Has anyone worked out how speech functions yet?

[David Davidson]

The biggest problem I had with KCD 5 years ago was that nobody (not even the devs) could explain certain features. That and a large amount of bugs.
I've noticed that even if my speech skills even exceed that of my 'opponent', I'll still fail fairly often. It kind of makes the empathetic perk pointless as you aren't learning whether or not you'll win a speech (or intimidation/charisma) check.
Is there a hidden attribute? Using the speech check in tricks of the trade and failing (while videos of people with a speech skill of 20 show that there IS other dialog and that it is winnable) is a bit of a slap in the face as I AM a blacksmith and my speech is higher than the person I'm talking to, so the check should succeed.

It's happened in other quests too, but this is the first to make me step back and wonder wtf is going on.

[danilo.schoeneberg]

In many speech checks it isn't enough to have a higher speech stat than the NPC, as it required a certain level. Let's say you have a speech stat of 7, the NPC has a speech stat of 5 - that doesn't mean you will pass a speech check, as the check itself might require you to have at least 10 speech or to be at least 5 point higher than the NPC's stat.

The empathetic perk is not a magical tool - it only gives you a rough hint at how you compare with the NPC and helps deciding which one has the best chance of success. For instance if you have a speech higher by 2, but a charisma higher by 10, using the charisma option in a dialog may have a better chance of succeeding.

[Lieste]

It is really simple... just as in real life you have a chance of persuading which increases with your ability to outwit, intimidate or charm your interlocutor... but also the chance changes radically based on how well your suggestion aligns with their intent, predilections, beliefs and desire to be awkward to you.

You can be a perfect orator, charming and intimidating, but make the wrong argument to the wrong person and at the wrong time and get completely shut down.... or you can be a blithering 1d10T failure barely able to get out of your own way, but your desire aligns with what is going to be done, if you'd only shut up long enough to let it happen...

[Four Little Diamonds]

Begs the question as to why the empathetic perk even exists if it wasn't intended to ever give the player an accurate representation of the enemy's stats and ultimately ends up misleading the player. Along with the idea that there are certain speech options that automatically succeed when others don't, it undermines the players stats and leveling. You can make the "just as in real life" argument but ultimately it would be the only explanation for this kind of behavior; i.e tricking the player.

Lots of rpg systems that clash and don't mesh well with each other in this game, not only with the speech checks but also with the combat.

[David Davidson]

Empathetic being only a rough indicator makes the most sense. Though if a developer makes that design choice showing actual numbers is kind of silly and it would have benefited from having stylistic imagery (facial expressions, thumbs up/down) to better convey to the player that it isn't as much about the exact amount of points you have versus they have, but what is the best choice for a given situation. Though this explanation falls somewhat flat when you can use only 1 of the 3 speech types. I guess that could be put down to an oversight in development.

Definitely feels like padding and railroading in tricks of the trade though and this is where the "It's just like real life!" explanation makes no sense; a blacksmith telling a blacksmiths apprentice that he must have never been around a forge when said apprentice describes tempering makes no "real life" sense. Besides, in real life we form sentences, we don't pick what we are going to say from a drop-down menu. Also I've seen videos of people passing that speech check (with a start of 20) so it isn't so much that you're saying something idiotic that could never be believed, feels more like the developers wanted to have a "if you're far into the game you can get a slightly different outcome and shorter quest, if you've only been playing a few hours, do some pointless work remembering a nursery rhyme"

Originally posted by Clown World HONK! HONK!:

Begs the question as to why the empathetic perk even exists if it wasn't intended to ever give the player an accurate representation of the enemy's stats and ultimately ends up misleading the player. Along with the idea that there are certain speech options that automatically succeed when others don't, it undermines the players stats and leveling. You can make the "just as in real life" argument but ultimately it would be the only explanation for this kind of behavior; i.e tricking the player.

Lots of rpg systems that clash and don't mesh well with each other in this game, not only with the speech checks but also with the combat.

Yep. On the bright side some things can be fixed with mods. Honestly a lot of decisions seem to have come from the "idea guy" such as the need for a specific save game item, which is more of a survival horror staple than anything else and it clashes with just being able to quit the game and you've got a save you can go right back to, or you just mod around it.

A lot of stuff feels like it's been added on and layered to the point where the developers have trouble explaining how systems even work and most "does x affect y" forum threads usually have two opposite answers. Makes some sense given that it's a kickstarter game and a lot of things were probably added in last minute, leading to a number of different (and often hidden) stat modifiers on top of one another.

Hopefully KCD2 which is in development (at least according to a mistake made by a voice acting talent agency) has a better management structure. Though some of the charm of KCD is its weird half buggy nature.

A 'social compass' in the sequel would be much better than precise stats. Half the time the things you say barely correspond to what you choose, or there could be a far better way of saying them. Listing numbers then having you lose anyway because what you made sense in the developer's head isn't the best way to do things. A "which am I least likely to fail" perk would have been better.