Keep it relational. Choice has to be based on the person and not the task/goal. The longer we delay a branch, the more the player can interact with the disagreeing parties, and therefore the more likely they are to care about each one’s perspective. When the choice comes, make it a choice between people.

This is what I liked about the design of the introductory "character generation" quest at the magic school. I probably went through that one a half dozen times or more before I stopped caring about the people and started minmaxxing based on the reward. That's a lot of roleplay mileage for such a small and simple (set of) storylines.

Even when I'm minmaxxing, once I have the bare minimum spells/schools for a build that can survive early game, I always RP the remaining choices.

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My only regret is that your choices during that storyline don't stick around. All that's implemented at the moment is a simple reputation variable per NPC you interact with. It would be very nice if doing quests could add permanent flags to that NPC that alter their interactions in a more unique and permanent manner. [Childhood Friend], [Childhood Rival], etc. Even if a given flag gets overshadowed by later flags and events, it would still be cool to see a tally of past flags.

Some flags, such as from providing monster corpses to an NPC, could make that town better defended against that kind of monster, raise the education level of that NPC, or potentially enable that NPC to become a heretic that needs more monsters to pursue research.

Rivalry flags, such as from working against an NPC on a business deal or ethical debate, would probably cause mild grudge that couldn't be fixed with a few days of bribery and speech checks. Pretending to work for an NPC and then doublecrossing them, or getting someone they care about arrested or killed, would likely be much more serious. Triggering a [Business Rival] flag should never be as serious as a [Lovers Vengeance] flag, no matter how many times you side against a business rival!

引用自 kaylo7：

3 Suggestions:
1. Tiered Motivation.
2. Tiered Commitment/Impetus
3. Player Interaction factored into ally/adverse party engagement.

As always, well thought out and clearly articulated Kaylo7. Appreciate your help in this.

#1 we are doing for sure. It has to be this way with a scale of motivation.

#2. Tiered Commitment - agree as well. Hence #1: to know how strongly someone reacts to a quest to capture a skeleton, we have to know how terrified they are about having one IN the village (even if it is pinned to the wall like a singing fish from the 90's).

#3 Player Interaction factored into ally/adverse party engagement. - Yes we will be implementing this as it is all about relationship. Or said differently, it is the relationships at the core of choices. Something Nolan believes strongly and is advocating and reminding us of daily (in a good way!). He was just at a game dev writing conference on the weekend and spoke about that.

What you described is a high water mark, the holy grail, of what I'm going for.
We're starting with 'kill a skeleton' so we can build practical experience before tackling the web of intrigue.

引用自 Gender Nihilist：

I would prefer an emphasis on additional interactions and complications personally. They are not unwanted for me as a player, they are part of the core pitch of this game that sold me on its promise, and something I would much rather have emphasized than de-emphasized

Thanks, glad you are here!

I agree it is a tightrope walk to get the balance right.
I feel like the player needs to tell the GM (the game) what they are interested in.
At the D&D table, I can tell by body language and tone of voice if I should move it along faster or slow down and smell the roses.
The game needs to be told "I want something quick & dirty" vs "I want an epic tale"

We need to build and release tension. There needs to be 'down time', like the score screen in Overwatch or CoD.

Mark shared a story recently of his work on God of War (both of em) where because the camera never 'broke' and kept it a single shot, it was stressing out testers and QA because they were never getting that 'here is a break, take it easy' signal. They had to build in downtime to the game to signal it was ok to put down the controller.

So we can't have the AI generate Mega Epic #1, Mega Epic #2, etc.
Unless you want that...

Much to figure out here! Thanks for journeying with us.

引用自 RedPine：

This is what I liked about the design of the introductory "character generation" quest at the magic school. I probably went through that one a half dozen times or more before I stopped caring about the people and started minmaxxing based on the reward. That's a lot of roleplay mileage for such a small and simple (set of) storylines.

Even when I'm minmaxxing, once I have the bare minimum spells/schools for a build that can survive early game, I always RP the remaining choices.

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Really glad to hear it. Nolan was largely responsible for this and I think he did it well. I've passed along your thoughts to him.

My only regret is that your choices during that storyline don't stick around. All that's implemented at the moment is a simple reputation variable per NPC you interact with. It would be very nice if doing quests could add permanent flags to that NPC that alter their interactions in a more unique and permanent manner. [Childhood Friend], [Childhood Rival], etc. Even if a given flag gets overshadowed by later flags and events, it would still be cool to see a tally of past flags.

Agreed. We aren't done yet and want to do much more with this. Your 'flags' is actually a traits system. And NPCs do already have a 'brain' and 'memories' in which they track your choices and behaviors. We then reference those to drive decisions.
You can't see much of it yet, but the base is there and we're building on it for these dynamic quests.

I definitely think that the fellow students should bring up your actions during that starting segment.

Also anyone you spend a lot of time taking to should be able to comment on past experiences you share.

It's coming! Right now all NPCs suffer from amnesia. But we'll give them better brains soon.