pitfalls_and_sucesses.md

Pitfalls

• Sameness in choices / Repetitious dialogue
• Clicking fatigue / Ask-everyone-about-everything tedium
• Unchanging NPCs
• Adventure-style text-parsers are too slow and convoluted

Successes

• Mechanics

  • Physical interaction during dialogue
  • Dedicated button directions for types of responses
  • Conversation recaps
  • Exposing the workings of the system for clarity (e.g. showing NPC mood)
  • Limited number of total choices an NPC can be asked
  • “News events”, their radii, spread, and evolution

• Players

  • Conversation-specific

    • Timed choices
    • Unchoices
    • Failure as success
    • Conversation interruptions (+ returns to conversation & queueing vs. interjecting)

  • Conversation-independent

    • Conversation tone choice

    • Collecting nouns and asking NPCs about said nouns

    • Stats/afflictions governing what players can say

    • Entirely different dialogue choices based on class/stats

    • Culture-influenced dialects

• NPCs

  • NPC ability to remember knowledge
  • Responsive choices to player statements
  • NPC purposes
  • Culture-influenced dialects

Biggest competition

• Complex
  • Dialogue System For Unity (biggest indie player + large number of features)
  • articy:draft 3 (AAA standard with a ton of features)
• Simplified
  • Meet and Talk (great UI + focus on nodes)
  • Conversa (great UI + focus on features)
  • Node Based Dialogue System (ultra-simple)