Option to hide unqualified (and spoiling) interactions/dialogue options?

[fridgeband]

Well, I'm a corpo IRL and when I talk to other corpos, I don't go like "hmm, I know how this works because I'm a corpo! Now, let me use this knowledge to answer this guy's tricky questions. Or maybe I should just answer him in a non-corpo way? Hmm...."

It doesn't work like that, it happens naturally.

Well then I must automatically assume that you're probably in a really clean and good corporation with no corruption, which is extremely rare. (supposedly)

Post automatically merged: Sep 4, 2019

IIRC she doesn't pick that but the one above (which happens to be pretty much the same)

It's kind of interesting, and I like many different options, but I also like how there are different WAYS to do the same things too, like more cautiously.

Post automatically merged: Sep 4, 2019

Character background options should be hidden, or only appear when qualified.

Skill check options should appear. At least definitely in the open world. If I can't access a certain area because I lack a certain skill, I want to know. Personally, I'd also appreciate it if they appeared in dialogue too, but that's just me.

An option in the settings would be the best of both worlds and give the ability to play what they prefer. Maybe for my first playthrough I'd like to see how deep these skill checks and dialogue options go and leave them on, or change my mind halfway through the game. Options are good, yeah?

Options = very good.

 

[kirell]

Well then I must automatically assume that you're probably in a really clean and good corporation with no corruption, which is extremely rare. (supposedly)

Well put. The corp life in Cyberpunk 2077 isn't some utopia of nice people cooperating for the betterment of humanity - your boss will look at you as an asset or ally for his advancement (if you are lucky), you will be familiar with power plays & cutting off rivals etc. Getting fired for botching an important deadline might be quite literally deadly. If you work on important research, you cannot just quit - and rival companies might steal important researchers by armed extraction, even against their will.

Like many aspects of cyberpunk, corporate life takes everything problematic today and dials it up to 110%...

 

[fridgeband]

No, it doesn't, but if it ain't broke, it doesn't need to be fixed. IMO.

Removing the indicators serves no practical purpose, and only benefits those who (for some reason) prefer to have less information about their characters at any given time. As I've pointed out in the past, I like information density, and arbitrary "immersion"-based decisions rarely make sense to me when it comes to gameplay (cinematics/story-telling are another story).

You correctly point out that you will not always know when you're shifting into "corporate mode" as a human being. That's fair. But we are not actually our character. We do not and cannot (yet) actually feel what they feel or think what they think. This is why user interfaces exist in the first place, to give us information our characters have, but we don't necessarily know. It's also why skill checks in PnPs and normal RPGs exist. This is why dialogue options exist. I think removing the background indicators would lessen the roleplaying experience, because I'll literally never know that my character is actually playing the way I intend for them to play. The only possible way I'll know that my character is different than someone else's is by going and asking them.

Different strokes indeed. This is a scenario where a toggle might be appropriate and perhaps not that challenging to implement, though I can't say for sure.

wholeheartedly agree.

Post automatically merged: Sep 4, 2019

Well put. The corp life in Cyberpunk 2077 isn't some utopia of nice people cooperating for the betterment of humanity - your boss will look at you as an asset or ally for his advancement (if you are lucky), you will be familiar with power plays & cutting off rivals etc. Getting fired for botching an important deadline might be quite literally deadly. If you work on important research, you cannot just quit - and rival companies might steal important researchers by armed extraction, even again their will.
Like many aspects of cyberpunk, corporate life takes everything problematic today and dials it up to 110%...

What you said is like a dish cooked to perfection. Needs no extra spice or salt or anything. Couldn't have put it better myself!

 

[lelxrv]

I don't think street kid/corpo/nomad lines should be marked/highlighted in any way. The player shouldn't be aware that he's getting a "special" option, it should have a natural flow.

Highlighting dialogue options like they are doing right now is super "video-gamey" and rather against CDPR's "full immersion" slogan.

Well put. It's one of those "gamey" elements that can be easily abolished.

 

[fridgeband]

Well put. It's one of those "gamey" elements that can be easily abolished.

Well hey, this is why I'm a huge fan of options and settings to disable/enable things like highlighting the options or turning the timers for dialogue or any in game timers on or off.

We can all be happy.

 

[Swedrami]

If, for some reason, it's not possible to remove them entirely (via the proposed option) how about obfuscating the unqualified interactions/dialogue options by applying a visual scramble effect instead?

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

A compromise I could live with but I rather have the option to hide them altogether or CDPR reconsider and just not show unqualified interactions/dialogue options by default.

I'm no UI/UX expert but either shouldn't be too complicated to implement?

I don't think street kid/corpo/nomad lines should be marked/highlighted in any way. The player shouldn't be aware that he's getting a "special" option, it should have a natural flow.

Coincidentally that's also something Pillars of Eternity/Deadfire's Expert Mode had covered and offered a solution for with "Show Qualifiers".

If checked, it would display interactions/dialogue options with the preceding qualifier-tag, just as it's currently implemented:

[<Hacking Icon> 6/9] I hope you don't screw like you type.
[STREETKID] Look behind you, a three-headed electric sheep!

No check, no tags, and just the dialogue line:

I hope you don't screw like you type.
Look behind you, a three-headed electric sheep!

Highlighting dialogue options like they are doing right now is super "video-gamey" and rather against CDPR's "full immersion" slogan.

Agreed.
Reaffirming again and again that "immersion is top priority" and "Cyberpunk 2077 is first and foremost a RPG with a capital RP" while also having interactions and dialogue options spoil and give away meta-information is quite the contradiction.

 

[SigilFey]

I'd seriously make it a few options. I really like @lv-426's distortion idea. That seems like a good "middle" option. If the distortion were color-coded to reflect the skill that could have provided the option, that would be a nice way of highlighting what other player builds might offer but not actually give away any spoilers. I'd put in a toggle slider, e.g.:

Dialogue Options:
Limited --------------- Reflective --------------- Full

Limited = only available options.
Reflective = shows the distortion letting you know that something associated with said skill is available, but not what.
Full = shows all text, so you know how things may have gone if you had a certain skill.

Honestly, I'd probably play at the middle setting if it was there.

 

[fridgeband]

I'd seriously make it a few options. I really like @lv-426's distortion idea. That seems like a good "middle" option. If the distortion were color-coded to reflect the skill that could have provided the option, that would be a nice way of highlighting what other player builds might offer but not actually give away any spoilers. I'd put in a toggle slider, e.g.:

Dialogue Options:
Limited --------------- Reflective --------------- Full

Limited = only available options.
Reflective = shows the distortion letting you know that something associated with said skill is available, but not what.
Full = shows all text, so you know how things may have gone if you had a certain skill.

Honestly, I'd probably play at the middle setting if it was there.

Options would be great. I would select full probably, after some serious thought.

 

[Snowflakez]

I'd seriously make it a few options. I really like @lv-426's distortion idea. That seems like a good "middle" option. If the distortion were color-coded to reflect the skill that could have provided the option, that would be a nice way of highlighting what other player builds might offer but not actually give away any spoilers. I'd put in a toggle slider, e.g.:

Dialogue Options:
Limited --------------- Reflective --------------- Full

Limited = only available options.
Reflective = shows the distortion letting you know that something associated with said skill is available, but not what.
Full = shows all text, so you know how things may have gone if you had a certain skill.

Honestly, I'd probably play at the middle setting if it was there.

I like these suggestions.

 

[Matchst1ckk]

something like that?
View attachment 11014328

Yeah, like that.

And also like this for in world skill checks. I want to see which areas I can and can't access with my loadouts.

 

[MozemKoqesku]

Pardon my creole, but that's utter bullshit.
If you don't meet the criteria - be it your character's background, your skills not being up to snuff or whatever - the game should not go ahead and show it to you anyway. That's anything but proper role-playing. Not to mention quite the immersion-breaker as well.

It's also likely not a question if a solution - be it the suggested option or the downright contextual removal (my preference) - is technically possible but if CDPRED is willing or deems it worth the hassle to do something about it.
With seemingly all of the community interaction happening on or through farcebook, reddit or twit twat you can't even tell if they're aware of this severe design flaw at all.

 

[fridgeband]

Yeah, like that.

View attachment 11014550

And also like this for in world skill checks. I want to see which areas I can and can't access with my loadouts.

Yes! if I don't know what I can and can't do or why, then I have no way of knowing how or what to improve myself or why. Basically just lost... no indicator, no way of even knowing it was possible to even open it at all. I might even never know there's a door, so I might think "wow they game has a lot of walls or I'm really not strong enough, but no way to ever find out unless I throw random perk points and expensive cyber limb upgrades into my character at total random, and just hope it isn't all just a waste."

So it is a very good thing if I can actually see "hmm I'm not strong enough, okay I will improve that later and come back". This way I can actually choose where my points go into my character with a real purpose, with real meaning.
You make it very clear, so +1

 

[Swedrami]

Pardon my creole, but that's utter bullshit.
If you don't meet the criteria - be it your character's background, your skills not being up to snuff or whatever - the game should not go ahead and show it to you anyway. That's anything but proper role-playing. Not to mention quite the immersion-breaker as well.

It's also likely not a question if a solution - be it the suggested option or the downright contextual removal (my preference) - is technically possible but if CDPRED is willing or deems it worth the hassle to do something about it.
With seemingly all of the community interaction happening on or through farcebook, reddit or twit twat you can't even tell if they're aware of this severe design flaw at all.

Going to end up just like the manual unsheathing/sheathing situation in The Witcher 3, at this rate.

CD PROJEKT RED: "Oh wow, we didn't know this was such a highly requested and useful feature, why didn't you guys tell us in the forums?"

 

[Skipper_1O1]

But how these dialogue options are appearing on the screen in the first place? They must be emitting from V's HUD right? And on what basis these options are formed? Is there some kind of a passive social enhancer implant, similar to Deus Ex, that can analyse an NPC's behavior and then shows, based on that NPC's behavior plus V's experience and skill set, the possible dialogue options, possibly along with the chances of success of each one, that we can choose from?

 

[KakitaTatsumaru]

Sounds (and looks) like a good compromise.

To me it's no different that removing the option totally.

Post automatically merged: Sep 16, 2019

Well, I'm a corpo IRL and when I talk to other corpos, I don't go like "hmm, I know how this works because I'm a corpo! Now, let me use this knowledge to answer this guy's tricky questions. Or maybe I should just answer him in a non-corpo way? Hmm...."

It doesn't work like that, it happens naturally.

For me this is just another video game gimmick that doesn't even serve much purpose. What would this be, to give a player some level of satisfaction that he chose a certain lifepath? It's totally random, it doesn't involve either skill or wit(or even a simple skill check, for that matter)...I don't really see a purpose, it just makes dialogues less immersive and more artificial.

I see it more as a way to reduce the difference between the player's knowledge and the character's knowledge.

 

[MozemKoqesku]

Going to end up just like the manual unsheathing/sheathing situation in The Witcher 3, at this rate.

CD PROJEKT RED: "Oh wow, we didn't know this was such a highly requested and useful feature, why didn't you guys tell us in the forums?"

Right, I remember - wasn't that patched in only several months(!) later?
Truly baffling considering how easy you could turn that automated shit off (for the most part) by changing a few variables and lines in the corresponding scripts. Maybe we'll have to do the same again with those dialogue options meta-spoilers, if CDPRED can't be arsed to provide an official solution to the issue.

 

[SigilFey]

Right, I remember - wasn't that patched in only several months(!) later?
Truly baffling considering how easy you could turn that automated shit off (for the most part) by changing a few variables and lines in the corresponding scripts. Maybe we'll have to do the same again with those dialogue options meta-spoilers, if CDPRED can't be arsed to provide an official solution to the issue.

If a system were built like this from the ground up, then it would be easy, but that's simply not the way the way some dialogue systems are designed to work. If not, it requires a new system to be introduced, then every applicable dialogue interaction to be edited. For a system like TW3, for example, it's not a simple "toggle".

 

[Heart Of Dawn]

Nothing has to be edited, just filtered which would be easy to do. It could be something along the lines of:

if(dialog.optionavaible==false){dialog.showoption=false};

 

[MozemKoqesku]

If a system were built like this from the ground up, then it would be easy, but that's simply not the way the way some dialogue systems are designed to work. If not, it requires a new system to be introduced, then every applicable dialogue interaction to be edited. For a system like TW3, for example, it's not a simple "toggle".

Even if that were the case and the dialogue system in its current iteration would need to be overhauled to allow for something like the proposed toggle to be realised - that's hardly something that couldn't be programmed, implemented and tested until April next year.
It's just about enabling/disabling a routine or function after all, and whether that involves simply deactivating automatic unsheathing/sheathing of swords or simply hiding unqualified environmental interactions/dialogue options doesn't make much of a difference in this case.

It's not like there's no groundwork to build/expand upon either.

As demonstrated in the 2018 and 2019 gameplay there's already code in place that checks for certain criteria or conditions, like the count of points invested in skills

or the chosen character background

and then accordingly calls for the 'greyed out'-filter to be applied/the "unavailability"-state to be set IF those criteria or conditions aren't met.

Replace the 'greyed out'-filter with the application of 100% transparency/0% opacity OR remove the unqualified environmental interactions/dialogue options from the available selection/from being displayed altogether, tie that to a checkbox under gameplay options and you'd essentially have what is being asked for with this thread's proposal.

The ball's in CDPRED's court.

 

[gaktem]

Didn't CDPR said they won't lock branching dialogue choices behind skill checks? If that is the case, all the background/skill dialogues will just be flavor texts to flash out your character and the world's lore. So it doesn't really matter that much in term of spoiling different outcomes.