Bionic Heart 2 - prototype

[jack1974]

Yes your solution would work, but would be harder since I should consider all possible switches (from manipulative to aggressive to friendly etc). I am thinking to let the player pick what strategy to use before each boss battle, maybe showing a percentage of success / difficulty. Like Robert is attracted to Tanya, so would be easier to use the manipulative/seductive approach. I don't think though that I should have each question trigger a random skill check, otherwise it would become just a matter of saving/reloading until you get the luck on your side, and I know that people wouldn't like this
I need to make it more something like "you need to find out the right sequence" of choices to use. That would make sense, since even in real life how people say things, in which sequence, can change a people's opinion radically I think.

[Themobboss]

Hmmm, ok I think I see what you're getting at. Would something like the following be along the lines of what your looking for?

Tanya confronts Robert
-player has chosen 3 seductive, 3 reasonable, 0 intimidating choices up to this point
Evaluation: Robert has low seduction resistance (10) , medium reasonable (15), high intimidation(20)

player chooses seduction

round 1 (with 3 dialog options)
A. effective response (5 seduction points + 3 points from choices, or a range (randomized) from [3 - 5] + 3 from choices)
B. neutral (0 - 1 or 0 + 3 choice points)
C. total thud ( - 3 to -5 +3 choice points)

round 2 (same choice spread)
round 3 (same choice spread)

Player has the goal of exceeding the NPC's resistance "points" with "points" derived from a combination of skill history and proper selection. Skill could mitigate some effects of bad choices but not totally.

[jack1974]

Yes that's what I'm thinking of doing now. There should be always the chance to win, even if you don't have high seduction skill, but would require you to always pick the best choice out of 3 (or maybe 4, so the % of getting the right one are even lower).
In the case above, depending on how high is your seduction skill, you could still win maybe selecting only 70% of best choices, and so on.

It will be a pain to write, but should be fun to play. Also, luckily this is only for the "boss fights" Thanks for the "brainstorming help"!

[Themobboss]

my pleasure

[jack1974]

I'm thinking though to use a percentage value for the 3 types of skills/approaches. I mean for example you start with Tanya: 40% seductive/manipulative, 40% aggressive/intimidate and 20% persuade/reason (other characters will have different starting percentages). Then the choices during normal play would change the balance but the sum is always 100%. Why? because if I add a numeric values to the choice score, could make some "boss fights" VERY easy picking the right skill and with a character with specific weakness (in the example above, seductive at 20 points and Robert).
Instead using a percentage I believe it would be more balanced, since would be unlikely for a player to have 90% in one and 5% in the other two, and would allow the player to switch the attitude if needed during the game...
So for a seduction 50% and a choice with 10 score would be: 10 + 50% = 15 score, and so on.

[Themobboss]

Yeah, that sounds like a great approach to it. I think it makes much more sense to place it on a 100% continuity. It would allow for approaches that aren't used to "atrophy" and be less effective and make the approaches the player opts to choose more meaningful. The varied "baseline" for each character at start sounds great as well, the player can still radically change the behavior over the course of things but it's more difficult.

[mastro]

Just played the test. I agree that I wouldn't like to have all the game play like that. I liked the first, as it was a sort of interactive comic book, or movie.
But even if English is not my main language I noticed that the writing has much improved! The seduction lines were quite exciting for me to read. Good job to the writer!

[MarSel]

I love this idea but I also agree it would best be only at boss battles.

[jack1974]

Well, I'm a bit stuck with the "social boss battles" it's really hard to come up with a dialogue with multiple choices, different attitudes, and that each question matches the player previous answer! I think I'm going either to eliminate those "battles" or do them differently. For now I think I'm going to go on with the plain scene writing since I don't want to waste too much time on that!