[suggestion] Can we have impactful Dialogue Choices?

[TheMightyMollusk]

Yeah, the meaningful choices thing in mass effect worked out great. All the blood sweat and tears of your decisions came down to "do you want a red, blue, or green tinted ending?"

I mean, Mass Effect was great about it for two and a half games. Unfortunately, everything after the Rannoch arc happened.

[Evergrey]

by impactful you mean to be able to kill a npc who would disappear anyway?

i liked swtor, but the decisions werent really that impactful


i wouldnt say no to something like this but i dont see a lot to gain from it

I've killed potential companions whom I'll never be able to have in my team again since they're dead.
I've told others to get lost and they haven't come back yet.
So it's not only NPCs whom you'd never hear from again anyways.

Regardless, many of these "impactful" dialogue options simply gives you a different cutscene but in the end it's just the same, a quest that's now done and you'll never hear from it or its NPCs ever again.
At least the companions leaves a void once they're dead/gone.

[Akonyl]

Impactful options are nice, but the issue is that they become restrictive when you want to make multiple games. If Dawntrail was the last expansion of XIV, they could easily plan for whatever impactful choices a player might make in Dawntrail and structure their story to fit it, but then what about the next expac? They'd have to take that expac's choices into account, which are compounded on Dawntrail's, and if there was an expac following that, it'd need to take all three into account, etc. They wouldn't be able to make certain story decisions they'd want to, like "oh but what if the player chose X earlier? Then Y wouldn't make sense".

That's actually a problem they already ran into, with optional content, because narratively the concept of doing a piece of story or not is similar to choosing different dialog options. It impacted ShB to the point where they felt the need to "remove the impactful option" by forcing you to do CT, to collapse that choice and ensure where the player was in the narrative. Even there, they said that if they run into the "optional content question" in the future, they'd just assume the player had done the content, so I really doubt they'll go any further down the "impactful choices" path beyond adding a few lines of text to congratulate you for doing whatever thing beforehand.

[Boa-Noah]

I think a lot of people are missing the more obvious reason why we can't have meaningful dialogue options: It would take more effort to implement than it'd be worth for the consumer.

This isn't the old days, the dev team isn't adding tail holes or customizing gear for certain races to fit unique ears and body features, this is modern SE and going back to retroactively add in a system like this would be monumental. They'd have to not only adjust for the current dialogue options but somehow track what options each account picked and somehow weigh those choices to fit whatever the future narrative options are. This especially won't work for cutscenes with voice acting as they'd have to rerecord loads of dialogue for the expanded options and whatever the possible narrative changes would be.

This kind of thing works if you build the game around it, adding it in to an already existing system that doesn't track that just doesn't make sense.

But also I'm pretty sure there was some kind of dialogue system back at launch that tracked your choices, I might be remembering wrong but I'm vaguely remembering there was like 3 options and depending on your choices would make it so your character was labeled a certain way? Am I crazy? I'm pretty sure it was like, tough / heroic / jovial or something? It's a solid 10 or so years back so if that's just crazy talk then ignore this part but I'm so sure it was a thing. Didn't have any impact on dialogue or anything but it was a character stat kind of thing from what my brain is struggling to recall.

[Akonyl]

But also I'm pretty sure there was some kind of dialogue system back at launch that tracked your choices, I might be remembering wrong but I'm vaguely remembering there was like 3 options and depending on your choices would make it so your character was labeled a certain way? Am I crazy? I'm pretty sure it was like, tough / heroic / jovial or something? It's a solid 10 or so years back so if that's just crazy talk then ignore this part but I'm so sure it was a thing. Didn't have any impact on dialogue or anything but it was a character stat kind of thing from what my brain is struggling to recall.

The dialog choice you gave to the merchant in the introductory cutscene (in the chocobo carriage) determined what stat was on the ring you started with, crit/vit/det/crafting. But as soon as you stopped using that ring it wasn't relevant anymore (though I still keep mine around).

[Taliriah]

Yeah, the meaningful choices thing in mass effect worked out great. All the blood sweat and tears of your decisions came down to "do you want a red, blue, or green tinted ending?"

BG3 is an example where it was done better. But it was very likely an enormous amount of work, and they don't have to deal with the consequences of all these choices since they're not making a sequel, whereas in FFXIV the story has to keep going on. But then again, they also wouldn't have to do player choice to the insane level of BG3.

[Evergrey]

The dialog choice you gave to the merchant in the introductory cutscene (in the chocobo carriage) determined what stat was on the ring you started with, crit/vit/det/crafting. But as soon as you stopped using that ring it wasn't relevant anymore (though I still keep mine around).

Oh, I never knew about that. Interesting.
I also kept mine, as a momento.

[Iscah]

That's actually a problem they already ran into, with optional content, because narratively the concept of doing a piece of story or not is similar to choosing different dialog options. It impacted ShB to the point where they felt the need to "remove the impactful option" by forcing you to do CT, to collapse that choice and ensure where the player was in the narrative. Even there, they said that if they run into the "optional content question" in the future, they'd just assume the player had done the content, so I really doubt they'll go any further down the "impactful choices" path beyond adding a few lines of text to congratulate you for doing whatever thing beforehand.

I don't recall them ever saying they would pretend players have done content that they hadn't done, and if they said it then they certainly aren't sticking to it, because we just recently got significant references to side content in MSQ (Void quests and Eden) only if you had done them in advance.

Or are you thinking of the fact that in Shadowbringers they initially referenced CT even if you hadn't done it? That's different (and quite neatly done) because

the time travel aspect gets around that. It doesn't matter whether you have been through CT or not – all that matters is that G'raha went through it from his perspective, whether that's a past or future event for you.

Likewise, the time machine relies on technology developed from Alexander and Omega because again it happened at some point before the other timeline's Eighth Calamity even if you haven't done it yet.

[Supersnow845]

I don't recall them ever saying they would pretend players have done content that they hadn't done, and if they said it then they certainly aren't sticking to it, because we just recently got significant references to side content in MSQ (Void quests and Eden) only if you had done them in advance.

Or are you thinking of the fact that in Shadowbringers they initially referenced CT even if you hadn't done it? That's different (and quite neatly done) because

the time travel aspect gets around that. It doesn't matter whether you have been through CT or not – all that matters is that G'raha went through it from his perspective, whether that's a past or future event for you.

Likewise, the time machine relies on technology developed from Alexander and Omega because again it happened at some point before the other timeline's Eighth Calamity even if you haven't done it yet.

The void quests don’t exactly make a strong argument for the opposing position either. The post role quest void quests aren’t mentioned at all no matter your status on them and completing eden does nothing but give you a 2 second cameo of Gaia you don’t even need to have done eden to actually understand who she is

I also remember krile giving updates to eureka as it released in the post SB quests and there is at least one reference to Alexander (though I can’t exactly remember where

There is also the reverse point (which is because it was released in that time) that side content treats you as you were when it released, implying you always do it when it’s released

While MMO’s do sit in a sort of time bubble there is no reason why the WOL would have conceivably left say…..coils until EW considering Bahamut was regenerating the entire time

Side content is definitely implied to have already been done as soon as you pass the patch that it was released in

[Iscah]

The void quests don’t exactly make a strong argument for the opposing position either. The post role quest void quests aren’t mentioned at all no matter your status on them and completing eden does nothing but give you a 2 second cameo of Gaia you don’t even need to have done eden to actually understand who she is

The Void quests are indeed mentioned in MSQ if done – Beq Lugg mentions working with Unukalhai, which is only possible if you have progressed that storyline.

And yes, you absolutely do need to have done Eden to its completion for Gaia to be there and for her to be behaving as she does in that particular scene. The whole thing would make no sense if you hadn't met her yet, and would not add up with earlier stages of the quest line.

There is also the reverse point (which is because it was released in that time) that side content treats you as you were when it released, implying you always do it when it’s released

I'm not saying that isn't the case.

The "only reference optional quests if complete" mechanism requires a weird kind of double-thinking. You're in Schrödinger's state of quest completion until you actually get it done.

If you haven't done them, they simply didn't happen, no matter how long ago they should have happened. The MSQ will not reference the characters in their end-of-quest states because they are not there. (There are some exceptions for characters who do not noticably change from start to end of an earlier storyline, though.)

If you then go back and do the quests later, the game treats it as if you stepped back in time to the point where the quest was always intended to take place, and your character's reality sort of realigns itself to now function as if they always did it at the first opportunity and not more recently.