Looking at the latest version of the co-operative dialogue (
Update 12), I’ve got a minor issue with how it works. There are two types of those co-operative dialogue events from what I can tell – Opinion Points, where your characters each give their opinion on a recent event (and it only really affects the relationship between the two). Those are things like "Was that girl sleeping around a bad person?" / "Was it smart to jump off a cliff?" / "Did we do a bad thing by killing the drunk guards?" I want to make myself clear: those are fine, my issue is only with decision points.
Decision Points are where the choice affects external events. In a decision, a player usually has two options, which I’ll call A and B. My issue is that if your first decision is not the same as your partner’s, you are locked into disagreeing. You don’t have the option to change your mind, say “I see your point,” and agree with them – switching your opinion from A to B or vice versa. It makes both parties seem stubborn and inflexible, not actually willing to listen to their partner, or change their mind, always insisting on “highest skill check wins”.
(For the sake of space, I’m using agree/disagree instead of a full line) Let’s say that Rod chooses A, and Scarlett chooses B. That’s the first time Rod hears Scarlett’s opinion, but at that point Rod’s range of responses is only three ways for him to insist on A. He can try to [Intimidate] Scarlett into picking A, [Charm] her into picking A, or [Reason] her into picking A.
Rod never actually listens to what Scarlett says, and Rod is not permitted to change his mind and agree to go with Scarlett’s B decision after he hears her opinion.I think it would be better if when it came time to respond to an initial disagreement, Rod had four options: [Intimidate] Scarlett into picking A, [Charm] her into picking A, [Reason] her into picking A, OR Change his mind and agree to pick B. You wouldn’t need to make custom “I changed my mind, let’s go with B” dialogue for each decision, a generic “Okay, we’ll do it your way” option could be used each time.
If Rod picked the agree, he would be switched to B, that would have the same end result as if they had both chosen B the first time.
If Rod disagrees and insists on picking A, then it’s bumped over to Scarlett and she picks a response, as demonstrated in the
update 12 video. If Scarlett was controlled by a second player in co-op, they could choose agree, switching her from B to A, and it would have the same end result as if they had both chosen A the first time.
I don’t know how well an AI personality would decide how to choose the “agree” option if the player-controlled character disagreed twice, so you could leave that out and just have AI Scarlett pick from the [Intimidate]/[Charm]/[Reason] argument for B.
If both characters disagree twice, including the first one, then it’s resolved by the dice rolling.
What do you think? (Is it clear what I mean?)
