[MoriartyL]

Originally Posted by Jackal

Yes, I know you have a "meaning" for each button, but the fact that they create dialogue lines the player doesn't anticipate means they're left guessing. That's why you're getting comments about randomness. They're not random under a larger umbrella, but in terms of specific direction, they seem random.

That is, until you take a moment to think about why it happened, and see the character. If you mean that the player is guessing what the character will say next, I really don't see how this can be seen as a bad thing.

You say you're trying to make dialogue more character driven, but if you're effectively communicating a character, then the responses should become intuitive. The complaints here aren't that the choices weren't what people WANTED them to be, but that there was no way to predict the direction they would take.

Now that's not true at all. Take any branch, think for a minute about who the character is, and you'll know what he's going to say next.

Don't get me wrong. I like the notion of having a dialogue evolve more naturally than simply picking one line after another. But you need to give players enough information to make them aware of what they're choosing. That's why you're already getting suggestions of more detailed options.

I'm still thinking about whether any more detail could be beneficial. I'm really not sure. As it stands now, the player learns a lot about the character by seeing what he says. It's not unreasonable at all to think that over the course of a longer game, the player would eventually get to know the character well enough that he would almost always be able to anticipate what the character will do when he presses one of the buttons.