That’s what the indifferent responses fill, no? And sometimes the hostile response is more passive than outright angry (initial meeting with Colonel Volk comes to mind).
I think now is a good time to explain the dialogue system for anyone who wants more information. I summarized it earlier, but here is a more detailed description.
Dialogue guide
Every initial dialogue interaction has 6 choices. The first two are always polite/friendly/positive. If you pick one of them, you will raise a character’s trust.
The third option is always indifferent. If you pick this option, none of the character’s relationship stats will be affected
The fourth option is always hostile. Picking this option will raise a hidden stat called rivalry. In the beginning it will also end the interaction with that character on negative terms.
The last two options are romantic (though not always flirty). Shy, then bold. If you select either of these options, you will raise a character’s trust as well as their hidden romance stat. Your choice also affects the hidden direct/indirect stat.
The way you interact with characters will affect what you can do later, so, for example, a character with no trust in you will treat you differently from an MC they trust.
With that out of the way, I’m open to modifying this system, but I’m not willing to go back and add a 7th specifically passive aggressive option to every dialogue tree. So what that means is, I’m willing to tone down the outright hostile responses to make them less aggressive, but I won’t change the indifferent response (I think it’s important to have a neutral option). So how about a poll?
- Make the hostile options less aggressive
- Leave the hostile options the way they are
- I’ll tell you what I think in the comments
The hostile dialogue options are also likely to change over time as the MC’s situation changes, regardless of whether I modify what’s there already or not
As for being passive aggressive outside of the dialogue options, I’m not sure it’s possible without a ton of extra work. In situations where the player can’t choose what the MC is going to say to other characters, I’ve tried to keep their dialogue as neutral as possible so that everyone can project their MC’s emotions. Once the player chooses a dialogue option, I can customize the emotional response, but I don’t want to assume that every MC is going to respond negatively before that happens, and even if I used personality stats to customize every bit of dialogue (impossible), it’s too early in the game for personalities to be developed
This is my reasoning but not necessarily my defense! If anyone sees a way that I can improve the system, please speak up!
Can you explain what you mean by this? I think what you’re saying is that skipping scene A doesn’t lead to a different scene (scene B?), but I don’t want to make assumptions. However, choosing to skip those interactions does have an effect. Besides all the stat points, the scene ends differently depending on what you did on the ship, and for those of you who interacted some with the crew, you saw different things depending on how you handled those interactions
Character deaths may be a thing (???), but certainly not this way!
You are both right!