Greyed out dialogue options

[AndreyKva]

Basically, if you have already heard what a character has to say on a particular topic then said topic should be greyed out, just like Oblivion and Skyrim. This was honestly the only thing holding me back from enjoying Morrowind and its extensive lore. If this gets implemented at any time, I will honestly give all my money to the project and thank each and every individual who was ever involved in this project. Honestly. Thank you.

[jirka642]

I definitely support this. Having to click on 100 different topics for almost every npc was a lot worse than the "terrible combat system" that some people hate so much.

[Tes96]

I also support this idea. What say you, OpenMW Team?

[Zini]

Sounds neat. Might accept this even before 1.0, if someone really wants to do it.

[TheMechanist]

I definitely support this. Having to click on 100 different topics for almost every npc was a lot worse than the "terrible combat system" that some people hate so much.

+1

[wareya]

Definitely something I want to see. I'd do it if an mingw-based openmw dev environment were rational to set up on windows. Alas, it is not.

[Greendogo]

How would this react to dialogue options that will give different reactions the second or third time they are chosen? Leaving them greyed out might prompt the player not to click it again, potentially hindering quest progression or missing out on dialogue content.

On the flip side, leaving them fresh and ungreyed out when there is randomized content or definitely new content to display in dialogue will kind of give it away... though that would still be the preferable option. Just wanted to point it out.

[Zini]

This is a valid argument. But I still like the idea. Maybe make the greying out optional (controlled via a user setting).

[Jyby]

Code could ask the question: Does this dialog option branch? Has it been branched? If yes, grey this option. Else no.

Another concern is "hyper links" in dialogue options; think of joining a guild.

I like the option to toggle this off. I'm also ok with playing with it on...
Like, I've heard the guildsmen's speech about joining. I don't need to hear it again. Thus that option is greyed.

EDIT: Maybe this could be an ingame toggle in the dialogue screen instead of a menu option.

[Chris]

The engine should be able to figure out which dialog entry a given link will lead to ahead of time. So rather than flagging the topic as heard/unheard, flag the target dialog entry. It should then only gray out if the player has read the actual response before. Topics that have a randomized target could have that random value calculated at the start of dialog and remain constant while the player is in dialog with the NPC.

Though there's still issues with dialog that uses talker-targeted variables (e.g. "I'm %name, %class.") which would cause it to gray out the first time it's heard, even though other people would say something different.