Not new information, but just a PSA to those who aren't aware how dialogue works here...

[Blood Eclipse]

One of the biggest complaints I see over and over again is about the repetitive dialogue...

I generally disagree with this complaint and think the dialogue is improved over New leaf, but there is a bit of a catch.

I don't think this game has a problem in terms of the amount of dialogue, but the problem is in how it's accessed...

You HAVE to talk to your villagers many times in a row to get varied dialogue. Dialogue is in tiers, and the more you talk to them in a row, the deeper they get into these tiers. The first 1-3 conversations are all introductory surface level stuff. If you just run around your island only talking to each villager once or twice, you're never getting past the introductory dialogue...

Think about it like this: The first time you talk to a villager, they're selecting from 3 options of what that personality can say. Talk again, and they're selecting from five options. Talk again, they're selecting from 10 options. Talk again and they're selecting from 20. These numbers are made up and just an example, but if you're only ever talking once or twice, you're cycling through the same 3-5 options over and over.

I'm posting this because I was DMing with someone who literally thought each personality only had about 10 lines of dialogue. They were only talking to villagers once. I had them talk to a villager until the villager was tired, and they said they saw stuff they've never seen before. They have significantly more than 10 lines, but if you only talk once or twice, you're pulling from a really shallow pool of options.

I'm not really trying to convince anyone that the dialogue is good with this thread. That's subjective, and not a hill I'm willing to die on since dialogue is still worse than GCN/WW. Just trying to highlight again how dialogue works in this game... I think it's kind of dumb that they adopted this layered tier approach to dialogue. I think it'd be a lot better if they could say anything every conversation... Just pull from the entire pool of dialogue every conversation... But they don't. And if you only ever talk once or twice, it's going to seem much more limited than it is because they ARE limited in what they can say for the first few conversations.

Same also goes for requests... They become much more likely to ask for things the more you talk to them. I do 4-5 errands a day for my villagers, but you have to get past the intro conversations first (unless they ping you with an errand).

I think it's kind of stupid they went with this approach. But I also think it's a shame when I see people frustrated because "villagers only talk about what I did yesterday"... Yes the introductory dialogue gets repetitive. But get past it, and you'll get to much "rarer" dialogue

I feel the dialogue has definitely improved since New Leaf, though it needs a little more work in my opinion. I liked when Cranky villagers and Snooty villagers were more mean (as their personality implies), they still feel too nice but not as much of a cookie cutter as New Leaf felt were all the villager's felt so undistingushable from each other that it was like talking to the same npc over and over. I also miss some of the adult humor from the older games, but I doubt that'll ever be brought back because of it rating. Still enjoying New Horizons though, and your example was really great and easy to understand. Ty

 

[Mezzanine]

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[TheKryptoKnight]

I feel the dialogue has definitely improved since New Leaf, though it needs a little more work in my opinion. I liked when Cranky villagers and Snooty villagers were more mean (as their personality implies), they still feel too nice but not as much of a cookie cutter as New Leaf felt were all the villager's felt so undistingushable from each other that it was like talking to the same npc over and over. I also miss some of the adult humor from the older games, but I doubt that'll ever be brought back because of it rating. Still enjoying New Horizons though, and your example was really great and easy to understand. Ty

That's why I prefer NH dialogue to NL. NL all the personalities are almost interchangeable. They're all so generic and dulled down... I find it frustrating. Still love new leaf. But it's dialogue is baaaaad. I also wish NH had a little more bite... But at least I can distinguish between them again.

I don't really like this decision at all... I know it was a thing in the gamecube vers. where the villagers would tell you to leave them alone for the rest of the day if you talked to them too much, but that game was so meanspirited that it made sense. I tried bothering Kiki today until she got flustered, and I did in fact get new dialogue. It's really bizarre to lock new dialogue when the game is cueing you to leave your villager alone..

Yeah. Like I said, I don't think what they're going for here works in execution. I think it'd be better if they had access to all dialogue from the first conversation... But just made the post because there's a lot of misinformation out there about there being almost no dialogue. There's quite a lot of variety, and I'm still finding new dialogue after 500 hours, but the way to access it is a little unintuitive, and I think most people just get tired of the intro dialogue and stop talking to them before ever getting to the deeper level dialogue.