Player Dialogue Fatigue: Measured in words or "next" presses?

[Talonos]

So, if a player is subjected to too much text without exploration/combat/etc to break it up, they become fatigued and miss important details in conversations, get bored and skip it, or (in the worst case) quit playing. Thus we want to keep text as concise as possible without skipping important info or losing the emotional impact.

We know this already.

But here's a question: Is reader fatigue measured in words or "screen switches"? Should I be working on eliminating as many words as possible from my dialogue, or should I reduce the number of times the player presses the "Next" button? Or, counter-intuitively, do packed dialogue frames wear on readers, meaning I should break the text up by adding more boxes with less text each?

My characters are talk too much, and I'm looking for the best way to fix it.

 

[Shaz]

Lots of text in boxes and pressing Next lots of times both annoy me. But if I had to choose, I think I'd rather press Next a few more times than read through walls of text.

 

[jkweath]

I've wondered about this myself. I've noticed, personally, that in games that have wave-after-wave of full message boxes (the latest Fire Emblem games come to mind), I tend to get uninterested and skip a lot of dialogue. Most of it turns out to be fluff, anyway.

Same goes for message boards or any writing, really. They say each paragraph should contain 4-6 sentences, but honestly nowadays it seems more common for paragraphs to only have 2-3 sentences to keep readers more engaged.

Games that have a better time of keeping my attention are ones that usually don't show as much text in the dialogue box; maybe one or two sentences at once. I keep better attention if the "next" button is used to display more dialogue in the same box, though. (You can do that in MV with the message code \! , I believe)

In the dialogue I've written for my games, if I have a message box completely full (all four lines are filled up), I try to delete any sentences that don't have any real purpose; if the reader can understand and get a feel for what's going on without it, I remove it.

That being said, constant streams of one or two sentences also get annoying after awhile. i suppose it's important to keep a balance, though i honestly don't know where that balance lies. I can only go on myself, and I have a pretty short attention span.

 

[Andar]

You're looking at this from the wrong side - if long dialogues become annoying, then you should ask yourself why they're annoying and solve that problem instead of looking for technical ways to keep them annoying but letting the player click through faster.

The first step would be to think "is that dialogue neccessary?"
Only the important dialogues should be forced on the player, and those should be kept short.
Optional informations should remain optional, allowing the player to decide if he wants to read through them at all or not.

There are a lot of ways how to do that, you just need to reorder your game a tiny little bit. Here are some examples:
1) background info is usually stored in books in libraries, not discussed by people around. So place libraries in your town, give them "book"-event that display part of the stories. If the player wants to learn more about the world, he'll know where togo to read.
2) character-building dialogue, especially long dialogue, isn't given in a doorway. So make the game stop in taverns every few chapters, have each tavern with some NPCs and more events for the party members (disable followers when stopping there).
Then the player has the choice of going through the NPCs and Actors in the tavern to talk about things, or go to bed and continue regular quests next day.
3) show, don't tell - an NPC does not need to describe that they don't have much water if the town is surrounded by desert-themed tiles.


There are other ways to handle this, you just need to make sure that the player understands where to look for required texts and where to look for optional texts. Players who are interested in world building will then go there (and those player have a higher tolerance for reading), while people who don't like to read much can skip those parts.

 

[Wavelength]

I think dialogue fatigue is probably a measure of "time" - maybe words, too, but not presses. The longer the player has to spend reading without seeing or doing something interesting, the more fatigued they will feel.

It's worth mentioning that dialogue fatigue only sets in if the dialogue is not very interesting, and the player feels disconnected from what they are reading. You won't find too many players getting fatigued from reading text in the wonderfully-written Persona series, nor in a game like Papers, Please where the dialogue affects gameplay and keeps players on their toes.

 

[megumi014]

I think it also depends on the way you present the dialog and the kind of game you are making. For example, I like to play games with long dialogues and heavy plot, so I lose interest precisely when dialogues are too "plain" or straight to the point, or if they use the same verbs and expressions instead of making the reading itself interesting. I feel like I shouldn't bother reading it too closely because it is giving me obvious information.

While I don't mind clicking "next" many times, sometimes it leads me to an auto-pilot key smashing when reading fast, and it can make me skip text boxes by mistake. I think that bothers me more than dialogues being long or short.

I also think a good way to introduce more dialog and story immersion (but keeping it optional) is the "talk again" option to an NPC you have already spoken to. The first time the NPC could give the important information, and the second time (optional) could open more dialog choices to ask them questions about what he just told you.

 

[Talonos]

You're looking at this from the wrong side - if long dialogues become annoying, then you should ask yourself why they're annoying and solve that problem instead of looking for technical ways to keep them annoying but letting the player click through faster.

The one playtester who mentioned he was annoyed said he liked the writing and thought it was clever, but he was annoyed because he was eager to get through the text and learn the battle mechanics. He was about four windows of dialogue away from doing so. This tells me that I need to make my opening dialogue more concise. But do I need to make it four button presses more concise, 12 lines more concise, or 80 words more concise? That's sort of the question I'm asking.

Optional information should remain optional, allowing the player to decide if he wants to read through them at all or not.

You're missing a category of player. "Completionist" players feel like they are missing out if they don't talk to every NPC, read every lore book, check every stump, and poke behind every building. These players, whether they know it or not, can get fatigued by sheer amounts of optional content. The first time my poor wife found a mage's guild in Morrowind, she felt morally obligated to read all the books before moving onto the next area. (Hint: She never got past the first town.) She also had issues with Bioware's Baldur's Gate; reloading the game to explore every permutation of every conversation tree became very taxing for her. Therefore, you should limit text even in optional areas. "Optional libraries" are not carte-blanche to info-dump.

1) background info is usually stored in books in libraries, not discussed by people around.

Because the libraries are so often used to info-dump, some players skip them. A writer can work background into street conversations, which players are more likely to read. "I love looking at this statue of Andrew. How I wish I could have been alive back when he sealed the Death Dragon!" or "I'm making flower-bands to sell at the Dragonsfall festival. Those suckers from out-of-town will buy anything!" I recall Tales of Zestiria being pretty good in that regard.

It's worth mentioning that dialogue fatigue only sets in if the dialogue is not very interesting, and the player feels disconnected from what they are reading. You won't find too many players getting fatigued from reading text in the wonderfully-written Persona series, nor in a game like Papers, Please where the dialogue affects gameplay and keeps players on their toes.

Very much this. Although, genre has a lot to do with this as well. People going into Persona expect to do a lot of reading. Pokemon trainers, on the other hand, get two windows of text tops before they fight you. Maybe as many as eight if they're a gym leader. Any more and the player will skip it, no matter how well written, because it breaks the expectations for a lighter RPG.

 

[Pine Towers]

he liked the writing and thought it was clever, but he was annoyed because he was eager to get through the text and learn the battle mechanics.

Ever saw a James Bond movie? It most of the time starts with 007 finishing some mission in some rather explosive way. Every Dan Brown novel starts with a murder that adds more questions than answers. This video about Megaman and this video about Mario exemplifies what you can improve: Players want to get into action right away. Darkest Dungeon did this right: Just a little of history and the tutorial dungeon starts, even before the players arrives at the game hub.

 

[Tai_MT]

Personally... I measure my "fatigue" with dialogue in "is this interesting?". I'm probably the exception to the rule, however. I'll read paragraph after paragraph of explanation, so long as what I'm reading is interesting or relevant in some way to the game I'm playing. I spent hours upon hours reading the Codex in Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3. I let the game read the Codex parts to me it would read. I read the rest myself.

But, if your dialogue is poorly written, poorly executed, serves no real purpose, conveys nothing, meanders forever, has no point for the characters to get to, or interesting bits of story/character building in it... Then I'm going to feel fatigue fast.

For me, dialogue fatigue isn't measured in length or button presses. It's measured in quality of the writing and how necessary what's being said is.

Good example of that? Mass Effect Andromeda. I've been skipping nearly all the dialogue in the game because it's boring, uninteresting, written poorly, doesn't really convey character very well (or at all), and is often just padding and fluff and filler for no real reason. I read the Codex in the 3 previous games and now I'm skipping al the dialogue in the fourth.

That's why the difference for me isn't in button presses or how long it goes on. It's quality for me, most of the time.

 

[Milennin]

Well, it depends...

First, is the writing easy to read? The more "big" words, or made-up fantasy terms/names are used, the harder it gets through text when there's a lot of it. When the reader needs to get a dictionary to understand what you're trying to say, you're doing it wrong. Keep dialogue written in a way a child could understand it - unless your game is specifically made for adult audience. Don't overload readers on fantasy terms/names. Chances are, people are going to forget if you have a bunch of made-up words and will get confused.

Space out large text boxes. Like, don't have several 4-line text boxes in a row. That kind of thing causes reading fatigue. Always find ways to cut down the amount of text you need to get the point across. Don't over-use "big" words as a way to fill up your text boxes. Don't keep on repeating the same points over again. Keep fluff dialogue to a minimum.
If you need a 4-line text box somewhere, place it in between 2 smaller ones, so it's easier to digest.

To prevent click fatigue, make stuff happen in between text boxes. Move around NPCs. Do stuff to the environment. But make sure none of this actually slows down the flow of the dialogue too much. There needs to be just enough to keep the player from looking at a static image while reading a cutscene.
Also, instead of making one huge cutscene, split up in several smaller ones with gameplay sequences between them.

 

[Piyan Glupak]

I have an intuitive feeling that writing or re-writing dialogue is a bit like mapping in that it can benefit: "Can I make it a little shorter or smaller without losing anything important?"

 

[Basileus]

The one playtester who mentioned he was annoyed said he liked the writing and thought it was clever, but he was annoyed because he was eager to get through the text and learn the battle mechanics. He was about four windows of dialogue away from doing so. This tells me that I need to make my opening dialogue more concise. But do I need to make it four button presses more concise, 12 lines more concise, or 80 words more concise? That's sort of the question I'm asking.

Well I found your problem. Why is your game even opening with dialogue? Diving right into a conversation before establishing the scene and characters is a cardinal sin of writing.

If your playtester was annoyed because he wanted to learn the battle mechanics, then I'm guessing there was an expectation that he was supposed to be fighting soon. If your dialogue suggested that you were about to fight and then just kept going that would be a massive breach of player trust. Just imagine if in a Pokemon game you pick your starter, get into a fight, and then Professor Oak interrupts to give a huge tutorial on the battle system including going through all of the types and stats. Anyone who played Pokemon Red & Blue will remember the frustration of going to Veridian City and having to deliver Oak's package before you could get your Poke'balls and actually start playing. And the most hated NPC in the game, that jerk that blocks the road and forces you into a slow tutorial on how to catch Pokemon. Even in the remakes that make it optional he is still an aggravating speed bump.

Let's look at some other game openings:

Final Fantasy III: Your party of 4 nondescript orphans wake up in a cave and fight their way out of a tutorial dungeon to kick-start the plot.

Final Fantasy VII: Cloud and co. jump out of a train and Cloud immediately has to fight some guards and only after that do we get the exposition on where we are and why we are here.

Chrono Trigger: Chrono wakes up and goes to the Millennial Fair. No fighting for a while, but no expectation of fighting yet and lots of activities to do.

Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind: Your player character gets off a boat and goes through a relatively short and immersive character creation process and is then immediately set loose into the world.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Your player character goes through a short scene in a cell then follows the Emperor's crew into a tutorial dungeon with a bunch of assassins.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Your player character starts out with their hands bound in a slow-moving cart, then sits through a long opening execution sequence, then navigates their way through the burning village with their hands still bound, then runs into a tutorial dungeon, then finally gets freed after another short scene, and then finally has to go through said tutorial dungeon before they can finally do things.

The fact that several of these openings are beloved, classic sequences while one of the most popular Skyrim mods of all time is a mod to replace the opening scene entirely should say a lot.