DProject: From the Gamespot Early Access review:
"I wish the dialogue system were implemented so that side characters got more attention from time to time; individual party members’ personalities are typically overshadowed by the character you designate as your primary conversationalist."
Shoot. I was keeping my fingers crossed this wouldn't be the case, but apparently it is. I was hoping that the other characters would "interrupt" the conversation if they could make, for example, a successful Smart Ass check if the initial person (leader) couldn't. But apparently the character you use will be doing all the conversations, which leaves few options: either
- creating the team spokesman who's good at all the social skills (I believe there's three or four of them), or
- miss out on some of the dialog options.
I'm really bummed about this. It's not a gamebreaker, not at all, but still something that would've been awesome to see properly made. As it is, I see no reason to give the three other characters any social skills, if they're never going to get to use them.
I might have to leave a notice of this somewhere, like the ranger forums or whatever it is, if I can access that. I'd really wish they'd fix this.
Your suggestion wouldn't really work with how WL2's conversation/skills system is. The speech checks are at fixed thresholds.. So if a check is for Hard-Ass 2, then you must have at least 2 points in Hard-Ass or you can't click the dialogue option, there's no way to "fail" speech checks because they don't have a percentage-based system like say Lockpicking does, but usually how it is you come up to some enemies, dialogue starts, they'll be an option to say screw you and start combat, or their might be a Kiss-Ass lvl 3 check where you can persuade them to let you pass. If your guy with the speech skill doesn't have the skill to pass the check, you can simply change the "speaker" by clicking on their dialogue, you can then change it to a character which has the required speech skill.
You can say have three characters and each of them specializes in a different speech skill, if you don't want to have the dedicated "Negotiator". I honestly think that might be a better route than a completely non-combat diplomat character, there's just way too much tough combat and so few opportunities to use speech that you wouldn't want to waste a character on non-combat stuff.
Their might be a much more heavy emphasis on dialogue in the LA section of the game though.