87 réponses à ce sujet

[PsychoBlonde]

I was playing through the game a bit more today, and it occurred to me that there is never (or almost never) any good (as in, well done) motivation for the PLAYER to play as a "bad" character.  DA has some difference simply because there are often "bad" effects even from the "good" options, but in many cases there is still the generic "accept the quest, be nice" vs. "don't accept the quest, be an ass" option.  The trouble is, why would the player not accept the quest?  You're missing out on XP and possibly some good loot that is found in the course of doing the quest, completely aside from the (usually mediocre) quest reward itself.
In a couple of cases, the only conceivable reason not to accept the quest from the Player's standpoint is that an NPC or two might get peeved, and it's not like they get so peeved that you can't just hand them a gift and go on.  (I've finished the game twice now with ALL the NPC's at 80+ favorable and 6 of them at 100, it's NOT HARD TO DO if you only ever take your 3 favorite NPC's with you.  Seems kind of silly.)
As a suggestion, I'd say that getting away from these quests where party members do dumb things like complain that it's a waste of time and refusing the quest has absolutely no metagame purpose would be a positive step in gaming.  Mentioning any kind of in-game time limit only draws attention to the convention that there is no *actual* time limit on anything you do.  It'd be even nicer if the opportunities to refuse quest lines opened up actually interesting options, where you maybe wind up doing an *alternate* scenario instead of just completely dumping the opportunity.

[ct1615]

1) I killed any party member who refused to go along with my decisions

2) You do get more loot being "bad"

[blazin130791]

to be a blood mage or reaver

[Dark83]

There's never a reason for the most evil, self-serving character to reject requests out of hand, in any scenario. If you want to be a jackass and not listen to people, why should they pester the heavily armed and dangerous Warden? Why should being a rude, anti-social jerk be rewarded? It certainly isn't in life. Being a murderous psychopath won't get you anywhere either.

The "stupid psychopath" way is to kill things for no reason. The "stupid jackass" way is to insult and reject everyone. The "self-serving, evil" way is to demand rewards and exploit those who want your help.

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

My power hungry mage got the ability to destroy anything. Blizzard to slow people down, death cloud to DPS, blood magic to stun then, hurricane to smash them, CoC to pick up anyone who resisted the first three... My power hungry mage killed a lot of people. She killed everyone who resisted her. Why be evil? Power. Pure power.



My dwarf noble was an evil ******... if the price was right. Why be evil? You every hear the sound of two sov'rins a jinglin' together? It's nice huh? How do you think a hundred sounds? That's music!

[ct1615]

Dark83 wrote...

....Why should being a rude, anti-social jerk be rewarded? It certainly isn't in life....The "self-serving, evil" way is to demand rewards and exploit those who want your help.

have you ever met a wallstreet banker and his "bail-out" bonus???

[LaztRezort]

A Warden needs to gather his resources in order to finish the main quest.  Completing the sidequests is necessary to get those resources.  How you complete those quests is up to you:  you can try to be a nice guy about it (and thus waste time), or go the direct route and step on people (which, while it might seem to be "evil" can actually be argued to be necessary in order to save time).

Clear-cut Evil and Good aren't really important, or prominant, in this game.  Try to forget about "good guy" and "bad guy" motivations:  try to come up with other possible motivations/traits for your character -- violent, idealistic, vengeful, pragmatic, adrenaline junkie, naive, greedy, timid, etc, and see how you can make them play out.  These are all much more interesting than the cliche "chaotic good" or "lawful evil" abstractions.

[PsychoBlonde]

You're not understanding my point. The point is that there's no metagame reason to do it, not that there isn't (sometimes) an in-game or role-playing reason to do it. Something like 99% of the side-quests are pointless busy work, but there's no good metagame reason to reject ANY of them because you miss out on the XP and/or cash/loot/you name it reward for not completing the quest.



The best writers of video games enable the player's motivations to match up with the character's motivations. They don't force a disjuncture between "what player knows would benefit character" and "what character ought to want".

[Dark83]

ct1615 wrote...

Dark83 wrote...
....Why should being a rude, anti-social jerk be rewarded? It certainly isn't in life....The "self-serving, evil" way is to demand rewards and exploit those who want your help.

have you ever met a wallstreet banker and his "bail-out" bonus???

You appear to have missed my point.
You don't work your way into positions of power in a business by being a rude, anti-social jerk. You may become one later, but you have to play office politics first, and you don't get anywhere if everybody hates your guts and wants you to fail.

PsychoBlonde wrote...
The best writers of video games enable
the player's motivations to match up with the character's motivations.
They don't force a disjuncture between "what player knows would benefit
character" and "what character ought to want".

My point remains
that what the character wants is irrelevant - not every action should
be rewarded. If you reject everyone who wants to pay you for some
trivial task, then you shouldn't expect to receive the same amount of
money as if you actually did work. (Though I suppose if you killed them
all you should expect to find the reward money on them.)

Modifié par Dark83, 17 décembre 2009 - 04:05 .

[Ibian]

Futile reminder: Good and Evil is in the eye of the Beholder (seriously, go ask it, it's right there in every one of its many eyes).



Try playing a warrior who doesn't believe in the Maker, hates the Chantry for being arrogant fools who worship a figment of their imagination and oppresses people, and thinks magic is evil. You will end up killing Wynne, you will not get to sleep with Morrigan (unless there are enough gifts to get there on their own), and you will probably get some Chantry trouble too but i have not played far enough with this character to tell yet. A good part of the world in general, and the people you will have to deal with in particular, will consider you evil incarnate.

[PsychoBlonde]

LaztRezort wrote...

A Warden needs to gather his resources in order to finish the main quest.  Completing the sidequests is necessary to get those resources.  How you complete those quests is up to you:  you can try to be a nice guy about it (and thus waste time), or go the direct route and step on people (which, while it might seem to be "evil" can actually be argued to be necessary in order to save time).

You're talking about the branching lines of the overall quest.  I'm talking about stuff like the JOB BOARD quests or the DLC quests, which are NOT necessary to complete the game in ANY way, shape, or form.  How many people got the DLC and didn't bother to do it?  Anyone?  Yet if you're playing a character that can't be bothered, how do you square wandering off into the middle of nowhere to help some twit with his family?  It doesn't make sense.

It'd be much better if the side quests of this nature were structured more like the main quests.  Instead of "oh, my son/daughter/cat/dog/uncle/pet rock is lost!  Boo hoo!  Can you help me?" how about a quest that you get by first FINDING the whatever-it-is?  Granted, there's at least one quest in the game like that, but there are a dozen that follow the standard formula for every one of those.

[Dark83]

Ibian wrote...
Futile reminder: Good and Evil is in the eye of the Beholder (seriously, go ask it, it's right there in every one of its many eyes)..

People never define what they mean by good/evil/bad characters, so I always address the "anti-social jerk", "psychotic mass murderer", and "self-serving hardass" seperately.

[Dark83]

PsychoBlonde wrote...
Yet if you're playing a character that can't be bothered, how do you square wandering off into the middle of nowhere to help some twit with his family?  It doesn't make sense.

Then don't do it. These jobs are posted with a clear understanding of "do this and get paid". The nice altrustic guy does it to help, the selfish bastard does it to get paid. The apathic guy who doesn't bother ignores it. So? If you're going to have a character who doesn't care to do a job - then he won't get the benefit of doing a job. Actions have consequences. He'll be poorer then the employed, and it's perfectly in keeping with the character.

This is like a player in a PnP campaign coming up with a pacifist, incompetant noncombatant. Why should everyone cater to that PC? If that PC isn't the sort to go dungeon delving in the first place, then why is that character even there (other than the flashing neon Player Character halo on her)? If she's built to be weak, then she is. If a character is designed to be unemployed - then he is, along with all the consequences of that.

You're basically saying every design choice should have the same result - which removes all consequences from making the choice, doesn't it?

[LaztRezort]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

You're not understanding my point. The point is that there's no metagame reason to do it, not that there isn't (sometimes) an in-game or role-playing reason to do it. Something like 99% of the side-quests are pointless busy work, but there's no good metagame reason to reject ANY of them because you miss out on the XP and/or cash/loot/you name it reward for not completing the quest.

The best writers of video games enable the player's motivations to match up with the character's motivations. They don't force a disjuncture between "what player knows would benefit character" and "what character ought to want".

I guess I'm still misunderstanding your point

Why should you get the same reward if you skip a quest?  Metagaming is fine if that is you're style, I understand that.  But why should a Role Playing Game necessarily accomadate skipping parts of the game?  I still contend that skipping quests, in this game, has less to do with being evil and more to do with being an incompetant Warden (which we are, like it or not, railroaded above all else into being).  An incompetant Warden shouldn't be as rich, experienced, and successful as a competant one, right?

[Orogun01]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

You're not understanding my point. The point is that there's no metagame reason to do it, not that there isn't (sometimes) an in-game or role-playing reason to do it. Something like 99% of the side-quests are pointless busy work, but there's no good metagame reason to reject ANY of them because you miss out on the XP and/or cash/loot/you name it reward for not completing the quest.

The best writers of video games enable the player's motivations to match up with the character's motivations. They don't force a disjuncture between "what player knows would benefit character" and "what character ought to want".

You are right, even though reason are not consistent but there are time when the story gives you motives to act evil,(e.g. the city elf origin) but most of the time it is left to any meta gaming intentions. I wouldn't say that 99% of the side quest had no point, there are many that are indirectly related to the main story and will affect it and there are those that are affected by the PC's class. 

[LaztRezort]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

You're talking about the branching lines of the overall quest.  I'm talking about stuff like the JOB BOARD quests or the DLC quests, which are NOT necessary to complete the game in ANY way, shape, or form.  How many people got the DLC and didn't bother to do it?  Anyone?  Yet if you're playing a character that can't be bothered, how do you square wandering off into the middle of nowhere to help some twit with his family?  It doesn't make sense.

Ah, yes, I thought you were talking about the main questsline.  To be fair, from a role-playing perspective, I do find it hard to justify many of the sidequests -- I can't be bothered to collect random objects when I'm trying to "save the day," after all.  When meta-gaming, however, I do them to earn cash and XP.  This is similar to most other RPGs I've played, to my memory.

[Dark83]

I think the motive for my Warden tends to be "Holy crap I'm broke. Oh hey, 3 gold to kill some bears."

[LaztRezort]

And now that I think I actually understand what you're trying to say (it's late here, sorry , I agree that there are lots of "unimportant" quests to partake in.  Perhaps if they were more connected with the main story, or had some actual perceivable effect other than money, there would have been more motivation to do them.  I honestly hardly did any of them until my 2nd or 3rd run.

They do, however, add replay value, for those of us who are the least bit completionist.

[OneBadAssMother]

I have to agree with others have said about "Good" and "Evil".



I can't make much examples due to this thread being in the no spoiler section. But not much is 'unjustified evil'. This world is rather grey.

[PsychoBlonde]

My point remains
that what the character wants is irrelevant - not every action should be rewarded. If you reject everyone who wants to pay you for some trivial task, then you shouldn't expect to receive the same amount of money as if you actually did work. (Though I suppose if you killed them all you should expect to find the reward money on them.)

I'm saying that it's stupid to even HAVE quests that you can outright reject in this way.  Why are you even PLAYING an RPG if you're NOT INTERESTED in doing the quests?  Have quests where there are a number of routes (3-4 for preference, more if you're dedicated, have unlimited amounts of development time, and completely insane), and the results should be significantly different, unlike in Mass Effect where the only difference was (maybe) a single line of different dialog.  (Heck, for several of the quests in ME, you could literally say "no thanks" and the quest-giver would still forcibly shove the quest entry down your throat.  Just in case you changed your mind.  Hah.)

Fallout 3 didn't do too badly with this in a couple of places.  There are a couple of quests where you can play both sides, screw with the quest participants, and get BOTH potential rewards--and still get to choose whether to be a jerk or not.  (The results if you fiddle with the quests enough can be QUITE interesting.)  Granted, this also led to the possibility that you might accidentally "kill" an entire quest line by goofing up one of the particulars.

Basically, all I'm saying is, get rid of the metagame considerations for doing a quest in a particular way (or even accepting the quest in the first place).  There's been movement in this direction, but not enough.

I still want to play  a game (I'll write it myself if I have to) in which I get to set my character's (general) attitude at the start of the game and get dialog options based on that attitude.  Yahtzee was actually talking about this last week in Extra Punctuation and invented an interesting conversation mini-game idea based on something roughly similar.

[Ibian]

Might wanna look into the Geneforge series, if you don't mind the graphics. Has a nice spin on the good/evil thing, and i hear choices have consequences for the story. Big ones at times.

[Oyclo]

I felt this right away.



The options are 'right' 'meh' and 'Chaoticstupid'

[PsychoBlonde]

LaztRezort wrote...
Why should you get the same reward if you skip a quest? 

I'm not talking about "you just didn't find the quest", I'm talking about a situation where you FOUND the quest, you the PLAYER wanted to do it, but you the PLAYER were also trying to play an evil-ish character and found yourself doing something absurd like rescuing somebody's favorite marmoset in order to get the quest reward.  Why must we have these goofy quests?

There aren't as many of these nowadays, and very often the devs do something like (say) have you retrieve something that's valuable in itself and give you the option to keep it instead of turn it over to the whiny quest-giver.  Okay.  And there are some quests in Denerim where the case is kind of reversed and you wind up doing some things that are a bit . . . objectionable (although the objectionable results are never really gone into, so how objectionable is it, really?) in order to complete the quests.

If you devs wanna add more content, stop with the marmoset retrieval and corpse disposal and fetch quests.  Do something kinda odd that any sort of character could conceivably get involved in.

Oh, and I'd just like to add that it was REALLY FREAKIN' OBNOXIOUS that all the job board quest lines had quests that COULD NOT BE COMPLETED UNTIL THE GAME WAS ALMOST OVER BECAUSE THEY ALL FORCED YOU TO VISIT A LOCKED AREA.  Those quests should have dispensed extra cash just for the fact that I spent 2/3 of the game with them sitting in my quest log, taunting me. <_<

[LaztRezort]

PsychoBlonde wrote...


I'm not talking about "you just didn't find the quest", I'm talking about a situation where you FOUND the quest, you the PLAYER wanted to do it, but you the PLAYER were also trying to play an evil-ish character and found yourself doing something absurd like rescuing somebody's favorite marmoset in order to get the quest reward.  Why must we have these goofy quests?

I agree, this is a valid criticism.  Personally, I don't get the decision of having completely disconnected sidequests, especially in a game such as this, where the main plot is supposedly demanding our immediate attention.  It would have been better if those, er, marmosets had some perceivable affect or benefit to the Warden's cause (which is paramount to everything else, it seems, in this game).  Or, perhaps, those marmosets involved the character in some way that had to do with his/her origin.  Good vs. evil shouldn't, in my opinion, have much to do with character motivations in this game.

When role-playing a character, I hardly did any side quests, because there was no motivation for my character to do so, regardless of being good or bad.  Even a "good" character, it seems, shouldn't be saving an old lady's cats, when there certainly more pressing things to be taken care of.  Extreme greediness, for an expected monetary award, seems to be the only possible motivation for those quests - good or evil is irrelevent.

Modifié par LaztRezort, 17 décembre 2009 - 05:31 .

[Dark83]

Yet in FO3, Oblivion, BG, and the like, you can find a quest, and still go "Meh" and ignore it. Unless you're making some sort of wierd self-justification of "Oh, I'll just happen to explore over there and hey, that's what he's looking for."