87 réponses à ce sujet

[tyeomer]

The problem of "there's never any good motive to be a bad guy" is simply related to the relative lack of evil-oriented quests (with a few notable exceptions). To be more balanced, the game should offer about the same XP between "save the kitten"-flavoured quests, plainly selfish evil-flavoured quests and "doing what is necessary" quests (main storyline quests?).



I perceived the same problem playing the game, I think due to an eccess of "save the kitten" quests, or conversely, due to an insufficient amount of plainly evil quests.

[Cat Lance]

Hm, I didn't feel this way at all. My Dalish elf doesn't feel the need to get involved with every little petty persons' request, though, she thinks family is important, and if she ends up solving something along the way, she has no problem going back and getting rewarded for it. Though, she rarely asks for anything. She sort of just wants to get through all this **** with the humans and solve the problem of the blight. She isn't too into getting involved.

[Emin Aliyev]

Evainelithe wrote...

I completely agree with the OP. The incentive to RP an evil character is simply not there. You pretty much get railroaded into playing a goody-two-shoes or an utter morron with terrible manners.

i agree with this

[KalosCast]

Most people aren't friends with someone mustache-twirling comic book villain who does bad things entirely for the evil-lulz, especially when a vast majority of the population has a battle axe.

[Cat Lance]

Well, I didn't think the OP was referring to an actual "evil" character, with they cartoon mustache twirling, but merely regular sort of "bad guy" type, not a goodie two shoes doormat type. I haven't had this trouble though. I don't think my character is a baddie, but she doesn't do everything for everyone or always take the sweetest of options.

[royen1]

Common problem for crpgs. I think the reason is primarily economic: most people will play the good guy if given the choice. Implementing bad guy quests where you're actually evil doesn't make a lot of economic sense if you have a mass market audience.

[Snoteye]

When your character learns of a (side-)quest opportunity, the journal should reflect it. You should never have to literally accept a quest, though bonuses may be granted for doing so. The job boards are slightly different because some of them trigger on random encounters, but then, those that trigger on random encounters obviously shouldn't require you to accept -- or even know of -- the quest in the first place.

[KalosCast]

Cat Lance wrote...

Well, I didn't think the OP was referring to an actual "evil" character, with they cartoon mustache twirling, but merely regular sort of "bad guy" type, not a goodie two shoes doormat type. I haven't had this trouble though. I don't think my character is a baddie, but she doesn't do everything for everyone or always take the sweetest of options.

There's at least 2 sources of things to do that are blatantly illegal, and both the Blackstone Irregulars and the Mage Collective have quests that aren't always on the up and up.

[F-C]

this is a set story where you are saving the world from the darkspawn and arch-demon and all.



you become a grey warden to kill the -evil- darkspawn.



does any of this register to you folks who think there should be a detailed evil story?



i mean they would need to make an entire second plot-line to the story where you never became a grey warden and you tried to make a bargain with the arch-demon to own your section of the world for helping him destroy all the good people in it...



i mean really. its a video game, not a pen and paper rpg. your choices are limited because a video game can only encompass so many options. to make a detailed evil story that much would have to be cut off the story of being the good guy and saving the world... they cant just pull it out of their backside, they would have to cut the development time from the other sections.

[Snoteye]

F-C wrote...

this is a set story where you are saving the world from the darkspawn and arch-demon and all.

you become a grey warden to kill the -evil- darkspawn.

This isn't true. You are more or less forced into the Grey Wardens, often it's not a real choice.

[F-C]

Snoteye wrote...

F-C wrote...

this is a set story where you are saving the world from the darkspawn and arch-demon and all.

you become a grey warden to kill the -evil- darkspawn.

This isn't true. You are more or less forced into the Grey Wardens, often it's not a real choice.

this is just semantics.

a grey warden has one real job, thats to kill the evil darkspawn.

whether you like it or not, you get tossed into the role.

you are fighting evil, not joining up with it.

Modifié par F-C, 17 décembre 2009 - 08:56 .

[KalosCast]

Snoteye wrote...

F-C wrote...

this is a set story where you are saving the world from the darkspawn and arch-demon and all.

you become a grey warden to kill the -evil- darkspawn.

This isn't true. You are more or less forced into the Grey Wardens, often it's not a real choice.

Okay, here's the evil character storyline:

You refuse to join the Grey Wardens, then get gutted, your dead bod falls over on top of Jory's in an embarassing pose. Daveth ends up surviving and tea-bags your corpse.

[Gracchio]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

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.

tl;dr

Who needs a motive to be a bad guy, it's just fun to be one.

Remember the trader? First you help him, get paid and then WHAM just for the hell of it!

motive: BECAUSE I CAN

[Wolfva2]

I think a far better question is why do people who want to play evil characters rampaging across the world doing evil bother to buy a game where the purpose of their character is to gather an army and stop a great evil?  There already are games out there where you can play an evil SOB.  GTO comes to mind.  Postal is another game that would probably appeal to you.  Games where you run around killing cops and 'hos', pee on the corpses, and in general do the most malignant deeds just for S&Gs.

[Gracchio]

Wolfva2 wrote...

I think a far better question is why do people who want to play evil characters rampaging across the world doing evil bother to buy a game where the purpose of their character is to gather an army and stop a great evil?  There already are games out there where you can play an evil SOB.  GTO comes to mind.  Postal is another game that would probably appeal to you.  Games where you run around killing cops and 'hos', pee on the corpses, and in general do the most malignant deeds just for S&Gs.

Well yes, if you prefer brainless violence and oh, I dunno, you're a wigger.

It is much, much more fun to be the evil genius who is revered as a hero while doing evil stuff when people aren't looking. Slaying evil doesn't mean you have to be the good guy. I'd rather be the much more evil guy who just happens to have similar goals... for now. Makes things more interesting imho.

This aspect was one of my favorite things in Overlord, a very refreshing game. You can either be a manipulative evil a-hole or a giant evil a-hole who just likes smashing things for the hell of it.

[mousestalker]

I thinking some people are confusing the idea of being evil with being a jerk. All jerks are evil (to one degree or another) but not all evil people are jerks.



My favourite fictional bad guy is Count Rugen (the six fingered man) in the Princess Bride. He had wonderful manners. He was very evil as well. The game does not really offer the player to be evil other than rude, blunt and annoying.

[Wolfva2]

Gracchio wrote...

Wolfva2 wrote...

I think a far better question is why do people who want to play evil characters rampaging across the world doing evil bother to buy a game where the purpose of their character is to gather an army and stop a great evil?  There already are games out there where you can play an evil SOB.  GTO comes to mind.  Postal is another game that would probably appeal to you.  Games where you run around killing cops and 'hos', pee on the corpses, and in general do the most malignant deeds just for S&Gs.

Well yes, if you prefer brainless violence and oh, I dunno, you're a wigger.

It is much, much more fun to be the evil genius who is revered as a hero while doing evil stuff when people aren't looking. Slaying evil doesn't mean you have to be the good guy. I'd rather be the much more evil guy who just happens to have similar goals... for now. Makes things more interesting imho.

This aspect was one of my favorite things in Overlord, a very refreshing game. You can either be a manipulative evil a-hole or a giant evil a-hole who just likes smashing things for the hell of it.

I agree with you Gracchio.  But, you wouldn't buy GTO and then complain that you can't be a knight in shining armor saving kittens from trees would you?  Which is basically what the OP is complaining about.  That she bought the game, but it isn't the game she wanted, therefore the game screwed up and should be changed to fit what she wants.

As fun as playing an evil genius may be, in THIS game you're not one.  You're a Grey Warden.  A group of people hand picked by senior Grey Wardens who see in them some ineffable quality which is needed by the Wardens to end an evil.  Ultimately, self sacrifice must be a part of your character.  Let's face it, self sacrifice isn't one of the hallmarks of evil.

[Sir Ulrich Von Lichenstien]

Meh, clearly the OP doesn't realise how there are ways to play evil...

As for the "the quest involves killing -evil- archdemon and his gang of darkspawn, so it is obvious it isn't set out for an evil character" that is all a manner of thinking.

There is even one particular origin story that really makes it easy to develop an evil character. The Dwarf Commoner.

Kind of as the opening narration states you start off as the lowest of the low in the dwarven caste. Your life is not your own but that of some criminal gang leader whom pretty much rules roost. You kill him off and in trying to escape are sentenced to death. Suddenly thanks to a twist of fate, someone comes along and saves your butt. Ok, lets look at this for a moment, in some respects, these 'wardens' are revered throughout the land not just on the topside but in Orzammar too, hmm, I've suddenly been elevated from my lowly position. Move forward to Flemeth's hut after Ostagar, right, I have the power now to demand Orzammar and all these other places give ME armies to command. Interesting, but why bother, dwarves have been fighting darkspawn for all their life. Hang on though, once they done with the topsiders they could come down and bring a whole new level of hate on us. Ok, so I deal with them, then I go back to Orzammar... revered.... with power... hmm... maybe I could even take over the Carta as I dreamed of when I put Beraht to the stone!

The way I see it, in this story it is more about your characters rise to infamy. Rather than being in the middle of it. How they work their way through the task to get what they want. I think there is a lot of opportunity to roleplaying situations in a very 'underhanded' way.

Edit:

Wolfva2 wrote...
As fun as playing an evil genius may be, in
THIS game you're not one.  You're a Grey Warden.  A group of people
hand picked by senior Grey Wardens who see in them some ineffable
quality which is needed by the Wardens to end an evil.  Ultimately,
self sacrifice must be a part of your character.  Let's face it, self
sacrifice isn't one of the hallmarks of evil.

Not entirely true, Grey Wardens basically picked anyone that could be of use and able to put up a fight to the darkspawn. Duncan and/or Riordan states something along these lines also stating how they pick rogues, bandits, templars, basically anyone and everyone that shows some level of fighting ability.

As proven regarding the Dwarf Commoner. Self sacrifice to some extent doesn't need to be considered, your character most likely doesn't know what it takes to become a Warden and even if they did, the fact is, people die every day, so what if it means your life expectancy just dropped, where your origin left off it most likely was going to be a lot shorter anyway. So it becomes more a case of self preservation (society!) rather than self sacrifice.

Get this whole 'Blight' business taken care of then look to raise your position in the world or go back to doing what you did best.

Modifié par Sir Ulrich Von Lichenstien, 17 décembre 2009 - 10:54 .

[menasure]

well both good and evil paths often lead to the same result because if there is a logical thing to do then you'll do the logical thing eventually, maybe even out of different reasons.
the evil gameplay consists of giving your own twists to the story, unfortunately some of the options you are given for more evil play during side quests end up dismissed because of the expected "good" side you take in the main story while it is not very clear why these "good" side options are the only options. it's partly a problem because you do get some seemingly viable other options when you did not follow that anticipated good route. "ok so you have some armies, now why can't you use them to settle the ruler dispute?" ... just one example of them.

with other more evil options missing in the main story you have to make up reasons of your own why things are what they are ... a working behind the scenes kind of thing mostly... and you might not like that but it is still nice to see the effect of more evil actions in the epilogues besides some direct results in side quests which actually give you a benefit ... do not worry about it all that much, i knew i was set up from the start no matter what side i chose but at least it gave me a few good laughs reading about the results in the epilogue.

Modifié par menasure, 17 décembre 2009 - 11:01 .

[Mikey_205]

There are evil choices you can do during the main story and the motivation for doing those things is more power. There's plenty of justification for being an ass given the background in of the racial and class tensions in the human/elf and dwarf locations respectively. There are also sidequests where you have evil objectives for rewards. A good justification is that some unhappy individuals just want to see the world burn.

[Adria Teksuni]

The way I play my "evil" type Dark Wardens is this: The Darkspawn do not care if I save the kittens or drown them. They're going to eat us all regardless. Either I get in there and try to save my own arse as a Gray Warden or trust someone else to do it.

Yeah, right.

Anyway, that's just for the main being a Gray Warden issue.

Modifié par Adria Teksuni, 17 décembre 2009 - 11:30 .

[Deception_2112]

Main problem is that there is a lack of an evil questline to follow...The Antivan Crows questline was one of them, but it wasn't well expanded and similarly Slim Couldry's quests, but they represent a very very small segement of quests. The Chantry i sincerely wanted to eradicate everytime i encountered them, but there was never an option for that.

[Gracchio]

Wolfva2 wrote...

Gracchio wrote...

Wolfva2 wrote...

I think a far better question is why do people who want to play evil characters rampaging across the world doing evil bother to buy a game where the purpose of their character is to gather an army and stop a great evil?  There already are games out there where you can play an evil SOB.  GTO comes to mind.  Postal is another game that would probably appeal to you.  Games where you run around killing cops and 'hos', pee on the corpses, and in general do the most malignant deeds just for S&Gs.

Well yes, if you prefer brainless violence and oh, I dunno, you're a wigger.

It is much, much more fun to be the evil genius who is revered as a hero while doing evil stuff when people aren't looking. Slaying evil doesn't mean you have to be the good guy. I'd rather be the much more evil guy who just happens to have similar goals... for now. Makes things more interesting imho.

This aspect was one of my favorite things in Overlord, a very refreshing game. You can either be a manipulative evil a-hole or a giant evil a-hole who just likes smashing things for the hell of it.

I agree with you Gracchio.  But, you wouldn't buy GTO and then complain that you can't be a knight in shining armor saving kittens from trees would you?  Which is basically what the OP is complaining about.  That she bought the game, but it isn't the game she wanted, therefore the game screwed up and should be changed to fit what she wants.

As fun as playing an evil genius may be, in THIS game you're not one.  You're a Grey Warden.  A group of people hand picked by senior Grey Wardens who see in them some ineffable quality which is needed by the Wardens to end an evil.  Ultimately, self sacrifice must be a part of your character.  Let's face it, self sacrifice isn't one of the hallmarks of evil.

Well I can't give examples here because of the spoilers, but have you actually played this game?

I wouldn't call someone who lies, cheats, betrays, murders, sells people into slavery or uses them as disposables to boost your own health, a morally "good" person from my point of view.

Funny as hell to do tho