925 réponses à ce sujet

[Pitznik]

MattFini wrote...

Someone might choose refuse as a means of giving BioWare the finger right back.

If a ton of people choose that, it shows them exactly how much they failed in serving up that junk ending.

Still changes nothing but, hey, a statement's a statement.

Yes, that is perfectly understandable. Not a Shepard's choice, but player's choice, but satisfying nonetheless.

[Isichar]

Sajuro wrote...

I know the Catalyst's death count for the cycle after I use the crucible
0

Nice! Happy you got a good ending then.

Modifié par Isichar, 16 août 2012 - 07:24 .

[Isichar]

AlanC9 wrote...

Isichar wrote...


^
I meant that the crucible has the same odds of working as conventional success to me. Can a reaper be killed conventionally? Yes. We see several reapers shot down conventionally. So you could technically win conventionally but it just ain't very likely to understate it. Same thing with the crucible, sure it could work but I dont think it is anymore likely to actually work then trying in a gun fight.

Gotcha. No actual reasoning at all.

None that you are capable of seeing. Thats fine, not everyone views it the same way and I can certainly see why you wouldnt. Within the context of the game it was obvious bioware would not go the way of conventional warfare.

[Pitznik]

Isichar wrote...

None that you are capable of seeing. Thats fine, not everyone views it the same way and I can certainly see why you wouldnt. Within the context of the game it was obvious bioware would not go the way of conventional warfare.

That still could be done after ME2. Conventional victory was gone with the great Crucible idea some genius came up with.

[Isichar]

Pitznik wrote...

Isichar wrote...

None that you are capable of seeing. Thats fine, not everyone views it the same way and I can certainly see why you wouldnt. Within the context of the game it was obvious bioware would not go the way of conventional warfare.

That still could be done after ME2. Conventional victory was gone with the great Crucible idea some genius came up with.

If they had wanted to they could have, true. But instead we got the Crucible and thus it only made sense to make the war unwinnable any other way. From biowares PoV of course.

Modifié par Isichar, 16 août 2012 - 07:38 .

[AlanC9]

Isichar wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Isichar wrote...

I meant that the crucible has the same odds of working as conventional success to me. Can a reaper be killed conventionally? Yes. We see several reapers shot down conventionally. So you could technically win conventionally but it just ain't very likely to understate it. Same thing with the crucible, sure it could work but I dont think it is anymore likely to actually work then trying in a gun fight.

Gotcha. No actual reasoning at all.

None that you are capable of seeing. Thats fine, not everyone views it the same way and I can certainly see why you wouldnt. Within the context of the game it was obvious bioware would not go the way of conventional warfare.

You didn't put any reasons in that post. Am I supposed to read your mind? All you've got there is that the probability of conventional victory is known to be so low as to be effectively zero, and you think the probability of using the Crucible is very low for reasons you don't bother to explain, and then you conclude that both numbers are effectively the same, for no apparent reason at all.

I don't know what's going on in your brain, but what's on my screen is nonsense. As in, non-sense. No argument.

Edit: It isn't effectively zero, it is zero. The Alliance is no more capable of defeating the Reapers than the Germans were of defeating the Allies after January 1945.

Modifié par AlanC9, 16 août 2012 - 07:53 .

[Isichar]

AlanC9 wrote...

You didn't put any reasons in that post. Am I supposed to read your mind? All you've got there is that the probability of conventional victory is known to be so low as to be effectively zero, and you think the probability of using the Crucible is very low for reasons you don't bother to explain, and then you conclude that both numbers are effectively the same, for no apparent reason at all.

I don't know what's going on in your brain, but what's on my screen is nonsense. As in, non-sense. No argument.

Edit: It isn't effectively zero, it is zero. The Alliance is no more capable of defeating the Reapers than the Germans were of defeating the Allies after January 1945.

Oh because the Crucible is a magic space gun designed to make all your problems go away, yeah that does not sound too good to be true /sarcasm

The entire existance of the crucible is stuck into the story as a plot device. And as for conventional warfare... to be honest I dont really care anymore about arguing that since arguing the odds really has nothing to do for me involving why I chose refuse.

Both are pretty much impossible. One in the context of the story, the other in any logical form.

Modifié par Isichar, 16 août 2012 - 08:03 .

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

While Synthesis is abhorrent and Control has a chance of ending...badly they both do something that your precious refuse doesn't.

End the Reaper threat while preserving the races of our cycle.

[robertthebard]

Pitznik wrote...

Isichar wrote...

None that you are capable of seeing. Thats fine, not everyone views it the same way and I can certainly see why you wouldnt. Within the context of the game it was obvious bioware would not go the way of conventional warfare.

That still could be done after ME2. Conventional victory was gone with the great Crucible idea some genius came up with.

Here's the thing, in ME 1, if you save the council, the alliance loses 8 ships.  That's the Alliance, not the Council races.  I never saw a count for the Council races in either scenario, barring the Destiny Ascension if you don't save the Council.  That was to take out a single Reaper, that spent half the fight as Saren's husk trying to beat you on the ground, and some Geth ships.  So the cost was high, but I don't know how high.  This is in ME 1, again, against 1 Reaper.  In ME 3, Garrus shoots us an 8 million people dead over 2 days on Palaven, and it looks bad from orbit, and that's just on Palaven, that's not counting the colony they lost before Palaven got hit.  We don't get to see how bad on the ground, since we never really get to go there.  On Rannoch, it took the combined fleet of the Quarians, plus the Normandy to beat a single Reaper, with Shepard on the ground, painting the weak spot to hit.

If that Reaper hadn't decided, been assigned, which ever, to solo Rannoch, we'd have been in trouble, since it took three volleys to take it out.  Plus one if you Renegade his sorry *** during it's little exposition.  Which I do, it's a great way to end the dialog.  However, if the Reapers had hit Rannoch as hard as they hit Earth or Palaven, I don't think we're getting out of there.  At least, we're not getting out of there as "easily" as we did.  We might escape, and might get some of the Quarian fleet out, but we're going to lose a lot of ships.  Remember, 1/3 of those ships are civilian vessels that have guns, but no real armor, whatever that means on a warship, maybe they're clothies?

It's really hard to figure that, since Council races, including Humans spent 2 years denying that the threat even exists, that we're prepared for what happens in ME 3.  Since there's no way we're really prepared, we get the equivalent of a surprise attack, even though we don't get as bad a surprise as previous cycles, thank you Protheans.  So being as unprepared as we are, and since we don't have the gun that fires angry Thresher Maws, I don't see a Conventional Victory.  Am I the only one that wanted that gun?  I did like EDI's account of it though, "beaten by a worm".

[BaladasDemnevanni]

Isichar wrote...

Oh because the Crucible is a magic space gun designed to make all your problems go away, yeah that does not sound too good to be true /sarcasm

The entire existance of the crucible is stuck into the story as a plot device. And as for conventional warfare... to be honest I dont really care anymore about arguing that since arguing the odds really has nothing to do for me involving why I chose refuse.

Both are pretty much impossible. One in the context of the story, the other in any logical form.

Still, isn't this a problem with the key premise, and not the ending? Everyone, Hackett included, is relying on the Crucible in the hopes that it does magically solve our Reaper problem. Not saying a player shouldn't be skeptical, but given that Shepard does just go along with the vague hope throughout the game, I'm not certain that suddenly getting cold feet makes much sense on his part.

Modifié par BaladasDemnevanni, 16 août 2012 - 08:23 .

[Timusafa]

Grand Admiral Cheesecake wrote...

While Synthesis is abhorrent and Control has a chance of ending...badly they both do something that your precious refuse doesn't.

End the Reaper threat while preserving the races of our cycle.

I would argue that the synth ending fundamentally changes the intricacies and individuality of species and individuals, therefore not really preserving the races as they were before the Crucible...

[Isichar]

Grand Admiral Cheesecake wrote...

While Synthesis is abhorrent and Control has a chance of ending...badly they both do something that your precious refuse doesn't.

End the Reaper threat while preserving the races of our cycle.

Oh the races of my cycle were preserved all right, just not in the same context

Control does not really end the threat though since the Reapers are still around. Synthesis sure does look attractive, but I would still never pick it for the future of the galaxy.

[Isichar]

BaladasDemnevanni wrote...

Isichar wrote...

Oh because the Crucible is a magic space gun designed to make all your problems go away, yeah that does not sound too good to be true /sarcasm

The entire existance of the crucible is stuck into the story as a plot device. And as for conventional warfare... to be honest I dont really care anymore about arguing that since arguing the odds really has nothing to do for me involving why I chose refuse.

Both are pretty much impossible. One in the context of the story, the other in any logical form.

Still, isn't this a problem with the key premise, and not the ending? Everyone, Hackett included, is relying on the Crucible in the hopes that it does magically solve our Reaper problem. Not saying a player shouldn't be skeptical, but given that Shepard does just go along with the vague hope throughout the game, I'm not certain that suddenly getting cold feet makes much sense on his part.

Blame biowares lack of choice options, I would have told them the crucible sounded ridiculous right from the start.

[3DandBeyond]

memorysquid wrote...

BaladasDemnevanni wrote...

To bring up an earlier point: a doctor who refuses to save a dying man isn't going to be considered completely innocent,

Unless he is that man's doctor, he is completely innocent.  There's a difference between malfeasance [doing something that negatively impacts someone] and nonfeasance [refusing to act].  That distinction doesn't really apply to Shepard because using the Crucible really is his job.

So then it's ok to do something because you're just doing what you were told?  Or those were your orders?  No, it's not.  Everyone thought the crucible was a weapon that would destroy the reapers.  They thought it would work with the citadel, that the citadel was the catalyst.  No one knew about the reaper kid.  And Shepard doesn't ask or even attempt to ask or consult anyone about the new situation.  Shepard was given some big "do whatever you think is necessary" pass.  The Citadel was moved to Earth to make harvesting easier.  Would you say it was great Shepard decided to choose destroy if it had indeed been a lie and was put there by the kid to make harvesting faster/easier?

What is known about the choices is only based on what the kid says.  Anything they will do is not independently verified.  It's literally like picking up some device off the floor and hitting a button on it or it's like this--finding a suspicious package in your parking lot and some guy standing nearby tells you you should open it after telling you he's the guy that's been killing people in the neighborhood.  He says he really wants to help you.  What you all are saying here is that you'd open that box.

You only have the kid's word that the choices are the result of the crucible.  It is not fact.  You only know what the choices will do based on what the kid says they will do.  There's no way to verify that.  You only know the kid's motives based on what he says and they are flawed at best.  Every reason to make a choice is based on the kid's word.  Even what he is is unknown.  Consider that the reapers could very well be what Sovereign said they were; independent nations.  And this could be a trick.  Why wouldn't Shepard ask about Sovereign?  The reaper kid could merely be a ruse.

It is just as likely as anything else that the kid could have created the choices to trick Shepard into NOT using the crucible as it was intended. 

It's like US game show "Let's Make a Deal".  They give you some money sometimes to start with and then offer some other things, but you don't know what they are-they might be garbage or they might be worth way more than the money you have.  And sometimes you get a choice of door number 1, 2, or 3.  Truthfully.  You can take the money they gave you and quit or you can pick a door.  All doors might have garbage behind them, but you don't know.

[AlanC9]

For once I'm going to agree with 3D here, at least in part. Shepard finds out that the situation with the Crucible isn't quite what it was expected to be. He has the right -- the duty, even -- to think for himself rather than blindly follow his original orders.

But in the end, there's no Reaper Off Switch on that platform. Just the three devices that the kid said were there, which can only be used the way the kid says they can be used.

[AlanC9]

Isichar wrote...

The entire existance of the crucible is stuck into the story as a plot device. And as for conventional warfare... to be honest I dont really care anymore about arguing that since arguing the odds really has nothing to do for me involving why I chose refuse.

Yep. Like I said, there wasn't any serious probability estimating going on there in the first place.

[3DandBeyond]

AlanC9 wrote...

For once I'm going to agree with 3D here, at least in part. Shepard finds out that the situation with the Crucible isn't quite what it was expected to be. He has the right -- the duty, even -- to think for himself rather than blindly follow his original orders.

But in the end, there's no Reaper Off Switch on that platform. Just the three devices that the kid said were there, which can only be used the way the kid says they can be used.

Ha ha, and lightning didn't strike either of us.  Problem is, Shepard never tries to see what anyone else thinks-Shepard tended to consult people who'd be affected by his/her choices.

The thing still is that the choices could be merely an illusion of choice offered up by the kid-he wants Shepard to think there is a choice.  Not a part of the crucible at all.  Everything Shepard knows about the choices is offered by the enemy.  Everything Shepard knows about the kid is just what the kid says.  What if the kid was Harbinger trying to trick Shepard.  Harbinger has used other appearances-he did so in ME2.  He was in control of the Collector VI and relinquished it at the end after saying they would find another way.  So similar to what the kid says they need.  It's very possible that everything changed the moment Shepard killed the collectors.  So the choices could be the kid's (Harbinger's) new way and new solution. 

In order to make a choice you have to completely believe the kid, but the crucible might only be something he could use.  It also might be something that could be used independent of him and not as some big reaper "off" switch.  But concerning that-if you think the crucible was so brainy and made sense, consider that everyone in the galaxy thought it was a big reaper "off" switch effectively or a big space cannon.  And they built it to the exclusion of all else.  I never said it should be a big reaper "off" switch.

A Catalyst quite literally causes change.  A Crucible is a severe test of a belief.  What if this was a test of the belief that the crucible would do something to help and the catalyst was trying to change what the crucible would be used for?

Modifié par 3DandBeyond, 16 août 2012 - 09:25 .

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Isichar wrote...

Pitznik wrote...

Isichar wrote...

Pitznik wrote...

So it all is down to your denial about chance of conventional victory? Again? Whole topic? 21 pages?

You could just say so - I disagree with 0% of conentional victory, I see it higher, and I rather stick with my 2% than with great unknown. That makes sense.

My denial of conventional victory?

And here I just said I know we are screwed conventionally.

What part of I dont believe in conventional victory is so hard for you to grasp. I said I dont believe the crucible is any more likely to work then conventional victory, which as you stated is about 0% chance.

There is no unknown in conventional victory. There is unknown in Crucible. So it is still Crucible > conventional victory. Worst case scenario - it just does what Reapers will do anyway.

/Headdesk

Ok last post you get from me, hard to respond to someone who just ignores everything you say.

I've been following this with amusement.

1)  So you're saying conventional victory = 0% chance, right? this is proven over the course of 20,000 cycles give or take, and the fact that Hackett has committed the entire galactic fleet for this one battle. This is all or nothing. And the losses are staggering. Yes we've taken out several of them, but we're taking very heavy losses. If we have to fight it out conventionally we're hosed.

2) You believe that the crucible/citadel combo won't work any better than conventional victory. IOW you believe Citadel + Crucible = 0%, right?

So the dilemma I'm having is that 1) is based on a consecutive repeatable event that ends in exactly the same result. In other words for all intents and purposes is an objective truth. You follow me?

And 2) has never happened before, and you're basing your entire decision on a belief, or faith, that it's not going to work, and rather than even take a chance that it will even have a possibility of working, since you don't know, you would rather go with the absolute certainty of 1) that results in the current cycle getting hosed.

Am I right?

Modifié par sH0tgUn jUliA, 16 août 2012 - 09:49 .

[memorysquid]

3DandBeyond wrote...

memorysquid wrote...

BaladasDemnevanni wrote...

To bring up an earlier point: a doctor who refuses to save a dying man isn't going to be considered completely innocent,

Unless he is that man's doctor, he is completely innocent.  There's a difference between malfeasance [doing something that negatively impacts someone] and nonfeasance [refusing to act].  That distinction doesn't really apply to Shepard because using the Crucible really is his job.

So then it's ok to do something because you're just doing what you were told?  Or those were your orders?  No, it's not.  Everyone thought the crucible was a weapon that would destroy the reapers.  They thought it would work with the citadel, that the citadel was the catalyst.  No one knew about the reaper kid.  And Shepard doesn't ask or even attempt to ask or consult anyone about the new situation.  Shepard was given some big "do whatever you think is necessary" pass.  The Citadel was moved to Earth to make harvesting easier.  Would you say it was great Shepard decided to choose destroy if it had indeed been a lie and was put there by the kid to make harvesting faster/easier?

What is known about the choices is only based on what the kid says.  Anything they will do is not independently verified.  It's literally like picking up some device off the floor and hitting a button on it or it's like this--finding a suspicious package in your parking lot and some guy standing nearby tells you you should open it after telling you he's the guy that's been killing people in the neighborhood.  He says he really wants to help you.  What you all are saying here is that you'd open that box.

You only have the kid's word that the choices are the result of the crucible.  It is not fact.  You only know what the choices will do based on what the kid says they will do.  There's no way to verify that.  You only know the kid's motives based on what he says and they are flawed at best.  Every reason to make a choice is based on the kid's word.  Even what he is is unknown.  Consider that the reapers could very well be what Sovereign said they were; independent nations.  And this could be a trick.  Why wouldn't Shepard ask about Sovereign?  The reaper kid could merely be a ruse.

It is just as likely as anything else that the kid could have created the choices to trick Shepard into NOT using the crucible as it was intended. 

It's like US game show "Let's Make a Deal".  They give you some money sometimes to start with and then offer some other things, but you don't know what they are-they might be garbage or they might be worth way more than the money you have.  And sometimes you get a choice of door number 1, 2, or 3.  Truthfully.  You can take the money they gave you and quit or you can pick a door.  All doors might have garbage behind them, but you don't know.

No, it's not okay because he was ordered to.  It is because he is being relied upon to do that job, that he owes a duty of some level of care.  Refusal Shepard is criminally negligent in derelicting his duty.  Not that it matters because his negligence results in the death of everyone.  Personally I think synthesis is the best choice, based upon what the game tells us of synthesis, but every action is at least better than refuse.

The Reapers think they are an independent nation each; they happen to be wrong.  You're questioning the story line of a completed work in which the authors have already been quite plain about their intentions.  Perhaps they muddled the execution, but to be honest not so badly that I didn't get it perfectly correct pre-EC.

Let's cut out some of the dross. You've got two people hanging off a cliff. You are a public servant tasked with saving cliffhangers. You've got three options to save them, none of which are perfect or you can refuse to perform your job at all and let both die. Your active options consist of shooting one in the face to save the other, declaring yourself to be their eternal overlord which lets you save both although you might decide to kill them yourself later or magically giving each one gecko pads so they can climb up on their own. You don't have time to ask them what they want. What do you do?

[3DandBeyond]

memorysquid wrote...

No, it's not okay because he was ordered to.  It is because he is being relied upon to do that job, that he owes a duty of some level of care.  Refusal Shepard is criminally negligent in derelicting his duty.  Not that it matters because his negligence results in the death of everyone.  Personally I think synthesis is the best choice, based upon what the game tells us of synthesis, but every action is at least better than refuse.

The Reapers think they are an independent nation each; they happen to be wrong.  You're questioning the story line of a completed work in which the authors have already been quite plain about their intentions.  Perhaps they muddled the execution, but to be honest not so badly that I didn't get it perfectly correct pre-EC.

Let's cut out some of the dross. You've got two people hanging off a cliff. You are a public servant tasked with saving cliffhangers. You've got three options to save them, none of which are perfect or you can refuse to perform your job at all and let both die. Your active options consist of shooting one in the face to save the other, declaring yourself to be their eternal overlord which lets you save both although you might decide to kill them yourself later or magically giving each one gecko pads so they can climb up on their own. You don't have time to ask them what they want. What do you do?

Well, criminal negligence carries much less of a penalty than mass murder.  That's the thing.  But I still believe it can be argued that Shepard has no idea that refusing the kid is refusal to act and to use the Crucible.  Shooting the kid certainly isn't.  Shepard has to be psychic to know that refusing the choices would shut down the Crucible and only if Shepard believes that the Crucible as a "weapon", it's original intent, no longer is viable do the consequences of not using the Crucible become a point.  Shepard does not know with any degree of certainty that the kid is the catalyst and that the crucible is linked to the choices.  Everything else is irrelevant.

And in your example you have to insert someone like the kid.  If the guy that pushed them off the cliff showed up and told me he was there to help, would I believe him?  That's the real question.  If he told me furthermore that 2 of his 3 options will actually also help the rest of his gang who have been pushing people off cliffs, his credibility is shot.  If he gives me options and he's the only one that knows about the options, if I trust him I am putting my trust is something that is a vaporous as the kid. 

In order to make a choice you must believe too many incredible things to believe that not using them is worse.  And it's not about not using the crucible, it's about not believing that you have to make a choice to use it.

[Goneaviking]

LiarasShield wrote...

Again it is the believe of what ending suits you and your shepard depending on what you believe is right it doesn't make any of the endings better then any others

Again, it's the willingness of the Shepards who chose a colour to accept responsibility for the outcome that makes their decision superior.

Yes. All of the options suck and involve betraying people's trust and/or violating their very natures. But it's only the partisan's of "Refuse" who try to pin the blame for the outcome solely and exclusively on the reapers.

[Goneaviking]

3DandBeyond wrote...

Well, criminal negligence carries much less of a penalty than mass murder.  That's the thing.  But I still believe it can be argued that Shepard has no idea that refusing the kid is refusal to act and to use the Crucible.  Shooting the kid certainly isn't.  Shepard has to be psychic to know that refusing the choices would shut down the Crucible and only if Shepard believes that the Crucible as a "weapon", it's original intent, no longer is viable do the consequences of not using the Crucible become a point.  Shepard does not know with any degree of certainty that the kid is the catalyst and that the crucible is linked to the choices.  Everything else is irrelevant.
[snip]

Great, fine. Shepard called the catalyst's bluff, but the catalyst wasn't bluffing. He took a chance, it didn't pay off but he's still responsible for the outcome.

And no. It doesn't require a psychic to know that refusing to make a choice would end in his failure, virtually every Shepard managed to make that deduction on the first playthrough. We knew we'd been making a device that the protheans believed would end the cycle of destruction, but we had no idea what would happen when we turned it on. A conversation with a ghost child wouldn't have been on my list of likely scenarios, but when it happened the most prudent response was to just roll with it.

[Reorte]

Not been keeping up with this thread but I've still not seen an explanation from Refusers about how they think that activiating the Crucible is going to make things any worse.

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

Reorte wrote...

Not been keeping up with this thread but I've still not seen an explanation from Refusers about how they think that activiating the Crucible is going to make things any worse.

They think it will make Reaper Bears.

Bears are godless killing machines. They'd get along famously with the Reapers.

[Father_Jerusalem]

Isichar wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

You didn't put any reasons in that post. Am I supposed to read your mind? All you've got there is that the probability of conventional victory is known to be so low as to be effectively zero, and you think the probability of using the Crucible is very low for reasons you don't bother to explain, and then you conclude that both numbers are effectively the same, for no apparent reason at all.

I don't know what's going on in your brain, but what's on my screen is nonsense. As in, non-sense. No argument.

Edit: It isn't effectively zero, it is zero. The Alliance is no more capable of defeating the Reapers than the Germans were of defeating the Allies after January 1945.

Oh because the Crucible is a magic space gun designed to make all your problems go away, yeah that does not sound too good to be true /sarcasm

The entire existance of the crucible is stuck into the story as a plot device. And as for conventional warfare... to be honest I dont really care anymore about arguing that since arguing the odds really has nothing to do for me involving why I chose refuse.

Both are pretty much impossible. One in the context of the story, the other in any logical form.

If giant machines are killing all sentient life in the galaxy with no chance of being stopped by the combined races and fleets, and someone hands me a magic space gun and says it's designed to make all my problems go away if I fire it, do you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to ****ing fire it. Because worst case scenario? Those giant machines just keep on killing all sentient life in the galaxy.

When the stakes are that high, I will do ANYTHING I possibly can in order to try and stop the giant machines from killing all life in the galaxy, even if it is a giant magic space gun or the hummus offensive.