123 réponses à ce sujet

[Zu Long]

ArenCordial wrote...

Zu Long wrote...

See, comics are a good example of what I DON'T want to happen. Because of the need to preserve a dramatic status quo, all good or happy outcomes are immediately negated by an unpreventable tragedy.

If I'm going to be the hero of the game, I want to be able to look back at the end and know that I made a difference. The best example I can think of is Dragon Age 2. You can't save one of your siblings. You can't save Wesley. You can't stop Hawke's mother from being murdered and turned into a puppet corpse. You can't stop the Qunari from declaring war on the city. You can't stop Anders from blowing up the chantry. You can't make Meredith or Orsino see reason. You can't. You can't. You can't.

At the end of Dragon Age 2, all I felt looking back was a series of tragedies I couldn't do anything about. It didn't feel very heroic.

Compare that to Origins and Awakening. I could save the mages at the tower. I could save Eamon's son without resorting to blood magic. I could settle the werewolves dispute peaceably. I could unite Ferelden at the Landsmeet. I could save Vigils Keep AND Amaranthine with enough hard work. I could survive killing the Archdemon by trusting someone I thought of as my friend.

At the end of all that, I felt like my Warden was the baddest mother****er on the face of the planet, and it was awesome.

Right and I 100% agree with you on this.  One of DA2's problem was the lack of player being able to influence the outcome on a ton of what occured on the game and often when your given the choice, the outcome is same.   I actually said something similar along those lines in an earlier post.  

I'm just not opposed to getting a decision coming back to unexpected turn against you, either lets say making you change your mind or do something even more heroic to make things right.

The scenario you describe would be fine with me. I don't demand that everything end in sweetness and light. I just don't want to feel like I'm constantly being punished for wanting to do the right thing.

[Kileyan]

I'm fine with decisions coming back to haunt me in MAJOR ways in the same game. I'm not a big fan of loosely tied together save game files screwing me over 3 years later.

As for the subject of the unforeseen consequences topic, it has to be used very sparingly. You don't want to use it so often that the player feels he is damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. That can come across as a vindictive Dungeon Master/Story teller who takes on an adversarial approach to his gamers, rather than guiding a story.

[Khayness]

Sadly most developers don't have the balls to do this. I gleefully picked that obviously trap choice in Deus Ex:HR, I wanted to see if they were brave enough to screw up my playthrough really bad.

All I got was an acid trip bossfight.

[ImperatorMortis]

I would have loved that in DA2 if you listened to that Orlesian Blood Mage you could save your mom. But no, they had to force that death on us.

[Odd Bet]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

SeptimusMagistos wrote...

That one was actually totally telegraphed. You can go see Grace in the Gallows and she keeps ranting at you about how this is all your fault.

Ah, so it was telegraphed if you went to see Grace in the Gallows.  And how was it telegraphed exactly if you let her go free and she never ends up in the Gallows?

She still ends up in the gallows. She says something along the lines of "Yes, we were caught. You turned us loose without any support, what did you expect would happen?"

[rapscallioness]

Even small choices. I remember in Orzammar that one Brother that wanted to open a Chantry ...branch there. Wel, I helped him. Felt all nice when I saw his lil chapel and there were even some ppl in there.

Then I find out in epilogue that he and his congregation got slaughtered. Idk if that woulda been different based on who I crowned? Idk, but it was unexpected. I thought if they had permission from the Shaperate...it would be respected, but damn.

In DA2 I fretted over that widget thing Merrill needed to start fixing the mirror. I wanted to help her..cuz that's my clique, but I wanted to protect her (and maybe alot of others)...cuz that's my clique.. from whatever might come outta that thing.

I didn't give it to her, and endured a royal chewing out. Lol. Next time I did..and well, turns out I had no reason to fret. It didn't make a difference except some rivalry points.

A small difference woulda been nice. A small consequence...well, besides getting royally chewed out. An angry Merrill is a scary Merrill

[Big I]

I'd prefer that choices be presented as "left or right" as opposed to "right and wrong". What I mean by that is that instead of having a fail condition as the outcome of a quest have two contradictory victory conditions. Take the left path and you help the elves; take the right path and you help the dwarves. At no point are you able to help both the elves AND the dwarves.


That said I liked how the Mass Effect dealt with these consequences on minor quests and NPCs, if not the major ones. Spare the asari researcher in ME1 and in ME3 it turns out she was indoctrinated. Spare the seemingly innocent Eclipse merc in ME2 and it turns out she's a murderer. I never felt ripped off for not choosing the "correct" option.

[Zoe]

Maria Caliban wrote...
A good example of this is my turning the noble's insane, murderous son over to the guards. He explicitly tells me that he'll get back at me, but that never materializes.

Which goes back to the sensation that each quest is its own little bottle. I'm not having an impact on the world because the world itself rarely reacts to what happened on that quest.

I believe there's one instance where if you kill a Templar, other Templars will attack you. I liked this.
 

I like these examples and also the example someone else gave of having the dark ritual have serious negative consequences. I like them because they make logical sense from the choices.

In some other games it sometimes feels like they are pairing random negative things with positive things, and I end up not really caring what the negative things are because I don't see them as choices.

Maria Caliban wrote...
Now, I believe Allan once mentioned that if there's a 'good' option and a 'bad' option, he's probably going to pick the good one as picking the bad one doesn't make much sense. That doesn't make it much of a choice.

In this case I think that they need to provide more of a reason for picking the "bad" option, such as giving the pc more power, wealth, or loot, for example.

Modifié par Keriana, 23 octobre 2012 - 01:41 .

[rapscallioness]

LookingGlass93 wrote...

I'd prefer that choices be presented as "left or right" as opposed to "right and wrong". What I mean by that is that instead of having a fail condition as the outcome of a quest have two contradictory victory conditions. Take the left path and you help the elves; take the right path and you help the dwarves. At no point are you able to help both the elves AND the dwarves.


That said I liked how the Mass Effect dealt with these consequences on minor quests and NPCs, if not the major ones. Spare the asari researcher in ME1 and in ME3 it turns out she was indoctrinated. Spare the seemingly innocent Eclipse merc in ME2 and it turns out she's a murderer. I never felt ripped off for not choosing the "correct" option.

This is also a case of the player gleaning info from the environment in order to make their choice. The Volus, or someone had mentioned that the Eclipse have to commit a murder in order to earn their uniform. She had a uniform.

One of my squaddies also mentioned , "She's wearing the uniform that's all that matters." There were enough hints if the player listened, and believed them--cuz that's another issue--that pointed to her being a liar.

The researcher one from ME1..I can't remember if there were any hints. It's been awhile, but I remeber when she said something like, "what do you think happened to the researcher I replaced? They got indoctrinated.." That raised some alarm cuz I thought, well, what about you?

[AppealToReason]

This would probably only lead to more complaining as people couldn't make different choices but still get their "perfect" game and thus any alternate choice is useless and Bioware is stupid for even offering it.

[silentassassin264]

I don't mind choices biting you in the ass but the problem is when they failed to administer that evenly. For example, in Mass Effect they gave up some choices to backfire but the only choices that backfire (and actually affect the game, not emails that say something went wrong and doesn't affect anything) are renegade options. And they renegade backfires are often spectacular like losing all of the Krogan support for not curing the genophage if you kept Wrex (and to preemptively stop any stupidity, sparing Wrex on Virmire was not a Paragon option. Renegades can spare Wrex just like paragons.).

If we have backfiring, it has to be done evenly. You can't have, using DA2 for example, having mage options backfire consistently and siding with Templars never has a bump in road.

[David7204]

It should have been completely obvious that refusing to cure the genophage would cost Shepard the krogan's support.

It should not be done evenly for the sake of being done evenly.

Modifié par David7204, 23 octobre 2012 - 01:54 .

[AppealToReason]

David7204 wrote...

It should have been completely obvious that refusing to cure the genophage would cost Shepard the krogan's support.

But it was only Renegade options that came back to really bite you in the ass was her point. The Paragon actions that did anything were basically "aw shucks!" and really didn't make a lick of difference.

[Kileyan]

Keriana wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...
A good example of this is my turning the noble's insane, murderous son over to the guards. He explicitly tells me that he'll get back at me, but that never materializes.

Which goes back to the sensation that each quest is its own little bottle. I'm not having an impact on the world because the world itself rarely reacts to what happened on that quest.

I believe there's one instance where if you kill a Templar, other Templars will attack you. I liked this.
 

I like these examples and also the example someone else gave of having the dark ritual have serious negative consequences. I like them because they make logical sense from the choices.

In some other games it sometimes feels like they are pairing random negative things with positive things, and I end up not really caring what the negative things are because I don't see them as choices.

Maria Caliban wrote...
Now, I believe Allan once mentioned that if there's a 'good' option and a 'bad' option, he's probably going to pick the good one as picking the bad one doesn't make much sense. That doesn't make it much of a choice.

In this case I think that they need to provide more of a reason for picking the "bad" option, such as giving the pc more power, wealth, or loot, for example.

Why should the bad option have a reward to encourage it though? A lot of people just like playing a not very good person, their reward is being able to make those terrible choices and be something other than the typical shining knight.

This discussion is sort of heading in the direction of insisting that choosing good choices, saving the princess would be enhanced by punishing the player later. If you saved Sally the barmaid, Suzy the seamstress was killed because of your choices, blah blah. This is a sort of "balance" I don't really like. It tends to turn into LOL LOL no matter what you do, something bad will result. It becomes the vindictive Dungeon Master syndrome, where you stop carring what you choose, because the story teller has decided they are all wrong.

[David7204]

If heroism matters, then Paragon characters being rewarded more heavily than Renegade characters is the logical conclusion.

[Zu Long]

AppealToReason wrote...

David7204 wrote...

It should have been completely obvious that refusing to cure the genophage would cost Shepard the krogan's support.

But it was only Renegade options that came back to really bite you in the ass was her point. The Paragon actions that did anything were basically "aw shucks!" and really didn't make a lick of difference.

That depends though. If you didn't have Tali and Legion make up their differences in ME2, and you chose the paragon option to save the rogue Geth, you were locked out of reconcillation as an option for Geth/Quarian storyline. That's a pretty serious consequence.

[rapscallioness]

Maria Caliban wrote...

snip

A good example of this is my turning the noble's insane, murderous son over to the guards. He explicitly tells me that he'll get back at me, but that never materializes.

Which goes back to the sensation that each quest is its own little bottle. I'm not having an impact on the world because the world itself rarely reacts to what happened on that quest.

I believe there's one instance where if you kill a Templar, other Templars will attack you. I liked this.

.

I think we're veering kinda far. Maria's request was pretty straight forward. And I agree.

that is all.

[AppealToReason]

David7204 wrote...

If heroism matters, then Paragon characters being rewarded more heavily than Renegade characters is the logical conclusion.

That would make sense if Renegade was inherently evil, but it wasn't. You were just a no BS kind of guy.

[AppealToReason]

Zu Long wrote...

AppealToReason wrote...

David7204 wrote...

It should have been completely obvious that refusing to cure the genophage would cost Shepard the krogan's support.

But it was only Renegade options that came back to really bite you in the ass was her point. The Paragon actions that did anything were basically "aw shucks!" and really didn't make a lick of difference.

That depends though. If you didn't have Tali and Legion make up their differences in ME2, and you chose the paragon option to save the rogue Geth, you were locked out of reconcillation as an option for Geth/Quarian storyline. That's a pretty serious consequence.

Are you sure? I thought that you needed like 5 of 7, or some number, "things" and that was just one of them.

[Kileyan]

AppealToReason wrote...

David7204 wrote...

If heroism matters, then Paragon characters being rewarded more heavily than Renegade characters is the logical conclusion.

That would make sense if Renegade was inherently evil, but it wasn't. You were just a no BS kind of guy.

If Bioware wrote Renegades better that would be true. Problem is, other than the main story choices, many of the renegade choices in the first two games were just petty bully choices for the sake of puling the wings off of flies and grinning stupidly about it. The main choices were done well, the renegade point padding your rating choices were just stupid.

[silentassassin264]

AppealToReason wrote...

David7204 wrote...

It should have been completely obvious that refusing to cure the genophage would cost Shepard the krogan's support.

But it was only Renegade options that came back to really bite you in the ass was her point. The Paragon actions that did anything were basically "aw shucks!" and really didn't make a lick of difference.

Exactly.  The Rachni Queen in ME1 had the genetic memory of Queens that tried to wipe out all of Citadel space.  The only reason to believe her is that she "pinky swears" that she won't be genocidal this time.  This decision does not backfire against paragons.  Nothing ever costs paragons in war assets or gameplay mechanics.

Next, the Wrex backfire thing is stupid.  The evidence that Wrex gets does not implicate Shepard, only the Dalatross.  If anything, Wrex should have been trying to assassinate the Dalatross.  That is treason on the part of whoever in STG did that.  Next it completely disregards that a renegade could have Major Kirrahe as STG who you would think would be watching out for him/her.  Thirdly, even if someone in STG was against genophage, it is absolutely asinine to sow dissention when the fate of the entire galaxy depended on unity for a fighting chance.  The Krogan backfire was completely contrived and made no sense.  Even then, I still picked it because it was within my character's personality to make that choice.  Paragons sacrificing common sense for heroism should also comeback to bite them in the ass.  Saving the council should have been more of a hit losing a bunch of that fleet.  Bad things should happen to paragons as well.  I would still pick the paragons choices that failed on a paragon playthrough.  The point is that those backfires should have been there and they were not and they went out of the way to make renegades fail.  If they are going to go out of the way to make one faction fail, they have to do that to the other or it becomes ridiculous.

[Yalision]

I would like to see if letting Loghain live and saving the Anvil of the Void ever come to have interesting consequences or at least visual cues.

[Palipride47]

Yalision wrote...

I would like to see if letting Loghain live and saving the Anvil of the Void ever come to have interesting consequences or at least visual cues.

Me too, but not if they handle it like Nature of the Beast (Elves vs. Werewolves) in DA2. Or what happened if you sided with the Sophia Dryden demon. 

[Zoe]

Kileyan wrote...
Why should the bad option have a reward to encourage it though? A lot of people just like playing a not very good person, their reward is being able to make those terrible choices and be something other than the typical shining knight.

Maybe because I don't see playing a terrible person making terrible choices as being much of a reward...

I was thinking more that paragon choices could be rewarded in ways that matter to paragons while renegade choices could be rewarded in ways that matter to renegades, but that the pc wouldn't get both rewards. So, you are picking what is important for your pc in a situation and seeing the logical consequences of those decisions. I wasn't meaning to suggest that a random person should die because the pc saves someone.

I was also responding to Maria writing "Now, I believe Allan once mentioned that if there's a 'good' option and a 'bad' option, he's probably going to pick the good one as picking the bad one doesn't make much sense. That doesn't make it much of a choice."

Modifié par Keriana, 23 octobre 2012 - 02:45 .

[silentassassin264]

Keriana wrote...

Kileyan wrote...
Why should the bad option have a reward to encourage it though? A lot of people just like playing a not very good person, their reward is being able to make those terrible choices and be something other than the typical shining knight.

Maybe because I don't see playing a terrible person making terrible choices as being much of a reward...

I was thinking more that paragon choices could be rewarded in ways that matter to paragons while renegade choices could be rewarded in ways that matter to renegades, but that the pc wouldn't get both rewards. So, you are picking what is important for your pc in a situation and seeing the logical consequences of those decisions. I wasn't meaning to suggest that a random person should die because the pc saves someone.

I was also responding to Maria writing "Now, I believe Allan once mentioned that if there's a 'good' option and a 'bad' option, he's probably going to pick the good one as picking the bad one doesn't make much sense. That doesn't make it much of a choice."

I like this idea and this is how I felt it should have been in the Mass Effect series.  Both sides had to sacrifice but only paragons really seemed to get something out of it.  Renegades got one-liners but nothing of substance or if anything losing assets.  Both sides should get something appropriate out of sacrifice and both sides should get a penalty out of it.  If DA, mages and templar, however they want to break it down, should both get penalties and appropriate rewards if they decide to sacrifice something intentionally or unintentionally.  It seems like bias if you only reward one or only punish one and it seems like devs are saying "this is how you should be playing.  if not you are playing it wrong."  I do not play an open ended western rpg to be told "this is how I should be playing".