197 réponses à ce sujet

[Dabrikishaw]

Sure, I'm down with this idea.

[Peer of the Empire]

I give this thread an A-

[Lotion Soronarr]

Sir JK wrote...
Indeed. This is exactly what I meant with games doing this being "quite different beasts than we're used to". I'm sure you and I would find a game doing this interesting at the very least, but I'm not sure we'd make up a very big crowd.

I dunno. An escalating series of responses sounds like something people shouldn't mind.

If you don't want to experiecne that content, dont' kill innocents and don't go on rampages - simple.
And even if you do kill someone by mistake, it's not game over.
Playing a fugitive from the law can be fun in itself.

[Sir JK]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

I dunno. An escalating series of responses sounds like something people shouldn't mind.

If you don't want to experiecne that content, dont' kill innocents and don't go on rampages - simple.
And even if you do kill someone by mistake, it's not game over.
Playing a fugitive from the law can be fun in itself.

Done right sure, but it's not an easy path to balance. Part of what is sought after in the ability to kill any npc is feedom, and while our line of discussion provides possibility the question is if it would satisfy that freedom. It becomes a delicate balancing act. Too strong a response and you've given ability without freedom, too weak one and you're not satisfying those of us that feel the ability often cheapens the setting.

Given that I'd rather go without that ability than have the response be halfhearted, chances are that I'm consierably easier to satisfy by keeping it out alltogether. And that ability without freedom is unlikely to satisfy the desires of the opposing end of the spectrum. We have this feature that'd need to be perfect or make both ends of the spectrum unsatisfied.

So it basically become one of those things that you'd have to devote quite a bit of resources into just to make it acceptable, let alone good. Given the other problems when it comes to crafting narratives (or just plain setting the possibility of narrative up) I dare say it ends up being one of those "lots of work for marginal gain"-features.

[Lotion Soronarr]

Too strong or too weak? I'd say it should be liek you'd expect it to be, not tailored to someones specific idea of "challenge"

The law is neither omniscent nor omni-present. A smart player should be able to outmanouver the law (wear disguises, constatnly lie abotu yourself, never leave witnesses, don't stay too long in any palce, avoid acting suspicious or walking close to the guards, etc..) - and this the resposne would feel like it's weak, because the law has trouble finding him to punish him.

A player that just walks in convinced he's a demigod of killing, and shuns all thoughts of hiding, would see an army march up his/her a**.

Freedom doesn't mean lack of consequence - altough some obviously think it should.

[Reaverwind]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Too strong or too weak? I'd say it should be liek you'd expect it to be, not tailored to someones specific idea of "challenge"

The law is neither omniscent nor omni-present. A smart player should be able to outmanouver the law (wear disguises, constatnly lie abotu yourself, never leave witnesses, don't stay too long in any palce, avoid acting suspicious or walking close to the guards, etc..) - and this the resposne would feel like it's weak, because the law has trouble finding him to punish him.

A player that just walks in convinced he's a demigod of killing, and shuns all thoughts of hiding, would see an army march up his/her a**.

Freedom doesn't mean lack of consequence - altough some obviously think it should.

Half the challenge is avoiding undue attention from the law - but I don't know if Bioware would seriously want to do the amount of coding it would take to set up areas where a player could commit crimes and get away with them if he's careful to avoid notice, but have the law come down on him like a ton of bricks if he fails to avoid notice.

The old Baldur's Gate games did have something like that, albeit it was rather primitive - you needed to be careful when breaking into chests for example.

[Lotion Soronarr]

Even if he DOESN'T avoid notice, it's middle ages.

It's not that hard to blend in with the crowd and few will even know, let alone recognize face. There isn't such a thing as a APB with your mugshot distributed everywhere in 5 minutes.

[Sir JK]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Too strong or too weak? I'd say it should be liek you'd expect it to be, not tailored to someones specific idea of "challenge"

The law is neither omniscent nor omni-present. A smart player should be able to outmanouver the law (wear disguises, constatnly lie abotu yourself, never leave witnesses, don't stay too long in any palce, avoid acting suspicious or walking close to the guards, etc..) - and this the resposne would feel like it's weak, because the law has trouble finding him to punish him.

A player that just walks in convinced he's a demigod of killing, and shuns all thoughts of hiding, would see an army march up his/her a**.

Freedom doesn't mean lack of consequence - altough some obviously think it should.

But how avoidable should those consequences be, therein lie the question. How many factors do you need to account for? How do you control this?

Does this game account for sound and curiosity? Do npc remember you leaving and entering rooms and buildings? How difficult is blood-splatter to get out of clothing? How does news travel? What is the response time of the guard? Can NPCs see and hear you outside their homes?

All of those are possible complications that could be "expected". Things that make comitting murder and get away with it difficult.

It's perfectly possible to make it mind boggingly difficult to get away with crime. Not to mention making the underlying systems extremely complex. So where do you draw the line?

[Mike3207]

All I'll say is I would have loved to kill Eamon in DAO.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The ability to kill any NPC is not the same as the ability to kill every NPC.

[TurretSyndrome]

Sir JK wrote...
So where do you draw the line? 

For Dragon Age, you draw it at penalising the player with money. Same system used in Skyrim and Kingdoms of Amalur etc. 

The reason that I think it needn't go any further is simply resources. I'd rather see the game being polished to look better, feel better and play better than something like this being prioritised with the quality of everything else lowered. 

[MJones]

This sort of thing was fun in Skyrim, but it doesn't interest me in DA. DA games are each trying to tell a very specific story, while Elder Scrolls create a wide open world and allow the player to tell the story he or she finds most interesting. While I enjoyed Skyrim, I didn't find any particular questline to be gripping storytelling. DA games, however, tell stories that I have replayed repeatedly.

[Angrywolves]

Smith looks like Arl Howe.
rotfl.
I wouldn't have to kill Eamon or any npc outside of those we can already kill in DAO.
Obviously in DA2 I would have liked to kill Meredith and the Ashirok early on to save Kirkwall , but we didn't have that opportunity .

[Mike3207]

Angrywolves wrote...

Smith looks like Arl Howe.
rotfl.
I wouldn't have to kill Eamon or any npc outside of those we can already kill in DAO.
Obviously in DA2 I would have liked to kill Meredith and the Ashirok early on to save Kirkwall , but we didn't have that opportunity .

It really doesn't or you haven't seen Howe.

[TMZuk]

MJones wrote...

This sort of thing was fun in Skyrim, but it doesn't interest me in DA. DA games are each trying to tell a very specific story, while Elder Scrolls create a wide open world and allow the player to tell the story he or she finds most interesting. While I enjoyed Skyrim, I didn't find any particular questline to be gripping storytelling. DA games, however, tell stories that I have replayed repeatedly.

Baldur's Gate I & II tells a very specific story and yet you can attack anyone you meet, if you are quick enough. Even Drizzt. Even Elminster, if you feel especially suicidal! So you can put away the argument about killable characters not being suited for story-driven games.

It's not about being fun, persé. It's about making a belieable experience, where you can have your character be the aggressor if you want to.

And in regard to consequences, it's really not that hard. Place all characters in a faction, that will react positively or negatively towards your character, depending on your actions. Watch where you AOE effects and arrows land. Once more I'll point to Fallout: New Vegas and say: How hard can it be? Obsidian has figured out how to do it. Broken as many of their games has been when released, at least they never insulted my intelligence before making a CTD.

DA2 insulted my intelligence in more ways than I can mention.

[Angrywolves]

I've seen Howe.
Smith acts like him.
I've had 17 different playthroughs of DAO.
Only one I didn't finish, the disc cracked and stopped playing.
Seen Howe a lot.
shrugs.
Some players want to commit genocide aka slaughters everything that moves.
I feel reasonably confident they'll run afoul of the consequences portion of the game.

[In Exile]

TMZuk wrote...

Baldur's Gate I & II tells a very specific story and yet you can attack anyone you meet, if you are quick enough. Even Drizzt. Even Elminster, if you feel especially suicidal! So you can put away the argument about killable characters not being suited for story-driven games.

Acting like BG I was a story-driven game in any meaningful sense of the world today is just plain misleading. 

BGII is a better example, but you can look at how Spellhold was dealt with re: magic to get at just how restrictions start to work much better and more realistic that just Lolz murder + guards and reputation mechanic. And it was still radically unrealsitic. 

And in regard to consequences, it's really not that hard. Place all characters in a faction, that will react positively or negatively towards your character, depending on your actions. Watch where you AOE effects and arrows land. Once more I'll point to Fallout: New Vegas and say: How hard can it be? Obsidian has figured out how to do it. Broken as many of their games has been when released, at least they never insulted my intelligence before making a CTD.

Fallout failed miserably at doing this. 

Modifié par In Exile, 14 novembre 2013 - 06:06 .

[In Exile]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
That is NOW.
In our MODERN society.

In ages past, trials and justice was much simpler. 
There would be no long trials..often no trials at all. Just the local sheriff or guard captain makign a swift judgment or you being dragged in front of the magister for a switf judgment.
Which sometimes in some cultures included monetary or material reparations - for murder. Or being made a slave.

You're completely wrong. Even if we go back to the way medieval justice worked, calling it "swift judgement" is misleading entirely because there was still an idea of procedural fairness, it was just that the nature of the crimes and judgement was very diferent and very tied up with the neighbourhood and geographic area where crimes happend (at least in the UK).

And again in cultures that Thedas is based on - i.e., the UK and France, etc - monetary reparation for murder was not a thing unless it happened at a particular level of nobility as a kind of thuggish infighting (and that was more reparation for war and damage of property in a sense). 

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I couldn't disagree more strongly (and I'm responding only to this remark because it is, by far, the most important aspect of what you said).

The player's perception, when roleplaying, is irrelevant.  The act of inhabiting the character, at least when I do it, involves something akin to what Sufi mystics would call Dissolution of the Self.  Someone here once described my approach as "the wilful induction of psychosis."

I was there for the psychosis conversation. While I understand what you're talking about, that's not what that comment was in reference to. The psychosis comment was in reference to how - from an in-character perspective - you think that the only and ultimate arbiter of "real" is the subjective perception of your character. 

As for the point I was making, when I say that the player and character have the same perspective, I mean that the player qua player and player qua character see identical things almost the entire time (the only exception being the cinematic cutscenes when the character isn't present). 

But the perspective is the same. 

Roleplaying is nothing more than perceiving events from someone else's perspective.  The player's perspective (including his awareness that he even exists, let alone is playing a game) does not matter.

No, the player literally sees everything the character sees. That's the perspective. 

[Sir JK]

TurretSyndrome wrote...

For Dragon Age, you draw it at penalising the player with money. Same system used in Skyrim and Kingdoms of Amalur etc. 

The reason that I think it needn't go any further is simply resources. I'd rather see the game being polished to look better, feel better and play better than something like this being prioritised with the quality of everything else lowered. 

Yeah. It's not really a feature that warrants much more resources unless you're already going to great lengths to mimic a working society. In most cases I'd say that there's plenty of other things that ought to be mor prioritized.

[Lotion Soronarr]

Sir JK wrote...
It's perfectly possible to make it mind boggingly difficult to get away with crime. Not to mention making the underlying systems extremely complex. So where do you draw the line?

At reason.
How much sense does something make and how hard it is to implement?

Given that insides and outsides are different areas, making NPC's outside hear you and see you is something that you're unlikely to see.

[TMZuk]

In Exile wrote...

TMZuk wrote...

And in regard to consequences, it's really not that hard. Place all characters in a faction, that will react positively or negatively towards your character, depending on your actions. Watch where you AOE effects and arrows land. Once more I'll point to Fallout: New Vegas and say: How hard can it be? Obsidian has figured out how to do it. Broken as many of their games has been when released, at least they never insulted my intelligence before making a CTD.

Fallout failed miserably at doing this. 

Explain, please. How did Fallout: New Vegas fail at this?

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

No, the player literally sees everything the character sees.

But the character doesn't see everything the player sees, even in scenes where the character is present.

This is why I object to depth-of-field effects in cutscenes.  They exist only to draw the player's attention to specific details, and that gets in the way of the player deciding what it is that draws the character's attention.

Also, how do you fit into your schema those events which the character sees, but take place off-camera?

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

Acting like BG I was a story-driven game in any meaningful sense of the world today is just plain misleading.

There's a reason I think BG was BioWare's best game.

The NWN OC comes second.

In Exile wrote...

You're completely wrong. Even if we go back to the way medieval justice worked, calling it "swift judgement" is misleading entirely because there was still an idea of procedural fairness, it was just that the nature of the crimes and judgement was very diferent and very tied up with the neighbourhood and geographic area where crimes happend (at least in the UK).

And again in cultures that Thedas is based on - i.e., the UK and France, etc - monetary reparation for murder was not a thing unless it happened at a particular level of nobility as a kind of thuggish infighting (and that was more reparation for war and damage of property in a sense).

I don't think you're going back far enough.  Think pre-magna carta.