216 réponses à ce sujet

[Killroy]

There shouldn't be any "evil" options. We're playing a hero who's finding new homes for the races of the Milky Way. There's no place for mustache-twirling and traintrack-roping. There shouldn't even be a "Paragon or Renegade" system. It's so simplistic and antithetical to RPing. Color-coding choices to help you fill a bar graph is moronic. Morality choices should be handled like every other dialog choice. Things like "Throw the traitor in a cell" and "Execute the traitor" should not require colors to communicate morality.

[KaiserShep]

I agree with this. So long as the intent of the option is clear, the player should be able to decide whether or not their PC is being a jerk or harsh.

[TheRatPack55]

There shouldn't be any "evil" options. We're playing a hero who's finding new homes for the races of the Milky Way. There's no place for mustache-twirling and traintrack-roping. There shouldn't even be a "Paragon or Renegade" system. It's so simplistic and antithetical to RPing. Color-coding choices to help you fill a bar graph is moronic. Morality choices should be handled like every other dialog choice. Things like "Throw the traitor in a cell" and "Execute the traitor" should not require colors to communicate morality.

 

Agreed on the color-coding. But I don't want to play a hero. Pioneers were hardly heroes anyway, they often steamrolled over everything in their way. Seems like a good position to offer both "cooperate" and "dominate" options.

[Killroy]

Agreed on the color-coding. But I don't want to play a hero. Pioneers were hardly heroes anyway, they often steamrolled over everything in their way. Seems like a good position to offer both "cooperate" and "dominate" options.

 

Then you don't want to play BioWare games. 

[Seboist]

Then you don't want to play BioWare games. 

True, Renegade was a hero of humanity.

[TheRatPack55]

Then you don't want to play BioWare games. 

 

Pretty much, not the recent ones at least. KOTOR did right by me. Though if I did MMORPGs SWOTOR would suit me well enough too. Still hoping for a change of direction.

[slimgrin]

Nope. Gimmie the grey. There's a ton of ways to do nuanced morality when you don't take it to cliched extremes. 

[In Exile]

Agreed on the color-coding. But I don't want to play a hero. Pioneers were hardly heroes anyway, they often steamrolled over everything in their way. Seems like a good position to offer both "cooperate" and "dominate" options.

 

That's often a hero from the perspective of the colonizer. Lots of stories out there deconstructing "heroes". 

[TheRatPack55]

That's often a hero from the perspective of the colonizer. Lots of stories out there deconstructing "heroes". 

 

Sure, but in a game, particularly an RPG, that still has to be expressed somehow. I cringe at games that offer you only one way to progress - via murdering everything in your way - and then go "oh noes! you awful person how could you do this! those always aggressive enemies had families too!".

[Seboist]

Sure, but in a game, particularly an RPG, that still has to be expressed somehow. I cringe at games that offer you only one way to progress - via murdering everything in your way - and then go "oh noes! you awful person how could you do this! those always aggressive enemies had families too!".

As Ice-T said in "Cop Killer", "I know your family's grieving, **** 'em".

[In Exile]

Sure, but in a game, particularly an RPG, that still has to be expressed somehow. I cringe at games that offer you only one way to progress - via murdering everything in your way - and then go "oh noes! you awful person how could you do this! those always aggressive enemies had families too!".

 

Games have screwy morality systems. That said, games rarely do that one - most often they do it the Bioware way, where you massacre hundreds of mooks and then the good guy/bad guy choice is sparing their boss. That's screwy morality. Like, say, how many corpses you crawl over in DA:O to get to the Lady of the Forest. 

[Seboist]

Games have screwy morality systems. That said, games rarely do that one - most often they do it the Bioware way, where you massacre hundreds of mooks and then the good guy/bad guy choice is sparing their boss. That's screwy morality. Like, say, how many corpses you crawl over in DA:O to get to the Lady of the Forest. 

Yeah, that stuff is utterly ridiculous. The only sensible choice in that kind of situation would be whether to kill or capture the boss. The way it's structured as is, it's akin to a game that has you break four fingers of some dude's hand, and then present the choice of whether or not to break the fifth one as some great big moral conundrum. At that point, you might as well finish the job.

[Laughing_Man]

I would argue that killing in self-defense is not equivalent to killing someone when you actually have other choices, especially if there are extenuating circumstances.

 

But I do agree that in general it is true that morality in video games is a joke in many cases.

[Seboist]

I would argue that killing in self-defense is not equivalent to killing someone when you actually have other choices, especially if there are extenuating circumstances.

In a lot of these cases, it's hardly "self-defense" as Shepard goes out of his way to look for trouble, like he had no business being in those towers in Thane's recruitment mission to begin with, regardless of whether or not Thane was there(the mercs were the ones acting in self-defence).

[In Exile]

I would argue that killing in self-defense is not equivalent to killing someone when you actually have other choices, especially if there are extenuating circumstances.

 

But I do agree that in general it is true that morality in video games is a joke in many cases.

 

But you don't need to massacre these people. You could easily design a combat system around non-lethal and lethal options - and that can be a meaningful RP choice. 

[Shechinah]

But you don't need to massacre these people. You could easily design a combat system around non-lethal and lethal options - and that can be a meaningful RP choice. 

 

That's what I'm so hoping to see in Watch Dogs 2 but I'm a bit worried that there'll be mandatory missions where you have to kill people. Hopefully the non-lethal path extends through the mandatory missions.

[In Exile]

That's what I'm so hoping to see in Watch Dogs 2 but I'm a bit worried that there'll be mandatory missions where you have to kill people. Hopefully the non-lethal path extends through the mandatory missions.

 

There are two (somewhat mediocre, but I like 'em anyway) RPGs-ish games whose names escape me (one of them I think is called Technomancer?) where the default isn't killing your enemies. Combat just incapacitates them. Frankly often it should kill them, but anyways, it is something that occasionally crops up. 

[Laughing_Man]

But you don't need to massacre these people. You could easily design a combat system around non-lethal and lethal options - and that can be a meaningful RP choice. 

 

That's simply not realistic in my opinion.

 

If you go against mercs armed with assault weapons, snipers, biotics, and missile launchers with a taser, you might as well shoot yourself in the head, less effort.

[Laughing_Man]

There are two (somewhat mediocre, but I like 'em anyway) RPGs-ish games whose names escape me (one of them I think is called Technomancer?) where the default isn't killing your enemies. Combat just incapacitates them. Frankly often it should kill them, but anyways, it is something that occasionally crops up. 

 

Yeah, that's mindbendingly dumb.

 

We really don't need tropes like "Set Swords To Stun".

[In Exile]

Yeah, that's mindbendingly dumb.

 

We really don't need tropes like "Set Swords To Stun".

 

I honestly thing a big part of it is that writers just don't get how dangerous blunt force trauma is, and that it was often the preferred way of killing vs. swords (particularly when there was armour involved). And I mean this regardless of the setting. 

[In Exile]

That's simply not realistic in my opinion.

 

If you go against mercs armed with assault weapons, snipers, biotics, and missile launchers with a taser, you might as well shoot yourself in the head, less effort.

 

Non-lethal rounds. With all the space magic going about, weapons that can auto-detect the amount of, say, tranquilizer they need to put someone down would be one of the most realistic things about the setting. 

[Laughing_Man]

Non-lethal rounds. With all the space magic going about, weapons that can auto-detect the amount of, say, tranquilizer they need to put someone down would be one of the most realistic things about the setting. 

 

It's simply very unlikely.

 

It's a thousand times easier to design a weapon that will kill, than to design a weapon that will safely put to sleep all the types of aliens you may encounter on the battlefield. For me it's about as logical as "set swords to stun".

[In Exile]

It's simply very unlikely.

 

It's a thousand times easier to design a weapon that will kill, than to design a weapon that will safely put to sleep all the types of aliens you may encounter on the battlefield. For me it's about as logical as "set swords to stun".

 

It's not less unlikely than magic gravity powers. Or, frankly, stunswords. 

[Laughing_Man]

It's not less unlikely than magic gravity powers. Or, frankly, stunswords. 

 

This is about the in-universe logic again, the fact that magic exist, does not necessarily mean that every other rule of reality has been thrown out of the nearest airlock.

 

Designing special bullets that contain special medical VI inside to put every creature you fight to sleep, probably means that a single crate of ammunition will probably cost about as much as it takes to re-arm a frigate. And most of these bullets will be wasted anyway on breaking down kinetic barriers, some will miss, some will not penetrate the armor, should I go on? It's just laughably inefficient and unrealistic.

 

P.S.

 

If your medical sleep bullets have enough velocity and energy to break barriers and crack armor, what's stopping them from doing the same

to your enemies?

[In Exile]

This is about the in-universe logic again, the fact that magic exist, does not necessarily mean that every other rule of reality has been thrown out of the nearest airlock.

 

Designing special bullets that contain special medical VI inside to put every creature you fight to sleep, probably means that a single crate of ammunition will probably cost about as much as it takes to re-arm a frigate. And most of these bullets will be wasted anyway on breaking down kinetic barriers, some will miss, some will not penetrate the armor, should I go on? It's just laughably inefficient and unrealistic.

 

P.S.

 

If your medical sleep bullets have enough velocity and energy to break barriers and crack armor, what's stopping them from doing the same

to your enemies?

 

It's the other way around. The rules of reality are being bent and broken and torn about all the time. Science-fiction technology is, basically, magic. That's no different than magical force fields, anti-bullet armour, etc. Having magic anti-bullet armour is no different than having magic stun bullets. Or stun lasers. Or whatever.