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Alignment can be great for a collaborative story, like a D&D campaign, exactly because it is so loaded and so ambiguous. It gets people into character, they start developing their own goals and motives, there's friction, stuff happens. No kidding there's no objective definition; it's about how the player wants to think about their character. The same things that make alignment work in the format it was created for make it a bad fit for the very different format of video games.
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Apr 16, 2015 04:38
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Alouicious posted:ask nerds about alignment w/r/t Paladins my brain read this as "Palestinians" for a fraction of a second
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Apr 16, 2015 04:39
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Son of Thunderbeast posted:my brain read this as "Palestinians" for a fraction of a second do NOT under any circumstances ask your nerd friends about Palestine, no direction that convo can go in is good
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Apr 16, 2015 04:50
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Alignment makes a lot more sense when you remember that it was supposed to be something on a character sheet to act as shorthand for how a preset character should act.
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Apr 16, 2015 04:59
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Sleeveless posted:Alignment makes a lot more sense when you remember that it was supposed to be something on a character sheet to act as shorthand for how a preset character should act. Except no, it had a shitload of actual mechanical interactions because early D&D was not very well designed. Back on target, sorta - it's not a game but I really loathe the short battery times on modern handhelds. I travel a ton and it sucks that back in the day I could have thrown a GBA and an eight pack of batteries in my carry on and been set for a month, whereas now my Vita gets 3 hours with the brightness turned down and my 3DS is lucky to hit two and a half.
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Apr 16, 2015 05:15
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Ryoshi posted:I'm pretty sure Landerig has a good handle on the scale, though. a chaotic neutral reply should have been the stake in the heart of this lawful bad derail. Dragging BF4 down is the fact that you can't repeat the second to last mission without first beating the last mission.
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Apr 16, 2015 09:53
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Thinky Whale posted:Planescape Torment's approach is pretty interesting. It keeps track of both good/evil actions and lawful/chaotic ones. So, if you murder and enslave and screw people over but always scrupulously tell the truth, you can end up as Lawful Evil, while being a standup citizen while lying your face off and playing with robot dolls makes you Chaotic Good. fuckin' love that robot doll though
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Apr 16, 2015 10:25
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I like the SMT alignment scale, where Lawful people want to turn everyone into a Dalek slave race, Chaotic people want to usher in a Hobbesian world of endless warfare, and Neutral people are normal and not retarded.
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Apr 16, 2015 14:49
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:I like the SMT alignment scale, where Lawful people want to turn everyone into a Dalek slave race, Chaotic people want to usher in a Hobbesian world of endless warfare, and Neutral people are normal and not retarded. SMTIV straight-up has Law-aligned religious Daleks, it's great.
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Apr 16, 2015 15:04
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Ryoshi posted:Back on target, sorta - it's not a game but I really loathe the short battery times on modern handhelds. I travel a ton and it sucks that back in the day I could have thrown a GBA and an eight pack of batteries in my carry on and been set for a month, whereas now my Vita gets 3 hours with the brightness turned down and my 3DS is lucky to hit two and a half. I remember having to replace my battery on my DS back in the day. It made a huge difference and was pretty cheap to buy. Also I can't remember but I recall seeing larger battery packs you could buy. Not sure if it applies to your Vita at all though.
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Apr 16, 2015 15:23
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:I like the SMT alignment scale, where Lawful people want to turn everyone into a Dalek slave race, Chaotic people want to usher in a Hobbesian world of endless warfare, and Neutral people are normal and not retarded. Yup, pretty much every non-neutral option in SMT games is pretty monstrous in one way or another. I honestly really like that neutrality is a true alignment by itself rather than just not being lawful or chaotic. Neutrality in SMT games basically involves telling all the major supernatural players that you're done with their poo poo and you're going to be killing the lot of them and re-establishing humans as the top dog.
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Apr 16, 2015 15:31
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:I like the SMT alignment scale, where Lawful people want to turn everyone into a Dalek slave race, Chaotic people want to usher in a Hobbesian world of endless warfare, and Neutral people are normal and not retarded. Planescape: Torment kicked this whole discussion off but its worth mentioning that the entire game is mostly about the absurdity of alignments and pokes fun at it by having all your party members be things like a chaste prostitute, a chaotic insane robot, and a monk who gets stronger by believing in fabricated religious texts.
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Apr 16, 2015 16:11
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My last contribution to alignment chat: http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sg/20050325a I like the explanation given, but it also means that no video game is really going to do it well. But the best set of chaotic actions in planescape is the one where you spontaneously cause a character to start existing because you kept using a fake name.
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Apr 16, 2015 18:50
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Sleeveless posted:Planescape: Torment kicked this whole discussion off but its worth mentioning that the entire game is mostly about the absurdity of alignments and pokes fun at it by having all your party members be things like a chaste prostitute, a chaotic insane robot, and a monk who gets stronger by believing in fabricated religious texts. Planescape is an incredible setting because almost everything in it is there to take the piss out of a mechanic that is literally ingrained into the environment (see: Pink Nazi Paladins).
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Apr 16, 2015 21:16
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My favourite morality system is where characters act according to the personalities the writer gave them instead of a coverall code with its designated god, lucky colour, magic power, spirit animal and afterlife
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Apr 16, 2015 21:35
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Chaos are the good people in the SMT games
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Apr 16, 2015 21:42
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I'm about 15 hours into Dragon Age: Inquistion and there is a lot to commend about the game. There's tons of stuff to do, the combat is pretty baller, the graphics are gorgeous, and the plot is pretty engaging once you start getting the Inquisition off the ground. But after 15 hours I've been given no real opportunity to mold my characters personality. One of my favorite player created character experiences was in Dragon Age: Origins. My character was a psychotic tattoo'ed barbarian nutbag who killed indiscriminately and did as much damage to Thedas while pursing the Darkspawn as the Darkspawn did themselves, but over the course of his journey grew to respect his companions and ended his story by sacrificing himself to the Archdemon so that his new friends could have a chance to live in a world without monsters like him. Origins gave me the tools to craft a real arc for my character and because of it I have always looked back at Origins as one of my favorite gaming experiences. A personal story like that doesn't seem to be in the cards in Inquisition. Every dialogue choice so far as characterized my Herald as Generic Fantasy Hero #1294. There are almost no options to do anything other than be a stand up noble who only wants to save the world. The best I've gotten so far was an option to give the Mages freedom then tell your court that you lied and they'd all be sent back to the Circle once the war was over. But even that choice has had zero consequences so far and none of the other characters even seemed to care. It's possible that I just haven't gotten far enough for the story to open up, as I spent way too much time in the Hinterlands and only just now started going to other areas. I hear that everything before you close the Breach is essentially a very long-winded prologue and the game doesn't really get going until after that. So I'll keep going and hope things change. I'm enjoying the overall plot, but it's hard to give a poo poo about my own character so far. Because he's not mine. He's shackled by the way the writers decided they wanted him to be. All I really got to do was choose his hair color.
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Apr 16, 2015 23:40
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The worst thing about Inquisition is that you had to pick your own berries and mine your own ore despite being the prophet king of an army. And the multiplayer was a pale shadow of ME3's.
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Apr 17, 2015 00:50
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Yea it really sucked that in Inquisition you just can't be evil at all and the worst thing you can do in terms of approval loss is be mean to the trans pirate mercenary you meet during your adventures. Game should have let you rule the inquisition with an iron fist if you wanted to. quote:And the multiplayer was a pale shadow of ME3's. They really should have just stuck with ME3 style, same with the loot, they would have benefited so much more with the cash shop poo poo as well.
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Apr 17, 2015 01:16
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What exactly is so bad about the multiplayer in DA:I when compared to ME3?
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Apr 17, 2015 04:28
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owl_pellet posted:What exactly is so bad about the multiplayer in DA:I when compared to ME3? Well for starters it has far less content at launch, it has 3 maps right now, I believe ME3 had around 8 or so? Loot system is quite bad since all the loot is like your standard RPG fair, a level 2 bow, a level 5 staff, poo poo like that and you're not guaranteed to get gear for the class you are using over others so its throws a wrench in things, its not like in ME3 where all the guns where divided into rarities. And its just not that exciting, you go through the 3 maps, listening to repetitive dialogue, kill waves of enemies in a room, do this 5 times then the final wave and its over, there's no crazy moments like ME3 when you where during a gold or platinum match and you had so many horrible things bearing down on you.
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Apr 17, 2015 05:58
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My bro got Mortal Kombat X and we found out it doesn't have Tag Ladder or 2v2 matches and that makes me really sad. Passing a controller around the room isn't the same as some good couch co-op. And my friend is worse than me at fighting games so versus is kinda pointless. Once story mode is over I know we're gonna get bored with this quick, and that sucks, because I'm still playing MK9.
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Apr 17, 2015 22:38
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Esroc posted:It's possible that I just haven't gotten far enough for the story to open up, as I spent way too much time in the Hinterlands and only just now started going to other areas. I hear that everything before you close the Breach is essentially a very long-winded prologue and the game doesn't really get going until after that. So I'll keep going and hope things change. I'm enjoying the overall plot, but it's hard to give a poo poo about my own character so far. Because he's not mine. He's shackled by the way the writers decided they wanted him to be. All I really got to do was choose his hair color. That's mostly it. Up til then as far as most are concerned you're untouchable and you can just repeatedly bitch at them that no, I'm an atheist, I don't actually believe in God. After the big choice between mages and templars things start to open up a little but as with the other two games it's often restricted to lovely/funny/mean with a side of believer/nonbeliever (with various gods involved, you sort of have to work out your character yourself and think of how they might react rather than letting the game work it out for you). The companion quests are where the game really shines with regards to your character.
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Apr 17, 2015 23:04
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I've been playing Sleeping Dogs, and the single most annoying thing about it was the stretch of highway from North Point to Central, where the construction work is. There's only a single lane and it's always clogged and all the barrels and barriers slow you right the gently caress down. I'd give it major bonus points for realism if it wasn't the one stretch of road you'll reliably go down like a hundred times because you go from North Point to Central so drat much.
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Apr 18, 2015 20:48
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I had somebody on my friends list who had a 6 minute record in the "drive fast without hitting something" stat. It took me a bit more than an entire lap around the map to beat 6 minutes so I made sure I didn't have to go through there twice.
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Apr 18, 2015 20:56
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My Lovely Horse posted:I've been playing Sleeping Dogs, and the single most annoying thing about it was the stretch of highway from North Point to Central, where the construction work is. There's only a single lane and it's always clogged and all the barrels and barriers slow you right the gently caress down. I'd give it major bonus points for realism if it wasn't the one stretch of road you'll reliably go down like a hundred times because you go from North Point to Central so drat much. Taxi to the nearest parking garage in north point or central to fast travel to one of your fancy cars. Problem solved.
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Apr 18, 2015 20:56
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My Lovely Horse posted:I've been playing Sleeping Dogs, and the single most annoying thing about it was the stretch of highway from North Point to Central, where the construction work is. There's only a single lane and it's always clogged and all the barrels and barriers slow you right the gently caress down. I'd give it major bonus points for realism if it wasn't the one stretch of road you'll reliably go down like a hundred times because you go from North Point to Central so drat much. I found the road layout in general to be annoying because instead of having a big city to tool around in it feels like you have a bunch of hubs separated by highways.
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Apr 18, 2015 21:05
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Mierenneuker posted:I had somebody on my friends list who had a 6 minute record in the "drive fast without hitting something" stat. It took me a bit more than an entire lap around the map to beat 6 minutes so I made sure I didn't have to go through there twice. I did it with a slow, lovely car because it doesn't actually need to be 'fast', just 'fastest your current vehicle can go'. Well, this was the case ages ago, not sure if they changed it.
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Apr 18, 2015 22:05
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NLJP posted:I did it with a slow, lovely car because it doesn't actually need to be 'fast', just 'fastest your current vehicle can go'. Well, this was the case ages ago, not sure if they changed it. Yeah. The best car for it was the vanilla cop car, since it had sirens, and just barely got over the 60 miles per hour needed to do the challenge.
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Apr 18, 2015 22:25
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Tiberius Thyben posted:Yeah. The best car for it was the vanilla cop car, since it had sirens, and just barely got over the 60 miles per hour needed to do the challenge. That was a great thing about Sleeping Dogs, turn on the siren in your cop car and cars on the road will pull over to give way. Made it much more realistic for me instead of feeling like the lights and sirens are just aesthetic.
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Apr 18, 2015 23:13
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every game i can think of that has a police car where you can toggle the siren has that feature
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Apr 18, 2015 23:14
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jojoinnit posted:That was a great thing about Sleeping Dogs, turn on the siren in your cop car and cars on the road will pull over to give way. Made it much more realistic for me instead of feeling like the lights and sirens are just aesthetic.
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Apr 18, 2015 23:36
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Maybe. I just know that SD is the first time it was obviously happening, usually it seems like they just drive as normal. Eh v v
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Apr 18, 2015 23:38
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jojoinnit posted:That was a great thing about Sleeping Dogs, turn on the siren in your cop car and cars on the road will pull over to give way. Made it much more realistic for me instead of feeling like the lights and sirens are just aesthetic. I'm almost positive this is a thing going all the way back to Vice City, if not GTAIII or the original GTA itself.
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Apr 18, 2015 23:42
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Inco posted:I'm almost positive this is a thing going all the way back to Vice City, if not GTAIII or the original GTA itself. At least to III.
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Apr 19, 2015 00:17
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Mister Adequate posted:At least to III. I remember the people pulling over and stopping in sleeping dogs being really smooth and clear. In other games sometimes your sirens make other drivers erratic or freak the gently caress out, but in sleeping dogs they pull over and make way like humans would.
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Apr 19, 2015 03:56
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Olaf The Stout posted:I remember the people pulling over and stopping in sleeping dogs being really smooth and clear. In other games sometimes your sirens make other drivers erratic or freak the gently caress out, but in sleeping dogs they pull over and make way like humans would. I'm sure we've all had it happen where we were blasting down the road with our sirens on and a car from the oncoming lane decided to go left off the road instead of to the right, right into you.
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Apr 19, 2015 04:07
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I picked up Age of Wonders III on a recommendation from a friend. It plays like a combination of Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic, both of which I like, so I'm totally on board. I boot it up, and the game suggests playing the Elven campaign to start off. I do, assuming it to be a pretty decent tutorial. It is not a decent tutorial. It teaches you how to stack units, open the in-game encyclopedia, pick a research and enter a fight. After that you're on your own, aside from a single instance where it tells you battering rams and trebuchets are good for sieges (without explaining to you why). This would be relatively okay by itself, if it weren't for the fact that the matchup the game gives you is absurdly unfair for an ostensible tutorial. Ultimately, the map is between you playing an Elven Rogue, and an enemy playing an Orcish Theocrat. This is actually an awful matchup, especially for a tutorial; elves are squishy and heavily range-focused, and rogues are extremely technical and focused around exploiting stuff like flanking. An Elven Rogue can work really well, but you need to know how to use them quite well, and hit the lategame. Meanwhile, orcs are really burly, and theocrats are heavily support-focused, so that goes together in a really simple way that's useful all game, but especially good early-on. So basically, the map intended for 'beginners' gives you an extremely high-skill setup, and then pits you against a setup with really natural synergy.
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Apr 19, 2015 04:31
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Leal posted:I'm sure we've all had it happen where we were blasting down the road with our sirens on and a car from the oncoming lane decided to go left off the road instead of to the right, right into you.
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Apr 19, 2015 05:26
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I wonder if real cops ever experience the phenomenon I did in True Crime NYC, where pedestrians constantly would leap from the sidewalk into the path of my car, killing themselves instantly and tanking my Good Cop Points.
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Apr 19, 2015 05:31
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