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Roobanguy posted:if i remember right, if you have her kill the slaver to gain her freedom she goes evil and crazy not even 10 seconds after. See this is the kind of writing that is simply beyond Bethesda. The problem is a karma system treats the player like an idiot - do good thing get good outcome *beep boop* guaranteed every time. It also removes all opportunity or motive for interesting writing. Each karma check is a wasted story-telling opportunity. Which is why it exists in the first place - to make the game easier to write and hence cheaper to produce. The fact that Karma/Reputation is even in Fallout: New Vegas just proves that although sensitive to the need for change Obsidian failed to improve on Bethesda's game design logic which resulted in only a marginal improvement in overall writing 'quality' for want of a better term. Which is why I am surprised people can really draw such strong distinctions between the two games. They were both poorly designed, which precluded their being well written. The same can be said for many of the differences between Fallout 3 and NV - Obsidian fundamentally misunderstood Fallout 3's many problems, and so their solutions resulted in an even more clunky, and ultimately worse game. Flaky fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Aug 7, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 03:30
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Flaky posted:See this is the kind of writing that is simply beyond Bethesda. The problem is a karma system treats the player like an idiot - do good thing get good outcome *beep boop* guaranteed every time. Removes all possibility or motive for interesting writing. Each karma check is a wasted story-telling opportunity. Which is why it exists in the first place - to make the game easier to write and hence cheaper to produce. the having her kill the slaver was the evil option. you can just free her and she leaves not crazy and evil and her mom thanks you.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:36
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Crabtree posted:You hacked someone's computer, you gained evil Karma. You slept in someone's bed, you committed a crime. Camp out on a ridge outside a prison and murder everyone you can see, savior of the wasteland.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:37
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Flaky posted:See this is the kind of writing that is simply beyond Bethesda. The problem is a karma system treats the player like an idiot - do good thing get good outcome *beep boop* guaranteed every time. ...Tenpenny Tower?
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Aug 7, 2015 03:52
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BenRGamer posted:...Tenpenny Tower? loving Roy.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:56
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JackBadass posted:Karma systems are broken as gently caress and I'm not sure there's a way to make them work good. It's always something like "You murdered a whole town of innocent people. That's just as bad as stealing a broken 2x4 from behind this guy's shack. Here's your goth make-up and devil horns". Either that or you play as a "good guy" which just amounts to not getting the cool gear and not having as many useful items. Being good in these games feels like playing with your left hand tied behind your back. Game Developers Todd Howard and Peter Molyneux Discuss Good, Evil, and the Concept of Karma quote:Peter Molyneux: ...an 'argument to moderation', as it were. One might imagine the heroic Neil Armstrong setting foot upon the moon's surface, observing Planet Earth from a perspective few will ever behold, and discovering that the world...the world is simply an endless series of binary switches--ones and zeros, yes and no, light and dark, right and wrong--and everything trapped between them is inconsequential waffling. He might even breathe a few foreboding words in his announcement to his homeworld: 'The world is an evil place--I can see that now. We are ants.' Could you imagine that? 'One small foot for man...' No, mate. 'We. Are. Ants.'"
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Aug 7, 2015 03:56
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Meridian posted:Camp out on a ridge outside a prison and murder everyone you can see, savior of the wasteland. You murder all the trash raiders, feral ghouls, Talon Mercs, Junkies and Enclave you see? You have an infinite amount of blank moral checks that will never run out to take care of all the petty nukes you set off or bad murders you make throughout the game. You give water to bums outside of town? You don't even have to kill evil people. Crabtree fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Aug 7, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 03:57
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Crabtree posted:You slept in someone's bed, you committed a crime. Original sin. When Eve slept in the beds of the three bears.
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Aug 7, 2015 04:11
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Do they drink the water? You never know. You never know. you never know
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Aug 7, 2015 04:21
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All I am saying is that so far the mechanics of a karma system have kind of worked against a player trying to role play a character. Might not be important to everyone and half the time it's not important to me, but trying to offset a karma hit because you looted something out of an owned container by fast traveling and murdering some dudes just doesn't really make sense when the two actions don't equal out in any kind of way. Karma never really had any impact on the world state to begin with, so what's the point?
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Aug 7, 2015 04:27
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One relatively easy way to shake up Karma would be to do what New Vegas did with faction reputations and have four axes rather than three- neutral, good, bad, mixed. Yet another way New Vegas leads us on into the future. Edit: obviously though they should get rid of karma entirely, maybe replace it with something like the system from Alpha Protocol which tracks the tone of your dialogue choices and has characters react to that instead. 2house2fly fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Aug 7, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 04:27
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2house2fly posted:One relatively easy way to shake up Karma would be to do what New Vegas did with faction reputations and have four axes rather than three- neutral, good, bad, mixed. Yet another way New Vegas leads us on into the future. That karma system was just as terrible.
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Aug 7, 2015 04:31
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replace karma with bad boy points you want enough so that the older girl in third grade will think you're cool, but if you get too many you have to sit in time out
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Aug 7, 2015 04:33
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I'm honestly not sure where it made that much of a difference (except in barkstrings), but yeah, I liked the FNV rep system. If you do a lot of good work for a faction, and then firebomb one of their bases, they shouldn't regard you exactly the same as someone they've never met before.
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Aug 7, 2015 04:34
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I also liked hiding and then killing people in different costumes as it made me feel like the world's clumsiest, yet efficient spy ever. Somehow an entire Legion never saw me coming as I killed them all in their sleep or quietly sniped them all, one at a time, as they patrolled in formation. Gotta collect them ears and dog tags! Even if Bethesda doesn't do it that well, they could totally replace Karma with degrees of Reputations and it'd be probably a lot more easier to code.
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Aug 7, 2015 05:50
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big mean giraffe posted:Witcher was easy just had poo poo controls. Dark Souls/Bloodborne is one of the few legitimately difficult games out there that isn't cheap or poorly designed. that is an incredibly hosed up thing to say.
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Aug 7, 2015 06:05
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AriadneThread posted:Do they drink the water? You never know. iirc, they don't. It's still in their inventory.
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Aug 7, 2015 06:24
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BenRGamer posted:iirc, they don't. It's still in their inventory. They aren't supposed to, but one day I was walking past Tenpenny Tower when I saw the beggar and thought, "Oh, what the heck?" and so I gave him a bottle of purified water. Maybe I just felt like doing something charitable for somebody else I guess? He didn't do anything, but as I was walking up to the gate, I heard a drinking sound. Not the usual "drinking" sound that NPCs make when they drink a beverage, but a really heavy, gasping, gurgling sound like somebody's shotgunning a beer wrong. I spun around and saw the beggar was drinking the water I gave him. I nearly flipped my wig. At first I thought it could just be a quirk in the animations, so I pickpocketed the beggar and discovered that the purified water I gave him was gone. I practically went bananas. I don't know what made me think about doing it, but I immediately opened up the console, clicked on the NPC, and typed, "WHO R U?" When I closed the console, the NPC looked up at me and said, "Thanks for the water...Cream-of-Plenty." But instead of saying "Cream-of-Plenty", he said my real name. I lost my marbles. Anyway, I guess the robots in Fallout 4 will say your name so that's probably what happened.
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Aug 7, 2015 07:12
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Posting pretty late that I will play this game.
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Aug 7, 2015 07:18
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BenRGamer posted:iirc, they don't. It's still in their inventory. They're not actually thirsty, they just have a water collection.
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Aug 7, 2015 07:44
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Usenet Magic-User posted:Posting pretty late that I will play this game. No no no, you're doing it wrong. In this thread, you're supposed to sing the praises of Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas, and poo poo all over Fallout 3 and 4.
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Aug 7, 2015 07:46
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evilmiera posted:They're not actually thirsty, they just have a water collection. All that irradiated water is going to skyrocket in value once they turn on the magic statue of Thomas Jefferson that makes all the water clean.
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Aug 7, 2015 07:47
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JackBadass posted:No no no, you're doing it wrong. In this thread, you're supposed to sing the praises of Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas, and poo poo all over Fallout 3 and 4. Damnit, I knew I was doing it wrong. This changes nothing.
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Aug 7, 2015 07:48
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So with Preston Garvey... It's always rare having the name of a character in a game with my name and hearing it spoken. It's just rare enough that any time it's spoken aloud I instantly take notice, I can't imagine what it's like having a super common name like 'Joe' though. I wonder if they've got Codsworth programmed to say anything special if you name yourself The Vault Dweller, The Chosen One, The Lone Wanderer, Courier 6 et cetera.
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Aug 7, 2015 07:49
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Syrant posted:So with Preston Garvey... It's always rare having the name of a character in a game with my name and hearing it spoken. It's just rare enough that any time it's spoken aloud I instantly take notice, I can't imagine what it's like having a super common name like 'Joe' though. The only names he knows are "Todd" and "Howard".
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Aug 7, 2015 07:53
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Syrant posted:I wonder if they've got Codsworth programmed to say anything special if you name yourself The Vault Dweller, The Chosen One, The Lone Wanderer, Courier 6 et cetera. "Thank you for purchasing our other Bethesda Fallout games!"
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Aug 7, 2015 08:40
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JackBadass posted:The only names he knows are "Todd" and "Howard". T. Howard actually has this really weird dislike for people using his name in video games--particularly in situations where the character may die, and especially in situations where the character's death would be announced, i.e. "T. HOWARD WAS FRAGGED". You couldn't even give your character his name in Morrowind; the game would automatically kill you if you tried to tell the Census Bureau you were some version of T or Todd Howard.
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Aug 7, 2015 08:41
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:They aren't supposed to, but one day I was walking past Tenpenny Tower when I saw the beggar and thought, "Oh, what the heck?" and so I gave him a bottle of purified water. Maybe I just felt like doing something charitable for somebody else I guess? He didn't do anything, but as I was walking up to the gate, I heard a drinking sound. Not the usual "drinking" sound that NPCs make when they drink a beverage, but a really heavy, gasping, gurgling sound like somebody's shotgunning a beer wrong. 
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Aug 7, 2015 08:41
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JackBadass posted:The only names he knows are "Todd" and "Howard". And Mr fuckface
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Aug 7, 2015 08:42
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JackBadass posted:That karma system was just as terrible. No, it really wasn't.
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Aug 7, 2015 09:09
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Mordaedil posted:No, it really wasn't. Yes, it was.
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Aug 7, 2015 10:40
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JackBadass posted:Yes, it was. Reputation system allowed the game to track what each group of people thought of your character, as opposed to generally how good or bad he was and even accounted for what they thought of you if you kept flip-flopping on the issue. How is that bad?
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Aug 7, 2015 11:06
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They rarely meant much besides the NCR one 
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Aug 7, 2015 11:15
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That's really untrue though. Low reputation with Legion meant assassins came after you. Low reputation on Freeside meant you were as likely to get shot by the kings as the beggars punching you did. Low reputation on the strip meant certain quests were more difficult to complete and some people acted like total stuck-up jackasses compared to a high reputation. Low reputation with the Khans, Powder Gangers, Brotherhood of Steel and others meant they'd shoot on sight. I mean, some quests also checked it, for instance legion spies in the NCR and the like, so what exactly more do you need from a system like this?
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Aug 7, 2015 11:24
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Getting low reputation on most of your examples means that the player is killing most of them anyway...so getting low reputation would mean they shoot you when you were gonna shoot them anyway But yeah its cool when quests check it, like the mercenary situation in Jacobstown
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Aug 7, 2015 11:33
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I liked that I could commit mass murder in random NCR camps but still not get shot on sight because I killed some stupid ants for Ranger Jackson
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Aug 7, 2015 11:41
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Leaving no witnesses means it is difficult to pin the blame on you.
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Aug 7, 2015 11:44
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Alain Post posted:I'm honestly not sure where it made that much of a difference (except in barkstrings), but yeah, I liked the FNV rep system. If you do a lot of good work for a faction, and then firebomb one of their bases, they shouldn't regard you exactly the same as someone they've never met before. Until you reach the Casinos anyway. JackBadass posted:That'd work great in FO4. "Hey, you stole an owned empty tin can. Here's a 500 cap bounty and three Talon mercs every 10 minutes until you pay off your heinous crimes!" More like 10 caps but yeah. computer parts fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Aug 7, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 13:21
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Flaky posted:[INT 1] See this is the kind of writing that is simply beyond Bethesda. The problem is a karma system treats the player like an idiot - do good thing get good outcome *beep boop* guaranteed every time. It also removes all opportunity or motive for interesting writing. Each karma check is a wasted story-telling opportunity. Which is why it exists in the first place - to make the game easier to write and hence cheaper to produce. The fact that Karma/Reputation is even in Fallout: New Vegas just proves that although sensitive to the need for change Obsidian failed to improve on Bethesda's game design logic which resulted in only a marginal improvement in overall writing 'quality' for want of a better term. Which is why I am surprised people can really draw such strong distinctions between the two games. They were both poorly designed, which precluded their being well written. The same can be said for many of the differences between Fallout 3 and NV - Obsidian fundamentally misunderstood Fallout 3's many problems, and so their solutions resulted in an even more clunky, and ultimately worse game.
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Aug 7, 2015 14:34
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Meridian posted:Camp out on a ridge outside a prison and murder everyone you can see, savior of the wasteland. I just wiped out the NCRCF and realized I can't take any loot in the facility without it being stealing. Kill the owners and loot their bodies = good, take the abandoned crap they left behind = bad.
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Aug 7, 2015 15:15
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