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2house2fly posted:To be fair, plenty of players no doubt will choose the evil options to see what happens, or to get the Did The Evil Thing achievement, but I don't know if it's good design to have a system that only metagamers will really engage with Undertale's genocide route basically makes fun of this in its own evil route, pointing how hosed up it is you did all those horrible things just to see what would happen.
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Mar 10, 2017 02:45
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Even when you attempt moral ambiguity though you will get a lot of gamers deriding it. Again to get back to WRPG choices, people will say "Choice A is so clearly the right thing to do that to do B, C or D is idiotic." Like working with the Desire Demon in Origins. Sure, getting the Circle to come and thus saving Isolde and Connor is "objectively right" but that's approaching the game from the entirely wrong angle. Grey Wardens are supposed to be amoral "anything to stop the Blight" and whatnot. So why is it wrong (from an in-character perspective) to get Blood Magic from the demon? It's a valuable tool and while you had to do a not nice thing to get it, that's supposed to be what being a Grey Warden is all about.
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Mar 10, 2017 02:51
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The thing is, good dramatic moral choices in narrative media tend to be more than "do you do this bad thing for your own benefit/the greater good"? Like there's a film by Kurosawa called High and Low. Toshiro Mifune plays a businessman who has mortgaged everything to try and buy ownership in his company, but he gets a call saying his son has been kidnapped asking for a hefty ransom. But then he learns it's not his son but his chauffeur's son, the kidnapper doesn't care, if he doesn't pay the kid dies. You know what he should do but you understand why he hesitates because if he pays he's completely ruined. That's a real, tense decision. It's hard to stage that sort of thing in a video game. Basically watch High and Low.
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Mar 10, 2017 02:59
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The Moon Monster posted:I mostly agree with this except one of the plasmids you get for saving them lets you mind control Big Daddies. It's one of the strongest plasmids in the game and makes the save rewards substantially better, in my opinion. Having a Big Daddy bodyguard isn't nothing, but I found it way too easy to accidentally turn him hostile. Then I had other enemies and a very pissed off Big Daddy to contend with. It also eats up a plasmid slot in a game that's unfortunately super biased towards certain plasmids, and is obviously totally useless any time there isn't a Big Daddy around to begin with. im pooping! posted:Was I high when I internalized that saving the little sisters actually netted you more plasmid juice in the long run? I thought those gift boxes made up for the reduced payout from saving them and then added some extra and by the end of the game you end up with more overall. No, according to the wiki if you harvest you still end up with a little bit more - 280 Adam - by the end. That doesn't count the theoretical value of the free plasmids, tonics, and loot you get from the presents but there's also no guarantee that you'll actually get use out of those gifts. In the case of the supplies you only get one shot at looting the present, so if you're topped up on anything (incredibly likely thanks to the game's minuscule inventory caps) it goes to waste. Somfin posted:The point of the fuckin' game is that helping people at cost to yourself brings greater rewards than hurting people to benefit yourself. Except it ends up being a gross gameified version of that idea where choosing to not literally murder children gets you showered with tangible rewards. Like, there's that whole phrase "a good deed is its own reward"? Though you also still seem to be convinced that there's this huge gap between the morality rewards when in actuality it's pretty drat even and only slightly slanted in one direction if you're being generous. So that mechanic doesn't even fit "the point of the fuckin' game" as it is. Edit: I'm kind of curious now what your take is on This War of Mine, a game that goes in a very similar direction of asking the player to weigh their survival against doing reprehensible things. John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 03:16 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 03:07
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fable 2 had the best moral choice when you first meet Reaver. there's a girl held hostage by a mysterious presence and a disembodied voice gives you a choice: give up your youth to save the girl or let the girl lose her youth. there is no risk to your character at all besides their looks. but it worked for me. I wasn't emotionally invested at all with my character or the story but I hesitated and let the girl take the fall for some misplaced fear that my generic looking dude would get a bunch of wrinkles. the game appealed to my narcissism and it worked.
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Mar 10, 2017 03:07
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I think games like Planescape: Torment pull off the good/evil thing well. Stuff like stuffing Morte in a stack of skulls for him to rot for all eternity are there as an option just because you can, not as an explicit morality meter or gameplay mechanic (in the Bioshock or KOTOR sense).
Teriyaki Koinku has a new favorite as of 03:22 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 03:11
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So this berserk game, the boss fights are loving awful. Like despite Dark Souls basically just being Berserk: The Game and having perfected the whole fighting giant monsters thing, this berserk game doesn't seem to have learned a drop of how to make them good. Instead every fight is against giant monsters with insane amounts of invincibility frames that just stunlock you forever while you can't do poo poo to stop their attacks. I was fighting one boss earlier who did nothing but a charge attack. He had other attacks, but I don't know if the AI bugged out or what but this one attack, he didn't stop doing it unless he hit the player. Ran faster than the player, so you couldn't catch up and hit him from behind, and hitting him head on did nothing. So you just had to sit there and wait for him to finally hit you to progress the fight. Often times you get stunlocked and launched into a corner where the game's lovely dodge won't let you escape and you just have to hope the boss gets bored and walks away long enough that you can get out.
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Mar 10, 2017 03:11
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Action Tortoise posted:fable 2 had the best moral choice when you first meet Reaver. there's a girl held hostage by a mysterious presence and a disembodied voice gives you a choice: give up your youth to save the girl or let the girl lose her youth. I'm still not sure what the "right" choice is for your endgame wish. As I recall, Theresa gives you a choice between: 1.Having all your loved ones restored, from your sister who was murdered at the start of the game all the way to your beloved dog who was brutally shot in the face. 2. restore the lives of everyone sacrificed to make the tower 3. all the moneys I'm guessing it's not 3 but everyone I know chose 1 but then you get chewed out for it.
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Mar 10, 2017 03:15
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Teriyaki Koinku posted:I think games like Planescape: Torment pull off the good/evil thing well. Stuff like stuffing Morte in a stack of skulls for him to rot for all eternity are there as an option just because you can, not as an explicit morality meter or gameplay mechanic. That's because the Nameless One operated on a scale from "not really a dick" to "a dick on a thermonuclear scale" I mean it says it all that the Practical Incarnation is one of the most monstorous characters in RPG history. Testekill has a new favorite as of 03:19 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 03:16
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NikkolasKing posted:I'm still not sure what the "right" choice is for your endgame wish. As I recall, Theresa gives you a choice between: yeah, see utilitarian morality. this topic is boring and has taken up way too many pages. Nuebot posted:So this berserk game, the boss fights are loving awful. Like despite Dark Souls basically just being Berserk: The Game and having perfected the whole fighting giant monsters thing, this berserk game doesn't seem to have learned a drop of how to make them good. Instead every fight is against giant monsters with insane amounts of invincibility frames that just stunlock you forever while you can't do poo poo to stop their attacks. I was fighting one boss earlier who did nothing but a charge attack. He had other attacks, but I don't know if the AI bugged out or what but this one attack, he didn't stop doing it unless he hit the player. Ran faster than the player, so you couldn't catch up and hit him from behind, and hitting him head on did nothing. So you just had to sit there and wait for him to finally hit you to progress the fight. Often times you get stunlocked and launched into a corner where the game's lovely dodge won't let you escape and you just have to hope the boss gets bored and walks away long enough that you can get out. Musou games are never good with boss fights. they scale the enemy stats up to bullshit levels. souls games can be experimental with bosses every now and then, but they do a good job creating a rhythm for the player to read openings and learn tells for unique attacks. Action Tortoise has a new favorite as of 03:23 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 03:21
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Action Tortoise posted:Musou games are never good with boss fights. they scale the enemy stats up to bullshit levels. souls games can be experimental with bosses every now and then, but they do a good job creating a rhythm for the player to read openings and learn tells for unique attacks. If it was just enemy stats or something that wouldn't be bad. But instead I'm fighting an ogre that just grabs a plank and beats me with it forever. It's especially annoying because the game's frenzy mode gimmick makes you invincible, but doesn't grant you any super armor at all so you get tossed around just as easily. There's a specific skill that's supposed to stop you from getting knocked back but I haven't noticed any difference at all with it.
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Mar 10, 2017 03:45
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I don't see what is so hard to understand, most people don't do evil things because it's evil. They do evil things because they are selfish and it benefits them in some way. So morality choices should theoretically reflect that. Edit: I didn't know I had more to read when I posted this and my point was already put out there so sorry! RenegadeStyle1 has a new favorite as of 03:52 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 03:48
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RenegadeStyle1 posted:I don't see what is so hard to understand, most people don't do evil things because it's evil. They do evil things because they are selfish and it benefits them in some way. So morality choices should theoretically reflect that. Think that is why I still enjoy Kefka in FF6/3. "Why would I do this? *Casual shrug as he dooms humanity.*". Like Vaas from Farcry 3, sure I am sure there are deep reasons to why they do what they do but they are having so much fun I just feel bad trying to stop them. Dr.Vahlen from XCOM comes to mind as well and she is actually an ally...supposedly.
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Mar 10, 2017 03:51
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My favorite morality choice in the Bioshock series was the one in 2 with Gil Alexander because it was so ambiguous that people legitimately disagreed about what the right choice was and even blamed the game devs for being "wrong" with how they ranked your decision. The fact that they created a situation where a considerable number of people though that killing a defenseless man trapped in a tank begging for his life was not only justifiable but actually Good and could argue to support it was really cool.
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Mar 10, 2017 04:22
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I liked the way morality affected KOTOR - but yeah, it's the paragon (so to speak) of the heavy-handed approach. Ithorian is getting mugged by 3 thugs. Kill the thugs and talk to him. "Oh thank you for helping; I don't know why they attacked me, I hardly have anything of value." A: "'Quick, get home and get healed up. And here are some credits to help you out.' [Give 250 credits][Kiss him gently on the forehead]" B: "[Lie]'Give me all your money or you'll get worse than them!' [Kill him][Harvest organs]"
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Mar 10, 2017 04:47
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Captain Lavender posted:I liked the way morality affected KOTOR - but yeah, it's the paragon (so to speak) of the heavy-handed approach. That's Bioware writing in general. In Dragon Age: Origins someone's like "My brother's missing and zombies are about to eat our town, find him for me?" and when you do you're given either the option to return him to his sister and give them money, or steal their family heirloom and send them off poor and defenseless. Like you're literally either giving people your money, or you're mugging children. Then there's the KOTOR2 approach where no matter what option you pick, the old lady shows up to tell you, you're a dumb rear end in a top hat and choice doesn't matter.
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Mar 10, 2017 04:56
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Nuebot posted:Then there's the KOTOR2 approach where no matter what option you pick, the old lady shows up to tell you, you're a dumb rear end in a top hat and choice doesn't matter. That literally only happens once. It's very easy to gain Kreia's approval by ensuring you are one controlling everyone. She only dislikes the typical RPG mindset of "I must get every kitten out of a tree" (which I also hate. Galaxy is in danger, I don't give a gently caress about your petty problems) and randomly murdering people.She prefers subtlety and domination to brutality and servitude.
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Mar 10, 2017 05:12
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The worst Bioware morality thing to me will always be Mass Effect 3, when the salarians swear that they won't join your coalition unless you do an evil thing that involves killing one of your companions. Which is fine, basically deciding how ruthless you want to be in pursuit of the greater good since the more people you get to join your coalition affects the ending and your chances to succeed or whatever. If you choose to refuse to do evil even at the cost of the salarians' support, you get an email like two missions later where your secretary just kinda casually mentions that the salarians decided to give you their full support anyway for no reason.
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Mar 10, 2017 05:18
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Teriyaki Koinku posted:I think games like Planescape: Torment pull off the good/evil thing well. Stuff like stuffing Morte in a stack of skulls for him to rot for all eternity are there as an option just because you can, not as an explicit morality meter or gameplay mechanic (in the Bioshock or KOTOR sense). He mentions that that a previous incarnation of TNO, a Lawful Good type, tried to do just that, on the grounds of "because that's where you belong".
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Mar 10, 2017 05:19
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Chuck Buried Treasure posted:The worst Bioware morality thing to me will always be Mass Effect 3, when the salarians swear that they won't join your coalition unless you do an evil thing that involves killing one of your companions. Which is fine, basically deciding how ruthless you want to be in pursuit of the greater good since the more people you get to join your coalition affects the ending and your chances to succeed or whatever. It's been a while but I think the way it works is, if you saved the salarian army guy in the first game he gets some of his pals to support you, and if you killed the council in the first game then the replacement councillor likes you more and after the Citadel gets attacked she's convinced to support you too. I think?
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Mar 10, 2017 05:45
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Action Tortoise posted:you pick the bad option because you bought a role playing game and are playing the role of a bad guy. Action Tortoise posted:did the game give you fair warning about what consequence that choice would result? if it didn't then yeah that's the writing's fault. RyokoTK posted:This entire argument is predicated on the assumption that it's not good to assume the player would want to play a game twice, which is a thoroughly retarded assumption to make. If you personally don't like to play a game twice, then that's fine and your thing, but that's not a "thing dragging the game down" because clearly there are people that do like that; it's just a personal taste. There are plenty of good games where you see the entire world in one go. Somfin posted:If anyone can actually articulate why killing defenceless children with your bare hands for bonus XP should be made mechanically equivalent or superior to saving those same children please do so Somfin posted:Also it's entirely justified selfishly in the game, do you think that maybe the person who invented ADAM and created the Little Sisters might- MIGHT- have access to a stockpile of the stuff? Might wanna help that person since she's promising rewards. Somfin posted:I'm just gonna let this stand as the astounding testament to naivete that it is. oldpainless posted:In a game with a morality good/evil thing I always play good the first time and then Evil murderer if I play a second time. Welp that's my story. Futuresight posted:Does anyone find morality systems in games compelling anyway? I don't think one has ever added to my experience. I think individual instances can make quests or scenarios stand out, but entire systems just become distracting systems to game.
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Mar 10, 2017 06:16
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Tiggum posted:I will never understand people who think computer games involve actual role playing. You don't understand very much, do you, Tiggum.
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Mar 10, 2017 06:24
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Tiggum posted:It's not good to assume that though. Most people don't want to play a game twice. It's incredibly dumb to assume that this game will be the exception. And if you want to play the game twice, you still can. Making it possible to see everything in one playthrough doesn't stop you playing it again. In fact, a good game can give you a different experience on a second playthrough without ever locking you out of anything. Look at Deus Ex: Human Revolution for example. You can do every mission and every side quest your first time through, and then play it again and do those same missions and side quests again in a different way, using different tools and approaches. (Although it is one of those games where you can accidentally lock yourself out of certain side quests for no good reason, so it's not perfect) "Most people" don't even finish a given video game once, so making a video game for "most people" to enjoy is kind of a sisyphean task. It's almost like different games are made for different tastes and not every loving video game is made for you specifically.
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Mar 10, 2017 06:31
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Tiggum posted:I will never understand people who think computer games involve actual role playing. Do you have the brain problems. Good lord.
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Mar 10, 2017 06:35
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Dark side in KotoR 1 is better because you're practically twirling your mustache with every dialog option and choice.
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Mar 10, 2017 07:04
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Yardbomb posted:Do you have the brain problems. It's a video game. It doesn't respond to "how you're playing the character". You're setting yourself up for disappointment. The character is already written and you can't do anything to change it. You're not playing a role, you're playing a game.
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Mar 10, 2017 07:05
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Tiggum posted:You understand that games are written by people, right? Those writers made specific decisions for specific reasons. They made the decision to give the player the option of being good or bad. The question is, what was their motivation in going to that effort? If the intended result is for no one to take the bad option because its outcome is obviously worse, why waste their time adding it to the game? What is their expected return on their investment? What do they hope to achieve by spending their time and effort adding that option to the game? There are lots of things that an actual person in the protagonist's position could do which the game won't let you do, because taking those options wasn't considered to add anything of value (or not enough value to justify the investment). But they chose to let you do this one specific evil thing. Why? To what end? Why would they build a system based around choice when the core line of the narrative is "a man chooses, a slave obeys?" Why would they put in a character who lies to you when their world is built on deceit? Why would they put in a health bar when the gameplay is about combat? Why would they put in walls or disallow noclip when their maps are about backtracking and claustrophobia? Why would they waste my time with a narrative when they could have just told me their central conceit on a public web page, when the core of their story is delivered in a way that is meant to take time to digest? It's all a fuckin' mystery to me, Tiggum my lad.
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Mar 10, 2017 07:09
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Somfin posted:Why would they build a system based around choice when the core line of the narrative is "a man chooses, a slave obeys?" You just keeping mocking people for asking the question without ever answering it. If you don't know the answer, just say so.
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Mar 10, 2017 07:12
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Tiggum posted:It's a video game. It doesn't respond to "how you're playing the character". You're setting yourself up for disappointment. The character is already written and you can't do anything to change it. You're not playing a role, you're playing a game. So the answer is yes then.
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Mar 10, 2017 07:28
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Tiggum posted:You just keeping mocking people for asking the question without ever answering it. If you don't know the answer, just say so. Okay. Quick question. Do you think that games can have a point?
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Mar 10, 2017 08:21
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FF14 doesn't let you see the expected progress for crafting, you have to test the waters to see exactly how much progress or quality points is added when you do an action. This is especially frustrating when you underestimate how much progress you'll make and you accidentally finish the item before you mean to. On the flipside you can accidentally fail to finish an item from overestimating. So you'll have to make a list of what difficulty of item will result in how much progress is made when you use a synthesis action.
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Mar 10, 2017 08:35
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Tiggum posted:It's a video game. It doesn't respond to "how you're playing the character". You're setting yourself up for disappointment. The character is already written and you can't do anything to change it. You're not playing a role, you're playing a game. yes, a binary system can only simulate a handful of set options. the choice for the player is to decide which of the set paths you wanna go. you don't write a CYOA book as you're reading it; you're just picking which page you're gonna turn to. you know why you get so much poo poo from everyone is because you won't entertain other viewpoints besides yours and your obsession with having the last say to everyone who quotes you. show some restraint and don't quote this. triple dog dare ya.
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Mar 10, 2017 11:03
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Leal posted:FF14 doesn't let you see the expected progress for crafting, you have to test the waters to see exactly how much progress or quality points is added when you do an action. This is especially frustrating when you underestimate how much progress you'll make and you accidentally finish the item before you mean to. On the flipside you can accidentally fail to finish an item from overestimating. So you'll have to make a list of what difficulty of item will result in how much progress is made when you use a synthesis action. FF14's crafting system is awful. Like, it has an auto-mass craft except it punishes you by making it so even if you're a high level making the lowest level poo poo, it can still fail(and it will, frequently because gently caress you) and it can't make good quality items. Which makes it useless. So you basically have to manually make every item, even if you're stuck grinding out a dozen of poo poo items.
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Mar 10, 2017 11:10
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I finished Planescape torment the other day for the first time and I really enjoyed it, the combat hasn't aged well but it's an 18 year old game at this point so whatever. I bought icewind dale off Gog and holy poo poo this game is just murdering my arse at every turn, I still want to play it but over 3 days I've literally seen three areas and I've died in all of them.
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Mar 10, 2017 11:14
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Nuebot posted:FF14's crafting system is awful. Like, it has an auto-mass craft except it punishes you by making it so even if you're a high level making the lowest level poo poo, it can still fail(and it will, frequently because gently caress you) and it can't make good quality items. Which makes it useless. So you basically have to manually make every item, even if you're stuck grinding out a dozen of poo poo items. Christ, you'd think this wouldn't be a thing after Tactics Ogre tried it like 20 years ago and it was awful.
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Mar 10, 2017 12:07
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2house2fly posted:This is really petty but I wish Molotov Cocktails in Bloodborne were called something different, it's too real-world for me in a way that gatling gun (for some reason) isn't. less petty: I wish they'd give you an enemy-free run from the save point to the boss because the thrill of taking down a werewolf is subject to some real diminishing returns when I'm swatting them aside two at a time on my way to try and kill the blood starved beast for the third time
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Mar 10, 2017 13:02
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2house2fly posted:less petty: I wish they'd give you an enemy-free run from the save point to the boss because the thrill of taking down a werewolf is subject to some real diminishing returns when I'm swatting them aside two at a time on my way to try and kill the blood starved beast for the third time This is 90% of the reason I've never finished a Souls game. Holy loving christ the burst damage on the highest difficulty (where the actual game is) in PoE is getting to me. Yeah cool, an enemy that shits thousands of damage at me in a huge area and now I'm frozen and now I'm dead. I can interact with this in satisfying ways. Good job.
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Mar 10, 2017 13:19
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Tiggum posted:It's a video game. It doesn't respond to "how you're playing the character". You're setting yourself up for disappointment. The character is already written and you can't do anything to change it. You're not playing a role, you're playing a game. Imagine that one advisor popup from SimCity, but it's Tiggum shouting THIS ISN'T A REAL CITY YOU'RE PLANNING! YOU ARE SETTING YOURSELF UP FOR DISAPPOINTMENT!!
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Mar 10, 2017 14:04
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Somfin posted:Okay. Quick question. Fuckin iracing man 
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Mar 10, 2017 14:33
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Testekill posted:That's because the Nameless One operated on a scale from "not really a dick" to "a dick on a thermonuclear scale" Goddamn I loved the morality system in Planescape Torment, because it wasn't a system where 'good' options where highlighted blue or whatever garbage. It utilized the alignment system of D&D really well, which is a tough feat, by giving you a bevy of options in numerous scenarios that would slide your scale in the appropriate direction, without making it explicit. I'm not even sure if alignment actually affected anything beyond the ability to use certain equipment. But jesus, the Practical Incarnation, is awesome. First, the name - it's not 'evil', it's practical. It will do whatever it takes to get to his goal. If that means saving a puppy, sure. If it means eternally damning a woman's spirit to act as a gateway by tricking her into loving him before getting her hideously murdered, he'll do that too. He isn't a moustache-twirling madman, he's just someone who is very, very determined and simply does. not. care. Reading his past atrocities was just so good.
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Mar 10, 2017 14:54
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