The Problems with Good-Playthrough in Many RPGs... Your Thoughts?

[REhorror]

Maxie is correct. The point of the game is to be a game--a toy. It's not an exhortation. That said, you're both making the same argument. I don't think Rehorror was saying the treachery would be automatic loss for the unarmed player, just significantly more difficult than had the player made a better choice. That difficultly might even result in the scenario being unwinnable for the player.

A toy, or whatever else, can be used to challenge the player.

A child gets easily bored by a toy if it does anything it wants. This is why Rubic cube and or even kiddie chess and games manage to hold the child's attention.

there is no challenge involved in picking whatever route the designer has decided to randomly choose as the one in which the game does not shit on you. it takes foreknowledge only.

Does it take foreknowledge to NOT blindly trust your enemy?
No, it takes basic thinking.

And again, you can just reload and try it over, except the ones stupid enough to do it learn a valuable lesson of NOT doing whatever your enemy tells you to.

it takes gamer acumen to recognize that blindly trusting your enemy lets you inside their camp for higher challenge and, potentially, better loot. being denied that is anti-games.

See?
No, you are encouraging people to be stupid, and then when the stupid people realize they are stupid, you are faulting the game designer for teaching them a lesson.

Nope, doesn't work for me. Being smart = rewarding, being stupid = get punished, this is my philosophy regarding how to solve a game.
You can intentionally make the game more challenging by being stupid, but you should never ever get rewarded for being stupid.

This applies to the world at large too, and why the world is getting DUMBER.

 

[Maxie]

Maxie is correct. The point of the game is to be a game--a toy. It's not an exhortation. That said, you're both making the same argument. I don't think Rehorror was saying the treachery would be automatic loss for the unarmed player, just significantly more difficult than had the player made a better choice. That difficultly might even result in the scenario being unwinnable for the player.

A toy, or whatever else, can be used to challenge the player.

A child gets easily bored by a toy if it does anything it wants. This is why Rubic cube and or even kiddie chess and games manage to hold the child's attention.

there is no challenge involved in picking whatever route the designer has decided to randomly choose as the one in which the game does not shit on you. it takes foreknowledge only.

Does it take foreknowledge to NOT blindly trust your enemy?
No, it takes basic thinking.

And again, you can just reload and try it over, except the ones stupid enough to do it learn a valuable lesson of NOT doing whatever your enemy tells you to.

it takes gamer acumen to recognize that blindly trusting your enemy lets you inside their camp for higher challenge and, potentially, better loot. being denied that is anti-games.

See?
No, you are encouraging people to be stupid, and then when the stupid people realize they are stupid, you are faulting the game designer for teaching them a lesson.

Nope, doesn't work for me. Being smart = rewarding, being stupid = get punished, this is my philosophy regarding how to solve a game.
You can intentionally make the game more challenging by being stupid, but you should never ever get rewarded for being stupid.

This applies to the world at large too, and why the world is getting DUMBER.

kindly remove your views on how the world is from the realm of video games.

 

[REhorror]

Maxie is correct. The point of the game is to be a game--a toy. It's not an exhortation. That said, you're both making the same argument. I don't think Rehorror was saying the treachery would be automatic loss for the unarmed player, just significantly more difficult than had the player made a better choice. That difficultly might even result in the scenario being unwinnable for the player.

A toy, or whatever else, can be used to challenge the player.

A child gets easily bored by a toy if it does anything it wants. This is why Rubic cube and or even kiddie chess and games manage to hold the child's attention.

there is no challenge involved in picking whatever route the designer has decided to randomly choose as the one in which the game does not shit on you. it takes foreknowledge only.

Does it take foreknowledge to NOT blindly trust your enemy?
No, it takes basic thinking.

And again, you can just reload and try it over, except the ones stupid enough to do it learn a valuable lesson of NOT doing whatever your enemy tells you to.

it takes gamer acumen to recognize that blindly trusting your enemy lets you inside their camp for higher challenge and, potentially, better loot. being denied that is anti-games.

See?
No, you are encouraging people to be stupid, and then when the stupid people realize they are stupid, you are faulting the game designer for teaching them a lesson.

Nope, doesn't work for me. Being smart = rewarding, being stupid = get punished, this is my philosophy regarding how to solve a game.
You can intentionally make the game more challenging by being stupid, but you should never ever get rewarded for being stupid.

This applies to the world at large too, and why the world is getting DUMBER.

kindly remove your views on how the world is from the realm of video games.

Aksually, I'd say that to you.

I wouldn't stand to let peope like you intentionally make stupid media to make everyone stupider LOL.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

All I know is that I'm beginning to really dislike Warhammer fans.

You're about 20 years late to that party. Warhammer fans are as bad as Sonic fans are, maybe worse even. Bunch of fucking retards being milked by a company designed to fuck them over at every turn.

Very few games get this right. They make doing the right thing just as easy as doing the wrong thing, and more mechanically rewarding to boot. Everyone would be a saint if the world worked that way. People lie and cheat and steal because there's an immediate and obvious material incentive for them to do so. People who are relentlessly honest and diligent tend to struggle, but they do so because it's the right thing to do (or they're just cowards who are afraid of the law).

I want an RPG that tempts the player to be evil. Not in a cartoonish way, but in a believable way. "You don't have to return that man's wallet. Surely you could use the money? He wouldn't have been so careless if he needed it. You don't want to drive across town to return it to him." Good should always be more difficult than evil.

Are there any RPGs with realistic moral choices? It's always Good/Neutral/Bad with obvious outcomes and obvious what the developer is intending you to do with each. Where's the total grey area game where you don't have all the info, you have no idea who the real good guys are (not in a late game twist way, but actual factions with positives and negatives) and ultimately you can't game the system to get perks from it but the world changes around you which rewards you in other ways.

 

[Shadenuat]

Rpgs should focus on what different people actually do in the world, not morality.
Ie mages roleplay mysteries, traders trade, rogues have espionage narratives etc

 

[Butter]

Rpgs should focus on what different people actually do in the world, not morality.
Ie mages roleplay mysteries, traders trade, rogues have espionage narratives etc

What's the narrative for schizoid Codexers? This is important to me.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Having player choose between good and evil is pretty much a waste of time. Whatever is defined as "good" in the game is based on what most people consider to be moral, and acting moral is in most cases the sensible choice. Creating more content for "evil character" usually means creating content most people won't be seeing. Choosing between different factions that are supposed to make sense is more interesting. People still discuss which New Vegas faction was in the right, I've never seen people talking if which side of the force was better in KoTOR games.

 

[TheKing01]

There's no downsides outside of what your subjective tastes are. Realistically, if you're expecting a wildly variable difference playing a good character versus an evil son of a bitch, then also expect the developer to have enough money to make two games.

Until that reality exists (which it won't) enjoy your inferior evil playthroughs where you kill quest-important NPCs and lock yourself out of side quests.

 

[NecroLord]

Having player choose between good and evil is pretty much a waste of time. Whatever is defined as "good" in the game is based on what most people consider to be moral, and acting moral is in most cases the sensible choice. Creating more content for "evil character" usually means creating content most people won't be seeing. Choosing between different factions that are supposed to make sense is more interesting. People still discuss which New Vegas faction was in the right, I've never seen people talking if which side of the force was better in KoTOR games.

Kreia thought that the Force itself was evil and malevolent - "The Malevolent Force" theory.

 

[Readher]

Would be nice to have a game in which every character, player included, was a absolute cunt.

We could've had that with BG3, but reddit complained and they changed it. EA companions were so much better than what we got with release.

 

[Readher]

story should always stay subservient to gameplay, merely a pretence for battles and dice rolling. if you accept primacy of the story and allow it to punish you for picking the 'wrong' option as envisioned by the designer, you've resigned yourself to playing a CYOA, most likely of middling quality.

your other argument's falling on deaf ears, because I'm old enough to remember nobody bothering to balance games.

You argue in favor of story being subservient to gameplay, but at the same time want to railroad games into being a goodie two shoes hero simulators for 5-year-olds. If you were actually in favor of gameplay above all, you'd want games to be sandboxes where the player decides why, how and with what/whom he engages and interacts, and that would include evil, immoral and stupid acts.

There are actually several examples where the player can react like a retard in a game, and it responds by giving you a game over of some variety. Black Geyser allows you to insult the king repeatedly, which results in an unwinnable fight. Bloodlines gives you a bad ending if you side with Kuei-jin. Siding with Master in Fallout is also a mostly bad ending, and you can get raped by Myron if you act like a retard in Fallout 2. In Imperial Agent's storyline in SWTOR you get force choked to death through holo if you insult your Darth sponsor (or maybe it wasn't a force choke, he kills you in any case), though since the game is an MMO you just respawn and continue as usual.

A good RPG offers a variety of choices, including stupid ones, and punishes the player accordingly. It's immersion breaking how many games allow you to insult people left and right and at most they'll give you some snarky remark but otherwise will continue to deal with you as usual, even if their station gives them overwhelming power over you, and they would have none of your shit if you didn't happen to be the Player Character with diplomatic immunity.

 

[Maxie]

story should always stay subservient to gameplay, merely a pretence for battles and dice rolling. if you accept primacy of the story and allow it to punish you for picking the 'wrong' option as envisioned by the designer, you've resigned yourself to playing a CYOA, most likely of middling quality.

your other argument's falling on deaf ears, because I'm old enough to remember nobody bothering to balance games.

You argue in favor of story being subservient to gameplay, but at the same time want to railroad games into being a goodie two shoes hero simulators for 5-year-olds. If you were actually in favor of gameplay above all, you'd want games to be sandboxes where the player decides why, how and with what/whom he engages and interacts, and that would include evil, immoral and stupid acts.

There are actually several examples where the player can react like a retard in a game, and it responds by giving you a game over of some variety. Black Geyser allows you to insult the king repeatedly, which results in an unwinnable fight. Bloodlines gives you a bad ending if you side with Kuei-jin. Siding with Master in Fallout is also a mostly bad ending, and you can get raped by Myron if you act like a retard in Fallout 2. In Imperial Agent's storyline in SWTOR you get force choked to death through holo if you insult your Darth sponsor (or maybe it wasn't a force choke, he kills you in any case), though since the game is an MMO you just respawn and continue as usual.

A good RPG offers a variety of choices, including stupid ones, and punishes the player accordingly. It's immersion breaking how many games allow you to insult people left and right and at most they'll give you some snarky remark but otherwise will continue to deal with you as usual, even if their station gives them overwhelming power over you, and they would have none of your shit if you didn't happen to be the Player Character with diplomatic immunity.

you're making the same point he was, only in a nauseatingly verbose manner. as befits storyfags, i suppose.

 

[Readher]

story should always stay subservient to gameplay, merely a pretence for battles and dice rolling. if you accept primacy of the story and allow it to punish you for picking the 'wrong' option as envisioned by the designer, you've resigned yourself to playing a CYOA, most likely of middling quality.

your other argument's falling on deaf ears, because I'm old enough to remember nobody bothering to balance games.

You argue in favor of story being subservient to gameplay, but at the same time want to railroad games into being a goodie two shoes hero simulators for 5-year-olds. If you were actually in favor of gameplay above all, you'd want games to be sandboxes where the player decides why, how and with what/whom he engages and interacts, and that would include evil, immoral and stupid acts.

There are actually several examples where the player can react like a retard in a game, and it responds by giving you a game over of some variety. Black Geyser allows you to insult the king repeatedly, which results in an unwinnable fight. Bloodlines gives you a bad ending if you side with Kuei-jin. Siding with Master in Fallout is also a mostly bad ending, and you can get raped by Myron if you act like a retard in Fallout 2. In Imperial Agent's storyline in SWTOR you get force choked to death through holo if you insult your Darth sponsor (or maybe it wasn't a force choke, he kills you in any case), though since the game is an MMO you just respawn and continue as usual.

A good RPG offers a variety of choices, including stupid ones, and punishes the player accordingly. It's immersion breaking how many games allow you to insult people left and right and at most they'll give you some snarky remark but otherwise will continue to deal with you as usual, even if their station gives them overwhelming power over you, and they would have none of your shit if you didn't happen to be the Player Character with diplomatic immunity.

you're making the same point he was, only in a nauseatingly verbose manner. as befits storyfags, i suppose.

I'm making the point that you should probably be playing japslop made for children if playing a goodie two shoes who always prevails no matter how retarded he acts and is a paragon of good, morality and virtue is what you seek in games. "I'M A GOOD BOY AND HAVE THE MORAL HIGH GROUND, THEREFORE I WILL WIN NO MATTER WHAT AND EVIL WILL BE DESTROYED". Literal bedtime story for children, grow the fuck up.

 

[MpuMngwana]

Rpgs should focus on what different people actually do in the world, not morality.
Ie mages roleplay mysteries, traders trade, rogues have espionage narratives etc

What's the narrative for schizoid Codexers? This is important to me.

Debating video game genre semantics.

 

[Maxie]

story should always stay subservient to gameplay, merely a pretence for battles and dice rolling. if you accept primacy of the story and allow it to punish you for picking the 'wrong' option as envisioned by the designer, you've resigned yourself to playing a CYOA, most likely of middling quality.

your other argument's falling on deaf ears, because I'm old enough to remember nobody bothering to balance games.

You argue in favor of story being subservient to gameplay, but at the same time want to railroad games into being a goodie two shoes hero simulators for 5-year-olds. If you were actually in favor of gameplay above all, you'd want games to be sandboxes where the player decides why, how and with what/whom he engages and interacts, and that would include evil, immoral and stupid acts.

There are actually several examples where the player can react like a retard in a game, and it responds by giving you a game over of some variety. Black Geyser allows you to insult the king repeatedly, which results in an unwinnable fight. Bloodlines gives you a bad ending if you side with Kuei-jin. Siding with Master in Fallout is also a mostly bad ending, and you can get raped by Myron if you act like a retard in Fallout 2. In Imperial Agent's storyline in SWTOR you get force choked to death through holo if you insult your Darth sponsor (or maybe it wasn't a force choke, he kills you in any case), though since the game is an MMO you just respawn and continue as usual.

A good RPG offers a variety of choices, including stupid ones, and punishes the player accordingly. It's immersion breaking how many games allow you to insult people left and right and at most they'll give you some snarky remark but otherwise will continue to deal with you as usual, even if their station gives them overwhelming power over you, and they would have none of your shit if you didn't happen to be the Player Character with diplomatic immunity.

you're making the same point he was, only in a nauseatingly verbose manner. as befits storyfags, i suppose.

I'm making the point that you should probably be playing japslop made for children if playing a goodie two shoes who always prevails no matter how retarded he acts and is a paragon of good, morality and virtue is what you seek in games. "I'M A GOOD BOY AND HAVE THE MORAL HIGH GROUND, THEREFORE I WILL WIN NO MATTER WHAT AND EVIL WILL BE DESTROYED". Literal bedtime story for children, grow the fuck up.

here we go. you just couldna kept your crazy to yourself.

 

[Readher]

here we go. you just couldna kept your crazy to yourself.

Just like you couldn't have kept your 50 IQ brainlet takes to yourself.