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sassassin posted:Unexpected consequences dished out with no warning for apparently arbitrary reasons are good writing. I unironically agree.
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Mar 9, 2017 19:22
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RareAcumen posted:From what I've seen of things, life is all bows and excessive cardio so I guess that makes sense? 
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Mar 9, 2017 19:23
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The loving overworld map in Shin Megami Tensei IV.
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Mar 9, 2017 19:40
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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.
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Mar 9, 2017 20:05
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...Frank West is ugly? Serious question here- sure, he isn't Nathan Drake with the easy smile, but he's not exactly Quasimodo.
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Mar 9, 2017 20:11
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CommissarMega posted:...Frank West is ugly? Serious question here- sure, he isn't Nathan Drake with the easy smile, but he's not exactly Quasimodo. my sister just said he looks like Vince Vaughn
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Mar 9, 2017 20:22
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Frank West is a hunky dude, nothin wrong there.RareAcumen posted:Content: Something about the protagonist's face in Horizon Zero Dawn seems kinda off and it bugs me. It's a lot worse when she was a kid though so hey, baby steps I guess. I feel like it's more games stepping way too far forward into uncanny valley, that game and Injustice 2 give me some weird feels about peoples faces.
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Mar 9, 2017 21:19
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Yardbomb posted:Frank West is a hunky dude, nothin wrong there. Nah, she's kinda got this earnestness to her expression most of the time. It's also because the lipsync is off, which I think might be because it sometimes uses the French lipsync instead of English, because many times it's dead on in an impressive way.
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Mar 9, 2017 21:44
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food court bailiff posted:Pretty sure it's "content" like the House Guilds in Morrowind, where selecting one (usually, mostly) locks you out of the other ones. Which is good, choices with consequences are good, and if I'm enjoying a game enough to want to spin up a new character in it having fresh content that I know I haven't seen before is awesome.
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Mar 9, 2017 21:47
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Somfin posted:Because the point of Bioshock is that Andrew Ryan's great chain and Frank Fontaine's dog-eat-dog philosophies, both of which encourage taking everything that you can at all costs, are both wrong. It is making a point. Giving you the option of doing the obviously and blatantly wrong thing and then punishing you for it is an acceptable way to prove that point, as is rewarding you for doing the obviously and blatantly right thing. I didn't either. If you look at the statistics developers sometimes release for these things very few people do, it's always something like 90% good path 10% evil path, and I'd imagine lots of the evil is from completionists and achievement hunters doing second playthroughs. It seems like a copout to me to present your game as having tough moral choices but then give you zero incentive to make evil choices aside from "I want to do an evil playthrough this time". As for the little sisters, I'd say it's more viscerally upsetting to kill little girls with a big SAVE / KILL prompt than it would be if they were adult women called sisters and you killed them by just shooting them without any special prompt. Is it morally any worse though? I dunno. And that's the sort of action that comes up plenty. John Murdoch posted:The problem is that Bioshock doesn't actually punish you for harvesting Little Sisters and arguably doesn't strictly reward you saving them, either. The choice ultimately boils down to a little bit of extra Adam for harvesting and a few extra exclusive plasmids/tonics (plus various supplies) for rescuing them, none of which are particularly amazing. If there's any meaningful difference it's that harvesting gets you Adam at a steady, unerring rate while saving them forces you to wait for the thank you gifts with one large lump sum that appear after every three rescues. The choice might've been more interesting if the game was hard enough, and your abilities scaled dramatically enough, that having more Adam now was actually a temptation over being forced to wait. 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. The Moon Monster has a new favorite as of 22:56 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 22:44
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The Moon Monster posted:As for the little sisters, I'd say it's more viscerally upsetting to kill little girls with a big SAVE / KILL prompt than it would be if they were adult women called sisters and you killed them by just shooting them without any special prompt. Is it morally any worse though? I dunno. And that's the sort of action that comes up plenty. Yes, killing a defenseless child is worse than killing an adult. What the gently caress kind of idiot question is that?
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Mar 9, 2017 22:59
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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.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:10
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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 Preferably without using the word "meaningful"
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Mar 9, 2017 23:21
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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. I watched a short video of the remaster/rerelease/re-something, and they were saying the same thing so that's even less reason to be a piece of poo poo in a video game too since the rewards don't even nearly make murdering children worth it.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:22
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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 What's the point of adding it in if you're not going to make it compelling? If you give me a choice between murdering innocent children and not I'm going to not and then think it's dumb you even asked me. It's not really a choice unless you're giving me some incentive to entice me away from my default position. I'd rather they just took out the choice than make it compelling, but if they want it to be anything more than a prompt I'm ignoring they need to give me an incentive. EDIT: There's the roleplaying angle I guess I'm never just up and roleplaying a baby murderer and the stats show that's not uncommon a position to take. So I don't really see it as a good roleplaying choice. Futuresight has a new favorite as of 23:35 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 23:32
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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 Really it should be a tangible immediate benefit with long-term downsides. "More Adam, but Big Daddies instantly agro to you" would probably be a better tradeoff than just rewarding people for being "good" and not being "evil". I think they balanced it the way they did because it's a pretty heinous morality system to implement, but they kind of dropped the ball on making you feel like a proper splicer because of it.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:39
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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 noone argued for that, you took it to that level when someone argued that a morality game should incentivize the evil choice more to make it more tempting because that's really the only point someone would choose to be evil. and that's a fundamental problem with morality. in order to avoid creating grey areas that can cause confusion in players, evil choices have to lean all the way into full Hitler so everyone agrees that it's bad.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:41
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The problem is that, well at least I like to think of it like this, people inherently want to be good or at the very least neutral. So because of that not many people go with the evil option unless there was some sort of offer to make them act that way or for completion sake. In the first KOTOR game even for my good play through I did an evil option when it came for paying for T3 cause I didn't want to pay the 2k credits. In KOTOR 2 in my good play through I went the evil option in Nar Shadaa to make the exchange thugs give me their money and jump into the nearby pit cause it was funny 
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Mar 9, 2017 23:52
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The Moon Monster posted:As for the little sisters, I'd say it's more viscerally upsetting to kill little girls with a big SAVE / KILL prompt than it would be if they were adult women called sisters and you killed them by just shooting them without any special prompt. Is it morally any worse though? I dunno. And that's the sort of action that comes up plenty. That's basically what they did in the second one. The Little Sisters are still there, but there are also Big Sisters which turn up after you've rescued/harvested all the little sisters in any given level. They're Little Sisters who grew up and were given their own equivalent of the Big Daddy suits. Can't say I ever had any moral problems killing them since a miniboss enemy flipping around all over the place and throwing fireballs at you doesn't really make you sympathetic. And yeah, you did get more ADAM by saving them than harvesting at least in the second game. You would get less initially, but at some point one of the saved sisters would leave you a present with a massive chunk of ADAM and some unique tonics/plasmids as well. I assume the rewards were much the same in the original. Biggest thing dragging down the Bioshock games is that Bioshock 2 is more fun to play than 1 even though the story isn't as compelling. Infinite is a whole different deal and made a lot of weird steps back in terms of gameplay, ultimately making it less fun to play than 1 or 2.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:56
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I think an evil option could work well in a game that really gives you an incentive to be evil in the plot. Like, something traumatic happens in Act I - is your hero out to right the wrongs of the world and try to genuinely be a force for good, or is he hellbent on revenge and okay with doing whatever it takes to get it? I...don't really know of any games that pull that off well, though. Even then, you need to come up with good scenarios that don't devolve into "should I rescue this puppy or light him on fire and throw him through the window of that orphanage?" Bioshock is a bad game and the morality system is a bad system.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:57
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If Bioshock didn't give you any bonus at all for saving the children it'd have more of a leg to stand on with regard to moral choices. Make me have to actually be a good guy by not rewarding me for doing the right thing, and make evil tempting.Leal posted:In KOTOR 2 in my good play through I went the evil option in Nar Shadaa to make the exchange thugs give me their money and jump into the nearby pit cause it was funny Get to ground faster that way.
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Mar 10, 2017 00:03
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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.
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Mar 10, 2017 00:08
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Leal posted:The problem is that, well at least I like to think of it like this, people inherently want to be good or at the very least neutral. So because of that not many people go with the evil option unless there was some sort of offer to make them act that way or for completion sake. See: that dude in Mass Effect 2 that always gets defenestrated, regardless of how Paragon your Shepherd is.
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Mar 10, 2017 00:09
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Morality systems generally tending towards one heavy handed example vs another is another big issue. This could probably be fixed if you had tiers of how 'good' or 'evil' you decide to be. Like, imagine Infamous had a thing where someone's cat got stuck in a tree and instead of doing it or not and draining the electricity out of their brain, you could save the cat but hold it hostage for a better reward or kill it because they didn't say they wanted you to give it alive specifically or you just shoot it out of the tree. Maybe having more options would help morality systems a bit, because the two choices with one being so cacklingly evil it makes Palpatine look like Tintin certainly isn't working.
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Mar 10, 2017 00:10
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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 00:19
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The point of the fuckin' game is that helping people at cost to yourself brings greater rewards than hurting people to benefit yourself. How does your proposed system of giving good people fewer rewards play into that? 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. No you're right good should always be the difficult path because otherwise you're not giving players enough incentive to be bad people
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Mar 10, 2017 00:21
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I have an oo-rah firearms buddy who I game with online frequently. He was super-excited for Ghost Recon and got us into the beta. I wasn't impressed enough to buy it, but he loved it enough to buy it for me. Good friend. Obviously I can't whine to him, so I'mma whine at you guys. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon is basically Just Cause 2, with co-op, without the explosions, grapple, action, or hang glider. You do the exact same things as in Just Cause, except in a boring manner-- carefully sneak up on a military camp, carefully snipe everyone out, miss a round halfway in because a desk/wall is invisible, remaining folks start the alarm, die right away because your character is about as agile as a fat internet gamer nerd. Repeat, get it right, go to another camp and start over. You start with a kit capable of clearing all objectives in the game (a silenced assault rifle, a flying drone that marks enemies). Everything else is just a few more degrees of convenience. This also means that you'll never get new fun toys. This also means that you'll never face more difficult enemies. Pretty early on you get an anti-material rifle that can one-shot helicopters and humvees, now there's nothing to threaten you with. (Sometimes you hit the people inside, which means they take the bullet and not the vehicle, annoying you into firing another round). Your AR is perfectly capable of exploding those vehicles if you don't want to get the big sniper. Enemies show up on your minimap at all times. You always know with 100% certainty of there are enemies in a particular area or not. Turning off things like the minimap turns off other vital information that isn't conveyed in other ways, for example "Go to this area and blow up X" becomes "Go somewhere and blow up X". Turning off notifications that you got +10XP or +10 SUPPLY every ten seconds also turns off 'press 1/2/3 to interrogate for information a/b/c'. Your difficulty options are "You're a huge bullet sponge" and "You die in two hits" The story is open ended and flat. There is no rising action whatsoever. The challenges you face Hour 1 are virtually identical in Hour 20. I'm maybe halfway through, and there is zero room for the story to do anything interesting. The bank heist mission was poo poo (basically just 'clear a building then hold for two waves'). It becomes grindy as poo poo to finish maxing skills that you don't use (you start with everything you need, remember). 
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Mar 10, 2017 00:23
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The story in Firewatch was just kind of ok. I was expecting more of a twist towards the end, really, and a game that has such shallow mechanics really needs a stellar story to sell it.
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Mar 10, 2017 00:25
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Action Tortoise posted:a morality game should incentivize the evil choice more to make it more tempting because that's really the only point someone would choose to be evil. You've clearly never met the significant minority of humans who commit crimes for the sheer sadist thrill of it, even at their own rationally-viewed expense.
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Mar 10, 2017 00:34
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My main problem with the morality choice in Bioshock 1 was the fact it didn't change the story at all other then a few lines of dialogue and a different (but equally lovely) 60 second cutscene at the end of the game. Like, why would Tenembaum continue helping you out after you've been murdering those little girls left and right? I'd have liked to see the plot diverge at that point, with an evil character aligning with Fontaine to kill Tenembaum and get all the Adam for yourselves, and the good character having the plot continue as it did in the final game (although being better obviously, because goddamn did Bioshock dip in quality in the last few levels.) On a similar note, the inconsistency of how the 'Would you kindly?' mind control works really annoyed me. When Fontaine does it you could gently caress around for as long as you wanted before eventually doing it, but when Ryan does it it's instant and irresistible. And after Fontaine gives the big plot dump he just sends a couple of flying turrets to kill you instead of just saying would you kindly leave Rapture forever and never return?'
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Mar 10, 2017 00:35
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Futuresight posted:Does anyone find morality systems in games compelling anyway? Depends, flat good and evil usually ends up just being "Okay, do I wanna be good upright paladin or cackling evil rear end in a top hat" but you also get some good stuff like how Jade Empire did their system. It wasn't expressly good or bad, it was Open Palm and Closed Fist, which was a more tangible "How do you get poo poo done" than Good/Bad, with Closed Fist actually being required to make 'good guy' decisions in a chunk of choices.
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Mar 10, 2017 00:36
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Spalec posted:My main problem with the morality choice in Bioshock 1 was the fact it didn't change the story at all other then a few lines of dialogue and a different (but equally lovely) 60 second cutscene at the end of the game. You're free of all that poo poo by that point in the story. They tell you so repeatedly. Did you just not listen to the radio after the twist happens?
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Mar 10, 2017 00:40
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Evilreaver posted:Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Your first warning that you were entering bland territory was the Ubisoft logo, the second was "Open World".
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Mar 10, 2017 00:42
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Sic Semper Goon posted:You've clearly never met the significant minority of humans who commit crimes for the sheer sadist thrill of it, even at their own rationally-viewed expense. gonna hazard a guess that those special boys are playing pure thrill kill games like manhunt and hatred and not games where, in the usual fashion, you can be nice or mean to various people.
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Mar 10, 2017 00:49
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Somfin posted:No you're right good should always be the difficult path because otherwise you're not giving players enough incentive to be bad people Well, yeah. What's the point of having evil options in the game if there's no incentive to take them?
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Mar 10, 2017 01:07
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2house2fly posted:Well, yeah. What's the point of having evil options in the game if there's no incentive to take them? I'm just gonna let this stand as the astounding testament to naivete that it is.
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Mar 10, 2017 01:24
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that's probably for the best since if you actually posted a response my feeble mind would probably be unable to comprehend it
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Mar 10, 2017 01:31
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Breath of the Wild feels like a melting pot of terrible ideas but weapon durability has got to be the worst, never in my life have I played where getting higher quality weapons render combat pointless as I'd be breaking my good stuff in exchange for poo poo, not even the Master Sword is safe from this, its a shame it doesn't actually break cause that would have been funny. I also hate that I can get a cool mount like a skeleton horse but I can't keep it, the stable master won't register it saying its a monster, apparently programming a monster stable is to much for Nintendo, but hey if I'm using a metal weapon I can get struck by lightning and die in a thunder storm.
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Mar 10, 2017 01:57
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Somfin posted:I'm just gonna let this stand as the astounding testament to naivete that it is. People don't do bad things for the sake of being bad. Villians have motivations and that includes the player. If your evil path is there to do it simply because "its there" then your morality system is poo poo. Alteisen posted:Breath of the Wild feels like a melting pot of terrible ideas but weapon durability has got to be the worst, never in my life have I played where getting higher quality weapons render combat pointless as I'd be breaking my good stuff in exchange for poo poo, not even the Master Sword is safe from this, its a shame it doesn't actually break cause that would have been funny. I had the opposite problem where id get a good weapon and never empty my inventory so i couldn't pick up anything becuase of hoarding it for a boss fight or a actual strong enemies who are complete hp sponges. on the other hand, i couldnt find any arrows for poo poo and buying them from shops is super expensive when you're trying to buy those hilariously overpriced outfits. Tengames has a new favorite as of 02:22 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 02:16
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Tengames posted:People don't do bad things for the sake of being bad. Villians have motivations and that includes the player. If your evil path is there to do it simply because "its there" then your morality system is poo poo.
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Mar 10, 2017 02:35
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