C&C in most games... too easy?

[User was nabbed fit]

I was reading the following part of the article about the Dutch preview of F3...

Several bullies harass a girl, what will you do? The moral choices you make here will be the first example what await you during the rest of the game. If you help the harassed girl you lean towards the path of ‘righteousness’, but you could also choose the side of the bullies in order to get in favor with them.

And something struck me. While a lot of people think they're making decisions based on their own values, the reasoning they use is potentially faulty.

Look at it this way: it's easy to do the 'right' thing when you're sitting at home, in front of your PC, and the negative consequences don't affect you. It's the 'right' thing to do according to us in the present day. But if you were actually living (read: trying to survive) in a postapocalyptic world, doing the 'right' thing by today's standards might not be as interesting for you. Video games counterbalance the fact that you could have gotten equipment or money for doing something 'wrong' by giving you more XP for doing the 'right' thing instead, but that doesn't happen in real life.

My beef is that it's too easy to do the 'right' thing in video games these days. One major problem is the lack of credible immersion (not solved by shiny graphics)... there's no game out where you genuinely believe that you're fighting for your downright survival in a postapocalyptic world. Even if you do decide to make your decisions by trying to place yourself in your character's shoes for a few seconds, there's still the fact that your resources simply aren't scarce enough. Somehow, you can become very rich and quite quickly, while the rest of the world is bum poor even though they've been around much longer than you... could it be that they're just lazy? I find that hard to believe.

And of course with all this wealth, it isn't hard to play the generous guy. So not only do the consequences not affect you at home (naturally), but neither are they really affecting your character in-game since he can get so damn wealthy.

RPGs need to remind the player what kind of world he's in, and make you really have to work hard for any gains you make. But in an industry that's making its designs easier and easier so that it's more accessible to the masses, I'm afraid that this will never happen, like many other things.

 

[DraQ]

Uhhh... Is Witcher a step in the right direction?

 

[User was nabbed fit]

I don't know. I haven't played Witcher (at least not yet).

 

[JarlFrank]

So basically, what you want is a scarcity of resources, not having 5 guns with 1000 bullets for each of them with you after the first few hours of playing, really having to fight to survive, and - most importantly - not being rewarded for the most obvious generous choice. I wholeheartedly agree with you. If you give 1000 dollars to a fucking bum on the street, and expect to get something in return - well, forget it, the guy spent all of it on liquor. You helped that girl who was attacked by bullies and chased those bullies away? Well, too bad for you, they belonged to a powerful gang and now you'll get a few problems with the local crime lords.

Things like that would fit a lot better into a post-apoc world, but, hey, Bethesda's Fallout 3 is all about the BoS being knights in shining power armor and the Enclave being evil propaganda-spreading nationalists. It's a classic cliché fantasy story in a post-apocalyptic world instead of a *real* post-apoc setting.

 

[JarlFrank]

Uhhh... Is Witcher a step in the right direction?

Yes it is.

 

[Korgan]

Uhhh... Is Witcher a step in the right direction?

It is mostly a step away from the problem - a really good one at that. There are the non-humans/Order choices that can't hurt Geralt no matter how he handles them, but question your vision of the Witcher's ethics. There is some "lesser evil" stuff, like slaughtering the mob/allowing them to burn the witch at the end of Chapter 1. These choices are kinda obvious, in fact, just like deciding to destroy the Wall in MoTB, and mostly exist to add DRAMA and DARKNGRITTY. And there's some "do the right thing for no reward" stuff, like curing a werewolf and missing out on a cool perk. Well, these only work if the player can sympathise with the characters or otherwise be moved by the story enough to forego a significant gameplay advantage. And this is the aspect which can never be done too well. I felt sorry for the werewolf, but saw nothing in the story arc that would've stayed the hand of a typical 17 year old gamer.

Tl;dr: If you want your game to be treated like serious business, you gotta make it fucking awesome first.

 

[DraQ]

I'm playing The Witcher now and OH GOD IT IS HEAVAN. True, the combat could use some polish and less twitchiness (but I've learned the system), one could also argue, that there is too much combat in game, but then, you're controlling a fucking witcher - not really a role for tree hugging hippie, there is also the problem of controlling a pretty well defined character, but it seems to serve the game well. I really dig the delayed consequence system.

BTW: There is at least one choice in Morrowind (yes, the one made by Beth$oft) where you get slapped for doing the noble thing. True, the outcome is positive provided your char withstands the slap, but it's still pretty nice.

 

[Murk]

I kind of hinted at that in the weapon/armor value gayness i spat out.

Resources are important only early on where taking a questionable route may net you more money, but like you said, once you get a decent flow of resources in (money) you can afford to take the altruistic route.

In a game where you start out with only 200 shekels but end up having 200,000 shekels and nothing to buy or spend it on because you keep finding better gear through adventuring, you have no reason not to donate to 20,000 shekels to the town elder and get +50 to jesus-duder as well as the fat payoff of experience points.

Having an in-game economy that doesn't break immediately is important, and this is something i guess single player cRPGs need to learn from MMORPGs, as shit like WoW is a good example of money used very well.

Though in those games money is more important than exp - as the game is an endless treadmill of grind, in single player games exp is more important than money as the game IS limited in time and its very possible that something as simple as 2 levels make the difference of "easy win" and "struggle".

 

[Hory]

RPGs need to remind the player what kind of world he's in, and make you really have to work hard for any gains you make.

Well, there you have the solution. If the player doesn't think as if he's in the game world, have the game world influence the thing he's attached to the most (his character).

The player sees bullies harassing a girl.
Most players would act righteously and step in to help her.
Have the bullies threaten the player from an obvious physical advantage (older boys, more of them).
The player might back down [you think of the consequences for doing so].
If the player is so naive to think there will be no consequences for persisting OR so attached to his principles that he will risk his well-being, he might continue.
In this case, the bullies push him around until he hits his face on [something sharp].
-1 Charisma. There you go, consequences.

If you make all C&C like this, tho, it would be artificial that every "good" action would have only negative personal outcomes. So you can add a story element where in the "future", the girl helps the player back with something.

 

[Murk]

^ there's also the choice that you can just avoid that encounter until you're strong enough to handle it. In such a situation as bullies and a girl, no, but in other cases like raiders holding hostages... yes.

 

[mondblut]

And there's some "do the right thing for no reward" stuff, like curing a werewolf and missing out on a cool perk.

Well, if you help (not cure really) the werewolf he later assists Geralt in a couple of hard fights. So it's not exactly "no reward", although one cannot know it in advance.

 

[Korgan]

Yeah, but the perk's way better. So it was a pretty tough design decision alright. You gotta love companies like CD Projekt or Stardock who can pull this in the days of 0%-nerd CEOs running the industry and fucking around with anything that looks like money.

 

[Carrie Underwood]

You know what the problem is? If you choose the "wrong" response, the NPC will get all pouty and never speak to you again, or you'll have to fight them to the death. Either way, you lose out on every quest and dialog related to that NPC and gain nothing except some evil points, if that.

I'm replaying Fallout currently, so I'll give an example from there. If I insult Aradesh or say something funny like "I'm saving an entire people from destruction!", he doesn't have any kind of retort. He just gets pouty and kicks me out if I don't respond with "I'm sorry, sir. I don't mean you any harm. Please forgive me." If I go back and kill him, then the entire town attacks me. I just killed their fucking leader - the strongest warrior in the area. Man, do they have balls. It's even more insane if I visit the raiders and wipe them out, and I still have to be all nice 'n easy with Aradesh. I can't say "By myself, I wiped out the entire legion of brigands who terrorized your village for years. You better give me something useful before your people suffer the same fate."

Everyone is serious business or bust - and by bust I mean getting your head impaled on a spear.

 

[Claw]

there's no game out where you genuinely believe that you're fighting for your downright survival in a postapocalyptic world.

 

[JoKa]

i really wish there were another Burntime...

 

[Azrael the cat]

Uhhh... Is Witcher a step in the right direction?

It is mostly a step away from the problem - a really good one at that. There are the non-humans/Order choices that can't hurt Geralt no matter how he handles them, but question your vision of the Witcher's ethics. There is some "lesser evil" stuff, like slaughtering the mob/allowing them to burn the witch at the end of Chapter 1. These choices are kinda obvious, in fact, just like deciding to destroy the Wall in MoTB, and mostly exist to add DRAMA and DARKNGRITTY. And there's some "do the right thing for no reward" stuff, like curing a werewolf and missing out on a cool perk. Well, these only work if the player can sympathise with the characters or otherwise be moved by the story enough to forego a significant gameplay advantage. And this is the aspect which can never be done too well. I felt sorry for the werewolf, but saw nothing in the story arc that would've stayed the hand of a typical 17 year old gamer.

Tl;dr: If you want your game to be treated like serious business, you gotta make it fucking awesome first.

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I thought the Witcher was certainly a step towards the right direction, but I thought that - story-wise - there was an obvious adjustment that would have made the order/elves C+C that much more interesting. The first 'nice-guy' character you meet in the game, early in chapter 2, is the archetypal paladin character - I forget his name, but if you've played it you know who I mean. He's a genuine good guy in a questionable but potentially good organisation. As a consequence, I suspect many players (of those who got caught up in the story) chose the Order out of 'loyalty' to him. Similarly, I suspect that those who chose the rebels did so because they sympathised with the hard-but-understandably-so rebel leader you meet later that chapter more than they did the good-but-naive paladin. Now...imagine that early in Act 4 (or late Act 3) the game killed off one or both of those characters. So you've been going with the order because of one good hero, (or the rebels, substitute accordingly), and then just before things are set to really heat up, that 'good face' of the organisation dies and you're left thinking 'do I really want to be with these guys after all'. Maybe a bit emo-faggy, but I think that, story-line-wise, that would have been a great C+C.

 

[Squeek]

C&C is nice, and I can think of plenty of CRPGs that could have used more of it, but C&C gets far too much credit here, IMO.

By itself C&C falls short because its choices are made exclusively by the player. That means all the consequences -- no matter how cool or how well implemented -- only result in response. It's too player-driven.

CRPGs really ought to make decisions of their own, ones that exhibit a kind of personality and style. That would result in collaboration. So instead of the game reacting exclusively to the player's decisions, the player would be reacting to the game's as well.

 

[RK47]

I agree wholeheartedly that it is too easy. Mass Effect present me with some hard choices but it isn't so hard anymore after I realize there is no consequences except for 'You're a meanie! How could you let him go?' replies.

My recommendation to make C&C give more impact to gamers is:
1. No Scaled Loot. None. Rewards are static. You see a guard with a sniper rifle. Kill him and you get it. It's hard as fuck though. Quests too should reward those who partake it earlier instead of giving crap reward at lvl 5 and yet-another-epic weapon at lvl 20. It makes the world believable, you see the have and have-nots. No fucking Bandits in 10k glass armour demanding 100 gold.
2. Have a reputation system that actually rewards you for being a covert evil instead of marauding jerkwad that refuses to perform duties for extra lunch money "100 g or I'll bust your nuts (intimidate)" would work on a new town but once word gets around, trying that on another fella on the street would get a crowd surrounding you. Back off or persists and deal with the town guards later. That's C&C right there.
3. Sparing your enemies or granting them merciless deaths would affect future encounters. Weaker ones would flee on sight. Stronger ones will not even consider surrendering and fight harder. Not running into the meatgrinder and burst into EXP numbers and drop loots on top of a blood splat floor. If I want that, I'd play Diablo 3
4.Better NPC Betrayals please. I had enough of being led around to find this 'betrayer' while I was screaming at the monitor 'HE'S RIGHT THERE U DUMBFUCK' but the game wouldn't let me do it and enforced 'Heroic Dumbfuck' tag on my protagonist. Then I had my intelligence insulted again when the villain gave a speech how he planned it all along and I was being cluelessly used etc. Oh COME ON! "BWHAHAHAH YOU FOOL! I PLANNED THIS ALL ALONG" was cool the first time, but after that....ugh.
5.Factions conflict. You're just one guy trying to make it big. So you join a side. You can try to go at it alone, but don't expect it to be easy. I'm saying faction flip-flops should be allowed but a great effort must be made to allow such change. No fucking Archmage Grandmaster Champion & Thieves Guildmaster please.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

This topic speaks the truth.

One of the strangest things in games, especially RPGs, is how easy it is to be the good guy. In fact, it's usually the best path; the path with the coolest loot, the best quests, more party choices, and the easiest aside from maybe fighting some big special evil dude. Contrast this with the less-than-saintly paths in which the game gives you minimal quality loot, only a few extra quests, less party members who will like you, and generally a more pain-in-the-ass experience.

If games are going to stick to a good/evil dichotomy, they should at least differentiate the paths a bit as opposed to just offering different flavors of the same reward. Perhaps have the more altruistically inclined characters receive friendship and allies as rewards yet lack money and loot while the greedier, more self-centered characters get the typical power and wealth type of rewards, but might have to always watch their back and/or trust no-one.

I'd really like to see a game that was balls to the walls difficult and beat the player down at every angle. Except there would be a way to make things easier....by being a completely heartless bastard. Maybe start the player off thinking they are "making sacrifices for the greater good" only to reveal to them in the end what a horrible sociopathic monster their character is towards the end. Perhaps their character i worse than the "ancient evil" they sought to destroy. Would at the very least make for some interesting player reactions.

 

[Murk]

You mean like Arthas in Warcraft 3...

 

[Korgan]

No, not really. Sure, Arthas was like "The ends justify the means, fuck yeah" at first, but he only betrayed Lordaeron when he went bat shit insane. Think more along the lines of starting a war without any casus belli just to topple dictators and right wrongs, then finding you've created an evil totalitarian/militaristic empire. Or terrorizing the populace to root out vice and crime, Konrad Curze style, then realizing you've turned these people into slaves.

 

[Azrael the cat]

No, not really. Sure, Arthas was like "The ends justify the means, fuck yeah" at first, but he only betrayed Lordaeron when he went bat shit insane. Think more along the lines of starting a war without any casus belli just to topple dictators and right wrongs, then finding you've created an evil totalitarian/militaristic empire. Or terrorizing the populace to root out vice and crime, Konrad Curze style, then realizing you've turned these people into slaves.

Actually I kind of think his first step - the one where his initial companions (the archmage girl and the paladin mentor from WC2) abandon him - was completely justified. He had a village full of infected peasants who were about to turn into an undead army with a dual purpose of attacking the kingdom and spreading the plague further. There was no cure for the plague available, and from his perspective no way of knowing who was infected, who isn't, and who might become infected. Pretty much all he could do was kill them all, which then brutalised him and prepared him for his later corruption in Northrend (burning the boats so his troops couldn't flee, turning on the mercs that helped him, and eventually taking the cursed sword)

 

[Jasede]

I thought the Witcher was certainly a step towards the right direction, but I thought that - story-wise - there was an obvious adjustment that would have made the order/elves C+C that much more interesting. The first 'nice-guy' character you meet in the game, early in chapter 2, is the archetypal paladin character - I forget his name, but if you've played it you know who I mean. He's a genuine good guy in a questionable but potentially good organisation. As a consequence, I suspect many players (of those who got caught up in the story) chose the Order out of 'loyalty' to him. Similarly, I suspect that those who chose the rebels did so because they sympathised with the hard-but-understandably-so rebel leader you meet later that chapter more than they did the good-but-naive paladin. Now...imagine that early in Act 4 (or late Act 3) the game killed off one or both of those characters. So you've been going with the order because of one good hero, (or the rebels, substitute accordingly), and then just before things are set to really heat up, that 'good face' of the organisation dies and you're left thinking 'do I really want to be with these guys after all'. Maybe a bit emo-faggy, but I think that, story-line-wise, that would have been a great C+C.

Spoiler

Not so hard is it?

 

[Azrael the cat]

This topic speaks the truth.

One of the strangest things in games, especially RPGs, is how easy it is to be the good guy. In fact, it's usually the best path; the path with the coolest loot, the best quests, more party choices, and the easiest aside from maybe fighting some big special evil dude. Contrast this with the less-than-saintly paths in which the game gives you minimal quality loot, only a few extra quests, less party members who will like you, and generally a more pain-in-the-ass experience.

If games are going to stick to a good/evil dichotomy, they should at least differentiate the paths a bit as opposed to just offering different flavors of the same reward. Perhaps have the more altruistically inclined characters receive friendship and allies as rewards yet lack money and loot while the greedier, more self-centered characters get the typical power and wealth type of rewards, but might have to always watch their back and/or trust no-one.

I'd really like to see a game that was balls to the walls difficult and beat the player down at every angle. Except there would be a way to make things easier....by being a completely heartless bastard. Maybe start the player off thinking they are "making sacrifices for the greater good" only to reveal to them in the end what a horrible sociopathic monster their character is towards the end. Perhaps their character i worse than the "ancient evil" they sought to destroy. Would at the very least make for some interesting player reactions.

Actually, as an adventure game 'I have no mouth but I must scream' had kind of a taste of that. Not in the sense of being corrupted through lesser-evil choices, but in the sense of the only way of getting the 'good' (kinda) ending is to focus upon the moral character of the characters you control.
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Basically you control a bunch of characters over the game, and (speaking of batshit-hard) most-to-all will unavoidably die. The only way of 'winning' is for them to die bravely/nobly etc and sacrifice themself in a way that will help out overall, save another character, or enable one of the other characters to pick up where the other one left off - rather than dying cowardly or selfishly. Damn awesome idea (though it's been about a decade since I played it, might just be rose-tinted glasses) that was worth WAY more rip-offs than PS:T's (or earlier?) 'hero-has-amnesia' hook got

 

[Darth Roxor]

This thread pretty much sums up what I felt last time I was playing KotOR1 and when I was thinking about BG2 - why the hell is it easier and more rewarding to play a good character? Kotor had dozens of places where someone is being oppressed by someone else and if you help the oppressed guy OMG LIGHT SIDE +5000000 XP, HERE TAKE THIS AWESUM REWARD, THE SUPAHRARE LIGHTSABER CRYSTAL EVEN THOUGH I'M JUST A BUM, while passing through or helping the attacker would yield "Oh gee, thanks, *dork side points* ". If that were to happen on your_regular_street, you'd probably get the crap beaten out of you the next day by the same thugs but with 10 other thugs if you help the bum, and the bum wouldn't probably turn out to be a multimillionaire-in-hiding.

on a side note: I have no mouth and I must scream is one of the best adventure games I ever played.