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Denver, 10:26 PM
Wed Dec 9
60 posts in the last 24 hours
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09/20/09
Well, I suppose I could go Google it.
09/20/09
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09/19/09
Now, I appreciate that this can open up the possibility to play through the game and see three slightly (maybe even "somewhat") different stories unfold, maybe with a few special quests tossed in that you only get access to by being one extreme or the other. Personally, I never get to take advantage of that because I usually can't find the time to do an entire 2nd play-through of a game.
Branching dialog must be a pain to write, so I'll give credit where it's due in that these kind of games at least give me a few options and have the world react to me differently depending on what choices I make, but there's already hints that we can (and should!) expect deeper systems in the future. What would I like to see?
In Deus Ex (It's been out over 9 years already?!?), important characters lived or died depending on my actions. Various factions, who had very distinct and opposing goals (and often very clouded morals), were vying for my attention and in the end my choice decided what the future was for all mankind. Whether that future was good or bad was a bit of a grey area, though, and completely depended on my personal interpretation.
The key in Deus Ex is that the choices weren't usually black or white in the vein of "are you a saint or Satan incarnate?" but "which side do you want to win?" When both sides have opposing goals but neither is quite the obvious moral high ground it can be a much more interesting choice for your character. Even if you decided during character creation that your avatar is "good" or "bad", the decision you face isn't forced just because of your character's morality (or lack thereof!).
I think a faction based system (think MMORPG) would be much more interesting in the modern "character choice" games than the global Good/Neutral/Bad system. Some factions can and should be linked, such that friendly and opposing forces to a faction that you help begin to respond to you appropriately. There should also be factions that simply aren't linked, and you're forced to redefine yourself through your new interactions. It could be all the more interesting when this new faction meets some of your old factions and chooses friend and foe a bit differently than you did...
A globally tracked reputation of arrogance or modesty, of being brash or tact, intelligent or simple, and more, would be very interesting to compliment the faction-based friend or foe reputation that may precede you. This would be much more interesting than a global "karma" score that colors the world very black-and-white.
I look forward to a game that tries to track your personality at a deeper level than just basic good or evil, and I'm especially interested in seeing more than just the "good" and "evil" endings to games that (pretend?) to give a character choices. Deus Ex managed to avoid trite good and bad endings over nine years ago--why do I still see them today?
09/19/09
So instead of focusing on moral choice, just give the player choice. Give him multiple ways to solve a problem, but don't put them into stupid predefined categories, that don't make much sense to begin with. What good is it to play the "bad" guy in Mass Effect when in the end you still safe the day either way?
I want to see the consequences of my action unfold in the gaming world itself, I don't need an evil-meter to remind me of my doing.
09/19/09
09/19/09
I don't really think I need choice in my games if it is only going to be superficial. I play games to experience the story the character is going through and to explore the world the designers envisioned.
A fully open world game where my decisions affected every aspect of the game would probably be me exploring the tops of mountains, the bottom of the oceans, and the depths of caves for awesome vistas, interesting items and misc. events/encounters. I'd probably let the princess go hang.
I remember SotC was awesome in how they handled the world and the story. If I ever got bored exploring, I just lift my sword and take on the next Colossus. I got to explore and experience the story at my own pace, and I wasn't led to the place by the system holding my hand unless I chose to.
09/19/09
Christians believe Muslims are evil. Muslims believe Christians are evil. This is the definition of insanity. Good and Evil are not facts, more often they simply justify intolerance and prejudice, or even blind subservience.
09/19/09
However the option of good, evil, neutral, chaos has always been a problem implementing in gaming.
The reality is in every gamer, it's very hard to determine what it good or evil. What I mean to say is, 'Yes, I really should save the princess in the tower.' Or 'I should quest for this mysterious jewel of power.' But even in the context of doing something for good, a player 'commits' evil acts.
Here, the best example for me is Shadow of the Colossus and SMT: Nocturne.
The wander goes through the game killing Colossi and the Colossi aren't doing anything to anyone. They're just wandering about, sleeping, minding their business when The Wander shows up and starts killing them.
Even if the Colossi were 'evil' at the moment where you attack and ultimately kill them. YOU are the bad guy and you're doing it for selfish reasons.
Now the game doesn't say that YOU'RE the hero, your simply the main character....but your acts in SoC lead to the events in Ico.
So, are you really GOOD in the game or are you BAD? Those that have played SoC, know the ending.
In the end, making moral choices in gaming have trouble because they either over empathize or under empathize or tack it on hollowly. But for a game such as The Witcher or KOTOR, it's essential to make it work effectively and equally to the sides your character is choosing. I don't play WRPGs so I can't go in depth with everything...
09/19/09
Another problem is that games make no distinction between action and inaction, and assume a moral position that sins of omission exist, which is not at all a settled question. As a specific example, here's how I played the tower in Fable 2. I didn't feed the prisoners, because I hadn't put them in the cells to begin with so they weren't my moral responsibility, yet I get evil points for that. Later, I refused to kill a guy I was ordered to kill, and I got good points for that. Under my view, NOT acting is always morally permissible (not necessarily "good" but at least "neutral") unless you have voluntarily assumed an affirmative duty to act or are personally responsible for the perilious situation at hand. And then at the end of the game, saving complete strangers is somehow considered morally superiour to saving people you love. I wonder what Molyneux's family thinks about THAT.
09/19/09
Two recurring themes are showing up here: feed off the way the player plays the game, and replace the good/evil system.
While I think the idea of utilizing a player's play style is a great one, I find a significant problem with the system lies in it being TOO accurate. I am a very cautious, leave-no-stone-unturned player. Occasionally the run-and-gun situations arise, but these are few and far between. Now, what happens if I want to see what the other side of the game is like? I have to switch my mindset to that of a run-and-gun player, denying my nature and forcing myself to make decisions that I would not normally make. While this would be a wonderful psychological and mental exercise, it can get very frustrating if you instinctively make a choice that keeps you from progressing the path that you wanted to travel. This would most likely be too much stress for your average player, and in the end your player base would only see at most 50% of the game because they can't deny their instincts well enough.
As for the good/evil system, I believe the problem is not in the +/- good/evil system, but simply the fact that the great judge is short-sighted (as many of you have hinted at already). "You help an old lady across the street." Regardless of your motive, that old lady is very grateful that you made her journey across traffic a much safer and pleasant experience. Your motive would take effect on your good/evil rating later when you make decisions that were made available by this action.
Now let's look at the "killing kittens" example that p.e.r.e.g.r.i.n.e. presented. Two options are "kill the kittens out of mercy" or "kill the kittens for fun". This is an argument straight out of abortion and death penalty arguments where one must argue whether it is ever good to shorten the life of a living thing. And cannot be argued properly in a mere forum post.
09/19/09
In the end, the good/evil system can only be successful if it tracks EVERYTHING and marches on territory that is considered highly controversial (such as ME's kill/not-kill scenario on the snow planet). Obviously, this would be a gargantuan task in design and implementation, so perhaps abandoning the good/evil system for a cause/effect system, as some of you have already stated, would be the way of the future.
What I believe we desire in a choice system is the ability for our choices to have the same weight in the virtual world as they do in our own world, with the only difference being that this virtual world has a reset button. Thus we must ask ourselves if we want our games to be toys, or realities with pause and reset buttons.
09/19/09
While that's a good point about play style, I'm quite enticed by the idea that you might have to play deliberately out of your *own* character - far more immersive I would think than trying to play out of some imaginary character. There could be some fascinating gameplay come out of that, in deliberately making the gamer uncomfortable with what he is doing.
About that old lady. Maybe she's always grateful, but what if you helped her across the road so that she could rob a bank? Motive is still important.
09/19/09
That would be another argument for a cause-effect system. Such a system would not try to quantify good/evil. It would track an NPC's goals and require them to make decisions based on desire and feasibility of each goal.
Oblivion kinda did this with their NPC scheduling. In this case, the NPC has a particular goal at any point in time, but they'll drop whatever they're doing if they spot a threat to them or one of their friends. Only, you would have to allow multiple goals to be going on at one time, and they would have to decide based on the current situation which goal to pursue (food vs. robbing a bank vs. killing a nearby kitten).
09/19/09
He's actually getting quite arrogant really...
Kind of makes me wish I'd said eating kittens. That would have taught him a lesson.
On another note I was intrigued by what you said about a system that reads and reacts to player actions, specifically the part about it hindering you.
I like to pretend to design games in my spare time. Very few of my ideas ever see the light of day (and by see the light of say I mean get read out of the notebook I wrote it in by anyone but my GF) but one of the first thing's I ever thought of was trying to design a system that could do that. I arrived at the same conclusion as you, that the player would feel trapped by it.
I had two solutions for this problem
One would be that the changes would be primarily aesthetic so that the real value of playing the game your own way would be to see how different your game became in comparison to your friends, while leaving you free to play any way you want. Thing's could change back and forth as your style changed back and forth.
Two would be to have the changes be based on areas only with only slight carryover. For example if you went crazy melee hackn'slash on one level you might see a lot of power-ups that promote that kind of fighting, those buffs would carry over into the next level but let's say that stealth was serving you better on that level then you would see stealth power-ups dropping more. The only problem I have with the later is that it would make it too easy to switch styles.
09/19/09
So, in essence, the game would cater to the way the player was playing instead of how the game designer tries to make the player play. I always thought that in-game music should do this (much like cinema uses video cues to synchronize music), but morphing the game itself takes that concept to a completely new level.
FarCry used this mechanic in a few areas; there was usually a run-and-gun path and an alternative stealth path. Other games, like Crysis, follow the same approach by avoiding restricting the player's path altogether. Also, instead of hand-selecting the player's power-ups, they just give the player everything and let them decide how to play. The problem with these games is they have some mechanic that prevents the player from taking a particular approach. In Crysis, it was nigh impossible to take the run-and-gun approach because your armor couldn't take more than 5 shots and any disturbance alerted every soldier within a 2-mile radius to come to your EXACT LOCATION. But sometimes you just wanna drive a tank into the base and reduce the place to a smoldering rubble (ala Prototype)! In Prototype's case, the game was at its peak when you could do just that: walk into the base under disguise and stealth absorb everyone till it's a ghost town, or go in like some horrific beast and destroy anything in your path. I didn't start rushing to finish the game until the super-soldiers came in with their special disguise-thwarting goggles.
Let's try a case study on what would be an application of this. A player gets dropped in by helicopter into a gully. Their path has been laid out before them by the terrain, so they immediately know where they need to go. It's pretty safe to say that there will be three kinds of players: the run-and-gun, the cautious "be swift, but look around every corner before proceeding", and the extremely cautious "I could be attacked from any direction." Obviously, the percentage of players that fall into these categories will be influenced by the difficulty of the game and the style of attacks their enemies have used up to this point. The game has to decide what their first encounter be. I believe it should reward the player for their approach methods, but it could also work against the player; just depends on how much tension the game designer wants at this point.
For the run-and-gun, the reward approach would place several weak enemies in plain sight looking directly into the gully. They would have just enough time to spot the player and reach for their weapons before the player mows them down without even breaking their run. The player is rewarded with a total domination scenario. The penalty approach would place two stealth enemies at the exit of the gully that would attack the player from behind when they exited carelessly. Obviously, this shouldn't happen too often in a game made for entertainment.
For the cautious player, they could be rewarded by having several enemies walking towards the gully from the side. The player's speed allowed them the perfect timing to spot this patrol, but their cautiousness kept them from giving away their presence. The player could plot a surprise attack on the patrol. As a penalty approach, the game could exploit their assumption that the only threats would be coming from around corners and send fire from above or below.
Finally, for the extremely cautious player, a reward would be to put them in close proximity with an ignorant patrol. If absolute stealth is possible, them send the patrol right through the gully. Otherwise, have the patrol pass above, looking down into the gully where the player is hiding. The best example I can think of comes from the sniping mission in COD:MW where you're dodging tanks and soldiers in a ghillie suit. The excitement courses through your veins as you watch the unsuspecting patrol from your invisible body. The penalty would be to place the player in a situation where stealth is useless by either giving the enemy heat vision or scattering land mines throughout the gully.
Now, I can't even begin to imagine how you could implement this. Obviously, from a game designer's standpoint, they would act more like a director, saying that at this point we want high tension (more penalties) and at this point we want total domination (more rewards). The scenarios for each of the play styles would be designed based on the director's requested tension level, and the engine would have to judge what play style the player is using.
09/19/09
The biggest problem is that these games forget to implement such systems, focusing on the boring single-dimensional Good vs Evil spectrum. They totally forget about the X axis to match that Y axis - Law vs Chaos.
09/19/09
There's usually either the choice to be a bastard/petty egotist, or Saviour of the world/community servitor. Which ever way on the scale, it's either to the very extremes or not enough, with no middle ground. This basically sets out how the game will be played. Say, you want to be a dark anti-hero, that's made impossible because you're forced into being either good or evil. And nobody wants to be neutral because that's boring.
So what needs to be done? Well, ideally have a game that literally evolves around the choices made, not just "Shop prices are lower because you're a pretty nice guy" or "Here's an item for being evil". The outcome is never really too different regardless of which path you take. You'll most likely still have the same plot progression and game stages, just with a few of those mechanics changed.
In my eyes, the game that has best done a moral development system is Oblivion, becausei t's not a key element of the gameplay. A lot of games such as Bioshock, Mass Effect etc use the moral choice system as a selling point, however in Oblivion it's extremely effective without even trying to be. You can be a charming murderer if you so wish, or you can be the dark anti-hero that is hated in the public eye, but behind the scenes is saving the world.
Of course, the game progresses in exactly the same way as it would but NPC reactions to you are brilliant, right down to the facial expressions. Fallout I think was a step backwards, as it almost forced the choice system on you. There was no inbetween option, it was always "Do the bad thing, do the neutral thing, or do the good thing". There's no complex options that mix decisions. It's all very clear cut, and, as with pretty much every game with a moral choice decision, you're not exactly rewarded.
The reason why Oblivion was so successful at excecuting this is because it's a roleplaying game; you're supposed to be able to structure your character in any way you want, while the likes of Mass Effect, Bioshock aren't as free; you're locked into the story of them and there's little room for development, hence why the moral systems are added, to (in my opinion, futiley) expand the character development however it's not handled greatly as gaming history will tell you.
Games need to have more of a middle ground, or choices that will eventually have consequences; i.e. I giving money to a beggar so much that eventually he becomes dependant on you and dies due to lack of your charity, or something to that extent. A bit of a bad example, but this gives an insight into how a moral system can be made much more innovative instead of being forced into making choices. This kind of thing could even develop your character in ways you weren't planning; i.e. every time you try to help, you fail and so you turn to the life of a vigilante out only for yourself because everything you've tried to help has just turned out worse off than they were originally. This would be much more beneficial to a game, rather than hinder it in an obvious ploy to try and lengthen longetivity.
09/19/09
EXPLORAN
OPEN-ENDAN
CHOICE-MAKAN
CONSEQUENCAN
09/19/09
It's a simple thing, but it really bugs me. My character's karma is as low as it goes, just because I'd rather play an anti-hero that makes sacrifices for the greater good than play a bland knight of valor type.
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09/19/09
And I *may* have detonated Megaton, and it *may* have been because I hated Moira...
09/19/09
Very broadly, there is a huge difference between (a) the gamer who storms through the game in the fastest time possible, despatching all the enemies with consummate skill but never stopping to smell the roses and (b) the gamer who takes things more slowly, builds resources, explores before moving on, takes the time to talk with NPCs. And a whole range in between.
What if this difference in gaming style reflected in the gameplay? The aggressive ruthless gamer gets an aggressive ruthless character, the cool explorer gets a thoughtful cautious character and so on?
What if the dialogue and the choices and outcomes reflected that?
Should be possible to do this already. but I suspect designers get a bit hung up on script mechanics and don’t even notice there is a whole vocabulary of gaming style that is already conveyed to the game without any express input from the gamer and without the need to program explicit choices that could be made use of.
(I don’t know if this makes any sense, as I have only just thought of it.)