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What are controversial gaming opinions you have?

Zeful said:
Yeah but KoTOR has the excuse of following another creator's vision in terms of the morality. Jade Empire has the same issues with it's morality system, without any excuses, since Bioware wrote the setting themselves.
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Not to be pendantic but Jade Empire actually went out of it's way not to have its morality system be simple black and white choices. It didn't always succeed but a lot of the times the philosophy came up the options were a lot less clear than "be good and noble" or "be a jerk". In fact several times the game punishes you if you think in such simplistic terms. Had they actually had time to develop that concept more it could have been pretty different from everything before or since, but BW is a big believer in throwing out the baby with the bathwater and never keep things from games that don't see commercial or critical success. That's why the Rival/Friendship system from DA2 never returned despite being the most logical way to deal with companions in their games without having to milk the system.
 
horngeek said:
I mean, in the case of the Paragon Bitchslap, that was in response to, uh

Some pretty fucked up shit.
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Well yes but what I'm getting at is that slapping people around because you're angry at them is supposed to be a pretty Renegade thing to do whereas Paragon actions are those of restraint and rule-abiding and etc etc, so the choice to give Paragon Shepard that moment to violently lash out at someone with no ability to fight back is pretty weird in the context of supposedly having freedom to mix and match the level to which your Shepard is a boyscout or a loose cannon as opposed to just one or the other.
 
ZerbanDaGreat said:
Well yes but what I'm getting at is that slapping people around because you're angry at them is supposed to be a pretty Renegade thing to do whereas Paragon actions are those of restraint and rule-abiding and etc etc, so the choice to give Paragon Shepard that moment to violently lash out at someone with no ability to fight back is pretty weird in the context of supposedly having freedom to mix and match the level to which your Shepard is a boyscout or a loose cannon as opposed to just one or the other.
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I'm telling you people, it would have been way better if it were an axis.

'Intimidating Paragon', 'Charismatic Renegade' and the like.
 
Honestly what they need to do is two fold. One is decouple morality systems from gameplay benefits. That way you're not forced into just picking one option over and over again, but encouraged to pick what best fits the situation. Two is actually have a reasonable balance between the two so it's not "reasonable moral person" and "insane war criminal".
 
VolantRedX said:
Honestly what they need to do is two fold. One is decouple morality systems from gameplay benefits. That way you're not forced into just picking one option over and over again, but encouraged to pick what best fits the situation. Two is actually have a reasonable balance between the two so it's not "reasonable moral person" and "insane war criminal".
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I disagree, I think the solution is to make it MORE tied in, conplete with the possibility of making the game unwinnable if you are too much of an asshole to the people you need. Without any flags or warnings about it, so that people keep trying for uncounted hours with no chance whatsoever.
 
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Arawn_Emrys said:
I disagree, I think the solution is to make it MORE tied in, conplete with the possibility of making the game unwinnable if you are too much of an asshole to the people you need. Without any flags or warnings about it, so that people keep trying for uncounted hours with no chance whatsoever.
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Also make the game unwinnable if you manage to miss a out-of-the-way item in the first hour of game while you're at it too. And let the players oibly make one save until they complete the game, as another fuck you.
Or, you know, make a fucking game that you can complete.
 
Flare said:
Also make the game unwinnable if you manage to miss a out-of-the-way item in the first hour of game while you're at it too. And let the players oibly make one save until they complete the game, as another fuck you.
Or, you know, make a fucking game that you can complete.
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Seriously, the fact that you can wind up with your entire party turning against you if you've been an asshole to them was one of the better bits in NWN2's original campaign. BG1-2 had party members either drop or even try and murder you if you continually violated their alignments. That should be a consistent thing. Being a dick to everyone should make the game harder because you don't have help, people will give you less in rewards because they hate you, at higher levels assassins should try to kill you in your sleep or snipe you randomly from the rooftops. And once you've killed a few folks AFTER they already gave you the needed info, the rest should tell you to fuck off because they know they are dying either way. And any option that lets you torture someone for info should get you wrong info.

Edit: the only thing is that it needs to be real choices. The game shouldn't railroad people into making bad choices. But having bad choices have the logical results should be a thing.
 
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Arawn_Emrys said:
Seriously, the fact that you can wind up with your entire party turning against you if you've been an asshole to them was one of the better bits in NWN2's original campaign. BG1-2 had party members either drop or even try and murder you if you continually violated their alignments. That should be a consistent thing. Being a dick to everyone should make the game harder because you don't have help, people will give you less in rewards because they hate you, at higher levels assassins should try to kill you in your sleep or snipe you randomly from the rooftops. And once you've killed a few folks AFTER they already gave you the needed info, the rest should tell you to fuck off because they know they are dying either way.
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That Bloodstained game by the author of Castlevania has something like that mechanic. You can straight up kill other party members instead of letting them into the party to get a power up for yourself, but you're also skipping out on both a bunch of other cool powers as well as limiting your life points.
 
Flare said:
Also make the game unwinnable if you manage to miss a out-of-the-way item in the first hour of game while you're at it too. And let the players oibly make one save until they complete the game, as another fuck you.
Or, you know, make a fucking game that you can complete.
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Pfft, being able to save is for losers. Back in the day you completed a game in one go or not at all.:V
 
Arawn_Emrys said:
Seriously, the fact that you can wind up with your entire party turning against you if you've been an asshole to them was one of the better bits in NWN2's original campaign. BG1-2 had party members either drop or even try and murder you if you continually violated their alignments. That should be a consistent thing. Being a dick to everyone should make the game harder because you don't have help, people will give you less in rewards because they hate you, at higher levels assassins should try to kill you in your sleep or snipe you randomly from the rooftops. And once you've killed a few folks AFTER they already gave you the needed info, the rest should tell you to fuck off because they know they are dying either way. And any option that lets you torture someone for info should get you wrong info.

Edit: the only thing is that it needs to be real choices. The game shouldn't railroad people into making bad choices. But having bad choices have the logical results should be a thing.
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That's a bit more reasonable, and actually having your party member abandon you or even try to kill you if you are an asshole could work. It more or less happens in DA:O if you defile the Ashes, half your party attacks you on the spot.
I'm still against making the game unfinishable, but making it a sort of challenge run if you are an asshole to everyone could be cool. It also makes the game more replayable.
 
One could also make a morality system where the people in-universe judges the player for their actions and the way you'd write dialogue is making a series of decisions that players would do for either selfless, selfish, or neutral reasons. "Morality" only matters as so far for various abilities and the odd buff/debuff but what truly matters is reputation. Let players justify their own actions.
 
Hykal94 said:
One could also make a morality system where the people in-universe judges the player for their actions and the way you'd write dialogue is making a series of decisions that players would do for either selfless, selfish, or neutral reasons. "Morality" only matters as so far for various abilities and the odd buff/debuff but what truly matters is reputation. Let players justify their own actions.
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Again, FO:NV did it right.

There was a "Karma" system, but it was largely a holdover from FO3 and didn't matter much. What did matter was faction reputation - if your reputation with one faction was low enough you might find yourself hunted across the waste. Likewise, high reputation might open up additional dialogue options (high NCR reputation can let you pass a dialogue check to get into Helios One, for instance.)

Also, I feel "moral choices" in games ought to ask the player "What do you believe in?" or "What are you willing to sacrifice?" as opposed to "Pick which group of unlikeable knobheads you want to support at the expense of another" or "Choose the lesser of two evils, and get berated for it regardless." A good example of this is Shadowrun: Dragonfall, where one job tasks you with obtain a cyberzombie for a client. When you find said cyberzombie, however, you discover that his existence is pure torment, and you are given the choice of either putting him out of its misery (which is what he wants, and the more moral option) or handing it over to the client. In this case, determining the moral option isn't hard, but choosing to let the cyberzombie kill himself results in the client wanting nothing to do you with you in the future. There's no real consequence (since you never deal with that client again regardless of your choice) but the idea behind it is sound.

Or, alternatively, you could just let the player be either a shining hero or a mustache-twirling villain and be completely unapologetic about it.

Anything but another goddamn variant of the Trolley Problem.
 
The real problem I have is that it's almost never actually "good and evil" it's almost always "sane well adjusted person and total asshole for no reason whatsoever who offends everyone and is edgy". That's not the sort of person who gets in charge of armies or has loyal followers. It's the kind of guy who gets fragged by his men. Seriously, if they would throw live grenades into officers' tents in real life, for being assholes, what would happen to the impossibly pure asshole that game morality lets you be?
 
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Hykal94 said:
I'll be honest, I wrote that post in hopes of someone asking "which game did this?" to which I would reply with some Tumblr post about New Vegas concerning mailmen, cowboys, and Roman cosplayers. Probably throw in Big Iron in there too.

victorian y u do this
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You should know that I saw you reply to this thread and knew it would be you praising New Vegas

> : P
 
DestinyPlayer said:
After this discussion, I´m suddenly feeling like the D&D-like table of character alignments would be the best way to do dialogue morality options.
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I had the vague recollection that some DnD stuff was moving away from strict character alignment charts and tables, or at least restricting players to the Lawful Good to Neutral side of the chart.

Personally I think it works better as an action alignment chart rather than a character alignment chart. A given action or decision may be considered to be Lawful Good or Chaotic Neutral, but a person can make all sorts of different decisions as they choose, rather than "you are a Lawful Good Paladin, every single decision you make must be Lawful Good".

The Victorian said:
Again, FO:NV did it right.
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I couldn't tell, since it barely worked for me unless I debugged it with console commands, which made me wonder why I didn't just use console commands to make everyone like me anyway.

I did like the Fallout 4 method of companion approval, which was far superior to New Vegas in that I did not need to perform specific one-time actions and pray that it did not bug out.
 
Adloquium said:
I had the vague recollection that some DnD stuff was moving away from strict character alignment charts and tables, or at least restricting players to the Lawful Good to Neutral side of the chart.

Personally I think it works better as an action alignment chart rather than a character alignment chart. A given action or decision may be considered to be Lawful Good or Chaotic Neutral, but a person can make all sorts of different decisions as they choose, rather than "you are a Lawful Good Paladin, every single decision you make must be Lawful Good".



I couldn't tell, since it barely worked for me unless I debugged it with console commands, which made me wonder why I didn't just use console commands to make everyone like me anyway.

I did like the Fallout 4 method of companion approval, which was far superior to New Vegas in that I did not need to perform specific one-time actions and pray that it did not bug out.
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Other than certain alignment based classes, changing alignment wasn't penalized. Alignments in early D&D are mindsets, so if the DM decides your actions don't match the mindset, he declares you now are of the alignment thst they do match. NWN1 actually had it on a 20pt scale from one to the next.
 
Arawn_Emrys said:
Other than certain alignment based classes, changing alignment wasn't penalized. Alignments in early D&D are mindsets, so if the DM decides your actions don't match the mindset, he declares you now are of the alignment thst they do match. NWN1 actually had it on a 20pt scale from one to the next.
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I did recall something from 4e or 5e about alignments that made me mildly curious, regarding restricting character alignments to non-Evil for all players in the core rulebooks. Which was perfectly fine for me, since I have no interest in Evil games.

It did make me wonder that for all that we hold up freedom of choice and the virtue of free will, there seems to be a sort of reluctance to allow ourselves to actually exercise this freedom of choice, preferring to set boundaries for ourselves into categories like alignment mindsets and personality types.
 
Adloquium said:
I did like the Fallout 4 method of companion approval, which was far superior to New Vegas
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GOOD GAME DESIGN.

Ah yes, let me lockpick/hack/get in/out of power armor so I can farm my companion's approval but do it sparingly because of a timer. I shall do this to companions whom half of them don't have personal quests of their own.
Piper's paper? Non-existent. Strong's milk of kindness? Nah, he doesn't grow as a person ever. Garvey is ... Garvey. No the minutemen :turian:questline:turian: doesn't count.

Also, Piper has been in Sanctuary for months. Nat can beg on the streets forever I guess.
 
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