Moral traps and ambiguities

[robanybody2000]

The problem is that I have paid for the game just like many many other people and i want to play what they have promised not the hastly version of it.You should get used to this king of games cause the next one will be even more imposing. This is caused by the mindless jerks who by good gaming understand mass killing of all isolated bandidts and marauders in a game, if possible without speaking to any of the NPC's (THIS is why Beth made self starting quest). What happened to the good old RPG style: the role playng, the complex development of a character (attribute depending skill, special abilities depending on skills and attributes not the lazy jack of all trades maxed to 100 all whose slight difference are some lazy perks wich some of them don't even work or are usless), the talking to everyone just to get a slight hint on a quest, putting rumors toghether just to descover a location...? Why all the characters HAVE to be so important and everything has to evolve arroud you? Why NPC's have to talk non stop nonsense rather than not talk at all? Why have everything served on a platter and take the fun out of a game? I miss the intricate creation of Arcanum's characters, the unimportance of the characters of Icewind Dale and the brilliant questing and gathering information from Baldur's Gate. Even Oblivion had it's chalanges (not beeing a propper thief wouldn't land you at the top of it't organisation), sadly in Skyrim everythin that envolves thinking and planning has been taken from me, including the character development. I don't wanna be the Master of Everyone, I don't want to lead the Thieves Guild and The College of Winterhold with a mindless warrior, or be the harbringer of The Companions with a sneaky thief. Despite the graphics, the games mentioned above provided me with thousands of hours of fun, for me and my friends (the multyplayer on BG 2 and IWD 2 are just superb) without having to invest just above 1.500 $ in my PC. Sadly the best thing Skyrim offered was this forum (no joke). :sad:

 

One other thing: A game is made to be fun and interactive, to fill your spare time with joy or chalanges not to have you think for hours wich side to join because of "morality". A game character has NO morality, only the people playing them.

Edited March 27, 2012 by robanybody2000

[thompsonar]

I just think people are making too much about this stuff. Perhaps it's because of all the hype before the game. I didn't hear any of it so maybe that's why I had no expectations when I bought the game. I haven't played games in years but I did always like TES games, so I went and bought it.

 

Why would you have a game where the player's character is not the center of the story (or at least very involved in it), isn't that the point of most any game? You don't have to join every faction in the game, nothing is making you. You won't have access to certain places and certain things if you don't but so what? You can't have everything while not doing everything at the same time(if you get what I mean). Oh and you certainly don't have to spend $1500 on a computer to play the game.

 

I have never felt forced to do anything in the game. But perhaps that's just because of my mindset, and because I don't mind leaving a few quests open in the journal, never to be completed.

[robanybody2000]

I was speaking of RPG games in general. And please start a topic were you name 50 GOOD sidequests (not the faction or faction related quests or bountyhunting and clearing tons of bad guys).And about the PC, I buoght it with 1005 euros, that is about 1400$(maybe from were you are they are cheaper, you just didn't think) and i play skyrim on medium.

[sajuukkhar9000]

I was speaking of RPG games in general. And please start a topic were you name 50 GOOD sidequests (not the faction or faction related quests or bountyhunting and clearing tons of bad guys).And about the PC, I buoght it with 1005 euros, that is about 1400$(maybe from were you are they are cheaper, you just didn't think) and i play skyrim on medium.

 

Good is entirely subjective, he could name all those feth quests as being "good" and wouldnt be wrong becuase good is SOLEY and opnion.

 

Also I bought my PC for 500 dollars and play Skyrim on max. Buying a pre-built PC is silly because they overcharge like mad.

Edited March 28, 2012 by sajuukkhar9000

[robanybody2000]

i didn't bought it pre-build, the difference is from WHERE i bought it.you see if i were in the U.S. same PC i have now would have cost me arround 300-350$ (i've checked) were if i wanted to buy it in Ukraine it would cost aprox 2000-2500$. It's not realy my fault that i live in a crappy country that is 10 years behind in terms of technology. :(

[eltucu]

1400 usd and playing on medium? Here i bought... lets see... a 2500K, GTX560 Ti (this one almost at launch, a year ago), 16Gb of DDR3 1600Mhz (working at 1333Mhz for now) and a mobo (P67 mATX tho) at 1000 USD or so. And im definetively not playing on medium :D Not counting that we have crazy prices here, 100% on import taxes and whatnot (380 USD for my 560 Ti for example, i could never have bought that but there were special circumstances involved).

 

On England or the US you can get more or less the same setup for 600 USD if im not mistaken, maybe with even better parts. Im not sure on Romania though, but it cant be worse than here i guess.

 

Plus, if Skyrim lacks in some department, its definitively on the graphics one. I mean, they had to patch in grass shading lol The dynamic shadows arent dynamic at all, the LOD system is crap, the lighting is crap, water is crap, particle effects are pretty crappy (except distant clouds).

 

You cant pin point a single modern or advanced shader being used:

 

No displacement for water.

No soft shore lines.

No ambient oclussion.

Not a single form of indirect lighting (baked or half baked).

Barely used parallax mapping.

Bad soft particles (or no softening at all).

No dynamic particles.

No volumetric lighting.

No volumetric smoke.

No sun shafts.

Barely functional soft shadowing.

No contact hardening shadows.

No dynamic deph of field.

Probably more stuff.

 

Still nominated to the technology category in the GDC! WTF was that?

 

The only thing i like a lot is the color correction they added, but thats like the first most basic thing that comes to mind after HDR started being used in games, proper color correction (2006-2007 tech).

Edited March 28, 2012 by eltucu

[MagisterTremere]

Let me start by saying that I am in complete agreement with what you wrote in this post. The initialization of the Boethiah's Calling quest is especially annoying and the primary reason for why I'm searching these forums. In regards to the Dark Brotherhood questline, [iMO] it would have been a viable option to initiate it via the random assassin attacks. I've been attacked on numerous occasions by these bozos and have no idea in regards to why or who. Finding the order/contract on them and attempting to track them down would have been more engaging and would have likewise provided a clear justification for why or why not to join/destroy them.

 

I swear its like people don't even try to make coherent or thought out arguments anymore. They just spew this contradictory garbage out in order to insult games in whatever way they can, that or they seemingly dont understand the basic concepts of common things like journals or roleplaying.

 

Bethesda hasn't taken some anti-roleplaying tack it's just that you entire argument is based around ignoring what a journal is and how people use it.

 

And I'm sorry if that sounded rude but I'm sick and tired of hearing the same broken and completely un-thought-out arguments repeated time and time again in some desperate attempt to make the game to be worse then it actually is.

 

Hold yer horses there, friend.

 

Don't misunderstand me: in general, I think that Skyrim is a fantastic game. I've no interest in freezing game development Han-Solo-style in nostalgia for Morrowind or Oblivion or whatever "insert things were always better back in the day" argument one might try to make. Any criticism that I make of the game is in the spirit of trying to be constructive, to illustrate ways in which--IMO--the game could have been better, not just to tear it down or make specious arguments because I am bored or angry or frustrated or just trying to engorge my own personal e-peen. So please respect the sentiment of my post, and don't jump to characterize me like you know me.

 

Anyway, that said, I will try to avoid undue criticism and nostalgia when I say that the Skyrim quest interface is neither better nor worse, IMO, than its predecessors, it is merely different. However, it certainly isn't much resembling an actual journal any longer, and is now little more than a glorified tool-tip for organizing your agenda. Yes, of course, in past TES games, that is what the journal was for as well, but there was at least the added embellishment of comments and/or use of an actual book that has now been stripped out. When I hit "J" it brings up essentially a list of commands that the game is telling me I should do, which, IMO, is fine. However, given that in many circumstances I have no control over how these things end up in my "journal," I am now being told to do many things that I have no desire whatsoever to do, like to kill my follower for the glorification of Boethiah. Or to kill Grelod the Kind simply because it was my first playthrough and I didn't yet know to avoid the Aretino boy. Is it really so much of a unreasonable request to be able to just say, "Oh hell, no" to Aretino and to tell him to kill Grelod himself? No, instead it stays stuck in my quest log--as a command--to go and kill an old woman that I have never personally ever met. If the interface were truly a "journal" it would read something like, "Demented Aretino kid wanted me to kill some little old lady; I am not sure if I am very comfortable with this." Instead, it says, "Kill Grelod the Kind," and I am stuck with this, even as the most noble of paladins--forever (assuming I don't actually want to kill her). Why, as a paladin, would I have ever written "Kill Grelod the Kind" in my journal to begin with? The fact that this is just foisted on you, the character, without your consent, is what my quarrel is with the way these things are implemented. On my first character, I had like fifteen different "Kill/rob/beat up random NPC" entries in my quest log that I could not get rid of. Whilst that might not be anti-roleplay, it is rather confusing (why would my noble character have made these entries?) and cumbersome (scrolling down two pages of forever-idled quests to see other ones). In other words--It could have been handled better.

 

Skyrim is an amazing game (I am more a fanboy than a critic, truth be told...) and I would recommend it to anyone. But I, like many (though obviously not all) others, favor playing in a roleplaying style. I absolutely do not want random, nonsensical "Kill X" entries cluttering up my quest log. The more strange aspect of all of this is that this functionality (to accept a quest or to reject it) is already employed for _many_ of the quests already in the game. You glossed over my example of the Nirnroot quest. Why am I given the option to turn this, or any, quest down, whilst others are forced upon me? Why, after I leave the farm, do I not have a journal entry telling me to collect a heck of a lot of Nirnroot? By the logic you used before, I "heard" about her needing Nirnroot and would thus have entered it into my journal, even if I hated Nirnroot and never ever wanted to handle the blasted things. It is a double-standard. Weirder still, any character can collect Nirnroot; it has no logical bearing on a character's morality or sense of honor--yet I am given the option to refuse, as if the choice were morally consequential (rather than just a waste of time...). This courtesy is then _not_ extended to me in the case of wanton murder, something that fundamentally affects the sort of morality our character is guided by. It doesn't make sense. An option to simply "ignore" information that we think is totally, irredeemably sketch would be logical as well as a nod to the player that they are free to pursue only the quests that they are interested in. An option to "drop" a quest would have been harder to implement, of course, but would have been nice in those situations wherein we listen to that demented Aretino and then decided we'd rather report him to the Jarl than to commit murder only to be rewarded with a junky silver plate.

 

So, I would say:

 

1. Give the player the opportunity to ignore things they don't want to hear. Those Windhelm guards aren't going anywhere if I suddenly become possessed by Molag Bal and just want to kill, kill, kill.

2. Extend your reasoning all the way to its conclusion and never ask the player for permission to take a quest, ever. Assume that he wants to do them all, and create journal entries accordingly. It may not be pretty, but it will be internally consistent.

 

(NOTE: having just re-read this post, I'll add that I'm not trying to be rude either. I think your position in general is good, as I too intensely dislike bashing good games or when people are haters or flame for no logical reason except to try and feel cool. And--for sure--those types of people are out there. I'm definitely not one of them though, and for sure neither are you. Therefore, I would say we're more allies than anything else :) .)

[CuliacanMexico]

....Some of the moral ambiguities, though, are more disturbing...

 

...For those trying to chart a path for a "good" character. it seems too easy to fall into moral traps...

Case in point of unstated options: With Friends Like These.

 

...But, in the end, I managed to accept my actions as street justice and didn't lose too much sleep over whacking her...

Your not playing a good character if you murder a women because she is 'verbally abusive' to some kids.

 

You have chosen a different path.

[Freya1997]

....Some of the moral ambiguities, though, are more disturbing...

 

...For those trying to chart a path for a "good" character. it seems too easy to fall into moral traps...

Case in point of unstated options: With Friends Like These.

 

...But, in the end, I managed to accept my actions as street justice and didn't lose too much sleep over whacking her...

Your not playing a good character if you murder a women because she is 'verbally abusive' to some kids.

 

You have chosen a different path.

Just to point this out... Verbal abuse can be just as damaging as physical abuse. Plus the body may heal, but the mind may not and once it's damaged, it's a lot harder to heal after suffering abuse. Also I don't quite recall the details of the quest, but I do remember getting the impression that the woman was someone who abused her children. So I can see why someone might off her. Of course it may just be that she simply sets her foot down and give her children clear lines of what they can and can't do, but as we're never told the specifics, we'll just have to go by what the quest says.

[CuliacanMexico]

Just to point this out... Verbal abuse can be just as damaging as physical abuse. Plus the body may heal, but the mind may not and once it's damaged, it's a lot harder to heal after suffering abuse. Also I don't quite recall the details of the quest, but I do remember getting the impression that the woman was someone who abused her children. So I can see why someone might off her. Of course it may just be that she simply sets her foot down and give her children clear lines of what they can and can't do, but as we're never told the specifics, we'll just have to go by what the quest says.

I wasn't implying it wasn't bad. Just that a character trying to walk a tightrope of 'Good Morally', wouldn't murder a woman based on the information given.

 

Binary choice: Allow the woman to continue Verbal Abuse or murder her.

 

My characters are not 'Good'... she dies.