Balancing rewards between good an evil acts necessary?

Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 2:55 pm

Circle werewolves are a different kind than normal ones.
Arnbjorn can control himself too, right? I mean it's not being in The Circle that enables you to control it, right...they just happen be able to control it and be in The Circle?
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Conor Byrne
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 2:54 am

Arnbjorn can control himself too, right? I mean it's not being in The Circle that enables you to control it, right...they just happen be able to control it and be in The Circle?

Arnbjorn used to be a Companion though, so he still received his abilities from the Glenmoril Coven, which might explain his ability to control himself.
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Robyn Howlett
 
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Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 3:48 pm

Arnbjorn used to be a Companion though, so he still received his abilities from the Glenmoril Coven, which might explain his ability to control himself.
Ah. Thanks. :P
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Jeffrey Lawson
 
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Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 11:44 pm

Yes, Fallout 3 is more balanced, the rewards for being good or bad or neutrel more fair. Theres good factions and bad factions and choices that are more straightforward and balanced.
Blow up megaton, get money and luxury apartment. Defuse the bomb, get good karma and a house. Simple, clear and not at all hard to do.

I agree. There is too few purely good options all over the game. No purely good faction. No virtuous knights you can join to crush evil. You can't destroy evil in the most straightforward way, killing it, even.
There is no good faction you can join to oppose the a bad faction sometimes.
For every evil faction there should be a good one opposing it you can join.
It's too grey. They should have delinated more and made it clearer who was good and who was bad.
The factions should be bad faction, good faction, make it clear. Good faction does good stuff, bad faction does bad stuff.


The daedra offer most choice in being good and getting rewarded properly.
Meridia, Asura are good daedra.
Peryrite is neutrel. Just doing what he's supposed to. Hircines a fair daedra.
Theres bad daedra, which you can choose to serve.

There you have a choice. Serve them all or serve who you want.

But outside of those quests, it's ridiculous.
Do you want to destroy the thieves guild? Well you can't! Do you want to beat your way through evil Farkas style, and just get it over with? You can't!
The game won't even let you be evil properly sometimes.
FFS, you can't even kill Louis Letrush to get Frost. You've got to tell him you're going to kill him, before doing it! For crying out loud!

Do you want to be be a good virtuous person, destroying evil? You can't theres no reward for it, or it's less.
So theres loads of bad or stupid options. But you refuse to do them. That leaves you with...a lot less good options than there should be.

I totally disagree with the notion that the game should have clear-cut 'good' and 'evil' factions. Honestly, good vs evil is one of the things I hate - a morality meter a la Fallout 3 makes that even worse.

Find a real person who considers themself to be genuinely evil. I can guarantee you won't find many.

Everyone believes themselves to be doing the right thing, or they wouldn't be doing it. Moral ambiguity makes games far, far more interesting and require actual thought instead of 'here's the good option, here's the evil option, and here's the neutral option.' Let me decide what I think is right and what I think is wrong.

Where I do agree with you, however, is that there should be opposing factions. Not necessarily good and evil, but certainly conflicting interests. Having grey morals is all very well and good, but if there is only one option then there's no point. The Companions in particular are a missed opportunity for having a situation which requires some genuine thought from the player - do you side with the monstrous, lycanthropic warriors of Whiterun? Or the murderous, 'Silver-Hand' butchers who hunt down werewolves and display their heads on pikes outside their bases? Do werewolves have any less right to continue living than other humans?
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Victoria Bartel
 
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Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 2:45 pm

Find a real person who considers themself to be genuinely evil. I can guarantee you won't find many.
Well, "evil" has been replaced with "insane" in the modern world so, yeah, most insane people don't consider themselves insane. :P
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Kira! :)))
 
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Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 1:44 pm

Well, "evil" has been replaced with "insane" in the modern world so, yeah, most insane people don't consider themselves insane. :tongue:

This! The OPs point still stands even in a gray world. The darker that gray is, the better the reward tends to be in Skyrim. It's possible to play "lawful good" but there is a sacrifice (more I think than someone playing "lawful or chaotic evil"). Yeah, I'm borrowing D&D terms.

However I contend that poisoning or cutting the throats of children, killing to engage in necrophilia, or hacking into living bodies clamped down onto tables (for experimentation) is not gray. All of these appear at least once in Skyrim. Yet I can't go into a temple in Whiterun, a Storm-cloak or Imperial casualty tent and heal anyone other than no-effect role-play.

Just an observation - not complaining because it makes it more fulfilling to go in and hack the evil offenders to pieces (now that's gray!). I'd prefer a reputation or morality system. I shouldn't be able to sacrifice a follower or kill someone that trusts me for some Daedra and then waltz into a Vigilant stronghold for a chat and cup of tea. If the guards know what I've done in secret then surely the Vigilants and others would too.
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Kira! :)))
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 3:03 am

...killing to engage in necrophilia...
:o Which quest/zone was that? I may have not noticed. :P
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Eibe Novy
 
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Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 10:44 pm

:ohmy: Which quest/zone was that? I may have not noticed. :tongue:

IIRC it was part of a College side quest. It was Yngvild. The Skyrim UESP describes it. That was one guy I would have trapped if I had a black soul gem handy :stare: .
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Euan
 
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Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 11:24 pm

yes and no. the more morally wrong the bigger the reward.
the reason you are bad is because it pays more. thats why people are bad in real life, its easy and it pays money.
Well said.
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louise hamilton
 
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Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 2:38 pm

A good person is harder to be in real life than an evil person. So that is some realism right there.

If that answer doesn't satisfy, evil missions like assassination or theft usually have a risk of factor to it that may end up costing the player more gold than it's reward. I will admit such risks are mimium at best at high level sneak, but that is a different issue.
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Skrapp Stephens
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 2:53 am


However I contend that poisoning or cutting the throats of children, killing to engage in necrophilia,

Yikes. Where in this game is there necrophilia? Inquiring minds want to know for sure.

I agree with a previous poster that I don't wish Bethesda to rate our actions as good / evil as with some other game, apparently, but there are universal standards for behavior which would be generally classed as good v those which are evil. There is nothing ambiguous about the DB or Thieves quests - they are universally evil.

Even w/o the r/p issues, it'd make the game a good deal more complex and deep to add opposing factions to these quests and have the outcome of completing either side of the quest reflected upon the world. That may not be a reasonable game design goal but it'd sure be a neat scenario.

Perhaps it could exist as a DLC at an isolated place like existed in both MW and OB.
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Shannon Marie Jones
 
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Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 1:42 pm

Yikes. Where in this game is there necrophilia? Inquiring minds want to know for sure.

I agree with a previous poster that I don't wish Bethesda to rate our actions as good / evil as with some other game, apparently, but there are universal standards for behavior which would be generally classed as good v those which are evil. There is nothing ambiguous about the DB or Thieves quests - they are universally evil.

Even w/o the r/p issues, it'd make the game a good deal more complex and deep to add opposing factions to these quests and have the outcome of completing either side of the quest reflected upon the world. That may not be a reasonable game design goal but it'd sure be a neat scenario.

Perhaps it could exist as a DLC at an isolated place like existed in both MW and OB.

OK, I can see your point. It's probably what Glorious was getting at earlier in this thread. It would add a different type of depth that an RP player could have fun with. I would play something like that. But the reward system as it is now does seem to skew toward evil. Arguably the two best (relatively) questlines are the DB and Thieve's Guild.

You don't see the necrophilia but if you read the journals in Yngvild it's clear what the necromancer there is doing.
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Charleigh Anderson
 
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Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 11:38 am

OK, I can see your point. It's probably what Glorious was getting at earlier in this thread. It would add a different type of depth that an RP player could have fun with. I would play something like that. But the reward system as it is now does seem to skew toward evil. Arguably the two best (relatively) questlines are the DB and Thieve's Guild.

You don't see the necrophilia but if you read the journals in Yngvild it's clear what the necromancer there is doing.

Well, reading a journal with a reference to an act and performing a quest to perform that act is the difference between a drag queen and a dragon. The post I quoted said our PC would engage in necrophilia & I am wondering what quest that may be. I had the cannibal quest but will stop short of this one which is why I'd prefer knowing its name.
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Charlotte Buckley
 
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Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 9:24 pm

Well, reading a journal with a reference to an act and performing a quest to perform that act is the difference between a drag queen and a dragon. The post I quoted said our PC would engage in necrophilia & I am wondering what quest that may be. I had the cannibal quest but will stop short of this one which is why I'd prefer knowing its name.

Oops - sorry for causing the confusion - No, the PC doesn't engage in the act. The way I strung those together implied the PC did the deed too.
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Lyndsey Bird
 
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Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 1:22 pm

Good to hear. There are things that I feel odd about even in a computer game.
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Eve Booker
 
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Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 10:01 pm

You don't see the necrophilia but if you read the journals in Yngvild it's clear what the necromancer there is doing.
Oh, that. :P Yeah, it was certainly weird, but I guess my mind never went that far. Originally I got the impression that Arondil was rebuffed by the females in Dawnstar and just retaliated, but as I reread the journals it is implied that he had other 'interests'. Of course, this begs the question: who is creepier - Arondil for what he did or Vekel for wanting to read about it? :lol:
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Strawberry
 
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Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 3:29 pm

I did what I had to in order to get the daedric artifacts. But Namira's quest really turned my stomach. After I got the ring, I killed everyone in that room.
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Catherine N
 
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