JarlFrank
I like Thief THIS much
So, imagine some guy approaches you and asks you to kill a certain person because that person is totally evil and a serial killer/thief/spy or something. The guy appears to be really quite friendly and trustworthy and he manages to convince you. So, you go and kill that person, collect your reward, but later on you find out that the person was completely innocent and the guy only wanted to eliminate him for personal reasons. And he seemed so totally trustworthy and honest! Of course, if you had investigated a bit and actually talked to your victim before mindlessly accepting the quest and killing him, you might've found out the truth.
Different scenario: you're looking for an ancient artefact. Some oracle woman claims to know where it is and sends you to do several quests for her or asks you to pay a large sum for the information. After recieving the coordinates and going there, it turns out she scammed you. The artefact isn't there, in fact there's not even a dungeon. You've just got cheated out of a lot of money/did work for information that turned out to be wrong. Of course, there are other ways to obtain the true coordinates of the artefact-containing dungeon, but this one was a dead end.
Most players would be discouraged by things like that. NPCs lying to you or using you for their own goals is a big no-no for many game designers (I remember Ken Rolston of Morrowind fame said that some time ago), but I believe it to be a good method for making the gameworld more realistic (AND DARK AND GRITTAY OH YEAH) and to keep the player on his toes when he doesn't know whom to trust.
Thoughts?
Different scenario: you're looking for an ancient artefact. Some oracle woman claims to know where it is and sends you to do several quests for her or asks you to pay a large sum for the information. After recieving the coordinates and going there, it turns out she scammed you. The artefact isn't there, in fact there's not even a dungeon. You've just got cheated out of a lot of money/did work for information that turned out to be wrong. Of course, there are other ways to obtain the true coordinates of the artefact-containing dungeon, but this one was a dead end.
Most players would be discouraged by things like that. NPCs lying to you or using you for their own goals is a big no-no for many game designers (I remember Ken Rolston of Morrowind fame said that some time ago), but I believe it to be a good method for making the gameworld more realistic (AND DARK AND GRITTAY OH YEAH) and to keep the player on his toes when he doesn't know whom to trust.
Thoughts?