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The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition - Obsidian's first-person sci-fi RPG set in a corporate space colony

jackofshadows

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I sense some serious murder-hobo discrimination vibes. Also inability to steal the entire inventory is an odd argument, some RPGs allows that, Fallout comes to mind first so those who copy their design like ATOM team copy that aspect as well. I've seen some Trudograd beta-testers asking devs about whether it worth to keep such a game-breaking feature.
 

Grunker

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Most games I enjoy in nowadays are murder hobo games. But now that you mention it, most strict murder hobo games - that is, RPGs that are strictly about combat, typically have unkillable NPCs. You might even say it's a staple of the murderhobo genre. It's the case for many blobbers and many tactical combat RPGs.

Also inability to steal the entire inventory is an odd argument, some RPGs allows tha

Why is it an odd argument because some RPGs are doing it? :S

Unless you think I'm arguing that RPGs shouldn't allow you to kill all RPGs or steal from a merchant's inventory, in which case I think you should re-read my posts.
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
the core mechanics of an RPG are character customization, character advancement, and killing things.
So, yes, you should be able to kill everything.
And you should be able to customize your character to be anything, especially a dentist. That's your logic, not mine.
If that's your background, sure.
But don't expect an RPG to actually let you be a dentist because they're about combat.
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
Don't you see the absurdity your argument is leading you to? To sustain it, you must argue that "who not to kill" is a more core and interesting, character-defining choice than whatever else a designer might dream up in their vision. That's such a limiting and strange approach to entertainment
But it is a core choice in an RPG?
Choosing not to kill the bad guy is just as important of a choice as killing the bad guy.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Don't you see the absurdity your argument is leading you to? To sustain it, you must argue that "who not to kill" is a more core and interesting, character-defining choice than whatever else a designer might dream up in their vision. That's such a limiting and strange approach to entertainment
But it is a core choice in an RPG?
Choosing not to kill the bad guy is just as important of a choice as killing the bad guy.
Are we talking about killing bad guys? Or killing anything under the sun because we don't like its haircut?
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
Don't you see the absurdity your argument is leading you to? To sustain it, you must argue that "who not to kill" is a more core and interesting, character-defining choice than whatever else a designer might dream up in their vision. That's such a limiting and strange approach to entertainment
But it is a core choice in an RPG?
Choosing not to kill the bad guy is just as important of a choice as killing the bad guy.
Are we talking about killing bad guys? Or killing anything under the sun because we don't like its haircut?
Who the "bad guy" is depends entirely on your character's POV.
 

Grunker

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Don't you see the absurdity your argument is leading you to? To sustain it, you must argue that "who not to kill" is a more core and interesting, character-defining choice than whatever else a designer might dream up in their vision. That's such a limiting and strange approach to entertainment
But it is a core choice in an RPG?

No, but neither is the choice of whether to kill all npcs or not
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
Don't you see the absurdity your argument is leading you to? To sustain it, you must argue that "who not to kill" is a more core and interesting, character-defining choice than whatever else a designer might dream up in their vision. That's such a limiting and strange approach to entertainment
But it is a core choice in an RPG?

No, but neither is the choice of whether to kill all npcs or not
It's not "kill all", it's "kill each"
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Who the "bad guy" is depends entirely on your character's POV.
No. CRPGs pretty much always define very clearly who the bad guys are.

I generally agree that RPGs are "about" combat. However, this conversation started because Roguey posited that the reasonable expectation is that this extends to murder. Blowing away a shopkeeper because you don't like their style, or you think it's funny to commit lethal crimes against the innocent, has nothing to do with "combat" or anything else that CRPGs are "about".

You know what else RPGs are generally "about"? Heroism. Solving problems, protecting the innocent etc. Stopping the evil wizard from destroying the world. This is baked in just as fundamentally to the settings as combat is to the mechanics, and you can't argue for one while conveniently ignoring the other. You can cherry pick counterexamples where evil options exist, but I guarantee I can pick a lot more examples where attacking noncombatants isn't allowed.

Roguey outright admitted that what he really wants and expects is a power fantasy ... in his case the fantasy isn't protecting the weak or saving the kingdom, but murdering folks who remind him of his real world prejudices for laffs. Haw haw I beat up that [gender/race/ideology] I want to torture in real life. It's pretty sick shit if you ask me, and I bet very few developers would agree that it's a valid interpretation of what their games are "about".
 
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Grunker

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Who cares about all these side discussion about what is murder and what is not. The relevant thing here is whether the implementation of the player's ability to murder every NPC is crucial to a good RPG experience or not - or at least, whether its implementation is universally worth the development effort no matter what cRPG you are making.

To that point, I have yet to see a single argument in favor of this being the case. The sole argument instead relies on it being a necessity for verisimiltude or the enshrinement of player choice, and that argument seems fragile at best given the multiple examples of the opposite.
 
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but murdering folks who remind him of his real world prejudices for laffs. Haw haw I beat up that [gender/race/ideology] I want to torture in real life.
This is basically the definition of games like Outerworlds, except it's ok because the people we're killing are bad because they do capitalism. Haw haw I beat up the [gender/race/ideology] I want to torture in real life because the designers made them a strawman!
At least half of modern RPGs have examples like this. Dragonfall Humanis mission, anyone?

Who cares about all these side discussion about what is murder and what is not. The relevant thing here is whether the implementation of the player's ability to murder every NPC is crucial to a good RPG experience or not - or at least, whether its implementation is universally worth the development effort no matter what cRPG you are making.

To that point, I have yet to see a single argument in favor of this being the case. The sole argument relies on it being a necessity for verisimiltude or the enshrinement of player choice, and both arguments seem fragile at best.
The argument is that what my character thinks is good and what your character thinks is good and what the designer thinks is good will rarely, if ever, mesh.

That was the entire argument from the beginning since the Avellone quote.
Players should be able to play an RPG the way they want, and they don’t need my moral judgments getting in the way of how they have fun. I also am not a fan of pre-determined attitudes and alignments for players-my hope is that at the end of the game, they’ve answered the question, “What kind of character am I really, and how did that depart from what I thought I would be?” I always considered Torment a sort of role-player’s experiment, where each incarnation of the Nameless One had the potential to be a different personality and a different type of gamer, depending on the choices he made in the game world. It’s echoed a bit in Alpha Protocol at the end of game with Leland, where he asks if you became the person you set out to be when you joined the agency, and it’s something I like to keep asking players when possible because moments of self-reflection never hurt.

As combat is the de facto tool of argument resolution and problem solving in RPGs it therefore is the most sensible solution to allow players to kill NPCs they don't like.
 

Grunker

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And like I said, you could argue for the implementation of many systems of that account. Again, the question is not whether killable NPCs is virtuous - all player freedom that doesn't break the fiction contract is, more or less - it is whether it is worth the cost to implement.

If there is 0 cost I completely agree that it should always be implemented, because why not.

My entire point since we began this discussion was that given how little you actually use the system and how little value it brings, it is an odd system for so many Codexers to choose as one of the fundamental tenets that must be in all RPGs.
 
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And like I said, you could argue for the implementation of many systems of that account.
No, you couldn't.
As combat is the de facto tool of argument resolution and problem solving in RPGs it therefore is the most sensible solution to allow players to kill NPCs they don't like.
RPGs are not storybooks, they are not racing games, they are not dating simulators.

My entire point since we began this discussion was that given how little you actually use the system and how little value it brings, it is an odd system for so many Codexers to choose as one of the fundamental tenets that must be in all RPGs.
Must be nice to always side with the designers 100% of the time and never think they made a horrible decision in favoring a terrible character.
Again:
It is not about killing every character, it is about the choice of being able to kill each character. If you play a game where everyone can be killed and chose to kill a single character the designers otherwise wouldn't have wanted you to kill, then congratulations, you used the system.

Tell me, who did you kill in FNV? How would your experience be different if the designers arbitrarily decided those characters are actually immortal?
 

Zarniwoop

TESTOSTERONIC As Fuck™
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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Yes I promise you it is true. TOW is that bad.
Not even close.

TOW sucks because there's nothing good about it except being polished. Andromederp doesn't even have that, it's still buggy AF after years of patching. It's so bad even die-hard Bioware LARPers that cream themselves over Tali fanfics, hate it.
 

Zarniwoop

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I am watching a let's play of Outer Worlds right now, actually, funnily enough. I am not seeing why it is met with so much hate.

Can people please explain that to me? The game play seems pretty good, and there doesn't seem to be any game stopping bugs. You don't get stuck in terrain, and barring one graphics glitch, the graphics are pretty darned good. Barring the commiecunt propaganda, there doesn't seem to be all that much sjw shittery in there.
Basically as I said. The only thing in its favour is that it's not buggy. Otherwise it's Skyrim With Guns Without Character.

And yes, it's full of SJW fucketry. The developers famously made all the wymbxn in the game ugly and androgynous on purpose (as a self insertion by the purple haired freaks that work there probably ) and predictably called anyone that objected misogynist literal hitlers.
 

Grunker

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And like I said, you could argue for the implementation of many systems of that account.
No, you couldn't.
As combat is the de facto tool of argument resolution and problem solving in RPGs it therefore is the most sensible solution to allow players to kill NPCs they don't like.
RPGs are not storybooks, they are not racing games, they are not dating simulators.

Neither are they about having the option to murder everyone. Like I said:

Most games I enjoy in nowadays are murder hobo games. But now that you mention it, most strict murder hobo games - that is, RPGs that are strictly about combat, typically have unkillable NPCs. You might even say it's a staple of the murderhobo genre. It's the case for many blobbers and many tactical combat RPGs.

I was reminded of this because most of the games I enjoy nowadays are extremely combat-focused RPGs like blobbers or tactical top-down RPGs where you do nearly nothing but murder everything you come in contact with - except for the (genereally very few) shopkeepers and quest givers, which are often unkillable since they often don't even appear as an interactable NPC but rather as a seperate screen.

Must be nice to always side with the designers 100% of the time

I'm not gonna reply to stupid strawmen, sorry
 

jackofshadows

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Unless you think I'm arguing that RPGs shouldn't allow you to kill all RPGs or steal from a merchant's inventory, in which case I think you should re-read my posts.
Yup, my bad.
You know what else RPGs are generally "about"? Heroism. Solving problems, protecting the innocent etc. Stopping the evil wizard from destroying the world.
I fundamentally disagree but why you can't imagine a case where creators won't allow you to kill that "evil wizard", at least straight away like it was in The Witcher for example, do you see that as a good design? I don't.
If there is 0 cost I completely agree that it should always be implemented, because why not.
If there's 0 cost then it generally sucks anyway, pretty much subj case. Compare it to, say, Arcanum's conjure spirit on plot NPCs use. No, if the devs not gonna properly support this design then it's simply not worth it. That's also why verisimiltude argument might look stronger or weaker depending on particular game's quest design and its very world.
 

KVVRR

Learned
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It's not something you would normally notice since the truth is that almost no video game would allow you to "gay-bash" somebody during any moment.
We win again fellow DISCOCHADS!
portrait_you_fash.png
 

Shadenuat

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It is not about killing every character, it is about the choice of being able to kill each character
Choices must come from a role player picked. Ability to kill everything is neat, but if it's just out of tradition, developers would most likely achieve nothing and leave you with mostly empty boring non-consequences and walking around empty areas. Ability to kill anyone in game where you're a hireling assasin in a story about noble houses fighting each other would lead to much greater impact.
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
It is not about killing every character, it is about the choice of being able to kill each character
Choices must come from a role player picked. Ability to kill everything is neat, but if it's just out of tradition, developers would most likely achieve nothing and leave you with mostly empty boring non-consequences and walking around empty areas. Ability to kill anyone in game where you're a hireling assasin in a game about noble houses fighting each other would lead to much greater impact.
I'm not sure why everyone thinks "can kill" is the same as "must"
is this an ESL thing?

can we get ESLs tagged properly so I know not to use advanced concepts when communicating with them?
 

Valdetiosi

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It is not about killing every character, it is about the choice of being able to kill each character
Choices must come from a role player picked. Ability to kill everything is neat, but if it's just out of tradition, developers would most likely achieve nothing and leave you with mostly empty boring non-consequences and walking around empty areas. Ability to kill anyone in game where you're a hireling assasin in a story about noble houses fighting each other would lead to much greater impact.

Remembering a game, third elder scrolls game, that would let you kill everybody, and just let you go on with the game, saying only as caution "you should reload your save".
 

Shadenuat

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Just lettin u go with the game if you kill anything/everything is just uninteresting. Murderfaggotry is interesting in PnP because of DM tears and trying to hunt you in haven and hell and similar stuff. When you kill Master of Blades in Morrowind or Vivec and, nothing really happens, eh it's ok they allow you to, but at least roll a cool cinematic where that moon held by Vivec's power crashes on you.
 

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