@surreality said in surreality's playlist:
Discovering the person you thought was your closest friend is actually complete monster is something I really didn't want to have to go through twice in this hobby, but clearly I am entirely capable of making the same stupid mistake twice.
Don'the know what this is about, but that sucks so much for you. 
I'm sorry.
I beat the entire game without ever doing Apex missions. I didn'the even realize they went above 5...
@Tempest said in MSB: The meta-discussion:
@WhatInTheSun said in MSB: The meta-discussion:
How many people are active on here? In the few places I've read, there's a smallish group that's vocal, then another layer of semi-vocal.
This is something I've noticed that's different from WORA.
Like yeah, there might be a decent pool of people who post here and there, but MSB is mostly like...the same 5 people from the WoD-crew circle-jerking each other all over the board about how they're the only people who know how to 'MU right'.
Nobody is preventing people from other games posting? If it'still heavily WoD, that's just because the active people play WoD games. Feel free to start discussions about other active games?
So, my experience here was mixed.
No Obsessions is weird. Not a total deal breaker, but why would you neglect this mechanic?
A bit too much in the way of custom stuff right out of the gate. The game is brand new, take your time, guys. Give them a chance to put out more than one book, maybe, before you start retooling all the things.
Seers are not playable. Which is kind of lame. Same old same old.
But importantly -- their entire plot so far seems to revolve around an ongoing war with the Seers of the Throne. A war on the scale that doesn't happen basically ever. It's very, very immersion breaking.
And most importantly! If you aren'the ready to go charging headfirst into the Seers, even though the game clearly advertises that you can supposedly do other things, you won'the find rp. And the little RP you do find will be trying to recruit you into the stupid war effort, and kicking you outside the Circle when you remind folks that their plan is batty.
The system is shiny. The code is set up nice. And if this is your thing, you will enjoy it immensely. If you're looking for something a bit more by-the-book, I advise you to app with caution.
@Arkandel said in PC antagonism done right:
For this to work it needs to be part of the initial design. Everything has to be tied together cohesively.
I'm... not really sure that I agree with this statement. I mean, sure, it's good if it's a part of the initial design, but I'm not sure that I'm ready to go for the 'Abandon All Hope' approach for games that didn't have it from the outset. It might take a philosophical shift, for sure, but I fully believe that any game could do this if they really wanted to. Just saying 'welp, it wasn't there to start with, so now it's all screwed' doesn't seem like a logical jumping off point.
@Tempest said in PC antagonism done right:
Games need XP caps. Seriously.
I'm... not even wholly against this. But really, I don't think they need caps. What I think that games need is a much slower rate of progression than we see on a lot of the current games. And maybe do away with the 'catchup' systems, because holy shit do those things get crazy quickly. Games need tiers of power between characters. If you know that you're within x-range of xp of whoever is supposed to be the top dog, it's much too easy to treat them as some yapping, eye-rolly pleb who you can just ignore. And it's also easy to sit around shopping for cute boots while you soak up godlike powers through the starbucks wifi.
It's very much a 'tragedy of the commons' sort of situation. If you know that you don't have to work that hard because all the guys at the very top are working hard, and you're not that far off from them because of game design, then ... why not?
This, too, creates problems with realistic conflict and antagonism. If you're pretty much a carbon copy, power-wise, of everyone else on the game, why do you even care? Especially on WoD games, once you hit around the 200xp mark, you're basically just adding party tricks. One more gift tree, a few more dots of arcana, a few low-level disciplines. They're drops in the bucket. You've already got your Focus Thing.
@Surreality - I would mostly agree that some of the more roundabout systems are okay. But even those social combat systems should be taken into account.
For instance, the Status merit. All it does, mechanically, is give you bonus social dice with the group you have status in. Thematically, they're seen as powerful, perhaps more worthy of respect/admiration/fear, whatever. Different statuses denote different thematic things. But the point is, it should mean something other than a fancy title, and if the only people in the group you have Status in are PCs, then social combat is pretty much the only time it's going to come up mechanically.
And I think that this is important to note, because if you are a newly turned neonate facing down a thousand-year-old elder, short of being batshit crazy with no self-preservation instinct, you're not just going to roll your eyes and think 'Jesus, this guy again'. He could realistically tear you limb from limb. People don't just walk up to lions and be like 'whatever, lion, I ain't skeered of you'. Or to the leader of an army, or whatever. They can make your life hell in a great many ways, and you should have some real concern there.
Social combat reflects a system that at least tries to mirror most-probable social scenarios. You might get some bonus dice or negative modifiers if you're an especially cheeky whatever-you-are, but those social combat system should still be respected, within reason. You're not going to Persuasion someone into suicide unless you've got some really serious leverage (pull the trigger or I rip the head off of this person you care about more than yourself), but for your standard social interactions, they should still mean something.
The fact that they -don't- mean much of anything on most games is a big reason why I think antagonism goes off the rails. There's no meaningful -mechanical- threat you can make to try and influence behavior without pulling out the nuclear options, most of the time. Physical rolls become the King of Things. And physical antagonism just turns into the Murderboating White Knightism we've been talking about the whole time here.
So sorry for making that such a roundabout point, but that's part of what I think we should be looking at. There should be meaningful mechanical interactions available for people who don't want to throw down and brute force their way through things most of the time. It would take some of the shiny off of the Brute Force options.
@surreality said in PC antagonism done right:
I just don't necessarily think they're reason to think there isn't a lot more that can be done to empower players with thematic 'backup' of sorts for the ICly NOT trendy (but OOCly popular) viewpoints present in game without doing the equivalent of handing nuclear warheads (or something like the Spear of Destiny from the recent Legends of Tomorrow story arc) out to all and sundry with no oversight.
At the risk of potential thread derailment -- this is the kind of stuff that social systems are designed to do. In the WoD, for example, players have access to a slew of merits that they can use to call in favors, gather intelligence, send out goons, etc. While some people take exception to social stuff being used against other players, generally speaking, there are ways of determining just how much pull the little neonate can get, or how much influence that Elder Primogen can use to try and enforce their viewpoints. These systems should matter, and in many games, they simply don't.
Which I think is part of the real problem. we keep talking about things like 'empowering players with thematic backup' while we ignore the systems in place that already do that kind of thing, because as a culture we don't like the idea that a character might act in a way we don't want them to act. Until we can get past that hurdle, I'm not sure what else we can really do. But we can't call for a system to be put in place that does basically the same thing as a system that we choose to ignore. We can't have our cake and eat it too, so to speak.
@Arkandel said:
Ideally that's the main question I'd like to see addressed in this thread; not just what (which I feel most of us agree with) but how. And remember, such systems need to be as easy to use on an everyday basis and require as little direct staff intervention as possible.
What the Players Want Isn't Necessarily What They Should Get - I mean, let's face it. We've all felt similar situations before. Just because a kid -wants- ice cream for dinner, because that makes them just the happiest of campers, doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea. There are lots of unhealthy things that happen if they get their way all the time. The same goes with a MU. Just because the players want the game set up a certain way, doesn't mean it's a good idea. Lots of games lately have tried to custom tailor their stuff to exactly what the players of the game want. And it's ended up with stagnant games where this is nothing to do, and people RP in little cliques instead of going out and interacting with the world. Because there is largely nothing in the world that can hold their attention long enough to really engage with it. It becomes monster-of-the-week plots and social scenes, instead of long-term planning and any real kind of strategy.
No Top-Tier PC Leadership - PC Leadership is always problematic, because then staff has to negotiate things with the PC leaders, who can essentially hold the game hostage while they issue mandates from on high. Mandates from on high should come from the staff, the storytellers, whoever. But it shouldn't be in the hands of players. You might let PCs get middle-management positions. It could be fun to play the Provost of a Councilor. But PCs shouldn't be on the Council. Or if they are, the HIerarch should be NPC, and should have veto power. Because that's how you keep the game from becoming some kind of boring, conflict-less Nirvana. The players should always have something to work toward, and keeping the top-tier 'governance' of the IC world out of their hands goes a long way in making sure that there are always ways to introduce dynamic conflict and meaningful consequences.
Fundamentally, I disagree that the systems used need to have as little direct staff intervention as possible. I think that staff are ultimately the ones who tailor both the world and the story, and while PCs can do meaningful things inside of it, the 'hands off' staffing approach is really not a great idea for making sure that this sort of things comes to pass.
@Thenomain said in PC antagonism done right:
"Let's keep it Cat & Mouse, not Cat & Missile." - The Mighty Monarch.
Pretty much exactly this, yes. As @Arkandel points out:
if you give nothing up by being a white knight (say, opposing that Elder doesn't penalize you in tangible terms in the least) then it's a win/win. That, to me, speaks of poor game design where they are fewer interesting choices to make.
Antagonist PCs should be at least somewhat numerous and/or powerful. Those two work on a sliding scale, really. The point is, there should be enough of them, or they should be powerful enough, that a full-force direct assault on them would be the height of stupidity. And vice-versa. They shouldn't be able to wipe the protagonists off the map either.
But more importantly, there should be some sort of advantage for keeping up the antagonism. World peace is boring. Look at some of the existing games where the PC faction is the only one. There's no threat. No threat means nothing really happening. PCs languish in obscurity. And you can't even move a threat in, because PCs have had months and months to set up every kind of alarm bell there is. And then:
@Misadventure said:
Then you have unleashed the Hounds, and the more people are involved the more likely the path of Final Victory will be selected, and achievable.
The status quo should not be 'we've won'. The status quo should be 'we need to tread carefully here'. Make there be some incentive for keeping the peace. Generally speaking, neither side wants a bloody conflict. The reality is that they don't go as cleanly as most MU conflict tends to go. They're long, and bloody, and messy. They take resources, and they drain everyone involved on some level, because nobody wants to be dealing with that shit when there are other issues they could be attending to. So if someone steps out of line for no good reason whatsoever other than they got a wild hair up their ass and wanted to go pick a fight, there should be consequences from both factions.
That's not to say that conflict can't happen. But conflict shouldn't be murder-first, question-later. It should be give and take, back and forth. They should both act as the foil to each other, and occasionally things can get heated, sure, if there's some real big piece of the pie on the line. But all in all, they should be trying to screw each other over, not trying to plot ways to annihilate the other in some kind of Final Solution BS.
@Misadventure said in PC antagonism done right:
...they gather up and take on the bad people, whether anyone wants them to or not.
It can refer to being a bully for "good" IC, or the dogpile of good folks all looking for something to do because they are do-gooders.
Caveat: I've only had experience with WoD MU's, not Superheros or anything else, so my opinion here probably has some bias.
But this is a thing I see happen a lot. Like, way too much. Even a rumor of an antagonist faction PC/NPC gets around, and suddenly fifty people are on the Murderboat. It doesn't matter that normal people don't go around killing people. It doesn't matter that it's a Morality sin, and totally out of line with their character. An 'antagonist' shows up, and someone needs a-killin', and people write it off like it's not a big deal. DnD Fighters and Wizards go in, blow shit to hell, and then cheer each other over beers.
It's why, in my experience, nobody even bothers with those antagonists anymore. Fifteen people dogpile on it, and either a PC ends up dead, and you get -thirty- people dogpiling on it for revenge and honor and bullshit, or the NPC gets away and it's a gamewide manhunt. There's no way to make them recurring, threatening things because everyone wants an all-out, no holds barred war, and no matter how much you say 'this is not how it actually works', people are unwilling to listen.
I think that antagonism only works in a game if the staff are willing to say 'this is how the actual antagonism is going to go down, and if you step out of line with that, there will be serious consequences from both sides'.
@surreality said in PC antagonism done right:
This is one of the reasons I'm sorta against "designated antagonists", but strongly encourage games with factions in conflict, in competition with one another, or with rivalries or opposition to each others' end goals.
I completely agree with this sentiment. I was fairly disappointed when a game I recently append into did the 'designated antagonist' thing, when I thought they wouldn't be. It was somewhat disheartening.
IMO - If you sign up for a game themed with existing material, and then get shocked and appalled when the theme explores similar concepts (which is usually a good sign you have not read existing materials), I don't think the fault lies with the game runner for not warning you what you're getting into.
@Arkandel said in PC antagonism done right:
@Lisse24 My experience with Vampire is some players go into it to play exactly what White Wolf explicitly states it isn't; superheroes with fangs.
That's pretty much all of the WoD game lines. People ignore what's there and do their own thing against the grain of everything else. If you try and discourage this, you become the bad guy. It's a never ending cycle.
See, I would be cautious here. While having an answer for every little thing is sometimes neat, there are many instances where "Things work like this because magic, and nobody is really sure why..." adds interesting dynamic to the world. Some things really do need to remain a mystery, and the more questions you answer, the more awe and mystery you take out of it. You need to know how it works. Not why it works.
@Tinuviel said in PC antagonism done right:
I'd also advocate for more stories with an end. A story that gives every group (not necessarily every individual) a goal, with plot to drive that goal home.
While I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing, I don't think it's really workable in most MU scenarios. Video games, sure. But in MU's, every player is playing a different character, sometimes multiple characters, that they've invested in. They have a story to tell. If the story ends, it's almost never at a universally agreed upon time for the entire playerbase. It's by the arbitrary decision of whoever is running the story, whether or not any one individual's character has finished their story or not, and I don't think that many players are ultimately going to buy into that. The Reach tried that, and I don't think that it succeeded very well (YMMV). The end date got pushed back multiple times to accommodate for a variety of things, many players still had stories they wanted to tell after the game officially closed, etc. It seems like a good thing on paper, but the practice rarely works out.
Ok, so coming from a polisci background, let's just go ahead and throw this out here. I think the term 'antagonist' often gets used as some kind of Black Hat v. White Hat sort of deal, and that's the way that it's done on MU in most cases -- but it's not really feasible in the long term. If we're playing PvP on a MU, then the simple fact is -- fantasy conflict won't work, and we need to look at real world conflict and work with that accordingly. Let's look at a few things here that hopefully help explain the reasons:
Black Hat v. White Hat Only Works In Stories With Definitive Ends - Most MU's are not designed with a definite end in sight, unlike the tabletop games that most of them draw inspiration from. MU's are much more dynamic than you're going to see in most fantasy scenarios. The people change over time, the vision changes over time, and the ultimate future is often left rather nebulous. There is no way to win a MU in 99.99% of all MUdom. It's just getting that leg up for the time being. Which brings us to...
Most Conflict Is Not A Zero-Sum Game - While it's easy, in a story with a clear beginning and end, to have two people/factions fight it out for supreme control of the galaxy, in the real world it's not so simple... and MU's are pretty good approximations of the real world whether they intend to be or not. You will almost never have two people duking it out for all the things, where one is the clear winner and one is the clear loser. They're both going to win some, and they're both going to lose some in nearly every situation that conflict arises in. Be prepared to deal with that in a mature way. You won't get the whole pie. And speaking of not getting the whole pie...
Coalitions Are A Thing - In most conflict, this is what you're going to see -- a group of people get together and pool resources toward a specific goal if all of them in some way benefit from that goal. You will see opposing coalitions more often than opposed individuals. No individual is capable of doing All The Things by themselves, and games should be set up in a way that encourages these sorts of coalitions to form. These coalitions are also fluid -- just because a group of people work toward the same goal for one thing doesn't mean they're going to be working toward the same goal in others, and can often find themselves both allies AND rivals simultaneously. Political parties are perfect examples of this -- no one person can make all the changes that need to be made, so they have to work together, but their ideological stances even within the same party are often at odds on certain issues.
Coalitions Are A Thing, Part Deux - Nobody in a coalition, even the one that "wins", gets the whole prize. Coalitions fall apart when people get less than they expect from them. You have to be willing to compromise both with the opposing coalition and the people in the one you're working with, whether this be shared access to The Thing or divvying up The Things between all involved. (See above re: Most Conflict is Not Zero Sum).
This Is How People Really Work - It might be called Game Theory, but I promise you that you can model Games for real world situations. People have been doing it for a very long time now, and the results are often staggeringly accurate. When any group of people are put together in the long term with limited resources, Games are the natural byproduct. And while we might be playing fantasy games or whatnot, the way we play them on a MU is not the way they are played in a tabletop. Like, full stop. You can want to tell a story all you want to, but stories really do have endings, and MU's... end, but not usually according to any plan, or shape. So the typical narrative elements don't apply, and we need to look at other things.
I think that if we keep those things in mind when designing conflict in MU's, we'll get a whole lot better result, just because we've set some very unrealistic expectations of what conflict should look like as it resolves. We like to try and do it as a story, and in a thing with no real end, the storybook method just doesn't work. It falls apart. We've seen it countless times.
So, I guess the TL;DR is -- set realistic expectations, and understand how conflict really works between people outside of set, patterned stories. Adjust accordingly.
@Monogram said in Mass Effect: Andromeda: The Thread:
Ran into my first game-breaking bug. Game-breaking for me, in any case.
So, I do all these missions related to setting up an outpost on Kadara, and my journal tells me I need to reply to an email from Reyes. ...only there's no mail from mail from Reyes to acknowledge and continue the quest. But the quest line is telling me there is. To the point where Suvi is telling me every ten minutes that I have unread mail. Bitch, no, I don't.
Which to me, means there's a bug. And I've lost four hours of work tonight. So I have go back and do all that crap over again, HOPING that it doesn't happen again.
I've experienced the missing e-mails bug multiple times now. But what gets me even more is when there's a conversation going on, and there is -quite clearly- a choice that needs to be made, and it just skips over it and defaults some choice without so much as a word of dialogue.
For example, upon a certain character's recovery, there is no dialogue whatsover, and the very first thing that's said is "I have a reputation to maintain." Like, wtf? What was said? What reputation?
@Monogram said in Mass Effect: Andromeda: The Thread:
Apparently there's a level puzzle on one of the planets that can seriously screw your game over if you don't complete it properly. That's just what I heard. I haven't gotten there yet. I think a desert planet. Not Eos, I guess there's /another/ desert planet.
It's the Krogan planet thing. And you seriously have to try and screw it up. Like, the puzzle is straightforward unless you're just being a total dunce and WANT to not do what it needs.
@Killer-Klown said in Mass Effect: Andromeda: The Thread:
@Derp But I don't want any of that. I'd rather... I'd rather ... just ... sing.
Now you need to go fetch yet another shrubbery just for that.
@Killer-Klown said in Mass Effect: Andromeda: The Thread:
I think it's less about psyche profiling as it is we have a whole slew of people doing jobs that they didn't expect/weren't slotted for. IE, Jack Wadd might have been selected as a gardener. He's a good gardener. He really knows his shit <literally> Now, because of Reasons, they don't need gardeners. They need Hydraulic Techs. Jack Wadd is now a Hydraulic tech and has only a passing knowledge of how it works <water goes through tubes>, very little EVA experience and, worse, is mildly claustrophobic - hence, being a gardner and not someone who runs around in a space suit.
But, they need him to be a Hydraulic Tech.
Or, you know. A Pathfinder.