How "Free" should your characters be?

[Laos]

By "free" I refer to the connection between you as the player, and the characters as independent, free-thinking members of your party.

 

Let me give an example. Let's say you're playing the game as a human and you approach an elf merchant. The elf merchant has no predisposition to you so he remains neutral and offers you his wears. Now imagine three scenarios with differing traits between you (In real life, if we could call it that) and your character (in his character sheet)

 

Scenario A. You don't like elves personally. your character's traits define him as indifferent

 

Scenario B. Your character has elf-hating traits. you are indifferent

 

Scenario C. You don't like elves personally but your character likes elves.

 

In Scenario A or B you will have circumstances that could lead to hostility, if not combat. In one case you are the initiator, in the other your character is the initiator. Both are straightforward and essentially do not conflict with one another. This makes sense in either case depending on how "free" you believe (or Obsidian believes as the developers) your characters are from your conscious decisions.

 

Scenario C is weird. It may be you rolled your character randomly, he joined your party as such, or for some reason this is how it ends up. Who outranks whom in the case? Let's assume it's a tie between the rating of influence between the player and his NPC. Let's assume the NPC's traits are heavily weighted to hate elves despite your love of them. Where does the line of "Freedom" stand for the players you control and their innate traits.

 

Reputations already surmise there will be an element of freedom you cannot control, as some races may hate you to immediately initiate combat. The real question here is if you can override your character's traits, your character's rule their minds, and if you're just the devil / angel over their shoulder influencing (but not deciding) the ultimate rating of the impression on the NPC

 

In the end I don't think it makes sense, no matter how much you love elves, if you roll a character who's a die-hard elf hater. I think the "angel / devil on your shoulder" would be an excellent mechanic that suits a scenario, much like a minimum dexterity or strength rules a item's ability to be used.

 

I hope i'm making sense here, and would like other people's thoughts on the idea of freedom between you as the player and your character's and their roles. After all, this is an RPG. I don't want to play the game as a college student on the computer, I want to be a barbarian / mage etc.

[Juneau]

I'm not entirely following what your asking as I would assume if you rolled an elven hating character you, yourself would play like you yourself hated elves and your character wouldn't offer "nice" comments/speech options to any elf your talking too.

 

It's one of those areas in terms of freedom where it depends to me personally on whether or not reputation/news plays a roll in the game. I mean if it's known widely who you are/who your band of merry men are and that you don't like the elven folk I would hope he would either a) cower b) run away or c) refuse to sell stuff to you and then die.

 

But I suppose that's less likely to happen as if you are in an area where all merchants are elves and they all refuse to restock your arrows and potions then your game could become insanely difficult very quickly.

[Sedrefilos]

The game should be super-free so that you can role-play as best you can. Free as Fallout 2 and New Vegas were and even more if it is possible. Only your actions and their reactions should be logical so that they'll be meaningfull. Or you'll get with a Bethesda do-what-you-want but it doesen't matter anyway cause your actions have ****ty reactions that you don't care about anyway.

Edited January 15, 2013 by Sedrefilos

[Cryticus]

I really do not get what do you mean, Idea seems ultimatly pointless and only serves to restrict players, and annoy them, if someone wants to play a good guy and will roll character trait that caues him to be ****, then he will be just reload becaues he want's to play good guy. If it will be a trait that is rolled but player don't know about it then it's similar to what happend in some dialog option in mass effect only much worse aka text sounds like it's nice option but woop ti du da you rolled racist so you het **** response.

[Lephys]

I have a feeling that P:E will not decide your main characer's opinion toward Elves until you, the player, actually make in-game decisions regarding Elves, so I don't think what you're referring to will be much of an issue in this case. However, it does bring up the interesting question of "Should you be able to make your character directly express favor for Elves in 17 consecutive decisions in the game, then make a decision that specifically expresses hatred toward Elves? And, if so, should there be a stronger impact on your reputation (i.e. 'Wait a minute, that go guys around talking about how Elves should have as many rights as everyone else! Has he been lying this ENTIRE TIME?!')?"

 

Personally, I think the game shouldn't prevent you from doing this, because it remains completely plausible no matter what it conveys about your character in the game world (psychoticness, evil, etc.)

[Faerunner]

The first problem with this thread is that you assume the player wants to be a human and has a problem with elves. Secondly... I have no idea what you're trying to say. It seems like you assume every conversation will start out with some kind of dice roll like in D&D combat. Just like how the start of every hit it basically rolls to see if you hit or miss, then rolls to see how much damage you inflict, and vice-versa for the opponent; you seem to assume that it rolls to see how nice you are to a character, and whatever it lands on is how you have to behave. If the computer decides your character hates the person you're talking to, then you have to be rude to them? You have to be racist against them? Even if your character has no prior history or reason to feel that way?

 

I thought the whole point of this RPG was to have complete control over our characters? Most PC RPG's I've played give you multiple ways to respond in every conversation. The NPC says something to you, and you can choose one of a few dialogue options that let you be polite, aloof, rude, hostile, maybe respond with something more complex (like funny, friendly, flirty, roundabout, direct, etc) depending on the situation (crack a joke for a friend, be evasive about giving information, cut straight to the point). Why your character chooses to respond the way they do is left up to you. For example, you might have the option to be rude to an elven merchant, but only you can decide why your character chooses to be that way. Maybe it's because your character is racist, but it could just be because they dislike merchants, they dislike this particular merchant, they're jerks to everyone, they're just having a bad, etc.

 

Considering how Obsidian has handled dialogue in the past, I don't see how the computer could decide how our characters feel for us. I don't see how every conversation is going to turn into a game of Russian Roulette where we never know how our character is going to have to respond regardless of how we envision them. I just don't see it.

[Karkarov]

This is a non issue if you are referring to the main character. You get to create that character and I would assume play them however you want. So if you want to be a elf hating human you make your character an elf hating human, pretty simple. If you are talking about NPC's that join your party.... Why would I recruit and elf, or a dude who loves elves, if I am an elf hater? In the end the NPC should behave in a way realistic to that NPC. So obviously my character and the NPC won't get along so eventually the NPC should either quit the party or force a fight and I have to kill em.

 

Pretty simple really. I am pretty sure the devs have already accounted for all of it too since they have done similar things in their older games.

[HansKrSG]

Your main character should not be free at all, so that you as the player can define the character as you see fit. The characters you bring along though, should have prescripted personalities.