The illusion of choice

[Wallaid]

At first, this is not a reall QQ thread, I enjoy the game and I'm not leaving. But as all new games, there are issues to be adressed.

 

I don't understand why we are presented with so many conversations with multiple choices, when we can't influence the outcome anyway.

 

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the story heavy game. But when I spend time reading it all through and make choices I expect to have likewise influence on the outcome.

 

Examples are the situation with Gault, a companion for the Bounty Hunter, and Malavai Quinn, a companion for the Sith Warrior.

 

But there are also other situations. Ex.: A situation where you choose option B, the NPC answers option B with a very short answer and the proceedes to answer what I would expact was the answer to option A. This is often "good to know" info but rarely essential to actually completing the mission. Why answer A if you get that answer anyway.

 

I've stumbled on a few occasions where a certain answer woul yield another mission rather than finishing the task for the NPC. Those are situations where choices matter because you essentially choose between doing more work for the same NPC or continue to others (perhaps without knowing another quest could be available). Here your choices matter, but it's so few situations.

 

As the topic says, The illusion of choice, cause in the end, alot of the stuff is heavily scripted and we can't do anything about it.

 

Like when my BH got Gault. In the pre-quests I've been chasing this sucker all over Tatooine and kinda got pretty angry with him always evading me. Then the first fight against Gault failed for me, I got disconnected, died and had to do it again (not BioWare's fault). When reaching the end conversation I was so mad with Gault that I just wanted him to die fast so I could get onwards to Alderaan. All through the conversation I choose the I'm-gonna-kill-you-slowly-with-a-spoon-and-enjoy-it-options ... and at the final moment, I'm rewarded with three different ways to accept his companionship ... ***?

 

So a final suggestion for BioWare: If you are gonna give us choices, and I really enjoy that you do, then at least let the choices have an effect. Focus on bugfixing etc. now and in future expansions I'd wish for choices to be real and have an effect on the outcome.

[FerrusPA]

They had the option of killing off certain companions. They took it out because they are afraid of people going "WAH WAH WAH I KILED A GYU HALP". Which is more than justified.

 

Also you'd end up with less people to do missions for you.

[Wallaid]

Which is perfectly justified somehow.

But for characters that fealt a would-be companion had to die due to the story surrounding him/her, BioWare could just give those that choose to kill the NPC a replacement later on.

 

That companion could be introduced through a simple quest that doesn't give any reason to feed it bullets. The replacement companion could even be the same race/class and have the same abilities etc. as the companion they replace.

 

The easy way out was to just remove the ability to kill the NPC. The smart way out was to compensate later on with a replacement "clone". That way the story would not suffer in this story driven game.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Wallaid

[Zangaboing]

Its not like all 3 choices are pointless most of the time. You can change small parts of the story... Good example of this is the black talon. There are plenty of choices that change the quests in small ways, but i guess thats what you mean by "illusion". I'd be happy to see stories/quests where your choices have bigger impact on the outcome.

 

edited for typo

Edited January 30, 2012 by Zangaboing

[marshmellowdude]

This hasn't been discussed before.

 

Time to rewash the scalpels.

[Qoojo]

When playing lately, I regularly wish for a pre-conversation option to pick light/dark/neutral, because of the trivial nature of most choices that end up at the same place.

[Red_Cruiser]

Because picking between "Yes, I am interested in helping!" "Why should I be bothered to help you?" and "Make it quick, worm!" three times for every quest is how you create a compelling and interactive storytelling experience, don'tcha know?

[CannotDeny]

Because picking between "Yes, I am interested in helping!" "Why should I be bothered to help you?" and "Make it quick, worm!" three times for every quest is how you create a compelling and interactive storytelling experience, don'tcha know?

 

Strange, after reading your sentence I just got even more depressed since thinking back that's exactly how it is.

If they're going to abandon everything for a story, I'd at least like that done right instead of having it as on-rails as the space missions are.

On-rails just describes this game so well.

[Jxspyder]

At first, this is not a reall QQ thread, I enjoy the game and I'm not leaving. But as all new games, there are issues to be adressed.

 

I don't understand why we are presented with so many conversations with multiple choices, when we can't influence the outcome anyway.

 

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the story heavy game. But when I spend time reading it all through and make choices I expect to have likewise influence on the outcome.

 

Examples are the situation with Gault, a companion for the Bounty Hunter, and Malavai Quinn, a companion for the Sith Warrior.

 

But there are also other situations. Ex.: A situation where you choose option B, the NPC answers option B with a very short answer and the proceedes to answer what I would expact was the answer to option A. This is often "good to know" info but rarely essential to actually completing the mission. Why answer A if you get that answer anyway.

 

I've stumbled on a few occasions where a certain answer woul yield another mission rather than finishing the task for the NPC. Those are situations where choices matter because you essentially choose between doing more work for the same NPC or continue to others (perhaps without knowing another quest could be available). Here your choices matter, but it's so few situations.

 

As the topic says, The illusion of choice, cause in the end, alot of the stuff is heavily scripted and we can't do anything about it.

 

Like when my BH got Gault. In the pre-quests I've been chasing this sucker all over Tatooine and kinda got pretty angry with him always evading me. Then the first fight against Gault failed for me, I got disconnected, died and had to do it again (not BioWare's fault). When reaching the end conversation I was so mad with Gault that I just wanted him to die fast so I could get onwards to Alderaan. All through the conversation I choose the I'm-gonna-kill-you-slowly-with-a-spoon-and-enjoy-it-options ... and at the final moment, I'm rewarded with three different ways to accept his companionship ... ***?

 

So a final suggestion for BioWare: If you are gonna give us choices, and I really enjoy that you do, then at least let the choices have an effect. Focus on bugfixing etc. now and in future expansions I'd wish for choices to be real and have an effect on the outcome.

 

The companions were originally going to be allowed to die, as a choice and consequence. They scrapped it because it would lead to momentuous whining. This has been said already though.

 

That aside, there are plenty of instances where there is no illusion to your choice. Like when I killed the rebel commander on Balmorra instead of letting him admit the Republic was violating the treaty. Or when I opted to kill the Gormak king on Voss, rather than let him live. Bioware has shown that they can make choice relevant to later content.

[Fentz]

They had the option of killing off certain companions. They took it out because they are afraid of people going "WAH WAH WAH I KILED A GYU HALP". Which is more than justified.

 

Also you'd end up with less people to do missions for you.

 

they could just have made you get another companion if you kill them, like, some npc that helps you do stuff during the quest to kill your companion etc, then you can choose if you want to kill the companion and get the other one (exact same skills, armor etc)

 

but noooo, they go the faster/lazier route (only shallow water cuz they don't wanna make swimming animation etc etc)

Edited January 30, 2012 by Fentz

[Fminor]

The title already said it "the illusion of choice"

 

People like to have a choice. If that choice affects the outcome is for most players irrelevant.

 

I think they added it for roleplaying purpose, so that people can say certain thinks that they think matches with their played character.

[Jandi]

The problem is that people would cry massively no matter what if they miss out on *anything*, no matter how trivial. I would have executed Quinn without hesitation, give the choice and dealt with the fact that I now miss a healer companion, would others? No, they would cry daily that they don't have a healer companion.

 

If they put any real choices with real consequences into the game, people would ruin it and then cry. While it would be awesome, it's just not realistically feasible. You will never have the thing you request, OP, and you can thank your fellow gamers.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Jandi

[darkcerb]

they could just have made you get another companion if you kill them, like, some npc that helps you do stuff during the quest to kill your companion etc, then you can choose if you want to kill the companion and get the other one (exact same skills, armor etc)

 

but noooo, they go the faster/lazier route (only shallow water cuz they don't wanna make swimming animation etc etc)

 

But then what if you want to kill the replacement.

 

Your logic sucks.

[Xerda]

On a slightly different note many of my choices are the same phrase over and over again.

 

But it does often seem that no matter what choice you make the story is already pre-determined and that's where you will end up regardless of the 1,2,3 options.

[Ethice]

My 100% Darkside Enquisitor wanted to kill the assassin, because he won the fight. But there was no such option. Why would I let such an ugly creature live, when I play an evil and arrogant Sith. Why fight it anyway, if I can't kill it? Why should I care about it's opinion about my actions, when I didn't want it as my companion in the first place?

Freedom has always been an illusion, but this is not what I expected. It would be fun if I had a choice of companions, each time the time was there?

[Stejo]

The problem is that people would cry massively no matter what if they miss out on *anything*, no matter how trivial. I would have executed Quinn without hesitation, give the choice and dealt with the fact that I now miss a healer companion, would others? No, they would cry daily that they don't have a healer companion.

 

If they put any real choices with real consequences into the game, people would ruin it and then cry. While it would be awesome, it's just not realistically feasible. You will never have the thing you request, OP, and you can thank your fellow gamers.

 

That is correct. And it's also the reason why MMOs and story don't mix. A story based game is supposed to be involving, have consequences, allow you to shape the world and live with your choices. If you made bad ones, so be it. In an mmo if you're given choices, some people are bound to make bad ones. And then they have to live with them for the rest of the game's (hopefully for the developers) long life. You can't be handicapping your players, it's not cool to find out a couple months after you started playing that this choice you made back when you were level 15, has handicapped your character for all eternity.

 

The developers realized that at some point so they removed all actual choice from the game. In doing so, they admitted the pointlessness of their project. The immersive story can not by definition be immersive and it all boils down to irrelevant chatter layered on top of a very standard mmo grindfest.

[ShadowMasterRP]

I was sent on a mission to track down a pirate leader on Hoth. He was a real figurehead and a had a personality cult around him in his pirate gang. This was because he was really strong, supposedly, an respected strength in others.

 

So I found him and he offered me a challenge of some sort since he saw that I was strong and unusually willful. But instead of participating in his challenge, I decided to cut him down where he stood.

 

That's just one of many examples where your choice matters. So I don't get this particular complaint.

[Xerda]

My 100% Darkside Enquisitor wanted to kill the assassin, because he won the fight. But there was no such option. Why would I let such an ugly creature live, when I play an evil and arrogant Sith. Why fight it anyway, if I can't kill it? Why should I care about it's opinion about my actions, when I didn't want it as my companion in the first place?

Freedom has always been an illusion, but this is not what I expected. It would be fun if I had a choice of companions, each time the time was there?

 

Hell yeah there are times I was so frustrated that I went through several fights without the option to actually finish the bugger off.

[Stejo]

I was sent on a mission to track down a pirate leader on Hoth. He was a real figurehead and a had a personality cult around him in his pirate gang. This was because he was really strong, supposedly, an respected strength in others.

 

So I found him and he offered me a challenge of some sort since he saw that I was strong and unusually willful. But instead of participating in his challenge, I decided to cut him down where he stood.

 

That's just one of many examples where your choice matters. So I don't get this particular complaint.

 

His challenge was to fight him. You refused to accept it so you fought him. Even if there was a third option to not fight him, that would be the end of it. The rest of your story would play out exactly the same regardless of what you did in that particular quest. It's all self contained. Get it now?

[ShadowMasterRP]

His challenge was to fight him. You refused to accept it so you fought him. Even if there was a third option to not fight him, that would be the end of it. The rest of your story would play out exactly the same regardless of what you did in that particular quest. It's all self contained. Get it now?

 

Well, what else would you expect?

 

It's an MMO, not a single player RPG.

The choices presented are pretty damn good for the genre, in my opinion.

 

They are implemented in a way to give you a feel of dynamic content while still going on with the story.

 

Obviously, SWTOR would've been a thousand times better a single player RPG, for many reasons, but EA decided to leech money via a subscription fee. I read somewhere that one of their higher ups talked in some interview about their general goal being making a "subscription base gaming experience" in general to deliver to their customers.

 

So sure, it could've been better if it were a single player game, but it isn't, and it'll never be one, so it's pointless discussing what COULD have been. Need to look at things within the confines of what IS.

[Mephane]

They had the option of killing off certain companions. They took it out because they are afraid of people going "WAH WAH WAH I KILED A GYU HALP". Which is more than justified.

 

Also you'd end up with less people to do missions for you.

 

Just give another droid for more missions then. I'd happily take a second ship droid over Skadge any day, heh. And that says a lot, considering the droid's constant rambling.

[Stejo]

Well, what else would you expect?

 

It's an MMO, not a single player RPG.

The choices presented are pretty damn good for the genre, in my opinion.

 

They are implemented in a way to give you a feel of dynamic content while still going on with the story.

 

Obviously, SWTOR would've been a thousand times better a single player RPG, for many reasons, but EA decided to leech money via a subscription fee. I read somewhere that one of their higher ups talked in some interview about their general goal being making a "subscription base gaming experience" in general to deliver to their customers.

 

So sure, it could've been better if it were a single player game, but it isn't, and it'll never be one, so it's pointless discussing what COULD have been. Need to look at things within the confines of what IS.

 

What else would I expect. Let's take an example of the Imperial Agent story, since it's the last one I played, very mild spoiler ahead. At some point you're given a task to infiltrate the opposite faction. At that point, you could be given the choice to successfully infiltrate, fail to infiltrate or actually get turned and change sides (within the confines of the class quest until it resolves). From the on, you'd be taken to 3 different branches with radically different objectives and elements that would eventually resolve a few quests down the road.

 

You could be taking orders from both sides as a successful double agent, fail to infiltrate and falling back to another plan, getting scolded by your faction etc, or turn on your faction and receive orders from the enemy and so forth. Instead a ridiculous plot device is introduced that nullifies any and all effect your actions could have. You're presented with safe conversation choices that aren't really choices and you just watch the story unfold as if you weren't there.

 

So yeh, it could have been a great single player rpg easily or, given how large the project was, they could've put some work on to implement stuff like that into an mmo and make it organic. They did neither and this is what we got now, DA2 in space.

[Jxspyder]

they could just have made you get another companion if you kill them, like, some npc that helps you do stuff during the quest to kill your companion etc, then you can choose if you want to kill the companion and get the other one (exact same skills, armor etc)

 

but noooo, they go the faster/lazier route (only shallow water cuz they don't wanna make swimming animation etc etc)

 

Then what's the point of killing him, if you end up replacing him with exactly the same companion? And when you get that companion, what if you kill him as well? When does the cycle end? When you are absolutely stuck without a companion, putting you at a disadvantage or when you end up with a companion no matter how much you may want to kill him.

 

 

On a slightly different note many of my choices are the same phrase over and over again.

 

But it does often seem that no matter what choice you make the story is already pre-determined and that's where you will end up regardless of the 1,2,3 options.

 

Just like Mass Effect or Dragon Age. I was replaying some Mass Effect, to get a "perfect" transfer character ready for 3. I get a mission where, no matter how adamantly I refuse to help this woman, or how maliciously I agree with what she's doing....the outcome is still the same and she still gives me the mission.

 

This isn't anything new. Why are people pretending it is?

 

 

That is correct. And it's also the reason why MMOs and story don't mix. A story based game is supposed to be involving, have consequences, allow you to shape the world and live with your choices. If you made bad ones, so be it. In an mmo if you're given choices, some people are bound to make bad ones. And then they have to live with them for the rest of the game's (hopefully for the developers) long life. You can't be handicapping your players, it's not cool to find out a couple months after you started playing that this choice you made back when you were level 15, has handicapped your character for all eternity.

 

The developers realized that at some point so they removed all actual choice from the game. In doing so, they admitted the pointlessness of their project. The immersive story can not by definition be immersive and it all boils down to irrelevant chatter layered on top of a very standard mmo grindfest.

 

MMO's and story mix just fine. There will always be a certain amount of story that you can't impact, no matter how much you want to. Again, this isn't a new thing.