Praetoria's morality...

It seems like the Crusader arc does the same. The initial stages of it were relatively good, in the "I just want to smash stuff!" sense of heedless anarchy, but by the time I got to Nova and accomplished Wardog's arc, it was back to business as usual. Why do I say this? Well, I just got past Wardog's moral choice mission.

I knew from scene one that we were going to detonate a neutron bomb in Nova Praetoria, and the reason why is we couldn't get it topside, so "poor" Wardog had to "sacrifice" himself to wipe out a whole bunch of PPD and TEST Rangers. So what choices am I given?

A. With the Seers broadcasting this to everyone, now is the time for the Resistance to make a stand!

or

B. With the Seers broadcasting, now is the time to suck up to the Loyalists!

At least that's how I read the options. I don't know, this just seems odd to me. Why is it that my only alternative outside of the Resistance is Cole's administration? What about an option to take the detonators, walk back topside and hand them over to Octavian, letting Wardog and Vagabond get killed by the TEST in the sewers. After all, the Syndicate were trying to stop the bombing. Why can't I help them?

Though, I suppose, given the limitations of faction-on-faction warfare, this kind of works.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Because the you don't know Octavian unless you do the other arcs, and the Syndicate probably won't talk to you unless you have an "in" (they seem like a pretty insular group)

I mention Octavian because I forget the names of the others already involved in the arc. A few Syndicate heavies assist me in the missions to acquire the Neutron Bomb, then Wardog orders me to betray them. So why can't I betray HIM and side with the Syndicate? One of my former Syndicate allies even says "What are you doing here? We weren't even going to kill you!" implying that they had nothing against me, personally and would most probably have been open to my job application had I offered it. Furthermore, this would be a good opportunity to give me a chance to turn to the path of honour, as apparently the Syndicate soldiers I'm fighting are from Wu Yin and Tub Chi Tan's faction who still care about honour over business.

Please don't resort to semantic excuses when it comes to storyline possibilities. The only reason those semantic excuses - when they even exist, unlike in this case - is because the developers deliberately put them there to narrow the scope of choices, instead of simply providing a third option. I don't know why they decided to limit themselves to just two alignments the whole game over when clearly a "grey and grey" morality implies a THIRD, GREY morality, rather than "slightly less hero" and "slightly less villain."

This is like the excuses I've been given for years, that "You can't oppose Arachnos! They'll just turn off the mediport reclimators!" Well, yeah, maybe, but WHY was the game written so I rely on their reclimators? If even my double can steal a Mediporter from a Council base and use that, surely a crafty villain can find a way to save his own ***. I mean, we have bases with reclimators in them, don't we?

Writing your story so that it deliberately robs people of choice should not be used as the excuse for lack of choice. Because when it is used as that, I then turn to ask "Well, why was it written like this to begin with?" City of Villains I can excuse. The game was intended to be railroading and the illusion of choice was never a design goal. That's understandable. But they set out to build Praetoria on the basis of choice, and yet still wrote an intentionally railroading story with almost no choice in it. Why?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You seem to have a lot of faith in this concept of an AI that will inevetiably take over the job of governing us and then take care of our every want and need.

You are welcome to your beliefs, but this sounds much like every other explanation of religion and heaven to me. Right down to the faith in a specific outcome without proof or concrete evidence.

AI is a possibility, not an inevitablity. And if it comes to pass, it is not certain that it will be impartial, or that will be capable of (or even interested in) taking care of every aspect of our lives as you propose.

Besides, is creating an intelligence who caters to your every need really anything more than a new form of slavery?

Did you ever look over at a game called Alpha Protocol?

It's fairly buggy, not really that amazing, but it is *very* responsive. Pretty much everything you do gets referenced at some point (smash a guy's face in a bar and you get marines guarding the US embassy rather than the regular security folks...)

Now, why this works is that the game is *heavily* railroaded: There are certain things that you can do, but you can't do everything. The reason is simple: For every possibility they program the amount of work they have to do rises exponentially.

(because you have to take into account previous choices, new choices, and future choices) it *quickly* becomes very, very bothersome (and what's worse: It's not easily automated, it's all "manpower work", and can't be handed over to a script)

Even Mass Effect (MUCH simpler than Alpha Protocol, and far more similar to COH) has a ******** of programming to keep all those variables in check. It makes for an awesome game, but it also requires a LOT of work.

The Praetorian story is a stripped down version (for a single-player RPG it's literally years back, but it is rather interesting for trying something like that in a MMORPG) but it *still* requires a ton of work.

You ask "Why can't I join the Syndicate?" the reason is "Because it would take a ******** of programming to do so."

They decided (rightly or wrongly) to make a somewhat stripped-down choice system (basically a binary one, with a bit more thrown in for flavour) because they felt this would be manageable (which it is, mainly, it's not THAT buggy, because the thing is, the more code you have to write the bigger the chance it gets buggy somewhere) they didn't have to: They could have done a completely railroaded storyline instead. But they tried introducing a bit of choice, as much as they felt the engine, their schedule, and their budget could handle.

The result is... (I think) fine enough: It's certainly a vast improvement over previous COH modes of doing things. Is it Dragon Age or Mass Effect or Alpha Protocol or Fallout: New Vegas? Of course not, but then anyone expecting it to be is, to be quite frank, delusional. Game designers operate under limits: This is fact.

It really comes down to this: "Why didn't they do X?" The answer is, 99% of the time, "It would be too time consuming/expensive."

If an AI truly is a sapient entity, then it would have the same universal rights you have been talking about all thread, and enslaving it would be as bad as enslaving any other person.

If it's "just a machine with a clever computer" then it's not an AI.

Being "alive" in the same manner that we are doesn't enter into it.

So, it's not whether someone is intelligent or has emotions, but whether or not they are "alive" that makes them a "real person".

I wasn't aware that breathing and circulating blood were more important than talking or feeling when it comes to ethical and moral considerations.

That seems...rather limited and short sighted to me.

On what do you base this supposition?

And I'm not talking about a "machine", but an Artificial Intelligence, which is more about software than hardware, (or at least as much about hardware as a human is about their body and organs).

Our flesh doesn't make us special, it's the "special spark" (as you call it) that does. Our bodies are nothing more than organic machines, after all. It's the spark of intelligence, the self awareness, the soul that makes us different.

Assuming that a true AI is possible at all (and it may not be, only time will tell), I see no reason to assume that it would not have that "special spark" just like we do.

Assuming that a machine intelligence will automatically be soulless and can never be a real person is just as baseless an assumption as Dechs assuming that the AI's are inevitable, and will be superior caretakers for humanity when they arrive.

Either you are making a dualist argument -- which, at our current level of scientific understanding is not really viable -- or you're being complete irrational.

If consciousness is the result of having a "soul" (and there is no evidence this is the case) then strong AI is impossible and the point is moot. If it is not, then consciousness in an organic brain is only the result of natural processes, meaning the brain is nothing but a computer that runs on carbon chemistry instead of semiconductors. That does not necessarily mean that it is inevitable that we will learn how to emulate it but if we do it would be nothing but bigotry to deny the resultant consciousness all the rights we afford each other.

Pretty much the cover story of this week's Time. Ray Kurzweil figures (due to the exponential nature of advances in the relevant tech) we will have reverse-engineered the human brain by the mid 2020's. Human level intelligence in computers by the end of that decade. By 2045, the quantity of AI created will be about 1 billion times the sum of all human intelligence that exists today.

Oh, and we'll be functionally immortal.

Of course not! I love you, Friend Computer!

What does that say about Metronome and the Clockwork Seers?

She's being completely irrational. Like any person convinced he or she knows everything, Golden Girl just "knows" what constitutes life and that souls are the key, and she is not interested in actually having convincing reason to believe so.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

My problem with Praetoria's morality isn't that I'm not allowed to do everything like I can in Alpha Protocol (probably the best example of a "do anything" game we're likely to see for some time), but rather the choices I'm allowed to pick from. A binary choice doesn't have to feel like a false binary logical fallacy if it manages to account for a wide enough scope of possibilities, such that either option "fits" as many more specific ideas people might have. This isn't the case, because Peaetoria's morality is intentionally simplified and robbed of sufficient scope.

Adding choices to a system with as little consequence as City of Heroes should be an opportunity to include everybody by making both options in a binary choice appealing to as many people as possible. This is achievable by making the choices very broad and the morality behind them very abstract.

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An artefact of great power has been found, and you HAVE to go secure it. Once you do, you have the choice of keeping it for yourself to use it in the future, or destroying it so it can never be used again. Neither option is strictly heroic or villainous, as it all comes down to how and when you might choose to use it, or what your justification is for destroying it. The game gives you choices, but it does not tell you which choice has what morality to it.
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My main complaint about Praetoria's morality is that I think involving such strong faction identity was a mistake. The elseworld hero-and-villain morality as depicted in Tip missions is far, far superior to that, in my eyes, at least. It does somewhat force your hand still based on what alignment you want to be, making you pick choices for that alignment, not choices your character would strictly believe in, but it's still FAR more appropriate for a morality system. For pure weight of options, I find morality systems like Alpha Protocol and Dragon Age to be superior to those of Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic, simply because you don't have a karma meter telling you what's good and what's bad. All you have is actions and consequences.

And idle example: If I choose to help free Killdozer, then I have to battle an extra rather heavy PPD spawn to break the guy out of jail. If I choose to go back on my word and let the guy rot, then I don't fight that spawn of PPD, but I have to fight an extra boss fight with Killdozer right after the fight with LeoKnight at the final box. Neither option is good and neither option is bad. They're just options. In fact, every time I come to that choice, I'm forced to sit down for a minute and decide WHY I'm choosing what I am. Let's take the option to let Killdozer rot - for which you are never given an in-game reasoning - and try to imagine why my character might have chosen that.

*For MageKiller Po, she did that because she's not a bad person, just misunderstood, and she wasn't about to set a villain loose on the streets.
*For Akili, she doesn't give a crap about the Freakshow and figures Killdozer deserves what he got.
*For Duriel, she enjoys seeing people suffer because she's a malicious alien bug lady. Intentionally screwing the guy over brings her joy and happiness.
*For Lord Cedric, he doesn't care about promises and honour. He's there for himself, and anyone else is for him to use as he pleases.

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I don't mind Praetoria's lack of choice. I mind that the choices were given this little scope and that they were so marred in faction warfare. We're intended to see them as choices between right and wrong, but they are what they are tagged as - choices between the Resistance and the Loyalists.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Err, from what I'm reading here you're saying the opposite of what you're saying. You think the Praetorian morality is too narrow and specific (tailored to a specific context that makes certain assumptions about your characters) and you'd prefer a more generalized, "universal" set of choices, no?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is that an accurate representation of your concerns?

From where I'm standing that would make the system *more* simplistic (although not neccessarily worse, simple can be good) but that's quibbling about semantics I guess *shrugs*.

There are advantages to this kind of writing (it's general, fits-all, etc.) There are disadvantages too (it brings far less flavour, and, depending on the writing quality, can make you far less interested) Personally I rather like City of Heroes and it's various storylines (even the jumbled, cut-off, and contradictory ones has a certain charm about it) I like *City of Heroes*. Not "generic superhero MMORPG". And I think the Preatorian stuff has some pretty interesting dynamics, situations and concepts. (The end of the Warden decision is golden, and the Power mission where you bump into Arachnos completely without warning is great as well)

But I can certainly see your objection: It's a matter of generic freedom of choice vs. telling a more interesting story. Where I fall on that debate tends to depend on how much I like the story.

I rather liked the concept of the Jade Empire "karma meter", they kind of botched the execution but the original idea was that OP and CF weren't "good" and "bad" as much as two different philosophical approaches to things. Paragon/Renegade in Mass Effect does something similar.

But then again, I don't see the "morality missions" in Praetoria as moral choices in the first place: These are choices of who you align with. Who's good and who's bad is (largely) up to you to decide (although they could/should have made this more apparent) any path supports a hero, any path supports a villain. The generic tip missions are actually a lot more stifling in that regard.

I don't think that's quite the case: We're not supposed to see them as binary "good-evil" choices, they're moral choices yes, (in the sense that they have moral ramifications) but they're moral choices with political repurcussions (eg. "If I do this, that guy won't like me as much.") Which I think is perfectly fine: If you want to be Calvin's best friend you'd better do what Calvin tells you to do. If you want to do what is right you're probably going to criss-cross a bit more.

Moral choices can and should have consequences, otherwise they're kind of meaningless. That is, if there's no cost of doing good/advantage of doing evil, why would anyone do anything other than good? (Advantage in this sense can and does include pure schadenfreude, obviously) Ironically a lot of tip missions I think fail in that regard becuase there is no consequences at all: You go to these extraordinary lengths to steal the Mystic Artifact of Doom and... You get nothing for it.

I prefer simpler systems. Simple systems are easier to build fiction on. Complex systems become very specific, and require specific fiction to "explain" them. I didn't need an explanation of why I'm a hero in a city of heroes, fighting crime and the forces of evil. I didn't need an explanation why I wanted to stop Ubelmann, bring Alexander Pavlidis in or uncover the secret behind the Revenant Hero project. I COULD apply a reason to it - namely my own - but that reason could be any number of things.

I'm given a reason for why I am a villain, and I'm given a reason why I do most of the villainous things. That reason does not always match up to the reason I had in mind, and I often find out about those reasons after it's too late to do anything about them. I'm then given a reason for why I can only be Resistance or only be a Loyalist, and why I can only destroy the Seer farm or only free the Seers, and why I can't do anything but those two choices. I'm not given an explanation for why I can't sell the Seers to the Syndicate, but it's implied that that's not an option because "because."

I'm never stuck wondering "Why did I just do that?" or "Why can't I do that?" running old Hero content, because the stories are loose enough. "Simple enough," as it were. Both CoV's and especially Praetoria's storylines are so specific and railroading that it feels like I'm playing someone else's character through someone else's story until I can get out of this horrible treadmill and actually be my own hero or my own villain, with my own hopes, dreams and aspirations that I designed, came up with and wrote up, as opposed to HAVING the share the same hopes, dreams and aspirations with factions I never wanted to join in the first place.

I DO NOT LIKE Praetorian politics. If I had a choice, I'd choose nether. Being in a position to want a choice where I can opt out of the storyline is a bad, bad sign, and not having that choice turns this into a tangible problem.

You can tell a linear story while still giving choices to the player as to how to get from point A to point B to point C. Warehouse X has artefact Y, guarded by Z. You can kill Z and take Y, which means a fight and which might strike some people as a pretty evil thing to do. Or, you ask Z nicely, and he gives you Y, at which point you're ambushed by Tau on your way out, still giving you the requisite fight, but feeling more like the nice guy option. Neither case comes out and says "This is good and this is evil." You're given options, those options lead to minor changes, but the main storyline rolls on. You have artefact Y, so you can advance the plot with it.

You can have a linear storyline that gives the illusion of choice, and I would rather have that than a branching storyline with no illusion of actual choice. I don't need consequences for my actions, so long as I get to choose what I want. Killing my clone at the end of Leonard's arc or letting it live is a meaningless choice, but I like it more than any Morality mission in Praetoria, because it's a choice I get to make based on my morality and my morality alone when consequences do not force my hand.

And this is a mistake. Controversial politics is not a good field for moral choices, for the simple fact that they require me to support at least one faction, even if I bounce around the available candidates. Controversial politics never has a place for a "neither" choice, because such a choice represents a third option that undermines the forced, artificial morality.

I'm not interested in "belonging" to an NPC faction. I'm not interested in sharing an NPC's beliefs. I'm not interested in the developers writing my characters for me, outside of instances where game design (that's game design, NOT plotline) absolutely demands it. I can't make a villain who's afraid to travel by boat, because that would be unplayable, but I CAN make a villain who may not necessarily care about Arachnos, and the game's settings provide for that. I can't make a Praetorian who's not aligned with either the Resistance or the Loyalists, because I'm not given that choice.

My characters are MINE, and this is one aspect of City of Heroes unique to it. It asks us to name them, build them, paint them, give them a backstory and by the end of it all, they feel like OUR creations. Not a developer construct that we can pick from a short list, not a nameless protagonist just like every other nameless protagonist. Easily City of Heroes' greatest strength is its ability to make my characters feel truly mine and nobody else's, which is why it infuriates me when it then plops those same characters in the world and starts writing their story for them.

When I'm given a choice, I don't want to pick between storylines written for me. I want to pick between between generic responses the combination of which together will define my character's personality. One generic choice is uninteresting, but when you go through 10 different ones, your character's personality begins to shape up.

I couldn't disagree more. Choices between good and evil, moral or immoral should not come down to what advantage they give, as that puts the metagame before the storyline. Choices between good and evil should come down to choices of preference, and be driven by the character's personality as written by the character's creator. "Who you are in the dark," as it were - people's true colours only show when they are forced to make a moral choice without consequences either way. Because that is the only time a person will choose what he WANTS, as opposed to what he feels he HAS to choose.

Moral choices such as those in Leonard's arc, Vincent Ross' arc and, to some extent, Roy Cooling's arc are where players show their true colours. Do I burn that Family goon in his warehouse or do I take him in? Either way, the story goes on, so which one do I WANT to choose? It depends on the character, at that point. As well it should.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.