Bored with the whole Praetoria schtick

So... you believe it was the Devs' intention to make me believe they're crappy writers with pre-adolescent views on morality and drive me out as fast as possible from boredom? As someone said before, Praetoria is not shades of grey. It's 3 shades of black and one shade of grey which you're told is "evil", at the end of which you're forced to do things not for the good of the people, but for the good of their foregone conclusion.

They TRIED with the Warden arc to make some attempt at grey, but all you are in that arc is a weak member of a faction of lunatics, uncommitted to the cause, not willing to "do what it takes" to unseat "Tyrant". The way this story is written, the leader of the Resistance is actually WORSE than the leader of the fascists, because the leader of the fascists is doing something to keep people safe. The leader of the Resistance wants to blow things up because it's personal. The Resistance is more willing to sacrifice innocent persons than the supposed "Tyrant" is, and that's where the writing fails.

Revolutions are absolutely useless unless they have something better to propose. In the real world when aimless revolutions without long term solutions succeed, it becomes a case of "meet the new boss, worse than the old boss". The Resistance are motivated and act as two-dimensional villains, yet the scenario tries it's best to paint them as good guys. It's just goatee universe in the end. Anarchy good authority bad!

Honestly, you use terms like "immature" and "pre-adolescent" in ways to minimize those who have a different value system than you. It's laughable because such tactics truly condemn your beliefs to the moniker you choose for others.

The Cole tyranny is not simply 'corrupt'. It is a oppressive dictatorship. Slavery isn't 'corrupt' it's evil. Extra-judicial killings are simply 'corrupt' they are evil. Conquest isn't 'corrupt' it's evil.

There is nothing safe or semi-safe for the citizens of Praetoria. This is not to say the Resistance is better (they aren't - their tactics are abhorrent) but to say they are worse and brand others as immature is one of the most foolish arguments I've ever seen on these boards.

It's interesting, because I see Power Loyalists almost more like Rogues. Selfish, out for self, but little of what they do really tugs at you as being evil. They're stopping criminals to the regime for the fame it earns them. As for the Crusaders, their tactics are extreme to the point of evil, but almost none of them are truly 'bad' people. Most of them have a backstory which makes it fairly clear why they have been driven to this conduct. Especially the Imperial contacts. Most have suffered greatly as a result of the Cole regime and seek vengeance. Not a great motivator to be sure, but it's easy to condemn them when your family wasn't wiped out.

With the Wardens/Responsibility folks, the choices seem almost good until they aren't. Responsibility path folks are doing OK until they're asked to support slavery and later work with a psychic vampire. Wardens are peachy all they way up to the point where they blow up a water filtration plant.

I do think Sam is on to something when he says there shouldn't be such clearly defined roles. It would have been better in my mind if Cole's regime wasn't so clearly, irredeemably evil and the Crusaders used dirty but not stomach churning tactics or at least felt bad about them.

Or... you see two equally insane extremes so focused on their objectives that they're evil... and then you see two middle groups that, while not saintly-- and each affected somewhat by the tainted methods of their extremist brethern, do aspire to make life better for their fellow man.

While the extremists see them as too "weak" to do what needs done, the truth is that they're strong enough not to fall all the way into the weak-minded evils that the extremists do. They falter- they aspire to do right but often fail-- let's face it, looking to their leaders for moral guidance won't help em much. What they lack is a solid leader-- someone that will help them do right and has the backbone to go against them when they take the wrong path. Perhaps weave the sides together so they're stronger than either extreme. Maybe that's your hero.

Authority bad in this case because CoV already presents an Anarchy bad scenario.

False. Tyrant was prepared to allow Arachnos to destroy one of Antimatter's reactors because it suited his agenda. Scott was not willing to allow renegade Crusaders to destroy a hospital even though it would have furthered his agenda.

That does not make Calvin Scott the good guy, of course. My whole position from the beginning has been "Praetoria is a corrupt society and anyone capable of exercising power in it is corrupt". You just can't even begin to argue that he's worse than Tyrant. Tyrant's regime is sacrificing innocent lives every day, and there is no reason to believe the whole "protecting the remnants of humanity from Hamidon" thing is anything but a convenient scapegoat at best.

That's only because at that point, "not destroying the hospital" furthered his agenda more than destroying it. In concept, he was not just okay with it, but actively approving of such action.

Although I think Venture's point was that to say that Scott is worse than Tyrant is beyond laughable. Neither are great guys you want at the company picnic, but Cole makes Scott look like a girl scout selling cookies.

What.

Scott was totally gung-ho for blowing up the hospital. He only lets you stop the bombing because he needs to keep you undercover. This has been repeated over and over in this thread.

I think it's just frustration at being born 100 years too late

Pants for Christmas: Best. Present. Ever.

You can repeat it again if you like. He didn't do it, that's all that matters. Scott and Tyrant were both given the same choice; Scott went one way and Tyrant went the other.

Which, realistically, probably has more to do with the technical feat of making Cole Memorial a burnt out shell next time you're sent there (say, after dying in Nova) than due to any moral implications. Pulling an NPC out of the game is a lot easier than pulling out a building.

Scott's change of plans was just an easy out to avoid having to program the actual consequences.

I thought they were both bi-curious?

Easy, narrate that the bombs killed a lot of people but didn't do much structural damage. Clockwork will have it cleaned up in no time.

Firstly, for those who say "it's just a game"? Yep. It is. And that's why Praetoria does not offend me... it merely bores me, it's just a game. I'm tired of seeing that message of "anarchy is good" and "nobody is a hero" presented as "edgy" and "cool", it makes my eyes glaze over with boredom. To try so hard to fill a place with "grey zones" that you only come up with a bunch of black is immersion-breaking for me, and it makes me rush out of the unpleasant and boring plotlines. Does this happen in the Isles and Paragon City as well? Yes! Several plots are just as stupid. The difference is you can opt out of them and go do sometihng else.

Praetoria offers no such option, and is thus a boring place to me.

When people try to defend the actions of the characters in the game, that rankles me a bit. There is a reason revolutions in the real world that are long on propaganda but short on actual solutions are filled with young people. An inability to empathize with people who disagree, and inability to think past the short term are, in fact, recognized signs of immaturity. Not only is it immature, but it is also cowardice to say "by any means necessary", because those means invariably involve people who just want to be left alone dying for your cause.

The only person who should ever die for your cause is you, those who raise arms directly to fight against you, and others who directly take up arms with you. It is immaturity to believe it excusable to put the lives of people who have nothing to do with a conflict ahead of your own life.

Let's make this easy: Sending people to blow up a hospital to prove your enemies are not infallible = immature and cowardly.

Sending people to raid and destroy a military target to prove your enemies are not infallible = desperate and possibly crazy, but a mature and brave decision.

That has been my entire objection to Praetoria and why it is so boring to me. All of your choices except one involve your character forcibly being a coward. The one which DOES allow you to show some empathy and gives you a mature set of principles to stick to? In the end you're again forced to be a coward; and worse have to put up with the game telling you how evil you are for trying to make the best of a bad situation. The responsibility Loyalist path, right up until the end, gives you chances to right wrongs no matter if it's done by the gangs, the Resistance, or elements of Cole's own forces.

The Warden Resistance path forces you to look the other way, and the only reason you can get the Resistance to ever cease an atrocity is because otherwise they might out you as a double agent. You cannot get the Resistance to be brave and mature by your own actions, you can only look the other way and make weak, hopeless statements to a group clearly led by someone equally as mad, but for more chaotic than, the "Tyrant" they're trying to overthrow.

I say the Praetorian plotline mostly appeals to immature folks because it DOES. Lack of empathy and cowardice, a willingness to throw others under the bus (but never putting yourself at risk to protect the people you are supposedly saving) to further your own cause are actual real signs of immaturity.

To paraphrase KoToR, which is in fact a further paraphrase of Chesty Puller (and if you read Orson Scott Card you'll recognize something Ender said which also derives from this old Marine's saying) , "Warriors kill because they hate who opposes them, Soldiers fight and die like maggots under a blowtorch when necessary because they love what they've left behind."

Another nice chestnut of his is "Soldiers step in front of civilians, cowards use them as bargaining chips."

Guard your women and children well
Send these bastards back to hell
We'll teach them the ways of war
They won't come here anymore

That is what "by any means necessary" means. It means you stand up and give your life to protect people who will never even know what you've done for them. You say "I will die for you, to protect you". Sometimes collateral damage happens, and it should pain you when it does, but to intentionally target civilians or, through your own inaction, allow them to die is cowardice.

And some people are simply immature cowards. It's a big world out there, and it takes all kinds to populate it, but one should at least be able to accept what they are. If you don't want your arguments to be called immature, then stop making immature arguments.

A lawyer acquaintance of mine has said there are three kinds of Defense Lawyers in this world. Type 1 are the wide eyed crusaders, who really are doing their best to ensure an accused gets a fair trial. Type 2 are those who talk like type 1, but it's all bologna. when push comes to shove, they do what's best for their career and all that rhetoric means nothing. Type 3 are those who simply like money, are good at lawyering, and don't really care what goes on so long as they win the case. He freely admits he is type 3. He and I both respect type 1 and type 3, even if he disagrees with the morals of 1 and I of type 3, because they're not hiding behind a layer false righteousness. Those who believe "any means necessary" includes sacrificing innocent persons to make a point would find themselves right at home as a type 2 criminal defense lawyer.

I freely admit I'd be type 1, and likely die nearly penniless as a public defender. It extends to my entertainment choices as well, I don't feel like being forced to be a coward, because I can't ram my head into my innards deep enough to be able to see the world in such a way that I could enjoy it. It's why when I play a "villain" I make choices accordingly and am something of a lone wolf hero.

At least with Statesman and Recluse, you know where you stand and can do your own thing accordingly. In Praetoria? You're forced to be evil, ultimately. Praetoria offers you no other choices.

Serving Tyrant is making a bad situation worse - that's why the game calls you an evil person for doing it

The game itself makes it extremely clear what his motivations are. Would it take someone saying to you "the only reason I didn't kidnap and molest that 11 year old girl is because I don't think I could get away with it" to help you realize that yes, intentions ARE just as important as outcomes?

That dude wanted to blow up a hospital! Who cares that he didn't get it done, his reasons for not getting it done are are only slightly less disturbed as his reasons for suggesting it in the first place.

You've got that backwards and it's a creepy thought process. Working inside the system to try and change it may do nothing to make things better, but it cannot, by it's very definition, make things worse. Siding with a lunatic who's basically driven by a lovers' spat? One who is willing to intentionally lead ghouls to kill people so they can "rescue" the survivors? One who will sacrifice countless innocents JUST so he can depose his former friend, regardless of the fact that it will enable Hamidon to then destroy the only remaining safe city in the world?

That makes things worse, and it's cowardly.

Entertaining how you ADHD'd out and weren't able to respond with any substance to anything I said. It doesn't do anything to disprove the point about immaturity.

The body-count for enslaving the entire multiverse would be pretty high

There are people surviving outside Praetoria City

There wasn't anything of substance to respond to - just more of the usual stiff-armer nonsense from the "Heil Cole" stormtroopers

Just like planning to enslave the multiverse and exterminate all superpowered people - even if he doesn't get it done

A smart guy once said it's our choices that determine who we are.

I'd recommend the guy in your example get professional help, but whatever his internal monologue, he resisted temptation and walked away. I don't damn people for things they didn't do.

Scott absolutely makes the choice to bomb the hospital, as shown by the fact that you can defuse the bombs around the building as part of the Loyalist arc. He can't be written off as someone who "resisted temptation".

A man deciding not to murder the person he was planning to kill because his plot was uncovered does not make him any less a criminal.

Not to keep beating on the "Bizzarro Goatee Evil" thing but I just had an epiphany about a pretty obvious thing.

A big part of the issue is that Praetoria isn't just "What if Statesman was an even bigger jerk?" Rather it's "What if Statesman was a bigger jerk AND Sister Psyche decided to have an army of psychic slaves AND Positron made an evil robot army AND Synapse decided he needed an evil robot army too AND Manticore... umm.. decided to train people to be evil AND Valkyrie... uhh.. well, she decided to be evil too AND Mynx... erm... was even more obnoxious about the catgirl thing except, you know, evil AND Luminary..." etc etc etc

You could potentially try to create an alternate world in which Statesman, poor Statesman, loses his grip on humanity and have it not be a blanket "mirror world". Praetoria isn't that place. It's a place where every hero decided "Yeah, sure, let's do all sorts of screwed up stuff" and none of them said "Hey, I'm basically a good person and this Cole guy is messed up in the head. I'm not joining him, are you insane?" Rather, everyone is just issued an evil goatee and told to get to work in Bizzarro World.