Narrative Complaint
- Thread starter Sparks
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Stats are an abstract system, having 100% of a stat just means you're as good as you can get in that stat for your level.
I've dealt with players in AD&D that just can't believe that the NPC's I've sent after them are higher in level and/or better than them in their own professions.
I'm sure it's the consistency that's the problem, not just people too lazy to figure out mechanics or too prideful to turn on Easy Mode even though they keep insisting that it's "just a Porn game".
tl;dr Let's just ignore the meta of story hooks and instead complain about the story hook itself and ignore the content behind it
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I was going to reply to this, but reading some of the comments, all I can say is
i apologize unreservedly in this case as it has been a while since i've actually played, i think i attributed her to you because of a few things (mostly she reminds me of mirrin)
This is because in the end, the shaky narrative is almost a non-issue. Of all the people that complain about this, you seem to be the only person on the blog posts and forums that seem to approach this in a respectful, sane and logical manner. In fact, you always bring up good points. Everyone else just rages and makes edgy comments. It's approaching levels comparable to people complaining about all the futa content.
Getting knocked out by Akane's ninja a problem? Oh he was using a high-tech self-guided knockout dart and it was locked onto you like Roz does on Zheng Shi.
Mad about Shizuya barging onto your ship with no combat? Okay cool you win the fight, they all go running back to their ship crying with their tails between their legs. Then they proceed to blast you and your ship into space dust because you're riding around in a piece of shit civilian space craft while they have military-grade weapons on theirs.
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that's if we even get that far, who knows maybe the biggest ship we'll be able to get as an independent would be a light cruiser, because i doubt we'll ever have a harem big enough to justify a capital ship. even still we're ambushed and they ambushed us with a ship able to penetrate dreadnaut armor then even if we did have a capital ship we'd still loose. just like the millenium falcon vs a star destroyer we may have them out gunned but they'd get the first shot and then use superior mobility to win.
Now that I really think about it maybe my biggest issue with Akane and her content is that I'm just Wrong Genre Savy.
Going through the intro to Akane, I went in playing as if it were an RPG.
With each encounter I gained more info and managed to shove more of my foot up their collective asses with each fight. So when I finally get contacted by what's clearly the Head of these space ninjas, my immediate assumption is that it'll be one of three things
- This is the final showdown and I finally get a satisfying fight/conclusion.
- There's secretly some altruistic(or at least honorable) purpose that Steele will be informed of.
- Steele has managed to gain some form of respect from the person in charge. "Here's a cool sword, now stop the hero act before we kill you."
The actual super mega prize for finally getting to Akane?
Lose Money, Get Your Ass Beat, Fuckin Die, or Prepare To Wholly Embrace The M in BDSM.
I have no issue with being bested, I'm just disappointed when my rewards feel(read are) more like punishments.
Sarcasm aside I'm sure people are into this sort of thing, it's just not for me.
Fair enough. I would have expected similar had I not read some of the doc beforehand (I never read the entire doc) but wound up getting a love story, you just have to get past the pain play.
That Akane good ending...
"Get past" the painplay? That's the good part! I just wish we showed up willingly.Fair enough. I would have expected similar had I not read some of the doc beforehand (I never read the entire doc) but wound up getting a love story, you just have to get past the pain play.
That Akane good ending...
You can have all the muscles and still get dropped in a single hit to the right place. Plus Steele is wet behind the ears no matter how you want to think of them; this is a teenager taking their first step into the wider world. You're not unstoppable just because you fought off some pirates on Tarkus and felt like you were unstoppable; there's nasty stuff out there that can and should be able to catch you with your pants down.
Put down the power fantasy for a minute.
Put down the power fantasy for a minute.
The gist of the problem isn't that Steele can lose (that's perfectly acceptable, be it via ingame mechanics or in a scene), it's the way it plays out and the payoff.
With Akane, unless you're really into her gimmick, none of the outcomes reward the player (as themselves, not the character) for tackling the challenge. With Shizuya, the player doesn't get punished (and even gets the chance to make new friends) and if you decide to spar with Shizuya at the end, there's an actual, tangible reward in pure gameplay terms.
Getting slapped with twenty different ways to lose an outcome regardless of how the fight went mechanically understandably leaves a bitter taste in people's mouths. Sure, big RPGs also have fights you can't win, but they'll either make it short (so it's not incredibly insulting), signpost it (so you can approach it with the right mindset) or, at the very least, don't punish you for it because you had no way of knowing what the outcome would be. On top of that, most of those bosses serve as walls to be outgrown or narrative foils in the main plot, no matter if it's a stealth fantasy, a power fantasy or a particularly aggravating individual in a game that leans heavily on its character interactions.
However, I'm glad it's not mandatory/main plot content. It being optional makes it less of a problem in the grand scheme of things (though at least subbing to Sera is fully voluntary. Makes it more fun in my book, too.)
The point is not to confuse 'my numbers are SO high and I've got SO many muscles' with narrative invincibility. Some people have already pointed out that even in those situations if you'd been allowed to fight you'd have been clobbered because those characters have way better equipment, way more experience, hit you with an ambush and on and on.
Even in the most video gamey parts of the story -you're- the one making the surprise attack, you're largely fighting one on one (in group fights you usually have a partner) and presumably you brought the right equipment for that battle. Assuming other characters can't do the same to you is just whining that the PC should be immune to situations where they're at a disadvantage or don't have much of any means to fight back.
Even in the most video gamey parts of the story -you're- the one making the surprise attack, you're largely fighting one on one (in group fights you usually have a partner) and presumably you brought the right equipment for that battle. Assuming other characters can't do the same to you is just whining that the PC should be immune to situations where they're at a disadvantage or don't have much of any means to fight back.
Yeah, it's not about not wanting to lose, it's that I win the fight easily, and still just get fucked.
Side note: it's hilarious when you destroy a fight in like 10 seconds and then the NPC walks off all cocky as fuck. Like, what are you even talking about Kai Leng?
Side note: it's hilarious when you destroy a fight in like 10 seconds and then the NPC walks off all cocky as fuck. Like, what are you even talking about Kai Leng?
You can still convey that with a mechanical fight that is purposefully stacked against you and not fuck the player over narratively without so much as a courtesy signpost. Accepting a mechanical loss and thus the outcome of the fight as per in-universe rules is easier on the player and doesn't break immersion as much as crushing a mechanical battle and then getting punished for winning an encounter that was winnable.
It's, again, less an argument about power fantasy and more about how a loss is delivered. An actual power fantasy would deliver a scripted loss like DMC 3 did, for instance: You win the mechanical battle, lose the story battle but you don't get slapped with a choice between pest and pox. Instead, the PC gains the means to level the playing field and try again (at a later point in the story) so it serves both narrative progression and a new gameplay tool to experiment with in one fell swoop.
What I'm saying is: By all means, put Steele in a disadvantageous situation, but think about how you do it. If you implement a mechanical battle, tie its desired outcome into the narrative so it doesn't break immersion. Bonus points if your PC gets something out of it for later (like a change in perspective or a new tool to experiment with and grow from the experience).
I'm not advocating for player immunity, that would be ridiculous. All I'm advocating for is encounters that, if they have a net negative outcome, feel like a genuine loss without being several flavors of punch to the face for the player.
Mechanical fights mean nothing, there are more complaints about combat difficulty than there are about lack of player agency. Adding a stacked fight just means even more complaints.
That's more a problem with/for the players that complain about mechanical difficulty on its own though, yeah? Makes trying to come up with a way that makes even mandatory losses more enjoyable kinda pointless though.
Yeah, if there's an unfair fight then people will be complaining that they can't win it and trying to find ways to game it. Putting in a fight, even an unwinnable one, dangles the possibility that you can win. There's absolutely nothing immersion breaking about a situation where an NPC puts one over on Steele Jr and gutpuches to the player's sense of invulnerability can just work just fine in content that's meant to show a cocky little rich kid that they're not the worst thing roaming around out there.
That would imply Steele has an attitude and personality to justify such a gutpunch. A Hard Steele probably deserves to be taken down a peg, mischievous ones are debatable at best and for the sweethearts of the galaxy, depending on what happens, it's undue punishment. Especially considering most scenes don't let Steele revel in their upper class status, which is likely what Victor intended to accomplish with not handing the company over right away.
I might be overthinking/overanalyzing this, but then again, I'm also not the type of player who enjoys to see someone get punished just because. Nor am I a masochist. So I still hold that you can shatter a player's sense of invulnerability without pulling an Akane.
Not necessarily, especially if it's done right. Take Kara's story 'The silence' two unwinnable fights, narrative backs up the mechanics, and when you do finally lose both you're not entirely upset as it's part of the action and not the climactic moments of the story, which keeps you from dwelling on it too long.
i've already pointed out my problems with how the whole host shukuchi quest was handled, and how i would've handled it, but to clarify i'll make a more concise and better worded argument here as people keep going back and forth over power fantasy/mechanics/narrative.
You give me a logical reason why steele would lose and i'll applaud you, like i've done with shizuya, but if you make it to where a player controlled character starts acting like an inept npc you're gonna hear me, and many others bitch. It's not mechanics and it's not that losing can't fit into the narrative, it's the fact that it was written poorly. Between the abuse of a piece of 'mcguffin' tech, and out of character behavior you lose the suspension of disbelief. It's not only just the loss of the suspension of disbelief though, at the end of this 'Quest' you, who has shown and reciprocated honor and came willingly to what was an obvious trap, gets nothing but punishment. The choices are, Be murdered, Get seven shades of shit beaten out of you, Get seven shades of shit beaten out of your bank account, or Submit to sexual abuse at the hands of a stranger holding you hostage. None of those options are really appealing unless you already knew who akane was and you were into her content before you got to this point in the quest.
I've already pointed out how to fix the narrative to be believable, and not have the end result be a swift kick to the balls, without watering down the authors creative license, above. As i said there though it's already written i doubt it'll be changed and i have no ill feelings to the author for it because this is their only content that i haven't really liked.
I actually mostly made this about Akane. The only part of Shizuya that bothered me was that I use a chainlaser and diving for it and shooting suppressing fire wouldn't have been very difficult, but I realize that's too minute so I have no real problem with Shizuya.
Thank you for putting it better than I would have made the effort to.
Whatever their personality Steele Jr. treats the galaxy like their personal playpen and doesn't generally act with a sense that their actions have any consequences, that they're in any real danger. This is in stark contrast to many of the characters they meet who're in crippling debt or otherwise in way over their heads in some sinkhole of a situation that's designed to legally screw them. Steele's default response to these is "why not just buy your way out of it? Here's some money, my daddy is giving me tons of it for playing scavenger hunt."
That's being a spoiled rich kid. The Akane content seems aimed specifically at Steele's sense that their adventures are consequence-free and every situation will have a way out of it that'll lead to fun and profit. It's running into the wrong person and getting screwed over and/or humiliated with no two ways about it. Complaining that it's not fair is missing the point of it, I think.
The difference between the Silence and the main game is that the Silence fosters a sense of vulnerability from the get-go. There -isn't- a way to game the tough encounters; what you start with is what you've got. In the main game you can level up, change your equipment, train your stats, different strategies to try. It's designed with a sense that if something's too tough then you're just not approaching it the right way. And there -are- so many options that it's tougher to make the fight itself unwinnable without jacking up the enemies to the point where it'd be over in a single turn - and if you're doing that what's the point? You might as well read the scripted sequence.
While the narrative power of a character that subverts the common thread of the game being about a playboy/girl heir(ess) to be treating the universe like their personal playground because they were born with an entire silverware-manufacturing corporation in their mouth is interesting and powerful and all the other literary talk I really should care more about and take more seriously. It's really something that feels out of place for a side character. This is like the "The Pitt" dlc for Fo3 in which you can roll up in power armor and a minigun to free some slaves and you just get beaten and enslaved by some rando raiders with literal sticks. Granted that putting it in the main plot probably just would have been like the MQ for Fo3 in which you just get super-flashbanged by the Enclave and captured for like a minute, but the point is that cutscene incompetence is something people tend to complain about.
I love Akane and think she's a fun character, but getting to her content is something that I already spent too much time complaining about when she was getting written.
I love Akane and think she's a fun character, but getting to her content is something that I already spent too much time complaining about when she was getting written.
In this instance you're trawling around the galaxy in your space sedan thinking you're a total badass and run into someone with the resources to fight a small war. People say it's immersion-breaking but get it backwards. It's a chance encounter reality check that illustrates some of the dangers you're hearing about here and there but haven't really run into yourself.
Think of it like getting mugged on your foreign vacation and realizing for a moment that you live in a bubble.
Think of it like getting mugged on your foreign vacation and realizing for a moment that you live in a bubble.
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