Can we get choices that really matter and have a effect?

[Bright-Flower]

I made this to make a point that choice is to open up to all view points not one of basic morality...

Just because society or 1000s or even millions or billions of people might agree with the moral choices not everyone does and thats why I made this because i believe choices satisfy everyone and not enforce a singler morality belive. Yes the ones I made examples of I truely believe are morality right and has done nothing wrong thats my opinion. If you don't like that you can shove it but thats my true opinion it has nothign to do with age or whatever other nonsense its my own experience and emotion that makes me side with those characters I don't put the opinions to be called names and what other else nonsense I was trying to make a serious point of choices never cause harm to the story in the fact it helps it...

But I'm done I'm just done I'm so tired of self rightous jerks casting judgement on a opinion because the masses can't understand it. I'll just write my own story and one day learn to make a private server that I can put a real in depth story that doesn't force their morality on others.

I have been nothing but nice,kind respectfull even when stating my opinions and views on examples of characters this is why i hate socializing with people can't share any thing or example without dealing with bs.. but sure i'm the w/e you want to call me because I don't submit to the masses view point and morality scale.

I'm done sharing my opinions and views or even socializing with people I'll just write my characters story and share it and throw out all the lore that my character views has incorrect and wrong like Emet-set and make my own story with my character and turn it into whatever you call it fanfiction or whatever. I'm done with this topic hate me or not idc everyone does anyways whenever I try to seriousely make a point or share my morality and view points.

It's not a matter of morality. These huge branching story options you want are not technically feasible for this game's writing style and story. The kind of choices you want would need a game built and designed from the ground up to support them. You're trying to make FFXIV into something fundamentally different from what it is. Into something it never was and never will be.

[SieyaM]

I just feel that if they are going to make us ride the rail and not deviate at all from the story, then just write dialogue for us. The options don't mean much of anything and they usually come down to one real response and some joke ones. If they wanted us to try to decide on what kind of character we are we need more options and more variety in those options. Right now it just seems like some half hearted attempt to give us input in the story that doesn't amount to anything.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I just feel that if they are going to make us ride the rail and not deviate at all from the story, then just write dialogue for us. The options don't mean much of anything and they usually come down to one real response and some joke ones. If they wanted us to try to decide on what kind of character we are we need more options and more variety in those options. Right now it just seems like some half hearted attempt to give us input in the story that doesn't amount to anything.

Its more letting you give your character a bit of personality, not making meaningful choices.


People complained their character was silent and just nodded their heads.

[SieyaM]

Its more letting you give your character a bit of personality, not making meaningful choices.


People complained their character was silent and just nodded their heads.

Except its not really, there is clearly one choice you are supposed to make and the others are just jokes or the mildest form of snark possible, and they are completely forgotten once you choose them. They never change the way the others think of your character or the way they interact with your character.

[Iscah]

As I've said before, text inputs are often just to give your character a specific line of dialogue instead of just nodding or mime-speaking.

[Packetdancer]

It is possible, just not with FF14's way of story telling. It's too rigid. You can have a more sandbox MMO where the player has more agency and creates their own role in the world. That's honestly what I expect from MMO story telling, but it's not what SE wants from FF14.

Alright, let me rephase: having a story-heavy game that branches in major elements is impractical as an MMO. Yes, you can have minor branching bits provided—as you call out—they don't alter the endpoint or the overall story arc that much. But if the differences do not actually matter—if you always end up at the same endpoint at the end of the expansion, regardless of your choices—then I don't feel the story actually branches. Branches continue on their own path.

Let's say you chase the Garleans out of an area, and then you go into a town that's been utterly trashed. There's two NPCs who are both looked to as leaders, but they have different ideas on how to rebuild the town, and turn to you to break the tie. One wants to wants to use abandoned Garlean magitek armor to move construction materials, and to salvage the materials from the now-abandoned Castrum nearby, because it will be the most expedient way. The other argues that people saw too many of their fellow villagers die at Garlean hands, and bringing magitek into the town and rebuilding everything out of salvaged Garlean steel and cermet would just be rubbing salt in the wounds.

If you choose the first one, it opens up quests where you go into the Castrum and collect materials, hijack magitek armor, etc. If you choose the second, it opens up quests where you go help get local materials, help rebuild the buildings in the style they were before the attack, etc. At the end, the look of the village and the incidental dialogue from NPCs could be different; in one case you have a village built of metal, and in the other more familiar Eorzean designs. But in the end, the village is rebuilt either way, and when you leave the village and move on, it never comes up again in the story.

That's technologically feasible, sure. Easily done. And if your entire MMO is just collections of questlines like that and no overarching epic that actually significantly alters the world state, yes, you can make it feel like it's branching because that's the entirety of the content. But you don't have an actual branching story at that point, just a bunch of little self-contained decision trees. And if there is an overarching storyline, all those self-contained little decision trees will be largely divorced from it; the choices made in them might affect incidental dialogue in the main storyline, but little more.

But that's not what this thread was about: the title is explicitly 'choices that really matter and have an effect', with the implication that the choices/effects should be in the main story. And the examples given were choices where on one branch basically the known world is destroyed, and on the other branch you save it. On one branch, you continue to interact with all the NPCs you've met previously, you can go back to the starting cities, etc. On the other, you cannot go back to those starting cities because they are flaming rubble—"There'll be nothing left of you but a SMOKING CRATER!", to quote a certain red mage NPC—and at least two other quest hubs would have been erased from existence entirely. I cannot see any reasonable way you can make those two options co-exist within a single game.

In a pure sandbox where each zone has its own self-contained story and never has you backtrack to previous zones or encounter the same NPCs again later, sure, it doesn't really matter if that quest hub behind you was nuked or not; you're not going back there, and the story just moves onwards with no lasting effect on the next zone. But you cannot have those two branches exist simultaneously in a story-driven MMO; after that point of divergence, you are writing two entirely separate stories, at which point you are making two entirely separate games. And if you have choices, plural, of that magnitude then the problem only compounds over time.

I mean, we can argue in circles over whether or not you can handle a fork of that magnitude in sandbox games—or really, if there'd even be the opportunity to make such a choice in a story-light sandbox—but this thread was specifically someone wanting the ability to make decisions of that magnitude, in this game.

I'd love to be proven wrong in this; a story-heavy MMO which supports multiple major mutually-incompatible decision points—including the entire destruction of major quest hubs—would be fascinating to observe. But I am firmly convinced that 'story-heavy' and 'major world-altering choices' are not features which mix well inside the beaker labeled 'MMO', where the narrative has to carry forward indefinitely expansion after expansion.

SquareEnix wants FFXIV to be a story-driven game; that decision opens up possibilities, but it closes off others. The ability to make branching choices which fundamentally alter game state is—so far as I can see—one of those that gets closed off.

[lolicon09]

That would be like the equivalent of a Miqo'te slaughtering all the other races simply because their different and that Miqo'te stood to benefit from their demise. It's obviously immoral.

It won't, since all the playable races in this game are labelled as humans

[PyurBlue]

Alright, let me rephase: having a story-heavy game that branches in major elements is impractical as an MMO.

I don't really agree with that. It's not FF14 being story heavy that makes branching impractical. It's that FF14 has a very particular story, the one SE wants to tell. The hypothetical sandbox MMO I mentioned could be just as story heavy but the story would evolve in a different way. It would be built upon the player's actions instead of restricting the player's actions. In all honesty it would be more difficult to do but far from impossible. I also want to very clearly point out that what is feasible for MMO's in general is different from what's feasible in FF14. Not everything I say can be applied to FF14 because it's not designed to have a branching story.

Yes, you can have minor branching bits provided—as you call out—they don't alter the endpoint or the overall story arc that much. But if the differences do not actually matter—if you always end up at the same endpoint at the end of the expansion, regardless of your choices—then I don't feel the story actually branches. Branches continue on their own path.

This is why I'd like less rigid story in a MMO, but FF14 was not designed this way so I wouldn't expect major branching from it.

Let's say you chase the Garleans out of an area, and then you go into a town that's been utterly trashed. There's two NPCs who are both looked to as leaders, but they have different ideas on how to rebuild the town, and turn to you to break the tie. One wants to wants to use abandoned Garlean magitek armor to move construction materials, and to salvage the materials from the now-abandoned Castrum nearby, because it will be the most expedient way. The other argues that people saw too many of their fellow villagers die at Garlean hands, and bringing magitek into the town and rebuilding everything out of salvaged Garlean steel and cermet would just be rubbing salt in the wounds.

If you choose the first one, it opens up quests where you go into the Castrum and collect materials, hijack magitek armor, etc. If you choose the second, it opens up quests where you go help get local materials, help rebuild the buildings in the style they were before the attack, etc. At the end, the look of the village and the incidental dialogue from NPCs could be different; in one case you have a village built of metal, and in the other more familiar Eorzean designs. But in the end, the village is rebuilt either way, and when you leave the village and move on, it never comes up again in the story.

Why would the village never come up again? FF14 has actually managed to reference past events. This example doesn't seem all that different from the CT references in Shadowbringers. What you did in the past doesn't change how the story ends, but it can have a lasting effect on how NPC's interact with you.

That's technologically feasible, sure. Easily done. And if your entire MMO is just collections of questlines like that and no overarching epic that actually significantly alters the world state, yes, you can make it feel like it's branching because that's the entirety of the content. But you don't have an actual branching story at that point, just a bunch of little self-contained decision trees. And if there is an overarching storyline, all those self-contained little decision trees will be largely divorced from it; the choices made in them might affect incidental dialogue in the main storyline, but little more.

Moving away from FF14, a sandbox doesn't need to be a collection of unrelated quests. Everything you do could potentially have consequences that will change your experience everywhere in the game world. Say in the beginning there are two cities that don't like each other, the player could have the choice to side with one or the other. The result could be being barred from entering the city you chose to side against. Some time later, one of the cities might contain an item of importance that you need for whatever reason. If it's the city that's friendly to you, the item could be easy to obtain. If it's the hostile city then you might end up having to battle for the item.

But that's not what this thread was about: the title is explicitly 'choices that really matter and have an effect', with the implication that the choices/effects should be in the main story. And the examples given were choices where on one branch basically the known world is destroyed, and on the other branch you save it. On one branch, you continue to interact with all the NPCs you've met previously, you can go back to the starting cities, etc. On the other, you cannot go back to those starting cities because they are flaming rubble—"There'll be nothing left of you but a SMOKING CRATER!", to quote a certain red mage NPC—and at least two other quest hubs would have been erased from existence entirely. I cannot see any reasonable way you can make those two options co-exist within a single game.

Making a choice matter doesn't have to involve the destruction of the entire world. So the central example discussed in this thread might not be feasible, but that doesn't make the entire idea of player choice unfeasible. Trying to find a neat and tidy way to branch the entirety of FF14 is kind of difficult because like I said before, the game was never intended to work that way. However I think you can have a meaningful impact on the story without a total divergence in the plot. Deciding on how things are done (build a giant golem to climb a mountain, or use magitek drones to fight your way to the top - the decision was made for us, but it didn't have to be) and who accompanies you are pretty significant.

In a pure sandbox where each zone has its own self-contained story and never has you backtrack to previous zones or encounter the same NPCs again later, sure, it doesn't really matter if that quest hub behind you was nuked or not; you're not going back there, and the story just moves onwards with no lasting effect on the next zone. But you cannot have those two branches exist simultaneously in a story-driven MMO; after that point of divergence, you are writing two entirely separate stories, at which point you are making two entirely separate games. And if you have choices, plural, of that magnitude then the problem only compounds over time.

I still don't see the need for isolated stories to give the player the ability to choose. The branching is only a problem if your story isn't built for it from the beginning (ie FF14). If you accommodate for player choices, they are much easier to handle. One of the most important things to do is to limit what kind of events and how many the player can influence. Destroying the world doesn't have to be one of them. Destroying a particular city sounds easier to work with. This will lead to a major plot split after it occurs, but it does not have to cause such a divergence that the stories afterward are completely unrelated. For example imagine after the player chooses to destroy/save the city a previously unknown army invades the general world that the player lives in. Something akin to Garlemald attacking Eorzea. The army is a threat to the city in question (if it still stands) and all nearby cities and their invasion would happen no matter what choice was made. The influence of the player's choice could be the difficulty of fighting the invasion. Perhaps if the destructible city survived it would mean the forces on the player's side have a large army and thus an easier time defending against the invaders. This could be made evident through all related content by increasing the number of friendly NPC's that fight along side the player. NPC opinion on the player for saving/destroying the city can also be influence from that point on, even expansions later. "Good" NPC's could be hesitant in siding with players willing to destroy a city.

There is also the option to have one story for all players, but to have the sum of all player actions dictate the direction the story takes. So for example, each player can somehow vote to save or destroy the city (it could be a simple literal vote, or it could be that they play in an instance where they side with or against the city) and the majority decision determines where the story goes. This removes the need to manage branches of any kind but the developers wouldn't be able to plan as far ahead in designing the game. It also reduces the individual influence of players, but doesn't leave them completely without agency.

I mean, we can argue in circles over whether or not you can handle a fork of that magnitude in sandbox games—or really, if there'd even be the opportunity to make such a choice in a story-light sandbox—but this thread was specifically someone wanting the ability to make decisions of that magnitude, in this game.

I'd love to be proven wrong in this; a story-heavy MMO which supports multiple major mutually-incompatible decision points—including the entire destruction of major quest hubs—would be fascinating to observe. But I am firmly convinced that 'story-heavy' and 'major world-altering choices' are not features which mix well inside the beaker labeled 'MMO', where the narrative has to carry forward indefinitely expansion after expansion.

SquareEnix wants FFXIV to be a story-driven game; that decision opens up possibilities, but it closes off others. The ability to make branching choices which fundamentally alter game state is—so far as I can see—one of those that gets closed off.

We can limit the discussion to FF14 although the post of yours that I quoted originally didn't specify FF14, but MMO's in general. I still don't agree that you need a story-light game to have player choice. You can have as heavy a story as you want, you just need to include the player's agency in that story. SE already has a story in mind and they intend for us to follow it on rails. That's not good or bad and it's up to players to decide if they like it or not.

[linay]

You are thinking of normative moral relativism a more specific, more narrow flavour, based on the assumption that no side is ever objectively wrong, thus everyone should try and dance around each other. By default moral relativism is just acknowledgment, that your morality is not absolute. Right and wrong are very subjective terms, and only apply to the specific subset of people you share your morality with. Doesn't mean you shouldn't shiv the MF thats doing your homies disjustice, or that you should in any way compromise the values you hold.

Its about knowing and admitting, that what you are doing is your decision, based on your own will and values, and other people can, and will oppose you for it. And them doing so, doesn't make them objectively wrong or evil. Its just two different wills / perspectives clashing. How such conflicts are then resolved (discussion, combat, avoidance) is mostly irrelevant to the philosophy.

Moral relativism doesn't excuse or forgive anyone of anything. You own your actions, and the consequences that follow.

If that's what you mean, then I don't think it makes any difference. I think it's plain to see whether or not there are differing moral beliefs/values, otherwise there would be no conflict in the first place. Simply acknowledging that does nothing unless it impacts your action.

I don't think we're quite in disagreement on the morality part (even if our perspectives seem to be different). My issue is with the choice of words. Slapping someone with the "evil" descriptor is akin to using the word "heretic" non-ironically. Its a one word way to shoehorn someone into a narrow, antagonistic role because they don't match your world views. Its alienating, dehumanizing, and dismissive... basically the opposite of what the writers are trying to do with their villains in the game lately. People throw it around way too freely, both related to the story and real world scenarios.

I'm not sure why those terms would be a problem for you.

Again, defining good and evil is the basis of morality. If there is no moral evil, then there is no moral good and you're left with what you want and don't want to do, rather than what you should and should not do.

Heretic has a religious connotation, but it's basically in contrast to an established belief system/teaching.

There is nothing dehumanizing about either term because they are used to describe humans (moral beings). People don't tend to describe an animal as being evil even if it may do things that would be considered evil if a human were to do it.

In terms of alienating/dismissive, that has to do with the moral worldview. If someone fits the label of evil according to a moral worldview, then it's not so much being dismissed but rather that person has been examined by that moral worldview, which may result in alienation if that is what that worldview prescribes.

[Edax]

It won't, since all the playable races in this game are labelled as humans

That's the game's label. All it would take is a Miqo'te labeling all the other races non-human or sub-human to justify their demise. Emet attached labels such as "not alive" to the living so he could justify killing them.