Weekly Poll 3/18/19 - Alternatives to Murder

[Sardukhar]

Well, in light of the popularity of the non-murder-hobo option in the Boss Fights poll, let's explore Some Ways to Succeed Other Than Killing.

MOST of you, I would venture to guess, have never even -considered- murder as a way to gain XP and level up in life. That is because despite what entertainment tells us, the vast number of obstacles in life do not involve large cyborged gang members trying to add us to their Cup-Of-The-Month collection.

Now, it's understood that a lot of Cyberpunk is violent and so, violence is a necessary response sometimes. Yes! But perhaps their are other options as well. Let us explore some!

I expect this to be a two-parter, as we go into what you'd like to see and then how you'd like it implemented.

Up to THREE choices!

Other Polls Found Here: https://forums.cdprojektred.com/index.php?threads/collected-weekly-polls-thread.10984601/

 

[Draconifors]

3 and 9. I'm fine with murder, or lying, or stealing, or anything really.

I do like to have fun, and in my not-that-notable experience there is always a way to have fun regardless of the situation.

 

[SigilFey]

6, 7, and 8. Kind of like the original Fallout, I'd love there to be a non-violent pathway through the game, but I also think it should be very, very hard to pull it off.

Aside from that, I think that past choices should affect the plot. I might be able to manipulate a non-violent solution sometimes, but certain choices will leave me with no choice later on.

(Of course, these should be options. If I decide to take the violent route...the blood will be everywhere. )

 

[Charles83]

I prefer the Doom option, leave it at that, its fun.

 

[Sild]

2 and 6

Ok so 2 is pretty obvious because if i build my character less combat-oriented and more on social/hacking and whatever other options CDPR might indulge us with, non-lethal means of conflict resolving should be a valid option at least more often than not. Or focus on solo tree and murderize everyone in style, that works too. Options!

6, because of plot consistency and translate-ability throughout the game and main/side-quests.
I spared a gang member in an earlier mission? Maybe i get a free pass in a joint owned by them. Things like that.

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

2, but it really depends on the game, the situation and the character I'm role-playing.

I.e. in RDR2 I tried to talk first and beat the shit out of everyone without killing unless necessary or particularly annoyed by the NPC. Except for

Spoiler: minor spoiler about a faction

those wild men you have from chapter 6 (?) on, those creepy fuckers must die.

 

[Suhiira]

6

 

[Snowflakez]

In order of preference, 5, 6, or 7.

No matter what, I want the non-lethal path to be more challenging, more time consuming, and require more exploration to pull off.

However, I want it to be just as rewarding as taking the violent path (if not more so).

Some random examples, since you hinted at discussing our specific thoughts in a future post:

• Non-lethal takedowns in areas where a full-stealth run is possible. Bypass enemies through patience, patrol route memorization, hacking or engineering, and the occasional (or constant, if you need that skull bashin' action) takedown.
• Side note: non-lethal weaponry to aid in the above, or to provide an alternative if stealth is not possible. Sleep darts if somebody isn't fully borged-up, remote knockout hacks, distraction gadgets, sleeping gas grenades. Stun guns.
• The game should recognize your body count in some way. One of my issues with the newer Deus Ex games is that, despite never killing a single person, certain NPCs still acted like I did. It was bizarre and frustrating.
• When stealth isn't the ideal way to solve an encounter non-lethally, often give players the option to spare somebody, or a group of somebodies. If there are negative consequences (They shouldn't always be negative, by the way - that's not fun, and it comes across as punishment), so be it. Chaotic Good.
• The Royce encounter lets you warn them that the chip is bugged, which allows you to keep your hands clean for that entire mission. They let you leave, and when you go back to Militech, Meredith is replaced by the guy she kidnapped earlier in the mission. I believe you and he are on good terms? Regardless, more stuff like that. Subtle choices that have a big impact on the way a quest plays out.

None of this is impossible for CDPR to do, and it's not taking the game into full-on Immersive Sim territory (a label I know CDPR is trying to avoid).

 

[KULLAPS]

ALTERNATIVES TO MURDER
i like non-violent options when it comes to a charater i know i can't just take down with just a gun, sometimes Non-Violent can be worse then death, say like a top teir gang member that you know is a very high level character [???], you know you can't take him/her head on you have to learn everything you can before you make your first move, weather you choose o humilate them or make them fear your as you slowly destroy them in the most non-violent way.
i'm taking ideas from other games here i played Dishonored alot i like to be able to never be seen by anyone and say look for something that can destroy them with out laying a hand on them.

 

[Snowflakez]

ALTERNATIVES TO MURDER
i like non-violent options when it comes to a charater i know i can't just take down with just a gun, sometimes Non-Violent can be worse then death, say like a top teir gang member that you know is a very high level character [???], you know you can't take him/her head on you have to learn everything you can before you make your first move, weather you choose o humilate them or make them fear your as you slowly destroy them in the most non-violent way.
i'm taking ideas from other games here i played Dishonored alot i like to be able to never be seen by anyone and say look for something that can destroy them with out laying a hand on them.

This is a good point.

While everything I said still stands, I'm also agreeing with this. Certain important characters (bosses, perhaps?) could be dealt with in precisely this way. The Dishonored example is perfect.

Find evidence of somebody's wrongdoings and bring it to your local Media contact, who can then publish it and kick up a fuss. If the public is too apathetic to care, maybe you bring the evidence to a rival corporation (Assuming the boss in question is some corpo overlord), or to an interested third party.

 

[Sild]

ALTERNATIVES TO MURDER
i like non-violent options when it comes to a charater i know i can't just take down with just a gun, sometimes Non-Violent can be worse then death, say like a top teir gang member that you know is a very high level character [???], you know you can't take him/her head on you have to learn everything you can before you make your first move, weather you choose o humilate them or make them fear your as you slowly destroy them in the most non-violent way.
i'm taking ideas from other games here i played Dishonored alot i like to be able to never be seen by anyone and say look for something that can destroy them with out laying a hand on them.

Yep, that's Immersive Sim at it's strongest!

I hope they go as much as possible in that direction, but that's just me.

 

[Snowflakez]

Yep, that's Immersive Sim at it's strongest!

I hope they go as much as possible in that direction, but that's just me.

And me!

That said, I don't want the RPG elements to be compromised either. However, in this case, I think they can be intertwined nicely. I think immersive sims are more compatible with RPG mechanics than pure first person shooters are.

 

[Sild]

And me!

That said, I don't want the RPG elements to be compromised either. However, in this case, I think they can be intertwined nicely. I think immersive sims are more compatible with RPG mechanics than pure first person shooters are.

Yep, they're basically a well thought out blend of both.

Here's a quite good breakdown of them as a whole.

Spoiler: off-topic?

1. Choices: It is designed from the ground up to provide the players vastly different ways of overcoming challenges and completing objectives — through non-linearity of environments, significant and gameplay-defining differences in character progression, or both.
2. Tools: It provides multitude of meaningful tools players can use, primarily through interactivity of the game world and advanced physics-based systems, that further personalize gameplay experience and self-expression.
3. Systems: It is designed to be an interplay of many complex systems, such as AI, physics, level design and more, which result in emergent and sometimes hardly predictable gameplay situations, and ensure that each playthrough is unique to an extent.
4. Focused Design: It usually puts players in believable, meticulously designed locations which make sense as actual places, rather than video game levels; it also puts great emphasis on production values and design aspects that matter for creating highly atmospheric, highly immersive experiences. By virtue of being “an inch wide and a mile deep”*, it constrains game spaces to relatively smaller areas, but full of rich simulation.
5. Message: It employs mature storytelling and conveys certain ideas and messages through advanced narrative mechanisms without limiting interaction and taking control from players, and sometimes leaves narrative and dramatical choices and consequences to players.

And the whole article if interested https://medium.com/@maximsamoylenko/five-pillars-of-immersive-sims-7263167e7258

Seems to lean in perfectly to Cyberpunk as a genre and consistent to what we know/saw of Cyberpunk 2077 for that matter (except the levels part..)

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

I hope they go as much as possible in that direction, but that's just me.

And me!

That said, I don't want the RPG elements to be compromised either. However, in this case, I think they can be intertwined nicely. I think immersive sims are more compatible with RPG mechanics than pure first person shooters are.

Same here! Immersive sim with choice and consequences and a character creation (deeper than deus ex HR, but still realistic)? Shut up and take my money!

Dying light 2, if techland delivers, guys...

I want the non-lethal path to be more challenging, more time consuming, and require more exploration to pull off.

However, I want it to be just as rewarding as taking the violent path (if not more so).

I don't agree, I've seen too many games rewarding you more if you go non-lethal. In this way the game is telling you how you should play, way too many games. The ideal solution IMHO would be to give you different rewards (even maluses!) in different situations, so that you never know which is the most rewarding path until you take it:
-You killed "guy1" instead of sparing him? His folks will come and track you down. You spared him? His gang will help you next time.
-you killed "guy2"? That's it, actually someone will come and thank you because guy2 was a pain in the ass. You spared him? He'll come back stronger than ever looking for revenge.

Same for loot/money at the end of the quest: sometimes non-lethal is better, sometimes a genocide is the most rewarding option.

It forces you to behave as you wish without caring about the reward. GTA 4 did that right.

 

[Mevik1023]

I'd say 2077's two biggest goals, standard stuff aside, are going to be:

1. Feeling like to can complete a quest with a variety of methods and outcomes

2. Feeling like your chosen methods/outcomes had an affect on Night City

Things like the quality of story or gameplay are a given. We of course want all that. But these two factors have the potential to separate 2077 from CDPR's own high standards. Witcher 3's choices were, compared to what's being advertised here, fewer and less important to the in-game world. Still the best damn game ever made if my vote counts for anything, but there's always room for improvement.

 

[Marquis_deShade]

I'm of the opinion that Murder should be the "easy" option.
It doesn't require much thought, and someone can murder-hobo their way through an area and be gone in 60 seconds with some loot and XP.

Alternatively, if murder is the "easy" option, I'd love to see more complex, less easy-button solutions that might not promise the obvious reward of bodies to loot, but, inevitably may garner more XP/loot and other rewards like the intangible reward of more quests associated with those NPCs you didn't kill to death with easy-button mashing; things that would be cut-off and inaccessible to the player if they did the murder thing.

Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 is, of course, a place rife with danger and violence, so, you might not always get to be a street-whisperer, and/or there's non-apparent skill checks like your street cred factoring in whether a certain talking solution gambit will work or not, and things go loud and hairy anyway, or stealth is genuinely, realistically quite difficult, requiring effort, patience, observation, and other factors, but, the rewards are generally greater, though, not always immediately and obviously so ... or, sometimes, the only solution is murder.

Options are good. Options are what can make a play-through memorable, and certainly more so than if one takes the Ritalin soaked 12yr old button-masher murder all the things approach to ... all the things.

 

[Snowflakez]

Same here! Immersive sim with choice and consequences and a character creation (deeper than deus ex HR, but still realistic)? Shut up and take my money!

Dying light 2, if techland delivers, guys...


I don't agree, I've seen too many games rewarding you more if you go non-lethal. In this way the game is telling you how you should play, way too many games. The ideal solution IMHO would be to give you different rewards (even maluses!) in different situations, so that you never know which is the most rewarding path until you take it:
-You killed "guy1" instead of sparing him? His folks will come and track you down. You spared him? His gang will help you next time.
-you killed "guy2"? That's it, actually someone will come and thank you because guy2 was a pain in the ass. You spared him? He'll come back stronger than ever looking for revenge.

Same for loot/money at the end of the quest: sometimes non-lethal is better, sometimes a genocide is the most rewarding option.

It forces you to behave as you wish without caring about the reward. GTA 4 did that right.

Fair enough. I'm not too attached to the "more rewarding" part.

I was more thinking rewards should make sense for the amount of effort the player exerts; whether the rewards are concrete (credits/equipment/vehicles) or obscure (allies, or simply the conclusion of a compelling side plot).

Rewards aside, I like non-lethal routes to be more difficult because it sort of disarms one of the main arguments guns-a-blazin' folks like to throw around, which is that we're wussies who just want the easy way out. Plus, I just like challenge, and morally it feels good to know I accomplished something tough without much collateral damage.

 

[Charles83]

In order of preference, 5, 6, or 7.

No matter what, I want the non-lethal path to be more challenging, more time consuming, and require more exploration to pull off.

However, I want it to be just as rewarding as taking the violent path (if not more so).

Some random examples, since you hinted at discussing our specific thoughts in a future post:

• Non-lethal takedowns in areas where a full-stealth run is possible. Bypass enemies through patience, patrol route memorization, hacking or engineering, and the occasional (or constant, if you need that skull bashin' action) takedown.
• Side note: non-lethal weaponry to aid in the above, or to provide an alternative if stealth is not possible. Sleep darts if somebody isn't fully borged-up, remote knockout hacks, distraction gadgets, sleeping gas grenades. Stun guns.
• The game should recognize your body count in some way. One of my issues with the newer Deus Ex games is that, despite never killing a single person, certain NPCs still acted like I did. It was bizarre and frustrating.
• When stealth isn't the ideal way to solve an encounter non-lethally, often give players the option to spare somebody, or a group of somebodies. If there are negative consequences (They shouldn't always be negative, by the way - that's not fun, and it comes across as punishment), so be it. Chaotic Good.
• The Royce encounter lets you warn them that the chip is bugged, which allows you to keep your hands clean for that entire mission. They let you leave, and when you go back to Militech, Meredith is replaced by the guy she kidnapped earlier in the mission. I believe you and he are on good terms? Regardless, more stuff like that. Subtle choices that have a big impact on the way a quest plays out.

None of this is impossible for CDPR to do, and it's not taking the game into full-on Immersive Sim territory (a label I know CDPR is trying to avoid).

I do not believe this is appropriate, Yeah maybe having non-lethal takedowns for characters that are obviously not suited for combat is good, but trying to shape the way you play I think is preposterous and I would hate it, giving more rewards for taking a non-lethal route, why? and it is taking a non-lethal route really more difficult than the direct confrontation? oh well I run around for an extra half hour do a couple puzzles and yay! bypass the enemy, while the person that decided to go for combat needed to manage his ammo, boost drugs, obviously use a lot of skills and move around the battlefield all for a lower reward.

I do not like where this is going and I hope CDPR do not take this thread that seriously, there is nothing wrong with non-lethal takedowns, but in dystopian societies some people deserve to die, I hope some of that come throught, "oh yeah you decided to leave this guy alive so he ended up becoming a mass murdering maniac and killing hundreds because the player did not put him down" this is the kind of thing i would expect from CDPR specially since some decisions in TW3 where of that intention and yeah i would expect that some people would despise the player because he didn't kill the maniac who ended up becoming a mass murderer, in other words that sometimes taking the non-lethal option would be the "bad choice" in some storylines.

 

[KakitaTatsumaru]

I wish there is social stats and be able to use them to talk my way through the game.
Don't know which poll choice it is, through, cause 5/6/7 might as weel be sneak and that's not what I meant, so I don't know which one to choose.

 

[Snowflakez]

snip

The whole point of this thread is player freedom, and that's something CDPR has been pushing for quite a while now. Regardless of whether or not some characters "deserve" to die in your eyes, others may feel differently. I'd classify myself as Chaotic Good player; at least in the Pathfinder (more specifically, Octavia from Kingmaker) sense of the term.

You have some obvious biases against non-lethal play, and that's fine, but I think it (understandably) colored your perception of what I actually said.

Yeah maybe having non-lethal takedowns for characters that are obviously not suited for combat is good, but trying to shape the way you play I think is preposterous and I would hate it, giving more rewards for taking a non-lethal route, why? and it is taking a non-lethal route really more difficult than the direct confrontation? oh well I run around for an extra half hour do a couple puzzles and yay! bypass the enemy, while the person that decided to go for combat needed to manage his ammo, boost drugs, obviously use a lot of skills and move around the battlefield all for a lower reward.

As I said to @Mybrokenenglish (who had similar objections to you), I'm not all that attached to the concept of more rewards for non-lethal play. That's why it was a small addendum to a much broader point. They can be about equal, or one playstyle could be favored over the other at certain points.

As for your point about "running around for an extra half hour doing puzzles," come on now. Yes, obviously combat has plenty of challenge to it, but it also tends to be objectively faster and more straightforward by its very nature. How can it not be?

Also by their nature, the non-lethal player will be spending more time observing enemies, looking for gaps in their rotations, digging through computer terminals to find alternate routes through an environment, and trying to avoid being detected at all. That usually takes longer.

This is not a criticism of your playstyle, please don't take it as such. Neither style is objectively better, it purely comes down to what you as an individual find more engaging and interesting. For me, it's the latter.

but in dystopian societies some people deserve to die

Obviously, I will be killing people in the game, this isn't Dishonored - it will be required at some points, I'm sure. And I probably won't feel bad about it, because this is a video game and I know the difference between reality and fantasy.

"oh yeah you decided to leave this guy alive so he ended up becoming a mass murdering maniac and killing hundreds because the player did not put him down"

If you re-read what I said, you'll notice that I'm completely fine with this. I don't care about the future consequences or social pressure, I'll do what my character (note, not me) feels is right. Chaotic Good!

However, I also don't want to be constantly punished for it just because the game wants to be edgy and show me that the world is "just such a nasty place." Fortunately, I'm not worried, because the WItcher 3 made you feel both bad and good for letting certain people live, so I'm sure it will be the same here.