Personality or Not?

[DocClox]

When ShiningRadiance first mentioned her intention to run a poll on the sandbox issue, I toild her that the game development process was not a democracy. And it's not. If you look around you'll find software development projects fall roughly into three categories:
 

• those with paid developers;
• those where the developers make the final decisions; and
• those with no developers at all

At the moment, this is a type 2 project.

That said, I've no wish to inflict my vision on people if the majority are dead set against it. So maybe we need another poll, this time on the "personality" controversy.

As most of you will know, I'm in favour of the first option. If it turns out that that's not what everybody wants, I'll probably stand down as a WM dev, pretty much immediately. I know that sounds a bit like "either I get my own way or I'm not playing any more". Probably it would seem better if I just allowed myself to quietly lose interest afterwards. But I want people to know where I stand, and why.

As  regards why, there are a two main factors. One is that a big part of my   motivation has been looking forward to all the cool events I'll write once it's all done. If I can't write those events, it gets damn hard to motivate myself. All the more so since everyone who isn't a dev will be able to write whatever mods they damn well please; I end up being only one who can't play with the shiny new toys I helped create. That's ... just depressing, really.

The second  reason is that even if I wanted to, I find it very hard to write in that style, at least where Crossgate is concerned. Everyone's creative   process works differently and I find my inspiration here starts by constructing the dialogue in my head. If I can't do that, the ideas just dry up.

And thirdly I'm fed up to the back teeth of having to endlessly justify every comma and semi-colon that I write. This blasted debate doesn't seem to want to go away, and if it's going to come to this, then I'd sooner it happened now rather than in six months time after I've done a shitload more work.

So let's see what people really want here. And then, I can either carry on where I left off. or else I'll leave you in the more than capable hands of my fellow devs, and see you all when Clonemaster is ready for an alpha release.

Either way, I'm looking forward to spending my time coding rather than playing at politics.

[Atrun]

I find it more fun to play with a well defined character.  Part of the reason that I play games is to get a brief escape from the real world, part of which is my own thoughts.  If I am defining my character completely the purpose of that is defeated and I might as well go outside.  By having a well defined character to play the role of I can set myself aside for a bit and completely relax.  As more choices are offered I can twist the character a bit, sure, but I'm playing that character as I want to at that moment, I'm not playing myself.

I'm all for a well defined MC and if people want to remove that later, isn't that why the devs are working to make the game fairly easy to mod?

[TF]

I had hoped for some middle ground. Something more than a faceless cutout doing your bidding, but not well-defined by any means, so that what you choose to have him do defines him more than anything else. I think that a certain modicum of harshness and disregard for others would be necessary, given the nature of the world he lives in, but I vote little else outside of actions people choose to take.

P.S. If I have sounded critical in the past, I hope I've made it clear that I was expressing my own opinion and was by no means at any time ungrateful for the work that's been done. Anything I say is meant to be taken as a suggestion in hopes of contributing, not to tear down the hard work that's been put in... except for the jokes and sarcasm, of course. ~_^

[DocClox]

I had hoped for some middle ground. Something more than a faceless cutout doing your bidding, but not well-defined by any means, so that what you choose to have him do defines him more than anything else.

That's what I think of as the psychology vs morality issue. I don't want to write anyone's morality (apart from as you say, an acknowledgement of the violent environment in which the MC needs to operate). On the other hand, if the MC's voice is to be consistent, we need clear guidelines. I see no way around this.

[Bluebeholder]

The problem I see with strong characterization in a game with as much cruelty potential as WM is making that character appropriate to the setting without being offensive.

[AnonymousSaurusRex]

A made an account just so i could throw my 2 cents in here.

I voted for option 1, as i think a defined character is a great idea, but only as long as morality of the character is left entirely up to the player.  Some people are going to want to play with an iron fist while others are going to want to play with a gentle hand.  As long as you think you can avoid polarizing the player's character one way or the other than i'd say the game will be better for it. 

If you don't think that can be done then i would say it would be better to go the other way, as going to gritty or gentle might clash with anything the players might write for themselves and take away from the customizable nature of this game.

-------------------

Something else that occurs to me though is that if you wanted to do some more morality specific events.  Couldn't you do that with Lua?  Like for example, you could set a event to only activate based on notoriety.

[TF]

Oh, and by the way, I'm for development head and shoulders above no development of the game far before any other issue is taken into account at all.

[Thought Crime]

I don't even understand why this issue is so problematic. It's been stated multiple times that the MC's dialog can be edited using Lua.

There is no reason that what Doc writes will be the only option players have. The game can be played using whoever, whatever personality you want.
If you wanted to put Master Roshi from Dragon Ball Z into the game as the MC (swap out the default MC profile pic drop in Master Roshi's pic.) and then change the dialog to match what he would say, you could do that.

If player's want a silent MC, then just make the necessary changes to Doc's initial script by writing in the 'absence' of dialog.

Perhaps the community here should just regard Doc's 'default MC' as a template for how the MC would interact within the game. Just regard Doc's work as an example, if you will. Encouraging you the player to make your own changes to the script. The community already mods plenty of girl packs. Why not offer several script mods as well.

[Lorde]

I don't even understand why this issue is so problematic. It's been stated multiple times that the MC's dialog can be edited using Lua.

There is no reason that what Doc writes will be the only option players have. The game can be played using whoever, whatever personality you want.
If you wanted to put Master Roshi from Dragon Ball Z into the game as the MC (swap out the default MC profile pic drop in Master Roshi's pic.) and then change the dialog to match what he would say, you could do that.

^ This. Doc needs to get the event system fleshed out first before we can go forward with mods. If it's easier for him to do it with an MC with a personality then let him do so. If you don't like what he did, Mod it when scripting comes online.

[Bluebeholder]

So really this is if there's a characterization in the default set game.  As that's the case go for it. 

[DocClox]

The problem I see with strong characterization in a game with as much cruelty potential as WM is making that character appropriate to the setting without being offensive.

I think the key will be to do "cruel" without doing "crude".  It won't disarm all potential criticism, but I think we can reduce the risk, as it were.

[dougie2]

If you don't like what he did, Mod it when scripting comes online.

Agreed.

[TF]

I could also mention that I've offered to write dialogue and story elements (whether I'll be taken up on that offer, we'll see) and while what I'm asked to write may not be exactly what I'd prefer, if I do get the opportunity, I'll be trying to give the developers whatever they ask for.

That being said, if I do end up doing some writing and people want a story with a little less... character in the main character, I could certainly provide alternate story and dialogue elements that they could switch out with whatever gets used for the official release.

[fires_flair]

just given the fact that the game is so modifiable makes me just fine with having (or the possibility) a character more developed then I would want (I'm not against character development). I mean if we don't like something, it's usually fairly simple to change it, even it's only to add another option or two.
so I'm in the "write as you please category"
infact I would rather have an over developed MC then an underdeveloped MC.

[necno]

hmm, yes I went too far with the silent character approach in the initial design. Players either need some ques as to who their character is so that their imagination can fill in the blanks or they need nothing defined at all (civilization games) where they can effectively play as themselves.

I am beginning to see that the second you start to define some aspects or background to a character you need to do a little more. I think some people are better at imagining a characters personality than others and so by giving very little background to a character you make things difficult for people who have more trouble imagining their character. There is probably a happy medium but it is difficult to hit that mark. So this is just a warning to all those who will attempt to write such a character.


Admittedly though I never did design whoremaster so perhaps if I did I would have noticed the oversight on the characters personality.

That said I think doc is going the right way about things, making it mod-able so that people can create their own ideas of the character.