A Thought

Well, after a long hiatus I'm kind of back again.

Just to highlight to this thread :

"How many killings do we still have to do ?"

A snippet from the original posting :

My point is so far there is only essentially down to its root TWO things to do in the game. Yea, only TWO things to do down at the root. I am not talking about the variety of things to do (which is a handful) but the fundamental principles of game play here.

The TWO things to do is:
(1) KILL NPC (aka PvE)
(2) KILL other player (aka PvP)

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Well … yes. He does have a point.

One of the reasons why I was absent here and why I don't play games that much anymore is just this : I'm inherently tired of killing NPCs, or animals, or whatever … "The thrill is gone", to quote one older blues song. And the taste is gone, too.

I assume that I'm just too old for playing "killing games" these days. I'll be actively looking out for games with no killing at all … And yes, I think I should replay "SIM's Medieval" again …

In one article I cannot find again (I think it was at PCGamesN, en English-language web site), people were actually looking forward to kill NPCs and get XP for that in the coming years (the theme was "the golden age of gaming", and the people in the comments section were believing that shooters etc. were the pinnacle of gaming - one even decided that Hitman was the pinnacle of current gaming). Maybe the discussion was held rather by shooter players, but to me … well, I grow deeply tired of having to kill ANYTHING.

And, besides, the concept of killing NPCs / Animals etc. for getting/receiving xp is "winning itself to death".
This is a term I had learned in an discussion about Capitalism, which is - according to that discussion "winning itself to death" as well.

This term means that a thing, a concept, is SO MUCH successful, that it just doesn't generate any alternative anymore. There just isn't. It's a one-way road (or world).

"Killing for getting xp" is so much successful that people have simple unlearned how to play nonviolent games, I dare to say. At least I believe so for certain game genres.

Tis is so deep that people just cannot imagine ANY OTHER approach anymore to get experience points.
Which is, I fear, the reason why everyone was looking away from SIM's Mediaval : It was TOO DIFFERENT from that overly successful concept.

Even I have no idea how experience points could get gained in an nonviolent way.
Okay, in some games the fulfilling of quests gives far more xp than killing, but killing just stays there.

As someone comments on the above linked SWTOR discussion :

It's kind of sad how people react to this request. Neither is it unplausable
nor is it unrealistic / undoable.

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Besides, it's one of the reason why I lost interest in SWTTOR almost completely - even with that new story.

Edit : I bought Stardew Valley now. I should have done that so much earlier …

As an addition to the above I found this in the SWTOR forum :

Best tank in my guild is a stay at home mom whose three year old son likes to sit and watch his mom kill people in pvp. She says he gets mad and yells at the screen when somebody kills his mom. I have met several other really top notch female players in game.

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Uh. Does this 3 year old kid even realize what's happening there on the screen ? Is this 3 yerar old kid being trained into "you can get any conflict solved with killing" ?

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Uh. Does this 3 year old kid even realize what's happening there on the screen ? Is this 3 yerar old kid being trained into "you can get any conflict solved with killing" ?

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Three year old kids already come programmed to solve any conflict with violence.

There's plenty of games that don't involve killing, just not so many in the RPG genre, sadly. Adventure games, city building games, sims (train simulator, trucking, goat , etc)

Then there's Undertale, where you get the best possible ending by befriending rather than killing all the monsters.

As for MMOs, yeah most of those are killing-centric. Maybe the best you can do there is find one that has a robust crafting system and be a crafter only?

The more I hear about Ultima, the more I need to play these games. Seems they had a lot in common with a MUD I used to game on back-in-the-day.

@Alrik Have you played "Life is Strange", I havent played it but I have a sneaking suspicion you will like it.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Which is, I fear, the reason why everyone was looking away from SIM's Mediaval : It was TOO DIFFERENT from that overly successful concept.
…
I lost interest in SWTTOR almost completely - even with that new story.
…
Edit : I bought Stardew Valley now. I should have done that so much earlier …

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1. No, Sims Medieval's problem was rince&repeat only a dozen of quests in a limited "playground". It cut away house (castle) build and never got a proper expansion but more of rince&repeat.
You want to play Sims3+World Adventures instead.

2. God exists!

3. You should. However, there is some killing in dungeons involved even there.

Damian said:

@Alrik Have you played "Life is Strange", I havent played it but I have a sneaking suspicion you will like it.

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Everyone should play it not just Alrik. Finished it a few days ago but as usual, don't have time to sort my thoughts and write. Will try to post something (short though) later.

joxer said:

Everyone should play it not just Alrik. Finished it a few days ago but as usual, don't have time to sort my thoughts and write. Will try to post something (short though) later.

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I can't play it. I tried to play adventure games before, but I can't seem to get into them.

Wisdom said:

Three year old kids already come programmed to solve any conflict with violence.

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Yes, I just read so today. The son of a woman suddenly began to act violently against his other elementary school pupils. Of course, the other children don't want to play with him anymore.
And then, his mother just disappeared with him. Nobody knows where to.

This is of course a positive reward spiral : People who get what they want through using violence of course don't see any reason to use any other way to get what they want.
And with "positive reward" I mean the molecular level of the brain.

Damian said:

@Alrik Have you played "Life is Strange", I havent played it but I have a sneaking suspicion you will like it.

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Not so far, but it is on my mental list of "this could be interesting".

Nephologist said:

There's plenty of games that don't involve killing, just not so many in the RPG genre, sadly. Adventure games, city building games, sims (train simulator, trucking, goat , etc)

Then there's Undertale, where you get the best possible ending by befriending rather than killing all the monsters.

As for MMOs, yeah most of those are killing-centric. Maybe the best you can do there is find one that has a robust crafting system and be a crafter only?

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I wish I could have been playing SWG, but I simply didn't have the money for it.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. I would be rather freaked out by a little kid that was already competent enough to avoid violence completely.

Hmmm, I wonder about No Man's Sky. There are plenty of critters intent on eating you but you *might* be able to just run from them. The game has changed quite a bit since I played so I don't know what the current state is.

I think there's plenty of games you can by for non-violence.

Alrik, there's a game coming out called No Truce With The Furies that might tickle you're fancy, its supposed to be a combat-free RPG.

What I think is missing from the modern gaming market is good old fashioned light-hearted ultra-violence that doesn't try to be over-the-top memes or exaggerated violence. Things like Golden Axe and Streets of Rage. Violence that's so cartoon-like it doesn't really represent violence. A problem with ultra-realistic graphics is that violence then looks too real, even if its provided in a light hearted way.

There's virtually no way to make violence not seem like violence with a realism approach to art, but abstracting to a cartoon allows you to have a small plumber jump on a chicken and suddenly the violence doesn't seem like violence, even though its satisfying the same purpose.

Is chopping up a bunch of skeletons in an RPG really comparable to shooting people in a CoD-like, for example.

lackblogger said:

What I think is missing from the modern gaming market is good old fashioned light-hearted ultra-violence that doesn't try to be over-the-top memes or exaggerated violence.

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I got The Expendabros just for that from Steam as long as it was free. ( It could still be free - but I'm not sure on that.)
Edit : Their Steam page lists a game called "Not a hero" … Hm, I still prefer Duke Nukem 1 over that - because it has jump & run involved.


But … I still want violent-free games. Well, I can't have everything, can I ?
Something like … as I once said … Far Cry island jungle environment filled with riddles and an Monkey Island like game …


I just bought Undertale today, by the way.


Okay, I just shut up. I do know how few success I'll have with my plea for non-violent games.


By the way, this month I wrote a fantasy short story (in the end it was 17 DINA4 pages) about an undead skeleton woman wanting her life back, so to say … She had been summoned by one evil mage, and fled from him because he made a few mistakes in binding her to his soul … that's why I called the story "a failed summoning" (roughly translated).
In the end, he turned into a Lich, because he was seeking power - but a Goddess managed to turn things around and heal the situation …

As in all my stories, it's kind of a story of healing. The Healing theme is there in almost all of my stories (with a few exceptions).

Almost all of my stories are rather about describing the problems of people, and why and how things became what they became. I'm very interested in the psychology of the people in my stories.
A second point is, that my greatest wish is just to write something like a … story of a journey … Just describing landscape, people, customs … Almost like a very good travel brochure, only in the form of a story.
I had read one when I was a teenager, it was about Marrakesh, and I found great immersion in it, maybe that's why I just love describing things.
The bad side of that is that I must keep myself away from boring readers, like I was ultimatively bored by the "Willow" (the movie by George Lucas) novels by Chris Claremont. That was almost only description, very boring description, and very little actual action. That's the downfall I'm trying to avoid.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Okay, I just shut up. I do know how few success I'll have with my plea for non-violent games.

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I was playing Firewatch a couple of months ago and it seemed to be a pretty good adventure game but not quite an RPG. Reminds me to check if it ever got VR integration. I didn't finish it so maybe the event with the skinny dippers turns bad later after all.

RPG without without violence is damned hard to come by you pretty much have to go the adventure side of the spectum but looks like undertale fits the bill perfectly.

I have Firewatch on my mental list, too.

well, right now I'm having fun with Stardew Valley - it's like a game I waited for a long, long, long time …

Well, that's a good show :

*slow claps*
*steps out of the shadows*
Heh... not bad, kid. Not bad at all. Your meme, I mean. It's not bad. A good first attempt. It's plenty dank... I can tell it's got some thought behind it... lots of quotable material...
But memeing isn't all sunshine and rainbows, kid. You're skilled... that much I can tell. But do you have what it takes to be a Memester? To join those esteemed meme ranks? To call yourself a member of the Ruseman's Corps? Memeing takes talent, that much is true. But more than that it takes heart. The world-class Memesters - I mean the big guys, like Johnny Hammersticks and Billy Kuahana - they're out there day and night, burning the midnight meme-oil, working tirelessly to craft that next big meme.
And you know what, kid? 99 times out of a hundred, that new meme fails. Someone dismisses it as bait, or says it's "tryhard," or ignores it as they copy/paste the latest ****post copypasta dreamt up by those sorry excuses for cut-rate memers over at reddit. The Meme Game is rough, kid, and I don't just mean the one you just lost :^). It's a rough business, and for every artisan meme you craft in your meme bakery, some ********er at 9gag has a picture of a duck or some **** that a million different Johnny No-Names will attach a milion different captions to. Chin up, kid. Don't get all mopey on me. You've got skill. You've got talent. You just need to show your drive.
See you on the boards…

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So its true, it is you... heard you were a ghost of the ol' by gones be by gones. Yeah, you don't remember me, but I remember you; we used to tussle back before you joined the Meme-Masons, a lot of rumors about you going around, ya know? how you bailed outta Danktown and took the leltrain to Mercville,, I dunno, just rumors is all I'm sayin', I try to keep them hush hush in New Sorcston, heard a big evac is under way, a lot of panic in the streets ya know, the ol' illuminati plan to drop the big one, something reminiscent of the smash monkeys, can hear the sirens now, something outta The Book of Eli, its a scary scene, stay perky and firm my Juggs, maybe the death angel will pass us, I have the blood of Rick Astley on my keyboard,...anyways, I said too much, they already knocking on my moms door. I'm in the basement, I'll be the hyena, you'll see... until we meet again, sweet prince.

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There is Cyberpunk.
There is Steampunk.
How would Fantasypunk look like ?

Alrik Fassbauer said:

There is Cyberpunk.
There is Steampunk.
How would Fantasypunk look like ?

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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DungeonPunk

^
This

That combination is not possible as punk opposes fantasy.

joxer said:

That combination is not possible as punk opposes fantasy.

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I don't know man; I'd say punk is pretty fantasy oriented by definition…

punk


__

I just came over that via this thought :

Cyberpunk is Sci-Fi with people running around being augmented or cyborgs.
Steampunk is mostly the same, often setz in an Victorian setting (Dishonoured); not so often in an Fantasy setting (Arcanum) : People being augmented or being cyborgs.

In both cases, their augmentations or how it'd be called is made of metal and electronics, in Steampunk rather steam-driven or something.

Now, what would Fantasypunk look like ? People would still be - according to my definition from above - run around being augmented and/or being cyborgs …
Now, how would a cyborg look like in an fantasy environment ? How would "augmentation" look like ?
My thought was that the "Punk" genre largely uses metal; in fantasy settings, however, metalk is not that much used, except for weapons and armor. And ships and carts, maybe.
So, in Fantasypunk, metal wouldn't be the main thing to build augments from; the things used for augments would have to be of rather "bionic" source, like plant, material, for example, or symbionts.
This was the line (train) of thought I had.

I vaguely remember someone telling me of (A)D&D ? in which a Sorcerer or Wizard had used crystals to replace parts of his body. That would be a kind of "augmentation" or becoming a cyborg, too.

The sister setting to TDE, Myranor or Güldenland (Myranor is the more official name of it) is some kind of an "Fantasypunk" setting, without its cynical, gritty tone, however. It is not like the TDE setting, not much at all, but it also isn't dark. It's just a High Fantasy setting.

joxer said:

That combination is not possible as punk opposes fantasy.

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Interesting point, which leads me to the question : Why do Cyberpunk and Steampunk have to be "dark & gritty" at all ? I mean, it could be well without its cynical tone … But no-one developed such a "Punk" setting with the dark parts of it extracted yet.
Or at least I know of none.
And it would have to have a different name than "Punk" as well.

joxer said:

That combination is not possible as punk opposes fantasy.

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One could turn the argument upside down or the whole way around as well : Fantasy opposes Punk. I mean, no-one has developed an SciFantasy setting yet ? Something like Cyberpunk, but the "Cyber" part being replaced by a "Fantasy" part ? Or Cyberpunk in an more peaceful world ?