The fact that it impacts on all other roles, adds extra work to be done, because the devs have to figure out how to make an activist version of all existing roles so that we can still continue to function and advance as something other than a pure activist and still not be siding with the oppressor.
Everything takes work, even the features
you want added, such as multi-tile creatures, which
i think wont be worth the effort.
Also, what do you mean by "activist" version? How would that differ from performing a role normally?
I thought it was obvious. The problem is that you, as a player aim to succeed, you aim to win and in order to win you learn certain rules, stratagems as it were as to do so. Everything you want to get, everything that counts as succeeding is actually dependent upon the society either giving it to you or allowing you to get it. If you want to be a great leader, a great warrior, a great anything really, you need the rest of society to cooperate or at least turn a blind eye.
The only 'winning' in Dwarf Fortress is enjoying the game. You only lose if you no longer enjoy playing. Your fort getting destroyed is not losing, neither is getting your adventurer killed. Nor would be anything that would be possible with these systems(which again, do not solely consist of civ wide oppression). If you don't want to play as a part of or work with an oppressive society then...
Don't! (i will be really impressed if someone manages to generate a whole world consisting of nothing but oppressive shitholes.)
And let those who do want to play with these systems, because that's winning in this game: Playing however you want and getting enjoyment out of it. I for one am going to enjoy getting my adventurer enslaved,
or raiding villages and dragging back slaves to my civ,
in collar and leash or buying slaves(' freedom)
or killing the slavers or just not giving a crap, because i might be playing a character with
other motives. An extreme example but it highlights a
tiny part what will be possible in the game, that can be improved by a system of discrimination, prejudice and oppression.
It is the morality that is linear in a realistic situation, there are multiple ways to do the wrong thing.
They thought about you stealing the amulet, so they aren't going to let you do that easily and to do so would make a murderer+thief anyway; the other options you lay down are commercial. You could hunt down 10 slaves yourself in order to be given the amulet directly, or you could give them enough wealth to hire enough other slave-hunters to hunt down 100 slaves; while it appears that buying the amulet is the moral option, you were actually doing less harm hunting the slaves yourself.
Sometimes there
is no right way. Think about it this way: That same dragon, if you don't kill it, will by itself kill hundreds, maybe even thousands, both guilty and innocent. Maybe if your moral sensibilities do not let you go slave-hunting in exchange for the artifact, someone else with more balls than you will. In essence, you've still not improved the world in any way by wiping your hands clean and claiming superiority.
This is to me what stories are about: conflict, struggle, hard choices and their consequences.
that's what i enjoy. And if you wanna prance around la-la teletubby land where
nothing happens, that's your choice.
(Or you could just steal the fucking amulet...)
Now the slave hunter example was a particularly explicit example. Instead of doing the easy thing and hunting down the slaves yourself (the obvious wrong option) you went out of the way to produce enough wealth that you can buy up the amulet. In reality however, you actually did far more harm by giving that wealth to the slavers in return for the amulet, taking the apparently good route than you would ever have done had you done the obviously bad thing. You were not using your cleverness to get around the requirement to hunt slaves for the slavers, the slavers were cleverly using your own ethical conscience to get you to unknowingly do more wrong than you would otherwise have done.
unintended consequences, quite a shocking twist huh? But i suppose the question in this case is, does the player
care? Does the character played by the player care? After all, their hands are clean and they can claim moral superiority, if they're the sort. Also, this is something we must discuss: The adventurer played by the player is
not the player themselves nor are they the player's avatar. They can be, but most people not only are capable of a little roleplay but actually like roleplaying their characters.
Most people can empathize with a character with (even radically) differing viewpoints from their own. You can too, right?
The only ethical thing is to accept you are never going to be a dragonslayer and go home. Actually doing the right thing in an oppressive society however, goes against the entire logic of a computer game which is to slay the dragon and win.
What if my character's goal in life is to become dragon
lunch? What if i want to play
as a dragon?
Dwarf Fortress does not operate on conventional "computer game" logic. lol
This is why we have to be careful with depicting oppressive systems in computer games in a way that we do not have to be in films or books; the game teaches a different set of lessons.
Mentally sane people can separate fiction from reality and do not take "lessons" from entertainment.
My attitude is just the facts of the matter.
No.
opinions.The other thing is that the better this idea is implemented, the more work it will take to code and if implemented poorly we are better off without it.
I would argue the opposite instead, the best implementations of ideas are frequently deceptively simple and
not overcomplicated.
we'll also be far better off without multi-tile creatures if they're poorly implemented.
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Topic: Add to the creatures thoughts about sex and be able to customize their values (Read 25990 times)