Is murdering innocent NPCs fun?

[SVGK]

lol, the main character in my game is a retired assassin, what are the odds eh?.

 

[JJK_42]

I have played many games where you can kill a lot of ppl (not everyone, but with most of the people you talk to you can find an option of killing them) but every time I decided to be the bad guy, I eventually felt bad about it and let the victim go... I know it's just a game, but somehow I can't make myself play the bad guy... Anyways, I don't mind if a kill everyone option is there, but I would probably not use it...

 

[Tai_MT]

Honestly, for me, it's about how well the feature is implemented.  Skyrim?  Implemented rather poorly.  ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery) or Dwarf Fortress, implemented fantastically.

What you need to do is determine whether or not the killing has any practical REWARD for the player.  If it's just "killing for the sake of killing" or "killing for random non-important loot", the option gets overlooked by players who just want to enjoy the game for what it is.  At that point, all the work you put into making every NPC killable is ESSENTIALLY wasted.  It isn't really about "context of the killing", though that does factor into it.  Would your CHARACTER willingly commit murders within the context of the game?  If so, why?  Games like Fallout and GTA basically give you a "blank slate" character to run with.  That character is whomever you want them to be, even if their storylines might dictate that they do good or bad things anyway.  When not straddled to the storyline, your character is a blank slate that is a stand-in for the player.  If you have characters that are NOT "blank slate", then you need to come up with compelling reasons for these characters to be killing each other without relying heavily on "players' whim".

Then, you need to make the killing somewhat impactful.  If it's just random wanton killing, it has no impact and thus loses the point of existing.  GTA has a MASSIVE problem with this.  Oh sure, kill any random person on the street.  Do it with any weapon!  And watch as the boredom ensues after the first hour of playing that feature.  These are nameless mooks with skill nowhere near close to yours and weapons nowhere near what you have.  They are not only easy pickings, but there is no consequence to killing them other than the police show up.  Fighting the police is more interesting because they gradually get tougher and bring better guns you can loot.  After a while though, even those nameless thugs get boring to wipe out.  At which point, the player either does the storyline and beats the game or starts throwing cheats into the game to make the random civilian killing more interesting.

If you are going to implement a "kill NPC" element into a game, you need to figure out how to reward players for taking that path other than "you get to revel in being sadistic as a player".  Few people rarely kill an NPC for that reason.  The vast majority of players tend to play as "Lawful Good" when given an option.  Sometimes we'll roleplay as something else, but most often it's "goody-two-shoes".  We'll dabble in the "evil" stuff later if we're curious about how it plays out...  But if it adds nothing to the game or replayability, it should be left out as nobody will have fun with it.  No, not even the sadistic players who just want to watch the world burn.  You need to provide incentive to use the feature beyond "some players may enjoy it".

 

[JJK_42]

Tai_MT, I think you are right in most of the things you say. One thing you should know is that with games like Skyrim and other non-RM games it is waaay easier to make everyone killable. As a java-programmer, I know how you could very easily do that with classes. So the makers of those games haven't really wasted any time by adding the feature. Of course, this is different with RPGmaker games because you can't edit the classes of the events. Or at least: I don't know how and I think anyone without Ruby skills won't know how to do so either.

So: When using RPG maker, you're right, but keep in mind that these features can be added much easier if you have full control over your code.

 

[Tai_MT]

Well, for games like Skyrim, it's really just about adding "flags" to characters.  There's a flag that can be toggled for "killable" or for "invincible".  While it is easier to simply do this by flag (as they have done), it technically serves no purpose in the context of the game itself.  Critical NPCs are always "invincible" and non-critical NPCs that you kill don't do anything to your character or the storyline.  Killing a non-critical NPC in Skyrim or any game like it just makes your game world that much emptier.  Oh, and then you loot the corpse and wish you'd killed a Bandit instead, since they drop better loot.

That's kind of what I mean, you can kill them, but it's done in boring and predictible ways so that it's not really worth the time to even put a flag on them to make them killable.  Other than, so some player can go, "I killed them just because I can", which isn't incentive enough for anyone to do it beyond pure maliciousness.

In games like Dwarf Fortress, death can be so absurd and spectacular that it's hilarious almost EVERY time it's executed.  In Dwarf Fortress, it is possible to pick up your own vomit and throw it into someone's face.  Because of the way physics are programmed, this sometimes results in peoples's faces getting busted up (broken skulls) or even outright murdered as the stuff punctures the brain.  It's so silly and stupid and nonsensical that almost every player has to try it AT LEAST ONCE just to witness it.

Nobody remembers the 684,000 mooks they had to trample into dust on the way to the boss monster.  They remember the boss monster who got curb stomped despite all his advantages and boasting.  If your NPC deaths aren't going to be at least memorable in the same way a Boss Death is memorable, it's not worth doing.  All you're doing at that point, if it's not memorable, is making the NPCs into just another mook to be slaughtered for miniscule amounts of gold and XP and the "lulz" of doing it just once.  Without a proper reward for even engaging in NPC killing, it has no reason to exist.  Rewards aren't just experience and gold or items either.  Rewards can be complete satisfaction at destroying one of the most annoying characters in the game.  Rewards can include bypassing sections of Quests if you murder one of the major impediments of one.  Rewards can also include funny death scenes so that the NPC is imprinted on your memory forever.

If all you're doing is the Skyrim equivalent of NPC deaths, then they're just  another mook in the game who just so happens to be friendly and MILDLY useful.  Which means...  They typically aren't even worth killing in the first place.  If you allow a character to engage in wholesale NPC slaughter, the rewards for this slaughter need to be somewhat tangible to the character.  That is, there has to be a reason that maybe killing the NPCs would be preferable to leaving them alive.  There needs to be a reason to have your character go "bad" without the standard method most games use of "it's just like the good storyline, except you don't have to worry about being nice to people".  It should be its own experience if you go down that route.  Maybe even with its own separate ending, or consequences seen in the ending credits to make it memorable and worthwhile.

Otherwise...  It's kind of just a waste to program an NPC as killable, even if it's just the flip of a flag on them.

 

[Ratty524]

Depends on how bad of a mood I am in and how attached I am to your characters in question. Needless to say, I WILL feel kind of bad about killing little kids, but still, I separate reality from fiction pretty well, and sometimes I'd like to ease stress...

I think the method also matters. Smacking a person with a giant fist and causing them to explode invokes a different reaction then kidnapping, strangling, and killing/assaulting them in a slow and painful process.

 

[JJK_42]

Well, I don't think it would hurt the game if you add it. I wouldn't use it, but I don't mind the feature being there either. So you can add it for those that want to use it. I wouldn't do it with RPG maker games though, because that is indeed a lot of work.

EDIT:

I definately have to play that Dwarf Fortress game some time!

 

[Tai_MT]

Well, I don't think it would hurt the game if you add it. I wouldn't use it, but I don't mind the feature being there either. So you can add it for those that want to use it. I wouldn't do it with RPG maker games though, because that is indeed a lot of work.

EDIT:

I definately have to play that Dwarf Fortress game some time!

Dwarf Fortress is a roguelike that uses symbols and such in place of graphics.  It looks oldschool, but it's honestly far more advanced than anything I've ever played.  It's also entirely free, has modding support (and even tilesets are available if you can't get over the symbols!), and is constantly updated.  Just google "Dwarf Fortress" and look for the game under the Bay12Games website.  You'll want a wiki as well...  The sheer amount of content that is never given to you in a tutorial (HOORAY! NO TUTORIAL NONSENSE!) requires a wiki when you're trying to figure out what to do and how to do it.  There are even some "starting up" guides laying around for current builds of the game.  Game is played in two different ways...  There's an "adventurer" mode where you wander around and do pretty much everything you'd do in D&D...  And then there's a "Fortress" mode in which you are given some Dwarves and have to do your best to avoid having them all die while discovering new things to do with those dwarves...

It's pretty fun, one of my favorite games to jump on when I've got a free weekend (it takes a ton of time to play, much like an MMO, except it's singleplayer only, no multiplayer support).

As for the topic at hand...  Include the NPC killing if you so desire.  Just do more with it than "you kill NPC".  If you include the feature make it interesting, make it amazing, make it fantastic.  After all, if you aren't going to do those things with any feature in your RPG Maker, it's not really worth including it in the finished product later.

 

[zblueboltz]

I don't like killing people, so I won't, but it makes me feel more "good" to decide not to when I can.

One must consider however NPCs being kill-able makes NPC deaths (or even just disappearing) less emotional.

You could limit this to harmless civilians on the opposite side of a war, or an opposite race. It'd make sense on some level, and your own NPCs will still be able to have somewhat emotional deaths. Keep in mind though, just them dying doesn't make it emotional.

Killing NPCs would be fun for most people and helps decide if you're good or evil, but there are still disadvantages.

 

[Tai_MT]

It is entirely possibly to have "evil" not include wholesale murder or slaughter of NPCs.  Choices have consequences.  As the opening scene in Chrono Trigger shows us, there are a multitude of ways you can have people decide you're guilty at the later trial, just by doing things you probably shouldn't do.  Lie to the court, someone decides you're guilty.  Eat someone's sandwich at the fair, they don't like you.  Try to sell someone else's necklace, they don't like you either.  Don't find the kitty for the little girl, someone else doesn't like you.  Any number of ways to get the "bad karma" points without being outright evil.

If you allow your Players to murder NPCs, you need real tangible reasons why this might be a good thing as well as real and tangible results of these deaths.  Maybe their family hires assassins to kill you.  Maybe the assassins actually ARE pretty tough to dispatch.  Maybe by killing the village elder, you bypass all his quests and pick up the key to his house so you can loot all the good weapons and armors long before you have access to them.

If they're just lifeless and pointless people there to be killed or minimally interacted with, they don't really deserve to be interacted with.  Look at Pokemon Black and White and their sequels.  There are streets with a bajillion people on them all in a hurry to get someplace.  After you talk to the third person, you stop talking to ANY of them, because they're not significant or interesting what-so-ever.  The player ends up ignoring them.  Same thing with GTA.  You ignore all of the random people on the street unless you're actually out to murder them.  Their lives and deaths are just so unimportant in video game terms, that they may as well not even exist.

 

[Chaos17]

I think the real question that you should ask yourself : "will it be a good feature for my game ?"

If you're not sure, try Fallout 1 and see if you're going to wipe cities or help some.

But personally, I dislike the idea though in GTA people were allright with it.

 

[Diego2112]

What's funny is, I have a slight option of killing NPCs in what little bit I've programmed on my game.

I mean, you don't REALIZE it's an option (it's a dialogue choice that when picked results in a battle-you've the option of that, or taking a quest to get the same reward), but it's there.  AND depending on which path you take, it affects what dialogue the other fella in the building give you.

It also shows a bit more about the main character.

Spoiler

As I said, you've got two options:  Take the guy's quest (bring him 25 gold, and a key item, he gives you the boat), or get offended at him downing on the island you live on.  IF you take the route of being offended, the guy basically laughs at you and attacks (he is a thug, I should point out).  If you win, he dies, and you find out that the main character has never killed an actual PERSON before, and it seems to shake him up quite a bit.  The Blacksmith reassures you that the fella had it coming, and it's life.  It's actually pretty cool.

Either way, you get the boat.  IF you kill him, you also get 400 Gold, some EXP, and get to loot his gear.

HOWEVER, you can't just go up willy-nilly to any character and 86 'em, savvy?

I DO plan to add a few more encounters of those types after I get the full version, sort of to show the dark underbelly of the world, as it were...

 

[Tai_MT]

That's exactly what I'm talking about.  The option is there and making the choice is both rewarding and interesting in the context of the game and the context of the story.  The death has a point and a purpose beyond "I kill you, huzzah".  Systems like that tend to be phenominal because it makes you care more about the characters and about your own actions, even if those actions have no consequences and those characters aren't real.  Death needs to be memorable in some way, and it sounds like you managed to do it.  I'd say keep on that track and it'll turn out just fine.

You start turning it into GTA where any and everyone can be killed just because...  And well, I'll start to worry about you.

 

[Diego2112]

That's exactly what I'm talking about.  The option is there and making the choice is both rewarding and interesting in the context of the game and the context of the story.  The death has a point and a purpose beyond "I kill you, huzzah".  Systems like that tend to be phenominal because it makes you care more about the characters and about your own actions, even if those actions have no consequences and those characters aren't real.  Death needs to be memorable in some way, and it sounds like you managed to do it.  I'd say keep on that track and it'll turn out just fine.

You start turning it into GTA where any and everyone can be killed just because...  And well, I'll start to worry about you.

I think (as has been stated) it depends on the context of the game.  For my game, and my main character, that just wouldn't fit-he's very set in his morals and ethics; so much that it ends up causing a split between him and another party member.  

HOWEVER, another game I'm bouncing around ideas for (not an RPG Maker game-this'n'll be a while in the coming-my final project for Simulation and Game Dev in college), it would make perfect sense.  A man, down on his luck, at the end of his rope, and a complete psychopath...  Sure, he may go off and kill everyone.  Then again, he may just pay for his milk and complain about the smell of the store.  Ya never know.

And I wouldn't rightly be worried about a developer implementing that feature, either.  I'm none too worried about the fellas at Bethesda, even though in Fallout ThreeVegas and Oblivion/Skyrim you can kill just about anyone for any reason.  Sure, the option is THERE, but it's not what I'd consider a core game mechanic.  Oh, sure, moral choice.  But really, moral choice games leave me feeling a bit unfulfilled-I'm with Yahtzee on that one.

So, I think that it depends on the game.  For an RPG, I think CONTEXTUAL ability to kill anyone (and have to fight them for it!) would be fine, IF it makes sense for the character(s).

But if it's just killing for killing's sake, eh...  In an RPG, that just don't...  I dunno, seems off.

And once again, I devolve into rambling...  sorry.

 

[Tai_MT]

I don't typically agree with Yahtzee about that particular issue.  "Moral Choice leaves me feeling empty".  That largely depends on the game and the system in play.  A proper Moral Choice in a game needs to take you off the beaten path some.  It needs to do more than give your character devil horns and make people run away in fear.  We can take Mass Effect for example.  It's an interesting moral choice system.  You can accomplish the same things in different ways depending on your answer.  It isn't until we get into sequel areas that we see what affects these choices have had.  It's quite telling that the only way to get the hope that Shepard lives in the third game is to go completely off the rails and basically murder and betray everyone along the way so that circumstances are set up in such a way that Shepard does live.  Sure, there's all that complaining about "the game had the same ending regardless of choice!".  That's what most "Moral Choice" systems end up boiling down to.  That's why the outrage in that game.  It had, up to that point, emphasized choices in the game world and shown real changes in what could happen on your playthroughs.

NPC deaths are part of the "Moral Choice" system whether a developer knows it or not.  As such, it needs to have real consequences or it becomes an absolutely pointless system to even have.  Bethesda has this issue in freakin' spades and it drives me up the wall.  "Kill Anyone you want!"  Okay, sure, I'll do that.  Except, I don't feel like it because there's no REASON to except out of pure maliciousness.  Killing an NPC is a choice.  It should have consequences.  It should give a normal player pause and drive to perhaps TRY it once or twice to see if it's interesting or remarkable.  I'm not talking about "oh, kill a guy, the guards want to kill you".  It's not interesting and not incentive enough to NOT do it.  A player, given a choice, needs the chance and opportunity to WEIGH that choice in order to make it.

It seems like you actually get it in terms of what you're doing with your game.  I applaud that.  Moral choice, rewards for either way of completing it, and your character can act or react differently depending on that choice.

A moral choice system is about one thing... CHOICE.  If you ruin the point of choice, a moral system can't stand on its own two legs.  Fallout, Skyrim, Oblivion, etcetera don't execute this idea well.  There isn't even incentive to PROTECT NPCs in these games.  Choice is completely taken away from the player despite the developers trying to tell you that all you have is choice.  Yeah, choice to go anywhere and do anything, but no real incentive to do it other than loot and maybe the story or places.  No PERSONAL incentive in these games to kill or save NPCs...  No personal incentive exists in these games what-so-ever.

A game like yours sounds like it has personal incentive, so it would utilize a "kill NPCs" function well.  It doesn't matter if this function is a staple of the game or just some background mechanic.  If you handle it improperly it becomes pointless and useless.

Sorry if I seem to be repeating myself, but to me this stuff just seems like common sense to me.  I grew up playing RPGs.  They were my favorite genre of game to play ever.  I started with Secret of Mana and worked through a major chunk of NES and SNES RPGs before moving up to N64 and PSX and suddenly seeing the decline of these great games.  I try a new RPG every now and again and am rarely ever surprised or even interested in the game.  I made a wonderful decision when I picked up the horrible looking "Mass Effect" on Xbox360 about two weeks after its release.  I'd followed the game for a while and it looked good, but on release it looked terrible.  I needed a new RPG to play and thus I bought and put it in.  Looks are quite deceiving.  It's the last great RPG and RPG franchise I've played.  Skyrim is awesome, but it's not what I would call an "RPG" because it's not an RPG so much as an RPG Simulator.  Many of the RPGs today just throw features into their games without knowing why they need to exist or how to properly implement them.  In the days when game space on a cartrage or disk was extremely limited... pointless features were cut.  Anything that wasn't a "core mechanic" just was cut, it didn't need to exist.  The games were better for it.  If a feature is implemented but isn't made to be important, it shouldn't exist in the first place.  "Look at our equipment creation system!" and then you rarely ever use it because it's not a core mechanic and it takes too long to grind for mats or monsters drop better junk...  It just doesn't need to exist.  "Look at our moral choice system!" and then it affects nothing.  Despite being an evil baby eater, you still save the world.  "Look at our minigames!" too bad they're absolutely freakin' pointless and useless and add nothing to the game other than an annoying way to earn "the best weapons" in the game for whatever characters.  Why does an RPG need a mini-game that's not integral to the plot or gameplay?  RPGs these days don't know how to BE RPGs.  It's quite frankly annoying.  It's annoying when players also don't recognize that these things are ruining their games and making them not that fun.  Some of these things are pervasive in other games as well, making them somewhat unplayable or boring.

Yeah, now I'm rambling.  Sorry about that.

 

[JJK_42]

I'm with Tai_MT on this one. Your choices should have affects.

One game that utilises this moral choice system brilliantly is Dragon Age. For example: Your companions will like or dislike things you do and so they will like or dislike you depending on your choices. If they like you, they get some bonuses but if they hate you they may even desert you! One of them tried to kill me :S

Also, the more important choices really have major consequences. You will head out to try and find allies to fight the arch demon, but some of your choices will kill these potential allies so they won't be able to help you.

There are six different main endings that depend on your most important choices. Also, after you finish the game, the epilogue will show you what effects your other choices had on the history of the country.

It is the best moral choice system I've come across. And, to get back to our topic, killing people has consequences. You may not be able to kill everyone, but those kills you are able to make may have major consequences on the game.

So, my opinion is that it is better to be able to kill only a few people with consequences than to be able to kill everyone without any consequences. Mind you that killing someone or not killing someone should have both positive and negative consequences so the player actually has to think about his choice.

 

[Clord]

Typically I go to benefits. Like let's say in Dragon Age I just tell my party what they want to hear as they are useful assets during the combat and because of potential other benefits. I defiled the virtual urn since it was not a real urn, just bits of data. It triggered the eventual event where one of the characters try to kill your party.

 

[Dark Horseman]

I feel this is a waste of precious time and effort that could be put elsewhere. Hobby games almost never get completed, and adding this minor feature greatly reduces the chances of that. The number branching logic statements is huge, and is usually only properly done with a team of writers, developers, and artists. You can achieve the same effect of killing anyone with "killing someone significant". If your party's warrior is appalled about a choice you made, give your player the choice to kill him. That has significantly more emotional impact than just murdering random sprites with 2-3 lines of dialogue. Further, I can pretty much guarantee you that the vast majority of players won't kill your npcs out of morals, laziness, and fear of handicapping themselves. There's a very small chance someone would do it - such as, what if I included an extensive side-plot to raise a donkey. Sure, a few players would do it and think it's novel, but you just spent 100 hours developing what could have instead been the last quarter of your game.

 

[Tai_MT]

Hobby Games, depending on who you ask and where you go... actually have a decent chance of actually being completed.  Just look up any "RPG Maker 2000 Games".  Some of these are short and sweet with complicated coding.  Some are rather long and extensive and have as many as five people working on them (FFEN is a great example).  The trick isn't about getting a bunch of people to work on a game for you or help you implement some feature...  The trick is obviously to get the creator to continue making the game.  Many of us have other obligations and work at a snails' pace (job, bills, girlfriends, wives, children, husbands, our own games to play, etcetera).  Some of us take what we've learned from previous games we didn't finish and apply it to the next endeavor.

If I had finished every game I started with this is what I'd have:

*A Pokémon game based on Pokémon 2000 in which you don't use the critters to fight for you, but instead take on a series of trials that mirrors the movie.  A very poorly designed and thought-out game.  The one hour playtime I ended up with wasn't even that fun.

*A game about a generic hero trying to save his kingdom from Dragons and being at war with them.  Gameplay was decent, but the world map and story were severely lacking and not any interesting.

*A game divided up into "levels" that you could tackle with any character you liked (you were allowed to choose 4 classes out of 12 with 2 genders for each class).  You spent Experience Points to gain stats and equipment.  It proved too massive an undertaking with too many coding issues, so I scrapped it.

*A game in which I tried to code as if it were a Metroid game in RPG form.  Battle flowed excellently, but coding events and designing landscape became a nightmare.  Lack of a spriter (I can't draw at all, computer or no) also made a lot of the overworld stuff somewhat bland.  Scrapped with the intent of trying again someday.

*A "Kingdom Simulator" game that worked a lot like Sim City in terms of operating your kingdom and expanding, but a lot like Ogre Tactics in terms of fighting and combat and all of that noise.  I could never get the two concepts to mesh well in the way I had coded them so I scrapped the idea entirely.

The point is...  Almost all of us here are "rank amateurs".  We have no clue what we're doing or if we should do things.  We've never made a game before.  We've never gone to college for it and have no plans to do so.  It's something many of us would love to do as a profession, but we're just absolutely clueless about how to go about it and lack the patience to learn some sort of computer coding to build something from scratch.  So, we come and ask if a feature would be good or fun and sometimes other people will tell us why or why not.  Sometimes, actual games even get completed on here.  It's amazing a lot of games even see demo releases.

As for the comment about "players won't kill your NPCs out of morals, laziness, and fear of handicapping themselves", it's simply untrue.  Give the player an option to do something, they'll try it at least once.  Some of them will even do it more than once.  All you need to do is watch people play GTA or Dwarf Fortress for honest examples.  The reason people often don't kill an NPC is because it's BORING.  It serves no purpose other than to stroke your own ego and to roll around in delight at your own maliciousness.  It serves little purpose to kill most any NPC in a game because it isn't worth it to even do so.  There is literally NO INCENTIVE to kill an NPC other than "I'm doing an Evil Run".  I will grant you that most players will do a "Good Run" on a game.  However, I don't think it's because they necessarily want to.  They know what they're getting right off the bat.  No matter what they do, who they kill, what evil monstrous acts they commit...  They're still in the role of the Good Guy and doing Good Guy things.  There's no option to join the Evil Overlord or to overthrow him because your plan is more awesome.  So, why bother with the disappointment of an "Evil Run" when you're a good guy anyway?  It becomes even more obvious that the "Good Guy" thing is railroading when characters stop liking you because you're bad and no new characters pop up to replace the people who hate you.  Nobody shows up and says, "wow, you're awesome, I'm going to follow you around and help you 'cause you're so dastardly!".  No reward for ever being evil.  No point to it.  So you get what... a few bucks from doing an evil quest?  Is that really worth it?  No.  This is why a vast majority of players simply play Good Guys, it's a lot easier and it's far less disappointing.

 

[Milennin]

Depends on the game. I don't really care for it, unless it's the kind of open sandbox game like GTA where it lets me do whatever. But if it doesn't make sense for the character that I'm playing, or doesn't really have an impact on my character or the story in general, I don't see the point in having it in your game.


One of the main reasons why I don't care for killing off random NPCs is because it just makes the game more empty and doesn't do anything for me (like in Skyrim). Like, what's the point?