You speak/type better english then 90% of the people on this forum, so no need to say that

Oh

:Applause:

I agree. It seems to me that the game could have been a lot more. This is basically SeaDogs in space, but unlike Sea Dogs it has no branching storyline and no real human feeling. The main character seems to be an amoral arsehole.

Unlike what I was expecting, the game gives very little in the way of options for the player. I'm only on mission 3 so I'm not absolutely sure, but it seems you're forced to follow the linear storyline otherwise you can't explore other areas. This is just plain wrong. Also, if you accept a story mission and fail it, you have to re-do it over and over again. No branching at all. Very unrealistic, and not at all what I expected from a state-of-the-art game. This seems to be just a poor quality rehash of Starlancer except with trading tacked on. Heck, this game could have appeared in 1998 and not made much of an impression. It's not worthy of today's technology in my view.

Finally, there are no real options to start out as a freighter pilot. I'm tired of blowing up other ships over and over again in every single space game that I buy. It just gets tedious after a while. As a pacifist in real life, I would have liked the option to become a trader and just explore the entire universe without having to kill thousands of my fellow humans in order to do it. I thought this game might finally allow me to just play happily in a game without killing folks.

What we have is a very curtailed version of what the game was presumably supposed to be. I'm more than a little disappointed.

Edited by - Beery on 09-03-2003 21:22:16

I disagree. The SP character starts out as somewhat lacking in interpersonal skills, but in fact gets very gung ho as time goes by and the last missions come up. If you compare this to the classic "sci fi sort of antihero," Han Solo, he gets more earnest, faster.

It is unfortunate that the SP campaign links you positively to a lot of pirates that you are encouraged by missions to kill, but I plan in MP to keep up factions in a sensible RPG fashion. It isn't impossible by any means. There are a lot of factions that are not likable, who raise a lot of factions, and there are bribes. Take that fellow who is only hostile to Xenos and Corsairs. That's doing pretty good.

I will regret it if I have to attack any Bretonian ships or anything like that, and will try to avoid it - I think, with bribes, it will be unecessary. But the criticisms of the game are untrue I think. The same things happen in Everquest - people constantly do totally out of character things to advance, and their factions be damned. Players will maximize and that is hard to get around.

Once you are done with the single player story missions (13 in total), you are free to roam the Freelancer universe as long as you wish to.

In fact, when you finish the single player story, you are only level 18, less than half of the level 38 which is the max.
There are also ships you can only buy if you are at least level 32.

Don't think though that scaling those 20 remaining levels would be long, in fact, you can achieve the max. level in much less time than finishing the story missions.

I kinda agree and disagree... its a shame that I have to get "in" with the pirates just to use their bases, tho I accept it would be unrealistic to have it any other way.. the other thing that really annoys me is that once you've become hostile to the police force in an area its almost impossible to get them back onside, as you can't dock with their bases to get jobs from them, so you just have to fly around looking for random pirates to blast, and any hope of trading when you can't land on the big planets goes out the window...

Not much you can do about people trying to get themselves into a position where they can go to any base they want... tho it was obviously going to happen and there should be a way.. a "trader" reputation or pass that you can purchase that means you can dock anywhere, but would be forfeit if you got too combat oriented maybe?

Cheers

Moog

My whole point was that a lot of people seem to be "camping" bandits or police for the sake of raising statistics only, if you are killing someone you really dont like for some cause then I guess its fine .. but to do it to raise statistics only isnt roleplaying.

If you are a bandit and you stop a cargo you would gain much more by demanding a fee from the trader to pass instead of blowing the guy to kingdom come. The trader would live another day and could be charged again....its like killing the chicken with the golden eggs, doesnt make much sence.

Dont get me wrong, I really like freelancer but some things just make me very annoyed....things that dont really make sence. I can agree that not everything can be made in a realistic manner but blowing up policeman John Doe and make his children orphans just because I want to buy that brandnew ship at a piratebase isnt a logical nor acceptable approach. I know the last example is an exageration but I would prefer not to think of Freelancer as quake in space, which it isnt, but a little more rational behaviour wouldnt hurt.






PS: Since I am not english native please pardon my errors.

All,
I agree that killing people just to raise one's faction level is not a good idea. I just ran into that this week when I wanted to purchase a Dromedary at a Lane Hackers base and couldn't get in. Well, I thought, who can I kill in order to get into that base? I knew that you could kill bounty hunters or any enemies of the LH's in order to raise faction points with them. I did it and DID NOT LIKE IT so I quit. I noticed that the Xenos were on everyone's hit list so I started killing them. I searched and searched prior to this in order to find someone to bribe but came up empty handed.

It seems that the lack of any morality on the part of the programmers is the basis of the quandry. If the people who scripted this game had a better sence of, or even cared about offending the sensibilities of others they would have provided a way of raising faction levels without the use of this "third world morality play" where your ONLY options are to pay bribes or murder people who mean you no harm. There needs to be a serious "mod" made available for those of us who would not like to offend our collective conscience in order to have this kind of fun.

Don't get me wrong, I like this game and even enjoy defending myself against insurmountable odds as I am attacked by the nefarious characters that inhabit the world of Freelancer. What I won't do is let my 16 yr old son play this game until I explain to him that it forces you to make bad choices no matter whether you choose to be law abiding or "extra-legal".

Pehaps this game is only for those of us who have a clear definition of right vs. wrong and are NOT impressionable from that standpoint. I am 48 years old, a Vietnam-Era veteran with one wife and five kids. I am a technical marketing engineer at the worlds largest chip maker. I have made some profoundly "right" choices in my life. It is not possible to persuade me to go against my value system in real life but this game forces you to exactly that in your imagination. My kids are another matter alltogether and hence must be protected.

I wish someone at DA had had the moral wherewithall to ask: What kind of influence are we having on the "impressionable" with this game? Morality and Fun are NOT mutually exclusive concepts!
Regards,
Daddyo
~Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!~

The whole point of the game weither it is SP or MP is to make money, buy better ship, shield and weapons so at the end you have an unbeatable monster as your ship.

This is accomplished when you are at level 38 and you have a Sabre, loaded with 2 class-10 weapons, Wirm II class-9 guns and sunslayer torpedoes with class-10 shields and an advanced thruster. That can be done easily (when you know how) .

Isn't the same in any RPG? Take Diablo for example... you upgrade your character with better skills . I'm not a big RPG player (althought I am desperately waiting for Star Wars Galaxies) but I think FreeLancer could be classified in the RPG/Space sim type.

So yeah, FreeLancer is a RPG. Good one yes, but too short. I never played or finished any other RPG, but I'm sure Diablo takes more than 15 hours before you reach the max level...

So, RPG, yes... but short.

Regards,

TigerLord

I beg your pardon, but what are morally sound people trying to do around pirate bases?
I certainly wouldn't want to go anywhere near a criminal organization's base in real life.

FDS and Tigerlord, there are two types of games ..the "quake/unreal" kind of games where blowing everyone up is just part of it, since most of the times the storylines or either absent or very thin the roleplaying part doesnt play a big deal and your personality doesnt seem to effect gameplay.

Freelancer is advertised to be an rpg, an rpg demands certain types of interactivity from the player, one of these being social interacting with your environment. Most large crime organisations (apart from terrorists) have realised that killing lawenforcement members is very unhealthy for business in the long run..it simply draws too much attention. So other methods like bribing, extorsion and threatening are used worldwide by criminals with large scaled business.

This is however a game and in most ways not very real life associated. But to experience any kind of a good rpg atmosphere people always draw real life comparisons to measure wether something is realistic or not.

Example:

I am in space as a freelancer and wish to get a sabre as an upgrade so I figure out who actually flies around in one. At a convenient time I will approach the owner and offer him 10x the price of one ..so if the sabre normally costs 500.000 I will be offering 5.000.000 to the pirate...most pirates would have a hard time saying no to this, while a few others bound by a certain code would have to deny regardless of the price offered. This would be more of a roleplaying and realistic approach.

Semi-criminals or the so called black market traders dont exist in freelancer, they usually dont care about factions, they just sell to the highest bidder .. this could also have been an option as a mean of getting to try out everything in Freelancer without shooting at people whom you have nothing against.

In any good roleplaying game the player is offered choices.. there are no choices in Diablo hence I wouldnt call it an RPG, it has the RPG elements but not the spirit of roleplaying...Freelancer could easily have had these things with minimal coding.


PS: Since I am not english native please pardon my errors.

This is a little inane, Danielsan, much like Max Steele's tantrum over ships not actually discharging their cargo when they said they would.

Frankly, all your points about FL not being RPGish are rebutted simply by the fact that you can, in fact, approach much of what you do from a role-playing perspective. I have contemplated, for instance, adopting a fictional persona while playing MP, which I may do in the future when I have thought it out some, and nothing is forcefully preventing me from doing this and actualizing it within the Freelancer universe. Perhaps I will consider myself to be acting out of character if I want to be a pirate and have to arbitrarily shoot down people just to realize this. You'd be out of your mind, however, to think that other RPGs that truly try to capture "RPGness" don't suffer from these sorts of situations as well, like Morrowind for example. Not like I could offer to buy something from a random person in that game either. Nor was there a black market available supposing I became an outlaw.

Your complaint is simply one of degree, and many complaints of degree can be leveled at Freelancer (not to mention EVERY OTHER GAME IN THE WORLD). Indeed, many of these complaints can also be said to involve minimal coding. However, given Freelancer's incredible breadth, I doubt that even "minimal coding" would involve only "minimal testing", and that they got the game out as bug-free as they did and before its graphics became utterly obsolete, is something we should be thankful for. Not that these complaints won't be useful in preparing a future game, but considering how well FL has revived the space sim genre (recent attempts at this sort of game have been pitiful), a continual attack on this aspect is, as I said, inane.

Finally, at what point, exactly, was Freelancer ever officially advertised as being an out-an-out RPG? At best, I think any official statement probably said it incorporates RPG elements.

And the complaint about the moral improprieties of Freelancer? What the hell? You're trying to tell me that you want to "get in good", so to speak, with IMMORAL factions, and you complain that you have to do something immoral (completely refutable when you are killing equally immoral people) to do it? While I respect your moral sensibilities and your status as a vet, I find this complaint utterly incomprehensible. Freelancer does not force you into any situations where you are doing something of obvious and absolute immorality. Indeed, the SP campaign is based on the premise of saving the galaxy, which justifies the hero in killing those who would try to stop him. Secondly, when you killed enemies of the Lane Hackers, how on earth did you decide to kill them without having any questions of moral propriety come up, only discovering that it was an immoral thing to do after you did it? That's just ridiculous, and I hardly see how Freelancer is to blame for that. YOU made the decision to perform an act that was immoral according to your sensibilities. That's your responsibility, not DA's.

Also, and I'm sorry, but if your 16 year old son is so impressionable as to be incapable of understanding the difference between killing someone in real life and killing someone in a game...hell, just don't buy Freelancer (I played Privateer when I was 13...haven't killed anyone yet). Tons of "impressionable" things exist in this world, and are allowed to exist because no one has yet made a sound case that these impressionable things constitute a grave threat to our society. The impetus is on you, if you think it of enough concern, to filter out these things. Few people will take your complaint at DA seriously, and no one else will take those few people seriously, because the very source of your complaint is shaky at best.

Edited by - Bhurak Starkiller on 10-03-2003 13:02:06

Some one was complaining about no options to be a trader? Fire up MP server (or join already exsting ones) join it and voilla you can be a pure trader, without the need to kill people. There will be some pirates after you cargo so you will have to fight those off, but appart from those you don't have to kill anyone. And since you're a trader you have no bussines on a pirate base. I mean the only people who do bussines with pirates are those who "cut some throats" here and there anyway (which isn't you in this case). So your hostile reputation with them and you not being able to dock on their station is of no importance to you. Freelancer can be a RPG game if you make it so. Play your character and you will have an excellent RPG. You talked about passes and at the same time dissmissed bribed. Imagine bribes are passes and you're set. RPGs always need some imagination if you want to play out your character. So if you want Freelancer to be a RPG, use it. That's all it takes.

If you're playing SP story, well that's one of the best stories in a game for a long time. Worth playing just for the sake of it. It's not a RPG sure, but as I said if you want RPG go play MP. And even after you finish the SP story, you can have a RPG. You're neutral or friendly with almost every faction. So you can dock to almost any station. And if you come near a neutral pirate, he will not kill you but demand your cargo (if it's on the more expensive side). You wanted mafie style play. Well this is it. Just insted of money you pay with your cargo.

Talking about conscience? This is a game not real life. A game that would be totaly realistic and real life like would be boring. Point of games is to have more fun with them than in real life. If you have more fun in real life, why play games at all?

Bhurak, you defenitely made some valid points and I dont believe anyone with a "normal" mind would be influenced by the violence in today´s games.

My only point is really that I want to try out a sabre, or any other ship in the game to test it out... which actually is a very valid wish. However I can not do this without attacking people I really dont want to attack and I believe another solution could have been added to make this possible. Like I mentioned, a remote black market, the ability to disable and steal a ship, the ability to offer a large sum of money to some npc you meet flying a sabre...this are just some of the suggestions.

There is a trick around this ... but its cheating and I hate any kind of cheating. I take on a mission at any base but ignore it and proceed to any pirate base which wont be hostile because you are on a mission. Its surely a bug, but lets me buy the ship without having to resort to "unnecessary violence".

I dont have a kid by the way, that was Daddyo

PS: Since I am not english native please pardon my errors.

I know, didn't mean to address that part of the post to you.

And I can understand your concern about wanting the Sabre, but aren't there a lot of enticing things in real life that you can't get without compromising yourself somehow?

Just a thought.