I'm referring to the Republic quest on Taris "AWOL"

 

If you send them back you get darkside points...if you help them go AWOL you get lightside points.

 

As someone who was in the military, I find that line of reasoning offensive for lack of a better term. The reason the were deserting...life is hard and they were afraid to die.

 

 

I'm wondering if a devs politics wandered into TOR.

 

 

/rant

I'm referring to the Republic quest on Taris "AWOL"

 

If you send them back you get darkside points...if you help them go AWOL you get lightside points.

 

As someone who was in the military, I find that line of reasoning offensive for lack of a better term. The reason the were deserting...life is hard and they were afraid to die.

 

 

I'm wondering if a devs politics wandered into TOR.

 

 

/rant

 

I understand your point, having been a soldier myself.

 

But from a Jedi point of view, saving their lives is a "good" deed. Sending them back to almost certain doom is dark.

 

The Force is not political in nature. Spare a life or condemn a life. That's the basic choice. Here. There are some other dark/light choices in the game I find utterly bewildering though.

I think that accroding to canon, Jedi are strive for "balance" rather than "goodness". In D&D terms, they are lawful neutral

As Yoda states multiple times, Jedi should not be guided by emotions, thus shouldn't be swayed by empathy or judge 'goodness' of things, but rather strive to keep law and order with reason and deliberation.

 

Note, that in the movies, Jedi do not rescue Anakin's mother from slavery, even though they could easily do that. Jedi try to keep law and order, not judge what/who is good or evil.

Empire threatens war on the republic, which would cause great chaos and suffering, so they fight the empire.

 

I think the Jedi thing to do is to turn in the deserters, restoring law & order.

 

Yeah, very often the game is very naive in its light/ dark side choices. Sorry for the nerdy outburst

Edited December 20, 2011 by domasx

I understand your point, having been a soldier myself.

 

But from a Jedi point of view, saving their lives is a "good" deed. Sending them back to almost certain doom is dark.

 

The Force is not political in nature. Spare a life or condemn a life. That's the basic choice. Here. There are some other dark/light choices in the game I find utterly bewildering though.

 

No, I don't agree with that. I'm pretty sure most Jedi would tell them to do their duty. It's definatöey a more darkside thing to desert your friends and let them die in your place...

AWOL is the right thing, as they won't kill people in the future and be less helpful to such cruelty as war (real life perspective).

Jedi aren't military. They don't see things the way a soldier would. Edited December 20, 2011 by belialle

To me this isnt the worst one.

 

The quest on the starter world for the trooper/smuggler that has you collecting the stolen medicine is worse imo.

 

A group of villagers steal medicine from troopers fighting people trying to kill them. Why? Because little Billy isnt feeling good. On the other hand troopers will die without that medicine. You get dark side points for returning the medicine to the troopers.

 

So, if you return stolen goods to troopers dying from wounds over thieves who want to be comfortable, you get dark side points.

 

 

Or how about the end of the smuggler quest line on the same starter world. The woman murderers her boyfriend/employer and you get LIGHTSIDE points for letting her go. Darkside if you decide to bring her to justice.

 

Im amazed at some of the morality of the devs.

AWOL is the right thing, as they won't kill people in the future and be less helpful to such cruelty as war (real life perspective).

 

lol because the world is made out of sunshine and lollypops, especially the Star Wars world.

 

Sith are slaughtering everyone that opposses them and the only that thats stopping **** and murder on a galactic scale is the Republic with its army made primarily of troopers.

 

Getting light side points for AWOL makes no sense at all and no, Jedi would not approve. I would think Jedi would have enough brain cells to recognize the need to stand up to evil.

No, I don't agree with that. I'm pretty sure most Jedi would tell them to do their duty.

 

And we also have a canon reference for that.

In Revenge of the Sith, at the space battle in the beginning, Anakin wants to help out the pilots, because they are likely to get slaughtered as bait and cannon fodder. Obi-Wan tells him "No, they are doing their job, so we can do ours." This implies, that the mission is far greater than the lives of 5 or 6 pilots.

 

On this take, also in game, when you help your fellow soldiers by bringing the much needed medicine to them, instead of helping a (admittedly somehow ackwardly hot) cat woman, you get dark side points.

 

So, you're faced with a dilemma...let the soldiers die or the children suffer. When in fact it is: If the soldiers die now, the children will for sure follow or suffer worse than now.

 

Odd moral choices placed upon us.

Getting light side points for AWOL makes no sense at all and no, Jedi would not approve. I would think Jedi would have enough brain cells to recognize the need to stand up to evil.

 

Funny you say that, yesterday I had a mission on Coruscant, where I had to order some troops to stand their ground for the greater good. Guess what. got light side points. Letting them leave would have gotten me dark side points.

I think the game contradicts itself in this case,

 

If you play consular you get light points if you reveal two lovers since its forbidden by jedi code jedis be in love. In that case its duty over personal preferences. You are the member of the order so you follow the orders rules.

 

But with AWOL case you have to understand the personal feelings of soldiers.

 

So Jedi person can't break his code because personal feelings. But its OK to help soldiers break their own code for same reason?

 

I would understand if choice was moral, like somebody would be harmed. But in case of deserters they would just end being hunter anyway and they would end breaking the code they had promised to uphold.

Light/Dark side is a hard and subjective thing to understand and as a result game developers will make choices that make no sense to someone else.

 

I tend to find that this game balances between combatant/non-combatant or honoring your word/breaking your word. It also seems to punish so called rationalizations.

 

In the example here, you can send a group of non-combatants <people who've lost the will to fight> back into the battle and rationalize it away as they knew what they where getting into. Now to every damn military person out there this is a horrible choice.

 

The same with little billy and the medicine. You must chose to save the combatants or non-combatants, while rationalizing this as the legal thing to do.

BioWare customer service sent me here.

 

Thank you for the feedback you have provided, though the mission caters to the light side, there is a equal chance of getting equal amount of points

 

To ensure your valuable feedback reaches the right departments we would ask that you submit all feedback related to your experience playing Star Wars: The Old Republic on the forums, which you can find at http://www.swtor.com/community

We are very lucky to have fans that share our enthusiasm for great games, and we hope to see you in-game!

 

This bothered me as well. The light/dark reward seemed backwards. I'm not military, but I've been a part of many teams in my days. Deserting almost always leads to some amount of personal darkness. They would think of their team members and how leaving makes weaker the team, the mission and the cause. Or more practically: on some level, every soldier wants to go home to a warm bath and cookies (and spouse and kids).

 

As for D&D, a lawful neutral respects rules, such as military conscription. A chaotic neutral would be required to tell the soldiers to do what they want, not what they agreed to earlier.

 

Actually, a lot of Taris seems very "Cartoon Network" morality (i.e. 12-year-old understanding of the world) to me. But of course the game doesn't bear close scrutiny. I mean, my mission as a Jedi has been "kill anything and everything in your way by the thousands", not quite Jedi Code.

The Taris mission in question isn't a clear-cut "do your duty or abandon your duty" question. It's a matter of forcing soldiers who have been at a post for years and are barely holding onto their sanity as they watch their friends die brutal, bloody deaths at the hands of mutated and feral humanoids to go back to a post that will lead to their own deaths, or psychological breakdowns (or both).

 

Jedi are taught to be emotionless and to be slow to act, but they don't hold non-Jedi to those same standards. They may preach and advise it, but they understand that others don't have the same training and may be more emotional and prone to the passions that come with those emotions.

 

The Jedi way is to respect the decisions of others, not to impose their own view. That's why you can get light side points for allowing soldiers to go AWOL in one instance, then get light side points for encouraging others to do their duty in another. It's all about context.

The one I remember being odd was on Coruscant, where you have to intercept a letter or report for someone from 'The True Republic', as the council member is working with the Empire. When you do this quest you get caught and have to make the decision of taking the letter regardless or putting your hands up and allowing the letter to continue on its path.

 

The thing is, allowing the letter to continue is a light side option. Huh? So it's light side to allow the politicians to deal with the Empire and possibly bring about the downfall of Coruscant, but dark side if I intercept that letter and bring to light their evil dealings?

 

That one confused me so much I don't even do the quest anymore.

I think the game contradicts itself in this case,

 

If you play consular you get light points if you reveal two lovers since its forbidden by jedi code jedis be in love. In that case its duty over personal preferences. You are the member of the order so you follow the orders rules.

 

But with AWOL case you have to understand the personal feelings of soldiers.

 

So Jedi person can't break his code because personal feelings. But its OK to help soldiers break their own code for same reason?

 

I would understand if choice was moral, like somebody would be harmed. But in case of deserters they would just end being hunter anyway and they would end breaking the code they had promised to uphold.

 

As far as the Jedi lovers are concerned, it was obvious that Moracen (the female) wasn't able to handle the situation. She was getting aggressive, even to the point of threatening you with violence.

 

As for the soldiers, they had spent 5 years on Taris, constantly worrying about Rakghoul infection on pretty much a daily basis. I don't know about you but personally I think that's asking way too much of your troops. I'd like to see how well you RL soldiers had handled 5 years in a hellhole like that...

/rant

Exactly that.

When you become a mindless killing machine...

One quest that really bugged me early on was actually on Ord Mantell.

 

You receive a mission to return some stolen medicine to a Republic officer, only to discover that the medicine was taken by a woman to help treat local orphans she was taking care of. After acquiring the medicine you have two choices: Return it to the rightful owners, the Republic military, and get dark side points. Or give the contraband to the woman and get light side points.

 

This one has always bugged me. Is it really dark sided to return medicine to the military outpost that relies on it? Either way people are going to die. One can argue that the lives of orphans are more important than hardened soldiers injured in battle, but to consider you dark sided?

 

Always thought it would have worked better if that was the neutral choice, and instead trying to sell it back to the woman was the darkside choice. That way you are actually being somewhat evil; using contraband medicine to extort a weary ad-hoc nurse.

Hi.

 

You're responding to a post that's over a month old.

 

Just an FYI......

I understand that. Regardless, I felt it needed to be properly addressed.

And we also have a canon reference for that.

In Revenge of the Sith, at the space battle in the beginning, Anakin wants to help out the pilots, because they are likely to get slaughtered as bait and cannon fodder. Obi-Wan tells him "No, they are doing their job, so we can do ours." This implies, that the mission is far greater than the lives of 5 or 6 pilots.

 

On this take, also in game, when you help your fellow soldiers by bringing the much needed medicine to them, instead of helping a (admittedly somehow ackwardly hot) cat woman, you get dark side points.

 

So, you're faced with a dilemma...let the soldiers die or the children suffer. When in fact it is: If the soldiers die now, the children will for sure follow or suffer worse than now.

 

Odd moral choices placed upon us.

 

It could be argued that the military will get more medicine, but the refugees won't and the Republic military isn't exactly not without ethical issues. One line of thought that crossed my mind is that the person on guard that was "sleeping" when the Cathar "stole" the medicine wasn't sleeping and intentionally gave her the medicine and covered it up with the "I was sleeping" story.

I'm referring to the Republic quest on Taris "AWOL"

 

If you send them back you get darkside points...if you help them go AWOL you get lightside points.

 

As someone who was in the military, I find that line of reasoning offensive for lack of a better term. The reason the were deserting...life is hard and they were afraid to die.

 

 

I'm wondering if a devs politics wandered into TOR.

 

 

/rant

 

Isn't the point of that mission that they had been kept out in the conflict for several extended tours (beyond what was reasonable) and that their CO was stealing supplies and barely keeping them in gear?

 

I seem to remember there was a little more to it than just "They didn't want to fight anymore".

 

I understood the options. You got Dark Side points for not caring about their suffering and sending them back based on some arbitrary rule.

 

You got Light Side points for understanding that they were suffering, weren't just shirking duties, and needed a break.

 

PS: War is a racket. Go back to Orwell's 1984 and read chapter 3 from Emmanuel Goldstein's book, "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism". That's pretty much what war is today. Trying to keep that going is hardly heroic or beneficial to society as a whole...

 

BTW Conundrum, great nickname.

Edited February 19, 2012 by Kubernetic

On Hutta you have an option of giving a starving family some fuel cells so they can sell them on the black market and buy food. Or let them starve.

 

Supporting the black market so a family can eat is dark side.

Letting them starve is light side.

 

They really needed a grey side option in the game. Just balancing light and dark is illogical.

Light=/=Good

Dark=/=Evil

 

It's perspective, and the individual.

 

THOSE SOLDIERS see you as a hero for letting them flee. THOSE SOLDIERS see you as a monster for sending them back.

 

YOU ARE GOOD OR EVIL IN THEIR EYES.

 

The same goes down on Ord Mantell. You get Light points for giving meds to a refugee group, and Dark points for giving the meds to the soldiers who they belong to, and who are dying for the refugees.

 

It's a matter of perspective. The same happens with several scenarios involving war criminals and pirates. Dealing out justice and killing them is Dark, and taking them prisoner is Light. Many would argue that killing them is heroic.

I think the game contradicts itself in this case,

 

If you play consular you get light points if you reveal two lovers since its forbidden by jedi code jedis be in love. In that case its duty over personal preferences. You are the member of the order so you follow the orders rules.

 

But with AWOL case you have to understand the personal feelings of soldiers.

 

So Jedi person can't break his code because personal feelings. But its OK to help soldiers break their own code for same reason?

 

I would understand if choice was moral, like somebody would be harmed. But in case of deserters they would just end being hunter anyway and they would end breaking the code they had promised to uphold.

 

I don't think this mission even compares with AWOL. Those two were dangerous, and were playing with fire, and the Jedi had rules against what they were doing for a reason. The threats the guy makes against you for even suggesting you'll tell the Master what they're doing was proof enough for me.

 

The AWOL team didn't threaten you if you didn't say you would leave them be, and didn't offer to bribe you either.

 

Totally different scenarios.