The unfortunate moral dilemma of imprisoned Solaris on new corpus ships

[Artekkor]

Hello there. I want to talk about imprisoned solaris on new corpus ships and certain issue with them as a game mechanic.

In order to free them i need to use a Granum Crown. Granum Crowns are a fairly hard-to-obtain resource. Not only i can gain 1 of them per mission max, but sometimes the carrier doesn't spawn to begin with (for no apparent reason). And when he does spawns - i might not have enough firepower to take him down (thankfully this is an issue only with tier 3).

Yet the prisoners can appear in numbers on the very same mission. So i gain 1 coin (hopefully), and might use like 3 or 4.

The problem: i want to have a healthy stockpile of these Granum Crowns. Like at least 20 of each, Just in case DE will add something that will require a lot of them.
In order to do that i have to ignore the solaris' pleas for help whenever i encounter them. Which is a little bit too often.
This causes me a certain moral discomfort, because i DO want to save them, but i can't spare the resources at the moment because i need to have a healthy back-up plan.

Can we do something about this? I don't think the granum crown requirement should be changed, but maybe there needs to be more opportunities to gain the crowns? Or some alternative method of helping those guys?

[Kamachi]

You know this is just a video game right? Even if we accept this premise as legitimate you are consciously choosing to save said currency in the hope that it will pay off for you in the future instead of using it to free the prisoners, your so called "moral discomfort" and thus dilemma lies with yourself and your actions not the game mechanic.

[Swagernator22663]

Its just a game, get a life.

[Artekkor]

4 минуты назад, -Alleluia- сказал:

You know this is just a video game right? Even if we accept this premise as legitimate you are consciously choosing to save said currency instead of using it to free the prisoners. Your moral discomfort and dilemma lies with yourself and not the game mechanic.

I'm perfectly willing to accept myself as a person of questionable moral standarts. Still would prefer not to have this 1 second of hesitation when leaving the room either way.

4 минуты назад, Swagernator22663 сказал:

Its just a game, get a life.

True. Also not useful to the conversation.

[ZarTham]

After you've got everything Protea related, you have no reason to go back to the Granum Void, so you'll have plenty of Crowns to free the prisoners, having more ways to farm Crowns is pointless.

Also, you can't save everybody, this is a lesson you still have to learn it seems.

[Artekkor]

11 минут назад, ZarTham сказал:

After you've got everything Protea related, you have no reason to go back to the Granum Void, so you'll have plenty of Crowns to free the prisoners, having more ways to farm Crowns is pointless.

Also, you can't save everybody, this is a lesson you still have to learn it seems.

I would, if the damn carriers would spawn. But they seem to refuse to spawn as of recently. Do they spawn only on "normal" missions, with sorties, syndicates and fissures being excluded? Or am i just unlucky?

As for not saving everybody - its fine if i don't have the resource or the opportunity to save someone. But this situation is... akward to say the least when the games makes it a choice. I have the resource. I have the power to save the guy. I just choose not to, since i need a stockpile of those crowns - just like i have a stockpile of every resource in the game (minus argon, for obvious reasons).

Its kinda weird for warframe - of all games - to put me into this peculiar situation. You know... The game where collecting massive hoards of resources is a perfectly normal thing to do. Or was, until now...

I must clarify that its not a BIG deal or anything. Its something small, that still bothers me every time i go to the corpus ship tileset.

[(XBOX)ShonOfDawn]

Well, even if it's just a game, some sense of morality and consequence should definitely present. I'm pretty sure that if the game suddenly introduced parts that involved murdering the elderly and children, the excuse "it's just a game" wouldn't hold up that well anymore. And to be fair, the concept of ignoring cries for help and leaving innocent people to their death just because that Granum Crown would be much more profitable in the Void from a gameplay standpoint isn't exactly moral, especially when the game doesn't do anything to remind the player of the fact that you left someone to die for your own gain, thus at least provoking a reflection of some kind. Although, as others have said, the issue theoretically sorts itself out as soon as you finish grinding the void (which might take ages for some), this is still another example of a poorly thought-out system by DE. 

[WhiteMarker]

20 minutes ago, Artekkor said:

I'm perfectly willing to accept myself as a person of questionable moral standarts.

You think you have questionable moral standarts, because you don't rescue some pixels?
What about all those enemies you kill? Did you ever try to talk to them? Maybe they don't want to fight, but are forced to do so. Do you have any issues with that?

[Magus_Tahir]

36 minutes ago, Artekkor said:

Hello there. I want to talk about imprisoned solaris on new corpus ships and certain issue with them as a game mechanic.

In order to free them i need to use a Granum Crown. Granum Crowns are a fairly hard-to-obtain resource. Not only i can gain 1 of them per mission max, but sometimes the carrier doesn't spawn to begin with (for no apparent reason). And when he does spawns - i might not have enough firepower to take him down (thankfully this is an issue only with tier 3).

Yet the prisoners can appear in numbers on the very same mission. So i gain 1 coin (hopefully), and might use like 3 or 4.

The problem: i want to have a healthy stockpile of these Granum Crowns. Like at least 20 of each, Just in case DE will add something that will require a lot of them.
In order to do that i have to ignore the solaris' pleas for help whenever i encounter them. Which is a little bit too often.
This causes me a certain moral discomfort, because i DO want to save them, but i can't spare the resources at the moment because i need to have a healthy back-up plan.

Can we do something about this? I don't think the granum crown requirement should be changed, but maybe there needs to be more opportunities to gain the crowns? Or some alternative method of helping those guys?

Not to make light of this commentary but..

You want to save them but don't want to incur a cost? Thats as selfish as it is greedy you may as well be a Tax Man for all of this mumbo jumbo backend reasoning you're putting forth here. I know venture capitalists in real life that have more spine about stating their desires. Come out and say what you really want to have your cake and it too. That isn't the world sunshine in real life or this game. 

I'd suggest animal crossing but you're not that timid. Your a special kind of chaotic evil that masquerades as lawful neutral. Wan't to save them, nahh you just don't want the guilt of infringing on your own bottom line while playing the good guy. This entire reasoning that you spelled out is an insult to bottom feeders.

[Artekkor]

2 минуты назад, WhiteMarker сказал:

You think you have questionable moral standarts, because you don't rescue some pixels?
What about all those enemies you kill? Did you ever try to talk to them? Maybe they don't want to fight, but are forced to do so. Do you have any issues with that?

I - in fact - do. I'm a big "Spec Ops: The Line" fan, so always keeping track of wether or not the game is being honest of me about the conflict on screen is something i do for every shooter game now, but that's a whole other topic that i'm not interested in having right now, and one that leads to nowhere because the answer is simply - yes, warframe is not being perfectly honest and is 100% biased with what it shows and tells.

Which is absolutely fine, because Warframe, by and large, is both a power fantasy and a game that doesn't take itself too seriously. At least for now... And while i would be perfectly fine with the game taking some edge with the morality of the tenno' actions (and also them effectively being child soldiers), there's something off-putting by the interesting conflict of a game mechanic (collecting and spending loot) with the moral context of the situation with solaris prisoners.

I think what bothers me the most is that the prisoners adress you directly when you find them, asking you to free them. If they were quiet or - better even - unconcious i probably would not have this much of an issue with this situation.
AGAIN - its not a BIG issue, but its an issue nonetheless, like a mosquito buzzing around my ear. So i have to adress it, even if just for the piece of mind and see what other people think of this. So far the counter argument seems to be exclusively "its just a game". Which is a perfectly fine argument... But not one i'm interest in, nor one that adresses the buzzing.

Also nobody so far offered any kind of soluition, which is dissapointing. So i guess i'll have to do this myself:
 - how about a "solaris extraction beacon" consumable item which can be crafted and used on the solaris prisoners to "mark" them for potential saving by other solaris operatives or maybe even other tenno (in lore only, of course).

Reward could be something completely miniscule, like 50-100 standing (as compared to 300 / 600 / 900 with crowns). Hell, i'll accept no reward at all - just the "thank you" from those guys will be good enough for me, considering that i'm technically rewarded with not spending the precious crown on it.

[(PSN)Viveeeh]

It's something you'll have live with, I guess. Those prisoners seem to be designed to serve as a purpose to collect crowns for, even after you finished in the Granum Void. And I don't think we'll get more crowns just to be able to rescue the prisoners and still have enough to farm Granum Void, that would speed up the farm (and I suppose DE wouldn't want that).

21 minutes ago, Magus_Tahir said:

Not to make light of this commentary but..

You want to save them but don't want to incur a cost? Thats as selfish as it is greedy you may as well be a Tax Man for all of this mumbo jumbo backend reasoning you're putting forth here. I know venture capitalists in real life that have more spine about stating their desires. Come out and say what you really want to have your cake and it too. That isn't the world sunshine in real life or this game. 

I'd suggest animal crossing but you're not that timid. Your a special kind of chaotic evil that masquerades as lawful neutral. Wan't to save them, nahh you just don't want the guilt of infringing on your own bottom line while playing the good guy. This entire reasoning that you spelled out is an insult to bottom feeders.

I wouldn't draw such conclusion from the original post. The OP wants to save the prisoners because they feel sorry for them (this is only natural, a good game involves the player on an emotional level), but in the meantime obviously they are aware this is a videogame, no real suffering is involved - so if they prefer to spend the crowns to enter the Granum Void, they don't commit some kind of ethical crime. 

[WhiteMarker]

7 minutes ago, Artekkor said:

I - in fact - do. I'm a big "Spec Ops: The Line" fan, so always keeping track of wether or not the game is being honest of me about the conflict on screen is something i do for every shooter game now, but that's a whole other topic that i'm not interested in having right now, and one that leads to nowhere because the answer is simply - yes, warframe is not being perfectly honest and is 100% biased with what it shows and tells.

Which is absolutely fine, because Warframe, by and large, is both a power fantasy and a game that doesn't take itself too seriously. At least for now... And while i would be perfectly fine with the game taking some edge with the morality of the tenno' actions (and also them effectively being child soldiers), there's something off-putting by the interesting conflict of a game mechanic (collecting and spending loot) with the moral context of the situation with solaris prisoners.

I think what bothers me the most is that the prisoners adress you directly when you find them, asking you to free them. If they were quiet or - better even - unconcious i probably would not have this much of an issue with this situation.
AGAIN - its not a BIG issue, but its an issue nonetheless, like a mosquito buzzing around my ear. So i have to adress it, even if just for the piece of mind and see what other people think of this. So far the counter argument seems to be exclusively "its just a game". Which is a perfectly fine argument... But not one i'm interest in, nor one that adresses the buzzing.

Also nobody so far offered any kind of soluition, which is dissapointing. So i guess i'll have to do this myself:
 - how about a "solaris extraction beacon" consumable item which can be crafted and used on the solaris prisoners to "mark" them for potential saving by other solaris operatives or maybe even other tenno (in lore only, of course).

Reward could be something completely miniscule, like 50-100 standing (as compared to 300 / 600 / 900 with crowns). Hell, i'll accept no reward at all - just the "thank you" from those guys will be good enough for me, considering that i'm technically rewarded with not spending the precious crown on it.

All I took from that is that you can't differentiate between a game and reality...
It's fine to see the moral conflict, sure. Nothing wrong with that. Getting bothered by that is what makes me worry about you.

[Artekkor]

30 минут назад, Magus_Tahir сказал:

Not to make light of this commentary but..

You want to save them but don't want to incur a cost? Thats as selfish as it is greedy you may as well be a Tax Man for all of this mumbo jumbo backend reasoning you're putting forth here. I know venture capitalists in real life that have more spine about stating their desires. Come out and say what you really want to have your cake and it too. That isn't the world sunshine in real life or this game. 

I'd suggest animal crossing but you're not that timid. Your a special kind of chaotic evil that masquerades as lawful neutral. Wan't to save them, nahh you just don't want the guilt of infringing on your own bottom line while playing the good guy. This entire reasoning that you spelled out is an insult to bottom feeders.

I knew this conversation could potentially spark a fire, but Jesus... What a way to go.

And yes - i do want to have my cake and eat it too, in this particular case. I have the right to ask for that in this particular game.
AND YES, this game is a world of sunshine, relatively speaking. Sure, the grineer and corpus and all other stuff is contextually grim and dark and all that... But the tenno (the characters AND the players) were yet to be faced with the reality of their actions. Tenno effectively commit war crimes on a regular basis - just look at Saryn and Ember. Have the game ever aknowledged any of it? No. Of course not. This game doesn't take itself that seriously. Every trailer for the warframes is how fun they are to play, not how terrifying of a war-machine they are.

And suddenly, out of nowhere, this weird-ass dillema: loot or moral standarts.
In this particular game of all games where loot is like the #1 reason to play, and moral standarts are... Well, i made my point with war crimes above.

I'm simply pointing out that the game is giving me mixed signals here, that's all.

[Artekkor]

5 минут назад, WhiteMarker сказал:

All I took from that is that you can't differentiate between a game and reality...
It's fine to see the moral conflict, sure. Nothing wrong with that. Getting bothered by that is what makes me worry about you.

Yes i can. Yes i do. And i don't care - the game is still giving me the signal. And i don't appeciate this particular game giving me this particular signal.
Yes, i can just ignore it. Its what i've been doing in fact. But its still there, and i'm raising the question of why is it there.

What a way to not adress the concern and just point a finger at me instead. Thanks.

[Aadi880]

il y a 36 minutes, Artekkor a dit :

I would, if the damn carriers would spawn. But they seem to refuse to spawn as of recently.

They are guaranteed to spawn at once per mission.

On endless missions, they will spawn at anytime between 5 to 7 minutes.

On non-endless missions, they will spawn at anytime between 3 to 4 minutes.

If you are speed running through the mission, you won't find them. If you joined late to a host where you are the client, chances are, you already missed them.

They do spawn in sorties, but there is no point in finding them there because they are too tanky to begin with.

They will always spawn in regular starchart missions. 

[WhiteMarker]

2 minutes ago, Artekkor said:

and i'm raising the question of why is it there.

Easy:
Because it's an interesting touch. Makes the game feel a bit more alive.

[Artekkor]

1 минуту назад, Aadi880 сказал:

They are guaranteed to spawn at once per mission.

On endless missions, they will spawn at anytime between 5 to 7 minutes.

On non-endless missions, they will spawn at anytime between 3 to 4 minutes.

If you are speed running through the mission, you won't find them. If you joined late to a host where you are the client, chances are, you already missed them.

They do spawn in sorties, but there is no point in finding them there because they are too tanky to begin with.

They will always spawn in regular starchart missions. 

Weird. I've been doing solo syndicate missions and got the tileset on them. 2 spy missions. Wasn't rushing - just taking my time in solo mode. Nobody spawned.

[(PSN)Kamranos]

I’m pretty much onboard with the OP. I would love to have an easier way to free these prisoners. Perhaps removing the crown requirement and making it credits (similar to paying their debt in Fortuna). As it stands, there is little reward incentive to spend crowns on them other than to not feel like a cold heartless space ninja.

If they cost crowns, I would hope DE would have made it more worth it and not the same as turning in a fish for standing. Do the Solaris really think so little of these lives?

[Artekkor]

1 минуту назад, (PS4)Kamranos сказал:

I’m pretty much onboard with the OP. I would love to have an easier way to free these prisoners. Perhaps removing the crown requirement and making it credits (similar to paying their debt in Fortuna). As it stands, there is little reward incentive to spend crowns on them other than to not feel like a cold heartless space ninja.

If they cost crowns, I would hope DE would have made it more worth it and not the same as turning in a fish for standing. Do the Solaris really think so little of these lives?

Oh right. Thanks for reminding me - the price for saving these guys is almost insultingly low as well. But that's another conversation entirely.

[Aadi880]

il y a 2 minutes, Artekkor a dit :

Weird. I've been doing solo syndicate missions and got the tileset on them. 2 spy missions. Wasn't rushing - just taking my time in solo mode. Nobody spawned.

Then I guess they do not spawn in syndicate missions.

Some missions are black-listed such as invasions due to possible conflicts. (If you are allied with corpus, you can't technically kill them). Syndicate missions are probably blacklisted too I guess (Why? idk.).

Do bear in mind that they only spawn in new corpus ship tileset.

[Artekkor]

7 минут назад, WhiteMarker сказал:

Easy:
Because it's an interesting touch. Makes the game feel a bit more alive.

Alright, i accept that answer.
I expect 50 more touches of this nature, with rising stakes within next 10 major updates. Let's make this "Spec Ops: The Line 2 - Electric Boogalo".
I'm 100% on board (not even joking).

Humour aside, what i'm trying to say is - its kinda weird that they decided to introduce that form of touch now and here, in this particular form. It feels weirdly out of place compared to how the game was so far. But oh well.... If it means more to come - i'm okay with that. Just please hurry it up, because right now - it doesn't sit well on its own.

[WhiteMarker]

3 minutes ago, Artekkor said:

Humour aside, what i'm trying to say is - its kinda weird that they decided to introduce that form of touch now and here, in this particular form. It feels weirdly out of place compared to how the game was so far. But oh well.... If it means more to come - i'm okay with that. Just please hurry it up, because right now - it doesn't sit well on its own.

What about it feels out of place?
We knew about the situation for the Solaris people.
It feels pretty fitting.

3 minutes ago, Artekkor said:

Alright, i accept that answer.
I expect 50 more touches of this nature, with rising stakes within next 10 major updates. Let's make this "Spec Ops: The Line 2 - Electric Boogalo".
I'm 100% on board (not even joking).

Quite a bit of salt. How about taking a break from using your PC for today, sipping on a nice cup of tea and talking to your loved ones? óÒ

[Magus_Tahir]

8 minutes ago, Artekkor said:

I knew this conversation could potentially spark a fire, but Jesus... What a way to go.

And yes - i do want to have my cake and eat it too, in this particular case. I have the right to ask for that in this particular game.
AND YES, this game is a world of sunshine, relatively speaking. Sure, the grineer and corpus and all other stuff is contextually grim and dark and all that... But the tenno (the characters AND the players) were yet to be faced with the reality of their actions. Tenno effectively commit war crimes on a regular basis - just look at Saryn and Ember. Have the game ever aknowledged any of it? No. Of course not. This game doesn't take itself that seriously. Every trailer for the warframes is how fun they are to play, not how terrifying of a war-machine they are.

And suddenly, out of nowhere, this weird-ass dillema: loot or moral standarts.
In this particular game of all games where loot is like the #1 reason to play, and moral standarts are... Well, i made my point with war crimes above.

I'm simply pointing out that the game is giving me mixed signals here, that's all.

 

1 minute ago, Artekkor said:

Yes i can. Yes i do. And i don't care - the game is still giving me the signal. And i don't appeciate this particular game giving me this particular signal.
Yes, i can just ignore it. Its what i've been doing in fact. But its still there, and i'm raising the question of why is it there.

What a way to not adress the concern and just point a finger at me instead. Thanks.

You have just proven my very point in all of this, and this is not a moral dilemma for you. 

If The Glast Gambit, 2nd Dream, The War Within, and The Sacrifice didn't send you a signal on the types of ethical conundrums that exist in the Warframe universe until you were suddenly struck with something staring back at you asking to be free that is entirely upon you for failing to recognize the world for what it is. Its rated M for Mature for a reason. I would actually be onboard with a better way change the Solaris prisons to hidden Caches you have to find instead of this bloody coin mechanic but that does not change the reason you started out with. By your logic visiting Ticker in Fortuna and not spending your resources to not pay off every debt bond there should be putting you into the exact same issue. It's no different except now you have to actually see it.

You're uncomfortable because you finally recognized one of the darker aspects within the Warframe universe after all this time that has always been there. And so you want to change the rules of the world so you don't have to feel it and bask in that sunshine you feel the games trailers show.

But to sit there and say I don't want to sacrifice because it makes me feel, or it affects my resource usage is just plain moral bankruptcy. It's like a dragon sitting on its mountain of gold hoarding it and treating anything that would take any of it as a threat to its very existence. The moment you confirmed that you lost any right to demand anything of this game within realms of morality. Hiding in DE's shadow with how dare they present me with a loot or morals choice in world full of murder and death that one makes me laugh.

If a change is made based on the reasons you have listed it would undermine the very storytelling and interactions the game story writers and designers created for the players to experience. They knew what they were doing something you seem to have missed entirely. 

 

[(PSN)Shaun-T-Wilson]

DE way of saying "you can't save everyone" even if your powerful top teir entity.

[Artekkor]

48 минут назад, WhiteMarker сказал:

What about it feels out of place?
We knew about the situation for the Solaris people.
It feels pretty fitting.

No it doesn't... I don't think we are having the same conversation here. I'll attempt to clarify.

For the sake of the argument, we are not going the "its just a game" route, because it simply drops and ignores the conversation. In which case i wouldn't create this thread to begin with.

The solaris prisoner situation is morally loaded, wether it wants it or not. With a clear GOOD and BAD option.
To be fair: the game did the moral options before. Examples: what to do with kuva queen, what to do with kuva bottle and - perhaps more importantly - the faith of that one half-infested colony in that one quest.
Hell, they even impact the whole "sun / moon" moral compass on our profiles.

The difference: the before mentioned examples are relatively equal. Each choice in those situations has an argument of why go this route and not that route.
The choice for the solaris prisoners - provided you actually have crowns on you - is binary. Either you save them or don't. The "don't save" option does not have arguments except for "its just a game" which is an argument that i've already decided to simply ignore.
Which means its a morally undefendable option. Yet one i have to choose because this game is a looter shooted and i need to hoard any loot i come across in case DE decides to add something that requires like 50 of each crowns to craft. Which is basically me preparing for the potential future and avoiding burning myself out on grinding the thing after the theoretical blueprint was added (which means i'll just be faced with this moral dilemma anyway, just in a condenced form... just like when grinding Granum Void).

The game had not done this before. It never had a clear good / bad options like that weighted moreally against a mechanic of collecting loot. And for WHATEVER REASONS it decided to couter-weight this choice against hoarding a very rare resource that potentially could become relevant in the future. And the game does this casually.

This is a unique accurance as far as i'm concerned. And its' pressence is bothering me (buzzing around my ears ever so gently) enough to make this topic. Provided its been present since the release of the update, and i've decided to talk about this only now.