Main storyline quest. Will we have RGB explosions in the end?

Basically, if you want to be a renegade, you're always forced into a fail path. No thank you.

Plus, you already know my feelings about "failing" in a story-based game after investing 40 hours into it. The only failure you should get is if your ship blows up trying to beat that last boss.

^ you can win with any path you've taken. You're misreading the diagram. The last choice that you need to make if you chose "renegade" option (orange & red) should be the one that leads to "yellow" win. This is your only chance to "win" in presented example.

By "Fail" I mean a legitimate game ending where you don't get an usual "game over" screen 'cause your ship blew up, but an ending story showing what and how you failed exactly.

What I don't want is another ME renegade/paragon BS that didn't matter in the end at all. It was meaningless fluff for different dialog options here and there. Nothing more.

And how do you expect to "win" if you killed everyone anyway?...

Simple. I won by exterminating all the aliens. Humans now rule the galaxy. We can live in peace, under my thumb.

By creating a "bad"/"failure" ending and associating it with the renegade path, what you've done is essentially made it so that being evil/selfish is not rewarding. You're imposing morality on my game. No thank you.

All endings should be "win" scenarios, but your actions should decide which "win" scenario you get.

If all endings are a win scenario then my choices are pointless.  I like being evil as much (or more) as the next guy, but I don't expect the hero ending for doing it. 

I know past Stardock games have indicated a sort of fondness for the good vs evil approach to gameplay, but I feel the need to say I really think it's time that gaming moved beyond.  As gamers age, so too does our interest in more complex thinking, and the most interesting stories simply can't be pared down to Good vs Evil.  Stories should be stories, not forced into a mould to give the frankly childish semblance of choice.

Star Control is off-the-wall and wacky, and Stardock has stated they want to carry on with that.  Just make a fun story, and give us some choices where the consequences are hilarious and unexpected.  We don't need lots of endings.  A single, awesome, hilarious ending that makes everyone want to talk about it to their friends and fellow gamers is 1000 times better than a game with multiple endings representing "Hero" or "Villan", "Good" or "Evil".

My 2 cents.

Winning or Losing a game should be subjective based on how you want to play.  If I wanna be a saint then I should consider saving the universe and its inhabitants a Win, and destroying everyone and everything a Loss.  Vice-versa if I wanna play the devil.  The game should not force any type of morality by labeling any result good or bad, win or loss.

I think we should look at it from a neutral perspective... every decision has an outcome, simple as that.  Groups of decisions lead to ultimate outcomes, as per Hunam_'s diagram.  Whether that outcome is good or bad is up to the player on how he/she wants to take it.  

Example: if you get into a battle and you destroy another ship, the classic sense is that you've won.  However, if the other pilot was your best friend, say, and you and him were forced to face each other under some strange circumstance, fleeing the battle without anyone getting injured could be considered a win. 

Exactly!

While entirely reasonable in some scenarios, this seems to defeat the goal of the narrative I expect, especially where we don't want to end the story with finality.  The Humans aren't a race of bloodthirsty killers.  That's the Ilwrath.  An "evil" play-style doesn't sound anything like SC2 whose story is very clear- Earthlings are exactly the "saint saving the galaxy" archetype.  While "The Great Empire of Zelnik" was a great running gag, it really was just that- a joke.

Ulp! Well... you're the one with the big starship.

To allow the player to act outside of the norms of a race feels bad for two reasons.  Play-wise, it means breaking suspension of disbelief.  Sure you could "choose" to play as evil but the difference was very minor in story, while it required you to know enough spoilers in advance to throw away all potential allies, while facing an existential threat.  A believable evil character would be more strategic than that and act somewhere between taking advantage of potential allies without necessarily rushing to their aid (e.g. use ZotFoqPik to gather intel but ignore their pleas for help), to outright subjugation of anyone weaker.  Development-wise it almost necessarily means spending a lot of resources on writing multiple paths along a divergent story which ends up forcing a shaky continuity moving forward if it's assumed there's no "right" choice.

Humans are all over the spectrum when it comes to being good and evil. How should we play our race? Corrupt? Fundamental? Benevolent?

Humans are always portrayed as "average" with no specific traits.  Like a game will have a race of spies, scientists, warriors, etc, and humans are always the baseline "no trait" race.  I have a long standing joke that the human trait should be "pesky meddlers".

I'm not talking about traits like this. I'm talking about how Oghorblar was saying playing against a race's stereotype feels bad/wrong. My counter was to ask what our race's stereotypes are to begin with. We have real groups of people in the world that want to see all of us affluent Americans killed off. I couldn't care less about them, but they hate my guts. If I wanted to play a Xenophobic Jihadist in SCR, would I be acting against my race's stereotypes?

What about a dictator? Why can't I play as Stalin or any of the Kims?

What if I wanted to play a self-centered Nationalist or Capitalist that only cared about our race/country/world and used political or economic leverage to take advantage of my allies?

None of these guys are truly evil. They are neutral, even when they have some fairly substantial character flaws.

That is a lot easier to do in an open game than a story driven one like an adventure game like star control.  It would be nearly impossible to do truly well in a story driven game since it would basically require a whole different story for each different type of character you wanted to support.

I hope you understand the meaning of the phrase: "He won all the battles, but he lost the war". 

The "Red fail" can be something along the lines of:

After defeating every other race by forceful subjugation or destroying them completely, the Earth Supreme Ruler IBNobody rested in peace. But it didn't last long. Due to lack of resources to enforce his rule everywhere in the Galaxy, corruption and moral depravity started to take hold. Local leaders rose from the ashes of burnt civilizations. First local conflicts appeared soon. Ever-present chaos and anarchy followed it. Earth and many human and non-human colonies developed a rebel element. People got sick and tired of IBNobody's ironfist and lawlessness outside of his domain which by that time shrunk to a small local star cluster. Not long after the Great Crusade was over he was found dead under his dining table, consumed by his own "poison". Another life wasted in the pursuit of power and glory...

The "Orange fail":

Delicate cunning, devious diplomacy and aptly placed deadly traps brought all the major races under the rule of the High Chancellor IBNobody. But he never felt proper safety and rightly so. Exploitative laws and unfair taxes started to alienate even extreme sympathizers. Craftily installed puppets and mouthpieces were brought into light soon after the First Galactic Concord pact was signed. One by one, star systems rejected the foreign elements out of their body. Meanwhile, the High Chancellor didn't sit idly. The ultimate Star Protection System was brought to life at many critical locations. The pact was broken by *insert proud alien civ name here* which decimated the first few SPSs, but not without heavy losses. Others, seeing potential success, joined them. The High Chancellor willing-fully surrendered when armada of several races pointed its guns towards Earth's capital. He died peacefully from natural causes at the age of 81 at his cell at distant Beta Fornax High Security Space Prison. More dust… more ashes… more disappointment...

Do we even play the same types of games?

Help me out, because I am completely missing your point. Is your definition of an "open game" an open world nonlinear RPG? Like Fallout or Ultima 6? Not open without story like Minecraft, right?

And you are saying that a story driven game (on-rails) is harder to write branches for than an open world nonlinear RPG?

Maybe it's time for devs to get off their @sses and work it out? Maybe it's time to create a quest engine alongside the game engine? Dunno how that would work.

And the "Green Win" scenario would be all happy-happy-joy-joy too? Or would it be "Star Wars Episode 7" or Tolkein's "The New Shadow"?

It goes both ways, my friend. Both ways.

^ could be anything. I don't disagree.

From business stand point, you wanna satisfy all your customers. So, you include as many ending as you can.

"I won by exterminating all the aliens. Humans now rule the galaxy. We can live in peace, under my thumb."

This can absolutely be one of the "win" endings if devs are willing so. It just doesn't correlate with reality too much IMO.

double post

Well, neither does playing nicey-nice correlate with reality. There's always another enemy, and there are two more sequels to SCR planned.

As an alternate and less glib response to you, Hunam, consider what you are saying about your failure endings. You've said that being a despot leads to failure. Thus, you are saying that being a despot is bad. Thus, you are trying to convince me to be good and to play the game like you want me to play it. 

From a metagame standpoint, why would I ever want to make selfish decisions if I'm going to be stuck in a failed ending?

If there were epic cinematic endings or the like I would do this, just to see what would happen (check out the different outcomes).  I like replaying, and I sometimes I like to be sadistic.  But I'm a nice guy most of the time.  Most of the time. 

^ YouTube

No, I am saying that with star control people expect a great story.  A great story is going to be very specific.  Writing that three different ways, for example, for the 3 different playstyle choices would be extremely challenging.  You'd have to write 3 great stories instead of just 1.

In a more open game that was more about space exploration (or some other aspect) and less about the story it would be a lot easier to allow the player to be good, evil, or neutral, for example.  But when the game is largely about having a great story the player experiences it is a lot harder to do that in terms of still having it be a great story (told 3 different ways) and in art and programming resources in creating all that.

Also if there will be 3 SD SCR games and say you make 3 endings for each game then do you know how much writing that would require?

1st game:

3 endings.

2nd game:

3 beginnings

9 endings.

3rd game:

9 beginnings

27 endings.

Each ending must lead to a unique ending in the sequel if not then story-lines will coalesce making the choices you have made so far redundant.

For example if you end up the bad guy in one game then you start as a bad guy with other aliens against you.

You can redeem yourself or become even more evil.

But you will only redeem yourself and not become the savior of the universe if you had started as the good guy.

You are overthinking it. Do you play many RPGs with alignment systems? Ever play Planescape: Torment?

These games usually don't have 3 different stories. They have a single story line but people react to you in different ways and then have multiple endings based on your choices.

The way that is often handled is that one ending is chosen as the canon ending. It isn't always the "good" or "best" ending. Sometimes, it's even the selfish ending. Or, you may have it where the opening of the second game funnels all endings in from the first game and puts them on a single path.

What these games do not do, however, is tell you how you did in the detail that Hunam listed in his failure endings. They leave the ending open to interpretation.

Overthinking maybe. 

But Star Control is not an RPG. And do you want to put an alignment system in Star Control?

If regardless of what your choice or action is the ending is "funneled into one single path" then what is the point of choices?

And if you have a 

Might as well just have 1 story path alignment (the Good way) with multiple different endings that act like STATS that can be carried over to the next game.

For example having different allies in the ending would influence what allies you have in the sequel.

Naturally with crew and items also being carried into the sequel.