Who actually is in for Star Wars?

[Barrister]

I actually have found the sith/jedi light/dark thing kind of stupid so far.

I mean, what does it mean if my Sith character makes light side choices all the time?

And the "evil" of the Sith is so sophomoric and stupid...

THANK YOU.  Finally someone who agrees with me.

The light side / dark side choices on the Republic aren't great, but they at least present themselves as two rational choices.  MOst of the Empire ones I've seen revolve around whether you wish to be needlessly violent and cruel or not.

[Barrister]

So is anybody out there planning on playing this game Republic side?  Ultimately I don't care too much about PvP vs PvE rule sets.

[Syt]

I actually have found the sith/jedi light/dark thing kind of stupid so far.

I mean, what does it mean if my Sith character makes light side choices all the time?

And the "evil" of the Sith is so sophomoric and stupid...

The text for one of the Sith chars seemed to imply you can align with the Dark Council or go Renegade - if that's really in the game as meaningful options . . . I don't know.

However, it seems your decisions in quests and dialogues can influence your companions for better or worse. Though, like an abusive spouse, you can try to buy them off with gifts when you mistreat them, it seems.

[Syt]

So is anybody out there planning on playing this game Republic side?  Ultimately I don't care too much about PvP vs PvE rule sets.

I will probably try a smuggler at some point, though not right away. I think it might be fun to play a light side Bounty Hunter or a dark side Smuggler.

[Strix]

So is anybody out there planning on playing this game Republic side?  Ultimately I don't care too much about PvP vs PvE rule sets.

I will be. Just pre-ordered today.

[MadImmortalMan]

I actually have found the sith/jedi light/dark thing kind of stupid so far.

I mean, what does it mean if my Sith character makes light side choices all the time?

And the "evil" of the Sith is so sophomoric and stupid...

THANK YOU.  Finally someone who agrees with me.

The light side / dark side choices on the Republic aren't great, but they at least present themselves as two rational choices.  MOst of the Empire ones I've seen revolve around whether you wish to be needlessly violent and cruel or not.

IMO the main dichotomy of the force is not so much good vs evil as it is calm vs emotion. Games have done a generally poor job of depicting that. It's usually cruel vs nice or selfish vs unselfish. I'd like to see it done better for once.

[Drakken]

How the fuck someone force-sensitive can be a "good" Sith?   

The Dark Side is about tapping into one's passion and primal emotions (like fear, hate, anger, and lust) to fuel the use of the force, thus focusing inward, to one's own selfish desires, usually power, glory, or domination. Even if those wants are "good", as in helping someone you love, the whole point about the Dark Side is the corruption of power. Even if badly written, the prequels makes the point with Darth Vader that even if the aim of the one is virtuous, the means leads you to further corruption and debases you in the end.

Lucas didn't aim for some moral relativism in force users. Jedis = good, Siths = bad. It's the whole nonsense about grey uberpowered anti-heroes that have fueled the fantasy of moral relativist Star Wars nerds, including those who have written the whole EU setting of Star Wars, that one force-user could be both or neither. And sadly, Bioware caters to that crowd, when Lucas plainly showed that it wasn't the case : As soon as you start meddling on the Dark Side, no one comes back from it alive. Even Vader, who was The Chosen One, died in the process.

Any wishy-washy Sith Apprentice would usually be culled by someone more ruthless and impatient at the Sith Academy in Korriban, anyway. <

[Berkut]

The problem though is that that model doesn't work for any kind of organized Sith society beyond outcasts and renegades. How could you ever put together anything liek a stable system if everyone is 100% driven by purely selfish behavior combined with a moral model that values personal power over everything else?

That works fine in Lucas world - there the Sith are rare and individual. They dominant other non-Sith. But no society where there are LOTS of Siths could possible work...

[Valmy]

The problem though is that that model doesn't work for any kind of organized Sith society beyond outcasts and renegades. How could you ever put together anything liek a stable system if everyone is 100% driven by purely selfish behavior combined with a moral model that values personal power over everything else?

That works fine in Lucas world - there the Sith are rare and individual. They dominant other non-Sith. But no society where there are LOTS of Siths could possible work...

Fear will keep the local Sith in line.

[Barrister]

The problem though is that that model doesn't work for any kind of organized Sith society beyond outcasts and renegades. How could you ever put together anything liek a stable system if everyone is 100% driven by purely selfish behavior combined with a moral model that values personal power over everything else?

That works fine in Lucas world - there the Sith are rare and individual. They dominant other non-Sith. But no society where there are LOTS of Siths could possible work...

BioWare did a reasonable job of describing a Sith society IMHO.  It's basically unreconstructed fascism - that struggle is the natural order and is healthy, that the strong shall survive and the weak shall fall.

[Berkut]

The problem though is that that model doesn't work for any kind of organized Sith society beyond outcasts and renegades. How could you ever put together anything liek a stable system if everyone is 100% driven by purely selfish behavior combined with a moral model that values personal power over everything else?

That works fine in Lucas world - there the Sith are rare and individual. They dominant other non-Sith. But no society where there are LOTS of Siths could possible work...

BioWare did a reasonable job of describing a Sith society IMHO.  It's basically unreconstructed fascism - that struggle is the natural order and is healthy, that the strong shall survive and the weak shall fall.

But societies don't actually work where the "weak" are falling all the time - that results in a lot of people ending up dead, and some of those are your best people.

A society where over some period of time 50% of the people kill the other 50% is not really workable.

At some point the entire purpose of "society" is cooperation, and the ridiculously evil Sith ethos of pure selfishness and greed would make cooperation impossible for anything more than a cursory amount of time.

Hell, how do you have laws when the strong are simply encouraged to take from the not strong? How does business ever get done if someone knows that the moment they aren't watching, someone is going to kill your employees and just take stuff because they can, and it is encouraged?

No society based on actual evil morality could ever function unless it was combined with a very top down and rigid law structure - basically dictatorship of the strong along with the standard power structure that dictatorship always creates, which is generally extremely inflexible and rigid. Not this "triumph of the strong over the not quite as strong" at every step of the power ladder.

[Barrister]

The problem though is that that model doesn't work for any kind of organized Sith society beyond outcasts and renegades. How could you ever put together anything liek a stable system if everyone is 100% driven by purely selfish behavior combined with a moral model that values personal power over everything else?

That works fine in Lucas world - there the Sith are rare and individual. They dominant other non-Sith. But no society where there are LOTS of Siths could possible work...

BioWare did a reasonable job of describing a Sith society IMHO.  It's basically unreconstructed fascism - that struggle is the natural order and is healthy, that the strong shall survive and the weak shall fall.

But societies don't actually work where the "weak" are falling all the time - that results in a lot of people ending up dead, and some of those are your best people.

A society where over some period of time 50% of the people kill the other 50% is not really workable.

At some point the entire purpose of "society" is cooperation, and the ridiculously evil Sith ethos of pure selfishness and greed would make cooperation impossible for anything more than a cursory amount of time.

Hell, how do you have laws when the strong are simply encouraged to take from the not strong? How does business ever get done if someone knows that the moment they aren't watching, someone is going to kill your employees and just take stuff because they can, and it is encouraged?

No society based on actual evil morality could ever function unless it was combined with a very top down and rigid law structure - basically dictatorship of the strong along with the standard power structure that dictatorship always creates, which is generally extremely inflexible and rigid. Not this "triumph of the strong over the not quite as strong" at every step of the power ladder.

What you are describing sounds very much like modern day Russia to be honest.  And while you can certainly argue that it doesn't work well, the entire society isn't exactly collapsing right at the moment.

[Berkut]

The problem though is that that model doesn't work for any kind of organized Sith society beyond outcasts and renegades. How could you ever put together anything liek a stable system if everyone is 100% driven by purely selfish behavior combined with a moral model that values personal power over everything else?

That works fine in Lucas world - there the Sith are rare and individual. They dominant other non-Sith. But no society where there are LOTS of Siths could possible work...

BioWare did a reasonable job of describing a Sith society IMHO.  It's basically unreconstructed fascism - that struggle is the natural order and is healthy, that the strong shall survive and the weak shall fall.

But societies don't actually work where the "weak" are falling all the time - that results in a lot of people ending up dead, and some of those are your best people.

A society where over some period of time 50% of the people kill the other 50% is not really workable.

At some point the entire purpose of "society" is cooperation, and the ridiculously evil Sith ethos of pure selfishness and greed would make cooperation impossible for anything more than a cursory amount of time.

Hell, how do you have laws when the strong are simply encouraged to take from the not strong? How does business ever get done if someone knows that the moment they aren't watching, someone is going to kill your employees and just take stuff because they can, and it is encouraged?

No society based on actual evil morality could ever function unless it was combined with a very top down and rigid law structure - basically dictatorship of the strong along with the standard power structure that dictatorship always creates, which is generally extremely inflexible and rigid. Not this "triumph of the strong over the not quite as strong" at every step of the power ladder.

What you are describing sounds very much like modern day Russia to be honest.  And while you can certainly argue that it doesn't work well, the entire society isn't exactly collapsing right at the moment.

No, people in Russia do not routinely kill each other the moment they think they are stronger than their superiors.

[Barrister]

The problem though is that that model doesn't work for any kind of organized Sith society beyond outcasts and renegades. How could you ever put together anything liek a stable system if everyone is 100% driven by purely selfish behavior combined with a moral model that values personal power over everything else?

That works fine in Lucas world - there the Sith are rare and individual. They dominant other non-Sith. But no society where there are LOTS of Siths could possible work...

BioWare did a reasonable job of describing a Sith society IMHO.  It's basically unreconstructed fascism - that struggle is the natural order and is healthy, that the strong shall survive and the weak shall fall.

But societies don't actually work where the "weak" are falling all the time - that results in a lot of people ending up dead, and some of those are your best people.

A society where over some period of time 50% of the people kill the other 50% is not really workable.

At some point the entire purpose of "society" is cooperation, and the ridiculously evil Sith ethos of pure selfishness and greed would make cooperation impossible for anything more than a cursory amount of time.

Hell, how do you have laws when the strong are simply encouraged to take from the not strong? How does business ever get done if someone knows that the moment they aren't watching, someone is going to kill your employees and just take stuff because they can, and it is encouraged?

No society based on actual evil morality could ever function unless it was combined with a very top down and rigid law structure - basically dictatorship of the strong along with the standard power structure that dictatorship always creates, which is generally extremely inflexible and rigid. Not this "triumph of the strong over the not quite as strong" at every step of the power ladder.

What you are describing sounds very much like modern day Russia to be honest.  And while you can certainly argue that it doesn't work well, the entire society isn't exactly collapsing right at the moment.

No, people in Russia do not routinely kill each other the moment they think they are stronger than their superiors.

and neither do they in Bioware's Sith Empire.

[Valmy]

BioWare did a reasonable job of describing a Sith society IMHO.  It's basically unreconstructed fascism - that struggle is the natural order and is healthy, that the strong shall survive and the weak shall fall.

There was a very ritualized way the Sith went about bumping each other off.  But ultimately this is why the Sith lose and why Darth Bane created the rule of 2.