Bribery: the useless option

[Eyestabber]

Do you want to pay 100 gold to avoid fighting this random trash mob? No? Me neither. Most RPGs put a random bribery opportunity here and there with zero thought put into the option and 99% of the time it ends up being ******* useless. Of course bribery can be an interesting option in some games, especially when you meet the bribed party again, but devs need to stop adding the ****** "give gold to avoid fight" option IF they have no plans on doing something interesting with it.

So, in what games do you guys see bribery done right?

[Gregz]

If I feel like avoiding combat it means the game isn't fun.

[Roguey]

I approve of bribing systems. Just pay the toll and move on if you want.

[Segata]

It's not that different from some pacifist speech check.

[The_Mask]

I think it's much more important to correlate combat with writing, which doesn't happen that often. A pirate asking for extra to ferry your party across a dangerous part of the sea, makes sense. This is, essentially, a bribe. You bribing with even more money to make absolutely sure he doesn't sell you into slavery, also makes sense.

Does that mean less combat? Maybe. But if it makes sense, within the circumstances, then it should be used just like any other tool that a dev has within the C&C bag.

The real problem is that most devs don't know how to use bribery right.

[rusty_shackleford]

I recall King Arthur: Knight's Tale allowing you to bribe mercenaries to join your side in fights, rather than fighting with the enemy.

[Shillitron]

I think on a whole it can work well (Alternative routes to pure combat), especially if it integrates well into the story, AKA using stealth / subterfuge / skills / GOLD to solve problems over combat. Especially if it leads to different outcomes later on.

Just don't ever jump the shark like sawyer and start punishing combat with reward removal.
There is nothing wrong with Min-Max route optimizations in games.

Not every choice has to have ~balanced~ gameplay effects.

Some things in games can just be pointless, or 'just there' - this was one of the most endearing things about older games before they started pumping games through conveyer belts of play testing and paying 12 soybros to ponder 'game design' all day on white boards. Have fun with it and make the game fun.

[WhiteShark]

DCSS does bribery right. It's technically a deity ability, but if you worship Gozag, you can spend gold to bribe all the enemies in a particular branch of the dungeon, causing there to be a chance that each monster you encounter will be neutral or allied. There are two reasons this works: firstly, gold is limited and bribery expensive, so it's a real choice; secondly, despite missing out on some XP, there are branches that are so dangerous that prioritizing survival via bribery makes sense.

Bribery is yet another mechanic that I don't think can truly work outside of a roguelike. I don't think most people prefer to avoid fights in CRPGs, and it's usually disadvantageous to do so. Yeah, you can put the mechanic there just in case someone wants to do it anyway, but it's not going to be particularly meaningful. There needs to be a compelling reason aside from player preference to not take some fights. Danger is not a compelling reason in a game with quickload. Maybe if there's a clock and recovery from battle wounds takes a long time it could work.

Just don't ever jump the shark like sawyer and start punishing combat with reward removal.

I think it depends on the game. I'm playing Dark Messiah of Might & Magic right now and there are no rewards for combat itself. You only get skill points for completing objectives and loot is generally found in chests and secret areas. I think it's good design. If there were rewards for killing enemies, it would discourage a stealth/combat-avoidance playstyle. Likewise Infra Arcana only rewards XP for discovering new things, not kills, and it works for the same reason. The problem is that in most CRPGs, combat basically is the game, so not rewarding it feels bad.

[Acrux]

I think it's partly a symptom of some bigger issues in CRPGs:

1) Economies in games are rarely well thought out. Item, training, bribery costs tend to be balanced around the early part of the game. Paying 100g to bribe a challenging fight might be okay early on, but pretty soon that cost will mean nothing. The player usually becomes the wealthiest person on the planet several times over. Not to mention you're going to miss out on any loot that might have been available.

2) Skill checks are nearly universally binary. It's rare that you might get a gradient of outcomes by rolling exceptionally over or under a difficulty check. So, this ends up bleeding into other parts of the system like bribery. In the times it does have something like this, it ends up being like a reputation system, where by "investing" more money will open up better items/quests/etc. That's still pretty rare, and the benefits are usually underwhelming.

[Lhynn]

I like bribes when they let me skip skill checks and access more content, as long as they are relatively cheap. But its not like they are often used, its often bribe to skip, which is just plain ********.

[Tweed]

Morrowind wasn't so bad with bribery, it could cost quite a bit to get someone to like you. It was certainly worth bribing the Mournhold merchants to 100 disposition for the best prices.

Ultima III let you bribe people as a other action, so you could bribe guards to leave for 300 gold if you wanted to rob a place unmolested, but that''s a lot of money. It's much cheaper to pay them to dance for 100 gold instead.

[NEG]

Bribes should make sense, and be properly reactive (and not just a simple win button) as often as possible. Being able to just bribe anyone and skip things is unrealistic and boring - unless you're playing a game set in Russia.

Pay a guard to look the other way, but get killed by the paladin you tried to bribe. Pay a judge off, and confidently sit through the courtroom scene - laughing at the prosecution openly, as you know the outcome is secured.

Some may think bribing and non-combat actions aren't fun, but I think there's room for fun, regardless of whether you're in combat or not. The least fun parts of the Thief games were the combat portions.

Stealth instead of combat.
Persuasion and fun with manipulating NPCs.
Pay an assassin to kill a troublesome NPC. Watch the assassin succeed, or fail.
Buy out the supply of a resource in one area and watch it affect the local economy so that you can profit from bringing goods from another area.
Sabotage a facility and create conditions in the city that favor you.

All of these things sound more interesting to me than fighting another trash mob, even if all they amount to in terms of action from the player are a few clicks, some gold and/or some stat point investments.

[rusty_shackleford]

Some may think bribing and non-combat actions aren't fun, but I think there's room for fun

The trend towards trivializing all non-combat content, probably due to RPGs being designed for two groups: people who want to play a game, and people who want an interactive book.

[Maggot]

Morrowind had a good bribing system that even took your Mercantile skill into account for success rate.

[GothGirlSupremacy]

Bypassing combat is for *******.

[J1M]

Let's be real gentlemen: the only thing holding bribery back is that it rarely grants XP.

[rusty_shackleford]

Let's be real gentlemen: the only thing holding bribery back is that it rarely grants XP.

I'm not a fan of combat being the primary form of XP. I liked that Trudograd rewards you XP for dialogue, as it makes sense that people learn through socialization and XP is just an abstract form of learning.

[Eyestabber]

Why OF COURSE, let me grab my purse real quick, lmao. I only refused his offer because I couldn't pay, otherwise I would most definitely enjoy the opportunity of wasting both gold and XP in my RPG.

[KnightoftheWind]

Bribery makes little sense as a gameplay concept when combat is the primary focus of your game, but as an RPG it may be useful for roleplaying purposes. Maybe your character is lawfully good and only fights when absolutely necessary?.

[Segata]

Not giving full XP for using the bribery option is antisemitic and dangerous to our democracy

[rusty_shackleford]

Why OF COURSE, let me grab my purse real quick, lmao. I only refused his offer because I couldn't pay, otherwise I would most definitely enjoy the opportunity of wasting both gold and XP in my RPG.

Giving bribes to skip combat works in that game because it's all about managing your resources. The problem with that specific instance is that it simply doesn't fit any shade of Mordred so I'd never take the option. Coming across a group of enemies supplemented by sellswords and being able to offer bribes to the sellswords to join your side fits Mordred.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Bribery works if you are desperate and you really do not want to get into a fight. Maybe because it's a game where healing is difficult and you are running out of resources, or you are fleeing from enemies and don't want more. Alternatively, it could be used to save a stealth mission, or as an alternate route in a stealth mission if you need to be able to get in and out of a door on a public street, ie bribe the guard to get into a building and then walk out the front door with the girl, rather than having to escort a vulnerable guest through dangerous areas. Another idea would be to bribe guards so they step aside and allow you to assassinat someone.

[Tangerine]

Bribery should be for situations where attacking the person you want to get past will cause more problems than it will solve. Bribing your way past the gate guard in Krasnoznamenny is bribery done right. Most often it tends to be used to make bandits act like bandits with little thought beyond that.

[maidenhaver]

Bribery's presented all wrong, it should be the norm.

[Demonic Fate]

If I feel like avoiding combat it means the game isn't fun.

This is, I think, a genuine catch-22 in game design.

You obviously want to make fights as interesting and fun as possible. But if you succeed, then every approach that avoids combat is a punishment for the player. You can balance things for the PC by awarding equivalent experience and loot for using non-combat approaches, but you can't balance it for the player who missed out on the fun.

It applies to bribery just as much as to diplomacy, stealth, or looking like Garl's dead father. And having many ways to solve a conflict, integrated into an organic narrative, is part of what makes a RPG more than just alt-tabbing between a visual novel and a tactics game.

A good example is the Torm family in BG3. Three bosses with unique and very fun combat mechanics, but also fun dialogue trees with unique animations that let you defeat them via bribery, deception, flattery, in-game knowledge, or drinking them to death. I ended up intentionally failing the first time so I could experience the fights, then reloading and keeping the narrative resolution because it was more satisfying. That's obviously not optimal.

A partial solution is to heavily encourage multiple playthroughs, but it's only partial because you'll presumably have different builds and you'll want to see how they perform in those fun fights. It only really works for games like the Witcher where you only have one character with relatively limited customisation options.

[Norfleet]

Bribery's presented all wrong, it should be the norm.

Bribery IS the norm already. How do you think a pay-to-win game works? You bribe the devs to let you skip parts of the game or access things that you wouldn't normally be able to get.

[maidenhaver]

In order to talk to anybody, I should need to bribe them. Time is money.