Why doesn't Blago ever reward you?

[RainingMetal]

You know that neighbor who asks for your help in getting his wounded brother to the hospital? He never comes back. Not to thank you, let alone give you a reward for your efforts. What an ungrateful ass.

[xlockeed]

He does, I believe it is a single bottle of moonshine.

Edit - That's sniper wounded. Sorry I've yet to get the take me to the hospital event. It is possible he did not make it and thus no return to thank you?

[RainingMetal]

If he didn't make it the others would have become sad and someone would have said something.

Let's face it, Blago's selfish.

[xlockeed]

No no, like they made it to the hospital but that was the end of the line for him. Your survivor comes back and tells everyone he was checked in, few days later he dies in hospital. Thus no reward.

Then again there's the old saying. The reward is in helping others.

[PoonMeistR69]

morale is the reward

[RainingMetal]

Originally posted by Pacifish:

morale is the reward

So is helping out Zora, Agata, Zyhu, even those damn kids! But even they reward you with something extra later on! Blago doesn't! I'll never help him again.

[PoonMeistR69]

Originally posted by RainingMetal:

Originally posted by Pacifish:

morale is the reward

So is helping out Zora, Agata, Zyhu, even those damn kids! But even they reward you with something extra later on! Blago doesn't! I'll never help him again.

in war not all people are very rich and cannot pay. also i think it makes people sad if you do not help

[RainingMetal]

Originally posted by Pacifish:

Originally posted by RainingMetal:

So is helping out Zora, Agata, Zyhu, even those damn kids! But even they reward you with something extra later on! Blago doesn't! I'll never help him again.

in war not all people are very rich and cannot pay. also i think it makes people sad if you do not help

The kids' family and Zora probably weren't wealthy either, but they still came to at least visit and thank us. The least Blago could have done was offer some materials, parts, or tools in exchange. But he didn't.

[WaywardPython]

The kids' mother gives you some coffee in exchange for helping her and her kids with food and meds. I don't call that a fair exchange, especially as the reward tends to come late in the game, by which point I'm usually cruising.

[RainingMetal]

It seems Blago has a much higher chance of showing up in the game, or perhaps it's just me. Anyway the developers need to fix this.

[Lymmea]

The game is all about moral choices. Sometimes the moral choice is "do I genuinely care about helping others, or am I only in it for what I can get out of it?" Blago is clearly an example of the player being given the choice to help someone who can't pay them back for it. Sometimes the reality - and this game generally is meant to be realistic - is that you help someone because it's the right thing to do, and you're not rewarded for being a good person.

The developers don't need to fix this because it's not broken. The game is a moral-choices-during-wartime simulator, not a quest-rewards simulator. Not everything you do, even if it's the ~right~ thing to do, is going to earn you presents.

[Suckstone]

Thank you, Lymmea. The posts before yours sadden me. To all those before: you may enjoy the game more if you approach it from a more human perspective.

[RainingMetal]

Take it from a developer's standpoint; by having Blago not reward you whatsoever (he doesn't even RETURN to thank you), you're basically punishing a player for making the right decision. That's a huge flaw. Everyone else who visits you has at least some kind of karmic return.

And yes, I am looking at this game from an emotional and moral perspective. I never harm the innocent and always smite the guilty in every one of my playthroughs, so seeing Blago never return any gratitute marks him as a baddie in my book.

[Lymmea]

The game doesn't punish the player for making the right decision. There is literally no downside for helping him aside from one of your survivors not being in the shelter for part of one day. You don't spend supplies, and as far as I know your survivor can't get injured in the process. There is no punishment unless you refuse to help, in which case your survivors take a karma/mood hit for making a heartless choice.

If you don't think helping Blago is worth it, then don't. Play the game how you want to play it. But even in more traditional video games, not every sidequest gives you prizes, and TWoM is striving to represent realism and moral choices. A moral choice quest that does not tangibly reward you is not a design flaw, it is a design CHOICE. And it's a design choice I expect the developers made deliberately, to keep players guessing as to whether or not charity is always a good thing that pays off by demonstrating that hey, sometimes you do the right thing and you don't get anything for it. It's the elderly couple scenario in reverse - you can do bad things and feel bad about them, but you might wind up getting a lot of good items...or you can do the right thing and feel good about yourself, but you might wind up getting nothing.

It is literally part of the game experience, not a bug that needs patching.

[RainingMetal]

That's where you're wrong. The game punishes you by sending him instead of, say, Zora, whom if you help yields an eventual reward in the form of bullets and a (repairable) broken shotgun.

[Lymmea]

By that logic, any random NPC appearance that isn't the one which gives the most beneficial reward is a punishment compared to what the game *could* have given you.

I'm not going to bother to continue this conversation, since it's clear you're so deeply into the material rewards aspect of games in general that the deeper message of this one has flown over your head. Blago's quest has intangible rewards. It is not meaningless, and it does not need to be fixed. Your preference for tangible rewards is perfectly valid, but it is not a game design law that those preferences must always be catered to.