390180 No.15026250
What's the best way to do a good/evil system in a video game? I can certainly name a few ways games royally fuck it up.
>"Good" choices are playing the game normally, and all the "evil" choices make you go "why the hell would anyone do that?" and offer no reward of any kind.
>See: Kotor 1
>"Good" choices make you go out of your way to hinder yourself or make the game arbitrarily harder and the "evil" choices are just how you would play the game normally.
>See: Dishonored
>"Good" choices are talking like a goofy cartoon superhero dispensing canned wisdom and "bad' choices" are things like making a mean face at the guy trying to kill you or saying something mean to a mass murderer.
>See: Kotor 1
I'm not going to include Fallout 3's karma system as a bad example because it's so obviously bugged. From a design standpoint, it's absolutely fine, although it doesn't add much to the gameplay and is really more there for flavor than anything. Obviously, it's ridiculous that you can nuke an entire town of innocent people and then redeem yourself in two minutes by handing tons of water bottles to a single homeless guy, but they very clearly never intended for you to be able to do that and the practically mandatory fan patch fixes this.
d2a548 No.15026265
1. Morality is purely subjective
2. A morality system in the game will neccesarily reflect what the creator of the system deems moral and immoral
3. You will therefore be railroaded into conforming with someone else's sense of morality instead of your own
4. Therefore a morality system in a game is a shit mechanic except in the miniscule offchance that you align completely with it
b16a26 No.15026268
>What's the best way to do a good/evil system in a video game?
you gotta start with having writers who can make evil choices more than just being a murder hobo
390180 No.15026288
>>15026265
>Morality is purely subjective
Bullshit, even chimpanzees have a baseline sense of morality in their DNA. Shit like "don't steal from your friends, don't kill other monkeys for no reason" is stuff they understand and comprehend. Just because there are shades of gray and not everything is clear doesn't mean that black and white don't exist. Quite the contrary, gray couldn't exist without black and white to create the hues that merge to form it.
The idea of "subjective" morality is a post-modernist claptrap used by degenerates to soothe the emotional pain their bad choices have inflicted upon them.
72ea09 No.15026369
>>15026250
>What's the best way to do a good/evil system in a video game?
Stop making morality systems binary in the first place. Ultima IV had a good system that was based on a number of factors with a single goal which was reaching a certain state of enlightenment.
But if you must have a good/evil divide make it so there is a second axis to judge on like "needs of the many" vs "Needs of the few" or whatever is appropriate for the game's narrative.
fe11d8 No.15026388
>>15026288
morality is only objective as a set of rules for community cohesion. individual morality is still subjective.
598cfd No.15026406
>>15026265
>morality is subjective
who could be behind this post, i wonder. who indeed…
655c5d No.15026424
The Karma system in Fallout games 1-3 was the best (yeah you could nuke an entire town in 3 and give water to a hobo until people see you as jesus but it was a better system than anything in NV or 4)
06dd8a No.15026452
>>15026424
3'rd Fallout's morality system is good only for shit and giggles.
FNV's was like in 3 but it was more obsolete, as you have reputation that determines everything. It had some good perks for karma though.
F1-2 had the best ones, with shit like special rep perks for killing children.
F4 is just a shitshow
302e90 No.15026453
Morality comes from context. A good system would take into consideration not just the mechanical action of what I do, but have a way to understand why I did it.
I could see a game actually giving the player a list of premises to form into an objective. The more premises you can stick together the greater the reward if you can achieve your end goal. The more you leave out of your decision lead to greater 'penalty' for going ahead. This would open up a morality system with a structure in place to allow for good intentions, moral complications and even possibly reward abandoning a situation if things became to complicated.
If you combined premises that were event specific, and added personal values as universal premises you could use whenever you wanted that you either choose at the beginning of the game or unlock as you play, this could give a lot of consequence.
>The village is starving
>The trade routes are being raided
>The crops are being raided
>Orcs are behind the raid
<Wipe out the orcs
or
<Fortify the crops
Leading to a scenario where you have to slaughter the women and children orcs at the camp, or force people into building defenses and posting guard in the town. If you're a knight of the land wiping out vile orcs to begin with, then you get an extra karma bonus despite murdering those horrible evil children. Conversely if you're a person that values freedom, then when you try and force people into building a wall you loose more karma than you would have slaughtering younglings. If you have the character belief that nobody is born evil then wiping out the women and children is a massive swing towards evil.
I don't know how you would use this data to affect the actual in game repercussions though. Perhaps a higher power gets aggravated if you do to much evil? Anyways, that's my two cents.
73bef1 No.15026456
There shouldn't be a basic good or evil system at all, as almost all decisions in well written games have shades of gray. If you really want one at all, it should relate not to good or evil but a certain type of philosphy.
Take Jade Empire, for example. Though the moral system in practice boiled down to good versus evil, the original idea was that open hand and closed fist wouldn't be that simple.
Also I remember a part in KOTOR2 where you had to either be nice to a beggar or chase him off and Kreia would scold you for both, saying that violence begets more violence if you choose the dark side option or that helping makes him a target if light side.
06dd8a No.15026472
>>15026453
>Perhaps a higher power gets aggravated if you do to much evil?
I dunno, there would be not much of a point in playing according to your character's moralities if being ebil edgelord makes the game more challenging and possibly more rewarding.
fcbe46 No.15026510
>>15026250
KOTOR 1 was messed up because it tied into the light, dark sides of the Force, but failed application of the living force or "grey side", that was better exemplified in the Jedi Knight games. It is also why they did specific choices to fix the system in KOTOR 2, as well as reward the morally grey character choices.
>>15026452
Well said on FO.
>How to do it.
Unless you are having a proper corruption/divine system, complete with in depth religious sources, the only way to win is not to play. This is one of the divides between the right and the left in the West, and it is almost always better to do a full reputation/faction system. Yes, you can have a church as one of the factions, but it allows more nuance, and frankly, ignores the individual morality argument by having the factions have their own code of conduct, or ethics.
73bef1 No.15026520
>>15026510
>reward the morally grey character choices
Come again? KOTOR 2's story emphasized the grey side of things but in practice the only reward for staying away from the extremes was a slightly more powerful lightsaber crystal.
a5afda No.15026521
>>15026250
>"Good" choices make you go out of your way to hinder yourself or make the game arbitrarily harder and the "evil" choices are just how you would play the game normally.
>See: Dishonored
Isn't that pretty much what being good is about, at least when it comes to being a superhero? Go the extra mile to help people, be careful not to hurt bystanders and don't just pick the easy solution if it will harm innocents. If you're playing as Superman, you could just fly at superspeed at all times and punch every bad guy through ten buildings. But doing that would make you a horrible "hero", so you hold back in order not to hurt people.
54e8bd No.15026524
>Bad choices are generally taking advantage of others for your own benefit, the choices reward you whit better gear, wealth and new enemies
>Good choices are based on just helping others and doing stuff for a greater good making the game harder since you often end up doing stuff for free and also you will have to face evil people preying on the weak, the reward for this is just renown, many friendships and unexpected help from others (as an example some hermit teaches you some ancient deadly martial techniques)
af1f04 No.15026525
>>15026510
Grey jedi's are the fedorafags of the Star Wars Universe.
179946 No.15026537
>>15026288
>Shit like "don't steal from your friends, don't kill other monkeys for no reason" is stuff they understand and comprehend. Just because there are shades of gray and not everything is clear doesn't mean that black and white don't exist.
But is ok and moral to kill your enemies and take their possession because they don't believe some stupid made up bullshit you believe. Checkmate, oppressive capitalist monkey!
179946 No.15026549
>>15026424
>The Karma system in Fallout games 1-3 was the best
Pls. It implies all-seeing omnipotent entity that sees everyone's actions. In reality people often do bad things because they can get away with them with others not able to spot the thief.
73bef1 No.15026550
>>15026537
>what are natural rights that you respect and in turn expect respect.
Communists aren't people, basically.
9b8e7a No.15026559
>>15026250
Every moral system is trash-tier. The best idea is always going to be location specific reputation.
>>15026288
>Bullshit, even chimpanzees have a baseline sense of morality in their DNA
>Shit like "don't steal from your friends, don't kill other monkeys for no reason"
Anon if you knew anything about chimps you wouldn't be spreading this bullshit. They cannibalize other chimps, they beat up other chimps, they steal from each other, everything and more than you claim they don't do.
There is no morality, there is merely cooperation when it is in one's rational self interest to do so, but as soon as that's no longer the case, people, animals, everything, will violate those "morals" without a second thought.
Why are you just making shit up?
179946 No.15026562
>>15026550
>may natural right is to steal added value create and belonging to workers
Stealing is universally bad concept, it is baseline sense of morality in everyones DNA. No human ever argued against that. You are sentenced to death for the crimes against Humanity.
979dd8 No.15026564
Any game that gives you a morality bar and/or give you bonuses for picking an alignment are shit. You're either going to go completely good or completely evil depending on your playthough so already know what decision you going to make before you're given an option. Going "grey" or "neutral" handicaps you and gives you no benefits.
Prime example is Mass Effect 2.
>Have a decision to make regarding the "Geth" I think, I don't remember
>Is a genuine grey area
>But the game labels one as "good" and one as "evil"
>Just pick the one which aligns with your playthough.
9b8e7a No.15026571
>>15026562
>Stealing is universally bad concept, it is baseline sense of morality in everyones DNA
Stealing isn't a universally bad concept, in fact, if the thief is guaranteed to get away with it, it is in his rational self interest to do so. See: taxation and the state.
bce2b1 No.15026577
Infamous, becuase it fits, it less a morality system and more a choose to play super villain or super hero, it does have it problems though, specially in the second game, tying ice power and fire powers to a side.
210f67 No.15026584
I think Fable TLC did it pretty good. Apart from being able to choose sides in conflicts through the guild system it always tempted you to do evil things.
>Civilians and merchants in particular can have decent drops, you can also more freely use AoE
>Tons of valuable things to steal in towns
>Swim in cash by renting out property at unfair prices
>Best weapon in the game requires evil sacrifice though TLC changed it I suppose
>Tons of people that deserve to die
If you're going to have a more black and white morality system like this I feel like the "morally correct" and righteous path needs to be the one of self-sacrificing gameplay benefits in order to give it more weight.
But it was still a bit unbalanced and too easy to be a good character since all the generic trash mobs that you for the most part had to fight through gave good goy points.
The thought behind it was (presumably) a good one but the execution was maybe not the greatest. Then again you could become the devil just by jacking up the rent prices as well.
5c3f10 No.15026585
The best morality system would be one that directly reflects the morality of the in game civilizations/people.
>The people have been burned for being honest and honorable.
<Positive "morality" for executing fleeing scouts.
<Negative "morality" for letting them live.
>This township has been using slave labor for centuries!
<Positive "morality" for capturing slaves.
<Negative "morality" for killing wounded hostiles and not enslaving them.
Or a morality system that is dependent on choices made in character select/creation, and by breaking or reinforcing your own morals and ethics, you can get buffs or debuffs based on you and your choices. With an ingame system that reflects your beliefs or lack of to the general populace and that influences important dialog and/or choices.
>This person was once noble and virtuous, but is now a lowly raider!
<Much less trust or even out right refusal to talk to.
>This person was once a wretch to society! But has now turned their life around and has found the light!
<Some distrust but much easier to get things done diplomatically.
179946 No.15026588
>>15026571
State calls crime as blessing and kills anyone who disagrees. State people may start buying into their own bullshit (many such cases of taking your own propaganda as truth) and really think they do not do a stealing but do helping.
I forgot what did we discuss? Yes, right, subjective morality.
9b8e7a No.15026612
>>15026588
The point is that it's not a "universally bad concept", as it's highly beneficial to the person doing the stealing when they can do so without consequence.
e20db5 No.15026636
Shadow the Hedgehog surprisingly has one of the better morality systems in a video game. The game has different factions trying to pull Shadow in different directions. One asking him to help destroy the world, the other asking him to help save the world. Also Eggman who doesn't want the world destroyed but is still kind of a dick. So in every level you have these opposing factions fighting, and asking you to do one task each. Each task will typically mean fighting the other factions, and fighting the other factions raises a meter for the faction you're helping. So raise one meter high enough and that faction won't shoot at you. Or be neutral, since there are also neutral goals, and everyone shoots at you. But the neutral goals are typically just to get to the end, rather than kill the other guys, so you can just try to avoid the enemies. These meters also give you access to a super move, an offensive move for the bad faction and a speed one for the good faction. But most importantly, every different mission leads to a different level, so you actually get significant effects. You also aren't penalized for switching sides, you just go on an alternate path. So unlike most games, where you basically choose good or evil at the beginning, and you're screwing yourself if you ever try to change your mind, you just get a slightly different story if you change your mind here.
People get butthurt over the idea of a "canon" ending being unlocked at the end of the game, after getting all ten regular endings (though there are like 256 paths though different levels and cutscenes you can take to get to those endings, and all those paths can be watched individually once you beat them, with their own names and stuff). The canon ending takes place after the timeframe of all the alternate endings, and can mostly fit after most of them, but of course invalidates the endings where you shoot Sonic or Robotnik in the face at the end of the game. I don't know what people were expecting. At the same time, people get mad about the game being edgy, but again, the point is choice and morality. You can choose to be edgy and side with the world destroying aliens, and as such end up fighting Sonic as the last boss and killing him when you win. You can also choose to be a superhero and not be edgy at all. Then the final story is about not being an edgy emo faggot anymore, and learning to take responsibility, think for yourself and not just follow others, which works with the themes morality and choice.
The major problem, though, is that you end up replaying the first level at least ten times to complete story mode. There are three missions, so really you're only doing each mission three/four times, but still. Not bad if you're actually trying to find all the secrets and get high ranks so you can 100% the game and unlock everything, but I get why this would annoy people.
Note that the other reason this morality system works is because the game takes place firmly in an anime superhero universe. Even when being super edgy, it doesn't really take itself fully seriously. Using a non-serious tone helps provide much more verisimilitude.
>tl;dr: give actual large gameplay changes, like alternate missions and levels, for your choices. Give these changes often, so that you actually feel the difference.
>Do not penalize players for changing their minds, so that they can actually make multiple decisions, and aren't given incentive to simply pick one side at the beginning and stick with it. Rather, just give them an alternate reward that isn't inherently better or worse than the one they would have gotten for continuing the previous path.
>don't make things too serious, because trying to actually explore subtle, complex, and contentious topics such as morality and choice is beyond the scope of a writer who ended up writing for video games. Stick to stuff like superheroes. Simple morality that is fun, rather than the condescending preachiness, or sheer stupidity, that results when hacks who aren't even good enough for comic books try to actually have real meaning to their stories.
179946 No.15026640
>>15026612
The point its morals (though subjective) exists and people not often do things they believe are "evil". People mostly do "bad" things (from others point of view) because people think these things are good. Cases of psychopaths who do things they believe are bad fro the profit or in the extreme cases of maniacs just for the sake of evil and others suffering are much less common.
This is why homogeneity is good and diversity is bad. Same people have same set of morals.
3f951f No.15026673
>what's the best way to do good and evil systems
Don't, they suck. The reason they suck is because when human beings (the developers) decide to play god with morality they end up making things they like as "good" and things they don't like as "bad" Like making calling someone a faggot give you evil points, but straight up murdering someone who's racist giving you good points.
Faction reputation and the like is a better way to go.
1b8f74 No.15028474
>>15026571
god forbid the state provides something for your miserable ass for once, if you don't want to pay into it then go off yourself or move to africa
390180 No.15029794
>>15026559
I didn't say they were good at following it. I said they had it.
>There is no morality.
t. kike.
390180 No.15029835
>>15026424
I can't cite F3 as a good example OR a bad example of a morality system. Its just a functioning one.
Of course its severely bugged and at times unbalanced, but from a design standpoint it works fine. If an action is obviously bad – like shooting a baby in the face – you get bad boy points, and you get GDP for shit like saving a town and turning down a reward, etc. Meanwhile, anything you would find debatable or morally gray didn't give anything either way.
The big problem is it had virtually no effect on the way the game was actually played. You could still go through the whole storyline exactly the same, there were no big quest or plot diversions, NPCs treated you the same, the only difference seemed to be random encounters.
It isn't bad or good. Its just a function example.
228e80 No.15029862
>>15026250
The best morality system is
>The game doesn't categorize actions as good or evil
>Characters in the game will judge your actions based on their own subjective values and act accordingly
>It doesn't explicitly tell you [X disliked that] or [Your Y went down] so you have to actually consider what you yourself want to do instead of blindly trying to minmax good/evil
ef6fe4 No.15029881
>>15026250
>It's another crying about Dishonored episode
Dishonored doesn't have a morality system, it has a chaos system. The more you kill, the more chaos erupts, because every dead body is more food for rats and bloodflies and more plague = more destabilization. The complaints about the system are basically "why can't I play on easy mode and get the good ending?". Maybe because a high chaos playthrough takes like two hours because you don't have to stealth, hide bodies, conserve ammo etc. You also neglected to mention that high chaos adds more guards and weepers so while easier at the start, it can pile up toward the end.
>>15029862
This but also add in like a 1000 choices. That way you won't even be tempted to do a quick web search to get the best outcome because there's just so many ways it could go.
22ef09 No.15029900
>>15026250
i don't really like the concept of morality systems in general, but here's a recent example from one i made: in the game, enemies are transformed people. you can kill them to get experience and level up, but this will affect the ending. on the other hand, you can do a pacifist run and kill only the final boss, and it will be hard as fucking shit, but everybody is alive in the ending. otherwise, the game doesn't give a shit which way you go, and treats it like whichever method you chose was the correct and necessary one.
i have no fucking clue if this works or is pure bullshit, it was pretty much shoved into the game last-minute.
>>15026288
>Shit like "don't steal from your friends, don't kill other monkeys for no reason"
this sounds more like ethics/fairness than morality
af016d No.15029909
>>15029896
Ahh yes, Alpha Protocol. The game that got so many things right, yet had one of the most hilariously terrible stealth systems of all videogames.
THE REWARDS WERE SATISFYING BUT SHIT MY MAN COULD YOU GUYS SERIOUSLY HAVE MADE A WORSE STEALTH MECHANIC????
7a27aa No.15029914
>>15026250
>What's the best way to do a good/evil system in a video game?
Just decided to do my post all over again.
af016d No.15029921
>>15029914
Okay but was Stephen Heck even a bad guy
5da875 No.15029930
>>15029921
He was crazy as fuck, but not bad.
1f98d9 No.15029961
Morality systems are shit. You only need two things to replace them.
Choices, and consequences.
The Witcher series does this. It's a dark world, and no matter what you do someone is getting fucked over (usually you, because people are cunts), but there's no "good boy" points for doing whatever the devs consider to be morally correct.
Quick related question:
> What is the worst morality choice you've encountered in a game?
For me is has to be the Rachni decision in Mass Effect 1. On the one hand it's a difficult choice to make. The creature has been tortured and bred for experiments, and appears to show genuine remorse for its actions (in a way that is lifted straight out of Ender's Game). But on the other hand any difficulty the question of "release the previously genocidal creature" poses is completely undermined by Bioware's asinine colour-coding of your options. Bioware's morality explicitly states that killing a creature that almost wiped out all other life in the galaxy is bad, while freeing it to potentially do so again is good.
And as for "your decisions matter and have far-reaching consequences for the rest of the trilogy" goes: You get bonus points for "preparedness" at the end of ME3 if you spared the Rachni, which equates to doing a couple of multiplayer missions
Yeah, far-reaching and deep level shit right there.
6cfa91 No.15029994
>>15029961
choices and consequences are also a meme. the witcher series does a terrible job at it. video games don't have a dungeon master and devs need to stop trying to have one.
8c8ac3 No.15030049
>>15026250
>Good makes you suffer, but put on the way to heaven, evil is easy instant reward and hell awaiting at the end of the ride
That is basically what morality is, and screw (((anyone))) saying that it is subjective. Doing good is supposed to be hard, takes a lot self-sacrifice and hardship, but you do it anyway because it is the right thing to do no matter what (((anyone))) say and heaven awaits you. Evil is easy peasy, instantly gratifying, but terrible things awaits.
But I agree, morality in most vidya is so stupidly done.
97bd0f No.15030102
>>15026406
>morality isn't subjective
>also jews are bad
The Supreme Retard
b8d44f No.15030138
>>15026250
Great thread
>morality isn't subjective and it's x
>no, it's objectively y
>I'm also for x, but you're a z so x doesn't apply to you!
>you're all wrong, only I know what being moral is and it's i!
>wow, disagreeing with my objectively moral standpoint - you're a j!
>x and z obviously fail in this scenario so it has to be MY answer - y
Really makes you think
448745 No.15030181
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
Has no one bothered to point out that most of the west functions loosely on Christian moral concepts that they've pulled away from the base (God) and are now supported with circular universal humanist ideals as the foundation?
3141ef No.15030227
>>15030181
Religion is for making you feel good about that tightening noose put around your neck by its creators, and shouldn't be conflated with actual spirituality or instinctive morality.
448745 No.15030248
>>15030227
That's a shallow view and actual spirituality and morality has all sprung from religion in the first place. Religion in the first instance is a formalising of the the other two.
3141ef No.15030268
>>15030248
Feel free to tell me where chimps go to Church then, or why the most moral self-sacrificing men in the last century rejected religion for general deism / worship of Natural Law
448745 No.15030313
>>15030268
I'm just going to ignore the chimp thing because that's not really an argument. Religion isn't limited to Christianity and rejection of the formalised religion for the concepts they've been discussing ans using as a foundation since day dot isn't one either. It doesn't change the fact that religion is a formalised study of deism and natural law as an extension of god or gods.
e94e0e No.15030322
>>15026265
As always, THE FIRST POST IS THE RIGHT POST.
>>15026288
>>15026406
>>15026531
>>15029913
Good job at triggering that one (((fascist))).
05439e No.15030330
>>15030102
If you wanted (You)'s so bad, you could have just asked.
448745 No.15030334
>>15030322
The first post taken to an extreme results in pure Solipsism.
d23540 No.15030347
>>15030334
Anything taken to the extreme is some kind of -ism.
ce9ea5 No.15030351
>>15030322
>there is only one truth my truth
Lmao
448745 No.15030352
>>15030347
I'd argue that while the morals are up for discussion they're rarely ever relative.
a3cfe4 No.15030404
>>15029900
TIL The undertale creator is a shitposter on /v/
Honestly not surprised
2b61f2 No.15030438
>>15030352
I wouldn’t call them relative but they’re certainly not well-defined. They vary from one group of people to another, which leads to tons of exceptions. “Well, what he did was bad but the circumstances…” and so on and on. And if your rule has tons of exceptions it’s a shit rule. Reminds me of how they deal with plagiarism in the court: it’s just up to the judge to decide whether your work has incorporated parts of someone else’s work (even if it actually didn’t) and there are no objective guidelines on how to identify such things.
063bbd No.15030531
>>15026521
>Isn't that pretty much what being good is about, at least when it comes to being a superhero?
The problem came about where it was bad to kill the horrible evil woman but giving her to a dude so he can rape her for the rest of her life is somehow the good option.
3141ef No.15030630
>>15030313
>religion is a study of things that sprang from religion
Culture, morality instincts and spirituality come from blood, not from a system devised to control the least spiritual and moral.
143d5c No.15030668
>>15030630
Religion won't boil down to just your myth of it, no matter how funnily you frame it.
>Culture, morality instincts and spirituality come from blood
Religion nudges, drags, lifts and pushes all of these, including the blood, to varying directions. They all draw and push the others, compete with one another and have symbiotic relationships with each and every single one of them.
3141ef No.15030704
>>15030668
And yet religion is so malleable it can be turned on its head and used to genocide its host populations by those claiming to be the most spiritual and closest to God who are in fact the least. And meanwhile those among the population who don't buy into it at all are the most pious and honorable. I have a feeling your definition of religion is some weird catch all thing and you stopped using it in the context of Abrahamic cults after your first post.
448745 No.15030714
>>15030704
You're referring to a very specific puritan ethic that has been infected with moral relativism and runs deeper to America's roots than anyone would like to admit. Also yes the term religion is broader than what you're using it for and even then you're dismissing alot of philosophy done under christian scholars.
448745 No.15030736
>>15030729
>Spenglerian crap
3141ef No.15030769
>>15030714
Well yes, because that's all I've seen of religion in my entire lifetime, and out of Christianity for as much as I've bothered to read about it, especially in respect to how it destroyed what I would regard as possibly worthwhile, closer to blood instinct religions along the way. Which, again, I can only see as reinforcement or control towards those who lack the instincts themselves. It would be better to simply attempt to awaken those instincts instead of giving you a big vague instruction manual and letting a pedophile read it to you, but we haven't had an attempt at that in the West since Positive Christianity. But what do I know, I've just known something was horribly wrong since I saw someone put out manger decorations next to Santa and reindeer when I was a toddler, only to find out when I was older just how much Yule has been fucked with. How everyone else can blithely go along with such strong cognitive dissonance is beyond me.
0026d2 No.15030861
>>15026250
Being evil in a videogame should always have consequences, like locking you out of certain shops/sidequests and NPCs being afraid of you, i liked how in RDR people shit their pants whenever you're near and apologize if you bump into them, they don't report minor crimes (like stealing, harassing officers, aiming guns at people, killing farm animals, stealing horses), don't report the first few murders and all the shops sell at 2x the normal price, but there's also a town full of thieves and other lowlifes that sells at half price if you're a scumbag.
Now if only i wasn't such a faggot, it breaks my heart whenever i find a random NPC crying because someone robbed them or kidnapped a loved one, beggars asking for pennies to feed themselves and innocent people getting abused, i don't like killing cops either because my father is one, i can never be evil in vidya because of shit like this.
390180 No.15030866
If you believe morality is subjective, you should also believe gender is a social construct. After all, they both follow the same logic.
ae72bd No.15030902
>>15026453
>If you're a knight of the land wiping out vile orcs to begin with, then you get an extra karma bonus despite murdering those horrible evil children.
These orcs are sounding more and more like goblins. You know what we do with goblins.
390180 No.15030911
>>15030861
Same, anon. I like the idea of being a bad guy, but when the time comes to actually do something nasty to an NPC I always end up feeling bad. Now, if you're playing a game like Fallout 3 where every NPC is a cunt anyway, it isn't so bad, but you still have to kinda go out of your way to force yourself into a "bad" role.
KOTOR 1 was really bad about this, but in an entirely different way. If you wanted to be a bad guy, you had to kill two thirds of your team, have entire villages hate you, work with smug assholes you just wanna force choke and generally do stupid shit that doesn't benefit you in any way or make any logical sense even from a selfish standpoint.
fe4259 No.15030912
>>15030902
>You know what we do with goblins
Give them a room to live in and help them be a part of human society?
390180 No.15030914
>>15030902
>You know what we do with goblins.
Rape the women and drain the semen from the men to breed more goblin women we can continue fucking for generations?
ddb3bb No.15030917
>>15030902
>You know what we do with goblins.
Turn them into immortal computing systems!
390180 No.15030926
>>15030919
I like my idea better. But I guess killing them is fun too, even if you don't get to breed a multi-generation sex slave race.
fe4259 No.15030931
>>15030919
>killing goblins
>not giving head pats with tender love and care
bbe275 No.15030936
I dont really care about Morality choices itself but C&C is one of the best things of videogames in my opinion. I absolutely love Age of Decadence for example because every playthrough will be unique depending on your choices. Wanna play a "good" character ? You play as a loremaster with almost no fighting if you dont want to. Want to play a "evil" character you play as a thief or an assasin and do "evil" things without thinking to yourself >"Good" choices are playing the game normally, and all the "evil" choices make you go "why the hell would anyone do that?" and offer no reward of any kind.
3e8a01 No.15030963
>>15030936
Cant you be a good centurion in that game and make rome great again?
e2ea05 No.15030970
>>15030926
I don't think female goblins exist in Goblin Slayer's universe, so that's not really an option for Orcbolg.
390180 No.15030980
>>15030970
Well shit, of course not, anon. Its called "Goblin Slayer." Not "Goblin Layer."
bbe275 No.15030981
>>15030963
This is basically the Imperial Guard playthrough. You get sent out to die by your officers and then basically take over everything. Killing imperial guards and dirty mongolians all the way to the top. Its a fun playthrough. My favorite playthrough was still doing the merchant route and calling my character Shlomo Shekelstein. He also got heralded as a new prophet.
3141ef No.15031012
>>15030936
This, and to a lesser degree Witcher's unseen consequences that pop up later preventing you from savescumming for 'best' outcomes (which there tend not to be anyway since its mostly grey area stuff), are my favorite examples of choice and consequence too. Being a kike merchant in AoD is a lot of fun. Morality bars are lazy and typically fail to recognize things like racking up +99 good, going and fucking everyone over in some area, and having their neighbors still treat you like a golden god.
73bce1 No.15031016
>thinly veiled ex-altar boy thread
So many people touched in the head of their penises.
3e8a01 No.15031040
>>15030981
I should try the game then, although i heard its really difficult.
af2e6c No.15031045
choices should simply be different ways to tackle an objective with different results to showcase your actions have consequences
there shouldn't be a good or evil dichotomy limiting the choices made
73c3da No.15031046
>>15026250
>play shitty RPGs
>get shitty choices
Stupid games, stupid prizes or something. Why bother? Just play some shooters instead of reading a visual book that's written by immature people.
f86b39 No.15031050
I've said this multiple times, but morality systems can only work in a game where the game revolves around being moral/ immoral according to its own internal system, and that moral system is based on either balance or good and evil.
If you have a moral system that is like kind of a side thing, then you get at best a system that is based on the developers world view that is either blatantly uninteresting ("feed the starving orphans" vs "kill the orphans and harvest their organs") or is baffling in its choices (see Fallout with the "killing the pack of ghouls who murdered an entire apartment complex of normal people is bad" scenario").
On the other hand, if you make the morality the main focus, but you don't establish an internal moral system, you have a problem in the developer's world views will leak into the game (like the aforementioned Fallout case) accidentally or intentionally.
Finally, if you don't choose either the balance (like SMT) or good and evil (Fallout) dynamic, then things either get so complicated that they fall prey to the former "developer views coloring choices", or lead to an ultimately unsatisfying ending (see ME).
Honestly, the only game that I would see this working would be like a "crusader" type game when following the religion no matter what is "good" and failing to is "bad". If you really want to make it complex, add a hidden dichotomy of "collectivism vs individualism", where certain choices can be classified as "good" but one favors the church hierarchy while the other favors the individual soul. For example, say you just cleared out an area of mudslimes from a town and are given options on what to do with the population, being 1. Help rebuild churches/ places of worship and make holy men town leaders (good/ collectivism), 2. Encourage spread of the religion through church texts, while keeping the societal structure intact (good/ individualism), 3. Enslave the town citizenry for cheap gains for the army (collective/ bad), or 4. Leave the town untouched and unprotected (bad/ individualism).
192671 No.15031063
a87cea No.15031071
>>15026250
>What's the best way to do a good/evil system in a video game?
a system that rewards middle way, because that's what nature tends to favor, so it feels natural, and instead of pushing to the other extreme, you need to balance, which is always more interesting, and some 'artificial judge' is probably a good idea (like force or supernatural creature), because it gives a handy excuse to have such an artificial system in the game world
aedf8c No.15031098
Here's my morality:
1. thou shalt honor the NAP in ones personal conduct, thou shalt respect their ownership of ones person and property, and thou shalt honor others ownership of their person and property, thou shalt not initiate force unless it is reasonably required to to end or prevent force from being initiated against self or others, and only to the minimum extent reasonably required to do so, thou shalt not fail to enforce the NAP in such situations and defend the person and property of others as you would your own, thou shalt also remember that memes may not be rightfully claimed by anyone.
(self-defense, defense of own property, defense of others and their property, prohibition of intellectual property, etc. all this is good shit so long as you don't go full ayncrap and use it to classify taxes as theft, state as illegitimate, and borders as immoral, the people who came up with the NAP were night-watchman-state minarchists at the least, due to libertarianism being synonymous with liberal at that time, who thought that ancap was extreme to the degree of insanity, there's a reason that when a new land was founded based on their ideas, it was not anarcho-capitalist, it had a government, military, borders, taxation, it was founded by white men who were to a number white supremacists and male supremacists, and was made up of 13 recently liberated british colonies).
2. thou shalt seek to maximize the knowledge of truths and minimize the belief in falsehoods, maximize pleasure and minimize pain, maximize happiness and minimize sadness, etc. in accordance with the personal preferences of thyself and others, thou shalt assign a higher moral importance unto thyself than thou shall assign unto any others, and assign the moral importance of others on the basis of their genetic similarity to thyself, the more genetically similar another is to you, the more moral importance they shall have to you - this law shall be followed only so far as it does not violate the first law.
(this covers the moral necessities of white supremacy and male supremacy, from which white nationalism and patriarchy aka "white sharia" (god i hate that memename, specifically as the age old concept has little similarity or association with sharia, also that it originated in western cultures, and is simply how we have always viewed women, best in the home as mothers and wives instead of competing with men in the university or workplace) naturally follow, it also covers the jewish question, as jews are genetically distinct from whites, and plot the genocide of the white race, and it covers opposition to LGBTQAP+ aberrations, as they are mentally ill fetishists who target young children, spread disease, do all sorts of disgusting shit, and are just generally depraved freaks who belong in psychiatric treatment, rather than having their mental defects welcomes with "tolerance", they should be treated and cured so that they can become normal-as-possible people living normal-as-possible lives, but first they have to recognize that they have a mental illness, not an "orientation", not a "gender identity", an illness, just like schizophrenia, bipolar, or autism)
sorry for the rants, they somehow found their way into my explanations.
it would be nice to see a natcap hero in a vidya (natcap - national capitalism, basically takes the capitalistic elements of ancap, discarding the anarchistic elements of it, and combines it with the nationalistic elements of natsoc, discarding the socialistic elements of it, an autocratic white ethnostate comprised solely of law enforcement and national defense, with completely free-market economics and NAP-based laws, with a few exceptions regarding taxes, immigration, and the rights of women and girls, who would be banned from anything a male child would be banned from, with the obvious exception of anything to do with sex - women banned from using recreational drugs, operating a motor vehicle or heavy machinery, owning or using weapons, etc. but not from watching or performing in adult films or playing adult games, owning or using sex toys, entering into or working at an adult establishment, consenting to sex, etc.)
3141ef No.15031126
>>15031040
The combat is pretty punishing with its RNG until you figure out how to minmax enough to mitigate it through a mix of dodging and breaking peoples arms.
ddb3bb No.15031129
b66ea0 No.15031142
>>15031126
>RNG
Dropped. Go play some gachashit, cuckchan.
ae72bd No.15031186
>>15031098
If someone takes property by force, is it stolen? How much time has to pass before it's no longer stolen?
6e8fe0 No.15031593
>>15029881
This popular explanation falls apart the moment you get a power that turns your kills to ash.
14967f No.15031681
>>15026250
Fallout 3's morality system favored you being neutral.
6f7c43 No.15031719
>>15026250
I liked the faction karma in new vegas, where good and bad were on a 4×4 grid where if you did good you move right while bad made you go down, and if you did both often you were considered an unstable chaotic neutral.
dcdcf3 No.15031737
Morality is merely a set of guidelines about how to maximize the fitness of your specific species. Anything that helps to improve it in any shape or form, as long as it turns out a positive at the end, it's a good moral decision\choice.
This is why killing is wrong, you're removing a member of your species from life and thus reducing the amount of possible offspring in the next generation. This is also why stealing is wrong: you are consuming resources that you did not produce while devaluing the work that other person put into acquiring their resources.
Pretty much every moral positive choice can be easily followed towards a positive outcome for someone that might not be you but it's still a member of your species.
Even things like taking care of animals and the like, that seem purely superfluous, do benefit us in the long run with a more stable ecosystem, more pets, less plagues and the like. There's a reason it's immoral to kill cats but not rats or dogs but not fish or bees but not wasps.
It's always a matter of generalized utility for the human race in total, even if you personnaly don't benefit from it.
Alternatively, you can see Good and Evil as "how best to distribute power?", power taking many shapes from money to political influence or friendships or owned land, etc.
Good people believe that power should be distributed among everyone. How much for each depends a lot but they'll easily agree there's a minimum and a maximum amount everyone should have. This ensures that everyone has a chance to contribute positively to the world and thus everyone benefits from everyone.
Evil people on the other hand believe that they alone are the possibly best person to use power and thus deserve large amounts of it. They are better generals so they should get the best army. They are better rulers so they should be king. They know what the kingdom needs and thus they deserve more money. Or they are just plainly more fit\smart than everyone else and thus deserve what they want.
Of note is that someone stealing to eat or make ends meet wouldn't be Evil since he doesn't necessarily believe he deserves what he steals, he just needs it.
Of note as well that a noble knight might believe it's a Good thing to distribute money around the village so everyone can eat, but the Evil knight who instead invests his high taxation income into industry and an army ends up being able to provide safety and jobs to anyone that joins up, thus the Good choice might not be the Better choice, actually.
dcdcf3 No.15031774
>>15026453
This is actually a neat idea but it requires a lot more legwork for the player and the dev.
The problem with "morality systems" in videogames is that they try to conflate two very different things: intention and consequence.
To most videogames, if you put a bullet in someone's skull, it's simply because you want him dead. Even if it's friendly fire or you have a specific reason to do so, unless it's part of a quest, the moral "reward" is already decided: you just murdered someone.
To solve this, you'd need something like dreaming or meditating on your moral values. Deciding how much of a good person you are, who you care about and what your goals are.
If you decide that murder is bad and you like one of your companions, shooting at him won't be considered a bad thing since the game knows you didn't mean it (but you'd probably still get some penalties)
If you decide to plot revenge against someone, every "bad" action you make towards that goal will be considered evil, but if you have a specific reason for revenge that you set up like "he killed my parents", then it's considered a neutral action instead.
This however means regulating and simulating some of the player's mental characteristics and psyche to tie into this.
For instance, setting your companions as "close friends" just so you can kill them without a karma penalty wouldn't make much sense. But getting some heavy penalties to your mind because you just killed several people that you considered best friends, would easily fix that while also providing a compelling argument to try and keep them alive (I just saw my friend being butchered!) and even get revenge at those that kill them to ease your pain if you're that violent.
dc0b0b No.15031794
Personally, if I could make a game, I'd set the game's story so that you have a friendly, lovable, upbeat companion with all sorts of cheesy puns to generate that comfy family-friendly-PG-rated movie feel however, as time progresses, the quality of your playthrough actually determines whether or not your companion gets kidnapped and brainwashed to subtly work against you thereby causing you to ultimately get what turns out to only look like a good ending or you actually play well, so your friend is protected from the brainwashing, the full extent of the enemy's evil plot is exposed and thus, the truly good ending is generated. The people that played well enough to get the truly good ending would be able to see the stories told by people who actually got the bad ending of how the game ends and they can hold their tongue in silent smugness.
Or, even better, the companion is already working against you but due to the quality of your playthrough, genuinely betrays her master and switches over to your side. If you didn't play well enough, you get an ending that looks good but if you did play well enough, she switches to your side, the full extent of the evil plot is exposed and there's a genuinely better ending.
I've been thinking a long time about this kind of system where the morality is attached, not to the nature of your playthrough, but rather, the quality. Playing the game like a scrub is what gets you the bad ending. Thoughts?
I don't know how it would be implemented. I was thinking, story-wise, because you play so well, much more of the enemy forces have to be invested into dealing with you and thus, they're not spent on advancing the evil scheme in whatever way's desired. This then causes gripes amongst the staffed members or them being rushed causes inadequacies in their work or something. I don't know but that's the gist of my idea.
dcdcf3 No.15031797
>>15031593
>the moment you get a power that turns your kills to ash.
The first rank only works if you use stealth, the second rank doesn't matter if you're not gonna use stealth anyway. It's a cool-looking but useless power.
You're also forgetting that the first rank of Wind Blast can be used without killing anyone, Possession, Blink, Time Stop, Dark Vision all are non-lethal as well, even the Summon Plague Rats power can be used as a distraction at the first level since it can't actually kill guards and can be used with Possession as well.
Then there's several passive powers like Agility and more health that help a lot with non-lethal stuff.
There's actually very little "lethal-only" powers and most of the stuff you'd throw in there is actually part of your arsenal instead. This was fixed in the DLC and the following game by the way, when they introduced a slew of non-lethal combat options for your arsenal.
I'll also always chuckle at the dumb faggots that spend the whole game neckstabbing people left and right like it's going out of fashion and then complain about an ending where their character spends the rest of his life doing what he did the whole game, with an evil loli at his side as a bonus.
If anything, it's a far better ending than the lukewarm "and then they tried to fight the plague and it sorta kinda maybe worked, but Corvo is dead, but Emily likes him and visits the grave :)"
143d5c No.15031832
>>15030704
>And yet religion is so malleable it can be turned on its head
Can it? Religions diverge into sects and cults with different practices.
>used to genocide its host populations
Suicide cults do what they do. Or were you referring to something else? Religious people have more offspring and are opposed to abortion and even in some cases, against birth control.
> by those claiming to be the most spiritual and closest to God who are in fact the least
Who exactly does this? What is divine? Are you close enough to judge others?
4ae3c8 No.15031881
>>15026265
I'm an atheist and it scares me to know people like you really do exist.
06bf47 No.15031916
>>15031881
Moral absolutism is especially retarded for atheists; where, if not some divine source, does it get its legitimacy?
fa5e40 No.15031960
>>15031794
Just lock the best endings behind both playing well AND hard difficulty. Not some bullshit hardcore try hard mode, just anything above "game journalist" or "SJW". Only gamers get the best endings, eat shit casuals
f98b78 No.15031965
>>15031916
Not an atheist but I assume they would argue that morality comes from the human condition itself, and that immoral people are simply failed humans
70fab3 No.15031981
>>15031965
>>15031965
If morals come from the human condition then it is subjective because it's something based on people's experience as a human. That's just basic logic.
aedf8c No.15032004
>>15031186
we've already figured that out, the rules regarding robbery may vary somewhat from place to place, but I prefer to use the good ol' US of A as my beginning standard.
It's my favorite country, it got so many things right, compared to every other country, especially my own, Canada (pls get me out of here).
aedf8c No.15032009
>>15031098
How would this be translated into an in-game morality system though?
f98b78 No.15032032
>>15031981
An individual's thought patterns and perceptions are not based entirely on experience. There is a significant genetic component.
aedf8c No.15032041
>>15031916
My race is my religion, if I had to choose between god the white race, I wouldn't even hesitate to kill god to preserve my people.
According to the bible, the devil (still) works for god, so I'd probably have to go through him to get to the anti-white bastard (in this hypothetical scenario where god becomes a threat to humanity).
09bc56 No.15032066
Morality systems are really tricky from a design perspective because it causes you to write the game in such a way that all decisions have to conform to a "right" and "wrong" option. It basically trains the player to view every option as a binary and when they play the game they don't pick options for story purposes. Like you would in something like Fallout like
>should I kill Gizmo and let Killian take over the town? Killian likes law and order but Gizmo's Casino brings money to the town
You see it like
>Ima kill Gizmo because I'm doing my light side playthrough
This causes the system to feel shallow and causes dialogue to just be something you skip through because you just wanna get to the end of it because it's predictable. In games like the Witcher there isn't a morality system and the "right" option isn't told to you. In fact in that game often the player is chastised for being naive. Like
>Sidequest early in the game
>Guy asks me to guard his boxes at night in exchange for information
>While doing it some elves approach me and ask me for the boxes. Say the guy is a piece of shit who is part of the evil organization you're fighting
>if you tell the elves to fuck off and kill them. Later you find the same boxes in the villain's lair
>if you let the elves have the boxes. Way later in the game you're supposed to meet some guy and he ends up being murdered by the elves who used arrows with the same insignia as the boxes.
I really like it when games don't make my choices obvious and just a simple binary of "obvious good choice = good result obvious bad choice = bad result" it's a shame that devs dumb down these choices entirely so that players who don't care about the story don't feel frustrated by not paying attention.
Some games like Kotor 2 and Fallout New Vegas do have morality systems but they feel incredibly tacked on due to how morally grey the plot is. Like if you ignore the morality system you really don't feel like you're missing out in any capacity. It's one of the reasons why devs slowly moved away from black and white morality systems in vidya. Even Mass Effect got rid of it.
70fab3 No.15032104
>>15032032
Sure but that information is being interpreted. Subjective doesn't mean "variable" while objective means "fixed." Even if they did, genes mutate.
63093d No.15032150
"Bad" gameplay makes people see you in a bad light and may gain you enemies, although you might get better loot due to stealing and pillaging people.
"Good" actions are not as beneficial for you when it comes to material possesions, but NPCs interact with you in a better way, sell you some stuff slightly cheaper and might even get you allies.
"Neutral" actions however just don't do shit. That's how you should make morality.
22d3f2 No.15032174
They are boring, usually because the writer uses very lazy categorization. Everything they like is in one camp while everything else is in the other. You hardly run into games where the one obvious nazi allegory has good and/or honorable people in it whilst those presented as the heroic have no flaws. Take Fallout 3 and New Vegas for instance. Fallout 3 the Brotherhood are all good and the Enclave comically evil. New Vegas the NCR think of themselves as benevolent, but are corrupt and incompetence. Meanwhile, the Legion are vicious and brutal, but people at least admit that the roads are safe and corruption is low and almost unheard of and you are left alone so long as you follow the rules. Unlike the NCR where you can get fucked over by following the rules to a T.
143d5c No.15032340
Once you get past the gag reflex, you can do anything. Fear is the mind killer. Cold shower is refreshing. What has been seen cannot be unseen. You can see that which you can use, and you can use that which you are.
590c46 No.15032505
>the best way to do a good/evil system in a video game
To having good vs evil changed to ethical vs unethical. Also, to have cause and effect similar to how it works in the real-world be nearly identical to that experienced in video games; the good outcomes and the bad. Unfortunately though, we won't be experiencing games of that quality in this life until profit-based civilisation collapses and is replaced by a development-based civilisation.
590c46 No.15032538
>>15026288
Objection: The reason monkey don't commit those acts is because that would result in further hardship for them down the line.
Response: If those things would upset a being, then that would display an intuitive understanding that those things would be immoral to do to the other person.
>The idea of "subjective" morality is a post-modernist claptrap used by degenerates to soothe the emotional pain their bad choices have inflicted upon them.
And it's also because some people want to feel smart.
d337df No.15032687
Morality systems are either one of three things ultimately.
The first
[Good choice: Give all your reward money to charity for saving the puppies from the burning orphanage after you've saved the orphans
Neutral Choice: Maybe do the previous but keep the money because you earned it.
Evil choice: HA HA I SET THE FIRE, LOCKED THE DOORS AND ATE THE PUPPIES AND NOW I'LL KILL YOU AND TAKE THE REWARD"]
The second
[Good choices: Be a total pushover and doormat
Evil Choices: Killing anyone ever even if they are an irredeemable evil or -literal natural force of darkness-]
The third
[Hamfisted politics reinforcing options which don't let you choose anything that goes against them anyway because MY VISION. Options are purely fluff and people treat you the same no matter what you choose]
Morality/Alignment systems in games are dogshit.
67a48d No.15032954
I want a Japanese-Witcher like game with a strict Nip morality system.
You'd play as a Shinto Priestess going around purging Yokai and purifying the unpure, and how strong your abilities are would depend on the morality system or how pure you are.
Purity would be lowered not just by bad acts but also if you get dirty or hurt just as hurting a person/animal, and could only be regained by rituals and purifying acts.
73bef1 No.15033005
>>15032687
I wonder why we never have at least two bars for morality anymore. Hell, Fable 2 atleast had corruption and purity which added SOME nuance.
>>15032340
I took Philosophy 1 in college as well!
ad3ae8 No.15033008
>>15026250
Reputation is better, unless the game world has a built-in objective moral system, like the Force or whatever.
73bef1 No.15033065
>>15026562
>no human ever argued against that
The fact that every possible position has been argued at some point aside, how is communism's seizure of property not theft?
And don't tell me "the people", because you can call a spade a dirt redistribution device but at the end of the day the only people who benefited from seizure of wealth were the elite members of the communist party in charge.
d183da No.15033125
>>15033065
Communists replaced good vs evil to oppressed vs oppressor. Anyone that is successful is a oppressor. Anyone that is doing poorly is a victim.
697665 No.15033305
>>15026636
>Shadow the Hedgehog surprisingly has one of the better morality systems in a video game.
deb063 No.15033367
>>15026636
>>15029914
>Shadow The Hedgehog
If the game didn't have a "canon" ending, then I'd agree. But because of it's ending, you're entirely wrong. The whole ending itself doesn't feel fulfilling because it basically says *fuck you* to your decisions and makes you end the game the way they want to, despite your decisions. On top of that, to even see the ending, you have to play the game by being good, bad, and 8 other morally-ambivalent adjectives just to get told how you should act. The system itself is pretty good, but it's overall implementation is just dogshit that throws itself away in the end. You decisions in-game are ultimately inconsequential. There's no weight to your decisions, you only question whether you should make a good or bad decision based on how badly you want to avoid playing The Doom again.
d2a548 No.15033394
>>15026288
Let's examine this a bit here. Let's say killing people is wrong right? But like basically any human will tell you, that moral principle doesn't always apply. What if you kill a rapist in self defense? Well clearly that's alright, right? Well what if you kill a group of raiders preemptively before they do something evil? Well, maybe that's a good thing, but you can't be sure since they havent done anything yet. In this case, and in many others, absolutes (i.e. objective morality) will always fail to address the unique situations without going back and contradicting themselves.
The very best example of this is the Tenpenny Tower quest in Fallout 3. You come across a ghoul who wants to get into a luxurious resort. The people who own the resort tell him to fuck off, they don't want him and it's their property and they can do what they want with it. He hatches a plan to break in and kill them all, take it over for himself, and even admits this to you. Following all of this information, the game brands you as immoral if you kill him, even though he was the one who was going to murder people who simply told him to go away. You can negotiate peace between the two factions, and they get alongat first, but then he kills them all anyway - even AFTER this, if you kill him, you take a negative hit to your karma for the act of killing a guy who murdered dozens of innocent people who were willing to accept him. To add insult to injury, after you negotiate the peace that leads to the guy getting in peacably, the game gives you positive karma for enabling the deaths of dozens of people. There is literally no way to do the "right thing" by helping the other side who just want to live in peace and for people they don't want to live with to fuck off. On top of that, you gain karma for blackmailing and bullying the people who don't want to live with them, threatening them to leave the safety of their rightful homes to invariably go die in the wasteland. That's a GOOD thing, according to the game.
So what have we learned from this quest?
>killing a mass murderer is BAD, before or after the fact
>helping him break in and kill innocents is GOOD
in other words
>helping the poor opressed ghouls is always good
>helping the people who own private property is always bad
even though i believe
>freeloading bum ghouls are deserving of death once they openly admit they want to harm others
>there is literally nothing wrong with private property and freedom of association
Thus the crux of the issue - the morality system in this game completely flies in the face of my own. In any game that includes it, there will always be an example like this. If you asked me, and the writer who designed that quest, we would both agree on the sloppy platitude that "killing people is wrong*" *except those who deserve it but in execution the views on morality on this even are a complete one-eighty. Take any "objective moral prinicple" you want, and people will find a way to twist it to their own worldview, and feel satisfied with it.
TL;DR morality systems in videogames are complete garbage
d2a548 No.15033469
>>15030866
Not at all. Morality is a tool that humans believe in to feel comfortable with their worldview. Gender/sex is a purely physicaly phenomenon that exists without anyone's opinion on it.
a87ee1 No.15033482
>>15033394
Aiding the ghouls is objectively evil, because it leads to the needless murders of good people. It is not just a difference of opinion, Three Dog and the Karma system are objectively wrong.
d2a548 No.15033498
>>15033482
>Three Dog and the Karma system are objectively wrong.
>their morality is wrong!
And they would say the same about you. Here's the kicker - neither of you can prove that your side is objective, there is no metric besides your opinion. Thus morality is subjective, eye of the beholder, merely your opinion.
a87ee1 No.15033505
>>15033498
>there is no metric besides your opinion
I gave you the metric, scumbag.
fc776b No.15033507
>>15033498
>tenpenny residents are either neutral or even welcoming in the name of compassion
>faggot jealous ghouls want to murder everyone in tenpenny while hiding their intent
CHECKMATE
d2a548 No.15033529
>>15033505
>Aiding the ghouls is objectively evil
opinion
>because it leads to the needless murders of good people
it can be argued (and indeed was, by the writer of the quest) that the greedy, mean ol' residents of tenpenny were rayciss and thus deserving of their fate, and the ghouls din du nuffin wrong.
>It is not just a difference of opinion,
That's exaclty what it is.
Three Dog and the Karma system are objectively wrong.
Prove it. (Note - I AGREE with your take on the situation, I just don't pretend that it is objectively correct.)
>>15033518
This does seem to be the biggest dissuasion from taking the evil path in a game, there are far more negative consequences and the gain is minimal or nonexistent.
f894b1 No.15033530
>>15033394
I've imagined an RPG system / game, think Blades of Exile, where certain conversation options have a constraint. Eg, if you had the GNE axis between 0 and 255, a value of 40 (really good) might be required to choose it. Or alternatively, it would simply shift you a few points towards good, which influences how encounters flow, if the scenario author does something with it
fc776b No.15033545
>>15033518
>no benefit to being good
I really digged on karma system in Infamous.
2 different sets of powers/upgrades depending on your path.
It wasn't perfect. it needed some polishing.
Nothing worse than losing karma even on a "good" mission because dumbass bystander runs directly through the line of fire and get a sticky-electro-nade attached to their head.
That's just straight bullshit.
Overall I'd use Infamous style as a foundation 80%
655c5d No.15033552
>>15033507
>clean well defended fortress with an upstanding society of people
>you can help a bunch of freeloading dangerous zombies gain access
>they will murder everyone if you do this
>if you kill them you lose karma, are branded a villain, and three nigger even berates you on the radio like you're hitler
What was Todd "Racewar Now" Howard trying to tell us?
fc776b No.15033559
>>15033552
That he wants the bbc.
2cd192 No.15033571
>>15033529
>>15033552
The quest itself was structured so that the ghouls were seen as good folks but they don't instantly kill everyone, it's only when you finish the quest and come back that the whole place is uber fucked, even the lighting changes and it looks more like a raider base afterwards.
The only actual "evil" people there by the game's morality system are Tenpenny, who shoots random people from his balcony and his nuke happy bodyguard, that's pretty much it and you can get away with killing them without fucking your relationship with the tower. The best result to the quest is honestly to not bother, it doesn't have any unique rewards for doing either path, you're better off killing tenpenny for his suit and rifle.
655c5d No.15033591
There's actually a mod for the Tenpenny ghoul quest that gives you good karma for killing Roy Phillips. Three Dindu still calls you racis on the radio though unfortunately.
d2a548 No.15033592
>>15033571
>The quest itself was structured so that the ghouls were seen as good folks but they don't instantly kill everyone, it's only when you finish the quest and come back that the whole place is uber fucked
And when you avenge the murdered residents by killing their murderer the game STILL brands you as a bad person for doing that (see >>15033559) thus proving that the morality system is complete dogshit.
def737 No.15033603
>>15026564
One thing I liked about Mass Effect 1 was that you can convince the final boss to kill himself if you have the appropriate stats for it. ME2 really messed up the system, dumbed it down, gave you less options to play with.
2cd192 No.15033610
>>15033592
actually no, that's just the actual engine and developers being dogshit because they couldn't be assed to remove the original ghouls and replace them with clones that have an updated morality tag. Bethesda uses the traveling NPC transition function to solve literally EVERYTHING and doesn't bother to make extra efforts, the morality system itself is easily fixed.
You'd be evil for killing off the ghouls when they've done nothing but sit in a subway, but after they killed the tower out of greed or revenge they'd be evil enough to kill since they've crossed the line.
It's pretty easy to fix even in the same engine, Bethesda is just retarded.
d2a548 No.15033619
>>15033610
>You'd be evil for killing off the ghouls when they've done nothing but sit in a subway,
Even after the main dude flat out admitted to you that he intended to kill everyone once he got in?
27d8f0 No.15033633
>>15033610
Why is so hard to accept that the people in Bethesda are just lazy faggots?
55e009 No.15033640
>>15033619
I remember this quest and I don't recall him ever saying he would enact mass murder. Maybe I just forgot.
In either case, thinking about doing something and actually doing something are usually considered to be different things. The proper response when someone tells you they're going to do something evil is just not to help them or to report them, not to enact murder of your own.
2cd192 No.15033644
>>15033640
Report them? In a lawless wasteland?
fucking who would you call?
d2a548 No.15033664
>>15033644
Exactly. Inaction can be the same as approval. If he tells of his plot to kill them, and you sit back and do nothing, and have nobody to pass off the responsibility to, then YOU are responsible for what happens next. If you knew their plan, and were the only one that could stop them before it was too late, yet did nothing - then you are not just immoral for doing so, but also a coward. A double whammy of badness. But the guy talking about game mechanics is also right. They could have implemented an option to report back to the Tenpenny guard and tell him ,and he would be like "What the fuck? Let's get them before they get us!" and thus you could kill them and receive positive karma for doing so
well actually just having balls and killing them yourself should give you positive karma
but then if you wandered across them with no knowledge whatsover of the quest and just randomly murdered them you would get positive karma
quid pro quo, morality systems in games suck ass.
e48e7e No.15033667
I've only seen morality sliders work well in Black And White, I think that's only due to the RTS nature of it. Other than that morality systems are better done with personal/factional relationship sliders.
d2a548 No.15033677
>>15033664
>quid pro quo
fuck, meant Q.E.D.
55e009 No.15033684
>>15033644
How about to the armed citizens in Tenpenny Tower, who can keep a closer goddamned eye on them and take whatever actions they deem necessary?
You act like I was saying to report them to the fucking truancy officer or some shit. Fucking Christ, I didn't think it was that hard to understand.
b923d7 No.15033690
>>15033367
The canon end exists to resolve Shadow's character arc, allow the game itself to be canon and allow them to keep Shadow on as a character. The multiple, non-canon endings can be interpreted as "these are possible routes for Shadow's character to take," and the True Ending is "but this is the one we're going with." There is no other option for the game Shadow the Hedgehog and I would agree that, if your complaints are solely because of the existence of a canon, this morality system would be better suited in a one-off game wholly detached from any franchise, with no true ending.
In terms of gameplay the choices you make do matter, you choose the route you wish to take whether that's harder or easier or to your preference. You see the results of your actions in the stages themselves and the preceding stages that lead into it have an influence on it.
>Paraphrasing "Throw It All Away"
Ebin.
93a6a1 No.15033727
Listening to this old faggot go through the seven stages of grief after being locked in the Sierra Madre vault was one of the most delicious endings I've ever experienced in a Vidya gayme.
8caddc No.15035605
Geneforge had a pretty good morality system in the sense that it was purely based on the reactions of the different factions to your choices, and that most of the consequences were natural results of those reactions instead of game mechanics intended to punish or reward you. What's even better is that none of the factions are completely pure; all of them, even the Awakened, are willing to step on people if that's what it takes to accomplish their goals, but all of them, even the Takers, have understandable reasons for doing what they do.
Interestingly, even the endings reflected this; what is arguably one of the best endings in the game is to join up with the BBEG You and Trajkov end up working together to conquer the world, then use the power of the Geneforge to create a post-scarcity utopia where humans and serviles are equal.
And even throughout the series when the rebellion against the seemingly-tyrannical Shapers takes off, there's still ample evidence everywhere that the Shapers actually had damn good reasons for what they were doing, and that things weren't actually that bad compared to the major mistakes the rebellion keeps making that fucks the world up worse with each successive game.
ce8f14 No.15035668
>>15026250
>What's the best way to do a good/evil system in a video game?
Loaded question, good/evil is a purely Jewish perspective on morality. Seriously, read Nietzsche's "On the Geneaology of Morals." In the real world there is only "What is good for my tribe/society", "things that don't affect us" and "things that harm us." Any or all actions taken according to these parameters could be viewed as good or evil in a modern context.
Now that said, the better and more practical/realistic way to model morality is purely on a reputation basis. Fallout does this fairly well, especially given that it fits the setting. Different people should react differently to you according to your reputation. Some people will think you're cool for slaughtering a particular village. The absolute worst way to do morality is in just about every Bioware game after KOTOR came out, including KOTOR itself, although ironically some of the NPCs in those games were much more morally intricate than anyone in the actual Star Wars movies/canon.
2cd574 No.15036080
>>15033498
This is actually true.
This also means that your morality, my morality, anyone's morality is inherently worthless, and the true victors of the world are only those who do everything for their own happiness even if it hurts other, because they do not distract themselves by worthless rules that only hinder them.
This is turned around if you are religious though, because then there is basis to believe that there exists an objective morality that is decided not by the material world but by higher divine being. So in short, if one would want to make a game with a good morality system, he would have to be religious and we all know that most devs are leftist cucks
2cd574 No.15036114
>>15026564
Mass Effect actually tried to make it a bit more gray by saying "No, no, those choices aren't really good or evil, you're playing a good guy, it's just that you have two different approaches to things".
655c5d No.15036137
>>15035668
>good/evil is a purely Jewish perspective on morality
fuck off retard
the concept of morality barely even exists to kikes
e81a70 No.15036156
Silent Hill 2 did it good, where all the shit you did was record behind the scenes of the game basically, so what you did affected the ending but you didn't know for sure so you just focused on playing the game the way you wanted to for the first time and complete the game the best way you saw fit.
2cd574 No.15036514
>>15036137
This first pic seems to imply that Jews hate white people because they were treated badly by them, wasn't it thought that it was the Jews who were thrown out from every country that they were in?
ce8f14 No.15036840
>>15036137
It's sad and ironic that you are so brainwashed to see good and evil as absolute truths that you read my post as complimenting the Jews on their high sense of morals.
8caddc No.15040107
>>15036514
The tl;dr of it is that jews were one of the original sekrit clubs in the world, and when they started using usury and their economic skills to amass power, a lot of small kingdoms started getting reasonably spooked by the fact that these powerful people that had strong debts and/or influence over them were loyal to their private cabal instead of any publicly known cause.
Cue efforts to force them out of their kingdoms.
8caddc No.15040124
>>15040107
Also, the mass genocides conducted by the tribes of Judah was kind of an important factor too, though to be fair genocides weren't terribly uncommon in that shithole of an era.
b32e22 No.15040163
9e920e No.15040794
idea of "evil" simply do no exist
12d800 No.15041289
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>15026250
Don't have one
ignore tumblrtale
6d6d54 No.15041423
Morality systems are dumb because it shouldn't be a tacked on system but simply the gameworld reacting to your choices. It only makes sense to count the player's good and bad actions if you plan to judge him at the end.
35a17c No.15053064
The bigger challenge is making a SYSTEM that works with the GAMEPLAY.
IF you just want a number that goes down and up based on your choices, Bioware has you covered with their crap.
The way I see it, Morality can tie easily with the gameplay:
>Good choices are hard/deny you resources
Yeah, maybe some NPC helps you, but it's always sub-par stuff. Being nice is always the harder choice.
>Evil choices are easy/give you ample resources
You just kill them and take their shit. the game shouldn't even pretend you're not suposed to be that rich when you just murdered a millionair.
>Actual being fucking evil / A goody two shoes
This is when the game goes back to being challenging. You're now recognized as a threat by the game itself (either the heroes or the antagonists)
Just throw more encounters and crap against the player.
If you're a good two shoes, it's even EXTRA FUCKING HARD. You have to deal with an increased challenged on top of resource scarcity.
Then tie it up with endings:
>Extra good Angelical ending
You're a goddamn hero. An actual one: you survived impossible odds while outnumbered, outmatched and rationing resources
>Good ending
It wasn't easy, but you got there. Great job, everyone agrees (except the baddies)
>Bad ending
You had an easy ride. It was smooth sailing, but now your character gets stabbed in the back or God throws a Meteor in your house.
Great place to emotionally fuck with people
>Extra fucking evil
Nearly the same as bad ending, where the world is extra fucking fucked, but drive in the point that the player MADE this and he did so out of his own volition.
The sad/stupid thing? Only Undertale did something like this. And Dishonored, in a way (by making the "good" playthrough boring).
35a17c No.15053076
>>15053064
Also, the Extra Fcking Evil ending can be used as a sadastic "Burn the World" thing.
Overlord did this and it worked wonders for it.
a70c88 No.15053110
>>15033367
It's a video game. It's always ultimately inconsequential. Everything stops being important the moment you stop playing. In this case, it stops being important when you stop playing any one particular route. The Final route is no different. It's not "how you should act," it's just the way they ended up building upon in future stories.
e84764 No.15053162
>>15053064
Why not the GURPS system?
35a17c No.15053172
>>15053162
Not familiar with it. How does it work?
f99b83 No.15053214
I find there are two viable ways of doing morality:
Approach one: Evil for the lulz (i.e good and evil routes)
The game provides an evil route and attempts to have no justifications for taking it, that's the whole point, you've already beaten the game in the intended way and the evil route exists so you can just sit back and watch how fucked up things get.
Approach two: Two equally shitty options (i.e grey morality)
The game basically gives you choices where both options lead to shit getting fucked up and you've got to decide which option fucks things up the least.
b8d44f No.15053651
>>15030330
The point was that for him jews are evil, which for majority of people is an immoral stance, but not for him, thus disproving the point that morals aren't subjective.
5ac718 No.15054345
>>15029961
>You get bonus points for "preparedness" at the end of ME3 if you spared the Rachni, which equates to doing a couple of multiplayer missions
Gameplay wise yes , But when Rachni say "We will sing to our children about you" and that's how they think , you just teached them compassion , and in the ME3 they help build and are said to be
"spookying sneaking around but helping" with hope for future full time civilization out of them
If you let the asteroid dude from ME1 DLC live ,I think he helps some civilians on cytadel . I think Rachni development in 3 is cool story wise ,but Biofags will never use it
ec161e No.15054390
>>15026636
Although the system is ok for a game with multiple endings I thing something like dragon age origin's character favour system would be better as a way to decide mores/morals/what everyone else things is good and evil. Since morality is objective, chinks think killing dogs is acceptable and americans do not. So it is better to have a favour system where certain characters or game event directed character actions differ based on their perception bar of you.
9191c6 No.15054542
>>15026250
morality systems in games are fucking retarded, you can blow up an entire city with a nuke just to entertain some asshole for a handful of cash, but if you hand the lazy squatter outside the rustbucket a shitload of water and murder enough irradiated undead youre suddenly a good and just person with "good karma" and the only consequence for mindlessly massacring a town of decent people is your father whos gonna die in 10 minutes saying "im dissapointed" like you flunked a class in highschool, A persons character isnt measured by accumulated pints on a scoreboard, every single table top game that uses point based morality is fucking retarded too, putting it into videogame form is artmajor-tier retarded, it might explain why problems glasses and their assorted marxist ilk act they way they do, that morality is goodboy points that allow you to act like human shit so long as it appeals to some "moral" idealogy and the public moral (((do-gooding))) makes up for them being a shitbag as a human being
13e107 No.15054555
>>15026265
Subjective morality is fucking retarded meme for edgy nihilists. And I say that as a Centrist atheist.
9191c6 No.15054577
>>15033610
>>15033619
>>15033640
>>15033644
>>15033664
Why isnt there an option to tell those blatantly commie wealth redistributing lazy ass zombies that are broke despite being 300 years old to kick rocks back to the ghoul city museum at the mall instead of bogarding a tower in bumfuck nowhere surrounded by yoai guay that doesnt even have a caravan that comes by
9191c6 No.15054588
>>15054555
name one thing that universally pisses of everthing from bone in nose spear chuckers to people in the bible belt
1859b6 No.15054631
>>15054588
Cold-blooded murder of people within the same community. Property theft. Assault without provocation or reason.
ec161e No.15054638
>>15054588
Stating the truth of kikes causing misery on a wide scale, i.e being evil.
ce19ea No.15054658
I fucking hate choosing between "be unreasonably charitable, massive dickhead, or do nothing", it's a terrible RPG trope that needs to go away. Give me a variety of different options that aren't so cut and dry
9191c6 No.15054666
>>15054638
chinks dont give two flying fucks about anyone other than a paying customer with a drycleaning ticket
sandniggers hate kikes
also the various assorted slavs and russians
bone in nose hunter gatherer primitives would be confused at someone spewing redpills since they dont what kikes are and would probably take whatever the person said about them at face value since theyre so worked up about these assholes they dont even know
hebes are generally considered annoying around a good portion of the world
9191c6 No.15054734
>>15054631
yet the only thing that shitty karma system keeps track of is property
7c59f4 No.15057075
Gonna hijack this fallout thread to ask how the fuck do I use crowbars in fallout 2?
If I use from inventory it tells me it doesn't work, if I equip it and hit the door it tells me I don't even put a scratch in it.
What gives?
00b204 No.15058177
>>15058162
>please read dumb shit made by a cuck
d34094 No.15058206
>>15058162
>read the work of a literal cuck
wew lad
he was great at pissing off marx, though. I'll give him that
078304 No.15058213
>Genius scientists performs a failed experiment on himself
>He becomes a mutated, insane freak of nature
>Allowing him to live could prove disastrous for the lives of hundreds of people, if not billions should he gain access to the global stage
>Audio logs from him while he's sane have him begging you to kill him should he lose his sense of humanity
>Allowing him to live would cause him to suffer, alone and in extreme pain, for possibly thousands of years in the middle of a dead city with no possible way for him to so much as leave the chamber in which he locked himself
<Killing him is wrong because killing is bad
>Even though you've been killing dozens if not hundreds of humans twice as sane and twice as human as he is
Name the game.
75e2ee No.15058237
d34094 No.15058239
>>15058213
The Order: 1886?
I'm not sure of the game, but the phrase for that kind of bullshit is 'ludonarritive dissonance '.
078304 No.15058333
>>15058237
>>15058239
Bioshock 2, actually.
d34094 No.15058347
>>15058333
Coincidentally, the Bioshock series is actually what lead to the phrase 'ludonarritive dissonance' getting coined in the first place.
892ed6 No.15058452
>>15058213
If makes you feel better, the whole place blows up in the end. But yeah, that was a retarded moral.
Neutral ending is best ending.