Good or evil?

[dknight99]

I picked no for all of them because I don't want a system that tells me being a wimp, not killing ****, and being Mr. "Fetch me that" is good because that is definitely not my definition of being a good guy.

[LokiHades]

I voted No No Yes...

 

I'll explain why:

 

I voted no for the first because I don't want to categorize choices in a binary manner as stated by members previously. Choices should always have a shade of grey and doubt, and the trustworthiness of a person should be judged by the player (and possibly party members) based of both their personal feelings/conclusions as well as evidence. There should be acts worthy of both terms, true evil, and true good as well as more neutral choices, but they should not be limited to black or white. Essentially a full morality that reflects real life (The Witcher games are excellent examples of this).

 

No, there should be no indicators for your "alignment", beyond the comments from others and reputation gained for your actions. People should react, refusing you quests, or giving you sinister ones to fit your reputation. If people know you are a ruthless, careless murderer for hire, they should hire you for such actions, as they should ask help from a paragon of justice, however people should have their own sense of morality too, like a person who sees your goodness and wants to use that against you (such as sending you into ambushes, having you kill someone under pretense that they are "evil" or "unjust").

 

Yes, I think some form of power should come from your "alignment" per say. For example, A blade stained with the blood of many innocents might be more proficient at slaying innocents, but within context of the game's magic and artifacts, and classes.

[Shadow501]

When it came to alignment, this is one thing I loved about Dragon Age: Origins and the Witcher 2. There was no meter to keep track of your "good" and "evil" choices. I definitely don't want it to be tracked on some alignment bar and then once I get enough good/evil points, some of my abilities get some sort of boost depending on which way I went. That was fun at first but I don't want to feel like I'm missing something just because I stayed relatively neutral.

 

No alignment bar, no stat boosts nor clear cut "good" or "evil" choices.

[licketysplit]

Look at my avatar...you think I want binary choices?

[AzureWatcher]

I don't want any sort of alignment system in this game. Luckily we have confirmation that there won't be.

 

Hopefully my relationship with a faction won't hinge on completely black-or-white choices either. I'd love for every major decision is somewhere in the 50% gray area where no path you take is the "lawful good" or "chaotic evil" road.

[Djole]

I am more inclined to determinism and don't really care about preconceptions of 'good' and 'evil'. Choices and consequences are all that matter, not a painted scale of player's past actions.

[horocaust]

It seems people either can't read or can't lurk. Or both. It has been explicitly stated that Eternity will not have karma meter, so all your worries are for naught.

[TrashMan]

You can think of aligment meter as how others generally percieve you, not how you actually are. That way, motivation inconcistencies make sense. After all, people don't know your motives, they know your actions. And naturally if you kill Sith and save pesants, people will think that your'e not that bad.

 

Or you can think of aligment as what you strive to be. Your goal. You can fail at it time and time again, but as long as you try to be Lawfull Good, you really can't be considered evil, now can you?

This is actually something I ran across often when playing PnP - if you are a Lafwull Good character and you do something that isn't reall that lawfull or good (for whatever reason) often times the GM will smack you with a punishment hammer for "not palying your aligment". God help you if you are a paladin.

In relaity aligmetn should be more of a guidleine, and not a strict "you must do this 10000% of the time" rule.

[Balor]

Didn't vote because sure as hell Obsidian devs will do what they damn please and they will do it Good. And Evil. And cover a lot of gray areas in between.

[TrashMan]

Is it irony that my favorite class to play is a Paladin, yet my favorite kind of setting is something similar to Witcher or DA:O (more realistic portraly of a fantasy world, with gods, distant or unproven, and people acting like people)..in other words, a setting where a paladin would be a pain in the ass to implement?

[Darustet]

Like most of people, after reading Game of Thrones, I too put my vote on the ''there is no good or evil'' side.

 

There are just different motives which lead the way to your actions. The 'judgement' just depends on the side are you looking the story;

 

I murdered a man. Seems evil from the point of view of his poor son. Doesn't seem so evil to me for he tried to rape and kill my sister.

I cut a hand from my mother and barely ran away from her. She wanted to sell me as a slave for the sake of food money for my borthers.

I fought a battle where many innocent perished against a black and flaming monster to save a village. Later we found that they hadn't even done anything, someone else murdered the villagers and really it was us who were the bloody killers.

 

So much about ''Good and Evil''...

[TrashMan]

I murdered a man. Seems evil from the point of view of his poor son. Doesn't seem so evil to me for he tried to rape and kill my sister.

 

It's not the case of him thinking "rape isn't evil", but more like "she lies, my fater would never do that"

At least I hope it is...otherwise the son is frakked up.

[Poolp]

There should be a range of choices and choices that are not that obvious, and the choice should have consequences.

[Humanoid]

Binary vs greyscale morality is, to me, a red herring either way, especially since in implementation, the latter is often just a compound for the latter.

 

The larger issue for me is the notion of the writer assigning a motivation or emotion to my character which I may not feel at all - in effect, trying to quantify my character's personality. It's as simple as allowing me to not care. In context, for example, I fully understand not having to option to go around killing civilians, but that's a completely different position than being told you feel guilty because you caused a civilian death in an act of collateral damage: point is that I don't care if the evil option isn't there, but let my character's mindset remain in my mind.

 

"Oh no, some kid died, you feel sad!" is the worst kind of railroading to me because it's an egregiously unnecessary one. Railroading the plot is necessary because computers can't yet dynamically write games on the fly. Railroading my character's personality is just a case of writer hijack.

 

 

TL;DR: I understand providing a reasonable 'evil' option is difficult-to-impossible in your common game scenario, and I don't begrudge anyone for the lack of it, and indeed praise them for omitting them where shoehorning the option would not reasonably fit into the narrative. But don't assume that my character is a good person because of a lack of that option.

[Auxilius]

People keep talking about shades of grey and that's fine but I still want to have the possibility to act good or evil. That's only logical. There is no shade of grey if there is no black nor white to define it. Just don't tell me what I should believe as good or evil.

[leshy]

I'd also prefer if there were no binary choices, but multiple, implying a more shades of gray morality.

 

However what I would like most is that choosing the ultimately right (or wrong, why not ) thing would be a big deal. Meaning it would be possible but difficult and preferably non obvious, in most of the more relevant decisions, and in some less relevant unobtainable at all.

Edited September 25, 2012 by leshy

[TimB99]

As long as there are no morality meters, I'm fine with 'good' and 'evil' choices, as long as they can pan out differently depending on what you do.

 

You can have different motivations for different choices, and well thought-out choices may not even be good/evil depending on your motivation. E.g. giving beggars money (light side?) in order to build up your intel network (well, isn't that dark side-ish manipulative?), killing an assassin (dark side?) so that they won't pose a threat later on (protecting those you love? Isn't that light side?).

 

Choices shouldn't just be about the +10 Dark Side points. They should be about the consequences.

 

Ergo, no morality meters, because what I do in-game may not even be meant as "I'm a good person, so I'm gonna take the good choice" vs "I'm an evil person, so I'm gonna take the evil choice" (and let's not even talk about the obsessive compulsive I-want-100%-dark-side-just-because, or even worse: because this item magically feels whether I have "75% dark side points" (whatever that 75% DSP even is)... But perhaps the motivations are rather, for example, "I have a moral code not to kill unarmed people who surrendered" or "he could be of use later" vs "I better kill him so he doesn't try anything funny later on" or even "You asked for it, mate... Shouldn't have attacked me...". The former is in-game and is forced on the player, whereas the latter is out-of-game and should be what the ROLE PLAYING GAME is all about.

 

 

In short: motivation for choices should not be determined in-game through the 'morality' meter, but is role-played inside the head of the player (hence the term RPG), and the consequences of those choices should be the One-Thing that matters most in-game (whether they pan out well for the player or not, whatever the intention might have been).

 

 

Examples:

 

Oh no! An ambush by assassins! You kill them all, and the final assassin surrenders. He begs you to let him go.

- Light Side: you let him go... And you find him later in the story in some pub where he happily tries to shake your hand, thanking you over and over... Before stabbing you with a poisoned knife... Seems like he learnt he could manipulate you through your kindness...

- Dark Side: you kill him... After which the Evil League of Assassins stops chasing you. Apparently their client has lied about you and your abilities and didn't pay the League enough for this kind of job, and has been killed himself as his lies has caused the deaths of X of their assassins.

 

Oh no! The village you're at has just been burnt down. There is one enemy soldier still alive.

- Light Side: you let him live... Only to find him being dragged off by the authorities later.

- Light Side: you let him live and take care for him in your camp... At night, he slips away afraid of what you - his enemy - will do to him, and you never see or hear of him again.

- Light Side: you let him live and take care for him in your camp... While sending your Cutie Companion to be all nice and cute, while subtly trying to extract information out of him. You learn of the next step of the Evil Plan of Evil.

- Dark Side: you torture him and find out more about your rival's Evil Plan of Evil.

- Dark Side: you kill him and find out nothing... You'll have to find some other way to learn of the Evil Plan...

 

 

JM2C,

 

-Tim

Edited September 25, 2012 by TimB99