Pretty disappointed, this launches in December?

[Mayama]

Reputation is not the same as alignment, and though you may prefer it; it can NEVER convey what alignment conveys. The new reputation system is a consolation for the removal of alignment, but not an improvement. Having BOTH would have been an improvement. 

I agree that both would be the best and the alignment system shouldnt be so strict. The real problem with the AD&D system was imo that it portrait evil in a very cheesy way, their was no real grey area. You had the psychopath (chaotic evil), the generic fantasy enemy (neutral evil), and the well adapted sociopath (lawfull evil). Its very hard to create enemies that do evil things for alturistic or understandable reasons whithin this system because everyone that does evil automaticaly slides down the good/evil scale and turns evil over time.

Edited September 6, 2014 by Mayama

[mutonizer]

Just to chime quickly here.

 

Alignment is indeed what the character is, at his core. This is usually a result of education, life experience, beliefs, etc. It also reflects, especially in a world where you got actual gods writing down laws about good, evil, law and chaos, and spells to detect them, how you are aligned on that front. Rigidly or loosely, when you create a character (not just the stats, but the entire character concept), you automatically (even if unknowingly, even if you HATE the concept of the alignment system) shift toward one of the axes. YOU choose this, this is the role YOU want your character to play, then you suck it up whatever the consequences.

 

Reputation has no link whatsoever with your character and instead, shift the focus on everyone else. As was explained in some interview or something, some people will react to say a "Kind" reputation differently than others, even though you didn't do anything kind to them, nor wanted to be kind with them. How does the guy you've been ultra brutal toward since you met him knows you chose to be kind so far? No idea. Why should your attitude toward 30 other people completely unrelated to that one dude affect how he'll react to you? No idea.

 

Overall, reputation the way it seems to be heading so far is (another) flawed concept to me that tries to fix something that didn't need fixing in the first place. That said, since we don't really have a chance to see it at work yet, we'll see how that goes in practice I suppose.

Edited September 6, 2014 by mutonizer

[Tartantyco]

Reputation has no link whatsoever with your character and instead, shift the focus on everyone else. As was explained in some interview or something, some people will react to say a "Kind" reputation differently than others, even though you didn't do anything kind to them, nor wanted to be kind with them. How does the guy you've been ultra brutal toward since you met him knows you chose to be kind so far? No idea. Why should your attitude toward 30 other people completely unrelated to that one dude affect how he'll react to you? No idea.

 

You do understand that the answer to your question is literally in the name of the system, right?

[makryu]

How has reputation no link to the respective character? It is built based on the character's actions, and if the character's actions aren't linked to whoever that character is supposed to be, then I don't know what would be. In the real world, people form an idea about who a person is based on his actions or the information obtained from other people about his supposed actions. I don't think it is so much of a stretch to assume that, on the background, information about the character's actions gets shared enough amongst different people via merchants, travelers, etc., to justify a relatively widely spread reputation.

[Gromnir]

reputation is subjective. 

 

alignment is objective.

 

is not an either/or scenario. both reputation and alignment may exist simultaneously. however, is a bit unwieldy to do both. even so, is not mutual exclusive. 

 

if developers says that people in the community think you are a jerk or dishonest 'cause you lied to the inn keeper when you told him that his stable were on fire, it is kinda tough to argue that the developers is wrong. developers is handling the behind the scenes stuff such as gossip and innuendo. you may think that perhaps the degree o' your reputation for dishonesty or jerkiness is excessive, but is just a subjective quality anyways. admittedly,  is also gonna be a question o' how far your reputation extends, and as such, most games with reputation actual has differentiation based on factions. your reputation in a small burg might not have any impact on your reputation in the kingdom of Eld many thousands of leagues away. nevertheless, reputation is always subjective.

 

alignment is different. alignment is objective. is lying a matter o' pushing you towards chaos or towards evil? is there situations where a lie could push your alignment towards good or lawfulness? get 10 people to discuss what law, chaos, good and evil in d&d alignment actual means and you will not get uniformity. you will get angry folks who think you is full o' crap 'cause you gave the character 1 chaos point for lying to the innkeeper even when the lie were part of an elaborate scheme to return the rightful count to power.  but wait, the count were secretly one o' those horrible animancers using captured children as undead experiments, and while technically he might be the rightful count, he had murdered the previous count which arguably made him ineligible to be the new count anyways... though he were never tried for the crime o' murder, so... nevertheless, while the murderous count was in power he had instituted a very progressive public works program as well as some much needed tax reforms that boosted the economy. he also made universal healthcare available in his county. 

 

was lying to the innkeeper an inherently chaotic act? was helping the count lawful? was knowledge o' the counts misdeeds making your help evil but lawful? what if you honest believed the count when he claimed he had turned over a new leaf and were not going to torture kids no more for the sake o' animancy? would it make a difference to your good v evil slider if you believed the count's claims o' good intentions? what if count actual committed more atrocities after you aided him? would that change evil v. good slider?

 

alignment is... a mess. is complete unnecessary as long as you do not have spells, gods and/or items that track good v. evil anyways.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Namutree]

This may be a little off topic, but I just want to say this.

 

Gromnir; I know some people have giving you a hard time about your writing style, but I still like it.

[Gromnir]

the amusing thing is that some o' the folks who are complaining is aware we have been doing this for fifteen years and that the bioware developers actual put the Gromnir character into one o' their games. what possible motivation could a handful o' schmucks on the PoE boards come up with that

 

1) we hasn't already heard many times-- is cute they all think they is unique and clever

 

and

 

2) they genuine believe is likely to alter a fifteen year pattern

 

?

 

anywho. alignment were kinda a funny quirk o' d&d. PoE cannot use d&d. therefore, is no reason to use alignment.

 

proviso: if this were an elric of melnibone game, then alignment (although not d&d alignment) would be appropriate. anybody know who has digital elric rights?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[PrimeJunta]

There is IMO only one good case for using a DnD style alignment system: if good, evil, law, and chaos have some essential, cosmic meaning. I.e., in a world with universal, absolute morality. Like in DnD for example, what with the Planes associated with them. Then you can bind it both to the lore and to mechanical effects to make it meaningful.

 

Everywhere else, IMO reputation is the way to go. There are way too many downsides to alignment.

 

Since P:E's lore appears to be morally relativistic, an alignment system wouldn't fit.

[Namutree]

 

Everywhere else, IMO reputation is the way to go. There are way too many downsides to alignment.

 

I don't consider reputation and alignment mutually exclusive. That said I don't feel that the lack of an alignment system in poe is a big deal since we got an expanded reputation system as a replacement.

[PrimeJunta]

True, they're not. You could always have both. The interplay between the two could be quite interesting in fact -- imagine a genuinely Lawful Good character with a Cruel reputation.

[Flow]

True, they're not. You could always have both. The interplay between the two could be quite interesting in fact -- imagine a genuinely Lawful Good character with a Cruel reputation.

 

How is a character "genuinely good" if that character is doing nasty things? I'm presuming reputation in PoE is based on your character's actions, not lies spread by enemies. Alignment is kind of meaningless if it only exists in the character's head.

[Namutree]

 

How is a character "genuinely good" if that character is doing nasty things? 

Maybe he's only cruel to villains and feels his methods serve a greater good.

[Monte Carlo]

As a hardcore D&D fan of over thirty-years standing I can honestly say...

 

...Alignment is bunk.

[Namutree]

As a hardcore D&D fan of over thirty-years standing I can honestly say...

 

...Alignment is bunk.

I still liked it. Especially in BG1. I haven't played very much actual D&D so I don't know how it affects the classic.

[PrimeJunta]

I liked alignment in my Planescape campaign. In all the others it was fairly useless.

[Monte Carlo]

Yeah, if alignment is part of the core setting then it can work like any other gaming mechanic.

 

In P&P D&D you were expected to choose an alignment and stick with it. Changing it merited a stern chapter from EGG who warned of dire consequences for even considering alignment change (i.e. you might lose character levels).

 

It was bunk. What about the redemptive hero, a mainstay of heroic fantasy.

 

I liked that in BG2 the Hell Trials could change your alignment. That did something interesting with the mechanic. Apart from that it was extraneous. A Paladin could do Bodhi's quests and romance a Neutral Evil drow priestess.

[Sedrefilos]

D&D allignment is juvenile and a cheap way to build characters.

Pillars' way is much much MUCH better imo.

Edited September 6, 2014 by Sedrefilos

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I have to admit after my first playthrough of the IE games, the main reason I picked a certain alignment was due to the loot. If there was an item that I wanted but was alignment bound, I would choose that alignment. Same with my Mage/Sorcerer and what familiar I wanted. Had nothing to do with the alignment, I just wanted that Ferret who had a 75% pick pockets skill on my solo playthrough.

[mutonizer]

How has reputation no link to the respective character? It is built based on the character's actions, and if the character's actions aren't linked to whoever that character is supposed to be, then I don't know what would be.

Because it's not something that defines him by himself, but how others perceive him, while providing no explanation whatsoever as to how they actually know about it. I don't mind the concept as a whole as it can indeed lead to some really interesting stuff RP/story wise, but when you start structuring it with neat little boxes, points, meters and probably steam achievements, all of them available for the player to see, then I think it's flawed, cheap and out of the players hand.

 

Will there be ways for us to prevent reputation from spreading? No.

Will it track all the subtleties of our various actions? No.

Will I find myself in situations where I ignore what I want my char to say but instead focus on the fact that he has equal reputation values, pushing me to choose one answer over the other, not for the story, but for fear of that reputation taking the lead? Most likely.

 

Therefore, to me, it has no link with my character or myself whatsoever and it's just a cheap way for the designer to have HIS way. It's the same bull**** as Karma, same cheap mechanic.

Edited September 6, 2014 by mutonizer

[aeonsim]

The problem I had with alignment in BG1/2 was that it was very hard to play a true chaotic good character (and probably some other types as well), far too often alignment choices seemed to combine lawful with good and chaotic with evil. And in many cases there was simply a lack of options, there were 9 possible combinations and you never seemed to get offered more than 2-3 possible choices for a quest which effectively means that for most quests you end up moving towards the 2 prime positions Chaotic evil or Lawful good sometimes with a neutral option.

 

Reputations make sense to me far more than the alignment system did. In PoE it seems like your character is going to be an exception rather than the norm, they'll acquire a party of fighters, solve major problems and acquire a fortress. They're effectively nobility or equivalent, part of an upper tier of the society and there actions will be noticeable. For a culture that relies on messengers, travellers and bards to spread news that is exactly the sort of news and gossip that will spread rapidly out into the country side. When those that travel pass by and are asked for the latest news and gossip the traveller will certainly remember the name of a person who was the sole survivor of a caravan slaughter or who had claimed a fortress, pissed off a merchants guild, or was attacking random people.

And they'll also pass on rumours like they seem a nice person, or they're associated with thieves, they're an easy touch etc. While those organisations you've wronged or helped will pass out that information to those that they are associated with along with instructions on if they should assist, hinder or ignore you. While I don't expect an isolated hermit in the middle of a forest will have heard your'd wiped out a group of slavers or had helped them any one with regular contact with civilisation on a trade route is likely to have and adjusted there opinion of you based on the gossip or instructions from their associates.

Edited September 6, 2014 by aeonsim

[Quetzalcoatl]

 

How has reputation no link to the respective character? It is built based on the character's actions, and if the character's actions aren't linked to whoever that character is supposed to be, then I don't know what would be.

Because it's not something that defines him by himself, but how others perceive him.

How others perceive you is determined by how you define your character.

 

 

while providing no explanation whatsoever as to how they actually know about it.

Abstraction, like everything else in the game. If you do things a certain way, people will take notice and you will develop a certain kind of reputation.

 

 

Will there be ways for us to prevent reputation from spreading? No.

Why should there be? You're playing a game where you're making decisions. You might as well complain about not being able to prevent XP gain and item drops. And you could always choose the dialogue options with no personality modifiers.

 

 

Will it track all the subtleties of our various actions? No.

No system can track the infinite amount of subtleties of what you can do in a game, though the reputation/disposition system will arguably come closest than it has ever been done before.

 

 

Will I find myself in situations where I ignore what I want my char to say but instead focus on the fact that he has equal reputation values, pushing me to choose one answer over the other, not for the story, but for fear of that reputation taking the lead? Most likely.

No one but yourself is forcing you to meta-game. You can also disable the tags that show reputation modifiers.

 

 

[mutonizer]

Sorry but you're thinking about this as if there was a complex and well fleshed out system behind it....

 

There is not, at least the way I understand it.

You press "clever" in any dialog, you get +1 "clever" point. That's it.

You could be at the bottom of the deepest cave talking to an Ogre, or at a royal castle talking to a king, that's all you get: +1.

 

The downside?

You no longer choose answers based on what you want your character to answer, but based on the reputation gain/loss because you don't want to **** things up and make "clever" get ahead of "aggressive" or something. Dialog stop being about words and meaning, they are now about + and -. Then it becomes frustrating because that's not exactly what you want to say, and you realize that all context is removed, but if you don't balance out your reputation points, that'll affect things later down the line...

 

As I said, it's a good concept, logical one. Just flawed mechanic, completely artificial, cheaply implemented.

 

 

people will take notice and you will develop a certain kind of reputation.

People? What people? Who? where? Can I murder them all to kill witnesses? Can I disguise myself or use a fake name? Who are these people? Where are they when I talk to a damn ogre at the bottom of a spider infested cave?

 

 

No one but yourself is forcing you to meta-game. You can also disable the tags that show reputation modifiers.

Burying your head in the sand to not see something, doesn't make it go away

Edited September 6, 2014 by mutonizer

[Silent Winter]

<snip>

The downside?

You no longer choose answers based on what you want your character to answer, but based on the reputation gain/loss because you don't want to **** things up and make "clever" get ahead of "aggressive" or something. Dialog stop being about words and meaning, they are now about + and -. Then it becomes frustrating because that's not exactly what you want to say, and you realize that all context is removed, but if you don't balance out your reputation points, that'll affect things later down the line...

<snip>

 

No one but yourself is forcing you to meta-game. You can also disable the tags that show reputation modifiers.

Burying your head in the sand to not see something, doesn't make it go away

But it does stop you choosing the answers based on what you want to pump rather than what you want to say

(unless you over analyse everything, and even then you might be 'wrong' )

[Namutree]

 

 

Because it's not something that defines him by himself, but how others perceive him.

How others perceive you is determined by how you define your character.

 

Not true at all. In BG2 my evil fighter did a lot of things that raised my reputation, but in truth I had evil motivations and even became an evil god at the end of the game. My character's true self was very different from how people perceived her. 

[nipsen]

...er..I mean, the mechanics are very simple, and they don't need any analysis at all, do they... What's interesting is what the writers do with it throughout the game.

 

Even if it seems pretty obvious, even from the little we see in the beta, that they're not treating this as a Bioware "reputation" stat. That you walk up to a character and they say: "Hi, mr [reputation alignment] guy!". Or that you get a "Only you can save the world" prompt every now and again.

 

Instead, the "reputation" is an internal tally that shows the tendency of the character you're roleplaying as. And when you gain enough points, the character feels confident enough to attempt more audacious lies, or string together more complex reasoning, use threats more effectively, etc. Without that really guaranteeing success, more than just giving you an option to choose a different path, or to figure out more about the characters in the quest, and so on.

 

And the dialogue really does read completely different depending on what sort of character you are. The flow between a might-build and a perception/intelligence build is well written as well. ..I'm liking the entire approach. Set your character abilities and the direction of it early. Then find your alignment and focus later. Makes a lot of sense.