Why morality systems are a mistake

[Erkki]

The difference is that the NPC's would act like real people. Your actions would have cause and effect. Therefore you would be making your decision based on repercussions to your character, not just because you're "playing paragon".

Yeah, that would be great. I think Dead State, the upcoming zombie survival RPG is attempting something like that.

[Iosef Stalin]

I'm not clear on exactly what constitutes a "moral choice" in a game if it's not part of a points system or some other specific "morality" mechanic. Since NPCs are basically just robots going through a fairly simple set of instructions, morality doesn't apply to them in any real sense. By necessity, it has to be an illusion supported by having them react to the player's choices in different ways. And if you're doing that, there's always going to be some kind of numerical system underneath it (unless you're just dealing with every decision individually, completely free of context, which seems less than ideal). I don't think the points themselves are the problem; it's just that they're too transparent.

The problem I have with most of these systems is that I feel like it's actually kind of antithetical to the way morality actually works, which is that you make decisions to the best of your ability based on what you think is right, without knowing what the outcome will be.

The most satisfying version of this that I can think of in a game is Fallout 3. You have a "karma" score, but there's no real reward for going to either extreme, and it can actually be beneficial to maintain neutral karma. In dialogue options, you're never told what's the "good" or "bad" option (or whether that's even applicable) and sometimes your actions have unintended consequences and something that you thought was a good idea might go wrong and get you the opposite karma from what you were expecting. Characters get killed, quests become inaccessible, etc., but the game is malleable enough to give you lots of alternatives and there's never really one option that's clearly the best one. In that game (and even moreso in New Vegas), I always felt comfortable making decisions based on what I actually thought that I (or my character) would do or say in that situation, rather than because I was thinking about my karma or what reward I'd get. (In fact, I actually tried to start an evil character to see some of the quests I'd missed by being too good, but I couldn't do it because I felt too bad about being mean to everybody.)

Right, but why does it have to be so codified and gamified? Yeah in Fallout 3 it isn't specifically indicated on the dialogue options whether a choice is good or evil, but it's usually pretty obvious. And then when you steal something or kill a "good" person you get that jangly hissing sound effect and you're told you've lost karma.

Why does that have to happen every time? It's stupid as hell when you're just jacking a bunch of stuff, and it goes off every second, like yeah I get it, i'm evil.

And the thing is, often you are punished for being ambiguous or following a neutral path because some options are only available if you are constantly good or constantly evil. You aren't really allowed to roleplay as a real person with conflicting emotions or decisions based on what your character might do in such a situation. Generally you decide that this will be an "evil playthrough" or a "good playthrough", which really just makes the whole thing a farce in terms of the 'R' part of RPG.

[shammack]

And then when you steal something or kill a "good" person you get that jangly hissing sound effect and you're told you've lost karma.

Why does that have to happen every time? It's stupid as hell when you're just jacking a bunch of stuff, and it goes off every second, like yeah I get it, i'm evil.

That is annoying and it would be nice if you could turn those notifications off. But I probably wouldn't, just because in an RPG I like to know when my character's stats are changing.

It's worth noting, though, that although that game obviously does use a numerical stat for karma, it's never presented that way to the player. It's only described in vague terms like "very good," and even though those karma gain/loss notifications pop up all the time, they never give any indication of how much.

And the thing is, often you are punished for being ambiguous or following a neutral path because some options are only available if you are constantly good or constantly evil. You aren't really allowed to roleplay as a real person with conflicting emotions or decisions based on what your character might do in such a situation. Generally you decide that this will be an "evil playthrough" or a "good playthrough", which really just makes the whole thing a farce in terms of the 'R' part of RPG.

I don't really agree with this. Like I said, I roleplayed it that way. Maybe I missed some extreme options that would only have been available if I were very good or very evil; I don't know, but the options that I was given seemed adequate and appropriate for my character. Whether I was doing a "good playthrough" or an "evil playthrough" just wasn't something I thought about at all (until I started a new character to try to game the system and get to the stuff I'd missed the first time through), and I didn't feel like I was being "punished" for it. If a game includes any meaningful choices, that pretty much means it's not going to be possible to see everything in one playthrough.

[Iosef Stalin]

I don't really agree with this. Like I said, I roleplayed it that way. Maybe I missed some extreme options that would only have been available if I were very good or very evil; I don't know, but the options that I was given seemed adequate and appropriate for my character. Whether I was doing a "good playthrough" or an "evil playthrough" just wasn't something I thought about at all (until I started a new character to try to game the system and get to the stuff I'd missed the first time through), and I didn't feel like I was being "punished" for it. If a game includes any meaningful choices, that pretty much means it's not going to be possible to see everything in one playthrough.

I guess so. It's just that i'm one of those people who wants to do everything and get all the secret stuff and the best elite weapons in a game, and since that's practically impossible in games like Fallout 3, that drives me a bit crazy. (Not just because it has a morality system, but because of how huge it is.)

But also it kind of annoys me that I know there are quests and perks etc that i'm missing because you can't get them all in one go because they rely on your karma level. It's like theoretically I know it should be cool that people will react to me differently depending on how much of an asshole I am in a game, but while actually playing I find myself being irritated by it.