Molyneux Says Americans Find it Harder to Be Evil
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If he's basing this on his game, DUH. Being Good in Fable 2 had such a better outcome:
- A town with cheap shops.
- Marriage (useless, but still).
- And plenty of tofu to get you there, with also ranks up with healing.
Being evil?
- You get to have sex with hookers (why pay, when you could Dance a few times and get in bed with anyone?)
- kill off all the shop keepers so you can't buy new weapons,
- A town which allows you to do bad without the guards getting on you (but if you were really evil, you would simply do what you wished regardless of what the guards thought)
- and you get a single food item to make you evil, which won't heal for squat later on in the game.
Don't blame our morals. Blame your crappy game design.
- A town with cheap shops.
- Marriage (useless, but still).
- And plenty of tofu to get you there, with also ranks up with healing.
Being evil?
- You get to have sex with hookers (why pay, when you could Dance a few times and get in bed with anyone?)
- kill off all the shop keepers so you can't buy new weapons,
- A town which allows you to do bad without the guards getting on you (but if you were really evil, you would simply do what you wished regardless of what the guards thought)
- and you get a single food item to make you evil, which won't heal for squat later on in the game.
Don't blame our morals. Blame your crappy game design.
We're probably "good" in Lionhead's games, but in other games... Seriously, who hasn't gone on a killing spree in games like Fallout 3, Oblivion, GTA series, and many other games that don't punish the gamer so much for it?
We like to kill without the consequences of a punishment.
We like to kill without the consequences of a punishment.
Never knew he created Populous..
I have no problem with being evil in a game. If a game has a "moral choice" mode I typically pick the "Good" path first mainly because it seems that developers make the "Good" path easier. Going through KOTOR I and II with both good and evil was quite fun, and it was cool to experience two different solutions to the same situation.
Moral choice in games is only good if it offers drastically different game experiences.
I have no problem with being evil in a game. If a game has a "moral choice" mode I typically pick the "Good" path first mainly because it seems that developers make the "Good" path easier. Going through KOTOR I and II with both good and evil was quite fun, and it was cool to experience two different solutions to the same situation.
Moral choice in games is only good if it offers drastically different game experiences.
Pretty much this, I like to kill those who have it coming. Some video games give me people worth killing, like Saint's Row 2. It is also why I like choices but hate the usual karma systems. What I have always found deliciously ironic is that Oblivion has almost a perfect karma system and it seems like they did it in passing.Machines Are Us said:
Check it, you have fame and infamy there. Then you have people's reactions and the reactions of the altars but if you have a high bounty on your head, then bandits, marauders, and vampires actually start to deaggro as you find them. Now a number of quests take into account whether you are famous or infamous but beyond that, there isn't some huge effect.
Your skills and abilities remain the same, it is the choices that change. All Oblivion had to do for a perfect karma system is make a slight emphasis on those choices. With a couple exceptions, there is no reason to be good or evil. I can't talk Marauders, Bandits, or Vampires into banding up with me and raiding a village for plunder. Any followers you can get through quests, you can only have one of that type at a time and followers only tend to be remotely useful in a group. If you're evil, you can't become a Lich or a Necromancer.
I think what Pete actually needs to do is worry about making the morality system fun, not an arbitrary way to pretend to interact with cretin NPCs but actually fun. If you want to do bad deeds, give those deeds merit and weight. Same for good. Allow Evil players a chance to do some interesting levels of villainy that have their own plot arcs, Like lure in villagers for some horrid purpose. Also, have quest strings of various shades of gray. Sure have the set of quests for the blackhearted bastards, murder, ritual sacrifice, raiding. However, also have the morally dark gray, like bank heists, burglary, protection rackets. Make sure to balance that out with Good. Good players can deal with protecting villages from raiders, hunting down evil necromancers and warlocks, playing detective against werewolves/vampires/murderous villains, breaking up nasty gangs, or even leading a set of raids like a crusade.
Check this, on Oblivion, with all the DLC for Xbox 360, I decided to clear all my infamy and don the Divine Crusader armor again. I even bothered to buy a white horse and kit it out with steel armor for effect. Then I grabbed a Knight of the Nine follower and a Battlehorn Man at Arms for a self given quest (Yes I love the game but am that bored.) We went Necromancer Lair raiding, my own made up crusade. I loaded up on custom spells that were personal buffs and buff/heal other spells, then we went in. I was thinking... Ya know, this would be a great thing for Good Characters to actually get credit for. Imagine if Fable or Oblivion gave you NPCs (competent ones that could let you fiddle with their gear if you have better for them) as a personal crusading crew and you could do a repeatable quest to raid a number of temples/lairs/ruins to "purge the evil ones" It could even be a fair bit random. One time you do it, you have to clear out bandit camps for the area, another time Vile Necromancers. Do the string of raids, get paid/karma/high score/whatever.
Then for evil, perhaps something similar, rob X number of stores/banks/caravans, attack X number of villages, etc. You get the idea. Actually feel like you are doing vile or heroic deeds instead of a bunch of petty chores. Hell, with the use of factions, you could even give the above idea a lot of variety. Perhaps one minute you are fighting bandits from a caravan and the fight has a few more waves to lengthen it til nightfall when you all become attacked by vampires drawn to the bloodshed or Necromancers looking for a distracted group to body raid. Head into a Necromancer Lair one of the times only to find out that they have allied with a small pack of vampires. Deal with vampires and every so often, you find they have a lot of mid level werewolves obeying them. Of course, evil can run into complications which aren't too hard to ponder out. Raiding a bunch of store fronts only to find beefed up security or even magical security of that second village from the end of your list has paladins beef up the militia.
Some of these, taking away a timer, give players a personal reward if they do recon. Check out the necromancer lair and see if anything funny is going on before you run in this, sword and spell slinging. Scope out the stores you plan to rob to know if they have a golem by the vault.
And for those loners who want to be morally gray, they could have a load of mercenary quests, like being called for protection for a village or a store or a necromancer's lair.
They could make a great moral bridge between the two over arching moralities and connect the quests together, storywise. Obviously the idea would need to be fleshed out more to give a feeling of accomplishment but the basic point is this. If you are going to have a morality system, make it actually worth a damn besides determining what color of sparkles float out of your ass. Area based benefit and consequence. If I am a famous paladin of virtue, lemme feel like it by giving me the option to do holy nonsense. If I am a vile necromancer/vampire/whatever, make me feel like I actually made a choice besides hair color by allowing me access to evil things to do. Perhaps it could be fun if I am a powerful outlaw to kill a bandit leader and gain a small bandit crew, then raid the hell out of caravans and the like.And of course, this leads to a quick thought, most of these ideas should not work off a timer. Stuff like Caravan raids or protecting a village could work off a timer with failure counting against your karma. If they got on a crusade to clear out lairs, don't time it but perhaps cancel that particular raid if they wander into a non-related dungeon.
Sorry for the size of this rant but it is something that has always bugged me. I never thought that this was a unique or magical idea but I never see it truly implemented. Oblivion could have done this, Fable could have done this. Infamous is now my favorite example of a morality system only there for a moral wank with no actual choice impact, IE doing it wrong.
/rant
EDIT: I need a thread slayer badge...
Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, David Berkowitz, Ed Gein, Edmund Kemper, Joel Rifkin, Jeffrey Dahmer, Alexis Flores, Edward Eugene Harper and George Lucas all agree with Mr. Molyneux.
Hah! I find evil the easiest thing to do, honestly. What's more fun that killing an entire town with your bare hands?
Molyneux is talking out of his ass here. He's a starry-eyed idealist trying to make people feel better about themselves. Although maybe he's just trying to make sure dicks like Jack Thompson have less ammo to work with.
Personally I can't stand being evil in games; it just runs completely averse to my personal nature. I never make choices to be mean to people just because I can (except in The Bard's Tale, where it's played for laugs) and I never sacrifice people for my own power. The only exception has been playing Necron in Dawn of War, where I feel a certain kinship with the Necrons' world-weary quest to annihilate all other life. Funny that. But I'm Australian anyway.
Personally I can't stand being evil in games; it just runs completely averse to my personal nature. I never make choices to be mean to people just because I can (except in The Bard's Tale, where it's played for laugs) and I never sacrifice people for my own power. The only exception has been playing Necron in Dawn of War, where I feel a certain kinship with the Necrons' world-weary quest to annihilate all other life. Funny that. But I'm Australian anyway.
I don't know if Molyneux's right about the whole 10% thing, but I tend to play my characters in RPGs as Lawful Good, even though personally I am somewhere in the gray area between the four Neutral/Chaotic-Good/Neutral alignments (as in draw a circle around the point where those four meet.)
I'm actually more moral and decent in games than I am in real life, apparently.
I'm actually more moral and decent in games than I am in real life, apparently.
There's 8 pages of replies, and instead of reading it all (Your opinions matter. I promise. Maybe.) I am throwing every Bullshit, every Shenanigans call, and every WTF phrase I can at Molyneux. There is aboslutley no way 10% of Americans would pick evil. No Fucking way.
Could also have to do with the fact being evil in Fable 2 is:
A.) Incredibly lame
B.) Boring. (Watching paint dry is more fun)
I'll give you an example:
I decided my second play-through Fable 2 I was going to be an evil skill hero, being a jerk is easy, in fact too easy.
Walk into a town, kill people left and right, fool someone to marry you, sleep with them then kill them. Guards catch you in the act, see how many you can kill before they catch you and when they finally catch you,
"You bastard! You walk into to this town and murder in cold blood, you have any idea what we do to the likes of you?"
Me, "No, but I hope it's epic and against enemies that don't go down with one shot!"
"Well, you need to:
A.) Perform Community service.
B.) Pay a fine
C.) Resist arrest.
Me, "What?"
Yeah, I feel like some evil badass when the worse thing to happen when I'm caught is I have to go clean up litter. You know what happens if you kill or break the law before you perform the service? The same thing, there's no real affect of being evil, NPCs say they hate you but they still let you walk in town. Bring forth the angry mob of NPCs with torches and pitchforks to drive your rotten evil hide out of town. Or slam your butt in the town jail, "Press 'X' to not drop the soap"
Also, give more tools to be evil, about the only interactions you have with NPCs is:
1.) Kill them
2.) Sell them off to slavery, which #1 is quicker and gives more evil points.
3.) Exploit them, which #1 is quicker and gives more evil points.
Make it somewhat fun and interesting being evil and not just, "I kill people so everyone hates me."
Where's the evil landlord that takes sex as payment from his/her female/male tenants?
Where's the souless human that kicks orphans out to make room for a new shop?
Where's the bastard that kills a child, makes soup and feeds the parents said child?
Where's the magnificant bastard that frames the nobles and forces the princess/prince into an arranged marriage with them against their will?
Where's the fun that being evil brings and where's the orphan child that seeks me out to avenge their: "Parents, sister, brother, friends, town?"
A.) Incredibly lame
B.) Boring. (Watching paint dry is more fun)
I'll give you an example:
I decided my second play-through Fable 2 I was going to be an evil skill hero, being a jerk is easy, in fact too easy.
Walk into a town, kill people left and right, fool someone to marry you, sleep with them then kill them. Guards catch you in the act, see how many you can kill before they catch you and when they finally catch you,
"You bastard! You walk into to this town and murder in cold blood, you have any idea what we do to the likes of you?"
Me, "No, but I hope it's epic and against enemies that don't go down with one shot!"
"Well, you need to:
A.) Perform Community service.
B.) Pay a fine
C.) Resist arrest.
Me, "What?"
Yeah, I feel like some evil badass when the worse thing to happen when I'm caught is I have to go clean up litter. You know what happens if you kill or break the law before you perform the service? The same thing, there's no real affect of being evil, NPCs say they hate you but they still let you walk in town. Bring forth the angry mob of NPCs with torches and pitchforks to drive your rotten evil hide out of town. Or slam your butt in the town jail, "Press 'X' to not drop the soap"
Also, give more tools to be evil, about the only interactions you have with NPCs is:
1.) Kill them
2.) Sell them off to slavery, which #1 is quicker and gives more evil points.
3.) Exploit them, which #1 is quicker and gives more evil points.
Make it somewhat fun and interesting being evil and not just, "I kill people so everyone hates me."
Where's the evil landlord that takes sex as payment from his/her female/male tenants?
Where's the souless human that kicks orphans out to make room for a new shop?
Where's the bastard that kills a child, makes soup and feeds the parents said child?
Where's the magnificant bastard that frames the nobles and forces the princess/prince into an arranged marriage with them against their will?
Where's the fun that being evil brings and where's the orphan child that seeks me out to avenge their: "Parents, sister, brother, friends, town?"
I tend to pick the evil side in games for a few reasons.
1 - Metagaming. Evil usually ends up being stronger. Examples: KotOR, Original Fable, Neverwinter Nights 2, and most other games with moral choices. I like making my characters as strong as possible.
2 - I also pick the evil side because it tends to give cooler visuals and style. Dark Messiah, for example: both multiplayer teams are identical, but Undead gets more interesting visual style. Fable, where the good guy looks unpleasantly bright, whereas the bad guy gets a cool red eye glow and horns.
3 - Because it's fun. Case in point: Prototype.
However, one thing I've noticed is that aside from Prototype-style rampages, I tend not to like evil choices. BioWare, for example, is notorious for making their evil options always be Stupid Evil. It generally just feels contrived and pointless. I far prefer the evil options of a talented writer, such as Obsidian Entertainment's writing team in Mask of the Betrayer. I don't want to spoil it, so I'll just say that their morality options are far more interesting.
I often end up being classified as Neutral by alignment systems, leaning towards good. But the statistical benefits of evil and the often insufferable characters on the good side (hello, star wars), tend to lead me to just picking the evil option most of the time. Also because evil sometimes leads to lichdom or daemonhood, which is pretty neat.
Truth be told, my ideal character is kind of like Thief's Garrett but with more of an adventuring and collecting spirit, less about making profit. I like exploring, seeing the sights ingame, stealing everything interesting and memorable. But I don't recall as that any game provided me that sort of option, so I just go with stock evil. At least that way I get to collect the interesting items (off people's dead bodies).
1 - Metagaming. Evil usually ends up being stronger. Examples: KotOR, Original Fable, Neverwinter Nights 2, and most other games with moral choices. I like making my characters as strong as possible.
2 - I also pick the evil side because it tends to give cooler visuals and style. Dark Messiah, for example: both multiplayer teams are identical, but Undead gets more interesting visual style. Fable, where the good guy looks unpleasantly bright, whereas the bad guy gets a cool red eye glow and horns.
3 - Because it's fun. Case in point: Prototype.
However, one thing I've noticed is that aside from Prototype-style rampages, I tend not to like evil choices. BioWare, for example, is notorious for making their evil options always be Stupid Evil. It generally just feels contrived and pointless. I far prefer the evil options of a talented writer, such as Obsidian Entertainment's writing team in Mask of the Betrayer. I don't want to spoil it, so I'll just say that their morality options are far more interesting.
I often end up being classified as Neutral by alignment systems, leaning towards good. But the statistical benefits of evil and the often insufferable characters on the good side (hello, star wars), tend to lead me to just picking the evil option most of the time. Also because evil sometimes leads to lichdom or daemonhood, which is pretty neat.
Truth be told, my ideal character is kind of like Thief's Garrett but with more of an adventuring and collecting spirit, less about making profit. I like exploring, seeing the sights ingame, stealing everything interesting and memorable. But I don't recall as that any game provided me that sort of option, so I just go with stock evil. At least that way I get to collect the interesting items (off people's dead bodies).
I'm sure it's been said repeatedly, but I'll toss in my contribution by asking game developers to show us some gray area.
As Yahtzee has stated in the past, the choices we are given are too stark. There is no consideration for making decisions entirely for personal gain. Personal gain can be anything from more money and power to simply not having the local militia riding your ass. Social manipulation gets overlooked entirely in most games. They never even consider that someone who sucks up to others solely for their own emotional or monetary gain can be just as reviled as the guy who will step on anyone to get wherever he is going. At least with the guy who steps on everyone you know what he is going to do.
I don't want to choose between saving a basket of kittens from a raging river or lobbing sharp rocks at said basket. I want to choose whether I save the kittens or not because the little girl sobbing on the beach happens to be the mayor's daughter and I may be able to use this seeming act of kindness as leverage later. I want the game to have some way to look at my actions cumulatively and adapt options that are presented to me later accordingly. I want some motivation in my actions aside from doing things just for the sake of being good or evil.
As Yahtzee has stated in the past, the choices we are given are too stark. There is no consideration for making decisions entirely for personal gain. Personal gain can be anything from more money and power to simply not having the local militia riding your ass. Social manipulation gets overlooked entirely in most games. They never even consider that someone who sucks up to others solely for their own emotional or monetary gain can be just as reviled as the guy who will step on anyone to get wherever he is going. At least with the guy who steps on everyone you know what he is going to do.
I don't want to choose between saving a basket of kittens from a raging river or lobbing sharp rocks at said basket. I want to choose whether I save the kittens or not because the little girl sobbing on the beach happens to be the mayor's daughter and I may be able to use this seeming act of kindness as leverage later. I want the game to have some way to look at my actions cumulatively and adapt options that are presented to me later accordingly. I want some motivation in my actions aside from doing things just for the sake of being good or evil.
