Poll: Morality Systems: Good or Bad?

[dfcrackhead]

Most mortality systems are as cut and dry as the poll featured here, but the question on my mind is, do you like it?

Do you like morality systems in your games or would you rather just see the whole mechanic die in a fire? The choice is yours.

 

[Marter]

If used right, I enjoy them. Often times they don't work out properly though, and are too extreme for my taste.

 

[Aerodynamic]

If pulled off right I will enjoy them, if not I won't really care.

 

[Mr. McFuzzers]

Most morality systems are to black and white and don't really give us enough of a choice, mostly, you choose to either become the next messiah or the anti-christ...

 

[L3m0n_L1m3]

I don't like how, despite the fact I'm the evilest SOB in the tri-state area, they still expect me to save them all.

 

[SplashyAxis]

I'm not too keen on them, especially if a game offers you nothing but a different ending, but the rest of the game is pretty much the same. There are a few games that get it right, such as Mass Effect, which reward you with differing experiences if you choose Paragon or Renegade.

 

[Miumaru]

I think they need to be done more like the way opinions of you worked in Fable 2. They have great potential, just need to be done better. The concept of grey needs to be better applied.

 

[zehydra]

They work until you realize you didn't agree with the game designer's idea of right and wrong.

For instance, in Fallout 3, I was surprised to find that I had gained positive Karma for helping the android escape. He was after all, a non-sentient robot...

 

['The Eel']

They work until you realize you didn't agree with the game designer's idea of right and wrong.

For instance, in Fallout 3, I was surprised to find that I had gained positive Karma for helping the android escape. He was after all, a non-sentient robot...

It seemed rather clear to me that he was indeed sentient. What made you think he wasn't?

 

[zehydra]

They work until you realize you didn't agree with the game designer's idea of right and wrong.

For instance, in Fallout 3, I was surprised to find that I had gained positive Karma for helping the android escape. He was after all, a non-sentient robot...

It seemed rather clear to me that he was indeed sentient. What made you think he wasn't?

Ah, well, maybe they said he was. I didn't seem clear to me at the time. The reason I thought he wasn't sentient, well, because he was an android.

 

[Zombus]

Moral choices can work if the game is logical about them; too often the choice is: be evil, get a sweet sword but no babes or be good and get no sword but get babes. The gameplay benefit shouldn't be the moral motivation. Restricting spells and abilities to one morality or another is foolish and there shouldn't be one morality that is clearly "better" than another. That is to say each moral branch should have distinctions but they shouldn't be based around access to features to the game. A good moral system shouldn't deny one kind of ability or an item to one morality it should find a way of giving both paths the same abilities/items/whatever but with a diferent flavour. Also good shouldn't always mean selfless and trusting and evil shouldn't always mean greedy and hated and overt. Good people can take the sword not out of evil but in consideration of the good they could do with it, and an evil person can feign niceness if it suits his purpose.

quasi-off topic: I think it would be hilarious if in some game there was an "I was evil all along!" option at the very end of the game where you betray everyone at the peak of their success and watch it all crumble around you as you rise from the ashes like the devious fiend you are.

 

[ShakesZX]

I like the systems. They present an interesting twist to gameplay to think about and change play style. I don't really think of them as morality systems though, since morality is never that cut and dry.

 

[Thunderhorse31]

Morality systems like the one in Mass Effect work - they give you choices but you don't HAVE to play only one way or the other - you still have real choices that you can make throughout the whole game. If you throw in a few Paragon interrupts or choose to spare a few folks now and again, it won't keep you from being a renegade or losing XP or anything.

Morality systems like the one in Infamous kinda suck, where your choice is either "commit to one side forever or never reach full power." I mean, I like the game anyway, but that system's gotta go.

EDIT: Also this:

They work until you realize you didn't agree with the game designer's idea of right and wrong.

Very good point, though unfortunately most of the moral choices in games are comically disproportionate like Yahtzee says. It's either rescue a kitten or fry it with lightning.

 

[lacktheknack]

Ever play Dragon Age?

That's the moral system I like - your decisions directly affect what people around you think of you, and you can't please everybody.

 

[lukemdizzle]

they work when they are a core part of gameplay and story meshed together to make a more personal meaningful experience ex. mass effect or bioshock. they don't work when they're just there to make you play games over again to unlock new things or are just tacked on. ex. infamous

 

[Asturiel]

I appreciate the irony of this thread.

But anyway I like it so long as it isn't half way there but dangling there (I'm looking at you MASS EFFECT!).

 

[skitzo van]

I think their ok (Kotor), but somes games could have handled it very differently.

 

[Billion Backs]

They're obviously biased to some idea of "good" and "evil". I'm all for having extensive option to affect the game and the responses my character gets from certain characters, but so far most morality systems I've played around with (mostly KOTOR games) offer very few choices and very often these choices are very extreme and ridiculous.

Like, you either save someone's life and everything for free, or you kill off an entire orphanage and make a fucking necklace out of their little skulls.

I tend to disagree with many moral ideologies developers clearly have, so meh. Not an overly huge fan of morality systems. And I really like certain alternative ideas Creia provides in KOTOR2 by criticizing what you could consider the common moral choices you would generally get in the game. I loved that old hag...

 

[klakkat]

Morality systems are fine as a concept, but I've only seen a couple I truly like (Planescape: Torment for one). Most of the time, they're kind of half-assed, and can even be hypocritical; in many games you can steal like a crazed kleptomaniac and still have no morality penalty for it, and in others you can make a decision that (neglecting obscure "please all" solutions that you'd have to be a nutbag to even go looking for) is the best you can make in a situation that is distinctly win-lose, and then get a ton of 'evil' points or whatever.

So, overall, the key problem I have with them is that good and evil are subjective anyway, and in a game characters are often once-removed (at least) from the players actual morality. That, and it is almost always crystal clear what the game considers the "good" and "bad" option. At least in star wars settings, that kinda makes sense with the "light side" and "dark side" of the force. But there is no reward for doing what I as a person would normally do when whiny dipshits try to give me a quest (ignore them) while doing anything else is guaranteed some reward.