Secret to a Good Moral Choice System

[BloatedGuppy]

Have each person of importance have a modifiable opinion of you, that simply came down to approve/disapprove.

And if they disapprove that you're a child killing maniac whilst they are a paragon of goodness, just give them 100 presents and they think you're tops. Riveting stuff.

 

[Vivi22]

Easy. Don't have one. Simply put, they ruin the game.

Going to have to disagree. I think morality systems can, and sometimes have, been done well. Thing is, they should never be as transparent and good/evil based as many games make them, and there need to be real consequences. If there's no ambiguity and no consequences, then players won't make an actual value based choice, but actually try and game the system more often than not, defeating the purpose. Which is largely the case in the examples you list as being bad.

EDIT: Never mind. I need to learn to stop skimming posts quickly sometimes because I see you basically recommended the same thing at the end of yours. So I guess I agree with you then.

 

[Zburator]

Have each person of importance have a modifiable opinion of you, that simply came down to approve/disapprove.

And if they disapprove that you're a child killing maniac whilst they are a paragon of goodness, just give them 100 presents and they think you're tops. Riveting stuff.

Obviously some fine-tuning is needed, but the core elements are praise-worthy. Although, didn't the gifts have a limit of effectiveness (in the vanilla versions)? Anyway, cutting the gift stuff to certain limits can easily fix that.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

The best moral choice system I think is one where you aren't thinking of morals, but consequences. There needs to be a potential reward for any approach you take, so there's no binary crap, just what you get at the end of the day. But there does need to be a reward because I will compromise any hope of role playing the moment I'm going to miss out on something. Doesn't mean NPCs can't approve or disapprove of your actions and act on it, just means there's no solid rulebook for what will get you i points or j points.

Since I'm not the best at inventing moral choice systems, I'm just going to say how little I like the others. Skyrim. No lasting consequences, the do-whatever-you-want approach. Annoys me to no end because nothing you do has any real effect as a result. Within the one mission or one NPC or group of NPCs sure, maybe they change a bit of dialogue. But to the rest of the world, they don't seem to realise you're a Daedra-worshipping murderer with only the hassle of killing all the guards in the city preventing him from killing your family and stealing everything they own. Mass Effect. Was meant to be idealism vs pragmatism, ended up as naíve goody-two-shoes vs being a dick for no reason. Like, for example, not giving a dying salarian medi-gel for his HEART WOUND simply because you don't feel generous. What's more, no bonus for being in the middle (ie a real character), you go full Paragon ro full Renegade and unless you want to be screwed over that is what you stick to.

Part of the problem is the game deciding what is good or bad, part is not allowing for in between, part is lack of substance in options or motivation and part is often the reward for one or the other path renders the other useless.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

good moral choice systems don't have a meter tracking them, or a necessarily different ending tacked on for each standing. a good moral choice system is one that realizes that good and evil isn't saving or eating the child, in some cases, the more evil option is to do the "good" thing fist, only so you can do something so much worse later. a good moral choice system realizes that the world isn't black and white, just good and evil. it realizes that there are other options. and you're rarely limited to just 2.

Fable 3 did this HORRENDOUSLY. your options were basically between saving the child now, only to have him and everyone he knows die horribly later, or killing the child now, so that his family and little brother survive.
remember that the first choice is the "good" path. WTF? mind that i HATE the fable series though. and i only played 3 because i was bored out of my skull. but it is a prime example of exactly how NOT to do it

Captcha: Skynet watches

Nuh-Uh Fable 3 also had the 3rd moral choice, buy all the property and increase taxes and let the Xbox run for for a couple of hours.

I was actively trying to be evil in this but I ended up doing all the good choices simply because I had so much money... Like, I think it was still filled up to the room after I spent all of it fighting the monster. In real life I would of been tossing it into the streets like JD Rockefeller just to watch homeless people fight over it because I had so much.

I was like Ross freaking Perot. How would I solve the deficit? I'd pay it.

 

[Vegosiux]

Planescape: Torment. Your alignment changes according to what you do or say. You're not locked out of going against your alignment because you didn't collect enough Dudley-Do-Right or Snidely Whiplash points prior to that point.

In short, your alignment is a result of your actions, not the other way around, where your actions would be limited by your alignment. After all, free will and all.

 

[deathbydeath]

No, here's the secret: have it be an ideological choice system as opposed to a moral choice, ala Bastion's ending, Deus Ex, or what Jade Empire attempted with the Open Hand/Closed Fist paths. When you add morality into the mix, it always turn to shit. However, when you bring ideologies into the mix, morality exits stage and there's less contamination of opinions into the game.

 

[WanderingFool]

Firstly, remove the system as a whole. As others have mentioned, Morality systems tend to be built around the idea of players making choices that come out in one of two ways. Developers than tie into that system certian rewards and such for getting to a certian level of good or bad karma. Like Mass Effects Paragon/Renegade choices. To get the best outcomes in some places, you had to choose mostly paragon or renegade options in order to activate the option. Instead of trying to roleplay, players now have to play their Shepard as either a saint or a dick.

So my plan is to remove the system. Make all the moral choices in game not add up. But that said, have the choices still hold some meaning in the world. A possible scenerio: You come across a young woman being manhandled by a pair of bandits. You could either:
- Save her from the bandits.
- Join in with the bandits.
- Kill her.
- Not do anything.
-and some others...

Having no overall moral choice system, these choices arent tracked as either good or evil, but they will style have some effect on the game world:
- The girl ends up being the daughter of a powerful lord in the region, and he rewards you for saving her.
- Same as above, and because you helped rape her, he now wants your head on a pike.
- Same as above, but with her dead, the lord now wants information to who killed her.
- Same as above, but you simply find out this information (unless she saw you not help her, than she may want you dead.)

My idea is to basically emphizise the choices a player has, and what they can do to affect the game world, yet not have a arbitary system in place to determine whether the action is good or evil, and thus give out a arbitary reward that would make players choose the more obvious good or evil choices for said reward.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Obviously some fine-tuning is needed, but the core elements are praise-worthy. Although, didn't the gifts have a limit of effectiveness (in the vanilla versions)? Anyway, cutting the gift stuff to certain limits can easily fix that.

Not really. Morrigan didn't like anything I was doing, so I just painted her with presents after every contentious mission and she thought I was the salt of the earth.

Dragon Age isn't any kind of terrible game, I liked it a lot. But I wouldn't hold it up as any kind of clinic on how to implement a "moral choice" system. The bad guys are the baddest bad guys that ever badded...they're gooey monsters from under the earth come to pillage and destroy. Their motivation is "because". You're part of an ancient order of self-sacrificing blah de blah blah blah. Some individuals like Morrigan approach shade of grey, but she's given the party role of shrill anti-hero, so she usually takes on an aggressively selfish persona without any sensible motivation or cause in order to provide a counterpoint to the selflessness of the more heroic types. As with KOTOR, individual choices often boil down to save the puppy or kick the puppy, without a lot of grey area for things like expediency, or compromise, or necessary evil. As with ME and KOTOR you can have your cake and eat it too by taking the good path, there are few if any sacrifices required of a paragon of nobility in those games. Evil doesn't come with any benefits except a red aesthetic, which displays a complete misunderstanding of the banality of evil and what motivates most people to behave that way in the first place (extreme self interest). Bad guys like Howe are needlessly sinister. Even grey characters like Loghain are shown smirking wickedly for absolutely no reason whatsoever. We're a few monocles and twirling mustaches short of full on cartoon at junctures. When the game does offer you a moral dilemma, such as Harrowmont vs Bhelen, it's always completely binary. ME was the same way. Genophage vs no Genophage is an interesting choice, but it's kind of like an introduction to ethics 101 question. It's not particularly SOPHISTICATED. And it's always some side quest, the primary narrative is always about bumping heads with some apocalyptic evil.

So...no. I would disagree that the core elements are praise worthy.

 

[lord.jeff]

Be careful including a reward system, lots of gamers will pick the choice with the best reward instead of what choice they want to make and never include rewards that are given if the player is only good or evil, Infamous, Kotor or Mass Effect for example where it's not really a series of moral choices but you picking a side and sticking with it.

 

[DestinyCall]

In my opinion, the best moral choice systems are ones that avoid the binary good/evil choice and instead give the player the choice between different values. They ask the player to examine his or her own beliefs and judge for themselves whether they are making the "right" choice.

The Ultima series did this pretty well with its Virtues. Morality wasn't just about right or wrong, but about which values you held most dear. Upholding one virtue might mean going against another, even though they were all "good" choices. They were based on three basic principles: Truth, Love, and Courage. Depending on how you were role-playing your character, you might focus on advancing one or another principle or set of virtues. The choices you made in-game might change depending on whether you felt Justice was more important than Compassion or Honesty was of greater value compared with Valor.

It wasn't just a black or white question, deciding which option was clearly evil or clearly good. You were not asked whether you wanted to burn down an orphanage or rescue a basket of kittens, but whether you would uphold justice for a shopkeeper who was just robbed by punishing the criminal or feel compassion for the thief stealing bread for his family and let him go.


Honesty is respect for Truth
Compassion is Love of others
Valor is Courage to stand up against risks
Justice is Truth, tempered by Love
Sacrifice is Courage to give oneself in name of Love
Honor is Courage to seek and uphold the Truth
Spirituality is to seek Truth, Love and Courage from one's own self and the world around
Humility is the opposite of Pride - the absence of Truth, Love or Courage

 

[Zburator]

SNIP

Bad elaboration on my part. I was referring to the 'core elements' of the so-called 'alignment system'. That being, there isn't one.

Dragon Age does not measure the 'evil/mustache level' of your character and adapt the world to that, but rather, it takes measure of each individual's approval of you. In short, as opposed to games like Mass Effect, Jade Empire and Fable, there is no universal, unexplained power judging your actions on a numbered (and very unforgiving) chart of good vs. evil; and molding the world to that, but simply each character having different ideals that in turn conflict with the actions taken by the main player.

There are some bad points here and there, but that can be learned from in later games. But I think, the core 'idea' of replacing the good/evil alignment system with a sole character approval rating is generally a good idea.

That said, I am well aware of the gift-to-100 thing in Dragon Age, but I believe they fixed that in the second installation (at the cost of the gameplay, apparently).

Anyway, would love to debate more, but I am starting to get delirious from a lack of sleep.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

In my opinion, the best moral choice systems are ones that avoid the binary good/evil choice and instead give the player the choice between different values. They ask the player to examine his or her own beliefs and judge for themselves whether they are making the "right" choice.

The Ultima series did this pretty well with its Virtues. Morality wasn't just about right or wrong, but about which values you held most dear. Upholding one virtue might mean going against another, even though they were all "good" choices. They were based on three basic principles: Truth, Love, and Courage. Depending on how you were role-playing your character, you might focus on advancing one or another principle or set of virtues. The choices you made in-game might change depending on whether you felt Justice was more important than Compassion or Honesty was of greater value compared with Valor.

It wasn't just a black or white question, deciding which option was clearly evil or clearly good. You were not asked whether you wanted to burn down an orphanage or rescue a basket of kittens, but whether you would uphold justice for a shopkeeper who was just robbed by punishing the criminal or feel compassion for the thief stealing bread for his family and let him go.


Honesty is respect for Truth
Compassion is Love of others
Valor is Courage to stand up against risks
Justice is Truth, tempered by Love
Sacrifice is Courage to give oneself in name of Love
Honor is Courage to seek and uphold the Truth
Spirituality is to seek Truth, Love and Courage from one's own self and the world around
Humility is the opposite of Pride - the absence of Truth, Love or Courage

One of the nicest things about Ultima, or at the very least Ultima IV, was that upholding the virtues was actually kind of difficult. Running down weaker opponents? Well, that's not very valorous. Shooting a fleeing Orc in the back? Not honorable. Holding back your hard earned gold instead of dishing it off to beggars? Not showing enough sacrifice. And on and on. There were ways to game the system, as it was an older game and the mechanics were fairly simple, but the game really did hold you to a high ethical ideal.

That's something that irritates me a little about modern games. There's no cost to being good. In fact, being good is often optimal. You get all the material rewards and ease of life as the evil folks do, AND everyone loves you and calls you a hero!

There are some bad points here and there, but that can be learned from in later games. But I think, the core 'idea' of replacing the good/evil alignment system with a sole character approval rating is generally a good idea.

Ah, I see what you were driving at. In that case I agree that it's a step in the right direction, although I think the implementation was a little over-simplistic. I found Sten, Morrigan, Alistair, etc to be needlessly pedantic and rigid in their morality, even when it made very little sense for them to be behaving the way they were.

 

[Krantos]

I'm going to shamelessly self-quote here:

Spoiler

In the interest of keeping this short, I think Morality systems can work, but they need to do several things:

1. Keep neutral open: ME2 mucked this up by linking the persuade options to morality. Essentially, many avenues were locked off unless you played all good or all bad. This leads, as the OP said, to choosing options for the points you get rather than role playing.

2. Keep it grounded. Unless there is a clear reason to in the game lore, don't call it "good" and "evil." These terms are so subjective they are basically meaningless. If you have to call it something, name it in a way that makes sense in-game.

3. Keep the options multidimensional. Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 are a great case study for this. The Paragon/Renegade choices in the first game were really about different styles of approaching problems. A paragon might take the choice of trying to save everybody at the cost of putting everyone at risk, while a renegade might sacrifice a handful of people to make sure more are safe. In Mass Effect 2, Paragon/Renegade was basically just Nice/A*hole. There were some exceptions to the rule (i.e. the Geth problem), but the majority of the options basically came down to Nice guy or douche bag.

- Have it mean something. If you include a system like this, have it reflected somehow in-game that doesn't unnecessarily restrict freedom or gameplay. The best example I have of this is KOTOR. Light/Dark means something in-game; it's not just an arbitrary dynamic forcing you to play through twice. Note this one is difficult to balance with #1.

That's the short version. I do like games like Dragon Age and The Witcher which do away with the system, but I also like a well executed morality mechanic.

Basically, Morality systems can be good, but you need to build them along with your game and make sure everything fits. Also understand that not everyone is going to want to be all one or the other and don't penalize them for going grey.

 

[DrunkenMonkey]

Let the game morph into territory outside of multiple endings. Such as what Witcher 2 did with choice. Your morality determines what characters you ally with thereby the locals should completely change. Basically don't stop at the creating your multiple endings part. Morality is a system that ideally should change the stakes of a game. Something that developers don't have time and money to do properly.

 

[burningdragoon]

I think you could improve a lot of moral choice systems by a) not showing every damn thing and b) making it harder to game the system.

For a: A lot people complain about how Mass Effect effectively (>.>) punishes you if you don't go all good or all bad. I think a lot of that is because the game hits you over the head when you can't do something. It'd be less frustrating if the dialog options you can't choose were only visible at all if you could choose them.

For b: Basically, make you own you decisions and get rid of always having a rainbows and puppy dogs results but also make negative outcomes valid outcomes (sometimes at least). A big improvement between Dragon Age and Dragon Age 2 was that instead of being able to shower your companions with gifts if they didn't like you, they made it so having a negative relationship with characters wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

 

[StashAugustine]

Morality systems should be broken down into two categories. The first is what Bioshock tried (and mostly failed) to do- you've got an obviously good choice and an obviously evil choice, but the evil choice is easier. As an example, in Dragon Age, I considered it all types of wrong to go along with Morrigan's plan, but it left me staring at the dialogue screen simply because the consequences of turning down the evil option were so big. The other kind of morality system is a greyscale one. This one shouldn't be marked, or if it has to be then be very clear that it's not good/evil. This is what ME tried (and, again, mostly failed) to do- it failed because Renegade is often outright evil with little to no benefit, Paragon is almost never evil, and both are equally valid ways to play the game.

 

[alphamalet]

So basically the OP is saying the secret to a good moral choice system is moral ambiguity? I didn't know that was a secret lol. But yeah, you don't know what the outcome of a choice will be before you make that choice. Why games insist on telling that player that sort of thing is beyond me. You also won't necessarily know the outcome of a choice right after you make it either. Dragon Age Origins got this right, and you saw some of the unintended consequences of your choices during the epilogue of the game. Why games insist on showing you some sort of good/evil meter and how your choice affects it immediately after you make that choice is also extremely perplexing.

 

[aguspal]

I rather prefer the Alpha protocol/Binary Domain route:


No karma or shit, just "reputation" with characters. And (preferibly) have said reputation affect you EITHER way, both good and bad. I honestly dont care that much about this subject but this way around, it was actually fun and interesting. Probably because they tried to be a little different I guess...