Moral alignment systems that do not incentivize you to max out your good/evil?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

In KotoR and Mass Effect, there is a binary good or evil meter where getting good points deducts evil points, so you can only ever you get bonus traits for being at either end of the meter. You are disincentivized to stay in the middle. Are there moral alignment systems that reward you for staying in the middle? The only off of the top of my head right now is Trails Through Daybreak, which introduced a three way alignment system (Law/Grey/Chaos). In that game raising your points with any of those three alignments does not deduct points from the other two, so you can have 5 points in Law, Grey, and Chaos. The best reward (picking which faction you get to run with in chapter 5) only requires you to reach rank 5 in their corner of the LGC triangle, and there is a fourth faction that unlocks if you reach rank 5 in all three corners, which is pretty easily attainable. However, if you want to get the upgrade ore that is used to create the most powerful weapon in the game, you have to get rank 6 in an LGC corner, which means you have to commit to 1 or 2 sides of the triangle, which means you won't have all factions available to you by chapter 5. So there are merits to both going for an even spread or maxxing out an alignment.

[Vergil]

Ironically Fallout 3. Too good gets talon mercs sent after you. Too evil gets regulators. Of course it fails because you rapidly out pace them so they just become free loot but still.

[rusty_shackleford]

Any game using D&D-style alignment, I guess? There's not really a 'meter' to max out. But I suspect over a long enough period of time, any person with a neutral(incl. partial neutral) alignment would drift towards one end of the spectrum.

[Tadeusz]

Any game using D&D-style alignment, I guess?

Pretty much that. I remember there were spells that specifically target certain alignments so staying neutral may be beneficial. Some factions in Planescape require you being neutral to join them (Transcendental Order for example) so there may also be narrative reasons to not go to alignment extremes.

[traxtan]

I stayed in the middle for KOTOR to get all the endings, I don't remember getting punished for it.

[rusty_shackleford]

Not knowing how my alignment changes but being able to see the result at the end would be better. I don't loik gaming the system by picking specific choices just to shift alignment.

[A Chinese opium den]

In games where you lose out on content for not having a maxed out alignment I often cheat and set mine to the highest one way or another so I can make whatever decisions fit my character instead of worry about metagaming the choices. The creative vision of the designers always comes secondary to my vision as the player.

[gerey]

New Vegas "morality" based on what faction you decide to help out is what I prefer, since it can lead to situations where the player decides to pick what is most important to them - as an example, do you side with the Legion because they have the best shot at taming the Wasteland, even through you are against slavery?

Alternatively, what BioWare was attempting with Jade Empire and Mass Effect - decoupling the choice and how you go about enacting it - though BioWare largely failed at implementing it in both instances, since it would have required them to go through a two-tier process, letting the player select what they want to do, and then letting them pick how they'd approach accomplishing this.

In practice, it mostly boiled down picking the "****" or the "*******" option, neither ever being particularly satisfying to choose.

Another alternative that I would like to see implemented is shifting the whole paradigm away from choices based on the lore/narrative, or choices based on binary morality, and rather have the writers come up with choices they know the majority of players will want to pick, but only letting them select one, thus leading to lots of agonizing decisions.

[TKVNC]

It's not really possible, because Neutral doesn't really exist.

There is Good, and Evil. Evil is Evil.

[maidenhaver]

New Vegas "morality" based on what faction you decide to help out is what I prefer, since it can lead to situations where the player decides to pick what is most important to them - as an example, do you side with the Legion because they have the best shot at taming the Wasteland, even through you are against slavery?

I prefer faction rep/alignment vs moral compass. Also, a god alignment, if fantasy, for paladins and clerics, instead of morality. Morality should shift a little between regions, either the gods change a bit, or the people become more or less permissive. There should be places women can't go, holidays to consider, etc.

[Norfleet]

It's not really possible, because Neutral doesn't really exist.

[maidenhaver]

It's not really possible, because Neutral doesn't really exist.

There is Good, and Evil. Evil is Evil.

It's entirely possible, and not only that its still the rule in all matters of honor.

[MrTwinkls]

I don't like morality systems in games at all. Moral is too subjective to correctly quantify. E.g. If I help a settlement in major ways picking good dialogue options (which I/character don't really mean), slaying nearby bandits and so on just to meet with its let's say hiding paranoid Elder in order to kill him does it make me good for greatly improving citizens' life (and they see me that way not knowing I was the murderer) or bad for lacking desire to help and just being methodical assassin? So I prefer simple cause and effect interplay.

[Demonic Fate]

New Vegas "morality" based on what faction you decide to help out is what I prefer, since it can lead to situations where the player decides to pick what is most important to them

+1

Faction and/or companion approval is 1000 times better than any abstract and absolute good/evil/law/chaos/orange/blue morality, and that definitely includes D&D alignments.

- It keeps things grounded. Why should the Guild of Fuckfaces have a worse opinion of you because you murdered a puppy in an alley in a different city, when they have no way of knowing?

- It avoids the endless tedious "but is it Lawful to obey an unjust law? Is it Evil to pull the trolley lever?" etc. debates, and getting ****** because the devs have a different opinion than you so you get an alignment ding. Instead, someone will like it, someone won't, and you may legitimately start disliking the latter characters because of it, which makes sense.

- It can be used for extra characterization. If the Paladin approves, or disapproves, when you stick to the law even if it hurts innocents, you learn something about him. In BG3 there's a good example, three of the early companions (Shart, Astarion, Lae'zel) are all introduced as fanatical and/or selfish assholes, but their reactions when you act good or bad will reveal over time which ones are genuinely evil and which ones are just posturing.

(There's a potential exception for settings like Star Wars where the good-evil axis is a metaphysical reality, but I think that's just one more reason Star Wars sucks ***.)

One variation I'm still unsure about is Tyranny's system, where approval and disapproval are separate bars and you gain different bonuses from each one. Pro: it lets you roleplay freely without worrying about getting nerfed, if you have a companion with whom you agree on some things and disagree on others he will just have half of each set of bonuses. Con: it still feels off to me to get rewarded for pissing people off. Maybe if the negative approval was called "Fear" and you earned it by successfully shutting them down (or punching them) when they complain about your decisions, I would like it more.

[Tweed]

In Megaten games the factions and what they stand for are always presented to you and you decide who you like and then you kill all of your friends over your ideological differences.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I don't like morality systems in games at all. Moral is too subjective to correctly quantify. E.g. If I help a settlement in major ways picking good dialogue options (which I/character don't really mean), slaying nearby bandits and so on just to meet with its let's say hiding paranoid Elder in order to kill him does it make me good for greatly improving citizens' life (and they see me that way not knowing I was the murderer) or bad for lacking desire to help and just being methodical assassin? So I prefer simple cause and effect interplay.

Someone mentioned this in the KotoR advenutrer's guild thread, but when you first meet the Jedi Council you get an option to say the "good thing" and then the same option again but as a lie. Perhaps because you don't agree with the jedi code but don't want to get into philosophical debate, or because you fear the jedi order as they claim a monopoly on the force and what might happen if you refuse to submit, or because you are secretly intending to go Sith and are not ready to reveal your true colors yet. Perhaps more games should have this?

[maidenhaver]

I don't think morality should be subjective, but if its there it needs to change with your region, faction, god, and even holidays. Its not the same thing as individualism. People are not blank slates who can be lectured into universal morality, they have roots, which good and evil try to destroy.

[MrTwinkls]

I don't like morality systems in games at all. Moral is too subjective to correctly quantify. E.g. If I help a settlement in major ways picking good dialogue options (which I/character don't really mean), slaying nearby bandits and so on just to meet with its let's say hiding paranoid Elder in order to kill him does it make me good for greatly improving citizens' life (and they see me that way not knowing I was the murderer) or bad for lacking desire to help and just being methodical assassin? So I prefer simple cause and effect interplay.

Someone mentioned this in the KotoR advenutrer's guild thread, but when you first meet the Jedi Council you get an option to say the "good thing" and then the same option again but as a lie. Perhaps because you don't agree with the jedi code but don't want to get into philosophical debate, or because you fear the jedi order as they claim a monopoly on the force and what might happen if you refuse to submit, or because you are secretly intending to go Sith and are not ready to reveal your true colors yet. Perhaps more games should have this?

Definitely. And it's a good thing when games tell you that you are lying. Most time if you pick some option with a goal to lie and go backwards on your words later on game does not take the intention into account and you are forced to proceed by those words.

[Norfleet]

Someone mentioned this in the KotoR advenutrer's guild thread, but when you first meet the Jedi Council you get an option to say the "good thing" and then the same option again but as a lie. Perhaps because you don't agree with the jedi code but don't want to get into philosophical debate, or because you fear the jedi order as they claim a monopoly on the force and what might happen if you refuse to submit, or because you are secretly intending to go Sith and are not ready to reveal your true colors yet. Perhaps more games should have this?

But then you're still somehow obliged to commit to lying or not lying well in advance. That's not a very flexible approach to things. You could just allow the statement to exist in a state of quantum superposition, being both true and false at the same time, until it becomes time to collapse the wave function.

[MrTwinkls]

Someone mentioned this in the KotoR advenutrer's guild thread, but when you first meet the Jedi Council you get an option to say the "good thing" and then the same option again but as a lie. Perhaps because you don't agree with the jedi code but don't want to get into philosophical debate, or because you fear the jedi order as they claim a monopoly on the force and what might happen if you refuse to submit, or because you are secretly intending to go Sith and are not ready to reveal your true colors yet. Perhaps more games should have this?

But then you're still somehow obliged to commit to lying or not lying well in advance. That's not a very flexible approach to things. You could just allow the statement to exist in a state of quantum superposition, being both true and false at the same time, until it becomes time to collapse the wave function.

Good approach but devs usually collapse the function for you right away.

[Demonic Fate]

Someone mentioned this in the KotoR advenutrer's guild thread, but when you first meet the Jedi Council you get an option to say the "good thing" and then the same option again but as a lie. Perhaps because you don't agree with the jedi code but don't want to get into philosophical debate, or because you fear the jedi order as they claim a monopoly on the force and what might happen if you refuse to submit, or because you are secretly intending to go Sith and are not ready to reveal your true colors yet. Perhaps more games should have this?

But then you're still somehow obliged to commit to lying or not lying well in advance. That's not a very flexible approach to things. You could just allow the statement to exist in a state of quantum superposition, being both true and false at the same time, until it becomes time to collapse the wave function.

Lying is about intent. If I tell you "sure, I'll come to your party" but I plan to flake, I am still lying even though I might later change my mind and decide to show up.

[gerey]

Definitely. And it's a good thing when games tell you that you are lying. Most time if you pick some option with a goal to lie and go backwards on your words later on game does not take the intention into account and you are forced to proceed by those words.

I would definitely like a game with a toggle, or something similar, that could clue the game onto the fact you want your PC to lie, but I can see how that would be a nightmare to account for, and is probably not doable in any satisfying way without the use of LLMs, since it would be physically impossible for a human writing team to account for all instances where this feature might appear.

[Norfleet]

Lying is about intent. If I tell you "sure, I'll come to your party" but I plan to flake, I am still lying even though I might later change my mind and decide to show up.

That is implying that you have a plan to flake, yes. If you have no plan at all, then it isn't. Neurologically, according to a brainogram, it isn't lying.

[Norfleet]

Con: it still feels off to me to get rewarded for pissing people off.

What do you mean, "feels off"? This is the entire operating principle of the Internet.

[Demonic Fate]

Lying is about intent. If I tell you "sure, I'll come to your party" but I plan to flake, I am still lying even though I might later change my mind and decide to show up.

That is implying that you have a plan to flake, yes. If you have no plan at all, then it isn't. Neurologically, according to a brainogram, it isn't lying.

Correct. Then I must have misunderstood your previous post: what did you mean by "But then you're still somehow obliged to commit to lying or not lying well in advance"?

[Vergil]

I stayed in the middle for KOTOR to get all the endings, I don't remember getting punished for it.

That's not how endings in KOTOR work

[Norfleet]

Correct. Then I must have misunderstood your previous post: what did you mean by "But then you're still somehow obliged to commit to lying or not lying well in advance"?

That the game forces you to declare truth or falsehood before YOU even know for sure what it is.

[Tweed]

The problem with alignment systems is that unless morality choices are clearly defined the zoombrain player will freak out. The player is not allowed to feel ICKY without their consent.

[Tweed]

@Stack of Turtles zoombrain detected

[Demonic Fate]

Correct. Then I must have misunderstood your previous post: what did you mean by "But then you're still somehow obliged to commit to lying or not lying well in advance"?

That the game forces you to declare truth or falsehood before YOU even know for sure what it is.

But that is what roleplaying is about - you're supposed to choose what your character is thinking as well as saying. You may not know exactly what circumstances you'll find ahead and whether you'll turn coat or not, but that's perfectly fine because neither does your character, and that's all that matters.

If you're roleplaying him as a goody-two-shoes with no current intention of turning traitor (even though you, the player, think you might be interested in playing a 'fall to evil' storyline), you should pick [Truth]. If you're roleplaying a cynical ******* who will do whatever is to his advantage, you should pick [Lying].

It's not like the game will force you to follow through on your declaration of truth or lie - at least KOTOR and Torment don't, not sure about other games with such a mechanic.