Morality meters: Fun mechanic, or annoying detail?

[Brian]

This topic is to discuss games that attach 'good' or 'evil' to actions you perform and then monitor your performance (and possibly also change your gameplay) based on them.  I know of two major implimentations that we'll be discussing here.

Meters: For example in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, you get light side or dark side points, and it's a meter that can move up or down.  Same for Jade Empire (though it's 'open palm' and 'closed fist').

Gauges: The only example of this I can actually think of is Mass Effect and its sequel--  Instead of making it starkly black and white (you're 'good' or 'evil'), in either case you're attached to your mission.  Are you an awesome hero about it?  Or do you do what it takes?  You can fill both meters simultaneously (though I doubt it's possible to cap them both).

While there are finer nuances between the two, at the most basic level, earning points to fill your 'good' or 'evil' bars tends to unlock new conversation options.  It can also amplify or reduce the effectiveness of given powers/abilities, and change how NPCs react to you.

The question here is:  Is it more fun to have a mechanic that tracks your morality, or is it more fun to go the Bioshock/Deus Ex route?  In the former, you've got to grind your morality up, while in the latter it's pretty cut-and-dry -- you either murder needlessly, or you don't.  In both cases, you can get different outcomes/endings -- and they both also effect your gameplay directly, too.

Is it better to make your choices and see the outcome?  Or do you like earning points to fill up your 'good guy' bar?

[Jon]

Bioshock was a bit half-assed about it, though; if you "murder needlessly", you get immediate rewards. If you don't, you get larger rewards a bit later. It's almost always mechanically better to choose the good path, which I'm not sure really fits the tone of the game.

As far as Bioware is concerned, I think the morality meters are a good idea, but I don't always agree with them about how actions should be measured on the meters.

[Anastasia]

They're a crappy idea unless done well. I think this is the sort of content that works better for pen and paper gaming. A living DM can adjudicate things far better than a program limited to what the designers could anticipate.

[Brian]

As far as Bioware is concerned, I think the morality meters are a good idea, but I don't always agree with them about how actions should be measured on the meters.

Completely agree that sometimes what I saw as the 'good' option ... they didn't.  In those instances, a small hit to the morality meter was superior to, "And now you get the 'you murdered the little sisters' ending."

They're a crappy idea unless done well. I think this is the sort of content that works better for pen and paper gaming. A living DM can adjudicate things far better than a program limited to what the designers could anticipate.

Mass Effect (IMO) tends to do it pretty well -- there are issues, but see above.  I'm less certain about Ko:tOR (lawl; intentional ;)), but it was also an earlier game.  I do hate to stomp on the point that it's done better by a human brain than a computer one -- that's not really the debate here, though.

The question is if these elements can make video games fun, or if they're mostly just annoying.  Or if there's a better way to impliment them!

I find the 'you get separate gauges' mechanic better than 'you have a single meter' -- but the tradeoff there is that your 'morality' comes across as more of an RP bonus in Mass Effect, then part of your driving goal (be 'light side' or 'dark side').  Admittedly, I haven't finished the KotOR games, so I may be somewhat mistaken there.  Or you get the sometimes somewhat more dubious Deus Ex route.

If you kill people, your reward is they won't bother you anymore.  If you're a pacifist (Hi!) the reward is a small EXP bonus (to offset what you'd normally get for killing a guy, since you ... you know ... didn't kill anyone for EXP) vs. the fact that other bad guys can wake up the guys you KO.  On the other hand, murdering all the opposition vs. not doesn't have the same feel for impact on other scenes.  People aren't automagically intimidated because you've slaughtered thousands (though you can probably still find a way to intimidate).

In that game, I got chewed out by my boss for tranquing 100% of the terrorists, freeing every hostage ... and then discovering that the terrorist leader was played by some other guy -- so letting him go.  This paid off later when that 'terrorist' leader contacted me to say, "I found the guy who set us up."

But in that instance, there's no meter to track morality -- it's just a simple, "Actions have consequences," aspect of the narrative.  And sometimes that's kind of a refreshing change, too.

[Grahf]

They're a crappy idea unless done well. I think this is the sort of content that works better for pen and paper gaming. A living DM can adjudicate things far better than a program limited to what the designers could anticipate.

Basically this. Unless a game was being developed on the fly -- an interesting if impossible idea -- then there's only so many choices you can give a player before they become bogged down by the sheer amount of choices you've given them. That said sometimes the morality just feels tacked on or hammered into your skull, forcing you to make choice a or b when you'd like to choose c or just do something else entirely.

The best morality system is probably something subtle, where you aren't instantly given feedback as to whether your choice was good or bad, and where some choices aren't inherently one or the other but instead depend on the development that the story and your character undergoes.

I did actually did some writing regarding this, although it drifted off into esoterics for the most part:

Spoiler: ShowHide

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four

I need to take a more concrete look someday, honestly.

[Dracos]

*briefly comments*

I remember Kotor, going through light side, having fun.  Restarting and intending to go dark.

Realizing that going dark turned my character into a horribly ugly monster in moments.

Yeah, done there.  A lot of these end up being implemented in such a way that playing an immoral villianous character is unrewarding, in both mechanical, visual, and narrative matters.

Because of this, I am more of a fan of the Actions->Consquences route that is seen in DX3, Fallout, and several other games.  It also tends to require less psychic results.  "You appear to be too good to negociate with!"

[Brian]

Interesting--

FO3 is actually a combination; it does have a karma meter (fallout's had that for a while, though).  If you're 'good' you get damage reduction and some other perks, if you're 'bad', you get more damage.  Well -- this was true in FO2; not sure how far FO3 goes on that regard.  It also tracks individual deeds -- blowing up Megaton puts you almost irredeemably evil, AND people say, "You bastard, you nuked Megaton! D:"

But conversely, if you always do good, then someone telling the truth, no matter how bad it hurts, labels you 'Savior of the Wasteland'.  (The titles are a function of level/karma.)

I think FO3 had a very good balance of both, and I don't ... think it let you actually _view_ your karma by default, even though FO2 did.  That was a nice way to do a single meter and also let individual actions have their own results.

* Brian struggles to keep this from spiraling back into 'Butbutbut ... human GMs > coded events!', since this isn't in the RPG forum, but the video game one. -_-

[Ebiris]

I hate morality meters. They exemplify the lazy 'I'll do it for free' (+good), 'I'll do it... for a price' (+/- nothing), 'arghbargl imma kill you' (+evil) choices that plague Bioware RPGs in particular.

Scrap morality meters and give us choices that have impacts down the line. And not the 'good actions mean delayed but better gratification' impacts but actual changes to the plot, or surprises like a pragmatic action working out great and a benevolent action biting you in the ass (shouldn't be a surprise of course but given video game writing it is). Deus Ex 3, Fallout NV, the Witcher... there's lots of good examples of this method, and it kicks the shit out of having an arbitrary morality meter any day of the week.

[Muphrid]

I have mixed feelings about them nowadays.  My experience with KotOR 2 was that the impact of the light/dark meter on the costs of force abilities could be ignored with a large enough pool, and you were highly encouraged to peg the meter for gameplay reasons--to unlock an advanced class, to get a bonus for fully light or dark.

In The Old Republic, things have changed a bit.  You can tell which conversation options will give light or dark points as you select between them, and instead of just trying to game the system, you have to consider how your companion will react to the choice (of course, you can just choose a companion who is more or less like-minded as the way you want to play, but sometimes they can be at odds:  as an Inquisitor, I have a companion who really, really likes devouring force users, so a light-side option to kill some Sith tickles him more than the dark-side option of killing an innocent man, even though most of the time he's dark, dark, dark).  I like that aspect of having to weigh what the companion wants against the morality meter and making a meaningful choice.

Otherwise, though, The Old Republic suffers from having rewards for pegging the meter over staying neutral or being nuanced.  They say they're going to change this, and let's say they do.  Then what's the point of the meter?  To have really, really dark side folks show the corruption visibly on their toons?  Eh, you can turn that off if you want to.  Different looking but otherwise identical gear?  Okay.  I guess that's the best thing to do with this sort of meter--have it affect aesthetics or, perhaps, how NPCs react to you.

So maybe that's all really off-point, because the only thing the meter really affects in, say, my Inquisitor's storyline is the title he ends up getting when the story's done (different titles for different alignments).  Granted, that's partly because there just aren't alignment-based alternate endings, and in addition, it seems like you can always make snap decisions that affect the course of the game regardless of your light/dark alignment.  You can say you want to kill scientists to punish them or just destroy their experiments and that's what you'll do for the mission, and you always get both choices regardless of alignment.

I guess, then, there's a difference between a morality meter that really affects the storyline and one that is largely superficial or has slight effects on gameplay.

[Brian]

That highlights something interesting--  As I understand Star Wars lore (not a high level fanboy, here), Jedi are supposed to be either light side or dark side, so it actually makes some sense when tied to the story.  You're a good Jedi, or a bad Jedi, and that's supposed to make a difference.

As Drac points out, (falling back to Jade Empire, which I understand is very KotOR-like), you go 'good,' you get 'nice guy' visual effects; glowing halo, etc.  They do this in Fable, too--  But you go 'bad,' you get a twisted visage (which no one really reacts to, for whatever reason), you get a dark aura, etc.  So, that I suppose underscores them trying to make it have an immediate onscreen feedback, for good or ill.

Compared to Mass Effect again, from what I can tell, even if your companions disapprove of your reactions, it doesn't change their loyalty (if you've unlocked it).  Of course, if you're like me and you don't want to annoy your companions anyway, that can still have bearing on how you play--  But it seems that the companions tend to mostly be ambivelant to your moral choices.  The Justicar will criticize you if you're heavily renegade (unless you replace her with her evil twin, in which case she mocks you for being heavily paragon)--  This is somewhat interesting because you can have (as I did) a maxed Paragon meter and a half-full Renegade meter.


I suppose at the end of the day it breaks down to, "If it feels like a mechanic, is it fun?" or if it's more subtle (FO3, DEx3), the implimentation feels organic enough to not be an irritation.

I want to argue that morality in gaming is good if well done -- so it adds to the story.  At the same time, some situations are handled poorly, so what I (personally) consider the better option is evidently the 'evil' one -- some minor value dissonance on that one.  But then if you go back a paragraph--  If I get 'evil' points for how I handle something, but tend towards 'good' enough that it makes no difference ... and I can't see the meter/points showing up to be bothered by it, that's probably fine.

I hate morality meters. They exemplify the lazy 'I'll do it for free' (+good), 'I'll do it... for a price' (+/- nothing), 'arghbargl imma kill you' (+evil) choices that plague Bioware RPGs in particular.

I don't think I've ever seen it done that blandly.  The poorest handling I know of would be Jade Empire--  There, the 'good' path is 'help people grow by showing them kindness and helping them out' -- generic enough.  The 'bad' path is supposed to be 'help people grow by making them survive difficulties'.  Unfortunately, that basically breaks down into, 'Any time you screw people over, you get closed fist points', which sometimes makes sense and feels right -- and sometimes comes across as, "This is not closed fist; killing people prevents them from growing at all.  That's just plain evil -- but we don't have a proper meter for that, so closed fist points."

Someone who played Dragon Age want to weigh in on this?  And can we come up with non-Bioware games that have these meters, too?

[Brian]

Remarking on something else that Drac commented:

Most of these games in general have the issue that the 'evil' side of the game tends not to be that well explored vs. the 'good' side.  Or there's just less to do--  Mass Effect sidesteps this by saying, "You're a hero, anyway--  Are you AWESOME about it, or a HUGE JERK?"

I'm probably harping on this like a Mass Effect 2 fanboy, but--  I like the fact that I can occasionally just decide to shoot someone for being a jerk and have it not detract from my Paragon gauge.  Sometimes when that renagade icon appears onscreen while some Krogan is blathering on about racial supremacy while standing on top of the walkway over the explosive pipe ... well....  "Lousy human can't even aim," indeed, foolish Krogan.

Seems that we're mostly digging out 'good' versus 'crappy' implementations of the idea, and Mass Effect takes a much narrower (and therefore less annoying) scope of 'nice' vs. 'mean' instead of 'good' vs. 'evil'--  DEx3 does this as well, by-and-large, even though it has no morality gauges--

Both approaches result in largely similar gameplay experiences (on the morality axis; there's a wealth of other differences between those two games styles).

[VySaika]

I think Eb's example of blandness likely comes from the Neverwinter Nights official campaigns. There's alot of refuse reward to shift your AL towards Good, take reward as offered, or demand more/threaten/lol I kill you to shift your AL towards Evil choices. It's...pretty badly handled, but nobody really cares about Alignment in those anyway, outside of what classes you can go up in. So it's mostly just ignorable.

[Kt3]

Welp, missed out on *this* discussion it appears.  Too busy enjoying my 4-day weekend.  :d

Might as well throw in my two cents.

The problem with morality meters and stuff of the sorts is how it really limits the plot.  I mean, you have this long badass plot about being the big damn hero.  And now you need to shoehorn an evil guy into doing the same thing a good guy would.  Or a good guy into doing the same thing an evil guy would.  So, alright, you can get around that by making multiple paths to the same end.  But now you've made quite a juggling act.  Having multiple paths to the same end makes controlling narrative, and also gameplay, much more challenging to polish.

Narrative becomes much more difficult to polish now, because now you have an amorphous blob, a good or evil entity who needs to do what you need it to do, instead of a carefully controlled character with disadvantages, advantages, and personality traits you know.

Do note I said difficult, not impossible.  It just makes it much, much harder to make a good experience, in my opinion.

What I would like to see would, if a pseudo-morality meter were put in, would be to eventually craft off 3 different storylines, one for evil, one for good, one for neutral.  To win the Evil, you gotta be evil in the right way, to be neutral, you gotta be neutral in the right way, and... well, whatever for good.  Who cares about good? :d

Or if it's a graph, make it more of a personality graph, where it just measures personality (aggressiveness, spontaneity, social skills, up to review) and doesn't even show it until midway or near the end of the game.  Personally to prevent any sort of metagaming the first time through the game.  New Game+ could just leave it visible, as the experience has already been... experienced and now it's about the gameplay and exploring.

[Iron Dragoon]

I'm late on this too, but I might as well throw my two cents in, also.

I'm going to have to side with Dune's comment of they suck unless done right. Question is, what's considered 'right?' I agree that Fallout has had a pretty good system for it, but from what I've seen of the many Bioware games I've played with the mechanic, the decisions on what gives you 'good' and 'bad' points always feel lazy, like Eb said.

In Bioware's newest form of it, in The Old Republic, it feels like a four year old decided which options give what points. There's literally one part of the Republic story line where you run into a fallen Jedi who's been running an Imperial Death Camp for the better part of a decade. When you beat him, he flat out tells you that if you turn him over to other Jedi for 'healing' he will actively try to subvert them into horrific monsters just like him.

Now, I understand the whole Jedi wanting to heal people thing, and trying to save people, but.. That kind of statement is *way* past the kind of thing you can typically 'help' someone through, especially in the middle of a new Jedi/Sith war. But, in TOR, killing someone via a conversation route *always* gives Dark Side points. What *really* bothers me is that you don't get any Dark Side points for killing the 300+ goons you had to go through just to get to this one guy. "It's okay to be a mass murder, but once you talk to someone, well, that's just plain wrong" is kinda BS.

As for Brian's thing about Jedi being either good or bad.. Eh, you're mostly right. Typically, they do fall into one clear-cut category or another. But, some of the 'greatest/most powerful' Jedi were actually neutral. In some of the later books, Luke Skywalker was neutral, and hardcore about it. He flat out killed and/or sacrificed more than a few people for the 'greater good.' To the point that he started using Force Lightning fairly often, which is historically and game system-wise, always a Dark Side power. Kyle Katarn (I think that's the name) from the earlier games was always flat out neutral, too. And independent, to boot. In the games and stories I read about him he was always disdainful of the council and did his level best to avoid Jedi. I think game companies use the 'you must be light/dark' mechanic as kind of a cheat to make story lines easier, though I completely understand why; it's expensive/hard enough to write two story lines, making a third is asking a lot.

Also, I think it's a *huge* mistake for them to be putting which options are which result (in TOR, you have to enable it, but the option of even seeing it is weak in my opinion). Seeing what you'll get for what option greatly skews what you're going to pick. Many people will make a choice because they want the points and I think letting people 'farm' points this way takes away from the story line. You're no longer playing a 'character,' instead, you're playing a math problem.

Also, it pisses me off when an option says, "Well, we can't really help you with that." and the actual result of picking it is your character saying, "You're not worth my time, loser." or the like. I ran into this in TOR fairly often, there are some quests that are just plain stupid, and I was going to turn them down. I 'turned down' a quest once and the game result was my killing the guy who offered it, though I don't remember what game it was in. Seriously, make your short form actually reflect the action.

[Empyrean]

Hopefully this thread isn't so long dead that commenting at this point is a problem.

One of the more interesting takes I've seen on this is in Galactic Civilizations 2, a 4x strategy game.  As the ruler of whatever race you decide to play, you are routinely presented with moral dilemmas related to the governing of your empire.  The rewards vary; sometimes the Evil thing to do is worse in the long run, sometimes not.  Sometimes the rewards are completely different types depending on your decisions; using indigenous sentients for research experiments might get you a tech boost, while coexistence gives a population bonus.  Aside from the immediate consequences, the decisions you make unlock different possible branches of the tech tree, based on the sort of society you've created by your decisions.  An Evil civ will get technologies for mind controlling civilian populations and more effective weapons.  A Good civ gets defensive bonuses among others.  A Neutral civ gets tech bonuses, I think trade bonuses (it's been a while) and some other stuff.  Also, your diplomatic relations with other civs are affected by your moral alignment, which can make things a lot easier or harder for you.

I think implemented that way it's a fun mechanic.  You're not worried about pegging the meter because you don't have to in order to get the bonuses of one alignment or the other, and the diplomatic relations aspect means that choosing the same alignment in two different games will have very different consequences.  There's a lot more depth than the KOTOR approach of, "Light Side points make my heals cost less mana, and Dark Side points let my character shoot lightning and choke people."

So, I think morality meters have potential to add to a game in interesting ways, but if they are poorly implemented then they just detract from the story.  Individual consequences for specific actions are superior, but some system for aggregating your past decisions to determine the reactions of others isn't really possible without a morality meter.