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The SWTOR (BW) alignment system
Creslin321
Member Posts: 5,359
I just read IGN's article on alignment and a few things in it struck me as...odd.
First, I thought that it kind of sucked that you are only rewarded for being good OR being evil. There is no reward for trying to be neutral.
Second though, and more importantly, I felt like the way the system tracks dark/light side points is kind of ridiculous. In real life, if you spend your entire life doing good, but one day decide to murder your entire family...then you will definitely be labeled as an evil person. One very evil act tends to undo the reputation you gain from a lifetime of good acts. That's how reality works...trust is hard to gain, but easy to lose.
The game however, seems like it treats good acts as being "equally" good as an evil act is evil. So if you send some guy to his death, you can just undo that by donating money to an orphanage and be left with a completely neutral character. I don't think this is how it should work...
I would rather it be where you are good and then can FALL to the dark side by just doing one simple evil thing. Not where you literally have to try to be as evil as possible at every single moment just to keep up your dark side rep. Thoughts?
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Comments
First, I want to clear up a misconception. Different acts reward you will different amount of light / dark points. Second, Bioware mentioned that they are working on rewards for being neutral.
Interesting enough, your position on good / evil is pretty counter to Judo-Christian thought where a single act can remove a lifetime of evil (see redemption of Vader). Does Karma balance that way?
For myself, I tend to favor a Yin-Yang system where the sum of one's acts is weighed together. Also, good and evil are interconnected. The two are dependent on each other to truly exist.
Edit: I hate typos.
He goes on to say "That doesn't help neutral players like myself, but the solution may come soon. "We've have a plan for [grey items]," Ohlen told me. "It's not in yet. It's something that's very near and dear to the heats of the writing team in particular."
I will assume that they will have items in the game for people in the middle, otherwise they will have created a major flaw in the game. People will no longer be making choices they will be purposly going light or dark bc they know their is nothing for switching between the two and making the decision based on what they feel at the time.
They are planning on adding neutral items.
As for the idea, I wouldn't be against it however I can see many players being annoyed with the fact you can competely undo your good acts with 1 evil act. Especially with light/dark items, it would only cause problems.
It's an abstraction not a simulation. Big difference.
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That's an excuse, not a reason. Big difference
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Quips aside though...
I don't see what the harm would have been in making alignment more "realistic." If SWTOR is so dependent on having a great story, then doesn't it ruin your suspension of disbelief when you realize that everyone still regards you as a paragon of virtue even after you slaughtered an entire village?
If they made it "easier" to get Darkside points, as it would be in reality, then that would even reflect the nature of the darkside as being the "quicker and easier" path. Power gamers would be drawn to it, but role players may want to walk the more difficult path of the light.
It seems like they basically sacrificed the immersiveness and realism of the world to achieve and exact parallel between dark and light side so that everyone has an equal experience. Personally, I think this was a bad call.
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A game is based on numbers underneath the hood. So there has to be a way to measure your acts. If it was a plus one for good and plus one for bad all the time, then I would understand the complaint. But it isn't that way, but gives x amount for each act.
For just an example, something really bad may give you 100 dark points, something slightly bad gives you 10. Same with light side, just something good may give you 10 and sparing someones life may give you 100. And when you bring in the story, killing someone may actually be a light side for the sith and sparing someone may be the dark side for the jedi. This should include the way it works with your companions. So there like or dislike will be measured with different points for different acts they like or don't like.
So being really bad will tip you to the dark side regarless of the good you may do. But changing the way you answer to good choices after being a higher level dark side, may take a long time to move you back to the light side. Same the other way depending on how they use the numbers. They could make it so numbers for the Empire are always larger for dark choices and smaller for light choices to make it much more difficult to be a light sith or dark jedi for the republic.
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R.A.Salvatore
You are seeing it in the wrong light perhaps: it's about "succumbing to the dark side" or "a path to redemption to the light side". Succumbing / corruption and paths to redemption don't happen over night. It's a gradual proces. Making one walk of life the quickest way to reap rewards would perhaps be realistic (in ONE point of view) but terrible from a game balance perspective.
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I get what you're saying, but I still get the impression from that IGN article that alternating "good and bad" choices will "net" you a neutral character in the end.
This basically means that one "really good" act cancels out one "really evil" act. And once again...this isn't how our conception of good and evil works in reality.
If the system were more realistic, you would have to do TONS of good things to be regarded as a paragon of virtue, but only do one or two really evil things to be regarded as a paragon of sin. You can call this an "imbalance" between dark and light side, and it is. But IMO, the dark side SHOULD be easier, and the light side SHOULD be the more difficult path.
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To be truly neutral requires that someone is capable of great good and Evil depending on mood. So being neutral is not as straight forward as just performing neutral actions. In some ways that is worse than just light and dark side points.
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Actually...succumbing to the dark side DOES happen over night, in fact it happens usually in an instant. In almost every piece of media where a good guy "falls" there is a single instant where he succumbs and becomes evil. It's not like he has to work at it for a while.
Anakin succumbed when he killed Mace Windu. (even though this was stupid, but I won't go into that)
Lucifer succumbed when he decided to rebel against God.
I mean, I know WHY they did it. Like I said before, they did it to give good/evil players an "equal" play experience. But they really sacrificed any sense of reality and impact that "falling" to the darkside would have by trying to make it a better "game" feature.
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First of all, you're using extreme examples to try and make a point about a minor issue you have with the game. Please point out to me the quest that gives you the chance to slaughter an entire village of innocent people. Any in-game quest like that will have those villagers be in direct opposition to whatever faction you are on...hence, in your mind, the villagers are evil, not you. And even if there was a quest like that, don't think that dramatically shifting to the dark side for that quest wouldn't have some profound impact on how your companions treat you.
But that point is moot, because they aren't going to have a quest where anyone you slaughter is going to be an "innocent." In fact, it can be said that the further you drift to either side of the equation (light or dark), the more justification you will have for your actions. If you've chosen light side the entire time, and are a paragon of virtue, you are not suddenly going to get a quest to slaughter a village of innocents. You may get a quest to slaughter a camp of Sith, because in your mind, they are evil and must be eliminated. Since you are so far to the light side, there is no room for comprimise. To you, the Sith are evil and evil must be destroyed.
I think you are taking some rather outlandish examples of some minor quibbles you have in the game and trumping them up to be more than they are. I'm sure Bioware has thought of this eventuality, and I'm sure their quest chains will be designed based on the choices you make in previous quests. So you won't do a lifetime of good deeds and suddenly get a quest to slaughter 20 innocents.
Neutral wouldn't necessarily be about great good and great evil, it could be more about great apathy or even ambivlance. Being kinda good and kinda evil.
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The easiest way to look at it is to observe Anakin's path. He started off being a very humble and noble little kid. As he grew older even though his actions were heroic some were not. He kept on this path growing more evil and hiding his true feelings until he could not be who everyone though he was anymore. It wasn't until many years later of course once he realized that he had a son that the good that was buried deep started to emerge and the path to the light started. Luke felt this and at the end, Vader, redeemed himself with a single act of good that returned his moral beliefs to the good side once again.
I.e. being neutral in SWTOR means you are essentially psychotic. You save an orphanage one day, and murder 10 children the next.
I would think that being neutral in reality would mean you are not particularly good or particularly evil. You are a "decent" person, and you respect the morals of society, but you never really go out of your way to help people. That's neutral...
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This is where I think they missed a HUGE opportunity... Smugglers and Bounty Hunters should be a completely nuetral faction.
Like the poster said a few above its not good and evil. Its light and dark, in respect to the force and which side your leaning towards with each choice. And as far as this whole neutral thing, personally I think if you dont have enough backbone to make a stand one way or the other then you dont deserve to be rewarded. Standing on the side lines and watching others take stands to do what they think is right and then expecting to be rewarded for not getting involved is nuts.
Maybe it should be looked at as a personal alignment. What is in the heart of your character and the conflict that these choices present to his psyche. What happens in the story will be seen by you and reactions to your choices will also be seen from NPCs you interact with. But your internal conflict will remain regardless of NPC reations.
So I do see it as a back and forth early in the game. You don't know yet as a character of which path you will take. But once you start making bigger choices that add larger dark or light. It will be more and more difficult to go back the other way to stay Gray.
We will have to see how it plays out over many levels, not just the early game. So this alternating may not be hard for your starter planet. But I would have to imagine that later level planets will be much more difficult to alterante.
How many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them?
R.A.Salvatore
Martyrdom is typically the only way that an evil person can be "redeemed in an instant." I don't think most players would want to perma-kill their character to get light side points
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You said it right, 'in your opinion'.
However, your idea of good and evil doesn't have to be the same as other people's perception of good and evil, in fact a lot of people have a different opinion of good and evil and the balance between them. The same when it comes to the interpretation of light side and dark side.
With so many people having different perceptions and viewpoints of what good and evil really stands for as well as light side and dark side, there's bound to be people whose viewpoint of good/evil and dark side/light side doesn't match with how Bioware, or even George Lucas, interpreted it.
Personally, I think your idea of morality is way off regarding the SW universe and Dark side/Light side, it sounded to me more like some skewed subjective version of christian dogma (catholic maybe? Just guessing)
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This is an exact quote from the article:
I would, for example, save a group of engineers from their death in the black vacuum of space, and then 45 minutes later condemn an otherwise friendly political figure to a sure death at the hands of the Sith.
Now...imagine this happened in real life. Someone saves a group of engineers from a mine, and then the next he arranges or otherwise participates in the assassination of a righteous political figure.
Now say that the assassination is brought out in the open and his picture is on the news the next day as an accomplice. How do you think people would react? Do you think they would say "oh well he saved those engineers, I guess it's all good." NO! That one evil act does sooooo much more damage than his good act could compensate for.
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I plan on playing a smuggler. I plan on doing what I feel my character would do at each decision point. I don't care whether it gives light side or dark side points if it feels right for the character I intend to play. Of course I also don't tend to min/max in games, I play to have fun.
Again, you are using examples that will not exist in the game. There won't be quests that ask you to save an orphanage or murder children. That's silly. The quests choices will all be in a "gray area." How you choose to do them gives you light and dark points, but it's never enough to push you completely to one side because those choices are never 100% wrong or right.
If a president declares war on another country because they attacked the United States, he is doing it knowing full well that he is sending thousands, maybe millions of young boys to their death. But he believes his action is correct because he wants to save the country from annihilation. Is his act good because he will save more lives in the long run, or evil because he is knowingly sending young men to their death? There are arguments to be made on both sides of the table, and depending on what side you sit on (war-monger or tree hugger), the act of war can be viewed differently. These are the kind of decisions you will be faced with in SWTOR---gray area decisions. There won't be purely evil or purely good choices, so the swing in light or dark points won't be all-encompassing.
That article leaves out context. I guarantee that the quest doesn't just give him the option of condeming that political figure for shits and giggles. I'd imagine there is a specific reason why it may be necessary to leave that figure in the hands of the Sith. And although it will grant dark side points, chances are the action had some other consequence that the character felt could not be avoided.
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Anyway...if there is seriously someone that believes that they can "cancel out" a really evil action by doing a really good action in real life, then they should probably be in prison.
This isn't how our world works...it's not really up for opinion or debate. If you rob a store or murder someone or embezzle funds...you will be put on trial and possibly convicted. The court will not care that you participated in the big brother program or that you donate $20 to a starving child in Africa every month.
To give you an idea of how our world views the "balance" between good and evil, if you litter...if you drop one piece of trash on the ground, you can be sentenced to do hours or maybe days of community service cleaning a park. Once again...it is very easy to do something "bad" but very difficult to do enough good things to "redeem" yourself.
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