Questions of morality are the great fun of philosophy .
Fanatic-Templar Send a noteboard - 21/09/2011 05:24:50 AM
I'd say that when confronted with "Save baby or death", and you choose to walk away because you value your own life more than the stranger-baby's, that's a pretty "neutral" reaction. I don't think self-preservation is evil.
Well, his example only said that death was a probable outcome, not an assured one. But yes, I did acknowledge that this would only be my perspective. I think it would be evil. Others might not. The other thing he mentioned though was doing what one wishes regardless of good and evil and only caring about oneself. And those two, I'm quite confident I'm not alone in considering evil.
I think fuzzy areas like this are part of the reason why you just don't see them...it's hard to determine how these actions would go in a game where things have to have a value. If you didn't save the baby, do you get good, evil, or neutral points? If you DID save the baby, would that be a good action, or an "expected neutral" action? The game developers would end up having to make ethical judgements on certain actions, and they may be hesitant to do so.
True. But then, I reckon that's pretty much the only point of making an alignment system anyway. I mean, if your only choices are going to be Sir Galahad or Puppy-kicking Palpatine, you might as well just choose one option at the beginning and have the appropriate responses selected automatically. I mean, if the only morality choices are going to be blindingly obvious, then there's no choice at all. You're not going to brusquely change your character's alignment mid-game, especially if consistency grants you bonuses. The only point I can see to these choices is if you can actually make choices you have actual dilemmas.
The first rule of being a ninja is "do no harm". Unless you intend to do harm, then do lots of harm.
~Master Splinter
Victorious in Bergioyn's legendary 'Reverse Mafia'. *MySmiley*
~Master Splinter
Victorious in Bergioyn's legendary 'Reverse Mafia'. *MySmiley*
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20/09/2011 03:56:19 PM
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I don't think I know anything that matches what you want.
20/09/2011 04:39:22 PM
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You are a horrible human being. *NM*
20/09/2011 08:24:05 PM
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I'm morally grey! Women love me, and men want to be like me. *NM*
20/09/2011 09:15:31 PM
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It'd be pretty difficult to specifically reward you for being a 'gray' character. (Two games)
20/09/2011 05:02:28 PM
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Take Knights of the Old Republic, for example
20/09/2011 05:08:04 PM
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That's not so much an alignment as just metagaming the system.
20/09/2011 09:27:49 PM
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Maybe I didn't explain right
20/09/2011 11:19:51 PM
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I'd say that's evil.
21/09/2011 03:00:32 AM
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of course, then you get into question of whether actions like that example are evil
21/09/2011 04:03:03 AM
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Questions of morality are the great fun of philosophy .
21/09/2011 05:24:50 AM
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That's actually a pretty narrow view of Neutral when it comes to Alignment or Morality.
21/09/2011 02:19:34 PM
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You might want to try The Witcher series.
21/09/2011 05:16:05 AM
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Grey decisions are good but...
21/09/2011 06:19:04 PM
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they don't reward it because, for the most part, they don't want you taking a middle ground.
21/09/2011 07:10:48 PM
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Well that's just stupid. Tired of picking the 2 sides over and over *NM*
21/09/2011 08:02:11 PM
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Neutrality is often boring or selfish. Good stories seldom have truly neutral protagonists. *NM*
22/09/2011 06:27:05 PM
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Are you kidding?
22/09/2011 06:54:19 PM
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There's a difference between doing "bad" things for a good purpose, and being neutral. *NM*
22/09/2011 09:12:16 PM
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I have an on-topic comment as well as a general rant on game morality systems.
21/09/2011 06:43:21 PM
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if they wanted to make the conversation mechanics more complicated...
21/09/2011 07:14:21 PM
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