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Morality - What's the Purpose?
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tommy
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 27, 2021 6:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Would allowing angels to go up to +50 Good MO at least fix the issue that you have with being able to attack neutrals who are sitting at +40 MO? Maybe there could be a child skill or something that allows this?

I think there should be a massive penalty for 'good' angels attacking other 'good' angels, but I understand that maybe a 'good' neutral class is still not as good as an angel. So I don't think HoZ and HtT should get changed, just maybe change somethings around them.

Also for the negatives of demons, don't they lose their powers if they go into neutral MO? Cos then surely they should? Same as angels when they fall out of good MO.
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Lagn
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 27, 2021 9:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

tommy wrote:
Would allowing angels to go up to +50 Good MO at least fix the issue that you have with being able to attack neutrals who are sitting at +40 MO? Maybe there could be a child skill or something that allows this?

This used to be the case before, but it was removed for reasons.
tommy wrote:
Also for the negatives of demons, don't they lose their powers if they go into neutral MO? Cos then surely they should? Same as angels when they fall out of good MO.

Demons lose their powers when they become neutral, yes. This rarely happens unless the player deliberately tries to do this, though.
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Kallas
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Xshu wrote:
The Redeemed would have to be completely reworked if they got rid of the morality system. I'm not necessarily saying that's bad, I'm just saying it's pretty integral to their abilities. The Nexus Champion, Fallen, and Advocate would also need some of their abilities changed/replaced.

I feel like the individual demons are a little stronger than the angels, having unusual powers angels don't get like stealing pets or ignoring soak (not to mention Unholy damage is just plain better than Holy), but angels are better at raiding and defending because they have more cooperative abilities.

[... examples ...]


I don't disagree that Angels have more buffs to affect friendlies. But I would counter that there are a good amount of Demon debuffs that act as reflections (or Angel buffs act as reflections of the Demon debuffs, whatever) of the buffs Angels can deal out.

Holy Champion can hand out accuracy and Soak to allies? Dark Oppressor hands out negative defence and negative Soak to enemies; or a Doom Howler inflicts Doomblight.
Advocate puts a buff spell on a friendly with Holy Transfer? Defiler drops Poison on them; or a DO puts Agony Curse on.

There are 'reflections' for many different abilities (and sounds like B5 is leaning into that a little more with Fallen/Redeemed). Point being, yes Angels buff each other; but Demons debuff others for similar effects - the main difference is in the application, not the results.


Xshu wrote:
In addition, while demons have easily the most powerful AoE attack in Keening of the Damned, the only other AoE attacks they have are Wail of the Dead and Explosive Murder. If you're not the Doom Howler you have to blow yourself up to do it. Meanwhile, angels have Wing Shards Flurry, Cleansing Flame, Static Burst, Volcanic Blast, Song of the Word, and Radiant Storm. You could argue that the submachine gun and flamethrower are more geared towards demons since angels don't have gun support, but that would still leave the angels with more — and Transcended characters have gun support as well, so good Wizards and Eternal Soldiers can use them in good factions.

The good aligned guilds also encourage cooperation, while at least one of the bad guilds can actually kill your entire faction if it cascades.


Absolutely - I'm not saying that the game is anti-Angel. My point is that the Morality system is only incidentally impactful to the Good end of the spectrum (ie, it's nearly impossible to 'repent' as a Demon by accident) - this is to say that the game mechanics have a much higher impact on a specific portion of the characters, while there is general, rough parity in capability for all of the varied classes.

Essentially: if all of the classes are supposed to be approximately balanced (and that is something I would prefer) then there is a leash around the necks of some of those classes in the Morality system that from a mechanical balance perspective doesn't make sense. And if it is trying to emulate Lore, then it could easily be argued that Angels should be restricted - but they should also be more powerful on a one-to-one basis compared to non-Angels. As some others have pointed out, this is likely not a good solution.


Xshu wrote:
Kallas wrote:
Currently, it only really has any kind of effect on Angels. It restricts who you can attack (and/or forces you to pay a CP tax on Hand of Zealotry/Holier Than Thou), or else lose your class abilities.
Demons do lose their class abilities if they become not-evil, but actually becoming not-evil takes more actual thought: it requires you to do supporting actions (eg, healing others).
Isn't that kind of the point? It should be harder to be an angel than a demon. Evil is easy because you can do basically whatever you want. Good is more rewarding because it discourages other good factions/characters from attacking you. I've avoided going neutral as a feral Revenant specifically because I want the limited protection staying good offers, but this means passing up some targets.


Yes, but my point is this:
- If Good is meant to be harder, Good should have an advantage. This is functionally asymmetrical balance.
- If Good is meant to be balanced with Evil (mechanically speaking, in a numbers/capabilities perspective) then the Morality system is affecting Good far more, which is inherently unbalanced.


Xshu wrote:
Kallas wrote:
So here's one of the big examples I have about MO being decidedly 'anti-Angel' and not actually a useful mechanic. Raiding a neutral faction with a Lightspeaker -
Doesn't seem like a very good thing to do, but alright. I guess Namm would approve; probably not the other two.


I feel like your objections come from "Lore says Good is always Nice and Friendly." While Namm is decidedly "Good Is Not Nice," it's also quite simply true that Good can't just sit back and take licks while Not-Good does stuff. Neutral-aligned might not be Evil, but they can still work towards the detriment of the Good, which comes under the same kind of header. You talk about a consequentialist position, that a character is judged on their actions: supporting a faction that is opposed to 'Good' (eg, supplying weapons/maintenance, buffing support, protection, etc) is not Good, but it is not reflected in the Morality system.

Obviously, trying to address that would an insanely complicated system, and that's not what I'm advocating for. But my point here is that following a consequentialist idea means that the Morality system is woefully inappropriate to display that - because there are so many actions are not impacted by Morality, even when a consequentialist position would have to account for them (eg, the aforementioned supplying of weapons would be accounted for, since it does have a significant impact on the situation: for consequentialists would this not be seen as an act in direct support, even though not swinging the weapons themselves, it is directly responsible for the use of those weapons.)

Point being: Good can't 'let' Neutral do Evil acts to Good just because they claim to be Neutral.

Here's one example of a breakdown of the Morality system: a Neutral aligned character does plenty of Evil actions - they're killed over a thousand Angels in the Breath alone. Suddenly, a Good faction comes along to 'punish' the Neutral faction for their clear transgressions. That Neutral character spends a little bit of time pumping their Morality up to Good for the duration of the 'war'. So because they've temporarily 'gone Good' they are now a reason that other Good characters get punished for attacking them - despite their clear track record. Right after the 'war', the Neutral character is free to go back to en masse murdering of Angels and other Good characters, with no repercussions.

The consequentialist view of the above should be that because they did many anti-Good things, they are receiving 'punishment', essentially. But because the Morality system is incredibly blind and basic, these Evil actions are simply discarded because the Neutral character fixed some doors and turned on some lights recently - so now Angels aren't able to attack this clearly Evil example without themselves being punished.

While it can be said that that Neutral character is now Good, there is a balance of evidence, I guess, that shows that that Neutral character is simply masquerading and using the Morality system to hide.


Xshu wrote:
Kallas wrote:
These neutral characters get to do some temporary things and be classed as "good" - despite having chosen to align themselves with neutral Elder Powers (or no powers), as well as joining a neutral faction that means they are actually actively opposed to the good Elder Powers.
The neutral powers are not actively opposed to the good powers, they are neutral. Only Namm is actually hostile to the neutral powers, which is the purpose of the Hand of Zealotry skill. You are not supposed to attack neutral characters as an angel. If you attack a neutral faction as a good faction, you bear the moral burden of doing so. You seem to want the game to be a free-for-all where angels can dish out divine justice to whoever they want. I am strongly opposed to this.


You say that the Neutral powers aren't actively opposed to the Good powers, but they kind of are? Considering that the Nexus and Breaths are literal combat grounds as the various Elder Powers are vying for control, and there is a singular winner of each, all of the Elder powers are kind of opposed. The difference with the Good powers is that they tend to have the closest aligned end goals; and the Neutrals can align themselves with the Good (or Evil) powers if it suits their purpose, but they're not bound to it.

Xshu wrote:
You seem to want the game to be a free-for-all where angels can dish out divine justice to whoever they want. I am strongly opposed to this.


No, I don't want that. What I want is a Morality system that more accurately reflects that Good/Neutral/Evil are all decisions and should be judged on more than just an arbitrary number at that time. Going back to the Neutral-wot-killed-loads-of-Angels example: that Neutral character can abuse the Morality system, because it's just a flat "are you X or higher?" check. Realistically, Lorefully, that character would not be considered Good at all. Their 'balance' is substantially in the red, and I highly doubt the Good powers would be against this Neutral character being punished by Angels - if the Neutral Angel Killer is actually repentant, then they would understand their previous actions need commensurate good actions to absolve themselves.

Hell, I'll use an example for a character I have/was planning. The intention I wanted to go with was to create an anti-Demon Demon, a fight fire with fire type. The plan was to liberally seed an area with Glyphs vs Evil and slap down Tentacles - while making a micro-faction, so that I could avoid hitting the bigger Good factions through the pet stances. Is it a good idea to limit my targets? Nope, and it didn't really pan out well, so I aborted it, and now he's more just murder-hobo-y because I got lazy as a player. But here's the thing: assuming that I kept to the principle, is that character Evil? His Morality score says yes, he's -40, he's definitively Capital E Evil. But his actions would actually be furthering the cause of Good, by targeting Demons (or at least minimising hitting Good as much as possible) so a more accurate Morality alignment would be...Good? But he sold his soul, and he's using Evil creations to do it, so Neutral?

Point being: the Morality system there is pretty inaccurate for judging whether a character is actually Evil, Neutral or Good - it's an arbitrary number scale that doesn't actually account for actions; it only accounts for your latest actions. You can slaughter a thousand Good Mortals, then go fix some lights and doors where no-one is located and that makes you Good? The Morality system doesn't accurately reflect scale or impact. A system that did would be incredibly complex, and likely unviable, and I honestly don't know how a functional Morality system could be implemented.

But the Morality system as is is not even passable to indicate whether a character is Good, Neutral, or Evil. It is simply a scale that limits the character on arbitrary values - and to come back round to my initial point: it affects 'Good' characters more than any others (with some notable exceptions such as Neutral NCs).


Xshu wrote:
Kallas wrote:
if you're attacking an evil faction's "good" character...it doesn't really matter, because they've aligned themselves with an organisation dedicated to the cause of evil, so why should you be punished for attacking them.
If a person goes out to save lives every day and is constantly thinking "man I'd sure love to eat these people" but never actually hurts anyone, are they a good or bad person? Nexus Clash seems to be taking the consequentialist position: they're good because they do good things, regardless of what they support.


As a counterpoint: if that character doesn't directly do harm, but does heal and protect the characters that do, can they realistically be called Good? The Nexus is a lot less morally grey than real life, but the equivalent here could be: a group of murderers goes out murdering. They come home to someone who doesn't murder: but they do heal and feed and provide for the murderers, enabling them to continue to murdering freely. That character is essentially thinking, "Man, I'd love to go eat people, instead I'll just keep these guys - who are eating people - fully equipped so that they can go do that more easily."

In real life, this is called aiding and abetting. This isn't as severe as the actual murderer's crimes, but it is a crime, because it's enabling Evil, essentially.

A 'Good' character in an Evil faction? That's aiding and abetting, essentially. How is assisting murderers morally Good?


Xshu wrote:
Kallas wrote:
We can also see that in some raid situations it's entirely possible for a character to accidentally hit - or even kill - a faction mate. In this circumstance, an Angel killing another Angel is massively impacted by a large MO penalty; evil character? Doesn't care
This is not Reds vs Blues. It's Angels vs Demons. A demon wouldn't really care about harming an ally; an angel would. I don't want the game completely divorced from the lore in the way you appear to be advocating for.


Counterpoint - an Angel would understand that their buddy wouldn't be deliberately hitting them, and legitimate accidents tends to not come with the same repercussions as actual harmful actions. The Angel would care that they hurt their friend, but they wouldn't become less Good because of an accident.


Xshu wrote:
I don't want the game completely divorced from the lore in the way you appear to be advocating for.

Um, calm down. For one thing, you're not the ultimate arbiter of the Lore. For another, you're ascribing a lot of malice to my actions where there is none.

I want Morality to matter: the current Morality system is extremely arbitrary and binary. It does not accurately reflect Morality because it is a static number check, not a balance of actions.



Xshu wrote:
Kallas wrote:
In this case, what's the point of Morality? All it does here is hinder who good characters can attack
Good! Why in the world would a good person be allowed to attack anyone they want? Evil is supposed to be the easy path. If you don't want to be evil but you want to be able to attack whoever, there's plenty of wiggle room as a neutral character.


A Good character can attack whoever they want. The only difference is that the Morality system ascribes arbitrary and specific values to set actions, with no context. Obviously, a mechanical, numerical system can't understand circumstances but that's exactly the problem. Morality isn't really a numbers game.

A Neutral-aligned character with 'Good' Morality takes part in a raid against a Good Faction. There are numerous Neutral and Evil characters attacking the Good characters. The 'Good Neutral' isn't actually attacking the Good Faction, but they are healing any other Factionmates getting attacked. The game registers this as a 'Good' action, and any of the Good characters attacking the 'Good Neutral' are punished for the 'Evil' action, even though this 'Good Neutral' is actively working against the Good Faction by directly supporting the aggressive, Evil actions of their Factionmates.

This is the problem. Moral actions in NC are based on set values. There is some wiggle room with how the Strongholds provide some overrides, but this kind of situation can actually apply anywhere - and if B5 successfully gets people to spread out a little for Infusion, and not just sit inside Strongholds all day, then it could be even more applicable. An Evil Morality Wizard shooting up a group of Good Morality Mortals, while backed up by a Good Morality Eternal Soldier who's healing them whenever the Mortals attack back? Great, so the Mortals can't even attack the ES without losing Morality, even though they're literally fighting for their lives.

Sure, they could leave, but considering that this is a game for entertainment, and that it is focused predominantly around combat, that seems like a cop out defending a system that doesn't actually work.


Xshu wrote:
Kallas wrote:
So, uh, what's the point of Morality?
Near as I can tell, it exists to enforce the lore. Baraas and especially Alonai would be furious if angels were running around lopping the heads off of neutrals. Good and evil aren't just team names, they represent actual practices. How would angels and demons be any different if they were both murdering an equal number of neutrals? The cannibalistic nature of evil and the relative difficulty being good are built into the game. Being evil means you're a target to everyone and being good means you're attacked less but you have to pick your targets.


Sure, it might be there to try to enforce the law. Does Alonai tell Angels to sit there and get killed by Neutrals?

Just checking the Alonai wiki page: "It is Alonai’s influence that ingrains into parents the tendency to protect their children." I'm pretty sure Alonai would understand a parent killing someone trying to kill them and their child. Self-defence isn't an inherently evil action; to move that to Nexus terms: an Angel killing a Neutral that is trying to kill other Angels, or Mortals, or anything really.

Thing is, the Morality system already allows Angels to run around 'lopping the heads off of neutrals' - Hand of Zealotry/Holier Than Thou do already exist - the problem is that they are just a part of the broken Morality system. There shouldn't be a skill that gives carte blanche murder-Neutral privileges; Neutrals that go around murdering shouldn't ever be marked as Good (assuming that their 'balance' is on the murder-hobo end of things). A Morality system that actually weighed characters' actions instead of just assigning a number would be needed (but is likely unfeasible).


Xshu wrote:
Kallas wrote:
If they are supposed to be equal, then how do we balance them out, because as it currently stands, being a good morality character is just a flat harder game experience.
That's simply not true. I just hung out for two weeks grinding books as a good character in Elysium without going back to base. Do you know how often I died there? Twice. I just slept near the vault of enlightenment with other characters, searching and helping non-factionmates with Sol Invictus. I've done the same thing in Stygia while looking for Lore of Haldon among a bunch of good characters and pets who were not my factionates, and it took a few days before anyone broke up the party. As a demon, I can't spend thirty seconds standing in one place outside my stronghold in Stygia without dying, and it's not because of the imps.


Yep, I believe I was actually one of those Good characters, I had a bunch of Sprites out sitting with the characters searching for Lore. Hell, the Sprites are the main reason that was even feasible, because they could actually heal others, en masse, without player activity needed.

That is an extremely anecdotal case for "the Morality system is not broken." And that's what it boils down to. We have a perfect example of something like this in action: TemShop. It is neutral ground, but there is no mechanical imperative to follow the rules - but the overwhelming majority do. Some do knock over TemShop every now and then, and some do kill inside of it, but most people don't, as far as I can tell.

Why? There's no Tem-Morality score, that arbitrarily says that killing these specific characters is a bad thing; it's an accord that all characters can choose to buy into. If your character does not hold to the accords then Tem is going to blacklist you (basically mark you as Evil) and possibly even get other characters who do obey the rules (ostensibly marked as Good) to come beat you up. Neutrals, in this example, would be those who mostly follow the rules, but don't always - not enough to get blacklisted, but enough to not be the 'best customers'.

The main reason why Tem works is because it's useful. It does something that is actually rewarding: you follow the rules, and you can patronise the shop. I feel like something like this for Morality would be superior - I am going to take some time and properly try to create an alternative and post that up later, once it's not half-baked in my mind.[/u]
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Kallas
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Alyss wrote:
Kallas is first and foremost out here stating that Lightspeaker should get the same treatment as other Good classes when it comes to fighting people who are Good MO in an Unaligned or Evil faction inside that faction's stronghold, or for that matter with raiders who happen to be Good MO attacking the Lightspeaker's stronghold (less relevant as the tank should have drawn all aggro but still)... and we've got people out here saying that they want 'a FrEe fOR aLL' and also 'iT'Ll kIlL NexUS ClaSH DeVelOpmEnT fORevEr'.


I appreciate the general support, but that isn't actually what I am saying.

The aggravation I have with the Lightspeaker has certainly spurred this on, but it is not the only reason - it drove me to examine the Morality system more deeply, which in turn lead me to the belief that the Morality system is fundamentally broken, but I'm not here begging for LS buffs Laughing
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Kallas
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Badziew wrote:
I would just like to remind you that one of core themes of the game is the struggle between Angels, Demons, and Transcendents, and that automatically implies the existence of the Morality character statistic.

We can argue upon the specific mechanics (e.g. which character actions should change Morality and how) but I think the core concept of there being the Morality stat should never be purged from the game, because if it did ever get eradicated we would actually have a completely different game that just shares the "Nexus" word in its title.


I am certainly all for there being a Morality system - as you say, the game is fundamentally about Good vs Evil (and also Neutrals being awesome/bastards/awesome bastards Laughing )

The whole point of my thread here is to outline just how badly the Morality system, as currently implemented, fails to convey Goodness/Evilness.
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Kallas
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kandarin wrote:
To my understanding the original argument goes much further than that and argues for "remove/replace morality overall". And to that argument - yes, it may seem nonintuitive to people who can't see the codebase, but it really was a choice between A) "pull the entire morality system out by the roots and reconfigure the whole game either completely without it or with a totally new morality system" and B) "Literally every piece of B4 and B5 development we've made since some time in early 2018".

I think most would agree that, development time being a limited resource, B) was the correct choice. The nature of the world being tied deeply to morality is a pivotal element of the setting and one of the core design principles of the game. That's not changing.


I am definitely not advocating for the game to be scrapped and reworked from the ground up!

I do feel that discussion on the Morality system is necessary - I've said it a few times in this thread, that I feel that a properly comprehensive and reasonably effective Morality system would be pretty unfeasible to code (not that I have much experience there, but just from a total outsider, I can think of numerous areas that would be difficult to impossible to code).

That said, I do feel like there might be a Lore-appropriate way to remodel Morality - I will try to get this idea properly assembled and lay it out for people to consider.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wonder how it would impact things to just have the morality value be calculated as an average of your character's actions over their entire career rather than changing by a flat increment/decrement?

I feel like it would address the "wash out a genocide by building a few doors" problem, which would be nice.

But it would make "morality management" much more punishing of a chore, for the builds/items/playstyles that rely on it. Could also lead to a situation where veteran/old accounts have so much good karma built up that they could get away with anything, which would be counter intuitive.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Lychwood wrote:
Wonder how it would impact things to just have the morality value be calculated as an average of your character's actions over their entire career rather than changing by a flat increment/decrement?

I feel like it would address the "wash out a genocide by building a few doors" problem, which would be nice.

But it would make "morality management" much more punishing of a chore, for the builds/items/playstyles that rely on it. Could also lead to a situation where veteran/old accounts have so much good karma built up that they could get away with anything, which would be counter intuitive.


That is kind of the thrust of the idea I'm trying to get onto paper/digital paper: a rolling weekly score. So it's not just a flat, "you fixed thirty doors, you're a Good person, despite the hundred bodies you left behind" and more of a, "well, you did murder that guy, but you healed these guys way more, so you're actually still good."

Still wouldn't be perfect, but would actually display if someone is actually being Good for a bit more of an extended period. One big 'spike' of Goodness doesn't wash everything away, because it'll get rolled out in a week, so consistent Goodness is the way to be a Good character.

It can even use the current Morality table, would mostly just need some kind of aggregation mechanism to track someone's MO.
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Lagn
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Perhaps a way to fix the problem of "washing away genocide by building a few doors" is to divide morality into subcategories. Let's say, combat and healing MO is graded along a line of -40 to 40, repair/destruction of doors and lights is graded along a line of -20 to 20, and MO from books (plus other misc. stuff like writing in blood/tapping unholy leylines) graded on another -20 to 20 line. Add them together but cap overall MO at -40/40. Even if you are a saintly electrician and reader, you still can't dig yourself out of the MO hole if your combat MO is -40. On the other hand, digging yourself out of the MO hole via combat becomes more doable if you have high enough MO in the Books and Repair categories to bring yourself back up to neutral. An additional benefit is that even if you're lacking in one category (say you love destroying doors/cutting power lines but are a healing pacifist who's read tons of Holy Books), you get to stay at the MO cap, so failings in one category (non-violent) can be forgiven, which solves the even more silly aspect of MO in that someone who's never hurt another character can be considered as evil as one who's killed a thousand angels.

Incidentally, this would make managing Tattoo of Balance NCs much easier since two categories can negate negative combat MO, which some might see as either a plus or a negative to such a system. It also creates a buffer for Good players who wish to kill other Goods (or Neutrals without HoZ), which seems to be one of the original complaints of the thread- if you maxxed out all MO categories, you'd need to inflict >60 MO worth of damage to fall, something that would take conscious effort to do.
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GreatCatatonic
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2021 12:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kallas wrote:
That is kind of the thrust of the idea I'm trying to get onto paper/digital paper: a rolling weekly score. So it's not just a flat, "you fixed thirty doors, you're a Good person, despite the hundred bodies you left behind" and more of a, "well, you did murder that guy, but you healed these guys way more, so you're actually still good."

Still wouldn't be perfect, but would actually display if someone is actually being Good for a bit more of an extended period. One big 'spike' of Goodness doesn't wash everything away, because it'll get rolled out in a week, so consistent Goodness is the way to be a Good character.

It can even use the current Morality table, would mostly just need some kind of aggregation mechanism to track someone's MO.


I wonder if we could have two different scores: one career morality slider that weighs actions over the course of the character's entire life and one recent morality that acts as a sort of acceleration slider for your lifetime MO. Every MO-altering action you take would affect both, but very differently.

The former is what other characters would see, and it would be used as the tool of judgment for other characters' actions. It would take much longer to change, avoiding the issue of the good-transcended-murderhobo. The latter would be much easier to change, via flipping/cutting lights, healing, repairing/breaking doors, killing evil/good, etc., but the direction you're trending affects how strongly your career MO is affected.

To pull numbers out of my ass, let's say your career MO goes from -10000 to +10000. You've been evil all your life, so yours is down in the pits. You want to become good, so you start healing people and repairing lights. At first? Who cares; you probably just did it for better search rates -> MO raises by 0.01. But you keep doing it, your current MO gets up to 0 and then +40 after a few days, now those same actions are raising your career MO by 0.5. You keep doing that for a solid week and then your MO starts going up by 10 points per action. Think Infernal Jets, but the penalty for breaking the streak it isn't so hard; if you go murder some Goods and drop your MO to 15 the acceleration takes a hit, but since that act is still a bit anomalous compared to the rest of your recent actions, you're still trending fairly strongly in the good direction. All this could be applied to being aggressively neutral, too, creating inertia against moving either way from zero.

Just a thought, but seems to solve a handful of the issues you brought up.

--Great
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2021 12:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I like asymmetrical games, so my vote goes to making angels stronger individually but they have to maintain good MO.

Career MO also sounds interesting. What if there was no cap on MO? If you're evil for too long, you might end up with -3438 MO and take forever to be good again. One problem with this is that an old angel could have +5000 MO and then go around killing other angels for weeks without losing their powers. Maybe a small fix would be for angels to have -20% to hit vs other angels or something like that.
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Lagn
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2021 1:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Problem with all the posts suggesting "MO inertia" is that it makes playing as Fallen/Redeemed even harder, or even "respeccing" between Breaths or via Character Reset. These two major issues are why I think that any system that uses "Career MO" would end up causing major problems.
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GreatCatatonic
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 02, 2021 7:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I would expect Career MO to be reset to 0 in the event of reset or new breath; your character is restarting its entire life. You couldn't really use that to game the system since you'd have to go through a whole 0-30 grind again.

I think it's fully in flavor for Fallens/Redeemeds, too; you should have to work for that repentance and earn your devotion to the other side. At no point should it be impossible to dig yourself out of any hole you made if you want to switch sides, but it *should* take a good deal of effort.

--Great
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SaltedSalmon
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 03, 2021 9:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Lagn wrote:
Problem with all the posts suggesting "MO inertia" is that it makes playing as Fallen/Redeemed even harder,

Under the tentative rules from GreatCatatonic, we could still allow Redemption/Falling based on recent morality instead of career morality.
Maybe it'd make it too easy, but its a alternative to using career MO. I have no opinion on the matter, personally.
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Lychwood
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 04, 2021 3:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Honestly I feel like thematically speaking, the process of changing your MO from one extreme to another, forsaking your deity and pledging yourself to their polar opposite should be a pretty big undertaking and take work to accomplish.

Gameplay speaking I can see why a lot of people wouldn't like that, especially with the current underpowered status of those classes (though I hear B5 will see significant reworks). Nobody likes getting saddled with an extra grind.

From what Kandarin said it seems like any modification would have to be fairly similar to the current system unless the game were re-written nearly from scratch. I'm not sure if that leaves room for multiple MO tracks or not, but maybe some other kind of weighted calculation that tries to balance inertia and playability could work.
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