Karma vs. cause and effect

[bhlaab]

Karma systems never seem to work out in games that implement them, pretty much limiting choices to binary "good" and "evil" decisions that are arbitrarily decided, almost like the developers programmed a tiny Jesus Christ to sit inside their runtime engine and dictate morality at you from up above. In other words, the game is trying to justify your actions for you.

I think everyone on this site knows about that, but what I'm wondering is why there is such a scramble for karma systems? What does it offer up over simple cause and effect?

scenario a) You kill a guy. Regardless of your reasons for doing it, everybody who liked the guy is now trying to kill you. Everybody who hated the guy thinks you're great. Simple and elegant. It makes sense.

scenario b) You kill a guy. Your karma is lowered because you apparently killed the most honest, loving generic NPC in the land. Everybody thinks you're a jerk. You come across a beggar and give him all of your money. Your karma skyrockets, the king invites you over for dinner and lets you sit on his throne and even laughs when you rip a fart onto it right in front of him. Your murder is forgotten.

Is it a case of empowering the player, or is Karma a system built out of necessity?
On one hand, I'd like to say that scenario A would be easier to do considering how simple and logical it is, but perhaps linking all these characters together would be too complicated?

 

[hiver]

karma system is basically an excuse not to design believable C&C. Thats all there is to it.


And Jesus was actually never about good vs evil n such a stupid limited way.
Not that im a believer , i just had to mention that.

 

[Zuluf]

And Jesus was actually never about good vs evil n such a stupid limited way.

When the original creators of the Karma concept in video games read the Bible, they gave him extra points for conjuring fish and bread, deducted some for his alcohol endorsement at some yuppie wedding, added some for his riding a cheap-ass mount into Jerusalem (modesty perk), deducted some for his defying of AUTHORITAE and anarchist ways, added some for his close-call ressurection of Lazarus, deducted some for his saving of prostitutes *yuck, the cancer of ancient Judaist society, bane to all Labriut morals*, added some for his completion of a few casual healing-related sidequests, then deducted some for his fail'd Speech Check when defending his own healthpool against the final boss of the Roman Dungeon.

Jesus was so confused he used his http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_double_effect skill to selfpwn.

Ergo, and I'm sure you'll all agree with my eloquent demonstration, Jesus was killed by the Karma system, the JEWS DIDNT DO IT.

Q.E.D., Karma is fail in all sorts of byblical senses.

Then again, the New Testament is a pile of steamy fanfic, so who knows.

 

[SilasMalkav]

I believe that a Karma system has a chance of working, as long as it doesn't just use the sliding scale system of Bioware's games. In Fallout, you killed a child you became a child killer, rather than losing 50 points of your morality pool. This gives you a place in the middle of the two scenarios, where if you kill the person you can't simply undo it by being good. The best way would be to use three different mechanics at once, by having a pool, a set of global flags, and a set of local flags. The pool would show that your act of murder is not generally in your character's nature, the global flags would show that you're a murderer no matter what else you've done, and the local flags would be to influence specific people on how they feel about that specific crime.

 

[Zuluf]

I like hoping for miracles too.

Like if Jesus were to use his Ankh and reincarnate at some point, I'd totally be on the "I want you to conjure a gazillion hot maidens of all colors, shapes and innuendos tied to this chain here plz" flag demographic.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Doubly odd given that Karma, in the literal Buddhist (or, if you like, the 'My Name is Earl') sense is very much a cause-and-effect issue. It's got nothing to do with how other people react to you (buddhism is much less concerned with importance of worldly events than the judeo-christian religions), and is more of a 'be a douche-bag and crap things will happen to you' (either in this life or the next, under buddhist reincarnation principles). Obviously that would be a rather random and crappy idea for a game. However, if extracted to a more modernised buddhism (think evolution-believing, morality-focused christianity vs biblical literalism, creation-story-focussed christianity), where karma was the abstract term for 'be a douche-bag, and other people will respond to you as such, you'll make yourself less happy etc etc' it would actually resemble the C+C model far more than the 'karma rating' system.

 

[Zuluf]

But isn't the whole point of morality having a system you can refer to?

I mean, you can't just be good or bad. You have to be good or bad in the eyes of someone or something. With some borders that you irreversibly cross.

Which basically tears down the Karma system in games such as TeS: Lolout 3 because it would take a special type of fucktard to deceive by alternating good and bad choices and easily manipulating the system until you've become Hitler's doppelganger and people still hail you as a futuristic Ghandi.

That's like killing your mom and still getting your allowance after you do the laundry for a month.

Or taking a dump on your boss' ficus and getting a raise a month later because you doubled your working quota.

See where it fails?

 

[bhlaab]

And Jesus was actually never about good vs evil n such a stupid limited way.
Not that im a believer , i just had to mention that.

What I mean to say is that a karma system creates this idea of an ethereal entity judging all of your actions for itself rather than letting the player decide what their own morals are.

 

[bhlaab]

But isn't the whole point of morality having a system you can refer to?

I mean, you can't just be good or bad. You have to be good or bad in the eyes of someone or something. With some borders that you irreversibly cross.

I see your point, but when we're talking about games with tons of NPCs doesn't a standardized system shoehorn the whole thing into "Well the good people think you're good and the bed people think you're bad" or "the good people think you're bad and the bad people think you're good"

I think Morrowind had a good system, in that it didn't have one. You could be walking around and see some lizard dude being attacked by bandits. Either you kill the bandits or kill the lizard or keep your head down and walk past, and it was more or less an irrelevant decision beyond the immediate consequences.
Kill someone in a town, the guards come after you. There was a reputation stat (a much more appropriate name than "karma" tbh) but it seemed less like a gameplay mechanic and more like a way to preserve versimillitude after a killing spree

 

[dagorkan]

The point of a karma system is granularity of consequences. If you had a system that simply mechanically changed the behavior of NPCs on each action you took you would also complain.

Saying killing citizen X switches all members of faction A to being angry with you, and all member of faction B to being friendly. Just a little later you steal some artefact which belongs to faction A and is wanted by faction B, which on it's own would turn all members of that faction to Angry and members of faction B Friendly if you sold it to them. Because of the order of the actions your second action has no effect on the game world. And if the effects were switched around for the second decision it would cancel out your previous action.

Realism doesn't improve. Unless you add some algorithm to determine NPC behaviors, that takes into account several different actions, each of which have a cumulative effect. That means you need some kind of scale, which essentially means you're back with the karma system.

That's why I think it's more of a problem of implementation than design. Developers with incompetent writers (like Bioware/Bethesda) will mess it up, but talented developers like Troika (thinking of Arcanum) have made the same "karma"/disposition system work.

 

[DarkSign]

Say you build good karma and bad karma from your actions...and then the game "spends" it for you.

You walk a little old lady across the street and get 5 points. Then when the sniper tries to shoot you if he's within 3% of missing your good karma saves you.

It's a bit like luck, but it's built up with your good actions.

 

[Squeek]

Doubly odd given that Karma, in the literal Buddhist (or, if you like, the 'My Name is Earl') sense is very much a cause-and-effect issue.

The concept of karma is based entirely on cause & effect. What the OP is really asking for, IMO, is a game based on something like the authentic idea instead of the Western interpretation of it.

Karma would make more sense in an imaginary world than the real one, I think, since its realities are all asserted. It wouldn't need all the assumptions involved in Buddhism. What I like most about it is how it lends itself to complexity. It would be an ideal thing to implement in a dynamic game world.

 

[Disconnected]

If you had a system that simply mechanically changed the behavior of NPCs on each action you took you would also complain.

Only if you give the karma system to the NPCs instead of the PC, but then, you'd have all the same flaws if you did that. It just wouldn't be anywhere near as efficient.

A better solution is to either predefine or establish a relationship scale for NPCs, based on who they interact with, what they care about, and what they may reasonably know about.

That could be done. I actually think I've just come up with a system that would do a reasonably good job of it. But the problem is it's hugely complicated to keep track of, and it would take a hell of a lot of work to make.

 

[hiver]

There should be no game measuring morality system at all.
All reactions should come from the NPCs . From the factions. Nothing else.

In Fallout, you killed a child you became a child killer, rather than losing 50 points of your morality pool. This gives you a place in the middle of the two scenarios, where if you kill the person you can't simply undo it by being good. The best way would be to use three different mechanics at once, by having a pool, a set of global flags, and a set of local flags.

This should be a reputation system.
Lets leave the morality to the individual.
Present the player with interesting surprising and unforgiving consequences of his choices and let him wander was it right or wrong.

Dont reward good deeds because doing "good deeds" in RL leads to no rewards. Except some rather ethereal ones from a few individuals, nothing more.
Dont reward "evil" deeds because in RL being a stupid cunt doent get you no honeymoons and riding off into the sunset.

Give the player a choice and a consequence he can believe in (not necessarily like it) and let him deal with it on his own.

 

[bhlaab]

The point of a karma system is granularity of consequences. If you had a system that simply mechanically changed the behavior of NPCs on each action you took you would also complain.

Saying killing citizen X switches all members of faction A to being angry with you, and all member of faction B to being friendly. Just a little later you steal some artefact which belongs to faction A and is wanted by faction B, which on it's own would turn all members of that faction to Angry and members of faction B Friendly if you sold it to them. Because of the order of the actions your second action has no effect on the game world. And if the effects were switched around for the second decision it would cancel out your previous action.

Okay, so let me see if I've got this right.

I kill a guy which makes A hate me and B love me.
I steal from A and sell to B.

If you're saying that because I'm making B happy twice there's no point. But if B is already happy with me for killing the guy, perhaps they pay me more for the artifact because they already like me?

Then, I suppose you'd say that if I did a third favor for B it would be pointless. But I disagree. I'm still getting a reward, I'm still getting quests from B, B still likes me... Is it really necessary for B to super duper like me?

Then you say that if I switched the actions, like so:

I kill someone who makes A hate me and B love me.
I then steal from B and sell to A.

I don't see how this cancels anything out at all. For one thing, A could be set to attack me on sight in which case it would be pointless to try to barter with them and I'd be wasting my time by making everyone hate me, an apt punishment. If not, and stealing this artifact would really make A love me again because it's just that important, then surely my friendship with B would make stealing it that much easier.

Again, nothing I see a problem with.

 

[DarkSign]

Sounds like you're mistaking reputation for karma.

 

[Fenril]

Replacing karma with faction tied reputations works better than the basic good/evil distinction in a karma meter. I also think a universal karma/reputation meter based on good vs assholish evil sucks.

Within the setting and gameworld the factions should be well realized so after some time of making choices with consequences and interacting with each factions NPCs for example the player will know in what position he will be with the choices he makes.

Kinda of like PS:T factions but I think there should be more visible consequences in the gameworld once you really chose a faction in detriment of all others.

 

[Disconnected]

Replacing karma with faction tied reputations works better than the basic good/evil distinction in a karma meter.

Each do different things, but both are simplistic systems meant to approximate dynamic relations. Ideally you don't want either, but making a genuinely dynamic relationship system is pretty fucking complicated.

Say you enter a bakery. With a karma system, the baker might like or dislike you, despite having no obvious interest in you, and no reason for knowing of you. With a faction system, his reaction to you might be modified by your faction status. If you're a mage, for example, you might get a discount because your guild holds the monopoly on Wards Against Rats or some such thing. Or if you're in the thieves guild, he might charge you extra because someone made off with his silverware the night before.

Without a karma system, you might have killed his wife, been recognised, caught yet gotten off somehow. But the baker won't care. Though me might give you a special discount for being in the mages guild.

It's not a question of which is better. They do different things, and although both suck, they're better than nothing. A more ideal solution is certainly possible, but the question is how much time & money you'll have left to make the game for, if you pick a more ideal solution. Combine that with the fact that it isn't all that important if the game doesn't have a seizable population. Now if your more ideal relations system makes each NPC 10-30 times more time consuming to make, you'll suddenly have a hard time making both the system and a sizeable population.

 

[dagorkan]

I thought we were talking about "disposition meters" vs "cause and effect".

The first means that the consequences of individual actions are added up according to a more or less complicated formula (simplest being like in Fallout, each action is worth a specific, fixed amount in one direction or the other).

The other as I understand it means you have to pre-script every action the player might take, so each action is looked at on it's own merits.

Now you're talking about faction vs global reputations, which can both be either "disposition meter" or "cause and effect" or a mixture of both - although in general global calculations are more "meter-ish". Your debate is about the level at which you calculate consequence/reaction to the player, in other words splitting up the game world into segments which will each have their own calculation for attitude, whether it's "cause-and-effect" or "disposition meter".

To take that further you would have:

Global (Fallout karma - though often the game uses a global for the location you're currently in)
Faction based (many modern games, the Witcher, Gothic)
Individual NPC (Morrowind?)

Obviously you can have a mixture of each. An individual NPC can have his own calculator but weighted by his faction membership and by global factors. You can be a good paladin and word has spread about you, but you are hated by a specific faction, but you've just done a good deed for that specific NPC in the faction. Depending on the type of faction/status/role/personality of the individual NPC it might vary around 15%/35%/50%. A hermit won't have any factional influence, whereas a religious cult member's opinion will be almost entirely based on what you've done for his group. NPCs in a backwater village will care less (know less) about your global reputation than NPCs in a cosmopolitan city which receives all the news.

Back to the "karma" system, obviously it can be combined with cause-and-effect. It's a false dichotomy. Fallout's Karma system is simplistic but could easily be improved by adding thresholds to the karma meter, or trend values.

So the average NPC who has had no previous contact with you would have a limit to how positively/negatively he reacts to you based on the global/factional factor. If the factional/global influence was say 50 or -50 (on a scale with +100 to -100 limits) any amount over those thresholds would be halved. So you have a +50 (decent) reputation with his guild but he's only heard of second hand (threshold of +/-30), his personal opinion of you is +40. As your paths cross more often it increases to +/-50 his personal opinion of you has the potential to become higher.

Or another mechanism: if you had done a few jobs for his faction and were a class/alignment he liked, he might be given a "trend value" of +20. You have recently done a series of minor fedex quests in quick succession for him, his meter goes up to +50, every day after that it will decay back toward +20 by a proportional amount. You won't any make real friends by doing hundreds of Fedex quests, within a few weeks they will have forgotten about you.

Add the cause-and-effect as shifts in threshold/trend value, so the potential range of your relationship changes and disposition requires more/less effort to raise. You just completed a major assignment for his faction which has given them a long-term edge over their rivals, the trend/threshold for that NPC increases by +20. You can now afford to displease him a little, but over time it will return to positive, your past achievements outweighing minor annoyances. If on the other hand you killed his dog or insulted him in public, his threshold moves down, and it will take a lot of long term effort to make him view you positively again.

 

[bhlaab]

Sounds like you're mistaking reputation for karma.

How often are the two actually distinct? Karma always tends to boil down to "I heard you're a jerk, so I'm not going to join you" etc.

 

[DarkSign]

No...and that's the point that a lot of people are missing in this thread.

Reputation is when people know about the bad or good things you've done.

Karma is about when LIFE knows about the bad or good things you've done.

Karma is more like bad or good luck that increases or decreases based on what you've done.

 

[OSK]

karma system is basically an excuse not to design believable C&C. Thats all there is to it.

I agree with this. Karma systems are just lazy implementations of C&C that do away the complexities of needing your actions to be witnessed and spread for consequences to occur.

 

[Squeek]

Karma is about when LIFE knows about the bad or good things you've done...more like bad or good luck that increases or decreases based on what you've done.

That's the general idea, although I would change and add just a few things. Karma is an expression of strict cause & effect where one's world is a perfect reflection of the state of one's life. The point of improving one's karma has nothing to do with moral considerations like good or evil. It's done with the expectation that the world will respond, that improving the state of one will also improve the state of the other.

Games could be designed so that their worlds responded in an almost infinite number of ways. If they did respond, then the characters players chose and the way they played them would actually matter. Barbarians who acted like Conan would naturally have certain kinds of adventures while hobbits who acted like Bilbo would have others.

That's a lot to ask for just $60. That's why I think cRPG makers should consider switching to some kind of subscription pricing.

 

[DarkSign]

Well Karma can, but doesn't necessarily have to react to YOU right away. Your actions can have an invisible effect that you never learn of or never realize.

CRPG karma is a cartoon version so that people can see the effects of their actions almost instantly.

But of course it would be nice to have a world more responsive to characters actions.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

I like the MMO-esque faction reputations. Sue me.