Disgust at Destruction

[SnowWolf]

I already explained how to handle an evil character (although I agree with Xandria that you could get away with not implementing this idea at all in PS) - You state at the beginning of the game what affects your morale. If you\'re evil - doing nice things makes you feel low - for instance, \"I haven\'t slaughtered a village in weeks....\"

It is by no means impossible.

[Wormtail_]

In any case, the race of your character, as I stated in the beginning of this post, affects whether your character is a maniacal psychopath or not. Such as if it is Undead (I know they aren\'t in PS, but that\'s not the point), they are amoral sadists while Elves, on the other hand, are empathatic friends of nature. And as SnowWolf states, the actions of your character very early on affects their level of disgust, and when they are disgusted or not.

The experience level could be the meter that decides how disgusted you are when you kill. If you are extremely experienced, you tend to not care as much, I think. If, on the other hand, you are not that familiar with slaughtering monsters, you do tend to regret slaying creatures.

Hm, perhaps instead:
You only get experience for killing x number of monsters/ppl an in-game day...

That would work a little, but I am in disagreement with it. Realistically, people get exp. whenever they do something, and realistically, there are no rules for gaining experience. While this would cut down on the killing for experience, it will not cut down the killing for items/gold.

I already explained how to handle an evil character (although I agree with Xandria that you could get away with not implementing this idea at all in PS) - You state at the beginning of the game what affects your morale. If you\'re evil - doing nice things makes you feel low - for instance, \"I haven\'t slaughtered a village in weeks....\"

I suppose that stating at the beginning of the game is actually in the character creation screen...

[RussianVodka]

I have no prob with MMO\'s where you kill monsters... I just thing it would be better if it was something like you and 4 of your friends tacticaly ambushing a dragon... not you alone in a cave steping on rats and geting minimal exp...

[SnowWolf]

A little off topic but I\'m a huge fan of tactics....

[Axsyrus]

I just noticed something while fiddling around in the char. creation again:

   class=\"Mental\"
   info=\"Resistance to monsters, situations and places that cause fear.\"
           cost=\"2\"
/>

   class=\"Mental\"
   info=\"Easy to frighten, malus on resistance to all fear attacks.\"
           cost=\"2\"
/>

This isn\'t really disgust, but still very closely related to it..

PS. online version of the advantages.xml can be found here

[Wormtail_]

Hmm, perhaps ranks similar to \"Coward\" and \"Fearless\" could be used. Such as \"Sadist\" and \"Green/Easliy Disgusted Person.\" There is a difference between fear and how much you can handle before you cannot handle more. Someone can be easily disgusted but fearless, or a coward and a sadist. An example of the latter is a mugger, the former...

[Rilar]

I think a moral-meter is a great idea.

Perhaps someone knows jagged alliance 2? This is a round-based tactical with such a moral-meter. In this game you have to hire mercenaries to fight a guerilla-war. The point is: At first, every person has a neutral moral. Whenever you wins a fight, the moral goes up. Is the moral neutral, it is not certain that the mercenary wants to stay. Is the moral excellent, he stays definitely. But with every lost fight and whenever someone from your side gets killed, the moral lowers. At a certain point, it is most likely that this person is leaving and will never join your group again. The moral also effects what the persons are saying.
In JA 2 the personality of the char is defined at a character-creation in form of a questionary (Question:\"You are robbing a supermarket, what do you take with you? [a knife] [a nightvision-goggle] [...] By choosing nightvision, you will probably get night-tactics and so on). When you choose some weird answers, you \"get insane\". This means, you go franzy at certain points (doing a automatic-fire at a person at a distance of 2m etc.)...

In PS the moral could be also realized over the char-creation. So the \"childhood-experiences\" could also affect the psychological tendencies as the race.
By playing a psychopath, all \"good\" things could disgust him, such as healing animals, helping innocent people...
Also when the char is insane, at certain points, the player couldnt stop a fight or move, also the fighting-style could be set on \"just aggressive\" or even on an extra style \"frenzy\" (this style should have some great advantages, as it is a great disadvantage for the player not beeing to intercept or to choose the fighting-style).

Back on topic: At first the moral-meter should take the char-creation into account, but also the customization to specific actions as fighting, cooking or building.
I mean, there are many ways to gain xp. So anybody could train his fighting-skills without actually killing a monster (especially with sparring as stated above).
When a char is killing a monster for the first time, his personality is crucial what effect the killing has on his moral. With time, the personality looses his weight.
A mad char could hate cooking and could be disgusted of picking mushrooms, for example.

How to implement it? I think, the certain actions and abilities should have a meter, how \"good\" they are. The more something is \"good\", the more it is bad for a psychopaths moral. A psycho could even be happy to see a groupmate die...
The moral itself could effect the gaining of xp by doing specific actions. Something you dont like, you wont learn.
Another effect could be an \"internal voice\", when the char speaks to himself and certain actions related to it.
Moral could also affect the reaction from npc. The more you are happy, the better the reaction.

What do you think of it?

Bye,
amogorkon

[Seytra]

Frankly I can\'t see this system work well, at least not if the game gives the player great flexibility, which is something it definitely should do.

There are always uses for skills that are contrary to their \"common\" use.
Take lockpicking, for example. Evil, right? What if you or a friend of yours has lost the key to their home, though, and you pick the lock?

Also, how can you assign what may or may not disgust a maniac? An Elf? A mass-murderer?
The maniac might love picking mushrooms, but may also get the creeps off it.
The Elf might like picking mushrooms, but only if at least half of them remain unpicked. Not to mention that elves may also become careless, just as any other race can become throughly nature-loving.
The mass-murderer might love killing people with certain attibutes, or people in general, but hate doing harm to animals. Or just love destroying life.

Thus, the moral meter would have to be 100% customisable by the player, and also adjust by itself according to what the player does.

Disgust at killing does wear off eventually if you do it a lot. I would like my char to express emotions, but OTOH, if they are not 100% aligned with what I RP them to be, it would be detrimental to my RP.

However, as has been said, this is something that would best be classified as \"polish\", and as such I\'d say that we should get a lot of emotes once the animation editor is done, but let the application of them be handled by the player, at least until everything else is in place.