Something I've noticed that happens a lot in RPG games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age or Fallout etc is that being a good person and helping people very nearly always works out to be you helping yourself which makes being a good person and helping people far too easy. What I mean is, you are presented with a "moral choice" but whether you choose to be good or bad, your own objectives are furthered in some way. Your choice matters little other than to serve to move your alignment meter in one direction or another. What I would like to see is an abundance of situations where taking the good guy route actually costs you in some way. You expend a bunch of extra ammo, it takes a lot longer, you get nothing more than a thank you as reward, that sort of stuff. The good guy who is always helping people should not also easily be the wealthiest man in the galaxy, as an example. It should be significantly harder to play a truly good character because being bad, robbing weak people and taking their supplies is a far easier option than helping them at your own expense.

I don't remember many missions from the older games like this, but I'm hoping they mix it up a bit like you have said.

I think there has to be a balance to the idea, but yeah, consequences would be a nice touch. I just wouldn't want it overdone in typical Bethesda "in for a penny, in for a pound" fashion. If "no good deed goes unpunished" becomes the standard, then it would svck to play a good guy.

Yeah I agree with your notion, Dave! Morality is something that's very hard to present in video games (you rarely feel bad for choosing the violent route, for example), but one way that they can get around this is by making it semi-obvious to the player that the reward for a less righteous path of action is greater than the "good" path, IMO.

Of course, this can't happen all the time. But sometimes I really wanna be told that if I'm going to get something better if I take the more devious approach to a quest.

It's because mutually beneficial symbiosis is just as powerful if not even moreso a force for evolution than selfishness. We are a multicellular eukaryotic species with purpose-formed specialized body tissues that have organized into social groups to the degree where we are the dominant animal species on the planet. How's that for a testament to the power of cooperation?

Cooperation is a winning evolutionary strategy.

Bioshock did something like this with get more Adam now by being evil or get a unique benefit later by being good. I feel that morality choices should be benefited by short-term gain for being evil and long-term gain for being good. It seems like taking the good choice in Fallout 4 punishes you by getting less caps.

what if you unknowingly cooperate with the wrong people? You think you're doing good. Then... bad things happen. To you, others.

It would be cool if being too good flagged NPC's that will attempt to use you, taking advantage of your benevolence.

That would be one thing. Or the guy you spared earlier in the main questline comes back to betray you down the road.

Maybe they could balance it by offering more XP for the good karma path, and more material goods for the negative karma path? Any unique rewards should, by and large, be equitable among karma choices though.

I can dig the betrayal twist. I'm always suspicious of NPC motives, but unfortunately the double cross doesn't happen much.
Tobar is the only instance that comes to mind.

I don't think that's right. Who's to say that being good gives a person greater long-term benefits (in terms of loot)? If anything, it should be the other way around to encourage people to do more evil deeds.

What I really want to see is the game try to push us to change our alignment; like, we try to be good but eventually get jaded. Or, we finally see something personal that motivates us not to be an ass. Dishonored did that really well with the chaos system; players reportedly stopped being so violent after they saw the influence they had on the world and especially Emily.

Like others have said consequences are hard to implement in a realistic way. Even in the real world truly evil people sometimes hide in plain sight. And good people go unnoticed so it's hard to expect games to be fully realistic. What we want is not actual a real world effect we want noticeable effects.
I think areas like, who will speak to us, who will trade with us, who will help us, what perks we can take, are all a possibility, for in game effects.
But as all items that are in the game are in the game world the route a player takes to get them should stay open.

Take a cool weapon a NPC has and you want it.
1. You do a quest for them for it.
2. You kill them and take it if you can find it!
3. You buy it from them.
4. You just steal it if you can find it!
5. You kill them and another NPC finds it and you get all of the above choices again.
The item never just becomes unavailable because you made a wrong choice.

I am not a big fan of items locked behind quest barriers. In the real world all items exist, so that means it can be owned.......one way or another.

The only exception would be if a NPC was going to make something for you. Your choices are more limited.
I suppose in theory you have only 2 choices if your evil you have to find something that they love or want and force them to make it for you or pay them a lot of caps,
If your good you would just be their lackey until they agree to do it for you or pay caps. Players in the middle which I expect most end up at some time get to bully, be a lackey or pay for it.

But if possible I also want realistic effects I don't want to steal an item with no witnesses and get painted as a thief as I step out of the door...... And I would like to have a rep but control its growth, by trading on my name, if I don't want to effect my rep I pretend to be a different person for that encounter, with a chance it fails to be convincing and they recognise me if my reps big. So if I am good and want to be evil I disguise myself and do the deed in the hope I don't get recognised, same for evil they can pretend to be good if they want, but their is a chance their attempt fails and they get found out.

Oh Hell no. I play games to be happy and to relax. To me that just seems like punishment for being a nice guy, which I basically am.

The more I think of it, the more I hate the idea. It was such a pain in the Ultima games. "Oh Avatar, is that virtuous?" "Shut up Iolo".

Just do what I do when I play a good guy

Help everyone. Refuse reward. And if someone turns against you, BURN EVERYTHING THEY LOVE AND PISS ON THE ASHES OF THEIR BROKEN SPIRITS.

Remember the first quest outside of Good Springs where you supposedly were helping the guy rescue his girlfriend only to find out he set you up. I want more of those types of quests....lots more. If you want to play a goodie two shoes type character then be prepared to have people take advantage of you because this is after all a post apocalyptic world.

Are you talking about that guy on the trail on the way to Riften? Where the tower is and there's some bandits at a table? That was pretty awesome. The first time I played that I was really impressed. And more, it was actually part of the social dynamics in the world, not some kind of reduction in stats or income.

Being evil means you can rob from civilians which is short-term gain. Besides what long-term benefits would being evil give you in a game like Fallout? 300 caps per week for protection money? Fallout is not a conquering game where you can take over the wasteland. Being good can have a person being rewarded with some powerful unique weapon for all the good deeds they have done in the city. There are no good short-term gains for being good. The only short-term gains for being good is a place to sleep and a free meal for the day with maybe a 5% discount at a store.

Different games. Goodsprings is in New Vegas and Riften is in Skyrim.

I definitely wish more games didn't equate good with best outcome. I find that rather than playing the games with a good/bad perspective if I play them with an altruistic/egoistic focus stuff seems more exciting because it creates more interesting situations.

In NV for example I wiped out the powder gangers from the NCRF because I intended to give the finger to everyone and as such I couldn't have them preying on trade caravans moving through Vegas (also I had the Bison Steve casino mod so after restoring it I eliminated possible threats). I was friends with the NCR because it proved beneficial in order wipe the legion (Caesar's corpse made quite the jump after that grenade blew up under him) but when the time came I threw Oliver off the damn (silly thing to throw around threats when you don't have the upper hand).

I think it's best to vary these situations. Varying consequences, rewards, and having plenty of choices where the best choice is grey. I don't think everything needs to be grey, because grey is part of a spectrum, but those types of dilemmas are usually the most intriguing.

The Tenpenny Tower quest is actually a decent example of the world not revolving around the character all of the time. The consequences of the "good" choice are done independent of your character. It's less of a think before you choose situation, because diplomacy is almost always the best option. It just happens whether you wanted it to or not. Not every decision should have this kind of consequence, but I generally prefer to not feel like the world revolves around me.

No, this was in FNV. Sorry should have specified the game. It was when you left Goodsprings assuming you took the traditional route and some guy was crying and asked you to help rescue his girlfriend who was supposedly trapped by geckos. After you clear the area of geckos he pops up behind you and you find out he just used you to clear the area so he could get to the loot and then he tries to kill you. Unfortanetely, that was literally the only quest like that in the game, aside from the DLC, that was like that. This is a post apocalyptic world. Many people are going to be doing whatever it takes to survive and if that means tricking naive do gooders and killing and looting them then that is what they will do. I want to see more shady and "evil" people who instead of just mindlessly running at you try and deceive you into drinking poison or disarming yourself so they can kill you etc. I would like to see more clever enemies that at first glance appear to be normal NPCs to the player.

There was a mission in Freeside where someone leads you down an alley to see something interesting. Only for you to realize that it is a dead body and he is trying to mug you.

I find that I am helping evolution along a lot in these types of games by raising the average intelligence of the npcs. If you encounter a mark with Power Armor and a Minigun and you and your band of thieves only has Leather Armor and pistols, then the appropriate response is to run for your lives and not commit suicide by hero.

Ahhhh ok. Thanks for answering!

I like what you say.. In fact, walking the neutral line should be the normal turn of events. Being extremely good or bad should be harder to achieve. Being a good guy would result in you getting used by more and more folks for menial tasks with no pay off. "Here comes that really fantastic guy! Ask him if he'll do our laundry and fix the plumbing." While being too evil would just simply get you shunned from getting any quests at all.

I think that's just a symptom of having to tell a story in a small environment though. Games have a set amount of quests and a set amount of characters so there's only so much good/evil we can do in a game. The only way they could really make you feel like you're playing good, neutral or evil would be to create an entirely different story line for every path that also allowed you to switch back and forth between alignments and story lines. It'd be a hefty undertaking.

Because it's good to be bad...