Virtue feedback

If our avatar is meant to be played as our actual selves and we are trying to follow a moral and virtuous path, then our understanding of what that means would be as follows...

Virtue: Behavior showing high moral standards.
Morality: Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.

I play the game as if my avatar is me, i act how i believe (or at least hope) i would actually act in this situation, bringing with me my own sense of right and wrong... and acting accordingly. When i see somebody in pain or distress, i try to help them. If somebody asks me a question, i do my best to answer truthfully. If there is danger that is within my power to deal with... i deal with it. I also collect and hoard all the things and lock myself in my house to make stuff (just like real life). I help as many people as i can and i do my best to understand other peoples needs, motivation and situation. By people, i am referring to both players and NPC.

Now, my courage virtue is doing just fine, as is my love virtue. Truth however... not so much, and it irks me. The oracle is judging me as a person, not my avatar... me. Some of the oracles dialogue and activities are (in my opinion) less than virtuous .. and this mechanical jerk with her hoard of mechanical perverts is judging me. But putting aside the fact that i don't like, trust or understand the oracle... i examine my actions and look for flaws. What i came up with is as follows...

Since i do not lie, the only reason i can possibly be in the negative for virtue is theft. If i come across a dead body and it has gold or something useful on it, i take it. If somebody attacks me and effectively forces me to kill them, i also will take their stuff. If i find an encampment of murderous thieves that have a stash of loot obtained by preying on the innocent... i am going to make sure such activities cease and (once again) i am going to take that stuff. I never initiate combat with players or NPC, i kill whatever attacks me. I do not pick pockets.

Now this world is not a 21st century first world earth civilization, it is a brutal medieval fantasy realm filled with hardship and danger. A gold coin could conceivably be the difference between living and dying, so why would i leave it laying around on long dead corpses that no longer have any earthly needs. If i knew of or had the ability to find the corpse's next of kin, i would deliver both word of their passing and their possessions, failing that... i am going to pass those materials on to those in need (including new players, beggars, guild members and myself). In this setting, leaving wealth to rot on a corpse is a luxury that is (in my opinion) foolish and in no way "the right thing to do". Likewise for piles of bandit supplies and the possessions of player killers. If i see somebody killing other people and taking their stuff, i kill them and take their stuff. This not only reduces the danger posed to others in the region but in the case of other avatars it returns belongings to their rightful owner. If i am in a hostile area filled with man eating monsters, then anything laying around should likewise be liberated and shared.

I was so saddened (and a little angry) that i had been punished for acting how i consider to be virtuous that i actually spent a week just taking anything not nailed down since it no longer seemed to matter. This view seems to be a common one among the community at the moment, we often hear things like "Just steal from NPC since your truth virtue is just going to be negative anyway if you leave your house" and "Picking up loot from dungeons is negative virtue so may as well just steal from everywhere". The judgement of the oracle effectively caused a crime spree.

I made a guild and called it Pax et Veritas (Peace and Truth). I role-played my role in a 2 year long player made scenario as the knight of truth. I don't lie. But my virtue cloak glows red like the baneful eye of that mechanical bung-hole the oracle. DAMMIT

 

It's bugged.

But @Lum the Mad stated that he was considering adding an "owned" flag to items in the wild. So that we'd at least get a warning before taking the hit.
My contacts in the Moonlight guild, lost and found section, tells me that stealing in Soltown is hurting truth more than stealing in Brittany. That taking from the prison of Epitaph is really a bad thing even those items beyond the prisoners' control. That misspelling once name when asked is slightly bad(ish). Etc.
and that the best way of gaining it seems to be telling cruel truths to the grieving or quarreling.

 

This last thing sounds good to me. Though I could imagine cases where one would need to choose between following the path of truth and path of love. Though telling truth should not really be considered unloving.

 

That would be nice, though there is still the moral dilemma of stealing from murderers and thieves. As much as i wanted to deal with virtues organically, it feels like something i am going to have to micromanage and min/max just to prevent myself accidentally becoming the opposite of what i want to embody >.<

 

Same poor experience with Truth. Some thoughts:

• I think that it is far-fetched to equate the Virtue of Truth to Honesty, which should be a separate virtue. What does stealing have to do with Truth?
• If you have to choose between Truth and Love (telling a cruel truth versus sparing someone's feelings) it is better to choose Truth because all you have to do to get plus points in love is give a beggar a coin.
• The Oracle only counts infractions, not efforts to avoid infractions. I can pass by a dead NPC victim without looting it a million times, but if I loot it only one single time by mistake while trying to loot a dead bandit or skeleton, The Oracle says I disdain Truth. The Oracle is a jerk.
• The Oracle doesn't like me to kill fauns (she says I disdain Courage) so I can't use AOE spells like chain lightning when fighting groups of satyrs. This means I end up avoiding areas with Satyrs altogether.

 

We are actually forced to kill fauns if we want to see all content as well.

 

I think the Virtue Cloak is bunk because it is based upon the parameters set forth by the Oracle. I've never once put it on to check my virtue standing because I see it for what it is. The question is why should what the Virtue Cloak displays matter to you? Do you need to be validated by this machine? Why should you trade your own moral compass for that of some machine that does not account for the nuances of human behavior or look at things contextually? Keep in mind as well, if you wear a Cloak of Virtue, you ignore an important one -- Humility. However, the fact that you are disturbed by this mechanic is a good thing because you, the player, are evaluating your own sense of virtue based upon your deeds and intent. This is a good thing.

@Kara Brae makes excellent points too. One thing I find interesting in how Scottie described the family room in Artifice (based upon what was mentioned in the Summer Telethon -- I forget which part) relates to what was mentioned about the fauns. In Ultima V (my favorite Ultima!), there was the room where you could optionally kill the children attacking you. The family room seems to be set up so that in order to advance further, you trigger an event that can kill them. What I can't tell is whether this is testing the player upon the greed of seeing further content or because it is to stop a greater evil that may exist further in the area. I think the intent there is for the player to pause and consider why it was so damn important that a mother, father, and children had to be sacrificed and for whose benefit.

 

Because it will affect the story line and how i fit into it

 

Let's hope there is another virtue reset when they get the bugs worked out.

My problem is that the Oracle keeps saying that my character considers the Virtues important (as do I, the player) but I just can't seem to connect to the importance of them or at least to their counters. It has modified my game playing behavior... but the obvious positive reinforcement attached with the Oracle and the validation of the Cloak feels so manipulative, I'm just not sure whether I want to rebel against the system by bucking my own moral compass because of the manipulation (and possibly be manipulated into another sort of behavior) or ignore it all and come what may from the story.

It's actually kind of fascinating in that the dilemma feels of more consequence than permadeath in that the player's place in the story is affected so much by a clattering calculator. Part of me is intrigued, and part of me is annoyed. I'd like to think this is a good thing in some respects.

 

Yeah..also i am pretty sure the oracle is NOT our friend heh

 

I just wish I knew why my virtues are considered overall negative as shown by my red virtue cloak. Right before they took the ability to see your virtue scores away, I was at about +80 for Courage, +286 for Love, and -4 for Truth. So why is my virtue score showing as red? I haven't picked up any world items from dungeons or stole from buildings in towns since. I never participated in stealing to salvage. So why is that one -4 Truth score turning my cloak red despite my much more significant positive virtues in courage and love?

The whole virtue system is pretty badly implemented in it's current state imo. Hopefully it'll improve in future releases.

 

To me, virtues are more related to philosophy than to morality. Love, Courage and Truth are guiding principles, but following them does not directly imply a high moral standard. There are lots of classic situations that can be formulated within the principles of the virtues where you can be virtuous but not necessarily good.

Even if its deemed as a bug i find sense in looting and taking from others causing a truth hit. Even if they're evildoers, even if they stole it from somebody else, truth is it wasn't yours to take.

My liege, I beg your pardon for i don't pretend to cause you woe, but if i shall tell the truth... your actions seems more Love driven than Truth driven. Oh! and just because the Oracle is not our friend doesn't mean it's our enemy

 

hehe, valid. But i still don't fully agree... which is a problem with virtues.. subjective >.<

 

And even more when talking about truth. Two kinds of truth should be clearly differentiated; the inner truth (ideals, personal and subjective) and the outer truth (real phenomena, observable by many, hence comparable and somewhat objective).

The first kind is pointless to judge since only one can judge how truthful is to himself. The second kind is worth of being searched more than judged since it cannot be uncovered unless many truthful eyes observe the same thing over and over again. Between both of them lies the law, which are a term of subjective truths that we accepted by belogning to the society that imposes it. I think this is the one that the Oracle is focused in judging, the issue is that we just don't know what set of truths has it to be judged. Maybe a Oracle Code of Laws should be released?

 

Anybody who uses nasty metal spiders to spy on you is unlikely to be one's friend. Ardoris still gives me the creeps because they're everywhere.

 

I would like to be able to ask about each virtue by itself like Ultima IV.

 

I just want a way to recover a bad virtue, it seems hopeless to me right now. I did some stuff that everyone is expected to do in games like loot everything possible. And that was before virtue was even fleshed out.

I really have zero reason to be virtuous other than because I feel like it, as I am forever cursed by an undeveloped game mechanic.

 

• I did not lie, I was being sacastic when I told an NPC I was Lord British.

 

I'm in the same boat as you having looted deco earlier on to help furnish my house. Since I'm going to be a PvE thief though it doesn't matter as much to me. At least the new anti-theft mechanics have reduced the usual smash and grab theft which left shattered barrels everywhere across Novia.

 

Is the virtue system online?

Outside of main story quests, the only place I've noticeably had a virtue encounter is via the test of the oracle for a few coins, but I saw that more as a question of whether I completed the stories.

The challenge I assume is that virtue is not defined by player intent but by a game coder. If the game is coded to score virtue on a first-order action-reaction basis, then the game would determine player intent by one action. I agree that this will lead to min/maxing rather than 'playing our real avatar.' But if the game could somehow better simulate intent by measuring virtue across the course of second, third, and fourth order actions in sequence, that might change behaviors. For example, if I took an apple from a vendor to compassionately feed a hungry beggar so that I could earn a coin from a patron who wanted to make a sacrifice for that cause, which I could later use as honest payment for the apple, could the game detect that as virtue rather than crime?

As is, from the opening post, sounds like I'd be rated a criminal too (and probably am).