Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General About Karma

In the live stream they discussed if they want to have karma or not.

My thoughts:
I have written somewhere in this forum:
"Dialogue should never be a mini game. Not for perks (like D:OS1), not for influence on companions (like NWN2, KotoR2) and not for alignment (KotoR1+2)"
In these cases people feel pushed to select one extreme and stick to it. It is best if you simply stick to "choice and consequence".
In case of the D:OS2 demo it means: Gwynne does not hate you because you have bad karma. She hates you because you stole the soul of her brother, then you killed her mother and stole her soul as well.

So I am against karma, at least if it is done in a very simple good/evil or order/choas axis.

I would agree with this, except for the "influence on companions"... it's rather important IMO that your party will infact have their own opinions on what they do and then reflect this back to you rather than being basically emotionless or opinionless husks.

It really depends. They should have their opinions and personality, but that doesn't mean they can't change if they see a role-model in you or you can sway them to your way of thinking. They shouldn't be emotionless or opinionless husks, but they shouldn't be static stick figures who can't be swayed. It really depends on their personality, if they are stubborn as mules and don't change their opinion even with overwhelming evidence, then that's their flaw.

The karma system sounds bad, I'd avoid it.

I share the same concerns, though it's clear from the live stream that not everyone is on board with the karma system yet and Larian is still figuring out if/how they're going to do it. I think a good question for Larian to ask themselves would be "has anyone ever done a karma system well in a video game?". Judging by the games I've played, the answer is no. So unless they've got some brilliant idea that the rest of the industry hasn't thought of, I'd be very hesitant of this feature.

I also think Larian should ask themselves "is it even worth it to try and do this? What are the benefits?". Because for me, it's a pretty hard question to answer positively. Yes, you can reward the players for the choices they can make but... This is a roleplaying game, aren't those story driven choices the reason we're playing in the first place? The choices we make are going to lead to cool encounters, fun fights and epic loots. That's reward enough for me. On the other hand, the potential negatives of screwing up a karma system are quite high.

While I do agree that karma (or whatever the final term will be) shouldn't be obvious to the casual observer unless they have some sort of magical means to see into the soul, I don't think the basic idea is necessarily problematic. It's just about how you do it.

The problem with not having karma, or something like it, is that there is no penalty for stealing Source, which would clearly give "evil" (I'm simplifying here) characters an unfair advantage. Unless they scrap the stealing Source mechanic, something has to be put in place to balance it.

I posted an idea of how to do it over at the uservoice game ideas site, and a guy called Andrew Ramsey filled in (a lot of) different takes on the same principle. I think it's a sensible way to balance Source theft while avoiding the pitfalls of an obvious "hollow-eyed and shrivelled evil monster" route.

Karma really isn't anything else than a kind of measure for your actions and how the world should react to them/you.
The issue with Bioware games that widely made this element popular is that it's always very obvious. In Jade Empire it kinda resonnated well because we associate Karma to eastern cultures and, well, JE was set in a fantasy ancient China. In Mass Effect the french translation of "Renegade" was "Pragmatic", which made it into a sensibly more interesting concept than just "evil". However ME2 blew it because every "renegade" actions were mostly "evil". In a Starwars game it also makes sense because of the very concept of the Force and its dark and light side.

BUT now we are starting to get tired of this simplistic element. I think we'd rather have it as a hidden feature that calculates how people see us and behave when we're around. Something that we wouldn't be able to track but still would have to keep in mind.

Karma or anything similar are just too gamey - oh, you killed a baby? EVIL! Oh, you went and donated a few bucks in a temple? You are GOOD! again. Measuring how good or evil you are on a numerical scale and NPCs reacting to that number, instead of naturally reacting to your actions in general, is the problem. Committing genocide isn't negated because you went and helped a grandma across the street. You should be the most reviled person in existence if you commit genocide, regardless of your previous acts.

It doesn't have to be a simple scale. It could be something like traits, hidden or not, that player gets after committing some particular (good / bad) action. Similar to Childkiller title in Fallouts. NPCs could then react to a particular title if present - regardless of other acts that player has done afterwards.

Instead of karma, why don't you just implement 'good and evil' types of source points. Where doing 'positive karma' source gather activities would award good source points, which would be used to power 'good source' skills. And doing 'negative karma' source gathering activities would award bad/evil source points, which would be used to power 'bad/evil source' skills?

I think it would quickly lead to simplification - 'Good / Evil' Source and it shouldn't. The Source should stay as a completely neutral force.

That leads into the problem of everyone having omniscience, though. Every NPC ever knows where you've been and what you've done. If you kidnap an orphan nobody knows or cares about and sacrifice him/her to a demon, away from prying eyes, then people shouldn't know you've done it. The demon can blackmail you after that to expose your secret. That would be way more logical and interesting than simply giving everyone omniscience :p Or your companions can expose you if they don't like you enough and they know you've done it, etc.

In the Divinity universe, sentients demonstrably have souls that can (judging from previous games) be manipulated and corrupted. Something as spiritually brutal as stealing Source would definitely corrupt your soul. This could have serious effect.

A corrupted soul may react to things differently than a non-corrupted one and this would most likely have an effect on magic use, since this is intimately connected to the soul.

From the novella "The Child of Chaos" by Rhianna Pratchett, shipped with the Deluxe Edition of Beyond Divinity:


Clearly, mages have some way of peering into people's souls, but this ability is also clearly not foolproof, which makes sense. If the darkness of those who would do evil were readily apparent, they would have little chance of getting away with anything.

This said, I still don't think it makes sense that your average NPC would be able to tell that your soul is somehow corrupted (or unusually pure.) It should be something reserved for other mechanics and the odd occasion where you meet someone who is able to literally peer into your soul.

Finally---I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: karma is not reputation. Karma is a state of the soul and reputation is the deeds you're known for. If Larian wants to have reputation in the game (something that has been done to good effect in lots of open-world games) then they should by all means add it, but it's not comparable or equivalent to karma.





What you're describing is actually possible to describe just in terms of proportion. If committing genocide gives you seven million negative karma points, you can spend your entire life helping geriatric saints across ragingly busy eight-lane highways full of homidical psychotics and you still won't even make a dent your karma.

Hmmm, I'd rather characters react towards you, based on a mixture of your reputation, consequences, actions, etc.

I don't like the sound of this system 'cos it's poorly adapted from the original concept of "karma". In fact, it's pretty much lifting a concept from a culture without much understanding.

Just a quick post, I may not be able to reply as I'm very busy.

Disclaimer: I'm not knowledgeable in Hinduism, Buddhism and the different eras of Chinese culture. Some of this stuff may be inaccurate.

The reason why "the full concept of karma" won't work in DOS2 is because of the cultural gap. It features heavily in Buddhism and possibly, Hinduism. Now, I only understand Karma in Buddhism which has the concept of "even if you've taken many, many lives or done a lot of wrong you can STILL do good and eventually find the path to redemption and forgiveness whether it be in your present or future life(life as in: reincarnation)". Buddha will forgive you and He will ask you to forgive yourself, that sort of thing.

Also, karma is not some black and white thing. It's heavily complicated. I'll just quote some excerpt : it's about cause and effect and far more.

In addition: there's the idea of retribution which isn't about people taking revenge on one another. It's about Heaven being like a live entity. Heaven or Buddha will punish the evildoer or force him to face his deeds until he repents, no matter how many lives he has to go through, or how much punishment he or she has to endure.

Whereas I get the concept that in certain Western cultures, things are much more vengeance-based? Correct me if I'm wrong. Like you're going to go for justice and you're gonna make everyone related to that person pay. As in: "mob justice", "the person is beyond redemption", "punish him, don't rehabilitate him", etc.

For me, this means a lot of people won't grasp it, unless it's thoroughly explained.

I think it's pretty clear that the term "karma" is used for practically giving an idea of a game concept rather than as a direct reference to Hindu beliefs. The term may well change.

Have you guys played Age of Decadence? If you haven't a) buy it when it comes out on the 14th (18th?), technically you can buy and play it now, but since it comes out so soon I'd just wait, or download the demo now and b) play it and revel in the causality of the whole experience. That's a great example of a karma system (i.e. non-existent), but the world reacts how it should react to your deeds. That's the whole point though, making the world react naturally to your actions, whatever they may be. Numerical systems just bring this unnecessary layer of bloat across the whole thing and it's a cop-out in general.

Hahaha, what a stupid long post. See? No one wants to read it.

I prefer choice and consequence over karma. It's an established system and it works. DOS2 sounds too complicated already.

Choice and consequence for specific actions is nice, but it's helpful to quantify the effect of more generic crimes and good deeds, particularly for devouring souls or the like. I think the best way to use a generic karma system is to make it most prominent in the hall of echoes, where certain good or evil spirits will arrive or give you offers based on general trend of acquiring source points. Probably you just need certain thresholds for certain beings to arrive. Devour 3 souls, and the first demon arrives to devour YOUR soul. Devour five, and another one tries to blackmail you (credit to Lacrymas for that idea). But I don't think anything should make up for devouring souls. You devour five souls, and it doesn't matter if you've been good the whole rest of the game, that demon is still going to blackmail you.

Probably best to keep the system under the table instead of giving you some kind of karma bar. You'll just notice demons showing up sometimes, and you won't really figure out the thresholds until your second or third playthrough.

@Baardvark
yes instead of numbers immediately quantifying your actions you could translate the good smiley/bad smiley principle into statues in the HoE that become lighter or more demonic depending on where you go.

The problem with that kind of system is that it's not really much of a deterrent. Even if the events and mobs are set to give no XP at all, you effectively get more gameplay out of it, and no lasting disadvantages. The only system I can see that really works as a counterbalance to the rather marked benefits of devouring souls to gain Source points, is to have low karma have some sort of direct, mechanical effect on your character---preferably something that comes into play in combat, seeing as there will be a number of players who will more or less ignore the social and role-playing aspects of the game. Magic use would be the obvious choice, seeing as it is directly connected to the character's soul.

(There is more deliberation on how it could be done here.)

Is this enough deterrent for you - http://tinyurl.com/o9nge2h ? :p Your choices lead to that outcome.