Honor System (and your thoughts on it)

[rebel-yin]

My gameplay tends to mirror my real life. Meaning, I know it’s a game and it’s not real, but I still find myself avoiding the random malicious type things that other players love to do. For example, outside of all the mission-related things we have to do, I generally don’t rob random NPCs or slaughter any animal that wonders by. Hell, I can’t even get myself to shoot a horse, which probably has a lot to do with my background. So to my original point: After playing this way, as well as volunteering for every damn “noble” cause that it asked of me, and donating to anyone who holds out their hand, I STILL FIND MYSELF IN THE RED AND ALL THE WAY TO THE LEFT ON THE HONOR SCALE??? I will admit, I do Loot any dead body I come across. Is that all it takes to lose your honor in this game? Just curious how the rest of you faired playing the “Honor game”? 

[Jmac]

Pretty easy to stay at peak honour.

[Gray-Hand]

Pretty high the entire time.

 

Apart from doing heroic type things that pick up a bit of honour here and there, there are a few easy ways to get cheap honour:

 

1.  Throw back fish you catch.

2.  Greet everyone you walk past in a town.

3. Do chores.

4. When you donate stuff to Pearson or the money box, do it in small batches rather than big lump sums.  5 donations of $20 gets you 5 honour whereas one donation of $100 gets you 1 honour.

[RayD70]

The post above pretty much sums it up. Aside from, of course, making the right choices inside of missions or side stuff. Also, killing racists (KKK and a few odd others) raises your honor, so there's always that kind of fun.

 

Never had a problem keeping my honor high, and I'm not above an occasional random act of violence, theft, or robbery.

 

What sucks is when you have it almost maxed out and some idiot jumps right into your horse - BOOM! 10% taken away.

[mde2]

It's garbage. I get it's like a staple feature in RDR because fans would get their knickers in a knot over not having features like that carry over but f*ck me am I getting tired of games telling me what's right and wrong. The fact that it only affects a few of the stories cutscene's is it's only saving grace but goddamn.

 

Like take the example the guy above me said, it's incredibly easy due to the way AI behaves that you could end up tanking your honour because some retard decides it would be funny to walk out in front of your horse. The most abhorrent example of this system is the lawmen, especially the fact that killing them IN MISSIONS affects your honour. I'm currently doing a second playthrough of the game and it turns out some missions, like the one with Micah just let you sitback because he does a pretty good job killing them himself, but then the game goes and penalizes you through the medal system (e.g. kill x amount of lawmen).

I feel like if Rockstar were to redo this mechanic in the future it should SOLELY be affected by your story decisions rather than during actual gameplay. Sure it would be inconsistent (the actions of the protag inside and outside of missions) but I'd rather that compromise be made in order to let people run wild in free-roam while still getting to experience the story there way. This might be a bit of a hot take but like I said, I'm getting really sick of games treating people like children by saying "x is good but don't do x cuz it's bad!".

[TheSantader25]

14 minutes ago, mde2 said:

It's garbage. I get it's like a staple feature in RDR because fans would get their knickers in a knot over not having features like that carry over but f*ck me am I getting tired of games telling me what's right and wrong. The fact that it only affects a few of the stories cutscene's is it's only saving grace but goddamn.

 

Like take the example the guy above me said, it's incredibly easy due to the way AI behaves that you could end up tanking your honour because some retard decides it would be funny to walk out in front of your horse. The most abhorrent example of this system is the lawmen, especially the fact that killing them IN MISSIONS affects your honour. I'm currently doing a second playthrough of the game and it turns out some missions, like the one with Micah just let you sitback because he does a pretty good job killing them himself, but then the game goes and penalizes you through the medal system (e.g. kill x amount of lawmen).

I feel like if Rockstar were to redo this mechanic in the future it should SOLELY be affected by your story decisions rather than during actual gameplay. Sure it would be inconsistent (the actions of the protag inside and outside of missions) but I'd rather that compromise be made in order to let people run wild in free-roam while still getting to experience the story there way. This might be a bit of a hot take but like I said, I'm getting really sick of games treating people like children by saying "x is good but don't do x cuz it's bad!".

This game doesn't tell you to have high Honour. It's up to you if you wanna be a Dishonorable Arthur. I'm having a blast acting like a total maniac in my second playthrough. I'm killing people left and right and it feels good to act like an OP outlaw who doesn't give a sh*t about anybody. It adds to the game because you can have different Playthroughs. If anything it makes sense to have it more in this game than the original RDR. Not to mention how easy you can pull it back up if you're feeling OCD(Fishing). 

Edited November 22, 2018 by TheSantader25

[mde2]

7 minutes ago, TheSantader25 said:

This game doesn't tell you to have high Honour. It's up to you if you wanna be a Dishonorable Arthur. I'm having a blast acting like a total maniac in my second playthrough. I'm killing people left and right. It adds to the game because you can have different Playthroughs. If anything it makes sense to have it more in this game than the original RDR. 

I never said it tells you to have high honour or low honour, I said that if you don't play in a particular way during certain missions it penalizes you, although I do get where you're coming from, I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who was trying to achieve high honour rather than let it tank. If I didn't make it clear enough in my original post though, the bottomline is that the game is trying to force it's ethics and morals on you even in situations where losing honour can't be reasonably avoided and by the end of the game you're given what is considered the worse endings (although if all endings except the accepted "best ending" didn't have the stigma of being the "you're a terrible person" endings, my entire post would be redundant) because of actions you were sometimes forced to take and that in itself seems a bit hand-holdy if that makes sense.

EDIT: Didn't get a chance to see your edit.
 

Quote

Not to mention how easy you can pull it back up if you're feeling OCD(Fishing). 

I don't know about anyone else but personally I prefer not to abuse the honour system and rather let it just play out based on my actions which is where my concerns are coming from.

Edited November 22, 2018 by mde2
Adding some more sh*t cause he edited his post.

[TheSantader25]

@mde2

 

Well since you said it's garbage and it's there because if it wasn't people would whine that it's missing from RDR1 I thought you think the whole thing sucks and should be removed but turns out you just have a "minor" problem with it. 

[mde2]

2 minutes ago, TheSantader25 said:

Well since you said it's garbage and it's there because if it wasn't people would whine that it's missing from RDR1 I thought you think the whole thing sucks and should be removed but turns out you just have a "minor" problem with it. 

Not at all minor. I think the honour system is fundamentally flawed in the way it's implemented. BUT the only way I've come to this conclusion is through the way I've tried to play the game. So it's not just a "me" problem.

Edited November 22, 2018 by mde2

[TheSantader25]

6 minutes ago, mde2 said:

Not at all minor. I think the honour system is fundamentally flawed in the way it's implemented. BUT the only way I've come to this conclusion is through the way I've tried to play the game. So it's not just a "me" problem.

Are there any other missions where honour goes down because of killing lawmen? Cause the only one I remember is the one with Micah and perhaps the train robbery with John? 

 

 

[mde2]

1 minute ago, TheSantader25 said:

Are there any other missions where honour goes down because of killing lawmen? Cause the only one I remember is the one with Micah and perhaps the train robbery with John?

More or less yeah, but I'm kicking myself in the arse for not including the fact that if you accidentally commit a crime and lawmen come after you, even IF they attack first your honour still tanks for just...defending yourself? And they aren't exactly lazy either, they're very determined in filling you up with bullets and hunting you down. That to me is the second biggest issue with the system, the first being the way it forces their ethics on you. It's like a sick joke really, getting punished for something out of your control and you can't even reasonably escape the situation without killing at least 1 or 2 lawmen (unless you surrender yourself, and I'm actually not quite sure what the penalties or benefits for that is either).

[TheSantader25]

Just now, mde2 said:

More or less yeah, but I'm kicking myself in the arse for not including the fact that if you accidentally commit a crime and lawmen come after you, even IF they attack first your honour still tanks for just...defending yourself? And they aren't exactly lazy either, they're very determined in filling you up with bullets and hunting you down. That to me is the second biggest issue with the system, the first being the way it forces their ethics on you. It's like a sick joke really, getting punished for something out of your control and you can't even reasonably escape the situation without killing at least 1 or 2 lawmen (unless you surrender yourself, and I'm actually not quite sure what the penalties or benefits for that is either).

It's pretty easy to escape if you have a fast horse(Turkoman or Arabian). A bunch of maneuvers and you can go but this is actually the only issue I have with the system as well. It bothers me when I bump into someone, we both fall off and the dude suddenly realizes the best thing to do is to shoot me so I have to kill him and therefore lose honour. Other than that the system is fine IMO. A dishonorable act is dishonorable. It does not matter if it's in a mission or not IMO. 

[Fatsanchez]

^If I may add something to that, another thing that bothers me is losing honor when looting strangers. Sometimes it makes sense, but sometimes it doesn’t IMO. I mean I shouldn’t lose honor for looting someone who was ripped apart by skinner brothers in the middle of the forest. Or a misterious corpse in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes people may have letters or some rare item on them, I dunno. And you can tell some of those are designed to be found (so they dont affect your honor). Its kinda inconsistent I guess. But other than that and the bumping issues, I also think the honor system is great.

[oCrapaCreeper]

4 minutes ago, Fatsanchez said:

^If I may add something to that, another thing that bothers me is losing honor when looting strangers. Sometimes it makes sense, but sometimes it doesn’t IMO. I mean I shouldn’t lose honor for looting someone who was ripped apart by skinner brothers in the middle of the forest. Or a misterious corpse in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes people may have letters or some rare item on them, I dunno. And you can tell some of those are designed to be found (so they dont affect your honor). Its kinda inconsistent I guess. But other than that and the bumping issues, I also think the honor system is great.

Yeah, you should only lose honor when looting people you killed yourself.

[Kemasus]

I did manage to reach 100% honor. Cant remember which event finally maxed out my honor but it didnt last long. The thing about honor is that I can spend a huge amount of time grinding out honorable camp activities and town greetings only to see progress fall away from one unfortunate encounter. From this I learned to play my saves as I would like Arthur to be rather than worry about Arthur,s morale worth relative to an honor scale. That said the Arthur in my world hangs out somewhere above the 25% shop discount level

[Gallows]

Just greet everyone you meet. That will do a lot to keep your honour High. It’s quite easy. In the epilogue of my first playthrough I went to minimum honour to try that, because it was maxed in the main stort. Then I went from minimum to maximum, which wasn’t that hard. It took a while of course, because I still killed, robbed and looted people. I’ll say it’s fine, and certainly not difficult.

[Oldsport]

i dont like it . my first playthrough i was very honorable and good but my second playthrough i want to be a outlaw so i been doing bad stuff. i want to buy some outfit but theyre locked because of honor? that makes no sense, very dumb

[oCrapaCreeper]

3 minutes ago, Oldsport said:

i dont like it . my first playthrough i was very honorable and good but my second playthrough i want to be a outlaw so i been doing bad stuff. i want to buy some outfit but theyre locked because of honor? that makes no sense, very dumb

I suppose you could grind the honor meter to be maxed out, unlock everything, then grind it back down.

[Oldsport]

2 minutes ago, oCrapaCreeper said:

I suppose you could grind the honor meter to be maxed out, unlock everything, then grind it back down.

i could but im at the lowest of low. i guess ill have to though

[RayD70]

Thinking on it, perhaps part of the problem is the lack of fame in this game to coincide with honor.

 

Low fame, honor really doesn't matter much. Once your fame climbs, your honor really starts to matter with how the world reacts to you. Such as high fame and honor, lawmen are more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt. High fame and dishonor, and NPCs surrender almost immediately out of fear.  (except other gangs and lawmen who will be kill on sight).

 

Discounts and outfits are rather weak incentives, to be honest.

[oCrapaCreeper]

5 minutes ago, RayD70 said:

Thinking on it, perhaps part of the problem is the lack of fame in this game to coincide with honor.

To be fair, having a fame mechanic when you're an outlaw on the run and hiding probably wouldn't make a lot of sense.

[Callahan44]

I try to be good but i do what i want,i loot friendly corpses,shoot bountyhunter horses or rob people sometimes. I think there should be more ways to get honour...but hard to say what exactly. Random events are quite rare and greeting people/throwing fish back isnt exactly exciting. 

Still really like the system.

[Cutter De Blanc]

Good people don't loot dead bodies, not hard to figure out

 

It's a question of pride vs. profit. Do you want to be a good man, or do you want to be a wealthy man?

[Gallows]

2 hours ago, oCrapaCreeper said:

I suppose you could grind the honor meter to be maxed out, unlock everything, then grind it back down.

Other stuff you can only get at low honour (special grip for double action for instance). 

[Somegras]

It is an okay measure for a player of how to play the game. The integration with everything within the world and missions has more potential in my opinion. 

 

People still greet you friendly and don’t fear you badly whilst you’re dishonorable. On the other hand, there isn’t a very big impact when being honorable. I expected more when I saw the trailer. 

Edited November 22, 2018 by Somegras
Typo

[Lonely-Martin]

7 hours ago, mde2 said:

It's garbage. I get it's like a staple feature in RDR because fans would get their knickers in a knot over not having features like that carry over but f*ck me am I getting tired of games telling me what's right and wrong. The fact that it only affects a few of the stories cutscene's is it's only saving grace but goddamn.

Couple of questions dude as I'm not the most experienced gamer with all these big franchises out there. (Rare I play combat games at all in general, COD/Battlefield and such, not my brew). But wondered what other games have this 'right or wrong' approach?

 

More because I enjoy the mechanic and I'm always interested in trying new things. Always nice to add to my gaming.

7 hours ago, mde2 said:

I don't know about anyone else but personally I prefer not to abuse the honour system and rather let it just play out based on my actions which is where my concerns are coming from.

Also, how is using a feature abuse? It's like saying replaying a mission in GTA:O purely for RP/cash is abuse when it's an free option with known rewards is all. Just another choice is all.

 

If we were doing something we shouldn't to manipulate the game in ways unintended, sure. But throwing fish back when it's a legitimate option isn't abuse, plenty do it IRL. Bad game creating if it's 'the way' to get something like XP with little else comparable. Especially as we need level 4 honour to progress the story at one point. (Though can't remember if that mission is a must or optional, my bad if optional though).

[SAS_Intruder]

2 hours ago, Cutter De Blanc said:

Good people don't loot dead bodies, not hard to figure out

 

It's a question of pride vs. profit. Do you want to be a good man, or do you want to be a wealthy man?

My problem are random encounters where someone is already dead but on his horse or wagon. Logic tells me to take him off his horse/wagon and see if he is maybe alive. Also to check if I should deliver his body somewhere or a letter. And on top of that I feel like we should free the horses instead of leaving them in the middle of nowhere.  But all of these activities result in losing honor and I think there should be actual reward for finding someone killed, bringing him or his belonging s back to nearest town and freeing horses so they can live.

[CryptReaperDorian]

Conversely, OP, I try to make my Arthur quite an asshole (mainly outside of settlements to avoid bounties), but I still build up honor faster than I lose it. I'm currently sitting over 80% to the right on the honor scale.

 

If anything, looting the bodies of the innocent whom you didn't personally kill is weighed a bit too much on the honor scale. I get it's disgusting to pick through the pockets of somebody that's been cold and dead for months, but as mentioned, sometimes these people have letters or trinkets on them. Letters or trinkets that their loved ones, if any, would probably like to have returned some day. The game would just be THAT much more immersive if you were able to act as a courier for those that didn't make it.

 

2 hours ago, Lonely-Martin said:

Couple of questions dude as I'm not the most experienced gamer with all these big franchises out there. (Rare I play combat games at all in general, COD/Battlefield and such, not my brew). But wondered what other games have this 'right or wrong' approach?

 

More because I enjoy the mechanic and I'm always interested in trying new things. Always nice to add to my gaming.

Fallout 3 is probably one of the best-known examples of having an honor feature (called "karma" there). It's pretty clear-cut in that game as it is in the Red Dead Redemption games. Karma also exists in Fallout: New Vegas, but it's not as important as it is in Fallout 3. Instead, there's more of a focus on the added reputation system regarding the numerous factions in the game. It's more complex, but still easy enough to understand.

[Lonely-Martin]

17 minutes ago, CryptReaperDorian said:

Fallout 3 is probably one of the best-known examples of having an honor feature (called "karma" there). It's pretty clear-cut in that game as it is in the Red Dead Redemption games. Karma also exists in Fallout: New Vegas, but it's not as important as it is in Fallout 3. Instead, there's more of a focus on the added reputation system regarding the numerous factions in the game. It's more complex, but still easy enough to understand.

Sweet, cheap games to try too. Thanks for the info. I think I tried one once, if I remember right it was a young lad and it was his birthday and remember getting lost trying to get out of some indoor area like a kitchen with cages and computers and weird bugs and stuff. But that was over a buddies a while back. Couldn't take much in at the time.

 

Probably completely wrong regarding what the building/location was. Apologies to fans. I'll pop over to google before I embarrass myself more trying to talk about a game I've so little knowledge of, lol.

[CryptReaperDorian]

4 minutes ago, Lonely-Martin said:

Sweet, cheap games to try too. Thanks for the info. I think I tried one once, if I remember right it was a young lad and it was his birthday and remember getting lost trying to get out of some indoor area like a kitchen with cages and computers and weird bugs and stuff. But that was over a buddies a while back. Couldn't take much in at the time.

 

Probably completely wrong regarding what the building/location was. Apologies to fans. I'll pop over to google before I embarrass myself more trying to talk about a game I've so little knowledge of, lol.

Cages, computers, and weird bugs. "Weird bugs" as in radroaches and programming errors/fails alike. That sounds like the Fallout I know!

 

Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas feel quite dated nowadays, but at the same time, Fallout 4 does away with too many of the intricate RPG elements. Karma is practically non-factor in that game. So, yeah, get Fallout 3: GOTY Edition (the "Broken Steel" DLC is necessary, in my opinion) and Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition if you'd like. Both should be dirt-cheap and a steal at this point in time. It shouldn't be much of a loss if you end up not liking them.