Why don't more modern RPGs have actual alignment systems in them?

>>3770834 (OP)
because it's a shit system usually amounting to 'save puppy' vs 'kill puppy' and everyone's over it by now

>>3770834 (OP)
Because real people don't have alignments.

>>3770834 (OP)
Because it's hard to implement it in a balanced way, I guess

It's hard to implement it in a way where taking the "bad" alignment isn't boring as fuck.

MY question is why there's no modern RPG that doesn't take itself seriously but doesn't go full obnoxious about it. That's what let the Fable alignment work - yes it was pure goodness or literal puppy-kicking, but that was the point, the game made that kind of funny, but it also wasn't trying to be some smug commentary on alignment systems. Its humor in general, crude and lame as it was sometimes, was at least earnest, and nowadays it feels like it's either dead serious or hurr durr full comedy.

>>3770880
Fable worked because of the British sense of humor of the people involved. The brits always had a think for cheeky humor in serious settings and usually can pull it of quite nice. Don't know why might just be a cultural thing but back in the States the humor usually interrupts the situation which can work well but often falls flat.

>>3770834 (OP)
Because “modern” RPG’s are uncomfortable with clear cut definable standards of morality and would rather have their writing team lecture you about why the monsters are just misunderstood and you should feel bad for creatures who don’t have the capacity for remorse.

>>3770842
Literally this

>game gives you choices that make you think for a bit and use your best judgment
>fuck all that, i'll just pick the obvious good/bad choice everytime because that's the kind of character i'm playing :VVV
it's retarded, that's why. but people are retards, so it's not surprising they like this kind of shit. so many people were upset by Wasteland 3 because it didn't include many choices with obvious best outcomes. turns out these fags don't want to make choices, they just want to "win" at the game.

In addition to the points raised here, in a game with voice acting and more cut scenes than gameplay, adding alternate pathways is very expensive.

I chose to save my dog in fable 2 and I regret nothing

>>3771057
>Because “modern” RPG’s are uncomfortable with clear cut definable standards of morality and would rather have their writing team lecture you about why the monsters are just misunderstood and you should feel bad for creatures who don’t have the capacity for remorse.
/thread

>>3770834 (OP)
Because the reality is unless you put a tangible reward behind doing so, most people just really don't like choosing to be an asshole.

>>3771048
See also the Overlord games. Being written by Terry Pratchett's daughter helped, you can tell her dad's writing rubbed off on her.

What I'm curious about is why do so many games use only good/evil dichotomy for alignments? Personally, I'd like to see more games implementing more diverse alignments and philosophies to follow, like in SMT. Now, yes, a lot of the time choosing between Law and Chaos IS tantamount to choosing between good and evil, but I'm talking about something akin to Reasons from Nocturne, only for them to not be relegated to few choices that determine the ending. That's another thing about the alignment system — it barely impacts the story or has any meaningful consequences outside of some item and companion restrictions. It would be nice to see them be more interwoven with the overall narrative and the world. It's almost as if RPGs, despite the RP part, are more commonly than not afraid to have any choice that is truly impactful and meaningful and isn't there just for flavor.

>>3770842
fpbp

Not a modern game, but I thought Jade Empire did this pretty well.

While closed/open fist were basically evil/good, there are some notable instances where closed fist in particular felt different than the normal puppy kicking and actually made good use of the setting.

>>3770842
I attribute this entirely to the console-fication of RPGs.
If alignments became a mechanic just 2-4 years prior we could've had something really cool. Now they're forever burned by incompetent console devs.

>>3770834 (OP)
That's the quintessential "white dude" protagonist face.
Kino.

>>3772166
Because there is only the good and the move away form the good.

>>3771057
This.

>>3770843
There is definitely a lot of evil people.

>>3770878
That isn't an alignment problem; that is evil playthrough problem in general. Most games w/o alignment make everyone treat the main character the same regardless how evil they act. The problem is game devs aren't willing to make the game unplayable for the player acting like an evil retard.

>>3770834 (OP)
Because if decisions lock you onto a "route" they are not real choices making them boring. Bioware style is worst at this where you are not engaging in dialogue, you're just filling up a meter by clicking the right color.

>>3775725
>Because if decisions have consequences, they are not real choices making them boring.
I don't understand this logic.

>>3770834 (OP)
>playing game for first time
>put on helmet when I'm clearly teenager
>wear it for a good chunk of the game
>forcibly removed for a cutscene
>suddenly I'm old as shit while nobody else has aged and maybe 3 weeks have passed in game

The aging system was genuinely baffling. Of all the things they dropped and kept it, they kept this nonsensical shit in game?

>>3774708
>If alignments became a mechanic just 2-4 years prior we could've had something really cool.
Prior to what?

>>3770834 (OP)
boring and backward slop made by clueless developers and pushed as a gimmick by clueless execs, zero real benefits and usually detrimental to the overall experience

>>3772166
>use only good/evil dichotomy for alignments?
people who play videogames are drooling retards so you have to cater to them

I miss Peter Molyneux. Yeah he was an autistic retard who always overhyped his own games and promised all kinds of wild bullshit he couldn't deliver on, but all his games had a definite sense of charm and originality. But ever since he started his own company and no longer had any corporate tard wranglers surrounding him to keep him focused on the job he's made nothing but shovelware garbage.

Indie development is very much a double-edged sword in this regard. Some developers thrive when they can just do whatever they want without some corporate leeches looking over their shoulders and pushing bullshit expectations on them, while others just completely shit themselves when left to their own devices.

>>3770834 (OP)
>smug ass old guy
I will never understand this decision. Evil even gets an extra face.

>>3770843

>>3776092
I noticed that, too.

>>3770834 (OP)
The greatest stories feature anti-heroes

>>3770834 (OP)
end times. everyone is neutral except good guys who are now villains and vice versa

>>3776328
>Macbeth
>anti-hero
When has this guy ever done anything heroic in the play?

Because it's not fun to make tough more decisions with uncertain consequences. I hated that about the Witcher series. It always made want to reload.

>>3772166
Been working on a game with a different system and the short answer is: Branching content really, really hard.
You're committing large chunks of your budget to things most players will never see and they will still feel restricted at one point or another. When you are a professional studio with millions on the line it's just a better deal to invest in one good story.

I agree that good vs. evil is too little. My game uses three alignments, not because I think it's much better but because it's the bare minimum and solo devs can't be picky. The alignments are valuing ideals, community or personal desires and can still be mapped to good vs. evil if you try. I simply don't have the ressurces to cover absolutely everything.
What I learned early on is to shift a lot of the choice inside the player character's head: Making the world react is very expensive, making one or two characters react is cheap. You can add a lot of choices that are mostly inconsequential but accumulate at certain breaking points where you put your budget. Often the immediate change is just some different lines or which character gets more screentime, but those set up your payoffs.
An example companion questline:

>young squire, fighter class
>believes in chivalric ideals
>from a noble family now impoverished and disgraced
>on quest to restore honor of the house
>during game, meet various asshole/corrupt nobles
>ultimately discover that own house was as bad as rumours say

Ending changes based on player's behavior:
>reinforced ideals
Learns that honor is within, not the recognition of others. Upgrades to Paladin

>emphasized ordinary people over the elites
Frees themselves of family obligations and pursues personal happiness. Upgrades to Bard.

>player just as corrupt as the rest
Mindbreaks, tries to soothe despair with material wealth. Upgrades to Barbarian.


Repeat that for every companion, have them talk to each other pushing their own values and I hope that makes for a good adventure.

>>3775780
When every dialog intends for you to pick the blue option or the red option to fill up your color meter to get the blue ending or the red ending that isn't C&C. Real C&C is the decisions you make having impacts on characters, factions and the world, each worthy and intended to be assessed individually, and you pick the choice based on what you want or what the character you're RPing as wants.

>>3778861
This is why it works in fable, the story is still the same however you play. Each morale decision is an independent action with no bearing on the next which allows the player to freely apply their own morale compass to the situation at hand:
You can spare whisper, sacrifice a dozen handmaidens at the Chapel of Skorm, donate your riches in the temple of Avo, beat up a hobo and none of it has any bearing on the final choice given to you at the end of the game.

Contrast this with bioslop which punishes a player for not sticking to a single road.

>>3770834 (OP)
I suppose it's a way to encourage actual role-playing, albeit on the most retarded level.

>>3770834 (OP)
I’d say fable does alignment better than most RPGs even if scuffed.

>>3778861
>When every dialog intends for you to pick the blue option or the red option to fill up your color meter to get the blue ending or the red ending that isn't C&C.
That is so far away from what you said.
>Real C&C is the decisions you make having impacts on characters, factions and the world, each worthy and intended to be assessed individually,
>piss off faction A
>you are forced to side with faction B to finish the main quest
>piss off faction B
>you are fucked the game becomes unfinishable
You are locked to a route.

>>3779039
>Bethesdrone calls able to switch the character's personality on the dime to get the best quest rewards "Roleplaying" but calls wanting stats and builds to matter "Powergaming"

>>3780438
>Bethesdrone
>Powergaming
>Neither has been mentioned outside of this post.
You need to calm your insecurities, we're talking about Fable.

>>3770834 (OP)
Most modern RPGs are, in business terms, "minimum viable products": in plain english, that means the whole dev plan is to cheap out as much as possible as long as this doesn't result in a flop.
Alignment systems require way too much skill and testing and tinkering for this kind of scheme, better copypaste in the usual randomized loot system with riveting modifiers such as +2% fire damage when at low health during night time.

>>3780453
The align system in Spider-Man web of shadows was pretty good as the choices were pretty good.

>>3780446
Nobody takes Fable seriously. I was talking about the general /vrpg/ concept of roleplaying which makes RPGs impossible to actually define.

>>3780453
>Alignment systems require way too much skill
It seems like it just requires consistent writing not type that labels psychopathic threats as "Sarcastic remarks".

>>3780806
>Nobody takes Fable seriously. I was talking about the general /vrpg/ concept of roleplaying which makes RPGs impossible to actually define.
Right, because all the people wanting to discuss it simply don't matter next to your preference.

>>3780809
Fable has a famously retarded alignment system which is the justification a lot of people use for ditching the alignment system altogether. It is the same way Bethesda justify removing mechanics by really poorly implementing them last time. Fable 3 has a criminally retarded inventory system but most people just treat it like a mild annoyance.

>>3780814
>Fable 3 has a criminally retarded inventory system but most people just treat it like a mild annoyance.
You think that's bad, you should play-through mass effect. The writing on that went full retard by the third. People regularly complain about the ending but the games flat-lined in the second. The real problem is one of sunken costs, the prevailing hope was the 3rd would would redeem the second but it never picked up the ball.

fable was actually fun. i think its more of an issue with motivation. modern game and screen writers are trash. we’ve had decades of save the world, save the galaxy, save your friends because you’re the good guy. but i agree alignment is basically pointless. if you’re a paladin who always does the write thing. there’s no moral dilemma you always do the write thing because that’s your character. even if no one is around to see you do something bad. if you’re role playing a bad dude the writers have to give you motivation and choices related to being a bad dude. but there’s no fucking point to middle of the road shit. If you do some bad things and some good things there’s no consequences. Like if you’re completely neutral or even chaotic neutral there’s really no motivation or reward that would move the story along imho.

>>3781158
>>3781182
First, I didn't say people didn't care about Fable. I said that nobody takes Fable seriously. Fable wanted to do both a highly systematic & story based system. Mass Effect was mostly really badly written. They try sell the idea that Paragon and Renegade aren't just good and evil but fail. In Fable, even stupid shit like what food you eat can affects your alignment. Divorce give you more negative karma than killing your wife. Admittedly eating live chicks would make you a worse person but it is more like a joke.

Alignment and Factions are very similar mechanics that more or less serve the same purpose. While people are more accepting of faction since it is more indirect, people are still ruining the faction system with the Bethesdrone mindset. Why give you the option to kill random NPCs while making a handful essential NPCs? It is designed for low impulse 14yearolds. The point of alignments & factions is to keep the players in the mindset of an RPG. Before RPGs became theaterkid improv comedy, roleplaying wasn't just "the game is too fucking easy so I handicap myself".
Bethesdrones believe joining every faction and getting the best reward by opportunistically switching from good and evil is roleplaying while actually exploiting the poorly designed game is powergaming. >>3775621

>>3781450
>stupid shit like what food you eat can affects your alignment.
>Admittedly eating live chicks would make you a worse person but it is more like a joke.
And therein is the magic you're missing. Fable doesn't try to take itself too seriously for the most part. Bertheslop and Bioslop are both trying to gather the "epic story" crowd.

>ruining the faction system with the Bethesdrone mindset. Why give you the option to kill random NPCs while making a handful essential NPCs?
I'm confused, are you talking morrowind or skyrim, they handle essential npcs in completely different ways.

Devil Survivor 2 did it the best. No one single dichotomy of good or evil, just several points of view with the will to enforce your way of life.

>>3780438
>>3781450
>spews shit about powergaming in a fable thread when nobody has mentioned it
>quotes a two week old thread from the archives that doesn't mention fable in order to justify himself

Fable 2 is the best in the series.

Because faggots like more to have a game that lets them be pieces of shit without being called out for it, otherwise they will feel psychologically obliged to be good or be punished.
This is why games these days will try a different approach such as reputation, not implementing it at all, affinity and such.

>>3784494
Holy projection

>>3770834 (OP)
Fable 2 marketing about their morality system very funny in hindsight. "You can be good AND fat, bad AND evil". Truly, The mind boggles.

>>3785030
Should read Bad AND Attractive but whatever, point stands. Anyway, not terribly sad about lack of good-bad in game dial. Morality socially contested, unsettled. If game has good bad binary system, will either be orphan hugging v chicken stomping (funny but childish), or contingent on the developers social mileu (very possibly worse).

>>3776045
he's the opposite of autistic, which was his biggest weakness

>>3770834 (OP)

>Why don't more modern RPGs have actual alignment systems in them?

Leftists realized that a lot of the things they support philosophically politically and economically turn out to be actually cruel and/or evil in their real world implementations. Therefore leftist historians, thought-leaders,academics etc. decided that terms like "good" and "evil" are not valid ways of viewing the world. This line of thinking eventually filtered through to leftist creators and their creations, and thus we have this endless series of thin, boring, character driven, morally gray, narratives throughout all of popular fiction. They are peppered with (sometimes thinly disguised) throwbacks to contemporary political and cultural issues as stand-ins for good and evil.

The grand narrative of obvious good triumphing over obvious evil isn't considered complex enough any more. E.g.: the church is evil, the "good" king who inspires valor and heroism from his champions secretly approves pogroms, etc. So it's usually some mix of "me and my friends somehow manage to do what we want" or "me and my friends manage to survive". An GNE alignment isn't of much use here as the narratives are character driven and usually rely on characters acting out character as "unpredictable" twists as a matter of routine to drive the story forward. Basically all the characters and entities are chaotic neutrals anyway, and a PC alignment would only serve the story in a shallow fashion - an ending twist, a different spell set, or some slightly differing npc interactions. Etc.

Too much squeeze not enough juice.

>>3776328
>Wants to mete out justice. In other words, wants to be a hero.
>Refuses to acknowledge it. "I'm no hero," mutters the arshittype in dark and broody tones.
>Gets a pass for it.
Has there ever been a more faggotted concept? Not even the white knight compares. But it figures. An anti something or another is bound to be retarded.

>>3784494
>>3785097
Alignment and faction reputation basically provides similar functions. In a TRPG, the DM is supposed to punish players who act outside their alignment because it is breaking character. A difference in how most CRPGs handle it by making your character start at Neutral. Most people prefer factions over alignment because it is less abstract and more consequential. Greyness is thought-terminating cliché. Every attempt to complicate alignment fails. The 3x3 grid of D&D is fine. People are just scared of using the word evil.

>>3781686
>I'm confused, are you talking morrowind or skyrim, they handle essential npcs in completely different ways.
Morrowind gives a gentle reminder that game might be unplayable. Skyrim makes a large population of characters unkillable regardless if they are important to the main quest.

I get that it would be stupid to make a random hostile bandit leader be an important character in the main quest but essential NPCs are usually characters that a normal player wouldn't randomly kill. Even then it is immersion breaking. An alignment system would be out of place in something like Doom where you are supposed to kill everyone. I don't think that RPGs should try to force the narrative to work despite your character acting like a violent retard. Underrail which has adopts a mostly no alignment system has things called Control Zones to keep the player in line.

>>3785463
>Morrowind gives a gentle reminder that game might be unplayable. Skyrim makes a large population of characters unkillable regardless if they are important to the main quest.
I'm aware of the difference, but when [you] bring up "the Bethesdrone mindset" [you] need to be specific because they've tried and used multiple systems in their history.

>Why give you the option to kill random NPCs while making a handful essential NPCs?
It's an ambiguous prepositional phrase that can be interpreted as the essential NPCs being either, inclusive, or exclusive, of the random NPCs that one can murder.

>>3770834 (OP)
Fable is one of my favourite games (mostly because of nostalgia, but still), but this shitty thing right here triggers me so much, it seriously shouldn't exist.
The whole point was to give the player a choice between your sisters life or power, but then they fucking ruined it with "We didn't want to disadvantage good alignment players".
Fucking bunch of geniuses, that was the whole damn point and it's not like Fable has a shortage of other good weapons.
They made a fucking game about "meaningful" decisions, then removed one of two actually meaningful decisions in the game. The other is whether to fuck Lady Grey or not.

Thanks for reading my blog post.

>>3785626
Bethesda is moving in a trend and it isn't to a more consequence based design. Killing everyone in town is just a novelty run. Most early CRPGs either don't give you the option or just let you live with consequences. Even New Vegas has to contrive a narrative which gives you a failsafe option with Yesman. The worst of all is FO4 which had all of the Minutemen be marked as essential. Going around killing everyone should be a sign that you don't care about the narrative yet the game evidentially designed for 14yearolds with all of the voiced profanities as names Cogsworth and only Cogsworth would say.

VTM:B has the masquerade violation system & the humanity system. Both are integral to the setting and encourages players to act like vampires.

>>3785635
It was going with the "how does it make you feel at the time" mentality which is also used in Telltale and Bioshock. There is even the update to get your dog back despite making the good choice.
>Bioshock: Infinite lets you choose to throw a tomato at the interracial couple or the police but stops you from doing either.

>>3785088
A lot of his ideas are shallow and poorly thought out. Remember the Cube?

>>3770843
Irrelevant

>>3770834 (OP)
Because for nearly all games you only get reward for full evil or full good, so there is no choice but keep doubling down on whatever you picked first.

>>3770834 (OP)
Because it dumbs things down into saturday morning cartoon tier good & evil shit.

>>3771057
You don't have to be woke to find the DnD alignment system boring and overly simplistic. Framing everything as a culture war dialectic is extremely low IQ behavior - please grow up as a person and start having your own original thoughts.

>>3790646
Calling a wolf eating all the sheep in their pen out of instincts boring and simplistic and blatant disrespect towards the wolf and its nature.

>>3770834 (OP)
Because it's one of the worst gamified things in video games?
Nobody acts based on some arbitrary alignment system.
At least they shouldn't in a game meant for adults.

>>3791327
What an incredibly low effort argument to make
There are many more elements to D&D alignments than certain creatures being always evil, and therein the true boredom and oversimplification lie

>>3791341
>Because it's one of the worst gamified things in video games?
>Nobody acts based on some arbitrary alignment system.
>At least they shouldn't in a game meant for adults.
>saying this 2025

>>3791327
Don't care. Sheep friend. Wolf enemy. I don't care what you call it.

>>3770834 (OP)
Literally everyone that played Fable over the age of 10 thought it was fathomlessly retarded

>>3785097
How retarded do you have to be to think leftists aren't utterly moralistic

>>3791382
Nah. Stop trying so hard.

>>3785463
>>3771057
>The 3x3 grid of D&D is fine
No it's fucking not. It's stupid, it's been stupid, and everyone in the actual tabletop space has realised that even though DnD-esque games sometimes cling to it (and even THEY have made it vestigial).

Alignment is a shitty mechanic and it's shitty worldbuilding. I don't understand why everyone on this board hero worships Gygax and treats ADnD as this "pure" RPG ideal to be strived to rather than games moving on and finding their identity. Every single time a tabletop mechanic gets mentioned on this board you pricks have zero idea what you're talking about, without fail, because "Old game = DnD based that means DnD good!!!". If I repeated half of what was said here on /tg/ I'd be permabanned for being so unspeakably fucking stupid.

>>3791349
>There are many more elements to D&D alignments than certain creatures being always evil, and therein the true boredom and oversimplification lie
True. Sometimes, as in real life, they’re also chaotic as well. Calling them merely evil is an oversimplification.

>>3771057
If RPGs now had you sparing a tribe of trolls as evil now that would be interesting. Especially if they did the misunderstood framing and said "Well destroying villages is their culture and we have to accept it" -100 alignment

>>3771589
You also save your childhood friend with that choice. I find that one to be the most moral choice of the 3.

>>3791383
NTA but the Left has always championed the greater evil to fight against the "lesser evil". This is why they mostly identify with evil and hyperfocus on the "moral flaws" of the traditional good guys.

>>3791349
Your complaint doesn't require any effort to respond to it.

>>3770834 (OP)
almost all the newer DnD games do?

>>3776045
>But ever since he started his own company and no longer had any corporate tard wranglers surrounding him to keep him focused on the job he's made nothing but shovelware garbage.

pay to win and pay for "stamina"/turns garbage. he just showed his true colours. maybe the real proggers and corpos are the real heroes?

>>3791359
>he identifies with the sheep, and not the wolves

>>3791986
No, DnD has moved away from alignment because the concept of objective morality makes them feel bad. Same with moving away from races having different stat modifiers, because the concept of race being real and having tangible biological effects makes them feel bad.

>>3792026
>DnD has moved away from alignment because the concept of objective morality makes them feel bad.
That's not quite true, it's a marketing thing wherein they do not want to alienate their playerbase. Their fanbase has moved away from the typically bullied nerd where there's a clear line between what they see as right and wrong (good vs. evil if you will), to, well for lack of a better word anti-fa wherein they can behave in a morally deplorable way while attempt to claim to be morally in the right. DnD players never used to be so eager to go murder hobo, but today it is an expected norm.

You can also argue it extends back to a certain drow and how it popularized the 'evil race but good nature archetype' that players started to fawn over. But that again goes back to good marketing.

>>3792023
Everyone who self-identifies himself as a "wolf" is a total fucking clown.

>>3792026
Oh come off it already. I despise the abject retardation of modern changes (especially the pants-on-head shit they did to certain races like the drow) but not only was alignment on its way out before most of those, but it was despised by MANY players, DMs, and D&D developers/writers for decades. I don't know what's with the weird revisionism and trying to force one single possible reason for wanting to change it.

>>3792049
It isn't because of Drizz't. All those guys take ques from vtubers who have turned the DnD make believe side into a visible show. They have established a lot of things that has skewed people's perception of how a game should go for better and worse.

>>3792026
>because the concept of race being real and having tangible biological effects makes them feel bad.
Yet the one thing that they never address is the lifespan difference.

>>3792023
They are animals. I don't care about their philosophical justification. Wolves are enemies. "Good" wolves are dogs; dogs are friends. Wolves are extinct in many parts of the world while dogs are everywhere. Wolves are kept in zoos because we got rid most of them. What kind of faggot identifies as a wolf?

>>3770842
every fucking time
retarded devs make the 'evil' path the 'randumb murderous sociopath' path, then wonder why everyone picks the 'good' path instead
where's the nuance? let me be absolutely wonderful to my friends and horrifyingly cruel to my enemies
or a scheming, machiavellan bastard
or put all morality to the side in the name of vengeance
or follow alien gods with doctrine utterly incompatible with civilised society
or thoroughly abuse whatever authority and power i have
or be a simple, petty small-time bully
or be a p*litician
etc etc
anything but fucking "durr me no like you, me kill you" low-effort slop

>>3792590
It's a vicious cycle. They reason that, since nobody plays the evil path, there's no point in putting any real effort into it or locking worthwhile content/rewards behind it... which ensures nobody will play it, because it fucking sucks and the payoff sucks too.
It's fucking wild how few games have playing an absolute bastard seem even decently reasonable (while still being clearly immoral), and most of those intentionally divest themselves of the dichotomy. I guess even though it boils down to the same thing, just not HAVING to divide what they write into good and evil or equivalents somehow makes writers not shit the bed as hard.
Even when it does happen, it's often just flashes of quality amidst the usual bullshit. Take KOTOR 2 for instance. In the middle of a game filled with the usual 'Dark Side = absolute dipshit' you have moments like the ability to demand a planet send ALL of their Force Sensitives, current and future, to you for training in return for your saving them from certain doom. Now THAT is a power move, not "hurr gimme moni". Sure it was pure flavor, as it fell outside of the scope of the game, but it hardly matters. Flavor options are fine to add characterization, and just having that option made for a better show than most games even bother with.
Of course it just made all the full retard DS options elsewhere seem even worse but what are you gonna do.