Should alignments be purged from all RPGs or are they a useful thing to keep around for whatever reason?

Should alignments be purged from all RPGs or are they a useful thing to keep around for whatever reason?

Alignments used to be all right back when they just denoted what team you were playing in. Later they were turned into personality tests, which they still are in most games, and that's the root of the problem because they're far too shallow to tell your personality and yet restrict your actions in the exactly right places - like a pair of too large trousers that nonetheless itch in your crack and squeeze at your balls.

Ditch the good-evil axis entirely, keep the law-chaos one to maintain the party relationship with higher powers, and you could get a decent Sword & Sorcery campaign about it. Otherwise, avoid.

They exist for the games that are built for them to be around.
Shoehorning them into where they do not go, making them something they pointedly are not, or trying to ruleslawyer your way around them, are the only actual problems.

They're moderately useful to show a character's temperament at a glance, but beyond that I don't really like them.

Ditch nine-point, use MTG color alignment. Less restrictive, more descriptive.

I don't much care about them the majority of the time, and I'm relatively casual about it. When I run D&D alignments are a quick note of someone's character, and used for a few magical items. If someone acts outside their alignment consistently I tell them to change it and deal with the repercussions of magical items maybe not working or spells affecting them differently. If they can't deal with that they shouldn't have picked that alignment in the first place. I'm tempted to dock exp for it occasionally, but that's more to do with it being bad RP than it being an alignment change, I'm a huge supporter of alignment change through character development, just not 'Nah, can't be arsed with actually playing this character'.

I don't care about what a Paladin, Cleric, or Warlock, or Druid does as long as it falls within the realms of what the provider of their powers would either approve of or not care about. If a Cleric of a Nature God goes about burning forests they're losing their powers, not because of alignment but because they're dicking over their god's sphere of influence.

Also, alignment charts are utter shite.

But then it just gets confusing when you have a character containing enemy colors. Might as well just use, you know, sentences to describe their beliefs.

They are completely useless.

The color pie is just as subjective as any alignment grid.

For example, answer this question:
>What color or color combination is Batman?

What "enemy" colors? Every color on the pie can just as easily be described as Evil as well as good. That's the point. Even black can have its good points, representing pride and dedication to achievement. It's better as a personality descriptor than a hard alignment decision anyway, and it's easier to view it as such.

Is he standing next to Superman or not?
I'd probably say Jeskai off the top of my head.