Well, a global change to a system that have worked one way for 30 years will most likely come with unforseen side-effects. Changing the way EQ saves introduced various (mostly minor) issues and bugs that we had not thought of (and we had thought of quite a few), so changing the alignment system will likely mean some unforseen things too. I was asking you players, if there is something you can think of that would happen, that we have not thought of.Thalric wrote: ↑02 Jan 2021 13:56What kind of side-effects can there be about making alignment equally easy or hard to achieve for both good and evil???Cherek wrote: ↑31 Dec 2020 17:18It's been discussed many times. I think we were pretty close to making a change a while ago, but, for some reason this suggestion was iced for a while. I don't remember exactly why, but I guess something else got in the way.
In my opinion, it would be good for game balance if going from good to evil, and from evil to good, took the same amount of time and worked the same way. Thematically/logically, the current system makes sense of course. Once you start murdering innocent people you become evil quickly, while it takes much longer to redeem yourself and become good. But to better balance good/evil in Genesis, it would likely be better if it is the same both ways.
It's definitely still a possibility, question is, what kind of negative side-effects have we not thought about?
Nothing!!
Evil players having to think about if they kill evil stuff for too long? Ohh the horror!
I am sure it will be really hard for them! Or imagine the hardship they will have when some goodies come and take some of their ents, kabal guards or centaurs from them!
I am sure they will all drop dead and die from lack of npc's to kill...
Or perhaps being evil while growing will just stop being such a huge added benefit.
Yes, huge side-effect that! We better not do it!
One thing I can think of is that if we make it slower for goodies to drop in align, it will be easier for them to sidestep their theme expected RP-style. If it takes 10 kills to drop from holy to blessed instead of 1, goodie guilds will be able to kill a lot more good NPCs without technically being penalized by their guild. What effects will that have on the goodie guilds? Do we need to make changes to any guild for them to keep their "goodie" nature?
If we go the other route, and make it much quicker to go from damned to neutral, what effect will that have on the evil guilds? It will likely be a pretty big nerf for them, so that has to be considered as well. I do believe things should be more equal than they are now, and evil players do have it easier than goodies due to the current alignment system, but if there is a way we can make things equal _without_ angering half the playerbase, that's obviously the best solution.
So, which "scale" would you prefer we pick? Should it become much easier for evils to go from damned to neutral? Or should it become harder for goodies to go from holy to neutral? Or a mix of both?