Alignment

[Redblade]

If we want to even things out, I think the easiest and most fair solution is to make it really quick to go from damned to neutral if you kill evil stuff, and equally quick to go from holy to neutral if you kill good stuff. Most evil guilds don't let you be more good than neutral, and if the path to neutral is very quick, we don't have to change any guilds, because then evils wont realistically be able to grind in goodie grinders, and vice versa. So, it's now fair. Depending on how many grinders we have for each align of course... and... neutral players/guilds will still have the biggest benefit of course. Actually, their relative benefit will now be even bigger, since both goodies AND evils will be at a disadvatage compared to neutrals when it comes to grinding, as they will be the only ones who can grind anywhere. So, we still have that problem...

Give the neutrals a bigger tax? That seems to be the ultimate solution and explanation that I've so far heard from many immortals repeatedly (no flames)

[Nerull]

Cherek metions one point that matters a lot: Distribution of grinders. At higher end, if I recall correctly, most of the areas with highest xp footprint are neutral or good aligned. Locking evil out of some of these may require development of new evil only grinders to balance it out, unless we want Fangorn and Qualinesti to be overcamped/overpopulated due to lack of options.

Isn't the problem primarily on low or intermediate levels for good aligned when it comes to growth, and not endgame content?

[Cherek]

Cherek metions one point that matters a lot: Distribution of grinders. At higher end, if I recall correctly, most of the areas with highest xp footprint are neutral or good aligned. Locking evil out of some of these may require development of new evil only grinders to balance it out, unless we want Fangorn and Qualinesti to be overcamped/overpopulated due to lack of options.

Isn't the problem primarily on low or intermediate levels for good aligned when it comes to growth, and not endgame content?

Yes, like I mentioned before, there will be a number side effects to an alignment system change. Probably including some we haven't even thought about. And yeah, If evils are locked out from too many areas after a change, it suddenly becomes imbalanced the other way around instead. So, that has to be considered as well before we do something.

In my opinion the main grinding problem for goodies is at rising hero-champion range. There are plenty of really good grinding spots for evil players at those mortal levels, but few for goodies. The upgrade to Trollshaws has helped, though.

[Redblade]

Slight flames: Well naturally you have more evil grinders when you look at the current good-evil balance. (yeah, let's not get into that here, if you want to elaborate, start a new thread). I mean, why do it the hard way, right?

[Thalric]

Cherek metions one point that matters a lot: Distribution of grinders. At higher end, if I recall correctly, most of the areas with highest xp footprint are neutral or good aligned. Locking evil out of some of these may require development of new evil only grinders to balance it out, unless we want Fangorn and Qualinesti to be overcamped/overpopulated due to lack of options.

Isn't the problem primarily on low or intermediate levels for good aligned when it comes to growth, and not endgame content?

How can it suddenly become a problem that fangorn and qualinesti becomes available to more people?
Evils will begin to complain they're not so entitled/lucky anymore?

[Chanele]

Just dont do any changes in a rush, changes to alignment system will have a huge impact to the game.

The loud mouths in here should focus on the problem at hand, aka their own guilds, not the alignment system. The biggest problem is at mid levels, we should add/boost some xp grounds for goodies equal to Kabal, Drakmere, Kalaman, centaurs etc.

[Nerull]

Cherek metions one point that matters a lot: Distribution of grinders. At higher end, if I recall correctly, most of the areas with highest xp footprint are neutral or good aligned. Locking evil out of some of these may require development of new evil only grinders to balance it out, unless we want Fangorn and Qualinesti to be overcamped/overpopulated due to lack of options.

Isn't the problem primarily on low or intermediate levels for good aligned when it comes to growth, and not endgame content?

How can it suddenly become a problem that fangorn and qualinesti becomes available to more people?
Evils will begin to complain they're not so entitled/lucky anymore?

Fangorn and Qualinesty are already available for the target group. The difference is that they can also utilize the other grinders, which means the xp pressure is divided or more spread out. By locking them only to for example Fangorn and Qualinesty would mean a grinding halt to general growth because of the limited xp footprint these areas give, which necessitates player stagnation / player number culling until numbers are sufficiently low enough to warrant time spent playing / growth rate normalizes. How many myths and supermyths do you think those 2 areas can sustain?

An analogy in regards to available xp footprint would be something like this: 10 sup guru herbalists that requires y herbs / hour to make it worthwhile / playable, divided on 20 (or x) areas that contains 3 (or z) herbs each, of which each resets after an hour (or zz). So, when you spend majority of your playtime just searching, and progression / number of herbs drops below a certain threshold, the odds for players quitting / going somewhere else, start to increase. The trend often continues until there are few enough players to make it worthwhile.

It is not unreasonable to expect that people spending x hours in a game to gain some returns/progression for their time spent, especially on necessary but repetative tasks, else, their incentives to remain playing probably drops drastically.

If we want to improve Genesis for all its players, we must strive to ensure that every step is playable for all factions, and not just for a few or certain factions. Yes, even the High end, or End game content (which isn't really the problem here).

[Thalric]

Cherek metions one point that matters a lot: Distribution of grinders. At higher end, if I recall correctly, most of the areas with highest xp footprint are neutral or good aligned. Locking evil out of some of these may require development of new evil only grinders to balance it out, unless we want Fangorn and Qualinesti to be overcamped/overpopulated due to lack of options.

Isn't the problem primarily on low or intermediate levels for good aligned when it comes to growth, and not endgame content?

How can it suddenly become a problem that fangorn and qualinesti becomes available to more people?
Evils will begin to complain they're not so entitled/lucky anymore?

Fangorn and Qualinesty are already available for the target group. The difference is that they can also utilize the other grinders, which means the xp pressure is divided or more spread out. By locking them only to for example Fangorn and Qualinesty would mean a grinding halt to general growth because of the limited xp footprint these areas give, which necessitates player stagnation / player number culling until numbers are sufficiently low enough to warrant time spent playing / growth rate normalizes. How many myths and supermyths do you think those 2 areas can sustain?

An analogy in regards to available xp footprint would be something like this: 10 sup guru herbalists that requires y herbs / hour to make it worthwhile / playable, divided on 20 (or x) areas that contains 3 (or z) herbs each, of which each resets after an hour (or zz). So, when you spend majority of your playtime just searching, and progression / number of herbs drops below a certain threshold, the odds for players quitting / going somewhere else, start to increase. The trend often continues until there are few enough players to make it worthwhile.

It is not unreasonable to expect that people spending x hours in a game to gain some returns/progression for their time spent, especially on necessary but repetative tasks, else, their incentives to remain playing probably drops drastically.

If we want to improve Genesis for all its players, we must strive to ensure that every step is playable for all factions, and not just for a few or certain factions. Yes, even the High end, or End game content (which isn't really the problem here).

It really looks to me that you're speaking from the same point of view as Chanele.
"Don't make it any harder for evils, because we like to have it easy".

Of course Chanele don't want things to change, because that means she would have to move out of Terel/Sybarus more often to fix her alignment.

And what you say, Nerull, simply doesn't make sense.
What is the target group for Qualinost and Fangorn? Huge evil players?
What is the target hunting grounds for the huge good players? Nothing?
Because ALL the other places make you so little evil that evils have no issue hunting there either.
And if they do go a bit below damned after several hours grind, they can visit some tiny hobgoblins in Sybarus or spend 8 minutes in Kalaman.

Also, you don't say what the issue is with opening Qualinost and Fangorn for others is.
You just say that because of that there are not enough grind spots, all of a sudden? As if the others will magically disappear..

I am not saying that you should make everything super damned. I am saying that it should be equally hard to go from evil to good, as it is from good to evil.
If that then is supposed to go really fast or really slow doesn't matter. But it ought to be the same!

[Dan]

If evils gets it as hard as goodie, the evil and goodie playerbase would end up stay in their own areas, and would rarely meet/skirmish have conflicts arise, making the game dull and boring.

Suggestion to make it evenly hard for goodies to become neutral as it is for evils to go neutral would ensure that people would meet and conflicts/interactions would arise everywhere in the game.

Hence I suggest making goodies drop as slowly as evils is the superior solution over making it 'harder' for evils, make it even for goodies instead - and e.g. kabal why not make all the guards near neutral ?

Everytime an evil npc xp area is out there, they get nerfed to near neutral - do the same for goodie npcs, nerf them to near neutral so that all can xp anywhere they roleplaying wise feels comfortable with.

Why would it be bad for a knight to slay kabal who is racist supremacists? ridding it for their vile methods ?

[Nerull]

How can it suddenly become a problem that fangorn and qualinesti becomes available to more people?
Evils will begin to complain they're not so entitled/lucky anymore?

Fangorn and Qualinesty are already available for the target group. The difference is that they can also utilize the other grinders, which means the xp pressure is divided or more spread out. By locking them only to for example Fangorn and Qualinesty would mean a grinding halt to general growth because of the limited xp footprint these areas give, which necessitates player stagnation / player number culling until numbers are sufficiently low enough to warrant time spent playing / growth rate normalizes. How many myths and supermyths do you think those 2 areas can sustain?

An analogy in regards to available xp footprint would be something like this: 10 sup guru herbalists that requires y herbs / hour to make it worthwhile / playable, divided on 20 (or x) areas that contains 3 (or z) herbs each, of which each resets after an hour (or zz). So, when you spend majority of your playtime just searching, and progression / number of herbs drops below a certain threshold, the odds for players quitting / going somewhere else, start to increase. The trend often continues until there are few enough players to make it worthwhile.

It is not unreasonable to expect that people spending x hours in a game to gain some returns/progression for their time spent, especially on necessary but repetative tasks, else, their incentives to remain playing probably drops drastically.

If we want to improve Genesis for all its players, we must strive to ensure that every step is playable for all factions, and not just for a few or certain factions. Yes, even the High end, or End game content (which isn't really the problem here).

It really looks to me that you're speaking from the same point of view as Chanele.
"Don't make it any harder for evils, because we like to have it easy".

Of course Chanele don't want things to change, because that means she would have to move out of Terel/Sybarus more often to fix her alignment.

And what you say, Nerull, simply doesn't make sense.
What is the target group for Qualinost and Fangorn? Huge evil players?
What is the target hunting grounds for the huge good players? Nothing?
Because ALL the other places make you so little evil that evils have no issue hunting there either.
And if they do go a bit below damned after several hours grind, they can visit some tiny hobgoblins in Sybarus or spend 8 minutes in Kalaman.

Also, you don't say what the issue is with opening Qualinost and Fangorn for others is.
You just say that because of that there are not enough grind spots, all of a sudden? As if the others will magically disappear..

I am not saying that you should make everything super damned. I am saying that it should be equally hard to go from evil to good, as it is from good to evil.
If that then is supposed to go really fast or really slow doesn't matter. But it ought to be the same!

Agreed on the last statements. That is why there ideally should not be much differences in available resources (xp) at any tier when or if the switch to same alignment functionality happens.

If the switch happened in such a way that recovering from good towards evil as it is now, the time of the necessary alignment correction would not be fast. It would be worsened if the "neutral" grinders also was altered towards alignment directions. In this event, evils could be "locked" as mentioned above to only few highend options, which generates the problem I hypothized in the earlier post. Currently though, the game sport some true neutral grinders, even if their theme screams "evil", which is good for gamebalance, but maybe not for thematics.

If the switch resulted in dropping from good to evil would be as slow as from evil->good, then the game would be more balanced since both can grind the same content with equal impunity, but then one could argue that thematics would create some dilemmas since knights, maybe rangers etc would have issues with killing for example ents?