Neutral alignment needs a change
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Right now the neutral alignment feels almost like an additional 2 button chore to go through when you're doing legends.
As legends are only announced when they're dead, there is almost zero conflict surrounding them, as any party who isn't lazy will just rotate them.
Neutrals should be the "primary" and "end game" alignment in Syndesia. Due to the fact that we now only have inventory drops, open world pvp between Neutrals should be much more encouraged, and areas of interest should be more telling.
The problem right now is that the map is really large, ( which is a good thing ), but to drive conflict and engaging content, there needs to be pvp hotspots or dynamic contested events.
One such current content that is there right now is the legends. The problem is that because legends are only announced when dead, this prevents there from being engaging PvPvE content surrounding them. This needs to change.
Legends should always be announced when they are summoned. The 10 minutes or so where it takes for them to appear gives time for other groups to marshal and fight around a summoned legend. This ensures that people know where to go to find content and fights. ( Right now it always feels like we're just roaming an empty world.)Another point I'd like to bring up is resources. There is 100% going to be a problem in all worlds where resource nodes are going to be camped. In Syndesia where things are political, we should be able to fight over these resources. Thus, when you try to gather resources out of your territory, you should be flagged neutral.
"Your" territory is defined as the territory you have residency in. This encourages people to actually become residents in Fractured, which to be honest should be one of the first things people try to do.Residency is incredibly important because it starts to make players get invested in the land and territory that they reside in. It also makes choosing a territory much more meaningful as well.
My final point would be about Guild Wars. There definitely needs to be a system where guilds can declare war against another, as this goes hand in hand with the political system and political war that Syndesia supposedly should have. Guild wars should enable players from opposing guilds to fight each other in the open world regardless of what flag they have.
Of course, to prevent the guild war system from being abused, we need to have clear start/end to the wars. We can use a similar system to the current one, where the guild which has the highest ratings, in the war would be declared the winner after an X amount of days. Guilds can also only have one war at a time, and after they have finished a war, they cannot declare or be declared against for X amount of days as well.
TL;DR :
i) Legends should be announced when summoned, not when dead
ii) You should need to flag neutral when gathering resources outside of the territory you own a residence in
iii) There needs to be a system where we can declare wars against guilds and fight in the open world
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I totally agree with you on the Legend announcement timing. It should be at the when Legends are summoned so that people can gather up and travel to the Legend location.
I also agree with your other points and there is an important issue which needs to be resolved first: PvP ruleset of Syndesia. Currently, it is not very encouraging for PvP players and mostly benefits PvE oriented players. You suggestions on guild wars and resource gathering part might not work within the current state because there are players who only want to do PvE and do not get involved with any PvP action. However, they also want to be tied to a city and join a guild. Thus, they would again be forced to join PvP fights.
My suggestion to solve this issues is simple: even if you are a Good player and you want to do PvE in Syndesia, you should consent to PvP which might take place because this is not Arboreus. If someone wants to do PvE and PvE only, then they should not be in Syndesia. After agreeing on the new ruleset, then we can proceed with the possible ways to improve Neutral alignment.
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- Yes.
- Yes, but in that case the houses must become almost free. Many players gather resources and sell them on the market to afford their first 4K. If the 4K barrier is lowered, then you can use the residency as a basis for a mechanic like that.
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Remember, although group play is allowed and somewhat encouraged, the Devs also want to, as best as they can, encourage those players who prefer to Solo and not align themselves with a Guild or City.
They have tied Residency to cities, but purposely made it so Residents do not lose out when a siege happens, unlike Citizens. This was explained as an intended thing to encourage the Solo'ists who want to be loan wolf players. The same is true as to why you can gather from nodes that you aren't a Citizen/Resident of. They don't want to severely hamstring those players
As to Legends, I totally disagree. I don't want to see every Legend encounter degenerate into a PvP hotspot. PvP is allowed, but again, Discouraged/disadvantaged on Syndesia...so PvE players should be able to summon and take on Legends without always causing every PvP player in the area to come challenge them for the right, when they came up with the items needed to summon said Legend in the first place.
Players on Syndesia do not need to consent to PvP risks, they should still have a reasonable chance to play the game they want to play. Arborea is for the No PvP possible crowd, but Syndesia is supposed to be a good 70% safe at least from PvP and most players should reasonably be able to avoid, or not lose out too much from it.
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Legends though are considered pvp targets, not really pve ones. That's why you can't face them without flagging for pvp.
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@spoletta You don't have to flag for PvP, just have to go Neutral.
You risk PvP at Legend camps, but that doesn't mean there needs to be a Beacon that goes out saying "hey, some party is off trying to take on a Legend, come gank them!"
Evil is "flagged for PvP" and Neutral is a middleground. At a little more risk than Good, but not as hard up as Evil in the PvP scheme of things. You have to be willing to risk possible attacks to take on Legends, but you shouldn't be all but guaranteeing them. They will still end up as hot zones more likely than not, as there will be PvP guilds who camp the Altars, but if a group comes across an uncamped Altar, more power to them!
Edit: I would say Legends are more-like End Game/Late Game content meant for both PvE and PvP players. You won't find many Solo PvEers taking them down in the beginning, but groups and also more experienced and better equipped PvEers who get to know which ones can be handled in smaller/solo situations will still be after them, as well as setting up larger scale Raid groups to take them on.
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So firstly to address some concerns :
Residence housing doesnt need to change - in most cases you only want to gather stuff once you already have a house, so there is no need to make residence cheaper. This also incentivizes people to become residents, instead of just co-owning a house.
Regarding legends being beacons to PvP if they were announced earlier - this should definitely BE the case though. Look at what's going on right now - there is little to no pvp hotspots, open world pvp is practically dead in Syndesia. Legends should be one of the PvP contents that players can fight over.
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One more thing to add is that neutrals should be able to steal other neutrals carts, else it would not make much sense if whatever you managed to gather is unlootable in your cart when you gather outside your territory.
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Ihmo it is not reasonable to examine current situation and make changes based on that. The eyes should be in the future and what Syndesia will eventually be.
Sieges are PvP end-game and Asteroids are marketed as PvP end-game as well. If Legends will be mainly PvP hotspot, what Syndesia will offer to PvE players end-game wise? When considering end-game content the scale is heavily on PvP side... And should actually be more balanced towards PvX. Therefore, I hope Legends will not turn to PvP hotspots and Asteroids will take somehow consideration PvE players as well.
Neutral alignment feels problematic in general but I think that is because most of the players prefers to play either good or evil. I would actually like to know that how many players would like to play as neutral. Because if the number is low then implementing forced neutral content would not be that smart. If the number is high then some neutral content should be available more for sure.
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Syndesia is expected to have the majority of the population as neutral aligned, so if this does not happen, then one has to find ways to make neutral alignment more rewarding.
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@spoletta I do not disagree, but has devs said that their goal is neutral gameplay?
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Okay, I did some research. According to Design Journal, neutral is planned for players who likes to PvP against like minded players, additionally, most competitive guilds are expected to play as neutral. Therefore, the general goal is not to push players and guilds for neutral unless they want to.
"Neutral flagged players are allowed to perform hostile actions against Evil players, just like Good players can, but also against fellow Neutrals, without losing Karma. This makes it the perfect alignment for those of you who are looking for a chance to PvP against like-minded players. Considering the Neutral alignment is also required to engage in end-game PvE events on Syndesia such as Legend summoning, we expect most competitive guilds will choose to be Neutral."
At this point I do not know what kind of system should be in use in Syndesia and opinions are more like shots in the dark anyway. We need all the content first into the game and after that people to test the entirety. Perhaps after that we can see which way the rules should be balanced. I disagree on one thing with the journal though. I expect the most competitive guilds to play as evil not neutral.
However, if I speculate a little bit... Perhaps current harsh PvP rules against evils supports that the direction is on neutral and consensual PvP..
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If the devs are right and most people stay white and just pvp amongst themselves then I see things going well. If the majority of the competitive guilds go red and just gank green people randomly then I don't really see a future for this game. I really don't think the devs intended to make another version of Rust.
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This post is deleted!
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@Tuoni You basically said it yourself. End game PvE content should be Neutral flagged in Syndesia, this is because Syndesia is supposed to be have political pvp.
Political pvp involves fighting for resources, and resources include end game PvE content like Legends, and also limited resources like metal nodes. Which is exactly why I suggested what I did. ( I would also add the suggestion that Neutrals should also get a higher drop loot chance when doing PvE )
We shouldn't just be looking at the game too far in the future when the current gameplay is missing crucial elements that's having us less testers than we could have. We should instead implement and trial engaging gameplay elements like the suggestions I did, and we can always balance them down the line if it gets too messy.
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I would not test something which is not planned for the game because it can be just waste of time and gives players wrong impressions how the systems will work. Making temporarily design changes just because some features are still under development and some are bugged does not sound reasonable.
Extra loot for neutral would make it superior when compared to good and evil players and even over planet borders.
This is hard topic because giving some carrot to the neutrals and that way encourage players to play as neutral will be a good direction. However, giving too much for neutrals just forces players to flag or they are excluded for a good amount of content.
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What about this?
Since we now know that there will be a tier 3 level of crafting, which will have its own recipes, we could just make it so only neutral players can drop tier 3 recipes. They are under the favor of the god of knowledge, so it would actually make sense.Since recipes drop completely at random, it would give players a reason to always stay in neutral.
For Tartaros you can just have them drop normally, since everyone is evil.
For Arboreus you allow everyone to drop them, but make them drop only by legends or stuff like that.
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Now this starts to sound almost like Albion, do PvP or you are in disadvantage... I think the three planet systems tries to get somewhat away from that. Anyway, I would not make hasty change at this point until the system in whole is actually tested.
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@Tuoni said in Neutral alignment needs a change:
Now this starts to sound almost like Albion, do PvP or you are in disadvantage...
I think the new rulesets Spoletta and Rife suggested are for Syndesia and in this case, it can be like Albion. Three planet system allows players choose their playstyle: you want full PvE, go to Arboreus, you want mindless lawless PvP, go to Tartaros, you want a mix of PvE and PvP, come to Syndesia and that is what they have been suggesting. If people want to do only PvE activities without any consequences in Syndesia, then why do we have another planet called Arboreus?
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@Clinion Yeah I know all this but that was not exactly what I meant, however, I should have been open it up a little bit more. In Albion if you play as a PvE player your content is very limited to blue and yellow and you are excluded basically from other content, especially end-game stuff. Now because Fractured has this three planet system it does not mean that Arboreus needs to be that happy farmville with shit drops and resources. PvE can and should be challenging as well and therefore, PvP does not need to be the only factor which makes playing risky. Arboreus and Tartaros are of course easier to get work right and it is the PvX Syndesia which will be a real challenge to balance right. I just think that even in Syndesia the PvE centric players should have some possibilities to do end-game stuff and not being totally excluded from it. It is of course okay that neutrals have some more options.
