MACRO: Alignment!

[Bane]

What are you trying to achieve here?

Basically Im looking to fix a poorly designed game aspect.

Are you after something else to do with your time?  Because this basically sounds like a few new quests with slightly different rewards.  Which would be great but why not concentrate on designing the quests rather than these vague global mechanics.

Or are you really hung up on getting more out of alignment?  If so, why?  Good-evil alignment seems to me like a shallow concept that should be gotten rid of, not built on.

Im taking my time rather than just blurting everything that is on my mind all at once. I'm working through my ideas, and the vague global mechanics is me gathering input so I can post a whole design. Yes I might be slow, but its how I work. Im looking at this from different angels, and I usually think of multiple ways of doing something. I want it to be a feature that just doesn't appeal to a specific type of mudder, but to all. Questor/Rp/Hack And Slash.

Im also trying to avoid just a simple band-aid of this problem also. Of course we could just tinker the alignment formula and be done. But then its just still a dumb useless stat in the game or as you said a shallow concept. If we keep it in game, which im not oppose to removing it, it needs to be a feature. I want to see it implemented so it can be easily added or expanded in the future if it needs be.


I have some free time over the next thee days so Ill be getting some work done on here.

[Bane]

Ive actually put alot of thought into this, and I want to dump my original idea.

There should be no big reward system or buffs in this. Because then everyone will only join to gain the rewards. I propose something else.


Instead of joining a religion, We can choose to join the dark-side(The Emperor) or the good-side(Yoda) of the force. Dark-side obv you are evil all the time, Good side obv you are good all the time. Each side of course is hell bent on destroying each other.

There's already a script on the Emperor to join the Dark-Side(though he is harder to find than Yoda, Darth Vader is a good substitute also)

Add a small script to Yoda to join the force of good.

To join first time is free and leaving is always free. After you leave you will have to pay a penalty to rejoin. War costs a lot of money. It will work like convey maxmove:

turns (num of times used ) x 10 million
(So if you use it 3 times it will cost you 30 million.)

Now when choosing a side you also gain an item to suck souls from the opposite align mobs you killed. These souls you can turn in to gain tradepoints. 10 souls equal a tradepoint. All souls will be carried in this container. You can look at container to see how many you souls you have.

Depending on the level of the mob is how strong of a soul you get.
level 1-50 mobs give 1 soul level
50-100 give  2 soul levels
100-150 give 3 souls levels

10 soul levels equal one tradepoint.

Thought about changing the souls to a different name, like you gain part of the force back when you kill them.

For people that dont want to choose any side, they may seek out jabba the hut, he will give you the item to remove souls from mobs upon death for a price whether its good align or evil align(neutral doesn't count). But it costs 20 soul levels to gain 1 tradepoint.

Jabba cares for either side of the force and just seems they always stick their nose in his business. Helping him get rid of either side of the force benifits him.


We still need to adjust the equation for alignment. If you don't like my time idea, that's fine the equation is fairly easy to adjust to make a lesser impact.


The gaining of souls happen automatically upon the creature dying, My original idea was to have to use a command like we do with skin corpse, But there's no way to tell what the level of the mob was from its corpse.

[Virisin]

Not a bad idea but it'd be better if you further abstracted it from Star Wars and the force. Some kind of opposing forces, potentially more than 2.. Souls etc.

[Bane]

Make a different one for each dimension?

Like souls would be better used in Prehistoric with Hades/Achilles
Old west Scalps? not like the skill scalp.


That sort of thing?