Vandraad said:Why would you need to betray your race? Or want to? For what purpose? What would this bring to the game that would justify the development time required?
You could do this in EQII, which meant you had to hide out for a time and change where you play... you ended up being KOS to your original home once you betray. Something different, I tried it..its okay if you don't mind having to work on opposite factions, to be able to "play normally" again. Not my cup of tea. :)
Xilshale said:Regarding knowing someone's faith and hilarious examples of wrong information with a heavy media slant:. Lol ok, believe what you will and we all wear signs showing our faith loud and clear for everyone to see. Gotcha. Bowing out of this conversation because this will not end with any shred of civility with the way it's going. Lol
Ok, leave real religious debate out of it, that's probably very smart. [Edit: I tried to portray two that there would be little debate on. Sorry if I offended any satanists....]
By your reasoning why would merchants know that I killed 99 orcs as opposed to the 101 that raises me to a new level of esteem, and give me better prices because of it. Why would all merchants in a city hold me in higher regard because I provided one merchant with 8 orc belts? Apply your logic to the game as a whole and factions are essentially meaningless until you've achieved heroic or villianous status. It's not necessarily a bad way to visualize factions, but from a game progression, playability and tangible reward perspective it would quickly become problematic.
And once you have achieved heroic or villainous status it would be illogical to assume that if a merchant (or NPC) knows of your deeds at all they would not associate them with your professed diety. Or more specifically come to conclusions based the professed goals or ideals of your diety and your potential future behavior, and from those conclusiions alter their interactions with you accordingly.
Still leaving religion out of things, look around today at our real world. There are people from all political leanings refusing service to those whom they have heard of and with whom they disagree. It's damn near a national sport at this point. But you can't see how that can (and more often than not does) apply to a game?
Xilshale said:
Regarding necro and SK, no I mean by the use of researched spells (crafted) in early EQ and the int based useage for mana defining them being a crane casters thereby not tied to the gods
Regarding knowing someone's faith and hilarious examples of wrong information with a heavy media slant:. Lol ok, believe what you will and we all wear signs showing our faith loud and clear for everyone to see. Gotcha. Bowing out of this conversation because this will not end with any shred of civility with the way it's going. Lol
I believe this was fairly true in some old civilizations. It is my opinion that people often believed heavily in the gods and were willing to die for their beliefs. There are examples of this throughout history. A person's religion was basically their way of life. That was the only thing that kept law and order outside of sheer military might. I'm not certain the Greeks or Roman's believed in the gods as much as some other civilizations. They did have a large impact on their lives though. The Egyptian's obviously believed heavily in the gods. Otherwise they wouldn't have made the pyramids. From what I've seen of the Assyrians and Babylonians they were more of a warlike culture. The Hebrews were fairly unique and had a philosophy of treating others well and not worshipping god with idols. Christianity had some zealots and was abused a lot by powerful people in the church, but also kept order and knowledge alive in the dark ages.
I feel like Freeport is an example of a culture that is intermingled with many different peoples. This might be like ancient Mesopotamia.
Ogres and Trolls might be like the Barbarian's that infringed on the Roman culture.
I suppose it might make sense for a satanic worshipper to hide their identity if they were in enemy territory. It all depends on the religion, how they feel about it, and what is permitted.
I'd imagine it wouldn't be easy tasks to conceal you were a necromancer. Just the way you dress and act would give you away. Necromancers weren't kill on sight in Everquest. Only the ones that were Dark Elves I believe. The rest were just frowned upon/disliked.
CanadinaXegony said:Deities = Faction good faction, bad faction..depending what you do. Don't really have to bring "religion" into it..that way you don't end up arguing about religion.
The problem is that deities are only a subcategory of factions. They're not exactly synonymous. But Terminus is made up of different races that were created in very different ways and come from completely different worlds with completely different gods, so at the same time, examples from real world religions are not really applicable. In order to stay on topic, I would suggest that people re-read the lore in regards to how the races were created by their gods and why they all ended up coming to Terminus from their respective planets. That should help shed some light on logical connections that players will have with the deities.
CanadinaXegony said:Deities = Faction good faction, bad faction..depending what you do. Don't really have to bring "religion" into it..that way you don't end up arguing about religion.
Yeah...when I said the Ogre should have had a way to drop his god, I meant it for faction purposes as you could still be KoS because of your deity even though you raised your other factions. I do agree that if you had such a system, it would have to work with class descriptions, and no, I wouldn't want there to be a way to change your class...and now that I think of that, it's probably fine if you are stuck with your deity forever. I mean, you can change jobs in real life, but I don't want you to be able to change jobs in PRF. So, I guess I should be okay with being stuck with the deity you choose at the start.
UnknownQuantity said:oneADseven said:I thought the Betrayal system was pretty cool in EQ2. It was betraying your alignment moreso than just betraying your race. I'm not saying that it should definitely be added to Pantheon, but based on my understanding of how Alignment and Faction is going to work, I could see some reasons why they may want to add it. I remember rolling a troll crusader, and at level 20 I had the option to become a shadowknight. Not being crazy in love with the dark side, I opted to betray Freeport and head to Qeynos so that I could become a paladin.
There was a bit of a time-sink while working on the betrayal quest and that was fine. It was basically implemented so that the system wouldn't be over-used. Every now and then you would see some weird racial/class combo and I always thought it was pretty cool. I get it ... I get it, a TROLL PALADIN? How does that make sense? Come on ... haven't you ever seen a Disney movie? The poor guy got tired of eating rats and traveling through sewer systems. He just wanted more out of life. And let's not act like ALL humans are holy. There will always be a backstabbing treacherous traitor human or 50. Adding a betrayal system does nothing more than allow a human to experience the storyline of an ogre and vice versa. Maybe there is a place for it in Pantheon, maybe not? Won't be a huge deal to me either way, but I will say that rolling a max level Troll Paladin was a ton of fun. All of the Qeynos Guards would snicker as I walked by ... animals would run away, etc. It felt pretty cool to be different.
It's a nice idea, but there are two problems with it I think.
One is that you would have to switch classes. I believe you will start with a finite class this game. It's not something you pick at certain points as you play.
The other issue is having a spific way to change classes or sides could be a bit dull. Everyone will know what it is and complete the same thing. It is also a bit to easy to change sides if you ask me. In my opinion it should be something that is a very difficult task to accomplish.
Okay, so here is an idea that can fix both of those problems. Allow characters the option to betray at level 20. Upon betraying, the new alignment that helps faciliate the betrayal wants to ensure that the character betraying is "cleansed" of their old ways, and requires them to start over at level 1 when they enter their city. This allows them to change their class to whatever they want to play, and also requires a "very difficult task to accomplish." There isn't any game-breaking incentive here as the only in-game benefit that can be achieved is the betraying character could have a rare racial bonus/class combo, such as there being a Skar Ranger. I feel that giving up 20 full levels of XP to accomplish that is a pretty heavy cost and that it would deter most people from ever using it. And that's fine ... the idea behind betrayal is that you'll find the occassional Ogre amongst your Human ranks, or maybe a Dwarf that wants to live with the Dark Myr, but it'd be very rare. Unfortunately, Dwarves can't inherently breathe under water so I guess that wouldn't work. Maybe a water breathing enchantment can be cast upon people who betray to live with the Dark Myr and it only works in their city?
Folks lets keep real life religion out of this discussion, it is not a basis to form an argument for in-game fantasy gods, many people have different thoughts on the real life religious topics so lets keep them out of our game.
You know the rules, no real life religion or politics in our fantasy worlds! not even as a reference or comparison, we play these games to immerse ourselves and escape the real world, so lets leave it outside where it belongs.
Bashnir said:I have yet to see this question, so i do apologize if there is a post about this.
Will there be a long quest line that you can do that will betray your race? I would love to see this in this game.
I find the roleplaying aspect of this to be very important. Humans shouldn't be the only ones that have a evil or good side. I feel it gives the races personality if they aren't all just good/evil. This all adds to the RPG aspect of the game.
I'm all good with the option. Players on PvP servers wouldn't understand. Say you're a human, and you encounter a dark elf and another human but they aren't fighting each other. The dark elf then starts whooping your ass. You fight back, but then the other human starts healing the dark elf! The "invulnerable healer" thing was a really big issue. Give me a warning, gimme a faction hit, but if the ****'s on, it's on.
According to the FAQ, the option to betray your home city is definitely going to be available.
But changing your factions so NPCs will react differently to you -- this is all key to the game -- our faction system will be quite robust. Yes, you could betray your home or default factions.
Only thing that really means, especially based on the wording, is like in eq1 you can do things (guard farming, supporting rival factions, etc) that lowers your home city faction to the point you are kos...Like a dark elf leveling in crushbone (yup did that once). This does not denote a betrayal quests chain like EQ2. I'm glad it seems like a straight "farm the mobs you want but beware cuz there are consequences".
If you want to rp a story about betraying your home city, farm the faction and say it was for religious reasons like a literary dark elf all you want, say it was for any reason or just for kicks, you don't need a quest with a shiny at the end to do something for RP purposes.
...It's creative freedom to write your own story (heck, farm the faction and make up a story about how you wish you did the faction change and tell that story!! Ignore that the game mechanics made you kill orc pawns for 4 days, nope that wasn't your story :) )
Or...Since you can't change classes...And the classes are race locked (so you can't change from crusader to dire lord...Sorry, not every game offers this...In fact very few do)...If you want to rp an outcast just don't go to your home city...Ever.
if you want to play an elf direlord and it's not an option, choose another race....Or play an elf crusader and advertise yourself as a cursed direlord infected with holy light. Most are asking for the betrayal option for RP.....But are ignoring the best part of RP....No not the ERP...The imagination behind your character.
I can't play a Myr shaman....So I looked at what can be shaman after the last stream and decided I like Myr enough to change my class idea vs my race idea. If I was an rper I'd still portray a spiritual bent on my cleric.
Again, my 2 coppers on the matter
Laura said:Vandraad said:Why would you need to betray your race? Or want to? For what purpose? What would this bring to the game that would justify the development time required?
What do you mean?! It doens't need any development. The ability to attack ANY NPC is fundemantal and I would be greatly disappointed if that wasn't the case for Pantheon. EQ gave us the freedom to attack/kill anyone, anything, anywhere. But with that kind of action comes consequences and that's where faction comes in. Kill enough of your people and your town will start attacking you on sight. I would bet VR are including this in Pantheon if not even expanding on it.
If you had bothered to read his post, he talks specifically about quests that exist solely for the purpose of betraying your race. You're just talking about killing guards and junk. Anybody can screw up their town faction just by paying attention to who likes/hates who and killing the right combinations. But to have a questline to follow? That's the 'development' part that would be needed.
Then lets look at all the collateral effects: The new race you're buddy-buddy with might not have vendors who sell the spells you need because your class in their society does exist. Some races had vendors on separate factions so even if you were OK with the guards not killing you, the vendors could still not sell to you. You might also be forced to switch dieties, so kiss all your diety specific gear, abilities and spells goodbye. Soo...yeah, development is needed.
Vandraad said:You might also be forced to switch dieties, so kiss all your diety specific gear, abilities and spells goodbye. Soo...yeah, development is needed.
This is the thing, development isn't NEEDED.
You mess your faction with your home city or anywhere else that you find out later that you need to go? Well that's a consequence of what you did. You can't buy that spell or do that quest? Tough luck because you chose to scrap that faction. Cause and effect.
Terminus is a world made of planetary (dimensional?) collisions, why would the elven god accept a skar ever? Because your skar screwed his city faction and wants to hug trees? Die skar the elf god won't even look at you. A human betrays his city to join the skar...And is made a meal. Plain and simple.
Just because you want it doesn't mean they have to put it in so don't say it's needed. Wanted by some, sure. Needed? Lol no. Like I said earlier, you want to betray your city in character? RP it all you want. If you actually strip the faction it makes for an intense rp because you have consequences for it.
They don't HAVE to program in anything for you over this. Nor should they.
Remember the You're in Their World Now thread?
Xilshale said:Vandraad said:You might also be forced to switch dieties, so kiss all your diety specific gear, abilities and spells goodbye. Soo...yeah, development is needed.
This is the thing, development isn't NEEDED.
You mess your faction with your home city or anywhere else that you find out later that you need to go? Well that's a consequence of what you did. You can't buy that spell or do that quest? Tough luck because you chose to scrap that faction. Cause and effect.
Terminus is a world made of planetary (dimensional?) collisions, why would the elven god accept a skar ever? Because your skar screwed his city faction and wants to hug trees? Die skar the elf god won't even look at you. A human betrays his city to join the skar...And is made a meal. Plain and simple.
Just because you want it doesn't mean they have to put it in so don't say it's needed. Wanted by some, sure. Needed? Lol no. Like I said earlier, you want to betray your city in character? RP it all you want. If you actually strip the faction it makes for an intense rp because you have consequences for it.
They don't HAVE to program in anything for you over this. Nor should they.
Remember the You're in Their World Now thread?
The FAQ has already confirmed the option for players to betray their home city. Whether or not they can be accepted into a city of opposing alignment or not is an entirely different question. I would like some clarification on that. As it stands right now, it's safe to assume that a human can go live with the dwarves. But what about a Skar living with the Elves? I proposed an idea earlier in the thread that would require a player to achieve level 20 before they can betray. If they want to betray to the opposing alignment, that city would require them to be "cleansed" of their evil or holy ways, and start over at level 1 to gain admittance to their city. It's a pretty heavy cost, but I know some people out there would love to play a Skar Ranger. Sounds like a pretty cool idea.
Xilshale said:Remember the You're in Their World Now thread?
What, that old thing? Nobody remembers that. ;p
Seriously, though, you're 100 percent right. It pains me to see how people aren't using their imaginations in MMOs. In EQ, I had a running storyline going in my head that Sheyna Rainbringer's family farm was somewhere out in West Karana, and when her mother was killed by raiding gnolls on the property (and her father was out fighting in the war), she was brought to the Temple of Karana in Qeynos as a baby. (I'll have to post the full story on the boards sometime.) I would never, ever have expected for Verant/Sony/GMs/the Devs/whoever to create that specific of a storyline for an individual player. They didn't need to. They gave us the lore and the world to play in, and I made up my own individual story based on that lore.
Xilshale brings up something else that I hadn't thought of. Let's say ol' Sheyna decided she was mad at the world for being an orphan and enough wasn't done to protect the farmers out in the Karanas, so she decides to turn her back on the world and wants to join the Dark Elves and kill humans. She's not just going to be able to go, "Right, I'm going to go meet with them and they'll be so happy to see me because I want to be on their team now!" Not knowing you from Adam, they're not going to automatically trust you until you can prove your intentions (ie: doing faction quests and work). And someone going from being liked in Qeynos to liked with the Dark Elves, it would take more than one quest for them to deem you trustworthy.
So yes, in a general sense, you should absolutely be able to betray your race/home city, but not quickly and not for a specific, spelled-out reason. That part should to be left up to the individual and their imagination. I also think that the ability to change your diety after you've betrayed a race may be an interesting twist. I'm pretty sure that if Sheyna started out worshiping Karana and then left it all behind to slaughter humans with the Dark Elves, Karana probably wouldn't want much to do with her anymore. Maybe you get a message that pops up and says you've fallen out of favor with your diety, it's time to pick a new one, and then you'd get a list of dieties that would have you in the state you're in. Wisdom/diety-based casters would have to choose a new diety and anyone else could pick agnostic or another diety. Or even, there may be a diety that is exctatic that you've betrayed your home and joined someone else, and you earn more favor with that god or goddess.
@OneADSeven I do remember experimenting with this in EQII and if I remember right..once you betray..you are actually KOS to both sides til you do the work to support your new faction...it made for some rather scarey moments for me..hehe I did do it however. I seem to remember hiding out til I got what I needed faction-wise. This could be for those who want to do it..a challenge, but when you succeed..all the better. :) Nothng wrong with trying new things, or trying to be "different." :)
I had some roleplaying going on in my head as well. I never acted it out, but I had read stories that influenced what I thought of things in game. For instance I wondered what the Dark Elf was doing outside of Qeynos and if he was defecting from his people or perhaps he was just a rogue causing trouble. Then there is the big Ogre sitting in Kelethin. I still haven't seen a comment from a moderator on what his story was. Perhaps there was no story and it was all just left up to interpretation (like music). My characters all had something they were striving for in game. Some of those were to do with the concept of going against your culture and doing things different than was expected.
CanadinaXegony said:@OneADSeven I do remember experimenting with this in EQII and if I remember right..once you betray..you are actually KOS to both sides til you do the work to support your new faction...it made for some rather scarey moments for me..hehe I did do it however. I seem to remember hiding out til I got what I needed faction-wise. This could be for those who want to do it..a challenge, but when you succeed..all the better. :) Nothng wrong with trying new things, or trying to be "different." :)
Yep! I had the only Troll Paladin I ever saw in Qeynos. I loved how the guards/citizens/animals interacted with my character differently than they would a natural citizen of Qeynos. The cats would always take off scrambling out of fear that I would eat them!
This game, like many,has race class combo limits. It's really time to just accept it and stop digging your heels in on a tenant of the game that isn't going to change just because you want skar rangers (which haven't even been denied yet. The class fits with the race. There were evil rangers in Vanguard a plenty....This isn't DND, evil can be primal and nature based.
Xilshale said:This game, like many,has race class combo limits. It's really time to just accept it and stop digging your heels in on a tenant of the game that isn't going to change just because you want skar rangers (which haven't even been denied yet. The class fits with the race. There were evil rangers in Vanguard a plenty....This isn't DND, evil can be primal and nature based.
Eh, what's wrong with some speculation? We're just sharing some pastimes from other games that were tied into betraying our characters. Can you elaborate on the tenet you are referring to? I can't seem to find anything that suggests that there will be race/class restrictions, although I do think I heard something on a stream that may have mentioned something along those lines. Knowing that "Betrayal" will definitely be a feature of the game, it makes me think that players WILL be capable of switching alignments. Betrayal is a pretty strong word, much different than simply "switching" to another friendly faction. Upon checking the information page for the 3 classes that have one; cleric, shaman, and rogue, I couldn't find anything on racial limitations. I also couldn't find anything in the races category to support that notion either. Can you share whatever information you have as to how you concluded that there will be race/class combo limitations?
And for the record, I have no intention of playing a Skar Ranger. My posts on this thread have nothing to do with what "I" want in this game. I'm just participating in the conversation, sharing ideas, reminiscing on memories, and speculating on what may or may not be possible. There is no self-motivated agenda going on here, friend.
The shaman races were listed in the newsletter preview of the shaman (ogre,archai, skar)
The Dec stream said flat out race/class combos are in.
(Edit to include From the Dec newsletter:
The shaman is initially slated to be available to players who chose the Archai, Ogre or Skar races, however that list may expand as development progresses. )
:)