Hi guys'n gals,
I've been concerned about MMORPGs being very limited in terms of roleplaying choices, such as acting chaotic evil.
Most of the time, NPCs beg for help and your only choice is either to help them (accept the quest), or to let them be (do not accept the quest).
What if I want to roleplay a truely chaotic evil character, and I want a 3rd option that will go against the NPC's will (making his situation worse, or steal from him, or even kill him) ?
Wait. I can see the comments coming : "But if you play an Evil class, you will have Evil quests with the perception system."
True, but Evil isn't the only point.
Acting Chaotic is the main point, as in thinking out of the box, things are not just YES OR NO.
For instance, an Evil Lord of Darkness asks me to do Evil things, but I decide to be even more Evil and that their is only one Lord of Darkness, and I kick his ***.
And killing this quest npc, instead of accepting/refusing his quest, would have faction hits that eventually open new "hidden" (as the 3rd choice was not selectable) Perception opportunities later on.
Will we have that "out of the box" possibilities + hidden consequences (hidden epic quests anyone) in Pantheon ? Or is this going to be too complex to make ?
Please let's not have players killing questgivers - not if that means other players have to wait for them to respawn before being able to get quests or turn-in quests. Too much room for griefing there.
Multiple ways of doing a quest are nice where possible though I see more downside than upside to having quests like "kill 10 kittens slowly and collect their tears as you torture them to death".
A conversation path where you can click on either "(2) orcs are terrorizing our village. Kill 10 of them and bring me their heads or ....(4) The orcs outside the village are paying me to help them. In turn I will pay you to help. Kill 10 villagers, if they are terrorized enough they may surrender" is another matter entirely.
Good quests in evil areas (if there are any such areas) or evil quests in good areas (if there are any such areas) are a nice touch. Personally I would rather see no area as good or evil. Each area has its own history and interests but no God should make every gnome chaotic evil and every elf neutral good (picking alignments at random). Factions can and will conflict but there need not be any overarching good versus evil involved.
By analogy Dark Ages of Camelot had three factions. They fought endlessly but none was postitioned as any "better" than the others. EQ2 had essentially "good" versus "evil". I find the former approach both more realistic and far more accomodating to interesting plot lines. Monolithic people under the thumb of a good or evil God tend to be more boring, even if there are some rebels included for variety.
Swtor played around with this feature well. You had dialogue at the beginning, middle, and end of many quests. Your dialogue governed the next part to the quest: for example (in fantasy terms)...
You are talking to a mayor who wants you to purify the town well from a necro's curse (choose your response):
#1) I will help you purify the well, no thanks or coin is needed.
#2) [Lie] I will help you purify the well (But you will really work for the necor to strengthen the curse)
#3) Sure, Mr. Mayor, Ill help you for some coin...
So depending on which option you choose, your set of task will be different. Once you complete that task you have another dialogue with more choices. Each time giving you differnent tasks that are governed by your action. These choices often bring faction consequence or maybe the choice to get coin gives you money but the one that helps with no coin gives you bonus xp or better faction hit. so on and so on.
I felt this was a very healthy way to introduce the different RP alignments
Even though I play a thoroughly, annoyingly squeeky-clean paladin, I do hope there are more than yes/no or good/evil answers to quests -- if it's not to much of a strain on development. I don't know if the staff is big enough to code a fully-fleshed out choose-your-own-adventure quests for each of the architypal D&D alignments, but it would be cool if there were a multiple choice of good, neutral, evil, and chaotic. And yes, that could mean someone could kill a quest giver. And this doesn't have to be considered RP in the "thee, thou, smite" sense. People can play an alignment in their minds without having to act it out.
I do like the point you bring up about complexifying the perception system by adding multiple paths one can walk based on the role you want your character to assume. However, if they added chaotic evil, then there would be great pressure also include the other 8 classic character alignments. Each addition of a perception role multiplies the dev's work. So if building a complete perception for a lawful good path took 6 months (I'm being very generous here) then this pandora's box would probably tack on another 6x8 months, or 4 years.
I would definitely think its feasible to add good and evil general perception quests, along with class/race specific perception quests, but anything beyond that might be out of reach imo.
Larr said: Hopefully they will support the truly evil players with plenty of truly evil content.