Jophiel

Yeah, it's a real fun piece to look at

On the other hand, a lot of people have said they dislike red side because they feel like a lackey. More recent arcs such as the Doppleganger one, took pains to make sure you felt like you were in charge or the Vincent Ross arc where you're the one telling Ross how you should proceed. Noticing that there's a population disparity and paying attention to why led to arcs that helped improve the game.

Pointing out the disparity in the alignments isn't the same as jumping up and down and screaming "Fixit!Fixit!Fixit!" but it's pointing out a sign that things could be improved.

OOORRRRR after 120 days, NCSoft just auctions off your account.

"Lot #2311 is this account with a Lvl 23 Tank on Freedom named Ice Girl! Do I hear $15 for this account?..."

Ca-CHING!!

C'mon now. When someone's arguments are "You're claiming the game is ruined because you'll only be happy with 50/50 and you'd throw out every underperforming archetype, you big whiner! Convince me otherwise or you'll never convince a dev!", it's hardly work to respond

Wait! This is where I insist I'm not upset and then type another paragraph after it showing how not upset I am, right???

If you say so.

Excellent. I'm... umm... glad to hear it?
Entirely possible. Luckily, I haven't put any more effort into worrying about it than typing some forum postings. Given that this is a thread titled "First Impressions of the 'Gray' Alignments", it seemed kind of apropos to talk about it here even if it upset you to read about it.

You're really trying hard to move the goalposts here. I never said the game was "ruined". However, having poorly balanced AT's does impact the number of viable choices I have in the game and I would rather that the AT's were, in their own ways, equally desirable (although not equal in function). Realizing that this isn't possible, I'm happy to settle for "roughly equal".

AT's that are infrequently played should be reviewed to determine why people don't want to play them and "fixed" to make them more desireable, hence increasing the number of viable options people have while playing. Playing an AT you don't find desirable should not be considered a "viable" option.

You're looking at it the wrong way.

More balanced rewards would benefit me and make it a "better" game and be reflected in the more balanced population. The population is a signal that there's a problem, not the problem itself.

This may well be the case. I only remember the complaint and haven't run an entire arc on the "wrong" side as a tag-along myself.

Nope. Guess you haven't been reading. I'd certainly be happier with a 45/55 split though or something more like that. Or 40/60.

The current split is 77/23 according to Positron's interview on Ten Ton Hammer.

Yeah, thinking that's a bit off must mean I'm a whiner who would only be happy with an exact split and nothing less!
I see you're new to the internet. Let me have someone show you around...

90 minutes left on the clock.

Yeah, the broad perception shown in the population numbers that you say you don't care about because you're already happy.

Gotcha

LOL.. I love it when people say "whine" on forums. It's like saying "I have no good argument but maybe I can shame you into silence instead".

Seems like the Devs went too far in one direction in trying to correct the problem. Which is, again, a pretty poor excuse to refuse to find a balance.

"Hey, I said the color white you used was too bright and now you painted the room black!"
"Golly, I'm just damned if I do and damned if I don't, huh?"

Yeah, there's a pretty broad spectrum between "Everyone wants one, no one wants the other" and "Perfect harmony among all things".

I'm just asking for a nudge towards the latter. Saying that you can't have everything at the "Harmony" end is a pretty poor to reason ignore things sitting closer to the "Lopsided" side of the spectrum.

No idea where your "have it all" remark came from since I didn't ask for them to all "have it all" (the A-Merit idea was someone else's) but rather have something more equivalent in desire from the player base.

Clarification: "Rogues" in the CoX universe are still classified as bad guys. This goes back to the "Rogues can't talk to blueside contacts" side discussion

Ermmm.... what?

No, by that logic I'd say "Hey, maybe the least popular AT's should be looked at so we can figure out why they're so unpopular and try to fix the situation."

I never say "get rid of gray alignments", I said "make them worth using". I have no clue where on earth you're coming from with the above.

I could easily imagine a "thieves guild" type who did that stuff. Rogues are still "bad guys", just ones who are in it for the money.

I didn't mean to imply they would, I was just illustrating that rogues (in my opinion) aren't really into "straight work" even if it pays well. It needs to have more of a thrill element.

I'd call the large disparity between "pure" and "gray" alignments in population numbers and the amount of people who qualify being happy with their gray aligned characters by saying "Because I can get A-Merits on this other guy" (as opposed to "because running SFs is worth more to me than A-Merits") the basis of gray alignments being less valuable to players. On a per character basis, without outside assistance, it seems that characters would rather go pure. That they can mitigate this by investing more time and character slots to overcome the shortcomings of a character's alignment choice only serves to call attention to the issue in the first place.

If you could only have characters that were gray or ones that were pure, which do you think most players would go for?

I don't see them quite that way. A rogue (in my view) wouldn't take a job as CEO of a corporation for a $6mil salary but he'd spend a year planning a $6mil bank heist. Now, he might take the CEO job if he thought he could embezzle another $12mil on top of his lawful salary.

Longbow saying "We'll pay you to bodyguard this ambassador" wouldn't interest a rogue nearly as much as being paid an equal amount to do some breaking-and-entry into a Crey facility. It's the thrill of the illicit hunt combined with the reward at the end. You could happily point it towards "good" (like the government paying hackers to infiltrate an enemy nation's systems) but you need the thrill get your interest.