Discussion: New Alignment Dev Diary on the City of Heroes Going Rogue website!

I have to agree that I think the hero alignment mission is confusing. It's not that I feel like I don't understand what happened, it's that what happens is outrageously surreal. Why is there a duplicate of me there? Why is Silent Blade so deadpan about the fact that there are two of you, and she defeated one? I think part of the problem here may be her dialog. Both her dialog and the doppleganger's seem stilted and don't help explain anything, which adds to the surreality.

That out of the way, let me pitch in this positive note. The tip-based mission delivery system overall is great. I seriously wish that the game had worked like this from day one. Tips are my characters finding things and going out to look into them, not some other idle NPC doing all the thinking/investigating and telling me to go do the heavy lifting.

Yes, I understand that it's just a text box. So is what we get from the contacts (with the original hassle that you had to go poke them "physically" to get the text). But when the text in that box shifts from you being the muscle in someone else's story to the whole story being yours, that's a big improvement, at least IMO.

..Huh?...Oh,.. wake me up when we get there..

Get where? Praetoria?

I think what I am hoping for in the Morality Mission is something a little more straight forward to the "Heroic" side. Even after six years I like to read the missions and this just wasn't right. A minor rework would do it. I am a little disappointed that with all the work that supposedly went into this system that it feels so choppy here. But only a little disappointed since I have been waiting for the whole side switching thing for so long.

I am also hoping that with the release of further issues, that they come out with more Morality Missions just to add a little variety.

BTW, MrHassenpheffer, my horror at agreeing with GG is spawned not only in her over use of the smiley faces, but in her one word or barely one sentence posts and her claims to some sort of special knowledge that not everyone is privilege too. I haven't put her on ignore yet, for fear she may actually have something good to say, but I seldom take any of her posts serious anymore.

I see your points.

I remember reading several feedbacks about all the new content, how it was well thought out, well detailed, and then... there was this threshold, where all of a sudden had a "rushed out" feel to it. Is that what's going on here?

edit, as far as GG is concerned, she would have more respect if she wasn't spending so much energy on those mocking little beratements followed with that almost trademark smug little I can see where there's a time and place for that, I do so enjoy her being cheerful. I can also see how deliberate the teasing is, and how it sets off my "passive-aggressive behavior radar"

so yeah...Shudders....

Thank you Shawn, for taking the time to share some of your insights on the purposes and processes involved in the alignment system.

That said, I think it could have been done much better. The vigilante choices are often downright Villainous and the Rogue missions are often far too virtuous. The alignment missions usually seem (to me at least) as if they would be better suited to a game where everyone started neutral and had to earn their spot as a Hero or Villain. They seem to be more a means of sifting light from dark than showcasing the shades of gray.

Also, the process feels a bit "forced" the way it works. You get a tip and decide ahead of time which way you want to lean, in an effort to build toward a particular alignment. While this is fine from a meta-gaming perspective, it feels to me as if it's shouldered its way into the character perspective a bit too forcefully.

What I would have greatly preferred to see would have been for tip missions to function much more like the Praetorian moral choice missions. You get a tip and go to investigate it, and you figure out what it's all about in the process of the mission (some of those tip missions just "hand over" far too much information after hand-waving a "you investigate and learn" phrase) and as you go through the mission, you are presented with moral choices (unlike the Praetorian ones where you just get one choice at the end), such as whether to kill an opponent or capture them and escort them to custody, whether to take a glowie for yourself instead of leaving it as evidence for the crime scene crew, whether to leave behind enemies or even civilians who may have "witnessed" your actions and could spread the word about what you did or didn't do. By the end of the mission, the game counts up the moral choices you made during the mission (or even mission arc... some of these would be much more interesting if they weren't self contained within a single mission), and determines whether to assign you an alignment point for Hero, Vigilante, Rogue, or Villain, depending on what you are currently.

I would also have liked to see the ability to go from Paragon to the Rogue Isles opened up for all alignments. There are Heroic deeds that need to be done in the Rogue Isles, and Villainous opportunities in Paragon. Sure, it should be a dangerous place, with Arachnos agents or Longbow troops acting in a hostile manner to those who "don't belong," but it would open many opportunities without creating a need for new maps. Many of the contacts might have different mission arcs available for someone of different alignment, instead of a curt "I don't talk to Heroes/Villains." After all, most villainous contacts in the Rogue Isles wouldn't feel bad about having a hero do their dirty work, or even have some heroic task that they couldn't entrust to the locals. In Paragon, a contact may be double-dealing under the table, or might simply be unaware of a villain's status as a villain (What, does every Tom, Richard, and Harriette memorize Longbow's top 10,000 most wanted list?)

Furthermore, the way things stand, your status as a Vigilante or Rogue is little more than tourism access to the other zones (though it's a pain for Rogues, since Paragon is obnoxiously time consuming to navigate without dependable access to travel hub zones... we really need a merged Ouroboros, I never thought it made sense to be separate in the first place) and as a stepping stone to go "all the way" to the other side. From a concept standpoint, I can certainly say that many of my characters are vastly better suited to be Rogues or Vigilantes than total goody-two-shoes heroes (who still happen to eviscerate and incinerate and disintegrate minor thugs for purse snatching, jaywalking, and loitering... real heroic guys...) or mustache-twirling megalomanics out to control or destroy everything else (or even just serve to the best of their ability in Arachnos, bringing a bit of law and order to the environment around them, because it suits them to do so). But as things stand for Rogues and Vigilantes, it's just more of a pain than it's worth to refuse to commit to one idealistic extreme or the other.

Good points Starhammer and i do agree with most of it. Your post has made me really think about what bothers me with the whole alignment system and I think it comes down to it's too easy (other than the Hero Morality Mission just seeming wrong). By this I mean you go from Villain to Rogue to Hero. It's too fast, too simple. To me it might be more plausible if it was Villain to Rogue to Vigilante to Hero. A little more "shades of gray" there in my opinion. I know it would take longer to switch completely over, but even that is more realistic. Anyways, that's my two cents.