First impressions of the "gray" alignments

So I just finished up my second rogue morality mission, and have the duplicity power. After bouncing around, visiting some zones, and checking the merit vender. I've developed my first impressions of the "gray" alignment.

It sucks

I hate it. The rogue alignment is the only one that fits the character, and it's little more than a burden. Duplicity is worthless, though I guess if a character had a confuse to stack with it; it might be better, the rewards are, ironically, trash in comparison to hero or villain alignments, and i'm going to get a concussion from banging my head on my desk every time I try to leave Pocket D and that obnoxious prompt decides it has to show up. Twice.

For a first pure alignment re-affirmation, you get 50 reward merits. For some reason, the time of a person seeking a "gray" alignment is worth less as they only get 30 merits. After that pure alignment morality missions give an alignment merit, where "gray" supposedly give 60 merits. Alignment merits are an immense advantage, when it comes to purchasing power. I think it's ironic that the alignment that's all about money and power is actually at a disadvantage when it comes to acquiring both. To buy a rare recipe with regular merits, it cost between 125-275 according to the wiki and I haven't been able to find a recipe that doesn't fit that assertion. To buy an uncommon recipe it cost between 50-75 merits. A random rare recipe roll cost 20 merits. You cannot get purples or pvp ios with regular merits.

So I want to buy a LOTG +rech? I pay 200,000,000 or 275 merits. Alternativly I could hop on my hero and, if I have two alignment merits, set the level slider to 25 and buy one. If I have one hero merit I can pay 20,000,000 and convert 50 merits saving myself either 180,000,000. Or about 11.5 hours considering, iirc, the design intention was a merit/hour average of 20

The power duplicity, it trash compared to Frenzy or Call of justice. A Pbaoe build up or a power either specifically built for your at, that if not is still a large damage/recharge bonus, is hella better than a confuse a bunch of minions that probably died in your first AoE attack chain. Additionally Most ATs and powersets, cant even stack additonal magnitude with it. I haven't tried Fear incarnate, but I can imagine it's much better unless your a Dark, ill, or mind.

Oh, and not to mention having to look at the Atlas tour guide accolade every time I open my Closest to Completion section of the badge menu. Not being able to get Edge of Chaos because "Only Heroes are allowed beyond this point" kinda sucks noodles.

Really, this is driving me insane. Is there something I'm missing? Is there some saving grace to the "grey" alignments, because from first impressions they are garbage for anything other than concept, and incredibly disadvantaged when compared to the pure alignments.

The main draw of being in the middle is that you can team with anyone, no restrictions. Most useful when your friends aren't restricted to one side of the game. However, there isn't really a reward incentive to choose the middle ground, just a Quality of Life one.


Here's what's kinda funny... originally in testing, Hero and Villain merits didn't exist. So, there was no real reason to stay a pure alignment, other than the fact that the perma-temp power you go from it was a little better. And most people ignore those powers entirely anyway. But overall the plusses of being a Vigilante/Rogue outweighed the negatives. It was a matter of having nothing or having a cool QoL bonus. So people were afraid that EVERYONE who wasn't a hardcore RPer was going to stick to the middle path, and there would be virtually no pure heroes or villains. Because really, what would be the point?

Then came Hero/Villain Merits. The decision suddenly became one of having a better reward for playing, or being able to play with more friends. For many people, the rewards won out in that situation.

I think both rogues and vigilantes should get their own A-Merits, and their own place to spend them just as heroes and villains do.

I suppose if you want to be fair to heroes or villains (who don't get access to the other sides' zones), you could make rogue and vigilante merits worth slightly less than hero or villain (as in: a LOTG 7.5% would cost say, 3 instead of 2, or something).

When a rogue or vigilante reaffirms their alignment, they should get a choice as to whether they want 50 reward merits, or one A-Merit. As for trading merits for A-Merits, heck, a rogue should be able to trade in Vanguard merits for A-Merits, and maybe slightly more inf! In fact, a rogue should be able to trade in reward merits and Vanguard merits (and no inf) for an A-Merit.

How's that sound so far?

I agree with the OP pretty much completely.

I know it's not as cut & dry as this but being able to start arcs on either side would make the gray alignments an attractive option. Being restricted to radio/newspapers or else hoping you can get in on someone else's team makes them largely worthless in my view. I don't doubt someone finds them really useful for the sideswitching (especially being red and able to go visit blue) but I can't say I've experienced it.

They couldn't have too many blue or red arcs open to them, as it's unlikely that a lot of the Hero or Villain contacts would trust people arriving from the enemy side.

I'd still love to see rogue/vigiliante contacts.

Personally, I kept all my heroes pure hero but took every single villain rogue, giving me around 21 heroes and nine rogues. For the red side characters, the benefit is massive; there's just so many more task forces blue side and generally triple the player population/teams running.

Blue characters? Opening up a-merits vs. opening up five strike forces and the respec trials? No question of staying hero any more.

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My impression is that, speaking strictly in terms of pure powergaming, the gray alignments can do anything and the other two are "trapped" on one side. If the rewards were equivalent, players would always be a gray alignment unless they are choosing their alignment purely for concept (and then they'd say they were being punished for not being gray). So, logically, the rewards for staying in a black or white alignment (for want of a better term) have to be equal to or better than the entire other alignment's content.

Flexibility almost always comes with a price over specialization -- the very cliché that starts "Jack of all trades" ends with "master of none."

Whether that price is too high or not is debatable -- I tend to think that (again, in terms of power-gaming mentality) it should be a pretty good reward; if it's even close to equivalent people will choose flexibility.

And of course the reason I'm exclusively addressing powergaming mentality is that the OP is not a complaint about roleplaying or flavor, but strictly about value of reward in monetary equivalence. Powergaming mentality.

This might be a bit off topic but I have no idea what Hero or Villain merits are...I'm assuming it was something introduced in GR that I have yet to read up on.

Anyone care to provide a helpful link for a returning, ignorant player?

The lack of incentive is why the vast majority of people have decided to remain either Hero or Villain. It's also why I'm thinking of taking my Vigilantes and Rogues back to "pure." It's fine if you want to completely convert from Red to Blue or vice versa, but playing Gray is not where it's at.

I posted something similar (although must less detailed) a few weeks ago. I totally agree with the OP. I don't really see much advantage to "being able to team with anyone" because of the fact that I have many alts (hero and villain) on every server I play. I can still do that without the disadvantage of, what I consider to be, lesser rewards.

I find that I enjoy being Gray.. All of my villians were originally written as undercover heroes. Even the SG name.. THUGS stands for The Hero UnderGround Soceity... It makes perfectly good sense theme wise for them to be rogue and to have the ability to move freely back and forth between Rogue Isles and Paragon CIty.

They can easily team with VIllians or Heroes. No matter what is going on in game on redside or blueside, they can take part.

I am rolling a MM who is a Thugs/Traps and he will be my first Vigilante. His story is that he grew in Kings Row, and got involved in the gangs around Paragon but after seeing his best friend hooked on Superdine and his life destroyed, and another of of his Oucast friends work went to work for Crey in Kings Row " disappeared " he decided to fight back.

Makes perfect sense to me..

The fact that many players will value alignment merits over access to what was supposed to be an entire game's worth of content indicates that either alignment merits are excessively valuable or the content is insufficient (or at least insufficiently accessible for the price). Possibly both.

Also, I still think that reward merit purchases and all rolls should be at settable levels without resorting to xp-locking shenanigans. There are supply deficiencies that want addressing here.

I agree with the dev sentiment of making the A merits to give incentive to "stay true." However, a part of me feels the purchasing power of the A merits is too strong and makes staying grey too much of a handicap. The benefits balance should be tilted towards heroes/villains, but I think it went too far.

That said, I'm aligning my characters by what feels right for them. My Rogue is collecing reward merits all over the place. Once the time is right he'll become full fledge villain, cash into V merits and IOs, and return to the grey area. Seems a very Rogue-ish thing to do, so it fits his character.

However, I do think my Vigilantes would have issues with this kind of trickery.

First, for clouded http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Alignment_Merit Alignment merits are merits than may be used to purchase special items at advantage.

For instance a single rare recipe roll cost 20 merits. However you may pay 1 Alignment merit to get 5 rare recipe rolls.

Next, when the market forums is trying to see if it's more effective, when trying to get 2 billion inf, to do 30 random rolls or save for 1 pvp IO; that shows extreme mastery of most. Pure alignments have extreme reward access, better alignment powers, and don't truly lose much from lack of opposing content.

All a player gets access to, through the gray alignment, is TFs and whatever content is being played at the time. They do not get access to the entirety of the opposing side's content. That and any content they might, possibly, get access to is available already by simply starting a new character.

If all opposing side content was opened; badges, contacts, and ouro. In addition to a moderate economic advantage such as largish inf bonus for Vigilantes and a higher rare/purp drop rate (like 10% more often) for rogues. If that were done, I think the gray alignment could be considered jack of all trades as opposed to just getting access to content you could already do, and even then not get most badges for it.

With the introducing of the weekly task force (WTF) and the notice of the well reward won't Rogues and Vigs have a superior advantage of Heroes and Villains.

My rouges can earn two notice of the wells a week and my heroes can only earn one.