CoH:Freedom new tutorial; Deeper moral choices?

Been a while since I posted a new thread in the forums, sorry if the thread sounds a bit suggestiony, but a lot of the Freedom-related posts seem to end up here.

I've been reading up on the new tutorial zone for Issue 21 and Freedom, the coming storm has finally come and it's going to wreck Galaxy City forever (tear). It's going to allow any archetype to start there so like Praetoria, your heroic ATs can become villains and same reversal for villainous ATs.

The way it's decided sounds like you'll encounter a dying hero at some point and you're given a choice. Save them or leave them. The former leading you to Atlas Park as hero or the latter leading you to Mercy Island as a villain. This is all well and good but it seems a little thin, a little too simple. As praetoria and Going Rogue have taught us, not very everything in City of Heroes is as black & white as this.

There's probably something more to the tutorial than this, but I feel there should actually be a number of choice throughout that makes you think about what your character's motives are. Are they true-blue, pure-evil or a bit of both?

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With this, I think there should be 3 or 5 'tests of character' that determines if your character is truly a hero at heart, or a villain. Or if possible, even a Vigilante or Rogue too!

Test of Compassion
"Save the dying hero?"
This one is the one mentioned officially as the choice you'd make to becoming a hero or villain. Tests whether you actually care about people and want to see them live, or not.

HERO: "Save the hero from dying"
VILLAIN: "Leave the hero to die"

Test of Temptation
"Should I take it or not?"
This test involves the use of gaining something really nice to start off your career, there's something valuable that's certainly not yours but it's not guarded or protected anymore. Do you dare pinch from the pile or leave it where it is?

HERO: "Protect the Valuables from being stolen/Leave the valuables"
VILLAIN: "Steal the valuables for yourself"

Test of Sacrifice
"Should I risk my life?"
I don't know if the test of compassion already covers this, but this test gives you an instance where you must save someone from something typically dangerous. It might not even be an important person, it could be someone's pet or treasured item instead. Would you risk your life to help this person or ignore their plea?

HERO: "Save the person/pet/treasured heirloom, risking your life"
ROGUE: "Save the person/pet/treasure for a price"
VILLAIN: "Ignore the plea for help"

Test of Priorities
"Do I save the people or catch the villains?"
This one tests your character's priorities. You're given an instance where people are in danger however criminals or monsters are also doing something they shouldn't. Do you go over to make sure the people are safe or gives the enemies what's coming to them?

HERO: "Protect the civilians from harm until they can escape"
VIGILANTE: "Beat the crap out of the enemies, leaving citizens to fend for themselves"
VILLAIN: "Screw them both"

Test of Mercy
"Should I Kill you, or Arrest you?"
You've taken down the enemy or caught them, and they're begging you to let them go or stop wailing on them. Would you detain them and let the law enforcement handle it? Would you put them out of their misery as judge and executioner? Or would you even let them go, knowing what they've done, perhaps at a price?

HERO: "Detain and arrest the criminal"
VIGILANTE: "Defeat/Kill/Rough-up the criminal before leaving/turning-them-in"
ROGUE: "Let the criminal go, with or without a condition attached"
VILLAIN: "Shake them of their valuables, then kill them"
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These are just a few of the tests I thought off the top of my head. But you can get the idea now. The tutorial, like Praetoria, shouldn't be all black and white. In the same way that your character can't switch alignments like a switch, there has to be a deeper motivation to becoming a hero or a villain or anything in between. A lot of these choices have Vigilante and Rogue thrown in them in the chance that you can start off as a grey alignment, but if you can't then those would be adjusted to be a binary Hero/Villain choice, can't help but dream though?

And why 3 or 5 instead of 2 and 4? Keeping it in odd scenerios lessens the degree of having to do tie-breakers. Also, If done in a group of FIVE tests, even if you did one of each alignment you'd end up with one alignment getting the majority moral choices made and eliminates all tie-breakers.

If done in groups of THREE then I'd have to say Heroes and Vigilantes count as the same and Rogues and Villains count as the other when making tie breakers. Getting a Hero+Vigilante+Villain result would make you a Hero/Vigilante, because there's more 'greater good' decisions than not. Getting Vigilante+Rogue+Rogue would make you a Rogue because it got majority

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Do you think this would make an overall better start to a character or just a more confusing tutorial? Post away forumites!

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@Oneirohero

I think the intent is to get brand new true newbies into the game and playing as quickly as possible. While I think the idea of getting players thinking about their character's morality is an interesting idea, I'm not sure that the tutorial is the place to do it. The tutorial is essentially the action-packed opening sequence that pulls you into the adventure and lands you in your starting zone saying "Yeah, let's do this!"

Making a ton of morally ambiguous choices during the opening moments will dampen that experience, without really adding much to it. I say this primarily on the assumption that when a player creates a new character, she already has a concept in her head about where the character stands on the morality scale. She's not looking for the game to figure it out for her and assign a value based on a series of arbitrary decisions.

Moral ambiguity is much more likely to occur later in life when the character has had a chance to consider her actions and their repercussions.

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I think they want to make the tutorial Shorter but simple to understand.

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I think it's generally unnecessary. For the most part players will select the morality of their character before they even enter the tutorial. Adding a "choose your own adventure" aspect to it doesn't really add anything from a player experience point of view, it's just a matter of pressing the correct pre-selected option.

On the issue of being a Rogue/Vigilante right out of the tutorial it's something that would be nice. However, I suspect that the devs want people to start on one side or the other than then gradually move to the greyer areas just for thematic reasons.

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They've condensed it down to the most basic and important choice - save a life or take a life - the other types of choices come in the Tip missions.

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@Golden Girl

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The problem with your idea is that it would probably require a tutorial that was levels 1 - 3 or 1 - 5 to work all that in well. And I don't think the idea is to segregate starting players for say 5 levels. Instead they want to keep the tutorial fairly short and roll into playing the full game fairly fast.

So your idea isn't bad, but that it conflicts with the design goals of the tutorial.

I actually like your idea of more complicated choices to follow but see that it would require isolating players from the main game for a longer period to provide enough space for those missions.

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The precise choice is:

"Give Hero some of your energy" or "Steal Energy from Hero"

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The other problem with that sort of Tutorial is that it has the potential to have characters get "stuck" as Rogues or Vigilantes, who right now are GR-only. Brand-new free players (the ones most likely to be using the tutorial in the first place, at least after old players are done checking it out) aren't going to have access to side-switching.

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