What could be done to incentivize the 'grey' alignments?

Yeah, that dead horse again.

Finally decided to take my praetorian born Rogue over to Paragon. Participated in a DIB, which was pretty fun. After finishing up I cruised around Atlas a little and thought about what else I could do running around, picking up a couple exploration badges. I'm content enough to keep him as a rogue so hero tips was pretty well out of the question.

Radio missions weren't all that appealing. Though I did pick up a radio!

I could do taskforces, if anyone were recruiting for them, or start my own. But then, all I'm getting out of it is reward merits. The badges and accolades for the different sides don't award til you change alignments so that's kind of useless. And if I want to run team content I've still got all the strikeforces redside to do anyhow since they barely get run. I guess the upside is heroside TFs get run a bit more often?

I could do the.. what 2 heroside zone events? The troll rave and the burning building. Again just more badges, and not even fun ones to get. I could go to Praetoria just as easily and do the zone events there that actually give some tangible rewards like an emote or some reward merits, etc. And none of those care about my alignment.

I could go hunt GMs. Except GM rewards are pretty cruddy. The only one that gives decent rewards now, Adamastor, can be spawned on both sides of the pond. And being a rogue, the Rogue Isle GMs are more valuable as they can unlock accolades and contacts. One minor plus is that I have better access to Hamidon raids, since The Hive tends to get more business than The Abyss (At least on Victory).

Then there's the alignment powers. A 10 second fear/confuse and a 15 second -10% DMG or -10% To-hit on a 3 minute cooldown timer. Compare to a 30 second +40% DMG and +10% To-Hit and a personal +30% recharge for 20 seconds and an AT specific boost, most getting a +60% DMG boost for 20 seconds.

.. does it really need to be said? Is the disparity not -blindingly- obvious? in fact I use Call to Justice frequently in iTrials and Hamidon raids, it's an -amazing- boost on big groups for a sizable chunk of time. Frenzy is awesome on my dominator when I need to refill my Domination bar (say if I've been hosped) or I get tackled by a boss early in the mission I need to lock down ASAP.

Fear Incarnate and Duplicity don't even have high enough magnitude to affect bosses without some secondary power to stack the fear and confuse. And even if they did, 10 seconds is crap. It's a very brief moment of relief, and even then they can still attack through a Fear. On my rogue it's used as a slight panic button if I start getting overwhelmed. It's not worth using any other time. There are so many tweaks that could be done to either power to make them more useful. Shorten the recharge, lengthen the effect, or make the magnitude higher. I usually save Call to Justice and Frenzy for bosses, I wouldn't mind being able to do the same with Duplicity or Fear Incarnate. The -To-hit and -DMG are.. ok? but on their own fairly inconsequential unless paired with your own +res or +def. (Being my rogue is a blaster, neither applies >>) And they don't compare at all to the massive damage buff or nice recharge/+to-hit of the other powers.

Ok so besides tweaking the alignment powers, what else can be done to make it worthwhile to stick around as a Rogue/Vigilante?

One thing that came to mind is increasing merit rewards for them. We've already established via their morality mission reward that Reward Merits are the substitute they receive in lieu of alignment merits. Well then let us earn more of them. Something like a 10% increase to merit rewards, or 10% increase to merit rewards from tourist activities. Or any time we get an alignment merit (lookin at you SSAs) give us 60. As it is, the only reward from any given SSA for a non-50 rogue/vigilante is 20 measly reward merits. Give us more since we can't get the oh so better alignment merits.

And maybe some alignment exclusive accolades. Stuff that requires badges from both sides like 2 exploration badges heroside, 2 villainside and a GM defeat badge or something.

Or make some zone events that are actually worth playing tourist for.

Anyway, that's about it.

I run Brutes (used to be almost only brutes) Scrapper (my new main) Dominators (many 50'd experiments) and Blasters (don't even ask, but I keep trying). There is only one good alignment for Brutes and Doms. Villain. For Scrapper and Blasters I prefer Hero. The two grey alignments? Yeah, no. I go on them so I can team with friends and get more content. period.

They need to do a little "powerset proliferation" and let you pick whatever Alignment power you want. If the game is truly balanced it won't matter. If the game is not truly balanced someone is getting messed over (I suspect Blueside Brutes...)

Just sayin'.

Best answer to the subject line? Alignment merits. Seriously, the ability to hop between Paragon and the Isles is NOT compensation enough for losing those valuable little cookies.

Give Fear Incarnate a +DMG buff with it. Give the confuse a +DMG buff to it.

Okay really, I think the ability to go to either side is worth it. I don't worry about the hero merits myself.

Buuut, what would make it more worth it imo, is if one could join opposing side SG/VG! Rogues who can join blueside SG and reverse for Vigilantes.

Id go Rogue just for the awesome tips, nevermind I think quite a few of them work for heroes period.

Maybe the devs don't want players to remain 'grey'. It's a transitory phase. The only reason they did it was to please all the RPers who wanted to be able to cross sides. It wasn't for more power-gaming options. At least that's my opinion.

Allow Vigilante's to get Vigilante/Villain tips while in Rogue Isles and let Rogues get Rogue/Hero tips in Paragon.

That should be enough to make me want to keep some greys at the expense of no H/V merits.

I think one of the big problems is the Signature Story Arcs.

As a 'Pure' Alignment you can get 1 Alignment Merit and 20 Merits repeatable up to 50, then the Astral and Threads.

As a 'Grey' Alignment you only get the 20 merit option up to 50. You can't even get 20 merits twice by doing a hero and a villain SSA. Just 20 merits for one SSA per week.

You know on most of my Vigilantes and Rogues I don't even bother running them? I'm planning on waiting on characters to get to 50 so they don't effectively 'waste' their first completion bonus on 20 merits.

And as much as devs have said being a 'tourist' alignment lets you play all the content in the game, that's only if you get someone on the other side of things to run it for you to join in. Not to mention that Rogues can no longer get the Atlas Park or original Dark Astoria exploration badges, while Vigilantes can get all the Rogue Isles exploration badges.

Apart from the SSA screwjob that Vigilantes get, majority of my characters are vigilantes in that they can just hop between the two cities doing whatever he pleases.
That alone is enough of a reward imo.

Being able to run any TF at any time is extremely significant. I had never tried the half-way alignments until just recently because I assumed I cared more about alignment merits. How wrong I was! I would so much rather be able to jump onto anything that looks good that someone advertises on a server channel without having to switch away from the character I want to play. I'd be lying if I said my stance had nothing to do with the fact that everything is dirt cheap on the market now, though.

Speaking of SSAs, did you know that rogues and vigilantes can run both sets of SSAs? It's really true! That's another reward: you can make the NPCs look like raging morons for thinking you're on their side after you just beat the stuffing out of them.

With regards to the original question: nothing, no one likes a fence sitter. Pick a side already ya bum!

1) A homeland. We have a hero side and a villian side. we need a rogue side. I think - with the story arc changes - that a 'broken" Praetoria would be wonderfully suited to that role.

2) "Grey" arcs. solo and team arcs that require a certain "moral flexibility." This would require certain choices to be made in the arcs and missions.

3) Special "grey" perks and awards.

4) A "grey" EAT/VEAT. My suggestion would be the "Profiteer," a stealthy blasterish AT with secondary mastermindish support powers (eg support pets) with an innate ability to generate better/extra rewards for teams.

It's 106 miles to Grandville, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing faceless helmets

... Hit it ...

As long as its not worth running SSAs and tips for rog/vig, I won't run them. When its fixed (if ever) I'll reconsider.

Edit: First the devs have to decide this is WAI. If not, they should consider an adjustment.