Without going too into detail I'd like to remind people that there are plenty of stories of superheroes doing what is effectively the right thing but the public or the media doesn't see it that way and is turned against them. Something something Harvey Dent can we trust him?

In a way, the Tri-Alignment being visible only to the NPCs and the player feels more real as the alignment is based on how the world in general sees you. Contacts outside of the general populous wouldn't really care what you do as any villain knows you can be swayed to the dark side and heroes know you can try and return to the side of good, the same with the other players. Doesn't mean either side would let you walk into their base freely but prove you're not BSing and they'll tour you through.

Kazander wrote:

Project hero does not see a reason to see this information and is fine with it being hidden.

Project_Hero doesn't see a reason NOW, and is unwilling to admit that there might be a reason in the future. By denying the opportunity for a reason, he's locking perspective to a singular exclusionary viewpoint. I call this Premature Optimization.

Kazander wrote:

Redlynne wants this information because the npc reacts to a player with this information and we the player can't see it and you feel if the npc can know this then we should for world consistency.

Correct. Even if the information is useless NOW (or at launch), that may not be true forever. After all, there's always the possibility of doing something COOL with the alignment system later on down the line, in which knowing this information (like almost every NPC does) would be helpful. The info doesn't have to be permanently visible at all times, but it ought to at least be [i]available[/i] somehow. Best compromise is to put it somewhere on a PC's Bio page so as to make it accessible if needed, with the implicit understanding that most people won't "need" to see it.

I've known Redlynne for a while, virtually, and he's a creative problem-solver, often coming up with interesting and imaginative solutions to problems. He can also be a bit defensive about those ideas. I suspect he's had an idea for something cool which could be done with alignment data, but perhaps the idea isn't well-developed enough to submit it to the scrutiny and mockery that is occasionally deployed on the forums. So, instead, he's arguing for the alignment data-stream to be exposed, so it can be used for something cool in later development.

(If you thought the 'Jiggle Debate' was bad, you should have been there for the 'Great Knockback Jihad'.)

I agree that, if PC Alignment ever becomes relevant to the game, then the Devs can come up with a method to display it at that time.

Be Well!
Fireheart

Kazander wrote:

Ok I am trying to understand both sides of this debate.
Project hero does not see a reason to see this information and is fine with it being hidden.

Redlynne wants this information because the npc reacts to a player with this information and we the player can't see it and you feel if the npc can know this then we should for world consistency.

Have I accurately summed everything up?

I guess I don't see the need to know and I don't think I agree that it is the devs are saying play our way not your way. I guess I have trouble figuring out how are you affected by not knowing? The effect of the alignment system is for the personal story portion of the game so for a lot of missions is it really going to come up? Or have I misunderstood the alignment system?

I think you didn't read the whole thread.

It appears as if you've only looked at the last couple of arguments by the most [s]heated[/s] active participants and stopped.

Project_Hero has only ever been arguing against the [i]Last Argument made[sup][size=8]TM[/size][/sup][/i], taken in isolation, and has thereby steered the discussion away from the points that he actually had no argument against. Go back and look again and see it for yourself.

I personally do have a gameplay impact of alignment to point out. And I think it is important enough to warrant alignments being visible. Take that reason and combine it with the cognitive dissonance of PCs not being aware of something the rest of the world is.
Right now [b]"I don't see a reason for it and am fine with it being hidden"[/b].

Project_Hero wrote:

You have accurately summed up my stance.

Is hardly enough of an argument to stand against the arguments Redlynne and I have made. And by the way, if you don't see a reason for it, then you are deliberately not reading all the reasons for it that we have been making. Perhaps your summary would be better stated as "I don't care for your reasons for it"

And to make it more convenient for you, the gameplay impact I am referring to is this:

[indent]Every PC will have an alignment they get to forge for themselves; regardless of whether it is visible to anyone.[/indent]
[indent]Regardless of the prevelence of alignment-impacting decisions, it will take dedication to get your alignment where you want it to be and it dedication to maintain it there. Even if you want to be the roguish scoundrel who plays in the middle ground you have to keep an eye on your alignment and make sure you don't do too many things on one side of any axis. In fact, the fewer opportunities to steer your alignment, the more important those opportunities become. [/indent]

[indent]Will there be players who don't care what their alignment is and just play the way they want and let the alignment cards fall where they may? Yes, of course there will be. But there will also be just as many or more people who want to play the ultra honorable ([i]or stay away from becoing the ultra-honorable all you paladin-haters, you know who you are[/i]) or any other other specific alignment position.[/indent]
[indent]And so it will come to pass that players will become more and more reluctant to run content with other players unless they share the same alignment goals. Yes, we can re-run content if we don't like how our party leader made some choices; but how many times are players going to consign themselves to re-running content before they just give up on parties and play solo for the rest of their time.[/indent]

When faced with this scenario, I find it is better to lay out alignments in the open than to hide them from players. And yes, alignments are indicators of past performance and not indicators of future behavior. But at least knowing someone's alignment can start the conversation if a conversation is what needs to happen. Worst-case scenario of making alignments visible is that people will continue to play solo as they were. So, not worse at all.

Project_Hero wrote:

So, Huck. When running missions why can't you just ask the party leader how they plan to make choices?

Even if their alignment is visible this doesn't give much indication on how they're going to choose. Alignments don't need to be visible to have a conversation about alignments especially involving missions where alignments will matter.

If you're so worried about having to rerun content BE the party leader.

Seeing others alignments still holds no real practical use.

Anyone running alignment specific quests would probably just say that that's how they're running alignments visible or not.

So again. Knowing someone's alignment is no indication of how a party will run.

My stance has always been that knowing someone's alignment is useless and adds practically nothing. I have argued as such against any of the reasons put forth.

There you go again. Ignoring the whole argument to point out special cases where it might not matter.
[indent]Your argument is actually a [i]formal fallacy[/i]. Specifically, it is a propositional fallacy known as Denying the Antecedent.[/indent]

Let me turn the tables on you... yet again...

You have been asking for proof as to why we think it should be visible. We've gone above and beyond to show you reasons. But you have yet to provide ONE SINGLE REASON why it shouldn't be visible. For crying out loud, your last sentence is all the proof we need that your argument is baseless.

If you had stated that you just don't want your alignment to be visible. That would have been a perfectly valid point to make. You could even go so far as to say why you don't want it, realizing that it is a subjective opinion. But you didn't stop there. You attempted to argue based on logic, and by doing so, have demonstrated an inability to follow actual logic.

We have made argument A and argument B.

(argument A: cognitive dissonance: why should the world know my character's alignment but other players do not?)
(argument B: making alignments visible facilitates forming parties of similar alignment)

- your argument against argument A is... not coherent at all, actually. Every argument you've made against it attempts to address specific cases and not the whole basis of it; and every argument you've made against it was summarily disproven before you switched to the next special case.
- your argument against argument B is that if you can show one case where you don't need it, then it is never needed. Or don't you understand what the word facilitate means?

Fireheart wrote:

I've known Redlynne for a while, virtually, and he's a creative problem-solver, often coming up with interesting and imaginative solutions to problems. He can also be a bit defensive about those ideas. I suspect he's had an idea for something cool which could be done with alignment data, but perhaps the idea isn't well-developed enough to submit it to the scrutiny and mockery that is occasionally deployed on the forums. So, instead, he's arguing for the alignment data-stream to be exposed, so it can be used for something cool in later development.

Nail vs Head
You are spot on (as usual) Fireheart.

I want alignment to "matter" in some way ... eventually. Doesn't have to be something done for launch, which will only be covering Levels 1-30, with room for an additional 20 more (to get to 50) later on post-launch. Point being, there's going to be room to grow the game.

Grow the game how? Dunno. But I'd rather not "nip that growth opportunity in the bud" before it has a chance to become nifty.

Consider ...

There's going to be Story Paths for Heroes and Villains (2 each) ... but the PCs are all going to be inhabiting the same zones. There will be Heroes AND Villains in Alexandria. There will be Heroes AND Villains in Clarkstown. This won't be like the great divide between Paragon City (Heroes only) and the Rogue Isles (Villains only). Which means ... all of the city zones will functionally be what amount to co-op zones, because you've got Heroes and Villains playing in the same spaces.

Now obviously, there are going to be stories that are written and designed and meant to be played by Hero only PCs. Same again with stories for Villain only PCs. So far so standard, right?

But what about the "co-op stories" where the distinction of Hero or Villain isn't important? Basically, why shouldn't there be "co-op stories" that segregate their content by alignment axis parameter, rather than by Hero/Villain designation?

So we've got three alignment axes ... Lawful/Lawless, Honorable/Dishonorable, Peaceful/Violent ... right?
Take each of those three alignment axes and chop them up into thirds.

Lawful - Neutral - Lawless
Honorable - Neutral - Dishonorable
Peaceful - Neutral - Violent

Now, pick ONE (or more) of those ranges on the continuum of the alignment axes ... and imagine stories written for specifically those alignments.

For example ...

We have information publicly available about the [b][url=https://cityoftitans.com/content/five-dragons]Five Dragons[/url][/b], who are a crime syndicate. Right off the bat, we can probably assume that a story involving the Five Dragons is probably going to be something having to do with Lawless activities ... right? But that doesn't necessarily have to translate into Good vs Evil in a sort of Hero vs Villain sort of way. It could instead be a story about the Five Dragons hiring the PC(s) as muscle to put a hit on their rivals, the Black Rose ... in which case this becomes a crime gang versus crime gang story (and good and evil can both take a hike). This would then, at its core, be something of a Turf War kind of storyline, putting the PCs into the middle of the action, possibly as mercenaries.

Now let's suppose that the Five Dragons are "hiring" supers who are known to not exactly have a whole lot of respect for upholding the Law. Practical upshot ... the Contact for this story (or collection of stories) is looking for Lawless supers who are willing to "get their hands dirty" for a payout. They [i]don't care[/i] if you're a Hero or a Villain ... so long as you're Lawless.

[youtube]hKzy_S2gRI8[/youtube]

So you have a story that's not written with a Hero slant or a Villain slant to it, but rather a Lawless slant ... meaning that Heroes and Villains can team up together to do it, so long as they're all Lawless.

And once you've got that story in the hopper, you can then write ANOTHER STORY ... again without a Hero slant or a Villain slant to it, but rather a Lawful slant. This could be something where the PCs are directly assisting the TCPD (so siding with "the law" in a turf war between the Five Dragons and their rivals the Black Rose), or could be doing something else more direct (like deliver this subpeona to the crime bosses who "aren't taking visitors") in support of a "legal" takedown effort.

And once you've got that extra story in the hopper, there's room to write YET ANOTHER STORY ... again without a Hero or a Villain slant to it, but rather a Neutral slant ... about how other people have gotten wind of this little turf war and are planning to "twist in the wind" so as to play each side against the other and skim the benefits off the top. Basically, someone's got "an angle" on how to get the better of everyone else involved, but they need someone who can plausibly be seen as a "neutral" party (who takes full advantage). Heck, this storyline could even be one casting the PCs as "spoilers" in the turf war, tasked with making sure that NEITHER the Five Dragons nor the Black Rose can "profit" from this turf war, and that any victories they might respectively achieve are pyrrhic at best so as to deter them from trying to pull this kind of thing again any time soon.

So from just a single story idea ... Five Dragons versus Black Rose in a turf war between rival syndicates ... you actually wind up with THREE story lines (Lawless, Neutral and Lawful) giving you three different perspectives on the events in that story idea ... rather than just two, of playing the Hero or playing the Villain. And because of that, you can write it all up as a "co-op story" in which the Hero or Villain distinction simply doesn't matter, and instead you're looking at a group (of PCs) brought together by commonalities of interests and reputations, rather than being about Good Guys fighting Bad Guys. Fill p(l)ot with meat, season to taste, stir vigorously while boiling and serve hot.

And if you can do that on one alignment axis, you can do it for all of them.
Peaceful? Restore order by dispersing a potential riot.
Violent? [b]Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls.[/b]
Neutral? Stay flexible so as to reassure people who need that reassurance while intimidating people who respect only blunt trauma applied to their noses.

I'll leave the Honorable/Neutral/Dishonorable story ideas as an exercise for the creative reader. My first thought(s) for this sort of thing?
Double crossed!
Treason!
Betrayal!
We've been sold out!

You get the idea ...

Now am I saying that ALL stories should be written this way? Of course not! Don't be foolish!
But I am suggesting that SOME of the stories for City of Titans could be written this way ... and if they are, since the content in them is functionally "gated" behind having the alignment of all of the PCs forming the team fall within a certain [i]range[/i] to be eligible to participate (because it's where you fall on the respective alignment axis that matters, not whether you're a Hero or a Villain) ... it then becomes important to be able to see the alignment on other PCs. And as soon as you take the "Good Guys versus Bad Guys" framing out of the story equation, things get a LOT more interesting in a hurry because the stories you can tell (and have the PCs participate in) can start to get a LOT more complex with a greater range of motivations and outcomes than you'd get with a straight up Hero versus Villain framing. Now you can dive into questions of LOYALTY and TRUST, which don't always map perfectly onto questions of Good versus Evil.

And just to be explicitly clear, I very much want to be in stories that are more complex than just "street sweep 10 Skulls and then go Defeat All in their abandoned warehouse base" like we kept getting in City of Heroes. The framing for so many of those missions was "here are the Heroes and you cheer for them, and there are the Villains and you faceplant them" with really not much of a story, let alone a motivation, beyond merely just that.

In other words, I think that City of Titans [b]can be more[/b] than just Heroes and Villains. I want there to be stories that are written for "crossover teaming" between Heroes AND Villains who have a "certain kind of reputation" around the city.

And it's really hard to do that if you keep all of the alignment info hidden because you're never going to let it be used for anything ... let alone for anything cool ...

In fact, if you REALLY want to keep that "co-op" sense that City of Heroes put on display in the Rikti War Zone and in Praetoria and eventually in the (new) Dark Astoria and in the Incarnate Trials, it would make a lot of sense for the storytelling and types of missions to make a "shift" in the late game (so like, Levels 40-50, maybe?) from being based on a Hero versus Villain framing to instead lean more heavily on an Alignment axis framing. Don't get me wrong, you'd still have Hero content and Villain content too ... but you'd also start seeing more Alignment oriented content, further stirring the pot of what people want to play in the "end game" Levels, and particularly at the Level Cap.

Project_Hero wrote:

A. The world needs to "know" your alignment to act accordingly, where civilians run to or from characters and certain groups will attack them. Players do not do either of these things. Thereby knowing their alignment in this case is pointless. I have stated this before.

That behavior has nothing to do with alignment. It may have to do with Reputation. Low rep with civilians could be used in resulting in them running away from a character.

Being attacked by a faction has everything to do with Rep and nothing to do with alignment.

The npcs that respond to alignment data are one’s associated with choices you have made. This is where Red’s adverts ruin that all nocs have perfect knowledge falls apart.

Many here in this thread have been confusing alignment with reputation.

Alignment axi is not a requirement for teaming. I’ve already discussed the mechanics for this.

It is not required for role play. How players choose to act out their alignment through role play is up to the individual player.

In many pno rpgs that rely on alignment don’t require a player reveal their character’s alignment to other players. They provide a guide for how to play out the actions for that character. When alignment does come into play is when there are game mechanics associated to alignments that either rely on what a player can do (what it can affect or how it can affect things).

Alignment are not used to create player to player factions. They are not limiters to who likes or dislikes your character (unless related to the story driven choices - and that may be tangentially related to reputation).

Once again, alignment is representative of the player’s choices they made for their character and acts as a guide for the direction the player is driving their character’s story.

If you don’t engage is content where decisions are made, it can be entirely possible to never effect your alignment (like street sweeping to 50, or when ugc is out, making your own content to simply plow through masses of mobs). If you never engage in the decision-based content, alignment has zero bearing on your game.

Viewing alignments is a waste of time.

Want to know about a character read their bio. Seriously. They probably have what kind of character they are. There you know about them. Knowing that their alignment reinforces their bio adds nothing. For those without a bio, ask them like you would have if you could see their alignment anyway.

Facilitating party formations? HOW? People will put things like "Running Lawful missions LFM!" If they matter enough to people and if not just freeking ask them.

How will viewing a person's alignment help that? All I can see happening with that is making a snap decision based on their current alignment. Cool, limiting your teams and potential grouping. Great idea.

Red, having specific team up missions for specific alignments does not facilitate the need to have alignments visible, especially if the mission info or name clearly spells out what it's about. Which you can do by easily adding the alignment it enhances before the mission title. Viewing others alignments doesn't help here. The specific alignment missions aren't enhanced in any way by seeing another player's alignment.

Most of these pro alignment visibility arguments seem to boil down to "well, I could just communicate with another player, but I'd rather make an assumption based on a specific game mechanic."

Project_Hero wrote:

Viewing alignments is a waste of time.

Want to know about a character read their bio. Seriously. They probably have what kind of character they are. There you know about them. Knowing that their alignment reinforces their bio adds nothing. For those without a bio, ask them like you would have if you could see their alignment anyway.

Facilitating party formations? HOW? People will put things like "Running Lawful missions LFM!" If they matter enough to people and if not just freeking ask them.

How will viewing a person's alignment help that? All I can see happening with that is making a snap decision based on their current alignment. Cool, limiting your teams and potential grouping. Great idea.

Red, having specific team up missions for specific alignments does not facilitate the need to have alignments visible, especially if the mission info or name clearly spells out what it's about. Which you can do by easily adding the alignment it enhances before the mission title. Viewing others alignments doesn't help here. The specific alignment missions aren't enhanced in any way by seeing another player's alignment.

Most of these pro alignment visibility arguments seem to boil down to "well, I could just communicate with another player, but I'd rather make an assumption based on a specific game mechanic."

[size=24][b]fa·cil·i·tate[/b][/size]
fəˈsiləˌtāt
verb
[indent]make (an action or process) easy or easier.[/indent]

What part of that definition do you not understand? You were here back in post #65 when I addressed these very questions. So why do you do this? Why do you ignore previous arguments and ask the same questions again and again? All this accomplishes is belaboring the entire thread and exasperating me and Redlynne and the others who disagree. ...wait a minute... is that your goal? Is your goal to ask us to continually defend our positions to the point that we give up so that you never have to defend your own position?

Because, if "it's a waste of time" is your only basis for your position, it's not a bad tactic to adopt.

Huckleberry wrote:

Project_Hero wrote:

Viewing alignments is a waste of time.

Want to know about a character read their bio. Seriously. They probably have what kind of character they are. There you know about them. Knowing that their alignment reinforces their bio adds nothing. For those without a bio, ask them like you would have if you could see their alignment anyway.

Facilitating party formations? HOW? People will put things like "Running Lawful missions LFM!" If they matter enough to people and if not just freeking ask them.

How will viewing a person's alignment help that? All I can see happening with that is making a snap decision based on their current alignment. Cool, limiting your teams and potential grouping. Great idea.

Red, having specific team up missions for specific alignments does not facilitate the need to have alignments visible, especially if the mission info or name clearly spells out what it's about. Which you can do by easily adding the alignment it enhances before the mission title. Viewing others alignments doesn't help here. The specific alignment missions aren't enhanced in any way by seeing another player's alignment.

Most of these pro alignment visibility arguments seem to boil down to "well, I could just communicate with another player, but I'd rather make an assumption based on a specific game mechanic."

[size=24][b]fa·cil·i·tate[/b][/size]
fəˈsiləˌtāt
verb
[indent]make (an action or process) easy or easier.[/indent]

What part of that definition do you not understand? You were here back in post #65 when I addressed these very questions. So why do you do this? Why do you ignore previous arguments and ask the same questions again and again? All this accomplishes is belaboring the entire thread and exasperating me and Redlynne and the others who disagree. ...wait a minute... is that your goal? Is your goal to ask us to continually defend our positions to the point that we give up so that you never have to defend your own position?

Makes things easier by adding an additional step?

Someone looks for team members

You check their alignment

You then ask them if that's how they're going to be running it.

They answer, you join or you don't.

As opposed to:

Someone looks for team members

You ask how they're running it

They answer, you join or you don't.

So. It only saves time if you never ask them and just base your joining of a team on their alignment.

Edit: which to me seems a good way to miss out on potential teams.

Huckleberry wrote:

Thanks for the clarification.

I believe the arguments Redlynne, others and I have made for why we think alignments should be visible are unaffected by this clarification, but it is good to have nonetheless.

I will specially address the main concerns you brought up in this thread.

The desire for players to use the tri-axis alignments in order to make and maintain their own social network - primarily through super team formation and maintenance by a super team leader.

This is basically trying to use the alignment system for something it is not: a player-based faction system.

Each players individual choices for their character do not have to have an impact on other players. There are choices that can be made to ensure this.

Creating social networks based on alignments can still happen. Players can choose to state their intent in a bio, or super team description, and if the group with players that make choices going against those guidelines, chose to enforce them at that time. The game providing the inflrmation does not impact this capability. It is, quite simply a very specific choice to associate with a players who who are playing the game in a particular way.

Players can do that without the system providing details of their choices. Players create social groups of all kinds without ever relying upon the game design to provide a qualifier of any sort.

The other main issue you discussed is the world maintaining a record of the player’s alignment.

This does not occur at the “world level”. It only occurs with npcs Within content which reference choices made by players as part of the story they are in. Not every npc in the game has a reference point decision tree triggered by a player’s alignment.

Tannim222 wrote:

Huckleberry wrote:

Thanks for the clarification.

I believe the arguments Redlynne, others and I have made for why we think alignments should be visible are unaffected by this clarification, but it is good to have nonetheless.

I will specially address the main concerns you brought up in this thread.

The desire for players to use the tri-axis alignments in order to make and maintain their own social network - primarily through super team formation and maintenance by a super team leader.

This is basically trying to use the alignment system for something it is not: a player-based faction system.

I have never associated players forming roleplaying guilds with player forming factions. That's a pretty outlandish argument Tannim.

On the other hand, I suppose it is possible that if players want to get a bunch of like-minded guilds together and form a Dishonorable faction or a violence faction or an honor faction for PvP, that would be really something! But just because a feature in the game wasn't designed for the way players use it doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be used for it. Besidfes, would alignment-oriented factions really be a bad thing anyway?

The reason sandbox games like Eve and Archage and BDO are popular isn't because of the instanced content. It is because they allow the players to incentivize their own missions.

Tell us. Regardless of alignment, will player characters be able to carry the label of Hero or Villain? The answer is quite important to this discussion.

Tannim222 wrote:

Each players individual choices for their character do not have to have an impact on other players. There are choices that can be made to ensure this.

Yes, you've told us this already. And the choice we have is to accept or not accept the decisions made by the leader. Will we be able to pick and choose on a decision by decision basis, or is this an option we select when we join a party or when we start an instanced mission? The answer to this question is important to this discussion.

Tannim222 wrote:

Creating social networks based on alignments can still happen. Players can choose to state their intent in a bio, or super team description, and if the group with players that make choices going against those guidelines, chose to enforce them at that time. The game providing the inflrmation does not impact this capability. It is, quite simply a very specific choice to associate with a players who who are playing the game in a particular way.

Players can do that without the system providing details of their choices. Players create social groups of all kinds without ever relying upon the game design to provide a qualifier of any sort.

So what you are saying is that the only way for a guild leader to enforce guild alignment is by actually playing in a party with every member. That is absurd.

And everything you just mentioned is great evidence that making alignments visible will facilitate such networking. Thank you for making my point for me.

Tanim222 wrote:

The other main issue you discussed is the world maintaining a record of the player’s alignment.

This does not occur at the “world level”. It only occurs with npcs Within content which reference choices made by players as part of the story they are in. Not every npc in the game has a reference point decision tree triggered by a player’s alignment.

I don't understand what this statement is attempting to prove. If you were to say that only special omniscient NPCs that descend upon the world like angels from time to time to hand out guidance, then I would agree. But all you are saying is that not every NPC in the city is programmed to react to a character's alignment.

Newsflash: We didn't expect every NPC to have that programming.

The important takeaway from the player's point of view is that: at any time, any NPC could be written with alignment affected content. Even if it is only one out of every 100 NPCs. From the character's perspective, NPCs have information that player characters are being deliberately prevented from knowing, against all lore and common sense. And like I said in one of my earlier posts, the less frequent opportunities are to impact our alignment, the more meaningful they become to make sure we impact our alignment in the way we want.

Hopefully if any alignment gated content comes out it'd only be to talk to the initial contact, or just the party leader that needs to have such an alignment.

Especially because folks can choose to accept the leader's alignment choices or not.

Edit: also if there's alignment gated content there should be some for those who do not have strong alignment leanings. Most games with alignment systems don't give much/anything to the neutrals.

We don’t have neutral. We have a non-binary scale for each axis of the alignment system.

There is no directly alignment axis exclusive content.

The direction your story takes is based on the decisions you make when choices are offered. At any point in time you can begin making choices that are in opposition to your earlier ones, changing your alignment, and the direction of your story over time.

Now, in theory we could make exclusive alignment axis content that doesn’t offer choice, but it would be based on the content holder’s alignment and not exclude others of different alignments from engaging in the content if they are on the holder’s team.

There may be particular version of events which are exclusive to alignments down the road, but they are a result of choices, not a requirement from the outset to start.

Red’s second to last paragraph has it just about right with how the system is set up now. The same content can be replayed and viewed from different angles of the story based on previous decisions made.

Sounds like someone has some explaining to do ...

I've been thinking in terms of a -10 to +10 scale/continuum, for ease of concept, in which zero is the "middle" of the neutral region. So you'd have ...
-10 to -4
-3 to +3
+4 to +10
... for a relatively "even" distribution of ranges (in integer terms). Actually MOVING a +/- 1 in either direction would require an accumulation of effort culminating in a mission to "finalize" the overall movement choice, kind of like the system that City of Heroes used, so as to prevent any kind of "accidental" movement of alignment values without Player buy in on the choice to do so. Set things up such that the "amount" of accumulated effort needed to shift another +/- 1 is on a sliding scale where the closer you get to the extremes, the more "effort" you have to put in for each additional bump towards the extreme, and you wind up with a sort of "rolling uphill" dynamic where the further you go the harder it is to KEEP going towards the extreme, but the "easier" it becomes to slide back towards the center relative to the amount of effort needed to keep pushing towards the extreme.

So if it takes 10 choices to go from +0 to +1 (or -1), it then takes 20 choices to go from +1 to +2, and 30 choices to go from +2 to +3 ... all the way up to 100 choices to go from +9 to +10 ... so the amount of "effort" needed for each additional bump towards the extreme end increases with each bump.

Conversely, any sort of "backsliding" will only get easier and easier. So going from +10 to +9 would need only 1 choice. Going from +9 to +8 would need only 2 choices. Going from +8 to +7 would need only 3 choices ... and going from +1 to +0 would take 10 choices in that direction.

So, going from +0 to +10 would take:
10 + 20 + 30 + 40 + 50 + 60 + 70 + 80 + 90 +100 = 550 choices to "push" in that specific direction ... which is a LOT of effort!

Backsliding from +10 back down to +0 would take:
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 +10 = 55 choices to "fall" back down to the absolute middle ... which is a lot LESS effort.

In other words, the amount of "work" that needs to be done to move your alignment in any given direction [i]is asymmetric[/i]. Going to the extremes is hard, while moving to the center is easy, and nothing ever happens because of a SINGLE decision. First you make the choice(s) that create the opportunity to move your alignment by +/- 1 ... and then you have to deliberately (and therefore, knowingly) choose to execute that option by completing a mission that is explicitly designed to achieve that purpose (like City of Heroes did with their morality/alignment mission system).

And this is where Tannim steps in and says everything I just wrote is completely wrong and City of Titans isn't going to be doing ANYTHING like that AT ALL ... and then proceed to elaborate what the system City of Titans will be using actually looks like and how it is structured (and why) so we don't have to keep wildly speculating about unknown systems that result in Left Hand No Talk Right Hand anymore on this topic.

Here, I'll even do you one better. Here's what I'd imagine the UI for showing alignments on the Bio page could look like. Mind you, everything I'm about to throw out here is fanciful/notional and I have no expectation that City of Titans will ACTUALLY do anything like this.

So ... start with an ordinary clock face.

[img]https://img00.deviantart.net/6dad/i/2009/355/7/9/clock_face_by_missminded.jpg[/img]

Divide the clock face up into 3 parts ... one for Law (blue) one for Honor (gold) one for Peace (red) ... like this:

[img]https://i.imgur.com/SDYIpGX.jpg[/img]

Then use an "arrow" or "pointer indicator" radiating out from the center showing where on the continuum for that particular axis a PC's alignment lies. Basically something like this for a 0, 0, 0 "all neutral" alignment.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/n4YYGV5.jpg[/img]

At that point, it's just a matter of "turning" the respective arrows through the 120 degree sweep available to them to show which "direction" a PC's alignment is "angled" for each of the alignment axes. Basically do it up as a sectioned pie chart, rather than as a grouping of three linear bars stacked on top of each other. The nice thing about doing the presentation in this "round" format is that it doesn't inherently have any positive/negative associations with any specific direction for which way the arrow is pointing (or where a dot lies on a horizontal or vertical bar line). It also lets you know "at a glance" (once you learn the symbology) roughly "where" a PC's alignment settings lie.

I mean, you can easily tell the difference between these three sets of alignment settings, can't you?

[img]https://i.imgur.com/vcg6oEv.jpg[/img] . [img]https://i.imgur.com/Xvd8XKp.jpg[/img] . [img]https://i.imgur.com/9hAODOV.jpg[/img]

Now realize that the red/gold/blue arrows move independently of each other and not necessarily in unison (as I'm depicting here) because each alignment is "independent" of the others and you've got a simple visual representation that can be done in a relatively small screen area. If you need "more detail" hover your mouse cursor over the alignment icon to get a pop up window with text information for each alignment.

This is what it would look like at 60x60 pixel resolution (so "icon sized").

[img]https://i.imgur.com/ytJgDM8.jpg[/img]

I have been in games where guilds can have characters of different races and different npcs faction access and it was not an impedement to the guilds formation not function.

We have systems in place to prevent arbitrary segregation of player pollution on purpose. We aren’t going to keep adding systems to enforce every possible distinction of how and why a super team can be formed and by what rules that formation must adhere to.

This does not prevent players from forming social groups based around a common concept. Players do this all the time even without a game mechanic driving the need for it.

I think an important lesson might be becoming forgotten--give the player choices unless there's a bona-fide game reason to remove an option.

What I envision, if not at launch, but sometime soon, is this:

Every character has a publicly accessible (from within the game and/or on this website) Cape Chasers' page. Elements on this page would include these: character name, @user name, civilian name, secret name, classification, specification, tertiary group, level, powersets, powers, supergroup (can we have more than one?), head-shot photo, action-shot photos (one per costume?), alignments, reputations, biography, badges, achievements, start date, last-active date, etc. The user of the character could toggle on/off each element separately.

Don't want your user name on the page. Toggle it off. Don't want your Five Dragons reputation on the page, but do want your CAP rep on it? Toggle the former off and the latter on. And so on. It should be as granular as possible.

Yes, one could periodically update one's bio, but if the database is keeping track of something, why not take advantage of that? Nothing on your Cape Chasers' page is needed by other players, but many might want to be shared or kept private. Let each player decide for each of their characters.

I'll have a Silver age hero who is very public and squeaky clean; everything will be public, even the "secret" ID. I'll also have a ninja anti-hero who is so secret, even their name is unknown to Cape Chasers. Please give me the ability to control mine own characters' information.

MeSoSollyWan wrote:

Tannim, I think it should be communicated that we definitely appreciate your time and feedback on the forums here. You've been especially present as of late on this topic.

Quoted for emphasis and agreement.

Redlynne wrote:

MeSoSollyWan wrote:

Tannim, I think it should be communicated that we definitely appreciate your time and feedback on the forums here. You've been especially present as of late on this topic.

Quoted for emphasis and agreement.

Ditto.

Lothic wrote:

Huckleberry wrote:

Sure, faction reputation can fill in for some of that; but since alignment exists, it would be a pity if MWM didn't make the most of it eventually.

I have no problem (as I implied earlier) if MWM can eventually "make something more" out of the alignment system that can affect game consequential things like how missions play out. I just necessarily think it might be relatively hard to pull off without it becoming something akin to the CoH Origin system that became something the Devs of CoH ultimately spent years trying to [b][i]remove[/i][/b] from the foundations of the game because of the arbitrary "factionalization" of the playerbase it represented.

Not saying alignment-gated content in a game like this would be bad and/or impossible. Just saying that implementing it well might not be as straightforward (or beneficial) as one might initially think. Players using alignments to "filter" various players for teams or supergroup memberships is one thing - having the game use alignments to compartmentalize what content is made available to players is something else.

This is a very good point, Lothic. A cautionary tale. I think the major difference between gating things by alignment and gating things by origin is that characters can change their alignments in CoT, but characters could never change their origins in CoX. Accordingly, I don't see alignment gates as that big of a deal for that reason. But that doesn't invalidate your point.

But there is one aspect of gated content that MWM is probably looking at, or should. That is they are only a small band of part-time volunteers. They have to make sure that they maximize their return on investment(ROI). So every Man-Hour-Equivalent they invest has to translate into as many Player-Hour-Equivalents as possible. This means that they need to maximize the replayability of content and the accessibility of content. Otherwise the playerbase will overrun their development efforts and will stop playing the game because they ran out of fresh content. Hiding some content behind alignment gates means that less than 100% of players will see the content. Thus it is a self-imposed reduction on the ROI. [i](or an improvement to the ROI if you consider the time players could take to change alignments is time spent playing the game)[/i]
Then there is the trade-off between the time spent by a single [i]character[/i] to complete all content versus the time spent by a single [i]player[/i] using [u]alts[/u] to complete all content. It would seem to me, at first blush, that requiring players to run alts to consume all content provides the higher return on investment because of the sheer amount of content that will be duplicated by each alt. But there are soft-measure that start to play in that case. Measures like [i]enjoyment factor[/i] which invariably drops with each replay, and the [i]cash shop saturation factor[/i] in which players stop spending money in the cash shop because they got everything they really wanted by their third alt, and also the percentage of player population who just plainly [i]don't want[/i] to play alts.
I'm sure MWM has given this great thought.

Easiest response I've got to these concerns is ... YES, you can do everything, [i]just not all at once[/i].

In other words, with enough "effort" and investment on the Player's part, ALL of the content in the game is accessible ... BUT ... that doesn't mean that all of the game's content is accessible all at the same time. This means that gating content behind mutually exclusive categories is "fine" so long as the Player can "shift" their stats in a way that allows them to meet those criteria AT DIFFERENT TIMES. Kind of like how you could be a Hero/Vigilante/Villain/Rogue, but you could only be ONE of those things at a time, which then locked out certain bits of content. You could shift between the states, but you [i]had to shift[/i] in order to be able to "do everything" the game had to offer.

It's the basic notion of You Can't Have It All (at once). You can "have it all" EVENTUALLY, but it's going to take work to do, but you aren't going to have "everything" available to you all at the same time. That way, the completionists will be required to pursue change and "circulate" through the game's content, rather than settling on a single "best" build and then doing everything with the One PC To Rule Them All™ (or words to that effect).

So, gating content behind factors that the Player can influence and change (and adapt to) AFTER character creation ... is fair game.
Gating content behind factors that a Player can NEVER change after character creation ... utterly bogus.

Remember, it's not the destination, it's the journey ... although, granted, a lot of people wouldn't even begin the journey without a reward at the destination. People are funny like that.

Considering that we are talking Alignments... is the Weird/Mundane axis still a thing? Or is that not even an axis but just another set of labels?

Good to know, thanks. I was wondering how you wanted to determine where PCs fall on that anyway.

[Url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/1488828]The Twelve, 1-4[/url] , scroll down to Pale Ride.

Foradain wrote:

[Url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/1488828]The Twelve, 1-4[/url] , scroll down to Pale Ride.

Yeah I totally forgot about this reference because I never even seriously assumed this game's alignment system would be based on a full 12-way axis system much less anything as vague as "mundaneness vs weirdness". Out of the twelve listed qualities the only two that are remotely descriptions of "physical" qualities are these two and as such have no place as part of an actual alignment system - clearly the folks at MWM were simply trying to come up with two more named qualities so that they could have a symmetrical number between the top six and the bottom six.

At best I probably considered this just a "working idea" placeholder of what was to come and it appears Tannim has backed up my assumption on this. *shrugs*

Tannim222 wrote:

Lothic wrote:

Foradain wrote:

[Url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/1488828]The Twelve, 1-4[/url] , scroll down to Pale Ride.

Yeah I totally forgot about this reference because I never even seriously assumed this game's alignment system would be based on a full 12-way axis system much less anything as vague as "mundaneness vs weirdness". Out of the twelve listed qualities the only two that are remotely descriptions of "physical" qualities are these two and as such have no place as part of an actual alignment system - clearly the folks at MWM were simply trying to come up with two more named qualities so that they could have a symmetrical number between the top six and the bottom six.

At best I probably considered this just a "working idea" placeholder of what was to come and it appears Tannim has backed up my assumption on this. *shrugs*

It was actually because some on the comp teams were firm in how certain characters didn’t fit within the other descriptions afforded by the other alignment labels yet wanted to apply a label to such characters.

Any living sentient being could be pegged on alignment axes such as Law/Chaos, Merciful/Violent and Honorable/Dishonorable to various degrees. To me something like Weird/Mundane could only be covered by some kind of twisted variation of a Charisma/Appearance stat. These were Apples and Oranges that never belonged together in the first place. Physical descriptors have nothing to do with alignment.

Now if you somehow "squinted real hard" and meant to have the terms Weird/Mundane apply to some kind of measure of sanity (where "Mundane" might equal generic sanity and "Weird" might equal generic insanity) then that -might- apply to alignment. But if that's what you intended you could have just used Sane/Insane as your descriptors.

Tannim222 wrote:

Lothic wrote:

Any living sentient being could be pegged on alignment axes such as Law/Chaos, Merciful/Violent and Honorable/Dishonorable to various degrees. To me something like Weird/Mundane could only be covered by some kind of twisted variation of a Charisma/Appearance stat. These were Apples and Oranges that never belonged together in the first place. Physical descriptors have nothing to do with alignment.

Now if you somehow "squinted real hard" and meant to have the terms Weird/Mundane apply to some kind of measure of sanity (where "Mundane" might equal generic sanity and "Weird" might equal generic insanity) then that -might- apply to alignment. But if that's what you intended you could have just used Sane/Insane as your descriptors.

Nope it doesn’t have anything to do with “sanity”.

I’m telling you, quite literally , that those two exist for the Comp team’s purposes as a compromise because some creators had issues with the alignment system insisting their creations didn’t fall under the regular axi.

Some of those characters are conceptually either somewhat “normal”or very strange.
Mundane <———> Weird

And I'm telling you that the terms "Mundane" and "Weird" are effectively gibberish when it comes to meaning anything in regards to traditional alignment systems. I can only tell you that I've played (and run) nigh-countless games using dozens of RPG systems over the last few decades and no game I know of (until now I suppose?) has ever applied such terms to anything remotely related to alignment.

I was giving you the concept of "sanity" just as a super, super vague way to make any sense of what those other creator people you mentioned were talking about. I have no idea what those other people were thinking and why they couldn't "shoehorn" their characters into more traditional alignment definitions.

Basically all I'm saying here is that I'm very, very glad you are not using "Mundane" and "Weird" in CoT's alignment system (at least for PCs at any rate) because I don't even know where I'd begin to "square that circle" of illogic. There's absolutely nothing wrong with describing your characters as being more "mundane" or "weird" compared to anything else, but those qualities are [b]anything but[/b] alignment descriptors.

Brand X wrote:

Should call these Non-RP/Theme Supergroup instead of Gray Guilds. We're superheros, not D&D :p

Superteam*

Fixed it for you :p

Mundane and weird have such broad definitions as to make them almost useless to describe anything.

A billionaire who dresses in bat pyjamas to fight crime because he misses his mommy? That's weird.

A Kryptonian with Super Powers that are normal for Kryptonians on earth? Mundane.

As alignments they get even more screwy. Superman is mundane because he was raised in Kansas?

About the only character I could count as weird is someone like Deadpool. And a guy like that having his own special alignment? Yeah, I get that.

Without a reference point for the weirdness it's hard to judge where anyone would fit.

Though even with the Deadpool example (as someone who knows not too much about the character) I could pretty safely say he's violent and lawless. At least most of the time.

I really can't see how mundane and weird could be used as alignments.

Tannim222 wrote:

Alignment is a representation of your actions. How you, the player interpret what it means for your character is up to you.

This is why "mundane" and "weird" can't really work for an alignment system because they are not "actions" in the conventional sense.

To be completely fair if the Devs seriously wanted to use something unconventional like "Mundane/Weird" as an alignment axis they would need to [b][i]very[/i][/b] specifically define what they wanted to represent with those terms as they would apply to CoT. I still contend it would be "less than ideal" at the very least.

Huckleberry wrote:

I think mundane would mean something more predictible, whereas weird would be completely unpredictible.

Exactly how do you quantify "predictability" in a superhero based universe where almost anything is possible? What frame of reference do you use for that? Again to be fair some kind of "predictability mechanic" might have a viable purpose in another type of RPG like a Call of Cthulhu where differentiating between "normal" and "not normal" is a little more relevant to the basis of the game. But for a game like CoT where the very concept of "normal" is basically turned on its ear I simply can't fathom a reasonable use for it.

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Yuck, I wouldn’t use mundane and weird as the extremes. Mundane would be the center. The other extreme would be Conformal. You know, the straight-laced, uptight type. It’s like the D&D lawful/chaotic axis except without bringing the law into it.

Yeah maybe that'd work for a "normal world reality-style high school" RPG where you just have to work yourself into the right cliques and figure out how to date the prom king/queen without posting something embarrassing on social media. ;)

Lothic wrote:

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Yuck, I wouldn’t use mundane and weird as the extremes. Mundane would be the center. The other extreme would be Conformal. You know, the straight-laced, uptight type. It’s like the D&D lawful/chaotic axis except without bringing the law into it.

Yeah maybe that'd work for a "normal world reality-style high school" RPG where you just have to work yourself into the right cliques and figure out how to date the prom king/queen without posting something embarrassing on social media. ;)

See, now I want a rogue like game that's set in a highschool. Be like Long Live The Queen. You'd make a bunch of choices as the game goes on with the goal of becoming prom king/queen, which would be impossible if you end up embarassing yourself.

Scott Jackson wrote:

Maybe I misunderstood; was the weird/mundane axis proposed by some Composition Team members to support their own planned PCs, or was it for NPCs? I could have incorrectly assumed they were doing it for the sake of the NPCs they were writing into the game...

The last one.