So, you basically want choices without consequences. Too bad you are asking for that in a game 100% based on the battle between dark and light.

Quit being so black and white. Star Wars has plenty of room for neutral types. Hell, one of the major figures in this game, Revan, walked the neutral path.

So bone up on your star wars lore and quit being a jerk.

It costs credits.

 

Why should he have to do this?

 

Alignment rewards should be PURELY COSMETIC, or they need to reward all the players who have used their own moral compass and picked both light and dark side decisions at different times (keeping them either neutral, or at Dark I/Light I).

Uhm, waah? It costs credits so its not fair?

Anything worth its salt (in real life and in games) should take time and effort.

You can also do Flashpoints and dailies for points, but the point is that he needs to realize there are consequences (very mild ones at that) for his decisions.

Uhm, waah? It costs credits so its not fair?

 

Anything worth its salt (in real life and in games) should take time and effort.

 

 

You can also do Flashpoints and dailies for points, but the point is that he needs to realize there are consequences (very mild ones at that) for his decisions.

Being unable to use relics is actually a very serious consequence.

Being unable to use relics is actually a very serious consequence.

Which he can circumvent by putting time into grinding dailies/flashpoints/diplomacy.

Which he can circumvent by putting time into grinding dailies/flashpoints/diplomacy.

You are too shortsighted. That isn't the correct solution to the problem, and the relic issue isn't even the main problem i'm trying to address. The relic issue is a product of the problem of not having proper reward system set up for alignment choice. Its a fundamental design flaw; you don't get relics unless you go black/white.

I've gone into this in great detail in this thread but you keep going back to relics.

Quit being so black and white. Star Wars has plenty of room for neutral types. Hell, one of the major figures in this game, Revan, walked the neutral path.

 

So bone up on your star wars lore and quit being a jerk.

Wasn't Revan canon light-side? The only major figure I can think of in the Old Republic era that was neutral, was Jolee Bindo.

Although I don't play on a RP server I do like the RP aspect of this game, and I laugh and "muahahah!!" with every cool choice I make in the game, that being said there are (on Empire side at least) some very odd choices during both class and planet quests.

I've recently started playing a SA and during character creation I fleshed out how to RP my character in my head and said to my self that I wanted to play a "reasonable" Pro Empire, Pro order kind of guym meaning NOT going "muahahahah" and blowing up the orphanage to see what would happen, but rather have the children send to sith academy or slave pens.

Problem is that while playing this character I can't get either a net DS or net LS gain.

Sometimes the LS choice is a "betray the empire and the principles of the dark side" and the DS is a "for the empire and the principles of the darks side" and other times the LS choice is "For the empire and for order" while the DS choice is a "muahahahah for ME for ME!!!" choice. this is roughly split 50/50 so I wind up with just about the exact same amount of DS as LS points.

Now I thought about it and initially I said to my self: LS points for empire should be order and DS should be chaos, but that would exclude the possibillity to play "the redeemed sith" fantsy, so I think what they should actually do is add another axis, namely the one from Mass Effect so people can play a Bountyhunter who obeys his contract but isn't a muahaha evil git, and enables the Sith to be for the empire or for him self without ending up very odd places (or no place at all) on the DS/LS scale

On another note on the DS/LS thing. As empire you get LS points for the oddest things.

There are a lot of these odd LS choices as Empire and in my opinion you should only get LS points for selfless acts (in all its variations) and only get DS points for murder, cruelty and so on.

I know that this would limit the amount of LS points you would be able to get as an empire character, but I really don't care and it could be worked around quite easily by simply lowering the amount of LS points required for each stage for empire and the same for DS points for the republic while also lowring the possibillities and amounts of points you can get on each side.

And as mentioned in my earlier post, adding another axis to the whole thing would also work, so that a sith would often have to choose between order (tyranny) and DS points (chaos) and only rarely get the option for LS points, and something similar for the republic.

Bw really does need to go through an revamp the choice tree. I mean, it's either I am a holy, honorable person who loves children and puppies or I am a murdering backstabbing scum who wants to kill children and old ladies.

When faced with a choice or getting hard to find medicine, I can choose to get it for the soldiers fighting the battles, or the children who have been orphaned. So, if I want children to die while soldiers yuk it up, I have to go Dark Side. If I am a Saint with truth and justice (which is *alwasy* the right way!) on my side, I let the soldiers die and save the children.

Okay, so the evil guy saves everyone in the town thanks to now-healthy solders is who can kill the enemy. The holy guy condemns everyone in the town, including the now-healthy children, to slavery or execution because there aren't enough soldiers to fend off or defeat the enemy.

Why do I get Dark points for saving the whole town? This is why BW needs to redo their choice tree's. They are too cartoonish for a Sci-Fi genre.

This is a major oversight of the game design, obviously coming from the MMO design vets on Bioware's team. Alignment shouldn't be min/maxed.

If Bioware want's people to play the story "correctly," they should completely revamp the alignment reward system, or providing mixed alignment gear. For example, gear requirements not being just "dark II" but perhaps "Dark I/Light I" combined.

Given that ya know... Star Wars is a battle been the lightside and the darkside... I just do not get these problems.

I do find that on the Imperial side some of the options that give lightside points are a little wonky. In the end though after playing up to level 20 as my Sith Sorceror I had only gotten 150 lightside points for taking options that were pragmatic instead of outright evil. I never had an issue, and given that my Sith is evil it works out perfectly fine.

Republic has some wonky stuff going on as well. My trooper is meant to be a bit more cutthroat no nonsense but pro-Republic which leads to a difficulty in accumulating points but ya know what... that's the character. If cannot get perks from it, meh. Then those OPTIONS then those CHOICES do not get to reap some benefits. I am ok with that because I played those options. I am gratified by taking those options.

Given that ya know... Star Wars is a battle been the lightside and the darkside... I just do not get these problems.

 

I do find that on the Imperial side some of the options that give lightside points are a little wonky. In the end though after playing up to level 20 as my Sith Sorceror I had only gotten 150 lightside points for taking options that were pragmatic instead of outright evil. I never had an issue, and given that my Sith is evil it works out perfectly fine.

 

Republic has some wonky stuff going on as well. My trooper is meant to be a bit more cutthroat no nonsense but pro-Republic which leads to a difficulty in accumulating points but ya know what... that's the character. If cannot get perks from it, meh. Then those OPTIONS then those CHOICES do not get to reap some benefits. I am ok with that because I played those options. I am gratified by taking those options.

It may be a battle for lightside and darkside (I guess, I wouldn't really agree, but whatever.) But it's not all about pure light and dark battling it out. With the exception of Palpatine, nobody in the movies is pure evil, they all have motives that place them somewhere near one end or the other, but not totally. Darth Vader's feelings for his son change his path where he normally would've mowed people down. Obi-Wan Kenobi is all about using the force for good, and not evil, yet allows himself to manipulate others with his abilities and even lies for "a greater good."

The Jedi believe in peace and harmony, but have their heads in the cloud from ego and position.

Plus, when you get into the greater lore, you know that while the jedi/sith battle might be a darkside lightside war, much of the other people (who would be represented in the game as Smugglers, Bounty Hunters, Troopers and Imperial Agents.) live a much grayer affair -- Han Solo is hardly a paragon. Sure, he swoops in at the end of the day to do what he feels is right, but he isn't afraid to shoot first. (regardless of what the newer editions want us to believe!)

It may be a battle for lightside and darkside (I guess, I wouldn't really agree, but whatever.) But it's not all about pure light and dark battling it out. With the exception of Palpatine, nobody in the movies is pure evil, they all have motives that place them somewhere near one end or the other, but not totally. Darth Vader's feelings for his son change his path where he normally would've mowed people down. Obi-Wan Kenobi is all about using the force for good, and not evil, yet allows himself to manipulate others with his abilities and even lies for "a greater good."

 

The Jedi believe in peace and harmony, but have their heads in the cloud from ego and position.

 

Plus, when you get into the greater lore, you know that while the jedi/sith battle might be a darkside lightside war, much of the other people (who would be represented in the game as Smugglers, Bounty Hunters, Troopers and Imperial Agents.) live a much grayer affair -- Han Solo is hardly a paragon. Sure, he swoops in at the end of the day to do what he feels is right, but he isn't afraid to shoot first. (regardless of what the newer editions want us to believe!)

Well said, and agree with 100%

This is a major oversight of the game design, obviously coming from the MMO design vets on Bioware's team. Alignment shouldn't be min/maxed.

 

If Bioware want's people to play the story "correctly," they should completely revamp the alignment reward system, or providing mixed alignment gear. For example, gear requirements not being just "dark II" but perhaps "Dark I/Light I" combined.

I think this is a brilliant idea. Right now, all they look at is the "net" alignment. This is an interesting alternative approach

I hate to tell you this but that is the definition of choice. You can choose dark or you can choose light. Not choosing light or dark is the opposite of choosing, you are doing nothing, you are then not making a choice.

I'd like the game to have hundreds of choices for my character to make, not just one. By forcing players to pigeonhole themselves into an alignment, it literally removes all of the moral decisions from the game and replaces it with one oversimplified choice that you make at level 1: light or dark?

For example, if you make a Jedi and you decide "I'm going light," well now you're done making any character decisions for the rest of the game. All of the critical dialogue options for he next 50 levels of gameplay have been decided before you even know the story...

I know i brought up gear in my first post but that isn't really the root of the problem. The main issue is rewarding people for alignment choice is handled so poorly. Even if you add neutral gear that doesn't solve the problem it just adds neutral to being 1 more right way to play in addition to dark or light. You'll still be punished for making your own decisions unless you end up landing in neutral.

My thoughts on this are changing the system from using a sum (Light minus Dark) and instead using ratios between the points for the alignment, and total points for the rank. This would mean that someone with 1500 Light points and 500 Dark points would be Light (3:1 ratio of points) and rank 2 (2000 points total) The exact ratios required and total points for each rank could be adjusted as needed. I would suggest 2:1 of any particular choice makes a character that alignment, and anything inbetween would be neutral.

This is only a levelling issue, and a minor one at that.

End game relics have no such requirements, including the raid drops and the ones you can craft via matrix shards.

I think this is quite an issue actually. Picking dark even on a dark side character isn't always the best bet. Like there was a mission to either kill the alien working force of a power plant, or let them work for you. Obviously the better choice is letting them work for you if you're at all concerned about the war. That's light side points right there. And a lot of the more manipulative and clever choices are light side, because the alternative is a killing spree. I've been playing quite a direct Sith Warrior so I'm still much further into darkside, but I can already see a problem arising when I start my Imperial Agent alt, whose only job and duty is to assure the glory of the Empire. That doesn't include killing everyone you meet, nor does it mean I'll get queasy when it's time to do what is necessary for victory. No doubt I'll be leaning more towards the dark side, but not by nearly enough I'm afraid. Then it will just mean more grinding at max level. At least flashpoint choices are so arbitrary that I can just always pick the side I want, which will help at least a bit.

Neutral relics, please.

Revan walked the middle path after his redemption/memories back/blah blah blah. In their latest book that came out right around launch, he harnessed the light and the dark, and in one of the flash points he shouts about "the Force in balance."

Would be nice if we could actually practice more Revanite thinking, after one measly quest chain on Dromund Kaas, instead of forgetting all that and just making the decisions we're pre-programmed to make if we want X trinket or Y.

I'd prefer to play as a real person, and as an agent whose class quests already leave me predisposed to despise the sith but love my empire, there are very complex decisions I get to make and there's nothing complex about reflexively hitting whichever option has the dark or light symbol next to it--no reading required, just color recognition. I'd rather be a deeper character that saves millions of innocents from terrorist bombings but enjoys Kaliyo's deranged company and vengefully killing baddies. Someone looking out for the greater good and willing to get their hands dirty to do so. The Star Wars characters that are the most interesting to read about, aren't the ones that act so predictably and boring.

I already feel pressured to answer certain ways to please companions (unless I bribe them). What happened to the role-playing part of mmorpg?

they should just introduce a whole bunch of non alignment gear and relics so that neutrals and everything in between can use them. just make the alignment gear look alot better. problem solved.

As for dealing with the consequences thats just stupid i'm a @#$% sith, I deal out consequences, I dont deal with them heheh

Btw i'm evil aligned right now but I agree in principle with the op.