Xenimus Message Board

This seems to be an important subject so make sure to vote here.

I don't think making all the towns neutral is a good idea. There needs to be good and evil towns and areas so people can have an area for starting off and leveling. If Jeloc or Velanthra is just a faction choice then new chars would have to start as neither one and choose later. But what if they never choose? What should happen if you kill them? I suppose if you never choose then you never get the +7.

If changing between good and evil is allowed then races would not change. I would like there to be a visual way for people to know who is an enemy because race wont be an indication anymore. There could be different color options for each side but there would certainly be some cross over and confusion because of the number of colors.

Let people do a quest to switch, seems interesting and is the best option out of the 3.

I think it makes sense to have all players start off neutral. Neutral players would be considered innocents - Jelocian aligned players would lose align for killing them because of their innocence...maybe Velanthra would punish her aligned players for "wasting their time" killing neutrals when they could be fighting the Jelocians.

A common spawn town for all players means everyone has access to the same quests and leveling spots, which is a good thing for balance, and makes adding new content easier - instead of having to make good and evil side equivalents, you just make one low level quest. There is still room for faction based content once the player picks a side.

If players are neutral until, say level 16-20, and all players lose align for killing them, then maybe higher level players would think twice about pking newbs - the way xenimus used to be. (Well, some high levels at least. There will always be PKers.)

As you said EJ, the neutral player could stay neutral, and simply wouldn't get their +7 bonuses. Joining a faction makes one vulnerable to people from the opposing faction, and the +7 is a reward from Jeloc/Velanthra for choosing to fight for a side. There used to be a number of players more concerned with community, leveling, and exploring, rather than just constant PVP, and choosing to stay neutral might be an option for them.

In any case, I voted for the quest option.

WOW!!! I really like Leonard's post. Crazy work for EJ to have to make a third faction, but would add more balance I think.

Have just a few towns for good / evil and then the rest neutral with quests for each... Add's a whole new dynamic to the game.

EJ, can you implement this before the end of the year? I think it will help reinvigerate the game...

Dont allow people to switch sides. Everyone will just switch to the side that has the best, most powerful players and they will gang up on the other side, making even more people switch over to the better side.

That is why a long quest so it takes awhile to switch so you better be prepared to stay for a bit or maybe even put in time limit on switching like month or so.

Remove good/evil entirely but (as someone posted in the other thread) make a guild system. Make people have allied guilds and enemy guilds. They can slaughter eachother without any allign loss(they have a choice to be in the guild). The people that do not want to participate in the guild vs guild pvp could stay neutral with jeloc. This would still make it possible to have all towns neutral. That way the xenimus2 server could be fully anti pk again. Opening up the whole map for everyone...as I posted before.

Make it so that only guilds can own castles, then guilds can do guild vs guild battles with the winner taking the castle. This could even be a scheduled weekly event. Have 1 guild+allies defend a castle vs their enemy guild+allies. The battle could last(example: 30 mins) a certain amount of time. After that time the winner remains castle owner for a week. Only 1 guild would ofcourse be allowed to attack a castle each week.

This would open up a whole new world of pvp for those that want it. Both inside and outside the castles. And the people that liked the old pvp system could simply stay neutral and not join a guild. Or maybe make a neutral guild option too, but disable them from owning a castle. These neutral people could still hunt real pkers, because the real pkers would still go evil for pking players which were not in an enemy guild.

Good vs evil just tears up the xenimus community too much.

EDIT: Allowing people to switch sides is a bad idea...1 week every player will be evil side, the other week everyone will be good side. It wouldn't work.

I agree, having a player start neutrally, but still keeping some form of GvE is a great idea. With this in mind, I think you should also write a good story to your game EJ. I know you haven't had time, but the current story is really lacking. Completely new people were probably really confused about having to choose between the dark and the light side at the character creating screen. Having them start out neutral in the beginning and then be able to chose what faction they want to join later on in the game would be great. For customizations, make three sets of colors people can use, neutral colors (generally neutral colors), evil colors (dark and red colors), and good colors (light and blue colors). In addition to this, make all races be able to display colors on a good portion of their gear. This will help distinguish neutral, evil, and good from each other visually.

Once again, I can't stress how important a story is to a game these days. I can't imagine how many people have tried this game just to be confused of what exactly is going on. This is a good quote I took from someone when we spoke about this issue "...being put into a world with no story, no interaction, no motive isn't a game. It's a 3d chatroom with a few more features." I think this sums it up very nicely.

I guess a guild-based solution to PVP could work too. I'm guessing the main difference between that and a faction system where players choose jeloc/velanthra would be that the guilds are player run? I don't really see why the balance in that system would be any different from letting players choose their alignment - there would be a dominant guild made up of powerful players that would always be in control of the castle. But, I do see the benefits of the guild system:

-Players all start in the same area, access to same quests
-Neutral towns, unites xen population
-Players could pick any race/class combo
-Full map open to all

(These are basically the same benefits as having players start neutral and choose good/evil later, though)

The question is how Jeloc would work. I guess with a guild system, the +7 is available to anyone. Members of a guild can only PK members of enemy guilds without losing align.

I like that idea too, mostly because it allows everyone to start in the same area and have access to the same quests. But simply letting players choose Jeloc/Velanthra instead of trying to set up a complex guild system would probably be easier to implement.

I would definitely go to the side with less players, only makes it more fun.

evreyone starts in a neutral based town, Quests point towards faction, level 36 (biggest quest, +7 jeloc/velenth), opposed to natural hostile factions

I like the idea that once you choose a side and switch sides you get 30 betrayal points for being a "backstabber" and both sides get to whack at you for 30 days.

this is a tough question to ask because a lot of these people have not been playing since before GvE.

so many of them are thinking oh shit let me switch back and forth that'd be sweet!
well sorry what would be sweet is everyone being able to make their own alliances again and actually have pvp with other then a consistently same 5-8 people. you push everything together and you have 10-16 people you can pvp with that are on the server at any given time. this might be enough of a stimuli to get people playing again and bringing friends along.

in all honesty ej, this game became popular (when it was) because of word of mouth.

you are essentially changing nothing for the game play if you just make it so you can switch back and forth.

what benefit is there really to switching? anyone wanna tell me that? are you going to get mad at someone on the good side so you're gonna spend a month switching to evil? kind of dumb.

my two cents.

and you have a choice when everything is based off of alignment. the way it USED TO BE.

he is asking if he should take the idea out. not jeloc and velenthra. you can still do quests and what not involving them. you should be punished, you are evil...and it's not even really punishment. it's living as a playerkiller.

i believe what truly brought the most players in before was this games unique pvp/equipment gameplay. a style of gameplay that is only matched by that of diablo II. how successful was that game again? having a pvp server and anti-pvp server was the perfect cure for the non-pvpers.

This

yeah.. lets split everyone up even more. gosh, i don't even know what i try.

Letting people do a quest to switch sides wouldn't really change anything from the way the game is now, only you wouldn't have to make new characters if you wanted to play the other faction.

I think going back to a system based purely off of the old evil------neutral------good alignment bar and building upon that would be best.

There are so few people playing TD these days that it can't thrive with everyone split in half.

Thank you!! This is exactly what I've been trying to say all this time.

Please don't allow factions switch. I'd rather keep it how it is but have the -goevil command implemented for a week to even the sides up.

Old isnt nessassarily bad. Sometimes you dont know that something was better just the way it was untill you change it and find out by experience. I think alot of the changes over the years have been good. Someone should review some of these issues is what Faith is saying. I would agree with the fact that gear has become far to powerfull and that having 2 seperate sides is not as fun or as healthy for the game. I also think that the pvp point system is unhealthy. It rewards people for doing something that already has its own rewards. If you are player killing your reward for killing your opponent is having them lose exp or gear and good old bragging rights. This game has always had its share of characters who have chosen this path. Why do we give these people more reward or initiative? Do we reward people for helping others with anything? NO, we do not.

Just my thoughts.

old xxblitzxx

=)

Letting people switch sides is a really bad idea. Think about it, there'd be no way of stopping everyone to go the same side. The game would be unbalanced alot of the time. And when alot of people suddenly decide to switch, then the balance simply shifts. Making more people switch over to the side that has the most players.
Allowing people to switch sides would only make the problem worse. If you think about it, you know that that is not the way to go.

It's not a bad idea if you really think it through.

If everyone went to the same side, so what? It would be a maximum of 5 minutes before someone raged about not being able to kill someone else and people changed to another faction to wtfpk them.

There would also be a good amount of people who would switch sides right away to see what it was like to be good instead of evil.

Yes, there are those pansies that HAVE to the advantage for PvP, but it's not too many, surprisingly.

Then, of course, there would be the ones who preferred one over the other and WON'T change.

Finally, there are those who prefer to be on the "underdog" side and would stay or change accordingly.

It wouldn't be unbalanced at all. It may get a little crazy at the start, but that would just make it more fun if you enjoy playing the game.

I think it would keep a really good balance. With a harsh penalty for switching like 30 betrayal points, it would not be as easy for someone to do. I bet you most people would not even use this option because of the penalty.

EJ still needs to make the Evil side up to par with the good side (Quests, Hunting places, etc) for this to even work.