I'll be honest from start and say I have a bias toward playing good and occasionally neutral, PC's because I can't make myself be very evil. I'm just not that mean.

Some of the recent characters on the Battlefield have made me question the balance between good and evil in character strength, particularly PK's. If you look at 3 recent evils, Nuloh, Isabeaux and Kanaev, they account for nearly 700 pks between them and less than 100 deaths. Sorry I didn't add up the numbers, too lazy. When you look at the next 5 easily identifiable good characters, they account for maybe 100 pks and about 200 deaths. Is this just the recent tide or a more pervasive trend?

I realize that from a role-play perspective it's much easier to justify rampant killing by evils and to a certain degree this will attract a segment of the player population simply because of this. And certainly several of the most memorable pk'ers have been evil over the years. I'm just wondering about this from a game balance perspective.

Should evil be that much stronger than good? Is it just playing style that results in numbers like this or is it an imbalance in class skills? I'm guessing the Immortal staff has conversations about this fairly frequently but I'm wondering if there's a predilection towards evil characters among them as well and hence a bias in the game towards making evil a bit easier to get strong PC's with.

Just a philosophical question by the usual suspect.

My thoughts on the propensity of evil characters vs good characters is pretty simple, though it is obviously more complex and a socio-pyschological study could easily be made of the issue.

Most folks are inherently 'good' in real life. By this I mean we act in accordance with a set of social morals and societal strictures. Most folks defined as 'evil' are held in civil custody once they act out enough to become noticed. Bear in mind this is a grand generalization.

When offered the chance, many folks will step across to roleplay evil. It allows certain expressions that are denied in RL society...it allow us to be 'bad'. We can be those bullies that plagued us in school (or we can recapture our childhood glory because we were that bully). Our parents would be shocked if we behaved in an evil fashion, and as many of the player base in their 'rebellious' stage, this helps release the angst. Flat out, we can experience a sense of power and dominance and kick the crap out of folks rather than having to deal with them as 'reasonable' beings in a structured, controlled society.

There is a certain 'sinful' attaction to being the 'bad guy', and in many instances it allows us to vent our frustrations and feelings of impotence in a 'safe' environment.

Then again, maybe we just like being wicked.



eshval@carrionfields.com

A whole new day, a whole new set of possibilities. - MacGyver

nt

I suspect you're probably right in that playing evil lets the 'dark' side of our persona free to do things that would be frowned upon in real life. I must be suffering from perpetual 'nice guy' syndrome in that I can't even be really mean to someone in the game unless they really, really deserve it.

But I also wonder if the game is not engineered to give that dark side a little more free reign to be wicked and to frankly be more powerful on an individual basis than the good-aligned.

The 2 PC builds with the greatest potential to PK on an individual basis are probably anti-paladins (i.e. Cabdru) and necromancers (Entropy lich). Even the rockin'est paladin couldn't stand toe to toe with characters of that ilk. They might be able to escape alive, but even that would be a challenge. I realize these are exceptional examples, but you get the gist. I think it is that potential, whether realized or not that attracts the power-pk'ers to the dark side. (For some reason I want to say 'Use the force, Luke').

Anyway, just some idle musings.

PKwins? Yeah ap, necro, hell even evil conjie (Kanaev as exhibit A in the evidence pool here) are nasty. And to be fair, that is definitely how most people view "most powerful" and "winning."

Lack of PKlosses? None of the above. Neutral healer, evil healer, good healer, in that order (and only because good healer is sorta required by RP to stick around to save his groupmates, while evil healer can be like "eff you guys.")

What I think *could* be a valid view of "powerful" is "makes his/her allies better" in which case bard, paladin, good healer, and transmuter win by far.

Or maybe it's "can raid enemy cabals solo" in which case Good conjie/Paladin is the shizzle, followed probably by shaman. When I played Meagara, I used to log in and if nobody was in range, I'd go take both the Scepter and Codex solo. If someone was in range, I'd typically head to their cabal to see if I could kill them and then raid solo. You can do that with AP as well, but you need a lot of preps to do it. Necro? You need to grab an army first.

I just think there is more than "sealing a pkwin and adding +1 to a counter" to overall winning. Meagara was 45/21 which isn't bad (despite what Shokai says *fistshake*) but was insanely valuable in group fights for her ability to summon and dispel and damn/curse. Did she get the pkwins in those battles? No, it was usually the warrior who was bashing/tripping and getting 6-8 attacks per round.

>Or maybe it's "can raid enemy cabals solo" in which case Good
>conjie/Paladin is the shizzle, followed probably by shaman.

I'd argue with shaman, depending on which cabals you're raiding. If you're a goodie shaman then you're basically a crappy paladin. Worse tanking, less melee, worse healing, less damage from demonfire compared to wrath. If you're evil, then some of the cabals you'd raid are tall orders. Watcher spams light of heaven and has an attack type that many evil shamans are vuln to. Archmage energy drains and mental knifes, which totally jacks your mana regen. (You also get no benefit from protection against the Archmage). Empire inners healing curse, plus all sorts of other maledictions. They might be the easiest, actually, since they don't do anything that would prevent you resting up between bouts.

I might put certain warrior builds above shaman, even without assuming highly-limited gear, as long as they can generate cash and purchase preps. If you assume wand use, then invoker, AP and offense-shifter all become viable. There's also bard.

I guess I should have quantified that as "good align" shaman because evil shaman is most likely going to be raiding fort which is a definite ow. My experience here is mostly limited to Meagara, who usually had happy items that did mana regen in combat, so raiding scion was a snap - bonus if the Archmage slowed me.

Also, my evil shaman experience was Taceolus, who would raid Knights solo pretty much daily. But that was Knights :P

****Or maybe it's "can raid enemy cabals solo" in which case Good conjie/Paladin is the shizzle,*****


I think that should read "conjie/paladin with the right virtues"


A virtueless paladin isn't really all that strong. And some virtues have nearly zero effect on solo combat.

>A virtueless paladin isn't really all that strong. And some
>virtues have nearly zero effect on solo combat.

I admit that virtuless paladins aren't all that. That said, a virtueless hero shield paladin is still well-equipped to solo raid. Inners don't wield weapons, so veteran's insight isn't a big deal. You still tank extremely well, even with out essence of temperence. You won't do a ton of melee, but you can go to town with wrath.

Basically, a virtueless shield paladin still trumps a goodie shaman. Probably two-hander as well. If you're raiding Empire, then the two-hander gets a move that hits all four inners. And he doesn't have to spend mana on wrath, so he can devote 100% of it to healing. If you're raiding scion, then the lessened ability to tank melee hits isn't a big deal.

All that said, to have zero virtues as a hero paladin, you're doing something wrong. I can't imagine any paladin I'd play not getting *at least* one virtue, and I'd almost always expect to get two eventually. And most of them have at least some utility in the context of a solo raid.

I'm actually a really really nice guy in real life...

But for some reason, when I see that skull and the, "By which name do you wish to be mourned", I need to unleash some death. Being evil, it turns out, is the best way to do just that in this (CF) world.

I'll live by the Golden Rule here in the real world, just not in the 'Fields ;-).

I'll be honest from start and say I have a bias toward playing good and occasionally neutral, PC's because I can't make myself be very evil. I'm just not that mean.

I really think this is the heart of the issue: pretty much everyone is going to have some sort of bias towards the characters they tend to play. I tend to lean a bit evil (probably a 60 / 40 split) and don't really play a lot of neutrals. Usually my reasons for deciding what to play are based soley on whatever role I've dreamed up around the end of the current character's life.

Some of the recent characters on the Battlefield have made me question the balance between good and evil in character strength, particularly PK's. If you look at 3 recent evils, Nuloh, Isabeaux and Kanaev, they account for nearly 700 pks between them and less than 100 deaths. Sorry I didn't add up the numbers, too lazy. When you look at the next 5 easily identifiable good characters, they account for maybe 100 pks and about 200 deaths. Is this just the recent tide or a more pervasive trend?

I think evil (in general) brings more inherent offense to the table, whereas good (again, in general) brings more inherent defense to the table. I'd also argue that there's more easily recognizable, readily obtained defensive prep or equipment options (stone skin, resist X, etc) out there than there are similar offensive prep or equipment options. If you buy the above, then it follows that it's easier to play an evil character. Less work for a skilled or knowlegeable player. That being said, there's plenty of equipment and preps out there that bring a lot of offensive punch to a defensively oriented character - they just don't get dusted off as often.

Same reason Villagers are so popular, and relatively easy to play. They get very potent inherent offensive and defensive abilities as Cabal powers.

I realize that from a role-play perspective it's much easier to justify rampant killing by evils and to a certain degree this will attract a segment of the player population simply because of this. And certainly several of the most memorable pk'ers have been evil over the years. I'm just wondering about this from a game balance perspective.

Sure, you can have your standard psychopath who attacks everything that moves, but I think those are the exception rather than the rule for skilled evil PKers. Most of the high-end players that do evil characters have good roles and RP that go along with their mad PK skills, which usually leaves room for evil or neutral aligned allies. So they're not killing everyone in sight.

Should evil be that much stronger than good? Is it just playing style that results in numbers like this or is it an imbalance in class skills?

I'd say mostly playing style, and a difference in class skills. I wouldn't necessarily call it an imbalance, though. I don't think anyone would really want to see a good-only clone of an AP, with the exact same skill and spell set (just renamed to make it more huggy).

I'm guessing the Immortal staff has conversations about this fairly frequently but I'm wondering if there's a predilection towards evil characters among them as well and hence a bias in the game towards making evil a bit easier to get strong PC's with.

Not frequently, but we do talk about the 'evil imbalance' on occasion, mostly with regard to the skew of evil only races though.

I think we've made a number of tweaks over the last few years to address this somewhat, especially the Evil Offensive Machine Grouped With Evil Defensive Machine (bards and healers) meat grinder.

I'll end this with saying that the Good-aligned successful PKers really, really stand out head and shoulders above the Evil-aligned ones. Scion necromancer? Yeah, you expect him to carry a kick-ass PK ratio. Fortress transmuter? Not a chance. So when we see an Enarn out there taking out the evil trash (to steal a Nepism), it really makes us sit up and take notice (well, me at least). :P

Just a philosophical question by the usual suspect.

Friend of Bears!

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

Goods can't request hidden wands off other good mage mobs. I bug-boarded it once or twice in the past and was told 'by design'. This means goodies can only get wands off of evils (some have evil flags, or are plain evil-only) or via hidden containers. That reduces wandage right down for me as looking at my uber-elite-secret wand list, all of the three I know are hidden-type :(

There's also the issue that as a goodie, even with peek, you won't know those wands are there without killing something. Do you engage in mass murder of neutral wizards just on the off chance they were worth the sacrifice for a better cause?

Some preps require you to do questionable acts. This could involve killing a neutral to gain access to it. Or in other cases, using one that has vaguely evil roots (not talking Demonic potions, but it uses something-not-evils blood as an ingredient). I respect that immortals don't mind us stretching RP for preps but it helps if we're not set up to be behind when evils have few scruples for their talisman whoring.

Yhorian

I desperatedly wanted to find a dagger that poisoned just as my enemies were using against me. I never found one that wasn't iron or anti-good, and to make matters more challenging the better good-only daggers had to be taken off the corpses of evil pcs.

What I have come to realize is that to get pk wins, having multiple attacks that hit for devastates is not going to win you as many pks as a well-timed annhilate--the former allows too many chances to make the decision to flee, whereas that giant sword spec or AP only has to wait for that one big hit to land.

The one thing gnomes, elves, and dark-elves had going for them was Striking could help keep their giant-sized opponents from fleeing on a whim, but I see an edge has gone in to minimize that legacy's effectiveness. That's too bad.

Some things aren't going to be fair.

Regarding the Striking legacy, giants are by design meant to be better warriors than the smaller races, who have other options open to them. To prevent a giant from fleeing, create a flail spec. If they have Enigma, bring a friend who can curse.

The elf example was meant to illustrate that offensive-oriented gear largely favors evils, which means good aligned characters won't land as many kills. That makes sense from a role perspective, for it is probably questionable for an elf to wish to poison people, but it did mean he could never hold onto a weapon if he fought an evil dagger spec, an imperial shaman, AP, or necromancer.

>but I see an edge has gone in to minimize
>that legacy's effectiveness. That's too bad.

Really? Hot diggety. Which one?

I think my reply to Eshval above highlights one of the things that drives the imbalance: pure raw potential for power in evil.

That said, it is easier to play a very conservative evil that runs when things get even remotely dicey (I suspect a lot of A-P's are like this) and with the power of big axes, move stripping spells and area attacks, you can play conservative and still get a lot of kills. Paladins, probably not so much. You'd either need to play the courageous kamikaze or the defensive rescuer. One will get you killed a lot, the other won't likely kill much.

The only way I could generally play neutrals is to basically ignore the good/evil dichotomy and focus on some other aspect like order/chaos.

Plus, there's so many of you evil b******s up in Immortaldom :P

Anyway, it's fun to think about. I keep wondering how much evil is lurking in my students if so much of it shows up in a game like this :)

The people who are more PK focused and the power-gamer types prefer evil. I think this is generally true, though obviously not in every case. Highly skilled players want to be able to fight everyone in sight, and aren't as worried about the downsides (backstabbing, etc).

This may be true in general, but it's by no means absolute. Most prominent evil characters are caballed. That alone rules out a substantial number of targets. If he's Empire or Battle then there are additional restrictions. Even ignoring cabal, many players of evil characters choose to form alliances rather than "fight everyone in sight".

Couple of other reasons people play evils:

1. Duergar detect hidden. Nothing similar on the goodie side.

2. More classes are evil-only (AP, Necro, Berserker) than are good-only (Paladin). While paladins have the potential to be powerhouses, they come with lots of strings attached. Strings that occasionally necessitate otherwise avoidable deaths, and that many people don't care to hassle with.

3. Goodie RP can necessitate tedious tasks. If you're a goodie and some guy asks you to help him not starve to death, if you're going to refuse then you better have a good reason. So the player has to rationalize his refusal or go help the dude, either which is viewed as a hassle. The reverse doesn't apply to evils. You don't need to justify giving the guy food. Or, at least, it's much easier, since you can just claim a selfish hidden agenda.

4. Self-fulfilling prophecy. More newbies play goods. Vets don't want to be bothered with newbies, so they play evils, which contributes to the very reason they didn't want to play goodies in the first place.

5. E-Peen. Some players want their alter-ego to be a bad mofo. Even if they're capable of an Enarn or Lariya, the "bad mofo" image is harder to sustain when one's character is supposed to be a paragon of virtue and light. It's somewhat easier when you're stealing people's souls and stuffing them in your giant, bloody axe.

A lot of those kills were evil vs evil.

Goods don't fight each other nearly as much.

So you'd expect evils, on average, to have more kills.

Also, evil has the most upside POTENTIAL. That is a long way from being "easier".

I can tell you having played a lot of characters that paladin was the easiest in terms of raw power. A powerhouse AP takes a lot of work (unless you have a healer / transmuter / bard at your beck and call).

With evil, you can kill anyone.

With good, a third to a half of the PKs in range are off-limits.

Though some of this comes down to the player as well. Evil characters are incredibly independant - while Good is incredible dependant.

This is by design AND preference. I'm happy to abuse my great evil lich powers, and do so far FAR away from that other lich who might mess it up.

Goods inherently have a strength in numbers, and are supposedly more fuctional that way (what with paladins, good healers, etc). The problem is that you then rely on other people - and they not only regularly fail but can sometimes even screw you over with incompetence worse than an evil could with intention.

They also lack any class that has serious PK focused power - like Necromancers. Paladins are awesome at exploration but pretty damn crap when it comes to sealing a kill and weakening their foes through it. Good is all defense, no teeth. That means the number of kills form gaunters, summoners, monster-bashers, etc. is inflated by picking off lambs from an already deflated flock.

That said, goodies are playable as is. You just have to be prepared to gank people like Nuloh, Kanaev and Isabeaux shamelessly. If you've got the 2 on 1 advantage then you have to use it to even the odds and get rid of those zombies/unholy weapons/huge ass offensive servitor army.

Yhorian

What I saw in game and what I saw on their pbf's does not reflect your assertion of those three characters "ganking shamelessly". Tard.

He's saying that goodies should be prepared to gank the likes of Nuloh and co., not that Nuloh and co are gankers.

Yay me.

Yes, yes you are.

If I spread so much, where are all the posts hastily correcting me with the real version? Plenty seem ready to scream 'misinfo!' but I have personally thanked and apologised to any who have actually gone to the effort of correcting me. I'd love some help answering a lot of questions but the consensus seems to be info hoarding is better.

I'm happy to pass on my opinion to anyone that asks. I'm not the one who claims to be 100% accurate because he read the code. Even those who read it are wrong. Its volunteered advice, not a ####ing Bill of Law.

I sympathise with the imms greatly at times, because they do a largely thankless job but get all hell let loose when something goes wrong. I am eternally grateful they go ahead and make new effort anyway - doubly so because they actually read posts from habitual ass talkers in case hell froze over. But they don't let it get them down, and still we are hesitant with our thanks because the same gay-obsessed minority might rise up against us too.

Tough crap. Thanks imms, cheers noobs and screw the vocal idiots.

Yhorian.

You need look no further than spaceballs for the reason why evil characters do better in PK than goods.

"So, Lonestar...now you see that evil will triumph because good is dumb."

Your points have some merit to them, but the fact of the matter is, there are warriors, shamans, bards, thieves, assassins that rack up mega kills as evils, and you see a lot less of them doing it as goods. The RP angles that lead to goods PK'ing less often do NOT force them to have poor ratios, only lower kill counts.

It's more that the restriction on RP and PK that goods are levelled with often turns off some of the better players who enjoy having freedom in their gameplay. The dependent, needy, unskilled players often gravitate towards goodies because of the fact that they're welcomed along. This is not to say that all goods will suck and all evils rule, but for the most part, the better/more aggressive pk'ers will roll evils more often than goods.