Make alignment more important - NPC reactions, new unique quests, evil solutions for existing quests
Xzar
Member Posts: 215
It would be nice if party members and common npcs could recognize your alignment, and vary their dialogue and story reaction to you based on that.
ToEE-style backgrounds are sure too difficult to implement and will derive the plot too much from vanilla, but alignment quests could be realized as a way of acquring unique weapons, one for each, or perhaps introduce a guild to join - Harpers, Zhentarim and some neutral organiztion.
Also, evil players should be able to resolve quests through their philosophy more often. And be able to reconcile or make pacts with npcs and organizations of same alignment. Particularly, Xzar and Zhentarim story would benefit from such upgrade, as it feels too unfinished in original BG
ToEE-style backgrounds are sure too difficult to implement and will derive the plot too much from vanilla, but alignment quests could be realized as a way of acquring unique weapons, one for each, or perhaps introduce a guild to join - Harpers, Zhentarim and some neutral organiztion.
Also, evil players should be able to resolve quests through their philosophy more often. And be able to reconcile or make pacts with npcs and organizations of same alignment. Particularly, Xzar and Zhentarim story would benefit from such upgrade, as it feels too unfinished in original BG
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Comments
it would certainly add 10000 points and at least 12 badges to replayability value and game depth.
Agree with you. It makes the game sort of childish when you've only got the ''good'' choice, the ''evil'' choice and sometimes the ''neutral'' choice you can make. Reality is often a lot greyer and I'd like choices that reflect that more so. I think for every dilemma there should be choices that reflect all the alignments to some degree though without being too obvious. Obviously this will not happen for EE but I'm hoping Baldur's Gate 3 will be like that
siding with either childishly evil villain or innocent poor peasants is getting old rapidly, not to mention charactes often being very single mindedly devoted to their alignment, without much questioning.
for that matter- i really liked the fallen paladins quest in bg2. i mean yes, they were accused of some crime, but i think the way they talked (they simply want to be left alone and distance from the order) it really made order look like evil assholes hiring you to kill without question just to get the relic back. they did not seem to fall from good, but from law.
still, they just had to put in some slaves smuggling or somesuch to make it easier for you -.-
If i'm a good char and my reputation is high why the hell would i kill the fallen paladins? They just fall in their votes with the order, to be cast asside is already punishment enough. The only alignment that would make a kill frist ask later action in this quest is the lawful neutral or at maximum a lawful good paladin (acting by the command of superior hierarchy).
Any other good alignment would kill anarg and spare or even help the sub-leader, Reynald the Chattilion, that is TOTALLY GOOD, and just fallen from his paladin status for a unrequited love. Any neutral alignment (except lawful neutral) would tel Sir Ryan to screw himself and would not do the quest (well, i do that already XD), and any evil aligned character would turn the table and sell the cup to anarg, even helping him.
This quest has potential but the way its done her end is really unbearable and annoying, i heard the official content CAN BE CHANGED IF SPECIFIC PERMISSION are granted by Atari, so if i'm not wrong here one of the main official content changes that need to be requested.
i really hope they put the permission requests to a good use, if not bordering on spamming...
But yes, having equally good rewards for picking the evil path is definitely something that was sorely missing in BG2, as the good option pretty much always had the best rewards in terms of items/xp.
If I'm in the middle of a dungeon with nobody around and I turn into the slayer, how does my Reputation change? Nobody is around to see it!
There should be two sliding scales, one for Reputation (How the public thinks of you), and Honour/Corruption/Alignment etc which marks how much Evil you've been doing.
That way you can still be a "Villain with good publicity", where your evil party members are happy to stick around, but you have an awesome reputation because you've been careful that nobody gets to see your evil.
The idea of reputation, "the higher the better" must end, just that.
The game almost punish anyone that has a low reputation... so good is the patch and evil is a mistake? I don't buy that.
I'll focus this post only on the merchant/store roleplay problem. If i want to be evil and buy in BG i must be a good evil (rep 18)... and that's sucks A LOT.
i even see some ways to turn this fact, two easy ways that would just adapt to good and evil, and a complex that would help a neutral roleplay too (if a neutral roleplay is implemented on BG, by that i mean ways to finsh a quest without gain or lose of reputation).
One esay way is just make a curve on reputation points, where 10/11 make all merchants sell the goods at the base prices (the higher prices) and the far you take from the neutral alignments the better the prices turn. ppl will sell cheap to a 20 reputation party by respect and to a 1 reputation party by fear.
Another easy way, the one i think would be the better choice, is as the previous a start from neutral reputations with core prices(10/11), and the far you get from the neutral reputation, the better prices you get from merchants of your alignment (or the place he sells sometimes, i don't see why the shadow thief merchant or roger the fencer should give discount to heroes, as they're criminals, and the drow merchants... let's just don't poke this wasp nest).
A more complex way would be reputation zones, as the party do quests in a specific place, there ppl will give or not (or ever overcharge) the prices for the party. So if i want discount in trademeet i must do their quests and save the town. From the ppl perspective if i poison or duel the druids really doesn't matter if i save their town. Other situation can happen, as if i kill the deep gnome son, after freeing him from the imprisonment machine, the father shoud overcharge me (he's not crazy to refuse business to a well armed group as mine ^^).
I have a lot of merchant/store ideas but that's suffice for now cos the major problem to evil players is:
We get half of the good reward and pay 4 to 10x the real price of the items. When i roleplay evil chars i have no shame in cluaconsole gold (with good sense to foresee what a good party in that point of the game would have.