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So you want to be neutral, huh? Easy Peasy.
popinjay
Member Posts: 6,539
I was thinking about the "neutral" character in the ToR world and read some people complaining about not being able to be neutral (or seeing enough "neutral" choices), so it got me to thinking....
Being "bad" will be easy. Just pick all the nasty choices you possibly can. That's the Idi Amin school of play. Anytime you get to kill someone, do so. Anytime you can torture someone, by all means. Anything you can be snarky, snippy and downright disrepectful, go for it and you'll get to have your eyes change color and veins pop out of your skin (literally, nice touch Bioware).
Being "good" is equally easy. Good choices. Don't miss an effort to help anyone with what seems like something innocuous. Just "do the right thing". I call this the Mother Teresa school of play. Help an old Jawa across the street. Make sure you wipe the mat after you're done meditating. Don't eat any Bantha meat but only Ju-Ju berries. Keep it up and your halo will be assured.
So, how does one play "neutral"?
To answer this, think about how you are as a real person everyday. Do you intentionally go out and try to do bad things everyday? No. Do you intentionally go out and try to do good things everyday? Some will say yes, but we all know that if it's one parking space and you're late for work.. Mr. Subaru over there better have comprehensive coverage because you're in like Flynn on that spot. Hungry? Go ahead, eat those last few cookies there to fill up. Sure you know someone else might like some but dangit.. you starvin' like Marvin. And don't forget that fat jerk in the tollbooth who you can't stand, so as you drive up you already know you're going to make his fat butt LEEEEEEEANNNNN out the window to get that dollar. So being Good isn't as easy as that either, is it?
Most people already live their lives in the grey or neutral so just play the game that way. Sometimes you'll be faced with a serious of choices and you may not like the puss on the NPC talking to you so just go with what you feel and tell him to take a flying leap. Other times you'll be faced with a choice that you know you don't want to make as a Jedi but it's the RIGHT THING to do and I guarantee you will earn DARK side points (won't tell you on what), but you'll come away knowing even though you didn't do what society wanted you to (be a good Jedi), you did what you thought was right as a moral person which eventually doing enough of will land you in that grey area.
I remember one toon I would ever so often open up and look at the Light/Dark meter and see if it was balanced and sure enough, but doing what I 'felt' at the moment just like I do everyday, I ended up completely neutral as far as point allotment.
So, if you want a true neutral guy for your Smuggler or Bounty Hunter, just be yourself and chances are you'll end up exactly that way.
Comments
I was actually thinking you were just going to tell us to choose the middle option in the dialogue, wouldn't that work?
I think people re more missing the old KOTOR mechanics that meant that you could fall or loose your companions if you did the wrong choices.
Everybody already know that you can play a relatively nice Sith if you want to, otherwise there would be no use to have choices.
Yep, there is actually a "neutral" choice but the thing is, in life on a daily basis you do not make any "neutral" choices. You either do something good or something bad. You cannot actively see your "karma bar" so you don't really know how your soul is settling.
In ToR, you will instantly see how your choices are faring. You'll find out whether you are on balance because you can cheat and look. What I'm saying is just play the game WITHOUT the intention of being neutral and you will end up that way more than likely because you are going to see missions you don't want to cooperate on because you personally don't like it and you'll get Dark points or Light points.
"TO MICHAEL!"
I think you are probably right from the 20 levels i got into my story, i was trying to be all lightside but wasnt happy with a few decisions so feel at lauch will just rp and not specifically go light/dark and imagine from the little i saw it will work out as you suggest and also make for a more intersting story.
So if you are a BH say, that means if you constantly pick what the game "says" you should for faction, you'll be making all Dark choices and won't be neutral. Conversely if you pick complete opposite you'll be too Light.
So the suggestion is to actually FORGET what the consequences might be and play those two "how you feel" like playing them and my guess is you'll end up neutral at 50 as far as points go, because you're not trying to be one or the other.
"TO MICHAEL!"
OP, this is exactly the way I played it during beta. I started out as a ****** but without any real intension to sticking to light or dark. I just played it as if it were me and it was a whole lot of fun. At a particular point in my story I had the option of doing the good cop and asking nicely for the item but as my EU server had just died on me and I was starting from scratch, I just blew his head off and took the damn thing. Not that I was trying to be badass but if I show up in the middle of a war packing that much steel asking for your stuff after the bad day I'd had, you then proceed to wax lyrical on how oppressed you feel? Sorry, you're getting ventilated. I wasn't a bad guy but some days it's just not healthy to get in my way.
Gonna like this game methinks.
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy.
______________________________
"This kind of topic is like one of those little cartoon boxes held up by a stick on a string, with a piece of meat under it. In other words, bait."
I saw a lot of neutral options actually.
Lemme tell you how my Trooper got neutral:
I hated his Lt. Aric Jorgan. He was nasty to me the whole time so everytime I got a chance to respond, I told him off or got smart. I intentionally messed up some missions and I threatened once to kill a child. A lot of why I did was not because I was trying to be a Dark Trooper; it was because I didn't like how this jerk (and a few others) looked at me or sounded when they were talking to me. So this went on but whenever I got missions that "made sense", I did them because I wasn't trying to be evil.
The funny thing is by the time we got on the shuttle and after what happened, I actually LIKED Jorgan and felt bad for all the times I was disrespectful. I had more Dark side points at that time (i REALLY hated him and wanted to shoot him in the face), but when we spoke in the Cantina, my whole outlook on him changed. Now instead of trying to piss him off, I tried to be his "friend" and whammo... my Light side points started going up.
Later, I still had missions where I didn't want to do what later NPCs told me and got Dark points and Jorgan didn't like it, but overall it was going pretty well as far as staying pretty neutral.
I was unintentionally roleplaying and I HATE roleplaying, lol! It was really something to come to understand how story and choices allow you to do that.
This is why I think anyone TRYING to pick neutral choices each time just for dialogue are going to miss out. Neutral played this way gives you the most flexibility in when to be good and when to be bad. If you just figured out the neutral choice each time, that would be pretty boring I'd think.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Didn't the devs say there would be specific rewards for every tier of light or dark you have advanced? I remember there was a huge thread on the forums but don't know how that actually ended up. Looks like being neutral isn't a very good choice right now unless something changed.
Doing Esseles, a Dark Side tanking type lightsaber dropped but my Jedi Warrior couldn't use it because I had been playing "neutral" style. Had I chose all Dark, I could have equipped it right then but instead, I put it in the bank until I would have reached Dark I, then I could have used it.
So if you level up and you have 500 Light and 500 Dark, you can use neither Level I Dark/Light weapons you find until you get 500 points in the right one (I think). So just hold onto it until then. The good news is later on, you'll be in much better position to use something because you don't have to make up as many points because you've been splitting the hair.. at least that's what Im thinking.
But if you want to pwn people in PvP or if you are playing "theme" Dark or Light, just choose a side so you can equip it faster.
"TO MICHAEL!"
It doesn't work that way though. These rewards are based on your alignment, therefore if you want that gear you either go full dark or full light. The light and dark points negate each other so you can't simply advance in both alignments but slower. I assume in end-game it won't matter so much though.
There will be so if there is something people want they can still get it, but it will take longer.
Doing Esseles, a Dark Side tanking type lightsaber dropped but my Jedi Warrior couldn't use it because I had been playing "neutral" style. Had I chose all Dark, I could have equipped it right then but instead, I put it in the bank until I would have reached Dark I, then I could have used it.
So if you level up and you have 500 Light and 500 Dark, you can use neither Level I Dark/Light weapons you find until you get 500 points in the right one (I think). So just hold onto it until then. The good news is later on, you'll be in much better position to use something because you don't have to make up as many points because you've been splitting the hair.. at least that's what Im thinking.
But if you want to pwn people in PvP or if you are playing "theme" Dark or Light, just choose a side so you can equip it faster.
It doesn't work that way though. These rewards are based on your alignment, therefore if you want that gear you either go full dark or full light. The light and dark points negate each other so you can't simply advance in both alignments but slower. I assume in end-game it won't matter so much though.
Hmm.. I didn't get that they were negating each other. On one toon I was 550/450 and another 800/200 ish.
Are you sure someone couldn't keep acquiring enough points in one side without making the other side fall or cancel out?
How is it possible to have both numbers so high if they negate each other?
"TO MICHAEL!"
The one thing I don't like about the way they set up their light side / dark side system is that you know ahead of time what choosing a certain path will do. I'd prefer that they didn't give you a preview in the middle of the dialogue wheel to let you know what each choice represented. Would much prefer players do what feels natural, either good or evil, and let the chips fall where they may. I think this preview option takes away some of the choice involved for me. Not sure if they have an option to turn that feature off or not, but it would be nice if they did.
There is an option to turn it off in the UI section, or you can use your number keys to select the dialogue option. You only get the 'preview' if you hover your mouse over an option.
Here is a non scientific experiment: Try responding to each of the scenarios that is presented to you with your sense of moral right and wrong, your own conscience and see what the game thinks of you by the time you hit level 50.
"Don't corpse-camp that idea. Its never gonna rez"
Bladezz (The Guild)