Choosing sides?

There are many things we can do with the current tools. As time goes by all the Planet Partners will really start to shine in their own ways. I personaly can't wait to share what Cyrene has to offer but patience is a virtue I am working on and I too will have to wait till it's the proper time.

 

Sounds like the future is very bright indeed!! :)

 

I think I could swallow, and maybe even learn to appreciate, items being blocked in certain areas. In Ancient Greece, I think it even makes sense.

It's the race/class/etc. that are absolutely depressing me. Next to the real cash economy, I think the free spirited, non-linear atmosphere was really the heart of pre-Mission/Achievement Entropia. Entropia is now becoming a different game than pre-Mission/Achievement Entropia, and I miss my old Entropia. Even though I have always been a non-depositing niblet with a small PED Card and almost no skills, I kinda feel like I was able to stay in the honeymoon phase of Entropia for almost 3 years. Looking at the future of EU, I think the end of that feeling is about to hit hard. :( I guess it happens to everyone for some reason or another.

Linearity is great in The Legend of Zelda. It's great in Sonic the Hedgehog. It's great in games that you play for 50 hours. It's great in games that are compiled onto your disk, and are still the same game each time you turn on the TV.

Linearity is terrible in games in which you live with the consequences of your decisions for years. And it's worse yet in games where the code could be changed each time you run the program. You don't even have all the information necessary to properly make a game-altering decision in Entropia. The planet partners are making the game up as they go. You'd be making an important decision, blindly.

 

I liked Jedi Knight. I even played it through twice - totally unlike me to finish hardly any game ever haha.
I've recently started Portal. haha very addictive... has that "just one more puzzle" thing going on

 

Yeah, I'm not so sure if you can really implement the Race/Faction/Class features in EU like other mmos, but you can definitely implement it to a certain degree.
I do hope MA makes some client changes to allow for more dynamic environments and like better questgiving. The quests and missions aren't really on par with the modern MMOs and the current system does not allow much room for expanding functionality.

I've had a MMO "marathon" in the past several years and played all the major MMOs out there and here is my take on factions: (I know some of it has been gone over already so I'll try to make it simple)

- WoW: You choose "Alliance" or "Horde". This affects Race choices. (Human, dwarf etc for Alliance... Orcs, undead etc for Horde) This in turn effects your choice of classes.
Now all this is done in Character creation. After this you cannot change your Faction/Race/Class. What you CAN do in-game is increase standings to various NPC factions. This will get you certain quests and items from that faction.

- LotRO: You choose Race and class in character creation. You cannot change race/class in game, but you CAN do quests from any faction. So race/class does not restrict the type of quests you receive.

- EVE: You choose Race in character creation. This does NOT effect your quests or skills or class type. It's probably closest to the EU model. You can be whatever you want based on your choice of skills.

- Runescape: No races/factions. Very similar to EU's skill system. Your "class" is based on your skills. You want to skill up in ranged combat, then you keep fighting with ranged weapons. Your usage of that item skills you in the usage of the item.

I've played tons more but probably not worth mentioning as it's the same old thing.

So the issue is, how will EU allow you to choose a race/faction/class if you already made your character and already have a set of skills? Games like WoW and LotrO encourage making new characters to try different classes/races.
EU, like EVE and Runescape do not quite work that way. Yes people make alts, but you don't really need to. You can still experience all of the game with one character.

I imagine as far as the EU system will allow, the option to choose which faction you will join would be obviously in character. And since this game does not encourage multiple alts (and nobody wants to spend real money to skill up another char), a system will have to be in place to allow people to change paths and questlines, but sorta punish them for doing so. The amount of punishment is debatable.

Like for example, you have a faction... lets say, an Army faction with questlines: Colony Security and Engineer Corps.
You should be able to "choose" the Colony Security storyline which focuses on hunting... killing missions. But you can switch to Engineer Corps for some manufacturing. But you will need to start from the beginning and work your way up.
The Army is allies with the Guards of Cyrene. You can do quests for them the same way.

Then there is the Separatists (GREEN) faction enemies of the State: GREEN Hunters, Ore Excavations and GREEN Industries. You decide that the Army faction doesn't pay well enough so you switch to their opponents, the GREENs, and decide to work for them.
They don't trust you, so you need to gain their trust by again, doing simple missions. Then after a few loyalty challenges you can unlock their storyline missions. This will in turn, lock up your Army storylines and you lose the ability to work for the Army and their allies.

Pretty simple, but without a real "faction points" system, I don't think it can go beyond that. You just trigger "locks" and "unlocks" upon completion of a quest. I don't know, that's my take. Sounds sorta cool in a way though. I wish MA would spend a bit more time on expanding EU's functionality and tools, so planet partners could start making some real unique gameplay and act like it's own MMO. If not every planet will feel like a cheap clone of one another, and while the landscapes look amazing, there's little reason to expand.

Holey crap that was longer than I intended. I'll shut up now! :P

 

Are there any news on this? Will the factions and choices be there from the start or added later? Will this be constrained to what missions you can do in the mission trees / forest or have larger implications?

The only present "sideness" in EU I can think of is the Genesis Star vs Mr Lyndon and it does not really have a big in game effect.

 

This is the best I found, it also references to ET June. I don't really see how a "factions VU" derives from this, unless the initial release won't have the missions with choices.

 

Sweet.. but which one makes you the most ped!!

 

Any news on those Factions?
When I think about it it can be big enought to change the mindless grinding in something with more depth.