I dont know if you were just being snarky or what, but if you are serious I have to disagree. Being neutral in CF imho doesn't mean a goodie has free reign to gear off you. People (including myself for the record) will gear offf a neutral mob but playing a good-aligned character one should at the very least have a justification for why you are killing a neuitral mob besides you want their loot.

To give an example:

The Sergeant in Ruined Keep is neutral. If you want that sword to go kill a dark elf then I can justify it because that particular neutral mob is working as a guard alongside a bunch of evil orcs and gnolls and other evil creatures. He may not view the world (more on this in a moment) the same way those orcs and gnolls do but his association i.e. his actions at the moment make him a casualty of the war against evil same way a rager doesnt really hunt non-magi but if you happen to be grouping with a magi when a rager comes along he isn't going to stop for a moment in killing you because your current association means you are helping support evil.

Personally I believe alignments are based mostly in CF on how a particular character/mob views the world. In other words what makes you 'evil' isn't necessarily your actions but the thought process behind how you relate to the other creatures in the game.

Meaning that what ties 'evil' characters together is a disregard for other creatures in general. Evil can be orderly or chaotic but what ties them together is that neither gives a fuck about anyone really except themselves. Pure self-interest lies at the core of evil. So evil characters don't really need to justify killing someone because the ends always justify the means when those ends serve your personal self-interest.

Goodies on the other hand are restricted by actually caring about other people and creatures. Possessing empathy. A goodies self-interest is always kept in check by their equivalent feelings of (for lack of better words) compassion and a sense of the greater good. When a goodie goes around killing neutral mobs for gear then there is nothing that seperates them from an evil character because within that moment their motivations and lack of justification (or even the attempt at justification) is exactly the same. They are killing out of pure self-interest.

Obviously alot of this is game mechanics (and the arms race so to speak of CF)

Evils always say how easy goodies have it in terms of getting gear (request) but the entire point of request is because evils don't need to justify killing anyone. If someone roleplayed a goodie the way the game is set up to roleplay a goodie they would have craptastic equipment until hero except for what is given to them by heroes (another complaint folks have about goodies but when you've played a goodie you begin to understand).

To give an example:

There is a certain potion in a certain place in the Past that is pretty easy to get by the 25th rank of most classes solo or with help from a warrior buddy if you are a low hp non-damage dealing mage or something. Warriors really like this potion. However if you are a goodie you can't request it until near hero if not actually hero. So every neutral or evil can get this fairly essential prep easily by their 30s and you can't get it until hero because you don't as a goodie believe gear is worth more than a life.

That mob is good-aligned but the principle in general stands.

Frankly the main solution would be more lower level good-aligned mobs with requestable equipment//preps so that goodies could compete at lower levels without breaking RP but then again I suspect that this is done on purpose. Who says being good should be easy? In a world like CF I would imagine that being truly good would be a rare thing and thus a fight not just physical but mental because the vast majority of medieval type folks were neutral in their way of viewing things or so I think - meaning that things like 'human rights' etc. were not the norm and if you believed in those things then you were basically choosing to restrict your behavior/actions making life harder for yourself.

Being good in CF in other words is supposed to be imho harder - its the harder moral choice to make because instead of serving your own self interests with few if any restrictions you have to think before you swing that sword if you are serving your own interests out of conveniance or serving the greater good. Obviously most people will go for conveniance nine times out of ten. I wont lie and say I don't go the conveniant route many times. Like I said to compete in today's Cf is an arms race and RP is going to be a casualty for most people besides the most die-hard. Just don't believe a goodie can gear off neutrals without some level of guilt.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2011 06:29AM by Moligant.