How Will Alignment Figure Into This?

[wolfmoonstrike]

n

That is certainly true.

However, cooperation is a powerful survival tactic. My cooperating tribe of six members is stronger than you alone. My stable alliance of cooperating good tribes is stronger than your ad-hoc, distrustful-of-its-fellow-members alliance of evil tribes. (If for no other reason than I'm not constantly looking over my shoulder at my 'friends' - or at least not to the extent you are.)

You point out good reasons why being evil operates against cooperation, and thus ultimately works against survival. And not because the game rules artificially impose penalties on being evil, but rather because the very nature of evil imposes those penalties.

(And by the way, since the topic of this thread is, 'How will alignment figure into all this', the points you raise aren't tangents at all. They're directly on point.)

Yes but no matter what even a good tribe can be evil behind the scenes. At least an Evil tribe is honest for what it is. Also totally agree cooperation is the key to survival (like I said even the aggressive know they can't always be aggressive). In truth every tribe will look after its own interest, at least with an evil alliance we expect to be betrayed and take steps to defend ourselves against even our allies.

While when you're working with the "Good" aligned you can never be sure when they may betray you, but it will happen. When resources get too scarce to support such a big alliance that's when diplomacy breaks down and you have no choice but to fight, or at least that's how a few may see it. My point is in a PA world no alliance can truly be trusted because everybody has to work for their own survival first.
the vid helps sums up my point again....doesn't help I like the quote lol.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UT9Y6coFT8

I mean their are more than one way to be evil than just killing a person, such as hiring somebody to kill/steal for you. If wanted to pretend to be diplomatic yet get the resources I needed from you, I would hire a tribe of "bandits" to get them from you.

btw I disagree with the whole concept of good and evil, so I'm trying to fill the shoes of the evil role to argue this out lol I understand both the concept of good and evil but I hardly ever think things are black and white. Everything to me is a shade of grey (though some things are way into the black for me, but that's another discussion). Killing something with context can be considered black but killing because you need to survive or your family needs to survive. Could that be considered evil? Is that good though? all a matter of perspective.

Believe it or not regardless of some of our bigger members enjoying a good troll or a gank here or there, Pandemic isn't an evil tribe. We do actually have strong morals and will be enacted when the game goes live(though I didn't say those morals were always gone about the right way). Btw wanted to throw that out their so you (or the bored few reading this) didn't think just because Pandemic seems to be evil doesn't mean it is (perspective).


EDIT: wanted to add that I'm really enjoying the debate. lol. Abstract ideas are fun.

[Bridger]

Let me clarify a point: I'm sure that for any given player/tribe, it's no more likely that an 'evil' alignment will make you less likely to cooperate or to act in your own enlightened self interest, simply by virtue of being evil. I'm sure there will be cooperative, dependable evil tribes. I was only pointing out the realities of the nature of evil and the potential impact that could have on relationships within the game.

For example:

Three evil tribes form an alliance and things go well. They cooperate and succeed and everything is happiness and progress. That is until the day the alliance finally manges to conquer the territory of a mutual enemy and claim their base and their resources. It's at this point that two of the tribes turn to the third and say, "You know, this is a lovely base and it has so much potential... for two tribes. For three tribes - not so much. Furthermore, we notice that by some strange coincidence, you guys took the brunt of the damage in that last fight and are all shot to pieces. It's therefore even more coincidental that we two have decided that now might be the time to dissolve this alliance - or at least your membership in it. And oh, by the way; I've always wanted that sword you're carrying..."

Evil tribes could turn on each other in that fashion. Good tribes would be less likely to do so because of the cost. (Notice: less likely, not 'inconceivably'. Maybe the reward would justify the cost. Who knows?)

Second point: I've been thinking about how you would code this to make the whole good/evil thing more situational and subjective.

I've noticed that the game already allows you to flag someone as a "friend/neutral/enemy" when you transact with them. So the game has a mechanism for setting that flag and tracking it. Maybe that's the answer here? Rather than having a tribe's alignment be a matter of setting a toggle, all alignments start out as 'neutral'. Then, at some point down the road, two players from two different tribes meet. If they simply transact and go their way, both tribes retain their neutral status with respect to each other. But if one of the players attacks the other, the attacker's tribe is set to 'evil' with respect to the victim's tribe. (The attack would automatically set the 'friend/neutral/enemy' flag to 'enemy' for each member of the attacker's tribe with respect to the victim's tribe.) The effect of that would be that now the victim's tribe can freely attack any member of the aggressor's tribe without damage to their 'neutral' status.

You could even take it a step further. You could build in a timer that would allow the aggressor's tribe's leadership to either ratify that attack or disavow it - probably by throwing the aggressor out of the tribe.

Additionally, there could be a '[x] strikes and you're out' feature. Your tribe's membership could only engage in so many aggressions before your tribe's status is set to 'evil' ('enemy') for everyone else.

Last but not least, you could give the original victim the ability to reset the aggressor's flag to neutral, if the original victim was willing - for whatever 'motivation' - to do so. At that point, everything would go back to the status quo ante.

Might that be workable?

[wolfmoonstrike]

I like the idea of alignment being on a more personal basis... Being flagged enemy for a single tribe/clan/person is a wonderful idea in my eyes. It never made sense to me how someone across the map that has never heard of you or seen you do something wrong could possibly know you're evil.

I think even if you do get set to red/evil in game it should be hidden until someone sees you do wrong, or if you have a very high perception+ hide skill (so in otherwords your character just notices these things about you). I also think you shouldn't be flagged "evil" if you kill all the witnesses before they can make it back to their tribe to report it.

Disavowing on the other hand sounds like an exploitable mechanic. What stops tribes from disavowing and then letting them rejoin later? Also about the three strikes you're evil I think is good idea but only if people survived to tell the tale. If not then as far as the game is concerned you're neutral/good. But if the players know they can still make you a personal enemy no matter what.