My Thoughts as a neutral....
Before I start a quick confession:
I havent read all the posts here (there are sooo many) so I'm probably repeating previous posters or going to put my foot in it. I just wanted to air my thoughts.....
Ok so we, as neutrals, have the ability to go anywhere and be pretty safe (acording to the article).... I'm sorry but thats not true and flies in the face of the sentence that follows shortly afterwards about being attacked by sided monsters.
err ok, surely if I go to a sided city (which I can as a neutral) then it follows that I am likely to meet sided monsters? (and when I'm high enough to kill that bloody NPC Omni crat that ALWAYS kills me when I go to Omni-ent he'll wish he was never rendered!).
I realise we cant have it both ways so what I would like to see is either:
a. We are safe anywhere (unless we start trouble) and all are welcome in a neutral city (unless they start trouble). So we can use all their shops and maybe sided players cant attack us first????
or
b. It stays the way it is at the moment but the same issues apply to clan and omni members in neutral cities (i.e cant use shops, ramdomly attacked by neutral monsters etc.).
There are basically two views to neutrality, we take neither side because we dont care OR we take neither side because we dont like either alternative. I think too many people think the neutrals just sit on the fence, rather than having made their mind up already.
The above statements will also show why it is stupid that we cant start a PvP fight (not that I want to but I realise why people are complaining about it). In fact if you follow the line of reasoning then neither side should be able to attack a neutral because they are 'non-combatants', but also because you wouldnt want to risk alienating a potential ally and/or convert - and start the bad vibe grapevine moving e.g. "Those Damn clanners attacked me last night while I was out hunting Leets, perhaps Omni is right about them being a bunch or terrorists after all!" or "If it wasnt bad enough having to put with Omni sending spys out here, they attacked by cousin Billybob yesterday while he was cleaning his Yalm, makes us just hate 'em even more"
Now for my part I choose neutrality because I didnt want to commit until I knew the pros and cons of either side. Well I'm lvl 23 and I still dont. I dont see any compelling reason to join either side. Neither has any great advantage (but then maybe thats because this whole token thing isnt explained anywhere), nor do they have any disadvantages (notwithstanding being attacked by the other side, but hey thats one side less than us right!). Neither actively canvesses for me to switch sides (omni or clan missions offered to Neutrals characters should offer more of an incentive since they cant get their own people to do their dirty work for them) but that isnt necessarily a bad thing (unless you stick to your original plan where neutrals are just a pool of people 'waiting' to join a faction)
As far as making playing neutrals hard.......this fact needs to be explained during character creation. I can imagine a lot of people would pick neutrality for the same reasons I did, i.e. wanting to find their feet first. On the face of it taking a side in a war appears to be a lot harder than not getting involved in the war. Unfortunately in this case its made harder for those who stay out of it (which again may be by design) so new players should get plenty of warning.
[Edited because I found loads of typos :-)]
The thing about Wompa access to Newland.....
The answer to the way the wompa network is constructed may be explained by the fact that the wompas would have been built prior to the formation of the clans. This still doesnt really explain why they go to Newland (from the architexture Newland doesnt look like it was built by Omni, and I dont recall anything out its construction in the timeline) as I cant see Omni being that bothered about keeping open relations with the Neutrals. The downside of this is there there really should have 'been' Wompa access between Omni-1 and Omni-2 (Athen), although this may have been 'switched off' or 're-routed' once Omni abandoned the city to the Clans.
The lack of Wompa betwwen Tir and Athen would be explained IF the Clans do not have the technology/resources to construct their own Wompa system.
Of course what makes sense in the context of the story doesnt always make for a sensible system in the game :-)
Mission tokens for Neutrals, etc...
I would like to see mission tokens for Neutrals if possible. Perhaps not as many as Clan or Omni? Or not as powerful? I think a Neutral should be able to collect rewards from both sides, token rewards. One way to implement this is to require twice as many tokens before they make a difference. Perhaps half the tokens from one side and half from the other? (So the first reward might show up after 10 tokens from Omni _and_ 10 tokens from Clan have been collected).
I would also like to see more shop access for Neutrals to Clan and Omni shops. Perhaps a fluctuating system, where access to shops changes periodically based on the current political situation? Or where only some shops are accessible at any time, but which shops depends on recent events in the storyline?
Thank you!
PS: For the Agent profession, faking sides might be an interesting addition to the game, especially for PvP. IE, a nano like FP Doctor, called FakeSide Omni, FakeSide Neutral, FakeSide Clan. Also, FakeName might be helpful in PvP.
Another Take on Neutrality
My first character was like most. Neutral because I wasn't sure which side appealed to me. But now my highest level chars are still neutral. Why, you might ask? Because after taking on "good" missions for both sides, they have seen the dark side of both Clan and OT. Both of these characters could never in good conscience join Clan OR OT after destroying hoards of amateur virusbuilders, people with permanent death technology, etc.
Don't call them mercs, it doesn't reflect their motives properly. These are individuals who started with Clan political sympathies and then woke up during a mission and said "Waitaminute! These guys are making weapons that could destroy the planet and everyone on it!" Then they saw the same projects coming out of OT. They think both sides are evil. The end doesn't justify the means to them. They'd do these "good" missions for free if that was an option. Seriously. They're not so much mercs as idealists. They'll take a mission for any party...so long as it's one they agree with morally. My characters are not alone. A lot of the chat in the clubs with other neutrals indicates to me that in addition to mercs and profiteers. there's a fairly sizeable contingent out there who believe the way to save the planet is to kill those on both sides who threaten every life form on on Rubi-Ka, regardless of their affiliation.
Please don't make my neutral characters join clan or OT because they kill a virusbuilder whose own employers would publicly deny all knowledge of him or her. These are chars who take jobs the public is never gonna know about, to prevent disasters that hopefully the public will also never know about. If forced to join a side, they could only do half that job. Half isn't enough for them. They make a lot of sacrifices to continue doing what they think is right. It's not easy to make money as a neutral actually, at least at the level mine are. They can't use half their treasure and rewards because they are Clan or OT only. Selling is difficult.
I can accept that maybe aligned items should not be usable by neutrals, or perhaps could be used if "hacked" in some manner, but I agree with other posts here that clothes and such are items that one would imagine a store owner would sell to neutrals. And insurance cell scanner machines? Why would they lose credits rather than insure a person who is in many ways less likely to die of war-related causes? As for being pked by aligned npcs, I don't think it should happen if you haven't killed a member of that faction in the last 24 hours. After all, most of the missions neutrals take are pretty hush hush. Would the average guard really know about them unless they fit the description of someone seen running out of a building recently with a loaded weapon and heading straight for the ammo shop?
I'm pretty new to the game, but I suspect one of the reasons people play neutrals is that instead of creating both OT and Clans as "good" with serious philosophical differences, according to the timeline, both sides have done some pretty questionable stuff. A new player coming into the game has trouble seeing everything in black and white, because, frankly, there isn't a white side here. I am sure this was done to prevent the majority of players from choosing Clan as the "good" side, but since Clan and OT act much alike in the eyes of new players, there is no roleplay incentive to really join either side. It's unfortunate because of all the games I have tried in the last 3 years, there seems to be more roleplaying here than anywhere else. I really expected that all my characters would choose sides. So far the only ones on sides were born there. If I could make them neutral, even with all the disadvantages, I would.