Since this is merely a thread suggesting how we correct the anti-neutral imbalance in the game, we needn't belabour interpretations of lore that don't relate to the question at hand. I will briefly address some of Loryen's claims about lore, but any extraneous dialog really belongs in-game or in a different thread.
Loryen, you choose to interpret bits of the lore you like at face value and disregard other bits of lore. And you mix in your own hypotheses and suggest that i treat them as fact as well. And since I have read the lore without drawing the same conclusions as you, you suggest that I have not read it. But lore is just that: lore, stories, legends, what have you. Before we learn any details about kami and kara we are told that:
"Two groups as powerful and mysterious as one another seek to control the destiny of Atys. Both possess unique powers, both claim to be the true guardians of the planet, both come to the aid of homins as long as they obey their rules, both are secretive about their origins and perhaps even their true intentions."
And so we learn that they are out to control us homins for their own unknown ends. The fact that they need something from us and are trying to control us should make us suspicious of their complete neutral honesty in descriptions that they and their followers contribute to subsequent lore. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for imagination and suspension of disbelief in a game world. I can imagine a great many far fetched things in pursuit of entertainment. I can believe in a possible world full of magic. I can go so far as to believe in a possible world in which people can jump. But it is beyond the bounds of my imagination to imagine a possible world in which 2 highly advanced cultures who are trying to manipulate me are both being completely honest with me but telling me the exact opposite story.
Add to that the in-lore prevarication about the kami's all-knowing nature (it should be obvious to any reader from context that we are only speaking about all-knowingness within atys and not the entire universe), and i cannot imagine that individual kamis are incapable of corruption. The lore says they "seem", that their behavior "suggests", and so on. Having really good surveillance and information-sharing abilities doesn't mean much. Evidence points to their surveillance being focused on the state of nature, not on each other.
Loryen writes: Why should they give someone who does not fight for them special privledges?
Because power corrupts. They have power. Therefore unless some other mechanism comes into play to allow neutrals and mauraders to get around, corruption lets you do it in a way that is completely consistent with the established game-world. Not kami or kara writ large, just the odd kami here, a kara there, stuck on duty in an out of the way place, somehow justifying to themselves chiseling a great deal of extra cash out of neutral players to let them slip into the teleport.
Erizon writes:
"Neutral has benefits and penalties.
Kami has benefits and penalties.
Karavan has benefits and penalties.
…
But with any game, regardless of how compelling a storyline is, expediency and practicality wins the hearts of the overwhelming majority compared to strong adherence to the story."
Let us examine the benefits and penalties.
As a neutral, I can teleport from inside pyr to outside of pyr without getting dizzy. I can teleport from inside zora to outside zora and avoid getting stuck on a cliff. The ability to TP halfway across a zone, but that honestly never comes up much. I've only had it come up once and there from a clicko. It has minimal if any strategic use. The cons: No high level teleports, no PR teleports.
As a karavan, one can get teleports to all the cities in the lake area and avoid quite a lot of annoying, slow swimming. One also gets teleports to PR and high level zones. The cons: if you let your kami fame slip from 0 to -.00001, you get attacked if you walk into a kami temple.
As a kami, one can get teleports to all the cities of intuition, avoiding quite a lot of jungle maze annoyance. One also gets teleports to PR and high level zones. The cons: if you let your karavan fame slip from 0 to -.00001, you get attacked if you walk into a karavan temple.
And we see that Erizon is absolutely right. Despite the obvious story-line reasons for remaining neutral, many players feel that not getting lost in zora isn't quite a compelling enough game mechanical reason to give up easy access to high level zones and so they give up on pretending there is a story at all, just to tech out the game system. This is, in fact, what I have been told to do time and time again: Don't treat it as a world, treat it as a story-less strategy game, and then you can justify aligning. I am surprised that players like loryen who attest that players who ignore lore "cheapen" the game for him do not, therefore, support an adjustment that would make acknowledging the lore less penalized by the game system.
I think my proposed solution of allowing neutrals access to a handful of PR teleports at extremely high costs will still not bring the advantages of neutrality anywhere close to the advantages of joining a faction. I am certainly not proposing that all of them be available at the right price, just a few. If saving up for a PR teleport is serious business, like saving up for a packer, this will not, as you fear, send hoardes of players denouncing their factions. It will simply make the game a little more fun for those of us who value neutrality.
Loryen, you choose to interpret bits of the lore you like at face value and disregard other bits of lore. And you mix in your own hypotheses and suggest that i treat them as fact as well. And since I have read the lore without drawing the same conclusions as you, you suggest that I have not read it. But lore is just that: lore, stories, legends, what have you. Before we learn any details about kami and kara we are told that:
"Two groups as powerful and mysterious as one another seek to control the destiny of Atys. Both possess unique powers, both claim to be the true guardians of the planet, both come to the aid of homins as long as they obey their rules, both are secretive about their origins and perhaps even their true intentions."
And so we learn that they are out to control us homins for their own unknown ends. The fact that they need something from us and are trying to control us should make us suspicious of their complete neutral honesty in descriptions that they and their followers contribute to subsequent lore. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for imagination and suspension of disbelief in a game world. I can imagine a great many far fetched things in pursuit of entertainment. I can believe in a possible world full of magic. I can go so far as to believe in a possible world in which people can jump. But it is beyond the bounds of my imagination to imagine a possible world in which 2 highly advanced cultures who are trying to manipulate me are both being completely honest with me but telling me the exact opposite story.
Add to that the in-lore prevarication about the kami's all-knowing nature (it should be obvious to any reader from context that we are only speaking about all-knowingness within atys and not the entire universe), and i cannot imagine that individual kamis are incapable of corruption. The lore says they "seem", that their behavior "suggests", and so on. Having really good surveillance and information-sharing abilities doesn't mean much. Evidence points to their surveillance being focused on the state of nature, not on each other.
Loryen writes: Why should they give someone who does not fight for them special privledges?
Because power corrupts. They have power. Therefore unless some other mechanism comes into play to allow neutrals and mauraders to get around, corruption lets you do it in a way that is completely consistent with the established game-world. Not kami or kara writ large, just the odd kami here, a kara there, stuck on duty in an out of the way place, somehow justifying to themselves chiseling a great deal of extra cash out of neutral players to let them slip into the teleport.
Erizon writes:
"Neutral has benefits and penalties.
Kami has benefits and penalties.
Karavan has benefits and penalties.
…
But with any game, regardless of how compelling a storyline is, expediency and practicality wins the hearts of the overwhelming majority compared to strong adherence to the story."
Let us examine the benefits and penalties.
As a neutral, I can teleport from inside pyr to outside of pyr without getting dizzy. I can teleport from inside zora to outside zora and avoid getting stuck on a cliff. The ability to TP halfway across a zone, but that honestly never comes up much. I've only had it come up once and there from a clicko. It has minimal if any strategic use. The cons: No high level teleports, no PR teleports.
As a karavan, one can get teleports to all the cities in the lake area and avoid quite a lot of annoying, slow swimming. One also gets teleports to PR and high level zones. The cons: if you let your kami fame slip from 0 to -.00001, you get attacked if you walk into a kami temple.
As a kami, one can get teleports to all the cities of intuition, avoiding quite a lot of jungle maze annoyance. One also gets teleports to PR and high level zones. The cons: if you let your karavan fame slip from 0 to -.00001, you get attacked if you walk into a karavan temple.
And we see that Erizon is absolutely right. Despite the obvious story-line reasons for remaining neutral, many players feel that not getting lost in zora isn't quite a compelling enough game mechanical reason to give up easy access to high level zones and so they give up on pretending there is a story at all, just to tech out the game system. This is, in fact, what I have been told to do time and time again: Don't treat it as a world, treat it as a story-less strategy game, and then you can justify aligning. I am surprised that players like loryen who attest that players who ignore lore "cheapen" the game for him do not, therefore, support an adjustment that would make acknowledging the lore less penalized by the game system.
I think my proposed solution of allowing neutrals access to a handful of PR teleports at extremely high costs will still not bring the advantages of neutrality anywhere close to the advantages of joining a faction. I am certainly not proposing that all of them be available at the right price, just a few. If saving up for a PR teleport is serious business, like saving up for a packer, this will not, as you fear, send hoardes of players denouncing their factions. It will simply make the game a little more fun for those of us who value neutrality.