I was a little bummed that being gray (i.e. not “light side” or “dark side” but rather somewhere in the middle) had no super duper gear choices like full-light or full-dark.
But then I realized that for non-min-max purposes, gray was awesome.
(1) Every choice is a choice
If my character is really goody-goody, chances are I will pick the light side option most of the time because that’s what a goody-goody character would do, end of story. Vice versa for being totally evil. But if my character is truly neutral, every choice, every single one, could go either way, and I get to sit there and debate with myself what to do. I love that.
(2) Diplomacy
I took up diplomacy. Some people use it to grind light side or dark side points, depending on their preferences. I use it for money. That’s right, I’m a smuggler, dammit, and light and dark make no difference to me. I choose the mission based on the profit.
I would be so super-pissed if I saw a diplomacy mission with a rich payout but was light side and didn’t want to take the dark side hit (or vice versa). As a gray, whatever, money is money.
Jedi are totally different. Jedi aren’t influenced by money. However, it’s awfully easy to get dark side points just making choices that a normal person might make. Failure to tattle to the council? Dark side. Covering for a friend? Dark side.
I love being grey. The first thing I did on my Agent was turn off the indicators for LS or DS points in dialog. It’s much nicer to just pick based on how I feel my character would react.
I just can’t stand not knowing the outcome beforehand, even if I am not “trying for” one side or the other. If I could, I’d have indicators telling me whether I’d get the -1 of Shame from my companions.
I can understand that. For me, though, knowing the result swayed my decisions far too much.
Personally, I would really like it if the dialog that my character says would more closely match the text. Sometimes I read the options one way, and the dialog that comes out is totally not what I expected. Those are about the only times when I will escape out and redo a conversation.
I started playing my bounty hunter recently and instead of viewing her as light side or dark side I tend to view her as just insane because I honestly don’t know what she’s going to do. And I play her! She goes by whim and that’s it.
My Jedi is definitely light side and, yes, a lot of the answers tend to be those that a normal person wouldn’t make but that’s the point of a Jedi, right? They’re NOT normal.
My trooper is For the Republic which, interestingly enough, does tend to make dark side choices every now and then.
I keep hearing that they’re going to be coming out with Neutral gear for those who straddle the fence. I wonder what that’s going to look like?
Mmhm… I played a bounty hunter in beta, and I was exactly the same way. I was hired to stop this dude from killing the natives (you know, before level 10). So I go and he tries to bribe me. No… I was hired to make you STOP, so bribing me isn’t going to work (light side points for that). Then he keeps being a jerk so instead of trying to persuade him YET AGAIN, I just shot him (dark side points). Hey, I accomplished my objective…
I know exactly which quest/mission/whatever you’re talking about and I did the same thing. My BH is a Chiss so I figured… hey, maybe she’s not so keen on humans hunting aliens so much and then killed him.
I like to think she did it just to watch him die. She also let the father go with his Force-sensitive son… I’m not even sure why. Maybe because the wife annoyed her.
Yeah… even on my smuggler I refused to take a bribe from a guy because he pissed me off so much that I wanted to take the option which made his life hardest (which happened to be the light side option). I said to my groupmates “I’m not usually this goody-goody, but I HATE this guy and don’t want to cooperate with him.” They were like “LOL ME TOO!” So I can relate… that wife was a total bitch.
On the other side of that, those two Jedi who are in love on Tython? I’ve never had a problem turning them in because they’re such wanks about it.
Light side points! Even if the reason I turn them in is totally petty from a personal stand point.
I hate those jedi. I think it’s that they call each other “my love.” I decided not to turn them in, went back to get the bribe, ended up not taking the bribe but getting DS points for telling them “I don’t give a crap if you fall to the dark side.”
I completely agree, being grey is a lot more interesting! You really get to decide what is the “right” thing to do in every situation. I love the freedom that comes with being able to pick whatever you feel like your character would want to do. Sometimes it’s hard to decide, but that’s what makes it fun!
Totally! Although sometimes there isn’t an option to do the thing you want. I’m often heard muttering “there’s no ‘shoot in face’ option!”
In the equation is also whether I am likely to get into combat following the conversation. I’m far more likely to pick options that avoid combat on my smuggler – because I’m at a severe disadvantage if I don’t get to set up my approach in stealth. With the sentinel, I’m quite confident (and at my best) in a close-quarters brawl, so I am more likely to provoke a confrontation.
I agree about the “choices are real choices” thing. My Imperial Agent is neutral, and it’s funny because I hadn’t planned it that way at all. I just sort of started playing with only a very vague concept of what the character should be like, waiting to see how she would turn out in actual play, and somehow the light and the dark choices kept balancing each other out so that she’s still firmly in the middle. I think depending on the story she might end up slightly light by 50, but at least by that point that would have been some serious character development instead of just “being good because I’m a good guy”.
I can’t imagine taking diplomacy on such a character though. I have it on my trooper and I was just making myself “nicer” all the time by doing only the light side missions.
Though I was freaked out when I hit Light V or whatever the maximum is, and all my dark side points disappeared completely (as in, the game claimed I had zero). I don’t know whether that’s a bug or intentional, but I was kind of disappointed either way because while my trooper is very light, I still felt that those couple of dark side choices she had made added to her character.
I don’t have diplomacy anymore because I was doing mission skills only while I was leveling (for cash flow) and now I’m starting to craft. Mostly, I did not look at the LS/DS points… except when there was a set of boots I really wanted at the LS vendor and I kept dipping above and below Light II. Then I did some LS missions to be comfortably over Light II. Then I discovered I didn’t want the boots after all. Sigh.
I bought those boots. I like them… why didn’t you want them after all?
I discovered that I liked my current boots (slightly) better.
Romily is getting lighter all the time. I always intended to play her mostly light anyway, but she was pretty neutral in the early levels. Corso’s influence has been good for her. If light side = good anyway.
I’m taking the neutral route on my gunslinger, and I’m using diplomacy to keep her pretty balanced so that I never get to the point where I have an alignment I’m trying to maintain. I hear they’re including neutral rewards, which would be good, but for an alt, even a primary alt, I don’t care quite as much.