Hey everybody!

Hope your weekend was great. This week, we're going to talk about what it means to be a Neutral player and also a bit of what Criminal Players can expect. These sort of playstyle paths won't be easy to follow, but they won't be impossible either. That said, let's find out some more details now...

In a world torn by impending conflict, Neutrality is a touchy subject. This week, we finally come to shred some light over what Neutral players can expect from keeping themselves distant from the Faction conflict. Also, we know would-be criminals among our player base have questions of their own.
 
Q: Will there be a totally neutral NPC-faction,  that provides services like cloning for everyone? I.e. will it be possible to be hostile towards every NPC-faction, without loosing the ability to be cloned again?
 
A: Aside from Continoma and Noir as major Factions, there are 10 smaller political groups (called Organizations), and 4 of them will be Neutral and will provide neutral players with quests that allow them to build their Reputation and unlock rewards that cater to their political standings. Cloning is currently independent of standings towards each Faction with the exception of several important resurrection points and teleporters that are meant to allow access only to Affiliated characters. We want to make sure that players won't get caught in a situation where important gameplay elements such as being cloned back to life is being denied or too heavily restricted to them.
 
Q: Who clones criminals? Insures their goods? Provides them a market? Offers them production facilities? Is the Autonomy the criminal version of Sal Vitas or the Noir Base? Or do criminals, unless they've built their own base, sacrifice some or all of these services when they decide to live by their own rules?
 
A: In order to operate on the island of Enterra, Criminals have been hard pressed to unite and fight back for survival leading to establishing their own settlement, operating under their own laws and authority. Hackers from the criminal establishment have been capable of hacking into the main grid, allowing criminals to be cloned back to life. The settlement will also provide criminals with market capable of buying back stolen goods, vendors, access to specific Factories for criminal crafters, and more. This criminal location is not part of the Autonomy but hidden away in a distant location where players will have to reach at least a mid-point of their character development to access without excessive risk. This is intended to discourage (but not prohibit) characters from going criminal from the very start of the game. Instead, once players understand the social mechanics of the game and the consequences of criminal life, they can access that distant location as a starting point of their underground life.

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Last week's Earthrise Fun Fact was as follows:
Earthrise is the name given to a photograph of the Earth taken by astronaut William Anders in 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission.

Curious for more?
You can see the photograph available here at the NASA website. NASA tells us a little bit about the holiday mission, and you can also see a picture of the "Christmas tree" the Skylab 4 crew made (the next crew up in space) and read the inspiring Christmas Eve broadcast the Apollo 8 crew made.

This beautiful photograph inspires all of us, and we hope it inspires all of you as well. Now while it is true no one from the Masthead Studios team has actually been to the moon, who knows, it might happen one day.

As always, each Wednesday we've got another Earthrise Fun Fact for you. Come follow us on Twitter to get the exclusive Fun Fact before it appears in the forums, but be sure to read QOTW to get more information.

We've got more interesting things in store for this week, so stay tuned!

~ m.

Oooh criminals! I'll eat you all! Great QOTW.

About the name of the game.... I loved Earth Rises Again more. It had more sense.

Yes, perhaps we could use a little clarification as to what our incentive is for not going criminal if criminals can spawn normally and get everything we need off of the market.

Sounding like criminals will be permanently prohibited from any settlement aside from their own.  Normally this wouldn't be THAT bad, but since it takes until around mid-game to reach your own city, it could become troublesome.

More info would greatly be appreciated.

With access to insurance, market etc it sounds to me like criminals will have the most freedom to do as they like. In addition I'd have to guess that the criminal insurance companies won't have the technical bias that conti and noir do as far as restricted tech. At least that's running with the thinking of criminals ignoring any laws about restricted tech.

It would be interesting to hear how MS is planning on keeping players away from the criminal town, or if the town itself is dangerous to such low skilled players.

Guess that means there's some hefty incentives to play as one of the factions, otherwise why wouldn't players want to go criminal and play without restrictions.

Thats an easy fix, Just make it so you can only have 1 person logged on an account at a time. You can always buy a 2nd account but im not going to do that and pay another monthly sub just to be a criminal.

If the had a bounty system or bonus for killing criminals that would make getting around tough.

hmm... Criminals hated by all, can't go to ermm about 85% of the island maybe less, has one settlement to go to for everything that is needed to actually play a game, and on top of that will most likely be hunted by a lot more players for their bounties than players of the other factions. I don't know about you guys but that sounds hard to me. Plus it will be an annoyance to have ONE settlement in the WHOLE island that we can truly be safe at (I doubt we will even be safe at this settlement). Crafting will be a B**** to do since we have one crafting station again, mean while the other factions will have 5 or so crafting stations. It will be a challenge and knowing a lot of MMO players, people want the easy life. If it is too much of a challenge to get there from the get go, that will be enough incentive for a lot of players not to go.

I don't see how you guys see a criminal life being easier than those of the other factions. yeah...

Not really. They can go whereever they want, just like any other player even right into the heart of Sal Vitas. Its just that they will aggro guards and no guards will come to their aid. It exists like a straight up third faction -> Conti fights noir and criminals, Noir fights Conti and criminals, Criminals take on everyone (Conti, Noir and other criminals).


Actually its still not clear how the 4 neutral organizations will treat high karma criminals. The Erratics, the syndicate, the red dragons, and what ever that group is that hangs out in Lottery Park may all deal with criminals - three of the four organizations are clearly criminals themselves.


Sounds like a fair trade. The existance of criminals means that players are more likely to be hunted down and killed just for their insurance payout or their items.


Ya these are some cons but I don't think they are really that much of a disadvantage. Large criminal guilds especially will just capture a couple territories and use those bases to be self sufficient. And again, we don't know how the 4 neutral factions are going to response to high karma criminals. The syndicate has the old industrial area - that may very well be a great place for criminals to do crafting.


I think the general sentiment is that doesn't sound hard enough. The faction system is basically a social contract in the game. It provides an amount of protection through acts of non-aggression and even mutual assistance among members in exchange for belonging to that faction and opposing an enemy faction.

Except that criminals are not affected by it. They can attack whoever they want whenever they want. Unless they do it near guards, there's no automatic penaltly for going on a murder spree. It will be up to faction members themselves to group together and fight back against a bunch of criminals. That means criminals have a lot of liberty and a lot of potential to cause havok. Those are two very big carrots for some players.