I guess I would echo what Miz said above, loyalty is one of the most strong and important values ICly, but that's speaking from an old player/RPer standing point. Values seem to have greatly shifted over the last years and most players do not care about it as they did in the past. The few still caring are a minority, but the longlasting, stable, entities (like PIE, etc). It's not so much a surprise as CCP themselves seem to be increasing a lot the gap between capsuleers vs NPC empires.
All in all, it's not so bad when you shift loyalties as you please like most do, it will just mean that your character will eventually lose its loyalist side to get an more independent and freelance side. It is a choice with a lot of consequences, but it's not a bad one per se. Of course, if you do it to join the opposite side or a heavily militant side of another faction, willing de facto to change sides for another loyalist position. Which means yeah, you don't drop your loyalist side but you actually turn your jacket. Or become a merc/privateer...
So be prepared to recieve scorn from other loyalists, but as long as you stick to your newly enlightened change of mind and loyalties because of :epiphanies: or whatever is your IC reason, after a while you will be perfectly fine I think. Eran Mintor did it well, as well as others. Ofc the taint would not totally go away, especially for a few stubborn radicals, but that's part of the charm and actually creates drama and makes the character human and flawed, struggling to be accepted.
Of course, think twice about it because changing again after, meaning switching sides AGAIN, will remove all credibility to the character loyalties, and that... well, is already the case for a good chunk of the RP playerbase.
Now then, I think I am in a similar situation at the moment. I came back to the game after being away like 9 months, not so much has changed but there is even less loyalists groups than in the past, meaning entities affiliated to a faction, major or minor. People tend to go into the few groups successful already (which kind of makes sense from an OOC point of view, you go where you can still have fun these days out of a lack of choice). So we end up with very few loyalist RP groups : PYRE, I-RED, PIE, and a handful of others, and nothing at all on the gallente and minmatar side.
I feel like being a remnant of the old times where my character was actually crafted for an already rich and thriving RP environement, where all major factions were very well represented and even minor ones (Khanid, Intaki, Mordu, Ammatar, etc). We also had various internal groups of the main factions that provided intra factional conflict as well (PIE vs KoTMC, EM vs UK, etc). So I naturally ended up creating a character that was here not to copycat already existing 'standard' or 'cookie cutter' loyalist characters (which are good characters, they are the basis for everything, without them, no faction RP), but to add something new for more diversity. So I went into minor faction loyalism intermingled with a complicated RP affiliation. It worked well at the time, but now that there is barely 2 main factions still thriving (barely), well, that character feels completely out of place. I can't even find a suitable group where to put her, and i'm still on the right side of the fence. Its too specific.
So like you I have several solutions that I don't like much for various reasons...
- Doing like you, albeit staying the same faction but that would still mean shrinking my loyalties to a more, more simpler one.
- Starting anew (lulz, after so many years, restarting everything... not the time, not the will).
- Using alts... With all the flaws it brings.
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Topic: Delete / lock please (Read 2156 times)