This week's Earthrise Question of the Week focuses on what players can expect from neutral and criminal gameplay in the game.
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Moll, Masthead's Community Manager sheds some light on the ability for players to remain neutral:
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.
Being a criminal in Earthrise was also discussed, and it was revealed that it would be excessively risky to head down that path early in the game, as the criminal settlement that provides a number of essential facilities such as factories for criminal crafters, and a market to sell stolen goods on will be unavailable to criminals until they discover this location, which shouldn't show up to players until about the mid point of their progression. This design decision was made to discourage players from being criminals right off the bat so that they may become more familiar with the game's social mechanics and the consequences of being a criminal. Of course, this design doesn't prohibit players from being a criminal right away, so if you don't care about the consequences you're still able to do so.
Cloning was also brought up, with Moll explaining that cloning will be available independent of faction, and that even criminals will have access to it as they have hacked the main grid.
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