Nihimon's page

There is always that possible disconnect in expectations which is just all around unfortunate when it occurs. Current in development mechanics versus final is always a fickle and tricky thing with these sort of early access projects. Even when you don't learn new things that make you want to change your implementation the trickle of features and demand for content can cause problems.

I'm perfectly willing to accept the possibility that my reading comprehension failed me. I've even asked some Very Smart People that I know to read some of the same posts I read that gave me the expectations I had. They didn't tell me "you read it wrong". Instead, they told me "that won't work". Given how adamantly Some Folks were insisting it wouldn't work three years ago, and how adamantly Ryan told them "you're wrong, this is what we're going to do", I really expected Ryan to at least try.

But to completely abandon the idea without so much as talking to us about why, and then to turn around and blame the folks who supported this game in its infancy for not wanting to put up with the things those systems were meant to discourage... well, it rubs me the wrong way.

And I should probably stop harping on it for a while...

It might well have proven to be a "bad" mechanic - we may never know for sure. But it was a mechanic that Ryan spent a lot of time talking about, and the consequences of that mechanic (and that mind-set) were the only things that made me willing to spend a couple thousand dollars supporting a PvP game.

Watching so many of my friends and allies stop playing because of the way the game was actually developed (as opposed to the way Ryan spent years saying it would be developed) was one of the most demoralizing things I've ever experienced.

I think the biggest let-down in PFO has been the utter lack of courage to follow through on the "funnel of suck".

Ryan was extremely clear for a long time that PvP "isn't what the game is about." But in Early Enrollment, they made a heedless dash to implement PvP systems that let the very folks Ryan said he was "especially concerned about" be driven from the game, only to be told by Ryan that they were "playing the wrong game for the wrong reasons".

During all of that time, the "funnel of suck" systems were completely ignored, and then we were told that they didn't want Characters to lose the abilities they've paid XP for, so it sounds like they're completely abandoning even the pretense of being anything other than just-another-PvP-game.

It's been excruciatingly frustrating.

I think the key innovation of Pathfinder Online as described in the blogs - the "killer app" aspect of it, if you will - was the idea that players would require in-game structures that could be destroyed by other players in order to maximize their Character Power. That level of risk was, I think, essential in capturing the PvP-averse players who really wanted nothing to do with a game that let other players attack them at will. The decision to abandon that innovation at the first opportunity (i.e. the War of Towers) leaves me scratching my head.

Nihimon,

How many players did the original course actually attract?

I get your point, and I don't disagree.

I think it was probably a mistake to be reliant on subscriptions during Early Enrollment to continue development.

I also think there was something fundamentally broken with the development team. The reemergence of old bugs and the mysterious loss of prior functionality were very clear indications that they were not properly using Source Control. I expect they also had corruption in their builds due to not properly controlling the Build Environment.

Don't just stay a failing course. Be Paizo. Adapt.

They set a course into the unknown, and then turned to stay close to shore before ever leaving sight of it.

Have the courage to turn back to the original course and leave the familiar coastline.

Let the folks who are rabidly pro-PvP put their money where their mouth is and actually risk something when they start a fight in-game. And the only thing that is worth anything to them is their Character Power, so you have to make that the thing they risk.

They agreed that they wanted, eventually, to found a town dedicated to the collection and distribution of knowledge. All the gods which revered knowledge and education would have temples, or at least elaborate shrines, and in the center of town would be a library to rival the greatest of legend. This effort would insure their place in the afterlife.

After more than three years, The Seventh Veil has finally achieved, in part, one of our most enduring goals. We have built a library near Phaeros! This was an intensely satisfying event, and we want to thank Goblinworks again for inspiring us to such dreams and for giving us the sandbox that is letting us bring them to life.

Couldn't Phaeros and AGC come to an agreement that doesn't necessarily bind EBA and EoX?

Sure we could, as long as Phaeros didn't promise anything about how other EBA members would act, and AGC didn't promise anything about how other EoX members would act.

But frankly, I'd rather fight AGC (and Golgotha) than make deals with them. I mean, I'd prefer it if the game systems were ready for it, but still, having enemies to fight is good.

I still laugh every time I think back on Guurzak yelling "SURPRIZE INSPEKTION!" That's the kind of thing that makes the game fun. Fighting over Towers can be fun. Running around killing everyone in sight isn't fun for me, but it's not really "wrong" either. Although, it is probably one of those things that, if it gets done "too much", would be really bad for the game overall.

The Everbloom Alliance is friendly to strangers and helpful to all. We welcome visitors and are happy to talk to anyone interested in operating in our area. Generally, we're happy to let folks harvest or join us to fight escalations, but those resources are limited and therefore they need to be properly managed.

Known enemies in EBA Territory will be killed without any questions unless they've arranged for a proper escort first. It should be fairly easy to identify the folks on the forums who are "known enemies" :)

... including currently held Tower hexes.

I meant currently held Towers in other hexes. I don't think anyone should ever respawn in the same hex they died in.

You two tend to ignore things you cant refute.

I've just learned how futile it is to try to refute the likes of you and Bluddwolf with facts and links to quotes. All that happens is I get mocked for providing links to quotes.

My friends have given me really good advice about only engaging the folks who are actually worth engaging - which is why I generally try to respond to Guurzak - but I'm deeply flawed and still have trouble actually following that advice.

People don't behave in ways that are contrary to their nature. You guys were running around killing everyone you could in the very beginning of Alpha. Trying to pretend that The Seventh Veil somehow drove you to that point now is ridiculous. I think you've always wanted to be murder hobos. I think that's why Pax made their first alliance with Bluddwof. I think that's why why Pax made their second "not an alliance, for realz" with Bluddwolf. And I think that's why you're getting all the groups who also very clearly wanted to be murder hobos (looking at you AGC) to join you.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

Side A refuses to agree to any terms of war, and then starts a war.

Side A (Phaeros, duh) refused to agree to any specific terms which would bind us to inaction in the face of hostility. As a result, when AGC took hostile acts, we reacted with a measured, proportional response. We took one Tower specifically from the Company that had been making hostile acts in EBA territory. We successfully defended that one Tower the next night, then unsuccessfully defended it the next night. None of that activity involved TEO/Brighthaven. At that point, since the hostile acts from AGC had stopped (as near as we could tell) we were content to let things cool off again. But in an all-hands EBA meeting, a large force from Golgotha came into EBA territory and started killing everyone they could find.

You can say we "started" it all you want, but just keep in mind there are quite a few people in the audience with enough reading comprehension and general judgment to get a feel for the truth.

You really need to make up your mind man. Did we have a ceasefire or didn't we?

Well, we stopped shooting didn't we?

But we never agreed to any specific terms, and we never would have agreed to any specific terms that were in direct contradiction with publicly announced Everbloom Alliance policy.

People don't want to PvP...

Having been personally accused of "not wanting to PvP" for years on these forums, when it was never true and despite my best efforts to illuminate the truth, I'm skeptical of this.

I think a lot of the people playing PFO are not interested in random player killing, and rightly recognize that PFO was marketed as a game that will have "a negative feedback loop that links random killing to gimping character development".

The fact that the game has developed a culture that's intolerant of certain types of degenerative behavior is good. The fact that Phaeros was able to generate some meaningful PvP last night when we defended the Tower we took from AGC (who was consistently violating our sovereignty in Everbloom Alliance Territory by both establishing a Base Camp and attacking Escalations) is good. The fact that some of the groups who have been written off as "anti-PvP" fought side-by-side with us while we did so is good.

People don't want meaningless PvP. People don't want PvP that deliberately targets inexperienced players around starter areas. But that doesn't mean they don't want PvP.

Beware the Legion of Bloom!

This should give you a reasonably easy way to calculate the minimum Influence you have, and a general idea of how to gauge the scale of the Influence that's not measured.

.

.

.

Cumulative Influence for Expert, Slayer, and Gatherer Achievements by completed Rank:

• 1 - 0.33
  
• 2 - 0.447
  
• 3 - 0.637
  
• 4 - 0.843
  
• 5 - 1.286
  
• 6 - 1.848
  
• 7 - 3.184
  
• 8 - 5.007
  
• 9 - 9.590
  
• 10 - 11.416

Over 9,000!

(not)

Ceding the public square to the most toxic is not an option.

To me, the point of concern is spamming public channels. No matter what language is used, it has to be stopped, fast. Only active moderation can help with that. My solution would be to make global channels only available to exp earning characters, and only usable when at least 100 feet from thornguards >D

ArcticMUD put a timer on how often someone could post a message in the global channel. I think a similar idea would be great in PFO for the General channel. It would take away the ability to use General for ongoing back-and-forth conversations. A 5 minute timer might be right.

Also hasn't GW already hinted/stated that settlements will get more DI for having less experienced citizens?

That's actually a benefit for Companies, not Settlements. Companies earn Influence as their Characters earn Achievements. New Players will have a much easier time earning Achievements. Therefore, Companies gain Influence faster when they have lots of new Players in them.

I expect that the devs are struggling with how Influence transfers with a Character when that Character changes Companies specifically because of their desire to support Pathfinder University without negatively impacting their design goals with respect to new Players earning Influence for Companies.

If bandits are going to be forced to be tied to communities, then, at the very least, they should be able to hide their membership. Perhaps not absolutely, but it should take a lot more work to figure out what community they are in than looking their name up in the list of companies.

Perhaps we should all have the option of having our settlement affiliation private from all but the leadership. People who want to figure out where we are banking and training can follow us around, or expend DI to discover it.

Bluff vs. Sense Motive. This is actually one of the things that have been specifically addressed by the devs, if I'm remembering correctly.

The Goblinary

Read the Announcement

I've been holding off on updating Blackwoood until someone makes some sort of announcement about its current status.

Blackwood Glade remains part of the Everbloom Alliance.

As far as I'm concerned this is a personal matter between Thod and Decius. If there were something we felt needed to be stated publicly, we'd state it publicly.

This ain't my first rodeo, and I have no intention of going 'round and 'round with our enemies trying to "clarify" something that doesn't have anything to do with them.

@Decius, Didn't the EBA once champion a treaty based upon the policy that each settlement had sovereignty over its core six?

My understanding is that the Tower NAP was to ensure PC Settlements had access to adequate Training. I don't believe it was based on the more general idea that those Settlements had sovereignty over their adjacent hexes.

The neutrality of Emerald Lodge was convenient for the Tower NAP. Now that the Tower NAP is defunct, there is no longer any need whatsoever for any Settlement to bend over backwards to help Thod maintain EL's neutrality, or to pretend that EL's neutrality is in any way advantageous for anyone other than EL.

Everbloom Alliance

Hammerfall: Abandoned; relocated to KP for safety
Keeper's Pass: Active

No.

Phaeros had been active in Hammerfall early on crafting. Phaeros relocated our crafting industry to Keeper's Pass.

Hammerfall is active.

Tyncale, there's no question in anyone's mind that predators need prey. My question is, how many of those who are currently playing primarily as prey are prepared to step into the role of predator?

While having too few predators is a risk, by far the greater risk is having too many. Having too few predators is likely a self-correcting problem. Having too many predators is likely to result in a vicious cycle that drives off prey until all that is left is predator-on-predator, which is what turns games into murder simulators.

Do you know what a really evil settlement would do?

They same thing they always do: denigrate those who strive for something better while pretending that they themselves are the "real" good guys.

In the real world, the first man to erect a fence and claim all this is mine and none shall pass... that man was egregiously evil and the world would be a better place if he had been laughed out of civilization, rather than copied.

In my mind, that first fence was built in response to blood, sweat, and tears being spent bringing forth sustenance from the earth only to watch others take what they wanted and trample the rest.

You have chosen to label yourselves as Lawful Good...

You're funny. Misinformed, but funny.

I hope that all the reasonable, silent readers are getting a good taste of why known allies of Golgotha can expect to be killed outright.

Presumably, gathering and trading by parties considered hostile to EBA will be done via alts, that may even be in a company aligned to an EBA settlement.

So all of this posturing is really pointless, and actually rather puerile.

Thanks for your comment. We'll keep that in mind when we start having other posters reprimand us for making an insufficient effort to disseminate this information more widely.

Capitalocracy wrote:

Savage Grace wrote:

Nonsense, we're all just Thod alts, roleplaying villains and victims.

That's another part of the problem, just villains and victims. We've got some proactive robbers, but we don't have many people playing cops yet. I suspect that will change with time, but it would be nice if there were some sort of brute squad people could call on to come fight bandits that are just camping around ambushing people.

To be fair, Phaeros are doing a good job acting as Team EBA, World Police right now. They are keeping us occupied with things that aren't accidentally picking on small settlements.

Thanks, Tink :)

We are very motivated to move the fight closer to Golgotha. Not only does that give y'all the PvP you want, but it also lessens the likelihood that y'all will get bored and pick on players who aren't really interested in PvP. Seems to be working so far.

Nihimon wrote:

Savage Grace wrote:

Given the current community's recent pushback on the devs' proposed WoT changes (to the point where many of us can now do just fine with a zero tower settlement), it is hard to imagine the exact same community won't crowdforge any crafting loss to similar irrelevance.

Funny, I thought the community was trying - unsuccessfully - to get Goblinworks to make the Towers more significant by capping NPC Settlements at Level 6 (no Tier 2 at all) and starting PC Settlements at Level 7.

You make it sound like the community demanded the current system, but that's exactly the opposite of true.

No, there was no such crowd forging that discussed lowering NPC settlement training to 6.

The main thrust of the push back was that low population settlements would effectively be squeezed out of the game, its members forced to join the larger settlements.

Crowdforging: Changes to War of Towers for EE 4.0

Start at the linked post and keep reading. You'll see a significant number of voices asking for NPC Settlement Training to be lowered to 6. Prominently, Azure_Zero - one of the most enthusiastic advocates for helping "small Settlements" - also added his voice to the calls to cap NPC Training at Level 6.

As I've said a number of times, I really try not to "correct" people's opinions, but when you assert as fact something that is provably not a fact, I can't help but link the relevant proof.

Nihimon wrote:

right now, nothing can be done about it other than to ask you to show some restraint, and we all know how well that's going to go over.

You might be surprised. Golgothan leadership does not want to see the world burn. If there's a serious argument that what we're doing is bad for the game I'm open to hearing it.

Here it is, as straight as I can tell it, but first I want to be extremely clear about two things:

1. I don't think Golgotha was "griefing".
2. I don't think the Blackwood Glade folks reacted "well".

My argument is pretty simple, but I'll try to lay it out as explicitly as possible.

1. Almost everyone reacts poorly to PvP the first time they experience it. It's good for the game to help those players get over the emotional distress without ridiculing them, treating them callously, or doing things that are known to drive inexperienced PvPers away from PvP games.

2. There are game systems which will eventually make it costly for the second largest Settlement in the game to make sustained attacks on a 5 player group. Taking advantage of the fact that those systems aren't yet in place, while not technically wrong, isn't really right either.

3. There were very serious bugs/issues that exposed a large number of Settlements to a larger PvP Window than they should have had, primarily due to issues where Settlement Leadership bugs made it impossible/impractical for some Settlements to recapture the Towers that had been made Unclaimed due to the system rollback. Taking advantage of this increased PvP exposure, while not technically wrong, isn't really right.

I'm not saying what y'all did was wrong. I'm saying it wasn't right. And I'm asking you to show some restraint, especially when targeting folks who are obviously not yet indoctrinated into a PvP mindset, and try to forebear responding to their emotional outbursts. Y'all have given a lot of really great advice on the forums about how to respond to PvP - I'm asking you to try to give that advice to people directly in game. If you see someone is having a hard time accepting their losses, I'm asking you to give them a little breathing room and give them an opportunity to develop some tougher skin. And I'm asking you to avoid doing things that you expect you wouldn't be able to do - or wouldn't want to pay the cost to do - if the systems you know are in the works were already in place.

Guurzak, I've often said you're one of the best posters on these forums, and I've meant it every time. I hope you understand that I'm asking these things of you player-to-player for the good of the game on a purely meta level. The Everbloom Alliance will wage war against the Northern Coalition because of your attacks against our allies and the sovereignty of our territory, but that's an in-game thing. While we'd like to see you change your behavior, we don't have any illusions that we can force you to by hitting you in the game, and the war will run its own course regardless of whether or not you find my pleas here compelling.

Because y'all are Lawful Evil, I'll try to lay out some guidelines that I'd ask you to seriously consider.

1. Don't send your warriors into enemy Settlements, because eventually you know those Settlements will have you marked KOS and you wouldn't be able to anyway. (Spies are fine, of course)

2. If someone reacts with obvious emotional distress when you kill them, leave them alone for at least 4 hours to give them a chance to cool down and to give their allies a chance to talk them through the distress and try to teach them how to handle it next time. Maybe even reach out to me and let me know who it was if it was in EBA territory.

Thanks for listening.

But PvP is a key aspect of this game - always has been advertised as such and always will be.

Yes. And the negative feedback loop that ties random player killing to gimping character development is at least as key - always has been advertised as such and always will be.

Generally, when my mates get bored they go south and stir up the hornet's nest...

Meaningless. No purpose but your own enjoyment, and a bonus if folks get upset by it. Probably even a bigger bonus if it hurts the EBA's recruitment efforts.

The thing that bothers me about it is that you're taking advantage of the insignificant in-game consequences right now. We all know there will be repercussions later, but right now, nothing can be done about it other than to ask you to show some restraint, and we all know how well that's going to go over.

Um..reputation has an effect. I haven't been able to step foot inside a town in going on a little over a week. I can't train, every time I feel up my bags from PVE/Gathering, I have to have someone else on to take my items from me to be banked..it sucks.

And yet you still engage in indiscriminate murder regularly. The impact is not meaningful.

The scales are only in favor of the PvP "bandits" because many (most?) players are largely defying the devs by not grouping and working as cohesive social units...

BS.

The "good guys" are always at an inherent disadvantage. The murderers get to go wherever they want and pick their fights. The good guys have to be in the right place at the right time and not be detected in order to combat the murderers.

I was under the impression that Reputation was supposed to have a meaningful impact in the game. That doesn't seem to be the case right now, and there's nothing persistent that's worth enough to a Settlement that it can be taken away from them to make them reconsider their actions.

Context is important, and the reader has a responsibility to try to interpret the speaker's intent. Most people can read Cheatle's claim and intuitively understand it's his claim. Most won't bother to chastise him for speaking inaccurately. Those that do are probably more interested in some secondary effect than in encouraging more accurate speech.

Members of EBA are spending all their time there gathering, crafting, and foraying into the field.

And don't forget, killing Golgothan murderers who skulk around the surrounding hexes :)

... after hitting "enter world" I immediately pressed and held the up arrow. It seemed that you could move before the terrain loaded...

Very interesting! I think I'll run some controlled tests on this tonight :)

Pretty sure Roseblood Accord was my most-favorited post at 26.

Some other interesting stuff...

Longest thread in the forum

Oldest thread on the front page

Second-oldest thread on the front page

Nihimon wrote:

Pyronous Rath, what Rank do you have Wilting Surge trained to?

If you only have it trained to Rank 1, it doesn't matter what Staff you have, or what pluses.

If you read the origonal post im quitr clear that its trained to 3 but anyhow the issue seams to have resolved by putting the item in and out of the vault. I also relaged 2 hexes away then wwent back and took it out of vault and re equiped,.

Glad to hear you got it worked out. Enjoyed the testing though :)

Rank 4 Wilting Surge - Psychic Staff +2. Two Keywords matched. 50 Base Damage vs 6 Resistance, so 44 * 1.84 DF = 80.96. I saw a Critical Hit for 81.

It looks to be working as expected to me.

But... since that's not the exact test conditions, we did it again with Tamlin.

Tamlin, Rank 3 Wilting Surge, against Nihimon with 0 Resistance.

Charged Staff +0 - 83
Diminishing Staff +2 - 101

I'll run some tests tonight. Is this on the live server, or on the test server?

How is it that you guys reported the bug multiple times and nothing was said about it publicly but then Golgotha reported it and there was pretty much an immediate response?

Really? Where's the link to your report? If it wasn't publicly posted, where's the copy of the email you sent?

Nihimon reports that the Prelates/Casters doing nothing but debuffing is apparently a bug - Febrary 9th

Goblinworks acknowledges the problem with Prelates/Casters - February 11th

All hail Golgotha, exploitslayer!

/snort

I'd like to see resizable windows, so you can see the whole name of a recipe or material, instead of having to hover to figure out the details.

I'd love to see Inventory and Vault windows large enough to see the whole item name and the Qty. It's maddening trying to get inventory counts of what we have on our bank characters.

But what explains that the second most used weapon is the staff? I'm not talking enervating field buffs, but the folks who actually attack with it.

Is their basic exploit a sock rocker on a common conditional...?

There are no Basic Attacks for Staff, Wand, or Focus; you can't use them unless you spend XP first.