Goblin Squad Member
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The title isn't clear as I wanted it to be and I apologize. Couldn't think of a better way to put it. Hoping I can explain well enough to make up for it.
In essence my question is how Pathfinder Online will handle area of effect spells and your allies (or if you are in a party). Example: I'm playing a sorcerer and I throw a fireball toward a fighter I'm partying with and three orcs. How is the fighter affected (or is he at all)? What about a fighter you weren't partied with/wasn't your ally (we'll say a neutral other character you are not at odds with).
Same idea for a spell like Mass X (Cure, Buff spells, etc). How will the system choose which characters do or don't get affected?
There are a lot of different ways this can be handled and I can see points for both sides honestly. I do not believe this has been addressed by Goblinworks (and if it has, please link me...I've read through most of the blogs now). I'm curious how they'll be approaching this and am wondering about other people's thoughts on the subject.
Thanks for your time!
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Personally, I'm hoping for AoE affects everyone, including the caster, if in the radius of effect. It's how my gaming groups have played from AD&D through 3.5 and Pathfinder. It tends, in my experience, to improve tactical use rather than "blow the world up until we're all that's left" type play. Taking it to the MMO world, it would limit balance issues of mass AE grinding.
It would still be a valid tactic in certain cases to blow a party member up with the enemies. (or mesmerize, stun, root, snare, charm, etc...) However, it would require more thought than "Tank gather X # of mobs, dps all spam "3" until dead" on average. Just my vote. I know there are others who would prefer differently. Perhaps this will be one of the votes. Great topic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I really like the authenticity of friendly fire but one huge concern it brings up is "blue blocking." This is when good aligned characters run around evil aligned characters in hopes that attacks aimed at the evil characters will hit them instead and get the attacker marked as a criminal.
A major use of this I could see is in large battles having good aligned characters outside the formation, run along with a formation of evil characters so the attacks aimed at the characters inside hit the good aligned character.
One solution would be to make it so area attacks aimed at a formation only hit people in the formation, and making any formations all a single alignment based on the alignment of the members inside.
Won't cover every scenario but it does help.
Good point. It could lead to a market of evil assassins hired by good groups to snipe the "good human shields" and vice versa. Still not a perfect solution to the issue you mentioned. If killing an evil character was the same alignment changer as killing a good, despite your alignment, then I don't see where it'd be an issue though. Kill 5 evils and 2 goods, you still come out ahead, or at least break even if 50/50 no matter the numbers.
Lee: Thanks for posting this--very helpful, and a lot to chew on. I'm trying to think through what this means for conflict, as opposed to murder/greifing. You've walked us through the clear case (ganking some crafter). What about more balanced kinds of conflict?
Imagine two players, one from settlement A, and one from B, both happen upon a resource around the same time. Each gets their mates to come, and try and set up a mining camp, and there's legitimate disagreement over who gets the resource. Maybe both sides think they got there first, and this spills over into armed conflict.
How might that be handled?
There's three ways currently they could plan on handling this, assuming they were dead set on fighting:
1) Fight dirty and ambush the enemy, sucking up the alignment and reputation hits, etc, associated. If the resources are valuable enough or a straight fight too uncertain, this may be worth it. Sure if it's just some iron who cares? But something like finding an adamantine meteor, that would be worth stabbing some dudes over. If this is your choice, calling in a hit squad of less lawfully aligned friends or allies to do the dirty work for you may not be a bad call; enter the chaotic mercenary company!
2) Gang Fight: Need a better name, but effectively you as a group challenge them as a group to a fight without the various punishment mechanics kicking in. This is effectively a big duel that they have to accept for it to work, but if it's that or be murdered one by one by you in sneak attacks, they may go for it.
Note: we're also looking at a possible option where you can turn off some fashion of the punishment mechanics against those who kill you as sort of a "come get me and you won't get punished" way to signal you want to fight. Or maybe some manner of declaration of an area being contest territory, in which some aspects of the system are not applied. But that's all very up in the air.
3) Get your settlement to go about the process of declaring war on theirs, assuming they are a member of a settlement. This takes some time though, so probably not the best option as they may be done mining by then.
If the two groups were from rival or enemy settlements, my hope is that they would kill each other. If they are from neutral or friendly settlements, my hope is they would talk out some manner of deal between the two factions. If two paladins show up on opposite sides of this disagreement, they best talk it out or they take the first steps towards losing their role abilities.
In these systems we still need to figure out the scales of all the numbers; one ill chosen kill is not going to make your paladin lose his lawful alignment, or make your crafter's reputation terrible. People have to make repeated choices, and can always work to redeem themselves, at least in the eyes of the system.
From: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2p7ci&page=3?Goblinworks-Blog-I-Can-See-for -Miles#109
Makes FFA AOE SEEM unlikely under the point Andius brought up in conjunction with the criminal tags. That said, it would promote detect alignment as a major advantage to a group and retain AOE as a tactical ability rather than a free card to go wild with pretty explosions.
Because of the downsides i'm even more in favor of FFA AoE (so long as you can't be criminally tagged for groupmates only) even if unlikely. :D
Personally, I'm hoping for AoE affects everyone, including the caster, if in the radius of effect. It's how my gaming groups have played from AD&D through 3.5 and Pathfinder. It tends, in my experience, to improve tactical use rather than "blow the world up until we're all that's left" type play. Taking it to the MMO world, it would limit balance issues of mass AE grinding.
It would still be a valid tactic in certain cases to blow a party member up with the enemies. (or mesmerize, stun, root, snare, charm, etc...) However, it would require more thought than "Tank gather X # of mobs, dps all spam "3" until dead" on average. Just my vote. I know there are others who would prefer differently. Perhaps this will be one of the votes. Great topic.
This.
I've been lurking these forums for a very, very long time and was relieved to see that there are people who feel as strongly as I do about AOE's/friendly fire. Two arguments against friendly fire have gotten me particularly annoyed:
1) I don't want my allies to hurt me! That is unnecessary, inconvenient and a waste of my time.
2)But... Griefers! Bugs! Glitches!
My response to anyone who uses these (or any other) arguments to deny the tactical and immersive importance of friendly fire is simple:
Grow a pair. If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the fire and play a kid-oriented game like world of warcraft. I'm not going to play this game if it's another safety scissors world.
By the way... I'm slightly drunk and can't tell from the quotes, but did one of the lead developers say that friendly fire would be unlikely?
Not that I've seen. From the quote I posted from Lee Hammock and their description of the criminal tag i'm merely assuming full friendly fire will be unlikely. That said, they've made some strong stances on things I'd have expected them to tone down so i'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Again, as DeciusBrutus said - Their stance on it is still to be announced. Just want to make sure my wording doesn't misrepresent what someone else has said.
edit: they're =/= their. :P
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Goblin Squad Member
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Imagine a wizard stealthily following around a party of adventurers. Either sneaking or keeping himself invisible.
During a particularly difficult encounter (in a lawful area) the wizard observes from the fringes of the shadows while the adventurers struggle, and then it seems are about to triumph over their foes.
At that moment, the hidden wizard decides to "help" with a maximized fireball aimed right at the last monster standing. It's not his fault said monster is encircled by "friendly" players with low health. It's not his fault they didn't play strategically enough to avoid this. It's not his fault they just handed over all the loot from the monsters and themselves to him on a silver platter.
Next, imagine a whole party of wizards doing this >:D
If they put in friendly fire, I guarantee you I will find a way to make you regret it.
In the PvP areas, said wizard could do that regardless of friendly fire by the descriptions given. You'd just earn yourself a criminal tag. Now, if said wizard was in their group and did that to his/her party, that'd just ensure a lousy reputation for the wizard with less chance of being invited. I'm sure there will be people who DO go around ganking individuals or groups. Friendly fire on or off will have no bearing on that. However, it would stop a wizard from AOEing his own group if it was intermixed with the enemy group, hence where tactics come in. Is it worth bombing your own group with the enemy?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Imagine a wizard stealthily following around a party of adventurers. Either sneaking or keeping himself invisible.
During a particularly difficult encounter (in a lawful area) the wizard observes from the fringes of the shadows while the adventurers struggle, and then it seems are about to triumph over their foes.
At that moment, the hidden wizard decides to "help" with a maximized fireball aimed right at the last monster standing. It's not his fault said monster is encircled by "friendly" players with low health. It's not his fault they didn't play strategically enough to avoid this. It's not his fault they just handed over all the loot from the monsters and themselves to him on a silver platter.
Next, imagine a whole party of wizards doing this >:D
If they put in friendly fire, I guarantee you I will find a way to make you regret it.
This isn't friendly fire. The wizard is not part of the group so he should be free to fire at will, assuming he or she is willing to accept the consequence, flagging as a crimal, faction loss, alliance shift, possible ban if this is deemed "griefing", etc.
Friendly fire would be if the wizard in the party with the adventurers let loose the fireball and killed his entire party. The worry people have with friednly fire is that the mob is safely out of range of the party when the wizard casts, but due to lag, bad netcode or bugged pathing the fireball warps to a mob thats actually much closer then where it shows on the wizzys screen and kills everyone, at which point a spell becomes never used, or worse the entire class becomes useless and unwanted.
As far as monster loot, many games lock the loot to the party that engages the mob first or does the most damage, not the person who gets the last shot, a legacy of the killstealing days of everquest.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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The marshals are alerted and start heading out for the crazed wizard. It doesn't matter to them if the intent was malice or negligence- either way, the penalty is clear.
As for the player who is deliberately interfering with targeting by getting in the way, with the intent to force another player to hit him and so suffer penalties for doing so, there is a patch for that kind of behavior:
[...]First, there's no hard & fast definition of "griefing" that will satisfy everyone. For some, any limit to their activities is too restrictive, and to others, any non-consensual interaction is too permissive. Where you fall on that continuum is really a matter of personal choice, not definition.
[...]
That is not to say that unlimited poor behavior will be tolerated. There are three ways that behavior can be limited:
1: Game Mechanics - the game itself can establish limits on what can and cannot be done. It can also establish punishments for doing things that are considered poor behavior even if it does not outright restrict them.
2: Community Management - the humans who watch over the game can act to force certain kinds of behavior to cease when they are petitioned for help. Those same humans can escalate the matter to the point where a repeat or particularly egregious offender's accounts are closed.(*)
3: Social Engineering - the humans who play within the game can act to enforce certain norms of behavior by providing and withholding access to shared community resources in response to character behavior.
It is not our intention to create an "anything goes" world where players are subjected to endless scams, ganks, and immersion breaking behavior.
[...]
1: Provide a /forgive mechanic; people who acknowledge that they are victims of friendly fire don't cause harm to the people who reduced their HP.
Impose penalties to characters who interfere with area attacks; perhaps being in the center of a group of enemies in order to be hit by a fireball requires that you be in the center of a group of hostiles?Allow a limited phasing mechanic in lawful zones: people who aren't in a group that designates themselves as 'exclusive' can't help them or be harmed by them (but may still choose to attack them, in which case they become the aggressor). Abuse of this feature can be minimized by limiting areas where it is usable to areas in which no advantage can be gained by abusing it.
3 and 2 are more complicated to implement, but between them cover literally every situation.
[...]3. now heres a tricky one to explain but for the spells like a clerics channeling abilities. Even if you are not in a set group of people the healing effects every living creature in it's radius. or undead depending on the case. or spells that have a limited number of tragets. mass heal or harm or mayby dividing damage of magic missle. if they have a way to pick and choose targets it will get very hard to play a great spell caster.
thats all for now.
Tera had healing similar to this. Multi target heals where you clicked the ability then used mouseover clicks to select targets and hit the ability a second time to actually cast it. Worked well and definitely took some skill to use over the standard group heal methods in most MMOs. Same for some CC and damage spells as well. Assuming the "feat" selective channel is represented with a skill you train, your selections could be done in this method. Likewise, it'd solve where you wanted your magic missiles to hit. You have 5 to cast and only clicked 2 targets? Easy, first 3 at the first selected target, last 2 at the second selected target. Up to X targets selectable, X being the number of missiles available.
As for mass heals, you could either do those as closest targets centered on caster in some determined range of target, targeted ground placement, or (if there's a skill similar to selective channel for all heals) the target select mentioned previously, although I'd personally prefer one of the two former methods. If you added selective channel for all aoe heals, it'd make sense to add to all aoe spells in general, effectively making the whole thing more complicated than need be. IMO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@OP
TBD, watch the blog, this is something that will probably come up.
I don't want to see friendly fire, opens up more paths of abuse and accidents than constructive game-play, especially in an online environment when everyone does not see eachother in the same place. All you have to do is run into someone's aoe attack to flag them as a criminal and kill them. It is something used in every MMO, someone self flags and goes into NPC groups.
I think friendly fire as has been described by people in this tread, is something that should be reserved for a LAN multiplayer game.
I would like to see PvP handled like Earthrise, where you have to press down an additional key to damage other players. The only way to attack other players was to consciously do it, unless they are flagged as attackable without consequence(war, or they are a criminal).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't want to see friendly fire, opens up more paths of abuse and accidents than constructive game-play, especially in an online environment when everyone does not see eachother in the same place. All you have to do is run into someone's aoe attack to flag them as a criminal and kill them. It is something used in every MMO, someone self flags and goes into NPC groups.
This is pretty close to my own opinion at the moment. Personally, I actually do like the tactical and skill based gaming that it encourages but I do not believe it is the best fit for PFO where they have stated that alignment is a very much tangible force and based on actions.
Those actions shouldn't include an accidental fireball suddenly dropping you into the evil alignment I think. Whether that means removing it entirely or (hopefully) finding a nice medium ground where things like that are severely reduced, this is definitely something that needs to be thought on carefully.
I also like the idea of a safeguard or pressing of an additional key to make it an option too. Or at least options/feats/abilities that let you ignore allied targets/party members in the area of your spells.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So how does your friendly fire in a group count for large scale battles where you will have allies who are not strictly in your "party"?
And if the game mechanics now work in such a way that someone not in your group gets hit by the explosion of a fireball (but is not the main target, just collateral damage), then you better cast detect invisibility before you throw any area of effect spells or some griefer might get you tagged as a criminal, not to mention placing a recurring bounty on your head. And he's gonna make the bounty really cheap so he can keep renewing it, and his buddy who likes to hunt bounties in lawful areas where they can't fight back without the marshals getting involved.
The point of my example earlier was not to narrow your imaginations (as some seem to have done in response) but to broaden it to all the wonderful griefing opportunities the suggestion of friendly fire will open the game up to.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I also like the idea of a safeguard or pressing of an additional key to make it an option too. Or at least options/feats/abilities that let you ignore allied targets/party members in the area of your spells.
Should be built into the base character, I don't want to have to rely on people training these, and they will become mandatory skills for any respectable grouping, so why not just build them into the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... you better cast detect invisibility before you throw any area of effect spells or some griefer might get you tagged as a criminal...
I'm sure Blaeringr knows this, but just in case there are any new folks who get the wrong impression from this quote...
It will be impossible to get flagged as a Criminal unwittingly. You will have to do something similar to clicking "Yes" on a warning that says "Are you sure you want to do this and get flagged a Criminal?".
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Goblin Squad Member
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And if the game mechanics now work in such a way that someone not in your group gets hit by the explosion of a fireball (but is not the main target, just collateral damage), then you better cast detect invisibility before you throw any area of effect spells or some griefer might get you tagged as a criminal, not to mention placing a recurring bounty on your head.
Great thread, everyone. We'd been thinking about this pretty seriously, and I'm taking notes :) . The quoted point in particular is well worth considering.
As some context, we're currently thinking of using a fairly standard Friendly/Neutral/Hostile breakdown for other PCs:
- Friendly (Party Member/Company Member/Settlement Member/Settlement Ally/etc.): You can buff and heal this target. It is very hard for you to accidentally attack this character.
- Hostile (Target you've attacked/Member of Settlement you're at war with/etc.): You cannot buff or heal this target. He or she will be a priority target very similar to hostile NPCs/monsters.
- Neutral (Everyone else): You can buff/heal this target, but can also attack without too much difficulty. If the target attacks you or you attack the target, he or she appears as Hostile and you can no longer help.
And then there are some rough priorities for if a player falls into multiple criteria (usually defaulting to Hostile taking precedence even if the player would otherwise count as Friendly).
Some things to consider specifically about AoEs:
- Latency is a concern with any MMO and AoEs. Even in GW2, where they've put a ton of tech into trying to make the combat realtime, I'll regularly get tagged by AoEs where I saw my character run out of the area but the server obviously doesn't think I quite made it.
- Players in a chaotic situation are never going to have the precision targeting possible in tabletop. An immense amount of time has been used by players in my games to agonize over the grid placement of a Fireball to catch the maximum number of enemies without hitting any party members. When everyone's running around, AoEs will have to become much more situational if they're going to hit allies.
- We're currently thinking that most AoEs, particularly spells, will have longish activation/animation times. This allows them to have a better risk (you're provoking opportunity attacks longer and can possibly be interrupted) to reward (decent damage against a bunch of targets) tradeoff. And it means that it's going to be even harder for the caster to precisely place an AoE (as combat conditions will likely have changed by the time it goes off).
So a couple of questions for the thread:
- With all that in mind, does it change your preference for friendly fire vs. AoEs ignoring Friendlies?
- If we made damaging AoEs mostly set up so they had to center on an enemy (rather than ground targeted), and any collateral hits on other targets didn't flag you as an attacker/criminal (but would let them also attack you without getting said flag), would that be better as far as gaming the system vs. the scenario Blaeringr described?
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Goblin Squad Member
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If we made damaging AoEs mostly set up so they had to center on an enemy (rather than ground targeted), and any collateral hits on other targets didn't flag you as an attacker/criminal (but would let them also attack you without getting said flag), would that be better as far as gaming the system vs. the scenario Blaeringr described?
I like this solution. It's still slightly exploitable in that players can deliberately get hit by your AoE and then kill you without penalty, but I think that's reasonable.
Personally, I think designing the game around AoEs damaging friendly targets will make for a much more interesting game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Friendly fire is a major nerf to wizards and that's a good thing. AoE's are OP without it.Depends what wizards you're talking about. The wizard Stephen is describing in the following quote will be majorly nerfed if he's accidentally hitting others. But if you reverse roles and he's the one accidentally being hit, and if that's exactly what he wants and he even came prepared with fire resistance so he didn't really take much damage in the first place, but just enough that he can wail of banshee on your party's wizard and catch you with some collateral damage - that's not a nerf, that's opportunity.
If we made damaging AoEs mostly set up so they had to center on an enemy (rather than ground targeted), and any collateral hits on other targets didn't flag you as an attacker/criminal (but would let them also attack you without getting said flag), would that be better as far as gaming the system vs. the scenario Blaeringr described?
Now let's discuss another idea Stephen just gave me: I see a group harvesting in a lawful area. I see some goblins over that way, but woe is me, they're not attacking the harvesters.
But no worries, I can still see a good griefing opportunity: I simply attack one of the goblins in the group and immediately make a run for the group of harvesters. Of course the goblins won't attack the harvesters, as explained in the blogs, but that's ok. I find the most concentrated group of harvesters and run right into the middle of them. When the goblins arrive, me and my buddies (who now all jump out of hiding) all launch our most powerful AoE attacks on the goblins...in the middle of the harvesters.
See? Not nerf but opportunity!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Someone (was it Decius?) posted a link earlier to a discussion of Counterplay, where a game feature is evaluated according to the choices it gives the opponent, rather than just the choices it gives the player that uses the feature. I think that Friendly Fire AoEs give opponents interesting choices.
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Goblin Squad Member
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When the goblins arrive, me and my buddies (who now all jump out of hiding) all launch our most powerful AoE attacks on the goblins...in the middle of the harvesters.
If you ever catch my friends and me just sitting around not actually doing anything while you drag in a goblin or twenty, then you deserve the kill.
The flipside of your scenario is that as soon as your group tags anyone in our group, well, then it's on!
[Edit] And that's all assuming we don't notice your presence first, and either do exactly the same, or simply Challenge you to either drive you away or throw down immediately.
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Goblin Squad Member
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[Edit] And that's all assuming we don't notice your presence first, and either do exactly the same, or simply Challenge you to either drive you away or throw down immediately.
In a lawful area? Other than "doing exactly the same", the rest of those actions would result in someone getting a criminal flag. You can't just go around lawful areas attacking people because you don't like the way they're looking at you.
As far as standing around doing nothing, I suppose that means you and I envision resource gathering being handled in very different ways.
And do you really expect to have large guard expeditions guarding your harvesters in lawful areas? I doubt it. There will be a sense of security for short trips around lawful areas. And if they implement friendly fire, that will be a false sense of security.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Other than "doing exactly the same", the rest of those actions would result in someone getting a criminal flag.
Not necessarily.
From Goblinworks Blog: I Can See for Miles:
2) Gang Fight: Need a better name, but effectively you as a group challenge them as a group to a fight without the various punishment mechanics kicking in. This is effectively a big duel that they have to accept for it to work, but if it's that or be murdered one by one by you in sneak attacks, they may go for it.
Note: we're also looking at a possible option where you can turn off some fashion of the punishment mechanics against those who kill you as sort of a "come get me and you won't get punished" way to signal you want to fight. Or maybe some manner of declaration of an area being contest territory, in which some aspects of the system are not applied. But that's all very up in the air.
The highlighted portion is basically the Challenge mechanic I've been pushing for some time now. I hope they're able to make it work. In essence, we would claim the territory around our Harvest Camp. If we detected you and Challenged you, you'd have a limited time to leave the area. If you chose not to, we'd be able to attack you without gaining the Criminal flag.
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Goblin Squad Member
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But why would they accept a challenge...?
The highlighted portion is separate from the Gang Fight Challenge that requires the other side to accept a challenge. I included the larger quote to provide better context.
If we claim the territory, it doesn't matter whether or not you Accept the Challenge. It only matters whether you vacate the territory.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Interesting. Sounds a lot like inviting bandits into your lawful territory and telling them to take what they want so long as they're strong enough. If there's no challenge, then they're bound by the consequences of breaking the law. But if you lay out a hypothetical challenge (and granted, we're lacking details on how that will work), then that requires you to police them.
But that's all a bit of a tangent. When we're talking about griefing, we're talking about something that tends to target newer players more than established vets. So if that's what we're talking about then we're talking about the NPC lawful areas, just outside of the innermost area where harming other players will be mechanically impossible. The outer ring where marshals are supposed to respond to criminal acts. We're talking about a very tempting loophole through that protection.
I'm all for this friendly fire silliness. More angry players. More revenge. More contracts for me :D
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Stephen
Thanks for the reply. Glad to see Goblinworks is giving this careful thought and seems to be coming up with exactly the sort of system I was hoping for.
Admit I would prefer the ability to very carefully place whatever spell I like, but it definitely seems like it would be much easier to be able to lock it onto a hostile target (you may want to allow AoEs to be a bit larger due to the inflexibility though).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sounds a lot like inviting bandits into your lawful territory and telling them to take what they want so long as they're strong enough.
Actually, it would be laying temporary claim to wilderness areas, I would expect...
But that's all a bit of a tangent. When we're talking about griefing, we're talking about something that tends to target newer players more than established vets. So if that's what we're talking about then we're talking about the NPC lawful areas, just outside of the innermost area where harming other players will be mechanically impossible. The outer ring where marshals are supposed to respond to criminal acts. We're talking about a very tempting loophole through that protection.
You're absolutely right. That makes it more of an interesting problem.
I think it really boils down to what the caster was aware of when he began casting.
1. If I target a Goblin with an AOE, and there is already a non-invis, non-stealthed Blaeringr inside the radius when I start my spell, then I get the Criminal flag.
2. If I target a Goblin with an AOE, and Blaeringr is invisible or stealthed so that I can't detect them, then I don't get the Criminal flag. Blaeringr takes the damage, but is not able to retaliate against me.
I don't know if it's practical to have the system analyze that at the time the spell is cast. For edge cases where Blaeringr is moving as I cast the spell, or where he drops his stealth or invisibility right before I cast, I would err on the side of the spell caster.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't know if it's practical to have the system analyze that at the time the spell is cast. For edge cases where Blaeringr is moving as I cast the spell, or where he drops his stealth or invisibility right before I cast, I would err on the side of the spell caster.
certainly is quite a pickle, I'm on the fence when it comes to that, especially thinking on latency etc... Erring on the side of the caster is still a challenge in determining what the err means. Casters awareness is very subjective and undeterminable. When the server sends and when the client recieves could be seconds off, and of course we can't trust the client to tell the truth, predicting the timing of the attack etc... Say the caster is expecting a blaeringer in nul-sec to attack him. He is currently nuetral, but the caster saw him go invis/stealth to approach, and the caster wishes to err on the side of killing an innocent rather than be killed by this untrusted source. In this case, the caster would want him to be defaulted as kill if he winds up in the AOE.
Of course that could be settled by a simple modifyer key to default to kill nuetrals rather than to ignore them.
The key moral is, erring on subjective to caster, is subjective, caster needs to be able to specify which way to err, hitting or not hitting the nuetral, because it could be fatal to him either way.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sounds a lot like inviting bandits into your lawful territory and telling them to take what they want so long as they're strong enough.Actually, it would be laying temporary claim to wilderness areas, I would expect...
I was pretty clear in laying out the griefing scenario above to say that said situation takes place in lawful territory. If that were not the case then there would be no sense at all in talking about it in terms of friendly fire. If we're in the wilderness, I don't need loopholes to attack someone I want to attack; I'll just attack them. Right? So far as they've told us, there is no criminal tag for acts committed outside lawful areas (except maybe assassination, but there will be ways designed around that if you're careful, or something like that).
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Goblin Squad Member
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The key moral is, erring on subjective to caster, is subjective, caster needs to be able to specify which way to err, hitting or not hitting the nuetral, because it could be fatal to him either way.
Well, I figured if the caster wanted Blaeringr dead, he'd target him directly. If the caster is targeting something other than Blaeringr, then it's a question of how long Blaeringr has been in the AOE radius. I would say if Blaeringr moved into that radius within the last couple of seconds, the system should assume the caster thought Blaeringr was outside the radius.
It does make me think that Blaeringr should also have an option to say "Hey, I'm walkin' here!" or something, that targets the caster, that forces the caster to be "aware" of Blaeringr. But that starts to get a little complex...
If we're in the wilderness, I don't need loopholes to attack someone I want to attack; I'll just attack them. Right?
I think several people have this impression, but I don't think it's accurate.
The scenario described by Mbando, and Lee Hammock's response in this post seem to be clearly talking about encounters in the wilderness.
My understanding is that, if you kill Nihimon - even out in the wilderness where no one can see - you will be flagged a Criminal and will have your alignment shift.
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Goblin Squad Member
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1. If I target a Goblin with an AOE, and there is already a non-invis, non-stealthed Blaeringr inside the radius when I start my spell, then I get the Criminal flag.Griefing loophole #1: corners. Blaeringr isn't invisible, but is not in your line of sight.
2. If I target a Goblin with an AOE, and Blaeringr is invisible or stealthed so that I can't detect them, then I don't get the Criminal flag. Blaeringr takes the damage, but is not able to retaliate against me.
Griefing loophole #2: a friend of mine, who is not in my party and thus as far as the servers can read is not affiliated with me, casts invisibility on you. Griefer then finds an excuse to come around the corner and detonate an AoE on a target right next to you.
Remember when I said this?
If they put in friendly fire, I guarantee you I will find a way to make you regret it.
I wasn't joking. Try to counter it all you want, but answer me this honestly: who spends more time thinking about how to bend rules and cause a little strife: you, or I?
Now, I'm going to stop poking holes in your adorable little ideas, but rest assured I could go on for ever. And keep that in mind with regards to the topic of this thread.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My understanding is that, if you kill Nihimon - even out in the wilderness where no one can see - you will be flagged a Criminal and will have your alignment shift.
No.
One of the first blogs was quite clear about that. This came up in the thread discussing assassination where it was clarified that assassinating someone might be an exception.
The post you refer to is a discussion of a) avoiding alignment shifts, and b) politics: how to establish claims on territory and how to challenge those claims without becoming a criminal in claimed territory. While it is in the wilderness, they're talking about establishing lawful borders.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Griefing loophole #1: corners. Blaeringr isn't invisible, but is not in your line of sight.
Pretend there was an "etc" in there... The point is to determine whether or not the caster should have been "aware" of Blaeringr.
If they put in friendly fire, I guarantee you I will find a way to make you regret it.
And I very much appreciate that you're willing to communicate the loopholes you see, and help us develop a better system.
Fundamentally, I think the problem revolves around intent, but we can't measure intent directly, so we try to determine probable intent based on what the caster was - or should have been - aware of when he began casting.
1. If I'm not targeting you, then I probably don't intend to attack you.
2. If I could see you standing in that spot since a second or two before I begin casting, then I probably did intend to attack you.
Any other cases should probably default as "did not intend", do their damage without flagging, but leave no room for consequence-less retaliation.
There will be cases where someone tries to skirt the edges, just like there are cases in PvE Theme Parks where someone waits until you're running up to attack a mob before they shoot it or cast an instant dot on it, so that they tag it but you have to fight it. But in PFO, you'll be able to come over and kill me if you think I'm doing that to you.
This is one of the reasons I think there really, really has to be a Challenge mechanic that doesn't need to be accepted, but that opens up consequence-less fighting if the chalengee doesn't leave the area. Naturally, as soon as I challenge you, you should be able to immediately start attacking me without consequences. There doesn't need to be a 3-second timer after you accept....
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Goblin Squad Member
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No.
Maybe :) I'm not willing to plant a flag on it, but I'm actually fairly well convinced that randomly killing someone in the wilderness will flag you as a criminal.
And I'm well aware that you spend more time thinking about this than I do. I am also convinced that the specific mechanics don't really matter all that much. You'll spend just as much time trying to figure out how to bend the rules if there aren't Friendly Fire AOEs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Where would such a challenge mechanic apply? In lawful areas? Then don't go afk or minimize the game window. You'll come back dead and looted. If not in lawful areas, then you can't stop me from kiting a goblin through you.
And besides, how fair is that? Putting in a game mechanic that lets you deliver lethal ultimatums to players retreating from a PvE fight? How's the game going to know whether he's dragging those goblins towards you for malice or for help?
I'm still for friendly fire being on. I have not seen a mechanical reason brought up to prevent it being an option. There are certainly solid points both for and against, but none that can not be overcome.
I took it as you only get the criminal flag by aiding in the death of a non-flagged (non criminal) character. No death, no criminal tag. After re-reading it, that is still my understanding. Just hitting someone once to be flagged opens up a whole new can of worms in griefing that matters little if friendly fire is on or off.
A simple "must hit target 2 or more times in a 5 sec window" (adjust to fit, no clue on cast time details/attack speeds. The exact timer is irrelevant, the concept is what matters) to flag for the guards in a "protected" area would curb issues with guards being called. If the AOE cast times are significant (as I took to be implied), then you're just not paying attention to hit someone more than once. Friend, Hostile, or neutral. Channeled AoEs would be the only possible exception to this that I can see. Details on whether these will exist, and in what fashion, would need be known to give any semi-accurate insight.
As to the low/no NPC protection areas, the "Xhits/Ytime period" could prevent hostile flagging as described above. First hit brings "griefer-wannabe" out of stealth/invis, warning pops up that you hit an unflagged player, you cancel second AoE with "longish activation/animation times."
People will grief with, or without, friendly fire. If my Settlement group is adventuring in an area, there is nothing to stop a group of wizards from coming in and AoEing the entire area we are currently clearing (assume same alignments, LG for this example) and we'd have no recourse to exact revenge although they consistently move ahead of us, even when we move to a new area. If FF were on, they'd either stop to prevent us from tagging them hostile by running into the AoE, or take the hit to alignment by triggering the hostilities and have it out with us. Assume I'm in the group of wizards now, peacefully AoEing with a group of fellow wizards and a group tries to run into our AoE repeatedly to get us flagged. We can swap to single targets until they realize we won;t play their game or we can flag ourselves and wipe them out taking a hit if they're annoying enough.
All that said, latency is an issue. If AoEs will have a longish cast time, ground target or targeted ae, that really solves the issue though. Assuming longish refers to 2-3 seconds.
On the subject of AoE targeted types; I'm hopeing for PBAOE, Targeted AOE and Ground Targeted AoE depending on the spell used. They're all types used in PF and would love to see them in PFO
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Goblin Squad Member
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And I'm well aware that you spend more time thinking about this than I do. I am also convinced that the specific mechanics don't really matter all that much. You'll spend just as much time trying to figure out how to bend the rules if there aren't Friendly Fire AOEs.
Sir! You slander my character. I have nothing but the best interests of a law loving community in mind. I figure out how to bend the rules so that I can anticipate the tactics criminal scum. All the better I'll be at clamping down on such behavior with an blood soaked iron fist!
I am against a challenge mechanic that causes your attacker to not be flagged without requiring consent. Going AFK in a dangerous area SHOULD get you killed, but not freely or without consequences to both of you. The attacker would still need to get flagged/alignment hit if you did not give consent, but they'd still get the looting benefits of killing you as well. Who goes AFK in unsafe areas without expecting possible repercussions?
EDIT: =D I realize I tend to sound blunt to the point of rudeness at times. That is not my intent.
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Goblin Squad Member
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words
So many loopholes in every point you made. How do you people not see it?! It's like taking candy from a 40 year old baby!
-the guy you hit in that AoE: you really think it's up to you whether that hit killed him? Of course not: he had his friend beat him to within an inch of life before he started this scheme to guarantee it works.-must hit target 2 or more...: you really don't see this one?! They don't need you to hit them anymore. Just a group of them, not officially grouped mind you, so the server can't tell the difference, all take turns hitting you with AoEs. None of them hit you twice, but you still die. This will just encourage them to target lonely newbs.
-warning pops up: again, you're assuming they haven't prepared and that your first hit didn't kill him. He's got nothing on him to loot, and now can run an endless series of bounties on you and his buddies can now hunt you down without consequence wherever you go.
Gah! I said I wasn't going to keep poking holes, but your silly little bubbles are so tempting. Pop!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am against a challenge mechanic that causes your attacker to not be flagged without requiring consent. Going AFK in a dangerous area SHOULD get you killed, but not freely or without consequences to both of you. The attacker would still need to get flagged/alignment hit if you did not give consent, but they'd still get the looting benefits of killing you as well. Who goes AFK in unsafe areas without expecting possible repercussions?
EDIT: =D I realize I tend to sound blunt to the point of rudeness at times. That is not my intent.
We're talking about using AoE to grief in lawful areas, so more or less safe areas. The game won't suddenly shift the setting to make it more convenient for the target of the griefing, so your loophole ridden arguments shouldn't either.