PvP and gear

[Thar]

I just read a post concerning the ability of other players to loot items off of another players corpse.
I totally disagree with this course, this is near to the system use in uo. this was the main reason many people left uo. i fear this will cause the same issue with pathfinder. personally i will not play a game where other players can loot stuff from me. this is due to a very bad experiance with other games that used this type of system.
JIM

[Nihimon]

@Thar, I think this is a very common concern that a lot of people have had when they first start reading up on PFO. However, Ryan and the folks at Goblinworks are very committed to ensuring that the kind of "griefing" and "ganking" that takes place in other PvP games is virtually non-existent in PFO.

I encourage you to read up on some of the other threads about PvP, and especially look for the posts where people who were initially very wary gradually begin to come around to realizing that PFO is going to be different.

[Morgen]

There have been a lot of people echoing that same sentiment Thar. It's a huge leap of faith to think

The most recent blog post has some interesting ideas for a basic system that mitigates things a little bit. Especially if you can tie your threads to a container.

If that works somehow, and there aren't traps or exploits that let you trick regular people to accidentally kill another player, have a curse leveled and then hiding opponents rush in to kill and steal with reduced thread potency.

[Thar]

when some players have the opportunaty to steal gear from other players it allows some of them to exploit it. as i said if this stays in i will not play the game. i will not start something only to have a bunch of peolpe steal what i have worked for. to put it bluntly those that enjoy causing grief in this way will find a way to abuse the system. has happened to many times. there is no way they can assure the system will be infallable.

[Marthian]

It's not stealing in the sense that you can sneak up to them and steal. It's that you are going to have to kill them first, and if you are attacking them in a good settlement, unless you have massively rearranged it, and even possibly then, you are pretty much screwed.

And at worst, suppose you do die to some gankaholic in a settlement. They will be marked as murderers (actually WHEN they start attacking you) and it's free game for others to come and kill them off without repercussion, and in fact, will most likely be rewarded for it. If that's not enough, their alignment will shift towards Chaotic/Evil, which can further lead to not being wanted in a settlement as well as NPC guards may eventually have you as Kill On Sight. This will force them to have to go to a Chaotic Evil settlement and have worse services, not to mention I'm sure there will be people there that are entirely ok ganking you as well. You may also be locked out of training or at a reduced rate.

Overall, the benefits are quick: you may have gotten someone's items and made a little profit off it (you most likely would have to spend resources to do this in the first place.) However, you are most likely going to have negative long term effects on you.

[Void Ronin]

It is meant to encourage grouping. Yes there will be those that will find a way to exploit the system, however, it has been stated several times that those who expressly exploit the system will be dealt with out of game ie banning. If you travel alone (solo) outside an NPC community or a well established good/ lawful community with goods you should expect to lose them or at a minimum defend them. There is an elaborate contract system in place that can be used to hire player guards as well as an equally elaborate bounty that can act a deterrent. In addition, gear will have threads that can be attached to prevent looting (higher level gear requires more threads leaving other gear unprotected). Gear will also be designed to be replaced often so that the loss of it is not a major setback, simply a minor setback.

Work with a group or charter company, plan ahead, and have a back-up plan at all times. IF this still doesnt work for you than maybe this is not your kind of game.

[Arlock Blackwind]

not to mention I believe you cannot loot certin items and gold. (unlike uo) there is also the benifit of summiting player reviews on the person who killed you! so if you die once you do not need to worry about dying again so soon. the best part I am pretty sure you can store items at your home/settlemt/guild so no one can ever touch it.

[Thar]

Well i still will not play a game that discourages soloing in this manner. It is not worth my time to sit around and try and find a group with others that are on at the same time as i am. This is a horrible idea shrug , they keep it in i dont play the game and they lose any additional support!!

[Valandur]

Thar, read up on threading. It and the bounty, reputation system will prevent you from having your best stuff taken. I too played Drakkar and UO where your stuff fell on the ground, to be grabbed by anyone when you died. That won't happen in PFO.

If your still unhappy with it, then obviously PFO isn't the game for you. I've heard very few complaints about this system, albeit I've not been around that long and am still reading through past forum posts.

[Summersnow]

Keep in mind gear is intended to be disposable and interchangable and the best stuff is supposed to be player made, not dropped off a raid/dungeon boss 1.2% of the time like many other games.

There is a system (threads) intended to allow you to make your best items unlootable and I believe you resurect at your bind point with them.

Also, the emphasis in PFO looks to be skills and badges you get as a character, not the gear you are carrying on that character.

As such don't give up on the game because you might lose some items. Its going to happen but the intent seems to be that the lose won't really affect you.

While mugging people will be a potential career choice, but just like in the real world there are dangers and penalties to heavily discourage that sort of behavior, i.e. death curses and bountys and as such killing someone for loot will NOT be griefing.

Killing them repeatedly on the other hand most likely WILL be considered griefing.

[Elth]

Please take Nihimons advice and do some more research. The pain of Looting is only relative to the way gear is handled and distributed. Without item loss there is an imbalance in the crafting game, if crafters have no reason to craft, gatherers and adventurers have little reason to gather, if gatherers and adventurers don't need to gather resources then Bandits and highwayman have nothing to rob, if bandits don't exist then guards and bounty hunters have nothing to do. If crafters don't craft, then kingdoms cannot go to war.. there will be no content without the looting.

[Draelin]

Whats the point of the game if it looks like you are working. I'm here to play not work. And if it is the players who are doing all the work to have fun it better be a free game cause I'm not going to pay money so I can be someone else entertainment. Hell if its like that they should be paying me. That's one of the things I hate about "player" driven games. What am I going to be paying for? Graphics? From what the demo looked it was horrible. Gameplay? It looks to be like an eve clone and (im not even talking about the pvp) which when I played was utterly boring. I was more entertained at the job I was working at and I was getting payed.

[Summersnow]

Draelin wrote:

Whats the point of the game if it looks like you are working. I'm here to play not work. And if it is the players who are doing all the work to have fun it better be a free game cause I'm not going to pay money so I can be someone else entertainment. Hell if its like that they should be paying me. That's one of the things I hate about "player" driven games. What am I going to be paying for? Graphics? From what the demo looked it was horrible. Gameplay? It looks to be like an eve clone and (im not even talking about the pvp) which when I played was utterly boring. I was more entertained at the job I was working at and I was getting payed.

While I can't argue with your assessment of Eve, I believe the leveling system and general layout hexes vs. star systems, fast travel vs. warping, etc. is the part thats cloned from Eve, not the boring "its not a game, its a 2nd job" part of eve.

[Elth]

What some people consider fun, I consider working and I'm sure that this view covers many points of view. I consider running the same PvE dungeon for weeks on end to get best in slot gear to be work, especially when I know that gear will need to be replaced with every new content patch.

What I consider fun is being part of an economy.

I can contribute as a hunter & gatherer taking my
donkey and cart into the wilds and returning (hopefully) with some resources to sell to the refiners or crafters that use them. I rely on adventurers or soldiers for protection.

I can play a refiner, who smelts a variety of ores into precious and workable metals, prepares wood for the woodcrafters, tans the leather for the leather workers, butchers the meat for the cooks. I rely on hunters and gatherers for my trade.

I can contribute as a simple crafter, buying my materials from those that dare the wilderness, and supplying townsfolk with farming tools, armies with weapons and armour or building furniture or houses. I rely on farmers, harvestors to gather resources so that I can craft.

I can contribute as a bounty hunter, taking contracts to hunt and kill (or capture) lawbreakers or rebels. I rely on crafters to craft and repair my
kit.

I can contribute as an adventurer, finding dungeons and tombs, slaying (or capturing) the monsters that inhabit them, taking whatever treasure I can carry and selling what I don't need to the people that craft wonderous items. Or I could hire myself out to protect caravans or gatherers. I rely on crafters for my kit, gatherers for work between adventures and wonderous crafters or collectors for work.

I could be a soldier, in service to a settlement or kingdom, whether it is to fight in wars, keeping bandits in check or chasing off rowdy adventurers. I rely on crafters for my kit and
my kingdom for work.

I can be a bandit or bushranger, waylaying travelers and relieving them of their worldy possessions. I rely on a steady stream of adventurers, traveling merchants and gatherers in order to ply my trade and replenish or replace my rusted weapons and armour.

There are so many possibilities that surely someone is bound to have fun.

[Blaeringr]

My understanding from what has been said is that this game won't be like the themepark MMOs where you grind for months and months to get the best gear:
You'll get decent gear fairly quickly, and the grinding will be done by groups to make sure you are always supplied with better gear.

If you want to solo, get on good terms with a solid group. You scratch their backs once in a while, and they'll make sure you have what you need.

[Darsch]

Thar wrote:

Well i still will not play a game that discourages soloing in this manner. It is not worth my time to sit around and try and find a group with others that are on at the same time as i am. This is a horrible idea shrug , they keep it in i dont play the game and they lose any additional support!!

Soloing is what you seem most interested in, well there is still world of Warcraft and single player games like dark souls and mass effect for you.

MMORPG=massively multiplayer online role playing game. Games of this type back when they started to come out were notorious for being impossible to solo in, then we got WoW. Wow made solo possible by everything, and you never had to group for anything other then gear runs and raids. While i love raids, and i love to solo, i also miss sandbox games like UO and SWG where the players crafted everything, created cities, a dynamic economy, and was just as much content for other players as the npc's and mobs were. I remember the first time i met a permared in UO and the subsequent deaths i suffered, i also remember watching him run in terror when a rather large order guild showed up to save me and get my stuff back. It was always an exciting time, yes i hated being killed and losing all of my stuff, but i also loved never knowing what was going to happen next.
I am more then happy to see PFO going this direction. and btw ranger and druid are supposed to be great solo builds, you could always check them out.
If this does not sound like your cup of tea, then fine, i can respect that.

[Blaeringr]

I'd wait to see in more detail what things look like before passing judgement on how soloable things really are.

DDO made a big deal of how hard their game was to solo, but people figured it out.

Then they made a big deal about how some classes were easier to solo with than others. So players went out and proved the opposite was true: the supposed "squishy" classes turned out to be the best soloers.

So they tried to make the quests more difficult and complicated, thinking that would discourage soloing and short-manning, but it had the opposite effect as it was more complicated trying to coordinate the actions of a group of wildcards than one or two trusted friends.

With the exception of the more difficult raids, veteran DDO players prefer short manning or even soloing to full groups, despite the game being intended for full groups.

[AvenaOats]

Thar wrote:

I just read a post concerning the ability of other players to loot items off of another players corpse.

I totally disagree with this course, this is near to the system use in uo.
JIM

But the question is: "How near?" & "Why?". Have you read the latest blog on this topic? What did you make of it: Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves

So it breaks down into:

1. Threading - you can determine what is at risk.
2. Trash Gear - you can determine how insignificant or significant losing some gear will be.

On the subject of solo in PvE: Update #23: Lee and Stephen discuss solo PvE play in Pathfinder Online is a broad discussion on this. I think there will likely be gradations of safety-danger in where you decide to roam: So a safe place you can gauge the risk to be low and so on to solo and PvE and scale up with more groups and more preparation for tougher challenges.

From where I am sounds full of interesting decisions and the risk leads to consequences of those decisions that makes it imo more meaningful (roguelike genre of games works well in this way). The "Why?" is that actually GW does hope the above is therefore more fun to more people than either PvE-only mmorpgs and FFA-full-loot PvP mmorpgs. And it fits in the economy of the game (if items are trashed). The point is with groups is players can aid in preventing that happening IF it does happen.

The final point is with Threading, the economic motivation to loot should not be very high, if most players thread their gear in the most logical way. But from their pov they manage to get something if they are able to win a combat encounter (eg depending on alignment and context and players).

[Ross Byers]

I removed a post. Don't do that.

[Being]

It is very true that an environment harsh to soloists makes it very hard for the person who has only minutes at a time to play or works odd hours, and so has few people to group with.

Sometimes you just want to get in and play without bothering with teamspeak or waiting for Pockets O'Neel to get back from his incessant smoke breaks.

There would be benefit were there significant PvE areas designed just for for soloists. Enough? Who among us but the devs can say.

[Uthreth Baelcoressitas]

I imagine that soloing will be much safer and more possible closer to settlements. As someone who will most likely solo 1/2 or more of the time, I'm ok with that. I'll probably venture out into more dangerous places from time to time, but I'm ok that that entails more risk and more possibility of losing stuff in my inventory. If I want to just log on for 20-30 minutes and putz around harvesting random nodes I can do that close to the settlement where the fear of guards and other dangers would hopefully prevent most gankers from hanging around. I started my MMO gaming career with games like EQ and a multitude of MUDs where dying was even more harsh than outlined so far for PFO. It adds more to the game than it takes away, in my opinion.

[Zidash]

Losing gear promotes a feeling of power coming with risk, and only wearing what you can afford to lose. Games are too hand-holdy these days. I'd be happy even with complete inventory loss (but perhaps not full inventory gain for the looter) but the threading should make it more acceptable to most.

Question though - will gold be carried? Can I kill someone and loot his gold (or a percentage of, perhaps?)

[randomwalker]

Being wrote:

There would be benefit were there significant PvE areas designed just for for soloists.

except maybe the starter towns, areas won't be designated by level but go through development cycles.

Areas far from civilization and untouched by adventurers will likely become the most dangerous PVE zones, but maybe the devs mix in some monsters that thrive on conflict and prey on civilization. The development cycles will not stop because settlements are built, but the nature of the threat changes.

for example, goblins or low-level thieves may start skulking around the settlement. Too low threat to bother for groups, but if not taken care of it will evolve to something more bothersome.

As far as I can tell, there will be PVE work to do everywhere. Finding the right place for your power level and skills will not be automatic though.

[Jameow]

Honestly I don't think the game will be that PVP heavy for those who don't want it. Will you get killed SOMETIMES? yes, but not on a regular bases, because generally there will be no reason to. The stuff you have on you probably won't be woth the possible bounties and curses, so generally people won't attack you unless they think they have a good reason. And those who DO attack you because they want to will be weaker.

[Papaver]

It is probably important to say that the monetary loss of loosing your equipment after dying relative to your overall wealth compares to the monetary loss of repairing your gear relative to your overall wealth in WoW.

So if you have 9000 gold for example it's not like you loose gear worth 5000 gold, it's more like you loose gear worth 5-10 gold go to the market get the same gear for 5-10 gold and continue your adventures.

[Nihimon]

@Papaver, unless you're foolish enough to spend most of your money on gear and then go out and get killed. Thus, the constant reminder to "only wear what you can afford to lose...". Unless, of course, you can Thread it :)