Goblin Squad Member
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Who says its a problem if they corner the market?
And we are aware of the danger of a powerful settlement "cornering the market" on a part of the economy critical for the health of the other settlements. We will be watchful for such outcomes, and will be prepared to take action to resolve them for the good of the game if necessary.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, I don't know what 'crafting personally' means. Do some bozos wanna watch a crafting montage complete with 80's soundtrack?
Just an aside here.
If you disagree with my opinion, by all means say so. But please do so without the implication that I am somehow a 'bozo' for not sharing your view. This place is remarkably well-behaved and non-judgemental for a gaming forum, calling people names is not really constructive or in character for these threads.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, I don't know what 'crafting personally' means. Do some bozos wanna watch a crafting montage complete with 80's soundtrack?Just an aside here.
If you disagree with my opinion, by all means say so. But please do so without the implication that I am somehow a 'bozo' for not sharing your view. This place is remarkably well-behaved and non-judgemental for a gaming forum, calling people names is not really constructive or in character for these threads.
Well said. I just think Sepherum could have lost the "bozos" (attack the argument and not the person) and said that a crafting montage is possibly not a great game-system or asked, "what makes "crafting personally" make the processing stage more fun? Any takers?!"
Agree, probably unintentional and these forums are marvelously good humored.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As a long term EVE player with a focus on industry can I request that goblin works carefully consider the design of the user interface for crafting. EVE's one is horrible. Each job launched requires a series of selections from a series of drop down lists and windows. With the right skills and experience you can run 10 jobs. Launching each requires the same series of selections even if the job is identical. For a short run such as T2 drone your job is complete after 2 hours and you have to start all over. Good isk but not fun.
Suggest as a minimum a way to batch launch multiple identical jobs. Also way to save favored selections as a recipe would be good. Eg if I make cure light potions most of the time with a standard set of parameters let me select that with a single click.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Good blog, very intriguing. I have no experience with Eve so this will be completely new for me.
I would be interested in more information on the various crafting careers now.
For instance some games have split up weapon and armor making. Will Pathfinder?
I assume that there would be different processing for ores vs. organics and such...
I also agree that you should look into unique avatars. When Papaver first posted I had to do a triple take to make sure his post wasn't official. Not his fault, but my heart leapt into my throat for a second :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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what about cornering the market within the rules of the game?
If a settlement or kingdom corners the market within the rules, you use the rules to break their monopoly.
1. Hire bandits to hinder their supply lines or raid their harvesting camps.
2. Try to set up your own harvesting camps within their territory. Bring plenty of security, because they will try to drive you out.
3. Encourage monster escalations within that settlement's areas, forcing them to focus more on defense than economy.
4. Assassinate their captains of industry, merchant barons or political leaders.
5. Go to war!
You probably notice, all 5 of my suggestions are combat or PVP related. That is because there is no way to peacefully negotiate a monopoly away from another settlement. Why would they?
You have to demonstrate that you have the capacity for violence, then the capability to execute it. Otherwise, they will just laugh at you and send you on your way. Or, they will crush you and send you to your respawn point.
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Goblin Squad Member
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what about cornering the market within the rules of the game?If a settlement or kingdom corners the market within the rules, you use the rules to break their monopoly.
1. Hire bandits to hinder their supply lines or raid their harvesting camps.
2. Try to set up your own harvesting camps within their territory. Bring plenty of security, because they will try to drive you out.
3. Encourage monster escalations within that settlement's areas, forcing them to focus more on defense than economy.
4. Assassinate their captains of industry, merchant barons or political leaders.
5. Go to war!
You probably notice, all 5 of my suggestions are combat or PVP related. That is because there is no way to peacefully negotiate a monopoly away from another settlement. Why would they?
You have to demonstrate that you have the capacity for violence, then the capability to execute it. Otherwise, they will just laugh at you and send you on your way. Or, they will crush you and send you to your respawn point.
True combat and PVP would be good ways to end it, but some players of the settlement could be reasonable if approached Diplomatically and thus no need for the mass combat, PVP, or hiring "_____ Bandits/Guild" as mercs/assassins.
Mind you, settlements that all control a specific resource could also band together and do price fixing as well, at that point they are jerks who do deserve what they get.
But if one of the settlements was press-ganged into the scheme, they should get a lighter serving.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And we are aware of the danger of a powerful settlement "cornering the market" on a part of the economy critical for the health of the other settlements. We will be watchful for such outcomes, and will be prepared to take action to resolve them for the good of the game if necessary.
I believe they may be talking about an unassailable lock on a market, rather than something that an appropriate cabal of player-organisations can deal with. Imagine one of the huge EVE territory-blobs encompassing all harvestable material types, with a complete set of crafting and training facilities included.
Such an area might be completely without need to contact any part of the River Kingdoms outside itself, and, having accomplished all that, might also be beyond the purview of the non-included players to address.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We are aware of the danger of a powerful settlement "cornering the market" on a part of the economy critical for the health of the other settlements. We will be watchful for such outcomes, and will be prepared to take action to resolve them for the good of the game if necessary.
I don't see the "taking action" as going to the far extreme of taking away what was already produced or collected, as some seem to be fearful of.
They can more easily and legitimately, "turn off the faucet" that feeds the cornered market machine.
As I wrote earlier: Move the nodes; Change the variety of nodes; Change the respawn of nodes; Change the quality of the resource; Remove the nodes.
All of these might not have an immediate effect, but that is actually a better solution anyway. It would give the controlling market a chance to see that their supply is dwindling at the source. They will then be presented with a few choices as to how to respond to their "faucet" running dry.
It will force even large settlements to have to trade with others. Remember, Ryan wrote, the goal is not for settlements to be self sufficient. There will be no "Vertically Integrated" monopolies, and the devs have the tools to break a "Horizontally Integrated" monopoly as well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have to agree with Bluddwolf on this. There are so many "in game" player driven solutions to the almost impossible cornering of a market. There really will be little need for a "heavy hand" from outside. If there ever is, it can easily be accomplished with a "tweek" or 2 on the resource nodes themselves, as at base, the resources themselves control everything.
There really should never be any reason for GW to need to break the "fourth wall" and physically adjust personal characters or previous stockpiles. I don't doubt that they would, if necessary, to save the game. I just don't see that it ever will be.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Or GW (as Bluddwolf has already mentioned) can use escalation to address the issue. The is a possible (extreme) Example: The hobgoblin kingdoms (LE) have decided that the Wolrdwound is as much a threat to them as the rest of Golarion. They build a massive army and march to do battle with the demons, but the PFO River Kingdoms are in their path. They don't care and like monstrous locust try to devour all in their path to conserve their own supplies.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I also have to agree with Bluddwolf and Bringslite in that players will likely find an "In Game" solution to the problem before Goblin Works has to step in.
A tweak or two on a few resource nodes should be more than enough to correct the flow.
Heck if it's really cornered market, Goblin Works could spawn a new node of that resource near a settlement that is far away and not in or near the offender's territory.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ingame solutions are good, I agree. But I think it should be limited to ingame solutions. No developer intervention if someone comes out on top.
As GW has stated, they would only do it in the case that "the game" itself is in danger. At that point, I think that they should. How many times, in previous MMOs, have parts/systems/mechanics ruined the enjoyment so completely for players that the game died? The Devs of those dead or dying games ignored the problems.
Also, if there are problems with the "synergies" of their systems they should address those in the early stages of the game instead of "later", which often means "never".
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are levels and types of domination that the game is designed for and there are levels and types of domination that are not in the game design.
You can't let the game eat itself just because GW made a miscalculation in X segment of the virtual economy and now 75% of the players are suffering an unfairly bad gaming experience because of it.
Sandboxes are by definition living creatures and you can never set in stone what will happen.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So, now we can choose what we loot. That's a highly interesting change. I'm surprised that got slipped in on an unrelated blog, rather than being part of a blog on PvP.
I'm 99% sure that means your choice of the small amount of inventory chosen by the program to be able for you to loot, just the way it's always been. When I read it I didn't for a microsecond think GW was saying we can now pick loot out any of the husk's full inventory.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, I don't know what 'crafting personally' means. Do some bozos wanna watch a crafting montage complete with 80's soundtrack?Just an aside here.
If you disagree with my opinion, by all means say so. But please do so without the implication that I am somehow a 'bozo' for not sharing your view. This place is remarkably well-behaved and non-judgemental for a gaming forum, calling people names is not really constructive or in character for these threads.
Well said. I just think Sepherum could have lost the "bozos" (attack the argument and not the person) and said that a crafting montage is possibly not a great game-system or asked, "what makes "crafting personally" make the processing stage more fun? Any takers?!"
Agree, probably unintentional and these forums are marvelously good humored.
My bad. I say 'bozos' in RL all the time basically meaning 'you guys' or 'people'. Didn't mean to hurt anybodys' feelings. Gotta wonder if folks expect to see their avatar working the lathe while 'Eye of the Tiger' plays in the backround tho. Maybe my crafter alt could turn that feature off? I myself am actually a bozo by the way.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So, now we can choose what we loot. That's a highly interesting change. I'm surprised that got slipped in on an unrelated blog, rather than being part of a blog on PvP.I'm 99% sure that means your choice of the small amount of inventory chosen by the program to be able for you to loot, just the way it's always been. When I read it I didn't for a microsecond think GW was saying we can now pick loot out any of the husk's full inventory.
That still leaves the possibility of carrying 100 items of little or no value, a 1 item of real value. I get killed, and my killer only has a 1% chance of getting anything of real value. What does not get looted is then destroyed.
The end result of that interaction is not meaningful. I as a bandit ended up killing the merchant for nothing. The merchant died for nothing, all unthreaded and inventory items are gone.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If someone corners the market on, say, iron, then there will be bandits swarming for the chance to steal it, since the market value will be hugely high. Further, nigh every other kingdom will come racing in to try and secure their own supply. Finally, I would be highly surprised if someone can truly corner the market. Take a huge chunk of it, certainly, but all of it? I don't see it happening.
Friggin technetium and the Jita runs for it were the worst part of EVE crafting but completely game canon. This recent expansion is supposed to have finally geographically rearranged the moon goo sources of technetium and other materials but the guys that controlled the supply did so for years without much competition ever wedging in.
Controlling 80% is functionally as good as a monopoly. The people that buy the 20% that undercuts your price get a slightly better deal, but you're still setting the price level (and the sellers of the other 20% are benefiting from your monopoly price too). Until there's enough supply that a majority of people can buy their materials without purchasing YOUR materials, you have a really strong influence on price levels. You don't have to control 99-100% of the supply to have monopoly power.
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Goblin Squad Member
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{Yes, I took macroeconomics in college and all my economic knowledge still comes down to Dense Veldspar.}
I mentioned it because it was a situation where the areas where technetium was mined were attackable and conquerable, and I'm sure they changed hands, but the new hands held nearly all the technetium most of the time too. The economic value of the material is WHY they warred so when they won they took all the technetium mining areas. The market result was fairly status quo.
The dev solution after years was to physically (video game-wise) change where it was able to be mined so more than one party had access inducing competition in price, and wars for the new sources.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That still leaves the possibility of carrying 100 items of little or no value, a 1 item of real value. I get killed, and my killer only has a 1% chance of getting anything of real value. What does not get looted is then destroyed.
That is an established transporting tactic in EVE :0). Fill your cargo with 3 valuable things and 16 stacks of mundane so when they cargo scan you it's more difficult to see anything of value. If they do go to the bother it's less likely to loot anything of value from the wreck as opposed to a cargo of only 3 things valuable.
However in EVE you get points just for destroying, whether it becomes lootable or not, so people of that mind will generally just go for it anyway.
Hey devs, are you going to keep track of how many billion ISK our characters have destroyed? 3 years after OE will we be telling newbies stories about the time that one jackass went down the highway alone in a small one-horse cart with 34 Goblin Balls in the back and got blown up? (kestrel, 34 PLEX)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Here's the info on the Pathfinder Online Talk at PaizCon:
PaizoCon 2013: Inside Pathfinder Online
Speakers: Lisa Stevens, Ryan Dancey
This winter, video game studio Goblinworks raised $1.4 million on Kickstarter to fund development of a fantasy sandbox MMO set in the heart of the Pathfinder world. Join the Goblinworks team for an overview of progress so far, including behind-the-scenes graphics and in-game footage highlighting the work in progress. Plus, find out how YOU can get involved charting the future of Pathfinder Online!
Oddly, I never noticed Goblinworks is one word, before.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm actually liking the concept of a 'hands off' creation process.
I'm loving the idea that player crafting isn't a one-hit wonder like so many other games and MMOs out there.
I'm adoring the randomized 'resource' nodes, and that Goblinworks has come out and said they will not allow huge 'Cartels' to operate unmolested, if they start to negatively affect the game and the players within that game.
An easy way to 'pinch off' the growth of a cartel? When the game is being built (and this is coming from the guy that can't program a VCR, so take it as you will!) and the coding for the frequency and types of 'node' spawns is being added, Goblinworks can just add a GM-only 'toggle' for that map.
Let's say, 'Knights of the Herpaderp' is a Charter that's using multi-account multi-box methods to create economic pressures that are being felt across the land, thanks to their location within a very rich series of Hexes and having long-standing trade agreements with the nearby, very PvP orientated Charters.
The PvPers get their gear for base-line prices, the Economic Emperors get to manipulate the market with relative impunity.
Players are having a hard time 'cracking' this nut, and it's been going on so long there's a fair amount of player apathy going on.
"There's no point!" They hear players lament when people discuss raids to disrupt these Herpaderps. "Even if we knock them down, the PvPers will gank our settlements. Even if we get rid of the PvPers, the Herpaderps have the money to throw endless assassins at us. Even if we got rid of both, they have enough backup gear stored away to just get back up and smack us down."
Yet the Herpaderp and PvPer Charters aren't cheating, they are simply using more money than the other Players and using Multi-Boxing strategies to make it work.
So to keep the game 'flowing' and destabilize the power-structure a little, Goblinworks 'tweaks' the spawn of resources to start slowing down.
Iron nodes that would respawn every few hours only respawn once or twice a day ... and then they start to slow down even further.
Throw in an escalation or two that's suitably challenging for the Herpaderps and PvPers, and let slip to 'trusted' players that there's something going on in the Herpaderp's home-hexes ... and you've got a clash of Kingdoms in the works as the Settlements who've been gouged for far too long get their acts together and declare war, while the Herpaderps and PvPers are suddenly no longer unassailable due to the Escalation dragging members away from the borders and their formerly rich Hexes no longer producing so much bounty.
A week into the conflict, Goblinworks restores the Hexes to 'full production', and their work is done. The players are having a good old time because they are actually 'changing' the status-quo, the Herpaderps are getting shaken out of their little niches and are finding multi-boxing doesn't hold up well to waves of pissed-off players with freshly sharpened torches and pitch-forks and the PvPers are awash in delicious PvP goodness.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That still leaves the possibility of carrying 100 items of little or no value, a 1 item of real value. I get killed, and my killer only has a 1% chance of getting anything of real value. What does not get looted is then destroyed.
The end result of that interaction is not meaningful. I as a bandit ended up killing the merchant for nothing. The merchant died for nothing, all unthreaded and inventory items are gone.
Such an interaction is not meaningless.
Bandits, weather or not the people they kill have worthwhile things to steal, add value by adding risk.
As a bandit you cannot expect everybody to have goods. Sure you didnt profit from the interaction but the interaction was far from meaningless. thats a risk you take when you are a bandit, that the mark doesnt have anything.
The other risk you take is that people will carry a bunch of crap in their inventory specifically so that bandits have to search for the good stuff. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact its a perfectly sound start, delay the bandits so your friends can catch them, or maybe some wandering champion catches them in the act.
a meaningful interaction for a bandit is not just the ones where they get rich, its the cumulative effect of bandits as a whole to add risk to people who would carry valuable goods.
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Goblin Squad Member
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a meaningful interaction for a bandit is not just the ones where they get rich, its the cumulative effect of bandits as a whole to add risk to people who would carry valuable goods.
But our risk needs to be versus a decent reward, otherwise we will not feel that a few a day are enough. If moderately valuable caravans are moderately guarded, but our potential reward is little, we will prey on a greater number of smaller risk targets, or the same little reward.
If given the choice between having meaningful banditry but with little gain, versus meaningless noob ganking for little gain, we will take the latter.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Job listing at Gamasutra for Goblin Works:
Get a job: Goblinworks is looking for an MMO programmer
Goblinworks is an exciting fast paced developer and publisher of a fantasy sandbox massively multiplayer online RPG based on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game from Paizo Publishing.
We are based in the Seattle suburb of Redmond. We commenced operations in mid-2012. We're growing, and we'll employ about 30 people by the end of 2013, doubling in 2014.
Candidate should be able to show prior work on game systems used by game designers to create an exciting and fun in-game player experience.
Job responsibilities?
- Implement game systems based on specification provided by game design team that will minimize latency in large (multiple hundred player) servers
- Create authoring tools to enable the rapid prototyping and deployment of game objects for these game systems
- Recommend middleware to implement those systems
- Document, create, manage, and deliver a pipeline of game features
There's some bright people on these forums who I guess also is an experienced programmer... and we need someone on the inside! ;)
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
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{Yes, I took macroeconomics in college and all my economic knowledge still comes down to Dense Veldspar.}
I mentioned it because it was a situation where the areas where technetium was mined were attackable and conquerable, and I'm sure they changed hands, but the new hands held nearly all the technetium most of the time too. The economic value of the material is WHY they warred so when they won they took all the technetium mining areas. The market result was fairly status quo.
The dev solution after years was to physically (video game-wise) change where it was able to be mined so more than one party had access inducing competition in price, and wars for the new sources.
Yes, this kind of situation is a game design mistake of the same order as an unbalanced faucet that leads to rampant systemic inflation. No one in game is doing anything wrong, but it has undesirable consequences for the game as a whole. So devs would be right to step in and make the smallest possible change that corrects the situation, and then let that solution flow through the normal game mechanics.
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Goblin Squad Member
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But our risk needs to be versus a decent reward, otherwise we will not feel that a few a day are enough. If moderately valuable caravans are moderately guarded, but our potential reward is little, we will prey on a greater number of smaller risk targets, or the same little reward.If given the choice between having meaningful banditry but with little gain, versus meaningless noob ganking for little gain, we will take the latter.
other players owe nothing to bandits, nothing. if they devise ways to prevent bandits from taking all their hard earned goods, guess what, tough.
Bandits are not owed good items from the victims.
If players minimize the risk, gasp, because they dont want bandits to steal their stuff, thats exactly what they should do.
bandits are allowed. There is a flag for bandits to choose to facilitate that option. banditry has risks, one of those risks is that you dont get good loot from someone. Thats a risk the bandits take.
SO do you attack that guy who may or may not have anything and risk him getting together a posse to take you out over a sword with one keyword OR do you wait until your spy tells you there is a caravan coming through in an hour?
minimal gain is the risk you run for not doing the work yourself and stealing from other people.
its like the guys who rob a store for 50 bucks and go to jail for years, its your choice. You can choose to rob someone or not, but its your choice to do so.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Let us not forget that bandits will have ample targets, for the taking, besides crafty merchants with "decoy" cargoes. If the Merry Murderers are numerous, there will be small settlements, gathering camps, and POIs. There will also be solo travelers/adventurers and/or parties of players.
That does not even count contracts for safe passage, hits on competition (merchant or political), even protection.
Many are the opportunities to garner.
The clever will find loot aplenty for their needs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The more ways the game has to scam bandits and cheat them out of their reward the better it will be for me. And if that leads the bandits to griefing noobs and thus getting them banned i'm all better for it. Strictly subjectively speaking of course.
Preying on noobs, is not griefing noobs. When we are new to the game, we will be noobs also. Our targets will be noobs by virtue of our proximity to the starter area.
Ryan Dancey says in the Dev Blog, he wants players to be able to gather and craft right away. That will put them out there in the wilderness right away.
Ryan Dancey also said that the low tier, common resources will still have value. That means that we can continue to prey in those early areas and still make a profit, although the risk of NPC wardens will be higher there.
My Take on Looting as it is suspected to be:
This is what is known =
1. Threading protects equipped items with a magical bind to the character. These items can not be looted.
2. A looter can only loot a portion of the unthreaded equipment or inventory items. We do not know what the limitation of the portion is yet, or how it is justified.
3. Any items not looted are destroyed.
What I don't like about the suspected looting system is the randomness of it. I don't mind having to spend more time searching, to reveal more of what is carried. That not only increases my risk, but also my reward.
4. We will have some choice of what we take, from a list of items. We do not yet know what mechanic is used to generate that list.
My proposal:
The more time a bandit / looter spends searching through his/her victim's belongings, the more of the items are revealed.
I am choosing to increase my risk be remaining longer at the scene of the crime, but I am also increasing my chance for greater reward.
I can take away whatever I can carry (this might account for the "only a portion" comment), and the rest will be destroyed.
What some of you are forgetting is that GW is hoping to use bandits to help regulate the economy. That does not happen if we have little incentive to participate in the act of banditry to start with.
We want a reasonable risk vs. reward trade off. Very early in this Blog, Ryan stated that we would have choice in what we loot. I don't see why that is such a scary concept for some. WE bandits have already assumed the risk of attacking; overcome that risk in defeating our opponent; why do we have to be artificially limited in our reward by unexplainable "randomness" in what we can loot?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Several things that stood out in the latest blog that seem far different than what most MMO players are used to (note - it might be exactly like this in EVE, but I don't play EVE). Here is the quote - the bold is my addition for emphasis:
Processing, at least initially, will be job-based. You visit a facility in a settlement that can do the kind of processing job you want to do, you'll wait until that facility has time to accept your job, and you'll then provide the resources required for the job, plus whatever other preconditions are needed. The job will be accepted, queued for delivery, and you then pay whatever fees are required and receive an estimate of when the job will be completed.
Steven Cheney has posted earlier in this thread that one of the reasons for an EVE style crafting system is to provide a more realistic portrayal of time - items cannot be banged out in a matter of seconds or minutes - so refining/crafting will require planning and time. This both helps slow down possible market flooding and stops players from instantly restocking things they're low on (no whipping up a batch of whatever you're running out of in the middle of a siege, for example).
However, as shown in the first bold text, I've never seen the time element of having to wait for the refining/crafting facility to be available. Does this mean you'll have to wait until the last person is finished loading their order, or until their job is complete? As earlier described, the completing time might be long enough to allow you to go adventure. That's an awfully long wait for the next guy in line. If the latter is the case, then choosing how many refining/crafting facilities a player settlement invests in will be as important a decision as which trainers they "hire" and how much of that training time is offered to those outside their settlement.
Second, I've never experienced a fee for refining/crafting. True, in many MMOs, refining/crafting might involve the purchase of NPC vendored ingredients, thus providing a coin drain. My question is whether the described fee will be a possible tax for the use of player settlement refining/crafting facilities, or will all (including starter town) facilities charge a fee for use?
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Goblin Squad Member
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why do we have to be artificially limited in our reward by unexplainable "randomness" in what we can loot?
Because we, who are being robbed, want to stick it to the bandits even after they have defeated us.
Also In my eyes taking away a bandits reward by ingame means ( random loot selection ) is exactly the same as taking away a merchants reward by ingame means ( robbing him )
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Goblin Squad Member
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A randomized selection of a player's gear/cargo only penalizes the bandit/PVP victor. There is a Nah-nah-nah factor for the victim but the amount lost is the same. The only logical factor for such a mechanic is to increase the frequency of item loss, as in "drain" from the game. This will spur production of low tier replacement gear and eventually medium tier. The fact is, it is only a drain if the gear/resource is lost. Not a drain if it is looted and used.
It is far easier to code a mechanic like that than say individual item tracking and individual item degradation. In that way, it makes a kind of sense.
@Hobs It makes sense that at least part of the crafting fees will be for the settlement. Otherwise it would have been "and you then pay the fee" instead of "and you then pay whatever fees are required". I could be dissecting the grammar with an overly critical view, but that is how I take it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...I've never seen the time element of having to wait for the refining/crafting facility to be available.
I anticipate the queue is going to be related to the "quality" of the crafting facility: bigger/better means more crafting "slots". I can see not only an improvement in the number of slots an upgraded facility has, but also something related to the quality of its output.
It'd be nice to see "rob Peter to pay Paul" arguments about which facility to use, weighing distance, availability, and quality.
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Goblin Squad Member
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GW is already artificially limiting bandits (or anyone else who kills and loots their victim) by only making a "portion" available, so as to cut down on the incentive to kill everyone in sight. Knowing you'll only get one or two item (my assumption here) may not be worth it when faced with the risk. But if you know what the victim was carrying (or likely carrying), decided the possible reward was worth the risk, and won...I think your limited portion should include your choice. If you want to slap a timer on looting (cycling through more items takes more time, larger items determined by encumbrance show first because they'd be more obvious, etc.), so be it. Again, risk vs reward...do you want to stand there long enough to find the thing you were after?
I'm not in favor of having to create systems just to make it appealing for bandits (they're not the only regulator of the economy), but at the same time, unrealistic mechanics created simply to "stick it to the bandits" seems equally nonconstructive. You're character will be living in an open PvP world...if you step out of a protected zone, you risk getting attacked and losing goods.
From a role-player perspective (something too often overlooked when discussing mechanics), I want the items a courier is carrying to be put at risk. If I am transporting some important item (important to an RP storyline I and others are engaged in), and my enemies manage to intercept and kill me to obtain it, having it disappear by some random loot assignment mechanic would be extremely disruptive.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Because we, who are being robbed, want to stick it to the bandits even after they have defeated us.
In another one of these threads, someone suggested the emergent gameplay might include macros to begin destroying or discarding goods when the bandits launch their attacks, for no other purpose than to stick it to the bandits. Accompany it with yelling "for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee", and one has a perfectly good Moby Dick channelling (okay, or Khan).
One can tell, by reading threads here, that some people hate bandits so much that they'd be willing to repeat what they'd already done (harvesting, killing, whatever), if it meant depriving bandits of gains. I'd not be surprised if some of those players want to get a reputation among bandits as an unprofitable target.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To attempt to build on Bringslite's insight: Isn't the random selection acting to increase the "sink" also ensuring a serious "looting economy" does not grow out of control? IE looting is secondary to other economic gains from bandit operations ie traders transporting than what they wear?
edit: Oops, Hobs already pointed this out. :)
pps: What is the RP reason for equipment to be removed? Do items have a magical connection aside from threading that deems them lost?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Because we, who are being robbed, want to stick it to the bandits even after they have defeated us.In another one of these threads, someone suggested the emergent gameplay might include macros to begin destroying or discarding goods when the bandits launch their attacks, for no other purpose than to stick it to the bandits. Accompany it with yelling "for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee", and one has a perfectly good Moby Dick channelling (okay, or Khan).
One can tell, by reading threads here, that some people hate bandits so much that they'd be willing to repeat what they'd already done (harvesting, killing, whatever), if it meant depriving bandits of gains. I'd not be surprised if some of those players want to get a reputation among bandits as an unprofitable target.
We will then become economic terrorists and deprive those settlements the higher-end resources that they need to build up their settlement.
If a gatherer / merchant has the reputation that he would rather destroy what he carries, than give us a shot at what he carries. He will have that same reputation with the settlement that he is attempting to supply. he will have the same reputation with the merchant that is thinking of hiring him to transport that merchant's goods.
We would certainly pass on that reputation to would be contractors, that said transporter of goods would rather lose all then risk some.
If we are left no choice but to kill, we will. If some want to destroy what they have (using that macro you mentioned), then all we have to do is show up and that traveler will potentially hand our employers exactly what they want, and we did not lift a finger or expend our flag in doing so.
The PVE minded traveler, trying to deprive the PVP minded bandit of loot, may deprive us of what they are carrying. But, we may be getting paid to stop that shipment anyway. We will also have our gameplay, and kill them with legitimate PVP flags.
The only way we bandits lose, is by ending the day with less gold than we started with and by not having fun while we are doing it.
My only objection is the an arbitrary game mechanic of "randomness", which is not implied by Ryan Dancey's statement in the dev Blog, does not support "meaningful player interaction in PVP."
In the end, I do not believe that GW will allow for a system of masking valuable items within a randomized gumble of junk, and not give us some means of adding risk (searching for longer period of time) to gain greater potential of reward.
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Goblin Squad Member
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AvenaOats,
Not sure if your question was pointed at my post or not. In case it was, let me clarify my concern for the randomness of what is and is not lootable.
If I and other RPers have decided a certain sword has special RP importance (besides its keywords, if any), and said sword needed to be secretly spirited from location "A" to location "B", and the courier of said sword was intercepted and killed by the enemies of the courier specifically to gain the sword, I would hate for the sword not to be lootable because it didn't turn up as part of the "lootable portion" decided randomly by the game.
The sword has RP importance for both groups involved. To thread the sword during transit would remove the risk of possibly losing the sword, which would be unfair to those RPing the enemies of the courier. By not threading it, it's loss is possible. However, by looters not being able to choose what they loot, their whole reason for killing the courier is potentially made moot by a game mechanic if the sword is not one of the randomly chosen items in the "lootable portion" of the dead courier's gear.
If this wasn't the part you seemed unclear about, sorry for the rambling. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Bringslite,
1. If all it takes is for some poor (in style) RPer to remake it after it's been stolen, or make a copy of it to seem as if they've captured it, I don't think they're the type of RPer I want to play with.
2. This presumes that the courier would be so cowardly as to hand it over when confronted. Poor choice of couriers if this is the case.