Discussion thread for Goblinworks Blog: The Man in the Back Said "Everyone Attack!".
Goblin Squad Member
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I like that Wars are one-sided, but costly. It was getting cumbersome to try to convey the differences that used to exist between the two types of War.
I find it especially interesting that Feuds can exist even between two Companies in the same Settlement. That's a really nice touch.
... . By "opt-in," we mean that individual players choose how much PvP they want to see outside the larger struggles of settlements and companies. (Of course, PvP is possible at any stage in Pathfinder Online, but without the sanction of warfare, bounties, feuds, or voluntary player actions—characters performing criminal or heinous acts, for example—there are consequences of reputation and alignment.)
Grand. Just... Grand!
I'm also extremely pleased to see a bright-line distinction between "sanctioned PvP" and "unsanctioned PvP".
And finally, I'm now extremely curious about the various factions we might join, and the spepcific benefits of the various ranks. I do hope, though, that there's a way to renounce your rank with a Faction if you decide you've had enough.
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Goblin Squad Member
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(Of course, PvP is possible at any stage in Pathfinder Online, but without the sanction of warfare, bounties, feuds, or voluntary player actions—characters performing criminal or heinous acts, for example—there are consequences of reputation and alignment.)
This blog post is mainly about systems that allow players to engage in PvP conflicts without suffering alignment or reputation loss for their actions. When you attack someone you are at war with, in a feud with, or who is a ranking member of an enemy faction, you do not lose reputation or suffer alignment modification for the act. If your enemy does not fall into one of those categories, you lose both alignment and reputation for attacking someone unprovoked, the specifics of which depend on the reputation of the target, where the attack takes place, local laws, and so on. So while these systems make it more likely to be attacked if you are involved in a war, feud, or faction, no one is totally safe.
If a third party becomes involved in a war, feud, or faction fight, they gain any flags or reputation and alignment penalties as normal. So if you are at war with a settlement and a friend from a third settlement heals you, he is treated as intervening in an ongoing combat and becomes a free target to your enemies.
I'm glad to see you holding firm on, and reaffirming that stance.
That aside, there are two points of interest for me in this blog. First the idea that when you declare a feud on someone their allies are not drawn in. While I appreciate this, will there be a mechanism for a willing ally do join the conflict without spending all the influence required to issue a feud declaration of their own?
Also it sounds like there will be a lot of factions. Do you see there being factions we can join if we really want to open ourselves to conflict with many of the other factions, and do you see the choices in factions being more meaningful than Horde vs. Alliance or even Caldari, Gallante, Amarr, and Minmatar?
The concern with me regarding factions as a replacement for the champion flag is it sounds like it will initiate a lot less conflict than a flag that allows all evil players to attack me, and while I wanted to use the champion flag to hunt people partaking in certain behaviors, factions seems very red shirt / blue shirt to me unless your faction standing gives bonuses to certain behaviors outside faction conflict. I'm not really sure I want to distract myself from my more meaningful objectives by flagging myself to the "red shirts."
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Goblin Squad Member
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The first principle of our design for Pathfinder Online is "maximize meaningful human interaction." There are few interactions more meaningful in a MMO than combat between characters.
We are often asked why PvP is a central part of our game design. This is the reason— conflict, and the special case of combat, is an engine that drives the rest of the game design.
At the core of Pathfinder Online is player versus player (or PvP) combat.
I think we can finally put this argument to rest!!!!
I have not had time to do more than a skim through, but I like what I have seen so far.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also, I need to start reading the Pathfinder Wiki again and start learning about all these factions RD keeps mentioning, I am not knowledgeable about all of them...
Neither am I George. I recently purchased "The Guide to the River Kingdoms" just to get familiar with the "lay of the land". While I don't believe some of the factions that will be in PFO are in the TT PF game, I can see many of the factions in the guide becoming part of the later PFO world as the map expands. (Added; these are the areas immediately surrounding our starting area of the Echo Wood, not to include Loric Fells, which doesn't seem to have any types that would be forming a faction, hags and such.)
Some might include:
The Black Eagles (of Lambreth)
The Outlaw Council (of Daggermark)
The Black Marquis
Druids of the River Kingdoms (I made this up, but I can see a group of druids created in order to be a neutral faction in order to be wardens of the forest)
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Goblin Squad Member
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It appears that assassination is not in and of itself bad so long as it is within specific contexts, such as factional conflict or war.
I didn't read anything to make me think that Assassination would not cause an Alignment Shift towards Evil. I would be surprised if it were now considered Alignment-neutral.
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I'm really hoping that rising to certain levels in a faction gives abilities that are more than just fluff or flavor but promote certain styles of gameplay, and that when a faction holds sway over a certain area, it has a meaningful effect for everyone living in that area.
This way characters actually care about their factions. Unlike in EVE where, sure Amarr are slavers and Minmatar are fighting for their freedom, but what is the difference between them and the effect their victory/defeat has on the community?
Really... they are identical and there is no effect for those not involved in faction warfare. Nobody cares about FW unless they are in it. I hope the central idea in PFO's faction reason is giving people a reason to care about their cause. That in territory owned by a Sarenrae type faction things are more peaceful and secure, and when in Rovagug owned territory, you need to be looking over your shoulder. Otherwise I'm probably going to bypass it and pursue all my conflicts through wars and feuds.
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Tork! Tork! Tork!
Great tosser of red meat! TORK!
Fantastic blog pretty much tells me that everything I signed up for is still very much in the game design plans.
My biggest question remains here, the exploitation of the feud and war systems by "hanging out" with people not in the conflict. If I am a single target specialist and I just hang out in a group of allies who neither heal me nor help fight, I can attack you at an advantage while your AoE's are useless and even your single target attacks will struggle to not pick up the attacker flag on the allies.
That is the very basic gist of what has never seemed right to me about this system and at some point I'd love a dev to draw a map with examples of what the design says one should do there.
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We are often asked why PvP is a central part of our game design. This is the reason— conflict, and the special case of combat, is an engine that drives the rest of the game design. To become competent in battle, able to drive opponents from the field, or stand one's ground against an assault, requires players to invest time and energy in harvesting, processing, crafting, building and training. It promotes social cohesion. It gives people a sense that "freedom isn't free"—that if they want to play the Kingdom Game, to create settlements of a rich and powerful nature, they'll have to do so as others try to pull them down and take their place. They have to earn it.
Even though many people do not like PvP at all (Hobs, I'm talking to you) it does create a more cohesive community. I played Ultima Online for seven years, and there was an "event" that tore most of the communities apart. The game developers decided, after much complaining about the open world PvP, to split the world, making two parallel dimensions (identical except for the game rules and the subsequent housing placement that came later), one called "Felucca", the other called "Trammel". Trammel was the "no PvP" side and Felucca remained full PvP (except in towns, and you could game that if you were crafty).
The towns that needed to stay united on the PVP side fell apart because most of the non-PVPers moved to the safety of Trammel. You could still cast spells to go to the Felucca side to do stuff like hunt for the richest hidden treasure chests, but that split pretty much killed PvP, and subsequently killed many of the player created communities.
Don't fear the PvP aspect of the game. It will make the settlement you belong to a much more cohesive (dare I say "neighborly") city, and to completely remove the PvP will erode much of the dependency our communities must have to grow and prosper.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can see things being tied to factions so as to provide meaning for being "part" of the dominant faction within a region. This gives reason for faction vs faction PvP, which in turn could be used to generate influence, which aside from achievements we really don't know how it will be produced.
I don't believe factions should be deity themed skins that overlay on top of settlements. They need to be more meaningful and at least somewhat advantageous, specifically when you are part of the dominant faction in the region.
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That was my original stance, but I was told by Ryan that assassination will always be evil. I'd like some clarification on this.It's evil in Pathfinder and I would bet my first copper it will be evil in PFO.
That's fine. I relinquished that point a long time ago, but can I train it as a good character? Will training it give me an alignment hit or only the act of executing an assassination?
How does the target affect the hit you take?
These are the questions that probably don't have answers yet, but I've got to ask anyway.
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In addition to more discussion of PvP, we're also going to begin doing a better job of sharing some of the visual materials we're making for the game. The Art Team cranks out all sorts of cool stuff continuously, and we've kept most of it under wraps. That's ending, starting with today's blog.
Uhm....
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Goblin Squad Member
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... can I train [Assassination] as a good character? Will training it give me an alignment hit or only the act of executing an assassination?
How does the target affect the hit you take?
These are the questions that probably don't have answers yet, but I've got to ask anyway.
Good questions, indeed.
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... your AoE's are useless and even your single target attacks will struggle to not pick up the attacker flag on the allies.I think that single-target attacks cannot damage an untargeted character. I'm not sure of that, but that's my sense.
I'm being simplistic in the example but I'm sure it wouldn't take long for us to come up with a list of ways to goad reputation losses on your enemies as a tactic. While I think there should be some room for that I'd hate to see that as a focal point for organized PvP.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That was my original stance, but I was told by Ryan that assassination will always be evil. I'd like some clarification on this.It's evil in Pathfinder and I would bet my first copper it will be evil in PFO.That's fine. I relinquished that point a long time ago, but can I train it as a good character? Will training it give me an alignment hit or only the act of executing an assassination?
How does the target affect the hit you take?
These are the questions that probably don't have answers yet, but I've got to ask anyway.
I'd think you'd have to train it evil just like a Pally has to train as lawful good. Just my 2 coppers of course.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It appears that assassination is not in and of itself bad so long as it is within specific contexts, such as factional conflict or war.I didn't read anything to make me think that Assassination would not cause an Alignment Shift towards Evil. I would be surprised if it were now considered Alignment-neutral.
Assassin and Stand and Deliver special abilities have been moved to skill-based functionality
A skill is like a tool: it can be used for good or ill, but in itself is neither good nor evil.
Example: Guns don't shoot people, people shoot people. Now, shooting is a skill. It is neither good nor evil. Shooting people, however, introduces an external factor that is not intrinsically part of the skill.
I think what Ryan was talking about as assassination was not at that time considered a skill.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Does this mean that Settlements will be defined more so by their Faction, than their alignment?
If you join a faction that is very militant and enemies with another faction, then you'll get plenty of PvP with no alignment or rep shift against that specific enemy faction, but not against everyone else.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Because of the expensive and time-consuming nature of settlement growth and management, it is much more likely that settlements will go to war to annex each other's resources rather than to breach the walls of each other's cities. Destroying an enemy settlement outright is difficult, but seizing control of a disputed border region—for example, a useful hex or two that lie between settlements—is a more manageable task. All settlements will eventually want to bring under their control as many resource hexes and their points of interest as they can hold.
This will be crucial. The "seeding" of resources in the River Kingdoms will really determine where wars are fought. If there are only a few large, harvestable sources of say, mithril, ironwood, rare herbs or some other required material, these will be the sites where battles are fought, and settlements will either grow or wither if these crucial materials cannot be obtained in quantity.
When the land rush occurs, and as each land expansion is patched in, these hexes are where players will live and die.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It appears that assassination is not in and of itself bad so long as it is within specific contexts, such as factional conflict or war.I didn't read anything to make me think that Assassination would not cause an Alignment Shift towards Evil. I would be surprised if it were now considered Alignment-neutral.Assassin and Stand and Deliver special abilities have been moved to skill-based functionalityA skill is like a tool: it can be used for good or ill, but in itself is neither good nor evil.
Yes, I saw where it had been moved to a Skill, but I don't think that necessarily means it no longer has an Alignment impact or requirement. There are any number of Spells which will have Alignment impacts and/or requirements.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've never understood an honor system that says it's acceptable for a leader to condemn hundreds or thousands to death through war, but it's evil to end that man's life with the thrust of a knife.
The explanation Ryan gave is that assassination in PFO will require rituals which are evil, so assassination is always evil regardless of the purpose it's used for.
But if this is up for debate again I'm all for good aligned assassins that are much more limited in the targets they can pursue.
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I see that fact that wars between settlements will likely NOT be focused on sacking the settlement, but more to conquer and control outlying areas to be a masterful stroke of genius from GW.
If they then allow for settlements to be more faction based (less directly, alignment based), then the faction warfare will be more meaningful.
Opening up warfare at the company level, through Feuds, was yet another brilliant move.
Factional warfare adds yet another possibility for meaningful PVP.
All combined I think that there will be a target rich environment, to the point that we can take our greedy eyes off of those not looking to partake as much in PVP.
More legitimate PVP has also had the consequences removed, in favor of attaching the "meaningful" aspect we all hoped for to its proper places. It seems to be the goal to have "meaningful reasons" to PVP, and "meaningful consequences" for griefing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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All combined I think that there will be a target rich environment, to the point that we can take our greedy eyes off of those not looking to partake as much in PVP.To be clear, this is the goal I was pursuing all along.
Me too...
"meaningful reasons" to PVP, and "meaningful consequences" for griefing.
Although they haven't said that the Stand-and-Deliver mechanic has changed , other than that it is now a skill and no longer the function of the Outlaw Flag. If this is true, than I can still SAD unflagged PCs looking to haul vast wealth (which was always my intention). But now with these new routes to PVP, that are consequence free, I can PVP to my heart's content without bringing my "bad" reputation into a settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would favor seeing Settlements remain as alignment based structures. I feel that having Factional allegiances at the Settlement levels could hinder member choice as well as limit our ability to construct our own purposes and stories, as we would in essence be taking on the purpose of a factional allegiance.
I would like to keep Settlements out of faction warfare. Faction warfare feels like a personal thing. Settlements already have competing settlements and raiding companies to watch out for.
As currently spelled out, I feel an acceptable balance was struck.
As to your concerns, Andius, fear not! The battle between Good and Evil shall continue. The war merely needs to be waged with more strategy than a simple champion flag. And honestly, there will probably be some evil-themed PvE oriented folks who will be happy to know it is harder to pick on them as well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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All combined I think that there will be a target rich environment, to the point that we can take our greedy eyes off of those not looking to partake as much in PVP.An astoundingly welcome statement, sir. I tip my (green) hat to you :)
Nihimon,
This is nothing new, I've been fighting this battle for weeks:
"Meaningful reasons" to PVP, and "meaningful consequences" for griefing.
But, don't get your hopes up that the UNC won't be SAD'ng unflagged merchants if they happen by and present a favorable risk vs. reward opportunity.
We will also be willing to take the alignment and reputation hit, from time-to-time, to send a message... "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!!"..... oh wait, wrong message.........
Don't carry, what you can not afford to lose
You are Never Safe
It's not personal, it's all about the gold
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Yes, I saw where it had been moved to a Skill, but I don't think that necessarily means it no longer has an Alignment impact or requirement. There are any number of Spells which will have Alignment impacts and/or requirements.It appears that assassination is not in and of itself bad so long as it is within specific contexts, such as factional conflict or war.I didn't read anything to make me think that Assassination would not cause an Alignment Shift towards Evil. I would be surprised if it were now considered Alignment-neutral.Assassin and Stand and Deliver special abilities have been moved to skill-based functionalityA skill is like a tool: it can be used for good or ill, but in itself is neither good nor evil.
I'm hoping for impact. Much like as Andius said, good aligned assassins would have to hold their strike more times then actually executing it in order to remain good. They would have to ensure they worked hard at staying good. It's a hard road and one that lots of people would stray from, but that is part of the compelling story of the good aligned assassin's struggle with morality. I think that is a story worth telling.
Also, they said we'd have more visuals, but I saw nothing. I'm sure they'll correct it as soon as they realize it. Either that or I'm blind.
So if assassination is a trainable skill, does this mean that there is the possibility for "good-aligned" assassins as long as they make strides to ensure their good actions outweigh their bad?
It appears that assassination is not in and of itself bad so long as it is within specific contexts, such as factional conflict or war.
I think now that there is no Alignment-based Assassin flag, there is no Alignment-absolution for Assassin activities. Meaning if you want to avoid normal consequences for attacking/killing, you will rely on targetting Criminal/Heinous flagged characters and/or acting within the scope of Faction PVP/Feuds/Wars. This seems like a topic several people are bringing up, so hopefully it will be clarified.
Druids of the River Kingdoms (I made this up, but I can see a group of druids created in order to be a neutral faction in order to be wardens of the forest)
Well... That, and the True Neutral Druidic Banking Overlords need to keep all the flows of mana and gold in harmony, which may involve hedging out those Kalistrade wannabe's and Qadiran venture capitalist vultures. Keeping the mana in balance, and the gold in our accounts is a hard job, but somebody's got to do it. Because Bambi.
Does this mean that Settlements will be defined more so by their Faction, than their alignment?I think it means they can if they choose to.
Yeah... This kind of makes me feel that the Alignment-based PVP flags should be retained in addition to Faction PVP, but I guess a good part of the reason behind it is catering to different play styles more/less interested in PVP. And Feuds/Wars always are unilateral options for Alignment-Consequence-free PVP. I just kind of feel that such wars SHOULD still have some Alignment repurcussions, it just doesn't make sense for there to be zero Alignment consequences for one supposedly "Good" Settlement to declare War or another "Good" Settlement out of the blue, that just seems to make a mockery of the system: "It's good because we payed the cost and committed the DI for it." The plan for Alignment specific Settlement improvements seems to still be the case, but creating more classes of PVP such that most PVP will be absolved of Alignment repurcussions just makes the whole Alignment system seem more marginalized and a meta-gamey afterthought. Feedback on how Alignment is still crucial in the whole picture would be good to hear.
I see that fact that wars between settlements will likely NOT be focused on sacking the settlement, but more to conquer and control outlying areas to be a masterful stroke of genius from GW.
If they then allow for settlements to be more faction based (less directly, alignment based), then the faction warfare will be more meaningful.
I would favor seeing Settlements remain as alignment based structures. I feel that having Factional allegiances at the Settlement levels could hinder member choice as well as limit our ability to construct our own purposes and stories, as we would in essence be taking on the purpose of a factional allegiance.
Moving the focus of group PVP somewhat away from Settlements (and outlying Hexes will more commonly be spoils of war rather than full on Settlement conquest anyways) seems like it has the intent to allow Settlements to function, grow, and flourish a bit more.
Retaining an Alignment focus for Settlements seems great and good, but I don't see that conflicting with any OPTIONAL Faction alignment for Settlements/Companies, either. How a Settlement Leadership declares Feuds, Wars and Alliances already impacts all members, Faction is just an extension of that. If Settlement members don't want Faction PVP forced on outside of their personal choice, the Settlement won't do that, or will only align with non-PVP Faction. If the Settlement is very diverse re: PVP and Faction preferences, they aren't going to make any alignment that doesn't work for any significant minority.
From the Blog:
" settlements who add to their ranks after the declaration of war will see the upkeep cost of the war increase."
Does this apply to both Settlements, or only the attacker/war declarer?
The context would seem to tend to the latter, but I'm not quite sure based on how this was phrased...?\\"In addition, it takes for a settlement to recover the Development Index points it used to support the war;"
"a while" seems like it would be nice about two words into that bolded section :-)
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I like the intra-settlement company Feud PvP, whether as a means to 'proove' their strength,
for pure PVP for PVP sake, bragging rights, or Riddick-like "the strongest is the king" competition.
With company-level 'ownership' over sub-components of the Settlement and their resource flows,
an escalation to a Feud level PVP over who controls/manages what seems interesting and a good option.
I'm curious about Settlements that don't want that sort of thing, whether to avoid intra-Settlement conflict or not waste resources,
for some it can be great, but when it says that Feud PVP is absolved of ALignment repurcussions, can it still be illegal per the Settlement?
(which should normally have Law/Reputation consequences if that's the case, although that only applies in Settlement territory)
Would it just be a matter of in Settlements where Feuds are illegal within the Settlement, that it still works but all PVP has to take place outside Settlement territory, but otherwise no problem?
I really like the shift in PVP from Alignment to Faction,
as you point out that makes more sense in a Pathfinder context, and is one more level of 'opt in'/'opt out'.
I like the idea of less-PVP focused factions (amidt more PVP focused ones),
a knowledge focused one would match at least one guild in the making so far.
It does make me curious how Companies and Settlements will be integrated,
if they as a whole can become associated with factions, with benefits, penalties, and consequences as appropriate.
Whether that would be in the form of Company/Settlement membership being tied to required membership in X Faction,
or the Company/Settlement having a Faction standing even if members are not (yet they are somehow subject to the repercussions of their Company/Settlement's Faction membership) would be one of my questions there.
As I wrote in the last post, I think Alignment still needs to be important (Class Abilities, Settlement Operations, Settlement Training/Improvements[Building Buffs]/etc, and I hope there is some way that is still remains interwoven with all these new options, the idea of even more a majority of PVP moving outside the realm of Alignment repurcussions just doesn't seem to bode well for Alignment remaining 'meaningful' rather than a metagamy concept that doesn't conflict with however you tend to play PVP day to day. Perhaps Alignment will be some sort of prerequisite to certain Factions??? Just hoping for more detail, and for Alignment to remain important and even better than before.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Hitting a couple of these questions. Tork will probably get more in the morning.
There should hopefully be more complexity to our factions than Horde vs Alliance. Importantly, you can mix and match them. So someone who's Pathfinders + Church of Iomedae + Eagle Knights is going to have an interesting confrontation when running into someone who's Pathfinders + Hellknights + Church of Asmodeus and someone who's Aspis Consortium + League of the Wood + Church of Desna.
The elements of assassination that were going to be things you trained remain things you train. We just removed "Assassin" and its bonuses from a flag you fly when evil and will probably move a lot of that functionality over to the assassin training. We're still conceiving of it as an evil act. Initially, it will likely be trained by the Church of Norgorber, and potentially also by factions like Red Mantis and Daggermark (the potentially being that I don't know whether we'll have those factions before or after assassin functionality).
Just speculating, because it's a long way off if it would even happen, but since it's now entirely a package of faction-locked feats rather than part of it tied to an alignment flag, there is a possibility that something similar to assassination functionality could be available to a non-evil faction. But there would need to be an appropriate lore group; I don't think Golarion has an existing canon group that we'd consider for a faction that believes in assassination for great justice.
Not much has changed conceptually about Stand and Deliver other than moving it to a feat. Honestly, even without the flag changes, we would have probably had to move it to a feat just to make it easier to give you a button to press to initiate it. But moving it to a trained element allows us to maybe expand it into a whole set of cool outlawy things like Bluddwolf and a couple others have asked for ;) .
I believe the statement meant that we're starting visuals with posts with the NEXT one.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hitting a couple of these questions. Tork will probably get more in the morning.
There should hopefully be more complexity to our factions than Horde vs Alliance. Importantly, you can mix and match them. So someone who's Pathfinders + Church of Iomedae + Eagle Knights is going to have an interesting confrontation when running into someone who's Pathfinders + Hellknights + Church of Asmodeus and someone who's Aspis Consortium + League of the Wood + Church of Desna.
Elaborate on interesting confrontation. I understand the concept, but how will the game mechanics look?
With a mix and match, if one of those factions is at war then your at war no matter if the other two are the same? (meaning between two characters, each has 2 factions as the same, and the third is at war with each other)
My guess is yes play as you will with that
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think this factional flagging feels a bit modern and has a better ring to it than the individual flagging, though it's not as free and therefore not as meaningful, but the individual flagging was a tough nut to crack if it even is possible to do correctly(alignment is a tricky thing)... I really like the fact that GW is intervening to ganging and ninja-looting etc with clear game mechanics. Overall the features mentioned in the blog sound intriguing to me. Just waiting for those pics...
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I've never understood an honor system that says it's acceptable for a leader to condemn hundreds or thousands to death through war, but it's evil to end that man's life with the thrust of a knife.
The explanation Ryan gave is that assassination in PFO will require rituals which are evil, so assassination is always evil regardless of the purpose it's used for.
But if this is up for debate again I'm all for good aligned assassins that are much more limited in the targets they can pursue.
Assassination is the step beyond killing one person with a poison dagger- it's the act of cutting some of the threads of fate which Pharasma has attached to your target.
Daggers which cut the tapestry of fate ARE inherently evil. They are not inherently griefing, which might imply a strange Alliance.
Rahadoumis would seem a non-Evil (Neutral) faction motivated to sabotage Pharasma's machinations.
Gods don't normally directly intervene in Golarion anyways, so her doing so in this manner would probably piss them off.