Discussion thread for Goblinworks Blog: Alignment and Reputation.
Goblin Squad Member
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Woah..... This is going to be a big one!!!!
So here is my questions:
1. What is the impact of raiding outposts, caravans and POIs?
2. Is the only reputation free raiding conducted as a part of a feud, war or faction warfare?
3. How do you plan on preventing players from using naked noobs as reputation bombs?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah so this brings us back to where we started: Alignment is the genre changing aspect of Pathfinder and in it's core it is an attempt to make players roleplay.
Not all PvP is the result of feuds, wars and faction alliances. How can a player role play a bandit or a raider and still maintain a decent reputation? How about role playing a duelist?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Right. Did my second read through. Some information in there that I think I have questions about. I see that the developers are still pushing for the One-Step alignment rule when it comes to settlements, and I am curious about how they see metagame organizations coming into Pathfinder dealing with that. Obviously Pax is one of those organizations, but there will be others in the future larger than we are, and some clarity might be nice for them as well.
We are a fairly large organization. Not by EvE standards, but for most other games we do fairly well numbers wise. We have members that range the gambit from murderous crazy people (that's me!) to … well, we have Hobs. Our general intention was that we would be able to provide a home for the majority of those people, either in Calambea or Golgotha.
This seems to sink that intent. From the sounds of it we are either going to have to run four settlements, one at each neutral extreme, or we are going to have to throw players to the wolves. If Callambea is Lawful Neutral, and Golgotha is Lawful Evil, what do we do with our Chaotic Good players? Do we tell them, sorry, we know you have been playing with us for seven years, but you either play the way we tell you to play, or you leave?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Fairly good stuff for the most part. There are two main concerns I picked out in this blog.
1. I think that people losing reputation for legitimate reasons are going to lose it a bit here, a bit there. Basically, they will lose reputation in little chunks at irregular intervals. The system for gaining it as outlined, encourages players not to lose reputation at all. Then spend all their reputation in one spree. Then lay off awhile. Then go on a killing binge again. I would far rather see a system that rather than setting your rep gain back to minimum when you lose some, just degrades your gains a little, with how much it degrades increasing more and more as you near the maximum rep gain rate.
2. Rep loss for killing allies should be determined by your company / settlement leaders. I'm personally prone to enable "friendly fire mode" AKA no rep loss at all for killing allies. From personal experience in similar titles, allies killing each other for the lulz is rarely a problem. For most smoothly running organizations it's much better to have consequence free friendly fire and sparring. For instance in my group in Darkfall it was common practice to attack eachother at random, then revive the loser. As a PvP oriented organization this helped us keep on our toes and honed our combat skills so that when the real wars came, we were prepared.
There were some organizations that recruited newbs purely for the free kills, but those groups were rare and well known as griefers by the veteran community. Had the GM's cared, it easily could have been stopped.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Note that Reputation is lost on striking a target twice rather than on death; this means Reputation is lost when your intention to kill someone is made clear rather than if you are successful.
This seems like an elegant solution to the problem of griefers who try to trick others into attacking them so they can retaliate without suffering the consequences.
Nihimon murmurs in sheer ecstasy as the magic courses through his veins
When a character attacks a character who was not Hostile, the character making the attack gets flagged as an Attacker. If the character with Attacker hits their target again in the next thirty seconds, they become Hostile, and lose Reputation.
Characters with the Attacker flag (or that are otherwise rendered Hostile) can be attacked by other players without suffering Reputation loss. So if you accidentally hit someone, you'd best apologize quickly: they can hit you, or even kill you, if they can manage it in thirty seconds.
So, it's the Attacker Flag itself that lasts thirty seconds? How longs does the Hostile Flag last?
... ...
Nihimon murmurs in sheer ecstasy as the magic courses through his veins
... killing low Reputation PvP players does not cost much Reputation.
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Note that even if you know a character is Evil or Chaotic, if you kill him while he is not flagged for PvP it is an evil act. Killing Evil or Chaotic (or Chaotic Evil) characters without cause is an Evil act.
Sounds like I'll be able to kill Low Reputation characters to keep my Alignment Neutral. This pleases me. Otherwise, I'd likely end up Lawful Good I think. Not that Lawful Good's a bad place to be, it's just not in line with my current plans.
Higher end structures, like tier 2 and 3 training and crafting facilities, require the settlement have its minimum Reputation set to certain levels to function. So if you want your town to have awesome training and crafting facilities, you have to set a high minimum Reputation to enter the settlement. This means characters that do a lot of PvP outside of wars, feuds, and such will be forced to visit less developed settlements that are wretched hives of scum and villainy.
I'm shocked - shocked! - to find out that a certain bandit's plans to basically ignore Reputation and still have access to high end training won't pan out.
The exact amount of Reputation is likely to change multiple times in testing, but currently we're shooting for 1 Reputation per hour...
Every four straight hours the character earns Reputation, the amount earned increases slightly (currently by .25), up to a limit of something like 10 points per hour.
That sounds perfect to me, and is definitely in the same ballpark as my own suggestion.
Personally, I was thinking more along the lines of regaining 100 Reputation points per day, maximum, with the losses as currently defined. That means it would take over a month to work off a single kill of a Max Reputation character, and most of a week to work off a kill of a 0 Rep character.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Morbis:
I think you would only need three settlements. LN, TN, CN, or NG, TN, NE. Even so, three settlements is just as much a problem as four is, early on. I think your citizens who play in a different style will have to associate in different towns. I can see some towns being willing to provide membership to those outside of their company, with some reciprocal good will.
I like what I see in this blog. I'm not sure of all the nuts and bolts yet (Bluddwolf's point of reputation bombs is a fair point), but I like the big picture so far.
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Goblin Squad Member
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3. How do you plan on preventing players from using naked noobs as reputation bombs?
You may have seen some of this before...
@Elth - the classic problem with naked PK is that it remains a viable tactic over a long period of time.
What we want to do is create a feedback loop where the more you do that, the harder it becomes to do it again, and eventually it becomes so hard that the PKer abandons the tactic.
Spoiler:If that feedback loop operates swiftly enough then the average PK ganker who is just in it for the lulz won't get enough positive reinforcement to do it at all and the problem stops before it starts.There's no one tactic that makes that happen. It has to be a layered approach.
Our layers are:
Flagging: If you get a flag (a state-condition with some meaningful in-game effect) that lets other characters kill you without penalty, then your character becomes a target for all the people who want to do PvP but who don't want negative consequences. In other words, you become their content.
Security: In certain areas NPCs will spawn, move rapidly to your location, and kill you. This is a graduated system - the closer you are to the "hub" of the secure area, the faster the response. At a certain point, the response is so fast that you die before you can kill your victim. And in some areas, it's so strong that you're prohibited from attacking your victim at all - if your victim can flee to one of those areas, they'll be safe.
Bounties: If someone kills you you can choose to put a bounty on that killer. Bounty systems have a lot of known flaws and we think we've worked around most of them with this tweak: You choose who can accept the bounty. That allows players to develop "bounty hunter" characters who are known to a) succeed, and b) not split the bounty with the target. We also envision a system where you can continue to re-instate the bounty as long as you wish, so if you are wealthy, and you get killed, you can make life miserable for your killer for a very, very long time.
Alignment: A character's alignment dictates what kind of Settlements they can belong to. A character's Settlement dictates what kind of training, resources, markets, allies, and potentially character abilities that character can use. The more grief you cause, the worse your alignment, and eventually you'll only be able to access the worst sort of Settlement. That will have a direct influence on your character's relative power vs. other characters of a similar age.
Distance: Your character will respawn at a designated place when it dies. As your alignment worsens you'll find the selection of places where you can respawn becoming more and more limited, and those places are likely to be further and further from the potential targets that you've selected. That means that you'll have to traverse a lot of distance to get back to wherever it is that you're trying to hunt, and that exposes you to the danger of moving through the game world without a lot of gear to help you survive.
We also don't intend to let characters have any real PvP capabilities "naked". You'll have to wear some kind of protection, have to use some kind of consumable, and generally be burning economic assets of some kind when you fight other players. So there will always be a cost to engage in PvP. You won't be able to run up to a character wearing nothing and stab your target to death with a newbie dagger.
Also there is a layered series of "defenses" as well.
Running Away: This is a tactic that you have to master. When you detect hostile forces in the area you're in, if you're not prepared to deal with them, you need to bug out. If you flee before they engage you, it will be highly likely (maybe "certain" but I'm wary of that term) that you can escape before combat begins.
Calling for Help: Everyone in Pathfinder Online is going to swiftly figure out that being a lone wolf is really, really hard. Being a part of a social organization is the best way to make progress. So when you get into trouble you should be able to call on allies. The arrival of reinforcements can rapidly shift a battle in your favor. Being a part of an organized, coordinated, group with good communications is going to be a huge asset.
We're Watching: If someone is causing you grief, report that behavior. We'll take swift action if we decide that the person is misbehaving. Our justice will be swift, and arbitrary. Players will learn that they shouldn't try to figure out where the line is; there is no line. Bad behavior is in the eye of the beholder, and the eye is ours. (I should note that being killed by someone is not misbehavior. Misbehavior is intentionally inflicting emotional distress on another player without any in-game rationale.)
Death Isn't that Big a Deal: In a theme park game, you typically wear the very best armor and use the very best weapon you can afford/acquire. In a sandbox game, that's the wrong way to play. You should never leave a safe area with more than a faction of your character's net worth; maybe 10% is a good number. You should expect to die often and to lose what you're carrying. So you don't put your character's assets at risk to one or two setbacks. You get killed, you respawn, you re-equip, and then you choose what to do next. You might decide not to go back to wherever you got killed and instead go somewhere else. A trip through the dead book should not be seen as a requirement to go back and get whacked again. As the man said, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is one of the definitions of insanity. :)
I hope that's a helpful summary of our strategy.
RyanD
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Goblin Squad Member
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Or just make one settlement TN. That will be one step away from both extreme alignments and would allow everyone.
That would solve the issue with large organizations like Pax.
In Pathfinder, you can't go diagonal as one step on the alignment chart. You have to take a step on the Law/Chaos axis, and then one on the Good/Evil axis.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like what I see in this blog. I'm not sure of all the nuts and bolts yet (Bluddwolf's point of reputation bombs is a fair point), but I like the big picture so far.
So do I. As for reputation bombs, the answer is simple, don't take the bait. As new characters, they would only be capable of equipping the most basic arms and armor. If they attack first they are hostile and you can kill them without loss. If not, then they are wasting their time if you ignore them.
Even if they decide to run into a fireball, one hit won't kill them, and you just need to not Hit them again for thirty seconds.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I see that the developers are still pushing for the One-Step alignment rule when it comes to settlements...Whoever was giving you the idea they'd abandoned it was misleading you...
Since it was Tork Shaw, you know, one of the people actually developing the game, I think my hopes were, perhaps, warranted.
Nein. I cannot ;) Well, I can try... The choice of alignment for settlements/VCs is possibly slightly more fluid than simply 1 step. It is possible that we will need to allow a settlement to choose which of the 9 alignments they permit, and to allow them to be much more permissive. I'm still playing with this a bit (as I battle with VC/settlement relationships) but a single step restriction is potentially going to be too harsh - particularly early on in the game's life.
Hey look, I have quotes too!
And yeah, it is my understanding that a TN Settlement wouldn't solve our issue in a One-Step environment. That would be two steps. We would still need at least three settlements under our influence to fully facilitate our players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope getting to the extreme +- 7000 or higher on any axis requires constant dedication.
For example to get to -7500 evil you have to be constantly be doing evil acts. So while you can get to evil without very much difficulty to get to the truly evil numbers you have to make being evil a goal. On the other side to keep a +7000 good alignment should be tough. If im a paladin and I kill more than one person unprovoked i should drop far enough that I lose my paladin abilities since i should lose a HUGE amount of alignment points. Then getting back to +7000 needs to be a MAJOR effort so that i can get back my paladin abilities.
Same with law and chaos. While it might be easy to get past neutral and be good or evil being totally evil or totally good or totally law or totally chaos needs to be something that takes time and effort and something where if you do the opposite you lose major points.
I like reputation. If nothing else people might look at it as a general can i trust this guy type of meter. People may or may not be willing to deal directly with low rep characters. For one they dont know if they will get killed and robbed (due to low rep needing to meet outside of settlements). I forsee being a spy or a middleman might be profitable.
I would like to see alignment/reputation hits/gains be influenced by your company/settlement and role. So lets say im a paladin using paladin abilities and im in a LG company. If i say go crazy and kill a group of people and rob them I should take alignment lose from killing/robbing unprovoked, I should take Extra lose from having high alignment (since i should have 7000+ because of being a paladin), I should take an extra hit because my company is LG, then i should take extra because i used paladin abilities to do it. Sure it may seem like sticking it to me, but i think thats the price you pay.
Only thing is that aside from say unprovoked killing/grave robbing what kinds of actions can you do to shift evil? what kind of actions would be lawful or chaotic?
I look forward to seeing what they come up for that.
The idea of existing out-of-game groups coming and have PFO's grouping mechanism cater to them I think just inherently is breaking in-game consistency/roleplay. Expecting to come in and not be subject to any particularities of PFO (Alignment), i.e. approach it as a generic lowest common denominator game, is just not a reasonable assumption. That said, I understand the interest there and think that can be a good thing for PFO.
If you want to do that within PFO, I think your pre-existing group will just need to organize outside of PFO's internal group mechanisms... And have multiple in-game groups as needed to cover the alignment range. That said, if not EVERY Alignment in represented in your group, e.g. no CE, it quickly becomes easier to cover all the bases. Anyhow, if you have a large out-of-game group, getting multiple settlements going shouldn't be too difficult... While just starting out, Alignment-incompatable characters can even participate in activities without being official settlement member, the settlement can sell them training at the same cost as official members, i.e. not much difference in gameplay... These characters can even be integrated into 'squads' or 'sub-guilds' as needed. Eventually multiple (different alignment) settlements will be within your meta-group's means and there won't be much further problems, with these settlements able to cooperate, and eventually form a multi-settlement 'kingdom'.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Right. Did my second read through. Some information in there that I think I have questions about. I see that the developers are still pushing for the One-Step alignment rule when it comes to settlements, and I am curious about how they see metagame organizations coming into Pathfinder dealing with that. Obviously Pax is one of those organizations, but there will be others in the future larger than we are, and some clarity might be nice for them as well.
We are a fairly large organization. Not by EvE standards, but for most other games we do fairly well numbers wise. We have members that range the gambit from murderous crazy people (that's me!) to … well, we have Hobs. Our general intention was that we would be able to provide a home for the majority of those people, either in Calambea or Golgotha.
This seems to sink that intent. From the sounds of it we are either going to have to run four settlements, one at each neutral extreme, or we are going to have to throw players to the wolves. If Callambea is Lawful Neutral, and Golgotha is Lawful Evil, what do we do with our Chaotic Good players? Do we tell them, sorry, we know you have been playing with us for seven years, but you either play the way we tell you to play, or you leave?
I doubt this is what you want to hear, but I'm glad you're going to be forced to make meaningful choices and tradeoffs. You will have to do social and political work, and end up "in the mix" with other groups trying to maximize power while trying to accommodate play styles.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Pax Morbis, Tork Shaw's statements were very, very qualified: "possibly", "slightly", "potentially". Unfortunately, some took that as gospel and tried to "spread the word".
I know what your insinuation was. You were implying that I had heard it from Bludd, or one of Bludds lackeys. That wasn't the case. The last thing we heard about the alignment system in regards to settlements seemed to hint that they were thinking about moving away from One Step. Straight from the mouth (fingers) of the developer that, seemingly, is the person whose primary workload was refining those systems, no less.
Your continued inability to move passed this little feud you have with Bluddwolf is beginning to grow childish.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Quote:
Higher end structures, like tier 2 and 3 training and crafting facilities, require the settlement have its minimum Reputation set to certain levels to function. So if you want your town to have awesome training and crafting facilities, you have to set a high minimum Reputation to enter the settlement. This means characters that do a lot of PvP outside of wars, feuds, and such will be forced to visit less developed settlements that are wretched hives of scum and villainy.
I'm shocked - shocked! - to find out that a certain bandit's plans to basically ignore Reputation and still have access to high end training won't pan out.
True, for those bandit groups that do not adhere to the feud, war or faction systems. Also, there are raids against outposts, and caravans, that have been described as at least reputation neutral. Then we still have SAD system.... Oh the glorious SAD!
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I have two concerns with the alignment system, assuming that I read it correctly.
The first, is that is appears that Lawful Good characters are going to be inherently more powerful than all other characters thanks to their settlement being ‘more powerful’. This will potentially reduce the game to having the majority of the player base be LG. From a role-play point of view that seems fairly dull. Also, why are these Lawful Good towns all trying to kill each other?
Secondly, linking Reputation to alignment access goes even further to prevent people from making evil characters. It I am playing an evil necromancer in the woods and have a low reputation/evil alignment for all of my dastardly deeds, people could assume that I got that low reputation for being abusive/racist/misogynist in the chat window. That’s enough that I wouldn’t make the character.
I foresee a game populated by Paladins in my future.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah so this brings us back to where we started: Alignment is the genre changing aspect of Pathfinder and in it's core it is an attempt to make players roleplay.Not all PvP is the result of feuds, wars and faction alliances. How can a player role play a bandit or a raider and still maintain a decent reputation? How about role playing a duelist?
If you're role playing an evil character, for example, an evil bandit who attacks and kills innocent people, then the system marks you as evil and having a low reputation.
Win.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I doubt this is what you want to hear, but I'm glad you're going to be forced to make meaningful choices and tradeoffs. You will have to do social and political work, and end up "in the mix" with other groups trying to maximize power while trying to accommodate play styles.Right. Did my second read through. Some information in there that I think I have questions about. I see that the developers are still pushing for the One-Step alignment rule when it comes to settlements, and I am curious about how they see metagame organizations coming into Pathfinder dealing with that. Obviously Pax is one of those organizations, but there will be others in the future larger than we are, and some clarity might be nice for them as well.
We are a fairly large organization. Not by EvE standards, but for most other games we do fairly well numbers wise. We have members that range the gambit from murderous crazy people (that's me!) to … well, we have Hobs. Our general intention was that we would be able to provide a home for the majority of those people, either in Calambea or Golgotha.
This seems to sink that intent. From the sounds of it we are either going to have to run four settlements, one at each neutral extreme, or we are going to have to throw players to the wolves. If Callambea is Lawful Neutral, and Golgotha is Lawful Evil, what do we do with our Chaotic Good players? Do we tell them, sorry, we know you have been playing with us for seven years, but you either play the way we tell you to play, or you leave?
That is really uncertain, and depends on if the one step rule carries over to kingdom level alliances. If it does Pax will be forced into a position to discuss and plan based on the majority of interest versus the majority of mechanical benefits.
Luckily Golgotha is on the same page in that regard. It is a shame for the roleplayers open to working with other alignments, but in a worse case scenario it does not hamper the meta game much.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah so this brings us back to where we started: Alignment is the genre changing aspect of Pathfinder and in it's core it is an attempt to make players roleplay.Not all PvP is the result of feuds, wars and faction alliances. How can a player role play a bandit or a raider and still maintain a decent reputation? How about role playing a duelist?
If you're role playing an evil character, for example, an evil bandit who attacks and kills innocent people, then the system marks you as evil and having a low reputation.
Win.
Define "innocent".... In terms of available targets (outposts, caravans, feuds, wars, factions, etc.). A majority of targets a bandit will focus on will not reduce their reputation, nor will it move them towards evil.
Banditry is not Evil in the River Kingdoms, and it is not presumably in PFO. Chaotic, yes! But it can be conducted along the entire Good -> Neutral -> Evil range.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I know what your insinuation was. You were implying that I had heard it from Bludd, or one of Bludds lackeys.@Pax Morbis, Tork Shaw's statements were very, very qualified: "possibly", "slightly", "potentially". Unfortunately, some took that as gospel and tried to "spread the word".
I can't imagine where I would have gotten such an outlandish idea. And my sincere apologies for being "childish" by pointing out the error.
With the recent news that the 1 - step alignment restriction has been lifted...
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Goblin Squad Member
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So once again evil is handicapped. *sighs*
I will say the reputation system is more to my liking now.
Reputation can also be lost if the player is flagged for abusive behavior, such as racist comments, camping, abusing new players, etc. All the specifics of reporting and verifying such behavior are still being worked out but we hope to create a system that allows as much community control as possible.
That's going to get abused.
Alignment... meh. This...
The first, is that is appears that Lawful Good characters are going to be inherently more powerful than all other characters thanks to their settlement being ‘more powerful’. This will potentially reduce the game to having the majority of the player base be LG. From a role-play point of view that seems fairly dull. Also, why are these Lawful Good towns all trying to kill each other?
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Goblin Squad Member
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The first, is that is appears that Lawful Good characters are going to be inherently more powerful than all other characters thanks to their settlement being ‘more powerful’. This will potentially reduce the game to having the majority of the player base be LG. From a role-play point of view that seems fairly dull. Also, why are these Lawful Good towns all trying to kill each other?
No, LE will be equally powerful.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would be disappointed if evil and good communities could blend in PFO--if the game system supported servants of Iomedae and Rovagug partnering as one. It would make alignment meaningless.
Unable, or perhaps unwilling, to destroy him, the goddess Sarenrae sliced open a hole in the Material Plane, and the archdevil Asmodeus bound him with a key only the Prince of Darkness held.
NG and LE working together in Golarion. Imagine that.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It would make alignment meaningless.
Funnily enough, that is exactly what I think the One-Step method actually does. Lets be frank, this doesn't hurt the kind of players who don't care about alignment. People coming into the game to play the game can adjust such that they will fit into whatever alignment they need to. My concerns for Pax aren't that I won't be able to force my PvP'ers into playing True Neutral, and acting within the limits to remain so.
My concern is for the roleplayers who actually care about alignment. Pax can't have Chaotic Good players within Pax lands with this system. They can hang out, and we can sell them training maybe, but they won't be under our direct protection. We can pawn them off to an ally, sure. But that sucks for them.
This system doesn't encourage alignment to be used as a roleplay tool. It cripples the people who actually want to use it in their ability to play with their friends.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would be disappointed if evil and good communities could blend in PFO--if the game system supported servants of Iomedae and Rovagug partnering as one. It would make alignment meaningless.
Beyond roleplay, I honestly think alignment is meaningless. If it can be gamed to allow the majority of our members a vehicle to play the alignment that want, then that is the path we will take.
That said I disagree with your example. Well, given anyone dealing with the Rough Beast is not going to be liked by any other faithful person of most other deities. Then again evil gods and good gods have worked together, to imprison that same chaotic evil god.
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Goblin Squad Member
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No, LE will be equally powerful.
The first, is that is appears that Lawful Good characters are going to be inherently more powerful than all other characters thanks to their settlement being ‘more powerful’. This will potentially reduce the game to having the majority of the player base be LG. From a role-play point of view that seems fairly dull. Also, why are these Lawful Good towns all trying to kill each other?
In the most recent blog, please point out where that is stated explicitly.
Unrest: Unrest measures how unhappy your NPCs are, causing them to work less hard and decreasing crafting and training efficiency so they take longer. Unrest starts high for Evil settlements and low for Good settlements, but, like with Corruption, Unrest increases when vile deeds are committed. Thus a Good settlement that does not patrol its borders for necromancers and the like may end up with higher Unrest than an Evil settlement (because peasants in an Evil domain are somewhat inured to the immorality of their rulers).
If both Good and Evil are doing their due diligence, Good will be superior.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Reputation can also be lost if the player is flagged for abusive behavior, such as racist comments, camping, abusing new players, etc. All the specifics of reporting and verifying such behavior are still being worked out but we hope to create a system that allows as much community control as possible.That's going to get abused.
I actually think it will be fine as long as the rep loss comes with moderator review instead of being flagged.
For instance on the forums I can flag your comments if I feel they are abusive, but you wouldn't take rep loss until Chris Lambertz or someone else with some authority comes in, reviews the flag, and agrees with me that your comment was inappropriate.
Actually, since many games require you to tie your in-game account to forum accounts to access certain forum sections making it apply to your forum behavior isn't a bad idea at all. It might clean up some of the problems we've been having.
I'm not sure they should throw extra moderators at this, but it would be a nice tool to hand the moderators who will already be reviewing bad behavior.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To be fair, I can see the limitations on evil being used as a balancing factor. Again, lets be frank. It is much easier to be evil than it is to be good. I can accomplish my goals quicker, more efficiently, and with more force by acting in an evil manner than I can a good one. If the developers believe that the advantage I gain by being evil requires something to balance everything out, then so be it. If it turns out that we don't need that handicap, it will be removed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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LE is where all the power for evil settlements is going to be and thats expected. CE settlements....well thats going to be tougher. However if you sit down and look at CE vs LE is it not reasonable for LE cities to be effective and CE cities to not be so effective?
CE folks are going to be guys the LE settlement sends in a month before an invasion to attack a settlement before war is offically declared to soften the other settlement without being flagged for war.
So that good settlement is getting attacked. They are expending resources and they know that the LE settlement is pulling the strings, however because they sent in those 5 CE companies the good settlement cannot just start hitting back directly against the LE settlement unless they can declare war. So the LE guys are sitting pretty. Then lets say the good settlement declares war on the LE settlement. Well the LE settlement can STILL have the CE companies attack the good settlement because the CE folks dont care about rep or their alignments. On the other hand the good settlement has its hands tied because they cannot ask another good settlement to pitch in (as they would be flagged for unprovoked killing) without also declaring war and making themselves more vulnerable. Sure they could help, but they would always be on the defensive and they could only help against the CE folks not the LE settlement folks (since the LE settlement can attack the good settlement unprovoked since they are at war).
I will be sadly disappointed if the LE and NE settlements do not use every single sneaky underhanded EVIL technique and rule to try to win. They need to take every single advantage they have and use it to the fullest as long as its not mechanics abuse. I mean they are evil its what they do.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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LE is where all the power for evil settlements is going to be and thats expected. CE settlements....well thats going to be tougher. However if you sit down and look at CE vs LE is it not reasonable for LE cities to be effective and CE cities to not be so effective?CE folks are going to be guys the LE settlement sends in a month before an invasion to attack a settlement before war is offically declared to soften the other settlement without being flagged for war.
My concern is that under the current system you won’t see CE settlements, as they are much less powerful than LG ones.
Due to unrest being higher in Evil towns and Evil being partially tied to Reputation, it’s unlikely that you will see any true, by which I mean organized and active, towns other than LG.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Reputation can also be lost if the player is flagged for abusive behavior, such as racist comments, camping, abusing new players, etc. All the specifics of reporting and verifying such behavior are still being worked out but we hope to create a system that allows as much community control as possible.That's going to get abused.
Allowing the community to control reputation will be something that is abused. Especially if they think its necessary to funnel the masses of CE Low Rep players to sucky settlements. Those players are going to be the majority. So you either hand pick from the minority or let the inmates run the asylum.
I've got Ryan echoing in my head right now about his stance on banning. The reason they were going to have that handled like a mine field is because they couldn't support the staff necessary to handle the player population. The same thing will happen with this.
I don't want anyone from this community in control of saying whether or not something I have done should result in a loss of REP or banning. There's not going to be an appeal. Staff is different, but players policing players is a conflict of interest. I may be going a bit far on this, but "community control" of reputation screams "potential for abuse".
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Goblin Squad Member
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My concern is that under the current system you won’t see CE settlements, as they are much less powerful than LG ones.
Due to unrest being higher in Evil towns and Evil being partially tied to Reputation, it’s unlikely that you will see any true, by which I mean organized and active, towns other than LG.
Well the thing is I think we will see CE settlements, if nothing else because barbarians will need them. Not only that but there will be large groups of people who will be CE just because they are close to the type of player who just runs around ganking and randomly killing people just because. They will create a settlement where they can do what they want, and they will have ties with a LE or NE settlement in order to get the things they cant get.
I think that LE settlements will be the corner stone for evil. Im more worried about NG, CG, NE settlements being few and far between. true neutral will probably see decent play by big time crafting/merchanting people in order to get to the largest market possible.
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Goblin Squad Member
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No one is going to set their core alignment to CE, the bias against that alignment is too strong in GW. The players wishing to play Chaotic characters will roll CG or Can and then occasionally comit CE acts, and let the drift take them back to core.
Alignment is a mechanic in PFO, and not a meaningful system for social structures, or role playing. Factions will pan out the same way. They will be seen as an access to the most targets, and not as intended by Paizo.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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That's the point. CE is bad.
My concern is that under the current system you won’t see CE settlements, as they are much less powerful than LG ones.
And thats fine, as long as it made clear that playing a CE (Evil Barbarian?) character is not a valid choice.
I suppose my issue is that in Pathfinder a evil character is as, if not more, dangerous than a good one. Making all the evil/chaotic characters worse than the good/lawful ones in the MMO seems to be going in the wrong direction.
I would rather slay evil as good and good as evil, rather than perpetual good on good.
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Goblin Squad Member
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i dont buy that. CE are going to be the bruisers who can do ANYTHING without worry or concern.
You are a bandit group and some merchants need to be taught a lesson, but you dont want to shift your alignment too much, hire a CE company to kill those guys. Need a settlement softened up before your war? Hire a CE company to do it.
the CE folks are going to become the default mercenaries because they are not worried about alignment or rep. they will kill anyone without hesitation because they can do it without the concerns other players have. what will they charge? Access to your cities crafters? Perhaps they demand 40 T2 swords, 30 t2 plate armor....etc? perhaps they demand training time in your city?
They are going to be able to do things that CG players cannot do.
a ce barbarian will be viable. Perhaps in their settlement he can train all the high level barbarian things. however because its a CE settlement it might lack the ability to create top tier weapons. In that case the CE settlement will need to work with another settlement, creating player interaction.
Not only that but remember that LG has restrictions on it. They wont be able to just go and cause havoc just because. They wont be able to run around and see a group and attack unprovoked. While an evil group can jump who they want because they are not worried about losing their alignment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Seems to me like all paladins would have to be PvEr's, as the only listed way to actively gain Lawful and Good past +5000 would be PvE (the example given is an ability requiring +7000 of both). Hope this isn't the case, and some solution is found where people can be LG paladins crusading against the Evil players instead of the Evil NPC's.