Goblin Squad Member
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Will we know WHY we just flagged up criminal? Things other than stabbing faces will be illegal so is it designed to catch us by surprise or will we get a confirmation screen before certain potentially vague crimes? It can happen in character. "You've seen several no mining/no poaching/no trespassing/etc. signs posted. Do you want to continue anyway?". With a checkbox option to remove confirmations if you plan on being plenty chaotic.
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Ryan said they're avoiding bottlenecks and from the terrain in videos so far it looks like you can cross hexes nearly anywhere along their borders i.e. there aren't unpassable mountains or trees that function as walls with only a few road/doors to change areas. For exploratory and conflict reasons is that impression that hexes can be crossed nearly anywhere correct?
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While SAD can theoretically be for Good, let's face it basically ALL THE TIME you're harming someone else materially, physically, or both for your own personal gain and River Freedoms or not that is the corest type of Evil.
For game mechanics won't the initiator have to choose what financial "account" the SAD payment will go to? Robin Hoods can select the needy NPCs of PoorTown and get shifts in Chaotic and Good (while never having the funds themselves, they give it away remember, if GW doesn't mind an arbitrary gold sink). That could raise or lower that town's Unrest too depending on context.
But if the initiator chooses the SAD ransom to go somewhere like My Settlement, My Company, or My Pocket that is harming non-hostile others for personal gain which I think warrants a shift toward Chaotic and Evil.
Bludd can go kill heinous slavers also to stay Chaotic Neutral.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This would drive all bandits, whether they kill or not, to Chaotic Evil.
Thieves and Rogues in D&D have always been viewed as "Neutral" focused classes, with some dabbling in any and all directions, including lawful. But never Lawful Good or Chaotic Good.
The Chaotic Good is somewhat odd to me, and might be what Gary Gygax was referring to as a mistake in hindsight.
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Goblin Squad Member
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CG are those who prefer good behavior, have a sense of nobility and rightness, but for whom Law seems tyrannical and obedience is foreign. They choose for themselves whether to do things as opposed to referencing external regulation. CG is not a mistake, it is a choice. The good of the one is greater than the good of the collective.
NG are those who concede part of their power to choose to the majority while having similar reverence to the good, but retain a significant share of their liberty. The good of the one is equally important with the good of the collective.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Gary Gygax has noted in hindsight that this may have been an oversight, as alignment was never meant to be viewed as an absolute hierarchy of best to worst, and character classes should reflect their medieval fantasy counterparts, even into accurate ethical and moral alignment license. (citation needed)
It is not exactly clear what the "oversight" is. I believe Rogues not having access to Chaotic Good alignment was clearly an oversight, as Robin the Hood is the perfect example of a CG Bandit (Rogue / Thief).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just out of curiosity, did Robin Hood ever use any special rogue-like abilities? Backstabbing, lock-picking, etc.? Or was he mostly a lightly armored bowman living in a forest? Maybe, just maybe, he was a ranger-like character who stole from specific people, in a guerrilla campaign to overthrow an oppressor?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just out of curiosity, did Robin Hood ever use any special rogue-like abilities? Backstabbing, lock-picking, etc.? Or was he mostly a lightly armored bowman living in a forest? Maybe, just maybe, he was a ranger-like character who stole from specific people, in a guerrilla campaign to overthrow an oppressor?
Yes, he used stealth, concealment, ambush, trap making. I would imagine while infiltrating a castle he was not above backstabbing a guard or reaching from behind a slitting a throat.
@ Being,
CG Rogues may be called "Rogues". Barbarians are "Barbarians" whether they are any alignment other than lawful.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Stealth and camouflage are ranger skills as well, ambush and trap-making might be techniques; they aren't class skills for either rogue or ranger in PF.
I don't have an alternate suggest for the perfect example of a CG Rogue - maybe there isn't one. I just don't see a lot of Rogue example behavior in Robin Hood. I think he's much more of a Ranger than Rogue. Lives in the woods, uses a longbow (martial weapon) and is really good with it. Feeds himself by poaching deer (the difference between a ranger and a poacher being about ||).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Robin Hood was a bandit and not a rogue. One is a job the other a class.
This would drive all bandits, whether they kill or not, to Chaotic Evil.
I've always contended, and got the impression Bluddwolf agrees, that Alignment should reflect the sum of what you have DONE recently, and that's it. So if your character was out doing nothing but flouting laws and harming other characters for his personal gain a lot during the last five weeks, he's probably CE. And since it's entirely within bounds of the sandbox there should be no training blockage or other mechanical penalties for it.
This is just staying consistent with the established D&D and gaming principles.
Is there a word from devs on the other two items?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Property ownership should be in the realm of law or chaos, its a law that says it belongs to you and a crime for someone to take it, one person owning everything would not be 'good'. So a shift to chaos for SAD ,but good and evil cant be tied to an act of breaking the law in every case. The laws could be evil. You make a good argument for SAD shifting toward evil but CE has a special place in PFO that bandits don't belong in , it's for murdering and robbing .
The argument that anything that harms me must be evil makes bad weather evil as well as all aggressive animals but aren't animals neutral.If Bandit is a profession it should be neutral instead of it being just totally an act of evil, the bandit gives a choice to hand over your stuff or else, the government does that too, as long as you comply we all can carry on with what's left. So a shift towards neutral seems to fit PFO instead of toward evil.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The argument that anything that harms me must be evil makes bad weather evil as well as all aggressive animalCausing harm is a means, for one's own superficial material gain is an end. The combination is a pretty universal core definition of Evil.
So the means are not so important, as in the definition of a means to an end? You are defining 'one's own superficial material gain' as a core definition of evil, that would include all kinds of things beyond taking stuff from people, like treasure hunting. A character grabs some loot from the treasure and another character grabs it from them, does our concept of ownership in RL justify making it evil in the game world? My point was to look at Bandit as a profession like Merchant is a profession, being a merchant is all about their own material gain ,does their shallow desire for more wealth make it evil?
The bandit makes his own law , the merchant needs the law to protect their ever increasing pile of gold from people who have their own definition of right and wrong. In lawless lands it is not evil for the strong to dominate the weak and demand some of their stuff, of course I am not trying to fit our RL morality of 'Do Not Steal' into PFO.People don't want bandits to take their money so they hand over the same money to the government, who then declare bandits to be evil and justify killing their competition. If the bandits get strong enough they form a government and make it a crime for others to do what they do, which is to demand you hand over some loot, for your own good, lol.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The argument that anything that harms me must be evil makes bad weather evil as well as all aggressive animalCausing harm is a means, for one's own superficial material gain is an end. The combination is a pretty universal core definition of Evil.So the means are not so important, as in the definition of a means to an end? You are defining 'one's own superficial material gain' as a core definition of evil, that would include all kinds of things beyond taking stuff from people, like treasure hunting. A character grabs some loot from the treasure and another character grabs it from them, does our concept of ownership in RL justify making it evil in the game world? My point was to look at Bandit as a profession like Merchant is a profession, being a merchant is all about their own material gain ,does their shallow desire for more wealth make it evil?
The bandit makes his own law , the merchant needs the law to protect their ever increasing pile of gold from people who have their own definition of right and wrong. In lawless lands it is not evil for the strong to dominate the weak and demand some of their stuff, of course I am not trying to fit our RL morality of 'Do Not Steal' into PFO.People don't want bandits to take their money so they hand over the same money to the government, who then declare bandits to be evil and justify killing their competition. If the bandits get strong enough they form a government and make it a crime for others to do what they do, which is to demand you hand over some loot, for your own good, lol.
Isn't there an implied difference between paying a Govt. for roads, storage (and other public buildings), and relative protection within that Govts. domain and paying bandits not to kill you? I get that any Govt, that kills you for not paying taxes is just as bad as a bandit, except that they provide many other benefits than bandits do and most Govts. do not kill you for failure to pay taxes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Isn't there an implied difference between paying a Govt. for roads, storage (and other public buildings), and relative protection within that Govts. domain and paying bandits not to kill you? I get that any Govt, that kills you for not paying taxes is just as bad as a bandit, except that they provide many other benefits than bandits do and most Govts. do not kill you for failure...The argument that anything that harms me must be evil makes bad weather evil as well as all aggressive animalCausing harm is a means, for one's own superficial material gain is an end. The combination is a pretty universal core definition of Evil.So the means are not so important, as in the definition of a means to an end? You are defining 'one's own superficial material gain' as a core definition of evil, that would include all kinds of things beyond taking stuff from people, like treasure hunting. A character grabs some loot from the treasure and another character grabs it from them, does our concept of ownership in RL justify making it evil in the game world? My point was to look at Bandit as a profession like Merchant is a profession, being a merchant is all about their own material gain ,does their shallow desire for more wealth make it evil?
The bandit makes his own law , the merchant needs the law to protect their ever increasing pile of gold from people who have their own definition of right and wrong. In lawless lands it is not evil for the strong to dominate the weak and demand some of their stuff, of course I am not trying to fit our RL morality of 'Do Not Steal' into PFO.People don't want bandits to take their money so they hand over the same money to the government, who then declare bandits to be evil and justify killing their competition. If the bandits get strong enough they form a government and make it a crime for others to do what they do, which is to demand you hand over some loot, for your own good, lol.
Medieval government sometimes did kill you for not paying taxes. But, can we remember this is a game and not all real world occurrences do not apply.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would prefer PFO to have its own way of defining things and not try to mirror what the real world is like. I think I failed to keep my thoughts just on a PFO world and drifted into what RL is, hard to not do that.
The reason people accept governments rule over them is the promise of protection and benefits, oh wait that's RL again lol, well in the game it will be the same.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Robin Hood was a bandit and not a rogue. One is a job the other a class.
This would drive all bandits, whether they kill or not, to Chaotic Evil.I've always contended, and got the impression Bluddwolf agrees, that Alignment should reflect the sum of what you have DONE recently, and that's it. So if your character was out doing nothing but flouting laws and harming other characters for his personal gain a lot during the last five weeks, he's probably CE. And since it's entirely within bounds of the sandbox there should be no training blockage or other mechanical penalties for it.
This is just staying consistent with the established D&D and gaming principles.
Is there a word from devs on the other two items?
Robin Hood is like Batman; there are too many versions of these characters to refer to them as distinct individuals without precisely defining the version you're talking about.
As to CE settlements/training, I could see making them havea much higher maintenance cost, paid more frequently, in order to combat the inherent corruption. Good or Lawful (you don't necessarily need both) societies which either have no desire to screw each other over or at least respect and enforce laws to keep from turning in upon themselves should find it cheaper and less expensive to keep their DI high and effects dependent upon DI running efficiently. Besides cost and frequency of upkeep, a CE settlement might need a vulnerability window twice as wide as a Good or Lawful one. There are a lot of ways to make things an increasingly worse PITA as the society descends into increasingly worse corruption and brutality, without an absolute hard-cap.
And next on Changing Hexes, these tavern owners pimp their neighbours' window treatments with 400 coin and help from out interior designers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As to CE settlements/training, I could see making them havea much higher maintenance cost, paid more frequently, in order to combat the inherent corruption. Good or Lawful (you don't necessarily need both) societies which either have no desire to screw each other over or at least respect and enforce laws to keep from turning in upon themselves should find it cheaper and less expensive to keep their DI high and effects dependent upon DI running efficiently. Besides cost and frequency of upkeep, a CE settlement might need a vulnerability window twice as wide as a Good or Lawful one. There are a lot of ways to make things an increasingly worse PITA as the society descends into increasingly worse corruption and brutality, without an absolute hard-cap.And next on Changing Hexes, these tavern owners pimp their neighbours' window treatments with 400 coin and help from out interior designers.
This is an argument for equity not equality and that is a fair compromise. Alignment is about differences not about a hierarchy of power. Lawful is more organized than Chaotic, but Rome fell to Barbarians. The most powerful countries in the world were rarely "Good", and they more often than not fell due to internal struggles or the combined efforts of many nations against them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I was tired when I wrote that last, so forgive the typos which occurred due to incomplete edits when I changed the way I wanted to phrase something. I guess it remains intelligible enough, but I'd still like to clarify.
Basically, I was saying that a CE settlement might need to pay more in upkeep (more costly), make payments more frequently (less convenient), and would probably need a wider vulnerability window to achieve the same DI as a settlement which is strongly Lawful or Good. The L or G settlements are able to cooperate over the long term and are thus able to use their upkeep more efficiently (less total cost due to low corruption/waste), are able to pay less frequently (can 'bank' future payments), and people on guard duty don't need micromanaging to keep them on task (assuming the NPCs a settlement attracts reflect its overall character).
I hope that's a little more coherent, thanks.
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I was tired when I wrote that last, so forgive the typos which occurred due to incomplete edits when I changed the way I wanted to phrase something. I guess it remains intelligible enough, but I'd still like to clarify.
Basically, I was saying that a CE settlement might need to pay more in upkeep (more costly), make payments more frequently (less convenient), and would probably need a wider vulnerability window to achieve the same DI as a settlement which is strongly Lawful or Good. The L or G settlements are able to cooperate over the long term and are thus able to use their upkeep more efficiently (less total cost due to low corruption/waste), are able to pay less frequently (can 'bank' future payments), and people on guard duty don't need micromanaging to keep them on task (assuming the NPCs a settlement attracts reflect its overall character).
I hope that's a little more coherent, thanks.
So really, it wouldn't be tied to alignment as much as the inverse of their corruption and unrest.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So really, it wouldn't be tied to alignment as much as the inverse of their corruption and unrest.I was tired when I wrote that last, so forgive the typos which occurred due to incomplete edits when I changed the way I wanted to phrase something. I guess it remains intelligible enough, but I'd still like to clarify.
Basically, I was saying that a CE settlement might need to pay more in upkeep (more costly), make payments more frequently (less convenient), and would probably need a wider vulnerability window to achieve the same DI as a settlement which is strongly Lawful or Good. The L or G settlements are able to cooperate over the long term and are thus able to use their upkeep more efficiently (less total cost due to low corruption/waste), are able to pay less frequently (can 'bank' future payments), and people on guard duty don't need micromanaging to keep them on task (assuming the NPCs a settlement attracts reflect its overall character).
I hope that's a little more coherent, thanks.
In a way, except that a CE settlement would be heavy on corruption and unrest all the time. Their default mode is 'everyone for themselves' which is a direct hindrance to cooperation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The Empire was able to organize to control a lot of territory and build monumental achievements even though they were cutthroat (or Force choke) CE. Drow too. And Decepticons.
And a L or G is supposed to be even worse in unrest and corruption if it can't control it's own land, so there's a steadiness to a NE or CE settlement that you always know roughly what to expect.
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Sure, you expect the worst. With sufficient imagination for what the worst may be you're either prepared or pleasantly surprised.
CE is operating as if it has high corruption and unrest as a default. They don't attempt to enforce laws or drive out brutality and abuse, so those on the top of the dogpile are slightly happier not and then, but still have to assume the worst or get knocked down.
Rome was not CE, more like LE (obey or be punished severely), but there were enough differences from one century to the next and one ruler to the next that Rome suffers from the same Batman problem as any other example which tries to sweep a very broad range under a single generalization. Even so, regardless of our differing estimations, that's comparing real, nonmagical history containing tons of complex factors against a fictional setting that has magic and only a loose simulation. On Earth there is no 'alignment energy' as an objective force and no one with a detection spell to read it if there were.
The drow were aligned by author fiat, and that author is not on the PFO dev team, as far as I'm aware. The drow also had rules about when they could get away with murdering one another, so they still have an internal structure and hierarchy. A goblin tribe is a better representative of CE than Menzoberranzan, and they'll actually appear in PFO.
Ultimately, the dev team are the authors who make the fiat here. They're in charge of assigning alignment values to actions and the effects that follow from getting some of it on you. If they create a bug which makes torturing celestials a LG act, then that'll just be a screwed-up fact of life in the world until it's fixed.
I am suggesting that there be no hard cap to DI imposed by the claimed alignment, but that there be mechanics for making the building and maintenance of a high-DI settlement cheaper, more efficient, and more convenient depending on how cooperative your society is. Having a high degree of cooperation (whether via goodwill or a code of laws) will let you run your settlement with those advantages. Making little or no attempt to cooperate means any great achievements will end up being very expensive to attain and maintain, inconvenient to manage, and unstable in the longer term. A society which claims to be Good or Lawful but does little to drive out the heinous or enforce its laws against criminals will lose their cooperation advantages, because they're operating as if they were not of the cooperative alignment they claim.
As a suggestion, made primarily to those who have the power to define alignments and their effects, this is possible.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Chaos isn't the physical inability to act in an organized fashion. It's the moral belief nothing outside your self has an *inherent* right to make you. (Not titles, regulations, traditions, codes, etc.)
If an outside party has the power to say build this grand structure or we will atomize you and everything you ever knew, that's an example of what they mean by not being chaotic stupid; organizing and respecting power for a second reason -out of self-preservation- but not those moral codes they still don't recognize.
If your statement "the organization that provides coherence strongly suggests law" is in fact true and law is prerequisite for coherence and organization, then logical deduction leads to there can be no chaotic permanent settlements.
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Chaos isn't the physical inability to act in an organized fashion. It's the moral belief nothing outside your self has an *inherent* right to make you. (Not titles, regulations, traditions, codes, etc.)
If an outside party has the power to say build this grand structure or we will atomize you and everything you ever knew, that's an example of what they mean by not being chaotic stupid; organizing and respecting power for a second reason -out of self-preservation- but not those moral codes they still don't recognize.
If your statement "the organization that provides coherence strongly suggests law" is in fact true and law is prerequisite for coherence and organization, then logical deduction leads to there can be no chaotic permanent settlements.
In a world where ethics & morals are objectively-measurable energy states, the alignments are about actions and results, not motives or beliefs. Even the divine powers of the setting are subject to them; if Sarenrae starts endorsing genocide, she doesn't change the definitions of Good & Evil, she changes herself from Good to Evil. The GM (in this case, the dev team) acts in a metadivine capacity, determining what actions cause you to get some alignment on you, and what effects that has. In a tabletop game you may have a GM who doesn't pay attention to alignment until there's an extreme situation, but in PFO the server does the bookkeeping.
People accomplish more when they cooperate, and both Good & Law represent forms of cooperation which don't require constant force & intimidation of one's own supposed allies. If you do have to micromanage and force them, you'll lose efficiency & resources where there are gaps.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Chaos isn't the physical inability to act in an organized fashion. It's the moral belief nothing outside your self has an *inherent* right to make you. (Not titles, regulations, traditions, codes, etc.)
If an outside party has the power to say build this grand structure or we will atomize you and everything you ever knew, that's an example of what they mean by not being chaotic stupid; organizing and respecting power for a second reason -out of self-preservation- but not those moral codes they still don't recognize.
If your statement "the organization that provides coherence strongly suggests law" is in fact true and law is prerequisite for coherence and organization, then logical deduction leads to there can be no chaotic permanent settlements.
So let's look at your example. If The big ugly empire is forcing your chaotics to build, are the chaotics more than tools the big ugly is using for its own tyrannical objectives? If so is it the guy swinging the hammer or the hammer he uses? Do guns murder?
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is part of the reason why I (personaly) generaly dislike overuse of Alignments in TableTop campaigns.
Outside of clearly supernatural acts. It can be really difficult to adjucate in a coherent fashion that will find broad agreement without causing alot of cognitive dissonence for players or devolving the campaign into a rather cartoonish state.
Robin Hood is a perfect example. Is he "LG" or "CG" or "CE"? Well one could say that he was a Saxon nobleman waging a "lawfull" war against and unjust Prince that had usurped his brothers throne and was actively seeking to support the lawfull, but absent King. Or one could say that he was a plain and simple murderer who was waylaying and killing Norman soldiers purely because they were Norman and were lawfully serving thier Prince and that there was no "Lawfull War" going on becase the Saxon's, including Robin's liege had signed a Peace accord with the Normans. Furthermore he had just returned from the "Holy Land" where he was busily involved in murdering Saracens and trying to steal thier land from them just because they believed in a different God then he, even though that was a lawfully declared War?
Would we suddenly regard an organization that promoted absolute chaos and anarchy as suddenly "lawfull" because they had organized in thier attempt to destroy all government, law and structure?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe that is why alignment can only really work in a fictional setting where it is defined, parsed, and judged (even if not all actions can be tracked) by a single entity (GM best but computer needed on this scale). You can debate what is lawful or chaotic, what is good or evil all that you want. In the end it is the GM or the computer programmed by the GM that sets those values in their universe.
It is an admittedly limited system. It is worth a try and may turn out to be revolutionary when it is fully developed, given time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It can be really difficult to adjucate in a coherent fashion that will find broad agreement...
I will gladly stipulate that everything you said is true, but I think it's also important to realize that the same kinds of arguments will occur about every system; consider the endless arguments that arise whenever class balance is discussed in other games.
It's far less important to me that Goblinworks make Alignment in Pathfinder Online match my own personal take on Good and Evil - I don't even see eye-to-eye with my wife on some really important things. What's important is making this true:
It will be really nice if that same system is also capable of stopping patently ridiculous situations like a Paladin being rewarded for murdering a quest-giver's political enemies by giving them poison (this was one of the things that really irritated me with the Diplomacy quest line in Vanguard when I started my Paladin in Tursh).
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We'll see how GW's ends up working out. I'll root for em even if I'm not all that optomistic.
My preference is to mostly not use Alignment in table-top outside of clearly supernatural situations and even there I tend to find it far too crude to be usefull in most situations.
Example: Joe-Schmoe is "NG" and spends all his time clear-cutting wilderness to make room for his city which is really overburdened with populatuion top expand. Joe's within 1 step of his chosen diety so all should be hunky dorey right?..... Problem Joe's diety is a Goddess of Nature, think she's thrilled about his clear-cutting her Domain, even though the God of Industry (also within 1 step of Joe) might think it's awesome.
Leaves me asking myself just how much utility those 2 letters on a character sheet actualy have to me as a GM (in the case of the campaigns I run as a GM, not much) but again we're talking TableTop here and my own personal style/preference for running things.
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Example: Joe-Schmoe is "NG" and spends all his time clear-cutting wilderness to make room for his city which is really overburdened with populatuion top expand. Joe's within 1 step of his chosen diety so all should be hunky dorey right?..... Problem Joe's diety is a Goddess of Nature, think she's thrilled about his clear-cutting her Domain, even though the God of Industry (also within 1 step of Joe) might think it's awesome.
I see this more as a problem between Joe and his chosen deity, not really a problem of Alignment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Leaves me asking myself just how much utility those 2 letters on a character sheet actualy have...
And just to touch on this, too, those two letters are only one piece of information. They're good for broad-stroke analysis, but fail to capture the full picture that really includes things like faction affiliations and personal history.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@GrumpyMel, to me that's the same as saying that choosing a specific deity is pointless because you can't sum up the entirety of your character with just a deity choice.
Alignment, in a roleplaying sense, is a part of your character, indicating how you think the person will generally respond when open-ended moral questions are put before them (of course with exceptions and caveats and everything that make them a more fleshed out character).
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Goblin Squad Member
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It can be really difficult to adjucate in a coherent fashion that will find broad agreement
Exactly why I keep advocating that it should be a purely role playing tool, meta and without affect other than the Paladinesque situations. Then we can use it to inform our personal rp experience or forget about it completely; since both styles have to cohabitate.
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Disconnecting alignment from meaning appears to be an attempt to work around alignment consequences resulting from in-game behavior. GW already separated alignment into rep and alignment responding to these issues. If we ask them to now also separate the consequences from reputation into karma it isn't going to become somehow acceptable to those who dislike disadvantages attached to advantages.
It would be simpler to just do what you intend and moderate your character's behavior to be harmonious with your own intentions and let the game systems monitor and record the consequences for the game the way you will monitor and record your experiences in your memory.
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It can be really difficult to adjucate in a coherent fashion that will find broad agreementExactly why I keep advocating that it should be a purely role playing tool, meta and without affect other than the Paladinesque situations. Then we can use it to inform our personal rp experience or forget about it completely; since both styles have to cohabitate.
My concern with ignoring it completely is that you then don't have the defined process of analyzing the Alignment implications of the actions you're asking the characters to perform, and you end up with situations like asking a Paladin to murder some quest-giver's political enemies in order to advance an important story path. Much better, in my opinion, to be conscious of Alignment at every turn.
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My concern with ignoring it completely is that you then don't have the defined process of analyzing the Alignment implications of the actions you're asking the characters to perform, and you end up with situations like asking a Paladin to murder some quest-giver's political enemies in order to advance an important story path. Much better, in my opinion, to be conscious of Alignment at every turn.It can be really difficult to adjucate in a coherent fashion that will find broad agreementExactly why I keep advocating that it should be a purely role playing tool, meta and without affect other than the Paladinesque situations. Then we can use it to inform our personal rp experience or forget about it completely; since both styles have to cohabitate.
Which is why I never said the game should remove or ignore completely I said "except for Paladinesque situations". The alignment label is a key thread in the fabric of some archetypes. Ryan expects many players to ignore their label and its rp implications completely.
I've never said don't measure it, just don't attach mechanical affects to the character window label apart from those archetypal concerns. Because anyone can habitually engage in the stated undesired behavior of acting chaotically + evilly regardless of the alignment label in their character window.
It would be simpler to just do what you intend and moderate your character's behavior to be harmonious with your own intentions and let the game systems monitor and record the consequences for the game the way you will monitor and record your experiences in your memory.
We can all paraphrase how Steelwing would respond to that by now, right?
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It would be simpler to just do what you intend and moderate your character's behavior to be harmonious with your own intentions and let the game systems monitor and record the consequences for the game the way you will monitor and record your experiences in your memory.We can all paraphrase how Steelwing would respond to that by now, right?
Go ahead and paraphrase I am curious now :)
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I've never said don't measure it, just don't attach mechanical affects to it apart from those archetypal concerns.
You're right, you weren't advocating ignoring it completely, and I shouldn't have argued as if you were.
I guess my real concern with not attaching mechanical effects to it is that it's kind of like not attaching mechanical effects to Faction. Sure, some players will want to play characters with high standing in two mutually exclusive Factions, mostly because of the mechanical benefits. At the tabletop, that might work because the GM can adjudicate the effects of disguises and alternate identities. But I don't see that working in an MMO.
Having a Chaotic Evil character be shunned seems perfectly appropriate to me. But even more than that, I see it as an integral part of Ryan's plan to keep the murder-happy jerks from turning PFO into a murder simulator, and that goal is far, far more important to me than pretty much any other consideration.
Go ahead and paraphrase I am curious now :)Just a guess, but I think you would say something on the order of: "I was hoping for a little competition but if you value other qualities more than your ability to enjoy those qualities be my guest."
That doesn't even make sense as a reply to what Proxima Sin suggested he could paraphrase
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Goblin Squad Member
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I guess my real concern with not attaching mechanical effects to it is that it's kind of like not attaching mechanical effects to Faction.
I have to admit I was on the other side of the river from making the jump to detaching mechanical affect from other institutions like faction.
Having a Chaotic Evil character be shunned seems perfectly appropriate to me. But even more than that, I see it as an integral part of Ryan's plan to keep the murder-happy jerks from turning PFO into a murder simulator, and that goal is far, far more important to me than pretty much any other consideration.
Murder simulator results in the parallel consequences of CE shift and rep loss, which is a huge, huge distinction to me from CE means all you can do is murder. I feel since murder simulator is an illegitimate way to play, attaching some trappings of legitimate play to it in addition to the rep loss diminishes the clear boundary of right and foul.
CE should be shunned, by Goods and anyone who feels a double cross is likely, which is a deserved limitation of the alignment label derived from rp.
But equating the CE label with murderous EVE Hooligan and nerfing the CE label to nerf the hooliganism I feel is 1.) unnecessary because reputation is supposed to do that and 2.) ineffective because actual murderous EVE Hooligans are going to be anything but the CE label and find the ways to avoid it long term which again tosses the job to reputation and 3.) never addresses all the other kinds of MMO problem behavior like scamming or flaming which is also taken up by -say it with me- reputation.
EE will bear this out for the majority of us here so who is going to volunteer to game Core alignment and risk nerfing ourselves while breaking bad to plug that hole before actual EVE Hooligans do it for real?
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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One of The points of alignment is that people who are grinding alignment can't also be murderhobos at the same time. The ratio of time spent grinding alignment to murderhoboing can be adjusted later to control the population of murderous vagrants.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One of The points of alignment is that people who are grinding alignment can't also be murderhobos at the same time. The ratio of time spent grinding alignment to murderhoboing can be adjusted later to control the population of murderous vagrants.
Isn't designing that in completely ignoring the fact that reputation has already been designed for measuring how a player behaves in game and applying suckage consequences, including murderers?
There are even ways to physically stop murder sprees soon after they start, which is the most protective thing to do for the community in that area, which are not being implemented in favor of making a particular alignment less viable to play within the rules. That is confusing to me.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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One of The points of alignment is that people who are grinding alignment can't also be murderhobos at the same time. The ratio of time spent grinding alignment to murderhoboing can be adjusted later to control the population of murderous vagrants.Isn't designing that in completely ignoring the fact that reputation has already been designed for measuring how a player behaves in game and applying suckage consequences, including murderers?
There are even ways to physically stop murder sprees soon after they start, which is the most protective thing to do for the community in that area, which are not being implemented in favor of making a particular alignment less viable to play within the rules. That is confusing to me.
I'm not sure I understand what it means to say a particular alignment is less viable to play; do you mean that players who want to play a character that is Chaotic Evil (but not generally so to other player characters) should be the same as players who want to play a character who is the best wolf hunter?
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Goblin Squad Member
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My comments were generaly in reference to table-top. I find it to be too coarse a catagorization to be generaly be usefull for most circumstances and therefore providing very little utility. Especialy since I as a human GM can understand the exact context of the player characters actions and view them in a granular fashion. I have no need to abstract the characters actions into some sort of cosmic 2 letter code/label and therefore it has little utility to me.
In terms of PFO, I do understand what GW is trying to accomplish but none of it actualy need be accomplished by that methodology and frankly I think it probably less desirable to use GW's proposed methodology then the alternatives due to unfortunate side effects. They could have accomplished regulating PLAYER behavior and disincentivizing anti-social behavior purely with a reputation based system alone, it accomplishes everything that Alignment is attempting to achieve in that area already... and they could have accomplished the fomenting conflict functionality with a purely faction (PC or NPC) based system sans Alignment.
I understand that is not thier intention and the Alignment mechanic is already a built in design assumption so the arguement is largely academic. I wish them luck, but I have the suspicion that an automated system of this nature is likely to be far too limited and coarse in how it functions in practice to achieve what most people might expect of it and likely will cause alot of frustration, cognative dissonance and just plain WTF? moments. It also has some unfortunate side effects for some portion of the player base as I think have already been well pointed out by Proxima Sin and others. However, I expect it's pretty much a done deal at this point, so we'll just have to wish for the best and see what happens when the rubber meets the road.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not sure I understand what it means to say a particular alignment is less viable to play
Players making the choice to use the character they are on to engage in a murder simulator (an illegitimate action) is being tied to a specific character alignment (legitimate decision). It's being assumed everyone with that alignment on their character sheet did the illegitimate actions to get there. Consequently the alignment as a whole is purposely being made not fun and full of suck, regardless if an individual player actually did the illegitimate actions with that character or not, i.e the alignment is less viable to play.
Back to my original question. Does designing a grind to change a legitimate game feature to deal with murder hooligans seem illogical and/or redundant with the fact there's already a purpose-built system defined as the one dealing with player behavior?