I've been following PFO for a little bit now, and have some concerns about the pvp flag system that is being planned for implementation. The idea is sound and I'm all for it, but we should never underestimate the MMO troll's need to screw with people consequence free...
My main concern is the interaction of area attack spells, such as Fireball, in situations where others are around with no pvp flag on.
Scenario 1: A group of undesirables wander the wilderness, with all but one of them running a pvp flag, with the hopes of finding a wizard. The non-flagged one rushes in whenever the wizard engages an enemy, hoping to eat a fireball, thereby causing the wizard to have the "attacker" flag, thereby making him a free kill target for the rest of them, and even opening him up for a deathcurse, despite the fact that he was either not engaging them at all, or engaging a monster instead.
Scenario 2: A friendly player on the street convinces you to take him with you out to explore the scary dungeon of mildly confusing imagery. All is going well, you are in the party together, when you encounter a more difficult fight than the rest. You're slashing away, when you see behind you, your "friend" is casting a spell... and he drops a fireball right at your feet, killing both the monsters and you. He then casually walks up to your husk, grinning. "Thanks for the loot, schmuck," he says, looting your husk and taking the treasure, with no hit to his reputation, because you were partied together, and fireball is friendly fire capable.
Given these two entirely plausible situations, what, if any solutions can we come up with or expect to deter this sort of behavior, given that, at least as I understand it, these are two ways to get around the system to tank your reputation for killing others without flags on?
Option 1: require the caster to explicitly target anybody who isn't already involved; case one, the uninvolved character isn't targeted or damaged, and case two puts the caster on the victim's enemy list just as though any other attack was used.
As to the first scenario: The assumption is that both the lone wizard and the band of bad guys have mutual pvp flags on that allow them all to engage one another without the "involved with X" mechanic stepping in. You're suggesting that in this instance, once the wizard engages the band of baddies, his fireballs will no longer hit the guy without a pvp flag on? That seems to work contrary to the notion of always-on friendly fire for fireballs, but perhaps that is a better solution.
As to the second scenario: So the attacker does take the normal penalties for killing someone without a pvp flag on, including the attacker flag and the reputation hit, despite being in the party? Does that also apply to looting the husk, since it was suggested in a dev blog that your friends will have the option to loot your husk to keep the guy that killed you from doing the same?
Scenario 1 was the subject of lengthy discussion in the forum thread for the "I put a spell on you" blog. The end result was that devs have stated they're aware of this, and it's on the person using the AOE to be accountable for the effects of it.
Thanks, I haven't had time to search through all the backlog of threads related to this topic, but my cursory search didn't find any mention of this particular kind of scenario. Thanks.
Goblin Squad Member
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Scenario 1 has been discussed in another thread. The Devs have said that the spell faster ultimately bears the responsibility when casting AOE spells. I won't go further here, I have expressed my solution in that other thread.
The other scenario is the Blue on Blue scenario. There is the Betrayer / Traitor flag for just that action. Report, bounty and Death Curse is what you can do. The flags will do the rest.
Both scenarios are undesirable for the victim.
Both seem acceptable within the PvP bounds as currently outlined by GWorks.
Scenario #1
The wizard fireballs the single attacker, and gets the Attacker flag for hitting the other guys. The wizard is slain, loses reputation, and items.
The wizard definitely learns his lesson. The next time the aforementioned scenario occurs, the wizard will not fling an AoE at a single target. Anyway, according to RD, an AoE at a single target is not optimal anyway.
Scenario #2
An adventurer is betrayed by an ally. The adventurer loses their life, effort made in whatever they were doing, and, we presume, some items.
The traitor will get slapped with the traitor/betrayer tag, a reputation hit, and an alignment shift. They might even get a bounty.
Further, the adventurer is never going to trust the traitor again. That name is going to stick in the adventurer's mind. If the traitor engages in this behavior too much they'll be Chaotic Evil, possess a worthless reputation, be stuck with undesirable tags, and be running around with a lot of bounties.
Further, the adventurer is never going to trust the traitor again. That name is going to stick in the adventurer's mind.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os9d2f-2lD0
Ha! That's great!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Further, the adventurer is never going to trust the traitor again. That name is going to stick in the adventurer's mind.
Shadow Cat Squad, that's awesome :)
I have no doubt that there are a number of players who really get off on betrayal and playing mind-games with others. It's going to be interesting to see which organizations are actually successful in-game at dealing with these kinds of nuisances.