-Aet- Areks's page

-Aet- Areks wrote:

What Tink said.

Sorry Areks just the way things work I have been Steelwings 2Ic for more years than I care to count and he needed people to come in and be in place in case we joined

To be perfectly honest, Krow and I had conversations about you. There was no evidence to back up our intuition of course, but there were two instances where we both got the same gut feeling. We were content to let things play out and well they have.

Neither you nor I are in the game, but regardless I consider you a friend. Whether or not I trust you as far as I can throw you is another story =)

Its true. I am Blaeringr. I mean, I am Vladimir Putin. And I am a quadruple agent. Who is John Galt? There is no spoon.

What Tink said.

Ryan D got there first, but here is the info on Golgotha.

Golgotha, Callambea, Mystical Awakening, and Bernstein are all part of the same Nation... the Empire of Xeilias. www.xeilias.com You can see where we will be located HERE And we are also part of the Northern Coalition.

Callambea will be primarily trade focused.

Don't forget... www.xeilias.com

Thod wrote:

I might disagree with Andius over a lot - but there is at least one tiny detail in the map that I will disagree with and why I thank Andius to have brought this to my attention.

There is a lot of talk about the inner circle of 6 towers. I'm suprised that one of the six towers surrounding Emerald Lodge is inside the green boundary.

Nobody can claim that Emerald Lodge is a tiny settlement nor that it wasn't possible to contact us. I answered every single PM so far and you find my contact e-mail in my profile.

If it was an oversight - then please correct it.

Otherwise please contact me as I would like to know who placed that tower outside our boundary.

Again, it was a a mock up of the map, that map going around isn't official in any sense of the word. The map was an exercise in political prediction, based on an offhand comment Golgotha made BEFORE Emerald Lodge was being talked to on a NAP level.

This is a case of someone taking the map, and posting it out of context.

Cheatle can also confirm that I made those corrections to him as soon as I opened the map.

I explained to him that neither the hex in the outer ring of EL nor the entire settlement west of Golgotha were EoX nor NC territory.

Cheatle made note of it. This was the initial draft of a map detailing the political lay out as he saw it. Cheatle and I spoke, it was probably the first time TEO and EoX had spoken in "official" channels since I gave Lifedragn the information that was getting fed to us about Brighthaven's settlement location choice.

Cheatle was making assumptions and requested clarification of details at a level which I had to have approved before clarifying. At that time, all I could do was clarify what was significantly in error. I could only give him part of an answer, so it wouldn't make sense for him to revise it then and there. He was still waiting on the rest of an answer from me.

The inclusion of the Emerald Lodge hex was an innocent, incorrect assumption made by Cheatle in an information vacuum and he was corrected by myself, acting on behalf of the EoX, as soon as I was make known about it.

It was nothing more than that.

-Aet- Areks wrote:

TEO Cheatle wrote:

@Areks, thanks for clearing that up. The conversation we had, is very similar to the one I have had with most of those considering any sort of tower NAP.

Not a problem. You provided me with something with an understanding that I would correctly articulate its purpose. I never got the chance to do that with Aragon leadership and then one of them decides to propagandize it for his own purpose, the least I could do is set the record straight.

Since we are clearing things up, Andius is not part of "Aragon's Leadership", and he did not claim to be. Andius is an officer in a company that has asked to be sponsored by Aragon.

While I didn't mean to imply "one of the leaders of Aragon", instead, "one of them = Aragonian" not "Aragonian leadership".

My bad.

Still, he's an officer of a company in the settlement of Aragon. That's a leader in my book, YMMV.

@Areks, thanks for clearing that up. The conversation we had, is very similar to the one I have had with most of those considering any sort of tower NAP.

Not a problem. You provided me with something with an understanding that I would correctly articulate its purpose. I never got the chance to do that with Aragon leadership and then one of them decides to propagandize it for his own purpose, the least I could do is set the record straight.

First off,

The map was a hobby map, that has been explained to all parties considering the NAP, it was an EXAMPLE of possible power blocks in 6 months after release. It started from a map where Everbloom was designating towers within our area.

Second, TEO has an interest to see everyone succeed and have a stable foundation..... with those that intend to actually play the game and communicate with those around them.....

There are 6-7 groups that have had little or no contact with not only TEO, but Everbloom, EoX, Highlanders, or anyone for that matter. TEO will never have the numbers to police the server, so we must pick and choose our battles, like Ryan states, "meaningful choices." If we spent all our time defending everyone on the server from everyone else, TEO would crumble under that weight.

TEO's Goals are stability, protection of the spirit of the game, as well as Brighthaven, and eventually several other TEO sponsored communities. Protecting the weak and serving justice is important, but we must utilize the resources at hand, making grand statements and not being able to fulfill those obligations is what the New TEO wants to avoid.

Let me preface this statement by saying that I am no longer the Thane Blade of Pax Aeternum and a State Representative of Callambea. 15 cr hours of College, my transition out of the military, and my family take up just about all my time. I voluntarily stepped down from that role.

That said, Cheatle shared the map linked above with me willingly when we were engaged in a conversation about a different subject entirely. He asked me if the NC would consider a NAP with Everbloom... I didn't know. I said I'd bring a proposal back to the Northern Coalition. I never pitched it. I told folks within the EoX about it and a day or two later, I stepped down.

There was no talk dividing up to the map or anything dastardly like that. It was a simple premise. "No touchy touchy during War of the Towers". It wasn't "target other folks, not us." It was "we'll worry about defending our stuff and not attacking you if you promise to do the same." No other parties were discussed. As Cheatle said, the map was given to me and we spoke about EVERYONE that had a settlement having a solid foundation.

The developers have said it from early on... you will have to work together to succeed. Smaller settlements will make sacrificial lambs out of themselves if they do not begin to organize and get bigger, however they decide to.

The title of the thread may as well read, "Attention!!! People are going to play Pathfinder Online!!"

Wow... most of the stuff that is important to me is important to everyone else. Awesome!

Some icons... like Blackfeather Keep for instance, probably should have some outer glow added... they are very easy to miss.

I likey!!

-Aet- Areks wrote:

Why do some folks have a red triangle to the right of their health bar? No idea.

It indicates they're "High Rep". My guess is +2,500 or greater, but I'm not certain.

-Aet- Areks wrote:

After I accepted, there was like a post-accept offer thing that you had to click as well. I don't know what the function of that was besides having you reconfirm your trade.

It's probably intended to frustrate trade-scamming. You finalize your offer. They finalize their offer. Only when both offers are finalized can the trade be accepted. If either party tries to change anything, you can't accept until they finalize again.

Thanks for the info about the triangle. I figured it was either a positive or negative rep indicator of some sort, but I found no information on it. I was leaning towards negative, tho. As in "Watch out for this player."

That would make sense, but you have to do it even if nothing changes. I don't mind the extra step if that is the case.

Honestly, I expected more glitches. At most, what glitches were there were just inconveniences and annoyances. I haven't encountered anything game halting, aside from adjusting my video settings. That and my TS freezes after about 10 mins in game... although that is more than likely on my hardware end, not the game.

With the size and scope of everything I will say caravan guards are going to have their work cut out for them and highway robbery might not be as lucrative as originally envisioned. It will be interesting to see how that is employed.

First off... thank you Goblinworks! Even in the Alpha state, the game is entertaining and I've played for about 15 hours now.

We've come a long way since the technology demo.

So, first off... right out of the gate, everything is a little clunky... its an Alpha, I get it. It was not too hard to get my bearings. Once I found out CTRL (Run) was a toggle, not a hold, I was good to go.

I've heard others say that that the "look" feature and "turn" feature were off a bit, but they were slightly slower than a FPS for me which is just right for an MMO that I am playing.

So now I go to train. What do I train? I want to be a fighter/rogue. I press F11 and bring up the "I forget what its called window". The window basically tells you the things you need to do to get achievements. So I look at Fighter 1.

I'm not sure why, but the details of Fighter 1 appear in a transparent window behind the F11 window, so they are kinda hard to make out... but you can move the F11 window. More on this in a sec.

So I go to the fighter trainer and want to train me some fighter feats. There's a big list of feats. So I hover over one. Nothing. I click on it. Still nothing. In game, before you purchase the feat, no information about said feat is displayed. I open up F11 and match two of them up and purchase.

I purchase all the stuff necessary from the fighter trainer and head over to the Dreadnaught trainer. I purchase everything I need from the Dreadnaught trainer. No achievement or anything pops up. I press F11 and go over the list again. I think I've bought everything... but there is really no way to tell.

Instead of having that transparent word bubble appear for the requirements for role achievements, I think a color coded bullet list would be more suitable. When I press F11 and click on Fighter 1, all the requirements should expand below it. If I have satisfied a requirement, it can be green. If I haven't but it is available to me for purchase, it can be yellow. If I can't purchase it yet, (for whatever reason) it can be red.

Now for the trainers... you can't move the trainer window. Its locked... or I didn't know where to grab it or how to unlock it.

Once in the trainer, hovering over the feat should give you some clue as to what it does via a text wrap version of the transparent word bubble we have for the F11 window. Clicking on it should give you the full low down on what buying that feat does. Clicking "False Edge 2" should tell me what the attack is and what the increase is compared to "False Edge 1". If "False Edge 2" increases my STR by .33 it should say that there. If False Edge 2 is a requirement for "Fighter 5" it should say that.

The Unavailable Feats tab does a decent job of this, but I'd still like more information.

At this point I tabbed out and started bringing up various guides. (Thanks to everyone that made those possible!) I figured out where I wanted to go with my character and tabbed back over... crashing the game for some reason.

Reloaded that game, went out, killed some stuff, harvested some stuff. Collision is turned on for the harvesting nodes which I thought odd... until I was pulling some mobs via ranged attack and backed right up against a log node and 4 melee mobs were on me. After a second or two, I jumped over it and thought, "Wow that was a pain in the butt." but I kind liked the idea of having to be aware of my surroundings.

There is some weird mouse recenter thing going on that is annoying during combat and lead to me looking at my character and having to move the camera to see the mobs and where I was going again. At first I thought this was due to lag or a simple glitch, but it happened quite frequently during my time playing... but only occurred during combat.

Aside from that, combat was smooth PvE wise. There is a little delay... not sure from what, but the mobs are slow to react, which could be attributed to a "surprise round" and after mobs are dead, if you have an attack queue, it still goes off. No issue at all from my perspective.

So I gathered and killed and gathered and killed. Time to try my hand at crafting. Or refining. Well, from the looks of it, they are identical, but they aren't. I had enough stuff to refine a stave and twine for a bow, but no varnish. I will say this, even in Alpha... the whole crafting/refining system is robust. The recipe drops are a little skimpy and you have to know where to go to harvest and what to kill to salvage, but over all, not too shabby and has LOTS of potential.

Why do some folks have a red triangle to the right of their health bar? No idea.

I accidentally clicked a question mark while trying to trade and ended up smacking the person trying to give me a bow. That was awkward. A bit of a slight panic on my part... I didn't know if I was gonna get attacked or what, but it took me a moment to whisper an apology. It'd be nice to be able to "lock-sheath weapons" in town and turn it off later once you know what you are doing.

So I'm a clicker... I like to click my hot bar buttons. The primary / secondary weapons swapper in between the 1-3 and 4-6 keys is VERY annoying.

Trade. Trade was bugged in town so we had to leave town to trade. After I accepted, there was like a post-accept offer thing that you had to click as well. I don't know what the function of that was besides having you reconfirm your trade.

All in all, I had fun... lots of fun. No PvP because I wanted to be able to visit town. I'll probably test it out next weekend.

I'm sure most of the stuff I mentioned above has already been mentioned by someone else and they'll get around to changing some things based on their priority and I'm totally fine with that. Most things, like trade in Callambea being bugged, are annoying at best and none of which significantly impaired the ability to play the game. The game is very playable in its current state. It won't knock your socks off, but the ground work for most things is there.

What I did notice is this... the primary content currently is PvE and Escalations. Now PvE is fun but in its current state gets very repetitive very quickly. Now I know once there are merchants and storage and loot drops from PCs, that PvP will increase, but if you want to be welcomed in town, you're kind of handcuffed.

PFO was marketed as a game where players would be each others content. I'm hoping War of the Towers will bring more PvP content to the table. Still, a large portion of the players that are invested in their Settlement will be primarily defensive wanting to ensure their settlements get every edge that they can for OE. I hope that PvP is encouraged in other ways as well to off-set the redundancy of PvE this early on.

While I am a bit concerned, the progress that Goblinworks has made thus far is very encouraging and I cannot wait for EE to kick off!

-Areks

There's shadowing around the grassland hexes in the midlands and the forest hexes in the lowlands which seems to suggest an altitude change, but there's no altitude change except along the major boundaries with marked transitions. For example, the cropland hex near Callambea isn't down in a hex-sized sinkhole.

There is a significant difference between the shadow for an elevation change and the shadow for an marginal elevation dip. If it were to signify a sink hole, it would look like an actual elevation change... See north of Callambea, and its shadows would be much more significant.

Working now... ish.

Yep. Every other website works, TS works. Just GW.com is down.

"Today on Adventure Time with Bonny, our heroes have to find where the devs have hidden the server and plug it back it!"

Nor can I bring up the GW website to post about it on the Alpha forums so I'm posting it here. Help! =)

This <link> is where I usually show Cheatle the changes I have made. I sometimes reupload it several times a day experimenting with different looks for various things like the Thornkeep icon and the Emerald Spire icon, which have been the latest things I have added.

So if you're interested in following the map's work in progress, the above link should work. But it is in no way final and will be repeatedly changed in the future. It is also 1408x1568 which should make it easier to read.

On this version the zoom is significantly clearer. My complaint is that zoomed out the settlement names are unreadable. If there a way to provide less information zoomed out and have the names bigger, the when you zoom in, the names are reduced and the alignment layer appears?

I've seen it done on a version of the Golarion pdf map, but not sure how intensive doing something like that would be... and since I'm not doing the project, I don't wanna see you guys get overwhelmed by trying to do something that is not feasible or wanted by others in the community.

That still leaves the situation of not being able to impose laws on the land you own. Hopefully GW can shed some light on this.

So the game is pro-griefer... that's an interesting "feature".

That leaves the "army of alts coming in not to harvest, just to go far enough to get flagged and leave so you take the chaos hit as a settlement" issue.

Areks, they have changed the terrain a bit since then, it looks like.

Well, I did say might. =) I appreciate the attention to detail though. I really do.

It adds to immersion that there would be a place where you could go and check the laws of a settlement in game, by physically going to the settlement and checking their keep or something like that.

If you don't and you don't know the laws, then you may very well be stealing. Ignorance of the law is not a defense.

The same way Goblinworks is.

I feel like my thread got hijacked into an argument about unknown mechanics of their xp system...

Still looking for a EE DT account.

Welcome to the forums. =) Valkner said he's got some. He's probably waiting on an offer from you.

-Aet- Areks wrote:

Hopefully laws are robust enough to where you can sell writs for node harvesting within your territory... more than simply either legal or illegal.

I definitely hope you can sell claim rights to harvesting nodes. If I fine a sweet motherlode of a node but lack the skill (most likely) to harvest it. Then I would like to be able to sell it or at least trade it.

I would hope those terms could be weaved into the contract. The hiccup I see is having to have ownership of the hex to establish the motherlode POI. If you hire someone, do they have to join your settlement to fulfill the contract? I hope not.

I think a more prevalent question is if the effect is the same for both intentions, is there even a difference and if not, how will those actions be received by those not involved?

Hopefully laws are robust enough to where you can sell writs for node harvesting within your territory... more than simply either legal or illegal.

One thing I would consider adding is a limit to how much you can attack a non-war target. I get this idea from killing Decius 50 times (when he was red!) at the Sotterhill spawn point. At 40 kills I was fine, then sometime after that my rep tanked. It would be nice to see a penalty for over-targeting a player or organization, outside of War or amicable PvP agreements.

Isn't that what reputation is for? To deter frequent instances of less meaningful PvP? What other type of penalty would you have in mind?

TEO Cheatle wrote:

From what I have seen, the terrain type that is higher elevation actually bleeds into the lower elevation hex. If you go look at all the ramps in the Alpha, the dirt/hilly roads extend into the woods hexes.

I'll have to take a closer look tonight, but I think Cheatle might be right. I'm pretty sure the actual hex boundary is fully on top of the elevation change for most elevated hexes, so that the cliffs themselves are actually slightly inside the lower hexes. I'm thinking the roads leading up into the mountains are equally(-ish) distributed between the lower and higher hexes.

This might help.

-Aet- Areks wrote:

Oh Jazz... You just put a smile on my face brother.

Oh hell. I'll bet I just described a stroke.

Yes, I'm often slow on the uptake of new stuff.

Yes and no. They already have grey stroke, you asked for pop. There's been a lot of discuss lately about whether or not images Poping were more appealing or less. You just sided with my opinion on the matter is all.

Stroke will give you clarity when similar colors overlap... So it pops somewhat. Emboss and bevel will do a more significant lift or indent creating a more apparent pop.

The more you know...

Caldeathe Baequiannia wrote:

On one of those nit-picky-OCD things that always get my wife upset at me...

Bleeding the higher elevation colour into the lower elevation hex below it makes it appear that the elevation change occurs in the lower hex. Is that the case? Is the higher elevation hex all one level, and extrudes a ramp into the lower, or is the lower elevation hex all one level, with a "cut/valley" in the higher elevation hex being where the level change actually occurs from the character's perspective?

The choke points bleeding into the lower elevations are intended to indicate where the roads/paths leading up actually are. For example, the choke point into the mountains just northwest of Callambea only has access paths on the north and south faces, not the northwest and southwest.

Are you suggesting it would make more sense to bleed the green of the forest up into the mountains instead of bleeding the orange of the mountains down into the forests? If so, that seems like a very good suggestion.

The latter is exactly what he's suggesting.

Good observation Cal.

The lower hex should be bled into the higher hex as it is the transition hex, not the lower.

Don't mind us... We're just trouble shooting your thankless work =P

The closeup makes it look as if Brighthaven's icon's outlined in grey. Could changing it to black make it "pop" more?

Oh Jazz... You just put a smile on my face brother.

-Aet- Areks wrote:

My only suggestion is adding either stroke or dropshadow to the TEO logo. The phoenix blends a bit with the mountain hex color.

Heh, thats been bothering me as well, here is a <closeup> of a section that shows both Aragon and Brighthaven with some outlines.

Nice. Those look great.

I spoke to Cheatle about this already, but I think it's a mistake to indicate elevation changes with the shadows where there are no actual elevation changes.

Actually there is quite a significant difference between the two drop shadows used. I would agree only in the instances of the water hexes. Plains inside a forest = trees casting shadows and the same for forest hexes in the middle of plains.

Actual elevation changes are indicated by a much more significant shadow. It makes perfect sense to me.

Basically a border/outline.

My only suggestion is adding either stroke or dropshadow to the TEO logo. The phoenix blends a bit with the mountain hex color.

a PREVIEW of the map with symbols so far, names yet to be added

Just the initial revision with drop shadow added and elevation smears are awesome! Good work... Snazzy looking logos too!

How are you going to handle another organization similar in size to Golgotha developing (for instance DEYS / Mystical Awakening) that are PvP focused and have a larger membership base also wanting a little taste?

You can answer privately if you like, I know this has been a whirlwind development and don't want to put you on the spot.

Just a formality... don't mind the Sith Overlord in the corner. ;)

My link above is fixed.

Click here for Golgotha and Callambea!!

So anyway, infiltration for political reasons is a completely viable tactic that will likely be utilized until API checks are the norm.

Ryan has already stated that the more malicious aspects of infiltration will have substantially more security measures to emplace than EVE currently does.

That being said, if this scenario does unfold, I fully expect EL's neutrality to be tested significantly. Being "switzerland" might be biting off more than they can chew, but only time will tell on that.

Thanks!

I support this initiative!

Can you give us emblem parameters for HxW in px by any chance?

Lord Regent: Deacon Wulf wrote:

... and they will need to be on the top of their game in order to prevent diplomatic incidents that would damage their neutrality.

And the sad reality is that someone will decide it's "fun" to join Emerald Lodge and create those diplomatic incidents just to stir up trouble.

As long as they are genuine and not malicious, I don't see why there is a problem... this is just another form of content creation.

Joining to lobby against an interest for a clandestine purpose and cause political strife is totally in bounds. I don't think this is any more sad than any player or groups of players doing anything else in game.

Joining to crash DI, loot company banks, and disband organizations is malicious and would be out of bounds. This right here, this would be sad.

In that case, Andius, it would have to be written into some kind of NAP with EL, that they don't allow that sort of thing to happen. Repercussions being cut off access to resources, storage, vendors, and so on.

Also, there might have to be some consideration given to chasing enemy down into that particular area. As if someone was trying to flee to EL for neutral protection.

There might have to be some kind of "deportation" clause, that allows us to come in and remove them, kill them, and EL has to kick them off the bind point.

In the interest of neutrality, I would expect these issues to be covered in the Charter of the Emerald Lodge, if indeed, they do wish to be neutral.

Who's to say we won't have vendors right outside the spire? We'll make the walk for you. Most PvE folks will care about rep for training. As long as that particular vendor(s) has a small guard force that gets a cut, there should be no issue. 0 mins < 5 mins.

On the other hand, we can circumvent EL completely and pick up the consumables off of the corpses after they are slain.

Or we could leave EL alone.

Anything is possible at this point.