Andius the Afflicted's page

I found this line quite interesting in one of the lastest blogs:

"We committed to our community to provide as much information about what we're doing, why, when, and how as we can. We accept that the downside for that level of transparency is that we become vulnerable to those who focus on the negative."

To me this raised a singular question: What is the positive we are supposed to be focusing on?

Back in the day I actually created a post pitching Pathfinder onlines features, that was edited and posted by GW on the front page of their 2nd Kickstarer.

So what has changed between then and now? Back then PFO had nothing but promises, now they have a game. Back then I saw their competitors as old school sandboxes like Darkfall, Mortal and Wurm. Now they are up against serious sandbox developers, some which have AAA budgets.

So lets delve into that question a bit more.

What is the Positive?

I'm no stranger to sub par games. I've chosen to primarily focus my attention on games that push the envelope and bring something new/great to the MMO scene. Unfortunately with the bulk of the resources in the MMO industry going into remaking WoW with some tiny variations over, and over, and over. That's meant that the majority of my time has been spent playing small indy MMOs.

I have a lot of negative things to say about these MMOs, and those who are familiar with me have heard me say them. However I also have a lot of positive things to say about them and I'm sure those familiar with me have also heard me applaud things such as Mortal Online's breeding and item property systems, Darkfall's exploration/treasure map systems, Wurm Online's improvement system etc.

So why is it that I have NOTHING positive to say about Pathfinder Online at this point? Pathfinder Online has made positive promises. Some of the systems they have said they will put in-game sound cool.

However there is not a single feature in this game I can point to and say. "That is done extremely well. That really pushes the envelope of MMO innovation."

And unfortunately that's the factor common in all MMO's I would even bother to rate as mediocre. Some feature done so well that it keeps me excited about logging in, and coming back to see what other areas that MMO has advanced in periodically.

Why is That a Problem? This is Just an Alpha.

Pathfinder Online was pitched to us as a game that would release early but still be fun by focusing on it's minimum viable product.

They said that they could achieve this by making human interaction, driven primarily by competition between player factions as the focal point of their game.

This made a lot of sense to me. As an old Freelancer vet I would rate every single feature of Freelancer as sub-par except the combat system and capacity for meaningful human interaction. They released a game with a bare bones economy, a freaking amazing combat system, a bit of space to explore and absolutely no rules. I loved it so much I played it consistently for 5 years straight.

Pathfinder Online however, launched with a shackled highly restricted PvP environment and few ways to really engage in it. When they did release something, not only was the release of it buggy and botched, but it was still so heavily restricted it boiled down to Arena PvP edited into an Open World Format. With that they have:

Terrible Combat Mechanics
Sub Par Graphics
Sub Par Character Creation
Sub Par Crafting
Sub Par PvE
Sub Par Trade
Sub Par Exploration
Non-Existent Settlement Building

I won't even talk about the stability because before I even care about that, you need to give me a reason to log in.

What They Should Have Done

PFO really violated their promise to give us a fun product quickly by focusing their efforts on player interaction. People have defended this by saying "EE will belong to the builders!" To that my question is: Then why isn't settlement building in yet, and why does crafting suck?

The fact is there is no single feature of PFO that is done well at this point. If there were any singular feature does so well, that was so fun that it would keep me logging in to this game, then I wouldn't be selling my accounts, even if every other aspect of this game was total trash.

Every competitor has given something to me in this arena.

Star Citizen has:

Amazing Graphics
Freaking Awesome Racing

And it's dogfighting isn't too shabby at this point.

Life is Feudal has:

The best non-block terraforming system I have ever seen.
Crafting fun enough to be engaging.

ArcheAge Has:

Amazing Graphics
Great Character Appearance Customization
Well Done Custom Classes
Engaging Fast/Paced Combat
An Exciting Variety of Mounts and Vehicles that Can Actually be Used in Combat
A Cool Piracy/Trade System

My Question to The Defenders of Pathfinder Online and Mr. Ryan Dancey

If you want us to focus on the positive I would like to know. What do you see the positive as? I'm asking for something better than "at some point down the road..." or "we really listen to the community."

What features that are currently in your game do you believe you have done an extremely good job on? Is there any feature that can be found in the current iteration of PFO that can't be found done as well anywhere else? What features do you think "those who focus on the positive" and the defenders of PFO should be selling to people?

And if there is nothing like that right now, what feature do you intend to get developed to a "selling point" status soonest, and what's your ETA on that?

Account 1:

Paizo account "Waruko". Comes with all daily deals, DT and some unspent perk money. Value 155$

Account 2: Half of a buddy package. Comes with DT and all daily deals.

Won't sell for less than 100$.

Account 3-4:

Half of a buddy package with all daily deals and DT. Brewmaster package with DT and the last couple daily deals. Both are twice marked. Attached to GW accounts "Andius" and "Amora." Will only sell as a 400$ package and only if accounts 1 and 2 both sell.

Can pay either through PayPal or through Star Citizen ships of equivalent value.

I've noticed, discussed with many other players, and seen posted a few times on this boards reference to the disparity between heavy armor and all lighter armors. While offering significantly increased protection, they have little in the way of drawbacks now that they give no movement speed penalties.

Because of this I would like to put forward a suggestion about bringing the different armor classes in line with eachother.

The Basic Premise

Increased stamina is introduced as a benefit of armor. Basically as armor becomes higher and higher quality it offers more and more stamina regen based on a scale like this:

Clothing = Huge stam regen bonus, no protection bonus
Light Armor = Large stam regen bonus , small protection bonus
Medium Armor = Small stam regen bonus, large protection bonus
Heavy Armor = No stam regen bonus, huge protection bonus

Here's the idea behind it. If you balance heavy armor purely through heavy armor penalties then that means that the difference between lower quality light armor and clothing and high quality light armor and clothing is far less pronounced than the difference between low quality heavy armor and high quality heavy armor.

By using a stam regen bonus you can put all armor types on the exact same power curve, but they just give their bonuses to different things.

Balancing This Bonus

The obvious / instant effect you're going to see from this is lighter armor classes, especially well geared light armor classes, throwing off way more abilities way faster, while heavy armor classes are stuck with the same amount of stam regen.

This is largely just going to balance out heavy armor which is currently insanely OP but there are a couple things that should be considered because of this.

1. As the only current clothing class Wizards will be working with a huge amount of stamina. An unfortunate side-effect could be wizards just sitting back and spamming the hell out of high stam cost abilties while ignoring low stam cost ones. The way to prevent this is an across the board increase of the stam costs of all arcane abilities as well as a buff to their effects. This will need a bit of testing and tweaking as raising say the damage by the same amount as the stam cost may prove to be OP.

This may make arcane spells a poor choice for wearers of medium and heavy armor and not as strong for users of light armor. This can easily be offset if roles such as the Magus are introduced by decreasing the stam cost of arcane abilities by a certain % per keyword in their armor feat.

2. Ranged and divine attacks are not dealt with in point one but are primarily used by medium and light armor classes. So they may need a lesser tweak to their costs and effects. This does lower the effectiveness of heavy armor ranged characters and divine casters but you could give appropriate roles such as crusader a reduced cost to such effects like described in point one.

Then again nerfing the ability of the heavy armor crusader to heal themselves as effectively as the evangelist and healer roles might not be such a bad thing.

3. Melee is used by both heavy armor and light armor classes. And currently the light armor classes wielding it are thee most underpowered roles in the game. I say keep it the way it is, anyone crazy enough to fight on the front lines in light armor deserves that kind or raw power. I would even increased the speed at which those classes can use melee attacks to enhance their ability to burn through all that stam.

Stam Regen to Protection Bonus Defensive Abilties

But what about monks? High AC rangers and rogues? Not all classes that wear lighter armor are glass cannons. Some of them can actually be quite defensive.

Correct! I'm glad you mentioned that!

So how could one create such a character in PFO? They could do it with the introduction of stam regen to protection bonus defensive abilities.

Basically these are defensive abilities which, along with the usual effect one would expect from a defensive ability have the effect "Trade 30% of your armor based stam regen for protection. You get X points of protection per stam regen lost."

Why 30? Because why would anyone play a heavy armor class if you could slot abilities that gave you 100% of their defense on any other character? 30% totals up to 90% if you use one of these abilities in every slot meaning while you can go very defensive with a light armor role heavy armor roles are still the kings of AC.

So you can go the glass cannon rogue who dies from a stiff breeze but hurls out insane damage. But you could also slot 1-3 of these abilities if you want to trade some of that raw power for survivability.

A Final Note on Heavy Armor

So as stated above heavy armor roles would still have the absolute most defense. The counter balance to that is armor check penalties. In the tabletop certain abilities such a stealth, fly, swim etc. are penalized while wearing armor. Those same abilities need to be penalized in PFO as they are implemented.

TL:DR

Make lighter armors give increased stam regen on the same curve as heavy armor gives increased protection. Put in defensive abilities that let them trade this for protection (at about 90% of the effectiveness as if they had just opted for heavier armor.) Adjust the cost and effective of arcane, ranged, and divine skills to make sure classes using them still need to manage their stam.

Awhile back there was a topic comparing this game to Destiny. A triple AAA title with an insanely huge budget, which is fairly light on the innovation like any other triple A title.

While I'm sure it makes us all feel good to compare ourselves to games with such bloated budgets they are not our primary competition. Our real competition is games like Arch-Age, Black Dessert, and... Life is Feudal. Games, some of which had smaller budgets and started around the same time, that really push the envelope of innovation.

Life is Feudal just recently went into alpha and I decided to try it out. So I'd like to talk a bit about my first impressions of the LiF alpha vs. the PFO alpha.

What's Similar?

Both games are sandboxes. (Though as explained further on LiF is more of a true sandbox)
Both games have Open World PvP.
Both games have alignment systems with meaningful consequences. (Both of which are similarly useless at this point.)
Both games have loot drop in PvP. (LiF is full loot drop while PFO is partial.)
Both games have durability loss on items. (LiF is from use while PFO is from death.)

And most importantly...

Both games feature a player driven economy, territorial combat, and player interaction as the primary forms of content.

So with that said, what does PFO have going for it and what does LiF have going for it?

Things that Set LiF Apart from PFO

1. Graphics - It's really rather undebatable. LiF is a beautiful fairly modern looking game while at this point PFO's graphics look a bit dated.

2. Terraforming - It's one of the central features of the game and done EXTREMELY well. You can bring up a view showing the elevation of all the surrounding tiles, making terraforming so easy a child could figure it out. The small tile sizes in comparison to games such as Wurm also make it easier to really customize the landscape just how you want it. Best terraforming system I have ever seen in a game not built out of blocks.

3. Fast Paced Combat- LiF uses a full manual aim combat system that is more able to accommodate the fact internet speeds and the average computer are getting faster and faster while PFO's combat system already feels outdated. However their system may still be a bit more fast paced for the average internet speed and system still being used today once they reach the MMO phase.

Things that Set PFO apart from LiF

1. Fantasy Setting- LiF feels like playing an individual character from Age of Empires II (medieval setting but not fantasy) while PFO offers a fantasy setting complete with elves, dwarves, and magic.

2. Less Grinding- PFO offers time based XP gains with achievement grinds to unlock the skills you want to spend it on. LiF uses a usage based level raising system.

3. No Skill Cap- PFO allows you to train as many skills as you want on a single character while LiF has a skill and stat cap meaning you can only progress a single character so far.

LiF's Minimum Viable Product

Like PFO LiF is rolling out with a more gradual approach, however they have what I feel is a better approach to it. Rather than releasing a Minimum Viable Product MMO they have given players the ability to host their own 64 man servers. On those servers you have access to the finished terraforming system, the nearly finished crafting system, and the combat system which is a work in progress. This system will be updated with more content such as character customization as those kinds of things become available.

My first impression of LiF's MVP was that it was additively fun. All of the major content drivers of their game such as terraforming, PvP, and territorial control are in the game giving you a reason to want to log back in as soon as you have the time.

The content that they have put in functions fairly well, while there are some server stability issues I've found very few problems with the game's released content.

PFO's Minimium Viable Product

Rolling out from the start as an MMO seems to may have been a bit ambitious for an MVP product. The game is missing major content drivers (PvP? Territorial Control?), almost none of the features currently implemented feel even close to finished. As I've heard other community members say the game feels "souless" and I find I'm having to force myself to log in.

Overall Impression

I feel like it's fairly hard to argue that at this point LiF has the better product. I believe they are also working with a smaller budget and started a bit later. PFO has a lot more content but LiF's method of focusing on less aspects at a time until they are functioning perfectly than moving on to others give's their game a powerful first impression vs. PFO.

PFO may be able to gain the leg up within 2-5 years because their slow paced tab targeting system allows for a larger server but the concern for me is:

1. How many players will they lose in the meantime?
2. How far with LiF and PFO's other competition advance while we are still waiting for PFO to get the basics in and functioning well?
3. How many years before full aim combat is viable on a large scale?

Bottom line, is a simple message to GW. Your competition is out there, it's organized, and it actually looks pretty scary. If you want PFO to grow as large as EVE you need to give them very strong, very solid reasons to choose this title over titles like LiF, Arche Age and Black Desert.

I've tried several times to give focus objects a shot as a damage dealing weapon for the convenience of not having to switch weapons when I need to heal but... the damage is just AWFUL.

Touch of Darkness is a good secondary (complete with the standard heavy stam drain of a secondary) but I can't name a single other attack on the focus I would recommend to anyone over just switching to your melee/ranged weapon.

One of the things that I've noticed is Damage over Time conditions just seem ridiculously gimped in this game. Usually damage over time means serious damage output but it gives the target time to respond and remove the condition before it takes effect. In this game it seems weaker than direct damage.

What am I missing? What is the big upside to focus object attacks, especially the primaries? Why even include primary attacks on the focus objects if they are going to be that weak?

This is a constantly updated list of resources available to the community to help you in your character planning, social interactions etc.

Resources Compilation List

Any resource linked in this thread will be added to the list. You can also use this thread to request resources and disagree with me on the usefulness rating of any given resource. Please back disagreements with relevant arguments in favor of or against the usefulness of a resource.

So I wanted to know how long it would take to create a character fully maxed out in a single combat build. IE every skill that can effectively be slotted into a single role PvP build at once.

None of this data takes into account attribute requirements or any other prerequisits. This is purely the training time of each skill based off of Sspitfire's table.

All numbers listed are a measure of days required to build the needed experience.

Core Stats

Hitpoints: 91.3 Days
Power: 271.8 Days
Base Attack Bonus: 97.4 Days
Will Save: 68.4 Days
Reflex Save: 68.4 Days
Fortitude Save 68.4 Days
Recovery Bonus: 24.4 Days

Total: 690.1 Days

Major Build Stats

Class Feature: 182.5 Days*
Armor Feature: 88.8 Days
Attack Type Bonus 1: 45.6 Days
Attack Type Bonus 2: 45.6 Days
Armor Proficiency: 2.2 Days

*Weapon Specializations from the fighter class take 217.7 Days

Total: 364.7 Days

Reactives and Defensives

Defensive 1: 21.3 Days*
Defensive 2: 21.3 Days*
Defensive 3: 21.3 Days*
Reactive 1: 15.2 Days
Reactive 2: 15.2 Days

*Some Defensives only require 19.5 Days

Total: 94.3 Days

Weapons

Weapon 1: 2.2 Days
Primary 1: 15.2 Days
Primary 2: 15.2 Days
Primary 3: 15.2 Days
Secondary 1: 15.2 Days
Secondary 2: 15.2 Days
Secondary 3: 15.2 Days
Weapon 2: 2.2 Days
Primary 1: 15.2 Days
Primary 2: 15.2 Days
Primary 3: 15.2 Days
Secondary 1: 15.2 Days
Secondary 2: 15.2 Days
Secondary 3: 15.2 Days
Implement: 4.4 Days

Total: 189.2 Days

Utilities

Utility 1: 15.2 Days
Utility 2: 15.2 Days

Total: 30.4 Days

Universally Useful Skills for Combat Characters

Stealth: 183.3 Days
Perception: 183.3 Days

Total: 366.6 Days

Overall Total

1735.3 Days or 4.75 Years

1. The list of stats raised by armor feats currently runs off the screen. I see it effects hitpoints, saves and other stuff. Not just the basic stuff like: "Crusader light and heavy melee damage. Evangelist ranged damage, divine attack damage, and movement speed." Do we have a full list of all the stats each armor skill effects yet?

2. Which of those effects are increased through additional keywords? Just the basics, all of them, or something else?

"Focused" would be an ability modifier that disabled the usage of an ability while sprinting but unlike stationary allows it's useage when moving but not sprinting.

Upvoting this proposal shows you support Goblinworks adding "focused" to the list of modifiers for abilities to use in balancing different feats.

Downvoting means you oppose adding "focused" to the game or it's usage on any ability.

This idea is not meant to crowdforge which abilities it will be used on and when it will be implemented. Simply to put it on the table for further crowdforging.

*Thanks to Caldeathe Baequiannia for suggesting the name for this modifier*

Unlike the ideascale I'd like to use this topic to talk a bit about which abilities people feel should get this modifier. I'll use the ideascale to address any questions and concerns directly related to the idea.

Later today I'm going to be proposing a new ability modifier. The effect is "Cannot Be Used While Sprinting." Unlike "stationary " these abilities can be used at regular movement speed.

I'm thinking a name that implies it's something that requires too much concentration to pull off at a full sprint.

Please propose names and upvote ones you like. The best / most popular proposal will be used in the ideascale post unless it's an obvious joke/troll.

Aggro-Leash Fix

This is a few proposed fixes to the aggro system used in place of standard leashing, that should make it a much harder to abuse it, especially through any form of kiting.

Ideascale Threads:

Don't Unbalance PvP to Balance PvE

PvE Solution to Ranged PvE Imbalance

... Is what people will be posting on independent sites if stealthed players remain detectable to the client.

The Agreement.

This is an agreement primarily to protect their own towers from the Northern Coalition.

Golgotha has suggested "The Slums" is still up for grabs. Basically All of the settlements west of the NC.

Will TEO push back against this crass sacrifice of smaller settlements which violates all of their founding values, or allow others to be sacrificed to save their own membership from PvP?

Will the new TEO prove conclusively they are only interested in their own success and power and that motto I wrote for the about the "protection of the weak and promotion of justice" no longer applies at all?

The TEO I lead was willing to make sacrifices for the good of others. The Sentinels still are. What happened to that TEO?

This may be the simplest feature I'm ever going to propose.

This would be an advanced skill. By advanced I mean it would have prerequisites and possibly higher XP cost per level than many other skills. Prerequisites would be stealth, a small amount of architecture, and if they have it survival skill.

When you have this skill you can choose to build a foxhole. Initiating an action timer after which your character disappears from the map, simulating that you have created and hidden yourself in a covered foxhole.

If another player perceives you they see you as a glowing patch on the ground that gives the information they would normally see when viewing your character.

Foxholes are perceptible from 5 meters away if the player's foxhole construction is equal to your perception. Perception / foxhole construction imbalances can change that range from 10 to 1 meters.

The point of foxholes is both for their obvious tactical usage in ambushes, but also to allow players who need to go afk momentarily to make their characters a bit harder to find.

You can attack from a foxhole but doing so immediately ends the hidden condition, as does moving.

This may be the simplest feature I'm ever going to propose.

This would be an advanced skill. By advanced I mean it would have prerequisites and possibly higher XP cost per level. Prerequisites would be stealth, a small amount of architecture, and if they have it survival skill.

When you have this skill you can choose to build a foxhole. Initiating an action timer after which your character disappears from the map, simulating that you have created and hidden yourself in a covered foxhole.

If another player perceives you they see you as a glowing patch on the ground that gives the information they would normally see when viewing your character.

Foxholes are percievable from 5 meters away if the players foxhole construction is equal to your perception. Perception / foxhole construction imbalances can change that range from 10 to 1 meters.

The point of foxholes is both for their obvious tactical usage in ambushes, but also to allow players who need to go afk momentarily to make their characters a bit harder to find.

You can attack from a foxhole but doing so immediately ends the hidden condition, as does moving.

How long after EE launch will we be able to begin building influence and declaring feuds?

The Premise

Arenas are the place settlements can go to be entertained. Eventually these will be modifiable structures that can be set up as gladiatorial arenas, race tracks, amphitheaters etc. Initially though arenas provide a place willing combatants can go to duke it out consequence free allowing for both training and sport.

Implementation Phase 1 - Minimum Viable Product

There are two arena sizes. Medium and large (though it is very possible only mediums would be included in the MVP). The MVP arena includes a stage/battlefield surrounded by seating with a box for VIP spectators. Underneath the stands is the staging area which contains some practice dummies and possible trainers. The MVP arena provides 3 things.

1. Settlement members with appropriate permissions can toggle combat mode on and off. While combat mode is on all players in the stage section of the arena are flagged as "contestants" making them consequence free targets for all other players with the contestant flag.

2. The arena gives a bonus to the morale index of the settlement.

3. The arena provides training in the staging area equivalent to a fighter training facility one size category smaller.

Basically the intent with MVP arenas is providing players with the bare minimum tools they need to create their own events. They serve as a great place for PvP combat training, duels, and organized tournaments as well as giving a stage for roleplay events with combat mode is toggled off.

Implementation Phase 2 - Arena Masters and NPC Combatants

Expanding on the role of players who can toggle combat mode on and off, they now become "Arena Masters." Arena masters get two really cool things they can do to improve the fun of arenas.

Deployables- Arena masters can deploy traps, obstacles and other features into the arena to make fights more interesting or facilitate new event types. A few big deployable worth mentioning are checkpoints and timed objects.

Checkpoints can be set up so they register when a player passes through them and linked together so they are meant to be passed through in a certain order. This is particularly useful in building races and obstacle courses.

Timed objects are objects that will go off a certain amount of time after the arena master starts their timer. They can be on separate timers or the same timer. A good example of a timed object is a cage containing combatants or monsters. They may be triggered manually by the arena master or set to trigger at certain points during a battle if the arena master begins the timer at the start of the battle. Another instance might be a pit of spikes opening up at a certain point in a race that it's presumed the racers will be in their final lap to add additional flair and danger to the final lap.

NPC Combatants- Arena masters can create PvE challenges or add a bit of PvE into PvP events with the addition of NPC combatants. NPC combatants can be added to the arena and will attack contestant marked players. They come in four major forms each with different ways of getting them to fight in your arena.

All variants of creatures are captured by players turning them into inventory items the arena master can then deploy as desired either in timed cages or before turning on combat mode.

Humanoids - These are creatures such as humans, elves, goblins, ogres etc. Some of these creatures can be "captured" through the use of diplomacy, meaning you persuade them to come willingly to fight in your arena. Humanoids "captured" through diplomacy require a certain amount of pay each time they are deployed. They can also have a chance of giving a capturable version of themselves on their bodies when defeated in combat. This is the creature you defeated made capturable by being incapacitated. Capturing a humanoid through this method counts as slavery, and they don't have to be paid.

Animals - These are things such as wolves, bears, tigers etc. They can be tamed or captured. Taming works much like diplomacy for humanoids (or works off whatever taming system the game already had in place) though tamed creatures don't need to be paid. Capturing works the same as for other creatures.

Monsters - These are things such as rust monsters, manticores, and worgs. They can only be captured.

Undead - These are animated dead. They can either be captured or created by a necromancer. Neither captured nor raised undead must be paid.

Phase 2 Conclusion

The point of phase two is to give players the tools they really need to dive in and build their own arena content. Through props and monsters they can create a huge array of different events from more interesting gladiatorial events, to races where the contestants have to evade traps as they are chased by hungry worgs, to RP events and performances where the players can build their own stage.

It also creates the start of some arena related professions with players now able to sell their traps, obstacles, and creatures to arena masters.

Implementation Phase 3 - Matches, Renown, Spectators, Betting, and NPC Combatants Expanded

Implementation stage 3 is arenas fully fleshed out. It adds some really cool elements that makes a large arena really something a settlement may base themselves around and people will travel from far and wide to take part in.

Matches/Timed Events - First is that there is now an official match system. An arena master can set events that occur at different times of the day or a set period of time after the end of the last event. They can preconfigure the obstacles, when the times are supposed to go off, what monsters will be added etc. and the arena will automatically follow their preset commands for a small fee (Because invisible commoners do the work of setting up the arena for each match.)

Events may be set as free for all events, predetermined team events (the contestants choose which team they want to join), or random team events (teams are chosen from the entrants at random).

They can either be given a win condition (first time to 25 kills or first player to complete 3 laps win) created as timed events (highest score at 20 minutes wins) or both (first to 25 kills or most kills at 20 minutes wins). This is where arena masters can really begin to create their own arena events on a par with those found in other MMOs. But rather than waiting months for the devs to create a new mode once the old ones get boring players can experience limitless different types of matches limited only by the tools available to and the creativity of the arena masters.

Renown - Renown comes in three (or possibly more) types. Gladiatorial renown, racing renown, and performance renown.

1. Gladiatorial Renown: Your renown in combat events both PvP, PvE, and hybrids of the two. NPCs you go up against have certain renown scores of their own based off the challenge they pose. Defeating opponents, both players and NPCs, in the arena gives you renown of the combatants defeated and the combine renown of the opposing side. Combatants released on set timers also give a renown bonus based off the strength of the combatants previously on the field if the timer for the release is short enough. For instance you might get a good bonus for killing NPCs released a minute after you had to another set of NPCs with a combine renown of 1000 but if the first wave only had 100 renown or the timer was set to ten minutes instead you might not receive a bonus. Gladiatorial renown is lost when you die based on the renown of the opposing side. The curve of renown is like PvP ranking in many games. It's easy to raise at first but eventually gains get very hard and loses become quite large.

There are bonuses to renown for performing crowd pleaser actions (based on perform skills) and finishing off (killing) or sparing defeated opponents when the crowd demands it.

2. Racer Renown: This is gained by placing in the top few places and lost by placing below those places. Whether a place earns or loses you renown is largely based on how many racers there are and what their renown is. So if there are 10 racers of equal renown you might expect 1st and 2nd to gain renown while 4th through 10th lose it but if you up that to 20 racers you might gain renown all the way through 4th place or if lowered to just two racers only the player who comes in first will gain renown and the other racer will lose it. There is also a bonus/penalty to renown based on the renown of the racers who finished ahead of / behind you. So a renown 10,000 racer in a race with 19 other 1000 renown players might actually find himself losing a lot of renown coming in 2nd because of the huge gap between his rank and the player in first even though most players would earn renown for coming in 2nd.

3.Performance Renown: Certain events such as plays or concerts may be set up where you use performance actions frequently. While these are mainly designed as RP events your performance checks will impress or disappoint the NPC crowd and allow you to gain or lose performance renown.

Spectators - In this stage NPCs come to watch at your events. NPC hype is built off the renown of those participating in the event allowing the arena master to set higher prices for attendance if there are a lot of high renown players/NPCs involved. The arena master can also undercharge for events granting a morale bonus to the settlement based on how much the undercharge. Throwing a bunch of cheap or events with a lot of renown involved is a great way for a settlement suffering morale problems to take the NPCs minds off their troubles. Because these events to generate coin or morale arena masters may pay well for high renown players to compete in their arena or for captured NPCs with high renown ranks. They can actually set the arena to automatically pay entrants based on their renown and boot lower renown players if a higher renown player tries to join (Making it smart for arena towns to have a medium arena for renown building and large arena for the main events.)

Betting - Betting comes in three forms. Player on player bets, player on settlement bets, and player on NPC bets.

Player on Player: The player places money against one side or the other at whatever odds. Another player may then accept that bet. If no player accepts the bet the full amount bet is returned to the player when the match begins or is canceled. If another player accepts then the full amount is returned if the match is canceled or the winner is given their winnings (minus a % based on the settlement settings that goes to the settlement) after the match ends. This automatic system ensures nobody can stiff someone their winnings.

Player on Settlement: The arena master places money on one side at certain odds. Players can bet against the settlement until all the money the settlement placed down is gone.

Player on NPC: Players can bet against any side at price based on the renown of the each side at certain odds and automatically have the bet accepted by an NPC. NPCs will only bet up to a small amount so having players throw matches to get money from NPC betters isn't really worth the cost to their renown.

Additional Features for NPC Combatants

NPC Combatants of all varieties except undead can now be trained to be stronger. Doing this ups the difficulty of defeating them and their renown rating. Defeats in the arena set them back a bit in strength/renown and additionally players who actually kill high renown NPCs get a huge bonus to their own renown and raise the settlements morale ensuring their is always demand for more NPCs and NPC training.

Killing humanoid and animal NPCs now moves your alignment toward evil. Additionally good aligned settlements cannot host to-the-death matches.

Certain NPCs can now participate in both races and performances allowing settlements that slot time for these events to no still generate some income if nobody shows, though payout for all NPC performances/races will be very small.

NPCs now have a fatigue rating that raises the more events they participate in without a break. Humanoids "captured" through diplomacy will flat out refuse to participate in events if their fatigue gets high enough and enslaved/captured NPCs will lose renown and eventually die if their fatigue gets too high.

Conclusion

Arenas allow a lot of customizable player made content as well as generating an entire new section of the economy and creating a both resource faucets and drains. Instead of developer created arena content as per WoW clones it gives the players the tools to create their own content as is fitting for PFO's model.

The Stage

I am sure many of you are familiar with my arguments as to why good aligned factions should settle to the north-west. Today I speak to another crowd. The forces of evil and chaos.

Your groups are in a bad way right now. Right now there are only two settlements that have declared themselves as evil as opposed to the whopping 12 good settlements. 5 of whom are top 10.

Looking at the EE map, there is a major good aligned power on both ends. Though technically The Western Kingdoms is not formed yet, it's in the process of doing so, and will be a major power if it includes the settlements invited to join.

So that's where things stand. Two good alliances with a neutral alliance containing one major lawful evil settlement between them. With no surprise move by an evil faction to come in and ninja a spot in the landrush good is left with a clearly dominant positon. It's a hard breakdown for those looking to come into this game and build evil settlements.

Where will you you train in the arts of evil and chaos? Where will you sell your ill-gotten gains? Where will you rest in-between sacking and pillaging? Chaotic-evil needs a home.

The Call

But all is not lost. There is a place for those who follow the ways of chaos and evil. You will not be handed your location as others have but you can birth your nation as any such nation should be born. Through blood, steel, tears, and flame.

The forces of good may dominate both sides of the map but they have cut themselves off from each-other, and divided as they are a unified front of evil may move against and crush either side. It will not be easy. I may very well result in the first major war of Pathfinder Online. But it can be done, and it should be.

Which Side to Move Against

To the northwest there is The Great Western Kingdoms. To the southeast the Everbloom Alliance. The northwest may appear the better target at a quick glance but after examining the full situation I feel the Everbloom Alliance is clearly the better target.

First, and going back to one of the major issue's I've talked of before. It's an issue of recruitment.

I present, the southeast in open enrollment.

The southeast is about half an hour from the major recruitment hubs for evil and chaos while about two hours for the major recruitment hub for good. There are two major implications here.

1. The good aligned factions in the southeast have crippled their own long-term growth potential while the good aligned factions to the north have empowered it.
2. If you take the northwest you will cripple your own growth potential, while the south-east will empower you.

The next issue is of course the balance of power between the 3 major alliances. Right now The Northern Coalition is an evil leaning but neutral alliance sandwiched between two clearly good alliances. It seems like it is probably only a matter of time before both good aligned alliances turn on it, and attack it on either front. So trying to take territory from The Northern Coalition is clearly out. If you win, after weakening the cause of evil, you'll inherit their same position, and be flanked on two fronts.

What you need to win is to take either power on with either the blessing or apathy of the Northern Coalition. Then if either good power moves to support the other, they leave their homelands undefended form the aggressive expansionist threat that is Golgotha. So who is The Northern Coalition more likely to support?

While I am myself affiliated with the NC I will say I in no way speak for them. I make this move on my own, and have not even discussed it with the rest of the NC or even Aragon. That being said, I would like to point out the Pax Fidelis belongs to Ozem's Vigil, a likely signatory of the Great Western Kingdom. Yes, the same Pax that owns two top 10 settlements in the Northern Coalition. So if a power were to move against the GWK then there is some chance the NC would come in to protect the interests of Pax. Move against the EA... well... there are few real ties between the EA and NC and some bad blood between individual members. Why would they stop a push against the good factions to the south east when it removes them from a situation where they are flanked by neighbors who may one day unify against them?

The Plan

Still help from the greater whole of the NC should not be assumed by anyone moving against either side. This may be a move you have to make largely on your own. So how can an alliance with hundreds of members be subdued. Well for those not familiar with me, I built TEO from the ground up. I am very familiar with the inner-workings of the EA and I know their weaknesses.

The greatest weakness is this. In all my time in the groups that now form the EA, I've met very few who say that they really truly love Open World PvP. Oh some are willing. Some say they will come to the defense of their homeland if needed. But people who say that they log on every day hoping for some good fights? Almost none. And a TON of them have said they would prefer to avoid PvP. Among the evil and chaotic factions of this game? A majority love PvP, and very few have said they would prefer to avoid it.

So how do we win? Bring the PvP to them. Make it constant. Make it brutal. Their factions will splinter and many will leave for the GWK if they can find more peace there. Sure, they have the numbers to beat any faction if they move against them on the open battlefield, but if we wear them out through constant guerrilla and skirmish warfare, things will change. We will eventually cut them down to size. At that point we can make a massive push and defeat them on the open field.

Who Will Control The Territory We Seize

As an officer in a chaotic good group I seek two things. The reunification of good, and the downfall of Brighthaven and Phaeros. Who will claim Brighthaven and rule it as Blighthaven? I care not. You have my full support in the war effort, but ownership of the SE has never interested me. I offer my services in battle, and leave the issues of ownership to those who wish to control this region.

How To Get Involved

I've said as much of the plan as I believe is wise to state publicly. If you would like to get in on this initiative, either for power and land, or for the glory of helping win the first major server war, then please PM me either through this boards or on our The Sentinel's site. I will begin setting up the leadership of the respective interested parties with the names of other parties, so we can discuss together the fine details of our plan together.

Role - Feud and Skirmish Warfare Experts
Alignment - Chaotic Good
Focus - PvP
Settlement - Aragon (CN)

The Sentinels are a group built from the ground up to be as effective as possible at feuds. Our objective is to find causes we feel are worth devoting ourselves to or foes who we feel need to be dealt with, and then inflict as much pain as possible on the opposing side until they either meet our terms of surrender or are battered to the point we no longer view them as a major concern.

Who Should Join The Sentinels?

In short, we are looking for those who want to become dedicated PvPers. This group has the highest standards to join out of every group in PFO. They include training, minimum skill requirements, at least two weeks and 10 hours interaction with members of the group, a voice interview and 25 verified kills through one of our specified methods. We provide all the training and support you will need to pass all our requirements even starting as a complete newb with no PvP experience, but only you can supply the effort, dedication, and persistence we require of all our members.

Members who come in expecting to do anything other than serious PvP are a liability to us. If you're the kind of person who is upset when they regularly and frequently face overwhelming odds, then you aren't cut out to be a Sentinel. If you're the kind of person who gets a rush from constant danger, who dies, and then notes what they did wrong and then uses that knowledge to win next time, we're calling on you to join us. If you're the kind of person to whom surrender is not an option, then you're exactly who we are looking for.

This is an intentionally small and tight-knit group of exceptional players. We know how to make ourselves an unstoppable force in this game. If you have what it takes to be one of us, then we'd love to show you how to become one as well.

What Kinds of Content Do The Sentinels Offer?

First and foremost, feuds. We will constantly be looking for and engaging in feuds that will offer our members as much content as possible while advancing positive causes. We will also be engaging in outpost raids and factional warfare to keep our skills sharp. Our support for PvE and crafting functions will be far more limited unless we find ways to use it to harm our enemies. You are allowed and even encouraged to seek out other companies with whom to engage in this content as anyone may join up to three companies.

Allowed Races and Classes

While we don't specifically prohibit any race or class, there are minimum movement speed and stealth requirements to join, so you'll want to play a race that can move at the desired speed.

In short dwarves, gnomes, and halflings may not be good choices while humans, elves, half-elves, and half-orcs should all be fine. You should also expect that whatever class you play, you'll probably end up in light armor or robes and have to train stealth.

Roleplay

The Sentinels are a group looking to protect the residents and lands of the Echo Woods. While we have no uniforms we generally we wear garb that helps us blend in to our surroundings and all Sentinels share the ability to move swiftly through and fade into the forest.

How Do I Join?

Apply here to start the initiation process.

.........while we are arguing for changes what about allowing people to make items that act as a retributive strike on death destroying all items not threaded. This kind of scorched earth action is meaningful is it not?

I actually really like this idea but any advantage needs a corresponding downside.

I would say make this a trainable ability that changes the nature of threading. You instead use the magical energy of threading items to make yourself explode destroying everything on you (And possibly unleashing an AoE damage effect). This removes the ability to thread anything when active.

I know this is a concern that came up earlier today so I'll give my thoughts on it. I believe that on some level every member of a company is responsible for the actions of every other member within their company.

Let me elaborate. Membership in a company is voluntary. You can leave at any time. Should leadership make decisions you do not agree with, the option to walk is always there, so in belonging to a company you show either support or apathy for the decisions made by your leadership.

Given that company members (in general) can be assumed to contribute to their company in some fashion even apathy enables your leadership to make the decisions they make. In other words, all players within a company can be assumed to back the objectives of their leadership and company as a whole.

But it goes a step further than that. Leadership has the ability to punish or remove their membership if they feel they have stepped out of line.

To illustrate my point we'll give a pretty extreme example not directed at any person or group on these forums. Lets say a member of your company advocated the genocide of a certain racial group and loudly vocalized that opinion to all who would hear. Would you not expect leadership to remove them from your group, and if they did not, would you remain with that group?

The same logic can be applied to any other decision made by the company. Sure, most are much less serious and easier to overlook but if someone outside your group feels you've overlooked something serious enough to be worth war deccing you over, then you can anticipate they would, and should, wage war against your group as a whole.

Why TEO was Founded

TEO was founded in April of 2014 under the name of Great Legionnaires.

It was not a collaborative effort but my sole creation. I was it's only original member and defined it's purpose and made it's first alliance (To The Seventh Veil) before the 2nd member was ever brought on board.

Great Legionnaires was not a new concept. It had existed in other games before, under the same name, most notably a five year run in Freelancer and during the last year of the original Darkfall.

The concept was always the same. It existed as a group that took a primary purpose of helping others and put that before all other issues. Even the good of it's own members. It was a grouped formed for those who wanted to make it their tireless task to put their time, passion, wealth, and necks on the line to stick up for those weaker than themselves.

By the time I reached Pathfinder Online I was already well versed in the culture of these games. Our Freelancer server had no restriction on who you could attack or why, and Darkfall was probably about the most brutal game on the market. Infact I heard about Pathfinder Online while playing Mortal Online. A title extremely similar to Darkfall.

The usual mode of operation for a veteran group in titles like Mortal and Darkfall was to go off and claim some territory out where they wouldn't get bothered and focus entirely on building their own operations and making their own group strong. Most groups would offer help if you signed on to their group and came to live in their cities.

If you did not sign on to a group and come to live with them you would receive extremely little in the way of veteran help. New groups who attempted to go their own way were generally beset upon by griefer factions who would wage war upon them until they disbanded. Non-griefer veteran groups were generally too absorbed in their own self interests to spend much time in the newb areas or help these newb clans. It was actually from the ruins of such a group the Great Legionnaires was formed in Darkfall.

Like in Darkfall Great Legionnaires was formed with the express intent of being everything your typical veteran faction was not. For one the aim was to be highly involved in the starter areas, making the plights of the groups and players there "our business", and offering them a helping hand in both learning the skills they need to succeed as well as fighting any griefer factions that came against them.

If you read through the materials of the Great Legionnaires you will see this intent was expressed quite clearly. It is flat out stated:

First and foremost the Great Legionnaires are a military force. We aim to be be the vanguard of the forces against good, riding out to meet it [evil] on whatever field it takes.

My History With TEO

March 28, 2012: Great Legionnaires was formed. At that point it was a one man operation.

~March 28, 2012: An alliance with TSV was formed. While we intended to help TSV establish an academy for newer players in a safe location it was made clear GL itself wanted to close proximity to the starter zones go give easiest access to those it intended to serve.

March 28, 2012: December 18th 2012: Great Legionnaires swells in membership to become what I believed at the time to be the 3rd largest group behind Pax Aeturnum and The Seventh Viel. We took our first two council members Valinar and Jak Blitz, and ran a series of meetings to help iron out some of the structure. While there are some contributions from different members noteably Valinar hosting the site, Solemor Farmen really streamlining our meeting structure, and Keovar editing our official documents it quickly became apparent that the majority of the burden would rest solely on my shoulders. A huge burden given I was working heavy overtime for most of this time period. For the most part meetings did not happen unless I lead them, I had to write nearly every document we ever released, and even to this day if you look at any major structure within TEO their foundations were forumulated by me.

December 2012: It became increasingly apparent Great Legionnaires was to play a major role in Pathfinder Online, and on a larger scale than any group previously bearing the Great Legionnaire's name. As such I proposed a name change, recognizing that this group had far outgrown the simple name I came up with in middle school while playing Age of Empires, and later applied to my group in Dungeon Siege in the 7th grade. Recognizing that our group was attracting a large number of less combat focused players we changed our document a bit to reflect our more well rounded group. However, our primary purpose of being a group that makes sacrifices to enhance the experience of others did not change. And when we released our new recruitment thread we made that plain. "Role: Player Nation with a Guardian/Peacekeeper focus." We still intended to have a large military, we still intended to make ourselves accessible to those who needed our help, and our Guardian/Peacekeeper mission was still our primary focus. Not the profit our membership.

January 2013: The kickstarter hits and the original landrush goes live. At this point I was regularly working four 24 hour shifts a week but I still found time to put a ton of effort into our recruitment drive. My life at this time basically consisted of working, and going home to get on Teamspeak to talk strategy with Solemor, address the concerns of TEO members, and meet with leadership of various groups we hoped to work with.

Spring 2013: I continued to work 96 hours a week (As I would through the entire year of 2013.) while focusing almost all of my attention on TEO during my time off work, and frequenting the forums while at work. Various officers and leadership in allied groups were even given my cell phone number so we could communicate via text while I worked. However after a break-up with my girlfriend at the time I decided TEO was ruling my life to an unhealthy degree. Solemor had given me the advice the groups on the scale of TEO needed to be lead by someone who would treat it as a full-time job, and I wasn't prepared to let it dominate my time like that any longer. I informed Jak Blitz I would be leaving, created a position that would grant him my authority, and then spent the next few months focusing on my personal life.

Late Summer 2013 - Spring 2014: Hearing Jak Blitz had a close family member struggling with a terminal illness I decided to return to TEO. When I arrived back I found that activity had fallen off to the point that the group was for all practical purposes dead. Infact while probing for information on an undercover alias I had several people tell me TEO was dead. Hearing this I began a campaign to revive TEO's activity. New meetings were held. New activity promotion initiatives were pushed. I began seeking like minded communities from other games to affiliate ourselves with and I was looking to find someone to fill in the role of Grand Master for me. As before, pretty much everything that was to get done ended up getting done by me with the exception of Ixolander approving recruitment applications. Eventually my efforts seemed to pay off with a huge resurgence in activity, a merger into CotP community, and a new Grand Master.

Why I Left TEO

When I made Lifedragn Grand Master is was pretty much an act of desperation to accomplish the objective of keeping TEO alive while giving me time to have a personal life outside TEO and my 96 hour work schedule. Lifedragn's contributions to TEO had been pretty light. He had DMed a play by post campaign and not much else. He also had no leadership experience in any previous title. However he had respect among the membership and the community, and he seemed willing to take the job if given support. While his lack of experience was concerning he gave me the impression through our conversations that he would seek my council and leave me in charge of the military/strategic decisions.

It was a very pleasing arrangement to me as the military/strategic decisions were the ones I primarily wanted to be in charge of, and reducing my role to just them would leave me time to work, take part in TEO, and have a personal life.

In order to give Lifedragn some credibility / name recognition among the community I started allowing him to take credit for ideas that were actually mine, and mostly developed by me. Primarily I created the idea for Brighthaven, did most of the work on the OP, but allowed him to make the announcement, and created the new TEO recruitment thread which he only made light edits to before posting.

Not long after it came time to choose our settlement location. We were initially looking at the location currently occupied by Pax Aeturnum. It seemed like we had decided on that as our spot but then there was another meeting in which most people seemed to have turned their eyes to the south-east mountains. I was in favor of that until Avari proposed the idea of K. K immediately intrigued me as a location that was both centrally located between the 3 starter settlements because of the implications that would have on our recruitment, our trade potential, and our ability to fulfill TEO's primary objective.

As I looked back at the south east I realized it was actually, frankly, a piss poor location for our groups. Highly isolated from both potential recruits and the players we aimed to serve, the south-east was not only an insanely weak play for the largest alliance in the game, but an ultimately undefendable one given the inevitable build up of chaotic groups around Thornkeep and evil groups around Fort Inevitable that will take place, and the sure placement of the major good-aligned settlements toward Riverwatch to the North as can already be seen starting to happen with both Talongaurd and Ozem's Vigil.

However at this point we had a lot of active members who had contributed little to nothing to the group thus far, first and foremost among them Cheatle who had been with us less than a week at the time, coming in and freaking out that taking K would be seen as too aggressive of a move and turn the server against us. (BTW. Notice how everyone has turned on Talonguard? Neither have I.) And insisting the the South East was not only defensible but an extremely safe location.

While I spelled out the extreme travel time between K and our primary recruiting grounds, how it isolated us from the rest of the community, and that it flat out would doom our groups. A great many of our members seemed convinced that it was perfectly safe, and that TEO's new role was to isolate itself and have people come out to live with us if they sought our protection. Thoughtless remarks like that we could pull most of our recruits from the forums, or that the Green Cloaks or Seraphic Commission would regularly make the hour+ trek from the SE to Riverwatch were quoted to me as if they were reasonable arguments. The whole situation absolutely enraged me.

1. I felt it was incredibly disrespectful for people who sat back and let me do all the work for 2 years to come in and feel they had a right to equal say in such a major decision. TEO was never promoted as a democracy, and it was not intended to be a group where a week old member could come walking in and start acting like the owned the place.

2. Their act turned our primary role from protecting others, to protecting ourselves. If that's what they wanted they should have never joined TEO in the first place. TEO was formed as a direct counter to the self-interested mentalities strongly exerted by it's current membership who now beg for mechanics to protect themselves rather than looking to protect others. TEO's primary purpose was never set forth as negotiable or something that was subject to change. Members who dissented with our primary purpose should have joined The Seventh Veil or made their own group rather than turning the group I spend so much effort building as a group focused on other's before itself, and planting it's military between all who need our aid and those seeking to oppress them into a group of self interested isolationists who make no more meaningful effort to promote our core values of "Community betterment, protection of the weak, and promotion of justice" than any other non-caring veteran group clinging to the edges of the map.

Their decision not only left me with no interest in staying to help TEO promote their self-interested objectives but the thought of working alongside Cheatle and the others who voted in favor of destroying everything I spent so long building after they did next to squat themselves utterly disgusted me.

While unable to contain my outrage and disgust with the complete 180 of purpose within TEO by people who did nothing to put it where it is today, and without even a basic understanding of these games and the strategies needed to succeed in them, I had decided to leave it at words and go build a new group to accomplish TEO's original objective. To even offer them a place to go after their inevitable failure in the SE.

That was until all the continued assertions that I was a quitter for walking out on a TEO I no longer found recognizable, people who did nothing to put TEO where it is today claiming credit for the fruits of my labors, and in general the complete lack of any gratefulness/recognition for the immense amount of work I did to put that group where it is. TEO didn't build itself up to where it is today. I did that.

That is why I bear the resentment to them I do today.

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This is a crowdforging thread. Please refrain from replying unless giving constructive feedback. For more information on what to post and not to post in a crowdforging thread read this.

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A Brief Background

The Mark of Pharasma is the source of our character's Immortality. Pharasma also known as the "Lady of Graves" is the true-neutral god of death, fate, prophecy, and rebirth.

Our characters have somehow been marked by Pharasma causing us to return to life after we die.

I'm sure I'm not alone in saying this raises more questions than it answers though. Why would a true-neutral who has the job of shepherding the deceased to the afterlife grant a group of individuals of all alignments and faiths a mark of immortality. Especially when some of them will be necromancers and Pharasma abhors the undead?

Giving possible answers to some of these questions that haven't already received developer answers as a community may be a fun exercise.

Crowdforging threads are threads where the original poster posts an idea intended to be run through the community for constructive feedback in order to help them improve that idea. These threads use non-official rules we ask the members of the community to respect in order to eliminate non-constructive posts and allow us to focus solely on the idea's being proposed.

What to Post in a Crowdforging Thread

1. Suggested additions to the idea.
2. Suggested tweaks to the idea.
3. Suggested changes to the idea.
4. Suggestions to drop parts of the idea.
5. Comments highlighting aspects of the idea that others may not have thought of yet.

What Not to Post in a Crowdforging Thread

1. That you like/do not like the idea.
2. Company/settlement recruitment.
3. Any commentary on individuals, groups, alliances or anything else not directly related to the idea.

As a disclaimer this is not suggested EE content. This is an idea I don't think should be entertained until we have all core races and classes implemented. However I do have some ideas on how to viably do it that I felt were worth putting down in writing before they're forgotten.

Why Should we Do It

Dark fantasy is an extremely popular format. Vampires and werewolves are almost as beloved by patrons of the fantasy genre as elves and dwarves. They're a big deal, and a lot of people would love for their character in PFO to be cursed by one of these afflictions.

With the World of Darkness MMO canceled, there are really not many good MMO's for the lovers of dark fantasy to turn to. Filling that niche could win us some additional players who would like to play vampires, werewolves, a slayer of such creatures, or just inhabit a world where they have a meaningful presence.

With Ustalav directly to the west of the OE map, it really makes sense to do this to. We have star metal in our lands due to our proximity to Numeria and it's no closer to us the Ustalav so it makes sense that these kind of afflictions would be a bit more common here than they would in many other parts of Golarion.

The Problems These Races Represent

As everyone knows, werewolves and vampires are powerful creatures who spread their affliction by biting or drinking the blood of their victims. In-game this translates to a powerful condition that is easily spread and in most MMO's can quickly lead from a few werewolves and vampires to a population absolutely filled with them.

While weaknesses can be implemented to offset their benefits it often ends up with these races feeling overly gimped, and if they are too potent or the limitations on becoming one feel to great it becomes a major piece of content aimed at a tiny minority of players. In the end, not something worth implementing.

So the aim would be to create something true to the lore and game enhancing, that would be used by a sizable minority of players. That is the intent of the ideas I shall propose here.

What Should be the PFO Vision of a Werewolf / Vampire

Werewolves and Vampires vary a lot from format to format. The more prevalent theme's found in almost all formats is that they often hunt humans (or other intelligent human like creatures such as dwarves and elves in formats where they exist). Werewolves for flesh or simply the thrill of the kill, vampires for blood.

For more details we really need to delve into what the Pathfinder lore says about each creature.

Lycanthropes
Vampires

To summarize some highlights. Both are incredibly difficult to kill without using the proper weapons and techniques. Vampires are apparently restricted to the evil alignments while werewolves can be (but rarely are) good. Nowhere have I read werewolves are always chaotic but I find it interesting to note that the example werewolf is chaotic evil and the god of good aligned lycanthropes is chaotic good. The whole idea of werewolves rings as pretty chaotic to me anyway.

This and a few more choice bit's I've pulled from the lore are integrated into my ideas on how I think they should be implemented.

The Three Factions Werewolves, Vampires, and Slayers

So how to put a limitation on the werewolves and vampires without making them feel like weaklings or having it so light everyone will play them.

I believe the solution lies in factions. Werewolves and vampires are hated and hunted creatures. So here is how I would propose to make them work:

A player bitten by a vampire or werewolf has 3 game days or about 24 hours to receive healing. Healing is a simple matter to acquire and during this time period the player will be consistently warned they are afflicted through messages describing the physical affects they are feeling as they change. To further avoid unwanted changes this is 3 game days spent online. While less realistic, you don't want someone getting bitten, logging off, and logging on again to discover they are now a monster.

A creature that catches lycanthropy becomes an afflicted lycanthrope, but shows no symptoms (and does not gain any of the template's adjustments or abilities) until the night of the next full moon, when the victim involuntarily assumes animal form and forgets his or her own identity. The character remains in animal form until the next dawn and remembers nothing about the entire episode (or subsequent episodes) unless he makes a DC 20 Will save, in which case he becomes aware of his condition.

A remove disease or heal spell cast by a cleric of 12th level or higher cures the affliction, provided the character receives the spell within 3 days of the infecting lycanthrope's attack. Alternatively, consuming a dose of wolfsbane (Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook 560) gives an afflicted lycanthrope a new Fortitude save to recover from lycanthropy.

Andius's Personal Note: For the sake of simplicity any remove disease spell from any level player or NPC caster should remove the affect in PFO.

Once the change has occurred they are IMMEDIATELY entered into the werewolf or vampire faction and flagged "for the cause" opening them up to PvP attacks by rival factions. This flag cannot be disabled unless they can somehow lose their vampire/werewolf template.

This is one of the major downsides to being a vampire/werewolf. Once you become one you are ever after a target of the slayers.

Unlike vampires and werewolves the slayer faction functions normally with the ability to enable/disable your "for the cause" flag until you reach a high enough rank. This is for two reasons:

1. While werewolves and vampires are constantly what they are, a slayer isn't really identifiable as a slayer unless they are either out slaying or have gained some renown in their craft.
2. Slayers are intended to be one of the major downsides of playing a vampire/werewolf. We don't want to dissuade people from playing them as they will hopefully be the largest of the three factions.

Playing a Werewolf

There are two forms of werewolves. Natural (those born with lycanthropy) and afflicted (those born with it).

In the interest of balance I am only proposing we add afflicted lycanthropes to the game. Natural would be just too damn powerful. But one of the big elements of an afflicted lycanthrope is loss of control:

When a PC becomes a lycanthrope, you as the GM have a choice to make. In most cases, you should take control of the PC's actions whenever he is in hybrid or animal form...

However I really don't think most people would be very interested in doing something that causes them to lose control of their character. So here is my proposal.

I expect this to probably be the most controversial proposal of my idea but keep an open mind about it.

Full Moon Nights- Once per in-game month, there is a full moon. This is not an event that goes unannounced. There should be system messages it is approaching and when it actually comes the background noises should become more eerie, frequently broken by the howls of wolves and werewolves.

When the full moon happens all lycanthropes are forced into hybrid form, and they are given a bit of an interesting twist. Their hybrid form is a bit more powerful than usual and they can now kill anyone without reputation loss. Infact doing so will give them boosts to their standing werewolf faction, which they need to become a more powerful werewolf.

While this going to create a lot of random slaughter, it comes with plenty of warning and it only happens for a limited time frame every so often (If there were to be 4 in-game days per one real life day this would happen for about 2 hours about once a week). Those not desiring to participate can retreat to the relative safety of their settlements and just wait the night out.

Out in the world everyone else can enjoy a night haunted by intelligent, roaming, player controlled monsters in which there is sure to be some hella-fun fights.

The incentive to slaughter is meant to simulate the loss of control. If someone chooses to roleplay fighting that loss of control more power to them. With each passed up kill they lose out on faction standing which is how they develop their lycanthropic powers, and werewolves aren't that great until they get those powers.

Base Form

Base form is your normal form before contracting lycanthropy. Slayers can still hunt you in this form. New lycanthropes will stay in this form constantly outside Full Moon Nights. As they progress in the werewolf faction and train the abilities that unlocks they can learn to assume hybrid and animal form at other times.

Hybrid Form

Part humanoid part werewolf. This is the classic werewolf form.

In PFO assuming the form could work like switching weapons. This form should give access to powerful natural weapon attacks, increase the players health and damage resistance to non-silver weapons as well as giving some great speed boost and gap closing abilities.

While in hybrid form you can't use any abilities that would be penalized while raging, though there are some werewolf faction spells that can be unlocked for casters who assume this form. As with the physical abilities all werewolf abilities emphasize raw power while shunning more subtle things such as crowd control. So expect less subtle utility magic and more "your natural attacks deal an additional X fire damage for the duration of this ability."

**This is intended as a limitation of power that can be partially offset by investing training time into werewolf abilities**

As a feared and hated creature assuming this form can be dangerous. It gives you the heinous for the duration of it's use, which does not begin to wear off until you re-assume human form.

Wolf Form

This is not unlocked until higher tiers of the werewolf faction. This essentially works the same as the druid wildshape ability except it only grant's the wolf form.

Since wolves can occur naturally or through druid abilities this does not give the heinous flag.

**This helps powerful werewolves (as in a year + training time werewolves) overcome the fact that their natural weapon training is wasted while in their base forms.**

Playing a Vampires

Full disclosure, as some of you may have already guess, I'm way more into werewolves than vampires so I've invested a lot less thought in this. That's fine. These ideas are here to be critiqued and improved upon and I would encourage you blood sucker fanatics to do so.

A vampire is a vampire is a vampire so unlike werewolves once you become one, you are constantly one.

Unlike a werewolf in hybrid form though, it's much easier to hide your true nature.

Vampires immediately gain some health regeneration, damage reduction overcome by silver and magic, and the ability to drink blood. The also gain a unique vampire disguise that will be described later on.

Like werewolves, vampires are constantly flagged against slayers, and like werewolves if their affliction is revealed they gain a heinous flag. This happens when their disguise is blown or they are witnessed using a vampire only ability such as drink blood by a non-incapacitated/non-vampire player or NPC-gaurd.

They are also considered undead meaning they are healed by negative energy, harmed by positive energy, and affected by any spell or ability which affects undead.

I might mention that their weakness to garlic, mirrors, and holy symbols should probably end up in game though most of these types of weaknesses will be exploited by slayer faction abilities.

The vampire disguise is a disguise that hides all exposed flesh (to avoid harm by sunlight) and makes them appear as a non-vampire creature of their original race with the same player name etc.

This disguise is harder to see through without special slayer training than your typical disguise. It also costs nothing but instead can't be re-assumed for a certain period of time after your cover is blown.

Vampires gain faction by drinking the blood of incapacitated players. Like werewolves, they don't become very powerful until they gain their faction abilities.

Playing a Slayer

(Slayers may be based of an already existing group such as the "Knights of Ozem" or a new group made up for PFO with the purpose of protecting the River Kingdoms from monstrous invaders.

As previously described slayers function more like a normal faction than werewolves and vampires as the "for the cause" flag can be enabled and disabled until a certain rank.

Slayers gain powerful monster fighting abilities, particularly ones to be used against vampires and werewolves though they may find some of these abilities to be of great use in PvE as well.

One does not pick up a clove of garlic, a crossbow with silver bolts, and a wooden stake and immediately become the next Van Helsing or Buffy. A powerful werewolf or vampire will easily slaughter an unpracticed slayer, though they may find the newly turned to provide a pretty even match. However the most powerful slayers are the stuff of legends, and the fear of werwolves and vampires alike.

Slayer faction perks tend to grant new abilities and enhance existing abilities so that they can be used with incredibly effect against monstrous creatures and players. While they won't find their abilities as universally useful as a vampire or werewolf might against eachother powerful slayers > powerful werewolves and vampires.

Slayer faction is gained by hunting down and killing player vampires and werewolves.

Points of Interest

While most tier 3 abilities come from settlements all tier 2 and tier 3 vampire, werewolf, and slayer abilities come from specialized points of interest.

This presents both an advantage and a weakness. The advantage being that they are easier to build, and the weakness being that they are easier to destroy.

That weakness is emphasized by the fact that slayers get big perks for raising werewolf and vampire POI's and vampires and werewolves get big perks for raising theirs.

Vampire Manors can only be built and maintained by evil companies. Werewolf Dens can only be built and maintained by chaotic companies. Slayer Fortresses can be built and maintained by any lawful OR good company.

This is a limitation that helps protect the "sizable minority" status of werewolves and vampires. In order to become a powerful one you need to find a company you are willing to join within one step of your alignment able to maintain a Vampire Manor or Werewolf Den.

It also creates a concrete objective in the constant war between slayers and monstrous players.

One thing I always hate is when I create a druid or ranger or whatever and take my wolf form, or bring out my pet wolf, or summon my raven or whatever have you and I hate the way it looks. Not only do I hate the way it looks but it has the same appearance as everyone else running around with the same pet/wildshape ability.

I like to spend a considerable amount of time in animal form. If I've got some kind of animal I have it out pretty much constantly. These are major parts of your character that you are constantly using and constantly seeing.

It doesn't make sense to spend a great amount of time allowing players to customize their armor and regular appearance and then have them running around in the same wildshape form as every other druid or using the same pet as every other druid.

So from the bottom of my heart, please let us customize our wildshape forms and companions.

*If we have to tame our companions just having a nice visual variety to the tamable NPCs works.*

What to Expect as a Player

Many MMOs with PvP develop a degenerate culture where any character that can be killed is killed. This then drives people who don't like dying pointlessly out of the game, leaving only people who are ok with pointless killing.

I have said from day one that our goal is a game with lots of PvP and little meaningless PvP. Killing newbies "just because" is the ultimate definition of meaningless PvP. We'll just work and work and work, with in game mechanical systems, community management and supervisory authority to keep punishing people who kill meaninglessly, especially if they're meaninglessly killing newbies.

I just don't know how much more plainly I can state this. I'd rather shut down the game and quit than run a simplistic murder simulator for the enjoyment of a tiny fraction of sociopaths.

While people can attack you anywhere for any reason consequences have been set up so that if they do so outside certain conditions it's really going to hurt their character's power, eventually rendering the game nearly unplayable for them.

What to Expect as a Settlement

You should be worried about having robust leaders. You need people with experience in large MMO guilds to be a part of your leadership structure. If you don't have any, recruit them.

You're going to get your asses kicked. Your stuff is going to get torn down. People are going to say mean things about you. Even some of your characters may become unplayable.

We want a game people care enough about winning to engage in robust espionage and sabotage. That's a sign we're succeeding, not failing.

Just wait until the Russians show up.

They'll survive the way such groups always survive, but being bastards. They'll likely carve out some Settlement as far away from well traveled areas as they can get, and then work like mad to develop all the nearby resources and max out the income potential of their territory. Once they have a handle on the economics they'll go into all out military production and field really large, really well equipped armies. Their neighbors will get crushed.

Along the way they'll betray friends, break alliances, double cross those who thought they were fellow travelers and generally leave a wake of pissed off and angry players behind them.

By the way - most people will read this and think "how awful". It would surprise you how many people reading this will think "sign me up!"

Settlement warfare is going to be nasty vicious business, not for the feint of heart. If you want to be successful at it you need to have an extremely competitive attitude and be ready to fight your territory. There will be 33 settlements at the start and over 6000 players. Competition will be hot.

There are feud and war mechanics. If people pay the cost to feud or war dec you they can kill you as much as they want without consequence. They can come and burn down your settlements, and points of interest, and outposts. Don't claim territory unless you are ready to fight, and fight hard for it.

So What Does This Mean?

Yes you can play this game without being a hardened killer or even someone who desires much PvP.

If you join this game, join a settlement with low expectations and few enemies you can go out gathering, adventuring, etc. and not expect to get killed nearly as often as you would in comparable titles.

If you claim territory you can expect to need to see to it's defense, and you can expect that to be a difficult task. You can expect to need experienced/competitive minded players to succeed in that task.

If you want PvP you can focus on the territorial control aspect of the game. It's going to offer a lot of content and opportunity for great fights.

This game offers a lot of content to both ranges of the spectrum. Make sure you've chosen the role catered to where you want to be on that spectrum.

The Vigilant - Warriors of Freedom and Nature
Role - Slave Liberation and Defenders of Nature
Alignment - Chaotic Good
Focus - PvP
Settlement - Aragon (CN)

This is a group whose focus is on the more militant and chaotic aspects of defending freedom and nature. Rangers, druids, and barbarians are all common among its ranks, but all classes are accepted.

Unlike their Aragonian brethren, The UnNamed Company, members of The Vigilant do not seek profit or rob for their own gain. They align themselves with moral causes and fight tirelessly to advance them. Their two primary causes are the liberation of slaves and the destruction of those who abuse nature.

Who Should Join The Vigilant?

The Vigilant is a great group for someone looking to participate in feuds, faction warfare, and willing to travel far and wide throughout the River Kingdoms. Our primary content will be:

• Feuds/small-group PvP
• Anti-slave factional warfare
• Pro-nature factional warfare
• Outpost destruction

There are also many opportunities to engage in many other activities such as exploration, escalation PvE, crafting, smuggling, and roleplay.

To join, please apply to the UnNamed Company and specify that you would like to become a member of The Vigilant.

Also, please be sure to vote for our home settlement of Aragon in the land rush.

This is a call to all good-aligned players, especially those in groups who chose to settle to the South East who have agreed with my concerns about the defensibility of the South East region and already expressed a desire to settle up north with me.

The Setting

For those who do not know the arguments, here are the points: there are three starter zones in Open Enrollment. To the South West, Fort Inevitable controlled by the Hellknights. This is were you should expect most Lawful Evil players to start. To the east, Thornkeep, which is Chaotic Neutral. This is where you should expect most chaotic players (including bandits and psycho killers) to start.

Fort Riverwatch will be added in the North East before Open Enrollment. This is where you should expect many LG, NG, and good-leaning LN players to start.

In PFO, travel time is non-trivial and there is no teleportation. Moving recruits from starter towns to their chosen location will be something every group will have to address. Beyond that, most newbs will venture into the hexes surrounding the safe areas before choosing a group and moving to that group's settlement. It is for these reasons we expect the areas around starter settlements to be settled by groups with similar ideologies to the safe-zone's town. This sets the stage for a predominately evil culture to the south, good culture to the north, lawful culture to the east, and chaotic culture to the west. These cultures will not be defined by hard boundaries but that is what we should generally expect.

The Call

Given this, I am issuing the call to other good-aligned players and groups: come north. It is where our recruits will be. It is where any other good-aligned groups with hope of long-term success will be established. It has been left to us to secure these regions against those who would prey upon their residents.

I will not be leading the groups up north, however, I will be hoping to charter my company in a northern settlement.

If you are a group interested in taking part in the initiative to settle the north, please private message me. If you are a player wishing to join a northern, power please do so as well.

Together, from a position prime for actual in-game growth, we can reclaim what has been lost.

I'm sure a lot of people who played the tabletop or regular D&D know these terms. Or those of you who have played Darkfall you might be familiar with the terms kill, revive, and gank. Though there is no parallel to stabilize in Darkfall.

This proposal could be framed. As translating the table top kill mechanic into an MMO.

This proposal could also be framed as translating the Darkfall kill mechanic into the Pathfinder setting.

It is either and both at the same time.

Incapacitate

When your HP hits 0 you are put in a helpless state on the ground. You are unable to take any actions (Unless abilities are added that allow you to do so). From this state you will either slowly bleed to death or be able to revive after a certain period of time. Obviously in the tabletop you slowly bleed to death, in Darkfall it's been done both ways at different times. From personal preference I would say slowly bleeding to death was the better of the two mechanics both in PvE and PvP.

One essential competent of this mechanic is the ability to "release" from the incapacitated state. This allows a incapacitated character to let themselves to die to prevent incapacitation griefing.

Stabilize

If you slowly bleed to death after being incapacitated, stabilize would be a mechanic that stops that process, meaning your character would no longer be slowly dying but either paused between dying and healing or slowly healing.

This would probably be a function of the heal skill as well as healing magic.

Revive

This brings your HP back up above 0 allowing you to take actions again. In Darkfall everyone has this skill by default, but it could be made a function of the heal skill and healing magic within PFO. There are merits to both sides of that debate IMO.

Coup De Grâce

This would allow you to instantly kill an incapacitated player. It functions identically to the "gank" skill in Darkfall.

Why?

This allows for:

• Friendly duels and training exercises.
• A way to defeat opponents without killing them.
• Simpler ways to rob people than SADs.

In most PvP games wars are actually a fairly minor part of the major warfare that goes on. Wars mainly stop NPC protectors from interceding inside safe zones, or remove alignment/security hits in zones where those exist.

The areas where the majority of the conflicts take place, and where players can claim territory of their own tend to have few to no laws or consequences that interfere with PvP. This allows for massive wars where many factions can join together into World War type conflicts. In PFO little has been said about lawless areas and the impression always given is that settlements and other claimable hexes will be subject to the reputation system at most times.

This means that in order for the world war type scenarios seen in EVE or Darkfall to be a reality there must be the ability to maintain many, many, wars/feuds simultaneously. But if this is possible what is to stop groups from recklessly warring everyone to effectively bypass the reputation system?

Hostility ratings could provide part of this solution.

Hostility Ratings

Hostility ratings are the measure of how many actions another group has taken that provides your group a reason to go to war with them. Examples include:

• Any action that generates the hostile flag toward your group.
• Aggressive actions taken as part of a war.*
• Being at war with an allied group.

As the hostility rating between your group rises, the cost of maintaining an aggressive war against them lowers. Hostility has a slow bleed off rate over time.

The point is if you are using the war system to get free kills against groups who have done little to provoke you, and with no conflict with your allies, that will require the highest expenditure of influence to maintain. If you are maintaining wars with factions who are consistently provoking you, at war with your allies, or whom you have a history of conflict with the cost will be very low.

*Aggressive actions during a war are a good generator because it means if a faction goes to war with you, you turn things around on them, and they drop the war, it will be very cheap to take up those costs yourself. It also means if they are maintaining a war with you over time it won't get much cheaper unless they are putting up good resistance. Something a group bullying newb factions is hoping to encounter little of.

I'd really like you to clarify this statement:

Not being a member of a PC Settlement means that there's no good reason for anyone to treat you as anything but hostile if you visit their territory. It would be foolish to have an open door policy for NPC Settlement members, so I expect most PC Settlements will NBSI them. I don't know when or if we'll have systems granular enough to let a Settlement set an individual character to NRDS but even after we do, I suspect you'll have problems negotiating one on one with very many locations. The map, for you, will be a small circle of green safe territory around your NPC Settlement, surrounded by an ocean of red where you'll risk being ganked if you venture forth, without allies, and without any means of meaningful self defense.

First question. When you say "I expect most PC Settlements will NBSI them." What do you mean by NBSI?

Second question. When someone crosses into a hex you control that is either trespassing or part of a group you have NBSIed will it hurt your corruption rating or will they have to actually do something once inside to accomplish that? If they are the victim or a crime (for instance if they get SADed) will it hurt your corruption? If so how much?

Disclaimer: I was waiting until we had some more detailed maps to work with but I think this needs to be brought into the discussion now. A lot of this is based on the best guess I have as to which territory is claimable, and which is not. As such it is not intended to be taken as gospel truth.

A Map of PFO

As you can see there is some tinting of some of the hexes on that map. Green, red, and a much more subtle yellow. I believe that:

Green = Settlement Hex
Red = Monster Hex (Unclaimable)
Yellow = Unclaimable Hex / Starter Area

So lets get down to it. I'm going to black out everything but the yellow unclaimables, and red monster hexes.

Unclaimables Only- It's not here to be pretty, it's here to illustrate a point.

Now we might be safe to assume the bodies of water I blacked out in that image won't be claimable, but for the rest of that black area, there is no reason to assume it won't be governed by settlements or points of interest. So I want everyone to think about that for a moment.

The NBSI Picture

So what does it mean for you if everyone goes NBSI? It means almost all of that black area not under the control of your alliance / a group you have a formal agreement with is going to be controlled by factions that will shoot you just for being there. You will not be able to go to the settlements there and engage in trade. You will not be able to go there and harvest resources. You will not be able to explore them without constantly evading the forces of the controlling factions. You will not be able to go there and sell your services to help with escalations / assassinations / bounty hunting. You will not be able to quest there. You will not be able to move through them to access the PvE content in those red hexes without evading the controlling forces. You will not be be able to move through those hexes to get to hexes that have given you rights to trade and/or reside there without evading the controlling factions

That is the life of null sec on EVE. You sit in the areas your alliance controls or those little yellow areas and do all your PVE there. If you go outside those hexes, you do so in stealth or with the backing of military force. One of the realities of living in null sec for me was that if I needed anything, it either need to be made for me / sold to me by someone in my alliance, I had to put in an order for the next time they took a freighter into high-sec to do shopping. Or I had to sneak out and pick it up in one of my covert ops ships.

If PFO becomes that, here are some career choices you can entirely cross off your list or at least be doing in a much more limited fashion than I know many of you have envisioned:

- Traveling merchant / trader
- Roaming escalation fighter / assassin / bounty hunter
- Explorer

The NRDS Picture

Now if those black areas are controlled by NRDS factions, then anyone who you do not have established hostilities with will open up their territory for you. You will be able to engage in trade with most settlements. They may open up access to or sell harvesting rights for resources they aren't consuming themselves. You will be able to explore without interference or perhaps even while enjoying protection of the local factions. You will be able to go to them and pick up work as an escalations slayer / assassin / bounty hunter. You will probably be able to quest there. You can move through them to access the PVE content in the red hexes without hindrance from the local factions. You will be able to move through them to gain access to the areas your faction controlled, and that have given you rights to trade/reside there without evading the controlling factions.

If your alliance's settlement doesn't have what you need, you can go trade with a neighbor. If you get bored with your own area, you can go explore a bit. You can go socialize a bit. You can go and interact with other players a bit.

Now I'm sure the peanut gallery is going to come in here and say "If that's what you want, do it yourself!" Here's there reality check. If NRDS is viable without any mechanics and incentives aimed to make it so:

Please point out all the NRDS groups on this map.

If you don't that black area to be as dominated by NBSI factions as it is in the map above. Then come join the discussion on how to prevent that.

Carrots

The following are a list of positive things that should inspire settlements to consider going NRDS, and help push players out into player controlled territory.

NPC Town Markets

They Should:

A. Not exist.
B. Have incredibly high tax rates if they do exist.
C. Only offer extremely low level items if they do exist.

The reason is simple. If one of A, B, or C is not true everyone will go to NPC towns for the majority of their trading needs hurting traffic to player settlements.

Player Settlement Markets

Players settlements should be able to put a tax rate between 0 and 100% on their town's market. All revenue generated by this tax goes to the settlement.

Again, simple reason. This gives MAJOR incentive for settlements to open up their roads to traders.

Development Indexes

Legally harvesting resources, killing NPCs, crafting, and completing quests in a hex should raise the development indexes or the organizations who control the hex, even if they do not belong to that organization.

The purpose of this is that it incentivizes less populated player settlements to let outsiders come in and make use of what they aren't using.

Resource Rights

Settlements and POI's should be able to sell the rights to extract resources in their territory in the form of an item. This would allow players to harvest normally restricted resources until they either harvest the max amount the contract allows or the contract expires.

This ties in with the Development Indexes to incentivize settlements to grant access to the resources they aren't using.

Sticks

Not penalties for running NBSI policies as I'm sure some of you must be thinking, but actually things NRDS policies can use to fight off some of the typical downsides associated with being NRDS.

Exile

Exiling a player or group allows you to kill them without consequence within your territory. Also any crime committed to an exiled player in your territory does not generate corruption / unrest. Setting it so that all neutral players are automatically exiled is how a settlement effectively runs a NBSI policy.

The great point to this is that this allows NRDS settlements to pick and choose who is considered "red", allowing them to effectively remove sources of trouble from their settlement without implementing a blanket NBSI policy. There is no penalty for exiling players or even adopting a NBSI policy. You just miss on the potential benefits the additional traffic could offer your settlement.

Crime Reports

When players are the victims of actions that generate corruption/unrest in your settlement, officials with the appropriate rights can read the reports on what caused it.

The point of this is if you noticed the same player is routinely being victimized in your territory you can talk to them to help determine the cause. Allowing you to better protect them, or exile them depending on your patience and findings. Creating less incentive to go NBSI due to alt abuse or "careless idiots who don't follow proper precautions."

Resource Restrictions

The right to set what resources can and can't be harvested by whom within your territory. This isn't a 100% blocking mechanic but instead criminal flags anyone who violates these laws.

This allows NRDS settlements to have a bit more control over what people can and can't do within their territory. Especially when it comes to the extraction of scarce resources.

TL:DR- Some mechanics that cause settlements to benefit from additional player traffic, and control the damage the traffic can cause a bit better. No proposed penalties for running a NBSI policy.

Since the creation of Great Legionnaires on these boards, and even our transformation into The Empyrean Order, we have grown in membership, viewpoint, and scope at an exponential rate. Our past organizations and our intentions while revolving around community betterment, have always most strongly expressed that by a focus on protecting the innocent and containment of the unjust through the use of force. In short we were a good aligned but combat focused organization.

The membership that has joined us on Pathfinder Online though has really brought in a lot of diversity in viewpoints and perspectives. TEO's membership has many ideas on how to better this community, many talents to offer to that aim, and many approaches they would like to to take to reach it. We have more members than we've ever had before, and and many more non-combat focused ones than we've ever had in the past.

As a leader one of the most essential talents to acquire is that of identifying people with the right skills for a job, and placing them into the position where they can serve best. One of the members whose talents I have to put in the right place is my own. I have traditionally always served as the leader of smaller, more elite, and very combat focused organizations. While I think these experiences and that perspective can be valuable to TEO, I do not think they necessarily are a good reflection of our organization as a whole. However I have recognized within Lifedragn that he is a level headed individual who commands great respect within and outside of our organization, a firm and principled individual whom will stay true to the intent of TEO and the reasons our members joined, and finally someone who shows the initiative to get things done that any leader absolutely needs.

After discussing this with both Lifedragn and TEO's membership, I feel it is now time for me to step down from my position as Grand Master, so that Lifedragn may take my place. I will still be a member of TEO and actively involved in this community. However I will be putting my talents toward TEO's military, and more specifically the formation, training, and leadership of our elite force known as The Exalted.

-Andius Meuridiar, formerly Grand Master of The Empyrean Order, Captain Commander of The Exalted.

I'm fully expecting TBD to be the answer received for most of these question. I would imagine a lot of them will hinge largely on crowd-forging. That's fine, I'm just trying to dig up any info that is present to help in our discussions.

As a player, please do not answer any of these questions unless you include a linked citation of a developer statement or blog. However, feel free to ask your own.

Crafting

• What crafting skills are you anticipating being in at the start of EE?
• What crafting skills are you anticipating being in at the start of OE?
• Will all crafting be tied to structures such as woodworking shops or smithies?
• How much production capacity do you think an average settlement is likely to have relative to the demand it's members have for crafted goods?
• How will crafting facilities available in NPC settlements differ from those found in player settlements?

Gathering

• What resources are you anticipating being in at the start of EE?
• What resources are you anticipating being in at the start of OE?
• How scare will the most common materials be?
• What are the most scare resources we are likely to see in the EE and OE?
• How much control will settlements have over who can legally harvest what resources in their territory?
• How will resources found around NPC settlements differ from those found around player settlements?

Trade

• What kind of items will there be in EE and OE that traders will be likely to need to move long distances. (For instance localized resources)
• How long would it take a trader to pass from one corner of the map to the other?
• Other than backpacks and bags of holding will there be mules, carts, wagons etc. If so how soon do you anticipate them being implemented?
• Will player settlements be able to tax the exchange of goods at their markets?
• Will NPC settlements have markets? If so how will they differ from markets in player settlements?

Awhile back it was stated alliances will cost influence to maintain, implying that there will be benefits to maintaining official alliances in-game. What benefits would you like to see?

Personally the main thing I want to see if I'm spending influence, is the ability to join them in defensive wars for free, and a reduced cost to joining them in aggressive wars.

Also should the alignment/reputation effect who can ally them or how much it costs to ally them?

Discuss.

Halt

Halt should be the base ability for stand and deliver. It would be non-alignment based and available to every class. At the base level it would be a ranged ability that makes your character shout a very audible "Halt!" accompanied by an audio/visual component such as a buzz and a brief reddening of the screen (or blueing of the screen if you are authorized to issue halts by the hex owners) for the target of the halt.

From that point on the target would have a set ammount of time they could continue moving before they get the "resisting" flag. This grants you the right to kill them without reputation loss and if the halt was lawful it also negates alignment drift. You are also immediately flagged as hostile to the target / their social circle if not an authorized agent of the hex where the halt was issued. You also receive a criminal flag if unauthorized halts are outlawed in the hex where you issue it.

If the target stops you have a set ammount of time to take one of the following actions or else they get to move on:

-Stand and Deliver: This allows you to inspect the carried items of the player and demand a portion of them. If the target complies then they may leave immediately and gets the "robbed" condition for five minutes. During these 5 minutes new SADs may not be issued and rep loss for killing them is multiplied. If they refuse the get the "resisting" flag. SADs are always a chaotic act. Any goods taken through SADs are flagged as "stolen" for 24 hours.
-Inspection: The inspection is both a tool for local authorities and vigilante justice seekers so it may or may not be a chaotic act depending on where it is issues. During an inspection you can.
• Demand stolen goods.
• Demand any contraband (Authorized agents only), free or sieze any slaves discovered, and destroy any items associated with opposing alignments.
• Collect any outstang fines. (Authorized agents only)
• Demand lawful taxes and tolls. (Authorized agents only) Doing so gives them an item they can present to other inspectors to show they have already done so, disabling the use of this option again until that item expires.
You may resist inspections as you would a SAD if the inspector tries to do something you aren't ok with. This may give you chaotic points if the inspector is authorized. SADs can be tacked on to unlawful inspections.

As you level up a halt it becomes a spell like ability that can gain access to the following benefits:

• Longer range.
• Breaks the target out of fast travel.
• Puts an increasingly potent slowdown effect on the target.

Finally, halts cannot be issued to someone who is already involved in a halt action.

Assist

Assist is a targeted ability you can use on anyone by characters of any alignment. When an assist is issued there is a brief fanfare and greening of the screen followed by a pop up (at the bottom right of the GUI by default) that asks if you would like to accept the assist. You can either manually click yes or no, bind hotkeys to those option or set youself to automatically accept or reject all assist requests. Default for new characters is set to auto-accept all but they are made aware of this during their starter quests.

When you assist someone you are treated as a member if their group for the purposes of sharing beneficial effects and who is marked as hostile to you. It goes without saying you are also penalized for their behaviors the same way you are if you heal / buff etc. someone who commits a misdeed. Unlike grouping with them however, they do not share hostility with targets who are hostile to you. Also, should you attack them or one of their group members the assist condition immediately ends and you are assessed a significant rep penalty.

The benefits you can get for training in assists depend a lot on your class but may include things such as:

• Increased health regeneration on the target.
• Redirection of a portion of the damage the target receives to you.
• Damage reduction.
• Immunity to your AoEs or transfer of your AoE damage from them and their party members to you. (Thus avoiding accidental betrayal.)
• Running or attack speed buffs.

The assist condition immediately end if you leave the area of the target. You may only assist one target at a time. Assists can be used to buff players who are already in your party.

Nihimon's First Forum Post.

Nihimon is among the oldest members of this community, but that's not what makes him great.

Nihimon is thoughtful because of the time and effort he puts into things that enhance this community.

Nihimon is caring because he takes the time to welcome every new player and group that starts up on these forums.

Nihimon is well studied because he takes the time to pour through the blogs and developers statements, so that he can always bring relevant information to his discussions and assist others in doing the same.

Nihimon is respectable because of the productive discourse he engages in to help bring fresh ideas to PFO's design, even if we have ended up on opposite sides sometimes.

Nihimon is bold because of his consistent voice in this community, trying to push the game in a direction that will yield a friendlier and more inclusive community.

Nihimon is honorable in that he often tries to extend the olive branch, even to those that sometimes seem undeserving and unwilling to acknowledge their own wrongdoings.

Nihimon is dependable as he is one of the most solid allies you can have.

Nihimon is humble, in that he does not create posts and topics to encourage others to recognize his own greatness, or often speak of his many virtues on these boards.

Nihimon is appreciated, in that he has others willing to take note of these things and do it for him.

Henceforth Nihimon shall be recognized by our order as Nihimon the Erudite.

Commence the celebration!

There's a title that will get people fired up if there ever was one! But bear with me.

When you report a player for griefing/macroing etc. and kill them within an hour of making that report or report them within an hour after kill them it registers it.

If during the next 72 hours a GM issues a warning against that player you get your rep back plus a boost. You get a bigger boost and even possibly reduced rep lost for a period of time if that player is punished or banned.

And so it shall be, that in the days of open enrollment, Pharasma shall send forth the legions of newbs and alts unto the lands of the Crusader Road. Like locusts they shall descend, more than the stars in the sky they shall number. And they shall ride upon the steeds of 1000 reputation wielding before them fiery blades of low ability scores.

Laid before them stand the settlements of the EE players. Their resources laid bare, and their reputations treasured. Among these heedless mortals shall sit the prophet warning of the calamities to come. His disciples and him having prepared their bomb shelters and stocked them with such sustaining substances as hot pockets, oreos, spam, and mountain dew. Ready shall he and his stand against the coming tide, and for just $98.67, your first born child and your credit card number, they can help you prepare too.

Meanwhile the mocker and the fools who follow him shall open their gates and throw out the welcome mats for these... these... FIENDS!!! They shall crash down upon him with a Tsunami and he shall not be prepared for their great evils.

The first will be Bzelbargoogleyes the starer. He shall come upon the mocker and stare. And the mocker shall stare back. And he shall stare more. And the mocker will offer him a drink. AND HE SHALL STARE MORE!!! Until the afk tag appears next to his name and the server boots him for inactivity. OH LAMENT YEE CRUSADER ROADS FOR THE FATE THAT AWAITS THE UNBELIEVER!!!

The next shall be Shumshumgrawlorgboob the resource harvester. He shall harvest wood, stone, iron, and that plant that maketh ropes and peace pipes. And the mocker shall not care!!! Until there is an iron shortage, after which the mocker charges for iron harvesting rights. And Shumshumgrawlorgboob shall pay him for rights. AND HE SHALL THANK HIM! But Shumshumgrawlorgnoob shall not pay him for rights, and try to harvest anyway. And he shall kill him, without consequence, because he broke the laws of the settlement, and because newb miners are easy to kill. BEHOLD THE FATE THAT AWAITS YOU MOCKER!!!!!!!!!!!

The next shall be Luciferrari666satan. AND HE SHALL WIELD A MIGHTY BLADE AGAINST THE MOCKER!!! SEE NOW!!! SEE WHAT AWAITS YOU OH YOU WHO LAUGH AT YOUR APPROACHING DOOM!!! DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!! Do0o0o0o0o0oo00oo00o0ooo0o0o0o0o0o0o0o00o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o00o0o0o0o0o00o0o 00oo0o00o0o0o0o0o00o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0oo0o0o0o0o0M!!!!!! And he shall get the attacker flag! And the mocker shall kill him without consequence because Luciferrari666satan initiated the conflict. DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!! DOOOM! DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODMOMOMFAOMFAOWMFOWAFAMWFOWANGOAWNGOWANGOANGEONGEAOAFNW AO! .... *doom!*

But then the great prophet shall come upon a naked newb harvesting in the forest. And the forest shall not belong to him. And he shall kill him for he desirith his wood be-eth to lazy to SAD him for some reason. AND HE SHALL TAKE A REP PENALTY! AND THE PROPHECIES SHALL BE FULFILLED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I figured it was time to start a new conversation on this given that we have a lot more information to work with now. The two major things we've been let in on that have a lot of bearing on this discussion are the stealth mechanic and this video.

For me, the biggest thing to consider, is stealth just plain won't work if the camera can be zoomed too far out. We know that if you have a maxed stealth character going up against someone with no perception, that your character becomes perceivable at 10% of their normal view range. (More information on stealth found here.)

Anyone skilled at playing a stealth character should be able to get of some great ambushes (provided their footsteps aren't audible in stealth) if people are playing from this perspective. There just won't be enough time to react by the point you can see someone behind you.

However this perspective is practically a melee ambush immunity mode. They'll still get the element of surprise but rogues will never get in close enough to land their first blow without being spotted. Not only does that nerf melee based rogues, but it pretty much forces everyone wanting to play competitively to use that perspective. There is a greater disparity in possible performance between the first perspective shown and the second perspective shown than there is between the first perspective shown and a full on first person view.

So my conclusion, give us third person but set the camera so the max you can zoom out is this far and your camera is forced to stay behind you unless you are standing near a mirrior.

Side-note:

You might consider making blindsense offer the ability to zoom out further and adjust the angle of the camera as desired once oracles or other ways of achieving it are implemented.

Visual Range = The range at which you can see the avatar of another character.
Audio Range = The range at which you can hear the actions of another character.
Indentification Range = The range at which you can see things like player names, company tags, and reputation/standing indicators.
Targeting Range = The range at which you can select someone as a target.

So the points of discussion is how far away should each of these be? Which of these should you be able to upgrade? What factors should effect each of these? How should they relate to each other?

It remains to be seen wether it makes sense to create several "islands" of territory and link them with some kind of gate, or if we just keep growing the contiguous map to the south and east into the River Kingdoms.

Begin the speculation and discussion.

An Assessment of the Situation

First, for those coming into the topic unfamiliar with what an assassination and a SAD are. An assassination is a contract that can be put out on players to temporarily remove their access to a respawn point and deny their settlement the benefits that character may provide them. Assassinating someone does not lower your reputation.The blog Join Forces Underground really dives into the topic of assassinations.

Second is the Stand and Deliver. Stand and deliver demands that a player give over a portion of their goods specified by you. If they refuse to comply you may kill them without reputation consequence. Enough has changed about SAD's (Mainly the removal of the Outlaw Flag) since it's original proposal that we aren't really sure what the downsides are, though a drift toward the chaotic alignment is almost assured. The best place to read about SAD's in the I Shot a Man in Reno Just to Watch Him Die blog.

So the Assassination and SAD mechanics seem to be very powerful mechanics. They are useable on players of any alignment and require no flags on the target. The SAD mechanic reaps a great amount of benefit for the player using it in the form of stolen goods, and possibly even a higher percent of lootable items on the corpses of players who reject SADs. (Some goods are destroyed and unrecoverable upon looting much like in EVE. The original outlaw flag lowered the percent of goods that are unrecoverable.) Assassinations place some pretty nasty negative effects on their target... for a cost.

So how should the good and lawful alignments be able to compete with these kinds of mechanics. First off, let's take a look at the differences L/G and C/E are already likely to have:

It appears as though CE and evil will have a disadvantage when it comes to running cohesive settlements.

So there is some disadvantage inherent to being chaotic-evil, though from other statements we know lawful-evil and chaotic-good will not suffer from that as much. Lawful-good on the other hand, is an alignment that has only be associated with favorable conditions... and heavy limitations on what actions they can take.

So what kind of things should we expect to see in lawful PvP systems:

-Lawful PvPers should have legal authority to do what they do.
-Lawful PvPers should seek order and the fulfilment of the law.

And from good:

-Good aligned PvPers should seek to do what is right above what profits them. They should be self sacrificing in many cases.
-Good aligned PvPers should seek justice, and deliver mercy where appropriate.

Becoming a Bounty Hunter

Like assassins and bandits, bounty hunters should have to train up a set of skills in order to practice their craft. First off, a bounty hunter is really going to need some good tracking skills to locate their target. These would be general skills available to everyone as other professions like the assassin will likely rely on them as well.

The second type of skills is bounty hunter specific, though other professions will surely have their own versions. They are contract management skills, designed to decide how many targets the bounty hunter may track at once. These skills allow the bounty hunter to purchase and manage more complex licences that allow them to hunt more potential targets and even join into feuds and wars that their company or settlement are not part of as an individual agent.

As implied by the purchase of licences, these costs are not confined to skill training. They may have other associated costs like money, influence, alignment, or even reputation.

Placing a Contract

Whenever someone is the victim of an action that causes the aggressor either chaotic or evil slide on the alignment scale, they may put out a bounty on that aggressor.

For the next two weeks the victim can go in and create a bounty contract, specifying which characters and/or organizations can accept it, and how much they'll be paid upon completion.

The type of action they were a victim of indicates what kind of bounty can be placed. Bounties come in three variations. Lawful, good, and lawful-good. (I'm sure we can come up with fancy names for each, but bear with me for now.)

Lawful bounties can be placed by the victims of chaotic actions. Lawful bounties apply a lawful debuff to the target.

Good bounties can be placed by the victims of evil actions. Good bounties apply a good debuff to the target.

Lawful-good bounties can be placed by the victims of actions which were both evil and chaotic, for instance the victim of a murder. Lawful-good bounties apply a lawful-good debuff to the target.

In some cases the person placing the target may allow the bounty hunter to choose what kind of contract it is. For instance allowing it to be claimed as either a lawful-good, or good bounty.

Once you have placed the bounty and selected from one of the available types, there are still three more options. The first is severity, and determines the length of the debuff that will be put on the target if killed or apprehended. (I'll go more into the debuff's later on.) You can choose as small as a severity as you would like on any contract, but the maximum severity is determined by the type of crime. For instance if you were SADed and accepted, the maximum severity will be far lower than if you were murdered.

The second is "Dead or alive." This allows you to specify if you want the target killed, apprehended, or don't care which. Placing a dead contract gives both you and the hunter who collects evil points. Dead or Alive gives you a slight amount of evil points and may or not give the hunter evil points based on which option they take.

Finally, you can set reparations. Reparations allow the target to pay the hunter off in order to avoid being claimed. You can specify how much of that money, goes to the hunter, and how much goes to you. The money is automatically transferred to you when the reparations are paid.

Claiming Contracts

At various locations in the world such as inns, magistrates, and town squares there are things called bounty boards. When a player goes to a bounty board it allows them to browse through all the contracts available to them as well as showing calls to arms for mercenaries wanting to help in wars or with escalations. When they find contracts to their liking they may activate any number of them, up to the maximum their current licence allows.

Taking Down The Target

Once you activate some contracts it's time to collect your tags (Ok I really need a better name for this, but it's the best I can come up with so far.) The tags come in the same variations as bounties lawful, good, and lawful good. They are objects blessed with divine magic, and not cheap to pick up. They are threaded and rendered untradeable by divine magic, due to the variance in price for different individuals based on certain conditions.

From there you start employing your tracking skills, hunting down your targets. Once found you may either apprehend them, or kill them. The choice is yours unless the contract specifies. At the point they are apprehended or killed you apply the tag either to them or their freshly killed corpse, releasing it's divine magic, and triggering the debuff.

*Note: Lawful-good tags are 1.5 times the price of a lawful or good tag.

Apprehend

Apprehending someone is a process much like stand and deliver. If you attempt to apprehend someone they have the option to fight back or surrender. If they fight back and are killed, you can attempt to subdue them by bringing their health to or below 0, at which point they can be tagged. If they somehow die by any other method than you or a party member using a coup de grâce on them you can still claim a contract that specified to take them alive, and you take no evil hit.

If they surrender, you may first offer them the them the chance to pay reparations if the contract allows for that. If they pay, the contract is complete. If they do not pay you may tag them applying the debuff.

The Debuffs

Whenever a tag is applied to anyone or their freshly killed corpse they take a debuff depending on the type of tag used.

Lawful debuffs make it so that for a set period of time depending on the severity of the bounty, the target loses all item threads if they commit a chaotic action. They regain those threads after the debuff wears off.

Good debuffs make it so that for a set period of time depending on the severity of the bounty, the target loses all item threads if they commit an evil action. They regain those threads after the debuff wears off.

Lawful-good debuffs make it so that for a set period of time depending on the severity of the bounty, the target loses all item threads if they commit a chaotic OR evil action. They regain those threads after the debuff wears off.

Paragons, Guardians, and Enforcers

Paragons, guardians, and enforcers are three flags players may take up to increase their effectiveness at bounty hunting, but at the expense of painting a bigger target on their heads.

Paragons are lawful-good, both in their abilities, and because you must be lawful-good to be one. They get a discount on lawful-good tags and their bounty hunting licenses. As a consequence, they can be killed without rep loss by everyone with flags associated with evil or chaos (criminal, heinous, etc.)

Guardians are good, both in their abilities, and because you must be of a good alignment to be one. They get a discount on good aligned tags and their bounty hunting licenses. As a consequence, they can be killed without rep loss by everyone with flags associated with evil such as heinous flags.

Enforcers are lawful, both in their abilities, and because you must be of a lawful alignment to be one. They get a discount on lawful aligned tags and their bounty hunting licenses. As a consequence, they can be killed without rep loss by everyone with flags associated with chaos such as criminal flags.

A Few Things To Note About This System

• The cost of bounty hunting is to the hunter. People can set bounties with a payout of 0, but hunters will lose money and tie up valuable contract slots accepting and completing such contracts.
• There is no alignment restrictions on who can take contracts despite the alignment of the contracts. This is because there is no logical reason players of any alignment wouldn't be able to accept these contracts. Any alignment slide is based on how they are fulfilled.
• Good aligned players may be able to take contracts that specify the target must be killed, but they won't stay good for long if they do.
• Lawful players can break laws in the fulfillment of contracts, but they won't stay lawful long if they do.

Tomorrow at 5 PM Pacific The Empyrean Order will be having a meeting with members and leadership from Covenant of The Pheonix. Most of the meeting does not concern those outside TEO and CotP but there will be 30 minute section discussing Pathfinder Online as a game.

The intent of this section is to go over some of the highlights of PFO and then open up for questions from an audience not greatly familiar with this title.

Here is a brief summary of my planned presentation.

What is Pathfinder Online

- A sandbox fantasy MMO with many elements similar to EVE Online.

- Based off of the Pathfinder tabletop RPG.

Why should you play it?

- There is no grinding.

- There are no classes.

- There are player structures and territorial control.

- PvP is meaningful.

- Players are not segregated by level.

- The economy is complex and player driven.

Audio for this portion of the meeting will be made available to the community as a resource. If anyone else from the community would like present on one or more of the points in that summary, or additional points they feel are important to many incoming players they would be welcome. You are also free to come just to listen in, or to ask/answer questions during the Q&A portion. Contact me or post here if interested.

This is a subject as important as the much more discussed topic of how you lose them. Ultimately if it's trivial to regain these points alignment and reputation mean nothing, but if it's slow and difficult that lends some measure of meaning. So let's lay out the options:

1. Time Based - Constant: Like the skill gains points could be earned at a consistent rate wether online or offline.

Example: EVE skill gains.

Pros
- There is no way for a character that's actively being played to game this. You do the crime, you pay your time.
- Makes it meaningful but not burdensome to gain points.

Cons
- Characters not being played as constantly get a heavy advantage as they regain the same amount of points but have less time in which to lose them.
- Incentivizes pre-vacation killing sprees.

Time Based - Active: You gain points while online playing the game. This can be coupled with systems that pause your gains if flagged afk, stealthed, or inside a settlement/structure.

Example: Mortal Online

Pros
- None of the cons of constant time games.
- Makes it meaningful but not burdensome to regain points.
- The methods of gaming it are very bannable offenses.

Cons
- Players will find safe(ish) areas to hide even if those are not settlements and structures and use macros to avoid afk flagging systems.

Resource Based: You spend resources to regain reputation. Things like sacrifices and and fines.

Example: Freelancer bribes

Pros
-You do the crime, you pay the fine. This simply cannot be gamed, period.

Cons
-This is less meaningful to players with lots of resources. They can simply buy their way to high reputation or lawful/good alignment.
- This is overly burdensome to player with few resources. They may never be able to recover from a bad reputation/alignment.

Activity Based: You gain points through doing things such as slaying a demon, completing a quest, or making a pilgrimage.

Example: EVE security rating

Pros
- Difficult to game if well thought out.
- Meaningful because of the active effort required.

Cons
- Heavily favors PvEers.
- May be overly burdensome to some players seeking redemption or just plain tedious.
- Simple to macro if poorly thought out.

Interaction Based: Based on interactions with other players such as reps for kills, rep for healing someone, or popularity systems.

Example: The kill for alignment system in the original Darkfall.

Pros
- Most in keeping with the player interaction theme of PFO.

Cons
- Incredibly gameable to the point of being utterly meaningless in almost any form.

I know a lot of us are bringing in influences from a lot of other games. I'm interested to know which combat system's people are being influnced by, and are most in favor of.

To be clear I am not talking about PvP restrictions, Open Worldness, Crafting, or anything other than the combat basics such as aiming, ability selection, ability styles etc.

I would say Guild Wars (The original). I've never played another game with as unique of roles, or ability to completely customize your character.

Two things note-ably absent from Guild Wars are tanks / a threat mechanic and stuns. However the game still works very well without them by giving their beefier characters more offensive/support capabilities and replacing stuns with a wide array of other interrupts and debuffs such as blindness or my personal favorite: backfire.

I think it's a system that bears looking at when creating the abilities for PFO. The only thing I would change is I'd like to see targeting work more like Mass Effect of Star Wars Battlefront II.