Dario's page

I'm fairly sure the silhouette being displayed is predicated on them having been detected. I don't think you even see that much if they're undetected.

I'm curious. This trend of referring to the unaffiliated settlements as "The Slums"... is this something people were doing already, or something Andius is doing to attempt to add a veneer of moral righteousness to his personal vendetta against TEO? I haven't seen the term used prior to this thread, and the need to define the area he's talking about in the first post suggests its not a sufficiently common descriptor for the area to assume people are familiar with it.

I'd be absolutely stunned if there was any kind of conversion. I expect the answer to be "start training the new role". I'm not sure we really have any good way to predict what the proper training path is to prepare for monks, but fighter/rogue with a dabble in wizard's cloth armor is probably the best you're gonna get.

Well, almost everyone is sure to be playing in the alpha this weekend so it might be a bit before you get a definitive reply, but my understanding is that the early enrollment package being sold now in the goblinworks store is actually for month 2 of early enrollment (month 1, beginning on the 22nd, sold out already).

If that's the case, they need to update the store page, because it's still saying "Join the game in the first month!" for the Early Enrollment $100 package, which this individual says they have purchased. They have the Explorer's package at $50 which is for month 2, and only comes with 1 month of game time. It also does not include the New Player pack that the Early Enrollment package does.

If you purchased the $100 package from the Goblinworks store, you will get into Early Enrollment, which is likely this month, as well as three months of game time.

Dario wrote:

Put differently, a crafting focused settlement is useless until the demand from Role-focused settlements outstrips their internal production ability.

Considering that you would currently need access to at least two role based settlements to be able to craft all your own gear (for both access to training and crafting buildings) I think it will still end up serving a purpose.

This is only true if you need gear from two roles that are not colocated in a settlement. If you are in a town that trains role skills, it will have all of the crafting facilities necessary to create gear for that role. So, if you're in a rogue/fighter settlement, and are only training rogue skills, you're fine. You only need to branch out to other settlements for gear if you're training rogue and cleric, or rogue and wizard.

KotC Carbon D. Metric wrote:

...between any two "Class Role" focused settlements the training for any given skill/feat/craft will be available between them...

I'm not sure I understand. A Settlement which chose Rogue/Wizard, for example, wouldn't have Dowser training, nor Bowyer, nor the other Gathering, Refining, and Crafting Feats.

Unless something's changed that I've missed, they will. I recall Lee saying that they would have "some basic to intermediate crafting". The question is whether "basic to intermediate" is sufficiently limited for anyone to care enough about not having access to higher tiers during the WotT for a crafting settlement to be useful. Put differently, a crafting focused settlement is useless until the demand from Role-focused settlements outstrips their internal production ability.

I'd recommend reading through the Blog as a basic primer, though some of the information there has been superseded.

As far as aging to death, that's basically a nonstarter for an MMO. Not only would it put an ultimate XP cap on characters (something we currently do not have), but it means that hitting the level cap means death and the loss of *years* of effort. That said, if you want to roll up a new character, twink it with resources from the higher level, and delete your old one for your own reasons, by all means, go for it. =P

I've got a small (currently 25 person) vent server we can use if you'd like. It's currently totally unused. I can bump up the limit if we think most of the folks on the list are going to show up.

@KarlBob Do a google map search of the L.A. sprawl. It is one town backed up against another and the only delineation between them is a sign at the corner of an intersection.

I sincerely hope this sort of thing does not become the style of PFO.

My understanding was that there was already a system of voluntary PVP flags planned. Given that information, I'm not sure that voluntarily giving yourself the murderer flag is really a problem, given that it doesn't carry any of the benefits of those other voluntary flags.

As far as suicide, I think it's fairly important to have some way to voluntarily release your character in the event of becoming stuck, or a host of other reasons. As long as it carries all the weight of an actual death, I don't see much problem with it. It's no different than jumping into a group of mobs and letting them do it for you, or flagging yourself and letting a friend kill you.

• How is damage handled at that point?
  
• Is it just the next single strike that gets the benefit of all 10 observe stacks?
  
• Is each assassin responsible for executing the damage granted by their own stacks of observe, or could a wizard fireball a target and take advantage of the stacks accumulated.
  
• Could a wizard fireball a room of people that had each been marked individually to consume the stacks of observe?
  
• Could one of the target's friends attack them at single stack to minimize the possible damage output?
  

My understanding is that stacks of Observed do not increase all damage against you, but certain assassin attacks will have a keyword which do additional damage based on the Observed status of the target. So you shouldn't need to worry about Fireballs interacting with the stacks, or the target's allies attacking them to pop stacks either way. I

I sincerely hope that "PVP window" for POIs doesn't mean "Hex-wide FFA".

1. What were the exact size buildings needed to support Rogues? Tork had said three, but not their size.

I recalled him mentioning the Medium/Large Class Structure (Thieve's Guild/Guildhouse) and the Skirmisher's School, which should be medium. From what he said, my interpretation was that the class specific buildings all come in a medium and large version, with the large being able to be upgraded to 3 classes total. And then you had the multi-role structures (Skirmisher's, Dreadnaught's, Seminary, War Wizard's School, and Occulist) which were all medium.

This is sort of like calling the paladin low-hanging fruit because it's a blend of cleric and fighter, but it's really not. It has a lot of it's own feel and a lot of custom mechanics that differentiate it from its sources. Likewise, these, even as blends of base classes, do add a fair bit of the their own flavor and mechanics. I think it's more important to focus on the current base classes that people are familiar with, rather than divert effort to things that bear a superficial resemblance.

Dario wrote:

Honestly, I hope coin stays primarily off the loot table. Players need something to start over with, and getting told they've lost absolutely everything just makes it easier to walk away from the game when things have gone south.

There are many ways to keep it on the loot table without taking all of it, leaving the lootee able to start again, rebuild, and so forth. If funds can reside both in the virtual bank (even if this is universally accessible) and separately, but physically, on each character (This concept currently exists with the hybrid method), then looting funds is still viable.

I'm fairly certain that the hybrid system could evolve into a simple, yet highly functional, method of keeping both elements in the game. It could also become very obvious which path is more meaningful once it is fully implemented.

I should clarify, I don't object to the currently presented hybrid model. I think it's a good solution. I just don't want to see a scenario where any coin on your character is lost on death, and the rest is lost if your settlement is sacked. Or where you're expected to make a large amount of your coin vulnerable in order to make transactions.

Honestly, I hope coin stays primarily off the loot table. Players need something to start over with, and getting told they've lost absolutely everything just makes it easier to walk away from the game when things have gone south.

I think EE will be very different than Alpha, because there won't be throwaway characters or server wipes, and characters will persist long enough to reach some of the really interesting combat feats.

I hope we'll have at least some of the rep-neutral PVP systems during EE, because OE would be a terrible time to introduce rep-neutral PVP. That paradigm shift should happen long before the general public arrives.

It's my understanding that's the reason the War of the Towers was introduced, as a quick and easy method to get some form of sanctioned PVP in until the more involved systems were ready to deploy.

The Demo Room was pretty good for testing PvP, I found. Also, can't you make throwaway characters?

Yes, but then you can only do testing with starter or near-starter abilities. I suspect the desire is to try it with more XP-intensive abilities, or a more diverse suite of abilities.

In alpha, right now, I do not believe there is a way to engage in a real fight between two players where one player does not lose rep. Key phrase there is "right now". Right now, there are none of the cases identified as desirable PVP implemented in game. Therefore, right now, anyone instigating PVP should be recognized by the system as undesirable. This is how the reputation system is supposed to work.

Does that impact testing PVP balance/functions of skills on players? Yes. But I'm fairly comfortable with the expectation that as alpha goes on, we'll get something to use for that purpose. My personal expectation is a PVP hex set up to emulate one of the tower hexes during their open PVP window, which would allow testing of pvp mechanics, transition from protected to FFA hexes, and notification systems which will be needed for the War of the Towers.

On that point, in alpha, when can you attack other players and not lose reputation?

Right now I think it's just when they have attacked a player and gained the attacker flag

Obvious Sam wrote:

Guess you guys really should have listened to Andius. He's probably the only one in your little organization with any foresight.

Correction. I was the only one in their little organization with any foresight. And thank you for voicing that.

Did you just thank your own sock puppet account?

Brilliant.

Ah, I was blind and missed that "here" was url hilighted. I'm going to blame it on the food poisoning.

I don't seem to have access to the forums. When I go to the link, I just get the splash page saying that access is limited to alpha testers.

Second Dario: Not everyone, just the guards, then the guards start doing a /yell or whatever in chat. If copy/paste is possible in game, they should have a message like this prepared. And it's not insane to expect the guards to do this kind of thing. It's being proactive. If the guards always take the defensive stance and wait to be attacked first, they'll end up losing clientele sooner or later. Allowing people to get the jump, could cost you the fight. Most mercenary Guards will likely not be LG, or maybe even one or the other.

It has little to do with alignment. Players doing that will be hemorrhaging reputation as well, and will end up booted from their settlement. I certainly think they'll start moving around and trying to pierce disguises, but that's what probing attacks are for. To determine the enemy TTPs, but to suggest they'll murder anyone who doesn't comply with some thing (that for some reason the scout assassin cannot comply with), then not only are they costing themselves, but people will stop going to their settlement. You cannot cut yourself off like that and expect to succeed.

To add to Being's rebuttal, this also assumes that the only people in the area will be on voice comms, in the same channel with the senschal. That there will be no visitors to the settlement, or that the guards are willing to take the collateral damage rep/alignment hit of murderhoboing anyone not in voice or afk just to prevent the assassination. That's insane.

Or moobot running it's own raffles totally independent of the stream or any actual prizes.

Our biggest fear is that something along the lines of just logging out to hide will become the counter. Like most DI attached characters will end up being alts that probably spend 99% of their lifetime logged out of the game and thus the settlement is invulnerable to the assassination mechanics.

These are both very valid concerns, but this proposal doesn't actually fix either of them.

I don't think logging out should be an escape tactic from any combat encounter, whether a face to face fight, or an assassination. I also don't think any character should be effective if logged off 99% of the time, but we need to address those problems, not try to throw on a slapdash band aid that causes more problems than it fixes.

No one is required to stay engaged in a standup fight either. They can always make an attempt to run. If they can successfully evade the enemy, why shouldn't that be a valid win condition? The devs have already stated the intent to prevent people from hiding out somewhere the assassin is mechanically prevented from getting (possibly worsening the Being Observed penalty if they try), and no one disagrees that logging out should not be a safe tactice to try against an assassin, so what exactly are you concerned about them doing to avoid the engagement? Rather than trying to break a core principle of the game (player agency) out of fear of some nebulous hypothetical, why don't you start pointing out things. Are you concerned about them calling guards? Guards have a transit time to arrive. The assassin will need to make sure they pick somewhere help isn't ten feet away when they try. Or they'll need to bring friends to deal with the target's friends.

There seems to be some perception that a lone assassin should be able to defeat a concerted effort by a group of players to protect someone, and that I just don't understand.

Yum. I kept my promise to myself and am now eating a big plate of waffles.

But did Cole get his dice? =P

Escalation Party

Nothing about last night was nearly that coordinated =P

Our tank was invaluable, but we learned that in order to beat down a remote escalation the tanks should be ferried there with something like Tensor's Disk (heavy armor is slowww). Fortunately we aren't yet having to deal with the full effects of fatigue/stamina drain so by sprinting all the time we were able to keep up (kinda sorta) with the looting prowess of Nihimon. Yes, his wife regaled us with anecdotes about it... be fast or be poor...

The melees even got to hit things a few times when the giant mob of wizards was distracted by a shiny thing.

!rofl

If you want some video, I've got a little over 2 hours of the event on my twitch channel. I had to kill it toward the end because my internet was starting to choke. *shakes fist at Comcast and its inability to deliver purchased service*

Both of you, two minutes in the Punalty Box.

I'm all for commenting, and frequently do comment on ideas I don't vote on, but I cannot in good conscience vote on half an idea. Particularly since votes are wholly divorced from comments.

And how do you propose when someone votes when they look at an idea and see it going either way, depending on speculation on missing context?

I concur. GW will know what they have on their plate and their project manager will set the future schedule. In the case of PFO part of that schedule will consider our input on ideascale. We don't get to dictate priorities, but we are being allowed to offer input on our preferences. But if we refrain from evaluating ideas they cannot know our preferences. The more of us who weigh in, the more accurate will be the information they have to work from. Many popular ideas are very evenly divided for or against.

Ideas cannot be accurately gauged in a vacuum, one has to look at its interaction with other things. If the idea lacks sufficient context to even begin to gauge those interactions, then how is someone to accurately gauge whether or not they think it is a good idea?

Master of Shadows wrote:

Nihimon wrote:

Stephen Cheney (Goblinworks Blog: Join Forces Underground) wrote:

Quote:

Will the target know how many stacks of observation he has?

Yes, part of being a skilled assassin group is varying up your observations to keep the target from deduction. Being able to see the stack totals is part of the target's agency, in basically being able to figure out how close he's getting to being able to be one-shotted (e.g., a high-HP heavy armor wearer may be in the mood of "Bring It!" at one stack, but may start to get a little antsy as the number rises and he realizes he's not going to get to fight back unless he can figure out where the assassin is).

This is even worse than the original description for Observation. If the target fails to perceive the threat he should never know what hit him.

Suppose that the defending forces set a magical trap, but the assassin failed to train magical trapfinding. Would it be fair for that trap to automatically kill the assassin, because he didn't detect it?

And also reduce the influence/DI of his entire company/settlement.

I was also not able to log in. It does seem to be offline for the moment.

I do not believe that to be the case, I'm fairly certain it is a combination of the assassination contract and a deathblow delivered by someone flying the assassin flag that actually causes the severing of threads.

Unless I've missed an update, it's just the assassin flag that causes the thread severing. It's the contract that enables the DI hit.

Nonetheless, I think it's extremely unlikely the devs will allow you to engineer a situation in which another player has no agency. Even in a completely outmatched fight, the weaker player still has the opportunity to try to run. Even in a SAD, the merchant has the opportunity to refuse to pay and fight back. These are not based on character XP or trained skills, but on player choice. You are advocating for an encounter in which the opposing player may have no choice to act whatsoever, and I just don't think that's going to fly.

Remember that having a higher personality stat doesn't make you better at the job. It's just a gating mechanism. The relevant factor is how you've trained the skills.

Your proposal does nothing to address logouts, and enables the possibility of totally unaware one-shots. If logouts are the problem, do something to penalize logging out while being observed, as other proposals have done. I strongly suspect the devs don't plan to allow logging out to be a free pass to avoid assassination, given their plans to prevent other methods of going into hiding:

Observation is a utility feat that you can use from Stealth up to a certain range, and which takes a few seconds to activate. You must be flying the Assassin flag (even if it is hidden by your Disguise) to use this feat. Using it puts a stack of the "Being Observed" debuff on your target. This is the target's warning that he is being targeted by an assassin (possibly his first and only warning). Further successful uses of the feat add more stacks of the debuff and reset the decay of the existing stacks. This debuff slowly decays over a minute or so if not refreshed. If the target hides somewhere an assassin couldn't get to start a fight (like inside the settlement keep), the debuff does not decay and may actually get worse (to keep targets from easily waiting out an assassination attempt).

Emphasis mine.

About 4-5x as strong, and far, far more versatile.

KoTC Edam Neadenil wrote:

It's no different to EVE.

In eve aren't some ships stronger than others? so players that spend more time harvesting can become more powerful then players who just sit offline gaining XP?

And in pathfinder, that will take the form of better equipment that allows you to leverage more of your skills to their full effect.

My question then is, with more stacks of Observe, will you be able to get to the One-shot point faster? If so, you will just see Large groups of assassins going out on a mission, finding their target, observing in mass, then rushing in stealth/disguise for the death blow asap.. I mean, who is going to assume the WHOLE GROUP of people walking towards you are all assassins?

Sure, why shouldn't assassins benefit from teaming up?

They'll have more coin, more resources, more social connections, more achievements...

<Tavernhold>Malrunwa Soves wrote:

Yeah, it has been said many times by GW that one hit kills are out. I don't know how assassins will work in PFO but GW probably has something in discussion. An odd idea I had was that an assassin could put up an effect close to an invisibility sphere for the length of the assassination. Not sure how that would play into PF mechanics....eh(shrugs shoulders)

One thing that i find interesting is all this focus on the one-hit-kill. While I have said that in my opinion a one hit kill should be allowed as part of the assassination mechanics, the proposed change to the mechanic currently under discussion in no way allows for a one-hit-kill. It simply prevents a target from being notified of the presence of an assassin without a perception check. somthing they would need anyway if we were to opt not to use observation.

I'd suggest you go back and read up a bit more.

Quote:

Will the target know how many stacks of observation he has?

Yes, part of being a skilled assassin group is varying up your observations to keep the target from deduction. Being able to see the stack totals is part of the target's agency, in basically being able to figure out how close he's getting to being able to be one-shotted (e.g., a high-HP heavy armor wearer may be in the mood of "Bring It!" at one stack, but may start to get a little antsy as the number rises and he realizes he's not going to get to fight back unless he can figure out where the assassin is).

So, yes, stacks of observation currently are planned to allow one-shotting. Which is why the target gets to know how many he has.

Congrats Kit and Dak.

Also, how the balls did I miss this thread? That's 1am my time, but I will be there on "Dariow".