Gaskon's page

you can shout that all you want but it does not make sense.

Armor Class is made up of so many abstract concepts that there are plenty of times that it doesn't make sense for a "miss" to hit someone else in melee combat.

High AC could mean that you are really good at dodging.

It could also mean that you are wearing thick metal armor that makes arrows bounce off.

If you shoot someone with an arrow, and it hits their armor, goes "plink" and falls to the ground, it doesn't make any sense to allow that "miss" to damage someone else standing next to the target.

If I'm really good at dodging, and I duck under your arrow, why doesn't it have a chance to hit the guy standing 10 feet on the other side of me, but it does have a chance of hitting the guy standing 5 feet to my left?

Three reasons firing into melee simply imposes an attack penalty instead of a complicated "maybe you hit your friend" rule are:

1) AC and attack rolls are so abstract that trying to make them model realistic physics is silly.

2) "Miss" means something very different than "my arrow didn't go where I aimed it"

3) Hitting allies with attacks isn't fun.

I don't care about the real money thing either way.

However, "Bulk Resources" has a specific in-game meaning, and I don't think everyone in this thread is using it to mean the same thing.

"Bulk Resources" are the product of holdings and outposts, and are used for settlement upkeep. They include bulk stone, bulk food, bulk ore etc..

It sounds like sdiamond88 is trying to sell something different, which is large quantities of gathered resources, such as true coal and true iron.

If this is in fact what you have, sdiamond88, then you might do better to change your advertising terms, because "bulk resources" has a different group of buyers.
I'd suggest "excess resources" or "gathered resources".

You could also try selling the resources on the AH in game for coinage, and then selling the coinage for real money. The precedent for in-game coinage traded for game time and game time purchased for real money might make the coinage - real money transaction more acceptable than resources - real money.

We include in this our interpretation that the requirement of seeking permission to enter, under threat of force of reprisal, is in fact a bar to free passage.

"Come in, come in," said the spider to the fly.

Do exactly what we are doing.

And we're back to where we started :)

I'm off the forums for tonight.. got a tower window to organize defense for!

Try to have fun everybody.

Gaskon wrote:

I want the response to "we lost a tower" to be "we take 2 towers back", instead of what's happening now.

How is that appetizing if you want to avoid ever fighting at a tower ever because it isn't fun?

Gatherers have whole lists of unappetizing things they have to do to avoid PVP they don't like.

So... suck it up and take the towers back, even if its not fun?

Or ignore the tower wars and have your training capped at 9?

Don't play until more enjoyable PVP systems are implemented?

Gaskon I don't know what you can't understand about the story here.

I guess what I don't understand is why Golgotha chose to escalate from "we lost one tower" directly to "We kill all Phaeros members."

Actually, I do understand, its because of all the bad feelings and history on both sides, I just think its really unfortunate and bad for the game.

I want the response to "we lost a tower" to be "we take 2 towers back", instead of what's happening now.

Why would you be sure of that? It came out as a he said/she said where one party said exactly that. It was resolved privately and admitted afterwards that it WAS in fact a genuine misunderstanding.

Yeah, just reviewed Tink's post about the agreement.

Gaskon wrote:

and somehow Golgotha thought that wouldn't be considered war by the rest of the EBA.

Due to an arrangement exactly to that effect that was the subject of an already hashed out misunderstanding - you have been posting throughout this entire thread. Have you not being reading as well?

Well, since the arrangement was never written down, we have Phyllain's recollection of it, and Cheatle's recollection of it.

Pretty sure neither of those versions included allowing Golgotha to go kill people in hexes adjacent to Phaeros.

Edit: just reviewed... apparently Tink thought that was the agreement.
That's a sort of crazy deal.

Any chance Golgotha would agree to let Forgeholm kill Kreuz Berenstein members while remaining neutral?

Taken 1 tower. According to Tink's timeline, Phaeros took 1 tower.
Golgotha then starting killing Phaeros citizens in Phaeros' core 6 hexes, and somehow Golgotha thought that wouldn't be considered war by the rest of the EBA.

We had no intention of beginning a war with Keepers' Pass or Brighthaven. We still have no real intention of being in a war with Keeper's Pass or Brighthaven, which is why we have been keeping the vast majority of our operations close to Phaeros lands.

You don't want to start a war, just kill people with no repercussions?

I should try that logic on Phyllain, "I don't want to start a war with Golgotha, I just want to kill Callambea's customers whenever I feel like it."

Ryan Dancey, aka the Guy Who Owns the Game wrote:

Our budget for the game to date is around $4 million, and we think we'll need a couple of million more in a combination of investment and income from operations to get to the next major evolution of the game (which we call "Open Enrollment").

Open enrollment is the official release of the game which we're all waiting on, set to occur early next year. They don't have enough money to get through the current Early Access stage of the game and make it to launch.

Part of the reason they're charging for this "beta" is to get enough money to finish the game.

I understood Ryan's statement to mean they have spent $4 million and plan to spend a couple of million more.

Forgeholm and Golgotha had a pair of enjoyable PVP skirmishes last night.

Golgotha was able to achieve their objectives of retaking two towers that bordered their mountains, and Forgeholm had good practice mustering our forces and learned some things we need to do to improve our PVP tactics.

It was a civil process on both sides, no non-combatants were attacked, no shrine camping, and people that wanted to disengage were allowed to flee without harassment. I don't think anyone lost rep (although the Golgotha guys were already at -7500 I think), and it was PFO at its best.

Forgeholm plans to keep fighting you when our ambitions collide, but the Golgotha guys earned a lot of my respect back for engaging us in the War of Towers, instead of continuing to target gatherers and non-combatants.

You can't be the most aggressive power on the map and also claim to be protecters of the helpless and innocent.

Side A attacks military targets, purposefully avoiding non-combatant casualties. (taking a tower). They send their army to meet their opposition at predictable times during which only volunteer soldiers need to be involved in combat. (defending the tower).

Side B responds by ignoring the military targets and heads into civilian territory to kill the non-combatants that are least interested and capable of fighting back. Their leaders say things like "kill them all" and "all targets are legitimate".

Side B is gonna have a real hard time convincing me that side A is the aggressive one, even if it really was side A that fired first.

Its almost like T7V claimed they were going to try and keep non-combatants safe in an open PVP game, spent two years being called naive carebears on the forums, and are now accomplishing exactly what they said their goals were all along.

When we respond after a conversation about how we are going to respond with TEO they follow that up with taking all of our towers..

It is at this point where we are now told to live in the SE and kill anything that moves.

See, this is my point. The correct response to "we lost all our towers" is not "go kill anything that moves".

Imaginary situation A:
Lets imagine that last night, Forgeholm got a note from Golgotha's diplomats saying TEO took all our towers. They are big bullies. If you help us get our towers back from TEO, we'll work out a deal regarding the towers around Aragon and Kindleburn.

What really happened B:
Phyllain kills one of our newbies wearing T1 gear and trying to gather near Marchmont, then goes in general chat and claims that this is retaliation for the EBA taking their towers.

If "A" happened, Golgotha would have the chance to sway northern opinion in their favor, make some trade deals, and possibly even have some dwarven fighters to call on for aid.

Since "B" happened instead, you have me bickering at you on the forums :P

Bringslite the south has been doing the same thing for weeks. How are we at fault?

I'm not Bringslite, but I seem to be in pretty close agreement with him.

I don't care who puts holdings where.

I don't really care who takes what towers, except that I want to see more PVP in tower hexes between evenly matched sides.

I do care when non-combatants are targeted and attacked by roving bands of militants.

IMO, going near someone's settlement and killing non-combatants is a bad response to either losing a tower or violating an agreement.

I think you are missing the part where our attacking of "non combatants" was in RESPONSE to them breaking the agreement and also taking our towers, not the other way around.

I'm not missing it. I am suggesting that it was a disproportionate response and a mishandling of the situation.

Someone breaks an agreement and takes a tower? Take two towers back, and then send your diplomats to find out why they broke the agreement. Negotiate from a position of strength.

Don't escalate the situation by attacking non-combatants, provoking the largest military power in the game into joining the conflict on your opponent's side.

If you don't want to start WWI, invade Serbia, but not Belgium.

Killing non combatants is a hugely viable tactic.

Sure. I didn't say it wasn't viable. I said it was aggressive, and that engaging in it makes previously neutral parties tend to dislike you.

And apparently, it ends up leading to broken agreements, the largest military power in the game attacking you, and the loss of all your towers. So maybe it's actually not viable. And maybe that's a good thing.

TSV took a tower form AGC, we responded by taking towers from them and engaging characters around phaeros.

In my opinion, the bolded part is what makes Golgotha the aggressor.

Someone takes a tower, you take two towers. Fine.

Someone takes a tower, you go to their settlement and kill non-combatants. Not fine.

There are no civilians in this game. Like it or not, everyone is a target.

Ah. Impasse it is then. Well, good luck to your diplomats :)

Also, this attitude is the primary reason why Golgotha tends to feel outnumbered and overwhelmed. Its hard to remain neutral towards a group that explicitly defines your members as "targets".

Where did you get the idea that this is from killing gatherers? becuase we have not been able to go down there for pvp operations since the agreement like 3-4 weeks ago.

Outside observation with limited information?

If Golgotha hasn't been targeting "mobile resource nodes" lately, then they have a serious public relations deficiency.

It doesn't help that Golgotha's response to losing towers is generally to start killing non-combatants, instead of actually... fighting to get towers back.

@Tink

Would you be willing to make an agreement like "Golgotha doesn't kill gatherers in exchange for Brighthaven doesn't take all our towers"?

Is that what you tried before?

Because from my Northern perspective, it seems like the breakdown point for all these agreements is that Golgotha won't stop killing gatherers.

Would a functional war of towers be a fair exchange for a moratorium on killing outside of tower hex PVP windows?

Man you are so naive. Don't you realize that Brighthaven and Xeilias set up some kind of agreement to not fight *before* because it was determined that Brighthaven has such overwhelming numbers they can't be fought off?

I'm not privy to the details of these agreements, and it sounds like they weren't written down.

Both sides have diplomats so I'm sure they don't need my advice, but I'd suggest that both sides should focus more on their fundamental desires and less on assigning towers.

If what Phaeros really wants is for its gatherers to not get killed, and what Golgotha really wants is opportunities for relatively even numbered PVP matches, then there is opportunity for a lasting agreement, and some arrangement about towers might help both sides get what they want.

However, if what Golgotha really wants is to kill gatherers, then they are basically at an impasse.

Gaskon: We are vastly out numbered by the SE. For every soldier we can put on the field, they can put down 5. It would be stupid for us to engage the SE in symmetric warfare. We believed that we could easily hold up against Phaeros in such a fight. The introduction of TEO, by far the largest group in the game, changes that.

Well. I'm hesitant to stick my foot in without knowing all the details, but as an outside observer, I bet that if Golgotha stopped killing gatherers and focused their PVP efforts on fighting over towers, you'd be able to end up in a situation where each side has 6 towers they don't have to worry about defending, and 3 towers in the middle that swap back and forth and generate enjoyable organized PVP for both sides, instead of both sides being unhappy.

I see Phaeros being unhappy because they can't protect their gatherers/noncombatants. I see Golgotha being unhappy because they don't get enough PVP on equal terms.

The simple solution is to stop attacking each others weakpoints and ensuring that nobody has a good time, and instead test your strength in equal matches that both sides can enjoy.

I'll even make an offer... if you guys can work it out so there are 3-5 towers both sides intend to contest, and at least one side puts their PVP window during late evening eastern time, I'll bring 4 or 5 dwarves down south and join the battles on whichever side is outnumbered.

Because a 15 vs 20 battle once a night sounds like a lot of fun, while 10 vs 2, or 100 vs 10 a couple times a week is stupid for both sides.

EBA's recruitment efforts have been so successful that you have made your region the only viable area to find PVP targets.

* If they ever do add caravans, I have little doubt GW will continue their trend and make them unsuitable PVP / looting targets.

This might be because PFO's goal is to provide PVP opponents that can actually give a fair fight, not just helpless "targets"

@Golgotha
When I heard that EBA had taken all your towers, I thought to myself, "wow, here is Golgotha's chance to show how strong a PVP company they are, I bet they organize themselves and take back all ten towers, and I hope there are some epic clashes between groups of fighters on both sides."

Instead, you've decided that fighting people who are actually prepared to fight back is too hard, so you'll target civilians instead?

I don't care who started what, but Golgotha's response is pathetic. This is your opportunity to have large-scale PVP in rep-free tower hexes, and your response is to throw up your hands and go kill gatherers?

Actually I GM PF Society... About 240+ games under my belt.

During those pathfinder TT games, is the party of brave adventurers often attacked by evildoers actively trying to kill them and hinder their activities?

Or do they spend most of those sessions traveling around and picking flowers unopposed?

Outposts and PoIs will improve the state of PVP immensely.

Raiding an outpost will be more consistently enjoyable and rewarding for the attacker and feel less like a personal assault to the victim than pouncing on gatherers.

PFO is an MMO set in Golarion.

It is not attempting to simulate the tabletop experience in a virtual format.

That statement, plus a reminder that we are in year 2 of a 5 year process can answer 95% of your rant. The other 5% are personal preferences that are not universally shared.

Is there a known bug with crafting achievements? I have made over 300 lesser vitals and over 100 lesser vital +1's as well as hundreds of numinous and consonants. Despite this I cannot get the gem cutter 3 feat with the prerequisite of (tier 1, common +0). Thought's?

If making the first one doesn't give the achievement, making more of the same thing won't help either.

If you think you are making the correct item, common +1 or whatever, and you don't get the achievement, make something else instead.

For the weaponsmith, I don't know specifically what item is the common +1, but try a longsword, those are pretty basic.

I picture PvPers next year just being handed whatever gear they can use, and having it replaced by GRPs (Gear Replacement Programs).

Crafting will have little meaning to them because everything is free, just for showing up and PvPing.

The reverse of this, is that PVPers are just peons that kill what they are told, when they are told to, otherwise the gear spigot gets shut off and they become useless.

Crafters are the ones who need to unite and say NO to the ludicrous prices people think they can get from the raw mats.

Its not the price I "think" I can get. Its the price that people are willing to pay.

I started listing coal at 5c each and raised the price by 5c each time I sold a batch of 25.

I ended up at 25c before the sales slowed down, and even at that price, I can sell more than I am willing to part with.

You can theorize all you want, but the real value of something in copper is the price I can list it at on the Thornkeep AH, and know that it'll be sold in 24h or less.

Don't know what that means... Google, hit me with some knowledge! :)

Urban Dictionary wrote: QED

In this case it's reasonably accurate, but in general, I wouldn't rely on Urban Dictionary to define anything other than slang and sexual references.

So... are you SURE killing a crafter doesn't interrupt their crafting? I don't know the answer, but have obviously heard what I described above.

Huh. I am pretty sure I've died while having a job queued, but I'm not 100% positive.

But we *do* have to crowdfroge a happy medium that doesn't allow crafters to be impervious members of the Military Industrial Complex

Kill the gatherers. They have to leave town.

Running in to kill AFK crafters should never be part of a valid strategy, because you can't actually stop them from crafting by killing them, it doesn't even slow down the queue.

Spastic mouse issues may be related to:
1) playing on a Mac. My Mac client was uncontrollable, other people have not had the same problem.

2) playing in fullscreen mode. Windowed mode provides much better performance in a number of areas.

Towers don't provide it; there are too many to make it worth defending the ones you hold, much easier to just run off and grab someone elses when their window comes up.

You are choosing not to defend your towers (which is supposed to be the main source of consensual PVP right now), and then complaining that there isn't enough PVP to keep you happy?

Maybe you should try defending your towers when someone attacks them?

Good day,

My question is simple: in the opinions of the experienced players, is there a niche in this MMORPG for the casual PvE player?

Absolutely.

You could definitely be an asset to your settlement by training 1 gathering skill and 1 or 2 crafting skills.
Log on for an hour, get refined materials from your settlement, start a queue for crafting finished products, spend any spare time running out and gathering in the hexes around your settlement.

You'll contribute to your settlement by passing on the raw materials and finished goods, and each time you log in, you'll have the accomplishment of seeing the new items you've crafted.

You will need an active settlement to provide you with recipes and raw materials, but if you are willing to pick a crafting profession that they don't already have covered, they will be happy to have you. I know Forgeholm would.

Diella, where is the big advantage in having 3 XP-gaining Characters on one account, compared to 3 seperate accounts or 1 DT account and one regular? To me, having multiple accounts seems to be better than multiple chars on one account, as this allows trading between the characters.

Well.. each account is $50 currently, and comes with 1 month game time, so there's a $35 per account initial cost, even if the subscription would be the same monthly cost either way.

Had a moment when PFO's graphics really enhanced my play experience and thought I would share it:

Night was falling and I was running down a dark road through the woods, when a flash of light off to my left caught my eye.
I stopped running and glanced over to see the far side of a tree trunk illuminated and reflecting.
I cautiously walked up the hillside towards the tree and as I crested the ridge, the flickering top of a fire appeared, with shadowy figures hunched around it.
More stealthing forward, and they resolved into a cluster of bandits and a wolf at their campsite in a hollow.

The lighting effect of the firelight reflecting off the tree trunk triggered an immersive and classic D&D experience. Kudos to the PFO graphics, and I look forward to further polishing between now and OE.

Really, Kathalphas?

Nothing? You didn't even bother to scout our towers to see which ones we were defending?

Did you at least take Aragon's core tower back? We weren't watching that one at all.

If you don't care about the War of Towers, how about this:

The carebear mobile resource nodes of Forgeholm will be in your hex, taking your resources. Come get us.

The hex north of Freevale. 9pm to 11:30pm eastern US time.

I guarantee we walk out of there at the end of the evening with more tansy leaves than you do.

I have not been able to find a single Tier 2 Gem from mineral nodes since the resource allocation. Is anyone else having this problem?

I have skill 90 in mining (yay dwarven racial bonus!), and I have found significantly more gems of both T2 and T1 since the allocation.

Its either too small a sample size, or the specific hexes you are mining in.

In TT (especialy pre-pathfinder) traditionally the fighters and barbarians are the low level combat monsters divine casters can sort of hold their own and wizards are fragile but occasionally useful, by level 10 or 12 the divine casters (Druids and Battle Clerics) took over as the melee combat monsters and arcane casters started to show benefits and by level 20 there was very little to compete with an arcane caster throwing level 9 spells around.

In Pathfinder, Archers and Barbarians are the best at pure dps, hitpoint damage even at level 20.

I absolutely agree that in TT, there is very little to compete with a 9th level spell, but those spells are typically not used to deal hit point damage.

My point was not that Wizards aren't useful. My point was that they're not really "glass cannons" - they're "glass" sure enough, but there are other Roles which dish out significantly more pure damage.

Which really follows the precedent set by tabletop pathfinder. If you want big damage numbers, you take an archer or a barbarian.

You take a wizard for control and effects that supersede mere damage.

If its possible to eventually translate that into PFO, wizards will be great fun.
In the current state, I agree, wizards are much too squishy and damage is the primary thing that matters in combat.

A small thing to ping on I know, but was this 20 people total or 20 people from EACH settlement? Before WoT Golgotha sent about 16-18 people down and we hit Hammerfall. The EBA responded with about as many people then countered with even more. so a ruff estimate of 40-50 people participated in the battle.

20 total. That's a low estimate, because I know people participated that I didn't have a direct count on.

I didn't realize how many people were in the Hammerfall dust-up. Your southern conflicts are a lot bigger than ours in the north. :)

Killing Joke matching three Keywords can hit for a max damage of around 130. Basic Longbow Exploit with Master of Opportunity: Suffer can hit for a max damage of around 230.

Doesn't Killing Joke have a 4 second stun attached to it? That is significant to a straight damage comparison.

We need something that isn't going to generate PvP, but the right kinds of PvP. The latter is what we don't have, because these free for all hexes aren't really doing their job on the grand scale of things.

I think the WoT is doing okay for a stopgap measure.

WoT gives us some places and times to say: "at this time, in this hex, both sides will be ready and prepared to fight," with enough uncertainty that it doesn't become a pre-arranged duel.

Honestly, what would fix the WoT for me, is to reduce the number of towers to 50 or so.
Either remove the others, or cover them with a server-wide NAP. If the 16 active settlements were fighting over only 50 towers instead of 300, you'd see a lot more engaging fights and a lot less afk capping.

Even if the towers gave no training or settlement advantages, the people that wanted to PVP would do it just for the bragging rights and the practice.

Thoughts on the event:

We really wanted to get in some fights, and were disappointed at the lack of resistance.

I miscalculated one tower attack, and missed capturing it by 50 points.

Out of 6 Forgeholmers that actively participated, we lost one to the blue screen character lockout bug, and one had persistent disconnection problems.

Other than that, there was little lag or other server problems, even when we had 20+ people in the same area.

The length of the PVP window felt right.. it was an hour for Freevale and 4 hours for Aragon, based on their tower holdings. The lower window for Freevale gave them some protection, it felt like a race to get the towers capped, and even slight resistance could have thrown off our timetable.

Same with the length of tower capture. With 5-6 people at each tower, it felt like the defenders had a chance to respond, without being too tedious for the attackers.

Enjoyed coordinating with everyone, including our southern neighbors, thanks for the show of support!

I know you've heard this before, but top of our wish list for implementation: Company tags, or some way to identify strange characters. Improved company or settlement chat options. Targeting fixes.

The night was fun, and a glimpse of the good things PFO can provide. Lots of dreaming about PoIs and Siege engines once they are implemented.

On Monday, Jan 26th, companies belonging to Freevale and Aragon attempted to take core towers belonging to Ozem's Vigil.

On Tuesday, Jan 27th, the Free Highlanders responded by launching an attack on the towers belonging to Freevale and Aragon, including their core towers.

Over 20 players from at least four settlements participated in this action, perhaps the largest coordinated PVP action in PFO to date.

No one from Freevale or Aragon showed up to defend their holdings, and the result was at least 5 towers taken from Freevale, and at least 4 towers taken from Aragon.

The Free Highlanders would prefer to return to good-natured squabbling over outlying towers, however, we do attach special significance to core six towers, and we will respond in force if any of our core six hexes are attacked.

link to image showing one of our mustering points one hex south of Aragon:
http://imgur.com/yYXLlAW

One more suggestion, run the game in windowed mode, not full screen. That seems to improve performance for a lot of people.

For issue #1, are you on a Mac? I found the mouse sensitivity so high on the Mac client that it was unplayable and I had to switch to Windows.