Brave Sir Robin's page

Originally, we had the flagging system, for people who wanted to be "Crusaders", "Assassins", or what have you. Currently the system is about NPC-factions, but those have their own problems too (such as people flocking to certain factions, and then having to switch factions consistently because they want to stick with the one that gives them the most PvP).

From what I've seen, the NPC-faction system just hasn't been well-liked on the whole.

So, I want to propose an opt-in PvP system that makes everything super easy. I think simplicity is the best way to handle all this, because there's enough complicated pieces of the puzzle already, so, it's nice to keep some simplicity where we can imo.

So, onto the system:

It's a flagging system, just like first one proposed, but, there's only one flag: The PvP Flag (makes sense, right?).

Now, GW wisely wanted to balance risk and reward, and since PvP'ers are inherently taking on more risk, let's talk reward.

Every character who PvP will be doing one or more functions of the Holy Trinity (Damage, Tanking, Healing), so I thought, why not improve these 3 basic things, and, allow the players to choose which one they want to improve (once when they flag up, and then the decision cannot be changed without taking down the flag and reflagging).

So the three avenues of reward would be:

% Damage bonus
% Absorption bonus
or
% Healing bonus (for giving heals, not receiving)

So again, you choose one, right when you flag up, and your stuck with that choice unless you take your flag down and then put it up again.

In the first flagging system, someone would flag up, and every hour, for 10 hours, the bonus would "ramp up" until leveling off at 10. This has the obvious flaw that people (even carebears) will use the system to flag up in a Settlement, and just hang around all day while it ramps up, then maybe go do some PvE'ing at night time, and shut it off the next day to go back to bravely avoiding PvP.

To solve this, you simply have to increase the ramp-up time, so instead of 10 hours, I was thinking something closer to 60 days. That way, someone has to make the meaningful choice of either being a PvP'er, or not being a PvP'er, and can't just shut the flag on and off to enjoy the bonuses at their own convenience, without the risks involved.

The bonus given would be 1% every other day. So, even if you flag up, you don't get anything for the first 48 hours, and, even after that, you only get a 1% bonus, then 2% after Day 4, 3% after Day 6, and so on, up to a max of 30% at Day 60.

This would keep it simple, force people to make 2 meaningful choices:

1) Whether to be a PvE'er or a PvP'er

and

2) Whether to enhance their abilities in Damage, Healing, or Absorption (Tanking).

To start us off, here's my tiny list...

Lifetaps- Love 'em. LT DoTs, Regular DD LT's, AoE LT's, you name it. Pathfinder/D&D really don't have anywhere NEAR enough of these (basically just Vampiric Touch, are you kidding me?).

Mez/AoE Mez - A mez was a form of CC that basically put someone to sleep until they were attacked in some way.

Insta-cast PBAoE Mez - Self-explanatory, great if you get surrounded.

Mob Domination - Basically allows you to turn an NPC, like a goblin for example, into a pet. If you can snag a healing or caster gobby, even better.

PBAoE DD - Pretty self-explanatory, high risk, high reward (and reward is paid out in damage).

Stuns - Again self-explanatory

Wall of Force - Everyone should know what this is.

Roots - Target's movement speed is dropped to 0, but can still attack.

Snares - Target's movement speed is reduced... should also be AoE/GTAoE/PBAoE versions of these two.

Healing Effectiveness Debuff - Single target or AoE, reduces the effectiveness of heals on an enemy by a certain %.

Ability Score Debuffs - Duh

Polymorphs/Shapechange

Power Drain/Endurance Drains - Similar to the Lifetap, but drain Power or Endurance instead.

Invisibility

Raising Undead from Corpses

Mage Armor/Short Duration Armor buffs - basically something that lasts a long time, and gives a small bonus to AC, and a short duration with a huge bonus to AC.

Spell Resistance Buffs

Saving Throw Buffs

Blink - Like what the Mage is famous for in WoW.

Damage Shield - Absorbs X amount of Damage

Dimension Door - Longer distance than Blink but shorter than a full teleport.

Teleport (for very high level and dedicated Wizards/Sorcs)

Mount summoning

Globe of Invulnerability - All level 4 spells and below are automatically resisted

Enervation/Energy Drain - Temporary Negative levels

Stoneskin/Barkskin - Famous from D&D. They offer Damage Resistance up to X # of HP.

GTAoE DoT - You place it on the ground, anyone who remains in it takes damage over time

Light Spells - To allow players to see further away at night)

Speed Buffs - Both long duration and short duration bursts (which are much faster).

Wall Climb

Fly (Oh how I would love to see it)

Mirror Image - Duh

Unwilling Shield - Similar to Shield Other, but your enemy takes 50% of the damage you take.

Undead Anatomy - Polymorphs caster into Undead, in PF TT, Undead Anatomy IV is the highest version of this, and allows player to turn incorporeal (how cool would that be?).

Fear Spells - Single Target/Cone/AoE/PBAoE versions

Temporary Hit Points (Like False Life in D&D and PF TT)

Nearsight - Modifies how far someone can see (so archers can't shoot as far, casters can't cast as far, etc).

1-Hit Absorb - Buff that fully absorbs the damage of caster's next hit (helps a lot when an archer or rogue gets the jump on you, you can recover faster).

Confuse - NPC's attack eachother or anyone at random, players are forced to switch targets at random, and can attack teammates.

Damage Shields - Anyone that hits target takes X damage

Attack Speed Debuffs - Target isn't able to attack as often

DD/Snare - Both damages the target and drops movement speed

I wasn't originally going to ask this question, because I thought there weren't enough DAoC'ers here to answer it, but, seeing as how there are quite a few of us, I wanted to ask, if you're choosing PFO over CU, then why?

This is obviously a very valid question, because for people who dedicated a lot of time to DAoC, we know the special place it holds in our hearts and obvious, even though CU isn't an exact clone (as Mark has said many times) it does resemble DAoC very closely (and is headed up by Mark and other former Mythicans).

So, that being the case then, why choose PFO over CU? Or have you made that decision yet?

While I can say I haven't fully chosen PFO over CU, I'm definitely leaning much more towards PFO at this point (even though I know CU is likely to be the slaughterfest typically desired by us DAoC'ers).

Why? Well, I spent a lot of my time on Mordred, and, the big appeal there was that the alliances and factions were guild-based, not set in stone like in RvR (though one of my big regrets from DAoC days is not RvR'ing enough).

I guess I was just trying to capture the whole "player created factions thing" which I didn't really get much of on Mordred, as people usually just stayed out of the Frontiers and killed each other in the more populated towns at the foot of Camelot and Tir Na Nag (Cots, Mag Mel, the works)...

So, a big reason I'll most likely be choosing PFO over CU is the idea of these player-created factions that are so meaningful in this game (the whole game is based around them).

Also, D&D was the first Fantasy fandom which I'd fallen in love with (DAoC being the second), so there's always that.

But, CU has a lot of similarities with PFO... Players are the content, Crafting matters (no big mob drops), similar sandbox elements, etc.

I guess at the end of the day, I just love the intrigue of the ebbs and flows of player-kingdoms, and player-created factions (with their contracts, alliances, betrayals, wars/feuds) more than the joy I got from killing faceless enemies in RvR (and I do mean it, it was a joy).

So, those are my reasons, what are yours?

Crowdforging Time...

So, in the recent blog post, it sounded to me like there will be 6 dedicated or "mandatory" weapon slots, for weapon abilities. For someone who plans to play a Sorcerer, Wizard, Cleric, etc, you will probably want to dedicate these slots to thinks like "Cure Light Wounds" or "Fireballz".

So, casters... how do you feel about that, and wouldn't you prefer to be able to put some more spells into these slots. 6 slots is a pretty heavy percentage for a full-caster to be forced to dedicate ALL of them to weapon, as opposed to being able to slot spells there, don't you think so?

Perhaps as a "Dedication" bonus, as a Wizard gets higher in level, he can put more and more Wizard spells in these slots, and as a Cleric gets higher in level, he'd be able to put more Cleric spells in these slots. What say you to that?

I wanted to make a quick thread to that I think makes an important point, because there seems to be a lot of confusion about the Reputation system and its intentions.

the main thing I want to say is this; the reputation is not a punishment system... it's a system for making trade-offs.

What I mean is that the system isn't there to ruin the time of anyone who wants to PvP (though some people may wish it was) it's there so that players have a COST associated with RDK's.

In some of the PvP/Reputation threads, I see people write things like "It should take forever to get your rep back if you make one RDK". The notion being that the Reputation system is there to PREVENT people from making Reputation-Draining Kills entirely, when in reality, it's there so that people have to be a bit more selective when making RDK's.

That's the key here: Not prevention. Selection. It also rewards people who are more selective in some ways (though those people will also be punished FOR being selective, since they're choosing a path that's more restrictive)... And it punishes people who AREN'T selective enough.

If the system were made to prevent these kills entirely, they would just shut off any type of kill that they didn't want. It's there so that players have to decide when to make these kills, and when to let someone slide.

For example, if someone comes out of an area, and you know they're probably packing some nice resources, giving where they were, you can't just kill them without consequence, but you're also not prevented from killing them either... it creates a meaningful choice.

In the recent two minute video, we saw a lot of a settlement really up close and personal for the first time, which I thought was fantastic.

It made me think a bit about the games sandbox elements, and gave rise to a couple of important questions, namely:

1) We see in the settlements a lot of houses, and they look somewhat homogeneous, and relatively the same size... we did see a couple that were a bit bigger and made of stone, but mostly wooden ones of approx. the same size. So my question is: Can these "plots" be merged together in order to create a larger structure, out of 4, 16, 25 plots etc?

Also...

2) What about landscaping? I'm talking about things like leveling and raising ground, planting trees, perhaps creating a labyrinth, etc. Basically what can we do to the land itself, or on top of it?

So, in case you don't know what all the acronyms that I made up in the subject are:

FPV - First Person View
OR - Oculus Rift
PFO - Really? You should know this one.

So, doing a google site search, and searching through Paizo for a thread on the OR, I found one, BUT, here's the problemo: it descended into a debate as to whether PFO should feature FPV or not, and NOT whether it should be OR compatible. So, I've decided to start this thread talking about how much I HATE FPV in games like this.

First person view works really terribly in the vast majority of situations. The reason is that this little screen (or big screen even) can't get the FPV right, there's just not enough room, so, it looks like you have tunnel vision. And if you want to see what's behind you, you have to swing ALL the way around.

I'm an old-skool DAoC hardcore PvP'er, and we had a name for people who went into PvP using FPV: "newbs". They would just get owned very quickly, because we could strafe around them, and magically "disappear" as far as they were concerned. So really, you could tool them very quickly.

Even the "you can see your hands" crap from the Elder Scrolls series I thought was ridiculous, and was pissed when they decided to waste even more of their time adding it to ESO (I'm no longer following that piece of junk abomination of a game).

So, long story short, FPV in MMO's is (for the sake of being politically correct) retarded.

So, why then am I all for having a FPV in PFO? For the OR of course.

For those of you who don't know what the OR is, it's by far the most powerful Virtual Reality (VR) headset every created for consumers, and like PFO, it was launched on Kickstarter, and funded over a year ago.

It gives people a HUGE field of view, and essentially does what VR goggles are designed to do: Immerse the player 100%.

I'll show you some videos of people using them...

People become terrified in roller-coaster games, or horror games, because it just feels so real.

One thing I should point out, is that David Helgason is the CEO of Unity, the game engine that PFO is using, and he is VERY involved with Oculus Rift.

Long story short, if you don't know what it is, you can check it out here. I recommend you check out the video there first thing.

So, if I hate FPV so much, then why do I think that the OR will work well in an MMO? Simple: It solves the main problems generally associated with FPV in an MMORPG.

First of all, seeing behind you... this is the biggie. How does it solve it? Well, it has a 110° field of view... which is HUGE... and because you can move your head around with very low lag... you can see what's behind you very quickly... just by turning your head a little bit, like you'd do in real life.

Also, FPV in vidya games isn't usually immersive, and that is CERTAINLY not a problem with the OR. I've seen people TERRIFIED on roller coaster virtual experiences, AS WELL as in horror games.

In fact, if you want to see a 20-something year old guy literally CRY from playing a vidya game with the Oculus Rift, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl7fz__6B-4

Here's a whole video of OR reaction compilations, because I think the best way to get a feel for how good they are is to watch these reaction vids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INDKNA7kXoo

And here's one more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjNLvgqZgUI

So, long story short, I don't want to play in Golarion... I want to GO TO Golarion... and with the OR, I think we can do this. Who's with me?