Ghoste's page

Please don't pull a WoTC on this :D

Let's say I suddenly somehow come into possession of a large amount of, uh... dough.. but I can't really bake anything from it because it's a little bit dirty (and may or may not look very much similar to a large pile of dough that was just reported missing). Could I hand it in to Tony to have it all cleaned up and baked into perfectly legitimate stacks of... bread.. that I can use with a clean conscience and no hassle from the authorities?

Tony hates dirty bread! Tony will most certainly make sure his dough is properly laund...er, cleaned before it can be presented to the public.

How clean? Well, let's not get too fussy. The 5 second rule is scientific fact, after all: If You Drop It, Should You Eat It? Scientists Weigh In on the 5-Second Rule

***SPECIAL NOTICE***
This Toilday, the 29th of Erastus, Tony's Totally Legitimate Bread Making Business will be running a special on laundering ex-wives.

I would really like to see active mount breeding...

Would linking a video of this get me banned?

I hate apostrophes in names. In some languages they actually mean something, but most people have no clue what they mean or how to use them and they just end up looking like a bunch of gaudy, tasteless rings decorating their hairy nipple of a name.

Stealth? Invisibility? See invisibility? Summoning? Crowd Control?

Will wizards be pigeon holed into AoE damage and buffing like every other MMO, or will they have access to a variety of spells that do more than just go "boom"?

Just waiting for this thread to die. PFO will never be anything like that video. It was disturbing, and its just a game doesn't cut it. If you can't see that try putting yourself in the shoes of those people being told "take your pants off and you can live" for about a second. That's all I got.

I get that something like that can possibly be traumatic for someone who's lived through something like that, but if it's traumatic for anyone else then they need professional help. So when you tell me to put myself in those shoes for "just s second"...I spent a lot longer than a second thinking about it, and all I could muster up in personal response was "meh".

If people were genuinely worried about triggering traumatic memories in others, posting a video like this and making it the number one topic of discussion on these forums for the past few days is not the way to accomplish that - you're kind of working backwards there, m'kay?

People are going to try to play the game and get involved in the dev made stories as well as the player made stories. Some of these people will get bored from time to time and attempt to come up with ways of having juvenile fun. They won't be looking for or expecting approval from people with a different idea of fun, and now matter how the game is designed, it won't stop people from occasionally finding some way to do something stupid. For that reason, this whole thread really just amounts to this week's PFO forum drama. Nothing more.

Alright, that's progress.

I'm of the opinion that "individual" viewpoints on morality are like "individual" viewpoints on health: just because over one million Americans believe that the only actual cause of cancer is suppressed negative emotions, and just because there are many other very popular and very crackpot theories out there, it doesn't in the least tempt us to believe there isn't a very correct and true answer (whether we yet know said answer or even how to get to it, just that it is there), and that these crackpots are just noise.

But that's reality, and we're discussing video game mechanics.

And we agree that the devs will have a morality system, and that it will be applied to individuals, and that it won't apply differently based off of the individual interpretations each may have of morality.

Killing characters free of justifying tags will be evil, and there will be tags that will justify killing, and I would argue that such situations should not be considered evil by default, and I don't think it will be a challenge to code a game thus.

So I'm saying it should be based off of tags triggered by specific behaviors, and you reply that the devs aren't taking people's individual concepts of morality into consideration, and I don't understand why that's the emphasis of your reply, or even how it matters.

just that I have not observed them taking individual viewpoints on morality into consideration.

and in response:

A good/evil alignment system is, by definition, a morality system.

Since the developers ARE going to implement an alignment system, and since they HAVE given examples of what will be good and evil, then you have indeed seen them taking morality into consideration.

You can leave the conversation if you wish; what I said was for clarification for all.

I also think we're making plenty progress with the conversation. Maybe time will help to see it that way.

Evil is only fairly judged by the context of the game environment. The developers have been clear that alignment is not a subjective matter in Golarion, but a god(dess) overseen set of behaviors.

So far we have been led to believe killing outside of feuds, war, crime, and factions is an evil act. I would argue it has been presented as a chaotic act as well, and therefore a possible chain on those wishing to remain lawful as well.

Given what we have, I don't know if the realism or personal morality argument will be persuasive.

It doesn't have to be subjective. A career criminal will have plenty of flags related to good/evil, law/chaos, reputation, and criminal actions vs settlements and individuals to make it extremely straight forward to ascertain whether a kill is good, evil, or neutral (as in wars or self defense).

If the programmers can't sort out something that simple, then there's no reason to believe they're even going to attempt an alignment system at all.

If that truly is your belief, then that is a completely separate discussion. This thread is built on the assumption, including the original post, that alignment and morality will matter to players and game designers, and that there will be ways to flag it. If they're all wrong about it, as you claim, that's a big discussion. Likely one for it's own thread.

I strongly disagree with one of the foundational assertions off of which this is based: "killing is an evil act".

Disclaimer: I intend to play an evil character who will do my fair share of evil killing.

Evil is acting contrary to compassion. Is it more evil to kill one murderer or to allow the murderer to walk free and kill many others? To truly act on compassion, you must choose to take some kind of action against murderers that will result in less killing overall.

This thread proposes that not only do law enforcers do less to stop the killing, but that law enforcement now give criminals a heads up that they're coming for them. So it penalizes stealth and surprise among bounty hunters.

The only argument for bounty hunters or other forms of law enforcement not needing to kill a criminal should be imprisonment or fines.

Imprisonment: character locked away for several days. Not popular from a developer point of view: you want players playing more, not less.

Fines: Lawgiver takes what's on the corpse - that's nothing new - but the system also siphons extra cash out of the fallen criminal's secret stores, be they in hideouts or in lawful banks.

How do you know you're about to die?

The cleric says "aawwsdsadsadsawsadwsawdsda" in chat.

No Katana's from day one. Doesn't match the setting in that particular spot. But if through trial and error and questing, a player learned to make a curved blade of metal folded, folded and folded again ... They'd be millionaires overnight.

Folding steel was a necessary method for the Japanese because they had a much smaller supply of iron ore than Europe, and the ore was often a lot more impure. Folding the steel gets the impurities out, but folding high purity steel is pointless and provides no benefit.

European metal smiths made stronger swords than the Japanese by focusing on mixing in the right amounts of carbon in low oxygen furnaces, which gave them few imperfections, like Japanese steel, but also a more precise alloy than the Japanese could manage.

The katana specifically was actually designed as a less lethal sidearm for the samurai of the Edo period when the military was trying to tone down the arms of the obsolete samurai. The larger No-dachi were much more important in their time.

The idea of the katana remains very fantasized in the minds of many people, but all the science boils down to is that the Japanese just did what they did because of the limited resources in their region.

Ironically Japan uses a huge amount of steel today and it's a crux of their economy, but it's pretty much all imported.

"Balance" as an all encompassing philosophy is garbage.

Designing classes so that different classes excel under different circumstances is much smarter game design. In a way though, it still amounts to balance.

But a barbarian who doesn't know when or how a barbarian can be better than a wizard and allows the wizard to set the situation against the barbarian deserves to lose. A fighter who treats every enemy the same, or wants every enemy to be "equal" in all ways is going to ruin the game for everyone else.

Some classes should have the upper hand in group combat, others in single combat. Some should have the upper hand when they manage to pull of a surprise ambush, others should excel in facing the enemy directly. If the game design doesn't reflect that, you should take it as a direct personal insult: the game designers suggesting you want something that simplistic.

And what would the Lord Regent want in exchange?

Souls, clearly.

Pax is playing by the rules.

Let's move past it.

This is supposed to be a meet and greet.

No, I'm not staying to shake hands with anybody; I'm going back to my cave.

My understanding is you're talking about privateering. UNC will wage economic warfare to Pax's benefit. And I assume UNC will have their own schemes on the side.

Think of the colonial days how the British empire would hire crews under the table to go out and harass merchant ships of enemy nations. If Britain were at war with Spain at the time, then the "privateers" would attack Spanish ships but let the French pass.

Norwegian: Members of T7V will all be tall, blonde, homogeneous and have a good balance of free market and socialist values.

For a LE company to avoid getting in over its head in conflicts over resources, I would point out the following to the community, as well as suggest such LE settlements try to underscore this point in their diplomatic entreaties: while evil can be a dangerous neighbor, LE are more obsessive about keeping contracts, agreements, and treaties than anyone else.

Shiny, dangly earrings are nice, and they say the redheaded ones are particularly fun.

Also, they said we'd have more visuals, but I saw nothing. I'm sure they'll correct it as soon as they realize it. Either that or I'm blind.

+1

Greetings,

thank you for your initiative, Armenfrast!

There seems to be a lot of concern about whether PvP will become too "toxic" and drive many away.

Also worth discussing, I think, is how toxic discussion on these forums have become, and not just on the surface. When I speak to individuals in this community on different issues through PM or voice chat, I am hearing a common thread to what many of you are saying: that you have your position, the other guy has his position, and making your statement is more about making more noise for Goblinworks' sake than for the purpose of convincing those you are debating.

I suggest another approach: have confidence that the folks over at Goblinworks already know what they want the game to look like as far as how aggressive PvP will look. So what if someone keeps saying something you disagree with over and over. Just let stupid comments speak for themselves.

All you're accomplishing by nitpicking every little comment you disagree with is to rub some of the stupid off on yourselves.

Rovagug is on no one's side. Rovagug has no meaning other than an end to everyone and everything.

Saying you're on Rovagug's side is like riding an atom bomb out of an airplane and saying you're on the bomb's side.

In Golarion, his humanoid followers are all nihilists (suicidals who just want to take down as much as they can with themselves).

If that's not the angle you're going for, then I strongly encourage you to reconsider your terminology.

DeciusBrutus wrote:

I think that describing the alignment system as having only 9 locations is inaccurate; in the entire space of character actions, four lines have been drawn (law, chaos, good, evil) dividing that space into nine regions, which together cover the entire domain of possible character actions.

In other words, you can't fully determine what a character does from their alignment, but you can almost always tell what their alignment is from their actions.

You can not do either.

"you can almost always tell what their alignment is from the totality of their actions."

Since we mere mortals can't see the totality of one's actions, alignment is the purview of the "Gods" or the "GMs", in both PnP and supposedly in PFO.

You can always tell the alignment of one's actions from those very actions.

It may not be perfectly specific, but one can generally get a pretty fair description of someone's alignment with enough actions to review. Especially if you're trying to describe their current alignment rather than try to describe their lifelong alignment.

And all of your examples from earlier in this thread, Bluddwolf, are examples of pivotal life changing reasons why alignments can change. They are not examples of dualistic alignment.

Everyone has urges pushing them in all directions of the alignment chart, but where they choose to go, and their personal reasons for their choices are what make up their alignment, not the disparity of urges.

In D&D lore, Asmodeus rose from being a devil and stole his godhood.

In PF lore he was one of the very first gods and eventually founded Hell and created devilkind. He is also responsible for binding Rovagug.

The title given to LE is "tyrant". In both D&D and PF the pinnacle of LE is tyranny, and tyranny has historically always been far more opposed to chaos than to good.

Regarding Sauron, lawful evil implies adherence to some form of principles and Sauron never seemed to have any. And Sauron was just a shadow of his fallen master, Morgoth. According to the Silmarillion, Morgoth's main motivations were really just trying to mess up the work of Illuvatar. He had no goals or plans to reform said work into something that fit his own vision, just break down the order of Illuvatar's great masterpiece. Both in the abstract and in the manifest forms of that process though, Morgoth kept meeting with frustration as Illuvatar found subtle and gentle ways to manipulate Morgoth's disruption back into harmonious order.

That is definitely describing a CE villian, not LE. The orcs and goblins followed Sauron out of fear, not out of a sense of purpose. When Sauron fell, no ideology nor purpose remained to bind them together and they turned on each other. Chaos.

Character Name: Tony the Baker
Character Alignment: Lawful Sexy!
Organization: Tony's Totally Legitimate Breadmaking Business
Rank: Breadmaking Person with the Shiniest Moustache
Organization Info: Talk to Uncle Tony and tell him about your problems. Through positive attitude and odd coincidences, mayhaps Tony can find a way to make them go away.
Organization Ambitions: to make backstab-berry muffins every day and use the power of heating up dough to make everyone's problems go away.
Play-style: whimsical and ironic
History: Legend has it that Tony's moustache helped clear many of the monsters from the River Kingdoms to help make settlement of Fort Inevitable possible.

Can't speak for them, but this is what I see in the name.

Translates: "Place of the skull" (original Hebrew: gulgoleth)

It was a place, one of many, where the tyrants of the long lived and glorious Roman empire executed justice with clear and authoritative brutality.

Also has sentimentality for some religious foke.

I really don't follow the point of this conversation.

What I'm seeing: some people arguing over what "random" and "toxic" and other terms mean as though the devs who made the various statements being quoted and tossed around are walking dictionaries and hyper literalists.

GW has a vision for the game: they've made it clear there will be PvP. They've made it clear some forms of PvP will be considered abusive and that there will be both community tools and developer tools used to deal with it. Where those lines lie, they've been very purposeful about not clarifying, so those who think they've got it figured out - those on both sides of this silly drawn out why the hell haven't you run out of breath yet argument - are arguing where they either think that line is or should be.

The answer is simple: they're going for a system that will keep things going in a way that, just like the blogs talking about economic balance between gatherers, builders and adventurers, will keep a balance between a variety of playstyles - including PvP. And if you think you've found a loophole in the system that will let you be a hyper-aggressive beast all the time to anyone you want, then maybe you're right. Maybe you're really seeing a loophole in the current system, or maybe that's what GW wants. I'm sure they sincerely do want at least a few players to play that way. But if they find the player base is more aggressive than they had envisioned, expect a rework of the flag system, or the reputation system, or the alignment system.

Whatever you think the current rule system is - you're wrong. Each and every one of you. The rule system is in change and will continue to change to sculpt what they want to sculpt. Some people will laud the changes when they come and some will cry "nerf". But the changes will happen, and happen again, and again.

Small world - my gloves are made out of an elf from Kyonin!

We need a LE settlement in the Spirit of Asmodeus, like the Cheliaxians. The advantage here is that it is a lawful that does not oppose good per se, but believes good is simply too naive to fully understand the consequences of chaos.

Before the gods allowed the souls to have choice, Asmodeus got along swimmingly with the other gods. The rift of ideologies arose as more and more insisted on allowing souls to choose where to go after death.

And even with the rift, Asmodeus ultimately chose to follow the path of patience.

From the Book of the Damned Vol 1 - Princes of Darkness: (this takes place after Asmodeus slew his twin brother for introducing the idea of free will among mortals to the rest of the gods)

It was Sarenrae who discovered the wounded and brooding Asmodeus, and in that moment of fury the goddess discovered something beyond order and chaos—her own sense of right and wrong. Sarenrae leveled her burning sword at the murderer, demanding he yield. With a blink, Asmodeus awoke and quenched the goddess’s blade, taking her by the throat. Looking deep within her, he saw fear, and insignificance, and weakness, but also the truth of the age. And as the goddess prepared to join her master, she was shocked to feel Asmodeus release and address her.

“Your war is won, Pale Orphan. I leave all of this to you and your ilk. But you will see me again, for I alone remain to guard the old truths. And I will wait for the age when all you have wrought and all for which you have fought turns to sweep you away. Then all of you will see what I have lost, and what I will make mine again.”

Good settlements need not fear a truly Asmodean LE settlement. Such a settlement would happily help them in crushing chaotic enemies. Just don't expect to like their methods.

I've seen Player Councils in games well before the term "MMO" was coined. They were either elitist jerks or such a watered-down entity that they had no real power, but still took all of the blame.

Yay! Popularity contest! Time to see who has the longest e-peen!

Never mind the old man with the big stick, he's perfectly harmless.

There's one vote for Being!

Oh! a popularity contest!

I nominate Aunt Tony!

Purely speculative, but making theft legal seems in itself a determined step towards lawlessness.

Does it even begin to compare though to making mass murder legal by simply renaming it "war"?

If it still bothers you though, we'll simply call the thieves "bankers". There you go, all the legitimacy we need to make it work.

Why can nor hideout have 'attractive destinations'? How does alignment of attraction compare to alignment of hideout? It is a sweet pot.

Only on Tuesday when the refractive index of the green opalescence meets just sideways of 50.

Every character belongs to a Settlement, Not all Settlements are run by player characters.

That is some juicy information. Thanks.

Fun with flags!

Storage security should not be high in any storage place other than a bank. Anything stored in hideouts should be lootable by those who can find the hideout, after they've defeated any guards hired and placed inside of said hideout of course.

So... Where's my male paladin with an accentuated, phallic codpiece? After all, I need to know he takes pride in his manhood. And what about beards? While we're talking idealized secondary sex characteristics, there needs to be much more beards.

... I think breasts are low on the list of things that make me feel awesome as a female...

The irony of the situation made me giggle a bit. Not mocking you, Kwizzy; I'm just imagining women complaining about their characters' armor showing breast shape and men boasting about who has the biggest cod piece.

A drow schooling an orc in geometry. Priceless!

Really like the implementation of opportunity attacks.

Wait, so all Necromancers are Evil in Pathfinder Online? Did they seriously decide that's the way to go?

No, only those who create and use undead.

I'm going to add some more bold to a quote you yourself used earlier:

Funny that you quote official stuff, and still get it wrong.

Quote:

Many of Pharasma's worshipers are those closely aligned with either burgeoning life or terminating death. These include midwives, grave diggers, and morticians. Her priests are typically clerics, diviners, and necromancers that choose not to create undead.

I'm sorry, but either you're playing with some really bad houserules or then you don't know what you're talking about.

Then again, could just be both. I doubt it matters by this part, since you're probably the type who can't accept ever being wrong.

Notice how your own quote excludes necromancers who do choose to create undead? But how you chose to bold it in a way that almost looked like it wasn't saying what it actually said?

Surprised nobody's pointed that out yet. Especially with you making a big fuss about how someone else supposedly can "quote official stuff, and still get it wrong".

...if chaos thrives in our settlements how could we maintain face as an orginization dedicated to the protect of our populace and greater enjoyment of pathfinder online.

Crush the chaos with an iron fist.

It's not just an ideological battle; the plane of chaos tears at the fringes of every plane, spewing madness into good orderly places just like the worldwound does on Golarion. Order must be enforced. The universe must be stabilized and chaos driven back.

Blaeringr wrote:

Being wrote:

Yeah he is notorious for that. Encyclopedic.

There's a reason I put a very high priority on infiltrating his company, and it has absolutely nothing to do with doing any harm to said company.

To be fair, said infiltration consisted of two steps: 1. Wanting to. 2. Complete an application.

Done and done. Long ago. To be fair, it was pretty straightforward.

Yeah he is notorious for that. Encyclopedic.

There's a reason I put a very high priority on infiltrating his company, and it has absolutely nothing to do with doing any harm to said company.

Jolt wrote:

Wedding parties who prefer to remain unarmed should be able to do so without worry. :D

I totally agree. I was just pointing out that the only way that actually happens is if there are other armed people elsewhere, providing that level of safety.

And that is why fewer and fewer people these days are making plans to travel to Syria for a scenic Mediterranean wedding.

wait until I've gained some experience and resilience to venture out to more risky areas.

aka marriage.

Rat faced boyfriends? If it's a matter of dishonesty and cheating, we have a special on "you lie, you rye".

If it's more an issue of abuse though, then perhaps your sister would prefer to order some "beat his crêpe out"?

Pull up a seat, have a piece of break neck baguette, or try a backstab berry muffin, and tell Tony all about your problems. I promise, you'll feel better afterwards.

:D

There isn't a lot of interest in the forums because there isn't a lot of interest in the MMO.

Keep in mind GW bribed the PnP crowd pretty heavy with non-mmo goodies to reach the kickstarter goal.

If they had gone strictly on the people actually interested in the MMO they would have failed rather spectacularly.

This is probably why they aren't allowing credits or reduction in pledge amounts. They have no faith in the actual MMO's appeal and are afraid too many people would bail or dump pledges.

It also explains why they don't ban me from the forums, as they need every customer they can get :D

Tell Uncle Tony who's ruining your day, and he'll make sure the backstab berry muffin you ordered finds its way to your mail box.