Gol Guurzak's page

The PVP focus and the lack of Golarion content were both answers to the same question: How do you make a game for less than the $100M+ pricetag that modern AAA themepark games are clocking in at? Themepark content is extremely expensive; player-generated content is free.

Knowing that there are a whole bunch of tabletop players who kind of expect their characters' enemies to fight just hard enough to make things fun and then lose, maybe this wasn't the right choice. But if the other option is to come up with $100M, maybe the only winning move was not to play.

Guurzak once posted a level 19 Royal Camp engineer recipe that dropped for him.

Royal Camp is level 20, thankyouverymuch

Dropped during Mordant Spire farming, local=7 at the time.

Are you quite certain that you haven't trained medium prof 2 already?

Medium Armor Proficiency 2
Divine=25 or Martial=25
Evangelist=5 or Healer=5 or Archer=5
Constitution=11 or Dexterity=11 or Wisdom=11
975 XP

Double check that you meet all requirements... If you do, what settlement(s) are you trying to train in?

but where there are exceptions, it's not because they're either carebears or murderhobos.

Can I be a murderbear? If I can, then Tink is totally a carehobo.

If I claim a public sidewalk is my territory and I will kill anyone who walks on it, and then proceed to make good my threat, I can absolutely make a case that my actions were foreseeable. Arguing that they were justified is a very different problem.

If I claim that my motivation is to protect PVP-averse players from unwanted combat, and then also have a policy under which I will initiate wars in response to peaceful PVE activity, I'm in much the same moral position as the sidewalk killer. Just because I announced the policy does not mean that my actions under the policy are justified, especially when the policy is so obviously incompatible with my "defense of innocents" posturing.

People who truly want to protect their innocents would not set policies under which their first response to a completely non-violent territoriality problem is a shooting war.

Side A refuses to agree to any terms of war, and then starts a war. Side B wages a war which side A started and which side A decided would have no terms.

Not trying to convince you of anything though, since it's obvious your mind is made up already.

That's part of it. The biggest part of it is creating a place where PvP-averse players can feel comfortable easing into PvP at their own pace.

PVP-averse players should definitely not be joining a settlement which starts wars over a smallholding placed for PVE purposes and which flatly refuses to commit to any agreements which might prevent such wars. You can't be the most aggressive power on the map and also claim to be protecters of the helpless and innocent.

I was in the Teamspeak channel when Tink and Cheatle spoke. The point was made, and reiterated, that we would be taking the fight to Phaeros's towers in response to their assault. The point was made, and reiterated, that we should expect Brighthaven to assist Phaeros in defending their towers. The point was made, and reiterated, that we should expect Brighthaven not to retaliate in response to attacks on Phaeros assets, but that we should avoid attacking any Brighthaven assets.

There was little room for misinterpretation or miscommunication in the conversation I heard. Both Tink and Cheatle were very clearly on the same page when Cheatle left our TS.

I've confirmed that red players cannot heal white ones and vice versa. I'm not sure if reds can heal reds.

Just what a brilliant criminal would say.

A player belongs to a settlement which is officially at war with my settlement. He would ordinarily show as red to me. However, he has a high enough bluff skill to successfully conceal his settlement affiliation.

* Should he show as red or white?
* If he shows as white, should I be able to attack him without consequence if I gamble correctly that he's a valid war target?
* Or should character knowledge trump player knowledge and penalize me for attacking someone my character does not have the skill to recognize as an enemy?

In either the EE4 or EE5 patch the combat math for AOEs was recalculated and yes, a lot of them are noticeably weaker now.

I forget who said it, but the standout quote on the topic as far as I'm concerned is "you can't teabag a backpack."

I'm confident that much better tools will appear as the game and community mature. This will do as an MVP until something more advanced comes along.

As expected, the better tool has now appeared: Please use The Goblinary instead.

Stacking Effects: How to connect the DOTs

What are these "stacks" I keep hearing about?

In most games, and for many effects in PFO, buffs and debuffs have a fixed effect and a fixed duration: A DOT that ticks for 30/sec for 10 seconds, or an expose that reduces your armor by 10% for 3 rounds, for example. Hitting the same target with one of these twice in a row typically won't do anything except resetting the duration back to its maximum.

But PFO also has stacking effects, which allow you to build up the effect through multiple applications to both prolong its duration and increase its effectiveness. So you could have multiple players all stacking the same Exhausted effect on their target, which would take away more and more of his stamina as well as lasting longer with each application.

OK, so what are these stacking effects specifically?

There are 9 stacking debuffs, in 3 broad groups.

DOTs

There are 3 Damage Over Time effects. They all do damage as a percentage of the targets MAX hitpoints, and also debuff one of the three defenses. The fact that these are percentage based is significant: as your target's hitpoint pool grows, DOTs become more and more valuable. (Assuming that you're able to land them successfully!)

Afflicted: Damage over time for (stack/10)% per round, and Reflex defense debuff for (stack).
Bleeding: Damage over time for (stack/10)% per round, and Fortitude defense debuff for (stack).
Burning: Damage over time for (stack/10)% per round, and Will defense debuff for (stack).

Effect at 100: Damage = 10% of target's max hit points this round, and -100 to relevant defense.

Attack debuffs

These 3 debuffs all reduce Base Attack, plus other effects. Drained and Frightened have identical effects and magnitude. Reducing someone's attack rating does not mean they will "miss" in the sense of not connecting at all, but they will do much less damage, will not be able to land critical hits, and the non-damage effects of their attacks will be significantly weakened or altogether negated.

Oblivious: Debuffs Base Attack and Perception for (stack)
Effect at 100: -100 BA, -100 PER

Drained: Debuffs Base Attack and Base Defense for (stack/2)
Frightened: Debuffs Base Attack and Base Defense for (stack/2)
Effect at 100: -50 BA, -50 BD

Other effects

The last 3 effects don't fit as neatly into a box.

Slowed: Reduces movement speed by (stack/2)%. Debuffs Reflex defense by (stack)
Effect at 100: -50% movement speed; -100 Reflex

Exhausted: Reduces max stamina and stamina regen rate by (stack/2)
Effect at 100: -50 Stamina; -50% stamina regen

Razed: Reduces physical resistance by (stack/4)
Effect at 100: -25 PR

Do all of these stacking effects, um, stack?

Yeah, so that's a language issue. In most games, "stacking" means that 2 different effects can both take full effect on the target, for example a poison DOT and a fire DOT. That'll just get confusing here, so let's talk about "collisions" rather than "stacking" when asking whether different effects can both function.

There is a mechanism for 2 effects to collide: they both have to be affecting the same characteristic, and they both have to be on the same channel. Channel is an arbitrary setting for each effect that doesn't do anything except determine collision potential. So, if we have 2 effects on the same channel that do different things, there's no collision. For example, Afflicted and Exhausted are both on the "Weakness" channel, but they do different things so there's no collision. And, if you have two effects that both affect the same attribute but are on different channels, you still have no collision. Slowed and Afflicted both debuff Reflex, but Slowed is on the "Torment" channel so there's no collision; you get the combined effect of both reflex debuffs.

There's only one combination among these 9 stacking effects where you actually get a collision on the same channel AND the same effect: Oblivious and Drained. They're both on the "Weakness" channel and they both debuff Base Attack, so only the larger one of those two attack debuffs is going to be in effect at a time. (The Perception debuff from Oblivious and the Base Defense debuff from Drained don't collide with anything, so those portions of the effects both work fine.) Other than that one combination, all other stacking effects "stack" with each other.

When I explained this for PFU, there was apparently some confusion regarding whether it mattered that attacks target the same or different defenses. For purposes of determining effect collision, it doesn't make any difference at all whether the attacks all go against Reflex or are split among all three of Reflex, Will, and Fortitude: collisions are determined based on the attributes they debuff, not the defense that the attack targets.

One last note on this: The 3 DOTs are all on different channels. If you were somehow able to land Afflicted 100, Bleeding 100, and Burning 100 on the same target at the same time, he'd take 30% of his max health pool in damage in the first round.

What about recovery? How do I get rid of stacks on me?

Everyone has a base recovery of 10 stacks per round for each stacked effect on them. So if you have Afflicted 10, Bleeding 10, and Burning 10 all on you at once, all three of those DOTs are going to be cleared away within 6 seconds. If you have Afflicted 30, it's going to drop to 20, then 10, then clear. This is a big reason why it's better to build up a strong single stack rather than have lots of little ones.

In addition to base recovery, all characters have access to training the Recovery Bonus feat. This adds 1 point to your recovery rate for every rank trained, so if you have Recovery Bonus 5, your standard recovery rate for all stacked debuffs is 15 per round.

And then, every armor feat line provides a recovery bonus to 3 chosen debuffs, and that bonus is equal to the number of matched keywords between your equipped armor and your slotted armor feat. So if you're a mid T2 player with 6 keywords matched, that'll give you +6 to your recovery for whichever 3 debuffs that armor feat benefits.

Fighter armors all provide recovery bonuses vs Afflicted, Bleeding, and Exhausted. Rogue armors all provide recovery bonuses for Afflicted, Bleeding, and Slowed. So, if you're going up against vets with physical roles, you may want to take their improved recovery versus physical DOTs into account when making your attack choices. Burning might be a better choice, if that option is available to you.

Wizard armors all have recovery bonuses for Burning, Exhausted, and Slowed. So, the converse of the physical roles; afflicted and bleeding will both work just fine here.

Clerics and the crafter roles don't have any particular pattern to their recovery bonuses. It's probably worth noticing that Crusader is the only heavy armor feat with a recovery bonus versus Slowed, but other than that it's just going to be a memorization exercise for each individual armor line if you want to go to that trouble.

So, that's how recovery is calculated: Base of 10, an additional generic bonus based on your Recovery Bonus feat rank, and then bonuses for recovering from specific effects based the number of keywords match on your slotted armor feat. Aside from passive recovery over time based on that math, the only way to actively clear stacks of debuffs is the Shrug Off effect. This design is still in flux, so just be aware that it exists and is relevant, until we get some clarity on the final design.

Recovery is important. A DOT stack of 100 will do a total of 55% of your total health over 10 rounds, at the base recovery rate of 10. If you get your recovery vs that DOT up to 25, that same DOT is only doing a total of 25% of your health pool, and it's completely cleared after 4 rounds. None of the role promotion feats require you to train recovery bonus, but it should not be overlooked.

How do I use stacks effectively? Which ones are the best?

Because stacking an effect increases both its effect and its duration, higher stacks are much more powerful than little ones. The best stacks to apply are the ones you can stack up the highest- so coordinate with the people you're adventuring with and choose effects that lots of you can help pile up. A single stack of anything at 50 is much, much more useful than 5 different stacks of 10.

With that said, do remember the cap of 100 on stack size: you don't want multiple copies of Blinding Dust (oblivious 100) going off on the same target at once.

What about positive stacks?

There are 2 stacking buffs that have the same basic mechanics as the stacking debuffs: Freedom, and Mind Blank. These buffs are granted by, and improve your defense against, control effects. So whenever someone roots, slows, stuns, or interrupts you, he also gives you stacks of freedom or mind blank, which will help you resist the next attempt to do the same thing. So what we should expect to see is the the first stun attempt on a target will land reliably; the second stun less so, the the third even less, and so on. If your whole group is using stun effects on the same target, he's very rapidly going to build up enough Freedom that any further stuns are completely useless.

There are tokens and other effects which can grant Freedom or Mind Blank stacks. It's important to note that these are not Shrug Off effects- they won't do anything to help clear a root which has already taken effect. All they'll do is help prevent the next controls from landing for as long, or at all. If you're worried that someone is about to use a control on you, you'd need to use the Token of Freedom preemptively, rather than waiting for the control to land and then trying to shake it off.

Buff stacks decay more slowly than debuffs: 5 per round, or 4 per round if you have slotted the Bravery defensive feat. So once you've built up a lot of Freedom, your stun immunity will be pretty high for a while, but it will eventually decay to the point that someone can land another stun (and push your Freedom back up).

Where else can I learn about stacking?

This video has some great stacking demonstrations, and examples of a variety of different options.

I use the GW forums to communicate with devs or to have technical conversations.

The social community of the game is still here, and will continue to be until the GW forums have better tools.

Reading this thread, I've breathed several big sighs of relief that I'm taking a break from caring about the politics of this game. Apathy is much less stressful than whatever y'all are doing here.

The neutrality of Emerald Lodge was convenient for the Tower NAP. Now that the Tower NAP is defunct, there is no longer any need whatsoever for any Settlement to bend over backwards to help Thod maintain EL's neutrality, or to pretend that EL's neutrality is in any way advantageous for anyone other than EL.

I'd argue that it's good for the game for there to be existing examples that there are multiple ways to play the political game well and successfully, and it pleases me that something matching the idea of a neutral Emerald Lodge is possible in our community.

Obviously, though, nobody's going to get anything for free, and in order to be an example of success Thod is going to have to continue to be actually successful. I personally hope that he makes it.

"Oi! Guurzak! Deres sum gud bashin down souf a bit. Yer wants ta go bash ogurs?"

Shur, me likes bashin ogurs. Who elss goin ta bash?

"Ebrywun! But doan bash nobuddy but da ogurs. JUS DA OGURS, got it?"

WOT KINDA DUMHED SKAH set dis ting up ware me kant bash enny dorfs or elfishes? Dats rilly da roolz fer dis bash?

"Yub, jus da ogurs, nobuddy elss. Oh, an der woofs too. But jus dem."

FIYN.

take up threads

heh- did you mean soul threads or forum threads?

Each role has their own armor feats, so training up any of the Cleric armors won't translate directly to Paladin. However, if you're going to be a melee paladin it's a safe bet you'll want your paladin in Heavy, so if you want to train up Crusader for the time being that would be the best match.

But hopefully with less hipster mustache.

Tyncale, there's no question in anyone's mind that predators need prey. My question is, how many of those who are currently playing primarily as prey are prepared to step into the role of predator?

One of the core principles underlying the design of PFO is that the primary content is conflict with other players.

So it occurs to me to wonder: If one day, all the members of the Northern Coalition just stopped logging in, how much content would be left?

For non-NC members reading this, I have some questions:

* Would you be satisfied with a PFO where everyone just farmed escalations, gathered tansy, and crafted increasingly pretty suits of armor, with no significant quantity of PVP content?

* Do you feel comfortable that if everyone on the map were playing the same way you do, there would be enough content to keep the game interesting and afloat?

* Have you seriously considered engaging in content creation? Have you done so? If not why not?

* Have you seriously considered initiating hostilities with anyone who isn't NC? Have you done so? If not why not?

* If the NC is the sole target of all non-NC content creators, how long do you think that dynamic can realistically be expected to survive?

Lawful you say? That may be, but it sounds like EBA is starting to wander dangerously close to Lawful-Evil.

The types of action you describe are pretty much spot on for a description of how the Hell Knights operate in the Pathfinder campaigns.

This is actually a fair point. Xeilias may have to update our branding language where we claim to be the largest evil organization in the game.

You get one guess, and one guess only.

The part of Al Smithy is now played by Sean Connery in a Russian uniform.

Still my favorite thread on this board of all time.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The EoX has established our borders, shown on the following map, for resource, escalation, and holding claims. We consider anyone harvesting resources, attacking escalations, or establishing holdings to be hostile, unless given prior permission from EoX leadership. Any non-hostile individuals are free to travel our land, trade, buy/sell at auction houses, as well as bank.

Territory map

You may contact any of the following people for more information about the above statement:

Kobold Cleaver - Agent Provocateur
Barack Obama - POTUS
Bill S. Preston - Esquire
Jessica Rabbit - Pattycake Expert
Andius - Bitter, Bitter Man
Neil deGrasse Tyson - Astrophysicist
Ryan Dancey - Goblinworks CEO

The above post is purely parodic and was made solely for purposes of amusing myself.

"arbitrary and capricious" is a reference to the game's human policy enforcers, not the coded behavior management systems. Nobody is going to try to justify game features which don't reliably do what they're supposed to do.

Especially if it means you stop trying to take our towers....

They're not your towers unless you can keep them.

Especially if they're nowhere near your settlement and would obviously be natural territory of someone else.

Guurzak doan tink dats da kind of challunj you wants ta gib sumbuddy wots alreddy gittin on yer nervz.

I hope that on the day a posse comes with a rope for Midnight, that whoever that stranger was fires an arrow that slices the rope, allowing me to escape.

Lyncher: This is a righteous hanging. You cannot think to thwart Iomedae's will.

Phyllain: Y'all see the orc back there with the really big longbow? I'm not saying you weren't easy to find, but it was kind of out of our way and he didn't wanna come in the first place. Orc's lookin' to kill some folk. So really it's his will y'all should worry about thwarting.

Phyllain: [to Midnight] Gotta say, your talent for alienatin' folks is near miraculous.

Midnight: Yes, I'm very proud.

Phyllain: Cut her down.

Lyncher: The girl is a coal-killer.

Phyllain: Yeah, but she's our coal-killer.

[Swaps to holy symbol and casts Divine Strength]

Phyllain: So cut her the hell down.

Where would you be coming from?

It's not just training, though. It's training, and banking, and crafting, and auction houses, and being able to meet the party where they're gathered in front of the bank, and having to chart your course around every settlement along your route instead of running through, and not being able to go AFK next to a Thronguard for protection...

Mechanically, no, it's not an insurmountable problem, but the quality of life impact is significant and effective.

If you assume that your enemy is exploiting by default, then anything they do will look exploitive. That's neither accurate nor productive.

Most of Xeilias's players are actively, deliberately, and legitimately maintaining high reputation. Those few players who have chosen to tank their reputations have suffered for it and complained about it to no end, and will almost certainly choose not to do so again. I haven't heard a single person say "OK, used up my rep, time to play my crafter for a week."

There are definitely bugs in the rep system, which have affected the evil PVPers more than anyone else. When we started taking rep hits in open tower windows, we announced it on the boards and also engaged in careful testing in an effort to replicate the issue; we were unable to do so. There have been a couple of isolated instances of independent griefing in newby towns where somebody would attempt to trick new players into flagging so that they could be attacked freely; those incidents were righteously stepped on and have not continued.

In short: these conversations are far more productive when people stick to describing their own experiences rather than reporting hearsay and inventions as fact.

No, we like EL just fine. This was a one-off.

There are mobs in Crowfall, but as in PFO they're not intended to be the primary content.

The team from Shadowbane watched server after server stagnate after one guild become unassailably dominant, and are deliberately designing Crowfall around the premise that if that's going to happen anyway you need to build the game to account for that tendency. So the reason there are multiple, temporary worlds is so that when one guild or faction wins their server they can blow it away and let everyone start over clean.

On a related note, my biggest concern with PFO from the very beginning has been a worry that the map is too small to prevent this from happening. It doesn't happen in Eve because the map is simply too big for a single alliance to effectively project force everywhere in the universe. That's not the case in PFO, and I don't see any reason why a single group couldn't win the map, nor why we shouldn't expect that it will indeed happen in exactly that way.

Hey Pino- have you empirically verified that all 3 of Travel, Agile, and Evangelist stack with each other?

I don't see the EBA making all these mistakes, like some of you are going on about. We gave the understanding that they were in a combat zone, we gave them the tools to contact us, several groups gave them gear/recipes/expendables, and divided towers evenly.

The issue here is that they didn't understand the political climate. Maybe we could have been more clearer, maybe they misunderstood what we were saying, personally I think there was a miscommunication, and it wasn't double checked. My point is that we did not throw BWG under the bus, whether some of you want to say so or not.

We gave them the keys to success, they didn't use those keys. Furthermore, it specifically states in our alliance agreement that they will defend themselves to the best of their abilities, and if they need help they request help, they did not request help, nor even contact us that they were being attacked. We can't be everywhere all the time, we can be in key locations, and the hex they were attacked in wasn't a key location. We don't have the manpower (yet), to patrol every single hex in our territory.

You all can agree or disagree with me, but short of stationing people to handhold, and protect their settlement 24/7, we did everything else we could possibly do.

This sounds completely reasonable to me.

I'd like to suggest that however little responsibility EBA had for teaching their member state BWG how to play PFO effectively, Xeilias had even less.

Guurzak tried ta raydiayt ettikut dis wun time. Ebrywun pinched dere noses an left da room. An dey glared at me, man you shoulda seen dem glares.

Wouldn't it be cool if banks were vulnerable -> Nothing important is kept in vulnerable banks.

Ryan used that specific example at one point when talking about the problem that mechanically permitting some kinds of activities leads to players universally avoiding the behavior which would enable that activity. Lootable banks would simply mean that a city threatened with siege would move all of its assets away long before the siege could be completed, and the coding effort to enable the feature would be wasted.

Grace, I meant to imply that EBA and Xeilias forces would not use each others' trainers, not that we would not use any trainers. And of course, if there were a huge bug that makes it so Golgotha has the only working X trainer on the server we'd certainly make him available to everyone for the duration of the emergency.

I'll try to lay out some guidelines that I'd ask you to seriously consider.

1. Don't send your warriors into enemy Settlements, because eventually you know those Settlements will have you marked KOS and you wouldn't be able to anyway. (Spies are fine, of course)

2. If someone reacts with obvious emotional distress when you kill them, leave them alone for at least 4 hours to give them a chance to cool down and to give their allies a chance to talk them through the distress and try to teach them how to handle it next time. Maybe even reach out to me and let me know who it was if it was in EBA territory.

With the caveat that I don't unilaterally set policy, I'd certainly be willing to propose to my leadership that we establish a mutual no-banking no-training no-auction posture with EBA. I don't think simply entering a hostile settlement hex should be off limits until we know more about how KOS will actually work once implemented, but I think we can be confident that using infrastructure services will be off the table.

While your second request looks reasonable at first glance, I don't see any way to draw a bright line which couldn't be abused: any such agreement could very easily turn into "throw a tantrum to get a free pass." With that said, we're all very aware of the negative outcomes of the BWG incident and would prefer to avoid repeats. I strongly encourage experienced PVP gamers in every faction to take the time to educate their novice allies on how to cultivate a security mindset and how to properly react to hostile activity.

Unfortunately, the map isn't big enough for anyone NOT to be in close proximity to their enemies. Dagedai could make effective war on Forgeholm if they really wanted to.

End of window rep loss is something to be aware of, but the situation on Friday was definitely not related to window end. Multiple Gol players were taking repeated rep hits while the window had plenty of time remaning on the clock.

Crafted camps never get banking. (Some?) player built permanent structures will have storage. We're also supposed to get wilderness caches at some point, which are man-portable temporary storage locations.

With that said, it's going to be hard for any wilderness cache type item to compete with a 1000XP ammo dump character.

Yeah, da last time Guurzak heerd sum wizurd blahin "Your primitive weapons are no match for my arcane might!" me figgerd owt dat wizurds doan got much arcayn mite wen der heds is bashd flat.

Mosaic, the ability to blacklist hostile settlements is coming- it's just part of the featureset that hasn't been coded yet. Like so many other things, it's a be patient situation.

You have been, and will always be, our friend.