GrumpyMel's page

Some points...

- When I was recruited to TEO (then the Great Legionaires) I was under the impression that our mission was primarly to defend players, particularly new players from RANDOM PLAYER KILLERS and GRIEFERS.... I was not under the impression that our mission was to defend every settlement in the game from settlement vs settlement PvP (i.e. what the Dev's designed as a core function of the game). Had I been informed of this, I likely would not have joined....because I would have no interest in trying to nullify a core design principle of PFO... I simply would be playing another game... not that I mind entirely PVE games, but this wasn't advertised as one.

- It would be presumptious of TEO or any organization to negotiate on behalf of OTHER organizations who have not granted TEO thier consent to act as proxy for them. I would be rather upset if my leadership did this. The fact that not every organization will be included in a diplomatic agreement should not preculde TEO or any organization from negotiating diplomatic treaties with other entities, even ones to (gasp) our advantage.

- I was unaware of our leadership, or anyone elses of pointing a target at anyone else.... a NAP is simply that, a mutual agreement NOT to engage in agression against certain specific targets... it is NOT an Offensive Alliance. That is an entirely different animal.

- I am unaware that our leadership has sought to preclude ANY group or organization from participating in this or any other negotation. If they fail to do so...that's simply thier own choice.

- Advantageous diplomatic agreements are part of the way PFO was intended to be played, as is settlement warfare, as indeed is banditry. I have never had a problem with how UNC or GOL have intended to play the game (though I may have expressed some disagreement over specific design mechanics with some of thier membership)..... as nothing in the past or present has indicated that they intend to engage in RPKing or GRIEFing of players or any purposefull attempt to wreck thier play experience. My impression of TEO's current goal is to generaly provide a relatively safe haven for those players who don't want to be exposed to constant PvP... I see nothing in the proposed agreement that would weaken that goal. Speaking only as a member, not an officer.... we aren't out to play as some server or world wide "police force" and prevent ANY act of agression or conflict from happening... indeed that would be preventing other parties from enjoying thier play time, as well as be entirely unachievable..... we are simply trying to provide a place where people can pursue the play style then enjoy most with less risk of that style being disrupted then in some other settlements that aren't focused on that goal.

My thoughts...

- Political agreements and diplomacy are part of "meaningfull human interaction" not a block to it.

- It is natural that many political entities would seek meaningfull agreements that they see as advantangeous to them. Neglecting to do so would basicaly be hamstringing your own settlement and setting it up for failure.

- The situation so far is setup not that there will be no wars but that the wars which will be fought will be limited in nature so that the major power blocks don't destroy themselves in a futile effort to expand beyond their capacity support. In no way does this mean that such conflicts will be less meaningfull or provide less opportunity for PvP. Most of European history (which could be pretty bloody) actualy followed this model of conflict. If there wasn't an explicit agreement to do so, most settlements would likely follow this as a matter of internal strategy anyway...no major power really wants to overextend itself and leave itself vulnerable to getting torn apart. That would be bad strategy.

- The WoT is for a limited period of time anyway, a place holder for the more robust conflict systems to be initiated later.

- We have no idea what later entities to enter the game or non-aligned individuals will do anyway. I predict that we'll have no shortage of groups and individuals who have no interest in building settlements and preserving themselves as political entities and simply want to fight just to "see the world burn". They may do so despite the very severe penalties that the reputation system places upon them. Very few of those individuals would be participating on these boards now or would have backed the game in advance of it's opening... so we don't really know how many there will be. However, it may be that there will be so many that the existing political entities will have thier hands so full fending off the "savages" that they really have no time nor resources to expend on full scale wars against each other. We just don't know this, and the level of uncertainty about it is naturaly going to cause the initial power groups to be cautious in thier approach until they really know what the landscape looks like.

Asbestos suit material I'm sure....but I've always disliked the D&D ruleset (any version) and I guess by extension Pathfinder ruleset too.

The advantage they have, AFAIC, is not being good rulesets but being so commonly known that everybody and thier brother knows how to play them.

Whenever playing with a regular group of freinds we'd almost always do some other (lessor known) game system or something homebrew. But if you want to go play a game with strangers...there is nothing like saying...ok, who knows how to play D&D/Pathfinder ?

Well, I know I'm definately not going to be talking about movies or telling Chuck Norris jokes in regular chat. I may be willing to do that in a whisper/tell or if the game has an OOC designated channel as some do... but in regular chat it's strictly IC. If someone wants to do that... that's fine, I'm not going to tell them they are playing "wrong" or are bad for the game or anything like that..... but they shouldn't expect me to engage in that activity in return. I'll use OOC channels to respond (if available) and just pretend my character didn't hear them or that they are talking gibberish.

That's where, I think, some non-roleplayers come up with a "false positive" definition of role-play snobbery. It's one thing to expect RP-ers not to tell other people how to play the game. It's another thing entirely to expect that they participate in an activity that actively detracts from thier enjoyment of the game.

To that end... I really hope that PFO comes up with either a designated OOC channel or the player community comes up with a clearly understood community standard for indicating what speech is to be taken as OOC in other chat.

I've always found that D&D (and by extension Pathfinder) rulesets were pretty sub-standard from a mechanical standpoint ("fighting words" I'm sure on this forum). Their real advantage is that they are so common that everyone and thier brother is familiar with them (kinda like McDonalds) so it's really easy to put together a game/campaign for people without needing to get everyone to invest in in learning an entirely different ruleset.

When playing with my regular group of friends/gaming group, when I used to do that on a regular basis, we almost never used D&D rulesets. It's easy enough mechanicaly to have a player in a TableTop game designate thier facing...even with longer rounds where they could turn around there would still be a "I'm trying to concentrate the majority of my attention here"....if they are concentrating the majority of thier attention against the opponent that could do them the most damage if they don't, that's called "good tactics" not an exploit... it does leave them open for the other opponent to exploit if positioned properly... ymmv.

You could really do alot with making PvE more dynamic. Keying off player behavior can really help....

Have an area that is getting developed and has alot of economic activity. You start drawing in intelligent monsters interested in wealth and looting.

Have a spot where a major battle took place and there were lots of deaths... carrion eaters get attracted to the area.

Have a settlement where people are practicing lots of dark arts and forbidden magic... supernatural creatures become attracted to the area.

A settlement that was once thriving and now it's economic rating have really plumeted.... scavangers and creatures that enjoy refuse start showing up (goblins, carrion crawlers, etc)

You can even do non-combat PvE stuff that would keep people interested in doing things. Blizzards and Storms that hinder travel in hex's... plagues that threaten the population (prime for clerics and healers) and commoners that need healing.... ..over-production of a hex that throws the local ecology out of whack leading to insect plagues and vermin infestations that lead to crop failures and famine if not dealt with.

There are so many creative PvE things that could be done if one really wanted to invest the resources in doing it. PvE can be very dynamic with the right systems in place. The reason Themepark games don't do it is not because they can't...but because they don't won't dynamic at all, not PvP and not PvE, they want to give players a tightly controled, canned experience... that is a concious choice on thier part.

Staying in your corpse and getting rezzed/revived on the spot, death should have minimal/no penalties...

Departing your corpse and reviving at a bind/spawn point....death should have pretty serious penalties.

I would go so far as to say that you MUST wait a minimum timer before the player is even allowed to release from thier corpse.... and that once released, there should be some sort of debuff as Andius suggests.

The game should REALLY, REALLY discourage people from using suicide as a measure of convenience.

The kinda zerg tactic where someone gets killed and 30 seconds later with no outside intervention they are back in the fight at full fighting trim is not the sort of PvP (or PvE for that matter) that I'd really like to see.

The conversation 6 months ago quoted by Andius was in the context of settlements being able to practicaly enforce NRDS or NBSI policies. The remainder of what Ryan said in that post was this....

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".....I don't know yet if we'll have some kind of granular territorial security policies so that Settlements can effectuate a NBSI or NRDS regime outside the Rep system and even if we do they probably won't be something that is implemented for quite some time even after PC Settlements are introduced. It's impossible to say for certain - such things will be subjected to intense Crowdforging.

This is clearly an area where the simple mechanic of the Reputation system is misaligned with meaningful player interaction. It's pretty damn meaningful to a Settlement to ensure it's security, but it's very hard mechanically to discriminate between someone who gets whacked for trespassing and someone who gets whacked for the lulz."

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Essentialy this comes down to the granularity possible for setting permissions to access territory. The reputation system alone is way too blunt an object in order to meaningfully deal with settlement security... I think Ryan recognized that. If it's possible to have a more granular system, even down to the individual... that problem, at least in terms of being able to enforce a reasonable security policy in ones territory pretty much goes away.

That doesn't, however, address the point Bluddwolf brought up... which is not really about settlement security but of bandits essentialy being able to perform thier role. Traditionaly bandits don't engage thier targets on the basis of what faction or organization those targets belong to, they engage them on the simple basis of the target having something of value the bandit wants. Generaly the bandit wouldn't care who or what faction/organization the target belonged to, just what wealth they had. They are motivated not by politics, but by simple greed.

PFO's PvP controls don't really align very well with that. As Bludd pointed out, an unaffiliated target pretty much circumvents the war/feud mechanics in place for reputation neutral PvP... and even with an affiliated target, I suspect the cost for War/Feud will be sufficiently high as to severely limit the scope of the bandits availble targets.... such that the bandit isn't really operating as much a "bandit" as he/she is a "guerilla soldier" fighting for his faction/organization.

I'm not sure what the real solution is to address given PFO's current mechanics. Either a bandit has to have some mechanism to engage in reputation neutral PvP or that reputation loss needs to not be sufficiently punitive so as to make it not worth engaging targets for economic gain... or the bandit has to have some means to regain reputation lost.

From my standpoint, I think this last is probably the simplest and most straightforward solution to impliment. Let characters pay some sort of monetary penalty in order to recover lost reputation.... a little like the Papal Indulgences of old.

I think this would allow for meaningfull PvP whil discouraging meaningless PvP. A player who kills other players for the "lulz" isn't likely to gain very much material wealth from those players, especialy if they tended to be lower level. They might be able to do it once or twice but they certainly couldn't sustain it on a regular basis. Doing so, they would be engaged in a sort of "deficit spending" that would quickly bankrupt them and force them into all the negatives that having a bottom reputation should have associated with it.

However, a character that kills another character because that character has significant wealth on them and takes that wealth ISN'T engaged in meaningless PvP, he or she is doing so for a good reason... and in fact is following pretty much following the traditional role of banditry. A character doing that should be able to maintain net reputation neutral and net income positive....as long as they are being judicious about picking thier targets.

This also follows along the principle of players being able to avoid frequent PvP by eskewing high risk activities in favor of low risk ones.
Walking around with alot of wealth on your person outside a "safe" area is pretty much the definition of "high risk" in most peoples books.

The advantage this has is that it should be relatively simple to lay on top of PFO's existing systems without requiring any changes to those systems. You simply need to design a place (perhaps a type of shrine?) where a player can exchange X amount of coin for X amount of reputation.

If one wanted to be more sophisticated...one could scale it based on the characters level... with higher level characters needing to exchange more wealth for the reputation returned and/or... place upper and lower limits upon it... so that a player could never be truely HIGH reputation, just AVERAGE reputation... or so that a player who sunk below a certain very low reputation threshold couldn't use coin to buy thier way out of it.

Thoughts?

Vrelx wrote:

But to this, I hope this is not true. Solo gathering should be one of the most dangerous things... Your a GATHERER (not trained for combat), and an open world where their ARE people who are trained for combat, and may want your things.

I don't think that taking the most boring thing, and making it the most dangerous thing, is a good idea.

It should depend in great part of the quality and rarity of the gathered resources. A player who doesn't want PvP, should be able to choose a low-risk low-reward path.

I think this post nails it. If you want to collect dirt just outside the gates of an NPC starter town you should be able to do so with pretty much no fear (PvP or PvE).... If you are collecting black diamonds on Mount Doom..... then it should be relatively impossible to do without a well organized expedition.... even absent PvP.... and with PvP, you should have a big fat target on your back. Risk vs Reward.

One of the major functions of PC settlements should be to create a RELATIVELY safe zone for resource gathering activities (absent a major settlement vs settlement conflict).... the further away you get from these, the sketchier it should get for both PvE and PvP.... and the more organized effort it requires to do succesfully.

I think this is kinda, the general direction that PFO wants to take.

@Guurzak

You don't really need to play funky games with training to do that. It's simple enough to make bad reputation be a direct combat (and even non-combat) skill debuff. You don't need to worry about what the characters settlement associations are or how long they've not been a member of someplace. Have cellar dweller reputation....mutiply the total of every skill roll by .1 It's simple, and even less abusable then the support system because you don't get a months worth of "get out of jail free time" before your combat abilities go into the tank.

A bit of a tangent, I know, but if PvE in the wilds represents zero risk to a solo (or even group) of gatherers then PFO has a HUGE problem outside of the current discussion about bandits and reputation.

Don't get me wrong, I think PvP bandits should be a real risk out in the wilds too... but if PFO is a game where monsters encountered in the wild are nothing more then a minor annoyance to a player.... then it got something very, very wrong.

I'm fine with whatever they want to use. I'd view it as pretty much OOC information anyway. I doub't my character would ever say something like, "it's 4 km to the south"....it'd be more like "it's a fair distance, go past the bridge until you see the rotting stump and then you'll know you are close".

It would be cool, if we figured out a themeaticaly appropriate substitute to use IC, if we did have to talk about such stuff... just convert on a 1:1 basis and call it something else.."pace, stone, league"... using the antiquated idioms shouldn't be too confusing for people.

I think there are 2 seperate and legitimate concerns here that could cause PFO will stumble...

1) Will PvP become some dominant in terms of play that EFFECTIVELY it prevents non-PvP characters from pursuing thier interests. For a non-PvP character, PvP is a hazard. It's a hazard that can be mitigated by various methods but not negated entirely. That's cool, it's part of the interesting gameplay choices and interactions that a player is supposed to be faced with in PFO. Even with all precautions taken there is a risk the character will lose resources due to PvP. Again, this is cool, it's part of what will make for interesting gameplay. The risk is there for PvP'ers as well....every time they engage in PvP against another PvP'er someone will lose and suffer the loss of resources. The difference is the PvP'er enjoys the time spent in interaction even if they lost, the non-PvPer doesn't even if they won.

Again this is all good as long as PvP remains a risk that be mitigated to an acceptable level. However, if PvP becomes a certainty that even good mitigations proove ineffective against or are overly burdensome, If they get jumped every time they step foot out the perverbial gate (to use a cliche) then they aren't going to enjoy playing PFO...even if they win in those PvP encounters and don't lose resources...because they will be continualy forced to engage in an aspect of the game they don't enjoy and prevented from engaging in ones they do.

It's actually irelevant whether they can have an effective PvP build along with an effective PvE (or crafting, etc) build because winning or losing is not what matters, it's how thier playtime is spent. I could sink every shot in basketball....it's not going to get me to join a basketball league if I don't enjoy the sport in the first place.

2) Will focus on PvP cause non-PvP aspects to get short shrift in terms of limited development resources? For those that enjoy non-PvP gameplay... that gameplay doesn't have to be bland, boring or stale if done well and given sufficient resources and attention. However, like any gameplay aspect...if relatively ignored in terms of focus and attention...it will be bland and boring even for those who prefer those aspects of gameplay and no one will want to do it.

I'm convinced it's POSSIBLE for GW to execute well on both those aspects, else I wouldn't be here. I also think they intend to execute well on both those aspects because they understand what it means to thier potential success. However it is a very delicate and difficult balance to strike. It's going to be a constant challenge for them.

Note... I'm not disappointed at all. So far, they are doing exactly what they advertised they would do in the Kickstarter.... and are trying to design a game that I am definately interested in seeing. I am however, cautious... it's a very difficult thing they are attempting and really hasn't been done well by anyone in the past...but I knew that risk going in.

From my perspective PFO is going to have to strike a good balance between alot of different activities if it wants to be truely successfull. PvP is going to be a major aspect of the game. However, it is important that it does not become such a dominant aspect of gameplay that it crowds out the other aspects of gameply. If it does, IMO, then what you are going to see happen is a positive feedback loop where eventualy the only players logging in to play will be the ones doing so to PvP. If that is the case, then it better hope that the PvP it offers is qualitatevly better then the hordes of other PvP focused online games out there, or it will be drowned out in a sea of competition.

For fantasy based MMO's, it's not all that hard for PFO to come up with PvP that is competitive.... because most of them frankly do very poor quality PvP... at least the ones so far available. However, it won't just be competing against fantasy MMO's in that instance... it'll be competeing against all online games...from MMO-Like games like PS2 to pure match based games like the WoT or FPS like the Battlefield series....and even those in the fantasy-medeival arenas like Mount and Blade or Chivalry, etc.

It's also important to note that PFO's biggest selling points, persistance and sandbox, won't be particulary important selling points to the majority of players who will be PvP Focused. The reason why is that those gameplay elements only have an interesting effect on the strategic aspects of gameplay. However, the only people who really get to interact with the strategic aspects of gameplay in interesting ways will be the decision makers...the Guild Leaders and Millitary Strategists.... and those likely will encompass less then 1 percent of the player base. The rest of the player base, the 99 percent of rank and file grunts won't get to interact in an interesting and meaningfull manner with those strategic gameplay elements. For them it's going to be functionaly identical in terms of thier gameplay whether a guild leader tells them to fight Y opponent on X piece of dirt or whether a FPS scenario/map designer tells them to fight Y opponent on X piece of dirt. In fact, the non-persistant game probably has advantages in that arena since if you are getting clobbered there it lasts 30-60 minutes and then you get a fresh start not weeks, months or maybe never to recover from a drubbing.

This is not to downplay the importance of PvP... it's a critical aspect of gameplay for PFO. One I expect to participate in both voluntarly and involuntarly during part of my playtime in PFO.

However, if PFO really wants to do well...it's going to have to hit on all cylinders in the non-PvP aspects of gameplay as well. If it ends up just focusing on PvP and then calling it a day...it won't bode well for PFO's future. The thing that has me cautiously optomistic there is I'm fairly certain Ryan and company are well aware of that.

I guess some people here would be happier in North Korea.

No but this is a video game, a fantasy. It has room to play out all sorts of negative emotions and organizational structures....

I'm fairly certain Bluddwolf doesn't run around mugging people with a sword in real life, at least I hope he doesn't... but I fully expect to see it here. It can be fun, as long as everyone remembers it's just a game. It's when people forget that where we get into trouble....and honestly 95 percent of the guild drama we see stems from people, no matter how many hours they might put into it, forgetting that it's still just a fantasy.

"I think that there is a misconception, about democracy. It doesn't mean that the majority always rule about everything."

Technicaly that is what it means, in the strictest sense of the word. It's just that what most people call democracies, aren't.

For instance, most people mistakenly believe that the United States is a democracy. We aren't, we are a Constitutional Republic.

I'm not sure if there are any nations that are really democracies in the technical sense.

It's not an exploit. At least not the definition I think we're talking here. It's a suggestion to use an intended game mechanic that results in a consequence. Now the fact that the person that used the intended game mechanic 'likes' the consequence has no bearing on whether it's actually an exploit.

This is no different than someone wanting to play an insane lunatic that has to stay away from all the settlements or be attacked. He can do that and the game will respond and give him that. The fact that he wants that to happen does not make it an exploit in my opinion.

I doubt the Dev's intended the MURDERER flag to be applied to killing oneself. They may not have even intended that a player be ABLE to kill oneself. The MURDERER flag (as I understand it) was intended for someone that had acted as the agressor in multiple PvP incidents so that other players had some measure of protection and warning against such players rather then being pure gank bait.

That being said, there is nothing unethical about what Nihimon is doing here. He's completely open about what he is doing and how it works. Moreover, it's ALPHA, this is the time and place to mess around with the mechanics and see how you can stretch, bend and break them. Ultimately the Dev's will determine whether it's an exploit or a "feature". My money is on the former. If they wanted players to be able to simply self-flag for PvP, it would have been pretty simply to build a function to do that. More importantly, it kinda muddies the MURDERER flag for players as no longer a usefull warning for players who are likely to initiate unprovoked PvP against you.

One of the issues why speed/manuver/range is such an overpowering advantage is that holding a position doesn't count for squat.

If I were designing PFO....

- Heavy Armor + Shield in a defensive stance, in cover, in a perpaired position should be pretty impervious to ranged attacks of either the mundane (e.g. bows) or magical variety. You could fire at them all day and pretty much not ever do enough damage to bring them down.

- Holding certain strategic positions should really, really matter. It should matter ALOT more then getting some random kill out in the middle of nowhere.

- The job ranged should play is to lock down the manuverability and the ability to defend against MELEE attack of heavy infantry. Heavy infantry's job is to hold and defend a position. They work together to provide combined arms. You use Ranged to supress fire from you opponents ranged and allow your melee infantry to act offensively. You use Ranged to fix your enemies heavy infantry in position and hamper thier ability to defend against your melee. You use your heavy melee to hold a fixed position or to drive the enemies heavy melee from thiers.
Light fast ranged can't take or hold territory by itself (unless facing similar light fast ranged) but it can keep itself from being engaged by slower, heavier melee... unless it encounters them at close range and is not perpaired for it.

YMMV.

So here is the thing...

You can have a Pledge or Statement of Principles and these can be as specific or non-specific as the author of the statement writes. With no mechanism of authority and no mechanism for enforcing specific obligations or requirements on members and including/excluding signatories based upon thier actions, then that's all it is. Now individuals can look at the actions of a specific signatory and say "I really don't feel X is living upto what they pledged" and there may be social/reputational consequences to that, especialy if that's a widely held view among the members, but that's as far as it goes.

You can also have Alliances or Treaty Organizations (e.g. NATO). Those Alliances or Treaty Organizations. Those Organizations can also include a Statement of Principles for why they exist or how they intend to act. However, these must have some mechanism of authority...it doesn't have to be central, it can just be some sort of group voting mechanism among members. As well as specific (the more detailed the better) obligations that are expected of thier signatories and a mechanism for failing to live upto those organizations. As well as a method for including/excluding who the membership is.

Initialy RA seemed to be shooting for the latter (from what I read of the "mutual support" portion of the statement) now it seems to be functioning more as the former. The reason the latter couldn't work in the form put forward is that there MUST be some mechanism of authority and means of including/excluding membership in order for a Treaty Organization to be practical.

Otherwise (if you'll forgive an 80's analogy) the Soviet Union simply joins NATO by simply declaring it's intent to do so....and defeats (or at least undermines) the political rationale for NATO's existance (in the 80's) without ever firing a shot.

Not saying that anyones acting as the "Soviet Union" here... and while I'm pretty sure all the signatories of the RA are likely to support each others OOC goals of making PFO a fun and welcoming gaming community. I'm also fairly confident that with such a broad and inclusive membership some signatories are likely to try to wipe the floor with others in the game at some point.

Here is the way I see this playing out...

1) The RA is a voluntary agreement with no real enforcment mechanism and no enforcing authority nor any strict bylaws. In that it is more like a Pledge or a Statement of Principles.

2) The signatories have agreed to "promote positive gameplay". There is no strict definition of this. It will mean whatever it means to each individual signatory. However, I think generaly the signatories see that minimaly as not behaving like a "jerk" toward the general player base and purposefully setting out to ruin the enjoyment of the rest of the player base at large and thus damage the community and PFO's ability to succeed.

3) There is no set procedure for handling complaints about negative gameplay which is established or required by the Accord. Individual signatories will handle such issues in the way each deems appropriate. However, I expect most will simply take it as an informational item which may raise increased awareness among the signatories leadership toward that players in game behavior and whether they are just having individual beefs or they are acting like a jerk to the rest of the player base as a whole. The latter would likely cause the signatories leadership to evaluate whether the member was appropriate to represent the signatories (OOC) values and take whatever corrective action might be appropriate.

4) There is no enforcement mechanism in the RA nor strict definition of "positive gameplay" but any signatories who's consistantly behave in a manner that the majority of the other signatories consider falls outside thier view of "positive gameplay" will be considered to have failed to live up to thier end of the bargain and will have to bare whatever social cost that carries. It's kinda like the "honor" system in that regard.

Attempts to strictly define or adjucate other signatories policies to see how well they fall in line with the RA are, respectfully, a waste of time. Unless there is some enforcement authority or mechanism vested with the power to say Yea or Nay, there is just no point to that. What can be judged is the results of those policies based on how the signatories members behave in game....and I suspect if there is a consistant problem with such behavior which goes unaddressed by the signatories leadership, people will raise that issue right here in this thread.

Well these are hex's where meteors have fallen....how about the occasional (infrequent) meteor strike. No reason for every hazzard to be player based...

Bloomingburg NY....

Bludd is disturbingly close, must buy better locks and more firearms!

I like Kitsunes response the best.

In PFO, I have no problem with anyone waging war on any company for any reason, including that they butter thier sandwiches on the left side of the bread and/or (especialy) if they don't like bacon (who doesn't like bacon?)

However, keep it about the game not the players. If you are attacking someone because you don't like the player then it is generaly unhealthy for both you and the game... and ultimately unsatisfying because slashing a bunch of pixels doesn't really resolve anything or change anything about the situation and after the 10th time or so you've done that you'll come to that epiphany. YMMV.

Andius,

I say this only as a private player, not as a member of TEO... I'm just a grunt there anyway.

One of the lessons I've learned over the years, in life...not just gaming, is that once you give up control (authority) over something you have to be perpared to accept the fact that you'll vehemently disagree with some of the decisions concerning it. That's just the way it works.

Real life, is WAY more important then gaming... so you made the right decision there. I've had to walk away from things I had invested alot of effort into before, so I know how tough that is... but sometimes time and life just don't allow for it. Frankly, that's why I don't WANT to be anything more then a grunt in most of the games I look at playing... too many other things that I want and enjoy doing in my life to get sucked into a vortex of commitments in a game.

I'm saddened that you feel so bitter but take it as a lesson learned (for more important things then just a game - which is what PFO is). Don't give up control over anything that you feel so invested in that you can't accept going a way you don't want. If you can't do that then you need to find a way to make sure that you can delegate responsability for most of the decisions but retain veto power when you really need to excersize it.... and you've got to make sure those relationships are clearly spelled out and understood. "Power Sharing" arrangements VERY often fall apart even with the best intentions of everyone involved.

In the end, I hope you have fun and enjoy PFO (and life). Don't get stuck in the past and let any residual bitterness get in the way of that.

P.S. I didn't really like the location we picked but that matters FAR less then the people you play with. There are alot of good people in TEO...and I know Lifedragn spends a ton of time trying to accomodate everyones input.

P.P.S. Player run organizations are more like herding cats then anything else. Even when they are "dictatorships", they really aren't because people are just there voluntarly to have fun. Most players have a pretty limited tolerance for being told what to do, especialy if they are going to make significant investments of effort themselves.

I'm not really sure that Starfall hex's need to be an exception to the games PvP mechanics.

- We are not even sure that Skymetal CAN be extracted by an unaffiliated noob ALT. It may be that the abilities to extract Skymetal or really any other high value resource require affiliation with a PC settlement and company, thus opening up the possability of War/Feud type conflicts.

- It is not safe to assume that engagement by NRDS players are the only dangers a harvester in such hex's face. I would assume that most high value resource areas also involve high level NPC threats that are beyond the capacity of any non-affiliated non-combat character to deal with. Likely that would require guards with significant combat abilities slotted in order to protect the harvester. That means significant resource investment in order to successfully harvest such resources. No one really need risk reputation loss to kill off the annoying level 1 harvester when one can simply watch the 12th level Owl-Bear do it instead.

- Any high value resource hex is going to draw the attention of bandits and brigands. I would not assume that any organization, at the very least in OE, is going to have a monopoly on all bandits and brigands in the game. I believe SAD is still a tool available to bandits and brigands in the game without reputation loss. I would also expect that a low level, non-affiliated, non-combat player is likely in some danger from even a minimal reputation combat oriented player.

Ultimately even if the harvester of such resources is not vulnerable to War/Feud PvP himself...SOMEONE who is will likely have to be present to insure the harvester can operate safe from other hazards within the hex. YMMV.

P.S. I'm not antagonistic to the idea of a few FFA hex's being on the map, as long as they are generaly avoidable by those not interested in such and don't break other game systems/dynamics. They may even help funnel the more agressive players away from those not interested in such activity. However, I also don't see a particularly pressing need for Starfall hex's to be made an exception to the games PvP mechanics either.

Hey, I hope you don't count me among those "baiting" you. I participate in your threads because I think a game like this needs "antagonists" as well as "protagonists" ( obviously these terms are relative to the speaker) and UNC seems like it's positioning itself to fill that role in an interesting manner.

I can never really seem to bring myself to play the antagonist role in RP games and MMO's but I enjoy seeing others play them well and am always interested in the approach they take.

For the record, I don't see anything about UNC or the way it intends to operate that contradicts the concept of positive gameplay. For me that's making whatever conflict occurs all about the game and the characters not the other player. As long as that's being communicated to the other guy so they can understand it and it's not being made personal I don't really see a problem...not even with naked agression, it's a game about conflict afterall. I guess that's an easy concept for me, coming from both a heavy RP and wargaming background.

Personaly, while I can get very immersed and can appreciate and enjoy the competition and will do my best to try to win, I just can't seem to take these sort of games all that seriously. At the end of the day, who really cares if ones settlement burns to the ground and everything falls to ashes around you...as long you had fun while playing and enjoyed the company of those you were fighting with (and against), it's all just pixels and bytes. It's not like you were competeing for anything truely important. The only caveat would be if losing somehow meant you couldn't continue to participate in the game in an entertaining manner which would be a complete fail of design on GW's side.

I guess the only tricky part is that they are trying to accomodate a game that appeals with very different and divergent interests and PvP is one of those aspects that can negate peoples ability to pursue other interests/aspects. That's fine, though if the PvP becomes overly dominating of the play experience then I'll only come to PFO when I'm in a mood to only PvP and nothing else....and the PvP will need to be superior to other PvP oriented games that are availble. YMMV.

Wurner wrote:

I'm quite sure the guy you're looking for is Lars Andersen.

Diella wrote:

I think the person you are talking about is Lars Anderson...

Many thanks to both of you!

Diella, Lars Andersen - The World's Fastest Archer is exactly the link I was looking for.

Doing a little digging on google (I can't watch the video while at work), for his speed and trick shooting, he's shooting a 30lb bow at half draw. That would barely annoy a deer and wouldn't penetrate any sort of field armor whatsoever. In the stills I've seen, he's shooting at targets which are about 15 feet away....which is point blank range for a bow.

Admitedly he's an incredibly talented archer and it's an amazing performance but it's just that, a performance. It's entirely impractical for use in hunting and or in war.

Note, I discovered that there is also a Hungarian by the name of Lajos Kassai who practices archery techniques similar to those practiced by the Mongols. If you look at him shooting, he is also firing at targets from a range of 15ft.

As a point of reference, for modern hunting, you want a minimum 40lb draw...at full draw and 40lb-60lb (adjustable) is common for modern compounds. English longbows historicaly were thought to average between 80-120 lbs, Mongol recurve bows averaged between 100-160 lbs. You can read about the penetration tests done against historical armor for bows of various draw weights. Google Matheus Bane and/or Mike Loades for those.

Note, I'm not trying to bash archery. As I said, I bowhunt myself and really enjoy it but, as with so many things, once you actualy start doing it you start to realize the difference between fact and fiction. Archery was a very, very important component of the medieval battlefield but it was just that one component. There were reasons why it was only one component of the armies of the day and there was a reason why it wasn't till the advent of firearms that armor and melee combat stopped being such important components of warfare.

Edit: Not that this has any bearing on game mechanics, but I'm kinda a nit for such stuff.

Caveat, I'm not playing Alpha but here are my thoughts......

My general feeling is that ranged attacks should force the attacker to be stationary or move at a very slow rate while in a firing sequence....

- I know realism is not a factor here but as someone who does bowhunt in real life, I can tell you that shooting a bow while attempting to move means a missed shot.

- Resource wise it's probably far cheaper then calculation of angle of attack and LOS to target.

- Gameplay wise it means that the archer has to have sufficient range when engaging and be able to properly judge the targets speed of approach in order to effectively carry out a harrassment tactic. Misjudging and cutting it too close means the archer gets caught in melee while in an opportunity state. Allowing the archer to move at full speed while firing nullifies that gameplay aspect.

......

Ranged weapons should balance Rate Of Fire (time it takes for the firing/loading sequence) versus damage. Slow firing weapons (e.g. Hvy Crossbows) should do more damage then fast (e.g. short bows) ones. Range is a very powerfull advantage, it should definately be factored into any balancing equation. I don't think an average bow should do any more damage then an average 1 handed melee weapon.

.....

Heavly armored, shield equiped infantry should have a means of minimizing incoming missle attacks by entering into a stance that sacrifices mobility and penalizes thier offensive and defensive capabilities versus other melee combatants.

- This creates a situation that stresses the advantage of combined arms tactics. Archers can effectively pin heavy infantry but are not particulary effective at destroying them on thier own if the infantry is willing to remain pinned (e.g. simulating taking cover). Heavy infantry can't be effective in melee while defending well against ranged attacks. Nor are they capable of forcing an engagement with lightly armored archers but they CAN hold terrain (e.g. a capture circle) if engaged by archers alone. Lightly armored Archers CAN'T hold terrain (e.g. capture circles)if engaged by Heavy Infantry but they can avoid contact at will. Light Infantry and Archers are vulnerable to each other depending upon what range an engagement is initiated at.

If you've got a situation where lightly armored ranged forces can maintain distance at will and do damage significant enough to kill heavy armored melee REGARDLESS of what actions heavy melee is capable of taking then you've setup a pretty unbalanced scenario.

Just my thoughts. YMMV.

My feelings on this are as follows and it realtes more to individuals then companies or settlements....

1) Can individuals, even those associated with companies allied to a settlement, gain at least some low level training in the NPC towns? I feel this is important as to not push individuals into the PvP aspect of the game before they are ready for it and comfortable with basic gameplay. It also allows companies that are not successfull to continue to play the game at some level. If the answer to this question is "Yes" then it allows the WoT to be an important but not all encompassing aspect of gameplay during EE. If the answer to this is "No" then it will likely drive alot of players who are not interested in having the WoT aspect be thier primary focus. I'm not up on the currently proposed mechanics from GW and they do seem to shift around a bit.

2) Will there be a sufficient number of hex's on the map that are free of towers so that a player can move around a bit and have some interesting things to do without needing to enter a potential conflict hex?

3) Will players have some easly discernable way of indicating to other players that they are not currently interested in conflict?

4) Will players generaly respect the fact that players outside of tower hexes and not clearly engaged in some conflict related activity are not valid PvP targets?

Of course alot of this goes away or changes once other game systems are in place. My feeling is that WoT is a cool and interesting aspect of gameplay but should not be an all encompassing aspect of gameplay where players feel "forced" to engage in it in order to play the game at all. I think that would backfire badly on GW, if it became reality.

I don't neccesarly think the community should regard taking "Alpha" towers as a violation of community standards but I do think it should be considered as an act of aggression and essentialy a "Casus Belli" from one entity to the next. I do think it would be helpfull for the community to come up with some ettiquite to define what would be considered a "non-combatant" in the WoT conflict and what might be considred acceptable behavior toward "non-combatants". For example, killing an active combatant on sight as many times as possible is probably a legitimate excersize of conflict based play. Killing a "non-combatant" once outside of the conflict zone to rob them might be considered a legitimate act of play in the context of banditry. Killing a "non-combatant" repeatedly in a short period of time probably crosses the line of acceptable play to harrassment.

As a community, trying to come to some general consensus about these sort of mores would be helpfull, I think.

I think people under-estimate the value of culture in these sort of situations. Yes mechanics have to be in place to reinforce the kind of culture you want in the game BUT all the mechanics in the world are worthless if the culture that develops is different then what is desired. I've seen that happen in games. The two have to work in concert to get the result you desire.

I've also seen first-hand what sort of inertia an initial culture established by a relatively small group can have in setting the tone going forward... even through vast expansions. Vast expansions CAN have a highly disruptive result that permanently erases whatever initial culture was established but that's not a hard and fast rule and it is definately the case that the culture CAN be maintained through that. I've seen that first hand in a commercial MUD that had a player base that went from an average of 50 or so players online at a time to an average of 2K-3K players online at a time within the course of a couple months, where the initial culture was determinative of what was transfered to the expanded player base. It was disruptive and it did take a heckuva alot of effort from the Developers, GM's customer service people AND existing players to make that happen but it DID happen, so it definately can be done.

One shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking that culture will mold the thinking of every single player...it won't. However, it doesn't need to do so....it just needs to have an effect on enough players that it becomes representative of the average experience of new players to the game. One also shouldn't expect culture to have any effect on the true griefers...it won't.... they specificaly are playing a different game from everyone else and are setting out to purposefully ruin everyones play experience. Those are for the GM's/Developers to handle.

However there will be alot of players coming in NOT with some purposefull predetermined intention to be griefers. They'll come in NOT being sure exactly how one plays the game, nor what to expect of the play experience...and MANY of these players will adapt thier play to what they see around them and how they PERCIVE others playing the game and being "successfull" in it...and it is these players that culture can have a very large effect on. If these players learn that the way to "play the game" involves negative behavior then it'll swamp the ability of the GM's and the mechanics to overcome that. THAT is what, I think, Proxima was getting at.

I, for one, am interested in hearing from Proxima and others more details on what cultural norms we should try to be promoting and which ones we should be discouraging. I know this may get a little heated....and obviously we can't define a hard and fast rule on what is considered "acceptable" for all situations... however, I think it's helpfull to at least try to get a better idea on some of the specifics about what the community at large would consider desirable and undesirable play.

I want to add something, mainly that FPS style games have a very large audience and personaly they are quite a bit of fun. I would strongly disagree with any caracterization they they are "murder simulators".

FPS games are all about team based combat (PvP combat). There is a specific goal to that combat... winning the match... and it is understood that all players playing the game are willing combatants. Further there is no confusion about who is hostile and who is freindly. Death has no long term consequence to the players ability to play and enjoy the game, though it has a short term consequence to who wins a match. Finally to one degree or another, a players results are based upon thier individual skill.

It is the combination of these elements that make FPS games enjoyable to thier audiences and categoricaly NOT "murder simulators"

"Murder" is an act of killing someone who is not hostile to you and has no intent to cause you harm. The difference with many FFA Open-World PvP games that are percieved as "murder simulators" by the general gaming public while FPS games (such as the Battlefield series) are generaly not... and these mirror my own feelings... is that you are getting killed in them by people you are NOT hostile toward and who'm you have no expectation would be hostile toward you. If you are playing Battlefield 1942 for example and you are playing an Allied soldier, you fully expect to be attacked on site by every Axis soldier in the match. You may not know where or when the specific attacks will happen, but you know going into the match to expect them to happen. In an MMO, you are NOT expecting the guy who hired your character to chop down wood for them outside of town and who will trade you some cloth in return to be hostile toward you and to put a dagger in your back. That is the difference between "combat" and "murder". It is that constant level of paranoia, of not being able to trust anyone that most people find distatsefull for long term play.

The other element that causes most FPS players (myself included) not to want to play PvP in MMO's is that the quality of the PvP in most MMO's is very poor by comparison. It is very often determined by factors external to player skill. This can be the difference in power between one character and another or it can be related to lag and performance issues where the MMO is not optimized to handle that many characters fighting in one area. This is a big turnoff for enjoying PvP in MMO's. Further, it is greatly excaserbated by the fact that getting killed in MMO's can have a long term impact on your characters abilities. If I get killed in an FPS game it has near zero impact on my ability to play and compete and perform well in future matches. If I get killed in an MMO, it can have a strong impact on my ability to accumulate enough power/advancement to perform well in future combats and can easly create a situation where a new player gets sufficiently behind the eight ball that they can never accumulate enough of whatever they need to perform effectively in combat in the game in comparison to established players.

Really for many FFA Open World full-loot PvP games....I don't even classify most of what goes on as "PvP". It's more PvV.. Player versus Victem.... and no one really enjoys playing "Victem" over the long term.
I quite enjoy many different sorts of PvP (Chess, FPS games, Turn based strategy games on both computer and board games, minatures, etc) I have zero interest in PvV games as either the Player or the Victem. YMMV.

<Magistry> Toombstone wrote:

GrumpyMel wrote:

PvP with looting

This is kind of the big one for me. You hear "pvp with looting" and you think murder simulator. There have to be some really strong mechanics in place to balance that one out.

Or a change in attitude towards your gear. If you learn to value your gear less than your time spent in experiencing the challenge of PvP, you will mind less the loss of gear.

Why is the "go to solution" always have to be limiting mechanics? There is never any compromise or acknowledgement that perhaps your attitudes can change.

Bluddwolf, it's pretty simple because people enjoy different things and they want to do something they actualy enjoy with thier time. I'm ok with loss of gear...I'll probably treat PFO as a sort of BattleField series FPS game in terms of how I approach gear. However for some people, a fantasy MMO is all about collecting neat looking gear to outfit thier characters. PFO probably won't be the game for them... that's ok but telling them to adjust thier attitudes is kinda like telling someone that's allergic to shellfish that they'll really learn to love raw clams. It's their entertainment dime and time, they shouldn't spend it doing something they don't like.

However, that's not really the purpose of the thread...open-world, FFA full-loot PvP tends toward turning an MMO into what most mmo players would consider a "murder simulator" and draws the exact sort of people that most gamers don't want to associate with in ANY sort of game. It obviously doesn't have to be true and not everyone dislikes those sort of games nor is every player of them unpleasant to associate with. However, I think it's pretty well supported that is the association those game-play elements have among the general gaming public. That's what Mbando's study showed, I think.

Basicaly that's what most people are going to assume about PFO, or any games with those mechanics.... until it's actualy built and empiricaly prooves that it's not as bad or anti-social as they expect... and they can actualy play and enjoy it without being ganked within 30 seconds of stepping out of town EVERY time they do so, followed by being subjected to a minute of "P-owned U looser, we're 'leet U noob"

The basic problem is this (IMO). PFO has all the key elements that murder simulators do.... Open World, FFA, PvP with looting... that is pretty much the murder simulator recipie. Tie in F2P (once OE happens) and you have an even stronger case. Now I know GW is putting a ton of controls and mechanisms in place to try to mitigate the more negative aspects of those gameplay elements so that PFO does not become a murder simulator and they are commited to do so. However virtualy every other game that has those elements has had thier Dev's come out and say "Our game isn't going to be a murder simulator and we're putting controls in place to make sure that doesn't happen" and they've all failed to make it work. "This time will be different" is not a very convincing arguement after so many failed attempts.

It doesn't work for GW to not mention those gameplay elements because then you are going to get alot of consumers upset that the product has features that they didn't expect and didn't want and PFO will get a bad name because of that disappointment plus GW and the people involved will burn thier reputations as reputable developers. Plus a little time investment here in reading about the game will reveal those features anyway.

Even with all the time I have invested here and learning about PFO and it's developers and it's mitigating controls I am not fully convinced it won't end up a murder simulator. It's a distinct chance and that's the (fully informed) risk I'm taking with my time and monetary investments. I'm certainly not convinced it will end up that way...it took alot of failed attempts at manned flight before Kitthawk and Ryan and his team certainly have the talent and commitment to pull it off... but it's very difficult and delicate thing they are trying to do... definately not a sure thing.

That's why I thiink GW strategy is exactly on target. The only way to really convince people that ANY game with the gameplay elements mentioned above, regardless of mitigating controls, won't be a murder simulator is by building it, having some people play it and demonstrating empiricaly that it's not. By building slowly in a controlled environment (EE) is exactly the roadmap to try to make that happen.

GW changing rhetoric isn't going to work because to most players ANY rhetoric by a developer is just hot air and marketing. Trying to de-emphasize core gameplay elements will just make it seem like GW is trying to hide something....because information about those elements always gets out viraly.

In one of the first posts about the game that I read, Ryan said he and his team were trying to accomplish something that many people think is impossible. I think that's essentialy it.... and the only way to really convince people that the impossible is possible is by doing it. YMMV.

The pve content will be limited in EE.

Competing with each other will be the main source of content in PFO.

I think you all give Ryan far too little credit.

In one single thread he has managed to stir up enough animosity to fuel a good lot of "content" for the game.

Perhaps enough so no one will notice its shortcomings until far enough into EE that Ryan & co will have had the time they need to address those shortcomings and flesh out the game.

What some of you see as incompetence I see as sheer brilliance.

Or dumb luck.. :=)

If that were true, it would be the worst way imaginable of stirring up "content". I'm perfectly content playing a game where I get killed every 20 seconds and had my stuff taken....it's only pixels and it's a game. However I would have no interest in playing a game where people were acting out of a sense of personal animosity of me as a human being for something that happaned out of game. That's no fun....and if PFO became that I wouldn't be hanging around for long. Who wants to sit down and play a game with someone that hates your guts? Even if you win, it's just a game but you've wasted an hour being around someone that's unpleasant and unfreindly.

I really don't think that is what Ryan was doing here, at least not if he's serious about making sure PFO isn't a toxic community. Out of game conflict tends to breed toxicity.

First off, the thread was pretty mild compared to many I've seen on other MMO forums. However, I can understand the level of angst some in the PAX community. Feeling like you are being attacked by others as a player and having uncertainty about whether your are going to have something you are emotionaly invested in taken away from you is not fun.

Secondly, I also think the communication from GW on the issue was not as good as it should have been. One thing I've learned over the years is that no matter how clear you think you are being, if the people who are your customers still don't understand you....you are not being clear enough.

I read everything in that thread including all the communication from GW and there definately was a significant period of time when I thought GW was looking at the opinions posted in the thread with the consideration of having them influence a decision by GW as to whether it would remove Golgotha from the leaderboard. Clearly that was an unfounded assumption and misunderstanding on my part.... but I was also clearly far from being the only one. As someone who wasn't part of PAX, it wasn't a big deal to me....but I'm sure it was very uncomfortable for the folks with something actualy at stake. What was needed was a very quick response to definitively clear that misunderstanding up, letting people now that they could voice thier opinions but it wouldn't have any effect on what GW would do in this case. Ryan, you did that...but IMO, it was too late in coming.

Ryan, I respect you greatly but I also think you guys haven't been as clear at communication as you seem to think you have on quite a few issues, including this one. Consider that a form of constructive crowd-forging from a player and a customer... not an attack on you are GW. I certainly appreciate the hard work that you all do and the difficulty of running an enterprise like this. Thanks!

T7V Avari wrote:

Xeen wrote:

It is not up to the community.

Roseblood is not very clearly separate entities. They may have started that way, but now they are in it for mutual benefit.

Separate websites, separate private forums, separate voting structures, separate meta game guilds. No common military, no common diplomacy, not even a promise to form in game nations.

I thought you guys had some lawyers in there, jeezus lawd you all SUCK as lawyers, just a bunch of rabid dogs go back to your cages!

The only thing in question here is that despite the fact that Nihimon is technically 100% correct, this thread offers AMPLE evidence that the COMMUNITY believes Pax Golgotha is a special case to the rules.

I personally, and have been asked to say this by several Roseblood Accord members, wish to see this thread ended. Not because Nihimon is wrong, he most certainly is in the right. But because Ryan Dancey himself has said that this community should police itself and in THIS CASE, the community has voted against the letter of the law and wishes Golgotha to remain in the Land Rush.

The only evidence is that T7V and some TEO members do not like it. I do not see a greater community here.

As for lawyers... You say you have all this separation in the foreground... but in the background I bet its all different. Are you going to tell me that if the UNC invades Brighthaven that the others will not rush to their aid?

Xeen, I think you are misrepresenting the situation with the Roseblood Accord. If another entity invades Great Britain will the United States come to thier aid? Almost certainly as both are members of NATO and have similar interests and complimentary world views. Does that mean that they are the same entity or the same nation? No.

Such it is with the Roseblood Accord. Each member is it's own seperate soveriegn entity with it's own top level government. The members may have certain Treaty obligations to each other and may consider each other in freindly terms because they have mutual interests and complimentary world views but each is it's own individual entity. The Treaty obligation is really not that much different then the sort of contract that the UNC might enter into with another entity....just that there is no fixed renumeration and no fixed contract period. As a member of TEO, I have no individual obligation to the Roseblood Accord. I only have an obligation to TEO and it's governing body. It's only through whatever Treaties TEO's governing body signs...whether to RA or anyone else that I inherit any obligations outside of TEO. At least that has always been my understanding.

I say that only to clear up the specific allegation that you made. I have no clue about PAX's internal structure....nor do I have any desire to.... nor would it in any way be appropriate for me to appoint myself as arbiter of such a matter. I have no problem with PAX doing with what it is doing. No one is voting more then ONCE in Land Rush...which would be my line in the sand. PAX isn't doing that. They've said they adjusted thier votes. Golgotha adjusted thier tags. They aren't running Fidelis in LandRush even though technicaly they could. I can't imagine why anyone would need to ask for more then that. If after all that it's still not kosher, then it'll have to be GW saying so, not any of us.

This said only as a private individual. This thread is way past it's shelf life now. The horse isn't just dead at this point, its a skeletal mount.

Cirolle,

Speaking only as a grunt in TEO not an officer (and I'm sure those that are will correct me if I speak in error). I'm am not aware of anyone in TEO asking anyone to join another guild in the RA with the intent of them not PERMANANTLY being a member of that guild/settlement.

What I am aware of is that we are recruiting new members for ourselves (TEO) and instructing any such members to ONLY vote for TEO (which doesn't count for anything but show in Landrush II) NOT anyone else. If the person is not interested in TEO or we feel they are not a good fit... we are reccomending they PERMANENTLY join other allied guilds... by essentialy vouching publicaly that those guilds are good people.

We are most definately not reccomending that they "join" (quotes) other guilds so they can vote for them...but that they JOIN (no qoutes) them because they want to be part of them. I rather suspect our leadership would boot anyone out of the guild for advocating such a behavior since it goes against the policies we internaly adopted.

I, for one, am not crying foul about what PAX is doing. However, I don't want anyone under the misapprehension about what our own policies are.

As a gamer.... I would have trouble staying a member of TEO, if those were the sort of tactics. Good sportsmanship is a far more important consideration to me then "winning" anything which is pretty much a nonsense concept in any game that has no defined end or "victory conditions"

Also note, I do not think PAX is engaging in "bad sportsmanship" here... I pretty much agree with Nihimon, they got caught in an unfortunate situation due to incomplete information about the rules of the Landrush prior to it starting.

Hi, I tried it again (thanks, Taylor!) and now my goblinworks.com account says

Enrollment

Thank you! You're signed up for Early Enrollment.

Which sounds good! Does that also mean the info for the other products (mainly the print addons, as I got the impression there is a time limit on that) got transfered alright?

Same process just worked for me too! Whatever Goblinworks did last night ended up fixing my problem. Goblinworks.com now shows me as signed up for Early Enrollement! Thanks for the hard work guys!

I'm not going to argue about EvE. I haven't played it but more succinctly EvE has a particular set of behavior involving scams that it defines as "fair play". Ryan has made it clear that PFO will not be following EvE's definition of that. Heck, maybe it even makes some sense being that EvE is supposed to be a dystopian sci-fi game.

In Pathfinder, a players character would logicaly know perfectly well whether they are handing over 1 gold coin or 1000 because they are physicaly handling each coin paid. If the interface doesn't make that information perfectly clear to the player, then that's the game's fault not the players. Taking advantage of a flaw in the games code or UI to do something your character would not logicaly be able to do in the game world is an exploit as far as I'm concerned. I believe GW is taking a similarly disapproving stance of it.

Again not seeing the problem here guys. War isn't a structured badmitten match....it's a state where one side is throwing out the rules of Diplomacy because it thinks they aren't going to serve it's goals anymore.

The Agressor pays a cost for going to and maintaining a State of War, if they aren't gaining something valuable by doing so then they are just hurting themselves.

The Defender has the option of determining how much of thier economy they are going to devote to thier war effort. If they think the Agressor isn't a credible threat then they don't need to devote much of thier economy to the effort.

If the Defender thinks that turtling up and trying to avoid provoking an engagement is the best Strategic option for them, then that's a perfectlty viable approach that should be allowed.

If the Attacker drops thier DoW and the Defender wants reperations then they are free to demand them and can use threat of thier own DoW against the Agressor as a goad.

I hate to say this, but I think in this case you are trying to introduce mechanics for things that aren't needed.

@Nihimon,

Whats to stop the Defender from simply issuing thier own War Dec back at the attacker in that case?

Ruses are legitimate millitary strategy, IMO, as are cutting ones losses after encountering stiffer then expected resistance.

I have no problems with scams and knavery in general but they should not take advantage of mechanical deficiencies or shortcomings in the UI to do thier work. GW does have a responability to correct these when uncovered but players also bear a responability to not use them while GW is working on those corrections.

Example of fair play scam "Hey listen, you can save on contract fee's, escrows and all that rot. Just give me your load of furs, I'll take them to market for you, sell them and give you the money minus a comission" <takes off never to be seen again>
- The players loss is entirely due to his excersize of poor judgement

Example of unfair play scam. Player knows that in a certain interface, the font used makes a comma seem nearly identical to a decimal so he uses that interface to sell a dagger to a player for 10,000 gp rather then the 10.000 gp the player thought he was paying.

- The players loss is due mostly to a flaw in the game interface that should never have been allowed to exist in the first place.

I don't think it's much of an issue. If the Defender wants to continue a conflict that the Agressor does not (presumably because the Defender is winning and counter-attacking), they can simply DoW the Agressor in return to renew the conflict. I'm not sure any special mechanics would be neccesary to handle such usage cases.

Actualy, I think wars/feuds SHOULD be relatively expensive precisely because you don't want them used frivolously to circumvent the other PvP systems GW has put in place.

A company/settlement should have to consider whether there is actualy something worth justifying the costs of going to war before declaring war.

You don't want small or new companies routienely and automaticaly curb-stomped simply because they are small and new. That's bad for the game. If they have something valuable or are doing something directly threatening....sure....but every single time an organization should consider whether it's really worth the cost to Feud/DoW them.

The Kingdom system is really where you can have much larger scale wars....as these are larger scale political entities.

Perhaps you could even have a system where there is a declared War (or Feud) which is an object itself and where player organizations can pay a single cost to join that conflict as a belligerent as one side rather then having to individualy declare war against every belligerent on the opposite side.

What you don't want, IMO, is where War/Feud is cheap enough that an organization can trivialy DoW a ton of neutral organizations that have no interest in becoming belligerents. That kinda defeats much of the core design of PFO, IMO.

GrumpyMel wrote:

Drakhan Valane wrote:

That's because the SAD has the cost of training, whereas maintaining a settlement and its territory is a free activity bereft of any costs.

LOL...lets say just for the sake of arguement that we stipulated that the exact same costs as SAD be neccesary... what then?

Why don't we wait and see the further fleshing out of the Marshal system?

But, if you want all of the mechanics of the SAD, then let go of your hang-up over the name, and use it. That is the only argument some people have against it. They don't like gage fact that it can be used for both chaotic and lawful means. Or the real problem is, it does have a skill and slot cost, and some want a freebie.

You can't use the argument that you have a settlement with its costs. Your settlement also gives you every advantage in power as well.

It's like you are writing a letter using the most advanced word processing program, complaining that someone else is writing a letter using crayons.

A pretty weak argument.

There are multiple reasons why SAD itself can't be used...as I've illustrated perhaps 3 times now Bludd.

- If a settlement wants to make banditry illegal then it needs to make one of banditries prime mechanisms.. SAD illegal as well or it's got a huge gaping hole in it's laws to be exploited. If it makes SAD illegal then it's law enforcment can't use it as a mechanism to stop banditry as that would make thier use of it a CRIME.... catch-22.

- The goal of SAD is to extort wealth from people to enrich yourself. The goal of something like tresspass would be to get people to leave your territory so they don't attack innocents doing business in your territory. The two goals are not remotely the same.

- It would be very easy for a bandit to bypass SAD being used on them by simply having no material wealth or coin on them and letting a handler character hold it all for them. It would be completely exploitive to allow SAD demand more wealth then a character possibly has or can pay. Thus all a bandit need do is pay the 1 copper the character has to his name when SAD'd by law enforcment, nullifying the ability to use it as a tool to keep him away from his prey.

- SAD likely involves CHAOTIC shifts. Law Enforcement is, by it's nature, a LAWFULL activity.

All these, as I've explained several times already, render SAD unsuitable for this function. A mechanism that works along similar general lines to SAD would be functional but not SAD itself. It is not simply the name that is unsuitable but the nature of exactly what the mechanism is designed to do.

What I struggle to understand is how someone can on the one hand argue FOR the existance of SAD which allows one to engage in banditry without negative reputation or alignment consequences BY ANYWHERE in the game allowing the BANDIT to extort money from the target or force the target into PvP with no negative consequences for the bandit...

AND At the same time...

Argue against allowing law enforcment a similarly effective tool which ONLY in Law Enforcments OWN territory, allows Law Enforcment demand the target exit said territory or be forced into PvP without negative Alignment or Reputation consequences for Law Enforcment.

It boggles the mind how anyone can support the former and in the same breath argue against the latter.

GrumpyMel wrote:

How exactly will they be perma-flagged for PvP?

We are talking about throw away low rep alts right?

GrumpyMel wrote:

...and under what logic is a Soveriegn entity not legaly allowed to enforce who is allowed into it's territory?

Im kinda missing this point... I said if you have people in your settlement who will not proactively enforce the laws, then fire them and find someone else who will.

No your arguement is that Law Enforcment must resort to continualy breaking the laws in order to enforce them, which will result in thier inability to enforce the law within thier own settlement. You are arguing for a catch-22 situation which is unresolvable and I'm rather suspecting you know it at this point.

The only effective recourse a settlement will be left at enforcing it's laws under this paradigm is to utilize UnAligned Criminal Alts to do so.

GrumpyMel wrote:

Xeen,

If your purpose building ALTS to prey on merchants/crafters and non-PvP characters then any advanced combat training would be completely superflous if not entirely wasted. Why would you need advanced PvP skills to engage characters who had no PvP skills slotted and little to no experience using them if they did?

I believe this notion is even fully supported by Bludd's comments about running around in EvE flagged Red and never getting engaged by non-PvPers.

Under this paradigm....the only characters that advanced PvP training would be usefull against (Law Enforcement/Millitary) can't legaly force a combat engagement.

You dont need the high end skills in that situation, but when you run into someone who does you will die.

The thing is, with your arguments, the characters that are built for this very subject will be perma flagged for PVP. So Law Enforcement will be fully capable of engaging them consequence free.

If you cannot engage consequence free... Then engage with consequences, If Law Enforcement will not enforce the law, no matter what... Then I suggest finding someone else to enforce the laws.

How exactly will they be perma-flagged for PvP?

...and under what logic is a Soveriegn entity not legaly allowed to enforce who is allowed into it's territory?

You are not getting around the system, you will take rep and alignment hits and you will not have high end training.

@Grumpy Mel - Sure, they can not be feuded. Im not sure that matters anyway... Those will be the guys you do not want to feud anyway... as it will just cost you.

The point is Xeen, they won't be ENGAGE-ABLE by Law Enforcement while operating in Law Enforcement's territory no matter how many past crimes they've commited in that territory.

What I want to prevent is this scenario...

Day 1 - Bandit SAD's non-PvP merchant in owners territory. Escapes before Law Enforcment can respond.

Day 2 - Bandit SAD's non-PvP merchant in owners territory. Escapes before Law Enforcment can respond.

Day 3 - Bandit SAD's non-PvP merchant in owners territory. Escapes before Law Enforcment can respond.

(All of the above perfectly fine so far....the problem comes the next day)

Day 4 - Law Enforcement intercepts bandit skulking in thier territory.

- Law Eforcer "Get out. If you've commited banditry in this territory every day this week. You aren't welcome here"

- Bandit "You can't make me. I haven't commited a crime in the last 20 minutes in this territory so as far as the system is concerned I'm completely innocent...and I'm unaffiliated with any settlement or company so you can't lawfully target me...hence you have nothing you can do to PROTECT your merchants from me. I'll hang out until you logoff then attack a merchant when I feel like it...and the only way you can stop it is become a criminal in your own territory"

What I want to stop is the above scenario. It's patently absurd that a settlement owner has no ability to exersize soveriegnty over who is allowed into thier territory without being subject to hostile action by thier millitary/law enforcment. They have that ability if the intruder is affiliated with a company or settlement (through War or Feud).....they lose it once the intruder is not. It's patently absurd that they can't effectively enforce the law in thier own territory without becoming a criminal there themselves.

If we really wanted to make this realistic....once a person commited a crime in a territory they'd remain a criminal there forever after...unless absolved by the settlements own justice system or laws. While not advocating to do so....as banditry should be a viable path within the game.....law enforcment/millitary should not become automaticaly handcuffed simply because a character chose to remain unaffiliated.

Finally the bandit really doesn't suffer much due to lack of high level training because thier desired prey will usualy be merchants/crafters with no PvP training or experienced....once they run into people with serious combat capacity, most of them will not want to engage in the first place or run if they are already engaged.

@ Grumpy Mel,

Your assumption that these tactics are solely "bandit modus operandi" is actually limiting the the scope of the usage.

Many settlements, particularly the more aggressive ones will use these "Monsters in the Basement."

A Bandit Company, made up of main characters, will use feuds and or faction to create their pool of consequence free targets. Raiding outposts will also be another source, where reputation loss is still unlikely and the alignment shifts if any are not undesirable as long as not paired with low reputation.

My usage of "bandits" here is simply descriptive of the type of activity the character/alt was engaged in rather then the type of organization they are supporting.

I'm sure there will be some bandits and bandit companies that operate differently then described. They are not as problematic as those I describe since (at least in theory) they can be held accountable for thier actions...as they will pay a price for feuding and they can (theoriticaly) be held accountable for thier activities by being marked as targets of feud in return. There is some mechanism within the system as we currently understand it to make things work there.

What I infer, is that absent any other compensating control, there will be a very strong motivation for unaffiliated bandits precisely because they would circumvent some of the controls that would ordinarly be in place to help make them accountable for thier activities and allow settlement owners to counter-act said activities.

If your company starts raiding or engaging in banditry against a settlement then at least theoriticaly that settlement could feud or declare War upon you....and thus not have to wait until your company members initiate a first strike while raiding to engage them in battle. Then it's all about, IMO, whether the cost of Feuds is reasonable enough to give the average settlement some chance at counter-acting such tactics.

With no company affiliation and and an NPC settlement membership.... there is nothing one can target for feud or war.