Klockan's page

Klockan wrote:

morewardogs wrote:

So lets say I start progressing through the fighter skills and then once i'm about half way through I go into the cleric set. Can I then later go back and finish the fighter skills and have access to all the fighter abilities?

All class abilities are directly tied to gearslots so for each slot you will have to choose between fighter and cleric.

Do you have a quote for this? I don't believe I have read anything that points at class abilities being tied to gear slots.

I had understood we would only be able to have a certain number of abilities active at a time however

Yes, you are right, I was thinking of how it worked for wizards. But some are tied to gearslots for everyone, like offensive abilities are tied to your weapon.

So lets say I start progressing through the fighter skills and then once i'm about half way through I go into the cleric set. Can I then later go back and finish the fighter skills and have access to all the fighter abilities?

All class abilities are directly tied to gearslots so for each slot you will have to choose between fighter and cleric.

leperkhaun wrote:

Stephen Cheney wrote:

Technically, you have a Reflex (and Fortitude and Will) Save that gets added to your Base Defense (which comes primarily from the Tier of your armor). So I tend to abstract "the number you actually want to roll to hit with an attack that targets Reflex, which is the sum of Reflex Save and Base Defense" as "Reflex Defense." But that's probably not the easiest thing in the world to remember or use consistently.

I'll try to do an informal poll around the office and see whether anyone has strong feelings on what to call it :D .

Honestly I like what you are doing now. I do think that sitting down and explaining what it means (like you just did) is helpful.

Base defense - simple enough its based on how good your armor is
Reflex/will/fort save - A stat that increases your defense against that type of attack.
Reflex/will/fort defense - the sum of your base defense + save that is used to determine how well you defend against that type of attack.

To increase your reflex defense you either need to train a +1 reflex save or increase your tier of armor.

At least to me it makes perfect sense and the part I like about it is that you know what each part of total defense is from.

Keep in mind, if I am correct from one of the blogs I read, Your mention of "Want better reflex defense, get +1 to reflex or upgrade armor" isn't necessary correct. The armor isn't always a direct upgrade to the saves, especially reflex that relies on movement that heavier armor restricts. You might have to go down in armor to get a better reflex save. Just like one of the blogs mentioned, lighter armor = better "spell" resistances and heavier armor is better physical resistance. Since most saves are vs spells, I would argue that "to get a better reflex defense, get +1 reflex or lower your armor category."

I could be wrong but that is my understanding. I know it TT, the armor only affects your + dex to AC, not to your saves, but it makes sense to apply it to...

Just to clear up the confusion, reflex save the same thing as AC in PO. The attackers attackskill gets compared to the defenders reflex save together with a dice roll.

Bringslite wrote:

@leperkhaun

It may be more productive to let a little bit of the old more rigid class definitions go. Instead, look at a character as a collection of skills that he chooses to learn as he explores our little corner of the River Kingdoms.

Except what if i already have a specific character in mind? What if iv already created backstory and history for this character? What if this character's RP isnt that he is some soldier or a fighting cleric, but a paladin?

Remember that in DnD a paladin isnt some guy with a sword and they arnt a cleric. A fighter can be many different things, but a paladin, a paladin is someone specific.

Thats the thing, people say ohhh just do a fighter/cleric. My character isnt a fighter/cleric. yes i probably could create a good almost paladin by dipping into what a figher and cleric does. But i dont want a fighter/cleric.

But anyway its a dead horse, ryan already said he wont be doing respecs.

Ill play something random i dont care about while my main gathers xp for when paladins and half orcs are released.

If you were a true roleplayer then you wouldn't need the specific name "paladin" to be displayed, you could just follow that route anyway getting paladin like skills etc. If you really need a label "paladin" I am sure that GW can give you such a label but I don't see what problem that would solve.

Special ammo in world of tanks can only be acquired by spending real money every time they shoot with their tank, so everyone who wants to be competitive needs to spend real money. That is way different from EVE.

That is not the comparison you are making.

This is the correct comparison:

You hike far up a mountain, clear the ground, and build a house. You have a great view and wonderful clean fresh air. It takes you 10 years to do this. No one else has such a house.

I pay a guy to go make me a comparable house on the other side of the mountain. A few weeks later, I move in. I'm just the first of many, soon "mountain living" will be commonplace.

Has your house lost value?

If you apply the principle of supply and demand, then yes it certainly has lost value.

1. It does not make sense. What are the physical or magical inhibitors that prevent me from looting the unthreaded items of my choice?

Then how do threading make sense? Item destruction works in exactly the same way as threading, just that your character failed to keep them on him during his banishment so they are lost to the void. There, now random item destruction is logical, a part of it gets banished with its master. What doesn't make sense though is that the player can loot 100% of the items if he gets back himself. It could be lored in a similar way to threading though, that some of your items gets put in a dimensional pocket which only you can open and if anyone else tries anything it gets destroyed.

2. How does GW prevent some one from filling their pockets with crap, to throw the randomness off, protecting the semi valuable unthreaded items?

Well, maybe each item just have a 50% chance to be lootable and the rest are lost? But maybe that solution is too simple for you?

Klockan wrote:

There is no reason why crafting quests wouldn't involve real materials and real items. If you instead of completing it steal the material you will gain chaotic and lose reputation and be unable to take more crafting quests from that guy so I don't believe that doing that will be overly viable.

Remember, we're talking about new characters. Make character, steal mats, hand to alt, remake character, steal mats, hand to alt, remake character, steal mats, hand to alt.

Would be faster to just harvest new mats instead...

Klockan wrote:

I don't really get your pure crafter character, do you really want a character that only watches progress bars without even venturing outside? That is not what you want to do, that is not what anyone wants to do. But, in the case were someone actually wants that they could even make a crafting related quest! You get materials and are asked to return with crafted goods, allowing you to watch your progress bar for a few minutes and then earn some cash! That sounds fun, eh?

First, yes, there will be people who want to play pure crafters. There will be people who want to make crafter/merchant hybrids who make goods and play the market, all without ever setting foot outside their settlement gates.

As for crafting quests, please see my previously posted thoughts on that subject.

There is no reason why crafting quests wouldn't involve real materials and real items. If you instead of completing it steal the material you will gain chaotic and lose reputation and be unable to take more crafting quests from that guy so I don't believe that doing that will be overly viable.

@Mel, I agree. You don't need to, but that doesn't mean you can't. A new player can always invest in some relevant gathering and processing, or can be given a hand up by veteran players, or any of a dozen other ways of doing it. My suggestion is simply one way of allowing the player to step into the game and start doing what he wants to do, instead of having to jump through a bunch of other hoops to begin doing so.

I don't really get your pure crafter character, do you really want a character that only watches progress bars without even venturing outside? That is not what you want to do, that is not what anyone wants to do. But, in the case were someone actually wants that they could even make a crafting related quest! You get materials and are asked to return with crafted goods, allowing you to watch your progress bar for a few minutes and then earn some cash! That sounds fun, eh?

And about crafting, if it is going to require active involvement then you will be able to earn money on crafting even bad stuff since high tier crafters most likely wont bother crafting low tier stuff if it takes them extensive amounts of time doing so. And even if the active involvement is minimal you still have a limit on how much you can craft per day meaning that unless low tier crafting is the most lucrative you wont see people doing it once they can craft better stuff.

I don't get it why anyone would believe that their cashshop is more extensive than EVE onlines? Technically in EVE you can buy every item in the game with PLEX, since people sell things for ISK that you can get through PLEX, but that is just an indirect cashshop were resources aren't produces from thin air.

@Bringslite,

My Philosophy: Games are supposed to be about PLAYING games not some fantasy medieval version of the Home Shopping Network. When there is competition involved it's supposed to be a measure of the individuals ability to PLAY the game...not their willingness to spend money. If that's all we really want to measure, you and I don't need a game to do that. We can stand around burning dollar bills until one of us decides to stop. When I'm in a FPRPG, I want to divorce myself from real world considerations as much as possible.

The secret is I actualy have pretty deep pockets. I'd gladly pay $100 per month for a quality game that DIDN'T resort to cash shops. When you think about it, $1000 per year is pretty cheap as far as hobbies go. I often spend that much or more on my other hobbies.

That's not the issue, never been. For the "GAMER" games are supposed to be about playing the game. Just as for the sportsman it's about playing the sport. It's not even "Winning" that's important. That's where Ryan gets it wrong about alot of us old-schoolers. How one comports oneself on the playing field is alot more important then whether a W or an L goes into the results column. Unfortunately we seem to be raising a whole generation of Lance Armstrongs who don't seem to understand that concept.

It's what make Sports or Games different then going to see a movie or going to the amusement park or going out to dinner. They aren't just any old "entertainment activity".....they are in very specific categories.

This is not a sport, there are no such things as "fair fights", there are no battlegrounds, no arenas, no such things. What matters is how much gold you gain through looting and how much gold you lose from dying. How much money any single person spends doesn't matter, if a city has hundreds of people it is still just a drop in the ocean. Not to mention that to buy anything that far from civilization you would have to transport the goods bought all the way from one of the trading hubs allowing enemies to intercept it on the way. Because buying anything from your allies doesn't really change anything in a war, you'd have to buy it from outside sources.

Hobs The Short wrote:

To not be able talk with your opponent stripped all the role-play, intrigue, and player created content/story right out of the conflict and reduced it to pure PvP.

I think that is one of the worst designs in mmorpgs I've ever seen.

How so? You could still talk through emotes, you just didn't share a common language. So you could say /wave /laugh /thanks /applause /point /no /yes and so on. That made for much nicer interaction and much more roleplay than any other mmorpg I have ever seen. The feeling you get when you make friends through emotes is priceless. The language barrier in wow was probably one of the best decisions they made with the game. Having a language barrier is also very realistic.

How is this an issue at all? As long as the market will be on the same scale as EVE's it will be way too big to be gamed. In EVE the tritanium market in Jita alone have a moving average of 30 billion units per day, or roughly 180 billion isk per day, which if converted to game time is roughly 90 thousand hours or if converted to real money it is roughly 8000$. So to just soak up the daily supply of tritanium in Jita you would have to invest 8000$ per day, how many do you think would want to spend that much money just to upset the economy in the game? Not to mention that as you buy tritanium prices will rise creating incentives for more people to mine eventually saturating the market at a higher price meaning that all your money got spent for nothing. As soon as you stop buying the prices will return to normal and you will run at a huge deficit.

Bluddwolf wrote:

avari3 wrote:

That's why chaotic settlements or chaotic characters within a settlement are rare. Chaotic settlements are usually just barbarian tribes, monster groups or bandits.

The River Kingdoms are obviously the exception rather than the rule:

Daggermark: Pop: 27,460 CN

Gralton: Pop: 9,200 CN

Mivon: Pop: 10,870 CN

Pitax: Pop: 8700 CN

Deadbridge: Pop: 4,113 CN

Riverton: Pop: 572 CN

Urigen: Pop: 1,213 CN

That's good news to me! CN is far and away my fave alignment, I really hope it's viable in this game so I can have one of my chars play it.

That said, the description of Daggermark isn't very CN at all. Sounds NE all the way. A kingdom ruled by its guilds is not chaotic, I don't see that at all. I think they just put in CN because its the biggest city in a CN country. There is plenty of of things in the Golarion setting I am not a fan of. The whole thing seems rushed and not very good to be honest.

Mivon and Pitax are MUCH better examples of CN settlements. The other classic CN settlement I forgot to mention is frontier towns.

How can a city which is mostly controlled by rogues (Chaotic) be anything but chaotic? Poisoning and assassinations aren't legal, its just that none have the power to stop them. So since the law enforcement is too weak to stop the chaos, the chaos (aka the guilds) reigns which means that the settlement is chaotic.

Tigari wrote:

I say let people use their real money to buy "plex" then sell for gold, just to turn around and buy some of the best gear. Then, when they become an assassination target, because the enemy knows they "buy" top of the line gear, and I bring my fellow assassins to assist (better to be safe then sorry with tough targets) and he loses it all, we can all just sit back and thank him for spending the actual money to help equip my assassin with ( or resell if its not gear I can use)

But if I then offered a plex to any guild that would grief you by hunting and killing you repeatedly, are you still glad the game is pay to win? If someone used real wold money to make your life miserable, would you still thank them? IF they spent real world money to buy high bounties on yur head every day for a year, would that be fun still?

How is this different from giving in game gold to people for harassing said person? Or just paying peoples subscriptions for them for doing it, that isn't illegal in any game. Yet this hasn't happened in any game ever... Its a non issue.

However making game subscription time tradeable is great for both hardcore gamers and casual gamers. Hardcore gamers got so much time to grind money that they will have more than they know what to do with it, letting them trade gold for subscription gives them a reason to play that much. Casual gamers on the other hand will gain levels much faster than they can grind gold, so to keep up with the hardcore gamers they can pay the hardcore gamers money to give them their items. Also it gives you something of real value to strive for, getting that free subscription quota every month takes a bit of work.

Ace-of-Spades wrote:

I agree Doggan, but not if it wasn't tied directly to the games mass reputation mechanic.

Perhaps it could be made a separate crafter "Contract Completion Reputation." Make it a percentage. Say you're really consistent at fulfilling your contracts and you have a 100% delivery rate. Something comes up, you can't make it IG to deliver your product so you take a hit. Maybe you now have a 97% delivery rate. Not a terrible thing to see when you're looking at bids and their reputation for delivering products.

The biggest danger in establishing contract completion reputation would be people using alts or friends to establish an artificial reputation, using that to qualify for a big contract, then taking the rep hit and the resources they were supposed to craft into products. It's a crooked world out there, sometimes.

But, all you need is to add a safety payment worth more than the item to be crafted. So the crafter needs to pay a million gold to get your resources, then he gets 1.2 million back when he returns it to you. If he cons you then you get to keep a million gold so you are happy, if he doesn't con you you got your deal so you are happy as well.

Do you guys actually want there to be no difference between raising skeletons and summoning celestials other than some minor combat differences? If a paladin sees a guy walking around with a throng of skeletons around him, the paladin would lose his paladin status if he did the paladin thing of attacking the necromancer?

While I understand the opinions contrary to me, I ask a few questions. Why does it appear that the alignment system is designed more to promote conflict between players than as a system to address that player's morality? Why does it appear that this alignment system is severely restrictive to a players interactions with the world around him/her compared to the TTRPG? And finally, why do you believe that the alignment system has been oriented away from a tool of role-play?

Because the majority of players will not be roleplaying, they will only care about game mechanics. Since the settlement system will shape the whole world, you want its game mechanics to shape the world into a world that feels like a fantasy world. If you give the freedom to allow any combinations without any reprecautions then every settlement will just allow all alignment which makes the system moot. If you force the alignment to be the average of the members then remember that you can funnel alts into a city to alter its mean alignment, so you can easily game the system. With this system a chaotic evil character needs a chaotic or evil settlement, no amount of min-maxing or tweaking will get you out of that one.

Actually having chaotic evil towns, chaotic good towns, lawful good towns and lawful evil towns makes the fantasy world come alive in another way than just having every town be the generic mishmash. This creates a world where it is possible to roleplay, even if the alignment system in itself isn't a part of roleplaying. Also I don't really understand why anyone would feel restricted roleplay wise when he hears he can only be one step away from lawful good in such a settlement. I mean, do you really need a label stating that you are "true neutral" to act that way? In these rules being chaotic means that you rob people and being evil means that you murder people, they are not roleplay labels but pvp labels. Stop treating them as roleplay labels and everything will become much simplers.

Since the game is free to play as long as you don't buy experience I'd guess that many who maxes out a class would stop paying for the game.

I don't think that they will have a global auction house. How else would trade between regions be different than in region trade?
Quote from blog:

Typically we see all this activity happening within a single hex, but trade and exchange between hexes is also critical to the economy. Most of the crafting system is designed around inputs from many sources which will not be geographically co-located, so each hex will likely have a list of things it needs to import and a list of things it can export to raise funds needed to buy those imports. Some of a hex's imports and some of its exports will be generated through resident characters' interactions with PvE content.

Klockan wrote:

You have to keep in mind that a TN merchant in PO have killed and robbed innocent victims, just not as much as a chaotic or evil character. Such a person would surely not fit in a LG settlement?

That is an assumption on your part, and likely not a probable one either. I could be a TN merchant and not have killed a single thing, nor broken a single law. I spent my entire time just buying and selling items in the auction house.

The belief that a Lawful Good settlement would not tolerate a truly neutral, benign and potentially economically beneficial person in their settlement is Lawful or Good. It is in fact segregationist, and Evil at its core.

Since you don't break laws and are benign I could make a case for your character actually being lawful good. But anyhow, I could see reasons for allowing true neutral characters in every settlement, but I still see reasons for why they would want to have this kind of alignment restrictions on who can join as well since alignment is closely tied to pvp mechanics. In a lawfull good settlement none of the members are allowed to attack each other without losing their membership which makes them good for newer players for example.

I do not see any benefit in a hard coded alignment restriction to being a member of a settlement (or chartered company for that matter). All I can see this type of game mechanic achieving is pushing people who would like to play together away from each other (and in general players engaging in most forms of PvP towards chaotic / evil settlements/CCs, which I doubt is GW's goal).

The PVP system allows people to pick sides and allows you to see which kind of people lives in different settlements. As a good guy you are more or less safe near all good aligned settlements since there only people who don't ruthlessly attack good characters may live and any evil character have a hard time there. As a lawful guy you are safe near all lawful settlements since there only people who uphold the law may live. Near chaotic evil settlements none is safe.

I don't think that most will go for chaotic evil, mostly because you have less places to go without getting murdered around every corner.

I was attempting to point out that I find it extremely odd that a TN merchant can not be a citizen(member) of a LG settlement.

You have to keep in mind that a TN merchant in PO have killed and robbed innocent victims, just not as much as a chaotic or evil character. Such a person would surely not fit in a LG settlement?

(I would point out though that the Pathfinder werewolf template is only CR+1, which equals LA+1. LA+1 becomes negligible around level 5 or 6 for PCs.)

CR and LA is far from the same. Look at vampire for example, it has CR+2 and LA+8. CR only measures combat power while LA also measures utility.

Klockan wrote:

Why are so many pointing out the obvious? "You drop your inventory" "If you are cursed you still drop stuff!" etc. I know, it is in their blog and I can read...

Because your posts suggest you haven't comprehended the information in the blog. The blog posts and dev comments on the forms have already addressed many of these issues, but you refuse to consider that they may be working and instead constantly repeat the same arguments.

I know the devs answers to these questions but they are mostly non satisfactory. They somehow think that you can get an economy as deep as EVE's while removing almost all aspects of it except for consumables. Of course you can get a deep economy with just consumables as well, just look at the real world! There it costs a lot of money just to live! But the real world is grindier than any mmo so I don't think that it is always a good model.

As for consumable grinding, how will this possibly be a grind? Consumables will be able to be crafted by someone with absolutely no skill in crafting, and will be the primary way for newbie crafters to make money while they are learning how to craft. Therefore they will be READILY available on any settlement market, and will only require gold. OR if you don't want to do that, you will also likely be able to buy consumables with cash. Going to a market to buy something everyone is making is doesn't sound like a grind.

If you don't believe me, fine. Wait until early enrollment and see for yourself.

I have read the devs posts. How is buying them in a shop a grind? Well, how do you get the gold? Do you get gold for free? No, of course not. You will have to earn your gold somehow. On average pvp costs a lot of money so only a few fraction earn it there. Instead you have to go do pve to get gold for your consumables. Thus a forced grind that everyone who wants to participate in pvp except the top few have to put up with. If consumables should be the main reason to have crafters it also evens out the cost a lot between the victors and the losers so chances are that very very few can earn money on pvp.

Consumables aren't a major coin drain, because they aren't literally made out of coin. Try comparing them to ammunition in Eve in terms of cost.

Are you saying that this is a good thing? EVE's ammunition market is almost nonexistant, how is that supposed to replace anything at all? The devs have already stated that they intend for armors and weapons to be a small niche market since most of it will never get dropped so people don't have to replace it. Instead they want to focus on consumables. Consumables were however not a big thing in EVE, they were ultracheap compared to all other expenses so you could more or less ignore it. And it isn't a gold sink for the worlds economy, no, but it is a gold sink for the pvp'ers. In EVE every time someone loses a ship they will have to pay the crafters, in PO everytime someone fights at all they will have to pay the crafters. If consumables aren't that important or expensive, then consumables won't replace the economy they removed by allowing people to thread most of their gear, which is bad. If consumables are that important and expensive it is bad for other reasons. Do you get my point now?

Consumables aren't a major coin drain, because they aren't literally made out of coin. Try comparing them to ammunition in Eve in terms of cost.

No, that maths was flawed since it was under optimal circumstances for the overleveled one and getting a lvl 4 sword or just get something that deals elemental damage instead will be enough to penetrate almost all armor in the game.(Based on their numbers) And please don't bring up possible mechanics they haven't talked about that probably wont be in. Or do you honestly think that they allow you to protect your gear to prevent griefing but at the same time gives some a sunder ability to just ignore this mechanic?

Edit: But of course they said that there wont be a big market for arms and armor in a thread, so it might just be one of thems opinion. Honestly I hope you guys are right and this is a non issue.

Here is the post:

I wanted to mention a few things about the economy that this blog and a few of our responses imply that I think may have flown a bit under the radar.

The factor that warps the system is the thread. Threading your most valuable goods means that they will not exit the economy often, which implies that they will be over-supplied vs. the demand.

We mentioned earlier, but it may have been overlooked, that we intend to introduce a wide range of consumables for all sorts of effects and bonuses. You will be expected to apply a number of these consumables during a combat encounter. So the consumption rate of these things is going to be ferocious.

This will create a very liquid market for these consumables, which will be crafted from low quality resources and be craftable by inexperienced characters. Demand will be very high which means that making the stuff will be a path to return a reasonable profit.

However, since you are very likely to thread your arms & armor(*), demand for those types of items will be greatly reduced. As you become able to make more and more powerful items the market for what you make will get smaller and smaller and eventually it will become easily saturated. What is likely to happen is that at the high end, you will be able to find the best arms & armor, across a wide variety of keyword configurations, available for sale in any moderately well supplied market, but the inventory will turn over very slowly. A small number of high end crafters will saturate this market very quickly, and then they'll cease crafting more stuff, nor will new high end crafters see much point in crafting more inventory for a market with a low demand. There will be some demand as characters gain enough character ability to use the high end stuff, and as some is lost to mischief and misadventure, but the consumption rate will be a fraction of that of other types of gear due to threading.

Everything not arms and armor will not have this problem, because you won't want to thread it (while...

Also for people using free gear, they will just use one of the better weapons in the game and together with that use the best armor they can thread together with that weapon. Thus they can damage everything and the only downside is that they take a bit more damage from enemies, the biggest difference is that low leveled characters can still hurt them. But at least to me it sounds like consumables will be way more costly and in much higher demand than in EVE.

Ryan Dancy was at CCP and very involved in EVE. I can assure you that EVE is a huge influence on the Economic Engine that PFO will be running on.

Why are so many pointing out the obvious? "You drop your inventory" "If you are cursed you still drop stuff!" etc. I know, it is in their blog and I can read...

Goblinworks is aware of the fact that weapons and armor are likely to end up being a separate market from everything else, and there will be smaller demand for them, and is working around it. We will have at least 18 months of "beta" in Early Enrollment in order to make sure the balance is right.

I believe it when I see it, none but CCP so far have gotten this right and many have tried. And then I don't really see how forcing people to have excessive amounts of consumables (their fix) is better in any way at all, instead of punishing deaths they just punish everyone who plays the game by applying a "tax" in the form of consumables. How many liked grinding potions for wow raids? Well, good news folks, that grinding have been reinvented in Pathfinder Online!! That could work as a money sink, yes, but if that's their model then I won't play this game... Honestly I was so appalled by the idea of consumables being driving the whole economy that I didn't even consider that it could work if you tweak it a bit. Basically what could work is that you "borrow" half your gear in the form of consumables instead of bying it.

If my worries turns out to be unfounded, then great! I know that a lot of what I said is assumptions. It depends on how effective consumables are, how expensive said consumables are and how good the the best gear you can thread is. If it turns out that consumables are so strong that it is impossible to fight without them, then fine. If a person who buys affordable gear can beat five or so comparable persons in free gear then it is also fine.

However we lack information about how this works, and the longer we wait discussing this the more it gets set in stone. Changing this after the beta is released will be all but impossible. EVE would be dead a long time ago if it weren't for it having one of the harshest death penalties in mmorpgs ever. Why? Because everything about EVE sucks except for that one thing. Read this review, this is how the game was then and this is how the game is now:
http://www.gamespot.com/eve-online/reviews/eve-online-the-second-genesis-re view-6029978/

Yet even though it is mostly a boring snorefest people still play and love the game and it is seen as one of the deepest games ever, something which wouldn't be possible without the punishing deaths:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/05/14/how-eve-online-still-thrives-10-year s-later

I am not saying that we should make this game exactly like EVE, I really don't like EVE's gameplay. However if we want an economic and area control system like EVE's, then you need to have comparable punishments on death as EVE or it will all break down.

In EVE you can't fight if you don't craft, you don't need to craft personally but everything in the EVE world is playercrafted. The ships and weapons and ammunition noobs are buying when they first start out are playercrafted. All the ships that gets blown up in the really large fights are playercrafted. The demand and production for new ships is so large that the system follows normal laws of economics with supply and demand curves.

But if you make it possible to fight while circumventing the whole economical side of the game then you just ruined everything. I am not saying that this will certainly happen with the current system, just that it is likely to happen and it would be sad if such a thing ruined this great game.

I think the best way to assign rare races would be to have contests with a theme based on the race. Then if you win such a competition you can create a copy of your character with the same skills of the new race instead allowing you to continue on with that character. Such a competition could be an event named "Goblins seeks an allegiance!" and the chaotic evil settlement that pillages and plunders the most wins allowing all their members to switch to goblins. Since all these goblins were chaotic evil from the start very few are expected to turn good, so you might see the rare good goblin from time to time but most of them will be associated with that evil settlement.

Can you offer an alternative to the proposed system that most people can all agree on? Choices have to be made for everyone to give up some things so that all can be as content as is possible...

I have already proposed a few alternatives. I think the best compromise would be to let the number of threads depend on your gear rather than your level. If you use only level 4 gear you get the same number of threads that a normal level 4 character would have and so on. With this system the only way to thread everything would be to use the worst gear, and the more pieces you upgrade the more pieces you need to start risking. This way you can still choose to keep a few of your items (Which was why they wanted the thread system from the start) but running risk free means that you must use the worst gear in the game. This would be a rather minor change for people that don't intend to abuse the system and at the same time it would make dying meaningful. This game is a game that that I don't think can survive if you have completely free deaths without sacrificing almost all your combat potential.

Another question to discuss: If guy A have gear such that he loses worth 1 hour of work each time he dies while guy B have completely free deaths, how much advantage in percentage should this give guy A? In my opinion in that scenario A should be able to beat several B without much hassle even if they got the same levels.

Another few points:

1) The "zerging" side is going to rapidly accumulate more and more critical injury penalties, making them less and less effective, until they're literally just wasting the defenders time. At least until the PVP window closes and the higher end NPC guards return to hold things on their own.

Now you are just grasping at straws, no way critical injuries will persist after death considering that they can even get healed away.

2) The "zerging" side will still have to travel back from their respawn points, which are likely to be some distance away as everyone in the game shuns them and refuses them access to their settlements.

It wont be further away than the nearest settlement, why would they zerg anything further away than their nearest border?

3) If you were to make death full loss, you'd still be penalizing new players more than vets, since vets will have the funds to replace gear. If you make an exemption for starter-grade gear, then you have the same problems you're complaining about, just at a lower power level (which you contend is irrelevant when you have "infinite numbers").

Yes, veteran players always have the advantage anyway, even in EVE (Except that in EVE very old characters costs so much to revive that there is no reason at all for them to fly cheap ships). That is why there is no reason to make it even worse by making them in addition to all other advantages also lose less when they die.

Edit: Also note that I don't require that people lose everything on death, just that they always lose some of it unless they use the starter gear. If I use lvl 4 gear on a level 20 character then I should still lose as much of it as a lvl 1 character using the same gear. I'd prefer if higher level characters also had to pay gold, but that isn't as important and I can see reasons as to why people would not want that.

Klockan wrote:

You will never get anything from killing bandits and fights over settlements will degenerate into endless zombie hordes clashing into each other since they don't lose anything on death.

That does sound pretty much like all PvP ever, yes. :p

Not in EVE. There while alliances break down because the members don't want to lose their stuff. Morale is very important to hold together people then, if your army scatters as soon as they realize that they might lose a lot on this battle then you should get a better army or give them better incentives. One way could be to supply the army with a standard set of gear that you mass-produce in your settlement.

If two kingdoms are at war, you do want them to duke it out. If you punish players harshly for taking part, you end up where only the most dedicated would bother. And I don't really see that as healthy for the game.

If two kingdoms are at war and one kingdoms subjects don't even care enough about their kingdom to defend it with their life and gear then that kingdom deserves to lose. Things like morale and loyalty becomes more important than numbers. Not to mention the importance of logistics! Have you ever wondered why EVE can manage to have such deep player interactions while not a single other mmo have managed the same? The fear of death in EVE is very fundamental for this to work.

Klockan" wrote:

They said that you start with enough threads to thread a full set of starter gear. Then you can get more threads, meaning that you can get a full set of threaded gear that would be significantly better than the noob gear.

And about the death curse, that is just if you break the rules and grief or so. That wont apply to most players.

You will get more threads, but your gear progression is designed to outpace your ability to thread it. Yes, over time you will be able to thread better gear, but even the most advanced players are unlikely to be able to thread over low-mid Tier 2 gear, and that's only after years of advancement. And, again, you still lose everything in your inventory, since none of it can be threaded.

Low-mid Tier 2 gear will be plenty good to get for free based on the numbers we have gotten.

Regarding the death curse, you can place a death curse on anyone who kills you (except masked assassins), so, not as uncommon as you seem to think.

Not according to their blog:

Edit:

Klocken wrote:

It works as long as you only consider normal play, it doesn't work when you consider situations where people know they will be taking risks. You will never get anything from killing bandits and fights over settlements will degenerate into endless zombie hordes clashing into each other since they don't lose anything on death.

Then they're operating at a reduced effectiveness to do so.

But reduced effectiveness doesn't really matter if you got the number advantage. Basically as long as you got enough people you can take a settlement without risking anything except the time it takes for people to siege it. Such guilds would not need crafters or so, all they need is to soak up all the battle hungry teens on the continent and get them to zerg cities.

I got to agree with Slaunyeh on this. The death penalty shouldnt be to harsh. Losing your things out of your inventory and unthreaded gear should be enough. I would be sad exploring on your own with good gear not all threaded being ambushed bye a large band of PC and not having a shot of getting back to your corps and losing all gear you worked hard for. Or am i seeing this wrong i'm not into pvp that much, i only used to play it in lotro where there's no penalty for dying except for some coins for repairs i believe.

Gear isn't the same thing in an mmorpg like this and classical mmorpgs like Lotro. I understand your concerns but it wont really be like that. And really your concern have nothing to do with what I am talking about, I don't want you who play normally to lose more. If you constantly use the best gear you got then you will lose some of it on death which is fine as it is.

Since you can't do anything to avoid dying, excessive death penalties are really counter productive. They don't actually accomplish anything other than imposing a tax on being outnumbered. You died. You already lost time returning to where you died, and you probably were carrying items in your inventory, so I don't see why you need to be punished any further.

It works as long as you only consider normal play, it doesn't work when you consider situations where people know they will be taking risks. You will never get anything from killing bandits and fights over settlements will degenerate into endless zombie hordes clashing into each other since they don't lose anything on death.

Perhaps soul-binding upkeep costs something up front or per death? Not really sure: Maybe if the economy needs it but atst you do want players engaging in combat more than not so a death penalty can't be too onerous?

If you lose everything you wear then the death penalty is as harsh as you want it to be. The stronger you are the more you risk when you play. Being able to thread more and more as you gain levels is thus counterproductive, you both gets stronger and lose less on death. The least they could do would be to fix the amount of threads so you can't thread more than your startergear, or have the amount of threads scale with your gear instead of your level so that you always lose at least a percentage of your gear unless you use the worst gear in the game.

Threading will only protect all of your gear with the lowest grade of gear. As your equipment gets more powerful, each piece will take a larger portion of your threads, leaving you unable to thread everything. Could you confine yourself to just the few pieces of threaded gear? Sure, but you're reducing your effectiveness rather significantly to do so. Not to mention that only equipped gear can be threaded, so anything you have in your inventory will also be lost. Each respawn point you wish to bind to will also use a portion of your threads, meaning that if you want to respawn nearby, you have less for your gear. You also have Death Curses that can temporarily reduce your available threads, leaving you with even less threaded gear.

They said that you start with enough threads to thread a full set of starter gear. Then you can get more threads, meaning that you can get a full set of threaded gear that would be significantly better than the noob gear.

And about the death curse, that is just if you break the rules and grief or so. That wont apply to most players.

As I have understood it, if you die with only your threaded gear on then you don't lose anything at all? Not even a bit of gold? Threaded gear is great, I agree, but dying without consequences is not. Even games like world of warcraft had consequences worse than this on death, there at least you had to pay for repairs.

How many here agrees that you should not be able to fight and die with no consequences at all? If you do it completely naked, okay, but doing it in mid tier gear is just wrong.

Imagine EVE's economy if high level people resurrected with free battleships... It just doesn't work. The reason EVE works is because money matters, if you kill their battleships they have to build new ones which costs a lot of money. When they got no battleships left you basically steamroll them. But if battleships where free then none would care if they lost an armada of 100 battleships, they just respawn 10 seconds later... Even if high tier people are twice as strong they still have no chance against endless free respawns.

Then not to mention the player mentality when they realize that dying costs nothing. We will start to see people suiciding to teleport home and other stupidly reckless behavior. And since there is a gear level which has free deaths then everything else will be compared to that, you would have to get a huge power boost to make people actually want to risk anything.

Lastly, this also makes high leveled characters imbalanced versus low leveler characters. In eve it costs more to die the more skills you got. In Pathfinder online it costs less to die the more experience you got. So, a high level character fights a mid level one. Both have the same gear. But the high level character have a lot of passive bonuses so he is stronger. Also if the mid level character for some reasons manages to pull off a win anyway, he will get way less loot than the high level character would, and he would lose more if he were to die. How is this fair at all?

but I think it bears repeating that the players are by their nature supposed to be the unique, the unusual, the exotic, the tip of the curve. So what if "everyone" will play the race which the lore dictates is ultra-rare? If you take a sample of a population by actively selecting the most outstanding members of that population, it will be the players themselves.

I say the only badwrongfun is cockblocking the players from enjoying their fantasy their own way. And that's all it really comes down to. Someone wants to stop someone else from expressing themselves just because they have their own idea about how everyone else should behave.

The fitting punishment for such bad manners is to maroon them as a mundane joe in an ocean of sparkling snowflakes...

You are arguing based on the TT game where PC's are rare. In an mmorpg PC's are very common, like the most common thing in the world. When every party and army has 50% drow's, undines, catfolks, tieflings et cetera the atmosphere in the game changes drastically compared to having mostly humans. Sure some might like that kind of fantasy, but most prefers when people look like humans, which all core races except half-orcs do.

And. It's one of my main objections to PFO: that you'd better get into the big boy's club on the ground floor or else you'll forever be the tiny fish in the pond. Ageism is just as bad as racism and sexism. It's frankly horrifying to think of it being codified and enforced by game mechanics.

In EVE its a non issue, no alliance would reject you just because you had low skills. But in EVE it costs more to revive the older your character is so having a young character has its perks as well. I'd like to see a cost of resurrecting in Pathfinder as well based on how much experience you got. As it is now high level characters can go out with average gear and then lose nothing each death which feels awful.

Klockan wrote:

Bringslite wrote:

Not sure if I comprehend. Are you saying targets gambling is best or bandits hitting gambling targets is best? Who gets the jackpot?

Seems to me, if targets gamble and lose, they lose a lot. I f bandits gamble and lose, they lose little or nothing.

Bandits gamble with their time, each minute they are not getting any prey is a minute wasted. But once in a while bandits hit the jackpot and gets rich. Traders gambles with risk, each time they don't get caught they earn a lot of money but once in a while they lose even more due to bandits.

So yes to both of your questions. Traders earn the most while gambling which is why there will be a lot of gambling traders. Bandits earn the most when targeting these gambling traders, so that is what they will do.

The bolded part is troubling. Are you one of those rare individuals that wins more than loses when gambling? For the overwhelmingly vast percentage, gamblers lose more than they win. Now this can be modified by your actual odds but I am talking in general, with odds slightly or greater against you.

For the overwhelming majority gambling is positive! What do you think banks get their revenue from? Only stupid people take gambles they don't believe are profitable. Anyhow, if you are a skilled merchant you should be able to avoid most bandits (you wont fasttravel of course) and if you take the goods into dangerous evil areas their worth should be way more than the safe areas you bought them in. If you believe that you can earn a lot of cash as a trader without taking risks then you are ignorant.

Not sure if I comprehend. Are you saying targets gambling is best or bandits hitting gambling targets is best? Who gets the jackpot?

Seems to me, if targets gamble and lose, they lose a lot. I f bandits gamble and lose, they lose little or nothing.

Bandits gamble with their time, each minute they are not getting any prey is a minute wasted. But once in a while bandits hit the jackpot and gets rich. Traders gambles with risk, each time they don't get caught they earn a lot of money but once in a while they lose even more due to bandits.

So yes to both of your questions. Traders earn the most while gambling which is why there will be a lot of gambling traders. Bandits earn the most when targeting these gambling traders, so that is what they will do.

Very high risk vs. very high reward (low investment). These target types are, IMO, gamblers and fools.

Don't underestimate the prevalence of gamblers and fools! We know from EVE that these people aren't that uncommon.

Watch this video from EVE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txSJqCQUsSs
They tried to transport things through low security areas by travelling in hard to find places. An extremely lucrative endeavor and as long as none manages to scan you down in time it is safe. Attacking people armed to the teeth isn't worth it most of the time. Attacking people who assumes that their way of travel is safe is where you can hit the jackpot.

Cormac wrote:

Nightdrifter wrote:

I also had fun with it and decided to see what would happen with the level 4 vs the level 1 from the blog. Spoiler: the level 4 can probably take on a small swarm of them.

Would 5 lvl 1s be enough to take 1 lvl 4 down? (only one lvl 1 surviving though)

In a toe to toe fight (standing there just hacking at eachother) with the numbers we've been given and assuming the level 4 is in heavy armor?

Not a chance. They'll bring the level 4 down some, but 5 level 1's toe to toe wouldn't bring the level 4 to half hp. If they're all wearing heavy armor they might hit half hp on the level 4.

Using hit and run tactics of swooping in/kiting the slowed down level 4 and using magic against his likely much weaker magic defenses?

With skilled players ... maybe if they go magic heavy or know how to kite well. But without knowing specific numbers it's hard to say.

My gut instinct is:

5 level 1 fighters? The level 4 wins. He simply out-damages them too much.

A mix including mobile melee and casters*? The melee die and the casters bring the level 4 down. The melee would be purely to distract the level 4 as the casters do the majority of the damage.

* I assume for this guess that caster damage works the same way as melee damage, but against different defenses. As plate is probably weak against magic (as Stephen Cheney has hinted), then it would be something similar to the casters seeing resistance on par with what light armor gives against melee.

Actually with those numbers 5 lvl 1 fighters would win against 1 lvl 4 fighter given that all lvl 1 fighters can attack the lvl 4 fighter at the same time and they are using heavy armor. It takes 10 strikes to down the first lvl 1 fighter, in that time the 5 lvl 1 fighters have made 10 attacks each so 50 attacks. Then before the next falls they have accumulated 90, then 120, then 140. 140 attacks kills the lvl 4 so one to two lvl 1 survives. Your calculations assumes a series of duels, not them slugging it out in a group.

I might be looking at this the wrong way and I'm definitely not saying that I'm against "banditry skills". It's just, if I were to play a bandit I can't see how I would prioritize anything other than stuff that helps me kill other players (and make a getaway before their friends catch me). If there is a FUN way to introduce USEFUL specialized banditry skills and abilities in the game I am all for it.

You haven't played EVE, because then you would understand how this would work. PO will be heavily based on the EVE model, so lets talk about EVE.

In EVE to mine and transport minerals you need a very specialized set of skills and gear. You can't use them for combat at all, basically anyone could kill them easily. I would assume that PO would work in a similar fashion. So the bandit doesn't need to be strong, he just needs to be stronger than a weakly armed hauler who have put most of his skillpoints and gearslots into stuff that helps him gather.

Now, if a guy hauling goods (hauler) meets a set of bandits, what is the best option for him? That's right, he can run. But if there is a blockade stopping him form running with his cargo wagon that option is now gone, leaving him with the choice of either paying or losing all of his gods in the wagon.

Now, what are the risks of being a bandit if you just prey on unarmed targets? Well, if you can't tell the haulers apart from a band of knights then you will die a lot, you need to be able to tell your targets apart. Other important skills is the skill to avoid detection, the haulers will certainly be frustrated by you taking their stuff so they will send out parties to search for and kill you. In this situation you will be the one outnumbered and no amount of combat skills will help you here.

Another aspect of picking your targets is knowing how valuable their belongings are. In EVE cargo scanners is the pirates best friend, now in PO we wont have scanners but they could have a skill or spell for it instead. You don't want to target the hauler who don't got any goods since he is on his way out, instead you want him when he is on his way home with his pockets full.

But of course, combat skills are never bad to have on a bandit, its just that in most situations the odds will be so much in either sides favor that any individuals combat skills wont matter much.