Malanthris's page

I don't have a particularly powerful dog in this "fight" as I've only invested a little attention to PFO so far and that only because my community has put in some investment. I lament the loss of the "good old days" where buying a game got you all of the game. It's not the price, as I'm one of those with disposable income and if the value is there I will buy it (my family hates Christmas shopping for me). I hate cash shops personally and would rather pay one larger price that included everything. It puts everyone on an equal footing where they can ATTEMPT to procure the items in game.

I realize that things have irreversibly changed and cash shops are basically here to stay as businesses try to refine their revenue streams. Cash flow and higher profit margins are good and help to pad poor business decisions with extra income. I understand the huge keg developers want to tap. The unreasonable/emotional side of me does however feel it goes against what I call the gamer spirit.

I'm with those who want only cosmetic items in the cash shop. While I'm not a crafter I don't think crafter made items in a cash shop will be conducive to a deep/rich player driven economy. It almost seems counter to the idea of building a thriving community.

Also we already have mechanical benefits purchased with money. Destiny's Twin I'm looking at you! I just hope it can be purchased after OE.

Mathematically I tend to agree. Is it perfect? Not by any means. It's generally not horribly difficult for an individual to put an action in a certain spot on a Cartesian plot and make a best fit, but it wouldn't likely agree with someone else's plotted point.

Though you also may be ignoring the driving factor behind the action (eg. Killing someone). It gets a little subjective in just how evil or good and how lawful or chaotic something is. I wouldn't say it's an absolute - jaywalking is chaotic but much less chaotic than brutally murdering someone in a society that says killing is wrong. Why are you jaywalking, however? That factors into the equation. Maybe you're just that rebellious, but maybe you are avoiding a gang of thugs walking in your direction and an inevitable conflict.

It would be interesting to see such a system put into place and see where it places people against their chosen alignment. I'm not sure a robust system is going to be easily programmed and implemented.

Is the current proposed alignment system adequate given all that? I suppose that really depends on the goal. I would say yes from a gamesman standpoint. We are going to have a good idea of what skills are tied to which alignments (I assume) and which actions drive your alignment in the desired direction. So we can direct our actions toward the desired effect.

From a storytelling and roleplaying perspective it's probably not going to be very good. It all depends on how ingrained the game system is with storytelling and RP. If it's like the vast majority of games the intertwining will be minimal (in my opinion). Personally my RP and gameplay generally interact only on a superficial level.

Though if this was achieved by requiring them to feed all their influence into some sort of newb-protection boon in order to see that protection, I could support that.

I would see the need for some form of ramp-ing down protection for newer companies and maybe even settlements. I'm somewhat iffy on making them spend influence on that protection, though it should come at some price. The reason for my doubts would be that it's not as likely that in EE and maybe even in OE that people would waste influence on such when everyone is new and all are equal. This puts newer companies further behind the power curve when they start later on in the game's life. It also means they can forge fewer alliances and build up less protection in other areas; based on the newest blog. I guess really all I'm saying here is that the cost/benefit would be something that would really need to be fine tuned.

Group self regulation is certainly something I'd hope all community and self-image minded groups would take upon themselves. Unfortunately, despite what I feel is the right attitude toward the game by GW this being a pretty open pvp game is going to draw in people and groups that care little about such a thing. I'm very interested in seeing which mechanical systems are put in place to try and solve this issue; and moreover, how it evolves over time as players find loopholes and exploits.

I don't know if you could factor moderation handed out into some form of feedback into companies and settlements to make groups care more about such regulation. That can be a slippery slope into too heavy handed methodology however.

With the influence system perhaps some negative hit to influence could be used to discourage behaviors GW deems unwanted and encourage group peer pressure to enforce certain standards - set by GW.

Speaking of tools for regulating player behavior one is left out. It's somewhat "controversial" because where killing someone in the real world is a pretty extreme form of punishment it's a more mild form of in game punishment when compared to incarceration.

I'm honestly not sure where I stand on it as being forced into a stockade or jail would be awfully boring and I'm not sure removing the player's ability to play the game is wise for a game's long term viability. Not to mention the all too likely option of abuse.

I bring this up only as a point of interest in that the severity of the punishments are rather flip-flopped between in game and the real world.

Also it might get people thinking about ways to simulate incarceration as a game mechanic without removing a player's ability to play the game.

Also: city fines? Hit player's pocket books, but only if they want to maintain city access. Obviously you don't have to pay a fine.

As mentioned previously, I'm not sure about the viability of the options I brought up just though I'd put them up for discussion.

Also: in the realm of incarceration I used to play on a Mud based on the Forgotten Realms where the DM/GMs would put players in a form of limbo timeout; yet most put there kept coming back to play the MUD afterward.

I've lurked these forums for a while and in the interest of actually posting on topic I'll share some of my "pvp" experiences.

I've played most of the major MMOs since SWGs in some way shape or form and have pvp'd in most of them. My experience in the hardcore pvp games is somewhat limited I will admit, but I'll also put forth the opinion that most of them haven't really been worthwhile games. I would have loved to pvp in EVE (despite it not being twitch) but the things one has to do to gather the money as a new and friendless player were entirely too boring to make it worth my while.

So on to two stories who's major themes have always served me well in pvp.

Stay calm under fire:

This is a vanilla WoW story (yeah, yeah, I know...). A group of us were wanting to kill the boss in the Dire Maul arena (free for all pit!). The boss itself would have been a joke for us (two were hardcore raiders and the other three of us were pretty competent) but there were a gaggle of Horde people milling about watching. The two raiders were anti-pvp and were very skeptical about jumping in as they were afraid of getting attacked. Eventually we were able to talk them into it with the advice: "Whatever happens, you two stay on the boss and stay alive. We'll deal with the Hordies."

When it was obvious we were going to kill the boss with ease, the five or so Hordies attacked. The three of us that were pvpers turned and instantly focus fired them all down systematically. They weren't pushovers but I don't think they were really expecting the concerted and calm reaction to their attack. We'd talked through the scenario before hand and basically had a plan for "what can possibly go wrong". When the poo came flying we reacted per the plan and remained calm.

The best part was the exhilaration of the PVEers from the adrenaline rush of the fight. We didn't quite make pvpers out of them, but they saw at least a little bit of the draw for it.

Make use of your environment:

This second story isn't about computer games. It's actually about a NATO wargame, but these canned scenarios are often very similar to video games in a manner of speaking (plus I can talk about them without violating any classification rules). I was the officer of the deck of a fast attack submarine with the goal of "destorying" a high value unit. They have us go to point with a plus/minus distance and a certain time and then start the scenario. Basically this actually gives them a fighting chance because honestly, other than the canned scenario noone really ever knows we're there.

The Captain and Engineer had this new "tactic" they like to use to get a better battlefield picture, which I was against based on having been brainwashed that stealth was everything. They would broach the sail of the sub just long enough to rotate the radar a few turns and get a clear picture of where everything was located. Other than the annoying procedures to carry out this evolution it wasn't all that big a deal, but this time there was a ship in the line up that had a spy-1 radar (know your enemies), which can see a car moving down a road at 200 miles. Needless to say it wasn't very long before a P-3 was up in the air looking for us and dropping active sonar buoys.

From a previous scenario I knew that the standard operating procedure for getting away from these things once detected wasn't really going to work (the same Engineer had made me pull out the book and use the SOP). After telling the Engineer "I told you so" and being told to "Shut the F up." (I had told him it was a bad idea prior) I told him I'd like to try something different. I knew the water conditions and how they affected sound propogation in the water and I knew where the other ships in the area were due to sonar and I had good firing solutions on every one of them. I figured out where to put the sub to basically shield us from the active pulses of the sonar buoys before they could really pinpoint us and go for a kill. It wasn't long after that, that we "destroyed" the high value unit.