Nonexistent's page

I am looking for a loose affiliation of players to join up with that has no overarching purpose but to help each other out. (This is not to say that individual members cannot be members of other groups or even leaders of nations.) This group would be no kingdom or assassins guild but a group with various alignments, skills and goals that agrees to first and foremost to do no harm to its own members, and secondly to assist other members in times of need. May that need be helping during an attack on their mine, providing cheap protection for another members wagon train full of ore, a small investment to help get a tavern running or quick retribution on a murderer if a member should fall. An in game family of sorts, "I may not like what you’re doing but one will always support his family."

I would start something like this up myself but when release comes my daughter will be just hitting 3 so a few hours here and there is all I’m going to be able to play for a quite a while. This sort of group would let players like me keep a meaningful online existence. Players who won't know when they may get a chance to log in, but when they do are ready to work or play hard and share his or her gains with those who have their back.

I would prefer to have my character not be a goody two-shoes but still have the moral values to keep himself from torturing small goblin children just for the kicks. So anyone planning a group such as this?

(My description kind of screams secret society and I do realize the irony of asking on a public forum if anyone is forming one, but heck why not it’s a year or 2 off, no one will remember one forum thread at launch, right?)

So there seems to be a bit of interest in offline player activities, guarding and the like allowing players to become NPC characters while logged off. It has been brought up that this would be difficult on account of AI limitations and cpu requirements due to high amounts of persistent characters having to be loaded in high population areas. I support the inclusion of an in game option to preform limited NPC function while offline. I've got a few ideas to keep the AI and CPU limitations to a minimum.

I propose the creation of a "Job pool" system where at any point a play could "que" his or her character up to perform a Job, For my example I will use a guard. A player could go to an inn or guard post and sign up to work as a guard, queing up to be in the Job pool for anywhere from 8 to 24 hours. At that point other players could hire the character based on a stat block with information like rank, name, companies he or she is a member of, number of guard shifts preformed and/or contracts broken, once hired they would be removed from the pool and their character would spawn as an NPC guard and perform as a NPC guard for a certain amount of time. With a Max amount of time of say 6 hours (one 24 hour PFO day/night cycle), meaning a player settlement would need to hire multiple shifts to keep constant protection. When queing up the player would have to choose a role to be hired as, i.e. melee guard, archer, scout, healer, or mage guard, each of these role would have some skill based requirements to que for. Someone smarter than me could come up with a better list with skill requirements when more info is available about what skills there are in PFO, so all basic archetypes could perform some role. A player would have to reque after each guard duty to rejoin the pool, preventing players from going offline for 6 months and coming back to loads of free coin. This system would prevent players skill timers from counting down while "on duty" and allow them to restart when despawning or going "off duty". Here is a basic example using melee and scout. (skill requirements assume a 1-5 rank skill system where 5 is the max skill rank)

Melee guard:
Your basic bruiser, bouncer and all around tough guy wields a mace stands around and looks mean until stuff hits the fan then pounds the problem to the ground, good choice for fighters and the like. Can be set a personal body guard or caravan guard and will stay within a certain range of the target they are protecting.

Melee Guard(rank 1): Requirements: Medium Armor, Martial Weapons rank 1

Melee guard(rank 2): Requirements: Heavy Armor, Martial Weapons rank 2

Melee guard(rank 3): Requirements: Heavy Armor, Martial Weapons rank 3

Melee guard(rank 4): Requirements: Heavy Armor, Martial Weapons rank 4

Melee guard(rank 5): Requirements: Heavy Armor, Martial Weapons rank 5

Scout:
Rides around a protected area looking for NPC mobs and incoming player forces does not engage in combat unless threatened, sends predefined reports to the captain of the guard in a player settlement, "Small group of orc raiders setting up a camp 2 miles to the northwest." , "Large player group spotted to the south 2 siege engines". The scout can then be ordered to engage, return to base or continue to watch covertly. In caravans travels ahead during fast travel and gives warnings if an ambush is discovered.

Scout(rank 1): Requirements: Tracking rank 1, Martial Weapons rank 1

Scout(rank 2): Requirements: Tracking rank 2, Martial Weapons rank 1, requires mount

Scout(rank 3): Requirements: Tracking rank 3, Martial Weapons rank 2, Stealth rank 1, requires mount

Scout(rank 4): Requirements: Tracking rank 4, Martial Weapons rank 2, Stealth rank 2, requires mount

Scout(rank 5): Requirements: Tracking rank 5, Martial Weapons rank 3, Stealth rank 3, requires mount

Each rank would use a predefined AI while the character is offline, basically ignoring the rest of the players skills and abilities. Rank 1 would be roughly as challenging as a 1 merit badge player, rank 2 a 5 merit badge, rank 3 a 10 merit, rank 4 a 15 merit, rank 5 a 20 merit. If logged in while hired certain rules would need to be followed, town or building guards would have to stay near town or the protected building but could otherwise choose to craft, buy, sell or play in any fashion as long as they are available to protect the contracted area. Scouts would be able to ride about in the wilderness but would need to keep their time in town to a minimum. I think the above would keep the AI needed to a minimum requiring a set number of basic NPC scripts of basic skill and power levels without the need of dealing with the massive amounts of abilities for a Fighter 20, Druid 20, Ranger 20 class combo, instead using the Scout rank 5 skills and abilitys list. This also makes online PC guardians more valuable and will still allow for guard companies to prosper by offering 100% online guards.

The other consideration is PC appearance, gear and such will most likely have a wide range of looks and abilities. To combat this AI and CPU requirement a player could be required to wear a Guard uniform, with a basic set of armor appropriate to the role they are filling, Scouts in Leather gear with a sword as a weapon, Melee in Plate with a huge mace, etc. Regular player gear would be stored in a local guard storage and can be retrieved when logging on during guard duty. Player cities could pay for Uniform upgrades like +1 to AC all guard uniforms for 500 coin.

It could also be used to create "Crafting Pools" or "Magic Research Pools", like Rank 1 blacksmith for example, when hired reducing the amount of time required to craft an item by 5% or reducing the amount of raw materials needed to craft items.

I think a system like this would be invaluable for a player wanting to contribute to his or her company while having a limited amount of play time per day, and help increase the amount of player interactions by simplifying the hiring process and getting people together. So for anyone who read that giant block, what do you think?

Sorry for the wall of text, just had to get that out of my head. I'm really excited about all the possibilities this game brings up and the direction its heading in so far.