Onishi's page

Hey everyone, wondering if Ryan or Vic or anyone else in development can give me an official comment. Been working on trying to get my friends excited about the game, the one thing that causes all of them to go shaky on it is the listing in the potential cash shop items.

Convenience consumables: Things that your characters might want to use in–game in lieu of relying on always having specialist characters with you while you adventure, or as a way to recover from an encounter that goes horribly awry

Namely the 2 things that scares my friends in it is

1. undermining the economy in regards to crafting.
2. large advantages for PVP in relation to the side that burns more real world money, to dominate in territory control, by not having to leave the scene of the battle.

Any chance some official comment can be made to help remove the fears of people buying win, or if anyone knows of a specific quote made in the past that I am just missing that will also work.

Thanks.

Alignment Axis:
LG|LN|LE: We are a group that lives by contracts, above all else, so lawful is prefered
NG|NN|NE: As long as you can stick to our rules you may join
CG|CN|CE: Very few exceptions, but chaotic might not fit in, in many cases

OOC Structure: A team of mercenaries first, we try to avoid war on our own territories, but for the right price, will take a side in conflicts completely unrelated to us. When our own land is in jeopardy we prefer diplomacy first and try to minimize wars on our own land

RP Level: Medium: We encourage our members to remain in character as often as possible. Accents etc.. are unnecessary, but meeting a feeling of your character is preferred.

IC Structure: Partial democracy, contracts are brought to a vote by officers before accepting.

Purpose: Exploration, Diplomacy, War

Information: IC Summary.
Formerly a group of ragtag adventurers, Pocket Ace was founded under the principle that a few good soldiers can turn the tide of a battle. From joining in battles they had no stake at loss, the Pocket Ace's honed their skills and tactics, growing in numbers and soon becoming a force to be reckoned with on their own.

Of course the most important rule for such a group, is the sanctity of a contract. Pocket ace will never participate without a contract and will have members vote on whether or not to accept a contract. As well any contract that conflicts with an existing one, is immediately rejected (It is against their policy to betray a contract even if offered a greater sum of money after signing.)

Mercenary work: We will take contracts to defend, or to fight within the battles of many conflicts, In general we will try to give an estimate of the success chance with our current intel to the person hiring, and we will decide what contracts to take on a case by case basis. The hirer will have the right to decide whether the deal is to be made public or not. If a contract is offered that contradicts an already in place secrete contract, it will be declined but the reason will not be given. Other reasons a contract may be denied include but are not limited to: impossible odds, target is allied with us in some way shape or form, or the person hiring potentially could pose a threat to our home territory or allies in the near future. In general we prefer to side with smaller forces containing larger forces, as one large overly dominant force, could pose a threat to our way of business and life. In the absense of any alegences or potential threat, it is first come first serve, first person to put money down, gets the contract.

Banditry: Despite a very heavy emphasis on keeping every promise and deal we make, Pocket ace does not prevent its members from dabbling in its old heritage of banditry, so long as the targets are not currently allied in any way, or under any current contract. Groups wishing to not be robbed, can be excluded from potential robberies for a nominal fee. (Depending on whether attacks in the wilderness are defined as chaotic or not, the lawful requirements may change). Banditry is not a primary focus of this chartered company, it is simply not officially condemned by our members as long as it does not conflict with any current arrangements.

Reconnaissance and intelligence:
Now one of the more important things for a mercenary, is knowing your enemy, and since as a mercenary anyone could become an enemy at any time, we intend to gather as much information about every company possible, and catalogue an estimate of their strength and possible information that can assist in tactical advantages when fighting. This information is to be kept highly guarded among the officers and very trusted high ranked members among the company. Pocket ace will also gladly pay anyone who is willing to sell inside information among others (sources will always be kept anonymous, and we will not announce what information we have, both to not show our hand and to protect the seller). Pay for individuals selling information will raise as their information has turned more or less reliable. If the price offered is right, we may offer to sell some information of this sort as well.

Kingdom ownership: We intend to own a town as a central hub for ourselves to organize and meet up with others. This will likely be out in the wilderness and we intend to be allied with the majority of the kingdoms near us, of whom we will defend for drastically reduced prices. As well as a central route for finding and gathering from dungeons. Expansion and domination are generally not our primary concerns.

Economy:
In addition to mercenary work, we intend to gather as much as we can via dungeon crawling, selling protection services to harvesters, bounty hunting and virtually anything else that can earn some coin.

Target recruiting: In general (but depending on size limits etc... for chartered companies/kingdoms) we are looking for people who will play regularly, but not requiring an absolute no-lifer. IE mainly players who are on a few hours a day, but not necessarily 6-8 hours a day.

Pocket ace Handbook:

Pillage, then burn.

A Lietenant in motion outranks a Major who doesn't know what's going on.

A barbarian at a dead run outranks everybody.

A well placed fireball covers a multitude of sins.

If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.

If the food is good enough the commoners will stop complaining about the incoming fire.

Mockery and derision have their place. Usually, it's several cities away.

Never turn your back on an enemy.

Sometimes the only way out is through. . . through the city walls.

A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head.

Do unto others.

Only you can prevent friendly fire.

If your name is in the mouth of others: be sure it has teeth.

The longer everything goes according to plan, the bigger the impending disaster.

If the officers are leading from in front, watch out for an attack from the rear.

If you're not willing to fireball your own position, you're not willing to win.

Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Take his fish away and tell him he's lucky just to be alive, and he'll figure out how to catch another one for you to take tomorrow.

Don't be afraid to be the first to resort to violence.

If the price of collateral damage is high enough, you might be able to get paid to bring arrows home with you.

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less.

A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you'll go.

Only cheaters prosper.

If you’re leaving scorch-marks, you need a stronger spell.

That which does not kill you has made a tactical error.

There is no 'overkill.' There is only 'open fire' and 'I need to reload.

Just because it's easy for you doesn't mean it can't be hard on your clients.

Current members: (most of which are currently not on the forums, but may be joining soon).

Onishi -- General
Nunu -- Colonel
Thimas -- Major
NetNeutrality -- Major
H -- Lientenant
IvanTheFool -- Lieutenant

I'm actually currious on several parts when it comes to the hideouts.

1. How specific will the information be to trigger an ambush.

I can see a few different possibilities with wildly different impact on how they go.

A. Ambushers get a notice "Movement detected crossing your area would you like to attack.

B. Ambushers get a notice "a party of 4 is passing through your area would you like to attack"

C. Ambushers get notice "A party of 4 is crossing through your area, Jim from faction X, Joe from faction Y, Tom from faction Y, and bob from faction Y.

D. "A party of 4 is crossing the ambush area, here is what they look like (shows preview of passers complete with visible armor etc...)

The more it narrows down the more an ambusher has the ability to pick and chose, currious if this may also be a portion of the setup, or if it will be more unpredictable.

2. Detection: While it is clear that detecting a hideout will be difficult and only possible for people with the skill to do so, how much will someone being ambushed be able to narrow down the location they were ambushed. Will they only know they were ambushed somewhere between point A and B (places where they fast traveled between), or will the ambush kind of give them a ballpark (say a hideouts trigger range is a mile, so once ambushed they have a 1 mile radious of where the hideout may be, and then will immidiately hire someone who specializes in hideout sniffing to assist them in eliminating the hideout.

3. This probably goes into fast travel, but what kind of timeframe would ambushers have to decide whether to kick someone out of fast travel. On an unrelated note it sounds like this partly confirms that fast travel is not going to be instantaneous, (fast travel has many definitions, from teleportation, to moving slightly faster than normal).

Well now that we know that when dying your gear is not going to be destroyed or stolen, but we do have strong hints that no matter what, gear is going to need to be destroyed/removed from the economy on a regular basis. I think this topic deserves it's own thread at this point.

I've strongly mentioned a great dislike for the idea of using the bind on equip, rapid obsolescence method that theme parks use, primarally because that involves an ever expanding continuous list of upgrades (as once people hit the top they have nothing to work for, so newer better items have to continue to be made on a regular basis as a as a result, the power level between characters continues to grow at a rapid level, and mid level players, and even characters who have just reached the top, become sideline characters in a war). This method also creates a large lack of value in mid-level items, as it is often just worth it to save up for the best and skip over the crap in the middle.

With items with wear and tear, that is not easy to fix, you wind up up with 1. mid level items remaining useful, as even the high level players are measuring out cost/benefit of using different items at different times. Sure I could use my 500,000 GP +5 flaming vopal sword of doom, but since it can only be used for about a week, I'm burning 75k gold to use it for a day, I'm not doing anything that valuble today so the +2 flaming should do the job, and only wear me out 2k worth of resources. This also creates extra chalenges, strategies, and gives the underdogs in a war, a chance to suprise a stronger guild that simply underestimated them and wore their cheap stuff to the fight.

One idea my fiance brought up, I don't think any game has ever had maintinence as a factor on weapons. What if on average, weapons went like say. Leather should need to be oiled, steel cleaned up dried off sharpened polished etc...

1 days usage for unmaintained gear, 10% damage
1 days usage maintained, 5% damage.
Death while wearing item, 5% damage
Enemy successfully sunders etc... 2-10% damage depending on weapon and level of sunder.

Repairing damaged weapons: I do agree, having a weapon get damaged should not be an unrepairable unfix-able issue, and should not cost as much as a new one, but it also shouldn't be barely noticeable pocket change either. The best system I can think of is, repairing the weapon takes 1/2 the resources it takes to craft the weapon to begin with, and must be done by a crafter who is able to craft the weapon. If it took 4 adamantine bars and 4 Dragon tongues, it should take 2 adamantine bars and 2 dragon tongues. In some cases you may have to provide them yourself to the crafters, in some cases crafters may be stocking up on them by themselves to increase their markups and profit margins for repairs.

As far as the main reason I believe destruction of gear is a necesity, it can be summerized with a quote from Ryan

We want to have the kind of robust market economy that EVE has and that means that loss of items will be commonplace.

I want to see lots of people harvesting, transporting, crafting, and selling.

While the destruction of carried loot will do some towards the removal of resources, that is only a slow down of gaining items not technically a loss, once they are manufactured and turned into equipment, if they are invincible, then we are right back at square 1, once made the items stay forever, and thus the economy reaches a peak and the crafting industry comes to a halt, as the supply keeps going up, but the demand keeps going down.

One other possible variant here. If instead of going by percentages, it instead could go by HP, certain types and classes of armor could have more HP then others, and even getting hit or hitting things could have a possibility of damaging equipment

I think I brought this up once, but since it was in the middle of one of the ridiculously over sized PVP discussions I figured it could use an area of direct focus.

Anyway the concept is for guilds/allience/whatever they will be called, to be more or less broken up into different tiers for the sake of getting large group benefits, while still allowing small groups of people who like to play together feeling left out. IMO quite a few games have a drawback of needing to be in a huge guild to not be steamrolled but many people like to be in a small guild of friends. An idea I think that could work well would be

Empire -- A large group of allied kingdoms (kingdoms may if they chose succeed from an empire and join another if voted on by their leadership.

Kingdoms -- Actual cities owned, with their own government, A kingdom should be able to appoint it's own taxes, government officials and positions, etc... Which will effect the main areas of what type buildings etc... can be constructed. and maintained A kingdom should be able to house at least 1000 players

Alliences/clans/guilds -- These should get 1 building within a kingdom. Possibly their own market front or crafting area. Clans should be allowed as few or as many members as desired(although a kingdom may chose not to use up space/construction time for a clan under 5 members or so, but the small clan could opt to find a city that will accommodate).

This would allow a group that wants a small personal group of friends to more or less have the diplomatic ties of a 1000 person group (the empire they loosely serve under). Without costing them the small group feel of being in a small exclusive clan.

It also would be interesting if there were sub-organizations completely separate, untied to such with confidential membership, say a pickpocket organization, or a spies group, or an order of traveling salesmen etc... Groups that may only have 1 member in any city, but their membership is kept from anyone who is not currently a member (these orders can also be player created and lead, so as to give the option to monitor or create their own application process to determine themselves if someone joining is just trying to spy/find out membership etc...)