Savage Grace's page

Thinking that "sandbox" requires open PvP for content was a mistake. I realize this was a decision driven by a meager budget but it really never gave PFO a chance. I don't think Ryan, or anyone else, had bad ideas. The budget forced bad ideas.

They should have realized during the Kickstarter that most of the support was from the TT players who just wanted the goodies.

How would you entertain thousands of players without open world PvP and without a themepark sized budget to spend on PvE?

Low budget sandboxes rely on players to provide the content. That generally is a combination of building and conflict over resources and territory.

All of PFO's competition will be sandboxes with open world PvP. PFO squandered their year head start, though, and their competitors are likely to be in retail release before PFO at the current rate of development.

While Thornguards have short memories, PLAYERS don't. PvP at your own risk. If you explain you are new, someone might let you duel/practice on them.

Also, no PvP is allowed in the 3 hexes that make up Thornguard.

The blue shield hexes are lower level and meant for new players, and veteran players aren't supposed to be killing new players in those hexes. However, once you join a settlement it will be difficult to know that you are new. Generally, veteran players don't kill other players, anyway... It's a very friendly community.

Enjoy!

As far as being "blob friendly" that's something any sandbox faces.

I was just mentioning the hazard of balancing having things worth fight for with being careful not to overly reward the blob.

The game needs to reward people for recruitment and social cohesion while not handing the entire game to one big group.

I usually try to describe it as: numbers ought to give you overwhelming localized power where you focus, without giving you overwhelming global power.

It's good if the biggest powerbloc's numbers allow it to control a good hex near them. It's bad if it means the entire map is theirs to do with as they please. We don't face EITHER situation, at the moment, because there aren't things valuable enough to fight over, yet.

PvP wars would have been better, if PvP actually led to anyone becoming stronger.

The Forever War only occurred because of enmity between player groups dating back to accusations of cheating during Land Rush BEFORE THERE WAS ACTUALLY A GAME.

There is no in game incentive for conflict (or it isn't strong enough to work), so the vast majority of conflict occurred in one long grudge match where people's participation has actually been DETRIMENTAL to them becoming more powerful in the game.

Conquerors need something of value to conquer.

Such a design is a double edged sword though because making anything valuable enough to bother conquering will be tricky without also making the game even more blob friendly than it is now.

While tabletop PvP is usually poor entertainment, PFO is based on PF's Kingmaker concept and that is going to be, by its very nature, competitive if each subscriber wants a chance/possibility to rise to power or influence a rise to power.

It doesn't lend itself to the everyone's a winner participation trophies PvE that most MMO players are used to.

That may have been a huge financial mistake.

But Eve Online's success suggests that with better execution, there is a mass market for a PvP oriented game, and that's a market that doesn't have to strive to be a WoW killer, like so many PvE games that fail or peter out after a year.

Reaching the end of the internet at this thread.

I know I'm a broken record, here, but the open-world, PVP free for all model is not conducive to encouraging roleplayers or PVE players to get into your game. Running a game that is so heavily focused on FFA PVP is detrimental to the player base that PFO claimed it was trying to achieve.

That was a major mistake and I cannot for the life of me fathom why it was (and has remained) such a heavy focus of the game.

*Edited to Add*

I'm not decrying PVP. I'm simply stating that a free-for-all, non-consensual PVP game leads to griefing, and has been shown in numerous other games to actively discourage and disenfranchise people who want to play the game for its story and its content.

and yet there was almost no griefing.

But you are 100% right if you are suggesting that people's (even irrational) fears of being griefed cut into the population.

Bringslite wrote:

I feel like the Funnel of Suck was destroyed with the implementation of "Universal Support to 20".

Me too.

Heck, even *I* agree with that one.

Early Enrollment is all about Crowdforging. If you have thoughts about how to make things better, share them with the community; they actually have a pretty good chance of impacting the development of the game.

I think the suggestion for a movement effect on some heals that brings the Cleric to their target is a great example of this, and I hope it gets enough support to catch the devs' attention.

It is fun when you look back and can see successes. Yay crowdforgers!

Guurzak once posted a level 19 Royal Camp engineer recipe that dropped for him.

I can't believe how long it has been since something frustrated or upset me in the game or forums.

As the game keeps improving, many people (including myself) are spending more of our free time playing the game rather than arguing over it.

SWTOR has been great fun for me. I think it is the best themepark MMO that exists.

Luckily, I was a latecomer, so I didn't feel the need to powerlevel, and thus I haven't burned through their content yet.

Try the buddy key you were offered.

The game is still in a very primitive state, but there is also a lot of fun to be had.

Or wait to play at Open Enrollment if you want a more polished game.

I haven't played PF so I have no input to offer in that respect.

Basically it isn't a melee buff for PvE. Because they raised the monster HP it is just an indirect method of nerfing ranged characters and another step towards forced grouping.

For PvP it *is* a melee buff... one that is probably well deserved at the moment, at least until fighter charges are dependable.

Chrome won't let me visit the website.

*If* we are seeing players leave because of the current war, my guess is that it is because they are lone wolf players who refuse to adapt.

GROUPS of EBA players seem to be faring far better at holding on to their phat lewtz than EBA's lone wolves.

Adaptable players would group more, or do any of a long list of suggestions already listed in other threads.

I realize that in a low population game building big groups isn't easy, but PvP-ers have the same difficulty. If a PvE-er joined the largest powerbloc in the game, I'm not buying that it's harder for them to group up than for a smaller powerbloc of PvPers.

And if a player quits because they refuse to group up and be social in an MMO, then all I can say to them is...

buh bye.

138 Holdings would cover the claim.

With perfectly min-maxed companies (getting 67 influence per characters) it will take 205 characters (iirc that holdings cost 100 influence before upgrades). That is well within the EBA's character numbers. But that only works if companies can hold multiple holdings... Can they?

The logistics of it all would be interesting to see.

Of course 1194 characters could claim the entire 800 hex map through the same math.

I get that, but knowing who the claimant is at war with would be vastly more important information to most travelers.

One settlement could have 20 enemies. We've already seen an area I would call "besieged" tell new players that it was a safe place for them.

Territorial claims in PFO are generally laughably large and unenforceable. I say that of even the more modest claims, having hunted and gathered them ALL without prior permission.

The proposed atlas would likely be nothing but a map of aspirations, with some claims simply looking greedier than others. But it will have very little to do with who is utilizing those areas.

e.g. I'll bet that if you could track which settlement's players occupied each hex the most this weekend, the data from many hexes would conflict with existing territorial claims.

While it's good to see numbers go up, it could be that some (or even most) of what we're seeing is a shift of 1000 xp alts moving from being independents to being associated with settlements through companies that wanted to raise their max influence.

I helped out some companies with a previously independent 1000 xp alt or two.

So, how's this working out, so far? ;-)

Just another agreement with Ryan. Earlier posts were unreadable due to length of posts and breadth of topics discussed, yet interesting enough when scanning through that I wonder what I'm missing.

Steelwing wrote:

Savage Grace wrote:

My neighbors are willing to deem PvE to be a hostile act and try to punish entire settlements for someone's PvE.

Yet somehow their PvE-ers are all poor innocent "non-combatants" who shouldn't be touched.

How can *I* become an untouchable PvE-er?

Join TSV?

Not fair - I was about to post Join EL but got nijaed

Probably a better suggestion.

Being a TSV PvE-er is probably the most hazardous activity in PFO.

Savage Grace wrote:

My neighbors are willing to deem PvE to be a hostile act and try to punish entire settlements for someone's PvE.

Yet somehow their PvE-ers are all poor innocent "non-combatants" who shouldn't be touched.

How can *I* become an untouchable PvE-er?

Join TSV?

That would only make me RHETORICALLY untouchable. :-)

My neighbors are willing to deem PvE to be a hostile act and try to punish entire settlements for someone's PvE.

Yet somehow their PvE-ers are all poor innocent "non-combatants" who shouldn't be touched.

How can *I* become an untouchable PvE-er?

From what I have read, 3-4 characters with minimal experience are meant to be capable to kill a player with more experience and better gear.

They probably won't have to be capable of killing anyone, it looks like the point counting thing is going to stay with us for a while.

The ability to find the tower/holding/outpost is likely all that is required by the zerg.

Gaskon wrote:

Its almost like T7V claimed they were going to try and keep non-combatants safe in an open PVP game, spent two years being called naive carebears on the forums, and are now accomplishing exactly what they said their goals were all along.

That's part of it. The biggest part of it is creating a place where PvP-averse players can feel comfortable easing into PvP at their own pace. Yes, Golgotha is doing everything they can to ensure we fail at that by deliberately trying to focus as much of the "roughest form of PvP" (Lee's words) on those PvP-averse players to punish them for daring to join us. Yes, we're going to do everything we can to make Golgotha pay for that over the long term. They may feel like they don't need Reputation or Training or Support right now, while the whole server is kinda stuck in the middle of Tier 2, but I'm fairly confident that won't always be the case and they've got a snowball's chance in hell of ever knowing peace with Phaeros again.

Taking that tower was not about keeping non-combatants safe, it was about you punishing AGC for daring to do a T2 escalation that you want to monopolize simply for POWER.

Aggrandizing power for yourselves is a totally valid way to play the game, but don't for a second pretend taking that tower was about protecting PvE-ers. That is just nonsense.

Its almost like T7V claimed they were going to try and keep non-combatants safe in an open PVP game, spent two years being called naive carebears on the forums, and are now accomplishing exactly what they said their goals were all along.

Yesterday... the first day of the kill them all decree...

I'm guessing they were safer BEFORE Phaeros got bent out of shape over an AGC base camp at an escalation.

Gol Phyllain wrote:

TSV took a tower form AGC, we responded by taking towers from them and engaging characters around phaeros.

In my opinion, the bolded part is what makes Golgotha the aggressor.

Someone takes a tower, you take two towers. Fine.

Someone takes a tower, you go to their settlement and kill non-combatants. Not fine.

But the excuse Phaeros gives for taking the tower is because a Xelias company did an escalation.

The argument that PvE-ers shouldn't be targeted out in the countryside when the entire fracas started over the right to PvE in that countryside seems ludicrous.

The PvE hexes ARE EXACTLY what the disagreements started over, so OF COURSE they are going to be the battlegrounds.

The problem for Phaeros is that 100% of our escalation doers and 90% of our gatherers are also PvP-ers.

So rather than fight over the actual battlegrounds Phaeros tried to shift the war to a War of Towers.

Phaeros won the war they chose.

Yesterday's 30 enemy dead to 5 friendly dead suggests Golgotha is winning the war they chose in what I'll call the real battleground.

Here's a question to ponder:

If Phaeros holds every tower on the entire map, will that help them gather and do escalations?

At some point, if you want to utilize a gathering hex or escalation you might have to, you know, go there and get back to a settlement safely.

And if you want to monopolize a gathering hex or escalation you're going to have to scout and guard them 23/7.

I think I can go a lot longer without towers than Phaeros can go without gathering or doing escalations.

Maybe I'm wrong, but if this drags out, we'll find out, won't we?

naw Bringslite, you didn't explode it. Recent events just made my thread more umm relevant.

If Golgotha hasn't been targeting "mobile resource nodes" lately, then they have a serious public relations deficiency.

Golgotha just killed mobile resource nodes ELSEWHERE, during the ceasefire.

*I* have 38 days clean of banditry, but the current strategic warfare is pretty damn similar to "banditry" should it still be going on when I carve out time to play.

The biggest difference is the act of destroying the resources you don't want to be bothered to carry. Bandits don't tend to do that, but then they get accused of husk baiting, so they just can't win.

@Savage

I was working on a point by point rebuttal and then I got to your trade comment, and I realized we aren't playing the same game. I think that's the root of our differing views, what I see and what I'm doing are radically different from what you see and what you are doing.

Just on your trade comment: I literally hang out in a town filled with crafters who will trade with anyone and has access to almost everything (some of which I help with via my DT) but some of the final items from higher rank crafting and has a staunch policy at keeping markup around 10%, far from price gouging. They aren't exactly quiet about their business and they're allied with me, a Lawful Evil settlement, gonna say they probably aren't discriminating.

We might be on the same server with the same people, but we aren't playing the same game and I didn't realize it until now.

To be fair, I was talking in generalities about trading in gaming as a whole, and *speculating* about what a resource monopoly would mean if one actually obeyed opposing settlements and didn't poach. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

I haven't had to do trading because my settlement is communist and apparently someone ;-) poaches enough to keep us geared.

Savage Grace wrote:

Can PvP participation metrics (like Eve's PAP links) be far behind?

PAP links? What are they?

Eve coalitions give leaders the permission to create a link to participation metric software. Once the fleet has done "enough" or finished the fleet commander puts up a link in fleet chat and players click on the link to register that they were part of the fleet.

Coalitions can then see which individuals/corporations/alliances are participating the most over any chosen period of time.

CFC and HBC tended to use those measurements when parceling out the choice systems to various companies and alliances.

With Killboards, and PAP links you can create a kind of meritocracy.

What resource does EBA have in their territory that Golgotha can't find elsewhere? Escalations? Here is a hot tip: If you quash nearby monster hex escalations every day, new random ones pop up. Sometimes they are great. Usually they are low end boring ones. That means that a group invests hours daily to have a chance at a good escalation. When an outsider comes in, not bothering to ask first, it pisses off those hard working people whose labor made it happen.

EBA comes north of their territorial claim to kill off t2 escalations to keep us from farming them EVEN WHILE THEY HAVE T2 ESCALATIONS back in the territory they claim.

But I was referring to certain specific node resources, and I prefer not to name them or the hexes, as that is often viewed as rude or hostile by the folks who farm that stuff. We might be fighting EBA today, but no one knows about tomorrow, and data spills are PERMANENT.

(Until GW shuffles resources again, LOL).

You won't get far if more than a few players in your alliance play and act with that philosophy. It wrecks agreements that your leaders hammer out.

Ignoring towers wrecks agreements? You've lost me.

Phaeros is always the pivotal player when things break down between us.

Either the EBA plays good cop bad cop using Phaeros as the bad cop, OR Phaeros is like the little brother who starts fights knowing his big brother won't let any harm come to him.

I'm still tied up with tax season greatly limiting my play time, but when I do get a moment to play, if I have to go back to killing gatherers, I totally blame Phaeros.

The plan that GW announced (when they first said they would remove the core 6 towers) would have made towers important... so important that the smaller settlements felt they'd have no chance and thus objected until GW changed the plan to the current irrelevance.

I'm not saying the crowdforgers wanted exactly this system, just that crowdforger objections to what would have been very meaningful PvP (which might very well have seen smaller settlements crushed) *led* to this system.

Maybe towers are still important to YOUR characters and their training plans, but they haven't affected MY training plans at all. I'd suggest that the "upper edge of training" only applies to very specialized characters. My active characters are pretty well rounded and wind up being slowed by achievement gates, not towers.

I haven't even requisitioned t2 gear over +0 because I haven't seen a need for it.

My gatherer is still using t1 gear and never dies.

My combat character uses t2+0 gear and pretty much only dies fighting over towers; towers she doesn't need unless she wants to fight in better gear which she would only need for fighting over towers. Do you see how circular it gets? The +2 I could get from the towers is only important for fighting over those very towers that grant it. If I ignore towers, the t2+0 gear works great for everything else that I choose to do (gathering, doing escalations, killing poachers) and the things I can do (like banditry) but have avoided for the last 38 days.

Maybe an extra +2 might speed things up a bit, but then you lose play time to messing with towers, as well as letting people control your behavior when they threaten your towers.

Ignoring towers probably isn't more efficient, but I don't think it is LESS efficient either once you add in all the time wasted on towers and the nonsensical behavior constraints that go along with worrying about not angering people so they won't take your precious towers.

What good is having the towers for +2 gear, if keeping those towers means obeying some opposition settlements' edicts about harvesting in "their" territory that would keep you from building ANY gear of certain types due to geographic resource monopolies?

You'll say TRADE for it, but I'll say their monopoly on certain resources means you pay a price so high it defeats the "efficiency" you were hoping to gain from +2 gear. OK, now I can kill stuff 20% faster, but I have to kill 35% more stuff to AFFORD to trade for the gear that lets me kill stuff 20% faster.

(I'm just making up those numbers in the last paragraph, but traders in most games generally push for a price so high that it *almost* doesn't make sense. Add in players who just want the best gear and don't actually do the min-max math and prices often PASS the point where it makes practical sense to players that have done the min-max math on time efficiency).

Large forces aren't a factor in 90% of the PvP that occurs.

It could matter for WoT, but only if towers mattered.

When someone starts posturing on the forums by threatening our towers my standard reply is:

We have towers?

The peaceniks crowdforged WoT into non-relevance.

In fact, by making towers not matter, peaceniks have completely EMPOWERED banditry.

Because no settlement really needs towers, they are free to hunt players as much as they please and can't be punished through WoT.

"Go forth and murder everyone all over the map."

If you want to have more PvP in the game, you (or someone else) will have to find a way to get the players that are reluctant (or opposed) to join in PvP.

It is going to have to be someone else, because like I said, I'm past it.

GoblinWorks are the ones with their money on the line. They know a sandbox needs conflict and it should be obvious as hell by now that *I* am not going to influence anyone.

One of Golgotha's claims is that they are the best PvPers in the game right now

My self described claims for my characters have run from mediocre PvPer to I may be one of the worst PvPers in the land.

I would describe Golgotha as the most enthusiastic PvPers.

PvP in this game isn't really sensible enough, yet, for anyone to be consistently "best", and like Eve, the best PvP RESULTS (when PvP is relevant) will usually come with the best PvP participation.

That will be a combination of numbers and dogged determination to keep showing up.

And Golgothans have never milled around for 1.5 to 3 hours WAITING for their foes to summon enough force so they can be outnumbered.

Nope, never happened.

Can PvP participation metrics (like Eve's PAP links) be far behind?

Stop being reasonable. ;-P

Yeah, 10% might be enough, but Eve suggests that those who want to be free of PvP will be paying PvPers for the privilege to PvE in territory held by PvP-ers.

Who will be the first settlement to admit they have renters? :-)

Savage Grace wrote:

People don't want to PvP...

I'm skeptical of this.

The community doesn't just oppose meaningless PvP. The community constantly uses crowdforging, and diplomacy to assure that the only PvP available *is* meaningless PvP.

Everyone who pressed for the core 6 tower NAP didn't want to PvP.

Everyone whose resistance to GW's initial ideas for WoT core 6 removal, (that eventually caused GW to make P.C. settlements start better than NPC settlements EVEN WHEN THEY HAVE NO TOWERS) didn't want to PvP.

There are lots of little ways that people show they don't want PvP. They can claim they want it, that they see a place for it, that they'd do it if defensive scouting weren't so burdensome, that the game mechanics need improvement, etc.

But, in fact, people don't want it. They certainly don't want very much of it, and they want it to be eminently avoidable and it will have to be largely without risk or penalty before 90% of the population does it, and even then, they'll hope that someone else does it for them.

I stand by my initial claim that there will still be only 5 dozen PvP veterans the day that PvP becomes relevant.

And that's fine. PvP will probably become relevant in such tiny baby steps that experience won't matter, and throwing a bunch of inexperienced people onto the field (with empty pockets so they can't lose anything and with free gear given to them and gear replacement promises) will probably accomplish everything that needs to be accomplished by most settlements.

The OP's posts is even more affirmed and it's concern is possibly understated.

Since I'm unconcerned, it can't possibly be understated. ;-)

People don't want to PvP and they'll probably even get away with it. Most players have gotten away with it for over 3 months, now.

@Duffy

I wanted to engage in informed crowdforging. I can't tell GW about things I don't try.

So I tried it, and it was irrelevant.

I can't speak for others, but some of what continues by others may just be training/practice, or a willingness to TRY it longer than I was willing to try it before giving up on it, or maybe they *like* their results compared to what they can gather or loot in PvE (which seems unlikely to me).

Banditry is like fishing.

Some people have more patience than me with wasting their time while waiting for that big fish... and some people just like to be fishing, regardless of their results.

Frankly, I don't blame people for continuing to try banditry compared to some aspects of the game.

If you compare it to staring at a 35 hour armor crafting bar... even chasing a gatherer carrying a single tansy leaf actually sounds like more fun. :-)

My point remains - the PvP up to know as largely been negative to the community, doesn't further your cause or win you any support among the people on the sidelines who aren't already been polarized to either extreme and is an impediment to the mental transition from a game in which PvP is considered somehow 'wrong' to a game in which is will be the norm and a necessity if settlements want to survive once all the bits and pieces are in place.

First, let me remind you I haven't done any banditry in over a month. Because banditry is also irrelevant PvP.

I think all the PvP up to now has been largely irrelevant and furthered no one's cause, nor hindered anyone's cause. The entirety of all the loot that has been "bandited" over the last 3 months across the map is probably less valuable than what any average player has sitting in a bank.

Regarding the mental transition... Psychologically, non-consensual PvP has been kind of wild, but on the forums it is almost like crime headlines in the newspaper. Far more people read about "crime" than ever experience it.

And if the people who experienced non-consensual PvP were RATIONAL about it, they'd realize they lose almost nothing.

I'm not worried about the mental transition of the community, because it doesn't really matter. Rational people will simply deal with it and irrational people will keep doing whatever it is irrational people do.

@Black Moria

I'm actually not frustrated, I've moved beyond it.

It is completely acceptable to eschew PvP until doing so becomes unavoidable.

Heck, I avoided crafting until the devs fixed Thornguards. (Thanks Golgotha!) Being ganked at a crafting station while my guards picked their noses was as unappealing an idea as some of the PvP you eschew.

My mates' antics may not be winning over the old guard, but landrush pretty much told us y'all weren't joining, anyway.

As far as the new players coming in, we registered 7 new players on our website last night. How many people signed up with your settlement last night?

Everyone's membership numbers (including Golgotha's) are whack right now, due to new companies forming (while settlements are having problems with being able to accept them) but Golgotha is growing by leaps and bounds and almost every one of our guys is a PvPer.

I think we're poised for greatness if PvP ever becomes relevant.

Last night on PFU comms I had noted that the community (as a whole) wasn't interested in PvP.

People started giving me advice on how we might attract the community to PvP.

Other speakers took the conversation in other directions before I had a chance to respond, so I wanted to respond here.

I'm not sure if I speak for other PvPers, but I'm no longer even interested in getting the existing community into PvP. I tried for 2 months because it seemed like INFORMED crowdforging was going to be vital to having a good game in 2016.

Sooner or later GW will make PvP relevant. When that day comes there will likely be about 5 dozen people with enough PvP experience to be called veterans. Everyone else will have to sink or swim.

I'm happy to give interested people advice on PvP, and I and my mates still put effort into getting NEW players interested in PvP.

But I'm not trying to convince the existing community anymore; I'm leaving it to GoblinWorks to make PvP relevant enough that ignoring it will be at one's own peril.