Steelwing's page

3) game world that changes based on what you do. The game that does this really well is Elderscrolls online. The world changes for you specifically . As you finish the quests, the bad guys disapear for you but not everyone else still doing that quest. NPCs comment on you and your efforts as you walk past.

The gameworld doesnt really change though its basically what I believe Wow called phasing. The idea of a sandbox is the impact of your actions and your settlements actions impact on everyone either on a micro or macro scale.

I point you at this link for eve for example

http://updates.eve-volt.net/game-of-sov/counter-coup-15/

This page is updated often as you can see from the posts and following it gives you a broad idea of how the players are changing the universe. This is what PfO is aiming for

just got another ping from Pagan charlie...he is madly trying to reply to you but Paizo keeps timing out on him

Well, if the game ever gets to the point where the game is more acceptable to your crowd, the offer will stand.

We will bear that in mind I hope the game works out I really do. I just think it is not something I can sell currently

he was one of the strongest advocates for not joining the game unfortunately he acceded to being outed to show the level of metagaming that people are going to go to...at least those that come from an Eve background.

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?

Sure, whatever, the spy is doing something spyish, pick your favorite activity. The point still stands the victim can only tell the difference if the spy is godawful at it and theirs only a few basic things they can do to slow it down. Most of which boils down to keeping sensitive things need to know and not relying on individuals too much. Still ain't foolproof.

Not much point when the spy is appointed to security chief :)

My point is it's irrelevant from the 'infiltrated' group's point of view. Your lying on the internet, not exactly a difficult task, it's nothing special, people do it all the time. There is no way to distinguish between a spy and actual legit player, if the spy was detectable they're a really bad spy. But since there is no real risk it's kinda irrelevant, either they get to a point where they can betray you or they don't.

So you have two options, delegate and break it up enough that hopefully no one person can sink you (tho a really organized team could still get you) or delegate nothing and keep a firm enough grip that the worse they're gonna do is spill some info. Practicality of either depends entirely on the mechanics of the game. But if you get all excited over it ya done got issues, your not doing much except lying, whoopee.

This spy bragging was boring back in EVE, and I wasn't even part of the big alliance stuff.

you assume a spy is just there to betray you though often a spies job is a lot more subtle it is for example to stir the pot between two opposing forces which you feel you wish to disrupt for example ( and I have cleared it with him) we had a spy reasonably high in the pax pfo leadership that spent much time subtly stirring the pot between pax and teo by making teo think pax was spying on them.

Words are wind, the only true measure of a person is what they actually do when they come into power. You can trust someone until you can't, fairly straightforward.

But even when you get to trust people that is when the betrayal becomes worst. I planted for example spies in every major group in this game when we were considering joining. Those spies despite reporting back to me had the main job of being extremely helpful to their hosts. They would of continued being good members on the surface while rising through the ranks until the right time to activate them and bring down the group they were embedded in came.

All academic now as we are not joining the game but we planned well ahead and aimed to infiltrate people wherever we could almost a year in advance of alpha

Aren't they going through a coup right now?

Indeed they voted out Lychton and replaced him with Malanek. Currently Elise is making the members think Lychton was the good guy by posting those friendly "I was just trying to help posts"

Caldeathe Baequiannia wrote:

Steelwing wrote:

Lol...it is no ones place to inform you that certain conditions are met if they gain an advantage by not doing so.

Steelwing, the actual disagreement was ended, and I think amicably, but your assertion is incorrect. How an agreement is ended is just as important as why, if you are working to establish a reputation for being reliable.

So you would rather trust people to tell you the truth? People who should not have the best interests of your group at heart. Trust is a valued asset it is true however if you take anything anyone says from another alliance on blind faith and do not have the ability to verify their words then you are setting your group up to fail and fail hard.

If you want to learn how to play the meta...go over to the brave newbies subreddit and admire how despite the fact Pandemic legion has just smashed hero out of catch Elise Randolph has half of the members eating out of his hand and believing that the legion really has the best interests of HERO at heart it is really quite amusing and a good lesson on how to be the bad guy while appearing to be the good guy

Steelwing wrote:

Lol...it is no ones place to inform you that certain conditions are met if they gain an advantage by not doing so.

Steelwing, the actual disagreement was ended, and I think amicably, but your assertion is incorrect. How an agreement is ended is just as important as why, if you are working to establish a reputation for being reliable.

So you would rather trust people to tell you the truth? People who should not have the best interests of your group at heart. Trust is a valued asset it is true however if you take anything anyone says from another alliance on blind faith and do not have the ability to verify their words then you are setting your group up to fail and fail hard.

Gol Phyllain wrote:

Caldeathe Baequiannia wrote:

Gol Phyllain wrote:

Every other group in this game that has had any sort fo deal with Golgotha has seen it honored.

You can continue to say it, and I will continue to deny it. You exited your agreement with Stoneroot without informing us that you considered Callambea active and considered the agreement ended.

Part of the agreement was that when call became active the agreement was over. They became active the agreement ended. No reason to inform you. I figured you knew they where active when they tried to take their towers back and you guys killed them. (as you should have)

Complete Bull. We exchanged towers with Callambea several times, during which you said you considered them inactive and didn't care. So your response is that we're supposed to know that the difference between this tower exchange and all the previous ones is that you are present.

So to recap, people who have an agreement with you will know when that agreement is over by the fact that you are attacking them.

Lol...it is no ones place to inform you that certain conditions are met if they gain an advantage by not doing so. In a game of sov intel is king. Do you not have spies in Golgotha? If not then you are failing badly. You should know there every move before they make it

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.

Sounds like t7v have done exactly the opposite if you are here complaining your non combatants are now being slaughtered. In fact it rather sounds like their actions have caused them to fail.

I'm not Bringslite, but I seem to be in pretty close agreement with him.

I don't care who puts holdings where.

I don't really care who takes what towers, except that I want to see more PVP in tower hexes between evenly matched sides.

I do care when non-combatants are targeted and attacked by roving bands of militants.

IMO, going near someone's settlement and killing non-combatants is a bad response to either losing a tower or violating an agreement.

Get used to it this is how war is waged

1) harass the support till they leave
2) target the peripheral companies and make their lives a living hell till they leave
3) Once the enemy are exposed alone and demoralized rip out their throat and stamp them into the dust

Don't escalate the situation by attacking non-combatants, provoking the largest military power in the game into joining the conflict on your opponent's side.

If you don't want to start WWI, invade Serbia, but not Belgium.

Size of military doesn't really matter from what I gather once this war of towers thing is over as you won't be able to bring all your fighters without the servers falling over or the clients choking at that point it doesn't matter if you have an army of 10000 or 1000 as long as you can field enough to flood the settlement hex

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.

Killing non combatants is a hugely viable tactic. It not only cuts your resources but also if kept up long enough causes those non combatants to seek other settlements that won't make them an instant target. This then weakens your settlement as they often take a few combatant friends with them.

In addition it tends to demoralize the people of the settlement members and cause moaning and griping on comms. Morale being another eminently viable target

Not sure what the issue is? On the Goblinworks forum, as mentioned, there is a Recruitment section where people can list both Settlements and Companies. It is up to the poster to give appropriate information such as links to their personal websites and whatnot.

I would hope that the Goblinworks forum is or becomes available to all EE participants.

Eve does this reasonably well. It not only has a recruitment forum but also a corp finder facility in game. The corp finder allows you to specify such things as play style, time zone and many other things. It then displays a list of appropriate corp adverts and provides a button for each corp to apply to them. This should not be hard to code frankly though it probably isnt a priority given how much other work they need to do

We will not be joining this game either. I am not even going to bother trying to persuade people currently. We would come for a decent game based on territorial control. Currently pathfinder is not that game. Maybe it will be that way in the future however when stress tests consisting of 42 people are hailed as a major step forward I doubt it.

I know others were interested for other reasons and that is fine and maybe they will find what they are looking for. I do wonder however what market segment they are aiming at. It certainly isn't people like me interested in the territorial control side, nor do I believe it is the wow style player. Not sure what that leaves frankly

There are many here however that believe Dancey knows what he is doing and I hope they are right. I would like to see the game succeed even if it is not a game for me purely due to the fact I have made a few contacts in the community that I would like to see get a game they are happy with.

I wonder where we would be now (in general terms concerning everything) if people that wanted to do things, invent things, succeed at thier goals:

a). Did not try because other people told them it was impossible?

b). Gave up if they failed at first try?

c). Had to figure everything out to perfect detail before they attempt the impossible?

Much as I respect you bringlite here is my point of view the same one I stated earlier

1) Decide what your game is about( in this case territorial combat) 2) Decide what will be needed to support that goal and test your engine is up to it. 3) Develop the rest of the game around that engine

Which of 1) 2) or 3) do you think is an unreasonable idea

Why do you think my questioning of item 1 was unreasonable?

I wonder how many times in his life Ryan has heard the words "but you can't do that", and simply thought to himself "watch me".

I wonder how many times Dancey has said "watch me" and been proved to be wrong

My speculation is this:

They launch the game on January 1st or perhaps December 31st (to keep it this year), either way that week.

All the hardcore alpha players (about 200 of us) will show up day 1, along with probably 800-1200 other players a combination of those that participated in the landrush, and who are just showing up for the first time. These people won't all show up at the exact same time, so 4 starting locations should be fine. These people will disperse.

Over the next 3 months, we will build towards more and more people showing up, probably towards the actual month 1 goal of 3-5k people. There are a few features that are still keeping people away, that once implemented should bring in a lot of people, specifically, I am talking about looting.

As more features are introduced attrition from previous weeks/months should be somewhat mollified, potentially pushing the game further towards its goal of 20k active players.

If you look at other games, the tend to have around 10-15% of their total numbers on at any given time (not including launch). I think the servers will be fine once were a couple days into the game. However, if more people actually show up, the servers maybe taxed quite a bit.

I think the leaders of each Settlement should encourage their members to head straight to their own settlements, or region of map. This way we can create a good flow of traffic out of these areas.

If they try ee now my prognosis is that it will keep active many of those already playing but drive off many of those waiting to play via actual experience or bad reviews in places like mmorpg. You simply cannot launch a game based on territoral warfare where the limits are 100 per hex

Remember that we have multiple servers each covering a couple of hex. If the servers can handle 42 in combat in a single hex on a single server than that suggests the capability to handle several 1000 players is already there.

I think the real issue is not a technical one of servers handling more than 100 people in one hex - its going to be crossing that sustainable threshold where we get a big enough population to keep more than a couple of people in settlement hex outside Brighthaven and Thornkeep more or less 24/7. That is going to require a sustained effort by settlement leaderships to organise local events and keep people interested once the initial flurry of EE passes.

Dancey has cited he is looking for 20k players within 6 months of EE at 100 cap per hex that is a minimum of 200 full hexes.

A while back I asked the question of what he saw as mass battles. Dancey answered.."lots tee hee hee". I was roundly declaimed for daring to ask such questions....guess it doesn't seem so silly now

Whatever router or modem or other method you choose I suggest installing a firewall on your pc. Zonealarm is a free one that is adequate. When coupled with decent antivirus it will protect you from most problems though not all.

Steelwing wrote:

PfO had a lot of promise...

And this is why I write off most of these doom and gloom posts. They're largely from the same folks who were making doom and gloom posts before Alpha, too.

Quote me in a doom or gloom post go on...you won't find any

The fact remains this game goes live in a few weeks. No matter what Dancey says about being alpha if there are to be no more wipes and a fee is charged the mmo population will regard this as a launched game.

Dancey had a target of 20000 players 6 months into EE, from what I have picked up on the forums I am not convinced the game can handle 20000 even if you assume a 10% value logged on at any one time.

PfO had a lot of promise, if they made good on those promises, however much of the mmo audience has already seen the promises made by other companies fail to come to fruition. They are now sceptics and if they come and find the game not fulfilling those promises they will leave and won't be back.

Is PfO dead? No it isn't but it is on life support. People have stopped talking about it which is an ominous sign. The worst thing they can do now in my opinion is advertise because this trailer will set expectations which will soon be found to be untrue merely by looking at youtube.

Get the game right with a soft launch of EE then when you have a game you don't think will make most of the community go wtf is this, then advertise.

Steelwing wrote:

While I understand crafters need player settlements for advanced training as long as they can make goods in npc settlements which as I understand is the plan then you will visit your settlement once a month for training then be expected to return to the npc settlements to craft.

You made me scratch my head on this one--why would crafters migrate to NPC settlements do do their work rather than staying in their own settlements?

If I have a thousand tier 3 bars of steel in a bank in an npc town they are not subject to capture. The most I can lose is a particular consignment of weapons to settlement A in on go.

If however I have to craft in a player settlement and it is captured I lose all my stored materials.

In Eve its the same way if we lose Sov we lose everything in our corp hangars therefore we keep all our materials in hisec and get our goods made there and jump freightered in.

Mbando wrote:

Summersnow wrote:

A quote from the Blog

"The implication to this is that players will be able to kill other characters frequently without blocking their access to most training. Killing a several characters a day will not be catastrophic."

My understanding that killing players was never intended to cause rep loss as it was a core fundamental part of the game.

GRIEFING other players is what was intended to cause rep loss.

So I think what you MEANT to say Ryan is "Griefing several characters a day will not be catastrophic"

I asked you during the Kickstarter if you intended to build a by griefers for griefers game like eve and you said no.

Seems you lied.

Holy Mackerel, you have terrible communication skills. Seriously, how does anyone function with such pathetic rhetorical skills? Anyone with even minimal rhetorical facility could craft something like:

"You said X, but it seems to me you did Y instead--can you explain that?"

The effect of being so clumsy and unethical is that no one will ever take you seriously. I'm sure you're successful in being annoying, at being dismissed as petulant or a crank, but normal people will just skip over the content of what you have to say because of the huge red flags.

Wow, and some people accuse me of being aggressive.

What I feel Summersnow is mixing up is non consensual PvP with Griefing. This I believe is a common mischaracterization made by players that are not accustomed to open world PvP games.

His misquotibg Ryan, as it relates to EvE, is yet another example. Eve is not a game made by Griefers, for Griefers. That maybe a misconception held by people who have very little or no experience of actually playing the game. They base their beliefs solely on what others have said, and those are usually the nay-Sayers. Ryan's quote was that "EvE is a game made for wolves, by wolves."

I believe part of the issue with PFO is, we really don't kniw who the game us being made for. We have...

Many fail to understand the economic dynamic of a game like this. The dynamic that drives the game is equipment loss. That may be via pvp or via pve but you need equipment loss to provide a market for crafters. Threading in my view is therefore a negative. I would be quite happy if they kept the percentage of gear looted the same but removed threading. in addition make crafters need to be part of a player settlement. This would not be a detriment to crafters but it would mean settlements have to regard crafters as full citizens not second class citizens.

Honest question for crafters here : who would prefer to be a golarion reknowned armoursmith that everyone goes to for top notch armour vs how many want to be known for making decent consumables?

With threading the number of world reknowned armour smiths is a lot smaller as less armour needs replacing

WOD was never going to get off the ground if you ask me. They put CQ into incarna as a testbed for the code and it literally burnt out grapics card with one player on screen and limited environment. Don't get me wrong the detail was incredible but you can't play what you cannot run

I have to say Archeage is a piling heap of horse manure. Looked into it briefly and I fail to see how anyone can think the game is good. This is not to excuse pathfinder however and I will continue to watch from a distance though I do think Dancey anticipating 10k within a few months of the start of EE is a little optimistic from what I am seeing.

I would like pathfinder to succeed I really would then it would give me options if Phoebe does not shake up null. I must admit to being a little dubious about that success currently from what I hear but I never intended trying the game till a lot nearer OE on the grounds I could not sell it to the corp. My watchfullness is waning but not dead quite dead yet

Deianira wrote:

T7V Jazzlvraz wrote:

Schedim wrote:

...I have the hand-eye coordination of a MBT driven by a drunk sloth... that suffers from dementia

My long-lost twin!

Triplets!

Toss in Bi-polar and Arthritis and I'm in!

Is there anyone full able and mentally stable looking at this game I sometimes wonder by the litany of ailments:) Speaking as an hfa myself

Steelwing wrote:

Bringslite wrote:

Still nice to see you around again, Steelwing. Even if it is to pull out the troops. Check back later. The game may have improved to a level that is acceptable for you and yours. ;)

I will be keeping an eye out and if the game becomes on I can recommend I shall do so. I am basing my opinion currently merely on feedback. I shall no doubt try it myself at some point before writing it off however I shall wait till much later to do so.

Not gonna sugar coat things. It is barebones stuff right now. Pretty much as they described it would be. I think that some are shocked by this and waiting or moving on. It seems almost spot on as described, though I admit a little behind schedule. That is not rare in game developement. Still there is enough in to have some meaningful fun if PVP is not ALL you care about.

I wish I had an invite left. I would offer it to you to try stuff out.

I have already been offered invites and declined. The reason being that if I saw in the state described to me I would probably not come back.

I will wait a bit instead and see if Dancey can pull a rabbit out of that hat.

What I want to se
1) settlement in and working
2) battles consisting of at least 200 a side
3) player looting
4) how threading works (*hint here if too much can be threaded it impacts negatively on a player driven economy)

Call me fussy if you like but all these to me are Miminum Viable Product till I can say to my corp hey there is this other game perhaps we should take a look and not get people coming back and telling me "why did you recommend this?"

Still nice to see you around again, Steelwing. Even if it is to pull out the troops. Check back later. The game may have improved to a level that is acceptable for you and yours. ;)

I will be keeping an eye out and if the game becomes on I can recommend I shall do so. I am basing my opinion currently merely on feedback. I shall no doubt try it myself at some point before writing it off however I shall wait till much later to do so.

Just casually browsing here. My take on this little "micro drama in the making" was that Nihimon was being friendly in a kind of "hey, long time no see" way.

Clearly, Steelwing, you have the right of it. Thanks for opening my eyes.

You may well be right and I was reading too much into it :) As I have noted before I don't do empathy well so sometimes get the wrong message. A cross I have to live with unfortunately and it sometimes makes my responses inappropriate. Should I have got it wrong I apologise unreservedly.

@Karlbob

I didn't imfiltrate spies I had people offering. some I accepted some I turned down

Steelwing wrote:

If you think we shouldn't try and help those who volunteered their services then that is your problem.

Hrm... I thought I remembered you being a bit more rational. That's a thoroughly bizarre pseudo-accusation. I actually think it's great that you're taking care of your people, that's a really generous - noble even - thing to do. You're a pretty swell guy.

What else am I to deduce from you aspersion of being conspiratorial?

Perhaps if you phrased yourself better?

Nothing conspiratorial about assisting those that help you in a completely different game as far as I can see. We will take them in, train them in null sec tactics if they want to give it a go *shrugs* not sure why you think its a big deal and frankly I thought you would be glad to see the back of me

Not conspiratorial at all. If we were coming into this game it would be conspiratorial. However we are unlikely too unless they get there act together. If you think we shouldn't try and help those who volunteered their services then that is your problem. I am merely extending an offer to those involved that they may take up if they wish as thanks for their support.

Given that another 15 months is probably the minimum time before Settlement Warfare is even a thing, I doubt many of us are expecting epic battles within a couple of months of EE...

You mistook my statement...I am not saying within a month or two of ee, I mean within a couple of years. I personally don't believe there engine is going to support it from everything I am being fed back.

Only reason I am on tonight indeed is to pm all my agents within various companies to let them know that we are no longer believing that pathfinder is for us and offer them support for getting into eve as recompense for their loyalty

As I have actually logged on for a change rather than spectating from a non logged on perspective a couple of points from someone who has more or less decided pathfinder is not a game to bother with currently

Those who are saying MVP is decided by customers not by the company are quite correct. If people come and look and find the game wanting they will not be back, MMO space is too crowded now to get a second chance this is why games like age of conan which launched as a buggy piece of crap haa not been able to recoup subscribers despite being a much better game now than it was then. First impressions count.

Secondly for all those who criticised me for pressing Dancey for details on numbers for mass battle...all I can say is if the game is struggling to cope with the numbers logged on now across a large number of hexes then dont expect epic scale battles anytime soon

So Steelwing, are you and your corp coming to PFO? Was wondering about that.

Nothing has changed in that we will make a decision shortly before OE can't see any point deciding any earlier

For realsies, the chances of the EvE goons jumping ship are slim. Anyone that has fought the goons in games outside of EvE know exactly what to expect. They aren't really that scary, I don't see why people continue to envoke them like the boogieman.

To be fair there is a slightly higher chance now that Dancey has given them a target by telling them that if they can turn the game into a murder sim he will shut it down. They would certainly enjoy the thought of that

You are correct though they are not the bogeyman people make them out to be and perfectly fightable

Is what someone would write if they wanted to stir the feces. But ask yourself, what will you do when they arrive?

The same as we do in Eve probably.

Being wrote:

Steelwing wrote:

Personally I would far prefer that rather than making starmetal hexes FFA that they actually increase the rep and alignment penalties for PVP my at least 2 or 3 fold maybe even more

Fascinating. What would that look like, and have you thought of a rationale?

The more harvesters you kill the higher your rep gains become. That actually increases ten fold if you kill folks trying to avoid PvP and 20 fold if you do it while they are quelling an escalation.

That way if you crash your rep by PKing everywhere else, you can go to a skymetal hex and fix it real fast so you can get back to training all the skills needed to ruin the game for other people since they all think that is your intent anyway.

/sarcasm

Hmm did I not explain well or did people skim read assuming they knew what I was going to say

some numbers ( made up :) )

kill a gatherer anywhere without feud etc....lose 100 rep and move 100 towards evil

kill a gatherer in the same situation but in a star metal hex I would like to see the rep loss being at least 300 and the slide towards evil being at least 300

I certainly was not proposing that killing the gatherers increased your rep

Personally I would far prefer that rather than making starmetal hexes FFA that they actually increase the rep and alignment penalties for PVP my at least 2 or 3 fold maybe even more

I am sometimes in Virginia

Steelwing wrote:

While declaring yourself has an advantage until GW decide how much not being lawful good is going to suck then an early declaration may leave you at a disadvantage.

If the empire or the settlements that make them up were already filled (negating recruitment concerns) I would take your statement as absolutely true.

Needless to say we are not in that position. We need members, we need allies. Part of recruitment is making clear what you are recruiting for.

Mr George I fully understand your reasoning and have few quibbles with it. My thoughts were along the lines of declaring your intentions privately to those you were hoping to recruit with the caveat that things were subject to change depending on gw's stance rather than an open declaration.

Not sure my suggestion is correct here or that your approach is by any means just your approach makes any necessary u turns more public

While declaring yourself has an advantage until GW decide how much not being lawful good is going to suck then an early declaration may leave you at a disadvantage.

In the days when bows were considered a useful weapon of war there were different arrow types that were used depending upon the foe.

An example being the bodkin point arrow which was better than the broadhead arrow for penetrating chainmail. It would be nice to see different arrows having different effects so that the archer had to make ammo choices

and i will post really really small because nothing i say is important

A note of caution...take it whichever way you will

While there are many skills that can transfer across from the military leadership wise there are also skills that work well in the military but are counter productive in a game like this and can end up causing more problems than they solve. Sorting out which is which will stand you in good stead

From my experience, the players I play with want a global id. It is a huge complaint on champions and star wars that the feature isnt there and a feature about city of heroes we loved.

I will use separate accounts so this does not apply to me however as always I would suggest that global ID be an optional thing then those that wish to use it can and those who do not want everyone to know each and every alt can not turn it on

The amount demanded can be controlled to a certain point by giving an incentive for the bandit to make the SAD successful.