Tavor Jeager's page

Nihimon wrote:

If there's a pack of wolves in the forest that preys on our livestock and kills our children, then going into the woods to hunt them down and kill them - or drive them off - is very much "protecting" my village.

Mbando wrote:

Swap "evil PK" for "ogre mage"--not sure how that is qualitatively different.

Because they stay dead.

Player Characters don't stay dead. Killing them doesn't stop them from doing what they're doing. You're not killing them to end a problem. You're killing them to make the player involved have to calculate the cost of being killed BY YOU when considering the decision to engage in murder.

It's a financial transaction, not a defense of the innocent.

There are two different stories being told here.

One is a classic fantasy story - you protect the weak by killing the danger. Everyone lives happily ever after.

In Pathfinder Online, that's a PvE story.

Two is what happens in MMOs - you attempt to modify the actions of other humans by using pleasure and pain. Eventually either you give up, your target gives up, or you both give up. Everyone has an interesting and meaningful series of interactions.

In Pathfinder Online, that's a PvP story.

RyanD

I have to wonder particularly from this statement how does it make sense that it is fine to kill a rampaging ogre because it would actually be dead but it was evil to kill a rampaging player because they would come back?

How exactly is completely removing someone from the mortal coil forever less evil then minorly inconveniencing them for a time.

And since you can't actually kill an immortal what evil act are you perpetrating against them? assault? actual bodily harm?

Also if being temporarily incapacitated (killed) can't be used as a good deterrent from doing these things why on earth would anyone bother to do things like arrange or pursue bounty or assassination contracts?

If it is going to be worth someones time to do it, it should surly cost a fair amount of money to convince them to do it. And if it really doesn't much inconvenience them to inflict "death" on them why would you pay so much?

Seems pretty simple. you just walk/ride up with your clearly overwhelming force (because why would they pay you if they think they can beat you) say "stand and deliver" or words to that effect and then when they tell you to go stuff yourself you kill and loot their corpses.

Unfortunately because it is a game and death is only a minor inconvenience there really is no reason to gamble on you letting them go after all that would just encourage you to continue to rob people.

For some reason the exact same arrangement of paying for access to areas without being killed by paying beforehand seems to work a lot better no doubt some trick of the human mind convincing them that this extortion is some how different.

First in regard to.

"Thief: Characters gain looting rights to NPCs and other players they defeat in combat. Looting rights unlock after about 5 minutes so that anyone can loot a corpse. Looting an unlocked husk that you did not originally have looting rights to will mark you as a Thief. This flag lasts for a decent length of time after the act."

This seems very odd to have an immunity delay and a thief flag. Surly if it has sat there for five minutes unlooted this would mean the person with rights doesn't want it? Why not remove the flag and extend the immunity time a bit more and avoid it all together? Or remove the immunity bit and have actual stealing rather then picking up abandoned goods as it seems now.

I fear the only real use for this is leaving stuff laying about and waiting in ambush for anyone to foolishly pick up the seemingly abandoned objects.

To "Traitor/Betrayer"

Is betrayal somehow going to be worked out by the game? assigned by a groups leadership? automatically given to anyone who leaves a group? And is there any idea of what constitutes betrayal if the systems assigns it?

For "Heinous".

I would hope there is at leased a good reason to do these bad things and suffer this penalty, raising of the dead being rather powerful for instance.

For the economics of banditry, unless a significant amount of items are destroyed when looted (which may make banditry unprofitable and pointless) since these goods would still exist after changing hands and would need to be sold to provide much use to any bandits and as such still go to market. It would need to be from the discouragement of goods collecting/transportation the driving up of prices would come from not the actual theft itself a point I hope goblinworks is aware of.

On a slightly connected note am I correct in my thought that items are not lost upon death but only when looted so all that is required for a group in a fight is to hold the field and they will lose nothing thus rendering any attempts at economic attrition on a larger force completely pointless or actually counterproductive by giving them your loot if you can't take the ground?

let people solo if they want. no reason not too as long as you cant solo great wyrms, beholders...etc.

that orc camp might take longer to take out and you have to be more careful, but I dont see a reason why a solo person couldnt wait for patrols to take out 1,2 orcs at a time until the camp is dead.

In regards to soloing i think that GW may end up having to tweet some of what we know about monsters to accommodate. Most higher CR creatures are built to be taken on by a group of adventurers by game design.

No reason a very powerful adventurer couldnt take out an adult dragon (CR 14) by themselves.

I think the way skill training in this game helps a lot with this problem. In traditional games having a level 20 fighter being able to take out what a group of level 14s can would pose a problem to the leveling of characters. In PfO since a creatures level is not tied to experience but to what resources you can earn from those critters, you dont have to worry about a higher level character soloing content below him.

I really do hope that NPC camps aren't that stupid, and would upon noticing a missing patrol send out bigger patrols or pull their patrols in rather then have them all die one by one in a brainless fashion.

I also hope that there isn't too big a spread in power level that a single character can kill dragons as I would think that would mean you will never need many people to kill dragons or that single characters can kill many players with ease.

I'll state first I am not currently a leader or member of an organisation.

I would suggest that meta-game agreements should be approached from a meta-game perspective to avoid confusion (but I do find your creative RP explanation interesting).

I think you may have trouble in that the term "Griefing" tends to be one which means different things to many people and as such it may be better to wait to see who your neighbors are friend or foe and develop relations before initiating what would seem to me to have to end up being a gentleman's agreement rather then a hard treaty (as hard as any treaty can really be).

I would also think making such agreements may be easier when any such unfriendly groups actually exist with the I know it when I see it principle helping to define the term griefer.

Tavor Jeager wrote:

I am strongly against any system which takes control of my character away from me.

I don't have a need to be in command I have done taking orders in online games a lot before and am fine with it. But quite frankly if I have to give up control of my character I just won't, and if anyone wants some mindless drones for there formations they can pay the bills for them themselves.

(possibly an overreaction but the sentiment is essentially true)

2 responses: If your character were able to climb inside some vehicle or ship and players were required to perform different functions (one on the wheel steering, perhaps someone on the back wheels, someone calling the beat to speed/ramming speed etc, another calling LOS, another running the weapons and other running defences etc...

Suddenly being in a large team losing some of your avatar's functions to be replaced with a delegated role in a "super-avatar", sounds fairly reasonable - especially when such a combination could if orchestrated, wreak destruction on foes less well coordinated/organised, requiring different skills such as teamwork and overall a different avatar experience? Combine it with emergent battlefield tactics on a huge scale with other coordinations and timings and order...

The other response is an old (very old!) army joke: "A sergeant shouted to all the new rescruits: "A-Ten-SHN! Right who here is well educated and refined in manners in background to consider the daily domestics to be beneath them?" Several hands shoot up into the air. "RIGHT! You are the people who MOST need to learn to perform these duties!!"

The fact is the life of a soldier requires a lot of giving up personal freedoms and being shouted commands at etc. The Soldier Career will be suitable for some players and not for other, as it should be. You make that choice.

I can see the argument you are making but to me there is a massive difference between following orders and instructions and coordinating with others then there is to simply having someone else do my actions for me.

Not to mention that making organisation automatic removes a sizable chunk of the possibility for confusion and uncoordinated action which can come from inexperience, haste or simple mistakes and decide battles.

To the vehicle/ship analogy whilst it does skirt around the movement area by an inability to go off in different directions being a single abject. I also would not want that to simply make me a part of a vehicle, I want to have to move to different positions myself never simply be put there by a commander. His job is to tell me what to do not to do it for me.

Most of all really I want the actions that my character does to be input by me and no one else and the ability to make my own mistakes.

Unknown, but I see no reason why not. Might be a reason but I don't know what it would be.

Whilst I can see a thematic reason for this for even knights bringing in levies or merchants with mercenaries one reason for caution in this regard that I can think of is balance. If bringing in a lot of NPC's is more effective than training other things and fighting yourself then it will be a no brainer for everyone, even if this were balanced in other areas such as cost it could just be an expensive no brainer.

I am strongly against any system which takes control of my character away from me.

I don't have a need to be in command I have done taking orders in online games a lot before and am fine with it. But quite frankly if I have to give up control of my character I just won't, and if anyone wants some mindless drones for there formations they can pay the bills for them themselves.

(possibly an overreaction but the sentiment is essentially true)

I would indeed argue that all other things being equal, if one side is just a bunch of random people who don't have a clue what they are doing and the other side does, they should lose. Or if against some non player threat should do a lot worse then those that have trained.

I would prefer for formations to not be bonuses for forming pretty geometric patterns on the ground. e.g. "well done you have formed a line plus however much percent defence." But rather work because of realistic reasons such as you being better defended in a line because there is someone standing next to you so you are not being attacked from the side as well as the front.

This would of course be harder to implement, you would need the ability to stop enemies from walking past you, reductions in the ability to defend against multiple people and/or from not your front.

Potentially stopping or making it a bad idea to have too many friendlies standing to close together (such as inside one another) when fighting so they can't just doom ball there way through. A thought there being big two handed swords need more room to swing then shorter ones so having your buddies crowding you could be detrimental. And of course some way to do this without allowing the accidental/purposeful blocking of doorways in towns or boxing people in elsewhere from non hostiles.