Tinyish's page

I do like the idea of having the option to be a bandit. I even like the idea that I might have to deal with bandits, as awful as that will be for my business.

We have several goals in the banditry aspect:
1. Allow bandits to get stuff to support themselves.
2. Allow for the destruction of some un-threaded items in order to create an economy.

I have a few ideas that will accomplish both of these.
The bandit does what he does and is left with a corpse full of goodies on the ground in front of him and an angry player who may be coming for some revenge.

The corpse should never just disappear immediately when looted; that negates the conflict between the players. If the bandit loots and the corpse disappears then one guy is angry and poor while another guy is richer and happy. The only reason at that point for them to interact would be for revenge, which just isn't enough in my mind.

It should take some time to loot an item. I'd say ten seconds. The bandit must keep the window open to loot. Multiple bandits can loot the same corpse at the same time, each taking whatever they like as fast as they can. At some point the corpse begins to decay, destroying one random item from the corpse every five or ten seconds until everything is gone or the player who owns the corpse returns to it. The corpse decay could start either as soon as looting starts or a few second in, or when the loot window is closed.

It gives the player the option of running back to the corpse with friends to chase you away and get whatever remains instead of all of it just being instantly gone. This would be especially worth it if you were carrying an especially large load.

This would mean that you could get a good handful of items from the corpse in the couple of minutes that it takes the player to get back to you and you'll then likely have to defend yourself. It also means that if you just wanted to hit and run that you aren't going to get as much unless you stick around long enough to be chased away..

Additionally, if the bandit chooses to do business close to his hideout then he could possibly make multiple trips to the corpse and back.

Obviously a corpse would retain all of the PVP flags that it had when the player died. If it was flagged as a criminal then anyone could help themselves without losing alignment. If a corpse was not flagged than anyone taking gear would be flagged as a criminal.

I STILL don't think that background skills are a good idea, but I do like your ideas about having a background, Sadurian. (not even 100 xp) As they've stated, this area of the map is rife with adventurers who intended to pass through to get to another place where they could hunt demons or something. I think it is a pretty good bet that every person who shows up at the starting town was simply someone who thought that they could make a better life here.

I think the background of a player might help to determine what starting gear they have. That starting gear should be limited to something very small like a couple of coins (possibly), a practically broken tool or weapon and a set of clothes. These items should be SO minor that if you didn't have one it wouldn't even stop you from doing the same thing as a character who started with the tool/weapon.

I think everyone's immediate background would be that they'd somehow lost everything. Making up your immediate background could be like playing madlibs: "I lost all the rest of my gear to (fire/flood/my ship sunk/bandits/taxes/plague/misplaced). Before that I was a _______." Background before that would just be a story with no affect on your actual character.

At some point in your character's life s/he decided to give up the lame thing that he was doing before and be a crafter/adventurer/other. That point just so happens to coincide with the exact moment that you made your character and now is your chance to become great.

Unfortunately that doesn't lend itself to a background like "I've always been a great crafter all my life." If you want your character's background to be that he's a great crafter then you're going to have to become a great crafter right now and then in the future that will be your actual background.

I would have no problem with having to wait the first nine minutes of my character's life before being able to equip a weapon, assuming I'm given the ability to pick up rocks. It would also give me a few minutes to decide which type of weapon I wanted to start on and give me a couple minutes to gather some stuff to be able to afford a dented, bent, mostly-broken or otherwise low quality version of that weapon.

And at the end of that 9 minutes I would equip that weapon and hold it aloft to the heavens, displaying it for all the world to see. And then I would charge into combat completely unarmored and quickly die. It will be glorious.

If anyone wants to NOT play the game for three months while they're paying the subscription just so that they can log in at the end of that three months as a completely broke and totally clueless but semi-competent character then that's just fine with me... I know that Goblinworks will put those funds to good use, (as well as the money they saved by you not playing the game).

I write walls of text as much for my own entertainment as anything else.

I don't think PFO should start with any special skills right off the bat. ESPECIALLY not tracking. Tracking should be something that not everyone can do and even fewer people can do it well. In my opinion it should have an ability requirement of at least 12 before you can even get started (not sure which ability score). Finding a dungeon at this point should be complete luck. Getting to the dungeon's entrance as a newbie should require a lot of luck and effort and probably a decent group of newbies. Stepping foot inside a dungeon should strike geniune fear into the heart of a brand new character. Finishing a dungeon should be beyond the wildest dreams of a group of brand new characters.

That being said, there should are things that everyone can do regardless of whether they have skill in it or not. Everyone should be able to run around and to pick up the lowest level of rocks and herbs and sticks off the ground. Everyone should be able to wield thier fists and trade with other people and buy things on the market and have the starting small number of hit points. Everyone should be equipped with tattered burlap pants and a tattered burlap shirt. Maybe the ability to equip all simple weapons and swing them, but not with any skill whatsoever. Putting on a piece of armor, if you even manage to get one somehow, should be possible but you shouldn't really expect much from it.

Everything should be an upgrade from that point.

The very first people in the game will be running around the first couple hours picking up sticks and rocks to try to make an axes and picks so that they can pick up ore and wood so that they can make knives and clubs so that they can get some leather to make... etc. A character who is less than an hour old should have to group with two other newbies in order to take down a goblin whelp. Yeah, it'll be slow to start. And that's okay with me.

As a new player once everyone has already made a handful of knives and clubs you'll probably want to go collect your own rocks and sticks and grass so that you can either craft something useful yourself once you learn the skill or be able to trade your stuff for one.

All of the basic skills should be available relatively quickly, like the ability to swing a sword and maybe even hit something with it once in a great while. Even if you're the type of person who quickly gets bored picking up rocks and sticks, you'll be able to log in on day two and have the experience available to be able to wear some armor and swing a weapon. I believe they said somewhere that it would be something like three weeks till you'd be able to be a fully contributing member of a dungeon party.

You will not be sitting on your hands during those three weeks when you aren't yet a very good character. You'll be earning money, collecting equipment, building reputation and maybe most importantly: making friends.

In SWG you had incredibly large areas, which made it virtually impossible to keep track of everything that might be in the 16 square miles around your character.

Since PFO will be hex based it should be fairly easy to keep track of exactly what monsters are in the relatively small zone and where they are even if nobody has seen them yet. The complete list of that information wouldn't even have to be passed to a player until they activated or updated thier tracking list. They should be able to get it to work at least as well as in EQ, which was good enough for me.