Urman's page

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? :-)

TEOs initial concept was to be a PvP force that provided a space for people to be mostly safe from random player killing (to include simple banditry).

I don't think we have renters, yet. I think that our goals and ambitions are still such that we'd let individuals and companies live in our space without belonging to TEO, provided they are good citizens.

I've wondered how easy it would be to scale agro range. If the agro range could be scaled, then more advanced escalations might appear more aggressive and possessive. I think current agro radius is 20m. If it were 25m for escalations at 25-50%, 30m for escalations at 50-75%, and 35m for escalations at 75-100%... It wouldn't be such a walk in the park - it would be seriously dangerous to try to pass through a territory claimed by mobs.

So all things considered, 15 isn't much of a cap at all...

Agreed. I think the Devs are well aware of this, which is why they have set the not-attached-to-settlement cap much lower.

@Forencith, I'm not sure whether we agree or not.

Whatever their intent, my betters (as I might call them in soft sarcasm, lost to some) failed to shape that intent into words that they would swear to. The treaty appears to cover towers, and towers alone. The treaty says nothing whatsoever about territory, or resources, or the contents of our husks once dead.

* Would you be satisfied with a PFO where everyone just farmed escalations, gathered tansy, and crafted increasingly pretty suits of armor, with no significant quantity of PVP content?

No, but I have no expectation that will be the case. There will, in time, be more competition for resources, just like there is currently some limited competition for towers. There will be PvP.

* Do you feel comfortable that if everyone on the map were playing the same way you do, there would be enough content to keep the game interesting and afloat?

Hmm. I explore, I gather, I participate in clearing escalations, I participate in 'sanctioned' PvP: taking and defending towers and defending allies from flagged bandits. I wait for the implementation of the Freeholder role, Outposts, and Holdings - and with holdings, raiding and eventually feuds and war. Yes, I'd be comfortable if everyone restricted themselves to sanctioned PvP, but I don't imagine that everybody will.

* Have you seriously considered engaging in content creation? Have you done so? If not why not?

If by "engaging in content creation" you mean attacking unflagged characters, no I haven't considered it. Why not? Because, as a member of The Empyrean Order and Brighthaven I'm sort of committed to the NG alignment. Because as soon as members of Brighthaven attack unflagged characters, we'll get criticized here in the forums.

On the other hand, if by "engaging in content creation" you mean venturing out into the world, accepting risk and potentially being a target for bandits, I do that every day.

* Have you ever seriously considered initiating hostilities with anyone who isn't NC? Have you done so? If not why not?

No. I'm a member of Brighthaven. If you look at the map, we don't share a border with anyone except our allies. That's deliberate. We don't hardly share a border with the NC. Why would I go more than half-way across the map to cause problems for my settlement?

* If the NC is the sole target of all non-NC content creators, how long do you think that dynamic can realistically be expected to survive?

That's a pretty big if, there. Even if we just assume away all of the potential for conflict over resources and territory, PFO is attached to the internet. I have no doubt there is a good supply of players out there who will come to the game and create whatever justification they need to attack their fellow players' characters.

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As an observation - I think the NC's biggest problem is that they are in a self-inflicted alliance between the two groups that are the most obvious aggressors. By deciding on a course of non-aggression between the LE groups (led by Golgotha?) and the CN bandit groups (led by Aragon?), they effectively shut down their best potential source of PvP - each other.

With that said, it's going to be hard for any wilderness cache type item to compete with a 1000XP ammo dump character.

Maybe the 1000XP cache character is the placeholder for the hideouts. :)

Crafted camps also don't have a 5 day duration. With a 4 hour cool-down for camps, you'ld have to deploy 6 high-end camps a day for 5 days to equal the power regen of a base camp. And with the base camp, in 15 days you can place it again for no additional cost.

Add in the storage capacity and that base camp has a pretty significant capability to allow heavy gathering or PvE in an area.

There is also potential value in trade towns on a static(ish) border between two regional alliances.

My experience was that scavenging nodes drop the types of materials not found in the current hex's nodes, plus the materials that are only found in scavenging nodes. So if there are plant nodes in the hex, the scavenging node won't drop material that would be found in a plant node.

Mountain hexes have no scavenging nodes.

Forest, Cropland, Swamp, and Badland/Rough hexes have plant, essence, and scavenging nodes. The scavenging nodes drop pelts, cloth, and stuff found in mining nodes.

I don't know what nodes are found in the hills in the NW. If the nodes are mining, essence, and scavenging, I'd expect some of those scavenging nodes to drop plant node materials. If they drop plant node materials, but no T2 materials, the drop tables might be bad.

Lesser Vital is listed as uncommon on the Jan 26 raw data, as are Lesser Consonant and Lesser Numinous. Decorative, Semi Precious, and Decorative are listed as common.

I'm offering a good selection of refined leather items in exchange for coal. If you have raw leather you want refined, you can use those in lieu of coal; I'll effectively tan the pelts into hides and give you the refined items (taking a cut, of course):

Item for Sale -- Price in Coal/Raw Leather

Basic Strip +0 -- 1/4 (.25)
Basic Strip +1 -- 1/3 (.33)
Basic Strip +2 -- 2/3 (.67)
Basic Strip +3 -- 1.40

Basic Hide Sheet +0 -- 2.2
Basic Hide Sheet +1 -- 3.3
Basic Hide Sheet +2 -- 5.7
Basic Hide Sheet +3 -- 11.5

Basic Leather Sheet +0 -- 2.2
Basic Leather Sheet +1 -- 3.3
Basic Leather Sheet +2 -- 5.7
Basic Leather Sheet +3 -- 11.5

Parchment Sheet +0 -- 1/5 (.20)
Parchment Sheet +1 -- 1/3 (.33)
Parchment Sheet +2 -- 1/2 (.50)
Parchment Sheet +3 -- 1

Advanced Strips +0 * -- 0.80

* Unfortunately, I have limited gathering ability. I can make Tier 2 items, on request, but the buyer will need to provide the required monster or creature pelts.

To arrange for trades, contact Yrme in game, or if she is not available, Fierywind. All sales in Keepers Pass.

Thanks Hardin, I never knew that was there.

Yes, it has been promised. Under "Local Vault Storage" in Blog "How the Auction House Works" Eventually Companies and Settlements will have shared credit accounts and Local Vault options but those functions are not yet in the game.

From your link (bolding added):

"Each character has their own Abadar credit account and Local Vault and credit accounts and Local Vault storage is not shared across all the characters on an account.

Eventually Companies and Settlements will have shared credit accounts and Local Vault options but those functions are not yet in the game."

So Company and Settlement banks have been promised. Shared banking between character on one account has not, at least according to that link.

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IF your characters belong to the same company and/or settlement, they would be able to pass stuff back and forth through that connection they share. Such characters would generally have compatible alignment, reputation, and in-game goals.

Imo, There's no reason or logic (or advantage to the game) behind two totally dissimilar characters, like a CE bandit and a LG monk equitably sharing all of their worldly possessions.

Training in all four combat roles, a crafting skill, a refining skill, and three gathering skills, on the other hand, is a bad plan. (Yes, you'll lose your hat.)

+1 for Girl Genius reference.

Reputation hits and kill count towards the Murderer flags could be increased in mid- and hi-security zones:

2x Reputation/Kill Count on 'patrolled' high roads and areas around starter town.
3x Reputation/Kill Count in settlements other than your own.
5x Reputation/Kill Count for attacks/kills in TK/FI

Rep losses and kill count towards Murderer flag could be applied to all party membersco-attackers within some range.

There is no flag (yet) for looting a husk you come upon, and certainly no rep lose. To be honest, I don't see why there should be.

No flag should apply to looting a husk - provided me or my party killed the poor sod. If we do the kill, we've paid for the spoils with reputation (or were defending ourselves). A criminal/thief flag should apply to someone who grabs our loot so we can kill the thief without rep loss.

And yeah, no need for a rep loss for looting, even stealing from a husk.

@Guurzak, I think we can make some T2+0 gear without found recipes, actually. Or we will be able to soon. Or we can go out in large groups, accepting the trade of T1+N gear durability for a roll at a T2 recipe.

I think the Agro change is a good thing. I think it makes the mobs act smarter when they don't line up and all chase the one character we specifically want them to chase. PvPers wouldn't all chase the one player that shoots them first, right?

The fact that mobs are invulnerable when they return to their camp is also a good thing. PvE difficulty has been ramped up a little with that as well.

I don't think it's group think. I imagine it's 17 players who are very interested in *not* having loose cannons that cause them headaches. Maybe those 17 players would rather tend to *their* game and *their* political machinations than take on trouble that they'll have to spend time, energy, and accumulated faction with other settlements to clean up.

edit to add: I think that most of us have day jobs. We might not like our boss, but it's in our interest to make her life easier, not harder. If we can make him look good, even better. If you aren't a leader, be a good follower.

iirc, it currently recovers on a very slow tick rate, like some points every 12 minutes you remain in game.

I don't think there's a way to see the numeric totals for stamina or power (or encumbrance. or achievement points.)

It probably could. The question is, should it?

EvE might be a dystopian future where scamming is legitimate business and a long-term betrayal is the pinnacle of player interaction.

Maybe PFO takes a different path, where building faction with player settlements is important and being a misanthrope is not a good long-term strategy.

Temporary, yes, but six+ months is a long temporary if needs to keep people engaged. At the moment, the tower wars is not keeping people engaged. Some reason to pay attention is necessary. I continue to push for Random mobs that threaten AFK tower captures. They only need to be high enough to be a low level threat to a character that is not asleep, and turn up once or twice per hour.

I was running around after server maintenance, checking towers and escalations, so I was thinking about this a bit. I think the main problem we have is there is no scarcity. Having mobs take over towers doesn't necessarily change the scarcity or towers or anything else.

I'll offer three things that could be used to encourage taking and seriously holding towers, things that could also be used later with POIs.

1. The group (settlement) holding a tower (and later a POI) could get a harvesting "infrastructure" bonus, collecting 3 resources per gather instead of 2. (Or an increased chance of multiple gather, or increased chance of gushers).

2. If "poaching" in an area controlled by someone else's tower (and later POIs), the infrastructure bonus works against the harvester, and they collect only 1 resource per gather. (Or a decreased chance of multiples or gushers).

3. When an escalation in the hex is at 50% or more, all players are considered "poachers", even if their settlement nominally holds the tower. Also, any benefits of the tower (point accumulation) or POI/Outposts (bulk resources) is reduced as long as the escalation remains above 50%.

It takes ~3 minutes to run across a hex. If the towers a settlement holds are contiguous, each patroller can quickly cover 3+ hexes. I don't see a need for an NPC to get involved.

Now, if we want NPCs to have the capability of camping an unwatched tower and returning it to an unheld state...

Just because something is happening in a video game doesn't mean you aren't viewing through your regular, real life cultural lens.

And if there were corpses, there would inevitably someone who decides to to be as offensive as possible. If people can do something in an MMO, if only in chat, someone will.

I think pushing crowdforging to the level of demands risks GW having to shut down the crowdforging concept. If it's bad with a few hundred players active in the forums, it will likely be unusable with a few thousand. GW cannot develop fast enough to meet players' insistent expectations (which can change every week) and may have to just say "this is not working" and pull the plug on our crowdforging.

Generally speaking though, the ability to come into settlements at will using stealth, find a spot away from Thornguard and kill AFK crafters with ranged attacks is not in keeping with the original Goblinworks comments that home settlements would be a place of relative safety.

If it encourages GW to give the guards more teeth, it might be worthwhile.

If they don't want to spend time/effort on AI, I'd suggest variable rep hits: 2x rep hit on 'guarded' roads and 3x rep hit when you attack someone in a settlement not your own, including TK and starter towns.

Just for clarification: I think the WoT is a stop-gap, to give some PvP elements to the game in the interim while we wait for feud and war mechanics, as well as settlement mechanics. POIs will establish claims, I think, and they will largely be placed by the criteria you outline. Hopefully, POIs placement takes a substantial amount of time (days) to get through all of its steps.

Looks like Calvinball to me, changing rules after the game is begun.

imo, based on the rules for the WoT, only b) Force matters. No one has any claim to a tower; they hold a tower only when all others choose not to take that tower, or cannot muster the force to take it.

The NAP is an agreement that basically say, settlements will choose, by mutual agreement, not to take another settlement's inner ring.

If you logged in for the first time on the last day of the first month, you'd get backdated XP to the start of Early Enrollment, and your first month of game time would expire 30 days after your first login. So yes, if you time it right, you could get effectively 2 months -1 day of XP for 1 month's game time.

At the end of the month, I will have had a month gaming, have >300 refined leather goods in the settlement 'bank', collected about 150 recipes from killing starter gobbos, gotten in some pvp...

The person who logs in on day 29 can buy recipes from "old" players, because the gobbos may be gone, gets to do their initial gathering under die-and-drop-husk rules, and generally will be catching up. If Ryan sweetens the pot and the day 29 player manages to get almost two months xp for one month's game time... it's no skin off my nose. I got what I paid for. And more players in game will be a good thing.

Proxima, I think that any alliance could easily manipulate that to lock up their towers every day within an hour of the vulnerability window opening. An ally 'attacks' with one dude, the defend has 5 standing by, tower is secured.

... instead of meekly letting you have the Tower for no other reason than that you got there first.

I'll venture the intent of the War of the Towers isn't to decide the future fate of the server based on who had the most characters on at server reset on 14 January. Or even who was fastest, or most organized, or whatever measure we might choose. It's to be several months of conflict.

"Judge them by their actions"

I imagine Brighthaven is going to have to watch themselves, not getting near the line of the non-agression pact. If the "Neutral" arbiter decides to contest a tower midway between to the two settlements, then goes on to claim the tower publically... Brighthaven probably has less reason to trust the neutrality of the arbiter the moment this thread was started.

edit to add disclosure: from Brighthaven/Empyrean Order, but not leadership.

randomwalker wrote:

1) 'useful tip' rather than favourite: selecting a stack and putting it back in the same window doubles it.

Could you please explain this in a little more detail?

For example, you open the vault. Say you have 75 smooth beast pelts in the vault side and none in your inventory side.

1. One click on the stack in the vault shifts 1 pelt to inventory.

2. Click and drag the one in inventory, just a bit, and drop it back in inventory. The count become 2.

3. Do the same click and drag, drop. The count becomes 4.

4. Do the same click and drag, drop. The count becomes 8.

5. Do the same click and drag, drop. The count becomes 16.

You can also switch things up and add or subtract single items from the stack to get different numbers. So after the count is 4, you could add just 1 to make it 5, then drag and drop to double it to 10, 20, 40, 80, whatever you need.

Sure.

In pathfinder online public, there's a spreadsheet file called "Copy of PFO Wiki - Official Data". One of the sheets in that spreadsheet is titled "Expendables Advancement". It clearly shows the stat/attribute increases learned with each Expendable.

Right now as a melee character you cant catch anyone who is just willing to run from you. If you give a bow man an ability that hits for 10 damage but lets him move at full speed he will use that to kill everyone he meets very slowly. Except other range people.

Yup. Every battle would become a running battle, more akin to a aerial dogfighting than a mideval or fantasy fight. It might be great fun for the shooters, but the overall flavor of the running battles makes the PvP seem out of place.

On the flip side, without some ability to run and shoot it's hard to catch someone who's just running away. But if objectives in PvP are tied to terrain, like towers in WoT and Outposts and POIs later... then people need to eventually stop running if they want to take objectives.

Ryan Dancey wrote:

The NPCs Settlements need to have a functioning economy for starter gear (at least).

Create NPC crafters.

Let the Armorsmith trainer in the NPC settlements exchange 15 Iron and 15 Coal for a set of +0 Pot Steel Plate, or whatever the correct ratio is.
You could even make it slightly less efficient to use the NPC crafter than to make it yourself.

You can always go out and gather naked, and it would functionally the same as a PC crafter with the pot steel plate recipe standing in the town square crafting for newbies.

I'd think it should be at least 20% inefficient, maybe up to 50%. But I like the general idea, a resource sink/item faucet.

I would have you note, that for some of us, our reputation is an important choice in our role play style. If we are loathe to risk it, it is for a legitimate reason.

When low rep prevents us from entering our cities in response to outside attack, it might suggest that we all need to manage our reputation and keep enough in reserve so we can go on defense.

I think that there are some counters that really, really should be visible on the main UI without popping my character sheet up to block my view of my target or attacker. Reputation is one. I'd really like to know my encumbrance as well. Maybe my max speed. Power and eventually injury points.

However if they now use the same system as the weapon achievments that is a total possible per profession of:

(5+4+3+2+1) x 2 x 3 = 90 points

Note that it may be intentional and working as expected that you cannot get to level 20 while restricitng yourself to a single profession.

Remember that you get 1 point for +0 item and *6* points for a +5 item, so the actual number for pure crafting professions is:

(6+5+4+3+2+1) x 2 x 3 = 126 points. In theory. Those +4 and +5 items will be rare, especially for armorers.

Refiners get no points for +4 and +5 refined goods.

However, it's pretty easy (maybe too easy, frankly) to get enough points. A crafter or refiner making a common and uncommon +3 at each tier will net 6 x 10 points - that's your base 60.

Check out the crafting recipes... there are 10 recipes that can be done by a zero level crafter, one for each craft. Tailor, for example has a recipe Wool Mittens that requires +3 course yarn. Get six +3 yarn, make a set of +3 mittens, boom: 10 crafting points. Repeat that with 6 other crafts and you have 70 points from zero level crafting, in addition to your profession. There is no need to train outside your profession - not for crafting points, anyway.

It all depends on if we can harvest arrows off of PvEers. If excess arrows (like beyond the ones in the equipped quiver) drop, arrows might not require too many resources to gather ;)

As they are crafted in batches of five and possibly added to the quiver on a one on one basis, I assume Diego means 1c/arrow.

2 steel blanks + 2 yew shafts = 20 steel bodkin arrows

All arrows are made in batches of 20.

Guurzak wrote:

I wouldn't expect any Refining recipe to use already-refined goods.

My point was that Copper Bar +X is not the only Refining Recipe that uses Copper Ore.

I'd like to see a recipe that partially refines poor quality raw resources or salvage.

So if I had 20 units of Poor Iron weighing 2 enc each (whatever the quality is called), I could do a smelting job close to the mine site that turns that crud into 20 units of Pig Iron weighing 0.5 enc each (same as good quality ore). The Pig Iron might be considered a salvage item, but could only be used as iron.

There's an argument that any player with a week in game can probably narrow his location down to a fraction of a hex (I'm at 6 o'clock in hex -01.04, 1/3 the way out from center). Since it's pretty easy for us to figure out our own location, and trivially easy to use voice-chat to report it to our party... It might stand to reason that the game should do that for us, and we can focus on the fun parts.

I do hope that at some point there is a achievement track for non-damaging orisons. It might take a lot more casts than kills, because of the risk, and because each kill probably represents multiple casts. But it's EE. We maybe should crowdforge/clamor for such a thing.

With sound. Klaxon-like or an air-raid siren noise.

The clerics in the groups I've been playing in have done a bang-up job of matching vectors with running tanks (and fleeing archers like me) and spamming heals on the run. Extending their range a little would mean less failed casts, but I *know* there are clerics out there who are healing their parties with existing mechanics.

Today we dealt with two escalations near Brighthaven. Both were charred tribe goblins. The first started at near 30%, the second started at close to 40%. With two teams of 6 adventurers, we were able to clear the escalations in about 2 1/2 hours total.

It seemed pretty easy - but one of my teammates pointed out that we had been promised special escalations at the start of EE. These escalations started at a couple thousand points, compared to tens of thousands of points that we saw in Alpha.

So: escalations are very doable at this point, for settlements that plan on keeping their escalations under control.

Another very common fantasy trope is the hero only gets to die once.

Some might say that an unlimited number of resurrections is silly and immersion breaking. That's their opinion; Goblinworks seems to think that unlimited resurrections is importantant for the game design; game design being some balance of fun and meaningful.

What Pharasma giveth, Pharasma can taketh away. I'd be ok with characters holding onto whatever skills they have... up to the point of their death. So if you get kicked out of your town (or lose your town), Pharasma generously gives you one month to be a social animal and find your character a new town or retake your old one. After 1 month, though, at the next resurrection, the character suffers the full impact of not having town support. The rootless hero can avoid Pharasma's cold grasp at his skills as long as he can stay alive.

Yeah, sticky stuff counts as adhesive I think, there is also smelly stuff.

Fanon: the names of the goblin bags indicate what's inside them; there are 8 bag types. In the tale Princess Snaggletooth and the Eight Goblins, the Goblins are named Itchy, Smelly, Sticky, Fiery, Dreamy, Healthy, Dangerous, and Bitter. Coincidence?

I haven't played Pathfinder, but when I played AD&D it was assumed that our characters were contantly training and honing their skills during downtime between adventures. If a player said, "Hey, my character is training between adventures and should get pluses to his attacks," the GM would look at him and coolly say, "That's nice, but constant training is assumed. If you ever decide to stop training, let me know and we'll assign penalties to your attacks."

In PFO I assume Tier 1 capabilities are pretty mundane. A character can maintain his training regime without a lot of gear (so even with access to just an NPC settlement). At Tier 2 and 3, though, those constantly training characters have better trainers, better training gear, the best adventurer training diets, etc., etc. And all those advanced trainers with their fancy training gear and elaborate training regimes all have standards of what kind of town they want to live in: it's not something downstream of Rotters' Hole.

You can begin using your game time when Early Enrollment begins. You can use that time sequentially, or you can play a month, put your account in suspension, and then play later. While your account is suspended your characters will not earn XP.

Early Enrollment is just like Open Enrollment in that you have to pay to play each month.