Great work, Harad. Whatever its accuracy, it is excellent food for thought.
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Mbando, have you given much thought to territory and holdings? Do you see PtV (if you'll forgive the acronym) as a purely combat company or do you anticipate trying to have a robust logistics section?
I will try PvP in both and see which one I prefer. Roaming with an 8-man in DAoC is still my gold standard for MMO fun but it's not entirely clear to me yet that CU will hit the mark. If it doesn't, then I'd rather play PFO for a lot of the same reasons I enjoyed EVE: meaningful, teamwork-oriented PvP.
DAoC. Want to zerg? No problem. Find the army and join up. You'll fight open field and in sieges. Want to run as an 8man? As long as you are a good team player with TS/Vent, you can find a group. Great open-field stuff and, if you play well, you can beat small armies with your group. Want to small-man? As long as you have speed and CC, it can be a lot of fun. The challenge of finding people to kill and getting away from the ones you can't never grew old for me. Want to solo? You can do that too. Not my cup of tea but a lot of classes could do it if the player knew his business.
Falls Church, VA, but I'm from Vancouver, WA, and lived in Seattle for seven years (where I worked at the WotC Game Center for a year and change).
Happy birthday, USMC. It's always a pleasure to work with you guys.
Depending on how cynical you are, you could argue that many real-world modern democracies practice (4) already. Several powerful Western countries maintain small but highly effective contingents of special operations forces that do all sorts of stuff that would cause reputation hits. Luckily, the "settlements" are big enough to absorb those low-rep chartered companies with nary an ill effect.
Andius, I would prefer a raiding system that allows meaningful economic damage. I think Lam is onto something in terms of simply tweaking the rate of destruction. Also, what if we're overestimating the importance of a single outpost? Instead of a 10% every 10 minutes with total destruction at 100 minutes, the growth rate could be changed to give diminishing returns and total destruction at two hours, three hours, four hours, whatever. Dedicated raiders can certainly lay waste to an enemy's economy, burning down orchards, tearing up workshops, and the like, but it should take some time. If raiders are willing to spend that time -- and forgo doing other things like attacking more outposts or killing PCs or whatever -- there ought to be some rewards. Just some random thoughts at 5 in the morning here!
"We're all scared. You hid in that ditch because you think there's still hope. But Blithe, the only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier's supposed to function. Without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends on it." (attrib. Ronald Speirs, BAND OF BROTHERS)
To expand on Xeen's point, Scenario A should be hard because a given hex only provides a finite amount of raw materials. Even acknowledging trade to exploit comparative advantages, a settlement would either have to expand its territory or voluntarily half its population growth (but thereby reduce its capacity to internally balance against adversaries, real and imagined). This tension would spur conflict and emergent content. The largest polities may be able to establish buffer areas but in an environment with magical fast-travel and various means of stealth, there should always be a decent possibility for raids by competitors or bandits. As an aside, I much better understand why GW wants to link harvesting with the discoverer. I wonder, though, if the merit badges might not be associated with the discovery rather than the exploitation? Successful prospecting would be the actual achievement on which advancement depends. To me, it's much less of a stretch of verisimilitude to sell deeds than the alternatives.
"Mr. Dennit, with all due respect, and remember I'm sayin' with all due respect, that idea ain't worth a velvet painting of a whale and a dolphin gettin' it on." Talladega Nights humor aside, I suspect the hook for the guards are the waves of attacking NPCs. In the context of helping their company or settlement, guards are probably willing to help out so long as they're not spending their precious playtime being bored. The pay would probably be insufficient regardless and just takes away some of the opportunity cost's sting.
Brilliant. It was annoying to me that certain non-intuitive actions in the Temple of Elemental Evil video game could cause your paladin to become fallen. No matter how hard we try to define alignment, there will always be a certain grays in terms of interpretation. Presumably, though, for the characters affected, discernment would be much easier. Then again, discernment of sin can be pretty tricky in real life but I'm not sure if that's a fun "system" to simulate!
I'm curious what the "sweet spot" is for repairs. In DAoC, I found repairs to be an annoyance rather than a meaningful money-sink or excuse to skill up a crafter. Repairs do make a LOT of sense, though. In real combat, weapons break all the time, armor gets dinged up, and the like. Prohibitively expensive (in terms of coin, time, or both) weapons make weapon breakage an emotional event for fantasy heroes, however. Imagine the blade snapping on your Vorpal Longsword +4 in a random encounter with Orcs; you might lose your mind. This is another reason why I prefer a system that promotes equipment turnover. The sting of weapon breakage would presumably be less painful when you're more accustomed to that and losing your weapons under other circumstances. I do acknowledge that something has to give. It's Pathfinder, after all. Players have every right to seek extremely high-end equipment and have a reasonable expectation that they can use it regularly and keep it in their possession and intact. In my personal experience, though, I preferred relatively easy-to-replace ships and fittings in EVE than grinding out templates in DAoC or LOTRO.
My statement was not meant to be sarcastic. Then you have my sincere apologies. How do you see your proposal playing out then?
Maybe all and every item should be auto destroyed after a week to be sure that no one cheats crafters out of their work by things like say, not logging in for a while. Seems extreme. Have you played a game where this happens? (See, I can be sarcastic too. I don't know for certain that my position is right but at least it's based on information gathered playing games with PvP, looting, no "threading," and fully-functioning economies.)
I didn't know any of us objected to item-threading. We live and learn. I think item-threading is a mistake. I'm still torn about 100% looting: from a realism perspective, it makes sense but from a game-economy sense it's less ideal. People losing equipment will ensure there's always ample work for crafters. It should also reduce the number of folks running around with Weapons of Ultrabaddassery (tm) which means a narrower degree of difference between new players and veterans.
Mbando, still gauging interest? Consider my interest piqued. Not only am I planning to play a Lawful Good PvP-oriented character, but I have a similar background: a bit over a year as a junior enlisted soldier in an anti-tank platoon and over eleven years (and counting) as a cavalry officer.
Lurker here. I missed the Kickstarter but watch anxiously for another opportunity to support the game and qualify for EE. At the moment, I have no affiliation. I played DAoC off and on for four years. Subsequently, I played EVE for two years and change. I tinkered around in LOTRO for a year and have familiarity with EQ and CoH. To me, EVE is the gold standard for meaningful PvP (though nothing beats a good 8v8 in DAoC in my book for actual gamplay). I hope to find a PvP-oriented LG company in PFO, though I will never be able to play much between my various RL obligations.
It is sort of sounding a lot like the most interesting way to play is go do something else for a month or two come back to a heap of XP and then spend a full weekend online doing the other stuff needed to rank up and get up to date then log off again for another month :D Nah, because while you may skill up at a fixed pace, you'll gain wealth, reputation, standings, and your social network by your active participation in the game. If you only log in one weekend every month, your access to a lot of player-driven content will be more limited and your toon will be less prosperous.
It's the Char creation that sucks a lemon to me. It's counter intuitive, and all starting characters being tabula rasa clones is major anathema to role players. Characters should have flavor from day one. This sounds much worse than it is. Character creation/progression strongly resembles EVE. In EVE, you have an exceptionally low amount of variance between starting characters. However, you train your initial skills so quickly that personalizing/individualizing your character is a fast, seamless process. Anyway, the real diversity between characters is never in their stats. It's how they're played. |