Victor Ippolito's page

To be honest a better analogy would be an employee of a company that is about to initiate a production run a 100,000 units of a new product. This employee notices something that might be wrong with the product which might cause the whole production run to have to be scrapped, but he is not sure. Should the employee remain silent or should the employee let someone in the company know what he thinks so that someone who has better knowledge check it out and make sure there is not an issue. It is my opinion that the employee should speak up and that is all that I am trying to do.
As I have said many times in my posts, if this is what the developers intend then that is fine. It is just my opinion that there are problems with the current design that I believe will kill the game. I could easily be wrong. In fact I have been asking anyone to show me or give me some idea of where my thought process is off. To date yours is the only post that goes to that point if only in a minor way. You indicate that some people will find this type of play enjoyable. You may be correct. It is just my concern that the players that initially do the building and crafting will, after a while, find that it is not enjoyable and leave the game. Again I could be absolutely wrong, but that does not change my belief at this time and that is why I made the initial post.

I agree with everything you said, settlements are important, crafting is important, but if building the settlement and crafting that sword is overly difficult and frustrating (i.e. work and not fun) then why would anyone pay to do it. My concern is that no one will want to do the actual building and crafting, that is not to say that someone might do it out of necessity, but it would be nice if there were some mechanisms to make it fun and advantageous to so. Right now I cannot see where it will be fun or advantageous for anyone to actually be the one doing the building and crafting. If you can, then let me know how.

Yes, that is the blog I am talking about, the one they post ever two week.

I do not look at my post as doom and gloom, I look at it as pointing out an issue that I believe needs to be addressed or at the very least better expressed to the community. If there are a lot of posts pointing out the possibilities for making the game less enjoyable for a group of players then it might be appropriate to address these concerns in the bi-weekly blog post by telling players what the intent is for that group and how the dev team is envisioning that style of game play. This might go a long way to alleviating the concerns of these players. Right now I understand their concerns as the dev posts have been leaning in favor of one play style at the expense of the other. There needs to be a balance and currently I do not see it. Now, they may have it all worked out, but if so then please let the community know what it is as there appears to be a lot of concern in the community about it.

As for myself, I realize that everything is subject to change and I will definitely be checking out the alpha and beta to see how everything works out. It is just given the blog and the dev posts I have seen, I think that this game is not going to do well in its current incarnation and would like to express my concerns so that at the very least someone is aware of the issues I am raising and possibly will give it some consideration. Again I want this game to work and I am serious about not being able to figure out how it will be any fun for those who want to do building and crafting. Can anyone give me 5 things that they think will be fun and not frustrating with regards for building and crafting?

Thank you all for you input and responses. let me preface this comment with the fact that I want to like this game and want to be able to enjoy playing it and have it succeed. I have also read the entire blog posted on the Kickstarter and some of the forum messages, but not all there are just too many and I do not have that much free time. I am not trying to put down the game and I REALLY want someone to honestly convince me that my impressions are incorrect.

It appears that most of the posts in this thread are from people who would like to play bandits, assassins, bounty hunters, etc. as that is what most have indicated in the posts. I on the other hand would like to craft, gather and build. My issue is, given the information available, why would I play this game. I do not see the fun in doing the thing that I want to do. Believe me this is an honest question and I would like someone to tell me where the fun is in building the actual town and craft items for other player, because frankly I do not see it. Everything seems to be slanted against the player who wants to build and create and towards the ones who want to steal and destroy. Why should I as a player organize camps, hire guards, spend time gathering materials only to have all the stuff I gathered taken from me with my character having little or no recourse. In a prior post someone said that they did not what their character incarcerated, because they are paying a fee to play the game. Well the people gathering the goods are paying a fee also, why should their hard work be stolen from them. I do not believe, at least for me, that the bounty system and reputation system (especially since the reputation system encourages banditry) are good enough. According to the blogs gathering materials will be a very difficult organizational and time consuming process. High risk, high reward. Well where is the risk to the bandits.

Again, bear in mind that I like the idea of a sandbox MMO and want to like and enjoy this game, but given the information presented I just do not see it being fun for the ones who want to create and therefore I do not see it succeeding . Please someone convince me that I am wrong.

One last thing. If you want to say "just don't play then", that is fine, but without players like me who what to create the world, there will be no one to steal from, no towns to battle over and nothing for the bandits, assassins and bounty hunters to do. I really think the Dev's need to take a close look at the game from the town builders and crafters perspectives.

Reputation gating isn't really about what your town wants. There are just buildings that you can't install or keep running if they're going to have disreputable folks around them. For whatever reason, they don't have any problem with charming bandits and gentleman assassins, but don't want to deal with kill-happy paladins. Maybe the people that you have to hire to work there just hate drama, and don't care about ideology.

At the highest level, though, we will often do things that maybe don't make total sense from a simulationist view because what would make more sense would also be way less fun (e.g., permadeath and prison).

Do note that the Outlaw and Assassin flags are designed as something you won't want to reset very often (because then you have to restart accumulating bonuses), so you're still often going to want to go to an Outlaw or Assassin-friendly settlement because lawful and/or good ones may happily slaughter everyone they see with such flags even if they can technically pass the reputation gate.

We're also in a fantasy realm, and fantasy stories are full of places where outlaws and assassins are admitted, if not appreciated, into polite society if they're not indiscriminate killers.

I want to make sure I understand what the intent is so I am going to ask some question. Note that these are questions and not statements. Please let me know if they are true or not and if not what am I misunderstanding. These are not meant as judgments, I am just trying to understand what the actual current thinking is.

Question 1: If a group of bandits extort money from caravans entering a city, but not attack them, then they can, due to their reputation, enter the city and train there.

Question 2: Multiple groups of bandits set up camp around a city extorting money from caravans entering the town, but do not attack them, and a group of paladins goes out and attacks them to drive them off, then the paladins would not be allowed in town (due to low reputation for killing the bandits and the reputation loss would be large due to the high reputation of the bandits), but the bandits would be since they would have high reputation for extorting money from the caravans.

Question 3: Can a caravan be attacked by more than one group of bandits while traveling from the gathering point to their city? Rare resources might be far away and it is possible that more than one ambush point may be setup by different bandit groups along the route.

I am in the #3 camp.

I also do not necessarily agree with what they are doing with the evil side. I understand that they want to make evil less attractive by limiting them, but I think a better approach might be to give good players more ways of dealing with them. Probably the best approach might be a little of both. I honestly think my suggestion is a good one. It would curb some players from getting their reputation too low giving sever in game penalties controlled by other players. Effectively allowing the player base to police themselves. This would apply to both good and evil. Do I really want my paladin to have a reputation below the threshold and be subject to incarceration by the evil city. The same goes with bandits, should I wait a week before sacking the caravan for city X and get my reputation back up a bit (assuming reputation decays with time) and sack the caravan for city Y instead as my reputation is not that low with them.

I ask everyone to take some time and think about all the issues it solves. I realize it is a bit draconian and out of the box, but it is truly up to the player where it happens to them or not as they control there own reputation.

I also went back and read in more depth, and as fir the last section on punishment, to be handled by players.... When someone else handles my subscription cost, they can handle my play time, thank you very much.

You do realize that you can gain negative Reputation from PVE as well? That and we have a global reputation score, not one for each settlement, so how could one settlement or player remove me from the game, if maybe 50 settlements love me?

I do welcome you to keep on reading and get involved in the forums. You will find that the Devs are really striking a good balance between the various interests that you find in an Open World PVP Sand Box MMO.

I understand you concern that this is a paid for service and that is a big downside for my proposal. I had the same thoughts as well, but feel that I could always play a different character if it occurred. As for the reputation being global, I was unaware of that, but in any case it could change to by settlement as any aspect of the game could change during the development process. I personally believe that it should be by settlement instead of globally anyway. That way evil players might have a very high reputation with their chaotic evil city where as a lawful good paladin would have a very low reputation. By the way my proposal goes both ways, a lawful good paladin could be locked up by a chaotic evil city. Note that his would apply to only those characters with extremely low reputations with the given city and if you do not want it to occur the player merely need to keep their reputation above that level so it is really up to the individual player where they can be incarcerated or not. Just like it is up to the player to stay in a safe city or not to avoid PvP.

I have read all blogs that I know of, but not all the dev posts. The whole idea of this post was to point out POTENTIAL issues so that they could be addressed in development and not reach the end product unless desired. Your comment that they "may or may not end up being true" goes to prove the point. The question is should this be part of the game or not. If it should be then fine, but if not then is it not best to point the issue out so it can be addressed by the developers?

I am truly unclear as to why the animosity for my post. I listed the assumptions I based my comments on and that I did not know if all the assumptions were correct. I then gave my option as to how the current structure could be abused base of those assumption and a possible solution to the issue. Now I admit that I am new to forum posts. Maybe this is how they are, but I was honestly just trying to make the game better.

The issue seems to be that I mentioned griefing and everyone took offence to that. Griefing is an issue that I see the dev team talk about all the time so it must exist. While not all PvP is griefing should all non griefing PvP be allowed without sufficient risk? For example, I set up an ambush point for a caravan route and start attacking and stealing the caravans goods. The caravan owner then gathers a group and take out my bandits. Great, but what has the caravan owner accomplished. My bandits respawn and continue to sack the caravans anyway. The caravan owner is out all his goods and has died in the process. Now granted my bandits have died, but they also have all the goods and can still sack his caravans. I believe this is an issue that needs to be addressed. I posted a solution that might solve the issue. Now if my bandits, if caught, could be removed from the game for a couple of days, I might not stick around to be caught. It makes the role of bandit/thief more exiting, at least it would for me, and it gives the caravan owner some recourse and a sense of justice. I look at this as a win/win. The having the character locked up is just part of the game.
If you don't like this idea then what do you think might be appropriate or you might this that this is not an issue. In either case let me know.

Greeting Victor,

Just wanted to mention two things....

1. Goblin Works Devs have said that they will be looking fir and dealing with acts of griefing.

2. Ryan Dancey has said that Chaotic Evil settlements will be the most difficult to function in, and would likely suffer penalties in settlement development, skill training and other set backs as well.

Now the 10 points you raise either have nothing to do with griefing and or are not features found in any MMO I've played in the past 10 - 12 years.

PFO is advertised as an Open World PvP MMO. That does not mean open wold griefing, but it does mean that you may not always be able to choose when, where and under what circumstances you will be drawn into PVP.

For some, that is griefing, and perhaps Open World PvP is not for them. For others, that helps make the world feel like it is alive, with suspense and danger.

It appears that no one is actually reading my post.

The 10 points are assumptions for the purpose of the discussion and the discussion is just that. I am not saying in any way that I hate the game or it will not work. I am also not saying that all PvP is griefing. I am trying to point out that there are issues that need to be resolved. It was my opinion that the whole idea of the Kickstarter was to allow contributors to have some input into the game design. All I am doing in this post is give my opinion and pointing out some issues that I have not seen discussed. I realize that there are not dev blogs saying that they are going to do any of this. I am trying to point out what I believe will happen if the issues are not addressed and give some suggestions.

Victor I submit there is a difference between meaningful PvP and griefing. Griefers will be purged by Goblinworks.

The developer is only building the environment and what can or cannot be done. If the game were a story they are handling only the setting, and that is fashioned to resemble part of Golarion. The rest of the story is ours to make, the players. We will devise the plots and flesh out the content. We will organize and set events into motion. What we do will depend on us.

Some of us will pretend to be evil, some good, and some of us intend to be balanced or neutral. Some of us will be lawful and others unlawful, wheter good bad or indifferent.

The reason there is so much emphasis right now on the mechanics of PvP is because while it is the most sensitive of issues it is also part of the world we will populate. It is also most complex, requiring most of the effort. It is possible to harm one anothers' characters because that is how it is in Golarion. We aren't a small party adventuring about in the midst of a vast world populated by NPCs, we are many. And we will have conflict because a tale without conflict is a tale about nothing: without conflict there is no plot, no story at all.

Stick around. Avoid forming judgements based on ignorance. Become better informed before making your decisions.

There are only two kinds of decision: Informed decisions and lucky ones. Everything else is just a mistake.

My post was not meant as a complaint or objection to the concept, I was just pointing out some issues that will, in my option, occur and to make some suggestions. My post was just to point out that the current proposed environment was ripe with griefing possibilities, also that the environment seem slanted toward the Chaotic and Evil side with much less recourse to the side of Law and Good. Chaos destroys where Law builds, but it much easier to destroy then to build so there needs to be a balance that currently I do not believe is there. Same goes with Good and Evil, since Evil cannot be killed (literally), how do you stop it. Most good does not go out and seek evil, but most evil will actively seek good to conquer. If you think I am wrong that is fine, but I would rather point these thing out now and discuss them then to stay silent. If no one agrees with me I am ok with that. You will note that my proposed solution mealy gave the players more options in dealing with those that would disrupt their city and did not change anything that was proposed by the pathfinder team.

Victor Ippolito wrote:

I believe your comment to be telling. If 70% of the population left, then question is why did they leave to PVE server instead of stay on the PVP server. Is the answer that 30% of the population was griefing the other 70% and is the reason the game failed is because the PVE server game could not stand alone without PVP play and the PVP server fell apart because there were no more victims to abuse and...

Ignoring the conotations... the game stood. Whether you want to assume that every player that chose to stay on the PVP server was a griefer or not. The PVP helped keep even the players who chose PVE from quitting. It extended their enjoyment of the game for them, even if they didn't realize it at the time.

Please note that I used "If" as I do not know whether they moved for that reason or not. I found it fasinating that it occured and was only speculating. I am glad the game did not fold and I agree that this game would not work in a PvE envoronment. That being said I think that it will need to overcome the, I will call it 5%, of the players that will be griefing the other 95%. I have posted a new thread [And "Evil" Shall Inherit the World] about my thought. Take a look at it and post what you think about it.

I am fairly new to Pathfinder Online and I did contribute to the Kickstarter without knowing much about the game. I liked the idea of the sandbox MMO which sounded like it would be fun. I just finished with all the dev blogs and have been looking over the forums and I must say that I do not see this project doing well without some further thought given to human nature and how the game mechanics can be abused by those who like to bully and grief other players, even within the rules of the game. First let me list some assumptions about the game that may or may not be true as I have not seen many of them listed, but are necessary for my discussion.

1. PvP is major part of game (80%+ focus) with plays always flagged as PvP
2. Players will regenerate hit points while not in combat
3. Players can have more than one account
4. Players account will have multiple characters (let's say 8)
5. There will be a free to play option
6. Building can be destroyed faster than they can be built
7. It takes longer to setup and gather resources than to steal them after they have been gathered.
8. Characters cannot be killed permanently
9. When a character is logged off they are out of the game world
10. In game reputation is by character and not by account (player)

You can always count of people to take the least path of resistance to get something they want, it is human nature. It is normally faster to destroy than build and easier to steal than to gather and unless there are some mechanics for "good citizens" to punish wanton destruction and theft of their stuff the "evil doers" will dominate the game and destroy the enjoyment for the majority of plays. If this is the case then this will cascade into driving all the players who want to build and develop the environment to leave the game thus leaving only the ones who want to bully and grief others left and then they will leave since there is no one left to bully and grief resulting in a dead game.
The only thing that can curb this are if the consequences for wanton destruction and theft are harsh and controlled to a large extent by the players. So far I have read about a bounty system and a reputation system that are supposed to prevent players from abusing one and other, but I do see either working. There is a great divide between the real world and an MMO so that the way society handles criminals in the real world is ineffective in an MMO.

1) In the real world a person cannot disappear into thin air, but in an MMO if a player logs out then the character is gone and cannot be interacted with. This simple fact kills the Bounty Hunter aspect since all I as a play have to do is have multiple bandits that I rotate through, let's say bandit1 though bandit7, that I attack with on a rotating basis, let's say one day each a week. The Bounty Hunter cannot touch them as they are not in the game and will not be until the bounty has expired. As far as the loot goes, I setup a front man in the city that I send it to that reaps the rewards of my ill gotten gain. As for reputation, the player would not care, as the only character that ever interacts with the city has a good reputation and if the bandits need anything from town then the front man simply takes it to them or they can use what they steal off the other players. In addition, since damage regenerates over time, I can attack multiple people each day, maybe stealing 1 to 2 weeks of in game gathering of resources.

2) People can die (and stay dead) in the real world, but in an MMO that is just a minor setback. Given this fact then a wizard can, by himself, destroy a town with a little perseverance. Since it is easier to destroy the build all the wizard has to do is sneak into town and blast a building with a AOE spell (assuming that they will damage building), get killed and come back and do it again and again until each building is destroyed. Why not, they cannot be permanently killed. The same goes with armies or any other player attack on a fixed target. So if I have 10 players attack a town, after the attack, win or lose, I still have 10 players to attack the town again. Assuming I can do a little damage to the town then eventually I will destroy it.

Possible Solutions:
1) Hit points do not regenerate in the wilderness. Hit points only regenerate in a town or while logged out of the game (i.e. resting) or with magic. This is consistent with the PnP game and will prevent bandits from attaching multiple caravans a day as they are more likely to get kill on successive attempts. It also makes being able to go to a town more desirable and emphasizes the reputation system.

2) There needs to be a way for gross offenders to be removed from the game by other players. let's say that a town is given the ability to arrest and incarcerate a player character who's reputation with that town is below a given "very low" level. The effect would be to either not allow the character to log in or if the character logs in it is in a jail cell within the city. The duration could be anywhere from a day to a week and could only be done in case of low reputation with that particular town. There need not be an exclusion for a declared war because would not a town want to remove as many of the attackers as possible from attacking the town.

The whole idea is to make the consequences of breaking the social laws severe and allow the players more control over how they can deal with bullies and griefers. Also there needs to be some way to avert the "Undead" factor where the same character keeps respawning and coming back to attack. If you are worried about preventing a player from playing the game, remember that each player can have multiple characters and so can play another character while the other one is unavailable. Besides this gives the opportunity for a jailbreak scenario if someone want to break them out.

Yup it's already been stated, but the general mechanics of the game are built expecting PVP, and thus a non PVP server just wouldn't work. That is, the entire mechanics of the game, just fall apart without the threat of PVP.

One analogy that is worth bringing up, is I believe DaoC, is an example of a game that did this. They had a large amount of PVP in the game, admitted it had flaws etc... but then after a few years, they created a PVE server. Within about a week 70% of the population went to the PVE servers, at first you would argue that is a good case for PVE... but the end result wasn't good. Without the threat of PVP, the game couldn't stand on it's own... the PVE server had a huge spike of players, but they were gone within a couple weeks. The PVP server, having lost 70% of it's players, also died in that same couple of weeks. In the end... the moral is, if the game is built with the assumption of PVP.... a PVE server just won't work, and will be detrimental to the survival of the PVP server.

That isn't to say that PVP is the sole value of the game, far from it, but in many ways it is the driving force to encourage the PVE activity. PVE in nature is calculated risks, of which gains will almost certainly outweigh losses. PVP on the other hand... the losses are generally to match or outweigh gains in more cases than not. With a pure PVE focus... you will consistantly be moving foward, challanges become less valued etc...

Even if you do not participate in PVP, the existance of PVP is what keeps the resources you find and the equipment you create, valuable and meaningful.

I believe your comment to be telling. If 70% of the population left, then question is why did they leave to PVE server instead of stay on the PVP server. Is the answer that 30% of the population was griefing the other 70% and is the reason the game failed is because the PVE server game could not stand alone without PVP play and the PVP server fell apart because there were no more victims to abuse and therefore boring for all the griefers. If this is the case then the game has a fundamental flaw that allowed players who like to bully people to run the other people out of the game. In reading the blogs and forum posts I definitely see this game going the same way right now.