Zanathos's page

You have to try to look at this from GW's point of view. How does someone get to be Chaotic Evil? Other than the tiny percentage(in terms of an MMO) that will do it for roleplaying purposes, you become chaotic evil by being one of gank happy jerks that MOST MMO players don't want to play with. Or deal with. Ever.

The point of putting limitations on CE settlements is to discourage people from BEING CE. Even though they really DO make sense - the ruler of a CE settlement is generally an individually mighty being - an insanely powerful mage or cleric, a warrior who is too powerful for anyone to even consider fighting, an assassin who just makes anyone who even CONSIDERS messing with them disappear. People like this don't WANT their followers to be strong enough to challenge them for supremacy... at least in fiction. It is a bad place to be. If you really want to be CE for roleplaying purposes badly enough, there are loopholes to allow players to get around the problems. They're tough loopholes, though.

Intentionally. I'm sorry, but multiple checks and balances are important. Ryan Dancey talked about this in his most recent interview, how no one system can possibly control the tens of thousands of players in an MMO. The more that automatic systems, such as alignment and reputation, keeps problem players under control the easier it is for the GM's to focus on the real problems.

Honestly, I think Neutral Evil needs to be just as rough as CE.

It's a shame that GW needs to look at it from the point of view of 'how do we control the KSing, backstabbing, awful humans playing the game' and not just 'how do we make this the most awesome game ever!' Unfortunately, anyone who's ever played an MMO knows that the internet is full of jerks. PvP games make it much worse. Go play a few games of League of Legends in solo queue if you disagree. If GW doesn't do things like this, there won't BE a PFO in a few years because, in a game that's supposed to be mostly community driven content, no one will want to deal with the community.

I'm sorry, but the limits GW is proposing to keep CE communities under control are absolutely necessary.

That was one of the (many) bright ideas from Paizo. D&D Rogues were getting an increasing number of monsters that laughed at their Sneak Attacks, notably all the ones you would expect to find in an abandoned temple or dungeon - the undead.

Yeah, it went along with their whole idea of making all of the base classes stronger. I would have never even considered playing a fighter in 3.0 or 3.5, but the Pathfinder fighter is pretty awesome. They buffed rogues, druids, bards and sorcerers into usefulness as well. Every single class got upgrades, but those classes got REALLY BIG upgrades. It was the first thing I noticed when I was introduced to Pathfinder d20. It was actually worthwhile to play a base class all the way to level 20.

I hope in PFO, we can say the same thing.

Rogues were easily the weakest of the 4 classes in PnP. Can't take a hit, can't heal and the damage blows if they aren't backstabbing (many monsters are immune to that btw). You played them because they were the "dungeoneers" that did all the cool stuff in between fights.

It's not until WoW develops the holy trinity that Rogues become the DPS class and daggers do more damage than warhammers. I didn't play DDO, but I understand they went back to the classic Rogue. Not much good in a fight but more necessary than a cleric to survive a dungeon.

I hope that PFO gives us a rogue somewhere in between the two. It's nice that they deal damage but their best value should be in the utility they have. Sneaking, trapping, unlocking etc.

The part about monsters being immune to backstab was removed from Pathfinder d20. There are a miniscule amount of critters that are immune to backstab, mostly oozes. You CAN sneak attack undead and golems in Pathfinder, so I assume you can in PFO.

Also, the rogue in WoW should have been named the Ninja. Really, that's what it was. Smoke bombs, volleys of knives and shuriken, secrets of invisibility. They weren't really rogues... they should have just given them the black pajamas and gotten it over with.

The problem in 'Most MMO's' as you put it isn't even the front loaded damage. It's the fact that, played correctly, a rogue can get off his initial attack combo, activate some combination of abilities that usually CC's and restealth them and move away to do it all over again a few seconds later at almost no risk to them.

A rogue, attacking from surprise SHOULD do a large portion of the enemies health! the problem comes when they can do it several times in rapid succession, by combining CC and 'Hide in Plain Sight' stealth abilities - essentially invisibility. At will. Multiple times in a row. Sure, they may only be able to do it every 2 or 3 minutes, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating to the person who just got stunlock comboed to death and never even had a chance to react. I'd rather see rogues be tougher combatants up front, maybe from some sort of dodge/evasion ability than allow them to just be able to point at anyone not in the best armor in the game and say, 'I choose you, squishy mage/priest/archer/whatever!' and proceed to destroy them with no chance of a response.

The front loaded damage is really only a problem in combination with the CC AND the stealth. If rogues have something similar to what they can do in tabletop, I think it will be fine. i.e. greater damage situationally. As long as they do subpar damage in a straight up fight, only gaining the increased damage when attacking from surprise(i.e. vs. flatfooted foes) or from behind(i.e. flanked foes) then I am fine with that.

My worry is that even if GW doesn't give rogues any CC(they NEED to give them stealth - it's not a rogue w/o stealth!) - which they really shouldn't, BTW - they'll just be able to take a splash from other classes and voila! CC instadeath stunlock combos, HERE WE COME!

What about people that you group with that are not in your settlement, Charter Company, etc.? That dirty little secret that Bluddwolf, the mighty bandit has? You know, the one where he likes to cavort in forests, crypts, and caves with that goody-two-shoes paladin and the insufferably self righteous cleric?

Wouldn't it be kind of important for the Lawful Good bounty hunter to know that a 'bad guy' has contacts and allies in his own camp? Preferably who they are, too?

I'm not saying that giving a bounty hunter access to a bounty's personal 'friends list' is a 100% good idea, merely playing devil's advocate here.

ok, well I am just saying, If I want to play a chaotic character, and gaining the attacker flag for attacking unprovoked gives shift to chaotic, then I won't mind punching someone for the hell of it. Killing people will hurt the rep so that will be refrained from, but the evil gain wouldn't bother me, as I need to be evil to flag assassin. I agree that there should be PVE or other ways to "gain" chaotic and evil to prevent people randomly attacking and killing to maintain or even earn their desired alignment, but it will still exist. I support purposeful use of this and will personally refrain from random attacking/killing.

Actually, GW Devs have stated several times in the blogs and on these boards that the built in 'alignment drift' only happens towards lawful and good alignments, and that they're plaaning to put in an option to turn that off. In other words, if you are evil and want to STAY evil you won't have to go around drowning puppies and killing unicorns and rainbows all day in order to stay that way......

Is it necessary for monks to use equipment from a balance perspective to enhance their unarmed strikes?

A character might select a weapon based on his opponent's strengths and weaknesses. For instane bludgeoning/piercing, or some magical property. Therefore monks might often choose to use a weapon much of the time, so their unarmed fighting ability gives them versatility rather than more power. This would be particularly true if an unarmed strike did less damage or had less scope for upgrading than a weapon.

I'd like it if monks in PFO don't have to be oriental styled. I'd like it if they can select say any light weapon and be able to use that to flurry. This would allow for broader interpretations of the monk class. I don't see how doing that would necessarily unbalance the game (unlike a flurry with a great axe).

I once played a bald elven mystic (i.e. monk) who had an extremely logical outlook on the universe, pointed ears, was good at martial arts, could paralyse with touch, and who greeted his buddies wishing they would live long and prosper. A lot of fun. My GM allowed me to flurry with a short sword being an elvish weapon with similar stats to the special monk ones.

First off, unarmed fighting styles have been prevalent in all parts of the world for centuries. The stereotypical monk is generally based off of the Shaolin Monk. Though certainly trained to fight unarmed, shaolin also taught many weapon styles including staff, sword, and polearm styles.

This being said, why should an unarmed monk be worse off than one using a weapon? In real life, this is likely true. But in the fiction that this game is based off of, it really isn't. Many people(myself included) like the idea of being able to beat down evil with my righteous fists of fury! The whole idea of the monk class is all about this. If one monk wants to use a weapon, then that's fine. He should be able to do so.

But why in the world would you think it's ok to REDUCE the options that other people have for playing a game, just because it's not what you want to do? More options are ALWAYS better when it comes to character creation/customization...

So yes, to answer your first question, I think it is necessary. This has been one of the problems with balancing monks in other video games that used them. Every other class' damage progression is based off of class progression, feat selection, and gear. Monks are based only off of the first two(mostly - the Amulet of Mighty Fists was a VERY poor attempt to add gear into the equation, in my opinion). Making this balanced around all three in exactly the same way as all other melee classes is the only real way to even things out...

Honestly, it makes sense the way it is... at least for some of the skills. If a paladin learns a skill that only a Paladin can learn, but then falls towards either Chaos or Evil, it makes good sense that he cannot continue to use the skill as it is a skill given to a deity's divine champions. If you no longer meet that deity's standards and no longer follow the code of ethics required, why should said deity continue to grant you a portion of his power?

On the other hand, you still know HOW to use that power. You just don't have access to it any longer.

Hopefully, any skills that require a certain alignment will fall under this kind of category. I think a lot of skills(especially the rogue-ish ones) may be easier to find training for if you're aligned a certain way(not many lawful people know how to pick pockets or pull a second story job) but don't require a certain alignment to use.

As long as skills are divided up this way, I'm fine with the system. From what I've read in the blogs, I think this is what they have in mind anyway.

So short version, if it's a skill that merely require knowledge and talent, alignment shouldn't affect it. If it's something that requires you to gain power from an outside(i.e. a god or perhaps other good/evil aligned outsider) source, then maintaining a certain alignment in order for that 'power source' to continue to provide you with juice makes sense. Even clerics should have to deal with this a bit, though it's likely easier for them as opposed to paladins. If a lawful good cleric becomes lawful evil, they can just worship a different deity. Though I would like to point out that gods can be worshipped by clergy and people 1 alignment step away from the deity's alignment. So a lawful neutral deity can have lawful good, lawful neutral, lawful evil AND true neutral clergy. The Hell Knights, a major faction in the Pathfinder and PFO setting are a perfect example of this...

I think that many of you are underestimating how much all of you are correct. Yes, PvP and 'user generated content' - i.e. setting up resouce gathering areas, defending it from local monsters, fighting off bandits while bringing it back to town or being the bandits doing the raiding, etc. will be a major source of what players will do in the game, if GW spends the time(and I don't see why they wouldn't) a randomly generated dungeon system could give many of the PvE fans loads of what they want.

Any of you old school players of D&D(original AD&D and even before that) surely remember randomly generated dungeons/encounters. There is a long history of it in the genre. As long as there is ENOUGH randomization to the type of monster and layout, as well as a wide variety of traps, secret rooms/passages AND GW does a good job of making them CHALLENGING.

The best part about this approach is adding only a few options to the system every couple of months will significantly change things. The same thing could be done with monster escalation, as well. I do hope, that with monster escalation, they do a good job of making the players feel that killing off the critters is actually helping to get rid of the problem. If there's a rampaging ogre tribe with goblin and hobgoblin servants in a hex, led by a strong ogre magi chieftain then things should be set up to work like an adventure. Killing a few goblins and hobgoblins might not do a lot to curb the tribes raids, but kill ENOUGH of their raiding parties(and the ogres leading the parties!) will lead to deescalation OR bring the ogre magi to the forefront of the battles. Killing him causes the tribe to disperse(likely while all the ogres battle - causing horrible casualties - for who will be the next chieftain!)

The amount of things that could be done with this are limitless. With the proper scripting, and enough randomization, it would likely never get old. Exploration is a BIG part of what attracts people to video games and MMO's in particular. When you start getting into things like this, it should be pretty easy to make things never get stale. 10 lists of options with 5 options per list is 100,000 different dungeons. 20 lists with 10 options is 10,240,000,000,000 different ones. That's not even a lot, really. 11 lists with 5 options is 161,051 - over a 60% increase in content just by adding a single 5 option list. Even sillier, by just adding a single extra option to each list, you go from 100,000 to 1,000,000 different dungeons and if you do BOTH you go from 100,000 to 1,771,561 options.

The point is, adding new random PvE content shouldn't be THAT hard. Yes, the initial investment in time will be long and laborious. Once the initial investment in programming time has been made, it should be rather simple to keep adding more stuff so that even the veterans never get tired of seeing the same dungeon with the same mobs, over and over and over again.

That's what I would like to see for PFO's PvE content. Enough random dungeon content to keep things fresh always and a feeling that me killing things in PvE actually makes a difference in the world. Oh yeah, the last thing I want is random quest givers! When I'm in an area near a 'dungeon' a random event should play with goblins chasing a haggard(but beautiful!) elf maiden for me to rescue! She'll tell me that she just escaped the horrible goblin tribe in the nearby abandoned mine! Please, get vengeance for her! This could also happen in local inns/taverns with some traveling merchant informing you of him being attacked by lizard men, finding a dying ranger begging you to rescue his comrades from trolls and so on and so forth. The best part, is this would be a part of the randomization system too.

Anyway, I can go on like this for days and this post is already a book. Whaddaya think?