ZenPagan's page

If that is your definition of Meaningful Human Interaction, Mr Dancey, then I feel like I may no longer wish to support Pathfinder Online. An abdication of responsibility is *not* effective leadership. If your system of justice will be based on mob rule, then there *is* no justice and this game will fail to attract anything but the organizations you so detest.

I was about to say much the same thing.

You are seriously telling us you wanted 15 pages of back and forth with the same participants getting more and more hot under the collar with each other?

Could I point out this bit at the bottom of the forum

"The most important rule: Don't be a jerk. We want our messageboards
to be a fun and friendly place."

The corollary to this surely is "Do not encourage people to be a jerk" I would suggest Paizo may wish to add it as it is obvious there a certain CEO's that can't follow the unwritten rule unless it is spelt out to them

Ok I haven't been around for a while as I decided to withdraw from Pathfinder early enrollment and take a wait and see approach to how the game was looking a few months after launch. Due to that I haven't really be bothering to watch these forums. Being on teamspeak for other games however with some of the PfO people I have picked up some of what was happening so decided to come take a look. Having looked I have decided to comment a bit.

First of all claiming Golgotha has only been around since August 2013 is complete and utter tosh. Golgotha the name itself has only been around since then but the organisations making up Golgotha have been around for a lot longer. Indeed Maelstrom who make a sizeable component of Golgotha are even mentioned on the Landrush. I know all this because I was the Aeternum diplomat for quite a while and was in contact with all the groups that now make Golgotha prior even to the discussion they had about a potential alliance with TEO. When those alliance talks fell through the three groups decided to merge themselves into one identity known as Golgotha. Golgotha therefore was always an entity in its own right and merely did as Ryan Dancey advised and forged alliances to form Golgotha.

Second the Pax structure. Yes both Golgotha and Aeternum are Pax divisions. That does not automatically mean they will not fight nor that they will cooperate. The leadership of Golgotha has no power over the members of Aeternum and vice versa. Should a dispute between the divisions occur it will be ruled upon by the Inner Sanctum (the pax council)...however and this is a big however this would not involve in game disputes which the inner sanctum would rightly ignore....this is about out of game things such as racism, breach of codes of conduct. You will notice there is nothing in the Pax charter saying Pax guilds must cooperate in game merely that they should not damage Pax. Some are trying to read into that article that it relates to not attacking each other in game. It doesn't I can assure you. Having said that Golgotha and Aeternum decided to form a kingdom between themselves. Kingdoms are part of the game. They did this before anything was known about the new landrush, once again following Ryans admonition to build a better big town to resist the onslaught of the open enrollers. If they had know the new land rush rules they may well have decided not to form a nation and Golgotha not to join Pax. Or alternatively they may have decided to just not announce their plans to form a kingdom an Golgotha to become a Pax division. Either way would have fallen within this spirit of these rules you keep harping on about. The crime here seems to be not what they did but the fact they let you know they were doing it and did so transparently. I am sure there are plenty of done deals that have been kept quiet that will be just as dangerous to the small groups as Pax.

Thirdly these landrush votes are shaping the political landscape of the initial phase of the game. Everyone who spent the 100$ should be entitled to have their vote count towards shaping that landscape. What you are effectively doing is saying to Golgotha's hey your vote is now worthless and you have to be part of a settlement that you never intended to be part of. Sorry guys they shelled out as much money as you, they are entitled to cast their vote same as you for the settlement they wish to be part of. They have both given an undertaking that only people who want to be part of Golgotha will vote for it that should be enough. Pax has given as much to this community as most people and in many cases more than a lot of groups and they have been repeatedly vilified and slandered.

Fourthly: Apportion blame for this fiasco squarely where it belongs on Ryan Dancey's shoulders. He was the one who gave us the half baked initial landrush where people were on an honour system a system that was abused either by mistake or on purpose. It was he who changed the rules on people halfway through the competition. It was he who failed in his ability to give clear instructions and it was he who sat back and watched a communtiy tear itself in half over this issue when he could have stepped in at an early stage and made a precise statement of what rules he wanted to apply. Instead he chose to be wishy washy and not take a stance and now we have 15 pages of bile ridden invective.

So if you tell me that you need a recording of someone "enjoying" him/herself to a potato grown in a pedestrian zone while wearing a dolphin costume all the while a dominatrix tells him/she that his/her math homework needs to be done I'm gonna tell you that it's:

A) oddly specific
B) gonna take a little more research time.

What?

I would have thought that a short trip to the Reeperbahn would have supplied more than ample footage to for this request and a dozen wierder ones as well :)

Not that I can speak from experience naturally

You realize we're talking about hypothetical actions/situations, not laws we're planning to enact, right?

My reply to Andius was deliberately a little tongue in cheek hence the smiley.

However while you may be talking about hypotheticals we in the empire are not. We will be enacting a law that we do not permit killing within the empire except for those carried out from necessity by our law enforcement agents. This is not a hypothetical it is a statement of intent. You have had officers from both of our proposed settlements come on and tell you in no uncertain terms that if you come on our lands and kill you will be considered a criminal and executed.

When we make a statement here that is official it is never a hypothetical it is our considered policy position (whilst subject obviously to revision should the known facts change).

By all means discuss the hypothetical laws Brighthaven may pass, frankly it seems a bit counterproductive though because many may not realise that you are discussing hypothetical laws and assume that your settlement will in fact enact such a statute

Bluddwolf wrote:

If a swarm of high rep, LG noobs are over harvesting the resources in your settlement and then they ship it all off to somewhere else. What will you do, if they don't listen to reason? What if they refuse to stop harvesting within your territory, to the detriment to your own harvesters?

Make harvesting without authorization a criminal action. They get flagged, you kill them, problem solved.

Ah I see....we object to random people committing vigilante murders in our territory and say we will make it unlawful and we are hauled over the coals for it and accused of acting in an evil manner.

You however wish to pass a law condemning that poor silvery haired grandmother to death because she has the temerity to wish to gather some firewood to warm her aging arthritic bones during the cold cruel months of winter and your settlement is a bastion of all that is good in the River kingdoms.

:)

Our terms of accord with UNC, as do all our terms of agreement with any sponsored chartered company provide for dissolution of the alliance by either side

A sample Terms of agreement document can be found here (note still a work in progress and it is a document that is custom tailored during alliance negotiations)

Terms of agreement template.

Dissolution is therefore a remedy already considered and included in policy documents

UNC may well have a list of Reds to them, they are free to follow this list outside the boundaries of the Empire (with the exception that no blue to the empire organisation should be on their red list)

All those on the empire Red list will probably be KoS. This list will consist largely of people we consider ourselves in a state of conflict with. The status on red is unlikely to be permanent but open to negotiation at future dates

An interdiction can consist of many things Shane

At the most extreme end the order will be stop kill and loot, (mostly reserved for those at the Red status with the Xeilian empire

At the softest end it will merely be a stop and question before either releasing to go on their way or escorting them to our nearest settlement for further questioning.

Interdiction will be targeted via intelligence received and a status list of who is red to us. UNC will be there to protect honest merchants within the lands of the empire

Banditry will be strictly forbidden within Pax territories and we will be using UNC and the bloody hand to conduct anti bandit activities throughout the empire.

Both however will perform interdictions under empire direction of certain merchants. These interdictions will be targetted however and will be at those we regard as red in the main. We may also choose to interdict others as we deem necessary due to intelligence received.

Interdiction however covers a range of options. These will cover a spectrum from

automatic attack kill and loot (usually reserved for red targets)

all the way through to

Stop and question (probably done via a copper piece sad) then either released to go on their way or asked to visit Callambea or Golgotha to explain themselves.

These actions though will be carried out under empire direction as part of the Empire's law enforcement and security regime

And if it's killing people for the purpose of stopping obvious murderers and villains regardless of laws? I don't know if murder and heinous activities are legal on Pax lands and a NG/CG character wouldn't care.

Frankly what qualifies you as judge, jury and executioner. You are not qualified and if you decide otherwise then that is your delusion and it will be met with swift and harsh punishment as befits a murderer

Killing people within our lands for purpose of law enforcement will be only by duly accredited personnel. These will be mainly Empire people though we may be open for treaties with pragmatic kingdoms that we believe can be trusted to use hot pursuit and other such legal niceties in reasonable and measured ways.

TSW had climbable ladders and Age of Conan had both ladders and vines. They were however set in place and you couldn't move them around

ZenPagan wrote:

Drakhan Valane wrote:

You may make it a crime to help those in need. That's what makes CG characters CG.

We are not making a law saying that though we are making a law saying that it should be up to our law enforcement to punish lawbreakers as you are stumbling on a situation and will be drawing conclusions about what is happening which will often be wrong.

It's simple: Is it unlawful for an outsider to help those in need within your lands without permission?

Simply put you do not have sufficient information to judge who is in need or if the action you have stumbled on is a justified police action, therefore instead of running the risk of aiding and abetting the evil smugglers who are blighting the lives of our citizens.

I am very confused how helping a caravan under attack is "inherently" evil. The situation you describe is a Lawful Evil nation enforcing its unjust laws. Law/Chaos and Good/Evil are two separate things in Pathfinder.

The caravan under attack may well be one smuggling for instance, perhaps it is carrying slaves. Being a caravan under attack does not mean you are good and the attackers are bad. This is our point you the vigilante do not know what the truth of the situation actually is you are merely guessing then acting out of your position of self righteous arrogance and will often kill the innocent and help the evil.

Bringslite wrote:

@ Pax Charlie George

....

I giggled. Also I still love you, and miss you.

As a merchant with fingers in many pies can I take this moment to point out that I have reasonably priced rooms to rent

You may make it a crime to help those in need. That's what makes CG characters CG.

We are not making a law saying that though we are making a law saying that it should be up to our law enforcement to punish lawbreakers as you are stumbling on a situation and will be drawing conclusions about what is happening which will often be wrong.

Pax lands will be in our opinion safer than most for merchants and we have taken steps to bring this state of affairs down. We see vigilantes and their capricious actions as being detrimental to this state of affairs.

I fully expect for instance vigilantes coming upon a caravan under attack by for example UNC in our lands to jump in and help the caravan. This would certainly be exactly the wrong thing to do as UNC are an arm of our law enforcement within Pax territories and if they are attacking a caravan it is because they are acting under lawful instruction. Your vigilante who thinks he is acting for good is definitely committing both a crime and an inherently evil act.

This is the whole crux of the matter, you do not have the full picture so you are incapable of coming to an authoritive judgement. Acting in a situation where there is doubt over who is the guilty party shows a reckless disregard for both law and justice and can never be a good act even if on occasion you guess right.

Honestly, the sheer level some guys seem to pushing to cultivate an openly hostile environment for people who are trying to help is frightening. If Pax is going to openly attack and hunt down people who aren't their own for the crime of aiding travellers, they're going to be very strongly LE/NE aligned.

Settlements have laws if you come onto our lands and break our laws one of which is likely to be that law enforcement in our lands is our perogative then expected to be treated as the criminal you are.

Will brighthaven be happy if I march into your settlement lands and kill any of your citizens that happen to have bounties on their head? No I don't think you would.

The simple fact is mostly you will be interceding with imperfect information. You will come across a situation and you will have no way of knowing necessarily who is the guilty party. The attacker flag in no way indicates this before you suggest it does. This will mean that you are in the wrong on a large number of occasions

To follow on from Charlie there is a world of difference between the citizen of a country intervening in something and a foreign national crossing into a country and intervening.

Additionally unless you are actually present you have no idea what the situation is.

Example you come across a merchant caravan under attack from UNC. That situation could be one that is a true bandit activity, conversely it could also be a lawfully sanctioned interdiction that you are intervening in. The latter is certainly not a lawful action and it is most definitely not a good action either.

Most settlements will take a pretty dim view of you trying to enforce anything within their territory and that will be the case even if you have a bounty contract to answer that one before you run it out.

While we haven't as yet discussed it internally so I can't absolutely confirm it to be the case but I think it likely that the empire will take the view that only Empire accredited law enforcement officials will be permitted to operate in our lands and that itinerant knights will kindly keep their swords sheathed as they do more harm than good

On the subject of video cards while both ATI and Nvidia make good cards and they have a tendency to be leapfrogging each other as to which has the best card I do these days tend to usually go for NVidia.

While only a personal feeling I have found it to be the case for the games I have played that it tends to be the ATI cards which tend to have the most problems with new games. These problems are usually ironed out within a few weeks by driver updates but can be quite irritating at the time.

It should be noted though that
1) this is purely a personal and subjective experience,

2) NVidia has exactly the same problems from time to time I have just experienced it more in my opinion from ATI cards

3) The issues are usually short term and fixed by driver updates

If I were not going to concentrate on being a humble helpless merchant adrift in an ocean of bandits and self righteous knights who seek to impose their morality on a man merely trying to make an honest living.....

then my eye would probably be caught by the gunslinger as suiting a cigar smoking dwarf right down to the ground

Shane have no doubt that there are already people embedded in organisations. I can confirm that UNC have certainly rooted out one and we have an eye on a couple of suspicious people in other parts of the empire.

Add to that most organisations leak like a sieve currently with information being posted publiclly when it should be posted in private or disgruntled members sending info via PM to competing interests

While I am not going to comment either way on whether I think it is a good idea that cc members are allowed to kill each other in the name of practise I would point out that eve allows free killing of corp and fleet mates in high sec without concord (the high sec npc police) intervention for exactly the reason of practise.

While in Eve this is used for practise it is more often used for the purpose of Awoxing. This is when someone joins a corporation with the sole intent on getting as many concord free kills as humanly possible before someone gets online and manages to kick them from the corporation.

1) Eve has a lot of tools to help corporations stay safe from Awoxing even though a lot of corporations do not use them and get caught by the Awoxers. PfO will not as far as we know have these tools available for at best quite a while.

2) Awoxing I personally feel is a pretty cheap trick and while it can be used to make a profit I tend towards the feeling that it is more a griefing tool than anything. It should be noted that we have already had a notorious Eve Awoxer on these forums expressing an interest in PfO and playing in exactly that way. I believe it was Bludd amongst others that spent time persuading him that his playstyle would not be supported in PfO.

It would be my hope that your guards are UNC bandit / raiders, for who better to ambush a group of bandits than another group of bandits.

We will gladly take the...

My guards may well be UNC...until at least I educate other bandits that my caravans are not a soft target and I will get a little peeved by those that try and interrupt my commercial enterprises :)

I would hope that it is only a lawful action if settlements allow it to be so Areks. The setting law aspects of settlements has as yet not be fleshed out but allowing bounty contracts would certainly be in my view a prime candidate. We certainly should be frowning on bounties being collected on our citizens when they have committed no crime in our lands and we have only the word of foreigners

If bounties are always lawful it is just one more flaw in the extensive litany of flaws embodied by the alignment and reputation system and a definite usurpation of settlement perogative

As a side not people are making the assumption that bounty hunting is going to be a lawful aligned occupation. Both in real life and in game I think this is a pretty dubious notion.

Certainly from a game point of view many settlements will frown upon people trying to collect bounties within their territories thus putting the bounty hunter very firmly in the criminal bracket if they continue to pursue their quarry.

(Note this should not be read as being the Pax position, once we have considered the issue and come to a decision as is our custom we will post that position in (hopefully) plain and unambigous language. If pressed my guess would be that we would probably accept bounty hunting by certain foreign groups negotiated as part of treaties and outlaw the rest.

Before the forum paladins jump in shout down this personal position they should bear it in mind that a bounty may be set (as far as our current knowledge goes) upon anyone who has initiated any for of unsanctioned PVP on you. Unsanctioned PVP however does not indicate with any accuracy whether the initiator is performing meaningful PVP or not nor does it distinguish between the initiator doing it as an actual agressor or as a preemptive strike to get the drop on know agressors. A good example of the latter is that I as a merchant set off up the road with my wagons and ten guards. I see the pant stealing bandits up the road and assessing the situation decide that as this notorious bandit group is undoubtedly going to try and SAD me that instead I will take them by surprise by asking my ten guards to jump them before they have prepared.

Technically I am guilty of a crime according to the system, frankly from an rp perspective it is very much an act of self defense against known bandits and I see no reason to cede them the first strike advantage

Hmm well that suggests a topic straight off Harad

War and feud declarations. How do we think they should work. I am not talking about the waging of war merely how settlements and companies enter into these states of conflict and how they can get out of them.

Sub topics should be items such as how long a lead time for these to take effect? Should there be different time scales for different setups? For example imagine when declaring a feud, there could be a choice of the surprise attack whereby the first the enemy know about it is when your forces fall on them (Pearl harbour), or the preannounced feud (think Britains declaration of war if germany invaded Poland from the second world war).

How about adding third parties to the war? Settlement A declares war on settlement B, settlement C comes along and offers to help settlement B. Are their reasons to include settlement C in the original war or should a completely separate war between B and A be started.

How about the concept of a ceasefire? The war declaration is temporarily put on hold and either side gets extra reputation and alignment hits for initiating action during the ceasefire. This might occur to allow negotiations to be achieved. For example settlement A is at war with settlement B. Settlement A has knocked down the walls of settlement B and is poised ready to wipe out the settlement. However settlement A does not actually want to destroy or take the settlement all they actually want is for settlement B to stop harbouring bandits who are using it as a base to attack settlement A. A ceasefire gives time for negotiation to take place whereas if the war continues it will only take an hour or two to reduce settlement B to smoking rubble

As someone likely to be using bounties a lot your system makes me no more likely to place them. I really do not care about the debuff at all the bounty is a negotiating point not a punishment.

It may not be any use to you but you are the one going to be wanting to collect bounties not place them. The system you propose will not increase the number of bounties on offer to any appreciable amount in my opinion. That being the case then it offers nothing realistically except making you feel better about collecting what bounties are put out.

If you want to increase the amount of bounties available to you I would suggest you argue for

1) People do not need to be on the death list to have a bounty placed upon them.

2) Bounties last until collected

3) Bounty pools are paid out as a percentage of equipment carried and this value is subtracted from the bounty pool

1) because I will be placing bounties on bandits that habitually rob me, competitors who are routinely undercutting me even after I suggest that a price fixing cartel may benefit us both. People supplying my competitors who refuse my overtures to provide me with similar discounts

2) Because if I wish to make a point to someone I want to be able to put a large price on their head that is going to take a while to be worked off. Currently it is not worth putting any more on someones head than the minimum it will get someone to go out and kill them

3) See 2

As a merchant SAD's, Assassination and bounties will be everyday tools of my trade. As noted I am lawful evil and I consider that profit is king here and I will use all tactics that I can get away with. I am just looking at these system from a customer view and telling you that currently the bounty system does not fill my needs and that your proposals do nothing to fix that so instead I will stick to out of game methods of contracting these services

In addition I would not say I am not PVP orientated just that I realise that stabbing someone in the face is not the only way to PVP and I can assure you my competitors will be getting regular doses of excruciating agony.

Nor does anything about suggesting that the bounty system should be kept as simple as possible imply that bounties will be expensive or not worthwhile. Indeed I would argue quite the opposite that the more complex you make bounties the less inclined people are to bother with them

As a merchant bounties are extremely useful to me. However bounties as currently proposed are not and your system does nothing to alter that. It is people like me who you need putting on bounties and what will currently happen is that instead of placing bounties using the system I will be going outside the system and agreeing bounties by word of mouth. (This largely due to you cant place a bounty on someone who hasn't killed you)

If bludd is right and bounties cost more than the amount that goes on the players head or they cost influence etc then even more reason to go outside the system, this also means those bounties will be going to people who do not care about rep and alignment hits (ie probably not good aligned players)

The bounty system is only of any use if players like me place bounties in the first place

Also while it is true I am planning to be a merchant and lawful evil I think a brief look at my posting history will show you I have never posted from the perspective of that particular role I post solely on what I think is good for the game. I happen to think that breadth initially matters more than depth for the start of early enrollment otherwise we run huge risks of sections of people finding their chosen playstyle is not supported at all whilst others have more depth than needed.

I would just as equally argue that we currently don't need much more than simple contracts available detailing date, quantity, product, price, location. Fripperies such as collateral, options, and all the other market style paraphenalia can wait till later and then get added only when the amount it brings to the game justifies its coding over other things.

I see plenty of new systems you are asking for

1) The debuff system
2) New flags (especially as they are moving away from a flagging system)
3) The tag system
4) A tracking system to decide why the bounty is being placed
5) The apprehend system
6) The reparation system

Sorry I just don't see this adding sufficient game play over and above the simple select player from death list and place bounty of chosen sum on head and specify who can take the contract.I would actually prefer even to do away with the death list provision personally as there are many reasons I may want to place a bounty on someones head who has not ended up on my kill list. For example the bandit leader who always SAD's me on one of my profitable trade routes. I may always accept the SAD because I can't fight him but sooner or later I may want to give him back some of the pain

1 Can you provide a quote from the devs showing bounties will have a cost beyond that paid to the hunter.

2 While merchants are undoubtedly carrying more value than your target the bandit robbing the merchant does not get an additionaly payment from others. The lesson here is do not take cheapskate bounty contracts. Just as a merchant or bandit has to assess risk vs reward so too does the bounty hunter.

3 I would assume just as in Eve the bounty pool for an individual you are hunting may come from more than just one other player. For example it would not surprise me if certain unnamed bandits may have bounties placed on their head from a number of different sources

Bounty hunters will not in addition be being consistently hunted down whereas bandits will be having it done to them. For instance we in the empire will be exercising a zero tolerance policy to banditry within our lands and we will be actively seeking out bandit hideouts and destroying them. I fully expect many player settlements to be doing likewise therefore the bandit carries that extra risk on their shoulders.

By all means argue that SAD's and assassinations should be altered in their application

I have the following general objection to a lot of these systems.

The more complex the system the more coding time it takes.

The more coding time it takes the less coding time for other things that would be of more benefit to the game

The more complex the rules the more loopholes in the system and potentials for unexpected side effects which end up hurting those it was meant to help more than it helps them

The more complex the system the more it stifles player creativity and emergent game play.

The more complex the system the harder it is for new players to understand (The old Eve aggression rules being a prime example of this, compare them to the newly implemented rules which are both cleaner and tend to be much better at hitting the effect they were designed for)

I would prefer to see simple systems implemented for the start of EE and then revamped as needed during EE so they remain only as complex as absolutely necessary and no more

Hmm well lets see.

SAD I stop you and demand a portion of your goods in order not to kill you and take no reputation hit

vs

Bounty hunting where I kill you and take 75% of your goods by looting your body and get paid into the bargain

Seems about on par to me.

Assassination we do not have enough details as yet but we do know that for the extra, which amounts to severing a bind point, you need significant training and you need to pre warn your victim by observing them over a period of time in order to perform an assassination. So the balancing their is the time commitment need (I seem to recall 10 minutes being cited though that may well be faulty memory). Can't therefore see assassination being a routine tool.

However if you feel those tools give you advantage by all means go train to use them and I certainly won't be losing sleep because all the good people are suddenly switching tactics. They are not any more of a threat to my characters livelihood than are bounties

Working fine now they closed the one loophole in it which was allowing people to be killed by their own alts to claim the bounty. A simple elegant solution

The bounty is only payed as a percentage of the value of gear destroyed.

eg 100 million isk bounty

you get destroyed in a 10 million isk ship bounty payout is 2 million. Bounty of 98 million remains on your head. Works fine frankly

Or we just have a system where you put a price on the head. Simple, easy to understand does all thats necessary without all the crap.

@Urman

Firstly from what we have been told the three starter towns won't be in EE there will be only one npc settlement.

Secondly the three starter towns are for specific alignments

Thirdly the starter towns deliberately have low training abilities specifically to deter folk from not venturing out to the player settlements. If these starter towns can offer training anywhere near the level of any player settlement then there will be no incentive for a lot of folk to take part in the main part of the game

If they had a system where all meaningful PVP was sanctioned and all pvp for no reason except for pvp was unsanctioned the I would agree.

Sadly the reputation system will not reflect that nor is it likely to ever reflect that as I do not believe it possible to produce a system witht he current state of software engineering that can accurately discern one from the other with even a 70% accuracy rate.

If anyone believes they can code such a system could I mention I have a bridge I am looking to sell

In my opinion, the reason it is more damaging to Rep to kill "high rep" characters is because the only ones who will have high rep do not participate in most forms of PvP

Not trying to pick holes in your argument and it may be correct however as I understand reputation as detailed it is a pvp measurement. This to me says that high rep is gained through pvp actions as is low rep. If this is correct (which given the devs havent spoken much of rep gaining methods I may not be) then the above statement is false

I am vaguely amused by the people congratulating Goblinworks on how being low reputation will suck. Obviously the law of unintended consequences hasn't occurred to people.

If low rep limits training as much as certain people are hoping then this is what will occur when a large organised group of people who do not care about rep comes into game

"Our training will be limited by being a low rep group. Therefore the way to ensure this is not a problem is to ensure everyone else's training is just as limited by routinely burning down every fledgling settlement before it can develop more advanced training. Coincidentally this actually suits the way we want to play anyway with the added bonus that being part of the sanctioned PVP family of wars and feuds it will probably actually help the rep we are losing by killing everyone we come across anyway making our strategy even more effective"

TLDR

If low rep sucks for training then the low rep will be incentivised to raze settlements on a frequent and ongoing basis

ZenPagan wrote:

It is the motivation of the initiator which determines meaningfulness not that of the one having it done to.

I'd hate to have you sitting as judge for an assault case. The intent of the perpetrator is largely irrelevant when assessing whether a crime was committed. That intent may be considered at sentencing, but not necessarily.

Except for two things

1) This is not about committing a crime it is obvious that the only person who knows whether they have a motive to kill the victim is the offender.

2) If you really want to drag real life into it yes intent is a huge part of deciding whether a crime has been committed it is what the whole point of "Mens rea" is about. mens rea

If you are happily mining ore in the woods and I come and kill you there is no way you can distinguish whether I killed you because

a) I am being a jerk and rpking
b) You are exploiting a resource that I wish to exploit myself
c) I wished to loot your corpse because I had noticed some of your equipment was quite nice
d) We have an operation happening in the area and all members were instructed to ensure there were no prying eyes to witness what we were up to
e) to z) other sundry reasons for killing you

Unless I happen to whisper you and let you know which of the reasons I killed you for you as the corpse have no way of telling. You therefore cannot ever be in a position to judge whether I had a reason to kill you or not.

If you are arguing that PVP interactions are only meaningful if the victim believes they are meaningful then you are arguing that for some people the game will contain no meaningful PVP at all. That position is patently codswallop

I ask PAX as opposed to TEO, as the alliances being formed out of game seems more 'evil' oriented and therefore more aligned (from a RP perspective) to the weal and woe type of play.

I wanted to correct this. While I understand the perception of where this comes from it is certainly not the correct view. Currently alliances have been made between Aeternum and some evil groups such as UNC,Golgotha etc. This is though just how the timeline has worked out so far. The empire we are forming (see the empire of Xeilias thread) will be overall neutral and we intend to have some good aligned groups and maybe a settlement if we can to balance out the evil elements. It just happens though that the good aligned do not seem to be organising themselves as yet and are mostly taking a wait and see approach.

@Alexander

Anyone coming into Empire lands to trade is basically safe from UNC (providing you are not red) and in our lands UNC will be providing anti bandit operations to ensure our lands remain bandit free.

Outside of Pax lands you will remain safe from UNC (outside of enemy territory where they will take the view that your prescence their is evidence of trading with our enemy) if you are blue to the Empire.

If you are outside of Empire lands and are grey to the Empire (neutral) then you are subject to UNC as bandits should they be out looking for tempting targets.

UNC may be willing to take a protection fee from neutrals, that is a matter for negotiation between those neutrals and UNC however and not subject to the auspices of the empire so ask Bludd (however we will probably expect those agreements to be voided should you move into red status with the empire)

@Jiminy

Pax certainly does not have total control of the map on its agenda for the reason that it would actually make the game pretty boring.

We do however intend to be a strong power and certainly aim to be one of the dominant powers of the River kingdoms. We believe though that being a big organised power is good for the game especially in early enrollment because it will make others look at us and go "Uh oh better get organised or we will get crushed when settlement warfare comes". This will mean that come Open enrollment when the flood gates open that the new entrants will come in to find not a lot of small disparate groups who have got used to each other during early enrollment but several well organised strong groupings. This to my mind makes it harder for a open enrollment group to come in and steamroller.

@Randomwalker

Sorry I have to disagree strongly here. It is the motivation of the initiator which determines meaningfulness not that of the one having it done to. In many cases the PVP will be meaningful but the victim will be deliberately kept in the dark.

Example I as a merchant find you are always undercutting me. I hire a group of thugs to harass you and raise your costs so you can no longer undercut me without taking a loss. I certainly don't want you to know why these thugs are targetting you but it does not mean the pvp is not meaningful

The point on kill stealing is the same as in eve null sec

PVE resources such as escalations are exactly that and will be jealously guarded. Try going into someones null sec system and running their anomalies even in an nrds system you will find the locals wanting a word with you at the end of a missile.

Settlements will want to ensure their pve inclined players have sufficient content in the settlement controlled hexes and will not be welcoming interlopers to join in the fun.

Note when I say settlement controlled hexes I am not talking about the ones in which the settlement can set the laws but the ones in which a settlement can bring sufficient force to bear to be considered the defacto owner

The point Nevy was making and one that several including myself have made in the past is that "unsanctioned" PVP does not equal random player killing or jerk behaviour necessarily.

In my view this is perfectly meaningful PVP done to secure a resource (in this case PVE mobs and escalations I believe will be jealously guarded and a source of being fought over :) )

His/her point was in addition that because the system classes it unsanctioned even though it is actually the sort of PVP we want that he/she would suffer a reputation hit and if there are punishments for low reputation handed out by the game then he/she may find themselves exposed to them despite not having partaken of jerk behaviour.

This sort of situation will not become one that ever becomes sanctioned in my view unless they make non controlled hexes ffa.

Before everyone leaps in and shouts feud I would point out I would fully expect feuds to have a notice period much as Eve war dec's do before they come into force. This is to prevent my group spotting your group and thinking "Aha a rich target we outnumber quick declare a feud and we can kill them without consequence"

In addition to the above debunking of why a feud won't work in this situation also consider feuds are at the chartered company level. Now consider this situation is more likely to be a small group than a single paladin. That small group may well belong to more than one chartered company. Even if you could declare an immediate feud you now have to declare it against several companies.

Thirdly to debunk the use of feuds for this situation, I would presume only one or two members of a company can declare a feud, influence is a valuable resource and I am sure you don't want it wasted

@ ZenPagan

I would not assume that those turn out to be the only ways to gain Rep. It would be a shame if all activities that are considered desirable did not increases it in some measure.

Would be nice to read what GW's current thinking is along those lines.

While I am confident you are right bringslite I am just cautioning that we should wait to ensure that we aren't being forced to do things we don't want to in order to regain reputation before we consider punishing those that have low reputation.

I am pretty sure frankly that there are going to be a considerable number of very low rep people who didn't get there via undesirable behaviour but due to failures of the alignment and reputation system to differentiate between meaningful and meaningless behaviour

Frankly before talking about punishment for low reputations we should be seeing what they are proposing to gain reputation.

Speaking for myself in Pathfinder I will not be partaking in activities which do not interest me. An example of this is PVE I will not be touching it with a barge pole. Another example is the faction system. If all rep gains were through PVE or the faction system therefore then I would never gain any rep and while not partaking in griefing or jerk behaviour (all PVP I engage in will have an in character reason and I will not be concerning myself whether it is sanctioned or unsanctioned) I would nevertheless slowly over time drop in rep until I hit rock bottom.

Now while I do not suggest for the moment that PVE will be the only method of gaining rep it is quite possible that all of the potentials for rep gains are either tied to things I want no part of or are tied to things that I do so rarely that they won't offset any reputation loss I suffer.

I suspect many will find themselves in this situation to be honest and I fully expect reputation to impact a lot more heavily on some of those who are most for the punishment of low rep than they believe will be the case.

Or alternatively you set up a buy order in callambea for 100 longswords at 15 gold each, minimum quantity bought in one go 20. Then put up a sale of longswords in a nearby settlement for 12 gold each quantity 100.

While 12 gold is expensive there is an easy profit to make just shipping them straight to Callambea and filling the buy order thinks the independent merchant.

Of course as soon as he buys the 100 for shipment and the informer in that settlement tells you the sale has gone through you cancel the buy order and pocket a nice profit from the sale of 100 overpriced longswords

Not that I am suggesting unscrupulous merchants might do such a thing......

There should be absolutely no ability to mail items within game, mail should it exist at all should be restricted to text only missives between players. Allowing the mailing of items would so fundamentally break the market localism that is aimed for that it would negate the need to travel.

I am fully for the not selling anything at all that can be player crafted in the store. There is absolutely no need for it whatsoever and it impacts upon the player market in too many ways for it to be good. There are plenty of things that can be sold without having to stoop to competing with crafters.

Crafting and gathering are as valid a playstyle as pve or pvp and I am sure folk would be unhappy if for instance you could hire an assassin from the cash shop instead of a player or get a player shop bought party to deal with that escalation instead of hiring some brave player adventurers.

A cash shop competing with players in any sphere results in effectively placing a price cap on the item that players cannot charge more than. It really doesnt matter what the item is either the net effect can easily stop players crafting the item at all as they cannot make a profit on it.

A cash shop competing with players is also bad because if they want it to sell, and if they don't want it to sell why put it in the cash shop, then they have to make it attractive to buy. Making it attractive to buy means that at a minimum they need to compete either on price, effectiveness or convenience if not combinations of all. They have ruled out competing on effectiveness therefore they will either have to compete on price or convenience at a minimum. One is directly bad for crafters as it easily removes the ability to profit as already noted. The second is bad because it means that cash shop bought items will be available in ways that break the ability to starve a competitor of resources such as being able to purchase directly to back pack in the wilderness

I also think it is a mistake in this context to talk of declaring war on merchants trading with the enemy. What is most likely to happen is we go to war with someone

a) We flood their territory with privateers with instructions to ensure absolutely no cargo enters or leaves that territory.

In the event of a) it is no good telling our privateers "but I am blue to Pax" you cant take my cargo as the answer will be tough you are aiding our enemy.

Subsequent to being waylaid the empire will be notified of your action in aiding our enemy and your status with the empire may be reviewed. This may range from a stiff talking to along the don't trade with our enemies line to a redefinition of your status. Declaring war on merchant companies is something we are unlikely to do often and usually when we wish to make a point.

The mistake here is thinking that either crafting or gathering is a pve occupation. In both your main competition is going to be other players either directly or indirectly.

In economic warfare the blood shed may often be more of the golden yellow variety than the red gore of direct combat but it will be no less viscious.

I certainly imagine that competitors will be ruthlessly sabotaged,waylaid,pillaged,undercut etc.

The environment part will I can assure you be an incidental risk and the least of what you will face in the player versus scheme of things

I would say Stormweaver, and while I am only speaking for the empire of Xeilias here I expect many conglomerates will follow the same model, when we recruit a company such as yours to be a sponsored company we do not try to make you clones of us. We very much want you to keep your identity and we do what we can to assist you in your goals. We believe many companies with individual flavours and focii are a boon to the empire and we encourage it. We would fully expect many of our sponsored companies to wish to hold and run POI within the empire territories and we hope to facilitate that