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Just to confirm - a bit back there was talk about self-flags such as bandit and enforcer? I think they were scrapped, but I'm not sure exactly why that was. Wouldn't it still be easy to have a secondary flag system where you designate yourself as merchant/bandit/etc granting access to SAD or other mechanics and if you perform an action outside the scope of your flag (i.e. killing someone without being a bandit) you take a huge rep penalty. Wouldn't that simply force those who want to be criminals but maintain neutral reputations to perform certain actions without the rep hit while also preventing others from exploiting them? OR - and this is just spitballing - rather than have neutral NPC merchant and bandit factions, why can't players make their own factions and have positive or negative relations with them. Maybe limit them to settlements, but if each settlement has a faction rating related to it, and you rob/kill any member of that settlement, even if your not a war, your rating relative to that faction would go down. The settlement could then set certain thresholds before members of the settlement faction could auto target those bandits. Actually, start with the NPC faction, and then add settlement factions on top of that later (since settlements will be a bit before their implemented).
As a follow up to my previous post, I also wanted to mention the potential options for coding - while I'm not sure how many flags and status GW wants to put in front of player - I think the SAD flags of: Negotiating, Aggressor, Defendant, and Interloper will be needed.I'm not following why you believe that the 'interloper' flag should give negative values. If You mug an old lady of her purse and I trip you, you want to argue my tripping you was bad because I interfered in your 'benefiting' the little old lady? A misunderstanding. In your example, we have quite a clear idea of who is right and wrong. However, in the game world - it will not be immediately obvious who is the bandit and who is not. More importantly, your example precludes the idea of someone else technically unaffiliated with either side just 'happening' on the scene when in reality they are coordinating with each other beyond the scope the game recognizes (external voice chat). If you wish to help those in need, there should be no issue declaring that you are on someone's side (preferably through an easy mechanism to declare and flag yourself a defendant). Having the interloper flag is designed to prevent 3rd parties from either intentionally or unintentionally letting one party of a SAD from gaining the benefits without the downsides.
As a follow up to my previous post, I also wanted to mention the potential options for coding - while I'm not sure how many flags and status GW wants to put in front of player - I think the SAD flags of: Negotiating, Aggressor, Defendant, and Interloper will be needed. The options for this, however, allow more actions to be codified within the system which can then be recorded. For example, a 3rd party person that after seeing, sides with the defendant could be given extra good alignment - in recognition of their deed. Conversely, a 3rd party individual who switches sides over the course of a negotiation, or attacks as an interloper would receive chaotic alignment. Also, the victim flag could be linked to an item that would be placed in the victims inventory simply named Evidence. A future enforcer or guardian could potential use some service or skill to analyze the evidence item - if successful, it would reveal the attackers name (codified in the game world), and allow a bounty to be created on the target without the normal evil alignment/rep loss penalties (as the evidence serves to demonstrate in the game that the bounty is in response to previous crimes). I imagine bandits could take skills to make evidence harder to obtain on them - creating another dimension of conflict between good and evil.
So, I've been paying some attention to all the SAD threads, but not a whole lot, -if I repeat some thoughts please let me know. That said, looking at this issue, I think I've deduced the exact problem with the 3rd party issue in the SAD situation. Namely that the 3rd party ends up defeating the power/legal balance created at the interaction between bandits (agressors) and merchants (defendants). Let's summarize if we can - in a basic SAD situation, an aggressor captures a defendant in a compromising position and offers an exchange - an expensive but affordable loss of goods and no reputation loss - and the merchant 'gains' the remainder of their goods, and the reasonable assumption that they can continue without any further inconveinence. What the 3rd party does, even if a truly 3rd party, is disrupt that exchange for either side at no downside to THEM. Implicit is that the 3rd party will likely be an agent of either side, and can tip the exchange in their favor without suffering a consequence. From here, it is clear that what really needs to happen is that any SAD situation that occurs must always be considered between THREE groups: aggressor, defendant, and interlopers. From this point of view, I see several types of flags being needed in a SAD situation, as follows Aggressor
The first two are obvious - your typical bandit and merchant. In a SAD situation, both groups would also receive the negotiating flag - indicating to passerbys what individuals are involved in the process (I imagine all aggressors in a party would be flagged as negotiating). The idea here is that while under SAD, all participants enter a sort of semi-protected status in which 3rd party candidates should not enter WITHOUT first declaring themselves. In a properly run SAD rescue, a helpful 3rd party should first have to select any negotating party, and activate a flag that desginates which side they are on - in that way are their intentions known and that all subsequent flags, and reputations are adjusted accordingly. In this way to you create meaningful human interaction, with 3rd parties coming to investigate prior to attacking. 3rd parties that do NOT flag themselves to one side, and then attack any negotiating party would be flagged as interlopers - which should be considered an undesirable flag. In short, interlopers would be considered hostile by all parties and could be attacked/killed with out any fear of rep loss, as least when compared with normal ganking prevention rules (prior crimes, feuds, war status not withstanding). With this, 3rd parties can still involve themselves, but they dare not do so without first: a) likely asking what's going on, what the situation is and b) declaring themselves to a party of one group or another - and in that case sharing in total the results of the original SAD. If anyone can think of a way to game this, let me know. ALSO - I would also recommend two more flags - accosted/victimized. These flags would be keyed to the individuals that were involved in the SAD. The accosted flag would likely be a trigger for the criminal flag as an easy programming setup, but also show directly WHO they had SADed. The victim flag would likewise who had SADed them. If an accoster further attacks/kills/or SAD's their victim again before the timer runs out, they are hit with a severe rep loss, alignment change, and other penalties. This would help mitigate Bandits who seek to gain excess loot beyond the SAD system without the rep loss compensation. Beyond that, being SAD'd by a completely new group after finishing one before - well, that's just bad luck then.
So, here's an interesting question - how much will level play into crits. I'm imagining a situation in which a higher level character fighting a bunch of lower level newbies will always be in danger of taking HP damage, however they would be relatively well protected from injuries. Conversly, lower level players might be able to defend themselves against a higher level player, but at the expense of significant injuries, meaning they can't zerg swarm for long stretches of time. I can also imagine that monsters can be ranked by their injury potential, with bossess quickly stacking up injuries on unprepared groups. Is this something you've talked about or considered?
I can imagine martial skills that can block or minimize some critical hits within certain time periods, Or abilities that temporarily negate them (thinking barbarian rage maybe).
Just wanted to say, love the injury point system, and the idea of healers having to balance HP vs IP against short term and long term needs. ...In some ways, what you have are opposite versions of two things, you have short term and long therm health (HP and IP), and short term and long term mana/energy (Stamina/Power). I like the symetry.
I'm glad to here some positive feedback. I've had a lot of ideas, anything that gets some traction. In response to your posts 1) I wound tend to agree, one would probably accumulate alot. I imagine that leads exist as a type of currency, and in and of themselves, weigh nothing, and you can store as many as you want. They would be nice in that way they cannot be stolen as they are not 'material'. However, if one were to trade them, first you would have to construct some sort of knowledge item. So, geographers would create maps, generals would make battle plans, aranists would make a treatise, nobles would make diaries, and so forth. These items would represent a set amount of leads, could be traded, and be utilized as part of crafting recepies or have some consumable effect. 2) I definitely agree. The list I posted were only the brief ideas I could think up as proof of concept. Certainly the balance and utility of rewards needs to be scrutinized by the crowdforging community. For instance, fast travel doesn't necessarily have to be a speed increase/decrease, but it could be made more efficient (save money), more secure (less chance to be intercepted), or more frequent (lower any cooldown timers). Because the system would have so many potential effects, it would depend on other systems that are added - but I don't have a problem brainstorming ideas right now, and adjusting them as we get more information.
Perhaps there is some misunderstanding, but I view this system as not replacing 'player knowledge'. The history of the world as a matter of fact that can be read by the players has its own enjoyment, and I wouldn't want to get rid of that. But, there are aspects of 'character knowledge', that simply can't be utilized or traded without a mechanic. The Leads system allows a PC (read: player character) to demonstrate within the game that it has a knowledge of X, and more importantly that the character is able to utilize it regardless of the player's knowledge. The purpose of this system is to broaden the resource base by turning an otherwise limited skill into a means to increase trade and thus increase meaningful interaction. I don't see how it would ruin RP or in-game secrets.
I have a hard time believing that any MMO game can't process a few skill tests per player periodically. In regards to passive tests, the net effect would be each player making between one and let's say five, 'behind the scenes' test against the server to detirmine if a success was made - keep in mind that the client communicates with the server for every interaction your perform, every button press, movement, most menu operations not tied solely to client - these would be insignificant bandwith users. As for action classification, I threw out some examples, but you only need a pool of significant actions for each skill for it to be (casting spells and combat is probably where you saw an explosion of potential actions). More likely, you pick actions that are expected to occur 'regularly', but not necessarily 'frequently' (such as entering mass combat, crafting a magic item, killing a keyword creature, utilizing an arcane structures service). A simple system is simply tying the reward of leads with actions that reward XP. Also, this system is by no means designed for EE or even initial full launch, it would be useful only once there are larger settlement systems in place, and a sufficient player base that more resource diversity would stimulate more trade.
I think part of the confusion with this is there are really two whole separate systems being discussed here, and we need to separate them before we can isolate their prospective functions and play value. First, we have smuggling, which would be a system of disguising goods and items to look less valuable in order to sneak them past observers. The second is illicit goods (drugs and such). The general ideas I see so far is that drugs are a sort of potential risk/reward item that can be sold to PC's/NPCs/Settlements for money, but in exchange has negative or unpredictable effects on their buyers. Smuggling:
I imagine a system in which a thief uses skill 'smuggle' on a selected item, say 'glitterrock', and locks it to look like granite resource. Or, this could easily apply to make sacred wood look like common oak. In either case, the item shows in any inventory as the mundane. Depending on the system's ability inspect another persons inventory, one would then 'scan' the item with a perception skill, and if successful, would see the item for what it really is. That test could further be modified by the target's own skills (sleight of hand, bluff, etc). This would be a great system for merchants in general traveling in dangerous areas; merchants might find it advantageous to disguise valuable goods as less so - bandits unable to decipher the goods true nature may not want to risk the rep hit to take goods as less valuable (some might take all items regardless, but then that's a whole other problem). Illicit Goods: This one is more complicated. When looking at these as potential options, the first thing is deciding who the target is. NPC's and PC's are a huge difference here, and from my look at ideas so far, It seems NPC's would be the better option. Namely, because the nature of illicitly goods (and drugs), in the real world is that they provide a 'feel good' effect for their users with almost always negative downsides. Temporary buffs are better handled by potions, randomized or not. But you can't replicate the effect of a 'drug' in a game world because it's effect simply doesn't translate into the virtual space, at least not in anyway meaningful for an individual player in the game. What COULD be useful, however, is the economic balance illicit goods play into social systems. By using NPC 'drug users' as an end point, thieves can build black markets around creating items that are then sold back to the 'game system' for in-game currency. In order to make that interaction viable to the player community, ultimately, those NPC's that are buying illicit goods must be linked to community settlements which effectively gain that gold. The end result is that illicit goods markets could be created at an individual level, but are consumed at the settlement level. Advantages have been discussed already, and particularly I like the ideas of having settlements that consume these items receive a bonus amount 'tax revenue' or some other economic bonus, but have various effects impact on there development indexes and settlement stats. The net effect is the seller gains gold AND the settlement 'may' gain gold, but loses development capacity. Some settlements (particularily chaotic ones), might benefit from the gold in place of settlement indexes, but most will want to prune the markets; in contrast the sellers are at war internally with the settlement to personally profit - which they may then use that influence to control the settlement (ergo, organized crime). As for the exact system of running a black market, first we have to break it down into it's components. Looking at it from a logistical chain, what you have from end to start is [settlement - NPC 'buyer' - PC 'seller' - PC 'transport' - PC 'supplier' - PC manufacturer - PC Organization] Looking at this system, the best places I can see for meaningful human interaction are at the following junctions: a) the selling of drugs to NPC's, b) the transport of goods and c) the manufacture of those goods. both b and c are in effect already covered by the current proposed systems (merchant travelling - b), and POI harvesting (c). One simply might slot in the ability to make a 'hidden distillery' instead of a logging camp at a given point of interest, which might output some lumber for cover, and then produce moonshine which is then attempted to be sold. Transport is already covered. This leaves the a, the link between PC seller and NPC buyer. How I imagine this system could work is similar to the proposed assassination system mentioned in the blog. 'Black Merchants' would choose appropriate skills and could then spend their time trying to stealthy 'sell' the items to NPC's within a settlement. Each sale could be broken down into a sort of 'social combat mini game' where a seller barters with the NPC OR just simply a cast time and skill check. The most entertaining way I can think of doing it is tying the appearance of NPC buyers to a vulnerability window, similar to the PVP time, in which during that time NPC buyers become available, and NPC guards are down. You now have a sort of hide and seek period within the settlement where the sellers try to offload their goods to targets within a time constraint while the good enforcers try to hunt them down. The time restriction helps control the flux of goods, and creates reasonable boundaries for success and failure for both sides. Summary To summarize the illicit goods market system then, players and companies could construct black market POI generators, that mask their production unless discovered, transport those goods to settlements (possibly smuggled), and then sell them to NPC's during a vulnerability window in which they are trying to deliver goods while avoid being captured by guard police. The rewards are gold, influence, rep and ability to influence a settlement, risk is loss of those plus death - the usual. Wow...sorry for long post. Thoughts
Well, in a more advanced setup, the items that are purchased with leads could have multiple cost structures or conversion ratios. For example, purchasing a 'travel map' might be sold for either a flat 50 geography leads, or 25 geography leads and 5 nature leads depending on the area, and provides a % reduction in travel time and a % chance protection versus fast travel ambush. In another case, building settlement structures, various build times might be improved by purchasing or crafted using engineering leads, but others might utilize engineering and nobility leads to create statues, nobility and warfare for defense structures, arcane and nature and engineering for replenishing gardens, and so forth. Ultimately, leads would exist as a unique type of currency that is generated by very specific in game behaviors - preferably activities that are enjoyable to the players and useful down the line to rounding out niches in settlement society. Need to incentive exploration or dungeon crawling, use the knowledge leads to incentive the activity while minimizing (though not eliminating) the impact on the overall economy.
I was just thinking, they could do this in two steps (thinking more along sea going vessels). The first phase, they could treat ship combats sort of like a lobby - building a ship requires so much resources, and a sufficient crew to run, and can haul so much cargo or other players. When you set sail, you decide if your doing transport or raiding. Then you get put into a system queue that runs some statistical tests between ships, comparing ship speed, time of day, viability, sailor skills, location, and so forth (supposedly similar to the caravan fast travel set up). The result is mostly binary, either the transport ship escapes any interception or is blocked by the raiding ship. If the raiding ship succeeds, an 'instance' is launched that spawns a map with combatants on appropriate ships and conditions. From there, raiders can forfeit and allow passage, issue SAD on opposing ship, or pillage until one side is dead. Then the winning side divies up resources and loot, burns or captures the other ship, and then exits at a port on land. This system minimizes the need to make a whole setup of ship mechanics for navigation, and server space for waterways, at least in the short term.
So long as the updates keep coming in to improve the game, I think you will be fine. What kills a lot of groups doing a similar thing is that they go months without new updates and players start wondering if they ever plan to finish. Daily updates may or may not be overkill. I have really good internet, but those who don't may grow frustrated with long waits to play a game every day as they download new updates. A weekly cadence is usually a sweet spot. Daily isn't important, just regular. They seem to be doing good on their promise to date in releasing the blog - that stability is what is refreshing and builds confidence.
So, I know Ryan and GW have talked about the need to prevent serious choke points arriving in the game to prevent small forces from repelling much larger ones, and I generally agree. That being said, I think there is a place for some logistic connection nodes that can enhance border conflict and economies without creating such a problem. Bridges, Tunnels, and Harbors. I imagine these as three potential special improvements that can be constructed at special point of interests. At a settlement or wilderness hex with a river, settlements can build bridges that provide two things: a base quick path across the river AND a fast travel node (more on that later). Now, the key to the bridge is not to have it be necessarily to cross an obstacle, merely a convenience. Depending on terrain features, you can ford a river or cross further upstream, and are not dependent on the point, but having them provides unique advantages worth defending. Also importantly, as a player built structure, they have to be built, maintained, and defended less they're destroyed - providing another source of contention. The other advantage would be in relation to fast travel. Now, obviously this system hasn't been designed yet, so this point may be irrelevant. I remember reading something about the fast travel system intended to allow players to skip the boring slog, but not allow them to escape meaningful encounters. To my mind, what I envision is that fast travel 'roads' or connections need to be constructed between two or more settlements - in doing so, they are required to place down a set of nodes between their locations on a map. Each node acts like a link in a chain, and must be defended - if a node is 'down', fast travellers pop out at the break, and must cross to the next link the long way before they can fast travel again. Depending on the distance, size, and investment the settlements commit, these connections will be fewer or more, and will have variable safe times to travel (similar to active pvp windows). Bandits have the ability to set ambushes and block nodes for a period of time to catch victims. Bridges and tunnels are merely important links in those chains - they aren't crucial to crossing any distance, but blocking a bridge may severely hamper trade and troop mobilization between settlements - as such they are nice hot spots of activity. Anyways, let the discussion commence.
Ok, so here this goes -been kicking this around. If this has been discussed already, my apologies. So, one of the requests I've seen come up from time to time is for the capacity for players to specialize in knowledge - having access to various local, geographic knowledge and then being able to sell it or leverage it to their advantage. On the surface, I think this is great, but also there are several problems. For one, knowledge in and of itself is hard to 'trade'; how do you demonstrate it's accuracy and how do you get paid. Also, what are the immediate and long term uses of knowledge for a player - is there a limit to it's usefulness. Finally, how do you reconcile a player's knowledge with their characters? The solution I came up with so far is character centric, and is an expansion upon the Pathfinder skill set. For now, I'm calling this little subsystem the "Leads" system. Per its name, the Leads system uses....leads, which I describe as a type of knowledge resource. Each character will be able to take skills in any of the knowledges known, plus perhaps one or two other to cover certain situations. These include (Arcana, planes, religion, the planes, nature, local, nobility, geography, dungeoneering, engineering, legal*, and warfare*). Like other skills, you have a score that is rolled against various challenges. The difference is what happens after you succeed one of those tests. When you beat a knowledge test, you get a lead, a finite resource linked to that knowledge skill. From here, the lead can then be spent (or 'traded') to receive various benefits. Before I go into those possible rewards, I first will mention some ideas on how you acquire leads. I roughly sort knowledge tests into two categories: passive and active. Passive tests are pretty straightforward - as long as you are in a certain location or situation, you periodically roll your skill against a target DC for that test, and gain leads. For example, while you are within a settlement, you might roll one test an hour against knowledge local - depending on your skill over a four-hour session, you’ll gain between 0-4 leads. While in a dungeon, you’ll test against a dungeoneering test, etc, etc. In other cases, you might gain leads while you’re under a certain situation: after you cast X spells successfully, you test against arcana/religion. If you use X combat maneuvers while at war, you test against warfare. In this way, your character gains a slow but potentially constant resource, depending on their actions. ALSO: not sure of the implications, but you can also make the resource of leads degrade overtime - this could help mitigatge people who try to overspecialize in getting one type of resource by gimmicks or grinding. The other capacity would be active, and would be linked to completing various tasks, fulfilling contracts, killing certain monsters, interacting with certain in game objects, or as part of certain rewards. These would likely be more reliable, but less often. With these leads, characters can then exchange them for a variety of goods, services, or boons. For instance, a mage might spend several arcana leads to see the spell list of an opposing caster, a settlement citizen might expend nobility leads to learn additional details about the settlements current leader’s activities. Travelers might use geography leads to reduce the cost/time on fast travel or reduce penalties to bandits. Lawyers can use legal leads to add additional items to contracts (the idea of fine print traps on contracts is slightly amusing), and so on. The result of such a system would be an expansion to the economy of the game in the diversity of resources, and create markets for activities that can be designed for or against that might otherwise be less lucrative. Perhaps you really want an explorer - now they can collect loads of geography and nature leads, and sell them to bandits planning raids, settlements interested in ambushes, merchants looking in lower travel times, and so on. Crafters can gain engineering leads that can reduce construction times on items, which could have a volatile market. Dungeon delvers could collect arcana leads to sell to mages looking for a battle advantage. Tavern rats could hoard local or nobility leads that can be used for discounts on services, access to otherwise locked buildings (alignment restriction), or location information on various characters (and bonuses on assassination). Generals could use warfare leads to increase the bonuses to their companies, gain strategic bonuses, reduce pvp windows temporarily, or increase damage to outposts. Arcane
Dungeoneering:
Engineering:
Geography
Legal
Local
Nature
Nobility
Planes
Religion
Warfare
Not to be annoying, but how technically is that possible - with extenant forums and chat services, there is almost certain to be large groups of people keeping up to date on major events across the game world. With the MMO being an open system, is this a realistic goal? Edit: Wow, super late in the thread and totally irrelevant
Some ideas that might be worth input So, current, strip mining seems to be a binary action, either it happens, or it doesn't. Though Tork Shaw and others have mentioned, the real world equivalent is more variable - exchanging short term harvesting for long term harvesting. What if you make a couple variables stats for each resource at an outpost, and link them in such a way: collection speed, resource health, processing, efficiency, and integrity. Resource health might be the likelihood to produce higher quality resources, processing reduces the relative weight of goods for transport (lumber boards vs trunks, carved stone, milled grain), efficiency a generic multiple, and integrity of the outposts health. If raiders simply want to deny resources to an enemy, simply raise the outpost, and move on. However, if you want to capture it, let raiders have some more discretion over the types of resources they have - they can sacrifice quality and efficiency for speed and processing, or integrity, processing, and speed for resource health. Each variable has a link with the others, as you raise or lower one, the others are adjusted in kind. This allows for the same dynamic as strip mining, but more nuiance for each region.
I'm going to have to agree, taking the problem of getting new players up to speed, and designing an incentive to 'help new players' into one of the most important mechanics in the game is almost too perfect to hope for. As long as any pitfalls are quickly squashed, this should definitely alleviate any sort of population stagnation concerns people might worry about. Also, I love the idea of these new companies being named academies or universities - just imagine senior companies looking for new members, and asking "So, I see here you graduated from the Magister's Academy, that's quite the pedigree"
First of all, Ideas: Brilliant! By the way, I'm curious, while we don't have much information about mass battles, and ideas on how assassins can play a role in those large confirmations. Is it possible that assissins that can slay certain commander types might be able to impact battles in more than making the person have to respawn far away - for instance, resting certain commander timers or imparing certain commander skills. For that matter, is it possible to have assassins's kills of targets inhibit players in other ways - not necessarily make them unplayable, but neutralize certain key aspects of their roles for a penalty - such as carrying capacity, spellcasting, speed, etc. Just some thoughts.
I mean take the keyword "sharp" is it variable, or constant? Meaning does it equate to say +2, or does its bonus depend on some other factor? Considering Sorcs as less variable blasters, I could see them instead getting sort of 'supped up' cantrips, with less spells or less refresh. So, those low level magic missiles or firebolts are more deadly from a sorc, but they simply don't have access to other spells (or as many). Perhaps they get a wonderous item (like the bloodstone) that takes up a slot (so they can't slot a spellbook), and that increases damage/effect of cantrips and/or removes their component cost (which would fit with eschew components. As for the keywords, from what I'm understanding is that they will be on a) the player via feats, an ability, and an item. So, what I imagine is whenever a player attempts to preform an action, the game checks the following: player feats -- ability cast -- item So, you may have the following setup Feat (pyromancer) -- Fireball -- Staff of Flame now, each of those has the keyword fire. One of them looks for the keyword, and assigns bonuses for each source that has it. Does that sound right?
We're calling Wands "Arcane Weapons" because that category also includes Staves (and possibly other things like Rods down the line).This brings up another question: Is there a difference between a Wizard Staff (Arcane Weapon) and a Quarterstaff (Simple Weapon)? Can a Wizard staff be used with martial abilities requiring a two handed weapon? Can a quarterstaff be used to cast cantrips? As a sidenote - how many rules lawyers have used that discrepency to try and pull off all sorts of crazy combo's in the Tabletop version.
I dunno about a combat thing, but I'd like to see this being something done to supplement siege warfare against settlements. Have a circle of X mages get together to rain meteors down on the town walls like a living trebuchet. what would be best is to have a game object that requires either a)a large investment of components and/or b) multiple players with specific feats/keywords interacting with the object that allows one person to cast spells scaled for siege damage
Y'know, a good solution for those would be Necromancer armies would be to treat 'graveyards' or other mass places and an undead host as any other NPC faction - Players can gain Reputation faction with that 'alliance', and you can balance an undead NPC horde along the lines of any other monstours horde. You can keep the one pet: one PC rule for combat, and this solution (flavored accordingly) allows you to keep the 'raised undead' army feel without introducing a new complex balancing act. Even better since the alliance system already has in place rivalries (obviously, people who ally with the 'undead' won't exactly spend their time elsewhere), and various necromancers can gain rep in the alliance by doing 'deed's, themed around necromantic stuff. Thoughts?
So, I was watching GBTV, and they were doing a story on Wildstar and efforts to increase complexity in NPC fights. It got me thinking. Something I would like to see GW work on is a sort of animation algorithim that takes a set of animations for each type of mob; specifically what needs to happen is that each type of action needs more than one animation - 3+ depending on power and number of actual attacks on a mob. After that, what you can do it make each mob unique by randomizing those animation sequences between mobs (not necessiarily between each action - thought that might work for multi stage bosses). In either case, by selec tively controlling the animation sequence, you help to preserve one of the entertaining aspects of combat - Pattern Recognition. Also, depending on various action speeds, this could be extrapolated to PC's. Imagine taking skills that increase the randomization of your skill animations, making your tells harder to predict. Thoughts?
A couple ideas I'd throw in. In crafting, the process could happen in stages - at each stage, the crafter can be given an expected chance of success (which shrinks with each stage), and amount of materials returned if they cancel ahead of time. Various other mechanics can alter this to have greater success/salvage rates per trade - this allows some grainularity for beginning/master crafters as to whether or not a project will succeed, and allow materials to be siphoned out of the system. The second idea, should be that as a crafters skill increases - to a certain extent they are able to use exotic materials, but they should also be able to BETTER utilize simplier, or otherwise inefficent components for otherwise harder objects. This would both keep beginner resources valuable, and allow crafters to make a premium off their skills. Anyone could make a high quality sword out of steel, but if you could make just as good a sword out of bronze and copper (and fairy dust for example), you can buy those components at a lost less, and charge the same premium.
Well, keep in mind that several feats will be turned into skills perhaps, and not as passives to be slotted (possibly fast movement, slow fall, purity of body) Also, importantly is that tabletop characters were not designed around fighting each other - so chances are the PFO character will be relatively weaker.
Sounds like you would need a special contract to solve a clue. Also wonders why kind of information would exist on one - would it merely be a black box that you test your skill against and wait for a solution? Can it fail? If you do solve it, what information do you get (a name is easy, maybe you only get their race, their reputation value, or their affiliation)
What would be cool is that whenever you 'steal' something from a player, you automatically place a new weightless item into that persons inventory called 'Evidence' or 'clue'. That item would have a variety of stats based upon the skill of the thief in question. The player can then attempt to solve the evidence to detirmine information about the thief OR give it to another person to solve it for them. Bad thieves have really easy evidences to solve, hence can be found quickly via tracking. Better and master thieves may have much harder ones to find, you may need multiples.
Sounds like a spell component pouch will just fall in line with other equipment on your character; i.e. should have a rarity, a cost to make and sell from base materials, a time to degrade (and be repaired/replaced), and have the ability to be threaded (if it is a very powerful component pouch). Did I miss anything OH, and not toughing that hunger/thrist thread again....I still have players debate it's merit in actual tabletop games, let alone an MMO.
So, let's see if I got this straight: Player A has Criminal Reputation of 100/100 with region X, (no crimes). Player pickpockets Player B, and recieves a flag from that player for action, their reputation is droped by, let's say 5 points. Player B also informs Player C that Player A is a thief, player C rates player A as a criminal as well. player A's rep drops to 90/100. Repeat until player A's rep falls to 50/100; player A can now be targeted for looting as a criminal while in Region X. However in Region Y, player A still has criminal rating of 100/100 How close am I?
I would understand CC/Settlements (that might be small enough), but how would local region flags work? You have a status for each Hex and as cross a border you might go from flagged to not flagged? Would that mean that you could escape capture/bounty by leaving a region? Could work...
A Paladin who finds himself trapped in a dungeon without food and water should be able to die of hunger and thirst so he can get out of there without committing suicide and thus losing alignment for killing a good character (himself). This is unfortunatly the problem - take this to it's conclusion: you die of hunger/thirst. In PnP games, this means roll new character, so it's important. In an MMO, it means respawn. Death isn't as big a deterrent. Effectively, this would be viewed as a 'pay resources to keep your stuff' mechanic. I can see food/water being useful in certain areas, but as a general mechanic, I don't see it bring any enjoyment to playing.
At the very least, the spell component pouch would have to degrad - all weapons and armor, from what I understand, go into disrepair after a long enough time, limiting their effectiveness. Right?
That sounds nice, I'll admit, but I think it's unfeasible at this point from a technical perspective. The problem is that rather having one criminal status that goes through a limited set of variations, you would then have mutliple versions of a criminal status for each person/organization. Effectively, you need to create a social status between each person for every person. For example, for a population of let's say 5,000 - EACH avatar needs to have data storage for the current status of 4,999 individual flags, plus additional ones for each organization. Now multiply that for each player, and you quickly have data that might take a lot to store. I can't say for certain how BIG such a notification would be, but it's easy to see that having to track each relationship is far more than having one per avatar that is adjusted serially. Does that make sense?
As Uthreth said, we all can come back from the dead in the game, the 'raise dead' spell would simply be a more convient solution, and having a price corresponding reflecting it accordingly. As for the complications you mention - I mean no disrespect but I don't see those as problems per se, but rather cost/benefits of various spells. At least for me, I've always viewed magic as a risk/reward thing - it shouldn't be just BETTER, but giving advantage at the cost of something else. Don't know if that helps.
Just go by normal Pathfinder rules, most spells as long as you have a spell component pouch you are fine. Then there are some spells such as stoneskin and raise dead that have costs. Do it that way. So, most spells would just have a stamina cost, and then (most likely your utilities) would have 'component' costs - This would actually work if you can adjust the availability of those components in order to allow spells to be learned by many people - but only castable by a small portion of the population to balance for how powerful they might be (raise dead for example).
Bluff (opposed by Sense Motive) and Disguise (opposed by Perception) could both be used in different ways to help hide your negative flags from being displayed. I like this idea, it still penalizes people because if they happen to die in pvp they won't be able to flag the attacker regardless of whether the attacker knew they were a criminal or not. It also allows for people to choose to be a bandit or villain and some people won't be able to tell that they are a criminal. Of course, word will get around socially and they will be blacklisted I'm sure, but not from everything and not by everyone. Very interesting idea, and a good one. Yeah, let's say there is perception to notice that you've been pickpocketed, and Sense Motive/Insight to detirmine WHO stole from you. I could see badges for thieves where at certain skill levels, they get a bonus to performing SOME types of crimes (corpse stealing or pickpoceting) and assassins (on killing). I also imagine that regardless if you can delay the criminal flag (social), that you will automatically get an alignment hit (moral). So, you cannot be a GOOD thief, but you can be wanted, fugitive - and possibly balance your evil acts of stealing with good acts of giving or support (robin hood style) to balance out your alignment. The important thing you would need is to have it that even a really good criminal can't be untouchable, they just need to be met with an equivenant vigilante (paladin with high percept/insigh) to find the criminal. Finally, having flags eventually degrade allows for two things - allows people to reform if they want to change their chacter AND provides an eventual means to stop endless potential counter griefing via the bounty system.
Honestly, spell components really just need to be treated like ammo, they are hard to manage in PnP because small item tracking is generally hard at a table top - however this is very EASY for a computer. Have a sensible set of components, and various grades of each (maybe 12 categories), and then have various spells need X amount of Y component per cast. Adjust price accordingly and done. For extra, make some versions of components cheap, but just perform basic acts of spells, and more expensive components that enhance a spell.
So, to sum up here, we have 3 status that can be applied to a character: Alignment (good/evil on a spectrum), Criminal (possibly temporary, nominal based on select actions), and thief (most likely this is a type of criminal category). From what I gather, being flagged as a criminal allows for various actions to then be done on your character (attacked without receiving a future flag, target of bounty, looted without flag). The other is that the flag is visible, thereby damaging your ability to conduct future non-criminal actions with others. I think that there is some room to have characters minimize these penalties - this has to be done, however, in such a way as to circumvent the intention of the system in general. What I see are a couple options - delay flags, hide flags, and remove flags. Delay flag would be worked into a skill, let's say subtly. It works by reducing the time between when a criminal act occurs, and when the flag is registered. I imagine the min-max time for this ranging from a few seconds, to a maximum of an hour Hidden flags would be the ability hide the display of your flags to other players corresponding with a difference in skills. Let's call this skill Guile - any player with a perception lower than this skill doesn't see your criminal flag (might make exceptions if they were a victim of that particular person, or give them a bonus). Finally, remove flags. I imagine this as a sort of in game statue of limitations. I suspect that criminal flags would eventually decay over time regardless (over many days, weeks, or longer). Taking this skill, lets call it notority, allows you to reduce the time it takes for a criminal flag to disappear. A caveot would be each new crime resets the trigger AND time spent logged out doesn't count. Basically, if you commit a crime, and can hide long enough, it is no longer valid, until you make a new one. Thoughts on these?
The best part about this possible development is that it would really make traditionally farming 'hard'; as soon as a large enough population of players developed the trick of wiping out a whole group of NPC mobs, they would 'evolve' (cause that's effectively what this is) a new attack or defense method, likely negating the players advantage. This in turn would require the players to adapt, probably necessitating new weapons to be made, new routes to be made, new resources to be farmed. In fact, I'd dare say that this idea isn't just great, it's neccessary to keep an economy robust, and just a little volitle. Kudos to the idea
Any capability that allows the player base to flat out make more content for themselves is good idea. I can see this being a possible MTX either directly, or as part of modules you may run; it seems something I would definitely pay for and a pay wall would discourage people who wouldn't be very committed.
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