I'd also recommend "We Be Goblins". It's a free download here on the paizo site. Great family fun.
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We always gave an auto perception check for the PC/NPC that entered the square with a +5 circumstantial if same size, +2 per size category difference if invisible PC/NPC was larger (max 10), -2 per size category difference if invisible PC/NPC was smaller (min 0). Almost never came up for creatures, rarely for stationary objects. Hence, this was just a quick and dirty homebrew solution. Second battlemap or sketches on a scratchpad behind the screen always worked great for us in regard to the aforementioned issue.
I wonder, Can we get a sticky post for links such as this?
@ Hark The first I could see, so long as it was 1 day or so many hours, but doubtful. The lowering reputation of those assassinated could be abused depending on the numbers, the effects of reputation in your own settlement/kingdom/alliances, and what you can affect depending on your standing in said places. Those are things I haven't seen announced or planned out yet, so not much to go on.
I'd like to see it stay in with the variances stated in the lore, but i'll second what Nihimon said: Especially in the River Kingdoms, where people from all over will have been mixing for generations, it really does make sense to allow the broadest possible options.
If I'm going to have assassinations in a game I want an assassin to be able to sneak into the castle of a player nations king, kill the king, and it actually mean something. I was looking at mechanics to allow assassins to do their jobs rather than taking a downward spiral in reputation, thus being allowed few places and dealing with NPC guards at every turn or going straight to hostile in any player run settlement they enter. That would make the characters less useful as assassins if they could go nowhere they need to. Perhaps if you're assassinated (someone places an assassination contract on you and it is fulfilled) then you take a reputation hit to your own settlement? Again, no clue on what the numbers would be, but that'd be a definite downside to a king losing reputation with his own kingdom.
Yes, In the wilderness (attacker, not criminal flag) with a party who could work together as a team. Considering the alignment and reputation hits only occur upon a player's death it's a moot point. Don fire resist gear. Cast resistance spells. Freedom of movement spells. That's what would make it tactical rather than seeing the screen light up like the fourth of July anytime 2 or more creatures appear. TLDR: Yes.
I'm happy with the direction Ryan has hinted at. Perhaps limited options at first with more range/detail opening up as you earn badges. It would feel, to me, as if my character were growing in game, rather than "He's always been the same since he was a n00b." Armors, weapons, and vanity items will add distinction and change, but seeing your character evolve would be interesting to me.
Just remove the reputation hit? Chances are, being an assassin, you're not that worried about the alignment shift, and probably prepared to take the criminal hit. Not taking a reputation hit would fit (trained skill to reduce penalties? rep and/or alignment) with the idea of the kill from the shadows theme as far as game mechanics are concerned. Granted, players would still know, but you'd not have reputation issues preventing you from getting into areas. Considering how they're doing the disconnect of "attacker" flag in wilderness, and "criminal" flag in civilization, it'd reduce the negatives while attacking in wilderness. Perhaps not completely negate them, but make assassination worthwhile while giving up training time that could have been spent on other pursuits. EDIT: Let me make clear, reduce =/= negate penalties. 5% per skill tier trained? 1%, 10%? Max of 5 levels? Assasination 1-5? Not enough numbers yet to set a threshhold, but it could be a skill offbranch of another line that requires non-combat ability skills, but possibly utility skills?
Good point to bring up. +1 While I (obviously) am for 100% friendly fire, I'm still trying to consider ways to compromise between the two camps. The issues I see from the ideas thrown around are that any compromise compounds the problems of both sides, increases development resource use, and/or can cause problems with future implementations. The only exception is the increased AoE cast time/animation which I definitely like in concept. That brings it down to: A) Friendly Fire on 100% B) Friendly Fire off, friends associated by whatever parameters fit with the vision of the game Devs (crowdforging vote?) Group, Settlement/Kingdom, Neutral?, Company, etc... Unless anyone has more ideas or I missed something else that wouldn't be a waste of dev time for the return the game would receive. I'm really hoping I missed something...
Plex has been generally considered a good success in EVE. This is, at it's core, essentially the same thing and tends to be fairly self balancing through market demand.
In any case, I have no intentions of griefing the weak. Whew, I'll be safe.
Burning down the house of an arsonist is not a way of improving fire safety... No, but it might be fun! /cough
Alignment of the parties wont matter either. That was my interpretation as well. Alignment and reputations. @DeciusBrutus - Pretty much. The only issue is minimizing how long they get away with it. Game design and GM intervention can both reduce or increase that time. I'm trying to consider methods to reduce it via game design rather than relying on petition systems as those tend to get pretty overworked in any game. I'm sure the Dev team has considered many, but discussion can bring new solutions sometimes.
I really like the attacker flag for wilderness areas as opposed to criminal. There are still the alignment/reputation penalties for initiation, but still not so harsh as to discourage PvP as the criminal tag could. I know many things are far from set in stone, but it's nice to see the open discourse on current ideas and direction.
Discussion on Wilderness flagging Here
If foreman Joe doesn't uphold his contracts, people will stop doing business with him. Reputation will matter if you want to have any form of business. If someone has a bounty on their head from being tagged criminal, and you are a listed recipient of the bounty, you can freely kill them. I'll search back to find the exact quote. Nihimon probably will beat me to it. :D EDIT: Oops, you said assassinations, not bounties. I've not seen hard answers for the ability to subdivide contracts. That said, it's all subject to change.
Thank you for the clarification!
Valid points to an extent. In your first post, I don't think we're on the same subject with the second post as it was more directed to an idea Nihimon mentioned, although I may have misunderstood it. If he was meaning you were challenged and had time to leave upon entering a claimed territory, then my statement didn't matter, nor applies. If he's running around at that low of HP consistently he is an obvious griefer and easy to petition. His friend would be tagged hostile calling in the NPC sheriff while whittling him down if not grouped. Assuming grouped with his friend dueling, now they are both up for possible banning. GM intervention aside, yes people could do this. In a sandbox reputation matters. Compared of the downsides of FF off, I'm willing to accept that. On or off both have consequences for griefing. Never said they didn't. A non-grouped set of people running around single attacking is also an option. The last person gets flagged criminal. If they buffed each other, they all still get tagged criminal. You'd still have one criminal per target you attacked in you roaming wizard (caster) group. Again, griefing will happen either way. I do not see more negatives for FF on than there are for FF off.
I am against a challenge mechanic that causes your attacker to not be flagged without requiring consent. Going AFK in a dangerous area SHOULD get you killed, but not freely or without consequences to both of you. The attacker would still need to get flagged/alignment hit if you did not give consent, but they'd still get the looting benefits of killing you as well. Who goes AFK in unsafe areas without expecting possible repercussions? EDIT: =D I realize I tend to sound blunt to the point of rudeness at times. That is not my intent.
I'm still for friendly fire being on. I have not seen a mechanical reason brought up to prevent it being an option. There are certainly solid points both for and against, but none that can not be overcome. I took it as you only get the criminal flag by aiding in the death of a non-flagged (non criminal) character. No death, no criminal tag. After re-reading it, that is still my understanding. Just hitting someone once to be flagged opens up a whole new can of worms in griefing that matters little if friendly fire is on or off. A simple "must hit target 2 or more times in a 5 sec window" (adjust to fit, no clue on cast time details/attack speeds. The exact timer is irrelevant, the concept is what matters) to flag for the guards in a "protected" area would curb issues with guards being called. If the AOE cast times are significant (as I took to be implied), then you're just not paying attention to hit someone more than once. Friend, Hostile, or neutral. Channeled AoEs would be the only possible exception to this that I can see. Details on whether these will exist, and in what fashion, would need be known to give any semi-accurate insight. As to the low/no NPC protection areas, the "Xhits/Ytime period" could prevent hostile flagging as described above. First hit brings "griefer-wannabe" out of stealth/invis, warning pops up that you hit an unflagged player, you cancel second AoE with "longish activation/animation times." People will grief with, or without, friendly fire. If my Settlement group is adventuring in an area, there is nothing to stop a group of wizards from coming in and AoEing the entire area we are currently clearing (assume same alignments, LG for this example) and we'd have no recourse to exact revenge although they consistently move ahead of us, even when we move to a new area. If FF were on, they'd either stop to prevent us from tagging them hostile by running into the AoE, or take the hit to alignment by triggering the hostilities and have it out with us. Assume I'm in the group of wizards now, peacefully AoEing with a group of fellow wizards and a group tries to run into our AoE repeatedly to get us flagged. We can swap to single targets until they realize we won;t play their game or we can flag ourselves and wipe them out taking a hit if they're annoying enough. All that said, latency is an issue. If AoEs will have a longish cast time, ground target or targeted ae, that really solves the issue though. Assuming longish refers to 2-3 seconds. On the subject of AoE targeted types; I'm hopeing for PBAOE, Targeted AOE and Ground Targeted AoE depending on the spell used. They're all types used in PF and would love to see them in PFO
Tera had healing similar to this. Multi target heals where you clicked the ability then used mouseover clicks to select targets and hit the ability a second time to actually cast it. Worked well and definitely took some skill to use over the standard group heal methods in most MMOs. Same for some CC and damage spells as well. Assuming the "feat" selective channel is represented with a skill you train, your selections could be done in this method. Likewise, it'd solve where you wanted your magic missiles to hit. You have 5 to cast and only clicked 2 targets? Easy, first 3 at the first selected target, last 2 at the second selected target. Up to X targets selectable, X being the number of missiles available. As for mass heals, you could either do those as closest targets centered on caster in some determined range of target, targeted ground placement, or (if there's a skill similar to selective channel for all heals) the target select mentioned previously, although I'd personally prefer one of the two former methods. If you added selective channel for all aoe heals, it'd make sense to add to all aoe spells in general, effectively making the whole thing more complicated than need be. IMO.
In the PvP areas, said wizard could do that regardless of friendly fire by the descriptions given. You'd just earn yourself a criminal tag. Now, if said wizard was in their group and did that to his/her party, that'd just ensure a lousy reputation for the wizard with less chance of being invited. I'm sure there will be people who DO go around ganking individuals or groups. Friendly fire on or off will have no bearing on that. However, it would stop a wizard from AOEing his own group if it was intermixed with the enemy group, hence where tactics come in. Is it worth bombing your own group with the enemy?
Not that I've seen. From the quote I posted from Lee Hammock and their description of the criminal tag i'm merely assuming full friendly fire will be unlikely. That said, they've made some strong stances on things I'd have expected them to tone down so i'm keeping my fingers crossed. Again, as DeciusBrutus said - Their stance on it is still to be announced. Just want to make sure my wording doesn't misrepresent what someone else has said. edit: they're =/= their. :P
From: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2p7ci&page=3?Goblinworks-Blog-I-Can-See-for -Miles#109 Makes FFA AOE SEEM unlikely under the point Andius brought up in conjunction with the criminal tags. That said, it would promote detect alignment as a major advantage to a group and retain AOE as a tactical ability rather than a free card to go wild with pretty explosions. Because of the downsides i'm even more in favor of FFA AoE (so long as you can't be criminally tagged for groupmates only) even if unlikely. :D
Good point. It could lead to a market of evil assassins hired by good groups to snipe the "good human shields" and vice versa. Still not a perfect solution to the issue you mentioned. If killing an evil character was the same alignment changer as killing a good, despite your alignment, then I don't see where it'd be an issue though. Kill 5 evils and 2 goods, you still come out ahead, or at least break even if 50/50 no matter the numbers.
Personally, I'm hoping for AoE affects everyone, including the caster, if in the radius of effect. It's how my gaming groups have played from AD&D through 3.5 and Pathfinder. It tends, in my experience, to improve tactical use rather than "blow the world up until we're all that's left" type play. Taking it to the MMO world, it would limit balance issues of mass AE grinding. It would still be a valid tactic in certain cases to blow a party member up with the enemies. (or mesmerize, stun, root, snare, charm, etc...) However, it would require more thought than "Tank gather X # of mobs, dps all spam "3" until dead" on average. Just my vote. I know there are others who would prefer differently. Perhaps this will be one of the votes. Great topic.
I loved EVE's PvP. The only problem I had was when I initially began playing EVE. Learning the system connection points had a steep learning curve, however it was simple once you understood it. You never had to set foot in a PvP area if you wished not to and still acquire everything in the game, granted some of it would have to be through the economy. It was casual and carefree. However, if you wanted to get your heart thumping, heading into low-nullsec would do it for you. The more danger, usually the greater the rewards. There were griefers, but they were few and far between. You could usually get away if you built for it. You had to prepare before venturing into the unknown and far reaches. It'll be similar, according to how I interpreted the Blogs and FAQs, in PFO. You'll be able to spend all your time in the safe areas if you so choose and still skill up. You may have to play the market some to get every item you want, but that's the downside of playing low risk. It'll still be available though. Perhaps you'll have to cross slightly dangerous areas to travel from safe area to safe area, but it will be minimal. If the PvP is as described, then PvE heroes will still find plenty to do while being an integral part of the larger gaming world. The differences I've seen between the PvP systems of EVE and PFO seem minor, mostly to allow the system to work in a terrestrial based, rather than space based, game. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
WoW's Mists of Pandas, although released, is still in Beta. Millions still payed for it. That's more along the line PFO's Beta will be in reference to finished product. This is my understanding. Despite that, people have payed to be in both open and closed betas. It wouldn't be something new. The biggest problem I see is the definition of many terms the larger mmo AND PnP crowds have preset in their minds. Most of these misunderstandings have been covered in the blogs. Beta, Class, Skills, MTX/Coin, PvP vs PvE areas, housing.... etc... There is much information to go through that's already been released through the Dev Blogs. I know it can seem overwhelming, but taking the time to go through them does solve many of these misunderstandings. That said, pointing out perceived issues at this point in development is a great thing as it may reduce dev time on aspects that may be less than ideal.
The Good EQ - 1) JBoots (run speed buff), Orb of Shadows (invisibility), etc... non-stat items that add utility. Granted, the nerfed versions were probably better for game balance. (pre-nerfinstant cast on click vs nerfedshort cast time) 2) Random buff timers for strong utility buffs. Invis vs undead in LGuk brings back fond memories. Charm spells included. It added variance. I'm sure many would disagree on this one. ;) 3) Armor/equipment sidegrades. Click abilities or utility uses for some armor pieces. I used my darkness snare leggings(?) long after the stats no longer mattered on my necro. Swapped out gear depending on the situation due to alternative on wear utility. Even old gear could take forever to get outdated. 4) Keyrings! Even No Rent ones (disappear after logged out for 15 min). Tower of Frozen Shadows comes to mind. (Velious era) 5) East commons tunnel bazaar. (Player driven economy in a not so player friendly economy world. This is a "good" in spite of the game, not because of. DAOC - 1) Siege Engines. While their implementation left much to be desired, I'd love to see them again. 2) Dyes. Minor gold sink, but allowed a certain amount of freedom in your look. 3) Abilities that triggered off effects. You dodged? This ability is available to use for 5 seconds. Parry? Block? Same concept. Hit ability A, abilities B and C are now usable. More dynamic melee combat. B or C could be anything from a snare, stun, cleave, increased damage, debuff...etc. Less about a "rotation" and more about utility/situational awareness. SW:Galaxies - 1) Player driven economy. 2) Houses Eve - 1) Risk vs reward. Encouraged smart(er) play. You learned very quickly to only fly what you could afford to lose. 2) Player driven economy. With the exceptions CaptnB mentioned. 3) Character creation, although it really didn't mean much in game play as you're hardwired into a ship for nearly everything. More detail can lend more "bonding" with your character. That said, it frustrated the heck out of some people... Many a lopsided newbie face. :D WoW - 1) Transmorg (yes, like many of these, it's not specifically wow's, but I'm only commenting on games I played.) I think I would have liked the DCUO version better... The Bad I'll just second what Jiminy said.... Extreme Gear inflation seems to be a leading cause of the arms race between players and developers. I don't have to have an extra 1600 agility on a trinket... That way the boss doesn't need 2 billion more HP, the armor of a sherman tank, but is a caster... Mechanics/options > straight stats. The Ugly Pick 83 berries, collect 32856723 fangs off the rare leopard (that there is a whole valley of), and 1 white bunny foot (8 hour rare spawn drop, shares loot table with 8 other items. White foot is 1% drop rate) |