BurnHavoc, you seem to be operating under the assumption that all losses of reputation are bad. Think about reputation less like a penal system and more like a currency: you spend reputation to engage in nonconsensual PvP. To keep PFO from becoming a 'murder simulator', nonconsensual PvP needs to be restricted. Timeouts, hard caps, cool-downs, etc. are all various restrictions that would work, but would also reduce player agency and decision making. Having a renewable resource that one spends is another form, but one that gives players much more freedom. To better facilitate meaningful group play, this cost can be deferred from an individual to a group through the feud and war mechanics (each or which have a different resource cost associated with them). If you spend too much of any of these resources on non-con PvP, you or your group will suffer diminished performance because of it.
Hey, Bludd, go back and re-read Ryan's actual words: I just fail to see how making people play alts to circumvent the alignment and rep systems is supposed to be meaningful player interaction. Why bother with the systems at all if you're just going to force players to circumvent them or fail. In his view, with which I entirely agree, those 'monsters' exist to address a shortcoming of the game mechanics. That is by no mean tacit endorsement of their existence as a whole, but rather as a solution to a temporary problem. The very clearly stated goal is to improve the game system to address that flaw so that those 'monsters' aren't necessary to create a meaningful interaction.
@Valtorious: The 'monsters in the basement' approach isn't the long-term goal. It's an interim stop-gap during EE while emergent behavior shakes out so that the devs can get a handle on what those 'monsters' are being used for and accommodate that play-style with game mechanics. @ Everyone in the Stand & Deliver circle-jerk: The mechanic that was presented ages ago was based on a system that has changed substantially. Furthermore, no such mechanic will be present in EE (and maybe not 'till late OE) and what it might look like will depend highly upon, again, emergent gameplay. If you want to fantasize about how you might exploit an imaginary mechanic, knock yourself out, but, please, stop polluting otherwise meaningful discussions with your masturbatory drivel.
I will say that the lack of a whitelist/redlist is a deliberate feature of the Settlement system. I think the lack of a redlist is a mistake. It limits a settlement's ability to actively police its territory from repeated harassment. Without the easy ability to punish harassers (which enables both discouragement beforehand, and retribution after the fact), settlements will resort to higher levels of xenophobia as a protective measure. I don't think that makes for a healthy game. In fact, I would argue that settlements should be able to allocate DI to redlist individuals, companies and even other settlements, but that status would only matter in territory controlled by the settlement. Similarly, companies should be able to spend influence to redlist other companies and individuals, but only within the confines of the settlement they belong to (and only if those redlisted don't also belong to the settlement).
@Ryan: I'd like to challenge your assumption that most settlements will be NBSI, and suggest you have the power to discourage such policies. In EVE, NBSI only works because all the economic resources required by groups adopting NBSI policy either come from money faucets (rats) or are imported from high-sec, which is NRDS. Effectively, EVE's economy operates solely in high-sec. Isolationist null-sec alliances (which is all of them) can only function because they buy everything they need from Jita and then haul those resources back to their space. Jita wouldn't exist as a market hub if it was NBSI. It sounds like, in PfO, the current plan is for there to be few NPC settlements (which is great), but for them to be centrally located (which is bad). If the current designs for NPC settlements allow for them to function as market hubs, players aren't going to want to stray far from them, and isolationist strategies will prevail. As far as methods for settlements to deal with scofflaws, the most obvious solution, to me, is to allow settlements to dedicate a small (exponentially increasing, but with a small exponent) amount of its DI to tag them as kill-on-sight. Like feuds/wars, but for individuals. In the future, there could even be an associated building to lower those costs or even some sort of bounty mechanic.
as simple as, "If you don't like, it ignore it or report it." And herein lies the problem. What you profess doesn't work for many people: The Experience of Being Trolled | Idea Channel Also, I expect Ryan et al to be studying the hell out of the profound impact League of Legends' Tribunal has had on player behavior: Has League of Legends Tamed the Trolls Forever? | Game/Show
Attempting (however futilely) to bring this discussion back to the original topic... EVE attempts to limit non-consensual PvP via security status, but, as I'm sure many of you know, that system is full of The larger point, and one I really wanted to express in this thread, is that terrain in EVE is basically non-existent. There are a whole three location-based components to combat in EVE (ignoring grid The land you occupy has always been of monumental importance in reality, and I'd love to see this reflected in a PfO.
It's interesting to me how responses shift from "wow, that's a great theory" to "no that's bad because it would negatively impact my preferred play-style". Unrestricted non-consensual PvP creates cultural problems, as Ryan has discussed at length elsewhere. On the other hand, a sand-box without non-consensual PvP isn't much of a sandbox. This is a video game where most of us want to be able to resort to violence in ways we wouldn't ever consider in our own lives. I unequivocally want non-consensual PvP to be an integral part of the game. Because of the aforementioned cultural problems, non-con PvP needs limitations. The best way to do that while still maintaining the freedom of the sand-box is by associating some increasing cost. In PfO, this exists, mechanically, in the form of wars, feuds, and reputation. Wars and feuds shift the cost from an individual resource to a collective one. Meaningful decisions are those where one has to balance between cost, risk, & reward. The aggressor in non-con PvP is assumed to be engaging in a low-risk activity, since they are the ones to choose the terms of engagement. Thus, if there is a high reward activity they can partake in, such as killing people to take their stuff, it needs to have a meaningful cost. That cost is reputation, and no feat or skill should mitigate it. That said, I'm all for feats or skills that enhance ones ability to gain reputation. In fact, that's precisely what I would like to see Stand and Deliver offer: a significant reputation gain if the aggressed party agrees to pay, but no other benefit. Such an ability would be of little cost, but would offer high reward along with substantive risk.
As for the contentious issue of PvP, I'd like to see non-consensual PvP (of which banditry is, 100%) be allowed and be a supported play-style. However, outside of combat, I'd like to pose substantially more risk to, or require more resources from those who partake in it. Characters partaking in non-con PvP will almost certainly be carefully choosing their victims so as to minimize the risk or effort required in combat. To balance that, there should be significant effort or risk required in accomplishing more mundane acts like character advancement or economic development. This contrasts with those whom bandits pray on, who face far more risk or require more effort to protect themselves from bandits, but aren't restricted in other areas of character growth. Of course, this is all predicated on ample opportunities for consensual PvP where everyone involved is deliberately exposing themselves to similar levels of risk. But I'm confident PfO will have plenty of opportunity for consensual PvP.
I want to see terrain be a huge factor in the game. I want the environment to feel like an integral part of the game, not just a scenic backdrop. I want movement to have a large impact on tactical combat, broad military strategy, and even economies. I want movement speeds to vary substantively based potentially on interactions with terrain, roads, class abilities, ability scores, feats, load, armor, maybe skills, and (eventually) mounts & vehicles. I want units, both PC and NPC, to take up space (but maybe not in town) so as to place noticeable limits on the movement of groups. I want high-ground to offer a combat advantage, for trees to offer cover to/for archers, for a narrow mountain pass or river ford to offer a strategic advantage. I want to see trade dictated by local and regional resource concentrations. I want to see local economies revolve around resource abundance & deficiencies. I want to see the flow of goods, both bulk and individual, be dependent on direct player actions. I also want methods of accelerated movement for traversing large distances (so trade isn't a horrible chore) but only along narrowly-defined routes (such that alternative options may offer lower risk or better rewards). I want goods to take up physical storage space as well. Displaying a dozen suits of armor should require a fair bit of physical space. Carrying that many should be difficult (not to mention incredibly awkward). Accounting for terrain/movement/capacity is annoying bookkeeping in a table-top game where the focus is on climactic adventure. Computers, however, are great at annoying bookkeeping tasks and with a robust economy, the game benefits from these limits. |
