leperkhaun's page

To be honest. I am most likely going to make my DT a paladin. The way XP works, if i miss spend it, iv lost the time spend on the xp.

So if I want to play a class, I should wait and use my DT for it. that way I dont make any mistakes.

I can play a different character until then, that way I can get the full benefits of that character while I play them and I dont have to worry that I wasted xp.

You are correct. Paladins will not be in the first part of EE. As a result those of us who want to play paladins have three choices. The first is to spend XP on the released skills, then when the paladin comes out start training paladin skills. For this i think some fighter and cleric mix should give the needed stats/skills to make the easiest transition into a paladin.

The second choice is to start the character but dont spend any XP, and when paladin comes out dump all the XP into that role.

The third choice is to play as normal and when twins are released set the twin up as a paladin.

Ultimately from an RP point of view any of those options can work well. It just depends on what your personal goals are. I will say that if someone decides to pick the second choice, they will burden their company and whatever settlement they decide to be a part of.

I am leaning towards having my paladin be the twin and waiting until paladins are released before playing that character. Until then my main will likely be either a fighter or a cleric, but who knows.

Realistically there's little chance that an Escalation will ever get ridiculously out of hand. The predation of the Escalation's monsters by PCs seeking them will be something we'll have to keep in fine balance. It's more likely that the PCs descend on an Escalation like locusts and kill anything that moves than that an Escalation is allowed to fester unchecked.

But if we do allow it to go unchecked PLEASE make it so that gaining the he is as costly as possible. I mean multiple settlements required to pour resources basically just like if they seiged other settlements. And if it gets bad enough they start raiding player hexes with MAJOR firepower.

Things that make me happy.

Alpha server rack. Probably not where its going to stay, but cable management and having everything organized even when its in a temp location. You can tell a lot about a maintenance crew from things like that.

Now i have to watch the video but I just wanted to say that.

Not really. Every time you die, your Threaded Gear loses durability. In addition, it's highly unlikely that any Character will ever be able to Thread all their Tier 3 Gear.

[Edit] That durability loss means the piece will eventually be destroyed unless it's repaired, and that repair process will almost certainly involve Crafters.

Thats the thing, the gear never gets lost.

Sure you have to repair it, but that just requires a repair kit. Now crafters have gone from making weapons/armor to being repair kit mules.

Durability means nothing for items being lost and having to be replaced. repair kits are a method of making sure gatherers have a job and weapon/armor crafters dont become obsolete after the first year or two.

I would much rather crafters craft gear than repair kits.

Items MUST leave the game otherwise you get into a situation where new items do not get crafted because there is no reason to.

@ Leperkaun

Problem with that is there are no criminal flags in the wild uncontrolled hexes. Many, including ourselves, will be preying on the caravans moving rarer resources from those uncontrolled hexes, on their way to the settlement hexes. Criminal Flags won't apply, so they can't be required before a SAD and won't be suffered after.

I dont think so. This means that bandits are immune from retaliation and have a 100% advantage over everyone else.

So I KNOW you are a bandit, you are approaching me and Im going to assume you watched me mine a bunch of mithril. I know cannot do anything about that. The reason isnt because you are good at what you do, the reason is that the game is allowing you walk up and initiate the encounter without the victim being able to do anything about it.

Thats not risk for the bandits. Ohhh sure they could be killed, but the person killing them suffers a penalties for doing so.

What risk is there to the bandit?

There needs to be a flag for bandits for a couple of reasons.

1) It puts the bandits at as much risk as the victims
2) It allows others to initiate encounters with bandits

Now bandits have to worry when walking around a hex. They are now a target. A victim can now have people roam in front of him and eliminate threats. A settlement can try to make a hex clear for merchants by doing sweeps to get rid of bandits.

So I think that its fair that if bandits can initiate encounters penalty free, that other people can initiate encounters on bandits penalty free.

I am 100% against a @handle type of thing of ANY sort. Basically unless you tell someone no one should know any character is connected in any way with another character or player, period.

for example I dont want my assassin to be associated in anyway with the public face I present to the community.

I would love to see all sorts of titles for sale and also titles earned in game.

In game titles could be slayer titles, goblin slayer and such.

bought would be nobility, religious, military, role specific, and other random ones.

1) The start of EE will have PfO being a minimum viable product. The result is that systems such as reputation and SAD will not be in the game. Due to this there is zero consequences to player actions. In fact the lack of SAD means that the only way to be a bandit is to kill someone. How will GW prevent PfO from becoming a murder sim? More importantly what is GW doing to ensure that the culture of PfO does not end up as a FFA even when these mechanics are introduced at a later date due to already having developed a toxic culture?

2) What mechanics/systems does GW plan on having for the start of EE to give players something to do?

3) How much item destruction will there be in the game? There is plenty of talk about item looting, but the key to keeping crafters relevant is having a constant demand for goods, which can ONLY happen if items leave the game. Basically if I die would i expect a % of goods to poof or just a couple including items that are in a bag.

4) We have been told that combat roles (fighter/wizard..etc) will require about 2.5 years of xp to hit max level. Does this mean that in 2.5 years a person will be able to train in 100% of a roles abilities OR does that mean in 2.5 years a person can train the highest tier abilities. For example lets say you have a fighter, can you max both shield abilities AND polearm abilities or just one of them.

5) How long will it take to max out a non combat role (gatherer, crafter...etc).

I think thats a reasonable thing to say.

I find it funny that people keep bringing up how much they loved UO, but dont play it.

Then why even have alignments. If players with low-reps and evil alignments are already penalized by being barred from major NPC territory, can be attacked on sight, and have limited access to trading...I don't think it is unreasonable to place restrictions on Good characters behavior because Paladins beheading Paladins over a silver mine isn't D&D.

I have no problem with the playstyle you just mentioned....but you shouldn't be able to keep a good alignment.

Evil and Low rep are two different things, except for CE, which seems to be the alignment that GW is reserving for toxic players.

Just because you are evil does not mean you will be low rep. Just because you are good does not mean you will be high rep.

however if you place restrictions on good players you HAVE to then provide them with an advantage, the result is that if you do not, then no one will play them. i do not want to be pigeon holed into being a PvE or a passive player because I like the mechanics of a paladin.

We need to step away from alignment as a moral system and look at it as a mechanical system.

Steelwing wrote:

Valtorious wrote:

On the other hand...if you are a LN, LG, NG, CG or N community, I think that the use of NBSI against any person or guild other than low-rep should garner a reputation hit for the entire settlement....unless someone wants to explain to me how a LG Paladin decided that it was morally justifiable to enable a law (NBSI) that permitted the murder of any of the NG merchants who lived in a neighboring...

We don't need to justify it alignment is merely a mechanic. Choosing one gives you mechanical advantages or disadvantages that is all. Justification on moral grounds is merely rp and therefore totally unimportant

And now my point has been made. NBSI is a mechanic high-rep/good characters are going to exploit so they can slaughter people consequence free.

Not really, since in order to have someone flagged for that they must be on YOUR territory. So unless they are on your settlement hex or one of your POI hexes they cannot flagged you and get you.

So yes, go into their territory and you can be killed without issue, however if you dont, they suffer all the normal lose for killing someone unflagged.

@stephen

For me.

1) Allow the settlement to set the rep threshold, HOWEVER said threshold MUST affect everyone, including members of the settlement. That means that members of the settlement are vulnerable unless they maintain the appropriate rep. I think that this should be an incentive to have players of a settlement maintain a rep that is consistent with the organization they belong to.

2) Allow the trespassing criminal flag to auto flag people within your territory. This would require lists and function to individually flag (in order of importance) Character, Company, settlement as well as blanket flagging for anyone not on the list as blue, gets flagged or flag only people on the red list. So if a character is individually flagged as blue, but their company is red, that person would still be blue and so on. This would allow settlements to tailor their flagging to allow trusted people in and keep others out.

I think it is important to give settlements control over who gets that trespassing criminal flag and who doesnt.

@bringslite

Well the reason why for the second one is simply so that bandits are not able to be immune to risk until the second the SAD someone.

If a merchant/gatherer is traveling they are vulnerable at all times. I feel that bandits NEED to have additional risk other than a single merchant possibly attacking them. This risk can be added by requiring them to be flagged in order to use the ability. This means that bandits are now at risk due to merchant guards (before the SAD happens), other unsavory types who dont mind attacking people like them, and coordinated patrols to keep areas safe for merchant travel.

I think that they should be required to have the flag active for 5-10 minutes before they can use the ability to prevent situations where they have an alt on look out and only log in their SAD bandit when a merchant arrives to reduce the amount of time the character spends in game.

So basically if you want to SAD you should have to accept additional risk.

I agree that a bandit should be flagged the second they issue a SAD. However i think they should be flagged for everyone, not just the merchant.

more so i think that bandits should have to flag themselves and keep themselves flagged to use SAD, to increase the risk to the bandits while they are laying in wait, not just when they actively use it. Since the targets will always be at risk, the bandits must accept just as much risk.

I am really really surprised that GW is putting financial information like this out there, more so because its broken down and there is no requirement to do so.

Between this and all of the developers' transparency through out the development of this game I really feel that GW is a company whose word i can trust. As someone who backed as a kickstarter, GW has better communicated than any other project iv heard about or backed. As a gamer it means that coming into this game, i know what to expect, and i trust that GW will make choices that are best for the game.

Thank you for that.

Death either in pvp or pve needs to be treated the same. i dont agree that mobs should loot your corpse, however until you go to get your corpse your corpse should be open to be looted by other players. So someone can see your corpse and take all your non threaded gear.

For me in order to use SAD you should be required to flag yourself, have the flag on for more than 10 minutes, and unable to get rid of the flag for xx amount of in game time after performing it, successful or not.

At the end of the day the bandits need more risk other than the prospect of a merchant fighting back, and i think that if in order to use SAD you become a legitimate target for other people, thats an acceptable level of risk.

like i said, SADing people who are harvesting resources because you wanted them is one of the things SAD was intended for. I dont think it is intended to be the primary way to engage in pvp. What I dont want to see are SAD grief squads instead of random gank squads.

So instead of people going, hmmmmmm i have to be careful about non flagged people im just going to SAD everyone i see instead.

Honestly SAD must allow gear to be taken, otherwise its worthless. People will just not carry around coins so SAD will not work OR they will carry 10 coins accept the SAD then go about for cheap. I would like that the amount of coins, level of gear that can be taken, and rep gained be linked to a SAD skill tree and occupy more than one skill slot.

I would dispute that this is necessarily using SAD in a way not intended.

I think we can all agree that fighting over resources is meaningful PVP.

We also know that rich resources will be available in hexes that cannot be officially controlled.

How do you propose other than through the use of SAD's that people fight over these resources? (War and feuds are not adequate answers for several reasons but the primary one is if these were the only way people would just use unaffiliated gatherers that can be neither warred upon or feuded).

Thats the thing if you see a gatherer and you saw they just mined a very high quality node, then SAD is appropriate. I would say that using SAD against any gatherer/crafter fine.

The issue I see is when the mechanic ends up being used to initiate all conflict when the other person is not already flagged.

Hmmm look that person is in our NPC hex, and only has starter weapons/armor on, in order to avoid the penalties of killing him (since he isnt flagged) we are going to use SAD to initiate the conflict.

As toxic as random gank squads are I think that if PfO becomes where everyone just SADs everyone that doesnt fit with what SAD was intended to do and eliminates a lot of risk.

@nihimon

I can tell you why a good number of my friends play it and why i played it for a bit.

For starters its basically the only good space MMO out there. If you want to be about space ships its really your only choice, there is STO but ehhh.

The second part is that its brutally hands off by CCP. A decent number of my friends really like that. If you want something you take it, if you want a base you better be organized enough to defend it. If you want the best ships you have to be in nul sec as the better ones are not allowed in the lower sec areas. For them it is about being good enough to take and hold what they took. they accepted the fact that their ships and such would get blown up and taken from them, they accepted the fact that people can target them and make a go at them, and for them that added excitement to the game.

For me I didnt like eve for two reasons, the first is that im not really into space ship style games and the second is that while i enjoy the sandbox hand having to earn, defend, keep things, i felt that they were too hands off with if you can do it its a feature.

What had attracted me to PfO was the hopes of a game like EVE but without a lot of the random toxic behavior that I couldnt stand in EVE.

that is something to think about, having SAD as a free pvp button than you can press anywhere isnt a good thing, it will be interesting to see how they balance the intended use vs me being able to steal or attack anyone i want to.

If you're only fighting other CEs, your relative power level will be just fine. Think of it as a challenge to overcome.

because by and large those folks who are going CE are not going to be doing it for the challenge, they are going to do it for the mechanical advantages it has, namely not caring about any penalties associated with their actions.

i am sure there will be some CE folks with high rep in NE settlements could just as easily have their alignment be LE or NE. However i think that most of the people who are looking at CE and going "i want to do that" are looking at not having to care about rep or alignment no matter what they do.

anyway i think lifedragn has it right, alignment is not about morals and whats right and wrong, in a game you cant code those kinds of things. Alignment is used to provide social structure to groups and encourage different styles of play.

Well if im not mistaken didnt ryan say settlements would be 500-1000 players?

The thing is that overpopulation shouldnt be given bonuses. When you are at the point where you cannot provide your members the expected resources, which by and large WILL be the ability to train abilities, then you need to expand so that you can provide those resources.

There is already a mechanic to support this style of gameplay, kingdoms. As a organization grows and needs to expand they will take over new settlements. Then in order to gain greater benefits they will join those settlements together in a kingdom, or if those benefits arnt good enough they will metagame the kingdom and leave them separate mechanically.

So if a settlement wants to have 5000 people, let it but dont provide them bonuses for stuffing 5 times the amount of people into one.

For me.

Dont take the "if its not prevented its a feature" approach of EVE. Know that some things will be madly difficult to code in and prevent. Make it clear which of those things are not allowed and then if someone is doing it, take action against them. So something like jet canning would be considered a loophole and people who used it would be punished directly by GW.

As an addition to the above. Allow players to police themselves within the sandbox. For example my merchant keeps running into bandits and keeps losing gear because i dont want to take another route. I instead show up with 100 of my settlement mates and I do constant patrols killing every bandit on sight until they leave. That should be considered a feature, sure was overwhelming force used, yes but it was done for a purpose.

Make the economy central to the game. Everything except the starter equipment should be player crafted. All levels of harvested goods should be used through out the entire crafting process (copper always being useful).

No warning when people enter hexes. If you own a settlement and you want to prevent people from getting on your land, you need to do patrols, there should be no system that automatically alerts you to the the fact that someone entered your territory.

Avoid chock points (warp gates) where a small amount of people can hold a large area just because they control that point. Some chock points are ok, If the eastern edge of the hex has a choke point, then people can just go to the other side to get in. If a group wants to control an area they MUST put in major effort.

Create diversity in the choices players have in regards to builds, weapons, armor. Sure most fighters will probably be in heavy armor, but they all shouldnt be using the same weapons and all the same skills.

Do not pigeon hold people into Good or lawful alignments. Ensure that Evil and chaotic alignments are just as good, but different choices.

Include a very good new player/character tutorial where they are shown what kinds of things they can do.

Make escalations matter, and make them HARD. make the require MAJOR commitment to remove if you let them get to bad, as in you basically have to go to war to get rid of it.

Do not dumb the game down, make it complex and rich.

Entering pvp should be a risk. Other than seeing what kind of weapon/armor/name/flags you shouldnt know how much rep they have, their alignment (unless you cast a spell) or how much xp they have. Engaging a target needs to be part of the risk

if possible implement a WAR style book of lore. that thing was amazing

include bunches of easter eggs.

Allow LG to go to war with other good folks and non evil folks.

Honestly i wouldnt be surprised to see an NDA, only because they dont want things like "man i played and it was buggy as heck" getting out even though most people know it is in alpha but a lot of people wont bother looking that up.

I don't think it "has to" but rather simply a mechanism it's "choosing to" use. There are plenty of faction vs faction or kingdom vs kingdom games that make no reference or no mechanical reference to alignment whatsoever. In Planetside2 or DAOC there is no reference to alignment... but characters still manage to belong to factions that fight each other. Even in a themepark game like LOTRO not every foot-soldier fighting for the Free Peoples would be considered "Good" alignment wise let alone "Lawfull Good". Some are right awfull sob's indeed...they just rather not be servents of Sauron or Saruman.

PFO is choosing to go the route of using "alignment" in segregating the populace into different factions. It certainly has the option of doing so, whether that works out well for it or not remains to be seen. But it doesn't litteraly need to go that route to get faction based PvP. It could have gone another route had it wanted. I'm not trying...

Thats because in DAOC and Planetside 2 your social structure is defined by what faction you join. In PfO there is no hard faction that prevents you from being on the same side as someone else..

The thing is that in those games morality is not an issue because they do not have DnD's alignment system in it.

And sure PfO could have done it different, i mean there are those npc factions that could have been used as the base.

however i think that alignment was meant less to act as a means of controlling behavior, but as a means of forcing social choices. So they arnt looking to make factions, but they are looking to force people to split up and one of the considerations players have to take into account is what alignment do you want to play. So am i going to join this faction or that faction (in essence). However where it is different than say PS2 is that even among people with the same alignment, you are still rivals. Two LG settlements can still fight each other over territory, the good/evil is a choice of what kind of mechanics people would like to use.

I really really really hope that alignment is used as a means of providing social structure and forcing choices. Evil has some extra options that good doesnt have, good however provides decent bonuses to offset those options. heck i forsee good aligned settlements and such maintaining contact with evil folks for things like low rep ce killing machines and assassinations.

I hope rep is what limits player's behavior and alignment is about style of play.

I would love to have people and organizations of all alignments.

Sure it is. I legally claimed that road as far as my laws say, the result is that I own it and i dont want trespassers.

Anyway I dont see the issue, If people have an issue with it, the simple way to deal with it is to get a group of people together and fight them for the hex. make it so that its not worth it for them to maintain control of that hex. If you cant do that, make sure they have to put serious effort into keeping it. that will weaking the settlement trying to control that hex. you then force them into a choice of "do i keep fighting for that hex or invest enough resources where i can become vulnerable to having my settlement attacked."

yeah at the end of the day it will be up to US as players to decide the culture of the game and i think that how it should be. if the majority of folks have a live and let live policy and then we all band together when the more hardcore folks try to move we have a very good chance of preventing them from expanding all over the place.

however thats the thing, WE need to decide that and WE need to work together if thats what we want.

we just need to recognize what others will do so that we can plan and not be surprised.

I am also for the mathematically consistent camp. As much as I would like something closer to TT, the fact of the matter is that to me its more important to have solid mechanics that work in an MMO rather than adhering strictly to the source material.

For things like gems, Perhaps you can use an opal OR you can take 100 somethingelses refine those with magic and get a refined magic gem that would act like an opal?

For alignment I would like to see some things like good/evil/law/chaotic aligned gear require the crafter to have that alignment.

honestly GW doesnt need to justify it. Alignment in PfO isnt about moral choice because much of alignment has to do with intent.

Stealing to feed your family isnt evil, stealing a families food meaning to starve them out is. The game cant tell the difference between the two, to the game all it can know is "does this item belong to you, yes or no. Did you take the item without it being exchanged or dropped, yes or no".

The result is alignment is mostly a social mechanic designed to force a choice on players about what type of settlement and thus what group of people (faction) they should/can join.

Want to play in LG settlement but your group wants to have LG and LE players, you need to make a choice. Have the LE players play LN or LG, drop those players, or change your settlement choice to LN.

So in a TT setting it makes perfect sense that people of wildly different alignments can be in charge and part of the settlement, but PfO has to force the choice and they have to define something like alignment with clear cut mechanics.

see bringslite thats not true, thats just the setup for giving the entire team cursed items and have them wear them all.

I have a question to add.

As you progress in gathering/crafting will there be a point where the common materials are not used expect for emergency gear and to give people something to do while they wait to craft the "good gear". for example in wow you have copper, that once you level past copper you dont ever use, as a result its a stepping stone that once you have stepped pasat it you never go back to it. I would love to see a system where there is a constant demand for common materials because you can make useful items with them, not because you need to craft 100 copper pants to get your badge to upgrade your skill.

For those who think that phone recalls are too much or dont understand why having them....serious settlements will make it a point to attack when the know another settlement has as low number of members on. This will include known alts who have nothing to do with said settlements.

What this means is that if you dont have a procedure in place to get your army out into the fight when the fight is happening you are going to get destroyed. They wont wait until you have all your ducks organized before going in. You will be attacked at your weakest and when the risk is the least for the attacker.

Also remember that organizations like steelwing's dont recruit random casual people. They have a list of commitments that you must agree to follow to join. I would be that they extensively research their members before accepting them and that they have a very restrictive probationary period.

Not only that but such organizations make it clear that when you join you fill a role and you better be optimized for said role.

I suspect EE will have a bunch of casual companies and organizations who end up sitting on settlements for the entirety of EE. Once OE hits and the game is matured to the point to attract larger organizations most of the settlements that were around in EE will change hands, as a lot of folks will not dedicate the amount of time the more serious organization.

For anyone who is curious I do think that those people who are planning on running successful companies needs to be playing EVE if they have not already.

There is a huge difference between serious hardcore organizations and casual ones, and the difference isnt like mostly pve games where one set raids top content and the other doesnt. It will be that the serious organizations control vast areas of the world and impose their will on others who cannot survive.

hardly, rent is an agreement between the folks. He said, hey you guys arnt mining here, if i give you xxx isk will you let me have mining rights? And they said yes.

Tribute would be "pay us or we kill you". There is a difference. And sure if he defaulted on his payment and continues to mine and they nail him for it, thats find since he broke the contract, but thats different than robbing other people or making people pay ransom.

Its like trying to say that a land owner who charges hunters who want to hunt their land are holding the hunters ransom....right.

if being a crafter requires you to say be a wizard or a fighter to get scores, then they built the crafting system wrong. If thats their goal they should take out the crafting role and just allow everyone to craft with just ability score prereqs.

you should get enough ability scores through the crafting system to be able to do what you want. remember that being pure crafter means you need someone to provide you raw materials....which is its own role.

I would perfer being throw into the mix from basically the start. have players go to the New adventurer hall or some such. Allow them to pick up as much starter gear as they want (all different weapons and armor) so that they can try all of them without any issue. Just make it so that the stuff is very very basic and has no value.

Include some quests that show the basics of how to do things, combat, gathering, crafting...etc. so a player has at least tried it once. After that I would say let folks do what they want to do.

I do think that in the game documentation, tutorial, FAQs...etc. it needs to stress the sandbox elements and how you wont have quest chains to take you from noob to capped. That the PLAYER needs to make their own experience. The new player experience needs to show what KINDS of things a player can do, not what kinds of quests they do. This is also why i think something like WAR's Book of Lore would be a good idea for a sandbox game.

I dont know about 2 box in wow pvp, but i know there were a good amount of 5 box teams for arena. My friend did his with shaman and did pretty good. he wasnt running for the top spots but he did better than a lot of folks.

He also did well in the BGs because he could focus fire so well.

well its not even 1 player more powerful than 1 other player. Sure I think you cannot deny that one person running 5 characters will clear content that 1 person running 1 character cannot.

However I dont think thats how you should look at it. you should look at it as what can 5 characters do when controlled by 1 person vs 5 people. A multi boxer has the advantage that all of his toons will do what he wants when he wants. The downside is that he does not have fine control of the characters. The result is that 5 people running 5 characters will be able to take out the multiboxer, as long as they work as a team. If they do not then they will get picked apart.

So if you want to take on a multi boxer with 5 characters you will need to go against them with an even team, which to me is reasonable.

If someone wants to pay for 5 subs and multi box let them, counter them with teamwork.

I dont know if this is the talk ryan is talking about but here is a presentation from Riot on toxic players.

The name of this talk is:

The Science Behind Shaping Player Behavior in Online Games

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/191262/

It matters a great deal to me, a group with 500 people that doesn't want us to know who they are? All the other groups are forthcoming about who they are. For someone to make a claim like this and then not back it up is not acceptable, why WOULDN'T a group want other people to know who they are?

It shouldnt. Here is what should matter to you. Trying to figure out what type of game play his group is into. Then will they actually come to the game.

The only reason you should care about that is because 500 people is either a great number of people you can ally with, are neutral with, or who will be your enemy.

Thats it. No person here should ever be expected to explain themselves to other players. If this group doesnt want to tell people who they are thats 100% totally fine, by demanding that they you we are the ones looking like the bleeps here.

folks it honestly doesnt matter what group he is from or who they are. Its perfectly plausible that he is the scout they sent and he will go back and tell them, hey its interesting because of x or its not because of x or we need to wait.

I think at this point he some concerns that he will not considered addressed until the game gets into EE or even OE.

im not sure i understand. the same thing can be said of a soldier in a PfO army.

The son of a wealthy noble, Mcperson looks around and is disgusted with the idle debauchery of his friends who have not earned anything in their lives. He does not want to end up like those people. To the shock of his parents and the rest of the nobility he forfeits his name and inheritance rights. He leaves his home with nothing but a change of clothes and a sword he enlists in the army hiding his privileged birth.

Through years of dedication and hard work is promoted through the ranks until he is finally commissioned.

Ryan I like the idea of selling training. It makes sense. Why wouldnt a neutral city sell this training? Would a LG city allow an evil person to train there, of course not. However perhaps they have a NG neighbor with which they draft a treaty and as part of their end they allow the NG settlement's paladins to train their high level paladin skills at the LG settlement?

It creates another commodity and interaction that settlements and kingdoms can bargain with. How much of our training can we sell and how much do we need to keep for ourselves?

Perhaps you have to invest extra resources/upkeep to change your own training slots to slots that other people can be used.

because at the end of the day the alignment system is being used as a mechanic to force choices in the game. As such i dont think that you can directly translate what actually happens to the game world. Sure in an actual city there are bad apples but you cannot code something like that into the game without doing something weird or watering down that choice.

In my mind I think of alignment kinda like your faction and less about accurately gauging morality.

See i would love something like the druid and cleric ideas. perhaps bards can increase the morale of your city? A wizard could lend their strength to building buildings, I mean mass bulls strength on all the workers?

while i would like gm involvement, i dont think it will really happen.

I would love to see animal husbandry. This could lead to two parts. The first would be the ability to raise mounts with different stats and for different purposes. So a merchant might want strong tireless draft horses to pull their wagons, but a knight would want stats that would be more useful in combat (like speed for mobility).

Besides horses you could get into exotic and difficult to raise animals as the skill gets higher.

On top of that you could use this system to allow the raising of animal companions. Want an exotic animal companion? Sure but realize that raising one will be a good amount of work and require high skill.

I dont think that a paladin will be viewed as a sociopath. maybe an uptight prick who is getting in the way of (dis)honest folks, and i dont think that pirates or bandits are under any illusion that they are crusading heros. They might look at themselves as folks just trying to make a living any way they can.

Banditry is morally wrong. Is it evil though, na. I do think that bandits will add to the game as they introduce risk, i do not think that bandits should expect to be praised by everyone for doing what they do.

well for the bandit thing remember that their abilities make up for it.

If the victim and Outlaw completed a stand-and-deliver trade, the Outlaw loses double reputation for killing the target within 20 minutes. (If they pay, you should let them go.)

When an Outlaw receives a ransom from stand and deliver, they get reputation up to a daily max.

So bandits have a built in reputation mechanic to offset their ways. however i think that overall bandits are going to be really concerned with their rep and it wouldnt surprise me if they have low rep. I mean other than robin hood and maybe a handful of others, how many criminals who robbed and killed people were considered to be outstanding members of the community?

Thats part of the risk you take as a bandit. You steal from others so you dont have to do all the hard work of collecting mats and creating items, the downside is that your rep may take a hit because people dont like getting stolen from.

Also someone mentioned about LG paladins and such basically having to PvE to keep their alignment.

The player earns extra good vs. evil for each character with Heinous killed up to a daily max.

The alignment-based flags have been removed in favor of the "for the cause" flags of factional combat. Benefits associated with the Enforcer and Champion flags are now tied to alignment score and to factional membership

So basically you use a good aligned "for the cause" flag then go hunt some heinous folks.

people wont only play good characters. the thing you have to remember is that being good comes with some restrictions. Part of that is that you need your alignment to be part of a settlement/company. This means that someone who starts a good character will have to walk a tight rope. For example, they will probably not want to attack very many unprovoked targets since thats causes alignment shifts to evil. If they do too much they stand to lose being able to be a part of their group. So they are now limited to only attacking people who are legal targets. That juicy merchant you saw walking all alone without any guards, well time to pass him up unless you want to take the hit.

Not only that but i imagine many LG settlements will require relatively high reputation to go into. What does that mean? That means that while your alignment may be able to take some hits your reputation cannot. have fun being barred from your settlement and unable to use its facilities.

So why be evil? You are not concerned with your evil alignment. meaning you have more targets of opportunity than good folks have. You can initiate actions with less penalty than good folks. Evil settlements will likely have lower reputation limits than good settlements (if they even have any) thus making doing things that low reputation less of an issue than for good settlements.

Not only that but could you imagine the reputation hit the leader of a LG settlement would take if they found out he was using CE mercs to harass a evil settlement before he went to war with them? While a evil settlement can do that without any issue, i mean its expected they would pull stuff like that.

how about evil settlements hiring assassins to take out important good characters under contract? The good folks cant do that, their rep would plummet and they wont even be able to be part of their settlement.

so yes a LG settlement might be rather powerful but they are restricted in ways an evil settlement is not.

i dont buy that. CE are going to be the bruisers who can do ANYTHING without worry or concern.

You are a bandit group and some merchants need to be taught a lesson, but you dont want to shift your alignment too much, hire a CE company to kill those guys. Need a settlement softened up before your war? Hire a CE company to do it.

the CE folks are going to become the default mercenaries because they are not worried about alignment or rep. they will kill anyone without hesitation because they can do it without the concerns other players have. what will they charge? Access to your cities crafters? Perhaps they demand 40 T2 swords, 30 t2 plate armor....etc? perhaps they demand training time in your city?

They are going to be able to do things that CG players cannot do.

a ce barbarian will be viable. Perhaps in their settlement he can train all the high level barbarian things. however because its a CE settlement it might lack the ability to create top tier weapons. In that case the CE settlement will need to work with another settlement, creating player interaction.

Not only that but remember that LG has restrictions on it. They wont be able to just go and cause havoc just because. They wont be able to run around and see a group and attack unprovoked. While an evil group can jump who they want because they are not worried about losing their alignment.

I hope getting to the extreme +- 7000 or higher on any axis requires constant dedication.

For example to get to -7500 evil you have to be constantly be doing evil acts. So while you can get to evil without very much difficulty to get to the truly evil numbers you have to make being evil a goal. On the other side to keep a +7000 good alignment should be tough. If im a paladin and I kill more than one person unprovoked i should drop far enough that I lose my paladin abilities since i should lose a HUGE amount of alignment points. Then getting back to +7000 needs to be a MAJOR effort so that i can get back my paladin abilities.

Same with law and chaos. While it might be easy to get past neutral and be good or evil being totally evil or totally good or totally law or totally chaos needs to be something that takes time and effort and something where if you do the opposite you lose major points.

I like reputation. If nothing else people might look at it as a general can i trust this guy type of meter. People may or may not be willing to deal directly with low rep characters. For one they dont know if they will get killed and robbed (due to low rep needing to meet outside of settlements). I forsee being a spy or a middleman might be profitable.

I would like to see alignment/reputation hits/gains be influenced by your company/settlement and role. So lets say im a paladin using paladin abilities and im in a LG company. If i say go crazy and kill a group of people and rob them I should take alignment lose from killing/robbing unprovoked, I should take Extra lose from having high alignment (since i should have 7000+ because of being a paladin), I should take an extra hit because my company is LG, then i should take extra because i used paladin abilities to do it. Sure it may seem like sticking it to me, but i think thats the price you pay.

Only thing is that aside from say unprovoked killing/grave robbing what kinds of actions can you do to shift evil? what kind of actions would be lawful or chaotic?

I look forward to seeing what they come up for that.

I dont mind if something like a dragon requires a kingdom or settlement as long as its an intensive long term (close to a year or more) effort that could be thwarted.

not only that but keeping an adult dragon should require constant and expensive upkeep.

Adult dragons are just pets, they are intelligent beings with their own wants and goals. As such they should need a reason to stay and go to war when commanded. This should be represented by a high upkeep cost.