Goblin Squad Member
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Idea is; Players vote each other as good/evil lawful/chaotic, the alignments are factions which affects the game experience, so the community polices itself.
--- Players who's PCs act like paladins can live with the paladins, use the lawful good vendors, get the lawful good NPC quests The players who's PCs act like Orcs, they all live with the Orcs, use Orc vendors, can take Orc quests.
--- but MOST Importantly: Players will naturally gravitate to be surrounded by other players who share their own play style.
As the community rates each other's play, their PCs will sort themselves into alignment factions. For example, griefers getting a lot of 'evil' reputation from other players will end up in the "Evil" alignment faction, players with good reputations would become the "Good" alignment faction.
Parts of the world will be 'safe' for some alignments, and adventure content for others. For example, Evil NPCS kill on sight Good PC, but are non-aggro to Evil PCs. Likewise, Good NPCs KOS Evil PCs. What would be a 'dungeon' to the Good faction PC, could be a town to Evil faction.
To be able to tell alignment from a distance, I think it would also be important to have the appearance of gear be affected by alignment - an Evil PC's gear looks evil (black and red with blood and spikes, you get the idea), a good PCs gear looks good (white and blue with a nimbus, etc.). That would mean more gear models, but would make for a much better play experience than just a floaty flag or color coded name font or something.
I feel strongly, there should also be mechanisms to limit higher level players in lower level opposite aligned areas. For example, a raid of 5th level evil PCs into a good PC town can be awesome, but always having one or two high level griefers in the nooby zone gets old fast.
Of course, a lot of work will have to be done to make sure the voting system can't be easily exploited, for example to grief a good player by spamming evil votes on him, but I think things can be done to prevent this. Community rating systems have been around for a while, after all.
Bottom line is, by empowering the players to rate other players play, the community can police itself to encourage a higher quality of play overall.
--- but MOST Importantly: Players will naturally gravitate to be surrounded by other players who share their own play style.
Now this is interesting.
The only problem I can see would be people's view of what an alignment is like/should be played.
Who remembers all the threads asking if a Paladin should kill goblin babies because they are goblins and thus evil?
Who remembers all the threads asking if a Paladin should kill goblin babies because they are goblins and thus evil?
I still think the paladin's shouldn't be allowed to kill goblin babies.
I like the idea but here is my problem with it. Everyone always chooses the 'evil' route because its 'cooler' or generally easier. I could just kill the couple and get X amulet instead of trudging through a marsh for the next half an hour to find some lost family heirloom.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is an even bigger danger in this, it is wide open for abuse. You know how goon swarm in eve online took down the largest, most ridiculously unbeatable ship in the game, by recruiting thousands of trial accounts, and having them all focus on the same ship at the same time. Now imagine the same happening, with thousands of new accounts signing on, just to flood the paladin with CE votes. While I like the idea, tendencies in MMO's where a large group can get together and scheme, can completely ruin high profile characters lives.
There is an even bigger danger in this, it is wide open for abuse. You know how goon swarm in eve online took down the largest, most ridiculously unbeatable ship in the game, by recruiting thousands of trial accounts, and having them all focus on the same ship at the same time. Now imagine the same happening, with thousands of new accounts signing on, just to flood the paladin with CE votes. While I like the idea, tendencies in MMO's where a large group can get together and scheme, can completely ruin high profile characters lives.
GS didn't recruit thousands of trial accounts. We pulled from our existing community who wanted to help expand our goondom in EvE. The fact is that everyone in EvE hated us and still does for what i can only assume is some misguided prejudice. We only had tiny frigates at one point and we still were attacked relentlessly what we did was purely in response to what was thrown against us.
Besides goons wouldn't be smart enough to abuse that system. Most of us came from special education classes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Solve this issue with 2/hr group time minimums to be allowed to vote on someone. Call it the "Comrades" condition. "Ive fought with Sir Spankntank back to back for two hours now. We're comrades. He's a Chaotic Stupid."
Or have only allowed people be able to rate you. Allowed people include: Anyone you just defeated in combat, anyone in your guild, anyone who runs your affiliated town/village/nation.
And I'd TOTALLY sign up for this if they handled it well. TOTALLY. I love player-rating systems.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yea, first thought that came to my mind on that was preventing exploit by limiting the ability to vote in some way, too. Could be rationed by time, maybe have an in-game cost. Exploits are always a problem for any system, though. But considering successful community feedback systems like yelp and whatnot are out there, the tools and experience already exist to make a workable system, I think. More just a question of applying it well.
Key is, the community polices itself.
That's how real life society works, and imo only reason you get so much divergent behavior in morgs is the perception that everyone's anonimous so there's no real consequences for behavior. Empower people to apply the same social consequences in game as they can out of it, THEN in game societies can organise themselves (which is a state goal of the game).
I don't think the exact definition of alignments need to be mandated. The alignment definitions in the pathfinder core rules could be cut/pasted right to the game manual, but ultimatly the community will decide what kind of behavior is what alignment by how they vote on player's behavior.
Though, I think it's a fair assumption that players who grief a lot will get more evil votes, players who flake out will get more chaotic votes, players who are generous would get good rep, players who are respectful and reliable will get a lawful rep.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The community never polices itself.
Have you seen the OT boards here?
This is an awesome idea.
It will end horribly if implemented.
You can have a built in system like in SWTOR where your character's decisions move your alignment based on a built in scale.
Course their axis is only 2 ways, not 7.
The community never polices itself.
Have you seen the OT boards here?This is an awesome idea.
It will end horribly if implemented.
I don't believe this. There are differences between the boards here and a video game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't believe this. There are differences between the boards here and a video game.The community never polices itself.
Have you seen the OT boards here?This is an awesome idea.
It will end horribly if implemented.
Don't believe...? While I respect your opinion, I can point to the chat channel of any current MMO as proof.
Now imagine if they all had game-mechanic level ways to effect the core of your character. If they can, they will.In that spirit, however, if I were to request any kind of special server, it would be an age based one. 21 years of age or higher on it's own server would do wonders for a better community experience.
People using WOW as a babysitter has turned that community to crap.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The community never polices itself.
Have you seen the OT boards here?This is an awesome idea.
It will end horribly if implemented.
What gave me the idea was a system another board uses where users can vote up or down posts. More people like a post, it's the first one people see, likewise tolls get sent to the basement. They implemented that system to address the problem, and it works.
A community *can* police itself *IF* it's given the tools.
Pathfinder Online won't be OGL-based, so alignment probably won't be used.
I'm not taking about alignment out of OGL, rather skinning a community feedback reputation system as Alignment.
I think that'll both synergise with real life concepts of reputation and fits the flavor of the game they're basing the mmo on (same as how they intend to use the PC core races and the games's player races, even though the mechanics will be different).
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Goblin Squad Member
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What gave me the idea was a system another board uses where users can vote up or down posts. More people like a post, it's the first one people see, likewise tolls get sent to the basement. They implemented that system to address the problem, and it works.
A community *can* police itself *IF* it's given the tools.
How exactly would you do this. For every action, chat post, you can vote it up or down? Who's going to do this? Who's going to stop playing a game they subscribe to and do this?
Again, good idea, but put some more thought into it's implementation, and you'll realize it won't work.A community *won't* police itself even *IF* it's given the tools.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Another, much more well known, example of this working is Ebay. Their system is quite effective in letting the community self-police. Yelp is all about enabling a community to self-police good products and services vs. bad. Amazon, and others all have comunity feedback elements, which are all functional and effective.
All this isn't an unproven concept.
The difference here is, rather than reputation determining if a user is a reliable buyer or seller like with Ebay, it's designating what parts of the world for that player are 'In Town' or 'dungeon' - safe or KOS.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I understand what you want it to be used for, but it won't be. People will use this system to "grief" others, and suddenly the faction they worked for goes to crap becasue some 13 year old and his friends voted you down to KOS everywhere.
If you give players the ability to do this, it WILL get abused.
For the 3rd time, it's not a bad idea, but for an MMO it won't end well.
Seems to me it would be a fine idea, without the inclusion of faction specific stuff. "Good" characters can do the wrong things for the right reasons, or because they think ends justify means. Evil characters can do the right things for the wrong reasons. So it doesn't make sense to tie your in-game faction to your rep with other players.
Though, come to think, there might still be a way to do this. Rather than a single "good vs. evil" scale, you have a separate rating with each and every faction, Elder Scrolls style. Players *in those factions*, or possibly even just certain players in them, can increase or decrease your score with that faction. That way, griefers would actually have to get membership to the factions they wanted you to be KOS for, which is less likely. It also allows for more complex dynamics. Do work for a local CG Thieves' Guild and the LG City Watch won't like you... but it doesn't mean you are evil, it just means your rep goes up for the Guild and down for the Watch.