Goblin Squad Member
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As much as a pain as it is, PvP griefing is a totally 2 way street.
Eventually someone will come after you and make your life hell if you abuse the system. You'll end up on the forums as a known asshat, and you'll end up having to buy a rename or an alias, or just delete the toon.
Onishi is correct that it boils down to a risk vs reward ratio.
Is it worth this outcome to harass people?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well I would say the 1 level better is going to be difficult considering PFO is going to be a skill system, and thus no levels.
AH! I didn't realize it wouldn't be level based - I hadn't read that yet. So if it's to be D20 mechanics still, I'm guessing it'll mirror that of Mutants and Masterminds RPG....????
FWIW, that's exactly the way I anticipated D&D 4th E looking like, and would have preferred as much. I do believe future incarnations of D&D or PF will look more like M&M - but that's for another thread.
As it stands, I would have to agree that your assessment of ganking the ganker mentality is the only way to police this, unless the game gave the victim the option to decline to "spar" - which would work - except that it doesn't allow the full free range of PVP and the feeling of a true "realworld" experience that many or crying for.
Like I said before - I and I know I'm not alone - would hope that I can just play against the environment at my own leisurely pace, and not have to worry each time I go somewhere that there's "bandits hiding waiting for me to barely finish off a boss-monster" so that he can have his way with me. This is exactly why I'm happy to pay to play LOTRO instead of some of the other games.
Robert
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'll probably make a player-killer first, and get him or her up there in skill, then start another one to be my main. If I get griefed, I'll dust off the assassin and return the favor.
If a griefer wants to cahnge my gaming experience, I will accomodate them.
Hell I may even start a guild of like minded players that hunts griefers for in game cash.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As much as a pain as it is, PvP griefing is a totally 2 way street.
Eventually someone will come after you and make your life hell if you abuse the system. You'll end up on the forums as a known asshat, and you'll end up having to buy a rename or an alias, or just delete the toon.
Onishi is correct that it boils down to a risk vs reward ratio.
Is it worth this outcome to harass people?
From what I have got it will be a single shard persistent world. My experience with one of those (EVE) is that:
- if you become a "know asshat" you will have a large crowd to hide in;- you will become an "hero of the people" for a segment of the population;
- for most people hunting the "asshat" will cost more time and resources that it is worth. if you are his target he usually select you because you can't retaliate.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'll probably make a player-killer first, and get him or her up there in skill, then start another one to be my main. If I get griefed, I'll dust off the assassin and return the favor.
If a griefer wants to cahnge my gaming experience, I will accomodate them.
Hell I may even start a guild of like minded players that hunts griefers for in game cash.
My good friend and fellow PF-RPGer Brian had a group that did this very thing - I think it was EQ that he played but can't say for sure.
He was "feared" by most on that server and people sought him out out to take vengeance on people who preyed on others in that way. Repeat offenders, he would literally hound over and over again.
I know he's looking forward to this being similar to that and I'll be lucky to have him as an ally IF I decide to play - which at this point is looking more and more only a maybe - a significant drop from when I first heard there would be a PF MMO. But that being said - I don't feel like I'd be missing out - because i'm quite happy with LotRO and paying them monthly subscription for me, my wife, and two children all with paid accounts, and I buy additional add-ons to boot. If a game is to my liking, I spare no expense - as you may have guessed from the number of subscriptions to Paizo products in my name title.
Robert
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Goblin Squad Member
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From what I have got it will be a single shard persistent world. My experience with one of those (EVE) is that:
- if you become a "know asshat" you will have a large crowd to hide in;
- you will become an "hero of the people" for a segment of the population;
- for most people hunting the "asshat" will cost more time and resources that it is worth. if you are his target he usually select you because you can't retaliate.
Thanks for the insight. I too have experienced this type of setting in other MMOs. It's why I didn't continue to play them.
If I have to work that hard, and worry and stress over a game, it's no longer a game. I'd rather be at work getting paid for working hard, worrying and stressing so much.
So thank you but no thank you - I'll spend my dollars elsewhere.
Robert
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Goblin Squad Member
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Diego, what does "single shard" mean?
Only one character per server?
No, one server, any number of characters.
EVE has 350.000 accounts on one massive server
Note: it is only an impression, nothing concrete to back that up.
EVE is one of the ispirations cited by Ryan, so it is a possibility.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thanks Diego.
That will be interesting then. I don't know the difference between only one server with 350k ppl on it, or 10 servers with 359k people on them, and playing on one of those servers...but I don;t think it will be hard to hunt griefers, unless there is inter-planar travel...
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Goblin Squad Member
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As much as a pain as it is, PvP griefing is a totally 2 way street.
Eventually someone will come after you and make your life hell if you abuse the system. You'll end up on the forums as a known asshat, and you'll end up having to buy a rename or an alias, or just delete the toon.
Onishi is correct that it boils down to a risk vs reward ratio.
Is it worth this outcome to harass people?From what I have got it will be a single shard persistent world. My experience with one of those (EVE) is that:
- if you become a "know asshat" you will have a large crowd to hide in;
- you will become an "hero of the people" for a segment of the population;
- for most people hunting the "asshat" will cost more time and resources that it is worth. if you are his target he usually select you because you can't retaliate.
It depends on the game and the system, I haven't played eve so I can't say for sure, in a web based game I play Pardus, this was not the case, even though there were a large amounts of mechanics for it, that I know of in the history of it, there were a handful of succesful pirates, (rarely enough that 2 were on a success streak anywhere near the same time). But the vast majority of them were rapidly eraticated, and the odds of getting caught by one of those pirates, was about the odds of getting struck by lightning.
The suggestions that ryan has made though kind of allow far better odds. IE the Nation of the killed player instantly being notified if it happens anywhere close to the territory of a nation, and given the option to fast travel to that location. Makes it almost a guaranteed instant punishment for the killer, unless it happens far out in the middle of the wilderness. It is generally implied you will be capable of obtaining everything within your nations territory, albeit at a much slower pace then if you were to travel to the high risk areas, you have the option of a guaranteed 25 whatever an hour, or the possibility of 100 whatever an hour but a chance of losing 50 if something goes wrong.
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From what I have got it will be a single shard persistent world. My experience with one of those (EVE) is that:
- if you become a "know asshat" you will have a large crowd to hide in;
- you will become an "hero of the people" for a segment of the population;
- for most people hunting the "asshat" will cost more time and resources that it is worth. if you are his target he usually select you because you can't retaliate.Thanks for the insight. I too have experienced this type of setting in other MMOs. It's why I didn't continue to play them.
If I have to work that hard, and worry and stress over a game, it's no longer a game. I'd rather be at work getting paid for working hard, worrying and stressing so much.
So thank you but no thank you - I'll spend my dollars elsewhere.
Robert
+1 on all counts. There's a system that's tried and true, and I'm to be led to believe that it's not under consideration precisely because it's tried and true? I see that I can shrink this subforum, and I shall!
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Hm... right from the top of my hat.
If everyone only gets 1 character, then they can't make alts to harass others to keep their "main" character clean.
Ingame crimes should have ingame punishment. If somebody kills you, steals from you (and gets caught), that sombody has to go to jail. Pouding rocks to rubble or something for 8 hours (manually by the player of course for 8 hours real time).
And if you want to play a proper evil person you could form a bandit group and your fellow bandits could bust you out of jail ... might be interesting.
Not being able to see level/class HP etc. of other persons makes it hard to spot weak victims that can't retaliate (and for stronger ones to pose as easy victims ;3)
General "being a jerk" could be punished with Penalty Points that increase the costs for that person or some NPCs even denying service. So the more people you annoy the more money you have to spend on everything you buy and might not get critical services at all.
Metagame crimes are usually fined by the gamemasters. But that is time consuming.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If everyone only gets 1 character, then they can't make alts to harass others to keep their "main" character clean.
And how do you think to enforce that?
Subscription only with nominal credit cards and only 1 account for each cc?So my son and I can't both play as we will use my CC?
No PayPal payments?
No to a plethora of other payment options?
I doubt Goblinworks will want to gimp subscription so much. Actually they have said the exact opposite, having multiple accounts for the same player will be supported by thw game.
Disclaimer - haven't read all the way through the thread, but that's due to finally having noticed it, and had a notion that was possibly simple, yet (semi-?) elegant.
People kvetch about alignment workings. Why not implement it in a sort of way to allow for the range and spectrum of PvP as the very same system might codify?
Alignment becomes something you actively work towards by virtue of one's play style; if you actively work towards the good end of the spectrum, you're less likely to lose gear on death, gain more out of doing legitimate bounty work, gain positive reputation bonuses faster, increase your 'assistance' radius (I.E., how far away NPCs will come running to help you if you're in trouble), cause greater hits to someone's alignment penalties for murder, et. al. Neutral would be an active tightrope walk, but would be geared more to those who want to be non-murderous brigands (robbery, theft, things where you can harm others without necessarily having to take lives) and such, possibly retaining the bare minimum of benefits from the good end of the spectrum, but also not being penalized as heavily as descending into outright evil (At best, guards ignore you when you need help, but don't actively seek to arrest you, at worst they'll discourage your presence but not actively cause malicious activity). There'd be a greater chance of lootability on death, but not of all items. As for evil, you could gain great amounts of experience for life-taking activities, but you'd rack up infamy like nobody's business, and would have to work around getting the guards to even let you in town. You would (to borrow a term) 'con' as a monster/target to things that would normally not be hostile to you, and as it is clearly not everyone's idea of fun, it should be patently punitive ENOUGH.
I could theoretically see where there might be appeal in an evil character - albeit evil with guidelines. I could see where actions would influence one's placement along both the law/chaos and good/evil axes, but the good/evil one is where a substantial amount of behavior that would constitute 'griefing' might come into play. After all, there's a good change that Chelaxian immigrants will exist in game - there's no doubt there will be in-game evil NPCs who aren't actively malicious.
The bigger problem I see is when people start (ab)using whatever in-game alignment/karma/voteforPedro system for antagonistic purposes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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"Griefers" in the classical sense, don't actualy care about thier characters, thier accounts, thier reputation, etc.
Characters and accounts are simply a tool used to achieve thier desired end...which is disrupting communities and disrupting other players. Those tools are entirely disposable to them.
So mechanics like killing/harming thier character, flagging them as hostile, flagging thier reputations are entirely ineffective controls in detering/policing them as they simply don't care about any of that.
The only real controls are the ones that limit thier access to the game, limit thier access to other players of the game and limit thier ability to engage in hostile actions. Generaly that means use of a /report system and account banning.
Note that for "Griefers", the account itself is disposable as well....unless you force them to invest something in the account. Otherwise they'll simply create a new account with which to practice thier malice.
In general terms I would expect you would at least need to have people pay for the account up front before allowing it to access the game world. Alternatively or additionaly, you could limit new accounts access to the game world and/or possibly the ability to engage in harmful actions for new characters. For example you could force new characters/accounts to complete a tutorial quest line before they could access the general game world or have access to potentialy harmfull controls (such as the ability to attack or steal from another character)
Say 2 or 3 hours worth of active effort to complete.
That reduces the ability of griefers to use "throw-away" accounts to disrupt others play.....as there is both a financial & time/effort investment involved in loosing access to ones account.
Note these are controls that would be specificaly geared toward "Griefers".....if we are talking about "gankers" or "Pk-ers"...that is players who for other reasons (such as thier own characters advancement) might be inclined to prey on other player characters on a frequent basis but are not doing so expressly for the purpose of harrassing other PLAYERS and limiting thier enjoyment of the game....then other controls such a social stigma or penalties to thier own characters may be for effective.... but for pure "Griefers" they simply aren't....because the "Griefer" doesn't actualy care about thier own character or about "playing the game"...They are playing thier own game...which involves wrecking other peoples play experience...the game is simply an environment for them to do that.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"Griefers" in the classical sense, don't actualy care about thier characters, thier accounts, thier reputation, etc.
Characters and accounts are simply a tool used to achieve thier desired end...which is disrupting communities and disrupting other players. Those tools are entirely disposable to them.
So mechanics like killing/harming thier character, flagging them as hostile, flagging thier reputations are entirely ineffective controls in detering/policing them as they simply don't care about any of that.
The only real controls are the ones that limit thier access to the game, limit thier access to other players of the game and limit thier ability to engage in hostile actions. Generaly that means use of a /report system and account banning.
Note that for "Griefers", the account itself is disposable as well....unless you force them to invest something in the account. Otherwise they'll simply create a new account with which to practice thier malice.
In general terms I would expect you would at least need to have people pay for the account up front before allowing it to access the game world. Alternatively or additionaly, you could limit new accounts access to the game world and/or possibly the ability to engage in harmful actions for new characters. For example you could force new characters/accounts to complete a tutorial quest line before they could access the general game world or have access to potentialy harmfull controls (such as the ability to attack or steal from another character)
Say 2 or 3 hours worth of active effort to complete.That reduces the ability of griefers to use "throw-away" accounts to disrupt others play.....as there is both a financial & time/effort investment involved in loosing access to ones account.
Note these are controls that would be specificaly geared toward "Griefers".....if we are talking about "gankers" or "Pk-ers"...that is players who for other reasons (such as thier own characters advancement) might be inclined to prey on other player characters on a...
This is close to accurate, Ideally the 2 requirements to control griefing that are needed are 1. It takes a huge investment of time to get to the point where one can actually be a noticable griefer. 2. The consequences for griefing mindlessly (IE suicide rushes with no concern for the political side effects) Should be something that reduces the characters longterm abilities to grief. Whether that be more or less guaranteed instant death when re-entering a land he has indiscriminately killed in (lets say the towns had scrying towers, that warn the high level guildies when someone who has murdered in their town, approaches within a certain distance of the town, note this would not be able to detect someone who ganked a member of their town outside of its reach). Second a decent death penelty, if the murderer gets rapidly killed over and over again, that characters power needs to be reduced to the point where he no longer can be a threat.
Basically someone who has 15x more enemies then friends, will have a hard time actually managing to get to and stay at a power level that will threaten anything other then newbies that some reason chose not to be in the areas of safety. Now duking it out with high level players far away from their kingdom, that is a situation in which a hit and run should be a plausible but not always successful path.
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I'm not sure if this idea has been suggested yet, but would scaling the looting option slow some of the ganking down?
If you kill someone your level or higher you get full looting rights. If you kill much lower toons , you only loot cash and maybe resources harvested. This may discourage ganking as it diminishes reward for killing lower tier players. I guess this depends on the balance in the game though, if being in the game longer does'nt make that big a difference to ability in PvP combat then this may not be necessary.
Cheers
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ideally I would prefer to see a 'three strikes and you're out' method involved in which people who have a record of going completely out of their way to be giant screaming [censored] in other player's faces without a damn good reason (Non-Consensual PvP is one thing, camping the 'exit' of the 'safe' zone for days on end for no other reason than to kill and tea-bag other players is another) other than 'because I can. Attacking lower-level players consistently should provoke an ever-increasing retaliation from the Game itself, such as your attacks losing their punch, your spells fizzling, your character slowing down to a crawl.
Continually go out of your way to abuse the PvP System and act in a manner not consistent with the aim of the game, such as killing people, doing, saying or emoting foul things over their corpses or leaving them mail/whispers/general channel comments that are openly malicious should eventually result in 'this IP Address has been banned from accessing the Pathfinder Online servers.'
First time is a week. Second time is a month. Third time is forever.
Another option is 'jail'. Someone who has repeatedly been found to be Griefing logs in to find their character stuck in a 'jail'. Their other characters are 'locked' and they cannot start new characters.
This could be a whole new 'instance' in which Griefer players are locked in with high-level NPCs who basically exist just to smash them about the prison, drain their XP and basically give them a 'downer'. Their gear is confiscated until such time as the GMs let them out of the Prison and any gear gathered during their 'griefing period' is permanently confiscated.
Found a sweet Mithril Breastplate on a dead 'n00b' you killed and enchanted to the nines? Sorry, confiscated.
Made a epic magical staff in between bouts of roasting a town's crops and livestock? Sorry, confiscated.
Earned yourself a few thousand gold playing the AH on an alt when you logged out to avoid the search-parties looking for your high-level man after you ran around murdering every NPC Trainer in the zone? Sorry, confiscated.
That said, this should be the result of continuous and sustained abuse of the PvP system to do nothing more than hold other players back and make Pathfinder Online 'un-fun'. Rival PCs should be able to attack each other without fail, but there has to be some kind of line in the sand we can draw from where 'Overwhelming Force' ends and 'Maximum Trolling N00bs!' begins.
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Goblin Squad Member
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'this IP Address has been banned from accessing the Pathfinder Online servers.'
Banning by IP is a horrible idea in almost every case. Many households have siblings/spouses/roomates who may play the same game, but might not be allied with eachother. Entire college dormitories may share the same IP address, internet cafe's etc... The list of areas where it can backfire and stab the innocent are huge, the areas where it can harm the guilty without them being able to bypass it is small as it can be worked around
Proxy servers, internet cafe's, dynamic IP addresses from an ISP. Heck it is fully possible for 2 people in the same city to release your IP back into the wild, and another player wind up getting it when they get a new IP address.
Contrary to popular belief, IP addresses are a very primitive way to attempt to identify someone on the internet. The list of ways they can go wrong is huge, and the people who you want to hurt can easily work around them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ideally I would prefer to see a 'three strikes and you're out' method involved in which people who have a record of going completely out of their way to be giant screaming [censored] in other player's faces without a damn good reason (Non-Consensual PvP is one thing, camping the 'exit' of the 'safe' zone for days on end for no other reason than to kill and tea-bag other players is another) other than 'because I can. Attacking lower-level players consistently should provoke an ever-increasing retaliation from the Game itself, such as your attacks losing their punch, your spells fizzling, your character slowing down to a crawl.
Continually go out of your way to abuse the PvP System and act in a manner not consistent with the aim of the game, such as killing people, doing, saying or emoting foul things over their corpses or leaving them mail/whispers/general channel comments that are openly malicious should eventually result in 'this IP Address has been banned from accessing the Pathfinder Online servers.'
First time is a week. Second time is a month. Third time is forever.
Another option is 'jail'. Someone who has repeatedly been found to be Griefing logs in to find their character stuck in a 'jail'. Their other characters are 'locked' and they cannot start new characters.
This could be a whole new 'instance' in which Griefer players are locked in with high-level NPCs who basically exist just to smash them about the prison, drain their XP and basically give them a 'downer'. Their gear is confiscated until such time as the GMs let them out of the Prison and any gear gathered during their 'griefing period' is permanently confiscated.
Found a sweet Mithril Breastplate on a dead 'n00b' you killed and enchanted to the nines? Sorry, confiscated.
Made a epic magical staff in between bouts of roasting a town's crops and livestock? Sorry, confiscated.
Earned yourself a few thousand gold playing the AH on an alt when you logged out to avoid the search-parties looking for your high-level man after...
This requires a strictly defined set of rules stating what is and what is not griefing. This is something most games have in place already, and generally call it harassment instead. Your example of waiting at the starting zone exit (hopefully) won't happen. Ryan commented somewhere about wanting to remove the choke point issue that another game (I think it was EVE) had.
Your idea of jail, having items confiscated, and forcing people to spend X amount of time locked in a place where the just die and have XP drained sounds like a childish reaction to having a toy taken away. Extremes like this aren't going to stop griefing, it'll just make people smarter about avoiding the penalties. They'll just start provoking others into attacking them first.
Ultimately, you have to decide where the line ends for the new player also. How long until his 'new' status goes away, and people can actually pounce on them? There has to be a limit on it. What happens if that new player decides "Screw the safe zone, I'm just gonna go run around in the wilds." Should they still be protected then? Why should a PKer be penalized for killing someone in his natural environment?
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Goblin Squad Member
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No, if you leave the 'safe zone', you are waiving your protection, I believe.
The jail time? The result of sustained and continued malicious actions against other players. We're not talking taking someone's sweet-roll, we're talking kept on burning down every single farm you came across, poisoning every well, doing everything possible to cripple as many players as you can.
The 'Jail' is basically where people who are going out of their way to be colossal douche-nuggets to other players, specifically other players who could not mechanically raise a valid defence, via a continued and highly malicious assault on their characters, their properties and the surrounding region.
Killing the guy who keeps going alone into the forest is one thing.
Killing him, then following him back to town and burning down everything he owns, waiting till he rebuilds, then burn it down again, repeated for weeks on end and boasting about it like it made you some sort of E-Star, would be Griefing.
Griefers tend to be people who think it's 'fun' to make someone else unhappy. They also tend to swing to either having a five-second attention-span that can only be sustained by a continuous stream of tears from the victim or people with some sort of vendetta against a certain 'breed' of player that will not stop unless they are removed permanently from the game.
I've had people in WoW campaign relentlessly against my characters for ... being a carebear. Apparently that's the worst thing in the world to a PvPer, according to them, and I am a variety of things I can't mention on the board without being banned because nobody could possibly want to do so much for another person without some form of material reward.
I've had Roleplay events crashed, had them following me around the capital cities screaming profanities and offensive slander in /shout and the cake was having them spam the report function on the forums whenever I engaged with other players on in-game lore and back-stories.
Is every Griefer some sort of crouching psychopath/hidden axe-murderer? No, but a surprisingly large number are, because they can hide behind a computer, they are relatively untouchable and if you ban them, hey, they can just go onto another account on the same or different game and get their fix.
The idea behind the Jail is basically "Here, be bored while everyone else has fun." It is designed to make them, as I believe the term is, butt-hurt. PvP with other players, but PvP and move on. Raid their villages, but don't spend weeks doing nothing but destroying stuff and blocking people's ability to have fun. Become an infamous mass-murderer even, but don't hit the same folks over and over and over.
Would it work? More than likely, no, but Griefers will never stop so long as they can be entertained. Rather than punishment, which they wear as a badge of pride, bore them to tears. Hell, swap out jail for a mini-game they can't leave in which they must do nice things for NPCs, break rocks with a pick-axe, something, anything, that gets them away from the majority of the other players and quite simply bores them stupid.
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Goblin Squad Member
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No, if you leave the 'safe zone', you are waiving your protection, I believe.
The jail time? The result of sustained and continued malicious actions against other players. We're not talking taking someone's sweet-roll, we're talking kept on burning down every single farm you came across, poisoning every well, doing everything possible to cripple as many players as you can.
The 'Jail' is basically where people who are going out of their way to be colossal douche-nuggets to other players, specifically other players who could not mechanically raise a valid defence, via a continued and highly malicious assault on their characters, their properties and the surrounding region.
Killing the guy who keeps going alone into the forest is one thing.
Killing him, then following him back to town and burning down everything he owns, waiting till he rebuilds, then burn it down again, repeated for weeks on end and boasting about it like it made you some sort of E-Star, would be Griefing.
Griefers tend to be people who think it's 'fun' to make someone else unhappy. They also tend to swing to either having a five-second attention-span that can only be sustained by a continuous stream of tears from the victim or people with some sort of vendetta against a certain 'breed' of player that will not stop unless they are removed permanently from the game.
I've had people in WoW campaign relentlessly against my characters for ... being a carebear. Apparently that's the worst thing in the world to a PvPer, according to them, and I am a variety of things I can't mention on the board without being banned because nobody could possibly want to do so much for another person without some form of material reward.
I've had Roleplay events crashed, had them following me around the capital cities screaming profanities and offensive slander in /shout and the cake was having them spam the report function on the forums whenever I engaged with other players on in-game lore and back-stories.
Is every Griefer some sort of...
By your logic, enemies would be allowed to move in 20 feet away from each other, and if they kill/destroy each other too much, that's griefing. I'm sorry, I'm trying to understand where you're coming from, but I just can't. Someone who gets killed in a certain area and repeatedly returns to it expecting a different result is griefing themselves. In a game where there's going to be high risk, you as a player are responsible for keeping yourself safe and playing smart. It's not on the people who would be killing you to take it easy on you, and give you a break. That's just not how these things work.
The things you described about your WoW experience is more along the lines of griefing. It even seems to step a little bit beyond that to the point of harassment. I'm fine with those sort of things having penalties resulting in game privileges being revoked. Most games have things like that covered in their TOS.
Again, your whole jail idea is still predicated on a single persons set of rules. Most of the things you described (razing farms, poisoning wells, repeatedly killing someone who returns to the same area) are things I see no need to punish. If those things are being done in the high risk zero security areas, then it's totally valid.
It sounds to me like you want more of a limited PvP system. Something like the PvE servers in WoW, where you can only be killed if you choose to flag or enter the "PvP" zones. I don't think you'd ever enjoy a game with full open PvP. And that's really where it seems PFO is going.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Most of the things you described (razing farms, poisoning wells, repeatedly killing someone who returns to the same area) are things I see no need to punish. If those things are being done in the high risk zero security areas, then it's totally valid.
I wouldn't really say that it is either a realistic world nor something that excites me for PvP.
Realistically, there should be punishments for terrorizing the wilderness, and it should come the response from other players, the game mechanics, and the game moderators.
Without the game mechanics backing you, it means that the established kingdoms just don't care how many of their people you murdered, just as long as you did it outside their borders. I'm not suggested they perform a full military response no matter where you might be, but they might at least acknowledge that known bandits are not welcome in their cities.
I wouldn't really enjoy going out to poison wells, raze farms, or repeatedly kill someone who returns to the same area.
Neither do I really find a game where I'm defending my farm from constant attacks, continually having to spend endless amount of time purifying my water supply, or being killed for the dozenth time trying to get somewhere I want to go to.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Killing the guy who keeps going alone into the forest is one thing.
Killing him, then following him back to town and burning down everything he owns, waiting till he rebuilds, then burn it down again, repeated for weeks on end and boasting about it like it made you some sort of E-Star, would be Griefing.
The idea is that following him back to town and burning everything he owns should be virtually impossible. Killing the lone beginner in the middle of the woods, should be an easy task. Attempting to destroy a players building in a town, as an individual should be virtually impossible to do alone, and should require a small army. If it is a player town, they should have strong defenses in almost any situation, if it is an NPC town it should have unbeatable defenses. Ryan himself said that one way or another he would make basic griefing in town nearly impossible, and that flat out disabling PK within towns was not off the table if it came down to it (Not that that is his first choice, but that if it was determined that there was no other way).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Unless coded to somehow give you the 'home field advantage', I can see teams of 'E-Heroes' running around at maxium skill-up (max level?) and going out of their way to be complete Trolls.
Look to most PvP servers on WoW and you'll find big groups of players who consider running up and camping a low-level town completely justified. If they get the ability to 'burn down' or otherwise temporarily (or worst still, permanently) shut down other players and their homes, Pathfinder Online will face a small but dedicated task-force of Griefers who do nothing but antagonise lower-level players and use 'neutral' NPCs to repair, train and vendor.
Something I thought of at work, and again, this is probably a bad idea, but I believe even a bad idea can do some good even if it's only a "No, because of X" response keeps people from persisting in it.
What about Flagging not opening you up for PvPing, but creates a sort of 'time out' between opposing players?
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Scenario A: Flag ON. With the Flag set to the ON position, you are signalling that you are ready and willing to PvP and risk camping. Same as what exists in most MMOs.
Once killed, you can run back to your body or respawn at the nearest Shrine you attuned to and either try to find back-up or run back out and get revenge on your own terms.
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Scenario B: Flag OFF. With the Flag set to the OFF position, you are signallying that you do not wish to PvP. While you cannot be killed via PvP in this state, you are beaten severely and the opposing player still gets their rewards, be it XP, gold or a random item generated using your average skill-level and gear-level.
For the next 20 minutes, the other player cannot attack you, nor can you attack them. If they continue to attack you, they get greatly diminished returns on their rewards, and potentially the player that has lost several times begins to gain a mechanical advantage against the other player, such as increasing their critical modifiers or attack bonus against that one player until such time as they are defeated.
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I would like to state that, again, this is coming from a Chronic Carebear and somebody who gets outwitted by a DVD Player, so don't worry if the idea seems retarded from a coding point of view.
And yes, I can see the abuse potential here, but I can't think of a reliable counter.
Edit: for the TL:DR crowd, Flag ON is "Death or Glory! I'll take your skull for a trophy!", Flag OFF is "Oh GODS is that my spleen? Take the money and spare me!"
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Goblin Squad Member
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... you are beaten severely and the opposing player still gets their rewards...
So you will be attacked every 20 Minutes and in the meantime can't hit the griefer even if he beats the snot out of your pal next to you for the price of being only "severely beaten" instead of killed?
Doesn't strike me as a working system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Again, there is a huge pool of abuse that players can dish out and work around here. It was an idea, not much of an idea, but an idea nonetheless.
Perhaps Flag OFF also disables your ability to attack or be attacked as well once you have engaged and win/lose (and are not still engaged at the time of that death, ie fighting two or more people, kill one and you don't then suddenly become invulnerable)? People interested in PvP will then avoid Players with the Flag OFF symbol as it will 'interrupt' their PvP-fest.
On the other hand it also sort of neuters a World PvP Setting if you kill somebody. Also I can see people abusing the Flag ON/OFF system to swarm a PvPer who may or may not be griefing and thus 'shut him down' for a 20 minute period.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Unless coded to somehow give you the 'home field advantage', I can see teams of 'E-Heroes' running around at maxium skill-up (max level?) and going out of their way to be complete Trolls.
In WOW this happens by design, it is the result of PVP being tossed on top of a PVE game
1. Towns are grouped in low level and high level player areas. In a low level town there are not high level players doing business or having any reason to be there, thus nobody to rival the trolls
2. There is no penelty for death. So even if/when the griefers get the crap beaten out of them when a fair match arrives, even if they gain nothing from killing the lowbies, they also lose nothing from dying. Now if the gain from killing a weak player were negligible, but the penalty for death was fairly high based on your level (or skills XP whatever determines your actual strength), this might be a different story.
Your system is entirely for a PVE game. It is completely worthless for any game that uses PVP as a function for something other then griefing. The idea of a PVP centered game, is around PVP being used for actual things like controlling areas, staking out your kingdoms territory, managing resources etc... So someone comes in to take from a limited resource that your kingdom has staked ownership of, you "beat them up" and then they keep going and take it? You completely lack the understanding of what a PVP game is, and have mistaken it for PVE games with PVP slapped on top of them.
or actually your scenario, the magical creation of gold and XP. With your system, what is to keep an entire guild from lining up, flag off, and having one person go PK and "Defeat" each of them back to back for free rewards. Then they just take turns doing it each day.
The way to lessen PVP is to have actual political and personal drawbacks to abusing it. If dying hurts, and being a jerk causes you to die a lot, then people who regularly are jerks will struggle to become powerful.
If kingdom participation is important, most kingdoms will not condone motiveless ganking, and thus the gankers will have to remain in a kingdom that does. If a kingdom is known for being jerks, it is liable to be attacked by the nearby kingdoms that don't appreciate their members being killed for no reason.
Don't use a PVE game with PVP slapped on top of it as a ruler for a PVP game, it is a horrible analogy. Liniage, ultima, eve are examples, and for the most part all of them had issues, but none of them had issues anywhere near the same league or category that WoW's PVP servers had.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Stop trying to put flags into a game which is almost certainly not going to have any.
PFO will be different to World of Warcraft. There are no similarities. WoW griefing is applicable because there is no risk to the harasser. The harasser can take from your time and enjoyment of the game, and you nothing from him. You will NEVER beat him and others wont take the time as they gain nothing from doing so.
Alternatively.
In a world where anything goes if your willing to accept the risk for it, things work differently. You can take as much from your aggressor as he can from you, potentially more if he's in better gear as to allow his ease of griefing. For every band of griefers there is an equally well geared, well skilled group happy to come and kill those guys for their gear. The griefers should be putting themselves at risk/in a vulnerable location if it is viable for them to grief you, thus you or others should be freely able to defend yourselves. This puts the griefer largely at risk.
Griefing is not a feature in open PvP/full loot games in any way similar to it is in a game with PvP flags/hybrid PvP. This arguement seems more a case of a guy in a trench during WW1 who keeps jumping out, getting shot and screaming 'OMG STOP'.
It's just most likely going to be a kind of game you will not enjoy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I enjoy PvP, but I just don't enjoy repeated episodes of relentless sodomy.
Sadly WoW is the MMO I've played most often and unfortunately my perception of Griefing is thus based mostly upon WoW's, as you put it, no-risk gravy-train that Griefers enjoy there. My ideas are just that, ideas. They don't work, fine, it's one more option crossed off the list towards a system that does. I'd rather be the guy that gets 99% of his ideas shot down in flames than sit there and say nothing.
I do love the concept of Griefing being an great risk vs reward setup. Yes you can get short-term wealth by ganking other players. No you will not maintain that wealth as these players go somewhere else to level up and scribble your name down in their little black book, or the higher level players in the region who will in turn hunt you down because you are A) interfering with their guild-mates B) interrupting Roleplay C) messing with the cogs in their economic machine.
While it would be annoying, death should drain you of XP and Gold (and possibly gathered resources). NPCs claim the gold and the resources, PCs claim all three. Death should be something you dodge like it's cancer (pun not intended), more than a speedbump in your questing but an "Oh Gods no!" event that can completely undo a few hours of work as your materials, XP and Gold disappear into the gullet of some monster or a PKer.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Lineage, ultima, eve are examples, and for the most part all of them had issues, but none of them had issues anywhere near the same league or category that WoW's PVP servers had.
Which of these were PvE games with PvP slapped on top? Eve and Lineage 2 are PvP games and UO is massively different to anything else and I would argue it couldn't be simply stratified as a PvE or PvP game.
All 3 games had non consensual PvP and full or partial loot. They're also funnily enough, the 3 longest surviving and most populated PvP games around if we were to call them such. Daoc, AC, Shadowbane, SWG; all dead. Sure their numbers pale in comparison to themepark PvPvE games but that's not the point.
If they're all terrible examples of PvP games then dare I say there's never been one?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sadly never got a PC good enough for EvE when it came out and when I tried to join in a year ago after having my first troubling encounter with Blizzard's stunningly disorganised Support Staff all I got was Photon-Blocked by the long-term players with whole Starfleets under their command, Lineage 2 was never released in my little armpit of Australia (apparently EBGames ships games to their stores in order and my little town is third from last in the entire country *tears of blood*) despite my continual orders. I've heard lots of good things from Ultimate Online though.
Perhaps we're drifting a bit? It might be presumptuous here, but maybe a tally is in order?
People who have played Purely PvP Games, Sandbox Games and MMOs, perhaps a list of the features (and possibly links too for those of us who weren't fortunate enough to play them?)
Then we can go through and point out the systems that were enjoyable, why they were enjoyable, any bugs or exploits we encountered that caused them to become Un-Fun or Unbalanced and so forth?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Lineage, ultima, eve are examples, and for the most part all of them had issues, but none of them had issues anywhere near the same league or category that WoW's PVP servers had.Which of these were PvE games with PvP slapped on top? Eve and Lineage 2 are PvP games and UO is massively different to anything else and I would argue it couldn't be simply stratified as a PvE or PvP game.
All 3 games had non consensual PvP and full or partial loot. They're also funnily enough, the 3 longest surviving and most populated PvP games around if we were to call them such. Daoc, AC, Shadowbane, SWG; all dead. Sure their numbers pale in comparison to themepark PvPvE games but that's not the point.
If they're all terrible examples of PvP games then dare I say there's never been one?
Sorry that was a result of poor use of phrasing I guess. I was intending to say do not use a PVE game with PVP slapped on top, use an actual PVP game for an example such as Lineage, ultima or eve.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is that, Tempestorm, but what happens if PKers don't show their names? What if it just appears on your screen as 'PC Bandit'.
Ideally for Anti-Griefers, being able to name a PKer is a good thing. Players who are known for targeting other Players will inevitably develop a reputation for being 'dangerous' and 'untrustworthy'.
After all, are you going to trust the guy infamous for killing folks and stealing their precious items to watch your back? What happens if the fight turns sour, he decides it's more cost-effective to slip a shiv in your kidney, steal your coin-pouch and trinkets and run, leaving your body deep in an underground cave teeming with now exceedingly pissed off monsters?
I'd agree with being nameless by choice if you wanted (possibly a multi-persona ability available to relatively high-level characters, sort of a Bruce Wayne/Batman theme?), although there are definite abuses I could see being taken that route. (extremely cheesy example ahoy) "By day, I am a humble rat-pile seller in the slums of Corrupt-Town. By night, I am the Broken Fang, Thief-Killer extraordinare!"
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is that, Tempestorm, but what happens if PKers don't show their names? What if it just appears on your screen as 'PC Bandit'.
Ideally for Anti-Griefers, being able to name a PKer is a good thing. Players who are known for targeting other Players will inevitably develop a reputation for being 'dangerous' and 'untrustworthy'.
After all, are you going to trust the guy infamous for killing folks and stealing their precious items to watch your back? What happens if the fight turns sour, he decides it's more cost-effective to slip a shiv in your kidney, steal your coin-pouch and trinkets and run, leaving your body deep in an underground cave teeming with now exceedingly pissed off monsters?
I'd agree with being nameless by choice if you wanted (possibly a multi-persona ability available to relatively high-level characters, sort of a Bruce Wayne/Batman theme?), although there are definite abuses I could see being taken that route. (extremely cheesy example ahoy) "By day, I am a humble rat-pile seller in the slums of Corrupt-Town. By night, I am the Broken Fang, Thief-Killer extraordinare!"
I agree the idea of hiding names is a system that is ripe for abuse. For the most part minimum in mechanics are needed, short of an actual penelty for death so that if you are a huge jerk, you will suffer. If I recall from a friend of mine that used to play liniage, things were at the point where if you didn't make any enemies you were generally fine, if you ticked off the wrong guild, you could find yourself being rapidly deleveled down to level 1. Pardus is an interesting web based MMORPG that is kinda fun to kill time on. In general there you can see the level of player enforcement is insane. In general 2/3rds of the territory is controlled by one major faction or another, and if you stick within the factions territory you are safe 99% of the time. In general once every 2-3 months in faction territory, what they call a NIP (noob interceptor pirate) arises, basically a player who works to get into the first combat ship and then tries to go on a PK spree. Usually he might kill one person before hunted to death and being blocked at the references, in which case A. he set his re-spawn point out of faction territory and when he rides his pod out he never returns, or B. His save point is inside faction territory and gets blown up mercilessly until he can no longer afford to take off.
I am not saying these methods will be the ones employed, just that yes player mechanics can work, assuming there is a noteworthy penalty for death, and it is easy to point out who the person being the jerk is.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Trials of Accension, a game that was in development a few years ago that I wish would have had the funding to get off the ground, was not going to have names visible either. People were expected to introduce themselves so that you could "know" them (tag them with a name). Conversely, you could simpy tag someone with a name yourself to identify them. I do not remember all of the specifics on how it was to work, but that was the basis of it.
I have not read most of the information released on the Pathfinder Online game yet. I was not aware, for example, that they intended to not display names.
Regardless, I am not a fan of (in my opinion) uneeded mechanics to do what the characters existing inside the game should be doing on their own.
They have not confirmed any intention to not display names, it was suggested and the dev's said it was an interesting concept and they would look into whether it would be possible and/or beneficial to implement. That is a long shot from a confirmation
Most of the things you described (razing farms, poisoning wells, repeatedly killing someone who returns to the same area) are things I see no need to punish.
Who else loves taking quotes from this thread out of context? ;D
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Goblin Squad Member
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Perhaps with the skill system, there could be a few options in how it's done to prevent "GOD OF ALL THINGS" character running about?
Every player starts off at the 'root' of a 'tree' of skills. Depending upon what you decide to do, you could level up to 10 skills at once, depending upon your playstyle.
On a tangent, I also echo arcane spellcasting should take longer in armor, while divine spellcasting generally lacks the all out DPS of the Arcane, so relatively less penalties for casting in armor, if at all.
After reaching a certain amount of levels in those skills, you start to find it's easier to level them, but harder to level the other skills. Mind you, that's 10 skills under your belt.
But the skill tree goes in 4 directions, and if a skill is 'neglected' or not leveled within, say, a month real time, it begins to atrophy, not decreasing so much as your character becomes 'rusty' and might need to work a bit harder at the skill for an hour or so real-time to get it back up to snuff.
The 4 directions of the tree are 'melee' 'ranged' 'spellcasting' and 'crafting'. Each direction starts off simple but expands into other options the higher the skill you choose.
Go Melee and end up using medium armor or heavy armor and meleeing constantly, you might open up options that allow you to use Rage-like abilities or the ability to focus with a specific sub-group of weaponry.
Go Ranged and you end up using a Crossbow and sniping from cover, you might gain access to ranged sneak-attacks and the ability to use Repeating Crossbows.
Go Magic and you end up using lots and lots of spells. You get the choice to go Arcane or Divine really quickly and each choice grants you access to even more choices. You might even be able to double-dip and take both Arcane and Divine choices.
Crafting is the same, chose the basic path, then you're able to decide you'd like to specialise in alchemy, cooking, smithing, prospecting, mining or building, to name a few choices.
But you can't choose all four paths. At starting levels, 2 paths, and towards the middle of your leveling, maybe a third if you don't mind pruning back on some perks for your original two 'paths.
That's not to say a person who picks Melee and Crafting and doesn't put any ranks into Ranged won't be able to make ranged attacks, but they will be rather weak at it, much as they would with any skill they had not leveled. Either pick two primary combat paths and go forth and adventure, pick a Combat and Crafting Path and go forth and adventure, or pick a Crafting and Combat Path and be the guy that keeps the economy flowing .... and go adventuring.
Leveling your Melee Path increases your Strength and Constitution.
Leveling your Ranged Path increases your Dexterity and Constitution.
Leveling your Magic Path increases your Intelligence and/or Charisma and/or Wisdom (two of the Three)
Leveling your Crafting Path increases .... something. Maybe Crafting doesn't give an outright Combat Prowess Benefit, and that is a good thing. Maybe your crafting will grant non-combat bonuses tied to your chosen profession(s), such as being able to repair people's armor in the wilderness or being able to cook a meal that will provide some benefits to the people who eat it, or your knowledge of buildings might help you find hidden rooms or traps easier.
Apologies for this being laid out so badly, but it's midnight and the cats are trying to climb up my legs, all six of them, with their claws.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why do you want to pigeon-hole people in the "proper role"?
Whit a skill based system a character that choose skills in different combat stiles is already less strong than a focused character, why do you want to make it even weaker?
In my experience having the possibility to experience all the facets of the game is one of the thing that will keep you glued to it for a very long time.
Force me to be a melee fighter that only can progress in melee skills and you will lose me fairly fast.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It was midnight, no wonder it didn't get across. Ah, less a pigeon hole than discouraging people from blindly trying to everything at once and then going 'Mobs too hard, I quit this game!' when the GoE Character falls flat on it's face.
I'd love to do it, to be able to dip my toes into every single option available to a character all at once, but at the same point a certain level of specialisation is required to be a productive character. That said, you raise an extremely valid point, Diego.
A character in a skill-based game should be able to be good at magic, good at melee, good at ranged and good at crafting, but not as good as somebody who specialised. I think the closest analogy I can think of is the Bard here. Yes you can do just about everything, but the other classes can do it better. That said, as an 'jack-of-all-trade' you're never pinned down by your choices, you retain a supreme flexibility under a much wider array of challenges and if options A or B are closed, you still have options C, D and F at your fingertips.
I should have mentioned I was looking at the Skyrim model as well. It is theoretically possible to level every skill in the game, but not to 'max out' every skill-tree's perks. You could reach level 60 and spent your entire career flailing away with a one-handed weapon and yet never dropped a perk into the tree. Your Skill is quite high, you're doing excellent damage with it, but you wanted to put those perks into some spellcasting trees and the enchanting tree. Your 'Mage' is an excellent swordsman, but not nearly as good as the other character who put a great many points into the One-Handed tree and the Sneak and Light Armor skill, but your spells will always be far more economical and more powerful than that other character can ever hope to accomplish.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As already pointed out in another post in this section of the board, the skill system probably will go something like this:
- weapon competency (basic to hit bonus)
When you have enough skill in single weapon you can take
-- Weapon damage (bonus to damage)
-- advanced weapon use (more bonus to hit)
raise advanced weapon use enough and you will be capable to train
--- melee weapon expertise (more bonus to hit with melee weapons)
--- missile weapon expertise (more bonus to hit with missile weapons)
enough Weapon damage and Melee weapon expertise and you could get
---- meele weapon damage (more bonus to damage with melee weapon)
and so on with ever more refined bonuses (2 handed weapons, then greatsword for example)
Every increase in the same skill cost more and each advanced skill cost more than the basic skill.
Same kind of progression for spells or every other ability.
As Ryan put it "a mile wide and a inch deep".
So a guy that want to specialize in greatsword will take ever increasing skills into that tree, while a dabbler like me will be happy to learn Advanced weapon use and Weapon damage but spend his skill point into learning level 1 spells.
With EVE it work very well. A new player that specialize can be on par with older character in his specialized niche reasonably fast. On the other hand the old character has a lot of flexibility and can choose what role I want to do depending on the requirements of the situation.
It is impossible to completely kill your build as there isn't a maximum number of skill point that you can get (putting a cap to what you can learn is a bad idea in a sandbox from my point of view), at worse you have spent months training something that you will not use, but, as the character can still learn other skills you can change your aim and learn what you need.
Note that you are still limited by your equipment: the experienced character that want to cast arcane spells and swing a sword would still suffer from armor spell failure (maybe mitigated by a skill, so he can be a "bard"). The arcane spellcaster that want to use a greatsword will suffer for his low initial strength and so on.
The "mobs are too hard" shouldn't be a big problem as mobs aren't the aim of the game.