However Imagine the nerdrage when the level 1 mage kills a pig and gets the vorpal greatsword of BBEG slaying when it's BOP and he cant even use it.
No, this one's a no-brainer. Your level 1 Mage says to himself "Stuff magery for a game of soldiers", converts to a warrior class and goes on to conquer the known world with his new sword.
Seriously, though, I hope that no items are ever bound in any way at all; the concept doesn't fit the philosophy of the game as it seems to be developing.
Goblin Squad Member
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Binding / Soulbound Items are really a Themepark conceit and not found in the Sandbox. But since PO is apparently wanting to also have some Themepart elements I would not be surprised to see it used sparingly.
While an amusing concept, I really hope PFO does not introduce binding at all. Binding only makes sense in a continuous linear progression of weapons, personally I would far prefer a system of equipment wearing out with use as the way to remove items from the world, rather than continuous jump from one weapon to the next, leading to a never ending increase in power.
IMO it dosn't make sense with the sandbox portion of the game. In every game the destruction of equipment is a key part, otherwise it becomes worthless to continue to store it.
The method that binding works well in, is if you are regularly updating to newer and better weapons and gear, as binding makes you throw out your gear if you outgrow it. Where the continuous upgrade and trash method is bad for, is a game with open PVP in areas where people of different levels/skills etc... are fighting against eachother. the more massive the scale of power between low mid and high end weapons, the less anyone in any tier short of the top will ever want to participate in PVP, which is fine if multi level combat isn't a core portion of the game... However in games like eve and PFO, that is the primary content.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well-said, Onishi... As much as I dislike item loss/durability (I am a shameless materialist), it will make content much more interesting. Sure, as a master PvP'er, you just spent half your fortune on a +15 Sword of Noob-Slaying, but what are you going to do when it breaks? Or when it gets damaged, and you're going to have to spend some fraction of the staggeringly high cost to repair it?
However, random item drops don't sound like they're going to be a huge part of the game; as I understand it, the dev team is trying to avoid any "lottery-ticket" mechanics in the game... but maybe they'll change their mind.
Oh, one last note:
No, this one's a no-brainer. Your level 1 Mage says to himself "Stuff magery for a game of soldiers", converts to a warrior class and goes on to conquer the known world with his new sword.
That is an awesome way to put it, and made me laugh hard. Well done, sir, I applaud you.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The only item restriction i would impose is that each piece of armor/clothing must be fitted to your character.
So you have to see a tailor before you can wear any gear. There should be npc vendors for the early on trivial gear or universal fit items, but at a certain point a player tailor should be required.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The only item restriction i would impose is that each piece of armor/clothing must be fitted to your character.
So you have to see a tailor before you can wear any gear. There should be npc vendors for the early on trivial gear or universal fit items, but at a certain point a player tailor should be required.
Armor should be based on character size. Medium characters can only use medium armor. On top of this, I would love for looted armor to give you less than full protection; possibly a debuff called "ill-fit". This debuff exists until, as you suggest, you get it resized and fitted. Tailors and/or armorers should do this (as is appropriate).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ive liked the idea of a choice on soulbinding gear. For example you found a + 3 club of kitten punting , and you think wow I really like this weapon. So you soulbind it and its no longer sell-able or tradable .
The assumption is the weapons or armor that are your favorites are the ones you actually take care of each day, stitching up the holes, cleaning the leather, sharpening the blade and what not.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Kind of off topic I just wanted see what you guys/gals thought about an idea.
In UO if your killed by a monster that same mob will take items from your bag when you die, after you go back to collect your corpse/husk you can try and kill that monster to get your items back.
What I would like to see in PFO is that if your killed and looted by a mob whatever that mob keeps remains on that mobs inventory forever, so if your not able to get back to your corpse or you can't find the mob that looted you others will have that opportunity to collect the items if and when that mob is killed.
I always found having to get revenge and get my stuff back from a mob that killed me adds another layer of realism and fun.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Pucktheplatypus, I still think the spirit of fantasy stories would allow you to hand that "+3 club of kitten punting" down to your son. Soul-binding gear was the easy way out. The proper solution would have been to give characters bonuses or penalties for using gear based on the origin of the gear. This would open up the possibility of Followers of Puck to be really thrilled about being handed down Puck's old +3 club, while everyone else just says "bah, it's used, and it's got a useless bonus".
Kind of off topic I just wanted see what you guys/gals thought about an idea. In UO if your killed by a monster that same mob will take items from your bag when you die, after you go back to collect your corpse/husk you can try and kill that monster to get your items back.
If you're talking humanoid mobs, that's a nice idea. Otherwise, I find the idea of a boar picking through your corpse's pockets and walking off with your Wand of Indeterminacy even more mind-boggling than having it drop from the boar in the first place...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also that mechanic works well with griefers in safe zones, if a player tries to PK you in town and guards chase after the PK he will be looted by the npc guards if killed.
Another key aspect of the prevention of griefers, I think it would be impossible for the griefer to kill a guard and get his stuff back.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also that mechanic works well with griefers in safe zones, if a player tries to PK you in town and guards chase after the PK he will be looted by the npc guards if killed.
Another key aspect of the prevention of griefers, I think it would be impossible for the griefer to kill a guard and get his stuff back.
Impossible to kill guards is an immersion issue and also a big obstacle for any RvR. Why worry about monster invasions for a new, small settlement? Just fall back to town and the guards can handle anything.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Hey, I think a lot of these questions are pretty well covered on the Goblinworks blog.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Blaeringr
I don't think guards will be in new settlements, players will have to defend there own settlements I think.
From what I understand guards are only in dev made starter cities to give safe heavens for noobs.
What about more established player settlements?
If not, I'm changing my sleep schedule. Find an Atlantic based guild and then just raze and loot their entire settlement while they're all sleeping.
Players being in charge of all forms of law and order or protection outside of the original settlements makes building anything a VERY high gamble. No, not even a gamble, but a sure thing that you're going to lose it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Blaeringr, there's been a lot of discussion about the possible implementations of Settlement Sieges in this thread.
Ryan's stated outright that players will be entirely responsible for enforcing laws in their Settlements, but that doesn't really rule out the possibility of NPC Guards to help defend the Settlement from attack.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I wouldn't say "outright". He covered it in a more generalized sense than that. Either way, if that really is what he meant - big mistake. Any player settlement can be easily razed to the ground solo if your timing is right. Unless of course PFO is going to be geared mostly towards extra hardcore players who never sleep.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Blaeringr
I don't think guards will be in new settlements, players will have to defend there own settlements I think.
From what I understand guards are only in dev made starter cities to give safe heavens for noobs.
What about more established player settlements?
If not, I'm changing my sleep schedule. Find an Atlantic based guild and then just raze and loot their entire settlement while they're all sleeping.
Players being in charge of all forms of law and order or protection outside of the original settlements makes building anything a VERY high gamble. No, not even a gamble, but a sure thing that you're going to lose it.
I would imagine a smarter guild with much to protect, would specifically recruit people in odd timezones. Not that I don't think there should also be purchasable guards etc... but I do not think that the guards should be powerful enough to single handedly prevent an attack on any timezone. As far as defenses go, I'm kind of 50/50 on things as far as how to manage them. I like the idea of an attack taking a long time, but not really sure how to do that fairly, manage repairs etc...
The best system I can think of is seige weaponry required to take down the walls and defenses, only being allowed to have a certain amount of the weapons at a time, and taking say 12 hours to make wave 2. Say a seige weapon can deal up to 50% damage to a wall if it isn't stopped before it runs out of rocks to catipult or whatever. then after it is destroyed it will take 24 hours to get back into action, durring which time if the defenders are repairing, they can fix 25%. So assuming the defenders are doing terrible but repairing what they can, it will take 3 days to tear down defenses.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Onishi that would certainly work...for those large enough and those who can find the right people who aren't wanting a guild they can group with more regularly.
But even then, you're still likely going to be looking at a minority. Most guilds will have absurd vulnerabilities to that system. And even those in the minority, unless their "graveyard shift" guidlies are really reliable and online all the time, sooner or later they're going to wake up and see everything they've worked for gone.
It's an unrealistic expectation to expect that to work even for the minority who succeed in recruiting people from around the globe who are on consistently enough to make it work and don't take any breaks from the game.
Any RvR system that doesn't let both sides be able to agree on when the conflicts take place is going to have some big, very exploitable issues.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Why not force the defenders set the time when they are vulnerable, within a window defined by the attackers? Or make the siege engines take a long time to construct, during which time the attackers have to continuously defend the siege from sortie?
There are lots of options that don't make destroying a settlement easy or quick, even for large groups. -Raiding- a settlement, on the other hand, should be something which can be done without notice; perhaps base the rewards for a raid on the number or percentage of members or officers of the target which are online at the start of the raid. (The goal would be to cause all of the members to be occupied elsewhere and raid their base, or to cause a significant number of them to abandon their action elsewhere to defend their homes.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Blaeringr, this is the statement I was referencing, from the LFG Blog:
Player settlements are where the training wheels come off, and where you're on your own to survive and thrive... or crash and burn. There won't be automatic systems to enforce the law—you'll need to do that yourselves. There won't be a mass of random characters just itching to put down an invading horde; if you're not monitoring the lands you control, things can rapidly get out of hand.
As I said then, it's not clear how this will be implemented, but it's also not clear that this is obviously a "big mistake". I'd rather hear what GW has to say about it before I conclude they're doing it wrong.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Some loot ideas:
Each creature should have a plethora of lootable items depending on it's type. Lets take the common boar for example. Tusks, hide, meat, and bones would be a good start. To keep people from just loot>all make each item take some small amount of time if done in the field. Also each lootable item has some % chance of being destroyed in the fight that killed the creature. A fireballed boar reduced to ashes is useless, even the ashes have been scattered in the blast. Was it taken down by a slashing weapon? Well there goes any chance of pulling a good hide out of it. Poison? Now the meat is bad,and so on. To receive the maximum utility from a boar it should be hunted with piercing weapons, and processed at a butchers shop. But if all you need are a couple of pigs feet for a spell component or something it wouldn't be too cumbersome.
Carts and horses. There is no reason that mobs have to be field striped. Why not just pile up those boar on a cart where the local butcher can do a better job (bonuses for access to masterwork shop tools for example), and do it faster (batch jobs require the correct facilities), at some cost (gold or a % of the loot). In a system like this merchants needing supplies could hire adventures to do the killing while they pile up the cart.
Back in civilization you get a bonus to butchering when in a butchers shop or well equipped kitchen, if it's going to take a considerable amount of time to transport or processes a wand of purify food and drink could prevent spoilage. Also being in town makes it easier to separate and store the bits and pieces, skins could more or less just be stacked on a shelf but you are going to need jars for eyeballs, a barrel for the livers and salted or dried meats, etc. This would require a robust container system, something I would love to see.
You are not going to just throw a bunch of unprocessed pig parts in a backpack and towing around all the necessary containers is a pain (especially if there is a breakage mechanic). But it's sill...
This is one of the most brilliant posts I have seen. I am mad I did not think of it as a solution to the failed logic of looting. It has always bothered me that looting was instant...and that I could not loot the logical things from a corpse...your suggestion fixes both concerns.
And, I love the idea of bringing the corpses to the people best equipped in gear and skill to make use of them. This suggestion would make it so the experts in their respective fields would not have to leave their places of business...business will come to them. Just how it should be.
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Goblin Squad Member
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some awesome ideas
Yes, yes, all of my yes. Weapon damage type, elemental damage type, all of these should factor into the equation of what you get. It stops the whole 'blanket the map in fireballs and then loot anything that sparkles' tactic farmers in most MMOs I have encountered use.
If nuking a district results in no valuable commodities, then it's likely going to turn off the 'strip miner' farming. People will start to think about what they are after, how they are going to get it, and how will they drag it back to town.
We'll always have lone or small groups of players running around slaughter pigs for their often-not-there livers, but imagine having groups of players getting together, going out and quite litterally going on hunting expeditions? Imagine players gaining access to non-lethal methods of capturing wild animals also? Herd of wild Horses? A blanket of Sleep Spells, load them into the heavy-duty wagons and have the mages keep more Sleep spells ready in case they wake up, drop them off to the PC who has the relevant skill and an enclosed area to keep the horses while he domesticates and trains them, bang, you have 'Wild Stock' which can have random attributes to add to the next generation of Mounts.
Running out of Pigs? Go hunt down some more, and take a few back to the farmers to use as breeding stock to keep the numbers up while new farms are being built to deal with the influx of players demanding meat and hide.
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We'll always have lone or small groups of players running around slaughter pigs for their often-not-there livers, but imagine having groups of players getting together, going out and quite litterally going on hunting expeditions? Imagine players gaining access to non-lethal methods of capturing wild animals also? Herd of wild Horses? A blanket of Sleep Spells, load them into the heavy-duty wagons and have the mages keep more Sleep spells ready in case they wake up, drop them off to the PC who has the relevant skill and an enclosed area to keep the horses while he domesticates and trains them, bang, you have 'Wild Stock' which can have random attributes to add to the next generation of Mounts.Running out of Pigs? Go hunt down some more, and take a few back to the farmers to use as breeding stock to keep the numbers up while new farms are being built to deal with the influx of players demanding meat and hide.
This.
Not everything you do has to impact the world in a big way, and this? This I like.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I mentioned it elsewhere, but it's worth repeating here. One of the funnest, most memorable things I ever did in SWG was go out with about a dozen other people on a hunting expedition to get high quality meat for doctors to use in their buffs.
I hope that PFO will implement something along these lines, that makes it worthwhile to get together in larger groups to harvest resources, and not just for defense.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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On the issue of attacking a town, what if the characters of players who were not online, and were soulbound to the community (or had a house there marked as their primary living space, or something along those lines), would animate as NPC's to defend the town, but their gear would not be lootable as they are not there to determine their level of involvement and risk.
A timer before they could respawn (possibly overriden if the player actually logs on during this time?), and I think this would help protect the settlements from odd hour attacks, but not as effectively as if the players were online themselves.
You just have to make sure that their is incentive to defend your home in person and not log off if their is in attack on your hometown and let the AI handle the defense.
I don't know. Just thinking.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Maybe when controlled by the AI, your toons would only defend the area immediately surrounding their home/residence. Then the defens would be disjointed and uncoordinated, but still cause issues for someone trying to just sneak in and set the whole town on fire.
Maybe the AI assumes control of your character anyway when you log off, and has them just tending the home/shop/camp or resting. Still be unlootable, or at least mostly so, but you could log in and find your character injured if you left them in a unsafe area.
Probably to risky for most people.
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Goblin Squad Member
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On the issue of attacking a town, what if the characters of players who were not online, and were soulbound to the community (or had a house there marked as their primary living space, or something along those lines), would animate as NPC's to defend the town, but their gear would not be lootable as they are not there to determine their level of involvement and risk.
A timer before they could respawn (possibly overriden if the player actually logs on during this time?), and I think this would help protect the settlements from odd hour attacks, but not as effectively as if the players were online themselves.
You just have to make sure that their is incentive to defend your home in person and not log off if their is in attack on your hometown and let the AI handle the defense.
I don't know. Just thinking.
Well in a way your gear is unlootable either way. According to the blog only your carried items are lootable, everything equiped is safe. Logically if you are in your hometown you've dropped off your unequiped stuff either in your room or in a bank of some sort, so that part is moot.
This idea is a good one, I supported it but there was a good amount of disagreement with it. I believe the majority of the discussion was in this thread