Goblin Squad Member
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I understand in a sandbox game it would be silly to restrict players from pvp but i really don't enjoy it. Add in the loss of items from dieing and this is shaping up to be a hardcore gankfest.
I wanted the Pathfinder that we play on a tabletop and that doesn't usually involve players killing each other.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Yeah, the tabletop game doesn't scale well without heavy instancing. It's almost as though individual characters can make choices which directly effect major changes in the world, rather than requiring major coordinated efforts to do so.
Small group gameplay is radically different from massive group gameplay, just like cooperative gameplay is different from competitive gameplay. Not better, not worse, but different. If you like the small cooperative style of gameplay, there are already MMOs that cater to you. PFO does not intend to compete for that niche.
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I think the biggest thing to remember is that Pathfinder Online... won't really be Pathfinder (which is why I think it ought to be called Golarion Online, but that wouldn't sell as well).
The ONLY thing it is likely to have in common with the game is the campaign setting, and some of the details therein. Some ability names will be similar, but this is overall going to be a totally different experience, which, for their small player base goal, will probably be fine. My only issue is that the game will likely be marketed using the Pathfinder name, and people will hop on only to realize it isn't Pathfinder.
More than likely, true PvP will only exist in the unclaimed unchartered areas of the world. Near towns or more secured hexes, you will be relatively safe from harassment from other player characters. While there will more than likely be plenty to do in or near towns and settled areas, the real gold is to be made in the unclaimed areas where enemies (both artificial and player character) exist.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are several safeguards to PvP extremes.
- Bounties, which could very well mean that you could even take the killers stuff if you are allowed to come along.
- If we have some "good guys" you could probably speak of your plight and they could bring down their wrath and ask where it happened for instance.
- NPC settlements (and later player ones) will/could send out guards to protect you, which also makes the attackers unwelcome.
- Most PvP will likely be limited to fast travelling (triggering ambushes) and lawless areas.
We are putting alot of faith into the combination of defenses, bounties, and those who will take up the cause of justice.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I do have a feeling that if you don't like PVP, 70% of the core of the game will not be to your liking, unless you have a strong enjoyment of crafting/harvesting/building, and don't mind having an enterage with you if you want to harvest rarer more valuble materials. There will be a decent amount of PVE, but the sounds of it, the greatest rewards will come from venturing into areas in which PVP is a threat.
The general concept I see for it is a very valid one IMO. One thing an MMO can never do that a P&P game can, is the P&P game can simultaniosly have persistance (IE the princess you saved, stays saved and dosn't need you to save her again, nor 500 people after you etc...) while continuing ot generate new content. The P&P model works great for up to a 6:1 player to GM ratio, but for a sustanable game if you want persistance, the DM's cannot make the bulk of the content.
Thus there are 2 choices, either throw away persistance, or allow/encorage conflict and political structures where players are each-others friends/enemies.
Bottom line, there are litterally hundreds of games right now that went the throw persistance away model, only a handful that actually allow meaningful PVP (Meaningful as in the world changes as a result, rather than the bell rings and the winner gets a prize and everything else remains the same).
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Goblin Squad Member
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PvP seems problematic to me as well, from the leveling standpoint. Sure, there will be "safe" zones where you'll be fine. But how to deal with players camping just outside the safe zone, waiting for players 10+ levels lower to come out.
With PvE it's relatively simple to do "leveling" of the dungeons (average level of the whole party - x-2, x+2, ala CoH et al). Not completely clear yet how that would work with PvP. A 15th level mage could just blast a 1st or 2nd level character (or characters - Hello Mr. Fireball!) to bits in one round.
Thoughts?
what is the problem with PVP? ok, take PVP away.
what if monsters/NPCs were actually dangerous, and actually were motivated by realistic goals,
e.g. getting revenge, wiping out those they hate and their allies, and taking their s&%*.
(like most PCs tend to do vs. NPC factions/etc)
if you stay in safer areas, you should be fine. have your guild hire themselves out as guards in safe areas,
where you keep the advantage of numbers in your favor (in all likelyhood) and you get the pleasure of fighting 'evil players' who would commit crimes against other players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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- If we have some "good guys" you could probably speak of your plight and they could bring down their wrath and ask where it happened for instance.
Oh, good guys don't have a monopoly on the revenge business. I guarantee you there will be some not so good guys willing and prepared to handle such matters.
also note: how goblinworks describes their system, your gear that you USE can't be looted, only excess stuff you are carrying around. so don't carry too much of that with you and you can't lose it... at any point, you can only lose what you are carrying (in excess of equipped gear), so when harvesting, etc, you just risk what you have gained in that time, nothing more. share the profits with some friendly combat-optimized munchkins, and you don't need to fear robbers and just have a small reasonable fee that you account for when planning your profit-making enterprises.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also you're assuming that everyone is going to be a great screaming flaming phallus to the eyeballs once out of a secure hex. Most people aren't going to go Chaotic Psychopath the instant they are out of the Hex. People will be very, very cautious, naturally, but I doubt we're going to see EvE's pirate-guilds circle-jerks around the warp gates right away, although for the PvPers there is likely going to be some delicious three-way shenanigans between the Hell Knights, the Crusaders of Iomaede and the NPC Brigands if the other Players decide they want to hold hands and skip through the fields rather than slaughter each other for a pouch full of rat-pelts.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also you're assuming that everyone is going to be a great screaming flaming phallus to the eyeballs once out of a secure hex.
this is one of the single best uses of language i've seen this year. And also makes a good point concerning the concerns of the initial post. PvP will be a concern even in the highest risk zones, but just based on the population density vs vast amounts of space, I can't imagine there will be walls of gang-ganking bandits and roaming hordes of bloodthirsty profiteers.
Chief Technical Officer
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PvP seems problematic to me as well, from the leveling standpoint. Sure, there will be "safe" zones where you'll be fine. But how to deal with players camping just outside the safe zone, waiting for players 10+ levels lower to come out.
I'm wondering if you've read the design blogs. Specifically, you'll want to learn about the bounty system described in this blog, and about how character levels work in this blog—(both in terms of how one levels up, and in terms of relative power levels between players).
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Goblin Squad Member
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... and about how character levels work in this blog—(both in terms of how one levels up, and in terms of relative power levels between players).
Vic, there has been a ton of speculation about the relative power levels between players. Could you please quote the particular piece of that blog you're talking about?
Or just summarize the goal, if it's not stated directly enough in the blog.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... and about how character levels work in this blog—(both in terms of how one levels up, and in terms of relative power levels between players).Vic, there has been a ton of speculation about the relative power levels between players. Could you please quote the particular piece of that blog you're talking about?
I was about to ask the same question, so far the only official word I have heard on relative power, was Vic's statement that a multiple capstoned character is not intended to be more powerful than a capstoned, but more versatile. I've found next to nothing on how a 3 month will compare to a 6 month or a 1 year will compare to a 2.5 year in character.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Vic, there has been a ton of speculation about the relative power levels between players. Could you please quote the particular piece of that blog you're talking about?
Sure. Maybe it's not as obvious as it could have been—and part of that was my own doing; Ryan was more specific in his original draft, but I felt that part of what he said was too specific and also likely to be misunderstood by many, so I removed it. In doing so, it became less potentially misleading, but also less explicit.
[On the tabletop] at the earliest levels, characters are learning how to survive as adventurers, with a substantial risk of catastrophe every time they go exploring. At slightly higher levels, the characters have acquired some experience at their craft and can usually take on most opponents and win, especially if they work together with a team. As characters continue to level up, they will eventually become notable heroes, gaining access to all sorts of special abilities such as flight, remote viewing, and the ability to change shape and form. At the highest levels in the game, the characters are practically demigods, getting involved in world-shaking adventures and often venturing into other dimensions and planes to confront the most powerful opponents. At 20th level—the maximum level currently supported by the Pathfinder RPG—characters that haven't multiclassed earn a "capstone ability," a special and really cool power reserved for characters who chose to master a single class throughout their adventuring career.
... Pathfinder Online is going to focus primarily on the kinds of classic adventure content that the tabletop game features at moderate levels—exploring dangerous areas and confronting monsters and villains that are scary and dangerous, but not challenging cosmic horrors or universe-destroyers.
The part Ryan originally had in there that I thought was likely to be misunderstood is that he called out power level in Pathfinder Online using a specific Pathfinder RPG equivalent. I don't have access to that draft right now, but the original phrasing was something like "...the kinds of classic adventure content that the tabletop game features at levels 7 through 12."
To be really clear here, I struck that because I didn't want people to use it to draw conclusions such as "all wizards probably can cast fly" or "druids won't be able to summon greater elementals," or other things that are *not* intended by that statement. He was just talking about adventure content and power level in a very generic sense, and that absolutely does not extend to specific mechanics.
What he *is* saying is that if you want to compare Pathfinder Online power levels to the Pathfinder RPG, we're talking about Pathfinder Online being all about mid-level adventuring.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Level advancement is more about gaining new options than about increasing the power level. Somebody who's trained ten levels is going to be only slightly less powerful than the person who has trained thirty, but the person who has thirty levels will have a much wider variety of potential actions to take.
In Pathfinder RPG terms, imagine two wizards that can cast spells of exactly the same levels, but one of them has a lot more spells in his spellbook.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Level advancement is more about gaining new options than about increasing the power level. Somebody who's trained ten levels is going to be only slightly less powerful than the person who has trained thirty, but the person who has thirty levels will have a much wider variety of potential actions to take.
In Pathfinder RPG terms, imagine two wizards that can cast spells of exactly the same levels, but one of them has a lot more spells in his spellbook.
Awsome that is one of the main things I really wanted to hear, I know a few as well as myself have been worrying quite a bit about the possibility of it taking 2.5 years to be able to be competitive in PVP. Considering that is going to be a notable fact of the game, I like the idea of tactics, timing and player skill taking much precidence over raw time having played etc...
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Chief Technical Officer
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Is the wizard analogy better than the analogy of two sorcerers, one of which has more spells known? Or somewhere in between?
The difference, of course, being what can be done right now, rather than what one player could have been able to do...
Yeah, sorcerer is probably an even better analogy.
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Chief Technical Officer
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I know a few as well as myself have been worrying quite a bit about the possibility of it taking 2.5 years to be able to be competitive in PVP. Considering that is going to be a notable fact of the game, I like the idea of tactics, timing and player skill taking much precidence over raw time having played etc...
We said in the blog:
We know people are apprehensive about the "first mover advantage," where the earliest adopters are able to hold all the power, and we want to assure everyone that we're going to avoid that problem. The world of Pathfinder Online is not going to be dominated by the characters and groups who are the first to explore the world. Players who enter the game later will have similar opportunities to carve their kingdoms out of the wilderness.
While the second part of that paragraph is specifically about exploration, the first sentence could stand alone. We want the most important distinction between established players and newbies to be that the established players have been having fun longer.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Is the wizard analogy better than the analogy of two sorcerers, one of which has more spells known? Or somewhere in between?
The difference, of course, being what can be done right now, rather than what one player could have been able to do...
Yeah, sorcerer is probably an even better analogy.
Using skill focus: Jump to conclusions, I think that the skill system will have lots of branches, but each branch will be of fairly short length, typically around a few months before the diminishing returns on that branch make starting other branches very attractive. It also means that there is a strong reason to give every character a weakness that can be used against them to great effect. That's going to result in a lot of unwarranted complaints when it is discovered that whatever build the complainer thinks should be invulnerable does in fact have a major weakness.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Level advancement is more about gaining new options than about increasing the power level. Somebody who's trained ten levels is going to be only slightly less powerful than the person who has trained thirty, but the person who has thirty levels will have a much wider variety of potential actions to take.
In Pathfinder RPG terms, imagine two wizards that can cast spells of exactly the same levels, but one of them has a lot more spells in his spellbook.
Interesting. Does this mean no increases in HP or damage dice of spells as a character progresses?
Am I right in saying then that it sounds like you are planning on all characters, concerning HP and damage dice, basically starting off and staying at level 10ish, but just becoming a level 10ish that can do a larger and larger variety of things over the course of time? Not more and more deadly things, or productive things, just different?
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Chief Technical Officer
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Interesting. Does this mean no increases in HP or damage dice of spells as a character progresses?
We didn't say anything like that. All we said is that power levels won't have dramatic increases; options will.
I'm convinced that most of the issues that people in this forum are having are the result of trying to map the things we've said too strictly to Pathfinder RPG mechanics. Free your mind, and the rest will follow!
So what will prevent people from joining your group to gank you in the deep dungeon. This is why I stopped playing Diablo with people online...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thanks for all the clarifications and notes on this, very interesting stuff.
To clarify though:
I'm convinced that most of the issues that people in this forum are having are the result of trying to map the things we've said too strictly to Pathfinder RPG mechanics. Free your mind, and the rest will follow!
Well, no, not at all actually. It's simple to control within RPG mechanics - the DM can even "fudge" damage rates on the fly as necessary to help the story.
I've played *a lot* of MMO's. I am definitely not mapping RPG mechanics on MMO's. I don't expect it to be at all the same. The issue/concern is specifcally around theorycraft and DPS within video games, especially MMO's. Those whacky kids will figure out the most optimal way to blast away at folks in an extremely short amount of time, if it's at all possible. Take it from me - I used to be one of them. :-)
DPS, DPS, DPS. That's entirely the concern. Brought it up because I want the game to be "fun" and sell like crazy. It sounds like you're already thinking about these things though, so consider it "feedback" (what you want, right?) and look forward to more details as they arrive. :-)
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Since PFO is very heavily influenced by EVE Online, there are significant differences between PnP and PFO's skills concept. The best way to contrast/compare the many will be familiar with is a few comparisons with WoW. EVE predates WoW by the better part of a year between launch dates as I understand.
WoW uses a narrowly focused level-based progression that a player can hit the level cap within a few months or so. The class-based level progession contains a specific set of abilities, armor and weapon proficiencies, access to four secondary professions and a choice of two from amongst three gathering professions (herbalism, mining, skinning) and a variety of crafting professions that use a combination of item recipes, vendor-only items and player-gathered materials. Once your character hits the "cap" in these various factors, the character is "done".
EVE doesn't dictate anything but a race-specific basic starting skills set. There are about 300 skills in the game, each trainable from level 1-5. These skills are assigned a numerical rank. The lower the rank, the faster each level of that skill can be trained. A rank 1 skill is extremely basic and very fast to train, with the 5th level of that skill taking a few days' real time to complete training. The highest rank skill in the game I believe has a rank of 20 - training such a skill takes roughly 3 months of real time to train from level 1 to level 5.
The skills are assinged to various categories, such as Science or Gunnery. How fast a character is able to train skills from a particular category as a general rule of thumb is govorned by the primary and secondary attributes for that skill. For example, as a general rule a character's Percpetion (primary attribute) and Willpower (secondary attribute) govorn how fast in skill points per time unit, the Gunnery, Missiles and Spaceship Command skills are trained.
However, the Electronics, Engineering and Mechanic skill categories contain numerous skills that passively improve the statistical values of every ship you fly (as does Navigation). If your character has extremely high Perception and Willpower they will train "combat" skills very fast while suffering a much slower training rate for all other skills.
As you learn more and more skills your versatility increases. Within your first day of game play you can, potentially, be flying around in a destroyer instead of your rookie ship. Within a week you could have developed a fairly broad, basic, skills set permitting you to something other than shoot things. Basic resource gathering, basic production ability, basic self-repair, faster navigation, a respectable capacity to shoot things while tossing out 2 or 3 combat drones to help you kill stuff and more.
Within your first year you will have solidly carved out one or two niches to a near-perfect capability. You have no "cap" to hit. If you're of the mind, you can develop skills to engage in "market PvP" over entire regions of space, command a fleet of your allies, administer a corporation of hundreds of players or to facilitate flying the battleships and battlecruisers of your fancy with more than adequate capacity.
By contrast, in WoW I have already maxx'd one character's entire ability/skills set out in a mere 3 1/2 months - and another five are already at 50th out of 85 levels. In order to have access to all of the professions, I have no alternative. By contrast, my EVE character could fight reasonably well across several hull classifications, had near-maximum harvesting capacity and was competent enough to build basic stuff to meet his own needs without having to shell out hard-earned cash constantly for ammunition.
After more than 8 years my one character *still* cannot do everything that there is do. He is however very, very good at doing the rest of the things that there are to do. If I decide that I want to go do something, odds are that I can do it, or learn how to with proficiency in short order.
TL;DR: With enough time, there will be almost nothing you will not be able to do if you choose to do so. It's all a matter of what you choose to learn how to do and when you choose to learn it. In PATHFINDER ONLINE you are what you forged yourself into being.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Much of this has little to do with my original concern but the extra info and clarification was great.
My concern still stands. I enjoy pvp when its Call of Duty when i can participate with no risk of losing anything. When there is the potential to lose stuff it took me hours to earn I'm not into that.
Not saying its wrong, just not my cup of tea and will probably prevent me from playing. Unless being a city merchant/builder turns out to really fun...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Much of this has little to do with my original concern but the extra info and clarification was great.
My concern still stands. I enjoy pvp when its Call of Duty when i can participate with no risk of losing anything. When there is the potential to lose stuff it took me hours to earn I'm not into that.
Not saying its wrong, just not my cup of tea and will probably prevent me from playing. Unless being a city merchant/builder turns out to really fun...
Well one thing to note considering in PK deaths the most you can lose is going to be what you earned on that particular trip (or what you've gained since you last stopped by the bank). So say in a pick up group if you were attacked by your group, the worse you have to worry about is losing what you earned in that particular lair or so. Essentially that is more or less no greater of a loss/risk as say in a non PVP game like WoW, missing out on that great sword at the end of an instance run, because the darn mage thought it would be a good idea to roll need on that rare sword etc... and it likely will be worked out the same way as that scenerio is in WoW, people develop reputatations in groups etc... word of mouth spreads, and people form guilds/chartered companies to know who is trustworthy. Someone hurts his own team in a chartered company he gets the boot from it. In addition guilds/chartered companies form relationships with eachother, and reach relationships where guild X can message the leader of guild Y, about a person in guild Y ganking and stealing from them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Onishi that's provided you're meticulous about storing whatever you've previously gathered. Storage and carrying capacity info is still 100% player speculation at this point.
Even if that speculation is correct, are you storing your stuff in a safe town? or in a hideout closer by? What if the PKer tracks you to your hideout, kills you, then his buddies join in and tear apart and loot your hideout?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Onishi that's provided you're meticulous about storing whatever you've previously gathered. Storage and carrying capacity info is still 100% player speculation at this point.
Even if that speculation is correct, are you storing your stuff in a safe town? or in a hideout closer by? What if the PKer tracks you to your hideout, kills you, then his buddies join in and tear apart and loot your hideout?
Every description of hideout pretty much has implied they are insanely difficult to find etc... If it is as easy as simply following someone then people will go to towns to store their goods, and I wouldn't go as far as to say it is speculation that people won't carry more items then they need to on a regular basis, that is just plain common sense. In the topic of fast travel it was implied that even extremely remote locations can be reached from town within a half hour. Someone carrying more than 3 hours worth of gains on themselves at once... would have to be flat out crazy.
Oh one other thing that you have wrong in your speculation.
Hideouts can be destroyed by individuals. If a hideout is destroyed, any objects in its local storage are destroyed as well.
There is absolutely no indication that people can loot a hideout, people can find it, people can destroy it if they are so determined to do so (which again I'm pretty sure it should be easy enough not to give away it's location just by going to it, they have already mentioned they have no intention of adding stealth/invisibility, so checking for a follower should be easy enough), but there is absolutely no gain in doing so for them, it would be a difficult fight with no reward.
The point of ambushing a hideout would be specifically to remove a band of thieves from being able to attack fast travelers in an area. Attacking a non-hostile hideout with no motive would be a costly endevor with pretty much no reward.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As others have already pointed out, you'll only lose what is in your inventory and as long as you've not spent the last 8 hours running quests without putting stuff in your bank then there isn't really going to be an issue.
Now for harvesting, that is a different kettle of fish but I'd suggest either a) harvesting as part of a crew, b) harvesting in safe areas or c) being very, very good at hiding.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Onishi that's provided you're meticulous about storing whatever you've previously gathered. Storage and carrying capacity info is still 100% player speculation at this point.
Even if that speculation is correct, are you storing your stuff in a safe town? or in a hideout closer by? What if the PKer tracks you to your hideout, kills you, then his buddies join in and tear apart and loot your hideout?
Hideouts can be destroyed by individuals. If a hideout is destroyed, any objects in its local storage are destroyed as well.There is absolutely no indication that people can loot a hideout, people can find it, people can destroy it if they are so determined to do so (which again I'm pretty sure it should be easy enough not to give away it's location just by going to it, they have already mentioned they have no intention of adding stealth/invisibility, so checking for a follower should be easy enough), but there is absolutely no gain in doing so for them, it would be a difficult fight with no reward.
The point of ambushing a hideout would be specifically to remove a band of thieves from being able to attack fast travelers in an area. Attacking a non-hostile hideout with no motive would be a costly endeavor with pretty much no reward.
Depending on the hideout I will disagree with you on their being no reward for destroying it. If the hideout belongs to a rival guild member you have denied them resources. Do that enough and the rival guild will no longer be a threat.
If anyone else played or remembers the Darktide server on Asherons Call (I was in HoS) there were plenty of fights for res spots, towns and dungeons for leveling/loot. People did defend or attack for resources and some guilds were disbanded due to concerted attacks on them. I guarantee you people WILL look for and destroy hideouts for the advantage in a war and/or because some people just enjoy destroying what others have saved.
Also would like to know if guilds/allegiances will me limited in size. Otherwise huge guilds will end up with an advantage due to sheer numbers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One of the things that can moderate the concerns is best viewed in a risk vs reward scale. If you have a heavy interest in harvesting, or exploring deep woods, you will already have decided to accept a significant amount of risk for the potential for a significant amount of rewards. If you're not comfortable with that, you can stay closer to a safe zone, make less of a profit margin and still have fun. Or, one day you can do X and the other Y. One of the things that excites me most abou the potential for this game, is I'll be able to go out and do what ever I feel like on any given Sunday. That kind of freedom (combined with some themepark and a lot of sandbox) doesn't have a lot of comparison in current MMOs.
Personally, i'm sure at some point fairly early, I'm going to be romping around way out in the woods and out of my league, and i'll get dead. Then I'll get up from my desk, get a glass of water or a bite to eat, figure out what went wrong, and go find my body. If someone ganked me, and I happened to be carrying that One Really Nice Hunk of Adamantine Nugget... well, then I didn't do a good job of hiding/fighting, and I'll go get glass of water, etc... This is what I would do in the early days of WoW with a level 20 Rogue skirting aggro ranges of monsters in the depths of level 50 zones. In PFO, this behavior will actually be rewarded as I'll have the potential for some huge boon.
I guess the heart of my point is if you die, you just get back to it, the penalty for death in this game will never inhibit me from deciding to dial up my risk.
This is somewhat long and off topic, as it's more about PvP in general and some questions.
I can only come to the conclusion that it must be aspects of pvp situations that turn people off rather than the thought of an intelligent being playing the role of a character they're fighting/encountering that causes people to dislike the idea of PvP.
What if in all those PvP experiences that lead up to a negative impression you honestly didn't know it was a human behind the character, but instead assumed it was AI, would you have disliked the game for having opponents that weren't utterly predictable or enjoyed the unexpected bugbear ambush for the excitement it brought?
Knowing it's another player must play a large role in turning people off. Although I guess I can imagine that if previous games handled PvP poorly by offering little reason to either engage or not engage in PvP and little to no reward of any kind to make it worthwhile it could be seen as just an unnecessary interruption.
I can't imagine any other reasons for disliking an encounter with intelligently controlled game characters - A.I. is only a necessary technological restriction, not the better choice, no? I guess I could be alone in that, but I'd be (a little) surprised if I was.
Why is it viewed as so much worse if a player of an enemy faction springs from the bushes and kills your character than if an enraged A.I. Minotaur charged out of the underbrush and slaughtered you, if not for the information that it was another player?
Ideally I would think in a fantasy world like that of Pathfinder we'd have *all* except maybe the lowest beast operated by a human GM or player, after all, AI can only do so much.
What advantage do predictable AI mobs have over a living and thinking opponent that makes people prefer them?
I realize this post may sound 'anti-PvE players' as it's currently considered, but I'm not attempting to offend anyone, I'm just honestly curious if with these things in mind, people would still be against fighting intelligently controlled characters/monsters/enemies (provided the rewards and consequences are the same as they would be from an AI controlled character), and if so, what's the most honest reason you can think of to explain it?
I'd thought we were just tolerating AI controlled characters because hiring thousands of workers to play various roles was unreasonable, not because AI was more entertaining.
P.S.: I hope I'm clearly making my point but I've got a fever at the moment and on some pretty powerful stuff, so I could have just typed anything up there - I'll re-read it tomorrow.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What if in all those PvP experiences that lead up to a negative impression you honestly didn't know it was a human behind the character, but instead assumed it was AI...
If one of my earliest experiences in a game was to be ganked by an AI Mob 10 levels higher than me, and then repeatedly dying to the same AI Mob over and over as I tried to recover what few valuables I had on my corpse, I would despise that game.
Knowing it's another player must play a large role in turning people off.
I don't think so. I think it's the behavior itself, not who's doing it.
I remain convinced that the main opposition to PvP is from players who have had horrific experiences, and that it would make not one whit of difference if it had been AI instead of another player.
The only real difference is that no game company in their right mind would program AI to gank newbies.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think also much of the concern is based on the large disparities we see in levels from other games. A freshly created character can be utterly annihilated in less than a second by a max level player, and with total impunity. As I understand it, levels will not work in this way for PFO. Much of what I've read indicates that efficacy between levels will be comparable (more like the table than other MMOs). From what I've read, they've analyzed lots of different scenarios and mechanics, and will likely put together a nice balance.
As to the scenario where you attempt to recover your backpack full of goodies from an AI that you couldn't kill the first time, a number of scenarios are available beyond throwing yourself back at it time and time gain. Wait for it to leave the area, snatch and grab, try a new tactic recruit some assistance, and ultimately just let it go. Obviously its a just a strawman to pinata on until we can get deeper details.
To Valkaern's forward thinking question; Indeed what is it about PvP that one doesn't like. I find the times I don't enjoy it is when i feel like the situation was mechanically insurmountable. If I lose a PvP fight due to my inexperience or lack of skill, my desire for revenge is gilded in a little bit of admiration for the victor. Also, when there's no method of disengaging from a scenario that I'm truly not in the mood for, then I find that a huge turn off.
For PFO I'm truly not worried about the griefing angle, as the base mechanics as described don't seem like an issue. I'll always have the option of re-engaging in a gankfest. Losing the pile of goodies in my pack is simply the upfront risks of a deep woods project. That I won't be stripped naked and left to fume seems a good compromise to me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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From this post.
Somebody who's trained ten levels is going to be only slightly less powerful than the person who has trained thirty...
To me, that's fantastically good news as it means that a single Capstone character isn't going to be able to defeat an infinite number of low level characters. I would imagine there's going to be a break-even point somewhere around 6 or 7 Merit Badges where you're sturdy enough to go out and not be one-shotted, and where you might even prevail if you have friends.
I've stayed away from the numerous PvP threads but I'm going to throw in my two coppers this time. Although probably from a different perspective than most.
Like I have said numerous times before I'd like this game to at least try and capture some of the pen and paper atmoshpere.
One thing typical about pen and paper games is that you don't have the players killing each other. Sure...it could happen...but it is usually the result of a long and ardous dispute between two members or some other kind of heavy roleplaying event.
So...my thoughts go like this. I don't want to throw PvP totally out the window because combat (and other) vs another human mind can certainly be entertaining.
I have seen many attempts at full PvP and the results where not so good. You momentarily got a bunch of kids who started bullying other weaker group of kids...or something like that. It was again a Neverwinter Nights persistent world server and it was about players playing as drow and starting in the underdark slowly working their way up to the ground and attacking the towns there.
Sure, in the case of the drows it makes sense cause they have like their own society and stuff...but I mean how do you roleplay and orc? I mean who wants to spend their whole gaming life roleplaying an orc?
So...my suggestion is this..although far fetched. Let most monsters use advanced AI while the most intelligent monsters be controlled by semi-payed professionals (DM's). Even high ranked players could be 'invited' to play monsters for a short period of time and being payed by for example given the ability to progress further or making their player character more powerful.
Just brainstorming a bit here but hope it was useful to someone...
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Goblin Squad Member
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The reason why so many players in mmo's do not enjoy PvP is simply it's never fair. You ever wonder why so many gamers in themepark games rush to lvl cap?
Look at games like TF2, BF2, CoD etc. These games are very popular and PvP is the main focus, the reason why it's fun for players is that everyone is on the same playing field ands it's a fair fight.
In most MMO's PvP is seldom a fair fight and that tends to discourage players from wanting to participate.
If GW can spread the lvling curve over a vast amount of time (2.5 yrs to cap) and provide a fairly level playing field, PvP will not be avoided but rather embraced by most.
Make PvP fair and players will have fun!
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Goblin Squad Member
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The reason why so many players in mmo's do not enjoy PvP is simply it's never fair. You ever wonder why so many gamers in themepark games rush to lvl cap?
Look at games like TF2, BF2, CoD etc. These games are very popular and PvP is the main focus, the reason why it's fun for players is that everyone is on the same playing field ands it's a fair fight.
In most MMO's PvP is seldom a fair fight and that tends to discourage players from wanting to participate.
If GW can spread the lvling curve over a vast amount of time (2.5 yrs to cap) and provide a fairly level playing field, PvP will not be avoided but rather embraced by most.
Make PvP fair and players will have fun!
+1 and reminds me of what i like about FPS games vs MMO PvP. Parity between players is assured, even if equality is discouraged.
RL = PvP
d20 = anyone's game
No matter how good you are, no matter how crappy you are, it is anyone's game when that 1 or 20 decides to show up. I believe a leveled playing field will make PvP a little more realistic and a little more fun. After all, don't pick on the new guy... you never know when the gods are going to grant him a critical hit.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've stayed away from the numerous PvP threads but I'm going to throw in my two coppers this time. Although probably from a different perspective than most.
Like I have said numerous times before I'd like this game to at least try and capture some of the pen and paper atmoshpere.
One thing typical about pen and paper games is that you don't have the players killing each other. Sure...it could happen...but it is usually the result of a long and ardous dispute between two members or some other kind of heavy roleplaying event.
So...my thoughts go like this. I don't want to throw PvP totally out the window because combat (and other) vs another human mind can certainly be entertaining.
I have seen many attempts at full PvP and the results where not so good. You momentarily got a bunch of kids who started bullying other weaker group of kids...or something like that. It was again a Neverwinter Nights persistent world server and it was about players playing as drow and starting in the underdark slowly working their way up to the ground and attacking the towns there.
Sure, in the case of the drows it makes sense cause they have like their own society and stuff...but I mean how do you roleplay and orc? I mean who wants to spend their whole gaming life roleplaying an orc?
So...my suggestion is this..although far fetched. Let most monsters use advanced AI while the most intelligent monsters be controlled by semi-payed professionals (DM's). Even high ranked players could be 'invited' to play monsters for a short period of time and being payed by for example given the ability to progress further or making their player character more powerful.
Just brainstorming a bit here but hope it was useful to someone...
Yeah, you don't have players killing each-other(usually), this is largely because you are playing with people you know, or that are in the same room as you. People's personalities change when they aren't face to face. The pen and paper atmosphere is impossible to move into an MMO because the guy you are bad-mouthing can't kick you in the balls and you have no prior relationship to maintain. You will never get an entirely 'nice' atmosphere in an MMO.
The only people that should ever 'take control' of any entity in the game have to be paid people sitting in the GW studio being monitored by someone. This is not fiscally responsible and takes money away from development. The only people you pay to play your game should be first release in-house testers.
The more you want this game to feel like you are playing a PnP the more you will be turned off when it is released. Expect everything to be new systems and you will appreciate the few things from the pnp that bleed into the game a lot more.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If PFO players start killing each other regularly, that's a serious problem.
There's nothing wrong with CHARACTERS killing each other, mind you...
Hmm... if we start running into players killing eachother, do we report to a GM, call the cops, or ask for advice from Jack Chick