Goblin Squad Member
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Will there be alignment repercussions for doing "evil" acts?
If a paladin, ranger, good cleric go on a week long gankfest and rack up dozens of murders/bounties will there be consequences ?
There have been dozens of posts on this and no official confirmation. IMO there shouldn't be. Any alignment system is subject to be gamed, in both directions.
1. Paladin knows exactly what will give him just enough "good guy" points to go on a killing spree, retreat back and re-earn good guy points again.
2. Evil guild hates paladin, they continue to fashion methods where the only way to stop them from doing horrible things to the paladin's town, involves the paladin doing something that will cost him his class.
As a result, I do not think alignment repercussions are going to accomplish anything other then grant newer harsher forms of griefing. It is pretty much a guarantee any system will be gamed to the worse extent.
If it is automated, people will learn exactly what triggers what
If it is player/voter based, people will group together to ruin someone
The only fair system is GM's watching every alignment restricted class, which is not even half way feasible. Alignment having short term nusances like inability to go into town etc... is reasonable. Long term effects like, say completely negating a class you've spent 2.5 years training temporarily or permanently is outrageous.
Honestly I seriously doubt ganking/killing fests are ever really going to be a factor in high security areas. Between marshals being out and the rewards being lower, it sounds far more likely that ganking will happen in the wilderness, where it can't and won't effect alignment, because no automated system can differentiate a fair kill, a necessary kill and a gratuitous kill.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I do hope that there will be alignment restricted classes, and alignment repercussions for overtly evil acts. It's a key facet of the P&P games.
If GW decides we can't have any nice things because a griefer somewhere might be able to twist it around... well, we won't have nice things, will we?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I do hope that there will be alignment restricted classes, and alignment repercussions for overtly evil acts. It's a key facet of the P&P games.
If GW decides we can't have any nice things because a griefer somewhere might be able to twist it around... well, we won't have nice things, will we?
It's not so much a question of it being a mechanic that can be gamed by griefers (although that's certainly a major concern), but rather it's a question of whether any computer system can ever determine "overtly evil acts". Far, far more concerning to me is the game system determining that I'm doing something evil when I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that what I'm doing is righteous in the eyes of God.
As an experiment, I invite you to try to write a plain English definition of "overtly evil acts", and see what kinds of loopholes people find.
I think the best way to keep folk from 'gaming the system' is to keep them from being able to earn 'good guy points'.
And I believe GW has already mentioned that there will be some sort of alignment system related to PvP. They can just hook that up with paladins.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If GW can't model an alignment system, they get to decide if they dump alignment entirely; debuff paladins (and monks, etc), since they no longer have a major behaviour limit; or something else.
Good and evil acts might just be limited to what the game says they are. For example, an illegal killing in NPC lands might be determined to be evil, and doing it might lose some paladin's benefits. If the game warns the player, they know what is out of alignment and can avoid it, regardless of how they think their god wants them to behave.
I think modeling "good" might be harder. I'll leave it to them to figure out how to do it; I'm not interested in giving up alignment yet. But like the kobold suggests, having a system where good points weigh against bad points isn't necessarily the answer.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If GW can't model an alignment system, they get to decide if they dump alignment entirely; debuff paladins (and monks, etc), since they no longer have a major behaviour limit; or something else.
How many times does it need to be said that "buffing" and "nerfing" are moot points before the game is made. The game isn't a true port of the P&P game, doubly so when it comes to the power level of classes, considering it is an entirely different system and everything said is drastically different then P&P in terms of power level. (AKA someone with 30 levels, will not be significantly more powerful then someone with 10). Monk and paladin don't need to be "debuffed" because they will almost definently be on even grounds with other classes to begin with, (and are you seriously implying that you think monks and paladins are significantly stronger than non-alignment restricted classes in pathfinder, and their restrictions are useful to balance that out?)
I'm not saying alignment can't have an effect, but allowing alignment to completely trash 2.5 years of work on a character, is just a flawed concept. Doubly so when you realize that people who actually want to be evil acting paladins will just stay outside of NPC towns, and if you were to assume that alignment restricted classes are more powerful, then paladins would likely be at the heads of the most tyrannical aggressive guilds in non NPC territory. As we pretty much all can agree that alignment in player territory is completely impossible.
I'm certainly OK with alignment having purposes. I am fine with it being detectable by players, effecting what shrines one can go to, what towns one can buy from etc...
The bottom line falling classes in P&P is the most heated and disputed topic, and even with human DMs that have closely watched the character 100% of the time from it's creation, people can't fully agree on what a fair reason to fall is. Also good DMs avoid catch 22's where you are screwed either way, while an enemy player would be focusing on creating such a scenerio every chance they get.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the key is to avoid trying to restrict alignment based on behavior. It's impossible for a computer system to effectively determine whether killing someone is righteous or wicked.
I think a better solution is to give alignments to magical items, and require Paladins to only use non-evil items. That's a very easy, bright-line distinction that can't be gamed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think a better solution is to give alignments to magical items, and require Paladins to only use non-evil items. That's a very easy, bright-line distinction that can't be gamed.
Things might also be done with companies or settlements. If 3/4 of the members identify as evil, the game might decide it's an evil group.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think a better solution is to give alignments to magical items, and require Paladins to only use non-evil items. That's a very easy, bright-line distinction that can't be gamed.Things might also be done with companies or settlements. If 3/4 of the members identify as evil, the game might decide it's an evil group.
While consorting with evil-aligned characters is another bright-line as far as detection goes, the spirit of P&P allows Paladins to work with evil-aligned characters to accomplish good results.
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Goblin Squad Member
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They have to have an alignment system or you have a lot of spells/abilities that won't be in game.
Protection from evil/good
Smite evil..etc, etc..Will none of these abilities work on players?
No matter what there will be a lot of spells/abilities that won't be in the game, and most likely there will be spells/abilities that do not origionate from the pathfinder tabletop game.
Just a quick off the top of my head list
Probably not going to be in or will at least be hugely modified:
Teleport
Gate
Wish/mirracle
Dimension Ancor
Plane shift
Fabricate
Gasseous form
Wind walk
Blasphemy
Gentle reprose
speak with dead
Control Weather
Guidence
Symbol of _____
Wall of Stone
Dream
Weird
Zone of truth
Reincarnate
Polymorph
Desecrate
Timestop
That is just off the top of my head things that I could come up with in a minute or so. The entire arguement X must be there because Y won't work then, is a moot point when it comes to anything in PFO, considering everything is being built from the ground up. Yes goblinworks will try and keep as much to the flavor of the P&P that they can, but quite a bit is also inevitably going to be cut changed and replaced to make a working sandbox MMO.
That being said some extent of alignment will probably exist, because the developers have used refference to alignment in both posts and blogs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree that there should be consequences for not following your alignment in a class like a paladin or a cleric of god with a specific alignment but I also agree that losing your class is ridiculous, and that if that is implemented griefers WILL find a way to abuse it.
I think a happy medium would be to require penance. Suppose you accidentally commit an act of evil as a lawful-good paladin. There might be a quest, or perhaps you have to pay a certain amount of gold to the church. You might suffer a light penalty until you do so. Or perhaps you have a time in which to do so after which you suffer a major penalty.
Griefers will still find loopholes but as long as they are actively working to minimize loopholes and the penalties are pretty light as opposed to utterly ruining people, it will be fine.
BTW. I thought this topic was suggesting an Anti-Paladin class such as a Black Guard. Which would be totally awesome. ;)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I still think they should make the alignment system based off the absolutes as defined by the gods. Each god has an alignment and doing missions for any god will move you toward their alignment.
Of course, the missions would have to be themepark content and be based upon the needs of the deity. Some deities will push their followers to do PvP...these deities have PvP missions, etc. Since the gods are not omniscient, random non-missions related deeds are not "seen" because the deity has more important things to worry about.
This is the only way I can foresee alignment working. It can even be a slow addition of missions, but at least it still allows for alignment and what I feel should be necessary alignment restrictions.
The only alternative is the debuffing of usually limited classes as suggested above...an no one wants this.
EDIT: I suppose the missions do not need to be themepark...for instance the PvP missions are not themepark...we just need to figure out how to make equivalent missions for each gods respective priorities.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... make the alignment system based off the absolutes as defined by the gods.
You're right, this would only be meaningful for Theme Park content, but I think that would be a very good way of dealing with my concerns. If doing a particular task is defined as "pleasing to Iomedae" instead of "good", then I'm not going to worry as much if I personally consider it "not good".
Why not make two servers, one where alignment is not in the game and one where alignment is in the game? The one where alignment is in the game would be a complete port of pathfinder as P&P
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Multiple servers has downsides greater than the worst proposed alignment system.
I still like allowing players to define their alignment, and then putting arbitrary restrictions and benefits based on alignment. Lawful characters can't commit assault or murder, steal, &tc. Good characters can't use evil skills or items, nor join an evil organization, but they can use good-specific items and join good organizations which have benefits exclusive to the light side. Neutral characters would be somewhere in the middle, able to join any organization but not gain all the aligned benefits, and use all items at a slightly reduced effectiveness.
I'm slightly at a loss as to what skills would be restricted from chaotic and evil characters, other than those provided by lawful and good dieties and classes.
I kinda posted before I was ready. Sorry. What I meant by that was basically making alignment part of something like an RP server where alignment would actually make a difference.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I still like allowing players to define their alignment, and then putting arbitrary restrictions and benefits based on alignment. Lawful characters can't commit assault or murder, steal, &tc. Good characters can't use evil skills or items, nor join an evil organization, but they can use good-specific items and join good organizations which have benefits exclusive to the light side. Neutral characters would be somewhere in the middle, able to join any organization but not gain all the aligned benefits, and use all items at a slightly reduced effectiveness.
This sounds right to me. The key is making sure that the system doesn't try to judge behavior (except under very limited cases such as "murder" in NPC Settlements). Restricting access to spells, items, organizations, etc. based on alignment is perfectly acceptable.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I still like allowing players to define their alignment, and then putting arbitrary restrictions and benefits based on alignment. Lawful characters can't commit assault or murder, steal, &tc. Good characters can't use evil skills or items, nor join an evil organization, but they can use good-specific items and join good organizations which have benefits exclusive to the light side. Neutral characters would be somewhere in the middle, able to join any organization but not gain all the aligned benefits, and use all items at a slightly reduced effectiveness.This sounds right to me. The key is making sure that the system doesn't try to judge behavior (except under very limited cases such as "murder" in NPC Settlements). Restricting access to spells, items, organizations, etc. based on alignment is perfectly acceptable.
Yeah I also back that adjusting options based on what players chose is acceptable. I just find any form of limiting based on actions, or worse causing "falling" etc... as a huge mess of rules. Parallels I wouldn't find horrific of a concept. IE paladins etc... turning into anti-paladins if you had a system that turned them etc... Giving rough equivelents of abilities isn't particularly bad to me,
But any system that involved turning people into ex-pali/cleric/druid/monk/barbarians/bards etc.... is flawed from the start in a PVP world. The loopholes necessary for any of them to work would not solve the serial killer pali, the lumberjack druid nor the eloquent barbarian politician, but always wind up leading to people trying their hardest to live up to the alignment, getting forced into situations manufactured by their enemies to attempt to force them to chose between saving their city or ruin their class.
As far as theme park content, we still greatly need more information on the theme park content to make assesments on that category. Namely what impact if any are the modules expected to have on the sandbox world, because IMO that is on it's own a huge debatable topic. When you factor in everything else in the game being limited, or difficult to transfer, monsters vanishing and not respawning when killed etc... The whole concept of mixing a themepark into it (IE modules that can be repeated infinitely), adds a whole new mess to the mix. That is why I am still under the opinion that the modules themselves should be considered as "Illusionary", not actually containing items unless an event of some kind is offering a prize for completion. (some quests etc... could call for the completion of modules, even merit badges etc... could offer them as well).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Additionally, using the deities allows deity specific benefits, including training of alignment specific skills. TO illustrate, only the "good" churches can teach paladin type skills...and they will only do so with characters so aligned. This created a way to limit these classes without arbitrary or illogical restrictions.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I still like allowing players to define their alignment, and then putting arbitrary restrictions and benefits based on alignment. Lawful characters can't commit assault or murder, steal, &tc. Good characters can't use evil skills or items, nor join an evil organization, but they can use good-specific items and join good organizations which have benefits exclusive to the light side. Neutral characters would be somewhere in the middle, able to join any organization but not gain all the aligned benefits, and use all items at a slightly reduced effectiveness.
I'm slightly at a loss as to what skills would be restricted from chaotic and evil characters, other than those provided by lawful and good dieties and classes.
I've been thinking about this a bit - below is my sketched out list for good-evil rules. It sort of depends on how much GW wants to discourage evil characters; PF sort of hints that they are problematic.
Good: Cannot murder (illegal kill), rob, or issue ultimatums, as discussed in mercy killing thread. Cannot steal from teammates.
Neutral: Can rob.* Can steal from teammates.**
Evil: Can murder, rob, give ultimatums, and steal from teammates.
* Robbing applies a criminal flag as other crimes, but allows only one bounty.
** Stealing from teammates - when a member of a party opens a chest or loots a corpse, normally the loot is subject to sharing rules. If the looter is Neutral or Evil, sometimes one of the possible loot items will be highlighted and the player can choose to take it for his own. Highlighted items will normally be those small items that others will not notice as missing. *Never* stealing might be a sign that you aren't as hard as you pretend.
The small print - the downside to being a criminal:
Each day that a flagged criminal that belongs to a party or company, the group accumulates 1 point towards a reputation as a criminal gang. The group accumulates multiple points for multiple criminal members. Each day a group has zero criminal members, its reputation improves 1 point. When the group has accumulated 100 points, the group is permanently flagged as a criminal organization. NPCs in their settlements generally will not trade or give quests to members of the group. Group leaders can see the criminal flags of members and accumulated reputation.
Individual criminals represent players, and players can have a change of heart in how they participate in the game. A criminal character can make amends to have the criminal flag removed; this requires forgoing training time gains for some period of time (one month?).
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Goblin Squad Member
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SWTOR has lightisde/darkside points that works well without really interferring much.
I beg to differ. I found the lightside options extremely warped on a number of occasions. It definitely made me feel like I had a different value system than the developers when the "lightside" choice was to assist a military unit in deserting their post.
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Goblin Squad Member
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SWTOR has lightisde/darkside points that works well without really interferring much.I beg to differ. I found the lightside options extremely warped on a number of occasions. It definitely made me feel like I had a different value system than the developers when the "lightside" choice was to assist a military unit in deserting their post.
Lol. And if you took that options later on you had to talk to one of the officers who's like. "We'll, I guess well just have to work everyone else harder."
That and one of the dark side options I took was shooting missiles at Sith fleet. Really, you are in a war, and blowing up a fleet of enemies that is coming to murder and oppress is evil? Fine then I'm evil I guess.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What was the dark side choice-killing them where they stood? Having them try without help and fail?
I don't recall. Does it matter?
Really, you are in a war, and blowing up a fleet of enemies that is coming to murder and oppress is evil? Fine then I'm evil I guess.
My point exactly.
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Re: Star Wars
Dark side choices are even more bizarre. A good number of them require the character to do something that isn't 'merely' evil, but is downright stupid and short-sighted. Racking up dark side points with my Sith is an exercise in holding my nose and pushing the button, because the choices are all profoundly dumb, and, often, counter-intuitive (as in, destroying a potential resource that could massively increase the power of your side, if you didn't petulantly crush it to get +50 dark side points).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Agree that it's a bad idea to try and link behavior and alignment in a game. Interpreting behavior requires expert cultural knowledge acquired over years in a society, and trying to create an expert system that encoded such cultural knowledge would be monumental.
Having items, skills, spells, deities, organizations etc. define alignment is much more workable.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So instead of alignment gains/losses maybe an intricate faction system? I know we all love grinding faction!
Maybe to remain a paladin you need a certain level of faction with suchandsuch diety. Or if you want to prestige into Anti-paladin you need faction with suchandsuch evil diety.