Goblin Squad Member
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So for those of you who have played games like Darkfall or Mortal Online you may be familiar with the concept of a Mercy Mode. Mercy Mode is basically when your character is on the edge of defeat your opponent has the choice of whether to kill you, or spare you.
This single thing may be one of the most powerful anti-griefer mechanics because it presents your opponent with the question of whether they really want to kill your or not in the first place. I think Pathfinder Online could implement a mercy mode more powerful than any of the others if they implement the following mechanics:
When a player is defeated in PVP they fall to their knees. At this point the fallen player has the option to die or remain in mercy mode until someone comes along and deals with them. Mercy mode would display the character down on their hands and knees gasping for air.
Once a player is in mercy mode anyone may walk up to them and right click them to enter mercy mode which displays the following menu:
Kill
Rob
Capture
Ultimatum
Spare
If you choose kill, your character takes their main weapon and strikes down the enemy.
If you choose Rob, you may choose one stack of items from the enemies pack and take it. There is then a 15 second animation of you patching them up and pulling them to their feet. Doing so disables you from taking aggressive action against that player for 5 minutes unless they initiate it. The point of this is encouraging you not to kill someone. Say you run across a player with some coins, some bread, some water, and a rope. All you need to do is take the coins and send him on his way. You have what you want, and they can continue their adventure. Using the rob option should allow a bounty to be set but they should not be able to re-set it once it is claimed.
If you choose to capture them, you may then open up your inventory and apply rope, manacles, gag, and/or a blindfold to them. If you have neither you can just lead them infront of you at weapon point but if you get attacked they will immediately break free. If you have a rope/manacles they will not break free unless A. They have the appropriate skills and are able to complete a "Break free" check. B. Someone sets them free. Putting a blindfold on them disables them from seeing. And gagging them disables them from using chat. All channels except /say and /yell are automatically disabled in mercy mode anyway, but you might not want them /yelling. At any point during their capture you have the choice to finish them (Incase their buddies try to mount a rescue.) and they have the choice to kill themselves (So that you can't lead them around endlessly as a way of greifing. Doing so also will count as if you killed them so that you can't avoid kills by capturing people and leading them in circles.) Criminals who are captured by lawful players will not be flagged in lawful areas, though NPC guards may demand you hand them over. Doing so will will allow you to collect any bounties on them that are available to you. The main purpose mechanically of capturing is say you think someone is a thief but you don't know, or someone is trespassing in your clan's hex and you want to make sure they leave but don't want to kill them. You can capture them until you have the info you need/have taken them out of your territory. It's also an awesome RP tool.
If you choose ultimatum you can select any number of stacks of items in that player's inventory. Then deliver your ultimatum. If the player accepts you are given those items, and there is then a 15 second animation of you patching them up and pulling them to their feet. Afterwards you cannot take hostile action against them for 5 minutes unless they attack you first. If they refuse, you kill them. The point is maybe they were out hunting and have a couple really nice magic items they will lose if they die. You can select the items you want and demand them, with them knowing that if they refuse, they will lose everything. Delivering an ultimatum counts as a kill for bounty purposes but... you have a chance to get much better loot than if you just kill them and roll the dice as to what survives. Plus you still get to loot them after killing them if they refuse the ultimatum making it a MUCH better option if looting is your objective.
Spare. There is a 15 second animation of you patching them up and then pulling them to their feet. No bounty may be set on you if you revive them.
I think the point is obvious. For true bandits the rob or ultimatum option is MUCH more profitable than just killing someone. People may still want to be cold blooded killers, but most people are just going to rob you and then send you on your way. I think most people are going to find this heavily preferable to getting killed every time they run into a bandit. Having played a lot of open world PVP games I think implementing this will reduce random ganking by at least 50%. Bare minimum.
I love this post and the ideas in it. I imagine the capture option could perhaps be more problematic to implement than the other things, but the overall ideas are great ones.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I love this post and the ideas in it. I imagine the capture option could perhaps be more problematic to implement than the other things, but the overall ideas are great ones.
Yeah I would imagine capture would take a fair amount of programming, and might be left out initially if these ideas are used but eventually it would be an awesome option. It would be pretty awesome to see paladins capturing outlaws and dragging them off to their forts to be interrogated. Or outlaws capturing their enemies and bringing them back to their hideouts blindfolded to be tortured. That and the practical use of "This is our forest. I'm taking you to the border and setting you free. If you come back again we won't be so kind!"
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Goblin Squad Member
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So for those of you who have played games like Darkfall or Mortal Online you may be familiar with the concept of a Mercy Mode. Mercy Mode is basically when your character is on the edge of defeat your opponent has the choice of whether to kill you, or spare you.
Actually a few weeks back we had a discussion on a surrender mechanic
I think the areas I'd disagree on, in general the pop-up etc... I could see as more harmful to the game then beneficial. IMO the pop-up message could cause a huge mess in a larger scaled battle. IE 5v5, one person begs for mercy throwing off his opponents line of attacks that would have otherwise finished him, while the person is trying to click kill, the other 4 take him out.
Basically you have several layers of potential grief added, I personally do like the idea of a surrender mechanic, if you read further into that thread though I pretty much determined the best system for it, I think it would be best more or less as a self debuff that clearly and visibly shows to your opponent that you are giving up the fight and wanting to negotiate, (Allowing him to trade with you if desired). Personally I don't think anything should force the attacker to stop if he dosn't want to (But an optional setting on a character to auto pause on surrender I could see as reasonable for ones who want an extremely honerable character).
Also in response to the non-lethal damage... I have yet to see a non-lethal damage idea that dosn't wind up worse then death in 99% of cases, open up more room for griefing, and also remaining nearly useless for any legitimate purpose.
The unconcious for 5 minutes idea... First off, it could be used to grief someone in the event you want to inconvinience them regardless of whether or not they have anything to steal, second it's a great way to set them up to die via other means (say dropping the unconcious body near a pack of bears, or perfectly balanced over lava, near traps or any other hazard). Thirdly if you are protecting an area, you want them as far away as possible, sending them all the way back to their hometown makes perfect sense, carrying them as far as you can walk, does not particularly.
The penelty for death in PFO is extremely light, the absolute worse case scenerio, is you lose what you gathered, between when you last stopped by a town, and when you died, I can't think of many situations where that would be more then 1-2 hours work tops, and I do say you have to watch for every possible abuse, because these are solutions to a very minor anoyance, we can't have solutions that open significantly more issues then the problem itself.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the areas I'd disagree on, in general the pop-up etc... I could see as more harmful to the game then beneficial. IMO the pop-up message could cause a huge mess in a larger scaled battle. IE 5v5, one person begs for mercy throwing off his opponents line of attacks that would have otherwise finished him, while the person is trying to click kill, the other 4 take him out.
My proposed system works similar to Darkfall in that there is no window until you right click the person on the ground. So you have your big battle, and people get knocked into mercy mode. Once they are down they would require a 15 second revive to be brought back into the battle, so they are prettymuch out.
No messing with pop-up windows mid battle. You fight it out, then go kill/rob/capture/ultimatum/spare to your heart's content.
You could also make it so a player could deactivate mercy mode so that anyone they kill automatically dies if they want to do so for a major battle.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Please discuss how this might work in large scale combat situations. When I have dozens of other opponents, maybe even hundreds, to worry about, do you foresee a system that slows the pace down at all as opposed to a system that doesn't ask and I just kill the guy?
How would it work if that last fireball I tossed finished off the hitpoints of 10 other players who were engaged in combat with several allies of mine?
I think the areas I'd disagree on, in general the pop-up etc... I could see as more harmful to the game then beneficial. IMO the pop-up message could cause a huge mess in a larger scaled battle. IE 5v5, one person begs for mercy throwing off his opponents line of attacks that would have otherwise finished him, while the person is trying to click kill, the other 4 take him out.My proposed system works similar to Darkfall in that there is no window until you right click the person on the ground. So you have your big battle, and people get knocked into mercy mode. Once they are down they would require a 15 second revive to be brought back into the battle, so they are prettymuch out.
No messing with pop-up windows mid battle. You fight it out, then go kill/rob/capture/ultimatum/spare to your heart's content.
You could also make it so a player could deactivate mercy mode so that anyone they kill automatically dies if they want to do so for a major battle.
Right, basically having been incapacitated you have the option to wait it out and see if one of your allies can "revive" you, one of your enemies may "spare you", potentially causing you less loss. Or you just suicide and have a standard death. There aren't really any downsides, especially if the attacker could as mentioned bypass this mechanism to make death final in large battles.
It'd be prudent to not turn this off if you wanted to maximize the profitability of robbery, but I can see the usefulness of disabling it during the siege of a settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Onishi, I agree with you for the most part, but I don't really see a problem with a mechanic that shuts down the attacker's attacks the same exact way they'd be shut down if their target had died. If it's important to them, they can re-target the Yielding victim and kill them with their normal attacks, or they can choose another target and proceed exactly as they would have proceeded if their original target had died instead of just Yielding.
I think Andius is really on to something here, and it basically mirrors the Pod-Killing aspect of Eve. When you were defeated, you got away in your escape pod. If people really wanted to punish you, they'd kill your pod too.
I would avoid the more troublesome mechanics of the different options of dealing with the victim, and keep it simple: either kill them, or leave them alone, or heal them. I would think the victim's state should be stabilized but unable to move or act. Any attack should immediately kill them. And the victim should be able to choose to "shuffle off this mortal coil" and die, rather than having to sit around waiting for someone to either kill or heal them.
Finally, I'd be very happy if the victim could activate a Yield ability that would automatically put them in this state. And that state should last until the victim is either dead, or healed by someone who is out of combat.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I understand Andius' OP right, the looting options are:
- Under normal looting, the looter gets to take some random number of loot items (say # 2, 4, and 7, of 9 items total), but the rest of the items are not displayed. Once loot window is opened, the husk and remaining items will be lost, even if the looter decides it's all junk and takes nothing.
- Under the rob rule, the robber gets to view the entire inventory (9 loot) and take 1 item of his choice.
- Under the ultimatum rule, the robber gets to view all 9 items, then can bargain with the victim for a price to let him go. So he might get 1 or even all, depending on how much the victim wants to live.
The upside for the robber or ultimatum is better loot (and maybe inspecting inventory). The downside is that it is a criminal act, and victim gets to put out a bounty (1 time for robber, any number of times for ultimatum).
Under both the rob rule and the ultimatum rule the robber could easily have a friend kill the victim shortly after the transaction, if there are other nice things in inventory. That would earn more loot, but word would spread that RobberX is not to be trusted. Bounties would be more likely filed as well.
I like it. I like the idea of defeated characters able to continue to watch the battle, even if they are out of chat (why take them out of chat? they are likely relaying info on vent, anyway) And btw, the captured character could be placed into a follow, if the game includes a follow mechanism.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well with the clarifications I can see the merit of it, though I still do have to point out the fact that it is designed to greatly lower the penalty of an already excessively low penelty in and of itself. Take the podding analogy in eve.
Blowing up someones ship in eve is an instant loss of all of their carried items, as well as 100% of their equiped items (ship, which would be compared to all of the gear, weapons etc... that a character is carrying in PFO). Right off the bat the absolute worse you can do to someone, is 1/8th of that as in PFO equiped items are safe and exempt from that. Podkilling is just stacking on an additional penelty to the victim of adding in a removal of skill training and destruction of implants.
Essentially this system, while honorable, I do have to say it takes a death penelty that is already at the brink of far too light and inconsequential, and makes it the exception to what happens when you are ambushed, rather than the norm. For such a system to work, I think normal equipment wear and tear type damage will need to be both absolutely necessary to be present, and ramped up at a pretty high level, to meet the loss needs for such a system to be present. At one point Ryan mentioned that regular item loss, was an absolute necessity for a stable economy within a sandbox.
I'm not saying the idea can't be done, I'm saying that if you reduce loss in a system that is already dangerously low in the loss section, loss has to be added somewhere else.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Onishi, you're right about the loss, and I hadn't considered that.
I'll admit, I'm focused more on the psychological aspects of it. And I'm coming from a generally "carebear" history.
I did just have another thought about Yielding, though: Instead of not being able to do anything at all, the victim should be able to trade. This not only opens up the possibility of bandits being able to demand a particular bit of inventory, or even equipped gear, for the promise of letting you live (if you believe them). It also opens up the possibility of being able to trade something to an ally if you're left alone long enough to do so.
As for the loss, I'm perfectly happy with a system that requires "upkeep" on gear to the tune of 100% of the gear's original cost (in coin and resources) every 6 months of in-game time, with skills readily reducing that to 80% and eventually reducing that to 60%. I imagine there are some who won't be happy with that, though.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think equipment wear and tear has to happen regardless.
I'm guessing lootable inventory slots will typically be filled with harvested resources, tools for harvesting, consumables like potions and ammunition and rations, some random bits of loot from PvE encounters, and more rarely nice bits from looting a dungeon.
If equipment slots aren't lootable, then adventurers aren't finding a lot of armor and weapons in PvP encounters, and they won't be carrying it as loot when they get jumped later on. Maybe they get some weapons and armor from PvE encounters with humanoids, but that's usually vendor trash in other games.
Some of this depends on how secondary weapons are handled. If my ranger is defeated in melee, is his bow lootable and his daggers not? Or are both bow and knives in protected slots?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Onishi, you're right about the loss, and I hadn't considered that.
I'll admit, I'm focused more on the psychological aspects of it. And I'm coming from a generally "carebear" history.
I did just have another thought about Yielding, though: Instead of not being able to do anything at all, the victim should be able to trade. This not only opens up the possibility of bandits being able to demand a particular bit of inventory, or even equipped gear, for the promise of letting you live (if you believe them). It also opens up the possibility of being able to trade something to an ally if you're left alone long enough to do so.
As for the loss, I'm perfectly happy with a system that requires "upkeep" on gear to the tune of 100% of the gear's original cost (in coin and resources) every 6 months of in-game time, with skills readily reducing that to 80% and eventually reducing that to 60%. I imagine there are some who won't be happy with that, though.
Honestly I would view six months as an extreme low side. I also note there are many that would be unhappy with it either way, but still with the intention to slow the gear curve down as one of the key benefits of deterioration, even the slowest gearcurve I can imagine, players would naturally be upgrading at the least once every 2 months or so, to actually be a meaningful slowdown, gear deterioration should happen once to twice per grade of weaponry, meaning 1 month would be roughly the minimum needed, to actually have it amount to anything and keep steady loss. Again as from the equipment damage thread etc... I think repairing it should have resources rather than pure gold, and they could be reduced by say up to half what it would cost to make it new to keep the system balanced.
The reduced final durrability after repair also could have a huge perk for low players. IE a used X weapon, would likely be half the price of a new one, because it will break down sooner, this gives the less wealthy a chance to have it, as the ritch aren't as likely to want it nearly as much, creating all kinds of submarkets for gear at different price points. But now we are kind of digressing from the main topic, if we are to discuss this we should probably necromance the topic on this subject lol.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Honestly I would view six months as an extreme low side.
I may not have been clear. I meant 6 months in-game time, which would be about 6 weeks of real-world time.
... a used X weapon, would likely be half the price of a new one, because it will break down sooner, this gives the less wealthy a chance to have it, as the ritch aren't as likely to want it nearly as much, creating all kinds of submarkets for gear at different price points.
Excellent point, and one I hope the devs take to heart. We need to be done with "soulbound" equipment.
But now we are kind of digressing from the main topic, if we are to discuss this we should probably necromance the topic on this subject lol.
I'm kind of new to Forums, but I don't really have a problem when a new thread gets started to cover a previously discussed topic, or when a thread organically changes subject. But then again, I'm voraciously reading every single thread in the PFO forums, so it all runs together for me anyway :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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When a player is defeated in PVP they fall to their knees. At this point the fallen player has the option to die or remain in mercy mode until someone comes along and deals with them.
I'll offer a couple of refinements:
When a character is defeated, there should be a chance of being killed outright if the amount of damage in the last blow/attack is significant.
If a character has suffered bleeding wounds or other damage over time effects, he can die of those effects while in mercy mode.
If a character in mercy mode is deliberately hit, accidentally hit, or hit with an area effect, then that additional damage can kill her as well.
I see this all as a parallel to the PF concept of Disabled at 0 hit points; Dying at negative hit points, but not equal to constitution; and Real Death at -Constitution. In PF the dying character takes 1 point per round - that does provide a sense of urgency to try to save the dying.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well with the clarifications I can see the merit of it, though I still do have to point out the fact that it is designed to greatly lower the penalty of an already excessively low penelty in and of itself. Take the podding analogy in eve.
Blowing up someones ship in eve is an instant loss of all of their carried items, as well as 100% of their equiped items (ship, which would be compared to all of the gear, weapons etc... that a character is carrying in PFO). Right off the bat the absolute worse you can do to someone, is 1/8th of that as in PFO equiped items are safe and exempt from that. Podkilling is just stacking on an additional penelty to the victim of adding in a removal of skill training and destruction of implants.
Essentially this system, while honorable, I do have to say it takes a death penelty that is already at the brink of far too light and inconsequential, and makes it the exception to what happens when you are ambushed, rather than the norm. For such a system to work, I think normal equipment wear and tear type damage will need to be both absolutely necessary to be present, and ramped up at a pretty high level, to meet the loss needs for such a system to be present. At one point Ryan mentioned that regular item loss, was an absolute necessity for a stable economy within a sandbox.
I'm not saying the idea can't be done, I'm saying that if you reduce loss in a system that is already dangerously low in the loss section, loss has to be added somewhere else.
Having come from games where death means losing everything, and all items degrade but are non-repairable... I personally would be in favor of full loot drop.
That said it seems like this game is not directly aimed at the same audience of a game like Darkfall, Mortal, Wurm, or EVE. It's aimed somewhere between them and a game like WoW where there are no penalties... thus the part sandbox part theme park classification. I think they need to address the issue by A, making items degrade to nothing over time. B, making it so you have to take your item to someone capable of crafting it, and they expend some materials repairing it. For instance if your bow is broken or about to break you take it to a bowcrafter who repairs it using some of the same materials used to originally make it.
What this idea really intends to address is that in games like Mortal, even though there is light stat loss penalty for killing lawful players, if you are out running around exploring in some terrible gear or no gear at all, the majority of reds will just kill you for the hell of it. It's a pain in the butt and an immersion breaker. You really think the majority of criminals would just straight up kill the crazy old man gathering local fauna to study their alchemical properties? This idea addresses it by giving the bandits a penalty they WILL care about. Loot. The reason most people will just straight up kill you in Mortal is because people have been known to conceal large amounts of money on naked characters, and they don't want to go to the trouble of investing 100 skill points in snooping just to check if you have what they want. But if not doing so means they only get a random item from your pack which is likely not the most valuable... they won't just kill you for loot.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What about large scale combat?
Seems like an obstacle when what's important is to stop worrying about the guy you just beat (or the 10 guys you just nailed with a fireball, one at a time pop ups about the mercy rule) and start worrying about the others you're still fighting.
Perhaps an option that players can check ahead of time to auto-accept or auto-decline such a mercy mechanism?
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Goblin Squad Member
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What about large scale combat?
Seems like an obstacle when what's important is to stop worrying about the guy you just beat (or the 10 guys you just nailed with a fireball, one at a time pop ups about the mercy rule) and start worrying about the others you're still fighting.
Perhaps an option that players can check ahead of time to auto-accept or auto-decline such a mercy mechanism?
You could also make it so a player could deactivate mercy mode so that anyone they kill automatically dies if they want to do so for a major battle.
Somewhere on the GUI you put a toggle button plus a /mercy /nomercy for if you don't feel like keeping it on your GUI.
Also as stated in the original post. You have to walk up to their body and right click to engage in mercy mode. Until then they will just sit there in their mercy mode animation unable to do anything but gasp for air. You will NEVER get a mercy mode pop-up unless you initiate it. The pop up does NOT come as soon as they enter mercy mode. The only purpose of turning mercy mode off is if you want to ensure people's allies cant revive them if you lose the battle, or the battle moves away from their bodies long enough to give their allies time to revive.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What about large scale combat?
Seems like an obstacle when what's important is to stop worrying about the guy you just beat (or the 10 guys you just nailed with a fireball, one at a time pop ups about the mercy rule) and start worrying about the others you're still fighting.
Would it be satisfactory to know that anytime you were fighting someone, and they Yielded, that it would be impossible for them to do anything other than Die or Do Nothing until everyone that had been fighting them agreed to let them live? (Or a suitable amount of time passes after all of those characters are no longer in combat)
I'm looking for a solution that has absolutely zero impact on large scale combat, and that makes it 100% impossible to provide any advantage to the Yielder or his allies.
I had previously mentioned allowing them to Trade, in addition to Do Nothing or Die, but I think that could be too easily used to their advantage. If the victor wants to allow them to live in exchange for Trade, then they could simply heal them enough to let them limp away from combat, and then kill them anew if they don't Trade as desired. I'm thinking a 5 minute debuff on the Yielder after they're healed that keeps them at 1 hit point and leaves them unable to do anything but walk slowly.
I also agree there should be a /nomercy setting that lets you automatically kill someone without ever slowing down.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'll challenge "not allowed" for "difficult and interruptible".
Because, you know, Mass Cure Critical Wounds is a pretty solid precedent.
I'm trying to create a system where the attacker has no real incentive to kill the player immediately when they Yield.
If there's any possibility that the victim can get back up and start fighting again, then there is a very, very strong incentive for every attacker to always kill Yielders immediately.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I'll challenge "not allowed" for "difficult and interruptible".
Because, you know, Mass Cure Critical Wounds is a pretty solid precedent.
I'm trying to create a system where the attacker has no real incentive to kill the player immediately when they Yield.
If there's any possibility that the victim can get back up and start fighting again, then there is a very, very strong incentive for every attacker to always kill Yielders immediately.
Put a small cost on the Deathblow, then. Make it take the time of an attack. I was also suggesting that incapacitated not be voluntary- players can yield using chat, if they want to. Providing a method which disallows dishonesty removes options, rather than adding them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm trying to create a system where the attacker has no real incentive to kill the player immediately when they Yield.
If there's any possibility that the victim can get back up and start fighting again, then there is a very, very strong incentive for every attacker to always kill Yielders immediately.
Build on the mercy mode. The yielding character can be hit with near certainty. Give the attacker the ability to do an attack, if he feels it necessary, that takes the yielding player from a surrender state to no-kidding helpless state for a few rounds. The old shield bash to the unarmed foe with the command of "and stay down, if y' know whot's good for y'."
One bandit can watch a handful of surrendering merchants; she should have an automatic hit if one starts to change his mind. But yes, surrendering/taking surrender is one of the riskiest parts of the battle.
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Goblin Squad Member
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maybe a high level skill to take someone hostage and for a ransom :D then ur friends have to rescue u,or u break out
An ability that is amusing in concept, but considering how low the death penelty is, any form of hostage, jailing or holding, kind of becomes rather useless for anything besides griefing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just saying, if a game had a mechanism where another player immobilized me for an hour, I'd spend that hour logging off and uninstalling, then looking for a new game. I don't have enough free time to waste my game hours with such a mechanism.
Fortunately I already thought of that, and included the option to take a suicide pill for the person being captured from the instant they are in the OP. Meaning you can only be captured if you cooperate. Its for people to lead you out of a certain area without killing you, or role-players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just saying, if a game had a mechanism where another player immobilized me for an hour, I'd spend that hour logging off and uninstalling, then looking for a new game. I don't have enough free time to waste my game hours with such a mechanism.Fortunately I already thought of that, and included the option to take a suicide pill for the person being captured from the instant they are in the OP. Meaning you can only be captured if you cooperate. Its for people to lead you out of a certain area without killing you, or role-players.
Well in the case or roleplayers, I'd imagine few mechanics are needed, the simple animation waving the arms in the air is more then enough to accomplish that.
As far as leading people out of an area... well that just seems like a ton of work for no reason. With the only penelty for death being the items they gathered since venturing out, whatever they have is most likely whatever they gathered where they shouldn't have been, IE it rightfully belongs to the defenders anyway. If death had a skill penelty, or destroyed equiped items etc... then you have a case for escorting. With death as basically a 1 way immidiate ticket home losing only what you gathered on that trip, all capture mechanics are is an extra hastle with no return.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well in the case or roleplayers, I'd imagine few mechanics are needed, the simple animation waving the arms in the air is more then enough to accomplish that.
True. But a full capture system with different ways if blindfolding, gagging, and restraining your target would be a lot more fun IMO.
It can lead to spontaneous roleplay. I might treat a fight as a normal encounter but once they start blindfolding me and saying "The boss is going to want to see you!" I would RP along with them.
Likewise if I clap someone in manacles, and they want to RP with me, they can. If not, they take the pill.
As far as leading people out of an area... well that just seems like a ton of work for no reason. With the only penelty for death being the items they gathered since venturing out, whatever they have is most likely whatever they gathered where they shouldn't have been, IE it rightfully belongs to the defenders anyway. If death had a skill penelty, or destroyed equiped items etc... then you have a case for escorting. With death as basically a 1 way immidiate ticket home losing only what you gathered on that trip, all capture mechanics are is an extra hastle with no return.
I think it would be extremely reasonable to have some harsher form of death penalty. Perhaps a Lord of The Rings Online style of death penalty where in addition to losing your items you get a debuff on you that can last for quite awhile, you might be able to use a consumable to get rid of it but make it an expensive consumable. Since you drop all items on death you'll need to go back to some form of storage and remove the debuff with an expensive consumable, or run around with a 25% debuff to all combat skills for half an hour or something.
Then people might care to about whether they live or die.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think it would be extremely reasonable to have some harsher form of death penalty. Perhaps a Lord of The Rings Online style of death penalty where in addition to losing your items you get a debuff on you that can last for quite awhile, you might be able to use a consumable to get rid of it but make it an expensive consumable. Since you drop all items on death you'll need to go back to some form of storage and remove the debuff with an expensive consumable, or run around with a 25% debuff to all combat skills for half an hour or something.
Then people might care to about whether they live or die.
While I don't completely disagree for a slightly harsher death penelty, it is a ballancing act to ensure that people aren't afraid to join in wars battles etc... that are essentially intended to be one of the largest attractions of the game. I wouldn't be opposed to a chance of gear destruction or confiscation etc...
Though at least with the currently proposed and officially anounced system in the blog, none of that has been confirmed in the blog.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think it would be extremely reasonable to have some harsher form of death penalty. Perhaps a Lord of The Rings Online style of death penalty where in addition to losing your items you get a debuff on you that can last for quite awhile, you might be able to use a consumable to get rid of it but make it an expensive consumable. Since you drop all items on death you'll need to go back to some form of storage and remove the debuff with an expensive consumable, or run around with a 25% debuff to all combat skills for half an hour or something.
Then people might care to about whether they live or die.
While I don't completely disagree for a slightly harsher death penelty, it is a ballancing act to ensure that people aren't afraid to join in wars battles etc... that are essentially intended to be one of the largest attractions of the game. I wouldn't be opposed to a chance of gear destruction or confiscation etc...
Though at least with the currently proposed and officially anounced system in the blog, none of that has been confirmed in the blog.
That is the beauty of de-buffs that are removable by consumables, especially combat de-buffs. They make people care to the point they aren't just going to not care at all if they are killed, but it isn't SO harsh you don't want to get involved in a battle. Anyone who really likes to fight will keep a good supply of those consumables. Anyone who doesn't will probably be fine hunting easier targets or crafting until the debuff wears off.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There's an interesting dynamic (do I say that too much?) at play in the way victims will lose all of their inventory (non-equipped) when their husk is looted, and the attacker will only gain a small, random subset of those items. It creates an incentive for Roleplay by leaving open the possibility that the victim can choose to give up something specific, that is valuable to their attacker, and still be able to keep the other items, which might be valuable to the victim.
I think it might be a bit much to ask the devs to implement systems for such narrow cases as blindfolding someone and capturing them, but I think there are general mechanics that could let us do this ourselves.
First, the Follow system needs to be a lot more robust than it is in most games. For some reason, most MMOs implement Follow with the same mechanics they use to let mobs chase players. I think, when it comes to groups, there really needs to be a much stronger implementation. If Adam /follows Bob, sure, just use the AI pathing. But if Bob then /leads Adam, then they should just get hooked up so that Adam isn't really even moving, but he's just wherever Bob is, kind of like Bob is now his wagon. This /lead mechanic should not be limited to groups, which would allow a victim to /follow their attacker, and their attacker to /lead them anywhere they want. The reason that /follow shouldn't do this all on its own is because some players won't want to be followed so robustly, and should have the opportunity to try to lose their follower.
Second, there need to be some generally applicable emotes that have verifiable in-game effects. One of which should be /blindfold, which affects the character as if they were under the Blind spell, until they issued another /emote that undid the effect. Basically, I think any effect that can be applied via a spell should also be possible to be applied at will on the player's own character via the use of an emote, with another emote to remove the effect. In the example above, the attacker would have to be vigilant to ensure the victim didn't sneak in the /unblindfold emote.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Second, there need to be some generally applicable emotes that have verifiable in-game effects. One of which should be /blindfold, which affects the character as if they were under the Blind spell, until they issued another /emote that undid the effect. Basically, I think any effect that can be applied via a spell should also be possible to be applied at will on the player's own character via the use of an emote, with another emote to remove the effect. In the example above, the attacker would have to be vigilant to ensure the victim didn't sneak in the /unblindfold emote.
Not to mention ryan would never go for a blindfold option. If it has any practical use whatsoever, then it would immidiately fall into the category of darkness/stealth.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Not to mention ryan would never go for a blindfold option. If it has any practical use whatsoever, then it would immidiately fall into the category of darkness/stealth.
That's a good point. It's probable that the Blind effect will be meaningless as a way of actually limiting information getting to the player. It will probably still be effective at limiting the character's abilities, but that's not really the same thing.
It would no doubt take some significant programming to allow a character to move around totally insulated from everything else in the environment, including any information about current coordinates being sent to the client.
Is there no way for players to opt out of PvP?
I know that this has been brought up before, but I never found out if there was a definate answear...
GRU
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Goblin Squad Member
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Is there no way for players to opt out of PvP?
I know that this has been brought up before, but I never found out if there was a definate answear...GRU
There's really no way to avoid PvP. If your not into PvP you might find it hard to enjoy PFO.
With that being said you should try to be optamistict! PFO is not full loot so there really anything to be overly concerned about, dieing is ok and expected.
You might even find it fun and challenging!
There will plenty of PvE content and from what I've read in the blogs a very large world to explore so you won't be forced into PvP, just expect it to happen often.
I understand your not really into PvP but I would hope you give PFO a try and see if you like it!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just skimmed through this thread. Liking everything but the capture mechanics, which I could see as being incredibly dull. If you get captured you're basically prevented from playing the game for a certain period of time. That sucks.
Maybe capture just allows you to fast travel with someone to a specific location to drop them off. Either outside of your hex, or to the nearest settlement. If you were to ransom a PC, maybe there would be a mechanism for each Guild or Company to allot a certain amount of resources to paying ransoms automatically. If you capture someone and want to "ransom" them, the funds are automatically withdrawn if they are there, and otherwise the ransom attempt fails and you kill them or rob them or whatever.
Point being, I'd hate to be captured and then forced to spend the next three or four hours of game time being led around unable to enjoy myself. RPing is fine, but you can RP without the actual downtime in the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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But from a role-playing standpoint, I don't play a lot of characters who would opt for honorable suicide. I imagine I'd wait patiently for at least an hour before I'd start considering the suicide mechanic. Character death is a major thing in Pen and Paper, and I'd prefer to limit, as much as possible, character death in PFO.
Is there no way for players to opt out of PvP?
I know that this has been brought up before, but I never found out if there was a definate answear...GRU
There's really no way to avoid PvP. If your not into PvP you might find it hard to enjoy PFO.
With that being said you should try to be optamistict! PFO is not full loot so there really anything to be overly concerned about, dieing is ok and expected.
You might even find it fun and challenging!
There will plenty of PvE content and from what I've read in the blogs a very large world to explore so you won't be forced into PvP, just expect it to happen often.
I understand your not really into PvP but I would hope you give PFO a try and see if you like it!
Can't argue with anything you say:-)
I'll cross my fingers and hope for the best,GRU