Goblin Squad Member
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I've seen a lot of discussion about alignment lately, even some discussion topics about, but none dedicated specifically to the mechanical impact of Alignment and how it can be used to encourage specific play styles.
I'll keep my thoughts very general so that everybody else can share their thought on the topic too.
In very general terms both Lawful and Good alignments should be better at teamwork while Chaotic and Evil Alignments should be better at operating as individuals.
This creates a continuum in which Chaotic Evil is the ultimate Soloist alignment and Lawful Good is the ultimate group play alignment. With more balanced approaches represent by everything in between.
What this means that in One on One or even small group combat the Chaotic Evil are probably at a significant advantage, while in Large Group combat Lawful Good is clearly at an advantage.
Now how are Alignments gained, or at least encouraged?
I see Good being gained by helping others. While Evil is gain by inflicting your will on others. Law is gained by working with others and taking actions that support the whole group, Chaos is gained by working by yourself and taking actions that only benefit yourself.
Thoughts?
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I could see lawful alignment granting advantages to large groups, and smaller groups gaining advantage for performing chaotic actions. If the long-term benefits of lawful behavior scale better, but the benefits of chaotic behavior are greater for small numbers, I could see a scale differentiation happening.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would also like alignments to be balanced rather just have straight penalties. I made this post explaining some ideas for how to achieve different feels for settlements of different alignments. Note that we have received a lot of info since I made that post.
I think also that a Chaotic settlement will likely attract Chaotic visitors (merchants, adventurers, mercenaries) while Lawful settlements will attract Lawful characters.
This makes it 'easier' to live in a Lawful area, as more (if not most) of the people you meet daily will also be Lawful (and want to keep that alignment), so you won't have to worry about being killed or robbed.
Chaotic characters get the benefit of having the freedom to kill/loot people more often, but the people they most often deal with will also enjoy that freedom. Chaotic places truly will be more chaotic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think there should be benefits to all alignments.
In the case of a Settlement, a Lawful settlement could have more guards providing better coverage of the settlements area. In a chaotic settlement they don't have as many guards, but the ones they have are tougher. It would be a lot easier to get away with things in a chaotic settlement, but if you get caught the situation is probably going to be much worse.
In a good settlement, the guards might try to take you to the guard post fine you and maybe take any obviously stolen good from you. In an evil settlement the guards are much more likely to just kill you where you stand.
Creating a distinct feel and game style for each alignment is really probably a good thing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I didn't say that evil needed to be soloists.
As an example of a way to implement it, Evil and Chaotic characters get a buff that only affects them. Lawful and Good characters would get a weaker buff that affects the whole party that can stack with other lawful and good buffs.
As and example. A Lawful Evil character would get a personal buff and a group buff. A Chaotic Evil character would get a double strength personal buff and no group buff. A Neutral Evil character would get a 1.5x personal buff and a half strength group buff.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I use the buff as an example because it is immediately obvious of the impact. Alignment impacts things like spells and some supernatural abilities. Ideally, I think I would like that kind of thing extended to impact abilities in general. Chaotic and evil characters being slightly better at abilities that affect them personally. Lawful and Good characters being slightly better at abilities that affect your whole team.
I had tried to be non-specific to allow others room to develop their own ideas. I see that kind of discussion doesn't work around here.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Hark I would prefer if guards worked the same way in all settlements, but that their ability to detect (numbers, perception), respond to (call other guards, response time), and follow through with enforcement (ability to disable targets, how quickly they can kill) be varied by settlement infrastructure upgrades.
A Lawful settlement would have access to better guard facilities that would get them the best guards. A chaotic settlement would rely on it's individual players to police and defend it rather than automatic 'big-brother' game mechanics; I think that is fitting for immersion purposes.
It puts more emphasis on individual Chaotic player actions to make their settlement work.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Not explicitly, no. For one, they would have to invest in the building and potentially pay higher upkeep costs for their more highly-trained guards.
The way I see it, Lawful characters in Lawful settlements give up some individual freedoms to unintelligent, predictable NPCs in lawful areas, and are restricted by their alignment in wilderness areas.
Chaotic characters in Chaotic settlements have the freedom to enforce as they wish (dependent on their ability to work together) and the freedom of their alignment to act as they wish in unlawful territory.
I contrast my ideas in what I linked above to the ideas that Stephen put forth in that thread that Chaotic (Evil?) settlements would be explicitly worse due to higher upkeep costs and by being gated from building character advancement buildings. I also do not one character path to be explicitly better than another. I feel a trade-off of power in one aspect (wilderness freedoms) can effectively be balanced by a trade-off in another (settlement freedoms).
Even if your believe that some of my ideas are skewed against Chaotic settlements, Chaotic characters' freedom to act as they wish in the wilds makes up for it, in my mind. Chaos has strengths at the individual level, but is not effective at the community level; I think that's a fitting trade-off.
Of course, a lot of that goes out the window if Chaotic characters' individual freedoms are subject to bounties in lawful and wilderness areas. This is one of the many reasons that I hope this will be revisited in the next couple weeks. You may have already accepted this, and in that case I do agree with you that settlements need to then be balanced better against eachother, rather than against the freedoms of their inhabitants.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We are talking about the guys that provide security for the settlement when all of the players are logged off. We are only talking about what Lawful settlements would get as a bonus with Chaotic settlements getting no advantage in another area to help them compensate.
People seem to be perfectly fine with Lawful getting all sorts of advantages, but if Chaotic gets anything to compensate it becomes broken, overpowered, or abuseable.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In very general terms both Lawful and Good alignments should be better at teamwork while Chaotic and Evil Alignments should be better at operating as individuals.
I'd prefer less in-built bias to how I might end up playing the game. As to solo vs group, I think that system can handle itself with the idea the variables might favor one set of players over others; if they are good at team-work gameplay or other factors hold sway positively with them. Therefore I don't see the need for an additional "balance"?
LG have better settlements but less chance to create conflict to sustain that settlement advantage. Seems self-balancing? The allure of CE is unfettered conflict.
We are only talking about what Lawful settlements would get as a bonus with Chaotic settlements getting no advantage in another area to help them compensate.
I've seen this opinion, but it's not a "rewarding A therefore punishing B" conundrum imo? [scrubs terrible analogy] So it's chaotic-lawful spectrum... vs evil-good... that is confusing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ok, dug up Lee Hammock's post on Alignment that made most sense to me:
The value of an alignment varies mainly on two axis: freedom and settlement options.
A chaotic character suffers no penalties if he goes into a settlements and breaks its laws, such as if a settlement outlawed members of a certain race. A chaotic character has less to lose in PvP, though can still suffer for bad target choices. If you want to play a trouble causing good guy who takes down evil regardless of where he finds it, chaotic good is for you.
Neutral good is about options. You can build any good-aligned structure in your settlement, from temples of Iomedae to temples of Caydean Cilaen. You're not the best organized and you can't do whatever you want, but you get parts of both worlds.
A good many of the benefits of alignment involve settlements, and Chaotic settlements are generally less efficient than lawful settlements (for example, their upkeep cost is higher, but if you make enough money through other means obviously this can be overcome). Chaotic towns are easy to manage; you don't have to worry about anyone coming and committing crime, which makes your town more chaotic, as it's already there.
Good vs. Evil is a matter of flavor for the most part; good aligned towns will have different alliance options than evil towns. So a Chaotic Good town may join a Neutral Good alliance and build an outpost for them in the settlement, unlocking Alliance gear, training, NPCs, etc. A Chaotic Evil settlement can't join that same alliance, but could join the Cult of Lamashtu. Each has different costs and benefits.
Basically law vs. chaos is a choice of playstyle; if you want to fight the man and cause trouble, Chaotic is for you. If you want your settlement to be a place you hang out but don't worry about developing while you run around and do whatever, go Chaotic. If you want your town to be the best town ever and run as efficiently as possible, go Lawful.
Most players will probably end up in varying shades of neutral.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't think you want to go into individual buffs based on alignment, save for those drawn directly from supernatural powers (i.e. Clerics, Paladins, etc). I think what you can do is reflect this in terms of training opportunities and standing with NPC organinizations and how settlements behave, etc...
In terms of settlements Lawfull communities are more efficient in terms of infrastracture and changes to that infrastructure are less reactive to external events. Chaotic communities are better at attracting trade (since they accept anyone) and external functions and they are more reactive to external events (for good or ill).
For an example of reactiveness, say a settlements hex was suddenly beset by monsters/raiders. This normaly has some deterimental effect on production (people are afraid to leave thier homes) and population (people decline to immigrate or start emigrating). For lawfull settlements the negative effect on production and population would be less drastic then in chaotic ones. People feel a greater sense of obligation and duty to stay and do thier work, they have greater confidence that the "authorties" will take care of the situation, etc.
They same holds true for postive events that would boost production or population...say the discovery of a new vein of gold nearby. People are less likely to flock to the settlement because they know tax's and regulations, etc are likely prevent individuals from benefiting from that vein to the greatest advantage possible.
In terms of settlements.. law = stability, smaller flucuations... chaos = instability, larger flucuations. Flucuations could be good or bad in thise sense.
Evil probably means smaller settlements overall and smaller growth (i.e. population penalty) but greater per capita production/revenue from said population....as Evil isn't hindered by concerns of caring for it's populace or not exploiting it...it can be brutaly efficient. However very few of the populace actualy WANT to live in a system where they are exploited. It may be that it has to PAY or RAID (i.e. take slaves) in order to gain more then a token amount of populace. It also probably loses populace at a greater rate when it's RAIDED (as people have the opportunity to escape) and it wouldn't benefit from things like a "militia" in defending it's settlement when under attack. However it could maybe do things like sacrifice populace to speed the construction of improvements (i.e. work people to death)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'll admit I haven't read the entire discussion, but I'll throw my opinion in.
The game at its core is a society builder. And there is no society in a chaotic environment. Society drives progress, and progress drives innovation(better training/crafting). There are base laws set in the game that drive each axis.
I would want to see things that are specific to each alignment. I want people to have to seek out other settlements than their own for all of their training. No settlement should get everything. There should be a place for chaotic settlements in the game.
A lawful community should come out with the best crafted items in the highest volumes. Evil communities should have the best items for slaying people(of all alignments), and Good should get the best blessings for snuffing out evil, not so much fighting eachother. Chaotic communities get the advantages of having no restrictions, anyone can do anything.
One path to wealth should be brokering trade deals between chaotic and lawful settlements, or high rep and low rep settlements. Chaotic and low rep settlements will need gear, but they end up paying a higher cost to keep their freedom to do anything they want.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm totally against the classification of soloists as evil, and the prejudice that the socially dependent are inherently good.
We have enough co-dependency in the world, tyvm.
Reject this monstrosity.
I never said anything of the sort simply that when one runs the numbers of my suggestion that Lawful good would be optimal for teamwork, and Chaotic Evil would be optimal for soloing.
If you actually stop to think about it, a character with large personal buff certainly isn't going to drag a party down and can very effectively work in a party. The personal 'buffs' afforded chaotic and evil alignments under my suggestion allow more personal freedom because you aren't reliant on a party to get the most out of them, yet you still contribute your fair share to the party.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would want to see things that are specific to each alignment. I want people to have to seek out other settlements than their own for all of their training. No settlement should get everything. There should be a place for chaotic settlements in the game.
So what would be an example of training that should be better/only found in chaotic areas? It seems like lawful is getting a whole boatload of mechanical benefits balanced only against some nebulously defined "doing whatever you want" benefit of being chaotic. It doesn't help that some people have a very skewed view of the alignment chart and want being chaotic to be punished by the mechanics more than being evil, which is preposterous.
A lawful community should come out with the best crafted items in the highest volumes. Evil communities should have the best items for slaying people(of all alignments), and Good should get the best blessings for snuffing out evil, not so much fighting each other. Chaotic communities get the advantages of having no restrictions, anyone can do anything.
No, whatever settlement has the highest skill level crafters should come out with the best crafted items in the highest volumes. Crafting should certainly not be one of the things that chaotic settlements are locked out of the highest levels of. If anything, it is the neutral and chaotic areas that should have the best economy while heavily lawful areas are skewed towards the fortified and militaristic. If all of the most qualified crafters live in a CG settlement, that is where I would expect to get the best goods. There shouldn't be some predetermined upkeep or bias bludgeoned into us by the mechanics, since the point of having a sandbox game is that patterns and associations can emerge on their own.
I would assume that the largest and most successful player settlements would in the end wind up being the NG settlements.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In the sense that the Economic game (which includes the various activities involved in Crafting) is largely going to be performed by (probably non-rendered) NPC common folk working in workshops, drawn from the nearest settlement, I do think the quality and the quantity of the labour force that are availble to staff those worksops from that settlement will and should have an effect.
I wouldn't get down to the level of great at building X items and lousy at building Y items, nor do I think it should be the only factor in consideration as the Character supervising the workshop is obviously going to have a huge effect on the outcome... but yeah, I think it should factor in.
What I would say is that the settlements Alignment should be a heavy influence in how that settlement gains/loses GNP (i.e. Economic Power) through it's commoner NPC labour force and how that labour force reacts to certain types of events. It shouldn't (IMO) be deterministic of the overal GNP (Economic Power) of the settlement....as that's what playing the game is about. You can also do other things like how and what sort type of automatic defences the settlement has and how and what sort of training buildings and temples/shrines and what goes into the construction of them that differ by alignment. For example, I might imagine that building a temple/shrine might require some special material component or relic and the nature of those could differ by the alignment of the temple/shrine. So a Good Aligned Temple/Shrine could require rare plants or or herbs (Frankensence, Mir, Athelas, etc) while an Evil aligned temple/shrine might require blood sacrifices or hearts collected from the sacrifice of innocent creatures, etc.
You can do those sort of things.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The way its shaping up about 1% of the player base will be some form of chaotic evil
I'm not trying to be rude when I say this but the only people expressing this concern have no experience with open world PVP games.
You don't see people who actually have played games like Darkfall, or Mortal Online expressing these concerns.
That is because we understand most veteran players gravitate toward chaotic-evil. Mechanical benefits are the only thing that will keep lawful-good from being the alignment of newbs and a tiny minority of veterans.
Any attempt to equalize their power will doom this game to be the random gankfest Darkfall and Mortal were. RPKing isn't griefing so don't expect the admins to do anything about it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The way its shaping up about 1% of the player base will be some form of chaotic evilI'm not trying to be rude when I say this but the only people expressing this concern have no experience with open world PVP games.
You don't see people who actually have played games like Darkfall, or Mortal Online expressing these concerns.
That is because we understand most veteran players gravitate toward chaotic-evil. Mechanical benefits are the only thing that will keep lawful-good from being the alignment of newbs and a tiny minority of veterans.
Any attempt to equalize their power will doom this game to be the random gankfest Darkfall and Mortal were. RPKing isn't griefing so don't expect the admins to do anything about it.
Andius, I understand that RPKing is undesirable so creating mechanical disincentives for it is a good idea (IMO). However what does that necceseraly have to do with alignments?
Admitedly, RPKing is probably ONE way to express the CE alignment, but it IS only one way.
Coming from the MUD world, which is a different background then the games you have mentioned some of the best played CE characters (and in fact most of the characters of Evil alignment period) hardly ever PK'ed at all let alone RPK'ed. So why do we have to throw the baby out with the bath-water and punish alignment choice when it's simply one particular behavior that we want to and can reign in all on it's own.
Furthermore, from my admitedly, limited experience in the type of MMO's you've described most of the RPK'ers I've encountered weren't actualy a playing a character with an Alignment at all (good or evil), they were playing BattleField2 with a Fantasy skin drapped on top of it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I never said anything of the sortI'm totally against the classification of soloists as evil, and the prejudice that the socially dependent are inherently good.
We have enough co-dependency in the world, tyvm.
Reject this monstrosity.
If you wish to establish as general rule that players who play together better are therefore of good alignment then there seems an implication that a characteristic of good alignment is teamwork, so a characteristic of evil alignment is poor teamwork.
That fails badly in my estimation, and smacks of some kind of teamsmanship prejudice. Evil, most unfortunately, can team just as well as Good.
Teamwork is a tool, and like any tool it is what it is used for that determines good or evil and not the functionality of teamwork.
It seems to me that whether characters play well together or not has little bearing on their alignment, and their alignment should not enhance or impede their ability to work well together.
simply that when one runs the numbers of my suggestion that Lawful good would be optimal for teamwork, and Chaotic Evil would be optimal for soloing.
Please display the numbers you say you ran on that. Your premise appears perilously weak.
If you actually stop to think about it, a character with large personal buff certainly isn't going to drag a party down and can very effectively work in a party. The personal 'buffs' afforded chaotic and evil alignments under my suggestion allow more personal freedom because you aren't reliant on a party to get the most out of them, yet you still contribute your fair share to the party.
I do not see the relevance of this last point. Am I supposed to accept a rather huge authoritative assertion because you assure me 'it will all feel okay' when the premise is fundamentally false?
Or are you going to say that because I disagree I am not a team player and therefore evil to the roots of my depraved soul?
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Goblin Squad Member
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The way its shaping up about 1% of the player base will be some form of chaotic evilI'm not trying to be rude when I say this but the only people expressing this concern have no experience with open world PVP games.
You don't see people who actually have played games like Darkfall, or Mortal Online expressing these concerns.
That is because we understand most veteran players gravitate toward chaotic-evil. Mechanical benefits are the only thing that will keep lawful-good from being the alignment of newbs and a tiny minority of veterans.
Any attempt to equalize their power will doom this game to be the random gankfest Darkfall and Mortal were. RPKing isn't griefing so don't expect the admins to do anything about it.
Andius, I understand that RPKing is undesirable so creating mechanical disincentives for it is a good idea (IMO). However what does that necceseraly have to do with alignments?
Admitedly, RPKing is probably ONE way to express the CE alignment, but it IS only one way.
Coming from the MUD world, which is a different background then the games you have mentioned some of the best played CE characters (and in fact most of the characters of Evil alignment period) hardly ever PK'ed at all let alone RPK'ed. So why do we have to throw the baby out with the bath-water and punish alignment choice when it's simply one particular behavior that we want to and can reign in all on it's own.
Furthermore, from my admitedly, limited experience in the type of MMO's you've described most of the RPK'ers I've encountered weren't actualy a playing a character with an Alignment at all (good or evil), they were playing BattleField2 with a Fantasy skin drapped on top of it.
In general I concur, but let us not forget there are many sorts of buff that can be benefits of alignment especially in a magical world where the gods may or may not roam but do intervene in mortal affairs, for good or ill.
It should be true that a suffering populace will be less productive and tend to migrate to 'better' lands. Cities well-run will inherently have the more powerful infrastructure. They will have more and better equipped NPC guards and law enforcement will not oppress, but permit the population to prosper.
On the other hand idealistic 'Good' characters should have to learn to deal with evil or be oppressed. Good did not gain dominence by gift, but by hard, often bloody work. Law will have to recognze the benefit of alliance with neutral and chaotic in order to win a peaceful preserve from the predations of the evil natured.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Actually, a Lawful Good party would be much better at teamwork than a Chaotic Evil party.
This is quite plain to me. Also, please stop dropping the axiomatic alignment when you paraphrase the man's argument. According to the rules good characters are self-less, evil characters are selfish.
Lawful evil characters can certainly work together well, but when they find they are no longer under the terms of an agreement with a teammate, and that teammate's death would be advantageous, they would orchestrate said death.
Not really so of a Lawful Good character, that would be wrong.
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I don't like the idea of characters receiving (de)buffs from alignment. I think the effects of alignment should be relegated to how characters interact and how settlements operate. Patterns should emerge naturally from there.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd like to put out there that I think that most of the comments about how Evil doesn't work well with others/immediately backstab are completely incorrect. That's Stupid Evil, not any of the actual alignments. A CE fellow should be able to recognize that, yes, having buddies means you're less likely to get ganked yourself, after all.
Everyone is (well, some people are) making anyone evil out to be a lunatic who cannot be trusted and will stab you in the back the moment you turn away. Not completely likely.
Remember, alignment is an average, not a constant. There can be the CE Fighter who's really a swell guy to talk to, but prone to acts of violence and, well, Evil. Or a LG person who occasionally has the irresistable urge to go kick puppies.
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As for actual mechanical benefits for alignments, there should be some.
Not immediate buffs for it, but more like "By being Lawful Good, you can take Paladin/Use a Holy Avenger". Granting access to something another alignment wouldn't have, be it an ability tree or use (or greater use) of an item. And all alignments should have this sort of benefits.
And alignment should most certainly have nothing to do with settlements, aside from those run by organizations that are strongly aligned. A town with a generally LE alignment should be able to have a LG or CG character living in it without much hassle, but a town run by a cult of the Great Old Ones? Yeah, no way.
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Huh. That was a rather long rant, methinks.
At least, it too a long time to write. :p
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Goblin Squad Member
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Furthermore, from my admitedly, limited experience in the type of MMO's you've described most of the RPK'ers I've encountered weren't actualy a playing a character with an Alignment at all (good or evil), they were playing BattleField2 with a Fantasy skin drapped on top of it.
I 100% agree. The question I am posing is why won't they do the same here?
Darkfall and Mortal had alignment mechanics. The problem is alignment meant nothing to players from player controlled cities that never used starter towns / safe areas.
The idea that a lawful good city that does not accept chaotic or evil players is mechanically better than a chaotic evil one where RPKers live makes the alignment system meaningful in a way that you don't see in other games.
Should that be removed or chaotic evil cities balanced to have their own equal benefits (Aside from the complete freedom from restriction by laws or morality.) then you have to offer other incentives to be lawful good or this game WILL become "Darkfall: Golarion Wars."
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Goblin Squad Member
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We are talking about the guys that provide security for the settlement when all of the players are logged off. We are only talking about what Lawful settlements would get as a bonus with Chaotic settlements getting no advantage in another area to help them compensate.
People seem to be perfectly fine with Lawful getting all sorts of advantages, but if Chaotic gets anything to compensate it becomes broken, overpowered, or abuseable.
People do seem to be pretty dead set on hosing chaotic alignments when it comes to settlements.
I would assume that if there are heavy penalties on chaotic settlements, any chaotic benefits would be beneficial to an individual and maybe not so much for the settlement. For example, a CG character should have a negligible penalty for ganking evil characters even when in highly lawful areas, since what is CG good at but f*%#ing up evil's day and having fun doing it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Furthermore, from my admitedly, limited experience in the type of MMO's you've described most of the RPK'ers I've encountered weren't actualy a playing a character with an Alignment at all (good or evil), they were playing BattleField2 with a Fantasy skin drapped on top of it.I 100% agree. The question I am posing is why won't they do the same here?
Darkfall and Mortal had alignment mechanics. The problem is alignment meant nothing to players from player controlled cities that never used starter towns / safe areas.
The idea that a lawful good city that does not accept chaotic or evil players is mechanically better than a chaotic evil one where RPKers live makes the alignment system meaningful in a way that you don't see in other games.
Should that be removed or chaotic evil cities balanced to have their own equal benefits (Aside from the complete freedom from restriction by laws or morality.) then you have to offer other incentives to be lawful good or this game WILL become "Darkfall: Golarion Wars."
I think you are getting to the core of my arguement. There is no question or disagreement that you want to penalize people who RPK so that behavior will be less common in PFO. The disagreement is with the METHOD chosen.
The problem here is that when you penalize the CE alignment choice because RPK'er's HAPPEN to fall within that alignment you are also snagging ANOTHER group of players who aren't RPK'ing at all but just want to play villians/antagonists of that alignment in a thoughtfull and intelligent manner who actualy make the game more FUN for everyone else. I would actualy argue that you want to ENCOURAGE the latter (because they make the game more fun for everybody) while discouraging the former (because they make the game less fun).
However, you end up discouraging BOTH, simply because the same data field is being used to record what they are doing. That, to me, is both a poor design choice and completely uneccesary. If you want to discourage RPK'ing it's pretty easy to use a data field that measures JUST that specific activity and penalize that. There is no need to sweep in a whole group of people that have absolutely nothing to do with that activity and penalize them as well.
Edit: To make it short, you don't have to penalize playing CE, you just have to penalize RPK'ing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It seems to me that chaotic evil characters should work best with other chaotic evil characters, not so well with neutral evil or neutral chaotic. But similarly lawful good characters should work best with other lawful good characters, and less well with neutral good and lawful neutral.
There should be a good balance, but then I am likely neutral good myself.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Killing as a by-product of honest role play (RPK) is, I believe, a legitimate form of role-playing and has a place. 'Griefing' on the other hand is intent on destroying other players' enjoyment of a game without more than a pretense of role playing. The motivations for 'griefing' appear to be a desire for power over other people, making them react in ways that permit the griefer to gain an inflation of their self-esteem. The motivations for RPK is as an artistic expression of play-acting.
It can be very difficult to distinguish between these in reality: the player killed is invested in their victim character and tends to perceive the event subjectively. The predator will often either construe the events to represent the event as legitimate RPK (whether it was or not) or claim he or she had been the victim and was only trying to defend.
Adjudication of these motivations by a third party is fraught with perils. It would be better to provide controlling mechanisms than to have to adjudicate and ban.
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Goblin Squad Member
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RPKing= random player killing.
Griefing is continual behavior intended to disrupt another player's gaming experience. An example of this would be I follow you around, continually killing you every time you respawn until you log off out of frustration.
We have a disagreement over the definition of RPK. I'd be interested in learning more about how the community understands 'RPK'. Is it player killing in the form or role play, or randomg player killing?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am just getting up to speed on this topic (and dont have access to a computer or smartphone), can someone please tell me what "RPKing" is versus "griefing" ? Thanks. :)
"RPK" literally stands for "Random Player Killing".
"Griefing" usually involves specifically targeting someone.
"RPKing" can be a subset of "Griefing". This would be the case where a high-level character is randomly killing all the lower level characters who are trying to adventure in a lower level zone.
Killing as a by-product of honest role play (RPK)...
This is a very interesting, and completely new to me, definition of "RPK". Do you mean it to stand for "Role Play Killing"? In that case, I think it would never be "Griefing". However, I don't think this is a common definition.
We have a disagreement over the definition of RPK. I'd be interested in learning more about how the community understands 'RPK'. Is it player killing in the form or role play, or randomg player killing?RPKing= random player killing.
Griefing is continual behavior intended to disrupt another player's gaming experience. An example of this would be I follow you around, continually killing you every time you respawn until you log off out of frustration.
General consensus for the most part is random player killing, the definition you use is one i have no recollection of seeing around here yet, others might agree with you, honestly do not know. I have however seen your definition used in UO a few times. every time i have been a victim of it PRK regardless of definition used the end result was always the same, the person doing the killing had fun, my day of gaming how ever was ruined, as it typically always happened with me being a new player just an hour into the game and a veteran player just comes up and one shots me. To each their own I suppose. I typically log out and come back the next day and plot vengeance with my list of names.
I wonder if one of the core functions of alignment that is in the Pathfinder RPG will also be in the MMO: class restrictions.
I do believe that class restriction based on alignment will be used. Could swear i read somewhere in the forums a dev state as much. maybe it was over on the blog.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Killing other characters in character is fundamentally different from griefing, which is typically harrassment of a player by another player. If I'm a CE murderhobo who has claimed this hex as MY personal hunting grounds and consider anyone walking through it to be owing me a toll (for protection) or otherwise feeding the ravens and pocketing their cash, then that is IC. If I'm acting like a griefing murderhobo and assaulting every living thing under the earth, especially targeting new players and repeatedly hunting them down and killing them, that is NOT an in character act. The difference is in both repetition and intent. It's not always easy to spot the differences, but people who tend towards griefing will gain a reputation for such.
Proposal: Create a board topic for suspected griefers after the game launches, post up the names. Periodically check it and if you run across them in-game A] be vigilant and B] watch for continual behavior to back it up. If they seem to confirm it, annotate it on the board. The community can and should take a role in mitigating griefing, we just have to figure out how. This idea might be awful, I've never had to deal with the problem before. But it's important, I think, to start talking over how to deal with them before we're in-game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I'm a CE murderhobo who has claimed this hex as MY personal hunting grounds and consider anyone walking through it to be owing me a toll (for protection) or otherwise feeding the ravens and pocketing their cash, then that is IC.
I think this is a really important distinction.
If there is an area of the map that most players should expect to be dangerous, and you're in that area killing everyone who enters, then that will almost certainly be considered fair play.
If instead you are deliberately seeking out areas that most players would expect to be relatively safe, and doing the same thing there, then you're probably "griefing".
Proposal: Create a board topic for suspected griefers after the game launches, post up the names. Periodically check it and if you run across them in-game A] be vigilant and B] watch for continual behavior to back it up. If they seem to confirm it, annotate it on the board. The community can and should take a role in mitigating griefing, we just have to figure out how. This idea might be awful, I've never had to deal with the problem before. But it's important, I think, to start talking over how to deal with them before we're in-game.
I do believe your proposal has already been created to some extent.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Bounty boards might be posted in-game even. Like bulletin boards at the Inn, where parties offer their services as guards and merchants offer their products in advertising, so too might bounties be offered.
There are in-game mechanics planned-for with regard to bounties. I encourage you to read the full text here (Control+F "Bounty"), but a quick summation is that characters who whack you outside of war/combat you started/etc get the option to place a bounty on them- any player can accept the bounty contract, hunt them down, and kill them in return for that bounty. There's more information here on the boards, but by the time I locate it, Nihimon will put it up. :P If he hasn't, I'll update this post momentarily.
Further Links:
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2p9rt?Tonys-Blog-A-Player-Made-Solution-To-Boun ty
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2p9j3?The-Big-Bad-Bounty
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2npiw?Multiple-Bounties#1
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2p8oq?PVP-consequences-Bounties#1
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2p9b5&page=4?Goblinworks-Blog-Gypsies-Tramp s-and-Thieves#161