Suggestion: Alignment, PKing, and Looting

[Paper Weasel]

PFO wants to have a meaningful alignment system, and to discourage nonconsentual PvP without forbidding it. How can we make that happen?
My idea: Tie alignment to the item-threading/corpse-looting system.

The Good: A non-aggressive player isn't going to like the thought of losing their hard-earned gear to a random PvP gank. To help these players out, I propose Good characters gain more Threads of Fate. Conversely, evil characters would gain fewer Threads of Fate. Live by the sword, die by the sword; those who like a game where death can mean losing all your stuff can play that game, and those who don't like that game don't have to play that way.

The Bad: If all we do is reduce the risk for Good players without throwing Evil a bone, we'll invariably end up with highwaymen and petty criminals gaming the system to think they're Good. We need some incentive for Evil murdering bastards to stick with an Evil alignment tag! I propose that Evil characters loot a greater portion of unbound items from player corpses. Conversely, Good characters would be unable to loot much from slain players. Those who make their Evil living preying off other players have a strong incentive to be Evil mechanically, while Good players, who don't PK much (at least not for loot), don't lose anything they wanted.

This system:
1) Reduces the risk PKs pose to Good players, by allowing them to keep more of their stuff after death;
2) Encourages players to match their in-game alignment to their playstyle, by giving Evil characters benefits player-killers want (and 'carebears' don't) and withholding those benefits from Good characters;
3) Encourages player-killers to hunt each other, rather than preying on the Good, as Evil characters get fewer threads and thus might drop more valuable items upon death.

This system comes with some built-in balance knobs, if it seems the benefits for one alignment are too attractive to players of the opposing playstyle. Threads of Fate could range anywhere from none (lose everything upon death) to all (lose nothing on death), with Good and Evil maxing out wherever on the spectrum makes the best balance point; similarly corpse-looting could range from all unbound items to nothing, even locking good players from looting husks at the extreme end. Beta can provide an extended test period to work out how best to tune these knobs.

[Being]

Looks promising. If a Good bounty hunter takes out a criminal they could loot less than they could were they evil. I would want to know whether coin is lootable from a corpse. If it is, is coin threadable?

[Drakhan Valane]

I'm pretty sure Coin is unlootable and requires no threads.

[Nihimon]

I think this is actually a really fantastic idea.

[leperkhaun]

i like it.

[GameGeekRob]

Being wrote:

Looks promising. If a Good bounty hunter takes out a criminal they could loot less than they could were they evil. I would want to know whether coin is lootable from a corpse. If it is, is coin threadable?

From the blogpost on coin, it seems it has a magical property that allows it to travel to wherever instantaneously. You could assume that coin could travel with you when you die, but that really depends on how the magic of coin operates.

Ryan, in a recent interview, made the point that characters aren't going to be running around decked out in expensive gear. Instead, they'd only be taking with them what they needed to survive, a fraction of their entire collection of wealth. So if coin is lootable, I assume we'd be storing most of our money in the bank rather than carrying it all on us like most mmos. Looters will only be ganking you for your lunch money, not your life savings. I really like the idea of waging the risks of traveling through troubling areas with a lot of coin in your pocket.

[Dakcenturi]

This actually does sound like a good solution under the assumptions that...

1) This is only relevant to PKs of players that do not have bounties on them, do not have a criminal flag, do not have an attacker flag.
2) Maybe instead of limiting how much a *good* player can loot, make it so that looting causes significant alignment loss?

One other thing, where do neutral characters live in this? Is it as simple as they get the average number of threads or do they get a boost to make them less of a target as well?

[Paper Weasel]

Dakcenturi wrote:

This actually does sound like a good solution under the assumptions that...

1) This is only relevant to PKs of players that do not have bounties on them, do not have a criminal flag, do not have an attacker flag.
2) Maybe instead of limiting how much a *good* player can loot, make it so that looting causes significant alignment loss?

One other thing, where do neutral characters live in this? Is it as simple as they get the average number of threads or do they get a boost to make them less of a target as well?

1: Bounties/criminals/attackers might be treated differently, with the 'thread-weakening' mechanic mentioned. I'm not sure if players should be able to loot more from bounty targets, though; the bounty already provides incentive to kill them (and similarly there should be more important reasons you'd want to kill attackers/criminals).

2: Maybe both? Loot limiting and alignment hits? I want to avoid a system where the Evil tag is purely punitive, as that incentivizes players with an Evil banditry playstyle to game the system and come up with ways to maintain a deceptive Good alignment.

Neutral characters: I picture both the threadcount and looting skill as being a sliding scale thing. A Neutral character would be able to protect more items with threading than an evil character, and would gain more from killing and looting in self-defense. But they wouldn't have any special boost other than that; moral/ethcal neutrality isn't the same thing as political neutrality, and highwaymen are unlikely to respect either.

[Being]

Paper Weasel wrote:

...highwaymen are unlikely to respect either.

Unless one gives good cause for said respect.

[DeciusBrutus]

I like the lateral thinking involved in this suggestion; but I'm not optimistic about the likely effects of linking threads of fate to alignment. Letting evil characters loot more is a great reward for them, and it can be balanced by a penalty like increased settlement costs or limited access to major hub markets with high volume and low fees.

[Copasetic]

After reading these posts about alignment and pvp for the past month one thing has become increasingly clear to me. There's a ton of people concerned that there's going to be a large number of people out there that will kill you just to take your stuff. If you are really worried about your stuff and the amount of threads you have then don't carry anything you can thread. If that means going naked all the time then play a monk, sorcerer or a wizard. Or simply stay inside protected areas where pvp is impossible without npc guards killing the aggressive person.

It's starting to look like everyone that want's to avoid pvp all together all propose that evil aligned players should have all kinds of penalties added to them just for being evil. The penalty for playing an evil aligned rogue is bounty hunters or just good aligned players have less of an alignment hit when they attack you. Doesn't mean that CE Stabby the Rogue is going to kill every single LG player that crosses his street corner, because he wouldn't be able to survive alive long if he did that.

As it's been said many other places on this board, unless you believe you'll need your Longsword of Awesomeness and your other ultra expensive stuff to go mining. Chances are you're gonna leave most of it in a safe place so someone doesn't jump out from behind a rock and attempt to take it from you.... JUST LIKE AN AI CONTROLLED MONSTER WOULD.

Please just stop trying to get GW to add penalties to evil players just because you don't wanna die to other players. Cause i can't tell you the number of times in WoW where 10-20 Murlocks killed me vs. the number of times i got one shotted while mining from pvp. Death is gonna happen to us all at some point in this game.

[Keign]

I really like this idea, it seems like it could be well balanced, and logical.

[IronVanguard]

Seems like a good plan to me, though I'll agree finding the right balance on it would take some tuning in beta.