Dakcenturi Goblinworks Executive Founder |
I think systems are being confused here.
There will be a reputation system that has some basis on players affecting other players reputation.
There will be a flagging system that is based on actions that a player take in the world and is assigned via code. Alignment seems like it will be effected by code as well.
From what I remember off the top of my head. Reputation will be changed when you trade with other players, or fullfill contracts and stuff like that there will be some sort of rating system similar to ebay or something.
The criminal flag will be applied when you kill someone in an area of the world where it is against the law to kill people and you aren't at war with that individual.
The theif flag will be applied when you loot a husk of someone who is dead and you aren't in their party or part of one of their social organizations (chartered company, etc)
Alignment changed will be applied when you do an action that has some sort of alignment bonus or penalty associated with it.
While some of these system may possibly over lap they aren't all directly linked to one another.
***DISCLAIMER*** This is all from what I remember, can't go through and quote hunt at this time.
Nemo_the_Lost Goblin Squad Member |
I think Goblinworks is very much interested in these deliberations.
Perhaps. I understand that we are very early in the development process, but I don't see why that means the hard questions should not be asked first. Some of these issues are central to Goblinworks' stated mission.
I have more to say on the topic but I've reached my daily quota of unproductive posts.
I think systems are being confused here.
I won't say you're wrong, but I think what is more relevant is that these systems clearly require significant interplay in order to adjudicate character interactions effectively. Which is something Goblinworks has not addressed.
Athansor Goblin Squad Member |
The technical term is, I think, reductio ad absurdum. By reducing a proposition to its absurd extreme it can be disproven.How many ways do you propose we should take :"give all the best stuff to the lawful good and the vendor junk to the evil'>
Lawful, more so than good, and again not to that extreme. Extremes can make almost anything invalid, and shouldn't be applied.
I have in the last 7 years almost exclusively played the "evil" side of games because you tend to get more civilized players. So I wasn't saying reward lawful good players because I want treasure. I've played a lot of open pvp games, and strongly believe if you want the game to be friendly to those that don't enjoy traditional PVP games you'll want to have a system that rewards lawful play. Unless the criminal flagging system is -really- that robust, you'll run into serious issues with a chaotic society.
Being Goblin Squad Member |
...
Lawful, more so than good, and again not to that extreme. Extremes can make almost anything invalid, and shouldn't be applied.I have in the last 7 years almost exclusively played the "evil" side of games because you tend to get more civilized players. So I wasn't saying reward lawful good players because I want treasure. I've played a lot of open pvp games, and strongly believe if you want the game to be friendly to those that don't enjoy traditional PVP games you'll want to have a system that rewards lawful play. Unless the criminal flagging system is -really- that robust, you'll run into serious issues with a chaotic society.
If you give greater reward to any alignment, thus creating imbalance, then the advantaged side will attract those who seek advantage, including those who are not interested in their fellow players except as a predator is interested in prey.
KitNyx Goblin Squad Member |
@Dakcenturi. Then I guess I am with the OP wondering why flags, which will dictate other PCs behaviour toward you, are separate from reputation. And why does one get flagged for something no one observes.
@Nemo. Sorry, I was not trying to make you feel negatively. I was just trying to explain my position. I too have the concerns you do and am just trying to offer solution for discussion (I am not implementing anything *grin*). While my solution does face abuse via the players themselves (which I tried to address with the small rep shifts for any one report and diminishing returns), it does address the concern I was trying to address, how to avoid being made a criminal for crimes that cannot or were not observed. This allows for real crimes to be committed with good planning without the criminal tag being applied...as, in my opinion, it should be.
I do agree the best solution is something as of yet not proposed, but the best way to get there is to discuss the ideas people have, find weaknesses, solve them, collate, mix-and-match, simplify and see what falls out...rinse and repeat as needed.
Dakcenturi Goblinworks Executive Founder |
@Dakcenturi. Then I guess I am with the OP wondering why flags, which will dictate other PCs behaviour toward you, are separate from reputation. And why does one get flagged for something no one observes.
Because the person on the other end of the action being taken IE the one being killed or the one being stolen from does witness it they just might be dead and coming back to life elsewhere.
When you kill someone in PFO there is always a witness because no one stays dead. The thief flag I could see being debatable.
Flags were to allow the flagged person to be killed without or with less repercussions.
Reputation just tells you whether you should trust the person or not.
I agree though that there should be some mechanisms for disguising or something to provide some mechanics to subvert the system to a small extent. I'm mainly thinking how cool it would be for some master of disguise to pretend to be this really reputable good merchant when he really is taking all the stuff and funding some vile, secret plan on the side
KitNyx Goblin Squad Member |
Carbunkle Squirrelbane Goblin Squad Member |
Dakcenturi Goblinworks Executive Founder |
Zetesofos Goblin Squad Member |
3 people marked this as a favorite. |
What would be cool is that whenever you 'steal' something from a player, you automatically place a new weightless item into that persons inventory called 'Evidence' or 'clue'.
That item would have a variety of stats based upon the skill of the thief in question.
The player can then attempt to solve the evidence to detirmine information about the thief OR give it to another person to solve it for them.
Bad thieves have really easy evidences to solve, hence can be found quickly via tracking. Better and master thieves may have much harder ones to find, you may need multiples.
peterc |
what I imagine is:
a group of 3 players, find a resource to exploit. A gold mine.
I want the resource they are extracting...but I can't directly fight them for it...
Perhaps:
A: We have an alliance, and my is at peace with their kingdom. (but I intend war later.)
B: I don't want to fight them, because they will hand me my butt, and start a conflict.
C: They are guarding the mine, and I want to hamper their efforts to extract it.
D: I am GOOD, and I don't want a criminal flag, but I have allies who can attack, but I want to support their efforts in some way.Is there any reason I couldn't set up a few Glyphs of Warding in my favored area, then let my allies attack and then lead them to that spot?
"Who put this spike growth here? And what's with the deeper darkness?"
I'm just catching up with this thread. I've highlighted the word "GOOD" because I don't see how it fits with the rest of the post. You are playing a double-crossing bastard who is trying to set some people up. Your character intends to do them over in future with a more open war but are settling on covert action for now.
And you say your character is GOOD? No, someone who behaves like that is EVIL and it ought to affect their alignment. And if the program can't pick it up and the character remains as GOOD then behaving like that and remaining GOOD is exploiting a weakness in the system aka cheating.
Dakcenturi Goblinworks Executive Founder |
What would be cool is that whenever you 'steal' something from a player, you automatically place a new weightless item into that persons inventory called 'Evidence' or 'clue'.
That item would have a variety of stats based upon the skill of the thief in question.
The player can then attempt to solve the evidence to detirmine information about the thief OR give it to another person to solve it for them.
Bad thieves have really easy evidences to solve, hence can be found quickly via tracking. Better and master thieves may have much harder ones to find, you may need multiples.
Ok that would be pretty cool!
Marthian Goblin Squad Member |
If you give greater reward to any alignment, thus creating imbalance, then the advantaged side will attract those who seek advantage, including those who are not interested in their fellow players except as a predator is interested in prey.
I actually beg to differ. I think they are good on having Lawful/Good settlements be the better settlements.
Maintaining a Lawful/Good alignment can be pretty hard. In turn, you have access to better training and most likely better quality service that won't rip you off.
On the other hand, having a Chaotic/Evil alignment isn't too hard to do. You may not have access to the best training, but you have a LOAD more leeway on your actions. That guy ticking you off? Pfft, screw him, you should just kill him or make his life miserable. This merchant ripped you off? I don't give two flying flips if "that's business," I'm going to go excise revenge on him. I don't care if I should report it to the lawful authorities, they don't give me crap.
Valandur |
KitNyx wrote:@Dakcenturi. Then I guess I am with the OP wondering why flags, which will dictate other PCs behaviour toward you, are separate from reputation. And why does one get flagged for something no one observes.Because the person on the other end of the action being taken IE the one being killed or the one being stolen from does witness it they just might be dead and coming back to life elsewhere.
When you kill someone in PFO there is always a witness because no one stays dead. The thief flag I could see being debatable.
Flags were to allow the flagged person to be killed without or with less repercussions.
Reputation just tells you whether you should trust the person or not.
I agree though that there should be some mechanisms for disguising or something to provide some mechanics to subvert the system to a small extent. I'm mainly thinking how cool it would be for some master of disguise to pretend to be this really reputable good merchant when he really is taking all the stuff and funding some vile, secret plan on the side
Also a flag eventually goes away while reputation remains with the character. A character can change their reputation but I imagine it won't be as easy as giving a couple gold to a poor NPC.
Valandur |
Athansor wrote:...
Also on the subject of benefits from alignment. It's generally my take that "Good" alignments, and "Lawful" alignments should get the most reward....Why? What benefit is there to the game to unbalance it so badly that no one will play the villain?
Do you not realize this is not a themepark that is going to generate content for us? We have to build it ourelves. If there are no evil characters the good characters have no purpose.
There must be a balance. If you are going to give all the most powerful items to the lawful good and allow only paltry trinkets to chaotic evil, how are the chaotic evil going to be balanced in compensation in your system?
I agree with Being here, no reason to discourage someone from playing a CE character. LG characters will already get more benefits then any evil aligned characters. The alignments need to be balanced, not weighted in LG's favor.
lawful evil guards from the nearest city charge out to find the raiders. With their superior gear they kill them, loot their husks and collect a reward.
Unless the area controlled by the LE settlement has a law that CE characters are KOS, or has a law against murder (unlikely) then they wouldn't attack the CE players unless the players broke some law in place within the hex.
Blaeringr Goblin Squad Member |
What is the difference between an evil military empire backed by the resources of a good economic nation and a good military empire backed by the rsources of a good economic nation?
Exactly.
I'm going to quote a humorous political commentator here:
"There's no way to make 'love thy neighbor' mean 'hate thy neighbor' or to make 'turn the other cheek' mean 'screw you, I'm buying space lasers'."
Being Goblin Squad Member |
What would be cool is that whenever you 'steal' something from a player, you automatically place a new weightless item into that persons inventory called 'Evidence' or 'clue'.
That item would have a variety of stats based upon the skill of the thief in question.
The player can then attempt to solve the evidence to detirmine information about the thief OR give it to another person to solve it for them.
Bad thieves have really easy evidences to solve, hence can be found quickly via tracking. Better and master thieves may have much harder ones to find, you may need multiples.
Sweetheart of an idea Zetesofos. What could be better than a crime that can be solved! It warms the deductive reasoning it does.
Being Goblin Squad Member |
...I actually beg to differ. I think they are good on having Lawful/Good settlements be the better settlements.
Maintaining a Lawful/Good alignment can be pretty hard. In turn, you have access to better training and most likely better quality service that won't rip you off.
On the other hand, having a Chaotic/Evil alignment isn't too hard to do. You may not have access to the best training, but you have a LOAD more leeway on your actions. That guy ticking you off? Pfft, screw him, you should just kill him or make his life miserable. This merchant ripped you off? I don't give two flying flips if "that's business," I'm going to go excise revenge on him. I don't care if I should report it to the lawful authorities, they don't give me crap.
So you feel that greater rewards accrue to those whose job is difficult.
If that is true look at all the mechanics being imposed on the Evil character for playing his character's alignment well. Then look at the Paladin atoning for everything non-Lawful Good that he did by sitting in a clean quiet chapel with a sad pious look while beating his fist gently, somewhere in the vicinity of where his heart is supposed to be.
The evil character, for playing his role gets persecuted, locked out of most settlements, hounded everywhere and he cannot even relax in his native settlements. Not only are the monsters after him like they are everyone but the Neutrals and Good are too. When he dies he has to respawn far away in evil territory, and to all Good settlement NPC guards he in KoS.
And you are going to tell me it is hard for that Paladin sitting in church?
I don't think so.
KitNyx Goblin Squad Member |
What would be cool is that whenever you 'steal' something from a player, you automatically place a new weightless item into that persons inventory called 'Evidence' or 'clue'.
That item would have a variety of stats based upon the skill of the thief in question.
The player can then attempt to solve the evidence to detirmine information about the thief OR give it to another person to solve it for them.
Bad thieves have really easy evidences to solve, hence can be found quickly via tracking. Better and master thieves may have much harder ones to find, you may need multiples.
We discussed an idea like this back here.
revcasy Goblin Squad Member |
People will play evil if it affords them the opportunity to be a jerk. (Chaotic) Evil characters can kill anyone they want, any time they want if they are strong enough and take what they want. That alone is more than enough incentive to create a group of players who do just that.
Look at early Ultima Online. There were plenty of PKs with red names running around, even though having that flag seriously limited where you could go and what NPC's you could deal with. Even though having that flag made you a free kill for anybody who PvPed but didn't want to be red. It was like a target on your back.
Evil is fun. Think of Grand Theft Auto. How fun was it to steal a hot car and plow through a crowd of pedestrians? Pretty fun. Evil does not need any mechanical advantages or bonuses, and can even stand up under a fair number of disadvantages because some people (many people) will simply enjoy it.
Being Goblin Squad Member |
TreavorQuix Goblin Squad Member |
i love the idea but perhaps you can post clues in an inn and leave it to players around to solve (if you didnt want to solve yourself) and find the thief who had taken from you of course you would have to have an award attached but isnt worth it to know they were killed also (thinking about this though i run into a space continuum where the bounty hunter is flagged thief and repeat cycle)
revcasy Goblin Squad Member |
Sure. Have to have evil for the whole thing to work right.
But at the same time we don't want griefing, period.
Leaving aside the issue of griefing, I was responding to your assertion that if good wanted an evil force to fight against that we had to offer some sort of advantage or at least equal footing to those playing evil characters.
I don't think we do, per my previous post. I think evil will thrive no matter what we throw at it.
BTW, how do you define griefing in an open PvP game?
Zetesofos Goblin Squad Member |
Sounds like you would need a special contract to solve a clue.
Also wonders why kind of information would exist on one - would it merely be a black box that you test your skill against and wait for a solution? Can it fail?
If you do solve it, what information do you get (a name is easy, maybe you only get their race, their reputation value, or their affiliation)
Being Goblin Squad Member |
@ revcasy I don't. But many players are afraid of it so it has spawned a very complicated mass of counters that tilt the scales of power even farther toward the Lawful Good alignment.
However we have been provided a few ideas of PvP types that are not griefing in the eyes of the developer. Killing a player character is not griefing if their settlements/kingdoms are at war. Killing a player character is not griefing when it is 'provoked' (and sorry no one has explained how they define provocation in a way the game can track). The only 'provocations' I can think of so far are being attacked, being pickpocketed and catching them in the act, duels, and there was something else but I'm not pulling it up right now. maybe you'll think of it.
So killing a player while not under those conditions and maybe others like them is griefing. I am not sure but I think the jury is out on whether killing the diametrically opposed alignment is griefing or not. That would be Chaotic Good versus Lawful Evil, Chaotic Evil versus Lawful Good (possibly True Neutral versus Entropic if I get my way, but that is unlikely).
Now the alignment hit story is rather different. How can an evil character get an alignment hit for being evil? Can't, as far as I can see. So it may well be the case that if you are evil you cannot grief kill another evil character. Every kill would be just a kill in that case. Not sure about that.
What are your thoughts?
revcasy Goblin Squad Member |
No I think chaotic evil killing chaotic evil has or should have no significance in any alignment tracking system. It only matters to those of non-evil and/or non-chaotic alignments who you kill.
Griefing is something completely different from PvP in an open PvP game. If you are in the game, then on some level PvP is always consensual. There are times when it is inconvenient, there are times when it is not exactly fun... in the same way that getting gibbed in Quake isn't fun, but it's a PvP game, so the act of PvP can never in itself be griefing.
Griefing is intentionally abusing game mechanics to systematically harass or ruin the play experience of another player. Spawn camping, corpse camping, stalking, etc. You guys know what constitutes systematic harassment. These are things that only need one game mechanic to handle--a "report" button.
Being Goblin Squad Member |
Zetesofos Goblin Squad Member |
Harad Navar Goblin Squad Member |