Goblin Squad Member
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Thanx Lisa for informing us there is still great hope to balance the alignments that are currently heavily biased to good in terms of progression.
But the way I see it is, it's different progression and different type of experience for each extreme (for simplicity) of LG v CE.
CE, actually sounds hellish fun, not having to worry about rules, adrenaline pumping as you know you are being hunted, but can you still waylay some unfortunate character while giving your pursuers the slip... then months later hatching some diabolical plot to raid a hex with some other disreputes for some wealth possibly then double-cross them and so on... all the while coming back from stinging defeats from time to time.
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Conversely, developing a hex as part of a team and forming interesting rules and rights and so on with LG that are rewarding to the whole community with awesome upgrades and so on.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Flags which would last for all of 10 minutes before being removed.By the same token, taking PCs into account, they would gain the trespass flag, criminal flag, and henious flag which would make them more than fair game... and that isn't even close to what he is talking about. Going out into the wilderness and attacking someone unprovoked is not the same as defending your homestead. Again, if you get attacked, you don't take the hit for killing them.Going into the wilderness looking for a fight isn't "protecting" anyone.I'm not sure that's a defensible position.
If there's a pack of wolves in the forest that preys on our livestock and kills our children, then going into the woods to hunt them down and kill them - or drive them off - is very much "protecting" my village.
Come one, Grumpy. To be fair, these flags can last as long as the devs set the timer for. It seems fairly obvious that for certain actions the timer could be made longer/shorter, etc. This is why we are all here discussing this.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Take the hypothetical where people know an attack is incoming, but they want to remain as good as possible so they don't want to open hostilities themselves.
Couldn't we use some magic like shield other to protect the merchants in a caravan from opening attacks? All sorts of defensive magic could be used to make the bandits' first attack useless while still flag-worthy. Even without magic, a 'bodyguard' skill could have the same effect, with which you grant an ally a defensive bonus by lowering your own a little.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Mbando: Paladins can use force against evil PCs without alignment consequences when those PCs are Criminals, Heinous, or At War with the Paladin's Settlement.
Aeioun, I understand what you're saying, I'm asking you what your grounds are. I haven't read anything to suggest that the Criminal flag means you can kill without an evil hit--what did I miss?
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Goblin Squad Member
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GrumpyMel seems to be passionate about the IC role-playing elements of justifying why "good" can proactively squelch "evil", but honestly that isn't going to trump a player's right to play the game under some clear and understood rules by everyone, even if he/she plays an "evil" character. Especially when the game is for paying customers with subscription fees :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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What does the fact of having or not having a BOUNTY do to the equation of making the villian feel enough pain (or at least lose the capacity for a time) to not kill innocents for awhile? The motivation is the same, the effect is the same. Why is one CE and the other not?
What difference does it make that the killing of innocents or the later encounter with the villian took place in the woods or a settlement?
If an evil character is not alive or is refitting after death, he is not killing innocents during that time. He is likely bound to an evil location that is a distance away from a good settlement and will have to travel back to retrieve his husk. He does not have his gear or full power until back at the husk making him less effective in combat against innocents on the way. Once he recovers his husk, he may kill another innocent and get another bounty placed on him. If you kill him again, he has to go through the same process. Eventually, he will try and find a target area where he can kill without getting killed in return... until the players in that area are strong enough to stop him. All the while, meaningful PvP is occurring and the evil character is spending twice as much time if not more getting back to his corpse than actually killing innocents.
Woods are lawless and therefore killing isn't a criminal act. Killing an evil character that has wronged you but is not flagged criminal would be a chaotic action. A settlement would likely have a law against the evil characters actions thus flagging him criminal, in which your attack on the criminal character is a lawful action....
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Goblin Squad Member
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Aeioun, I understand what you're saying, I'm asking you what your grounds are. I haven't read anything to suggest that the Criminal flag means you can kill without an evil hit--what did I miss?
@Mbando: Paladins can use force against evil PCs without alignment consequences when those PCs are Criminals, Heinous, or At War with the Paladin's Settlement.
It's Ryan post from the other "paladin" thread Here.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Now, if you think it's going to enhance gameplay to complicate protecting the weak, I'd be genuinely interested in hearing your explanation. That's a different question.
Sure, no problem. There is an element of selflessness to being truly good (nice ring to that "Being: Truly Good").
Our paladin is so good he will sacrifice a measure of his stature among the ranks of the good in order to visit the wrath of vindication on the evil.
He will atone, shaken from the bloody deed. It isn't something he would choose to do at all, let alone every day. But duty must be served and the weak must be defended from these predators, and if it means he must sully his pristine purity then by the gods he is the man.
And he is amazed at the adulation of the poor and the weak when he re-enters the walls of his home settlement, and stammering his thanks to them with bowed head walks a hero to pray in solitude in the sanctuary.
Thus are legends born.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Flags which would last for all of 10 minutes before being removed.Please cite where you found this information.
From the Blog entry itself
"In uncontrolled territory, no player settlement is present in the hex. Murder does not apply the Criminal flag, but attacking an unflagged target still applies the Attacker flag (and flags from other sources persist until they expire naturally). Help is also potentially very far away. A player killer here is likely to be free of the Attacker flag before anyone else shows up. "You can also read in other threads where the Heinous flag is expected to last no more then a few seconds.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Umm... no where in that text does it say criminal, attacker, and heinous flags last 10 mins. You are speculating that they will last 10 mins. However, you just answered your own question on how killing innocents is different in the wild vs. in settlements.
From what I have read on the heinous flag, the more you get flagged heinous the longer it lasts... but I might be under the wrong impression.
Still, you are assuming that they will only last 10 mins. If a kingdom controls multiple hexes, the criminal flag would last as long as it took the player to get out of the kingdom.
I am assuming that kingdoms, once established, will have overarching jurisdiction on the kingdom, thus making the criminal flag last after the player has vacated the hex he commited the crime in.
There's nothing wrong with speculation, but when you specify a time limit of 10 mins for all flags when the devs had already stated that the times would vary, you're just being counter productive.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ok, so you are in uncontrolled territory and you see someone skulking around. You don't know if they recently attacked someone, they don't have any active flags. Do you attack them as potential bandits when they may just be explorers keeping a low profile so they won't be attacked by bandits?
Do you stop them and question them or just attack? If they say they are just exploring do you take thier word or attack them? If they run do you follow them? If you cast detect evil and they show as evil do you attack them just for being evil?
In any of these situations if you attack, then you are not doing a good act.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What does the fact of having or not having a BOUNTY do to the equation of making the villian feel enough pain (or at least lose the capacity for a time) to not kill innocents for awhile? The motivation is the same, the effect is the same. Why is one CE and the other not?
What difference does it make that the killing of innocents or the later encounter with the villian took place in the woods or a settlement?
If an evil character is not alive or is refitting after death, he is not killing innocents during that time. He is likely bound to an evil location that is a distance away from a good settlement and will have to travel back to retrieve his husk. He does not have his gear or full power until back at the husk making him less effective in combat against innocents on the way. Once he recovers his husk, he may kill another innocent and get another bounty placed on him. If you kill him again, he has to go through the same process. Eventually, he will try and find a target area where he can kill without getting killed in return... until the players in that area are strong enough to stop him. All the while, meaningful PvP is occurring and the evil character is spending twice as much time if not more getting back to his corpse than actually killing innocents.
Woods are lawless and therefore killing isn't a criminal act. Killing an evil character that has wronged you but is not flagged criminal would be a chaotic action. A settlement would likely have a law against the evil characters actions thus flagging him criminal, in which your attack on the criminal character is a lawful action....
If he's find a spot where he can kill innocents, it doesn't matter where that spot is. Killing him removes him from that spot for a time and costs gear which makes it more expensive to kill innocents and theoretically impacts his ability to kill innocents.
I say theoreticaly because this is a ROLE-PLAYING GAME or at least I assumed it was. Which means nothing really makes any difference anyway because the PLAYER can (OOC) keep coming back and doing whatever they want for as long as they want....and that's part of the game....and potentialy even part of the FUN as long as the "innocents" don't actualy mind it.... and the PLAYERS really aren't "Evil" or "Good" for simply playing a game.
However, (IC) our characters aren't really supposed to KNOW any of that. They are supposed to believe what they are doing ACTUALY MATTERS and that they are STANDING FOR SOMETHING.....However it seems that is actualy being taken away...or is being reduced to an "economic equation" IC....sorry I'm not interested in role-playing a CPA thank you.
You wanna be a holy vigilante, you aren't a Pally, you are a fighter/cleric type. Deal with it.
But what we know so far is clearly making Good subjugated to Law.
If you act under the Law, then actions will not push you to Evil.But a CG character (holy vigilante, or otherwise) shouldn't need to restrict themself to the same Lawful actions that a Paladin (or other LG character) would, right? But based on what we know, THEY DO need to do so, there is no actions that would keep a character in the CG alignment, or beneficial actions that a Paladin would not take. There is no proactive CG sphere of action, they are just expected to act like Paladins except on the side they can do Chaotic stuff like cheating on contracts. Doesn't sound very heroic CG to me.
What does the fact of having or not having a BOUNTY do to the equation of making the villian feel enough pain (or at least lose the capacity for a time) to not kill innocents for awhile? The motivation is the same, the effect is the same. Why is one CE and the other not?
What difference does it make that the killing of innocents or the later encounter with the villian took place in the woods or a settlement?
Exactamundo. Good is subsumed to Law, CG types are expected to only fight Evil in the exact same way as LG types.
(both may occasionally do stuff that pushes them a bit towards Evil, but there is no DIFFERENCE for CG that gives them more freedom of action than LG, which anybody reasonable would expect them to have. EDIT: the only difference would be starting fights but not killing the target. that doesn't sound like a complete solution to me)Whether a Flag has expired expired or is currently active says nothing about whether they Evilly murdered people, or whether they will Evilly murder again. Whether it was a legal Crime or not has NO relevance to Good/Evil, but only to Law/Chaos. It feels wierd that RD went out of his way to say 'Paladins aren't Sheriffs/Bounty Hunters' to then just make it so they can in fact play that role very well.
Player Characters don't stay dead. Killing them doesn't stop them from doing what they're doing. It's a financial transaction, not a defense of the innocent.It's a financial transaction for the express and reasonably expected purpose of protecting the weak. I know that killing a PC in game does not permanently remove them from the game. The idea is to make the cost of being a bad-guy too high, in order to protect the weak.
Funny thing, if you make a game all about financial transactions where there is no real death, then financial transactions become the only fundamental concern... Which goes some distance to explaining why everything I've seen so far with PFO seems to point to Good being subsumed to Law.
If you cast detect evil and they show as evil do you attack them just for being evil?
First, 'detecting evil' means 'detecting history of things that push alignment towards evil', not the open-ended definition of a tabletop game, but the explicitly transactionalized version of automatic alignment tracking of PFO. So far, attacking and killing people is what is evil in PFO.
Second, you're cherry picking one example of not knowing the target in any way. That is far from the central issue of people concerned about this. There is also the cases where you DO know exactly who they are and what they do, but their Flags are expired (if the Flags were still active 'after the fact' of their assault, it would be OK(Good) even though it was just as much 'after the fact', just a smaller period of time afterwards). There is also the factor of Criminality, a Flag which persists a relatively long time after the fact, but Criminality is fundamentally about LAW, 'Sheriffs' would care about it, but if you are a CG hero fighting Evil, what should you really care about Law in the first place, if there is no difference in actions but simply under which legal regime those actions were done?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sure, no problem. There is an element of selflessness to being truly good.
Our paladin is so good he will sacrifice a measure of his stature among the ranks of the good in order to visit the wrath of vindication on the evil.
He will atone, shaken from the bloody deed. It isn't something he would choose to do at all, let alone every day. But duty must be served and the weak must be defended from these predators, and if it means he must sully his pristine purity then by the gods he is the man.
And he is amazed at the adulation of the poor and the weak when he re-enters the walls of his home settlement, and stammering his thanks to them with bowed head walks a hero to pray in solitude in the sanctuary.
Thus are legends born.
Yep, I like that. People need to figure out how to be goal-oriented rather than label-oriented.
Show some restraint instead of merely PKing everyone who happens to have a black hat on.Realize that you can't assume that someone you meet is going to do harm, and may be working towards rehabilitation.
Be ready to fight back when evil attacks, even strike first when you must.
Be willing to sacrifice a little of your own 'purity' in order to save the life of another.
At least with a character sheet you can see when you're starting to slip and need to re-examine your motives. Are you too quick to turn violent, trying to solve every problem at the tip of a sword? Are you in it for the glory, or doing the most good possible? If the world becomes more peaceful, could you trade in your warhammer for a carpentry hammer?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Umm... no where in that text does it say criminal, attacker, and heinous flags last 10 mins. You are speculating that they will last 10 mins. However, you just answered your own question on how killing innocents is different in the wild vs. in settlements.
From what I have read on the heinous flag, the more you get flagged heinous the longer it lasts... but I might be under the wrong impression.
Still, you are assuming that they will only last 10 mins. If a kingdom controls multiple hexes, the criminal flag would last as long as it took the player to get out of the kingdom.
I am assuming that kingdoms, once established, will have overarching jurisdiction on the kingdom, thus making the criminal flag last after the player has vacated the hex he commited the crime in.
There's nothing wrong with speculation, but when you specify a time limit of 10 mins for all flags when the devs had already stated that the times would vary, you're just being counter productive.
It really doesn't matter whether it's 5 minutes, 10 minutes or a day. A villian doesn't stop being a villian simply because some games timer has run out. He MAY stop being a villian when he has atoned for said prior acts and has resolved that he will no longer repeat them in future...which would mean that he has ceased being EVIL...at which point and ONLY which point would it be an Evil act to attack him.
I have never seen a narrative where the Alignment of the character fighting a villian was dependant upon some Metaphysical "Game Timer" running out with ZERO change in said villians nature, personality or future intentions, have you?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ok, so you are in uncontrolled territory and you see someone skulking around. You don't know if they recently attacked someone, they don't have any active flags. Do you attack them as potential bandits when they may just be explorers keeping a low profile so they won't be attacked by bandits?
Do you stop them and question them or just attack? If they say they are just exploring do you take thier word or attack them? If they run do you follow them? If you cast detect evil and they show as evil do you attack them just for being evil?
In any of these situations if you attack, then you are not doing a good act.
Right, but that's really relevant to the discussion. The relevant scenario is you're in uncontrolled territory and encounter Dithryius, servant of Baalzebul, who three times in the last week used necromantic magics to murder prospectors.
Just asking - doesn't a clear and understood "rules of engagement" set for both the attacker and the attacked trump IC considerations for the most part in an MMO? Shouldn't it?
Sure, and this is why I don't have much problem with the known set-up as it impacts on LG characters like Paladins: they do have a reasonable set of rules of engagement within which to pursue a LG struggle against Chaos and Evil. My issue is that CG characters really do not have any equivalent for proactive engagement of Evil (including LE), since Good seems to be so subsumed to issues of Law, e.g. attacking a Criminally flagged person isn't Evil (but whether an Evil character is murdering people in a no-murder-allowed country, or is doing so in the wilderness, isn't really a concern relevant to the Goodness of a CG character).
There has been posts saying how 'if there is no social connection, then just attacking people for being Evil is Evil', which has some validity, but it's also the case that that is removing the aspect of non-selfishishness to Good, as well as the fact that you CAN INDEED have a social connection or justified knowledge/reason to confront an Evil character, but as so-far described: if the Flags are expired, then it's an Evil act.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think a lot will depend on how long certain flags last, so hopefully a lot of thinking about it goes on.
And testing in EE, of course.
Word. If criminal and heinous flags are very short duration, that will very severely impact a LG character's attempt to be proactive.
What if heinous and some criminal flags (i.e. murderer) last a couple days?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just asking - doesn't a clear and understood "rules of engagement" set for both the attacker and the attacked trump IC considerations for the most part in an MMO? Shouldn't it?
I've already stated that I COULD LIVE with having some MECHANICAL PENALTIES imposed based upon said "rules of engament", even if the system wasn't smart or nuanced enough to accurately adjucate an intuitive outcome in many cases.
However this is NOT just that...this is also an ALIGNMENT system....something that defines your characters VERY IDENTITY...a large part of thier CORE BEING....thier MORALE COMPASS and where they stand in relation to the Cosmology...and even who they are allowed to associate with.
That's a very much larger picture then you are subject to a death curse/bounty for swinging first.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Now I could see variations to the ammount of ALN hits you take being tied to how far into lawful good you are... how long since you've commited an evil act... etc. Attacking without provokation is an evil act... that point isn't debatable under the alignment system.
Again, we are dealing with static interpretations of the alignments, not dynamic. Either killing is an evil act or it is a good act. We know for damn sure that it isn't a good act, so what does that leave?
If alignments weren't tied to character concepts (monk, pally, druid, barb) and tied to settlements, then we could explore the possibilities of dynamic alignment which is what we have in society today. Good and evil is relative to under what ethos you were raised. In our world, the US Soldier and the Taliban fighter both view themselves as "good" and the other as "evil"... but neither of them can be both.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Right, but that's really relevant to the discussion. The relevant scenario is you're in uncontrolled territory and Dithryius, servant of Baalzebul, who three times in the last week used necromantic magics to murder prospectors.
Side note, but Baal was just the fertility god of that pantheon. That's why the Israelites kept turning to him and Ashera in peacetime. Yahweh was their war god, before later edits made him their only god.
Still, if you mistrust that the necromancer is really trying to reform, attack. If he's been doing a lot of evil recently, killing him won't ding your alignment too much and you can earn back the few 'good points' you sacrificed for the sake of expediency.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Umm... no where in that text does it say criminal, attacker, and heinous flags last 10 mins. You are speculating that they will last 10 mins. However, you just answered your own question on how killing innocents is different in the wild vs. in settlements.
From what I have read on the heinous flag, the more you get flagged heinous the longer it lasts... but I might be under the wrong impression.
Still, you are assuming that they will only last 10 mins. If a kingdom controls multiple hexes, the criminal flag would last as long as it took the player to get out of the kingdom.
I am assuming that kingdoms, once established, will have overarching jurisdiction on the kingdom, thus making the criminal flag last after the player has vacated the hex he commited the crime in.
There's nothing wrong with speculation, but when you specify a time limit of 10 mins for all flags when the devs had already stated that the times would vary, you're just being counter productive.
It really doesn't matter whether it's 5 minutes, 10 minutes or a day. A villian doesn't stop being a villian simply because some games timer has run out. He MAY stop being a villian when he has atoned for said prior acts and has resolved that he will no longer repeat them in future...which would mean that he has ceased being EVIL...at which point and ONLY which point would it be an Evil act to attack him.
I have never seen a narrative where the Alignment of the character fighting a villian was dependant upon some Metaphysical "Game Timer" running out with ZERO change in said villians nature, personality or future intentions, have you?
I think it's also a population level question: If the timer ticks off longer = reduced frequency of evil aligned players further attacking for eg, then it has a ramification across how interactions play out and how willing each individual is willing to get flagged to pvp another player across where and when for what set of motivations?
The questions I have personally are:
1) What pvp action can "Good" players enjoy proactively?
2) If Player_Name="BeezlebubIV" is known to all and sundry as CE, low rep and everyone agrees that player is a griefer, blight and all the rest of it: Can't I just take my axe to them, there and then?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ok, so you are in uncontrolled territory and you see someone skulking around. You don't know if they recently attacked someone, they don't have any active flags. Do you attack them as potential bandits when they may just be explorers keeping a low profile so they won't be attacked by bandits?
Do you stop them and question them or just attack? If they say they are just exploring do you take thier word or attack them? If they run do you follow them? If you cast detect evil and they show as evil do you attack them just for being evil?
In any of these situations if you attack, then you are not doing a good act.
Mostly agree...except about the "Detect Evil" part.
However that's not the scenario I presented. The person skulking around killed a bunch of orphans yesterday. The sneer, admit it and tell you they are going to do the same thing tommorrow. Are you still "Evil" if you attack....the game mechanics would adjucate you so (because they don't have the Attacker flag currently)... it would adjucate that the "non-Evil" thing for you to do would be to shrug, walk away, and leave the next bunch of orphans that comes by to be slaughtered. Does that match logicaly with the narrative?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Right, but that's really relevant to the discussion. The relevant scenario is you're in uncontrolled territory and Dithryius, servant of Baalzebul, who three times in the last week used necromantic magics to murder prospectors.Side note, but Baal was just the fertility god of that pantheon. That's why the Israelites kept turning to him and Ashera in peacetime. Yahweh was their war god, before later edits made him their only god.
Baalzebul, Archdevil with portfolios of murder, undead, devils and the wind.
Everyone seems to be operating under the assumption that there is going to be no way to get your good alignment back. I have to hope that there will be some way to shift your alignment through something other than PVP. So if you see that guy that killed the orphans yesterday and you murder him you get an evil hit ( a small one since you where good and he was pretty evil) then you go off to teh temple and pray or do a quest some place or what ever mechanic the devs put in for you to grind the rep you want.
But that's not enough. They want to be able to murder these evil people on their own terms along with taking no alignment hit.
I think the solution is to realize this, and change their settlement laws so that murder is allowed. That way there would be no alignment hit for murdering anyone. (If I'm understanding things correctly).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Now I could see variations to the ammount of ALN hits you take being tied to how far into lawful good you are... how long since you've commited an evil act... etc. Attacking without provokation is an evil act... that point isn't debatable under the alignment system.
Again, we are dealing with static interpretations of the alignments, not dynamic. Either killing is an evil act or it is a good act. We know for damn sure that it isn't a good act, so what does that leave?
Then every single Pathfinder Tabletop Character is thoroughly "Evil" by that definition. They slaughter thousands about thousands of sentient beings (drow, orcs, ogre's, goblin, druagar, mites) usualy invading said creatures homes to do so. Very often not only do said adventurers strike first but they often do so by surprise, without said beings even being aware an attack is coming. Not only that, but they rob those beings of thier possesions afterward.
No, I don't think you're interpretation of the alignment system is an undebatable point...in fact, I think it's dead wrong.
In the Classic High Fantasy setting...the very act of "Evil" being "Evil" is justification for Good to attack and destroy it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Which means nothing really makes any difference anyway because the PLAYER can (OOC) keep coming back and doing whatever they want for as long as they want....and that's part of the game....and potentialy even part of the FUN as long as the "innocents" don't actualy mind it.... and the PLAYERS really aren't "Evil" or "Good" for simply playing a game.
However, (IC) our characters aren't really supposed to KNOW any of that. They are supposed to believe what they are doing ACTUALY MATTERS and that they are STANDING FOR SOMETHING.
Does it change your stance if your character does know it IC? Certainly in EVE, it's IC knowledge that anyone flying a pod ship is effectively immortal. And yet people still are able to make significant changes in the game world in EVE.
I could certainly see it as being IC in PFO that anyone who is Marked by Pharasma (or whatever the actual term is) can innately recognize others so marked on sight.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@GrumpyMel
So you are going to kill someone because they say something evil but you don't have any evidence they did an evil act (a flag) just because they said they did.
Where is that good?
The evidence is that they've self incriminated themselves and stated thier intentions to repeat the act.
In fact, in RL if someone stated they just blew up a bus and stated they were going to do so again and had what looked like a trigger in thier hand....I sure as heck wouldn't wait around for the explosion before acting....would you?
So you are going to kill someone because they say something evil but you don't have any evidence they did an evil act (a flag) just because they said they did. Where is that good?
A flag is not the only evidence of doing evil, it is evidence of doing some evil WITHIN THE TIME WINDOW OF THE FLAG. If you witnessed them do evil, or know they did from other sources, that is just as valid. Strict concerns about classes of evidence are really only relevant to Lawful alignment, CG should really not need to care as much about such Lawful terms, even if comes to bite them in their ass sometimes (but as described, it would turn them Evil ALL THE TIME, which is ridiculous). I mean, as described, it is not Evil if they attack you first and you fight back and kill them, but it is Evil if a week later (the Flag expired) you find them and attack and kill them. In all cases, nobody is 'really' dying, everybody is resurrected, so in ALL cases it is just about 'economic' consequences of dying, but if that's true, why is the first case (when you are attacked/flag is still active) NOT Evil while the latter case IS? The only difference is time-span, if you are 'taking revenge' on being attacked in the first place (before you die), or doing so later.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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@GrumpyMel
So you are going to kill someone because they say something evil but you don't have any evidence they did an evil act (a flag) just because they said they did.
Where is that good?
The evidence is that they've self incriminated themselves and stated thier intentions to repeat the act.
In fact, in RL if someone stated they just blew up a bus and stated they were going to do so again and had what looked like a trigger in thier hand....I sure as heck wouldn't wait around for the explosion before acting....would you?
So you're telling me anyone who has claimed they did something evil and claim they are going to do something evil again should be shot on site because "Oh they must be evil and it's ok to kill them?" That does not sound good to me that sounds very CE.
But that's not enough. They want to be able to murder these evil people on their own terms along with taking no alignment hit.
I think the solution is to realize this, and change their settlement laws so that murder is allowed. That way there would be no alignment hit for murdering anyone. (If I'm understanding things correctly).
You really could chill out on the straw-man arguments, you know.
FYI, your understanding of GW's proposed alignment system is just wrong: not having a law against murder has no relevance to Evil alignment shifts, just Chaotic. Your solution is relevant only to your strawman argument universe: nobody is asking to have no alignment repurcussions for murdering ANYBODY.I *AM* asking why there is no fight against Evil that a CG character would initiate but a LG wouldn't (i.e. Good but Chaotic)?
That just seems really bizarre to me, that Good is so subjugated to Law that it can't exist independently.
Whether or not it is ALWAYS Good to attack an Evil person does not conflict with if there are situation-specific details which make it sometimes Good to attack an Evil person (in a non-Lawful way)
GW has given no such indication there are any, and their responces so far have been pretty hostile to the idea of considering any such change. (Lisa's post may indicate a change there, obviously)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Everyone seems to be operating under the assumption that there is going to be no way to get your good alignment back. I have to hope that there will be some way to shift your alignment through something other than PVP. So if you see that guy that killed the orphans yesterday and you murder him you get an evil hit ( a small one since you where good and he was pretty evil) then you go off to teh temple and pray or do a quest some place or what ever mechanic the devs put in for you to grind the rep you want.
Exactly. Killing the bad guy won't turn you in CE char instantly, but just shift a bit your alignment towards chaotic and/or evil. You still be good but if you keep killing over and over then you will become evil.
So you can just go out in the wilderness and kill the evil criminal and later perfom some quest , or mission, or task to reset your alignment back.
Sounds ok to me. Not a big deal.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I *AM* asking why there is no fight against Evil that a CG character would initiate but a LG wouldn't (i.e. Good but Chaotic)?
That just seems really bizarre to me, that Good is so subjugated to Law that it can't exist independently.
Whether or not it is ALWAYS Good to attack an Evil person does not conflict with if there are situation-specific details which make it sometimes Good to attack an Evil person (in a non-Lawful way)
GW has given no such indication there are any, and their responces so far have been pretty hostile to the idea of considering any such change. (Lisa's post may indicate a change there, obviously)
That is what the heinous flag is for
Paladins can use force against evil PCs without alignment consequences when those PCs are Criminals, Heinous, or At War with the Paladin's Settlement. A Paladin could choose to whack a known evil character at any time, of course, they'll simply have to deal with the stain on their alignment. Some players may choose to play a character that never gets such stains, but that's a meaningful player choice, not a rule.
Note that while a flag may only last a certain period of time the devs have specifically noted in previous discussions that continuously getting flagged extends the length of the flag time and could potentially lead to a permanent flag.
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Goblin Squad Member
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However this is NOT just that...this is also an ALIGNMENT system....something that defines your characters VERY IDENTITY...a large part of thier CORE BEING....thier MORALE COMPASS and where they stand in relation to the Cosmology...and even who they are allowed to associate with.
I'm with you on this, and it is part of what makes PFO interesting to me. Given this, you could pretty easily make the case that a little push towards evil on the alignment scale for killing someone outside of the prescribed "no-shift" possibilities makes sense.
But we should also add, that the Alignment system is also being created within the context of the real world realities of an MMO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I see someone out in the wilds that has murdered a dozen innocents yesterday for LoLs. I know they are a thoroughly Evil sob that does this on a fairly frequent basis.I attack them...This happens on a frequent enough basis, because I spend a fair amount of time in the Wilds trying to protect innocent. I become Chaotic Evil... for the act of protecting the innocents and fighting Chaotic Evil villians.Emphasis added. You are not "protecting the innocent". You are taking revenge, or enforcing your idea of justice on others.
Protecting the innocent would involve you accepting a contract to guard a caravan or resource harvesting team, and being present when they were attacked, and responding.Going into the wilderness looking for a fight isn't "protecting" anyone. It's just you deciding that you want others to fear you when they choose to attack others.
I can see how it's chaotic, and perhaps incompatible from good, but is it evil? That is, in terms of alignment, is an anti-hero wandering the wilderness hunting scum truly identical to a the scum themselves? Is there no room for a Punisher? Or Judge Dredd?
The Heinous flag has been stated to not persist for any signifigant amount of time.
As is, killing somebody unprovoked IS an evil act, yet once the flag wears off (immediately in wilderness, after a longer period of time if breaking a law) there is no justification to confront that evil.
I haven't seen any posts on what other sources of 'Good points' would be.
GW should expect people to discuss what they actually post, not caveat every single instance that they may criticize with 'well they could change something in the future so lets no criticize anything'. If nobody criticizes anything, GW is missing alot of info that would be useful to inform what changes and new developments they should make in the future.
However this is NOT just that...this is also an ALIGNMENT system....something that defines your characters VERY IDENTITY...a large part of thier CORE BEING....thier MORALE COMPASS and where they stand in relation to the Cosmology...and even who they are allowed to associate with.I'm with you on this, and it is part of what makes PFO interesting to me. Given this, you could pretty easily make the case that a little push towards evil on the alignment scale for killing someone outside of the prescribed "no-shift" possibilities makes sense.
Sure, but does it make sense for those proscribed situations to be just as amenable to LG as CG, with NO allowance for CG prosecution of Evil? That just makes Good subjugated to Law. That's fundamentally my issue here, it seems like there is, and there's further plans for, many way to enable Lawful Good killing. I don't think killing needs to be 'no alignment consequences', but it seems wierd that there is NO allowance for Chaotic killings that are Good / not Evil.
I can see how it's chaotic, and perhaps incompatible from good, but is it evil? That is, in terms of alignment, is an anti-hero wandering the wilderness hunting scum truly identical to a the scum themselves? Is there no room for a Punisher? Or Judge Dredd?
+1
This could be addressed with by some actions moving alignment one direction BUT NOT PAST A CERTAIN POINT (i.e. Neutral).Really, apart from this specific issue, it seems like having events keyed to work like that is an important aspect of the game, ones that move you away from having the strong alignment, but that can't actually make you the opposite alignment all on their own (of course, if you did any actions that would move you towards the opposite alignment, those would be applied 'on top of' the now Neutral Alignment, thus moving you into Evil/opposite aligned territory)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Everyone seems to be operating under the assumption that there is going to be no way to get your good alignment back. I have to hope that there will be some way to shift your alignment through something other than PVP. So if you see that guy that killed the orphans yesterday and you murder him you get an evil hit ( a small one since you where good and he was pretty evil) then you go off to teh temple and pray or do a quest some place or what ever mechanic the devs put in for you to grind the rep you want.Exactly. Killing the bad guy won't turn you in CE char instantly, but just shift a bit your alignment towards chaotic and/or evil. You still be good but if you keep killing over and over then you will become evil.
So you can just go out in the wilderness and kill the evil criminal and later perfom some quest , or mission, or task to reset your alignment back.
Sounds ok to me. Not a big deal.
I would add that a character is not simply good. If they are indeed good then they are (already) regularly do things that make them good.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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The Heinous flag has been stated to not persist for any signifigant amount of time.
As is, killing somebody unprovoked IS an evil act, yet once the flag wears off (immediately in wilderness, after a longer period of time if breaking a law) there is no justification to confront that evil.
One instance of the Heinous flag has been stated to only last for a small amount of time. However, in that same discussion it did not say it only will ever last that long
However, when flags were first being discussed before there was a break out of all the different types of flag it was noted that how bad the act was and if you did it again while flagged would extend the length of the flag to the extent of it possibly becoming permanent.
This could have changed but I haven't seen anything to the contrary.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Killing the bad guy won't turn oyu in CE char instantly but just shift a bit your alignment towards chaotic and/or evil. You still be good but if oyu keep killing over and over then you will become evil.
It's also been said that killing the same person repeatedly in a given time period will give progressively smaller alignment shifts (to avoid alt-killing exploits for alignment shifting), so if it's just the one bandit coming back to the same area over and over again, there's basically a limit* to how much alignment you can shift by "protecting the innocents" .
(*if the progression forms a convergent series)
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Goblin Squad Member
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GW should expect people to discuss what they actually post, not caveat every single instance that they may criticize with 'well they could change something in the future so lets no criticize anything'. If nobody criticizes anything, GW is missing alot of info that would be useful to inform what changes and new developments they should make in the future.
I concur in principle. As long as both sides realize we are dealing with missing info, because we were invited into the Crowdforging process, I think we will be fine.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Which means nothing really makes any difference anyway because the PLAYER can (OOC) keep coming back and doing whatever they want for as long as they want....and that's part of the game....and potentialy even part of the FUN as long as the "innocents" don't actualy mind it.... and the PLAYERS really aren't "Evil" or "Good" for simply playing a game.
However, (IC) our characters aren't really supposed to KNOW any of that. They are supposed to believe what they are doing ACTUALY MATTERS and that they are STANDING FOR SOMETHING.
Does it change your stance if your character does know it IC? Certainly in EVE, it's IC knowledge that anyone flying a pod ship is effectively immortal. And yet people still are able to make significant changes in the game world in EVE.
I could certainly see it as being IC in PFO that anyone who is Marked by Pharasma (or whatever the actual term is) can innately recognize others so marked on sight.
It changes my stances to not playing the game at all. If IC we absolutely know that every single time we are killed or kill another character there is ZERO chance of death being final...then how does the scenario become anything other then a Monty Python episode or an excersize in Nihilism. Where is the drama? Might as well jump off a mountain-side for giggles. Most you could lose is a few coppers.
Would you really like to play in a PnP Campaign where all the characters KNEW IC it was impossible for them to die permanently... or be incarcerated... or be removed from thier plane of existance for more the 5 minutes...and the same held true for all thier Antagonists?
Might be interesting for all of half an hour before the novelty wore off.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm really not a rules-lawyer type person. I would appreciate/hope someone who that sees a major fault with the latest info (e.g. Grumpy, Quandry, Andius, etc) could offer up a succinct version of the issue (s) and a solution (s). I know I would be thankful. :)
There is now a lot of noise/snipping in this thread and it is starting to become difficult to follow the arguments.
Thanks!
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is now a lot of noise/snipping in this thread and it is starting to become difficult to follow the arguments.Thanks!
That is because there is a lot of conjecture based on minimal information.
FOR EXAMPLE: If you need only kill once or twice to change alignment to evil that is a huge issue. If it takes 1500 such PvP killings to become evil the whole argument is ridiculous, the matter becomes trivial and irrelevant.
I believe it's reasonable to assume if that particular mechanic is implemented the alignment shift will be large enough to be a deterrent without making certain character types unplayable. For me what is interesting is what level of shift is being proposed. That is however only MY assumption, other posters assume the worst and fear it will ruin the game.
Another issue sneaking through is it seems likely some posters actually WANT to be what GW would call griefers but do not see that behavior as actual griefing.