Goblin Squad Member
|
Thus far in the development process, every advantage seems to be for the forces of Good. Is this a problem?
The developers seem to be laboring under the impression that:
A) There are enough jerky people out there in real life that will play the game simply to enact that jerkiness out on other players,
and
B) This tidal wave of players will be significant enough that, in fact, severe mechanical disadvantages such as limited contracting ability, and inferior settlement building need to be in place to stem it.
I'd like to see some suggestions for benefits for Evil only characters that do not increase the likelihood of griefing. How about:
Undead Creation? Devil/Daemon/Demon Summoning?
Players want to play a concept, but they also want to "win the game." It seems to me that the forces of Evil are set up to fail, and I think that will be a big discouragement to many players, myself included. It's in the best interest of the game to encourage diversity in alignment on all levels of play - from individual interactions, all the way to conflicts between kingdoms.
This seems like a fairly large oversight in what I've considered to be a pretty spot on development process thus far.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Ryan did just state that LE settlements will be both awesome and powerful.
Yeah I saw that. . . and that's great if true - we just have yet to see any actual mechanical advantages spelled out for being evil.
I want to know "why is it cool to be evil, other than satisfying my inner jerk-face."
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
internet + anonymity = total jerkwad
Evil certainly won't be bringing you flowers.
An evil civilization should indeed be something than can get quite powerful, but with greater risks involved.
Good settlements don't squeeze as much productivity out of their populace, but they're also not plotting to destroy each other. Good can trust good, but evil can only trust evil to be evil.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Exactly, Blaeringr.
The thing that worries me is the personal viewpoint Mr. Dancey expressed earlier, and I think it's been evident in the design philosophy thus far:
There is no good reason to play a chaotic evil character except if you like being other people's content.
I just think that RP'ing an evil character is totally valid in and of itself, and I'd like for it be rewarding outside of giving Andius and company something to do.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Roleplaying an evil character is totally valid, yes. But I have never seen of a portrayal of a CE character that wasn't an insane bloodthirsty psychopath sadist that had no goal beyond immediate pleasure at someone else's expense.
The Joker isn't someone you want in your party, and EVERY TIME I have played with someone playing chaotic evil, they came off as the same kind of insane that Heath Ledger played in the Dark Knight.
Lawful Evil is an awesome alignment to play and has several positive examples from fiction. Neutral Evil can at least be interested enough their own ends to be dependable to a party (Jayne in firefly).
But Chaotic Evil? I'm with Ryan on this one.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Erm CE is not the only evil, there is also NE and LE.
Right, and he has stated that LE settlements might be able to compete with a LG settlement:
It will (potentially) have less valuable buildings than a Lawful Good Settlement - less valuable to a degree not yet determined. It will not have buildings as crappy as Chaotic Evil.
So a LE settlement will have a low GOOD rating and therefor make them less effective than a LG settlement.
All we know at this point is that will probably be at a disadvantage, but out of the three evil alignments, it has the best chance of competing with the good settlements. Although it has yet to be determined how "crappy" they will be.
So right now, the most a LE settlement can boast is being the "least crappy." Not exactly inspiring for the forces of darkness.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The thing is even if the settlements is some degree crappier than a LG settlement. The LG guys can't do all the things that the LE guys can do because they have to worry about shifting their alignment so that gives the LE guys a lot more flexibility which in my book balances out not having as nice of a settlement.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
So right now, the most a LE settlement can boast is being the "least crappy." Not exactly inspiring for the forces of darkness.
Take it as a challenge. In most games behaving like a 5 year old smashing things is too easy. Its good that you need to work hard to be successful at evil. Filters out the wannabes :D
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Ryan was the one who brought up CE, not me. It's easy to delegitimize evil characters as being played by a bunch of jerks on the internet when you target CE, because it's the most unpredictable out of the three.
But speaking of CE, you probably have played with people who just played Chaotic Stupid. The few times in tabletop that I've been CE, I've been a cold, calculating type of killer - the kind that has an endgame. Hannibal Lecter comes to mind.
Have we seen a single benefit thus far to playing an evil character?
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Take it as a challenge. In most games behaving like a 5 year old smashing things is too easy. Its good that you need to work hard to be successful at evil. Filters out the wannabes :D
So right now, the most a LE settlement can boast is being the "least crappy." Not exactly inspiring for the forces of darkness.
You're describing CE, not LE
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Well there are things like was told about using evil spells, undead, slaves...etc.
However there is something else. PfO is at its heart a game about controlling territory as Ryan said.
One example he gave is that LG settlements will be restricted in who they can declare war on, while a CE settlement will have ZERO restrictions, they can declare war at any time, for any reason, against anyone.
Thats a pretty big deal. I mean ohhh look that CG settlement is controlling a very valuable mine, but they dont like us so they wont trade that with us and we cant just take it from them. On the other side a CE settlement can go...we want that, decalre war, and take it.
A LE settlement should be just as "good" as a LG settlement. I can see why a CE settlement will not be able to develop very good facilities.
I do agree, and i think that GW is looking at it, that Evil needs to not be a second class citizen.
However part of the problem is that the majority of griefers are going to go evil just so they can grief people. Not only that but there are some folks that I have seen and think to myself that they are griefers but just dont know it. The result is that you want to somehow limit the over all "evil can basically do whatever they want because they are evil".
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Good is inherently more functional than evil because good will cooperate where evil will subjugate. The long-term benefits clearly favour cooperation, but people can be pushed or enculturated toward putting a short-term individual value over the long-term collective value.
Anonymity is intoxicating. One of the prime reasons people behave in the real world is because they fear social censure, but the anonymity afforded by the internet prevents it. The alignment and rep system is there to add some of the effects of social censure back in, not just to divide the world into white hats and black hats, realm vs. realm, alliance vs. horde, etc.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
The idea arising in this forum that banditry is evil but necromancy is not is exceedingly curious.
I define good and evil by the promotion of happiness or suffering. If an undead is mindless, it can suffer about as much as a rock. The same is not true of stealing someone's time by robbing them of the resources they earned in that time.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
The idea arising in this forum that banditry is evil but necromancy is not is exceedingly curious.I define good and evil by the promotion of happiness or suffering. If an undead is mindless, it can suffer about as much as a rock. The same is not true of stealing someone's time by robbing them of the resources they earned in that time.
So good and evil for you revolves around infringing perceived personal rights ?
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I define good and evil by the promotion of happiness or suffering. If an undead is mindless, it can suffer about as much as a rock. The same is not true of stealing someone's time by robbing them of the resources they earned in that time.
When I steal from a caravan, I will bring you happiness. Just think of the joy you will have, if you manage to get away. Just think of the joy you will feel, when you make it to the market.
Even if I do take your caravan, loot it and leave a few of your guards dead. Think of the joy I just gave to you. The joy of adventure, the sense of danger. I just elevated the mundane activity of bringing resources to the market, to an event that had you "at the edge of your seat".
You will thank bandits for that, or you might as well be playing solitaire.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I define good and evil by the promotion of happiness or suffering. If an undead is mindless, it can suffer about as much as a rock. The same is not true of stealing someone's time by robbing them of the resources they earned in that time.When I steal from a caravan, I will bring you happiness. Just think of the joy you will have, if you manage to get away. Just think of the joy you will feel, when you make it to the market.
Even if I do take your caravan, loot it and leave a few of your guards dead. Think of the joy I just gave to you. The joy of adventure, the sense of danger. I just elevated the mundane activity of bringing resources to the market, to an event that had you "at the edge of your seat".
You will thank bandits for that, or you might as well be playing solitaire.
Merchants play a different game. The excitement comes from predicting the market and out smarting other merchants.
They could not care less about combat. Avoiding it altogether is the much preferred option. This is something many PvP players have incredible difficulty understanding.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Haha. . . I'm not trying to get into yet another thread on "define the nature of evil," I just want to know what the cool, mechanical benefits to playing an evil character will be.
Some of the things mentioned (increased ability to declare war, undead, slaves, etc) sound good. I'd like to see drug use/trade as well, as that's a topic covered extensively in the Pathfinder RPG (and something that evil merchants could really have fun with).
I'd feel better about Good characters having the powers of "cooperation" and "friendliness" (and enjoying some mechanical advantages) if I as an evil character can do something truly dastardly that is only allowed by virtue of the dark pacts I've made.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Haha. . . I'm not trying to get into yet another thread on "define the nature of evil," I just want to know what the cool, mechanical benefits to playing an evil character will be.
Lots of wannabe-evil noobs joining your clan you can boss around? :D
Presumably you will also have access to training that is specifically evil. Evil descriptor spells and summons may be an obvious one.
Keep your resource locations secret by simply killing any wandering touristy types?
You may have less problems being "devious" or downright dishonest in trading.
It's hard to tell until we know more.
|
Goblinworks Executive Founder
|
The idea arising in this forum that banditry is evil but necromancy is not is exceedingly curious.I define good and evil by the promotion of happiness or suffering. If an undead is mindless, it can suffer about as much as a rock. The same is not true of stealing someone's time by robbing them of the resources they earned in that time.
The happiness of the person isn't negated by their death. Enslaving the dead is no less an abomination than enslaving the living; arguably, it's less evil to enslave the living because they have the capability to attempt resistance.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
The happiness of the person isn't negated by their death. Enslaving the dead is no less an abomination than enslaving the living; arguably, it's less evil to enslave the living because they have the capability to attempt resistance.The idea arising in this forum that banditry is evil but necromancy is not is exceedingly curious.I define good and evil by the promotion of happiness or suffering. If an undead is mindless, it can suffer about as much as a rock. The same is not true of stealing someone's time by robbing them of the resources they earned in that time.
Especially if we keep in mind that in PF lore creating an undead negativelly affects his soul in afterlife. Basically you are enslaving a soul, what is, with no doubt, evil.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I think what the devs are saying is along the lines of, "the burden of proof" from the history of mmorpgs/online games is with players.
That's more or less what the blog says. I'm still playing my tune that EE (early enrollment) is going to be the best phase of the game with a great collection of players in it for the good of the game and each other. After then as Andius said in another thread in another context, just takes one player to find a loop-hole and a thousand copy-cats to jump down that hole after them... . It's come up time and again as a key question in interviews how to avoid the griefing problem with open pvp+pve.
I think after that question, comes the question of promoting diversity of alignments.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Especially if we keep in mind that in PF lore creating an undead negativelly affects his soul in afterlife. Basically you are enslaving a soul, what is, with no doubt, evil.
I keep seeing this come up, but every reference I've found says the opposite. Where does this information come from?
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Especially if we keep in mind that in PF lore creating an undead negativelly affects his soul in afterlife. Basically you are enslaving a soul, what is, with no doubt, evil.I keep seeing this come up, but every reference I've found says the opposite. Where does this information come from?
There is some discussion about the "mindless" undeads such as skelektons or zombies, but lichs wendigos etc certainly have inteligence , so they have a soul, some even remember stuff they experienced while alive. Even if you consider that "mindless" undeads don't have a soul involved in their creation, they are animated trough NEGATIVE energy, that is obviously opposite to positive energy that is the energy animating any living being. Manipulating negative energy (that comes from the negative planes) is evil, period.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Erm CE is not the only evil, there is also NE and LE.Right, and he has stated that LE settlements might be able to compete with a LG settlement:
It will (potentially) have less valuable buildings than a Lawful Good Settlement - less valuable to a degree not yet determined. It will not have buildings as crappy as Chaotic Evil.
So a LE settlement will have a low GOOD rating and therefor make them less effective than a LG settlement.All we know at this point is that will probably be at a disadvantage, but out of the three evil alignments, it has the best chance of competing with the good settlements. Although it has yet to be determined how "crappy" they will be.
So right now, the most a LE settlement can boast is being the "least crappy." Not exactly inspiring for the forces of darkness.
What I am taking away from that whole exchange was in part that the efficiency of settlements is a function of Lawfulness, not where on the spectrum of good and evil they fall.
If I'm right about that not only can we predict that LG and LE settlements will be equivalent, albeit different, so too will LN settlements have similar potential.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Creating undead is undoubtedly evil, and while sentient undead have (or are) souls, I haven't seen anything suggesting that they're the same souls they had before death, as opposed to evil souls created from negative energy as part of their spawning process. I'll have to look into this further.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Could someone explain to me how come the Drow who are CE, are very successful at building a mighty empire underground, and a huge threat to the surface elves, and to anyone else that gets in their way.
From what GW and Ryan has proposed as a system for handling griefing, alignments and reputation, having major restrictions in advancement, the Drow would never been able to advance to be such a powerful nation.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Thing I don't understand is why the extreme anti-griefing policies?
I play WoW, and at most run into maybe one d-bag every few days. WoW has millions of subs and hundreds of thousands of players.
PFO is only going to start at 4k players, and maybe get to 100k players in a matter of years.
Is it expected that those of us who have donated hard earned money to this project that will make up the first 4-5k of players, will suddenly decide to act like an asshat and lend to an atmosphere in game that makes the game unpopular?
It doesn't make any sense.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Thing I don't understand is why the extreme anti-griefing policies?
I play WoW, and at most run into maybe one d-bag every few days. WoW has millions of subs and hundreds of thousands of players.
PFO is only going to start at 4k players, and maybe get to 100k players in a matter of years.
Is it expected that those of us who have donated hard earned money to this project that will make up the first 4-5k of players, will suddenly decide to act like an asshat and lend to an atmosphere in game that makes the game unpopular?
It doesn't make any sense.
WoW is a poor analogue. It has a great deal of PvE content for people to go wild on. PFO will not. If you want a better example, go play EVE for a month.
Edit to add: Wow is also inherently factionalized. If memory serves (It's been years since I played WoW) even on the PVP servers, you can't gank your own faction members.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Especially if we keep in mind that in PF lore creating an undead negativelly affects his soul in afterlife. Basically you are enslaving a soul, what is, with no doubt, evil.I keep seeing this come up, but every reference I've found says the opposite. Where does this information come from?
I'm not sure either.
Mindless undead = skeletons & zombies, for the most part. A necromancer (or other caster) can control a limited number, and after that, prior animates start going wild. Those loose ones are a danger to every living thing they encounter, so I can see that there should be some measure of evil inherent in even taking the risk.
More advanced undead are not mindless, but most of those are created by others of their type (vampires, wraiths) or even form spontaneously with particularly traumatic deaths (ghosts). If you do create those via spell, then you are creating an inherently evil thing that may find its own existence tortuous and is likely to take its pain out on everything it can. Add to that the fact that they can think, and the odds of them getting loose or twisting your instructions goes way up.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
There's actually a fairly large number (larger than I realized, I don't often play necromancers) of intelligent undead that can be created by spell. Create Undead and Create Greater Undead both produce intelligent undead and are sixth and eighth level spells, respectively. I haven't gone through the full list, but at least one of them remembers bits of it's previous life.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Thing I don't understand is why the extreme anti-griefing policies?
I play WoW, and at most run into maybe one d-bag every few days. WoW has millions of subs and hundreds of thousands of players.
PFO is only going to start at 4k players, and maybe get to 100k players in a matter of years.
Is it expected that those of us who have donated hard earned money to this project that will make up the first 4-5k of players, will suddenly decide to act like an asshat and lend to an atmosphere in game that makes the game unpopular?
It doesn't make any sense.
Ten million players can dilute the frequency of d-bags an individual meets dramatically. Take the same number and divide it into 4000 and the incidence would be overwhelming.
I don't expect so much of it at ee, but I think that might change significantly at OL.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I'd imagine you'll see a higher concentration of Dbags in a sandbox mmo with an emphasis on pvp than you would in a game like WoW.
I don't want anyone to get griefed (although this is inevitable to some extent), but I also am apprehensive of the devs assuming the worst of the player population and putting in place unduly restrictive measures, before seeing if they're even needed.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There's actually a fairly large number (larger than I realized, I don't often play necromancers) of intelligent undead that can be created by spell. Create Undead and Create Greater Undead both produce intelligent undead and are sixth and eighth level spells, respectively. I haven't gone through the full list, but at least one of them remembers bits of it's previous life.
Yes, there is a difference between mindless undead and other types. I don't think I claimed otherwise.
Responsible zombie owners keep their animates under control, and only use them for target practice or self-defence.