Goblin Squad Member
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@Neelkbur,
PFO is not faction-based PvP. There aren't "sides". It won't matter if 70% of player characters are Chaotic Good.
If the Evil ones become dominant or the Do-Gooders control the server it won't be balanced and it won't be fun for the weaker side.
How? Just because - hypothetically - 70% of player characters are Chaotic Good, that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with whether those characters in any way cooperate.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Alignment is in the game. It is tied to the setting and good or bad it's a core component of the design. There will be no good vs. evil faction on the game. There is no Alliance Vs Horde, no Heroes vs. Villains, no Sith vs Republic. Ther will be 9 alignments that players and settlements will be and countless player driven guilds who will be competing with each other for resources, trade, play-style, and role-play reasons.
Chaotic Evil low rep characters will be at a slight disadvantage due to training facilities, but they can make up for that be having more freedoms on who they attack. And they can keep reputation high by using Outlaw flags to give people an option of paying them not to attack.
There is plenty of room for constructive criticism tearing apart alignment, reputation, and flag systems to deal with nuances of keeping sides balanced, but even with recent blog posts we don't have fully enough info yet to know everything about the system. It's safe to say that the Heinous flag may need some work if we have necromancers that can animate zombies in the game.
What isn't helpful are suggestions to completely throw out part of the core game tenets, and alignment is part of that.
I fully expect to see CE mercenary factions targeting LE slaver factions, and LG guard factions targeting CG bandit factions.
In other words, it's not all about alignment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hear what you are saying, but I see an awful lot of Company posts saying their role is to hunt down evil in all its forms. Many don't stop at saying the will operate to protect their own, but they are on a mission to go after evil so they are creating sides right there.
Moreover, you want to criticize my suggestion that you drop the label as throwing out a core tenant. I'm sorry but isn't choosing a class a core tenant as well? But more importantly, way to keep an open mind and foster ideas by being the judge of what is helpful and not. I thought this community was going to be a little different...
Anyways suggesting you let people play the way they want as opposed to fitting a pre-determined alignment is no different than letting a player train skills the want to instead of forcing them into a pre-determined mold by class.
People *can* play however they want. Their alignment will shift to match.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The other issue I see, that no one has brought up. From what I can tell, there is very little incentive to be evil. They already announced Lawful Good towns get exclusive perks. What about Lawful Evil Towns or Chaotic Evil. Isn't it just as hard being Lawful Evil as it is Lawful Good?
If I missed something, please let me know. I'm curious about your thoughts on this.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The other issue I see, that no one has brought up. From what I can tell, there is very little incentive to be evil. They already announced Lawful Good towns get exclusive perks. What about Lawful Evil Towns or Chaotic Evil. Isn't it just as hard being Lawful Evil as it is Lawful Good?
If I missed something, please let me know. I'm curious about your thoughts on this.
The general belief is that, in the absence of any incentives, most of the playerbase will end up evil. (See EVE, or most PVP servers in other games.) Incentives toward good are primarily intended to help balance that.
In other words, most players are naturally evil and must be properly bribed not to be total dickbags.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The general belief is that, in the absence of any incentives, most of the playerbase will end up evil. (See EVE, or most PVP servers in other games.) Incentives toward good are primarily intended to help balance that.
In other words, most players are naturally evil and must be properly bribed not to be total dickbags.
Interesting view. Now I tend to disagree with that. Why do you say players are inherently evil? What are the benefits in this game for being evil? I know when I played EVE, I ran a rather successful Security Corp a few years back. And we were primarily neutral. We ran escort or miner defense for the highest bidder and didn't care who they were. At that point, money was our goddess and we pursued her at every turn.
As far as I can tell, the penalties for attacking characters are bad enough. Now, I wish they would allow some benefits for making a Riddleport or some other evil town, where you get benefits for sacrifices or slave markets. It would give great incentive to good aligned players to shut them down while still creating the benefit of being evil. In the real world, we have criminals cause it pays better and you tend to have access to things that the good guys can't get. Will there be exclusive evil only stuff?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Isn't it just as hard being Lawful Evil as it is Lawful Good?
No.
Evil has the "benefit" of being able to take by force what others have created. It seems to be generally well-accepted that Evil is the easier path.
If you end your training now - if you choose the quick and easy path as Vader did - you will become an agent of evil.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As far as I can tell, the penalties for attacking characters are bad enough. Now, I wish they would allow some benefits for making a Riddleport or some other evil town, where you get benefits for sacrifices or slave markets. It would give great incentive to good aligned players to shut them down while still creating the benefit of being evil. In the real world, we have criminals cause it pays better and you tend to have access to things that the good guys can't get. Will there be exclusive evil only stuff?
A great benefit of being evil is the ability to self flag yourself as an Assassin. Assassin will give you reputation bonuses for killing players that have a valid bounty placed on them, will give you a bonus to stealth, and when you kill a valid assassination target, you will block access to the nearest res point, so they will have to travel farther to get back to where they died.
There will likely be the ability to use slave or undead (sims) in construction or for other labor to reduce building and upkeep costs for your settlement instead of paid workers. This will apply the heinous flag to the one who uses them, but that will likely be the Aristocrat settlement leader who will never be in the wild where they will be subject to the whims of do-gooders who may kill them for being heinous.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My personal feeling is that the player bias toward choosing Good vs Evil will fluctuate to some degree dependant upon how the IP presents both sides.
EvE kinda presents a dystopian future so it's not a surprise to me that alot of players are choosing to play pretty dystopean characters to match.
For something like Star Wars most peoples initial impressions of the sides from that IP are based upon Mark Hamill vs James Earl Jones. All due respect to Mr Hamill, it's no surprise who players are going to gravitate to more there. Plus just the way Lucas setup the specific cosmology of the sides....I think alot of people just don't find the Jedi particularly appealing.
I do suspect that since Pathfinder(IP) is mostly presented from the Protagonist point of view...more people then GW expects are likely to gravitate toward Good.
That being said, Nihimon is correct....people won't neccesarly cooperate with each other because they share the same Alignment...they may not be openly hostile in terms of direct warfare...at least for those of us with Good Alignments....but that doesn't exclude the possibility of non-violent forms of competition.
I think the greater concern is making sure players don't feel like they must join one of a handfull of large, alliances or entities that increasingly dominate the map. There has got to be room for small groups to carve out thier own niches....and that's going to be very dependant upon GW's ability to scale the map to the player population...and also the mechanics of Kingdoms, etc. That I see as more of a potential concern.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There will likely be the ability to use slave or undead (sims) in construction or for other labor to reduce building and upkeep costs for your settlement instead of paid workers. This will apply the heinous flag to the one who uses them, but that will likely be the Aristocrat settlement leader who will never be in the wild where they will be subject to the whims of do-gooders who may kill them for being heinous.
So the evil guys get a reputation boost for being bounty hunters. Also, the settlements get more cash for using slaves. That money will be used to fund better equipment and defenses of the town. But as I understand it, you wont be able to find any decent trainers in evil towns. And even the Sith had their Lords to train apprentices.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There's nothing still saying evil can't get "decent" trainers, and I suspect so long as you keep your town reputation high you can still get the best trainers, at least for certain things.
They've implied certain skills like barbarian or lockpicking would take chaotic towns.
Yeah, I think what you REALLY don't want to do is be low on all 3 axes.
So if you are CE with a horrible REP...you are going to struggle a bit in terms of training opportunities.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are slight penalties for trainers for being evil, being chaotic,or being low-rep. It really only becomes crippling when you are Chaotic, Evil and Low-Rep at the same time. If your settlement is Lawful Evil and High rep, you will probably only not be able to train paladins or good clerics.
That said, there are some skills that will only be able to be trained in chaotic settlements, not lawful ones. There aren't many Barbarian or Rogue trainers in lawful areas. Likewise, there won't be Monk trainers in chaotic settlements.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As long as there are pros and cons to being good vs evil and lawful vs chaotic, I am a happy camper. and what Imbicatus said makes sense to me and I would love to see it be that balanced. It would open up some very interesting gameplay mechanics. I just don't want to feel like being stretched over the rack if I choose to play an evil or chaotic character.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Fear not for the training of evildoers. I am sure evil settlements will abound. They always do. I don't see all the bad guys on this forum talking about how evil they will be and what theyr plan is for total domination of the River Kingdoms, but if Goblinworks builds it, they will come. There will be plenty of training available....I have no doubt.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Your actions will determine if you are good or evil
[...]
The benefit is that players will fight for their own and their company's benefit. Not because they are "supposed" to be Evil or "supposed" to be good. Sometimes they may choose a less savory path and others will take the high road, but at the end of the day they fight out of a pure motivation - not a trumped up one based on a label in the game.
This is already the case, it just happens that whatever alignment you happen to drift to will be visible to yourself and others through specific means.
I think there IS a lot of hang-up on this forum about the "fairness" of good vs evil in the game, but I think in large part it's based on exactly your misconception. Good and Evil aren't two monolithic sides.
Characters who work together, help each other, and strive towards common goals at their own expense are "good" - even if that goal is conquering the "good" guys on the other side of the river. "Evil" on the other hand is always looking for personal gain at the expense of others, and the general attitude of "screw everyone else, I'm only looking out for me."
Consider the Prisoner's Dilemma, and (ignoring the premise that the two are criminals) think of the prisoner that always cooperates as perfectly "good" and the one who always betrays as perfectly "evil". If you have a population of two, with one good and one evil, evil will always "win". Being good (cooperative) can only be an effective strategy if the number of people willing to cooperate outnumbers the number of betrayers significantly. That's why I'm leery of ANY concessions given to selfish behaviour (for example, banditry). Evil is its own reward, it doesn't need concessions to be balanced - the rules (flags, reputation, etc) against evil behaviour are there so that being GOOD is balanced and feasible.
Pathfinder and its D&D predecessors do hang some added baggage on Good and Evil (e.g. undead, etc) but the underlying concept is rooted in communal gain vs individual gain. They also implicitly define the scope of "the community" whose gain is under consideration, being the general ensemble of peaceful and cooperative races. Specific, warmongering, uncooperative races (e.g. Orcs, Goblins) are viewed as evil (even though they tend to work with each other for their own communal good), as are hostile Outsiders (e.g. Demons). Going out and murdering those pre-determined evil guys is beneficial for the community, so it's Good. Murdering those within the community is not, so it's Evil.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That's why I'm leery of ANY concessions given to selfish behaviour (for example, banditry). Evil is its own reward, it doesn't need concessions to be balanced - the rules (flags, reputation, etc) against evil behaviour are there so that being GOOD is balanced and feasible.
This is exactly my feeling as well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Lots of good and evil talk.
Honestly, it's some people don't even CARE about the endless wars of Law versus Chaos, man. It's an axis to you know!
That's because of the Hollywood effect where countless movies equate lawful with good and chaos with evil.
If you are brought up on a diet of movies and television where the forces of law and all that is good fight an endless battle against chaos and evil (think NCIS etc etc) it is probably hard to separate the two.
Also many people do not understand chaos at all seeing it as simply unlawful/criminal (only one of many ways to be chaotic) or maybe some sort of stoner hippy commune thing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Right, good and evil are meant to be more significantly different than the colour hat you wear.
Selfishness has some short term rewards, and those are balanced against the need for social acceptance. People will have different thresholds for how much evil they think they can risk engaging in. Anonymity tends to disinhibit that to a great degree, so for an online game there are mechanical ways to track behaviour.
Nice point on the Prisoner's Dilemma, Tuoweit. :)
The visuals are rather dated, but this little show has a bit in which the PD is recast as winning money rather than avoiding jail time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you are brought up on a diet of movies and television where the forces of law and all that is good fight an endless battle against chaos and evil (think NCIS etc etc) it is probably hard to separate the two.
Also many people do not understand chaos at all seeing it as simply unlawful/criminal (only one of many ways to be chaotic) or maybe some sort of stoner hippy commune thing.
Heh well I'd say quite a bit of TV shows portray LG more as CG, They actually tend to portray very strong on the cops attempting to work around those silly rights that get in their way that only protect criminals. Interogation tactics that would work whether the person is actually guilty or not. Hunches are always right, evidence is always misleading, and those darn LE criminals that work through all the loopholes in the system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's the poor Neutrals who will suffer!
Someone make the point above that the incentive towards good was to demotivate players from their natural inclination, which is evil. The working (is not the intent) painted a pretty general picture with broad strokes, and I think it's more about the vocal minority than all players. 90% of players could be operating just fine, acting 'good' (in the more generic sense of not working actively to ruin other people's gaming experience), but that 10% who lives in the mindset that anonymity = freedom to act like a **** make a big enough impact that generalizations get made.
I think if anything, the incentives should be towards social play, whatever form that takes. Players who engage with other players for the betterment of the game as a whole should reap the bonuses, be they 'good' or 'evil'.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The big bonus of being a true neutral is you can blend in in most places that do not have alignments in the corner of the box. Also, you alignment shifts will be far less per kill, whenther good or evil, whether law or chaos. You are flexible, adaptable, and tolerant. Not necessarily what the evil guys would consider "good" traits, but neither would the good guys consider them "evil".
You neutrals will be of the ilk, "Eh, whatever. That's fine. Just leave me be."
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Goblin Squad Member
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Is there a "Detect Neutral" spell?
If not, most settlements would only think to check for their opposite alignment and move on.
"Well, you're not Good or Lawful, so I guess you're cool."
There isn't a detect neutral, but you could cast Detect Evil/Law/Chaos/Good and if you got no results from anything, they are neutral or there is an invisible lead sheet (or an Undetectable Alignment spell) between you and the guy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There isn't a detect neutral, but you could cast Detect Evil/Law/Chaos/Good and if you got no results from anything, they are neutral or there is an invisible lead sheet (or an Undetectable Alignment spell) between you and the guy.
Or just toss around Dictum, Word of Chaos, Holy Word and Blasphemy and observe who falls over when.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's the poor Neutrals who will suffer!
Someone make the point above that the incentive towards good was to demotivate players from their natural inclination, which is evil. The working (is not the intent) painted a pretty general picture with broad strokes, and I think it's more about the vocal minority than all players. 90% of players could be operating just fine, acting 'good' (in the more generic sense of not working actively to ruin other people's gaming experience), but that 10% who lives in the mindset that anonymity = freedom to act like a **** make a big enough impact that generalizations get made.
I think if anything, the incentives should be towards social play, whatever form that takes. Players who engage with other players for the betterment of the game as a whole should reap the bonuses, be they 'good' or 'evil'.
Good is the prosocial alignment, evil is antisocial. Most people are somewhere in-between in real life, willing to take from others or do less than their share when they think it won't be noticed or judged, but otherwise cooperative. In a game, some will take the anonymity of the internet as a way to get away with a lot more. Others may see the anonymity as an opportunity to be a bit more brave about being a good person, since in the real world they may feel powerless to make a difference, or fear ridicule from their more cynical peers. It doesn't take many of the antisocial types to mess things up for a lot of people, while the efforts of the very good draw less attention.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Good is the prosocial alignment, evil is antisocial. Most people are somewhere in-between in real life, willing to take from others or do less than their share when they think it won't be noticed or judged, but otherwise cooperative. In a game, some will take the anonymity of the internet as a way to get away with a lot more. Others may see the anonymity as an opportunity to be a bit more brave about being a good person, since in the real world they may feel powerless to make a difference, or fear ridicule from their more cynical peers. It doesn't take many of the antisocial types to mess things up for a lot of people, while the efforts of the very good draw less attention.It's the poor Neutrals who will suffer!
Someone make the point above that the incentive towards good was to demotivate players from their natural inclination, which is evil. The working (is not the intent) painted a pretty general picture with broad strokes, and I think it's more about the vocal minority than all players. 90% of players could be operating just fine, acting 'good' (in the more generic sense of not working actively to ruin other people's gaming experience), but that 10% who lives in the mindset that anonymity = freedom to act like a **** make a big enough impact that generalizations get made.
I think if anything, the incentives should be towards social play, whatever form that takes. Players who engage with other players for the betterment of the game as a whole should reap the bonuses, be they 'good' or 'evil'.
Good and Evil are not about how many friends you have
I dont know if Id say good is pro-social and evil is anti-social. After all, evil can have friends and build networks (thieves/assassins guilds for example). I would categorise them more as pro/anti-communal (if theres a better word for it I can think of it now as I havent had my coffee yet). Basically its the conflict between 'us'/'them' and 'me'. Selfless instincts vs selfish instincts.
Law and Chaos are about the law (who would have guessed?)
With respect to the law vs chaos axis, Ive always understood that to represent how someone deals with a situation rather than how much of a fanatic they were. For example, when a problem occurs, the lawful character will respond within the law (call the cops, citizens arrest, etc). A chaotic character may (they are chaotic after all) decide that the law wont see justice/vengeance done and exact their own brand of punishment on any perpetrators involved. What that means is that a characters shift on the law vs. chaos aspect would really come down to whether or not they broke the law, which in turn depends on the laws of the territory they are in as well as any applicable moral codes (paladins, etc).
Suggestion
This may indeed pose a problem for LG characters in a territory that are allowed to rid the place of any wandering evil characters but cannot do so without killing them because of game mechanics. Perhaps a new 'coup de grace' mechanic could be introduced similar to killing downed characters in Guild Wars 2 in PvP. Working within the PF PnP rules it would apply the rules for bleeding (i.e. staggered at 0, bleeding between -1 and -Con hp). Players could get an option to stop the bleeding and have the player turned in to the authorities (in game terms this would translate to the downed player returning to their soulbind point but without losing items or other penalties of death). Alternatively, some feats, weapon abilities (e.g. Merciful) could deal nonlethal damage. If a killing blow is scored with nonlethal damage, then the coup-de-grace mechanics take over.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Although, I'd like to point out that you guys are speaking very genericly and from a modern perspective of Good/Evil, etc.
In many Fantasy Settings and even real world historical cultures Good and Evil have much more specific definitions and CAN be about allegiances or the individuals nature or what they were exposed to, draw their power from, etc more then even simple behavior and with behaviors that doesn't even match up well to the modern social mores.
For example, among some cultures, counted among the Most "Holy" and "Good" were hermits who were entirely asocial and acommunal...having cut themselves off almost entirely from other human contact.
The labels I see some of you using are more suggestive of PLAYER PERSONALITY TYPES and PLAYER BEHAVIOR rather then what Aligment someone may pick and try to maintain in the game.....which is an important metric in it's own right, but a somewhat different one then which Kingdom or Settlement or Alignment a player may give his allegiance toward and try to assist in gaining power.....which I think was a little bit closer to what the OP was discussing.
For example, I'm fairly certain you can be a very selfish jerk...and figure out a way to keep your Alignment mechanicaly on the Good side of things.....and I'm sure you can be an entirely selfless fun guy, at least within your own group, and figure out a way to have "Evil" on the alignment field on your character sheet....and the "TEAM" that most people were playing on WOULD be a pretty serious concern IF conflicts in the game were split strictly upon the Alignment Axis.
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Goblin Squad Member
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.....and I'm sure you can be an entirely selfless fun guy, at least within your own group, and figure out a way to have "Evil" on the alignment field on your character sheet....
Indeed there is a rather well known mid 20th century guy who was a passionately patriotic artistic type, a landscape painter who was a vegetarian, a non drinker and loved kids and animals ... he also established what is arguably the most evil political/military organisation in world history :D
Or to put it another way ...even Drow have positive aspects :D
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Goblin Squad Member
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I meant since this is a Role-Playing Game, people will be Role-Playing persona's that don't reflect thier behavior and motivations as a Player.
So Joe, nice guy, selfless, prime motivation is that EVERYBODY on both sides has fun, always whispers to people to make sure they are interested in PvP before initiating it....might actualy choose to play a CE character.
It's cool and important that Joe's a nice guy. However, that doesn't factor into the equation of what sort of Kingdoms are able to project more combat power....which is more what the OP's post seemed to be directed at.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think its perfectly natural that Chaotic characters have a difficult time building organized settlements. Its not really what they do.
@GrumpyMel: It doesn't matter if law/chaos is factored into the definitions of good and evil in various Earth cultures. The definitions of Law and Chaos, Good and Evil are set in stone for the Golarion setting. Law and Chaos are wholly divorced from Good and Evil (and the fact that some people cannot separate the two axis is due to a lack of understanding in the differences).
Also, tragically, people have a hard time separating Chaotic Evil from criminally insane, because that just happens to be the easiest way to play CE.
