Goblin Squad Member
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The way things are shaping up with the different potential kingdoms/factions/alliances, it seems that being a spy would be a fun way to make a living (at least until your kidneys encounter something rather sharp).
But with the alignment restrictions that settlements can create, it might be hard for an evil-aligned character to gain entry, let alone get themselves involved in a good kingdoms affairs, even if the character has done nothing recognizably evil since character creation.
Which leads me to one of my favourite PF:RPG skills, Disguise. I would leave to see the ability for a skilled rogue or spellcaster the ability to use the disguise skill and nondetectable alignment/nondetection/misdirection spells to enter and investigate opposite aligned settlements.
This would give some use to the Divination school of magic, and add another level of intrigue to wars and kingdom relations.
Not sure if this is doable, but hopefully one day I can sneak myself into a city as a 'craftsman' and watch as my army marches through the open city gates, the slit throats of the watchmen there to greet them....
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Goblin Squad Member
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My opinion on the subject (which I believe was expressed in the other topic), players are already going to have flawless spies via alts etc... Adding in a mechanic to do the same, would just fail.
Either, A. It is too good, IE if anyone can whip up an undetectable form, with a clean slate on rep and alignment... well that kind of negates them. If there is a weakness, IE a 5-10% chance of it failing/being detected, than no one will use it anyway, an alt would be able to do anything it could with no risk, and even if an alt is discovered, tracing back to the source with certainty is still impossible (hell even if the alt confesses he was working with X, X could claim it is really Y trying to frame them)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Isn't it interesting that where Wiseman would probably gain all manner of RP satisfaction from taking a chance on the 5% chance of failure, dropping disguise, and then doing his damnedest to escape in one piece, others only think of how easy and effective, how efficient it would be to simply use an alt.
For some things efficiency is itself inefficient.
Notably in Art and relationships.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For some things efficiency is itself inefficient.
Notably in Art and relationships.
Quite true. However, for other things - notably Software Development - there needs to be a significant return in order to justify the investment of time and resources to develop a system. If the vast majority of players will avoid using a system because there's a very easy workaround that works better, then it's probably not worth developing.
I say this as someone who very much wants to see meaningful anonymity and disguise.
This is why I believe the only way this is ever going to really happen is when the game models information as an in-game object, which a character cannot act upon unless they possess. In such a system, the alt loses a great deal of its value because there has to be an in-game transaction between the alt and the main in order for the main to have the information (or vice versa), and that in-game transaction is then subject to divination spells, etc.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For some things efficiency is itself inefficient.
Notably in Art and relationships.
Quite true. However, for other things - notably Software Development - there needs to be a significant return in order to justify the investment of time and resources to develop a system. If the vast majority of players will avoid using a system because there's a very easy workaround that works better, then it's probably not worth developing.
I say this as someone who very much wants to see meaningful anonymity and disguise.
This is why I believe the only way this is ever going to really happen is when the game models information as an in-game object, which a character cannot act upon unless they possess. In such a system, the alt loses a great deal of its value because there has to be an in-game transaction between the alt and the main in order for the main to have the information (or vice versa), and that in-game transaction is then subject to divination spells, etc.
That would be insanely hard to code... Like somehow objectifying information, and then coding appropriate allowable responses.
@Being, oh I can only imagine the pleasure of watching a well-worked scheme coming together... and then if it all goes belly-up, well it's the risk that makes it fun anyway! Pretty sure that's what the greater invisibility and dimension door spells are for ;)
This is all discussed more in depth on the link that Dak posted, so best continue this there :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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That would be insanely hard to code...
Yeah, it will be insanely hard to design, too. I don't expect it to be in PFO. I do expect to eventually see it in games. My prediction is that it will make it possible to have meaningful espionage and counter-espionage inside the game, while nullifying the advantage of anonymous alts.
It's kind of like the PC Hobbyists in the 70's who saw the potential for a combination of D&D and PCs... someday.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Isn't it interesting that where Wiseman would probably gain all manner of RP satisfaction from taking a chance on the 5% chance of failure, dropping disguise, and then doing his damnedest to escape in one piece, others only think of how easy and effective, how efficient it would be to simply use an alt.
For some things efficiency is itself inefficient.
Notably in Art and relationships.
Hate to point this out but we are talking PFO here, not P&P, or real life. P&P and in real life, finding out a spy and killing him before he delivers information to his friends, actually has a meaning. PFO... well the spy has instantanious capabilities to deliver everything he knows to his friends, even in the completely notgoingtohappen event of permadeath and instant deletion of a character caught.
Now in the existing plausibility of the game... we already know, death is a minor inconveniance that will cost at the worse, the items you chose to carry along with you, or possibly as severe as... a loss of respawn point sending you further away from your intended destination.
In all honesty, a mechanic created spy, is something that would only be used in RP context, at which we are talking tiny RP sects, which could probably just as well pretend not to know who the spy is if their /dice command shows a failed catch, the power players will have none of it, and more likely would immidiately kick out a player "spying" in a way that could possibly be traced back to them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Isn't it interesting that where Wiseman would probably gain all manner of RP satisfaction from taking a chance on the 5% chance of failure, dropping disguise, and then doing his damnedest to escape in one piece, others only think of how easy and effective, how efficient it would be to simply use an alt.
For some things efficiency is itself inefficient.
Notably in Art and relationships.
Hate to point this out but we are talking PFO here, not P&P, or real life. P&P and in real life, finding out a spy and killing him before he delivers information to his friends, actually has a meaning. PFO... well the spy has instantanious capabilities to deliver everything he knows to his friends, even in the completely notgoingtohappen event of permadeath and instant deletion of a character caught.
Now in the existing plausibility of the game... we already know, death is a minor inconveniance that will cost at the worse, the items you chose to carry along with you, or possibly as severe as... a loss of respawn point sending you further away from your intended destination.
In all honesty, a mechanic created spy, is something that would only be used in RP context, at which we are talking tiny RP sects, which could probably just as well pretend not to know who the spy is if their /dice command shows a failed catch, the power players will have none of it, and more likely would immidiately kick out a player "spying" in a way that could possibly be traced back to them.
I have to 100% disagree. The game is going to encourage a lot of PvP and resources are going to be vital, with information possibly the most vital of these resources.
A kingdom is going to raid a particular outlying settlement? You can forwarn them. You are looking to secure lumber for a previously unsettled forest, the enemy is waiting there with an army. You are exchanging a prized possession for gold at a neutral location? Surprise robber attack. How fortified is a settlement? What contracts do they have? Do they have standing guards? Do they have the resources to survive a siege?
If anything it's probably easier to be a spy as communication is so easy. Im just going by some of the shenanigans that have occurred in EvE, but i think there is a very strong position for the spy to fit into. How fortified is a settlement?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have to 100% disagree. The game is going to encourage a lot of PvP and resources are going to be vital, with information possibly the most vital of these resources.A kingdom is going to raid a particular outlying settlement? You can forwarn them. You are looking to secure lumber for a previously unsettled forest, the enemy is waiting there with an army. You are exchanging a prized possession for gold at a neutral location? Surprise robber attack. How fortified is a settlement? What contracts...
I was never implying that spying would not be commonplace and extremely valuable, I was saying that a separate mechanic for a character to spy, either falls into ridiculously broken, or inferior to using an alt.
I am not arguing against the existance of spies, I expect them to be extremely commonplace in fact, I am arguing against the idea of a mechanic to attempt to compete with the inevitable form of spying that will exist via alts, traitors etc...
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Goblin Squad Member
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oh then i do apologise, i misread what you meant.
I think a few things will influence the mechanic you are talking about:
1. Availability of alts and training time
To spy you are gonna wanna be pretty confident in your abilities, and that takes time and training which takes money. Are you really wanna invest all that in an alt you are gonna throw away?
2. Enjoyment
I WANT to play a spy, i think it would be a blast. Are people who don't really want to spend hours and $$ on a character they don't REALLY want to be playing? Especially when information may be is freely available from my nefarious self? I can't see someone who really wants so be playing Fighty McBasherson playing their boring sneaky spy for a very long....
4. Time
The big one. You arent gonna be able to get the juicy stuff the day you walk into a guild/kingdom. Sure you might glean some basic city info, but nothing important. Are people going to want to devote time interacting with a guild, gaining there trust over weeks/months/years only to throw that away?
3. Ease of communication
This is why things might be broken, as communication over skype/teamspeak/ whatever is impossible to track --> no paper trail. But it would become obvious that there is a spy, and then the fun begins :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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That would be insanely hard to code...Yeah, it will be insanely hard to design, too. I don't expect it to be in PFO. I do expect to eventually see it in games. My prediction is that it will make it possible to have meaningful espionage and counter-espionage inside the game, while nullifying the advantage of anonymous alts.
It's kind of like the PC Hobbyists in the 70's who saw the potential for a combination of D&D and PCs... someday.
I see a lot of potential for AI being able to do that through something like what they're doing over at Project Blue Brain, in Swizterland. Combine what they're doing with a quantum processor computer, and it should lead to some pretty amazing things.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I see a lot of potential for AI being able to do that through something like what they're doing over at Project Blue Brain, in Swizterland. Combine what they're doing with a quantum processor computer, and it should lead to some pretty amazing things.
I almost said I don't expect to see this kind of system until after the Singularity, but then I realized that I was kind of missing the point...
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Goblin Squad Member
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oh then i do apologise, i misread what you meant.
I think a few things will influence the mechanic you are talking about:
1. Availability of alts and training time
To spy you are gonna wanna be pretty confident in your abilities, and that takes time and training which takes money. Are you really wanna invest all that in an alt you are gonna throw away?
Myself of course not, Using an alt does not require much in the way of training time. He obviously needs to train enough to reach whatever level of information he needs. The point is it isn't what I want, but it is what some people will want, either for the desire to win above the desire to do what they enjoy, heck it's a pretty small investment to pay for a few spy accounts, when you are looking at the funds that could be split between settlements of 100+ people.
2. EnjoymentI WANT to play a spy, i think it would be a blast. Are people who don't really want to spend hours and $$ on a character they don't REALLY want to be playing? Especially when information may be is freely available from my nefarious self? I can't see someone who really wants so be playing Fighty McBasherson playing their boring sneaky spy for a very long....
Assuming there is no way you can ever be countered or traced back. If you are caught once, I would expect the groups that suffered from you to reduce your sponsering settlement to rubble rather quickly. If you can't be caught or traced, then the disguise mechanic is woefully overpowered. (IE Bob thorton is discovered, 10 seconds later you have joe terrance ready for spying on the same group).
4. TimeThe big one. You arent gonna be able to get the juicy stuff the day you walk into a guild/kingdom. Sure you might glean some basic city info, but nothing important. Are people going to want to devote time interacting with a guild, gaining there trust over weeks/months/years only to throw that away?
I fail to see how that isn't the case for both scenarios. Course the prime difference is the multi account/character spy, can work multiple organizations simultaneously
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Goblin Squad Member
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Whoops, I can totally count numbers in order...
Information is not going to grow on trees. Any spy will have to be involved and useful in any community he is trying to infiltrate. And there is a large chance that there will be no payoff for a mighty long time. You are going to need to put large amounts of training time into the alt simply to show that you are a) committed to the character b) worthy of being held in some sort of regard. That would give you access to information, a member of a town council for example.
And if someone IS caught, I can't imagine a guildmaster/city rep blabbing about where they keep all their gold to the new blacksmith in town...
And in regards to countering them, tracing them back, as soon as someone benefits from the information the spy has passed on, it will be become easier to spot from where the spy hails. Or to feed false information.
Do you think spying is overpowered or just a broken concept?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Whoops, I can totally count numbers in order...
Information is not going to grow on trees. Any spy will have to be involved and useful in any community he is trying to infiltrate. And there is a large chance that there will be no payoff for a mighty long time. You are going to need to put large amounts of training time into the alt simply to show that you are a) committed to the character b) worthy of being held in some sort of regard. That would give you access to information, a member of a town council for example.
And if someone IS caught, I can't imagine a guildmaster/city rep blabbing about where they keep all their gold to the new blacksmith in town...
And in regards to countering them, tracing them back, as soon as someone benefits from the information the spy has passed on, it will be become easier to spot from where the spy hails. Or to feed false information.
Do you think spying is overpowered or just a broken concept?
Spying via alts is inevitable. Spying via your main transforming into an unknonw character, is either OP or worthless, still in most situations I would lean towards worthless. The only scenerio I would call it OP is if a PC could either mimic an existing PC and access their guild chat. Though there is also the danger if someone can easilly disguise their alignment and reputation.
A mechanic to do so, in comparison for a 1 character "throwaway alt" (which also is worth pointing out, it isn't necessaraly throwaway, maybe the person wanted a wizard or crafter alt anyway, and once it's high level, and partly on the dime and resources of the organization he is spying on, he can move it over, of course this is a permanant loss of the anonymity, but the spy can chose when and if he needs to ever do this, he could craft for his own group, and happen to lose exactly what his ally's need when he's "caught" in a "supprise stand and deliver" that he intentionally walked into.
Now an in game spy mechanic, pretty much universally means the character can't willy nilly switch between his character that is spying one minute, then go back to his main 2 minutes later. He burns some XP on his main in getting the spying skills, etc...
Both have the drawbacks of potentially months worth of time needed to appropriately infiltrate and get the needed information, but only an alt has an ease of switching back and forth, without need to change costumes and travel back and forth, risking blowing cover "Uhh, why did you come from the north, where our enemies live?"
The only drawback at all to an alt, is the extra subscription cost. But if there's anything eve taught, it's that there's no shortage of
A. Players with so much disposable income, buying 5+ extra subs is a negligable expense.
B. Large organizations with enough joint in game income, that buying training time for a few dozen spies, would be a drop in the bucket.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The "instant communication" between players, or even between a single player's alts, can be used against them. As an example let's say that you (as a player) belong to an CC who is at odds with another CC. Further, let's say that you have found out the identity of an alt (Tab) of a player with a upper level character (Cola) in that opposing CC.
It is physiologically hard to keep knowledge known by one area of your life isolated from information of another area, if those areas are supposed to stay separate. This is a major problem for married people with something on the side. So:
1) You feed info about one of your CC's operatoions to the alt (Tab), information your opposing CC could use to disrupt that operation
2) Another player in your CC uses an alt to give the same information to the player's character Cola
3) because the player of Cola gets the impression he has corroborated information (through his alt Tab), he can now motivate his CC to take action against your CC's operation
5) they move to hit you, falling directly into an ambush you have set for them, while another group from your CC hits one of their operations.
Just saying.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The "instant communication" between players, or even between a single player's alts, can be used against them. As an example let's say that you (as a player) belong to an CC who is at odds with another CC. Further, let's say that you have found out the identity of an alt (Tab) of a player with a upper level character (Cola) in that opposing CC.
It is physiologically hard to keep knowledge known by one area of your life isolated from information of another area, if those areas are supposed to stay separate. This is a major problem for married people with something on the side. So:
1) You feed info about one of your CC's operatoions to the alt (Tab), information your opposing CC could use to disrupt that operation
2) Another player in your CC uses an alt to give the same information to the player's character Cola
3) because the player of Cola gets the impression he has corroborated information (through his alt Tab), he can now motivate his CC to take action against your CC's operation
5) they move to hit you, falling directly into an ambush you have set for them, while another group from your CC hits one of their operations.Just saying.
Certainly is the case in all scenarios, the point still stands on the point of one character vs alts however. With the exception of the need to pay for a second account (which is negligible in the grand scheme of things), every weak point within an alt, exists within a main. No matter what if you suspect a spy, feeding false information is a good way to both confirm suspicions, and cause the plan to backfire.
So the question is, what justifyable mechanic would exist to merit a spying mechanic in game, that would not cripple dozens of other areas of the game. Here's the ones I can gather that would backfire.
1. Spying could be used to mimic an existing character or pose in a charter/settlment you are not really a member of.
Backfire: Communication for anything of any value, will be moved to where it cannot be seen by spies, If guild chat is impregnable via this method people will use that, if it isn't, it will all be moved to ventrilo, xfire or whatever method has absolute security.
2. Hiding of alignment, reputation etc...
Backfire: Kind of negates the purpose of alignment/reputation systems at all if you can't trust them.
So the key is, why should/would GW bother to impliment a mechanism for spying? Players will not bother with an inferior option when it comes to matters of kingdom security, and unless someone can come up with a beneficial mechanism to give an edge to a player disguise skill that actually gives it a reason to be used, it's kind of a null discussion.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Are we easily going to be able to 'see' alignment though? As I understood things, unless I missed something, the only way you'll be able to actually 'see' alignment is going to be via a Paladin's detect evil, various divination spells or items with divination ability.
from my understanding not everyone will be able to, but there will certainly be times or places when arranging for someone to check is important. I would consider after rallying the troups and discussing the battle plans, the first call I would make in a LG organization, would be to pick 3 people with the ability to do so at random (3 to virtually eliminate the potential of 1 spy or traitor from being able to ruin everything, and a random factor so that a spy or traitor wouldn't even know the right targets to attempt to corrupt or imitate), and have them scan the group for anything out of the ordinary, especially in the event that in character spying is possible, and does not consistently trump detection abilities.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Spies may position themselves to directly observe whatever is of value to those he or she is agent. Which merchant has made significant purchases and is now organizing a caravan, and how many guards is he contracting? When is the settlement least heavily populated, and does this happen regularly? What are the habits of target X, and when does he venture out, and with whom?
The potential for spies is great.
Similarly scouts can observe and report troop movements, supply routes, gathering operations.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The only other way to "see" alignments (in a general way) might be if your settlement has alignment restrictions and someone coming in suddenly shows the Trespasser flag. I have some fuzziness about this. The results of entering an NPC settlement may be different than the results of entering a PC settlement. As I understand it (which means I could very well be wrong) a starting PC settlement can set limited periods of PvP when the NPC guards are off duty. During that time other characters would not be automatically attacked or blocked from entry; that job would fall to the settlement PCs. For the PvP closed periods I don't know if the PC settlement NPC guards will respond the same for PC settlements as they would for the NPC settlements.
Spying (observing the actions being taken by your enemies) is only one aspect of espionage. Another is turning assets, creating double agents. I think the most effective way to spy (but most likely the most difficult) will be to convince a member of the organization about which you want information to provide you with that information directly. It may not be giant space hamsters or a Spiny Norman, but moles could be one the greatest threats a settlement could face, short of war.
