Goblin Squad Member
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So I had a constellation of concepts about the reputation system that included gifting a boon of reputation to a new player because of his style, or gaining reputation by helping thin the herds in an escalatory hex, but then I think it was Stephen Cheney who indentified that Reputation will be exclusively PvP.
Could we get a more complete idea based in the team's current thinking about what reputation will actually be, how it is gained and lost, and what it is intended to be good for, please?
When I speak about it I would like to speak well, and currently I am unsure that I can do so.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think it was Stephen Cheney who indentified that Reputation will be exclusively PvP.
That doesn't sound right...
From I Shot a Man in Reno Just To Watch Him Die:
Characters with high law vs. chaos can also give law vs. chaos points from their own pool to more chaotic players to reward lawful behavior the system can't quantify, though the amount is limited.
I believe this mechanic is available for all three axes: Good vs. Evil; Law vs. Chaos; and Reputation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also from 'I Shot a Man in Reno':
Reputation is entirely a PvP-based metric, and it only changes through interaction with other players. Reputation goes down through PvP against people who aren't flagged for it (through flags like Attacker, Criminal, or the PvP flags below described below). It can also be lowered by people who lower their own reputation to try and lower yours, if theirs is higher to begin with, so be careful who you treat badly. Reputation goes up by an accelerating rate each day players don't lose reputation for their actions, from gifts from other players, and through playing their role in the PvP flags described below.
How to reconcile this apparent equivocation? It is entirely a PvP-based metric. Nothing about beating down the escalating hordes, though there is something about gifting to other players.
Perhaps I am a dullard tonight, but Hobs asked and I discovered I couldn't rightly explain what benefit Reputation affords, and didn't have a clear understanding myself.
I think we originally proposed reputation was involved in commerce, where we would essentially rate the reliability of those marketing their wares, but I think now that may just have been our speculative prospecting.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being,
My homework assignment was easier than yours (to ask for clarification about the settlement UI for making laws). I simply found an existing thread dealing with the topic and resurrected it from several pages down-screen by posting my question in it. :)
As to your thread topic, I would like to see reputation be a rating for more than whether we've attacked someone, since reputation, to me, means so much more. This almost sounds more like a notoriety system, with characters moving from famous to infamous status. Reputation implies what others think of you, which should encompass more than PvP. For instance, if you break a contract, I would expect it to affect your reputation negatively, and not just your Law/Chaos rating (at least I think it's already affecting those). Personally, I'd rather not have any such information visible (names, rep., alignment, etc.), but if it's going to be, I would want it to be a broader measurement of my actions than what it sounds like here.
Being,
My homework assignment was easier than yours (to ask for clarification about the settlement UI for making laws). I simply found an existing thread dealing with the topic and resurrected it from several pages down-screen by posting my question in it. :)
As to your thread topic, I would like to see reputation be a rating for more than whether we've attacked someone, since reputation, to me, means so much more. This almost sounds more like a notoriety system, with characters moving from famous to infamous status. Reputation implies what others think of you, which should encompass more than PvP. For instance, if you break a contract, I would expect it to affect your reputation negatively, and not just your Law/Chaos rating (at least I think it's already affecting those). Personally, I'd rather not have any such information visible (names, rep., alignment, etc.), but if it's going to be, I would want it to be a broader measurement of my actions than what it sounds like here.
Ryan mentioned that the reputation system would be like Ebays rating system. I hope, in addition to giving a rating on a +/- scale, that we will be able to add a short sentence about why you rated what you did. If they allow that, then the reputation system will be like a famous/infamous chart where you could look through the ratings and see that this character doesn't uphold deals, will break contracts and PK people who call them on it. Otherwise we will just see a figure without knowing what the character did to earn that score. Just take a look at the rating system on EBay to see what I mean.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being,
My homework assignment was easier than yours (to ask for clarification about the settlement UI for making laws). I simply found an existing thread dealing with the topic and resurrected it from several pages down-screen by posting my question in it. :)
As to your thread topic, I would like to see reputation be a rating for more than whether we've attacked someone, since reputation, to me, means so much more. This almost sounds more like a notoriety system, with characters moving from famous to infamous status. Reputation implies what others think of you, which should encompass more than PvP. For instance, if you break a contract, I would expect it to affect your reputation negatively, and not just your Law/Chaos rating (at least I think it's already affecting those). Personally, I'd rather not have any such information visible (names, rep., alignment, etc.), but if it's going to be, I would want it to be a broader measurement of my actions than what it sounds like here.
Failing to uphold a contract is PvP and helping someone out is PvP. It's not all about hitting people, and not all negative.
As to having all that stuff invisible, when the art assets can handle entirely unique looks not able to be reproduced, and when player input controls can make their character do something based on the player's mental state, sure.
As it stands, those things are there to make up for the loss of subtle communication the character should be aware of but which is not available to the player. It's basically a metagame knowledge issue that works opposite to the usual issue of OOC info being used in-character.
If someone known to the community as a pickpocket walks through the marketplace, would you really expect everyone there to emote *watches X closely while guarding his/her coinpurse*?
Even if no one screams "thief!", there's communication going on there. The visible name makes up for the lack of art detail to make each person unique, and the visible reputation makes up for the subtle communication and gossip that goes around in a real community but isn't represented in the game.
Even if each reputation ding produced a tavern tale, who is going to spend all day reading them? Even if you did read them all, you'd need to take notes for the information to be of any use. Was the thief you read about named Garrik or Gerrik? By the time you find the spelling in your notes, the situation is over.
When you give a point of rep or ding someone, you're effectively saying "I'm spreading word of this deed" to your GM. The dev team has said many times that there are assumed to be more common folk NPCs around than what the art will show, so spreading word to them spreads it to other players.
I've presented similar examples before, but no one engages, so it appears my point is understood, but now I wonder if anyone can even see my posts...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Im in favor of something simple, i.e. a number. We dont need to carry around a comment book. I dont need to know that John Do-Gooder helped a little old lady across the river last Tuesday or that Bob Kill-em-all ganked a newbie harvester and stole 10 hours worth of gathered copper which the harvester was really hoping would be made into a new armor and he really hates this game now because of griefers like Bob, etc etc etc.
Lack of writing discipline will turn it into mini chatboards.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Keovar,
I'll engage with you. First, I have read your prior posts and I understand your points, but as you and I know from bantering topics about on Team Speak, that doesn't mean we always agree with one another. Now, you know I know why visible names/titles/flags exist in-game, but that still doesn't mean I have to like them. Sure, the River Kingdoms or especially any starter town are going to be far less packed with people than one of our cities, so people are more likely to know one another. More likely - not 100% certain. So if I'm a bandit and I do most of my infamous acts on one side of the map, but today I'm visiting the other side of the map, likely where far fewer people know of my deeds, let alone what I look like so as to match face with reputation, then having both automatically visible to every person I pass is unrealistic - far more so than the simulations you're describing should be making available. I don't mind a simulation of something from real life if it's likelihood of occurrence or the depth of the information you're gaining is similar. All of this should be even less visible (i.e. my reputation) if my crime is something less visible like contract fraud. Again, for game purposes, I know why it's there...I just don't agree that it should be there.
My issue is that not everyone should know my name until I tell it to them, until someone standing next to them who knows me tells it to them, until they overhear someone who knows me call me by name, etc. To have it floating above my head is a convenience for players (often so you can report others for some wrong doing). If I'm robbed, I doubt the bandit is going to share his name (unless he's extremely cocky or stupid), and unless I'm a great artist, it's going to be difficult for me to describe him well enough that others can 100% identify him by sight without me there to point him out (which the floating name again over-represents the ability to do).
Yes, the floating name does represent an easier identification of a person you do know when the world has only so many avatars to represent thousands of faces. I know Bob, so even though his avatar looks identical to Jim's, I know it's Bob because I've met Bob or someone who knows Bob told me that was Bob. Perhaps we should have a simple association system (I say simple, but I'm sure the coding for it wouldn't be) - a combination of a friending system (if they're on your list you see their name) and flag system (if they've done something to you to earn them a flag, you see their name in the future for identification purposes...you remember that face). Will they implement this? I highly doubt it, since it's a matter of player convenience and allocation of programming funds.
I know some people don't like bringing real life scenarios into these conversations, but here goes. At any given time, there's likely to be 1,000 players or so online in PFO when it goes live. I'm a middle school teacher in a 1000+ student building. I work there every day, but I teach in a room on "my side" of the building, I only regularly deal with 165 of those students, and I only teach one subject in one grade level. There are kids I don't have right next door who I have seen on and off all year, but never had a reason to learn their name. On the broader, 1000+ students scale, there are kids on the other side of the building I've never seen, let alone met, let alone know their name. If I wanted to know who they were, I'd have to go find them and ask, ask someone who knows them as they pass by, or try to go search 1,000+ pictures in the office. The first two means of identification require them telling me or someone who knows their name telling me. The third has no realistic simulation in-game. As a teacher, trying to catch a kid who just did something wrong and is darting down the hall away from me, it would be a whole lot more convenient if they had their name flying over their head, but they don't. Neither should we in-game, but I doubt it's going to change for my sense of RP realism.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Missed something...in a broader sense, I realize PvP could imply any action that you perform which pits you against another player in some form of competition (market pvP , contract PvP, etc.). However, most players are going to think of traditional player vs player combat when you use the term. Perhaps we need a different term, as that would likely be easier to create and spread the use of than trying to change people's interpretation of a long standing definition.
As for PvP meaning helpful actions, though you can help a friend during traditional PvP, to say that me helping someone on the street just as a random act of kindness gives the wrong conotation when you look at the word versus (coming from the Latin for "against").
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's supposed to take about an hour to run from one side of the map to the opposite side.
Here's the blog that mentions that.
Considering that, and the ubiquitous but unseen 'common folk', I don't see why a reputation shouldn't get around quick enough. If you only made your first theft and crossed the map then no one knows you, but no one would care much because your rep couldn't be very low or high yet.
There's also magic that could read the mental image of a witness and a silent image spell could reproduce it.
In any case, without tools for player accountability, the game becomes a paradise for those who love using internet anonymity to spoil other people's time. I'm not so concerned with realism in a fantasy world that I'm going to put it above systems to deal with them. Besides, roleplaying tends to be inversely proportional to population size, so I'm not trying to set my expectations too high. I'm generally happy enough with people not being actively immersion-breaking by naming their characters 'Spudzilla' or whatever. Most games allow you to turn off player names, and I often do just to avoid the eyesores like that. Luckily names will have to be approved in PFO, since turning off names is probably a bad idea in a PvP environment.
'Versus' is problematic, but people probably don't want to type out "meaningful human interaction" as a blanket term to cover all types of it, positive and negative. Maybe Player-con-Player works since 'con' is Latin for 'with', but PcP is a rather unfortunate abbreviation. PxP could be the term that includes PvP and PcP, or I guess you could just try 'MHI' and see how many times you have to decode the acronym soup before people get it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's supposed to take about an hour to run from one side of the map to the opposite side.
Here's the blog that mentions that.
Considering that, and the ubiquitous but unseen 'common folk', I don't see why a reputation shouldn't get around quick enough.
To continue the oft-used EVE comparisons, I can see if the PFO world covered the entire River Kingdoms--or otherwise mirrored the scale the EVE universe has grown to have--then you might be able to out-run your rep...for a time. As it is, Keovar's right: the starting area's too small to accomplish that task easily.
Perhaps, Hobs, your suggestion is one you should continue bringing up from time to time in our discussions with Ryan and Stephen, as new game-systems could, once again like EVE, be introduced as we increase our reach into more-distant areas.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So I had a constellation of concepts about the reputation system that included gifting a boon of reputation to a new player because of his style, or gaining reputation by helping thin the herds in an escalatory hex, but then I think it was Stephen Cheney who indentified that Reputation will be exclusively PvP.
I was trying to point out that your first assessment was accurate. You will be able to gift a boon of reputation to a new player because you like his style. While you probably won't get direct Reputation gains for dealing with the NPC threats in an area, it makes perfect sense that the players who own the hex will reward you with grants of Reputation.
I think the important thing is that Stephen Cheney's comment shouldn't be taken to negate this. "PvP" doesn't always mean "PvP combat". There will be market-based PvP. I could be wrong, but I believe Stephen's meaning was that Reputation is entirely based on Player-Player interaction - it's not something you'll be able to go off and grind up doing PvE content.
I've presented similar examples before, but no one engages, so it appears my point is understood, but now I wonder if anyone can even see my posts...
I can see your posts :) And I think you're right in this case to take silence as agreement. I think saying "I'm spreading word of this deed" to your GM is the perfect way to describe it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's supposed to take about an hour to run from one side of the map to the opposite side.
Here's the blog that mentions that.
That may not be as solid as we might think. I seem to remember that they still don't have the scale of local involvement (similar to the environmental experience, I believe) nailed down yet. That blog is almost a year old.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I know some people don't like bringing real life scenarios into these conversations, but here goes. At any given time, there's likely to be 1,000 players or so online in PFO when it goes live. I'm a middle school teacher in a 1000+ student building. I work there every day, but I teach in a room on "my side" of the building, I only regularly deal with 165 of those students, and I only teach one subject in one grade level. There are kids I don't have right next door who I have seen on and off all year, but never had a reason to learn their name. On the broader, 1000+ students scale, there are kids on the other side of the building I've never seen, let alone met, let alone know their name. ...
On the other hand there are far fewer teachers than students. Many students may very well know the teachers by sight where the opposite can easily not be true for the teachers recognizing a particular student.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Harad,
To be sure. I have kids who say my name when I meet them without my having any clue who they are.
As for my name or rep showing, like most of these discussions, I'm simply saying what I think makes sense, but I'm more than willing to play along with the rules GW makes. I'm pretty adaptable and I don't plan to have Hobs doing anything that would gain him ill repute anyway.
Now, I still reserve the right to role-play surprise and even slight distrust when characters I've never met seem to know things about me. Back in UO, if someone did that - used the name floating over my head as in-character knowledge - I would question them about how they knew who I was. This usually elicited quite a bit of back-peddling as they tried to come up with a plausible way for knowing who I was when we had never met.
"Your friend Mr. So-n-so described you so well, I just knew it was you..."
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Goblin Squad Member
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I could be wrong, but I believe Stephen's meaning was that Reputation is entirely based on Player-Player interaction - it's not something you'll be able to go off and grind up doing PvE content.This is correct.
This can't be said enough: Player-player interactions with pvp-combat a small (but fun) subset of that range. As it should be in a mmorpg!
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I could be wrong, but I believe Stephen's meaning was that Reputation is entirely based on Player-Player interaction - it's not something you'll be able to go off and grind up doing PvE content.This is correct.
I'm really interested in the mechanism put in place to stop a bunch of players from going into a +reputation cycle.
Don't worry though; the alpha testers will take the system that you thought was exploit-proof and break it like an inappropriate simile.
