Goblin Squad Member
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sometimes lone farmers have to do distasteful things to survive. =)
No kidding, I suspect we will not be able to support ourselves solely on banditry either. My only hope is we don't have to resort to gathering common goods, just to meet our needs., but that might be what our alts will do.
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Goblin Squad Member
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sometimes lone farmers have to do distasteful things to survive. =)No kidding, I suspect we will not be able to support ourselves solely on banditry either. My only hope is we don't have to resort to gathering common goods, just to meet our needs., but that might be what our alts will do.
I doubt it has to come to that. There will be lots of gatherers with inadequet protection, I am sure. The extra unneeded could be sold by your Alts or a friendly city contact. You may need that Alt or city contact anyway as gatherers and caravans will be a hit and miss as far as getting the exact resources you may need.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm seeing Bandit Clans needing a broad swathe of members with differnet skills if they wish to be truly self-sufficient, but still, even the largest and most diverse Bandit Clan isn't going to have access to the 'good' stuff unless they make their own settlement, which is going to be a touch of irony right there.
That said, I wonder what a 'Chaotic Neutral' Hex would be like, as I think that's basically the limit you could have a bunch of Bandits and their Supporters rally together around while they're off plundering and pillaging the nearby Hexes without triggering an 'At War' flag.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Bringslite, Bluddwolf is pro-bandit, and has argued the pro-bandit side of things for a while. I have only been loitering here for three months or so, Bluddwolf not much longer. IMHO he wants the rules to be pro-bandit versus neutral to favor his playstyle.
If you want to be a farmer, be a farmer. There are plenty of players looking forward to killing characters like Bluddwolf's bandit. I will have a Soldier, and if you are within the patrol area of a large settlement you will be safe. There are going to be more of me than there are of him. Farm away!
(Goad to Bluddwolf: Bandits are a bunch of lazy good fer nuthin's looking to profit from other people's hard work. And I'll protect those that are working hard, not loafin'.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Straight up farming is one of the things I hope is absolutely necessary....for example, I hope food and drink are more than buffs. I want them to be required. So farming will be required, and basic items like wheat, potatoes, corn, normal foods in always in strong demand. It would make the PFO economy so much healthier than if food and drink were only a buff.
Think alcoholic beverages...how many things are required to brew beer, age wine, distill spirits? Hundreds if not thousands! That would be awesome and would provide the different drinks to be served at inns and taverns all of the River Kingdoms! The crafting skills for supporting items like barrels and barrel hoops, bottles and corks for wine and spirits, crops like grapes, barley, rye, you name it! The recipe experimentation to make new brews, the cellars needed to store aging barrels or whiskey and bottles of wine....the possibilities are endless!
I want to make booze, too. Can't do it much in America so maybe I can do it in my settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ Hardin
I'm an elite brew master, and I'm hoping we will actually have a recipe to make our own brews, rather than just have them as a generic drink on the shelf.
Oh and it is not a matter of laziness, its an aversion to the boredom that is associated with gathering. I don't mind bringing stuff to market, although I would prefer not to. But, when I do I'll be flying the Traveler flag and hoping a group of bandits cross my oath.
I will not only turn down their SAD but will gladly fight them. If they beat me and my crew, I will learn from them and offer them a place in my company. If we beat them, I will offer to train them, and give them a chance to join The UnNamed Company.
If I lose all of my cargo, oh well, I had stolen it in the first place, so I lost nothing. But, I gained a fun experience and maybe a tale to tell as well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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those that need to make their living.You could always try your hand at farming? ;)
Why, when you can do that and I take what I need from you?? <evil grin>
I agree it would make it more RP (role play) and fun IMHO, as long as it was tied to the time your character was actually in game. Use the in-game time (1 day = 4 hours) as a reference for how often to eat and drink. I say use logged in time because if I take the weekend off for a vacation IRL, that would be like a month or two in game and would be death by normal standards. To be honest, I doubt they will do something like that, but it would be really cool and immersive if they did (hint, hint, nudge, nudge, devs!!!)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why, when you can do that and I take what I need from you?? <evil grin>those that need to make their living.You could always try your hand at farming? ;)
Nah, I don't grub in the dirt - not my style. ;)
I agree it would make it more RP (role play) and fun IMHO, as long as it was tied to the time your character was actually in game. Use the in-game time (1 day = 4 hours) as a reference for how often to eat and drink. I say use logged in time because if I take the weekend off for a vacation IRL, that would be like a month or two in game and would be death by normal standards. To be honest, I doubt they will do something like that, but it would be really cool and immersive if they did (hint, hint, nudge, nudge, devs!!!)
I really don't think that having to explicitly take care of basic survival necessities is particularly cool or immersive. Should we have a slider for controlling inhaling & exhaling, too? The more strenuous activity you do, the faster you have to move the slider from "inhale" to "exhale" and back, or you pass out....
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Goblin Squad Member
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I really don't think that having to explicitly take care of basic survival necessities is particularly cool or immersive. Should we have a slider for controlling inhaling & exhaling, too? The more strenuous activity you do, the faster you have to move the slider from "inhale" to "exhale" and back, or you pass out....
That's just silly. There will be plenty of features I don't like, but I'll play PFO anyway. Eating and drinking I would like. But food and drink have played a role in many games and it has been well done. And it would really strengthen the overall economy. It doesn't have to be onerous, just right click the food item and from the options "Eat it". or "Drink it". Easy stuff. Your example is absurd.
Unless you are too lazy to eat and drink, it's hardly a gamebreaker.
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I really don't think that having to explicitly take care of basic survival necessities is particularly cool or immersive. Should we have a slider for controlling inhaling & exhaling, too? The more strenuous activity you do, the faster you have to move the slider from "inhale" to "exhale" and back, or you pass out....
Grow from your cocoon, little larva. Maybe if you looked at it from a different angle you might see some merit. That is, eating and drinking could consume resources, create markets, provide meaningful interaction, justify NPCs and settlement levies, augment game mechanics, involve chars with the world, and develop storylines?
Resources from farming and hunting would be consumed, disappearing from the surplus and creating value for land. Markets could be created to supply grains, meats, vegetables etc. This would give cooks a reason to interact and develop ties to farmers, (and legitimize Tony's Bakery and bring protection money for transport through Bluud's band), creating meaningful interaction. NPCs (and slaves) could have a role and make their being well fed a factor in a strong settlement (if your guards are hungry they might not want to risk their lives). You settlement taxes could provide you with some measure of comfort knowing that while you are out slaying gobbies, your town has at least some measure of defense against the Goons because the watch is well fed. Those who want pets might need to feed them to keep them loyal and healthy, not to mention that it might be a way to tame a beast or cause your pet to grow in power just as you do. Starvation could be a viable mechanic in warfare/siege.Yeah, its an inconvenience to clik a button every game day, but think of all the interaction you are stimulating with just one clik. You have become the butterfly.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Grow from your cocoon, little larva. Maybe if you looked at it from a different angle you might see some merit. That is, eating and drinking could consume resources, create markets, provide meaningful interaction, justify NPCs and settlement levies, augment game mechanics, involve chars with the world, and develop storylines?
I don't object to creating interaction, but if being offline for a week means my character starves to death like Milo was suggesting, I'll simply not play the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've said it before, if "food or die" becomes the situation, it will reduce my interaction with other players. I'll log in, do whatever I need to do, and log out, rather than hanging around chatting with people. It means that every minute I'm logged into game is costing my character coin. Spending coin to chat with my friends is not worth it. I can do that out of game, though that means I don't meet anyone new.
"Food or debuff" I can live with (depending on then nature of the debuff), since it means I eat when I plan on actually playing the game, and just ignore a stat penalty when I'm hanging around goofing off.
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My apologies then, I thought you were objecting to feeding your char. When one goes offline they should be in suspended animation and not need to feed themselves, or their pets. Taxes, tithes, or levies could only last as long as the money held out and then they'd lose whatever bennies that belonging to a settlement provided them. I would hate to come back to the game in 10 years and find a char I'd spent 2 years on dead of starvation, but I could cope with needing to find a new settlement.
Hmmm, new thread: how to handle chars that aren't played for years and come back? What if the settlement is gone? what if the settlement now has laws against their alignment? If I logged out in a CE town and came back in 3 years would my alignment be LG (drift mechanic) make me instakill by the town guards?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I really don't think that having to explicitly take care of basic survival necessities is particularly cool or immersive. Should we have a slider for controlling inhaling & exhaling, too? The more strenuous activity you do, the faster you have to move the slider from "inhale" to "exhale" and back, or you pass out....That's just silly. There will be plenty of features I don't like, but I'll play PFO anyway. Eating and drinking I would like. But food and drink have played a role in many games and it has been well done. And it would really strengthen the overall economy. It doesn't have to be onerous, just right click the food item and from the options "Eat it". or "Drink it". Easy stuff. Your example is absurd.
It was meant to be absurd - about as absurd I think it is to require performing other constant mundane maintenance tasks like eating and drinking just to keep my character alive. If you want to have food & drink as some kind of vehicle for buffs, I'm fine with that, but simply needing them to avoid death is IMO not fun or interesting in this setting. My character, being an adventuring type, should be smart enough to keep him/herself fed without having to take care of that manually, just like I won't have to manually control my character's breathing or waste disposal.
Now if the game were a survival game, where finding sustenance was a major gameplay element, that would be different - but that's not really appropriate to the setting, IMO.
On the other hand, I can see making food important in the large scale - feeding a settlement is a different (and much larger ;)) kettle of fish entirely. I think it's been previously discussed that having various qualities of food available to your settlement might provide settlement buffs. As an adjunct to that I could see tying in player character rations to a settlement food pool in some way such that the majority of the time you never have to worry about it unless your settlement is out of food - so most of the time it's a settlement logistics problem for those who enjoy that sort of thing, rather than a constant nag for all players.
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I think as a start off, if they are trying to create an online experience that has the spirit of the tabletop experience and world, then they need to include gameplay and rules for most of these environmental rules that guide the TTRPG. Thirst, Hunger, Drowning, and Starvation are just as important as hit points or class balance to a convincing world, especially one with an economic system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've said it before, if "food or die" becomes the situation, it will reduce my interaction with other players. I'll log in, do whatever I need to do, and log out, rather than hanging around chatting with people. It means that every minute I'm logged into game is costing my character coin. Spending coin to chat with my friends is not worth it. I can do that out of game, though that means I don't meet anyone new.
"Food or debuff" I can live with (depending on then nature of the debuff), since it means I eat when I plan on actually playing the game, and just ignore a stat penalty when I'm hanging around goofing off.
I think this is a great reason not to have starvation in PFO. Even if you can buy a bunch of cheap food, you will still lose some of the time on your 'good food' buff if you sit around chatting after going on an adventure.
In the TT, you can <pause> the game whenever you like. Not so in the MMO.
I also think there are good reasons to reflect 'thirst' and 'hunger' as a lack of a buff, rather than a debuff.
Anybody interested in further information on how I came to these conclusions, please search the forums for words like 'hunger,' 'thirst,' 'food,' 'drink,' and 'toilet' or 'potty.' There have to be 5 threads out there with very full discussions. Those last two might be your best bet to finding direct links to these conversations =P
I hope we can stop ourselves from derailing this thread into another hunger/thirst thread...
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Goblin Squad Member
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I expect it will end up more "food for buff" than "food or debuff" or "food or die".
It may very well be that the buff you get from food is considered necessary.
I suspect that if we have food and drink at the character scale, it will be in the food for buff/food or debuff category. I lump these together because in a classless, levelless game, the difference is pure psychology.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I believe a sand box MMO should spend more effort on creating systems of "Character Management".
I'm not suggesting we have to pee and take a dump in the woods, but being required to eat food or suffer a debuff is not unreasonable. It also creates a number of player inter actions that would be extremely beneficial to the game:
1. Adds another category of consumables to the market place
2. Provides another game play option for players
3. Creates a warfare dynamic that is one of the most important, especially in sieges.
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So, far we've talked about providing food for:
1. Food for Buffs
2. Food or Debuff
3. To Not Die
In regards to buff, why not do it like this: Foods like meat, bread, cheese, etc are useful for buffs. They give you a long-lasting, useful benefit. I would like to see this buff last for a typical play session (a few hours). And, yes, it could become something everyone considers normal, but, if there is food in game, isn't that what we want to happen?
For food or debuff, I think wine, spirits, ale, and beer would make the most sense for doing that job, but I want to do it a little differently than a straight "Drink this or you'll get a debuff."
In all the tales, heroes are sipping from wineskins, breaking open casks of dwarfish mead, or relaxing in their favorite pub after a long, hard day in the dungeon. Using drinks, alcoholic or not, as debuff-removers could be a great way to emulate this. After an adventuring party crawls out of a tough dungeon (or battle) with a bunch of nasty lingering debuffs, they retire to a bar to drink away the day's sorrows.
Doing something like the aforementioned would give players two good reasons to use consumable like food & drink without requiring either. They could get by without the food buff and eventually even the worst debuff would end normally without drink.
Now, as far as preventing starvation goes, I'm not sure how that would work. It seems like anything that wanted to hew close to reality would get old really quickly.
Thoughts?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I suspect that if we have food and drink at the character scale, it will be in the food for buff/food or debuff category. I lump these together because in a classless, levelless game, the difference is pure psychology.True. But that psychology is important.
I focus on systems design. I'll handle the engineering. I leave the psychology to the business and marketing folks. =P
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Goblin Squad Member
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Using drinks, alcoholic or not, as debuff-removers...
I like that.
I've always wanted a game to go into more details tracking Character States like "soaking wet" after you swim, or "chilled to the bone" if you've been exposed to cold for too long. These could be balanced with states like "warmed by a fire" or "belly full of wine".
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Goblin Squad Member
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I focus on systems design.
I find myself lately spending a lot of time and mental effort contemplating the psychology of group dynamics. Specifically, how to structure an incentive system that motivates people to work toward a common goal without making them feel like they have to sublimate their own personal goals.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've always wanted a game to go into more details tracking Character States like "soaking wet" after you swim, or "chilled to the bone" if you've been exposed to cold for too long. These could be balanced with states like "warmed by a fire" or "belly full of wine".
I hope you have a chance to poke around some of the excellent player-created mods for Oblivion and Skyrim that do just this. Makes the games *far* more harrowing, but survival can get old after a time, and drain too much fun from the game; I'm sure that balance is delicate.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope you have a chance to poke around some of the excellent player-created mods for Oblivion and Skyrim that do just this.
I haven't enjoyed a single-player game since Ultima V, and that was not as enjoyable to me as Ultima IV. I've played a few here and there mostly because I could play duo with my wife.
I have no intention of playing Skyrim or any of the others. But I'm glad to see the player community has already implemented some of these things.
These 'environmental debuffs' should be minimal at best, but still, if you let them pile up, they are going to start to drag on you.
That said, removing the Debuffs should also make your character not only perform better, but 'feel' better too, a slight morale bonus?
I like that idea.
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A simple way of dealing with this is having a "hunger" bar, 1-25% you receive a scaling debuff (Depending on how low), that lowers your endurance and your Stamina Bar.
0% Hunger IMO should mean your character cannot make any actions that deplete your Stamina Bar. If you haven't eaten in 4 days there is no good reasonable way climbing a mountain or swimming across is going to be just as easy, or even possible.
26-74% Would have no penalty for player on any stats.
75-99% You would receive a scaling buff just like the debuff that adds to your Stamina regen rate and endurance stats.
The Hunger could decay based on how much Stamina you use in a given between refreshes, meaning if you dont eat every day, (A day being 6 hours in game) then starvation should begin to kick in.
My basic point is that a robust food and drink system would help ADD value to the game. Sure there are plenty of people out there who want a more casual, pick up and play game, but lets be honest here people.
2/3rds of the players are going to come from the kickstarter and paizo community, and we have all already established we want something closer to table-top ROLE PLAYING experience than we want Call of Golarion Black Ops. Food, and drink will bring players together for common needs, and desires (Yes! Food and Drink can be desirable in game, rather than a hassle!), and isn't that the whole point of the game; To increase player interaction?
If in 2 years from now, a fully game ships and rolls out without a way for resources gatherers to directly interact with the product in a way that interacts with other players on some level other than "Oh I want this guys loot so I can sell it to the same NPC he was going to" then GW will have failed to deliver a role playing experience.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Carbon,
I have to agree, and the "hunger bar" is a novel approach. I don't think eating and drinking will be nearly as onerous a task as many believe it will. It becomes part of your routine. If you are getting ready to go on a mission, or on patrol, you will check your gear, make sure you have the things you don't want to lose threaded, fill your pack, stash some food, fill your wineskin, and off you go!
If you run into trouble, get lost, have to take a detour to avoid an enemy force or monster camp, hopefull you have a few skills that let you live off the land for a few days. Maybe you know of a nearby inn and can refill your supplies there. Then, back home again!
It all sounds like fun to me. I'm not sweating the "eating and drinking is a problem" thing. It seems like a pretty obvious roleplaying feature to me. If such things are not going to be in PFO, they (and we) are missing one of the main features of the entire game, roleplaying.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You don't need a mechanical bonus/penalty system in place to roleplay.
I don't mind having hunger/thirst/tiredness in a system, as long as it doesn't get in the way of the system. Case in point, I play Fallout 3: New Vegas in hardcore mode. Hunger, thirst, and tiredness are all a part of this, but they are not overdone and removing the hungry/thirsty indicators is simple.
However
As I stated before, and has been stated before that, the system is more about carrots than sticks. Instead of saying 'Eat now or I will beat you with this 25% stamina debuff' you could say 'Eat now and I will give you this 25% stamina buff'. You don't 'need' to eat, but why wouldn't you? That guy you are chasing ate, and you didn't, so he's going to outrun you. That mountain is going to take 15 minutes longer to cross because you didn't eat. The consequences don't change, but the perception does. People, players, respond better to 'buffs' than 'debuffs'. Just like they respond better to blue and green backgrounds than to red and yellow. Just like they respond better to sliders moving left to right than right to left. People are funny animals.
Additionally, this is an RPG, and an MMORPG at that, not a life simulation. Abstraction is essential to cut down system load. If you can reduce the amount transferred by 10 bytes every second, that's not an insignificant improvement. 10 bytes * 1000 players avg * 60 seconds * 60 minutes * 23 hours = 828MB per day in traffic savings. Increase that number of players to 10000 and you are saving 8.28GB per day.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Instead of saying 'Eat now or I will beat you with this 25% stamina debuff' you could say 'Eat now and I will give you this 25% stamina buff'.
+1
The way that you put this really makes a lot of sense and still leaves open a system wherein farming foodstuffs and cooking can be very important. Not saying previous poster's haven't made sense. This just hits home nicely.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It all sounds like fun to me. I'm not sweating the "eating and drinking is a problem" thing. It seems like a pretty obvious roleplaying feature to me. If such things are not going to be in PFO, they (and we) are missing one of the main features of the entire game, roleplaying.
I'm all for a food and drink. Idea of slowly removing permanent "stress" debuff in a bar all the while having short, but stacking debuf "drunk" have much appeal :)
And here's another idea about gathered organic resources.
Many resources in RL have very short lifespan unless properly stored and/or processed. I came up with the idea of such mechanic. Here's no need for additional parameters for objects.
Just run every 2 hours or so all-server check. All short-lived resource items which are not in proper containers/stores, lose one point from their quality score. So grain will not be stored in heaps for years, berries, if not used fresh, will start to rot, milk will go sour. Not only this – every week or so server may check status of uncured leather, improperly stored timber, perhaps even iron ingots.
River Kingdoms are flat and wet land, so keeping materials intact may be a serious problem. Gameplay-wise, this process will add incentive for players to move goods into the storages. This also adds to the “realism” feel of PFO..
Thoughts?
I like to think that I'm playing a character who is more than an automaton that needs to be directed about every little detail concerning stuff that my character is supposed to know better than I do.
Why go through all this trouble? Where's the excitement and heroism in forgetting to do mundane tasks like properly packing your iron ingots, forgetting to fill your water skins, forgetting to eat today? This is not a post-apocalyptic survival game where this stuff is hard to find., so it's not like there's any actual shortage of food or drink (unless we're talking about food for an entire settlement - I addressed this earlier, see above).
Just assume that the characters "do the right thing", because in these cases, failure is boring and frustrating. Save the player's decision bandwidth for cases where failure is interesting and exciting.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Settlements should have a food/drink upkeep requirement. That alone should keep the farmers, ranchers, and even cooks for the settlement in business (having a master chef taking raw foodstuffs and turning them into gourmet meals could be a huge morale boost). This should also take the bulk of the product produced. The PC consumables are just gravy. Important gravy to players, but gravy to the producers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just assume that the characters "do the right thing", because in these cases, failure is boring and frustrating.
I'm personally partial to requiring the character to behave in certain ways to remove certain states (get shelter, a fire, and a warm meal to get rid of "soaking wet" and "chilled to the bone"), but this is a compelling argument.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Supply should be a critical consideration for besieged towns and armies on the march. The need for supply argues strongly for significant effects accruing buffs for the well-supplied and negative effects for the starving and thirsty.
Without supply rules in War you are eliminating the meaning of interdiction and trade in war. You eliminate the disadvantages of a long supply route for invaders. You eliminate the entire supporting mechanism of logistics.
It seems ludicrous to me that people should argue against both positive and negative effects for food, drink, granaries, and wells/cisterns/reservoirs.
If you want these things removed from individual adventurers fine, but do implement them for armies and settlements. Improve your settlement morale by building granaries and give the farmers and cooks some reason to raise crops and herds and prepare provisions. Give meaning to the saboteur's ability to poison or foul water supplies and set fire to silos. Give interdiction and supply importance in the conduct of a siege or offensive.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Supply should be a critical consideration for besieged towns and armies on the march. The need for supply argues strongly for significant effects accruing buffs for the well-supplied and negative effects for the starving and thirsty.
Without supply rules in War you are eliminating the meaning of interdiction and trade in war. You eliminate the disadvantages of a long supply route for invaders. You eliminate the entire supporting mechanism of logistics.
It seems ludicrous to me that people should argue against both positive and negative effects for food, drink, granaries, and wells/cisterns/reservoirs.
If you want these things removed from individual adventurers fine, but do implement them for armies and settlements. Improve your settlement morale by building granaries and give the farmers and cooks some reason to raise crops and herds and prepare provisions. Give meaning to the saboteur's ability to poison or foul water supplies and set fire to silos. Give interdiction and supply importance in the conduct of a siege or offensive.
You're conflating supplies on the character level and supplies on the settlement/camp level.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Indeed, a lack of 'supplies' can be crippling. The Merchants have nothing to sell, the Crafters have only what they have on hand or what their Fighters can bring back into the town, and there's no new food supplies coming in to feed the NPC Guards and PCs.
A siege that cuts off access to any form of resources, including the humble farm, should have dire consequences for a community or fortress. If there is item 'decay' (varying for the types of items, of course!) over time, then the longer a Siege lasts, the more it's going to hurt, and potentially cripple, the Defenders.
In contrast, the Besiegers can raid the farms, lumber mills and the like for resources to supplement their own storehouses, plus if they are smart, they will have found 'bandit camps' within the Hex, claimed them and used them as 'depo's' for the needed resources for their siege to work, meaning that the amount of time they need to spend ferrying forces back and forth across the Hexes for supplies to replace what they've expended is drasticly reduced .... so long as the Defenders don't have small groups of Raiders running around trying to find the 'Bandit Camps' and loot what they can from them before setting the rest aflame to deny the besiegers the remanents.