Goblin Squad Member
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I don't mind if a bounty hunter can investigate and get my general location. they can even know where I have bank accounts, or properties that I own,. They can know what settlements I have visited in the last few weeks.
They should not have access to my friends list. A friends list is player based, not character based. Not all of my friends would likely be in my charter company or even in my own settlement. They maybe someone I know in private life, but rarely if ever play with in game.
Again, I don't have a problem with a bounty hunter being given the tools to find the character that has a bounty on his head. It will be fun to be hunted. But, leave my private friends list out of it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Where did you even pick up that this was a possibility? People that you have traded with, on the other hand...
Dev Blog on Bounties and Death Curses. On IPhone so can't link it.
As for those that we traded with, that would not really help BH much since most trades on open world market are completely random. Contracts are likewise often done behind closed doors and might not be public knowledge, well at least contracts between settlement leaders and less savory types.
But friends list should not be revealed, for reasons I stated already.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Each player will only be able to pursue a limited number of bounties at one time, and will get general details about the target's friends, reputation, and relative power level when accepting the bounty. So if you want the best of the best to take your case, you'll have to put up a fair amount of coin. Or you'll have to pass off permission to consummate your death curse.
That's not "people on your 'friends list', that 'people you've grouped with and/or are part of the same organization'.
Even then, 'general details' would include things like number and relative power level; names would be the most specific detail possible.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Do you mean track people on your friends list, or just know about it?
I intend to make it my business to know as much as I can about people's friends' lists. But that will be done in a meta sense.
If you can draw the network of the first 5000 people after the first month, I'm pretty sure I can find a peer-reviewed journal that wants to publish your methods. And pretty sure that you either want credit for publishing them, or don't want it to be known that it is possible.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Each player will only be able to pursue a limited number of bounties at one time, and will get general details about the target's friends, reputation, and relative power level when accepting the bounty. So if you want the best of the best to take your case, you'll have to put up a fair amount of coin. Or you'll have to pass off permission to consummate your death curse.That's not "people on your 'friends list', that 'people you've grouped with and/or are part of the same organization'.
Even then, 'general details' would include things like number and relative power level; names would be the most specific detail possible.
I certainly hope you are correct, but I'm hoping for some clarification. Grouped up with would be kind of difficult to track because the CC has been at times called something short of a guild in the traditional sense and temporary grouping might be very common.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What if the Friends list is per character? What if it isn't a meta-game player-based list?
I e never known a friends list to not be player based. But even if it was individual character based, how would that be public knowledge?
Charter Company membership is something that might be written on the charter, and so public knowledge. Same goes for settlement affiliation. Public contracts are also fare game, but not private contracts.
I want there to be player privacy, and for what I formation a bounty hunter can get to make sense and not hinder him or her in finding their targets, if they do the proper investigating.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well in the browser based game pardus, friends lists are actually specifically tied to mechanical connections. IE there are buildings called military outposts that work as blockades. Of which they can be set to allow or deny your friends etc... Starbases also had key settings in which foes could not dock or repair, indifferent (IE neither friends nor foes) could dock and repair unless they had a terrible reputation score, and friends could actually access squadrons (which were used to destroy starbases). Currently they are about to impliment a seperate contacts list, to allow people to have friend/foe lists, without worrying about it jeopordizing security of their allies.
Anyway the point I'm making here, there could be 2 seperate types of lists of friends. IE 1. a list of friends/enemies that controls say whether someone has access to their settlement resources, shops training facilities etc... and a different one that functions for PM convenience etc...
The prior type of list should be discoverable via in game means, the latter should not, in my opinion.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Anyway the point I'm making here, there could be 2 seperate types of lists of friends. IE 1. a list of friends/enemies that controls say whether someone has access to their settlement resources, shops training facilities etc... and a different one that functions for PM convenience etc...
The prior type of list should be discoverable via in game means, the latter should not, in my opinion.
I like this approach.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why would a bounty hunter not compile a list of known associates? Why would this information NOT be networked among bounty hunters that have a common cause? This only makes sense to me.
It'll depend on how the mechanics play out to see what tools bounty hunters actually have, but a lot of times, bounty hunters have to do some private investigating so I don't see this as being out in left field.
Just my two cents.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why would a bounty hunter not compile a list of known associates? Why would this information NOT be networked among bounty hunters that have a common cause? This only makes sense to me.
It'll depend on how the mechanics play out to see what tools bounty hunters actually have, but a lot of times, bounty hunters have to do some private investigating so I don't see this as being out in left field.
Just my two cents.
I have no problem with bounty hunters compiling a list of known associates, ie. Charter Company members list; Settlement Associations; Settement Visitor Logs; Public Contracts Taken by or Against the target; Home deeds; Bank accounts, etc...
My issue was that the "and will get general details about the target's friends", makes me think of a friends list. As I stated above, my friends list is based on me, the player not my character. I therefore view it as something that should be private, as a player. All of the associations I listed above belong to my character, and should be fair game for investigation. They also fall within the realm of reason that a Bounty Hunter with good investigatory skills could discover.
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Goblin Squad Member
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"and will get general details about the target's friends", makes me think of a friends list.
It makes me think of known associates. If I were a good character and a friend was playing an evil character, and they were on my "friends" list, that is useless information to a bounty hunter because likely that "friend" of mine is someone who will not have any useful interaction with my good character.
Why input a mechanic that detracts from game play? Likely it would pool characters that you play with on a regular basis, CC mates, etc. That in addition to a "friends" list per character... not player would be my guess. Including all contacts based on account seems a bit too meta-game for the direction they are taking... IMHO.
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What about people that you group with that are not in your settlement, Charter Company, etc.? That dirty little secret that Bluddwolf, the mighty bandit has? You know, the one where he likes to cavort in forests, crypts, and caves with that goody-two-shoes paladin and the insufferably self righteous cleric?
Wouldn't it be kind of important for the Lawful Good bounty hunter to know that a 'bad guy' has contacts and allies in his own camp? Preferably who they are, too?
I'm not saying that giving a bounty hunter access to a bounty's personal 'friends list' is a 100% good idea, merely playing devil's advocate here.
I have no problem with bounty hunters compiling a list of known associates, ie. Charter Company members list; Settlement Associations; Settement Visitor Logs; Public Contracts Taken by or Against the target; Home deeds; Bank accounts, etc...
Woah, some Scribe is going to retire once he finishes doing all your jobs!
j/k
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have no problem with bounty hunters compiling a list of known associates, ie. Charter Company members list; Settlement Associations; Settement Visitor Logs; Public Contracts Taken by or Against the target; Home deeds; Bank accounts, etc...Woah, some Scribe is going to retire once he finishes doing all your jobs!
j/k
Well that would certainly be a "shovel ready job" wouldn't it?
I'd like to think that a bounty hunter would actually have to investigate and gather all if his information, and then follow leads, some good some false. It is why I advocate fir there to be no set time limit tht a BH has to find his target. There would then be only three ways to resolve the bounty, BH kills target, BH gives up on contract, Employer gives up on contract.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I forsee many players having multiple characters, so they can flip between good and evil missions, same as they could have an adventurer exploring the wild, an Enforcer PC in open warfare, and a Crafter engaged in settlement building.
If friend lists are set to each player, then such players would have need of a long friends list, covering all the real-life people whose PCs interact with any of that player's several PCs.
But that would be pointless info to share with a bounty hunter, since many of those players, and many of those players' PCs would have no connection to the specific PC the bounty is on.
The only information that should be possible to unearth on any PC or NPC, is their in-character associates. And I'm pretty sure that's what Decius just confirmed above.
It's hard to make the Bounty Hunter investigate when he only gets a day to catch the guy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Because mind-numbing tedium is a better alternative.
Bounty Hunting without a little bit of leg work is not "hunting" and it will grow boring in short order.
Give the Bounty Hunters the time to really get involved in investigating, tracking and then killing their targets, and their experience will be more of an achievement. Not to mention, the really good ones will become feared, or at least respected.
I hope for the same for Assassins. The game mechanics should require them to be true professionals. Gather information about their prey. Discover their location. Observe their practices. Then, strike when the opportunity is presented. The really good ones will strike fear in their prey.
If in PFO the character is the "end game", then the emchanics of the game have to make the character live their profession.
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Goblin Squad Member
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+1 for longer than 24 hours on a bounty (and similar actions).
Id forgotten that the intention was for a short window. Considering the size of the map and the lack of teleportation features, youd have to stumble onto the wanted character, realise hes wanted, go pick up the bounty and come back and hope to find him again.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Bounty hunting definitely needs a longer window to act in. Many of the 24hr timers really should be 'permanent until one or more of x events occur', such as absolution, restitution, reconciliation, contract completion, contract cancellation, etc.
As for the friends list, the friend's list in EVE is character-based. Actually, in most of the games I've played which allow alts the friend's list has been character-based. It doesn't really make sense to have a player or account-based friend's list in an RPG. I'd say give the boundy hunter a limited list (maybe based on his skill level) of recent character activity (who the target grouped with, who he purchased from, etc.). Any bounty hunter worth their salt is going to keep an out of game record on their past contracts. I know as a bandit I'm going to be keeping a list of who I've seen, who they have been with, what I've done to them, and what disguise I was wearing when I done it.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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The intent is to give potential bounty hunters a clue as to how much support you might have if they go after you, in a "that is not enough of a bounty for a guy with this many allies" way, not to give them a detailed list of known associates. So potentially things like settlement and company memberships including rough sizes of those groups, but probably not friends list. We'll probably need to tweak that even further based on what programming decides is a reasonable database search per bounty.
Players that want to identify as full time bounty hunters, of course, may work up their own lists through detective work and networking.
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Goblin Squad Member
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(JOKE) Accepting a bounty won't give me a glowing arrow pointing to the target's location, and a teleport button on my mini-map? Actually researching and searching for a target would be too much work! (/JOKE)
I also support the idea of bounties that remain in effect until one party or the other gives up. To avoid endless bounties, maybe the bounty hunter should only be able to accept X contacts simultaneously, with X being tied to a skill level.
Can't find some targets and want to accept new contacts? Drop one of the cold cases to accept a new bounty.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The intent is to give potential bounty hunters a clue as to how much support you might have if they go after you, in a "that is not enough of a bounty for a guy with this many allies" way, not to give them a detailed list of known associates. So potentially things like settlement and company memberships including rough sizes of those groups, but probably not friends list. We'll probably need to tweak that even further based on what programming decides is a reasonable database search per bounty.
Players that want to identify as full time bounty hunters, of course, may work up their own lists through detective work and networking.
Thank you, that wax the answer I was hoping for.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thank you, that wax the answer I was hoping for.The intent is to give potential bounty hunters a clue as to how much support you might have if they go after you, in a "that is not enough of a bounty for a guy with this many allies" way, not to give them a detailed list of known associates. So potentially things like settlement and company memberships including rough sizes of those groups, but probably not friends list. We'll probably need to tweak that even further based on what programming decides is a reasonable database search per bounty.
Players that want to identify as full time bounty hunters, of course, may work up their own lists through detective work and networking.
WTB Bludd a spellchecker. Isn't it his B-day anyway?? LOL
I agree, this certifies it more and I like that answer. Now if we could just push to get the "until one side or the other quits" idea set in stone, I think BH will be well on it's way to being a well balanced and polished concept. Now, on to assassinations.....
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Goblin Squad Member
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true, and yet, untrue. From a contract point of view, yes Bounties and assassinations are similar. From a completion perspective, they CAN be very different. Not all bounties are meant to kill the target, most (IRL) are actually to bring them back for court or whatnot. I realize in-game, this is mainly be a kill order on a "bad guy" while assassins will kill anyone they are paid to, LG pally to another CE assassin.
My main different is that, while assassins share similar skill sets, to track and stalk their prey, BH can "offer" their prey a semi-fair fight, where assassinations are typically high profile targets that require quick, precise kills, sometimes in public to send a message. Also, a big difference, BH CAN be a fighter type that can stand toe-to-toe with most and survive, an assassin is a master of stealth and quick kills, not fighting toe-to-toe.
I know I know too many people are afraid of the big bad "1-shot kill", but honestly, could you play assassin's creed without it? What about any other "stealthy assassin style game?" And for the record, assassin's creed brotherhood has a multiplayer version, just saying. The whole point is to 1 shot each other there and it works and is great fun. they even have disguises too.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Milo Of course you are a proponent of the "one shot kill" or it's lil bro the "almost kill". You plan to play an assassin. The Devs are designing things to avoid those tho. Even crits are being changed from thier TT mechanic just to avoid spikes of inflated damage in regular PVP.
It seems like a neccesary mechanic to play assassin (Heck, I actually feel like you're right) but only fun for assassins. I hear your pain, but I don't think that you will get much relief.
They obviously want assassins in the game. It should be interesting to see how they work that out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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my whole thing comes down to this, concerning assassins. I honestly don't see them, in any capacity, being an end all be all that everyone wants and has to be if they included a 1 shot ability. I feel that giving them that ability, and making it limited (such as using the flag and having a contract on your target) will make it special and rare enough.
Also, it comes down to assassin contracts will likely be rare and should be. they should ALSO be expensive. Anyone seen the movie "Ninja Assassin"? In there, they talk about 10 pounds of gold being the "cost" of a life. Pay this ninja clan 10 pounds of gold (Or cash equivalent) and they kill the person you require, no questions ask, no matter the target. I would LOVE to see something like this in PFO. I am interested to see what the PFO community determines will be the "cost of a life."
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Goblin Squad Member
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What I keep coming back to with assassins isn't the cost or how you carry out your task, but the end result. Unless you're trying to remove a character for a relatively short period by cutting their nearest bind point, what meaningful result does assassination give you for all that work and money? That result might be meaningful to remove a character from a battlefield at a critical moment, but otherwise, this seems more like an inconvenience than anything else.
I'm certainly not asking for perma-death, but with death penalties being as minor as they are, it seems like a lot of special training, tracking, and planning on the part of the assassin and a whole lot of cash from the person posting the contract for potentially seems like very little impact on the target.
For this reason, I would submit again the idea of negating the target's affects on their settlement if assassinated. In this way, we also reinforce the idea that targets of assassination tend to be people of position and power.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm actually pretty okay with the direction this conversation is going. As long as bounty hunting doesn't turn into something only people with tremendous free time are able to enjoy. It'd be hard to impossible to prevent them from being better at it than less dedicated hunters, but it should be something you don't have to dedicate hours a day to to have a chance.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I hate to say this but you guys are making me feel like character death should somehow be more painful.
Not fun when it is a matter of being ganked but perhaps neccesary to make PVP, bounties, assassinations, PVE, everything meaningful.
It would certainly give you that adrenalin burst when you found yourself in conflict.
As it stands now, it does seem like a minor inconvenience.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hate to say this but you guys are making me feel like character death should somehow be more painful.
Not fun when it is a matter of being ganked but perhaps neccesary to make PVP, bounties, assassinations, PVE, everything meaningful.
It would certainly give you that adrenalin burst when you found yourself in conflict.
As it stands now, it does seem like a minor inconvenience.
Maybe death should result in medium-term reduction to something that's one step removed from being able to play the character. For instance, you can re-spawn right away, but your contribution to the leadership indices of your settlement is reduced for a week. That would motivate political assassinations. A week of reduced effectiveness at managing a gathering or crafting team would produce a clandestine form of competition between merchants. On the bounty side, maybe a re-spawned bandit would face a week of reduced ability to issue SADs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe death should result in medium-term reduction to something that's one step removed from being able to play the character. For instance, you can re-spawn right away, but your contribution to the leadership indices of your settlement is reduced for a week. That would motivate political assassinations. A week of reduced effectiveness at managing a gathering or crafting team would produce a clandestine form of competition between merchants. On the bounty side, maybe a re-spawned bandit would face a week of reduced ability to issue SADs.I hate to say this but you guys are making me feel like character death should somehow be more painful.
Not fun when it is a matter of being ganked but perhaps neccesary to make PVP, bounties, assassinations, PVE, everything meaningful.
It would certainly give you that adrenalin burst when you found yourself in conflict.
As it stands now, it does seem like a minor inconvenience.
That would make leardership rolls somewhat unfun for people that maybe didn't do anything wrong to be assassinated. It would also punish ALL of the people in a settlement. Cool for reducing effectiveness before war though.
Again, hurting a possibly inocent merchant and all of the younger people working in his team.
As for bandits, if we take away SAD ability we would be hampering the intended game mechanic for reducing griefing.
Also, all of these would require separate coding and tracking systems for every case.
We would need a small but painful hit. Something that is fairly easy to program and is universal. Something that would make dying cost you but not too much. That would scale up for criminals, murderers, and maybe even be more severe the lower the character's reputation.
I have one idea. It is gonna be unpopular and anyone reading this will, I am sure, let me know...
As a base line example:
1. Your typical character, with a fairly good or better reputation, would lose 1 hour of exp pts when killed in PVE or consentual PVP or when he is attacked and killed just minding his own business.
2. That loss would scale up for killed with any short term flag except "killed" or "involved".
3. Even more with advanced versions of the naughty flags i.e. "brigand, villian, or murderer".
4.Finally scaled up more, the lower the rep of the killed.
This, or something similar, plus most of the things already planned (rep loss, alignment shift, etc...). The idea is to make death sting only a little for people playing the system the way GW wants, and worse (scaling up) for those that are playing naughty (outside the scope of GW intensions).
Without a little negative rienforcement for dying, IMO, this game is seriously nerfed and I fear that people will lose interest.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If the death of a leader type had a negative effect on the whole settlement or faction, then surely that would be incentive for regular folks to rally round each other, and protect their popular leaders, the ones who are focused on exploration and settlement building.
As a crafter, you may not have the strength of arms to hunt down an annoying griefer bandit, but you can certainly contribute to his demise, by helping to inform on him to the whole Bounty Hunter community.
Update the town notice board, let everyone know he's been in town trying to buy supplies.
Send your apprentice to fetch the Watch, while you keep him talking.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It is gonna be unpopular and anyone reading this will, I am sure, let me know...
Deal!
As a base line example:
1. Your typical character, with a fairly good or better reputation, would lose 1 hour of exp pts when killed in PVE or consentual PVP or when he is attacked and killed just minding his own business.
Ugh. Just triple-blegh. So punish people for enjoying your game by taking away the skill they just learned. Eww, eww, eww. Or if you go the other direction and take it off the next hour of learning, then you're punishing people for subscribing. Those without a current skill time purchase don't get a hit while you steal from those who've paid you real money. Just disgusting business practice.
2. That loss would scale up for killed with any short term flag except "killed" or "involved".
3. Even more with advanced versions of the naughty flags i.e. "brigand, villian, or murderer".
4.Finally scaled up more, the lower the rep of the killed.
This, or something similar, plus most of the things already planned (rep loss, alignment shift, etc...). The idea is to make death sting only a little for people playing the system the way GW wants, and worse (scaling up) for those that are playing naughty (outside the scope of GW intensions).
You misunderstand the game design. Those "naughty" flags are encouraged. They are absolutely inside the scope of the game design. Otherwise they wouldn't get flags, they'd get banned. The game is designed for PvP conflict. It's designed around it. If you dole out steeper punishments for the players that cause conflict, they'll leave. Then you have no conflict and the rest of the players leave because they're now just playing a fantasy version of the Sims but paying a lot more for it.
Death should be meaningful, but not necessarily painful.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have one idea. It is gonna be unpopular and anyone reading this will, I am sure, let me know...As a base line example:
1. Your typical character, with a fairly good or better reputation, would lose 1 hour of exp pts when killed in...
XP loss isn't absolutely terrible in a conventional MMO, because you can work to overcome it. Fight harder mobs, play an extra hour or two, and you're back to where you were. With a system like the one GW is using for XP in PFO, there is nothing you can do to make it up. You have permanently lost paid subscription time. You will always be behind someone who started playing at the same time as you and died less.
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Goblin Squad Member
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KarlBob,
24 hours, certainly. A week...as others have said, that seems too punitive to others players in that leader's settlement.
24 hours is definitely more tolerable. At no point should a leader be more effective by not logging on for fear of dying and hobbling the community for a long period of time. At 24 hours, you're looking at something more tactical in use. The leader can set up defense for himself to prevent future assassinations after the first one instead of just punishing everyone in the settlement for a week.
I mean, if you see a war brewing on the horizon, you'd want to play an alt until it boils over instead of punishing your settlement for a week during the war.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Drakhan,
But that causes the same loophole Nihimon has pointed out with bounties or assassination or any other form of retribution for a character's actions...the target simply avoids retribution by logging out and playing an alt for a day. Perhaps diminishing returns for that leader's settlement bonuses due to their absence from the game over time would require them to be around during times of war. After all, that's when you need your leaders most. I know that would potentially penalize a settlement if one of their leaders was absent for a prolonged period due to legitimate reasons (real life issues), but the game goes on...settlements would need to temporarily replace that position in such cases, as happens in real life when a leader is unable to serve.