Goblin Squad Member
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To maintain a Chaotic alignment, the character must also be a criminal?The positive drift is in there to provide a way for people to recover over time if they want to be Lawful and/or Good. It'll probably be really slow, but still useful for those who are filled with regret at their choices and want to be LG again. And there will be an option to say "Nope, I'm happy where I am, thanks, you can keep your points" for people that want to stay Chaotic, Evil, or some shade of Neutral.
This makes it sound like there is a shift towards both Lawful and Good. However, many of the players point to the blog which only mentions a shift towards Lawful.
Could we please get a clarification from a dev?
Thanks, much.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It seems fairly clear to me, but reasonable people are reading that quote differently. An unambiguous clarification would be appreciated.
If that clarification doesn't happen, then I think it's safe to assume the devs aren't sure yet, and would probably appreciate hearing more from us on the subject.
A drift toward Lawful and Good does make sense.
After all, it's pretty easy for the game to quantify evil and chaotic actions. What would be Lawful or Good action that would come up enough for the game to quantify it?
(PS - I'm not saying there aren't any, I just can't think of any off the top of my head.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I, too, think the natural drift would be toward neutral. You aren't good without doing good and you can't be a bulwark of Law passively doing nothing.
Similarly at the other poles.
Other hand I think there would be a difference between doing nothing (NN) and striving for balance among the extremes (TN), but that doesn't seem to be the direction the developers intend.
I, too, think the natural drift would be toward neutral. You aren't good without doing good and you can't be lawful without doing nothing. Similarly at the other poles. Other hand I think there would be a difference between doing nothing (NN) and striving for balance among the extremes (TN), but that doesn't seem to be the direction the developers intend.
I tend to agree with your sentiment, I just have no idea how they could give players enough Lawful or Good actions to take to make it meaningful.
Any ideas?|
Goblin Squad Member
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Being lawful is measured by not breaking laws. No activity of enforcing laws is required. Being a "good" person can also be passively achieved, just by not committing wrongful or evil acts. This follows the belief that people are inherently good.
In game terms I also believe that we should all start out as neutral (N), and let our initial actions in the game shift us towards what we behave as.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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I got slightly confused in that original quote and shouldn't have included Good vs. Evil. The current idea is:
- You gain Law over time but can turn that off if you want to stay Chaotic.
- You gain Good by doing certain PvE actions like quests (probably at a restricted daily rate to keep people from just grinding all the way from Evil to good in a marathon session). You can remain Evil by not doing these actions.
The idea is that Good vs. Evil is much more of a roleplaying and PvE choice, while Law vs. Chaos is something that even players that primarily PvP need a way to recover.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sorry, but that seems skewed, Bluddwolf.
It is not enough to sit idle to be either lawful or good, in my view.
Being idle is just not illegal or evil.
Being good is contributing to the well being of the community, being constructive, furthering the objectives of your culture. Being lawful and good is furthering the objectives of civilization and justice, participating in your culture's governance, teaching the ignorant, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing those who are cold.
Saying it is enough to do nothing to be good and lawful goes hand in hand with such errors as thinking good needs evil to exist. Good is more than the absence of evil.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My understanding is:
Background Drift -> towards Lawful
Good -> requires taking good skills, doing good npc stuff and building good buildings/promoting such?
That said, good can be knocked in pvp sometimes, I believe?
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I think the rationale for background drift TOWARDS lawful, is pvp will happen and will cost something depending on how selective players are and how much pvp how frequently they are experiencing, mediated by alignment v aligment matrix of interactions (and reputation transfers). With the apparent "pause" button for those that wish to stop below certain lawful thresholds indeterminately.
That was my understanding. It seems lawful is primarily about player laws and more emphasis on player interaction though some good creeps in, while good-evil is more paths chosen with some pvp results. I don't understand it entirely (and hope it's complex anyway).
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Pagan's mention of addtional "markers" as per eve was a good one, so you can mark other groups and players with your own "dubious, dependable, keep watch," for when you meet them again seems another useful wrapping to the flag system that the system determines specifically. Maybe that system will be part of the Reputation system ie player-driven?
Edit: Stephen answers above...
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with the idea that PCs should begin at the center of the alignment diagram. I might add an exception, however, for clerics and paladins.
I realize the game is classless, but having everyone start at NN makes most of the religious classes "advanced options" that won't be available until the characters' actions (or passive drift) bring them into an alignment compatible with their deity (or with paladin-hood). Druids could start practicing right away, however; which would give them an odd advantage over the other divine casters.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I got slightly confused in that original quote and shouldn't have included Good vs. Evil. The current idea is:
- You gain Law over time but can turn that off if you want to stay Chaotic.
- You gain Good by doing certain PvE actions like quests (probably at a restricted daily rate to keep people from just grinding all the way from Evil to good in a marathon session). You can remain Evil by not doing these actions.
The idea is that Good vs. Evil is much more of a roleplaying and PvE choice, while Law vs. Chaos is something that even players that primarily PvP need a way to recover.
Thanks for the clarification, Stephen.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can see the act of choosing to be a Lawful Good Paladin as a good act in itself.
If we all started at 0,0 centered on a graduating set of coordinates (or 0,0,0 if three dimensional allowing TN to differentiate from NN) then that act could establish Lawful Goodness in itself at 1,1. However if to be LG the character has to achieve 255,255 before qualifying then yes that would be a hindrance.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I got slightly confused in that original quote and shouldn't have included Good vs. Evil. The current idea is:
- You gain Law over time but can turn that off if you want to stay Chaotic.
- You gain Good by doing certain PvE actions like quests (probably at a restricted daily rate to keep people from just grinding all the way from Evil to good in a marathon session). You can remain Evil by not doing these actions.
The idea is that Good vs. Evil is much more of a roleplaying and PvE choice, while Law vs. Chaos is something that even players that primarily PvP need a way to recover.
Stephen,
I'd just caution that you guys take care that gaining Good through PvE questing doesn't become overly grindy/repetitive for the player.
Afterall it's a game and you still want to make things fun for players, else nobody will do it. Given the current description of the Alignment system, it doesn't seem too difficult for players who self-identify as "Good" to slip from that alignment with the occasional mistake. Thus, I would think that it shouldn't be overly grindy/uninteresting to be able to recover from that on an occasional basis. Clearly a completely different story if the player were needing to do so with frequency....but the PvE recovery stuff should be fun/interesting to do, if you have to do it every once in awhile. YMMV.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Perhaps GW should act as the ultimate GM and dispense rarely a temporary "good flag" for some virtuous players allowing them to do more "good positive proactive actions" such as slay a particularly CE player or extend the influence of good in some form or manner? Really apex of the LG stuff.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Im not really interested in evil alignment myself. But I do have a question.
Can you do PvE actions to get evil as well? Like attacking any good NPC faction? Or does evil shifts only come from PvP?
You'll be able to get evil from PvE too. There are evil alliance factions who will have missions that will undoubtedly earn evil points.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I got slightly confused in that original quote and shouldn't have included Good vs. Evil. The current idea is:
- You gain Law over time but can turn that off if you want to stay Chaotic.
- You gain Good by doing certain PvE actions like quests (probably at a restricted daily rate to keep people from just grinding all the way from Evil to good in a marathon session). You can remain Evil by not doing these actions.
The idea is that Good vs. Evil is much more of a roleplaying and PvE choice, while Law vs. Chaos is something that even players that primarily PvP need a way to recover.
Please no limits, a player should never run into a situation where they stop receiving rewards for actions they enjoy doing. And no asymptotes inside of possible boundaries. If someone wants to keep running 'good' missions all day, they should be able to, after 20 or so missions, the rewards diminish. People who play a lot should get the same fulfilment through their entire session. The limit should be based on how long it takes to move form quest to quest.
I think the key is to make the time required to maximize an alignment long term, like the skill progressions. It should take months to move from TN to NG. The 'marathon grinder' would still take months to shift, and the casual player will probably take a year.
The character should always be moving forward, and never stopped. They can be slowed down, but not so much that it feels like being stopped.
It may also be worth it to start increasing other rewards once alignment rewards start diminishing, to keep the total value of running missions constant.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Valkenr: Good point - but - an alignment choice only has meaning so long as it has persistent consequences do those choices: Snapping babies necks one moment to be reviving them the next moment seems perverse? I think the road to evil is a slippery slope and the road to good a long journey; matches pvp indiscretion and challenging quest to redemption. Overall good quests should be very challenging, maybe?
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I got slightly confused in that original quote and shouldn't have included Good vs. Evil. The current idea is:
- You gain Law over time but can turn that off if you want to stay Chaotic.
- You gain Good by doing certain PvE actions like quests (probably at a restricted daily rate to keep people from just grinding all the way from Evil to good in a marathon session). You can remain Evil by not doing these actions.
The idea is that Good vs. Evil is much more of a roleplaying and PvE choice, while Law vs. Chaos is something that even players that primarily PvP need a way to recover.Please no limits, a player should never run into a situation where they stop receiving rewards for actions they enjoy doing. And no asymptotes inside of possible boundaries. If someone wants to keep running 'good' missions all day, they should be able to, after 20 or so missions, the rewards diminish. People who play a lot should get the same fulfilment through their entire session. The limit should be based on how long it takes to move form quest to quest.
I think the key is to make the time required to maximize an alignment long term, like the skill progressions. It should take months to move from TN to NG. The 'marathon grinder' would still take months to shift, and the casual player will probably take a year.
The character should always be moving forward, and never stopped. They can be slowed down, but not so much that it feels like being stopped.
It may also be worth it to start increasing other rewards once alignment rewards start diminishing, to keep the total value of running missions constant.
It depends on what the daily limit is; I think that two hours worth of time-maximized good per day is a reasonable limit that nobody except people who are trying to maximize their delta-alignment will hit.
Would a system where the marginal reward per action asymptotically approached some point greater than zero satisfy your objection? (The first one gives you 1010 out of several million required, the second one 910, the third one 820, then 739, but the 50th or so in short time would only give you about 12.
And of course evil actions would have a similar progression...
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Decius, I think nonzero is better than zero, but it shouldn't reduce to basically zero. I in general hate diminishing returns, especially when they reduce something to a point is is no longer useful. I don't want to see the outcome diminish to more than 50% of it's starting value. The only place I like diminishing returns, is in Crowd control, because perma-locking isn't fun.
I don't want to see a number that determines if someone is grinding or not. I've never though of repeatedly running normal missions as 'grinding', by my definition 'grinding' is the rounding up of mass amounts of NPCS to kill with AOE attacks. In some games this can be done in missions by running 'solo groups' or using built in systems to inflate your mission difficulty.
I really want to see no diminishing of any rewards. I think saying "it takes 800 hours of missions to go from 0 to full 'Good'", is better than "It takes 400 days playing 2 hours a day to go from 0-full". Progression shouldn't be based on how much you play, not how often. If two people play the game 10 hours a week, but one does it Monday-Friday for 2 hrs a night, and the other does it Saturday and Sunday for 5hrs/day, they should both see the same rewards.
I am fine with having missions say 'magnitude 100 lawful shift', and the shift is smaller, the higher your alignment. People can shift in and out of low rank alignment relatively quickly, but you need a higher rank to get the more useful benefits of the alignment.
As an aside while the majority of people I suspect do a little of both pvp and pve to some extent. There is still a sizeable minority which only do one or the other.
I think the game should provide methods to get your alignement shift by either pvp or pve to cater to these. For instance a paladin to atone for a particular shift may get either kill 10 goblins(pve) or fulfil 3 caravan guard contracts, kill 5 different criminally flagged players etc.
While I do both pvp and pve I have often seen complaints from people forced to pve in order to be able to pvp and vice versa
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Goblin Squad Member
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Looking at:
Good vs. Evil
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Evil: -7,500 to -2,501
Neutral: -2,500 to 2,500
Good: 2,501 to 7,500
Imo: Direction Change: Evil -> Good:
When,
Evil: low good-xp, high challenge
Neutral: medium good-xp, medium challenge
Good: low good-xp, highest challenge
And a general gradient within each 3 states. Ie most extreme at -7,500 and 7,500 for eg.
But it seems necessary to control the real-time change possible from one state to another. I suggest harshest for the extremes, again, and milder exponential decay of xp-good gain in the middle in either direction.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that daily limits are very, very good.
It's draining having to constantly grind to get where you want to be. I am very much looking forward to the time-limited progression in PFO so I can slow down and "smell the roses" as it were, without paying a huge opportunity cost.
I'd actually prefer Monthly limits, though, since that way a player can "catch up" during the month with one or two marathon sessions.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the game should provide methods to get your alignement shift by either pvp or pve to cater to these. For instance a paladin to atone for a particular shift may get either kill 10 goblins(pve) or fulfil 3 caravan guard contracts, kill 5 different criminally flagged players etc.
I believe that's basically the plan.
You gain Good by doing certain PvE actions like quests...
While Champion is active: The player earns extra good vs. evil for each character with Heinous killed up to a daily max.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I also prefer weekly limits over daily. I haven't considered monthly limits before, but that seems even better.
Daily limits aren't so great for people that can only really play on the weekend but can play for many hours on the weekend. If they won't be able to play one weekend, a weekly limit isn't so great for them, either (unless, of course, the weekly limit is set near 40 hours). Monthly limit is nice because I suspect that most players' monthly playtime doesn't deviate as far from their average monthly playtime as their weekly playtime does.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would be fine with a weekly limit.
My concern about the daily limit is that it creates a situation where you pay a significant opportunity cost if you don't get that daily max every day. That gets grindy, and I'm hopeful that PFO can use time-based limits on progression to get rid of grindiness, rather than to create more of it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I prefer a daily limit. I feel like loose more with a weekly limit if I don't get everything because the maximum is larger, and there is a longer time between periods. With a daily limit you just do it that day or you don't. I don't think it will really matter that much for how "good" you are. I mean what is the difference between good at 2501 good points vs 7500 good points? I just don't want to see something like SWTOR where you end up doing countless Black Talon speed runs just to increase or decrease alignment.
I just don't want to see something like SWTOR where you end up doing countless Black Talon speed runs just to increase or decrease alignment.
I don't think that can happen.
If I remember correctly, PvE content is generated by the system, then despawns once "completed". I could've sworn I read something like that in a blog update.
Unless I'm totally wrong, PvE speed runs to modify alignment should be impossible by default.
The real question is also, and this is something of an aside admittedly, how many players are actually going to worry about the alignement or rep systems.
Personally I must admit I plan to ignore them as much as possible due to the fact in many instances I think paying attention to them will prevent me correctly rp'ing my character. Nothing I have read so far points me towards anything that will affect me by doing so as I don't plan on playing an alignement dependent class and as I am not someone who kills without a good rp reason the whole system is likely irrelevant to me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The real question is also, and this is something of an aside admittedly, how many players are actually going to worry about the alignement or rep systems.
Personally I must admit I plan to ignore them as much as possible due to the fact in many instances I think paying attention to them will prevent me correctly rp'ing my character. Nothing I have read so far points me towards anything that will affect me by doing so as I don't plan on playing an alignement dependent class and as I am not someone who kills without a good rp reason the whole system is likely irrelevant to me.
In my understanding it should be irrelevant to you while playing. What we are concerned with here is whether the game systems make sense to us, and how they do or do not make sense to us. It's sorta part of our way to try and crowdforge the game we hope to play, at least if I understand what we are doing here.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The real question is also, and this is something of an aside admittedly, how many players are actually going to worry about the alignement or rep systems.
Personally I must admit I plan to ignore them as much as possible due to the fact in many instances I think paying attention to them will prevent me correctly rp'ing my character. Nothing I have read so far points me towards anything that will affect me by doing so as I don't plan on playing an alignement dependent class and as I am not someone who kills without a good rp reason the whole system is likely irrelevant to me.
Settlements will have alignment restrictions on who can be a member, which may impact access to crafting and training facilities. NPC alliances will have alignment restrictions to join them. That's all I know of so far.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's not just Alignment and Reputation that will likely be limited by these types of systems. There will also be NPC Faction with the various organizations like the Assassin's guilds.
I also wouldn't have a problem with a hybrid Daily & Weekly limit, where the Weekly limit was capped at something like 3 or 4 times the Daily limit.
The reason I'm being vocal about this is because of my experience with it in WoW and Vanguard. In those games, if I wanted to log in and play an alt, or explore a new area, or just spend time trying to reproduce a bug I found so I can show it to the devs so they can fix it, I would have to pay a significant opportunity cost in order to do that. If instead, I can choose to do something like that and say to myself "it's okay, I'll make it up tomorrow night", then that's a much, much, much better overall experience for me. If there are only Daily limits, then I can never make it up tomorrow night; instead I will have forever lost that opportunity.
I really want to be able to spend some of my game time exploring and writing about my explorations without feeling like I'm falling behind.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...I really want to be able to spend some of my game time exploring and writing about my explorations without feeling like I'm falling behind.
It is almost tragic that games of adventure have become so warped into a race to level cap that we even think about, let alone worry over, such a thing a falling behind.
Do you feel that rep and alignment are going to turn out just another way to 'race' everyone else and 'beat' the game?
The point I was making Being is while I agree with the need for some systems to be in place, if the systems get in the way of playing the game then they will be ignored.
For me the systems seem to be getting in the way of why I play mmo's which is to role play a living breathing character. For instance I see someone I knew robbed a merchant from my settlement. If I attack and kill them I may get a shift to good if he is still flagged or a shift to evil if the flag has worn off. Frankly my view from an rp position is I killed someone who robbed a merchant from my settlement this is a good thing and I don't care what the system says.
If the system is strict enough that for helping my settlement by killing those who rob its members that I am locked out of my settlement then it is not a game I will play. I don't think the system will be strict enough to stop me rp'ing my character by barring me from my own settlement therefore I will just ignore it.
If a lot of people end up doing that then it is not people that have got it wrong but the system that has it wrong. The systems regarding player interaction and limitations on those interactions are getting far too complex.
I really want to be able to spend some of my game time exploring and writing about my explorations without feeling like I'm falling behind.
I empathize with your position, but I really don't think the feeling you experience on this issue is solvable with a hybrid day/week system. Even with that system, you could still feel as if you fell behind provided you failed to get "max" in a given week.
To address your point, a better method might not be a hard cap like "only +1000 Lawful Good points/day" (or whatever, I'm completely pulling numbers out of the aether for demonstrative purposes).
Instead, a 'soft' cap related to time investment requirement may work better. As in, sure, you could theoretically grind out a lot of Lawful Good points in a day or two, but it would take virtually all your time simply due to how long the quests take.
And, you know, if a player is really that dedicated to changing their alignment to pour hours and hours and hours into in a short period of time, heck, let them have that cake.
I think the number of people who would actually do that is so small as to be insignificant.
@Being
That is certainly a more succinct way of putting what I was saying. I hope personally that we have large percentage of role players compared to other mmo's.
My concern really is that the more complex people want to make the systems and the more situations people try and cover then the more likely they get in the way of rp.
I feel sometimes when arguing points over things people lose sight of the one major point we know about this game. The majority of the content is us and the interactions we have. The more limitations and restrictions you hedge about player interactions the more you reduce possible content.
Emergent gameplay derives from simple rules. It arises from the border case and the grey area's. The more you try and regulate the less scope for creativity
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Goblin Squad Member
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The reason why players will really care about the Alignment system (aside from us Role-Players who will care no matter what) is that it limits what PLAYER organizations you can be associated with. That's part of the reason why it really CAN'T be too much of a marathon to recover from an alignment slip...as long as such slips are infrequent rather then chronic in nature.
For example...You are a member of Jolly's Rangers, those are the players (in real life) that you enjoy working with and grouping with. Jolly's Rangers are a NG Company.....you have an incident where you slip up (or maybe you just have a bad day in RL and do a few none NG things).
Your alignment slips to CN...the system AUTOMATICALY boots you out of Jolly's Rangers and prevents you from entering any settlements they own (where all your stuff is). This despite what the other players in Jolly's Rangers want.
That's a pretty harsh penalty....but yeah PFO is a game where actions have consequences, so not unreasonable. However, should it really take 400 hours of actual play time and questing to get back as a Member of Player organization made up of your freinds who WANT you as a Member? Think about it, for a casual player who might only be able to devote 8 hours a week to questing...that's 50 WEEKS real-time that you are not able to be officialy associated with the group of players who you like to play with. That would be pretty INSANE for a single slip-up and I really can't imagine too many players playing a game like that for FUN.
That's why recorvering your aligment...even if it's LG...can't be a huge marathon effort akin to max leveling in other games. It definately should be something that takes some effort to do....but it should be something pretty easly achievable if you only need to do it once inawhile....if you have to do it all the time, meaning it's not just do to a slip-up on your case but being a chronic offender....that's where it should be something where the continual effort is too much work. It's going to take some carefull consideration on GW's part finding that suite spot....
From my perspective...I'd say maybe 4 hours worth of active questing pushes you 1 alignment shift back up....and maybe you max out at 4 hours per day.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Your alignment slips to CN...the system AUTOMATICALY boots you out of Jolly's Rangers and prevents you from entering any settlements they own (where all your stuff is). This despite what the other players in Jolly's Rangers want.
This is something I've seen people reference a lot. Can anyone point out to me where they said you would be able to ban people from entering (not joining) settlement based on alignment? I've seen reputation cited, and a nebulous "other mechanics", but I thought alignment was supposed to be something that isn't so easily determined without magic or something similar? Particularly since the disguise mechanic makes no mention of masking your alignment.
Edit: The rest of that quote actually raises another interesting question. Person A has stuff in Settlement Q's storage. A betrays Q and is banished. What happens to A's stuff in the storage? Does it sit idle, locked up but untouched, or can Q reclaim the belongings as property of the settlement? I can see arguments both ways.
@ GrumpyMel
I see what you're saying, but, and I could be wrong, I don't think anyone is proposing what you're opposing.
Instead, I think most people don't want to see someone shift from Chaotic Evil to Lawful Good in a day. Dramatic shifts from Evil to Good (not vice versa!) should be difficult.
Edit - And to echo Dario, I don't think alignment prevents entry into anywhere.
Nothing prevents entry.
Instead, being a member of an organization or with certain flags active might make someone a criminal in a certain place, but there isn't any physical bar to entry in the game at all as far as I can tell.
Otherwise, make your town illegal to CE, NE, and LE and you're pretty safe from assassins.