Goblin Squad Member
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Good topic to discuss.
Death is a norm for PFO. Threading allows players to preserve some items they have as well as what they are using. I think as flexibility will be required players will be forced to carry more than they can thread?
Secondly the value of that goes up according to how determined and what risk/reward players determine is important, so apparently it's modulated by that as well?
On the question of higher level characters, I think the threading tracks their ability to use better items and even carry more. Though I have not thought about any other possibly consequences that that higher level chars might need to cost more per death... . Trash gear has been mentioned so it seems risk goes up when players take measures to achieve important goals ie "cost of death" increases?
There's also that assassination may sever threads and/or cut some soul/binding locations which might be considered cost in terms of "time" also.
Perhaps soul-binding upkeep costs something up front or per death? Not really sure: Maybe if the economy needs it but atst you do want players engaging in combat more than not so a death penalty can't be too onerous?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Threading will only protect all of your gear with the lowest grade of gear. As your equipment gets more powerful, each piece will take a larger portion of your threads, leaving you unable to thread everything. Could you confine yourself to just the few pieces of threaded gear? Sure, but you're reducing your effectiveness rather significantly to do so. Not to mention that only equipped gear can be threaded, so anything you have in your inventory will also be lost. Each respawn point you wish to bind to will also use a portion of your threads, meaning that if you want to respawn nearby, you have less for your gear. You also have Death Curses that can temporarily reduce your available threads, leaving you with even less threaded gear.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Since you can't do anything to avoid dying, excessive death penalties are really counter productive. They don't actually accomplish anything other than imposing a tax on being outnumbered. You died. You already lost time returning to where you died, and you probably were carrying items in your inventory, so I don't see why you need to be punished any further.
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Since you can't do anything to avoid dying, excessive death penalties are really counter productive. They don't actually accomplish anything other than imposing a tax on being outnumbered. You died. You already lost time returning to where you died, and you probably were carrying items in your inventory, so I don't see why you need to be punished any further.
Because any reasonable story wouldn't even ALLOW you to resurrect in the first place. You have to consider exactly that that really means for any given individual, and Role-Play Wise, I don't intend to often be in a situation where it comes down to my life being taken, anything else would quite literally be suicide.
You have to keep in mind we wont be playing for a high score or set of gear in PFOL.
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Goblin Squad Member
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They said that you start with enough threads to thread a full set of starter gear. Then you can get more threads, meaning that you can get a full set of threaded gear that would be significantly better than the noob gear.
And about the death curse, that is just if you break the rules and grief or so. That wont apply to most players.
You will get more threads, but your gear progression is designed to outpace your ability to thread it. Yes, over time you will be able to thread better gear, but even the most advanced players are unlikely to be able to thread over low-mid Tier 2 gear, and that's only after years of advancement. And, again, you still lose everything in your inventory, since none of it can be threaded.
Regarding the death curse, you can place a death curse on anyone who kills you while you're not flagged, so, not as uncommon as you seem to think.
Edit:
It works as long as you only consider normal play, it doesn't work when you consider situations where people know they will be taking risks. You will never get anything from killing bandits and fights over settlements will degenerate into endless zombie hordes clashing into each other since they don't lose anything on death.
Then they're operating at a reduced effectiveness to do so.
I got to agree with Slaunyeh on this. The death penalty shouldnt be to harsh. Losing your things out of your inventory and unthreaded gear should be enough. I would be sad exploring on your own with good gear not all threaded being ambushed bye a large band of PC and not having a shot of getting back to your corps and losing all gear you worked hard for. Or am i seeing this wrong i'm not into pvp that much, i only used to play it in lotro where there's no penalty for dying except for some coins for repairs i believe.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Klockan:
Your initial post assumes that characters only run around in basic gear that they have fully threaded - battling other characters with basic gear fully threaded. I'll go out on a limb and say the vast majority of character will not be like this at all.
Gatherers will be carrying resources. Merchants will be carrying goods. Bandits will be carrying stolen goods. Adventurers will be carrying items they cannot possibly thread. It goes on and on...
This is still the early stages of the game development lifecycle, so we might see skills such as sunder and disintegrate fill roles as gear destroyers. Plenty of time yet to see other mechanics come about.
Lastly...
How is this fair at all?
What has fairness got to do with anything? If a player has spent more time playing PFO, has a more skilled/higher 'level' character than someone else, they should be better than others that don't meet these requirements. It's just punitive suggesting they get a greater death penalty.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You will never get anything from killing bandits and fights over settlements will degenerate into endless zombie hordes clashing into each other since they don't lose anything on death.
That does sound pretty much like all PvP ever, yes. :p
I'm not sure what it is you want to accomplish here. It kinda sounds like you want to keep people from fighting. If there's a big siege, then when I (inevitably) die and lose all my gear I am unlikely to return to the fighting. Is that what you want?
The harsher the death penalty (and honestly, losing everything you carry save the few things you can thread already sounds harsher than roughly every other MMO out there), the less likely people are to engage in "pointless PvP". But we already have an elaborate alignment system set up to discourage 'pointless' PvP.
If two kingdoms are at war, you do want them to duke it out. If you punish players harshly for taking part, you end up where only the most dedicated would bother. And I don't really see that as healthy for the game.
But it's quite likely that I don't understand the gist of your argument. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Another few points:
1) The "zerging" side is going to rapidly accumulate more and more critical injury penalties, making them less and less effective, until they're literally just wasting the defenders time. At least until the PVP window closes and the higher end NPC guards return to hold things on their own.
2) The "zerging" side will still have to travel back from their respawn points, which are likely to be some distance away as everyone in the game shuns them and refuses them access to their settlements.
3) If you were to make death full loss, you'd still be penalizing new players more than vets, since vets will have the funds to replace gear. If you make an exemption for starter-grade gear, then you have the same problems you're complaining about, just at a lower power level (which you contend is irrelevant when you have "infinite numbers").
@Klockan
Personally I would be quite happy to see the threading system ditched.
However having said that there are a lot of people here who do not like the thought of losing any gear when they die and would not play potentially were they to lose everything. Therefore the threading is I guess a compromise which makes neither side truly happy.
A lot in my view depends on the detail which we don't really have and it comes down to two questions basically which hopefully we will see the answers to before much longer
1) What is the maximum level of armour and weapons that can be worn whilst still remain threaded for a veteran character
2) How does that make them stack up against a similarly veteran character wearing top end gear
As long as the answers are
1) Not very high, good tier 1 or low tier 2
2) Not very well
Then I can live with it
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Goblin Squad Member
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If two kingdoms are at war and one kingdoms subjects don't even care enough about their kingdom to defend it with their life and gear then that kingdom deserves to lose. Things like morale and loyalty becomes more important than numbers. Not to mention the importance of logistics! Have you ever wondered why EVE can manage to have such deep player interactions while not a single other mmo have managed the same? The fear of death in EVE is very fundamental for this to work.
But do you really want a game where most people just sit around in drydock somewhere because they are "afraid of death"? Doesn't sound like a very good game.
PFO already has a much harsher death penalty than most game and, aside from threads and the minuscule chance that you're an idiot and lose your character, essentially the same as EVE.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The more players have to lose from dying, the more fun some people will find it to grief them. Making it just right will be a fine balancing act for Goblinworks and will also depend on a lot of other factors such as:
- How good is the alignment/rep/deathcurse system at deterring players from griefing?
How large a crowd of griefers will the game attract?
How expensive will it be to replace lost gear?
How hard will it be to run away/escape from combat?
To what extent will moderators be able to strike down on griefers?
And so on...
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Goblin Squad Member
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It wont be further away than the nearest settlement, why would they zerg anything further away than their nearest border?
Somewhere in blogs or dev comments (still looking), they've mentioned the ability to knock someone's respawn point to further away from the death site than it had been. Good defence against zerg, perhaps.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Klockan
As has already been stated:
The penalties for death are already more severe than most MMOs. Previous fantasy MMOs with harsher penalties did not last long or enjoy much success while they did.
Even with all threaded gear, you will when you die, lose all of the consumable buffs that you applied to your gear. That could get expensive.
The threads required to bind gear and the threads available as you gain exp do not scale the same. As you grow in "level" more and more of your equipped gear is at risk, if you use some higher tier items.
Sure, run around with all threadable gear, in ganker packs, and see how long you last... If I have cool gear, I will want to wear/use it. Why have if not to use?
The "other" stuff in your backpack etc... is always up for grabs or possibly destroyed when you die. That can be a significant loss.
Battles may be an endless clash of "returning" slain, as the system seems now. It hasn't even been tested yet though. Let's give them a chance to try some things out and see what works best.
Can you offer an alternative to the proposed system that most people can all agree on? Choices have to be made for everyone to give up some things so that all can be as content as is possible...
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Goblin Squad Member
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It has already been stated that the ability to thread gear will decrease as the quality of the gear increases. A new character using basic Tier1 gear with minimal keywords can thread all equipped gear. Someone using the High-end Tier3 equipment will be able to thread only a suit or armor or three weapons.
It will not be possible to win using zerg tactics with substandard gear against formation combat with character using good gear. The statistical analysis on Tier1 vs Tier2 gear heavily favors Tier 2 users. Formation combat will also allow more defense against being overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
While you can keep all of your equipment if you die using tier1 equipment, you still loose any consumables and non-equipped gear you are carrying. You also are FAR more likely to die as the people who risk losing their equipment by using higher quality gear will outclass you. And while you are racking up your death count, you are constantly loosing alignment and reputation, unless you are in a war. But if you are in a war, it's likely that the people who keep killing you as you attack them will simply come and attack you in your city, and destroy or capture it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the best compromise would be to let the number of threads depend on your gear rather than your level. If you use only level 4 gear you get the same number of threads that a normal level 4 character would have and so on.
What do you mean by normal level 4 character? A fighter archetype will need different gear than a dedicated refiner, and different gear than a cleric 1/rogue 3. I think that level 4 gear means different things there, and that a set number of threads evens it out.
Also, as an Assassin, I like the idea of threads. I want to force my victim to respawn farther and farther from home each they die, and I don't see how that makes sense without threads.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ryan Dancy was at CCP and very involved in EVE. I can assure you that EVE is a huge influence on the Economic Engine that PFO will be running on. All items in PFO will be player created as well, and consumables will be a huge part of player effectiveness above gear. Threading will result in Weapons and Armor being in a slight different market that all other gear including consumables, and magic items such as rings, bags of holding, belts, helmets, cloaks, amulets, and so on. Weapons and Armor are the two biggest impacts to combat effectiveness, so they will be the most likely to be threaded. As the quality increases, they become more and more difficult to thread, so the cost of loosing all the unthreaded gear rises as you rise in power.
Goblinworks is aware of the fact that weapons and armor are likely to end up being a separate market from everything else, and there will be smaller demand for them, and is working around it. We will have at least 18 months of "beta" in Early Enrollment in order to make sure the balance is right.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The main thing to keep in mind when talking about the consequences of death is that death in PFO will already be more consequential than in most other MMOs because of the fact that players will be fighting over things that matter more than they do in most other MMOs. Even if you're only doing PvE, that PvE is consequential because those NPC Monsters are trying to harm your Settlement.
I don't think there's a need to program in additional consequences.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the weight of whether dying is "painful enough" will be determined in Early Enrollment. There will be several months of game time to finesse the game mechanics and tweak things like death penalties, Development Indices, and Escalation Cycles and rewards. I am not concerned about the details per se, only that the details can be altered just so in order to make the game as enjoyable as possible when the floodgates open. After that time changes will become much more difficult to implement (but they should be easier to measure due to the increase of data).
That late audience will be much less forgiving of early changes, as they will expect a polished game at that point, and will complain loudest and longest, until they bail in frustration. So, a long EE is a good idea to get it right as early as possible.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why are so many pointing out the obvious? "You drop your inventory" "If you are cursed you still drop stuff!" etc. I know, it is in their blog and I can read...
Because your posts suggest you haven't comprehended the information in the blog. The blog posts and dev comments on the forms have already addressed many of these issues, but you refuse to consider that they may be working and instead constantly repeat the same arguments.
I believe it when I see it, none but CCP so far have gotten this right and many have tried. And then I don't really see how forcing people to have excessive amounts of consumables (their fix) is better in any way at all, instead of punishing deaths they just punish everyone who plays the game by applying a "tax" in the form of consumables. How many liked grinding potions for wow raids? Well, good news folks, that grinding have been reinvented in Pathfinder Online!! That could work as a money sink, yes, but if that's their model then I won't play this game... Honestly I was so appalled by the idea of consumables being driving the whole economy that I didn't even consider that it could work if you tweak it a bit. Basically what could work is that you "borrow" half your gear in the form of consumables instead of bying it. /
As for consumable grinding, how will this possibly be a grind? Consumables will be able to be crafted by someone with absolutely no skill in crafting, and will be the primary way for newbie crafters to make money while they are learning how to craft. Therefore they will be READILY available on any settlement market, and will only require gold. OR if you don't want to do that, you will also likely be able to buy consumables with cash. Going to a market to buy something everyone is making is doesn't sound like a grind.
If you don't believe me, fine. Wait until early enrollment and see for yourself.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Consumables aren't a major coin drain, because they aren't literally made out of coin. Try comparing them to ammunition in Eve in terms of cost.
Running the math, it looks like someone with throwaway weapons will be virtually ineffective against someone with mid-range armor, and literally ineffective versus someone with top-tier armor. If you are risking literally noting and your opponent is risking as much as possible, then you will be completely ineffective. Don't compare a free BB from Eve, compare the free starter ships that Eve actually has.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In EVE you can't fight if you don't craft, you don't need to craft personally but everything in the EVE world is playercrafted. The ships and weapons and ammunition noobs are buying when they first start out are playercrafted. All the ships that gets blown up in the really large fights are playercrafted. The demand and production for new ships is so large that the system follows normal laws of economics with supply and demand curves.
The exact same is true of the PFO world. The only difference is that 'some' gear a character has can be threaded. 'Some' being a set of low tiered gear or a single piece of high tiered, fully decked out gear.
As per my previous post, we do not know if there are skills that can destroy gear or sever threads yet. We are eighteen months away from beta, so there is plenty of time for us to find this out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Klockan
We can only give you counters, to your concerns, over and over. We can try and word these counters in different ways. You can continue to find fault in all of the answers provided. Those are your opinions and your rights.
What is the difference between "grinding" to buy consumable buffs and "grinding" to replace equipment lost in the system you propose? I don't get your point there.
Clearly, what the responders are replying is not satisfying your concerns. Alright then, let me ask a question.
What are you trying to get out of this? Recognition that your concerns are valid and the system will not work?
If you debate hard enough, you might persuade some people, I suppose. All we can do is quote the Developer's Blog and remarks/comments from this forum and interviews elsewhere. The things that they have written and spoken (interviews) are the base descriptions of the systems that they are trying to implement. They have hardly been put to the test of whether they will work or whether they will work well for the majority of the player base. Things that don't work, will be changed and tweaked until they do. Much of it, with our input and our stress testing of it.
I have argued, repeatedly, that I think that item degradation and eventual destruction is vital to crafters and the economy. That is from a crafter's and merchant's point of view. I can see that my concern is applied through a narrow lens, however. The Devs want to go with a "consumable equipment buffs" system instead. Okay, I suppose that is worth a try. I still have concerns about what those consumables will be and how they will be crafted. I don't think I would like the "flavor" of weapon/armor smiths crafting oils, potions, ointments, polishes, etc... They have not described the consumables yet. They may turn out to be sharpening stones and armor tuning kits, so I will reserve my concerns until then.
You should consider something: They have to design some sort of systems for us to test. There are people arguing all sides of the systems, as described, from all angles. No one will ever be satisfied with all of GW's take on all systems. We just have to trust that they will try and do what is best for the entire game. We really have no choice. The game design is theirs and they will develop their vision.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Are you saying that this is a good thing? EVE's ammunition market is almost nonexistant, how is that supposed to replace anything at all? The devs have already stated that they intend for armors and weapons to be a small niche market since most of it will never get dropped so people don't have to replace it. Instead they want to focus on consumables. Consumables were however not a big thing in EVE, they were ultracheap compared to all other expenses so you could more or less ignore it. And it isn't a gold sink for the worlds economy, no, but it is a gold sink for the pvp'ers. In EVE every time someone loses a ship they will have to pay the crafters, in PO everytime someone fights at all they will have to pay the crafters. If consumables aren't that important or expensive, then consumables won't replace the economy they removed by allowing people to thread most of their gear, which is bad. If consumables are that important and expensive it is bad for other reasons. Do you get my point now?
Where I believe you are off in, we are going entirely on an assumption, as to what percentage of power is balanced into what slots.
Realistically we can assume say 10 slots or so. Now there is a school of thought that assumes the weapon = 90% of offense ability, armor = 90% of defense ability, but that is an assumption.
There is a second possibility.
Weapons and armor are more designed as controls of what skills you can use. IE Joe the 2h fighter needs his greatsword of cleaving, dodging sundering to make use of the skills he trained. Replacing it is a pain in the neck, because that sword was custom made for the skills he has trained, and thus unless his build is very cookie cutter, it will be hard to find the exact combination of abilities he used. Because he needs to avoid the annoyance of trying to find the sword of those obscure qualifications, he'd rather protect that than his Boots of speed increase, bracers of increase damage, ring of deflection etc...
IE the weapon and armor = necessary to even think about using your skills, other slots = more mass producible, generic but the main controllers of your overall power.
and yeah that is before we even begin to cover the topic of consumables, as a 3rd portion of your power.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Running the math, it looks like someone with throwaway weapons will be virtually ineffective against someone with mid-range armor, and literally ineffective versus someone with top-tier armor. If you are risking literally noting and your opponent is risking as much as possible, then you will be completely ineffective. Don't compare a free BB from Eve, compare the free starter ships that Eve actually has.No, that maths was flawed since it was under optimal circumstances for the overleveled one and getting a lvl 4 sword or just get something that deals elemental damage instead will be enough to penetrate almost all armor in the game.(Based on their numbers) And please don't bring up possible mechanics they haven't talked about that probably wont be in. Or do you honestly think that they allow you to protect your gear to prevent griefing but at the same time gives some a sunder ability to just ignore this mechanic?
What makes you think that flaming swords will be easy to thread, or that having trash armor and even the best weapons will make you a threat to someone with great armor and great weapons? There might be a zone where one can risk nothing and be practically ineffective rather than literally ineffective.
Oh, and the numbers I ran were for longsword vs. medium armor, on the assumption that medium armor will be roughly equally as effective against energy damage as it is against physical damage. If that is the case, and energy damage is common, I predict that medium armor will be most popular.
Threading is not about stopping griefing, it's about making losing fun instead of frustrating; players revive with at least some minimal equipment to make a corpse run.
I also suspect that most PvP will be subsidized by settlements with gatherers and crafters; those settlements have a vested interest in their armies being as effective as possible, and skilled players will probably have easy access to the best equipment their group has to offer, including replacements when required. Warfare isn't just about the quality of the players fighting the battles, it's also about the ability of the social group to provide and replace equipment.
Warfare isn't just about the quality of the players fighting the battles, it's also about the ability of the social group to provide and replace equipment.
Infrastructure? In my sandy box?! Is it more likely than I think?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with DeciusBrutus that medium armor is likely to be the most popular (at least for melee). Newer melee players might go towards heavy for its high effectiveness vs physical damage then learn about its ineffectiveness vs magic.
As for fighting above your tier in order to cheap out on threads, using a t1 weapon compared to a t2 weapon against t2 armor means doing something like ~75% of final damage based on the bonus to defense skill based on tier (very rough estimate based on some damage curves for sample weapons we're been given numbers for).
... but that assumes the t1 and t2 weapon do the same base damage (highly unlikely!). So realistically you're looking at dropping that 75% down by another significant factor. How much?
Well, your final damage needs to roughly scale with tier as the developers have mentioned that hp triple in your career (basically scaling with tier). But time to kill is roughly constant. So average final damage needs to scale with tier.
The simplest scaling to achieve this is scaling the weapon base damage and armor resistances with tier. But fighting with a weapon from t1 against t2 armor means you're facing double the resistance that t1 weapon is meant to face. So your damage will be dramatically decreased from that (on top of the ~25% reduction due to the defense bonus the defender gets from tier). Since resistance is highly dependent upon the armor type, it will vary.
Against light armor that extra reduction might not be so bad. Against medium you're going to be pretty ineffective. Against heavy you'll be lucky to be doing anything higher than 0 dps.
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Goblin Squad Member
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*Very* rough ballpark numbers for using t1 weapon vs t2 armor under my above scaling assumptions:
-vs light armor: you're doing something like half the damage you'd do with a t2 weapon. About half of this reduction is due to it being t2 armor and about half is due to the doubled resistance.
-vs medium armor: you're in the range of ~10% of the damage you'd do with a t2 weapon. Most of the reduction is due to doubling the pretty good resistance.
-vs heavy armor: the defender can go AFK.
While yes these are very preliminary numbers and are only for melee damage, it does strongly favor getting decent gear.
I'd recommend bringing buddies who can attack different defenses than you in order to find the defender's weakness.
EDIT: vs cloth, you're at 75% as cloth offers almost no resistance, so doubling it doesn't do much. So you might have somewhat of a chance against casters when cheaping out on weapons.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am pretty much satisfied with the currently stated death penalties. It's a difficult issue to tackle in MMOs.
There should be good reason to fear death though, it should never be a minor inconvenience. Without penalty for failure or a sense of danger there is no real challenge, combat becomes insignificant and meaningless. It all just becomes bland and boring.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I think that t1 weapons will have BETTER base damage than t2 weapons, given the same quality. I think that there will come a point where a decision will be made between a tier upgrade and additional keywords, and for a while the additional keyword(s) will dominate.
I didn't see where damage resistance scaled with tier; is a reference available?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I didn't see where damage resistance scaled with tier; is a reference available?
It's just an assumption on my part as it would be a simple way to do the scaling, so no reference. However:
-hp roughly scales with tier (they've mentioned that you'll roughly triple your hp in your career, not counting buffs in the "Combat Stats" part of the "Murder by Numbers" blog)
-damage roughly scales with tier (they've mentioned that fights should take the same time in the "Armor and Keywords" part of that blog)
The simplest scaling I can think of where you want final damage to scale with tier is:
D = final damage
f = damage factor
p = penalty for not getting a complete hit
b = base damage (plus keywords etc.) for t1
r = resistance for t1
Then for t1:
D = f(b-r)(1-p)
For t3 if you triple D:
D --> 3D = 3f(b-r)(1-p) = f(3b-3r)(1-p)
Ie. it's simple to achieve by not changing how p is calculated (yes the probability distributions change between tiers) and not changing the damage factor. This assumption seems reasonable to me as it allows independent scaling of attacker (in the form of b) and defender (in the form of r) without changing any mechanics.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I know the devs answers to these questions but they are mostly non satisfactory. They somehow think that you can get an economy as deep as EVE's while removing almost all aspects of it except for consumables.
I think I see the disconnect here, you seem to be thinking that "armor and weapon" covers most of a person's gear. But "armor" is just one slot out of a dozen, as is "weapon". There's another 10ish slots of equipment (boots, belt, rings, hat, etc) that will be simply too hard to thread unless you go with crappy gear all around.
So discounting armor and weapons because of threading isn't "removing almost all aspects" of the economy except for consumables, it's removing 2 out of a dozen slots of permanent equipment, and dying with any half-decent gear equipped will still cost something. On top of consumables lost in the inventory, of course.
Also, don't forget that if you die and can recover your corpse, you get your stuff back - so holding the field will be a big economic advantage in warfare, and the side that is using better equipment will have the advantage in holding the field.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sweeping the battlefield after the battle, however, both helps you and hurts the enemy. Your team gets some number of items from each corpse looted that can be sold or distributed to players on your side. Enemies whose corpses are looted before they can run back will lose everything they haven't threaded, not just the stuff you took. If Thief remains disabled for some period after a battle, then battlefield looting becomes a valuable way for GW to give battles a decisive end, even though soldiers re-spawn. When the losers re-spawn far from the battlefield, and their non-threaded gear had been destroyed by looters who don't get the Thief tag, then the battle is likely to decisively end. It may be re-fought after the losing side re-arms, but that will be a separate engagement, not a continuous single battle.