Goblin Squad Member
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1. Is there anything you can tell us about item storage, particularly in terms of gathering/crafting structures and settlements?
Follow up:
Do you intend for directly raiding player settlements and gathering camps to be profitable?
1: There will be storage. :)
It will almost certainly work like storage does in EVE Online. It will be local to some in-game location, and to access it you'll have to go to that location. It will likely have some kind of access control system so you can allow multiple people or groups different levels of access to it.
We do expect people to raid harvesting operations to steal the fruits of others labor. And to intercept those fruits when being transported from point to point.
It's less clear what we'll do about items in storage in permanent structures like Settlements, Forts, Watchtowers, Inns and Hideouts. There are so many downsides to allowing someone to "steal" from those kinds of storage locations that I suspect we'll not try to implement that kind of security risk. But there are certainly thematic and roleplaying upsides to the idea of burglars so I can't rule it out as an impossibility.
I feel like this is a discussion the community really needs to be in on so I brought it here.
Obviously we are trying to balance two conflicting issues here:
1. People don't want all their stuff to be sitting around somewhere it can be looted.
2. People want to get loot when they successfully attack or infiltrate someone's settlement/hideout/tower etc.
I think that a balance between those two ideas can be reached, and to get your brains flowing, I'm going to cite one example that fits that criteria.
In Darkfall most player owned cities and hamlets come with resource nodes that give large amounts of raw materials, and harvest much faster than comparable nodes found around the world. Player houses also can come with smaller nodes such as trees and herb gardens that give off more materials than random nodes, but less than city nodes. These materials are generally used to help pay for the upkeep and defense of that city.
But if raiders attack your city, they can harvest all these resources for themselves, making wealthy cities with many resource nodes prime targets for raiders.
I think in PFO we should look for something such as a taxation system (Think Fable) or city resource nodes that constantly generates something of value that can be stolen by raiders.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Depending on how well guarded a settlement is the possibility of a raid may be unrealistic. Any settlement with a wall would be all but immune to raids. Its pretty hard to knock down a wall or gate and then fill up on loot in quick manner. However I can see raids on PoIs being fairly common if they hold any goodies worth taking.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I find it strange that an entire settlement can be taken, but not individual storage buildings or their contents within the settlement.
Perhaps there could be some system tied to the settlement's DI that would place banking / market fees and place them into escrow sort of like the FDIC and in the event that a settlement is sacked, the owners would receive a portion of their losses from that account.
The trade off would be, a settlement that provided that kind of a service would would get a bonus to its appropriate DI.
The bank / auction house would have storage insurance fees based in the value of the contents of the storage. Want to insure up to 10,000 gold, pay 400 gold per month, etc...
If the raiders take the building they get to loot any of the unsecured loot + a portion of the escrow amount that becomes unsecured as the DI of the settlement declines during the siege.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Group of Disguised Bandits?
But yes I like the idea of being able to steal from a settlements coffers. But I do realize people need to have a safe place to store there most important things as well. I don't have any ideas for a good balance though. Andius' idea seems pretty good though. But then again, if there is a lockpicking skill, then as a rogue I want to be able to use it. IDK maybe there could be different coffers that hold different categories of items, and you could only pick the lock of the one in any 72 hour period
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think it might be important to agree on some terminology. A raid is most often used to describe a very short term military action aimed at a poorly defended target. The vulnerability of the target is essential for a successful raid. Otherwise the attacking force runs the risk of becoming bogged down long enough for their target to muster sufficient force to defeat them. An example would be the Viking raids that targeted monasteries.
Sacking a settlement would involve the temporary occupation of a settlement by the attacking force. The settlements defenses would be neutralized allowing the attackers to pillage at will. An example of this would be the sack of Rome by the Vandals.
The idea off a few disguised infiltrators entering a city and taking resources sounds a lot more like robbery than a raid.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well in both Darkfall and Mortal Online players pay taxes on their houses. In both formats, if a group owns the area where the house is, the taxes from those homes go to them.
Do what if in PFO, owning a watchtower/settlement/hideout gave you a zone of influence around it, and the homes/businesses within that zone had to pay their taxes to you.
The taxes could then be stored inside the settlement/watchtower/hideout until someone with the appropriate permissions comes by to collect them. If raiders manage to force their way in and break the chest, or a burglar can sneak in and pick the lock before those taxes are collected, then guess who gets the money?
Similarly towns might come with resource nodes that can be constantly exploited if you build the right structures there such as farms that constantly produce crops, mines that constantly produce stone/iron, bodies of water that constantly produce fish etc. These nodes would be dumping their resources into the storage of the facility that harvested them at a constant rate. Anyone with the appropriate permissions could come by and unload them into a warehouse where they are safe, but before that raiders would be able to steal them as well.
Through measures like these towns would generate a constant profit, but raiders and jealous factions would constantly be eyeing you more and more as you gained access to more resources. If you needed to use a portion of those resources as upkeep for the structures and their defense/services it could make things very interesting.
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Goblin Squad Member
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1. People don't want all their stuff to be sitting around somewhere it can be looted.
2. People want to get loot when they successfully attack or infiltrate someone's settlement/hideout/tower etc.
I'm really not very swayed by #1. People don't want to lose their gear when they die either, but the fact that they can makes the game far more interesting than it would be otherwise.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I will simply say, I want a balance. Good guys vs bad guys. If you can "raid" our hideouts and take anything we left there, then we should be able to "raid" your settlements. Make it fair and balanced. You need perception high enough to locate our hideout, we need disguise high enough to infiltrate your settlement. That is step one for both sides. Balanced and fair. Keep it going with that and it will turn out to be a fair and fun system.
If someone wants their stuff protected, then hire guards (PC or maybe some form of NPC guard force for a fee) and make sure to use the best (and most expensive) locks. Same goes with our hideouts. Maybe instead of guards, we use traps. But something that would be roughly the same difficulty and interesting.
Also remember. Looting requires stuff to be carried. So a lone thief can sneak into a settlement's coffers, but can only carry so much. Sure you got 1mil gold in there, but if he can only carry 2k (just giving numbers) then you only loose 2k, assuming he makes it back out without issues.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm really not very swayed by #1. People don't want to lose their gear when they die either, but the fact that they can makes the game far more interesting than it would be otherwise.1. People don't want all their stuff to be sitting around somewhere it can be looted.
2. People want to get loot when they successfully attack or infiltrate someone's settlement/hideout/tower etc.
Most games like this offer some kind of storage that is 100% secure. The lack of something like that results in a game that is really far more hardcore than most players want.
There is a big difference between losing your carried gear while you actively play the game and losing absolutely everything while you're asleep. I don't think a high lockpicking skill entitles you to get everything I own while I'm not there to defend it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Most games like this offer some kind of storage that is 100% secure.
We've already been told storage in NPC Settlements will be 100% secure.
I don't think a high lockpicking skill entitles you to get everything I own while I'm not there to defend it.
Here's a post I found where I tried to describe how I think Thievery should work.
It would be pretty cool if there were some kind of in-game Wealth score for your house, and an in-game benefit to having a high Wealth score for your house (faction standing, certain Diplomacy skills). That way Thieves could steal from Wealthy houses without actually getting access to the specific items the player placed there, unless they went through a much, much more expensive process that would only be worthwhile if they knew there was something of extreme value being stored there when it should really have been stored in a Fort or Settlement Vault.
There's probably a lot of interesting and relevant stuff in that thread.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't have a problem with theft from settlements per say. What I worry about is one group being able to steal from another with little effort or chance of confrontation. This applies to bandit hideouts or any other player structure.
Basically it's risk and effort scaling with reward. If you want to burgle some gold from a merchant you run a slight risk of being caught but you might only come away with a couple hundred coins. If you want to empty the city's vault and carry away cartloads of loot it will be far more difficult.
I think I'm starting to ramble so off to bed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't have a problem with theft from settlements per say. What I worry about is one group being able to steal from another with little effort or chance of confrontation. This applies to bandit hideouts or any other player structure.
Basically it's risk and effort scaling with reward. If you want to burgle some gold from a merchant you run a slight risk of being caught but you might only come away with a couple hundred coins. If you want to empty the city's vault and carry away cartloads of loot it will be far more difficult.
I think I'm starting to ramble so off to bed.
Well in Darkfall raiding a settlement can take a matter of minutes, but what you get is dependent on when the nodes were last emptied. In that game the nodes are completely full and what they are generating goes to waste if they are left untended for over five hours.
I don't think the cap is nessacary in PFO but you get the picture.
Basically, unless a structure is being entirely neglected then you won't get more than a few hours of passive resource generation from a structure. It isn't like you get all the resources the players have generated all day. You aren't getting access to anything they've actively gathered at all. This will only be a major blow to groups too inactive to deserve holdings.
For anyone else it's a minor setback.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Many games have a guild perk where each player gets say, 3% greater loot each time they get a cash payout for a quest reward or monster kill, and that bonus goes into a pot (in this example, the guild coffer). Perhaps a settlement could generate a percentage of their "GDP" to go into a fund that could be periodically used for a special purpose, but be vulnerable to raids and theft. Think of it as a separate treasury used only on rare occasion. (I think it was "The Prince Who was a Thief" with Tony Curtis and Piper Laurie where she wove her way through a barred window into the castle treasure room....that's the idea.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I personally don't get the issue with storage being taken when a settlement is captured. Assuming it takes a large military action, and such a military action gives the settlement time to make their own counter defensive military action, and the fact that a super secure storage is an option, though less convenient and has more logistical concerns for getting goods to the settlement.
In all honesty, when your settlement is sacked, when months to a year's worth of building is going under, in all honesty what's in the settlements storage is probably peanuts in comparison to the point that it isn't worth mentioning. Not to mention the fact the dismantlement of the settlement itself is a rather huge problem (IE the fact that the settlement is both a player organization and a location).
Essentially when you factor in what is lost, settlement storage, is basically so negligible it isn't even worth caring about.
IMO people put way to much emphasis on individual wealth, In a large organization based game, personal wealth is a very minuscule part of anything of worth. A settlement could quite often without batting an eye equip everyone playing under a year with the best gear that they would have the training to use, but that would be poor use of their resources compared to stregnthening their actual settlement, improving their defenses, raising the training capabilities, expanding their city etc...
I do have a problem with ideas like theft etc... in which we are talking an individual or a small group pulling off taking things from storage in which the defense is unaware the action is occurring until after their goods are half way across the world. That leaves settlements with the only plausible options of defense being, 1. Never store anything of value in settlement storage, 2. Adjust settlement defense to be more of a "anyone without a very detailed and thorough background check is killed upon entering" etc...
People can handle losing with consequences, but losing with consequences on a game they aren't even involved in is a completely different matter, and passive defenses are their own issue. IE a passive defense absolutely has to have a max point. and either maximum defense is good enough to negate the chance of being stolen from without you knowing,
or it isn't. If it isn't, then obviously the players feel gyped when they are stolen from despite having done everything possible within the mechanics to defend (there is no way to feel like you were outplayed, you know your opponent simply chose the right training and had the right amount of luck to pull it off). If it is, then settlement storage does not become viable until such is maximized.
I don't think Ryan was talking about when an entire Settlement is taken over. I think storage is limited per facility capacity, and it would be pretty strange to take over a Settlement but permanently not be able to access a good amount of it's storage capacity which belons to the previous owners of the Settlement. In that case, having storage units turn over to the new owners seems par for course. EDIT: It would be reasonable to apply some sort of Chaotic Alignment and Low Reputation repurcussion for 'Conqueror' Settlements/Players who take 'stolen' loots from the PRIVATELY owned accounts of a newly conquered Settlement's banks (the Settlement's own civic accounts would be granted to the new owners). That might imply some sort of 'conversion' of Charted Company accounts into another type, if the Chartered Company alignment is no longer compatable with the new owners'...? The point being to engender more in-game rationale to 'honoring' existing 'account holders' following the 'hostile take-over' of the Settlement itself.
I believe he was talking about people sneaking in to steal items from a warehouse WITHOUT taking over the Settlement. I can understand where he's coming from in not necessarily wanting to enable that sort of thing... It's not like all that stuff wasn't already vulnerable to being stolen at one (or multiple) points (i.e. during transport). Let's put it this way: It definitely doesn't sound like the sort of thing for even early-ish Open Enrollment.
I am curious about the idea of PoI/Harvesting Camps being raided... I'm not sure exactly how the "PVP Window" would apply here, but would it be possible for 'Raiders' to temporarily "operate" a PoI themselves? (using their own skill rating)? How would the "PVP Window" apply here? Non-owners or non-"operators" could only attempt to withdraw accumulated goods (or attempt to become the "operator") during the PVP Window? Not sure of the details there, but I like the possibility of something like that happening, it makes it much more risky to try to establish such a Harvesting Camp far from your own spawn points, you could just end up building your enemies/competitors a free Harvesting Camp if you aren't prepared to hold it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I partly agree with Onishi. If it is possible for over powdered rouges ;) to covertly break into settlement storage, it would be a major undertaking. Full time work for an enterprising percentage of the player base.
On the other point. Yes personal storage is miniscule compared to settlement loss. It would still be an added blow to the moral, though. It does make sense, as a result and incentive for marauders. It is still gonna suck.