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Quick Q: How do Treaties work?
I'd assume the writing of Treaties (Effectively High level of State/Nation Contracts) between different settlements (city states & their claimed/held lands) and kingdoms would be the first step to any declaration of war breaking these?
If there are no treaties ie (roguish states) then there is no basis for war or am I simplifying it too much?? IE factions have to "recognize" each other or otherwise "not recognize" formally, then it's "ffa"??
A treaty is an express agreement under international law entered into by actors in international law, namely sovereign states and international organizations. A treaty may also be known as an (international) agreement, protocol, covenant, contract,convention, pact, or exchange of letters, among other terms. Regardless of terminology, all of these forms of agreements are, under international law, equally considered treaties and the rules are the same.
Treaties can be loosely compared to contracts: both are means of willing parties assuming obligations among themselves, and a party to either that fails to live up to their obligations can be held liable under international law.

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Urman wrote:Can't settlement #1 attack settlement #2 even if #2 would rather remain at peace?Sure they can. But that's not the "War Mechanic".
Just like the PvP discussion, there will be plenty of people who completely fail to understand the rationale for these constraints, and who will raise hell trying to get them removed.Letters of Marque
When two entities (characters, Companies, Settlements or Kingdoms) both set their relationship standing to "Hostile", a state of war will exist between them. Killing someone you are at war with (or burning down their Inn) is not a criminal act. It probably won't have alignment implications either.
Both sides have to agree however, because otherwise you'll have a situation where people are being targeted for wars against their will, and they'll lose the value of the safety of the security system - thus negating a lot of its value.
Wars are a "big deal", and we'll probably have to have several blogs to talk about things like how long you have to wait before a war goes into effect or can be cancelled, how it affects allies, how it affects reputation, etc.
But "War" is effectively the mechanical expression of the letter of marque idea. Except you can't grief someone with it.
Or maybe they understand it, but simply disagree with it.
Bluddwolf was making the claim that "there is no reputation loss during war". I was merely pointing out that he is wrong. The "no reputation loss" version of war requires both parties' consent. The "no consent required" version of war includes the normal PvP consequences.
I can not find this last statement anywhere but here. Even in the Letter of Marque it still leaves it an open question as to "how it will affect reputation".

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The First time they attack back...they just consent to the war.
Oh, doesn't that potentially open an ugly can of worms? Imagine an attacker with a spy in their defending target settlement, who orders the spy to attack the attackers and thus "give consent".
Under this interpretation, we'll obviously need some sort of definition of how much fighting back consents to the war. Herding player-character cats...oh, the joy.

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@Tuoweit, there's no discrepancy between my quote and Bringslite's.
You mean, other than simultaneously having two different definitions of the term "war".
I don't buy it. I think it's more likely that GW changed their mind sometime between May 2012 and early this year on the subject of wars.

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I usually don't get into discussions about PvP, since it's not something I do, but the topic of "war" piques my interest this morning (oddly enough). Though upon first read, I scratched my head at the requirement of consensual declaration, but when considering the reputation system they are attempting to construct, it makes sense. If GW doesn't want to allow consequence free PvP on the character level, why would they want it any more so on the settlement level? Here's a step-by-step of how this might play out. If there's a problem with it, I'm certain someone will correct me. :)
1. We begin with two neutral settlements, so that neither's members have opposing flags allowing for consequence free PvP. Members of settlement A begin to bump into settlement B's members as the two settlements begin to expand.
2. Neither side initially is willing to lose reputation for nonflagged PvP over the resources, and first-come-first-served is the rule of the day. Unfortunately for A, B's people seem to be better at finding the nodes.
*Break* If the disgruntled leadership of A are allowed to simply declare war at this point, and gain nonconsensual PvP (e.g. being able to have any of their members attack any of B's members without rep hits), they would be circumventing the PvP and reputation rules simply because these are two settlements, rather than two characters, involved in the conflict. *Back to the action*
3. A's leadership has had enough. They sanction a few "warning shot" actions and several A members take the initiative and the rep hit by raiding B's harvesting camps. As individuals, the members of these raiding parties are seen as the aggressor, lose rep and slide a touch towards chaotic evil, though it's not enough to affect their whole settlement's standings.
4. B's leadership complains but is unwilling to either share the resources it legitimately finds first or attack back and have its people take rep hits - they're just defending themselves at this point. B is even less interested in declaring war and opening all its members to consensual PvP. B sends out more protection with its harvesters.
5. A discovers how much less successful the raids are now that the B's harvesting camps are better defended and A is still losing out in the resource race. However, A's members are starting to worry about their reputation and alignment hits they're taking for their own unprovoked, unflagged aggression.
*Break* Though the actions of A's raiders have been sanctioned by their leadership, nothing has occurred yet that can be tracked by the game to make this a settlement vs settlement conflict (settlement A's overall alignment and rep might suffer if this goes on indefinitely, but nothing yet links that decline to settlement B). *Back to the action*
6. As B views the situation, they're winning the resource race, they're successfully defending their camps, and A is clearly the aggressor. B's people are only ever the defenders in the conflict, so they're taking no alignment or rep hits. They have no reason to negotiate nor go to war.
7. At this point A could back down and expand in another direction, or escalate the situation. They gamble that a hit closer to home will make B rethink the situation. A large raiding party is gathered and they attack and damage one of B's Points of Interest structures. A sends word to B, "Let's negotiate how we will share these resources or expect more attacks on your home. If the latter, consider us at war."
*Break* Avoiding the hundred different things B could do to retaliate, etc., and guessing that they are unwilling to be extorted in this fashion, for the sake of the war discussion, let's boil their response down to two possibilities:
a. They can remain the defenders and prepare for attack, even siege if it comes to that, and by doing so, leave A as the rightfully flagged aggressors. If A makes good on its threat at this scale, it's people (and thereby its settlement's) alignment and reputation will decline as it is cast, by the game's mechanics, in the light of an oppressive (eventually evil) force.
b. B's people may have had enough and want to take the fight to their enemy...B declares war. At this point, members of either settlement can whack away at one another without penalty...they have mutually consented to expect attack anywhere. The only question left is, when and how does it end? What game mechanic will allow one side to say "stop" or "let's renegotiate" or "I give up"?
If war were not consensual, the very play style that GW is trying to keep out of the game would thrive. The jerks would band together, form a settlement, and circumvent the entire reputation system by declaring war on any settlement they choose. Yes, I could have just typed this last paragraph and passed on the whole wall-of-text-story, but hopefully having some details presented in a possible scenario helped.

ZenPagan |

Hobs sorry have to disagree here with you
They have clearly stated Settlement wars as behaviour they wish to promote.
Quote
Behaviors we want:
Large PvP wars. (Thus wars eliminate all reputation losses.)
Players able to defend themselves without concern. (Thus the Attacker flag.)
Players to attack each other over resources, money, territory, etc.
Most PvP to occur outside of settlements where there are no guards, laws, etc.
Players who are not PvP combat machines having some ability to discourage attacks via bounties, death curses, reputation loss, etc., but these should not be so onerous as to prevent PvP if the profit potential is there.
Players able to play their alignment, but at the same time not grief players of opposite alignment. If one player is chaotic evil and another lawful good, each should not be able to abuse the other without limit or recourse.
End quote
If war has to be consensual then frankly what it will mean is war is impossible as to successfully take a settlement who refuses to make it consensual will mean that by the end of it all your troops will be chaotic evil and low rep.
No settlement is going to agree to goto war unless it believes it will win.

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Kind of makes sense as one of the "mechanical" challenges for LG (and other aligned) settlements and aggression.
Several of us were quite distraught when some of the unexpected constraints on Lawful Good were revealed...
Ryan Dancey wrote:Wow. Not sure what to say. There goes my whole chartered company's concept.Flexie wrote:-A paladin will mainly be a pve content player. As it is hard to do pvp and stay within the alignment requirements.I think this is likely true but certainly not absolute.
Thinking back on that, I'm somewhat more sympathetic to Bluddwolf's concerns about Chaotic Evil. And, to be clear, I don't have the slightest problem with his advocating to make High Reputation Chaotic Evil viable.

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A complicated problem indeed.
How will the PVP window factor into all of this? Obviously, it would be problematic if you could adjust it during a siege or after someone declares war on you. What about changing it if you think war is coming?
What system will there be to establish whether a non consensual war is justified?
Am I missing something that better defines that?

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@Bringslite, changes to the PvP Window don't happen immediately. It's not finalized, but it might well take a week before the change takes effect.
And yeah, they'd probably be better-served having different terms for the two disparate versions of "War". This is something a lot of us pointed out at the time.

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7. At this point A could back down and expand in another direction, or escalate the situation. They gamble that a hit closer to home will make B rethink the situation. A large raiding party is gathered and they attack and damage one of B's Points of Interest structures. A sends word to B, "Let's negotiate how we will share these resources or expect more attacks on your home. If the latter, consider us at war."
Reading through your list, this is the point where A declared hostilities.
So maybe - a group must declare hostilities to attack a POI structure. Maybe only when both sides have taken that step does a state of hostility turn to a state of war.

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Or maybe they understand it, but simply disagree with it.
Isn't that disagreement just as bad as the players who disagree that the game needs to have non-consensual PvP? PFO was described from the beginning as being Open PvP - with Consequences. There will be players who desperately want it to be PvE-only. There will be other players who desperately want it to be "Open PvP" the way they've experienced that in other games. Neither of those visions represent what has been described, and what we've bought into.

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Hobs sorry have to disagree here with you
I was presenting a possible reason for why some would say it needs to be consensual, not that I'm totally in agreement with it being so. And I'm happy to be disagreed with if you have a better argument (you usually have very good arguments, so it's a distinct possibility). After all, the generation of better ideas is what we're hopefully trying to promote here via our discussions. :)
If war has to be consensual then frankly what it will mean is war is impossible as to successfully take a settlement who refuses to make it consensual will mean that by the end of it all your troops will be chaotic evil and low rep.
No settlement is going to agree to goto war unless it believes it will win.
The problem is that GW's intended system already makes nonflagged aggression an evil, low reputation action (given your alignment and reputation migration). If this is meant to discourage meaningless acts of violence, then how can allowing whole settlements to get away with the same action seem any less meaningless and violent? Instead of one individual acting contrary to the behavior GW hopes to promote, nonconsenual war would allow your whole settlement to behave that way...attacking targeted settlement's members without any of the penalties designed to restrain the behavior GW hopes to restrict.
I'm not actually arguing for either system. I'm just pointing out that these two (meaningful, flagged PvP and nonconsensual war) seem a bit contradictory. Given that they haven't outlined their war system/mechanics, it's possible they've got a way to deal with this already. Until they reveal it, we're left to speculate.

ZenPagan |

@Nihimon
In the case of war though the consequences are that it is not possible to take a settlement in a non mutual war unless you are willing to go chaotic evil and low rep for all of your combatants.
Considering large settlement wars is something they want it seems counterproductive to prevent them happening. Mutual wars will not happen because unless a settlement is confident of winning they will not accept. They would be fools too.
You need to deter frivolous wars not all wars and that is what mutuality does. If wars have to be mutual then this will no longer be a game of settlement conflicts and kingdom building

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War is activated when both sides set their relationship to hostile.
What if reputation loss is smaller if you kill someone your settlement is hostile towards?
Killing an ally gives a huge rep loss, killing a neutral gives an average size rep loss, killing a hostile gives a small rep loss and killing someone you're at war with gives no rep loss.

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Bluddwolf wrote:Or maybe they understand it, but simply disagree with it.Isn't that disagreement just as bad as the players who disagree that the game needs to have non-consensual PvP? PFO was described from the beginning as being Open PvP - with Consequences. There will be players who desperately want it to be PvE-only. There will be other players who desperately want it to be "Open PvP" the way they've experienced that in other games. Neither of those visions represent what has been described, and what we've bought into.
And no one gets 100% of what they want. I never claimed that anyone should.
Who here has called for no consequence PVP everywhere in the game?
Who has asked for PVP outside of the flagging system?
But, that is not the topic of this thread, so I will address the other:
Thinking back on that, I'm somewhat more sympathetic to Bluddwolf's concerns about Chaotic Evil. And, to be clear, I don't have the slightest problem with his advocating to make High Reputation Chaotic Evil viable.
I appreciate that recognition, I truly do. I had seen that issue as inherently unfair and a detriment to the game itself.
Players and more importantly settlements of Chaotic Evil will have to expend a great deal of effort, imagination and intelligence to pull of High Reputation Chaotic Evil, and that kind of play should not be denied its opportunity to benefit all of us in the PFO community.
I hope that we who may play CE can live up to that challenge and prove the initial suspicion wrong.

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Effectively, to have a valid character of any alignment, a high reputation is almost mandatory. We really need to see more details around the reputation system, how it works and what effects there are (low and high) from it.
I'm starting to believe this will be the most important mechanic/stat of the game.

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Nihimon wrote:Bluddwolf wrote:Or maybe they understand it, but simply disagree with it.Isn't that disagreement just as bad as the players who disagree that the game needs to have non-consensual PvP? PFO was described from the beginning as being Open PvP - with Consequences. There will be players who desperately want it to be PvE-only. There will be other players who desperately want it to be "Open PvP" the way they've experienced that in other games. Neither of those visions represent what has been described, and what we've bought into.
And no one gets 100% of what they want. I never claimed that anyone should.
Who here has called for no consequence PVP everywhere in the game?
Who has asked for PVP outside of the flagging system?
But, that is not the topic of this thread, so I will address the other:
Nihimon wrote:Thinking back on that, I'm somewhat more sympathetic to Bluddwolf's concerns about Chaotic Evil. And, to be clear, I don't have the slightest problem with his advocating to make High Reputation Chaotic Evil viable.I appreciate that recognition, I truly do. I had seen that issue as inherently unfair and a detriment to the game itself.
Players and more importantly settlements of Chaotic Evil will have to expend a great deal of effort, imagination and intelligence to pull of High Reputation Chaotic Evil, and that kind of play should not be denied its opportunity to benefit all of us in the PFO community.
I hope that we who may play CE can live up to that challenge and prove the initial suspicion wrong.
None of us have asked for no consequence pvp everywhere. There is no reason for it, there will be plenty of places to pvp and plenty of places to have the consequences. That will make it fun, trying to stay in the game.
It will be a great challenge living up to High Reputation CE character. It will be great fun to.

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Effectively, to have a valid character of any alignment, a high reputation is almost mandatory. We really need to see more details around the reputation system, how it works and what effects there are (low and high) from it.
I'm starting to believe this will be the most important mechanic/stat of the game.
I think it will be one of the most important stats in the game. It will limit so many things for low rep people. That is I think, till the game is in OE and has a larger crowd... at that point there will be a larger population that will accept it into their settlements.

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Pagan,
I think my only issue with your argument is that is seems too all or nothing...that only settlements that know they can win will ever be willing to declare war. But there may be many gradations of "winning". An all or nothing war system excludes the possibility of war up to the point of one side totally winning and the other losing its settlement.
I can see many wars taking place until one side has lost too much and is willing to...concede its claim to a hex with desired resources, pay tribute, sign over control of a point of interest, etc. and the winning settlement is willing to agree to such arrangements because they have made gains they didn't have before the war and are unwilling to sustain the kind of losses to their own settlement (in equipment, resources, etc.) that would result from completely crushing their enemy. War is and should be a very costly endeavor.
I guess I can see war being shorter periods of aggression that both sides are willing to risk for potential gain rather than the all out siege and conquer warfare that some imagine when they think of "war" in a game.
Also, sorry for seeming to derail the Chaotic Evil discussion, though if war does need to be consensual, and settlements attack each other without mutual consent, they would likely end up Chaotic Evil. If that's the case, Milo will be very happy, since he'll be able to get training pretty much anywhere. :)

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Effectively, to have a valid character of any alignment, a high reputation is almost mandatory. We really need to see more details around the reputation system, how it works and what effects there are (low and high) from it.
I'm not sure that high reputation will critical/almost mandatory in the early (first year) of the game. It depends on how structures are limited, of course; I'd expect structures required for high level feats might be tied to settlement rep, but people won't need those skills for quite a while.

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War is activated when both sides set their relationship to hostile.
What if reputation loss is smaller if you kill someone your settlement is hostile towards?
Killing an ally gives a huge rep loss, killing a neutral gives an average size rep loss, killing a hostile gives a small rep loss and killing someone you're at war with gives no rep loss.
Having a settlement set at hostility or war should bring such benefits. It should bring penalties as well. Maybe the settlement leadership - or all members - have a slow rep leak until the hostility flag is lifted.
edit: make that a slow rep and chaos loss. That would make chaotics more tolerant of being in a hostility state, partially balancing their other inefficiencies. Low rep settlements could also afford more war, as they have already accepted being low rep. So low rep CX groups such as barbarian camps would be most prone to going to a hostile state, early and often. Content.
"It is well that war is so terrible, or we would grow too fond of it." - attributed to General Robert E. Lee

Anathema |

If high reputation chaotic evil is going to be possible there will need to be some ways for characters of all professions to gain reputation. The inclusion of reputation and alignment penalties for trading with chaotic evil characters seems unfair. Will there be such penalties for trading with others of different alignments?

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There's an interesting assumption I've seen in this thread that I wanted to mention.
The assumption is that a character can gain X ability while a member of one Settlement, and then keep using it when they change Settlements to one that doesn't have the necessary perquisites to provide and/or sustain that ability so that a character's total available abilities are disassociated from thier Settlement affiliation.
That's an assumption, not a fact.
So I take it from this that... We lose the ability to use a skill If the settlement we are a part of cannot train the skill.
Do we just lose the ability to use the skill or lose the skill?

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If high reputation chaotic evil is going to be possible there will need to be some ways for characters of all professions to gain reputation. The inclusion of reputation and alignment penalties for trading with chaotic evil characters seems unfair. Will there be such penalties for trading with others of different alignments?
That's a good question. Is it confirmed that trading with CE will have penalties? I read the dev posts while half asleep so not sure.

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Xeen wrote:Do we just lose the ability to use the skill or lose the skill?I assume you lose the ability to use the skill, just like a person whose alignment slips can lose the ability to slot certain feats.
When you rejoin a settlement with that capability, the skill is still there.
I would assume the same, but we are assuming a lot. And since the question is an assumption about an assumption post who knows. Im going to assume we will get an answer but that's assuming a lot as well.

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Will there be such penalties for trading with others of different alignments?
Given that GW has said that unlike reputation, alignment should be rather difficult to determine (short of the appropriate spell), I would hope this will not be the case.
Perhaps, however, if you buy goods off an auction house in an evil aligned settlement, and you're not evil...perhaps that's cause for a hit. You would be doing business with and providing income and profit for evil, either directly to evil merchants, or indirectly through their auction house commissions, taxes, etc.

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Anathema wrote:Will there be such penalties for trading with others of different alignments?Given that GW has said that unlike reputation, alignment should be rather difficult to determine (short of the appropriate spell), I would hope this will not be the case.
Perhaps, however, if you buy goods off an auction house in an evil aligned settlement, and you're not evil...perhaps that's cause for a hit. You would be doing business with and providing income and profit for evil, either directly to evil merchants, or indirectly through their auction house commissions, taxes, etc.
I believe the reputation loss, if any, was limited to person-to-person trades. Knowingly passing loot for a CE thief to a LN merchant (fence) would ship the LN merchant towards CE and cause a Rep hit.
However, placing those items onto the public market (AH) would not carry any of that consideration.
What I brought up in the Barter Thread was, how would that system work if the alignment / reputation shift was tied to player-to-player trades?
Also, since we do not know a person's alignment, how would we be prevented from doing this kind of trade innocently?

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Also, since we do not know a person's alignment, how would we be prevented from doing this kind of trade innocently?
I don't think we should be. My point was that if you knowingly walk into an evil settlement, and support their auction house, which likely helps fund their evil doings, then could you potentially be held liable? I don't know. Just posing the question.

ZenPagan |

ZenPagan wrote:Hobs sorry have to disagree here with youI was presenting a possible reason for why some would say it needs to be consensual, not that I'm totally in agreement with it being so. And I'm happy to be disagreed with if you have a better argument (you usually have very good arguments, so it's a distinct possibility). After all, the generation of better ideas is what we're hopefully trying to promote here via our discussions. :)
ZenPagan wrote:If war has to be consensual then frankly what it will mean is war is impossible as to successfully take a settlement who refuses to make it consensual will mean that by the end of it all your troops will be chaotic evil and low rep.
No settlement is going to agree to goto war unless it believes it will win.
The problem is that GW's intended system already makes nonflagged aggression an evil, low reputation action (given your alignment and reputation migration). If this is meant to discourage meaningless acts of violence, then how can allowing whole settlements to get away with the same action seem any less meaningless and violent? Instead of one individual acting contrary to the behavior GW hopes to promote, nonconsenual war would allow your whole settlement to behave that way...attacking targeted settlement's members without any of the penalties designed to restrain the behavior GW hopes to restrict.
I'm not actually arguing for either system. I'm just pointing out that these two (meaningful, flagged PvP and nonconsensual war) seem a bit contradictory. Given that they haven't outlined their war system/mechanics, it's possible they've got a way to deal with this already. Until they reveal it, we're left to speculate.
Not at all a war may be fought over many things and it will not necessarily be to settlement destruction, I was merely using that as an example. However if everytime your group kill an enemy soldier you get an alignment and rep hit it won't take many dead before your soldiers are verging on CE and low rep is the point Hobs. That applies whether you are trying to destroy their settlement or drive them away from resources.
even at as low as 250 rep for each killed it would only take your army killing 60 of the enemy and your people have gone from +7500 rep to -7500 in one battle. Before you say but thats a massive army you are fighting remember it will include people who die, respawn and die again several times

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*chuckles*...I wasn't about to say anything. :)
You make a fine argument, as usual. Unfortunately, until we know more, I'm left feeling that their rules to control individual player behavior and their desire to promote reputation penalty free war seem contradictory...and you're left feeling that mutual consent will lead to every settlement being Chaotic Evil and having low Reputation.
This leaves us with my earlier statement - "...it's possible they've got a way to deal with this already. Until they reveal it, we're left to speculate."

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Why don't you guys (I'm looking at you Bluudwolf) let go of alignment as a way to define your character?
To the best of my understanding, the game design means you will be a worthy, effective adversary for good guys like me--you're not going to get whupped regularly because of the design system, but because I'm smarter than you ;)
What if I turn out to be smarter than you? But because I am CE and mechanically less skilled than you, even though I joined EE same time, or even before you and you beat me anyway? That is where I have the issue. If you out smart me, then by all means, you win, GG. But if I am smarter, better organized (meta-gamed) and out play you, why should you still win?

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Urman wrote:I would assume the same, but we are assuming a lot. And since the question is an assumption about an assumption post who knows. Im going to assume we will get an answer but that's assuming a lot as well.Xeen wrote:Do we just lose the ability to use the skill or lose the skill?I assume you lose the ability to use the skill, just like a person whose alignment slips can lose the ability to slot certain feats.
When you rejoin a settlement with that capability, the skill is still there.
i assume you assumed right ;)
The inclusion of reputation and alignment penalties for trading with chaotic evil characters seems unfair. Will there be such penalties for trading with others of different alignments?
The whole thing is a means to further isolate the low rep(-rep) characters, right?
so, wouldn´t it make sense to take alignment out of that equation and give a high rep(+rep) character a big rep-hit for traiding with a low rep characters?-so, even if the player of a -rep character has a +rep character as a fence for his loot, he can only use that a couple of times, then +rep will be -rep as well.

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However, placing those items onto the public market (AH) would not carry any of that consideration.
What I brought up in the Barter Thread was, how would that system work if the alignment / reputation shift was tied to player-to-player trades?
Also, since we do not know a person's alignment, how would we be prevented from doing this kind of trade innocently?
Maybe that's why GW wants to anonymize all market transactions. I said some time back I couldn't imagine how you could grief someone by buying their stuff off the market at the price that they set, but if there's alignment impacts then suddenly there's an opening that would need to be dealt with.
EDIT: On the other hand, if the transactions are anonymized, how would you justify an alignment shift at all since you don't even know who you're transacting with...

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Mbando wrote:What if I turn out to be smarter than you? But because I am CE and mechanically less skilled than you, even though I joined EE same time, or even before you and you beat me anyway? That is where I have the issue. If you out smart me, then by all means, you win, GG. But if I am smarter, better organized (meta-gamed) and out play you, why should you still win?Why don't you guys (I'm looking at you Bluudwolf) let go of alignment as a way to define your character?
To the best of my understanding, the game design means you will be a worthy, effective adversary for good guys like me--you're not going to get whupped regularly because of the design system, but because I'm smarter than you ;)
How could you possibly be smarter if you chose to be CE? :P (This is not a serious argument...)

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Warning!:This product was manufactured in Shadow Vale. Purchase of this product has been shown to corrupt souls, lower your likeability, and possibly cause warts.
It's a little more subtle than that. :) Have you ever boycotted a company's products because of their business practices, or made a purchase decision based on them? People do that sort of thing all the time.

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I could see supporting a system where any two settlements or nations could agree to a war, and a settlement with a causues belli could bypass the reputation and alignement penalties for attacking.
I'm not sure what valid justifications would be...
"I want your land, is justifiable."
"I want access to those resources, is justifiable."
"I want you to leave our caravans alone, is justifiable."
"I don't like your alignment, is justifiable."
"I don't like Necormancers, and you are ruled by one, is justifiable.'
There are many, many reasons for declaring war in an Open World PvP MMO. Especially one like PFO what is built on the idea of settlement growth, expansion, domination and conquest.
Even escalations (PVE content) can be manipulated into a weapon versus the enemy (PVP).
The Devs have said there will be several War Blogs, we have only seen one so far.

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DeciusBrutus wrote:I could see supporting a system where any two settlements or nations could agree to a war, and a settlement with a causues belli could bypass the reputation and alignement penalties for attacking.
I'm not sure what valid justifications would be...
"I want your land, is justifiable."
"I want access to those resources, is justifiable."
"I want you to leave our caravans alone, is justifiable."
"I don't like your alignment, is justifiable."
"I don't like Necormancers, and you are ruled by one, is justifiable.'
There are many, many reasons for declaring war in an Open World PvP MMO. Especially one like PFO what is built on the idea of settlement growth, expansion, domination and conquest.
Even escalations (PVE content) can be manipulated into a weapon versus the enemy (PVP).
The Devs have said there will be several War Blogs, we have only seen one so far.
I agree entirely. And yes, PvE interactions may well become part of the larger PvP (settlement vs settlement). But I just want to add a couple of contrasting examples of unjustifiable (IMO) wars:
"We were bored"
"You're next to us"
"We just like fighting"
"umad bro?"
Oh and though I know your list was not meant to be exhaustive, Bluddwolf, I think you left off an important one to mention:
"You're harbouring known bandits" ;)

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About wars. I told about their IRL limitations in another thread, and it seems devs have read same historical stories (:) ) as I. Next one is my assumption, based on some replies from Ryan Dancey and a bit of RL regulations of warfare.
There will be rules of warfare, with days of armisice (medieval divine peace or ancient greek Olympics, whatever) between periods of legal war. Maybe (as in medieval Europe) some categories of non-combatants will be illegal targets (their property used as war materials is another matter entirely). Wars between adherents of same faith (alignment) can be judged/resolved by the higher power after some active fighting. (Those were kings and bishops in Europe, but we'll have gods themselves!)
I'll leave all the prisoner thing out of this thread, for death of the PC in PFO is something insignificant compared to RL thing.
OK. First situation. So kingdom A and kingdom B have an issue one with another. A wants wage war to B, but want to be as righteous as possible. So they declared their casus belli and what they want as their goal (if your merchant was robbed once by 6 people and want 120-person settlement raised to ashes, you have no proper casus belli, it seems). So they suffered some shift to the Evil (war is bad thing after all), but not much shifts in other dimensions - they did it right, after all. Then war goes on, settlement B calls allies (who are joining their defence efforts) and settlement B starts to overcame their enemy. Settlement A calls their war off and is ready to call it even.
- Not so fast, guys, you owe us now 30000 coins of destroyed property. Pay this or we have 1 week of retributive warfare for every 10k coins of damage. You dit it right, we'll do it right too! (Settlement B suffered small shift into the Evil and have some fun time).
Second variant. 2 NN settlements have some problems but no one want to start the war - their alignments are dangerously close to CE. They can wage covert ops through intermediaries, they can do economical warfare... But they can agree to the consensual warfare, clearly stating the winner's prize and time for the war. Ready-steady-go! This variant can even give them both small lawful shift in the aftermath in the case of the decisive victory of one of the participants.
Third variant (viking settlement mentioned by devs). You are CE, You are robbers and assassins, but you're doing this to your war targers only. And yes, war (as in EVE) costs money. As long, as you have some, you can declare war without much fuss and PvP your enemies to the botttom of your heart. You will be CE, but your rep will not drop down like a falling brick - more like falling feather :)
GW, as it strikes me, are trying to interveawe patterns of human behavior into the game mechanics. This will be great, and all the things about alignment and reputation, gods and society-building can serve this purpose.
Just my speculation, ofc. [/wall of text]
Thoughts?

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...placing those items onto the public market (AH) would not carry any of that consideration.
If all sales-arenas are in settlements, then you've got to be able to get Chaotic-Evil-made items into a non-Chaotic Evil settlement in order to begin anonymising them. I can see a series: Chaotic Evil sold in Neutral Evil, bought there and sold in True Neutral by a crony...rinse and repeat.

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Oh and though I know your list was not meant to be exhaustive, Bluddwolf, I think you left off an important one to mention:
"You're harbouring known bandits" ;)
"I want you to leave our caravans alone, is justifiable."
It was third on my list, which I think is more than fair considering what #1 and 2 were.
I think you are are starting to believe your own propaganda, that I don't want to take responsibility for my banditry.

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Bluddwolf wrote:...placing those items onto the public market (AH) would not carry any of that consideration.If all sales-arenas are in settlements, then you've got to be able to get Chaotic-Evil-made items into a non-Chaotic Evil settlement in order to begin anonymising them. I can see a series: Chaotic Evil sold in Neutral Evil, bought there and sold in True Neutral by a crony...rinse and repeat.
This is operating on the assumption that a settlement is just one alignment (ie. CE).
Even under the current 1-step a settlement with a Chaotic Evil core is open to: CE, CN, NE. Any items bought and sold on its markets are therefore exchanging hands among those citizens.
Items do not "carry" the alignment of who made them, possessed them or placed them on the market.
So even under the 1 step settlement alignment system, a settlement wanting to bar the economic assistance to a CE settlement, by baring trade with its citizens, would have to ban entry for traders of CN, CE, NE.
I guess someone could do that if they chose to, but if the system that Tork Shaw recently discussed goes in place, you would technically have to block all outside trade. You could do that as well I suppose, but your settlement's DI would suffer greatly.
A question to ponder... If a player driven economy is the goal, does it make sense to add such penalties to virtually every transaction?
I honestly don't see this idea seeing the light of day in-game.