Goblin Squad Member
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I think PFO could thrive with no unsanctioned PVP, but I'd still like for unsanctioned PVP to be possible.
There are many mechanisms for access to PVP through wars, feuds, and faction membership. So if PVP is what the player desires then there are plenty of opportunities by following the 'rules'.
Since PFO is about building settlements as much as PVP and destroying them, there is likely a fine balance between PVP being desirable to create tension/destroy resources, and excess (?unsanctioned, chaotic, apparently random?) PVP assaults on resource gatherers, builders, etc.
If it became the case that players fitted for non PVP activities felt that they had no chance of going about their business without being slaughtered, then I see a risk that the PFO concept as a whole could fail. It might not then be possible for any settlements to actually be built. Imagine if the whole of the EVE universe were nulsec and there were only say 3 NPC stations that people could dock at. It would be a mess and most players would have quit.
In EVE the PVP is great and certainly adds tension to the game (only bit I feel ccp got badly wrong is enabling high sec suicide ganking of young players - there must have been thousands of players who started as miners, saved for their first hulk, then saw it destroyed in hisec and quit). In EVE there the consequence of unsanctioned PVP (highsec suicide ganking)is so trivial it really isn't a consequence.
In PFO unsanctioned PVP ought to be unnecessary, but the risk of it will add tension as you will never be able to know 100% if the character you encounter might attempt to kill you. Unsanctioned pvp should however carry really severe penalties. Massive reputation loss, inability to enter NPC settlements, etc. Reputation recovery should take a long time and not be a matter of killing 10 goblins. Thus unsanctioned PVP becomes a conscious decision, eg for strategic purposes, rather than an inconsequential choice.
You do know that unsanctioned PVP is any pvp that is not part of the Factional, Warfare, or SAD systems atm.
High sec ganking is "unsanctioned" but with what is planned so far in PFO, so is going on a roam in 0.0. The majority of PVP you see in Eve will be considered unsanctioned in PFO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And feuds and death curses. And assassinations, I hope. And killing trespassers and/or law breakers, depending on your settlement setup. That's quite a lot already but I think that instead of complaining about faction PvP, we should be looking for other ways to sanction more PVP in game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And feuds and death curses. And assassinations, I hope. And killing trespassers and/or law breakers, depending on your settlement setup. That's quite a lot already but I think that instead of complaining about faction PvP, we should be looking for other ways to sanction more PVP in game.
Its not really a complaint in the other thread... Its more of a: make it worth doing and not just a side thing that has no real point for the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You do know that unsanctioned PVP is any pvp that is not part of the Factional, Warfare, or SAD systems atm.High sec ganking is "unsanctioned" but with what is planned so far in PFO, so is going on a roam in 0.0. The majority of PVP you see in Eve will be considered unsanctioned in PFO.
I think I am going to have to ponder whether the terms Sanctioned and Unsanctioned really get the meaning across properly. Given the current inclusions and exclusions of these terms, they appear to be 'Socially acceptable killing in the game world'. The real world parallel would be that the majority of the population gives soldiers a pass for the murder of enemy combatants. Being a game in a virtual world, the notion of acceptance goes beyond simple war to include all of these other aspects. SAD sort of stands out as a bit different in this group, but it is at least more socially respectable than the alternative.
The fact that the majority of PvP in EvE will be considered unsanctioned in PFO is very much by design. I don't have the exact quote from Ryan, but I recall him saying something along the lines of "Eve Online is about what lives in the dark hearts of men when uncontrolled capitalism is the status quo. PFO wishes to avoid that theme." PFO definitely does appear to be about power struggles between groups and organizations, but societal expectations still exist among the populace to provide for a more realistic backdrop. The public understands that Glorious Good Guys will be trying to drive Enigmatic Evil Empire out of the region and that EEE will fight back and they come to accept that.
However, nobody wants to get murdered in the woods by strangers. They view people who go out murdering strangers in the woods negatively. Known enemies fighting each other is fine, they are combatants in a known engagement. But strangers are acting for unknown causes. And unknown causes scare the common folk.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And feuds and death curses. And assassinations, I hope. And killing trespassers and/or law breakers, depending on your settlement setup. That's quite a lot already but I think that instead of complaining about faction PvP, we should be looking for other ways to sanction more PVP in game.
And self defense, and defense of others (by killing a flagged attacker).
I'm sort of wondering what type of killing isn't on the sanctioned list yet.
Maybe Manslaughter. Killing someone by accident, when you've lost control of your character in a drunken state. Or a barbarian option to deliberately lose control of your character for the rest of the fight. Maybe you suffer the rep loss for any innocents you kill, but not the alignment loss.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can safely assume we're pretty much all in favor of unsanctioned PvP everywhere. We just don't agree on the details.
Not that safe an assumption. We already know about safe NPC towns, and you've seen enough conversation here to know the various objections people put forward to exactly the idea of unsanctioned PVP everywhere.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And feuds and death curses. And assassinations, I hope. And killing trespassers and/or law breakers, depending on your settlement setup. That's quite a lot already but I think that instead of complaining about faction PvP, we should be looking for other ways to sanction more PVP in game.And self defense, and defense of others (by killing a flagged attacker).
I'm sort of wondering what type of killing isn't on the sanctioned list yet.
Maybe Manslaughter. Killing someone by accident, when you've lost control of your character in a drunken state. Or a barbarian option to deliberately lose control of your character for the rest of the fight. Maybe you suffer the rep loss for any innocents you kill, but not the alignment loss.
The problem is, with both statements, is that it requires unsanctioned attacker to get the rights to the others.
Defense (self or of others) - you need to have been attacked first
Feuds - Warfare, I named it
Death Curses - You need to have been killed first
Assassinations - Will still likely cause consequences and may require you to have been killed first
Loss of rep is what they have termed unsanctioned.
So that sanctioned list your talking about went back to the very small list I already named.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can safely assume we're pretty much all in favor of unsanctioned PvP everywhere. We just don't agree on the details.Not that safe an assumption. We already know about safe NPC towns, and you've seen enough conversation here to know the various objections people put forward to exactly the idea of unsanctioned PVP everywhere.
By unsanctioned, I do not believe he meant consequence-free. It makes that unsanctioned PvP COULD occur in a "safe zone". The consequence of doing so in that safe zone means you have about 10 seconds before guards show up and insta-kill you.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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By unsanctioned, I do not believe he meant consequence-free. It makes that unsanctioned PvP COULD occur in a "safe zone". The consequence of doing so in that safe zone means you have about 10 seconds before guards show up and insta-kill you.
Yep. Guards or other mechanisms.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think I am going to have to ponder whether the terms Sanctioned and Unsanctioned really get the meaning across properly. Given the current inclusions and exclusions of these terms, they appear to be 'Socially acceptable killing in the game world'.
There's probably more than one state, so Sanctioned/Unsanctioned doesn't quite cover it.
- Some killings are totally legitimate, like in warfare, or feuds. Sanctioned.
- Some killings are totally illegitimate, like killing the stranger in the woods. Unsanctioned. They'll happen and sometimes be tolerated.
- Some killings are somewhat legitimate. Some of these were under the long term-flags and we might see them in new forms. Champions could slay evils with only a loss of reputation, but no alignment hit. SADs might fall into that partially legitimate state as well. So any killing where you take either an alignment hit or a reputation hit, but not both. Sanctioned.
But thinking of word choices... Permitted doesn't work, because like you say, we'll be allowed to kill people anywhere, we just suffer consequences.
edit to add: I might be wrong above, because Tork had said but without the sanction of warfare, bounties, feuds, or voluntary player actions—characters performing criminal or heinous acts, for example—there are consequences of reputation and alignment. So maybe my last example is unsanctioned?
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Goblin Squad Member
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My interpretation of sanctioned/unsanctioned is the hostile state. I see hostile PCs no different from hostile NPCs. I don't always attack a hostile NPCs if I don't need to, same with hostile PCs. Then there are nonhostile PCs and NPCs. One probably can't attack nonhostile NPCs, but whether or not to attack nonhostile PCs is everyones own business. If you go along the path of attacking nonhostile PCs, there will be some consequences, namely reputation and alignment changes. How those changes affect a persons gameplay, who knows?
It has been highlighted by GW how reputation and alignment changes affect a persons gameplay many times, but there seem to be a lot people who are not buying those talks. I wonder why that is?
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Goblin Squad Member
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What I hope for is that when everyone logs into the game their heart rate picks up a few beats.
I definitely hope this is not the case. This was the "horror show" feeling that I disliked about DarkFall and other murder simulators.
No where in the game world should you feel completely safe.
I completely agree. But that doesn't mean the only alternative is to constantly feel like you're trying to sneak through a zombie infested research facility.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What I hope for is that when everyone logs into the game their heart rate picks up a few beats.I definitely hope this is not the case. This was the "horror show" feeling that I disliked about DarkFall and other murder simulators.
No where in the game world should you feel completely safe.I completely agree. But that doesn't mean the only alternative is to constantly feel like you're trying to sneak through a zombie infested research facility.
I tend to agree. Being in a constant state of stress would be a game-killer for me. I want moments of alertness and paranoia, not a constant feeling.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Audoucet But at the absolute zero of rep, you might have been kicked out your PC town. There have been hints that if you don't have access to the training you once had, those nice feats can't be slotted.
And if you can't slot your nice feats, then your level 10 fighter is really at risk when he faces a level 10 fighter who still has access to high rep feats. It might not be an ideal place to be, low rep.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't really like the reputation system... Because once you're at the absolute zero of rep, nothing is encouraging you to think "Mmmmh. No, I won't kill this lvl1 blind midget mushroom gatherer, he's not worth the kill".
That's s good point but I'm willing to live with it. If there are those lunatics in PFO, so be it. They said: "You shouldn't go alone into the wilderness."
If PFO really is a sandbox open world pvp game, then I don't know what mechanics we could have to restrain those lunatics brutally killing innocent midgets gathering mushrooms. I think the reputation system is better than nothing though and a start.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Audoucet But at the absolute zero of rep, you might have been kicked out your PC town. There have been hints that if you don't have access to the training you once had, those nice feats can't be slotted.
Have they announced the mechanics behind how low reputation individuals will affect settlements? I seem to remember there being talk of the game taking averages of members when determining modifiers? If that is the case, then there will be settlements that are perfectly willing to have very low reputation characters simply because of the advantages they bring.
Consider two settlements. One doesn't have any low reputation individuals. The other has a small cadre of low reputation individuals, but their presence is largely balanced out by the very high reputation individuals that is keeps as well. Which of these two settlements has the advantage in a guerrilla war? Without seeing that exact mechanics of development indices, I would say the one that can ruthlessly engage anyone at anytime (the latter settlement).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't really like the reputation system... Because once you're at the absolute zero of rep, nothing is encouraging you to think "Mmmmh. No, I won't kill this lvl1 blind midget mushroom gatherer, he's not worth the kill".
It depends. By the time your rep is bottomed out, you should be cut off from quite a bit of opportunity. Your reputation may not drop any lower, but neither will it start increasing. Each kill such as that resets the timer before natural reputation recovery begins.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Have they announced the mechanics behind how low reputation individuals will affect settlements? I seem to remember there being talk of the game taking averages of members when determining modifiers? If that is the case, then there will be settlements that are perfectly willing to have very low reputation characters simply because of the advantages they bring.
Consider two settlements. One doesn't have any low reputation individuals. The other has a small cadre of low reputation individuals, but their presence is largely balanced out by the very high reputation individuals that is keeps as well. Which of these two settlements has the advantage in a guerrilla war? Without seeing that exact mechanics of development indices, I would say the one that can ruthlessly engage anyone at anytime (the latter settlement).
Nothing is restricting the other settlement either, if they so choose...
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't really like the reputation system... Because once you're at the absolute zero of rep, nothing is encouraging you to think "Mmmmh. No, I won't kill this lvl1 blind midget mushroom gatherer, he's not worth the kill".
I believe the expectation is that once you're at the nadir of Reputation, you'll begin to realize that your character sucks, the Settlements you have access to suck. That should be a significant encouragement to try to dig your way out of that hole, or just delete that character and start over, but with less murder in your heart.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Nothing is restricting the other settlement either, if they so choose...
Right, at which point being forced to leave your town is no longer an issue, and so low reputation becomes less of a negative for the group. The person I was quoting was implying that one of the disincentives for having a low reputation would be that player towns might kick them out. Without extremely substantial modifiers for the town they are a part of, I can't see that happening. At least not for those members lucky enough to be 'made men'.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Have they announced the mechanics behind how low reputation individuals will affect settlements?
Not in detail. However, they've been clear about what Low Reputation characters can expect.
Being Chaotic Evil in Pathfinder Online will suck. You'll be stuck in crappy Settlements where you won't have access to good markets, good training, good workshops, or other "good" aspects of Settlement life. Everyone else in the game will have more better stuff than you. I suspect you'll also find that the only places those Settlements can survive are in Hexes with undesirable attributes, and even then I suspect they'll get destroyed regularly by people who just want the land.
Chaotic Evil characters will also likely be "killable on sight" by lots of other characters which means that they'll be running for their lives every time they encounter other PCs. They'll have bounties on their heads and bounty hunters trying to earn those bounties. When they get too close to NPC Settlements the Marshals will appear and nuke them. When they get detected in territory controlled by people who don't want CE characters around they'll be hunted mercilessly.
You get to be Chaotic Evil by ganking people, betraying people, and generally acting like an a%#++~+. The variables we will have to work on in terms of balancing are how fast you go CE, and how you dig yourself out of that hole once you're in it.
There's been no change on this front from what we've told you about alignment and rep previously. That is, we expect the majority of CE characters to also have very low reputation, because ganking lowers all three axes. So Ryan's shorthand is "CE will suck," because we genuinely believe that there won't be very many CE players that maintain high reputation.
There are a few of you that plan to play CE as a roleplaying choice, and try to make sure you're only doing it in a way that doesn't cost you too much rep. That's awesome, and we really hope you succeed. If you have a high-rep CE town, the penalties are the minimal ones that we've mentioned before; it's the low-rep that really hurts you. But we still expect that CE will be very strongly correlated with low-rep, because we don't expect that the majority of players coming in outside of the forum community will be choosing CE for roleplay, just drifting there due to behaviors that also lower rep.
If the early enrollees manage to set up enough high-rep CE settlements to create and maintain an expectation of "playing CE but not being a jerk about it" among later players, that'd be great. Just don't get your hearts set on pulling it off :) .
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I believe the expectation is that once you're at the nadir of Reputation, you'll begin to realize that your character sucks, the Settlements you have access to suck. That should be a significant encouragement to try to dig your way out of that hole, or just delete that character and start over, but with less murder in your heart.
Seems nice. It'll need some adjusting I guess, but it's a good idea.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The person I was quoting was implying that one of the disincentives for having a low reputation would be that player towns might kick them out. Without extremely substantial modifiers for the town they are a part of, I can't see that happening. At least not for those members lucky enough to be 'made men'.
I think that might be wishful thinking.
They'll lose Reputation and slide towards Chaotic Evil. They'll therefore become content for defenders and bounty hunters, and they'll find that the places where they can live tend to be crappy.
Remaining bound to an NPC Settlement will limit their access to training. As they slide further towards Chaotic Evil, and as their reputation drops, they'll find that they are forced to relocate to very undesirable Settlements. Those Settlements will likely be a long way (physically) from the Good aligned Settlements, making the trek from their respawn points to where the "targets" are increasingly hard.
Most players will likely find this very unsatisfactory.
Chaotic Evil will be at a substantial mechanical disadvantage. (Their Settlements will suck)
I can't imagine Ryan has spent so much time and effort stating unequivocally that they'll only have access to Settlements that suck if that could be easily avoided.
Trading directly with CE characters could be considered a chaotic and evil act.
If just trading with someone like that can impact you, what impact would it have on your Settlement to allow them in?
* It's important to translate "Chaotic Evil" in most of Ryan's statements to "Low Reputation" since, as I noted above, that's what Stephen Cheney has said will really hurt you.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Have they announced the mechanics behind how low reputation individuals will affect settlements? I seem to remember there being talk of the game taking averages of members when determining modifiers? If that is the case, then there will be settlements that are perfectly willing to have very low reputation characters simply because of the advantages they bring.
I've seen a lot of talk from players about using average reputation. I don't recall seeing anything from GW.
I thought I saw something from GW that settlements would set a floor on acceptable reputation, and that would affect what buildings or training would be available. But I've searched for that and can't find it, so I don't know either way.
If settlements set a floor for reputation, there's a question about what happens when a citizen has low rep, would they get automatically booted? Two weeks back GW popped the idea of corruption on us; if a settlement has crime that isn't punished, corruption goes up. That would fit with a settlement setting a reputation floor: if the settlement doesn't kick the low rep people, corruption might go up. How much corruption is tolerated is the settlement leader's choice.
And that sort of flows with the info Nihimon provides. If they say low rep will be bad, there will be mechanisms like corruption to encourage settlements to boot the bad.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It just struck me. Corruption could also be used to enforce a settlement's alignment as well.
I think we're not sure how alignment and settlements will work; Tork said a while back that they were relooking it. But what happens when a character shifts, though her actions, into an alignment that isn't in the settlement charter? Auto boot would not be good. But corruption might happen, for as long as that character is out of sync with the settlement goals.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It just struck me. Corruption could also be used to enforce a settlement's alignment as well.
I think we're not sure how alignment and settlements will work; Tork said a while back that they were relooking it. But what happens when a character shifts, though her actions, into an alignment that isn't in the settlement charter? Auto boot would not be good. But corruption might happen, for as long as that character is out of sync with the settlement goals.
Do you suggest that settlement reputation, which is the sum of the reputations of the companies forming the settlement, which in the company reputation is the sum of all the character reputations forming that company, has something to do with corruption, which has something to do with the DI of a settlement or the effectiveness of a settlement?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Here's the teaser post on Corruption.
That sort of sounds like each crime that occurs in a settlement adds to the settlement's corruption. So more laws => more crime => more corruption?We'll hopefully go into more detail on this (and other tweaks to our ideas on settlement alignment) soon, but the basic idea is that higher Chaos creates a higher minimum Corruption, but having laws broken can temporarily increase Corruption (which is lowered back down by killing the criminal). A Lawful settlement with laws that it can't enforce could become worse off than a Chaotic settlement that played it cool and didn't make any laws in the first place; in the Lawful city, all the crooks know for sure they can get away with anything.
So, in essence, Corruption is a mechanic that measures how much the Lawful axis is violated. I would imagine there's a similar mechanic to measure how much the Good axis is violated, and another to measure how much the Reputation axis is violated.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I want moments of alertness and paranoia, not a constant feeling.
Adrenalin and I are old enemies, and I avoid him fervently, as he screws with my ability to rationally analyse, which is what I'm paid for. Several years ago, when my car was hit by another and totalled, the hormone surge screwed with my brain for more than three days; I couldn't concentrate or focus on anything, which is an ugly feeling.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Do you suggest that settlement reputation, which is the sum of the reputations of the companies forming the settlement, which in the company reputation is the sum of all the character reputations forming that company, has something to do with corruption, which has something to do with the DI of a settlement or the effectiveness of a settlement?
I'm not sure we know for a fact that settlement reputation is based on the sum or average of its members' reputations.
I think that the settlement might set its reputation, just like it sets its laws. So the settlement council might set the lower bound of acceptable reputation at -2500, for example. Setting the bar higher (or lower) would affect what buildings may be constructed (edit: or operated). Some buildings might need a lower bar.
After the settlement reputation bar is set, no one with a reputation lower than that could join as a new citizen. Existing citizens with reputation below that bar would cause the settlement to gain corruption, (or some other effect). And yes, I'd expect corruption will affect DI or effectiveness.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In PFO unsanctioned PVP ought to be unnecessary, but the risk of it will add tension as you will never be able to know 100% if the character you encounter might attempt to kill you. Unsanctioned pvp should however carry really severe penalties. Massive reputation loss, inability to enter NPC settlements, etc. Reputation recovery should take a long time and not be a matter of killing 10 goblins. Thus unsanctioned PVP becomes a conscious decision, eg for strategic purposes, rather than an inconsequential choice.
I'm currently focusing my mind on a thought instigated, intentionally or not, by Nihimon's desegregation thread. I proposed we should promote integration rather than mere desegregation, though certainly desegregation would form a prior state needed for integration.
There is also another thread regarding the current necessity of 'grinding' escalations to a low rep character to regain reasonable rep.
With that background, then I think it should be possible to compose systems by which a low rep character could regain reasonable rep by other means that promote integration with the RP community.
That would, I think, be a desirable outcome because it should gradually promote young minds who despise RP to instead actually use it themselves just as PFO is certainly going to be promoting RP players to PvP.
If we can integrate both sides we will grow. If we insist on segregation we will fall.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... by Nihimon's desegregation thread.
Should probably read "by Nihimon in Andius's desegregation thread".
I proposed we should promote integration rather than mere desegregation, though certainly desegregation would form a prior state needed for integration.
I liked it there, and I like it here, too :)
I tend to think of things in concrete terms - desegregation and integration have the exact same physical characteristics - but there are underlying nuances that are very significant, and I completely agree with you that Integration is the real goal.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Or maybe they are the same guy
Baseless speculation. As we all know, I'm just Blaeringr in disguise...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Or maybe they are the same guyMy theory is the Bludd, Andius, Nihimon and possibly Ryan Dancey are all actually the same person, playing the very long game.
It's funny that you posted this while I was digging up that old link.
I joke about being Blaeringr, but I don't have any sock puppets. It's not my style.
