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I wanted to make a quick thread to that I think makes an important point, because there seems to be a lot of confusion about the Reputation system and its intentions.
the main thing I want to say is this; the reputation is not a punishment system... it's a system for making trade-offs.
What I mean is that the system isn't there to ruin the time of anyone who wants to PvP (though some people may wish it was) it's there so that players have a COST associated with RDK's.
In some of the PvP/Reputation threads, I see people write things like "It should take forever to get your rep back if you make one RDK". The notion being that the Reputation system is there to PREVENT people from making Reputation-Draining Kills entirely, when in reality, it's there so that people have to be a bit more selective when making RDK's.
That's the key here: Not prevention. Selection. It also rewards people who are more selective in some ways (though those people will also be punished FOR being selective, since they're choosing a path that's more restrictive)... And it punishes people who AREN'T selective enough.
If the system were made to prevent these kills entirely, they would just shut off any type of kill that they didn't want. It's there so that players have to decide when to make these kills, and when to let someone slide.
For example, if someone comes out of an area, and you know they're probably packing some nice resources, giving where they were, you can't just kill them without consequence, but you're also not prevented from killing them either... it creates a meaningful choice.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Meaningful choice: mugging one gatherer gets you a small amount of resources at a small cost. Mugging as a standard policy gets you lots of resources at a very significant cost.
I would like to see the point at which the cost and benefit are equal be very hard to find, which means not having breakpoints. If it is clear that crossing below some arbitrary line makes the difference between a profitable rep->stuff conversion and a losing one, it becomes a matter of calculating where that line is and going up to it without crossing it.
If the benefits of reputation are lost only gradually, then it becomes a major decision/calculation to determine how lucrative a reputation-costing activity must be to be worth the cost.
Goblin Squad Member
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My major complaint about the Darkfall experiment (Bringslite and I are still in it, although I will be largely on hiatus for December) is that there are actions without consequence. As long as player (represented through their character avatars) perform their actions knowing the consequences, no sweat. Post the information so all know what the consequences of their actions are. For Darkfall, there are no built in consequences at all, so it is up to the other players to create consequences.
In PFO the results of certain actions are partly reflected through the alignment system. No game has pulled this off well so far (there have been some attempts, but imo none have been very successful). This is one of the key elements that should make PFO very different from other MMOs. I hope the alignment system is deeply ingrained in many elements of the game design, and so far I am encouraged by the posts of the different developers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Reputation isn't a protection mechanism. It's a mechanism for allowing Settlements to make informed meaningful tradeoffs between various types of actions and developing character abilities.
From the "Thrive w/out Unsanctioned PVP" thread:
What I pulled out of Ryan's post is that the "settlement" is unit of leverage. I think what Ryan's getting at is the the leverage isn't at the individual level--they're not trying to (directly) influence actors. Rather, they're trying to influence behavior at the level of collectives, who have contextual, local info to make informed choices.
So they really aren't trying to protect players, newb or veteran. They're trying to leverage social structure, so that those social structures have stakes in how PvP interactions are conducted.
This is very comparable to what we do in public policy: sometimes we try to improve outcomes by affecting individual behavior (e.g. personal choices about risk, like smoking or unprotected sex), and sometimes through interventions at the population level (e.g. changing diagnostic criteria or information sharing policies).
The people who keep going on and on about how reputation can best protect newbs are thinking at too low a level of analysis, and more more importantly, looking at the wrong object of analysis. GW is trying to affect social structures at the population level, not the individual level, by giving social structures actionable information. The goal is to create certain kinds of like-aligned social structures, not to protect high risk members of a population (newbs). In this sense, it's part of that funnel Ryan described, pushing like-acting players together into social structures.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Reputation isn't a protection mechanism. It's a mechanism for allowing Settlements to make informed meaningful tradeoffs between various types of actions and developing character abilities.From the "Thrive w/out Unsanctioned PVP" thread:
What I pulled out of Ryan's post is that the "settlement" is unit of leverage. I think what Ryan's getting at is the the leverage isn't at the individual level--they're not trying to (directly) influence actors. Rather, they're trying to influence behavior at the level of collectives, who have contextual, local info to make informed choices.
So they really aren't trying to protect players, newb or veteran. They're trying to leverage social structure, so that those social structures have stakes in how PvP interactions are conducted.
This is very comparable to what we do in public policy: sometimes we try to improve outcomes by affecting individual behavior (e.g. personal choices about risk, like smoking or unprotected sex), and sometimes through interventions at the population level (e.g. changing diagnostic criteria or information sharing policies).
The people who keep going on and on about how reputation can best protect newbs are thinking at too low a level of analysis, and more more importantly, looking at the wrong object of analysis. GW is trying to affect social structures at the population level, not the individual level, by giving social structures actionable information. The goal is to create certain kinds of like-aligned social structures, not to protect high risk members of a population (newbs). In this sense, it's part of that funnel Ryan described, pushing like-acting players together into social structures.
Exactly, Rep is an individual measure that influences the opportunities available to ones collective association(s). The goal, rightfully so in my opinion, is to drive associations to police their own members...as opposed to forcing devs to do it.
I am vaguely amused by the people congratulating Goblinworks on how being low reputation will suck. Obviously the law of unintended consequences hasn't occurred to people.
If low rep limits training as much as certain people are hoping then this is what will occur when a large organised group of people who do not care about rep comes into game
"Our training will be limited by being a low rep group. Therefore the way to ensure this is not a problem is to ensure everyone else's training is just as limited by routinely burning down every fledgling settlement before it can develop more advanced training. Coincidentally this actually suits the way we want to play anyway with the added bonus that being part of the sanctioned PVP family of wars and feuds it will probably actually help the rep we are losing by killing everyone we come across anyway making our strategy even more effective"
TLDR
If low rep sucks for training then the low rep will be incentivised to raze settlements on a frequent and ongoing basis
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Goblin Squad Member
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TLDRIf low rep sucks for training then the low rep will be incentivised to raze settlements on a frequent and ongoing basis
Hordes of naked noob alts will reap havoc on the DIs of all settlements and help to reduce the average reputation level to the point that even NPC settlement training is on par with PC settlement training. Then they will have won the game!!!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am vaguely amused by the people congratulating Goblinworks on how being low reputation will suck. Obviously the law of unintended consequences hasn't occurred to people.
If low rep limits training as much as certain people are hoping then this is what will occur when a large organised group of people who do not care about rep comes into game
"Our training will be limited by being a low rep group. Therefore the way to ensure this is not a problem is to ensure everyone else's training is just as limited by routinely burning down every fledgling settlement before it can develop more advanced training. Coincidentally this actually suits the way we want to play anyway with the added bonus that being part of the sanctioned PVP family of wars and feuds it will probably actually help the rep we are losing by killing everyone we come across anyway making our strategy even more effective"
Yeah, anyway, there's not really a "law of unintended consequences." That's an idiom, a folk recognition that simple systems can lead to unintended emergences. Or not--policy makers may make accurate judgements about the consequences of policy choices. The main constraints are ignorance of the system, lack of access to feedback, inability to experiment/vary policy, and goal/time frame misalignment.
We know that you are ignorant of the game when compared the devs, have no access to feedback, and can't tinker with policy, so if anyone is poorly positioned to understand consequences, it's you.
TLDR: You know nothing, the devs at least know something, and can learn.
I am vaguely amused by the people congratulating Goblinworks on how being low reputation will suck. Obviously the law of unintended consequences hasn't occurred to people.
If low rep limits training as much as certain people are hoping then this is what will occur when a large organised group of people who do not care about rep comes into game
"Our training will be limited by being a low rep group. Therefore the way to ensure this is not a problem is to ensure everyone else's training is just as limited by routinely burning down every fledgling settlement before it can develop more advanced training. Coincidentally this actually suits the way we want to play anyway with the added bonus that being part of the sanctioned PVP family of wars and feuds it will probably actually help the rep we are losing by killing everyone we come across anyway making our strategy even more effective"
TLDR
If low rep sucks for training then the low rep will be incentivised to raze settlements on a frequent and ongoing basis
I don't think it'll get to that point, but I do see your point. Some people are just using the reputation system to try to basically take PvP out of the game as much as possible. The PvE'ers are just trying to change the rep system from its original intended use, to basically being a system that prevents all non-consensual PvP as far as possible, so that they can skip through the meadows on their merry way without ever having to worry about dealing with any PvP danger.
That's what this post was about. Clarifying what the rep system was far, as I see people looking at it as a "RDK Prevention System" instead of a balancing system, which it was intended to be.
I think the point was important enough to deserve the attention of its own thread. And so people could talk more specifically about how to balance it, rather than "let's see who can come up with the worst punishments for PvP'ers" as some of the other threads have turned in to.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ Qallz,
You I believe have hit the nail on the head. In another thread I posed the possibility that Sanctioned PVP should actually increase reputation. The usual suspects are of course against that idea, because they only want PVP to get the stick, and never the carrot.
Once they see instances of where a dev says, "well that has always been our plan to have that activity be considered a "positive interaction through PVP", some have responded with... "Wait, I thought this was not going to be the case.....there should always be a negative consequence, or its should cost something to engage in, maybe a timer or a maximum number of times it can be done in a day, week or even month" (not from just one quote, but complied from several. And no it is not a straw man, every one of these comments have been made).
These are some of the same individuals who were stunned when GW devs finally stated clearly "At the core of PFO is PVP", and the mad scramble has been on ever since to get GW to then say that "Unsanctioned equals griefing". When they got the exact opposite of that from Ryan, now there is another mad dash to discover another angle to limit PVP that they consider to be non beneficial to how they want to play.
Some of them want PVP, they just want it in such a controlled manner that it will never be non consensual (as you pointed out). Some really want Arena PVP in an Open World, without the tag of "Arena" because we all know that is "Lame PVP" and no one admits that is what they want.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Successful "sanctioned" (deprecated phrase, but not sure what to use) should get rep increase. Successful SAD should get rep, but so should the target who gets to destination with a profit. Limit SAD and both win! 8-)
And so should the "rescue calvary" following 12 seconds behind the trader "bait". 8-)
-- OH, and changing topic in mid thread --
Thanks for the TS discussion on red, grey, blue during a war. I appreciate you publishing UNC position. My main concern was UNC calling a company Red in Pax, because it also dealt with "enemy", while there were blue to Pax in current trade to/from Pax. Actually there is an easy way around this for trader community, but I like your position better than what I wanted.
Lam
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Goblin Squad Member
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Some people are just using the reputation system to try to basically take PvP out of the game as much as possible.
BS.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Interestingly enough to me, what Zen is describing is a barbarian invasion. It seems like it should work as intended. My inference then is that these 'unintended consequences' nobody thought of are part of the plan, and fully intended.
Just let me get my walls up and a goodly supply of arrows made before the flood of targets sweep in.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Some people are just using the reputation system to try to basically take PvP out of the game as much as possible.BS.
I will not call this false, I am sure there might very well be some people trying to do just as Qallz suggests, I just do not have any idea who these people would be.
I will not call this false, I am sure there might very well be some people trying to do just as Qallz suggests, I just do not have any idea who these people would be.Some people are just using the reputation system to try to basically take PvP out of the game as much as possible.BS.
Yea Nihimon, no one said it was you. No need to defend yourself bro. ;)
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you all want to discuss the intent and the pro's and con's of the Reputation system, do that. Stop making veiled accusations hidden in rhetoric and stop posting defensive retorts and just discuss the system.
Write a summary of what you think the system is. List your idea of the Pro's and Con's and the summarize with a closing.
Sniping at one another will just reinforce the current characterization of one faction or the other and not get the discussion anywhere.
Write a summary of what you think the system is.
Read the OP.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Yea Nihimon, no one said it was you. No need to defend yourself bro. ;)I will not call this false, I am sure there might very well be some people trying to do just as Qallz suggests, I just do not have any idea who these people would be.Some people are just using the reputation system to try to basically take PvP out of the game as much as possible.BS.
Some people are being far too passive-aggressive and are trying to use the passive voice to weasel out when they are called on it.
Bringing it back to the original post: Reputation is something that you can either accumulate, yielding benefits based on the level of accumulation, or spend (in taking actions which lower reputation). I think one possible goal is to make the powergaming behavior be the accumulation of as much reputation as possible, and then make as much 'jerk' behavior as possible be rep-reducing. A closely related goal would have an ideal reputation point, and spending reputation above that point would result in more overall power; in such an implementation it should be made non-trivial to determine that point and/or have a tradeoff such that maintaining +4000 reputation requires less jerky behavior than maintaining +2000 reputation does. (Otherwise it's a grind-and-spend dynamic, and keeping the higher setpoint is not any harder than keeping the lower one.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If low rep sucks for training then the low rep will be incentivised to raze settlements on a frequent and ongoing basis
I think that the three (or more) starter towns don't all need to support the same reputation ranges. Training opportunities in the starter towns can also be gated based on character rep instead of settlement rep. Very low rep? We'll teach you the following things. More rep, you can learn more things. Even more rep? Even more things to learn.
I think they'll actually need to do this from the start, in order to encourage mid-high rep behavior in the period before we get player settlements. So low rep will be at a training disadvantage, even if there are only starter towns on the map.
@Urman
Firstly from what we have been told the three starter towns won't be in EE there will be only one npc settlement.
Secondly the three starter towns are for specific alignments
Thirdly the starter towns deliberately have low training abilities specifically to deter folk from not venturing out to the player settlements. If these starter towns can offer training anywhere near the level of any player settlement then there will be no incentive for a lot of folk to take part in the main part of the game
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Goblin Squad Member
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No disagreement, but the limited training available from any starter town will probably still need to be tiered by Reputation so that whatever training is available allows a differentiation between low rep and high rep characters.
If we have no player-made settlements in the beginning of EE and one of the primary reasons to maintain high rep is to access better training, then there is little reason to not have low Rep in the beginning of EE. The beginning of EE is exactly when GW needs to start coaxing us to keep our rep high and not turn their new game into all PvP all the time. So unless they have other ways to coax players, I think they'll need to limit some of the training in the starter towns by rep, whether they have 1 starter town or 3.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yea Nihimon, no one said it was you. No need to defend yourself bro. ;)I will not call this false, I am sure there might very well be some people trying to do just as Qallz suggests, I just do not have any idea who these people would be.Some people are just using the reputation system to try to basically take PvP out of the game as much as possible.BS.
Yo, bro. I'm not trying to defend myself :)
I'm calling BS that there's anyone posting on these boards who is using the reputation system to try to basically take PvP out of the game as much as possible.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Isn't the goal for both GW and the majority of the forum members to encourage positive game interactions?
That may be the goal, and it's likely to happen in-game as often as it does here. Chris and friends stepping in here may be analogous to GMs showing up in PFO; let's hope it's no more often.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon
1. What reputation should a new character begin with?
2. Should positive game play (playing in a way that GW wants us to) grant positive reputation?
3. Isn't the goal for both GW and the majority of the forum members to encourage positive game interactions?
(Numbered for easy reference)
1. Zero. Although I think it would be appropriate to give them +7,500 Innocence and factor Innocence into the calculations that determine the cost to anyone who kills them.
2. I don't know.
3. Yes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon
What reputation should a new character begin with?
Should positive game play (playing in a way that GW wants us to) grant positive reputation?
Isn't the goal for both GW and the majority of the forum members to encourage positive game interactions?
Ryan has used the phrase "meaningful human interaction" often. I don't recall uses of "positive game interactions". I "think" that is because many interactions my character may experience may not be positive to me, but maybe to another character. (Think of an assassin and his/her target...success is relative in that encounter, one experiencing a positive event, the other quite negative, but for both, it was meaningful.)
I don't think hordes of noobs attacking a settlement will become an issue...well, not an unsolvable one. They will be able to do little. Hordes of very experienced players with low rep might be able to damage a settlement, but I am skeptical they could all push the rock in the same direction for long enough for that to be a real problem.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It may have changed, but in the past Ryan has said words to the effect that a horde of low-geared players chucking rocks at a settlement won't do beans--it was in response to someone saying the solution to gear threading would be naked zerging. Essentially that you will have to have the financial resources to create siege equipment to take out a settlement.
I would guess raiding a POI or a gathering camp might make for an easier target. But it would be pretty hilarious to watch a bunch of low rep CE scum attack a settlement and just get slaughtered :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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It may have changed, but in the past Ryan has said words to the effect that a horde of low-geared players chucking rocks at a settlement won't do beans--it was in response to someone saying the solution to gear threading would be naked zerging. Essentially that you will have to have the financial resources to create siege equipment to take out a settlement.
I would guess raiding a POI or a gathering camp might make for an easier target. But it would be pretty hilarious to watch a bunch of low rep CE scum attack a settlement and just get slaughtered :)
Mbando,
I know you have limited MMO experience, and perhaps none with EvE Online, but your belief that CE in low gear will lose everytime has been proven wrong.
First, in EvE, most of the notorious pirate corps had High Sec industrial corps as their supply and general support. So to think the CE horde will not have access to the best equipment or nearly unlimited funds is not factual.
Under the current proposals of the Rep / Alignment system, settlements will have to be on the alert for the "Naked, High Rep, LG, Noob, Zerg Bomb".
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Goblin Squad Member
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I suspect Mbando was instead considering the effectiveness of fortified positions versus poorly armed peasantry.
All I'm saying is that the assumption that a horde of low level CE would be ill equipped or ineffective has been proven a dangerous one.
Zergs are effective due to their numbers, which I'm sure you're both aware. Their second advantage is they anticipate and accept heavy loses, often times heavier loses than some in your lines may be willing to take.
There are many other aspects of Zerg tactics that are also very effective, but I'll talk of the later.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I suspect that a combination of better equipment, siege defense weapons, and formation combat will likely make zergs on fortified positions non-effective.
Likely they will help, but Zergs won't be just a lot of peasants throwing rocks. Any organized army will used combined arms, mixed units, and will use every tactic available and unthought of to win.
No one thought 40 frigates could take out a dreadnought, they were wrong.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Mbando,
I know you have limited MMO experience, and perhaps none with EvE Online, but your belief that CE in low gear will lose everytime has been proven wrong.
Goodness, what a silly fellow you are, and with such fanciful ideas :)
First, in EvE, most of the notorious pirate corps had High Sec industrial corps as their supply and general support. So to think the CE horde will not have access to the best equipment or nearly unlimited funds is not factual.Under the current proposals of the Rep / Alignment system, settlements will have to be on the alert for the "Naked, High Rep, LG, Noob, Zerg Bomb".
What part of "Hi I'm Ryan Dancy, CEO of Goblinworks, and one of my goals is too implement lessons learned from EVE and other prior games" do you not understand? The fact that X occurs in EVE doesn't mean it will be a fact in PFO, particularly if the dev team says stuff like "We're not going to have X."
I suppose they could fail, but absent evidence of that, I'm not going to assume it. Is your contention that the Devs are inept? Untruthful? I guess what I'm asking for is evidence to support your claim over theirs.
Oh BTW, please read what the CEO of GW just wrote. Dude, it's absolutely possible they could fail, or maybe need a crowdforging period to experiment and tinker, but it should be abundantly clear, even to you, that they are thinking the problem through.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Azure_Zero A training requirement, and a need to stay in good standing with the trainer, so a 'level' and a reputation requirement. A low rep/skill character can use that sharp, silver, vorpal, masterwork sword. Just not as effectively as it deserves.
It will be interesting to see how 3:1 or 4:1 "weak" rogues work against a "superior" foe, when most of the rogues can use sneak attacks.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Having the best gear doesn't help if your character can't access its keywords.So there is a form of level requirement for equipment, nice.
That would stop the spamming single digit level characters who are played multiboxed/Botted with high end equipment on the Zerg horde
A level of skill training. You could have your character accruing exp for a year, but absent being able to access high level training, you're going to be hamstrung in both the level of skills you can slot, and the level of keywords you can access on equipment.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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People sometimes misunderstand what the Goons did to BoB when they first arrived in EVE.
At the time high-end alliances were used to fielding fleets comprised primarily of Battleships. The Battleship was much better than the smaller ships, and much cheaper than the bigger ships. Pilots spent lots of time training skills to maximize the power of their Battleships, where the last increment of training could take months for a tiny mechanical advantage. The richest pilots fitted their ships with rare, exotic modules that gave them tiny mechanical advantages. The result was that all the tiny edges added up cumulatively to a consistent winning advantage in fights.
To counter this tactic the Goons, who had neither the length of training time nor access to the supply of exotic modules determined that a mixed force of cheap, small ships and Battleships could win against the experienced vets if they could get a numerical advantage of about 2:1.
The cheap small ships used a tactic called "tackling" which slowed the opposing ships and blocked their ability to "warp out" of the fight. They were fragile and died often, but the Goons would have large stocks of these ships in nearby systems so that a pilot that lost a ship could race back to base, get a new hull, and race back to the fight quickly. They essentially became inhaustible.
With the enemy tackled a lot of the advantages of the high level skills and exotic modules were negated. The Goons would then gang up on target Battleships and destroy them one at a time. They would lose their own Battleships during this process, but again, they had positioned reinforcement hulls nearby so their Battleship pilots could get back in the fight.
It was essentially a war of attrition, where one side was losing a lot of money much faster than the other side. Essentially the Goons "bled" BoB catastrophically.
The problem with the Goon strategy is that actually taking territory required the use of one of the bigger than Battleship hulls to engage in siege warfare against player-built locations called Stations. Since the battles at stations were sieges, the Goons didn't have the advantage of being able to pick territory close to reinforcements. And they had to use big, expensive ships that required a lot of training (more than six months, minimum) to use, so they couldn't rely on rookie pilots. The Goons proved they could defend their own space, and that they could beat BoB in battles, but they couldn't take new territory against entrenched defenders. They essentially creatd a static WWI style front line.
The Goon innovation showed how a new Alliance could get started and have some initial success against disorganized incohesive opposition, but it didn't actually displace existing cohesive effective opponents. Long term the only thing that has done so has been internal breakdowns in leadership leading to sabotage.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Players will find a way, that is all I'm saying. Here is an interesting little story, from Age of Conan. Now it has been a number of years so I forget which Boss Mob it was, maybe the first one.
The Boss Mobs use their abilities with cool downs, just as players do. The Devs had designed the Boss Mobs to react to all sorts of combinations of attacks and it would know which attack was used, know how long before it could be used again, and it would anticipate the next attack based on the available character classes it was fighting. The Boss Mob(s) were prepared for any group make-up with the exception of one.
If your party was made up of one class, all with the same skills, and used them in a staggered cycle, the Boss Mob would fall in a fraction of the time. The was a flaw in its programming because the devs never anticipated that tactic. The tactic was effective because it defied the Trinity of group make-up.
Players will find a way.... That doesn't mean the Devs are not smart or they are not learning from past experiences. Players have numbers on their side.
Here is another interesting thought. The Devs have said that we will die a lot in PFO, but there is an effort to limit the potential for an alpha strike, one shot-kill.
At some point, shear numbers vs. one will always prevail. I'm not concerning myself with efficiency of force, only at what threshold is overwhelming force achieved.
I figured 8:1 (with expected, low level modifications)is probably the point in which a new character can be alpha striked, with a one-shot kill.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that if you can get 8 hostiles into position for an alpha strike on one, you have already fought and won the significant part of the fight.
Yes I understand that, but it does not have to be 8:1 overall advantage. It could be 8:1 focusing fire. The groups could be 8 vs. 5 lets say.
1. 8 alpha strikes from surprise, 5 is now 4 instantly.
2. 8 focuses on next single target, and let say they lose 2 and victim loses 1.
6 vs. 3
5 vs 2
4 vs 1
4 vs 0 or 3 vs. 0
This is just a hypothetical, but I think it would realistically play out this way often enough to be accepted as true.
Numerical advantage > Most others (not all, but most).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that if you can get 8 hostiles into position for an alpha strike on one, you have already fought and won the significant part of the fight.
This is a good example of why it is il-advised to travel on your own. Safety in numbers right? But I agree, if you can manage to get 8 individual's to circle and coordinate a strike on a single target, there isn't much the target can do, nor should there be. Honestly, there should be a point where sheer numbers will overwhelm an individual, regardless of skill/gear/"level". Atleast that is my POV.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For standard combat, sure. Once we get into group formations though, I would expect those 8 alpha strikes will be applied against the group as a whole instead of the individual, or would encounter a much higher resistance from a shared shield wall allowing the target to survive the alpha strike. We don't really have a lot of info on group fighting yet, but I think that if you are in formation, traditional number disparity no longer applies. Granted, if the army is big enough, you can still be overwhelmed, but as Leonidas proved but it will be VERY costly to do so.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I think that if you can get 8 hostiles into position for an alpha strike on one, you have already fought and won the significant part of the fight.This is a good example of why it is il-advised to travel on your own. Safety in numbers right? But I agree, if you can manage to get 8 individual's to circle and coordinate a strike on a single target, there isn't much the target can do, nor should there be. Honestly, there should be a point where sheer numbers will overwhelm an individual, regardless of skill/gear/"level". Atleast that is my POV.
Skill/gear/training determine how much of a numerical advantage is required.
Quantity does have a quality of its own.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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@ Ryan is a battle of attrition impossible in PFO?
No I think they'll be quite common.
At what point would you imagine, numerical advantage would tip the scales?
I believe that in general what will happen is that any time a numerically superior force engages with a numerically smaller force the smaller force will lose.
The first notable exception will be when the difference is very slight - if there are 100 characters on one side and 105 characters on the other, that probably won't be the determining factor.
The second notable exception should be when a numerically superior force of rookie characters engages a prepared and properly equipped smaller force of average characters. At some point the zerg rush will succeed, but we hope to make that point fairly substantial.
I'll note that "losing" here implies that the other side decides it can't win and withdraws. It does not imply exclusively a TPK.