Goblin Squad Member
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send a hash to every client...Never, ever trust the client. It is in the hands of the enemy.Hey Ryan, Bludd and I asked a couple of on topic questions...
Does passive rep and alignment gain and loss occur while you are offline?
Your answer is already in the post. It says each "hour of playtime". You can't play while logged off. Unless GW has redefined playtime for their game (they haven't) then playtime and being logged out are mutually exclusive states.
You'll have to be logged in.
It makes sense right. Passive reputation gain is a reward for acting cool in the game so why would you get that reward if you're not even in the game? The only exception I can see is (not necessarily passive anyway) if you attacker-flag-hit someone but logout before they die to attempt to avoid the associated rep/alignment changes.
I was actually speaking specifically of alignment gain out of game, the blog says nothing about when the shift takes place. Reputation regen clearly takes place only in game, passively, but there will also be active ways to gain reputation.
So back to the questions I posed concerning alignment.......
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Goblin Squad Member
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Never ever EVER let yourself get roped into a fair fight. I thought this guy said he played EVE..If player numbers are capped how do you intend to make it fair for the sides so that the smaller side can't gain an advantage because a larger attacker can't bring all its force to bearA prior question is 'Should they?' A basic element of choosing terrain is to deny your enemy the ability to bring all his force to bear. Leonidas at Thermopylae. Alexander at Granicus focused his phalanx of companions whereas his opponent spread his numerically superior cavalry across the whole front. And the whole purpose of turning a flank is to create a front where you can apply superior force even with lesser numbers.
Why do you argue that the whole merit of tactics should be removed from battle? Is the only force multiplier available to you superior numbers?
Maybe he is channeling Xerxes or Darius.
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Goblin Squad Member
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send a hash to every client...Never, ever trust the client. It is in the hands of the enemy.Hey Ryan, Bludd and I asked a couple of on topic questions...
Does passive rep and alignment gain and loss occur while you are offline?
Your answer is already in the post. It says each "hour of playtime". You can't play while logged off. Unless GW has redefined playtime for their game (they haven't) then playtime and being logged out are mutually exclusive states.
You'll have to be logged in.
It makes sense right. Passive reputation gain is a reward for acting cool in the game so why would you get that reward if you're not even in the game? The only exception I can see is (not necessarily passive anyway) if you attacker-flag-hit someone but logout before they die to attempt to avoid the associated rep/alignment changes.
The numbers they used is for Rep and alignment... they also said that if you are playing a Paladin that you will lose L and G over time... and if I remember correctly it said that you will log in to a lower number.
So lets get it clear.
Its not just a reward, you will lose alignment over time...
And the final point... When you attacker-flag-hit someone, you lost the rep there, not when they die.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Never ever EVER let yourself get roped into a fair fight. I thought this guy said he played EVE..If player numbers are capped how do you intend to make it fair for the sides so that the smaller side can't gain an advantage because a larger attacker can't bring all its force to bearA prior question is 'Should they?' A basic element of choosing terrain is to deny your enemy the ability to bring all his force to bear. Leonidas at Thermopylae. Alexander at Granicus focused his phalanx of companions whereas his opponent spread his numerically superior cavalry across the whole front. And the whole purpose of turning a flank is to create a front where you can apply superior force even with lesser numbers.
Why do you argue that the whole merit of tactics should be removed from battle? Is the only force multiplier available to you superior numbers?
His point was, if the number cap for a hex is 100... and the attackers force their players into the hex constantly while the siege timers are running... that by the time the timers are up they may have 90 people in the hex...
So the defenders lose with barely a fight.
How exactly is that related to playing Eve?
And finally, he just told you that a fair fight doesnt matter. My alliance (and I have guessed at his) would take 10 guys against 20+ and come out on top most of the time...
Call that a fair fight?
Also, you do need to look at who is hostile and who isnt, you called him hostile in another thread, and you are hostile to him in this one.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I was actually speaking specifically of alignment gain out of game, the blog says nothing about when the shift takes place. Reputation regen clearly takes place only in game, passively, but there will also be active ways to gain reputation.
So back to the questions I posed concerning alignment.......
In the corner cases it would suck to be out of the game for 2 weeks and come back to find your paladin under 6000 GvE and unable to use that super special ability you logged out with.
It would be terrible if the system made it feel you HAD to log in and play or get your alignment yoinked back to default core levels, or were a mass murderer who left for a month and came back NG. The out of game shifts would have to be so small to keep them fair to players as to render them meaningless most of the time, I think.
Until I hear a really good argument for it I hope Active Alignment doesn't drift back to Core while logged out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The only exception I can see is (not necessarily passive anyway) if you attacker-flag-hit someone but logout before they die to attempt to avoid the associated rep/alignment changes.
Most games have some log-out timer, a time where you might be disconnected but your avatar is still in the world. The blog said that the attacker flag lasts 30 seconds*, so the easiest thing might be to have the log-out last more than 30 seconds if you're flagged as an attacker (or maybe you can't even log-out while you have that flag active.)
When a character attacks a character who was not Hostile, the character making the attack gets flagged as an Attacker. If the character with Attacker hits their target again in the next thirty seconds, they become Hostile, and lose Reputation. ... However, if you have the Attacker flag and your target dies by another means before it expires, you still lose Reputation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The only exception I can see is (not necessarily passive anyway) if you attacker-flag-hit someone but logout before they die to attempt to avoid the associated rep/alignment changes.Most games have some log-out timer, a time where you might be disconnected but your avatar is still in the world. The blog said that the attacker flag lasts 30 seconds*, so the easiest thing might be to have the log-out last more than 30 seconds if you're flagged as an attacker (or maybe you can't even log-out while you have that flag active.)
When a character attacks a character who was not Hostile, the character making the attack gets flagged as an Attacker. If the character with Attacker hits their target again in the next thirty seconds, they become Hostile, and lose Reputation. ... However, if you have the Attacker flag and your target dies by another means before it expires, you still lose Reputation.
Thanks for the quote. And yep, there is always a log out timer... I know in Eve its something like 15 minutes (been a while since I have dealt with it. You warp off and have to be scanned down but you can be killed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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His point was, if the number cap for a hex is 100... and the attackers force their players into the hex constantly while the siege timers are running... that by the time the timers are up they may have 90 people in the hex...
So the defenders lose with barely a fight.
Hm.
What would that scenario look like if settlement citizens have priority access to their settlement hex?Say my 90 member horde of Hoi Barbaroi arrives to storm your settlement with its laughable fortifications. We spring out of the underbrush to charge at your settlement gate seemingly out of no where. Only one of your citizens is inside, whistling under his green felt cap. When he returns with his cup of tea to check the progress on the hundredth crafted tomahawk he notices something amiss. "Oh /sit!" he cries and puts out the call to his fellows raising the alarm on skype and facebook and mass email. As the settlement members log in over the next ten minutes they will be unable to log in to a character in that hex. That is the posed case. Now if settlement members have priority in that hex, then as they log in my Barbaroi begin to disappear from the hex one by one as the defenders log in.
My guess is both solutions are untenable from the game's PoV.
My expectation is that if there is such a hard cap then settlements will try to leave their citizens logged in, inside the settlement, against such an invasion event.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I want to get at this alignment thing from a different angle.
Cities in real history don't have laser focused alignment similarities, not even the towns in the River Kingdoms are like that, so logically it's a decision the devs made with some sort of PO-specific purpose to it.
We've gone over the troubles of playing and joining settlements with the one-step rule. I honestly can't see any reason Brighthaven shouldn't be LG, it's founded as the geographical embodiment of a specific code of justice after all, but it's planned NG as far as I can tell just to allow the CGs in.
So why can't we get one alignment bar (all Goods, or all Lawfuls) or have diagonal count as one step for PO? I've never seen this explained: Why is the one-step rule so important to devs for building the game?
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Goblin Squad Member
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It might potentially save some code and perhaps save some grief if a settlement's laws are autoset by alignment choice, autobanning from citizenship out-of-alignment prospects automatically.
A good reason to maintain alignment.
Settlement leaders could not set special case exceptions and inclusions.
So if a member of an LG settlement falls away from the One True Faith because he went on a murderous rampage (And It Was Glorious!) he not only might lose his Holy Handgrenade skill but also his house and belongings because of it.
Similarly if a nefarious doer of evil acts on a compassionate sentiment and not only does not steal the babies' candies but actually gives their poor starving widow of a mother some sustenance and shelter without enslaving her and her children yea unto the seventh generation, then he too might be ousted from his belongings.
And it would not be blamed on the settlement leadership since it is automated. Less drama.
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Goblin Squad Member
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His point was, if the number cap for a hex is 100... and the attackers force their players into the hex constantly while the siege timers are running... that by the time the timers are up they may have 90 people in the hex...
So the defenders lose with barely a fight.
Hm.
What would that scenario look like if settlement citizens have priority access to their settlement hex?Say my 90 member horde of Hoi Barbaroi arrives to storm your settlement with its laughable fortifications. We spring out of the underbrush to charge at your settlement gate seemingly out of no where. Only one of your citizens is inside, whistling under his green felt cap. When he returns with his cup of tea to check the progress on the hundredth crafted tomahawk he notices something amiss. "Oh /sit!" he cries and puts out the call to his fellows raising the alarm on skype and facebook and mass email. As the settlement members log in over the next ten minutes they will be unable to log in to a character in that hex. That is the posed case. Now if settlement members have priority in that hex, then as they log in my Barbaroi begin to disappear from the hex one by one as the defenders log in.
My guess is both solutions are untenable from the game's PoV.
My expectation is that if there is such a hard cap then settlements will try to leave their citizens logged in, inside the settlement, against such an invasion event.
EE is scheduled to last 12-18 months, let's use 15. In those 15 months GW will probably ask us to gather up somewhere and do stuff trying to break the game on purpose, see how we did it if we can and double dog dare us to try to break it again; lots of times.
I personally am choosing to 1.) give GW enough credit they're not going to get caught completely off guard by 100 people in a hex, and 2.) wait for the results of a series of stress tests in EE before I think the sky is falling about hex pops six months or a year down the road from then when massive battles become a thing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Being Your example characters are booted from their settlement when their core alignments change, not their active alignments. Since changing core alignment is the player's choice, the settlement leaders can't be blamed. And it looks like it might be automated based on this bit:
Only characters within one Alignment step in both their Core and Active Alignment can join the settlement, and if your Core Alignment falls out of that range you are forced out of the settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Being Your example characters are booted from their settlement when their core alignments change, not their active alignments. Since changing core alignment is the player's choice, the settlement leaders can't be blamed. And it looks like it might be automated based on this bit:
Only characters within one Alignment step in both their Core and Active Alignment can join the settlement, and if your Core Alignment falls out of that range you are forced out of the settlement.
It really looks like there will need to be some kind of debuff in place when your core and active alignments don't match. Otherwise people will pick a core alignment that matches the settlement they want to join and then let the active alignment go anywhere without worry. If you aren't playing a paladin, it won't matter.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why is the one-step rule so important to devs for building the game?
Because they are trying to get what was a bad role playing system to begin with, to also function as a game mechanic to control player actions in a system that ultimately will prove to be an unworkable and yet another bad system.
I don't need future hopes to state this opinion, just decades' worth of experience in TT,PC-RPGs and MMO experience to never have seen it work well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I want to get at this alignment thing from a different angle.
Cities in real history don't have laser focused alignment similarities, not even the towns in the River Kingdoms are like that, so logically it's a decision the devs made with some sort of PO-specific purpose to it.
We've gone over the troubles of playing and joining settlements with the one-step rule. I honestly can't see any reason Brighthaven shouldn't be LG, it's founded as the geographical embodiment of a specific code of justice after all, but it's planned NG as far as I can tell just to allow the CGs in.
So why can't we get one alignment bar (all Goods, or all Lawfuls) or have diagonal count as one step for PO? I've never seen this explained: Why is the one-step rule so important to devs for building the game?
I have never had the impression that the one step was instituted for roleplaying or historical accuracy reasons.
I have no problem with the one step, and would actually see more beneficial to it if it is tied to "meaningful interactions".
If you want to make allowances for every playstyle, you have to do it outside of game mechanics. That incurs an organizational cost, you have to structure it and maintain it. One side or another might incur costs for participating in an action that has mechanical drawbacks.
I would like to see some leniency with training in foreign citiens, not to allow a vehicle to allow for one power to do everything, but as another thing that can possibly be traded between powers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It really looks like there will need to be some kind of debuff in place when your core and active alignments don't match. Otherwise people will pick a core alignment that matches the settlement they want to join and then let the active alignment go anywhere without worry. If you aren't playing a paladin, it won't matter.
Then GW would have to develop activities (PVP and PVE) to support every alignment so that players can maintain their core alignment.
The game seizes too be an Open World Sandbox and it becomes an alignment grind to maintain core.
This would mean escalations that will shift your alignment to CE and also build up reputation for doing so.
This would mean having escalations tailor made for NG, so as not to shift their alignment towards lawful, chaotic or evil.
Corner Alignment settlements if they even exist at all, will find their citizenry autobanned any time they shift even by one point (there is always the one point that makes the difference) making them paralyzed with inaction any time a meaningful choice is presented to break from one of the alignment axis.
I play one of the easiest alignments to play, CN, and I still see this alignment system to be ridiculously ill conceived.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's not like one step avoids problematic mixes. We could just corner alignments each have their own spots and make 75% of settlements NN and let NG mingle with NE, lawfuls and chaotics stirred together every day, both at the same time. See what happens to corruption and restlessness then.
I would feel better if each settlement could have one step + one bar. Like all the Goods, all the Chaotics, all the Neutrals on either the GvE axis or LvC axis but not both, kind of as a theme to the city.
At least an explicit statement that you can train outside your membership settlement if the other is willing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Corner Alignment settlements if they even exist at all, will find their citizenry autobanned any time they shift even by one point (there is always the one point that makes the difference) making them paralyzed with inaction any time a meaningful choice is presented to break from one of the alignment axis.
I'm not suggesting or advocating settlements auto-banning members if their active alignment moves away from core. I am advocating a small debuff that lowers resistance & damage and crafting and gathering skills if your active and core alignments do not match. The severity of the debuff could increase the further away from your core you are. Maybe 1 step is 2.5% debuff, two steps a 5% debuff, and so on, for a total of 10% if you are LG core with CE active alignments or vice-versa.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not suggesting or advocating settlements auto-banning members if their active alignment moves away from core. I am advocating a small debuff that lowers resistance & damage and crafting and gathering skills if your active and core alignments do not match. The severity of the debuff could increase the further away from your core you are. Maybe 1 step is 2.5% debuff, two steps a 5% debuff, and so on, for a total of 10% if you are LG core with CE active alignments or vice-versa.
I like the 1,3,6,10 series for increasing effects. So applied to your example, it could be a minor 2.5% debuff for being 1 step from your core, a significant 7.5% debuff for being 2 steps away, up to a disabling 25% debuff for being 4 steps from your core.
As a scary thought, could it be applied to training/XP gain? Not at 2.5%, though - I'd think losing 1% of XP gains for being one step out would be painful, and people would switch their core well before they got to 10% reduction of XP gains.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's not like one step avoids problematic mixes. We could just make 80% of settlements NN and let NG mingle with NE, lawfuls and chaotics stirred together every day, both at the same time. See what happens to corruption and restlessness then.
I would feel better if each settlement could have one step + one bar. Like all the Goods, all the Chaotics, all the Neutrals on either the GvE axis or LvC axis but not both, kind of as a theme to the city.
At least an explicit statement that you can train outside your membership settlement if the other is willing.
The problem with this is, Ryan Dancey has pushed down everyone's throats so often, that Lawful settlements will be the best. That chaotics are at best an unnecessary drawn on settlement efficiency and at worse a pariah just welcoming in bad behavior. It is unlikely that most settlements, if any would go NE or CN, certainly none that would go CE.
CG has some chance, because the devs won't steer the system to make any good alignment suck.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This would mean escalations that will shift your alignment to CE and also build up reputation for doing so.
I don't see a difficulty doing that. Some escalations are CE but it isn't a challenge to imagine other escalations that are LG. TN escalations would be most likely midway between a CG settlement and an LE settlement or between a CE and a LG settlement.
They could mix escalations to be most opposed to the nearest settlements.
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If player numbers are capped how do you intend to make it fair for the sides so that the smaller side can't gain an advantage because a larger attacker can't bring all its force to bearA prior question is 'Should they?' A basic element of choosing terrain is to deny your enemy the ability to bring all his force to bear. Leonidas at Thermopylae. Alexander at Granicus focused his phalanx of companions whereas his opponent spread his numerically superior cavalry across the whole front. And the whole purpose of turning a flank is to create a front where you can apply superior force even with lesser numbers.
Why do you argue that the whole merit of tactics should be removed from battle? Is the only force multiplier available to you superior numbers?
There is a difference between choosing a spot which geographically prevents the enemy bringing its full force to bear on you at once to it happening because of technical limitations to the game system.
Let me throw a scenario out there for you
Your settlement is around 1000 warriors
My settlement is around 100 warriors
*edit* forgot to say I would love to see choice of battlefield matter and being able to use the geography in the tactical manner you describe and would be all for it. Most engagements won't be like that though
The system can handle somewhere around 200 characters in one area.
Would you be happy to lose your settlement in a battle because both sides are only allowed to bring 100 people?
Now don't get me wrong I am pretty sure that Goblinworks will think that is as undesirable an outcome as your other 900 settlement members that didn't get to join the fight did.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If player numbers are capped how do you intend to make it fair for the sides so that the smaller side can't gain an advantage because a larger attacker can't bring all its force to bearA prior question is 'Should they?' A basic element of choosing terrain is to deny your enemy the ability to bring all his force to bear. Leonidas at Thermopylae. Alexander at Granicus focused his phalanx of companions whereas his opponent spread his numerically superior cavalry across the whole front. And the whole purpose of turning a flank is to create a front where you can apply superior force even with lesser numbers.
Why do you argue that the whole merit of tactics should be removed from battle? Is the only force multiplier available to you superior numbers?
There is a difference between choosing a spot which geographically prevents the enemy bringing its full force to bear on you at once to it happening because of technical limitations to the game system.
Let me throw a scenario out there for you
Your settlement is around 1000 warriors
My settlement is around 100 warriors
*edit* forgot to say I would love to see choice of battlefield matter and being able to use the geography in the tactical manner you describe and would be all for it. Most engagements won't be like that though
The system can handle somewhere around 200 characters in one area.
Would you be happy to lose your settlement in a battle because both sides are only allowed to bring 100 people?
Now don't get me wrong I am pretty sure that Goblinworks will think that is as undesirable an outcome as your other 900 settlement members that didn't get to join the fight did.
Using your example ,would it be possible for all soldiers to register before the battle begins, their 1000 and your 100. To deal with the problem of crashing, a limit of 200 per battle is used, just an example of cource.100 from each army fight the first round of battle, after that new soldiers join round 2 and the round one soldiers cant join. So the 1000 man army will win , or maybe multiple battlefields in a war so the small army cant engage the big one on all battlefields and the battlefields are far enough apart so you don't get a crash.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So if they built it such that the battlefield is discrete?
Mind, they have not suggested anything of the sort will be the case.
But if they did then of your hundred doughty warriors ninety survived.
Then they face the second hundred-ten defenders of my settlement.
And so on.
At last your most valiant heroes, ten named men strong and true, now face 190 of my settlement's defenders by the time they reach the stone walls, tall and stout.
~~edit~~ notmyrealname ninja'd me
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So if they built it such that the battlefield is discrete?
Mind, they have suggested nothing of the sort will be the case.
But if they did then of your hundred doughty warriors ninety survived.
Then they face the second hundred-ten defenders of my settlement.
And so on.
At least your most valiant heroes, ten named men strong and true, now face 190 of my settlement's defenders by the time they reach the stone walls, tall and stout.
~~edit~~ notmyrealname ninja'd me
That is certainly a solution and not one I would be averse to. I think the question of how they are going to handle it was reasonable and the suggestion you posted I would have considered a decent response from Goblinworks had they suggested it was how they might handle it.
Participants in a battle only having the one life I think would make life interesting and certainly change some of the more common tactics. It would diminish the effect of the zerg for instance as conserving the life of your troops becomes important.
*while I replied to Being equal credit goes to notmyrealname for the suggestion :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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So it is with crowdforging. We think up problems and suggest solutions. At least that is the sort of stuff the community has been doing. I think GW's version of crowdforging may look more like a poll where we prioritize, but we do know they read the posts we make and likely discuss our thoughts on occasion.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would like to see a system where in a battle players die and cant come back to the same battle, so it goes on until all that showed up to fight have gotten in the battle. So a general chooses what units to send in and maybe withdraw ( they cant return if withdrawn), until both armies are 'used up".
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think GW's version of crowdforging may look more like a poll where we prioritize, but we do know they read the posts we make and likely discuss our thoughts on occasion.
Ryan's given you some hope:
It would very dangerous to assume Crowdforging will just be a series of votes. That won't work. We can't have a game designed by majority rule.
Crowdforging needs to be a matrix of ways that people can influence the design. Some of those things will be simple polls. But some of it has to incorporate more nuanced approaches.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We've gone over the troubles of playing and joining settlements with the one-step rule. I honestly can't see any reason Brighthaven shouldn't be LG, it's founded as the geographical embodiment of a specific code of justice after all, but it's planned NG as far as I can tell just to allow the CGs in.
Brighthaven is designed as a city to promote goodness, in all its forms. TEO (the founding company) is NG, because we see the benefits of law, and the benefits of chaos. I am one of the more Lawful members of the group, but we have a fairly large contingent of chaotic aligned players/characters as well. We aren't about a code of justice, or a crazy long list of laws. We're about a place where anyone devoted to Good can have a city to call their own.
/end tangent
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well thats the thing a paladin in a LN settlement wont have access to the same things as easy as a paladin in a LG settlement. However he will have different advantages than the other paladin. To get his training perhaps he needs to interact with the LG settlement and get to the point where he can buy training from them. I see that as positive as it enforces one of the key goals of PfO; Player interactions.
What will his advantages be though? More than likely he will have better access to trade in general. A LN settlement is much much more likely to allow all people in to trade, even those CE folks. The second is that he will have access to a wider range of options from a metagame stand point.
A LN settlement could have a LE company, that LE company could comprise of nothing but assassins who are used to 1) discourage some competition to the LN settlement and 2) Allow the neutral and good members of the settlement to settle scores without getting their hands dirty 3) access to possibly other evil only (undead/demonic) benefits. So if i was a LG paladin in an LG settlement my rep would probably take a huge hit if it was known that I was sending assassins against people i didnt like. That reputation hit will heavily affect someone in a LG settlement as LG settlements will probably have high reputation requirements. The paladin in the LN settlement doesnt have that problem since by and far anyone in his settlement could have made that contract, and if he is called out and takes a rep it it wont hurt as bad since a LN settlement probably has lower rep requirements due to allowing free trade.
its a trade off between what kind of benefits the player wants. but remember that thus far there are only really two classes with heavy alignment restrictions. That is the paladin which will require high (+7000) alignment in order to use some abilities, and the cleric which is required to be in 1 step of their god. Barbarian and Monk each have alignment restrictions but as far as we know they dont have...
Playing Devils Advocate for a moment....this assumes the player uses the in game mechanic for taking out assasination contracts....rather then simply saying in chat...."Hey Joe, could you go kill X for me, I'll give you some coin" or even "Hey Joe, can you go put a contract on X for me, I'll give you the coin" something the game simply can't recognize as being done.
If players can step around mechanical restrictions via out of game channels to avoid repercussions they will do so. If a system promotes that and there is no way of preventing it then the system is merely wasted coding time that could be spent more productively.
Dancey recognises this when he talked about being able to view market prices from a distance and that if they didn't allow it third party websites would just spring up so it is an issue I believe they are fully on board with
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Goblin Squad Member
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Playing Devils Advocate for a moment....this assumes the player uses the in game mechanic for taking out assasination contracts....rather then simply saying in chat...."Hey Joe, could you go kill X for me, I'll give you some coin" or even "Hey Joe, can you go put a contract on X for me, I'll give you the coin" something the game simply can't recognize as being done.
No, but it could easly make any instance of one player giving an item to another part of the trading system, and it has been alluded to that trading with low-rep or evil people can bring you down to their level. I don't see any reason for the game system to make a difference between you giving as assassin 5000 gold or you placing an assassination contract for 5000 gold. The contract just provides a measure of protection for the assassin and the client, but the transfer of funds would provide the evil and or rep hit.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Playing Devils Advocate for a moment....this assumes the player uses the in game mechanic for taking out assasination contracts....rather then simply saying in chat...."Hey Joe, could you go kill X for me, I'll give you some coin" or even "Hey Joe, can you go put a contract on X for me, I'll give you the coin" something the game simply can't recognize as being done.No, but it could easly make any instance of one player giving an item to another part of the trading system, and it has been alluded to that trading with low-rep or evil people can bring you down to their level. I don't see any reason for the game system to make a difference between you giving as assassin 5000 gold or you placing an assassination contract for 5000 gold. The contract just provides a measure of protection for the assassin and the client, but the transfer of funds would provide the evil and or rep hit.
In which case you would simply use a 3rd party cut-out for such actions. Possibly even an ALT that was created for the specific purpose of such transfers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In which case you would simply use a 3rd party cut-out for such actions. Possibly even an ALT that was created for the specific purpose of such transfers.Playing Devils Advocate for a moment....this assumes the player uses the in game mechanic for taking out assasination contracts....rather then simply saying in chat...."Hey Joe, could you go kill X for me, I'll give you some coin" or even "Hey Joe, can you go put a contract on X for me, I'll give you the coin" something the game simply can't recognize as being done.No, but it could easly make any instance of one player giving an item to another part of the trading system, and it has been alluded to that trading with low-rep or evil people can bring you down to their level. I don't see any reason for the game system to make a difference between you giving as assassin 5000 gold or you placing an assassination contract for 5000 gold. The contract just provides a measure of protection for the assassin and the client, but the transfer of funds would provide the evil and or rep hit.
If trading with low-rep or low alignment characters is an activity that lowered rep or alignment, then any cut-out will take the hit, and then you will take the hit when you trade with them.
Using a 3rd party work-around may slow the descent, but it wouldn't stop it.
In which case you would simply use a 3rd party cut-out for such actions.Ryan has specifically addressed 3rd party cut-outs multiple times. My understanding is that they're going to be using Social Graphs in some way to make sure this isn't effective.
Dancey has no access to information on most social networks to form decent social graphs. While he has stated they plan a more facebook style of thing instead of using forums I expect that to be not widely used.
Without a social network style app that the majority uses or the support of an intelligence gathering government organisation such as the NSA he can tell us social graphs will make everything better all he likes but it won't make it true
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Goblin Squad Member
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Unlike in PFRPG, in which you pick big details up front which then define what you can or should do in play, PFO was tending to turn those things on their heads. Instead of picking a class to define your skills, you pick skills which eventually determine your 'class'. I thought alignment was the same way; instead of picking an alignment to provide some help on how to act in various situations, you'd just act as you wish and see what that produces. I am all for more flexibility, but for a tabletop game systems to build your own class are prone to weird loopholes since the system tries to retrofit itself to already-existing classes. I like the idea of tracking alignment by behaviour, but such systems get bogged down in too much bookkeeping. A new skills-first system needn't carry the baggage of existing classes and computers are great at bookkeeping, so I liked the opportunity for turnabout PFO might have afforded.
From the perspective of making small choices first and seeing what overall trend they produce later, what should have happened is that anyone can apply for membership to a settlement, and the leaders would allow or disallow them. Those leaders could even set some conditions to auto-reject certain applications so they don't have to deal with floods of CE characters applying just to annoy a mostly-LG settlement. Then the alignment of the settlement itself would be defined as an average of its members, perhaps with a little greater influence being weighted toward the alignments of the leadership.
Now, if not being of the 'right' alignment means being disallowed membership in the same settlement or nation as our player community, we're back to the paradigm of picking alignment up front and playing to keep it later. Maybe GW is trying to tell us to play as individuals first and see what community we fall into later, but that's counterproductive. People are likely to play longer when they have more friends in the game, and getting stuck with the settlement equivalent of a PUG (pick-up group) makes that unlikely. It isn't that I don't think the alignment system has a place in the game, I just think they've lost a lot of ground with the way they're applying it here.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Some thoughts....
- I'm not a fan of the alignment system (no secret there) but I fully accept that PFO will have one. I'm simply playing Devil's Advocate so that the limitations and shortcomings of that system can be explored. That's intended as a good and constructive thing. ANY design choice is likely to have some limitations and shortcomings just as it has strengths. I think it's good and usefull to have some idea what those might be. In some cases GW might be able to mitigated some of them with controls designed into the system. Even in cases where it can't, I think it's valuable for both players and designers to understand the limitations of any system that is built. Though probably most of my "insights" are not anything GW hasn't considered themselves a thousanf times over.
- It's perfectly reasonable to expect that some aspects of PFO won't be appealing to some players. I happen to think variety in games is an awesome thing. PFO is aiming to be different in a number of ways then other games....that's cool. There are also plenty of other games that are are very different from PFO that are still awesome games. For example Battlefield 1942 and Mount and Blade were entirely different games with different design decisions then PFO is making. I happened to enjoy the heck out of both, YMMV. So I don't see the need to get overly defensive about the design of PFO. It's trying to achieve a certain set of things....and hopefully if those things are achieved successfully it'll be another awesome game that gamers can choose to play. It remains to be determined yet if it will be succesfull in those goals.
- On alignment based meta-organizations. Clearly the design intent is that settlements will be alignment based and settlements are pretty much the core of the mechanicaly represented territory control game. I fully expect that there will be meta-organizations, out of game, that are comprised of settlements with different alignments. There may be mechanical disincentives for that but there are going to be certain reasons outside of mechanics that are going to be hard to overcome. If the leaders of settlement Y and settlement X TRUST each other or are FREINDS in real life, it's going to be hard for Alignment mechanics to overcome that. If they happen to be situated in a certain way on the map, happen to have membership with complimentary play schedules, happen to have common enemies that threaten them. All these things are likely to exist as part of the meta-game reality and real-politik of how such alliances work in practice. I think it unlikely that will be overcome by settlement alignment mechanics unless they are terribly draconian....in which case you defeat alot of the purpose of not simply making a hard coded faction based PvP (e.g. Dark Age of Camelot) style game from the outset. YMMV.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe GW is trying to tell us to play as individuals first and see what community we fall into later, but that's counterproductive.
I think that to some degree we will be playing as individuals and companies first in EE, before we get to the settlement stage. So those who play thru EE will have formed community norms before they organize into settlements. What we might need is the ability to shift a company's alignment over time as we find where we stand.
If we know a lot about alignment before EE (recharge rate, hits for all of the actions) then we might be able to pick alignments before game start. But I think some of that will change throughout EE - so do we know enough to target group alignments at this stage?
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Goblin Squad Member
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In which case you would simply use a 3rd party cut-out for such actions. Possibly even an ALT that was created for the specific purpose of such transfers.Playing Devils Advocate for a moment....this assumes the player uses the in game mechanic for taking out assasination contracts....rather then simply saying in chat...."Hey Joe, could you go kill X for me, I'll give you some coin" or even "Hey Joe, can you go put a contract on X for me, I'll give you the coin" something the game simply can't recognize as being done.No, but it could easly make any instance of one player giving an item to another part of the trading system, and it has been alluded to that trading with low-rep or evil people can bring you down to their level. I don't see any reason for the game system to make a difference between you giving as assassin 5000 gold or you placing an assassination contract for 5000 gold. The contract just provides a measure of protection for the assassin and the client, but the transfer of funds would provide the evil and or rep hit.If trading with low-rep or low alignment characters is an activity that lowered rep or alignment, then any cut-out will take the hit, and then you will take the hit when you trade with them.
Using a 3rd party work-around may slow the descent, but it wouldn't stop it.
A cut-out is typicaly used because they are disposable or exist primarly for such purposes. For Example....the cut out has a High Rep and plays rarely...under existing mechanics they would continue to maintain a high rep as thier passive Rep gain would put them back at good Rep even from lowest Rep simply from 10-12 days of inactivity.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In which case you would simply use a 3rd party cut-out for such actions.Ryan has specifically addressed 3rd party cut-outs multiple times. My understanding is that they're going to be using Social Graphs in some way to make sure this isn't effective.Dancey has no access to information on most social networks to form decent social graphs. While he has stated they plan a more facebook style of thing instead of using forums I expect that to be not widely used.
Without a social network style app that the majority uses or the support of an intelligence gathering government organisation such as the NSA he can tell us social graphs will make everything better all he likes but it won't make it true
A "social graph" doesn't require Facebook. It's simply a way of analyzing the various interactions between characters in-game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In which case you would simply use a 3rd party cut-out for such actions.Ryan has specifically addressed 3rd party cut-outs multiple times. My understanding is that they're going to be using Social Graphs in some way to make sure this isn't effective.
I think you would have better luck with a Detect Alignment spell on a real person then doing that.....at least in any automated fashion without generating enough false positives to make the system unworkable.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A cut-out is typicaly used because they are disposable or exist primarly for such purposes. For Example....the cut out has a High Rep and plays rarely...under existing mechanics they would continue to maintain a high rep as thier passive Rep gain would put them back at good Rep even from lowest Rep simply from 10-12 days of inactivity.
The passive rep gain only happens while logged in. If they are required to spend time on an active account not engaged in any activity that lowers rep, the boredom cost will likely outweigh the benefit. Even if they are multi-boxing the alt, it's a significant expenditure of resources for very little gain.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A "social graph" doesn't require Facebook. It's simply a way of analyzing the various interactions between characters in-game.In which case you would simply use a 3rd party cut-out for such actions.Ryan has specifically addressed 3rd party cut-outs multiple times. My understanding is that they're going to be using Social Graphs in some way to make sure this isn't effective.Dancey has no access to information on most social networks to form decent social graphs. While he has stated they plan a more facebook style of thing instead of using forums I expect that to be not widely used.
Without a social network style app that the majority uses or the support of an intelligence gathering government organisation such as the NSA he can tell us social graphs will make everything better all he likes but it won't make it true
Nihimon, that can work a bit with Gold Sellers/Account Hackers to some extent because of the FREQUENCY with which the Gold Selling is being done as pretty much the sole activity the character is involved in. Even that requires alot of manual work to compensate for false positives. Yeah, if ALL a character was doing repeatedly every day was hiring assasins you might be able to detect for that. However the occasional use of that....you simply will never detect it with an automated system ...I can pretty much assure you of that.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Seems to be a lot of discussion due to people reading what they want to hear without substance because of the lack of a set definition by GW as to what they regard as legitimate banditry that have no negative effect on reputation but still allow ganking player X to force carebear player Y into a situation that can/will result in pvp other than the SAD system. Maybe there is none and thats fine, but is there 100% clarifying statement on that or is it still under development? Any answer is fine with me since we already have the SAD (Whoa have to tread carefully here)
Pluss if I'm reading this correctly will there be limitations to what areas SAD is in effect? I.e can you use SAD on a person in a back alley inside a city? Just a question if there is any information on it that I have missed in the blog.
Edit: Is there also a timer on SAD i.e a player that has already been victim of SAD will be in a "guarded" mode for i.e 10minutes?
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Goblin Squad Member
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The passive rep gain only happens while logged in. If they are required to spend time on an active account not engaged in any activity that lowers rep, the boredom cost will likely outweigh the benefit. Even if they are multi-boxing the alt, it's a significant expenditure of resources for very little gain.
A cut-out is typicaly used because they are disposable or exist primarly for such purposes. For Example....the cut out has a High Rep and plays rarely...under existing mechanics they would continue to maintain a high rep as thier passive Rep gain would put them back at good Rep even from lowest Rep simply from 10-12 days of inactivity.
So far I haven't seen any answers about whether passive Rep gain is offline or online. Even with online, there are algorythems that can try to detect for macro use to see if a player is really online or just simulating....but it's not all that easy for the clever ones, and usualy requires some manual GM intervention in order to do. If they want to and can afford to invest that many resources into halting the activity....well good luck to them on that.