Goblin Squad Member
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Tying reputation to contracts might be possible. It tracks with Ryan's statement: When you take selfish acts, you will lose rep. When you take acts that benefit the community you gain rep. If contracts are a way to encourage character interaction, and GW can distinguish between a legitimate contract and a contract that is being used to churn rep, it would work. Having a contract filing fee so every contract costs coin could reduce the use in rep churning.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ryan
The reason why i dont think that might be true is that LE is still worried about reputation and will want to maintain a high rep.
the reason for CE folks is to have people who dont care if they take rep/alignment loss for their actions. The result is that you have a group of people, ready to be hired where you can go "go there and kill" and they dont have any extra rules to prevent them from doing so.
The down side of CE is that they will have limited training, facilities, and they will basically always be vulnerable to getting killed since there will basically be no penalty for killing them.
In these cases the object isnt to go into even or fair fights, its to overwhelm your opponent KNOWING that a couple of you are going to get killed, BUT that the enemies death means more than yours does.
I agree with steelwing that unless it gets crazy with gank squads running with hundreds of people, the way to death with CE folks is to meet them with well equiped well trained characters to beat them down.
I for one agree with using a variety of alts to do different jobs and to keep your high rep folks hands clean.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@leperkhaun I think some of the way LE mercs might work is that they can join a conflict as an allied company, or use their own influence to engage in a rep-loss-free fight. How they'll fight will very much depend on how much rep they currently have and what they've decided their organization rep-floor will be. Sometimes they'll just accept some rep losses. (edit: especially when killing very-low-rep gutter sweepings.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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It might not be worth GW's coding time to have rep transfer based on trades, given the imperfect world of alts.
It might also be worth their time, given that one of Ryan's stated tools for getting certain folk to leave the game will be boring them into it. If one needs to create a series of alts of "increasing" alignment to transfer--in the extreme case--goods or coin from a CE earner to a LG spender, but many or most of those intermediaries are "damaged" by those transfers, we might expect a few folks to get bored at having to do that repeatedly.
Then people will just find a way around it. There are many ways to transfer coin except for direct trade.
There is transfer via market
There is transfer via SAD
There is transfer via looting
There is transfer via trade using a newly created alt
In addition not all has to be paid to the character carrying out the deeds in the first place
Example I have high rep alt A and low rep alt B
Character C wishes to hire B
C therefore trades the price to A. I then log on alt B and go off and do the dirty deed.
There is no way you can now connect the payment from C to A to the deed perpetrated by B (assuming precautions have been taken that B and A cannot be linked)
Alt B never actually needs money really because he gets all the training he can use before going low rep. After that all he needs is gear and consumables and he can "SAD" merchants which just happen to be carrying what he needs
(*It should be noted I am not saying this is necessarily something we would do just pointing out ways around)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the solution to CE militias will be LE mercenaries. I think that if there are a lot of CE militias, there will be an overwhelming number of LE mercenaries.
This is what I don't understand about this argument, pretty much everyone else can defeat a CE character 1 on 1, and also (from the blog)
Characters with the Attacker flag (or that are otherwise rendered Hostile) can be attacked by other players without suffering Reputation loss.
So if 50 CE alts show up to fight your 20 LG characters, they all become hostile to your group once they start swinging so you don't lose rep, and you'll likely beat them despite the significant numbers disadvantage due to the difference in training and gear (numbers made up, will likely be far off the mark). And that is of course assuming they have many more CE alts than you have characters in the area. So why is it an issue if someone has CE alts that he uses to benefit his group (in whatever small way) without being mechanically connected? IMO it seems a better course of action to just find ways within the system to attack them with mains, rather than going out of the system to attack with gimped alts.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Then people will just find a way around it. There are many ways to transfer coin except for direct trade.
This will be an arena where we see how effective Ryan and crew are at stopping those ways vs how effective their adversaries are at coming up with new ways once windows begin to close. I'm sure professional game designers are as adept at creating counter-strategies as you and others are at creating or discovering those strategies in the first place.
I think the solution to CE militias will be LE mercenaries. I think that if there are a lot of CE militias, there will be an overwhelming number of LE mercenaries.This is what I don't understand about this argument, pretty much everyone else can defeat a CE character 1 on 1, and also (from the blog)
Characters with the Attacker flag (or that are otherwise rendered Hostile) can be attacked by other players without suffering Reputation loss.So if 50 CE alts show up to fight your 20 LG characters, they all become hostile to your group once they start swinging so you don't lose rep, and you'll likely beat them despite the significant numbers disadvantage due to the difference in training and gear. And that is of course assuming they have many more CE alts than you have characters in the area. So why is it an issue if someone has CE alts that he uses to benefit his group (in whatever small way) without being mechanically connected? IMO it seems a better course of action to just find ways within the system to attack them with mains, rather than going out of the system to attack with gimped alts.
In the example of using this sort of tactics the CE alt mercs are a back up to the maximum sad technique done by high rep characters. The maximum sad is to ensure the sad is refused. The CE mercs are purely for those few times the sad is accepted. I would expect that the SAD would only be accepted by those who truly feel they have no chance of fighting.
It should be remembered that when issuing a SAD it does not mean you have to reveal your full force necessarily. As an example if a merchant and 6 armed guards are trundling through a hex we are trying to control. We may step out with 8 high rep chars to perform the SAD even though there is actually 20 characters in the group. We merely keep the others out of sight so the guards and merchant feel they have a chance. Once they refuse the SAD then we then get the rest of the group to come into vision and commence the fight.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are many ways to transfer coin except for direct trade.
There is transfer via market
There is transfer via SAD
There is transfer via looting
There is transfer via trade using a newly created alt
And the possible counters are:
- Markets could operate on an anonymous basis, with characters *required* to buy the lowest priced goods first. If you sell low, someone else can score your cargo, unless you totally control the marketplace. And a very low rep character might not be able to get to the market anyway.
- Transfers of cargo is possible by SAD. Transfer of coin doesn't need to be possible, if GW decides to close that off.
- Transfer by looting? To my knowledge no coin drops on death.
- Unpaid characters could be restricted from trading except thru marketplaces.
Like Jazz says, it remains to be seen how effective and wily GW will be.
I concede on your second point; a payment to me for my alt's services wouldn't be traceable.
@Urman
I expect markets to be as anonymous as Eve's are and lowest to be bought first still doesn't stop coin transfer
SAD transfer of cargo or coin doesn't matter which cargo can be turned into coin.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well, if you've got a group of high rep characters who've forced my group into fighting (for the record, I think that by its implementation SAD will not be usable in the way you've described, or at least not consistently) and you also have a large group of CE characters waiting in the wings to attack (and assuming you can coordinate a battle involving your mains and alts simultaneously), I'd say this example is unfair. :O Can't I at least get some attack dogs or something to keep it even?
But seriously, I have no doubt that you'll find ways to exert control over an area you don't mechanically own; I also do not doubt that people will find ways to get through it or around it. I don't even remember what the meaning of this particular discussion was anymore, but the point I was trying to make is that rolling with a low rep CE character is something players should be able to do. It's not griefing, or circumventing mechanics, or anything of that nature.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Another train of thought: instead of having CE alts ready to attack in the wings, why not have LE or LG alts ready to attack in the wings? If they are attacking at the same time as your SAD group, why use CE dudes (a maximum group size would be a reason; are there any others I'm not aware of)?
Well, if you've got a group of high rep characters who've forced my group into fighting (for the record, I think that by its implementation SAD will not be usable in the way you've described, or at least not consistently) and you also have a large group of CE characters waiting in the wings to attack (and assuming you can coordinate a battle involving your mains and alts simultaneously), I'd say this example is unfair. :O Can't I at least get some attack dogs or something to keep it even?
But seriously, I have no doubt that you'll find ways to exert control over an area you don't mechanically own; I also do not doubt that people will find ways to get through it or around it. I don't even remember what the meaning of this particular discussion was anymore, but the point I was trying to make is that rolling with a low rep CE character is something players should be able to do. It's not griefing, or circumventing mechanics, or anything of that nature.
Personally it would be preferable if there was some sort of mechanism whereby you can extend settlement control that way there is no way anyone can say there is anything underhand going on.
People exercising this control I think it would be fair to automatically flag as hostile so that anyone can attack them without fear of reputation loss or alignment change. Given that fighting over strategic travel routes and resources is by its very nature meaningful it seems better to me that they put in a way to exercise such control rather than making it so we get into all the back and forth about "its exploiting/not exploiting". I am sure there will be some that disagree however
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon I see a conflict in the current reputation system between this
Tying reputation to contracts might be possible. It tracks with Ryan's statement: When you take selfish acts, you will lose rep. When you take acts that benefit the community you gain rep.
which is playing the game as intended, and doing things like murder simulator, scams, intolerable language, and other stuff that GW says is playing the game in ways they don't want. Character reputation and player reputation, condoned and condemned, different purposes and uses, but all muddled into a single number.
My idea was to simplify and clarify everything. In my hypothetical Reputation refers only to how each character conducts themselves in-character. A different mechanic, Karma, handles toxic player behavior so reputation from condoned activity and Alignment don't have to be appropriated into a double-use of dealing with poisonous players. For example, I profoundly believe we should be able to play balanced viable CE that are truly vile people as characters but excellent members of the player community and provide tons of fun engaging content if this is going to be a commendable D&D game.
Karma: On a -7500 - 7500 scale. Start at 1000 if you want. Passively gained over time while logged in to reflect not being toxic while you play; ideally everyone is 7500 because no one is a jerk. Build Karma from being good, lose Karma from being bad, details how TBD but the serial murder algorithm is an example. At certain very low levels (I used -1500 and -4000 for roughly bottom 40% and bottom 25%) every character on the account has mechanical affects like loss of access to tier 2 or 3 keywords, inability to SAD or place contracts etc., results of bad karma, that blunt the affects of toxic behavior on other players in the game. At the lower level they become equivalent to starter characters in power. At the same time with any dip below 0 Karma a behavior modification program would be enacted with that player to hopefully reform/return them to good citizenship. If they're incorrigible, at least their low Karma characters aren't very good at ruining everyone else's good time until they get banned.
"But they can keep a different account with their high Karma characters on it to get around that" Yeah and those characters aren't making a toxic environment for other players around them are they? Working as intended.
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"But they can keep a different account with their high Karma characters on it to get around that" Yeah and those characters aren't making a toxic environment for other players around them are they? Working as intended.
No it is not working as intended. It is having no effect whatsoever because each character is on a separate account. There is no karma effect at all in that case
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the solution to CE militias will be LE mercenaries. I think that if there are a lot of CE militias, there will be an overwhelming number of LE mercenaries.
I'm curious why you feel Lawful Evil is the natural or most likely enemy of Chaotic Evil?
The way alignment is being presented in PFO, primarily by you, there is no game mechanics reasoning behind it, The alignment system in PFO barely has any connection to role playing, it being used primarily as a funnel / segregation tool.
I see it more likely that LE will use CE hoards as a tool rather than fighting to crush them, that would be more in line with what LE would do. That plan has even been expressed here on the forums several times and by multiple organizations.
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Goblin Squad Member
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- If I wanted to play EvE, I would play EvE. I don't want PFO to be EvE with Elf Skins.
and more...
I would think that the 3 AM problem would not be around with the fact that a Settlement etc. can set it's "PvP Window". If the group has players from different timezones and has a NPC faction guarding it, I think it is highly unlikely that a War on a Settlement could be done so fast that they would be powerless to defend themselves in their waking hours.
Got few hours that the Settlement is active? Lower your DI capabilities.
Want better security? Absorb/Hire Companies that work at different hours than you.
In terms of Hardcore vs Casual i see it this way:
The NPC areas will be perfect for early Casuals.
The Good and/or Wild Hex's will be perfect for experienced Casuals.
The Wild and/or Evil Hex's will be perfect for Hardcores.
Adventure for Casuals.
Feuds for Casuals/Hardcores.
Wars for Hardcores.
From the blogs I got the distinct feeling that they know about the issue and are taking the steps to create reasonably safe areas for the Casuals to play in.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm curious why you feel Lawful Evil is the natural or most likely enemy of Chaotic Evil?
The way alignment is being presented in PFO, primarily by you, there is no game mechanics reasoning behind it, The alignment system in PFO barely has any connection to role playing, it being used primarily as a funnel / segregation tool.
I see it more likely that LE will use CE hoards as a tool rather than fighting to crush them, that would be more in line with what LE would do. That plan has even been expressed here on the forums several times and by multiple organizations.
There is reason to suppose the discord between Law and Chaos is equal to the conflict between Evil and Good.
We have cultural biases. In the U.S. we tend to be more tolerant of chaotics and less tolerant of evil. This leads to a skewing of our intuitive conceptions of power balances. A general lack of understanding of the differences between liberty and anarchy is similarly perilous here in the States. But the fact is that chaos and order are just as opposed to one another as good and evil.
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Goblin Squad Member
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"But they can keep a different account with their high Karma characters on it to get around that" Yeah and those characters aren't making a toxic environment for other players around them are they? Working as intended.No it is not working as intended. It is having no effect whatsoever because each character is on a separate account. There is no karma effect at all in that case
You're going to keep getting new emails and paying GW to train brand new characters from 0 xp?
Brand new accounts -> no training, can't do anything to other players. Been training a few weeks doing bad stuff in the meantime -> GW makes money from the training as the Karma for a mediocre power character (hard to ruin other players' experience) drops to the point they're mechanically ineffective at behaving in ways GW doesn't like.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In my hypothetical Reputation refers only to how each character conducts themselves in-character. A different mechanic, Karma, handles toxic player behavior...
This is the part that confuses me. How do you identify the player? If you're suggesting an account-wide consequence for character behavior (which is the only kind of behavior the game systems can actually measure), then I'm adamantly opposed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm curious why you feel Lawful Evil is the natural or most likely enemy of Chaotic Evil?
The way alignment is being presented in PFO, primarily by you, there is no game mechanics reasoning behind it, The alignment system in PFO barely has any connection to role playing, it being used primarily as a funnel / segregation tool.
I see it more likely that LE will use CE hoards as a tool rather than fighting to crush them, that would be more in line with what LE would do. That plan has even been expressed here on the forums several times and by multiple organizations.
There is reason to suppose the discord between Law and Chaos is equal to the conflict between Evil and Good.
I agree, but there is not reason to suppose that LE will overly concern itself with CE, rather than CG or CN.
The alignment polar opposite of LE is CG, having opposition on both the Law vs. Chaos and Evil vs. Good axis.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There has been no one at all on these boards saying that they plan to play CG and wage war against LE. They may be polar opposites to LE, but if they aren't a particular threat or hazard, I'm not sure that the LE will feel a need to hunt them down. I think wars, declared or not, will be fought for resources and against perceived threats, not over alignment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There has been no one at all on these boards saying that they plan to play CG and wage war against LE.
I claimed to fight slavery as a Chaotic Neutral, as a Chaotic Good act to help shift me away from falling into Chaotic Evil.
Anti Slavery escalations would be my PVE of choice if they are available.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There has been no one at all on these boards saying that they plan to play CG and wage war against LE.I claimed to fight slavery as a Chaotic Neutral, as a Chaotic Good act to help shift me away from falling into Chaotic Evil.
Anti Slavery escalations would be my PVE of choice if they are available.
So you'll attack heinous characters if you can do that to boost your alignment towards good.
I'll repeat myself: There has been no one at all on these boards saying that they plan to play CG and wage war against LE.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In my hypothetical Reputation refers only to how each character conducts themselves in-character. A different mechanic, Karma, handles toxic player behavior...This is the part that confuses me. How do you identify the player? If you're suggesting an account-wide consequence for character behavior (which is the only kind of behavior the game systems can actually measure), then I'm adamantly opposed.
If it got personal and settlement Alignment out of the punishment/reward business and back to it's original D&D concept, and made the distinction between player rep and per-character rep more clear, I would quick as lightning give up my minor preferences and live with a Karma-per-character basis.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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I think the solution to CE militias will be LE mercenaries. I think that if there are a lot of CE militias, there will be an overwhelming number of LE mercenaries.I'm curious why you feel Lawful Evil is the natural or most likely enemy of Chaotic Evil?
I think Lawful Evil will be the preferred alignment for large, cohesive, successful mercenary companies. I think that becoming a successful Lawful Evil mercenary will require a character to whack a lot of opponents. Whacking opponents while remaining relatively high in reputation and remaining Lawful will require a lot of dead CE bodies. By design, the LE mercenary companies will see CE characters as a harvestable resource for Achievements which will unlock character abilities to make them bad ass.
A CE character in accessible territory is going to be like blood in the water to LE mercenaries.
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Goblin Squad Member
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By design, the LE mercenary companies will see CE characters as a harvestable resource for Achievements which will unlock character abilities to make them bad ass.
This is what makes me very hesitant to advocate for changes to the way Alignment and Reputation work. There's obviously been a lot of thought put into how those systems function to moderate player behavior.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd love for some more details about why, mechanically, LE is more encouraged to be mercenaries than LG. Is it because of an Evil hit when killing people? When does it apply? When does it NOT apply?
I think the short answer is that lawfully killing another character is still Evil, even if there's no Chaotic hit and no Reputation hit. This seems custom-built for Bounty Hunters.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Here's my opinion.
People will self-sort into alignments based on their playstyles. This is reflected in the idea that your alignment "drifts" from an origin based on your actions.
The people who want to be crafters are going to end up drifting towards lawful good. The actions they take are going to mostly be lawful and mostly be good. They're going to avoid combat and they're not going to spend time & energy pursuing the kinds of Achievements that will unlock combat-focused character abilities.
The people who are going to be actively engaged in PvP in a meaningful way are likely to end up with a drift toward evil. But they're also going to be trying to remain at a medium to high rep which is going to drift them towards lawful. If a client is buying mercenary services they want to work with lawful mercenaries not chaotic mercenaries. Having a reputation of strictly upholding contracts is going to be the best way for a mercenary team to attract new clients. The first time you screw your patrons, you'll find the number of new jobs dry up rapidly.
There is a whole group of players that EVE doesn't really cater too. EVE has a core of Lawful Good characters up in hisec. and a nimbus of groups in nullsec who are Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil. But there isn't much to do if you don't want to be a crafter or an Alliance warrior.
We will have more and more interesting things to do besides craft and make war - a very light layer at first but it will get richer over time as I'm virtually certain Crowdforging will push us that way. The "Exploration" and "Adventure" components of our matrix are going to get emphasis that EVE doesn't deliver.
This is why I think the game is going to have a lot of chaotic neutral and chaotic good characters. There are a lot of people who want to adventure and are going to see anyone who tries to stop them as content - but not the content that fulfills their game objectives. They're not going to go out of their way to find PvP but they'll be good at it because it will happen to them a lot. They'll drift away from Lawful but they're not going to be drifting strongly toward Evil. And whatever impacts whacking monsters has on alignment is unlikely to be anything other than Good.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Here's my opinion.
People will self-sort into alignments based on their playstyles. This is reflected in the idea that your alignment "drifts" from an origin based on your actions.
The people who want to be crafters are going to end up drifting towards lawful good. The actions they take are going to mostly be lawful and mostly be good. They're going to avoid combat and they're not going to spend time & energy pursuing the kinds of Achievements that will unlock combat-focused character abilities.
The people who are going to be actively engaged in PvP in a meaningful way are likely to end up with a drift toward evil. But they're also going to be trying to remain at a medium to high rep which is going to drift them towards lawful. If a client is buying mercenary services they want to work with lawful mercenaries not chaotic mercenaries. Having a reputation of strictly upholding contracts is going to be the best way for a mercenary team to attract new clients. The first time you screw your patrons, you'll find the number of new jobs dry up rapidly.
There is a whole group of players that EVE doesn't really cater too. EVE has a core of Lawful Good characters up in hisec. and a nimbus of groups in nullsec who are Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil. But there isn't much to do if you don't want to be a crafter or an Alliance warrior.
We will have more and more interesting things to do besides craft and make war - a very light layer at first but it will get richer over time as I'm virtually certain Crowdforging will push us that way. The "Exploration" and "Adventure" components of our matrix are going to get emphasis that EVE doesn't deliver.
This is why I think the game is going to have a lot of chaotic neutral and chaotic good characters. There are a lot of people who want to adventure and are going to see anyone who tries to stop them as content - but not the content that fulfills their game objectives. They're not going to go out of their way to find PvP but they'll be good at it...
Thank you Ryan. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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We will have more and more interesting things to do besides craft and make war - a very light layer at first but it will get richer over time as I'm virtually certain Crowdforging will push us that way. The "Exploration" and "Adventure" components of our matrix are going to get emphasis that EVE doesn't deliver.
I'm sure no one else worries about it, but I've always been told I think too much. This is what I was referring to when I said PFO would be appealing to the kinds of folks who avoid EVE.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are a lot of people who want to adventure and are going to see anyone who tries to stop them as content - but not the content that fulfills their game objectives.
One version of GTA, I only ever completed 40% as I spent the rest of the time roving for random things to do. This sounds great to me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Then my thought about good NPC camps springing up as escalations near evil settlements was just a pipe dream it seems.
I did consider the counterargument that not having good escalations should increase evil PvP content.
You may not want to rule them out entirely, but such things are probably more distant and will be more sparse if it does come around. I expect crowdforging to drive Good escalations eventually. There is no reason Evil escalations would avoid evil settlements though, but plenty reason Good escalations might avoid good settlements. So even then, escalations are likely to be skewed to evil monsters.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the solution to CE militias will be LE mercenaries. I think that if there are a lot of CE militias, there will be an overwhelming number of LE mercenaries.I'm curious why you feel Lawful Evil is the natural or most likely enemy of Chaotic Evil?
The way alignment is being presented in PFO, primarily by you, there is no game mechanics reasoning behind it, The alignment system in PFO barely has any connection to role playing, it being used primarily as a funnel / segregation tool.
I see it more likely that LE will use CE hoards as a tool rather than fighting to crush them, that would be more in line with what LE would do. That plan has even been expressed here on the forums several times and by multiple organizations.
I agree, As a LE I certainly wouldn't be against using some CE thugs to harass my enemy and all the while keep my hands clean.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I think that becoming a successful Lawful Evil mercenary will require a character to whack a lot of opponents. Whacking opponents while remaining relatively high in reputation and remaining Lawful will require a lot of dead CE bodies. By design, the LE mercenary companies will see CE characters as a harvestable resource for Achievements which will unlock character abilities to make them bad ass.
(Emphasis added)
!!!
I must admit, I had been thinking of the Achievement/Merit Badge system as being dissociated with the Alignment and Reputation system. In retrospect, I should have concluded that Achievements would cover every aspect of the game, rather than a very limited subset.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We will have more and more interesting things to do besides craft and make war - a very light layer at first but it will get richer over time as I'm virtually certain Crowdforging will push us that way. The "Exploration" and "Adventure" components of our matrix are going to get emphasis that EVE doesn't deliver.This is why I think the game is going to have a lot of chaotic neutral and chaotic good characters. There are a lot of people who want to adventure and are going to see anyone who tries to stop them as content - but not the content that fulfills their game objectives. They're not going to go out of their way to find PvP but they'll be good at it because it will happen to them a lot. They'll drift away from Lawful but they're not going to be drifting strongly toward Evil. And whatever impacts whacking monsters has on alignment is unlikely to be anything other than Good.
Thank you. This is the group I'm in (well, except for the "good at PvP" bit), so it's good to hear this is a planned-for and desired component of the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Decius I sort of interpreted that as there are multiple achievements for PvP - like 5 kills, 20 kills, 50 kills, etc. One can get some number of those kills through war or feuds. Or one can kill very low rep (and likely CE) types. So it may not be tied directly to alignment and reputation as much as those who want kill achievements will be the punishers who hunt the low reps types.
But yeah, they seem to have some feedback loops built in to their social engineering.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the solution to CE militias will be LE mercenaries. I think that if there are a lot of CE militias, there will be an overwhelming number of LE mercenaries.I'm curious why you feel Lawful Evil is the natural or most likely enemy of Chaotic Evil?I think Lawful Evil will be the preferred alignment for large, cohesive, successful mercenary companies. I think that becoming a successful Lawful Evil mercenary will require a character to whack a lot of opponents. Whacking opponents while remaining relatively high in reputation and remaining Lawful will require a lot of dead CE bodies. By design, the LE mercenary companies will see CE characters as a harvestable resource for Achievements which will unlock character abilities to make them bad ass.
A CE character in accessible territory is going to be like blood in the water to LE mercenaries.
But, if Lawful Evil uses feuds, wars, factions, and SADs, the won't suffer loss of Reputation regardless of who they whacx.
Your whole premise is based on the falsehood that all CE character must have low reputation. You are wrong, unless you purposefully manipulate the system to exclude CE from the same actions that don't cost reputation.
Are CE characters and their companies barred from feuding? Are they barred from joining factions? Are they barred from having their settlements wage war?
What if CE characters don't lose reputation?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Your whole premise is based on the falsehood that all CE character must have low reputation. You are wrong, unless you purposefully manipulate the system to exclude CE from the same actions that don't cost reputation.
Firstly, the devs have said that though 100% of CE players might not have low rep, the vast majority are expected to.
Secondly, why would a CE character feud, war, etc? The whole point to being CE is that you don't have to deal with the restrictions on PvPing everybody else has to. Other than that nobody should want to play CE (as far as I understand the systems). There are no benefits to setting your core alignment CE and keeping rep high.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Firstly, the devs have said that though 100% of CE players might not have low rep, the vast majority are expected to.
I'd take this a step further and say that the vast majority of low rep characters will also be CE.
(edit) It would probably be easy enough to be LE and low rep, but the LE settlements will very likely insist on members following the rules so the settlement can maintain a high rep threshold.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the solution to CE militias will be LE mercenaries. I think that if there are a lot of CE militias, there will be an overwhelming number of LE mercenaries.I'm curious why you feel Lawful Evil is the natural or most likely enemy of Chaotic Evil?I think Lawful Evil will be the preferred alignment for large, cohesive, successful mercenary companies. I think that becoming a successful Lawful Evil mercenary will require a character to whack a lot of opponents. Whacking opponents while remaining relatively high in reputation and remaining Lawful will require a lot of dead CE bodies. By design, the LE mercenary companies will see CE characters as a harvestable resource for Achievements which will unlock character abilities to make them bad ass.
A CE character in accessible territory is going to be like blood in the water to LE mercenaries.
So Lawful Evil can only maintain being Lawful Evil by whacking Chaotic Evils? If that is the case they need to rethink the whole system as that is so frustratingly limiting, and nothing like Pathfinder p&p.
This tells me there are not going to be any evil schemers/manipulators in the game because since they are not actively killing people they drift towards good. Even though they may me causing all kinds of damage in other ways.
Does it not seem dumb that the current way is no one who doesn't participate in active killing can be evil?
Maybe they should not let you change your core alignment freely when you pick it (but maybe a cost of some sort will change it) , and instead of calling it "Active" alignment, call it "Perceived" alignment. As in that is how you seem to others though you may be rotten to the core and are a good actor? Classes with alignment restrictions like Paladins need to keep up appearances and keep their Perceived and Core alignment equal.
Hopefully there is more to than what Ryan just said because that seems a bit limited.
The system is I believe unless they have changed it that
on creation you set your core alignment. Your actions then move your active alignment. When you do nothing that alters your active alignment it slowly drifts back towards your core alignment.
So maintaining LE it is just a case of set your alignment (core) to that and as long as you aren't doing chaotic or good acts your active alignment will slowly shift that way
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think Lawful Evil will be the preferred alignment for large, cohesive, successful mercenary companies. I think that becoming a successful Lawful Evil mercenary will require a character to whack a lot of opponents. Whacking opponents while remaining relatively high in reputation and remaining Lawful will require a lot of dead CE bodies. By design, the LE mercenary companies will see CE characters as a harvestable resource for Achievements which will unlock character abilities to make them bad ass.So Lawful Evil can only maintain being Lawful Evil by whacking Chaotic Evils? ...
Hopefully there is more to than what Ryan just said because that seems a bit limited.
I think you misread Ryan. I think he is saying that LE mercenaries will engage in a lot of PvP; they'll be actively working on PvP-related achievements*; and (low rep) CE characters will likely be targeted often by PvP-seeking LE mercenaries**.
* to gain Influence so their company can attack others using feuds
** low rep (typically CE) can be attacked without much rep loss even without a feud.