Goblin Squad Member
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Ryan provided a provocative analogy in his vision for PFO between PvP and tackling in American football. The primary reaction in the community responding were observations that tackling plays a pivotal role in American football.
Yet if football were about tackling we would call it wrestling.
How should we understand what Ryan was suggesting? What are the implications for the game being designed, constructed and implemented?
To begin, let me outline what I got from it because that will reveal my own biases when I interpret. My vision of PFO is basically an RP MMO within a virtual world where it will be possible to resort to violence against my fellow players if I determine that is meaningful to me, but where I have in-game consequences that should be recognized and prioritized if I do so resort. An RP game without the ability to enforce my militant will is a lamed RP game. With PvP included I am in a whole RP game. Further, when I band together with a community of affiliates to form a company we can set objectives that also involve PvP to obtain.
The PvP in PFO is one of several in-game instruments by which we achieve an objective or set of objectives. PFO is not simply a complicated arena where there is only PvP combat and everything you do is about PvP combat. If it were, then it would end looking more like Call of Duty set within an environment out of the early World of Warcraft real-time-strategy (RTS) games where every building, every resource harvested, is only about increasing the tier of PvP capability or improving the defenses of PvP investments.
So my conclusion is that while individual and settlement PvP may well be a very pivotal element of PFO, it is by no means the sum of the game.
Instead, I believe that PFO will resemble a fully functional death st... I mean, RP environment suitable for a continuing Pathfinder saga about not only individual characters adventuring but the rise and fall of nations. Diplomacy will be role-played, even though few if any will couch their treaties in Elizabethan English.
Look for a moment at some of the most colorful characters in these forums. They are already roleplaying, and doing a rather good job of it I might add. Even the most (apparently) violent and domineering personalities are actually character personas they use to post. Few if any of them would be the same in person over lochs and toasted onion bagels with a cup of rich coffee. Mmm and a glass of orange juice, please.
Many players entering Golarion through PFO will not expect what we will do, and will attempt to dedicate themselves to PvP, and that is a good thing because they will be confronted by PvP in many ways. But PvP will not be the whole game.
PFO will, in my envisioning, not only be a fine opportunity to gain more PvP enthusiasts from the ranks of the dedicated PvE players, it will also be an opportunity to increase the ranks of the RP players because that is what everyone will be doing, whether they plan to or not. And that is why we should accept the instruments of reputation and alignment and faction that the designers are building.
Because football is not just wrestling.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Very interesting post Being and I think I could go on for quite a while about different angles on it. As far as "roleplaying" your online persona, I think you are 100% correct and that is specifically why I created a "main" character with like minded goals and methodology as myself, something I don't normally do. Yes, I am already RP'ing that character and the persona I am creating on these forums is an extention of that character.
Going back to the football analogies, because I love them, I think there is a metaphor to be made where the Quarterback is the settlement or King on the chessboard. The back and receivers are like the PvP'ers who do the conquests and the merchants and crafters are the linemen who do the heavy lifting but don't get the glory. Well, maybe PVE'ers are the running backs, I dunno something like that...
Oh and Bagles and lox. I went to a tasting (yeah I'm a foodie) where a Puerto Rican celebrity Chef and a Jewish celebrity chef combined the cuisines. The highlight was the codfish on bagels ;)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Do you have a link to what Ryan said?
Here is a link to the post. You'll likely need to read the others near it to get the context.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@pax
Its not about that. One of the major themes of the game is territory control. Controlling territory has specific mechanical advantages OTHER than just having a base to call home. One main thing is training. Only settlements provide training, only PC settlements provide high level training, and training is a limited resource. So each settlement no matter how advanced can only provide a fixed number of training in any given time period.
If an organization wishes to expand to get more training time they have to get new settlements. This puts them directly in conflict with other people.
So at the end of the day if your settlement and group of people just want to set up shop and stay at one settlement and just be left alone and not engage in the non pve parts of the game, thats fine. However dont be surprised when someone goes...hmmm those people dont really know how to pvp, i bet we can take their settlement without much effort and you end up getting attacked.
So play how you want to play, if you dont want to be expansionist you dont have to be (I for one wont be part of such a group), but people need to accept the fact that PvP is a major part of the game and that the game is DESIGNED to have players cooperate but also to put them directly into conflict with each other.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think part of the difficulty is in the term "PvP," which is entails a particular scheme from prior games. For a lot of gamers, "PvP" means something like playing on an EQ2/Rift/WoW PvP server, with fairly low-stakes, meaningless dueling or Arenas, but much more importantly, jumping someone else or getting jumped. If you're coming from a game like EVE, that might be different, but most MMO veterans are going to think about trying to harvest/grind/kill a boss when someone else/another group jumps your trash and ganks you.
PFO is going to have mechanisms for those sort of encounters (within a social rule system), but the game is primarily about Social Structure vs. Social Structure gameplay.
Talking about PvP is always going to steer the conversation away to something we're not really talking about.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope you're right but I think more of the game is going to come down to "we want to expand and you're in our way, sorry, nothing personal."
I think especially with alignment and rep restrictions it's going to be a bit more "your in my way and I don't like you". You have to pick your enemies a bit more carefully here.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have to ask, what are lochs? Google only gives me the Gaelic name for lakes.Actually we are all spelling it wrong, good call. It's Lox. Lox is a fillet of brined, smoked, salmon.
I'd seen people spell it locks before so I thought it was just some other regional spelling you guys were using.
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Goblin Squad Member
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On topic. Ryan probably had fever when he wrote that. The comment that he gave to the quote is more like a thought flow. It is true that he has said many times he doesn't want to make a tackling simulator, but that's exactly what he is making in my opinion and I hope he makes a tackling simulator with very sophisticated rules. But it's true football just isn't about tackling. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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...the game is primarily about Social Structure vs. Social Structure gameplay.
I understand and agree that social structure -vs- social structure will be major, but I am reluctant to assert even that will be primary. For leadership, sure: okay. But by definition most players are not in the leadership cadre. The tendency for individuals members of a company, or independents, will be varied. Socializing, exploring, local community RP, actual nitty-gritty PvP, escalation management, harvesting, crafting, marketing, drayage... all will be a focus of various players in greater or lesser balance.
I'm just not yet convinced that one element will be 'primary'. Some of the major systems will be critical and core to almost everyone. Few will be of singular focus is my prediction.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ryan has a theme he keeps returning to because its important. The gaming culture of pvp and how it is perceived. What does football have to do with it? American football is all about the fans and that is why it is played, including the tackling. There is a huge football culture that includes countless things for people to get involved in. The fans want to be a part of the football culture , that is what interests them ,they sure aren't going to tackle anyone.
I think his quote could have been ,'cant see the forest for the trees' ,a forest is not just a bunch of trees. The details of game mechanics wont help PFO overcome the public perception of PVP as toxic ,PFO needs its own game culture that people will see is different.
More players is more income and more game features added as well as a bigger game world , so people trying out the game who have avoided PVP need to see a player culture that is non-toxic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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On topic. Ryan probably had fever when he wrote that. The comment that he gave to the quote is more like a thought flow. It is true that he has said many times he doesn't want to make a tackling simulator, but that's exactly what he is making in my opinion and I hope he makes a tackling simulator with very sophisticated rules. But it's true football just isn't about tackling. :)
For the record Aieoun, I drafted you on my fantasy Pathfinder team ;p
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Goblin Squad Member
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...the game is primarily about Social Structure vs. Social Structure gameplay.I understand and agree that social structure -vs- social structure will be major, but I am reluctant to assert even that will be primary. For leadership, sure: okay. But by definition most players are not in the leadership cadre. The tendency for individuals members of a company, or independents, will be varied. Socializing, exploring, local community RP, actual nitty-gritty PvP, escalation management, harvesting, crafting, marketing, drayage... all will be a focus of various players in greater or lesser balance.
I'm just not yet convinced that one element will be 'primary'. Some of the major systems will be critical and core to almost everyone. Few will be of singular focus is my prediction.
That's why Social Structure vs. Social Structure is more useful as a descriptor and conceptual framework. "PvP" puts player combat out as the focus. However, in Social Structure vs. Social Structure, people will be socializing, exploring, harvesting, manufacturing, and so on, within their social structures. And as Ryan has stressed, those social structures will be at war, and the inefficient ones will be consumed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Perhaps it needs a better name than 'social-structure -vs- social structure' to reflect the incorporation of integral settlement components. 'Social-Structure' also suggests a lack of individual autonomy many may find problematic.
I am familiar with several high-quality players whose lives are too filled to depend on doing nothing without a support group, simply because that support group is not always on when the player is, and those players cannot stay in-game for the duration that their support group needs.
These players historically end up feeling excluded by the game design.