Goblin Squad Member
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Ok, so here this goes -been kicking this around. If this has been discussed already, my apologies.
So, one of the requests I've seen come up from time to time is for the capacity for players to specialize in knowledge - having access to various local, geographic knowledge and then being able to sell it or leverage it to their advantage. On the surface, I think this is great, but also there are several problems. For one, knowledge in and of itself is hard to 'trade'; how do you demonstrate it's accuracy and how do you get paid. Also, what are the immediate and long term uses of knowledge for a player - is there a limit to it's usefulness. Finally, how do you reconcile a player's knowledge with their characters?
The solution I came up with so far is character centric, and is an expansion upon the Pathfinder skill set. For now, I'm calling this little subsystem the "Leads" system.
Per its name, the Leads system uses....leads, which I describe as a type of knowledge resource. Each character will be able to take skills in any of the knowledges known, plus perhaps one or two other to cover certain situations. These include (Arcana, planes, religion, the planes, nature, local, nobility, geography, dungeoneering, engineering, legal*, and warfare*). Like other skills, you have a score that is rolled against various challenges.
The difference is what happens after you succeed one of those tests. When you beat a knowledge test, you get a lead, a finite resource linked to that knowledge skill.
From here, the lead can then be spent (or 'traded') to receive various benefits. Before I go into those possible rewards, I first will mention some ideas on how you acquire leads.
I roughly sort knowledge tests into two categories: passive and active. Passive tests are pretty straightforward - as long as you are in a certain location or situation, you periodically roll your skill against a target DC for that test, and gain leads. For example, while you are within a settlement, you might roll one test an hour against knowledge local - depending on your skill over a four-hour session, you’ll gain between 0-4 leads. While in a dungeon, you’ll test against a dungeoneering test, etc, etc. In other cases, you might gain leads while you’re under a certain situation: after you cast X spells successfully, you test against arcana/religion. If you use X combat maneuvers while at war, you test against warfare. In this way, your character gains a slow but potentially constant resource, depending on their actions. ALSO: not sure of the implications, but you can also make the resource of leads degrade overtime - this could help mitigatge people who try to overspecialize in getting one type of resource by gimmicks or grinding.
The other capacity would be active, and would be linked to completing various tasks, fulfilling contracts, killing certain monsters, interacting with certain in game objects, or as part of certain rewards. These would likely be more reliable, but less often.
With these leads, characters can then exchange them for a variety of goods, services, or boons. For instance, a mage might spend several arcana leads to see the spell list of an opposing caster, a settlement citizen might expend nobility leads to learn additional details about the settlements current leader’s activities. Travelers might use geography leads to reduce the cost/time on fast travel or reduce penalties to bandits. Lawyers can use legal leads to add additional items to contracts (the idea of fine print traps on contracts is slightly amusing), and so on.
The result of such a system would be an expansion to the economy of the game in the diversity of resources, and create markets for activities that can be designed for or against that might otherwise be less lucrative. Perhaps you really want an explorer - now they can collect loads of geography and nature leads, and sell them to bandits planning raids, settlements interested in ambushes, merchants looking in lower travel times, and so on. Crafters can gain engineering leads that can reduce construction times on items, which could have a volatile market. Dungeon delvers could collect arcana leads to sell to mages looking for a battle advantage. Tavern rats could hoard local or nobility leads that can be used for discounts on services, access to otherwise locked buildings (alignment restriction), or location information on various characters (and bonuses on assassination). Generals could use warfare leads to increase the bonuses to their companies, gain strategic bonuses, reduce pvp windows temporarily, or increase damage to outposts.
Arcane
Tests: cast spells, kill arcane monsters, reward items, level up arcane skills
Rewards: build certain items, predict spell list, activate certain quests, gain rep with faction
Dungeoneering:
Tests: visit dungeons, kill underground monsters, gain treasure
Rewards: Improve healing outside settlements, improve healing in area, gain info on escalations, gain faction rep, activate certain quests.
Engineering:
Tests: find certain locations, build items, harvest materials
Rewards: reduce build times, increase harvest yields, gain faction rep
Geography
Tests: fast travel, visit important locations, travel
Rewards: increase OoC Running, Make maps (better fast travel), recover faster outside settlements, faction rep, activate quests
Legal
Tests: draw or fulfill contracts, enforce or follow laws
Rewards: reduce crime penalties, make better contracts, reduce criminal flags, faction rep
Local
Tests: visit PoI, Settlements, defend settlements, use services, vote
Rewards: tax/service discounts, use restricted building, locate individual in area, rep
Nature
Tests: visit locations, kill natural creatures, find certain treasure
Rewards: track individuals, forage for resources, plan ambushes, faction rep, new quests
Nobility
Tests: manage company/settlemets, make feuds, wars, alliances, visit foreign settlements.
Reward: Gain influence, development indexes, gain info on leaders, faction rep, gain quests
Planes
Tests: visit locations, fight monsters, use certain items
Rewards: craft items, use certain spells (teleporation/scrying), faction rep, activate quests
Religion
Tests: use shrines, fight monsters, die, use spells
Rewards: respawn bonuses, use certain spells (divination/healing), faction rep, quests
Warfare
Tests: raid settlements, repel invaders, guard missions
Rewards: reduce pvp windows, field larger armies, gain combat bonuses, rep, quests.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are quite a number of those that I'd be very much interested in. Perhaps there could even be more advanced feats created by having and using a combination of two or more?
Geography + Nature = feat that allows for more concealed travel through wilderness areas; reduction of aggro radius vs. natural beasts; etc.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Awesome idea. Especially if it can be used to learn more about the Marks of Pharisma that PC have. Perhaps opening up more options
- Reduced Thread Cost
- Copy random soul binding spot of targets
- Steal 1 soul binding point from target
- Travel to soul binding point, without dying
- etc
Obviously I'm interested in my character learning why he and others can't die, and how to use it to his advantage.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are quite a number of those that I'd be very much interested in. Perhaps there could even be more advanced feats created by having and using a combination of two or more?
Geography + Nature = feat that allows for more concealed travel through wilderness areas; reduction of aggro radius vs. natural beasts; etc.
Well, in a more advanced setup, the items that are purchased with leads could have multiple cost structures or conversion ratios.
For example, purchasing a 'travel map' might be sold for either a flat 50 geography leads, or 25 geography leads and 5 nature leads depending on the area, and provides a % reduction in travel time and a % chance protection versus fast travel ambush.
In another case, building settlement structures, various build times might be improved by purchasing or crafted using engineering leads, but others might utilize engineering and nobility leads to create statues, nobility and warfare for defense structures, arcane and nature and engineering for replenishing gardens, and so forth.
Ultimately, leads would exist as a unique type of currency that is generated by very specific in game behaviors - preferably activities that are enjoyable to the players and useful down the line to rounding out niches in settlement society. Need to incentive exploration or dungeon crawling, use the knowledge leads to incentive the activity while minimizing (though not eliminating) the impact on the overall economy.
i like all that to be part of the titles or badges system not sure how to name it.maybe few of them can be traded with coins and the mentor set up the coins he wants to teach you something.
but i am against any kind of new curency.
you cant have all the in game knowledge in an actual system.and any kind of that system will cut off player options and RP.
I personally prefer some in game secrets if they are any,not to be monitoring by a system.its better for the player to find out than a system to tell you secrets even if you dont notice them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I love the idea, but I wonder how feasible it is to implement such a system, with regard to server resources and bandwidth concerns. Also, they would have to classify just about every action, item, location, etc. in the game as belonging to certain knowledge areas/leads, which surely adds to the database size and query times.
Constant checks/dice rolls for leads in just about every aspect of the game would have to push a lot more information per player character over the network, I would think. With hundreds or thousands of players constantly roaming around having checks made all the time, that's a lot more network packets moving around, eating up bandwidth.
Again, I love the idea, but it may have to be put on a back burner until such time that all of the technical aspects could be worked out and guaranteed that it won't negatively impact the performance of the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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i like all that to be part of the titles or badges system not sure how to name it.maybe few of them can be traded with coins and the mentor set up the coins he wants to teach you something.
but i am against any kind of new curency.
you cant have all the in game knowledge in an actual system.and any kind of that system will cut off player options and RP.
I personally prefer some in game secrets if they are any,not to be monitoring by a system.its better for the player to find out than a system to tell you secrets even if you dont notice them.
Perhaps there is some misunderstanding, but I view this system as not replacing 'player knowledge'. The history of the world as a matter of fact that can be read by the players has its own enjoyment, and I wouldn't want to get rid of that. But, there are aspects of 'character knowledge', that simply can't be utilized or traded without a mechanic. The Leads system allows a PC (read: player character) to demonstrate within the game that it has a knowledge of X, and more importantly that the character is able to utilize it regardless of the player's knowledge.
The purpose of this system is to broaden the resource base by turning an otherwise limited skill into a means to increase trade and thus increase meaningful interaction. I don't see how it would ruin RP or in-game secrets.
I love the idea, but I wonder how feasible it is to implement such a system, with regard to server resources and bandwidth concerns. Also, they would have to classify just about every action, item, location, etc. in the game as belonging to certain knowledge areas/leads, which surely adds to the database size and query times.
Constant checks/dice rolls for leads in just about every aspect of the game would have to push a lot more information per player character over the network, I would think. With hundreds or thousands of players constantly roaming around having checks made all the time, that's a lot more network packets moving around, eating up bandwidth.
Again, I love the idea, but it may have to be put on a back burner until such time that all of the technical aspects could be worked out and guaranteed that it won't negatively impact the performance of the game.
I have a hard time believing that any MMO game can't process a few skill tests per player periodically. In regards to passive tests, the net effect would be each player making between one and let's say five, 'behind the scenes' test against the server to detirmine if a success was made - keep in mind that the client communicates with the server for every interaction your perform, every button press, movement, most menu operations not tied solely to client - these would be insignificant bandwith users.
As for action classification, I threw out some examples, but you only need a pool of significant actions for each skill for it to be (casting spells and combat is probably where you saw an explosion of potential actions). More likely, you pick actions that are expected to occur 'regularly', but not necessarily 'frequently' (such as entering mass combat, crafting a magic item, killing a keyword creature, utilizing an arcane structures service). A simple system is simply tying the reward of leads with actions that reward XP.
Also, this system is by no means designed for EE or even initial full launch, it would be useful only once there are larger settlement systems in place, and a sufficient player base that more resource diversity would stimulate more trade.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hey this is glorious. period.
Problems:
1)Where do you store those "leads"? If they are procedurely generated every hour, people like myself, people who tend to spend long hours in-game when they play, are going to accumulate a LOT of those "leads", and that might take up a LOT of inventory space. I'd suggest having their own "inventory" and also having the passive checks degrade over time per area. Thus:
One on entry, one hour later, one hour later than that, two hours later than that, three hours later than that, and so on.
This ensures people who spend little time in-game still gain some leads, but at the same time ensures that people who spend long times in-game aren't going to be swamped.
2)There are things I feel should not be included as the "rewards"
The major one: Seeing another's spell list. That is really cheating IMO, and unbalances any engagement. If they chuck out a few spells you can spend a lead then to learn SOME of the spell list, but in the middle of combat that is going to be a low priority for most. Also, we will have to see what the in-game is like before we can start changing combat mechanics and giving combat advantages.
Another one: Fast travel speed ups. No, no no no no. No. The devs spent a lot of time and effort in this issue, and are still developing it. Fast travel is set to a specific speed (or speeds) for a reason.
There are more, but on the whole this is a good idea that needs just a few tweaks to specific completely arbitrary details (in my opinion).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hey this is glorious. period.
Problems:
1)Where do you store those "leads"? If they are procedurely generated every hour, people like myself, people who tend to spend long hours in-game when they play, are going to accumulate a LOT of those "leads", and that might take up a LOT of inventory space. I'd suggest having their own "inventory" and also having the passive checks degrade over time per area. Thus:
One on entry, one hour later, one hour later than that, two hours later than that, three hours later than that, and so on.
This ensures people who spend little time in-game still gain some leads, but at the same time ensures that people who spend long times in-game aren't going to be swamped.
2)There are things I feel should not be included as the "rewards"
The major one: Seeing another's spell list. That is really cheating IMO, and unbalances any engagement. If they chuck out a few spells you can spend a lead then to learn SOME of the spell list, but in the middle of combat that is going to be a low priority for most. Also, we will have to see what the in-game is like before we can start changing combat mechanics and giving combat advantages.
Another one: Fast travel speed ups. No, no no no no. No. The devs spent a lot of time and effort in this issue, and are still developing it. Fast travel is set to a specific speed (or speeds) for a reason.
There are more, but on the whole this is a good idea that needs just a few tweaks to specific completely arbitrary details (in my opinion).
I'm glad to here some positive feedback. I've had a lot of ideas, anything that gets some traction.
In response to your posts
1) I wound tend to agree, one would probably accumulate alot. I imagine that leads exist as a type of currency, and in and of themselves, weigh nothing, and you can store as many as you want. They would be nice in that way they cannot be stolen as they are not 'material'. However, if one were to trade them, first you would have to construct some sort of knowledge item. So, geographers would create maps, generals would make battle plans, aranists would make a treatise, nobles would make diaries, and so forth. These items would represent a set amount of leads, could be traded, and be utilized as part of crafting recepies or have some consumable effect.
2) I definitely agree. The list I posted were only the brief ideas I could think up as proof of concept. Certainly the balance and utility of rewards needs to be scrutinized by the crowdforging community.
For instance, fast travel doesn't necessarily have to be a speed increase/decrease, but it could be made more efficient (save money), more secure (less chance to be intercepted), or more frequent (lower any cooldown timers).
Because the system would have so many potential effects, it would depend on other systems that are added - but I don't have a problem brainstorming ideas right now, and adjusting them as we get more information.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Righteous.
The only problem remaining is the sheer variety of the knowledges, and thus need for a currency/item for each. This, however, is a problem with Pathfinder (and most table-top RPGs) however so I wouldn't worry about it, nothing we can change.
Devs please notice this idea and give it thought.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with the general consensus, this is a interesting and unique (To my knowledge) idea that would be great in PFO. It is a set of skills in the TT that may or may not be used often (Depending on the group and player make-up) but would definitely get some use in PFO if implemented properly. I remember some people who already expressed a desire to "trade information" and exploring and such that would use skills such as these. Great idea and looks to be well thought out. GG
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Goblin Squad Member
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I could see others as well. Nearly everyone could potentially benefit from this system. Some more than others, but knowledge skills in TT are useful to every class, why not make it as such in PFO? Not like game changing Massive useful, but like a side perk, like cooking in WOW, not needed but has perks.