Party "Nesting"


Pathfinder Online

Goblin Squad Member

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Just tossing out an idea for consideration, the ability to "nest" parties. The idea is intended to address the desire for larger non-persistent groups.

To clarify how this would work, parties can be composed of 1 party leader and 5 members which can in turn be either parties or individuals. If a party leader invites the leader of another party, the whole party gets appended under that party leader.

Dynamically, flags would get inherited down, but not up.

Goblin Squad Member

Forencith wrote:

Just tossing out an idea for consideration, the ability to "nest" parties. The idea is intended to address the desire for larger non-persistent groups.

To clarify how this would work, parties can be composed of 1 party leader and 5 members which can in turn be either parties or individuals. If a party leader invites the leader of another party, the whole party gets appended under that party leader.

Dynamically, flags would get inherited down, but not up.

There are precedents in other games similar to your idea here. It is late (kinda tired), but I am wondering how the flag part would work...?

The top "party" must make the move and those below inherit the "state" and the options/consequences of that "state"?

Am I reading your idea right?

Goblin Squad Member

I'd be cool. What abilities would it have that differentiate it from a company and make it worth creating a system for?

Goblin Squad Member

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Sounds similar to EVE's Fleets.

Goblin Squad Member

Interesting concept, how would this be represented in-game as there would potentially need to be stacks of screen real estate to manage and visualise the depth + complexity?

What would the benefits be? (wider raid-like groups or some such)
- in-game communications could potentially be super confusing

Also wondering about flags... if the top-level group smacked down an innocent, that could have serious negative impacts on the nested parties.

I'd like to see where this goes...

Grand Lodge

Not sure what you mean by this? You mean setting up 'cells' of Adventurers?

Goblin Squad Member

Bringslite wrote:


The top "party" must make the move and those below inherit the "state" and the options/consequences of that "state"?

Am I reading your idea right?

Exactly. Inherited down, whereas a leaf level party (with no nested parties) it only responsible for itself.

Jascolich wrote:
Also wondering about flags... if the top-level group smacked down an innocent, that could have serious negative impacts on the nested parties.

Exactly, as above.

Jascolich wrote:

What would the benefits be? (wider raid-like groups or some such)

- in-game communications could potentially be super confusing

Well, currently there has been no "raid-type" group announced. As far as I have seen, the largest non-persistent social group is the "party of 6". As for communication, I would suggest the following communication channels:

Raid (or I like someone else's idea for a Band)
Party (which is the Party you are currently part but not leader of..."party up" in the hierarchy)
Party Leader (which is the Party you are the leader of..."party down" in the hierarchy)

So actually, the only people who would have more than Party and Band are the few members who are heading a nested party.

Goblin Squad Member

Ah, potentially very useful in that context. Complex too, but I can see the value there...

Raids, now there is something that could be a suggested topic in the Q&A for our developer friends to comment on =D

Goblin Squad Member

Oh, and I would propose that the normal UI only support the status display of your immediate "party of 6".

Goblinworks Executive Founder

1 person marked this as a favorite.

So, the top leader would see his status and either the status of the other party leaders or a summary of their parties? Sounds like an Aristocrat ability.

How do you envision the typical use case?

Goblin Squad Member

Top leader would only see their party, including themselves and 5 other members who each may or may not be the leaders of their own parties.

Typical use case:

Party of 6: Standard party dynamics. Everyone can see their team mates.

Party of 11: Leader can see their team of 6, one of those 6 (say member 3) is a team leader of 5. Those 5 are invisible to the top level team, but are visible to each other. I would suggest member 3 is either locked into the team he/she captains, or has a toggle. Any effect (such as flag) on the top party in inherited by the lower, an effect on the lower does not necessarily affect the top.

Cool feature, a group can have some measure of control on the effects of their party utilizing interesting data structures (read trees, graphs, linked list, circular linked lists...etc.). Then consider how effects are inherited.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Why inherit down but not up? It seems weird that if I attack one of the six, all eleven can retaliate, but if I attack one of the five, only the five can.

Goblin Squad Member

Might be a bit wonky for a group to come up and attack one of these big Bands, and have only 1/4, 1/2, or the entire Band become active in the combat based on who you attack first. (though that would likely make little to no difference in game, as those who aren't automatically made active could easily join in, as long as I understand hostility correctly)

Goblin Squad Member

1 person marked this as a favorite.
DeciusBrutus wrote:
Why inherit down but not up? It seems weird that if I attack one of the six, all eleven can retaliate, but if I attack one of the five, only the five can.

Let's leave seven of nine out of this discussion.

Too controlling, tight vinyl.

Goblin Squad Member

EVE Fleets are composed thusly:

A squadron consists of 10 ships, one of which is the squad leader. A wing can consist of up to 5 squadrons, led by a separate wing commander. A fleet can consist of up to 5 wings, led by a separate fleet commander. Most of the structure has to do with passing down bonuses. Everyone in the fleet is considered in a single "party."

Scarab Sages

It sounds like if you attacked the smallest group, one of its members would also be a team leader that is in a larger group. As he is being attacked and in both groups, both groups would be considered as being attacked. And this could lead all the way up to the main group and then down to all the smaller groups again if organized properly.

Goblin Squad Member

Kios wrote:
It sounds like if you attacked the smallest group, one of its members would also be a team leader that is in a larger group. As he is being attacked and in both groups, both groups would be considered as being attacked. And this could lead all the way up to the main group and then down to all the smaller groups again if organized properly.

That's just the thing, he specifically said that the hostility wouldn't transfer up. So if you attack any of the 5 people in the small group who aren't the leader, the big group doesn't get attacked.

Scarab Sages

Yes, but the hostility would not need to travel up as it would affect a player in both parties and therefore affect both parties.

Edit: I hope I'm using affect right. I always get the two mixed up, no matter how much I look up the separate definitions.

Goblin Squad Member

Affect is the Action, Effect is the End result.

Goblin Squad Member

I remember affectionately: it is effective.

Goblin Squad Member

As others have said, this is similar to EvE's fleet structure, or simply a raid group structure. I've always assumed this would be in game anyway.

Goblin Squad Member

You affect an effect.

Goblin Squad Member

I like the "Nesting" idea Forencith is suggesting. When I asked about party size in another thread, my main focus was on PVE stuff like dungeon exploration.

However, when it comes to raiding outpost or banditry, 6 players won't always be enough. I can see bandits getting as many members together to 'blockade' a road. However, if they become too big, lets say 35+ for just one 'blockade' I can see the nearest Settlement or a Settlement interested in protecting their merchants to send a military squad to squash the bandits.

Goblin Squad Member

Good points all, that's why I wanted to discuss it. I think it makes an interesting dynamic.

If a "band" of 11 wanted to get universal inheritance, they just need to link the tails of the parties.

For instance:

Party of 11 (variant #2): like the original, but insure the top level leader is also a member of the lowest level party. This creates a circular structure (assuming no branches) and exhaustive inheritance.

Goblin Squad Member

1 person marked this as a favorite.
DeciusBrutus wrote:

So, the top leader would see his status and either the status of the other party leaders or a summary of their parties? Sounds like an Aristocrat ability.

How do you envision the typical use case?

I like that. Expand the Aristocrat.

Goblin Squad Member

WHy? what is the magic about group size. In 70's TT most players had 2 <we would call them alts now>. In 80's and 90's I played with game maters who had 8, 10, 12 players. Why have this complicated scheme?

Goblin Squad Member

There are a few more people sitting down here than at a TT game. If the magic number for party size is "six" for reasons of UI clutter and other factors, that is fine. There may be reasons that larger numbers may be desired to group and be linked, other than and until regular warfare battles (formations).

Goblin Squad Member

MY TT experience is 4-6 generally. More than that and you just can't role-play. Too many people to get any time for your character.

Goblin Squad Member

Why not just have it that when one member of an association sees a hostile act against another member of that same association, he too sees the attacker as hostile.

If you attack my brother, you have attacked me. Company affiliation should be automatically linked when it comes to hostility.

Goblin Squad Member

Bluddwolf wrote:

Why not just have it that when one member of an association sees a hostile act against another member of that same association, he too sees the attacker as hostile.

If you attack my brother, you have attacked me. Company affiliation should be automatically linked when it comes to hostility.

This is talking about the specific case of parties, not companies. So assume every person in the party is from a different company.

Goblin Squad Member

I hear that @Bringslite has had GM who could only handle 4-6 players. I have seen that in the last decade. I had one Gw who was good for 6 players. In the previous century I had 3 GM who were each good for games of over 10 players. These were more mature GM (though most were younger than myself.]

So this is aimed at the LOWEST common denominator. Lower expectations. Like the D&D 4.X GMs and their pseudo war games.

SO?

Can two groups (of 5 or 6) work together?

Goblin Squad Member

Lam wrote:

I hear that @Bringslite has had GM who could only handle 4-6 players. I have seen that in the last decade. I had one Gw who was good for 6 players. In the previous century I had 3 GM who were each good for games of over 10 players. These were more mature GM (though most were younger than myself.]

So this is aimed at the LOWEST common denominator. Lower expectations. Like the D&D 4.X GMs and their pseudo war games.

SO?

Can two groups (of 5 or 6) work together?

@ Lam

I think that they are looking into it. I hope that they find out that it is a yes. Obviously we can work out ways to do it ourselves. It would just ne nice if we could have some mechanics.

There have been times that I have DMed for as little as one player and as many as 14. My personal favorite is 4. More chance for roleplay and story development. This has little to do with TT numbers, so I am not quite sure that I understand what your point is or what you are asking... :)

Goblin Squad Member

Depends on the game. lowest was 2 most was... 11 if I remember it right.. I like six, it gives enough that you have sufficient overlap that people can choose whatever role they so desire and the party is filled out like that, but it doesn't get too big.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

Drakhan Valane wrote:
You affect an effect.

When you make someone feel good, you effect an affect.

Homonyms are fun, and I hate them.

Goblin Squad Member

DeciusBrutus wrote:
Homonyms are fun, and I hate them.

How do you feel about homophones?

Goblin Squad Member

This conversation reminds me of:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

(google it if you don't know, because it is quite amusing.)

Goblinworks Executive Founder

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Nihimon wrote:
DeciusBrutus wrote:
Homonyms are fun, and I hate them.

How do you feel about homophones?

Homophones with divergent spelling effect a smaller affect in me, but their lower rarity effects the effects that I can get while using them. Effectively, my affection for a given homonym is greater than what the individual effects of homophones and homographs would effect without synergy.

Goblin Squad Member

DeciusBrutus wrote:
Homophones with divergent spelling...

Now tell us how many times you re-read that before publishing to make sure you got it right.

Goblin Squad Member

DeciusBrutus wrote:
Homophones with divergent spelling effect a smaller affect in me, but their lower rarity effects the effects that I can get while using them.

Shouldn't their rarity affect the effects, rather than effecting effects?

Scarab Sages

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Gotta love a crowd that turns a topic about Nesting (probably the solution to some of the current S&D arguments) into English lessons.

But seriously, how do you see such groupings working? I like Forencith's initial idea, but I would like the flags that the initiating group sees to flow down so that the attacking party sees only the group that they attacked as hostile and the flags the victims see to flow up so that all parties that party is attached to through party leaders can see the attackers as hostile.

This way initial attackers are only aware of the small party's grouping unless their allies decide to aid them.

Goblin Squad Member

The EVE-like party (fleet) concept sounds perfect to me.

Especially as it allows the leaders to give bonus from their group skill to the rest of the party (fleet, wing etc).

So if the leader(s) have learned the leadership skill he/she would grant a certain bonus for all his group. Example: if he has a skill like "army defensive strategy" he grants a bonus in defense for the entire party, if he has a skill such as "bowmen commander" the archers in the group would have an ofensive bonus, etc.

Goblin Squad Member

1) Would this be separate from unit combat?
2) Could this system be the test platform for unit combat?
3) Where do you see this system diverging from the concept of Unit combat?

Goblin Squad Member

Kios wrote:

But seriously, how do you see such groupings working? I like Forencith's initial idea, but I would like the flags that the initiating group sees to flow down so that the attacking party sees only the group that they attacked as hostile and the flags the victims see to flow up so that all parties that party is attached to through party leaders can see the attackers as hostile.

This way initial attackers are only aware of the small party's grouping unless their allies decide to aid them.

I don't think the size of each side needs to be a secret to anyone. There might be tactical reasons to try to keep it a secret, but there should be skills that penetrate/hide the connections. Our characters are hardened survivors; they see things that we as players don't necessarily see.

I think the nesting parties would be the basis of unit combat. Like others have said, it's somewhat like EVE's fleets.

Community / Forums / Paizo / Licensed Products / Digital Games / Pathfinder Online / Party "Nesting" All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Pathfinder Online