Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm going to preface this by stating my view in regards to Open PvP. From my experience, PvP is what keeps games fresh, PvE is never challenging, because in the end, every fight comes down to a formula, and it is impossible to generate PvE content fast enough to appease the masses. PvP provides unpredictable gameplay, and is necessary for a sustained game.
I want bandits to be in the game, and I don't want players to be discouraged from playing them. Chaotic Evil should have equivalent viability and access as Lawful Good, but everything I'm seeing leads me to believe that Lawful Good is going to give the most benefit. Reputation just makes this even more skewed.
I think the current system is overcomplicated and more than there needs to be.
Threading already makes it so death is a non-issue, so there shouldn't be complicated mechanics around PvP.
---------
I do not think Reputation is necessary to keep the game from devolving into a 'kill fest'. Players who are killing constantly should shift Chaotic Evil, separating them from the Lawful and Good parts of the map. I want there to be lots of criminals, because I want lots of targets. The solution isn't to moderate PvP interactions, but to lessen the effect of solo death(which has already been done with threading), and limit the amount of time a player can commit crimes in lawful territory.
Everything should be available in lawful areas of the map, but commercial quantities of rare materials should be found in zones far from NPC cities*. As a general rule, the farther you move from an NPC city or road, the greater your rewards should be. 'late game' development should, practically, require materials obtained from lawless territory.
A criminal flag is the only flag you need. This is given when you break a law in lawful territory. Anyone can attack a criminal without consequence. Since death is not final in the game zone, it is the penalty for every crime. The main sources of criminal flags will be: Attacking other players, Murdering other players, and stealing from containers that do no belong to you(dead players, npc/monster loot you didn't get the kill for)
As you move away from NPC cities the protection you receive should go down. As it stands now, you are protected 2 hexes away from NPC cities, lets call this 'Protected' territory. This is a good size for now, in the future this could expand out one more as the game population increases. If a character with a criminal flag enters Protected territory, they are attacked on sight by NPC guards. 4 more hexes** from the Cities, or hexes next to a road hex should be 'Lawful' territory, where you can still get a criminal flag, but won't be attacked by NPC's. Outside of that, there should be no laws, so no criminal acts are possible. When players get near the boundaries to either of these types of territory they should get a warning of some kind.
Loosely related points:
Killing a non-criminal player should always shift you chaotic.
Killing an evil player as a good player should always shift you good(one shift per 24hrs)
The more 'good' a player is than you, the more evil you shift if you kill them if they are not a criminal.
A settlement should be able to declare it's hex and the surrounding 6 as lawful. This would require upkeep of a very expensive structure, that is impossible to maintain without heavy resource flow from unlawful land.
If you are attacked by a player, for 2 weeks, or until you kill them, you and anyone in your current party can attack and kill them without shifting alignment or getting flagged.
Let's check this against the desired outcome:
Behaviors we don't want:
- PvP conflicts where the death of the target means no gain for the attacker, i.e. randomly killing people for no reason.
- Abuse of new players.
- Players cooperating to game reputation and alignment systems to their advantage.
- Players willfully committing crimes or evil acts under the shield of reputation or alignment penalties so onerous no one would try and stop them.
- Death of a target is never meaningless if there is any chance for loot. People can disguise to look like new characters, or use fresh characters as mules, so there is no hard determination outside of the ability to see everyone's inventory from a distance. Go play Rust, sometimes running around naked is safer than using full kevlar, until people catch on.
- Starting zones are protected, death is a minor inconvenience, and the attacker will not be able to keep abusing. It would take a huge number of people targeting a single character to make a problem, and that fringe case shouldn't be considered. And still, in a protected area the player should always be able to retrieve their inventory.
- No reputation, the only thing I could think of trying would getting a 2nd player to loot the corpse, but a NPC guard should attack and kill the player well before the looting action is completed, and the inventory compromised.
- If they kill players, they get flagged. If they steal from players, they get flagged. No way around it.
In summary, you can go out and kill all you want, but you will not be able to enter Protected territory without getting killed by the first NPC that sees you, or you will have to only kill in unlawful territory. People who want to avoid being killed should stick to protected areas. People who want their killer to have consequences need to stay in lawful areas. If you are traveling into unlawful territory you have no right complain about getting killed, and should expect it and be prepared for it.
*We can assume the NPC's harvested all the commercial quantities of rare materials around and near their cities.
**When determining distance, do not move through impassable boundaries.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Threading already makes it so death is a non-issue, so there shouldn't be complicated mechanics around PvP.
This statement is not true, at least in my opinion. You can only thread equipped items, and the higher level you get, the less of those you can thread. At death, 25% of your non-threaded items (so everything in your bags and non-threaded equipped items) gets destroyed immediately. The other 75% is up for fulll grabs for your killer, or anyone who comes after that. Even if your killer can not take all your stuff due to encumbrance, there will be many players that will destroy the rest, simply to starve the economy of an enemy (Steelwing and co).
Also, at death, you will respawn at a different location, so you will lose time (and gumption?) with whatever you were doing.
Lastly, death will cause damage to your threaded items, which will cost you sooner or later. Death in a group may be somewhat less of a setback, if your party wins off course.
Personally I think death in PFO will be a *huge* issue to any PvE-conditioned player, who has never really learned to take item-loss in his MMO career. And I am pretty sure GW is eyeing at least some of that crowd. The saving grace here is hopefully, that "pride of ownership" in PFO is more then just that item you looted in a Raid, that nobody can take away from you.
The biased(or uninformed?) way you put up that statement about death did not encourage me to read any further, I must say, but I will do so anyway.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@ Valkenr
Your post is well presented, but I fail to see how what you want would make PfO a different game than many other sandboxes out there. Most of which are not very successful.
There are quite a few games in development, now, that promise many neat features (just like PfO) such as PVP, some reputation systems (basically criminal flags, outlaw status, etc...), the ability to build and wreck structures ANYWHERE, to dig and construct underground, sieges, warfare, monster play, lots of neat stuff.
They are in their infancy, and if/when they become available, PfO should be hitting it's stride. What ways/how do you see your vision making PfO better (and so not abandoned) just as happens to most every other sandbox that is little different than what you propose PfO be?
In short, if what you want is little different from other sandboxes (PVP wise) why do you think that it will attract AND keep a solid, growing customer base?
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
The devs are building those systems over time. So we'll start off with some sort of red/blue iirc?
I believe the rationale for adding such systems is: Modulate the frequency of types of PvP across the player population therefore making PvP to use the arch decription "meaningful" choice that scales up from solo to group pvp.
Rome wasn't built in a day but it could well have been sacked in one!
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In-game death from PvP is not rendered a non-issue by threading items. 'Things' you can thread are fairly irrelevant compared to humiliation. Self-esteem is affected, in part salvaged if the loser acquits himself well, gave nearly as good as he got, was at least partly credible as a combatant, but the humiliation even then is present and the victor gains similar reward in positive territory but not by merit of character nor constructive contribution. The victor is rewarded with elevated strokes for his ego.
It has nothing to do with being able to thread your gear.
The victor is given an ego boost. Without regard to merit his self-esteem is bolstered and reinforced. The loser is humiliated.
The victor is rewarded neither because he is wonderful person nor the scum of the earth but because one got the first hit in, was sneaky, or had the more numerous or more coordinated team.
Reputation loss is hardly a compensation for the victim. It is a moderating influence against killing outside of certain conditions.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
If I read your post correctly, Valkenr, you want to remove reputation and allow alignment and the subsequent gating into areas/settlements from alignment to be the stick for PvP. Correct me if I am wrong.
I've seen this work, albeit in a much smaller game (~1000 concurrent users) and I rather liked it.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Reputation loss is hardly a compensation for the victim. It is a moderating influence against killing outside of certain conditions.
The question is, moderating how and to what end.
In another thread going on today, there are complaints that low rep, throw away characters (monster in the basement) are bad for the game and are circumventing the spirit of the game. If that is the case, the reputation mechanic isn't working as designed or it is a spurious claim.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I've been following Pathfinder Online very closely since someone told me that in a nutshell it's gonna be ''high fantasy Eve Online'', once I found out they're gonna tackle the issue of a toxic community I was sold.
The OP's idea would create a breeding ground of anti-social behavior that is present in ALL of the sandboxes out there. I don't want to go into wilderness and automatically assume everyone I see will attempt to kill me without a word every time. That's not a virtual society that's sociopathy at it's best. I would prefer banditry to be a rare occasion, heavily penalized, but not impossible to happen.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I've been following Pathfinder Online very closely since someone told me that in a nutshell it's gonna be ''high fantasy Eve Online'', once I found out they're gonna tackle the issue of a toxic community I was sold.
The OP's idea would create a breeding ground of anti-social behavior that is present in ALL of the sandboxes out there. I don't want to go into wilderness and automatically assume everyone I see will attempt to kill me without a word every time. That's not a virtual society that's sociopathy at it's best. I would prefer banditry to be a rare occasion, heavily penalized, but not impossible to happen.
The Devs do not want banditry to be "rare", it is an important part of the economic system. Read the Dev Blogs, Blood on the Tracks and Screaming for Vengeance, in one of them (I can't link it) is a subsection called "The Most Dangerous Game".
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Sorry, Valkenr, can't agree with much of this. What you're describing might be a great Open PvP Sandbox game, but it's not what we've been led to believe about PFO, and bought into.
I think there are a number of folks who don't see any value at all in the Reputation system, and who might think the folks who do see value in it think it's a magic bullet that's going to eliminate unwanted PvP. The way I see it, it's a huge differentiating factor between PFO and most other Open PvP Sandbox games, but its actual effect will probably be fairly subtle.
Everything should be available in lawful areas of the map...
It sounds like you're expecting the devs to divvy up the map into aligned areas. Personally, I see a lot of value in the players being able to carve out sections of the map themselves.
Death of a target is never meaningless if there is any chance for loot.
This is really disappointing. There's always a "chance" for loot, which means it's never meaningless to randomly kill everyone you see. That's a horrible outcome.
To be honest after reading Screaming for Vengeance i have to disagree with you!
I think alignment hits are gonna be a big detriment to much of the banditry, even though it is possible to attack someone in the wilderness hex it will still not be prudent 100% of the time.
I play with a relatively large community that takes pride in being the ''good guys'' in any game they play. We usualy train a significant militia however, since good guys with no teeth are just amusement for others.
If this is true:
chaotic evil characters will be at a fairly significant disadvantage compared to other settlements
squashing their chaotic evil settlement shouldn't be too hard, revoking their access to skills, training, resources, etc.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
chaotic evil characters will be at a fairly significant disadvantage compared to other settlements
squashing their chaotic evil settlement shouldn't be too hard, revoking their access to skills, training, resources, etc.
This is what I thought Valkenr was driving at. Murder or steal from people and your alignment drifts to chaotic evil. You are then banished to a lesser settlement (because it is not lawful and all shiny) and you have the criminal or mass murderer flag on you whenever you wander into a lawful hex (governed by player set laws).
Thus, you alignment determines where you can go and who can attack you. Your alignment is determined by how you PvP.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The Devs do not want banditry to be "rare", it is an important part of the economic system. Read the Dev Blogs, Blood on the Tracks and Screaming for Vengeance, in one of them (I can't link it) is a subsection called "The Most Dangerous Game".
Bluddwolf has the right of it.
Ultimately, we feel that it should be pretty likely for players transporting valuable goods to be attacked by other players, with an increasingly likelihood as the value and distance they're transporting goods increases. The game economy will make getting into town with a big haul valuable precisely because there are people out there who want to take it from you: if you can get it to market, you get to charge a premium because of all the people that couldn't.
There's a nuance to this, though, that is extremely important to me (and I think to you, too, Robbor) even if it's actual effect will be, as I sad above, subtle.
At the end of the day, if you're killing other players that are uninterested in PvP for no benefit, we want to make the costs significant enough to convince you to do something else, as that's the kind of thing that drives players away. However, if they know they have something valuable and fighting or fleeing from you is the price of profit, suddenly it's worthwhile for everyone. And those opportunities should be worth risking the consequences.
Yeah so if i understand correctly bandits will be unlikey to target a lawful good soldier with mediocre equipment on his way to a monster spawn just for laughs and very likely to target a person with a small army of donkeys with bags filled with gold (or same soldier returning from monster spawn)
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
They wouldnt be good bandits if they didnt target the profits.
Although, that does not stop someone from targeting the Lawful Good Soldier, if they think he may have some good equipment.
You cannot just look at someone in a real sandbox game and automatically know what they have.
Yeah but indiscriminately targeting people is what they are trying to reduce with the whole alignment/reputation system!
If they manage that, they will achieve something very unique in the current mmo market.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I see S&D helping here also. A likely target is approached and offered a S&D, after which it is discovered they don't have anything valuable. Either drop the S&D or ask for 1 berry and move one. Far preferable to approaching a likely target and killing them, only to find all they had was a single berry.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah, I cannot agree with the OP here. The fact that there is a cost to killing others - or a reason not to kill others - that is able to be balanced against the gains in killing others is what makes PFO so attractive. If we mark open season on killing each other, the game loses its uniqueness and a sizable chunk of its player base.
The current model is close to the playability border for me, but I am giving it a chance. I would not play the game the OP proposes - especially if the game required a subscription or other monthly purchase to continue progressing.
Having a reason not to kill, across the entire map, is a critical feature in this game. It makes the decision of whether to attack somebody else more meaningful.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I agree to disagree with the OP. GW had alignment-based flags in their design at one point and removed them as widespread alignment vs. alignment warfare was counter to the Pathfinder lore. The OP's suggestion would have them reverse themselves again and design a very different game.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Could someone quickly explain the concept/game mechanic of *threading* to me? Thanks!
Nihimon grins mischievously
Mind if I just quote the last time I linked the explanation for you?
OK, another newbie question: What is a threaded item?
On another note, I can see I am going to need to spend quite a bit of time in the settlement hex until I get the hang of things!!!
See Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves for the full explanation.
In short:
Each character has a certain number of "threads of fate" they can use to tie their equipment to them... These threads cause the items to which they are tied to remain with the character when the character resurrects, meaning threaded items cannot be looted.
j/k btw. I expect a lot of folks lose track of where they were in threads, and get overwhelmed when they come back and there are hundreds of new posts to wade through.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Ultimately, we feel that it should be pretty likely for players transporting valuable goods to be attacked by other players, with an increasingly likelihood as the value and distance they're transporting goods increases. The game economy will make getting into town with a big haul valuable precisely because there are people out there who want to take it from you: if you can get it to market, you get to charge a premium because of all the people that couldn't.
Wouldn't those goods arrive at the market anyway, but now through the hands of bandits? I realize that bandits will probably not be able to take an entire cargo, and that getting your stolen goods to market may pose some (faction/reputation) problems here and there, but ultimately those goods will find those markets.
If the balance of the resource-flows is tilting too much in favor of the Bandits, this system will not be sustainable. I think such a tilt will already happen at pretty low percentages for the Bandits, for the simple reason that they are stealing it(minutes), not earning it(hours). The moment it is more lucrative to be a bandit then a merchant, the system is flawed and will collapse(100 bandit groups waiting for that 1 merchant that is left).
No need to bring playerskill into this: I am off course only comparing the creme the la creme of both bandits and Merchants.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Wouldn't those goods arrive at the market anyway, but now through the hands of bandits?
25% of them will be destroyed (I think) if the Merchant is killed.
Also, as I just said elsewhere, the key to making sure full-time Bandits don't get out of hand is to ensure they face a significant risk from Bandit Hunters, which means they need to be flagged to those Bandit Hunters (faction works just fine) even when they're not actively engaged in Banditry.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I know most of the community will disagree with me. KOS/RPK is not toxic behavior to me, it is meaningful interaction. It provides greater risk, and makes achievements more meaningful. Though things like chain-killing new characters, should be limited by game mechanics(marshal system).
As a part of our game design we have built in systems that will tend to shift gankers and griefers towards chaotic evil alignment with low Reputation.
This is fine.
And we have designed the Settlement system such that Settlements which consist of members with those characteristics have degraded structures which limit their member's skills and abilities. In other words, as your character loses Reputation and is forced into a low-quality Settlement, your character will suffer mechanical penalties vs. other characters. Your character will lose power and be more easily defeated by others as a result of your actions.
I would be fine with reputation if it was just to identify players that are constant criminals. I'm fine with settlements being able to set reputation requirements. I'm fine with high reputation making progression easier, and less expensive. I am not fine with using reputation to artificially limit character development and ability.
Low rep should just make existence harder. People are always able to attack you, you can't enter most settlements, you don't have secure storage and advancing your character or settlement requires a higher cost and committing heinous acts lowering your reputation further and increasing your criminal flag duration. Most of all: aside from real life connections, your 'friends' cannot be trusted.
If you find that there are too many low-rep players, further increase the cost of playing at that reputation level.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It seems to me that limiting character development is just another step in making existence for a low rep harder. I think becoming functionally weaker then your goodie-two-shoe counterpart is actually the only thing a low rep player will really dislike. All the rest is probably a minor annoyance.
It is not just about giving those few a place that want to do low-rep things while accepting the consequences, even if it is a small gutter-like part of the world: Ryan stated somewhere that low rep behaviour can infect and snowball with players that are initally not into low-rep behaviour at all. That is why he wants to curb it, and not really give it a place to fester.
Or something to that extent.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think chaotic/evil characters being at a disadvantage in combat ability is a brilliant idea. RPK players generally devote most of their time killing anything that moves, learning the most effective PvP builds and techniques making them very good at PvP.
A problem with a community of ''do-gooders'' is that you have a number of people that are genuinely afraid and inexperienced in PvP and sparring among eachother can never bring you to the same level as someone that devotes all his time to murdering people fast and efficiently.
If these good people knew their equally equipped characters are stronger than the outlaws they will be less reluctant to involve themselves in PvP!
It will also force the people that love PvP to bring their skills to use in more meaningful interaction than just running around killing anything that moves. A confident group of would-be bandits would be just as good as a group of sell-swords for the highest bidder or helping a nation block it's rivals supply chain!
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I would be quite satisfied if Low Reputation Characters (below -2,500 or maybe below -5,000) were free kills for everyone. I can't get past the idea that the Reputation system should provide any incentive not to kill someone who obviously ignores the incentives that same Reputation system gives them not to kill.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I would think the most "win-win" solution is:
highly indescriminate pvp'ers (CE et al) don't lose rep against each other. But lose substantial rep against high reps who are lower frequency pvp and highly selective pvp'ers (LG et al). Is that a system that self-regulates?
This is the system as they've described it. If you kill a low rep target you lose practically no rep when compared to killing a high rep target.
Wouldn't those goods arrive at the market anyway, but now through the hands of bandits?25% of them will be destroyed (I think) if the Merchant is killed.
Also, as I just said elsewhere, the key to making sure full-time Bandits don't get out of hand is to ensure they face a significant risk from Bandit Hunters, which means they need to be flagged to those Bandit Hunters (faction works just fine) even when they're not actively engaged in Banditry.
Which reminds me of an idea I had a while ago. What if after a rejected SAD the amount of goods destroyed was greater, say 50%. Would that make bandits more likely to offer better SAD deals and not move to combat so much?
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Wouldn't those goods arrive at the market anyway, but now through the hands of bandits?25% of them will be destroyed (I think) if the Merchant is killed.
Also, as I just said elsewhere, the key to making sure full-time Bandits don't get out of hand is to ensure they face a significant risk from Bandit Hunters, which means they need to be flagged to those Bandit Hunters (faction works just fine) even when they're not actively engaged in Banditry.
Nihimon, you are forgetting Bounty Hunters. I would imagine that a large Merchant Company may have their own group of Bounty Hunters or have a group on retainer.
A Merchant Company with sufficient fighting capability may also feel confident enough to wage a feud against the bandit company.
Then there is faction, which you noted, which would also allow for retaliation at anytime and anywhere.
The idea of bandits being flagged all the time and to everyone is an unworkable and unfair burden. It is unworkable because, "what identifies someone as a bandit?" Banditry is an activity, not an identifier (except faction identifier). It is unfair because no other role is open to such a rule set.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Isn't there going to be at least one settlement (kind of like Riddleport) where criminals & thieves can train and are welcome while do-gooders are shunned and/or outright forbidden?
To an extent, Thornkeep will fill this role as a "wretched hive of scum and villainy". However, I don't think it will be the case that "do-gooders are shunned and/or outright forbidden".
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
OK, I am WAAAAY behind the curve on all of this as I have 3 daughters and a real job BUT:
I have to agree a little with Valkenr. I must be missing something in all of this but with what I have read, I don't see any benefit in playing a "bad" character. Now, I typically play do-gooders just because that is what I like. But what about people that enjoy playing evil characters. Why should they be more restricted than I am if we are the same "level" (Yes, I know there are no levels).
And believe me, this is coming from someone who despises greifers. I pretty much don't play MMOs because of them but if PFO is supposed to be a more dynamic community don't we need the evil with the good?
How do you allow players to play "evil" without also letting them be a-holes about it?
I may be missing a great deal here so please feel free to hit me with a link if this has already been covered in another thread.
Thanks!
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I go back and forth on this issue. There need to be "bad guys" in the game; without them it's no fun. We should all want that.
I think what most people don't like is the poor newbie sap learning the ropes that gets smoked by someone just because he's in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or someone who goes around harassing people because its only a game and it doesn't really matter. (Well I'll speak for myself on those, at least).
But from a RPG standpoint (and I've been playing RPGs for a very long time), a Chaotic Evil character should be almost impossible to play "correctly". CE is (and has always been in RPGs) an insane, unreliable, untrustworthy, lawless, resentful of ANY authority, inconsistent individual. CE characters cannot get along, cooperate, or in any way work together, its just not possible if you role play them "correctly". As such they should have MAJOR limitations in game.
A Lawful Evil character, however, is very playable from an RPG perspective. These guys are ruthless, but they can operate in an organized fashion that actually make them very dangerous indeed.
For CE, I of course understand that their are real people on the other end of these characters who are not CE, so they are not really CE. But to me that's not playing the characters as they should be played in an RPG. The players behind the characters should be "in character" and try to play them as they are meant to be played (historically in RPGs is what I mean by "meant").
Anyway, from an RPG perspective its my opinion that anyone trying to play a CE character really should have significant limitations, but they should not if they play a LE character.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I go back and forth on this issue. There need to be "bad guys" in the game; without them it's no fun. We should all want that.
I think what most people don't like is the poor newbie sap learning the ropes that gets smoked by someone just because he's in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or someone who goes around harassing people because its only a game and it doesn't really matter. (Well I'll speak for myself on those, at least).
But from a RPG standpoint (and I've been playing RPGs for a very long time), a Chaotic Evil character should be almost impossible to play "correctly". CE is (and has always been in RPGs) an insane, unreliable, untrustworthy, lawless, resentful of ANY authority, inconsistent individual. CE characters cannot get along, cooperate, or in any way work together, its just not possible if you role play them "correctly". As such they should have MAJOR limitations in game.
A Lawful Evil character, however, is very playable from an RPG perspective. These guys are ruthless, but they can operate in an organized fashion that actually make them very dangerous indeed.
For CE, I of course understand that their are real people on the other end of these characters who are not CE, so they are not really CE. But to me that's not playing the characters as they should be played in an RPG. The players behind the characters should be "in character" and try to play them as they are meant to be played (historically in RPGs is what I mean by "meant").
Anyway, from an RPG perspective its my opinion that anyone trying to play a CE character really should have significant limitations, but they should not if they play a LE character.
Ever here of the Drow? How about the Sith Code or the "Rule of Two"? I'm sure there are plenty of other examples of CE being able to cooperate and manipulate their way to great power.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
You are correct, the Drow are a good example, truly a society based upon fear (some may argue they are closer to NE than CE, but I agree they can be CE). However, they have limitations because of it; and they kill each other. I'm just guessing, but if a group of players forma CE settlement together in PFO, they won't be killing each other.
I don't know anything about the others you reference.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
For myself, in all of the "Drow" fiction that I have read, they seem able and willing to cooperate when there is need and it is in their best interests. When there is opportunity, they will take it like nobody's business. That is the chaos coming out. They will disobey orders and go against rank and hierarchy when they can get away with it. They will betray their agreements and oaths at just the right moment to best serve themselves.
It is just Chaos played with intelligence and self preservation in mind. It is still chaos.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
My last post added nothing to the discussion.
It would be fine by me if there were a way that the combo of "Evil" and "chaos" can be played in a way that is "functionally positive" to a game. I think that it can be claimed that you are CE, but not that you can "play" CE because it is too intertwined with the things that are not encouraged in game.
It is just a plain fact that more players than not will simply go elsewhere with their dollars if there is too much random killing, betrayal, and lack of "some" stability.
So, the way I understand it (in a nutshell), people that really play CE must suck.