Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with Guurzak, this strongly encourages the establishment of medium to large nations, and it encourages them to stick together. It actively *discourages* any dynamism or break-ups of large powers. That is the exact opposite of what they are stating as their goal.
Someone earlier mentioned the idea of scaling DI costs for larger nations, and I think that is an excellent idea. The skill role support idea is rubbish.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Well, I think it might also comes down to a matter of real estate in a settlement. Perhaps they want to ensure that settlements have more structures then only skill training facilities by enforcing a limitation on how many of those facilities can be placed in a settlement? Maybe basic skill training facilities only take up a little space where as the highest level facilities take up a whole lot of space.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I support needing multiple settlements to be required for training all roles at max levels. But supporting all roles at max level should be able to be done by most larger than average settlements.
If I am a wizard, and can travel three towns over to get my training then come back and live and contribute to my home settlement, then great! If I have to leave my friends and go live in wizard town, then I become a flight risk.
If I am not playing with my friends, then why am I playing a multiplayer game in the first place? Meaningful decisions are great! But if they begin separating friends from playing together, then they are going to kill the game faster than any toxic environment might.
Edit: This is not a personal "I" but a metaphorical one. The wizard town three towns over seems like it would be a great place.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How does the class-specific support model foster MHI, specifically?
It forces Settlements to cooperate with other Settlements in order to get what they need to prosper. This also creates friction in the same way that having lots of Lawful Good Paladins in your Settlement creates friction about whether or not to provide Assassin training.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yay meaningful human interaction huzzah.
There are so many better ways of doing this. Lets look at the supposed positives from keeping it.
creates conflict (not really sure myself how it does this but sure why not)
creates meaningful human interaction ( kind of lost on this one as well)
Prevents mega groups from being self sustaining. (not in the least all they have to do is run enough cities themselves to "support" every one.
Negatives:
Creates yet another hurdle in between you and playing with people you actually like or want to play with.
You can never leave your city with out taking a massive power hit. If you stop liking what your group is doing you are SOL. If you want to keep your skills you have to stay or find another group that is the same alignment, has training agreements to get you skills and has the buildings to keep your skills. You also have to get along with these new people and they have to want you.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How does the class-specific support model foster MHI, specifically?It forces Settlements to cooperate with other Settlements in order to get what they need to prosper. This also creates friction in the same way that having lots of Lawful Good Paladins in your Settlement creates friction about whether or not to provide Assassin training.
Because training agreements, bulk goods and not wanting to have to watch out for them attacking you weren't enough reasons to cooperate. Also what are paladins doing planning to build an assassin guild?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Because training agreements, bulk goods and not wanting to have to watch out for them attacking you weren't enough reasons to cooperate. Also what are paladins doing planning to build an assassin guild?How does the class-specific support model foster MHI, specifically?It forces Settlements to cooperate with other Settlements in order to get what they need to prosper. This also creates friction in the same way that having lots of Lawful Good Paladins in your Settlement creates friction about whether or not to provide Assassin training.
Maybe that's the point. Will any settlement really need to support each and every class?
I would expect providing total skill support for alignment restricted skill sets like paladin, assassin, monk, druid, and to a lesser degree, barbarians, might not be critical to every single settlement. They might support one of those, maybe two. But not all of them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also what are paladins doing planning to build an assassin guild?
If you are running a Settlement that has lots of Paladins and some Rogues in it, there's going to be friction when you make the decision of whether or not to provide Assassin training. The Rogues will likely want it, and the Paladins would probably prefer to have something else that would benefit them. These are meaningful choices - they have consequences. Sometimes those consequences are that your friends go somewhere else.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love for it to be possible to have a Settlement capable of providing the highest level of training for all Adventuring Roles. My hope is that our meaningful choices to forego Crafting Facilities, Commoner and Expert Training, Security and Morale Improvements, and Markets will be sufficient in the developers' eyes to warrant letting us make a real University Town. But frankly, I'd be embarrassed to be seen arguing that it's unfair that we can't build all of that in one Settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How does the class-specific support model foster MHI, specifically?It forces Settlements to cooperate with other Settlements in order to get what they need to prosper. This also creates friction in the same way that having lots of Lawful Good Paladins in your Settlement creates friction about whether or not to provide Assassin training.
No, it doesn't. If I need Inquisitor support, I cannot get that by arranging trade or coordinating with the settlement next door; I have to actually leave my settlement and move next door myself. That's a zero sum interaction, or a negative one if I'm leaving valued friends behind.
And to the extent that this mechanic encourages nations to form puzzle-piece role support designs with multiple settlements sharing the load of a full support repertoire, it a) is unnecessary since nations are incented and powerful already, and b) discourages settlements from splitting off since they would have to find a matching puzzle piece opening to fit into elsewhere.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I guess the biggest reason not to have support structures, is that you have to be a balancing ninja. No classes can be better than others, they all have to be equal at all times or certain settlements get unfair advantages. If every settlement can support all classes, all settlements can have equal power potential no matter the balance.
Class/Class balance should never be expected in PFO
1v1 balance should never be expected in PFO
Every build should have a few situations it is good for, and a lot that it isn't.
As long as each side has access to the same tools and the same mechanics, combat is balanced.
Yeah, I wasn't a huge fan of the Support mechanic as-is, either. The general idea doesn't bother me—it'll force people to keep using settlements, and it'll force settlements to stay allies.
But I really hope Support Structures are cheap. I want a settlement to ideally be able to fully support at least three classes without any trouble. Maybe even four or five.
In addition, why not make them free? The only reason they exist is to force people to use settlements. Making them inconvenient for a settlement to have doesn't serve any purpose. Just make them an insubstantial mechanic—the settlement can choose, say, three classes to fully support and one or two classes to partially support.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Remember back in the day when the Kickstarter said this was going to be a classless game? Golgothan Farms remembers.
Right now it does seem like more of a class-based system that supports multiclass characters than a truly classless system.
I'm not really clear on what you lose after a month away from a well-developed settlement. Feats? Ability score points derived from feats? Class levels derived from ability score points derived from feats? If you stand to lose all of the above, then why is Thannon Forsworn saying "you do it (train) once for each feat and you're done forever"?
If you don't actually lose feats, but just can't slot them, then do you not lose the ability score points and class levels?
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Goblin Squad Member
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No, it doesn't. If I need Inquisitor support, I cannot get that by arranging trade or coordinating with the settlement next door; I have to actually leave my settlement and move next door myself. That's a zero sum interaction, or a negative one if I'm leaving valued friends behind.How does the class-specific support model foster MHI, specifically?It forces Settlements to cooperate with other Settlements in order to get what they need to prosper. This also creates friction in the same way that having lots of Lawful Good Paladins in your Settlement creates friction about whether or not to provide Assassin training.
I must have misunderstood the question because you're response is very confusing.
Understand that it wasn't all that long ago that you couldn't even train at other Settlements:
So: this idea that you can train at a Settlement not your own?
Makes no sense.
If we allowed that mechanic, then a True Neutral settlement would be created with a really high rep, would open its doors to everyone and charge fees for access to the Settlement, and there would be no mechanical correlation between your reputation and your character abilities.
Assume you train skills at the Settlement you are a member of. Settlements are not universities.
A few hours later, we got this:
Training at Settlements you are not a member of has provoked an interesting day of brainstorming at Goblinworks. :)
Are you suggesting that the ability to provide low-cost Support Facilities is somehow worse that having to build high-cost Training Facilities?
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Goblin Squad Member
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For the last time this thread is not about training. At all. Full stop. This thread is about the support mechanic. Thank you. Still not a thread about training.
So, you want to be able to Train anywhere and be able to use all your abilities without requiring your Settlement to Support them?
As a correction: There ain't no classes. A settlement should be able to support at least two roles fully and maybe 3-4 to levels of varying meaningfulness.
I still don't see much point in requiring actual money-costing Support Structures, though.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are many ways to support meanjngful choices/interaction for these type of dynamics. Given the stated goal, the game demands more not less support of MHI.
Connecting character "advancement" to "settlements" in the way that is proposed supports meaningful choice. Why meaningful? Because character advancement is one of the main features of an rpg that players care (passionately) about, which is basically the definition of something that meaningful.
In fact this very thread is evidence for the fact that GW made a correct choice in identifying a feature that is meaningful to most players and then making it integral to a decision point in the game. Kudos to them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So, as I read this I see confusing between SUPPORTING a class, and TRAINING a class. So I will use myself as an example...
As a Golgothan Rogue, I have no problem going over to Aragon or any other close by settlement that has rogue TRAINING (this is NOT what this thread is about). But if Golgotha does not SUPPORT (<-- what this thread is about) rogue training, as the Op stated settlements can't support ALL classes, Then I can't live in Golgotha Either (or have to at least move the the settlement I get training from and become a citizen for 1 day every 30days..)
I agree with limiting settlement TRAINING, so you have to make training agreements with other settlements, but limiting settlement class SUPPORT does nothing for this game...
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Goblin Squad Member
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For the last time this thread is not about training. At all. Full stop. This thread is about the support mechanic. Thank you. Still not a thread about training.So, you want to be able to Train anywhere and be able to use all your abilities without requiring your Settlement to Support them?
You should be able to train anywhere that will let you. This provides a whole bunch of that meaningful interaction stuff you are always going on with. Say Golgotha trades Pharos cleric training for wizard training. Look at that we are working together and interacting. There shouldn't be a support mechanic. Everything that people have claimed it adds can be done a different way that doesn't impose the negatives that the as is support mechanic does.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... limiting settlement class SUPPORT does nothing for this game...
It ensures there's a mechanical correlation (through your Settlement) between your Reputation and your Character Abilities.
I've been around long enough to see that correlation cause problems for folks who don't want to be punished for having a Low Reputation. I have absolutely zero sympathy for them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For the last time this thread is not about training. At all. Full stop. This thread is about the support mechanic. Thank you. Still not a thread about training.So, you want to be able to Train anywhere and be able to use all your abilities without requiring your Settlement to Support them?
I know this isn't addressed to me, but what *I* would prefer is that support structures cost little, and support more. Instead of say, 1 small support structure supporting just 1 role, I'd rather it support say, 3 roles. So at a non-negligible, but also not crippling cost, you can support all classes compatible with the alignment of your settlement.
I don't think supporting classes should be a tremendously high investment. Put the "meaningful choices" in settlement management in other areas.|
Goblin Squad Member
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"Large structures can train three roles
Medium structures can train one role
Small structures can support one role, but not train it"
How many Large Structures can a settlement have?
Can one Large, and one Medium structure not support all four main character roles (Fighter, Rogue, Magic User and Cleric)?
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Goblin Squad Member
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... limiting settlement class SUPPORT does nothing for this game...It ensures there's a mechanical correlation (through your Settlement) between your Reputation and your Character Abilities.
I've been around long enough to see that correlation cause problems for folks who don't want to be punished for having a Low Reputation. I have absolutely zero sympathy for them.
Exept for the having to get training from a city that has high reputation thing. Which we have been told will be needed for the highest tier of training. If the true intent behind this is to stop low rep people from training then simply don't let them train. Stop trying to force people to be unable to play with who they want to.
Yeah, if you don't limit support, here's what happens:
Cleaverton makes friends and gets every type of training available from them, paying its friends back with money saved by not building any training houses itself
Cleaverton trains its members (via its allies) to max levels.
Two years later, Cleaverton severs ties, able to effortlessly support every single one of its members. Cleaverton has made a fortune by saving cash this way, so they're able to get way ahead of everyone else.
Cleaverton has no allies, no rep, and does just fine as a bunch of high-level murderhermits.
CLEAVERTON WINS!
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Goblin Squad Member
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... limiting settlement class SUPPORT does nothing for this game...It ensures there's a mechanical correlation (through your Settlement) between your Reputation and your Character Abilities.
I've been around long enough to see that correlation cause problems for folks who don't want to be punished for having a Low Reputation. I have absolutely zero sympathy for them.
...How did Low Reputation come into this? I said nothing about Low Reputation. I fully agree that if you have low Reputation a CHARACTER should not be able to support a higher level skill. But SETTLEMENTS should be able to support all skills. If a settlement has low rep, then the citizens likely have low rep. Meaning the CHARACTERS have low rep, so should not support the higher level skills...That should be on a character level not a settlement level.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, if you don't limit support, here's what happens:
Cleaverton makes friends and gets every type of training available from them, paying its friends back with money saved by not building any training houses itself
Cleaverton trains its members (via its allies) to max levels.
Two years later, Cleaverton severs ties, able to effortlessly support every single one of its members. Cleaverton has made a fortune by saving cash this way, so they're able to get way ahead of everyone else.
Cleaverton has no allies, no rep, and does just fine as a bunch of high-level murderhermits.
CLEAVERTON WINS!
If thats teh case cleavertons allies made some very poor life choices. Also cleverton just pissed off an organization that had the ability to train everything to level 20 so good luck to them.
Reputation is required to train folks. If you can Support people and get them Trained by other settlements, Reputation loses value. I assume that's what Nihimon is referring to.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The more ties that bind, the better especially for a game that. is grounded in community. As soon as players/companies/settlements start being able to "solo," community will disintegrate and you will be left with some other game.
If we are creating a game that is based on allowing everyone to simply play with your friends then we are in trouble :)
With that said I am willing to concede that I may have completely misinterpreted this thread *grins*
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you can train many classes, but you can only slot feats supported by your settlement, then characters with tons of xp and characters with a moderate amount of xp will be playing on an even more level field than before. If you've trained feats from many classes, but you can only slot a few of them based on your settlement, then older characters, who already don't have much of a raw power advantage over newer characters, will also lose a substantial portion of their versatility advantage over newer characters.
Maybe the ability to slot feats should be based on all the settlements owned by your nation, rather than just the settlement you belong to. That would preserve the versatility advantage of veteran characters.
If I've trained in an unpopular combination of roles, then under the current system it does sound like I might have to rotate my allegiance between multiple settlements to maintain access to most of my feats.
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If thats teh case cleavertons allies made some very poor life choices. Also cleverton just pissed off an organization that had the ability to train everything to level 20 so good luck to them.
Except Cleaverton has a whole army of level 20s already, has put its money into its military instead of training houses, and doesn't have to worry much about a bad Reputation.
Good luck to Gullibville.
The point isn't "can Cleaverton win?" That depends on a lot of other factors. The point is, Cleaverton can now solo the game. That is not what Goblinworks wants.
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Goblin Squad Member
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"Large structures can train three roles
Medium structures can train one role
Small structures can support one role, but not train it"How many Large Structures can a settlement have?
Can one Large, and one Medium structure not support all four main character roles (Fighter, Rogue, Magic User and Cleric)?
Three Districts. Keep is separate.
I have no idea if the info survived but this is from a sketch in this Pathfinder Online-Work in Progress video.
District "A": Large=1 medium=2 small=9
District "B": Large=1 medium=1 small=7
District "C": Large=0 medium=1 small=5
This would be potential, IF you can get your DI high enough.
Maybe one of our Revered Developers will chime in and set me straight on this assumption.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So you claim the support mechanic prevents low rep people from maintaining high level skills?
Also so they have training, they still can't provide all the bulk resorces they need for their city. If they are just a company then they have somewhere around 50 people which in a land of cities with 500 is no big deal.
Who said they were just a company? This is a settlement. I never made the slightest indication they were weaker than any other settlement—they're just a settlement using an exploit.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Are there mechanics in place to prevent people from just doing "stupid settlement tricks" once a month and popping over to a neighboring settlement and paying to become a member for an hour to refresh training?
If not, then its all a waste of time as it will simply be meta'd away and will only really affect newer players who don't know better.
If there is, is it really worth the aggravation it causes the playerbase to NOT be able to play in the groups they want for whatever benefit?? GW thinks this will provide?
Now, looking at the Alpha stuff and comments from GW on the future of the graphics, it should be obvious that Graphics are not going to be a factor in player retention.
From what I've seen of the combat, and I admit its early in alpha so who knows, but that't going to be at best a minor factor in player retention and at worst a huge negative in player retention when they finally realize what losing means. (with all due apologies, people are DUMB. no matter how may times you scream "ITEM LOSS ON DEATH" they simply will not get it until they die a few times).
That leaves player groups and the player relationships as the retaining factor for players and anything like this, the one company one tower rule, etc that fractures and splits those relationships just doesn't feel healthy to the long term success of the game.
Its got too many negatives working against it to hinder one of the major retaining points on what looks to be nothing more then a malicious whim on someones part at GW.
If there is a good reason for this or even some logic to it them it certainly eludes me.
Perhaps something from GW explaining the design intent or reasoning why they don't want people to play in the groups they want?
A reason for the role support structure mechanic is likely to force players to have a PC settlement home. Without it, it may be viable for some players to base themselves longterm out of NPC settlements. They might pay for high level training at player settlements from gold gained through solo or small group activities like PVE or banditry, and then rush back to the security of an NPC settlement to avoid having wardec risks or having to participate in settlement metagame.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Who said they were just a company? This is a settlement. I never made the slightest indication they were weaker than any other settlement—they're just a settlement using an exploit.
Alright then they are a city that just ditched its longest tearm allies. Now they can run out of what ever bulk goods they cant make themselves. So their DI falls and their city goes down the drain. They need new members at some point because people will rotate out. They can't train the new people.
The point isn't "can Cleaverton win?" That depends on a lot of other factors. The point is, Cleaverton can now solo the game. That is not what Goblinworks wants.
We're overthinking the thought experiment.
My point was that removing limited support offers a simple way to make settlement non-dependent on each other: Train up, then ditch the others. They don't have to be murderhermits (murderhobos are homeless, silly), but they're still a big, powerful group that doesn't need to have dealings with anybody. They can just focus on holding lots of POIs.
Also, Cleaverton can add members: Other high-level players who see Cleaverton is doing really, really well by not having to invest in training newcomers.
Not everyone will be as extreme as Cleaverton, but this can still happen: Train up to a satisfying level and then stop making deals.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My point was that removing limited support offers a simple way to make settlement non-dependent on each other: Train up, then ditch the others. They don't have to be murderhermits (murderhobos are homeless, silly), but they're still a big, powerful group that doesn't need to have dealings with anybody. They can just focus on holding lots of POIs.
Also, Cleaverton can add members: Other high-level players who see Cleaverton is doing really, really well by not having to invest in training newcomers.
Not everyone will be as extreme as Cleaverton, but this can still happen: Train up to a satisfying level and then stop making deals.
But that's not factoring in what happens when there are new roles and feats added to the game in the future? Cleaverton will be missing out on fancy cause no one will want to train them new fancy stuff. They will be all like "No way Cleaverton, you have fun with your BetaMax. We got Laserdiscs now. Hollar!"
They have stated a few times in the Gobbocasts and in a few dev posts that you may be able to support every class but its not going to be top tier skills. They seem to want to avoid having cities where you can find a level 20 of every class and I am not sure why they want that to happen.Because they don't want powerhouse nations/settlements composed of mega guilds that become unstopabble since none of the smaller companies can support getting every role up to max level. At least that is my understandinf of the limiting mechanics. This is all aside from the meaningful interaction aspect.
Well, it's not like there can't be multiple settlements that are allied in a meta-game way though, right? It seems like it'd be smart to do that, then, and at the top it would seem the mega guild with multiple settlements would be even more powerful.
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Goblin Squad Member
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But that's not factoring in what happens when there are new roles and feats added to the game in the future? Cleaverton will be missing out on fancy cause no one will want to train them new fancy stuff. They will be all like "No way Cleaverton, you have fun with your BetaMax. We got Laserdiscs now. Hollar!"My point was that removing limited support offers a simple way to make settlement non-dependent on each other: Train up, then ditch the others. They don't have to be murderhermits (murderhobos are homeless, silly), but they're still a big, powerful group that doesn't need to have dealings with anybody. They can just focus on holding lots of POIs.
Also, Cleaverton can add members: Other high-level players who see Cleaverton is doing really, really well by not having to invest in training newcomers.
Not everyone will be as extreme as Cleaverton, but this can still happen: Train up to a satisfying level and then stop making deals.
The poor Cleavertons. They are sooo 3 expansions ago.....
Well, Cleaverton does have the option of just making deals with settlements whenever an expansion comes out, but I think I've made my point regardless. ;P
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Goblin Squad Member
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Remember, it takes 2.5 years to fully train a role, ignoring everything else. It's not like GW doesn't have time to think up better ways to make us interact.
Since i am wholeheartedly against reputation limiting power potential, I can't support that reasoning for keeping role support.
People are already organized into groups, most of them are called guilds. Its already been enough of a headache mapping into company/settlement. We don't need another headache splitting up groups so they don't have to compromise their play style just to stay together.
There are people that want to play together, and they want to play largely different roles. This idea GW has would be great if everyone was coming into the game with no friends.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You should be able to train anywhere that will let you.
I haven't understood this one yet. If one only needs to be able to convince a Settlement to let one train for the minute or two it takes to accomplish that, it may've required no more than a few minutes' meaningful human interaction, after which one can walk out the gate, never to contribute to that Settlement's well-being again.
Support, in my mind, requires one to participate in a Settlement enough to convince them it's worth their while to let you live there, and receive on-going benefits of residence.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you are running a Settlement that has lots of Paladins and some Rogues in it, there's going to be friction when you make the decision of whether or not to provide Assassin training.
A little off topic, but:
Is this a valid example? Don't you need to be evil to train assassin skills? Rogues don't need to be evil, do they?