Does anyone know how harvesting resources is going to be handled when doing so on territory that is claimed?
As an example, Company/Settlement A controls a hex, and someone from Company X comes in and begins to harvest resources off the land. If someone from Company A attacks them, will they be given the "attacked an innocent" flag and potentially suffer from a reputation hit?
It seems that if territory is controlled by a settlement, harvesting on that territory when you are not part of that settlement (or allied, etc) should flag you for being attackable by those people only (i.e. not free for all for everyone).
Goblin Squad Member
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I don't remember if the devs are going for something like this or not. But it has been mentioned a 'Trespasser' flag for people that are not part of the Company/Settlement's controlled hex and who doesn't have permission.
This would allow enforcement of the laws without costing reputation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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GW had mentioned that there will be a law system which allows settlements to make certain kinds of actions criminal in their claimed territory. (Interestingly, lawful settlements will be able to pass more laws than chaotic ones can.)
We haven't been given details of what those legal options will be, but there's a strong consensus on the boards that trespassing and unauthorized harvest should be in there.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We also have not been given clear ideas about where the laws are applicable. IE: Settlement hex only? Hexes with PoI owned by Sponsored Companies? If the latter, do the hexes need to be contiguous with the settlement?
The entire notion of figuring out what we can consider claimed territory needs to be hashed out still. So it is hard to get into what types of laws or enforcement can be made upon them. It'd sure be wonky if Company A from NBSI settlement on the other side of the map could put a PoI in a hex next to another settlement, declare all non Company A members as free-kill trespassers and go to town. If that were the case, a big group could starve out little groups by declaring short feuds/wars to take out PoIs in the surrounding hexes and not bother the settlement.
Let's say Callambea was tiny (just because they have a good example position). A little 1-hour PvP window. Over the course of three days, Goons (the quintessential bad guys it seems) pick off one PoI per day and build their own to "claim the hex". -9 -1, -10 -1, and then -10 -2, effectively locking them against the cliff. They declare their hexes as No-Trespassing, Kill-on-Sight. Then they drop the feuds or wars. They do not need to keep spending on them, because their Laws are making their opponents free targets. Meanwhile, the Callambeans would be having to spend influence or DI just to try to fight off the encroachers who are preventing them from trading and gathering their own resources.
Either Laws in Claimed hexes should only be able to apply out a limited number of hexes, or hexes should not be able to be able to be considered territory without being contiguously linked to the settlement hex.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We do knew that Ryan strongly approves of contiguity requirements. I'd expect discontiguous sovereignty to be either impossible or heavily penalized.
Goon companies would be able to claim those hexes but would not (probably) be able to get sponsorship, and without sponsorship no laws.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think a key detail aside from all the types of mechanics you guys are talking about (which are important) is that the Laws themselves should affect your settlement in some way. If your Laws are super restrictive and allow you to kill interlopers willy-nilly you should have a strong Lawful Evil alignment shift which in turn affects your building options.
Stuff like that is important to increase the varied interaction and decisions players can make. If everyone can just set their territory to 'friendlies good, everyone else bad' it's really boring interaction.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We do knew that Ryan strongly approves of contiguity requirements. I'd expect discontiguous sovereignty to be either impossible or heavily penalized.
Latest I recall is that they're not actually pushing for direct contiguity, but rather scaling costs based on distance. I'm having difficulty finding the post, so it might be that I simply misunderstood something when I read this post from Stephen.
Responses are reassuring that something is likely to be in game to support this, even if specifics aren't known yet and/or it's not immediate.
I would agree that contiguous hexes would probably be more apt to support a law system, but I would say non-contiguous should still be able to have the laws applied, even if at a cost of resources or something to penalize it...making such issues Lifedragn mentioned at least be a costly endeavor.
Of course, on that note, in Life's example Callambea would have had the benefit of a "free defense" prior to the Goons taking over...the size of Callambea, at least to me, is irrelevant. Coming from a group that is traditionally tiny...I understand that making friends and having alliances is the lifeblood of small groups in games like this, and I'm not a fan of having mechanics specifically coded to protect small groups.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hopefully laws are robust enough to where you can sell writs for node harvesting within your territory... more than simply either legal or illegal.
I definitely hope you can sell claim rights to harvesting nodes. If I fine a sweet motherlode of a node but lack the skill (most likely) to harvest it. Then I would like to be able to sell it or at least trade it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hopefully laws are robust enough to where you can sell writs for node harvesting within your territory... more than simply either legal or illegal.I definitely hope you can sell claim rights to harvesting nodes. If I fine a sweet motherlode of a node but lack the skill (most likely) to harvest it. Then I would like to be able to sell it or at least trade it.
I would hope those terms could be weaved into the contract. The hiccup I see is having to have ownership of the hex to establish the motherlode POI. If you hire someone, do they have to join your settlement to fulfill the contract? I hope not.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think a key detail aside from all the types of mechanics you guys are talking about (which are important) is that the Laws themselves should affect your settlement in some way. If your Laws are super restrictive and allow you to kill interlopers willy-nilly you should have a strong Lawful Evil alignment shift which in turn affects your building options.
Stuff like that is important to increase the varied interaction and decisions players can make. If everyone can just set their territory to 'friendlies good, everyone else bad' it's really boring interaction.
I disagree with that. A Lawful Good settlement enacts laws for the betterment of everyone in the settlement. Enacting laws to protect resources for its citizens and the benefit of the settlement is not evil. They are under no obligation to make life easier for nodejackers coming from outside settlements (and possibly chaotic/evil ones, at that). Friendlies from other settlements could be given harvesting rights through some mechanism, and neutral parties should be able to purchase temporary rights if the settlement wishes to sell them. I doubt there will be punishments outside of the criminal flag, so it would be up to parties involved to agree to a punishment without PVP. I, for instance, may ask that they hand over anything they harvested and escort them out of our territory. Others may opt to just kill the criminal. Neither of those options should be rewarded or punished in regards to alignment.
Basically, if you want to nodejack in someone else's territory, you a) need to work something out in advance (diplomacy, money, trade goods, whatever) b) bring a bunch of friends to protect you when you get flagged as a criminal and PVPers come after you or c) move and harvest quickly, hoping you can avoid PVP. All of those are meaningful choices if you decide to harvest in someone else's backyard.
I too hope they implement a system that allows for defining what actions are lawful in a given terriroty, but it cause a predicament for the wandering casual that may not know the laws of a given territory.
From an RPG/roleplay standpoint, this is reasonable and excellent. If you're _seen_ harvesting on owned land, being flagged a criminal even without knowing in advance is excellent, especially if there's a mechanic to work out the issue/flag/grievence with the offended settlement.
From a gameplay standpoint, it's attrociously bad. If I'm wandering around and I snag a node that I didn't realize was in an owned hex or an owned hex that restricted such things, why should I be penalized?
The answer is a UI that... breaks from immersion an bit and say "whoa whoa whoa... that's gonna get you shot" prior to mining. Not awesome, but...
Regardless, it'll be interesting to see how/if it's implemented. I'd love to see gathering nodes fall under lawful access rules available to settlements.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It adds to immersion that there would be a place where you could go and check the laws of a settlement in game, by physically going to the settlement and checking their keep or something like that.
If you don't and you don't know the laws, then you may very well be stealing. Ignorance of the law is not a defense.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sidetrack Alert
Ya know, I played alongside the Goons for a while in EVE (as a member of TEST Alliance), and I didn't find them to be such bad guys. I really don't think their arrival in PFO will be the death knell of the game.
Will they role play their interaction with your character? No.
Will they bring highly organized PVP tactics to PFO? Absolutely.
Will they grief everyone until every reasonable player has abandoned the game? I don't think so.
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If I'm wandering around and I snag a node that I didn't realize was in an owned hex or an owned hex that restricted such things, why should I be penalized?
Ignorance of a given law isn't an excuse...unless there is no way to find out the given law. Good rule of thumb, don't mine the node unless you know it's safe...
Now, if there's no way to view what the give laws for a settlement are...it can be bad. I would hope there would be a way to look at a settlement's hex and see what laws are applicable to their controlled hexes.
That or, as you said, the UI that says "Hey doing that is bad"
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Goblin Squad Member
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@KarlBob
Depends in which era you played along side them. Most of the original groups were really just like that, douchebaggery incarnate. I also played along side them, until I didn't. I think after a few forays into different games that met them with a lot of resistance (Darkfall being one of them), that in the last couple years they seem to have gone away from they way they were.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think a key detail aside from all the types of mechanics you guys are talking about (which are important) is that the Laws themselves should affect your settlement in some way. If your Laws are super restrictive and allow you to kill interlopers willy-nilly you should have a strong Lawful Evil alignment shift which in turn affects your building options.
Stuff like that is important to increase the varied interaction and decisions players can make. If everyone can just set their territory to 'friendlies good, everyone else bad' it's really boring interaction.
I disagree with that. A Lawful Good settlement enacts laws for the betterment of everyone in the settlement. Enacting laws to protect resources for its citizens and the benefit of the settlement is not evil. They are under no obligation to make life easier for nodejackers coming from outside settlements (and possibly chaotic/evil ones, at that). Friendlies from other settlements could be given harvesting rights through some mechanism, and neutral parties should be able to purchase temporary rights if the settlement wishes to sell them. I doubt there will be punishments outside of the criminal flag, so it would be up to parties involved to agree to a punishment without PVP. I, for instance, may ask that they hand over anything they harvested and escort them out of our territory. Others may opt to just kill the criminal. Neither of those options should be rewarded or punished in regards to alignment.
Basically, if you want to nodejack in someone else's territory, you a) need to work something out in advance (diplomacy, money, trade goods, whatever) b) bring a bunch of friends to protect you when you get flagged as a criminal and PVPers come after you or c) move and harvest quickly, hoping you can avoid PVP. All of those are meaningful choices if you decide to harvest in someone else's backyard.
Well that gets into how you interpret various alignments. Murder, regardless if it is legally sanctioned, is still considered an Evil act. It's one of the few ways to distinguish how a LE entity would carry out the punishment compared to a LG entity.
If the E and G in LE/LG are just 'flavor words' then what's the difference? They aren't supposed to be easy alignments, and the reasons they are generally not supposed to be easy is because you can't always do whatever you want. In your example is killing a character over a log they harvest really a Lawful Good thing? Or is that Lawful Stupid? Shouldn't it mechanically leave the murder option as the last possible thing an LG character can do?
The reason I like the complexity of trade offs is that it encourages you to not just lock your little world down and call it a day. It encourages other behaviors that may have beneficial options. Otherwise everyone locks their corner down and hands out papers to their buddies. Which is really boring and against the idea that settlements are dependent on outside entities.
If I'm wandering around and I snag a node that I didn't realize was in an owned hex or an owned hex that restricted such things, why should I be penalized?Ignorance of a given law isn't an excuse...unless there is no way to find out the given law. Good rule of thumb, don't mine the node unless you know it's safe...
Now, if there's no way to view what the give laws for a settlement are...it can be bad. I would hope there would be a way to look at a settlement's hex and see what laws are applicable to their controlled hexes.
That or, as you said, the UI that says "Hey doing that is bad"
I was just covering the multiple sides as I see them. I think it would be super awesome if mining the node got you flagged, it's just a hard choice to make from a game design stand point. It requires a level of dedication/vigilance/acceptance that most gamers don't have these-a-days. And despite all the early access excitement, you can't run an MMO with 900 crusty old EQ/DAoC/SWG vets who don't give hoot what the carebears whine about when they get guard killed for being a node thief. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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@KarlBob
Depends in which era you played along side them. Most of the original groups were really just like that, douchebaggery incarnate. I also played along side them, until I didn't. I think after a few forays into different games that met them with a lot of resistance (Darkfall being one of them), that in the last couple years they seem to have gone away from they way they were.
I played EVE Online pretty heavily around 2010-2012. For a while during that time the alliance I played in (TEST Alliance Please Ignore) was working with the Goons. Toward the end of my EVE days, TEST and Goons became enemies, instead. This was all long after the war between the Goons and BOB. By the time I played, the Goons weren't upstarts fighting against an established power bloc; they were an established power bloc.
There were definitely griefers in TEST and the Goons when I played, but the groups as a whole weren't playing to ruin the game for everyone else. If I had played in the earlier period, I'd probably have a different impression of them.
@Kemedo - Booga booga! Don't worry, I'm sure you guys will be plenty scary.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I was just covering the multiple sides as I see them. I think it would be super awesome if mining the node got you flagged, it's just a hard choice to make from a game design stand point. It requires a level of dedication/vigilance/acceptance that most gamers don't have these-a-days. And despite all the early access excitement, you can't run an MMO with 900 crusty old EQ/DAoC/SWG vets who don't give hoot what the carebears whine about when they get guard killed for being a node thief. :)If I'm wandering around and I snag a node that I didn't realize was in an owned hex or an owned hex that restricted such things, why should I be penalized?Ignorance of a given law isn't an excuse...unless there is no way to find out the given law. Good rule of thumb, don't mine the node unless you know it's safe...
Now, if there's no way to view what the give laws for a settlement are...it can be bad. I would hope there would be a way to look at a settlement's hex and see what laws are applicable to their controlled hexes.
That or, as you said, the UI that says "Hey doing that is bad"
How about if attempting to mine the node triggered warning text saying "This action is illegal in this hex"? Then you could mine away, with no excuse when someone kills you, or you could go find another hex to mine in.
Yes, it's unrealistic, but it would solve the "I didn't know!" and "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" problems.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I read something once that said that Goonswarm is as bad as they need to be to overcome their current challenges. In the old days, they were the new guys fighting the big old empire. It was an existential fight, and they were nasty as all hell. As time has gone on, they have gotten more stable, and thus less awful.
It rings true to me at least, from an observers experience (I also played 09-12ish).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Goonswarm still needs to be shot (I dislike them with a passion). I played Eve from the early beta till about 1 year ago... my view on the Goons will never change...
In regards of the ideas here and what I would like to see is the following.
Defending a Hex as a company / settlement will be hard unless you zerg it to death so that nobody gets in. The issue with the Hex system compared to eve is the fact that with eve you are able to setup gatecamps to monitor who enters, this is impossible in PFO. So I would like to see something like:
Settlement is able to set who can enter / harvest nodes on a company / settlment base. Those not on that list and are going to attempt to do something illegal should be flagged for the time being that they are in the settlements Hex(es) allowing the people from the settlement to hunt the intruders and punish them.
Now if there will be an option in the future in regards of NRSD or NBSI then that can be thrown into the mix as well to help out settlements/companies on how to handle this...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Look: labels are little more than labels until they are imbued with believed myth. The Goons earned their mythos, but in fact the label is pointing at an element of humanity.
So long as we are humans and multiplayer there will be players who bring what the Goons became famous for. You can call that type whatever you wish and we can quibble for months about the semantics but that element of humanity remains what it is.
Best to prepare for it as it is inevitable unless mechanically impossible. And the only way to make it mechanically impossible would remove half the constellation of possibilities and promise of multiplayer role playing in the Golarion setting.
Utopia is inhuman. Accept the burden that to have a whole game we must be prepared to do what must be done to first seize and then keep it.
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Well that gets into how you interpret various alignments. Murder, regardless if it is legally sanctioned, is still considered an Evil act. It's one of the few ways to distinguish how a LE entity would carry out the punishment compared to a LG entity.If the E and G in LE/LG are just 'flavor words' then what's the difference? They aren't supposed to be easy alignments, and the reasons they are generally not supposed to be easy is because you can't always do whatever you want. In your example is killing a character over a log they harvest really a Lawful Good thing? Or is that Lawful Stupid? Shouldn't it mechanically leave the murder option as the last possible thing an LG character can do?
The reason I like the complexity of trade offs is that it encourages you to not just lock your little world down and call it a day. It encourages other behaviors that may have beneficial options. Otherwise everyone locks their corner down and hands out papers to their buddies. Which is really boring and against the idea that settlements are dependent on outside entities.
If we are talking about a TT game, I agree. There are many options for dealing with illegal harvesting that allow for differences in good and evil settlement.
However, the way this game is set up, an illegal harvester is flagged as a criminal. The only punishment for being flagged a criminal is PVP without repercussions (perhaps limited to "enforcers" of a settlement). Mechanically, you either take out the criminal, or you get corruption. If you make taking out the criminal an evil act, then a Lawful Good settlement can't enforce its own laws without either becoming evil or becomes chaotic because it doesn't enforce its laws. The only other option would be to let anyone harvest within their lands, which would be a detriment to your settlement because settlements are significantly dependent on those resources to grow. You would basically strangling your own settlement as well as potentially giving your rivals and enemies free reign over your resources. That isn't interesting gameplay, it isn't forcing meaningful interaction, its just bad gameplay design.
Under the current intended design, give a harvester fair warning he's breaking the local laws and let him decide if he wants to risk a criminal flag. Otherwise, the devs need to code a more refined punishment system for criminals that would include ways to levy fines and time-outs for jail, so death by PVP isn't the only available option to a settlement looking to enforce their own laws. But I somehow think that the playerbase as a whole would never agree to the later.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That leaves the "army of alts coming in not to harvest, just to go far enough to get flagged and leave so you take the chaos hit as a settlement" issue.
Thinking about what Traianus Decius Aureus said above, it seems like there ought to be some minimum amount of Criminal activity that goes unpunished before any Corruption is applied to the Settlement. My first thought was that this would mean the Criminal stayed in the hex for a certain amount of time, but that creates the problem where your enemies go into your hex when no one's online. Perhaps only Criminal activity that occurs during your PvP Window should apply, but it seems like that would cause other problems. I'm curious to see how the devs crack this nut.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That leaves the "army of alts coming in not to harvest, just to go far enough to get flagged and leave so you take the chaos hit as a settlement" issue.Thinking about what Traianus Decius Aureus said above, it seems like there ought to be some minimum amount of Criminal activity that goes unpunished before any Corruption is applied to the Settlement. My first thought was that this would mean the Criminal stayed in the hex for a certain amount of time, but that creates the problem where your enemies go into your hex when no one's online. Perhaps only Criminal activity that occurs during your PvP Window should apply, but it seems like that would cause other problems. I'm curious to see how the devs crack this nut.
I would have NPC guards, not Wardens, patrol hexes with POI's. They have to observe people breaking laws set by the POI. If you break a law in view of a Warden, you are flagged for 1 hour to everyone from that POI to their Nation if they are connected to one, and the warden tags your location. There could be an upgrade where the NPC's pretend not to notice law-breakers and just report their location, so the law-breaker doesn't know if they were spotted.
When a POI becomes part of a settlement, the guards match the settlements defense capabilities, and increase in number.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If we are talking about a TT game, I agree. There are many options for dealing with illegal harvesting that allow for differences in good and evil settlement.
However, the way this game is set up, an illegal harvester is flagged as a criminal. The only punishment for being flagged a criminal is PVP without repercussions (perhaps limited to "enforcers" of a settlement). Mechanically, you either take out the criminal, or you get corruption. If you make taking out the criminal an evil act, then a Lawful Good settlement can't enforce its own laws without either becoming evil or becomes chaotic because it doesn't enforce its laws. The only other option would be to let anyone harvest within their lands, which would be a detriment to your settlement because settlements are significantly dependent on those resources to grow. You would basically strangling your own settlement as well as potentially giving your rivals and...
If they can't mechanically do it, then they can't. But if they could I would imagine something very similar to a SAD being the preferred way for LG to handle things like theft compared to executions. That way if the criminal refused you fall back to the killing them thing as they are clearly resisting.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thinking about what Traianus Decius Aureus said above, it seems like there ought to be some minimum amount of Criminal activity that goes unpunished before any Corruption is applied to the Settlement. My first thought was that this would mean the Criminal stayed in the hex for a certain amount of time, but that creates the problem where your enemies go into your hex when no one's online. Perhaps only Criminal activity that occurs during your PvP Window should apply, but it seems like that would cause other problems. I'm curious to see how the devs crack this nut.
There doesn't seem to be a clean answer to this. Laws which apply all the time lead to 4AM corruption attacks. Laws which don't apply all the time lead to 4AM non-crime sprees.
Maybe the best option is to let each settlement decide what their enforcement window will be, and which side the knife they wish to cut by.
Settlements who successfully recruit a global player base for follow-the-sun law enforcement may have a significant advantage.
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Trespassers will be shot survivors will be shot again
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Goblin Squad Member
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There doesn't seem to be a clean answer to this. Laws which apply all the time lead to 4AM corruption attacks. Laws which don't apply all the time lead to 4AM non-crime sprees.
Seems to be like laws that apply all the time are a pretty strong incentive to build a 24hr community. A lot of MMO guilds tend to be centered on a particular timezone, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it would be nice if PFO where to shift that paradigm by providing a reason to actively strive for global coverage.
I think a key detail aside from all the types of mechanics you guys are talking about (which are important) is that the Laws themselves should affect your settlement in some way. If your Laws are super restrictive and allow you to kill interlopers willy-nilly you should have a strong Lawful Evil alignment shift which in turn affects your building options.
Stuff like that is important to increase the varied interaction and decisions players can make. If everyone can just set their territory to 'friendlies good, everyone else bad' it's really boring interaction.
I REALLY like this concept! Very much so.
To clarify based on some comments further down in the discussion, is that perhaps node stealing could be a criminal offense in a LG territory, but simple trespassing could not. Trespassing would only be a criminal offense in an LE settlement. (This, of course, assumes that you're neutral to that settlement and not on their enemies list or have negative reputation.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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NBSI has several problems in PFO: You'll run out of people to charge for training. Caravans have to be able to get close enough to give all their goods to your settlement members, who will haul those goods the rest of the way to the Forbidden City (assuming you can convince people to volunteer for that job). Shooting every trespasser will probably tank your reputation (especially if your enemies make a bunch of newbie alts and repeatedly trespass). You'll have no shoppers stopping in to restock on their way to someplace else. I just don't see it working very well at the EVE level.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To clarify based on some comments further down in the discussion, is that perhaps node stealing could be a criminal offense in a LG territory, but simple trespassing could not. Trespassing would only be a criminal offense in an LE settlement. (This, of course, assumes that you're neutral to that settlement and not on their enemies list or have negative reputation.)
Why do you feel that trespassing can't be illegal in a Lawful Good settlement? Being good, even being extraordinarily good, does not preclude an expectation of privacy and respecting of boundaries. Ozem's Vigil will take the law very seriously. We expect that others will, too.
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Goblin Squad Member
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NBSI has several problems in PFO: You'll run out of people to charge for training. Caravans have to be able to get close enough to give all their goods to your settlement members, who will haul those goods the rest of the way to the Forbidden City (assuming you can convince people to volunteer for that job). Shooting every trespasser will probably tank your reputation (especially if your enemies make a bunch of newbie alts and repeatedly trespass). You'll have no shoppers stopping in to restock on their way to someplace else. I just don't see it working very well at the EVE level.
It's important to point out that NBSI as a mechanic just means that everyone who enters your territory is a valid target. It doesn't mean you have to shoot them.
To my understanding, during your Settlement's PvP Window, anyone in your territory who is not a member of your Settlement will be flagged as a valid target. That doesn't mean you have to shoot the friends that show up to help you defend against any aggression.
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Goblin Squad Member
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NBSI has several problems in PFO: You'll run out of people to charge for training. Caravans have to be able to get close enough to give all their goods to your settlement members, who will haul those goods the rest of the way to the Forbidden City (assuming you can convince people to volunteer for that job). Shooting every trespasser will probably tank your reputation (especially if your enemies make a bunch of newbie alts and repeatedly trespass). You'll have no shoppers stopping in to restock on their way to someplace else. I just don't see it working very well at the EVE level.It's important to point out that NBSI as a mechanic just means that everyone who enters your territory is a valid target. It doesn't mean you have to shoot them.
To my understanding, during your Settlement's PvP Window, anyone in your territory who is not a member of your Settlement will be flagged as a valid target. That doesn't mean you have to shoot the friends that show up to help you defend against any aggression.
Aha. I've still been thinking of NBSI as a settlement-leadership-driven policy decision, expected to be enforced by any minimal-PVP-trained settlement member who sees a non-blue in the Forbidden Zone at any time.
"If they ain't us and our sworn allies, they don't belong here! If ya see 'em, raise the alarm in company chat, then shoot 'em!"