Goblin Squad Member
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One of the core premises of the PFO design is that actions have consequences. Players who want to behave in ways that only those immune to consequences can afford to, will strive vigorously to find ways around accountability systems. One of the big ways to do this will be playing silly buggers with settlement and company membership.
1a) Aggressors annoy Benevolence until they declare a feud. Then, everyone abandons the Aggressors company, join a new company Antagonists, and start the cycle again.
1b) Aggressors annoy Benevolence until they declare a feud. Then, they get a bunch of heavy hitters to swarm into the company and crush Benevolence all day erryday.
What happens if we decouple "can freely attack" from "can be freely attacked" in the context of wars and feuds? Imagine this scenario:
* If you were in the target company when the feud was declared AND are still in that company, you can freely attack that company's feud enemies.
* If you were in the target company when the feud was declared OR are now in that company, you are freely attackable by that company's feud enemies.
In other words, if you leave or join a feuding company while the feud is in effect, you will lose/not gain the feud's freedom to attack, but will retain/gain the feud's vulnerability to being attacked. This will encourage people to think of company membership as a relatively static thing rather than something to be discarded when inconvenient.
2) Players create a bunch of alts in Thornkeep which perform various kinds of harassment which cannot be linked back to the Aggressors and which feuding or warring the Aggressors will not stop.
I don't see any way around this without making TK citizens suspect by default. I don't think I want to see newbies freely attackable if they step out of the high-security hexes, but they should probably become attackable much more readily than a player-settlement citizen would.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Guurzak
1a) If everyone abandons the company, then all Influence it has gained is lost. It's a technique, but means that those characters aren't getting full use of their Influence. If most leave the company, but some just log out, then the company only keeps a certain amount of Influence based on its population.
1b) I frankly could see a weak company recruiting some tough guys during a feud as being a legitimate move. I think we've been told that it will take some time (24 hours?) to join a new company, so the weak company will have to take its lumps until the ringers are brought in. Note also that the company that declared the feud (Benevolence) can drop the feud once the ringers have joined. Yes, they lost some Influence, but the company where the ringers came from might have lost some as well, due to Influence caps.
I think that feuds will likely be most useful when the targeted company has something they'll lose if they log off or switch companies.
One example: A company of loggers from Beneviolence are harvesting in an area. A martial company from DemonLocusts declares a feud and the Beneviolencers log off or otherwise leave the area. A logging company from DemonLocusts strip mines (strip logs?) the area.
Another example: A company from Beneviolence declares feud against the DemonLocust loggers. The loggers log off. The Beneviolencers chuckle and raze the loggers' sawmill.
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Goblin Squad Member
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> I think that feuds will likely be most useful when the targeted company has something they'll lose if they log off or switch companies.
That's definitely the case. Landed companies are tied to their land, and players who care about that are tied to their company. For those players, the feud system should work as intended without needing extra work.
The problem is players who don't care about holding real estate, who specifically choose not to take holdings in order to avoid the complications that property creates. The Aggressors aren't going to build a POI or an Outpost for exactly the reason that doing so would make it costly to abandon the Aggressors crest.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Not sure how 1a/1b comes about, anything that would be considered 'harassment' should constitute the target being allowed to fight back. A feud or war is just saying 'forget the pretense of tit for tat and other law mechanics, it's on', I need a better example of what would cause someone to make a feud that could be dodged like that.
In my personal logic the only reason I would commit to a feud at all would be for offensive purposes, not defensive. If they don't have anything worth defending I have no reason to feud. If they do then abandoning the company to dodge the feud gives me free reign to wreck/loot their company affiliated stuff. Bringing in extra support falls under the same cases to me, but I guess that's more of a general question: should you be allowed to add new members during a feud/war?
If forcing feuds on targets that are of no value and will dodge the feud to waste influence becomes a common tactic I think people will just stop feuding targets that don't have anything tied to them. They'll let the retaliation, law, and criminal mechanics do their job.
They can probably tighten that up a little bit with join/leave cooldowns like EVE has, but I feel like that particular area is close enough to working as intended.
I find the the Alt situation to be far more problematic and agree that needs a close look. Maintaining a cadre of good reputation bandit alts to harass your enemies without them knowing the source does seem somewhat against the premise of the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Characters who don't bind themselves to a social organization will be at a significant disadvantage to those who do.
I think we need some new terminology. I propose we use "Outcasts" to refer to Characters who are members of an NPC Settlement even though they've trained beyond what's available there. That should be enough of a "bright line" definition to distinguish them from newbies.
I would have no problem whatsoever if Outcasts were always flagged. They've chosen to forego the consequences of playing in the Settlement game, and I don't think they should reap the benefits that are intended for new players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon I think Outcast might be a bit too derogatory. I like Safeholders (I don't know who coined it, maybe Guurzak?) as more neutral, but maybe that applies to the new members of the starter NPC towns.
I think it's an interesting twist, though, to separate the citizens of the starter towns into new/low skill characters and higher skilled characters that seem to be avoiding the settlement game. Though I think that if a character want's to avoid the settlement game, maybe that's just a choice.
I think those high-skilled characters should only suffer flagging, though, in someone else's official territory, only by that settlement's citizens, and only if the settlement chooses to declare Outcasts personas non grata.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What if the feud stayed on the members of said company if they disbanded? Would that solve the problem. Like hunting down members of a scattered gang into old west.
That's half of what Guurzak suggested. I'm torn on it, but my gut reaction is that it's a short-sighted solution. I expect most Feuds will be used to change behavior - politics by other means and all. In those cases, it may well be your intent to cause a loss of membership in order to pressure the leadership to change their stance, or the company to change their leadership. I also worry that any mechanic which makes someone a consequence-free target will be abused, so it seems like there ought to be an "escape clause" of sorts.
Make it so you can't leave a company that is currently feuding.
Also, you could hire a merc company to do something about them possibly.
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Goblin Squad Member
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They are only at a significant disadvantage in the grander scheme of things, but if their purpose doesn't benefit from access to all the settlement and company perks then a couple of tier 2 capped bandit alts could still be fairly effective against all but an even numbers of tier 3 characters. The power curve isn't supposed to be particularly steep.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What if the feud stayed on the members of said company if they disbanded? Would that solve the problem. Like hunting down members of a scattered gang into old west.That's half of what Guurzak suggested. I'm torn on it, but my gut reaction is that it's a short-sighted solution. I expect most Feuds will be used to change behavior - politics by other means and all. In those cases, it may well be your intent to cause a loss of membership in order to pressure the leadership to change their stance, or the company to change their leadership. I also worry that any mechanic which makes someone a consequence-free target will be abused, so it seems like there ought to be an "escape clause" of sorts.
I don't see how it's consequence free. You are spending company or settlement influence to maintain the feud that could be used in a myriad of other ways. I must admit I have not played at MMO for a long time so some of these nuances escape me. I plan on having one character and that is all.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Make it so you can't leave a company that is currently feuding.
Also, you could hire a merc company to do something about them possibly.
I like the idea that you can't leave a company that is currently in a feud. I'd offer the caveat: as long as someone from the opposing company is online and accessible.
If a company declares a feud and then all of its members log off for the weekend, the members of the targeted company should be able to leave if they wish. Likewise, no declaring feud and then escaping into inaccessible spaces like buildings where your target can't get at you. (In fact, maybe a feud should just end if no members of the declaring company are online and accessible).
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@ Guurzak
You've played Darkfall, haven't you? ;-)
I'm really glad to see someone thinking about and posting about possible ways to exploit some of PFO's system. (Really! I'm not being sarcastic!) It WILL be thought about, and if it CAN be done, it WILL be done, so I'm offering a huge "Thank You" to Guurzak to being someone who's thinking about it that wants to stop it, not abuse it. There will be plenty of players who will think about it, post nothing, and exploit the mechanic as long as possible. I've played enough FFA PvP games now to have seen some crazy things done to exploit reasonable systems. It's gotten to the point that when I read about FFA PvP mechanics, it's generally the first thing I think about ("how can this be abused"...) when assessing a game's PvP systems. So, it's a huge plus to have guys like Guurzak pointing out potential exploits now, when they can still be thought about and addressed, rather than when they're being used to annoy the hell out of the game population. And, if anyone reading ever things "that's ridiculous, no one would ever do something so silly" about a potential system exploit, let me just go ahead and say from experience that people really will go to rather extreme lengths to exploit a system, sometimes just because they can, but usually because they've found some incredibly ridiculous way to make the game hell for some group of players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For every possible exploit we come up with--in any game-system in PFO--I imagine Goblinworks has thought of three more. It'd be fascinating to know how often we come up with one that's not shown up on their white-board.
More often than not.
The EVE devs when they introduced Wormholes regarded them as the equivalent of Dungeons for example and never expected anyone to live there as the environment was "too hostile". EVE now has a burgeoning wormhole community of corps based entirely in wormholes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Quite often, it's sounded as if the EVE devs don't bother with "how are our players going to use XXX?"-type analysis. It feels, from the stories, as if they just put something new in the game, then sit back to watch what happens.
That in some cases is the beauty of the sandbox MMO, but particularly in EvE. The players will always have an advantage vs the Devs in thinking of ways to use systems in innovative ways. Shear numbers differential accounts for most of this. But, there are also players who are far more experienced with MMO systems than the developers of any one particular MMO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Make it so you can't leave a company that is currently feuding.
Massive abuse potential: chain feud a company for a month or two or six and none of its members can change companies the whole time.
In general, allowing a choice but applying a penalty of some sort to discourage it, is much more in line with the PFO design philosophy than mechanically removing the ability to make the choice at all.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Make it so you can't leave a company that is currently feuding.Massive abuse potential: chain feud a company for a month or two or six and none of its members can change companies the whole time.
In general, allowing a choice but applying a penalty of some sort to discourage it, is much more in line with the PFO design philosophy than mechanically removing the ability to make the choice at all.
I second you there, a cooldown style mechanic as you previously stated I feel would be sufficient to reduce the problem. Even a couple days isn't too bad, maybe increase it's length from normally a single day to 3-5 during a feud? Pending how long feuds are likely to last.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I also worry that any mechanic which makes someone a consequence-free target will be abused...I don't see how it's consequence free.
I meant it as a term of art. We need some way to say "you can kill them without losing Reputation or Alignment". I had hoped "Sanctioned Target" would catch on, but Ryan asked us not to use that. "Consequence-Free Target" is the next best thing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Quite often, it's sounded as if the EVE devs don't bother with "how are our players going to use XXX?"-type analysis. It feels, from the stories, as if they just put something new in the game, then sit back to watch what happens.That in some cases is the beauty of the sandbox MMO, but particularly in EvE. The players will always have an advantage vs the Devs in thinking of ways to use systems in innovative ways. Shear numbers differential accounts for most of this. But, there are also players who are far more experienced with MMO systems than the developers of any one particular MMO.
"No game survives contact with the Players!"
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Goblin Squad Member
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I too worry that those who are not truly new players will reside in starter settlements for all the wrong reasons - to avoid the risks of being affiliated with player settlements (and thus subject to feuds, wars, etc.) while reaping certain starter settlement benefits. However, I have some concerns as to how the Guide Program would be impacted by this debate.
Here is a potential Catch 22 between affiliation and trained skill level that the Guide Program could find itself caught in with the suggestions already made:
1. Affiliation - My hope is that Guides will have membership to the Guide Program Company via their third company choice. This way, they can still play the "settlement game" with their first and second company choices. However, some may question the Guide Program's (and thus its participant's) ability to remain nonpartisan - I suspect because of certain members' affiliations. This would seem to indicate that if Guides are involved in the "settlement game" when not on duty, that they may be be held suspect of favoring their own settlement (such as recruiting the new players they meet) when they are on Guide duty.
2. Level of Training - If Guides are affiliated with a settlement, they're free to have higher level training, but may be held suspect, as described above. If they remain unaffiliated, by Nihimon's suggested solution, they would either need to keep training to starter settlement levels (which I doubt many players would wish to do), or be always flagged for PvP because of their "Outcast" status. Either of these seem too strong a consequence for desiring to help new players.
So in short, if you're a Guide with an affiliation, you may be held suspect for that affiliation. If you decide not to be affiliated so as to be in Guide Program, you are stuck with starter town level skills or free PvP target status.
I realize this is a very corner case to the debate at hand. I also do not hold it against Nihimon for having suggested the "Outcast" status nor how it might affect the Guide Program. In most cases, "Outcast" status does seem like a plausible solution to the problem. Again, I suspect developers don't consider game mechanic issues with such a corner case situation in mind.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It was the only thing I could think of to avoid the trust issues that might prove common in a game with such emphasis on PVP. Perhaps it'll be a developing-over-time thing, where certain characters will build reputations (small-r reputations) as helpful to newcomers regardless of any other "official" entanglements.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Agreed, I think the issue will be there but hopefully any issues can quickly be resolved either by some quick conversation or removal from the program. As a Guide participant I plan to develop that reputation and avoid mixing politics into my guide activities. I have gone so far as to ban recruitment attempts by Hope's End citizens if I'm bringing around new players as part of the Guide program.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Jazz and Duffy,
Thanks for the Guide Program suggestions and enthusiasm. :)
Personally, I have even considered not gaining training over what is available in the starter towns for Hobs. Though I would want several levels of Cleric to help heal new players during their first steps outside the starter town, I don't foresee the need for very elevated skills in my case. Likely, a broad range of lower level skills will be more beneficial for what I plan to spend the vast majority of my play time doing. However, I realize I have a very "corner corner case" play style, as any number of friends have reminded me. I certainly don't expect anyone else in the Guide Program to follow that lead, but rather to fully experience and enjoy the whole game while not "on duty".
Back on OP - what if you are simply not able to gain training over a set amount while still a member of a starter settlement? Sure, there may be some real abusers who purposely keep an alt at low level to take advantage of the situation (e.g. running out from a starter settlement's NPC safe zone to quickly ninja-harvest, then run back in for guard protection), but most people won't care to hobble their paid account characters in that way. Hopefully those who do will be few enough to name and report, or am I being too naive?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Another thought - I know Ryan once mentioned that all characters need to be members of a settlement, even if it is a starter settlement, and that if you are booted from your player settlement, you default back to a starter one. In that latter scenario, you might have a character as a resident of a starter town with higher than starter town training, but what if skills temporarily reduced to starter town level until you gained membership in another player settlement?
I'm sure this can be abused somehow, but I'll leave it to those better skilled at finding the loop holes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hobs, this does happen but not immediately. If you leave or lose your settlement, all of your trained feats will continue to be available for about a month*, which gives you time to find a new home with good training support. Once that month is up, you will lose access to any trained abilities which are not supported by the settlement you moved to.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hobs, this does happen but not immediately. If you leave or lose your settlement, all of your trained feats will continue to be available for about a month*, which gives you time to find a new home with good training support. Once that month is up, you will lose access to any trained abilities which are not supported by the settlement you moved to.
I honestly have to say, that of all the mechanics i have heard of for this game, this one, this singular ill conceived pile of horse $#!7 is probably the most ridiculous and least appealing "feature" i have ever heard of anywhere in any game ever. While I can understand crafters not having access to certain feats because they lack access to the facilities necessary to ply their trade, a fighter does not forget how to swing a sword, a cleric does not forget how to wear armor, a rogue does not forget how to pick locks, and a wizard does not forget how to prepare spells simply because they moved away from home, or were forcibly evicted. I understand the desire to have consequence for not belonging to a settlement, but those consequences should be limited to lack of advancement options. Taking away things I have spent a significant amount of time and energy developing is a pisspoor mechanic from a customer service standpoint.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In the grand scheme of game play satisfaction from a player perspective, I think most will agree that while additives are not always a good thing, subtactives will almost always be looked upon with ill favor. Its one thing to take something away to preserve game balance, it is another to take everything you can do away just because you're no longer a member of a settlement. For certain types of characters or mechanics that are specifically tied to settlements and structures sure, if the structure isn't there then you can't use the feat. but for the rest of the non settlement dependent things like combat abilities, just because you can't advance shouldn't mean you have to regress.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being, This is a pretty simple mechanic to understand, if someone has the patients to dig up the original post that would be awesome, i'm not that guy, but based off of what I remember of the original post which I don't believe Guurzak is too far off of. When a player leaves a settlement to find a new settlement, after 1 month if the new settlement is not high enough level for a player to train the feats you have, you will lose access to that feat.
That's easy to understand, and just as easy to judge.
it is functionally the same as spontaneously forgetting how to tie your shoes because you moved in with housemates who only know how to use Velcro. This is poor design and needlessly punitive.
Also I seem to remember there was a design intent to allow members of one company/settlement to travel to another settlement for training they can't receive at home. The above mechanic seems to imply that this won't be possible.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The above mechanic seems to imply that this won't be possible.
Training and support are two different things. It's more expensive, in terms of Settlement-investment--primarily in the limited number of building sites--to be able to train something than it is to support it.
Many Settlements will be able to support a thing, while a smaller number will be able to train it. One can travel to a training site, and then come home to a place able to allow one to use what one learned.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Master of Shadows
The support mechanic exists to insure ties to a particular settlement, without it the game population becomes transient and there is no reason to bother with a lot of the training interplay.
To offset your concern supporting a particular feat/role line is far cheaper real estate wise than training that line. Just because your settlement doesn't train wizards doesn't mean they don't support them. Cross training at other settlements will still be a thing and is a currently a significant topic in the political maneuverings.
The game is also heavily based around people working together for common goals over long periods of time and the training/role systems reinforce this idea. The game is not meant to be particularly deep for the solo or anti-social player.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not a big fan of the support mechanic either. The game doesn't really need them as an incentive to join settlements. Joining a settlement would be pretty popular, IMO, even if it offered zero mechanical benefits.
As it is, there are plenty of economic and security benefits to settlement membership. Most people will want access to those regardless of whether they needed training support from a settlement. For those who wouldn't engage in the settlement portion of the game without it, I don't really see the harm in some folks being nomads/transient. They will give up some economic and security benefits for doing so.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Without the support design: Bad Actor plays nice for X months until he has completed the training he thinks is necessary, then goes on a murder spree. He gets kicked out of his nice settlement for low rep, but doesn't care. He moves to Hoboville and lays waste to the countryside without further consequence; he can no longer train anywhere but he already has all the training he wanted.
With the support design: Bad Actor plays nice for X months until he has completed the training he thinks is necessary, then goes on a murder spree. He gets kicked out of his nice settlement for low rep, but doesn't yet care. He moves to Hoboville and lays waste to the countryside without further consequence for a month, and then his character becomes nearly useless; he can no longer train anywhere and he has lost access to all of his most advanced trained feats because Hoboville can't support them.
If you don't like the training support idea, you need to come up with another way to deal with Bad Actor. Unless character power is tied to settlement quality in some ongoing way, a "fully trained" character (whatever that may mean to the player in question) is immune to the consequences of the reputation system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being, This is a pretty simple mechanic to understand, if someone has the patients to dig up the original post that would be awesome, i'm not that guy, but based off of what I remember of the original post which I don't believe Guurzak is too far off of.I have found that Guurzak is very seldom far off, even when I disagree with him/her/it.
When a player leaves a settlement to find a new settlement, after 1 month if the new settlement is not high enough level for a player to train the feats you have, you will lose access to that feat.
That's easy to understand, and just as easy to judge.
That is where you lose me. If judgment of a complex system is easy then either you have vast understanding of it or you are (almost certainly*)wrong. Do you have vast understanding of the complex system that is PFO?
*almost certainly: there is a vanishingly small chance that you got lucky.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ah, I had not realized that support and training were independent from one another, i thought they were tied together. that makes me feel somewhat better with regard to training, however that does not invalidate my point.
One does not simply forget how to tie one's shoes or swing one's sword just because one has moved to a new home.
@Duffy
The game is also heavily based around people working together for common goals over long periods of time and the training/role systems reinforce this idea. The game is not meant to be particularly deep for the solo or anti-social player.
I am by no means advocating solo or antisocial play, but humans are nomadic by nature and everything is subject to change. If my settlement is destroyed, or the settlement leadership has begun to drift from its vision such that the environment they create is no longer conducive to my play style, its time for me to move on(we have already seen this happen, most notably with Andius and TEO, or the sudden political upheaval in Freevale). There is no good reason why i should be punished for this decision by taking away my toys.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Guurzak
You don't really need to play funky games with training to do that. It's simple enough to make bad reputation be a direct combat (and even non-combat) skill debuff. You don't need to worry about what the characters settlement associations are or how long they've not been a member of someplace. Have cellar dweller reputation....mutiply the total of every skill roll by .1 It's simple, and even less abusable then the support system because you don't get a months worth of "get out of jail free time" before your combat abilities go into the tank.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you don't like the training support idea, you need to come up with another way to deal with Bad Actor. Unless character power is tied to settlement quality in some ongoing way, a "fully trained" character (whatever that may mean to the player in question) is immune to the consequences of the reputation system.
The simplest solution would seem to be to give all characters falling below a certain minimum reputation threshold a debuff which would discourage falling below the said threshold. Minus outgoing damage, plus incoming damage, minus hitpoints, minus incoming healing... You get the idea.
Could be as harsh or lenient as the good of the game requires. Should be very easy to implement and adjust. Would give clear and immediately feedback to the "Bad Actors".
There are other grounds which can be used to argue for the training support concept, but necessity arising out of need to enforce the reputation system is not it (in my opnion at least).
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Goblin Squad Member
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it is functionally the same as spontaneously forgetting how to tie your shoes because you moved in with housemates who only know how to use Velcro. This is poor design and needlessly punitive.
Losing access to a Feat because you no longer have Settlement Support for it is no more irrational than only being able to slot (in a single Weapon Set) three of the four Primary Feats you've trained. It's how the game imposes balance.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Without the support design: Bad Actor plays nice for X months until he has completed the training he thinks is necessary, then goes on a murder spree. He gets kicked out of his nice settlement for low rep, but doesn't care. He moves to Hoboville and lays waste to the countryside without further consequence; he can no longer train anywhere but he already has all the training he wanted.
With the support design: Bad Actor plays nice for X months until he has completed the training he thinks is necessary, then goes on a murder spree. He gets kicked out of his nice settlement for low rep, but doesn't yet care. He moves to Hoboville and lays waste to the countryside without further consequence for a month, and then his character becomes nearly useless; he can no longer train anywhere and he has lost access to all of his most advanced trained feats because Hoboville can't support them.
If you don't like the training support idea, you need to come up with another way to deal with Bad Actor. Unless character power is tied to settlement quality in some ongoing way, a "fully trained" character (whatever that may mean to the player in question) is immune to the consequences of the reputation system.
Haven't they already stipulated that Bad Actor will be dealt with through liberal application of the Ban Hammer?
This support system is to broad a response. Its going to adversely affect people with perfectly legitimate reasons to change settlements.