Goblin Squad Member
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I have added a new Ideascale topic for everyone to look at HERE.
The idea is so everyone can see who is in their Company, settlement, and is set as friendly.
Kinda amusing that someone already voted no, not sure why anyone would not want this in the game.
There are so many good reasons to have this that I couldnt list them all and not cause a crash of Paizo.com.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would definitely like to see some way to identify what Company, Settlement, or Faction a player is if that player is selected. I do find that I am interested in having this tied to a feat or skill so that it isn't automatic with a tag always flying, or that you can switch it on or off. Still, I'm behind this idea and agree. Only reason i can see to say no would be that sometimes you may not want people to know who you operate with.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, that is true, people may not want to be known. An idea later on to fit in with the feat/skill your talking about could be Bluff or something like that to turn it off.
As for turning it on, it should be automatic. If not then it would be a required feat that everyone should have. No one will want to be killed because they do not have a tag showing that they are allies.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Right now, the mini-map shows characters that it knows to be hostile to you with red backgrounds. Maybe it should have a green background for members of your Company and Settlement, and light blue for members of Allied companies. Everyone else could keep the current tan/off-white background.
This would be less intrusive than anything hovering over a character's head. (Hovering tags really bother some people.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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That would not bother me completely. The only problem I can see is that I do not use my minimap once a fight gets going. So unless I know everyone I am fighting by name, I could (or any new player) hit a friendly by mistake.
Agreed. Maybe a compromise could be for Allied/Hostile flags to appear above the head of each character within a given radius when combat begins. When combat ended, the flags could disappear again.
If Companies and Settlements get as large as GW hopes they will, then trying to recognize everyone on your side by name will quickly become impossible.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You got that right. I was thinking something very simple to begin with.
-Ability to set a slider for friend or foe
-One simple icon next to the rep triangle, red for enemy and blue for friend
Should be simple enough... Unless they decide to go with an overview like Eve... which I doubt since we are not flying our characters around space
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There seem to be a lot of hard-core types voting down on legitimate ideas which basically are analogs for generally accepted features in the MMO space.
Ultimately, there has to be a balance between immersion and play-ability, otherwise you end up with a game like DayZ standalone, which sounds cool in concept but is actually quite obnoxious when for instance you die from accidentally drinking rubbing alcohol instead of applying it to your wounds.
Personally, I hope the devs only use the IdeaScale site for insight into players thoughts, and not actually as a roadmapping tool for features.
If every player was semi-required to vote on stuff periodically with a small quick survey pop-up when they play, the resulting data might actually be useful.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There seem to be a lot of hard-core types voting down on legitimate ideas which basically are analogs for generally accepted features in the MMO space.
Ultimately, there has to be a balance between immersion and play-ability, otherwise you end up with a game like DayZ standalone, which sounds cool in concept but is actually quite obnoxious when for instance you die from accidentally drinking rubbing alcohol instead of applying it to your wounds.
Personally, I hope the devs only use the IdeaScale site for insight into players thoughts, and not actually as a roadmapping tool for features.
If every player was semi-required to vote on stuff periodically with a small quick survey pop-up when they play, the resulting data might actually be useful.
Immersion has been the Holy Grail for a vocal segment of this board's population since PFO was announced. There were people who howled in protest when GW proposed to include a mini-map. They successfully prevented characters and monsters from having permanent floating name tags. (That hasn't been so bad, except that it's tough to get close enough to a large group of mobs to tab through each one and identify them. That font is small, and its legible range is very short.) They've also protested virtual coinage and remote display of pricing data from the Auction Houses, and requested that darkness should prevent human characters from seeing what's in front of them.
Several times, Ryan has explained to the Immersion Above All crowd that not everyone will be content to live within their self-imposed restrictions. Some people will create third party mini-maps if the game doesn't have them. Some people will adjust the gamma settings on their monitors to see in the dark. Some companies will post alts at every Auction House to manually track prices. In these cases, the cheaters will prosper over those who stay within the immersion-promoting limits. To their credit, the immersion fans have generally accepted these explanations.
As I've been saying for a long time, the video game players will come, and they will treat PFO as an MMO video game, not a virtual table top pencil and paper RPG. When they arrive, both sides will have to make some compromises. Hopefully, we can all have fun.
The survey might work well at login. It certainly shouldn't pop up during combat, and it would be annoying if it popped up during a lot of other activities.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Xeen whenever I've seen you in game, I've known exactly the settlement you're playing for :D
That said, I approve this idea. Basic flags at first, eventually I think it would be interesting to tie in Knowledge skills to determine "success" of identification, such as Knowledge(local) for example, with better score allowing more detailed id - faction or settlement -> company or something like that. Bluff could counter, Disguise could be a rogue feat to that adds bonuses. Lots of ways they could expand on it, but basic flags to start.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not a big fan of 'floaty' names, badges, and other such stuff. For me personally it is immersion breaking.
I do think the info is important to us, though. If I specifically target someone I would like to see their name and affiliation, etc. What I would REALLY like to see is Mouseovers for all of these sorts of things: PVE and PC related. Having to switch targets to see if that goblin is a Shaman--or that PC standing in the bushes is Xeen--is pretty tedious.
Good idea, Xeen.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It may be annoying for "ne'er do well, ganky, banditry " types though.
People will spot their company or lack thereof from miles away and just scarper.
"oh look - that group of guys over there are not nice fellows from a LG settlement, they are members of that dreadfully awful river pirate, gatherer hating, company - lets go the long way around"
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Goblin Squad Member
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It may be annoying for "ne'er do well, ganky, banditry " types though.
People will spot their company or lack thereof from miles away and just scarper.
"oh look - that group of guys over there are not nice fellows from a LG settlement, they are members of that dreadfully awful river pirate, gatherer hating, company - lets go the long way around"
As it should be. If reputations and allegiances can't be viewed in game, people will just start making sites with "Watch out for this guy" outside of the game anyway...
I like the idea of Bluff and those types of skills affecting how much information people can see about someone, but I don't think anyone should be able to hide their allegiances or reputations from everyone.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It may be annoying for "ne'er do well, ganky, banditry " types though.
People will spot their company or lack thereof from miles away and just scarper.
"oh look - that group of guys over there are not nice fellows from a LG settlement, they are members of that dreadfully awful river pirate, gatherer hating, company - lets go the long way around"
Thats one way of looking at it.
The other way of looking at is the exact opposite.
" Oh look - that group of guys over there are the dreadfully awful river pirates, and not the nice fellows from an LG settlement - lets hit em now."
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Goblin Squad Member
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stealth to hide your icon from the minimap,
bluff or disguise to appear friendlier on the minimap,
- I like that idea.
Bluff would be countered by sense motive though, so that it would be a huge risk to try to bluff your way through any large group...
As for when the chaos of melee erupts: I will probably regret this, but so far I like the idea of no names unless you target them. If you want to identify your team, color coordinate. If the foes don same color to confuse you, that's a legit tactic - you can still use the minimap or target them and read their name.
Company tag. Yes I absolutely like that too, but adding a "right click to see all my (public) company tags and titles"-function would cover all noncombat needs without removing fog-of-war and subterfuge aspects.
I've never really had any problems with targeting, other than selecting a rock or tree stump rather than that wolf right behind the aforementioned node.
Have you done any PvP in Alpha?