Wandered back to other game sites and it showed that grifter guilds are still a force. These guilds call themselves 'evil guilds' and profess that pulling trains into raid groups, blocking rare spawn points, killing all the NPCs in a town, and other 'evil' acts are just part of the game when their true goal is to take over the server and prevent anyone else, not in a large guild, from exploring end game content.
I've already tried to address the first two 'not playing nice' activities with my Kings Warrant / King Pardon post. Now, I'd like to offer some remedies for NPC killing and town attacks; Pantheon's Perception feature makes these ideas possible.
1. Eventually, there will be a reputation characteristic. Using this would be the easiest way to restrain NPC killers. Kill passive NPC, like a merchant, and your reputation takes a big hit. Kill a guard and it takes a bigger hit. Low reputation means that some merchants won't sell to you; others may raise their prices. Lower reputation might cause city guards to follow you around or even bar you from entering the city or town.
Recovering reputation might be through long time consuming quests or other game play impacting requirement.
2. While attacking an NPC, the player is flagged PvP. This allows both guards and PCs to come to the aid of the NPC as they might in a real town. The trigger radius of the attacked NPC is greatly increased, so more guards will be called in.
Players attacking would have red PvP flags, players defending would have green ones. Players attacking green PvP flagged would gain a red PvP flag. Players healing or enhancing red flagged PvP, gain a red flag. Once flagged red, you stay red.
PCs that assisted in defense lose the PvP flag after the fight. The player or players that attacked or aided in the attack (healing and such) do not lose it for 24 hours (or other time period) as they are now wanted bandits.
If the attackers encounter guards during the cool down time period, they could be attacked and arrested. So maybe this could be a PvB (Player vs Bandit) or Criminal flag.
Now, many town guards are in the mid-level range of say 30ish. What if a group of 50s start raising havoc? Here's where the King's Guards come in. They are a group of say 60ish fighters backed up by 60ish level clerics and magic users. Why so high? Well the King's Guards go through special training that is not available to lowly adventurers. The King has to maintain power, right?
So if an 'evil' guild wants to vie for power against the kingdom, the kingdom will fight back. And the King's Army? Those barracks are filled with men-in-arms that do patrols, defend against raids, and kingdom defense activities. More than enough to stand against thirty or forty 50ish types who wish to challenge the king. And if this size of a battle occurs, you can bet everyone on the server might want a piece of the action and most will fight to defend the city.
So you want PvE actions to result in PvP outcomes? Just because someone want to XP off a guard? No thank you. Terrible idea and one that would be open to exploitation. Besides, NPC social aggro can be coded such that attacking merchants in town would trigger a far wider reponse of guards than 'normal'. No need to players into the equation.
to be honest,I never played a game with this issue
"trains" into raidgroups"
when having a look at the atmosphere /climate system in the "pantheon differences" section,
where they say that small tornedos might travel through a region;"compelling player to work their way around ,not trough.
I wonder if that would even be possible if they would have to contend with the world itself.
so pulling trains into raid groups might become their own undoing,as getting from point x to y isnt so evident
as when environment poses no dangers in the older games.Different circumstances
Or they might trigger a zone event,thwarting their plans to block rare spawn points and/or train into raid group
As for those killing all NPC in towns,don't forget about the NPC dispositions,the alarmist,the bully
Soon those bullies might become the victim of it.
I think ,when all these things come together ,trying to take over the server might become more than those "evil guilds" can chew
gelfzin said:Wandered back to other game sites and it showed that grifter guilds are still a force. These guilds call themselves 'evil guilds' and profess that pulling trains into raid groups, blocking rare spawn points, killing all the NPCs in a town, and other 'evil' acts are just part of the game when their true goal is to take over the server and prevent anyone else, not in a large guild, from exploring end game content.
I realize there are bad apples out there, but this is straight up fearmongering to push an agenda.
gelfzin said:
1. Eventually, there will be a reputation characteristic. Using this would be the easiest way to restrain NPC killers. Kill passive NPC, like a merchant, and your reputation takes a big hit. Kill a guard and it takes a bigger hit. Low reputation means that some merchants won't sell to you; others may raise their prices. Lower reputation might cause city guards to follow you around or even bar you from entering the city or town.
Recovering reputation might be through long time consuming quests or other game play impacting requirement.
So, uh, the faction system that's existed for 20 years?
gelfzin said:
2. While attacking an NPC, the player is flagged PvP. This allows both guards and PCs to come to the aid of the NPC as they might in a real town. The trigger radius of the attacked NPC is greatly increased, so more guards will be called in.
Players attacking would have red PvP flags, players defending would have green ones. Players attacking green PvP flagged would gain a red PvP flag. Players healing or enhancing red flagged PvP, gain a red flag. Once flagged red, you stay red.
PCs that assisted in defense lose the PvP flag after the fight. The player or players that attacked or aided in the attack (healing and such) do not lose it for 24 hours (or other time period) as they are now wanted bandits.
But what if the "attackers" belong to an opposing faction? What if they were already KOS to the guards? What if the guards attacked first? Why should everyone in the world be able to attack them if the game literally has factions that are KOS to each other to begin with?
gelfzin said:
Now, many town guards are in the mid-level range of say 30ish. What if a group of 50s start raising havoc? Here's where the King's Guards come in. They are a group of say 60ish fighters backed up by 60ish level clerics and magic users. Why so high? Well the King's Guards go through special training that is not available to lowly adventurers. The King has to maintain power, right?
Why stop there? If my guild is on Red Dragon Faction and your guild is on Blue Giant Faction, and your squad is raiding the Red Dragon Lair, my guild should be able to come attack you and you should suffer your red/green penalties, right?
gelfzin said:
you can bet everyone on the server might want a piece of the action and most will fight to defend the city.
What a great bit of double speak. This is the same as saying they might not. And again, why would the Skar care that a Dark Myr attacked a Halfling guard? All this because people exp on guards?
In its simplest form, I agree that this is mostly about exp guard camping. I consider it the biggest immersion breaker for any game that professes to be a fantasy world that encourages people to be a part of.
If your character is part of a city, why shouldn’t you be able to defend it?
All the dialog, quests, activities, and other content the game designers generate to immerse you into the game, to encourage you to care about what happens to others and your character all fades away when some min/max group is working the game code to camp guards for exp.
Triggered PvP has a place in PvE. If you attack my resources, my guards, my stuff, then you are indirectly engaging in PvP already. I should be able to gather friends and stop you and your group. If your faction raids my town, then my faction should be able to assist in its defense. That lets me be part of the game and not just part of the game code.
On a pve server it is really simple.
1. Don't allow players to attack merchants or questgivers or other NPCs that other players need. Permitting this is neither more nor less than permitting griefing. If you want players to be able to attack town guards or other NPCs that fellow-players do *not* need I see no benefit to this but since I also see no harm to other players I don't really care.
2. Don't allow trained mobs to attack fellow-players. This too is simply a way to allow griefing. On a pve server competition should be limited to competing for resources and quest objects and mobs - not being able to kill each other albeit through indirect means. Yes I know I am in the minority but no one has ever given me a reason to allow training other than "it makes the world more dangerous and unpredictable". Sorry but with all due respect I consider this a very poor argument. If VR wants more danger and unpredictability they are entirely capable of having powerful mobs spawn randomly and wander around randomly.
On a pvp server I think this would be an interesting ruleset with a few tweaks. I don't like the idea on a pve server though.
You guys are so concerned with rampant griefing, but I don't think it will be such a massive problem.
VR is taking the right approach in my book, and leaving it an organic experience. I think that the number of non griefers will vastly outnumber the griefers out there, and that the community will self regulate. In a social game like this, griefing is detrimental to your progression.
If it becomes a huge problem that isnt going away, I'm sure VR will have plans to sort it out. Brad has spoken about this topic many times, and his answer is always a multipart one.
I'm on the fence on this from a PvE perspective.
I think it hearkens back to the "accident" coming about from the sandbox nature that allowed players to attack NPC's like merchants and bankers and particularly guards. It started with guards. Someone from another race with bad faction, being one-shotted by a guard would naturally want revenge. Seeing a Sk troll, under the bridge in fellwithe camping the two guard spawns and freaking out the newbies was kind of cool. However, when a higher level player (power creep) filled to the head with raid gear from an expansion that pushed the level cap to 65 when the game was originally set to 50 then killed a banker and the banker didnt respawn for- I think it was 12 RL hours, that was an "accident" that was not anticipated. No one could bank, not even the newbies.
Of course the faction hit was huge, nothing a little invisibility couldn't resolve but they also found the exp gains were enormous and Powerleveling for RL cash was born. So long as the grouped player being PL'ed did not hit the guard they would not suffer a faction hit but would get all the exp in record time. Whats a little more worse faction to the Powerleveler when it means 50bucks. PL 0-65 in 2 hours, who cares if you don't know how to play your class.
From a PvE/sandbox perspective. I think you should be able to attack an NPC wether by accident or otherwise, however I think the game repercussions if you kill them should be almost crippling. I say this because I don't want to take away the other side of it, the newbie accidentally attacking the NPC and being one-shotted in their own home city saying HAIL! and it coming out as "H~!" A-*auto-attack* LOADING PLEASE WAIT...
From a PvP standpoint it makes perfect sense. If you're raiding and you see another guild start to assemble, its either negotiate or a battle royale. If they thwart you, you hit them in their cities and train guards on them when their sleeping, "they come at you with a knife, you come at them with a gun. They send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue! That's the chicago way" (The Untouchables)
I think there is an easier way to prevent this, just make it so all guards and NPC's inside of cities award large NEGATIVE exp. You can kill them if you really want, but you're probably going to pay for it with a level or two.
Also, to help prevent death from accidental attacks, I would like to see a keybind that lets you scheath your weapons. Thus if you accidently attack a guard, you then scheath your weapons, the guard doesn't kill you, instead you pay a fine for your attack.
Vandraad said:So you want PvE actions to result in PvP outcomes? Just because someone want to XP off a guard? No thank you. Terrible idea and one that would be open to exploitation. Besides, NPC social aggro can be coded such that attacking merchants in town would trigger a far wider reponse of guards than 'normal'. No need to players into the equation.
Yeah I am pretty tired of games treating guards/merchants/townsfolk differently than any other NPCs/mobs, often to the point of making them invincible/unable to be attacked or just pointless to kill by offering no loot or experience. If someone wants to treat Thronefast as just another zone to level in by killing the denizens thats totally okay, let them do so without weird artificial safeguards.