Red Evil Player

How to support the players Evils?

Evils players will have a lot of attention on them. They will be hunted, stalked and brutalized. There must be places to protect against zerg who want their heads. Too often the main attraction of many people is to go camping for the Evils Shrines. Already they can not go into the cities with guards, how will they buy their equipment and other goods necessary? Will they have houses? If yes, in a village, town or city? I worry for Reds Heads

 

Very few humans are truly evil. The just fall under the influence of a charismatic dragon (or whatever). I would prefer to see if there are players that are evil to just about everyone, that they still are following some path or story. They were promised money, power, or some really cool place to live.

Maybe a player builds up some bad karma and gets a quest "serve the dark lord." And given that he has no food and a steep repair bill, this seems like a good idea.

 

Other then the Guild backed Pkers, I doubt we see very many "Reds" right away.
The early Evils will probably have Guild backing, the on his own (less of these) Evil guy will probably have to wait and build up a stash first, or 2 accounts.

As far as extra game created protection, have not heard anything planned yet.
Not even sure if there will be any "Reds" since it is consensual PvP.

 

@Xandra7

In a consensual PvP game, e.g. WoW, I have reds. But they are player from the opposite faction. If I am alliance, the hoard are red (and vice verse). In Ultima, honor is associated with the paladin. But more people have been killed by someone "just following orders" than any other motivation.

Perhaps there's some faction in SotA that places a high value on honor, and valor, and has it's own ideas on Justice. Not so much compassion. That group my appeal to Abydos. Perhaps he joins a like minded guild or free lances. If someone absolutely doesn't ever want PvP, they will never see him. But many people might be willing to take some risk that their caravan gets raided or whatever.

 

How realistic is this game going to be? If you see someone walking down the street, how do you know if they're good or evil? If you're a known criminal in a certain area, then the guards should recognize you and arrest you. But if you go to a different town, how would the guards there know you're bad? I don't think players should see each other as red, blue, grey or whatever, unless they've seen that person on a wanted poster, or interacted with them in the past.

 

@Caledor, the game has a magic system, and is based on virtues. It isn't that big a stretch to presume that murder stains the soul so much that anyone can 'magically' see it, through a sense unavailable to us in the real world.

If you are willing to buy magic, you ought to be willing to buy that.

 

I really want there to be Player Killers in this game, even though I am not going to be playing as one I just want to know that they are out there. I feel like if we don't have them in the game, then to me, i'll get that sense of something is missing.

 

@Glory - I want them as well, otherwise this will just be yet another PvE game. Already playing one of those. Don't need another one.

 

There's two basic problems:
1) PKers existed to prey on the "weak". Those weak will either opt out of PvP, or just play some other game.
2) PKers really had no opportunity for advancement. Perhaps they could feed another account but basically they were outside of the story.

The only way to solve both problems is to bring the would be PKers back in the story.

Player x takes the gypsy test to sort virtues. He scores dead last in compassion. No empathy, a psychopath, a Killer. This is not a bad thing...but a tremendous role playing opportunity. He's sent to a different starting area. He's given different quests. Perhaps he starts by stealing sheep or otherwise hassling NPCs. He's gaining rep for some faction and losing it for this town. He's now basically a kill on sight red to this town. Some adventurer in the town, maybe Owain, is given a quest / offered a bounty to hunt down and remove player x.

To the extent that player x continues his quests and eludes capture, be may get access to vendors, and all the other things you'd expect for someone following the story. They just won't be in this town.

 

@PrimeRib, "1) PKers existed to prey on the ?weak?. Those weak will either opt out of PvP, or just play some other game."

How does that apply to SotA, if PvP is consensual? If players don't want PvP, then yes indeed, opt out. That has been my repeated point.

"2) PKers really had no opportunity for advancement. Perhaps they could feed another account but basically they were outside of the story. "

PKs make their own story, just as the Anti-PKs make our own story. It may be that RG and Tracy Hickman do come up with a great story, but I'm not depending on that. Dragon Age tried the same story with a single player RPG, and I thought the storyline was pretty lame. It was also similar to SotA in that it had a 2D map, and there were also moral repercussions to the decisions you made. It was still lame. I finished the story, and immediately uninstalled it. Zero replay value.

What about when the estimated 40 hours of play time have passed, and you've finished the story? Crafting? I suppose, but Open PvP yield continuing player developed content.

Here is a link to the archives of the KGB Sentinal, the newsletter the Knight of Glory and Beer produced playing Ultima Online. UO had no story, but we in the KGB created our own stories.
http://w3.the-kgb.com/kgbnewsa/kgbnewsarc.htm

 

@Owain
I agree with you. But as I've said the story has to be there now. Because PKs have nothing to feed on. Even if we make the rules exactly like UO and didn't even allow people to opt out of PvP, they'd just play another game.

So you have to script in some kinds of factions. You have to allow each side to have the opportunity to play "bandits" vs the other side or "defenders" vs said bandit.

Most individuals and small groups will focus on the seesaw / tug-o-war that happens on the border towns. Large guilds will try to control the map by taking castles.

<i>I do not want hard wired factions at all.</i> That game has been made many times. My assumption is something like they get tied to castles. NPCs own the castles until someone take them. At that point guilds control the politics of the game.

If you ever played Sid Meier's Pirates!, you have four factions: Spanish, Dutch, French, English. You go the the local lord and choose to sail on their behalf. You can work for multiple, but it would be almost impossible to sail for all of them as they're all fighting over the same stuff.

 

@PrimeRib, " But as I?ve said the story has to be there now. Because PKs have nothing to feed on."

Sure they will. In UO, there were all the various shards, each with a perfectly safe Trammel facet. And yet people still came to UO: Siege Perilous. Not just PvPers, either, but merchants, role players, miners, and lumberjacks, people who never participated in PvP, and yet they came. Siege Perilous gave them something Trammel didn't offer. So there will be people to kill, and there will be PKs. As someone said to Loki in the movie The Avengers, "There are always men like you."

It's a long way between now and release. We still have the Alpha/Beta tests. Time enough to see how things will unfold.

 

@Owain: It?s a long way between now and release. We still have the Alpha/Beta tests. Time enough to see how things will unfold.


Agree, I'll probably try the profession of Pk during the Alpha/Beta. It will be easier to determine the rules of this difficult profession.

 

Maybe a solution here = https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=open-pvp-in-village

 

According to Hickman in the foreword to The Soulforge, "[we] were just settling in to the game when I turned to my good friend Terry Phillips and asked what his character was doing. Terry spoke...and the world of Krynn was forever changed. His rasping voice, his sarcasm and bitterness all masking an arrogance and power that never needed to be stated suddenly were real. Everyone in the room was both transfixed and terrified.

Tracy's most famous character, Raistlin Majere turned Chaotic Evil and had a Charisma of 15 ...Deadly Combo.

It's good to know that the story will be hardcore even if the developers are more into Barbie Pony games. Good for my Mattel stocks, Not so much for Evil Red Characters, however.

 

@Acrylic:

I'm not sure what you're talking about with the developers being into "Barbie Pony games" but I do like your idea for this game being hardcore. I already know the story will be good with Richard and Tracy at the helm.

 

@UA
Just trying out ways not to use the C word now that Firelotus forbades it.

Here's hoping the "helmsmen" end up being captains of the ship *cheers*