Blog#33: Blood on the Tracks

MumboJumbo

Blood on the Tracks

 

Over the last few blogs, we've been engaged in a lot of discussion about the Kickstarter, the game engine, and the process of organizing to make a game. We'd like to shift the conversation back toward the design philosophy of the game and a discussion of what your experience as a player is going to be like. So, as a big first step in that direction, designer Stephen Cheney has put together a great discussion of PvP and its consequences in Pathfinder Online.

The Consequences of PvP

This updates some content we've presented previously, reflecting a lot of feedback from the community, as well as our sense of how we want to shape the game design to achieve our goals. As always, this essay reflects the state of our thinking at the moment. Based on our efforts to implement these systems—and your feedback—we'll continue to refine and improve these plans throughout the development period.

Goal

In Pathfinder Online, Player vs. Player combat is meant to be the major source of conflict: Defending your resources from enemy players will be a bigger challenge than defending them against AI creatures. However, our goal is to provide a graduated list of risk factors for PvP. A player just exploring should be less at risk than a player gathering rare resources, who in turn should be less at risk than a player in a settlement at war.

[Cont'd...]

 

Slapshot1188

Nice to see a developer embrqacing actual OpenWorld PvP with consequences but also designing the game so that while you CAN play as a psycho-serialkiller, there are disincentives to do so that are meaningful.

 

Very much looking forward to seeing how the implement their ideas.