Goblin Squad Member
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In this post - Re: The Anti Case for PFO - Ryan Dancey defines PFO as encompassing 4 elements: Exploration, Adventure, Development, Domination.
These separate the sandbox experience from the PnP experience, because the traditional Pen and Paper Pathfinder System only contains the Adventure content.
I'm looking forward to a blog post or similar detailing the vision for the Adventure Experience in PFO (with or without Theme Park elements) and how (if?) this Adventure Experience can carry over some feel of the Adventure Experience of the tabletop game.
(Disclaimer: I read all blog posts and quite a few forum posts over the last few months and I haven't any clear picture of this. Feel free to point out any already existing resources.)
cheers!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I probably don't understand exactly what kind of information you're looking for, but my personal understanding of the Adventure component of PFO is that it will mostly be the Theme Park elements, but will also include Dungeon crawls.
I believe it will be quite possible for players to specialize in PvE Adventure content, and structure their play styles to minimize their exposure to anything else. This will almost certainly require them to work in conjunction with other players who specialize in other things.
For example, I can easily see a group of friends who only want to engage the PvE Theme Park and Dungeon content. In order to do this, they will probably have to hook up with other players who take on the risk of finding that content, and who escort them to and from that content in strong enough force to minimize the risk of being attacked by other players en route.
This is also the kind of thing that The Seventh Veil is committed to supporting. We mean it when we say we want to make a home for all types of players, and empower them to achieve their goals :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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In this post - Re: The Anti Case for PFO - Ryan Dancey defines PFO as encompassing 4 elements: Exploration, Adventure, Development, Domination.
These separate the sandbox experience from the PnP experience, because the traditional Pen and Paper Pathfinder System only contains the Adventure content.
I'm looking forward to a blog post or similar detailing the vision for the Adventure Experience in PFO (with or without Theme Park elements) and how (if?) this Adventure Experience can carry over some feel of the Adventure Experience of the tabletop game.
(Disclaimer: I read all blog posts and quite a few forum posts over the last few months and I haven't any clear picture of this. Feel free to point out any already existing resources.)
cheers!
Well the details are all very shady if you are looking at controls, mechanics, etc...
More or less everything we know was on the Adventure in river kingdoms blog post. I know you've mentioned having read the blogs, but that post is more or less 95% of what is known about the adventure experience.
I am trying to figure out specifically what details you are looking for on the adventure experience, and what specifically you are meaning by carry over the experience from the feel from the game. IMO P&P has 2 things that no MMO can keep at the same time.
Detailed adventures and persistence. Which are 2 things that in an MMO cannot happen at the same time with pre-written content. IE if the PVE content has a deep story, complicated events etc.. Goblinworks can't write that detailed content over and over for each player, meaning no persistence (IE the same princess that was saved 20 seconds ago still needs saving, the wolves you cleared from the farmland, are still there etc... This is the route most theme parks go. the even bigger nusance of this method to me at least, is before long once you've done everything, you already know exactly what is around every twist and turn, and even first timers, are most likely teaming with someone, who already knows what is coming up, what to do, and guides them through it.
I believe the direction GW is going, is more focused on actually keeping persistance. From the sounds of it, dungeons themselves will be more or less random where they appear, (invisible until the right skills are used to uncover them), they will disapear when cleared, new ones will show up elsewhere etc... The dungeon content itself will most likely be fairly random (This is speculation, but a reasonable guess). The advantage of this is, with more random events, they can be permanently dealt with. IE you clear the orc infestation near your town, the orcs could be gone for moths, or even never come back, a pack of wolves or kobolds may show up instead. Even in PVE content the experience is quite possibly going to be fairly dynamic, little concern for spoilers and guides because they would be outdated the first time someone clears a dungeon.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Onishi - thanks for pointing out that blog post. Been awhile since I read it and it didn't leave no clear impression with me it seems.
Now, re-reading it doesn't leave no clear impression either, but I think it helps me in focusing on what I meant.
What I'm not quite getting behind is whether there is a vision for any "P&P like Adventuring experience" outside of instanced theme park modules.
The blog post talks about types of PvE content: Wandering monsters; Harvesting hazards; Ruins, lairs and caverns; Encampments; and finally, about "theme park 'modules'".
For me, the Adventuring experience in PnP is that you get a party together to fulfill some objective(s) and slaying monsters - while a central mechanical part of the system - is only a side effect of following a "story line".
But, upon re-reading the blog post I can formulate a few ideas that don't sound too bad and I guess it just remains to be seen how it's gonna be executed.
- Wandering Monsters -> Would be nice if those could be more than mere cannon fodder on the way from A to B
- Harvesting Hazards -> the classic guard duty. Not sure how much fun it is to fend of waves and waves of incoming vermin. (It's one of the quest types I enjoy less in DDO.)
- Ruins, ... and also Encampments -> Hopefully these will be more than just "kill room(s) full of monsters". High hopes if they manage to get together good randomized "dungeons", even with no/generic "story lines".
- Modules -> I might just note that theme park content can benefit from randomization too. (Sadly, not much of this in DDO although they tried some.)
So I guess maybe a vision inhowfar the PvE content will be true to the spirit of the P&P game (or whether that's actually a goal at all) is what interests me.
(A note on me mentioning DDO: I'm not trying to do a comparison. It's just the only MMO I played for an extended period of time.)
(And I just thought of another related question that I think I'll keep to a separate thread. :-)
cheers!
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Goblin Squad Member
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So I guess maybe a vision inhowfar the PvE content will be true to the spirit of the P&P game (or whether that's actually a goal at all) is what interests me.
It's very difficult to know what you personally mean by "the spirit of the P&P game", but from my perspective, most everything that happens in PFO will be true to the spirit of PFRPG.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like the idea of paizo writers creating events that have a reactionary quality to player's actions. Exciting thought to see how they move new and unexpected plots in response to each module's "conclusion", like chapters in a big side-plot to the player's actions. The development of Thornkeep for the Kickstarter somewhat fits with this idea.
From a mechanical point of view, these events if they happened on a fairly rapid cycle (3-6 months) but didn't overly ramp in difficulty, would be a fun and interesting way to destabilize and reinvigorate any stagnation in the economy. Introduction of new high end PvE could also provide new resources, and with that a new wave of itemization. Might also be a sneaky way to introduce some of the more advanced features that weren't ready by launch.
Chief Technical Officer
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In this post - Re: The Anti Case for PFO - Ryan Dancey defines PFO as encompassing 4 elements: Exploration, Adventure, Development, Domination.
These separate the sandbox experience from the PnP experience, because the traditional Pen and Paper Pathfinder System only contains the Adventure content.
I disagree with the assertion that the tabletop system only offers one of those four things. I'd specifically draw your attention to our Kingmaker Adventure Path, which not only offers up all those elements to tabletop gamers, but also serves as a key inspiration for Pathfinder Online. (Ryan does specifically call out Kingmaker as an exception, but it's *not* the only exception.)
I think the problem with that quoted excerpt may be one of context; the part of Ryan's statements just prior to it said this:
Instead of a game that JUST has adventurers, this game is bigger. Much bigger. It has all sorts of people in it who would, in a traditional tabletop RPG, be NPCs. But in Pathfinder Online, those characters are real people.
And what's better, those real people want to make content for you to consume. Helping them achieve their goals opens doorways for you to achieve yours.
I think what Ryan was trying to assert (as we've discussed it before) is that, while the tabletop RPG is focused on adventurers and the adventuring lifestyle, PFO will also have places for people who don't adventure: builders, farmers, politicians, merchants, you name it—roles that you don't usually play in the tabletop RPG. In this context, then, "adventure content" means "content for adventurers," and there will be content for people who *aren't* adventurers—in fact, the very act of adventurers adventuring ends up creating content for non-adventurers, in the form of buying and selling loot and crafted items, and brokering information, and changing the world's power structures and such.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm looking forward to a blog post or similar detailing the vision for the Adventure Experience in PFO (with or without Theme Park elements) and how (if?) this Adventure Experience can carry over some feel of the Adventure Experience of the tabletop game.
Adventure is what you make of it.
The world will be filled with things other people need your help to do. It will be filled with challenges that make doing those things hard. Some of those challenges will be other people.
How you put those pieces together is what makes it a sandbox.