Gregg Reece's page

Gregg Reece wrote:

Keep up the great work man.

I only stand upon the shoulders of the giants who have come before me :)

But what if that giant's shoulders are on fire.... *glances at avatar*

Keep up the great work man.

Thanks for taking this over.

Thanks for taking this over. I've been crazily busy for the past month and don't check in as much as I used to.

2 people marked this as a favorite.

As an aside: Yay for the Dr Strangelove reference.

By the way, I'm pretty busy at the moment. So, if I happen to miss someone, feel free to message me about it. You don't even have to be part of that group, I just want to stay on top of keeping the list current.

Added "The Kingdom of Aeternum (Pax Gaming)" and removed their filler thread link.

Added you to "the list" of Chartered Companies/Groups/etc.

If this were in another industry, it would be called a "soft launch". It's something that's kinda-sorta open, but still has some gate to prevent things from getting out of hand. A dress-rehearsal of sorts.

I really like the idea of it being labeled as "Kickstarter Launch" or something similar to let people know that it's launched, but only for the people that helped it get off the ground in the first place.

Edit:

Sorry, the following also popped into my head based on other comments.
Pilgrim Era
Colonization Launch
Exploration Launch

and similar.

Added Sword of the Sepulcher.

Added The Black Company

I'm playing either an Alchemist or some custom built thing that will essentially be an Alchemist ;)

Hey, someone's gotta do it. Plus it makes it really easy with the list features on the boards here.

You're welcome ;)

So, Ryan, how is xScape Platform from Icarus Studios working out as the MMO engine thus far? (if it isn't the engine, then the resume of the lead designer was a great distraction)

Necrocracy - Lich and undead based government.

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Or you just bring your wizard friend because he is your friend you guys enjoy adventuring together...no matter what spells he has prepared. Just saying...

Ah, the effects of a charm person spell working as intended...

Yeah, I had an initial gut reaction it would be that... and I looked anyway.

The hat was a great touch.

Added
Chartered Company: The First File [TFF] - LN - Unrivaled, unsurpassed military-for-hire

Generally, the best place for skirmishers is in your opponent's back field. This is sometimes called a Rabbit group. The general idea is that while the main forces are formed up against each other, the skirmishers sneak in the back and start to foul up the lines of communication as well as stabbing people in the back. If you hear the order to charge or fall back coming from behind, your instinct is to believe that it's your own officers giving that order. It could be the skirmishers instead.

The reason this is successful is that the formations aren't able to face two opponents at once and if they have to break off a couple fighters to deal with that group of skirmishers, then the line itself has been weakened.

In essence, skirmishers mess up the ability of the enemy formations to function properly.

The other good place for a skirmisher group is in your own back field to kill any skirmishers your opponents send against you.

The other advantage of these groups is that if the line is starting to fall, the skirmisher group can be cannibalized to reinforce the line.

That and it's very hard to flourish with an illegal system that has little to no advantage over a completely legitimate system.

The people providing the illegal service will generally give up in that scenario as it won't be profitable enough to pursue as most people will generally prefer to take a legitimate route if one is available.

See iTunes.

To contribute a bit to this thread I would like some "ground breaking" spells that would require a ritual, require a group of spell casters (arcane for arcane and divine for divine) for example if you are attacking a fort/castle in a fantasy setting, you ofcourse have siege ramps, catapults and what not of siege weaponry but with every siege weapon, you require loads of person to handle it, why not have something simmilar for the spell system, ofcourse they would be in a safe disstand so some long casting time would be fair.

I found this by reading Undeath/Unholy/Unclean series from forgotten realms and I've liked that and been wanting to see it in some mmo.

Having rituals for certain spells to be cast isn't "ground breaking" in MMOs, they've actually been done before. Warlocks in World of Warcraft used to need to do a very long quest chain in order to gain the ritual to summon a certain powerful demon as a slave.

When they did this ritual, everyone in their party had to help summon the demon and it would randomly sacrifice one of the party members upon summoning at which point the Warlock could enslave the demon. The problem with this is that there was a 20% chance that the Warlock would be the person sacrificed and then you'd have an unrestrained demon running around killing your party.

This wasn't a one time thing. This was the ritual that happened any time you wanted to summon this demon to fight for you (and he was pretty powerful, so you really did want him).

Now, would it be cool to have some "teamwork feats" for casting show up in the game? Sure. Probably something similar to the group tactics talked about in today's blog, but altered to match casting instead of soldiering.

Very impressed with this week's offering. We will be our own raid content! Very, very nice.

Dunno that I like the DDR example, but I suppose that to mean we'll need to coordinate actions, not mash buttons, right?

Your guess is as good as mine.

It sounds like there will probably be a series of commands for the officer to be able to give in order to move the unit around, put it into a defensive posture, engage enemy, charge, hold, flank, turn, and a variety of other small unit tactics. Those commands will have a corresponding button on a special group tactics toolbar that the grunts in the unit have to hit within a window of time with being either early or late being bad.

For example: The officer yelling "Advance!" means that on a certain beat (generic term designating a period of time and in now way related to DDR) you need to press the button labeled 'advance'. "Wheel left" means you need to hit the one that turns the unit left and so on.

I'd also guess that generals will be given a slightly modified version of that command list that would allow them to command the officers under them to go various places or to perform various tasks which get repeated down the line.

Gregg Reece wrote:

I'm predicting that it will be a system based on cards and you have to 'tap' certain cards in order to play others. These eldrich spells will be aligned with certain colors and you'll want to build decks of them in order to be a powerful magic user.

Is that your prediction for PFO? If so, is it just on a lark, or do you have a reason for believing this is what they'll actually do?

It's a lark playing on Magic the Gathering.

However, I think they'll end up with a system that is very similar to other systems currently used in video games, but with a more Pathfinder spin on it. Also, while I think it will be influenced by the vancian system, it won't necessarily hold directly to it in a lot of cases and may diverge completely from it.

For example, how do you show the difference in a Sorcerer and a Wizard in an online video game? They have the same spells after all. I think it comes down to resource systems and adaptability.

Sorcerers would have a finite spell list available to them that could be changed under very special circumstances, but within that finite spell list, they'd have a distinct amount of power. They'll likely have a casting resource of some sort (think mana as a reference) and higher level spells consume larger portions of that resource and lower level spells consume less of that resource. But, the resource would regenerate slowly over time in combat and possibly faster out of combat (or at least have some way of being made to do so).

Wizards, on the other hand, have a seemingly infinite amount of ways that they can prepare spells based on the spells available in their spell book, but once they are chosen, that list is fairly fixed until they re-prep their spells. So, we'll say that our Wizard prepared fireball 3 times today and as such can easily cast the spell 3 times in succession. The problem is that he must then wait for that spell slot to recharge (any amount of time based on gameplay and balance) before it can be used again. This would allow for the customizations and feeling of a prepared caster without being limited to _ONLY_ having that spell 3 times for a 6 hour period (remember, they've sped up time 4x in PFO so that you get 4 'days' per 24 hour period). There will be some mechanism to add spells to your spell book either by merit badges or by just purchasing scrolls and scribing them in (with a chance to botch it).

Other than the customization of spells available, we're talking about resource systems which are fairly standard across the video game markets and each have their own issues balancing. You can have more in depth resource systems or simple ones such as the ones I described. There is something to be said about a more complex resource system to manage in that it forces players to use more skill to play. A lot of games have started using hybrid resource systems involving multiple types of resources that you must manage in order to use your abilities.

It still comes down to how Goblinworks wants to do their combat system. If they really wanted to, it could be turn-based and have an interface like old school Final Fantasy games. Until they figure out their combat model, any guesses at the magic system are rather moot, because they won't have a proper context in which to be framed.

All in all, I'll still bet it's going to be similar to most modern video game magic systems in some fashion with a little flare thrown on to make it their own.

TLDR: No idea and neither do you.

It follows with the idea that the decisions the players make will have persistent effects on the zone.

It will likely be fairly similar to other magic systems in MMO or single-player RPG video games. It could be anything from the Diablo III style to SW:TOR to Skyrim. We don't know until they announce it and they will likely announce something that aligns with their overall concept of how their combat system will work in the game. Until they figure out their combat system, they can't really figure out their magic system and for the most part, vice-versa.

Until then, I'm predicting that it will be a system based on cards and you have to 'tap' certain cards in order to play others. These eldrich spells will be aligned with certain colors and you'll want to build decks of them in order to be a powerful magic user.

2 people marked this as a favorite.

da_asmodai wrote:

... give the characters at least the possibility of advancing without having to pay...

You will be able to advance your character without having to pay real-world money. You'll just have to earn enough in-game coin to buy a Skill Training Package (or whatever they call it) from another player.

Manual of Gainful Employment +1 ?

SWTOR will probably go F2P alot sooner than that...

SWTOR will be F2P this fall. Their F2P FAQ.

Unity has full networking support built in. How that translates to the MMO space I don't know but its not "just a graphical front end." It has a built in physics engine, content pipeline and authoring tools etc.

I don't see how billing has to tie into an engine to be considered MMO quality though. No engine I've ever seen claims to support a certain payment infrastructure. Its much more likely there's another 3rd party tool to do that for you.

http://www.bigworldtech.com/

http://www.icarusstudios.com/

http://www.heroengine.com/

Those are three of the big ones.

Unity 4 has native Linux support. I don't know exactly when it comes out but they're heavily marketing it so I'd guess within the next couple months.

Even so, I see zero reason why you couldn't import a unity 3 project into 4. If you couldn't it'd be pretty useless.

Of course, Ryan said that they're using an engine that supports a full MMO back-end and not just the graphical front-end. As such, Unity falls into the same box as Unreal Engine and is unlikely to be the client, because it lacks the billing and support infrastructure on the server side.

Even those usually involved with such evil cults believe that they'll be given special spots or consideration in the horrible world/afterlife that they're striving toward.

Forencith wrote:

Buri wrote:

Also, I don't give a damn what...

Wow dude, you win...sorry for disagreeing.

Emo much? I didn't attack you so whatever. I simply said I don't care about something and why. The don't give a damn is simply to let you know it's not an argument with me. I don't buy it, period, so don't try to come up with some witty argument that unsupported material on a 3rd party site is supposed to have weight as I'll simply disregard it.

Ahem.

Neutral: A neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. She doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos (and thus neutral is sometimes called “true neutral”). Most neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character probably thinks of good as better than evil—after all, she would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, she's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way.

Some neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run.

Neutral means you act naturally in any situation, without prejudice or compulsion.

Emphasis mine. Source Paizo's [link].

And I'm done with this thread.

I would love to have a book of the AP deity articles with the player companion stuff to flesh them out.

BigWorld engine has been fairly successful. There's a couple fantasy MMOs using it as well as some really popular off-the-wall concepts (World of Tanks!).

HeroEngine is what I thought BioWare was using for SWTOR, but I can't remember.

Icarus Studios makes an MMO engine, but I don't know anything about any games made on it.

Multiverse died and went open source. Being as Ryan said that they'd negotiated a contract, I highly, highly doubt that this is their engine.

Monumental Dev Suite disappeared off the face of the planet never to be seen again.

----------------------

BigWorld is the most likely candidate, but if that fell through then I'd guess HeroEngine.

I don't know enough about Icarus to even start to predict them as using it.

Was kind of hoping you could actually craft the components, but as long as there is some recognition you are the responsible party having ‘the inn’ erected, and a fun mini-game associated with it, then I am ok with this.

This sounds a little too much like Puzzle Pirates for my liking.

I was thinking more of having collected all of the materials from harvesting, monster killing, and dungeon delving, you give the stuff to the foreman and he clicks 'Build Inn'. X amount of time passes and the building appears.

Nihimon wrote:

When you cast Teleport, you're presented with a list of Destinations.

Sure, but technically that would be any point to fixed point.

Well, you'd want to pick someplace you know... and you know should be 'safe'.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/spells/teleport.html#teleport

There is, after all, a chance of mishap and all that. If you're trying to go someplace that is owned by another group and the little forest glade you've chosen to arrive in has been cut down or there's a watch tower sitting there now, then you're much more likely to screw it up in some way.

Ah, I see. That would make sense if you weren't in my head, which you weren't. :) As I demonstrated, I was talking about expecting a single product to "steal the market." There is no magic bullet so don't even look. If you look at wildly popular consumer products such as the iPhone you'll see that the product itself doesn't really do much besides enabling other functionality so it gets to be an extension of consumer expression instead of being the end-result of that expression. Outside of these types of products, you get into niche markets where product diversification is the way to go.

Wildly popular products also have the concept of "Network Externalities" working for them. Essentially, their functionality gets them some users and then at a certain point they reach critical mass and the fact they have sufficiently large community of users is what starts attracting other users.

I'm likely flubbing the explanation, but I originally came across that concept in an interview I read on some gaming site quite a long time ago. You might take a look at it and see if you can find if that guy has done anything since.

Bad rule info on "Animal Companion/Cohort/Eidolon" page. Under offense it lists the CMB formula as "10+...".

Not sure if that's been caught by anyone else yet.

4 people marked this as a favorite.

So, I've been tracking down and downloading all of the nice, long deity articles from the APs.

I've got ones for:
Abadar (#8)
Asmodeus (#29)
Besmara (#55)
Calistria (#17)
Cayden Cailean (#14)
Desna (#2)
Erastil (#32)
Gorum (#35)
Gozreh (#38)
Iomedae (#26)
Irori (#53)
Lamastshu (#5)
Nethys (#41)
Norgorber (#59)
Pharasma (#44)
Rovagug (#23)
Saranrae (#20)
Shelyn (#50)
Urgathoa (#47)
Ydersius (#42)
Zon-Kuthon (#11)

Have I missed any?

Could I get access to a Google Docs spreadsheet within the game? ;)

Goblin Works Blog wrote:

Players will select an alignment for each character during character creation. Actions players take will tug at each character's alignment, shifting it this way and that. A prolonged series of minor actions, a few significant actions, or a single monumental action could shift a character's alignment into a whole new position.

Ah, that's interesting, so a player could choose straight off the bat to go for chaotic evil. My theory that players would all start Lawful Good and "drift" based on actions is out then. So there's going to be a lot of distinct alignments from the start with presumably different motivations to work within those alignments...

Well, why shouldn't they be allowed to pick their alignments? You do in the normal RPG.

You're also allowed to start out at a settlement that best matches your alignment. There is the chaotic settlement (Thornkeep) in the woods, the good settlement (Fort Riverwatch) in the north, and the lawful settlement (Fort Inevitable) in the south. So, any evil characters would likely be split between Fort Inevitable and Thornkeep depending on your variety of evil.

A Fort is just a Fort. It is not a Settlement.

I have a feeling that the upgrade from Fort to Settlement will be more than the materials needed to build the Fort in the first place. Probably enough more that any Chartered Company interested in doing it would either have to dig deep or expand their sphere of influence.

What this would do is if someone was saying, "Hey! I want to build a new settlement from the ground up. Give me your materials so I can build a Fort." You tell them to bugger off, because you have no guarantees that you won't be screwed over.

Someone else says, "Hey, I have a Fort. I'd like to upgrade it to a Settlement. Here is the proposed Settlement Charter. Who else would like to sign up?" Then you have a settlement charter and the initial settlement community. You have the community to start upgrading that Fort into a full settlement and you have some vague guarantees that you won't be screwed over by con artists. Everything would be built on the contract and community systems of the game instead of on the good will of others to keep up their ends of the deal.

I have no idea if that's how things will be, but it would give more guarantees to those wanting to be involved in the building of a settlement. At that point, you just find someone with a Fort who wants to build a Settlement out of it. There might be Chartered Companies that make a living out of clearing hexes and building Forts to sell to those wanting to build a settlement.

Onishi wrote:

GrumpyMel wrote:

- I'm not interested in playing the "finances" game...I'm interested in being a part, if only a small part, of an organization involved in the "empire building game". If Charted Companies are the core organizations involved in that....and they have a membership slot limit...that leaves me out in the cold as far as...

I see absolutely no reason to see chartered companies as the core organization involved in making or breaking the world. In the war concept CC's are likely to be squadrons, and odds are if someones squadron is half empty they would either have members outside of companies, or split teams of multiple companies etc... A 24 man team isn't going to be fighting wars by themselves, settlements and player nations are going to be fighting the wars. Chartered companies have never been described as the big movers and shakers in the world. As a casual player I see nothing that would hinder you from joining a settlement or player nation and showing up in 1 in 3 wars

Right, membership in a SETTLEMENT isn't a problem. There is no limitation on those slots. It's membership in the Chartered Company that the problem. That's where the membership limitation comes into play.

However it's the Charted Companies that are the foundation of Settlement Building. Since they are the ones who be OWNERS of the FORTS, WATCHTOWERS, ETC....that are the PRE-REQUISITES for BUILDING the SETTLEMENT. If I want to participate in that aspect of the game, I can't because of the Membership limitations.

Now once a Settlement is BUILT....I can join it...but that's a different aspect of the game....that's "Empire Maintenance" not "Empire Building". You can't be a member of more then one Settlement, so it's not like I'll be participating in building another for my Settlement Charter.

The best I can hope for, therefore...is to be an OUTSIDER who is involved in helping to build someone elses settlement...whether it's as a member of an existing settlement which is helping to...

Actually, you're wrong. In order to upgrade that fort into a settlement you need a settlement charter be signed. You can sign said charter and participate in that and will at that point be a FOUNDING member of the settlement.

Unless you're just absolutely hung up on the Fort building part... which could have been built months and months previous before anyone decided to upgrade everything from a Fort to a Settlement. Because the ability to create a settlement isn't going to be put in until 7-8 months after launch at which point a bunch of Chartered companies could have had Forts sitting around for a month or two just waiting.

Right, but that COIN can only come from it's MEMBERSHIP. If it's MEMBERSHIP is limited to 24 slots... then if you can contribute more COIN or Hours then I can...I'm OUT. The organization would be HURTING itself by WASTING a SLOT on me. Which means I'm completely cut out of participating in that aspect of the game to any degree.

Only if your friends are dicks.

The other viewpoint is that 5-6 Chartered Companies realize that none of them have the needed skills nor workers to sufficiently sustain nor build a Settlement on their own and instead decide to join forces. Then you've got nearly 150 spots that can help out. Tada.

Or, 100 people on the boards decide to just build a settlement without anyone creating a Chartered Company first. Tada.

Or, your Chartered Company isn't interested in ever building their own settlement, but you've got some other friends who are interested in it. You help those other people build the settlement and you become a member of it. Tada.

Or, you become independently wealthy and have purchased all of the materials and laborers to build a settlement just for you. You get enough people to qualify for the charter and each are being paid to sign, because they're going to be kicked out directly afterward. The settlement is built and you are the only person that is a part of it. Tada.

Added order of the thorn and peace through vigilance

Bots are relatively stupid. They can perform superhuman feats, but they're dumb. There was a game where gold farmers would set bots near easy monsters that dropped good loot. Players figured this out and would "tag" the monster first and thereby reserving the loot and then let the bots proceed to kill the monster. The player loots the corpse and waits for a respawn to repeat this nice little action. The bots were smart enough to kill these particular monsters, but not smart enough to realize that they weren't getting the loot.

Bots are only as smart as their programming makes them. Doing 1/100th of a second precision with tactical moves simply isn't something they'd do well because of latency of the connections, lag spikes, etc. They're generally not smart enough to see when something goes "wrong" with what they're being told to do unless they've been specifically setup with a mechanism to double-check.

Sure, you can make some complicated bots, but as soon as there is a new patch on the game, any loopholes you were using could suddenly be closed and you would need to start over looking for a new loophole to exploit.

It's much easier to steal player accounts, sell all of their stuff, and then pay the people who are buying gold off of you through the stolen accounts. Sometimes you use your gathering bots on these accounts to make some money off of the auction house before the account gets closed.

Stealing player accounts is the new gold farming. This is why buying gold via an outside resource is almost always a bad idea.

The EVE model of allowing you to buy/sell subscription time legitimately and within the game goes a long way to getting rid of that problem. Ryan would have to speak on how well it seems to work.

Well the blog states that a settlement can cancel the sponsorship of a guild so there must be a grace period to find a new sponsor otherwise your guild would be disbanded.

This leads me to believe there would be a system to change your own sponsorship.

Yeah, Ryan has said that you could change sponsorships and that if you got your sponsorship revoked, you'd have a grace period to change sponsors before the group gets dissolved.

The bots I've seen are far from "superhuman." They are obvious to the observant player. Bots have to account for getting stuck on objects, mobs not being in range, and other things. In operation, they actually behave like idiots. Tag a mob you know they are going for (ie: the closest one) and they will assist you even though a human would know there was no benefit. That sort of thing.

Actually, bots can be pretty superhuman. They usually accomplish this by using a broken version of the client or a piece of software that pretends to be the game client which can call functions not normally available to players and pull all sorts of nasty exploits.

There was one in WoW that used a teleport exploit in order to move characters vast distances in an instant. Connect this with a map of spawn points for resources and a bot and you've got the ability to gather massive amounts of resources and control the market on a particular type of commodity.

Bots are a bigger problem than you might think in certain games.

@Onishi, as I understand it, a Player Nation would consist of both Green circles. I'm specifically asking about the Blue circle.

I'm going to reattempt the frat analogy that Mr Dancey started.

You've got a frat house at the university. You have non-frat people in your frat house all of the time visiting and such, but that doesn't mean they are in the frat. So, someone can live in your settlement without being a [u]member[/u] of it.

As far as the second settlement goes, player nations. And until they go in, private chat channels and a good website to keep your settlements in sync.

You could build a Hideout, an Inn, a Watchtower or a Fort.

RyanD

2 quick questions:

1. Will Chartered Companies be able to, for instance, build an Inn and later build a fort around it to form a settlement at that location?

2. Have more than one of these structures at a given time?