Mark Kalmes's page

That's a great idea. We'll look into that when we redesign the site.

We want to keep the River Kingdoms feeling like the semi-wilderness that they are. Settlements will definitely not be allowed to grow all the way to the sides of the hexes and start merging. There is a lot of wilderness between each of the settlements.

We don't want bots, and we'll do what we can to avoid them. Very sophisticated bots can be hard to detect though, and they've been getting more and more advanced.

Our first strategy will making the game systems interesting/complicated enough that it isn't very easy to bot. This should cut down on the number of simple bots to deal with. After that, we'll work on detecting them wherever we can. It will probably always be a battle though.

Good ideas. Definitely going to fit things like this into a comprehensive system of stealth vs. perception. I don't know the details of this system yet though.

Stay tuned

Hey guys!

I hope you are as excited about using Unity as I am. I'm sorry the post yesterday didn't have too many details in it - we just finished negotiating for weeks in order to get Unity, and we just put a very quick post up because we were excited about it.

We're planning to do a more detailed video or text update about the engine choice today or tomorrow. Yes, Unity will definitely require more work on the server in order to support a single-world MMO. But we've factored that into our schedule, and I've done that work before.

We'll keep updating everyone with more aspects of the engine choices over the next couple of days.

If I didn't already have loyalty to Pathfinder I usually would be a bit put off from backing someone with 2 projects created and none backed.

We've all backed dozens of projects. It's definitely an irritating part of Kickstarter that you are kind of encouraged to make a corporate account for running the project and then it looks like it has no history. :-( It would help if we could at least link our profiles to the project in some way, but we aren't even allowed to back it.

Anyway, thanks for all the notes here guys. We're definitely paying attention and planning to keep adding information to the project. I think we may focus on putting this stuff into Updates for the project. I hope we get the feeling of a more and more exciting project as time goes on.

@Ravening: That's a great point. We'll have to figure out something along those lines for Beta. We can't commit to this yet, but I suspect we will be giving out some MTX currency during Beta, and maybe that will allow folks to advance another character. Otherwise, I'm sure we can just give out direct credit for second character advancement.

Thanks guys! Good notes on UI stuff.

Maybe not first priority, but I would definitely like to be able to play with a gamepad. Also very important to be able to play from a laptop that doesn't have a mouse attached.

Very cool. I like this.

Would definitely love some flying mounts. Don't know where they would fit into design yet.

Yeah, I think your favorite is always the one you're working on. Also, this one I'll be in charge of :-)

You're one of the few people on earth that I'll believe is actually more anxious about this game than I am :)

Haha! Making a video game is like having a kid. It definitely makes you anxious.

Very cool. We definitely want to keep most of this interaction between players instead of NPCs.

We'll definitely be adding content while the game is live. Our whole plan is to ship with the minimum viable product and then continue to evolve as we get feedback from the players.

Keep in mind that we're probably not going to have villages with literally hundreds of houses that players would have to walk through. It's just too boring to put a completely realistic scale on a village. So all settlements in the game will be smaller than a comparable one in real life.

It's similar to how Deadwood is presented in the TV series. Almost everything happens in the town square. It would be boring to present the hundreds of shacks that should actually surround that square. And it would be even more boring to constantly walk through them in order to get to the tavern or chapel in the middle of the village.

Very interesting. I have to admit that just doing entire buildings is a lot easier to program though :-)

These are all good ideas for putting guild organization tools in-game and within a realistic setting.

This is going to require a lot of thought and attention.

Yeah, the single server keeps everyone on the same page - it's really the only way that players get to actually control the history of the world, and affect everything in the game. Definitely the way to go for Pathfinder Online.

Pretty cool ideas.

I'd love to be able to 'make camp' in the wilderness. I hope with a campfire that is visible for a little distance, and the ability for other players to gather and gain the benefits of being in camp.

Very cool. Looking forward to seeing you guys in game.

Great discussion. This is definitely an area we'll have to do a lot of work in. I like the OP point that we're more focused on gameplay than trying to get every bit of realism we can out of the world.

We will definitely do everything we can to serve Mac users. But realistically, we won't have the budget for fundamental engine changes for some time.

We haven't really started coding yet. It's still very early.

We're going to start with a very small, focused team. That means that we probably won't have every feature that the big boys like WoW have. Instead, we want to make a distinctive and fun game, and build it up over time with a dedicated player base.

Hehe, that sounds fun.

I'm definitely voting for cloth map.

We'll be proceeding as quickly as possible, but it's definitely going to ship "when it's done" and not before. Our blog entries are intended to give people an early glimpse into our thinking. As time goes on, these entries will become more and more concrete, and you'll be able to see us build the game.

We're going to stay connected to the community the whole time. We're definitely not secretly doing anything.

Yeah, I agree. Manpower will be a basic element of the economy, and certainly you will require a lot in order to build a city.

I had this happen once while using the public wifi at a Barnes and Noble. I assumed it had something to do with their routing config. I haven't been able to reproduce it since then. (Using OSX Snow Leopard with latest version of Safari, btw.)

Yeah, I like the idea of prestige classes - even if it gets worked into the skill system.

It will definitely be a core part of the economy.

Great stuff, JMecha. We are definitely interested in players building up the towns.

This hasn't at all been worked out yet, but it's pretty common to do a full day-night cycle in an hour or two. This keeps things moving fast enough that you get to lots of great varied lighting when you explore an area. But not so fast that it's irritating.

But we may end up with a gameplay reason to have a different cycle later. For instance, FFXI had some sort of moon cycle that affected crafting which was kind of interesting.

I would love to have some basic games like chess or go in the client. Games are pretty much the poster-child of game features which never make the cut though - they just never get high enough on the priority list. :-(

Yeah, it's difficult. In a tabletop RPG, you often get the feeling of being an advanced mage with powerful spells that can only be cast once or a couple of times a day. It's difficult to rectify this and the pace of an MMO with parties blasting through enemy after enemy. Also, you'd like to make sure the mage can still play solo when they would like to.

It's rare to find a game where 1v1 PvP gameplay is very interesting. Large groups battling over real territory on the other hand...

Spending hours in a cantina watching dancers to rebuild some status bar that I'm sure why I need to rebuild..

Hahaha - I couldn't stand watching naked wookies to repair my psyche - seems like that should have the opposite effect.

Very cool. I know a few developers who have loved the way that Matrix Online was able to embrace the RPG community with this sort of interactive story.

I do like Derek's point though - we would rather make it an ability for some players to actually poison the sewers and then let the other players deal with it. This would keep everything happening in-character and in-game.

Very interesting

Mmmm.. I would love an iPad app. :-) Unfortunately, these ideas are pretty outside our scope at the moment. Need to make the core game a success first!

This will probably be determined mostly by the engine. We aren't really scoped for making too big of a change to the underlying physics.

One great thing about playtesting a PvP game is that we will need folks to test out the high-level kingdom gameplay. I hope it will make for a much more fun beta time :-)

Thanks for the suggestions, Adam. We are definitely looking forward to getting feedback from folks who have spent a long time thinking about MMOs and how to make them better.

It's difficult to respond to these specific concerns. They seem more focused on WoW, and that's not the style of game we are going for. As development progresses we will be keep sharing more with the community. I hope the bloggers will be able to get into the game and comment specifically on what works and doesn't work in Pathfinder Online.

This is a feature we would love to have eventually, but it is not on the roadmap yet. On the other hand, there will be a lot of need in the game for people who simply are good at organizing and motivating other players. Maybe you'd feel best in a leadership position within a kingdom?

Good stuff in this thread. I think our focus here will be on getting a designer with good experience with how several games have solved the problem. We'll try to get a good final solution based on experience the field. We will probably not eliminate all griefing - but we want to keep the level down so that it doesn't unduly irritate players who are focused on other things.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. We're reading through everything right now. To be honest, we won't be able to give full attention to these ideas until we are getting started with production. But we're going to hold a pointer to this thread, and make sure all the designers read it.

What would be really useful for us is if we keep the thread focused on specific requests and justifications for those. Back and forth arguments are definitely good too, because we can see that other players have a different opinion. But if they drag on for a bit, please consider moving them to their own thread and we can keep this one clear as a good master list.

Thanks!

Absolutely, there are going to be great Paizo goblins in the game.