MicMan's page

Picture yourself spending a few hours harvesting resources. Now you are on your track back - would you turn on PvP and risk loosing your stuff?

No, you wouldn't!

So consentional PvP equals no PvP in regards to sandboxes and their economy.

I'm not asking for them to prevent friendly fire, I just want things treated equally...

This will surely happen (though there will be not eb that many skills that allow you to make AoE attacks with arrows or swords).

The thing is that AoE offers great advantages IF you look beyond damage!

Spells like Sleep or Power Word: Stun need a distinct disadvantage and having them to use carefully is one of these.

Look here.

First paragraph.

True. AoEs need to be powerful (though Fireball is less important than Color Spray or Sleep in this respect) but should not be a no brainer at all.

The reason for this is that you this serves to soften the impact of strength in numbers. A highly mobile and fast and well coordinated small team with a powerful alpha strike can hope to make it worth their while when attacking a chaotic zerg.

Matthew Downie wrote:

Is it possible that they could retreat and rest? The boss could use the time to gather a few more minions to keep things interesting.

That would be 100% ok and possible, I did already say that.

"100% ok and possible" meaning "if they don't do that, I kill them".

As I already said, it's obvious that your players do NOT want and are NOT able to play a tournament style game where wrong decisions usually end in death. Like so many other players they simply want to be heroes!

Especially because they seem still a little wet behind the ears you should go easy on them. Gaining levels does not only cover the character it also covers the player experience. If they start to grasp their characters a little more it is usually ok to gradually remove the stops and cushions.

So you should adjust your expectations accordingly or at least inform the players that this is how you will play the game or your campaign could be quite short lived.

Will they be ejected to be squashed between the wall and the "reformed" surface or will they be ejected to the ethereal plane or something as there is no space that they can go?

Also what happens if someone resurfaces after burrowing below the entrance of the pit?

...but they still should have made a decision other than "oh well, we move forward."...

"After foolishly pressing onward you encounter waves of Kobolds that eventually kill you because you did not rest long enough last night. Time to make new characters and stop the whining or I will make a post at the Paizo boards."

Yeah, I see, that totally was the only way you could have handled this situation.

15 minute workday ftw.

Paizo boards are among the most mature and well spoken boards in the whole game industry but here too exists a tendency to put up redundant threads and veer threads into off topics.

If that happens closing a thread is simply an issue of basic "board hygiene".

So move on folks, nothing to see here.

As I GM I would have problems with this because the pit is an extradimensional space. if you earthglide through the space below the "entrance" to the pit you will not find the pit but rather undisturbed earth.

Also note that the pit is sloped and that anyone wanting to throw/summon something inside the pit at an opponent will have a chance to fall in (so spider climb would be very useful). Randomly chugging things into the pit from father away would follow the rules for targeting the ground so you would greatly benefit from the Throw Anything feat. Summoning something at the rim of the pit and commanding it to throw itself into the pit might lead to resistance by the summoned creature if falling would damage it, so swarms are likely your best bet as are Shadows, if you can summon them, as they make it hard to escape the pit with their strength damage.

But I'd say that aqueus orb is a great suggesting as it fills your need of getting more opponents into your pit and preventing those inside from getting out. Leave the mundane damaging to your party members.

Not to nitpick, but "fascinating" is a bit strong.

You provide a most basic descrption of Paizo with a few facts, that you imho fail to tailor to the "consumer" of your paper (d20?, OGL?). Some of the statements are at least debatable ("WotC gaining a huge advantage by the OGL" is certainly a view not shared by quite some people).

You close your really short paper (though maybe you had to be this brief) with a statement that is very generalistic and hints that you don't really understand what the term "customer service" (as opposed to "customer relations") encompasses.

If I were you, I would expand the word count to explain a few terms. I would also use a distinct example to portray the point you want to make, for instance the detailed process how the Pathfinder RPG came to be and exactly why you think that Paizos relation to it's fans (fans as opposed to "mere" customers) is the main reason for it's success.

As a Paizo fan, I would say that the main reason for Paizos success is that Paizo gave the 3.5 fans what they wanted when they wanted it in the a way they wanted it AFTER doing a great job on existing formats (i.e. Dungeon and Dragon magazines).

"Customer Service" is really just the tiniest part of this.

Edition warring, part XXXIIII

Uhm, not in the slightest.

@Hogarth: QFT!

Like what I read, most concerns seem to be adressed, casting seems a fun and dedicated system, customisation possibilities seem huge.

But I would have liked to hear about combat casting/concentration, as this is a huge thing to balance casters to non casters (i.e. if someone is in melee with you, will you be mostly unable to cast spells or will it hardly matter).

Yes, Baldurs gate was a hit but I found it very boring. I detest games that have an "artificial difficulty", meaning you have to act in a very specific way in order to beat the machine but once you found that way you will always beat it.

This is the reason why, for instance, WoW included more and more random elements to their boss fights, to keep it "interesting" (meaning that you will wipe now even when doing it "right" unless you equip is finally good enough to absorb those random spikes).

Many people like it that way (or at least like it more than the alternatives) and thats nice and fine and the reason why there are so many MMOs that work this way.

What galls me is when people insist that ALL MMOs have to be this way or else they will face abysmal failure (not that this happened in this thread, but it happened often enough in previous ones).

So really, give it a chance, the PvP-Environment in PFO will be unlike all you saw so far - you might still not like it, but whats to loose?

My Fighter fix:
Only play up to level 6.

The GM is always supposed to adjust any and all adventures to:
+ the number of players and classes of the group
+ the playstyle of the players
+ the players experience/inexperience
+ the characters power (especially when houserules come into play)

Not doing so will usually lead to frustration UNLESS the players are aware that this is some sort of challenge "how far do we get" campaign, and even then it takes a special breed of players to weather this.

That there is a whiny player is a problem to be handled separately.

I don't get it.

You warned them not to do an all Wizard/Sorc group but you allowed it anyways.

Now you want to show them?

I would say spare yourself the time and simply abolish the campaign.

Yeah, the ICV2 gets less meaningful year by year as direct sales pick up more and more and SW appearing a 2nd place is an indicator for this.

I think the D&D team at WotC is noticeably larger than Paizo. If D&D really sold much less than PF for all these years overall I guess Hasbro would have closed it down long ago.

Yeah Kingmaker is best suited for the mount classes. However with so much melee damage already floating in this group a arcane or divine char would be most fitting.

I would play a Bard in this party. Not only are they great support to all the other classes, they can also create items well and cover the lore part that can play an important part in Kingmaker as well (depending on the GM).

Way to go! You had my favorite item in round 1, and you were the best in every round but the 2nd. I can't way to buy this!

QFT!

It's funny that the last three contests ended with the person winning that did the (imho) best item.

I just want to say that your Bonus Location is imho the best single idea in this round. This has evoked so many pictures in my mind I could put together an adventure just based on the few words you gave me here.

I just realized that the old Age of Empires 2 HD ist 18 Euro on Steam and bought this for me and my son.

This was my first (an only) serious RTS and I ranked at around ELO2000 like 15(?) years ago. Never managed to do so in any of it's sequels let alone Starcraft.

Butter?

Thanks Klaus, I will test Ace of Spades.

When I read this I was thrilled at first being an old school DAoC fan since their beta.

But when I read about their design goals (no PvE at all) I became a lot less thrilled because what made DAoC for me was the mixture of RvR and PvE.

As fas as I see the new DAoC will be a GW2 clone with housing instead of PvE or a PFO without hexes.

...The point I was aiming at, is war should be a huge undertaking and not the trivial practice to kick-off it often is in many games...

QFT!

This is actually what makes me a bit wary about threading. While I certainly appreciate the fact that it makes the game less cut throat it also has the potential to make war efforts trivial.

I guess GoWo will counter this by requiring, for instance, extremely expensive siege engines for attacking settlements in order to bring back choice into war (should I risk loosing a lot of assets by attacking - will I gain more than I loose - is this worth it).

About PvP:
I love good PvP and I never play games without it because battling the AI is only good for learning the game. But I hate useless, boring repetitive PvP (aka arenas) in an MMO because if I want arena battling I play a MOBA or a RTS game. PFO will have meaningfull PvP (you risk loosing things, the face of the world can be changed by large scale PvP) and this is great.

We play Minecraft on and off since Beta and it is always the same: When you start a new world you struggle to get you little base going but as soon as this has been accomplished after a few days and you build your first few vanity structures the game looses it's appeal.

So does anyone know a game that is like minecraft (multiplayer) only with a little bit more long time engagement?

Imho the main reason why many people think that a game would be better without PvP is that many people want to feel in MMOs like in a movie or in a single player game - they want to be the king, the focus of the whole.

This is normally impossible in an MMO and PvP most drastically demonstrates this to these players.

So what these players usually mean is that they wish that PvP would be there but they would always win.

Add to this that in most games PvP had no cause but was rather another tacked on feature and it is understandable that many peopel think they could live without. But an MMO without PvP will either be a themepark and thus fail to out-WoW WoW or not be a MMO at all because it severely restricts player interaction.

About DAoC:

So if you want a real MMO with no (non-consensual) PvP, you are pretty much stuck with WoW or one of it's clones because in a sandbox this is likely never gonna work.

@MicMan ... I'll report back if you're at all interested.

Yes, please do.

LoL is regarded by far the most accessible MOBA. The graphics may not be everyons taste but they are clear and crisp, you see much better what is happening than in DotA1/2.

While the video gamer crowd is special playing a MOBA with random guys is just asking for abuse. This game is much too tactical and talking each other is much too important for this to work.

So get a team, there are many websides dedicated to help you finding one.

...I think that means I am going to do very poorly in the cut-throat world of PFO in which it is starting to appear only the ruthless will survive banded with other ruthless...

Cut-throat is in the eye of the beholder. If you say that PFO will be more cut-throat than WoW and that is too ruthless for you, then yes, indeed.

But don't confuse a dedication to the success of PFO for ruthlesness.

Imho DotA2 and LoL can easily coexist, because they were clever enough to cater to the opposite ends of the spectrum of MOBA enthusiasts.

I like to play LoL more than DotA but I like to watch DotA more than LoL.

Besides LoL and DotA2... not sure.

...3.)SC2's xpac(pretty awesome)...

I feared as much. After the horrid disappointment that Diablo III was for me I vowed to not buy Heart of the Swarm to teach Blizzard something about milking customers dry...

So far I hold.

These magazines all suffer from the same problem: in a rapidly changing environment ("fotm") the information that they provide can be considered outdated by the time the magazine arrives at the customer and any and all informations within are easily found at the interwebs and then some.

Finally the few game magazines that have survived so far usually cover everything of interest for the few people who like to read their strats on the loo and favor paper there.

...PvP minigame...

A MOBA is not a PvP minigame at all.

Characters have 4-5 skills that the level anew during every game. In a MOBA you have mechanics that work very different than in an MMO (ability, armor, damage, crit, life, armor, magic resist)and all this needs to be superbly balanced, too, which takes a great many effort and time.

Additionally you need special arenas that have no relevance to the sandbox aspect of your MMO.

Finally you even need to have another UI.

So nothing that you build your MMO with is usable in the MOBA "minigame" - you have to make it all new.

And this is a waste of scarce resources that will likely mean PFO would be a bad sandbox MMO and a bad MOBA instead of a great sandbox MMO and nothing else!

+++++

About Dust 514 - it's certainly not an "FPS minigame in EvE", it's an entirely separate game in terms of programming and has been years in the making.

+++++

Your arguments are weak, to say the least. You suggest things that would likely cause PFO to crash and burn and when told so you complain about unconstructive criticism.

So I constructively suggest you research a little bit into the fundamental mechanics of MOBAs and how these are different from MMOs and then come back and post something constructive about it.

...Minecraft, dabbling in League of Legends,...Borderlands 2...

Funny thing, you describe me pretty well here - only thing I would add is Torchlight II which really is a steal if you are into the genre.

About the "nannybot":

EvE is a prime example why such a system is needed.

When EvE launched in Europe it initially captured few players, which was good! These players struggled with the game because it ws deep and complex and no walkthrough were available. The PvP aspect of the game was played down.

After that the community grew steadily and EvE became a success.

When the same EvE launched in Asia it was a horrible "everyone for himself" PvP gankfest galore and thus failed.

It was the same game, why did it succeed and fail at the same time?

Well, EvE hat no nannybot at all and no Dungeons. It was totally up to the players and EvE profited in Europe from being pretty much unknown with a small but dedicated community at first. PFO will have a greater community at start but witht his comes also a greater risk.

To be honest EvEs success is true in part of they being "lucky" to have attracted a fine community at the start - if they had launched like in Asia the game would probably be dead and forgotten by now!

QFT!

I am interested in seeing how Elder Scrolls Online (or what it is called) will do. Afaik this could be "the last AAA themepark MMO" that releases. And though it starts with a strong support (just as SW:TOR did) I guess it also will fade into obscurity in 3 to 6 months.

The market is no longer there, this is the proverbial dead horse.

New MMOs will try and define themselves as different from themepark, which likely means sandbox, a broad category.

I, too, think these are the same.

The first MOBA to be known under this name started out as a mod to Warcraft III (but was inspired by a mod to Starcraft) and was called Defense of the Ancients (DotA).

MOBAs are RTS games and thus fundamentally different from MMOs (controls, skills, items, stats, everything). MOBAs are NOT arena PvP at all they are much more Starcraft than WoW.

Including a MOBA in an MMO is simply not doable and is a ridiculous suggestion.

the plan is that threads are a persistent feature of your character and you can bind them to whatever you wish; if you want to change those bindings you can.

This is what I ment that there are no real separate economies. It is not that "weapons are always threaded so they wont be bought a lot".

I say that many people will thread their most powerful items that they don't want to loose and this may not alway be arms and armor.

This may also change as fotm equip (that provides fotm stats) makes it's appearance, so, for instance, swords may go from no demand it to highly sought after to no demand over the course of a few weeks.

...and it needs more epic quest lines culminating in a RAID.

If you provide raid-Dungeons that is a lot of work and you need to add a new one every few months or else the raiding crowd gets bored.

All classic fantasy MMO games since WoW have tried to establish such a cycle AND FAILED.

So your suggestion is that PFO should do like all these games - fail?

My concern is that GW is only making EVE set in the middle ages... if so this will be a tiny niche game.

Consider your concern confirmed but add that Ryan and most of the people here would disagree with you about the word "tiny".

EvE certainly is a niche game, but the niche is far from tiny.

There will be no shortage of guides for PFO.

There will be no shortage of people who ignore these guides and then whine if something turns out to be not totally foolproof.

There will be people who will recommend that the whiners go and play WoW instead.

Still, nowadays an AAA MMO costs hundreads of thousands of dollars and thus it is totally legitimate to say that such a game is only successful if it can attract and hold hundreds of thousands of players.

...That's actually also true after WoW, but what changed was the perception of "success."...

I'd say that is a bit too easy. The MMO crowd has become much bigger than it was back then and much much more experienced.

When back then everything was new and had to be tested by the players, nowadays most MMOs are same old same old and players RACE through the content meaning new themepark MMOs need to be released with a lot of content up front driving up the costs exponentially.

Take DAoC for instance. It was easier to level than EQ but still the first people did not reach the highest levels until after almost a year when today the crowd would blast through exactly the same content in weeks.

When DAoC was realeased the higher level dungeons were not even itemized, most classes had no working high level skills, there were no high level items. This was all introduced after the game launched. Impossible today!

...My purpose in throwing that plea out there is to have less of the popcorn enemies than what we see in current MMOs...

In current MMOs you see these popcorn NPCs almost exclusively because of two reasons:

1. You have to kill hundreds and hundreds of them to advance with no alternative.

2. The games need to attract a huge number of players to generate revenue and thus are build for very inexperienced/casual players until the very endgame and then some.

Neither reason applies to PFO.

I ment that it will not cause a separate economy in the sense that the OP thought.

Threading means that the 2nd and even the 3rd best items for each class for each slot are still in high demand, because getting the best in slot means you will have to thread it and then you will loose your other items over the course of several deaths because you can only thread one or two top items.

If you manage to have your corpse defended most of the time this will significantly raise the time it takes until you need to replenish your items, if you run alone and each death means you get looted you will have a constant need of new items.

But no, threading will not cause a separate economy, it will simply cause people to wear a selected few top items without worry instead of noone using the best items for fear of loss. This in turn makes it possible that the best items are very rare/very expensive, which otherwise would not be practical.

This is all nice and fine, but where are the Dwarves? Tankard swinging Dwarves in full mail and with axes larger than a man, I say!

D&D, and by extension Pathfinder PnP, has always been about the 'small adventuring group' so its only natural to expect a certain amount of that in the game...

Yes and no.

Yes, small group is D&D/PF... BUT in a living organic world that no small group RPG has managed to capture so far, let alone an MMO which about as far from the P&P tabletop experience as possible.

Skyrim came closer but at the cost of being single player.

So unless the players create the content you will never have the organic non-scripted feel of the original. I gladly trade in the "the world revolves around me and only me" aspect for this, but it surely is not for everyone.

So if Mr Garriott succeeds, fine, more power to him, but his game doesn't sound as a competitor to PFO at all.

If two kingdoms go to war then, after the first few battles many many players will have been killed over and over and over and will certainly be short on aceptable gear and in more or less dire need of some resources.

The occasional banditry is never the focus of this system, you are aiming too low assuming it is.

That said banditry will be profitable, though not hugely so and only with good preparation, going after the most valuable resources only found in the remote wilds. Someone carrying basic resources from hamlet a to village b will most likely not see banditry. But someone carrying the super rare pure ore from the middle of nowhere to the only big player city that can smelt this ore should better bring friends.