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There will be as many 'good' guys as there will be 'bad' guys. Me, I might just go where the cash takes me and live the mercenary life. Be a sell-sword for caravan details and what not. So I'll end up on either side of the fence.
Personally I've found in-game chat to be disruptive more often than helpful. I do see its usefulness if people aren't intentionally trolling the area on it. Best example I can think of right now is someone looped audio from their output on the PC into the input with voice activation in WoW then sat in the dungeon finder making it so groups had to kick that individual out. Then again, I've had it be extremely useful when playing Red Orchestra and Red Orchestra 2 for coordinating with a team on capturing objectives. This is assuming people listen to whomever is issuing orders for that battlefield at the time... So I guess my point is moot. If it isn't abused in the title awesome, if it is then it'll be more of a pain or will need to be regulated somehow.
I took another online alignment test. This one was waaaay longer. I still turned out LG. Guess my PC is doomed to make honest deals and his pile o' gold will take 2yrs instead of 1. :( At least the class test didn't tell you to be a wizard... I typically loathe spell casting, but somehow I'm supposed to be a wizard.
Every time I take this test the results are always the same
I know how it is for the break in portion, but I just chime in where I feel my opinion has merit. Otherwise it's interesting to read some of the conversations, but I have limited time to try and keep up with the posts on here and new subjects from day to day.
I think the world in general, inside and outside the US, will discover PFO sometime between the first day of EE and the first day of OE. Until then, we'll continue to be a pretty specialized community. I think we'll remain an extremely specialized community even after a wide spread knowledge about the title is distributed. But at the same time I think that makes this a fairly spectacular community.
Goblins Comic - Please take some time and read this comic. I assure you, you'll enjoy it.
Along this line, are we going to get the options for sub-races? Like Gold Dwarves vs Shield Dwarves vs Dark Dwarves (Duergar)? Personally my character from way back in D&D was a Forest Gnome, while extremely rare they aren't anymore or less special than the other gnomes and don't have the level modifier like the Deep Gnome. As most of the changes for the Sub-races is skin tone, hair color, and base stats I'm not sure it be difficult to implement but it'd be time consuming to test and balance appropriately if adjustments needed to be made. I also wouldn't mind seeing some of the non-standard races being implemented in the future but I agree that it isn't likely to be something we'll see out the gate.
Thanks for posting, GrumpyMel. I saw XCOM and Mount & Blade on your list so I thought I'd check out the others you have there. Looks very interesting, I may play a couple of those. I wouldn't say so. I actually like titles that require thought and follow through. Or at least understanding of the mechanics to succeed in a playthrough. Personally I think a lot of games do too much hand-holding these days. The designs are meant to appeal to the least common denominator which makes for intelligent gameplay going by the wayside. This is one of the reasons I play Red Orchestra as an FPS title, it's based on real ballistics model and mechanical behavior for the rifles. Hell the machineguns actually overheat and you can burn out your barrel.
1. Shogun 2: Total War - doing Co-Op campaigns with various friends through the various campaigns/expansions
Considering I work a lot of overtime, I squeeze in a bit of everything when I can.
That does sound like a pretty awesome PvE event to occur. My purpose in throwing that plea out there is to have less of the popcorn enemies than what we see in current MMOs. playing SWTOR and being a trooper I can use Mortar shot to take out groups of 10+ enemies if I just grab a bunch force a LOS issue then they all huddle together once they see me again and throw the AoE attack on them. But for that particular title, I think the normals should be the same difficulty as a strong, the strongs should be about a star, and the champs should be closer to what bosses are. As it stands I can take out champs if I really want and using just a few consumables.
I'd like to second Hobs post as a topic for a future blog. This subject interests me as well. Looking at the images, it would be nice if you could arrange the buildings prior to hitting an "accept" button when first laying out a settlement. (Similar to how you place shops in "The Guild 2", if your familiar with that game). I would also like to hear your thoughts on the ability to tear down and move a structure and change a structures facing. I concur on this one. I'd like to know how settlement generation will work, Structure placement in construction, the variety of structures and their purposes. Will NPCs be included in the structures or a variety of 'Sims' like behavior of build it and they will come to work the less meaningful jobs. Will players be able to act like business owners? Crafters can take up housing in workshops for their particular craft have NPCs to sell their wares and then make stuff to store it in the stores inventory vault to be sold? Is there going to be a meta-system in place to advise the pricing on said materials? Will there be the ability to construct the one-off sorts of structures in unusual hex locations like the lone inn in the woods for travelers who didn't stop to stay safely in the city? Watchtowers near forts, or road toll positions? Lots of interesting subject matter to explore here.
That may be apt. But its more that the desire is for the majority of PvE content to exhibit this sort of difficulty and significance. I'm all for player driven content, I'll spend a lot of time creating content, but there also needs to be a general sense of a challenge otherwise this doesn't feel rewarding to an end user. The drive toward easy popcorn enemies that you just slaughter for the sake of slaughter or a number drive quest feels too easy and relatively unimportant other than getting a few coffers and finishing the quest.
I'd like to see the PvP operate more like DAOC rather than WoW or ever SWTOR. The running in circles to try to avoid combat or leaping about I always found rather annoying. DAOC's method to compensate for that behavior was an Auto-Face of target actively engaged in combat. They also had an Auto-Attack to determine the combat state though. I'm sure a similar method can be done without the need to have it tied to the auto-attack in behavior. I do agree the PvP and unit cohesion will play a roll in generating a pack mentality in some ways forcing group combat. But my plea here is more driven toward PvE encounters which will need to exist to cater to another audience for this genre of game. Many of the designs I've read thus far have been ambitious, expansive and fairly well thought out. There is a great deal of promise. I'm hoping it all turns out to make effectively what will be a long-lived and beloved title to experience.
That's context, not content. What I'm looking at is explicitly PvE content design and implementation. I'd like the Orc tribe I need to wipe out to claim a hex to be more than just popcorn enemies I hack to bits with little thought or reason. Waltzing through a massacre of NPCs is fun for an Action RPG. But I'm looking for what PvE content that exists to persist as a real challenge. Utilize specialized skills from characters and make it so they aren't by default as a player vastly superior to the NPCs. I do see your point though much of the opposition is going to be other players in the field. I'd just like to see the NPCs you face actually posing a threat. EVE had that concept in their missions making it so the NPCs had the same ships and capabilities as the players. This made is so challenging fights could be actually challenging for ship to ship combat. But by no means did it make it really impossible. At some point, someplace they'll have to be NPCs the player can combat, steal from or otherwise interact with.
Mirkk, and Bekan, where did you hear about Pathfinder Online? I'm just curious. Stumbled across the Kickstarter while looking at the 'Wildman' kickstarter. I actually work in the Redmond\Kirkland area where this is being made and work in the video games industry. I've been intrigued by the designs I've seen on the blog, and read as much as I can on the forums when I have time, which sadly isn't much free time between work commitments and attempting to have a social life of some kind. Pathfinder as a PnP I haven't actually played as of yet, but I was always interested as it seemed like a good alternative to D&D which I played quite a bit of back when I was in Junior High and High School. Recently I've spent time playing GURPs which has a great deal of flexibility and Deathwatch which is a Warhammer 40k PnP. Now the small plea I'm making here is already somewhat in the works in the sense of diversity, but bringing back opposition that isn't popcorn seems to be outside the design most people are comfortable with these days. The idea is to make the player feel "heroic" right out of the gate. While I understand the design, I miss the thought process required to successfully pull off a challenging encounter or work around.
I'd like to see a large volume of group oriented content and quests than we currently see for MMOs. I find it disappointing to join into a Massively Multiplayer Online Game then end up spending a good portion of my time running around alone or just in proximity to players. Theres very little need to talk or interact with each other as simply having someone there makes the encounters go expeditiously. Now I've played MMOs since Ultima and Everquest, playing the majority of them since then it's been a common trend for anything released after the WoW era to be more of a "soloing together" experience as a friend of mine coined. Individually in Everquest the NPC opposition was often stronger than the player - this made for people at the very least to double up. While I'm not a huge fan of the "Camps" that arose because of their spawning system and the strength of such mobs, I believe treating enemies less like popcorn and more like real opposition could drive further interaction from players. This specifically was what made me develop long lasting bonds with many players in that game as I played a rogue and often couldn't do much alone other than explore (Sneak+Hide was awesome). Ensuring enemies remain a constant challenge for an individual player will also drive for balanced groups mechanically and allow for people to interact both in the wild and towns. Along this same thought process I'd love to see the return of Utility class play. Where Rogues are more than DPS, Casters can be something other than DPS or a healer. Everquest did this well with their Enchanters and Shamans making them fit a slight role in DPS caster or Healer, but also giving them extremely powerful buffs that compensated for their inadequacies compared to your more dedicated damage Mage or Healer. Druids and Wizards had their unique perks as well to set them apart. But integrating traps or hidden passages into level design that a racial or class based set of skills to spot or utilize these would also make for a difference in overall gameplay. A Return of traps to dungeons where Rangers and/or Rogues can detect and disarm them, or find a route to bypass an extremely difficult area would be amazing as well.
Well as it goes for the "Spear" it might be better to refer to the class of weapon you're looking at as a Polearm. Because as it stands, you have the Pilum, Halberd, Spear, Short Spear, Long Spear, Lance, Long Axe, and many many more types of long Polearms that share spear or spear-like behavior and functionality. Some are dedicated to certain roles like Short Spears were made infamous by the Hoplites of Greece. They'd carry a short spear and a short sword of some variation. While the Pilum was a Roman throwing spear design to have the tip bend on impact making a shield unusable or the man it strikes severely wounded. If we can have representation of some of this it'd be awesome. But mostly I'd like to see the Basic Thrusting Spear, Slash and Thrusting Halberd, and Slashing Long Axe style weapons available as Polearm training.
Is there any ETA on when the latest kickstarter items are to be shipped out? I have yet to even receive contact email recognizing my kickstarter contribution or that the orders are being processed.
@McDuff The original EQ had a good system for dealing with Food+Drink, it was a passive consumption of Food that allowed you passively regen health (SLOWLY) and Passively regen Stamina/Mana (SLOWLY) between combat. The better food or drink you purchased influenced the regen rate but it was always at such a minimal rate that it was almost negligible. The requirement for it came from when you had downtime and needed to rest. If you didn't have anything you also didn't regen so it became imperative to at least have minimal food. I personally found that buying the best food from the Innkeepers was more than enough for my characters even up to the high level 60's after playing for years and years. I also agree with a system like that you could see some very good boons to the player profession by requiring it in a similar fashion, but allowing for other abilities or attributes to be influenced based on player made food.
It's not impossible to do (I played in some MUDS like that as well), there is just an extra cost (resource and $$$) to do it...which is why it's commonly avoided. Think of the scale involved...most big successfull MUD's have on average 2K users on at a time...and generaly not more then 10 players in a room, which is the limit of the view range of a player. An MMO might have 100K online at a time...and in a... With a combat system where the user doesn't "miss" the objects could be stored on the intended target, if you manage to down the target then you'll have a neat stack of items to extract from that opposition be it player or NPC. If you fail to kill them then the objects could disappear or appear as part of the loot table for the victor in the event it's a player. This makes it so the combat encounter is still tracked and the items are thrown into a grey area until combat has ceased. It would allow for recovery of thrown items without cluttering the ground. Not the neatest solution but not horribly difficult to implement as well as we have a targeted combat system, it'd simply transfer the item from the using players inventory to a invisible inventory on the target. When combat state has ceased that inventory becomes visible and the objects are assigned to both players until the loot action has occurred.
I hope jumping and excessive movement takes alot of fatigue too. Otherwise you'll have people running and jumping in cirlces around opponents hoping to get a pixel or two on your backside for precision damage. DAOC had a good system to deal with this by having the target you're actively engaged in combat with have an "auto-face" toward them. But this system was dependent on having an auto-attack system to make it determine the combat state. I'm curious if it'd be possible to do that while you have something targeted then use a combat skill it enters this "Ready" state and makes for the auto face to function until you have 10-15 seconds of combat inactivity to drop out. This will allow for state changes and potential for an "Ambush" on people/players that are not currently in the "Ready" state.
Viking soldiers were known to carry 2 throwing spears then pull their axes for combat. Franks did the same with the Francescea throwing axe. The idea of being able to throw a weapon that can be used for Melee as well has been around for a long time. I agree we should have the ability to throw these weapons and recover them or have a "Returning" magical ability that can be applied to high level versions. I can see this being accomplished easily by treating thrown melee weapons similar to ammo produced arrows. If you're using a weapon set with a "Throw" capable weapon you can purchase additional of that weapon to be stored in the "Ammo" slot or container. This means if a weapon is tossed you pull a new one from that available slot/container. When depleted you return to being weapon-less (in the event you're Weapon+Shield, or the remaining weapon becomes your dominate combat weapon. |
