Moonbird's page

I'm in !

Moonbird

I would guess closer to 60. It was actually one of the most full seminars I was a part of at the con. I was super pleased with the high turnout.

Is there any video recording of the conf somewhere on the net ? (GenCon is soooo far away from France...)

Seeya,
Moonbird

@Moonbird - that's a really big and complex system. The tradeoffs with other design priorities would be enormous. Would need to have a huge wave of community support get behind something like that to make it happen in the 2-3 year timeframe (couldn't be done any earlier regardless of interest...)

Thanks a lot for your answer, Ryan, I understand your concern.

From my outsider's point of view, I feel you're not far from having the basic building blocks to offer such a system, since you already have player deployable structures like the basecamp and smallhold, and they have hit points and can be destroyed by players with or without siege engines.

What would be missing for a minimal player built forteress ? I would say 2 things: a wall that could be oriented north/south or east/west, that would connect to another wall if one would be there, and that would have hit points . The other thing would be a lockable door and that's about it I think.

And finally the ability for the defenders to climb on the wall so they could shoot the attackers.

Is this possible on a shorter time than 2 or 3 years ?

Seeya,
Moonbird

@Moonbird - that's a really big and complex system. The tradeoffs with other design priorities would be enormous. Would need to have a huge wave of community support get behind something like that to make it happen in the 2-3 year timeframe (couldn't be done any earlier regardless of interest...)

Thanks a lot for your answer, I understand.

Need to go build a community around that (or a Minecraft plugin for PFO) :-) to get it done sooner.

Moonbird

Great news, thx for announcing all of this !

Certainly we will sell some things that are useful, and great to own. We want to make valuable items available for sale to those players with the interest and ability to buy them. Our commitment is and has been that such things won't provide a meaningful mechanical advantage that you cannot get just by playing the game.

I hope on the other hand that this kind of premium item could craftable one way or another. I strongly dislike having to pay real money for in-game items, and if through skills, ressource gathering, crafting and time if were possible to get the same items, that would be great.

From the blog post:

Future Upgrades

We have lots of ideas of how to expand this basic system over time. We can offer several varieties of Smallhold structures. We can offer various decorations. It may be possible that player-character crafted objects can interact with a purchased building (like buying a paint kit from another character, for example).
We have ideas on ways you can improve a basic structure to expand its capabilities and add new capabilities. Maybe you will be able to hire an NPC Thornguard to keep watch, for example.
Of course we'd like to have interior spaces you can decorate, with furniture, display cases, trophies, etc. Allowing players to enter the Smallholds, interact within them, and customize them extensively is a part of our road map for developing this feature.

@Ryan, any reaction to my idea about player built fortresses for siege warfare ? Is this in your future plans by any chance ?

Thx for all that amazing amount of great work !
Moonbird

Voted down on principle for making a "vote on my idea" thread.

Arf, sorry, I wasn't aware this was misconduct. I thought folk from the forum didn't go necessarily on Ideascale to look at ideas, just as I didn't until this afternoon.

Seeya,
Moonbird

I posted an idea on Ideascale earlier today, about player built fortresses, after reading the thread about Personal Housing.

Please come over and comment it, vote it up (preferably :-), or down if you wish) and make it grow !

Siege warfare: building fortresses

Enjoy!
Moonbird

Another take on these questions, based on Bringslite's format:

Problem: Land clutter

Solution: make them destructible, and limited to the space enclosed in your settlement's walls. Player housing would be part of the settlement that could be taken or destroyed during a siege. Available land space could also depend on the settlement's level.

Drawback: you lose your housing if you lose a siege. That make your settlement even more worth defending it.
_____________________________________________________________

Problem: Development cost

Solution: mini Minecraft in PFO ? Limit this to predefined building blocks (pieces of wall, floors, roofs, windows, doors).

Drawback: adds another subsystem to the game.
_____________________________________________________________

Problem: Safe storage is not "kosher" to the game.

Solution: guild vault with limited space. Make the amount of space depending on the settlement's level, and allow player to rent to other players (trade, trade, trade !). Everything else could be either destroyed if your settlement is taken, or partly looted.

Drawback: players don't like to lose their things, but it's what adds spice to the game

I added an idea about siege warfare and player build fortresses on Ideascale: Siege warfare: building fortresses.

Seeya,
Moonbird

Alas, no. The scope's likely to be a little more claustrophobic.

I hope you can keep the same kind of mood and atmosphere as Nightglass, though the short description of Nightblade hints at something more traditional as a fantasy novel (but I pray you'll surprise just as you did with Nightglass).

Here's the review I just wrote, it's an almost first-timer for me:

Great mood and atmosphere

***** Moonbird — 1 hour, 28 minutes ago

I really enjoyed this book, it stands out of the crowd of usual hack and slash or adventure type stories set in fantasy settings. Here, no group of super heroes plowing through obstacles and getting rid of them usually by brawn (or magic super powers) and witty end lines.

What you'll find is closer to (dark) mood and emotions, the heavy atmosphere of a nation using torture as means for its ends, and the path one of it's shadowcaller follows through his apprenticeship. I'd really like more of this kind of books, they're so rare. The first part of the book reminded me very much of the Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K Le Guin (2nd book of the Earthsea series). The second part is a bit more conventional as a plot, but using a different point of view for the main character, who comes to understand and embrace a very different culture.

The novel is of a very high quality. Enjoy it !

PvP tends to fall within 2 categories Pre-determined factions (i.e. Horde vs Alliance, Empire vs Rebel Alliance, Vanau vs NC vs Terran Republic, etc) or "FFA"... if it doesn't fall within the former then it's the latter.

Funny how a same word can be understood differently. For me, if I were to assign categories, PvP would to fall between "constrained" (faction vs faction as you described) or "open" (one can attack any other character). But "open" doesn't mean FFA in my understanding: FFA stands for "attack freely with no consequences", whereas Open PvP can have consequences (rep hit, being denied access to resources, loss of equipment…) and as Ryan pointed out, doesn't imply full looting.

Seeya,
Moonbird

It strikes me that player interaction is the key to successful mmos:

1. PvP is a very powerful interaction: I mean I find PvP many times more engaging than PvE AI combat but pvp in context of a story where it makes sense and is not senseless otherwise as said play a fps game.
2. Trade is a very powerful interaction between players as evidenced by some of the cool stuff in EVE.
3. Groups aspect seems really core part of having fun too.

Player networks seems to be the key.

Yep, I fully agree on these points.

The designs that seem to have this potential for example:-

1) EVE = Virtual economy
2) EQN = Asset creation and purchase and the whole platform of voxel-making virtual objects building a community around that that then uses such for their own types of games or world-building. Minecraft seems to have achieved this somewhat albeit less around actual asset sales, and more around mods for private servers?
3) Shards Online = if they were successful at creating a platform with lots of scripting of Lua and admins run shards that design has potential to build a community around the game and in the game atst
4) Pathfinder Online = Virtual Economy again.

Not so sure about these points... My expectations and hopes for PFO run around playing a great PvP game oriented around Settlement Warfare* (building fortresses and strongholds, being able to defend them but also to lay siege and take them), Player vs Player combat being one aspect of that bigger fight going on. Virtual economy and associated activities (ressource gathering, crafting, building etc) IMO are supporting activities for warfare, just alongside other types of activities like level or skill advancement, diplomacy (guild or nation relationships), intelligence gathering on your foes (in-game and out-of-game) etc.

Seeya,
Moonbird

* that's another example of those "you always seem to look for your first love again thing": in this case, Shadowbane's Gameplay for me.

Wow ! What a post ! Thanks for taking the time to explain all this !

PvP is a feature, not a bug. Our target market segment expresses a preference for it. And we have built our game design around PvP. Specifically, the kind of PvP we have built our game around is Open World PvP.

(snip) But it is a desired feature for the people we are actively targeting.

You got me ! Your target is dead on my brain !!! :-) I'm in the market segment, yeah !!! This game is for me !!! And this is to say that some ppl on the forum support you fully, I think what you're building is great :-)

Personally, I think "PvP with consequences" is a better construction. At least, that's what made me embrace the PvP in PFO so wholeheartedly.

"Meaningful PvP" maybe ?

Seeya,
Moonbird

Audoucet wrote:

Don't forget the 75% of EvE players never putting one foot outside of high security territory.

Don't forget that statistic, even if true, has no meaning regardless of how you are looking to use it.

Does this mean the 75% do not PvP?
Does this mean the 75% don't commit crimes?
Does this mean the 75% are not Griefers?
Does this mean the 75% are not alts of pvpers in low or null sec?

I can't forget something that hasn't been established as fact.

I'm not sure there are that many players stuck in high, but anyway whatever the numbers, I'd say these guys have found a way of enjoying EvE compatible with their own risk tolerance (or aversion), in a game that might be the most engaging open pvp around. If not, they'd have quit and gone to SWTOR (as a good example of SF theme park in my mind, this isn't derogatory).

Maybe their risk threshold makes them stay all the time in high (so no open pvp, only wardecs can hit them), or maybe they go in low once in a while for missions or rare ore or whatever and take the risk of getting attacked. But anyway, they are aware of it and accept it.

Seeya,
Moonbird

I'm with the Snorter here! He expressed it succinctly.

I'm an avid pen and paper RPG gamer and always will be. I'm 53 years old and since 1976, I am still GMing a regular game (Pathfinder for the last few years) with 4-8 players from ages 15 to 50 (Nerd Alert, I know). I've been involved with some MMOs over the years, but they tend to become uninterested quickly due to the lack of RP. Personally, if there's no RP, its very boring and my heart won't be in it.

I think the problem is that there's a huge group of players out there that don't understand the concept of "In-Character".

Hi there, Urlord !

Sorry I missed your answer while I was typing mine a few minutes earlier.

I might be sort of (don't remember the expression in english: disappointed ? in french I would say "déçu du voyage") but I haven't seen much lasting RP in MMOs since I started with Shadowbane. Usually the best I've seen was on dedicated RP servers where specific rulesets enforced RP in one way or another. Now my point of view is kind of skewed, since as I said earlier I have trouble immersing myself in some kind of RP med-fan in front of my computer screen and I'm aware I might have missed great RP games somewhere in cyberspace.

I don't think one can expect much more than the usual exaggerated traits (like elves vs dwarves, or the stalwart paladin). RP in MMOs (IMO) is more about building a community in-game and having an active role in it that others would depend on (like crafters, engineers, combatants, fortress builders), and holding your guild's beliefs and alliances (thus war!). RP as we live it around a table is hard to get in MMO's, and even more in a sandbox open-pvp MMO. P&P RPG is very scripted (by the adventure and the GM) and is more akin to PvE: you character builds his story and gathers his assets and riches and xp etc, and no one is going to come barging in destroying everything *unless* it's part of the scenario or campaign your GM has (lovingly) cooked for you.

Seeya in the River Kingdoms,
Moonbird

Moonbird wrote:

I suppose we also have a population of pen and paper Pathfinder RPG gamers who never tried an MMO (does these guys exist really ?)

They do (hi!).

Hello! 30+ years of tabletop RPGs here, never stepped into an online game until three hours of EVE as a test a week or two ago. If I'd noticed the PvP being a key aspect, I'd not have bothered.

Hi there :-)) I don't doubt you guys exist, it's just that I don't think the numbers are that great compared to the general gamer population. And I also remember that these are Pathfinder's boards, where ppl lurking around are mostly and first of all pen and paper RPG players (me too, btw, for over 30 years). What's nice about that, it's that you're going to discover a whole new aspect of gaming with lots and lots of fun and passion in it :-)

It's become clear to me that I'm getting into something that is not what I expected. I'm going to have to hope it works out for me, but there's a very real possibility it will be the bitter dose of reality that ends the experiment. C'est la vie.

I started with Shadowbane 12 years ago and never stopped… and kept playing P&P RPGs too. One thing I'd say about that is that MMO's are really really great (and addictive), but you can't expect the same pleasures than what you get from P&P RPGs. As an example, I never was able to really role-play in an MMO: it's hard to forget I have a computer screen in front my nose for very long… whereas around a table with friends or during a live role-play game… the immersion is much much deeper.

Seeya soon in the River Kingdoms,
Moonbird

Just my 2 cents... I don't follow those general gaming forums so I don't really know how that "PFO will turn into a Murder Sim MMO" thread is really strong, but I have a tendency to think often it's just very few ppl on forums who tend to have very strong opinions but the vast majority doesn't agree and doesn't take the trouble of saying anything.

Anyway, I would summarize my opinion on this by 2 points :

. an MMO player who sees "open-pvp" in a game description knows there's going to be fighting around. Either he likes it, and he's going to EvE if he likes scifi or would wait for PFO if he's more a med-fan enthusiast. Other option, it's not his favorite gameplay and he sticks to theme park MMOs, but anyway he's aware of what's going on.

. I suppose we also have a population of pen and paper Pathfinder RPG gamers who never tried an MMO (does these guys exist really ?) and who are expecting only one thing, it's to live their paper RPG character adventure's online. These guys (and girls) might have a bad surprise if they fall victim to ganking and griefing, but then the guild mechanism and natural tendency of players to regroup would kick in and they would start enjoying the fun by numbers. Or not, and then they could go visit some theme park MMO instead.

But honestly, I don't think that 2nd population really exists. I think the vast majority of ppl who will try PFO will be from the first kind of gamers, knowing that some of them might wish to have a theme park WoW repainted in PF colors with no PvP. But given the consistent way that Ryan, GW and Paizo have always described PFO, there won't be any surprise.

Seeya,
Moonbird

(quoted from the blog)

(You can still add the Print Pack Add-On to your Kickstarter Pledge in the Pledge Manager on paizo.com if you have not already finalized your Pledge!)

Unlucky me, I finalized my pledge a loooong time ago, and the print version of the Emerald Spire looks gorgeous ! Is it possible add the print-add on another way ? (since I can infer from what you said that you still some have unsold copies of the special version for backers)

Moonbird

Any idea if public APIs will be released ?

I'm thinking of how web sites or 3rd party software developers can use in-game information for offline displaying of in-game related content (like character skills and assets, skill training planning tools like Evemon, etc...).

On a personal side, I'd rather not have a huge bunch of 3rd party in-game add ons like what was done for WoW: it's too much of hassle to keep track of all the updates continuously going on and can really mess your UI. I prefer the way EvE handles this, by keeping it simple (sort of...) for everyone in-game, but giving read-only access to information outside of the game.

Seeya,
Moonbird

"Oh!... et apportez une couple de sauciflards, par pitié, ceux de la guilde sont infects".

Well, here they are… Justin Bridou, a French social network :-)

Enjoy!
Moonbird

Are you yourself already in a company, Moonbird ?

Nope, not yet. Didn't have time to really look around for one, and I was hoping some of my guildmates would come and join me during EE. I guess that's dead, anyway.

(and it takes time to read all the stuff on the forums…)

Seeya,
Moonbird

It's also always nice to have a euro-time based section in a guild for advanced scouting and snipper operations against US time based guilds :-)

About French presence in EE, I'm not sure there will be many of us around… I tried raising some interest in my former (pre-EvE) guild (l'Alliance des Seigneurs), but no real answer. I think that if you didn't start following PFO from at the latest the 2nd Kickstarter, the $100 entry ticket to join what is perceived as an evolved beta is too high.

Seeya,
A bientôt en jeu :-)
Moonbird

@Ryan: thanks for your answer :-)

Seeya,
Moonbird

Question about the EE package, from one of my guildmates who didn't participate in the Kickstarter (shame on him :-)): what do you really get for $100 ? Access to the game sure, but how many months afterwards ? Do you get anything else ?

I'm can't answer him because I have access through the Kickstarter Crowdforger Pioneer level, which gave us access to a whole bunch of pdfs and 3 months of game time. The description on the GW store doesn't say anything more than that it gives access to the game.

The only other info I found was a statement from Ryan saying that game time would cost $15/month during EE.

Any answer to my buddy's concerns ?

Seeya,
Moonbird

Worked for me (though I had a sliver of doubt creeping on my back).

Here's what I did:

. went here: https://www.goblinworks.com/paizo-account-link/
. clicked on the "Pledge Link Tool on paizo.com" big green button
. logged on paizo.com and on got on this page: https://secure.paizo.com/paizo/account/pledgeDrives
. I have 2 Kickstarter PFO pledges (the Online Tech Demo and the Sandbox MMO, Crowdforger Pioneer level)
. clicked on Details for the "Pathfinder Online: A Fantasy Sandbox MMO"
. entered my favorite username (Moonbird), password (won't tell) and email
. got a confirmation on screen
. then got an activation email from gwauto@goblinworks.com with an activation link
. clicked on the link
. got a page confirming the account was activated (displayed on a blue background), but allowing me either to register a new account or log in (that's where that sliver of doubt crept in: why could I register a new account just after activating it ?)
. logged in with my new account
-> TADA ! it worked !
. and got a page saying I was signed up for Early Enrollment (no other details).

Seeya,
Moonbird

Question about the EE package, from one of my guildmates who didn't participate in the Kickstarter (shame on him :-)): what do you really get for $100 ? Access to the game sure, but how many months afterwards ? Do you get anything else ?

I'm can't answer him because I have access through the Kickstarter Crowdforger Pioneer level, which gave us access to a whole bunch of pdfs and 3 months of game time. The description on the GW store doesn't say anything more than that it gives access to the game.

The only other info I found was a statement from Ryan saying that game time would cost $15/month during EE.

Seeya,
Moonbird

Another spamming jerk, this time on Goblinworks message boards: http://paizo.com/people/vekashnathji

Is there a way to ban these guys ? Any tech from Paizo.com online now who could do something ? I'm flagging this junk but he keeps posting every minute...

Seeya,
Moonbird

That's great ! A real achievement for you and these kids !

How much do they know of the medieval european inspired setting in which Pathfinder (and Kingmaker) is set ? Do they have enough clues about it in their culture or did you sort of translate it into their own ?

Nihimon wrote:

Forgive my utter ignorance of French Popular Culture, but do French fantasy novels exist? If they do, do they refer to distances in the metric system?

Honestly, Fantasy Novel are considered a geek thing in France, we don't have a Fantasy tradition, like england.

(...)

Fantasy readers are more common now, since LOTRO movies (Nobody knew Tolkien before that), we ain't outcast anymore, and yes, fantasy novels (well, translations of : We have ZERO reknown french fantasy authors) uses the old system mostly.

Please allow me to correct you slightly: I agree we don't have a fantasy tradition as in England and the US, and our authors of renown in imaginary literature are more SF oriented, but we do have some French authors of fantasy who are well known and successful with young teenagers (check the series by Pierre Bottero, Ellana, les Mondes d'Ewillan, or Tara Duncan books by Sophie Audouin-Mamikonian), or who come from the tabletop RPG background (such as Frédéric Weil for Nephilim, or Mathieu Gaborit for Agone).

I read some of my daughters books from the Ellana series (and liked them, but that's off-topic), and books from Frédéric Weil or Mathieu Gaborit, but just can't remember what units where used. As a matter of fact, I think they would have been in some way non-immersion breaking, or just absent: for example by using time of travel to measure big distances, or notions such as close or far, or in reach or not.

In the case of books, the reader doesn't have to make any kind of conversions. Approximations are enough (miles are big, kilometers too: 20 of each seem far to travel on foot), or meters / yards / feet (x3 for those) are used for human sized things.

Which leads me to think that units in PFO should be non-immersion breaking for the player: it should be easy to have them presented in metric or imperial depending on the prefs of the player, and have them rounded nicely so as to avoid having cumbersome decimals around. And who cares if they don't convert precisely (mathematically) between both systems, as long as they are consistent ?

What I mean is that an hex could:

. be sticking to "reality" in both systems, as defined by GW today : 680 m flat to flat (as Stephen Cheney said), = 2231 feet flat to flat, taking 8'46" for a human to cross (base speed of 30', 3 miles / hr walking pace). Player chooses in prefs if he wants metric or imperial units.

. or be sort of elastic : round it up or down in each system for better understanding by players, making it for example 700 m flat to flat for Metric users, or 2200 (or 2300 or 2500 or whatever) for Imperial users, but keeping the same travel time of 8'46 in both systems. (Ok, this one isn't a good idea)

. or expressed in some medieval units no one really knows about (leagues, farlongs, goblinmeters, but using decimal conversions) for players, stay in meters internally for devs, and keep the same travel time to cross it.

IMHO, I like the 3rd idea best : doesn't break immersion. Distance in a MMO is really about time taken to travel or range in order to hit something (or not). Doing the math is done by the computer, whereas in a tabletop RPG it's our job to calculate distances.

Moonbird,
(based in France)

I fully support the metric system, mainly because it's much easier to convert between scales (short distance to long distance).

In the case of PFO, I guess it isn't really relevant: either you need short scale measurements for ranged actions, or you need long scale measurements for travel.
In the first case I suppose your pointer or whatever will tell you if you're close enough to shoot, and in the second case it's more about how long it takes to get from one place to another, and the game mechanics will impose your speed of movement regardless of unit.

About hex size, I don't really understand when Lee implies that a map 9x13km is really big, and that hexes 500m accross are huge (viewed from a PC standpoint): I know that travelling through rough terrain can be very slow, but let's say a character runs on the east-west road in light cloth for fun, he should be able to do it 1 hour, and a marathon-grade PC (with no chemical or magical speed enhancement :-)) should do it in 30' or less. That's short, since he'd be crossing an hex border every 2 or 3 minutes.

Is that correct ? Or am I misunderstanding this assumption that thoses 500m hexes are *big* ?

Seeya,
Moonbird

Really glad you moved the blog to a real blog tool with links to posts (with titles !), archives by date and an RSS feed (hurray ! I can add your blog to my Netvibes page !).

I guess the only thing missing would be a search box, unless you rely on Google for that.

And I have a small question: is it possible to restore the previous links and make them point to the blog articles in the new format ?

I linked several times some of your blog posts in my guild forum posts using the url I found for each article: https://goblinworks.com/blog/index.html/#20140219 was the one for https://goblinworks.com/blog/now-i-understand-the-supernova-scene/ . It would be nice to have these links still functionnal and redirected to their original articles. I might not be the only one who did this, and there might be a number of articles on the web that linked back to your blog posts in that way.

Thanks for the good work !
Moonbird

Moonbird wrote:

I don't feel EvE is overrun by gankers and griefers,

You may be one of a handful of people on the world who feel this way.

I can't tell if my feeling is vastly shared or not. I can only tell that I've been playing Eve for about 2 years now, with a corp that's around 5-6 years old, mainly industrials and about 60-80 ppl strong who mostly share my opinion, since no one in my corp complains about gankers. We get wardecced once in a while, fight back, go on PvP roams in low sec now and then, have operations in low sec and in a wormhole, and are having fun. The only thing we don't do, is go regularly in null sec.

I think we just know our limits and avoid zones of maximum danger to us.

But anyway, Nihimon and Andius got it right:

Perhaps the most important fact to glean from Ryan's characterization of EVE is that he wants PFO to attract the kind of players who avoid EVE.

He and his team are the ones designing this game. As they have decided EVE's atmosphere is toxic and that they will put systems in place to prevent it in PFO, it's the opinions of those who think that EVE's atmosphere is perfectly fine that are irrelevant here.

And at the same time, PFO *will* attract many players from Eve, because it will be the only sand-box PvP oriented MMO around in a med-fan setting, and these players will feel like going for a change from sci-fi, or come back to their first kind of MMO or D&D like kind of game etc.

Seeya,
Moonbird

Thanks for your answers, Andius and Being, they clarify a bit my understanding of the rep system.

Reputation is separate from alignment. While most actions that lower reputation will be chaotic and evil it is possible to have a high reputation character who is one or both of those things. It may even be possible to have a lawful good character with a low reputation.

Basically, reputation is lowered through random slaughter, but there are still aggressive actions such as robbery and assassination that make your character more chaotic/evil without lowering reputation.

Low rep is absolutely designed to make your character suck. Random slaughter is something the majority of the community does not want to be prevalent, and the head of this project has gone so far as to say that they would rather not make this game than produce a murder simulator. So people who do it much will find themselves with terrible characters that live in terrible cities.

It seems to me, from the blog post, that the only player initiated action that will lower rep automatically will be attacking another character out of sanctioned PvP (wars, feuds, FW). (I'm leaving out the rep loss as a GM sanction for bad conduct).

A character with a high Reputation is likely someone who only engages in PvP via feuds, wars, or factional combat (if he engages in PvP at all), while a character with low Reputation likely attacks people regardless of those PvP structures or is rude or abusive to other players.

It's a game mechanic, meaning, as you said, that a character from any Alignment can lose rep this way. I still don't understand (or agree actually) with the fact that these low rep characters should be denied high level training facilities based on 2 reasons: the first, that I would qualify as a background kind of reason, is that if low rep PCs are more likely to come from CE alignment, and given that CE (as we imagine it) favors a more individualistic point of view on life, we can then imagine that a high level training facility for a CE settlement would be some kind of "survival of the fittest" training academy specially tailored for fighting, assassination, sabotage and stealth skills.

The second reason is more based on observation of what happens in EvE: the low rep guys in EvE have a security standing below -5, and are denied access to high security space of the Empire. They can still trade in low sec space, acquire skills and goods either directly or through friendly high SS characters. Well I don't feel EvE is overrun by gankers and griefers, in part because after all there's only a small fraction of the players who are willing to go down that way, in part because the areas of lawlessness are well identified (high sec > low sec > null sec).

I think the idea is that chaotic evil settlements will find it challenging to cooperatively build toward an orderly, constructive, cooperative civic organization that efficiently builds much of anything beyond the basics necessary to stay alive. Lawful settlements are by definition lawful and stable which is ideal for mercantile operations. Laws protect private property so there is assurance that your neighbor is less likely to take all your stuffs, which in turn encourages to get more stuffs.

I think you're right in general, but a CE low rep settlement could still offer a limited list of high level training facilities done their way (instead of following a fighting class 101, it would be an arena style "class" where it's the last standing guy who gets the experience or whatever).

So my proposition to the devs would be to lower the limitations on high level training facilities for low rep characters, and allow a limited list of skills to be trained in Chaotic settlements, based on character class or concept description (e.g.: fighting, assassination, sabotage and stealth skills for a CE settlement).

Seeya,
Moonbird

Ok, I honestly tried to read all 330 + 639 posts of this thread and the one following up the last blog post on Alignement and Reputation. I can't say I read *all* of the posts, so maybe I missed the answer to my concern.

It's about the fact that CE settlements, because of low rep rules, won't be able to offer high level training and facilities. I don't understand the rationale behind it (apart from the fact of discouraging people from choosing CE as their alignment). After all, a CE settlement might offer excellent training and facilities for a small subset of skills or equipment, specializing in what a CE character might want to do best (assassination, poisoning, commando type disruptive activities, stealth etc, that's only a list of what in my opinion could be offered).

I would probably choose some NG alignment for my first character, since I have a tendency through the different MMOs I played to go naturally along this line. But I think "evil" and even more "chaotic" characters are essential for fun and interesting content in a PvP sand-box MMO. They provide "content" for good, neutral and lawful/chaotic characters to fight against. Nothing is more thrilling than having to do your business in dangerous areas of the game world. It's something I loved in Shadowbane, and found again in EvE, when having to go through infested low-sec or null-sec areas is really fun because of the pirates hanging around and the danger they represent. In the same line of thought, having your POS and POCOS (a sort of EvE equivalent of settlements) attacked by some unknown enemy is part of the fun, and provides opportunities for your corp (aka Guild) to band together and fight.

In short, I'm in favor of letting CE settlements provide high-end training facilities and equipment crafting because it will provide worthy opponents for the whole PFO community.

Here's some quotes about this subject, that illustrate my comment:

Higher end structures, like tier 2 and 3 training and crafting facilities, require the settlement have its minimum Reputation set to certain levels to function. So if you want your town to have awesome training and crafting facilities, you have to set a high minimum Reputation to enter the settlement. This means characters that do a lot of PvP outside of wars, feuds, and such will be forced to visit less developed settlements that are wretched hives of scum and villainy.

-> the original part of the blog that raised my concern

But, to come back to what I think we know about PFO training systems: It costs some of your DI to maintain training facilities. Chaotic settlements are likely to have lower DI than equivalent Lawful settlements. Nothing will stop a Chaotic settlement from offering the highest level training in stealth, archery or melee combat, it just might mean they have to invest a higher percentage of their DI to do so.

-> this what I would like to see in the game: be sure CE settlements can offer these high-level training facilities

What would be a better way of saying it is, "CE settlements will have different advantages and disadvantages that other alignment based settlements will not have, nor suffer from".

-> this too I fully support.

Seeya hopefully soon in PFO,
Moonbird

Great idea, and great concept to have troops in a game in order to bring all that dice rolling down when characters face lots of similar enemies.

In fact, I had that same reaction a couple of months ago when I bought and game-mastered a beginner session of Star Wars Edge of the Empire game, where "minions" is a very similar concept, specifically introduced in the game to keep it more dynamic (like when PCs face stormtroopers and such).

One thing missing here that Minions rules have, is that their stats go down as they take hits (mainly their damage, but maybe other things like their defense: I don't have my copy of the rules at hand to check). That's to reflect the fact that when Minions take damage, some of their numbers are killed and can't contribute to the overall damage of the group anymore.

In the case of troops with the present rules, as an example, you could have this CR11 troop reduced to 1 hp (a lone crippled soldier left standing) and still doing 4d6+8 dam with a single rifle, or a 6d10+6 fusillade (always singlehandedly) or a 12d6 Volley of Grenades...

Maybe a simple way of reducing the damage when troops get hit, would be by reducing it for each 1/4 of it's hp disappearing, in this case removing 1d6+2 for every 37 or so hp of damage taken. This reduction should apply on the other sources of damage that are based on lots of individuals contributing (like Fusillade and Grenade Volley in this case).

Just my 2 cents,
Moonbird

Construction Sites

The construction site can be attacked and destroyed, so it must be defended by the builders.
(...)
Destroying a Building
Buildings can be destroyed by hostile players, or even by hostile hordes of monstrous humanoids.
(...)
Other buildings can only be damaged by siege engines—huge machines created to hurl boulders or orbs of burning pitch, or similar large-scale weapons. The process of establishing a siege is lengthy and can be attempted only by the largest and best organized groups of players. Siege warfare is therefore the province of player settlements and kingdoms.
(...)
Forts—The penultimate expression of power. Forts provide a significant strategic advantage to their owners. Forts are large and complex buildings and require substantial time and resources to construct. Forts have extensive local storage and allow characters to be logged out of the game safely. Like watchtowers, forts have a detection radius.
(...)
Forts can only be destroyed by siege engines. If a fort is destroyed, any objects in its local storage are destroyed as well.

Hail the return of the spirit of Shadowbane !!! I really enjoy reading this about PFO, and I really hope it will come true and happen as you describe it.

I enjoyed playing Shadowbane years ago just for the siege experience and the intense battles that took place to take a Tree of Life, and control territory and resources. And the ideas you expose here seems it's going to be so much better !

I remember the thrill of preparing for battle, either as an attacker or a defender, and all the involvement that went into building a fortress that could hold a siege... or not... The excitement when the battle was raging, and the day was won, or not.

/bow Ryan
Moonbird

Everyone at Paizo is very interested in Mac clients. The engine we're most interested in is currently working on Mac support, and if we end up with that engine, we'll do our best to take advantage of that as soon as the option is ready—which may or may not be prior to launch.

Great news ! That sounds good :-)

@Ryan
Thanks a lot for all these explanations, and from what you write about Pathfinder Online, I would really like so see it come out and be as interesting as what you describe :-)

Your blog posts and the discussion of Sandbox vs Theme Park also enabled me to understand why I was never as happy with current MMOs I played (WoW mainly, Guildwars, Warhammer, Age of Conan, soon SWTOR), after the first one I started with (Shadowbane), because they all are Theme parks (or maybe because it's like your first date, you never forget her)...

I now realize that what I really loved with Shadowbane was it's Sandbox aspect, where a guild had to build a city, and a then a realm, and defend it against other players. This led to epic battles (sieges) between players, that where truly memorable because of the time and effort spent into building what you were defending, thus a certain "value" attached to it. (See this post if you want to have an idea of what the game was like: http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/08/02/the-game-archaeologist-uncovers-sha dowbane-the-highlights/ )

I never played EVE, so maybe this aspect is also present in it, and explains its attractivness to long term players.

So if Sandbox in Pathfinder Online means player cities and sieges, I would say: YEAH !!!! HOURRAHHH !!! :-)

@Vic
Another expectation I have, is using a Mac client ! Please please please, include this in your initial requirements :-) Shadowbane and WoW (had) have native Mac clients, and nothing beats that: playing Windows only games under bootcamp is a pain, mainly because it means rebooting your computer each time you want to play... And in the end, it's a factor when you feel like switching to something else.

I really hope you can make this game come out !
Cheers,
Moonbird

Yes. It only happens with Apple's Preview app under OS X 10.6 and higher. The bug has been reported to them by several people—since before 10.6 was even released to the public—but they haven't fixed it yet.

Thanks a lot for your answer and your clear explanations. I hope Apple corrects this soon...

Moonbird

I see you're using GoodReader as your PDF viewer, and it drops the Capital A's from one of our header fonts. I heard rumblings that the iPad now had a built-in Apple-provided PDF viewer... is that not the case?

Hi Vic !

I also noticed the problem on my Mac when I open your pdfs with either Apple's built-in viewer or Safari, but it doesn't happen when I use the genuine Acrobat Reader (v 9.3.2). So I guess it's related with Apple's internal rendering of pdfs, and some sort of unusal feature of the font.

I noticed it does it only on the capital A of paragraph titles, not the main titles: for example, in the file PathfinderRPGCharacterTraits.pdf, p2, the main title "PATHFINDER CHARACTER TRAITS" will be ok, whereas the paragraph title at the top left of the page will be garbled and will read: "CH R CTER TR ITS". Another funny thing: if you copy and paste both titles in plain text such as this post, here's what you get for the first title: "Pathfinder CharaCter traits", and this is the second one: "CharaCTer TraiTs". Notice the capital letters in the middle: why ? And maybe a workaround would be to write those titles directly with capitalized letters instead of using a capitalisation style to have them display in capitals ?

I use Mac OS 10.6.3, but can't tell you if it worked on previous versions or not (I'm new to Pathfinder :-) ). I can try it on an older version of Mac OS I have at home (10.4.x) and/or send you some screenshots if you wish.

Thanks for the good work,
Moonbird