Onishi's page

The true opportunity cost of a foundry would be the content and structure that could have been created with the same time and money. While is might not be impossible to add people and get the existing goals completed on time, the same resources could be used to either improve the existing content or add new features and systems, both of which are closer to the goal of releasing the minimum viable product and then iterating on it .

Indeed, having a minimum viable product is IMO a pre-req for even starting development on a foundry... Meaning the resources needed for such at launch... is the same as the resources to launch 6 months ahead of goal... of which if possible, would probably be done (launching 6 months early)

I would say a foundry at launch, will be beyond impossible. Designing the world etc... as ryan has mentioned, has at least a few components that just take time, and no amount of money, or even staff can make go faster.

The concept of a foundry, until the world is in, balancing can't start, without balancing of abilities etc... instances can't really be developed.

One thing also worth pointing out, a foundry in the context of PFO... will be far less popular than it is in a game like NWO.

Why? quite simple, the reward factor. In neverwinter, the foundry quests etc... had comperable in game rewards to the remainder of the game. XP loot etc...

PFO... it can't, shouldn't and won't have anything comparable to the other activities that are already implimented. (considering every other activity involves, finding a site, passing through wildernesses, of which the value of the rewards will usually be scaled within the risk of PVP and enemies just to get there), as well every other aspect of the game is designed to dry up, vanish, move etc...

The key is, the category of things that "modules" are mentioned to be in, in order to not margionalize and destroy the rest of the game, will have to fall into 2 possibilities.

1. Items that are exclusive to modules, possibly used as a piece for certain items/equipment to be crafted with, but it cannot replace the materials needed from the actual sandbox side of the game.

2. Negligible/no reward. or entirely social structure based reward. (IE settlements/CC's may use these as enrollment tests)

I would expect looting to be an interruptible action taking 3-6 seconds to complete that leaves you defenseless . Looting a corpse on the battlefield while the battle is active seems hazardous to your health.

Enemies who have threaded themselves to a closer point and reach their corpse, or their allies resurect their corpse, allowing them back in the action with a grudge against you, are also hazardous to your health.

My personal viewpoint is, with limited slots etc... I have nothing against mixtures/blends of classes etc... Now what I would have a problem with (something GW has more or less confirmed will not be the case), is the idea of say, a level 10/10 wiz/fighter on the field being equally effective at wizardry as the straight 10 wizard, and as good at fighting as the straight 10 fighter, After 5ish years into the game when people having both of those become more common, it creates a rather devistating point in which the power level of the 20/20's can completely dwarf and prevent any newer characters from having any shot at being competitive until 5+ years down the road (at which point they will still remain inferior to the now 20/20/20/20's that still crush them.

So basically this is more harping on NWN's huge exploit that they allowed to happen, were slow to respond to, and handled poorly all around?

NWN's exploit is unique, and the general concept of that form of theme park... allows these problems to escalate to the level it did. Instances being infinitely repeatable, quick to access and contain huge loot... Well while not inherently a cause of exploits, it allows any such exploit to be magnified, 500x in a matter of hours, but even with such flaws... the talk of it as if it is inevitable is rather silly as well. At least from my understanding, DDO never had an exploit of that level within it's 8 year history. Though it has certianly had it's share of exploits. I believe there were rumors of instances being botted etc... with no way for the players to confirm since... well they are instances.

PFO while not immune to the potential of such a flaw, it would almost certainly take 10x longer for the flaw to reach fruition, and will likely be caught far sooner. (PVP nature causes people to pay much more attention to things, and it is much more likely that someone out there, will quickly oppose the exploit)

the talk of "when the inevitable market collapsing bug hits", as if it is inevitable, has happened in every MMO ever made etc... That's just silly, Is it rare, no not particularly, is it every MMO ever, even less likely. In my experience things like that happen in roughly half of games.

The length of time required should respond to how different the archetypes are: it should take less time for a wizard to convert to a monk than to a heavily armored fighter, as an example.

As a whole, I would disagree with this assumption. This is essentially assuming wizards and monks having the lack of gear dependency that they do in P&P, as well as the thoughts of more slots etc... In a large extent this is also assuming noteworthy stacking etc... To get a monks AC bonus, a wizard should have to give up defensive skill slots, just as a fighter should have to give up fighter skill slots etc... If we are not factoring in gear differentials etc... (as a monk, and wizard DO need comparable gear dependencies to fighter, otherwise wizards and monks, will be very valuable suicide gankers, as they need to thread far less).

In addition, based on the attribute system prescribed by GW... actually would favor the fighter mixing vs the wizard, assuming similar attribute dependencies. Training skills will boost your attributes. Monk abilities will likely have prereqs for similar attributes to their attributes in P&P, Meaning most likely str, wis, and dex. Fighter abilities, most likely will have leanings towards, str, dex and con. Wizard abilities, will most likely lean towards int, and possibly dex.

We do know that having unlocked higher attributes, one may be able to reach the higher tier skills faster, via not needing to train the less necessary ones, as a result, I personally think that a fighter, will quite likely be able to more easily mix and match portions with monk archtype skills, vs wizard.

The gear dependency side, I can't say for any certainty which one will have more items that do not mix well. Though I personally disagree off the bat that wizards or monks will have less gear requirements than fighter. Both should have to make some sacrifices.

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It is my hope that GW takes a good look at the chaos that has hit another MMO (AD&D based) and decides to forego having regional or server-wide auction houses.

Auction House MUST be local! You MUST actually travel to the settlement to see what is in that Auction House.

Half agree... To purchase yes, to obtain, in any way shape or form absolutely.

To see? I don't really see how that will effect anything. Multi's, bots, duplicate accounts, pick your poison. Some way shape or form, the big players will find a way see the prices, and have it aggregated to a settlement wide or public document. Updated daily at the slowest, but probably hourly, it's just unavoidable there. In my opinion nothing is ever balanced by people not knowing stuff. Information at this day in age is at the point where if one person can know it, everyone will very shortly.

Another fix for exploits that may hit a player-economy is that NPC vendor prices should also be increased, and listed next to any item placed in the Auction House, so that players can see what an NPC would pay for that item. This will cut down on rampant price gouging.

Not sure on that... I'm not even sure what exploit you are trying to solve. Are you meaning if say Joe has the only X, and bob tells joe it's worth 500gp, while knowing it's worth 20k, is an exploit, rather than Joe not doing his research?

I'd say the solution you are proposing is worse than the problem. In my opinion NPCs buying stuff, should be the extremely rare exception of what to do with items, which should be going into the crafting economy, being salvaged to make into something to craft etc... Having NPCing be a reasonable alternative, can lead to massive inflation, as that's a pretty big faucet, that cannot be contained.

Finally, player crafted items MUST be the end-all and be-all of high quality gear. No item drop in game should ever be greater than 70% of the quality level that player crafted gear can be.

Fully agreed there. GW has designed a very good long chain for equipment to enter into the economy.

adventurer gathers big rare components from dangerous boss monsters/escalations, harvesters gather large quantities of less rare, both are sent to refiners, who send them to crafters, who make them into stuff, and sell them to adventurers (or possibly middlemen who sell them to adventurers).

When you cut it down to "adventurer gets item", skipping all the markups etc... from every step inbetween... well you wind up with WoW's crafting system, in which 5% or less of crafters, actually make more than they spend.

I've been playing the Neverwinter open beta lately just to pass the time, and that got me thinking about how GW plans to handle rollbacks.

Neverwinter is in open beta, with the cash shop open, and no wipes. So I'm not really sure what "beta" means in this case--the game is pretty much out, just in a state of regular hotfixes. There was recently a huge farming exploit--basically one of the Guardian class' abilities did millions of points of damage, and could 1-3 shot boss mobs. So of course a bunch of people just farmed the heck out of the the most difficult dungeons, creating a huge economic skew.

But you can't rollback, because people are paying for stuff with real money. I've mostly played subscription games before, so I'm not sure how this is best handled.

What happens if we're in EE, people are paying for micro-transactions, and something big goes wrong in the economy?

Games making a mistakes that require rollbacks, is usually hugely sloppy events. They do greatly infuriate the community, especially when someone having nothing to do with the giant exploit etc... happens to stumble upon a super rare item.

Games without cash shops are still hesitant to even consider a rollback because of the harm such a concept does to everything else.

I suppose the biggest thing is, to actually test and prevent giant economic collapses and the like from happening to begin with. PFO's overall model already leaves quite a bit of coverage for issues like the example you provided. Namely because the game as provided so far, requires significant time spent finding and getting to said dungeons, they poof when completed so you can't just spam them over and over again in the 48 hours it takes for a huge glitch like the one you described to be reasonably patched.

I know cryptic is doing most of the coding etc... but every perfect world game I have ever played emphasizes some huge amount of terrible planning, and horrid bandaid fixes.

Take pulling in the original perfect world. Pulling in instances was done via having a venomancer (pet class), send his pet foward into the middle of enemies, the pet hits 1 enemy once and then is dismissed, at that point only the enemy that was hit will move foward and leave his protection and come after the party. This is in my opinion an obvious exploit, one that must have been caught in the alpha stages, and rather than fixing it, they decided it should be the de-facto mechanic, and beefed up dungeon mobs to make it so that was the only way to get through a dungeon alive unless you were 20-30 levels above the instance. (again that is my speculation)

Anyway ignoring my side tracked nature, the propor approach, is to actually plan, and alpha test things well enough before they get into the game, and IMO if a bug of huge extents hits, do an emergency shutdown and patch (if nothing else, have the emergency patch just temporarally block out the broken ability/item etc.. while it is being re-coded). Personally I'd rather get locked out of the game for a few hours, than have a days work taken from me, cash shop or not.

That being said I also don't see how cash shop really changes the rules of rollbacks. A rollback should return the person's money, and items he used between the time that the rollback was issued. Turn the items back to skymetal bits or whatever.

Are you saying that this is a good thing? EVE's ammunition market is almost nonexistant, how is that supposed to replace anything at all? The devs have already stated that they intend for armors and weapons to be a small niche market since most of it will never get dropped so people don't have to replace it. Instead they want to focus on consumables. Consumables were however not a big thing in EVE, they were ultracheap compared to all other expenses so you could more or less ignore it. And it isn't a gold sink for the worlds economy, no, but it is a gold sink for the pvp'ers. In EVE every time someone loses a ship they will have to pay the crafters, in PO everytime someone fights at all they will have to pay the crafters. If consumables aren't that important or expensive, then consumables won't replace the economy they removed by allowing people to thread most of their gear, which is bad. If consumables are that important and expensive it is bad for other reasons. Do you get my point now?

Where I believe you are off in, we are going entirely on an assumption, as to what percentage of power is balanced into what slots.

Realistically we can assume say 10 slots or so. Now there is a school of thought that assumes the weapon = 90% of offense ability, armor = 90% of defense ability, but that is an assumption.

There is a second possibility.

Weapons and armor are more designed as controls of what skills you can use. IE Joe the 2h fighter needs his greatsword of cleaving, dodging sundering to make use of the skills he trained. Replacing it is a pain in the neck, because that sword was custom made for the skills he has trained, and thus unless his build is very cookie cutter, it will be hard to find the exact combination of abilities he used. Because he needs to avoid the annoyance of trying to find the sword of those obscure qualifications, he'd rather protect that than his Boots of speed increase, bracers of increase damage, ring of deflection etc...

IE the weapon and armor = necessary to even think about using your skills, other slots = more mass producible, generic but the main controllers of your overall power.

and yeah that is before we even begin to cover the topic of consumables, as a 3rd portion of your power.

There is a precedent, recorded on YouTube, for a ceremony being interrupted by a hostile guild. If I recall correctly, I believe it was actually an in-game funeral for a character after the player had died out-of-game. Clearly griefing behavior, to me, but a security detail would have been handy in that case. I'll see whether I can dig up the video.

Edit: It actually happened several times in WOW, not just once.

WoW is a pretty drastically different game in several mechanics.

1. The us vs them mentality is permanent, heck the game itself intentionally prevents any form of in game communication between the 2 sides, is there any real surprise that players are likely to forget that the players on the other side are actual humans? Compare that to eve, and the blueprints for PFO, of which no matter what, cease fires, treaties etc... You don't just keep wasting resources fighting an enemy that remains an enemy, never goes down in strength etc... The losing side either strikes a deal to work with the side that took over, or moves somewhere far away.

2. The PVP is meaningless and consequences. OK so you tick off the community. First off you are unkillable by people on your "side" regardless of if your actions in doing something like that are so sickening 80% of your side hates you. So now you are KoS to the bulk of your enemy side... Well again the us vs them, you've been KoS to all of them anyway, it's nothing new, and you lose nothing when you die anyway. Compare that to PFO and eve, where if you upset the majority... you lose access to settlements/territories, your selection of ships or armor options are now limited, as well you are going through ships like crazy, because ANYONE who knows and hates what you've done, can and will kill you.

3. NPC guards, not just minor annoyances. Not sure about now, but back when I played WoW in vanilla days, a team of 20 bored alliance members or so, traveling to the heart of orgrimmar, wasn't uncommon. The defenses were intended to be minor slowdowns, the cost of waging war against a city, and basically walking into the center, was designed to be a joke. PFO is talking defenses that take hundreds to tear down in player cities... and marshals that are by definition unbeatable and able to freeze you in NPC areas.

Sure you hear of this kind of garbage in WoW, but look into the sandbox PVP world. Eve is largely viewed as a dark, angry community, full of gankers, defending the rights of scammers etc... Look at what happened when vilerat died, Vilerat was a member of goonswarm, a group known for the worse level of ruthlessness etc... with no shortage of enemies. When vilerat died, quite a few details of ceremonies, memorials etc... being put up in his honor. I didn't hear a single report of any noteworthy sabatoge etc... of these memorials. No group with the power to consider such and the heartlessness to want to do such, could also be stupid enough not to know the ramifications of such an act.

Of course the great question is within the context of an appraise skill, "where" is the value calculated based off of? I'd imagine there will be no shortage of merchants lets say refined adamantium from a city where it is 100/lb, to a city where it is 140/lb. Due to differences in proximity to adamantium mines.

Bandit attacks merchant roughly in the middle of such. Does the appraise skill go off global? The average of cities near the hideout, the point of origin, the destination?

Slightly off-topic, but I'd love to see a plague escalation event. WoW had one by accident (corrupted blood incident) and it was hugely popular from what I read (I just barely missed out on it back in the day).

Back on topic, I have to say I love the idea of this thread! I imagine some form of seasonal variation would probably be the first thing implemented before proper weather could be included.

A Control Weather spell would become really interesting if that occurred ...

I wouldn't say the plauge event in WoW was hugely popular, It was really cool from an outsiders perspective, and cool in concept in the "oh wow, so this sort of thing really can happen in an MMO". but it also rendered the game virtually unplayable until it was cleaned up. (litterally anyone under level 50... died instantly if they got anywhere near any infected players or NPCs). Of course with balancing and planning, a fun version of such that is actually beneficial to the game, would absolutely be awesome.

Real women, in the real world, have closets full of impractical items. I don't think its unreasonable to assume women in a fantasy world would be any different.

Besides, these fantasy characters are wearing armor 24/7. I'd say a chain mail bikini is more realistic than wearing full plate all day.

Well the impractical items yes, but what is impractical but tolerable for a date, is drastically different than the impractical tolerable for a physical labor job. IE you will see high heels all the time in a business environment, at bars etc... Not so commonly in women in dangerous positions that involve physical labor, doubly so when lives are on the line. While a female firefighter or construction worker is a rare sight on it's own... I've never seen or heard of one in high heels or a mini-skirt while on the job.

But ignoring the entire realism argument for a moment here, it's a fantasy world, the important key is to determine what is the right amount of suspended belief, physics for the context of the world etc...

@Onishi, regarding trapping luggage/wagons, etc:

How about a trap that destroys most of the contents of the container? That would potentially be a punishment to the bandits to watch half their haul go up in flames.

True, I would fully think an idea like that sounds pretty viable, and beneficial to the game as a whole. As well it adds extra incentive for bandits to want to give trustworthy merchants the opportunities for merchants to give them a toll rather than blindside kill and steal.

Maybe it's just me, but I like when games are a bit mysterious and everything isn't delivered on a platter for you. I prefer an RPG like Nethack over an RPG like Diablo 3, and an FPS like Quake over an FPS like Borderlands 2. Games that don't show you exact, scientific data over every possible equipment choice makes it much more fun to try different things.

Eve Online is called Spreadsheets in Space by many, because that's mostly how you play it. You look at spreadsheets, determine dps and there's very little mystique to playing it. There's an optimal way to play and very many bad ways of playing. If you come to a fleet with a ship that has a unique fitting, people will mostly ridicule you because it's not the mathematically most efficient way of doing what you are doing.

I think this is unavoidable if you add all the stats easily accessible to the player. It's like allowing your players to read the Bestiary and Gamemaster Guide in pen and paper. If someone decides to use sub-optimal weaponry and such, everyone will immediately trash him and there will be no point in making characters that are not optimized. This issue is only exacerbated in a hardcore PvP ruleset MMO like this will be.

I believe the key problem in most MMO's etc... is DPS being the key. Fire rate etc... If damage is all that is going on, then yes, no matter how you slice it, 76 DPS, is more powerful than 74 DPS.

When you add other factors, knockbacks, Debuffs, control options, situational damage (IE X type hurts more against X armor type), elemental stregnths/weaknesses, changes to movement speed, resistances/bonuses to different categories of magic, you can very much maximize the quantity of decisions that are good.

What is worth pointing out, is what is told/not told, is irrelevant in the context of an MMO. You mention the preference of Nethack, because it doesn't tell you everything. Guess what though, if you look up net-hack guides, every object, every item etc.... is fully detailed and accounted for. Now admitted nethack certainly has the advantage of "well you can't chose what items you get". Quite true, but well without permadeath, there's no way that can be accomplished.

The question on caravan traps... is what can they do?

First off right off the bat I have to say, trapping what you give for the SAD is a bad idea. Not for the game, but for the merchant. Just as it is a bad idea for a mercenary group to take an offer to betray the group that hired them, just as it is a bad idea for a bandit to attack and kill those who accepted their SAD. Agreeing to X term, and then using it to backstab works well... the first time, afterwords you should expect not to get X term offered again, and can expect things to come back to bite you in dozens of different ways (bandits working alone, will now accept the rep hit to kill you, If bandits are working for a kingdom, your hometown may move up a few notches on their future targets, etc...). Most forms of treachery in these forms... in the real world, kind of rely on the expectation, that the victim will not get a chance to talk and spread the word of what happened, This is obviously much less likely in an MMO, vs real life, or even the table top game.

Now to say settings where no agreement is made... it does make sense for your luggage etc... to be booby trapped to kill the bandits that blindside attacked you and attempted to raid your caravan. But there we run into some key issues... when you are dead... what punishment can hinder the bandits? Instant death... yeah I suppose that can work, put their corpse run and yours side by side, but unless your trap kills their whole group, they still have a pretty strong advantage there. Best idea I can think of, is a mark. Magic can make the equivelant of a dye+tracking device. Letting bounty hunters etc.... have a chance to get a go at the bandits.

As far as traps on the field of battle... I see quite a bit of potential, Damage, debuffs, snares, Harm to wagons+livestock. There is no shortage of potential in those categories.

LOL We were discussing what the possibilities of thieves entering settlements and stealing top tier items from storage. Could they do it? Could they escape the guards?

Nothing to do with, caravans, SADs, hideouts, etc....

Well I personally consider the idea of theft such as taking items out of storage etc... via anything other than social engineering or taking the city, as highly problematic in and of itself. Such a practice would be a kiss of death to the entire concept of settlements being open to outsiders at all. (say 500 strangers in your city a day, at least 10 of them will likely be theives, no profitable outside market will compensate for the total loss of security caused by 3 lost items a day to your settlement [I'm assuming 70% failure rate for perfect skills due random numbers to make it even half way non-crippling to the game]).

and in the event that such did exist, and somehow all the huge inevitable flaws of undetected theft aren't going to cripple the game, the rule of "you should not be able to have any shot without putting something on the table yourself", IF that sort of theft is implimented, it would absolutely HAVE to have a much HIGHER gear cost requirement. Otherwise you will be looking at hundreds of pure thief alts, that do nothing but steal, even with 99% fail chance as still fully worth the cost, at the chance of a 10 million coin item, in exchange for 99 no loss deaths.

A smart thief will use the threading system to his or her advantage. They do not have to get clean away with the stolen item. They only need to possess it long enough to equip it and thread it. Then even in death, they will still have the item. The test of what they carried would either be looted or destroyed.

Even under the assumption that a thief can thread his loot on the field, there still lies one problem with that assumption. In order to win that match (or be intimidating enough for his opponent to not laugh in his face on the SAD) The thief also is wearing comparable gear to his victim. meaning assuming he even can... the thief still has to un-thread something of comparable value. Now that may accomplish the goal of ruining the victims day as if someone kills the thief, he only has a chance of recovering something of comperable value, which still will result in a large net loss due to the time wasted in attempting to exchange that Dagger of cruel backstabbery for a replacement for his barbarian club of thud.

of course that is a factor without the threading system, as at least from my understanding most unthreaded stuff is destroyed anyway, odds of the item you care about happening to survive 2 deaths in a row, aren't that high no matter how you slice the cake.

I am with you on the death penalty being lenient although for different reasons. As I plan to craft trade a considerable amount I fear that is most people never lose their armour or weapons it will restrict the crafting as a viable living to a small handful of consumables.

Though I would be the first to acknowledge I am probably in a minority on the "You should lose everything on death unless you can return to loot" camp

You aren't entirely alone in that camp, I also wish for a more severe death penalty, or natural degredation of even the protected gear. Though I also think many are underestimating what is lost. unless you are wearing absolute garbage gear, it sounds like you still lose 80% of it as there aren't intended to be enough threads to get much more than that.

Of course we will need to see more to know on that.

Even at that though, lets say they went full blown every bit as harsh as eve. I do believe I'd still take a ship destruction in eve, over a 1 hour incarceration period.

Come to think of it, anyone else find it odd that Trespassing is punishable by death? Seems to be kind of excessive.

well in the context of an MMO with light death penalties, death is about as minor as a punishment as possible, short of a minor fine, Incarceration for even 15-30 minutes takes players out of having fun far longer than a simple decapitation.

Minor fine is a light penalty, but it also fails the criteria of ensuring the tresspaser is not going to complete whatever he entered to do on his way out.

Well I play many games where the player base is 60 to 70% north american and it is a struggle often to get groups going let alone a decent market for us euro's and I understand the oceanics have it even worse hence my concern.

Well one thing worth noting in PFO vs most other MMORPGs. They don't intend to divide their population into multiple servers, that alone should be a rather significant cut into the normal plague of population reduction that happens in traditional MMORPGs.

There will likely be convenience items in the cash shop that have analogs that can be crafted by players like potions of healing. They won't be materially better than what you can craft yourself, and the point of making them available for sale is just to reduce player frustration not force people to buy stuff.

It is worth asking, how will things like healing potions be in the logistics train of war? IE when we are talking a long drawn out war, side A, needing a chain to move their crafted potions to their troops, of which side B can vandalize, meanwhile side B has rich players poofing them into existance on the front lines. Depending of course on all kinds of things like, how hard are potions to get out, how much is the cooldown etc... we are talking anything from a minor negligible effect that may have little to no impact, to pure and direct pay2win of which 2 buyers can hold their side indefinitely and the battle wages on until someone maxes out their card.

A common belief is that the reason people play MMOs is to be social. That is simply not true.
A lot of players want a game that they can play solo with never ending content. I love the pathfinder system, but really I have little interest in playing with others and when I am forced to, I will not be social, in my mind they will simply be NPCs. This is how I have treated all the other MMOs I have played, and with the unfortunate exception of DDO it worked out fine. The problem with DDO is that after level 11 the missions become to difficult to solo on your own.
My hope is that Pathfinder Online, allows characters to solo the entire game.
There are a ton of characters in fiction who go it alone, using others as needed. That is a character I want to play. When I want to be social, I go out with friends. When I want to build a powerful character and his merchant empire, I hope to be able to do it alone in pathfinder.
And I know for certain, a LOT of other people feel the same as I do.

Well I believe the overall intent of the game as planned, it does not sound like you will like this game. As well, in my opinion the solo MMO market is pretty saturated, there's no shortage of games in which solo activity is the bulk of it. World of Warcraft, perfect world, ether saga, at least the start of runes of magic, etc... All of them virtually have no need or reason to team up before you reach the level cap. Actually yeah looking back at it, you also mentioned this is the majority of games you've played as well.

Pathfinder online, is not intended to immitate the bulk of the games out there. They have been pretty clear that the solo game, is not their target audience of the game. The core focus of the game, is on meaningful player interaction of all kinds. Most of the people gathering around waiting on PFO, are not looking for yet another solo game that occasionally allows you to team up, but a game where our actions actually matter to the world as a whole. Where what we do effects others, and we are regularly effected by others actions, both for good and for bad.

It is way too late in GW's plan for a 180 to be something reasonable to expect. Admitted Paizo could in theory license out the pathfinder ruleset to another MMO or single player RPG. I don't find that possibility very likely either, but slightly more probable than goblinworks scrapping a year of planning and moving their game into the highly saturated market of MMO's that have been keeping the same theme park mold.

Harad Navar wrote:

Wait until the monk buys lunch.

Speaking of buying.....even a little...

If a Monk were to follow a vow of non materialism, how open to a barter system might the PFO community be?

I'm sure that a Monastery would function is such a way, but how would a traveling Monk get by in the River Kingdoms?

I'd imagine the idea of a barter system as problematic to say the least in the game mechanics. Coin is the one thing you can carry around without worrying about losing it. Services I suppose would be the next closest thing one could offer that couldn't be stolen so easily. Don't get me wrong, if you pick the right item, it would likely be worth MORE than cash, by eliminating the risk of transport/gathering the item itself to the customer.

Bringslite wrote:

AvenaOats wrote:

I think GW could allow permissions for some players who would RP these faithfully and earnt that trust to enhance the game for others.

Maybe some of those eventually across the board. But the exceptional for exceptional players with exceptional rules?

That is a slippery slope that you are proposing....

It is, but so to is proposing the devs have a manifest role to play in the game too with their own "agents". We're blurring the boundary of developers and players during crowdforging, why not blur it during the live game as natural extension. One precedent is the "monster cast". This is one way to really integrate pve further, maybe.

In my opinion there is no "bluring" between developers and players right now. Yes players get some say in the order, and to some extent what should get implimented from the lists of valid options.

Here's one fact of MMO's, fans will always suspect some extent of bias, whether they are suspecting the dev's having favor to a specific class, role, settlement etc... but here's the thing, when you add that power and potential to a group who does not have a vested interest in keeping the majority of players happy. suspicions get larger. I would say about 80% of situations with players with psudo GM powers, or even minor power have gone horribly wrong. I've seen incidents of event manager's girlfriends, happening to "win" 15 random chance events in a row.

Messages that were supposed to be delivered from "community assistants" to GMs happening to get lost for people who they don't like etc...

Yes corruption to some extent happens, but when the people with the opportunity to abuse power aren't gambling their jobs to do it... it's flat out commonplace.

Fact is I don't want accidentally offending some "authorized" villain on a forum, to lead to repeated incidents of goblin tribes at the gates of my settlement.

Well I don't feel like digging it up right now, but we've had this discussion before, main things worth noting.

1. Games launch is going to be mininimum viable races. We may not even have core at the point of EE.

2. We are going to need to keep everything on relative power. Level adjustments were bad enough in PnP, they didn't work which is why paizo got rid of them in pathfinder, and instead created the advance race guide, of which you basically can add to existing races, or have the rest of the players pick an equally powerful race as compensation. Obviously that solution won't work particularly well in an MMORPG.

3. The act of making a "rare" race, will accomplish the exact opposite. Everyone wants to be the uncommon exception to the rule but in the end, you just wind up with exceptions that outnumber the rule.

Bluddwolf wrote:

I was under the impression that watch tower came first, then fort. Fort is probably the minimum structure needed to get a settlement charter.

I may find that a fort is a bit too permanent / resource intensive to have "settlement" status. But, I guess we will have to deal with that expense.

I have a feeling everyone is going to want to be a part of a settlement eventually. From what the blogs and post have hinted at, joining a settlement is going to be de rigueur very quickly.

Seconded, I don't think they have desire for people without settlements to be doing much to settlements, and that I also fully agree with.

In a poker game, it isn't a good idea to allow a wager to be 100% regardless of how much money each player has, even with crap odds. Someone coming into the match with only a penny to lose, SHOULD be essentially guaranteed to fail against someone who loses thousands on a loss.

In my book, yes if you are going to fight, you are going to need to have something at stake that is of comparable loss to you as your opponent. Just like a suicide ganker wearing the bare minimum he can tread shouldn't do notable damage to a character wearing 3x what he can thread, a cheap thrown together overnight settlement, shouldn't have a chance of tearing down 6 months of work.

I really don't see why there's much objection to the thought of needing to be part of a settlement, GW has pretty much ensured there should be plenty of them, odds are there won't be particularly strong limits of how many each can hold etc... Odds are getting into one should be relatively easy.

Anything you can expect players to be able to do, like determining that a particular mob needs to be picked off right away, is something you can expect to be botted. Literally, anything. All of the examples you gave will have to convey to the player what needs to be done. Once that information is conveyed, bots can react to it.

Perhaps it's possible to randomize encounters in a way that players have to discover what needs to be done in real time, and then adapt to that. But I don't really see how.

I've been thinking about it a lot lately because I see bots being used so much in Vanguard, and because I don't like them.

The point I keep coming back to is to remove "the grind" as a game mechanic. Limit progress by real time.

Computers of course can do anything a human can with enough time, and in theory they can pick up any que that a human can, but theory is far from reality. Just like in theory computers can read capchas, and to some extent they can sort of, but even the best capcha crackers can't do it constantly. The key thing is, most MMO's, 1 tactic works, 99.9% of cases, and regular mobs never change up, bosses rarely change it up.

AvenaOats wrote:

... it seems gm-reporting of that is the only solution. :)

And it's a very limited solution that ties up a lot of human resources without making a real difference.

Like any black market, the best answer is to subvert it by allowing the players to do what they want without having to resort to a black market, or to remove the obstacles in the game that can be overcome by bots.

I'm going to strongly disagree with ya here Nihmon, I've seen basic botting be made into a game feature. See ether saga, it's a free MMO, and it's play for free is overpriced. Making botting available immidiately makes it commonplace, as a result, the quests, the market etc... also have to adapt to compensate for this, and thus virtually everything in the game assumes that after a certain level expect you to follow the tedious actions for 6+ hours at a time.

IMO instance botting is the exception, and the solution to it benefits the game anyway. Make the game more complex, don't allow any character to be able to get by repeating the same order of skills ad-infinium, bots are very good for repetative predictable tasks. If the enemies actually are unpredictable, and an array of tactics is necessary to beat them, botting itself becomes a huge challenge.

The reason tank bots can exist, is in most MMO's a single taunt skill, or the same combination of attacks works 99.999% of the time. But what if that wasn't the case, what if

10% of enemy combinations require one type of enemy to be picked off either immidiately after the start, or even before the fight begins (requiring a stealthy character or a good wizard to start the fight)

20% of encounters need the tank to rush in and engage immidiately, as otherwise they will begin buffing eachother, making the encounter drastically harder.

20% need to be lead off with AoEs of some sort, before the tank gets in.

10% have some massive defence piercing debuff requiring a different type of tank compared to what is effective against the other 90%.

etc...

The gist of my opinion is, things are botted because they are boring and repetative. Think of it like the real world, there's quite a few jobs that involve just entering data from one program to the next, and quite a few of them, are being made obsolete via scripts, There's other jobs that require things that actually challenge the human brain, of which computers will not be adaptive enough to handle for decades. I want to play a game that requires me to actually think and plan, not mind-numbing repetition. Take out the tedium, and you simultaneously make writing bots harder, and lower the desire to use them.

KJosephDavis wrote:

Nihimon wrote:

Also, there will be players who use bots to make their own little armies, and they'll gladly pay Goblinworks for the privilege. I've seen it in Vanguard in a way that makes me completely despair that there will ever be any way to stop it.

Pretty hard to stop people with excess cash and free time.

Heck, if someone wanted, they could literally pay other people to play with them. Someone probably already does this.

I seem to recall Ryan or one of the Devs posting that they want the game interface, designed using Unity, to block the commands bots usually use, but I can't recall where or when it was posted. Ryan appears to share the view that bots are bad, and GW can take steps to minimize them if not outright block their use. If GW can do this, I will be very happy. Nihimon, do you have that post or blog bookmarked?

Emphasis on "usually use". It's an arms race, always has been always will be. Just like windows updates and new versions fix the vulnerabilities that a virus will usually use. The system avoids compromise for a brief period of time, someone figures out the new weakness, the exploiters adapt and a new "usually use" forms.

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You're assuming most players aren't power gamers, or that goonswarm like guilds wouldn't mandate being necromancers, simply because it's that much stronger.

Maybe with the RPers and the TTers, yeah, but once the hardcore MMO players arrive they'd start stomping rather quickly if something's that much stronger without a very significant drawback.

Indeed, the fact is within the bounds of open PVP, there will almost certainly be goonswarm like groups, which can be expected to make up roughly 20% of the world and if there is a viable "superpower" class/skill combination that can run down everything and everyone... well you can pretty much expect them to do it.

Of which the first consiquence, is going to be those who like both RP, and winning on occasion, lets say these guys make up 60% of the world, these guys will inevitably be forced to adapt to not face continually getting their face rubbed in the dirt by group 1.

Finally is group C. The guys who will play what they want to play with no consideration of power. Group 1 will steamroll these guys (admitted, they most likely would regardless, group 1 will inevitably be optimized to the maximum potential, but the bigger thing is, group 2 also is steamrolling them. As a result, part of group 3 will adapt and take the OP route, a good portion will quit, and a tiny portion will remain true to themselves. Most likely as hunting targets for group 1, as they form their puny little resistance.

Now all that being said, this isn't the nail in the coffin for creating powerful necromancers with undead swarms. The solution is rather simple.... The upkeep to fuel one man's undead swarm, must be drastically more than 1 man can rationally obtain by himself. If it takes 20 people to obtain, secure and manage the supply chain to keep 1 swarm going, then 1 in 20 will be able to go necromancer, as everyone going necromancer would result in characters being non-functional 95% of the time. In addition of course the time to build up a swarm could be notable, and when a side kills them off, they could take just as long to replace as they did to create. The old expression the bigger they are the harder they fall, is a fully viable balancing condition, unless you actually make it so powerful that they won't realistically ever lose.

With a 25,000 gold diamond cost per cast, it isn't cost effective to use wish in exclusion of other spells.

Also worth pointing out... you can't exclusively prepare 9th level spells. You only get a few of those, then your limited 8th, then your limited 7th etc...

Greater question of course, what's a rational interface for a spell that lets you chose another spell. IE it isn't particualrly effective in combat to have to flip between a list of 50+ spells to find the one you need. (and yes I'm more than aware there's waay more than 50 spells in PFRPG, but I certainly immagine there being less in PFO than the several hundred in the TTRPG, at least for the first year or so

KarlBob wrote:

I thought it would be most useful for wizards, sorcerors and monks, who don't typically rely as much on armor.

In PFO, everyone will rely on armor for keywords that make them more effective.

Yup GW has made it clear, there will be no such thing as a "gear independent class", it breaks apart the entire harvesting resources etc... system, as well as creates a very undesirable effect when it comes to PVP. (IE the more effective you are, the more you should lose if you don't win. people who are able to attempt fights which they have a 10% chance of winning, but do them indefinently because they lose nothing when they die, need to be prevented)

Onishi wrote:

I agree in the simplest form, but there are ways that I could see such working. The necromancer does not have to do such a concept alone. Ryan has mentioned ideas that are not off the table of similar vein.

There has been talk of befriending enemy encampment monsters etc... and using them to attack your enemies, there is also statements like ...

I am all for that, but Befriending undead in a monster hex is a very different concept than being able to create undead. If you can create an undead army, then you can just go an create another one you you do get killed bay a group binding together to end your menace. A undead horde in a monster hex though, once it's gone, it's gone. But all of those things are not the standard method of using simple spells and class features to create undead.. Those are what need to be balanced since they are part of your character instead of an npc that you have trained.

Well yes, if done as a poof I have an army of undead, that is very wrong. Just as if crafting in PFO is I have the gold Poof here's the item, is wrong. Even in pathfinder tabletop rules, create undead while a class feature, you need an onyx gem worth 50*CreationsHD. My PFO expectations do not begin with the assumption that the material components will be limited to these and they will be available at your local jewelry store. It could take a full crafting chain involving rare materials from uncommon beasts to obtain an onyx, and additional components could be added etc...

Yes with the preconcieved notion that it is, "OK I sit in my lair for a day, casting create undead as often as my refreshes will allow me to, I'll have an army tomorrow, if the army happens to lose, I return to my lair for another day and repeat the process", then undead armies are a horrible idea.

If it takes hundreds of man hours, needs lots of assistance, some luck to find the right things, as well as difficulty in obtaining those things (IE they aren't going to be on the open market because you cannot risk people discovering what you are buying), then there is all kinds of potential

If this were a single player game, I would agree. But for a multiplayer game where social interaction is key, having one player able to create their own personal army is against the design goals. Druids are actually worse than Necros in this regard, because they have a permanent companion in addition to being able to summon an army of beasts, treants, and massive swarms of bugs to engulf enemies.

I agree in the simplest form, but there are ways that I could see such working. The necromancer does not have to do such a concept alone. Ryan has mentioned ideas that are not off the table of similar vein.

There has been talk of befriending enemy encampment monsters etc... and using them to attack your enemies, there is also statements like

Context

We want to enable characters in armies to devastate characters not in armies - but only when the soldiers comply with some very stringent conditions.

And most importantly we want groups of characters acting in a coordinated fashion to be superior to individual characters who do not.

In that context, let's talk about the dragon thing.

Getting a dragon into a combat should be heck of a lot of work, and not something that a single character could likely accomplish. One path might be finding a dragon's lair, capturing a dragon egg, building a dragon egg hatching structure, bringing the egg through to hatching, keeping a baby dragon alive, learning how to train that dragon, bonding that dragon with one or more characters, keeping a juvenile dragon alive, learning how to train the dragon with combat-useful abilities, keeping an adult dragon alive, getting the dragon into a combat zone, and directing it successfully amidst the chaos and confusion of a battlefield.

That might represent months or years of effort by dozens of people. Having exerted that effort, the reward would be a pretty damn effective weapon system. The reward is that you're using a dragon to fight your foes, who may not be able to defend themselves against such a threat - in which case the proper response is likely die (to delay and advance or cover a retreat) or flee.

If your opponents are fielding dragons, you better be prepared to respond in kind or to have developed similarly powerful tactics.

In this context it's totally OK for one side to just utterly dominate the other, regardless of the size of the forces.

This is the kind of resource, time, and knowledge intensive stuff that makes sandbox games so much more interesting than theme parks.

Pretty much everything on dragons, could apply to an army of the damned. Assuming you are talking a rather significant group busting their tail for a long time, for a temporary advantage (I would greatly oppose this idea if the dragon, or army of the damned, were a permanent advantage for the group that creates it, IMO they must be kill-able.)

well from the original description in the post, it sounds like he took into account the objections

the undead would be quite weak (old bone not so strong) but it would be a nicety as a "psychological" defense against groups of bandit PCs or raiders. just my little idea i have as a character for when the game comes out.

Personally I myself am not entirely opposed to the concept of undeads having notable combat capabilities, IF and only IF,

1. It takes significant time and cost to develop, and produce noteworthy undeads.

2. The undead themselves when destroyed, take the full work/time to recreate and get back into the mix.

IE hiding behind undead is a very costly, laberous task filled with lots of risk, when it pays off the payout could be great, or a pack of paladins could discover what you are up to, and slaughter your horde before you get off the ground, but the important thing is, it is not a permanent "OK I spent 2 years to have an undead horde that can go toe to toe with the average party, I have permanently earned my right to be a 1 man party.

In my opinion there are 2 things that are quite often wrongly equated.

1. Reaching a point in power which puts you on a separate league from anyone without said ability permanently.

2. Having a tentative hold on something which puts you into a seperate league to those who do not have access to such, and in a form that any time you actually intend on using such power, you must risk losing said capabilities which will drop you right back onto the same page as everyone else (possibly lower considering the time you lost working towards the temporary advantage).

In my opinion equating the 2 is like in D&D 3.5 terms, the difference between the 2 things.

1. The cleric's divine power spell, which essentially gives a cleric the base attack, HP and stregnth of a fighter, assuming he uses his first round of the match casting the spell, and only has the spell slots to likely use this 2 fights a day if he doesn't want to also waste many of his other good spells.

2. The clerics divine power spell, using the cheese that is the divine metamagic, + nightsticks + persistent spell, to allow the cleric to use a single casting of Divine power, first thing in the morning, and have all those bonuses for the entire day.

I would say based on the appearence of the tech demo, 80-90% chance of 3rd person as the default. I'd also have to agree with the naysayers of first person, while I enjoy first person games, it is certainly a significant lack of viewpoint to the area, IE a huge lack of peripheral vision etc... and without something like the oculus to look around, would be pretty obnoxious in an MMO of this style.

As far as for the oculus, as GW says, anything designed for only a handful of players, is probably a pretty bad idea. The oculus is a cool idea, but it isn't a periferal I can imagine getting widespread adaptation anytime soon.

The TT principle is "fail forward": a failure should always leave a path forward instead of stopping play.

I'm not sure what the MMO equivalent is; it seems to me like there should be ways to fail out, or challenges that must be overcome in order to reach the reward for overcoming those challenges.

An important concept might be that turning back from a dungeon IS a continuation of the story, not an end. The game needs to go on, but the dungeon need not be cleared for that to happen.

Well the concepts of escalation cycles certainly contribute to that. Hero's attempt to stop the great dragon cult, hero's fail, dragon cult grows, new waves of hero's move in, hero's back off, gather allies to attempt to defend their city from the oncoming wave of dragons that have been grown in the dungeon they failed to clear. One thing worth mentioning is the key difference in the MMO and the tabletop game... the first hero's to step into the story, do not always or even have to remain in the center, they may be the stars at the start, and become support characters, or may run off to deal with a different problem etc...

@Dario and @Jazzlvraz, I understand, and was well aware of this sentiment before posting.

I would also point out that many Enchanters in EverQuest found it difficult to find groups once everyone was able to get a 4-hour KEI in POK.

I would also point out that "drive-by buffing" may be extremely dangerous to your Reputation in a game where much of the conflict is Player-versus-Player.

I want there to be ways to practice random acts of kindness to strangers. I'm just of the opinion that "drive-by buffing" isn't a very good way to do that, because of the other problems it causes.

Point 1 I would say that is a huge flaw in the mechanics, while I'm not familliar with those particular buffs as I haven't played EQ, IMO stronger buffs should have lower durrations, buffs with more than a 5-10 minute duration should be more kinda nice things but never the primary reason you would bring a class along in any circumstance.

Point 2 certainly does make sense there. IE how do you know the guy you are buffing isn't about to go on a murderous rampage, and that certainly does bring up questions on it.

I do agree that a dev does need to show up to this one... But IMO the answer should be pretty obvious, items in the bag are unequipped... Any arguement of BoH working the other way... virtually eliminates banditry...

Why is going with absolutely nothing of worth except a full bag of holding even slightly a drawback for a merchant? Bandits lose any and all incentive to attack, as they can tell there is NOTHING they can gain. So now merchants are off the market for bandits.

So now to adventurers... Oh wait, adventurers can also use the bags of holding... So now the only thing takable from the adventurer, is his adventuring gear... Yay we caught one that just defeated a legendary X, he probably got some good loot.... too bad that's almost certainly exempt from taking it, because everyone but the wizard has a bag of holding... and the wizard probably just is having the fighter carry his share until he reaches the safety of town...

Gear and resource loss is supposed to be commonplace, not the exception when you make a HUGE mistake.

OK so lets imagine the one drawback the merchant with BoH vs naked merchant without BoH has is half capacity... He also gets a de-facto free half time trick...

Merchant delivers goods from city A to city B, carrying nothing but a threaded BoH, lets say he dies on his first trip, but hey no loss, repeat. Makes it to deliver the goods to city B, now he picks up goods from city B that need to go back to city A, and promptly suicides... Poof free instant transport.

Offering any job or task to be "lossless or riskless" transport is just rife for abuse... Heck think if phase 2... Multiboxer's shipping company... make 20 alts... pay for their XP just long enough to get enough threads for a BoH... send the swarms out to deliver... risk free.

Going on an adventurer, bring your walking safe storage box with you... Fill up his bag, and just kill him back to town... Multiboxers have never had an easier life.

The point of Caravans, Bandits, etc.... All go out the window when you introduce risk free transportation. Every idea GW has put foward has pretty much stated "a character with nothing at risk, should have little to nothing to contribute". But a bag man.... that's a risk free character with plenty to give.

Onlishi,

If threadable and protects the contents, it is virtucally identical to the secret chest spell.
If it doesn't protect the contents, a mule seems better value for money.

If it requires virtually all your threads plus a spellbook/wondrous slot, would it really be a problem? I see the business opportunity for dedicated smugglers/couriers, but not that that would be against the 'risk vs reward' spirit of the game design.

Dario: that's what i'm afraid of, yes. And that quite literally takes away some of the magic for me.

Well assuming you can actually put a decent load of items inside... yes.

The spells and item in P&P are not relevant to this discussion, in P&P logisics of transfering goods from X to Y are irrelevant, crafting is done by turning gold into items etc... Yes in P&P keeping all items safe is trivial, as is moving 10 full sets of armor half way across the world.

The reason there are benefits for the traveler flag, is the dev's are trying to encorage people to travel in methods that have risk...

Almost every situation described by the dev's wants limited benefit in traveling with nothing to lose, and when exporting goods... there is virtually no tradeoff in going unarmored and weaponless in the event that you have no reason to care if you die.

Based on pretty much all of the intents of the game, I would say very highly unlikely that they would intend for the contents of a bag of holding to be protected. It is pretty clear the overall design is to have the minimal amount of "safe" items as possible. Obviously I'm not steven but my guess on possible scenerios

1. It offers a set improvement to carrying capacity, Considering the existance of the traveler's flag etc... we pretty much know for a fact that personal carrying capacity is a variable that goes up and down (IE travelers flag) So IMO the simplest and most logical way would be for a bag of holding to be a further increase to this.

2. It is threadable... and the thread cost is a variable based on the contents. IE you load up 4 weapons into the bag, to thread it you need 4 weapons worth of threads.

It looks, to me, like the settlement's members must be of a certain reputation to get/keep certain facilities running. Why would the settlement care what the rep of visiting characters is if they pay to train there? I do see that they can set visitor rep lvl to what they want, but won't some settlements let anyone with money in?

Well... I'd imagine quite a few settlements have their line of who they want to sell weapons and skills to. Sort of a player nation security thing. Low rep essentially means the person kills indescriminantly without warning. You don't want to sell a skill for 100gp, then have the guy use that skill to steal 10,000 from you later.

Bandits contribute to the economy by taking a merchants goods?

1. When you take someone's goods you punish thier economy and set them waaaay back in time and effort.

2. I think it was Hobbs the Short that asked this question somewhere: What happens to the goods that the bandit takes? Most likely he sells them on the market at a reduced price (to liquidate them quick), thru a shady fence. So the goods likely go to the market anyway and bring prices down.

Seems like bandits will damage the economy.

Damage/improve... it is all a matter of perspective. A healthy economy is entirely a matter of perspective... For the buyer, a good economy is everything being available and cheap. For someone who wants to make his living harvesting... well he has to work drastically harder for the same money when the prices are low.

Viewing raising or lowering prices as good or bad for the economy is wrong... The goal is to keep supply and demand changing, but not spiking drastically

Sintaqx wrote:

Thanks for the response, Stephen.

Another thought crossed my mind while working a bit of my own wizardry on a particularly obstinate server. Has there been any consideration on ritual spells, circle magic, or coven magic? Could a group of casters collaborate to rain fire and brimstone (fireball heightened by the combined keywords, etc) down on a group of targets? Something that would be more effective than each casting their own spell and increasing the magical turbulence?

I dunno about a combat thing, but I'd like to see this being something done to supplement siege warfare against settlements. Have a circle of X mages get together to rain meteors down on the town walls like a living trebuchet.

Possibly, I think it loses one of the key balancing points of seige engines though. (I could be guessing here though) but at least per my pre-concieved notions, the idea of seige engines is for them to be slow and difficult to get into position. IE wizards don't particularly fall into that category primarally because unless when they have the group spell equipped they move slowly etc... That isn't to say there aren't ways to balance it however, maybe if the cast time were slow enough (IE a couple of minutes in which the wizards need to be protected could do the trick)

An additional question does arise. It appears that the arguments against one-shot-kill coordinated attacks presumes that all effects within a 6-second combat slice occur simultaneously. Do we actually know this for a fact? Is there an initiative mechanic involved with the ordering of effects?

There is no implication by GW that attacks or damage will only be applied once every 6 seconds, merely that the quantity and type of attacks will be limited by stamina, which will refresh every 6 seconds and in the event that you are attempting to use your most powerful attacks, your stamina will require you to slow down and throw in some weak attacks. As far as I know the attacks themselves will more or less be resolved in as close to real time as possible.

It is worth pointing out that party size, may be much larger, and battles etc... also much larger... wars could wind up hundreds vs hundreds, as well when it comes to certain situations, escalations, wandering monsters etc... there would be no limit to the quantity of participants. Instances themselves are not the be all end all of group activity as they are in the typical theme park MMORPG.

There goes the PG-13 rating...

Well considering paizo's definition of PG-13 includes their own products. If I recall correctly brothel was an optional building within the kingmaker campaign, and could still fall in safe range, provided the interior is never shown. (of course in P&P there is the wonderful thing of the publishers can simultaneously cater to both kids and adults, by loosely mentioning the presence of adult subjects without going into detail, allowing the DM to judge whether his/her audience is suitable for that sort of content as to whether any of the story actually requires them to go near it, an MMO does not have that luxury.

They can have as much mature themed content as they want, and the ESRB can't do a thing about it as long as they simply avoid trying to sell at retail outlets. GW's CEO mentioned it in a thread a while back...

Though it is worth pointing out, GW and Paizo working together can create maturity onto the level they want. Paizo still possess veto power, and have stated that they do not intend for the games content to be above PG13. Of course that is subject to Paizo's standards of what PG13 is, rather than what the ESRB would likely bump the rating up for.

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I'd say 2 factors have to be applied on the should pets be killable.

1. Are we talking multiple teirs of drastically different power of pets.

IE if there is an epic pet that must be tamed and earned, that is not an automatic earn for the class just by leveling up, then the boosted pet is following the same general rules as equipment, and thus must be vulnerable to item loss etc... If reaching a certain merit badge, or training the pet handling skill etc... poof allows you to have the pet, and the only variation of that vs someone else with the same training and badge is cosmetic (or a choice, but they have the same options as you), then it is a class feature, and should be immune.

2. pet use/equiping.

If using the pet counts against your equipped skills, stamina etc... (IE commanding it etc...) then that is a vote towards it being a class skill, and thus recoverable without any real hassle.

If the pet is an added bonus on top of your choice of equiped skills. Then the pet is a bonus consumable... and thus subject to death. (remember everyone is going to be multiclassed to some extent at some point, if it is ballanced for a druid with X skills to have it, it still has to also not be a drastic improvement for a 20/20 wizard/druid to be using pure wizard skills, with a pet out, without blowing a normal 20 wizard out of the park.)