RETH-Mog's page

If you mean the thing where you insert tags that will embed an image hosted somewhere other than paizo.com directly in the page, no we will not be doing that. The main reasons are: Remotely hosted images can be changed maliciously to become pornographic or shock images. It is a security risk. And most importantly, we prefer people to use their words rather than depending on a "U MAD BRO" image macro to communicate. There's lots of places on the internet for that kind of thing, just not here.

I'm much more interested in the Golarion flavor than the Pathfinder rules. What works on the table isn't the same as what works on the screen.

Day in and day out you see it. People crying for consensual PvP only! show us the world without the risk!

It's amazing to me that you cannot or refuse to understand that non-consensual PvP isn't the only way to have risk or be challenged in an MMO.

It feels as if you think people are somehow cowards for wanting to play a game that's enjoyable for them to play.

You also speak of "ways to grief people other than PvP".

Tell me how, please. And tell me how it would be as unavoidable as non-consensual PvP.

But to address your original post I've got a great idea to solve this and I've said it more than once — Different Servers with different rule sets.

Check it out, now we both have what we want.

The more I read these threads, the more I fear our differences may be irreconcilable. That those in fear of a persistent world with a risk vs reward paradigm and interaction with other people who very well may be after what you hold dear will never yield on their position and will end up not playing what everyone is hoping will be an awesome game.

I know I envisioned Pathfinder Online as a persistent shared world, where everybody is in a single instance of the same world (perhaps using similar server technology to Eve, according to what I've heard of that game on the boards.) But if PvP can be turned off, that suddenly makes the game unfair to those who aren't hiding from everyone else (or worse, griefers who hide behind the inability to attack them to harass you in other ways.)

I'm not terribly fond of spending a lot of time in a thread when the divide is presented like you have.

In the first quoted paragraph you seem to describe the anti-Open PvP posters as being stubborn and losing out on an (hopefully) incredibly fun game.

In the second, you don't attempt to portray anything possibly good about
a consensual-only PvP limitation, instead, you describe the bad elements that you believe would result.

So, I think the first step in removing the divide would be to stop trying demonize the other side's premise as you asking how to remove the divide.

I could care less about the rule set that an MMO follows. They are not the same and you should not aim for it. Pathfinder is a turn-based tabletop RPG. As a rules set for a TTOP RPG, it works quite well. However, a MMO is not a tabletop RPG. The people who think it should work like that do not get the design issues and probably never will.

I already know that the devs know this – but many of the fans here just don’t get it . Persuade your fans as to why – and with patience, the persuadable will be persuaded. However, some of these fans are NOT persuadable under any circumstances. That’s life. Keep selling them books and they will still be your customers, just not your online players. That’s okay. Let ‘em rant, because that isn’t Pathfinder.

I do see, however, a number of things that CAN work and DO feel like "Pathfinder,” to wit:

1 - Class Abilities: Pathfinder has improved upon and developed a number of class abilities that serve to distinguish the class from others. Those abilities should form a tangible aspect of a class design.

For example, we know what Paladins are. A Pathfinder: Online Paladin should have auras; smite evil, and have the ability to confer those benefits to others. Similarly, we know that a Witch has a familiar, can fly, and can cast hexes like misfortune and deep slumber. Alchemists in Pathfinder throw bombs and can use mutagens to increase their stats and body size. While something like a Vancian based arcane bond is not likely to matter in PF: O, Wizards should be able to throw a weapon and have it return to their hands. They should get some sort of metamagic and should be able to craft magic items. They should get a scorching ray and get multiple numbers of them as they advance (never mind what damage they actually do or how often it can be used) Barbarians are all about rage and DR. Gunslingers are all about guns, deeds, and grit, Ninjas can vanish, etc..

Keep the recognizable iconic abilities of classes and make them do similar sorts of things which are somewhat intuitive and recognizable to a player. The underlying math, lethality and so forth is irrelevant. Let the computer game designers of the MMO be computer game designers of an MMO. Nevertheless, some of the iconic powers of a class need to be represented and unique because that’s what fans expect and that’s what keeps up the verisimilitude of the Pathfinder brand.

2 - Look and Feel: Pathfinder has a distinctive art direction to its characters and many of its monsters. Some of that is going to work well in a computer game -- and some of it is not. Cut the stuff that will not work for polycount and animation reasons and do it without remorse.

But when you get right down to it, Pathfinder is Wayne Reynolds' art style. Make that come to life? You are golden in terms of art direction. Fail to deliver it and you dropped the ball and will alienate customers. Sorry – but in many respects it really IS that simple.

Above all, keep the cartoony look to your characters. There are strong benefits to this. On a technical design basis, it reduces polycount. As we move forward in the next five years, PC Gaming threatens to go off a cliff and the desktop will not be the primary platform for this game. Accordingly, anything that reduces graphical overhead and makes it more laptop friendly is good. Any CTO who tells you what the GPU capabilities are of the expected users of this game 4 years from now is making it up. He doesn’t know. That’s an ENORMOUS tech risk, so the engine and art direction has to be HIGHLY scaleable.

If you went for something like the CANVAS engine for your art style? You would not go wrong in terms of artistic impact (tech/economic feasibility is another matter). Apply the CANVAS engine's style and Wayne Reynolds art and color palettes and tell me you wouldn’t drool to play that game.

On a less technical basis, cartoony designs also serve to make the game look unique. The problem with realistic 3d models , shaders and middleware environmental options all designed to operate within the tech limits of the hardware platform of the day is that it all ends up looking the same, from game to game. Seeing as you are likely to have to use middleware for much of your environmental organic effects, anything that serves to distinguish the look of the game from that produced by others enhances the value. In this case, it also delivers on the expectations of fans – so double down on Wayne Reynolds' iconics and cartoony goblins.

Blizzard made the right call with WoW. Some people hated it and it turned them off -- but you cannot argue with that level of success. I can confirm that there was a significant debate within BioWare as to whether to go cartoony with SW:ToR. BioWare decided to go a little cartoony with their art direction in TOR too -- and it was the right call. Some people complained sure, but some people always complain.

3 - Golarion: At Paizo's current publication rate, it is likely that there will at that time of PF:O's release be more game material written about the world of Golarion than any other fantasy world in the history of RPGs. Even the FR (and that's saying something, damn it).

That is a VAST treasure trove of IP. It's the one thing Paizo brings to the table which it does BETTER THAN ANYBODY ELSE, in or outside of the computer development field. Do not sacrifice this on anybody's sandbox altar. Dance with the girl that brung ya.

That's what a Pathfinder: Online is to me. It's not rolling a 20, it's not Vancian Magic, longswords which do 1d8 or even magic missiles.

Gimme a Witch that hexes with a fox familiar, a chance to interact with the iconic characters which LOOK like Wayne Reynold's art come to life -- all set in a believable slice of Golarion.

That's a Pathfinder MMO to me.

Dream Daemon wrote:

What are die-cut tokens? Are those like the cardboard pawns in the Beginner's Box?

These would be like the cardboard tokens found in the 4th Edition D&D Monster Vault (among other products). They provide a very nice alternative to painted (and painting) miniatures. They are also a much more effective way to go for a publishing company that already has an in-house 'game aid' design team (referencing the GameMastery table top maps).

The D&D disks are like POGs.

Sorry, but we're not going to do that, ever. For starters, I hate the way the image has to focus on the monster's face, so they all end up looking either tiny or too zoomed in. Terrible.

So no, we won't be doing POGs.

We have had a lot of very positive feedback from the cardboard cut-out pawns in the new Beginner Box, however, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see more products along those lines.

These things are not mutually exclusive. We don't even produce the pre-painted miniatures, WizKids does. They have been producing prepainted plastic miniatures for longer than anyone in the American tabletop gaming business, and they know their stuff. I am not too worried about longevity, and even if I were, I'd still be pushing them to make the miniatures as awesome as possible at as good a price as possible for basically one reason:

Because I can.

I just wanted to stop by and thank everyone there at Paizo for these generous donations to our company! We'll be coming by to do free tire rotations for the whole office sometime in the next couple weeks. This was a totally unexpected gift!

It's commendable that you are attacking the Stealth problems, though I believe you have made things very difficult for yourselves, by rolling Hide and Move Silently into the Stealth skill, and on the other side of the coin, rolling together Spot and Listen into a catch-all Perception skill.

I understand the temptation to reduce the number of skills, to help those classes with fewer skill points, but I believe those classes already benefitted from the other changes;
Namely, the 1:1 skill cost, lifting the cap on cross-class skills, and changing the class skill bonus to a flat +3. All of those things served to reduce the potential disparity between the haves and the have-nots, without creating bizarre situations, where a silence spell effectively also makes you invisible, and invisibility also makes you silent.
Does buying a telescope grant the user super-hearing?
Does a dog's Scent ability auto-fail in the dark?

I have a PC who wears magical eyelenses; when I ask for a Perception check, I get back 'I got 25, unless it's a sight-based check, in which case I got 35...'.
PCs who are in melee have penalties to hearing what's going on behind them, since they create so much noise. If there's a potential backstabber in the room, do I base the DC on their hampered hearing, or on their sight?
One of the party has low-light vision; approaching enemies may be seen earlier, as they step into the limits of his sight. His hearing is no better than anyone else's. Do I base the surprise DC on sight? Or sound?
A PC gets blinded; does this also deafen him? If not, what's the point? Am I or am I not actually within my rights to disallow that he can simply navigate around like a bat, rolling Perception checks at full bonus? There's more than a few on these boards, who would take the view that this would be 'screwing with the player'.

In practice, there are so many situations in which the surroundings, equipment, nearby activity, etc. affect one sense differently from another, that I am effectively forced to calculate PC and NPC Perception and Stealth as (at least) four separate and different values.
I don't believe I have gained any streamlining of play, via the consolidation of skills; in fact, quite the opposite, since what used to be resolved by calling for a Spot check, or a Hide roll, gets derailed if I ask for Perception or Stealth checks, as the players stop to query which kind of check it is, and we have to dissect the various modifiers (That modifier doesn't apply; that one does...).

My question (for someone who knows about game design)
Would it be possible to design a RPG Computer game that has Both options?
I imagine at the start up of a game, one of the options would be Turn Based Vs Live Action (or whatever you call it)
Many games have choices and option at the start of the game, would that option be possible?

I have always imagined a game where you play in turn-based for combats but afterward could view a cinematic that replays your party's moves in a realtime setting to show the combat realistically. It could be a cool gimmick to get people interested. I would like to see the 10-15 minutes of turn-based condensed into the 45-60 seconds of combat and see how it would play out.