Rafkin's page

If a leader type dies through regular combat do indexes drop or is it only through the act of assassinations?

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.

What's to keep everyone from just joining the same settlement? Other than the minority that chooses an evil alignment.

How about an automatic adjustment of your pvp window based on how many settlement members are online?

Small settlements with 10 players online would be relatively safe but if you have 50 people on you better be prepared to defend your land.

Does your pvp window in any way limit when you can attack other settlements?

So do escalations advance at a certain time limit or after a certain number of mobs have been killed? If these are the main source of PVE content I see them getting zerged on a regular basis. So either the event ends quickly or your stuck trying to tag mobs within their 10 second lifespan for hours at a time. Too soon to criticize, just tossing out concerns.

Can a hex produce multiple escalations at once?

I don't see them lasting anywhere that long. You'll want people to be able to start and finish an escalation in one game session which should be an hour or two. Probably less.

Rafkin wrote:

Will monster hexes respond to the number of players in the area? As in, will there be more frequent escalations during prime time and fewer at 2am?

In a single shard game, it's always prime time for someone and 2 am for someone else. So far, that seems to be the intent for PFO: One global server with everyone in it, rather than some North American servers, some European servers, and a couple of Asian servers.

I realize that but I think settlements are likely to attract many people from similar time zones

Will monster hexes respond to the number of players in the area? As in, will there be more frequent escalations during prime time and fewer at 2am?

Rafkin wrote:

Since nobody walks in an mmo is it safe to assume anyone walking is probably an assassin?

If I attack a disguised assassin who is flying the assassin flag in a settlement will the NPC guards attack me?

Kill all Walkers!

I would assume that by "walking animation" they meant "Normal Move Animation." So if you saw a disguised assassin trying to be unnoticed, you wouldn't see him walking in that funny half-crouch that games love to use to show someone is sneaking.

Also, how do you know that that guy is a disguised assassin? If you saw through his disguise, the NPC guards would immediately see through it as well. If not, then they are seeing random guy A attacking random guy B and move to intervene.

I wouldn't KNOW he was an assassin but maybe I'm paranoid and I attack some random guy who just happens to be a disguised assassin. Does it not drop the disguise?

Since nobody walks in an mmo is it safe to assume anyone walking is probably an assassin?

If I attack a disguised assassin who is flying the assassin flag in a settlement will the NPC guards attack me?

I haven't seen anything that suggest a war declaration is required to attack a settlement.

I wasn't worried about repeling the attack. My concern is that attackers can force you to take alignment and reputation hits just for defending your town.

Rafkin wrote:

I've been skeptical of the entire flagging system from the start. It's bloated and easy exploitable.

Please, explain what exploit you can foresee.

You see 100 players forming up outside your settlement. You see them rolling up seige engines. You can't do anything about it until they attack or you're the attacker and probably get the murderer flag.

The catapults start firing. The battering ram is knocking. Yet only the handful of players operating that equipment are flagged as attackers.

You have little choice but to attack them. If your settlement has laws against murder and you win, how many players just took an alignment hit? Your settlement alignment could shift towards evil just for defending your town.

I've been skeptical of the entire flagging system from the start. It's bloated and easy exploitable.

Could you post some parses please?

If it takes 2+ years to capstone one "class" where are you going to find all the skills to take up that much time for each one?

I'm concerned that we're going to end up with 75 ranks of a handful of skills. Which is not fun.

Will there be any warning that one of your outlying hexes has been entered by potential enemies?

Can a settlement control a hex that is not adjacent to another hex they control?

For a low budget MMO pvp is really the only way to go since they dont have the resources to make content that pve requires. (Nobody does, thats the problem with the themepark model)

GW has given many reasons why pvp is a better model than pve and they all sound valid. However, its not like they really have a choice. This model is the only option for them given their resources.

Be interesting to see where they get all these skills from.

Considering they want a capstone ability to take a couple years to reach I imagine any skill you can think of will likely be in the game.

Or we are going to get 50 ranks of slash...or something, which will be incredibly disappointing

I don't even know what a MOBA is but now I want one.

I couldn't download the PDF on my IPad so I searched the web for a copy I could view online. It's probably legit, but I thought I would mention a site that charges to read Paizo's free PDF. Seemed shady to me.

Site is Scibd

Will characters be able to traverse rivers? Obviously wagons are going to be limited to bridges but what about characters swimming across?

The sexy armor issue is so subjective I've stayed out of the discussion. Appropiate clothing/armor is determined by your culture. There are plenty of real world examples of female clothing that is counter-intuitive to its function but women still wear them for the same reasons women of Golarion might.

Remember the armor in PfO is also "everyday wear" so men dressing in full plate to go to the market is about as realistic as a female wearing a chainmail bikini in combat.

If they are using the art style of PF, there is some of the ridiculous anime giant swords in there. Lets hope they leave that out.

If adding key words is the upgrade path for armor/weapons, what is the upgrade path for spells?

Can we add key words for the Mage Armor spell?

Can we add "bleeding" to our Magic Missles?

We'd love to see some suggestions for future blog topics...

Rich Baker
Goblinworks

Ideas:

Zero Point sequel
Alternity Online

(ok..maybe a little bit off-topic)

Looks great!

Maybe it's the mannequin but the clothing on the hips looks flare out too much.

If out of combat healing is slow then everyone will take "levels" of cleric. Everyone!

I dont see you as a jerk because you are ABSOLUTELY right in your view about granular numbers. They are not needed in a good game.

Eg. Baldurs Gate is a perfect example how a combat system can be done with small numbers. It proofs also that D&D with its d20. limited but clever actions and small numbers is perfect for computer games too.

This blathering about excessive unneeded granularity and "we do because we CAN..." so what? Just a cheap excuse, a sneaky persuasion attempt to get the fans on their side.

And to the people at Goblin Works I have an advice: Play Baldurs Gate and you will see that its not necessary at all to have 400 Hitpoints on 1st level and a full load of overcomplex mathematic formulas to let the player experience engaging combats.

And we would end up like DDO where everyone has 35 AC and + 17 to hit. Small whole numers is a huge limiter when trying to make a complex game.

Macros: as long as each ability requires a keystroke I have no problem with macros. I never saw the difference in pushing 1,2,3,4 vs. pushing 1 four times. I could take it or leave though. I do like being to add text to my abilities though. Especially since there are attacks that combo together. I Slash and /party " %t has a bleed". So group mates can now use attacks that work on Bleeding targets.

One thing I really don't like is circle strafing. I hope there is no advantage to using this tactic. The occasional "jump behind to backstab" is fine but the constant running in circles...bleh.

A lot of talk about Assassins. Aren't prestige classes way, way off? Or are guys just referring to characters that take assassination contracts?

Could we have a natural 1 result in a crit fail? Give it some funny animation like you stab yourself in the foot.

Relatively unskilled characters will not beat relatively well equipped high skilled characters in fights. But they should be able to try to run away without always being killed no matter what. And a low skill character and a medium skill character working together should be a good match for a high skilled well equipped character; not a 50/50 fight, but a high enough chance of victory that the high skilled character has to consider death a reasonable potential.

We want a flatter power curve than most of the theme park games. But not a flat one. The case we're trying to avoid is high skill character one-shotting every low-skill character it fights, and low-skill characters being totally unable to do any (meaningful) damage to a high-skill, well equipped character.

Any veteran is going to have one physical control and one mental control ability, so that's two consecutive full power controls to lock down someone who runs under the current Freedom design.

Obviously I don't have enough info about crowd control to judge this system but I am concerned about the separate Freedom stacks for physical and mental.

I have no issues with the power curve.

I like the whole setup. A lot of thought and effort have gone into it to make combat more than just a click fest and it looks like an experienced player with a weaker character could quickly even the odds against a more powerful foe with only one or two real strategies.

r.

Except that the veteran character has lots of different keyword damage types and multiple weapon sets. So all he has to do is hit the lowbie once with each of his weapons and see which does the most damage snd stick with that set.

Where the lowbie has one weapon set, few keywords, so his only chance of winning is if gets lucky and his weapon happens to match up against the veterans defenses.

I don't have a problem with this but I'm not ready to buy into the whole " newbs have a chance vs. vets" thing. (Talking characters, not players)

But we will know your biggest weakness based on the armor type we see you wearing. I suppose thats true of most games but then most games aren't this predictable. Ah well, system sounds good to me.

Just consider changing Freedom or everyone will spec for one physical control and one mental control and its Stun Wars all over again.

I would suggest you not separate physical Freedom and mental Freedom. Doing this allows for 2 consecutive full strength control effects.

Is there any reason to be concerned that the system is TOO predictable? Once player A figures out a rotation that beats Player B won't he alwyays beat him?

Or once I know Pauls weak vs. Fire won't I always beat him until he earns xp or re-gears?

Maybe just a concern vs. NPCs who can't change tactics.

I agree. They would be fun.

As I understood it, Ryan stated that pve dungeons would spawn randomly making them something of a semi- rare "reward" for being brave enough to go exploring.

Now if his Vision of the game has changed to letting us select a dungeon from a drop-down menu anytime we feel like then that is a drastic change.

Its only sandbox for those creating the dungeons. For the people playing them how are your dungeons any different from one made by GW? If GW was making a hundred dungeons PfO would clearly be in the themepark category.

I just want to point out again that I'm not against this feature. Players will have much more time to devote to their creations than a single dev team ever could so I would expect some awsome stories and I would buy them by the bucket loads.

My concern is that these dungeon runs would become the main focus of game play and drastically reduce the open world interaction that is supposedly the selling point of PfO.

Rafkin wrote:

So is a themepark not a themepark if the players are making it?

For the players I don't see how these dungeons are any different that those made by a dev team.

It seems like a very un-sandbox like feature.

I like themepark games so I'm not against this. I'm just saying.

Technically I suppose there can be hybrid themepark elements even in a sandbox, but these seem no more themepark than escalating hexes otherwise. The hex just also goes down, and around, and might wander all over.

I like the idea that an escalatory dungeon like this might, if not cleared periodically, overflow into the countryside.

With dozens, if not hundreds, of these dungeons available, the game would be much more themepark than sandbox. You're not even happening upon these dungeons in the wild. You're just scrolling down a list, enter your credit card info, and whammo...you've discovered a dungeon. I don't know how you get more themepark than that.

So is a themepark not a themepark if the players are making it?

For the players I don't see how these dungeons are any different that those made by a dev team.

It seems like a very un-sandbox like feature.

I like themepark games so I'm not against this. I'm just saying.

Rafkin wrote:

If I'm paying a subscription I don't want to have to buy any content, player made or not. Subscription should get you everything save major expansions.

I cannot imagine a player having to buy optional content that might be made available on the GW Store. You don't want it don't buy it. I would have though that would be a 'given'.

I realize I wouldn't "have" to buy it. I am saying that a subscriber should get any content as part of their subscription. As I said, with the exception of expansions/ major content updates.

If I pay $15 a month I shouldn't also have to pay $1.99 to run your dungeon.

I don't know if the legal aspects of the Open Gaming License allow for the usage of all terminolgy in a video game. So we might see similar feats with different names.

Plus skills like Power Attack require the player to make a choice every swing so even familiar feats will have to be drastically altered for PfO.

Why should recovering after a battle be fast and automatic? Just because that is the MMO and PnP default? (once a wand of cure light wounds becomes cheap)

Why shouldn't it be? In terms of an mmo its just a timesink. In terms of pnp Hit Points are not suppose to represent just your health. Its your overall chance of "not dieing". This is why you're just as effective at 1 HP as you are at 100 HP.

Maybe we could choose our alignment and get bonuses based on how close our actual gameplay reflects that alignment. Same for settlements.

I think recovering health out of combat should be fast and automatic. Fixing wounds from crits is another thing all together. Kits with Heal skill would be an option

If I'm paying a subscription I don't want to have to buy any content, player made or not. Subscription should get you everything save major expansions.