Fadil Ibn-Kazar

Starhammer's page

48 posts. Alias of Rock Peterson.


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@Onishi Thank you for the Vic Wertz quote. That is actually quite helpful, and actually is a much better representation of what I'm looking for in a game than what I was misunderstanding the intent to be from the blogs.

Vic Wertz wrote:

Level advancement is more about gaining new options than about increasing the power level. Somebody who's trained ten levels is going to be only slightly less powerful than the person who has trained thirty, but the person who has thirty levels will have a much wider variety of potential actions to take.

In Pathfinder RPG terms, imagine two wizards that can cast spells of exactly the same levels, but one of them has a lot more spells in his spellbook.


Nihimon wrote:
Starhammer wrote:
... an advancement system where I learn to get better at things in game by logging off to play WoW or watch TV...
That's not accurate, and quite condescending. It's like saying "I get good grades in school by daydreaming". Sure, you might be daydreaming a lot, but it's kind of silly to say that's how you're getting good grades.

Actually, it's not like saying I'm getting good grades because I'm daydreaming. It's like saying I'm getting good grades because I'm giving money to the teacher or school, and my grades will be good regardless of whether I study or daydream. Daydreaming may not teach me how to do anything useful related to the class, but as long as the transcripts are acknowledged by the school, I can use them on my resume.

Nihimon wrote:
I encourage you to re-read this blog.

Read it recently, just read it again, since you asked so politely. The "company vision" for character advancement in PFO is to emulate EVE Online and let players advance in skill without having to log in and play, because regardless of the complexity and potential difficulty in learning how to use the advancement system to make your character be what you want it to be, the benefits of keeping everyone on an even level (even though new players will never be able to be on a truly even level since they can, in Ryan Dancey's own words "never catch up") will outweigh the drawbacks.

Yes, there are "achievements" you can get for killing X enemies or climbing some mountaintop, but the things your character can actually "do" like what spells they can cast or items they can craft are locked out until you reach a certain level with the appropriate skill, which can only be attained over a predetermined period of time, or proportionately slower if you want to do more than one thing with your character, like cast spells and craft items...

That blog makes it quite clear that they want players to advance regardless of whether they actually participate. You call my view condescending. I call it reading what the man wrote. Of course now I'm worried that both quoting and disagreeing with a lead developer will simply get me banned.

Nihimon wrote:
If you have ideas about better advancement systems that accomplish the stated goals, I'm sure we'd all be glad to hear them.
Starhammer wrote:

I don't mind a system where advancement is throttled to prevent people from maxing out their level, grinding end game for awhile, then getting bored and moving on and/or selling their account. That stuff is just as harmful to a game's long term viability in my opinion.

I know my suggestion will fall on deaf ears, but even so, the compromise I would advise is a system of use-based advancement (not rewarding obnoxious things like jumping over and over for the sake of grinding skill like in Elder Scrolls) that throttles the increase of skill per use by implementing diminishing returns per time period. If you practice a skill over and over and over as fast as you can spam it, you'll get one or two normal gains, then little to nothing. If you use a skill once a minute, you'll make regular gains for a couple minutes and then it will taper off until the next hour, repeating the process to periods of days, weeks, and months. So instead of grinding things really fast, your best way to learn is to do things repeatedly over longer periods of time. Kinda like training and practice in real life.

Balance the diminishing returns, and then the daily crunchers, weekend warriors, and no-lifers will all see meaningful skill gains in return for their efforts, with those who spend more time playing having more opportunity for diversity, but little or no more potential for gaining more raw power. You will also not have anyone being rewarded for not playing, which ends up devaluing actual participation in the game.

Nihimon wrote:
@Starhammer, it sounds like you're willfully oblivious...

Actually I did precisely that, offered what I thought would be a better system that still managed to meet the needs of a varied playerbase... and you did not acknowledge that, but still took the time to insult me. And I'm the one who's being condescending.


Nihimon wrote:
@Starhammer, it sounds like you're willfully oblivious to the fact that having unlimited free time to collect resources, play markets, explore new areas, craft items, and generally just play the game is actually kind of nice. Please don't try to take all of that and then turn around and ask that it be made so others can't actually get anywhere in the game unless they have similar free-time.

Having to hang around in the newby zone for a couple months until everyone is able to safely exit at a preplanned time isn't any better. I'm not trying to say that anyone who can't dedicate 23 hours a day should be stuck hanging back with the baggage train (for the record, I don't play that often either... I tend to go for bursts of a lot of playing over a few days, and then spend a few days mostly reading, watching movies, unleashing my arrogant beliefs on unsuspecting message boards, and so on). However, if someone can't spare the time to actually play a persistent world roleplaying game more than an hour or two a month, maybe this is not the best hobby for such a person, and expecting everyone to be trammeled to their pace is just gonna be boring.

If I find that I've done everything new I'm sufficiently skilled to do, such as exploring the safety zones, getting my butt whooped repeatedly in PvP by people who are much better than me, and then harvesting mediocre resources until I'd prefer to have a bot do it for me (solely because programming the bot would give me something new to do), and all that's left is to use the game as a glorified chat room with a very sophisticated communication interface... and I can't get any better at anything for another 3 weeks, I'll lose interest real fast, and go back to doing something where my activity makes a difference, at least for myself.

If PFO can't keep me entertained and involved, then it's no more the right hobby for me than than any activity based MMO is for someone who can only play for a couple hours a month.

PS: I'm not willfully oblivious, I'm aggressively skeptical. I've been through enough Alphas and Betas to see just how rare it is for a game that promises to be new and innovative and unshackled by traditional design methodology to actually end up as anything other than a WoW clone or a faltering open world gankfest that can't really support anything except clumsy RP and hard-core Grief vs Grief. I would very much like to see PFO live up to my hopes and dreams of what an MMO could be, but I'm not going to bother preparing for anything other than abject disappointment... anything else will be a pleasant surprise.


Gruffling wrote:
In an MMO you can't base one class on exceptional but brief periods of efficacy while everyone else gets to be comparatively mediocre all the rest of the time.

As I understand it, the system being designed will not be using traditional "classes". Everybody will have potentially equal access to any variety of skills they desire.

Gruffling wrote:
as the table top game's magical resources are based around a limited time frame of adventuring as well as significant time dilation.

Depends on how you want to implement the learning and use of magic. If learning a spell is nothing more complex or time consuming than selecting a new spell from a list, then spamming it till you run out of spell points like a blaster in CoH or a Wizard in WoW... then yeah. In that case you just have to balance "Magic" as being pretty much equal to Archery with different graphics.

I would hope for a much more robust and innovative system however, where spellcasting and spellcrafting are dealt with in some manner other than Fire and Forget (Vancian, not Smart-Missile). I'd like to see a magic system where the crafting mechanics are as important to spell use as they are to sword swinging (though perhaps implemented differently) and where skill level can improve efficiency (reducing expenditure of SP or whatever) or increase puissance or utility. Something of a cross between Elder Scrolls spellcrafting and GURPS casting technique (where cast time and fatigue cost were reduced for each 5 skill levels).

Something like the Ars Magica spell system would be really amazing to play with also, where you don't necessarly learn "spells" like in most other games, but you level up skills for different Sources (Fire, life, earth, etc) and Technique (Move, destroy, create, and so forth), then combine two aspects to get a spell effect. Probably one of the best overall magic systems I've seen in any game.


From a mechanics perspective, try to view summoned creature (that is under the summoner's control) as a spell effect causing Damage Over Time in a variable area that sometimes has secondary qualities such as damage mitigation (by taking agro that would otherwise have gone to a player) or buffs/debuffs/healing/enemy sensing...

I think one of the best examples of a short term summon for combat purposes is not even what most people consider a summon: Flaming Sphere. It is at it's base functionality the same thing that any summon monster spell is, just somewhat simplified and lacking the aspect of a creature (Ok, it's also immune to damage, but theoretically some critters could be as well. This actually makes it more threatening than summoning a creature that can be destroyed). It serves a purpose of showing how a summoned creature should affect the battlefield however, without getting into the intricacies of mistaking a summoned creature for a complete individual in its own right.

Typical summoned creatures should have simple default behaviors in combat, that can be modified by the summoner. Such control takes time however, improving precision at the cost of time spent casting other spells. Controlling advanced creatures may even require full concentration, inhibiting the summoner's ability to attack or defend himself, or interact in other ways (like clicking an objective).

Ultimately, summoned creatures should be balanced such that they are not particularly better or worse for general combat than other spells of similar power and difficulty. They should be better for some situations (dealing with a few enemies that are spread too thin to use a conventional AOE spell on, but too numerous to settle for taking out one at a time) and worse for others (individual enemies that hit very hard, or tightly packed large groups of fragile enemies). They should be good as tactical sacrifices as well, either to hold the attention of an enemy too tough to defeat while you escape, or perhaps to spring an obvious trap or ambush that you don't know another way to bypass.

Magic already tends to be high DPS, whether Burst or DOT, so summoned creatures adding significant DPS shouldn't be particularly unbalancing compared to fireballs and lightning bolts. How they're used will likely make much more difference than what they are.

On a different note, uncontrolled summons, like my army of spammed Animate Dead, should in theory be as much a danger to my own group as to an enemy (before taking into consideration that I will likely attempt to mitigate that through planning and preparation, like invisibility to Undead or something)


I'll be the first to admit that I'm firmly in the NoLifer camp. Not so fanatic that I don't sleep or take potty breaks, and heck, I even manage to make my way to a renfaire or SCA event occasionally. But I'm stuck on disability, meaning I can't (and don't have to) hold down a job, I have very few offline friends that I only rarely interact with, and the vast majority of my RL responsibilities are handled with an online payment system on the first couple days of the month (I don't trust my financial matters to automated systems though... too much room for error that I'm still held accountable for). Frankly there are a lot of days that an entertaining book or a compelling MMORPG is the only thing keeping the gun out of my mouth.

I am the perfect demographic for a subscription based MMORPG.

[sarcasm]I can certainly understand the plight of the cool kids who have jobs and families and lives (who happen to be rewarded offline for those offline activities... it's not like they have to go without positive reinforcement without having MMOs catered to their lifestyle) wanting to fit in with losers like myself by logging in to a game where they can pretend to have a meaningful existence in addition to actually having one.[/sarcasm]

I dislike the training and advancement system as thus far described very much. My character will not get any better at what he does in return for actually doing things. Adversely, I can develop skill just as fast by logging off and playing some other game, watching TV, or just about anything else. In essence I'm actually getting increased reward for NOT playing PFO, because I get all my PFO reward plus whatever else I do that rewards me for actually participating.

Additionally, since this model is basically letting people have X amount of advancement in return for X amount of monthly subscription fees, eventually it will become obvious that the most responsible business decision is to stop requiring people to wait for their advancement and just let them have as much as they can afford to purchase, as often as they are willing and able to shell over their money for it. Then PFO just becomes another Free-to-lose/Pay-to-win game in a sea full of them.

I don't mind a system where advancement is throttled to prevent people from maxing out their level, grinding end game for awhile, then getting bored and moving on and/or selling their account. That stuff is just as harmful to a game's long term viability in my opinion.

I know my suggestion will fall on deaf ears, but even so, the compromise I would advise is a system of use-based advancement (not rewarding obnoxious things like jumping over and over for the sake of grinding skill like in Elder Scrolls) that throttles the increase of skill per use by implementing diminishing returns per time period. If you practice a skill over and over and over as fast as you can spam it, you'll get one or two normal gains, then little to nothing. If you use a skill once a minute, you'll make regular gains for a couple minutes and then it will taper off until the next hour, repeating the process to periods of days, weeks, and months. So instead of grinding things really fast, your best way to learn is to do things repeatedly over longer periods of time. Kinda like training and practice in real life.

Balance the diminishing returns, and then the daily crunchers, weekend warriors, and no-lifers will all see meaningful skill gains in return for their efforts, with those who spend more time playing having more opportunity for diversity, but little or no more potential for gaining more raw power. You will also not have anyone being rewarded for not playing, which ends up devaluing actual participation in the game.

If my most effective means of participating in this game is to not participate, I'll do exactly that, and go play something else without paying a subscription fee to a game that doesn't want me.


GrumpyMel wrote:
I think it depends alot on the expectations the game sets up toward gear. Is gear a part of the characters identity..i.e. "I am Arthur this is my sword Excaliber".....or is gear simply a disposable tool that is used to achieve some end "Col. by the time I...

This covers a large portion of the matter for me. If I put a lot of time and effort into finding a particular piece of gear that really matters to me, I don't want it to be doomed for the scrap heap twice per subscription period. I also don't want to spend my first hour of play twiddling my thumbs while the local Crafter Mafia gets around to fixing my gear so I can go out and loot enough stuff to pay for tomorrow's bill for the same thing.

It seems to me as if a lot of focus is being applied to "Crafters got the shaft in previous games, so we have to make PFO a game for Crafters to have fun with, and then try to make it suck as little as possible for everyone else after."

Nihimon wrote:
As for planned obsolescence, it's not really a "jerk move", it's more a practical solution to the fact that technological progress will render most things obsolete anyway, so there's not a whole lot of point in spending $1,000 making a mouse that will last hundreds of years when it's going to be obsolete in 20 years.

If obsolescence comes about because better things are available, then that's fine. If my mouse stops working because it was designed with a virtual time-bomb to guarantee repeat purchase, that's entirely different. Most people's iPods are left forgotten in some desk drawer not because they suddenly stopped functioning, but because their owners are weak willed people who fell prey to the marketing drive that made them buy something newer.

I would hope that new abilities and effects will be added to the game as time goes on (and coding and playtesting allow expansion of content). With a system where nobody is even allowed to reach "mastery" of a particular archtype for two and a half years, I think it's safe to say that there will be a consistent demand for new gear on a sufficient basis to keep dedicated crafters just as busy as any other archtype without storing our gear in an acid bath.

Let me try to offer another perspective with a real life example. I use a Microsoft 5 button trackball instead of a mouse. It fits my hand perfectly and doesn't cause the cramping and pain that other mice and trackballs cause. I've been using this model for over 10 years, and I've had to replace it once. Yes, time and constant use have degraded it's performance slightly (some days it has a tendency to trigger a left click upon both press and release of the left button). I have to clean the fuzzies and dirt buildup trackball slot occasionally. It's reasonable and realistic that wear and tear over the past seven years have required this (This one has lasted longer than the previous because I take better care of it and don't allow others to use it). I'm constantly on the lookout for others because Microsoft doesn't make it anymore, or anything near enough like it that I can find. I do not look forward to the day when I have to pay somebody probably 2-4 times the original price to make repairs to it, which will have to happen eventually. Where is the difference between this and item degradation and repair that I seem to be railing against in the game? Seven Years - And I expect more many more years before it's completely unusable. Even if I have to have it professionally repaired a couple times, I would like to still be using this after 20 years. If I had to take it into the Startech for repairs or professional cleaning every month though? I'd find something else that lasted longer. If I couldn't find anything that didn't require that level of professional maintenance, I'd either make something myself that could, or I'd more likely lose interest in using the computer as much as I do, and go find some other way to spend my time.

In my view, how much something matters and how disposable it is are of immutable inverse proportion.

I know this makes me a fringe minority in a world where cars, homes, jobs, clothing, friendships, marriages, and even beliefs and ideologies are all disposable. Being in the minority makes me a poor sales demographic, but it doesn't make me wrong.


DalzatheAzure wrote:
And I personally think it would be weird to see a wizard running around in robes and pointy hat saying he's a fighter for roleplaying purposes...

Reminds me of this.


Nihimon wrote:

I think it's a dead-end road to discuss things like "no common language" since PFO is going to be going for the spirit of Pathfinder, which includes common as a language.

I'm also very skeptical of any suggestion to have some skills advance via use rather than the normal skill progression system. I actually think it makes perfect sense to require us to choose to train in a language, and for that training to occur just like the training we select to get better as a Wizard.

True, however I just can't bring myself to be very supportive of an advancement system where I learn to get better at things in game by logging off to play WoW or watch TV... It's as nonsensical as gaining proficiency in fishing by killing orcs.

I understand why they want that sort of advancement, however, there's no inherent need to shackle every aspect of the game to it. Of course we could just say, "It's a game, who cares? there's no actual need for different languages anyway. It's just a niche desire... like crafting, or crossbows, or any magic or other aspect of any MMO that doesn't translate directly into healing, DPS, crowd control, tanking/taunting or the buff/debuff of one of these."


Delbin wrote:
I wonder how it would fit thematically. One doesn't go into people's shops and read their books.

Tell that to my local used book dealer :p

I really like this idea. However, in addition to getting a greater volume (which hopefully includes more detailed information as well) of information at higher skill level, I would also like to see better sorting options opened up. Not only being able to see what's for sale in this hex, but what swords are for sale in this hex? What swords are for sale in this hex that have a +3 or better enchantment? Or for other knowledge skills, What do local critters offer as loot and harvested resources. What have miners pulled out of the ground lately in this hex? What demons are not resistant to fire? What undead create spawn?


Tarondor wrote:

I completely agree that a customize able UI is a must, and that the ability to port the newly customized settings across characters is highly desirable.

I also agree that macros are something I very much dislike and do not want to see in the game. Not because of the sorts of players who like them (I'm sure they're all lovely people who like fluffy puppies), but because they reward the full-time player and penalize the casual player without the time to develop, find or use them.

They're exactly the reason I've always avoided WoW. A game like LOTRO, which disallows macros, is far more appealing to me as a casual gamer because it doesn't feel as if the full-time players don't have some cliquish advantage that will always separate their characters from mine, particularly in a PvP game.

I don't consider myself to be at all a lovely person, though I am somewhat fond of fluffy puppies... in moderation.

First off, How is it bad that people who play are rewarded for playing? People who have lives outside of the games they play are rewarded for living those lives. It sounds more as if you want to make sure that people who have nothing better to do than play games all day are punished for doing so in some effort to reveal how they're wasting their time.

As for me, it's all a matter of accessibility. If I cannot customize my control interface sufficiently to play in a manner that I find comfortable, I just won't bother with the game. There's other ones out there that are capable of suiting my desires in that regard. I'd like this game to be better than them, but if it can't manage my minimum requirements, then it holds no value to me no matter what else it ends up doing right.

I'm sure you think your post is just about standing up against bots or something... that would be great. But when I read it, I'm seeing someone who wants to restrict or exclude my participation unless I'm willing to conform to your playstyle and personal values.


To make everything perfectly fair and balanced, we have to give everything the same stats, same capabilities, and same capacity for graphic appeal... then it's just a contest of ping rates.

I think the inherent nature of traditional hit point systems makes many folks forget that the durability of fighters is a capability that mages often lack. There are also potentially areas and individual curses that can disrupt, inhibit, or completely disable magic.

Magic, in most systems, is also limited to short bursts of great power, whether it's a limited number of memorized spells in a Vancian system, a pool of spell points, or some sort of occult feedback that causes the casting of spells to risk harming yourself and making you unlikely to use magic except when it's most needed. Magic Users often run out of spells, Swordsmen rarely run out of sword. (For the purposes of a game however, I do greatly prefer the Pathfinder rules over D&D regarding level 0 spells having unlimited use. I hate to see a character become completely useless with his chosen profession at any point)

I would like to see the means by which magic is learned be difficult and inconvenient enough that only the most dedicated can truly master it, but I'd like to see that dedication rewarded with the capacity for acts that would seem miraculous to everybody else (I especially feel this way about magic healing, but that's for another topic). I would like to see most people "settle" for a lesser effect that can be gained more easily from a mundane source.

This does not mean that I want non-magical combatants to be just a slew of spear-catchers that march to their inevitable doom. Highly skilled fighters and rogues should be capable of acts that are similarly heroic, but not unbelievably outside the capacity of mundane realism. Think James Bond or Ethan Hunt, or Conan... These characters are vastly more capable than their rank and file contemporaries, and reflect a level of training and talent that most will never achieve... but their not breathing fire or shooting lightning bolts from their backsides either.

There is an inherent balance between high level mages and warriors. It's just not always expressed well in every circumstance, and you will always have a propensity for seeing something someone else can do that you can't and being jealous, thinking they have some unfair advantage. Just try to remember that unless they are suffused with overwhelming arrogance, they're probably looking at you and thinking the same thing.


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I kinda like the idea (much like in the tabletop rules) that you can summon as many as you can summon, but that may be more than you can actually control.

I would love to be able to make a necromancer that just keeps spamming animate dead to create a zombie horde. It should probably require me to save up a lot of resources in order to do however, so I'm not making a new horde every day. Then I'll just save it for special events, like holiday celebrations and weddings :)


Onishi wrote:
Starhammer wrote:
On the matter of item degradation, I'm in favor of it to an extent. Higher quality items should be less apt to wear out with minimal maintenance. And maintenance of gear should be on the very low end of crafting skills, so that nearly anybody can, if they choose to, maintain their own gear and reduce the necessity of taking it in for repairs all the time. I don't mind being penalized for neglect, but I don't want the game to harass me constantly about needing to have my stuff taken to some master craftsman every time I get in a fight. Crafters should be important and valuable, but not a mandatory checkup every time you turn around.

Then how does that, prevent crafters from becoming obsolete after everyone has the top tier of items. The next batch of players will come with their own crafters... so a top tier crafter is basically out of work short of one or 2 people who are too lazy to maintain their own gear. Or they will have to go after the next group of players, meaning that the next groups crafters, are out of luck as the more advanced crafters will force them to sell at a massive loss until they catch up.

Actually if you'll read the thread I linked earlier, one of the main suggestions was weapons having 2 portions of repairing, maintinence that can easilly be done by the owner, measured in a percentage, but only serves to Slow down degredation of a weapon, A proporly maintained weapon should last roughly 2 weeks of active use before needing repairs. Now repairs should cost at least half of the material cost of the weapon would be, and must be done by someone capable of crafting that type of weapon. Another idea that was proposed, was allowing overmaintaining, the ability to oversharpen a sword, making a weaker sword do more damage, at the cost of it taking more durrability damage per hit.

One extra thing this method will do, is it will make people think twice about using their best weapon for all purposes. Say person X has 3 weapons, one that say is 10 damage, the...

Sorry, but I don't have any interest in being forced to support my local crafting guild any more than I care for being legally required to pay whatever insurance and pharmaceutical companies feel like charging in real life just because alternatives aren't allowed. Frankly, the system you describe sounds to me as though it highlights the idea that our (characters) lives are safely expendable but our best gear should be of utmost importance to horde away in safety until a significant enough threat comes along to warrant risking our "precious"... Frankly, I'd rather just say "Sod the hassle" and master unarmed combat.

I shouldn't have to be taking my magic sword in for a tuneup every 1000 kills to avoid it breaking down on the side of the road.

On a related matter, I enjoy a well implemented crafting system, but I don't have any interest in servicing people's goods just because the game requires them to tolerate my unrequested assistance. I want them to come to me for the best I can give them, and I want to be able to say, "Hey, this sword won't break before its wielders will has broken first". Also, As a crafter, I want to make things. I want to experiment and invent and craft items that blow my mind. I don't want to sit around hammering the dings out of somebody's stuff all day, and when I'm done with that, if I'm still awake enough to keep playing, then maybe I can try doing the fun stuff.

If crafters can't keep people interested in their goods without the crutch of a game system corroding everything like a new car at the beach, then there's a more fundamental flaw in the concept than will be addressed by some communist job guarantee.

Think about stuff we use in real life... you pay 10 bucks for a cordless drill at Harbor Freight, then yeah, it'll probably break down (most likely the power supply will stop holding a charge) within a few months to a year. You spend 200-300 on a high end Makita or something, and if it breaks down in less than a year, the company better be providing a replacement with free shipping. Like any adventurers gear, a modern professional expects that his tools will last long enough to be worth the investment. Yes, it's important to take care of your gear in either case, but planned obsolescence is what's made the automotive industry into a money-grubbing joke. Even with perfect maintenance, a new car is due for the scrap heap in a decade or less, but those cars made 40+ years ago that have been reasonably taken care of are still running as well as ever and will be doing so another 40 years from now, barring legislation of mandatory disposal.

How would you feel if you had to get your iPad a hardware upgrade or at least "manufacturer approved maintenance inspection" every 2 weeks? How about if you were expected to buy a new box copy of an MMO every time there was a patch or update? These absurdities are on par with having a high quality steel blade that needs to be overhauled every two weeks, much less a magic blade.


DMDragon123 wrote:
It's funny....in anticipation for this game I found myself relogging on to DDO and trying to recreate one of my characters that I've been using in a current campaign named Dorian Swift. The name instead came out to be something like Doreaeen Swift...and I was thinking to myself...if I want to play a character named Tim, and my friend also wants to be named Tim...WHY CAN'T WE BOTH BE TIM?! He has a different last name than me so that's how we tell each other apart not whether or not our first name is different! I fully support the aforementioned list!

Agree wholeheartedly. Sometimes I'm fine with a goofy/weird spelling for a fantasy name, but if that's not what I'm aiming at, I don't want to be railroaded into it just because one of thousands of other people has similar taste in names for what may be vastly different characters.


World size looks like it will be plenty sufficient to manage population. The concern is large gatherings of characters that must be tracked and drawn, especially during "events" where lots of people are likely to show up in the same place, or worse, a malicious flash-mob intending to lag-crash lower end systems* and generally disrupt play in otherwise popular social hubs (*perhaps that would be a "Crash-Mob"). Sure, won't be a problem if everyone is playing from the terminal in their NSA/CIA cubicle, but it's a technological aspect that has to be accounted for to make a functional game that doesn't require the most up-to-date hardware available.


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I really enjoyed some aspects of the SWG language system. I liked that if you had some skill in a language (expressed as a %) that percentage of something said in that language would be understandable, and the rest would be garbled.

I did not care for the fact that you could, with the ease of a few mouseclicks, just teach any or all languages you know to another character. While it may have encouraged a new player to seek out someone with language skills, this was easily done with a general yell in the starter spaceport, where someone you never had to see again could activate a macro and you're suddenly a polyglot.

I would love to see something similar done, but instead of just being able to teach a complete language outright, I would prefer a use-based skill system (similar to UO) that makes a skill check every time it translates or partially translates a statement in another language for you. (It would be limited to only making so many checks in a short time segment, and slightly more in longer time segments, to discourage quick-grinding... Something to the effect of a maximum of one check per minute, 30 checks pr hour, and 360 checks per day, and so on) Each check allows for a minimal improvement in skill (again, like UO, with larger gains at lower levels and smaller gains coming slower as you approach mastery). As you improve in skill, you begin to understand more and more of what is being said around you. You could not, btw, increase your skill in a language to be higher than the people speaking it that you're learning from. Wouldn't want a couple guys with .01% proficiency in Elven to just jabber away until they'd somehow mastered a language they'd barely even heard used... They'd practically be creating their own language doing that... more on that later.

Now for the interesting/controversial parts, muahahahah...

1st off, no "common". Characters begin with a racial and/or geographical language (or maybe even a geographical dialect of a racial language that qualifies as partial proficiency with the base racial language and any of its offshoots). Some characters may not be able to speak coherently to each other right off the bat. If you really want to play with a buddy from this guild you heard of, just be careful to pick the correct starting language and it'll be fine. They'll still learn other languages with exposure to them, it'll just be a gradual development that takes a little while.

2nd, this can allow for player created languages. Your settlement, or guild, or RL family members could "create" a new language skill (generally just by selecting a new generic language skill and giving it a name, such as Tony's Totally Legitimate Shorthand) and then deciding if it is learnable by anyone who hears it (they get to make skill checks as you speak in their vicinity), it can be learned by anyone but is difficult for outsiders (You get reduced opportunities for skill checks if you're not part of the same guild/etc.), or it is a "private" language, and only selected individuals or those of sufficient guild rank can learn it.

I'm sure many will see this as an unneeded complication and a waste of development time that could be better spent on their pet projects. That's fine, the idea isn't really for them anyway. It's for everyone else who thinks "Oh wow, that could be really cool! My guild could actually have our own in-game language, and we don't have to go learn Klingon or Zimbabwean to do it!"

To address the potential of player segregation by language in starter areas, I have a couple points. First off, if there are multiple starter areas, the game could suggest starting languages in order of local popularity. That way, you have some forewarning that you may have a more difficult time if you choose a particularly esoteric starting language (or it could even assign your starting area based on the language you chose, guaranteeing a greater likelihood of easy communication early on, while making distant lands even more exotic). Second, with the rapid advancement at low levels in the proposed advancement system, even if you didn't know any languages around you, you'd start to pic them up fairly rapidly, and should have at least enough to manage simple communication with most folks inside a short while, quicker if you actively attempt to communicate with people, the more experienced of whom are also more likely to have some familiarity with whatever starting language you chose, providing incentive to meet and associate with people who can understand you.


Nihimon wrote:

I think I see where you're going with this Starhammer. If I'm right, it ties in with something I've been thinking about for many years.

Basically, one of the problems in computer games is that the game doesn't really know what you're trying to accomplish, unless you're actively trying to complete the objectives in a quest.

My solution would be to develop an elaborate system where the player can specify detailed motivations and current objectives totally unrelated to PvE/Theme-Park quest systems.

For a very limited example, I could specify that my Wizard is seeking out the Detect Thoughts and Locate Object spells. I could also specify that I'm distrustful of Gnomes.

This makes it possible for other characters to detect my motives and thoughts, and even makes it possible for the game to reward me for completing my objectives, if that's appropriate.

Yep! You get it.


Onishi wrote:
Starhammer wrote:
Gildur Anvilfist wrote:
This sounds like it could be really immersion breaking and, frankly I'd personally prefer to have more servers if 1000 people showing up in the same area at once becomes a real hazard.
It's no more immersion breaking than having a user interface in the first place. It works just fine in existing games like Champions Online or DDO, both of which are free to play, at least enough so that you could see how it works if you don't mind downloading the client overnight...

The goals of DDO and the goals of PFO are more or less converting 2 different halves of P&P to the MMO side. Both at the same time is imposible from a technical standpoint.

DDO's goal was specifically a PVE game, to do dungeon crawls as deeply as possible, as well as to set the generic rules and leveling as similar to P&P rules as possible.

PFO's focus is on the persistance half. IE when X dragon is killed by someone, X dragon is dead forever, a new dragon may appear randomly somewhere else in the world but X dragon is dead. The dungeon that X dragon was found in is cleared, gone. If jim builds a house, Jim's house is there for everyone to see until or unless someone else tears it down.

Second difference is PFO is less focused on developer created PVE content. There will be some, but the majority of the focus of the game is intended to be random created things, the players are intended to be the primary source of content, whether that be their conflicts, the goals they are wanting to accomplish together, etc...

I do believe you're missing the point of what I'm talking about. I'm not suggesting that PFO should replicate the purpose of DDO in any way, I'm simply extolling the value of a single piece of technology used by DDO, CO, and likely other games (CoH has a more clumsy variant) that allow population in a single in game area to be graphicly segregated for the necessity of computer performance issues, without requiring that the game population be segregated into different game worlds (or servers, or shards, or whatever) which creates the above mentioned
Arbalester wrote:
"Oh, you play LOTRO? I do too! What server do you play on? Oh... any server other than the one I'm on. It's almost like we're not playing the same game, then. Damn."

problem. We could pack everyone in like crowds at a convention, and lag would guarantee similar penalties to movement and perception, which I'm sure some purists would love, but it's otherwise impractical since first and foremost this actually has to FUNCTION as a multiplayer computer game.


Delbin wrote:
I hope that fighters and the like will have analogues to magic when appropriate. A mending spell would have the same effect of a fighter using a repair skill, for example

Actually, that sounds way to much like D&D4E for my taste, with "skills" and "magic" having the same game effect but just slapping a different name on it to appease a class style. Magic should be... magical. It should be wondrous and fantastic, and offer advantages that cannot be attained without it. While a crafter may be able to repair an item as quickly as a "Mending" spell, it should require more time, specialized tools, and so forth. On the other hand, Mending should only fix minor damage... good for maintenance and minor repairs on the road, but not useful for severely damaged items, or fabrication of items (which may be done with more powerful magic, but still require a craft skill to do competently).


I like the idea of player operated local auction houses. It's not much different in execution from the "mall" concept as it played out in SWG, and gives multiple crafters within a player settlement a more convenient method by which to sell their goods, while also providing a marketing benefit to the settlement as a whole.


Gruffling wrote:
Starhammer, not sure if you've noticed, but your equipped gear will not be touched by the process of looting or destroying your carried items.

Ahh, yes. That I had not noticed, and was under the impression that once looted, you were back to your skivvies and whatever you had stored in a house or bank.

Gruffling wrote:
Also, they idea of looting a clearly personalized weapon or gear from a Orge's bags is, quite frankly, totally awesome.

Thanks :) It's an idea that I think helps to create a sense of interconnection between the players in the game, even if they never encounter one another personally.

Valkenr wrote:
The idea of destroying items is to take items out of the game, if you don't you will reach a point where crafting is in very low demand, because there are so many items floating around.

I recognize the value in removing items from the game. The idea of occasionally looting "lost" personalized gear is that it would be looted from the ogre's bag instead of a game generated item that would have been there otherwise, not in addition to it. If handled through a mass inventory of "lost" items, as well as perhaps crafted items that are sold to NPCs (like selling a crate of longswords to the local garrison) distributed randomly (higher percentage chance in the hex the item was lost/sold in, with lower, but never quite zero, chance in other hexes as they become more distant) means that crafters, especially the more active ones, will gain renown among the playerbase in a purely organic manner. Ultimately, I think it would be wonderful if most or all of the game generated items were eventually replaced by player crafted items, using the quantity of items in lost/sold inventory to determine the probability that game generated treasure would be replaced by player crafted items of similar quality to what the game would have placed.

Give higher quality crafted items a higher chance to be found at greater distances than lower quality gear as well, reflecting that it's more likely to survive such journeys intact, and more likely to be in high demand for distant collectors. That way you also get the advantage of promoting commerce and communication between distant settlements. Perhaps if your character loots a particularly high quality sword crafted by a distant artisan, you will be interested in traveling to see if he has wares of similar quality available. A scroll containing an intriguing spell may inspire you to seek out the crafter and convince him to teach it to you (much more interesting than the traditional method of copy/pasta from scroll to spellbook, in my not-so-humble opinion). Find a wedding band that has been inscribed with the names of the couple and you may be moved to seek them out to return it to them or perhaps their next of kin.

It's one more avenue by which the game can make player generated content even more meaningful, and it doesn't have to create eternal stockpiles of gear that make crafting unnecessary. Quite the opposite I would think.

On the matter of item degradation, I'm in favor of it to an extent. Higher quality items should be less apt to wear out with minimal maintenance. And maintenance of gear should be on the very low end of crafting skills, so that nearly anybody can, if they choose to, maintain their own gear and reduce the necessity of taking it in for repairs all the time. I don't mind being penalized for neglect, but I don't want the game to harass me constantly about needing to have my stuff taken to some master craftsman every time I get in a fight. Crafters should be important and valuable, but not a mandatory checkup every time you turn around.

Also, on the mechanical side of things, I think crafters should have a bonus when repairing items they have crafted... something significant enough that it might be worth the trek to travel across the world to have a magic sword repaired by the original crafter, but not so significant that every masterwork item needs to have minor repairs worked out by the original crafter or risk being destroyed.


I am hoping, due to the nature of the genre, that magical transport like flight and teleportation will be available at some point, and not brushed under the rug in order to keep feeding the PvP appetite.

It shouldn't be there for everybody right off the bat. But it should be available to high power spellcasters, through magic items made by high power spellcasters, and for keeps and castles supported by (or supporting, as the case may be) said high power spellcasters.

The same could go for lower power spells that provide ambush protection to fast travelers, like invisibility or movement speed increases.


Also, I'm actually pretty ok with preset building sites (which is admittedly odd considering I'm usually the one clamoring for maximum control and options) as long as new hexes to build in are made available before game population starts to make virtual real estate overly scarce. The reason I'm ok with it is that I've seen what careless placement of housing structures can do to a game environment, and if pre-approved build sites are coded into the terrain, it helps to alleviate unwarranted congestion and avoids silly things like strange clipping issues.

Also, though slightly unrelated and just for better understanding my views on things, I would have liked to see a somewhat different restriction system used for housing placement in SWG. I would have liked to see a plot placement radius that was increased in size based on not only the size of the structure itself, but also based on the population density of the area. This would have made it made it more difficult to pack lots and lots of houses into that "ring" around planetary cities and other highly desirable locations. The plot restriction would not have applied when a house inside a player city was placed or moved of course, allowing the city to be laid out as needed, with whatever structural placement density was desired. This system could have applied well to UO too I believe. One housing placement system I greatly dislike is the "bases" in CoH, where you access your base through generic teleport hubs, and whether your base is a local building, underground tunnel, spaceship, or interdimensional pocket was limited in relevance to RP fluff. RP is great if done well, but fluff is just fluff.


Gildur Anvilfist wrote:
This sounds like it could be really immersion breaking and, frankly I'd personally prefer to have more servers if 1000 people showing up in the same area at once becomes a real hazard.

It's no more immersion breaking than having a user interface in the first place. It works just fine in existing games like Champions Online or DDO, both of which are free to play, at least enough so that you could see how it works if you don't mind downloading the client overnight...


Sounds interesting and potentially wonderful.

Some things I'd really like to see possible: Tree Houses, ala Swiss Family Robinson, Ewoks, Wookies, etc. Not so much a special type of building as a style for existing structure ideas.

I'd love to be able to have combination/hybrid buildings, such as an an apparent Inn that is also a Hideout (You get to case the travelers when they stop at the Inn, and then ambush them as they leave), or a Bridge that also has a Watchtower, providing good military control of a logistics choke point. Also, I'd like to have simple Houses/Cabins and such be available as well, for the solo players who aren't wanting to ambush people or put them up for the night.

(PS on the subject of Bridges: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2448754&postcount=428 )


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In a somewhat related matter, I would love to see player crafted items that are "destroyed" when not looted go into a reserve pool within the game's "inventory" to be doled out occasionally as random PvE loot. It would be an entertaining experience to find a sword crafted by your buddy on the corpse of a bandit, or in a dragon's horde.


Onishi wrote:
Starhammer wrote:

Thank you for the Autohotkey link. It looks promising. I'll look into it soon. Do you know offhand if it can kill ALT+F4 default functionality while leaving ALT & F4 as ALT and F4? If so, that would be awesome all by itself. This might open up a few other games for me that I otherwise don't care for much.

I believe it is as simple as adding to your script

!F4::return ; disable 'alt-f4'

Ahh, I think I read about this recently when I was looking for a solution to ALT+F4 for my SWTOR play, and if I recall correctly, the script sterilizes the functionality of pressing ALT+F4, but doesn't actually allow the "Shut Down Current Program" to be replaced with Right Hotbar, Slot 4...

Useful if you have a habit of accidentally pressing ALT+F4 because it works in City of Heroes, but doing nothing if you actually want to assign something else to it without redefining ALT or F4 as something completely different, then redefining something like Pause/Break as F4 and then having to go in and fix all the keybinds so they follow the progression of F1, F2, F3, Pause/Break, F5, etc...

Not quite the elegant solution I hoped for.


In a mostly unrelated note that is completely off topic, it would amuse me greatly to see a player city named "Ye Olde Sex Pits" created, and better yet, accidentally become a merchant capital.


Dynamic quest mechanics yes... limited to chatting around ye olde sex pits... not so much.

I'm talking about creating a database that can be accessed by the game to individualize your quest goals, assigned enemies, named interactions, and so forth, through an automated or semi-automated process, whether by developers, other players (if player generated content is functional, beyond chatting around ye olde sex pits), or even the game's random quest generator, if it has one.


That customizable actions thing from Ryzom looked interesting, a lot like the spellcrafting system from Elder Scrolls games (and similar to something I'm incorporating for a homebrew system).

I like to have options in in what my options accomplish just as much as I like to have options in how I implement my options!


BlackUhuru wrote:
I think numerous instances kind of goes against the sandbox design philosophy, separating players or taking them out of the game probably isn't a good idea.

Actually the numerous instances thing that I'm talking about is to specifically keep players in closer contact with one another... without setting your video card on fire when 1000 show up in the same place at the same time.

They all share the same broadcast channel, partied members coming into the "zone" default into the same map instance, and anyone who needs to change instances can do so easily and painlessly with a couple clicks of the mouse on the map controls.


Onishi wrote:
I can't quite tell from your post if you are unaware of, or suggesting an alternative to the decision that what isn't looted from your corpse, will be destroyed if your corpse is looted.

I'm aware of the decision that whatever is not looted will be destroyed. I even understand the need to destroy items to remove them from the economy, and agree that it should be done... Just not in such a widespread and haphazard fashion.

If there's a good chance of me being looted and losing everything (and I'm sure somebody will find a way to create a program that tracks players and puts a "Here be Treasure" marker on their minimap every time one dies) then there's little point to me even taking the time to walk back to my Husk. I may be overestimating the danger of opponents in security zones or the capacity of looters to find my corpse before I do, but I'd be a fool to base my expectations on underestimating these things instead.

I'm not a particularly social player in MMOs. I enjoy PUGging, and certainly enjoy getting to know a few people that I see regularly, but I'm not much of a joiner. I don't want to become another footsoldier in somebody else's guild, and be required to keep up with their website and forums and in game meetings. I also don't want to put the time and effort into creating, organizing, and leading my own guild. But in any game with open PvP, you're either part of a major guild, or your fodder for the ongoing gankfest sponsored by everyone who takes you not joining their guild as both a personal affront and an act of war.

I don't mind a good duel now and then, and I am ok with accepting that getting caught out in the badlands may cost me a few hours of work. On the other hand, I don't want to find that leaving the safe-zone around town will inevitably lead to having to spend a week grinding coinage in the newbie zone in order to afford some rotten leather and a rusty sword to cover up the skivvies I'm lucky to be left with for my arrogance of refusing to be a schedule accomodating footsoldier in the local raiding guild.


Sorry about the late entry into the topic, I'm just getting here.

I liked almost everything I read in the blog regarding character advancement. There's only one part that stood out as something I distinctly despise in every game in which I've encountered it.

Level gated equipment accessibility.

I'm sorry, are you saying I can't wrap my hand around the hilt of this dagger and jam it into somebody because my dagger skill isn't 25+?

I love the idea of a skill based advancement system, and I have a preference for use-based advancement, though I can certainly understand the reasoning behind not applied use-based advancement in an MMORPG. Grinding can be absurd to an outside viewer. (It's got some realistic application though, and hopefully I'll get back to that later without too much rambling in between). I despise the idea that a sword, axe, or crossbow (the original point-and-click combat interface) can't even be equipped, much less used, because I haven't attained sufficient mastery of the skillset. I could accept some Japanese weaponmaster refusing to let me wield his family Katana before I'd reached a certain mastery (if ever) but that's a cultural/RP restriction, not a mechanical one. Outside of movies where someone who's never fired a gun manages to spin in a circle because they weren't ready for the recoil on an AK-47 (makes me want to slap a director... with an AK-47) there's no good reason why most characters who have functioning hands should not be able to at least pick up and attempt to use the VAST majority of weapons. They may be abysmally incompetent, but they should at least be allowed to make the attempt. I'll make allowance for very weak characters with very heavy weapons to be an exception.

Ok, I get that this isn't intended to keep the alchemist's apprentice from wielding the butcher's cleaver. It's more likely that you want Bleedy-screamy, the legendary bloodletter wielded by Volknar the Sadist to only be used by someone who actually has some skill with daggers, and maybe Profession:Torturer. I understand the value inherent in that. I would propose a compromise however...

Instead of level-gating the ability to even equip certain advanced gear, level gate specific advanced abilities that the gear has. When an unskilled wielder holds Bleedy-screamy, it's more effective than a typical dagger, but not by much. As he reaches certain thresholds in skill level however, various advanced powers and attributes to the artifact become unlocked and available for use, whether it be through a passive increase in combat performance or some actively triggered special power, like debuffing Fast Talk skill to 0.

This approach also applies other advantages in that treasure can be handed out that only "seems" to be of mediocre quality to most people, but when appraised by someone with a high enough level in the appropriate skill it's true value becomes apparent, a happy surprise! (Though this is not necessary... Bleedy-screamy is afterall Legendary, and as such, most everyone knows what it's capable of in the right hands, unlike Excaliban, a sword that gives a character with high enough guild status the power to reinvite someone the guildmaster booted within the last 7 days, but otherwise just looks like a masterwork longsword.)

Oh yeah, back to Grinding. Repeated use of a skill or technique, even outside of actual combat is known to produce improved results during more important situations. This is why people practice and train, whether we're talking about martial artists, football players, or soldiers... I know some people don't want to watch people perform training katas in the streets (though it looks pretty cool when Tai Chi practitioners do that exact thing, which would make for a cool monk event every sunrise) but I would like to see proficiency rewarded for activity.

"Hey, I made an account, paid 30 months up front because I was about to file bankruptcy anyway, and then blew off the game after a couple weeks. Now 2.5 years later I'm back and I get to pick a Capstone ability! Woohoo, I'm Leet, Who's yo daddy?"

Yeah, that's a little exaggerated, but rewarding people for not playing is why we don't like bots. On the other hand, actually going out and getting in swordfights being no more likely to improve your sword skill than logging off and playing WoW is kind of a slap in the face to everybody who does go out and get in swordfights (in the game... People who go out and get in swordfights in RL are more than welcome to trashtalk my character's swordfighting skills).


First, let me apologize if anything I mention has already been covered. I'm just coming into this topic and there's a lot to read. I don't want to hope that I still remember my thoughts on these matters tomorrow before posting...

In general I like certain aspects of PvP as discussed in the Jan 18 blog. There are some specifics I would suggest to make the loss more palatable and the reward more exciting however.

As one point of order, just as those who heal, buff, or otherwise assist in your demise can have a bounty placed upon them and/or will be flagged as a criminal, I would suggest both these statuses be equally applicable to someone who loots your husk post-murder or in a "safe-zone" (with the potential looter of course being warned that looting your husk will show them to be allied with your killers and subject to repercussion by association). This should help alleviate the tactic of keeping a loot team lying in wait while a kill team does the wet work.

I would also advise separating gear into different tiers of importance, with more expendable items like consumables, ammunition, and smaller percentages of coinage being ranked at the bottom tier. Tiers progress upward in importance though medium tiers like quality gear, high value consumables, and medium percentages of coinage through high tiers consisting of major magic items and most or all of a players coinage. Some items will be flagged as "untiered" like collectable trinkets having little to no game effect, existing predominantly as souvenirs, and items of great importance to the character that have been enchanted at great effort and expense to not suffer from loot or item degradation (remember Bless scrolls from UO?).

If someone attempts to loot your corpse in a high security area, you lose some of your low tier items, and they get a chance to loot some of what you lost. If looted in a medium security area, you lose all of your low tier items and some of your medium tier items and they get a chance to loot some of what was lost (with guaranteed inclusion of some medium tier items if available). Finally in wilderness and badlands you lose all of your low tier items, most of your medium tier items, and some of your high tier items, and the looter gets a chance to loot some of what was lost (with guaranteed inclusion of high tier items if available).

One team of looters (including one-person teams) can only loot your husk once. If a character loots your husk, he and any character who he has been teamed with for some period of time (probably at least equaling the amount of time since the fight started that killed you, + 5 minutes) can no longer loot your husk. You can be looted by another team however, with loot being chosen from among that which was not lost or looted in previous lootings. No matter how many times you are looted however, you will never lose ALL of your items, giving incentive (reduced though it may be with the passage of time) to return to your husk and claim what is rightfully yours.

To prevent spawn/husk camping, I would give all recently defeated characters PvP protection while they return to their husk and for a few minutes thereafter, or until they participate in combat against another player or loot a husk other than their own, whichever comes first.

Finally, though I have no mechanic in mind at the moment, I would like to see some sort of "Good Samaritan Protection" for healers who unwittingly heal someone they may not have wished to, or who, in character reasons, will not turn away any in need of care. The latter could likely be developed through the awarding of merit badges for healing without reservation, and possibly awarded faster if combined with pacifist advancement. The former is just a situation where I can see some unfortunate healer getting lumped in with badguys because he came upon a bunch of players intermixed with local monsters, and threw out some healing to help prevent players from dying, without realizing the players were actually engaged in PvP and the monsters just happened to be there. You can't necessarily count, in the heat of combat, on having enough time to read the specifics of some popup flag that may be a warning that you're about to contribute to PvP, or which side is which. I can also see complications in assigning blame/bounties in battles that have 3 or more sides.


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No, I'm not asking what character everyone wants to make.

I would like to see an in-depth survey be an optional part of character generation (which continues to be editable after generation). Anybody ever taken a personality profile survey during a job application, where they look for traits to potentially disqualify you? Something like that, along with other "personal information" from the character's point of view. Things like names of family members, friends, and even rivals or enemies. Things the character likes and dislikes, or even fears or is strongly supportive of (like religious views or patriotism). Basically a vast data reservoir that can be drawn on by queued variables in adventure generation, whether controlled by the game or for player generated content.

This way, instead of seeing the same "So-and-so hasn't been heard from, go fedex them and then kill 10 rats" we could have more of our adventure content personalized in ways specific to our character, or even to the extent of our guilds and friends. BuddyFromNextVillage might have a nemesis that wants to hurt him by ambushing me while I'm protecting a caravan, or my guildmaster's daughter may be kidnapped, and everybody in the guild gets a notification that it happened and we have to go find her, possibly each getting different clues that will mean more if we work together.

The idea requires a more sophisticated level of mission generation coding than most contemporary MMORPGs provide, but can provide a reward of offering a vastly more individualized play experience. And of course, being optional it's not like anyone would be required to fill out anything more than a name for their character (which we do anyway). The system can also keep track of adventures we've taken part in, adding salient details to our "journal" and occasionally making use of that information for providing new adventure hooks as well.

Theoretically, with a sufficiently integrated character database system, the vast majority of random adventure hooks could involve other active player characters, giving players who don't otherwise play together reasons to search one another out to solve their own quests or learn some piece of lore that wasn't covered in a storyline that caught their attention. Seems like a great way to promote the social aspects of being a "multiplayer" game other than just making the important encounters too difficult to solo.


I also love the nickname idea, though that theoretically just falls into a variant of an /alias command (which is very useful for dealing with other longass /commands).

I like the idea of trying for one server, or at least one server with numerous instances, the way Champions Online does it. I want to be able to play with people I meet on the forums without having to do a server transfer and sacrifice playing with people I already played with.

I'm not yet all caught up on this "month worth of training" thing and what that amounts to, but I definitely want the capacity to make multiple characters. I like making characters. In CoH I can have multiple Super Strength/Invulnerability Tankers and still find each to be unique and enjoyable because it's a different character with a different background and personal story. If I find the game "consuming" enough, I'm not above shelling out some extra money now and then (hey, it's cheaper than a drug habit, or even going to McDonald's once a week) but I don't want to have to deal with the hassle of managing multiple accounts to do this, let me just buy extra training (or whatever it is) when I want it.


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Forencith wrote:
And...this does not mean you can just remove your armor and "carry it in your inventory" to prevent sinking...

All too true. If anything it should be more of a hindrance when it's packed away, since at least when you're wearing the armor it's weight is spread out and supported in a more efficient manner.

I like the idea of heavy encumbrance/heavy armor slowing you down and making it difficult or potentially impossible to navigate certain terrain hazards (minus magic). I'd love to see mobility modifiers make heavier armors just enough of an inconvenience that many people would choose to go with lighter armors (or none at all) and depend on dodge more than DR. Of course I've always been a believer that heavier armor shouldn't make you harder to hit, but just make more of those hits not matter (and possibly make you easier to hit).

Probably more of a pain to code than it's worth, but I'd love to see some types of armor and clothing (especially robes) be earmarked as "absorbent" and apply special game effects after being drenched in water, or acid, or minotaur urine...


Thank you for the Autohotkey link. It looks promising. I'll look into it soon. Do you know offhand if it can kill ALT+F4 default functionality while leaving ALT & F4 as ALT and F4? If so, that would be awesome all by itself. This might open up a few other games for me that I otherwise don't care for much.

I too played DCUO from launch, and a wee bit before... I have a great Batman bust to show for my very short interest in that game :( Beautiful graphics and compelling storylines, unfortunately shackled to a less than mediocre game. Just another example of how you can do so many things wonderfully, and drop the ball on something important that doesn't get enough attention during the marketing hype, and end up with "Dear God I hope we can make our money back with microtransactions if we go F2P."


There are a great many things I want from an MMO experience. First and foremost is a good control interface (http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz5fxw?The-Importance-of-the-Customizable-Contro l) because it doesn't matter how pretty the graphics are or how great the story is if the physical act of playing the game is cumbersome and unpleasant.

I want a game where I have as much control over my character as possible. If I must wear platemail because I have Full Plate equipped, that's fine, but I want an appearance editor that allows me to choose its style, colors, and accoutrements... preferably from choices I've unlocked through gameplay on this or another character (microtransactions are acceptable as an additional method of unlocking options, but never as a replacement for gameplay).

I want a wide visual range, from the heroic proportions of the characters in Spartacus: Blood and Sand or 300 to the gritty realistic mundanity of Season of the Witch, or most Bruce (Bruise) Willis movies. I don't need a dozen sliders for every facial detail, but I should have more options than DDO.

I would like a game world where "Good" and "Evil" even if discussed as such in the environment are a subjective experience, rather than hard coding anyone's morality into the game function. Rather than being focused on good guys vs. bad guys, I'd rather have a wide variety of factions and aligned factions, similar to the old Everquest system (not quite the same) where you are better liked by the people you help, and disliked by those you work against (though maybe respected by those you defeat often, potentially turning an enemy faction into an tentatively allied one if your heroism as an enemy is tempered by mercy rather than spiced with atrocity). I want the freedom to choose a wide range of actions with regard to different situations, but I want my actions to have consequences... I want my choices to actually matter, and not just in my forum fanfic, but to others in the world around me. The phasing system in CoH works pretty well for this, and if something like that were implemented from the beginning of a game instead of as a bolt on accessory, it could make a massive difference in the capability for dynamic storytelling.

I want (as I have heard is intended) a skill based advancement system. The class system never sat well with me, but GURPS was amazing (until the skill list reached critical overload). Classes are fine as a tool for people who don't want to deal with that many choices or that level of detail. I'm not one to insist others play the way I want to, just so long as I'm not forced to play the way they want to.

I want a system that allows players to create and use player generated content, whether it be dungeons, social events, overland adventures, crafting tutorials, or whatever. I'd like to see them implemented in a more organic way than forcing everyone to go to some artificial PGC hub though (like CoH's Mission Architect system). Use some sort of phasing technology instead perhaps. Give players the ability to choose to keep a completed PGC event as a permanent overlay in their environment if they liked it enough.

I would like to see an MMO where all but the simplest gear is player crafted. The cheap stuff should be sufficient to get you through basic play, but if you really want to shine you should have to craft your own gear or buy it from someone else. I could see certain items being an exception to this, such as loot on an important NPC or a magical artifact in a dragon's horde, but these items (or their NPC bearers) should be fairly unique, and not part of a standardized stepping stone on everyone's path to minimum acceptable gearscore. In fact, it would be great if upon slaying/robbing the head of the town guard, I found that he was equipped with a significant amount of player crafted gear. (Player sells a bunch of crafted swords to an NPC, and the game keeps track of the NPC redistributing them throughout the game world)

In a related matter, I would like to see a fixed amount of money and resources in the game. Rather than having money generated by repeatable content (much like the way our own government just prints more of it to give to itself), have treasuries maintain a dynamic quantity. If more precious metal coinage must be introduced, require that it first be mined, processed, and minted from mines with static quantities available, requiring time, effort, and organization to properly extract. If all of this is too complicated to bother with, then eliminate transferable wealth altogether and implement something similar to D20 Modern's Wealth score, representing a combination of cash, barter, credit, influence, and haggling aptitude. This at least has an added benefit of being difficult (impossible if correctly implemented) to farm out to RMT dealers.

I would also like to see context sensitive interaction nodes. For most people, a rock wall is just a rock wall and a static part of the terrain, but for a skilled miner it may show signs of being harvestable for resources. Allow sufficient skill levels to make various objects display one or more additional functions. The same may be true of having access to certain objects. You run across a wooden bridge to escape a group of orcs in pursuit, and if you happen to have an accelerant and firestarting gear, you get a glowie you can click on to set fire to the bridge and slow them down.

Customizable magic systems are another thing I'm a huge fan of. I never cared much for Vancian magic, but a spell learning and creation system similar to what was offered in The Elder Scrolls games would be excellent.

I'm sure there's at least dozens of ideas I'm forgetting to mention, but it's time to log off and got play some games instead of just talking about them...


I went and posted an opinion regarding control interface and macro systems before I ran across this thread, so instead of just copying and pasting, here's the post:

http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz5fxw?The-Importance-of-the-Customizable-Control

What some people see as "face rolling" is for me the ability to sit back in a comfortable position and use an input device that doesn't cramp my hands. I put a great deal of thought into developing attack chains that make best use of DPS, Endurance Usage, and Recharge time, and allow me to trigger up to 4 powers with the press and subsequent release of a button, the next press potentially being the same sequence or an entirely different one. I use "downtime" that I am not actively playing the game to write the files that support these keybinds (and used a great deal of it to learn the commands and format) so that my character, a highly skilled and powerful entity, can actually use its abilities without being crippled by my own lack of coordination and talent, which clearly lies somewhere other than WASDland.

All in all, in my experience, none of this provides me with a significant performance advantage, especially in PvP (which is the context in which I hear the most griping about it), just an improvement in personal comfort. If anything I get a mild disadvantage in PvP since my attack chain is somewhat static (Not completely of course, I have at least 6 buttons to bind different chains to, plus others that are used for activating toggles or other utilities).

If I'm arrogant, it's not because I use macros extensively... It's because I've learned that arrogance helps to overcompensate for lifelong self esteem issues that have been around for much longer than any MMORPG I know of.


I'm a big fan of keeping form and function as separate as possible. I don't like the idea of "classes" anyway, so I don't necessarily want people to look at my character and be able to determine my class by my physiology or attire. I can see how there is some importance in the fantasy genre to recognizing how a character is armed or armored, but I'd prefer to have as much control over my character's appearance as possible.

While I might be forced to be visibly wearing platemail if I have Full Plate equipped, I want to be able to go through the appearance editor and pick the styles, colors, and accoutrements of my platemail suit, preferably from options I've unlocked during play. Same goes for what my shield, or helmet, or boots, or tabard, or weapons look like.

Also, for uses of disguise spells, or armor that is magicked to look like clothing, I'd like to be able to even bypass the need to look like I'm wearing Full Plate. It would be even better if doing so were to cause NPCs to underestimate me, or be able to use such spell to avoid being recognized as someone who shouldn't be where I am, and not get automatically accosted.

The reverse is also true, as I might wish to play a wizard who's magical protection appears in the form of enchanted armor, or who wears illusionary armor to appear more robust (and like I'm not worth the risk to potential muggers) than I actually am.

I don't necessarily need a dozen different sliders to customize the tiniest details of facial structure... who's gonna look that close anyway? As long as I have a solid variety of variation (DDO and CoH are great, SWG was good aside from the inability to grow thicker facial hair than a 5 o'clock shadow).


I got started in my MMO hobby back in the UO days, but the game that has kept my attention for the greatest duration has been City of Heroes. I don't like how it does everything, and I can think of a lot of ways I would prefer it to be vastly different... but the Control Interface is one area of CoH that satisfies me in functionality where almost every other game I try (except to some extent SWG) leaves me severely disappointed to the point of becoming frustrated and quitting.

First off, I'm not talking about where I move windows on the GUI, or being able to give something a Hello Kitty layout like some other games. That's nice, and I like being able to put my windows where I want them of course, but what I'm talking about is what most people view as their macro/keybind system. Unlike what some people think, this is not a method by which you can turn your character into a bot and have it play while you go to work (ok, you probably could with the use of external products, and I know there was limited capability for this using in game macro code back in SWG), but rather the capability of being able to tell the game how it should react to what input you choose to give it.

I don't type very well. I have big fingers, never learned to type, and have to look at the keys to do so with any accuracy. I'm also painfully uncomfortable just being hunched over long enough to type forum posts. I'm almost 40, and having used computers more or less the same way for the past decade, I'm unlikely to go take a typing class and suddenly be just like everyone else who grew up on them. None of this qualifies me as having an interface disability like some people do, but it gives me some limited understanding of their plight, and makes me view a highly customizable control interface as an extremely important aspect of any game that I may be interested in playing for more than 10-20 hours total.

For my CoH gaming experience, I use an old XBOX S-pad controller (not 360), some nearly impossible to find drivers, and a program called Joy2Mouse2 that allows me to redefine joystick buttons as keyboard or mouse activity as needed. Add this to the tremendous flexibility offered by the City of Heroes keybind system (including the capability to have a button press load a new file and rebind itself), and I can play every aspect of the game aside from chatting in game and some seldom-used utility abilities (like costume changes or fast-travel teleport powers) without ever touching my mouse or keyboard.

This means that City of Heroes adapts to me and my playstyle, unlike most other games that expect me to adapt to a playstyle favored by the lowest common denominator. This is what I'd like to see from a lot more games in the future. This is what I'd like to see from Pathfinder Online. Furthermore, it has the added benefit of opening up accessibility to a wide audience of people with physical disabilities that prevent them from being capable of adapting to traditional control interfaces. That's gotta be worth something.


I'm firmly of the opinion that the wider the variety of options, the better. There should be as many ways as you can imagine to deal with a situation, and there doesn't need to be any way to guarantee that each is as efficient or effective as the others. Balance means giving everyone all the options they can imagine using, rather than reducing options to the lowest common denominator of popularity.


I have mixed feelings about it, dependent largely upon just how much functionality an auction relay is given. I enjoy going out to people's customized homes and browsing their vendors. That was a lot of fun in UO and SWG. I didn't always enjoy having to do so though. Most of my time spent browsing an auction relay in SWG was spent comparing stats on starfighter components, making notes, and determining which one(s) was uber enough to justify buying and RE'ing to put in my ship. I regularly found a few merchants that would consistently have better stuff for sale, but the process of going to numerous different houses across numerous planets, and possibly having to search numerous vendors at the house did make the shopping task a little more like real life work than I cared for.

I think I like the idea of a game supporting different forms of auction houses/auction relays. If you want to bring your goods to a town center AH and sell them, dropping them off with the automated vendor and letting the game have a go of it, I'm ok with that. I'd like to see it use a "double-blind" sort of auction system like City of Heroes, where both buyer and seller present their bids and the lowest selling bid is matched with the highest purchase order to make the sale. On the other hand, I like the idea of being able to set up a private vendor and sell directly at a set price. To use the public AH, you have to transport goods to the AH, then pay a consignment fee, then come collect money. Selling on a private vendor lets you set a price and tell buyers how much something costs ahead of time, and you only have to pay upkeep costs, and don't have to transport goods. I still like the idea of a marketing relay however, perhaps a portable inventory listing of private vendors you have visited in the past, where you can see what's for sale, and then go there to buy it, or perhaps pay extra to have it shipped to you.

From a functional standpoint, I do not like auction systems like DDO, where you place a bid, but you can be outbid anytime before the auction ends at a set (but not necessarily precisely known) time, like some half-assed ebay. It led to either having to bid far mor than an item was really worth to ensure victory, or to stand around in realtime rebidding until you hopefully won. Again, way too close to RL for my tastes. YVMV.

Ultimately however, I think a far more important aspect of the game's economy is the availability of wealth. When there is a potentially unlimited quantity of wealth available through environmental generation (or just having the government print more like in real life), it totally borks any potential stability for perceived value. In a Pathfinder setting, I would love to see the game have a set quantity of wealth available, mostly in the form of unmined precious metals and uncut gems, but also as a dynamic value in varying treasuries. None of this "everybody gets another 3d6 GP for completing a repeatable quest" thing that generates guaranteed inflation. Same goes for starting cash. Can't let people bypass it by giving starting characters 250gp that they can log in with, pass to a friend, then logout, delete, repeat.


Rhubarb wrote:
<snip>the police don't go around looking for ways to mess with people cuz they think it is fun,

Sorry to respond to something so far back in the thread, I'm really not trying to threadjack. But this statement concerns me to some extent.

Certainly not all police are just out to mess with people, but in my experience, some are. Some became cops because they got a gun and a badge, and the authority to bully people. All it takes is a couple bad apples like this to take something too far and then other officers end up being put in a position of having to takes sides with or against fellow officers who may have had their back at an important time.

I'm not saying that law enforcement should be disrespected in any way. Chances are, even that cop giving you a ticket for speeding or running the red light would risk his life to save yours. However, it's important not to hand over power too freely or unnecessarily either. Just because most of the homeless in San Diego are not constantly scouring parking lots to ransack my car does not mean I shouldn't lock my doors at the mall.

Power and authority can be put to great use when properly focused, but police are Human too, and therefore susceptible to the same flaws and faults (and bonus feats) as all the rest of us in that racial package. The same can be said for politicians and celebrities. I have my doubts about lawyers, but generally everybody should be subject to equal measures of respect and distrust, unless or until they individually prove themselves (guild/faction membership should not constitute proof to non-guild/faction members) deserving of differing ratios.


Bitter Thorn wrote:
Xpltvdeleted wrote:
Bitter Thorn wrote:
Xpltvdeleted wrote:
Orthos wrote:
Xpltvdeleted wrote:
NotMousse wrote:
Bitter Thorn wrote:
Can you see how this reasoning becomes a train wreck when you apply it to other basic human rights?
Hate to be rude and interrupt, but, which human right does invading a foreign nation's sovereignty fall under?
Must be really easy for somebody who doesn't fall into the racially profiled group to say...
Tread lightly. You're very close to falling into "you can only comment on this if you are one of the affected people", which is a stupid route to follow.
It has some truth to it. I'd be willing to bet that a fair portion of the people posting on this topic are people who wouldn't even be affected by the law under discussion. How can they argue the merits of the law if they cannot even begin to fathom the detriments of it?

I respectfully reject this line of thought. Let's take a deep breath, and not walk into an emotional trap.

Men can be pro choice, and non drug users can oppose criminalization and so on.

I realize those are just examples you've thrown out, but both of them happen to be personal choices that can be made by individuals (a man does have some say in an abortion--an opinion at least). Nobody chooses to be racially profiled, and TBH, even though I am in a unique position (relatively), I'm not going to even pretend that I understand what it's like to get pulled over for DWB (driving while black) even though my wife has to worry about it. Do I have more understanding than the average non-brown person? Yes. Do I even come close to having the same understanding as someone who is brown? No.

People can argue the merits of a law that doesn't impact them directly through reason. For example I can't envision a situation where anti gay marriage laws or anti poly-amorous marriage laws would impact me personally, but I think adults have the right to define their own relationships.

I...

I doubt Arizona's law is likely to have a direct effect on me in the foreseeable future, as I am a caucasian man living in Southern California. However, regardless of any direct effects to myself, I would take great amusement to look back on AZ SB 1070 in about twenty years and see that it was what laid the groundwork for the Native American tribes to forcibly deport me and others like me to Europe.


Bitter Thorn wrote:
I get a kick out of Penn and Teller being drug and alcohol free and opposing criminalization and prohibition. It tends to take the wind out of the, "You just want to get stoned." counter argument.

I'm in a similar boat. I've never taken drugs recreationally, and often pass on those that are considered medically justified. I'd rather keep my mind clear. But at the same time, I'm completely in favor of legalizing their use, possession, and even distribution. I know I'm a little more radical than some in this belief, but I don't care if we're talking about pot or heroin... as long as we're below the level of something that's gonna be considered a HAZMAT event if it's spilled in transit, I say have at it. If you want to pump various chemicals into your body, organic or otherwise, it's your body and I'm fine with that. As a human being, you're a renewable resource, so by all means enjoy your life the way you want... As long as by doing so you do not endanger the well being or freedom of those around you.

You see, I also support some of the other sides of the argument. If you fall off a ladder at work, I don't think it's unreasonable for your employer to require a drug test before paying your medical bills. I also don't think it's unreasonable to fire you for being stoned on the clock (though I'm sure some companies might perform better if they had a pot-friendly work environment... not all, probably not most, but certainly some). I think if you commit a crime because you chose to alter your state of mind, or if a crime you may have committed anyway is in some way made worse because you were high on something, the punishment for said crimes should be representatively harsher. "Because I was drunk," "Because I was stoned," or "Because I was coked out of my mind" is not a justifiable excuse for breaking the law. It's just worse in my opinion because you intentionally took some drug that you (probably/hopefully) knew might impair your judgment.

Ultimately I hope this goes through, and our law enforcement resources can be redirected towards people that actually endanger others in our society, rather than being wasted on Joe Stoner who's weed habit isn't getting in the way of his productivity any more than {possibly less than) his neighbor's perfectly legal WoW addiction.