Goblinworks Executive Founder
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So I wanted to gauge the interest in a Pathfinder Online Fan Site and do some *crowdforging* of my own to get feedback from the community on what features they would like to see.
The whole point is to have a site for community building without directly linking it to a specific guild. Also, once the game is released a place to not only get news about the game but to have community news about events and different things going on in the server.
Going forward, assuming GW puts the functionality in place, I would love to do things like live maps, maybe market info, etc.
I'm nearing completion of the initial site build and here is the current functionality:
- News posts about Pathfinder Online
- Pathfinder Online wiki (no association to a specific guild)
- Community Social features such as creating groups, events, adding friends, etc
- Forums: General PFO Discussion (Potentially guild specific forums.)
I'm also considering opening up a PFO Fan mumble server.
I'm *hoping* to have the site up and ready (for the most part IE still need lots of work on the wiki, better images from GW :D) by Jan 1st, but at the latest Jan 14th once the KS ends.
Please, please, please let me know your thoughts, what you would like to see etc. I know it's a little difficult without seeing the site itself but would still appreciate the feedback!
Goblin Squad Member
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One of the useful current things is to have media & information on the game, all in one place:
Eg Developer Video Discussion series, Interviews, Podcasts via various media links (youtube, vimeo, massively et al.) and so on. That's always a useful source for impressions and references to build into future discussions or refer to new interested players.
/my 2 cents.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Completely agree, however, the problem I've run into is all the videos are on KS not youtube which makes embedding and/or linking slightly more difficult.
Here are some links I found elsewhere that might be helpful:
Ryan Dancey Pathfinder & MMORPG Presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUPrYVkdbc0
Kickstarter Project Pages:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1675907842/pathfinder-online-technology -demo
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1675907842/pathfinder-online-a-fantasy- sandbox-mmo
Main Sites:
https://goblinworks.com/blog/
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/licensees/pathfinderOn line
Mark Kalmes interviews pt1-2:
http://www.feartheboot.com/ftb/index.php/archives/3018
http://www.feartheboot.com/ftb/index.php/archives/3030
Developers Lee Hammock & Stephen Cheney Videos from 2nd KS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmDktHi4CE8
http://player.vimeo.com/video/56173981
http://player.vimeo.com/video/56337748
http://player.vimeo.com/video/56387316
Ryan Dancey Interviews:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/12/13/an-interview-with-pathfinder-online s-ryan-scott-dancey/
http://www.linkdeadgaming.com/20-questions-with-ryan-dancey-from-goblinwork s-about-pathfinder-online/
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Goblin Squad Member
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Here is something I'm working on that you might be interested in:
((This is a topic I'm building for the Paizo forums I want to link to when recruiting people outside the PFO community. The point is to quickly sum up why PFO is unique / better than other MMOs.))
Pathfinder Online is a fantasy sandbox MMO by Goblinworks based on the Pathfinder tabletop game. It uses a unique process called "crowd-forging" to determine what features are implemented in the game, in what order. This crowd-forging process will ensure the developers never make decisions or waste a lot of time on features that are highly unpopular with their community.
Beyond the crowd-forging process Goblinworks has already promised a lot of features that are really interesting and in some cases unique to their game. For full details you should read the Goblinworks blog or browse through the forum posts made by some of the developers like Ryan Dancey, Lee Hammock, Vic Wertz, and Mark Kalmes. But here is a brief list of some of the highlights of this game:
1. No Grinding- Pathfinder Online uses a skill training system like that of EVE Online. You train skills by choosing what skill you want to train and allowing the time required to train it to elapse. So you don't train any faster farming mobs or spamming your abilities than you do exploring the world, role playing with your friends, or even being offline.
2. No Classes- Unlike other games that give you a narrow range of abilities as you train your class, in Pathfinder you gain levels in different archetypes based off what you have trained. PFO uses a Guild Wars style system with a limited number of ability slots you can fill with any of the abilities available to you. Archetypes have bonuses for using a build made up of abilities from that archetype but this is only to balance them with powerful multi-archetype characters.
3. Player Structures- Build your own homes, taverns, farms, even cities! The Pathfinder Online world will be filled with places players can use to build and customize their own homes, businesses and communities.
4. Freedom of Alliegiance- Unlike games that give you a few factions to pick from like Alliance vs. Horde, in Pathfinder Online you can join a vast array of organizations run by players, create your own organization, or even be a lone wolf! Fight for your friends, your ideals, power, profits, or personal freedom. The choice is yours. The alliances, the betrayals, crushing defeats and glorious victories. It's all real and meaningful.
5. More Than A Gankfest- Unlike other Open World PVP MMO's currently on the market Pathfinder Online actively discourages meaningless PVP. A meaningful alignment system that actually offers mechanical advantages to lawful and good aligned organizations, and a functional bounty system that allows the player to choose which players and organizations can collect the bounties they set discourages random and meaningless killing. Beyond this the admins are taking a hard stance against griefing, where players specifically seek to ruin the experience of other players, often through using game mechanics in ways that weren't intended. Griefing in PFO will be a bannable offense.
6. Real Battles- Large scale combat won't be the total chaos most MMO players are used to. PFO will make use of a formation system that gives groups huge bonuses for marching in unison and coordinating their ability usage.
7. Less Tedious Crafting- Crafting wont be done by sitting and watching your character create the same recipe over and over. First you build the structure you need for the kind of crafting you want to do like a sawmill, bakery, or smithy. Then fill out work orders that your NPC subordinates execute for you. Meanwhile you can go do other thing, or later in the games development there may be activities you can do to help the process along. PFO will also launch with both traditional resource harvesting and camp based harvesting.
8. More Meaningful PVE- NPCs aren't all just sitting there in groups that never move, never change in size, and respawn every few minutes. There will be random NPC infestations that escalate in severity if not dealt with. For instance a goblin camp left undealt with may turn into a goblin tribe that begins attacking your harvesting camps. Leave dragons, vampires, or giants alone long enough and they may attack your town. This creates a need to work together to deal with these threats and generates demand for players who train abilities specialized for hunting NPC types like dragon or vampire slayers.
9. All Players are Useful- This won't be like games where a new player has 49 health and a veteran has 49,000. All the attacks from that new player won't miss the veteran. A new player will be weaker, but still able to make a meaningful contribution to combat. As a sandbox where group sizes aren't limited, this means all players are useful, and don't have to segregate themselves by level.
10. Trade is Meaningful- There is no auction house, no system to mail all your items across the map, no bank full of items you can access anywhere. In Pathfinder Online players must manually transport items to their intended destination. Most shops are player run. And there will be goods more abundant in or even exclusive to certain regions. So merchants, traders, and even auctioneers are all viable professions.
If you are interested in this game please check out the kickstarter which will be running until January 14th. And also, check out our organization The Empyrean Order, a gaurdian/peacekeeper kingdom which is currently the largest organization in Pathfinder Online.
I'm of two minds about this.
On the one hand, I'd love a site with more flexibility than this single forum offers. Just keeping valuable information (Nihimon's Community Information thread and Valkenr's Blog Posts thread) up where new members can see them is a constant effort, and everything's jumbled together in one long list. (And on that note, an RP forum would be very, very nice.)
On the other hand, how many people are going to regularly check three different sites (here, fan site, guild site)? I'm afraid this might split the community, especially if it needs to be advertised/bumped the way we're already having to do for the above threads plus chartered company threads.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm of two minds about this.
On the one hand, I'd love a site with more flexibility than this single forum offers. Just keeping valuable information (Nihimon's Community Information thread and Valkenr's Blog Posts thread) up where new members can see them is a constant effort, and everything's jumbled together in one long list. (And on that note, an RP forum would be very, very nice.)
On the other hand, how many people are going to regularly check three different sites (here, fan site, guild site)? I'm afraid this might split the community, especially if it needs to be advertised/bumped the way we're already having to do for the above threads plus chartered company threads.
I know I check multiple sites a day (news / gaming / guild / fansites / blogs). Yeah, I need my fix for news/forums etc and I prefer a fansite at times as well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm of two minds about this.
On the one hand, I'd love a site with more flexibility than this single forum offers. Just keeping valuable information (Nihimon's Community Information thread and Valkenr's Blog Posts thread) up where new members can see them is a constant effort, and everything's jumbled together in one long list. (And on that note, an RP forum would be very, very nice.)
On the other hand, how many people are going to regularly check three different sites (here, fan site, guild site)? I'm afraid this might split the community, especially if it needs to be advertised/bumped the way we're already having to do for the above threads plus chartered company threads.
Gives us something to check when the Paizo boards are down... As usual.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are several reasons i would support such a site.
1) Wiki - important info at your finger tips (where to find resources, recipes...etc)
2) item database (ala wowhead if possible)
2) better forums. Having actual forums by archtype, alignment, crafting...etc.
3) a place to talk about the news thats not on an offical site.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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All great insight and input! Can't wait to finish up and get it public so it can grow and improve further.
As far as forums, what kind of breakup would people like to see?
Also if you could setup your own guild forums and a community group where you could post events and announcements how likely would guilds be to use that?
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Goblin Squad Member
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All great insight and input! Can't wait to finish up and get it public so it can grow and improve further.
As far as forums, what kind of breakup would people like to see?
Also if you could setup your own guild forums and a community group where you could post events and announcements how likely would guilds be to use that?
I have not yet decided on guilds so am unsure/not placed to answer. But if I was a non-player who found the web-site and happened to check it out: An easy to see list of active guilds and their variable states eg alignment, numbers, map locations etc is ALWAYS a positive indicator to my mind of a diverse and active community of a thriving online game?
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Goblin Squad Member
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For forums i think something like this
General
Crafting (equipment/resource subforums)
General class forum (with archtype subforums)
General deity forum (with specific deity sub forums)
general river kingdom (with settlement subforums)
alignment forums
merchanting forums (with weapon type/armor type sub forums, say one handed weapons and plate armor)
Also under merchanting forums a Want to Order sections so someone can put. want to buy 100 +1 longswords paying 10 gold. then a crafter or settlement can say, ill take that ill have it ready next tuesday.
off topic (with various sub forums)
In general im a big fan of subforums for specific things that fall under a general forum.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Fantastic news hearing of a fan site where all the latest information will be located in a wiki in a logical manner. Please have a proper table of content for the wiki. Really hate trying to find the correct information on wikis that don't have proper ToC.
Forums are bad for game information, as seen the last few days, there can be multiple threads discussing the same issue, where information in them are not the same. In other threads, people make comments on known information, only to discover that their comments are outdated as they based it on old information that they thought was the latest. Common problem resulting from a lack of a central information website (wiki, or what ever) where the latest version of information is only kept.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I've been pounding away on the wiki. Here is a screenshot of the Main page. Would love feedback on any other subjects that I may be missing.
All the items in some shade of yellow are articles I've already worked on/finished. Red is obviously things that are missing.
(PS thegeekenders.com is NOT the domain for the fansite, that is just a personal site.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like it.
Perhaps adding a section under war about sieges? Donation link?
Also perhaps one forum that is just forum stickies? thread/Posts have to be added by admins, up voted threads can get looked at to see if its good enough to add. Things like archtype guide, crafting guides, general guides. Just linking to the sticky in the appropriate forum space.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I like it.
Perhaps adding a section under war about sieges? Donation link?
Also perhaps one forum that is just forum stickies? thread/Posts have to be added by admins, up voted threads can get looked at to see if its good enough to add. Things like archtype guide, crafting guides, general guides. Just linking to the sticky in the appropriate forum space.
I like the stickies forum idea! Also there will be a donation link at some point in the future.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Don't expand the wiki with forum pages. Keep those for a forum.
Wiki should only hold game info, not info that has been posted by people on a forum, it will/might lead to skewed information. Keep it to game info only.
Agree, I took the stickies page more for a place in the forum where forum posts that were highly popular could all be gathered in one place rather than in a bunch of seperate sub-forums.
I love the idea! A Wiki will rock
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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As far as the Wiki goes, please make sure that we have a place for both current information as it stands officially along with a way for us to update the latest agreed upon revisions to a proposed or existing mechanic.
The only problem I see with that is who is the one that says it is an agreed upon revision? I would think it almost better to kelp that in forums, but if it makes sense we can surely add a section to pages for community feedback
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Goblin Squad Member
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You could pick a few of the more promenant PFO community members as moderators of such pages. Once most of the details have been hashed out, we get it pushed to the Wiki as a proposal page that is easily referred to in later posts.
Not a necessity, as surely over time it may see further revisions and alterations. It would help give a more cohesive picture if we are able to see a list of proposals all sitting right next to each other, rather than digging through hundreds of posts across several threads.
Chief Technical Officer
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Note that while Goblinworks does not have a Community Use Policy yet, there will eventually be one, and it will very likely be modeled on Paizo's Community Use Policy. If you can ensure that your fan site aligns (more or less) with that, that will help you out in the long run.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Dakcenturi,
I sure I not the only one curious about your title "Goblinworks Executive Founder" and you relationship to the PFO project. To me, you seem not to be involved in the actual process of making the MMO, but collecting information about PFO to create a Fansite for PFO at another host instead of the Goblinworks website. Or is it planned to move the Fan Site to official PFO site when PFO site is ready?
Just rather curious...
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Dakcenturi,
I sure I not the only one curious about your title "Goblinworks Executive Founder" and you relationship to the PFO project. To me, you seem not to be involved in the actual process of making the MMO, but collecting information about PFO to create a Fansite for PFO at another host instead of the Goblinworks website. Or is it planned to move the Fan Site to official PFO site when PFO site is ready?
Just rather curious...
"Goblinworks Executive Founder" is one of the titles given out for the Techdemo Kickstarter, just like "Goblin Squad Member" and I think there is one that is just "Goblinworks Founder," though I could be mistaken.
The persons actually employed at Goblinworks or Paizo have specific titles. Like Vic Wertz, who is the CTO of Paizo.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Correct, completely un-affiliated with Paizo/GW, just a supporter who believes in what they are doing and the know how to put a site together. The title is for the $500+ backers from the Tech Demo, of which there are about 110 of us, only 32 who will be in the alpha.
I want to keep the community strong once they move past the Kickstarter and have a dedicated place for new information that comes out, at least until GW get their own site up and running.
After that I still hope it will be a place where the community can post stories, organize events etc. Since it will be one server rather than many it is intended to keep the community together and strong while not being affiliated with a specific guild.
In fact I'm hoping that some guilds might even use it as their own base of operations, as currently when you create a group (which is moderated) it auto-creates a forum for that group that only that group can access.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I could volunteer to assist you with any details that might need testing. Although I desire a guild, I have been unsuccessful in tempting my TT gaming group nor my MMO guild to respond, as of yet. With this weekend being a payday, I hope (and pray) I can get one more backer for a guild!
But to that end, Dak, let me know what you need from me and I can send it to you in a PM.
Site looks good. I like it. :)
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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For all those chartered companies out there, if you don't want to bother setting up a dedicated site, feel free to utilize PFOFan.com to setup you chartered company as a Group with your own forums, events calendar, photo and video galleries.
More details here: Guild Setup
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Sounds good. Gonna have to join there. Feel free to use my google docs drawing I did kinda based on the FAQ#1 transcript thread. I'm slowly working on a prettier one. May help clarify how alignment choices of settlements and kingdoms can very much impact your membership. I think it's correct, one step off at each level. It's set to public sharing so you should be able to make a copy and modify it yourself as well. As more things need info graphics I'll stay on tap for those. Sometimes things are just expressed better visually. :P
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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@Dorje Cool thanks!
All, put up the first poll: Which *class* do you plan on playing?
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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@Dorje Cool thanks!
All, put up the first poll: Which *class* do you plan on playing?
Not a lot of votes yet but appears wizards are winning!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Not a lot of votes yet but appears wizards are winning!
This makes me sad. I refuse to be cookie cutter, but my first choice is a Wizard. We'll see when it gets closer to Early Enrollment.
Nice site so far, hopefully it becomes a good source of info throughout the crowdforging process. I wonder if posting on any external forums should be kept to a minimum though because the devs might not check them for ideas, etc.
