Goblinworks Blog: Closing the Gap to Early Enrollment


Pathfinder Online

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Grand Lodge Goblin Squad Member

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@Bluddwolf

How it currently works:

Recovering reputation: 20 hours game play indeed would be truly painful. But all you do is - log in, let the computer run - come back next day. My son has done this and no issue whatsever to get back next day to > -2500

So the whole formula depends on the difference of playing or being logged in to gain reputation. At the moment PFO doesn't (can't I guess) distinguish it. So 20 hours bad reputation is not a problem at all.

I'm not worried about that - GW will fix it one way or the other - but right now getting back rep is not a problem. It can be more painful to be teleported as you can't just stay logged in an come back later to be back where you started.

In regard to nothing to craft for crafters:

They have changed the formulas for refining a lot. A Pot Steel Plate +3 is 11 Steel Plates +3 - this would have been 35.2 coal and the same amount of iron total.
Now it is 81.4 coal and 81.4 iron and 22 ordered essence. 185 resources take a while to gather. And with coal and iron not at the same place it also means travel. I haven't even yet included encumbrance - or you have to craft it where you can get ore AND coal at the same time.

That leaves the amount of stuff detriorating when you die.
Gathering, running around etc. I die once per hour of game play. Less if I stay in town and craft - more if I fight escalatobs. So there is a decent amount of resources that 'dissappear'.

Off course a +3 doesn't make much sense anyhow as my skill only allows me currently to use +2 which makes it easier.

Off course I can play more cautious - travel less - only go to the hex close by, not fight escalations. But then I would also not run into any bandits as I stay where I am right now.

The alternative is - I just use the dropped weapons/armour. These are piled up in my vault. But I guess a lot of players are not happy enough to perpetually play with starter gear.

I don't see crafters becoming jobless any time even without PvP. The reason that there are mainly crafters in alpha is that non-crafters stopped playing because they couldn't get the equipment they want.

My son came back playing - when I handed him decent equipment - and he takes it for granted I replace it whenever he burns through another runespun robe +2 or needs some more + wands or + staffs.

Don't be fooled that there are big give-aways. They are done because players have tried out the system and have surplus and they expected a wipe. So they can as well give it away.

And as I said - the +2 and +3 gear did increase in price considerably. Not sure TEO would be able to make a +4 armour as easily now as they did a few weeks ago.

Goblin Squad Member

Basically, I would like for them to lay it all out on the table, so we can see exactly what is going on.

Goblin Squad Member

Saiph wrote:
Loke_ wrote:

So PvP only, corpse looting, corpse runs, esoteric level advancement, I'm not sure if I have any interest left to lose in this game. I wish GW the best of luck, I really do hope they succeed. Granted I consider multiplayer solitaire fairly boring, but the game mechanics left behind the way I'd like to play a while ago.

I've stopped telling others how disappointed I am with the game and started simply lending out my second account for others to try. I hope I can at least replace my wife and I for your player base.

Quite a bit of vitriol here. But I suspect it's just passionate fans...

Cheers.

This is definitely one of the oddest critiques I've read. Pathfinder Online has been advertised as a PvP game since day one with all of those things you "don't like" fully advertised in the Kickstarter.

I think it's great that you are offering your accounts for other people to try but I still don't understand your outlook? I think the only one you can blame is yourself.

You're not trying too hard if this is the oddest critique. ;)

I KS'd the tech demo and was the ninth pledge in my tier, both prior to mentioning PvP only. So no, they didn't advertise that day one silly. And I decided to keep my pledge after they did announce it.

My outlook? I don't like PvP, not quite sure how to make that clearer. I could use hyperbole if you'd like.

Blame myself for what exactly? Didn't realize I was laying blame on anyone.

Cheers

Goblin Squad Member

Loke_ wrote:

My outlook? I don't like PvP, not quite sure how to make that clearer. I could use hyperbole if you'd like.

Blame myself for what exactly? Didn't realize I was laying blame on anyone.

Cheers

Bottom line is that MMOs are not viable in the long term without PVP. In table top terms, try to imagine running through a level 1 campaign with level 5 characters and playing that for 6 - 12 months.

In your typical MMO, you could easily go weeks, months or even a year or more without ever losing to a PVE foe. The only real risk versus PVE is if you are solo.

Fortunately, you discovered that the game won;t be to your liking, before you've invested more time and money into it. To be honest, Skyrim is as much Pathfinder as Pathfinder Online is.

Good luck with your search for a game that is better suited to your taste.


^ yabut pvp isn't enough to make a game viable, either.

Open world pvp is a blessing, true. It's a different dynamic. And the idea of a sandbox is something driven by the players, but I still will keep saying it makes no sense to have a game that is completely driven by the players with no other content.

Also, the rep change is good, to speak on the blog. I think there need to be two reps. I don't think people should be able to kill you or that you should get guarded, but people should know you are a terrible person if you are always killing people and taking rep hits.

Maybe like an alignment rep that doesn't regen with time, or that you must regen doing other things, good deeds...!

I think this is nerf to would be summoning necromancers, though, because once you get get that flag for raising dead, you become worse than a lot of PKers.

Plus groups of PKers could run around and handle a lot of gatherers, taking turns killing. Should also be a penalty in rep (hopefully) for looting.

Goblin Squad Member

Besides being Pathfinder, what drew me to PFO was the concept of a Sandbox MMO with Themepark themes.

PvP will obviously be the driving part of the Sandbox which will include regular Combat PvP, Merchant PvP, Political PvP, and Settlement PvP.

But like celestialiar said above. PvP isn't enough to make a game viable either. At least not for me. That is where the Themepark aspect will come in. At the moment PvE content is not really that good but eventually when they start adding Dungeons, hopefully that will combine entertaining PvE with PvP.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

Bluddwolf wrote:
Loke_ wrote:

My outlook? I don't like PvP, not quite sure how to make that clearer. I could use hyperbole if you'd like.

Blame myself for what exactly? Didn't realize I was laying blame on anyone.

Cheers

Bottom line is that MMOs are not viable in the long term without PVP. In table top terms, try to imagine running through a level 1 campaign with level 5 characters and playing that for 6 - 12 months.

In your typical MMO, you could easily go weeks, months or even a year or more without ever losing to a PVE foe. The only real risk versus PVE is if you are solo.

Fortunately, you discovered that the game won;t be to your liking, before you've invested more time and money into it. To be honest, Skyrim is as much Pathfinder as Pathfinder Online is.

Good luck with your search for a game that is better suited to your taste.

A MMO without PvP is worse than a single-player game with co-op. But Everquest is still viable, and it never had mainline PvP as a feature.

Goblin Squad Member

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About recovery rate of Rep.

Why not base it on a factor a+bSQRT( ABS(Current Rep)) where a is a low number >0 and b is a suitable factor TBD.

It would have the beauty of allowing a kill now and then, as long as you stay well above 0 you bounce back to full reputation quite fast. But a killing spree sending you to -7500 would allow you rais from the gutter quite fast allowing training in not-so-fussy-places but getting above zero would demand walking the narrow parh for quite a while.

Goblin Squad Member

Bluddwolf wrote:
Loke_ wrote:

My outlook? I don't like PvP, not quite sure how to make that clearer. I could use hyperbole if you'd like.

Blame myself for what exactly? Didn't realize I was laying blame on anyone.

Cheers

Bottom line is that MMOs are not viable in the long term without PVP. In table top terms, try to imagine running through a level 1 campaign with level 5 characters and playing that for 6 - 12 months.

In your typical MMO, you could easily go weeks, months or even a year or more without ever losing to a PVE foe. The only real risk versus PVE is if you are solo.

Fortunately, you discovered that the game won;t be to your liking, before you've invested more time and money into it. To be honest, Skyrim is as much Pathfinder as Pathfinder Online is.

Good luck with your search for a game that is better suited to your taste.

EQ, WoW, DDO, etc have plenty of mobs that will murder you quickly. Get past the starter zone and you'll find a challenge. PvP exists, it just isn't the focal point.

I played Beyond Earth about 12 hours within two days of its release. There's plenty of great games out there, not worried about finding something else.

I'm simply curious to see how this game develops, I'm enjoying the ride so far. =)

Goblin Squad Member

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Maybe one of the reasons I "get it" with MvP is because in RL, my work centers around public relations and consulting for restaurants. For as long as I've been in the business most restaurants have gone through the exact same bell curve as AAA video games. All of the promotion and resources go towards a launch date at which time the press judges them and everybody rushes in to try it. Just like AAA games, restaurant launches tend to be disasters. The staff isn't oiled enough, the kitchen just learned how to make the dishes and the customers are pissed before they take one bite because they waited in line for 2 hours. The restaurant opens in a hole because they had to wait extra months paying rent to open and they often live or die based on the reviews they get in that opening week.

More and more of the veteran restaurateurs have moved in the opposite direction with ever softer openings. The restaurant opens with barely a facebook page and only friends and family are let in for an entire month or two. They won't even have a liquor license in place (the PvP of restaurants) and they serve a limited menu that constantly gets tweaked based on feedback. No media, no reporters unless they are friends. They let the crowd grow gradually and then host an official launch when they are good and ready.

Maybe it's the holistic economist in me, but I think all of this is the correct way to create a niche product. The only very real danger GW faces is that the mass media hates this format with a passion. It emasculates their power and debunks the fear myth they use as a selling point. Mass media has spent decades propping the launch/review dynamic and has a good portion of the populace believing the BS that this is the proper way to do things, because they would rather skewer their clients at "launch" than actually help create sustainable businesses who might dare to think they don't need advertising (bS again, everybody needs some smart $$ invested in advertising).

TL;DNR: If you think mass media's reaction to the first day of EE is a big issue, you are sheep.


T7V Avari wrote:

Maybe one of the reasons I "get it" with MvP is because in RL, my work centers around public relations and consulting for restaurants. For as long as I've been in the business most restaurants have gone through the exact same bell curve as AAA video games. All of the promotion and resources go towards a launch date at which time the press judges them and everybody rushes in to try it. Just like AAA games, restaurant launches tend to be disasters. The staff isn't oiled enough, the kitchen just learned how to make the dishes and the customers are pissed before they take one bite because they waited in line for 2 hours. The restaurant opens in a hole because they had to wait extra months paying rent to open and they often live or die based on the reviews they get in that opening week.

More and more of the veteran restaurateurs have moved in the opposite direction with ever softer openings. The restaurant opens with barely a facebook page and only friends and family are let in for an entire month or two. They won't even have a liquor license in place (the PvP of restaurants) and they serve a limited menu that constantly gets tweaked based on feedback. No media, no reporters unless they are friends. They let the crowd grow gradually and then host an official launch when they are good and ready.

Maybe it's the holistic economist in me, but I think all of this is the correct way to create a niche product. The only very real danger GW faces is that the mass media hates this format with a passion. It emasculates their power and debunks the fear myth they use as a selling point. Mass media has spent decades propping the launch/review dynamic and has a good portion of the populace believing the BS that this is the proper way to do things, because they would rather skewer their clients at "launch" than actually help create sustainable businesses who might dare to think they don't need advertising (bS again, everybody needs some smart $$ invested in advertising).

TL;DNR: If you think mass...

the sheeps provides meat for the wolves and wool for the shephards

CEO, Goblinworks

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I've been pretty public for 2 years+ that I think one of our big risks is adequately setting expectations for the start of Early Enrollment. The whole process is so outside people's prior experiences that they are likely to have trouble framing it in a context that makes sense to them. Witness the multiple threads here and elsewhere about whether Early Enrollment is a "beta", if Early Enrollment is a "release", etc. These are attempts to frame the start of play in familiar terms even though the actual process is new.

We just have to keep reiterating the idea that people are seeing this game in Year 2 of a 5 year development cycle. Most people have never seen a game in this state before. It's so far out of context that they don't know how to evaluate it on its merits. (And based on the comments some people have made that they think we should be "further along", a lot of people have no realistic idea of how amazing the progress on this project has been so far).

That will apply to the press as well. They have no mechanism to evaluate "Early Enrollment", despite having to grapple with Steam Early Access. The whole idea of starting to sell a product at this stage of development runs at cross purposes to a review culture designed to pass judgement on a completed process.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

Ryan Dancey wrote:
We just have to keep reiterating the idea that people are seeing this game in Year 2 of a 5 year development cycle. Most people have never seen a game in this state before. It's so far out of context that they don't know how to evaluate it on its merits. (And based on the comments some people have made that they think we should be "further along", a lot of people have no realistic idea of how amazing the progress on this project has been so far).

Perhaps it might be of use to compare the programmer-months on PFO with the programmer-months in Dwarf Fortress, or name a AAA project that has about the same man-hours invested (which will probably involve guesswork or inside knowledge), or finding a suitable completed game that had some multiplier of the time currently invested in PFO.

That has the risk of backfiring if it can be contextualized as cheap product at industry standard prices; I'm sure there are drawback I don't see.

CEO, Goblinworks

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Right now there are 3 comparables. Cryptic, Portaltarium and Chris Roberts Space Industries. If Camelot Unchained makes more public progress, I'd add them to that list.

Cryptic uses about 30 people to make an MMO, but they are using toosls paid for by previous development, including a huge amount of development paid for by Microsoft for an aborted Marvel MMO. So they can dedicate all the staff on a project to art, programming and game design and not worry about tools or infrastructure. Plus they have a separate pool of people for marketing and customer support, and for server operations.

I would estimate loosely that the investment Cryptic makes in an MMO before they start monetizing it, exclusive of marketing and infrastructure, is 3x what we have spent so far, and a year or more of time longer than we've spent, and not factoring the time/value of the Cryptic tools. They don't do MVPs (although I think a really strong argument could be made that Star Trek Online was an MVP.)

Portaltarium is about our size and they're spending about what we are spending. They elected to invest a lot of time and effort into interior spaces and dungeons, which they are monetizing by selling housing. From what I have seen Shroud is ahead of us in terms of UI and the aformentioned interior spaces, but we have a more robust single-server MMO platform, zoneless world, and a lot more character content (Feats, armor, weapons, etc.)

They raised 3x as much money was we did through crowdsourcing, and Portaltarium has some external funding that came to the company before it started work on Shroud. Plus they are a cohesive team who have been working together in this space for 20 years, with a history of process that I can only envy.

Our MVP is an MMO. My opinion of Shroud based on their public statements about their roadmap is that their MVP is a Neverwinter Nights-class "MO", designed for small groups of players and solo players with MMO style markets and maybe chat.

Chris Roberts has raised 10x the money we have spent. He has a hundred people working in several studios. They have invested a lot of that money into their art and their stuff looks gorgeous. So far he has released two modules: a hanger and a dogfighting system. As far as I know they have not started delivering client/server work - the dogfighting module is peer to peer from what I understand. I don't have any sense of what their path to an "MMO" experience is, but I suspect it will be 2-3 more years of work minimum. His MVP appears to be a series of modules with the theory they can be linked together into a cohesive whole at the end of that release process.

Goblin Squad Member

Speaking only as someone who has pledged to both games Ryan listed for comparing:

I pledged 1/4rd the amount to StarCitizen that I did to PFO but feel the game is far, far beyond PFO. Totally understand they have a budget that's an order of magnitude greater but I am still excited by their progress and the game path. Yes they are selling a ridiculous amount of ships for cash, but I am fine with that as they are not forcing ME to pick between paying a sub or falling behind in character development.

I pledged about 1/5 to SotA that I did to PFO. That game seems far, far ahead in development. Yes they do not have a seemless world on one server but that's a design decision they made early on and that's what they sold us. I do not love the combat system, but IMHO they are much further along on the path to delivering on their vision than PFO is. Again, they are selling a ridiculous amount of houses, but that's not my thing. I will be able to play the first 3 episodes of the game without spending another cent.

Honestly, while I have not participated in the Pre_Alpha testing on Camelot, they appear to be way ahead in developing a final product as well. I think THEY are really a better comp for PFO than the other two you listed. It will be interesting to see what Mark can deliver but he has been very public and been GREAT at communicating.

Goblin Squad Member

A quote from the Blog

"The implication to this is that players will be able to kill other characters frequently without blocking their access to most training. Killing a several characters a day will not be catastrophic."

My understanding that killing players was never intended to cause rep loss as it was a core fundamental part of the game.

GRIEFING other players is what was intended to cause rep loss.

So I think what you MEANT to say Ryan is "Griefing several characters a day will not be catastrophic"

I asked you during the Kickstarter if you intended to build a by griefers for griefers game like eve and you said no.

Seems you lied.

Goblin Squad Member

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Summersnow wrote:

A quote from the Blog

"The implication to this is that players will be able to kill other characters frequently without blocking their access to most training. Killing a several characters a day will not be catastrophic."

My understanding that killing players was never intended to cause rep loss as it was a core fundamental part of the game.

GRIEFING other players is what was intended to cause rep loss.

So I think what you MEANT to say Ryan is "Griefing several characters a day will not be catastrophic"

I asked you during the Kickstarter if you intended to build a by griefers for griefers game like eve and you said no.

Seems you lied.

I'm sorry, but Jesus F^&* C#$%! They're tweaking the numbers because people have been reluctant to engage in any sort of PvP because it completely wrecks your character at this point.

This does not mean that they want to create a murder simulator. If the numbers appear to make it too easy to kill (or in particular, grief) people, they'll tweak them back to the harsher side of the penalty again.
This does not make one "a liar." It simply means the game is still in development/testing.

Get over yourself.

Goblin Squad Member

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Summersnow wrote:

My understanding that killing players was never intended to cause rep loss as it was a core fundamental part of the game.

GRIEFING other players is what was intended to cause rep loss.

This is a profound misunderstanding.

Griefing cannot be identified by a computer program. Killing other players outside of Feuds, Wars, etc. has always been described as causing Reputation Loss.

Goblin Squad Member

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Philosophical question--why are players so eager to kill each other?

Goblin Squad Member

Because it is fun.

Goblin Squad Member

Shaibes wrote:
Philosophical question--why are players so eager to kill each other?

It is pretty straightforward.

Some people find their challenges within the game itself. Developing the optimal trade network or the most efficient way to harvest is something they enjoy. They may even have a hectic busy even stressful and dangerous every day life and enjoy sitting back and perfecting something they can get satisfaction from. These type of people in EVE are known as "carebears".

For other people the game itself is irrelevant, what matter is competing with and getting a reaction from other real life people via the game interface. When someone says they want "meaningful PvP" they generally are not talking meaningful in the sense of achieving in-game goals. By meaningful they mean the other player gets upset about it or loses something significant as a result.

Now there is nothing inherently wrong with either type of play you only get a problem if the two types interact. In particular if you get players of the second type who instead of fighting other PvP equipped and focused players find it more satisfying to harass the first sort and "collect tears" to use the EVE terminology.

In essence the two types of play are rather incompatible. If you have a purely PvE game all is fine. If you have a purely PvP game like CoD (or classically any of the the oldschool games like Counterstrike, Tribes. Unreal Tournament and so on) or any of the combat flightsim its also fine.

It is when you combine the two it gets tricky.

Goblin Squad Member

I wouldn't say *all* PvPers are out to cause emotional distress in other players. I myself enjoy competitive games, not because I can make the other person lose (I genuinely lose more than I win) but because that's where the challenge is. You can make good AI, but you can't make it better at thinking than humans. All you can do is turn up its stats, make it move so fast that human reflexes just simply can't keep up. But someone else with the same capacity to think, to strategize, to outmaneuver me? Now that's where the true challenge lies, the one that pushes you to become better, not just faster.

Goblin Squad Member

TEO Alexander Damocles wrote:
I wouldn't say *all* PvPers are out to cause emotional distress in other players. I myself enjoy competitive games, not because I can make the other person lose (I genuinely lose more than I win) but because that's where the challenge is. You can make good AI, but you can't make it better at thinking than humans. All you can do is turn up its stats, make it move so fast that human reflexes just simply can't keep up. But someone else with the same capacity to think, to strategize, to outmaneuver me? Now that's where the true challenge lies, the one that pushes you to become better, not just faster.

No in many games I play the PvP is definitely competitive.

However the sort of comments you see here, things like "its unfair gatherers can wear armor and carry weapons and fight back when I attack them" and "we want this system where instead of having to use spells or other combat techniques to stop players the game does it for us automatically and places my victims at a tactical disadvantage for me" indicates to me that, at least in the forums, there is a lot more collect tears than competitive spirit.

Goblin Squad Member

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Yes, I get the competitive urge. But why is murder the preferred medium? When you think about it, it's kind of odd.

CEO, Goblinworks

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I wanted to interject quickly to say that I would not lime to see the term "carebear" used lightly in out community. I think it has loaded connotations.

Goblin Squad Member

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TEO Alexander Damocles wrote:
I wouldn't say *all* PvPers are out to cause emotional distress in other players.

That's probably true. Sadly, there are lots who are.

I find it difficult to get inside the thought processes of someone who claims that I can't have fun unless I am open to them attacking me and (presuming they win, which they likely will, taking my stuff) whenever they want. They don't want to be told that they shouldn't want to have fun by killing other characters that aren't interested, but they do want to tell me that I won't have fun unless they can.

Goblin Squad Member

Ryan Dancey wrote:
I wanted to interject quickly to say that I would not lime to see the term "carebear" used lightly in out community. I think it has loaded connotations.

sorry for derailing, but this puzzles me every time I hear it.

I've obviously used it wrong in all my MMO years (never been in Eve though). In my guilds, 'carebear' was someone who went out of their way to help newbs. Always non-gankers, but not necessarily avoiding 'fair' pvp. Basically someone with high social/low killer on their Bartle profile.

Call me a carebear and it'll most probably make me happy. But sure, i've avoided the term around PFO since it very obviously means something else to other people.

Goblin Squad Member

randomwalker wrote:
Ryan Dancey wrote:
I wanted to interject quickly to say that I would not lime to see the term "carebear" used lightly in out community. I think it has loaded connotations.

sorry for derailing, but this puzzles me every time I hear it.

I've obviously used it wrong in all my MMO years (never been in Eve though). In my guilds, 'carebear' was someone who went out of their way to help newbs. Always non-gankers, but not necessarily avoiding 'fair' pvp. Basically someone with high social/low killer on their Bartle profile.

Call me a carebear and it'll most probably make me happy. But sure, i've avoided the term around PFO since it very obviously means something else to other people.

I agree it has loaded connotations. "Unwilling and unable to defend themself" is probably the most loaded of them. "Not a team player" could be one of them too.

"Competitive" can be many things; imo a PvP-er seems to think that pitting yourself directly against another player is the only "competitive" that really counts.

These are just my own interpretations and observations of the age-old debate about PvP, from my own *cough* carebear *cough* perspective. :)

I must say that I would never associate carebear with a helpfull and or mentorlike player though. I know where the word originates from so I guess the original meaning got lost pretty quickly. I guess it's not "cool to care", especially not on the Internet.

@Ryan I am sure I read that Portalarium is sitting on at least 35+ people in their development team for quit some time now, so that is quit a bit more then GW.

Also, CR had more then 280 people working on the game in october as per this article Eurogamer

Goblin Squad Member

To me, as newley returned to the multiplayer scene, PvP in PFO is not so much about the excitement of combat (as I'm really lousy at that) but for injecting a bit more danger in the world. Admit it, AI is not invented yet that you cant fool. There fore I'm a supporter for a system that allows you a PK a couple of times a week with no great penalties, but harsh penalties to anything that even remotely looks like massmurder, harassmen or, what do you call it, ganking?

OTOH I reserve the same disdain for the "I gather in the nude" min/maxer as for the "I kill 50 nebies a day", "Look I cheated up a greatsword+8" crowd and, not to forget, "I cant do everything instantly" crowd.

It is about balance, compromise and finding that meta-stable sweet spot.

(For the nude gatherer syndrome, I have some suggestions, for the nude Crafter, I think it will go away when we can go inside buildings).

Goblin Squad Member

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I reserve the term care bear for those that are more vocally and or proactively anti PvP, than just those who don't like PvP.

I place true Care Bears into the same category as true Griefers, they both being equally toxic for the game. The only difference is, Care Bears never get banned for their undermining of the game's culture, while Griefers (correctly) sometimes do.

Goblin Squad Member

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The rep hit needed to be lowered. 5-6 kills a day sounds right to me, obviously this is one pf those systems that needs to be more nuanced down the road.


@RyanDancey:

Quote:
We just have to keep reiterating the idea that people are seeing this game in Year 2 of a 5 year development cycle.

I agree whole-heartedly. I believe the most important thing that can be done over the next month is managing expectations, and then beyond that, still managing expectations.

They way people talk on here, and outside these forums, there is still this notion that at EE, this is *the game*.

It might be helpful to have a big repetitive disclaimer like DayZ StandAlone, or Rust, have done that says hey - don't buy this or start using your game time if you think this is supposed to be a completed game on EE launch.

Goblin Squad Member

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Its fairly clear that a number of people have recently returned after backing the Kickstarter without clearly remembering what the design goals were, who have not read any of the GW blogs or even the emails sent through the kickstarter system. And for some reason are surprised that the game doesn't match whatever they have constructed it to be in their head. Contrast that with people who have discussed issues ad nauseum for years here, some of whom unfortunately seem to have fallen into an echo resonance chamber among their close confidants and are now convinced that their particular view of the game is the way it must be.

The blogs and Goblinworks overall vision have remained remarkably consistent as to what type of game they are trying to build. As various features are released, it gives an impression of a pendulum swinging between different versions of what this game will be, but overall the design continues to be moving exactly where we were always told it would.

Goblin Squad Member

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Shaibes wrote:
Philosophical question--why are players so eager to kill each other?

Dynamic Content is the Holy Grail for my perfect MMO. I kinda/sorta enjoy Raiding in other games, but I've always longed for an experience where the critical factor was how well folks adapted to changing circumstances in real time, not how well they could execute a pre-defined strategy. PvP is the only feasible way to deliver on that kind of experience.

Goblin Squad Member

Summersnow wrote:

A quote from the Blog

"The implication to this is that players will be able to kill other characters frequently without blocking their access to most training. Killing a several characters a day will not be catastrophic."

My understanding that killing players was never intended to cause rep loss as it was a core fundamental part of the game.

GRIEFING other players is what was intended to cause rep loss.

So I think what you MEANT to say Ryan is "Griefing several characters a day will not be catastrophic"

I asked you during the Kickstarter if you intended to build a by griefers for griefers game like eve and you said no.

Seems you lied.

Holy Mackerel, you have terrible communication skills. Seriously, how does anyone function with such pathetic rhetorical skills? Anyone with even minimal rhetorical facility could craft something like:

"You said X, but it seems to me you did Y instead--can you explain that?"

The effect of being so clumsy and unethical is that no one will ever take you seriously. I'm sure you're successful in being annoying, at being dismissed as petulant or a crank, but normal people will just skip over the content of what you have to say because of the huge red flags.


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Always felt bad for the Care Bears name being hijacked. Care Bears were the honey badger of kid's cartoons. They handled their ****. Land of No Feelings, Professor Coldheart, No Heart Wizard, didn't matter, they handled their ****. Care Bear Stare, wicked powerful. Grumpy Bear would have none of this.

Now, Woozles, and Popples deserve it maybe, but not Care Bears.

Goblin Squad Member

Care Bears

Goblin Squad Member

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Mbando wrote:
Summersnow wrote:

A quote from the Blog

"The implication to this is that players will be able to kill other characters frequently without blocking their access to most training. Killing a several characters a day will not be catastrophic."

My understanding that killing players was never intended to cause rep loss as it was a core fundamental part of the game.

GRIEFING other players is what was intended to cause rep loss.

So I think what you MEANT to say Ryan is "Griefing several characters a day will not be catastrophic"

I asked you during the Kickstarter if you intended to build a by griefers for griefers game like eve and you said no.

Seems you lied.

Holy Mackerel, you have terrible communication skills. Seriously, how does anyone function with such pathetic rhetorical skills? Anyone with even minimal rhetorical facility could craft something like:

"You said X, but it seems to me you did Y instead--can you explain that?"

The effect of being so clumsy and unethical is that no one will ever take you seriously. I'm sure you're successful in being annoying, at being dismissed as petulant or a crank, but normal people will just skip over the content of what you have to say because of the huge red flags.

Wow, and some people accuse me of being aggressive.

What I feel Summersnow is mixing up is non consensual PvP with Griefing. This I believe is a common mischaracterization made by players that are not accustomed to open world PvP games.

His misquotibg Ryan, as it relates to EvE, is yet another example. Eve is not a game made by Griefers, for Griefers. That maybe a misconception held by people who have very little or no experience of actually playing the game. They base their beliefs solely on what others have said, and those are usually the nay-Sayers. Ryan's quote was that "EvE is a game made for wolves, by wolves."

I believe part of the issue with PFO is, we really don't kniw who the game us being made for. We have been on the proverbial "roller coaster" ride going from one blog to the next and it is never really clear and plagued with several contradictions.


Bluddwolf wrote:
Mbando wrote:
Summersnow wrote:

A quote from the Blog

"The implication to this is that players will be able to kill other characters frequently without blocking their access to most training. Killing a several characters a day will not be catastrophic."

My understanding that killing players was never intended to cause rep loss as it was a core fundamental part of the game.

GRIEFING other players is what was intended to cause rep loss.

So I think what you MEANT to say Ryan is "Griefing several characters a day will not be catastrophic"

I asked you during the Kickstarter if you intended to build a by griefers for griefers game like eve and you said no.

Seems you lied.

Holy Mackerel, you have terrible communication skills. Seriously, how does anyone function with such pathetic rhetorical skills? Anyone with even minimal rhetorical facility could craft something like:

"You said X, but it seems to me you did Y instead--can you explain that?"

The effect of being so clumsy and unethical is that no one will ever take you seriously. I'm sure you're successful in being annoying, at being dismissed as petulant or a crank, but normal people will just skip over the content of what you have to say because of the huge red flags.

Wow, and some people accuse me of being aggressive.

What I feel Summersnow is mixing up is non consensual PvP with Griefing. This I believe is a common mischaracterization made by players that are not accustomed to open world PvP games.

His misquotibg Ryan, as it relates to EvE, is yet another example. Eve is not a game made by Griefers, for Griefers. That maybe a misconception held by people who have very little or no experience of actually playing the game. They base their beliefs solely on what others have said, and those are usually the nay-Sayers. Ryan's quote was that "EvE is a game made for wolves, by wolves."

I believe part of the issue with PFO is, we really don't kniw who the game us being made for. We have...

Many fail to understand the economic dynamic of a game like this. The dynamic that drives the game is equipment loss. That may be via pvp or via pve but you need equipment loss to provide a market for crafters. Threading in my view is therefore a negative. I would be quite happy if they kept the percentage of gear looted the same but removed threading. in addition make crafters need to be part of a player settlement. This would not be a detriment to crafters but it would mean settlements have to regard crafters as full citizens not second class citizens.

Honest question for crafters here : who would prefer to be a golarion reknowned armoursmith that everyone goes to for top notch armour vs how many want to be known for making decent consumables?

With threading the number of world reknowned armour smiths is a lot smaller as less armour needs replacing

Goblin Squad Member

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Bluddwolf wrote:
I believe part of the issue with PFO is, we really don't kniw who the game us being made for.

I'm not often on the same page as Bludd, but frankly, Amen to that.

For all the openness in the process, I don't feel like I have any idea who the target market really is.

Goblin Squad Member

Thing is you also have gear erosion. Even in alpha with no PvP active players are going through a set of armor a week. I do like the idea of threading because it sucks pretty bad to lose your uber expensive gear just because your internet went down.

Goblin Squad Member

Steelwing wrote:


While I understand crafters need player settlements for advanced training as long as they can make goods in npc settlements which as I understand is the plan then you will visit your settlement once a month for training then be expected to return to the npc settlements to craft.

You made me scratch my head on this one--why would crafters migrate to NPC settlements do do their work rather than staying in their own settlements?

Goblin Squad Member

Steelwing wrote:

While I understand crafters need player settlements for advanced training as long as they can make goods in npc settlements which as I understand is the plan then you will visit your settlement once a month for training then be expected to return to the npc settlements to craft.

There will be no danger of your mats going missing there because of settlement conquest and you will be like the industrialist in eve who is needed to supply goods but not wanted down in null (this is something ccp does wrong imo btw). In eve people are expected to have their main in null and use an alt for industry largely. I personally would like to see that change and make gathering and industry something settlements need to really care about.

I'm not convinced the facilities in starter settlements will always be capable of "cooking" Tier 2 or 3 goods. If the trainers can't train you that high, why should they have the tools and capacity to permit doing the work? And everything you manufacture in a starter town will eventually have to be shipped to a player settlement. Those are meaningful choices.

I'm also not sure yet what that kind of extra-settlement activity will look like if/when we are reduced to the three final NPC towns. Such decisions will develop some extra variables if the likes of Rathglen, Marchmont, Ossian's etc. vanish later and we are reduced to only three, quite far apart.


Shaibes wrote:
Steelwing wrote:


While I understand crafters need player settlements for advanced training as long as they can make goods in npc settlements which as I understand is the plan then you will visit your settlement once a month for training then be expected to return to the npc settlements to craft.
You made me scratch my head on this one--why would crafters migrate to NPC settlements do do their work rather than staying in their own settlements?

If I have a thousand tier 3 bars of steel in a bank in an npc town they are not subject to capture. The most I can lose is a particular consignment of weapons to settlement A in on go.

If however I have to craft in a player settlement and it is captured I lose all my stored materials.

In Eve its the same way if we lose Sov we lose everything in our corp hangars therefore we keep all our materials in hisec and get our goods made there and jump freightered in.

Goblin Squad Member

OK, that makes sense now.

Goblin Squad Member

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I wanted to jump in on the PvP aspect a little bit. PvP is simply Player vs Player.

As I was growing up some of my favorite games to play were Fighters (particularly ones with good counter mechanics like Killer Instinct and Dead or Alive) and First Person Shooters from Goldeneye to the Battlefield series and beyond.

The fun of these games is the challenge and competition involved in defeating your opponent(s) through tactics, skill, guts and sometimes hilarious luck.

It's not a matter of killing my opponent or making them suffer for some twisted reason. The goal is to defeat them so that you can progress, whether that is to become the best fighter, capture territory or just gain points for you/your team. Defeat often takes the form of character death since that is the way the devs design it but it is really just any form that eliminates an opponent from participating further in that conflict.

Mario Kart is PvP.

Any game where one player competes against another is a game where PvP exists. Sometimes defeat eliminates the loser from the game, sometime it's just a setback.

In PFO, the defeat of PvP results in just a setback. They dust themselves off and get back in the fight or go elsewhere. I'm really looking forward to some of the mass combat that will be taking place in the future and the flux of returning fighters and reinforcements that have to be considered and dealt with.

Don't get me wrong, losing sucks. Hell, it can be heartbreaking if you've invested a lot of time and resources into the things that you lose. Despite that, you still exist in the game. Overcoming adversity, amazing comebacks, or just straight up dominating revenge are all things that PFO will be great for and stories will be created that you will share for the rest of your life.

The conflicts in PFO have the potential to bring a real dynamic life to the game and if I'm lucky I'll be right in the middle of it.

Goblin Squad Member

Steelwing wrote:
Shaibes wrote:
Steelwing wrote:


While I understand crafters need player settlements for advanced training as long as they can make goods in npc settlements which as I understand is the plan then you will visit your settlement once a month for training then be expected to return to the npc settlements to craft.
You made me scratch my head on this one--why would crafters migrate to NPC settlements do do their work rather than staying in their own settlements?

If I have a thousand tier 3 bars of steel in a bank in an npc town they are not subject to capture. The most I can lose is a particular consignment of weapons to settlement A in on go.

If however I have to craft in a player settlement and it is captured I lose all my stored materials.

In Eve its the same way if we lose Sov we lose everything in our corp hangars therefore we keep all our materials in hisec and get our goods made there and jump freightered in.

Steelwing,

I think this post and the one you made before it are not 100% correct. While some might heed this, and do as you say, NPC towns are extremely slow when it comes to crafting, they can be 4-6x slower than PC towns. When you are making something that takes 6 days in Thornkeep, and you could be making it in 23 hours in Brighthaven, people are going to consider their options.

Second, I agree that if you lose your settlement it is going to be bad, but smart settlements will leave caches of supplies, resources, and raw materials across the map, in case their settlement does bite the bullet.

Some will indeed play out of the NPC settlements, but I think that its more likely that people will play out of their own settlements or settlements near by that offer better facilities and training.

Goblin Squad Member

Steelwing wrote:
Shaibes wrote:
Steelwing wrote:


While I understand crafters need player settlements for advanced training as long as they can make goods in npc settlements which as I understand is the plan then you will visit your settlement once a month for training then be expected to return to the npc settlements to craft.
You made me scratch my head on this one--why would crafters migrate to NPC settlements do do their work rather than staying in their own settlements?

If I have a thousand tier 3 bars of steel in a bank in an npc town they are not subject to capture. The most I can lose is a particular consignment of weapons to settlement A in on go.

If however I have to craft in a player settlement and it is captured I lose all my stored materials.

In Eve its the same way if we lose Sov we lose everything in our corp hangars therefore we keep all our materials in hisec and get our goods made there and jump freightered in.

As Cal infers above, I also assumed the design intent is for the crafting facilities to match the trainer level of the settlement. That is, NPC settlements will be limited to lower tier crafting and only settlements that offer training in upper crafting will be able to do that crafting. None of those limitations will be in place at EE, however, and its possible I've misunderstood, and those features will never be put in place. But I don't think the design intent is for NPC towns to be the crafting centres, or a safety deposit box. They will want to encourage rewards for settlement warfare as the appropriate modules come on line and removing a "safe-haven" will likely be part of that. Limiting the ability of a settlement to craft items equivalent to its training capability makes sense. If it wasn't in the plan before, it will be when the devs read these posts :)

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