Inspire me - I'm feeling disenchanted


Pathfinder Online

51 to 75 of 75 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | next > last >>
Goblin Squad Member

2 people marked this as a favorite.

I will admit that writing the "they don't have a clue what a sandbox means" was a bit too harsh. I am just as far from agreement with Ryan's definition of it as he must be with mine. To me, a sandbox has only an outside perimeter, and obviously no internal compartments. Ryan apparently, does not wish to allow us to play within the sandbox without many controls. In my opinion, so many controls, that it is barely a sandbox at all.

My other major disagreement is that EE had been started too soon. There were and still are, too few systems for even what a minimal viable product would be. I have always said, Goblin Works does not define what "MVP" is, but rather the potential consumer would. The consumer will vote with his or her wallet in this case. I believe the low sever population is an indicator, along with the general reception that PFO has received from outsiders.

Finally, I see the basic building block of social identification being that of the company (guild), rather than Ryan's belief that it is the settlement. He can provide no evidence, even within PFO that his belief is true. I will point to two facts to make my point:

First, the largest 3 to 5 settlements are run by multi gaming community guilds (Pax Gaming, COTP, AGC and even UNC). When the map opens up, are we to believe that none of these will look to relocate?

Secondly, companies have been moving from one settlement to another, as a unit. Clearly this is evidence that settlements are viewed as locations and not the basic building block of social structure.

What I don't understand is why Ryan feels the need to fight this particular battle? Unless of course it is just another attempt to limit the way we plan to play with the sand.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

3 people marked this as a favorite.

There are four important parts to an awesome sandbox.

First, there's the sand. There has to be something that produces emergent behavior and a medium in which it can happen.

There also has to be a box: the limits and boundary conditions set on the sand.

There also have to be people, to make the sandbox distinct from driftwood on a beach.

And the hardest bit is the buckets. It's hard to provide buckets without subtly discouraging doing the things that buckets don't make easier. Providing a mechanism for PvP combat at designated times and places has the effect of making attacks outside those boundaries less accepted. Likewise having the ability for a company to remain intact and move to a different settlement discourages any settlement from taking members for granted.

Generally I find that the buckets we have for the sandbox shape PFO towards the product that was described all along, even though in retrospect I notice that I used to think that it would be several different mutually incompatible things at once.

Goblin Squad Member

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Mmm, active and regular posters who post a lot evidently do care, such as Andius. Perhaps expression of frustration however is the stranger amongst friends in forums?

I do think GW have an ace design here.

Edit: I meant to say here: The Sandbox in PFO according to my interpretation of all that Ryan has said: Is that it does have rules which are control systems for feedback dynamics that lead to cause-effect consequence chains rippling across the systems and players: IE our COSMOS (= ORDER) ie those Greeks got there already!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos

The cosmos /ˈkɒzmɒs/ is a complex and orderly system; the opposite of chaos. It is the universe regarded as an ordered system.[1] The philosopher Pythagoras is regarded as the first person to apply the term cosmos (Ancient Greek: κόσμος) to the order of the universe. The 19th century geographer and polymath, Alexander von Humboldt, resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek, assigned it to his multi-volume treatise, Kosmos, and, along the way, influenced our present and somewhat holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity.

Tangent- [[Perhaps with a scale change you could change the concept of avatar to Family Name in the same way as Game Of Thrones / Crusader Kings II as your progression / spread of influence with marriage and death and settling of your "growing clan" and connections being the personal build-up to end-game!! ie mortality and perma-death are possible atst as wars over marriages even and different characters.]]

But I'm getting ahead of myself there...... on the "building blocks of social identification"....

... The problem as per Bludd is:-

* Number of integrated systems interacting (ie players insert into)
* Polish of above (I think the tab-target is going to be so difficult and long to do at this scale).

With a smaller scale we could already be building settlements, ships, armies the lot! and the devs could be doing dungeons for parties.

Squaring the circle of the Pathfinder RP market segment and the MMO Sandbox / Empire-War and the rest of it...

Also specs for playing would be easier (a big big plus) and player content could do half the marketing with vids of what players are doing/creating already.

* So Bludd is right again MVP is too raw

- imo because of the graphic requirements at this scale - credit to the artists it still looks lovely, but pulling all the content together with the underlying systems and bugs and comparing to the gorillas of mmo shiny cost...

Don't compete with them! I just watched vids of Camelot Unchained and Gloria Victus, all look interesting but all look like a big ask to get the graphics up to stellar (how appropriate re star citizen) showing.

The other thing is at that scale, it's intuitive to the customer you're different and not trying to be those other games.

To quote The Spider in GoT's: "A small man can cast a very long shadow."

Let's get those numbers of players up and the world bigger!


Quote:
There were and still are, too few systems for even what a minimal viable product would be.

I saw on the GW blog that they are doing this Head Start thing now, seems like a push to try to get more beta participants.

People keep throwing around this MVP "Minimum Viable Product" concept like they understand it to mean the smallest amount of features that constitute a game, but fail to realize that the most critical aspect of the idea is the word "viable".

Clearly, what Goblin Works estimated to be "viable" was incorrect, as they are now drawing on their last cohort of early adopters to keep alive the game world or worse, their finances.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Al Smithy wrote:
to keep alive the game world or worse, their finances.

huh? Do you even log in?

Game isn't dead and GW isn't out of business. Do you just get off on throwing around empty doom and gloom about the game (addressed to the thread in general not Al in particular)?

Go away for 6 months and then check back on things if it has all gotten you down so much that you just can't help yourselves, but I for one will still be around then and look forward to celebrating the 10th anniversary of PFO with those who have a bit of patience with the implementation of their vision.

Goblin Squad Member

Rynnik wrote:
... I for one will still be around then and look forward to celebrating the 10th anniversary of PFO with those who have a bit of patience with the implementation of their vision.

*clinks glasses*


There is fun to be had in this game.

The only problem is there isn't $30 buy-in plus 15 a month of fun to be had from this game compared to the competition *unless* you accept the premise of building power in advance of future fun, or you really dig crowdforging.

I think that, over the last few years, we've attracted just about all the crowdforgers we're going to attract.

If it weren't for the fact that I'm stockpiling recipes/spells/maneuvers/resources for playing this game in the future, there are many days I would just log into Skyrim for an equal amount of fun. Or for MMO fun I'd probably join my guild in playing SWTOR since I haven't burned through that game's content yet.

Hopefully the stuff PFO introduces in coming weeks will up the fun. The truth of the matter is they really NEED to up the fun, so here's wishing them luck.


Quote:
huh? Do you even log in?

I had not for a month or two, then finally did again for the last patch.

Lots of empty settlements. Game is super buggy.

I don't believe PFO will be around for another year, much less 10, if GW is so desperate they are blowing their open enrollment wad with this head start thing.


Al Smithy wrote:
I don't believe PFO will be around for another year, much less 10,

I'll take that bet.

I am fine with a smarmy 'I told you so', but if you want to up the stakes a bit that sounds good to me.

365 days from today sound good?


I'll probably be playing Crowfall or Camelot:UC betas then.

Either way, don't want this game to fail, just don't have any confidence that GW knows what they're doing.

Goblin Squad Member

Al Smithy wrote:
... just don't have any confidence that GW knows what they're doing.

I wonder how many people said that about Ryan when he pushed the Open Game License.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Nihimon wrote:
Al Smithy wrote:
... just don't have any confidence that GW knows what they're doing.
I wonder how many people said that about Ryan when he pushed the Open Game License.

Another good laugh is to look up the EVE forums from 2003 and see what people said about CCP back then on their boards.

I do know I have a lot more faith in GW then I do in nose picking armchair game devs and their grand visions.

Goblin Squad Member

Personally, my hunch is that Ryan's decision to let in the Head Start folks is largely what he's told us it is. I hope it's successful, and I hope the influx allows Goblinworks to hire additional staff to up the pace of development.

Goblin Squad Member

The OP did ask for "inspiration". I think that could be a "pep talk" or it could be "think positive thoughts", but I don't think those are powerful enough though possibly conducive for inspiration:-

Here's inspiration then, you may not like it but I believe I'v found it:-

GW is looking to make PFO with it's 4 pillars Exploration (a big world that changes interestingly that is truly enormous and a character itself); Adventure the (dungeon party stuff + the hiring at the Inn from a brooding stranger in the shadows with strangely glowing gimlet eyes), Development of settlements, businesses, kingdoms and Domination ie World at War

In fact this is a bit like a big game of Civilization bar Adventure. It's also not so disimilar from Strategy Games (war and so on). And again if you think about it it could be just like The Best Strategy Board Games only played by thousands + players at once over a long time.

http://dommcg.hubpages.com/hub/10-Best-Strategy-Board-Games-Ever-Great-To-P lay-With-Family-or-for-Christmas-Birthday-Gifts

So here's the inspiration:-

GW imho should focus on this aspect for PFO. If it's trying to create the tab-target experience combat system then it's going down the WOW route requiring that gameplay too much. Now that's not to say all the stuff done can't be used but just put on much smaller avatars in a different scaled world and work with the numbers of players syncing up to work on the world with more systems. Ie FOCUS dev away from the engine doing fancy stuff with the graphics and onto the stories in the minds of the players playing = reciprocal fun = return business and sense of game time = investment in growing story shares in the game.

I think speeding things up you can then do the massive dungeon Adventure aspect ala Torchbearer / Darkest Dungeon or even just Pathfinder RPG - linking the best run kingdoms to providing/financing the best dungeons for parties.

For convenience, a pithy statement: "Less WOW; More Board Game Strategy."

You know the RTS strategy and perhaps TBS grand strategy are genres that were huge and are in the lull loop atm. Turning these into MMOs or MMOs into these I think the hybrid will lead the way to innovation (for both).

Inspiration -> Innovation.

Community & Digital Content Manager

Removed a few posts. Just because a person has a dissenting opinion does not mean it's okay to make negative personal comments or compare them to others you may not like.

Goblin Squad Member

1 person marked this as a favorite.

"The Disenchanted" would make an awesome name for a Company.

Goblin Squad Member

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Nihimon wrote:
Rynnik wrote:
... I for one will still be around then and look forward to celebrating the 10th anniversary of PFO with those who have a bit of patience with the implementation of their vision.
*clinks glasses*

One of the things that excites me the most is: While I have been playing since day one of Alpha I started getting permanent XP on New Year's Day.

For the first time in a very long time, I now have a very legit reason to celebrate the new year. So Nihimon and Rynnik, I look forward to clicking glasses with the both of you each New Year in game.

Goblin Squad Member

1 person marked this as a favorite.

I am apparently a "Glass is Half-empty" person so this Crowdforging thing is hard for me.

The reason I am still around is because the design doc is still the best thing since sliced bread and so far they have not strayed from it, at least in my view. There is also a freedom to the game that I like: one of them being that you can trade everything and nothing is BoP or BoE. The one-world (buggy and all)is a treat too, even though its repetitive. And yes, the PvP which I fear but gives it meaning.

But development is so slow; content delivery, bug-squashing and polish is sooooo slow that I sometimes feel like Al Smithy, Bludd or Andius and think they can not deliver. I am positive there is talent on the team, but GW sure as hell isn't what I would call a well oiled, lean and mean development machine. And many MMO's have proven to be unviable and become dead in the water. There is still a chance that the coolness of Eve simply can not be translated to a Fantasy world. I have seen many cool concepts die. Lisa is not crazy: she is not going to risk her business by throwing money at PFO forever.

Also, if I ever saw a "Glass is Half Full person", Nihimon, you are it.

I am thoroughly intrigued. :) Don't forget, if the glass drops it was already half empty anyway in my case. In your case it was still half full, so a MUCH bigger mess and loss. ;)

EDIT: I want to leave something for the OP to inspire him. Yesterday, PFU was doing a World tour, visiting locations all around the world, also to get Achievements. Community focus like that is awesome, the fact that this is one, big world helps immensely with that. I am not sure how all that will translate to when the game is much fuller, but I do feel that events and initiatives like that are inherent to this game's design. It *is* really a Players world.

It will not *only* be Wars and Strife and PvP. Players will balance it into a social environment like you have never seen.

Yes, towns will be razed: but I can also see serverwide initiatives to get a loved Settlement back on their feet. I can see fickle "Seize Fires" while harvesters from across the lands flock together carrying goods to kickstart a new settlement.

I am not much of a roleplayer, but because of how the world is set up, I can see stuff like festivals actually being cool: trying to attend one may be an adventure in itself, due to distance and political uproar.

I also expect "Red Weddings"......

Grand Lodge Goblin Squad Member

@Tyncale
I disagree that the development is slow. Being in since alpha 6 I see A LOT having changed and added and really major steps forward and every new patch brings in new stuff.
I rather see some development too rushed (too many bugs) which detracts from the improvements as every new patch rather highligths what is wrong now instead of what is new and shiny now. I used the term 3 steps forward 2 steps back when I looked at the company vaults.
The two steps back distract from the steps forward and once that is solved it doesn't seem anything new as we had some of it in the past.
The issue is rather how incomplete a lot started - but that is 2 years into a 5 year development cycle. Actually looking back I feel that the whole process works and generates a better game with our input.
But I'm the first to agree that is doesn't feel that way when you download another 'improvement' and what you get is that you have to log out after you die in a monster hex as respawning only works in the same hex or the company vault is inaccessible or finding stuff is so more difficult.
That you don't have to carry stuff to the crafting station and how great it is that you can use inventory, personal vault or company vault gets lost (and I still show up half the time with items in inventory). Especially as you 'forget' some weird salvage or different quality of items and see that you actually have more weak acidic as you thought.

I think one aspect that seems difficult for many players (especially new ones) is to form a bond with the settlement / company and to care. This is where the meaningful content comes from.
I didn't wanted to play long yesterday and just wanted to visit Marchmont - only to notice some Bonedancer escalations growing again. 95% of gamers would say - so what - or wouldn't even have noticed. For me it was - Oh my god. This can destroy a week of game play if not stopped in it's tracks immidiately. We are finally and slowly moving Bonedancers out of hexes close to EL. But a 10% growth rate per hex with 60+ hexes of them just between us and Canis Castrum means they will be all around again if nothing is done.
So emergency notes went out - I did detours from Marchmont and with my crafter to hit possible monster hexes and 2 or 3 hours later I finally found the hex responsible - still at lowly 15% - and with help of another member we finished it off.
It was three hours game play and hard work - but it felt like a great achievement as I know what the alternatives would look like in 2 days if we hadn't tackled it then and now.

But 95% of player will see - oh - Bonedancers - done them - not interested to do them as they don't drop anything interesting and death Squads have a bad risk/reward ratio - so they just move on - and lose the fact why I ended up in bed late but feeling to have had an achievement, felt great about it and racked up a lot of influence as well and possible gating.
Oh - and I need a new armour as the T2 I used died just when the fall boss appeared and I got desynched (actually not a GW issue but my network dropped a few times for unknown reasons).

Goblin Squad Member

Nihimon wrote:
Al Smithy wrote:
... just don't have any confidence that GW knows what they're doing.
I wonder how many people said that about Ryan when he pushed the Open Game License.

OGL was nothing more than finding a loophole in the copyright laws that allowed for the "sharing" or taking of game mechanics, by third parties and then producing products of "their own". Of course Paizo sees it as a a major achievement, because they directly benefited from it.

This is not universally viewed as a positive. The wiki source can be provided by a biased contributor, including Ryan himself.

I'd be curious to see the reaction of GW if some game developer came along and copied the mechanics of PFO into their own game. Regardless of the fact that I can't think of any system unique enough, innovative enough or exceptionally well executed, that anyone would want to do that.


Ben in this game for two months now and I must say that I am very much impressed by the passion and quality that the developers are putting into this game! My ingame "to do list" rivals my real life version and I can see myself living w this game a very long time. In order to make possible l will uppdate my ea account to platinum!
If you feel disenchanted as things stands now I recomend you to "log out". But please do come back after some months, check it out and let us know your verdict.
Cheers!

Goblin Squad Member

1 person marked this as a favorite.

I don't think the tab-target core gameplay is going to be very successful going forwards with these graphics.

I think turning the game into a RTS-MMO-RP (note: not a MMORTS!) is the key and then tab-target fits fine.

As Bludd said in another post/thread:-

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2s3ic?Imagine-a-hypothetical-collaboration#27

>"Animations are not just a matter of visuals, they produce the perception that the mechanics of combat are "clunky"."

I was looking at the comments at:-

http://massivelyop.net/2015/03/30/pathfinder-online-opens-up-head-start-acc ess-on-april-1st/

And that is the prevailing impression. It's the LOSS OF FOCUS that is the problem because of this imho. With smaller scale, it fits the hybrid genre and expectation setting as well as by now people in that forum should be talking about the grandeur of the world of The River Kingdoms, a tiny but huge portion of the World of Golarion and full of Pathfinder brought to life.


One possible solution to disillusionment... find a new company or settlement.

It could be that your mates are boring you and that new mates will drag you out to do new things.

I have no way of judging if that is the case for the O.P., but anyone running low on fun might want to change who they run around with and see if that helps before giving up on the game altogether.

Goblin Squad Member

Savage Grace wrote:
... but anyone running low on fun might want to change who they run around with and see if that helps before giving up on the game altogether.

Good point. In this game, activity breeds activity. if your settlement doesn't provide it, there's nothing wrong with looking elsewhere.

The Exchange Goblin Squad Member

Savage Grace wrote:

There is fun to be had in this game.

If it weren't for the fact that I'm stockpiling recipes/spells/maneuvers/resources for playing this game in the future, there are many days I would just log into Skyrim for an equal amount of fun. Or for MMO fun I'd probably join my guild in playing SWTOR since I haven't burned through that game's content yet.

Hopefully the stuff PFO introduces in coming weeks will up the fun. The truth of the matter is they really NEED to up the fun, so here's wishing them luck.

That's what i did - i went back to SWTOR - I paid 18 euros for 60 days and I enjoy the game. A new update, with story content is scheduled for the end of april 2015.

Currently, i don't know if my subscription to PFO is still active or not (I think i had a 3 months subscription)

51 to 75 of 75 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Paizo / Licensed Products / Digital Games / Pathfinder Online / Inspire me - I'm feeling disenchanted All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Pathfinder Online