Lord Bozo worries about this game...


Pathfinder Online

Goblin Squad Member

Hello, I'm Sepherum and I was once very active on these boards. In fact mine was the first question answered on the video blog long ago. I don't think my comments belong on the official Goblinworks site. For about a year I've been a frequent lurker here, on the Goblinworks forums, Ideascale and other MMO websites. I'm very worried about the future of this game.
What first turned me off was the introduction of the War of Towers. Clunky, immersion-breaking and an admission that the game mechanics weren't generating content. Why not choose one of three factions based on Golarion lore and go at it with reduced/eliminated rep hits? Instead a game of 'capture the flag' that disappears when the game improves?
I remember that Goblinworks was going to limit the number of subscribers each month to avoid server overpopulation. No need to worry about that now. I'm not being sour; unfortunately those prognostications are out there for everyone to see.
In the future, developers won't charge for alpha if they're smart. I definitely fall on the side of 'the MVP didn't have the V' in that argument. When players are describing their experiences, I don't think a lecture on the definition of 'grinding'or 'leashing' or somesuch is productive. Address the issue or concern itself.
I worry about the viability of a PVP game that's buggy and has a high level of entry for understanding how to make your build.
There aren't enough interesting things to do solo, which is as advertised, but then there aren't social systems in place either. Proponents of the game are talking about all the fun socializing they do out of game, about future promises and, well, more interesting stuff than playing.
Everywhere I look people are interested in improving escalations and making them interrelated with pvp, gathering and questing. That seems a good place to start making headway for the future. I still hope to come back in 6 months and find a successful, vibrant game.

Goblin Squad Member

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Stages of a Big Project below:

1. Enthusiasm

2. Disillusionment

3. Panic

4. Search for the guilty

5. Punishment of the innocent

6. Praise and honors for the non-participants

You are now at stage 2. Some people are already at stage 3.

And no, I am not making light of your concerns. It is still early in the process and crowd forging is still going on, meaning little is locked down in stone at the moment.

And yes, we all have our misgivings about aspects of Pathfinder Online, some more or less than others. Which is natural at this stage.

Give it some time and as you say, check back in 6 months.

Goblin Squad Member

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Well, I'm having tons of fun....so much so, I bought a second account!

IMHO PFO is a great game and getting better all the time....can't wait for outposts and holdings to be fully implemented!

Goblin Squad Member

@Black Moria - Although an interesting theory (one of many) it needs to be tested and hence it may apply to a sample of people, but I don't think it applies to all. To test for Sepherum:

* War of Towers
* Cap on Monthly intake vs observation
* MVP vs Value For Money status

Imho, that and suggestion for direction for improvement is not a good fit for the above framework. The above framework is quite effective for a full mmorpg's population, but a random x1 sample it's not.

=

Let's talk business:-

1. I invest in the vision via kickstarter as part of my cash's value
2. Next, I want to see some returns on the investment via personal fun
3. I want to see an actual profit in my investment: I mean the game is a huge success and I was canny enough to see that invest and "double-my-money" so to speak.

I'm using the above formula instead. I'm at 2. and not there yet because I've held off playing.

What's held me off playing, I can and have answered and I think it ""MAY"" be highly applicable to others hence my suggestion being constructed to wider application ie not just random specifics to add to a huge list with others' contributions randomly heaped up.

I just don't think people are going to find EQ-Next, Crowfall, Camelot Unchained or PFO that significant. There may be some players for all these games and the existing ones (EVE, MO, DF etc) and others not mentioned (Gloria Victus, Life Is Feudal...).

If you want fantasy immersion, you get it in TT RP, in FPS Chivalry for visceral combat.

What you don't get anywhere which is what PFO is offering is the sheer scale of Kingdoms as per Kingmaker. THAT = PFO's FOCUS.

I think again change scale of the graphics to achieve that. My character could be about 1cm tall onscreen amid the huge world, big buildings and scores of other players and do all the tab-target in the game atm and it would be more fun and faster dev with all the systems in place and bigger world than any other mmorpg.

Looking back at one of Ryan's comments:-

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2ns90?Goblinworks-Blog-Time-is-the-Fire-in-whic h-We#35

On map scale: This imho needs to be bigger world and longer time to traverse it. Smaller map ~ Population and grow it.

On Crowdforging Animations priority:

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qc0j&page=2?Goblinworks-Blog-Jigsaw-Fallin g-into-Place#98

On animation and graphics work the engine needs to do to look good:-

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qpy0&page=3?The-Decline-of-MMOs-by-Richard -Bartle#124

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2r83a?What-to-expect-visually-from-PFO#33

This one is very structured and shows how much scope is involved.

There's a blog too on explaining how the animators/artists make the models and all the moving parts in this - tons!!

That's as well as major networking work + combat == fun immediately necessity + scope of the game design doc itself + saturated mmorpg market full of comp. plus going EQ/WOW perspective requiring all the above work to look like the comp. on less money...

So 2. is my current investment decision. I hang on atm, but if the above does not change I make the calculation to get a return on my cash instead of gameplay.

On 3. I've already explained: I want to use the game as a system for a meta-system of human interaction using fantasy guise for that aim "To plant some quaker oats!"


You're well spoken and thought out about your idea for what sounds like making PFO a RTS/MMO -

- but it isn't going to happen.

GW is having enough trouble trying to make it a standard perspective MMO.

Goblin Squad Member

Al Smithy wrote:

You're well spoken and thought out about your idea for what sounds like making PFO a RTS/MMO -

- but it isn't going to happen.

GW is having enough trouble trying to make it a standard perspective MMO.

Well I realize it may be too late, not considered "kosher" for GW's (even if I believe as Bartle "revolutionary" is the requirement) as attractive enough for modern markets. But imho the scale atm makes everything look like a model and breaks immersion. The closer the characters the more demanding the attention to detail too (see above).

It is outspoken to repeat this point too many times, I'm usually more mild mannered, but as a kickstarter "shareholder" it is to offer my input and support the success of PFO as I see it.

To again keep turning the idea over via rephrasing it to deliver a new emphasis of the same meaning:-

"Information growth in the game world > Graphics"

= Slow & Satisfying Gameplay for PFO.

To begin with win over a dedicated player base of MMOs; many won't like the scale of smaller characters but the few who do will stick with it as the speed and integration of systems allows them to tell THEIR stories. I even think combat tab-target will work a lot more with more players and more position information of all the above visible on screen. But the real dividends are the formations and larger creatures/walls/hills to fall off/size of the land and number of landscape changes crawling with mythical Pathfinder beasts and creatures packed with information.

Goblin Squad Member

Still having fun!


Smaller characters as in Diablo 2?

Goblin Squad Member

The game is doomed you should all leave now.

Then it shall all be mine .. mine ... mine. Where did I put those minions.

Goblin Squad Member

Savage Grace wrote:
Smaller characters as in Diablo 2?

Smaller, look at some RTS egs 0AD , Kingdom Wars 2. This is in order to change the scale of everything:-

* Mountains bigger
* Topology more variable
* Trees larger
* Buildings and sites of larger to characters (see the old post about this eg door sizes and bridges and settlements being more like models - darn that feels along time ago now)
* Get more characters on screen and in formations sooner
* Scale of monsters more impressive eg dragons
* Time to travel the hexes therefore longer too

A vid here of where PFO should be now imho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_xDEJrf6q4

The building scale would be better if it was larger proportionally than in this 0AD eg. Ie more impressive. The characters could be perhaps slightly larger with a zoom choice too.

This is the vision I see for PFO - actually getting the whole thing off paper and working. Atm you look at vids and it's too ghost-town and the landscape is too empty. The combat is too clunky.

I believe this is not the fault of the devs quality, but the scale problems that you're going to see in all these EQ/WOW scale mmos - all of them.

To imagine my settlement with it's walls and armies as per above, that replicated with the enemies and theirs, that's PFO's vision and growth imho.

Here's combat:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOlJDc7JxSk#t=00h12m00s

That looks absolutely fine to me. Imagine that is all the players coordinating and with the actual combat system the devs intend... It works at this scale and the human coordination is the real (fun) gameplay. The EVE trailer exemplifies this iyrc.

Goblin Squad Member

I'm enjoying a couple of books atm including a return to George RR Martin's Clash Of Kings. Browsing came along with:-

http://io9.com/10-authors-who-wrote-gritty-realistic-fantasy-before-g-16950 63524

Here we see a small sample of fantasy stories. There's a great deal of potential for PFO to be simulation that generates it's own stories for the different visions that players bring to the game.

This is the emphasis: Story generation > Graphics; talking about the Scale change is really a way of saying de-emphasize Graphics so that Story Interaction combinations can be fast-tracked into gameplay opportunities for players.

In the previous posts demonstrating the focus on graphics and combat issues and suggesting they're not problems to go away as well as they're the wrong focus for PFO's design to now finally saying that focus is Story.

I have hopes of producing some story for PFO already as per here:-

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2r9t0?Player-Cooperative-The-Shadow-of-the-Beas t#1

Really, this could be possible in shorter time with a different approach to the graphics of the game world. In fact Bartle often points out that without graphics, MUD's had much stronger physical systems that were logical and allowed what Koster talks about here:-

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rlvm?Raph-Koster-What-makes-a-game-last-a-gene ration#1

  • a decently large permutation space. We have an enormous ability to prune possibility space in our mental models. Tic-Tac-Toe is small enough we solve it pretty readily. In contrast, there are a lot of possible games of go.
  • a human opponent. Humans add in a whole new set of problems that are also inherently hard, problems of psychology and status.
  • procedurality in problem set generation. Every game of Tetris is different. The weather adds random elements to every sporting event. And so on.

Goblin Squad Member

Avenaoats, why do all your posts read like an equation. You manage to take words and make it look like math!

Goblin Squad Member

It's a bit like when you try two things too much at once: To pat your head and rub your tummy (that old game) atst, (said with concern)!

To come back to the OP's concern: The rate of development to reach the game design I'd make a guess needs to be faster and create more fun for the players faster hence to keep them subbing and enthusiastic and hence positive vibes of the game to gain new players.

That rate question is the key. If it can be done with the current graphics then all good - stick with that, if not I suspect the game needs to change the scale so the overhead for the devs to focus work on MORE stuff (eg more buildings, monsters) more integration of systems and addition of (rep affects on pvp, soldier-ing, building defences etc and all the concepts in the blogs) and then more WIP of these testing and improving as well as scaling up the networking to handle more and more!

Now going on a completely different path: Sub-time it could be a change in game design of holding a family name and a single character being a small sub, a larger family being a higher sub and so on; ie the players who create huge dynasties that influence the game world are paying more. With mortality/perma-death being a natural part of the game but being able to keep the family name going. Of course the assets of the family retain their value in the game itself ie the work converted (until destroyed!).

I know people bang on about the price of a sub these days.

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