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I guess this is more of a setting question than a strict rules question, but it's weird that (Archives of Nethys link) Vortex Dragons, described as emissaries, can't get between systems on their own. So how do they access the Drift? The Plane Shift spell specifically can't access the Drift, and it seems like a waste to build an entire starship for a creature that only needs the Drift engine. Is there some kind of augmentation or magic item for this? Or do they land on a highly modified ship that's basically just a Drift engine with a frame, like a Battletech jumpship or that hyperspace-ring-thing from Star Wars Episode II?

I'm not talking about starship-scale creatures that use the starship rules; I'm talking about standard creatures with the (Archives of Nethys link) Spaceflight universal rule. The rules say that they can fly at "standard navigation and astrogation speeds". Does that mean they can also use Drift travel? If so, how fast is their Drift travel speed? I would assume engine rating 1, unless the creature statblock says otherwise.

A few friends and I are doing round-robin GM'ing with one-shot adventures using various game systems to get back into tabletop gaming, and my turn is coming up. I'd like to do a PF2e adventure, but I don't know which ones would be good for a single 4-5 hour session. I can see three different pools of ideas.

1) PFS Scenarios. Are there any good ones to run even outside of society play? Searching earlier threads, I saw A Frosty Mug as a suggestion. Are there any others I missed, or new ones since the previous posts?

2) PF2e Adventure Paths; specifically, a section of one. I have no problem adapting the beginning and end of a single book (or even part of a single book) into a single session, but I don't know good candidates. Are there any notable greatest-hits moments in an adventure path? Even in the less-good AP's, are there any notable parts? For example, I've heard mixed reviews about Extinction Curse, but the first book (The Show Must Go On) sounds like fun on paper, but I'd need to run only part of it to fit in a single session. Also, apparently Strength of Thousands is a good AP overall; is there any one section that would work well as an adventure? (Our premise for these one-shot adventures is as a team of time/dimension repair agents being sent all over the place to fix various timeline errors, so I have no problem dropping them right in the middle of an adventure path.)

3) Other sources I didn't think of, especially third-party scenarios. I'd prefer to use Paizo sources, but what notable third-party adventures are there?

Here's one way to handle the fact that a Colossal starship doesn't seem like it has as much room as it should: Most of the expansion bays scale with the size of the starship they're installed on. Here's two examples I came up with:

Docking Bay (3 BP, 8 PCU): This can fit one starship of up to 3 size categories smaller, or twice as many starships for each size category smaller than that. If multiples of this module are purchased, they may hold larger starships: 2 size categories smaller with 2 bays, and 1 size category smaller with 4 bays. More than 4 bays cannot hold starships larger than that, but can hold multiple smaller starships.

Vehicle Bay (2 BP, 5 PCU): This functions as a Docking Bay, but can instead hold one vehicle of up to 1 size category larger than the starship, 2 size categories larger with 2 bays, or 3 size categories larger with 4 bays.

To clarify, here is a list of each size category and how many Tiny starships (or Huge vehicles) it can fit.

Compared to the CRB's Hangar Bay and Shuttle Bay, these are larger in capacity, but not to a game-breaking degree (especially since PC's have a prohibitively hard time managing starships larger than Large).

If having a vehicle with a larger size category than the starship it's in seems weird, remember that vehicles use the character size scale, while starships use their own scale. A Large vehicle is roughly 10 feet long, while even a Tiny starship is at least 20 feet long.

As for the BP/PCU costs, I based them off of the Hangar/Shuttle bays, but scaled down to a single bay. (Per bay, the Shuttle Bay costs 2 BP and 5 PCU, and the Hangar Bay costs 2.5 BP and 7.5 PCU.)

Also, I can see that Tryn already thought of a similar idea in his Starship Builders Guidebook, but with different capacity and pricing.

More broadly, could this scaling idea apply to other expansion bays as well, like Guest Quarters, Escape Pods, or even Cargo Bay capacity? Maybe some of those scale linearly (1, 2, 3, 4) instead of quadratically (1, 2, 4, 8). What do you think?

Dead Suns officially only runs from levels 1-12, according to the campaign outline in Part 1. However, the setting information near the back of each chapter gives a wealth of settings, plot hooks, and even characters to work with. With that in mind, I'm working on expanding the Adventure Path to run from level 1 all the way to level 20. First, I'll lay out my experience point roadmap. (I personally don't use exp when I run campaigns, but it's nice to gauge how many encounters to have at each level.)

Each chapter starts and ends assuming the PC's are a given level, and includes enough encounters of the starting CR so that the PC's will reach the starting level for the next chapter right at the end of the previous chapter. (Fun fact: This same math works in Pathfinder using the Fast exp track, since Starfinder uses the same exp amounts for levels and CR as Pathfinder!)

Assuming a team of 4 PC's, that's 100 encounters in Chapter 1 and 60 encounters in every chapter afterwards. (Using the lower CR's as a benchmark allows me to mix and match encounters more easily, and I don't have to worry as much about NPC's grouping up or calling for reinforcements, since the PC's can handle more of them without becoming overwhelmed.)

In addition, I can mostly follow the chapter's parts, simply placing encounters so the PC's gain roughly one level per part. (Chapter 1 needs an entire part added to it, but otherwise the structure is fine.)

So, my fellow GM's/worldbuilders/writers: What would you add to the Dead Suns AP to expand it? And how would you restructure what's already here? And the other challenge: Since the PC's baseline level will be far higher in each chapter, how would you boost the CR of existing encounters to compensate? I've already made a few basic notes myself, but I'm curious to hear what others think about it.

(Also, I've marked this thread as spoilers, not for any specific event, but because discussing each chapter would require talking about the specifics of characters/events/locations.)

So, here's an idea for a module/short adventure path in Starfinder:

The PC's are hired by a major corporation to travel with/in their starship to a region of the Vast, to assist with scanning for notable planets and placing a network of Drift beacons to make it easier for other ships to follow. However, just as the ship exits the Drift and enters orbit around an oceanic planet, a massive energy blast rocks the ship! The PC's manage to make it to the escape pods and launch to the planet's surface, minutes before the entire ship breaks apart and crash-lands. Getting their bearings in the escape pod, now floating on the ocean surface, the included PDA informs them (paraphrase as needed):

You have suffered minor head trauma. This is considered an optimal outcome. This PDA has now rebooted in emergency mode with one directive: to keep you alive on an alien world. Please refer to the databank for detailed survival advice. Good luck.

In summary, the players play Subnautica as a Starfinder adventure! So, what all would need to be changed between video game and tabletop? Here are some of my thoughts:

1) Base building and item crafting aren't usually a major part of Starfinder. GM's would either need to gloss over/handwave much of the base-building, or remove most of it (maybe major parts of the ship are still useable as rooms).

2) What happened to the PC's ship, both during transit and post-crash? My thought is to have their ship docked inside the corporate ship during transit, and then damage it during the blast/crash, but not obliterate it. (If it was docked during the crash, maybe the larger ship protected it from the worst of the damage.) However, its engines are definitely nonfunctional and in need of major repairs.

3) How does the GM make sure the PC's get the message that they can't just relaunch a ship immediately, so they don't try to just quickly fix their ship and take off? (Informing the players is easy, if they're willing to go along with it; informing the PC's ingame is harder.) Maybe make it clear that the energy blast was not an accident, and came from somewhere planetside?

4) Subnautica famously doesn't have lethal weapons beyond a survival knife, but Starfinder PC's are much more heavily armed. For me, the easiest way to adapt this is to just let the PC's fight creatures if they want, and make a Wandering Encounter table or two.

I know I already warned about spoilers in the title, but I'll still hide the rest of this list, in case anyone stumbles on it.

Overall, I think this could be a lot of fun as an adventure! Anyone else think so?

Most of the "wilderness/castaway scenario" discussion has been about how much easier it is in Starfinder, since all armor gives you at least 24 hours of air/temperature/pressure/radiation protection, made indefinite if you can get to a working recharge station (like your ship) once per day.

However, another part of survival suddenly became harder in Starfinder: Food and water. The two biggest changes are:

1) Create Water and Create Food and Water have both been removed from the CRB. A lenient GM could houserule them back in, but RAW, spellcasters no longer have a "Cure Thirst" cantrip. (Token Spell can still flavor food, at least, so spellcasters still have their spice-rack-in-a-box cantrip.)

2) Ring of Sustenance is still in the game, but item slots are much more valuable. You only get two slots for any worn magic items, and most classes will still want a Ring of Resistance, even though it's no longer mandatory, meaning the Ring of Sustenance is now competing with every other worn item in the game for the one remaining slot.

Anyone else notice these changes? Together, they do raise the stakes in a survival setting. That being said, most parties will still have at least one member with Survival, so on non-barren planets, this is less of an issue. Still, even though all players now have effectively permanent Life Bubbles (and the spell itself is only 1st level now), that doesn't mean all survival situations have been trivialized.

Something just hit me a few days ago: When creating your character, if a certain Race or Theme seem awesome except for the ability score adjustment, you can basically ignore it. Just using RAW, take one of the three quick pick arrays in the CRB, pages 19-20. It's even written there:

Under this method, choices like race and theme don’t affect your ability scores—you just choose which score goes in which ability, and you’re good to go.

(Personally, the Focused and Versatile arrays are both solid for most characters, especially Focused for spellcasters and Versatile for non-spellcasters.)

Also, with GM's permission, you could create your own "premade" array, basically choosing your own Race and Theme ability scores, regardless of your character's actual Race and Theme. Anyone else notice this?

Well, with Pathfinder Unchained coming out with its own version of automatic character bonuses, I figured it was time to update my own houserule and clean it up a little. Without further ado, I present...

You Are Not Your Gear

Why the different version names? Well, it's currently Version 5 of the houserule, but this is Version 2 of the thread. I figured I'd start a new thread, rather than necro the old one, especially since now I can put a link to the Google Doc right in the first post. (Of course, if/when I ever make a Version 6, this will all become outdated, but that won't be for a while, right?)

There are three main changes from Version 4:
1) Some rebalancing of when characters get what bonuses.
2) Using this houserule only costs 1/2 of your WBL, not 3/5ths. Less bookkeeping, and only slightly more powerful; still near the power of vanilla Pathfinder.
3) Using an extended Point Buy system instead of enhancement/inherent bonuses for ability scores. Trades one set of numbers to keep track of with another set of numbers to keep track of, but this way your characters don't have to use Sovereign Glue on their belt and headband so that their stats don't suddenly plummet when they get undressed at night.

Several people on the forums inspired me and gave good advice for this houserule already, but I have to especially credit Charender for suggesting the Extended Point Buy system; thank you!

I should mention that I still haven't had time to playtest any of this (I've been rather busy with school and work for the last several months), so this is still all conceptual; I'd appreciate any constructive feedback on these rules.

So, what do you think? Is the Extended Point Buy system too much extra number-crunching to be worth it? Is this too overpowered in an otherwise regular Pathfinder game? How does it compare to the Pathfinder Unchained rules? Please let me know in your replies!

P.S. This is my insecurity talking, but that Google Docs link is anonymous, right? I'd rather not just show my Google account and email address to everyone on the Internet.

Overview: A minor houserule: remove four of the mandatory magic items, give those bonuses to all characters passively, adjust WBL as needed. Still perfectly balanced for gameplay, assuming your table doesn't see Mage's Disjunction cast on a regular basis.

Background: I really hate the idea of "mandatory" magic items that give nothing but more +1's, with encounters and CR's basically assuming characters have this gear. With that in mind, I'm proposing a fairly minor houserule. I've heard variations on this before, but I can't find any place on the forums where anyone actually spelled out how it would work, so here's my version, where I deal with four of these magic items: Amulet of Natural Armor, Ring of Deflection, Headband/Belt of Stat Bonuses, and the so-good-it's-required Cloak of Resistance.
(Mind you, I consider Boots of Levitation "mandatory" on most characters I play, but I find yet another +1 to be far more boring than "Gravity? What's that?" Getting a +1 from a class feature is one thing, but I'd like my magic items, enchanted with power, to be something a little more interesting.)

Drawback:
All characters have 1/2 the expected WBL. In other words, however much wealth and treasure they'd normally get, they now get half.

If the previous sentence didn't cause you to run screaming from the forums: Still here? Good. Let's get to the bonuses. All characters gain the following five extra features over the course of their 20-level careers. These are in addition to any class or race features they would normally gain at those levels.

Heroic Resistance (Ex): At 3rd level, the character gains a +1 Resistance bonus on all saving throws. This increases by +1 every three levels thereafter, capping out at +5 at 15th level.

Heroic Deflection (Ex): At 5rd level, the character gains a +1 Deflection bonus to their AC. This increases by +1 every three levels thereafter, capping out at +5 at 17th level.

Heroic Armor (Ex): At 7rd level, the character gains a +1 Enhancement bonus to their Natural Armor bonus to their AC (Just like an Amulet of Natural Armor, this can change a +0 Natural Armor bonus into a +1). This increases by +1 every three levels thereafter, capping out at +5 at 19th level.

Heroic Attributes (Ex): All characters gain an Enhancement bonus to one or more ability scores of their choice, as laid out in the table below.

Almost Perfect (Ex): At 18th level, one ability score of the character's choice gains a +1 Inherent bonus. At 20th level, that bonus increases by 4, to a total of a +5 Inherent bonus.

To help make things clearer, I've outlined the 20-level progression below.
Abbreviations: Res, Def, and Nat refer to Resistance, Deflection, and Enhancement bonus to Natural Armor, respectively. Inh refers to Inherent bonus. Enh refers to Enhancement bonus to Attribute. All numbers given are the TOTAL bonus at that level, not the increase at that level. So at level 14, a character has a +4 Enhancement bonus to one stat, and a +2 Enhancement bonus to a different stat.

Bonuses Gained By Level:
1: None
2: None
3: +1 Res
4: None
5: +1 Def
6: +2 Res
7: +1 Nat
8: +2 Def
9: +3 Res, Enh: +2
10: +2 Nat
11: +3 Def
12: +4 Res
13: +3 Nat, Enh: +4
14: +4 Def, Enh: +4/+2
15: +5 Res, Enh: +6/+2
16: +4 Nat, Enh: +6/+4/+2
17: +5 Def, Enh: +6/+6/+2
18: Enh: +6/+6/+6, Inh: +1
19: +5 Nat, Enh: +6/+6/+6/+6
20: Inh: +5

Game Balance: The above bonuses, when duplicated by magic items, work out to just a hair over 1/2 of a 20th-level player's expected WBL. The cost breakdown:
+5 Enhancement bonus to natural armor bonus to AC (50k)
+5 Deflection bonus to AC (50k)
+5 Resistance bonus to all saving throws (25k)
+6 Enhancement bonus to four different ability scores (180k)
+5 Inherent bonus to one ability score (137.5k)
Total: 442.5k
20th-level WBL: 880k
Yes, these bonuses are slotless and Extraordinary, but I feel this is still balanced by two things: 1) The bonuses are fixed, so less player choice is allowed about what bonuses to get when, and 2) These bonuses are all but mandatory anyway, so getting one of these items lost or dispelled doesn't feel like a temporary setback/annoyance so much as exposing a glaring weakness.

Conclusion:I haven't actually playtested this in a campaign, but since the overall WBL works out to exactly the same as regular Pathfinder, I don't see how it could break anything too badly. I think it could free up a lot of slots for more eye-catching magic items, as well as stop the table from screeching to a halt every time someone casts Greater Dispel Magic (as everyone tries to figure out which magic items were hit), and preventing the classic newbie player casualty, Death By "What's a Resistance bonus?"

Feedback: So, what do you think? Is this balanced? Is this a great idea, or is it terrible? How do you think I can improve it?

P.S. Just have to add: This is the first time I've posted on the Paizo forums in a long, long time.

In short, how are gamers with differing amounts of time on their hands going to interact and have fun in PFO?

My major problem is how this plays out in EvE Online. (And here's that comparison again... seriously, one of the reasons I'm looking forward to PFO is so we can have a sandbox MMO to discuss other than EvE Online. But I digress.) In EvE Online, although skill training happens whether you're logged in or not, money gathering requires you to be active. Fairly simple, sounds good, right? Problem is, the system really favors people with a lot of free time, or very flexible schedules. The people with more free time (That is, time not spent working/maintaining yourself and your home/socializing outside of an MMO) have more time to collect money: Running missions, mining, going pirate-hunting in the asteroids, joining up with corp-mates for any and all of these, etc. Also, anyone with a flexible schedule is going to be much more successful in a nullsec corp, as they can be "called to battlestations" at almost any time of the day (or night), and thus help fend off attacks from anyone, no matter what time it is, and thus are more valuable (and more likely to stay) in a good corp. (Anyone with more EvE Online experience than my small amount, please prove me wrong, if you can.)

This is one of the key reasons I stopped playing EvE Online: I work a job and go to school part-time; although I have a lot of time for gaming, it wasn't enough to really help out in nullsec or make a lot of profit in empire.

The thread is named after, in my observation, the main three groups of gamers, based on time:

The Nonstop Nolifers are the ones that do not have a time-intensive job/responsibilities, and can spend almost all of their waking time gaming. These are the people who dominate very grindy games, like most Korean MMO's, and EvE Online.

Weekend Warriors are gamers with 5-day-workweeks; they don't have much time during the week, maybe only an hour or half an hour a day, but have free weekends. WoW has definitely rolled out the red carpet for these gamers: the game has basically shifted from a daily-based game to a weekly-based game: Weekly raid lockouts, daily dungeon bonuses stacking up to 7 times if not used, etc.

Hour-A-Day Crunchers are busy both weekday and weekend, but have more steady chunks of time. They can put in more time in the weekdays, but are also busy on weekends. Many students and part-time workers are in this category. (A note to any full-time college students reading this: If you're not at least a little busy on the weekends, then you're not taking college seriously.) Daily quests are this group's specialty; the daily-quest rewards really add up if you can put in the time consistently, day by day.

If you're up for even more reading, TV Tropes handles this idea rather bluntly here:
TV Tropes on Nolifers

My question is, will PFO be different in this regard? And if so, how? Most theme-park games have "rested experience", and a huge chunk of rewards in once-a-day or once-a-week quests/dungeons/raids, so even only playing for an hour a day gets you a significant chunk of reward. EvE Online has no limits on playtimes, or compressions of benefits for the first bit of playtime each day, so as far as I can tell, the nolifers rule. What about in PFO?

There's already been quite a bit of discussion on crafting, but what I haven't heard any talk about is how resource gathering will work, other than some of the February 1st blog:

Harvesting hazards: These are opponents that are generated randomly as an effect of harvesting certain resources. The longer a harvesting operation continues at a given location, the more likely it is to attract unwelcome attention. [...] (Yes, this means that people harvesting are potentially creating content for people who want to slay monsters. Win/win!)

That sounds awesome, but what is each player going to be doing? Let's say that a woodcutter and a fighter have teamed up to go harvest logs in a forest. The woodcutter finds a good tree and starts chopping, and the fighter sharpens his sword and waits. Now what is each player doing?

That's my main problem right now: Harvesting is a major part of the game, since it supplies crafters with, well, everything, but I have yet to see a game where player-done harvesting wasn't a pain in the rear.

In fact, the only two MMO's I can think of that did harvesting in a way that didn't feel like such a boring chore were SWG and EvE Online's PI system. In both of those, you don't gather the materials yourself; instead, you just manage the machines/NPCs who do all the gathering. Set them up on a resource-rich spot, make sure they're properly powered/supplied, punch the Gather button, and check back in a day or three. (In SWG, you could also manually gather small amounts of a material, but that was really only for novice crafters who couldn't afford a harvester yet; still, it was a nice backup/supplement)

Oh, Minecraft is worth a mention here, but it's gathering system is fun because, after harvesting 5000 stone, you can actually see the mountain you leveled or the giant hole you dug in the ground. That always makes it feel like a significant accomplishment, not just "Now I can supply my guild for another week. Yay."

That's the only system I've seen where I wasn't bored out of my skull after two days of gathering. The main problem with it for PFO is, how the heck are you supposed to guard a group of NPCs for three days straight? That's an escort quest that would even give Fable players nightmares. Maybe have NPC guards to guard the NPC gatherers? But now you're really pulling the players out of it...

Can anyone come up with a good way to have players harvest materials without feeling like such a chore? We know what the guards are going to be doing, but what are the gatherers going to be doing?

This was part of the discussion about Combat mechanics, but I'd like to put it here. Putting aside all the discussions about spellcasting, targeting, first-person vs. third-person, I'd just like to focus on health. How is PFO going to handle health, and how health decreases?

Personally, this is one of my annoyances in theme-park games; the sheer number of times a character can take a battleaxe to the chest and keep swinging. Look, I know the games are supposed to have an epic feeling, but come on! You can only take so many hits before you should just be a pile of mush, regardless of how many hit points you still have left. And shouldn't losing and restoring that much blood/limbs that quickly have some effect on your mind? If you're taking thousands of damage a second, and being healed for thousands of damage a second, I'd expect you to die from shock after less than a minute. In most MMOs, it's not too bad, but with how high damage/healing numbers have been climbing in WoW, it's really broken the immersion for me (not like other parts of the game didn't shatter immersion years ago, but that's getting off topic).

Three games deserving mention here. LOTRO came up with a fun solution; that green bar your character has isn't a Health bar; it's a Morale bar. When you get hit, it's not your physical vitality that's decreasing so much as your vigor and will to fight. If you take too many hits and your Morale drops to 0, you're so demoralized that you're forced to retreat back to safer ground. Mechanically, it's almost identical to WoW's death and graveyard system, but, with just a few word changes, the system sounds better and makes more sense. Healing effects aren't restoring limbs and closing wounds so much as inspiring your allies and exhorting them to keep fighting, no matter the odds. The names for healing spells include Raise the Spirit, Words of Courage, Bolster Courage, Rallying Cry, etc.

The other game I'll mention is Pathfinder itself. The core game uses the old health=vitality system that D&D started with and WoW used, but some GMs have come up with other names for the system while still using the same rule. Morale, sanity, happiness, etc.

But the system I'm hoping PFO looks the closest at is a variant rule in Ultimate Combat: The Vigor system. Here's a link to the Reference Document page about it:

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCombat/variants/woundsAndVigor.h tml

Basically, it gives each character two health pools: the Wound pool and the Vigor pool. The Wound pool represents physical health and vitality, while the Vigor pool represents your stamina and will to fight. Most damage is subtracted from Vigor, representing that your character blocked or dodged the blow, but is slowly tiring from the battle. Particularly damaging blows or spells can hit Wound directly, tearing muscle and drawing blood. Likewise, most healing spells restore Vigor, and Wound restoration is difficult, especially in-combat. With a day or two of rest, though, you heal a lot of Wounds. It's a very fun variant, especially for low-magic campaigns, where healing is scarce, and I'd love to see this implemented in PFO.

Also, what about if characters take stat penalties for having less-than-full Wounds, or just losing all your Vigor? After all, if you've been stabbed a few times, you probably won't be running, swinging your weapon, or casting spells quite as well. I could see several problems with this, namely that one bad turn in a battle invites further failures, but if the penalties were removed while you had any Vigor left, then healing spells/skills would help turn the tide of battle back to your side. It would certainly add some depth to the game, and make fights a little more interesting than just "I attack I attack I attack I attack I attack I'm suddenly dead." Once people on both sides start running out of Vigor, the fight would get more intense, and strategy would be more important than ever.

There's already a thread going about flight and how PFO should deal with it, and I think that means it's time to discuss another major mode of transport that most MMO's ignore: Water.

So, how should players be able to interact with, and travel on, water? Swimming, boats, water breathing, whole underwater towns/kingdoms? Playable aquatic races?

Maybe making a whole underwater area explorable is too much coding. At the very least, I'm hoping to be able to both swim across the surface of water, and be able to build/use boats; everything from rowboats to riverboats to smaller sailing schooners to gigantic merchant vessels to warships.

How to control boats? I think Minecraft has the right idea there. (Mind you, Mojang has done nothing to develop the boat since they made it, but at least they made one.) Boats both take time to get up to full speed, and take time to slow back down. Maximum turning speed is also limited; the boat can't just turn on a dime.

But what about boats for multiple people? Who would command the boat, deciding how fast it goes and when it should turn? Would the larger boats require multiple players to keep them going? What would those players be doing to help keep the boat moving? How should cargo in the boat work? Would boats just have a nebulous but working cargohold, like in EvE Online? Or would items stored in the boat actually show up, so sailors would see the crates of wood and bolts of cloth in the hold?

I'm just starting this off talking about boats, but what about everything else in the water? Fishing? Diving for wrecks? Water Breathing? Equipment getting wet? Storms? Attacks by sharks and aboleths? Other aquatic races? Underwater dungeons? Underwater towns? What would they look like, since gravity isn't as much of an issue? How about players being able to make their own underwater towns, ruling over them just like their landlubber kin? Or how about lashing together a set of boats to make a town?

Let me end this on a note to Goblinworks: I understand if you don't have the budget to code everything underwater; it can be a lot of work to get right, and most MMO's just skip underwater altogether (LOTRO, Warhammer) or just have a little underwater stuff without really exploring the possibilities (WoW; Vash'Jir is a nice effort, but they could have done more; they still thought too much in 2D, but maybe I need to read up on how underwater ecologies actually work.)

So please: If not right at launch, then at some point in the future, make traveling both on and under the waves a real possibility in PFO; everything from fishing on a rowboat in the river to exploring dungeons and ruins far below the surface.

So what about everyone else? What ideas do you have for water, both on it and under it?

I was going to post this in Pathfinder Online in the "wish list" thread, but I realized that it would be a very long, derailing post there. Still, I'd like this to be a place to make notes about what other MMO's did and didn't do well. I'll start with my list of MMO's I've played or heard a lot about, what I liked or didn't like, and my favorite/least favorite moments.
Warning: Titanic wall of text ahead. Just a heads-up.

1) World of Warcraft: I'll start with the hot-button, to get it out of the way. I started WoW at the tail end of vanilla, finally hit level cap in the early parts of Burning Crusade, and continued through until the end of WotLK, with a few breaks in between.

What I Like: The User Interface and Controls. Credit where credit is due, WoW has one of the most responsive interfaces out there. There's almost no delay between me thinking about what I want my character to do, and my character doing it. Plus, the fast-loading and relatively easy to understand windows, maps, stat screens, and the very smooth Dungeon Finder make questing a breeze.

What I Dislike: It's too bad there isn't any story. Blizzard's original vision was severely altered for Burning Crusade, almost completely destroyed for WotLK, and finally chucked out the window in Cataclysm. Most newer gamers don't realize this, but Warcraft actually has a decent backstory. Go play Warcraft 3 sometime, and compare it to the story in WoW today. It's just all about the grind to level cap, and then the grind for gear. No real opportunity for roleplaying or exploration anymore, since there's no consistent story anymore; it's been rewritten too many times.

Favorite Moments: For all the rote-memorization, slot-machine loot dungeons, WoW did make one jaw-dropping raid: Karazhan. Still my favorite dungeon/raid in WoW, with several of my favorite bosses. First off, it's the only instance where the monsters look like they have a reason to be there. There's a kitchen, dining hall, armory, library, living quarters, study, chapel... it's actually a livable place! Also, in a game where the Holy Trinity of Tank/DPS/Heals reigns supreme, Karazhan has a couple bosses that really mess with it. Namely, my favorite boss in WoW, the Shade of Aran. Aggro? He laughs at taunts, and all your +100% threat buffs. When he attacks, he picks a random player, regardless of aggro. Then there's Moroes, the boss in the dining hall, who is immune to taunts, vanishes and garrotes random players, and comes with four allies picked from a possible six. Not a big step from the WoW formula, but at least it looks like they tried.

2) Runescape: Allegedly free-to-play MMO made over ten years ago, it's now fallen in popularity somewhat. I've heard it's similar to, if not a ripoff of, Ultima Online; since I've never played UO, I'll leave that to someone who has.

What I Like: There are no classes, just different skills to train. You mine some rocks, you get better at mining. You cast spells, you get better at magic. And unlike Star Wars Galaxies and UO, there's no cap on total levels. You can hit max level in every single skill in the game, becoming a true jack of all trades. Plus, quests aren't just "kill 10 things over there"; each quest does add to the storyline, and when you've finished a quest, it feels like you've actually done something. Plus, their writing is good, and the tone is often hilarious. Another big point: In several quests, you aren't the hero. You're supporting the main characters by being the jack of all trades. In many quests, you're more MacGyver with a sword than Conan the Barbarian. Your main strength is the fact that you can become an expert in many different skills, then use your wide pool of knowledge to become a one-man-explorer.

Things I Dislike: It gets really, really grindtastic. Worse, grinding skill training takes just enough effort that you have to pay attention, but not enough to keep your attention. I'd love to just alt-tab back every few minutes, but the game takes more input than that. And skill grinding gets too boring to hold my attention that long. (Maybe that's just me.)

Favorite Moments: My favorite quest in the game is Monkey Madness. Your mission: A squadron of gnome gliders went missing while exploring the south seas. The gnome king asks you to find them and figure out what happened. Turns out? They crash-landed onto an island ruled by a civilization of intelligent, xenophobic monkeys, and were imprisoned! You have to negotiate an island where almost everything is trying to kill you, sneak around the monkey city without being spotted by guards, and gradually collect the items you need to make first an amulet to speak with the monkeys, and then a totem that lets you turn into a monkey when wielded. Now that you can disguise yourself as a monkey, the island is a much less dangerous place. After some deals with the arrogant Monkey King (Including rescuing some monkeys from a city zoo; the dialogue there is hilarious), you rescue the glider squadron and help them defeat the Jungle Demon sent to destroy them. As a reward, you get combat training with the gnomes (In game terms, that's a chunk of bonus exp), and the ability to buy and wield Dragon Scimitars, a very fast, very powerful one-handed melee weapon. Whew!

3) Star Wars Galaxies, Pre-Combat Update: Abbreviated as SWG Pre-CU, this is SWG as it existed before the Combat Update turned it into WoW In Space. Before then, as mentioned in several other posts, it was unique: A class-based system, but you weren't locked into one class.

What I Like: A crafting system that was actually complicated enough to offer a challenge beyond grinding for mats, and required character skills that most people spent on combat instead, so not everyone could craft. Not only player-owned houses, player-owned cities! Including being able to place items in your house. Not just furniture and decorations; if it could be in your inventory, it could be placed in your house. This resulted in some very creative decorations, like people making aquariums using polearms as the corners, and filling the middle with fish they had caught. (It should be mentioned that the game didn't have a physics engine, so objects could be placed in the air.) Or people placing walls of cinderblocks to build fake walls in their houses. But mainly, the allure was the class-based system: There were six base classes, only two of which were directly involved in combat. You started the game knowing the basics of one class, but you could learn all of them, and improve in any of them. However, there was a cap on how many total skills you could know, so no mastering everything. This is also a game that demonstrated that a player's class could be a status symbol, not just shiny gear and mounts: Pre-CU, the Jedi class was notoriously difficult to unlock, requiring lots of exploration, and usually mastering two or three classes, though not all at once. However, once you finally unlocked it, not only were you one of the best fighters in the game, but everyone who saw that lightsaber knew that you were a long-time player. It always felt more like how Jedi in the Star Wars universe should be: They were rare, they were formidable fighters, and everyone's heads turned when one walked into the cantina.
One last note: Mentoring. Getting skill training from NPC's got rather expensive, especially for a novice, but any other player who knew that skill could teach it to you, assuming you met the prereqs. Plus, in almost every skill, getting the capstone required you to earn Leadership experience, which you could only get by mentoring other players. So trainees got free skill training, and trainers got the experience they needed to unlock their class mastery. It was quite common to see several players hanging around a town center, advertising what skills they could teach.

What I Dislike: I never got far enough in the game to group up a lot, but I heard group play wasn't that great. Also, although you could spend your skill points however you wanted, there was the inevitable downside that some builds were flat-out better than others. Especially multiclassing; except for the Medic class, it was usually a bad idea to start training in a class and not master most of the class.

Favorite Moment: I should mention right now that the game also allowed Guild Duels; not just one-on-one duels, but entire guilds could challenge each other in a throwdown. I'll just recount one afternoon during the second week I was playing the game, when I learned about this the hard way. I was hanging out in Theed, looking at all the skill trees, when I realized that the crowd outside the starport had separated into two groups. Only half paying attention to them, I noticed that many had advanced weapons, a few had pulled out high-end combat pets, etc. Suddenly, at the drop of a hat I didn't notice, the entire town square erupted into a brawl! Since I wasn't part of the duel, I couldn't be hurt by any of the explosions, rampaging pets, or blaster fire, but that didn't stop me from flailing around in circles in the middle, trying to figure out how and why they were shooting at each other! I'm pretty sure it gave the two guilds a good laugh, and made a very memorable experience for me.

4) Guild Wars. I must admit, I haven't played this very much, but I've spent a lot of time talking with friends who have. So if I'm wildly off-target here, please forgive my ignorance, but I think I'm getting this right. Main impression I got was twofold: One: Cohorts and minions for every player, to make soloing much easier and group play feel more like a small army, and Two: Very soft trinity and loose aggro mechanics. Oh, and the level curve was short: Level capped at 20, which could be hit in a week if you were slow and a day at the fastest. Also, some of the best gear in the game could be bought just with money earned from questing; you could have a level-capped, well-equipped character inside of two weeks, easy. So what was the point? Group play, story, and crazy combat mechanics. Aggro was almost nonexistent; monsters tended to attack at random. The tank's job, in the words of my friend, were, "to slow any monsters heading for the back lines so that your monk could take time off of healing and buffing to blast them to kingdom come". Healing was important, but tanking was really more about surviving whatever came after you, rather than guaranteeing that everything was attacking one person. The minons help; each player can have three cohorts and around five minions, allowing players to fill missing roles in a party, or just provide a party if you're soloing. The fact that combat an shift so dramatically if monsters start going after the squishier players means that everyone has to stay on their toes. To paraphrase Charles Darwin, "It is not the strongest, nor the smartest who are most likely to survive, but the ones most adaptable to change".

5) Warhammer Online: Best PvP MMO I have played, in my opinion.
What I Like: I'm not one for PvP, but this game makes it FUN. Easy-to-use queues for instanced battlegrounds, noninstanced objectives on the map to take and hold, and the humorous kind of violence and brutality that characterizes Warhammer. The main reason I liked this game was that there were ways players could affect the map. In each zone of this theme-park MMO, there were two keeps: One held by the forces of Order, the other by Destruction. One of the major ways to get exp and rewards is to take the enemy's keep while stopping them from taking yours. Mind you, this isn't instanced: The keeps reset in a few hours after one is captured. What results is a constant back-and-forth all over the zone; players gather together in roaming groups to capture different objectives in the zone, each one of which makes it easier to attack the enemy keep. Once you think you're ready, the group charges to the keep's doors, siege weapons at the ready. (You heard me; you don't just pound down the doors with your weapons, you can actually build a battering ram to breach the doors!) Once the outer layer is down, it's a vicious fight in the courtyard and up the battlements to secure the flag flying at the top of the keep. (Oh, and enemy players are collidable; you can't just run through them; this means you actually can have a line of player tanks blocking doors and ramps) If you succeed in tearing down the flag, the keep is yours! You then usually have to defend it from the former occupier's counterattack, unless the players get bored or all ragequit for a few hours.

What I Dislike: Like any PvP-based game, if there aren't many players on, it's not fun. So your enjoyment of the game can vary wildly from day to day; some days, there are several full warbands rampaging across the map; other days, you're lucky to get a handful of players together.

My Favorite Moments: Being able to stand on the battlements of a recently-conquered keep and realize that you actually did something that has an effect on the map. Only for a few hours, but still. Plus, there aren't many other MMO's where you can say, "Guess what we did today? While you were grinding for crafting mats in WoW, I joined a warband and stormed a g!@!!#n keep!" Oh, and in addition to enemy collision, many classes get knockback effects. There have been many times where my orc has smashed the enemy players off their own battlements to plummet to the ground, and I still grin every time it happens.

6) Lord of the Rings Online: Best PvE MMO I have played. Based off the books, not the movie, for the record.
What I Like: The crafting system and the class roles. First, crafting: Although it mainly follows the WoW pattern of "collect two logs and make a bow", there are notable exceptions. First off, you have a crit chance while making gear. If you critical on a crafting recipe, the resulting item is extra-powerful. Plus, at higher crafting tiers, you can name the item if you crit while making it. Very annoying to have that "name this item!" box pop up while you're just grinding crafting, but it's a nice touch when you crit on an item you or a friend will be using.
Then, there's class roles. Although the Holy Trinity also reigns supreme in this game, it is joined by two other roles: Buffing and Debuffing. Unlike other WoW-clones, buffing and debuffing is actually useful. As such, there's no class that is pidgeonholed into dps; every single class can, with the right traits slotted, fill a role other than just dps. This means that, no matter your class, you can be useful in a group.
Oh, and I have to mention one of the most original ideas introduced with the Moria expansion: Legendary Items. Essentially, it's a weapon that grows more powerful as you do; not like WoW's "you'll never equip anything else" heirloom items; instead, it's an item that you can upgrade as it levels up. All LI's have their own exp bar, and you get Item Exp in addition to regular Exp. When an LI levels up, you get points to put into one of its Legacies. These are class-specific, and they boost specific class abilities. For example, on LI's made for Captains, there's a legacy to reduce the cooldown on Kick, one to boost the damage-over-time on Cutting Attack, one to boost all vocal healing, and one to increase the bonus parry rating on the On Guard buff, among others. They're basically talent points on your weapon; not only does it allow even more character customization, but it allows item customization; over time, you feel like it really is your own weapon, not just "this weapon has 10.5 more dps than the one I found two days ago".

What I Dislike: The Epic Quest. For a game so focused on questing, it's not too surprising that there's one huge, long quest chain that starts just after you make the character, and continues after level cap. Problem is, almost all the quests in the chain are easily the most annoying quests you do in the game. Especially in Moria, where I found myself running back and forth between the same three quest NPC's more times than I want to count. The Epic Quest tells a great story, and it gives good rewards, but it's a heck of a hurdle to jump through. Especially since you have to do the Moria section on all your alts if you want them to have one of their three class capstones. Yikes... I don't even want to think about doing that chain more than once. I'm very glad that my alts are going to stay low-level crafters.

Also, I know that it's a theme-park MMO, but the static world is especially glaring with all the quests you do. You'd think that killing the leader of an entire tribe of orcs, and then killing HIS leader, would drive some of the orcs off. Going back to the Moria Epic Quest: My biggest problem with that part is, when you start out, Moria is a network of old, dank tunnels, infested with all kinds of beasties. Most of the quest chain is just going from one NPC to another, having to carve a path through the mines in the process. But even after doing a huge chunk of the quest, including helping the dwarves secure the Twenty-First Hall and surrounding area, my reward is... it's still a network of beastie-infested tunnels I have to carve my way through if I want to get anywhere. Gee, it's like I didn't do anything at all...

My Favorite Moments: Playing the Skirmishes. Skirmishes are like instanced dungeons, but they can be played solo or with a group, and instead of just clearing your way to the loot-filled boss, it feels more like you're doing something: Retaking Bree from brigands. Defending the dwarf town of Gondamon from a goblin invasion. Helping one of the rangers defend Weathertop from an undead attack. The scaling difficulty based on party size is a huge plus. Skirmishes can be: Soloed, 2-manned, 3-manned, or 6-manned. Also, there are three tiers of difficulty, with higher tiers being harder for a group of the right size, but will also give better rewards. All that adds up to a very customizable instance experience.

7) EvE Online: Best sandbox MMO I have played, but not my favorite PvP one; I'll explain below. There's been a lot said about EvE already, so I'll keep this brief.

What I Like: This is one of the only games that can truly claim to be a sandbox MMO: There really are almost no restrictions on what you can and can't do. As a fun note, the Terms of Service include: It is legal to scam ingame items and money from other players, but surviving an attack by Concord (the NPC riot squad/police force) will get your account permanently banned.

What I Dislike: This is personal opinion, but I just can't get into the "real" gameplay of EvE Online: PvP. Even if you don't want to PvP, you can't escape it; although Concord will destroy an attacker's ship if they attack you in highsec (the "safe zones" in EvE), Concord takes six or seven seconds to arrive; this delay has spawned a whole school of griefing/sport known as "suicide ganking": Figuring out a ship and equipment setup that can blow up any given ship in six seconds, while still being inexpensive enough that you can easily buy another one when Concord blows yours up. This means that, even if you're in highsec, there is the remote chance that someone will suicide gank you: either to claim whatever was in your cargohold, or just to cackle at your smoldering wreck of a ship. And in lowsec systems, Concord doesn't exist, so it's truly open PvP. As a shameless carebear wuss, I try to stay out of lowsec, even though that's where all the fun stuff happens in EvE.

My Favorite Moment: Unfortunately, this isn't a positive one, but it summarizes both my likes and dislikes of EvE Online: The player-made holiday known as Hulkageddon. Most of the materials in the game come from mining asteroid belts; several ships are specialized at mining, the best one being the Hulk. For one week out of the year, many players get together to suicide gank as many Hulks as they can find, as well as any other ship they catch mining the asteroid belts. There are prizes for whoever can kill the most Hulks, as well as other prizes, all awarded by players, to players. On the plus side: The players do all this themselves. They set up the holiday, they made up the rules, they stick to the rules, they make their own fun. That's the kind of creativity that should be encouraged if you're going to make a successful sandbox. On the minus side: This creativity is being funneled towards destroying EvE's economy for a week, by cutting off supplies, and forming rampaging hordes of ships out to kill anything and everything that isn't a combat ship they find in the asteroid belts. In Warhammer, I don't mind this roaming PvP so much, since there's no loss if you die, other than time. But in EvE, when your ship is blown up, it's gone. If you're lucky, you can salvage some of the equipment, but otherwise, there's nothing to do but buy a new ship and try not to get it blown up this time. My main problem with the open PvP in EvE is that you always have to watch your back. Any time you're out mining or exploring, you have to constantly check your sensors to make sure that nobody's trying to kill you. The only time you're safe is docked in a station, where you can't do much that's useful. I sure don't like that. Maybe it's just me.

I know this turned into a huge wall of text, but if you actually read the whole thing, thanks for reading.

How about everyone else? What is it that you like/dislike/remember about the MMO's you play?