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Ryan posted on the GW site Sept 22: "We are still working on the update we planned to deploy on Saturday. Until we have completed that process we are not opening the game for the Alpha Stress Test. As we mentioned in the blog last week, if you have Open, Explorer or Early Enrollment please wait for an email from our MailChimp system informing you that your access to the Alpha is available before trying to log in or download the client. We are continuing to update the community about the progress of this update both on the Paizo.com forums and the Goblinworks.com forums. As we have more information about the update to share, we'll be doing it on those forums. Thanks for your patience!"
Visual aesthetics, what many call graphics, are among the most challenging, time consuming, and expensive luxuries an extremely expensive game enjoys. I want to urge the new player to take the game's visuals in stride. They aren't bad and in may respects are quite good, but the artists will have all the time they need to bring the quality up to AAA standards and perhaps beyond if the game plays well for us otherwise. What is required is that the aesthetics are workable at this point. If we waited for the details to be perfect we would be waiting a very long time. Let us resolve to not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Let the good be the staunch ally of perfection. I overheard in the game an old timey backer expressing his dismay at the imagery. I didn't want to start a general chat flamewar, but I would very much like folks to prioritize their values better for the good of the game. If it doesn't play well the best graphics in the world won't save it, but with a good, successful game we have all the time in the world for an artistic masterwork.
The ratio of consumption to availability should roughly equate. I think it will be best if settlements do not select their settlement type (Wizard/Rogue, Fighter/Cleric, etc.)until they are confident they know what the initial mix of resources will be locally available. Later on there will be a system of supply between settlements/areas, but initially we should not pick what type of settlement we have based on what people want to play but on what will be supported by the local environment. Where there is little pine or the components for bowstrings and varnish it doesn't make sense to count on longbows. Where the components for sepia crystals are scarce a cleric settlement will face difficult times. I think, further, that the developer must make an effort to ensure that the rate of resource consumption will approximate the availability of those resources. That is, if it were pine that is scarce, setting the durability of weapons dependent on pine too low will create many avoidable problems. Currently the availability (frequency) of for an example, esoteric essence nodes appears disproportionate. Granted, this observation is local and subjective, but only the developer has the means to objectively evaluate the relative frequency of 'junk' nodes and the anticipated consumption rate of leather armor. Personally, I don't think a durability of '20' is going to cut it, given the frequency of character death.
So it is a slow day at work because the person I have to run my data summaries past before massaging them for publishing is out for the weekend. So I was looking at Steam and there's a game called Lichdom. It's like an FPS shooter but for spellcasting, and apparently the bulk of the game is about crafting spells. I didn't pick it up because from what I can tell it is a simplistic linear gauntlet that provides an excuse for the particularly interesting spellcrafting model. What they do is provide libraries of effects the player can mix & match. Say I want a direct damage ranged spell. I choose whether fire, ice, electricity, corruption, or psyche and whether it should be a projectile or a ray (or a trap, an explosion, or a dot). Then I can augment it with secondary effects like debuffs or secondary explosions, burning dots, or what have you. I think it would be pretty neat were there some sort of spellcrafting ability later in the game, and it wouldn't have to be only wizards, but also clerics, and similar but differently for fighters and rogues (put together chains). Is there anything like that in the Pathfinder origins of the game?
If you propose an idea in the IdeaScale crowdforging tool everyone gets to see and consider the idea and upvote or down vote. You can filter the ideas to be considered by how new they are, by how many votes they have received, and how 'hot' they are. However, if a community member decides your idea is a duplicate, or if they just want to suppress your idea they just have to click on the 'report duplicate'. Once enough people have done so it is removed from view for evaluation by an admin. If it sits in this limbo long enough then even if the post is judged unique and made active once more it is no longer new and sinks to the bottom on the 'recent ' tab. It wasn't there to receive votes or comment so it sinks to the bottom of the 'popular' tab. It also has grown cold so it sinks to the bottom of the 'hot' tab. Even then all it takes is enough votes to suppress it once more removing it from view again for the admins to eventually review it again, approve it again, and it reappears at the bottom of every list. All it takes is enough community members of a company who want the game to develop only the way they want to effectively remove an idea they oppose from consideration. I think this is a problem with the way Ideascale is designed. Ideascale, I believe, was built with an assumption that the participants would be working together to find ideas rather than working against one another. I've had five ideas removed from view for reported duplication. This morning all five were returned (at the bottom of each list now) to community consideration by Admin adjudication. All five were also reported as duplicates yet again just minutes later. The ideas once more 'pending approval' are:
I don't believe these are duplicates. I think some folks don't like these ideas and engineered the system to remove them from the table by fiat instead of letting them be downvoted. If they are bad ideas they should be downvoted, not avoided.
I think we as a community have been overlooking the potential for using Alpha backers, who are to have the ability (monitored) to play the roles of monsters. GW has been very quiet about what they have in mind for that. I think we have been assuming quite a bit about what that might look like. For example, my assumption has been that there might be monstrous invasions GW has in mind that Alpha backers would add challenge that goes beyond AI technology. But the thought occurred to me this morning that there might be other uses for us (the Alpha level backers). The example I thought of is that we might be useful for the purposes of Role-Playing the villains for a company. Ryan once asked, in a thread about the tools needed for RP (it is Pathfinder after all) what role players would really need in the game that players couldn't supply, the things GW needed to be able to supply. I think the same elements of story are shared between meaningful RP and a meaningful fantasy story, namely a resolvable conflict, usually entailing villains. For an evil company, naturally the villains would be good-aligned paladins and clerics, for example. For a good company we would play evil-aligned characters. What if there were a way for a player company, a settlement, or kingdom to obtain a cast of intelligent villains in the person of alpha backers playing the roles of the villains in a role play encounter that company wished to set up? If there was to be a 'prize' chest at the end of the RP scenario they cook up then that reward could be the product of one of their crafters. It might even be taken so far as to record, like a script, the activity of the alpha players so that it could be re-used. Does this idea have merit with others? In what other ways can we think of using this potential alpha boon?
I thought of a system I think will be needed for effective RP. As some may know I write, mostly stories. But some of what I write is poetry. Now one of the things poets do is perform. Others I know will wish to perform as well. And leaders will wish to orate at times. It takes time to type out a long, well-thought speech. It takes time to craft a well written tale. And clerics will need to be able to deliver sermons without getting a cramp from the keyboard or mistyping /sit. So one thing the UI and chatbox must be able to do is accept pasted text we copy from notepad or whatever. I think this will be very much desired soon after EE, or OE at the latest. After all how otherwise will I be able to spam my spiritual drivel?
Those of us familiar with skill progression in MMOs will recall that what it amounts to is a series of various kinds of damage, whether damage all at once within varying values and cold-based, fire-based, etc., or damage over time within varying values, each of which gets a different name, icon, and animated graphic effect. Some will be called bleeds, some noxious, some poison, etc. That provides a wide array of counters for each of the types. One thing I don't think we've seen as a trainable character skill, beyond various shield-bashes and consequent stuns, are vital combat skills that a melee combatant in the real world would expect to try and master. Maybe it is time to include such a skill tree. Parry is usually just a chance buried among the rest, and similarly blocks and evades. The problem I assume has been that latency in the network makes it impractical to respond timely coordinated with the opponent of the mob on the server. These are three skills right off the top that could be developed as separate skills. Activation might still be automated but the probability of it happening could vary with skill tier. Going a step further, there are other individual combat skills that have not, to the best of my knowledge, ever been provided for beyond enabling the ability to write a macro for your controller. As an example case, in DAoC players who bothered to write (or copy/paste) macros for their controllers gained almost insurmountable advantage in melee combat over players who did not. They could make their character stay within melee range 'circle-strafing' to gain the flank or even the back of their opponent to score strikes that their macro-less opponents could not adequately counter. This and similar techniques could be incorporated as trainable skills in PFO. This should turn what was a technological player skill (as opposed to trainable character skill) into something accessible to all, and turn an otherwise unequal match between two same-level characters into a match where similarly trained characters was less lopsided. I am of the opinion currently that making the same functionality as was coded in macros in DAoC into available trainable character skills would be beneficial to PFO. Since the macros were commonly available through the forums of various programmable controller devices these artificial advantages, often proclaimed as player epeen could be available to all, even old fogies and the technologically illiterate.
Ryan provided a provocative analogy in his vision for PFO between PvP and tackling in American football. The primary reaction in the community responding were observations that tackling plays a pivotal role in American football. Yet if football were about tackling we would call it wrestling. How should we understand what Ryan was suggesting? What are the implications for the game being designed, constructed and implemented? To begin, let me outline what I got from it because that will reveal my own biases when I interpret. My vision of PFO is basically an RP MMO within a virtual world where it will be possible to resort to violence against my fellow players if I determine that is meaningful to me, but where I have in-game consequences that should be recognized and prioritized if I do so resort. An RP game without the ability to enforce my militant will is a lamed RP game. With PvP included I am in a whole RP game. Further, when I band together with a community of affiliates to form a company we can set objectives that also involve PvP to obtain. The PvP in PFO is one of several in-game instruments by which we achieve an objective or set of objectives. PFO is not simply a complicated arena where there is only PvP combat and everything you do is about PvP combat. If it were, then it would end looking more like Call of Duty set within an environment out of the early World of Warcraft real-time-strategy (RTS) games where every building, every resource harvested, is only about increasing the tier of PvP capability or improving the defenses of PvP investments. So my conclusion is that while individual and settlement PvP may well be a very pivotal element of PFO, it is by no means the sum of the game. Instead, I believe that PFO will resemble a fully functional Look for a moment at some of the most colorful characters in these forums. They are already roleplaying, and doing a rather good job of it I might add. Even the most (apparently) violent and domineering personalities are actually character personas they use to post. Few if any of them would be the same in person over lochs and toasted onion bagels with a cup of rich coffee. Mmm and a glass of orange juice, please. Many players entering Golarion through PFO will not expect what we will do, and will attempt to dedicate themselves to PvP, and that is a good thing because they will be confronted by PvP in many ways. But PvP will not be the whole game. PFO will, in my envisioning, not only be a fine opportunity to gain more PvP enthusiasts from the ranks of the dedicated PvE players, it will also be an opportunity to increase the ranks of the RP players because that is what everyone will be doing, whether they plan to or not. And that is why we should accept the instruments of reputation and alignment and faction that the designers are building. Because football is not just wrestling.
So those of us used to themepark MMOs are generally accustomed to our hitpoints and mana or magic power pool regenerating over time out of combat. Should it be similar in PFO or different? If different how do you recommend? If similar what seems optimal in your view? What will be the downsides and upsides to your preference? (Devs weighing in with the facts would be welcome IMV)
We each have our vision of the game of Pathfinder Online, and we each have our own idea of how the game will best find expression. I believe that most of us prefer that the spirit of playing in the River Kingdoms will be filled with fun for everyone, and that we will each be able to focus ourselves on our individual play styles in liberty within the framework of rules GW is designing for the good of all. However, we must recognize that there are exceedingly well-organized entities typified by the large Eve corporate entities whose efficiency and focus on territorial domination of everyone, everywhere will impose restrictions on our individual expressions. Our gaming liberty will be endangered if they are able to seize power and impose their limitations on our play. We will be relegated to serfdom and be left homeless. Yet to band too tightly together now is to hand our game over to that alien game-style before the game has even entered alpha. We should not surrender our liberty for the sake of security before the first settlement is even built. At the same time we should realize that those Eve corporate entities are already well organized and disciplined. Their internal communications are already established and practiced. Their management structure has their instant notification systems already in place and working, and they are already coordinating not just raids but invasions. When they decide to come to Golarion we will be wide open. Fortunately access to the game will be metered, and we may be able to detect their growing numbers over time. I recommend that we organize an informal defense league now, set up a system of communications not just of leaders of large guilds but including the individuals and independents. The previous effort to do this preparatory work was, in my view, a vigilante system that would impose a version of justice, assigning 'black marks' on player characters. I opposed the idea of vigilante justice because I know how easily worms can insinuate themselves into even the finest apple. Worms can spoil the whole barrel by insinuating unjust accusations, and can divert an organization dedicated to real justice into an instrument of injustice. I believe that when the threat is present it will be easily recognized. We do not need a vigilante justice organization at this time. We will know when we have to unite to resist the oppression of an alien spirit on our world. We need only set up our networking and ensure that each member and organization of our league stands prepared, supplied, and ready to suspend our hostilities with one another and unite for the common cause: the best PvP-RPG game on the planet.
When I think of herbalism I tend to think only of wandering around picking plant leaves, drying them or steeping them in various mixtures to create cures, buffs, and poisons. However herbalism also entails gardening and gardening presents an opportunity for experimentation. There could be rare collectables out into he wild that could be transplanted and then cared for to produce remarkable substances. With distinct combinations of reagent-like soils, fertilizers, special waters, and specific composts they might yield amazing things like roots that increase spell potency, power regeneration,, etc.. Similarly alchemy could also include experimenting with rich solutions to grow various magical crystals.
Hello, consider honoring Veterans today meaningfully, with a donation to the USO. The United Service Organization is nonpartisan and instrumental in making the lives of our servicemen and servicewomen, their spouses, and children a little more bearable as they give of themselves in defense of the liberties we enjoy. Thank you for your consideration.
Should the alignment and reputation of a settlement affect the alignment and reputation of it's citizen as the citizen's alignment and reputation affects the settlement? If my character's alignment is lower than that of a settlement I join should my reputation be enhanced by the association while the settlement's reputation average is lowered by my joining? Should my character have a reciprocal relationship by association? Should the pure and holly be oppressed by the company of thieves? Should a villain be slightly ennobled by the company of the enlightened?
A new poster proposed a mining scenario where he imagined a PVE dungeon instance. I pointed out what I think we know about such, that there will be few if any provided by GW though later on down the road there may be such crafted by players for sale on the game's market. However it occurred to me there might be an instanced PvE dungeon. How do we imagine GW will bring Emerald Spire into the game? Once the dungeon has been run it would be much different from what it had been prior to the first run, exhausted of treasure probably, yet likely to still be spawning escalatory critters. This would present a problem: all that expense, all that creative talent working to craft it lost the first time a party successfully accomplishes a run? I doubt that. It would be nonsensical to waste it so. Instead I believe while a player character is young there will be an opportunity to enter an instance of the dungeon within a party of adventurers. From the outside it will look just the same as it always will, but first entry into the dungeon will be entry into an instance that preserves the original adventure. I suspect that instance will be preserved for that party until they either leave defeated to try again or achieve their objectives. Once that instance is completed the interior Emerald Spire will no longer be virginal. Chest will lie open and empty but resources may still be gatherable, and I feel confident it will be a constant source of escalatory content. Do you see another way?
And here we see why the 9 grid alignment system is inherently flawed. Characters with any depth cannot be slotted into one of 9 different holes. This quote is from the thread "Golgotha: An invitation of representation'. Positing the nine core alignments in a grid is convenient for players wishing to target specifically their preferred end-state with respect to the principles of the deities of Golarion. Active alignment in comparison measures the expression of their actual alignment by correlating the player-character's behavior.I contend that active alignment is a flexible system of Cartesian coordinates which increments with your character's actions. Many actions are to be tracked in the game, and what you cause your character to do will variously add or subtract good, evil, law, and chaotic values moving that character's cumulative average of historical actions toward these cardinal ideals. As such it is capable of adequately capturing the current alignment-state of any action that will be tracked in the game. From this hypothesis I believe I can argue that the nine alignment grid is an adequate behavioral meter for PFO to use. What is your thought?
I believe we should begin cataloging observations about what works and what does not work for us in Darkfall: Unholy Wars. To begin, crafting is punitively expensive not only in terms of in-game gold but player time. Now, this does have benefits in that those things that require investment are also valued, and value does promote player generated content, but the punishment is nevertheless punishment. Degradation rates for player gear seems extreme. You can trust very few as there are no apparent social controls. Recruiting strangers into the clan is a scary ordeal fraught with danger, especially given the inadequate controls for clans to set permissions, especially for clan banks. What have you seen that you hope does not make it into PFO, and what have you experienced that you think would be good to adopt?
There are some phrases everyone uses but few apparently really understand. I'll give it a try and run what I think a 'sandbox' is up the flagpole and then stand back to see whether anyone salutes. So very much of the material in the blogs talks about 'sandbox game'. It is contrasted with 'themepark game' but nowhere is there a good explanation about what we mean by that phrase. As a point of reference Neil Sorens said:
In a sandbox game the player creates the story. In a multiplayer game players modify one another's stories as well as create their own. This is radically different from a 'themepark' game where the game designer tells the game's story for every player. In order for a sandbox environment to work well there must be things to furnish your story with and things to do to facilitate making your own story. There should also be few mechanical limitations on the possibilities of your creation, yet there must be limitations on how badly your creation can be affected by other players. Have I adequately described what a sandbox game is? Do you have anything you would add? What have I glossed over? What did I understate?
So we could conceivably be creating content for the game already. A version of the Unity development environment is free for download already. Might there be a way to contribute art assets for consideration? Would doing so be helpful?
So I'm thinking magical enchantment ought to be a branch of the crafting professions and should include the druidic shape wood and shape stone spells. A pure crafter wishing to be able to empower his creations should be able to pick up enchanting skills as a natural extension of his progression into mastery. Enchantment should also be accessible to those specializing in wizardly and druidic skills for their staves and wands, and for recharging same if they need to be reloaded, without losing their professional focus benefits. Should castable buffs and debuffs whether permanent or temporary, be forms of enchantment? Remembering that your stats are going to primarily affect how quickly you learn related skills, should enchantment include, at higher tiers, stat increase tomes?
Hi. You may have heard of the Foundry in Cryptic's 'Neverwinter' MMO which permits players to craft dungeons of their own design and publish them in-game. The tools are pretty basic but not really bad. Many desirable features are missing, but it is better than nothing. Anyway I thought if some of us were dabbling in that game it might be good to have a thread where players familiar with actual role-playing might post the shortcodes and descriptions of any quests they have created there. To that end I'd like to start of the listing with two of my own. The first is 'A Circumspect Strength'. You can search for it within Neverwinter under the 'New' tab in quests using the short-code #NW-DHDXPT9WB This foregoing is a quest you can actually complete without necessarily engaging in combat. There is combat available if you want it, but it isn't actually necessary to the story. The second title, 'Counter Diversion' #NW-DKJZFSBOQ was actually developed from the first, but will require combat to complete. Longer than the first it returns some decent experience and introduces the plot of a story that will unfold over 4 quests in the campaign.
Okay, I work with spreadsheets.
I know the devs will necessarily be building similar information gathering tools overall, but I am concerned only with my own stats not anyone else'. I hope I will be able to access that. For example if you play MWO you can use the known cycle times for each weapon-type and the weapon stats in your MWO profile stats page. Determine your accuracy with that weapon by finding the number of rounds fired compared to the number of rounds on target. So if you had 80 rounds hit out of a hundred rounds fired, your accuracy with that weapon is 80%. Next discover the amount of damage you deliver with that weapon by dividing the damage done with it by the number of rounds that hit. So if you hit with 2017 AC20 rounds for 38,945 damage the AC20 for you, the way you play, would be providing on average (varies by range)19.30838 damage per hit. Since an AC20 fires 2.5 times in ten seconds, its average damage in ten seconds for you would be 48.27095. Now multiply that by your accuracy percent, and multiply the result by the number of AC20 cannon you are firing (including this detail so you can calculate for multiple Long Range Missile tubes). Call that the weapon value (for my 64% accuracy a single AC20 is worth 30.89892 in weapon value). Compare all your weapon types and you will see your optimal load out for the way you pilot your mech and how accurate your shots are. Bottom line is you can improve your damage output best by improving your accuracy, whatever loadout you run, given you carry enough ammunition and stay alive on target. In PFO the stats I would need are the number of fights with each weapon and spell, how many times I used that weapon or spell (how many swings with the longsword), how many times I scored a hit, the total damage that weapon caused, and if possible the cycle time between strikes for that weapon.
For me, the very best crafting system I have ever found in a game was that used by Dragonrealms, a pay to play text-based MUD. As an example of the depth of complexity there was the skill of fletching bows and arrows. First there were different kinds of wood, like pine, maple, elm, oak, teak, etc. which were increasingly challenging to both forage up a limb (longbow) or stick (shortbow) and successfully shape that into a longbow, shortbow or arrow shaft. The aspiring fletcher would have to purchase a fletching bag to contain his fletching tools, such as a knife and a 'wood shaper' like a wood plane, and hold his arrowheads flights, and fletching glue. Having foraged a limb of wood he has a hope of working successfully the fletcher uses the command 'shape longbow from limb' or 'shape shortbow from stick'. You gain prompts telling you which tool to use at each step. There is always a chance that you'll slip, and ruin the piece. Advanced skill relative to the material you are working increase the likelihood of success/reduce the chances of a misstep. Arrows are crafted similarly, and arrowheads as well, using different commands. All the crafting skills are complex, deep, and challenging. To you, which game provided the best crafting, and why do you think so?
So Ryan once asked our opinion whether in the future, once the minimum viable game area has been completed and we are all playing, how should they expand the playable area? Should they expand using a portal system to other areas of Golarion or continue incrementing on the borders of what we will initially have to start. The portal idea seems neat because we would be able to reach different terrain types quickly and easily, and the current area in the River Kingdoms extends quite a ways without much change. No mountains to speak of, no real oceanic areas for expanding into naval engagement are really nearby. On the other hand incrementing the play area at the borders is attractive as well, in that it should lead to a more unified playerbase. If the advanced players are all off beyond a high-level portal the basis area might become rather unpopulated, drastically reducing the opportunity for player interaction. Or we could ask them to do both, in a manner of speaking. On the current borders add some portals, but also expand the land area around those portals in a manner that makes them subject to blockade. I'm still not satisfied that we have fully explored these potentials, and thought I would bring it up again for comment.
It is customary for there to be a mini-map always displayed in the UI but I think it is arguably unnecessary. I do think the player should be able to call up a map of the area that offers a 'zoom-in' function keyed to the scroll-wheel of the mouse and plus/minus keys of the keyboard. However I also think it would be better to use a fog-of-war mechanic on the map to occlude areas that have not been visited in order to encourage exploration. At the same time players should be able to inform one another of locations (such as settlements) and other significant landmarks. I would propose that when shared or when bestowed by quests such locations should have icons that appear superimposed on the 'fogged' portion of the map for the player to go find. What are your thoughts in this and related matters? Do we really need a mini-map obscuring our screen when looking out on the world? Should the map be obscured where we have not yet been?
I should imagine that as an aspiring herbalist or alchemist my training would inform me what ingredients and components I need for a potion, salve, or balm. But how am I to identify those ingredients in the wild? Sirely I will not be limited to only whatever may drop as loot for a goblin or ettin I brain(s). Surely I will be able to find nettles, arrowroot, and lavender in the wild. But perhaps not. Perhaps I should have to discover their properties another way, possibly by ingestion? Will those plants and herbs I could harvest display a glowy outline? Will they have a label? Descriptive text that is more revelatory the higher my skill? Will honeycombs stand out from the tree hollow or will I follow the bee home? How will I determine grade 100 Lavender from grade 300 lavender?
At my alma mater, for my curriculum, we had a Sophistic field sport called 'Spartan Madball'. The objective was to have the ball. Whoever had the ball was the mutual target of all the other players, who would pile on and wrench the ball away, whereupon the new ball holder would become the target of everyone else. Brutal. Patently pointless, except if you were aware of what was happening in class: Then it was a lesson. Our curriculum used discussion/conversation/seminar to explore whatever was the current subject. If someone presented a hypothesis everyone tried to disprove it or come up with an antithetical argument. So the object of Spartan Madball was, I think, to teach us that if you have a conversation, the objective should not be so much to pile on the holder of the hypothesis, but to further the hypothesis constructively into thesis. Having a thesis we would then generate its antithesis. Some would champion the thesis, others would champion the antithesis, and by conversing constructively we used the conflict as the dynamic for generating a practical synthesis. If successful, that synthesis would then be adopted as our new Thesis, and the process was to resume. This is called dialectical reasoning. I wonder could PvP/Politics be instructional to good effect in PFO? If PvP is just Spartan Madball, then I would argue the game will be less successful. But if PvP in PFO is a constructive and multipartate dialog then it might progress, and evolve. Am I too obscure and the topic is worthless, or should I clarify?
So I had a constellation of concepts about the reputation system that included gifting a boon of reputation to a new player because of his style, or gaining reputation by helping thin the herds in an escalatory hex, but then I think it was Stephen Cheney who indentified that Reputation will be exclusively PvP. Could we get a more complete idea based in the team's current thinking about what reputation will actually be, how it is gained and lost, and what it is intended to be good for, please? When I speak about it I would like to speak well, and currently I am unsure that I can do so.
One of the most interesting potentials for PFO that have been averred to by the developer is the player-crafted dungeon. It was made clear that dungeons need not be a tunnel in the ground but can include special or unique forest glens, fortresses, and similar. Basically it is any special area limited in size in which players can adventure together, particularly for PvE. Further Ryan mentioned that possibly such dungeons might be offered on the GW store, and that GW would share any profits with the author. This game feature, if it came to pass, could result in players generating a modest income. So since I am approaching retirement and my book should be finished this year I was thinking I'd really like to dedicate some time to building a few... but for now I really want to encourage GW to begin planning, if possible, for making this feature a reality as I think it offers great potential not only for prospective dungeon designers but also PvE enthusiasts. So toward that end I'm creating this thread for some dungeon ideas, sketches of dungeons we would like to see whether we end up actually building them with a Unity-based tool using in-game objects and skins or just ones we would like to have someone build for us. Mostly I'm venturing some design 'sketches' in hope that we can spark some interest for the eventual inclusion of such a wonderful feature as this could be. Now, I'm fairly confident that the community will have commentary and insight to share aside from actual design sketches, and I want to encourage the understanding that you can respond to the thread with your thoughts as well as contribute to the designs if you so choose. I'll use a leading tag, such as 'design: <title>' to distinguish any designs I submit for your review. I'll try and use an intelligible, common sense format structure for ones I submit to try and give it some structure. As soon as I have a design ready for you I'll post it here. Please feel free to comment or contribute your own design ideas. It would also be pertinant to identify how you see these player-crafted dungeons being included in the game itself once purchased from the GW Store. For example my thought is that these dungeons, once purchased by a player, would spawn for that player and his party at variable spots that would persist for them until used, but would appear for no one else not in a party with him or her. I'm guessing they would be single-use, and would vanish once completed.
So we're looking at a world where the teamsters whiz by on the traderoutes hardly seen before they are gone, unless it is by bandits exerting a speed trap with Stand and Deliver. But what happens to the Travelling Salesman when he speeds into an escalated hex? You'll remember the escalation mechanic where goblins, hobgoblins and other monsters can overpopulate and become belligerent. Will such escalated mobs exert SAD-like mechanics to stop the teamster fast travelling through their area?
As a few of our number have more than adequately pointed out we believe there will be times, probably many, when players have cause to request GM intervention, such as cases of in-game harrassment. While it is probable that GM interface mechanisms and procedures are common knowledge among development teams it is the case that these mechanisms could be improved, since griefing is still an alarmingly prevalent concern for so many players. What can we suggest for GW's consideration? How do we imagine a few customer relations reprepresentatives can handle what might be pandemic problems? For one thing it may help some of us gain insight in how difficult it may be for GMs to effectively adjudicate cases to consider how it could be done, but it is also possible we will think of something original. So the way I am seeing it is that the player should have a simple way to call a GM's attention to a location where the harassment is underway and to initiate the recording of a log of what is being said in chat. It should be simple for the player to report without distracting or contributing to game disruption. Recommend for the case where the GM cannot arrive timely to observe the incident in-progress a player-uneditable log file should being recording local chat at the site. The GM should then have a way to locate invisibly to the cited location for observation. If the GM directly observes harassment and the unedited local chat log indicates no inciting behavior precidence then because learning is promoted by immediate consequence the harassing player character may be isolated until such a time that the GM can interface with the perpetrator for adjudication. All report and GM events should be time-stamped in the logs and GM-Perpetrator interactions should be recorded.
I awoke this morning even earlier than usual from a dream in which I met the developers. There was Ryan Dancy leaning over a laptop in some public place that reminded me of the Student Center at my alma mater. I went over and introduced myself and he morphed into someone who looked like a cross between Stephan Cheney and Dakcenturi (as he appears in his video question). The iris' of his eyes were the shimmering colors of a DVD in sunlight. I felt concerned because he had been so busiy on the laptop I thought I was interrupting. But he handled my interruption with aplomb and I got an impression that he intended to encourage the community as if it were as important as the actual game being developed, and reflected that in a way we are because if we are adequately supportive it will make it much better received when it goes to Early Enrollment than it would otherwise. He asked me "Here to get your bling?". Well, I was actually only intending to introduce myself and wish him well, at least I felt like that was why, but I also wasn't going to turn down some freebies that might become collector items someday. I started to protest that my objective was originally more altruistic but then realized that giving me bling was what he was prepared for, and likely felt that the sooner he took care of whatever my need was the sooner he could get back to work without offending me (after all we all know how debilitaitng it can be to offend Being). So anyway... not much of a punchline but there it is: I am now certifiably obsessed if I am actually dreaming about it. <looks around> Uh, is there a twelve-step program for this stuff?
Would it be a good idea if NPC escalation hexes that are left alone long enough are allowed by the game to increase to the point where we find a full-scale invasion? At what point do we think the developers should program governing/limiting mechanisms to keep NPC populations reasonable? Could evil kingdoms purposefully leave evil NPC populations to grow to invasion levels, to use them as shock troops and cannon fodder their Characters can exploit? There is so much we don't know yet about the NPC escalation system. I am confident that Stephen and the rest of the design team are thinking it through carefully. GW will be rolling out their idea of crowdforging, which I believe entails their asking specific questions about what we prefer at key decision points along the development path. This should be to learn which of available options we prefer. This system of crowdforging, assuming I have it conceptually right, would be beneficial because their design would suffer less 'scope creep'. On the other end, our end, we can speculate all day but it will not cause the developers to deviate willy-nilly from their intent. But clearly we come up with good ideas, and not infrequently. If our ideas are good then I suspect the design team talks about them, and conceivably a good idea can trigger a solution, rather as a catalyst might. So how far should NPC escalations be allowed to grow?
If the developrs get to the point where they are just wondering how to fill their time, maybe this weekend, perhaps there might be negative effects on wildlands they march across. Historically the march of armies devastated the lands they passed through with their foraging food, cutting firewood, and harvesting timber for their siege engines. It could be an opportunity for players to try and restore those devastated areas, nurturing the forest back to health. It could also provide reason to cause neutrals to commit to guerilla methods to attrite the ranks of those belligerents. A good idea? Or not worth the effort?
As the topic has not risen, as far as I know, I thought I would start a thread on how we see the movement controls working in Pathfinder Online. I think the most common assumption has been when the player presses and holds the W key they will start jogging forward and when he or she releases the W they will come to a stop again. An alternative might be that pressing W once and releasing it will start the character walking slowly and the effort expended will be less that the refresh rate of stamina. Press W again and release it and your character picks up the pace a bit, lengthening stride, and the effort expended will equal stamina refresh rate. Press W again and the character starts jogging, and so on, until with enough W presses the character will be sprinting, expending stamina much more quickly than it refreshes. When stamina is depleted then the character has to stop or reduce to a slow walk to replenish stamina. I would assume that the amount of stamina will be represented with some sort of stamina bar that is filled when full and empty when depleted. How do you see movement working?
So I made a post where I proposed stripping out all the complex code bounties (that add possible exploits to the system) and recommended just significantly increasing the aggro range of the killer when the victim of a verifiably unprovoked murder flags him. The idea was that all the creatures and NPCs in an area would immediately rush in to tear the murderer limb from limb. Ryan said 'Sweet!' but I think that reply has vanished as I haven't seen it since. I looked for it when I thought it would be much more satisfying for the victim to be able to watch, as in spirit form, as the murderer is brought down by an unnatural swarm of wild animals. But then it occurred to me that nobody is going to want to hover around for a few minutes to see the bad guy fall to a swarm of rabid bunny rabbits anyway, and would likely rather just respawn and get on with things. Then I was chatting with a fellow who seemed rather interested in open PvP for the Evil-aligned and together we arrived at an observation that it really is acting in character for the evil to be evil. It occurred to me that probably open PvP would be a desirable thing for an evil character, and probably all the people who absolutely will not tolerate non-consensual PvP would align good or neutral and avoid evil like the plague. Alignment hits for PvP would only bolster evil ratings anyway. So I've come to a tentative conclusion that it would be better if, when a good or neutral aligned character is struck down in an act of unprovoked murder (not in a state of war, not duelling) that when they die they call out to their deity as part of their animation and a terrific bolt of lightning should boom from the sky and blast the killer instead. As in disintegrate. The system would have to unerringly know whether the conditions defining 'griefing' were met, and strike immediately, wasting no time. This would remove a potentially major burden from the GMs, and there should be no appeal about unfairness, since the rules are clearly defined. The lightning bolt is an impartial judge, jury, and executioner. The victim cannot curse the murderer unless murder conditions were present. It would be pretty hard for the murderer to not know what it was for, how it happened, and there would be no appeal of a human decision. Let the gods sort them out. The killer just gets his eggs fried and that is that. He leaves no body, maybe a singe mark or smudge, all his gear is disintegrated, and he gets to start his character all over again. No worries about banning. He does it again and it always happens without fail. Eventually he learns. Meanwhile the evil are whetting their skills on each other without worrying about absurd criminal flags and meaningless alignment 'hits' while no unbalancing advantages accrue to Lawful Good, better assuring us that the ranks of the lawful good are not being swollen by opportunists for the excessive power that othewise will attract them. Plus the victim gets to see his revenge before he releases his spirit for rebirth and gains a sense of satisfaction without wasting time. I realize this is a shocking proposition, but does anyone else think this might be better alternative to the bounty/flagging system?
The purpose of this thread is to get us thinking and sharing what we imagine might be the best opening experience for the new player. So let me sketch out what I envision the start of the game would look like were it my project. Then everyone can poke and prod and tear it apart or describe their own vision whole, as they see fit. After a cinematic opening introducing the River Roads area I would have the intro dissolve to the character creation screen. The first step would be racial selection listing currently available races. Selecting one would open to a description including a comparaticve table of perks that come with that race compared to what is available to the other available races. The user can continue to gender selection or go back to the list of races available. When the user affirms to go to gender selection the characteristics of available genders (if any) are listed and described. When gender is chosen or confirmed the screen opens with a Da Vinci' Vitruvian Man-like drawing of the base body type, but for the race selected. 'Handles' intended for dragging the character drawing into different proportions should be available to the user to make the body shorter or taller, thicker, thinner, and sliders should be provided for inciting more or less muscularity, body fat, and skin tone. Each of these value ranges shoud have defined limits determined by the ranges of clothing/armor art asset dimensions to enable appropriate sizing and reduce the potential for clipping. The body depicted should have rotation functionality. When the user is satisfied he or she can accept the changes and progress to a magnification of the facial features. To avoid excessive incidence of 'clones' each face should begin with a randomization routine that will vary the appearance from the prime basis, hair coloration, facial hair if any, hair style, and apparent age of the character. This way if the character does not wish to bother with custmization then still the produced character is less likely to be a twin of another character. The face would have 'drag handles' that can be rendered invisible using the tab key (instructions for use on-screen). There should be drag-handles for nose tip, brow, cheek, cheek bone, ear tip, ear lobe, ear center for shifting the whole ear, orbit (whole eye positioning), eye lid, eye edge, mouth, mouth edge, upper lip, lower lip, whole mouth (vertical positioning), chin (whole), left and right chin, jaw edge, jaw center, and jaw below ear.
All changable dimensions have limitations dictated by the art assets to reduce the likelyhood of clipping issues with helmets and hats, etc.. Further, by holding the control key paired elements like the eyes should be independently positioned to allow limited asymmetry in those features, and the nose should also allow limited skewing. Some blemishes such as scars should be selectable and placeable. Hair styles, hair colors, and facial hair selections should be provided. Once the user accepts their character appearance they are presented with their character's whole appearance in a natural stance clothed in default clothing. The finished caracature should allow the player to zoom and pan and rotate. The player can transition back through the character creation screens preserving their appearance so that adjustments can be made as needed. When the user is satisfied the user can finalize his or her character by naming (first, middle, and surname) and submitting their product. If the name passes all filtration
There will be times when a settlement/city/kingdom must make a collective decision. Players should be provided a secret ballot mechanism and powers that accrue to the collective and override any single in-game authority other than official company GM staff. Examples might be where the settlement leader has vanished, when someone powerful must be banished, when a course of action must be decided and there is no despot, and when a settlement determines it may be time for regime change and the despot disagrees. If settlements are left without the means to resolve such issues peacefully it will require either their subjugation to an undesireable condition or in-game violent overthrow. Both those solutions could still be possible, but for many I suspect it would be preferable to have a way to enforce the will of the people through non-violent means. So if a community member has great power but causes sufficient antipathy among residents, the residents should have the abiltiy to expel or banish, and the instrument for doing so should be by secret ballot. The ballot initiative's author would have to correctly name the character to be affected by the vote. The ballot initiative's author would have to select from preset available actions, such as banishment, promotion, or possibly the amount of a fine, and a date not less than three days from initiation, by which date the votes would be final, majority wins. This would entail a rather more formal membership status in a community than I suspect the developer intended. Recommend a quorum of citizens would be required for the vote to be valid, and simple majority rules. Do you concur or see a need for altering the request for such an instrument, or will a community be ruled forever by the same people?
Could use some posts over on Joystik to try and rustle up some interest.
...so... what I am imagining is that say a party of six accepts formation command by a cleric at the inn, before they set out for a dungeon. The party is a rogue, a wizard, the cleric-commander, a paladin, and two fighters. The cleric-commander gets a new bank of icons with six multicolored dots or squares, each dot colored according to class. Upon creation of the formation but before combat initiation the commander defines who goes where. So the cleric-commander puts himself in the back where he can be protected to heal, the wizard to his right and the rogue to his left. He puts the paladin in the center of the fron tline flanked by the two fighters. This will be the default formation they will initially take if beset by hostiles. Other options might be a six-pointed defensive star with everyone facing out from a central point, or a five pointed star with their wizard in the center or what have you. Another might be echelon -left/right, or perhaps phalanx (wedge). In anticipation of having to fight in a corredor he has one in a column of twos. Finally he has one where the rogue is to flank, so he can take advantage of some rogue backstabbing advantages. He sets up these various formations as alt-function key assignments, The wizard and cleric set up their ready spells, and the party leaves the Inn or camp for a destination dungeon and they begin to fast-travel. Along their route a party of six bandits waits in ambush, and as our party fast-travels the road the bandits spring their trap. The party appears in the road where they have been ambushed in default formation which is less than optimal if the bandits have set up in an enfilading fire configuration where they can fire their crossbows at the party from all sides. The cleric has the option of changing formation to a defensive star or charging one side of the ambush in the current formation. Changing formation would take precious time so he decides to charge whichever side of the bandit formation the party is facing leaving their most vulnrable backs open but potentially reducing the offensive strength of the bandits by one opponent who is quickly overcome. To do so the cleric-commander is the only one who actually uses his WASD movement keys. Once the focused bandit is down he wheels the whole party to their next objective, an adjascent bandit, and also changes formation to send the Rogue to the right flank away from the greatest threat of missile fire from the bandits' remaining positions to set the rogue up for a backstab opportunity. The wizard decides to return fire casting magic missile. Because the wizard (I assume) must stand still to effectively cast his spell his action stops the rest of the party other than the rogue (already in motion) for his cast. This is just how I envision formations working.
Many many players are not always available for grouping. Work demands, small children at home, many legitimate reasons can require our ability to turn to them at a moment's notice. This is a hardship for any group you are adventuring with. Others of us work odd hours and may have difficulty finding a group to adventure with. Too, it is the nature of some classes to work solo or as a duo: Rogues and Rangers come to mind stalking their quarry silently doesn't fit well with the company of noisy clerics and fighters or absent minded bumbling wizards. Yet the world will be a harrowing place for those who walk alone. We are warned 'Don't do that!' when soloing is brought up. One would think it wouldn't be necessary to require such dependency. So my thought is to provide some types of activity which can be profitably soloed. The careful hunter should not invariably find himself beset with hordes of goblins. Lynx should not only come in six-packs. Have you any thoughts or preferences with regard to the availability of solo adventuring?
So I was dreaming this morning over coffee as my eyes slowly opened and my voice began to smooth. If my Druid ever made it to where he could cause a lighting strike, what should that be like? What is the ideal I have for that event? For me, when I was preparing to cast the spell I should select the spell similarly as I would draw a bow, and when I had proper aim, tension, or focus for its intensity/ferocity I would release it. While I prepared to cast lightning I imagined the world growing darker, as if a cloud were overhead. When I unleashed the power of lightning, at the same time the bolt struck, the rest of the world became even darker, such that the lightning bolt was all the more impressive. After the briefest moment the sound of the lightning stike would thunder in a great echoing CRACK. The eyes would be as if stunned for a moment until they recovered from the flash. What spell effects would you like to see and hear for the various great actions we should be able to take?
Suppose a player character's home should be where he can usually be found in Pathfinder Online. Granted I am presupposing a bit when I venture this assertion, and realize I don't think this will all happen at once and may not be realized until well after release and pretty deep into a character's career. But I think it may well be a desireable thing, so maybe it should be looked at early. Later program development often depends on earlier things, like when prototyping a character data record. I'm supposing each player character builds his own house, perhaps helped by his friends. I am imagining the player must locate a suitable plot of land, lay a modular foundation, and raise modular walls both interior and exterior. The modular walls would support an apropriately shaped roof. The interior should be useful to the character. The material a house is made of would be material that can be found locally. He should be able to fence his plot, set up a garden, and have cooking facilities. Perhaps his food and garden produce would 'happen' while the player is logged out. He might have some livestock. He might notice if a band of orcs has made off with his pig or stripped the vegetables from the stalk. By and large the matured character would stay at home to sleep rather than taking a room at an Inn, except when travelling. When he wishes to go on an adventure with friends he would first check the settlement, then the Inn or Tavern(s), the crafting halls and market, and the homes of his friends as well. In RL of course he would have contacted them, but not everything is as planned as that, and if he found time on his hands while in the game then there would be places he could go to seek company. But if he is not particularly inclined to adventure due to a lack of known motivations then he might stay at home and work on his craft, whether an adventuring craft or productive craft. He might have a forge and anvil, or a lathe and woodshop. He might have a spinning wheel and loom, or tanning racks and leather shop. The alchemist might be rattling beakers and tapping a retort. Of course home is usually where one stores possessions that don't merit vault space in town. What thoughts have you for player character housing?
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