Caldeathe Baequiannia's page

If you aren't risk averse, you'll probably do better if you wait for a funding announcement, which doesn't seem to be happening. At the moment things are pretty precarious, and the market is weaker. On the other hand, if there is no funding announcement, at some point it won't be worth anything.

There are regular escalations of mobs running near Thornkeep that are best tackled by 3 or more new players (you can do some of the stuff with one or two, but the final boss will require a lot of hit-and-run activity and might be too tough depending on skill and tactics). As you level up, there are more and more difficult escalations that spread around the map at random. Some of those will fall in territory that other players consider "theirs" so might lead to PvP if you don't ask first.

At the moment, there are really only four roles (Fighter, mage, cleric, rogue), and none is much more heavily in demand, though most people find taking at least some cleric training useful.

It's in an open-beta-state. You can sign up for a 15 day trial for no cost at Goblinworks. If you want to stay live after that, it's about 12-15 a month depending on how you choose to pay. If not, you can simply let the character go inactive after 15 days, and try again later, if you want, by paying for 1 month, or (theoretically) by trying a new 15-day trial account if you have a different email address (but that original trial will have about 35k xp by the time it goes inactive, which you'd have to wait for all over again.).

There isn't a large population yet. Depending on when you are in, you might be the only person (or at least the others are not responding in general chat) or there might be 10 or 20 or a hundred. If there's more than that, most of them are keeping their heads down.

There are some basic mobs to fight near the starter shrine, and mats to gather, and you can craft gear in the starter town if you care to put xp into crafting skills. You start with only a little XP, and get 2400 more per day during your trial, or any time you have paid time active.

There is a new company that has shown a commitment to the game (They're currently paying for half the costs of keeping the game active) They've indicated they hope to be finalizing over the summer, but it probably won't change the game much for a few months anyway (it's currently on a skeleton staff, with bug fixes plus a few new features once every couple of months)

Personally, I'd suggest creating an account, logging in to start a character, run around for a few minutes, kill a half dozen goblins (or more if you enjoy it) to get a rough feel, then park it for a few days until it has a few thousand XP so you can more easily run the quests for your preferred roles, and maybe do a little extra training before tackling a more thorough trial. If you start a toon today, by Sunday it will have about 10k xp. You interact with quest givers by right-clicking. Attacking anyone near a thornguard will get you killed, but they have a short memory. Right by the shrine is an extremely basic movement quest to get you started (look for a glowing woman).

There are some basic info docs in linked in the starter app, and you can see the controls at the PFO wiki

Everything is more fun if you have a group of people to work with, especially if they have a little experience. Various alliances have various voice rooms for chatting. If you have Mumble installed, there's an open mumble at golarion.mumble.com see goblinworks post here. Most North America evenings there are at least a couple of people there you can chat with while playing. At random times, there might or might not be anyone visiting.

The Goblinworks forums (link above) are a good place to find people, who can guide you to where they are hanging out. You can read the public areas, but can't post until you have an account (active or trial).

Case in point about how humans thrive. Ryan's departure, whether voluntary or otherwise, doesn't actually vindicate anyone. I'm certain it makes some people feel good about themselves (as was no-doubt intended), but looked at objectively, there's no evidence one way or another whether he failed, or was sacrificed (willingly or unwillingly) on the altar of change. Furthermore, although failure and success generally overlap, one person's failures are not inherently another person's success. The gain comes in feeling like we were right all along. It's a very human feeling to desire.

You could be right, Bludd, but for a very long time your tendency has been to ignore anything except the possibilities that support your own personal hypotheses. They could be publicly traded and forced to deal carefully, they could be working on an unrelated deal with someone that doesn't like Paizo, or extricating themselves from a deal with someone like that whom they've decided to break with and want to reduce penalties for ending it, they may have been bitten in the past by a competitor pushing into deals to interfere.

Human beings thrive when their decisions are proven correct. You abandoned the game in disgust, as is your right, and now you have a degree of personal investment in its failure, since that will justify your decision.

Vic Wertz wrote:

KarlBob wrote:

Is NewCorp the actual name of a company, or just an anonymous designation for "the un-named company that has been in discussions with GW for quite some time now"?

The latter.

That tells me there is a lack of confidence in the deal and or in the project, so the new party can avoid embarrassment if it does collapse.

Your ability to interpret corporate motivations from the name players are using to refer to the potential buyer is interesting.

Hi Opiate, I think all kickstarter accounts were DT. There's a very good chance your accounts are DT, but you aren't looking at them right. When you are logged in to goblinworks.com, on the Account inventory page, there should be a line that says either:
Destinys Twin 0 or
Destinys Twin 1

If it says one, you have a DT account but haven't created your second toon. If it says zero, then log into the game and on the character screen if you have two or more characters showing and two of them say "Training XP" then you have your DT characters active.

If you only have one character Active, and have a zero on the goblinworks inventory screen, then you do not have a DT. If you do not have a DT, but did donate to the Second kickstarter, you should send an email to support@goblinworks including the email you used to support the kickstarter. If you supported the first kickstarter (proof of concept), but not the big one a year later, you might not have a DT.

Edit: if you bought them after the game was live (which 800k XP indicates), you definitely do not have DTs. You had to support over three years ago to have been in the kickstarter.

Quick question: Can someone explain to me where the value of ~550 came from for Bluddwolfs account? Does the leader of settlements have something to do with it? He described it as selling it cheaply.

He still had ten months of paid subscription left a couple of months ago, so that would have added about $100-125 to what you currently have. And though he called it cheap, it wasn't particularly. If you'd been active and had bank vaults full of stuff, or had accumulated a bunch of achievements to break gates, that might add further value. Yours might well be worth around that once an announcement of funding is final, but at the moment I think 400 is approaching the top end of what's likely.

My hope is the real Pathfinder multiplayer game will include at least a subset of the actual Pathfinder game mechanics.

That can't happen. The pathfinder mechanics are OGL, and can not be used in an electronic game. That particular ship sank before it got in the water.

T3 stuff can only be found in monsterhexes, am I correct?

You are correct. And not every hex has T3 in all node types in a given hex. Most hexes have only one or two items with a rating of T3 present.

Good luck with that.

ZAEL CASTS ULTIMATE NECROTHREAD

To what end? There are exactly two viewpoints, in direct opposition. You've not shared your own opinion, so there is no evidence of any consensus, just an indicator that there is no agreement whatsoever.

As long as they have a DT perk, they are probably worth at least $100 each, likely more. Interstingly, the "adventurer" DT account perk is often worth more than a complete DT account, because it can be added to an existing non-DT character.

(Man, I wish I could get back the $185 I gave to the PFO Kickstarter)

That shouldn't be difficult at all, since most kickstarter accounts are selling within a day or so for as much or more than they cost.

(edit: and that's even if you place zero value on the hundreds of dollars of PDF rulebooks that came with the original pledge.)

There's no direct public evidence, that he was fired. However, they said he'd be staying interested and involved after stepping back for personal reasons, yet he has not said a thing about the game since or communicated with the player-base.

Linkified:

Still have a DT account for sale. Looking for $200. It has 1 character fully untrained. Character 1 is named Xanne she is a female elf archer, purely trained into Fighter. This character has no wasted XP, level 5 long bow abilities and the proficiency to wear T2+3 gear. I will also include her vault, with extra backup gear and 23 gold coins. Character 2 is named Cordovan he is a human male with 440k unspent XP. Nothing is trained on him.

The account is subbed for 30 days. Here are some screenshots.

Xanne:

pic1 pic2 pic3 pic4 pic5 pic6 pic7 pic8 pic9 pic10 pic11 Bank items in Keruz Bernstein

Cordovan: pic1

Account Perks: pic1

Contact me here or email heroguids@gmail.com.

Is it really heroguids@, or is there an "e" missing (heroguides)?

But it's supposed to be in the sticky thread for account sales.

One place I don't feel like Ryan succeeded was in managing expectations. He was clearly in love with the idea of the game, and too eager, often creating inflated expectations, when the reverse would have served them better.

Is it essentially dead or what? I read an article about the devs firing all but three of their staff and if that isnt a death knell for a game I dont know what is.

What the hell happened O.o

It didn't get the uptake they were hoping for, so they ran low on funds. At the moment, it's primarily in a holding pattern while they look for options, with only one more significant update scheduled for the next week or two, then a focus on polish. They're bringing in enough to keep the servers on and a skeleton staff going, but it's pretty quiet in game, currently. If you can connect with an active group, or like exploring by yourself, there's some stuff to do that may make it worth checking out. Otherwise, you might consider checking back in a couple of months.

TL;DR: Anyone thinking of selling a DT to Bludd, I'll happily pay you ten dollars more than he's offering.

I wouldn't pay 5 cents for an account before the end of September, because there has been nothing to indicate that servers WILL be up in October.

There's been lots to indicate it, just nothing definitive because nobody can see the future. There's nothing wrong with trying to get the best price you can on accounts, but none of us are obliged to stand by and let you pretend that DT accounts are worth less than $35

Besides, have you noticed the server pop drop off? I'm going to guess there are less than 200 unique subscribers left.

Trying to extrapolate active subscribers from who is playing is no more valid today than it was a month ago. I personally (i.e., in real life) know three people who have not played in many weeks but have continued their subscriptions and are in no hurry to cancel them. In fact, whe current state of the war between Xeilias and Phaeros probably means that trying to judge active subscribers from people logging in is less useful than it was a month ago. Many people are simply keeping their heads down.

Unused DT

gathering toon
low level smelter

<24 hours to take advantage of the weak Canadian dollar!

Looks like Zycor outbid me. Maybe not giving up after all?

a sorted history in the MMO industry

I'm assuming you mean "sordid?" Or is it "varied/chequered?" I guess either way, the meaning is pretty comparable, if not exactly the same.

'Tough sell' is a bit of an understatement. Sure there could be a miracle investor who brings in the money to revitalize the game and undo the damage done, but how often does that happen?

Sorry if I'm a little pessimistic. I just can't conceive of a realistic scenario where things work out well for PFO now that I know that their funding is much less than the kickstarter let on.

It could be a tough sell, though I think that Ryan pulling away from the project, combined with Lisa being willing to sell it to a publisher, rather than Paizo doing it themselves, might make it more interesting to some. Ryan is a polarizing figure, whom a lot of people either love or hate. Lisa is much more easy-going and less likely to be a deciding reason for someone to avoid investing altogether.

I think that PFO will go in a different line from here forward, and that may also make it more interesting to some backers. On the whole, I feel a great deal better about the project than I did during the week+ of total silence last month.

tl;dr/math is scary: Based on what I see the only conclusion I can reach is that the funding from investors fell through after the kickstarter and before Oct 2014. Sub numbers were too low to possibly make up the short-fall and this must have been clear to GW. Likely they kept searching for new investors up until the last minute before layoffs.

The numbers match my thought processes, and I think they match something that Ryan communicated specifically. The one variation from what you said in your tldr is that the search didn't stop at the layoffs. Lisa is still actively meeting and courting investors and plans to continue doing so.

Anybody who has the 1200+ influence in one company needed to capture a dormant settlement probably knows that.

If you enjoy the game it certainly is. I have an ongoing annoyance at online gamers in general, who think that they should get the moon for nothing. $15 is one good movie ticket, and I get way more entertainment out of pfo in a month than 3 hours.

But do the trial first. The game is still pretty raw and young, and it isn't for everybody.

The first 15 days is a free trial, then it's a few cents under $15 per month, with a bit of discount for buying time in six or twelve month blocks.

Correct. you click the green toggle in the middle of the bar, or press the tilde"~"/open-quote key (left of the "1" on u.s. keyboards.)

If this game fails, it says nothing about the general lay-of-the-land of MMOS, is is solely a result of the quality of the product.... Period.

Patently untrue. It probably says very little, but nothing exists in a vacuum. As a single example, if gamers actually appreciated the value of what they are purchasing with their money, instead of having been spoiled by a glut of programs from companies for whom $5 million isn't even a line in their annual report, the monthly sub would be a pittance to them and would make the game more attractive. For the 20+ hours of entertainment I'm getting a week, I'm paying less than a dollar each, much less. Even factoring in my overhead from computer, internet, and power, it's cheaper per hour of entertainment than a Stephen King novel in paperback. That is a fact about the lay-of-the-land for the Gaming industry that is affecting PFO's survivability, like it, or not.

Nobody said it has an effect on how fun it is. The miserableness of people who left the game but still come to complain about it doesn't affect how much i enjoy the game at all.

I lol'd pretty hard at that, thank you. Because Goblin Work's own ineptitude would have nothing to do with this game failing.

He didn't say that. Everything has to carry some weight, and one of the weights that Pathfinder is carrying is the sum of the people that make it. If it fails, it will be in no small part the fault of the team, but it will also be that summed with other things, like the general lay-of-the-land regarding MMOs, and the loudest voices (for good or ill) and how those voices have affected other people's expectations.

do not join the instant someone in game tries to recruit you. Do a little bit of homework on the settlements first.

Actually, there's nothing wrong with joining a company immediately, as long as you think of it as taking a car for a rest drive. There will be some pressure to stay once the salesman gets you in the car, but it's your choice. And there's no better way to find out if you like the way it handles.

For the fastest way to connect, check out mumble*. The player-run Pathfinder University uses the open-to-all golarion.mumble.com (port 3093, no password). There are also usually several other groups doing stuff there.

* If you're not familiar with mumble, it's kind of open-source skype-for-gamers that integrates well and can allow large groups

There are people who try to make money off of anything. That is not exclusive to gaming. What I'm trying to get across is not about protecting anyone's profit, it's that the developers selling a DT for less than hundreds of dollars is bad business. It eats into their future profits. I expect they regret having to offer them in the first place. A business having a below-cost stock reduction sale because they come up short of cash is not a good reason for them to do it every day.

Also, I feel for all of the new guys coming in the game now who had no chance of buying them (for just $35). I think it's totally unfair, and I think you should be able to upgrade your account to a dt for $100-$150. Or GW should do sales where they sell them for a limited time for $40-60. A lot of new bros are angry about this whole DT thing and so am I.

I'm disappointed that I didn't invest in Apple and Microsoft in the early 80s. That doesn't mean I think they should sell me stock for the same price they sold it at then.

The DT is an extraordinary value, and was given at the time because they needed to raise the kickstarter funds. Over as little as a couple of years, it saves a person who wants two characters around $300.00. They'd be undermining their own income stream to sell if for what you suggest.

Note: nobody got to "buy" a DT from Goblinworks. It was an extra perk we got for giving them our money two years before the game went live.

sspitfire1 wrote:

"Caution: This guide will (...) help you make a more informed decision

And Coca Cola will help you make a more informed decision about drinking cola.

Which it will, by letting you know whether the taste is pleasant or awful to you. But that's also a terrible comparison of the two things.

This is a lot more like putting an blog online that says why used Fords are a better value than new ones when you are selling last year's Focus.

The sticky for sale post is not a Goblinworks decision, it's a Paizo decision as people in the general Pathfinder forums are not happy with* people coming into the those groups to look for accounts.

That is an extrapolation on my part, based on the fact that every time one appears, someone complains and they move it here, even though people who backed the kickstarter but have no interest in PFO are who most of those buying are seeking.

XP and Achievements are both gates. A person willing to play a lot can advance faster with excess XP than they can without. As far as what Goblinworks is saying, "little advantage" is not the same thing as "no advantage" Until people are near the top of a single role, there will always be some advantage to having more XP. That advantage may be small, but there is no way to get it other than the passage of time, so an account that has XP leftover will have value.

Actually, a lot of us are finding it useful to have a specific character in two different parts of the map, rather than running back and forth. It only took a couple of months XP to make a decent PvE/gatherer.

But if you want a second character, you will have to play a second subscription, if you want him to gain XP (XP is gained over IRL subscription time, not in game actions).

That is not quite correct. If you want multiple characters to have the maximum amount of XP, you need multiple subscriptions, but you can move the spigot on your XP at any time. So you can play character one for a week, after which time he'd have 7X2400=16,800XP, then you can swap the XP over to the other character for a week, while still playing the first if you want, so that a week later the other character would also have the same XP. At that point you can leave it, move it to the third character, or move it back to the first.

Caldeathe Baequiannia wrote:

Agelaus wrote:

Ryan Dancey wrote:

I recommend you read the New Player Guide before you start play!

You have then already failed if I have to read a guide to even start the game. There should be in game help, pop ups or other directions to point a new player in the right direction.

Furthermore, having to click on each NPC to find out its name was also not fun. If there was a command to display a name banner over their head I was unable to find it as I did hunt around for a list of commands.

And yet, those things are the essence of the tabletop experience. Without a patient group around you, willing to talk you through the complex rule system, you couldn't get anywhere without reading a large book.

I actually agree complexity is the core of a sandbox and most sandboxes don't have very good tutorials early on. Good player guides and wikis are essential to any good sandbox.

However you did justify your argument with "And yet those things are the essence of the tabletop experience" and that's what I'm attacking because it's a seriously bad argument.

"Life is Feudal doesn't even have a tutorial at this point and look at how many players they have on their servers" is a lot more valid argument when you are talking about a sandbox MMO. Of course you have to know the sandbox MMO genre to make arguments like that. ;)

I did that here, and only here, because this is a response to a blog that is read by almost no-one who doesn't play Pathfinder Tabletop already. Sorry if that was confusing.

This is an MMO, not a tabletop experience. If you want to continue to say "well it's that way in the books" don't be surprised when they day comes when GW says "Well, nice run but we've been bleeding money too long and will be selling this game/down-sizing our team/shutting this thing down."

There are not 3333 and one third players who care if this game is authentic to the P&P. MMO players care how good your MMO is.

Except I've never said it's taht way in the books. I'm saying it's based on the rules that require a lot of books, and is, therefore, a more complex game than most MMOs. It is far less complex than the tabletop rules. People who aren't looking for a complex game are going to have a difficult time, and may not be engaged. They're certainly going to be frustrated if they jump in without taking the time to find out how it works.

That complex game is one of the points of it being created. If success requires that it be simplified, then there's not much point, because people can go play one of the myriad of other non-complex games that already exist.

And I think you know all that. It feels like the only reason we're arguing about this is because I'm the one you feel like arguing with today.

Caldeathe Baequiannia wrote:

And yet, those things are the essence of the tabletop experience. Without a patient group around you, willing to talk you through the complex rule system, you couldn't get anywhere without reading a large book.

I'm not sure about the USA, but in France, we have such things as table of contents, index and glossarys, to help us using our books.

In English, we call that a Red Herring*. PFO doesn't require a large a book. Tabletop does. PFO requires about 5 to 10 pages before you can play competently. Nobody uses an index for something that small. Anybody who spends 10 minutes with the PFO starter guide is perfectly able to play the game. Nuances come with time and discovery. Anybody who's not willing to spend 10 minutes reading the starter guide had better have an experienced helper at hand because it is a complex game that is based on an even more complex game.

*An attempt to score points by making a statement that seems smart but has nothing to do with the subject.

Caldeathe Baequiannia wrote:

The people who haven't activated their accounts still have all their free time coming.

Er, are you sure ? Didn't Kobold Cleaver lose his, without activating it ?

absolutely. See Nihimon's response for details. (though I would probably have used something like careless, or unfortunate, rather than "really bad")

And in the end, he got more for his account because it had been running and accumulating XP than he ever would have if it had been suspended, though he might have continued to play if it had.

And responses like this one are why I don't post here anymore. But to answer your ridiculous question, I think they probably should have announced some compensation or at least addressed the matter when they announced the change. Again, Business/Marketing 101.

while leaving open the possibility of compensation, I don't presume it's a done deal. They could also be hoping to avoid it, or be testing systems for delivering something based on current participation and not yet know if they can deliver. You clearly didn't take Marketing where I did.

Caldeathe Baequiannia wrote:

w w 379 wrote:

Including the possibility of making money this early when the game is so unpolished is a major turnoff.

You understand that without paying any other bills, wages are costing them over $50,000/month right now, just to keep making the game?

I understand it. You understand it. But the real question is, did the devs understand it when they came up with the business plan? I have never seen a company sell boxes to their game and then cancel the need for it before the game even fully launches. I would imagine there is some potential for really bad PR based on the number of people who pledged during the Kickstarter and may have decided to just wait for Open Enrollment. Are those folks being compensated in some way?

I think this is a sign that something is fundamentally wrong with the dev's perception of the market.

Like battle plans, no business plan survives first salvo. They got it wrong. Life goes on. Now they are working to make it work within the market they actually have. The people who haven't activated their accounts still have all their free time coming. The people who have gotten to play for the a while. They all get the free extras. They still get their Destiny's Twin, which is currently going for between $100 and $400. Big loss for that $35 or $100 pledge, eh?

Maybe they'll offer the rest of us some extras as compensation, maybe they won't. What do you get from assuming the worst? Perhaps you think those people that are waiting would be better off if they just said "Well, that didn't work. Shut it down."?

Caldeathe Baequiannia wrote:

You understand that without paying any other bills, wages are costing them over $50,000/month right now, just to keep making the game?

How do you explain The Repopulation ? They have less money (They got less than 500k by KS), they are in a way more advanced stage, in less time, but for the same type of game, and the alpha is a real alpha, without subscription.

No two groups of people have the same goals, dynamics, motivations, and a host of other things that have direct implications for their willingness to take on risk and their expectations of compensation. I applaud the developers of Repopulation, but Repopulation isn't PFO, and the developers are different people. I don't know why there's a difference, and I don't need to know. Whether Repopulation is a better value per consumer dollar doesn't affect (for me) whether PFO is an acceptable value. I shop at a grocery store that is, on average, a little more expensive than one of the other options in my area. I like the layout, and the people, and the products. That doesn't mean I wouldn't like those things at the other store, and it doesn't mean that they are a better store. It's where I choose to spend my money. I don't want to shop at Repopulation, so I don't assess whether they offer a better value for my dollar.

Caldeathe Baequiannia wrote:

Audoucet wrote:

things

Andius, just so you don't think I missed this. I'm no longer interested in whatever turned you bitter. While I may or may not read your posts, I don't intend to ever address any more points you bring up, regardless of validity. Good luck with your life.

Audoucet=/=Andius, there are more letters.

You're right. My apologies. Your disappointment is much different, and I apologize for confusing the two of you.

things

Andius, just so you don't think I missed this. I'm no longer interested in whatever turned you bitter. While I may or may not read your posts, I don't intend to ever address any more points you bring up, regardless of validity. Good luck with your life.

Ryan Dancey wrote:

I recommend you read the New Player Guide before you start play!

You have then already failed if I have to read a guide to even start the game. There should be in game help, pop ups or other directions to point a new player in the right direction.

Furthermore, having to click on each NPC to find out its name was also not fun. If there was a command to display a name banner over their head I was unable to find it as I did hunt around for a list of commands.

And yet, those things are the essence of the tabletop experience. Without a patient group around you, willing to talk you through the complex rule system, you couldn't get anywhere without reading a large book.