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Darkfall had nice ideas like that too. They didn't need to ask for $1,000,000 from a kickstarter and the original Darkfall failed and shut down. Fingers crossed for Unholy Wars but, if everyone bought games off of the pre alpha proposed feature list, we'd all own a great deal of worthless games.
@Npd Dany Morin - No, it's a package designed for Guilds who like to "check out" new MMOs on launch. Typically they send a team of players in early to experiment and get a feel for the game. That package is designed to help facilitate that process. I'm familiar with 'Pay 4 Beta', $100 dollars is a record price tag no?
Not overly pleased that a second Kickstarter has begun. I'm all for supporting a project through Kickstarter; paying for a game 4 years prior to it's release is one thing, $100 for an early beta slot another, but asking for funding to the tune of $1,000,000 from our collective pockets is something else. I could almost relax if not for the inevitability of a third kickstarter campaign should this one result in success. I don't know if the community knows or if they're ignoring the knowledge that funding an MMORPG for no return and no assurances on the outcome of the game itself - it is a fools errand.
What I want to have is a Facebook-style social network tool that features characters instead of people. That tool will replace things like forums. It will be accessible everywhere you can make a web browser run, and have calendars, reminders, notifications, chat, etc. Heroic idea. Thinking about it, no originality is really required should one simply recreate facebook as a community system for an MMORPG. Surprising that, to date, the nearest thing we have is WoW's Armoury; Ultima Online's MyUO did the same job 15 years ago.
Simples. When entering vast marshlands/swamps, endless deserts, thick forests or towering mountain ranges, your minimap/compass doesn't work lol.
Creating 'secret' valleys is relatively easy given the correct adjustments on how that area can be accessed. I.E, suppose fast travel exists between central hubs on the map; perhaps players have the ability to mark areas and fast travel between them with a long cooldown on their 'fast travel' ability. A secret area or valley would remain scarce if it simply existed in an area which required the longest time to arrive to, and return from. Obviously this system is broken if a player spends 15 minutes running there and can then simply fast travel back with a spell or hearthstone. UO had something similar to this with the lost lands after the Age of Shadows exansion. UO had fast travel for pretty much every character using marked runes and recall spells, allowing players to move to and from wherever they pleased with ease. The lost lands however had to be accessed via tunnels and secret entrances on the mainland and, once inside, one could not simply recall out of the lost lands as recalling was not permitted in the land mass. This allowed for a player to work his way deep into the lost lands and visit scarce locations which remained relatively scarce. A system which enforced similar effects in PFO would be a really great idea as playing in such remote areas definitely added something extra to the game. Another interesting idea might be that, say in a preexistant abondoned mine or quarry and given sufficient mining of the area, secret dungeons or caverns could be excavated for a temporary time. Perhaps an evil lurks inside which requires a portion of the server to band together and slaughter it, at which time the battle causes a tremor which demolished and reseals the entrance. I've always dreamed that players could find and defeat such unique enemies, gain a unique trophy of some sort for no other use than boasting rights and to carve a real sense of insular history within the game (Prays for the ability to run a PFO museum).
I dunno if a sandbox MMO can have the same kind of story that a theme park MMO can have, but if PFO at least doesn't make me feel like some NPC is taking credit for my accomplishments, they'll at least one-up WoW in that department.
The Darkfall team was only capable perhaps of delivering a single faceted, PvP centric game (and I'd argue it barely managed that). I think the most important thing learnt from Darkfall is that resources must be managed in order to deliver on a range of functional and inter connected systems, regardless of their complexity. Darkfall tried to establish a twitch based, first person combat system built within a single massive server complete with epic sieges; this was all on top of attempting a fully armed sandbox feature set of a player driven economy, player housing & cities, skill based progression system etc. UO still for me hands down wins on a true sandbox delivery of a wide range of functional features, features which were often in many cases (fishing) extremely simple in their programming. Focus on delivering as many polished, simple systems as possible and spend the next ten years building upon them.
World of Warcraft also limited you to a single class/role. PFO and Darkfall do not. I think my comparison is a lot more fair than a comparison of PFO and WoW. Darkfall also limited you to being every single role and utilising every competitive spell, ability and skill in the game simultaneously in order to be competitive (i.e warrior/mage/thief/sorcerer/wizard/barbarian/paladin/bard). Just saying :D
The PvP emphasis is what kept me away from Darkfall. I haven't seen any indication that Pathfinder Online will share that emphasis. PvP will be a large focus in the game, but if Rainwhisper is referring to what I personally fear myself, is that PFO will share Darkfall's total emphasis on PvP. Darkfall took the form of a quake style RPG with almost everything else taking a back seat. On the bright side, Eve Online is largely a PvP game, but one with strong emphasis in player crafting, economies and other unique areas. Lets hope PFO takes this path other than the all encompassing 'pew pew' path of the sword wielding rocket jumping fragster.
Basically, if you aren't catching my drift, allowing too many abilities at once turns the game into a competition between people's hardware and macros. World of Warcraft utilises a wealth of keys and key combinations on my keyboard; I wouldn't call it a war of macros. Darkfall is an exception to the rule. It had a pre-alpha UI which allowed for and almost required 3rd party macros for effective gameplay. I wouldn't call it a fair example given I can't think of another game with a large number of abilities which required difficult macros and a naga. I know enough people competitive in high end WoW arenas without a bloody naga. I pretty much utilised my whole keyboard for UO hotkeys with ease; the important thing was the wealth of options at my fingertips, not that I generally only used a handful of spells 90% of the time. I guess in hindsight I've just never seen a limited UI bar work for me before (not a fan of Guild Wars) but I'd be happy to give it a chance.
I actually have grave concerns about this design choice since it relies on the UI, rather than the design of skills and abilities, to constrain our choices. The idea of a UI constraint on abilities is something I have never been a fan of. The best element of true roleplaying games is character progression allows for a greater wealth of options in any given situation.
When people refer to World of Warcraft as a clone, it is not in reference to WoW specifically cloning a specific title, even if those claiming WoW as a clone tend to think so. It is more in the continuation of a trend of gameplay by Everquest triumphantly shut down with World of Warcraft. The proof is in the pudding that no major company has remotely come close to launching a game which aspires to originality, despite every indicator pointing to an inevitable failure to meet investor expectations of securing any long term piece of the pie.
And what about the inaugural members of the goblin squad, mentioned in the Kickstarter video? This is what I was referring to :D See bottom of blog entry.
As much as I understand people's urge for MMORPGs to adopt more advanced forms of combat to that of older MMORPGs, I do not and never have seen combat as an element of gameplay which would keep me around for any great period of time. WoW has tab targeting, global and local cooldowns and generally a very refined version of the norm, yet WoW arena PvP was far too elitist for me and this is coming from an old UO PvP vet who used to rave about skill based PvP, a too greater emphasis on combat can detract from the idea that you're playing an RPG. What MMOs generally have in common is a centricity around combat as the bread and butter of the game and this is at the heart of the scrutiny of it. Combat sits at the core of gameplay, finite PvP and PvE goals are completed and the romance ends. In line with a post I made on another thread, the outcome of combat and player interactions are far superior to the substance of the actions themselves; any combat system eventually becomes boring and one can only turn to the purpose of the interaction to continue to be satisfied with participating in it. Tera Online had arguably the most enjoyable combat system I've experienced to date, yet the game offered little to no purpose and subsequently nose dived. UO, Lineage 2 are two examples of games with long histories, UO lasting a very long time and Lineage to this day being played by hundreds of thousands of players (not on the retail servers); these games have very simple and dull combat mechanics but ones which will eternally be driven by the requirement to engage in combat for the larger social/political goals they hope to achieve and not purely. I would even go as far as to argue that a game with too complex or purely skill driven combat system would alienate more players than it would attract through the elitist swing; bunny hopping Darkfallers I'm looking at you. Keep it simple, smooth and well animated and very polished, but above all, give it a wide arching purpose to be defined and redefined by the player base and they won't even care what they're doing.
I agree that people don't know what they want, nor could they probably decisively agree upon any given concept for a new MMORPG to follow, but one thing I know they'd all play would be a game which allowed for true player influence within the game. People will play an MMORPG regardless of balance, regardless of the speed of progression or the lack of PvE end game, interesting quests or arena ladders. For me, many of the things which we gauge modern day MMORPG games are not remotely any of the qualities which made previous MMORPG the games which we didn't play for 6 months - 1 year, but games which we came back to and lived in for many years. Games need systems of power; the power to truly conquer land, to establish towns and cities, for roleplay to exist within the game community rather than a singular bubble of activity built somewhere within it. Elements of older MMORPGs which have failed to be carried into the new generation are due to negating the costs attached to include these elements of player freedom; the loss incurred in open pvp systems, the steep learning curves, the harsh player politics which favour the powerful over the weak and the difficulty to implement ideas such as player housing and player crafted item economies which were much easier to introduce in far simple game engines and systems. Speaking for myself, I'd personally play any game which allowed me the power to put my stamp on the game world in a way in which my efforts would be recognised and influence both the game systems and the community. UO allowed me to do this in a hundred ways, Lineage 2 allowed me to do this in PvP and especially sieging, SWG, Shadowbane, Eve Online...Even vanilla World of Warcraft had the budding seeds of server wide player communities in PvP/PvE despite the massive artificial barriers put in place to soften them (horde/alliance language barrier, instancing the shit out of everything). MMORPGs are now about participation and any and all orchestration has been diluted or removed completely. Give people the power to impose themselves in positive/negative/creative ways in which the ingame systems are the players themselves and you'll have a unique offering in the market, something that (apart from Eve Online) has been missing in the fantasy genre for a long time. Offer them the ability to participate in premeditated systems of little tangible influence (battlegrounds, arenas, raids) and you're offering more of the same in a losing battle with Blizzard. Reading that last paragraph I realise that the things I complain about are things which tens of millions of people play, this is more a response to those cut from a similar cloth as myself who simply want a single MMORPG which delivers a freedom which we've had taken away from us.
I don't think people will have a problem with limited open PvP/limited looting. Given Eve online is a heavy inspiration for how danger is cultured in PFO, a broad spectrum of players from many playstyles can find their comfort zone and know what they're getting themselves in to (given the choice between low and high risk areas). We've hopefully come a long way from dropping players naked in a wood with a dagger and wishing them the best.
Questing, combat and the way the in-game stories unfold on SWG was utterly awful I hope PFO stay away from that mold. It's funny that people look for good 'questing' in an MMORPG. Questing has and always will be a lackluster device employed by MMORPGs in order to give offer you a straight forward means of progression. People who jump from WoW to Rift to SWTOR to Tera can keep questing tbh as there are many games who do that borefest extremely well. Quests have no place in a sandbox MMORPG game, not in their conventional form anyway.
You're kind of running on empty here; almost everything I enjoyed in both SWG and UO were institutions both created and ran by players in an environment I would assume you would call empty. You're ultimately calling most of the most organic and creative players social creations (in UO especially) unsubstantial, which is ridiculous as they were the fabric which founded the genre of sandbox which we crave. You're love for auction houses speaks volumes; in a sandbox, players would create the trade hubs required in order to establish successful marketplaces, actions which would be invaluable as PLAYER creations. Auction houses are just another form of automation which takes initiative away from players and doesn't belong in a sandbox game.
I could quote the names of many players on UO; famous theives, honest crafters, tradebrokers, entertainers, roleplayers, treasure hunters...the meat of their existence and renown came not from their ability to jump through hoops or complete expectant goals, but for displaying qualities the game did not ask of them. The joy of a sandbox is succeeding in ways in which the game does not expect. Read any famous story from Eve Online; many of which are events which twist the very fabric of what is possible in a sandbox MMORPG. To Ryan
The mechanic in question functions in an open PvP world. Death mechanics work both ways; if a good aligned PC dies, a passer by will, in a world in which one would require similar aid in the same situation, aid a fallen PC. An evil character would receive no aid and thus rely on a villainous friend to come to their aid, or take the loss and downtime involved with self resurrection. Harsher death penalties are highly functional in open PvP games given that the penalties are thicker for those committing evil deeds. Death using the above system can be simple and quick; you travel with friends, you stock required physical components to resurrect, you don't wonder off into the wilderness or enter into activities where you deserve to die. I sincerely hope that death is far from quick and simple and that it is instead variable to the circumstances of the PCs death. World of Warcraft offers a quick and easy recovery from death - I used to die as a form of quick travel and generally didn't consider death to be a hinderance what so ever. PvP felt like a deathmatch where I would simply respawn following death and I generally found the game to suck for it. The above mechanic, death was relatively quick and easy for me as I played smart in a dangerous world. There were times where I died far from home and murderers hid my body in a barrel in the cellar of a deserted inn...I grew from that experience and the game was richer to me for it as death was as much a learning curve as any other aspect of the game. Whats wrong with a game which punishes you for being stupid? They're my favorite kind :(
Upon dying, your PC's spirit appears at an oubliette in the Near Ethereal. You must navigate this fog-shrouded maze to find a portal to return you to the Core. However, this does not instantly return you to life. Instead, you appear next to your remains. After a brief period of time, you're able to reenter your body. For whatever reason, should you not reenter your body in a certain amount of time (this period decreases in length as you gain levels), your corpse will decay and you will have to be raised from the dead to come back. In these cases, another player can raise you or you can be raised by an NPC priest for a fee (to be raised by an NPC, a corpse must be placed within range of them and used; an option will come up to make the NPC raise them, for a cost of 100 gold per level). If the period of time is very long, you will require a resurrection. We have no xp loss when you die. Upon death, you will drop all the gold you're carrying, along with the items in your hands. The other items you have equipped will be stored on your corpse. Note that it's possible for another player to loot your corpse while you're in spirit form. Unequipped items cannot be looted. Other players also have the option to stab or burn your corpse, forcing the player to be raised in the case of the former and resurrected in the case of the latter. If you come back to life by reentering your own body (picking up the placeable corpse), you will experience a stat loss that will be in effect until you rest. Since death uses up all allotted rests in your rest period, this means you have to wait for an in game period equal to your level (e.g. a level 2 waits for 2 in game hours to rest; a level 10 waits for 10 in game hours) or you have to go to a safe rest area like an inn room. If you are brought back to life through the actions of another player or an npc priest, you experience no stat loss and your rests are not used up." NOTE: Players can carry corpses of the deceased; it is a common occurrence for players to carry corpses to the nearest church, a hot spot for clerics who will then raise the fallen (possibly gaining some experience or progressive reward for doing so). It can also be an area for people to recover from negative alignment through healing (and ressing if possible). Such systems remove the general downtime of death for good aligned players; increases risk and down time for evil players, all in a very interesting system which for me, has been the most well implemented system I have played. Dying an idiotic death at night, deep in the wilderness was far more costly to my time than a more safe death; you're taught to play wise and fear death - but not too much. (Some of you may recognise it!)
Eve's greatest flaw was obvious; it was in space. Create an MMORPG in the open seas and pirates will dog you from shore to shore. Beyond being docked in a station, you could technically die anywhere and it was not all that expensive for experienced players to grief you of your time and your belongings. I think PFO can only grow from everything that Eve did right, take out it's elitist PvP elements, dilute the griefing and fill the gaps with a fantasy setting and a hint of tabletop character and charm.
but an official "collectors edition" of a game that is intended to be distributed via downloads seems kind of an odd concept to shoot for Tera launched with a digital collectors edition featuring a unique mount, unique 'skins' and 2 pieces of jewelery to use at low and mid level. Not personally something I went for but there is definitely potential for an online collectors edition. It's difficult to grant people digital rewards as these are generally things which the worldwide web have a hazard of sharing anyways: PDFs, soundtracks, videos etc. Granted the game is not meant for largescale release in physical form, it is not a long shot to have a small number of collectors edition boxes to be produced for the die-hards. Darkfall, Mortal and other sandbox games which were primarily distributed digitally still had the $$$ to produce limited edition collectors copies.
All this is irrelevant anyway. If you try buy ISK in Eve, their system immediately logs the transaction and the money is subsequently removed from your account and your account given a formal warning. It's not the 90's anymore; buying gold is easily preventable if the company wishes it so (COUGH NCSoft COUGH).
Early 2013 is the realistic goal in which they hope to achieve a very early alpha test which is indeed impressive. Equally, an early alpha test can mean very little and it could be a year or so until the game is ready. The question here is whether there will indeed be a closed/open beta or if the staggered launch will comprise these stages.
Is it really "expected to release in 2013"? I wasn't expecting it so soon (I would have confidently predicted such a pace was impossible). They're going the way of the organic development of Eve Online; implement basic functional systems, staggered release, develop where development is needed in tune with player desires. Given patience on behalf of the userbase, it's a good way to go.
I just thought of it an exclusive set of goblin works dice! I'd definitely be in on a set of them. I also through this on the kickstarter page under one of the updates: "If we're switching to a monetary goal, allowing high end backers the opportunity to feature in some way in the fiction is a sure way to attract fans. Perhaps allowing their characters to be immortalized as a minor NPC, allowing them to write a line of dialogue or to name a featuring NPC or location. Such opportunities were used in the Journey Quest kickstarter campaigns which we're great successes. Fans love a touch of infamy ^^" Maybe a little late for such a suggestion!
I just hope that the game doesn't make new players feel useless. Like my experience with eve.
I just hope that the game doesn't make new players feel useless. Like my experience with eve. Define useful. Eve happens to be one of few games in which you can engage in PvP almost immediately as a tackler etc. It is one of few games in which you can choose your career and begin making an external difference to the game almost immediately. You can start crafting and selling your wears immediately, buy and sell on the markets and start earning isk running missions. Other games might allow your character to immediately appear more powerful in your chosen tasks, yet the core utility you acquire in terms of being useful in a mass multiplayer game In a similar perspective, in other themepark games, beyond gaining experience and levels which is a largely insular task, you're practically useless in that you're a slave to experience grinding repeatable content whilst you're character levels up; end game raid content and arena PvP is practically the only 'useful' thing you can do in the game beyond your own personal progression. Eve allows you to influence the wider world almost immediately; most other MMORPGs? not so much. Again, it depends how you define useful. I wouldn't define useful as being able to kill things or craft epic stuff, they are outcomes of singleplayer games. I would define useful as someone who can immediately start causing externalities through these tasks of crafting, PvP or PvM. Eve online allows this from the get go whilst most other games never even give you a chance, despite perhaps making you feel somewhat more 'powerful' in the most meaningless ways.
Being befriended by a stranger, led into a dark corner and murdered is something which can happen to veterans and newbies alike; it is not something you can prevent.When I joined EVE, the first experienced player who offered to show me the ropes specifically encouraged me to ask around about him before we went anywhere. The reports were very encouraging, and he and I even became friends after I siphoned as much knowledge from him as I could. One of the first players I met in UO offered me a magical sword as a token that I could trust him before showing me the ropes; few minutes later he pried from my cold dead fingers :D.
Eve soundtrack is strangely immersive and very well done. I was strangely enough listening to the World of Warcraft OST the other day too; forgot how well written and epic those songs are. A good soundtrack can be expensive yet I'd prioritize music very highly on the shopping list; it can bring so much to the game.
Now I still maintain that you don't have to put a single point into performance to play a bard, and that the only bardic abilities that even suggest putting ranks into a perform skill are those I listed. On that note, we should also stress that the game itself is being structured to the skill system of Eve Online (one assumes) and either way will be a game in which one 'constructs' ones class, or at the least has room to maneuver within a given class. We are all talking very finite builds of classes; this is a scenario which I don't see happening. As much as you can build a bard on the tabletop to play a greater combat role and a very slim set of bardic skills, I assume (and very much hope) I can play a bard who rarely would need to leave the confines of a City but for moving to another. Such a build on the tabletop is rare (imagines a GMs face when given that character sheet), yet in a MMORPG? Fun fun fun.
Pathfinder Online is going to be a different kind of MMORPG, not a race to be the most useful class in combat. As I have said in many threads, social skills are important. A bard has always lost in the race to be the most useful or effective character in combat, but excels in non-combat aspects. This is not a bad thing. As I have begged Goblinworks, employ the use of entertainers and musicians to inhabit taverns and social hubs in order to heal the minds/fatigue of players, and to inspire them to greater deeds with 1 hour 'gentle' buffs. The Bard should be designed similarly to the dancer/musicians of Star Wars Galaxies and thus shall forever be an important class in Pathfinder Online, both in the towns and in the back lines of a battle. A bard would make a great utility character in negating debuffs of players in combat. Do NOT turn the bard into a cookie cutter combat class who happens to carry a loot. As I intend to play a bard myself, I see no better role for myself than that I have just described. Allow us to maintain or position in combat as per the tabletop, but allow us to form troupes and a meaningful position in earning meager coin in the cities and you've hit the nail on the head.
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