Darwinism's page

I don't know, but perhaps they felt it looked too similar to a specific piece of their art?

For example, Paizo's glabrezu looks a little different than the WotC glabrezu because only the glabrezu's stats and a general description are in the OGL, not the specific look of it, so Paizo's glabrezu art is based party on what's in the OGL and party on Paizo's additions to its description (probably by James Jacobs). And the WizKids mini is based on the Paizo art, not the Wizards art.

Oh well at least it's not copying without permission, you know if you change things slightly.

TheAntiElite wrote:

I keep forgetting that underboob is a material component for casting Undergarment Sand

LOL

Darwinism, I would argue being an argumentative tit doesn't empower anyone either. Just a thought. I'll post more productively when HE finds me an artwork of a woman thrusting their crotch at the camera. I can wait.

Really? That's your argument? That it's hard to find a direct 1:1 comparison so obviously my example is entirely different from women being drawn in poses and outfits that serve no purpose but to accentuate their sexual characteristics?

I get that you're not actually interested in an honest discussion but seriously put some effort into it.

The problem isn't that it's some woman wanting to dress provocatively.

The problem is that it's (almost entirely) men drawing women dressed provocatively specifically for other men.

It's not a matter of wanting some sterile world where sex doesn't exist. It's wanting a realistic portrayal of sex appeal; not fantasy wank material like Seoni or this character. This kind of art is horribly, horribly common and it's not empowering and it's not the character deciding this! The character is wholly fabricated and any justifications are not the character's but the creator's.

Hell, imagine a man in a banana hammock on the front cover in her place, thrusting his junk forward suggestively. Now imagine nearly every fantasy book had a slight variation of this. Would you have no issue with it? Or would you feel that it's excessive and trying to market towards certain people's base instincts in an extremely insulting manner to anyone who tries to think past their genitals?

Would you argue that it's empowering for a man to pose in a way that's not serving any purpose but to accentuate that he's an object for sex? Would you say that it's perfectly fine because that one woman on one cover had a little bit of her stomach showing? Would you feel alienated, as if the intended target were people you wouldn't want to associate with because the guy who describes a character like that is probably a total creep?

I love the arguments that because an artist made up a reason for her to dress in a way that makes her little more than a sex object it's totally reasonable for her to dress in a way that's entirely nonsensical! I mean, come on, there's a made up reason for her boobs hanging out for desperate nerds to ogle! That makes it totally cool, guys.

Seriously it's nothing more than standard-issue fantasy fap material. It's a huge part of why the hobby is so insular. You have this kind of 'art' that regular people see as no higher than those 'playing cards' back in the day that had naked chicks on them.

And the thing? That's all it is. It's not even 'art.' It's people targeting perceived weaknesses in other people's psyches and desperate-for-fantasy nerds falling for it and then defending themselves because obviously what they like can't be some base instinct that others are triggering to influence them! They're above that!

Except you're not.

Well, fine, you have a point. But let me then re-choose examples of names I would like singled out then. "Septhiroth666", "Squall94", "VariantehAwesome", stuff like that. But you already knew exactly what I meant, you just like to get on other people's cases. :) Which is fine by me too.

But hey, this is a wish-list thread, right? I can wish all I want, for things both realistic and unrealistic. But please, don't shoot down other people's wishes just because they don't fit in YOUR ideal MMO either, because you are doing pretty much the same I was doing.

The criticism is apt, though, and restricting naming conventions broadly is just a bad idea. On RP servers, to be sure, you have guidelines and rules, but in general play there shouldn't be restrictions on names simply because you or I think they look silly. Don't tell people they're having fun wrong unless they've already agreed to have fun in a certain way; IE by creating a character on a RP server and being told that there are rules regarding names.

Neverwinter nights is a game that was largely helped by a strong playerbase, custom content, and the fact that its sequel was made by the worst video game company in the world.

Obsidian's critical flaw is in being far too ambitious; when they're not trying to overreach they make fantastic games more often than not. KotOR2 and Alpha Protocol were both cases of them overreaching and being shut down by deadlines, but New Vegas and the expansions I've played for it were well, well above-average. And, hell, Mask of the Betrayer is downright wonderful.

Even at their worst they're nowhere near the worst developers in the world.

Can we please stop calling for the removal of features that are expected in MMOs for the sake of convenience? It's not going to happen. There will be an in-game map, and an in-game compass. And maybe even in-game quest arrows.

This bears repeating and re-repeating; MMOs are not about verisimilitude and immersion. Hell, D&D isn't even about them; it's primarily a combat simulation engine that a very large number of people attach roleplay to, but roleplay is in no way integral to the system. The problem is that no MMO is going to match an imagination, because the limit's going to be what people can program. Much like how D&D rules only ape physics, because trying to actually put realistic physics into the game would be incredibly time consuming for little real gain over quick estimations.

If you expect PFO to be a TTRPG, you will be sorely disappointed, because it is not and can not be a TTRPG.

1.) Don't rush production of the game.

No game ever gets enough dev time. This is a rule that only immense, popular studios like Bethesda or Bioware can break. Production will always be done as fast as possible; it's a money sink until release, and devs don't set their own deadlines for release.

2.) Use the PFRPG rules, verbatim. If you don't, use something as close as possible. Every action my character has should not be a power with a cooldown, and cooldown abilities for all characters should be kept to a bare minimum.

Impossible by the OGL and a terrible idea besides; D&D is a turn-based game at its heart. Turn-based games do not translate very well to real-time. Nor are many of PF's mechanics friendly at all to a real-time environment. There will be a great many compromises and the system will look like Golarion, but it will not, can not, and should not use 3.5 rules.

3.) Open economy. Meaning I can make transactions with players easily. This allows players to create their own businesses, perhaps under the radar. Try to leave the business making out of the hands of NPCs.

To a degree this is good, but there have to be NPC vendors.

4.) Few NPCs. Have one outpost where there are NPCs. It's up to PCs to create civilization. This also allows PCs to capitalize on lack of certain player needs being met, and can make their own businesses. A player sees something that other players need, that player charges for the service. Get that gold moving around.

This is an absolutely terrible idea that would lead to very, very spotty coverage in any market and a top-heavy economy because that's where the actual money will be.

5.) One persistent and changeable world. All players are in the same world. Trees can grow back over time, but if I have the manpower and saws, that forest is SOL if I don't want it there. If I want to dig out an underground fortress or mine, I can.

Look at Wurm Online for why this is a bad idea; it's easy for a vindictive group of players to ruin an area permanently. A lot of people, given the chance, will act like complete dicks in games like this. And before you trot out, "But then people will band together to stop them," you should remember that this is going to be a 24-hour-game. There is no stopping organized griefing if your system allows it.

6.) Gritty micromanaging realism. NPCs and PCs must eat and drink to survive. They must sleep. The day should go by at real time. If I put an object in a flowing river, it should be carried by the current. Everything I can carry has a weight (and volume, please don't have inventories of infinite space).

God, no. I deal with having to sleep and eat and crap in real life. I don't play games so I can repeat the trivial steps of real life. This is not Real Life: The Game. This is elf wizards flying around shooting dragons with lightning.

7.) A first person version of Dwarf Fortress crossed with EVE.

No. Reality simulation is a horrible goal because it will always be spotty and incomplete. Not to mention horribly hard to code; what kind of dream team of programmers do you expect Paizo to have to code reality in a 3D medium and not go over their deadlines?

8.) Permadeath, or something close to it. Of course, if I cast raise dead on a corpse, it's back to life. If that player gives up that character anyways, it's now an NPC.

God, no. Again, this is a MMO. Death will happen. Don't play punitive games with people about something that can happen from something as silly as losing connection for 30 seconds. It works, somewhat, in 3.5 because of the expectation that it should work the way it does, but 3.5 is not built as an MMO and certain conventions must be left at the door.

9.)Creatable and semi-controllable NPCs. I want to be able to get the equivalent of the Leadership feat, and make a group of NPCs. I want to be able to assign these NPCs to tasks (like building, mining, hunting, patrols, assaults, etc).

This could be fun, if done properly.

10.) As large a world as possible.

No, no, no. As large a world as you have content for. It's incredibly possible to make it like Oblivion and have a hundred square miles of wolves and bears running at you, but no area should be made unless content to make it interesting is made as well, or it's entirely pointless padding.

11.) Character face and body customization during creation, with as much control and variance as possible.

This can easily lead to problems; it's infinitely harder to make a model and texture that looks good on Beef McLargeHuge and Chubbs the Lardo.

To state my point clearly, laying even more difficult tasks on top of the hugely insane already MMO development sounds good if you're not in any way aware of the trials that developers go through to get a game released on schedule. You have to have realistic expectations of what can and cannot be done.

You described a themepark MMO. This isn't a themepark MMO.
Even the previous generation themepark MMOs like Everquest had harsh death penalties and everquest was the model that blizzard copied for wow.

Yes, and one of the improvements they made was not penalizing someone for a thing that can happen for a myriad of reasons. Death penalties are not a good thing in an MMO. Punitive measures for a facet of the game that you may or may not have control over is not good design for the majority of games.

These are only my personal opinions on how I would like things to be. Telling me "that wont happen because MMO's don't do that" is pointless. I know how MMO's work, how RPGs work and how table top games work. I also know that MMO's that copy other MMO's just don't work anymore, the whole genre is stale and people are expecting far more than WOW2.0. I am more interested in a sandbox MMO that can give me a similar experience to a pen and paper game. An MMO or MOG will never be as good as a pen and paper game, but if the rules are more closely aligned to a pen and paper game, things will be far more enjoyable "for me" than the WoWs, Everquests and Rift themepark MMOs.

This entire hobby is built on copying games. MMOs arose from MUDs which arose from D&D. There's absolutely nothing wrong with copying a working formula as long as there are improvements, otherwise Paizo would not be in the same position it's in. EVE Online's not a model you really want to copy, unless you want Golarion Goonswarm formed for the sole reason of screwing people over because the system allows it. Not to mention that 'innovative' is one of the most hugely devalued buzzwords in any gaming release. It's hard to find a game that doesn't list some kind of innovative system in its press releases. And, until there's anything more than press releases promising the moon, the stars, and the entire goddamn universe, it's worth basically nothing.

Also I love your statement that MMOs or MOGs cannot be as good as a TTRPG. It shows that you're rating them based on how much like a TTRPG they are. Of course you're going to find them lacking; you're measuring an entirely different genre by the standards of another. Half Life 2 is a bad platformer! Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is a terrible sports game! Pathfinder is a horrible FPS!

REALISTIC games like Neverwinter Nights 1 you have have ammo. Spells and special abilities are charges per day. You go into battle with limited resources and must REST out of combat to get them back. In NWN 1 you can MULTICLASS. In most of the SUPERS games you break off into talent trees (Wow) or advanced classes (SW:toR). Characters in SUPERS do not get to be Arcane healers unless the GM's allow it. In a SUPERS game you are generally a cog, basically a role assigned character, not a role playing character.

The REALISTIC type of games are way harder play balance, because there more options for players to choose from. This is doable, but it requires thought and consistency on the part a game developer. It hasn't really happened yet in MMO.

REALISTIC games where wizards cast spells and there are elves and...

You do realize that it's silly to use the word 'realistic' like that when you're not denoting realism, you're denoting preference?

NoSleep... wrote:

Is there any rule that MMORPG's have to be pc games? ... Online console games shouldn't be limited to FPS!!!

There is a rule. Section 127, Subsection A, Paragraph ix of the XBox console license prohibits developers from designing online multiplayer games that are not first person shooters, though a subclause allows "shooter" to be loosely interpreted so they can have melee and thrown weapons. There are similar restrictions in Playstation 3's contract. The Wii allows other games, but they have to use Mii avatars.

That or consoles are horribly unsuited to MMOs as a general rule.

Death will be easily recovered from because it's an MMO and harshly penalizing players for something that is going to happen is not how you appeal to a broad playerbase.

1.) Don't rush production of the game.

2.) Use the PFRPG rules, verbatim. If you don't, use something as close as possible. Every action my character has should not be a power with a cooldown, and cooldown abilities for all characters should be kept to a bare minimum.

3.) Open economy. Meaning I can make transactions with players easily. This allows players to create their own businesses, perhaps under the radar. Try to leave the business making out of the hands of NPCs.

4.) Few NPCs. Have one outpost where there are NPCs. It's up to PCs to create civilization. This also allows PCs to capitalize on lack of certain player needs being met, and can make their own businesses. A player sees something that other players need, that player charges for the service. Get that gold moving around.

5.) One persistent and changeable world. All players are in the same world. Trees can grow back over time, but if I have the manpower and saws, that forest is SOL if I don't want it there. If I want to dig out an underground fortress or mine, I can.

6.) Gritty micromanaging realism. NPCs and PCs must eat and drink to survive. They must sleep. The day should go by at real time. If I put an object in a flowing river, it should be carried by the current. Everything I can carry has a weight (and volume, please don't have inventories of infinite space).

7.) A first person version of Dwarf Fortress crossed with EVE.

8.) Permadeath, or something close to it. Of course, if I cast raise dead on a corpse, it's back to life. If that player gives up that character anyways, it's now an NPC.

9.)Creatable and semi-controllable NPCs. I want to be able to get the equivalent of the Leadership feat, and make a group of NPCs. I want to be able to assign these NPCs to tasks (like building, mining, hunting, patrols, assaults, etc).

10.) As large a world as possible.

I don't think anyone was looking for a list of things that shouldn't be included in any MMO ever.

I present unto you any chat service that is free via the internet!

That would break my immersion.

Darwinism, I think the market is littered with the dead games who all pursued a very specific strategy: Make a theme park MMO that targeted people who like playing World of Warcraft.

I'm reasonably certain that doing that over and over and expecting a different result was not an effective use of time, money or talent.

On the other hand, the only big effort to release a fantasy sandbox MMO (Darkfall) resulted in a game that was so popular that a wave of signups crashed its billing system and it never recovered from having too many people trying to play it simultaneously when it was brand new. That tells me there's an unserved market available for such a product - and it also reinforces lessons I already learned at CCP about how important it is to manage the growth of a sandbox vs. the "big bang" of a theme park.

The team of folks who will build this game will all be proven experts in their fields. We already have more working on the game than we've disclosed because we're not ready yet to talk about who those people are. One of the nice things about coming to market after a bunch of other companies tried & failed to beat World of Warcraft is that there are lots and lots of trained pros looking for a new project.

Differentiation, segmentation, awareness and brand building are my specialties. I'm not worried at all about being able to let the right people know the Pathfinder Online story. We'll have no problem standing out from the crowd.

Fair enough. I have one other question; EVE Online is a game that is known for having players drive almost every aspect of it. Unfortunately that has resulted in it being renowned for organized griefing. Goons are probably the best known group, but in every MMO with player-driven X/Y/Z, people rapidly reach the top and it's nearly impossible to unseat them because of the bonuses you get by being at the top. This can easily result in stagnation, where people at the top stay at the top because they're at the top and people who want to start something new have no chance. Is there a plan to prevent that from happening, or will it be embraced?

I think about 30% of the MMO player community wants a game that is primarily a sandbox. That's my primary audience. That figure is derived from market research I have read.

To put some numbers on that:

The MMO market is projected to be a $14 billion segment by 2015, growing at a compound annual growth of 12.8%.

The market in the West for subscription & microtransaction MMO is more than 18 million players. I reasonably estimate that at least 7 million of them are paying a full-price (i.e. $15/mo) subscription. So that defines the minimum size of our target market as at least 2.1 million potential players.

I think there's a very high overlap between people who play tabletop RPGs and people who play MMOs, so by extension, there should be a similar percentage of Pathfinder tabletop gamers who want that kind of game. That's a logical extrapolation based on no data.

I think the earliest adopters will be people from the hardcore Pathfinder community, plus the people who REALLY want a successful fantasy sandbox MMO and are paying attention to us from day one. I think the middle term audience will be comprised of folks who shift from an existing MMO to us because they prefer a sandbox vs. a themepark, or they find their existing sandbox unsatisfying. If there is a long term audience that is bigger than that is unknowable at this time, but possibly exists. The only way to determine that is to build a great fantasy sandbox MMO and see what happens.

The overall game design is driven by my direct experience in the market, combined with all the market research data I have read, and with discussions with hundreds (maybe thousands) of players of both tabletop and MMOs. My opinion is that it has the best chance to do what we're attempting which is to address a clear need/gap in the market for a meaningfully large number of prospective players, and has a sustainable long term business model based on a rational estimate of how many of those prospects can be converted to playing players.

We are not...

All of this is nice but how are you going to sell people on a new fantasy MMO that just doesn't look much different from games that already exist? Golarion is very much so a fairly generic fantasy setting until you get pretty deeply into it, and has nearly no name recognition outside of a small part of a small hobby.

The field is littered with the corpses of MMOs that had immense funding. Games that used the same buzzwords seen in the news releases for this one. Everyone claims their new MMO is innovative and will change everything forever and whatever else, but that means absolutely nothing. You've got a plan to make a MMO, that's great, but a plan to make an MMO is nothing at all; it's the equivalent of that guy in college making the rounds trying to recruit people for his totally awesome video game project he has so many great ideas all he needs is everything else to make the game.

I'd have felt much more confident if the news had been, "We've assembled a team of industry professionals and are starting development, we have plans to acquire more funding and more staff," instead of, "Well, we don't really have many people on board and we don't have funding buuuuut it's totally gonna be innovative and change everything ever."

Also funny is the fact that SKR compared it to a feat. You know, that thing Fighters get so many more of than Rogues. But if you compare SA to a single feat, SA could possibly be better!

Kind of creepy that they're descendants of a child god.

Except.... Pathfinder really hasn't seemed to have made many real improvements(as a system)since its inception.

I won't lie; I love the fluff. I love the world. I am currently playing through Rise of The Runelords.

But it's in 4E.

I cannot speak for others in my group, but having played through 3E since it was introduced? It's really not that great of a system. Even moreso than 2E, casters are the default best. Even moreso than 2E, if you're not a caster, you have to plan out your character progression from 1-20 as a martial to even pretend to be competitive with the caster who just took what sounded neat.

That's not good. It'd be cool in Ars Magica, where casters are the focus of the game. In a game about a group of people who can't all be assumed to be casters? It's poison. Aside from tradition, which stems from people like Gygax and Arneson trying to marry wargames with something else, why should anything ever be so obviously mechanically better only by people who know the system? And why should choices be so mechanically worse? Punishing people for doing what they think is neat is not ~*verisimilitude*~, no matter how you cloak it. It's bad design.

Now, of course, there are limits that need to exist, I think, for a good portion of people. But those limits shouldn't be defined by the people making the setting; they should be individual choices of the people defining their ideas of the setting for their particular groups. Yes. Leave it to the DMs to say if Iomedae is pissed off by a particular cleric having a Death domain. Leave it to the DMs to say if another cleric pisses off Norgorber by having a Law domain. If the player can come up with a good reason for having those domains, they should be allowed, and people in charge of the system in general should not say they aren't.

Saying otherwise is just trying to dictate what you, personally, feel is good playstyle. And that's poor design.

Renee_in_Mich wrote:

Sexism is real. If anything, it's even more pronounced in the gaming community. And no one who can change it really seems to care.

Hmmm, I wouldn't of accused the gaming community being "even more pronounced".

Interesting...sports, TV shows, movies, actor's, actress's, models.....the gaming community is much larger than I thought.

Ah, the classic, "Because it's happening elsewhere, we're not at fault," defense.

Only we are, as a whole, at fault. Fantasy art, even more than TV shows, movies, and whatnot are far more objectifying on average. Video games are the only other area that comes close and, often, exceeds tabletops.

Why should it be acceptable just because someone else does it?

Darwinism wrote:

What these images say to me is that I'm so incapable of any sort of nuance that I have to have sexuality thrust into my face, like Frazetta was still relevant and acceptable, and that I'm so easily led by my genitals that a bunch of skin in an incredibly infeasible and misogynistic outfit is, by default, what appeals to me. And that I'm incapable of viewing a female adventurer as a person if they're wearing practical clothing.

Perhaps you shouldn't assume that it's all for your benefit. You're taking it incredibly personally.

What's it meant for, then? Who is it meant to target?

Yeah, old threads are cool and all but why should rampant objectification of women be acceptable just because some people want it.

Why should misogyny be acceptable because it's rampant?

There is a huge difference between a character who is attractive and a character who is made to be shallowly attractive because they don't wear clothes.

Is it just me that finds such incredible cheesecake offensively condescending and damaging to the hobby as a whole? Why should we, as a group, continue to perpetuate the idea that women exist first as sexual objects and only second as actual people?

Art such as this, or this.
This needs to go away. This is not doing anything positive to the hobby.

What these images say to me is that I'm so incapable of any sort of nuance that I have to have sexuality thrust into my face, like Frazetta was still relevant and acceptable, and that I'm so easily led by my genitals that a bunch of skin in an incredibly infeasible and misogynistic outfit is, by default, what appeals to me. And that I'm incapable of viewing a female adventurer as a person if they're wearing practical clothing. Even the most beefcake Iconic wears pants.

I resent that. I like the Golarion world, I like the strong females within, like Sarenrae and Iomedae. I hugely dislike being pandered to like I'm some socially stunted idiot who can only find women attractive if they dress like strippers.

Stuff like this needs to continue, while the other, offensive art dies a slow, painful death.

Ameiko: Awesome without a serpent trying to bite her nipple off or a hugely distorted face.

Seelah: My favorite Iconic, without question. If only she'd lose the boobplate.

Though I will say that boobplates need to f%+*ing die, too. There is more than enough room in a breastplate for breasts. Accentuating them is either for ceremonial armor or for perverts.