Dorgan Berkham's page

Wow, over a thousand! I hope it keeps growing like this.

I was trying to connect to the server to activate my characters, but I can't manage to. Is it under maintenance right now?

<Kabal> Daeglin wrote:

I think there are a lot more fun people to meet and play with, either as friends or enemies. You may not understand why I am happy with the game so far. I can't understand how you're not.

I actually understand completely. It's how I felt about my Freelancer Server. My Freelancer server was capped at 50 people with no plans to ever become much larger.

I hope you realize this game's plan is to expand, and if it succeeds in that venture, the tiny little group of people that comprise PFO's current community will ultimately be of no meaning. It's going to attract an Open World PvP crowd. A crowd that has quite literally accused me of being a carebear and had a lot of people even in my own group telling me I was too nice and didn't have enough bloodthirst.

Good luck with that.

So are you telling him the reason why his reasons are not valid is that the game might succeed, all in a thread questioning the very possibility of the game succeeding?

We are all in this boat more or less together. It's funny that people continue to say stuff like "Just leave!"

As he's actively trying to sell his accounts, I wouldn't say we are in the same boat at all.

1) "Your character's as strong as the community behind it."

Close up to Character vs 1 enemy, zoom out to reveal character as part of a chain of characters vs the same enemy.

2) "Your Voice (may) shape(s) the world".
Character expressing idea as a symbol (for instance a Basecamp) on a cloud like a Comic book. Symbol on the cloud translates to image on the game of the same idea. (Could be mountains, or forests, or a settlement as symbols as well).

Holy smokes, that was informative! Thank you Ryan!

The state of the game. Rough canvas, bugs should be squashed to increase confidence.

The direction of the game. I think the direction is fine, but it seems people do not like the speed of it or the order of steps to get there.

What you feel are positives and negatives of the game.

I don't think I would call it simply a game. I believe there may be a (totally understandable) misunderstanding on what you are paying for in EE. I don't think it's meant to be $15 for playing the game and being ahead, but to be able to participate on the development of a game before you're usually allowed to (aside from playing the game), which is something that is very interesting for some folk. Is the price right for that? I do not know. Perhaps I'm wrong.

How you feel about the process of Alpha to EE: mostly worried about deal-breaking bugs for EE and the reaction time to handle those issues.

Suggestions for the game: Add more people to QA or revisit the QA processes. It cannot be that we get bugs like "Feature A doesn't work at all" when Feature A is just introduced. To pass testing it must have worked partially. I want to be able to know that when you introduce something new it will mostly work, else I'm thinking "Okay, how many weeks until feature A is finally working? What else broke now?"

What you feel is MVP. Looting, encumbrance, SAD, Rep system as intended, optimization (Real question: How can I run Mass Effect 3 at full graphics, but I can only get a choppy "Fastest" experience in PFO?)
What you feel isn't MVP. Settlement warfare.

Hey Guys,

I know I might get reprimanded for defending the game, but still I feel I must. I cannot speak to the design or programing aspects, in a team you play your role to the best of your abilities. I can speak about the graphics. There are very cool things in the pipe I cannot talk about. Cool Stuff. Any who about the graphics. I have worked the past 10 years, this month being my anniversary in the game industry after studying game art for 4 years. I have worked on small to the biggest games to date, so I know what both sides of the spectrum are like. I have worked on psp, ps2, ps3, and now Ps4 games. Also the same generation xbox ones and pc. We are doing very exciting things graphics wise. I know what the tech was like in 04. trust me, i pushed for our company at the time to go into ps3 development in 06. This meant normal maps. This was in 06. For a small company I helped pioneer one of the first games that hit the ps3. note I said normal maps, true RGB maps that make the light calculate as its a higher resolution model. For a small company at the time I was like, damn we are so behind whats out there. what I would come to learn to realize is that small companies, can actually push the envelope in greater ways than a 200m game can because there is less politics and middle management. I wont mention names, but one of the biggest budget games an all time classic that came out in 08 I believe did not use this tech they were far behind the curve, it was a hundred million dollar game. in fact the small company i made the push at was ahead of them. Soooo on pathfinder online we are using the highest poly characters we can knowing there will be hundreds on screen. they use true normal maps. they also do all the color tinting stuff that is also somewhat recent. I don't know the exact date but every time I hear, game looks anything less than 08, I chuckle. Because what you are thinking of is fond memories of those games. But feel what you want. As I mentioned cool stuff is in the pipe, and we can hit...

Thank you for this information, Esequiel. I may not post much, but know that I'm behind this game and its team. I will wait what is necessary for this game to shine.

No Mac client yet.

did this happen to every one or just me?

Me too.

If their client truly crashed, they can submit a ticket and the "system" should return their lost items. I know this is technically possible, I have done it in other games (EVE in particular).

If they did this, it could probably be used to duplicate items, having someone kill you after you "CTD" on purpose.

"Precise"?

This is meant to be a single player game. The challenges involving an MMO are quite different. It looks like a nice game, but the comparison to PFO is inadequate.

I have an invitation left. PM email.

I have 1 invite available, PM me with email.

You can up to three, and they all accumulate XP

Thanks for the reply, Cheatle.

Kadere wrote:

It is still a cold start - but the growth rate is simply accelerated. It still provides the framework to prove that the economic cycle can start up and self perpetuate, which I believe is the primary point.

The big difference from last weeks Alpha will be the character is a bit less disposable.

Last week it was possible to run a wizard for a few hours, delete it and try a rogue, rinse and repeat.

Presumably this time around you will start to incur quite an XP disadvantage if you do that too often.

Can't you have more than one character in Alpha? I was expecting to create several characters and just let them accrue XP in order to test faster.

PM sent!

I suggest you take this discussion to PMs, so we can talk about disconnecting in enemy territory.

Yes, what I meant was similar was the idea of having certain places where you actually log out be it a shrine of Pharasma, inn/tavern, camp, etc.

I'll take a naive approach.

What about if your body stays where you left it, but is still visible in the world?

If it gets killed, you end up in a shrine of Pharasma and your body disappears from the world.

If you log out at a tavern/inn/equivalent/(camp?), (certain parts of) town or Shrine of Pharasma your character disappears from the world.

If it doesn't get killed, good for you.

Of course, these slumbering entities should be reputationless kills after a certain time TBD (to prevent griefing by blocking or whatever, but not so that if you disconnect everyone can kill you without penalty).

I think we may have been thinking something similar Cynge, though I think things got buried in the discussion.

Not going back to the fight at all will decrease your power even more. If T1 is what you have left in your bank, then that's what you equip.

Sure, but you may think that your expected losses by the power decrease are too high a cost for what you are fighting for.

I'll take a naive approach.

What about if your body stays where you left it, but is still visible in the world?

If it gets killed, you end up in a shrine of Pharasma and your body disappears from the world.

If you log out at a tavern/inn/equivalent/(camp?), (certain parts of) town or Shrine of Pharasma your character disappears from the world.

If it doesn't get killed, good for you.

Of course, these slumbering entities should be reputationless kills after a certain time TBD (to prevent griefing by blocking or whatever, but not so that if you disconnect everyone can kill you without penalty).

Please poke all the holes you want in this. :)

TEO Pino wrote:

Zerging into combat after death only happens in Alpha because there's no death penalty, and no economy.

Death penalties yes. Economy no. Economy won't stop this. I remember in Darkfall if I lost my siege gear I'd gear up in another suit and run straight back into battle.

People stockpile away nice gear just so they can do that in sieges, and if the costs for 1 siege get too high you just switch to throwaway suits.

What you're going to see without death penalties is people gearing up in uber enchanted Tier 3 gear for the first 1-3 deaths and then rushing back in over and over and over in Tier 1 gear after that.

The cost of Tier 1 gear with trash enchants to vets will be inconsequential. Hell they may even be able to thread the whole suit themselves, and throw tier 1 gear at their grunts like it's candy.

Edit: That also depends on the frequency of sieges. In Darkfall every major alliance generally dealt with multiple sieges a week. If sieges are less frequent people will use more suits of T3 per battle.

But if I recall correctly, equipping Tier 1 equipment will severely decrease your power, as your power more or less is the minimum between your gear level and your character's abilities (loosely speaking).

Do you think that does not matter or weren't you aware of that?

Mbando wrote:

I'm utterly perplexed by how robust this idea is. As Decius points out, it's a terrible design choice. And it's never going to happen, because it's such a terrible design choice. But like a slasher in a movie, no matter how many times you think this is idea, it just pops up again.

It is not a terrible design choice if the game was designed from the beginning to be built around permanent death. It is a different design choice, nothing more or less than that.

I second this, I don't understand the need to impolitely bash ideas without adding anything useful to the discussion.

The easiest solution in not having permanent death as a game mechanic is to self impose the penalty for death of a character. I would actually respect the inherent will power it would take to hold oneself to that standard.

The only problem I have with this, is the inequality of position between someone who can just suicide-kill you then be back over and over again, while you can't take those risks. Permadeath I think would be have for everyone or at least those involved in it have to be dealing with the same degree of risk for it to work.

I'd just like to pipe in and say something. I've been in the game industry for around 16 years now. I've seen a lot of companies come and go, and worked for like 8 I think. In all that time, I haven't seen, or heard of, a game company as dedicated to making a game with a focus on building a true community (with the possible exception of Cyan, who I loved working for as a result). I've worked for good companies, and worked with people who cared about the games, but never for a company whose focus is so clearly on the quality of the game features and experience, or which has such a connection to the community and interest in making them (you) happy.

We are a TINY company for the scale of game we are trying to make. Our budget is a pittance compared to other games of this scale and complexity, even though it may seem like a lot of money. We are infinitely grateful for the money each of you has spent and your support, and doing everything we can to eek every iota out of that funding (as I sit here on hour 80 or so of working this week). All of that is so we can be sustainable and make this work for Pathfinder fans and a relatively focused online game community that we see as 'where it's at'.

Yes, I realize that none of you know me really, and that I work for Goblinworks, but seeing comments suggesting this team is trying to milk people for money hits a bit hard considering the reality I experience daily. I hope you will take it to heart that we are doing everything we can to make a company and game that can live on for many years and be a living and vibrant community. As part of that, we will do everything humanly possible to make sure the experience is balanced and not 'pay to win', because we believe that has a huge bearing on building on the quality of the community, and that is utterly key to us. However, as with any business, revenue is life blood, and gives us the ability to keep growing and building the world and features for all of you.

Thank you all for the support and input. Sorry I don't...

The amount of unforeseeables in a software project of this magnitude must be extreme. Software projects at the very least have to account for 50% more development time than originally planned as a rule. To be able to stick to your plan, on the amount of resources you have is admirable (great planning + long hours is probably the answer) considering you have a community that is constantly trying to change whatever it is you had planned to do (which of course sometimes it is for the better).

I'd ask people to have a little more respect for GW's capabilities. It's obvious to them that it is in their best interest not to make a Pay-to-Win game. The only people who like those, are usually those with enough money to spend. Those are relatively few. Ergo, you end up with a game with few players. No one wants to play a game with no players. I would think they have already thought this a long time ago.

GW needs to create a solid community and they are not going to jeopardize that by introducing obvious distortions to the game that are going to alienate that very thing they are trying to create.

So, core message is good work GW and I know you are smart enough to create a balanced game!

Bluddwolf wrote:

3. Upon death, how is the 25% destroyed determined?

This piece appeared recently; I believe it's a random chance rolled for each separate item, or for a stack if that stack's above a certain size. I'll try to dig the quote later, if no one else finds it first.

Providing quote:

It's not active right now.

Once it's in, the current plan is:
* For single items or small stacks, we roll a random 25% chance of destruction for each item.
* For stacks over 5, we destroy 25% of the items in the stack (and I assume it will round in a normal fashion, so if it's a stack of 6-9, it'll destroy 2 items).

Placeholder thread will pop up here first.

The thread is already up.

I'd like to see some serious effort put into making the crafting system interesting. If crafting is intended to be a viable play style in its own right, it needs to be interesting. Watching a bar fill up is incredibly dull, even if the rest of the mechanics are deep (i love the whole idea of material quality and skills affecting the final product, for instance).

An optional mini-game of some variety, with high skill at it resulting in a small bonus to Quality, would be an ideal way to keep it from becoming mind-numbing for those who run crafter.

It seems this is not popular.

I was wondering what kind of relationship there will be between characters on the same account. For instance, would I be able to send them money, create equipment for them or have a common stash (a la Diablo 3) in a simple way or the idea is for them to be totally separate entities (which can be circumvented through third parties)?

jimibones83 wrote:

...I just don't want to invest a year or 2 into a game that I won't be able to get my friends to play at OE or within a reasonable amount of time thereafter

Either I don't understand this, or I don't understand friendship.

If they are friends their friendship will be unaffected by whatever games they or you play. And friendship is only enhanced by new friendships. If your friends aren't playing the game you are playing there is no harm and only good to making new friends in your new environment.

He'd rather play with his friends, but they won't play the game because of the quality of graphics.

Awesome thanks!

For now, F1 targets you for your heals (and if you're in a party, the other F keys target party members). We'll probably have smarter targeting for beneficial spells eventually (there's design for having to do some kind of override to attack friendlies and being unable to buff/heal hostiles, which should help if all PvE enemies are treated as hostiles).

It is not expected that heals (if they are positive energy based) may damage undead?

Could you post the login information for those TSs?

Excellent, thanks for the reply!

But shouldn't it be for stacks over 4 that it stops rolling?

Just a clarification: when one dies the 25% of unthreaded items that are destroyed are rounded up or down?

Perhaps, they could be balanced in the sense that should they be killed, they stay that way. Makes it a much more meaningful choice that way.

Thank you Stephen, that makes it much clearer.

What's wrong with using imgur, tinypic, etc? Why do you need this to be on the GW servers?

I said "display pictures from certain URLs or uploading them to GW's servers".

Certain URLs would include imgur, tinypic, etc.

I was wondering on the current status of trees in the game.

As I understand it, right now they would be a source of raw materials.

Could we make more use of them?

Are they always the same or do they have different heights, thicknesses, etc?

There are three interactions I think would be interesting to have regarding trees:

- Climbing: the ability to climb a tree for scouting or ambush purposes.
- Building: the ability to create certain temporary structures in them.
- Destruction: the destruction of a tree for economic or aesthetic purposes.

Some questions arise right away? Can anyone climb trees? What skills or attributes are involved? Does burning a tree down generate fires on the trees that are nearby?

I was thinking of trees as I think they could be a decent trial to test interesting mechanics on a smaller scale.

Resurrecting this.

What are the technical/legal limitations of having characters display pictures from certain URLs or uploading them to GW's servers as their character portrait?

Are there copyright issues involved? Too heavy on the GM side?

I brought this up once, here's the thread.

The specific examples are still unknown for balance and implementation reasons.

We do have the concept of activated magic items in general. You can slot them instead of a consumable in one of your two consumable/wondrous slots, and they cost Power to activate (whereas consumables soak up the Power cost for their action as the benefit of being consumed). Boots and gloves also do something similar, as a bonus effect "proc" when you use certain utilities (e.g., boots of speed have a chance to make you Hasted every time you use certain utilities like Charge while wearing them). (Though that's all only partially implemented, and might change again before you see the final version.)

Most other magic items provide a passive bonus (more keywords and/or a statistical increase while equipped).

Thank you Stephen for the prompt reply!

It's also usual of low level invisibility spells to be dispelled when you take meaningful action (like attacking or using an item).

Oh, I was talking about a more general kind of magic items, but all my examples were on stealth based items. My bad. I meant the kind of artifacts or magic items you are likely to find on a TT game, like boots that make you jump extremely high, amulets of Fireballs or belts that switch your gender.

Hello,

I am wondering whether there are plans to implement magic items such as invisibility capes, or amulets of disguise self or something along those lines. I don't recall any blogs or threads on that topic. If it is being implemented, is there going to be something during EE or OE?

Cheers!

Talk about resurrecting old threads...

I'm curious if Goblinworks has ever really considered the ability to drop things on the ground, or not.

It's been 1.5 years since this post started and stopped, and we are now much closer to a minimum viable product. Do we know if the game's technology/platform will allow for such a thing? If it does, are there any considerations to implement such a thing?

Take a look at this thread, there are a couple of GW responses.

Yes I do that too, but it would be nicer to have it all in one button.

I would like a Goblinworks Post Tracker, if there isn't one right now.

Nothing survives Alpha.

I'm glad I'll be in at Early Enrollment then.