Duffy's page

My first DMing experience was Star Wars Saga. I was hesitant to DM anything in the traditional D&D family line as I didn't feel familiar enough with the base setting material, but luckily I had plenty of Star Wars knowledge from years of reading EU books and what not. Soooo I semi winged an alternate original trilogy timeline campaign that then branched into another more related campaign, technically still have the notes for a closing 3rd chapter.

I now do the same thing in Pathfinder but fake the setting too! I pick a theme and build a couple villians/major plots around them then wing everything in between. Sometimes jam it right into Golarion somewhere or just use most of the trapping but make a quick one off world. I'll do a quick major events/ecounters outline and then thumb through the MMs to bookmark monsters that fit appropriately for random events or w/e the PCs get stuck. After that it's just a matter of tricking errr I mean letting the players help flesh out all the details of getting from A to B by playing.

Caldeathe Baequiannia wrote:

BitterClinger wrote:

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.

I keep hearing this, but there must be more to it. The OGL clearly allows for "computer software", and WotC further clarifies that "computer games" are permitted in their FAQ.

Ironically Ryan Dancey was one of the people that helped make the OGL and it ended up blocking what they could do for PFO. I think there is a thread somewhere in this subforum where they talked about it.

To my knowledge and reading of the OGL (I Am Not A Lawyer) the main problem is that they would need to code the game and then release a plain text version of the code outlining all the rules and mechanics they used that are then available to anyone else for use. Literally everything the code does to govern the game, and they would need to update it with every change. A dump of the source code is not good enough (plus the whole giving away your code thing).

This is probably why the few commercial d20 games out there were all directly licensed instead of trying to use the OGL.

I could be wrong but that's what my reading gets.

@BrotherZael

See my above post, a lot of it had to do with loss of a funding source, but the future is looking brighter.

I'm not sure why you highlighted that aspect or how you think it would be the candidate to draw in players that aren't super fond of PvP. A big snow-bally punishment stick is not going to be a very good PvP incentive for those that are iffy about it in the first place. Personally as a competitive gamer it's my opinion that building that sort of effect into your game is really difficult to balance and I am leery of any game that takes more than an hour or two (so match based games only pretty much) putting that sorta mechanic in to even begin with.

That works in your RTS games or hell even Chess, but tends to create very specific failure scenarios that are just not fun in an MMO setting.

Personally the strength of PFO to me was the myriad of overlapping systems. I haven't really seen a good sandbox game build as many systems as they proposed in the blogs. I would love to see a game with all of them and more. I'm of the mind that in this sort of game more rules and systems is better than less, you just need to cover a lot of options to balance it all out and make it fun for the long run.

PFU is a good place to start, they have a good number of people around, will give you some lower level items to get you started, and can help you learn the ropes. As Cal said their Mumble channel on Golarion is a good place to hang out, their tends to always be at least one person hanging around to help out.

The big key is don't be afraid to interact with the community, the game is at it's best when your working with others.

Skill based combat has a ton of inherent issues with large numbers of players and processing the instructions they generate quickly. There's a reason most twitch based games have the player limits they do. Just look at Star Citizen's and Elite Dangerous instancing mechanics despite being MMOs with respectable budgets. 'Traditional' MMO combat is the way it is for a very good reason.

Options are limited if you aren't willing to severely limit the number of players in a particular 'area'. While it might not be true right now, the goal is to have larger amounts of players involved in a given fight, part of the reason they have a plan for formation combat is to get around this very problem by reducing the amount of commands they would have to process for large battles.

@Bludd

Your description of the combat is a bit incorrect. Timing, interrupts, movement, and resource management are very intricate to winning an evenly matched fight in PFO. It's not super complex once you get the hang of it, but it still requires you to do more than just slam a rotation as fast as you can.

"Doom and Gloom! Doom and Gloom!"

Let's not pretend a single audience is the end all and be all. PFO is it's own thing that mixes a bunch of different concepts. Trying to say it's geared towards stealing a specific audience is the wrong way to think about it. It will build it's own audience or it won't. Crying it doesn't do the thing you want to fill your needs is just silly. It does or it doesn't, they are gonna follow their intended design, if it doesn't work for you just walk away. If it doesn't work at all then it closes down so be it, that's the way of things.

For example I love competitive games. I played high level amateur sports most of my life. I will play hours of a MOBA with rage and hate in my heart without ever saying a toxic word while I slam my head against a ladder I can't quite climb. I've play team based FPS games on and off for years. I love a good RTS match despite getting curb stomped by 2000 APM players. Hell, I won't even step foot in a match for one of those games if it uses bots; to me that's a waste of time.

MMOs tho? I've stuck to games like WoW, FFXI, GW2, TEO, DCUO, CO, CoH, and even a bit of EQ.

But I hated EVE, Darkfall, and even Ultima way back; turns out I hated most sandbox MMOs I tried. They don't scratch the competitive itch for me or make building things interesting enough. But I like PFO and I like the intent of where the Devs want to go with it. I think it's different and unique (eventually) that pulls at my gaming inclinations both for MMOs and competitive gaming. I hope they succeed. But if they changed their intent to try and pull the general audiences of those sandboxes I mentioned above? Then I would leave and I assume many like me would leave, because that's not the type of game we want to play, and that's specifically why we are here. Because we don't fall into the existing games filling this genre.

By the way, I backed Crowfall specifically because it was taking the PvP competitive aspect of a Sandbox and moving it into a more match like campaign system. In that setup the rougher aspects of those other PvP sandboxes I disliked get sanded off somewhat. Which is still a huge difference compared to what PFO is trying to do. If you think PFO and Crowfall are competing games (or should be), one of them is probably not really for you.

Sure, whatever, the spy is doing something spyish, pick your favorite activity. The point still stands the victim can only tell the difference if the spy is godawful at it and theirs only a few basic things they can do to slow it down. Most of which boils down to keeping sensitive things need to know and not relying on individuals too much. Still ain't foolproof, still easy as all hell to do.

@Tink

According to this:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The EBA has established our borders, shown on the following map, for resource, escalation, and holding claims. We consider anyone harvesting resources, attacking escalations, or establishing holdings to be hostile, unless given prior permission from EBA leadership. Any non-hostile individuals are free to travel our land, trade, buy/sell at auction houses, as well as bank.

Territory Map Border

...farming an escalation in claimed EBA territory without permission is clearly a violation of their stated 'laws'. You don't have to like them or follow them, but some form of response to something they clearly stated they weren't gonna allow in a clearly stated area seems like expected behavior.

That all said there is probably a debate to be had about proportional responses, but I'm leaning towards lack of game mechanics making that kinda tough.

I have no personal stake in this, just trying to establish a timeline and some cause/effect so I can figure how I should deal with all these random entities when it's my turn. I'm really trying to stick my meta politics to a firm interpretation of Lawful Evil, as hand tying as it can be sometimes.

@Tuffon

Out of curiosity cause I seriously don't know: is them farming the northern escalation in question in any way, shape, or form a violation of any territory claims or agreements? The status of any escalations in their own claimed territory is kinda irrelevant to the conversation in my Lawful Evil opinion.

@Bluddwolf

I would just like to state that I have managed to keep to all 273 backroom deals I have made despite my nagging inclination to stab omni from time to time. The struggle is real.

Kinda curious how we crowdforged WoT into non-relevance. Seemed pretty meh from the beginning. The last change wasn't gonna make it any better and just cause some meta stuff to work around it. Let's not pretend there was some glorious PvP system hiding in WoT, cause their ain't. It was ill conceived from the start.

Any sort of advancement mechanism needs to come from within a group, it can't be external like the Towers. Unless your willing to relegate the majority of the server to a 'losing state' by making them super scarce and letting whoever can field the most people simply dominate the game.

Once it comes from internal effort conflict over it becomes far more reasonable and mechanically sound as we can choose how to lay ourselves out and focus our ability to defend or attack something. The key is to make the time committed to a particular action proportional to the outcome. If it takes me and my buddies 10mins on any given day to cripple your training ability for a week or so, it's too easy and it becomes a frustrating chore. If it takes us a week by sieging our way through all your holdings, then it's good.

And WoT kinda matters if you're trying to like I dunno stay on the upper edge of training. If you aren't at the upper edge than neither the new, the old, or the prospective changes would have mattered to you anyways.

The idea that you gained nothing, the target lost nothing but you still did it anyways says all sorts of things about interpreting motivations, differing psychological reactions to events, and gauging future behavior.

Arguably no matter what the specific outcome is everything breaks down to 'wasting' someone's time. I think people generally dislike when that happens, especially if it's a surprise or unintended affect, the negative emotion of feeling helpless or annoyed will persist much longer than the light satisfaction of having a successful night doing whatever in-game activity. No one remembers 'all' the days when nothing happened, they only remember the highs and the lows.

While I might be missing the conversation's full context, as someone who is interested in PvP I will say that I'm not interested in PvP that doesn't actually accomplish anything. There is nothing interesting or competitive in the game yet for me to engage with PvP wise so I spend my time doing other things in preparation for when there are PvP activities for me to do. Kinda sucks, but I'm keeping busy none the less, if I totally get bored I might have a problem. We'll see how long that takes.

Some practice certainly won't hurt, but I'm not gonna go randomly attack someone under the guise of 'practice' when theirs no mechanical reason to do so and it will only cost me meta political points. I'll do that with my buddies in an open PvP hex (As long as Rep isn't bugging out again...).

Everything is in good time, we're playing an Early access MMO, they are iterating as fast as they can. They don't have 100 million dollars and 200 devs working on this game. Things like art and animations generally takes quite a bit of time and effort. It's totally feasible they could replace every bit of it, but that could double or triple their timelines. Is it worth fixing the prettiness instead of adding, fixing, or extending features? Probably not at this time.

Content is slim right now because players are supposed to make up a large chunk of it and we just don't have all the systems in place to allow that to really happen. We're really in a prepping and learning stage right now, building relationships and learning the way the game is going to work while building a basic economy. If that's not to your liking you should most likely come back and try again at a later point. Try six months or so from now.

(Side note as bad as EQ? Seriously? Go look at an EQ screenshot, my character's face has 1000x more polys than everything in that screenshot combined. The environments while not amazing are also significantly better. At least use something like early WoW or LotRO, much more reasonable comparisons.)

We aren't going to get everything quickly. So far what they have delivered has matched up with previously stated plans or been pretty close. Nothing they have done so far has been surprising outside of the WoT announcement way back before Alpha. The game has never been billed as fantasy EVE, it borrows some ideas but rejects plenty of others and I've known that since the 2nd Kickstarter. If you've been here that long I don't see how you could possibly be surprised unless you were making a lot of assumptions despite the intent of all their shared designs.

@Bludd

Please don't take this as jumping on the pile and please no one else use this as an excuse for jabs, but your most recent postings seem to have gone from hopeful to bitter and contentious (not like your old style). That's probably not good for you or your interactions with everyone else. Please don't pull an Andius or Audocet, I actually like your older postings.

Alignment: Lawful Evil (Allowing LN and NE)
Founding Company: Vox Silentii
Patron Deity: Norgorber

Goal: Become the premier source of infamous and evil aligned mercenaries, bounty hunters, and assassins. Provide training and support for the the less popular evil aspects of PFO without necessarily being what some would call overtly Evil.

Membership: Any company that meets the alignment perquisites (LE,NE,LN) may join. Companies (and individuals for that matter) are free to come and go or participate in settlement management as little or as much as they wish. Company agency and autonomy is mostly left to their respective members as long as they honor our few rules and directives.

Politics: We're Lawful so honoring our rules is important in maintaining order and our political connections. Above all else honoring contracts and agreements is paramount. As a founding member of the Aeonian League we're also covered by their charter and in exchange gain several membership benefits without having to severely limit our potential activities.

Remember we're the contractual side of Evil, we might not be looking to conquer or rob you, but if the right person pays us a few gold pieces...

Any questions can be directed to this thread, our site, via PM, or email at Vox.Silentii.PFO@gmail.com

Couple of observations (I'll repost them somewhere in the GW forums for the devs) as that is the first escalation I've tackled from that high a percent down to zero:

1. That took way too much time. Maybe it was just because of the difficulty of traversing that hex, but it was far from 'difficult' once we got it below 70%, it was just time consuming for our group of about 7-9 people and we were steamrolling every pack. Time consuming != difficult. I honestly will probably not bother doing that again for such an unrewarding escalation, I would rather dodge the mobs while running through hexes than waste the time to kill off a low level escalation. If they make this type of thing a required maintenance task without adjusting it...idk. Maybe it's a population problem? But again if it's just a time waster task why bother regardless of scale?

2. Kinda unrewarding, we did one pass through the hex for a handful of undeath squads...and they never spawned again. After that it was white mobs with a yellow every once in awhile. We also had an event that never spawned it's mobs (Bonedancer Heroes).

3. As far as we could tell the final boss did not give anyone an expendable, possible bug?

4. Respawn rate was pretty good, very little 'searching' time, but not nearly enough event spawns to break up the monotony.

5. Knocked out a bunch of achievements, which is always good, but incidental to the endeavor.

6. Base Camp was pretty handy even though we ended up not really stashing 'good' T2 loot like we had hoped.

7. Mini Map visual distance for parties is annoying when randomly acquiring helpers or folks you just ran into. While we were mostly on voice comms there was a lot of 'no i'm over by the lion icons other foot' chat and it was annoying due to the difficulty of traversing the particular hex in question.

The Aeonian League and members of Pathfinder University claim victory over the Bonedancer threat.

Confirmation Gallery

Dreggo and Galash also helped but had to leave before the boss fight.

Started around 9PM EST at above 75% and finished around 2:30AMish EST. That is a horrible hex for an escalation, way too much elevation deviation.

There was finally silence.

No goblin chanting, no clattering of bones, no goblin dog howls. Just pristine silence, the true sign of an ending.

It was not the shining knights of Brighthaven, the Mad Orcs and Gnomes of Golgatha, or the scholars studying the Emerald Spire who swept away this blight.

No, such honors go to a handful of ethically questionable men, a trio of tradesman, a pair of wandering mages, and an unlikely set of students. They were the ones who brought an end to the Bonedancer Warchief and his mad machinations.

With their work complete they return to their homes: to build, to study, to contemplate, and to wait for the next time they would hear the call, knowing that someday, they will be called again.

I dunno guys, on the one hand I look forward to killing plenty of folks, but on the other, for me based on what we have today it is not that day. Not yet.

I'm not gonna out right say anyone's wrong but after reading this conversation this debate doesn't really feel quite right on either side. I'm gonna chalk it up to EE and features not existing yet for now.

I have two at a whopping 8 favorites. One of them is my map announcements so I'm gonna ignore that one. And my top comment is...me being snarky about some comments in the WoT NAP thread:

Oh look a random anonymous account railing against the vocal group consensus by citing the indisputable fact of what a 'sandbox' must be, despite numerous posts from the development team filled with evidence to the contrary.

So should we start placing bets on whose troll account this is? I'll place a wild bet, 1 Silver it's a dev trying to rile us up!

My runner up at 7 is from the thread 'TENSIONS BETWEEN DESIGN PHILOSOPHY & CHARACTER ADVANCEMENT MECHANICS: THE WORST OF BOTH WORLDS' from October:

The biggest problem is that most people who allow their anger to guide them are very unlikely to change their mind regardless of the amount of evidence or statements to the contrary and this is very frustrating when trying to expand the conversation or get more people interested. It's particularly frustrating when blatantly incorrect statements are given as fact.

I've followed several outside viewer conversations regarding PFO and many people refuse to simply acknowledge that it's doing something a bit different that might not be for them and move on, instead they make convoluted logic to explain why the Early Access/Beta is really a release and/or scam, and then lambast the devs, the gane concept, and anyone who is interested in it. The very definition of toxic. A person can be contrary, can be critical, and is free to not like something for subjective reasons, but they don't have to be an ass about it; that's all on them.

Sadly the best course of action is to simply not engage, which unfortunately means they get to continue spewing their toxicity and factually dubious statements unopposed.

Hope's End has added another company and a new recruit.

Join the League today.

Oh look a random anonymous account railing against the vocal group consensus by citing the indisputable fact of what a 'sandbox' must be, despite numerous posts from the development team filled with evidence to the contrary.

So should we start placing bets on whose troll account this is? I'll place a wild bet, 1 Silver it's a dev trying to rile us up!

Here is what I see. AGC has open violated the NAP and even has admitted to it. They are calling out the NAP and flaunting everyone's inaction.

What is going on now is whole bunch of procedural brouhaha about who should do any retribution.

This little "League of Nations" is trying to prevent War in a game where the main focus is player contention over resources.

So once again...Fight or wibble indecisively.

One of the problems is fighting doesn't resolve anything like this definitively at this point in the game. Thus a diplomatically negotiated solution is the only way to really resolve this sort of violation. This game is intended to not just be a giant ongoing brawl everytime a few people run into each other, if that's what you are looking for you are in the wrong place.

As the situation appears to stand (until the we hear otherwise from the eventual tribunal) it very much appears that AGC is blatantly at fault. The question for the Tribunal will most likely be what is Aragon's solution to the problem or are they willing to accept the consequences of AGC's actions? Remember, taking the towers benefits Aragon, not just AGC so Aragon needs to respond if they wish to keep their WoT NAP status.

For example if they choose to boot AGC the towers leave Aragon, become 24 PvP window, do AGC absolutely no good for holding them, and quite possibly blacklists AGC for the immediate future from any WoT NAP abiding settlements.

Edit: How this is resolved will also show us which people can keep their word and which people can be trusted to follow the directives of their leadership.

@Bluddwolf

Given the pick of Ozem's Vigil (Highlanders) for the accusing side that would leave your choice of a High Road Covenant or Aeonian League defender, both of which have active players and settlement leaders.

The general problem is they have to crib ideas that are buried in random posts, that happen to get enough votes on Ideascale, or that they think of.

If we provide a basic list of things that a large portion of the vocal and active people find annoying and they throw that into their survey system with anything else, I can't see the harm.

I also believe they have said several times just because an idea is popular does not mean they are going to do it.

If there's a meeting of some sort we will send someone or a few reps from the League.

Aside, on the note of not trusting your leadership...then why are they your leadership?

0: You have what you hold.

That quote gets thrown around a lot, but holding something through negotiation is just as valid as holding something through force and does not violate that axiom. Food for thought.

Version of map that can be blown up can be found here.

Hope's End and Canis Castrum are up and running!

However, I seem to not be able to figure out how to accept companies to the settlement, I swear I did it in alpha.

I'll take color blindness into account on my next update shouldn't be too big a deal to swap a few colors, thx for the heads up.

Map Updated with the removal of Stoneroot Glade from the 'Free Highlanders'.

As per a suggestion from Cald I've created a editable sheet so that any others that are so inclined can help me collect the raw data for my dynamic map project. It can be found here: Dynamic Map Raw Data

I have data validation on all the columns so that the values will match my database's values. So it's just a matter of going through all the hexes and setting each column.

The last column is to indicate that hex has been filled out.

Working on it. :-)

Map Updated added 'High Road Covenant' consisting of Talonguard, Kabal, and Tavernhold.

They get to be the guinea pigs of rings within rings :-).

If only there was some sort of book you could model such a thing after, like a guide or manual, yea something like a Player's Manual of some sort or maybe a Core Rulebook type thing, I swear I've seen something like that around here ;-)

The biggest problem is that most people who allow their anger to guide them are very unlikely to change their mind regardless of the amount of evidence or statements to the contrary and this is very frustrating when trying to expand the conversation or get more people interested. It's particularly frustrating when blatantly incorrect statements are given as fact.

I've followed several outside viewer conversations regarding PFO and many people refuse to simply acknowledge that it's doing something a bit different that might not be for them and move on, instead they make convoluted logic to explain why the Early Access/Beta is really a release and/or scam, and then lambast the devs, the gane concept, and anyone who is interested in it. The very definition of toxic. A person can be contrary, can be critical, and is free to not like something for subjective reasons, but they don't have to be an ass about it; that's all on them.

Sadly the best course of action is to simply not engage, which unfortunately means they get to continue spewing their toxicity and factually dubious statements unopposed.

Duffy wrote:

So you're not against engaging with the game to get what you need/want, just against engaging in ways you do not want to? Given the current state of the mechanics (i.e. the ones that exist) what engagement did you want instead of what we have?

It's a question of principle. Not something that I want specifically. I intended to create 5 characters, because I like specialized characters for each task. But I never thought that my PvP character would be forced to do PvE to progress.

If I was against engaging with the game, I would play O-Game.

Has there been a statement that once real PvP is actually added to the game that PvP will never count towards achievements?

How do you feel about intent of design? Do you openly oppose it or fight against it when you run across it?

The intended design of PFO seems to indicate that PvP should be for specific gains that will always come with some costs (even to the aggressor) and possibly some long term ramifications. This implies to me that it is not meant to be constant on an individual level and therefore is not meant as a sole means of engagement, but as a carefully chosen path or momentous decision, with all that entails.

Furthermore that would indicate that the design assumes you will be doing other activities in between your bouts of PvP to support your decisive moments of PvP and thus your overall goals, which in turn implies that the game is somewhat designed against specializing too much. Some would see this as a benefit as it gives you wiggle room in your builds to add non-primary role optimal options without sacrificing efficiency, but in the case of someone who is willing to make separate specialized characters it would be seen as a hindrance.

So again the question of intent is brought back around and it would seem the intent of the game does not line up with your particular game views and play-style choices. Therefore you behave as you do, which is somewhat ironic since you are guilty of very thing you accuse others: you want what you want and no one can dissuade you from it, and anyone who disagrees with you is a blind fool.

I personally think EVE is a horrible excuse of a game and yet I do not feel the need to proverbially scream at the high heavens towards anyone that says otherwise. I'm sure it would easy if I desired it, those who continue to play it would most likely disagree with me.

Those here are mostly happy and content to be here and to engage in the ongoing conversation where they are not quite content. And I assume plenty of us, should we reach the point of significant discontent, are willing to quietly walk away and leave those who are still here to their own devices instead of railing against the oppressive design and letting our irrational anger and hatred that stems from our own personal preferences spew from our proverbial mouths.

Criticism is fine, but criticism is not inherently cruel, condescending, or angry. If you find that your criticism is always perceived as such then you are most likely doing it wrong.

I think when crafting is a incredibly important pillar of your game that approach is preferable, especially if crafting is essentially another class and not a system tacked onto your other classes. I feel that in theme parks click and forget crafting as your downtime activity makes sense. In a sandbox I would prefer it to be its own thing, especially in a game with a strongly modeled economy.

"All procedurally generated content would be stored as hierarchical class variables so you don't need to send new meshes to the client other then normal updates for a new class/content type."-me

So the procedural generation takes place server side. For monsters and resource types it would be done as needed. For terrain variation over time it could happen during daily downtime or even once a week.

That would be my second example:

You can also procedurally generate the terrain once, touch it up with some details, and then 'box it' as the terrain, lots of games do this to varying degrees.

You could do it every few weeks with a patch instead of just at 'release', either way the client gets a currently static mesh. Plus it's not really a server side operation, it would just be part of their patch compilation, so you don't have to worry about the server managing or sending that data anywhere.

I'll point out that you seem to be assuming that there will be new players, but none of them will want to run crafters.

Which struck me, actually, like an epiphany. Is there this demand for crafting alts because the "adventurer" players simply cannot imagine someone choosing to play a crafter main?

Well that's an interesting observation that I would say is mostly true. The big problem is that crafting as an activity is a fairly short and uninvolved play cycle compared to combat. Plus combat is required to advance in crafting (via recipe drops) therefore maining as a crafter is kind of boring (you rely on your buddies to feed you the combat stuff) and/or incredibly hard (you do it yourself with most of your xp NOT in combat skills).

On the flip side a combat character is going to be focusing most of their XP into their combat roles. If they spend valuable XP on crafting that character will be progressing slower for combat but will lose some XP efficiency. But they gain a theoretical secondary source of income, but not as good as the dedicated crafter.

So to be efficient you want to pick one or the other and a lot of people value effieciency (sometimes just because it feels like the right way to play successfully), therefore a lot of people will split crafting into secondary alts that their combat main feeds items too.

Ultimately the root of this problem is that crafting is not a particularly involved or engaging mechanic in most games. Currently at worst it's click and forget (WoW style) and at best it's about planning, logistics, and relationships (EVE, the act of crafting is still click and forget). (Notable exception to some degree: Vanguard) If it was as well fleshed out and time consuming as normal combat with the same level of 'play skill' required and it wasn't intrinsically tied to the combat system you would see a lot more 'main' crafting characters.

Last I heard pretty much all trees are procedurally generated nowadays.

There are catches with procedural terrain though, if you are using true random procedural generated terrain client side it ends up being a lot more intensive on the player's machine with longer load times (which is a problem when their aren't really any load times in your game to begin with). You can also procedurally generate the terrain once, touch it up with some details, and then 'box it' as the terrain, lots of games do this to varying degrees.

An interesting place to use the random generation would be if they ever implemented something like random 'findable' temporary instanced dungeons. Something like that could be pretty neat use of the technique.

I agree with you Carbon, an Alt shouldn't just be a cost of doing business thing, they should be for entirely different purposes. Will I have a buisness/crafting alt? Sure, but it's because of how the game's training system works; 'mule' style alts are a ridiculous contrivance that just shouldn't need to exist.

I second Nihimon's view, the 'challenge' of the economic system should not be the obfuscation of the information you need (which the dedicated traders will circumvent anyways), it should be in moving the goods around and interacting with the other game mechanics while trying to maximize your profits.

Map Updated added Crafting indicator to Guardheim, all training decisions should now be on the map.

I know there are some differences from EVE but why in the world would you not be able to log into characters not gaining xp? That seems really crappy to me. It's a huge kick to anyone that doesn't have Destiny's Twin when that perk is already really awesome. Even without earning XP it would be useful to be able to log in to an alt to check the market of another town and such. Unless the ability to see only what is for sale locally in the AH is off the table or it will list all the prices for an item and where they are being sold globally, this will be a primary use for alts aside from basic crafting. Not to mention zerg recon.

Just to point out, both examples you gave were using alts to circumvent game mechanics. Minor circumvention, sure, but still. Alt mechanic decisions have a huge impact on the game, it is not a simple or subtle thing. It has already been stated that some of this has been taken into account since the auction houses will be linked for searches (you still need to travel to the right place to buy/pickup the item) to eliminate the need for market checking alts and third party market sites.

Having the ability to influence the market at all with essentially unlimited 'short time paid' alts that only required a few minutes of activity a day could have some serious ramifications on the economy and those participating. Do not underestimate your fellow players, they will use every system they can to their advantage and this is one that I feel is a very dangerous area.

Map Updated changed several settlement names and added training choices for some unknowns: Brains & Brawn to Arkhaven (Crafting), Open Road to High Road (Wizard/Rogue), vVv to Doomhammer(Cleric/Fighter), Deaders to Deadman's Glen (Wizard/Rogue), Hammerfist Clan to Hammerforge (Fighter/Wizard), Bastard Sons of Daggermark to New Daggermark (Crafting), Guardians to Guardheim, Terra Australis Incognito to Terra Firma, Mystical Awakenings to Auroral

Map Updated with Tavernhold added to the 'Free Highlanders' and Golgatha and Mystical Awakenings training picks of Wizard/Fighter and Cleric/Rogue, respectively.

Map Updated with Kabal's training choice of Wizard/Rogue

Map Updated with Sunholm joining the 'Aeonian League'

Andius the Afflicted wrote:

And if ranged attacks are made stationary (assuming ranged also includes magic) he will kill you 6 times in a row, especially if you give him first strike each time.

Why do you think being stuck in melee combat is a death sentence for a ranged attacker?

Lets assume both characters are constantly in melee range.
What advantages does the greatsword user have over the longbow user?

They can both wear the same armor, they both have access to the same defensive feats.
DPS is approximately the same.

The only advantage that I can see is that the longbow user will be granting opportunity. Is that really enough of a penalty to offset the 2-3 shots he got in while the melee guy was closing?

Fighter vs Wizard is a different comparison, because then you have to compare the fighter's greater hitpoints vs the wizard's greater access to status effects.

I keep seeing people (not just Andius) claim that a stationary ranged attacker dies to any melee attacker.

What advantages of melee attacking other than opportunity am I missing? Or am I just underestimating opportunity punishment?

Well it depends on what you consider 'balanced' and the desired effect. I think for the most part everyone is kind of assuming that an archer will be wearing lighter armor than the typical melee because traditionally that is a true statement for the most part. Plus a longbow is not a weapon you use effectively while someone is hitting you with a sword hence the opportunity effect. So they assume that being in melee for the archer is a death sentence.

Using your example if all raw DPS is equal the question seems to be should the 'range' advantage of however many shots be balanced by the 'opportunity' bonus once the melee closes the gap, and once that is all balanced it's an equal fight if everyone stays in melee (ignoring mistakes and potential outplaying etc..).

I then ask if your desired outcome is no practical difference between range and melee outside of flavored mechanics? They are effectively no different, that would be homogeneous balancing, which is certainly an option. (I still think ranged has an edge as target identification and gap closing leave more room for error on behalf of the melee, but it's less about numbers and more about reflexes.)

I think most people are assuming it will be asymmetrical, and thus once stuck in melee the ranged will probably lose unless the skill disparity is huge.

Ideally I think the archer should switch to a more appropriate melee set that complements their ranged abilities and attempt to finish off their opponent. This results in something similar to your example but ends up being asymmetrical since there are different actions required to win, but there are still equal odds. Therefore the Archer would maybe be considered an 'advanced' technique as it requires you to swap to melee for opportune moments to finish of your opponent versus the easier technique of running around with heavy armor and a big sword.

The idea of wasting time with software is a nebulous problem, getting the true balanced system they want could take (made up numbers) 6 months, that's 6 months of us living with an overpowered state. If it takes them 1 month to balance the not as good system to something acceptable then it's ultimately worth the time spent now versus waiting until later. It depends on factors that we certainly can't estimate and they would have a hard time estimating until they've at least discussed a few options internally.

How they should go about it is also really dependent on what the ultimate desired effect actually is: should ranged be inherently weaker to melee in a form of rock, paper, scissors? Should they be perfectly balanced so that the only difference is a mistake or (if applicable) random number coming up in someone's favor? Should they be balanced so that martial melee, martial bows, and magic act as a similar rock, paper, scissor counter?

I'm personally in favor of the idea that melee > archer > magic > melee.

Once the desired effect is decided then you can start debating how to achieve it and the value of each individual action in achieving that outlined balance and if their a nuances when comparing similar types.

Something to remember: balance does not necessarily mean equal, it means fair. Hence an asymmetric system can be balanced when evaluated under ideal circumstances. Homogeneous solutions are fair and balanced plus a lot easier to do, but also pretty boring. I prefer the former over the latter but understand the difficulty in achieving that.

I'm working on something a little more involved then what we've seen so far map wise. Hoping to have the basics ready for EE and some additional features ready for WoT. Coding time will drastically decrease once EE starts :-)