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Another Day as an Adventurer - Keep an eye out for arrows and guard your knees!

Wow! I just found a new area! There's 15 new quests, and I can unlock even more by doing those! Of course it's really the same five basic tasks with minor variations, given with blocks of text that are meant to make them seem interesting but at boring themselves. Time to grind this out and claim my rewards!

I think we've all been there, and none of us are particularly eager to see this in PFO. So how can we make it more interesting?

Ahk! There's Too Many of Them! We're Surrounded! - You need apples for a pie? Sounds like a quest!

I think the biggest problem with questing in MMOs is that everything is a quest. MMO developers are struggling to find stories to make all these quests seem relavent when they should be asking, "Does this even need to be a quest?", "Will anyone actually find this fun?"

Rather than hundreds of quests telling you to kill different monster types what if there were bounty boards advertising what needs killing and magistrates paying for their heads? What if instead of quests asking you to recover items the vendors in the market would just advertise they are buying certain things? Not only does this cut out the need for a ridiculous storyline, but it makes it easier for things to adapt with the changing escalation cycles, and for players to post up their own bounties and item requests.

What if instead of a camp outside of every dungeon with a bunch of quest giver screaming "Please kill Lord Gotye, he kicked my monkey and used my goat!" there was just a dungeon sitting there filled with dangers and rewards?

In Search of A Quest - Will quest for food!

So if all the tedious tasks aren't quests, what kind of quests should there be?

Long and interesting storyline quests, with recurring characters, plot twists, and voice actors. These should be the only quests we ever encouter, and there shouldn't be a great deal of them. But these kinds of quests are Pathfinder! Think of them as mini-adventure paths set into the greater world of Pathfinder Online.

No the developers can't supply is with enough of these quests to keep us constantly occupied but that's never been the point of this game. If they add and expand the epic quest arcs here and there it will just allow us to taste the great storytelling of the Pathfinder brand in the same world loaded with great player driven content.

Given there are no active topics I'm finding all that interesting at the moment I decided to come up with something that would spark a heated debate. This is the best I could come up with in a few moments.

How much voice acting should we see? Random character grunts? Fully voiced quests? Character voice themes like in Neverwinter Nights?

Round 1... fight! I mean discuss...

I've briefly discussed in another topic the idea of a peace rating mechanic. Here I intend to go into great detail about what that is, and how it could work

Peace, Huh! What is it Good For?!(Well hopefully something!)

The flavor of peace: As you will see as I go into further detail the peace rating system has a lot of flavor attached to it. It can allow for some very interesting characters, grant a lot of utility to the diplomacy and intimidate skills, and generally offer a unique approach to combat never before seen in an MMO.

I can't control this crowd!: MMO's are commonly filled with mechanics such as daze and root that give very powerful crowd control, which is broken as soon as the target takes damage. This works well in MMO's where it's team A vs. team B and no friendly fire is allowed. In the unrestricted environment of PFO allies will quickly and easily break each other out of such conditions. The peace mechanic offers a much deeper crowd control system which involves a lot more effort to use, and to break.

What is Peace? Baby Don't Hurt Me...(Don't hurt me... no more...)

Making your peace: Certain skill will be able to raise someone's peace rating. These would be things like diplomacy skills vs. intelligent creatures (including players) whose language you can speak. Handle animal skills vs. animals and beasts. And spells that can be used against anything (Unless otherwise specified).

Rate my peace: The peace rating is a measure of how prone toward violence your character is. Default is 0, which means you are ready to smash faces. As people use abilities that increase your peace level you can progress through the peace ratings.

0 = No effect.
25 = Decreased attack speed.
50 = Decreased attack speed and damage output.
75 = Decreased attack speed and damage output, rage and some other aggressive abilities blocked.
100= Unable to use any aggressive abilities, or buffs that enhance aggression, can still move and use non-aggressive abilities/buffs.
101-150= Same effect as 100, simply a buffer.

There are also abilities that can only target, or have additional effects on targets with a high peace rating. For instance "Lay down your weapon" could be a diplomacy based ability that disarms an opponent with a 75+ peace rating.

The highest rating most players can push someone to is 125 unless they have taken a vow of pacifism which will be explained later.

The speed at which someone's peace rating increases is lowered the higher it gets. So it is much harder to push someone from 75 to 100 than from 0 to 25.

Peace rating naturally decreases over time. It is also lowered any time the target takes damage. The rate of the decrease is very dependent on how close the target is to 100% health. A target at 100% health will lose peace rating very slowly. At 25% health and lower they will lose it almost instantaneously.

Peace vs. "the law": While it would seem inspiring people to be peaceful would never break the law, that would make this mechanic very abusable. For that reason the following conditions should exist.

Abilities that add peace rating can only be used against targets you can legally attack unless you have the "snake-tongue" trait which I will explain further on.

Characters with the "snake-tongue" trait that use it against targets they aren't allowed to attack suffer criminal flagging / alignment hits as if they had attacked their target.

Aggressive / non-aggressive abilities An aggressive ability is any ability that does harm to a target, or enhances the ability of the target to do harm. This would include direct attacks, damage over time, most debuffs, weapon damage buffs etc. A non-aggressive ability is an ability that gives the target a positive effect they can't use to harm others, or debuffs the target's capacity to commit violence. These would be things such as healing, armor buffs, disarms, attack speed debuffs, etc.

The World of Peace (Where Miss Americas finally get what they wished for.)

Barbarian rage: This ability causes the target to lose peace rating very quickly, making barbarians a great class for overcoming this kind of crowd control. However your peace rating reaches a certain point, you may no longer be able to activate it.

Snake tongue: Snake-tongue is a trait that allows peace abilities to be used against targets you normally couldn't use it against. When you think of a character with the snake-tongue ability think an evil advisor/diplomat who convinces people that they must accept something wrong, or that it isn't a threat to them. Wormtongue from Lord of The Rings is the perfect example, as was the brotherly embrace Asmodeus gave Ihys as he stabbed him. Some peace abilities (especially those associated with the good alignment) may be blocked to people with this trait active, but it may enable new and more sinister peace related abilities as well.

Intimidate / taskmaster: The intimidate tree comes with taskmaster abilities. These are abilities that remove peace rating or enhance the peace rating removed by damage. They may even give access to certain items and item enchantments such as the "taskmaster's whip" that aid in this end. Think of a taskmaster specced character standing in the back of their soldiers with a whip shouting "Fight harder!" and whipping those who don't comply.

Vow of pacifism: A character that takes the vow of pacifism can no longer use any agressive abilities. In exchange they are granted some serious enhancements to their peace abilities. Such as:

1. All peace abilities generate more peace.
2. Healing abilities that generate peace on their target.
3. Defensive buffs that lower the amount of peace a target can lose.
4. "Go in peace" target with 125 peace or higher is unable to attack players with VoP for 10 minutes, even if their peace rating falls back below 125.
5. Can raise peace level of players to 150.

VoP isn't a trait you turn on and off as you wish. Taking the vow should require a sacrifice. Breaking the vow should come with a cooldown (we're talking months) before you can take it again.

Shout, Shout, Let it All Out! (Leave us the comments we can't do without!)

Please post thoughts, feedback, and any input on how you feel this system could be improved.

So in every game, unless rogues are done horribly wrong, they are accused of being an OP class.

So what causes this? Well the signature ability of rogues is in almost every game. In Pathfinder it's called sneak attack, and I think we can all agree it's an ability so iconic to rogues it needs to be in the game.

A very common combat build for rogues is to specialize in making a strong opening attack that either does tons of damage or slaps some very nasty debuffs on to foes allowing the rogue to quickly dispatch the target rather than have a longer fight, which generally wouldn't go well for the rogue.

What you will quickly see pop up on the forums is threads saying rogues can kill people way too quickly with neat little breakdowns of how many seconds it takes to kill someone using the rogue's abilities. If it's like most games the exsample target will be an unbuffed min-maxed glass cannon sorcerer.

Where these breakdowns go wrong is that they presume combat begins when the rogue makes their first attack.

For those who play rogues, we know where the fight really starts. It starts when you begin attempting to get to the position to makes that attack. This can require a good deal of cunning, patience, and no small amount of luck. If a rogue who specializes in this type of combat fails to get the drop on their target and end up in a fair fight, they generally won't last long, because rogues don't fight fair. We aren't paladins.

You combat this by having a high perception and not letting down your guard. Sometimes you will get caught unaware and die, and in that case the appropriate response is to tip your hat and move on with life.

Just wanted to get some awareness of this issue out there before the passions of "But I died really fast... and I hate dying!!!" become involved.

It's been a long time, and you've been very patient as a community all things considered. I can sense, the irritation, the anticipation, and perhaps even a bit of stress and flared tempers as you wait for that golden moment.

I am here to tell you, you can finally rejoice that the wait is over. That's right! Eldurian Darkrender is here!

Say hello to the slyest, most charming, and most incredibly humble addition to this little community. You can stop crying into your ales and raise a pint, because it my friends, is time to GET THIS PARTY STARTED!!!

I've always thought that MMO's require enough time investment that they need to offer an extremely wide array of activities. People like to change up their gaming routine and if they can't find anything interesting to do in their current game they will find another one. But with the time investment MMO's requires finding another game means building new characters, economic resources, and connections.

Therefore a game that offers a lot of variety in activities is quite appealing. It means you can enjoy a lot of varied activities without switching games.

Unfortunately most MMO's just offer crafting and combat.

I think one great addition to PFO would be card / board / dice games in taverns. If patrons could walk in and have options to play games similar to chess and checkers or fable some coins on dice and card games similar to blackjack etc.

Playing Tavern Games On Mobile Devices

So we know there will be safe-zones and that the taverns purchased through the kickstarter will be included in them.

I suggest making it so that you can log on to a mobile app that will allow you to play tavern games in safe-zone PFO taverns with one of your offline characters. Mobile players would see a list of the tables at the tavern and could join a table with open seats or create a new game at an empty table. PFO players would actually see avatars seated around tables and could walk over and sit down to join or create a game the same way.

At that point both players could view and play the game which would only show what is happening on the table.

Many iPhone games are programmed in Unity so I'm sure this can be done.

Tavern Game Rewards

Tavern games should give some form of reward. Be it achievements, earning trophies and other items, or subtly skewing the odds so it actually EARNs you money unlike real life.

But a reward that makes people feel like they are continuing to advance their PFO career while playing chess in the doctor's office before their appointment or whatever. This will have two great benefits.

1. It will make people feel more invested in the PFO community by giving them access to it anywhere their phone gets reception.
2. It will ensure there are always opponents for PFO players wanting to find tavern games.