Enruel's page

Enruel wrote:

1. We do not lose any paid for time until the game is in a more finished/functional state. This is so that we can build and save our XP until the game is in a form we want to play without losing paid time.

How do you judge when that form is complete? Can you be more specific?

1. When a wizard with all wizard feats is more powerful than, or at least on par with a heavy armor cleric or fighter wielding an arcane implement.

2. When the idea of specializing in hand to hand combat and wearing light armor isn't laughable.

3. When charge abilities work 100% of the time.

4. When ranged characters aren't stationary when activating any ability, but also aren't ridiculously overpowered.

In short, when things are actually working.

Right now in the state that the game is in, I'm not very happy about the prospect of spending my skill points.

All my magic attacks make me stationary and the balance between robes, light armor, medium armor, and heavy armor really favors heavy armor.

How can I really know if I'll like these roles when they presumably aren't anything like their final form?

The reason I paid so much to get in on the first month is because of the promise of EVE style training and the idea of being there from the very start.

At this point I'm left with the option of investing my skill points in making a character for a combat system that has drastic changes needed before it can be considered finished, just letting XP build and not playing the game (while my 15$ a month time is eaten up), or losing the first month advantage I paid so much for.

If you actually release this game in such an unfinished form I would like to see one of two things happen.

1. We do not lose any paid for time until the game is in a more finished/functional state. This is so that we can build and save our XP until the game is in a form we want to play without losing paid time.

2. We have the option of having all of our XP refunded once all the abilities are working and fairly close to their final form, and all the armor types are balanced. That way we can play and enjoy the game without having to worry about whether or not we're wasting XP on abilities we won't be using once the combat is more function.

I realize all games go through endless cycles of nerfs and buffs that will leave players dissatisfied with previous training choices but currently it doesn't feel like any of the roles are even finished being built.

I think these might be good balance measures to go off of.

Firearm Pros:

1. Very powerful attacks that translate into higher DPS.
2. Very good armor penetration.

Firearm Cons:

1. Heavy stamina drain. Quickly depletes all available stamina and few low stamina attacks to offer for after it's drained unless it has bayonet attacks.
2. High skill requirements to create.
3. Recipe availability more sparse than other ranged weapons.
4. Longer crafting times needed to create.
5. Requirement of less common materials raises price to produce.

I don't think it's really wise to talk exact numbers at this point until we understand the relation between economy and power level a bit more.

Here is the basic idea though. A firearm is going to be more expensive to produce than say, a bow. It has higher material costs, higher requirements to create, and can't be produced as fast by the few people with the ability to do so.

When you are use a firearm you're going to be able to unload a very heavy amount of damage very quickly after which you need to switch to a different weapon to effectively finish your target if they are left standing. You're also going to be very effective vs. heavily armored targets.

Bows on the other hand are cheap and fast to produce. They have abilities such as "half-draw" you can fall back on when your stamina is running low and are just a better weapon in many situations.

Not a fan of the delivery but Andius does cover the points I would have made.

The implementation of firearms and the gunslinger class don't have to come at the same time. In Pathfinder any classes are able to use firearms if they take the needed feat.

In Pathfinder Online we have a few builds already that would function quite well with a firearm as the primary weapon and even more builds that could benefit from their use as a secondary weapon.

So what do we need to implement firearms?

1. Running with a firearm and firing a firearm animations. Rifle animations could actually function identically to crossbow animations. A core rulebook weapon that also already has skills in game.
2. Firearm models.
3. Firearm abilities.
4. Firearm crafting recipes.
5. Firearm sounds.

A detailed firearms system with pistols that can be single or dual wielded, gunslingers, and all that kind of stuff is probably a long way down the road but I wouldn't be surprised to see rifles much, much sooner.

Also making an entire category of weapons "rare" would be quite harsh in a game with gear loss, but I do think making them more difficult to produce makes sense. It may make sense if there are weapon smithing, alchemy, and engineering prerequisites to start training gun smithing, and if guns were to have long production timers.

The reason I asked is because, as someone mentioned, the firearms skill is already in the game, which leads me to believe they may actually be included very soon.

This is really interesting to me as I too had assumed it would take a long time before they made it into game but when you think about it, it really won't take much work once crossbows are in.

So I opened up this line of questions.

These are questions for the developers:

How soon will firearms be implemented?
What will be the advantages and drawbacks of firearm usage?
What kinds of firearms can we expect to see?
What crafting skill(s) will be used to create firearms?

The inclusion of tooltips will definately make this game closer to a beta-ready product.

One big thing though is have they got the OR code working in role progression. Once beta goes live our skill purchases are "for real" and as far as I've heard there will be no respecs.

So character progression needs to be working pretty well before releasing the EE becomes a good idea.

I don't see why. A basic cleric is proficient in all simple weapons including crossbows and javelins. Any cleric can then learn to use bows by using a feat to train the use of a martial weapon, or if it is favored by their deity and I know of a few gods that have some form of bow as their favored weapon.

It isn't the classic image of a basic cleric, but it is as appropriate as the also possible heavy armor wearing crusader. I don't see a problem with it.

Here is my frustration.

I was experimenting with an evangelist cleric.

I had to go to the cleric trainer for my cleric skills, and the seminary trainer for others. Then I had to go to the dreadnought for medium armor. For my longbow / ranged abilities... I believe the training was scattered across the dreadnought, skirmisher, fighter and rogue trainers. I can't even remember it was such a muddled up mess.

I shouldn't have to go to so many NPCs just to create one basic role. It's not even really clear if I would get my dedication bonus or not. I think all my skills were available to a cleric but it's hard to tell when they are scattered everywhere.

Like I said. Fighting with the game's setup to get access to basic character functions is not the kind of challenge this game needs to be promoting.

I am not proposing all skills be at all trainers but all relevant skills be at all relevant trainers.

If you want a fighter specific skill you go to a fighter trainer, a rogue specific skill you go to a rogue trainer etc.

If you want a generic skill shared by multiple roles than the trainers for any of the roles that use it will have it.

That doesn't effect the support of settlements for different roles. If you don't have the wizard trainer then you don't get the wizard skills. Just generic skills used by both the roles you have trainers for and wizard trainers.

Compromise: have an NPC that lists all of the training available in a given settlement, and from which trainer(s) one can get it.

That would be an improvement but does anyone have an argument to present on how having to run from skill trainer to skill trainer presents meaningful challenge, creates a sense of accomplishment, or improves the game?

To me it feels like a meaningless time sink / grinding.

An easy mode one stop shop I disagree with.

If you believe this creates an "easy mode" do you believe the current system creates meaningful challenge? Because I find it more reminiscent of "go find this person / talk to this person" quests. The only challenge is to my patience and if I'll have enough time to find out which NPC I need to go to and train the skills I want before I have to go back to work.

Meaningful challenge should be derived from the content of the game. Not making basic features more tedious.

I'd like to head this off with the fact that I know this is an alpha. I expect problems, I'm just trying to voice my feelings on them and how they could possibly be addressed.

I found feat training a total buzzkill this Alpha. I spent more time hunting feats and trying to find out what they do than anything else. There are a few things that I'd really like to see happen.

1. Tooltips in the skill trainer menu. Hovering over a feat should give a description of it. You shouldn't have to buy a skill or find it outside the game to determine what it does.

2. Categories. I'd like to see the skills trainer have headers of skill times such as an "Attacks" tab with "Primary" and "Secondary" attacks sorted out as well as sorting them by weapon.

Like so.

Attacks Tab
---Greatsword
------Greatsword Primaries
------Greatsword Secondaries
---Longbow
------Longbow Primaries
------Longbow Secondaries

Or

Passives
---Reactive Passives
---Armor Passivies
---Role Feature Passives

3. Skills you already have ranks in should be highlighted in green. You should also be able to filter out all skills other than these skills for easier progression in a specific build.

4. Create Redundancy. Certain skills are used by multiple roles and some by every role. Create redundancy in skill training by having skill trainers offer more skills relevant to their class even if other skill trainers offer it as well. Skills shared by multiple roles should be at all of those role's trainers.

So if I want hitpoints, medium armor, and bow skills for my evangelist cleric I should be able to get that all at the cleric trainer since those are all very relevant for a cleric type. If I also need it for an archer fighter I should be able to get it from the fighter trainer as well since they are all very relevant to a fighter type. Stop making us run around to hunt down skills with seemingly random trainer type selection. It isn't fun. It's tedious.

5. Create a term and category for passive skills such as hitpoints and perception which do not need to be slotted. These skills can be very important to every character type so they should be easily identified and acquired.

Interesting. I notice there is skills for riding and firearms as well as social, knowledge, survival etc. kind of skills.

How much of that actually does anything at this point?

Is there somewhere I can go that has the full descriptions of active and passive feats? I can't seem to find any descriptions when browsing through them at the skill trainers.

Thanks to Proxima Sin for an invite!

Still hunting for an alpha invite. I guess I have terrible timing.

Still looking for an alpha invite.

I could use an invite.

@Ryan- Thank you for your answer. As I've stated earlier I am more than willing to show any GW employee the exact scripts I'm running for any reason be that curiosity as to what the players are running or to verify that they feel my macros fall within the realm of what should be allowed. Any suggested removals or alterations to the scripts by a GW employee to bring them within the spirit of what you want for this game will be done promptly.

Multi-boxers will instantly be on my (and many others) KoS lists, like it or not, so you may not want to advertise it in the forums.

That's unfortunate but it will be obvious to anyone observing what I'm doing anyway so I'm sure my name will end up on one of your lists one way or another.

I've done what is important with me, which is made it clear with to Goblinworks I intend to abide by the rules they set forth.

If you are still angered enough by my actions to take the reputation hit for attacking my characters, or pay the costs of feuding them, then may the best man win.

@ Enruel

Do you use Isboxer/Innerspace??

Isboxer is what I currently plan on using if it works well with PFO.

I would really appreciate an official Goblinworks response on this. An acknowledgment that you've seen it and are still deciding the answers would be enough.

I'd really just like to know that when I start linking up my accounts via a multiboxing program and possibly using some macros to make them run a bit more smoothly come September 15th that I won't be facing the banhammer.

Edit: Also, since I may be one of the first multiboxers in PFO I'd be willing to provide full details to Goblinworks employees on the programs, hardware, and scripts I'm using and how it's performing if you would find that information useful.

Not a chance. They come with destiny's twins.

Well I have multiple first month EE accounts already. I'm basically just wondering what kind of challenges I'm going to have to overcome to give them the level of coordination I want, and for a greenlight from GoblinWorks to multibox them before I invest my time in creating and testing a system that will work for PFO in LotRO.

I don't know about 2-4 but No, multiboxing will not be a TOS violation. You can log on to as many characters (other then a Destenys Twins) at the same time on the same account.

I'm referring less to being on more than one account at the same time and more to:

"...play[ing] multiple characters at once and slave[ing] them together."

1. Will multiboxing be a TOS violation?
2. Macros. How complex can we make them before they violate the TOS?
3. Will there be a follow command to get one character to follow another?
4. Will there be target assist options to get one character to automatically target a targeted ally's targets with hostile effects?

I wonder if characters which do not have paid training can earn achievements and contribute influence to their companies. Should they or not? I'm thinking not since we don't want to enable a newby achievement unlimited influence scam.

So if we make characters who aren't earning XP "inactive" for member count purposes, I think that solves any problem in this area.

That will be interesting to see. If unpaid accounts can generate considerable influence with minimal effort then that's certainly a problem worth consideration.

As long as it also removes any benefits, not just drawbacks?

As others have stated I'm aware of no benefits presented by inactive members but if there are those should go to.

The main point is coming back to find yourself without a company can often lead to feeling of rejection/feeling unwanted yet the leadership may not really want to cut you loose. They're just doing it min-max their bonuses.

Best for everyone involved to save them that decision.

Implementation aside can anyone list a downside to doing this?

Because being kicked can leave the impression you're no longer wanted even if that's false.

Making the system makes sense because it should be simple to code and if membership counts are listed anywhere it gives a more accurate depiction of a company's true size.

From my understanding the smaller your company:

1. The less it costs to feud someone else.
2. The more it costs to be feuded.
3. The greater efficacy of influence generation your current members will have.

I'm least sure on point 3 but I thought I heard something about a drop off in efficacy after 50 members to a company.

The reason this concerns me is this leads to the practice of kicking inactive membership when leadership might rather not. Logging in after a time inactive to find yourself without a company can make you feel unwelcome, and lead to loss of membership that was actually valued.

Giving members inactive status saves leadership from having to make the choice between cutting valued inactives loose and making active membership suffer the bloated membership count.

From the sounds of it the number of members in a company or settlement actually effects the mechanics of various gameplay elements. The cost of feuds, how much it costs to feud you, and how effectively your group generates influence all depend upon the number of members you have from my understanding.

Based on this I'd like to make a proposal. Inactive members should not be counted. I would say any member of a company that hasn't logged in during the last month should be placed in inactive status and removed from it's member count.