Gilthy's page

You guys are talking like budgets are exact targets that will tell you when a project will be done. As a software developer, I can tell you projects almost always go longer than expected. At the outset, they expected their ~$4 million budget to get them to a self-sustaining project. IE, subscription revenue would maintain the staff and continued growth.

There possibly also was the hope that out-of-the-box middleware could have brought them further than it actually did. And while I do have long-time experience in developing software, it's all in the corporate/business area, not in games development, but from my experience most if not all middleware packages come with their own caveats.

But MMOs are never "done". They aren't like single player games that get released, maybe one patch, and are forgotten. They are living games that need constant development, improvement. They are never done. Show me a done MMO, and you'll find it is dead.

Or barely alive. Take a look at Guild Wars (the original); it's running fully automated these days, with no development going on. And there's still some people there having fun in there (most of it is instanced anyway, so if you run it solo or with a group of up to 8 friends it could be a fun thing to pick up).

Edit: And it's hard to knock WoW off the pedestal, because it has had 15 years of continuous development at this point.

Indeed. And the idea that "WoW is bleeding subscriptions" might be correct. A better way to look at it is that WoW has become exceedingly swingy in subscriber volume: a well-targeted new expansion (like Warlords of Draenor was at the launch, and which Legion might become) could well drive the subscriber numbers up to over 10 million again, if only for 2-6 months (until people feel like they are "done"), and that might repeat with the next major patch and expansion. Remember that far over 100 million people have played WoW by now; it's a game on its own, not something to compete or compare with. And it brings in enough revenue to support its major amount of support in both developers as well as community people and servers.

...

Darkfall:UW sufferered a lot because of toxic general chat.

A filter that removed only all profanity would not have helped it one iota, even if the filter was perfect.

Agreed, it's mostly the toxicity that needs to be addressed. I know of several people who quit EVE over its sometimes rather toxic environment, and getting them to try the game again (or any game with a similar setup, and PFO is one of those) is extremely hard, even when EVE seems to have cleaned up its act a lot in the last year or two.

Apart from that, as Ryan said, we need a /mute or /ignore option, or (preferable) a /report (which could include an auto /ignore, at least for the current session; WoW has that now and it's usually adequate). A (good) profanity filter on names and text could also be useful, even though I would hope that at this point in the lifecycle of PFO that would hardly be necessary ...

It could also be good to look into ways to log (on the server) everything which is typed into the client, with timestamps and user/IP address origin. Some people might just shut up if they know everything they say (or /whisper) can be traced and (re)viewed, and otherwise it could actually be used for offline analysis.

I'll go with Elder Scrolls Online (with grass on, of course :) )

Last bit of a clip on Youtube

(though the grass and foliage in the latest World of Warcraft expansion is also nicely done, and moves when you walk through it.)

Happy Holidays! Enjoy those days with your friends and families!

Assuming this is the 18th of July 10.00 PM PDT, I made a handy time conversion link thingy:

Escalation Alpha Party

Not sure I'll be around, as it's 7.00 AM local time for me (and I got a late-night gaming session -- AD&D 2nd Edition -- the night before).

Yeah, probably mine. It was Cheatle (on Teamspeak) investigating the crafting system, while I was killing players. ^_^

Oh, don't give me that look. PvP needs to be tested too. :P

Killing players is fine. Just don't kill their characters.

What... ? ^_^

Finding this really helped in getting some of the Cleric leveling achievements (unlocking some more feats).

Perhaps sticky this until the in-game interface shows these things more clearly?

Thanks, Stephen.

It's not really a problem (I'm fully aware this is still alpha), mostly me wondering if there was something I overlooked.

I'll try and gather my thoughts on my alpha play experience once I've tried it a bit more. Keep up the good work!

Is there a way to get my Lesser Cure ability back? It disappeared from my bar when I was playing around with what-gear-goes-where, and I removed my ... I think it was my holy symbol ... from the slot. And now it's gone and I have no idea how to get it again.

I did manage to train up to Cleric 2 (thinking that might be an issue), but no luck thus far >.<

... I suddenly totally and vividly remember why I stopped playing 3e and Pathfinder and switched to Dungeon World, FATE, various other indie RPG's and modern retro-versions of 1e/2e D&D.

When playing tabletop, I prefer to tell a story with the group instead of playing Lawyers an Lawbooks :)

Back on topic, I'm totally fine with stealth working in a more "natural" way than the WoW etc. invisibility/cloaking-like stealth mechanic. I would love to play a stealthy ranger-type character at some point and explore the world though! (which still seams feasible).

*downloads too*

*tries to figure out the time window the alpha will be running in his local time*

I just hope there is a skill to improve moving backwards faster. 'Cause I plan on shooting something, that will probably be with other somethings and running backwards while shooting whichever something is closest until I either kill them or they kill me.

Planning to use a melee weapon if you plan to solo seems crazy to me. Shoot and Scoot! Repeat as often as needed! :-)

Learn how to strafe efficiently! Run forwards (well, actually sideways) while shooting backwards! Or learn the art of the jump-shot (which was, and maybe still is, a thing WoW hunters did).

Fallen Earth (I think that has a free-to-play option these days as well) might also be a nice one to try. Goblinworks Lead Game Designer Lee Hammock was also a Lead Game Designer for that one (as well as working on Zenimax Elder Scrolls Online game).

Fallen Earth is also a sandbox game, and has some minor features I really liked (in a game that was generally fun to play): your mount actually stayed in the world as you got off, and there were some things like being able to wear your jackets zipped closed or hanging open. Never got into PvP in that game, though. And the colour palette of mainly browns and greys got boring after a while (I'm in favour of the brightness and diversity of WoW and Guild Wars 2, myself).

EVE isn't bad to learn a number of things either, but it lacks the direct avatar control of the other games (unless PFO also goes to the "click oponent, choose <approach> or <keep distance> or <circle around at 20 yards>, then click F1 for auto-attack" way of playing, which I somehow doubt :) ). But there's a lot of other stuff that's intriguing in that game. Note that CCP itself offers 2-week free playtime, and it's also on sale on Steam at the moment; the 3-week buddy offers from players give rewards to the offering player if you decide to sign up for a subscription (which might be a fine deal if they help you get started in EVE, as it's not all that easy to get started -- even if it's a LOT more friendly for new players than when I first tried it in 2006). There's also limited offers for 30-day trials available from third party gametime/PLEX vendors.

Yep. I got a high-end system with a somewhat high-end video card about three years ago. If I go upgrade that high-end card now, to a current mid-range card, it's half the size, has a lot more memory, uses less power, and is a lot faster (but maybe not twice as fast). Or I can spend more money for a current high-end video card, to find out my system can't power it properly, and easily spend three or more times than what I would spend for that mid-range card.

I can totally imagine software builders going totally crazy over this (also because if you wait 2-3 months, it has all shifted again).

I'm proud to have been 29 for 20 years now!

So you're 29 again,/ Don't tell lies to your good friend
(from the Mongolian Birthday Song)

(okay, so I'm 49 :) )

Ravenlute wrote:

When you first heard of Pathfinder Online, a dream was born. Come live out that dream in Freevale.

The Dream of the 90's Is Alive in Freevale!

What do you mean, Free? "The uploader has not made this video available in your country." :D

Bluddwolf wrote:

Audoucet wrote:

Don't forget the 75% of EvE players never putting one foot outside of high security territory.

Don't forget that statistic, even if true, has no meaning regardless of how you are looking to use it.

Does this mean the 75% do not PvP?
Does this mean the 75% don't commit crimes?
Does this mean the 75% are not Griefers?
Does this mean the 75% are not alts of pvpers in low or null sec?

I can't forget something that hasn't been established as fact.

I'm not sure there are that many players stuck in high, but anyway whatever the numbers, I'd say these guys have found a way of enjoying EvE compatible with their own risk tolerance (or aversion), in a game that might be the most engaging open pvp around. If not, they'd have quit and gone to SWTOR (as a good example of SF theme park in my mind, this isn't derogatory).

Maybe their risk threshold makes them stay all the time in high (so no open pvp, only wardecs can hit them), or maybe they go in low once in a while for missions or rare ore or whatever and take the risk of getting attacked. But anyway, they are aware of it and accept it.

Seeya,
Moonbird

I am a rather casual EVE Online player. Casual as in, I play it heavily for a week or two, three, then go play "EVE Offline" (i.e. just keeping the skill queue running) for the next period, which might be from 1-2 weeks to maybe 3 months, depending on interest, other games and offline stuff (work, life in general and being heavily invested in playing tabletop RPG's).

When I play EVE Online, I'm playing mostly solo in space, chatting in various channels, scanning down stuff, sites, wormholes, peeking inside those and exploring more, doing some sites I come across. I tend to mostly stay in high-sec space, because the risk of moving from high-sec to low-sec and beyond feels like a sharp cliff, not a gradual increase of danger. And yes, I've picked up stuff in low-sec, travelled through it, etc. without getting ganked or otherwise killed (except that one time when I was planning to join some big CCP-driven event, where I encountered a rather heavy gate camp the moment I crossed the line from high to low sec; that was a calculated risk, however). For some reason, entering wormholes feels less dangerous than entering low-sec to me.

I hope PFO will have a more gradual curve in the risk/danger element, and more choices/less choke points when moving around the landscape. In EVE, the gates between the systems are the only spots where you can move from one "hex" to the next; I would hope that PFO offers less defined borders where you can "sneak across" if you are careful.

I don't mind risk or danger, but I do like choice in when to be exposed to danger, and choice in how to avoid it.

And to answer the original topic of this thread, it is that choice, coupled with meaningful consequences, that drew me to the idea of Pathfinder Online; there are quite a few things I do like in EVE, but I actually prefer playing as an avatar (and not primarily a ship) and would love to experience a proper fantasy sandbox, with not just PvP but also a bunch of sandboxy PvE elements (monster hexes, escalations, etc.). And I can only hope that it is that choice that is communicated, and not just the risk posed by "open PvP" and "being a murder simulator".

EDIT: Or maybe Pathfinder Online should not only have the equivalent of EVE wardecs, but also add peace declarations. And force people to play as "the other side" for a while, for a price. How would that feel?

Woohoo!

(and yes, please keep the server running when you head home, so we can break test things when you 'mericans are asleep :) ).

Hi, I tried it again (thanks, Taylor!) and now my goblinworks.com account says

Enrollment

Thank you! You're signed up for Early Enrollment.

Which sounds good! Does that also mean the info for the other products (mainly the print addons, as I got the impression there is a time limit on that) got transfered alright?

I think it would be a cool idea if our characters had a "life of their own" when we're not playing them. Turn them into NPC's when we're not around (like in that old Dragon story I linked), set some behaviours and default actions, etc. The idea is cool.

It would be hard to pull off with current technology, I think, though. If I look at EVE Online, which has about 500.000 accounts, of which between 25.000 and 50.000 are actually online (the record stands at 65.303, but that number is something of an outlier), about 5%-10% of accounts are online at any given time. Which means 90%-95% are not, and they probably all logged out in a safe spot. It will be busy there :) When Pathfinder reaches 100.000 accounts, there will usually be 90.000 accounts "standing around".

(And unlike EVE, PFO probably won't have things like a starbase: when you're docked there, you're effectively gone from the game grid, you're just an entity in a chatroom, who can interact with the market, manufacturing, contracts, planetary interaction and the skill system. In PFO, most of those things require you to be about in the world -somewhere-, I would imagine).

Apart from that, imagine the tears from the player who got killed (repeatedly, I would guess?) while offline. And ragequits the moment they find out about it.

The idea reminds me of a story in a Dragon magazine, a loooong time ago.

*googles*

It's "Catacomb" by Henry Melton from issue #97 of Dragon magazine May 1985.

If you want to read it, the author put it online to be read (for free) here.

And remember, this is from 1985:
This was written back when both the Mac and the IBM PC were new and years before the web. This was before everyone knew to click a mouse or knew that underlined text was a hyperlink.

Spaceships. Red dots are (usually) enemy spaceships. The big spaceships that look like spaceships ... are actually HUGE kilometer-long titan-class ships.

It's most probably from this (recent and big) space battle:
EVE Online Battle of B-R5RB

Fights like this draw in the media ... but what's not really talked about is the fact that this kind of battle (a) is an outlier, (b) is stressing the EVE Online technology and infrastructure to its limits and (c) playing in it is quite boring, as you 1. press F1 to fire weapons at your primary designated target (and/or have assigned your drones, your "pet" robot ships, to one other player so you don't have to actually play the game to play the game) and 2. "enjoy" the effect called TiDi, or Time Dilation, which means that everything you do in game takes 10 times as long (which is a trick CCP uses to keep the servers running under load).

Good story, bad moment-to-moment gameplay (in my opinion).

Is this WoW-style soon™? :)

(And I'd rather Alpha starts when the game is ready for it, than on some predetermined schedule which got hit by the reality of software development which, for a project of any size, always causes some form of deviation from the original plans).

Talking about EVE Online, did I already leave the link to the blog of Psychotic Monk around (which is Belligerent Undesirables)?

I think it's fascinating reading... in the "watching a train wreck happen" kind of way. And the guy is totally nice to chat with outside of the game, I've talked with him on G+. It's his way to enjoy himself in the game, and he's quite open about it.

Some of the things I read about in this blog are the things I'm hoping PfO won't have (being able to rep/heal people in combat without being in danger yourself is one, being able to attack corp-mates (fellow guild members) without repercussion is a second (and then having to wait for the person to dock to even be able to kick him out of your corp...)).

As said, some of what Psychotic Monk and his mates are up to is fascinating, but some of it ... borders on mis-use of the rules of the game. Though it fits very well with the sometimes toxic environment that is EVE Online.

There is risk, and there is risk. I don't mind fighting the good (or bad) cause, I don't mind being ganked (as long as it has consequences), I assume I'm not safe the moment I spawn into the world.
But there should be some places where trust can be built, things can be enjoyed, or Pathfinder risks becoming a toxic wasteland similar to EVE.

Ryan Dancey wrote:

Don't do things that make people angry just to make them angry.

Yeah I get it, I'm hoping that system works, and I don't have to give a dissertation on why I killed someone.

I'm now imagining having to fill out an extended questionaire (in triplicate, of course) whenever you kill someone. :-)

This starts to sound a bit like a certain other game ...
- select target and lock it
- select "Circle" --> "20 yards" and start running circles around the target.
- Press F1 to start shooting
- Wait until it drops dead
- Next target
- Profit!

Perhaps with pet classes you can assign control of your pets to another player? So that one player can focus all the pets on one opponent?
(yes, this is possible in EVE Online with drones :) )

@Steelwing - the Crash Course is instanced. But as soon as you finish the crash course you're in the shared server.

(The Crash Course is a short tutorial teaching people how to fly and read the overview and a few other things)

It's not really instanced (tried it on an empty character slot slot, there were a bunch of space yurts with russian labels, and a couple other players in rookie ships).

You're thrown out into the world in EVE from the first moment you leave a station. Yes, there are some of the acceleration gates (which means you get your private bit of deadspace), but that's no different from any other mission. CCP is pretty adamant about no dicking around in the starter systems (and the rookie systems, where the career missions are located, though there's usually people there doing some stuff).

What the tutorial utterly fails in (and which is the hard part) is teaching anything about the social complexity of the game; it just tries to teach about the game mechanics and interaction. Getting people into the social bits of the game early on (and reducing the sometimes rather toxic community) would help EVE, and (hopefully) will help Pathfinder Online as well.

Sitting in a chair and writing notes in a book or scroll seem so .... unimaginative.

I can't say that in close to 30 years of playing roleplaying games I've ever thought "the best part of that session was when I sat in a chair".

If you came to me in 1990 and said "imagine you're playing a shared world game with thousands of other people in a detailed 3D virtual fantasy world - tell me what you would want to be able to do in that world that would be meaningful to you as a way of developing your character" I can guarantee you "sit in a chair" was not going to be on the list.

"So, you're all standing in the tavern, staring straight ahead..."

But, seriously, it's about the world feeling like it's an actual world. I remember playing some text adventure, a looooong time ago ("The Hobbit", I think). "You are in a forest." "Climb tree". "You don't see a tree".

... duh.

Tell me they're too steep, or something. But don't break my immersion (at least, not too much).

I wish I understood better the value proposition of things like books you can write in or chairs you can sit in from a "roleplaying perspective".

I think that perhaps my definition of "roleplaying" is not in the same venn diagram as those other things.

For me, there are things which help with roleplaying, by immersing me more fully into the game world, helping me feel like it it more of a real (virtual) world, and not "just" a game.

In EVE Online, having an avatar which can wander around (even if it's only in the tiny captain's quarters) helps me better imagine that persona as someone different from myself, instead of "me playing the game of internet spaceships".

A couple of things help me with that immersion; some are perhaps more conventions from roleplaying in earlier MMO's.

Relatively small things:

• being able to walk instead of run - in real life, no-one runs all the time; and when I play WoW, people walking instead of running are usually roleplayers (I play on a RP server, but it's not like everyone there is a roleplayer). Walking (or riding) at a leisurely pace from A to B (on patrol, on a pelgrimmage, etc.) as your characters, while talking in character about the world, and looking at the great vista's the game presents around you, can be quite a fun way to spend some time (at least, for me).

• similarly, being able to sit, on chairs and/or on the ground helps with immersion, feeling you're really there. Telling stories around the campfire in-character, perhaps.

• things like scrolls and books mean you can send notes to people. In WoW, we used the text items from received mails, as there wasn't anything else.

  Imagine sending a messenger to some lord with a sealed note, or some plan to be captured. It opens up the opportunity for more in-game play for some of us, instead of either going out of game for things like that, or just imagining them.

• an emote system also helps with immersion. Being able to type "/me raises an eyebrow" and getting that into local chat as "Gilthy raises an eyebrow" is a nice start.

  Age of Conan has a huge list of animated emotes (from dancing to leaning against a wall), and WoW actually animates your avatar if you talk in /say (with different animations for ending your sentence with a "!" or a "?", or /yell-ing). Again, it all helps with immersion.

None of those are strictly needed for the MVP, but I can imagine it's useful to anticipate having things like these at some point in the game (mostly so it's, well, perhaps not easy to add them later on, but at least possible).

Utrecht, The Netherlands

Wasteland 2 (together with Unity) ran a promotion of sorts, where the assets were submitted to the Unity asset store, and some might be used for the Wasteland game (and all would be available for other developers to be bought from the Unity asset store).

See this page for some of the details.

The idea is quite cool, but all assets wouldn't be as unique to the game (as they could be used by others as well). Also there's the issue of IP and rights to be thought about.

PLEX is destroyable in EVE. The sad thing is that it doesn't even need to be transported. People can buy PLEX anywhere, and convert it back and forth between an in-game item and a note on a game account. That means there is never any need to carry the in-game item from place to place.

Once PLEX is an in-game item, you cannot use the "reverse redeem" system (turning it back into an out of game flag) to move it around safely. (from the EVE wiki: "Please note: Once a PLEX is redeemed it is locked to that station with regards to the redeeming system. In the event the Reverse Redeeming option is used the original station that the PLEX was redeemed to will be the only station the PLEX will be able to be re-redeemed to. The redeeming system cannot be used as a method to transfer PLEX between stations.")

Which is why people are flying around with the (lootable and certainly destroyable) in-game PLEX items, taking them to and from the major trade hubs.

The game has been advertised as a Sand Box MMO with Open World PvP. L owing that up front, thousands of people contributed money I to the kick starters ( both of them) and that on some cases represents people who bought guild packs (x6) or Buddy Packs (x2).

Unfortunately, not everyone might have fully read and understood that premise. They might just have wanted a computer version of their tabletop Pathfinder game (and some probably backed the Kickstarters primarily to *get* neat stuff for their tabletop Pathfinder game), or maybe they didn't back the Kickstarter but are interested in an MMO version of Pathfinder (not necessarily this version of it), as this forum is hosted on the Paizo site.

Personally, I'm hoping most of the focus in the game will be on the "meaningful human interaction" Ryan mentions, which does not necessarily mean *JUST* PvP all the time. At least, not "combat PvP" (market, diplomacy, etc. interaction and thus PvP usually have a slower pace).

I do understand those people averse to PvP as well, though. I've slipped back into playing EVE Online, and I personally don't have problems with it. But I play it rather casually, non-AFK (which can get boring at times -- especially mining a large-ish amount), and somewhat risk-averse (don't fly anything you cannot afford to replace, etc). And I read enough blogs to know what to look out for. Like this one by a fellow called Psychotic Monk: Belligerent Undesirables ... read through some of the posts and see what kind of gameplay is totally acceptable in EVE. (As a sidenote, how do we feel about character names in PFO? Psychotic Monk acceptable? ... maybe spin that to another thread though).

Well thats kinda sad that Roberts was on the MMO panel. Star Citizen isnt even an MMO... Its going to be more like NWN, player servers, player modding, a Campaign, they will have a base server up for people to play on but eh...

It's not "the MMO panel", it's "The Future of Online Games Panel". Which is why Chris Roberts is there, as Star Citizen is primarily an online game.

Perhaps the decay (time limit) on the bounty is so that you don't get the current EVE Online situation, where just about everyone has a bounty on their heads. Most of them are only 100.000 ISK (the minimum, I think, and for the space-rich who have billions, not much at all), but you still have a large stamp with WANTED over your portrait.

At some point, everyone who passed through Jita (a big trading hub) got a bounty, everyone who said anything in some channels got a bounty, etc. (And EVE being EVE, a dark and unfriendly universe, there doesn't have to be a reason to get a bounty on your head).

Getting rid of the bounty in EVE is easy: just get enough of your ships (and implants?) destroyed to cover the amount of your bounty. I.E. get killed enough times. Which can be had for a simple service fee (hell, I'll killl you for free!).

Most MMOs have text chat. Most MMOs have Guild Chat. Does any MMO have a chat client that runs on your smartphone so you can be a part of Guild Chat when you're not logged in? This technology is ancient. Yet as far as I know, none of the mainstream AAA Theme Parks let you do this.

The (free) iPhone/Android app for WoW has Guild Chat and PM's, and access to the Auction House.

And as said, the RIFT one also has chat (both also have other functions).

...

However, since you are very likely to thread your arms & armor(*), demand for those types of items will be greatly reduced. As you become able to make more and more powerful items the market for what you make will get smaller and smaller and eventually it will become easily saturated. What is likely to happen is that at the high end, you will be able to find the best arms & armor, across a wide variety of keyword configurations, available for sale in any moderately well supplied market, but the inventory will turn over very slowly. A small number of high end crafters will saturate this market very quickly, and then they'll cease crafting more stuff, nor will new high end crafters see much point in crafting more inventory for a market with a low demand. There will be some demand as characters gain enough character ability to use the high end stuff, and as some is lost to mischief and misadventure, but the consumption rate will be a fraction of that of other types of gear due to threading.

Maybe a comparison with the big ships of EVE Online might be fitting here? When I first tried out EVE (back in ... 2009 or so, maybe a bit earlier), the biggest ships (Titans and other supercaps) were quite rare, extremely hard to make, and only the biggest alliances had perhaps *one* titan. Fast forward to 2013, and CCP needs to start thinking on how to handle the (by now) many wealthy and experienced players, in a game where those big ships are now used to grind NPC pirates ("ratting", from shooting piRATes), and are brought to fleet battles regularly. Only now (4, maybe 5 years later) do they have to worry about what the role of these ships should be in the changing sandbox.

I can imagine the same thing with high-end armour and weapons, which might be very rare and costly, but could become less so over time. Worry about that when needed, and at this point in time just note it as something to look into once the first few people can actually create those items.

I haven't seen the discussions in question either, but if it relates to the game being 'biased' towards lawful, good, and famous over chaotic, evil, and infamous... yep that's the developer's attempt to limit griefing. Sometimes I think it may go too far and potentially make anything other than Lawful Good a 'developmental dead end', but in that case I have no doubt such will become apparent in play-testing and be balanced back.

I personally think this is to be vastly preferred over the CCP \ EVE Online developers (and long-time players) 'bias' towards a HTFU (Harden The F*** Up) attitude in their game management, where grieving is an accepted (and even expected) part of the game.

There are quite a number of things in EVE I do appreciate, depth and available options in the game design and gameplay are some of them. That attitude ... not so much.

And once it's an accepted part of the game, it's hard to turn back the dials. Should CCP try and switch their attitude around (at least, should they do so too fast), their current player base would quit in anger (at least, the vocal part would). Better to start with this games (PFO) bias turned the other way around.

On the Unity site, I found the following info about Unity's support of Linux:

The Linux desktop publishing preview is a work-in-progress. The Linux OS runs on a variety of hardware and utilizes different software. It will take more testing and feedback before Unity ships a final version. Many games will run without Linux-specific problems on most modern Linux systems. While in preview mode, we will only be offering official support for Ubuntu 10.04 or later, with a graphics card that has vendor-made drivers installed.

Until Unity releases their Linux support for production use, I cannot imagine Goblinworks formally announcing a Linux version of PFO. It's also the question whether there are other tools that need to be ported as well.

The good news is that if and when Unity announces their Linux client, porting the game will probably not be a huge job.

<irony>
... but won't it be <right-click your target> - select <circle at 10 yards> from the menu, and then select your favourite attack and sit back, watching your avatar run circles around the target, shooting it all the while until it's dead?

Or is that too much of a straight translation of EVE Online's gameplay.
</irony>

Um, Kickstarter isn't an Amazon company (as far as I know), they just use Amazon as their payment gateway for US projects (UK projects go through a different channel). Both Amazon and Kickstarter get a percentage of the pledges if the Kickstarter funds (and nothing otherwise).

They also pay for the platform, etc., which is very stable (the Star Citizen campaign did both their "own" crowdfunding as well as a Kickstarter. Kickstarter never had a problem, the "private" servers were down a lot when it got busy!).

But yes, for campaigns like this, better tooling would be good!

@Drakhan the Tech Demo has come and gone, it has served its purpose (get enough external investors interested to make Pathfinder Online a reality). This Kickstarter is for the next step: get US$ 1 million to accelerate the development, so we'll have the first group of "early start" players entering the game in June 2014, instead of (say) June 2015 or later.

Unity is no demo tool, it can make proper games (if you build the right assets, i.e. graphics, models, music, animations, game rules, etc.). If Goblinworks builds this game like I'm imagining them doing, they will have a playable (but very unfinished) game as soon as possible, and keep refining that and building on top of that until it's ready for launch.

Darcnes wrote:

The only thing I have to say about publishers involves dropping the f bomb. Since that's not constructive or appropriate... I'll just refrain from going into detail.

Interesting, concidering that paizo is a publisher.

Paizo is a "classical" publisher of pen-and-paper games and books. Not a publisher as the term is used with computer games (the likes of Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard and THQ), where the publisher provides (usually) the money, and thus has a huge say in the development of the games being made.

Goblinworks isn't using a publisher to make sure their unique vision is implemented. Thus the Kickstarter(s).

One thing EVE has is the character bazaar, where you can legally sell a character (just the character, no items allowed on it if I remember correctly) for in-game currency (ISK, i.e. gold in Pathfinder). The transfer itself costs 2 PLEX (the meta-currency, 1 PLEX = 1 month playtime) or actual dollars\Euros\etc. payable by the seller.

Note that the character has to have been played (or at least, trained) by someone, and EVE allows only one training character at a time per account. So characters you can buy won't be more skilled than is possible in-game at any given moment in time. And while having skills helps (in EVE) to unlock access to gear, even characters who're only 1-2 months "old" can assist in taking down the biggest ships around when flewn correctly. Or win at playing the markets.

*Points at www.argentarchives.org -- a player-run site for WoW Argent Dawn EU *

It's a site I've done most of the tech work for, while the initial idea and a lot of support came from a few other people, together with quite a large bunch of volunteers for keeping it running, helping people out, etc.

Having something like that exist as an integrated part of the game would be great.

I can even imagine having some parts accessible in-game, for example the noticeboards are already imagined to exist in specific sites in-game, it would be great if you could go there and read them/add to them. I recall some of the very first MMO's I ever played (I think Meridian 59?) had some sort of messageboards in the major hubs in-game.

And yes, EVE-gate is quite great as well.

Ethelif wrote:

hmmmm... not sure why but I was kinda hoping for a little more difference between the levels other then a color change.

where you thinking about something like "Goblinworks Executive Founder" written next to your username?

Now that would be cool! ... oh, wait ...

*grins*

No problem here (using Chrome), but I do get a message that some of the resources are not protected by the certificate. This might be the Kickstarter block, or perhaps the Facebook/Twitter icons.

The certificate itself is fine (though the encryption could be a bit higher, but that's a cost\risk thing mostly).

Also, most sites don't put their public info behind an SSL certificate.

The scheme of "buying\selling training time in-game" is derived from the EVE Online "PLEX" scheme. It looks like the plan is to have a bit more fine-grained options than EVE has, though.

In EVE, you either have an active account, or you don't. You cannot log in and play if you don't have an active account. Each account has (fixed) 3 character slots, of which a maximum of one can be training for skills at a time. If you want to train a second character at the same time, get a second account. If you want more than 3 character slots (say, for trading at more than 3 stations without flying around), get an extra account.

An EVE Online PLEX (Pilots License Extention) grants you the ability to run a second (or third, etc) account for a month, without paying any real-life money. However, some actual person needs to have bought the PLEX for real money and offered it for sale (usually for ISK, the EVE in-game currency, not to be confused with the Icelandic Kronar, or ISK).

From what I've read about the Pathfinder Online "skill packages", it's similar to this, but more fine-grained. You might not necessarily need a second account to do everything you want, you might want more character slots (to experiment, to have a crafting alt, to try something else), you might want to actively play and train a second character. Or you might not have too much real-life cash, but still want to play. And if you're good (enough) with getting in-game gold, you might be able to play for free.

I remember reading Goblinworks is busy-busy hammering out the needed contracts etc. for whichever middleware gets chosen.

"Middleware" to my mind (but then, I work in software engineering) is the stuff between the client and the back-end system. The client (in this case) would be the actual game client, the back-end system something like the database engine or at least the permanent storage needed. Also, in the case of an MMO, the bit of software that "knows" how the world works, how to spawn a hex, the encounters in it, where those are, what state they are in, etc.

Cryengine is client technology, as are (for example) Unreal or Unity. You can tie them to networking software (this is the middleware) to make an MMO.

If I understand it right, HeroEngine supports both the client and the middleware (and the back-end) parts, not sure about most of the others.

Also remember that this isn't a themepark game. We (the players) are the content as much as we are the customer. With a low-ish amount of players starting out, there is more chance of the social structures needed for a game of this kind being formed, as well as having a period of ironing out any bugs or problems. This isn't a game of "world firsts", of grinding to the level cap as fast as possible (which is limited by the real-time component of skill training). I hope it will be a game of exploration and community building.

The only issue I have with the skill system (coupled with the slow trickle of new players) is the "first starter advantage": those people who started playing on Day 1 will actually be in the position to have the more skilled characters, the first shot at limited resources or limited spots for stronghold creation, etc. It's something I hope Goblinworks gives some thought to.