GunnerX169's page

There was a story of a roman guy who wore a cork suit under his armor to swim across a river at night. Rattan and bmboo armor were used in the east and some islands in the pacific. There was also some paper armor that was highly effective (stops bullets) that could be made moderately water resistant and buoyant with grease or oil.

Personally I don't need to be able to swim anyway if it takes to many development resources away from the rest of the game.

Advanced geometry: What is the area of a regular hexagon if the smallest possible circumscribed square has a side length of 1.2 km?

Your question gives me flashbacks of trying to figure out Wankel engine compression ratios. ::Shudder::

Watchtowers: Should vary with level, starting out they might just be the tripod with a basket on top, but maxed out it could be as much as a full wizards tower or small (wooden) keep.

The richest people (or at least the ones with the highest regular incomes) that I know in EVE, for the most part make that money in less then an hour a day. Production, research, and station trading are all minimally time intensive and highly profitable activities. Of course they require a good deal of out of game research, and a significant initial training time investment.

Even I manage to pay for the vast majority of my account through Planetary Interaction and Datacore farming. PI takes me about an hour a week, and collecting datacores takes an additional 3 hours a month or so. Of course pretty much everything is more effective if you can micro-manage it.

Pheoran Armiez wrote:

Robert Hawkshaw wrote:

I want derivatives contracts and underwriting!

KHAN!

What could be more thrilling than carefully setting up your book of business and then selling reinsurance sidecars?! Or the use of black-scholes-merton option pricing?

:P

Setting up your own Ponzy scheme?

Nihimon wrote:

If it's going to take 3 days to learn to craft a pair of boots (gaining the Skill), and it's going to take 4 hours to actually craft those boots (for example), then why on earth is the person who is able to sit in front of his computer for that 4 hours more entitled than someone who instructed his character to craft the boots and then logged out?

I believe the goal should be to ensure that each Character has a finite pool of Time as their most valuable resource, and that the player should be able to choose how the Character spends that time, whether they're in front of the screen or not.

I do agree with nihimon in this, if crafting is going to use real time as the limiting factor (IE it takes 3 hours of real time to make an item), than that should be done offline, no-one in their right mind should fairly be forced to sit there and stare at a screen for 4 hours while make a pair of boots. If the limiting control for the boots is time/resources, then getting resources should be the active part, time should be the inactive part.

While I in general hate botting, I think the real issue isn't botting systems themselves, it is having tasks so tedious and mindless that botting is the best way to do them in the game in the first place. I will never be impressed by a guy who manages to click a single button for 900 hours, things that are tediously easy are the part of the game that IMO are better off left out.

This is basically how it works in Eve, the game-time component is made up for by a limited number of production activities going at a time. In order to maximize your productiveness you still have to log in at the right time to setup your next run, or you lose potential production time to inactivity. So you end up with people logging in for ten minutes before work and here and there through out the day to maximize there efficiency.

Nihimon wrote:

GrumpyMel wrote:

You do NOT have the ability to wear plate armor after learning the "wear plate skill"...

Irrelevant. Whether it's "the ability to wear plate armor" or "the ability to go out and acquire the 'wear plate armor' merit badge". In either case, there is a real difference in my player before and after gaining the skill.

But, as I said, I've resigned myself to your refusal to try and see this point of view.

How is it irrelevent? Acquiring the "wear plate armor" merit badge REQUIRES you to go out and do something significant in ACTUAL game-play (i.e. kill 1000 orcs).

So please enlighten me as to exactly what role the "Learn Armor Skill" while offline is playing in the design except as a hard limit on how quickly a person can level thier character?

What functional difference is there to your character...except he now has access to the IN GAME tasks involved with earning the ability to wear plate?

As I recall unlocking new equipment was actually listed as one of the effects of skills.

Nihimon wrote:

The goal is to have all of the following be roughly the same power level:

5/5/5/5
10/10
20
20/20
20/20/20/20/20/20/20/20/20

I would not expect that goal to change.

The only advantage the 20/20 or the 20/20/20/20/20/20/20/20/20 has is that they have more options, but their actual attacks should be roughly on par with the others'.

actually I would say the first 2 are just plain not possible to have on par with the lower 3. A system that makes a 20/20/20/20 on par with a 20, but more versatile, means a 5/5/5/5 is going to be on par with a normal 5 only more versatile.

Correct, but assuming the implied slowdown of the final levels in the time it takes to get a 20, a dual-class would be around a 16/16 and the multi-class 13/13/13/13. And give that the goal is for 2-3 1s to be able to handle a 20, so the overall power level won't be vast.

It may have been mentioned in the blog, but I don't recall, will there be a way to "forgive" an attack? Or at least to otherwise legitimize combat in "safer" zones? I'm hoping for something more formal then "take my trit from that jetcan." With the implicit risk of actually being killed of course.

Sepherum wrote:

But, two different durabilty loss systems? Percentage-based deterioration over time? Acquiring mats to restore your magic sword? ... gentlemen, this is HOMEWORK. And step back and look at some of these proposals from the devs point of view...

You have a point. I think we're all so excited that it's really easy to want to throw in everything but the proverbial kitchen sink. I can live with a simplified single-valued durability system that just has some kind of chance of going down with use.

But, gentlemen, the real question is staring us in the face, and I would greatly appreciate a little clarification from Ryan, if he's willing.

Is it going to be PFO, or POL, or something else entirely?

PFO clearly, POL was the service (PlayOnline) that FFXI ran on.

How about, instead of randomly generated INSTANCES, how about randomly generated AREAS, like dungeons and caves?

I wouldn't want instances in PFO, but some randomly generated dungeons would be nice, especially if there won't be any player-created ones. It would make exploration more fun and interesting.

An instance doesn't have to be private. I personally would rather see them instance any kind of random caves/dungeons rather then run the risk of having them clipping through the side of a hill or mountain, nor have the devs spend the time writing code to prevent such.

well... maybe a single .bmp file that represents a guild's tatoo is not a problem. neither are thousands of them...

You'd want a .png, but yeah I didn't mean that there couldn't be any custom assets, just that a handle needs to be kept on them. Guild emblems/heraldry would be a nice area to use them.

DarkLightHitomi wrote:

Would be nice if we control more then just the head as far as looks are conserned. It's boring to have everyone look similer except their heads. Definitly use stat representing modals but also allow other things like body scars or tattoos or maybe a gnome that's started losing her color or should they allow catfolk fur patterns and such.

You know, the tools for creating 3-d models and textures really are mature enough that it should be possible to allow the community at large to submit them for inclusion in the game. Maybe even allow the players to control access to them? So that a guild can design a tattoo that all of their members have, but other players aren't allowed?

The problem with custom assets is that they can quickly spiral out of control. How many models and/or textures do you want to have to download every time you walk into a major trade center?

The best solution I've seen is to make buffs and de-buffs matter. If a 3 week old bard can give 20 warriors a ten percent bonus to their combat effectiveness with his music alone, he's already paid for himself before performing any other actions. Likewise a blind or slow could be a bigger battle changer then another fireball.

To do this you probably need to get rid of the all or nothing saves of PnP. There is no real reason why a computer can't handle 32.6% silenced, with a relative increase to MP cost and/or casting time, rather then resorting to the simple yes or no of the tabletop.

This makes force composition, and decision making more important then overall training (XP) and gear, though those things of course still matter too. A smaller, younger force of skilled kiters should easily defeat, or at least neutralize a larger, more experienced group of that is overly heavy in melee combatants.

Of course that doesn't mean that the larger group can't be driving the kiters into an ambush setup by their allies.

Sepherum wrote:

I believe Mr. Dancey said that we are the content. Sorry, Balodek, but you seem set on repeating 'I am the victim'. We are the content means that instead of grinding mindless mobs for cloth or loot or whatever maybe me and my guys wait for you and your guys to come by guarding a caravan of hard-earned resources. We are the challenge for you and visa versa. You're not someones' 'lootable corpse', hell, how about kickin' some ass? I played WOW for a long time. It's not a theme park or a virtual world. It's a wax museum.

Assuming I'm going to win every fight is foolish. I'm talking about the fights I'm going to lose, because that will happen. Let's say I have plenty of good gear, a large bag full of potions, wands, some spare boots of levitation for those really big cliffs. I am wolf packed by an organized band of players who specialized in looting travelers. Let's call them bandits.

I show up back in town, my armor torn, my sword nicked, hair disheveled, with the prospect of a run back to my corpse ahead of me. Let's hope I'm not one of the unlucky sods who decided to be an explorer, since you can only soul-bind once there is no incentive to explore unless you're in a large caravan. I get back to my looted husk to find that not only have the bandits taken some of my gear, but the rest has been destroyed by the game. After all, the bandits didn't get it off me, and I clearly had no more use for it, since I died it wasn't doing me any good.

Very well then, bandits have stolen part of my gear and the rest is gone forever. I get some friends together and form a mining consortium or adventuring band or what have you. I replace my gear, and we go hunting bandits. Eventually we find their camp and slay them. We loot their corpses, getting a small fraction of what they have on them, confident that they have learned their lesson. Of course, there is this nice camp sitting around here, and the bandits probably won't need it.

Come to think of it, life is good for a bandit....

Don't carry that much stuff. Go back to town more frequently. If you are exploring carry as little as possible and keep your eyes open. You just have to think about what you are doing within the confines of the system to minimize your risks.

GunnerX169 wrote:

Or a reasonable distance requirement between buildings?

Even that shouldn't be necessary, buildings should be destroy-able, when a building is destroyed half of the resources should be collectible by whoever is near and destroying, the other half should be in unusable condition, aka garbage. If someone wants to keep building a brick wall in front of my front door, that should be giving me money essentially, as I'll just keep tearing it down and collecting the resources. It should take roughly half the time to tear down as it did to put up.

So someone trying to destroy a legitimate approved structure, should still take a long time to do so, a town of people and the NPC guards should be more than aware of it before he completes his goal, and will likely kill the person the first time, by the second he should become Kill on sight if he walks back into that town.

Oh, so it's okay to be able to wall in someones house because they can spend 8 RL hours knocking it down with their fists (so they don't wear out their weapon, or 7 hours after they've worn out their weapons)? And then when they get 3 guys on the other side repairing it you are just stuck.

I hope free play has a soft cap to training...maybe at 50%-80% what it would take to reach a capstone skill, and a debuff decreasing training rate by the same percentage. But, this goes hand in hand with my hope that players of all levels are useful and can contribute in PvP and PvE.

I hope subscribers have access to everything. I quit LOTRO when they switched to the P2P and even though I was a subscriber, I had to P2P for things I could do for free the day before. This made me very upset and I will never play a P2P game that is like this. P2P is to me an alternative to subscription for those who do not want to pay a subscription. They can pay less by only paying for what they use. Requiring me to do both will make me quit (or never even start).

But at the same time they can't have a business model where everything is unlocked by paying for one month of game time. I mean I was annoyed that I couldn't play my mastermind in CoV now that it's FtP, but it's not actually worse then simply not being able to play.

GunnerX169 wrote:

The best solution, IMO, is in game trade of MT currency for regular in-game currency.

This is a bad idea. In this scenario, a player can purchase a large quantity of 'Goblin Coins' for real life cash and then sell these through in game markets. Like with Plex in Eve Online, this allows a scenario of paying to win as real life currency can heavily influences in game buying power. Alliances in Eve have bought their way to power and continue to do so.

The counter argument to this is that gold farmers will always fill the gap if Goblin Coins or 'Plex' was never implemented. Funnily enough, CCP heavily monitor in game transactions and buying ISK (Eve currency) illegitimately is very difficult in Eve as the ISK transfer will be recorded, marked, investigated, removed and then a warning will be issued on your account.

It's nothing more than another stream of income for the developers and is hazardous in a competitive game.

Except it doesn't result in "Pay 2 Win" . . .

You spend exponentially more money for a progessively smaller fraction of increased power.

So you can dump a PLEX to get a set of faction guns, but my T2s that combined cost less then 1 of your factions are "better" (with my skills anyway). Or you can dump a PLEX or 2 for each of the officer guns you want, and you will have, maybe, a 10% advantage over mine, but when my friends come and blow you up we reap the profits by re-selling your real life expenditure.

So you end up paying to be this guy: with 6.73 billion in losses, to noobs . . .

...

Buying Gold.

Now, before the Forumites tear me limb from limb, it is inevitable the greasy, foul tentacles of the Gold-Farmers will inevitably sink into Pathfinder Online. By all means, fight them tooth and nail, but for players who want their gold now, being able to buy it safely from Paizo should be an option, and should hopefully undercut any attempt by the Goldfarmers to get a toehold into the game's economy, thereby making it extremely impractical and highly uneconomical to attempt to sell gold to players via a third party (Gold Farmers).

I know I certainly wouldn't object to being able to start a character with some additional gold in my pocket. Maybe a $1 = 10 gold, to a limit of 1000 gold (100 dollars) per month limit per account. Buying Gold should come with an agreement that Players buying the Gold will not go out and attempt to destabilize the Game Economy with malicious intent.

The best solution, IMO, is in game trade of MT currency for regular in-game currency. That way players decide the value of your dollar. The economics of it seem to work better when I've seen it, and it really puts a crimp on the other nasty RMT sites.

As far as MT vs. Subs, I think the best solution is to have most things from MT be limited use. So if you are going MT you can buy a single use pass to some premium content, or even a week long pass, but in game things should tend away from the permanent unlocks. Something like an extra character slot (not training), or a haircut would be fine for a 1 time payment however.

I also agree that any sub should come with a certain amount of MT currency each month.

And again I'm in favor of "VIP" rewards for extended subs, and certain MT milestones, perhaps even giving the player a choice as to what they want to unlock (skill tree X, Y, or Z, or an extra character slot).

Whereas I never check it save for when a new discussion thread links me back to it . . .

kryvnus wrote:

I think anyone should be able to build anything anywhere. But I also believe that if you build somewhere that is already claimed or is near a city that may expand you risk forfeiting what you've built.

Just because a king claims everything within a mile of his castle doesn't mean he has the means to enforce it. But should he ever gain the means to do so, anyone who openly defied him in the past has to answer for having not obeying the rules in his kingdom (unless he grants amnesty).

So you think that having people build a wall on the street while you are off line would be fun? Or wall up every exit of your house?

For me there should be a mechanic to avoid that kind of things. If someone want to change a street into a wall he should either:
- be the local ruler or owner of the land, tear down the existing structure and build the new structure;
- declare war to wrestle the control of the land;
- buy the land from the owner.

I can build anything anywhere unless someone is actively opposing me is a bad mechanic prone to shenanigans.

Or a reasonable distance requirement between buildings?

GrumpyMel wrote:

...the account can be temporarly banned until the user places a phone call to customer service to resolve the issue....

Seriously? an intercontinental call to a support service where the people don't speak my native language and possibly speak English with one of several different accents?

No, thanks.

Generally that level of discipline is limited to RMT or other major TOS infractions.

In any case are you planning on running so close to the limits of what is acceptable to have it actually be an issue? In a dozen years of MMOs I have never had to deal with a GM for anything other then bugs.

Kryzbyn wrote:

GrumpyMel wrote:

stuff...

So you don't like games where a group of people have to work together to defeat a more capable foe?

In most RPGs, 99.9% of the population can't defeat a CR 6 dragon, but a 10th level fighter can probably handle one with little effort.

I'm failing to see the problem here...

No you aren't understanding my point at all...Games that focus on cooperative play are great....they are my preference in fact.

Games where .1% of the PLAYERS permanently get to play "MARS, God of War" and the other 99.9% of the players are PERMANENTLY relegated to playing "Joe, the totaly outclassed Peon" are not generaly FUN...especialy where "Joe" is expected to compete directly with "Mars" as a primary focus of the game.

The guy playing "MARS" MAY have fun for a little while (most people would actualy get bored of that pretty quickly).... "Joe" may tolerate it for a little while.....but it's almost certain that almost no one's going to be interested in playing that game for very long. They generaly don't succeed in attracting audiences that are large enough to fill up a softball team.

Note the O Level NPC Farmer doesn't have a choice whether he has to stay in the game world or not... the guy PAYING to play for ENTERTAINMENT does.

It's not going to be GOD characters it's going to be (or at least the goal is) more along the line of f(x)=(2x-1)/x, wherein as time (x) approaches infinity the power (f(x)) of a character approaches the limit of "2". Obviously my numbers are arbitrary, but the basic graph of the function remains the same.

They've already said that time won't be 1:1 so your "8 hour" buff could last for 1 hour, or maybe just 8 minutes in game. They have also said saves will be based purely on stats. I expect HP are going to be relatively constant and a more important factor will be Effective HP from damage resistances and/or dodgy, parry things.

Monk/Wizard still has the stating problems that everyone seems to want to gloss over. Do you use a Robe of the Magi or a Monks Robe? Periapt of Wisdom or Brooch of Shielding? Headband of Intellect or Headband of Ki Focus? So you can still only be 70% of both or 100% of one plus maybe 10% of the other (and that's acceptable to me for the extra time investment). Same thing with the ranger/wiz fair-average shooty + spells or excellent in one and shoddy in the other. It's just a matter of making the gear matter more then the abilities on their own.

I seem to recall the "powers that be" mentioning Eve's training times and implying that they would follow a similar curve. Meaning that 6 months in you will be around a level 16, and the next two years will be polishing of those last 4 levels, so your 10/10 isn't actually a 10/10 it's closer to a 18/18. I could be wrong on this but that's what I want to remember.

I hope that someone who has subscribed for two years and then drops down to F2P doesn't end up in a more restricted state than someone who's been F2P all along and only given you 1/10th the money.

I would like to see some kind of VIP rewards system for paying players, both in months of subscription and MT dollars.

3 months of sub or $50 get a free character (not training) slot kinda thing.

Any chance of using Eve's one trial (free) account logged in at a time?

I know it can be worked around, but multi-boxing is limited by how many boxes you have, and virtual machines drain system resources.

GunnerX169 wrote:

I think people are kinda going off track here a little bit.

It wouldn't be a F20/Pld20. It would only be a F20 with the abilities of a Pld20 as well. That sounds kinda powerful but hold on.

He doesn't gain any of the saves or passive bonuses of being a Paladin? If no, then what was the point of becoming a paladin? If yes, then you can't deny that as a significant advantage over a pure fighter. Especially if the resistances will be based on a different, specific stat; because pally bonuses are divine and would affect all of them. From what I've been reading a level 40 shouldn't be stronger than a level 20, which I can't really understand.

GunnerX169 wrote:

And the more classes you add the more drawbacks you will run into.

Except for classes that *don't* have a large overlap. Do that same comparison with a rogue and a wizard. Or a sorcerer and a ranger. Or a paladin and a bard(bearing in mind that alignment restrictions in a skill-based system make very little sense).

First part: Yes he would get the improved will save, and the CHA bonus to all saves, again at the cost of the fighters main dump stat.

Second part:

Wizard/Rogue: No armor, extra-squishy going into melee? No I think I'll sit back here and cast spells. Atat conflicts and magic attack power vs. physical.

Ranger/sorc: Again no armor, no dual-wield, I could shoot things with my bow or just release my nigh endless stream of spells at the enemy. Again stats and M.Att vs. P.Att.

Basically the actual power gain tends towards marginal at best.

I think people are kinda going off track here a little bit.

It wouldn't be a F20/Pld20. It would only be a F20 with the abilities of a Pld20 as well. That sounds kinda powerful but hold on.

Both get all martial weapons, up to heavy armor, and shields.
Fighters get tower shields as well, but this is moot as we will see later.
Fighters get more Dex bonus and reduced check penalties from their armor, which means they benefit from having more DEX. Th only class skill a PLD has with a check penalty is ride.
DEX is one of the few "dump" stats for a paladin.
Fighters get a bonus to will saves against fear, but paladins are immune to that anyway.
Fighters get some bonuses with lots of different weapons
Fighters get a whole bunch of bonus feats
Paladins get the ability to cast some spells, this is based on CHA, a major dump stat for fighters.
Spell casting also requires a free hand, I know everyone loves to forget it, but if it has somatic and/or material components you need a hand free to cast. This means no dual wielding or shields if you want to cast in combat.
Paladins can turn undead, fairly poorly, again CHA.
Paladins can heal, more CHA
Paladins get a bonus to saves (CHA)
Smite evil (CHA)
Paladins can detect evil!
Paladins are immune to all those nasty diseases that both they and fighters have loads of fort save to resist anyway!
Paladins can enhance their weapon or summon a spiffy mount, the fighter can pay for the majority of either of these things anyway, and in an MMO it's not a finite X/level resource.
Paladins get a bunch of auras that do some stuff.
PALADINS HAVE TO BE LAWFUL GOOD!
PALADINS HAVE TO FOLLOW A CODE OF CONDUCT!
In case you missed it, that pretty much means no going invisible and sneaking up on people to murder them in cold blood before they can react, at least it does in any game I've run =/

So in the end you end up with a paladin with a few extra points of attack and damage bonus and a handful of feats that may or may not be useable by the paladin (improved shield bash yeah!). Not taking into account any stacking penalties. The paladin that has trained for up to [i]an extra two and a half years[i] has a few more feats and smidge more damage then a regular PLD20. If this equals out to a fraction more power, I'm okay with that. The F20 doesn't have any of the drawbacks of the paladin and can dump the heck out of CHA to actualy gain something from a higher DEX as well as possibly boost his STR/CON. And then amplify that with gear. In WoW a holy paladin in Retri gear isn't going to be a very good healer, I don't see why something similar can't be achieved in PFO.

And that was one of the combinations with the best synergy possible. And the more classes you add the more drawbacks you will run into.

Daniel Powell 318 wrote:

Stormanne wrote:

@Daniel- This problem is easily solved by making the majority of items either user created or bound to character. That means the player has to move beyond the "safety" of their small hold to build up wealth. Another solution would be have the size of the players holding dependent upon their level/experience.

So, in order to build a castle, I have to quarry the stone myself? And the purpose of this is to ensure that I'm tough enough that there are some people who aren't disqualified from siege because they would win?

How about, you build the castle to claim the territory by right of force majeur. By doing that, you open yourself to anybody who wants to contest your superior force with their own. Don't want to fight for your right to control land? Pay rent to someone who is willing to fight for their right to collect rent from you.

By right of force majeur? So, what about the new player? You're all for telling them to "F" off since you were there first and had time to gather strength and resources. The way you want to approach PvP will make sure that the only audience for the game are those that start at launch. Anyone who is late to the party is going to be screwed by the human nature to abuse what power they have. There would have to be a mechanism in place to have a level playing field otherwise the power gap between the haves and have nots becomes such that the have nots say to hell with it and leave the game.

Well I don't think any single person is going to be able to build and hold a keep on their own. It's a matter for guilds, and guilds will always have player turnover. So there will always be entry level positions. And honestly if enough new players get together they can take their own lands too. Go look at TEST and Goons if you want some examples.

Nihimon wrote:

My dad is absolutely convinced, and I'm not convinced he's wrong, that 3 Level 5's should be equivalent to 1 Level 15.

Well the game its "inspired" by doesn't follow that numeric comparison.

What it does do is that, freaky magic items not withstanding (and I'm talking about ones that grant DR and the like here), any character of any level ALWAYS has a minimum 5% chance to hit any level of character.

Can they (or should they) leverage that legacy into the MMO.. not really sure. It has merit but it also has flaws.

No they shouldn't. Not at all. But you know if you can't see the fantasy for the dee and dees that's fine too.

When that character, sixty-some years from now maxes all his skills in EVE I'm sure he will become a god as well. In the meantime I'm going to keep playing.

When you say first capstone takes 2.5 years, that means the first one takes 2.5 years. Am I right to assume that the second would likely take less, having already trained some of the prereqs and support abilities needed for a second set of merits?

On the subject of the 'Great Capstone Debate':

I think many people are missing a greater point here. What this system gives players is choice. And real choice, not some resemblance of choosing. But with choice comes consequences. You have the freedom to branch out in all directions, which is a short term advantage. But there is a long term advantage of staying in the one direction. This satisfies not only different play styles but different personalities as well.

But it's not so much a choice as a gamble that won't get sorted out for around 3 years. Two and a half years for the first capstones, then however much longer to actually find out which is better over the long run. Yeah you can theorycraft it, but 3 years out? Something is going to get balanced in that time. And if you start as, let's say, a rogue and then find out you solo like a drunken gerbil, you can't just switch over to an uber-farming druid without giving up your Extra Special Stabby Bonus. Forever. And you might have to make that choice 3 months deep into your character build, and 27 months out from the consequences, or 12 months in and 18 out. And I'm not sure which of those would be worse.

And just to pay homage to the thing that was put in to keep prestige classes from being such a complete no-brainer. A great idea it was too! There anyway, but this isn't starting from the same position. This shouldn't need to follow in the tracks of the fixes for the missteps of that which came before. It should just avoid those missteps in the first place.

Actually that give me an idea. You want choices and consequence, fine, but don't expect a new player to be able to make a decision on something that's 30 months in the future. Instead make it the last 3 traits (or 3 of the last ten if you want the choiceTM earlier) branch off into a set of "capstone" choices that refine, rather then define the character. An couple extra points in weapon or armor mastery for a fighter, at the expense of a point in the other one, or just take the neutral path in the middle. It's trivial, but still can give you that slight edge over the other guy.

It would be more like the color of the petals in the flowers of the frosting on the cake. Which I think is better, because some people just don't like chocolate frosting. Then again I suppose some people are allergic to Red #40 too.

And that's the thing, if it has consequence it has consequence, otherwise it doesn't. You aren't going to be able to hit that sweet spot where it's really up in the air as to which way to go on 11+ classes. 90+% of them will eventually breakdown into no-brainers one way or another. This is the internet after all. The line between "ZOMG!" and "meh" is pretty thin.

So yeah that's about it for my rambling thoughts and concerns. For now . . .

And what about the inevitable player-base deciding capstone X isn't worth giving up Y and Z for 2.5 years, until some meta-level changes make X a "must have" for said class.

GunnerX169 wrote:

Or they could just let you gather materials offline. That way you wouldn't have to be bothered logging in to gather your stuff.

Now there's an idea with actual merit. SWTOR manages to do this well thought it usually winds up being more of a supplement to easy harvesting nodes.

Oh totally. I'm not opposed to it, despite the rather sarcastic inflections of the comment. There are things like that in EVE too. It just seemed the logic conclusion to the line of thought presented.

GunnerX169 wrote:

I'm sorry, but I find this absolutely false. Yes you will always be "ahead." Yes it might take 3-6 months to get in a T2 fit battleship with all the other appropriate support skills, but that's all you need for any PvE in the game. In PvP you can go Rifter Hero on day 1. You can always use more tackle.

I agree with most of what you are saying, and generally speaking I love the EVE skill system. I'm excited that PFO is going in this direction, and I look forward to it making a @#$%-hot game as a result.

In the context of the original comments though your own response is proof enough of my point (and the blog post acknowledges it too). The skill-point system in EVE causes a gap that effects game uptake amongst some users, even with friends in the game... my example being my wife. PVP is of no interest to her, and telling her to wait 3-6 months before we can enjoy the same sort of content is a good recipe to sleep on the couch. Especially when you factor in that any EVE player that hung around for longer term play (my wife included, past say a 3-6 month MMO burn-out period) would probably want to start diversifying and reach that point of realisation where they know they will never, ever catch up with older players, or even just me.

If I was talking about my workmates or other gaming friends where I enjoy a pseudo-competitive friendship then I think they (and I) would argue in favour of the same points you make, but with my wife I would love to see there's at least a slow option to close the gap when parties on both side make the deliberate choice. EVE doesn't offer this, short of saying "Oh, I'll stop growing my main until she catches up"... not an attractive choice.

Well, you could jump in a frigate and run L1s with her in the meantime couldn't you? So she can't join you in an incursion fleet, yet. How much real difference is there between her not playing while you run incursions, and her not playing while you run incursions and her character is training to catch up? It's like saying I'll never catch up to that guy in WoW because as soon as I get to level 80 he will have trained a second character to 80, as soon as I get tier x gear they will have tier x+1 gear. Yep they can do more stuff better then you, but they have to get in a different ship, or log in another character in WoW, to do that other stuff. And then 80% the ability in 20% of the time.

I'm sorry to belabor this, but it's an absolute BS argument and I must crush it whenever I see it.

-----

Other things I wanted to comment on.

I too am concerned with the capstones. I'm not entirely happy with the archetypes for that matter. Classes are my second biggest complaint with DnD (after not having a sexy bellcurve, D20 should have been 2d10, or better yet 3d6). It always bothered me, for instance, that I couldn't really play a gentrified educated knight without a pile of useless and/or out of character abilities. Yeah I can play a paladin to get the Knowledge: Nobility, and Diplomacy skills I should have for politicking, but I don't want to be a Holy warrior of righteousness. I can multiclass rogue for the extra skillpoints, but why does my mounted combat focused, full plate wearing character have sneak attack and uncanny dodge? The only path that kind of worked was 2 levels of fighter 1 of bard, where at least the inspire type abilities were moderately in character. The spells, even if they weren't completely out of character RP-wise, were almost completely useless in my full plate.

I was really hoping for a step back from the "core classes" into some more generalized skill groups. I was hoping we would be able to create our own mix and match archetypes. Why does every paladin have to be the same? Why can't I make a Templar (Ret-spec?) while he makes a Hospitaller (holy-spec?)? Why does paladin (Fighter/Cleric) get to be "core" in the first place when the Magicknight (Fighter/Mage or even the elf from way back in basic), and Shadowblade (Rogue/Mage) don't?

I was hoping they would try an overcome these limits rather then embracing them as a core part of the game. C'est la vie.

I love the details I just read, although I have to second the concern that EVE has a system where it is very difficult to address the skill point disparity between old and new players. I'm not really concerned about the idea of 'catching' the current king pins ahead of everyone else... they got where they did (hopefully) through honest play.

My issue has always been with more personal gaps, like between my wife and myself. We play a number of online games together and she'll never play EVE with me because my character is a lot older and the gap is really obvious... not only that, but it will only widen over time, if not stay arbitrarily large.

I'm sorry, but I find this absolutely false. Yes you will always be "ahead." Yes it might take 3-6 months to get in a T2 fit battleship with all the other appropriate support skills, but that's all you need for any PvE in the game. In PvP you can go Rifter Hero on day 1. You can always use more tackle. The beauty of the skill system in Eve is it takes 5-8 times longer to reach 100% effectiveness then it does to reach 80%. And that 100% can be as little as 10% more damage versus 8% more. In the long run the gap can only close, especially now that they've gotten rid of learning skills, and you can plan out remaps to optimize your learning plans. And even beyond that there is an absolute cap to what skills will benefit you in any given situation. My T2 frigate, and missile skills don't do me any good in my Machariel, and my T2 autocannons don't do me much good if I'm in a Drake.

So while a newer player will always have x less skill points, the older players can't maintain their lead as a ratio to newer players' skills.

That said:

I've always thought it would be great to have a mentoring system where I could deliberately sacrifice some of my skill-point growth to speed up hers... in a pathfinder context, somewhat like a lvl 20 warrior spending time to teach young warriors. Given the alternate progression systems you are providing as well perhaps it would also contribute to something like a 'teacher' merit badge, providing a status incentive.

I support this completely.

The resist armor idea goes the furthest toward alleviating this concern, but I don't really want the mages (on either side of the fight) dictating what everyone needs to wear, and thus having a monopoly on strategy.

That's a non issue. The CO will be deciding both what spells the wizards bring and what you will be wearing. On the uptick, it's his fault if you die horrible inglorious deaths.

Onishi wrote:

I've never heard of an MMO of any genre that you don't...

I was hoping that PF Online would refine what we consider an MMO to be - if not then I think it'll go the way of Warhammer Online.

The only novel thing I have read that PF Online will have is the kingdom building aspect - other than that 'rumors' make PF Online sound like the same-old same-old we have had for the last decade.

I don't have the answers, but I hope they are reevaluating the way things are done in all the MMO about now and asking themselves "why is this done this way?" and then in the context of the game they wish to make implement the best system - which may replicate the current status quo or something novel. What I would hate to see is all the current MMO ways of doing things blindly tacked on to a RTS engine (e.g. what you would get if you combined Warcraft III with World of Warcraft).

I can see now why it seems like using the PF PnP ruleset as a basis for this game is a bad idea (and I need now eat my words from another thread).

S.

I don't think they are trying to combine an RTS with an MMO.

As an example Eve didn't really start out as a plan to make EQ in space. I think it was more an idea of making a multiplayer space trading sim (like the X-series, or Freelancer).

I'm hoping it's more along the line of putting some of the ideas in say Evony, and/or Europa 1400 into an MMO and taking a good bit of focus off of poking things with sharp sticks. Or at least make the sharp sticks a means to a greater end.

GunnerX169 wrote:

Caineach wrote:

Diego Rossi wrote:

Matthew Trent wrote:

I maintain that playing a mini game is always more fun than standing in front of a tree and attacking it until your carrying capacity is maxed.

And I disagree.

- Click attack, click attack, click gather the wood, repeat 10 times

lose every time against

- Target tree, click "cut the tree and gather the wood" and then sip you tea while keeping an eye on the screen for approaching unfriendly creatures/players

so the quality of the minigame and how mandatory it is count.

+1, especially if I can alt+tab out and do other things, like check my email or read a wiki.

But would it really be so bad to have a little bar going up and down that when you click in the sweet spot you get an extra resource? You don't have to, you just get bonus if you pay attention. Besides then maybe there would be less whining about being ganked while AFK.

I actually know many people who would be anoyed by such a mechanic. It is terrible design. Its basicly saying "we can't design anything compelling here, but we will reward you for wasting your time and paying attention." People will get annoyed that they gather slower because they are unwilling to do a chore.

Or they could just let you gather materials offline. That way you wouldn't have to be bothered logging in to gather your stuff.

I would like to see something along the lines of CoVs random (newspaper) mission generator as a primary source for PvE. It would also provide the basic building blocks for potential player created dungeons somewhere down the line. CoH/V has those too, don't know how broken they are, but if a "CR3" simply drops an "random EL3 treasure" it shouldn't be too hard to keep balanced.

Diego Rossi wrote:

Matthew Trent wrote:

I maintain that playing a mini game is always more fun than standing in front of a tree and attacking it until your carrying capacity is maxed.

And I disagree.

- Click attack, click attack, click gather the wood, repeat 10 times

lose every time against

- Target tree, click "cut the tree and gather the wood" and then sip you tea while keeping an eye on the screen for approaching unfriendly creatures/players

so the quality of the minigame and how mandatory it is count.

+1, especially if I can alt+tab out and do other things, like check my email or read a wiki.

But would it really be so bad to have a little bar going up and down that when you click in the sweet spot you get an extra resource? You don't have to, you just get bonus if you pay attention. Besides then maybe there would be less whining about being ganked while AFK.

KitNyx wrote:

. . .

But...I just thought of something interesting, repairing a sword normally means you fix burrs or notches in the blade, what does fixing a mace entail? I would like to see weapons degrade at different rates...this at first sounds nitpicky but swords are much more popular in MMOs, whereas maces are rarely used unless forced by some class mechanic. Weapons types should have different degrade rates...and the fact a mace degrades a quarter as fast as swords might increase their popularity (as was the case IRL).

Actually not a bad idea, Actually having a damage/durrability trade off etc could add an extra dimension to the entire...

Honestly you it's pretty much the same thing with a mace as a sword. You still need to take all the nicks and burrs out so it doesn't get hung up on things, and while you may not need to hone the blade, you still are going to be straightening flanges and reinforcing the haft.

Personally, I'd rather see varying resistances to the different damage types (S/P/B). But I guess either way could work.

Read my next post, I realize the incongruity of some of my statements about this. I want the choices to be there, I'm just worried about the slippery slope. The difference between a character that can fulfill multiple roles and a character that can fill *every* role. You can say that he'll be a "jack-of-all-trades" so he'll be a "master of none" all you like, but given a year or two years or however long to level up, if there's no max level it's gonna happen unless something creative is done to prevent it. *That* is what I'm trying to get to, Scott... a solution.

Limited Ability Bars, like Guild Wars.

So there are three off the top of my head. Granted some of them might not make that much a whole lot of sense in the lore, but I think the benefits of having just one character outweigh that.

The problem is without a ref/GM you really can't have meaningful roleplay. Once you get into the realm of "massively" so many systems have to be automated as to render roleplay rollplay. Even with the hundred or so people at some of the GenCon LARPs the GMs have trouble keeping up, thousands of players will just increase these problems.

Then there is the problem of what one considers to be roleplay. We've encountered groups or players that didn't fit our play-style. Ask 6 different RPers what is roleplaying you will get a half-dozen different answers. Again imagine what you will get with thousands of players each with there own idea of what's important.

You know what I love about my Pathfinder table top game? I've never had to worry about replacing my magic sword because it "wore out".

There are plenty of ways to make a functioning economy without adding depreciation calculus to the game.

You clearly aren't fighting enough Vampire barbarians with improved sunder and adamantine greatswords. Or rust monsters if you prefer something less zany. I prefer the zany myself.

I think it *should* be arduous to respec your character, let alone switch from a Ranger to a Necromancer. I get the image of an utterly superficial game play when someone who has spent months(years, in-game) learning to bust out all these crazy bow shots can just wiggle their nose and drop some gp in the coffers to pretend like that never happened and instantly *poof*, know how to summon undead and drain the life from the masses. IMO, if you have a Ranger and you want a Necro, start an alt.

I'd rather see something more along the EVE model where you can have the training for both, but neither will be very good without the appropriate equipment to back it up. So as a Necromancer you will want robes of darkness and a bone wand, but the archer would want camo leather, bracers of archery and a bow.

Also, the distinction between arguing against one's assertions and attacking that person is non-trivial. It's easy to confuse the two, but don't.

Indeed.

Idea #27 is terrible because, no one else does it, it will cause these problems and therefore no one will play.

vs

Idea #27 is interesting but I see a potential problem with these things, do you have any ideas to mitigate them, as otherwise I think it will marginalize the audience to too great a degree.

GunnerX169 wrote:

Or you make it a reward for a long and difficult series of quests that span a vast area of the world. Then you make the use of such a thing limit your ability to do other things such that it is a trade off in other forms of awesome.

First off by definition of long, you pretty much have to be talking, months/years worth of long, as anyone and everyone will take 3 weeks to get absolute 100% safer and significantly faster travel, and well what can the alternatives be that are on par with perfectly safe travel? When you are talking something as game-breakingly strong as this, you need something pretty darn big to make it not the only sane option.

Game-breakingly strong? Well just off the top of my head: No attacks while flying because you need both hand to stay on and in control the mount, can't carry as much as a horse, let alone a cart, likewise potentially limited armor due to weight restrictions, if your mount is shot down (was it 50% hp?) chances are the fall will kill you, plus it is bigger and less well protected then you are, and the endless list of effects that will also result in an inglorious plummet, and terribly limited field of view with the wings and head other bits blocking your ability to see all the threats that were just mentioned, and if it gets killed you can't summon it again for a 72hr to 1 week. I'm guessing a bit more creativity could come up with far better examples then that though.

KitNyx wrote:

@lungdisc, Your opinions are valued, please keep sharing them. We are all trying to make this endeavor turn out better, some people are just more...certain in their opinions about what will work and not than others. Even if they do not agree with you, just remember there is probably a huge silent majority here reading...that may very well agree with everything you say.

Actually, I'm pretty sure most of what we're seeing is the vocal minority pushing for their sort of wild and crazy views.

This may be true, but we are vocal due to being underserved.

Kryzbyn wrote:

Sorry, it's hippogriffs, and Korvosa.

What point would there be to classify it's rarity on a global scale? I'm sure people in Korvosa would think they're a pretty big deal, and any player that wants to make a character that can become one would think it's pretty darned important.

and thus comes the problem of things like this for MMORPGs, something that is intended to be super rare, must either 1. have a requirement that takes years to achieve, 2. Not be given to players 3. Be accepted as extremely common, unless comperable good things come from many different groups that are mutually exclusive.

Personally I don't like the implications of 3. So I'd preffer them to either be on par with the titan in eve in terms of difficulty obtaining (which makes sense, considering an elite faction isn't going to just take 1 million joes off the street. Even that though has some serious implications, that is pretty much unlimited fast/safe travel for the person in question, that is more then just a huge combat advantage, that is an insane safety and efficiency boost. 3. is equally problematic, considering now you are pretty much requiring them to come up with a good air combat system, or we can expect travel to be a completely safe event.

Which pretty much just leaves 2, make them npc only and make Korvosa an NPC only group.

Or you make it a reward for a long and difficult series of quests that span a vast area of the world. Then you make the use of such a thing limit your ability to do other things such that it is a trade off in other forms of awesome.

GunnerX169 wrote:

I'm going to agree and disagree with this. I think there should be a primary activity. I think that activity should be rulership, as you put it. Every other activity should be there to support that one. You should need Lumberjacks to harvest the wood for a frame, Stonemasons to gather and shape stone for the walls, and warriors to defend your fortress. You should also need dedicated craftsmen and miners to keep your army equiped.

I really don't think that there's going to be much appeal to a game where the majority of players get to be serfs for a few.

It's not a matter of being a serf. It's about being part of a larger community, working towards some stated goal. Trust me, 98% of players don't want to have to deal with the politics and the organization that "officers" of a group have to deal with. As long as the individual feels they have some effect on the path the group follows, and as long as they feel they are contributing to a cause, the majority of players will be satisfied.