Hardin Steele's page

I can't imagine being enamored by the Elder Scrolls werewolf meme. It is so overdone it is a total bore. Every single player was running around as a werewolf. Not interesting to me.

I can't see the loss of focus. This game is not targeting the WoWheads, or the F2P crowd. That is a totally different market and will not have an interest in PFO anyway, so not attracting them here is not unexpected.

Ryan and Lisa are targeting a small niche market (I am one of those players) that prefers interaction with other players, graphics are not the be-all-end-all of he game, depth is more important than sparkle. So far PFO has those things even if they have not made it into the game yet. The rollout of new content is on the schedule they have projected, and the design seems solid.

I do agree with the last part about the strict naming conventions. Having crazy numbers and x's in names is immersion breaking. It would be nice for players to have to have a certain name structure (personally I would prefer an area for a character backstory or biography like in LotRO), a home area, and some Golarion style connection in the character creation process to give players a nudge in that direction. The niche market Ryan and Lisa are looking might appreciate that layer of depth in the creation process.

They recently "turned the heat up" on the escalation monsters and they are certainly tougher to kill than they were a couple of weeks ago. Bob Settles said in his Fireside chat (what 2 weeks or so back) that there were more monsters planned, and some additional features for escalations, but the escalations were to be part of the core PvE content (unless I missed something).

There will eventually be dungeons, as everyone wants them in (including Lisa and Ryan and all the rest that have come on Mumble), but that is pretty far down the road. At least a year it sounded like. Until then you'll have to find things to do if the escalations don't tickle your fancy.

PG-13

Hoffman, I would bet at least for the first couple of years the original core group of players and posters to the forums would defend your call for help should PFU ever become the target of a true attack, creating an actual emergency defense situation. Everyone (I think) applauds your efforts and would come to your aid in short order were that to ever happen.

Strangely though, the NPC bandits and Razmiran's all drop and are physical corpses for a moment, however brief. With all the horrors available on daily TV programming and the internet, not showing a corpse seems....quaint.

Burning down a place of learning and intellect - I hardly can imagine any act more evil and vile apart of burning a library.

Hoffman - you will have my unquestionable support should you ever be in danger of such an atrocity.
I tried hard to never ally myself with anyone and offer them my unlimited support in case it would be used against the status of the Emerald Lodge.
But in this case it should be known by everyone that I will make an exemption.
We are yours in the moment of need.

Signed

Theodum

The Great Library of Alexandria is no more. t was damaged many times before being completely destroyed, ad was usually being sacked by cultures thought to be "civilized". So it will go in PFO. One settlement's loss will be the victors gain.

Isn't High Road an inactive settlement?

That was today the 2nd and 3rd stickies were removed. They were here yesterday. They had really old information on them and had apparently outlive their usefulness (in GWs opinion).

I don't know much about the Unity engine or the Unreal engine. I did experience the Hero engine in SWTOR and it was a true nightmare when you entered a PvP battleground. The lag when you got more ten 6-8 players in one area was difficult at best to play in. Glad that Hero engine is not in use here.

Two years ago I stated on these forums there is never a lack of evil intended players (gankers, random PvP attackers, conquest oriented players). I thought it odd there was so much complaining by the "evil" intended players that evil was at a disadvantage. Hot news! Evil is never at a disadvantage! Evil always has the advantage as there are no rules for a player to behave in an evil manner.

It seemed redundant, and even moreso now, that Pax decided to take on the role of an evil empire since there was not enough evil. It tipped the scales in that direction, and now with so many players in that stable, but few mechanics to support directed PvP Xeilias and company are complaining they are bored. What did you expect when you tipped the balance?

I agree that inactive members may at some point skew the calculus on "populated" settlements, versus "active" or "successful". One player with 10 to 40 accounts will not be able to exploit their own accounts effectively. Settlements are better off with 100 active players with only 100 accounts than 500 accounts and only 50 players any day.

Maybe instead of talking about ditching PFO for some other game you could talk up PFO. This thread is a boost for PFO.

Good news Pathfinders!

MMORPG has an article, "The List: 5 Big Kickstarter MMOs to Keep an Eye On"... and Pathfinder Online is on the list.

Here's the link - The List: 5 Big Kickstarter MMOs to Keep an Eye On

The word is getting out!

Thannon, I agree the NPC auction houses should be closing at some point in the near future. There is little incentive for players to travel to nearby payer settlement markets if the starter town has what they are looking for. Let's hope their days are numbered.

I'm sorry but bugs of this scale really make me question the release practices of GW. It would be nice to have an explanation about how this bug made it through their QA.

How do you know there is a big bug or little bug until it rears its ugly head? Have a little faith man. Or beastie, or whatever you are...

What a bunch of crybabies.

This is a great idea. In a recent post by Thod enumerating the members in each settlement (characters, not players) the total came out to (iirc) 1113. Lisa Stevens posted shorty after that announcement that our numbers are off, as there are more characters NOT in a settlement than there were in settlements. That's a lot of players, and great potential. But they might never know the benefits of belonging to a group (company, settlement, etc) without a little help.

Granted, many MMOs encourage soloing, but PFO is not one that will make the life of a solo player easy.

I have had goat meat. Very stringy, but quite delicious. I preferred the very spicy sauce, but still quite tasty).

Use the "Ignore thread" function, the little circle with the slash on the far right of the thread.

Shared vault on same account -> Stupid very bad idea especially with people having characters in opposing settlements

Yeah, that could pretty much destroy any need to trade at all.

Why would the characters be able to share vault space? They are separate characters. I get they are one player's toons, but they should not be able to use one bank. (Kinda causes you to interact with other people....)

Spend money on some tech to record the presentations and a few cool videos. The YouTube videos currently online are of such poor quality they are easily ignored, no matter how good the info. They are pretty bad. Noted, they are usually recorded by a third party, but if you want some slick marketing, that's your chance. Get a guy that does weddings or some such to record the meetings, use Camtasia or a screen capture/twitch tech to make decent videos, show off the terrain, have an "awesome scenery highlights" reel running on a big screen.

I think the merchandise would be cool, if sold at reasonable prices. Is there a way to get t-shirts or sweatshirts done up with the GW/Paizo logo on one side, and our character name and avatar on the other? That'd be sweet.

Other stuff probably should go in the GW cash shop...more on that later.

For Kard - Do you seriously think a game can support a large player base without generating some sort of income? That is not a reasonable assumption. GW, and any other business, needs to generate some sort of income. The games that are "Free-to-Play" either already have a large player base with an active cash shop, or some other system in place that can generate income. Right now a sub is the way to go. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

For Ryan - So what day should we log in a new character in order to get January experience backdated while not burning the January month of game time. You mentioned this in a previous post, and I'd like to take advantage of that boost in XPs. What's the criteria to get that transaction right?

I agree that it is too late for Tier 1 recipes, as the starting settlements have a huge head start, so Tier 2 and above, as well as recipes that have not yet been introduced should drop at a much lower rate.

Otherwise, what are other ideas to get the economy going that have not been mentioned above?

We have only gotten a few (three so far I think). The point is, if every settlement gets every recipe, there will be less incentive to trade refined goods or finished product with others. It is one thing, among many, that might help to increase the need for trade and spur activity in the (currently stagnant) economy.

There is no benefit to less recipes (unless you are hoping to have an edge on new players) as they will reduce in value anyway over time as more and more crafters have all the recipes they need no matter what you do to the drop rate.

Not fewer recipes, but a much lower drop rate for all recipes.

The fewer there are of a specific recipe the more settlements will have to rely on trade to get what they need. It is quite obvious every settlement with a decent population is trying to create every item independently of all other settlements, gather all needed materials themselves, and not interact with other settlements much at all. A dysfunctional AH and very difficult trading mechanics make this almost necessary, but not what was originally desired (if I read the blogs correctly).

Rare recipes would cause settlements to interact more, trade more (even if it is difficult), and not try to remain completely isolated (think North Korea).

Here are a few things that come to mind that may help stimulate the economy (because it needs some help).

1) Drastically reduce the frequency of recipe drops, and change the loot tables so higher level drops do not occur at lower levels. I saw the level 20 recipe Guurzak got in loot, and while exciting, there is no reason a level 20 recipe should ever drop this early in the game, That is a major loot table fail and should be removed immediately. Also, level +1 recipes should be reasonably common, +2 very uncommon, and any +3 should be very rare indeed. What is happening is monsters are getting farmed badly so every settlement can remain independent producers of every crafting input of levels +1 thru +3 (in large part since trading in any reasonable volume is otherwise almost impossible). This independence, while admirable, is causing there to be no need to trade refined goods. Why invest the time in trading refined components when all we need to do is farm the hell out of nearby monsters so we get the ability to craft everything we need ourselves?

2) With a reduction of the current recipes dropping, GW should infuse the crafting with a wide variety of other recipes to still make some drops possible, just reducing the percent chance of a drop. Add many more shields (there should be at least 30-50 different types of shields when all is said and done, add tons of new tailoring, leatherworker, and metalsmithing recipes. Tailoring should include a large variety of capes and cloaks, role-play clothing, dresses, hats, gloves and all the things that go with heraldry. I know the pennants, banners, flags and tunics are not in yet, and they will be a while, but they should be planned for a future release. Leatherworkers could make sandals, boots, bags and backpacks, leatherwork and smith aprons, as well as supplies for the eventual release of the trade caravan animals, animal handling, and possibly mounts.

3) Push out wagons, carts and other trade caravan items that increase the encumbrance that can be moved at one time. Again, this might already be on the drawing board, but moving it up on the timetable may give the trade networks a boost and help fire up the sluggish economy.

4) Fix the auction house. You know what it needs. (I know, next patch or two.)

Yes, it seems to get stuck a lot, not regenerating. Very annoying. The only solution I have found is to log off and on. That seems to reset it. Same goes with cooldown on orisons. They often grey out, but never reset to usable status. gain, the only way to kickstart them is to log off and on.

I know you likely know this, but this is Early Enrollment and there is, as stated by GW in many places, a long, long time left for the game to be retail ready.

1) Movement is not perfect, but not horrible. There are some instances where interacting with spell effects (the frost bolt by Goblin Shamen come to mind) not only disorient your character, but strangely change the orientation of your mouse view. Causes death quite often.

2) The three that are in (Human, Dwarf, Elf) were the most popular, and Gnomes are in next (only just beating out Halflings). Other races will be introduced as the models can be developed and animated. All in good time, but not a priority according to public discussions.

3) There are some synergies in purchasing skills, feats etc... I would suggest reading some of the guides describing how to invest in a role by purchasing these skills in a pretty narrow category for the role you wish to play. You can't do it all, so specialization is required. Characters that can do a lot at lower levels will not be advancing in any skills as fast as those that focus on only a few skills.

4) Potions are supposed to be a working thing, but I have not used any yet. Someone else can flesh out that issue.

5) Yes, the color palate does need some fine tuning.

6) The maps are an early iteration of the tools they will later become. They are better than there have been, and are miles better than they were in Alpha. Be patient.

Your loot drops will not include armor. Armor was dropped for the first couple of weeks, but they should be crafted items so encourage the economy, and dropped right into your pack, sometimes overloading a character that had been in the field for a long time gathering loot. But there should be plenty of loot drops once you leave town. The starter goblins in town used to drop loot, but they were getting badly farmed, so now are for training only.

There are a number of places in the EE map that allow for a beautiful panoramic view. While you lose the detail over long distances, just getting the view tells you a lot about the scope of the landscape (and the game), I can't wait for the OE map to be available. I am very much looking forward to seeing for miles from a tall mountain peak (although I might have to fight some pretty vicious monsters to get an uninterrupted view from the top).

I am good with not being able to multi-spam Minor Cure. The stam regen was too fast for what it did, there does have to be a limit. It really does change the tactics though. I had a system down, and have to change it. Just got to adapt.

The cooldowns do get stuck quite often though. Agile Feet, Minor Cure, occasionally on attacks, the orison "whites out" for a minute of more and it cannot be used. I have not found a common reason for it. Could be a hex border thing, but have not looked to see if that is consistent. Dangerous to not be able to use those when you are counting on them.

Being anywhere near the top at Tailor, Jeweler, or Iconographer means that unless you have multiple characters, you'd better really like making the same one or two things over and over again.

Certainly there should be many, many more options for crafting these items by expanding some of the keyword functions. Or even having straight crafting bonus keywords in order to give crafters an entirely new set of keywords they could imprint on crafted items to give them their "signature".

"Speedy" on a leather blacksmith apron would speed up smelting time, armorsmith time and weaponsmith time.

"Carver" or "Woodsman" on a similar piece of clothing or gear would give a bonus to crafting time for sawyer, bowyer, and carpenter.

And so on. No need for all the keywords to be useful in combat. There is a little of that now in some crafts, but the variety of craftable items should be GREATLY increased.

It will take a while to get it growing, but you can see the seeds in the ground. A functional AH will help a lot, but there is no substitute for people talking to each other.

With "only" 17 crafting skills, one would hope the gear produced would be worth investing the staggering amount of XPs needed. Sadly, Jeweler does not get a passing grade, only needed for Trophy Charms. Tailor only does because of wizard robes. All their other gear is largely useless, and it will only get used for the extra 0.5% boost. (Almost as useful at Tokens).

I am hopeful these useless crafting skills get fleshed out in the future. For now that are not worth investing in.

I can't sell you on a game I've already given up on.

But still coming to the forums regularly to express. Bravo!

I get what they DO make, but it sure seems like a lost opportunity to allow some diversity in each role. I can easily see the limited options leading to "ideal outfits" for each role. There are not really many variations on gear. Ignore the plusses, and they are all the same.

I am hopeful fleshing out the gear is in the future, because for the investment in XPs there are no crafts that seem very deep at all.

Maybe I'm missing something on some of the crafting skills, but Jeweler seems an almost worthless investment of several hundred thousand XPs. This one crafting skill in particular could have been designed to allow a player to make their character unique by choosing specific items to put in their paperdoll. They could emphasize stealth, power, an extra spell level with a ring of a certain type, faster travel, better loot drops, or any number of other things. Right now this profession is not worth investing in. Tailor is not far behind in it's limitations (robes being the one exception).

Any future plans of adding lots of additional recipes for jeweler to make it not suck?

Typical crybaby players who want to run around killing everything.

"It's better than no system at all", I actually think it is worse than no system at all. It us ripe for abuse, unenforceable and unnecessary. Even the title of this thread is completely wrong.

Bluddwolf, We all know you want to be able to wantonly kill, no consequences. We get it. Sspitfire is trying to implement a system for the game to work and survive. Players like him make these games better. Players like you turn worlds like Agon of Darkfall into beautiful but empty lanscapes. Your world is not fun, not even for you, since there won't be anyone in it.

4 collect care bear tears

Pyro, You seem to forget that griefing is a no-no, while PvP, as designed, is a big yes. We agree to those terms. If you do not, you will suffer the consequences. Stay within the "consentual PvP" boundaries is not carebearing.

We do accept all kinds of Chaos, Good and Evil. We just don't accept Chaotic Stupid.

There will be a lot of players of the Chaotic Stupid, as well as Lawful Unbearably Pretentious before all is said and done.

With a functionless AH, our only advantage was faster crafting. we were at 200% speed last week, but as of Wednesday, even with six towers, we are only 20% faster than any non-crafting settlements.

The AHs are not really "functionless". Most players in this early game are simply trying to get theirselves equipped. Thornkeep, of course, has some activity on their AH, and Blackfeather Keep's is working, although on a case by case basis. Some players are PMing other players to pass good back and forth without having to carry the goods all the way to the end point. Saves time and makes use of (currently) otherwise useless coin. The arranged transfer of goods is the best use so far for the AH. The interface is bad, but if you know there are 200 of X listed, it is easy to find, and the trade takes only an instant.

Because this was Ryan's day off. And Jen posted it for him.

Lisa

Huh? Who said Ryan gets a day off.

The whole point of GWs business plan is to sell subscriptions, which means training time. $15 for one month's worth of XP generation or $150 for a year (2 months free). They have payroll and bills to pay, and that will be one of their revenue streams. Pay for that, and you get an XP generating character.

In fact, you can see why the Destiny's Twin has been retired. It is a benefit of $150 per year, every year, forever. Pretty damn good bonus is you ask me! (You didn't). But GW needs to earn money.

Is it true or false that the tougher an escalation is to clear the better the boss reward? Or are the boss drops in yet? I seem to remember from an ancient thread that hard escalations bore greater rewards, and letting the grow had an upside (better reward) and downside (dangerous to your group and tougher to clear).

Thread resurrection! Ala-kazaam!

Bulk transport seems pretty important at this early stage of the game. I would not have thought so, but there are few players in right now, and the economy will lag if goods are not moving around the map. I have traveled around the map a good bit and have found most every resource in abundant supply, but they are localized (as they were meant to be). That means gathering is easy, but transportation is hard, and VERY slow and tedious.

Which brings me to the question; not including the bulk goods for settlement construction and maintenance, what are the expectations for getting draft animals, carts and wagons, or even hand carts in the game? Is there any schedule for things like this in the next few months? I understand EE has only been up for a week, and my character(s) are progressing nicely. Just checking on this feature, and all that will go with it (guards and escorts, wagon construction, animal handling, caravan routes, etc...)

The Fallen Earth outfit is made up of individual parts; a hat, shirt, pants, coat, gloves and others not visible or worn. Each of which can be individually dyed with up to 3 different colors after creation.

Let's get that in PFO!"

Lee had a little bit of input into the crafting system of Fallen Earth if I recall correctly, so I expect PFO will look pretty cool down the road!

Question for ya'll - where are we submitting feedback for little things...yes, bugs, but almost not worthy of a bug report. I'll bug two things if needed. (Map icon disappears on death and forces relog; health often does not regenerate after combat, requiring relog to reset.)

Player looting will make this practice obsolete. If I were to spot on obvious bot, I'd come back in about an hour, kill it, and loot the spoils. The rep loss will be worth the fun of looting and the tears of the botter, having wasted all that time.

Unless your settlement has an arrangement to use this exploit to create a goods factory willing to be murdered and looted. Good money, easy to make. this would be the suicide ganker in a Catalyst in EVE. Cheap to make, create loads of low level goods, be willing to die. something any noob could do.

Jive Turkey!? I haven't heard that used in "regular" conversation since Jimmy "J J" Walker was on Good Times!

Dy-No-Mite!

Nice guide. hopefully after using the gear more in game it will make more sense. this system, sadly, will drive away many potential players, as it is confusing as hell. I understand the intent, but the system is complex enough to discourage many hopefuls.