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F...antastic joke. Hnggg.

Looking good! :)

Now waiting for those streams to come up...

But I also realize that if everyone has low reputation, then no one has low reputation. If the majority of the population choose to ignore reputation, the reputation system has no meaning.

I would say that depends on how much reputation influences training. If your settlement is considerably stronger because you are of higher rep then it has meaning.

I do not believe the reputation system will be as layered as the Devs have said. If it were it would be far too limiting on PvP, and there is little else to do in PFO, other than PvP. How many escalations are you going to grind before you get bored of grinding escalation?

You dont lose rep for PvP'ing in Feuds, Wars, Factional PvP and killing already other hostile players. The major reason the rep system was introduced was to penalize the constant meaningless PKs. How many ''meaningless'' kills we can get away with without losing too much rep is TBD. So yes you can do plenty of PvP and still be high rep.

I still fear that everybody will be an efficient crafter far into the game. I would love to have crafters being able/known to craft better stuff than people who go out and fight aswell. I would consider a buff that gets stronger the longer you have only commoner/expert/artistocrat skills slotted or something. Making you better at what you do if you stick with it.

You equip feats to make your loudout. Your example is correct Hobbun.

Thats a big pie to eat for the UNC. Good they got such big mouths!

Lots of backstabbing at the forge be assured!

I hope you guys get to play soon cause it's getting hillarious for us lurkers *shakes head*.

Dare i say crafting gear?...

In general i hope seizing an enemy settlement will cost so much (both in coin and DI) that you only will try to do it if there is big rivalry in the picture. This would leave smaller settlements who just wanna do their own thing a greater chance of surviving if they play their cards right.

Barely tried it as i couldnt get into the whole spaceflight/no real avatar (tho im a sci-fi fan in general). What i liked is the feeling of vast openess from the get-go, that you can mount into anything if you want to. I havent been able to go back to a thempark mmo since ever because of how tucked in and clostrophobic it feels. The atmosphere was also very good. If they had the option for you to be able to dock at planets and explore i would probably play more of it.

Awesome idea!

I feel like goals we make for ourselves and/or our group is much more meaningful than the quests you see in themepark games. In many ways its much more unique and a more long term way of playing a game, as in you are not running the same quest as everybody else in the area, and it actually affects the world around you. And the stories that will come from it are much more unique aswell.

From an economical point of view i would suspect these carts has to be destroyed by the bandits to gain access to the loot inside, which then will be up for grabs for anyone (maybe with a % of loot destroyed aswell) The bandits has the choice of bringing a cart themselves or take what they can carry.

If this is not the case then i think we will all be swimming in carts after a while. Having carts being a mediocre resource dump sounds fine to me.

Also gonna be interesting to see how they do these caravans. Will there be designated drivers? Can you stop and leave it on the ground to fight? Any disadvantages/advantages for the whole group for running a caravan? Can you put a trap on the cart? Will there be feats for this? I guess they dont quite know themselves yet, as it probably will be a while till we see it. Still a really interesting topic.

Some questions about feats for different roles.

Will there be feats making you more effective in trading (such as in AHs)?

Will there be feats making you more effective at doing contracts of any kind?

If yes, when will feats for the merchant role, but also for roles like diplomat, spy, scout (any non-combat, non-crafter role really) be available?

I think we should be able to put a tracking unit on our goods so we can go and get it back from the bandits when it's stolen.

I wonder if a good solution wouldn't be to open the possibility of graphic modding. Everyone I know agree that TES5 is a terrible game, without graphic mods, but with them, the game become awesome.

I could see GW opening for modding of stuff like settlement buildings and dungeons (which they have mentioned before) some time in the future. Great way to add value to the game cheaply and also involving the community. Win/win. Still a lot that has to be done before that.

I just hope they prioritize animations before a lot of other stuff. But i think they understand they cant sell their product to a larger market without getting this right. So maybe some time next year? Should be before OE at least.

Have they said anything about NDA during EE? Another problem could be potenial customers already dismissing the game before they see the OE product (before animation fixes are in place).

To me the graphics are okay at this point and i really like the artstyle.
What needs some work is the animations themselves. What needs a lot of work is how characters relate to each other and the npcs. This might be the hardest part to get right, but i think its very vital to how real and solid the gameworld feels. The devs have adressed the animations and that it will improved later in the development, but it cannot be stressed enough imo.

Someone mentioned how WoW wasnt graphically advanced when it launched, which i guess is correct. WoW tho had some pretty smooth animations, which i hope PFO will get right aswell.

Enjoying the stories guys. Seems like Shadowbane, EvE, Darkfall and other sandboxes really made some good stories and can't wait for them to happen in PFO.

I think you are right to advice good alligned new/unexperienced players/guilds to setttle in the north.

Have in mind tho that resources will be unevenly distributed over the map. So while evil alligned settlements can turn to war for gaining resources, and chaotic can rely on banditry, i see good alligned to be heavily relying on trade. And they will most likely have to trade with settlements in the south/east to get the resources they need to develope their settlements. So having allies there might become a must. These don't have to be good alligned tho. I think this is where good look to trade with actually any neutral and/or lawful settlement.

I will be trucking for KE so lemme know if you need some valuable goods transfered safely.

I think Dota 2 & steam is a good place for GW to look for tips regarding modding. Weapons, armor, settlement buildings, dungeons etc.

Bah had wrote this wall of text when i got a blue screen. Lucky for you :)

@Xeen, this is just a brainstorming, of course you are gonna find faults in the mechanisms. In your example the PvP settlement could offer a ''pledge to protect'' agreement which is sort of a one way defensive pact, for example.

@bluddwolf, you would only make an agreement with one other company/settlement, not it's allies. You two would decide the specifics, also how long it would run. You could decide to make it public or hidden.

The point i was trying to make was that if agreements became an important part of the game, there could be several benefits from it:

-Meaningful content for diplomats and spies.
Diplomats would have to meet to make agreements.
Hidden agreements could be made, that only spies could uncover.
There could be a tracking of previous agreements of a settlement that spies could uncover to see how they acted before.
Spies could steal from agreements where valuables (or even influence) is traded.
Spies could get caught, which would alert the organization from where the spy came from, and maybe some other penalties.
All this depending on skills in the game (and not by person) and gear as well.
And all this could lead to interesting scenarios.

- More options when a settlement is under attack. Do you send out a diplomat to negotiate for a surrender, maybe even become a vassal under the attacking force?

- The diplomatic landscape in general less black and white, much like the real world (which isn't always a good point, but here it might be). Cross overs, paranoia, allies spying on each other.

- Diplomatic connections could be more easily followed. A menu where you can search for all known agreements between all known companies/settlements for instance.

This might seem far fetched and hard to balanced (which i think it is), but it would be great if it was made possible.

I would be happy if they let us browse skill menus, manage inventory etc. while harvesting.

I don't know if this has been discussed before (but i would be surprised if it hadn't). Basically an Agreement could be a long term contract between social organizations. It could change some in game mechanics, and would have to be renewed in regular periods. I think this could provide a lot of meaningful interaction and value to the community. Brainstorming:

Trade Agreement - The most basic form of Agreement, that most resembles a normal trade contract. The accepting party agrees to continually provide specified resources, items, or other goods to a specified location, in specified intervals. This can be in exchange for coin and/or goods, but also for other services. For instance useful if a settlement wants to hire a company to run a nearby mine for them.

Peace Treaty - Pretty self-explanatory. The two parts are unable to attack each other for a specified amount of time.

Safe Passage - The accepting party agrees to not attack any caravan moving through their area (settlement controlled hex), in exchange for coin, for a set period of time.

Defensive Pact - The accepting party agrees to join defense if the offering party has been declared war (or feud) on. Does not apply if the offering party declares war (or feud) (du'h. Might be tricky to specify therms. This could be useful in many different ways: Could be a step towards an alliance. A company could be accepting party in exchange for usage of a feudal manor in a settlement controlled hex. Etc.

Training Agreement - Accepting party accepts to continually provide 1 or more training slot in their settlement in exchange for coin.

And I'm sure there is more...

I believe the only way to stop a toxic community is to have a major report/penalty system in place,as some of you have mentioned This might be too much for GW to handle resource wise, but there could be benefits from such in the long run, as a toxic community really scares off new players.

Likewise, i believe best way to deal with griefers/flamers is to, if possible, separate them from the community, without separating them from the game. Flamers could be muted for a period of time. Griefers could be unable to attack, unless attacked first, for a period of time. Getting banned rarely makes someone appriciate the game or paying money for it.

Ryan Dancey wrote:

People who want to be anonymous jerks will not get much pleasure out of being quickly and unceremoniously silenced, booted, or banned.

I hope Ryan agrees that the "quickly" part is important, and I hope he has some specific ideas on how to make it a reality.

I believe this is a tricky part, at least when the numbers of reports start adding up. It might also not be that important, as i find people who grief/flame to do so regularly, and if they get penalized for it in the same regulatory, they find themselves not wanting to continue such behavior.

Interesting blog post. So now we have:

• Companies have to get sponsored by a player settlement to receive advanced training.
• A player settlement will most likely have to open itself to war to be able to build the more advanced training halls.
• Sponsored companies will share any alliance and hostility with their settlement.

Seems like staying outside of any war will be close to impossible for a company that wishes to advance their characters.

Can't wait to see what they got in store for us this week. Hope it's more than just a recap of recent cons'n'stuff.

* ”habitual” random player killers will very quickly find themselves in the chaotic/evil end of the spectrum and naturally gravitating towards the chaotic/evil settlements, which provide the training services they need to take advantage of the special tools available for chaotic/evil characters (such as assassination) as well as company in which to perform such actions more effectively

I am just gonna quickly quote Ryan to clearify how they want to punish random player killers that end up in the chaotic/evil spectrum

Chaotic Evil will be at a substantial mechanical disadvantage. (Their Settlements will suck)

So it's pretty clear that Chaotic Evil players won't have access to the higher training facilities. They will be penalized for their behavior by being weaker than players of other alignments. For this penalty to actually have any effect, they have to deny chaotic evil players the right to live in other, more thriving, settlements, where they can grow just as strong as other characters.

It would be nice if GW could disclose their reasons for pushing this approach and subject those arguments to public discussion, which GW has generally been very willing to do -hopefully for the betterment of the final product.

It would indeed be nice with some comments from the guys above, since this has become such a debated topic lately.

The following quote is really interesting though

Lawful Evil will get all the upside of being able to use force to solve problems, and will have awesome Settlements.

This seems to imply that:

So killing players outside the starter areas and the settlement areas where killing is not allowed (by the settlement's law) won't hinder your characters growth. You won't be penalized for that. (LE?)

At the same time, if you constantly break contracts, but never hurt a fly, you will be penalized. (CG?)

In short: The freedom you get for being able to break laws and contracts is being balanced by lawful settlements having better settlements. If you could be a brigand and live in the most civilized settlement in the world, you would get the better of both ends. Who wouldn't want to be a brigand then?

This might be slightly off topic, but i wish official titles to be earnable through actions in game, for any role imaginable.

Kill a giant red dragon and you get the right to call yourself Dragonslayer. Be a front figure in running your settlement and you could call yourself major, city planner etc. Gather all wizard spells in the game and you can call yourself Archmage. I think you get the point by now :)

Titles like this could even give some unique, but trivial skill, emote or something like that. The major could get an unique emote that makes him look like he is making a speech. The Dragonslayer could get a unique tattoo of a dragon if he decided he wants it.

Regarding alignment in settlements. While i understand people might be let down they can't live in the same settlement as their friends, i think there are good reasons why the system is as it is right now.

It sort of makes sense that mixing child killers, who rob all their neighbors, with the nicest neighbors in the world wouldn't work. Reality may not always be the best way to set up a game, but in this setting i think it is.

GW looks at previous sandbox games and wants to avoid the constant kill on sight PvP that seem to be the main gameplay in such games. They want diplomacy, trade, craft etc. to flourish (but also wars of course). They call it meaningful human interaction. So a way to handle this is to penalize those who constantly kill random people for no reason whatsoever, with the alignment system. By having settlements of certain alignments be at a disadvantage when it comes to upkeep, training etc. (at first i disliked this, but i see what GW wants to do). So if we were to allow people of any alignments into any settlement, this system would not just go to waste. I think people need incentives to play meaningful, for this game not to turn into a KOS PvP game. For people not to ruin other peoples experience to the extreme.

The only solution i see to the problem is that: A settlement is the most efficient the closer to its set alignment it's members is. The further spread out it's members is on the alignment axis, the less efficient it is. This way any member of any settlement has real incentives to be as close to the settlement's set alignment, for the settlements well being. At the same time you could have your free haven settlement (which i think is really interesting), but it's would run really bad (bad training facilities, upkeep etc). A lawful good settlement that has an evil necromancer summoning undead in his basement would take a toll on it's indexes. People would not really want him there cause he is making the settlement less efficient. Of course if he is a dear friend you might decide to let him live there, but you have to pay a price.

Thank you for the warm welcome StormWeaver! Looking forward to be making a name for ourselves as an always reliable trading company. And of course making tremendous amounts of coin. I'll be playing a transporter kind of guy so if you need some light, but very valuable goods, transported somewhere, look me up :)

I really like the Pathfinder art style. Good work making it come alive guys! Would be amazing to get a demonstration of how it actually feels to play the game (animations from a player point of view) next.

Hey guys.

I am just here to voice the need for dense forests, fog and dark nights. Traveling or fighting under such conditions should be different than on sunny days. When watching the tech demo i realized how dull the world would be if it always looked like that. I haven't had much experiences with such things in mmos, except somewhat from the recent The Secret World, but i heard stories about dark nights in EQ for example. How would you like this to be implemented in PFO?

I like the idea of food / drink having an important role in the daily life. It adds another dimension to the game imo. Either putting food in your backpack before adventuring, or rely on your survival skills like fishing or hunting.

I would like to see food / drink being used to restore Hit Points between fights. So normally it would maybe take 30 seconds for your Hit Points to restore from 10% to 100%, but with food / drink it would maybe take 10 seconds.

There could also be some buff depending on what food / drink you use. Food needed to be prepared over fire could give a long term major buff, so setting up campfires once in a while is a good idea.

Interrupting supply chains under siege sounds really intriguing, but may be hard to implement. The same goes for poisoning the water supply for an enemy settlement as sabotage (this would have a major impact on the common folk that are harvesting for that settlement). Thieves poisoning the food people are carrying around on them (using pickpocketing skill).

It's gonna be interesting how much salvaging will be used and how much of an impact it will have on the economy. I can picture looted weapon/armor being salvaged right away in the field, to avoid encumbrance.

Hoplite style would be awesome, not something i am expecting tho. Maybe even shield + throwing spear...? Ahh wet dreams. But doubtful.

Hello guys.

Can we have spears in the game? With suitable animations, not using it as a slashing weapon (then we're talking halberds maybe).

I like spears.

MJ has been following PFO blogs and looking towards it when it comes to funding and interaction with the community at least.

Hard to decide. So many options. First i want to learn how to move silently and fast in the land. Gain knowledge about monsters and players. Use this knowledge to smuggle valuable wares ''under the radar'' for other players. Then i want to gain some fighting power, probably using leather armor and a spear. Also want to specialize into a gathering profession, be it herbalism, skinning or something else that benefits from my knowledge of the wilds. Lastly i want to be able to make good deals as a trader, since i already will be smuggling other wares around the world. Probably some sort of Ranger.

I dont mind seeing lower numbers in combat calculations, but you can hardly compare combat in a single player game and a mmorpg. In a mmorpg players will go to lengths to figure out the best possible way to build your character to be better than other players, while in single player games you only have yourself vs Environment to worry about. I think this might be why so much mathematics have been put into combat calculations.

Isn't there a possible 22 buttons to use?

3 weapons each with 6 feats = 18

And then you have the refresher skills = 4

]Okay, so a guy spends four years of gaming to be highly flexible. What's wrong with that? After four years, I'd be shocked if the most advanced players hadn't invested in being ready for anything. Four years is a long time.

Meh i've played the same games for 10 years on and off because of it's gameplay. A part of the reason why i am looking forward to this game is that there are so many different roles you can pursue, making you a highly specialized and unique being in the world. I was hoping this would also translate to combat. That you can't fill every role at the same time. That you can't be ''ready for anything''. If everyone are ready for anything, then everyone is equal and that makes for some pretty stale combat.

Hopefully the thread system and maintenance of weapons will stop people from being every card in the deck, from being the rock, the paper and the scissor.

A medieval knight typically had access to a Sword, a Mace or Pick/Hammer, and a Dagger and would switch between them as needed. Having multiple weapons is desired, but it makes training which weapon set a real choice.

If you have a Sword, a Dagger, and a Mace then you will need to train pretty deep into each tree to take advantage of all the different keywords each will have. If you are fighting someone who is vurnable to bludgeoning damage, but you spent all your training on Swords, you may want to stay with swords so you can keep your sharp, bleeding, keen, and overwhelming keywords, because you can only use "Bludgeoning" from the mace tree. If you spend equal training on all of them, you can have more flexibility, but you wont be able to use the best keywords of any of your weapons.

I was never a big fan of putting real life into gaming systems for the sake of real life.

And yes it would be a while into the game before something like i described could happen. A 100% fighter with 3 weapon specializations = 4 years? But then again i am here for the long haul, and rather plan for it now rather than wait and see what happens.

Glad to see they are going with slashing, piercing & bludgeoning that can set up for a rock, paper, scissor type gameplay. It makes people have strenghts / weaknesses, it's up to you to take advantage over them --> skilled and experienced players has an advantage.

Now i have a simple question, will you be able to swap between your 3 weapon types in combat? Because this would negate the whole rock, paper, scissor and making people generalists instead of specialists.

EDIT: This will be the case anyways, since you can just swap weapons when you see an opponent and just pick the weapon that counters his armor... yaaaawn. Please go away with 3 weapon system. People should pick 1 weapon before they go out hunting.

First of all i think it's pretty hard to balance single class vs multi class to the extent that all parties will be happy, so good luck with that devs.

I agree with Randomwalker tho, that capstones should be powerful class defining abilities that you want to get as fast as possible, and that you only should be able to use them if your build is of a single class.

That way you would want to level a single class as fast as possible.

I don't know how much multi classing will delay your progress in a single class (please inform me if you know). If there is a significant delay you really have a tough choice, do you want to delay getting that powerful capstone ability so you can get some more versatility now?

This way you might want to stick to a single class so you don't get delayed to the peak of your class.

I feel this is enough to balance capstones. A straight leveling path from 1-20 isn't really needed. Only single classes can use capstone abilities and a (significant) time delay to capstones if you multi class.

About the generalist vs specialist discussion, there is too much we don't know yet to say how it's gonna be in PFO. Personally i hope we can ''specialize into a few areas'' without loosing too much progression into the game. What i mean by that for instance is that i would like to be good at sneaking, scouting and skirmishing (small scale combat, mostly ranged, some melee). Others could be good at squad-fighting and mining production. Others could be good at Weapon AND armor crafting. Others at dungeon crawling and wood refining.

You will still be reliant on other players because there are way too many roles for you to even be close to fill yourself. But at the same time you have a couple of interesting fields to progress in. I think it's important to have more than ONLY ONE thing you should do while playing.

I feel that spending 2,5 years (!) in a game leveling a class should be worth a capstone, no matter what. Those who only level a single class will get it sooner than those who don't. That's their reward.

The idea is that they are meaningful, so not fluff, but not necessarily mechanical advantages. If they aren't meaningful in terms of gameplay, then they offer no incentive.

If they offer no mechanical advantages, aren't they fluff by definition?

What i meant to say is that capstone abilities won't be more powerful than other abilities. Still they can be ''special and really cool''. More for showoff and for someone to feel special. I can't find that quote tho.