Talgoren

Jim Rudnick's page

Goblinworks Founder. Organized Play Member. 102 posts (104 including aliases). 2 reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 1 Organized Play character. 1 alias.


Grand Lodge Goblinworks Founder

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KitNyx wrote:
[IC] The beginning of our path… ...

This a positive, active, and engaging community. I recommend it.

Grand Lodge

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Fabius Maximus wrote:


Boy, so many people actually wanting to work in customer service. Even if it's Paizo, I'd still cut off my left arm than to do that again.

Although I understand where you are coming from, I like customer service.

  • I like being helpful and useful. It’s a nice boost to be able to help people and solve problems. Being helpful makes me happy.
  • I like being in contact with a wide range of people. Customer Service provides an opportunity to connect with all sorts of people that I’m not likely to encounter on my own. This nudge out of my comfort zone and routine bubble of the mundane is healthy growth.
  • I enjoy the pace of activity. It’s fast, active, and fun to be busy.
  • The work plays to my strengths – I’m a polite, diplomatic, and generally upbeat communicator. It’s nice to be in a role where these characteristics really make a difference to the success of my work.

Grand Lodge

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Thank you to the Paizo staff for your active and professional moderation of the messageboards. The work that you do to keep these forums civil and grief free is very much appreciated. It is one of the reasons that I feel like a welcome guest each time I visit these boards. Well Done!

Grand Lodge Goblinworks Founder

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Dakcenturi wrote:

Any Eve players that might be able to spread the word in the Eve community?

Yes, I've done some of that with the colleagues in my old but still active EVE corp and their current alliance and coalition. The response has been limited but positive. Loosely paraphrased responses were along the lines of "Hey, that looks cool, but the game's release looks pretty far off. So, Jim,... can you make the fleet op tonight?"

The best place to broadcast the word in EVE at the moment is this non-official news site run by Goonswarm's leadership. This site is part of their well orchestrated meta-game propaganda machine http://themittani.com/. Despite that fact that the Goons run this news site for their own purposes, it is a site followed daily by EVE's most active players. Seriously, an article there will be read by thirty to forty thousand hardcore MMO players within a day or two.

I have mixed feelings about using that site as an outlet. The grief-master Goons are the last players in EVE that I would like to see moving into Pathfinder Online, but on the other hand if it means success for the Kickstarter than it would be worth catching their attention.

Grand Lodge Goblinworks Founder

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Gilthy wrote:

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

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

I hope this feature isn't delivered in PO. I think the character bazaar has contributed to the less positive aspects of the EVE community.

Anonymity is bad for the game culture. WoW's deployment of cross-realm features and dungeon/raid finder functions delivered a similarly detrimental effect. They allowed people to be anonymous jerks and not suffer the consequences of a bad reputation. These features damaged the particular communities that had developed in each realm in Classic WoW.

The time-based skill training system and role of plex-like transactions in PO are all good with me. It's the ability to buy and sell characters that I object to bringing into PO.

Grand Lodge Goblinworks Founder

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NativityInBlack wrote:
I (sorta) know the EVE PVP model but I personally don't believe it will translate that well for a game that's selling point is trying to let us "be the Storyteller".

My long-time experience with the EVE sandbox is the opposite of your observation. Player conquest of the outer (null sec) regions drives the player generated content and produces strong story lines by the players.

Rivalries are intense and conflict breeds story. Writers will tell you that without conflict a story is empty.

This is why PvP is critical to a sandbox game's success. Players create more robust and dynamic conflict than the developers would given their limited resources. Mindcraft is a good sandbox without PvP but remains storyless - a virtual lego environment (although still great low budget game software).

I've linked to a thread I drafted from an EVE PvP encounter that was just one story among many others during my time in EVE's player wars.

I'm not particularly fond of of PvP just for the sake of it, or for dominating other players with my twitch skills, but I really appreciate the creative intensity found in EVE's player wars. When you PvP in EVE's nullsec for the purpose of conquest or defending one's own territory, it carries some weight and meaning.

I think some folks envision the Pathfinder Online PvP to be as empty as the WoW battlegrounds. I believe it will an engaging, story-driven, story-generating activity that will capture our hearts.

Grand Lodge Goblinworks Founder

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I am so happy with this recent Blog.

Authenticators for everyone day one is brilliant!

The limits on negative speech are super important to building a positive community. Personally, I've found continuous exposure to nastiness in other MMO communities to be a bummer.

Thank you!!!

Grand Lodge

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Jim Groves wrote:
Liz rocks!

There is an epidemic running rampant throughout the Pathfinder community.

This virulent strain of magical disease is not lycanthropy. The symptoms are recognized to be quality products, strong customer service, happy personnel, dedicated customers, and an infestation of brilliant high-integrity people throughout the Paizo staff.

This rare disease is known as good leadership.

Congratulations to Liz for this well deserved fan thread.

Grand Lodge Goblinworks Founder

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"Goblinworks Blog: Time is the Fire in which We Burn" was another strong post to the Pathfinder Online design blog. Keep up the great posts!

My favorite comment on the Goblinworks facebook page is written by Cory James Hill: "I'm throwing money at your blog, but it just bounces off my screen... sign me up."

Grand Lodge Goblinworks Founder

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Vic Wertz wrote:
We'd like you to shoot a short (10–20 second) clip of yourself talking about why you love Pathfinder and why you are looking forward to Pathfinder Online.

Okay, I've posted three video clips to YouTube. They are not Madison Avenue quality, but I hope they help.

Pazio Publishing and Goblinworks have my permission to use these three videos.

Grand Lodge

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Vic Wertz wrote:
I'm really thrilled by how many people are using the Beginner Box to introduce their daughters to gaming!

About seven months ago, my brother-in-law, my daughter, and I played through a short homegrown Pathfinder campaign using my Pathfinder books. My daughter is now nearly ten which is about the age I started playing D&D in 1978. She loved the gaming sessions and leveled her Fighter up to sixth level before the conclusion of the campaign.

For Christmas, I bought her a Pathfinder Beginner Box (also purchased one for my nephew.)

The day after Christmas, she walked up to me with her arms literally hugging the Beginner Box and with tears running down her cheeks said to me "Daddy, I really love this present!"

No Joke. She was earnestly choked up and I think honored to be given her own set of Pathfinder rules which I so obviously revered. I recall preaching "Honey, careful not to write in the Pathfinder books". During the campaign with Brother-in-law, she had carefully put sticky notes on some of the pages of my Core Rulebook so that she could easily get back to the pages she wanted to find without damaging the book.

A week after Christmas, she had invited one of her friends over to our house and convinced her friend to give the Pathfinder Beginner Box game a try. I was so proud of her efforts to Dungeon Master the session for her friend.

Grand Lodge Goblinworks Founder

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DarkLightHitomi wrote:
real time skill progression...[clip]... just another way of doing things with nothing good or bad about it

I think this is a strong design from both a player’s perspective and from a developer’s perspective. I'll use EVE Online as an example as it is the only MMO that I have played that uses this system.

A low skill point character in Eve can be nearly as effective as a high skill point character for a specific function. For example, I could have a 3 million skill point character fly a Frigate with the role to tackle enemy ships preventing them from fleeing the battle field. I could have a 40 million skill point character perform the same role, but only manage the job slightly better than the 3 million skill point character.

The difference between the two characters is range of roles and activities that two characters can perform. The more advanced toon can be good at flying a larger number of ships performing a wider range of functions.

As a player, this is valuable because no matter how new I am to the game, I can still be comparably useful to my friends and colleagues in the game. Generally, others players don’t say to me, we don’t need you because you are not high enough level or don’t have enough of the right gear. What they say is “which roles are you best at?” Sometimes, in larger fleets there is a call for specific types of DPS ship to be flown in the main line of battle. If you’re not skilled in those ships, you may be asked to perform an alternative role such as scouting ahead or behind the fleet to prevent the team from being surprise by approaching enemies. Both functions, dps & scouting, are critical to the overall success of the fleet. It’s been my experience that adding players to the fleet has always been welcome and that everyone brings something of value to the group.

Real-time progression contributes to focusing the environment on not how powerful your character is but on what you accomplish in the game world. This helps maintain the immersion and contributes to the player-driven nature of the environment. If you and your friends have set for yourselves a goal such as to capture a particularly valuable resource like a moon ripe for mining, than the focus is on accomplishing that goal and the reward is achieving the goal that you’ve created for yourself. This rich moon might be just the resource you needed to complete the construction of that larger ship that your team was hoping to have in a future fleet operation that will drive forward your alliance's overall strategic plans. Character skills are an enabler for participation and not the focus of personal power.

Personally, I enjoy planning and creating artful characters. This skill progression system inspires me to plan my progression and enables me to tailor my characters to the types of roles and functions that I enjoy most. This skill planning is like a mini-game plotting out how I want the toon to evolve overtime. There a few “best builds” or assumptions that because I’ve chosen to take a particular skill path that I might not also be good at something else as well.

Enabling the progression to occur in real-time, enables to me play when I want to play and doesn’t force me into playing just to keep up with my friends and colleagues.

Real-time skill progression enables the persistence of the world environment. The game continues whether you’re there or not and so does the character’s progression.

Real-time skill progression doesn't establish an arbitrary level cap. There is no dramatic shift in play style from leveling a character to cap to find that the way you have been playing your character from the beginning is completely different than what's expected of you now that you've finally hit level cap.

I'm speculating, but from the game developer perspective, I believe that this system also contributes to other design and strategic goals. One goal that has been articulated is that the design should encompass a five year life cycle for a character with a first capstone ability being achieved somewhere around the character’s second year. Another strategy has been set to grow the game at a measured pace. Both of these goals are served by a real-time skill progression which will help prevent a scenario where the hardcore players achieve their level cap within days of release and then sit around clamoring for new content. Character progression will mirror the game’s development. For example, in Eve’s history the largest ships were not released on day 1 of the game. When some of the larger ships were introduced, they were added with skill requirements that would take a player some time to have developed anyway. Therefore, as the population of characters was maturing to a skill set that would fit these big ships the big ships became available in the fresh content added long after the game’s release. Most players were excited by this new big ship content and no one said that we should have had these ships on initial release.

I can only imagine what kind of character skills and associated game development might occur in PO. Let’s imagine that the construction of magic flying cloud castles is an advanced skill requiring characters some substantial time to master maybe as long as 18 months of play. This would allow Goblinworks to plan for the full coding and development of magic flying cloud castles to be completed many months after initial release of the game.

In Eve, a character with 100 million skill points has nearly the same utility as a character with 80 million skill points. Let’s say that in PO, it may take five years to reach the PO equivalent of 80 million skill points. This could represent the five-year horizon mentioned on the Goblinworks blog. Sure, characters could continue progressing after that point but the relative utility of additional training is diminished. This represents the horizon of design requirements. For example, maybe there just aren’t any player built structures to be included in the game more complex and skill intensive than a magic flying cloud castle and that it would be reasonably common for a five year old character to have achieved the skill to build one. This seems to me like an elegant means to help manage the growth and development challenges to the game.

This is not the only viable system but I listed it as positive design concept because I believe this system’s strengths are greater than the alternatives. I also believe this system will help differentiate PO from other sword and sorcery MMO’s.

Grand Lodge Goblinworks Founder

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Pathfinder Online is likely to be an extraordinarily special game environment. My confidence in this is based upon some of the following elements of the Goblinworks narrative:

• Principals: Lisa, Ryan, Mark. These principals bring a proven record of leadership, success, and experience with some of the greatest outfits in gaming history – White Wolf, Wizards of the Coast, CCP, Cryptic Studios, Paizo Publishing, and others. Although they are smart business people, more importantly they are committed to quality in their game products. We recognize them as gamers that care like you and me. Their integrity resonates with us. Unlike the faceless corporate entities such as Hasbro and EA, we want these people to succeed.

• Partnership: The Goblinworks partnership with the booming Paizo Publishing provides the new team an incubator for establishing their venture on solid footing and a license to vast volumes of quality content and the intellectual inheritance of decades of D&D game development.

• Community: There is an established customer base in the Pathfinder product line and the fans of the prior works of the principal goblins - Lisa, Ryan and Mark. Pathfinder has captured the hearts and minds of the Dungeons & Dragons community. The zeal and loyalty of the customers provide Goblinworks a built-in set of raving fans.

• Strategy: The plans to grow this game in a measured manner will help contain the development, managed costs, and rise of the game in a profitable manner similar to the amazing history of CCP’s Eve Online which is one of the first, best, and continuously successful MMO’s since 2003. This strategy will help maintain the game’s design integrity by avoiding the financial pressures of having to provide return on investment to equity partners eager for short-term gain. Game design is art. Game communities are people. The Goblinworks growth strategy provides the maximum opportunity to care about their art and their people while still providing financial success for a more intimate group of investors.

• Outsourcing: The plans to license middleware and a base of established code on which this new game will be built is immensely sensible. There is no cause to recreate the wheel. This buy-over-build strategy enables Goblinworks to accelerate their development efforts and focus on the code that is strategic to Pathfinder Online.

• Design: Although, I’ve listed this point last. It is the most significant component to the Goblinworks secret sauce. They are distilling the best elements of other modern MMO design. In some cases these design concepts have been highly refined in existing games. There are strengths and weaknesses to games such as Pathfinder, World of Warcraft, and EVE Online. Goblinworks is bringing the best elements and fresh thought to avoiding the weaknesses of these systems. Some of the key design concepts include:

o hybrid sandbox/theme park-style MMO
o robust trading ecosystem and player driven world economy
o scaling social organizations scale from small groups to player nations
o persistence and immersion
o grief intolerance and philosophy of fun
o sophisticated progression and real time skill development
o PvE and PvP with meaning – fighting for your player controlled territory and for the protection and development of your player built resources brings an amazing dynamism to PvP conflict

I have a one question that I’d like to put forward to this community in support of Pathfinder Online. How do we avoid developing the worst of the social behaviors found in some other games?

For example, I love the sophistication and player driven content of the EVE Online game. In the EVE sandbox, we develop coalitions of thousands of players internationally in the pursuit of empires. In EVE, a player makes their own mark in a manner that can have lasting impact on the game. Individual players can become global celebrities for their in-game influence.

On the other hand, EVE also has attracted or developed a player community that manifests some of the worst of human behavior. The game’s gender imbalance is extreme. Racism, sexism, homophobia, pornography, viscous online bullying, manipulation, fraud, metagaming, cheating, boting, and unsanctioned real money trading are common. It is impossible to find any significant alliance in the game where you are not consistently exposed to these behaviors. In some of the game’s most influential alliances, player credibility is established on the quantity of tears you have caused for other players. All of the game’s major alliances routinely cheat through the use of vast bot mining operations. This cultural phenomenon has become endemic in the game’s player community.

Some of this culture is fostered by the dark future and space pirate aesthetic of the game. Some of this culture seems to be derived from CCP’s failure to control the game’s security and police policy abuse. Some of the game’s designs such as the margin trading mechanics contribute to the problem by enabling in-game fraud.

I’m hoping that Pathfinder Online will grow a player community that is less regressive on the scale of social progressiveness, gender balanced, and definitively less corrupt than what we see in EVE.

What are your thoughts on this?