Marou_'s page

The pay for beta thing rubs me the wrong way. Put some extra nomenclature around it, like "If issues prevent you from playing that time will be refunded to you." Don't fool yourselves, you're a small shop. Your beta won't be Gmail, it will be Darkfall. There is nothing wrong with that if you set that expectation. Otherwise there will be lots of tears here. Some game-breaking bugs that force wipes such as duplication errors, and resource exploits will not come to light until late open beta. Those things will require a wipe. If you are committed to not wiping, you will have shot yourself and the game in the head. Who pays to play something that could be wiped (beta) or a released game with a horribly broken economy due to all the exploits uncovered in beta?...

Andius wrote:

I might be more open if someone could site a game with combat paced slower than WoW, but not turn based, that is fun.

Have to agree with this. Maybe slowing the combat down takes too much pace out of the game as a whole is a real danger in that case? That is worth thinking about.

Some sort of reduction in the speed of time as an area of effect, universal "tool" in combat could then mix a bit of slower gameplay with mostly normal speed to allow players some form of strategy on top of combat? /best shot!

The combat system is really critical to me, to the extent of make or break.

I've been having a blast playing the persistent character zombie apocalypse mod Day-Z RPG for Arma 2. Arma 2 is a hyper-realistic military simulator (realistic physics fps, vehicles, etc) and the mod takes place over an area that's 225 sq KM in size. Those maps support maybe 50 people but I'd think it's even more demanding than your standard fps.

The learning curve is brutal, there is no character advancement outside of gear, there is free-loot and permadeath. Because of the realistic simulator it's sitting on top of most all of the buttons on the keyboard are used. It's the opposite of a "steamlined" game, and I love it.

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What does this have to do with PFO? Basically that I'd like to see a much more *complex* combat system for PFO. Realistic military simulation complex? Nah, but way more complex than "hit 1-3-4-5-5-2 over and over for optimum dps".

Some stuff in there that I'd love to see make an appearance in an "empire simulator".

-Being knocked out
-Bleeding and blood loss, bandaging
-Pain overload affecting vision/perception.
-Broken bones
-Infections
-Dragging/carrying incapacitated players
-No "ambient" light. Midnight is really midnight, you won't see crap without some light source.

Keep in mind that the Baldur's Gate is rated teen.

It has:

1) Enemies that explode into showers of body parts.
2) Working brothels.
3) Depictions of torture.
4) Literal fountains of blood.
5) Your main character is a spawn of the god of murder who raped thousands of mortals during the time of troubles to ensure his continued survival.
6) Quests involving serial killers (The Skinner chain, etc).
7) Slavery (including of children)
8) Disfigurement

I think in most everyone's head Pathfinder is equilavent to D&D in content style and tone. Most everyone would also agree that the content in say, Planescape Torment, or the Baldur's Gate series is rather mature, even though it's rated 'T'. If those games came out today, they would probably get an 'M', but that's irrelevant in PFO. Those games are likely in line with what Paizo considers acceptable content for PFO.

Would you Goblinworks guys say that is a safe assumption? Or, are those classics more mature than your aim?

The basic weakness of all MMOs to date: you are mostly just a grunt, one of a million when you really want to be the hero.

If you want to change that you have to invest ungodly amounts of time and/or money to archieve a glimpse of something that Skyrim gives you for free - a world where everything revolves around you - just with noone else to admire/envy/.. you.

But if you really want to have a interesting world, you can't look to PvE as to date even a game as complex as Skyrim is still shallow and scripted.

Problem is, that in the classic fantasy MMOs this is just as true as PvP is reduced to arena style sport events.

This is what Pathfinder will hopefully change.

In order to fully appreciate the AI in Skyrim you have to stop fast travelling. The non-combat AI is way above anything else I've played sans the Sims. In most MMO the NPC's are loot pinatas and quest vending machines. In Skyrim I followed this group of undead/vampire hunters once for a few hours. It lead me to some extremely interesting content that had nothing to do with quests. 400 hours in I'm still finding strange things laying around Skyrim. Some is scripted, some is emergent behavior of the AI. Sometimes the 2 collide with really amusing results, like General Tullius being attacked by a Dragon while he gives a rousing speech in front of the final war related battle (Imperial aligned).

Marou_ wrote:

It's a paradox created by the harsh death system and economy of the game. You need to have better ships to have the economic capacity to afford losing ships.

No, it really isn't.

Cheap ships and cheap modules are cheap. You can get the ISK to refit yourself almost risk-free. Sure, if you're unfortunate enough to somehow lose your last ship and your last set of low-level mission and/or mining gear, then you have to rebuild from newbie levels, but why would you do that? Just keep one ship fit for "getting emergency ISK" and don't put it at risk.

Cheap is a relative term. A decently fitted Rifter can cost well over a million ISK easily. A well fitted one can cost up to 6 million. That's how many low level missions? Upwards of 20? Those missions can anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour to complete one. It may be low risk, but it's very time consuming. "I died once, now I'll spend 10+ hours prepping to fight again" isn't an attractive proposition to most people.

Or spend $35 once, get 700 million ISK by selling a PLEX, and never ever worry about ISK again.

I don't like pay to win.

If people don't want to peddle their own goods they should work out a deal with a merchant or sell them to a pawn shop.

As far as auctions go. That is fine if people want to sell things that way. Get an auctioneer, and have one. A REAL auction.

I'm inclined to agree with Andius. The profitability of bargain hunting and the fun of shopping and trading goes down drastically when players are given the same type of localized economic tools usually reserved for large businesses (that expend huge amounts of cash on research) in the real world.

I understand why Eve's system is the way it is, it's in the future, in spaaaaccee, in an information society. Such a system would make zero sense in a world with at best steampunk types of tech.

Localized (to a town/settlement) pawn/consignment merchants that charge a high enough fee to make player run businesses more attractive appeal to me much more in a fantasy setting. No magic mail transporting goods, no profiteering on items 3 hexes over that you shouldn't logically even know existed if you've never been there.

To throw out something related but not necessarily in the exact same bucket I loved the trading in Uncharted Waters Online as much as I hated it in Eve Online. I explored and had a large notebook on what regions had regular demands for what goods. I regularly ferried goods through a long (4+ hours of realtime) and perilous route that would start in Denmark, sail to India, and finally end in Portugal after hitting some various ports along the way.

I carried specialized dyes and whatnot that were only available in the Scandinavian regions, combined them with fabrics from parts of the middle east and Africa, and made a handsome profit on textiles as I arrived in India. Once there of course I loaded up on spices which Europe ALWAYS wants. Sometimes the market on a particular thing would be crashed because some other trader beat me to meeting demand, but I could always warehouse the stuff until demand was back.

In Eve trading falls more along the lines of doing a ton of regional searches and running spreadsheet formulas to determine optimum profit per jump. Way way less fun than my free wheeling trader's notebook and adjusting plans on the fly based on the other traders I'm talking with in company chat passing on information about rates, market crashes, and privateers (players).

It was funny in Uncharted Waters, I started out wanting to be a pirate. However, I got so engaged in the trading system that the first month the game was out (yay sabbatical) I was one of the wealthiest merchants out there. I stopped playing only because my methods of playing were incompatible with my free time once work life resumed.

Things I accomplished before then:

1) Hired player pirates to harass my competition
2) Cornered the market on several goods and caused many ports in India to declare formal alliances with Portugal on account of my economic investments.
3) Sailed the best and fastest merchant ships money could buy in a fleet with some of the best armed escorts money and socialization could buy (players).
4) Helped England and our pirate and shipbuilder allies be #1 in certain ship classes and armaments through my heavy investments.