Nihimon's page

The Goblinary

Read the Announcement

... how long have I been overlooking the 2nd and 3rd threads in this forum?

I just noticed that two of the three sticky threads have been removed.

Greetings!

I just want to let everyone know that my name in-game is Nihimon Vhane'Sylvan.

It has come to my attention that there might be some folks running around with names that look a little like Nihimon, and I wanted everyone to know that's not me.

Ryan, I just wanted to say thanks for being so open about the game development, and allowing us to be a part of it. To me, that's what Early Enrollment is all about.

Seeing what you're enduring right now - if you're staying current on the forums - really makes me appreciate the fact that you knowingly set yourself up for this, apparently because it was actually important to you to let us be involved and... all this... is an inevitable side effect. Kudos to your thick skin, and thanks again, it really does mean a lot to me.

I'd love to see another thread comparing and contrasting peoples' experiences at the two different Stamina maxes. The intent is to leave Stamina regen at where it is now, so raising the total mostly just affects how many secondaries you can use before being fixed to your regen rate.

I think the Stamina Pool we have now would be fine if the game didn't put my Weapon away while I'm waiting for my Stamina Pool to regenerate.

I actually think there are some interesting dynamics around the choice of whether to use a high cost Attack as soon as you have the Stamina for it vs. waiting until you're almost full so that you still have a bit of Stamina for something else.

It would be really helpful if we could review logs of the Companies participating in attempts to take a Tower that we controlled, perhaps showing the gross number of Capture Points each Company earned during a particular PvP window.

License to Game: An Hour With Ryan Dancey

The sound quality gets a little rough at a couple of spots with some echoes, but I could clearly understand Ryan throughout.

Please consider allowing Alpha Accounts to have three Characters earning XP in Early Enrollment until you get the tech working to assign XP directly to a single Character on an Account.

I'm not saying I wouldn't have bought into Alpha if I'd know I would be limited to a single Character on that Account, but the understanding that we'd be able to train multiple Characters on a single Account and even log them in at the same time was certainly part of the decision to do that instead of buying a Guild Pack.

Ryan has said he's interested in adding value to the Alpha Accounts, so I would ask him to consider whether this request is an appropriate way to do that.

1. Will different Races have starting Ability modifiers, like +2 Dex for Elves?
2. If #1 is true, will Humans be able to allocate a +2 to an Ability of their choice?
3. If #1 is true, and someone's Race Change causes them to lose +2 Dex, will they also lose (temporarily) the ability to utilize Feats they no longer meet the prerequisites for?

Pathfinder Online (Public)

While we work on the process for getting this data into pfo.pathfinderwiki.com, I'm massaging the data the devs share with us into spreadsheets available at the link above.

The latest round is another drop from Stephen, which has been placed in the "Passives, Attacks, Expendables, Recipes, Armor, Weapons" spreadsheet.

This replaces a couple of the older sheets and should have new info, for example on Shortbow attacks.

To get enough Social points to advance Knowldge: Nature & History, you must get the Player Killer achievements. The easiest way to get those without losing Reputation is to repeatedly kill yourself. Once you've killed yourself a number of times, you will have the Murderer Flag for 24 hours (I believe). Once you have the Murderer Flag, anyone can attack you without losing Reputation. If you encounter anyone else who has the Murderer Flag, you should be able to fight each other freely without worrying about Reputation loss.

I've tried to clean up how I was storing this data, and make it easier to incorporate new versions over time. My sincere apologies if I've broken any links.

I strongly caution everyone to not link directly to any of these documents, as they will be replaced as new versions become available. If you have a direct link, I believe you will always be referencing that particular version, so you will not see the new data the developers share with us.

Pathfinder Online (Public) has the spreadsheets I've created from what the Devs send us.

The files from the developers are stored as-is in the "Raw from the Devs" folder. I will move old versions to appropriate Old folders over time, for anyone who wants to look at the historical data.

Gratuitous Headstacking

Since this is publicly available information, I'm going to go ahead and share links for public viewing. I'll try to get these links into the wiki asap so anyone who wants to can use them to help build the wiki entries for the individual items.

Achievement Feats - Attacks, Cantrips, Orisons, Utility, Defensive, Reactive, Feature, Armor, Bonuses, Skills, Points, Proficiencies, Expendables.

Achievements - Crafting, Interactions, Meta, Npc Kills, Player Kills, Settlement Locations, Feats, Special Locations, Weapon Kills.

PFO Wiki Template Key.txt

PFO Passives for Wiki.txt - Armor, Feature, Reactive, Defensive.

PFO Attacks for Wiki.txt - Physical, Cantrips, Orisons, Utility.

PFO Expendables for Wiki.txt - Trophy Charm, Rogue Kit, Spellbook, Holy Symbol.

I've uploaded one of the spreadsheets from Lee so that the Alpha testers can figure out how much of an Attribute gain they'll get from learning specific Feats.

Achievement Feats

We hope to have this information in a much more useful form on the Pathfinder Wiki soon.

Cole Brown gave us an excellent summary of manually editing the Key Bindings in Alternate Key-Bindings. I asked a follow-up question there, but I realize the codebunny is likely very busy.

Is there a way to use modifier keys (Ctrl, Alt, Shift) in the Key Bindings?

The Razer Tartarus I'm using right now and my older Nostromo are extremely useful for gaming, but my standard configuration requires me to be able to use the modifier keys in my remappings. For example, my Inventory is usually Ctrl-Alt-8, and my Map is isually Ctrl-Alt-4. These key combinations are actually remarkably easy for me to activate, and I've grown accustomed to them over the years.

I would also need to be able to remap Sprint and Walk to something other than Ctrl and Shift.

First, congratulations to Goblinworks - and especially Mark and the programmers - for this truly groundbreaking achievement. This Day One Alpha was remarkably stable.

And for the question I know many of you are asking yourselves: Yes, I did come into work today :)

User Interface

The UI is different than what I'm used to, but I think it's right because the game systems are quite different as well. It will probably take a bit more time to figure out how to efficiently use it, especially things like getting the right Implement associated with the right Weapon Set. Right now, you can't drag Feats around on your action bar (unless the Feats tab is open?).

Movement was great. Mouse-look/mouse-move worked almost exactly like I'd expect it to, except that using mouse-move didn't cancel auto-run the way I'd have expected. It took a little to get used to the fact that your character doesn't make large turns instantly; if you turn the camera completely around and then use mouse-move, your character will start running the way he was originally facing and then gradually turn to face the new heading.

The biggest problem I had was not being able to enter custom key bindings so that I could efficiently use my Nostromo, but Stephen tells us that may just require some manual editing of a config file, so I'm happy.

The other big problem I had was that there were no tooltips at the Feats trainers, so it was hard to know what to train. I trained Bright Rune only to discover afterwards that it was a Wand feat, not a Staff feat.

There was noticeable lag when crossing hex boundaries, but as I said elsewhere, it's already better in PFO on day one of Alpha than it was crossing chunk boundaries in Vanguard after 6 years of being live.

Combat

It's very easy to die. The first time I died, I hadn't really processed that I was taking damage yet, but I fairly quickly adapted to that. It's also pretty easy to kite. The most important thing for me as a Wizard was realizing the value of switching between Staff and Wand. Staff gives much better range than a Wand, so is great for pulling. The Wand is better damage once things are close, though.

Don't solo. Running around in a group of 4 to 5 players was a total blast, and just felt awesome. Also, let a fighter or healer start the fight - Rogues and Wizards are definitely squishy.

My biggest problem with combat was that one of the default Fighter bow attacks was ridiculously over-powered, with a Damage Factor of something like 3.6 that was almost one-shotting mobs that would take me 5 hits to kill.

The combat was also a little sluggish sometimes. I would make an attack and it felt like it took a while for the animation to fire off, and then a bit longer for the damage to register.

Crafting (Sorry, didn't even try)

High Priority Fixes

I think the single-most important thing to fix as soon as possible is tooltips at the Feats trainers so we can know what we're buying.

Notification when leaving the play area. Every time we explored west of the starter town, our character would simply disappear and we'd be stuck and unable to move. We had to logout and log back in to get unstuck. Which leads to...

Every logout is a total character wipe. You lose all (most?) gear, all feats, and all XP gained. This might actually be necessary for a little bit because it's also pretty easy to go kill-on-sight to the guards and the character wipe also resets your Reputation, so this might not actually be a high-priority fix.

Overall Impression

ZOMGWOWSOMUCHFUN!!

Two and a half years of anticipation might have something to do with that, but I really had a blast. The game does a great job of rewarding you for working with others.

There's a bit of "what do I do now?" It will probably take some time for enough information to be organized and released by the community to give folks a sense of what they should reasonably expect to be able to do on first logging in.

Last night was all about jumping in with both feet and testing limits. Tonight will probably be much more structured for me. I expect I'll spend most of my time in the starter town (Sotter Hill? sp?) cataloging things like trainers, recipes, etc.

If you're in Alpha, try to stay around the mountains. It's easy to get hopelessly stuck if you wander too far. If you haven't already noticed, the Alpha area is centered around the mountains between Callambea and Freevale on the Land Rush map.

So. Much. FUN!

Reading the Alpha Instructions document, it sounds like there's no support yet for alternate key-bindings. I implore you to implement these as quickly as possible. Some folks absolutely need them in order to play, and it will be difficult for me to use my Nostromo if I can't remap the key-bindings.

Phaeros, a settlement of The Seventh Veil, is recruiting companies interested in managing Points of Interest and Outposts, and individuals who wish to become citizens.

Location: Hex Coordinates [00, 17]
Alignment: True Neutral
Government: Oligarchy/Council/Citizens
Membership Policy: Approved*

Mission: To provide the highest level of training for all roles, and to make that training available to friends and allies.

Phaeros is envisioned as a university town. As such, we recognize that we must rely on good relations with our neighbors to satisfy our members’ needs for access to crafting facilities and markets. We are also embracing the need to have a reasonably high minimum Reputation requirement in order to qualify for these advanced training facilities, and the need to have high Development Indexes in order to afford them.

Government: The Stewards of The Seventh Veil will govern Phaeros as an oligarchy with significant community involvement in decision making. [Depending on the implementation of future game mechanics, some settlement management options may be under the direct control of the Phaeros Council, or of the citizens of Phaeros.]

The Phaeros Council will consist of a representative from each Sponsored Company that chooses to appoint one, and a representative elected by the citizens of Phaeros, and will have a significant role in settlement management. We want to emphasize our commitment to the principles of good governance and giving Sponsored Companies and citizens a reason to feel invested in Phaeros.

Location: The Seventh Veil has a long-standing alliance with The Empyrean Order. When each of us won a Settlement in the first Land Rush, we coordinated our selections with an eye towards securing a defensible location with a variety of resources. We have established a strong presence in and around the southeast mountains with the ability to control strategic choke points into an area of the map that will be otherwise inaccessible until the map expands. We have very friendly relations with the other Settlements in this area, and with many others across the map.

If you are interested in operating a Point of Interest or Outpost for Phaeros, in becoming a citizen of Phaeros, or have any questions, then post a response below, contact DeciusBrutus, Nihimon, Skwiziks, or Valkenr via private message on these forums, or register on our website

If you're already registered, go to the Application Forms and apply for Phaeros Sponsorship.

All of the old Blog discussion threads prior to Thunderstrike have broken links to the actual Blogs.

To make it a little easier for folks to get to those old blogs, and hopefully to make it a lot easier for Ryan to make the updates, I've compiled the list below.

[Edit] I'm not sure why, but some of the links in plain text have an unexplained space. For example "begins-with-a-si ngle-step/", even though when I edit the post, there's no space.

The Roseblood Accord is a group of sovereign player organizations united not under central authority, but in our agreement to promote by example the goals of positive gameplay and the mutual success of its members. It is our belief that positive gameplay improves everyone’s experience, and we are dedicated to providing a place in Pathfinder Online where players who seek such an experience can find it. Towards that end, we have come together to announce our intentions to the community, and to invite all who share these goals to join us.

The name, Roseblood, stems from the symbol of Milani, a minor Goddess who is well revered in the River Kingdoms. While we do not necessarily worship her, nor advocate her alignment, we venerate her stance against oppression; specifically when we make the metagaming step of equating negative game play to oppression. In homage, we choose to use her sigil as inspiration, a beautiful yet thorn laden rose, rising up from bloodstained cobblestones.

If your group is interested in joining the Roseblood Accord, simply state your intent below. If you have any questions, please send a private message on these forums to Lifedragn or Nihimon.

If you are an individual interested in joining the Roseblood Accord, please see below for a brief description of each accord member and how to contact them. For a complete and up-to-date list of current accord members, please see the Roseblood Accord list.

I'm starting a new thread to highlight the participation of the groups who have joined us since our initial announcement. We have all been overjoyed by the success of the Roseblood Accord and hope that others will continue to join us. If you or your group is interested in helping us promote positive gameplay, I encourage you to check out the groups below and see which one might be a good fit for you.

Taur-im-Duinath (Land Rush / Recruitment Thread): Haven of Elvenkind, one with nature and magic.

Hammerfall (Land Rush / Recruitment Thread): Threads of wood, gold and iron woven into one tapestry for all.

Forgeholm (Land Rush / Recruitment Thread): Strength of Steel, Glory of Gold!

Dagedai Alliance (Land Rush / Recruitment Thread): By will alone, we set this trade in motion.

Magistry (Land Rush / Recruitment Thread): Tight-knit, settlement-minded community.

Keepers of the Circle (Land Rush / Recruitment Thread): Respecting life, protecting freedom, united against tyranny.

The Seventh Veil (Land Rush / Recruitment Thread): Creation. Destruction. Exploration. Contemplation. Magic. Nature. Mysteries.

The Empyrean Order (Land Rush / Recruitment Thread): Brighthaven :: Community betterment, protection of the weak, and promotion of justice.

I would also like to mention Koinonia Emporou (A Society of Merchants) and Deathwatch, who have chosen to make their home in Phaeros with The Seventh Veil.

I think it would be really cool if it was possible to run caravans that didn't actually have anything of value in them that could be stolen, but which looked like valuable merchandise to Bandits using a Blind.

Keeping in mind Ryan's warning that "X" would be Cool ... becomes Nobody does "X", I think the key to ensuring this particular cool thing doesn't fall into that trap is to impose a significant cost to creating these False Cargoes. It would seem appropriate to me to allow the creator of the False Cargo to make it appear to contain specific items available in the Local Market, and to require a non-recoverable cost at some proportion of those items - perhaps even at their full value.

The Roseblood Accord is a group of sovereign player organizations united not under central authority, but in our agreement to promote by example the goals of positive gameplay and the mutual success of its members. It is our belief that positive gameplay improves everyone’s experience, and we are dedicated to providing a place in Pathfinder Online where players who seek such an experience can find it. Towards that end, we have come together to announce our intentions to the community, and to invite all who share these goals to join us.

The name, Roseblood, stems from the symbol of Milani, a minor Goddess who is well revered in the River Kingdoms. While we do not necessarily worship her, nor advocate her alignment, we venerate her stance against oppression; specifically when we make the metagaming step of equating negative game play to oppression. In homage, we choose to use her sigil as inspiration, a beautiful yet thorn laden rose, rising up from bloodstained cobblestones.

If your group is interested in joining the Roseblood Accord, simply state your intent below. If you have any questions, please send a private message on these forums to Lifedragn or Nihimon.

If you are an individual interested in joining the Roseblood Accord, please see below for a brief description of each accord member and how to contact them. For a complete and up-to-date list of current accord members, please see the Roseblood Accord list.

The Empyrean Order (Brighthaven) and The Seventh Veil (Phaeros) have already been granted our Settlement locations at [04,11] and [00,17] in the southeast corner of the Early Enrollment map. Strictly as a matter of logistics, accord members who establish themselves in this area can expect the most support. Members who choose to settle elsewhere are welcome to join, but should be aware that support may be more difficult to provide.

Audacity: Lawful Neutral - A group of specialists for hire.

Deepforge Company: Lawful Neutral - A community of dwarves based in the River Kingdoms.

Koinonia Emporou: Lawful Neutral - A society of merchants, traders, and other tradesman.

The Empyrean Order (TEO): Neutral Good - Community betterment, protection of the weak, and promotion of justice.

The Seventh Veil (TSV): True Neutral - Seekers of knowledge and understanding.

Rare goblin shark caught off Key West

Might we have a new candidate for the Bestiary?

I've tried to correct this in the individual threads, but just in case any casual readers got the wrong impression from my utter failure to properly read one of Ryan's posts, I wanted to try to make the correction as public as possible.

I've recently quoted Ryan a number of times suggesting that Bandits would be able to train "exotic" banditry skills at NPC Settlements. I've realized this was completely wrong. Here is the complete quote.

GrumpyMel wrote:

Lets be perfectly clear about how MOST Bandits/Brigands will operate.

There's a continent's worth of assumptions in this post, many of which are unlikely to prove true.

Quote:

- Most bandits/brigands WILL be members of the NPC Starter Settlements so no way to declare WAR upon them (at any expense) and so that they will be able to use legitimate newbies as cover for thier operations.

- Most bandits/brigands will NOT be members of any company so there will be no way to feud them (at any expense) and no way to hold them accountable for thier actions.

Assumptions:

Members of NPC Settlements can be members of Companies

Members of NPC Settlements will be able to soulbind to points other than the NPC Settlement for resurrection. Dying halfway across the map from where you soulbind will be a pretty big limitation on how effective a bandit can be.

Members of NPC Settlements will be able to make Hideouts.

Members of NPC Settlements will be able to train and use exotic character abilities linked to maximizing banditry operations.

I sincerely apologize for any confusion I may have caused by reading that last sentence as a statement of fact, rather than as an example of an assumption that is unlikely to prove true.

Does this idea have merit?

Limit new Characters to only being able to carry Tier 1 Resources and Gear, and limit their inventory space such that they can't carry a large quantity of either. While these limitations are in effect, color-code the Character's name in cyan or light green or something as a true signal to other players that they aren't carrying valuable resources. Have the process that removes these limitations come with a severe warning that they will now be much more likely to be killed by bandits who will reasonably conclude they might have valuable resources on them. Do not allow free accounts to remove these limitations. Otherwise, the game systems would treat them exactly the same as other Characters.

I think this would go a long way towards realizing Ryan's goal:

I'm especially concerned with ensuring that new players are able to learn how to play the game, gain some mastery of basic gameplay features, have some fun, and have a great experience without having to worry about someone intentionally ruining it for them by scamming them, killing them, taunting them, or otherwise disrupting their attention which should be focused on dealing with the sensory overload of going into a new virtual world.

I'm secondarily concerned with ensuring that people who choose a low risk / low reward course of play are able to do so without regular interruption by those seeking to gain enjoyment from interfering with them as they go about their business.

I think that new players coming to PFO will be much more likely to take death in stride if it isn't repeatedly thrust upon them as they first begin to move away from the "secure areas". I think that having a true signal to other players that they aren't carrying valuable resources will further discourage what will otherwise feel like "random killing" to them. And I think they'll feel more in control by actively choosing to forego that pseudo-protection by accepting a severe warning that what they're doing is going to make them much more likely to be killed by bandits.

This seems like a very simple thing to implement, especially if it's agreed that no other systems would need to reference this status. And I think it's a natural and acceptable way to limit free accounts with a minimal level of development effort.

I'll be in Alpha, and there's about a 90% chance my wife will as well.

I'm hoping this thread can serve as a gathering place where we can come back and post our Character names so we can find each other.

I will reiterate that we can't tell you anything definite about Stand and Deliver at this point, as it sits on top of all the other flagging and hostility systems and they're mid-implementation. It might be helpful if those of you that are most interested in and/or worried about the mechanic could give us a short summary of how you expect the system to work, what you think is good about that, and what you think is still a problem so we have that as a reference of the desirability and pitfalls surrounding the mechanic. Maybe in its own thread so it doesn't get buried in here?

Commence :)

I understand the current term is vulgar and won't be used officially, so let's try to come up with something better. This is not the name of the "points" you buy with real-world money to then spend in the Cash Shop. Those are already named Skymetal Bits. Rather, this is the name of the item you can buy in the Cash Shop that grants a specific time period of XP Gain, that can also be traded in-game.

Here are my two submissions. I'd love to hear everyone else's, too.

XPAC is easy to say and could stand for XP Accrual Certificate. It also brings to mind - in me, anyway - a "pack of XP". Although some might misinterpret it as Professor Xavier's Political Action Committee...

Goblin Teeth might capture a bit of the vibe from the current term, but much less vulgarly.

I'm stating this thread so that the community has a place to discuss some of the questions being asked, without derailing that thread and burying the questions themselves.

The start of EE... systems such as reputation... will not be in the game.

I don't believe that's accurate. Ryan has said that it will be difficult during Early Enrollment to make Reputation as meaningful as it will be once we have Settlements and Settlement warfare, but that doesn't mean Reputation won't be in the game.

It's one of my pet peeves. Some folks might find this article of interest.

How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations

I'm interested in any advice anyone wants to share about making "Let's Play" videos for Pathfinder Online. Specifically, I'm interested in learning about the technical options for different recording software, and any advice about presentation style.

Thanks :)

My personal understanding is that Reputation is the easy way to determine whether another player is generally a "jerk". That is, they frequently break contracts, or attack other players for no real reason, etc.

Is it reasonable for me to plan to use Reputation this way?

Specifically, my current plan is to generally attack and try to kill any Flagged Characters I see that are also Low Reputation. If they have a High Reputation, I'll base the decision on a lot of other factors like alliances, etc.

I'd very much appreciate any input from Ryan or the devs on whether Reputation is intended to serve as a signal to other players about the kinds of things a Character is prone to do.

1. Save UI Layout customizations by screen resolution. I have three monitors. The main monitor is 1920 x 1080. The other two are 1400 x 1050. It would be really nice if any changes I make to the UI are indexed by the Screen Resolution so that dragging the PFO window from the main monitor to a side monitor automatically loads the appropriate UI.

2. Bags as organizational tools. I was telling my wife about the way PFO is going to have a single Inventory window that has all our stuff, and which gets bigger as we add "bags". She was worried that she wouldn't be able to easily separate Quest Items, Clickies, Resources, Gear, Vendor Trash, etc. I expect you're already planning on giving us Filters. I'd encourage you to consider giving us a row of icons we can use to store preset Filter configurations so we can easily look at just the stuff we're interested in.

I've actually been quite torn recently, as I've been more and more active with my guild in Vanguard, and with Alpha and Early Enrollment seemingly just around the corner.

Vanguard broke my heart in a way no other MMO could have back in 2010 when I finally stopped playing after everyone else had already left due to bugs, crashes, instability, and probably-too-hardcore content. I was surprised how much I still enjoyed playing it when I went back and hooked up with a great bunch of people.

Now they're shutting down the servers July 31, 2014.

At least now I won't have to feel bad for shamelessly trying to recruit everyone to come over to PFO :)

Each settlement has an Alignment that is set by the founding company when the settlement is created. It must be within one Alignment step of the leader of the founding company and the company itself. Once set it can only be changed by leaders of the settlement with sufficient permissions. Only characters within one Alignment step in both their Core and Active Alignment can join the settlement, and if your Core Alignment falls out of that range you are forced out of the settlement.

Some are taking the bolded statement to mean that this is the only way a Settlement's Alignment can change. Since that's a significant departure from prior statements, I was hoping we could get a clarification.

I hope all of you are enjoying your time with friends and family as much as I am. I'm mostly skimming over posts just trying to make sure I don't miss anything from Ryan or the devs, so forgive me if I'm slow to respond or even completely miss something that's directed to me.

And raise a glass to the New Year that will hopefully have many of us actually playing this game we've been so excited about. It's hard to believe that January 5th will mark my second year of posting, and that February 20th will mark the second anniversary of our announcement of The Seventh Veil on these forums.

It's been a pleasure being a part of this community, and I thank you all for your patience in putting up with my flaws, and for your encouragement and appreciation for my efforts maintaining the Guild Recruitment & Helpful Links list.

Merry Christmas to you all, and especially to Ryan and Lisa and all the Goblins who are working hard on this fantastic gift to us.

Formation combat should be a totally different kind of experience than what anyone has attempted in an MMO before. A well coordinated, cohesive unit acting in formation should be superior to almost any random force of zergs. The tradeoffs have to be significant though else everyone will try to do everything in formations. I suspect that the biggest tradeoff will be that we'll limit where formations can form and where they can move.

I would like to propose a system that combines a number of my own pet ideas and that I think would serve well to balance the power of Formations.

Battle Plans would be created in Command Centers (which must endure until the attack is launched) by sufficiently skilled Combat Leaders and would provide significant bonuses during the attack based on the plan lead time and the number of Combat Leaders participating in the planning. They would detail the identities of the Combat Leaders participating, the time and place of Settlement attacks, and the route of any Formations that will participate. Unplanned attacks could still occur, but would be at a significant disadvantage relative to well-planned attacks.

Espionage skills would allow characters who were able to infiltrate the Command Center to extract some degree of information about the Battle Plans, varying based on their skill and the precautions taken by the planners. This information would not be available to the player; it would only exist as an in-game artifact that would need to be taken to a Command Center (or a Diviner!) to be interpreted.

Divination could be used in three ways to determine information about Battle Plans: 1) casting "cold" (without any information) on the target of a Battle Plan would have a chance to some minor information similar to the information that could be obtained via Espionage; 2) casting on information obtained via Espionage could reveal information about the Battle Plans similar to the information that could be revealed as the information was interpreted by Combat Leaders in a Command Center; 3) casting "hot" (with interpreted information) on a target could reveal significantly more information about the Battle Plans. These Divination attempts should have significant costs, and should be limited not only for the casters but also for the targets, and in the case of 1 and 3 should require the casters to be present at the target.

It would be incredibly important to make a lack of Battle Plans onerous enough that players consistently use them when they have the opportunity, while also keeping Espionage and Divination constrained enough so that most Battle Plans (between "equals") still have a significant net benefit even if partial pieces of information about them are revealed.

Please understand I'm not even remotely suggesting that the game mechanics disallow Unsanctioned PvP, or even that the consequences should be onerous enough that most people choose not to engage in it. For the sake of this hypothetical question, let's pretend that there are absolutely no system-enforced consequences for engaging in it.

Could Pathfinder Online thrive as a successful game if everyone simply chose not to engage in Unsanctioned PvP?

I believe the answer is clearly "Yes", and conversely that the game would suffer immeasurably if the majority of PvP were Unsanctioned, but I'm curious to read others' arguments.

This came up in a conversation elsewhere, but I wonder how Goblinworks will use Social Graphs to make PFO better.

Reputation is a social construct, and your reputation will flow through your social contacts. If nobody I know knows you, I will not have access to any of your reputation information. If some of my social connections know you, I will know what they know about your reputation. Treat my friends well or you may find it hard to do business with me.

I was really excited when I first read that highlighted portion. I envisioned a system where my default opinion of another character would be based on my friends' opinions, and where a change in my opinion of that character might influence my friends' opinions, too.

I don't have a strong intuitive understanding of how Social Graphs are created or maintained, I'm not entirely sure how they can be utilized, and I have no idea how they might be manipulated. Are there others here who are better informed or more experienced in these matters that would care to offer their insights?

Just stumbled across this while doing some research...

(By the way, many of the people in these "evil" groups will operate under the philosophy that they are really the "good" group, and that the alignment system of the game is a joke, designed to highlight hypocrisy and designer stupidity, and when they're not out attempting to kill as many inexperienced and unprotected characters and destroy as many badly organized Settlements as possible, they'll expound on these "truths" at length in every forum available to them.)

Does Goblinworks intend to allow players to grind Achievements in-game to earn Goblin Points to be spent in the Goblinworks Cash Shop?

Live from GamesBeat 2013 - there will be new video! (Nightdrifter's link to the video)

In that presentation, Ryan mentioned they were modeling their Cash Shop system on Turbine's. Turbine lets players grind out achievements in-game to earn Turbine Points, which are their Cash Shop currency. Does Goblinworks intend to include that particular aspect of Turbine's model?

When I click the List This Thread link, I'm presented with a Popup that allows me to select which List to use. There's a link at the bottom of this popup that says "Or select another list". Lately, when I click that link, the web page simply refreshes instead of bringing me to my full selection of Lists.

I have a large number of Lists, and this option has worked before, but has lately not been working.

Please consider making Low Reputation (less than -2,500 or perhaps less than -5,000) characters sanctioned targets for all High Reputation (greater than 2,500 or perhaps greater than 5,000) characters.

There have been a few Cash Shop threads, and the subject still pops up in other threads. I almost just posted this in one of those threads, but figured I'd try to get myself in the habit of not changing the subject in the middle of threads.

There are a lot of things I'd be very happy to spend money on in an MMO, and there are other things that I feel absolutely used when I'm forced to spend money on them. In general, it boils down to whether I feel like I'm paying for someone's work, or feel like I'm getting raked over the coals for a convenience that didn't cost anything significant to develop.

Please keep in mind I'm talking about Buying with Real World Money.

Things I Want to Buy:

• Character Model Customization Options;
  
• Non-Standard Races;
  
• Non-Standard Classes (yes, even Paladins);
  
• Any non-standard artwork for gear or Settlement structures;
  
• Special Edition versions of player-crafted items*.

Things I Hate to Buy:

• Keys to unlock loot boxes;
  
• Extra bag/bank space;
  
• Anything that makes the game easier that can't be crafted by players or purchased from NPCs with in-game Coin.

* I know this one's somewhat controversial. My reasons for supporting it are because it takes actual work by real people to create, and because Goblinworks deserves to make profit. It's also not a necessity or even a luxury that's more effective than something that can be acquired in-game without spending real world money.

Note: I'm talking about the current definition of Harvesting, which is going around and hitting individual resources nodes that produce a small number of crafting resources like wood or iron.

Please allow the yield to be increased by having multiple characters involved.

I believe this falls under "maximizing meaningful human interaction" because it creates an incentive for players to stay together while roaming around looking for harvesting nodes, rather than splitting off by themselves. I believe it's balanced because of the nature of harvesting in PFO where each resource pulled from a hex reduces that hex's capacity to provide more of that resource.

I would like to publicly apologize to UNC & Pax, specifically to Bluddwolf, Xeen, and Areks, but also to everyone else who has had to endure my sniping and to the mods who've had to step in and put a stop to it.

This game is very important to me, and it's important to me for very specific reasons. I felt threatened by what I saw happening, and I reacted poorly.

This community is also very important to me, and I feel partly responsible for the negative tone it has taken of late. I "washed my hands" of it in the middle of another thread, but that's not enough. I also need to publicly apologize and publicly promise to just let it go. It's not my place to try to force anyone to accept anything.

I hope that this public apology will be enough to put an end to a lot of the sniping that is directed back at me, but if it's not I understand, and I still promise to just let it go. They say time heals all wounds, and we have lots of time.

Nihimon

There seems to be some confusion about what exactly happens with Gathering Kits. We're hoping a dev could come on and clear this up.

For example:

You cannot drive someone off the claim and continue extraction from it. The claim is locked to the finder. Whether you can steal what they have extracted it is neither here nor there. If you cannot take over the claim and continue extraction then the mother lode is bound to and owned by the discoverer.

If we find you extracting and you have only got 10% of the possible output from the other lode and we kill you we will not be able to access the 90% of the lode yet to be extracted.

This doesn't seem right to me.

My own understanding of what happens is that if I discover a Gathering Node, then I am the only character who can place a Gathering Kit on that particular Gathering Node. If I fail to do so in the allotted time, that particular Gathering Node disappears. Once I place a Gathering Kit, it will function independently, regardless of where I am or what I do. It will continue to function until it is either destroyed, or it exhausts the resources in that particular Gathering Node.

I think some people are getting hung up on this paragraph from the blog, thinking that those "exclusive rights" persist after the Gathering Kit is activated.

Once you discover a gathering node, you'll have exclusive rights to it for a limited amount of time, after which the chance to haul in the resources from the gathering node disappears. You can't pass these rights off or have them stolen from you, either directly or by showing another player the site; if you find the gathering spot, you are the primary character that must be involved in a gathering operation there.

While, to my mind, the paragraph that follows it makes clear that those rights terminate once the Gathering Kit is activated.

Once you've activated the gathering kit, all bets are off.

I am a little worried that gaining Influence will require specific in-game actions that might start to feel Grindy, but I also understand the desire to give new players especially a clear path to advance their character. I'd like to start a conversation about balancing these concerns.

One of the most exciting things about Pathfinder Online to me from the very beginning was the realization that I would be able to do whatever I wanted in-game because my character progression would be based on real-time passing, rather than on me grinding Wolf Paws, etc. I was reminded of how important this is to me while exploring the map in DarkFall. That exploration doesn't gain me significant Prowess, and I'm unable to gain Prowess by other means while doing this. I very much enjoy exploring, but feel like I'm wasting my time because I'm not progressing the way I could be.

At the same time, I very clearly understand how important it is for new players especially to understand what they can do in-game to better their characters. My wife has a particular love for games with lots and lots of fun quests. In LOTRO, she loved the Oatbarton zone with all the quests associated with preparing the town for a Festival.

How can we balance that desire for content (even if it's only clearly defining the things that allow the character to gain Influence) without creating too great an opportunity cost for doing whatever else we want to be doing in-game?

We've been having some discussions at The Seventh Veil about our governing structure and voting methods.

Please allow us to set up an arbitrary number of Voting Methods in our Settlements and Nations, and then assign a proportion to each Method to determine the final vote. Also, please add support for a Veto Power.

For example (not a real example for T7V), someone might want to have a Council of Elders where specific named characters each have a vote, and a Senate where each Sponsored Company has an equal vote, and then a House where each Settlement Resident has an equal vote, and then combine those so that the Council of Elders is worth 40% of the final vote, and the Senate and House are worth 30% each.