Ryan Mercy's page

It would be nice to game is a persistent world where not every animal you encountered in the wildness was a blood thirsty killer. High concentration of hostile mobs is great for level grinding, but for immersion purposes I would love to have the fauna be more diverse in nature and aggression. And a little breathing room when traveling cross country to not facepull a bear, boar, wolf or giant rat every 10 feet.

Nihimon - Thanks for the add! I'll have more details, including a description, later in the game when we know more about how the game will operate, and we make the call on what specifically we will be doing. As for alliances and the like, we are mostly just in the 'talking to new people and making new friends' stage at this point, but we should keep in touch. We are under no illusions that we would have the manpower to make much of a mark on our own, but it's also important to us to keep our identity. When we get close to alpha / beta kicking off, we would like to have some tight alliances with other Chartered Companies who share our vision of what the game world should be like, that we could work with to mutual benefit.

Wyldthorne - Out of curiosity, is the Pax Gaming Community the same Pax from SWTOR Sanctum of the Exalted?

Weighing in, for what it's worth-

I fully support a game company doing what they feel is best to make ends meet. The developers / publishers need to make money in order to keep the lights on. And I will stomache most of what gets thrown out there, if I means I get to continue to log in and play.

But when it's all said and done, the sub is really the best model. Maybe not economically the best model, but for me as a player, it's hands down the best experience. $14.99 is about what I am going to pay to see a 2 hour movie here in LA, so I'm certainly not getting exploited in any way. But that simple $15 barrier makes for a better community, and makes the whole experience feel more immersive and less cheap.

We've all seen what happens to communities when a game goes F2P. Access to the game takes nothing more than an email address, so the flood gates get open to any internet superstar who wants to jump in, tell Chuck Norris jokes in general chat, ruin a few RP sessions, then go complain on the forums about how they are being abused by the developers placing restrictions on a game that is free to play. $15 a month is a like a security guard that keeps the vagrants from peeing on your azaleas.

Then you tack on a digital store. The store doesn't work if I can aquire the same items in game, so instead, or if the items exclusive to the store held no sway on the player base. But I just feel cheapened each time I have to open an in game store browser and add real world money to an account to pick up those trinkets and baubles I covet. It also doesn't help the image of the game, as (again, personally) I start to equate what should be a AAA title with facebook shovelware designed to rope people in and fleece them.

PFO is taking bold steps to break the mold and do something different. It's not shaping up to be a themepark hot-key mashing treadmill. I just hope that this innovation makes its way into the how GW chooses to handle the business of making money, and we see something that allows them to thrive without watering down the experience for the players.

Wanted to get our hat in the ring with a thread, even if it's pretty preliminary at this point.

Name: Red Mercy
Alignment: Any good or neutral
Focus: Social gameplay and peacekeeping
Timezone: Guild leaders are PST, but we have community members everywhere.

Red Mercy (our working Company name) will be the presence in PFO of Mercy Gaming, the small gaming community I am a part of. We are a band of friends involved in a variety of games, who operate under a loose common banner. Where we have enough players interested we form guilds, and where we don't we see that members get involved with larger guilds togther, to keep us united. For the members of the Mercy Gaming community, it's more about the friendships and social aspects of the games, rather than the games themselves.

A good number of our members are keeping an eye on PFO as it develops, and a bunch of us kicked in together for the guild launch backing on Kickstarter to get an early hand in the game. For many of us who are older and grew up with MMOs before they were all themepark treadmills, the prospects PFO offers are more than enough to keep us hanging on.

We plan to organize the Company under our own banner, and then seek alliances (here in the early days as well as post launch) with other Companies that share our outlooks and goals. We are friendly and social players, our personal demeanor's leaning towards 'neutral good' and will most likely focus ourselves on helping to create a better community for other good or neutral players. (Even, I suppose, evil players in the long run, since a rising tide lifts all boats.) We see ourselves are offering our services out as as occasional for-hire merchants, bodyguards and entertainers, and occasionally doing those jobs for free, for our own nefarious RP purposes.

We had a fairly extensive lore written up for our Republic guild in SW:TOR, which we will most likely adapt for use in PFO. You can read that here. The short of our planned RP backstory is that we will be a band of civilian soldiers, merchants and doctors (or their PFO equivalent) who through some masterfully penned contrivance, end up working for the good of the common people outside the bureaucracy and red tape of those who should be tending to the flock but aren't. We are a citizen army of and for the people. We are not the strongest, the largest or the wealthiest. But we have the courage to do what others will not, so that the lowest can live without fear.

I'm sure this will get updated more as we get close to seeing an actual game, and as more is revealed about the game. In the meantime, we are just enjoying seeing what is in store, and hoping to meet other like minded individuals and Companies to share in the creation of this new world.

/salute

SWG was my first (unhealthy) MMO obsession, mostly because it spawned so many memorable stories, most of them player based. If I had to pick one...

An alliance of Rebel guilds on my server came together, pooled their cash and built a 'base'. They spent weeks scouting locations until they found an area on Corellia that would support a large number of small player houses all lined up side-to-side, and used 20+ houses to wall off the area, with one narrow opening called 'the gauntlet'. They then put a clone facility, cantina and a few shops inside, as well as three of the destroyable bases.

Now the Empire had a target. The gall of the Rebel Alliance to build a base right under their noses! Some of the most amazing fights took place here with up to a hundred players on each side, duking it out over 20 feet of open space. It started with just attrition wars as the empire went through the meat grinder to get inside, but they eventually started finding smarter ways to attack, as we had to adapt. It was a constant push and shove, and there was never a dull moment.

What made this fun wasn't the fighting itself, but the fact that WE had created something that brought players together. Not the developers - the players did it. It wasn't just a fight breaking out here or there, or some instanced warzone. The call went out and everyone showed up to fight in one place. Your allies and enemies stopped being just red or green blips on the radar, and became people you interacted with regularly. It was our home, and we wanted to defend it. It was a blight on their pride, and they wanted it gone.

No scripted story could offer this level of dedication.

Star Citizen re opened donations and reward tiers after KS, and was able to keep the hype going to add a lot to their fund. I'm sure if the option to keep an influx of cash coming in is viable, we will see options to be obliged.

I go into ever new MMO I am looking forward to (which is sadly fewer and fewer each year) with the idea that I am going to take my time with my character, and explore the world. Outside of Eve, though, this isn't really much of an option.

When as little as one level means you are no longer able to play out conent with friends, and the community doesn't really come together until end game, then the motivation is on progressing as fast a possible, at least for social players. I tried really hard in SWTOR to take my time and see everything, but by the end of the first week the power levelers in guild were already antsy to be running end game stuff, and if I don't get caught up I would have no reason to every interact with those people. So grind away.

I like the idea of a fresh level 1 with almost no skill points could reasonable provide help to players who have spent weeks in game. That the ability to play socially is not tied to level, gear progression or unlocks. I hope PFO offers this sort of alternative.

I think coin drop was discussed in a past thread as well, and that is it's own thorny issue. If coin drops too freely, it creates a market imbalance - or at least it could, depending on drop rate and how quickly coin goes back out of the market. If NPCs (humanoid I would assume) drop coin, the players need to be required to spend said coin in some sort of timely manner, to keep people from accumulating so much that it loses any value. The same goes for item drops - if an NPC boss drops an item that is as good as something you can make, what is the incentive to make the item, or spend time trying to buy it? Fun in the short term, but makes crafting a hobby instead of a central part of the game.

It's the poor Neutrals who will suffer!

Someone make the point above that the incentive towards good was to demotivate players from their natural inclination, which is evil. The working (is not the intent) painted a pretty general picture with broad strokes, and I think it's more about the vocal minority than all players. 90% of players could be operating just fine, acting 'good' (in the more generic sense of not working actively to ruin other people's gaming experience), but that 10% who lives in the mindset that anonymity = freedom to act like a **** make a big enough impact that generalizations get made.

I think if anything, the incentives should be towards social play, whatever form that takes. Players who engage with other players for the betterment of the game as a whole should reap the bonuses, be they 'good' or 'evil'.

I would be ok with some sort of point buy system at first, to allow some lee way. I see this as deterrence to one race == one class. MMO players are min/maxers by default, and the tendency is going to be to roll the race whose starting stats most benefit the build you are planning (at least initially). So you end up with most fighters being half orc, most rangers being elves, or however it lies. Even a small amount of point buy means players don't feel as pinned into a race at creation.

I tested for another MMO a few years ago, and at one point they patched in racial bonuses. They were small, and would mean nothing at max level, but still you saw almost all new character rolls fit into a small set of race/class combos, for that one point of this or that it alloted.

While they seem to have alluded to it including both, there is nothing wrong with it leaning heavily to a 'sim', as you say. It marks a large percentage of what is (err..will be) making PFO unique from the rest of the market. And it's not to say that a 'sim' can't mold itself into more of an MMO - that's just up to the player's devising instead of the designers.

Awesome write up this week. The more I read, the more excited I get.

While I could see it being a problem in the early months, I like the idea of higher level traits being restricted to training at player settlements. This gives people an incentive to explore, to visit places they might not usually go, and bring traffic to your settlement. I see guilds (even smaller ones) specializing in a given training, and that giving them a place on the map, and making them a destination, not just a target. One of the things I remember most fondly about SWG was the need to visit player cities to train to make purchases, and how that opened up whole new areas to you that you might not have previously seen.

Now we just need to cross our fingers that settlements will have a high degree of personalization and customization, rather than just cookie-cutter make ups by tier (ala Age of Conan).

A++++ would read from again.

Sorry if I missed this is the blog write up or in skimming these posts -

Alignment shifts and reputation are one thing, but it seems like the bigger issue they are trying to address is griefing. They want us to PvP, but they don't want one player to ruin the experience for another for no reason other than that one player enjoys making other people miserable.

To that end, I have a question about the attacker flag. It gets set to the person who initiates attacks. In theory, this means the aggressor gets flagged, and takes on the consequence of his or her actions. But if I have learned anything from years of player MMOs, it's that a player who wants to game the system will. And here it seems fairly easy.

The 'griefer' (for lack of a better word) waits for his target(s) to engage in combat with NPC enemies, then puts himself in the line of fire by catching an AoE. (This is a pretty common practice to force a flag on a PvE player in past games.) Now the non aggressor is flagged as an attacker, and can be killed with no regard for reputation.

I assume this is where we get past what the game's mechanics can handle, and get into GM intervention?

Improbably for release on top of the multitude of bigger issues to tackle, but at some point I would love to see PC bands. Maybe not as complex as the LotRO system (although that would be amazing), but at least the option for players to train in an instrument the same as they would train in any other skill, and then play a progressively wider range and complexity of songs. Players with the same songs in their knowledge base can sync up different instruments they are proficient in to make fuller so sounds.

The bard class aside, this is a cool system to make taverns a more lively place, and attract players to hang out in taverns, rather than just pass through them for basic game needs.

Simple gambling mini games would be nice - dice and basic card games - where players can wage coin. Drinking mini games would be nice as well, where players with a good CON score and take drinks with increasingly harder DCs to remain upright.

In these (and other similar) ways, taverns could become social hubs in the game. Player run taverns could become famous hang outs where players who would normally never see each other come together. Nothing helps a game become personal like a strong community, and a strong community comes from players having direct interaction.

I like an support a separate kill command. I see it as having a number of uses and reasons to exists, not all of the pure RP.

As someone posted above, getting killed by an NPC is not always a death sentence. That bear might maul you, then wander off once the threat to it's home has been dealt with. A bit later you can revive and move on. The tension comes in that moment when they knock you unconscious - will they make the killing blow or not? Obviously the higher the value of the NPC, the alignment of the NPC and other factors would weigh into the likelihood of a spared sentence.

For PC interactions, it could be a good thing as well. A player running a bandit knocks you out, steals your stuff, and makes off. He gets flagged as an attacker and thief, but skips the murder charge, meaning you can't death curse him. (Perhaps the number or type of items available to be looted is lessened when unconscious vs dead as well?) It also gives players who are leaning towards good options - options that could translate for RP or real in game factors.

While I support looting options for parties (IE any gold or valuables get auto added to party, or split among party members, if they so choose to do it this way), I would like to see a reduction in 'loot' over all. The more items drop from mobs, the less of an impact player crafting has. Sure, the goblin king that set up camp in that dangerous hex might just have a magical item on him, but your run of the mill NPCs should be wearing the standard junk. And like in PnP PF, you have to weigh the option of carrying that junk around with you until you find a player or NPC who wants it, or just leaving it where it lies.

I do like the idea of lootable craft items though. It gives combat oriented players a way to contribute, and adds to the community required to make items in game. Certain magical beasts drop parts or items needed to make some magical items - IE a spider queen might drop a venom sack needed to make a dagger that adds a poison DoT.

Perfect! Thanks!

+1 on a robust crafting system!

While I am admittedly do not personally have the patience for the complexity of a full system (ala SW:G), I get bored beyond belief with the standard practice of mine a node in the world --> find a crafting station --> select a recipe --> watch an animation --> done.

It's also worth noting that when you talk to people about their memories of games like SW:G, that featured a complex crafting system, and ask them about the players they remember from those games, inevitably they mention a crafter. I have spent years in other games, could not tell you one name of one person who has many anything I have used. But 10 years later I can recall the names of numerous vendors from Galaxies who made my weapons and armor. It took someone dedicated and proficient, and those people were rewarded in kind for their time and efforts, instead of being relegated to a string of text that says 'Crafted by...' on an auction house listing.

When I was in beta for another MMO (that I won't mention by name), we spent some time discussing with the developers the crafting issue. Most member of my testing group were in agreeance that a more robust system was always preferable to a more automated and mindless one. But the developers stuck to their guns, letting us know that in their minds 'crafting was not heroic'. This being their justification for a shallow and tacked on system.

I am inclined to disagree with this statement. I think heroism has many faces, and it can't be pared down to just killing bad guys. What's more, a game should stand first and foremost on what is FUN, and there are people out there for whom the social aspect is what is fun. Becoming famous because you make a quality item can be equally rewarded for many people as being famous because you downed a boss first. And you would be amiss to discount this group.

So up with crafting! And any social, community driven professions and skills! A strong community is build on community interactions, and a strong community sticks with its game.