Shaibes's page

I logged in where a tower HAD been, but which is now where an ogre camp is, apparently. One filled with dozens upon dozens of ogres, just standing around rubbing shoulders against each other, waiting for someone to materialize. Which I did, and died waiting for the graphics to finish loading. And also where I res'd--repeatedly (because I'm body-surfing ogres). The hell, guys...

Having PvP windows that don't overlap with daily server downtime would also be nice.

I don't mind the difficulty of transport between settlements at all. I do, however, wish I didn't have to waddle at 1/100th normal speed from the bank to the crafting shacks when I want to make large batch of something.

In most ways, the River Kingdoms conform to "traditional" RPG/MMO European medieval-esque high fantasy aesthetics and social structures. In this regard PFO is quite faithful to TT Pathfinder, because between religious hierarchies, feudal administrations, trade guilds and military orders, medieval Europe was nothing if not "high school-cliquish".

KarlBob wrote:

In a post-NAP War of Towers

Another World...

Another Time...

In the Age of Wonder.

A thousand years ago, this land was green and good...

...until the NAP failed.

(Camera pans over a DESOLATE WASTELAND)

Guurzak wins this thread. Now I want to play a Skeksis.

Well, since we are transported to and physically restored at the nearest shrine, maybe it's correct that we wouldn't leave behind some grisly husk. Perhaps our gear could be left in a puddle of ectoplasm or a pile of Desna glitter.

Yes, the Alderwag Harvest Association is an Alderwag affiliate. They have their papers.

I may be speaking for myself alone, but I suspect I actually represent a fair number of players. To date, I have not been sufficiently satisfied with the apparent state of the game to begin burning my prepaid months. I say apparent, because my impressions are not based on first-hand experience--how could they be? Rather, I rely on the forum, YouTube videos and anecdotes from other players.

Now, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the game has advanced significantly since the end of Alpha and I would be impressed with the progress if I activated my account. The problem is I'm kind of cheap, and I have an aversion to throwing money at things blindly.

"But you already spent that money!" you may say. True. I spent the money on a promise. That promise is not yet fulfilled. So long as I don't activate my account, PFO is the Schrodinger's cat of MMOs--it might be awful, or it might be amazing. There's no way of knowing. So I keep the lid on the box and hope that when I finally break the seal I will be delighted with what I discover.

Again, I bet I'm not alone in my hesitance to "accept delivery" on the product just yet. Want to change my mind? Give me a way to sample the wares before I commit. Consider it a test drive.

That being said, I'm starting to think that a certain uberbitter ex-player who continues to regale us with tales of his own genius, popularity, foresight and prowess might actually be Dancey in disguise pulling some kind of super-meta-triple-reverse psychological ops, because every time I read one of his posts I feel oddly compelled to activate my account. It's weird.

Asha, that's a very intriguing proposition. This would offer both a means to introduce the game to new players without up-front investment, and also a way for subscribers to dabble with hardcore mode without endangering their precious primary characters.

1979, 4th grade at Wing Luke Elementary in Seattle was the start of it for me. We all had to share my buddy Mike's box-set dice when we played at lunch, because nobody else had anything besides plain-old d6s. Now I have buckets of the damned things, because I can't set foot inside a geek shop without buying the prettiest dice in the case. I am no better than a bird or a fish in this regard--oooh, shiny thing!

The core of Alderwag is a fine group of fellows who've been playing D&D, Cthulhu, Shadowrun, Warhammer and Pathfinder together since the late '80s. How many other hobbies can claim to bind people so tenaciously? Not many.

The summer before last on my way back from the east coast, I rode through Lake Geneva, WI, solely for the purpose of "blessing" a few dice on the Gary Gygax memorial plaque there and paying my respects to the man. We tabletoppers owe him a great deal, and visiting the old master felt like the right thing to do.

I said it in another thread and I'll repeat it here: ArcheAge is a very pretty game. I do wonder, though, what the Korean devs think breasts are made of, as actions as trivial as speaking or breathing set them jiggling like paint shakers.

And the story-pushing cut scenes are insanely overlong.

That aside, it's a nice piece of brain candy with some interesting mechanics. I have it in my rotation of games to be played every now and then.

Churning out bales of +3 stuff is not something we in the hinterlands need to worry about at this point. Come on out to the edge of the map and savor the struggle!

Yes, I get the competitive urge. But why is murder the preferred medium? When you think about it, it's kind of odd.

Philosophical question--why are players so eager to kill each other?

So now, in addition to naked gathering, we'll have naked crafting where crafters kill themselves as soon as they near the completion of their costliest recipes to avoid getting ganked by nefarious gangs camped outside the doors of every craft hut? How about the Thornguards start doing their damned jobs?

Or maybe you just hate to admit that Ryan knows how to pull your strings ;p.

What one person might call "string-pulling" another might call "getting jerked around". Semantics, I suppose.

Whatever we label it, we're still firmly in the "this doesn't work right" phase.

My only complaint with the forum is the lack of an "ignore" button.

Fierywind wrote:

So what makes you think that your views on how this game should be played are more indicative of the to-be greater general populace of the game than the landslide-majority views held by those currently playing the game? This community has a lean, certainly, but that lean should be indicative of the lean of the target audience unless you can present hard facts as to why this community is biased differently than the population that will be joining the game later.

Mainly the fact that the majority of people in the game are from the Paizo forums. And funny enough (okay, point of no return here), the majority of people who hail from games similar to PFO like EVE? They're excited about PvP. And most of the people who don't like PvP? They're tabletop gamers who say things like "I hate PvP, but hope to be able to avoid it."

Tabletop RPGs are a teensy little market compared to the MMO business. And tabletop gamers aren't really a good market to focus on when you're making MedEVEal.

This is dangerous ground for me. I get that.* I'm just kind of weary of the attitude that PvP is a "necessary evil". People are welcome to think that, but that's not how the game needs to behave. The game needs to treat PvP as kind of a central theme. The "yin" to merchants' "yang".

I guess I just have trouble taking the people who don't like PvP very seriously. I have trouble believing they're going to stick around if PFO is at all successful.

*Like, really dangerous ground. I am dissing people who I legitly like with what I'm saying. People in my own settlement, I'm pretty sure. And considering the reaction I'm getting, I'm probably going to stay the hell away from this thread and this general subject matter after today and go back to making Youtube jokes.

Yes, I am a tabletop RPG player. Yes, I hoped that PFO would hew a little closer to the PnP experience. No, I don't dislike PvP--I dislike stupid and pointless PvP that hinders character development more than it promotes it. No, I don't actually care if you take me seriously, and I don't care what you think this game needs any more than you seem to care about the opinions of those who disagree with you.

I will say this--when you write that you don't think non-PvPers will stick around if PFO is successful, what I read is your wishful hope that non-PvPers will go away so you can have your game the way you want it. To quote good Westley: "get used to disappointment."

Ah, thank you KarlBob. Despite what Ryan says, I still think being able to filter for availability would be a good thing.

The Concerned Citizens' De-Escalation Committee sallied forth from Alderwag last night to beat down a 100% escalated hex. Sack upon sack of dark onyxes were returned to the Loitering Wizards, and after many hours of glorious combat and heroic retreats, victory was declared when the escalation was reduced to a paltry 97%. Huzzah!

I was always partial to Ankylosaurus, personally.

People in Eve say you shouldnt solo. Yet they do on a constant basis.

I will solo, a lot.

I soloed a lot in EVE, too (though not often in low-sec); mostly because I liked spinning around an asteroid listening to spacey music.

Less ePeen measuring, please.

Having talked to a few of the people disgruntled about these sort of issues in game I have come to the conclusion its a perspective thing.

For a player that wants to be a "badass PvPer that treats care-bear activities (gathering crafting and PvE) with disdain" the grinding of achievements and waiting 4 years to get to what they see as the "end game" where they can show there PvP elite skillz to their fullest is unacceptable.

Speaking as someone who has quit every MMO he's ever played shortly after capping because he's never found end-game content that didn't feel forced, repetitive and boring, I say "sucks to be them." If I get to play five years instead of five months before losing interest, better for me.

Srsly? Every thread is a discussion thread.

Being able to limit the AH listings to just items actually being sold on the AH would be nice.

OK, I need to get this off my chest. The procurement of items and resources so far doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me. How can I be travelling through a forest, and still be unable to "find" any wood? How can I kill a camp of bandit archers, but there isn't a bow (or even a bowstring!) to be found among the corpses? We should be awash in mundane daggers, bows and swords, and common materials like wood should be there for the taking.

Come on down to Alderwag for all your crafting needs. Our auction house is open 24/7!

Gm you had a gm I had to give birth to my gm and then wait 17 years for him to grow into the job.

You may think Iam just being funny but I played my first dnd game in th 70's and my second one 25 year later when my son Joey was old enough to play/run a game.

You have a son to DM for you? You lucky so and so. I had to make my own DM out of dirt clods and cigarette butts. He won't run anything but GURPS and he always kills my character in the first encounter and then makes snide comments about it for the rest of the evening!

By Crom, I almost wept with joy the first time I saw a dry-erase battlemat with a grid on one side and proper hexes on the other!

Played a little Archeage over the weekend. It also bills itself as "beta", though that is not completely "true" by my reasoning, since folks on the other side of the Pacific have been playing for a year or so already.

What drew me in was it being advertised as an open-world sandbox, which I thought might make an interesting comparison with PFO.

Since the game's been out for a while (beta claim notwithstanding) and because it borrows heavily from Rift for it's textures and environmentals, I was not at all surprised that it looks more polished than PFO. Honestly, it's a lovely game.

As to the sandboxiness of the game? It's there, but it's limited. While you're leveling, the game is very theme park. Player content supposedly emerges as you approach the level cap. I wasn't close to that, so I can't evaluate the accuracy of that statement. I did see persistent player-made structures (entire villages, in some cases), which was neat and made me look forward to seeing our settlements grow in PFO.

All of the above aside, there were two things that stood out in comparison with PFO, one laudable, the other heinous.

PRO: Lawbreakers are tried and sentenced by juries of randomly selected players. Penalties are "jail time" (temporary character lock, essentially) of between 5 minutes and 48 hours, depending on the severity of the crime, mitigating circumstances, and the overall dickishness of the defendant. All trials are conducted in public. It is fascinating to watch and does seem to keep bad behavior in check.

CON: Ermagerd, the chat. If Obi-Wan thought Mos Eisley was a wretched hive of scum and villainy, it's only because he was never exposed to thirty seconds of general chat in Archeage. I've never--not even in the old Yahoo News comments sections--seen such venemous, loathsome, outrageous displays of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and types of -isms and -phobias that probably defy classification. It was nauseating, and made me not want to interact with any player at all. I "fixed" it by creating a new chat tab that didn't track anything, including whispers and invites. It's that terrible.

Final conclusion? PFO is rough around the edges, maybe even rough in the middle, but (so far, at least), the in-game community is helpful, informative, reasonably courteous, and above all focused on the game. I did not appreciate this as much as I should have until I spent some time where it is entirely absent.

Virtual high-fives to the PFO player community, for trying something genuinely refreshing in online gaming: being civil.

I think the success of regional auction houses will also depend on their distance from Thornkeep and their proximity other "frontier" settlements. Anyone facing an hour-long overland haul to Thornkeep may find an auction house three or so hexes away very attractive.

I think EVE is successful, in part, because of a very elaborate Market system. I know that's what most interested me about it. I expect many other players play for different reasons, but I suspect a large number of players stick around because the Market is so satisfying.

For me, EVE offers a level of immersion that I don't think any other game even comes close to. The graphics, ambient sounds, soundtrack--as a sensory package, it's practically perfect.

On top of that, the devices and conceits that make playing over the internet practical also mesh brilliantly with the game environment. If I'm a capsuleer orbiting some nameless hunk of rock out in low-sec, I probably am sitting in front of some kind of computer terminal, communicating with corp-mates over vast distances on an audio channel or using text-based chat. It pushes all the right buttons for me.

Conversely, using a chat window or even TeamSpeak in a swords-and-sorcery setting breaks immersion for me. What choice do we have, though, but to use them? It's no fault of Goblinworks, it's just the way it is. I expect I'll still enjoy PFO plenty, but I don't expect it will come close to EVE in terms of immersion.

Then again, I'm not a game designer. Maybe I'm wrong and this will be the most completely immersive gave ever! If so, I'll be delighted to eat my words.

At last! An icon for Alderwag.

Please let me know if you can work with this. If not, I'll do what I can to correct it.

Kadere wrote:

celestialiar wrote:

Kadere wrote:

No. Any mechanic that is going to stop a person from playing the game against their will is a horrible, horrible idea.

It'd be per character.

Which is entirely irrelevant if the person in question only has one character.

I know that you are taking a stab at bringing in a more strategic style of combat, but this is not a track on which you will ever get any traction. Allowing players to remove agency from one another is a very, very poor design.

I don't know, it works this way in PnP RPGs. As a matter of fact, in most cases when I had a character die in D&D my DM often made it takes weeks to find a cleric that could or would resurrect a character. It was usually permadeath.

But how much were you paying your DM? A gamemaster who volunteers his or her time and labor to run a campaign automatically earns broad latitude in dealing with characters, even if that means sometimes things happen that make the players upset. A for-profit game enterprise may not be able to act with the same liberty, no matter how well it might fit the overall design objectives of the game.

Remember also that dedication bonuses are going to reflect what you slot, not what you know, so you can still be a Cleric in the morning, and a Rogue in the evening, if you choose to've spent your XP that way.

In other words, a mullet character--business up front, party in the back!

Taverian has been busy in the lab again, and has whipped up a new and improved web presence for Alderwag.

We love company, so come on over and visit us anytime!

T7V Jazzlvraz wrote:

Bluddwolf wrote:

An NPC settlement is not in competition with PC settlements for training, trade or conquest.

Nor for viability, once again by design, for players wanting to do...pretty much anything.

Viability for what, having a neutral ground? You don't need maximum training or crafting for that.

Like I wrote earlier, which was deleted for some reason, what is being suggested in that one player run settlement is to be exempted from all of the struggles and limitations that all others have to deal with.

What entitles that settlement the settlement "I win button"? It would by default end up with the highest tier crafting and training and an ideal location as a THE trade hub, due to the proposed "hands off" status.

PFO is not a zero-sum game. Someone else "winning" does not mean you are losing. In any RPG, there are episodic victories and defeats, but in the long run they're the same--just pages in an evolving story.

<Tavernhold>Malrunwa Soves wrote:

You know, I don't think anyone in the area is going the expert/commoner rout during war of the towers. If you went that rout you might be able to bring something more to a negotiation since almost all the settlements around you would want to send their crafts-men to you for training.

That might not necessarily be true ;). More to come in the future, I hope.

Also, even if they were to go crafting, they only have 12 people. Enough for 2 towers :(.

Yes, :(... indeed! Still, we're going into this committed to the proposition that we won't remain only twelve bitter old heroes and must plan accordingly. We expect to draw many cynical, aging champions to Alderwag.

Because several of you have been working hard on useful maps and lists, I thought I should post a little additional information about The Gauntlet.

Settlement: Alderwag. Given the average age of the PFO messageboard users, many of you will catch the reference. No, it's not a typo. We're intentionally spelling it that way.

Alignment: NG

Political Structure: Because we're still a one-company town, we're currently running on membership consensus. This is admittedly the slowest and most cumbersome of all governance styles, but nothing needs to be decided quickly at the moment, so we have the luxury of pursuing total agreement before settling anything. As we approach the EE start date, we will transition to a more streamlined structure.

Training Focus: TBD. We would like to minimize focus overlap with our neighbors as much as possible. There are only five roles in various combinations to be used at the moment, so overlap is lamentably unavoidable. We've narrowed it down to two possibilities. Details to come soonish.

For the time being, I am the interim and acting ambassador for The Gauntlet. For now.

The Federation of Free Settlements, or FFS.

This is exactly what my face would look like if I had to run around town in chainmail. I'm chafing just thinking about it.

Chaos in action. ;)

I have to tip my hat (technically my nemes, I suppose) to any settlement that embraces its declared alignment with such gusto. Everyone expects Golgotha will be impressively eeeeevil, but this? Wow. Setting your own house on fire the day after you're handed the deed is nothing short of spectacular. That's pro-grade chaos right there.

PS: I'm not above ambulance chasing. Any former(?) Freevalians looking for a laid-back and *ahem* sparsely-populated settlement should PM me. Maybe we can offer you what you seek.

In short: "Good news, citizen--you now have the right to obey!"

Gol Caliphis wrote:

It will be like 1914 all over again.

Perhaps like a game of Diplomacy, where the question is never "whether to backstab", but "when to backstab".

Alternately, never backstab but always assume you will be backstabbed and plan accordingly. Just because you're loyal doesn't mean you shouldn't be... careful.

Has anyone heard much from The Gauntlet.

We're around and we follow the threads, but I think I'm the only Gauntleteer who ever posts anything. As such--on behalf of The Gauntlet, I extend congratulations to all the groups who ended Week 10 with a settlement, and would like to express our profound satisfaction with how the NW corner of the map has turned out. We look forward to cultivating fruitful relations with each of our proximal neighbors.

When the game stops being fun, I stop playing. Problem solved.

By Crom, I surely am glad to have played pen and paper games in the days when tanks stored hot water and DPS meant Department of Public Safety. Though probably an inevitable game mechanic in most MMORPGs, I find The Trinity boringly reductionist. If PFO does nothing else but liberate players from a handful of boring builds and cookie-cutter rotations, it will be a success in my eyes.