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Nice! The Goblinworks team is taking this in a very interesting direction, keep it up!

Just a question though: Was the idea on weapon usage and the abilities and gaining it as you become more proficient in some ways inspired from the system used in Guild Wars 2? Reminded me of it somewhat from the way you were describing it, except using character level and 'weapon proficiency' as a wall to prevent lower level players from using high level abilities.

Of course, I'm going to have to go on and say my approval is based upon speculation of my possible experience in the game, so until I get my hands on a build down the road this should be taken with a grain of salt.

Well, personally I think there should be weight, but gold/currencies with extremely high circulation should be weightless if not next to that. Things like carrying around gold shouldn't be too much of an inconvenience in a game like Pathfinder Online. Games usually try to follow the Unspoken (yet written on TVtropes.org for those of you that want to look) Rule of Fun. The main thing about a game is that it should be fun.

If everyone has to worry about storing their gold and having to worry about weight, transit and other issues relating to the idea that gold is weighted and needs to be transported when moving to allow you access to those assets makes the game in a way 'un-fun'. It makes accumulating wealth tedious, which is entirely against the idea that players are adventurers who with experience gain wealth. If this was meant to be a realistic idea implemented into Pathfinder to make it feel like an entirely real world (you know, suspending disbelief of the existence of monster and magic), maybe that would be good.

Ask a question though, would you have fun carrying around gold and other things as a non-str based character. If Goblinworks did that, all casters with strength as a 'dump-stat' (should they implement stats, specifically STR and its effect on carrying capacity) would be at a distinct disadvantage to martial characters in the game.

That's my take on this anyway. It would be more fun to have everyone not worry about this, it makes the game less complex and allows players to focus on playing the game itself when they don't have to worry about how much gold they have in their pockets.

And in the case of trade goods... Well, that's another thing. Those represent gold, but should have weight, because unlike gold, you can move those to where there is high demand from areas with high supply to make profit.
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That's my take on this, guessing Dancey may be leaning toward weightless gold as well according to his earlier comment, but I just wanted to throw my opinion into the mix.

Goblinworks will most likely take it as it comes in the case of animal companions for PFO. If they can implement animal companions for all the classes from the core rulebook that have them, they most likely will. They want this to be like Pathfinder, but in online sandbox form. Until we start getting closer to launch and seeing the MMO itself in action, we as players don't really have an answer for that question and many others just yet.

Hm... Player-Assisted Development then? Also abbreviated as P.A.D.? That way each community member assisting in development is in a way, important, as we each contribute as part of that whole to your work?

I'll throw that out there now instead of my Call to Adventure idea, but despite the whole idea of the name of this whole 'thing' being generic being important, it might be good to still have it be a unique title for this unique MMO; Since it involves Community Development In New Games (or C.D.I.N.G. Oh that's a funny one! made it without even knowing!). My "P.A.D." idea doesn't encapsulate that enough though in my opinion. But, I just want to pitch it since I like acronyms.

(Long post incoming. The blog post and the messages I read made me want to write a lot! Sorry!)

Hmm... Genesis is good! We are in a way building and seeding this new world with them, I would say that would be an amazing title if we can't find a better one! Maybe in a sense instead of being first though, Goblinworks could also focus upon the idea that they're making it with us. It kind of in a way is like Player Character progression in an RPG.

As everyone reading my post probably knows, our characters in the P&P or any RPG in general have some form of character progression where you become stronger over time. In tabletop games you are playing alongside other players, helping to shape the world you are in through the adventures you have in the RPG world. It's much harder to survive alone in games like Pathfinder sometimes, and so players join together to become better than they were when they first met.

In a way, I see our relationship as prospective players of PFO and the Goblinworks team like this. We both want to see an amazing game that can embody the vision we have, so we can step foot in Golarion and be proud of what we see. Goblinworks is doing a lot of work on this, and Dancey, your statement in the blog of us "co-developing" the game with your team says to me you consider that we are moving towards that goal with you. So, a part of me wants to call all of this in a way Cooperative Development, because of the fact that you say that you said that line.

Either way, we're with you. We'll be here when you need us. When you ask us for our opinion, we'll give it gladly. This is our Call to Adventure. Just like developing this game is for Goblinworks!

P.S.

Actually, would Call of Adventure sound good for a first phase of PFO? The next phase of players entering the game after a few are let in to begin building the game could be called The "Adventure Begins!" or something like that. Either way, this is an quest for both players and developers interested in the game being a success, so we're both needed to make this work!

That was a really nice video! Since they already have a release date in mind from what Dancey said, I can't help but feel an even larger amount of anticipation for this game than I already had!

Ryan Dancey wrote:

So a lot of responses to my question were of two varieties:

1: Ways to make it cool for one person or a small group to interact with PvE content.

2: Suggestions to make reselling the output of the encounter the point of interaction.

The first fails because it maximizes the interaction of the involved people with the content, not with each other or the wider social graph of other characters.

The second fails because if the economic advantage is meaningful farming the encounter will become routine and the flow of the components will become commodities.

Think about the idea that whatever the answer is it has to be repeatable hundreds, maybe thousands of times each day. It also has to be something that both individuals, small groups and large organizations might all compete for. And remember than in an MMO, nothing can really be mechanically unique or of extreme limited availability without creating artificial winners and losers, or restricting content to a tiny minority of the people who are financially supporting the game.

I'd like you all to try harder. The question is "how do we make the presence of unique opponents that produce exceptional loot maximize human interaction"?

One thing I've always disliked is weird loot drop from creatures. i.e. You slay the owlbear and discover a +1 breastplate. So I'm hoping that this sort of thing will be taken into account in PFO.

One option (which relates to this topic) is for some rare monsters to have a nest which has the actual rare loot drops, rather than have the rare loot on its body at the time of death.

So while it is a challenge to find the rare creature, it is an equally great challenge to try and track down its lair. So perhaps in order to find a creatures lair you must first kill it, then follow its tracks back to its lair. The tracks may take you thru various dangerous areas and then end with a showdown with the rare creatures mate and possible the young. Its also possible that the rare...

I like how you thought about incorporating furthering the whole concept of killing rare creatures!

My personal idea for this and making it more socially viable would maybe making unique mobs randomly generated! As heroes rise and fall in worlds such as Golarion, as do the threats that face the heroes. If possible, I would suggest having unique mobs or encounters be randomly generated, with a high amount of variation on the type of encounter (and where it leads!), the monsters inside of it, and the loot itself! Some ways to get social interactions together might be something akin to a bounty board, open calls for heroes to search for threats together for fame and fortune!

The idea behind the Bounty Boards would basically be like what we see playing the tabletop game itself. In towns, local villagers may post up on a bounty board about a monster or some problem that is plaguing the town or area (which would allow for the more traditional 'quests' to be placed here as well!). The boards would provide contracts similar to player-based ones, basically saying "Hey, we need help!" making it taken in a way as a form of mobile quest compared to more traditional 'find a dungeon, run through it and solve the problem we have with it', as these unique mobs may move around the area, or get suddenly killed by another group unsuspectingly. When players go out to find the monster slain, they may run into the other group, perhaps searching for its home and the treasures it may hold? Social dynamics may come through those groups interacting with each other, possibly creating conflict between them or an alliance to find the rest of the treasure the monster's lair may hold.

The monsters themselves would have to be varied and unique, possibly changing in regards to hex placement, and no two should be distinctly the same (no same name, just a general type of monster with its own unique moniker! As an example, during a tabletop game we fought with a bugbear named Walkar that was plaguing a small town with some goblins and eventually happened upon his lair, which we actually had to fight with another group of adventurers which wanted to claim our bounty and the loot his lair held with less competition, we eventually had something similar happen where we killed a more notorious and different monster but this time did not encounter another group of players, but instead a greater adventure hook!).

A way to possibly make slaying these 'Notorious Creatures' more socially rewarding, is to perhaps also apply some form of reputation and trophy reward to slaying these creatures. Maybe when players kill a unique mob and returns for the reward, in addition to the thanks and reward from townsfolk, they also add this mob to a personal 'rap-sheet' of Special events, as well as an increase to their reputation around the area (and perhaps further, which would play into their player based reputation by showing they have skill as an adventurer). These deeds may also be heard about when players gather information about this particular player or group, with more well-known and powerful creatures being of greater note than others (so you can't go around killing 50 Unique bandits and expect to think you're now the most well-known Hero in all of the Inner Sea), so when players of greater strength than others feel as though their accomplishments really mean something, and people will acknowledge them. That also plays into trophies and special loot, perhaps specially named items or trophies may be available for those that become professional 'Monster Hunters' because of their exploits, such as through the slaying of a well-known dragon, would possibly make their item being able to be called 'Dragon-Hewer', or some form of special item or trophy of that equivalent, their items and trophies gaining a reputation and story of their own to tell fellow heroes during a local jaunt at the tavern!

These physical and social rewards would be able to be gained from many different unique mobs or events that spawn/occur and wander around hexes, not being stuck in one predefined area causing people to clutter around this one spawn area to kill a specific dragon for the loot he drops alone. Things like this would be everywhere around Pathfinder Online, just as it would be in the world of Golarion. The world is large, filled with many different people and beasts, and people take notice to those that are known for slaying great threats to the world and carrying their own uniquely named items! Of course, they also have to deal with they threats such a reputation and gear brings, as someone may just want that item you have for the reputation it brings with it, or for the prestige of defeating such a skilled adventurer...

Or at least something like that. I think this would clear up the whole going for one specific unique mob, prevent people from flocking over to the best specific item and having 1000 copies of it across the world. It allows people to have special gear exclusive to them, along with the idea that they have slain their own unique monster and gained a special bit of social fame for NPCs and PCs to see.

I hope this is a good idea that people agree with! :)

For me, my character will probably be a TWF ranger that has some splashes of the fighter archetype skill progression (from what I saw, the 11 base classes are going to be in at launch for character archetypes, don't know about prestige though, I didn't see anything about that on the Goblinworks blog post about characters from back January). I became a fan of the fighter/ranger idea when I was playing D&D 3.5 back in the day, before I even knew anything about Drizzt. I just loved the ability to track people around carrying two weapons with bonuses against favored enemies!

After that I think I'd create a wizard-like character that doesn't directly stick to the archetype, which would hopefully be able to become a crafter so I can have some sustainability in the marketplace for all of my characters while having an arcane caster to mess with. Pretty much after that my later characters are up in the air. I just found out about Pathfinder Online a little while ago, and I'm really excited to see how they're going to be porting Pathfinder into video games.

Crusty, I'm really with you on the hope of golem crafting being in the game, I'm a huge fan of creating constructs so fingers crossed! Either way, the tech demo will shed some light on the game a bit! :)

EDIT: Actually just re-checked the blog post, from what it said it looks like prestige classes might not be available until after launch and some more work is done, at least according to this quote (taken from the blog post Your Pathfinder Online Character at Goblinworks.com):

Each of the base classes in the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook will be represented in the online game in this way, and in time we intend to add additional development paths to simulate prestige classes, archetypes, and base classes from other Pathfinder RPG content such as the Advanced Player's Guide and the Ultimate rulebooks.