Suviont's page

I think a big part of the problem is the children.

Okay. Stop. The average age of a WoW player is 28. Many theme park MMOs have subscriptions, making children a weaker target for them, as, barring willing parents, children don't have disposable income to drop $15 a month on a game.

You don't like WoW or other theme park MMOs? That's fine. But insulting games and the people that play them purely because you don't enjoy that particular style of game? That's childish.

This thread seems horribly unnecessary and hostile. Playing a lycanthrope or other animal race does not even come close to being a furry.

If even the availability of such a race at some theoretical point in the future would make you not play this game, I'd say that's a very personal problem.

Harrison wrote:

Tyveil wrote:

Completely immersion breaking. I hate, hate, hate the way games do this. It's not a "skin", it's a weapon. If your character is showing it, that's the weapon you're carrying. Same goes for armor. I'm fine with clothing you wear over your armor, but not with "cosmetic armor" that replaces the look of what you're really wearing. It doesn't make sense and it's a stupid mechanic. I highly doubt that PFO will be using this mechanic.

Having gear be able to magically change their look is immersion breaking for Pathfinder?

If 99% of the population is doing it, absolutely it's immersion breaking. We have everyone walking around with sticks and pigstickers when really they are wielding greatswords. I think anyone could understand how ridiculous and immersion breaking that would be. Works fine for PnP, not so great in an MMORPG. I'm sure Goblinworks will put some thought into it and make it not nearly so easy to do (if at all) as it is in the PnP version.

Of course there would be equivalencies (as there is in almost every MMO that uses cosmetic systems). Plate armor must be made to look like plate armor, a greatsword must look like a greatsword, and so on.

Wow. You did say in another thread that you don't have a negative opinion of this game, right?

I mean, the level of unprovoked rudeness on display here, especially when this thread is ostensibly making a request? It's impressive(ly terrible).

Psyblade wrote:

I am slowly putting out the info about PFO to other friendly guilds that I know and see if they are interested. I might actually see if I know someone who is willing to post it on the eve forums and have the rabid dogs being released to this...

j/k about the eve forums :P

Why j/k?

That is the target audience for this game.

If the kickstarter is to succeed those are the people the devs should be advertising to.

Not pathfinder pnp players.

I don't like EVE. I want to play the crap out of PFO.

Your negative opinion of this game doesn't determine its target audience.

Flight only cheapens the experience because it isn't integrated, it's tacked on.most of the time the sole purpose of flight becomes to get from a to b in the fastest possible time, this while thread has been some people saying it doesn't have to be and the other half saying it is.

With the bandits and scout- that assumes your bandits don't have a flier to take out scouts, and that your ambush site is visible from the air. Neither of these can be assumed.
Ever been oin a plane and looked at a forest? You can't see what's underneath the canopy. But that doesn't mean they can't see you.

Several solutions have been offered to the objections, but we never hear WHY they wouldn't work, or how content is bypassed, just that it is.

The flier to take out the scout doesn't change the fact that the scout would see your flier or your party on the ground. Cover on the ground could help, I suppose that would be partly dependent on UI, whether or not brightly colored names will appear above heads. If they do, would they be obscured by foilage? Would tab-target be prevented by foilage?

I'm agreeing that a lot of these limitations and solutions to the problems that come flight could work. However, I think it will be a tricky balancing act to have these restrictions capable of keeping flight from being the go to form of transport for most players, and nerfing it into worthlessness. As much as I don't like or want flight personally, I'd also hate to see it implemented in such a way that those that want flight are handed a near useless version of it. Then no one really gets what they want.

Having it be something a character must focus on to get its usefulness sounds good. Having to spend training in flying specifically would make players choose between gaining flight or other, perhaps more practical skills.

Weight limitations seem to me to be a given, and would considerably help with preventing flying from becoming too powerful, but I don't see it as much addressing the problem of flight becoming too common.

Limited uses of flight from items would also be good. If its a finite resource, each use of flight will need to be considered, rather than "I need to get across town. Time to fly!"

I suppose I don't so much buy the "strong winds" bit that's getting thrown about. Building wind physics for it, as well as audio and visual cues to indicate its presence and direction, as well as a maneuvering system able to incorporate resistance in three dimensions is a lot of work.

The flying monsters solution doesn't seem a great fix to me either. In order to make it a real danger and limitation to flying, those monsters would need to be everywhere. A sky constantly full of griffons and giant eagles would be annoying to look at, and just wouldn't make sense in-universe.

And as for how content would be bypassed... it's on the ground. You fly over it. You avoid the dangers and risks of travelling where the people and monsters that can't fly are. You avoid geography that may be designed to present challenges and force you to make choices on how to deal with it.

Like I said, I know I'm in the minority against flight. I'm not trying to say there's no way it could work, or that the game shouldn't have it because I don't like it. I'm trying to point out that there are a lot of considerations to be made whenever the design of flight in PFO comes up. Some people are approaching flight as a given; that the issues its inclusion raises are trivial and easily addressed, and anyone opposed to flight is some kind of close-minded spoilsport. That's not really the case.

I think the point I have been trying to make us flying doesn't have to be super powerful just because it is in-game. If sustainable flight requires significant training time, and consumes enough of your gear / ability slots, then is relegated to a scouting and harassment role, it will be a meaningful character choice like wearing heavy or light armor, or being a bard or fighter.

This I could get behind. If you want to fly, you have to set out to make a character that can fly. It makes you sacrifice other character options to pursue it, which can make it less desirable for some people, which would make it less common.

I do still worry that flying scouts would end up being the superior scouts in most any situation, though. The advantage of being high above the ground, unrestricted by terrain is a pretty big one. The distance for sight will likely be higher than the distance for attacking, and all a scout has to do is see someone to ruin a well-laid plan. "Alright guys, we've been setting up this ambush for a while now. They'll be coming along this road any minute, and-- ah crap. They've got a flying guy. He sees us... and he's out range. Well, let's pack it in, fellas. They had a flying guy."

I've only skimmed the thread, and I apologize if this has already been said...

Personally, I think using terrain features as impassable obstacles is a cop-out. A vast chasm or a high mountain range shouldn't be impenetrable absent flying. Flying should simply be one of many ways of dealing with that obstacle. Teleporting past it should be another. Grabbing some rope and a Sherpa should be one as well.

I know you skimmed, but that's not what we're saying at all. Terrain obstacles absolutely shouldn't be impassable. They should present choices as to how to deal with them. There's a mountain range ahead, do you A) go around? B) try and climb it? C) look for a pass through the range? D) try and find a cave to go through from underneath?

My own worry is that if there's E) Fly over it, then that's what people are going to do every time. I get the feeling from this discussion that flying's going to get into PFO eventually. I'm not going to say that "That's a bad idea and it will totally ruin the game, nyah!", I just think it should be added very carefully, with a mind to all the ways it can affect the world an the choices in it.

Spoken like one who prefers melee, I suppose.

The Fellowship of the Ring also lacked a healer. Wouldn't life be more interesting if everyone only healed at at the same, slow pace?

Usually an archer, myself.

The LotR example was just a well known reference specifically dealing with flight in a fantasy setting. Not everything in LotR or any other popular fantasy story should be applied to PFO, it was a specific example.

I feel that making the sky an available, accessible place devalues the ground from a practical standpoint, which I think is a shame. The space of the ground has design in every facet, its features affect travel and combat in direct ways that make things interesting. You might have to divert around a canyon, or you can set up an ambush from the high ground.

When you're flying, you move in any direction as you please. This is a lot of nice freedom, but at the same time, a flight from one place to another is a straight line through the sky, and a fight in one patch of sky is virtually identical to a fight in any other patch of sky.

This is also all just opinion. We're perfectly free to disagree.

Marshall Jansen wrote:

...

I read about limitations on gear... not a problem. Any well-organized Chaotic Evil enclave is going to have some people invested in the LG side of things. All it takes is for a LG shell guild to craft a ton of consumables and gear, hire a band of stalwart adventurers to protect it, and go out into the wilderness. 30 minutes later I skype my evil buddies 'hey, got your shipment enroute, 20 guards, not much magic support. Kill them all, loot them, and take your stuff!'

A few days later, a team of LG (or LE, or any other alignment) vets raids the evil hideout and takes all of their stuff.

Yeah. I think it's important to note that not only will there be benefits to simply being LG, but that you earn those benefits and get more from killing the evil guys. The Good-aligned guilds won't simply be killing evil characters and griefers out of the goodness of their hearts. They get stuff for it. It is a defined objective with rewards. These guilds won't have raids to go on. They will have nightly hunts for murderers and thieves among the rest of playerbase.

Kakafika wrote:

Swimming, on the other hand, does not have a lot of the same drawbacks, since it's limited to areas with water.

Nope. Falling in water should lead to instant death and an unrecoverable corpse. Forests and hills too... people can only travel on roads or they die.

Seriously... flight is a challenging thing to implement, but it's also very cool. Fantasy MMO's rarely touch it, or as you mention with WoW, they do so at such a late point in their development that it comes out half-arsed. I think one of the big points of a sandbox MMO is a greater degree of freedom and less railroading. Themeparks are the ones that keep their rides on rails.

I don't think WoW's flying is half-baked. I think it serves a distinct purpose for a different game. The limitations on it don't mean the system is bad, just that Blizzard knows unrestricted flight everywhere would be a bad thing.

A game is defined by its affordances and constraints. There's a big differences between "railroading" and constraints. Not having or even limiting flying would not be "railroading". In fact, I think that it would open up more possibilities for the game.

There's the idea in game design of First Order Optimal Strategies (FOOS). It's the things people do in games because they are the simplest and most effective. It's the best builds for characters in RPGs, the best build order in an RTS, the best combos in a fighting game. The things that people do all the time because anything else is a waste. For the most part, designers want to have a great variety of choices that can reduce the prevalence of FOOS, or at least provide a good variety of FOOS that players will be willing to use.

To me, flying is the FOOS of travel. If it's attainable, it's going to be the way people get around. It's just too desirable. You don't have to worry about terrain or physical obstacles, you can avoid most dangers, and it's likely faster. Limitations like carrying weight or dangers in the sky might help, but I feel like these will simply be obstacles that people will quickly find the best ways around so that they can fly as much as possible. Very limited time of flight, or times per day, or maybe even flight items granting a limited total number of uses could be other good constraints to keep flying from becoming the go to method of travel.

Flight also breaks the feeling of distance and danger in the world for me. Almost every time a discussion about Lord of the Rings happens, someone always brings up "Why didn't they just fly the Ring to Mount Doom on the eagles?" There's lots of in world explanations for it (BECAUSE REASONS), but what it really boils down to is that it would have been a much shorter, much less interesting story.

I'd prefer it if we all walked to Mount Doom.

I'd rather see the game stay grounded. Flight should be limited, in scope and ability if not also availability. Flight in games like CoH and WoW is neat and all that, but it also drastically changes the state of the game. Roads become irrelevant, travel through unsafe areas becomes trivial. These are things that are set up to be important in PFO. Also, think of all the art assets and great locations wasted as people fly right over them to the big city they want to visit.