Uthreth Baelcoressitas's page

Looks like we can close this thread, much like the staff at Goblinwerks and eventually the game itself.

So paizo drops the ball on mythic, pathfinder online, and the VTT thats been dead or in the works but now stopped for the past 3 years.

You can choose to think of it that way.

I choose to acknowledge that an investor pulled out, and Goblinworks tried very hard to find more investment to make up for it, but unfortunately couldn't find it before funds dropped below a critical threshold. Meanwhile, instead of shutting down like other studios have done, they've tightened their bootstraps and made a commitment to the players to fight as hard and as long as they can to make this game succeed. Lisa Stevens herself poured her heart out to the community, and is now working actively with settlement leaders to make sure that everyone's ideas are heard and that the game has the highest chance to not only survive, but bounce back and actually become a success.

EBA has a system in place for this for EBA members. If you're a member of the Everbloom Alliance (Phaeros, Brighthaven, Keepers Pass, Hammerfall, Blackwood Glade) please contact your settlement leadership if you'd like to get involved.

So, there's definitely a difference whether you are talking about solo play or group play.

Solo play: Playing this game casually as a solo player is going to limit your options. Gathering can definitely be done solo, and consists of running around filling up your bags with stuff harvested from nodes, similar to WoW and other games, while avoiding packs of mobs. If you want to play the economy, in the current state of the game you can haul goods from one settlement to another and make a profit that way but you'll have to coordinate with others at both ends to make the transfers. You can do this by PMing on these forums, or on private company/settlement websites. You can also refine or craft, but both will also require coordination for obtaining materials (unless you harvest them yourself) and for selling the product. I expect that by the end of February we will see some development of the Auction Houses to the point where a lot of the coordination can be done through those, which will greatly aid the solo casual player.

Group play: This will definitely require coordination, and probably also joining an existing group (shameless plug for the Seventh Veil, which is casual friendly, but there are many others to choose from). If your schedule is limited but flexible, you can check for scheduled events and log in during those times. Events may include taking down monster escalations, some of which require very coordinated tactics, or group gathering events which might include players acting as guards killing low level monster camps while they watch over the gatherers nearby. If your schedule is both limited and inflexible, you can schedule your own events and have other players join you when it's convenient for you. This may sometimes result in a lower than expected turnout, so you'll have to have a backup solo option for yourself if the event falls through.

Basically, playing casually in this game is definitely doable, especially if you join a group with an efficient infrastructure that you can take advantage of. If you want to play this game casually without joining any groups, it will be somewhat difficult until a lot more features are implemented, or until you have enough experience on your character to be able to gather, refine, and craft through the entire process. Hopefully by then you'll be able to take advantage of a functioning Auction House to buy/sell along the way and at the end of the process.

Taking down camps of low level monsters solo is not recommended. It can be done, but will probably quickly become boring.

For me, there are two big things missing in terms of functionality:

- Viewing a thread always starts you at the beginning, rather than at the first new post. I follow the GW forums a little, but if this were implemented I would follow them a lot more.

- The forum is not mobile friendly. Detecting a mobile browser is easy, and limiting the width of the post is also easy. I hate having to zoom out to the point where the text is so small I have to strain to read it, but that's still better than constantly moving left and right like a typewriter trying to read a post.

We were able to take down what seemed like a few dozen T2 groups of ogres tonight with only a handful of deaths the whole time. We took our time, used tactics, assigned targets, and executed plans successfully. We were able to learn quite a bit along the way, and we got more comfortable as time passed. I think the hardest group we took down had 3 purples (2 shamans and a ravager), 3 reds, and a bunch of yellows in a mixed group of about 8 ogres with a handful of wolves thrown in. Nihimon managed to die on that one. ;)

Having people that can focus fire and burn down targets as someone calls them out is essential. Also, it helps to be able to rely on a couple of tank types standing toe to toe with red or even purple ogres while the rest are burned down. I think we managed to do it all with only 2 healers, and only one of them was a dedicated cleric.

Overall I absolutely love the changes to the AI. I hadn't done any PvE for over a week because it was basically boring, but now it's fun again. It was a great way to get some of our new recruits into some coordinated action, and I look forward to the next time (probably this weekend sometime) that we organize another event like that.

My wife and I each have 2 characters with Destinys twin. We've decided one will be our fighter and one our crafter. Should we play both fighters together or 1 fighter/1 crafter?

It's probably best for each of you to have 1 fighter and 1 crafter on your accounts. That way you can each play whichever of your characters you'd like at any given moment. Any other way and you wouldn't be able to have 2 fighters on or 2 crafters on at the same time.

If you're asking what to play at the same time, I would think it would depend on what you want to do. If you want to adventure together, tackle escalations, maybe harvest a bit or do some pvp, then you should both play your fighters, for example.

It doesn't take a whole lot of skill to use the best Tier 1 abilities from every role. It's actually the entire reason for the dedication bonuses - to balance against that exact tactic. Tier 2 is when we'll see how the different roles really interact with each other. At that point, people will be forced due to the greater exp costs to narrow down to abilities and features mainly from one role with a little mixed in from a secondary role, and the latter will most probably remain Tier 1 for awhile.

I've beaten Slammy and run him out of Hammerfall, and I'm sure others have beaten him as well. He tends to log on in the few hours before down time and prey on AFKers and crafters. The thing about PvP videos is that you can record thousands of hours of footage and just pick the ones that look the most favorable. Still, in our 1v1 fight he definitely put up a good fight and it did last quite awhile before he ran away with Energetic Field. I look forward to future engagements.

I love the company or settlement tabard idea. I also agree with Decius that company/settlement name should appear under the player name when you target them. I think those two things together with making it easier to target people or cycle through non-allies would solve the problem, and without using nameplates.

I'm against nameplates. It's refreshing to have a system as different as PFO and once targeting is fixed, determining who is on what side is as simple as cycling targets (or tabbing through if tabbing only cycles through enemies). I find myself paying much more attention to how someone looks or acts in PFO than in games like WoW purely because of the lack of nameplates. I count this as a huge positive for PFO.

Got into a nice fight again tonight with TEO and TSV. Traded oen tower for another. Lessons learned, Defense is impossible even when the defender outnumbers the attacker. That or TSV/TEO didn't quite outnumber us enough to stop us.

I hope they implement the attackers taking more time to spawn soon. That'll make a huge difference.

I think the most people we had at one time defending was 8. I didn't get an accurate count of you guys but it seemed like a little more than that. That was only on the defense, though. When we counter attacked I think 3 from TEO joined us, along with another one of our guys so I think at that point we were at 12. These numbers could be off by 1-2, of course.

It was a good fight. I'm glad we got into PvP tonight, a lot of us felt left out yesterday when we saw no action at all.

Targeting is still kind of an issue, though I only had problems a couple of times. I was able to recognize most of your names, and a lot of our TeamSpeak was spent asking if so-and-so was friendly, so we were able to cope that way. Not being able to heal people in your own party who are red in the group battles led to a bunch of our deaths. I don't think any of us lost armor (but I could be wrong), but we did have one guy go from 20 to 1 durability on the new armor he got like an hour before the fighting began.

The intro to the article is pretty harsh, so people who don't read past the first bit are going to have a negative impression. However, by the end of the article it's very positive and Ryan's responses to comments are very well done in my opinion.

Do you enjoy surviving in the wilderness, relying on your skills and those of your brothers and sisters so that you aren't forced to be a city dweller?

We're looking to expand our family, and if the above applies to your character in a roleplaying sense then you may just fit right in.

Sponsoring Settlement: Phaeros
Member of: The Seventh Veil
Alignment: True Neutral (we accept NG, LN, TN, CN, and NE)

Roleplaying: We preserve and protect the forest, and harvest using sustainable methods. We're woodsmen, hunters, and survivalists and we're a band of brothers.

Membership: The Echo Woodsmen are a sub-community of The Seventh Veil and are sponsored by Phaeros, a settlement in the southeast. As such, in order to become a member of The Echo Woodsmen you must first apply and become a member of The Seventh Veil.

Leadership: The Echo Woodsmen are led by a core group of real life friends who meet up and socialize often. We play board games, roleplay in several different tabletop groups using a variety of systems, and many of us went to college together in our younger days. Collectively we have decades of gaming experience, both on- and off-line. We're a mature group who like to have fun and we're very interested in promoting positive game play.

*If we sound like a group that you could call family, head over to The Seventh Veil forums and apply. Be sure to mention in your application that you'd like to be a member of The Echo Woodsmen.

**Also, our wild blueberries are delicious.

Our Updated Recruitment Thread @ The Seventh Veil

We do love our buttered scones ;)

We're also very casual friendly, light hearted, and we're here to have fun. There will never be a requirement to show up for anything - our hope is that you will play because you want to play, not because you're required to for any reason.

Along with others from The Seventh Veil, we've been working on escalations in our area south of Phaeros, and it's been a ton of fun. Last night I logged in for a bit to join one such group and we managed to fight the escalation from 100% down to 95% with some effort before I had to log off. Come help us keep our forest healthy and clear of encroaching fiends!

Do you consider yourself manly? Or perhaps you might just enjoy the company of manly men.

We're looking to expand our family, and if the above applies to your character in a roleplaying sense then you may just fit right in.

Sponsoring Settlement: Phaeros
Member of: The Seventh Veil
Alignment: True Neutral (we accept NG, LN, TN, CN, and CE)

Roleplaying: We preserve and protect the forest, and harvest using sustainable methods. We're woodsmen, hunters, and survivalists and we're a band of brothers.

Membership: The Echo Woodsmen are a sub-community of The Seventh Veil and are sponsored by Phaeros, a settlement in the southeast. As such, in order to become a member of The Echo Woodsmen you must first apply and become a member of The Seventh Veil, here.

Leadership: The Echo Woodsmen are led by a core group of real life friends who meet up and socialize often. We play board games, roleplay in several different tabletop groups using a variety of systems, and many of us went to college together in our younger days. Collectively we have decades of gaming experience, both on- and off-line. We're a mature group who like to have fun and we're very interested in promoting positive game play.

*If we sound like a group that you could call family, head over to The Seventh Veil forums and apply. Be sure to mention in your application that you'd like to be a member of The Echo Woodsmen.

Also, we have blueberries.

Our Thread @ The Seventh Veil

The forums on Goblinworks.com (currently referred to as the Alpha Forums) are pretty much exactly what you described that you wanted. There are sub-forums for everything from crafting to different class roles to technical questions and bug reports. My understanding is that those forums will eventually be the permanent default forums for Pathfinder Online.

Also, don't ever be afraid to ask questions. Especially now - lots of in-game information is not yet in the game, and even veterans have to search on the forums or other external resources for information from time to time. A few weeks ago there weren't even tooltips in the game for feats, so it's coming along.

I'd also like to see some cases in which a shortsword and dagger is superior to a greatsword, and I haven't seen such a case yet.

Perhaps once grapple effects are implemented we will see more reason to use small weapons in the offhand, or in the secondary slot. Being able to cut yourself out of grapple-like root spells would be much better than sitting there with your greatsword making faces at your enemy until the root effect wears off.

Exciting times! With the announcement of a Mac client on Day 1 of EE, a couple of our guys are now super elated. Also the additional few days in exchange for the entire map on Day 1 will affect us because we're in the area that would not otherwise have been available immediately.

We've secured a Smallholding and have come to a decision on where to place it when we get it. We're on track to be one of the premier PvE groups within the Seventh Veil, with our future home hex being located in proximity to more than one potential PvE rewarding hex. That doesn't mean we won't participate in PvP and other aspects of the game; in fact we have some members who are aiming for PvP to be at the center of their character concepts.

Head on over to our forums and check us out! Feel free to PM me here or on those forums, or ask any member of the Echo Woodsmen or the Seventh Veil about us.

Reddit just created a sub-reddit for PFO recruitment, as the only things getting posted were recruitment threads. They were hogging up the whole thing. IT was mostly us known Paizo posters hogging it up too.

The Echo Woodsmen, EoX, and Forgeholm were the only groups who submitted recruitment threads before PFORecruitment was formed. There were several other messages interspersed, so they were hardly "the only things getting posted." There were also posts with questions that Ryan Dancey actually chimed in and answered, along with links to live streams, Gobbocasts, and several recent blogs.

The direct link to the PFO subreddit is here: /r/PathfinderOnline

The direct link to the PFORecruitment subreddit is here: /r/PFORecruitment

*EDIT: There were some other recruitment threads far enough down on the page that I hadn't noticed before.

One of the most exciting things about being a member of Phaeros in terms of game mechanics is the idea that I'll be able to train anything I want at my home settlement and will not be boxed into a specific role or couple of roles. As a result, companies who are sponsored by Phaeros or our nearby allies need not have their members worry about being forced to play something they might not want to just so that they will be able to play with their friends.

If your group is diverse in desired roles or play styles, Phaeros is one of the few places that will be able to offer you a place to live where everyone can play what they want and how they want. The True Neutral alignment only adds to that - we will be able to support 5 alignments, as many or more than any other settlement.

Now is the best time to get involved. There are already several really great looking and diverse groups forming within the Seventh Veil and all sponsored by Phaeros. The Echo Woodsmen, The Grey Guard, Frozen Fingers, and a few other groups that haven't made formal announcements yet (including a mining group and an all-gnome group, among others). If you have your own group you can maintain autonomy and join Phaeros, or The Seventh Veil, and become part of this fantastic community.

Someone from a neighboring friendly settlement mentioned that their druids may not like The Echo Woodsmen. I asked him why, and it turned out that he hadn't read past "lumberjacks."

We use sustainable methods with the end result of actually increasing the health of the forest. We have the utmost respect for nature and will protect the woodlands around our home against any who may ravage them.

Druids and rangers will find The Echo Woodsmen an excellent group to call their family. As will anyone else who would rather help the forest than hurt it. The forest is our home, and we respect and protect it, as it provides for us.

Sponsoring Settlement: Phaeros
Member of: The Seventh Veil
Alignment: True Neutral

Roleplaying: The Echo Woodsmen consist of characters from all roles, with the common cause of harvesting from the natural environment using sustainable methods. We're lumberjacks, hunters, trappers, gardeners, gatherers, crafters, and even land developers that focus on long term health of the natural biome. Gardening and harvesting timber sustainably actually increases the natural health of the area, and adopting a hunting methodology with focus on maintaining the biodiversity of the fauna in the region is a net benefit to the natural environs.

Membership: The Echo Woodsmen are a sub-community of The Seventh Veil and are sponsored by Phaeros, a settlement in the southeast of the Early Enrollment map. As such, in order to become a member of The Echo Woodsmen you must first apply and become a member of The Seventh Veil, here.

Leadership: The Echo Woodsmen are led by a core group of real life friends who meet up and socialize often. We play board games, roleplay in several different tabletop groups using a variety of systems, and many of us went to college together in our younger days. Collectively we have decades of gaming experience, both on- and off-line. We're a mature group who like to have fun and we're very interested in promoting positive game play.

Looking Ahead: The Echo Woodsmen plan to run a PoI and both outposts in a woodlands hex near Phaeros. As we discover more information about the game, we will adjust our plans accordingly, but currently the outposts will be a Lumber Mill and a Hunting Lodge.

*If we sound like a group that you could call family, head over to The Seventh Veil and apply. Be sure to mention in your application that you'd like to be a member of The Echo Woodsmen.

The people of the Seventh Veil are some of the most genuine and welcoming people I've seen in online games. I'm very glad I joined, and if you're still deciding which group to call your family I think you'll find that once you join you'll be glad you did too. If you'd like to talk about it some more or have any questions, I can usually be found on the Seventh Veil Teamspeak server most evenings.

Learn more about Taur-im-Duinath here! Also, check out the forums here. If you like elves even a little bit, join now!

This is one of the groups that I'm super excited about. Heavy roleplaying potential, great initial settlement location, friendly and active leadership, and who wouldn't want to be a haughty elven lord?

I'm glad that this seems to be reaching a point of resolution and that Golgotha will still end up with a settlement. Just to clarify, are the Fidelis votes also being removed or only the Aeternum votes? In the thread on the Pax forums that seemed to spark this thread, it's mentioned a couple of times that Fidelis members should vote for Golgotha. It just seems a little strange to me considering the vast alignment difference; are members of Fidelis going to have Golgotha's settlement as their home until they can found their own settlement or will they be located at Callambea with Aeternum in the interim?

To reiterate, I'm glad that Golgotha was not forced to abandon their land rush spot. I personally think that Pax will bring a lot to PfO as a whole and that Golgotha's catering to evil and necromancy fills a necessary role in the community.

Dwarves are one of the iconic fantasy races and they have an incredibly rich role-playing history. Who wouldn't want to be one? Consider joining Deepforge Company in the settlement of Forgeholm and living the experience that many only dream of.

I'll second the animations being much more important than the graphics. Uncanny Valley is a hypothesis that humans experience revulsion when animations or movement of something human-like is not quite human-like enough. There are ongoing studies currently exploring this.

WoW had very smooth animations and I think that caused people to connect with their character very easily right from the beginning.

I'm not sure how difficult it is to get animations correct in Unity, but I hope the devs put much more effort into that than into the graphics.

Hi Psvinkle! Feel free to hop over to the Seventh Veil forums and post in the Member Applications section! I personally think it'd be great to have you!

Link: Member Applications

I don't understand why so many people think that K is going to be some incredible merchant stop on the crossroads. It's a great bandit settlement because of its proximity to two roads, both going to NPC settlements, and because it's a little tucked away. It's not optimal for a merchant settlement and it most likely won't become the trade hub that people expect. Consider for a moment that O is only one more hex away from the crossroads than K is, and you'll quickly see that there are 3 non-lettered settlements that are closer, two of them significantly so. In fact, the one at (-17,05) has a very close and direct path to the crossroads and can exert direct pressure on two of the three roads leading to the crossroads fairly easily.

Xeen, I'm replying to your post though I've heard the merits of K preached by many more than just you, so please don't take this as a personal attack of any kind. Also, you mentioned that it's better and not that it's better for a merchant settlement specifically. I definitely agree that it's an awesome place for bandits or even "good guys" who want to help "protect" the roads.

I apologize if I missed it, I wasn't able to find information on this.

What happens to the contents of a bank when the settlement it's in is destroyed? What if just the bank is destroyed?

To the victors go the spoils? A percentage of them? Do the contents remain in the bank in case you can somehow sneak in and withdraw them under cover of darkness and distraction?

What about if you're kicked out of a settlement? Is there a scenario where your goods are confiscated? Will they be deposited in a "lump sum" outside the city gates like an eviction?

Hmm, I just looked it up and I may actually be wrong. It means "warlike" which really does fit well. I think I must have been going off of roleplaying jargon instead of actual real world semantics.

I think you guys misunderstood me. "Martial" typically implies physical combat rather than magic. I was simply commenting on the word choice. :)

I think TEO or T7V is where I'll end up. I actually filled out an app for T7V over a year ago but posted awhile back that I would rather see how the first bit of EE goes before committing. Both organizations seem to want to promote a playstyle very close to what mine typically is.

@Being,

I completely agree. However, I'm also sure that there will be skills available as part of other roles that would benefit a role that won't be implemented until OE or shortly before. For example, if I want to play a Ranger in the future there will most likely core skills as a part of the Fighter track that will be shared in the end that I can train in the meantime. For the rest, I can bank the experience a bit in anticipation of more Ranger-specific skills being added to the game.

I think that teamwork feats are something different. They would work more like paladin auras in WoW, where if you're within the aura of someone else with the feat you both gain the bonus. Alternatively, it could work like the Shield Mate and you just have to be in the same group. Either way, that's a different discussion.

The Formation Combat system would be an optional way for large scale battles to occur and lighten the load on the server. Which it would, because there would be a lot less information passed from server to client. Instead of 400 (or 4000) characters' info being passed to each client in the battle, only 50-100 entities' data would be passed. This would go a long way toward helping the server deal with everything and everyone's clients staying up to date without lag. The problem then becomes the textures on the client end but that's a symptom of computer hardware and there are things that can be done to help that like loading low res textures etc.

The main problem I think people have with the Formation Combat system, from what I've seen in this thread, is that it takes away from your ability to control your character. That's not the aim at all, in fact you should be able to leave the formation at any time. At first I didn't think simply moving should take you out of formation but now I think that would be a good way to go, originally I thought you'd have to click something in the formation UI to leave. In PnP Pathfinder, characters can move and cast, so there's no reason that being essentially on autofollow would prevent you from doing things like that. Being in the formation would grant you defensive bonuses if there are defensive characters in the formation, and possibly offensive magic bonuses if you have multiple wizards casting or something. It's all up in the air, but the main focus was the mechanic behind Formation Combat that would help alleviate strain on the server while maintaining fun for everyone involved.

Think of it as a vehicle, imagine yourself riding on a cart that was moving and you can cast or shoot arrows or whatever you'd like from the cart. You wouldn't be moving yourself, the person driving the cart would be moving everyone together, but you'd still be useful and it would still be fun. When I was writing the OP I was thinking about a lot of things but one of them was the few games I've played where you could hop on a tank and take a ride while still providing cover fire and other support. If you prefer not to think of it that way then that's not a problem, just think about it like a unit sticking together and moving together and covering each others' backs. Being able to react to a flank quickly is easier under the Formation Combat system because the leader just has to select a different formation and everyone automatically falls into place. Each formation could give different bonuses and be useful for different situations.

I think in the case of the rogue sneaking up behind someone, they would just break formation for a second and go do that and then come back. Or, just not be in formation with everyone else and just keep sneaking around. Formations aren't for everyone, and they should be optional.

Formation Combat

Introduction
Formation Combat has the potential to make large scale battles viable and fun. If designed correctly from the bottom up, server load can be drastically reduced and hundreds of people can be on the battlefield at the same time. What follows is what I envision for fomation combat.

Scenario
You and five of your friends want to go adventuring together and are gathering in The Rusty Swagger. You receive word that an army is approaching the peaceful farming settlement of Farmville. The settlement is known for its wealth, being the only hex in the area capable of producing Willow Grain, the main component in a popular brew. Having no standing army of their own, they rely on mercenaries for defense and your group fits the bill. You jump up, head to the stables, and mount your horses for the short 2-hex journey. Along the way, you are put in charge and start setting up formations. Since three of your number are front line fighter types, you set up a simple formation with those three in the front and the more magical oriented in the back and set it as the default. You also set up a formation with two of the front liners in the front, one in the back next to the cleric who is wearing heavy armor, and the physically weakest side by side in the middle. When you get to Farmville you immediately leave the settlement and join the other groups who will meet the invading force on the road. Standing in formation along the road, you await the clash of forces with eager anticipation. Suddenly, around the bend come a squad of charging barbarians, intent on slaughter. Your fighters stand their ground and form a wall upon which the wave crashes. The three in the back sling spells and incantations, causing energy to tear into the flesh of the barbarians while bolstering your group with beneficial effects and healing. Having no healer, the barbarians are quickly dispatched, but looking around you noticed dozens of other battles and not all of them are going well for the defenders of Farmville. Suddenly, a battle cry from behind you fills the air as more attackers appear, and archers appear in front. Surrounded, you quickly switch to the second formation you set up while on the road, and one of the fighters jumps back with your cleric while the other two unsling tower shields from their backs. Forming a stalwart defense against arrows, the fighters with the tower shields are invaluable in allowing the fighter and cleric, along with the two wizards, to focus their attentions on the flanking enemy. Quick work is made of them and though the cleric was unable to reliably heal his allies because he was the one being targeted, not much damage was taken because of the defense given to the group by the tower shields. The battle is won shortly thereafter, and your group collects its generous reward from the people of Farmville.

Mechanics
I envision an information pane with dots representing each member of the formation. These dots would be silver if not in combat, or green/yellow/red/black depending on the health of the character, something like 90%-100%/50%-89%/1%-49%/0%. The leader of the formation should be able to select, create, modify, or remove formations through some sort of flyout or dropdown menu. Creating or modifying a formation would open a new focus pane where the player could either choose a predefined formation and drag party members to it or create a new formation by dragging party members' dots onto a blank slate. Formations containing the exact number of people in the party or more would be allowed, to allow for players losing connection or dropping from the group suddenly. If a new player is added to the group no change to formations will occur unless there are now more characters in the group than dots in the formation, in which case the formation will become blank and the leader will have to select or design a new formation. Facing is part of a formation, so that must be taken into account when designing the formation.

When a formation is selected, the group becomes one creature with many heads. Graphically, each person's character will run to its position and stand in formation, similar to Baldur's Gate and other such games. The leader of the group is the one that will control movement. The leader turning left or right without moving forward will not move the formation but moving forward or backward will move the entire formation and also cause the formation to reorient itself graphically.

When attacking a formation, it would be similar to attacking hit locations on a creature. Each zone of the formation is occupied by a separate character and that character takes damage if that zone is hit. The result is that it will look like you're hitting that character and that character will take damage, but in reality behind the scenes you're hitting the formation which is treated as one creature but the hit location causes the damage to be routed to that character. If a character dies its body is left behind if the formation moves and that zone is considered dead so cannot be targeted. If a character is immobilized or otherwise cannot move with the formation it is left behind if the formation moves and becomes its own entity and leaves the formation if the formation moves out of range. Characters can rejoin the formation any time they wish, as long as they are still in the group.

Characters in a formation can still take actions that do not include movement. For example, casting spells or targeting and firing a bow at an enemy or attacking an adjacent enemy in melee are all actions that can be taken. With few exceptions, there would be no mechanical difference when taking these actions in a formation, except that you don't move and you might get a bonus depending on the formation.

Efficiency
Because the formation acts as a single entity in terms of movement, the server and client both would be able to process the information more efficiently. Each character represents a zone within the formation, so location data only needs to be kept for the leader's position. It would be much more efficient to only have preset formations and not allow people to design their own, but there can be dozens or more of them to allow for versatility. Having predefined formations would allow both the server and client to reconstruct the formation with minimal data. For example, an array passed from server to client might look like this: {formation_id, x, y, z, player1_id, null, player2_id}. This would be for a formation of 3 with only 2 members present, in positions 1 and 3.

Formations would be treated in many ways like a character would. Damage done or spells cast by the formation would act as if a single character had done the damage or cast the spell. Location only matters for determining if someone is adjacent or otherwise in melee range using reach or something, and that can be calculated using the defined zones in the formation. For area effect spells the easiest and most efficient thing to do would be to affect the entire formation equally, but it could be done by zone instead if you wanted to differentiate between actual locations of each character.

Conclusion
I see formation combat being one of the big draws to the game from people who like very tactical combat. This can be used in both PvP and PvE, above ground and in dungeons depending on the space the party can move in. Entire armies could be assembled across a field from each other and clash in an epic battle using formation combat.

In PnP Pathfinder, anything can be changed... except your class levels. You can be reincarnated as a totally different race or be polymorphed into a candlestick, but your class levels and the skills and abilities derived from them never change. There's a reason for this and that reason is the same in PFO. It would be like suddenly removing someone from existence and replacing them with someone totally and completely different, there's just too much of a continuity break.

I know the arguments for it, and I can relate. If you decide to make your character a Wizard and then find out that spells like Fly, Teleport and Wish are not anywhere near what you expected (which, btw, is likely) and you aren't having fun because of that, you will want to play something else. Because it possibly took you 5-6 months to realize that you didn't like being a wizard you want to have that time refunded and applied somewhere else so you don't fall behind everyone else. Your dream was to be one of the first to complete a class and now that's impossible without a refund. Well, that's not what this game is about. I expect that very few people will take a straight shot all the way to the level 20 merit badge in a class, even among those who intend to do that when they start. I expect that it will be more fun to grow your character here and there as you find out more about the game and hone in on what you want to do. There will be skills that people learn that at some point they stop using, but the journey they took learning those skills contributed to their knowledge of the game and the experiences they will draw on in the future. Besides, versatility is an amazing thing, and if you can't decide on a class and take a few levels of 4 different classes you'll be that much better able to handle a wider variety of situations. This is going to be a classless game, so have fun with it and stop worrying about min/maxing so much.

I'm against being able to respec. Valkenr is right; if you want to pursue a different set of skills then just start learning them. There is no limit to what you can learn. The only thing a respec does is break continuity and immersion. It made sense in WoW and other theme parks, but not with PFO's skill system.

Deleting accounts may not be reversible, whereas flags can be removed easily. I am 100% for solid and harsh crackdown on bots, but I'm against innocent people having their accounts deleted without warning. For example, if you get into combat and turn on auto attack and run to the bathroom and a GM happens to stop by and ask you if you're a bot and you don't respond, it would be bad if you came back to find your account deleted. If there's no auto attack, think of harvesting a node and that taking time. Or not anything in particular, but if it looks like you're doing something and just before the GM asks you a question you go AFK for whatever reason, it could lead to a misunderstanding. Add to that some people not speaking English very well or possibly being too young to understand that they should respond to a GM, or even someone who is drunk or otherwise under the influence of something and you open up lots of room for unfortunate account deletions to occur. At that point it would become more of a chore for GMs to verify bots because they would have to be 110% sure it was a bot and not something else. If it's something simple as a flag then if there's a mistake it's a simple thing to correct it. Maybe start with a flag and continue monitoring for possible account deletion later.

Seamless Zoning
So the topic of seamless zoning has been touched on in a couple places, the most recent of which was during the live broadcast at the end of the Kickstarter. I've been thinking since then of ways to accomplish this, and I don't think WoW's model will work. Seamless zoning is important for immersion, and while EVE has the excuse of needing to use warp travel to go between star systems, PFO doesn't have that luxury. That's why it's especially important for PFO to have seamless zoning.

Since this is going to be a single server, everyone will be in the same world and zones will have to support potentially hundreds of people or even more for some hubs like the NPC towns or some very large settlements. One way to accomplish seamless zoning is to preload every zone that connects to the one the player is in so that when they move to the next zone it will already have loaded it and will just load the next zone(s) before they can get to the other side.

Since PFO is going to use hexes, almost every hex will border 6 other hexes. Loading 7 hexes is going to be hugely taxing on systems to the point where you would basically need to have an SSD for even the most remote hexes and also a great connection to the server cluster for well populated ones.

I wonder if it's possible to overlap hexes somewhat. Draw a band, something like 5% of the width of the hex, around the perimeter of the hex that is loaded when a neighboring hex is loaded. The band will have to be big enough so that draw distance is included. Actually, since it's common for spells to have a range of "long" (400 ft + 40 ft/2 levels) it'll probably have to be 800 ft minimum regardless. If the band is entered, the next hex is completely loaded so that by the time you get into that hex you'll essentially be in a zone that is 2 hexes big. The most this would ever get is 3 hexes if you hover around the vertex of a hex. If low res textures are loaded by default until complete and then they switch to high res if that option is selected, this would most likely be possible with no indication to the player besides noticing low res textures if their system is slow enough. Of course, the band width could be tweaked and tested to find the optimum size.

So here is what would happen in order:
- Uthreth is in a hex, and his system has loaded 800 ft into each of the neighboring 6 hexes
- Uthreth walks toward the edge of his hex, until he gets to 800 ft from the edge
- The next hex is loaded
- Uthreth continues walking, and crosses over to the next hex
- The previous hex remains in memory because he's still within the 800 ft band (of the new hex)
- Uthreth continues walking, and exits the 800 ft band in the new hex. The old hex is removed from memory except for its band, and the band for all 6 of the hexes that border the new hex has been loaded

Everything mentioned until now has to do specifically with textures and the map, and not with dynamic objects such as players and monsters. Likely not all dynamic objects in a hex will ever be loaded at the same time, so these have to be treated differently when moving from hex to hex. For objects within the same hex, the normal dynamic object loading code will occur with no difference and no problems related to zoning. However, when a player is within that band that borders the hex, sometimes dynamic objects within the band of the next hex will have to be loaded. This is where synchronization will have to occur between shards in the cluster, but since we're only concerned with what is in the 800 ft band it shouldn't be too much strain. Problems might happen when there are armies clashing along the border of hexes, but since settlements are in the middle of each hex that should be kept to a minimum, I imagine. Even more so if armies defending a settlement get a bonus while in that settlement that's enough for them to pull back to the settlement instead of meeting on the road. Also, priority can be given to band synchronization over other operations to mitigate the potential problems.

In EVE, when there was a large fleet battle the devs would redistribute the load so that the system where it took place would be able to handle more than usual. It didn't always help enough, but it did help some and this kind of proactive tuning could be done in PFO as well. It would be trivial to set up an alarm to notify the devs when more than X number of people gathered in a hex, presumably an army about to begin the march.

I've seen drastically different numbers thrown around over the last couple days for hex size in many different discussions. How big, exactly, is a hex?

On Hex Layout
We know that settlements will be placed in the geographic center of each hex, and we know that there will be a few sites scattered around that players will be able to interact with. It was even stated that players will have to clear some of these sites before they will be able to begin the series of tasks that end with a settlement being created in the hex.

On Map Size
Pathfinder Online will be one single server, and they want to start with tens of thousands and move up slowly to hundreds of thousands of players, similar to how EVE Online progressed.

EVE Online's "map" is such a vast area that it takes hours or days (using the 4 hour average daily playtime metric) to travel from one end to the other, depending on the speed of your ship and whether you do it manually or hands-free. It's also a dangerous journey; different groups control different areas of space and they typically guard the choke points into and out of their territory.

I expect that the map size in Pathfinder Online will be similar in scope. If tens of thousands of players are on a single server, with the map size that some people are projecting in other threads of an hour or less to traverse across, the population density will be much too high. The devs have stated repeatedly that there will be plenty of wilderness to explore and that each settlement will be limited in size compared to the total size of a hex.

Conclusion
Can we get a definite answer, or at least a current projection, of how big each hex will be and how many hexes will be included in early enrollment, release, and the future based on player growth? Even something as vague as verification of the facts above (like wanting to maintain wilderness in every hex) would be good. I've seen people throw out numbers in other threads that make absolutely no sense to me, and that are drastically different from other numbers I've seen elsewhere and even what the devs have said. Of course, during development everything changes, which is why I thought I should start this thread and why I think everyone would be ok with an answer that's currently true but might change in the future.