Valkaern's page

I would absolutely welcome nights that actually appear to be taking place during night time once again.

In my opinion, the ambiance and restrictions of dark nights and deep dark caves are worth any small inconvenience.

I want a broad spectrum of experiences, rather than 'all good, all safe, all easy, all comfortable, all the time' which when not in contrast to 'bad!' feel decidedly shallow. If this were a linear task hub grind, it wouldn't make as much sense or serve as much as a purpose. However in a sandbox environment, where the world you play in can be one of your biggest enemies and sources of danger, it fits perfectly - especially when considering the ways in which we're intended to interact with this specific environment as outlined in the blogs.

Waiting at the zone line of Kithicor Forest at night brought the world alive, the darkness was an entity and it meant something, it added weight to an otherwise mundane area. You knew Kithicor was a dangerous area at night, prone to undead invasions, and traversing it alone in the dark was down right risky. Waiting for others to arrive so you could make the journey in a group was wise; the second you shed light on that you destroy the entire zone.

Here I am over a decade later clearly recalling experiences that led to social interaction and really made the (then) unforgiving world of Norrath a very real place to be.

I want to explore dungeons by the light of a flickering torch and traverse vast forests that are pitch black mysteries beyond the reach of my lantern.

I don't want you holding my hand all the time, I don't want a cave artificially lit by fluorescent bulbs and I don't want wilderness lit by street lamps. I want to, as they say in their blogs, stumble into adventure - what better way to do that than by flickering torchlight?

If the game is designed with the notion that nights will be dark, caves will be dark, the underground will be dark - aside from tools like spells, torches or lanterns, I think the end result would be a game that could treat darkness as a realistic danger and entity, and more than just an inconvenience to some.

It's worked great in the past.

I would gladly welcome any small inconvenience it brings for the sake of setting, ambiance, threat and immersion.

I very much hope learning your way around counts for something and that geographical information remains somewhat esoteric. Hands down the best adventures I've ever had online were in the pre-map/mini-map days of rough guesses, guides, word of mouth and blind luck.

Having someone in the group suggest a dungeon I'd never heard in a zone I'd never been to lent the entire experience and journey an air of mystery. I clearly remember the many times we never reached the intended goal but found adventure elsewhere along the way - or got lost in Rathe mountains for hours while well below the level of the zone, almost lost our corpses to sharks in some ocean somewhere and got drunk back in Freeport to celebrate our eventual return to civilisation.

Did we walk away with some predetermined quest reward and a carefully rationed amount of XP? No. But I did walk away with an experience from 1999 that I fondly remember to this day.

None of that would have had the chance to happen if every area was revealed via in game maps/mini maps. Sure, mini maps make sense in linear task hub grinder themeparks, but in a sandbox environment they do more harm than good.

If they can incorporate in game player made maps as some of the above ideas suggest, that could truly be an amazing thing and would certainly appeal to a lot of people (provided there would be more and more new lands to map as the game expands).

If they can't manage to get a system like that in place, I'd settle for lack of GPS level maps on new born characters who would most likely only have a rough idea as to the shape of the lands beyond their town.

In short, I really hope the majority of wilderness is a mystery to me until I've arrived to see it, or until I open the map I just bought from a player in town.

8. "And there's even the chance that you might be able to create your own module content for other players—perhaps even on a for-profit basis." I've already said elsewhere I think there's a real opportunity here for letting 3rd parties create content like this. I'm very, very pleased to hear that y'all are thinking about how to make that work, and I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of tools evolve to meet those needs over the next decade or so. There's evidence all over the web that motivated users can and will create a lot of high-quality content for free just because they love what they're doing. If you give them the tools to do that in PFO, that will change the MMO world.

There's no question a robust system like this that actually worked could add an invaluable amount of longevity to the game for any of us 'Game Master/Dungeon master' types. Some of us love creating and building games as much as or more than we love playing them.

However, some examples of MMOs that tried to achieve this (player created content) off the top of my head would be: City of Heroes, Ryzom and EQ2. In every one of these examples I find the limitations implemented in order to maintain balance cramp creativity so severely that the content feels bland and lifeless.

Obviously developers need to maintain some level of control in order to preserve balance and curb Monty 'Haul' scenarios, so where they draw the line will be very important in determining whether it's a system worth implementing and devoting resources to, or not.

Unless they're certain they can give players enough tools and freedom to really create complex experiences, I would rather see the resources and time devoted to other game systems. The trade off wouldn't be worth it if what we're allowed to create amounts to a limited variation of bland rooms dotted with scaled monsters and nothing more. EQ2s new dungeon creator system for example was something I found to be very restrictive in terms of tools, rewards and challenges, and very bland and predictable to play through.

However, if the system offered something approaching the tool set available in NWN (I doubt we'll quite see that, but we can hope), I can't even imagine how much that could do down the line for this game in terms of longevity and replayability, and would certainly love to see resources devoted to that.

To sum up more succinctly, if they can provide a robust system that actually gave us with tools needed to create something that would be fun to play through, great. If it's going to be so severely limited due to balance restrictions that the end result is a lifeless series of halls and scaling monsters, skip it and devote resources to another area, as so far every attempt to incorporate this into an MMO setting has fallen very short. Personally, I would love for someone to get it right eventually.

For me, each blog continues to tick every box on the design document that is pretty much my dream MMO.

It's hard to manage expectations after a decade spent dying of thirst in a zero risk, zero danger, zero variation wasteland of theme park clones.

Out of curiosity, and I'm not really expecting a meaty answer, has there been any mention of how far along the development process is technically?

I was assuming they were in a pre-production stage of refining the design doc and possibly mapping out a development calender, or has any actual coding or asset creation begun? And also, is it ready yet? How about now?

Edit: Great questions by the way guys, most of what I intended to ask upon initially reading the blog has been asked.

It all comes down to how exactly travel is important in this particular world.

Without more specific details on the risk of travel, distances, and territory control, I can only arbitrarily say that in general I lean towards not trivialising travel and reserving fast travel for rare situations.

All of that hinges on if it's justifiable in the game. Travel doesn't simply become important by removing fast travel and fast travel is only as valuable as the risks it's helping you avoid, the time it saves you and the value of its convenience.

Vanguard, as an example, struggled a lot with this in beta. Many of us were strongly opposed to fast travel and we watched the developers swing the pendulum back and forth trying to find the right balance. However, because of the lack of risk associated with travel on a pve server in the games release build, travel felt arbitrary.

It didn't add enough weight to the death penalty as they introduced ways for you to bind near just about any adventure area, it didn't introduce you to adventures you would have otherwise skipped over (often) and seemed to only increase travel times for the sake of travel times (which were eventually toned down anyway).

More succinctly, I'm opposed to fast travel that trivialises the risks associated with an open and dangerous world, but if in turn you offer safe roads that run the entire distance anyway, there might as well be fast travel as travel in that case is already trivial.

11.) Avoid arbitrarily relying on 'bound' items. Reserve it for special occasions in which you absolutely feel making an item non-tradable is required to maintain the balance you're aiming for.

We've come to expect some degree of 'Bind on pickup' or 'Bind on equip' system, but I feel it makes the worlds economy and trading space more dynamic when lightly used. I personally don't have a problem with advanced players gifting some great gear to less advanced players, provided someone originally did the work required to obtain the item.

If I defeat Slargoth the Maniacal, I should be able to distribute his treasure hoard however I see fit, in my opinion.

Besides, I've never understood why a low level couldn't get lucky and on rare occasions in a fantastical world, discover an item of amazing power early on in their career. I would personally love to spend time in a world in which there's a teeny tiny chance that someone could potentially win the lottery and discover a very powerful item at any time.

Anything that makes me feel less like I'm playing through a spreadsheet is a good thing.

12.) Avoid over use of item limitations beyond possible skill proficiency requisites.

I just defeated a monster that was carrying a sword, however while I'm powerful enough to defeat the enemy, I'm not powerful enough to use the sword...yet? How does that make sense?

I've always been annoyed by that. I know it's easier on developers when they can exert control over every aspect of how you interact with their content, but some sacrifices should be made on occasion in the name of enjoyment.

13.) Avoid trivialising travel and exploration as much as possible, provided the world justifies doing so.

Obviously if you're creating a world in which there's no reason to go off the beaten track, making travel time consuming makes no sense. But judging by the tone of the blogs and proposed systems we do know of, I don't think that's PFO.

It's certainly an area to be approached carefully as it will probably have a large impact on gameplay.

Daniel Powell 318 wrote:

I don't think there will be 'quest items' in the sense you are thinking of. "Bring me twenty pristine wolf livers" isn't the core of sandbox games. There might be a NPC who pays a bounty on rat tails or wolf pelts, but that is just a mechanism for gold to enter the economy.

If crafting is as great as some of us hope...and can be a primary source/reason of play for us...and with this looting system, there will be gathering quests.

I as a blacksmith may not waste my time trying to gather and defend myself, instead I will pay you x gold for y piece of z ore. How you gather them, via trade routes or off a fence, I may not care. But, true to the sandbox...these missions should be player driven.

The modern task system is a crutch and a poor excuse for content, in my opinion. I won't call it a quest system because I don't recall hearing any heroic tales in which the adventurers undertook a quest to click 10 vases. They're more often than not, menial tasks.

However, a player driven task system as you described could be excellent if implemented well.

While at the core they're very similar, the key difference's to me would be that the player driven task system would be inherently more dynamic by it's own nature, and it would save me the trouble of reading some hokey pop culture reference text that attempts to justify the clicking of said 10 vases.

All in all, I don't want to adventure in a world that only exists as a place to facilitate the clicking of 10 vases. I want to adventure in a world that's designed to be adventured in.

I would ideally like the play space to be treated as just that, it's own mechanic and made as interesting to interact with as possible without relying on tasks such as 'Walk ten feet to that guy and deliver this cheese, you'll be obscenely rewarded for such a petty act'.

Long over-arching quests that are quests in the truest sense and potentially span across many play sessions are another thing all together, and I would fully welcome the option to pursue loftier goals.

The long and short of it is, instead of investing in a mundane task system and devoting resources to such a system, see how much can be done without relying on that by making the game world itself enjoyable to interact with.

PS: I just re-read the original blog more thoroughly, and as I haven't asked any questions yet and many questions are being answered, I'd just like to ask: Is it ready yet? How about now?

I know I said I wasn't going to get my hopes up, but given that I'm here instead of playing the latest entry into the 'we want a slice of WoW pie'christmas release, I think it's pretty evident that it's too late for me.

Looking forward to more news, and was very pleased to see some solid details with this latest entry.

I'm eagerly awaiting more news for sure. What really has me (cautiously) excited though is the prospect of a PnP rpg being translated into MMO form.

While early MMOs (and earlier MUDs) seemed to make a reasonable attempt to recreate these fantastic worlds online, modern MMOs just seem more interested in rehashing previous MMOs; all the while incorporating all of their inherent limitations without a second thought as to what these games were originally attempting to do: deposit players in a fantastic world with enough tools to freely navigate through it in many various ways.

Triple A MMOs no longer seem to go back to the drawing board to see if there's possibly a better way to facilitate that. Instead we see one successful model rehashed over and over with different graaphics. They include illogical design decisions that were originally made over a decade ago (some even in the last century) as a knee jerk reaction that comes from emulating a video game rather than from trying to capture the true open ended rpg experience.

I would love to see a development team not simply dive in and say 'Ok, how do we emulate other MMOs successfully?', but rather carefully consider which decisions were made due to the technoligical limitations of the past as well as limits of imagination. A sort of 'going back to the drawing board' scenario to determine how best to bring players into an online space with the express goal of facilitating a varied, interesting and engaging experience in their given lores universe.

While it may not lead to the reinvention of the wheel, it may lead to discoveries that will not come from simple emulation of existing models.

I also genuinly believe that any innovations will come from smaller development companies as they generally seem to have enough lattitude to explore possibilities, rather than from a larger game development house with strict expectations and a fear of risk.

While I don't expect the Pathfinder MMO will have the jaw dropping budget of other current releases, I'm certainly hoping passion, ingenuity and especially creativity will lead to a fresh and welcome gaming experience.

Lastly, (congratulations if you made it this far! I had no idea it would be *this* long.)it's been a long time since I've felt I was playing a game that was born of someones absolute passion for an original idea that they just *had* to see made, rather than the endless reverse engineering and spreadsheet analysis MMOs that have been flooding in. I'm hoping Pathfinder is in the former category.

Anyway, back to awaiting more news, thanks & best of luck :)