clynx's page

To anyone who has concerns about PvP in an MMORPG, I would suggest that you keep an open mind. If you've had unpleasant experiences with other games in this area, perhaps it's because those other games did A HORRIBLE JOB AT IMPLEMENTING PVP. And that your displeasure actually derives from terrible game design, and not the nature of PvP itself.

Have you ever played a multiplayer FPS game and said to yourself "I wish my team was fighting against AI because getting shot by other people isn't fun"? Maybe you have, but for the 99.99% of everyone who plays those games, the answer is no. The game is designed around competing against the human opponent, and that's where the fun derives from. How many times have people played de_dust in CS? Hundreds? Thousands? It has an infinite replayability because playing with and against humans is more compelling than against AI or PvE. If in that game, you shot enemy AI, would anyone have played it as much?

Don't think of PFO as a PvE MMO that has PvP, because it's a completely wrong way to view the game. If you took away all the things that were PvP driven, what would be left? I guess resource gathering and settlement building... so something that resembles a minecraft type MMO.

You can't always understand and MMO by mapping it to ones you have played. Having played WoW doesn't mean anything in terms of understanding what PFO is and how you play it, and what your goals will be in game. Having played on a PvP server in another game doesn't describe what that term means for PFO. It's like trying to learn a language by translating everything word for word into your native language. That translation doesn't always sound right or make sense. Some things simply can't be translated. And in that regard, the assumption of disliking PvP in PFO is based off a very poor translation of what you may have known PvP to be in other games.

If nothing else, I hope this post makes you think that just maybe PvP can be done A LOT better than it has been done in the past. And PvP that is done right might be worth playing.

As far as I have always understood, marketing is part of a game's budget. Have you seen something about TOR that says their marketing campaign is not part of the $200M figure?

@Soldack Keldonson: It's just a little ambitious. For eg SW:TOR cost 350m$...

TOR's budget was never officially disclosed, but the general understanding is that it was between $150-$200 million. $350M is ridiculous. Their space ship on rails thing was lacking... but it was a late addition to the development of the game. A very late addition. They added it because a lot of fans were asking for there to be more you can do with your ship. I thought it was pretty good considering the time they had to come up with something; and the fact that they didn't have to do it at all.

As for MOBAs... aside from it being a totally different genre outside the scope of this game, I'd have to strongly object to the idea of PFO having one built in because of their community. I'm not sure how many of you here play MOBA games, but they have spawned the worst behaved gaming community I have ever seen. I have yet to play a MOBA game where players don't disrespectfully trash and berate their own teammates. I'd rather see those people locked away from the rest of the gaming community - MMOs have already suffered from the deluge of short-term/instant gratification/self-entitled casuals since WoW's popularity opened the floodgates back in 2004.

One of the biggest hopes I have for this game is that it will see a return of the traditional MMORPG community that used to exist in this genre.

I find what turns people away the most is when a game doesn't conform to the player's pre-defined notions of what the game is and how it's played.

There was a lot of open criticism of the leveling experience in GW2 during it's betas because it was being played (mostly) by people who brought their WoW experience with them and found out that they couldn't level very well by playing GW2 as if it was WoW. (they just wanted to go from quest hub to quest hub and quickly found themselves drastically under-leveled)

In traditional MMORPGs, I found that each game had its own leveling curve. That whenever you played a new one, there were some fundamental differences. Having played UO didn't make EQ any less greek to the player, or AO, SWG, FFXI, RO, AC, and on. And for the most part, this was completely acceptable by people who played MMORPGs. But any time I tried to get friends into MMOs that weren't like WoW (their introduction to the genre), I noticed that they all tried to skip the initial learning curve
by playing as if they were playing WoW again. Any time that caused a conflict it would be interpreted as 'not fun' or frustrating, and the players quickly abandoned those games.

The biggest challenge for PFO is to get players past their default desire to play it as if it were many of the other MMOs of recent years. I'm not even sure if that's a realistic expectation - In my experience, the NPE turns people away - not by any fault of the game, but of the player. I wish Ryan and Co the best of luck with that. Ryan had a good point; at least character control will be similar to previous MMOs.

@Being, I would love if NPC mobs needed LOS to aggro, instead of just having a big circular aggro radius. I'm not sure we're there yet, but we can definitely see it from here :)

This, and monsters that would kill you if you traveled alone are what I miss the most about FFXI (I think that was the last time I played an MMO where everyone wasn't the Kratos from GoW equivalent).

FFXI had a wide variety of aggro mechanics. Most were simply LoS, but some types of mobs could aggro off sound or smell. You have white mage spells that could mask your odor, and with bats who detect with sonar, if you simply stood still, they wouldn't aggro you either. I think there was also a form of 'linking' where If you attacked a beastman, other beastmen in the area would come to its aid - kind of like a cry for help.

GW2 did an alright job of 'group if you want, but it won't matter much in the end'. But every character in that game was self sufficient. Everyone was responsible for their own DPS, healing and damage avoidance/mitigation. A group of individuals or a group of players in a raid didn't really provide any difference. And that's fair enough, but you couldn't apply the same system to games where some characters are healers, some are tanks, some are buff/support roles etc. I think in other MMOs, there is meant to be a group structure because the classes were designed to synergize with each other.

GW2 had some of it's own issues with dynamic events. Early on (and I don't know if they ever truly fixed this) you could game the heck out of rewards by failing the big dynamic events. If the encounters only triggered once every few hours, then it was more beneficial to progress through all the stages to the end - and then wipe. The event resets after a few minutes, and you repeat. Players earned more rewards/karma by doing this even with diminishing returns on the same event.

I stopped played after ANet started to retool the events and do a massive nerf to karma gains in an attempt to make gear and legendary weapon acquisition take substantially longer. I admit players were abusing the dynamic event system and not playing it as intended, but it seemed like the dev's counter to that was just as bogus but in the other direction. I didn't have any particular fun farming the same events over and over. And when faced with the prosepect of doing the same event farming in 1 zone every day for months just to get a legendary; I quit playing. Instances were the same. You could do different branches of each instance; but the majority of players were only interested in doing the 1 path that was fastest (and easiest because everyone knew it inside and out)

I may have commented about this before, but it's been bugging me anew in Vanguard recently. I'm aware that it probably won't be as big a problem in PFO since PFO won't be as Theme-Park oriented.

The Problem: A particular area has 20 NPC monster spawn points. Each spawn point has an equal chance to spawn as one of three monster types. There are PvE reasons to kill the first two monster types. Either out of ignorance or laziness, many players only kill the types they need for PvE reasons. Soon, the area is completely overrun with the third type...

This is a poisonous mechanic that leads to intense resentment, and generally promotes anti-social behavior. I don't know if there are technical reasons why this kind of situation is desirable, but from a player perspective it is beyond maddening.

Well, I'll give a specific example of what you describe, and then I'll see if I justify this being how things are done.

If anyone here ever played WoW back in classic, you probably would have heard of a weapon enchant called "Crusader". The recipe for this enchant only dropped off 1 mob in one particular camp, in one particular zone. Only the Scarlet Spellbinder NPCs could drop the formula. Now, when you killed a spellbinder, another NPC would shortly spawn - the type of NPC would draw from a short pool of all the NPCs that spawn in that area; about 3-4 different NPCs. So, like you describe in your game, if you only kill the Spellbinders, it doesn't take more than 2-3 passes of the camp before all the NPCs are up but no spellbinders are around.

So, what if a spellbinder should spawn when one is killed? Well, wouldn't that spawn point just be camped? If everyone knows where the NPC will spawn, it usually becomes an AoE fest as all players try to get the 'tag' or loot rights to the corpse. Randomizing NPC spawns helps prevent outright camping of a certain NPC by allowing them to virtually be anywhere in the area to which they spawn.

I think in your scenario, you're more likely to co-operate with other players. The fact that you (or they) don't, is a byproduct of making games (and especially MMORPGs) more 'casual'. When content becomes massively soloable, you're more likely to view other players as competition rather than an opportunity. Take a game like EQ or FFXI - MMOs that required groups of players just to kill 1 thing and having that be the norm, fostered a co-operative environment. Groups weren't always easy to find, so building a social network in-game was beneficial.

Thanks to the massive success of WoW's 'don't worry, be happy' model, players now get away with self sufficiency because it is often easier AND faster. I don't know if you've ever done quests in a group in WoW but in a lot of cases items were unique in the sense that only 1 party member would get credit per spawn/kill/loot. Imagine how a 'collect 5 of' quest in a party of 4 turns into 'collect 20'. Rather than combating this solo behavior, I've seen games designed to just give everyone credit without having to party up. The public quests in WAR, Rift's dynamic events. You could invite yourself into groups rather than needing an invite sent in SW:TOR (and possibly rift or WAR I think I've seen it somewhere prior to TOR). WoW now has tag-less elite spawns. Instead of issuing group quests - players now just kill the big elite mob when they see others doing the same. And soon WoW will have tag-less World Bosses. It's pretty sad how low the standard has dropped.

At least in PFO if someone is taking all the NPCs you've done all the work to spawn, you could always kill them :) (I'm betting that sometimes you're just going to have to set aside your reputation/ alignment and put someone in their place)

Soldack Keldonson wrote:

Predict a topic in the next GW blog...

I'll start.

Settlements.

+1 on the buildings and stuff

(also any one in GMT+2 and could tell me what time the blogs come up)

I'm not on GMT+2, nor do I wish to do any conversions for you right now. But what I will say, is that I expect the blog to be posted within 5-7 hours from the time of this post. (this is just based on when I noticed the updates to the last two blog posts)

Nobody in the industry thinks MMOs are on the decline. They're the wave of the future. They just won't look like World of Warcraft, or represent a $100+ million pre-revenue investment in a theme park.

That was kinda my point about this new grey area emergence of where MMOs are going. I do think MMORPGs (maybe by traditional sense) will be on a decline. But I very much agree that an MMO market is still growing.

You say nobody wants to invest in a theme park anymore; From what I've seen, the industry has a very keen ability to sell the public on almost anything. Look at games like Defiance and Marvel Heroes - Not theme park MMORPGs, but what's really the difference anymore? They're heavily PvE. They consist of leveling a character/class/specialization. The 'content' has to be provided to the players. Gear grinds. Quests. Raids and instances. Sounds really familiar to me - yet if you asked anyone if either of those two games are MMORPGs, they'd say no.

What happens if Defiance is successful? Now the genre explodes into MMOFPS games that borrow every concept from the theme park MMO that was too risky to invest in. If I asked you 10 years ago if there was a difference between FPS, ARPG, and MMORPGs you could list every attribute that separated them from one another. But instead, I'll ask what the difference is between MMOFPS, MMOARPG, and (themepark) MMORPGs as we know them to today and on the horizon. Those genres all have surprisingly common attributes, do they not? And in regards to micro transactions, the theme park backbone feeds into that. Perhaps now toxic in RPG form; theme parks are new and exciting as an FPS, or any other genre that can map RPG elements onto the gameplay.

When I look at the (traditional) MMORPG genre today, I can't help but think back to when RTS games were all the rage on PCs. Dune 2, C&C (all 50 titles, lol), warcraft, starcraft, Age of Empires, Age of Myth, Empire Earth etc... It was the go-to genre for a long time. But it reached that saturation point. After StarCraft (which many believed was the perfect version of what an RTS should be), the market grew stagnant. As 3D games, processing power and Internet connections got better, we saw an explosion into FPS games as it became the go to genre for big money.

MMORPGs will continue as RTS games still do; but I think they'll take a back seat to whatever innovations they spawned. Look at the success and popularity today of the MOBA genre and how it eclipses SC2 (and whatever RTS remnants are still out there). Both are very similar genres, and we wouldn't even have MOBAs if it weren't for WC3, mods, and a community to back it all. Maybe Sandbox MMORPGs will be the MOBA to RTS equivalent of Theme Parks. Maybe the idea of RPGs is just too stale no matter what, and something else will emerge. However it turns out, I'll be happy with PFO if 20k people play it or 200k play it.

Personally, I liked MMORPGs when they had communities of 10k-250k players. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to see a return to that standard, regardless of where MMOs go.

Man, It's always nice to see Ryan post about insider perspectives on the industry.

I have no doubt Titan will eventually be one of many projects being worked on internally at Blizzard. I recently heard David Brevik in an interview detail the same process shortly after Diablo 2 in regards to a squeal. He spoke about there being many projects, and when some of the leaders of those projects left Blizzard, they continued their work to release games based on those projects. One of them became Torchlight, another has become David's new ARPG: Marvel Heroes.

I see AAA as a relative term - highest $ bracket invested into a project. If the top end of that spectrum scales back, it's still the top end. Even if games have to be more practical, you're still going to have hype/marketing thrown behind proven or popular franchises/IPs. MMORPGs might be on the decline, but there seems to be a grey area that is emerging from the MMO market. I'm noticing more hybrids from FPS and ARPG games. Trion has an FPS/RPG MMO coming out that identifies with the 'Borderlands crowd'. Planetside2 recently launched. Marvel Heroes looks to be an ARPG in an MMO setting. There always seems to be a way to tell gamers "Hey, you haven't played a game quite like ours. It's going to be awesome. Pick it up!". Heck, Activision doesn't even have to pretend their CoD games are different. Those things sell millions every 12 months.

@Ryan, do you have any idea how much Blizzard made of D3's RMAH? I'm genuinely curious because Blizzard gave players the ability to earn real money playing their game - and took a cut of every transaction. If you ever wanted to theory craft a way to monetize a massively multiplayer game in a manner that gamers want; giving them the ability to earn real money seems like it would be a big draw. So why hasn't this become the new go-to model for MMOs? People do it anyway; sell items, characters, accounts, game currency... It seems smart to open it up and make it available to all in a safe/hassle-free way.

I see no reason to believe the devs would make one playstyle statistically or mechanically at a (dis)advantage to all others. That's just poor game design. That's like releasing a game called "Rock, Paper, Atom bomb".

If something doesn't quite translate over from P&P PF, I wouldn't expect to see it implemented without being retooled/rebalanced to make sense in a sandbox mmo.

There is always WoW, but the only new AAA themepark title announced is Elder Scrolls Online.It seems like everyone else has learned the lesson of RIFT, Tera, SW:TOR, and others in that is impossible to make money on a AAA title when content locusts will raze and consume everything in the game within a month and then the game becomes a ghost town.

ESO was announced publicly after being in development for 5 years. A year ago you might have said "the only AAA MMO announced is GW2" (TERA was a NA&EU localization of a year-old Korean MMO) and here we are now awaiting ESO. I have confidence in the industry to capitalize on the MMO market during a forecasted lull between titles. I don't doubt Blizzard will let the lid off Titan either at this year's E3/Blizzcon or next (they already announced D3 will launch on PS4, which shows they're once again releasing console titles).

I don't think publishers are losing money on these games either. zenimax gained funding in the order of 300 million dollars to launch a studio that will produce ESO, and future titles. If a firm has 300 million to blow on a start-up dev studio, be assured they feel like they'll see a return on that investment. This is the HUGE misconception gamers seem to have with this genre. Not dethroning WoW does not mean failure in the realm of profits. Yes, you see a lot of theme park MMOs have a TON of people play at launch, and then quit in the first 3 months. That doesn't mean the company lost money. And it doesn't mean other companies will stop making these games. In most cases, you're probably looking at profits for just the initial launch. Sell 1-2 million units at $60 each? You just made back your investment. Now it's time to ride subscriptions as far as they go for more money, and when that slows, convert to f2p to bring in a massive surge of new players who will finance you with micro transactions.

Publishers finance games to make money, not to make the game that will "kill WoW". WoW has ~9.5 million subscribers. That alone is a HUGE demographic. Even larger is notion that today; there are more people who have played WoW and quit than there are current WoW subscribers - meaning there's over 10 million people who belong to the MMO market, but currently are looking for the next WoW to play. It is INSANE to NOT make another MMO for that market if you're a massive publisher like EA or Activision. All you have to do is sell 10% of that total market on your game, and you've sold (at minimum) nearly 2 million units. You don't even need to retain subscribers beyond the first month of sales.

When you read about these dev studios that made the flop MMOs shutting down; you can claim we'll see an end to the theme park shuffle. Cureently: Mythic is still in business, BioWare is still in business, TRION is very much in business(massive MMO&TV show to be joint launched this year), ArenaNet is very much in business. FunCom is still churning out MMOs. Last year, the only MMO developer to shut down was Paragon Studios (City of Heroes).

/food for thought

It's nice to see developers make games for gamers. Ryan wants a small meaningful community that will grow, and I think that's great. Mark Jacobs left Mythic to start up another dev studio that he feels will create a true successor to DAoC (not that Warhammer crap that had EA's fingerprints all over it). He has stated that his game isn't made with everyone in mind. That it will appeal to those who played and loved DAoC. These games might not be popular, but they will host a niche community - I think the only people who get that are the pre-WoW era MMORPG/RPG players. Meanwhile, the lowest common denominator will be reading about the next big hype over at IGN.

What we see in most MMOs today is a game design where success for the player does not depend on the interaction of others.

In theme parks today; The player is practically invincible provided they follow the level path laid out for them. Seldom do you ever die, and even more rare do you ever "fail" a quest or an event. There are little to no penalties/setbacks for death.

Group content no longer requires you to get yourself into a group. The game can handle that for you. And at the first sign of someone encroaching on your ego; you can drop group and have the game give you a new one.

It fosters a very disposable/throwaway mentality towards other players - You don't need anybody because the game will always be ready to pair you up with a limitless supply of anonymous lemmings to get the content done.

I'm not terribly worried about those players coming to PFO. I doubt many of them will ever hear of this game. Seems like the industry has a healthy supply of AAA MMORPGs every year to keep them occupied.

I can't wait to read the dev blog that details how settlements will obtain relics/artifacts and the implications.

Hopefully in PFO we don't see a monolithic alliance that holds most if not all the relics, to which no other kingdoms can do anything about due to their size/power. I'm pretty sure Ryan said somewhere that was one of the things he didn't want to carry over from EVE. It will be interesting to see how that can be prevented.

What would be cool to see, are rival kingdoms who go to war time and again to gain control of an artifact.

I think there's a difference between implementing a known flawed mechanic, and implementing a mechanic that has limitations and acknowledging those limitations. Every MMO I've played has had market saturation and gold inflation over time (years). I've even seen devs come up with ways that effectively combat inflation, but makes for poor gameplay. A lot of Korean MMOs have a lot of random chance mechanics in their game. Where upgrading gear can fail. Risking large amounts of gold and items. The net result is for every "best item" you make, there are thousands destroyed in the process. Works really well at combating saturation and inflation... turns out players get terribly frustrated with such systems because they view it as a casino where they always lose. Farming up a ton of mats and money just to lose it all isn't great game design, despite it combating a market issue. (personally, I don't mind such a system... but I do think there could be better things to do in game than farm>gamble>farm>gamble>farm>...)

Just about anything you implement will have some sort of limitation or vulnerability to it. Especially, when those mechanics are meant to interact with others. And then you have to deal with how players ACTUALLY play the game - it may turn out that they abuse a system, or not play it in the way you thought they would.

Gear loss upon death is a great example. Why have threading? Well, if you simply lost all of your gear upon death; you suddenly find that players simply don't adventure in their best gear. They own the best, but never use and risk it. So much for having a risk system that punishes death.

With threading, you're more likely to have players suit up in (at least some of) their best armors. Still no risk their either? Well, that's why we have Death Curses. Players will thread their best stuff because they feel safe, but now they might still lose that gear. Maybe Death Curses should not be known to the player it is issued against to prevent them from banking their items safely. - Maybe player banks themselves should all have physical locations in settlements and should be subject to loss if that settlement loses an engagement of war.

What's important is GW informs us of the intent behind the design. If we can find a loophole in that design, they'll likely change it. But even then some of these game mechanics serve more than 1 purpose, and a change to solve 1 problem might create several more in another area of the game. It can be a tricky balance.

Having known PKers in other games, much of what they looted off kills was salvaged for raw materials or sold off quickly to NPC vendors for the cash, since most decent level buyers only wanted high end goods (not some poor schmuck's looted nonmagical sword). Both salvage and resale to NPCs (if it's possible in PFO) would remove looted items from the economy.

That's very true and I entirely agree that there is that avenue for removal from the system. In my mind, I was imagining 300 QL items when I said players would either retain or sell on the market. But if GW decided to make encumbrance a big factor in looting player husks, then it might be more beneficial to just salvage/destroy loot rather than haul it off.

Maybe assassins could earn recognition through some sort of mechanic that could prove they destroyed their target's armor rather than kept it. Sort of an honorable act of Bounty Hunting to say "My motive is to satisfy a bounty, not for personal acquisition of items." ... or something. The idea there is to have players want to destroy 300 QL items.

I understand the skill and that's not so bad i guess but the way leveling is described it sounds like the leveling from Elder Scrolls Skyrim with the added bonus of Vanilla WOW; where i have to find a trainer and spend all my gold on training. Leaving PFO being made with the idea of having no "end game" but will have the "end game" of not having to spend all your money on hp and class ability's and finely being able to use my gold on some player goal. i would like maintaining my class to be an after thought. i know what i get as a level 5 rouge in PFRPG, i don't want to save up after killing X things with sneak attack and save up 50gp to be a level 5 rouge in PFO.

The game (if it's anything like EVE, which It looks to be) plays more organically than what you've described. Your concept of a "level 5 rogue" doesn't even exist in PFO. You're free to develop down any skill path you choose. Not all players progressing towards a rogue archetype will even pick up the same skills or in the same order. Your "player goal" is your development of your character. That has heavier implications than simply training. On top of every skill being an elective, you develop a social and political standing within your community. Develop a settlement/territorial ownership. You play your character to conform to the alignment you wish to maintain. None of these things are restrictions that lock you into an "end game" scenario. You're entirely free to pursue them in any fashion you see fit - focusing on some more than others.

Who says training your skills will cost you anything at all? How do you know you won't be part of some thieves guild who doesn't charge its own members a fee to train? XP gains will come at a fixed rate. If you know you'll qualify to train in 1 hour, you can spend that time going out to a training facility so that the moment you level, you can train your new skill with no downtime. It won't always be the case of "oh great, I leveled while out in this dungeon, and now I MUST leave to go train." - Just do it when it's convenient for you. It's not like NOT training is going to hold you back from progressing towards another skill. You're still gaining XP over time.

Someone mentioned they didn't like everyone becoming multiclassers. It sounds as if you're applying something familiar to something unfamiliar in an attempt to understand it. Thinking of a sandbox MMO as having levels or classes at all is a mistake IMO. I know the devs use them a lot to correlate the equivalency between P&P PF and PFO, but it does a disservice to PFO as I feel there shouldn't be a direct translation between the two. Theme park MMOs are actually a lot closer in gameplay to table top games than sandbox MMOs. What I would hate to see is a group of this community be disappointed with the game when it comes out because they built it up in their mind to be something that it isn't.

Anyway, that's my view. I've played TES franchise. I've played EVE. I've played many modern theme park MMORPGs. I've played many D&D games. I'm not worried at all about what this Sandbox MMO will and will not be; based on what I've read from the Dev posts. I hope those who have never played a sandbox MMO keep an open mind.

At the end of the day, will PFO be Pathfinder? Well, It will be a sandbox MMORPG. It will be based off the Pathfinder IP. GW has never been unclear about that. I think PFO has a unique style to its gameplay and mechanics - thanks in part to it belonging to the Pathfinder franchise. Will you like it? That's up to you. I hope you love it!

it's been said that you could probably thread most (if not all) of your gear at the newbie stage - wearing nothing but grey or while quality gear. The cost for threading high quality pieces raises so that the idea is you'll only be able to thread some of your items, and certainly not all.

I think Ryan's post about the economy becoming saturated with weapons and armor is mostly true, even under these conditions. If you die in PvP and your high quality gear wasn't threaded; it's still looted by the other player and thus NOT removed from the economy. The player either keeps the looted gear or sells it on the market - There has been no loss in the system.

If I can predict my enemy's tactics I can win the battle. If I know that my enemy will press forward into Melee and not use formations in rank and file then I know my enemy's tactic, and if they surprise me and use rank and file I still have that fireball.

Without FF=On I can less predict his tactics. He might choose keep his light troops as archers back in the trees firing on me where they would have been less likely to do so knowing I could lightning storm them equally well if they close or stay ranged.

With FF=On he will instead reliably use his lights to maneuver and turn my flank close in order to negate my ranged strength.

It improves, rather than weakens, play to make consequences count.

Still, you're talking about a scenario where you are orchestrating and executing the movements and ability usage of several units, against an opponent who does the same. If we're talking about a 50 vs 50 battle in PFO, we're talking about 100 individual players, controlling 100 interdependently trained, geared and positioned characters. And all these players have their own mind and opinion of tactic and strategy.

I'm exceptionally inclined to believe that the battle would play out in no way similar to what you have described. The more people involved, the less organized a group will be. Again, you describe a game where everyone involved plays the same way you do. Shares the same view for tactic you do. It doesn't actually happen because it's based on the notion that everyone is playing the game the same way you do.

On paper everything you describe sounds like a really cool game to play. But for that game to work, requires everyone who PvPs to be playing that game for that reason. So far PFO doesn't sound like it's aimed at the tactical-realism-sim demographic.

I'll give a very specific example: Back in 2005 (or so), I played the hell out of a game called Battlefield 2. BF2 had a vote kick mechanic to allow you punish/remove players who were disruptive to the team. The game featured Friendly Fire as part of the combat mechanics, and do you want to guess what ACTUALLY happened in REAL gameplay scenarios? IDIOTS would die from their own stupidity, and the innocent player would suffer the consequences for it. Commanders would call down an artillery-strike on a zone that had half a dozen enemies. There would be a voice com to all teammates that artillery was in bound. There was a HUGE red indicator on the minimap that said "HEY, DON'T ENTER THIS SPACE RIGHT NOW BECAUSE YOU WILL DIE!"... and what happened? Johnny Clueless would walk into it, see he was killed by FF and punish his teammate. Worked the same way for land mines. Place mines outside of an enemy base, your teammate drives a loaded Jeep into their base, over the mines (despite the skull and cross bones on the HUD), die, and punish for TKx4. Blow up a tank with a rocket; tank explodes, teammate next to the tank dies from the explosion - TK. Punish.

While it seemed really great in concept, the way it actually played itself out in game was drastically different. You can't ever account for the lemmings who just aren't even playing the same game as you in their mind. And the really depressing thing is; there's going to be more of them than you in an MMORPG. Just look at everyone on these forums; everyone has a unique opinion of PvE/PvP/mounts/flight/trade/ganks/FF/crafting/politics/alignment/etc.

For FF to work in the manner you describe Being, everyone has got to be on the same page. I don't want what you describe - not because I think it wouldn't be fun. But because I don't think it would work with the majority of players, and the experience would be ruined.

But it would be neat to play one day :)

I think we will see a need for 'lower level' ores. Your example of what happened in UO is a very theme-park way of implementing such a system - despite UO not being 100% theme-park... probably because it was a leading pioneer in the modern MMO and those concepts hadn't been perfected.

I stand by my EVE analogy. Yeah, vets could strip mine the crap out of asteroids, but quantity isn't what we're arguing. We're talking about the quality of the ore and the demand for the ore. I'm suggesting that the demand for the ore the newbie brings in will be just as high as the vet. If the newbie can only mine 1/10th of the vet, then he's making less money, but by no means isn't edged out of the market. He'll make money relative to his character's development - The strip mining vet also had to start out small.

I would agree that while a "fun" game can be made out of FF mechanics and situational use of skills, ask yourself if PFO is that game. Personally, I don't see that it is.

MS Flight Simulator was a really popular game franchise. However, I wouldn't advocate for their plane sim gameplay to be included in a game like Battlefield 1942/2/3/etc.

It's one thing if everyone playing the game is playing it for that aspect. But to expect MMO players to play by 'real-life tactical simulator rules' doesn't really work. Like mentioned before, players will still just use single target abilities. AoE volley on the ranks in the back? What group of gamers would assemble in such a manner, knowing they are opening themselves up to the most devastating AoEs that will wipe them all out? Great in theory, but terrible in practice.

I see the same concern raised over and over: "who would want the lower skilled miner's ore? "lower skilled miners are at a disadvantage"

...Well shouldn't they be at a disadvantage? Apply the same skill over time to crafting. Would it be fair for a newbie crafter to be on par with someone who has put two years into training? - Heck no.

But just the assumption that low miners can't compete still seems like folly to me:

-If players need raw materials for buildings and upkeep of settlements, I highly doubt they'll be in need of 300QL materials for that. Most likely they'll need quantity over quality. Which is actually advantageous to the lower quality market; if QL is not an issue, than players will seek out the lowest price on stone/wood/etc.

-low level miners won't be '2 years behind' vets if it is anything like EVE's system. Every type of ore had it's own specialization. Both for mining and refining. Meaning a new player could effectively compete rather quickly by specializing in 1 type of ore. It wouldn't take 2 years to master copper for example. Much more likely it would take a few weeks. The archetype mastery in PFO would be a complete mastery of every type of ore. The new player can still be competitive in one or two categories, just not all.

-There's also an assumption that 300QL ore is even going to be the standard once players level up. I still don't see any evidence that this will be the case. 300QL will be rare. Because of its uncommon nature, and the process involved in making a completed 300QL item; I suspect the price difference between 200-250QL and 300QL will be so large that only players who are serious about crafting 300QL can even justify spending the money on it.

I understand why some people wouldn't like QL on ore. In a way, it doesn't really make sense. Can you have different qualities of an element? Isn't all iron or fundamentally the same? Deposits might be rich or poor, but that determines how much you can get out of the ground, not the quality of it. But what about non-element resources? Diamonds certainly come in different qualities. I'm guessing the same could be said for silks, wood, stone, etc, so the QL should remain. Maybe in a real world scenario it doesn't make sense, but for simplicity sake in a game, I have no problem with it.

To those who want flight, what specifically do you have in mind?

I say item degradation should be part of PFO. It creates business opportunities for crafters to repair items. Also simple maintenance with low crafting skill (low level: maintenance) to keep the quality where the item starts off at, without dismantling item into components. Such as using a whetstone and oil to maintain a sword blade.

If degradation is something that applies to all players, and maintenance is at the entry level of crafting; what's to stop everyone from just picking that skill up for themselves? Entry level skills are super easy to train. If it's a matter of utility and it's relatively accessible; expect most players to get it.

You might have a better system if repairs are at a mid tier. Early on, it's more practical to toss away items for newer ones, and only look to repairs for things that matter to you - The items you chose to thread because you dare never lose them.

I think this is a great discussion. I'm neither for or against FF, but reading some of these posts makes me sway from one side to the other, then back again, lol.

I really like the idea that yes there should be FF, but also have a system for elemental affinity/resistance so that your party can largely mitigate its own damage to itself.

My biggest problem with FF (and unfortunately this is a HUGE concern), is the bounty hunting system that this game will feature. What I don't like is Bounty Hunters who wiggle their way into a group, with the sole intent of backstabbing a party member to claim a bounty. Maybe this will be a really cool 'feature' and I'm not entirely against it. But my concern is that it becomes the go to strat for Bounty Hunters, and all of a sudden, you have a community who doesn't like socializing/grouping with people they don't know out of fear of either Bounty Hunting or even just to grief someone - maybe for personal reasons outside of the game, or political reasons inside the game. While I'm aware there are reputation and alignment mechanics in place to discourage random/senseless killing; I don't think this is something it would prevent. If there's a legitimate motive to kill a player, I'm guessing most people would be willing to deal with the consequences after doing it.

- You lose non-threaded gear upon death (unless you can get back to your corpse in time; in PvE - maybe. In - PvP don't count on it). Your gear will go "pop" just like it did in EVE.

- Settlements will require materials to construct buildings. As settlements grow, they will require more upkeep to maintain a fully functional sate.

- Warfare will lead to consumption of raw materials as players and settlements rebuild/repair. Warfare isn't restricted to PvP between settlements. PvE can encroach and take over hexes as well.

- Low harvesting skill produces low quality materials. It's entirely possible that those materials are still highly sought after to make low quality high level gear.

I think this game will have more than ample avenues to keep item destruction on par with item creation. As well as prevent obsolescence of materials such as copper or tin. All that is required is a relative cost fr things so that is stays equal to production. IF the markets are supersaturated, then adjust settlement upkeep so that players can barely keep up (or not even) with their own growth.

Hmmm. The crafting process does sound overly complex though I do agree with much of it. The longer the chain of events required to make an object, the more there is that can go wrong. Additionally, what if I want to do everything myself? Will I have to multiclass?

I know and agree that working with others to create a chain of supply and refinement should be the quickest and best way to craft items. But, will it be the ONLY way? How does a 300 skill crafter make a 300 quality item if there are no other 300 quality resources, miners and refiners about. Will there be a (long, drawn out) process that lets a crafter use their full skill? Or is it a case of you may never construct a 300 item unless every resource and step is also 300 skill or quality?

Will this also mean that the best quality items won't appear in the game for two years because no one will be 20th level until then? Or will there be some way to organise groups of people together to create a better result than any one could on their own? Such a mechanism could also be used in rituals- a group of casters in a besieged city trying to cast a meteor swarm spell before the invading army breaks through and kills them all?

I consider a 300 quality item to be extremely rare. How do you do it yourself? Realistically I would imagine you buy the refined 300QL components and craft the final product. To even find 300QL nodes will be rare. Having the skill to mine and refine them will take time to train. The whole idea of 'I want the best stuff and be able to make it all myself' seems exactly what this crafting system is designed to prevent.

I don't know if it will take 2+ years before we see 300QL items surfacing in the market, but to be honest, I'd actually LOVE for that to be the case. What the "BEST" item is, is purely relative. If the highest level miner/refiner/crafters only have the skills to make 150QL items; then the 'best' items in the game will be QL 150, and you should feel excited to own something of that QL. As time goes on, players will push their limits and slowly unlock higher QL items. I think that would be fantastic. I would like to see a long, involved career as a miner/refiner/crafter/enchanter/etc that weeds out all the 'alts'. (I don't mind alt crafters, but I definitely don't want to see them at the top of the skill curve over time. It's kind of a kick in the **** to all the people who choose to do that full time on their main)

Great news about the crafting.

The only question I had was in regards to the private storage that your crafted item goes in until you claim it:

What happens if for some reason you craft an item, but then lose access to the settlement before it is completed or claimed from storage? Lets say something happens like your settlement is destroyed in a War with another hex, or you're kicked/outlawed from the settlement because of social reasons or you broke the laws/alignment of the settlement.

Is there any way to still claim your crafted item? Or is it lost at that point?

@Tuoweit,

Again you are basing this on current MMO combat mechanics... They are terrified of forcing thier players to have to work with others in order to overcome challenges.....and they are terrified of allowing thier players to fail at anything. Thus characters aren't just equivalent in those games...they are IDENTICAL...save for mostly the graphics...For those reasons, A Wizard casting Magic Missle and a Ranger shooting a bow and a fighter swinging an axe are pretty much the same things mechanicaly in thier combat systems...it's just different graphics applied. If you are having a system based on that...then yeah, letting one guy move faster then the other becomes a pretty huge advantage.

I agree that just because other MMOs haven't done it, doesn't mean it can't be done. I would suggest that maybe the reason why other MMOs equalize the concepts we talk about here is because of balance. The more you add to a combat system, the more difficult it is to balance. In WoW terms, players had a choice in race selection. I don't know any serious Horde PvPers who didn't make an undead character (class restrictions permitting) for 'Will of the Forsaken'. Yes, there may be disadvantages to level out the field, but ultimately there's one combination of things that succeeds on average more than the rest.

From a design point of view, you don't want everyone shoehorned into a particular selection despite the game offering robust choice. The majority of players will figure out what works best, and play nothing else; which defeats the purpose of all that choice to begin with.

A big problem with PFO is that you play your character for years. It's very hard to re-balance skills/abilities that players have invested months/years into training for. And since you can't undo your race choice (big assumption here, but one I feel safe in making), it's one of those things developers should not re-balance if at all possible.

In order to not screw over players who have invested potentially years into their character, it's best to have the mechanics that are subject to change be placed on things that are not a permanent choice for the player. In PFO, this pretty much means gear. If you want bonuses to speed or encumbrance, or anything else; it should be done at the gear level, and not the race. This would allow GW to tweak these things as they see fit, and not burn players who are 'locked in' from a choice made from an obsolete build of the game.

clynx wrote:

Nihimon wrote:

clynx wrote:

Ultimately, 1 player is pocketing ALL of the tax on good faith that it will be put towards the betterment of the settlement...

That is not true.

Put It in Writing describes a variety of governance options for a Settlement. It's possible to create a Democracy where every expenditure of Tax Money will be voted on by all Settlement members.

I didn't come to the same assumption you did after reading that.

It sounded like you came to the assumption that there would always be 1 player in control of all the tax revenue. It's not an "assumption" on my part that this will not always be the case. It's very clearly spelled out.

Just for funzies, lets include the sentence that came before the one you quoted: "I take issue with settlements setting their own tax rate and pocketing those taxes for themselves."

I think we're arguing semantics here. Replace "1 player" with "1 interest group" - Those who actually control the settlement. My assumption is what players will do, not what the game allows for. In every MMORPG I've ever played; Guild banks, invite, kick, disband, and chat privileges have had very restricted access - despite there being an option to give all members unrestricted access. Mainly because just about anyone can join, and you don't know anything about who they are when they join. The people who are the founders of a guild/company care the most about that guild and will protect it. It's their creation. Much like a company founding a settlement; those members will retain control over their settlement. When I say "Ultimately 1 person", I'm generally speaking to the entity that put themselves in power. You're right; It could be more than 1 person, it could be 10. But I'm betting those majority stakeholders belong to a group that share the same goal/interest. And so, how many there are is a moot point - they are unified. That group who are the majority stakeholders can change the rules of the settlement at any time.

I honestly don't think this game can truly have an open democracy. How long would that last? Enough players with a common agenda (any company with enough members) could vote to take control of that 'complete democracy'. And I wouldn't put it past any group to pull it off. I have no doubt there will be a group of players who look for absolute democratic settlements, join it, vote themselves in power, and loot everything that's not nailed down. This isn't just hypothetical. I post on an Internet forum that does this regularly. Someone makes a thread about a territory/kingdom domination game - dozens to hundreds of members of the forum join the game and work towards a common goal. They don't always ally themselves in game under a common banner. Nobody in the game knows they are one large entity until they've taken over from within. There's plenty of large forum communities to choose from: 4chan, SA, reddit... these groups are always looking to make a huge impact in a game and stir up drama. So yes, I absolutely expect every settlement to be founded by a group that retains a controlling stake in that settlement; any company that doesn't will likely regret that decision sooner or later. But my problem isn't the founders getting screwed; it's all the members who had been taxed that become collateral damage in such an event.

Yes, it will be possible for a Settlement to set itself up so that 1 player is in control of all the tax revenue, but that's not really what you were saying, is it?

What I was really saying was that the members being taxed are not a part of the group who retain control of the settlement (bold to emphasize the context of what you quoted me on). If the player is putting their faith in the controlling entity of the settlement (taxes being appropriated accordingly), then its only fair for the settlement to place it's faith in the player (taxes being volunteered by the player at a rate the player chooses). At any time either party is not satisfied by the other, they can back out. Either the settlement removes the member not donating at a rate reasonable to the settlement, or the player leaves the settlement if they feel taxes are being mismanaged. And in the event of a disaster (loss from war/corruption/etc), all parties had control in their investment from the start. Seems like a fair balance of power.

@Greedalox

I don't think the 'double-pay' is a fair assessment of skill training. What you're paying for with real money is a game subscription - Like any subscription based MMO. In EVE, you have to pay for game time, pay for the training book, and then pay for the ship/CPU/Laser/etc that you trained to use. Some books in EVE were more rare than others. Some, you had to travel out of your way to pick up and pay a lot more for. This feels like the same system in PFO, just presented a little differently.

At the highest tiers of training, you're likely looking at months worth of EXP. During that time, it should be feasible to track down a settlement that can train you (because of fixed EXP gains, you'll know exactly when you'll need to train). Book an appointment with a few settlements. Say "hey, in 5 weeks, I'll need to train Gigatron Smash XII", and they should be able to reserve a trainer for you. Make a couple appointments like that, in case something happens to one of the settlements (war or w/e), and pay them a small cancellation fee for the inconvenience.

Because of the time required at higher levels of training, I think you'll have ample to time to: save money, find a trainer, and satisfy the merit badge requirements (assuming you can do badges PRIOR to training)

As for skill decay, not a big issue for me. If it's not in, I'm fine with that. If it is in; neat. If it were in, I'd like to see it as a mechanism to decay skills you don't use. For instance, if you've trained down 2 trees, and only use one tree (say you play your bounty hunter skills 100% and neglect your paladin skills), then there should be a decay on the skills you don't use, and some sort of retrain/reactivation/rebadge measure required to use them again. Just a thought, but I don't expect most to be on board with it :p

What I find really cool, is the prospect of training facilities being the reason to go to war.

Imagine your settlement offered training in an obscure high-end skill. Now imagine only 4-5 other settlements offer that training. As is, you'd have a pretty commanding dominance in that market. BUT, what if you went to war with those nations and took over their hex/destroyed their settlement. Now you'd be the only settlement which offers that training.

Maybe you don't even want a monopoly. Maybe outlaws are a thorn in your kingdom's side, and so you make it a crusade to eliminate their high end training settlements around the world to keep their numbers low?

I'm not sure what the logistics will be for settlements that have grown to a large size, and then eliminated. But if you could remove/undo their progression, I wonder what kind of strategies we'd see from some of the larger powers.

As a practical example - You'd be hard pressed to find the "level 20 gear" equivalent on this chart:

EVE Skill Tree

Mainly because unlike Theme parks, PFO doesn't have a liner progression. The idea that you 'start at level 1 and progress to level 2, then to three, on and on until level cap' doesn't have a literal translation into a sandbox skill-based progression. Each player may start at a different point and develop down a completely unique path. When players will be in need of the training your settlement offers will be impossible to forecast.

Nihimon wrote:

Not to speak for Camlo, although I think I understand him.

The problem is that once a majority of the player base has purchased a particular Skill/Tier, then the demand falls off dramatically, causing the price to plunge. It's similar to the problem with lower-level gear in most games - once most players are level 50, the market for level 20 gear is really distorted since most level 20s at that time are actually alts who can afford prices much higher than a "natural" level 20 could.

Camlo is looking for ways to ensure the demand is more or less constant, the same way the demand for adventuring gear will be constant.

This was exactly my point, Nihimon.

Yes, skills are likely something that you train once, and then never need to again. That isn't as bad as it sounds however. Keep in mind, that as a training settlement - your 'customer' is every player on the server. If you ever lose business, it'll be from another settlement that offered the same training.

Each player levels at their own pace. 'Block Rank 1' might be something that all fighters might pick up early, but probably not all at the same time. Maybe some players train it a few weeks behind other players, or months behind! And that's just the players who have an immediate need for it. All the people leveling a craft early, or a caster may not have had any need at all for 'Block Rank 1' - but after developing their class for a few months, they notice it's taking a long time to train for marginal rank increases. So they diversify a little, and train up some of the other entry level skills that other playstyles offer - one of those being 'Block Rank 1'.

In this case, I can see training being relevant year-round; not to mention the influx of new players and alts continually being added to the world. Unlike the level 20 gear analogy; not all players develop down the same path at the same time. Skill training is much more of a web than it is a straight line.

I wouldn't mind upkeep either. Maybe in the form of recurring merit badges at the highest level. If you didn't re-earn your badge for the month (for example), you'd have to pay the fee via retrain (but if you did pay to retrain, it would wave the badge requirement for that month).

Ive got mixed feelings about the changes to skill training in the latest blog.

2. Passive XP gain
Ive got extremely mixed feelings about the passive xp gain. Im a new player to EVE and it took me a while to figure out where i wanted to go in my training and even longer till I did my first skill remap. It was confusing at first (and still catches me by surprise on occasion), but I was invested in the training. As skills opened up and got completed I felt that my character was growing even if I didnt change a single piece of equipment or change a single tactic. This was because I was paying attention to my skill training and the associated queue. Removing that and saying 'Log off for a while at 1st level, now come back and spend all your points. BAM! Youre a 3/4/5 level fighter' is counter to the feeling of organic growth and development that forms a huge part of roleplaying (IMHO). I understand that there will be some in-game requirements as well as the xp, but unless those requirements take significant time it amounts to the same thing. I would prefer that there be some planning ahead of time rather than just sitting back and spending a huge bunch of points. I feel that the reason it works is because no skill is useless and every skill is eventually trainable. So while you may have lost a little time, its not something that significantly hinders your character or progression.
Suggestion Assuming that the EVE style is not desired (which could mesh well with the trainer IMO), then perhaps a pool cap on the passive xp? If you...

As I see it, the XP gain in PFO is not an exact translation of training skills in EVE. Yes, in EVE, there was incentive to plan ahead and monitor your training queue to make sure you're always training. But In PFO, you're going to require 'achievements/badges' to train on top of the XP requirement. So you'll still need to plan those out. If training a skill requires you kill 100 rats, you'll have to plan on having that completed by the time you have the XP for training. Will those requirements take significant time? I'm fairly certain the time they take will be relative to the depth of the training. Your first thing you train will probably take 5-10minutes to earn the badge. 2 years in to a particular path, you'll likely have to spend considerable time earning the requisite badge.

@ the alt discussion:

I can see why people want alts. Personally, in a game like EVE or PFO, I prefer not to have them. Yes you can have 2 'lvl 20' characters in 2.5 years as opposed to 5 years. But the time to train down those paths is grossly exponential, not liner. So early on, my 1 character could still have significant progress into two trees of development - completely negating the desire for alts. The benefit alts have in this case is a very long term one, and is dependent of me having the same goals/views 2 years into the game that I had back when I first started playing (GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD luck with that!)

I also like the idea that I as a player don't have access to everything. Everything to do in the game is larger than myself. That I depend on people who specialize in things that I don't. Having an alt that keeps pace with players who devote their sole character to a specific path cheapens the game for me. It's a way for players to be a jack of all trades, master of all - which to me defeats the purpose of even having lengthy and diverse development paths. I HATE the idea that someone will play one character, and while playing; hit a 'road block', and overcome it by simply switching to their alt. How many wandering merchants are going to have assassin alts to take vengeance on someone playing an outlaw? Ruins the point of the game for me. I wish there was a way to prevent Alt2 from coming to the rescue of Alt1 - something like switching characters on a 1-2 hour cool down. Make storage/money account wide to solve the "what if I just need to send money to my alt?" issue - assuming that's a legitimate concern, considering it's another example of Alt2 coming to the rescue of Alt1

In a game where I'm not restricted in development (alignment can always change, so don't argue that. And roleplaying is self-imposed so don't argue that either), having alts do tasks that your 'main' is completely capable of doing itself is out of the question for me. I see it as a holdover from the themepark era, which doesn't serve me any purpose in PFO.

I "get" alts. In WoW, I had max level toons for DPS, Healing, and Tanking. I had max levels in EVERY profession - because the scope of that game was small. It only took a few weeks to max out any one of those things, and with not much else to do; why not? Just doesn't apply in this game to me.

That is my take from the 'no alt' camp. I recognize MANY do not share that same view and will play multiple characters regardless. :cheers:

Reading that blog made me pretty damn happy.

I briefly skimmed through some of the posts in this thread and wanted to comment on the point raised about how new/late settlements will be able to compete or offer anything of relevance over much older settlements:

What happens when a settlement is attacked/over taken by enemies? If they lose all/some of their buildings, I imagine that keeps them on par with newer settlements. I figure there will be progress>lose>progress cycles with settlements. Also, with alignments and laws; I think you'll find large separations between settlements. Much like with characters spending a long time to train down 1 path, settlements should do the same.

With reference to the flagging, do you get the flag as soon as you target someone? Sounds a bit odd to me if thats the case as you are in effect observing the target (closely or otherwise) regardless of whether your weapons are out, else all guards with weapons drawn/ready would be counted as aggressors. I think the flag should only come up once an attack has been initiated against the target (whether it hits, misses or is resisted is irrelevant)

No, you're not flagged simply for targeting someone. But the point was raised; What if you somebody kills you before you had a chance to defend? If you're killed in 1 hit, there seems to be little you could do. You can't "defend" yourself before you get hit, or else YOU yourself are flagged as the attacker. So the idea that, if someone displayed hostile intentions (targeting with weapons drawn), would that be better as it would show the attacker flag and allow one to defend before taking the first hit.

In a way, it makes sense. If you're a ranged character, and you see a melee character charging towards you in an obvious attack; the current mechanics say that you have to allow yourself to get hit before you can attack - or suffer the consequences of attacker flag/rep loss.

But being flagged just from targeting someone seems to create a whole other set of problems. So for now, I guess your main options are to simply run away or get hit if you wish to avoid being the 'attacker'

@ Dakcenturi, I agree. If timers count down while logged out, that really defeats the purpose of flags imo.

Heh, this made me think of a Penny Arcade strip I read once:
Penny Arcade

I think this discussion fits very much in line with the 'PvP or PvE' thread. At it's core, you go back to the developer's intent with the game.

Take Blizzard: It was their intent to deliver an MMORPG that was easy and accessible to 'casual' gamers. At the time of launch, that definition was relative to EQ. Make EQ easier. Remove the 'grind' from EQ. As the years went on, WoW WAS the relative comparison to WoW. So Blizzard made WoW easier. Made WoW more accessible, and removed the 'grind' from WoW. That will continue until that game's end of days because it is the driving ideology behind its development.

FromSoftware: It was their intent to make a game that wasn't the same casual crap you see on consoles these days. They wanted a challenging RPG. They wanted a game that didn't hold your hand. That was very tough, but never unfairly so. In 2009, they launched a game called Demon's Souls. It was a huge success. Turns out there's a big demographic of gamers that want a game experience like that.

You can also look to roguelike RPGs, where the intent is to simply see how far you can go. Once you die; start over and see if you can beat that record.

With MMOs specifically, themeparks have to create new contnet. That content is almost always 'better' in gear/stats to make it 'challenging' for the players. So in that regard, you're very much correct in saying that devs keep handing out better and better gear over time. It's the only way they inject 'things to do' in their game that players understand because the premise of those games is to level up to the most powerful state you can.

Sandbox MMOs work a little differently. You may still have that gear/item inflation as expansions come out; but the real interaction is between the players. When you have loss on death like you do in PFO, you'll quickly find that item/gear progression is not a liner progression over time. It has it's ups and downs. Just because you get strong items, doesn't mean you'll have them always and forever. They can be stolen or destroyed. This game has more capacity to TAKE from the player than it does to GIVE, and I think that's where you'll find your love for this game.

It makes me wonder if democracies with thrive at all in PFO. It'll definitely be an interesting social experiment.

If Ryan makes big decision spending require votes, it sounds like settlements might get bogged down by too much administration. Imagine a war time scenario. You have a dictatorship settlement where 1 person runs the show. They can build and spend as fast as (s)he has the resources to. A democratic settlement facing a declaration of war from this other settlement might not be as quick to get the war machine into production.

How long are voting periods? I imagine a 12-24 hour period for a vote would be realistic if all members are to allowed to vote. People shouldn't be penalized just because they were offline at the moment a vote was called. Do absentees count as a vote against? or omitted? If omitted, couldn't someone call a vote when major stake holders are known to be absent in an attempt to usurp or circumvent others who share control? There is a lot to take into consideration, and I don't envy the job the devs have at divining the perfect formula.

I think in war, a democratic state would probably need quicker action. At which point they'd likely hand control over to 1 person... I wonder if they'll hand that power back? lol

@Kakafika,

Certainly, the player can choose a settlement based on it's tax rate. My issue is, there are so many other factors that go into settlement choice. What alignment do you want for yourself? What alignment do you want in a settlement? What are the settlement's laws/goals/priorities? Where is it's geographical location? Is is close to a massive alliance bent on conquering all? or close to a major trade hub? Is it close to where your friends are? etc.

clynx wrote:

Ultimately, 1 player is pocketing ALL of the tax on good faith that it will be put towards the betterment of the settlement...

That is not true.

Put It in Writing describes a variety of governance options for a Settlement. It's possible to create a Democracy where every expenditure of Tax Money will be voted on by all Settlement members.

I didn't come to the same assumption you did after reading that.

*This enables the organization to ward against the unwanted use or removal of key assets. It complicates their use, but also protects the members of the organization against unscrupulous actions—to some degree—depending on how voting power is concentrated in the organization.

I see that people will be able to vote on changing how things are set. But if a settlement is set so that a small handful have access to the coffers, they could still abuse that position until (if ever) a vote changes their privileges. I'm betting the founders of a settlement (probably a company) will set the rules that they want - And likely weigh their votes so they can keep things in line with their vision. I'm betting you're more likely to see Oligarchy or Feudal-like settlements early in this game. A true democracy is the riskiest governance for the founders of a settlement - as they could likely be ousted from power or the settlement itself... or simply hand partial control of assets to a person outside the original founders.

It would suck to have someone tax you at a rate you had no say in (set at the declaration of the settlement), and see your taxed money misappropriated/lost.

I like the donation idea better because it is voluntary. Each player is able to contribute at a rate that is relative to their means/goals.
In a game like PFO, things can change from day to day. If a settlement is nearing a total needed to build something I might say "Hey, change my tax rate to 50%, and lets see if we can reach this goal buy the end of the day!". Maybe I might get assassinated or S.A.D'd multiple times and lose a TON of items/money; I'd like to request that my tax be lowered for a while so I can try to recuperate from my loses.

Maybe meet somewhere in the middle? Perhaps the settlement sets a minimum tax rate that can't exceed something like 10%. Leave it up to the players to adjust their tax rate above the minimum if they so wish.

Cliffs:
-If I'm going to lose my investment in a settlement (be it corruption, or war, or w/e), it would be nice knowing I lost something that was my decision to invest. It's better to gamble (even a really safe bet) with money that you have to lose, rather than risk what someone else thinks you should.

Well the consequences of attacking someone in the wilderness still apply.

Attacker

The character has attacked another character outside of a war situation, and the target character did not have a PvP flag. It denotes which character is the aggressor in PvP combat.

Anyone killing a character with Attacker does not suffer reputation or alignment loss.
Attacker is removed if the character is killed.
The Attacker flag lasts for one minute after combat ends.
If the character gets the Attacker flag he gets an Aggressor buff that lasts for 24 hours that has no effect besides being a counter. Each time he gets Attacker increases the stack of Aggressor by one.
If the character gets a high enough stack of Aggressor, determined by his Reputation, he gets the status Murderer, which lasts 24 hours and does not disappear on death. It acts the same as Attacker, allowing repeat offenders to be hunted down for longer periods of time.

If I baited you into flagging yourself as an attacker, I could kill you and not suffer any reputation or alignment loss. As well as not debuff myself as aggressor/murderer. Which is a way to circumvent the whole point of the reputation and flag systems. It's meant to deter players from indiscriminate, rampant killing; be it in a town or wilderness.

Initial Scenario
Player A has weapons/implements drawn (or is in a combat stance for monks)and targets Player B
Player A immediately Flagged as hostile only for player B

Lets say you're fighting some wildlife out in your hex. There's a pack of wolves that you're engaged in. I come over and stand around you and the wolves, hoping that you'll target me by mistake (either by miss-click or tab-targeting the wolves). Boom! you're flagged as an attacker and I can kill you without consequence.

Your scenario is practical around settlements, but away from all the towns and roads, it seems like someone could use that to grief you.

clynx wrote:

Keep in mind that the PLEX option doesn't generate extra revenue for GW. If a player buys a PLEX off GW for $15, and I buy a PLEX off that player, I'm not paying that $15 for the month to GW.

What PLEX does is cut out the gold selling market. Players who want to 'buy gold' can sell game time to other players for in-game gold. A system I very much support.

It actually does. You paid for the PLEX, and then traded it to someone else. You didn't get to use the benefits of the PLEX, someone else did.

Right, and THAT person in turn doesn't pay $15. So in this case, of two people:

1 has paid $30 (their own sub and the plex)
1 has paid $0 (they use the plex)

A total of $30 to GW for two monthly subs.

Having said that, I will concede to Imbicatus. I guess you would have players who wouldn't play at all if they couldn't buy game time with in-game money. Getting to that point does usually require some investemt in the character already though. I don't think it's feasible for someone to start playing EVE and immediately be able to pay their subscription with in-game money. (at least not with considerable help and knowledge from people who have already been playing for a while).

@LordDaeron

Alright, maybe I need to elaborate a little further because I seem to have given off a drastically different impression than what I was even talking about.

Basically, I'm thinking specifically to how a game called Stronghold Kingdoms handled this very thing. It was a territory war-like game. there were plots of land much like the hexes in PFO. All the players would have their little town inside the boarders of these hexes.

Each player had a vote in which member of the hex ran the perish, which was the hex government village if you will. From there you could set tax rate, and construct buildings that would give boons to every player's town inside the hex.

Now, the elected player who ran the perish was limited to which building could be built; so either they would serve their own interests and choose what was 'needed', or put it to a vote. Once the buildings were selected, they required increasing amounts of materials to be built/upgraded. Which was done through donations. The players living inside the Hex were the only ones who could donate/upgrade these buildings. If you viewed the town perish page, you could see recent donations from other players, and what they were donating.

I don't mean to imply that there is a server wide announcement that you've donated gold in any way. In fact, I'm thinking specifically of raw materials when I suggest donations. Enemies wouldn't have access to any of that information unless they had a spy as a member of your company, as the donation record is only available to the players working towards growing their settlement. That kind of info would be good to have. "Oh, I can see LordDaeron has been making frequent deposits of wood this week, I'll work on gathering stone because that seems like it'll be the bottleneck of our production". That sort of thing.

And if we can visually see a well-developed settlement, I think it'll be safe to assume that the people living inside it are well off or have a strong economic power. Not that I think that will actually lead to robberies, anyway. I envision most buildings to require massive amounts of raw resources, not gold. Just because you build a massive church in your settlement, doesn't mean you carry anything of value on your person at any given time.

Keep in mind that the PLEX option doesn't generate extra revenue for GW. If a player buys a PLEX off GW for $15, and I buy a PLEX off that player, I'm not paying that $15 for the month to GW.

What PLEX does is cut out the gold selling market. Players who want to 'buy gold' can sell game time to other players for in-game gold. A system I very much support.

Like Avena says, you could likely carve out a PvE existence in PFO, but you really won't be able to remove the PvP aspect from the game.

The same could have been said about EVE though - especially when you look at that game on paper (as we now look at PFO). I have a feeling that if you really didn't Like EVE because of the PvP, I wouldn't expect you to like PFO.

The devs are doing their best to design the game so that players participate in meaningful PvP. They definitely don't want players killed for no reason or without consequence. So if just random ganks are your concern, PFO might be better than EVE in that regard. But sometimes you just have to realize some games aren't designed for you. If you liked the setting of Dark Souls, but don't like being killed; I'd recommend that you simply not play Dark Souls. Dieing is an extremely common thing in that game. The game is designed to make you die a lot. You're supposed to die a lot. The whole point of that game is to learn from your deaths and overcome the obstacles that would strike you down. It provides you with a greater sense of accomplishment.

Do I prefer PvE over PvP? It really depends on the game. If the game was PvE in design (EQ, FFXI, RO, WoW to name a few), then yes, I prefer PvE. Those games were designed at their core for PvE gameplay. Games like DAoC or EVE... these games were designed with PvP in mind. They have a much richer PvP experience because every aspect of the game took PvP into consideration during development. Most themepark MMOs are PvE in core design with "PvP" just tacked on lazily. In games like WoW or Rift, PvP servers are just PvE servers with an attack flag enabled. It's literally a binary value of 1 instead of 0. That's it. To me, that's inexcusably terrible design from the developers. A lot of people think that's just how PvP is because that's all they know.

I am really looking forward to PFO because GW IS taking PvP into consideration. They're trying very hard to implement it in an intelligent way that gives purpose and meaning for it - in the same way people like Intelligent and rewarding PvE.

Yes PFO will have PvP, but I think you should play it for that. PvP doesn't get in the way of PvE. PvP IS the game. PvE simply supplements that experience - it's a tool to gear up, grow, trade and further drive interaction with other players.

Well, tax on sales in an AH system is usually incurred on the seller, not the buyer. In most games, it's a way to destroy or remove money from the economy - something every game needs to do. You can't have a game generate money without removing it somewhere else; you'll end up with massive inflation otherwise as money keeps entering a system without leaving it.

This could be an argument for why players would have an incentive to sell their goods in their own shop or through a communication channel. If they wanted to sell on their own and circumvent the market/AH, they wouldn't have to pay the tax.

I take issue with settlements setting their own tax rate and pocketing those taxes for themselves. Ultimately, 1 player is pocketing ALL of the tax on good faith that it will be put towards the betterment of the settlement... which can get a little shady on its own. The second part of this is: Will settlements even require a monetary upkeep at all? I'd rather see them require resources and skills. Need to fix or build better walls? - Better quarry some stone and wood and build them. The third part is: a 'reasonable' tax rate is subjective. The leader(s) of a settlement might be really ambitious and be willing to tax 10% of market sales in order to build more. But maybe other players might not agree. What if the crafters can only afford 5%? Do they just leave the settlement? What if outside players don't want to pay 10% when 'settlement B' two hexes over only taxes 5% - you'd essentially drive away your own business.

I think a tax the settlement places on its residents is something that should be done at the player level and independent of any built-in game mechanic like the AH. The leader(s) simply ask each player to pay their rent at the end of the day/week/month. Players can then donate money/goods/services in a manner relative to their playstyle - Not everyone will spend significant amounts of time on the market anyway, in which the tax system fails the settlement in that regard.

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In a donation system, I'd very much like it to be publicly broadcasted when a donation is made, what that donation was, and by whom. This should all be recorded and accessible by everyone in the settlement. It lets everyone know exactly who is donating what, and at what pace. In a lot of cases, you get players competing with each other to be the person who has donated the most. It also allows the leader to identify who hasn't been donating and see if they can motivate them to contribute, or possibly even remove them if they aren't meeting the required standards of the settlement.

I really hope they decide to include the crafter's name on player made items.

In Ragnarok Online, If I was a Blacksmith, every item I crafted would have my name as the prefix to that weapon. A Fiery Stiletto made by me would be named "Clynx's Fiery Stiletto". My name on the weapon was even a different colour to denote it was the crafter's name.

I can't stress how important that is in a community. It's crafter recognition that can't be ignored. Anyone who buys that item will know my name. If a player in PFO looted another player after a kill and saw that there was a really good item they could loot, AND it had my name on it, the recognition continues. The names of the people who possess a crafted item might fade into obscurity, but the maker never should.

Other games (and I'll go ahead and take a dump on WoW for this example, 'cause I'll never pass up that opportunity) like WoW, the crafter's name is included as flavor text at the bottom of the item's tooltip. It's a rather obscure recognition. So much so that if you asked the average WoW player who crafted their bags or BoEs, I'm betting 99% couldn't tell you (of those who didn't craft their own).

Ask anyone who's watched Kill Bill the name of the Japanese man that forged the legendary samurai swords, and I bet they could tell you. If GW is serious about giving crafter's their due in PFO, then that example should be the ideology behind their design process in regards to crafter recognition.

Ok, I have my coffee here and I'm jumping right in to round 2 on my take on some of the other discussions here....

To the people who oppose the EVE-like market system or even just an AH system in general: Yes, centralized markets can somewhat ruin the person-to-person interaction by reducing the entire process to a browser interface - but in my experience the player run shops didn't offer much in that regard either. Mainly because most players only ran their shops when they were afk/sleeping. If they were ever actually at the computer, they were off adventuring instead of running a shop (presumably collecting items to later sell when they aren't actually playing).

I also think some people too easily dismiss the fact that even with an EVE-like market, players still must:

-Journey out to the market they found (easier said than done)
-Have enough inventory/encumbrance to collect their purchase (easier said than done)
-Return home with their purchase (easier said than done)

And with that last bullet in mind, it gives credence to Ryan's reasoning behind masking buys/sellers.

It would be so easy to bait out a merchant by listing large quantities of a commodity at an intentional below-market price. When a player buys it and you can see their name, all you have to do is wait for them to show up and depart. Follow that person out of the settlement, and then either perform a S.A.D, or simply kill them and loot the inventory back anyway.