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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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 :)

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)

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.

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.

I'm going to make this super easy on myself, and maybe the rest of you might want to consider this:

Instead of pre-defining what your character's alignment is, and then being restricted to what you can/can't do in the game (and subsequently being upset over those restrictions); I'm going to do everything I want to do in the game, and let my alignment slide all over the place. If I want to PvP, I will. Will it make me "evil" or "unlawful"? Who cares, I'm doing it because I want to, not because my alignment says I'm allowed to. If I want to act charitable towards, or mentor newer players starting out, I'll do that too.

The alignment to me will just be a 'system I game' when I need something. If you need a pure alignment to get/use something, I'll shift my character over to that alignment as a prereq to gain that access.

To me, alignment is no different than "classes". In D&D, you chose all those things upfront and then play accordingly. In a sandbox MMO, those things are subject to change over time - which is not a bad or flawed thing. My character in PFO isn't going to be a class. My skills will be purely selected by what I want to do in the game. Again, if it happens to be beneficial to take 1 archetypal set of skills, I'm simply gaming the system to have access to those beneficial skills - NOT because I've decided for myself that I'm 'x' class. And as time goes on, everyone here will have more skills/training that would qualify them to complete several archetypal classes, so what good would it do to identify yourself as just 1 of them.

It's a sandbox MMO. What you want to do in the game on day 5 might not be what you want to be doing on Day 50. The guild/company you start out with might change their goals over time. You might even change companies or merge with others. Outside forces like bigger alliances and their politics might radically influence the region you're in and interrupt what you had planned back on day 1. Everything is completely open-ended and subject to change, including myself and everyone here. At the most, the alignment system might influence what I do, but will never define what I do.

@ Clynx

As a former guild leader I trully understand your point. I had in the past problems with players using alters to spy on my clan just to gather information to an enemy clan. That is a major concern indeed. But on the other hand, to prevent people to play alts at all would be something like forcing the fairplayers pay for the actions of the cheaters, don't you think?

I think of it as forcing the cheaters to pay for their own actions and giving the fair players justice, knowing that whoever wronged them can't hide behind a character that has no infamous reputation.

However, It's not about restricting people from playing multiple characters. I think if you could come up with some sort of breakdown on each player's alts or guild associations I would be fine with that within a multi-alt system as well.

Having played omni-spec characters in games like EVE and FFXI, I thoroughly appreciated being able to do whatever I wanted with 1 character, and never needing another to experience something different. I expect to do the same in PFO - Not needing alts is one of the great things about sandbox games. The first few days in EVE even exposes you to each type of gameplay. You get quests that have you do all the neat stuff that you can spec into. By the end of my first few days, I knew what I wanted to cert into and what I didn't. There really wasn't a need to experiment by rolling other characters. I expect to see a similar introduction in PFO.

I've been reading a lot of the discussions held on MMO economics and crafting here on the forums. I want to share the (extremely positive) experience I had in another MMO where a crafter was a class of its own:

Ragnarok Online

I played RO in its early years. I played the international localization between 2002 and 2004, and witnessed one of the most stable economies I have ever seen in an MMO.

First off, the Blacksmith class. Blacksmiths had two sides to them: crafting and combat. To level your Blacksmith, you needed to invest permanent attribute points into combat stats and skills. However, as a crafter, your success rate was influenced by your lesser stats (dex and luck). So the player could level a Blacksmith relatively easily and cheaply by going the combat route, but the trade off would be that they would have a lower success rate on crafting than someone who leveled as a pure forger. It typically took a guild effort to level a blacksmith to a high level on pure crafting stats.

Although PFO uses a completely different skill system, I find common ground in the way players will skill up their craft; do they devote ALL of their skills into crafting? or do they deviate to give their character the ability to do other things like fight and have more utility? The latter being the easier route on the individual as they become more self-sufficient.

Having established the crafting class and the difficulty or dedication of having a 'pure crafter', I'll go into the crafting system:

Every craft has a chance to fail. A fail is a loss of all materials used in the recipe. This has a few implications. One being that the players who put in the most effort to get the highest success rates possible were renowned within the community - something most crafters want in an MMO. The second implication was that there was a constant destruction of supply in the market. Making demand always high, and prices relatively immune to deflation due to surplus. Nobody likes crafting an item that is worth less than the cost of materials.

To give you an idea, Most of the sought after player-made weapons had roughly a 35% chance of success when made by a forge smith, and maybe as low as 15-25% for a battle smith (depending largely on stats and level). That is A LOT of loss of materials with not a lot items floating around on the market. In my opinion, this is ideal.

On top of the crafting system was the upgrade system. In RO, this was handled by NPCs at a fixed percentage of success, but again, a failure would be a complete loss of that item. The higher an item was upgraded, the higher the chance of failure.

Much like the sandbox nature of leveling a character (to which there is no real end), player crafted gear had almost no end. To craft an item and upgrade it to a maximum of +10 was virtually unheard of. Amour could also be upgraded in the same way. This lead to a continual destruction of high priced items; once rich players had their ideal set of gear and set their sights on upgrading each piece to higher levels.

so what was the outcome of such a system?

-It promoted the idea that there was no 'max gear set'. No matter how rich someone was, they would never obtain +10 on all their gear... in fact for the 3 years I played, I can't recall anyone having 1 piece of gear at +10. Although I'm sure some uber rich person may have had one.

-Crafters had a distinct role in the community. Most people knew all the good crafters, as the people who devoted the most time ended up with their name on most of the items on the market. If you were a high level pure forge smith everybody wanted to be your friend :)

-Virtually all of the materials that went into crafting items, and the crafted items themselves were subject to destruction; leaving supply low even over long periods of time.

A lot of people criticize such systems. Many call them casinos as they're just random luck for the individual. When I look at the end result however, I like what I see. EVE had a system wherein your death meant a loss of a ship, its mods, and its cargo. I'm not sure how PFO will handle player death, but unless you lose all your gear and inventory, something else needs to be in place to serve as the balancing mechanism for item saturation.

I know we have a diverse community with backgrounds in all other MMORPGs. What are your thoughts on systems that combat over-saturation of items and gold? Which have worked best in other games? And can they be adopted to fit in PFO?