galderon's page

I'll add my two cents here. My first impression of the game was that it's much, much rougher than I had expected. I know that graphics and animations are taking a back seat to a lot of the underlying functionality, but it's the first thing you see. I know that the term "minimum viable product" has been around since the beginning of the Kickstarter, but I didn't realize how minimum "minimum" was.

I'm also finding the systems of the game very confusing. One day I logged in to try to figure out the crafting system, and utterly failed. I realize I haven't put in the requisite work to really understand the systems, but I'm finding it a bit overwhelming.

That said, I'm optimistic that these things will make it into the game eventually, and I might be a good candidate to wait a few months after EE to really start digging into the game. The game will be improved and I'll be able to take advantage of any community-written game guides (I'd love a "PFO for Dummies" that includes a lot of basic assumed stuff that the more active alpha players have worked out). I might log in at the beginning anyway, to start the XP clock, and to periodically log in to check the game state and to say "hi", but I haven't decided yet.

I think that the Crowdforging aspect has been working great; hopefully it will give everyone the game they want (though what people ask for and what they want are often different -- hopefully Goblinworks is compensating for this).

I'm coming into this game from the Pathfinder side (rather than from the Eve side), so I'm more of a casual player that's interested in training up a capable character (or two) that can help out and be fairly effective doing it, but I'm not so interested in the politics and kingdom building. So I'm hoping the game will have a place for me.

Sent.

I'm mostly a lurker, enjoying the ride.

I would be interested in playing a Roll20/Skype game, either Darkfire's or something else. Of the above, Throne of Night seems very appealing!

Regarding the OP's original concept, I'm reminded of the movie cliche where a super-effective special-ops team is shown how capable they are, and then for one reason or another, their boss saddles them with a new guy that tags along and they have to protect him. The leader of the ops team objects, yelling, "He's gonna get us all killed!" The movie then proceeds to show how the guy is a hindrance. Eventually, they get to a scene where the new guy rocks some of his skills and saves the day in a way the special ops guys couldn't do.

Pathfinders really are supposed to be special-ops teams. In order to be "that guy", you'll definitely need to be able to pull off the payoff at the end...where you save the day in some unexpected way. Otherwise you probably just will get everybody killed...and nobody wants to watch that movie. :-)

Due to the complexity of the Pathfinder RPG, a lot of enjoyment can come from designing and crafting characters, and not actually playing them. Whatever Pathfinder Online becomes, it will definitely not be that.

I would think that "game hater" is not a target audience you would want to cater to when developing a game, so no matter what the final product is, it will not appeal to the OP.

Incidentally, my forum class would be "Lurker/Fan".

There is one event I know of that is specifically for it: Inside Pathfinder Online.

Thanks for the tip! Signed up!

Will there be support for Mac users? I'm and early enrollee (slated for the first month) and I hate the idea of having to boot up windows to play the game.

I believe that was one of the perks of switching to the Unity engine...so unless anything has changed, the answer is....yes? Check out the January development blog posts.

Some questions on light...

Will special vision be implemented for dwarves, elves, etc? Lowlight and/or darkvision? Will characters encounter dark areas (caves, dungeons) requiring special vision, torches, lanterns or spells to see properly? Will night be dark enough to require external light (assuming one is far enough from a brightly lit settlement).