plopmania's page

Pyronous Rath:
I don't think changing is currently a real option for few reasons.
1) GW has licensed Unity's source code (which cost probably somewhere around 150k)
2) Unity just put out version 5. If GW feels there's benefit in changing, U5 has many upgrades.
3) Unreal takes 5% cut when you actually start making money with the product. Considering GW aims to have a subscription based game that runs for years, that 5% will be more expensive than Unity.

And in the end, no matter which engine you are using, _most_ of the visuals depend on the amount of time spent making models and textures, not the latest and greatest tech. :)

Final Fantasy XIV - A realm reborn

While I didn't care for the game itself, the visuals were nice - including the grass.

Ah, yes. It requires level 15.
Not fully saturate then. Anyhow, I guess I was trying to make the point, that character progression itself is quite far from capped. Or something like that.

While I agree, that the exp curve between "level" 7 and 8 is rather wide, I don't think it matters (unless I am wrong :)

I mean, to my understanding, you can actually saturate the whole of Tier 3 without ever crossing the magical border of level 7 and 8. Of course, currently it isn't possible to buy those feats but when they are available, I don't there's any reason why you should get the achievement level 8 for rogue. The perceptions and stealth ranks are not required to advance fully into Tier 3 of everything.

I _might_ be wrong tho.

Personally, I'd also like to see a little bit more formal approach to the crowdforging process in the near future.

Meanwhile though, we can also "metaforge": crowdforge the crowdforging process as the devs are throwing a lot of resources towards fixing the the game (and consequently have less resources to spend elsewhere).

In a sense, the polls that Sspitfire has done in the past can be viewed as part of this metaforging process. While the polls have gathered data about various things pfo, it has also been tested as a crowdforging tool. What it might be good for and what it isn't suited for.

We could have a thread that tries to itemize features we want in the game ( like the lists above ) and this way, as a crowd, contribute towards the next player-made poll (leaving Sspitfire or someone with lessened burden on their shoulders).

Or we could try something different and see where that gets us. :)

Correction to OP: It was Stealth 8 and Power 8 (not Hit Points).

If I'm not mistaken the attribute increase for each level is .08, so if I train all 12 attacks (Short Bow and Light Blade) I should reach Dexterity 11.

However I also have:

Stealth 7
Ranged Attack Bonus 4
Reflex Bonus 4
Scout 4
Swashbuckler 4
Opportunist 1
Light Melee Attack Bonus 2
Light Armor Proficiency 1
Light Blade Proficiency 1
Rogue Kit Proficiency 1

None of these have contributed to getting 1 point in Dexterity???

I am assuming that you also have Bow Weapon Proficiency, Base Attack Bonus 3, and all your 12 attacks are R2.

By my calculations, this should bring you somewhere close to 10.587 dex. To amp up, you might consider buying some upgrades to your feature (getting to rank 3 would give 0.162 dex or rank 4 0.382 dex). Moving from rank 2 to rank 3 in attacks gives 0.045 dex per attack.

I am sitting in a similar position and it isn't all too awesome.

Values provided by: Sspitfire

Personally I would prefer that the moving would happen after the search functionality has been enabled on the GW forums :)
I think that the CMS you are using should readily provide such functionality? Or is there some complication with that?

About an hour (or so) ago Bonny informed us in-game that the db-sweep would no take place every hour instead of just once a day. You'll just need to be logged off for that work. :)

Light blade feature is also a little bit weird the other way around:
Only subterfuge types use light blades, but to use said feature, you'll need martial points. There could be some mid-ground there, I think.

I believe the border colors are also visible on trainer listings themselves. At least, that is how I have always separated the attack types when browsing for new ways to inflict pain.

I got myself stuck in the same situation and I simply died. Once I respawned, my screen was all blue (except for UI controls). Trying to relog got me stuck on the "Waiting for character".

So no fancy maneuvers for me to get myself stuck.

Thanks for the nice guide again! :)

Also: As I now fumbled on again in EE, I noticed that the guide says that Tailor teaches Scavenger feat. Seems like it's actually Weaver who teaches that feat. Cheers!

My keyboard uses the Finnish multilingual layout and my [swap] button defaults to ö which would be ;: characters on a standard american qwerty (or the button to the right of L). Not the most useful default. I hope the keybindings will be more universal one day. :)

TL;DR: Maybe no time dilution but something else? Some quests have scrollbars.

IMHO, you need to put in Eve's time dilation solution for many players in a hex, otherwise to win in pvp, you simply bring the max players allowed in a hex and win by default.

While time dilation might alleviate some of the load and latency issues, I for one feel like it would not be a very good fit for a game like PFO (or other, rather fast-paced avatar-based games).

In larger battles, the players are meant to be grouped into bigger units that would aid in reducing latency. These groups of course don't remove the possibility of just stacking countless characters into one place and thus blocking the server. Handling high character density is a rather annoying problem :)

The current hexes are a rather large spaces. To enable more than #hardcap users to exist in this area, the hex could be split into smaller sections between several server nodes. This could be a static split or perhaps something more dynamic; For example, splitting the hex into a voronoi diagram based on population clusters. Still, these ramblings wont' remove the the problem above. It would be nice if the largest gatherings of players (I'll assume these are big battles) would be set up in a way that "forces" formations - across several hexes. It wouldn't be very helpful is 500 players just gather to one place and suddenly *pop* into formations.

There could be a mechanic to set a hex into a battle state that would enable only formations to enter. This would of course require all kinds of special considerations: How would the defenders assemble? What about scouts? What happens to 3rd parties?

I am kinda glad these are not truly my problems to solve :D

[Edit] The quest-giver dialogs need scrollbar handles.

The ones I encountered in Thornkeep had proper scrollbars. :\

Indeed. I finally put in some real hours in alpha 13 (around 15 hours, total i guess). I had one disconnect, no apparent desyncs.
After alpha 14 I have desynched 3 times and twice I ran into a missing hex (after which I disconnected). These happened during 2 hours of game play.

You could always try to change you DNS address manually. You'll need to navigate to your internet adapters properties and from there to Internet Protocol 4 settings.

Then set your DNS address fields to:
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

Those are public DNSs provided by google, and I was able to connect using those.

Now the actual notes are out, too :)

Ive also not read anywhere that settlement management may not decide to tear down one structure and replace it with another, thus changing that focus for the settlement.

I actually think that it has indeed been stated that tearing town buildings is something that a settlement can (and should do). For example, when the settlement has reached a stable, stagnated phase, where majority of citizens are in T3 skills, it's a natural transition from training facilities to support buildings (or something different).

On the topic of reduced skill proficiencies, a percentual reduction might be more tolerable than straight out flattening the player. Easier to market one self to new settlements if you don't have to start with: I am very good at various things, provided you are willing to build X building first.

Ah yes, the taverns. I am hoping the taverns would get world placements somewhat early on, if only to break the (currently) rather monotonous landscape :)

Anyways, I actually have a question: how can I see my power level? I tried to look around, but that yielded no results.

I seem to remember some text or other having indicated that you would need campfires or actual camps (or those fancy player structures they are selling), to regenerate power in the wilderness. But then, my memory isn't always the best reference for actual facts.

If one would like to follow the TT for the statistics of these weapons, here's the relations (in a "how it would feel" accuracy):

Crossbow, light
range: between Shortbow and Longbow
damage: equals Longbow
rate of fire: somewhat slower than bows
criticals: more frequent, less potent.

Crossbow, heavy
range: greater than Longbow
damage: greater than Longbow
rate of fire: much slower than bows
criticals: more frequent, less potent.

Also, crossbows are easier to use.

I am sure this is of no help, but anyways :D

But.. but.. I was waiting for the next iteration :<
Maybe you can remove the hard drive and attach it to another computer and recover things from there? Also, nowadays I tend save directly in my dropbox or google drive folders for instant sync :)

My questions concerning EE and pre purchased time are:

1. Is the only time directly tied to EE, the initial KS time (1 - 4 months)?

2. If I have other game time packages, ie. 3 x 3 months and 1 x 12 months, when do I have to use them?

I personally would plan on playing the first four months of EE, then take a break and wait fiords more features to be included. Follow that up with the three, separate 3 Month packages. Then take a break, and hold the 12 Month package for OE.

While I can't pull you a quote (but you can refer to the post below :), I'm reasonably certain that you can apply your pre purchased game time at your own volition, at any given time.

I am pretty sure the Goblin Squad Member thing just appeared, when I linked my kickstarter account (used to make the pledge) to my forum account using the Pledge Manager that has since been closed.

In Arche Age, rivers actually do carry you with them. While that may not constitute as "currents" in the way Schedim would like, I found that a nice touch.
I do agree with Tyncale that investing time heavily towards creating an aquatic experience might not be a priority for a while (year+). But I do second the sentiment of having bodies of water to serve as functional part of the game world, rather than just as reflective landscape. :)

A solid, working roster for companies and settlements wouldn't go amiss and I think the standard Friends list would also be of high demand. (And I kinda miss the global chat as the alpha population is kind of sparse,)

Just wanted to drop in and say: awesome work with the guide sspitfire :) I find your work to be more valuable as a learning resource than the official New Player Guide (so maybe secretly incorporate the official guide and _become_ the official one).

As for feedback; a little more white-space might make it easier to skim and indentations might add focus-points for the eyes.
Otherwise, stellar stuff.

Just some unwanted markup tag in the url.
Cleaned link.
(https://jfe.qualtrics.com/form/SV_2rzW4ig5nUX8cqp)

This seems like a good deal!
Could I have one too? Pretty please?

EDIT: Never mind :)

@Urman. Yes, sounds right. Apart from the caravans that are most likely hauling bulk goods, I am wondering if there is a place for solo-couriers. I realize they can not carry much, but they could fetch you a few quick ingredients or a part that a crafter needs, becuase he has run out, and the city has none available in its auctionhouse.

I can see the /shouts in a settlement already: "Armorsmith needs a runner for 3 Skymetal and 2 Quicksilver, collect in Brighthaven, 7 hex run!"

--

I had a similar idea but with some extension. It would be nice if the various travel systems would enable wide-spread courier services to exist. The service would have agents in various settlements to ensure fast delivery across long distances and undoubtedly hostile lands for an agreeable price :)

"Need that Tier 3 armour set delivered across 15 hexes of warring factions? In 30 minutes? Silver Horn courier company is your friend."

This would of course require some limitations on the fast travels to make these services interesting.

My gut feeling based on the trailer is that EQ:N will be mostly instanced to a 'group' sized set of people, that each 'zone' will reset every time everyone leaves, that only a very small portion of the landscape is actually destructible, and that the practical destructive effects are binary- either the bridge is there, or for movement collision, it isn't; with no room for a damaged bridge.

That last is based mostly on watching the trees at the end as they are destroyed and then clip through the monster as they fall down. Once the trees are 'destroyed' the rubble doesn't interact with other objects anymore. Then they use a jump cut technique to hide what happens to the portion of the building which is destroyed, implying a small number of unique states of damage to the building.

While I agree with your thoughts on instancing the play field, the destruction is actually more fine-grained. The voxelfarm tech enabling the destruction allows real-time set operations on voxelised meshes. It is quite neat. As for the trees: voxelfarm does not handle physics so my bet is SOE decided to avoid a lot of pain and made do with particle effects rather than break the system with unnecessary complexity.

You should google the voxelfarm dev blog. There's lots of little fun stuff that might be of interest to you :)

Sooooo.... Is there anyone attending GenCon who would just love to claim my Konkrud promotional mini and mail it to Finland? It's no biggie, right?

I live in Australia, and this blog post makes me a sad panda

You are not the only sad panda around :)

I think it's note-worthy to mention that "Head Start" is a totally different thing than "Invitation to Early Enrollment". I, too, have Head Start listed and it says that I get to join the game on the last phase of EE. But Invitation to Early Enrollment states I can join on the first month.

The benefit list simply contains all the possible benefits you can possibly get with your pledge level. Some might trump others. I think Head Start was a late addition to the Adventurer-level (35$?).

[Above ramblings are to say: It might not actually be a bug, but a feature.]

I think there's a slight problem with the current design as the alignment system currently performs two separate roles:

1) It in some form and capacity performs the RP functionality that is familiar from TT version of the game.

2) It doubles as anti-griefing mechanic to deter people from being evil by issuing penalties for evil-doers.

It's like trying to tune a guitar to two different keys simultaneously. That don't work so good.

Dakcenturi wrote:

plopmania wrote:

Dak:

I made a crappy temporary rss-feed for blogs until GW sets up their own. So, on the off-chance you'd like to use it, here it is:
www.rnd.fi/pfo/rss

I'll work the dates and maybe some other meta-data into those when I get the chance.

EDIT: And while at it, I'll figure out why Butchers, Bakers and Candlestick Makers redirects to GW's twitter. That makes very little sense.

So I tried setting this up but for some reason it isn't pulling into my reader on the site :(

Now, that is weird. It functions well enough on my Google Reader. To be honest, my knowledge of rss feeds and readers is somewhat limited. What reader do you use on your site? I could take a look and try to fix the feed if I can.

DeciusBrutus wrote:

If the load process takes longer than moving to the area, there is no seamless solution mathematically possible.

Thus my suggestion for "buffering" bordering hexes and loading the hexes you can potentially move to in the background while you're still moving around inside the current hex.

The core idea of the point is still valid tho. Given enough speed, the game would need to buffer almost the whole world in a worst-case scenario.

But, as the speed is limited, buffering is the solution I think.

A few things come to mind:

a) Pseudo-random isn't that expensive, i ran python script for 1s
and generated 2,754,483 random numbers. And even if you want
pre-generated numbers, just put them into ram. If they are stored
in db or anything like that, well, you could generate the number
just as well, given fetch latency.
As for faster generation, if I remember correctly, Quake 3 used
float overflows. :)

b) Unity isn't very golden server back-end as it is not thread-safe.
Sure, you can run threads but not interact with unity from those.

c) GW2 put everything into a gigantastic one file, for mechanical disks
to have better access to data and they could load faster.

Hmm. Now that I look this over, it looks almost like an attack towards Uthreth. Please don't take it as such :)

For me it doesn't really matter whether 1st or 3rd person pov is chosen, but then, I don't perceive any change to the immersion due to the pov setting. If the game plays smoothly and I don't have to swear to mechanics, awesome.

As what comes to top-down, I feel it is a setting that only places artificial restrictions on the game - graphics would be left to state that is good enough and the reduction on server load would be rather minimal.

I might as well concur. It is a tad dark :)

Dak:

I made a crappy temporary rss-feed for blogs until GW sets up their own. So, on the off-chance you'd like to use it, here it is:
www.rnd.fi/pfo/rss

I'll work the dates and maybe some other meta-data into those when I get the chance.

EDIT: And while at it, I'll figure out why Butchers, Bakers and Candlestick Makers redirects to GW's twitter. That makes very little sense.

If and when teleportation is included in the game, I would like to see some restrictions imposed on it.
These could be something like (just throwing stuff):

- Settlements put down a law prohibiting teleportation into the settlement
- Limited distance or mildly exponential curve on [spell cost]/[distance]
- Limited weight allowed per spell or limited number of players
- Possibly requires more than one caster to cast (steps away from TT, yes)
- Rare spell to come by and is not 'copyable' by magic craft
- Only made possible with preset places of power or something

Also wilder:
Limited number of teleporters in the world, say n% of all the spell casters. Teleportation would be learned through a special ritual which gives you the ability and 'pops' out the longest teleporter, who would then need to re-ritualize himself to get the power back. ( Crazy idea. Don't do this :D)

Teleportation is all fine and good, but an excess of instant travel soon makes the world 'disappear' and streamlines it down to a collection of minigames: Teleport to place A and collect cool leather. Teleport to place B, cure the said leather.. etc.

Okies. Before that gets officially done, I scripted this for people to use:

www.rnd.fi/pfo/rss

Just subscribe to that address and you are done.
It might work.

So what you're saying is that the needs of one class, outweigh the convenience of all?

I can't for the life of me figure out, where Andius said this.

Blog post

That should cover it. :)

And in general, alphas are meant to be fairly closed affairs as the application (whichever kind it is) is still more than bare bones - it might be missing a few joints and whatnot. Need to get those seamlessly together before fancier stuff like meat can be put on :)

Time to sleep.

To be perfectly clear I operate under the assumption that the vote decides what order those things will be put in during Alpha.

--

Then again, I would make the assumption that 'crowdforging' an answer to a question would affect the crowdforging phase.

EDIT: Not trying to step on your toes here. Just my best guess.

@leperkhaun

Sure it might not be the most fitting name, but it is also more or less the industry standard for AI controlled game objects that a player own on either temporal or non-temporal basis and is able to issue some set of commands to.

Kinda off-topic: If anyone has player Dragon Age, I kinda liked the logical expression system they used so that player was able to define NPC party-member behavior. If they had something like that with existing presets, pets could be quite nice. But then, I am just too sleepy to think about server-side evaluation implications and all those things.

My quick viewpoint (considering both features will be added):

No horses: Slower movement -> seemingly bigger world.

No 'pets': Some archetypes (which many love) miss a core feature and wind up gimped.

(I did have a larger write-up but it turned into an obscure heap of chaos. Don't do sleep deprivation.)

plopmania wrote:

Peter Wenter wrote:

Yeah, and at this point so many people are watching the Kickstarter that a multi 10k influx (especially if no 10k slots are taken) would definitely be noticed.
I cannot imagine that any financial benefit would outweigh the hit to Paizo's & GW's reputation such shenanigans would cause.

They could always pledge, say, at level of $15 starting now. Then gradually start raising that pledge but stay on the same pledge level. Most would just assume that old backers are raising their pledges and new ones are just throwing in tad larger once. None would be the wiser.

That would be unethical and against the transparent nature of both Paizo and Goblinworks. It takes a long time to build up consumer trust, but only one whiff of scandal to destroy it.

So it would, and I would not take it well if they did as I described. Just pointed out how one could go about it.

Other thing:
It's not actually against Kickstarter's rules to pledge for your own project, but Amazon Payment's rules ( which transitively applies this rule to kickstarter).
And those rules state:
"You may not use your Card to make payments to yourself or to add money to your account."

(https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/helpTab/Personal-Accounts/User-Agree ment-Policies/User-Agreement)

It refers to the specific credit card used to create the Amazon Payments Account. As I only have a general idea how these things work in the US being from EU: how are companies issued credit cards? Could they have several? And would that make it "alright" to pledge themselves (rules-wise, ethics aside).