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When you wish to use an interactive PDF, such as many adventure path maps, what viewer do you use? As far as I've seen, Firefox can only display the default view with the interactive elements static. I hate the idea of an ongoing subscription for Acrobat, and I'm trying to avoid Chrome for security reasons. All of the free readers I've tried are as limited as Firefox. Related to that, what is your method for pulling a map out of a PDF to use on a simple VTT like Owlbear Rodeo?
The top three dropdown menus; My Account, Cart, & Help; don't dropdown when moused over on Chrome.
Although I mentioned this in another thread a couple days ago, I guess I should make my own thread, just to be sure GW has a chance to see it and chime in if they have a problem with an account being sold at this point. Changes in some life circumstances (mostly health-related) have made it so that I think it unlikely that I'll have the time/energy to play my PFO account much. I'm willing to consider offers for my alpha pledge & its add-ons. The PDFs are already part of my Paizo.com account and are not transferable, and I'd rather not mess with shipping the miniatures, which were the only physical reward I got (I didn't buy the physical book or the flip-mats). Crowdforger Alpha ____________ 1000
I will set up a new Gmail address to put on the account, but I would also like the GW account name changed away from "Keovar" when that is possible.
While some weeks of alpha have already gone by, remember that alpha accounts are also subscribed for all of Early Enrollment (in addition to the 21 months provided by the add-ons listed above), and will also have access to playing as monsters in "Monster Casting" when those special events are developed. Even when alpha is over, this account still provides a value which is not otherwise available.
Extra Credits: The J.C. Penney's Effect is a video from about a year ago which discusses a game that plans to use a loot system similar to what PFO plans. Mobs will drop crafting components rather than directly-useful gear, and while this sounds better for everyone, the J.C. Penney's story illustrates one way in which people don't always react as they rationally should. Would gear feel more interesting if it had a more unique look, name, and memory attached to it, or would you actually rather gear be generic so it doesn't bother you to replace it? Even though we'll start with crafting components & recipes at first, could we transition to gear which could be directly useful, or alternately, taken to a crafter to have it broken down? Not only could the deconstruction produce materials, but it could help the crafter learn new recipes via reverse-engineering.
I seem to recall that we're to have the ability to join up to three companies, but we're only residents of a single settlement. By now, I don't recall where the idea of 3 companies came from, whether it was a blog or thread. I also recall settlement citizenship is handled like cleric worship, in the sense that you've got to be within one step on the alignment grid, and diagonals don't count. I don't know if that applies at a company level or if a company has other restrictions to membership. Companies would seem to fill a similar role as that of 'guilds' in other games. Is there a minimum starting membership like there often is in those other games? Are there positions within a company which can be granted powers by the creator, such as members besides the creator being able to approve new members? If the creator of the company hadn't logged in for 60+ days, would the remaining members be able to select a new leader? I think I've seen a few non-settlement companies forming to create trade networks, and one or two which plan to form druid circles if/when that class becomes available. If you've got a company planned which is not tied to citizenship, please post it here. If you have an idea of something you're looking for in such a group but haven't seen yet, post that too. Thanks!
There's a local Meetup group I like to hang out with, and we're all pretty good friends. Occasionally we set up a night to play tabletop games and (those who drink) order beer or whatever. One popular game is Cards Against Humanity, which is basically the evil twin of Apples to Apples. When talking about the game night to others, I've found it's rather hard to describe CAH without getting weird looks and awkward silence. I mean, I'm a humanist, I know the smurf is wrong, but paradoxically, that's why it's funny. If I had to guess at the psychology, I could posit that the uncomfortable ideas provoke unease, and that stress is relieved by laughing. Beavis & Butt-Head were stupid to the point of it being tragic, but they were funny for a similar reason. More currently, I think South Park and Family Guy work in much the same way. In contrast, I don't condone things like rape jokes, homophobic slurs, and attacks to someone's ethnicity, disability, or other aspects of personal identity they have little control over and which don't actually cause harm. I speak up enough to at least say it's not cool with me, to be clear that I reject the oppressive language. However, there are exceptions for some contexts and some subjects, though they'd be extremely difficult to state up front. Humour doesn't trump everything, but it's close. What is it about the context of a cartoon or a card game that makes it seem more okay to say some of the worst smurf possible? Many young mammals, and even adults in some species, will play-fight. Even juvenile rats will tussle, and if you have equipment capable of picking up pitches higher than humans can hear, they seem to be laughing the whole time. Among humans, baring one's teeth and narrowing one's eyes is a friendly expression, though among many other species, that could indicate a threat. 'Play' could be considered a nonserious threat display, a way of showing that those involved recognize they could do harm, but they would rather build social bonds. Maybe the cartoon characters get away with saying awful smurf because our culture is predisposed to view cartoons as absurd and not to be taken literally or seriously. When playing Cards Against Humanity with friends, I know them well enough to take it all in jest. I can see their expressions and hear their tone of voice, but more specifically, I know their true ethics are generally compatible with mine. Online, watching or interacting with people I don't know, that 'just playing' interpretive mode often doesn't work. As a culture, we don't have much history indicating how we should interpret emotion-laced communication that's been made vague by anonymity, and people regularly take advantage of that anonymity just to troll for a sort of schadenfreude. The adversarial tone can be overcome with time, as people work out what's meant to be threatening and what's playful, but to an outside observer it would still appear toxic. Worse, due to the us/them tribalism people so easily fall into, it's difficult for new people to be accepted to the ingroup clique. In PFO, I hope the need for new members is strong enough that those on the ingroup side of the fence will look for ways to bring newcomers across, and that everyone will realize that their continued enjoyment of the game depends on its success, which itself depends on having an influx of new players greater than the outflux. Can we avoid presenting an image of toxicity, whether we mean it or not, so we're not chasing people away? Can competition be handled with "good luck, have fun" sportsmanship so folks don't feel burnt out? Anonymity is intoxicating in many ways, but can we find ways to counteract that and avoid dehumanizing people? Let's try it here.
The Walking Eye is one of many podcasts I listen to, and in this episode a previous host who's been away for a while comes back to share her perspectives on Eve. Since that game is something of an ancestor to PFO, a lot of the discussion may apply on a meta level. Also, she reminds me of Proxima Sin... or at least the song at the end did.
This short video draws a connection between The Sims and 'reality' TV, pointing out how the ambiguity between what is scripted and what is spontaneous works for them both. I think it's a lot more basic than that. It occurs to me that whether it's real neighbourhood (or social media) gossip, daytime soaps about the intrigues of some fictional rich family, a 'reality' show about the ignorance of a slightly-more-real rich family, a fantasy show about families who murder one another at weddings, or virtual families of our own creation, we're going to be endlessly fascinated by social dramas. We're social animals, and knowing what's going on in a social environment was often relevant to our survival in the evolutionary past, and now the wiring works even when we know the drama is only simulated. Wouldn't the same apply to a PvP sandbox game? Are PvP sandboxes the 'reality shows' of MMO gaming in which a bit of scripting and some spontaneity are mixed to heighten underlying social dramas? Is this ultimately an expression of our narcissism, as individuals and as a species?
I haven't played League of Legends, but this video claims they've made progress in toning down the amount of trolling and other toxic behaviour with a sort of carrot & stick reputation system. Has League of Legends Tamed the Trolls Forever? While I certainly doubt the 'forever' part, that isn't exactly what the lead-in question of the video asks. As someone who hasn't (and likely won't) play this particular game, I'm wondering if those of you who've played it have noticed a change in average player behaviour over time? Either way, personal stories are still a collection of anecdotes, but I'm curious to hear them anyway. Do you know of other games doing similar things with any success?
Last I recall, there would be a 'core' alignment chosen by the player which you'd drift back toward over time, and an 'active' alignment based on your recent actions. The core alignment would define the fixed, proscriptive definition of one's 'nature', while the active alignment would be a descriptive definition of what you've been doing. I like the basic idea, but think neither point should be truly fixed, but act as if joined by an elastic tether. The core is more massive with greater pull but less mobility, while the less massive and more freely-moving active alignment still has some pull on the system. You could consider it loosely analogous to a gravitational system. As an example, say you start out with a chosen core of LN, but in playing your active drifts way over to CN. Then for every three points of pull the core exerts on the active, the active exerts one point of pull on the core. Constantly pulling the active alignment in a consistent direction would eventually shift the core to match it and spells/ceremonies like atonement would act to pull one's core alignment in a specific direction so that plus effort to keep the active end moving the same way could help someone shift their core in a desired direction a bit faster, enough to break a vicious cycle and keep one shift from amplifying itself to the point it's unrecoverable.
Fear the Boot did an interview or two with Mark Kalmes last December during the Kickstarter which brought most of us here. In their most recent episode, they discuss what it really means to be playing the 'good' guys in a game where most players do whatever is expedient and rationalize it however they must. Does the fact that players know it's all fiction tend to make them more callous and less empathetic? Does that actually help to model realistic cultural norms in a time and place where life is treated far more cheaply? Yep, they opened ye olde alignment debate. Somewhere, a tin named 'Pandora' is oozing annelids. :P ~~~~~~~
* (0:41) The dangers in lifting the veil. * (3:24) Playing the good guys. Many players think they’re being good, even though their actions may not reflect that. The draw of shortcuts when getting to a goal. * (6:57) The moral distance a game provides. The role of genre in providing moral context. * (22:58) The role of GMs in guiding player-character behavior. The necessity of defining what it means to be good.
Of course, BATMAN shows up, as he practically always does on this topic.
I think it could be useful to get an idea of how many EE backers are reading these forums. There are a handful of folks who post on many threads every day, but it would be good to see who's out there on the 'lurker' end of the spectrum too. If you visit this forum at least once a week, chime in with your name and any player organization (guild, CC, settlement, etc.) affiliation you have. If you like, add a short comment about your thoughts on what's been going on in the game and community development recently. Let's make this a recurring thing; come back and post again anywhere from once a week to once a month, preferably on a Wednesday as that's likely the day with the most visitors & visibility. This should make it so we can all look over the posts from recent weeks to get an idea of the overall size of the community, including those who do more reading than posting. Let's also try to keep this thread to introductions & 'roll call' entries, So it doesn't get cluttered with responses to comments, recruiting, etc. ~~~~~~~
Hey, I'm Keovar, a member of Pax Aeternum.
Goblinworks team:
Now that we're in the final month of pledge adjustments how about an add-on that lets us get extra accounts starting at the beginning of EE, rather than the 35$ Adventurer that only comes in at the end? This needn't be an extra copy of any out-of-game perks, but in-game things like the Destiny Twin, name reservation, plus the Daily Deals & EE access equal to the rest of the pledge should be included. ~~~~~~~ Goblin Squad Members:
In any situation which includes a high degree of uncertainty, there is fertile ground for the formation of superstitions. People have a strong desire to make the world around them comprehensible, and to derive from that a sense of control over systems which are highly complex and mostly hidden from their view. Games like chess are less likely to produce superstitions because, while the possible moves are very complex and an opponent's mind is a closed system, the mechanics produce calculable results. Throw in extra layers of complexity or randomness to make a system effectively incalculable (without lots of observational tools and experimentation) and you can count on many players creating the equivalent of rituals to ensure a successful hunt. Even the best batters in baseball have an objectively poor (30%-40%) percentage of hits, and the sport is well-known for its odd superstitions; like a player refusing to change his 'lucky' socks mid-series, no matter how nasty they may get. Gambling for money is also known for promoting superstitious behaviour and a variety of statistical fallacies; regression to the mean misunderstood becomes the gambler's fallacy that new result is 'due' after a streak of opposite results. Stakes are quite a bit lower in tabletop gaming, but players still have 'lucky' dice and will change sets after just a few poor rolls. In my local Pathfinder Society lodge, there are quite a few players that think it's somehow 'unlucky' to roll a die on your character sheet or indeed, any surface besides directly on the table. One might expect online games to cause a lower degree of superstitious behaviour because you're dealing with calculations happening on a machine with strictly-defined rules, but they seem to attract more superstition for all its calculable reality, probably because players seem to assume a higher degree of complexity in closed systems. The personal inability to predict results due to poor data access seems to be interpreted as actual incalculable complexity. An exception may be WoW, which allows UI mods that can collect lots of data impartially without the confirmation bias and other cognitive heuristic errors to which human minds are prone, but I've still heard of it happening there in situations where the 'stats' are inaccessible or non-existent. Some players assumed certain classes or even certain character names affected the quality of randomly-generated loot, and even refused to believe devs that told them such factors didn't matter. Shades of 'government cover-up' conspiracies, perhaps? A couple of my favourite examples of MMO superstition happened in Ultima Online. One of them was based on the success rates of catching fish with the earliest version of the fishing skill. Any time a new player used a fishing pole object and targeted a water tile, they had a basic 50% chance to catch a fish, but some players dreamed up a complex system of modifiers. They were sure that wearing a wide-brimmed fishing hat helped, or that certain water tiles were 'luckier' than others. The products of their fishing efforts played into another superstition; the belief that fish cakes were the 'best' food for enhancing one's rate of skill gain. Later updates to the game changed fishing and cooking skills that may have added a little truth to these beliefs, but originally there was nothing to them. The original EQ kept its numbers hidden wherever it could, and was full of superstitious beliefs about how the world worked. When you were playing the most efficient (and boring) way of camping on a spawn point, some players insisted that you couldn't stand too close or leave junk items on monster corpses because you'd slow down the spawns. Neither belief was true, but refusal to play along could result in being kicked from a group, and in early EQ soloing was directly correlated with lots of death and experience loss. City of Heroes would put on a 'Trick or Treat' event each Halloween, and many players believed you'd get more treats if you were wearing certain costumes or actually spoke the phrase "trick or treat" in chat before checking a door. At least that game's lack of traditional equipment items tended to limit the assumption that another's actions could affect your own rewards, so groups seemed less prone to 'shun the unbelievers'. Dungeons & Dragons Online had one of the most bizarre superstitions; players would insist on the character with the highest Diplomacy skill (used in that game to reduce one's threat on a enemy aggro list) to use it on every chest found in an instance before anyone touched it. It made no sense at all, but it was occasionally funny to see people cringing in front of their loot boxes. The devs eventually had to disable the ability to use Diplomacy with an invalid target selected. They hoped to get players to stop doing uncooperative things like refusing to join a group that didn't have a high-diplo character, but of course, the players screamed bloody nerfer about it. This blog post and its comments mention these and other MMO superstitions: Terra Nova - Superstition
Some of the comments on the above blog argue about whether the observed behaviours should rightly be referred to as 'superstitious', or whether they should be called something else, like 'urban legends'. Personally, I think the behaviours are similar enough to real-world superstitions to call them such. An example of a game-related urban legend is discussed in the following podcast & article link, since it's a story about events that supposedly happened at one time, but aren't an assertion about how the world works in general: Skeptoid 362 - Polybius What are some examples of gaming superstitions you've encountered or been affected by? Tales of your favourite set of 'charmed' dice are rather prosaic, so let's try to avoid focusing on those too much. One idea which actually worried me doe a while was the idea that character names might be used in the RNG seed and my history of unimpressive loot could be a result of the name(s) I'd chosen. I suppose it seemed similar to the "Wi flag" from Asheron's Call, but was more likely due to the fact that I had a low tolerance for running the same static content over and over until I got the 'good' item I wanted. Do you think gaming superstitions are good for an MMO? Should PFO specifically try to make its systems obscure in order to promote a high degree of unfounded speculation, or would you prefer to know where you stand with the mechanics and leave the inscrutable closed-system complexity to the "meaningful human interaction" dimension of the game?
https://secure.paizo.com/paizo/account/orders/v5748a8i3frbe I received my subscription copy of Maiden, Mother, Crone partially opened. Checking the book, it has been bent in multiple places, breaking the spine twice. How do I go about returning this for a replacement? Thanks!
Philip Zimbardo - The Psychology of Evil
Dr. Zimbardo is the psychology professor who ran the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. In this interesting TED talk, he comments on what happened in that study, the earlier Milgram experiments, and the Abu-Ghraib incidents. I think his findings about anonymity's effect on aggressive and brutal behaviour is applicable, since online games make everyone anonymous to start with. Having human(oid) avatars for characters may tone down the dehumanizing that happens in a game like Eve, but there is still a need for representing social capital. In PFO, I think the reputation system is meant to do this, but with ways to avoid rep loss and even gain rep by abusing other players, I wonder if it will have much of its intended effect.
People keep talking about mountains in their various ideas, but there doesn't appear to be any near the part of the River Kingdoms where we'll be playing. Some are also hoping for large-scale naval battles, but our rivers cross into NPC nations before they reach larger bodies of water. I thought it might be helpful to collect some links to maps people can reference. This is a hex map of the starting area with roads and locations drawn in:
This small map shows the RK as a whole, with a red rectangle outlining the area the previous map covers.
Here's a better map of the RK as a whole:
Here's a fun map of Avistan & northern Garund (roughly analogous to Europe and northern Africa):
This was inspired by the "If I Had a Hammer" thread, but I think this could be a topic of its own. Some have concerns about game mechanics producing unrealistic situations, but I think realism is relative to the setting. Magic in general is unrealistic, but in fantasy you can still aim for internal consistency or verisimilitude. GW seems to be building the fiction in such a way that necessary MMO mechanics are explained by something in the setting. I guess the biggest example is character death. An MMO that includes PvP and permanent character death is probably unmarketable. Most of a decade before LotRO came out, Sierra had the license to produce Middle Earth Online and were going to try permadeath. That linked story does indicate that there were management problems which ended up killing the game, but the permadeath aspect is also called out as being "crazy". GW has worked repeated player resurrection into their fiction by saying that PCs are marked by the goddess Pharasma. It seems that what looks like breaks in the story for game mechanic needs may actually have an in-story cause. They don't completely collapse the fourth wall, but there's much less need to overlook things that would breach it in a regular PFRPG game. Maybe the souls chosen for repeated resurrection by Pharasma also have abilities granted by other deities, like seeing an item's properties just by examining it. Maybe we're all being trained to fight in a coming apocalypse whenever Groetus decides to make its move? Our little corner of the RK could be a sort of Highlander-meets-Valhalla training ground preparing an army to defend our material plane reality from Entropy itself.
Run Like Hell - Movement Speed No recent game I've played has yet had the courage to implement varying movement speeds based on race, though they have occasionally implemented slowing effects for encumbrance. The legs of the halflings and gnomes are half as long but pump twice as fast. In Guild Wars 2, the large races seem to have their run animations in slow motion, so they move the same speed as the small race. I hope that speed based on racial type and armour/encumbrance will be implemented for PFO. Of course, dwarves should also get their reduced movement penalty for carried weight or worn armour. In addition, I'd like to see a 'Run' skill added to the list of movement skills like 'Climb' and 'Swim'. The achievement badges for the skill could provide a boost to movement speeds and a fractional increase in Strength and Constitution. Some levels of Barbarian could require advancement in the Run progression since faster movement is part of what that class trains. Some training in Run could also provide access to upgraded charge effects and a Sprint feat that gives a minor passive bonus to regular movement, but allows a greater boost of speed when activated (but when it wears off and is in cooldown, the passive effect is down as well).
I'd like to propose that before Goblinworks begins adding lists of spells to the game that they work out a modular spell research system. This system would then be used by GW to create the spells the game starts with and ones added in the future. This would provide a way for player-built spells to be developed which are balanced with the ones that already exist within the game. Time and again when RPGs have tried to add in a spell builder after spell lists are already established, there are gaps in which the core spells of the game do not add up in the system. By putting the builder first they make sure that all spells add up, and that player-driven expansion of the magical libraries is possible. Does this mean that some beloved tabletop-game spells are at a different 'level' in PFO? Probably, but we're already far afield from trying to copy it in detail, we're just emulating it in feel. As inspiration, the team can reverse-engineer some iconic spells from the Pathfinder RPG, as well as the Metamagic feats found there and the Words of power system from Ultimate Magic. I would also recommend they check out DarkLightHitomi's post on the topic, and if others have relevant systems to suggest for consideration, post them here! Some preliminary ideas: Whether it's spell slots, mana, stamina, refresh time, or whatever, each spell would of course have a casting cost of some sort. Some elements of the spell's design have no effect on that, some increase it, and some reduce the cost. The total cost of a spell determines which spellcasters can handle it depending on the badges they have earned in the spellcraft skill(s) they have, such as wizardry, sorcery, theurgy (clerics, paladins), druidry (druids, rangers), and so on. Elements which do not affect casting cost:
Elements which increase casting cost:
Elements which reduce casting cost:
Other elements are possible, such as a spell limitation that not only requires a sapient target (mind-affecting), but one that is only able to affect elves, humans, or half-elves, etc.
In the now-hidden second crowdforger poll, GW pitted the addition of extra deities against a pet system (animal companions, familiars, etc.) and a system of fast travel. I think the first set of nine deities should be crowdforged before we're asked how badly we want more added. I propose that GW should create a set of up to nine crowdforger questions, one for each alignment, listing the deities of that alignment which are appropriate to the River Kingdoms. I understand that Iomedae (LG) and Asmodeus (LE) may be locked in for their slots due to the existing lore of the Crusader Road region, but a vote for the favourites of those alignments would still be useful as a priority list for future development. With the list of deities, a brief description of each, or a link to the appropriate PathfinderWiki.com article, should be provided. Just for fun; a 'hymn' to Calistria. ;)
Hi, I'm a member of the site AbleGamers.com, which exists to promote the interests of and provide solutions for gamers with all sorts of disabilities. I am not on the staff there, but I do think working with them could be mutually beneficial. If Goblinworks makes a commitment to make Pathfinder Online a more accessible gaming experience, I think AbleGamers would be happy to spread word of that, which could definitely help in the 'big push' phase of the current Kickstarter. AbleGamers recently produced an informational site called 'Includification' which is a collection of "research, review, experiments and first-hand experience by gamers with disabilities who live with these problems every day". I think it has a lot of useful perspectives and ideas to consider when designing a game to be playable to as wide an audience as possible. As I have mentioned before, my personal challenge in gaming comes from vision issues. Multiple sclerosis has caused Optic Neuritis, damaging both of my optic nerves, so it isn't a problem which can be solved with glasses. This and other symptoms stemming from my MS have made me more aware of the various issues that can impact a person's ability to enjoy gaming, and I hope you'll research and keep in mind such issues as you move forward with the design of PFO. Thanks!
At the end of the beta phases of other MMO's, there's been a period where people can go completely wild, since there are no lasting consequences when there's an incoming wipe. With there being no wipe in the transition from Early Enrollment to Open Enrollment, there doesn't seem to be an opportunity for such an apocalypse party. For a while, UO's backup schedule was such that around 5-15 mins of play were lost on a regular basis due to server reboots. Players could occasionally use this time to experiment with ideas that would be ill-advised in the regular game. UO also occasionally had special-event shards that let players play holiday characters - like things from the Santa Claus mythos - and they were free to run wild without ruining their main characters on regular shards. I'm thinking it could be fun to have something similar for PFO. One day a year, nothing is 'for keeps'. Maybe for 24 hours, it's all a dream. Devs could be part of the fun as well, logging in as demons down from the Worldwound, or hordes of ice trolls led by winter witches, or even a zombie apocalypse that's spreading up from Geb. Whatever the scenario is, the world is effectively 'destroyed' at the end, so whether good and evil groups ally to defend their lands, or whether they both take advantage of the chaos to go on rampages of their own, it won't matter at the end of that day. While the 'apocalypse' is happening, an onscreen notice would be posted to let players know what's going on, and when it ends with the 24-hour rollback, that is plainly posted too. What day? Well, here on Earth I've been advocating for an annual 'joke' holiday called Apocalypse Day, in which we 'celebrate' all the stupid end-of-world predictions that have caused harm in the real world. Maybe if people knew just how many times these predictions have failed, they'd be less inclined to believe the next one and avoid ruining themselves financially, or worse, trying to kill their pets, kids, or themselves. I think May 21 is a good day for it, since that was Harold Camping's failed 'rapture' last year. It could also be a sort of April Fool's joke or a Halloween-ish event, but I'd rather it stand on its own rather than overlapping an existing 'holiday'. So what do you think? Would it be fun to have an annual 'Apocalypse Day' every May 21 where the world effectively 'ends' only to be reset the next morning as if it were all a bad dream?
That got me thinking; how will someone know their alignment status? Will it just be a number on their character sheet? Or maybe it's a dot in a square that moves a little bit down with an evil act, and a little bit right with a chaotic one (and in the opposite direction for opposite acts, of course)? Will you need to visit a spellcaster to have them read your alignment for you? Obviously if you're out there killing random people and stealing everything you can, you know you're headed for CE status, but what about more subtle things, small things that seem 'necessary' at the time, and not such a big deal that they'd outweigh the good you've done... but could there be a point when you look back and realize you're so far over the line you don't remember how it happened?
When I played UO, there wasn't a problem getting character names I wanted, because names didn't have to be unique. That would be a problem for PFO, since it would be too easy to impersonate other players. Still, having all of one's good name ideas turn out to be taken is one of the reasons people come up with stupid things like "Spudzilla". Being able to add a surname, whether in its own space or just by being allowed to use a space in the name, could help. Many games ignore the surname, if they have them at all, but that needn't be the case for PFO. It seems surnames are usually avoided or ignored because of the /tell messaging system. If the command parser sees a space, how does it know whether the next word is a surname or the beginning of a message? This could be handled by requiring a comma between the name and message, like CoH/V did. Alternately, the names could be allowed one underscore, as long as there were letters before and after the _ symbol. When viewed in-world, the underscore would not be visible, but in-chat it would be there. I would prefer the solution of using a comma to split the name from the message, but the point is, there are better solutions than simply disallowing or ignoring surnames. To avoid the possible tedium of typing longer names and punctuation, make it so clicking a name in chat auto-populates the entry blank with the /tell command, name, comma, and a space, so it is ready for the message. Other games have done this, and it seems to work well. We could also have a 'friends' list, which allows players who mutually approve the link to message and see the online status for one another. Finally, please allow some form of name-recycling. If an account has not had any subscription or micro-transaction activity for three or more months, and a character has not been logged in in that time, the character would lose their claim to the name they're using. If no one else tries to use it, no problem, but if someone else happens to create a character by that name, they can. If at some point the other player comes back, characters who have had their names recycled would receive a free renaming token and a system-generated name to use until they spend it. Name-recycling not only solves the issue of players that only played for a month and quit but tied up a lot of names in that time, it also creates another sense of ownership for regular players.
I know the potential for losing character names I've grown attached to would encourage me to keep a subscription active (or login to use the MTX store)! Promote a greater sense of roleplaying context by making character naming important. I appreciate that there will be a human-verified approval process, but I think surnames and name-recycling could reduce the number of attempts at anachronistic, offensive, etc. names, and the messaging system can work around it rather than limiting options. Thanks!
This is a collection of principles affecting the design of online worlds, as collected by Raph Koster. I think it's an interesting list, and one with a lot of discussion potential!
(The above link has better formatting, but I know many fear Rick Astley music too much to click an outside link.) The Laws of Online World Design These are taken from both experience and from the writings of others. Most are the sort of "Duh" things that many who have done this sort of game design take for granted, but others may be less intuitive. Many of the laws here were actually stated as such by others, and not by me. A Caveat Ola's Law About Laws
Design Rules The secrets to a really long-lived, goal-oriented, online game of wide appeal
Persistence means it never goes away
Macroing, botting, and automation
Corollary:
Game systems
It is always more rewarding to kill other players than to kill whatever the game sets up as a target.
Never trust the client.
J. C. Lawrence's "do it everywhere" law
Hyrup's "do it everywhere" Corollary
Dr Cat's Stamp Collecting Dilemma
Koster's Law (Mike Sellers was actually the one to dub it thus)
Hyrup's Counter-observation
Enforcing roleplaying
Storytelling versus simulation
Players have higher expectations of the virtual world
Online game economies are hard
Ownership is key
If your game is narrow, it will fail
Lambert's Laws:
Pleasing your Players
Hyrup's Loophole Law
Murphy's Law
Dr Cat's Theorem
Dr Cat's Theorem as expressed by J C Lawrence
Hanarra's Laws
A corollary to Elmqvist's Law
A caveat to the corollary to Elmqvist's Law
Baron's Design Dichotomy
Online identity
In game calendars
Social Laws Koster's Theorem
Baron's Theorem
Baron's Law
Mike Sellers' Hypothesis
Schubert's Law of Player Expectations
Violence is inevitable
Is it a game?
Identity
Jeff Kesselman's Theorem
Psychological disinhibition
Mass market facts
Anonymity and in-game admins
Community size
Hans Henrik Staerfeldt's Law of Player/Admin Relations: The amount of whining players do is positively proportional to how much you pamper them.
Hal Black's Elaboration
J C Lawrence's "stating the obvious" law
John Hanke's Law (cited by Mike Sellers)
Rewarding players
Rewards
Dundee's Law
Ananda Dawnsinger's Law
Rickey's Law
Socialization requires downtime
Darklock's First Law
Corollary to Darklock's First Law
Darklock's Second Law
J C Lawrence on Utopias
Before it was permanently laid to rest, I'd re-up my City of Heroes account for a month now and again just because I missed the ability to fly... but in that game, no water could be more than waist deep, so it had z-axis limitations of its own. Whether it's via spell or wildshaping into a bird, flight is often an option in a fantasy tabletop RPG, but rarely available in fantasy MMO's. I understand that themepark MMOs tend to avoid flight because more content-building options are available to devs when they can more easily railroad players, but movement limitations could also be accomplished by taking away Disable Device and forcing players to find quest-item keys for every door. Yet for some reason picking a lock is okay while flying over a chasm isn't. Arcane casters are often the most at-risk in open PVP, so let's be sure to include spells for flight and invisibility to help mitigate that risk. If the z-axis is open above land and below water, the sandbox gets so much bigger, and designing with that in mind doesn't need to limit any but the most narrowly-built content. Thanks! |
