Goblin Squad Member
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I didn't want to post in any of the existing threads because they've mostly become deadlocked around folks saying the same things to each other without much chance of interesting dialog. So I felt that the chances that readers would see my comments would be better if I started a new thread.
First, there's no hard & fast definition of "griefing" that will satisfy everyone. For some, any limit to their activities is too restrictive, and to others, any non-consensual interaction is too permissive. Where you fall on that continuum is really a matter of personal choice, not definition.
I can tell you that in Pathfinder Online you will be involved in non-consensual interaction with other players on a regular basis.
That is not to say that unlimited poor behavior will be tolerated. There are three ways that behavior can be limited:
1: Game Mechanics - the game itself can establish limits on what can and cannot be done. It can also establish punishments for doing things that are considered poor behavior even if it does not outright restrict them.
2: Community Management - the humans who watch over the game can act to force certain kinds of behavior to cease when they are petitioned for help. Those same humans can escalate the matter to the point where a repeat or particularly egregious offender's accounts are closed.(*)
3: Social Engineering - the humans who play within the game can act to enforce certain norms of behavior by providing and withholding access to shared community resources in response to character behavior.
It is not our intention to create an "anything goes" world where players are subjected to endless scams, ganks, and immersion breaking behavior.
It is our intention to apply some of the real world lessons learned in our major cities by focusing on "broken windows" - that is, stopping minor transgressions of our social behavior policies before they escalate out of hand. It is my opinion that doing so will reduce antisocial behavior substantially. People who want to be anonymous jerks will not get much pleasure out of being quickly and unceremoniously silenced, booted, or banned. Without the ability to encite "rage & tears", those folks will have no good reason to haunt Pathfinder Online.
All three kinds of tools will be used to help enforce our social behavior policies. But the meta-rule will be: "If you're acting like a jerk, we'll feel free to give you a time-out lasting from minutes to forever without appeal and without warning."
I'm especially concerned with ensuring that new players are able to learn how to play the game, gain some mastery of basic gameplay features, have some fun, and have a great experience without having to worry about someone intentionally ruining it for them by scamming them, killing them, taunting them, or otherwise disrupting their attention which should be focused on dealing with the sensory overload of going into a new virtual world.
I'm secondarily concerned with ensuring that people who choose a low risk / low reward course of play are able to do so without regular interruption by those seeking to gain enjoyment from interfering with them as they go about their business.
What I want is for people to clearly know that the more risk they accept, the higher the rewards they may be able to achieve, and to be able to assess the risk of the area they are in and the actions they are taking with reasonable ease. Nobody should be surprised to discover they're in a PvP free-for-all subject to being attacked by hordes of well-prepared opponents. On the other hand, it should be clear to those same players that if they really want to find those super-rare resources, or track down that really tough monster, or explore beyond a border claimed and patrolled by hostile forces, that they're accepting the risk that entails.
Players should be able to operate in an area of risk/reward that makes them feel most comfortable.
Players should also be free from metagame harassment of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political or religious affiliation, favorite college football team, or participation in other MMOs. Taking someone's off-line world into our on-line world will be totally unacceptable and we'll have a very low tolerance for those who break those rules.
(*) Be aware that on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. It's impossible to ban a PERSON from Pathfinder Online because its very easy for one human to impersonate many different players - and people can and will do so for all sorts of reasons. The best we can do is try to connect accounts together when we believe they're controlled by individuals who have been excluded from the game, but that is never a perfect solution. The same gay-bashing, neo-nazi thug who insulted your mother and your pet (and then got banned) could be playing the character you're conducting extensive trade with or even following as leader of your party or Settlement. There's just no way to be sure and there are individuals who take a pathological glee in living those kinds of fragmented disparate lives.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Good stuff. This should hopefully put peoples' minds at ease (I've personally stayed well clear of the grief threads). I think this is a manifesto we can all put faith in.
Your vision deserves praise and it's refreshing to hear such good stuff from the outset.
@Kyrt
( -_-) (<-- a ninja btw)
Goblinworks Founder
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Be aware that on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. It's impossible to ban a PERSON from Pathfinder Online because its very easy for one human to impersonate many different players - and people can and will do so for all sorts of reasons. The best we can do is try to connect accounts together when we believe they're controlled by individuals who have been excluded from the game, but that is never a perfect solution.You realize you could just like, require a credit card for every account, and ban based on billing address if you really want someone gone. I mean that would catch all but the most dedicated. You'd think you would like know this claiming to be the MMO Steve Jobs and all
Where there is a will there is a way Redmage. If someone gets enough enjoyment out of anti-social behavior I'm sure they would find a way around something as simple as a billing address block and even in todays financial market, lenders are still handing out credit cards like candy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Be aware that on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. It's impossible to ban a PERSON from Pathfinder Online because its very easy for one human to impersonate many different players - and people can and will do so for all sorts of reasons. The best we can do is try to connect accounts together when we believe they're controlled by individuals who have been excluded from the game, but that is never a perfect solution.You realize you could just like, require a credit card for every account, and ban based on billing address if you really want someone gone. I mean that would catch all but the most dedicated. You'd think you would like know this claiming to be the MMO Steve Jobs and all
Well 2 flaws with that idea.
1. Elimination of F2P players, the free to play model pretty much is noting that even players who don't pay, add to the value of the game for themselves and those who do (by having more players, the world is more lush for those who do pay, and thus more paying customers stick around, everyone wins). By requiring a credit card you add issues for out of country players, teenagers etc... Once you mandate a credit card all free to play concepts go out the window, as people who don't want to pay, certainly fear giving their credit card numbers away.
2. Family members/roommates. Say a 17 year old living at home and his 13 year old younger brother, have seperate accounts, but the only CC number is the father of the household, the 13 year old is a solid businessman in game, runs a very trustworthy business in the game. The 17 year old is a griefing jerk. By this logic you still have the issue set forth of an innocent getting banned for someone elses mistake.
(Note I intentionally chose the younger one as the good guy in this example because many people forget, in the MMO world, age and maturity often do not line up even slightly, many times the mature one is young and the old one is not mature).
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Being a nasty character and a nasty player are two different things. I don't believe (not sure, I could certainly be wrong) that by "scamming", he meant a character thieving or cheating another character out of in-game resources. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm curious about this.
I think what was meant was a case of nasty players who scam other players for IRL resources such as account info, micro-trans shop tokens, etc.
I'm curious what the feelings about jerk characters who trick, bamboozle, or otherwise trap other characters for purposes of robbing (or something similar) the character. Is this what the scamming was referring to?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Point One: who gives a damn. Unless you are ad subsidized a F2P player is nothing but a drain on your resources.
That is simply and demonstrably false, and is indicative of an unfamiliarity with the reasoning behind the F2P model on your part. A non-paying player is not simply a potential conversion into a paid customer. He also helps support the in-game economy that is necessary to drive paid customer participation. MMOs thrive off large player bases, but the F2P model assumes a (relatively) moderate number of paying customers. The rest are non-paying, but still contribute to the game world - they harvest, they purchase, they craft, they group up for dungeons, they join guilds. MMOs are well-served by having a large and diverse player base, even if a substantial portion of that base is not directly responsible for your revenue.
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I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.
A non-paying player is not simply a potential conversion into a paid customer. He also helps support the in-game economy that is necessary to drive paid customer participation. MMOs thrive off large player bases, but the F2P model assumes a (relatively) moderate number of paying customers. The rest are non-paying, but still contribute to the game world - they harvest, they purchase, they craft, they group up for dungeons, they join guilds. MMOs are well-served by having a large and diverse player base, even if a substantial portion of that base is not directly responsible for your revenue.
Most F2P games I've played heavily restrict the ability of F2P players to contribute the economy by limiting trades, inventory, etc. I haven't played every one, though. Which ones are F2P-friendly?
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I do not believe that EVE is a cesspit. Perhaps you did not mean to imply that, sorry if I misunderstood. One of the key ideas at work here (AFAIK) is that though there are systems in place to stop IRL damage being done, and systems to give your character some moderate protection as well, the welfare of your character is largely your responsibility as a player. Such is the core concept of PvP, despite the terminology. In my opinion, it should be CvC.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A non-paying player is not simply a potential conversion into a paid customer. He also helps support the in-game economy that is necessary to drive paid customer participation. MMOs thrive off large player bases, but the F2P model assumes a (relatively) moderate number of paying customers. The rest are non-paying, but still contribute to the game world - they harvest, they purchase, they craft, they group up for dungeons, they join guilds. MMOs are well-served by having a large and diverse player base, even if a substantial portion of that base is not directly responsible for your revenue.Most F2P games I've played heavily restrict the ability of F2P players to contribute the economy by limiting trades, inventory, etc. I haven't played every one, though. Which ones are F2P-friendly?
I've never played a F2P MMO that limited my interaction with paying clients to such a degree. Typically, they limited inventory/bank space, but that's more of an inconvenience than a genuine barrier to economic participation.
I've never played a F2P MMO that limited my interaction with paying clients to such a degree. Typically, they limited inventory/bank space, but that's more of an inconvenience than a genuine barrier to economic participation.
Off the top of my head, WoW limits your level and gold, prevents you making trades altogether and you can't join a guild. (but it's a themepark MMO! Holy s#$&!)
Aside from TF2 (which is more an FPS/RPG than an MMO) most of the ones I can recall right now mostly limit inventory and sometimes access to the really cool items, though.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've never played a F2P MMO that limited my interaction with paying clients to such a degree. Typically, they limited inventory/bank space, but that's more of an inconvenience than a genuine barrier to economic participation.Off the top of my head, WoW limits your level and gold, prevents you making trades altogether and you can't join a guild. (but it's a themepark MMO! Holy s&*&!)
Aside from TF2 (which is more an FPS/RPG than an MMO) most of the ones I can recall right now mostly limit inventory and sometimes access to the really cool items, though.
Ah, I've never really considered WoW. I still think of it as a primarily subscription-based MMO. It allows F2P as more of a demo experience than anything else - it has a subscription base that is large enough that it doesn't need F2P players to help support its in-game systems. In this respect, it might be unique. Most MMOs could use the extra players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I do not believe that EVE is a cesspit.I do.
In my opinion, it should be CvC.Gang versus gang gameplay is only empowering to those very few who have any sort of leadership position in a gang large enough to exert any influence over other gangs. Everyone else carries rocks, gets eaten, or both.
WoW isn't even remotely considered a F2P, beyond a terrible marketing campaign claiming it is, it's F2P up to level 20, which even the most casual player would accomplish in under 5-10 hours playing time, and yes WoW designed the F2P model in a way to more or less prevent F2P players from even the most basic MMO elements. At best WoW's free to play is a rebranding of the 1 week trial, only it limits the game even further then a 1 week trial would.
an actual F2P games to be considered would be Dungeons and dragons online, a game of which not paying won't even slightly hinder you until level 10ish (level cap is 20) and even then you can earn everything in the cash shop, if you don't mind repeating the same content on a ton of alts to earn the cash shop money, you can join guilds, team up to your hearts content with all paid players (also paid players can spend the equivelent of 25 cents to bring a free player with them to areas limited to the paid players), etc...
DDO is also a great example of a game in which the f2p model excelled. The player base of DDO was rapidly shrinking, there just weren't enough people who wanted to subscribe, people who did want to play it, also were leaving because of a lack of people to play with when they were on. It was a repeating cycle, until they went f2p, all of a sudden a influx of free players, gave paying players someone to team up with, many of the free players converted, but many also didn't, and really it didn't matter, they assisted the community and that made the community grow, far better then it ever did when DDO used a 1 week free trial method (which is pretty much the same as WoW's free to play up till level 20 thing).
Now I do believe DDO took several flawed steps in their f2p model, they toned back the difficulty, raised the power level of the characters, weakened de-buffs etc... That IMO is not a trait of f2p vs subscription, that is a trait of developers ignoring the vision of the game to make the complainers on the forums who cry over things being too hard for them.
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Goblinworks Founder
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an actual F2P games to be considered would be Dungeons and dragons online, a game of which not paying won't even slightly hinder you until level 10ish (level cap is 20) and even then you can earn everything in the cash shop, if you don't mind repeating the same content on a ton of alts to earn the cash shop money, you can join guilds, team up to your hearts content with all paid players (also paid players can spend the equivelent of 25 cents to bring a free player with them to areas limited to the paid players), etc...
DDO is also a great example of a game in which the f2p model excelled. The player base of DDO was rapidly shrinking, there just weren't enough people who wanted to subscribe, people who did want to play it, also were leaving because of a lack of people to play with when they were on. It was a repeating cycle, until they went f2p, all of a sudden a influx of free players, gave paying players someone to team up with, many of the free players converted, but many also didn't, and really it didn't matter, they assisted the community and that made the community grow, far better then it ever did when DDO used a 1 week free trial method (which is pretty much the same as WoW's...
If Dungeons and Dragons Online launched with the starting zone they have now, they would not have bled so many subscriptions in the first place. There was no content in the game that did not require a group and when you are running persistent servers, you need to cater to people that play during off-peak when they might not be able to get a group. The F2P model was definitely their saving grace and they really did a good job of implementing it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In dealing with "scams, ganks, and immersion breaking behavior," ganks are probably the easiest to prevent. Make PvP impossible in the tamest and most civilized areas, and institute a sliding scale of PvP danger as players move from the city to the howling wilderness. As long as the newbies stay near town, they won't be cut down by griefers every time they respawn.
Scams are a little harder to police. Some forms of scamming, like swapping out items being traded for worthless junk at the last second, can be eliminated pretty easily. Many others, though, such as the collection of "initiation fees" for joining player-created groups/guilds/corporations, are pure social engineering. It can be hard to protect gullible people from the consequences of their own rash decisions.
Immersion breaking behavior is going to require the most policing on the part of the Goblinworks team. A certain amount of "metagame harassment based on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political or religious affiliation, favorite college football team, or participation in other MMOs" is likely to happen in any MMO.
Dark Age of Camelot used its language system to cut down on verbal attacks between factions. Each faction had an isolated voice channel, and typed words were rendered as gibberish to the opposing factions. It wasn't a perfect solution, since members of the same faction could still berate one another, but it prevented some rivalries from turning personal.
Immersion breaking behavior is going to require the most policing on the part of the Goblinworks team. A certain amount of "metagame harassment based on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political or religious affiliation, favorite college football team, or participation in other MMOs" is likely to happen in any MMO.
... I don't think "it's immersion breaking" is the problem with those.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Although this is important for new players in my opinion if you're going down the route of multiple servers, I'd suggest some servers being marked as "friendly" and others as "indifferent". The latter being extremely loose on the rules of scamming and associated behaviours. Why? Bandits, thieves and nasty organisations in general are a majour part of Golarion. By offering the opportunity to play in an "indifferent" server players can explore different paths of their characters and this could lead to some very interesting player interactions and politics.
There is a difference between scamming the character and scamming the player.
EVE, to keep up with it, has a complex market and there are ways to scam a character. Some are a bit metagamey but almost no one bat an eye at them beside a little annoyance at seeing hundred of announces on the general chat about "wonderful" offers.
Then there are the scams against the player. Those should and will be ruthelessy squashed.
The second you advertise a server as "scam friendly" you are attacting the second kind of scammers like flies.
@Ryan
I think you know that perfectly, but repeating it will not harm anyone.
There is a ideal density of population, especially for the "wilderness" area where PVP is allowed.
Too low and there little or no interaction.
Too high and you get the current EVE troubles, where people has learned that you are either in one of the winning mobs or you will be crushed.
The second version has the curios effect that it depopulate the wilderness area as the winning mobs aren't so interested to accepting more untested players.
Finding the right balance will be one of the real tests of the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You realize you could just like, require a credit card for every account, and ban based on billing address if you really want someone gone.
Yeah, that's what most naive companies think too. Then they discover how incredibly simple it is to get credit cards with multiple addresses. Often not even in the same city, state or even country. Many Europeans for example already have cards with US billing addresses so they can circumvent region limitations on stuff they want to buy online.
And in today's world, "requiring a credit card" is a really bad idea. You need to have the ability to pay by PayPal, and a variety of other non-credit electronic payment formats (especially common in Europe).
And finally there's the issue of pre-paid game credits (either time or MTX). These are a big part of the modern MMO revenue stream and they disconnect the purchaser data from the user data.
If only things were as simple as you think they are there would be a lot less grief in MMOs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd like to see some sort of clearer vision, unless the goal is to make another Biggest Gang Wins game.
EVE was built by people who intentionally wanted a game where people could do all the bad stuff that modern civilization prohibits - and then see how others would react to their misbehavior. They wanted a world where players would have to assume the worst about everyone they met.
It is essentially a commentary on the pitfalls of unregulated corporatism.
We'll never know how Darkfall would have developed. The game was a victim of its own success. Adventurine tried to do a "big bang" launch, mimicking the way a theme park MMO launches with a huge spike of players at startup. Unfortunately, that spike killed their billing system, and sand box games don't work well when the game does not have time to develop social and economic structures or for people to spread out through the world. By the time the developers got a handle on the influx of players, it had already been dismissed by many who might have tried it. All that was left were folks looking for a hardcore PvP experience. (Adventurine did themselves no favors by promoting hardcore PvP at the expense of everything else, especially since most of the money & time spent on the project had gone into its themepark and exploration content.)
Pathfinder Online isn't going to do either of these things. It's not going to be an unregulated commentary on the evil that lurks in the hearts of men. And it's not going to be blown up on day one by a million people who show up and say "now what?"
That's why we're going to use all 3 tools at our disposal to direct the community away from abusive misbehavior from the start and not just rely on people self-policing themselves.
By the way: Biggest Gang Wins is just a game design artifact. If you make a game where military force is the only thing that matters when determining the value of territory then of course you'll end up with biggest gang wins. We're not going to do that, so having the biggest gang will not be a guaranteed route to victory.
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Even though I don't engage in combat PvP (at all) in EVE, I feel like the scumbag in the room as a regular EVE player. How many people here play EVE, and how long have you played? Also, I'd like to know exactly what is meant by abusive misbehavior. Is a thief I make somehow only compelled to steal from NPCs? Some people here are implying misbehavior is the same as PvP, which I know can't be right from what I've heard of the game so far.
Scamming a player is not the same as scamming a character. If my character loses resources, that's fine. This is a game and losses to some extent are to be expected in any game. I play a game because I don't want these terrible things happening to me IRL, but they can be fun in a game. Loss is part of the life of an adventurer. My swordsman has been swallowed whole, lost body parts, gone insane, died and been brought back, been lit on fire, and robbed blind. I don't want that to happen IRL, but in a game it's simply what happens on the way to victory.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm glad you're taking an active part on these boards for the discussion Ryan, and I'm liking what I hear from you; seems like you may have some experience and know-how in the field...crazy, I know.
Too bad all these people on the Internetz know your job better than you do ;-)
Keep up the good work, Ryan et. al.
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PvP insinuates that there are players who are my enemies in some form. We are opposed. I'm not sure what you think enemies do to each other, but even in the vaguest sense of opposition or competition, you have deprivation of resources. In a PvP setting, other characters will seek to deprive my character of resources, either by keeping me from gaining them, or causing me to lose ones that I already have. It might help if we had a common definition of what constitutes a scam. Am I scamming you out of healing potions by pelting you with arrows? If I engage in misinformation by telling people there are resources where there aren't any, so I can have the good areas to myself, is that a scam? If bandits ambush a caravan, is that?
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Goblin Squad Member
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PvP insinuates that there are players who are my enemies in some form. We are opposed. I'm not sure what you think enemies do to each other, but even in the vaguest sense of opposition or competition, you have deprivation of resources. In a PvP setting, other characters will seek to deprive my character of resources, either by keeping me from gaining them, or causing me to lose ones that I already have.
That is absolutely true.
It might help if we had a common definition of what constitutes a scam.
Sure.
Am I scamming you out of healing potions by pelting you with arrows?
Nope.
If I engage in misinformation by telling people there are resources where there aren't any, so I can have the good areas to myself, is that a scam?
Nope.
If bandits ambush a caravan, is that?
Nope.
A scam usually results when someone is maliciously tricked out of something. In a game setting, it more specifically refers to being tricked out of something when the trick isn't part of the generally understood "terms" of the game.
For instance, posing as a friendly guild leader anxious for new players and encouraging those who join to deposit gold in the guild vault, only to turn around and empty the vault, disband the guild, mail the gold to the scammer's main character, delete the guild leader alt, and reroll a new character to do it all over again would be an example of a scam.
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Okay, that helps a little. I always feel super shady because I have a tactical mind occupied by covert activities and violence. But in game (and IRL) I'm the nice guy. When I use the term scam as it refers to characters interacting, I think of what things would be considered a scam "in-world", by the characters themselves.
For example, I'm some guy in a tavern who is telling new adventurers that I'll pay for bear pelts or something, because there's a cave of bears near the town. Problem is, my buddies already cleared that cave out and are now just lying in wait for new guys to come in unprepared to get jumped by 10 psychos with knives.
Or I play an alchemist who is selling dud potions. Or enchanting weapons with a teleportation-return ability before I sell them. Et cetera.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For example, I'm some guy in a tavern who is telling new adventurers that I'll pay for bear pelts or something, because there's a cave of bears near the town. Problem is, my buddies already cleared that cave out and are now just lying in wait for new guys to come in unprepared to get jumped by 10 psychos with knives.
This strikes me as a poor plan given that even if your marks are murdered by those 10 psychos with knives, they'll all respawn and come after you like 10 minutes later.
Maybe stick to adventuring.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We'll never know how Darkfall would have developed. The game was a victim of its own success. Adventurine tried to do a "big bang" launch, mimicking the way a theme park MMO launches with a huge spike of players at startup. Unfortunately, that spike killed their billing system, and sand box games don't work well when the game does not have time to develop social and economic structures or for people to spread out through the world. By the time the developers got a handle on the influx of players, it had already been dismissed by many who might have tried it. All that was left were folks looking for a hardcore PvP experience. (Adventurine did themselves no favors by promoting hardcore PvP at the expense of everything else, especially since most of the money & time spent on the project had gone into its themepark and exploration content.)I thought they had a relatively tiny, limited number of of pre-orders, sold those out barely before the launch, and then their servers were so hopelessly poorly prepared that they couldn't even handle that relatively limited amount of demand. I dunno, I'm not an insider or anything, but the narrative I got around SA and f13 and such was not "overwhelmed by demand" but "game did not actually work very well at any point, few seemed to care very much" outside of the same hardcore PvP crowd.
Anyway, Darkfall isn't the only game of its sort to come along; Shadowbane and Mortal Online also cater(ed) to the same crowd, all to equally dismal success. I don't see how you expect social pressure to work to prevent people from being jerks to each other in a game where people see some other players as the enemy. As I see it, those are diametrically opposed design goals, and only encourage the sort of players who enjoy preying on other people. It may be too early to do this sort of thing, but I for one am waiting for a "How we're not going to be Shadowbane" FAQ entry.
Nope, I was there with a big guild (we came from another game) at launch waiting to get in and it took me 2 weeks to get in game because I could not get them to accept my credit card (because there were so many people trying to purchase the game...buying page would time out, looked like a DoS attack)...then I got booted two months later because they were never able to collect payments. I was already frustrated by being 2 weeks behind many of my guildmates (although there were many of us in that boat) and not having a say in where we made a home (because I could not get in and explore too), so when I got booted because they could not get my Visa to work...well that was enough for me.
(I did not really like the first person perspective anyways...being able to see your whole body simulates proprioception in a system which only allows vision feedback).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I thought they had a relatively tiny, limited number of of pre-orders, sold those out barely before the launch, and then their servers were so hopelessly poorly prepared that they couldn't even handle that relatively limited amount of demand. I dunno, I'm not an insider or anything, but the narrative I got around SA and f13 and such was not "overwhelmed by demand" but "game did not actually work very well at any point, few seemed to care very much" outside of the same hardcore PvP crowd.
Anyway, Darkfall isn't the only game of its sort to come along; Shadowbane and Mortal Online also cater(ed) to the same crowd, all to equally dismal success.
Agree and disagree. Darkfall was infact pelted with a demand far exceeding their supply. AV had to stagger sales of the client for a long period after release to deal with this. The game was also plagued with the problems you'd expect from an indie MMORPG launch and Aventurine were in no position to sort these things out, on top of 'finishing' their - at best - mediocre product.
To then go on and relate the failure of Darkfall, Shadowbane and Mortal Online as having anything to do with their 'crowd' is a bit of a stretch. Mortal Online and Shadowbane were the most broken MMORPG games I have played to date (at their times of release). Mortal still to this day contains a bug where if a relatively large battle occurs, one if not players will become invisible. Darkfall Online was not much better, poorly designed and had nothing of appeal to any other than a seriously hardcore open pvp player.
Don't forget that WoW PvP servers (which are generally the most populated servers), experience griefing by top level characters on lower levels to this day. Before they instanced PvP, Azeroth was a carpet of corpses. Open PvP or relentless griefing for that matter, did not represented much of a problem considering WoW maintained a monster subscription base during the highest periods of grief.
Pathfinder Online will not be Shadowbane, MO or DFO by releasing a well designed, relatively bug free and polished product. I don't think it has much to do with open PvP considering it is well implemented and policed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Pathfinder Online will not be Shadowbane, MO or DFO by releasing a well designed, relatively bug free and polished product. I don't think it has much to do with open PvP considering it is well implemented and policed.
Then why did Darkfall's US launch, which went perfectly smoothly, attract no notice and little demand outside of existing Darkfall players? Remember, Darkfall launched with its EU server only. Darkfall failed not solely or even chiefly because of technical issues, but rather because the product was poor and the community was toxic.
There doesn't seem to be any huge fanbase of people dying to play some sandbox PVP game other than the rabid dogs. Darkfall, for all the roughness of its launch, did manage to absorb just about all of the rabid dog demand, on its one rinkydink server. That doesn't say "huge untapped market" to me. I suppose there might be some sort of untapped market of people interested in a sandbox worldbuilding game that isn't as hopelessly braindead and broken as Second Life and cutthroat as Shadowbane, but to get that market, a plan to muzzle the PLAY TO CRUSH rabid dogs would be helpful.
Dude Darkfall was rubbish. Even into US release the game was fuelled by dupe bugs, elitist groups and a fundamentally broken game. It's biggest failing, as Ryan states, was the focus on hardcore PvP.
Darkfall says nothing about a sandbox market; it is not even a remotely functional sandbox game, it is a PvP game. The sandbox elements attempted were ill conceived, broken and left that way. If you have any idea of the discourse of their content updates from release, you'd need a stronger pair of ribs than my own as they'd shatter with laughter. Crafters fled the game, roleplayers fled the game, PvE'ers fled the game, EVERYONE fled the game save for the sociopaths.
A sandbox game, whatever its form may take, requires working and functional sandbox features. That is all. Darkfall failed in the longterm because of the absence of these functional features, not because of the presence of open PvP. The sandbox crowd is far larger than the hardcore PvP crowd.
When ArcheAge releases with more sandbox fluff than you could wave a stick at, come back and tell me that there is no market for sandbox games. We're not talking about PvP games but sandbox games, what PFO will be.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Remember, Darkfall launched with its EU server only. Darkfall failed not solely or even chiefly because of technical issues, but rather because the product was poor and the community was toxic.
While I will not disagree with this, I do want to point out that my guild (once we were able to get in) coming into DF was 100+ people and we were our own community. If we made more friends, great...if not, we intended to be self sufficient. Since we did not interact much with others socially, PvP just became intelligent PvE. Our community was not toxic. The problem we had is that a portion of our community never made it into game which gave us a really bad first impression. Then our players started randomly getting booted because Adventurine was never able to get their payments to work...this pissed us off. And, I have to admit, I was not impressed with the implementation (primarily we were really disappointed by the inability to design new structures, only build pre-designed and placed ones). We had hoped to be able to design our own defensive structures and pit them against the ones designed by the other communities.
a plan to muzzle the PLAY TO CRUSH rabid dogs would be helpful
Once again, I am not directly going to disagree with you, just mention that Goblinworks has already highlighted a three-tier system they intend to use to create this muzzle.
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Goblinworks Founder
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Aside from the launch problems with bother DFO and MO, I personally did not find them enjoyable because of the first person view. I never even got into the Elder Scroll games of the past because of the FPV and it has only been with Oblivion and Skyrim that I actually took an interest.
The actual mechanics behind Darkfall (at a basic level) weren't too bad.
I payed to alpha test Mortal Online but when I discovered their billing system wasn't secure I quickly cancelled my credit card and distanced myself from the company. Both of these games did not have much financial backing either, I am very interested to see what a well backed company can produce in the sandbox line.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Once again, I am not directly going to disagree with you, just mention that Goblinworks has already highlighted a three-tier system they intend to use to create this muzzle.Other games with the problems I've outlined have exactly the same three-tier system.
Ah, I suppose that is the danger of getting the advise of the experts in a given field, you are going to get the same errors as the best of the field.