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I think it likely there will be horribly evil kingdoms run by rogues, assassins, spies and traitors.Awesome. I'm really glad to see that the potential for being a double agent and switching sides at critical times is there, makes things all that much more interesting. An espionage aspect to a fantasy game, who'd have thought it =D
There is another factor that would make sense to come into play when discussing any kind of medieval setting.
Castles.
A castle is in and of itself a "safe" place that is created (and expanded) with a huge expenditure of resources. You literally have to build it, when it is damaged you have to repair it, and you have to keep the resources to supply it.
If an approach is to instead of having formalized territory you have castles that are built by players functionally holding specific areas, that creates relatively safe zones at a resource cost. These castles could be taken or destroyed, consuming the resources and changing the power in the area.
In a sense, this is how things went.
My concern would be assuring that resources have some kind of consumable aspect that forces players to keep needing to find ways to acquire them, while not leading to power bloat at the top and making entry impossible.
It sounds like a crafting mechanism will exist that can create a good economy, but I could also see the economy getting out of whack if the resources aren't consumed. I'm sure this will be addressed, but consider an open sandbox game where you can literally build a fortification for your faction as a base of operations. You will expand, and be relatively safe within it (if you protect it of course) but all of this will depend on your faction acquiring and using resources.
The primary concerns would be overpopulation (mitigated by the slow grow approach) and inflation if the crafting system ablity isn't under control with regards to consumption.
And of course a castle is only one type of fortifications. And having a castle also means you have a central location for your enemies to attack.
I think this could work well, I'm glad they are building slow to see how things interact, but when you think about a resource building system and you consider how popular minecraft is...
People need to get their head out of the WoW model, as this isn't going to be "Go kill the monster and see what drops".
This is likely going to have aspects of that, but for challenge you will actually have to face as the BBEG comes in the form of your fellow players. That is in my opinion a more interesting enemy.
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Thanks Ryan. Great information & thanks to you I am now playing bloody Eve Online, AGAIN. I'll never understand this stupid game.
Can't wait for PFO though :)
Hehe, since I posted my disinterest in this type of system, I've now downloaded Eve and am on my first day of the 14 day free trial. We'll see how much I can adapt to a game of this style I guess. Maybe I'll be pleasently surprised.
Cheers
Goblin Squad Member
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Finally, PFO seems to be a game where you HAVE to interact with your fellow players to do much at all.
I am so sick of the Multiplay Solitaire approach that almost all other games seem to have. You can easily solo through 90% of all the content, need minimal interaction for 9% and need to guild/know the players for a meagre 1%.
Also the reason why in the past times games like DAoC felt so good was because there wasn't n-zillion players in the first 3 months that really weren't interested in an MMO at all, chocked the servers and the community and vanished to leave empty ruins of worlds.
It seems like PFO will avoid that.
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I would even argue that sandbox is way more demanding content and development wise than themepark game. Sandbox content isn't linear, it is repetitive, tightly focused and unpredictable. This brings a lot of issues.
I can't let this statement go unchallenged, as it is utterly ridiculous.
A sandbox is a forum for community created content and options.
A themepark game requires paid developers to create instances for players to explore.
To take the theme park analogy to the next level, in a theme park game you need to make rides. The rides are great the first time, but after grinding them for awhile...meh...
This means to keep your existing users, you have to create instances almost as fast as they can beat and get bored with them.
A sandbox game allows players to create there own "instances" in a sense. Want to raid someones fortress? That's an event. Fighting off someone raiding your fortress. That's an event. Someone summoned a horrible demon using a gate spell? That's an event.
You give players options and the world unfolds organically. Minecraft is an incredibly simple game that pretty much just gives players options on how to create a game for themselves.
This is the goal of a sandbox.
If they build it properly, the game will be the interactions with other players, which will always be more variable than static instances your grind over and over for loot drops.
Will it appeal to everyone? No. Neither does WoW, and neither will KOTOR:Online. That isn't the goal.
The goal is to create an online space interesting enough that players will pay money to play in it, preferably for long periods of time.
If they can find middleware flexible enough to allow player options, and they can keep the economy balanced, it will work great toward that goal and a lot of people will want to play it. Which is why they are slow building it so they can not the bugs out and get the balance right as they unroll it.
If they can't, it will fail.
Again, minecraft is basically a block guy digging up stuff so he can recombine it to make other stuff.
This is taking aspects of that and creating a mass economy along the way as you trade for these limited resources which can be made into other things by people who have the abilities.
Just because you wouldn't play it, doesn't mean others won't. And since they are only shooting for a 120k userbase, they can create a niche products.
I mean, Minecraft has sold over 4,000,000 units in less than year.
You give players options and the world unfolds organically. Minecraft is an incredibly simple game that pretty much just gives players options on how to create a game for themselves.
This is the goal of a sandbox.
....
If they build it properly, the game will be the interactions with other players, which will always be more variable than static instances your grind over and over for loot drops.
Nein.
I don't think a full out sandbox ala Minecraft is a good idea for an RPG. Player customization of their own gear and look to some extent, sure. Player customization of the whole world....niet. At least not total freedom.
I mean you can let some players build dungeons or whatever but it has to be governed somehow if its all going into the open world.
All RPG's to some extent build on immersion. It is not very immersive to have 100 MMO-kidz build a wall the size of the chineese one around the best dungeons...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Nein.....have 100 MMO-kidz build a wall the size of the chineese one around the best dungeons...
Doch :-)
Between this and WoW are actually whole oceans of possibilities. So I think we can rest assured that while the chinese wall will be prevented player driven content via interaction will actually happen in a fun and immersive way.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you have a good core system designed to be a sandbox then very little developer content is needed to have an enjoyable game.That is simply not true.
Sandbox without content will turn into boring repetitive grind very fast and lose players, just like any themepark. Sandbox without tools.
I would even argue that sandbox is way more demanding content and development wise than themepark game. Sandbox content isn't linear, it is repetitive, tightly focused and unpredictable. This brings a lot of issues.
EVE was able to maintain steady growth only because the game is consistently getting tons of new content with 2 expansions per year. It is the most developed game around.
Sorry, I disagree. You cannot compare eve's core system as what I'm talking about here. I believes Eves core system is mind-numbingly boring. Click on something, automate.
The closest example I can think of is a text based game called Dragon Realms, which happens to be very similar to a lot of the ideas for PFO. Combat was very much interactive, characters did not consist of a pool of "hit points" but rather many different hit locations that could take varying severity of wounds, with very complex rules for limb damage, poison, paralysis, etc. Combat was very fun and engaging. As this combat is taking place, you're not earning generic "experience points" and boring loot per kill, you're gaining skill on whatever skills you're practicing, and loot was highly enjoyable, with trapped/locked box drops and skinning hides off skinable creatures.
The result is that I didn't need to see a new creature type every hour or so of play or be bored. You didn't need a ton of "content" in DR to stay entertained. The company would release a new "hunting area" and it could keep you entertained for weeks, months, or more.
I haven't seen a good, enjoyable mixture of combat, character development, and loot ever in a graphical MMORPG. This is what's needed to make an enjoyable sandbox. Hopefully PFO will be it.
Wow if they pull this off then it will become this generations Ultima Online.
A sandbox/theme park that still continues today.
I can't wait....
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Goblin Squad Member
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Nein.
I don't think a full out sandbox ala Minecraft is a good idea for an RPG. Player customization of their own gear and look to some extent, sure. Player customization of the whole world....niet. At least not total freedom.
I mean you can let some players build dungeons or whatever but it has to be governed somehow if its all going into the open world.
All RPG's to some extent build on immersion. It is not very immersive to have 100 MMO-kidz build a wall the size of the chineese one around the best dungeons...
I strongly doubt dungeons are going to be done in the same way you would expect from WoW or other MMO's. Going by Eve as a baseline, odds are no matter what the world is going to be huge, quite possibly to the point where getting to a specific location, may take several hours of traveling through unsafe area, of which the other side of it, could have a full army just maintaining control and preventing others from accessing. Actual dungeons will need either 1. dozens of entrances to the same dungeon scattered around the world. 2. perhaps no entrance at all, perhaps a teleporter in each city is the way to get in, or possibility 3. Dungeons themselves could be completely random locations, with random unpredictable contents. Say a dungeon randomly appears in the wilderness, until you go inside you have no idea if it's a den of CR1 kobalds, or a CR25 red dragon's den, the whole dungeon could just vanish and re-appear elsewhere later. That could create an interesting dynamic if randomly generated dungeons could be created.
Going by Eve as a baseline,
I think most are going crazy with this EVE stuff. Just cause the developers said that they MIGHT look at some aspects from EVE that doesn't mean this game is going to be EVE in la-la-land.
First of all its a totally different game. Its a space game and you own a fleet of ships which is what you play with.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Going by Eve as a baseline,I think most are going crazy with this EVE stuff. Just cause the developers said that they MIGHT look at some aspects from EVE that doesn't mean this game is going to be EVE in la-la-land.
First of all its a totally different game. Its a space game and you own a fleet of ships which is what you play with.
It still doesn't change the fact that the game will have large amounts of player controlled territory, which means, a large environment. Seperate economies, means that just instantly blinking from one city to the next should not be easy (as then all economies would instantly be the identical, even if you limit how much someone can carry on a teleport, they would just teleport more often). You are right that it won't likely be identical to eve, but eve is the only half/modern sandbox MMO to compare things to, and there are a few traits that have to exist, and the idea of controlling kingdoms, require a large environment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sorry, I disagree.No need to be sorry.
Just unless you provide some reasonably relevant arguments in your reply, there is not much to discuss...
I gave examples as to why ALL current MMORPG's fail in multiple aspects and why they wouldn't make good sandbox games, that is highly relevant. Believe it or not an RPG game can be made entertaining where you need little content to provide that entertainment, that just hasn't been the traditional formula, and is also why these Themeparks are so much $$ to develop. So I don't have a graphical MMORPG that does it right to compare to. Comparing to dragon realms is as much if not more relevant than everyone else here using comparisons to Eve.
All RPG's to some extent build on immersion. It is not very immersive to have 100 MMO-kidz build a wall the size of the chineese one around the best dungeons...
You know the one way to avoid interaction with "MMO-kidz" with 100% success?
Do not play MMOs.
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You give players options
You somehow seem to think that those 'options' isn't content.
To siege a player owned fortress you need deep game mechanics for claiming, ownership, management, building, etc... Those mechanics need to be designed and coded just like a raid dugneon.
Actually it doesn't.
See, ownership is relative. You can put the time a resources into building a fort, but can you hold that fort? Because if you can't someone's game instance will be raiding the fort you built.
And you paid for the privilege of building an in-game event, rather than me paying a developer to write it. And then you may try to re-take that fort. You may raid people on the way to that fort. You may build your own fort...etc...etc...
They are building the framework, not the game. You are stuck in an instance based perception of an MMO, where there are places everyone goes to do repeating missions.
The game IS PvP, PvP isn't an aspect of the game. Every player is competing for limited resources, making alliances, trying to hold territory, trying to gain territory, trying to move up in the hierarchy, all while trying not get killed.
It isn't about raids. Raids are a side note. You aren't just going places to kill things for loot drops. You are trying to build cities and empires.
And then trying to hold them.
This isn't that.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A couple of comments:
- looting of fallen enemies: as much as I would dislike losing my stuff to looters, especially if 20 noobs characters can kill y experienced character, looting should remove stuff from the fallen and not create it from thin air. Doing otherwise will kill crafting very fast.
If my character can be killed and his corpse will generate appropriate loot while I will not lose anything, why craft anything? I only need to log a second character, go into a PvP area, get my main in the nude and kill him, take the generated loot, rinse and repeat.
To avoid that you need to take the loot from the fallen or make being killed so costly that no one will try this trick. But if being killed was so costly people would never take a risk. Being killed in PvE (and it should happen) would be a disaster.
- player generated PvE: I have seen several posts by people suggesting to have tools to create content for the other players. That should be approached with a lot of caution. I can easily see people crating dungeons with Easter eggs that could be unlocked only doing the "right thing" and sharing the way to get the big loot with friends. Similarly I can see people populating dungeons with monsters chosen because they drop great loot and suffer from a specific weakness, so that they would be easy prey fro a player prepared for those monsters.
To make an example that almost anyone on these boards will get: about 10 years ago, in the first days of the 3rd edition, my 3 level party had an encounter with a Grick, CR 3 monster. It is a though challenge for a warrior type at that level as it has DR 10/magic and 5 attacks.
The sorcerer was the first to go in the surprise round, cast magic missiles, got maximum damage and killed it before it had the time to do anything. The whole party was amazed that a easy monster like that was worth so many XP. What was a hard challenge for a warrior type was a very easy one for a spellcaster.
The consequence of the above problems with player generated content is that player generated content should not generate "resources" (NPC, loot, ecc.) from thin air, but it should be created consuming some kind of resource from the player/kingdom creating it, and at the same time it should give some kind of advantage for the same player/kingdom.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Finally, PFO seems to be a game where you HAVE to interact with your fellow players to do much at all.
I am so sick of the Multiplay Solitaire approach that almost all other games seem to have. You can easily solo through 90% of all the content, need minimal interaction for 9% and need to guild/know the players for a meagre 1%.
Also the reason why in the past times games like DAoC felt so good was because there wasn't n-zillion players in the first 3 months that really weren't interested in an MMO at all, chocked the servers and the community and vanished to leave empty ruins of worlds.
It seems like PFO will avoid that.
I agree with you 100%, too many games these days do the whole solo 90% of the game, and then they defend it saying "well you can team up if you want", but generally arrange it so that by teaming up it either takes longer or it takes the same time, to top it off they go by quest chains so that if you aren't on the exact same page as anyone else, they have no reason to work with you, as a result actually finding someone willing to team up, is hard to impossible until you reach an instance, of which then half the time is cheated by having someone way overleveled solo it while the people of appropriate level sit on the sidelines.
The general viewpoint of it is that it takes so long to find a party, but the reality is the reason it takes long to get a party is because all of the eligible members are out soloing.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
It is so ridicules that theese games are being measured by how many players they have on when its all the same...they're all going to grind through their solo-content...
Chief Technical Officer
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Middleware and cutting costs:
Whether your budget for the game is 100M USD or 20M USD, the price of purchased technology will be the same. So much do you really save on middleware solution?
There are several potential licensing options. Some middleware is licensed with a fixed fee, but some packages can be negotiated with an ongoing royalty, in which case there can be little to no cost until you have revenue.
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Couldn't have said it better myself.
It is so ridicules that theese games are being measured by how many players they have on when its all the same...they're all going to grind through their solo-content...
I think we got your "NWN was the only true MMO out there, everything else is a WoW clone that's an endless grind" point loud and clear by now.
I think we got your "NWN was the only true MMO out there,...
Yeah and I got all yours "We want another WoW-clone MMO".
Whatever, knock yourselves out...congratulations on yet another stereotypical MMO...
...and its funny....cause you actually made a couple of posts that sounded good to me...
Goblinworks Founder
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I don't think anyone here want's a "Wow-clone" or a "NWN-Clone" to be honest. I don't want this game to replicate either of those games.
I want it to be exactly what they are marketing the game and I want to play the game with people that enjoy the game, not with people that wish it were more like NWN or WoW or PnP.
The way they are marketing the game it will be a WoW-clone with slightly more freedom and some Pathfinder lore :-o
The amount of NWN-clones out there are none...and again...i never said NWN-clone...i just said...look at how NWN PW's work....
...well, maybe NWN2 is an "NWN-clone" but it was worse than the first one in my oppinion...and even less aimed at multiplayer unfortunately.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Ryan
Thanks a lot for all these explanations, and from what you write about Pathfinder Online, I would really like so see it come out and be as interesting as what you describe :-)
Your blog posts and the discussion of Sandbox vs Theme Park also enabled me to understand why I was never as happy with current MMOs I played (WoW mainly, Guildwars, Warhammer, Age of Conan, soon SWTOR), after the first one I started with (Shadowbane), because they all are Theme parks (or maybe because it's like your first date, you never forget her)...
I now realize that what I really loved with Shadowbane was it's Sandbox aspect, where a guild had to build a city, and a then a realm, and defend it against other players. This led to epic battles (sieges) between players, that where truly memorable because of the time and effort spent into building what you were defending, thus a certain "value" attached to it. (See this post if you want to have an idea of what the game was like: http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/08/02/the-game-archaeologist-uncovers-sha dowbane-the-highlights/ )
I never played EVE, so maybe this aspect is also present in it, and explains its attractivness to long term players.
So if Sandbox in Pathfinder Online means player cities and sieges, I would say: YEAH !!!! HOURRAHHH !!! :-)
@Vic
Another expectation I have, is using a Mac client ! Please please please, include this in your initial requirements :-) Shadowbane and WoW (had) have native Mac clients, and nothing beats that: playing Windows only games under bootcamp is a pain, mainly because it means rebooting your computer each time you want to play... And in the end, it's a factor when you feel like switching to something else.
I really hope you can make this game come out !
Cheers,
Moonbird
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am extremely excited for Pathfinder Online, but I do worry about the 4,500 limit per month. That .... kinda scares me. Having to wait 6 months before I can even get my foot in the door? I will be an incredibly sad panda.
Hopefully things take off and it jumps to 9,000 a month instead.
It would be interesting to know just how many accounts are on Paizo website to see how many people I have to murder to get in from the first month......ahem.....how many people are potential players of Pathfinder Online.
*goes to the Goblinworks site to see if there is a 'have my firstborn, put me on the short list!' function up yet*
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Roleplaying games, specifically of the fantasy genre, should encourage characters to play multiple characters than that of all roles on a single character.
Why? Skyrim requires no such many character approach and I hear its getting pretty decent reviews from the rpg crowd.
... an even playing field is necessary to promote the game to potential new players.
Why?
I'm really curious. I'd see your point in an arena based pvp systems (which is all most people have experience with in MMOs) but having played EVE as a latecomer I can say that it was not at all hard to get to play super-fun roles and if you were smart and planed your character toward it not too difficult to build toward the higher end combat jobs. Open world pvp is really a totally different beast than anything you can find on WoW or any of its variants these days.
I point to the 'hero rifter' that TEST promoted in EVE even naming several stations after brand new pilots who through tenacity and a bit of luck could pin down veteran players till the big guns blew them up. Very new players can have very real impacts without nearly the skillsets of older players. Now how one implements tackling or ewar in a fantasy style game I'm not entirely sure, but I'm confident that there will be some interesting answers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Roleplaying games, specifically of the fantasy genre, should encourage characters to play multiple characters than that of all roles on a single character.Why? Skyrim requires no such many character approach and I hear its getting pretty decent reviews from the rpg crowd.
Apologies, I was referring to massively multiplayer RPGs. In Skyrim you are the hero of your own insular world. Great. Having a single character immerse himself and conquer in his own game is kind of the point. The same in the tabletop game. Make your party the kings of Golarion, why not.
In an MMORPG, you populate and bring the world to life. Having hundreds of thousands of identical heroes loses most of it's validity as soon as you realise your fulfilling no purpose beyond your own short sighted entertainment and nobody will hear you leave. In my opinion, most common gaming outcomes of RPG games should be left at the door of any sandbox MMORPG.
Having multiple characters fulfilling certain roles brings the game to life. It doesn't matter if each blacksmith has relatively the same skill set as they each have a place in the world and each play their part in maintaining that world.
Having hundreds of heroes amassing vast skill pools makes an otherwise well designed world lose all authenticity and look ridiculous. You can't make single characters look remotely normal if you let them do everything. You cannot have a medieval/fantasy sandbox MMORPG where everybody is Jesus.
Let the people who want to be heroes earn that in game. Not through a massing a ridiculous amount of skill points. This works in New Eden; Eve portrays everything I could dream of for PFO, I just do not see that skill system working in Golarion. Happy to be proven wrong though.
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Chief Technical Officer
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@Vic
Another expectation I have, is using a Mac client ! Please please please, include this in your initial requirements :-)
Everyone at Paizo is very interested in Mac clients. The engine we're most interested in is currently working on Mac support, and if we end up with that engine, we'll do our best to take advantage of that as soon as the option is ready—which may or may not be prior to launch.
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Apologies, I was referring to massively multiplayer RPGs. In Skyrim you are the hero of your own insular world. Great. Having a single character immerse himself and conquer in his own game is kind of the point. The same in the tabletop game. Make your party the kings of Golarion, why not.
Indeed the group I DM is finishing up Kingmaker and probably going to start the Jade Regent AP soon.
In an MMORPG, you populate and bring the world to life. Having hundreds of thousands of identical heroes loses most of it's validity as soon as you realise your fulfilling no purpose beyond your own short sighted entertainment and nobody will hear you leave. In my opinion, most common gaming outcomes of RPG games should be left at the door of any sandbox MMORPG.
Having multiple characters fulfilling certain roles brings the game to life. It doesn't matter if each blacksmith has relatively the same skill set as they each have a place in the world and each play their part in maintaining that world.
Having hundreds of heroes amassing vast skill pools makes an otherwise well designed world lose all authenticity and look ridiculous. You can't make single characters look remotely normal if you let them do everything. You cannot have a medieval/fantasy sandbox MMORPG where everybody is Jesus.
Honestly I don't follow your reasoning. I'm not trying to be rude but to understand.
If I create a character and train him in heavy armor and melee weapons then I'm basically building a fighter yes?
If I go onward to learn some evocation magic to gain some ranged option (rather than say pursuing an archery tree) I'm essentially taking levels in Magus or possibly Eldrich Knight as far as the rest of the game world is concerned.
The only way that I see that everyone will pick the 'one true path' is if its so badly designed that the one true path is completely obvious and totally dominates all other options.
Honestly I see more difficulty with a fighter who is completely unable to ever learn a simple cantrip because when he set out in the world he was a smiths son who only knew how to swing a sword.
Now in EVE the ships with different roles help to mitigate this a lot. A super dreadnought is simply not going to be able to effectively tackle an opponents ship. So the super dreadnought pilot won't bother equipping any of the tackling gear and the fact that the character is also super-skilled at pinning down opponents won't matter once bit.
The question of how one implements this sort of thing in a fantasy setting is harder. I am curious how it will be addressed. If everyone can in fact do everything at all times that may be problematic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Everyone at Paizo is very interested in Mac clients. The engine we're most interested in is currently working on Mac support, and if we end up with that engine, we'll do our best to take advantage of that as soon as the option is ready—which may or may not be prior to launch.
And just out of curiosity: Linux support?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Everyone at Paizo is very interested in Mac clients. The engine we're most interested in is currently working on Mac support, and if we end up with that engine, we'll do our best to take advantage of that as soon as the option is ready—which may or may not be prior to launch.
Great news ! That sounds good :-)
Moonbird
In an MMORPG, you populate and bring the world to life. Having hundreds of thousands of identical heroes loses most of it's validity as soon as you realise your fulfilling no purpose beyond your own short sighted entertainment and nobody will hear you leave. In my opinion, most common gaming outcomes of RPG games should be left at the door of any sandbox MMORPG.
Having multiple characters fulfilling certain roles brings the game to life. It doesn't matter if each blacksmith has relatively the same skill set as they each have a place in the world and each play their part in maintaining that world.
Having hundreds of heroes amassing vast skill pools makes an otherwise well designed world lose all authenticity and look ridiculous. You can't make single characters look remotely normal if you let them do everything. You cannot have a medieval/fantasy sandbox MMORPG where everybody is Jesus.
Honestly I don't follow your reasoning. I'm not trying to be rude but to understand.
If I create a character and train him in heavy armor and melee weapons then I'm basically building a fighter yes?
If I go onward to learn some evocation magic to gain some ranged option (rather than say pursuing an archery tree) I'm essentially taking levels in Magus or possibly Eldrich Knight as far as the rest of the game world is concerned.
The only way that I see that everyone will pick the 'one true path is completely obvious and totally dominates all other options.
Honestly I see more difficulty with a fighter who is completely unable to ever learn a simple cantrip because when he set out in the world he was a smiths son who only knew how to swing a sword.
Now in EVE the ships with different roles help to mitigate this a lot. A super dreadnought is simply not going to be able to effectively tackle an opponents ship. So the super dreadnought pilot won't bother equipping any of the tackling gear and the fact that the character is also super-skilled at pinning down opponents won't matter once bit.
The question of how one implements this sort of thing in a fantasy setting is harder. I am curious how it will be addressed. If everyone can in fact do everything at all times that may be problematic.
Eve has ship roles, but that guy in a super dreadnought may very well be as good at tackling in his backup ship as anyone else in the game. In Eve, players are distinguished by the role they enjoy and have equiped for more so than what skills they have. And changing equipment is easy when you have 1/2 dozen fully equipped ships with various purposes. Older characters are more likely to have a skill than not, from what I can tell.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And just out of curiosity: Linux support?
If the middleware supports it, we'll support it if we can. I find it unlikely though. From my experience at CCP I know that the costs vastly exceed the returns. Very, very few people in our target demographic have a "linux only" household.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And changing equipment is easy when you have 1/2 dozen fully equipped ships with various purposes. Older characters are more likely to have a skill than not, from what I can tell.
One of the interesting things about the EVE skill system is that the time required to train the "highest" level of a skill is often onerous. And the benefit you get from that training is (apparently) marginal. So what often happens is that characters train the minimum skill to use a type of gear and then move on to other training trees.
However, if you have the discipline to specialize, you get benefits that are non-obvious. For one thing, there are many skills that require you to have completed a skill tree as a pre-requisite. Having put in the time to finish that basic skill enables the character to gain access to new and usually more powerful options.
And in some pursuits, especially crafting, even marginal improvements can have a huge effect on profits when magnified across large volumes of transactions. So the character who delayed gratification by sticking with a skill tree to the end gets rewarded long-term by "winning" in market PvP. (That is, they can undercut their competitors because their higher skills give them a slight advantage on costs or other factors).
The syndrome of a character with a lot of different skills enabling that character to be a "jack of all trades" is extremely prevalent in EVE. On the other hand, once you see those characters in action, you realize that they have paid a big price because they are "masters of none".
RyanD
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The syndrome of a character with a lot of different skills enabling that character to be a "jack of all trades" is extremely prevalent in EVE. On the other hand, once you see those characters in action, you realize that they have paid a big price because they are "masters of none".
I am reminded of the first time I played with a Bard 1/ Rogue 1/ Cleric 1/ Wizard 1/ Druid 1. What a train wreck of a character that was. Completely incompetent at absolutely everything compared to what a simple Anyclass 5 could do.
Well, I for one LIKE having maxed out skills. Sadly, it does take FOREVER!!!
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If the middleware supports it, we'll support it if we can. I find it unlikely though. From my experience at CCP I know that the costs vastly exceed the returns. Very, very few people in our target demographic have a "linux only" household.And just out of curiosity: Linux support?
As a hardcore linux fan, I can also support this viewpoint, as long as you don't load a bunch of bogus anti-cheating software. In general 90% of games even in a pure linux environment can run just fine via WINE with little to no loss in game quality, including eve despite not having official linux support
I do have to ask is there going to be some anti-cheat program? The reason why I oppose such an idea is 1. They do break compatibility with WINE or other programs to allow them to run on other systems, 2. They do tend to cause issues with about 5% of players via conflicts with antivirus's or the like, both of which I could accept if it weren't for the fact that 3. They don't tend to work, people can bypass them, usually defenders of these programs say, well yeah sure we have hundreds of cheaters with it, but if we didn't we'd have thousands, these programs limit the hackers to the more technically inclined.
From what I've observed, they change the steps of cheating from "go to sketchy site and download cheating program", to "go to sketchy site download detection program disabler, then download cheating program".
It's like saying lawn gnomes protect you from robberies. Sure my house got broken in once this year, but if I didn't have them I'm sure I'd have been broken in 5 times. In the end the only working security model has to be on the server side, the client by definition is compromised the second it is on the end users system, and anything one person can figure out, will be automated so that everyone interested can do the same.
Are we looking at a skill-based system then, or will there be classes? I am led to believe the latter from the info released thus far.
I thought I saw earlier in this thread that Ryan said there would be no classes. I'm not slogging through this again to find it though.
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Are we looking at a skill-based system then, or will there be classes? I am led to believe the latter from the info released thus far.I thought I saw earlier in this thread that Ryan said there would be no classes. I'm not slogging through this again to find it though.
http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz4v92&page=4?Goblinworks-Blog-A-Journey-of-a -Thousand-Miles#189
Pathfinder Online will not have classes in the traditional sense. We'll be talking more about how we'll be enabling people to play characters that develop similar to the ways classed tabletop characters do in a future blog post.
Slogging complete
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Hey Ryan, I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your thoughts with us and keeping a dialogue going with the forumites here.
The developer/insider activity and conversation on these boards is quite awesome, and is one of the main reasons I became a Paizo fan. When I first heard of this corner of the internet and checked it out, I was amazed at the level of interaction between the community and the Paizo staff, and am ecstatic to see it carry over to Goblinworks.