Goblin Squad Member
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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
Cheers for locating that. However, that would indicate that we will have classes but they won't be as rigid as Warcraft classes, for example. So my Fighter can still take a Knowledge but just not as well as the party Bard.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I read the first two pages. I have two conclusions. My first is that this game will probably be a success on its own (limited) terms. My second is that it will ramp up so slowly that, given the nature of the Pathfinder playerbase, the existence of a Pathfinder MMO should not preclude the development of a Pathfinder equivalent of Neverwinter Nights. Especially important are the abilities to create your own content -- from the ground up, not just inside someone else's world -- and host your own games. That's what PnP RPG is all about!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Agreed. While it is sad to know many of us won't be allowed into Golarion from day one due to the nature of your 'search', I must echo the call for Roleplayers, and friendly roleplayers at that, to be brought into the game first.
If possible, please try to avoid the Elitists, and try to find the people that, quite simply, Love Their Fantasy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I read the first two pages. I have two conclusions. My first is that this game will probably be a success on its own (limited) terms. My second is that it will ramp up so slowly that, given the nature of the Pathfinder playerbase, the existence of a Pathfinder MMO should not preclude the development of a Pathfinder equivalent of Neverwinter Nights.
Actually, it arguably does. I believe one of the Paizo folk stated that Goblinworks was granted exclusive license to develop a Pathfinder MMO. A Neverwinter Nights-esque game has certain traits common to MMOs, and Goblinworks may be within its rights to prevent such a game from being created by another studio.
EDIT: Not that they would object, mind you, since they're basically run by the same people. But Paizo would be smart to renegotiate the terms of its license with Goblinworks before giving another house the rights to produce an NWN-like game, just in case.
Umm, what are saying Scott?
What game is it that you want Paizo to stop?
The right method to go about when making a game is to focus on your own stuff and what you're doing. I don't think there are any specifically severe legal issues pertaining to making a turn-based game or an NWN-esque game.
NWN has as little rights over what games mimic them as WoW. Besides...NWN is an SP game with MP so there IS a long road to walk to only multiplayer...and in my eyes....a good one....
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Goblin Squad Member
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It has taken so long to get to us having one Pathfinder video game that I really can't see Paizo green-lighting another one, at least not for several years.
It's hard to please everyone but at the end of the day, Paizo have to green-light the project which is more likely to get more people paying and playing. Evidence states that this will be an MMORPG where you can tap into the MMO market of people who play because it's an MMO, regardless of the lore or background.
Is Pathfinder Online going to be a virtual carbon copy of the P&P game? No. There are numerous products on the market which are established and offer that functionality already.
Is Pathfinder Online going to be a way in which we can get the flavour of Golarion in an interactive environment? Yes. It might not include all of the options that are in the P&P but then I'm not 100% sure that is what I'd want. There are a number of ways to break the system in P&P, see "RAGELANCEPOUNCE" and other such ridiculous threads. I don't want that kind of level of daftness in the MMORPG and if that means certain elements of the P&P have to go, I'm fine with that.
I'd rather that PFO act as a bridge between the existing MMO market and the hardcore of Paizo loyalists so that the company and by extension, our hobby, can grow!
“lessons learned from other games”
The best would be to not look at the MMO games at the market at all. Instead look at older multiplayer RPG's...
At least that what I would want...
Wow Scott! What we totally need is a legend of zelda MMO...just take the old nintendo version and add multiplayer!
Are you kidding. I have seen more griefing in 4 Swords than any other game ever. I would hate to play it with people I don't know.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You realize this means he needs 500 dollars from each of his players at the three year cap to break even. Thats a hefty goal. I am beginning to understand why Dancey is no longer with CCP.
That's $13.88 per player per month, and easy number that people pay already, so the math appears to work out perfectly to me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Wow Scott! What we totally need is a legend of zelda MMO...just take the old nintendo version and add multiplayer!Are you kidding. I have seen more griefing in 4 Swords than any other game ever. I would hate to play it with people I don't know.
You realize that 4 Swords was designed to foster competition? I mean, why else do they have that trophy award phase at the end of each level.
I would play a Zelda style game like that online. On the other hand, I play Dwarf Fortress, so my tastes aren't exactly mainstream.
I am very excited to see how this develops. While the whole limiting factor is kind of a bummer for those who won't be first in line (more than like myself included), I think this is a great idea. I would rather have to wait to play an awesomely amazing game that focuses on the detail of the game then play a game that busted butt to meet a release date and skimped in areas.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not sure if that's what realities of market and making money want nowadays.
“lessons learned from other games”
The best would be to not look at the MMO games at the market at all. Instead look at older multiplayer RPG's...
At least that what I would want...
It would be better than drawing too much inspiration from current MMORPGs. The current market is tired, boring, and completely unoriginal. Somebody has got to break out of the mold. Unfortunately I think money keeps driving the decisions to keep with "what's working" even though really it's not.. MMORPGs could be 100x better. Paizo is definitely taking steps in the right direction from what I've seen so far.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The current market is tired, boring, and completely unoriginal.This is really a very one-dimensional view of a market that is actually incredibly varied and is experiencing constant innovation.
Well I would say it might be a bit of an exaduration, but it is also pretty accurate of a statement. I would say the majority of MMORPGs being released follow 80-95% the same mold, then put in 5-20% unique features to differentiate themselves. There is quite a bit of new inovation going on, but it is in such small strides that it is basically split between dozens of games. If you took the unique features from 10-15 games and put them into 1 game, you could have a revolutionary game, but I would say most games right now are so close to the mold you barely notice the variation.
I started playing World of Tanks (WoT) a few days ago and have to say its kind of refreshing even though simple.
Maybe the multiplayer part is a little too less but its there still.
At least I hope people wont rage about WoT saying its not an MMO...like some are against NWN...
I'm not saying WoT has anything of interest for PFO....I'm just saying its a cool game and its kind of "out of the box thinking" that made it...
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Goblin Squad Member
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The current market is tired, boring, and completely unoriginal.This is really a very one-dimensional view of a market that is actually incredibly varied and is experiencing constant innovation.
And it's people with the $ who think like that is the reason MMORPG's have fallen so short of what they could be over the last decade. They need to stop patting themselves on the back and come up with something good. MMORPGs have been nothing but single player games with some multi player interaction. And it seems like the trend is continuing in the wrong direction (see SWTOR).
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Goblin Squad Member
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And it's people with the $ who think like that is the reason MMORPG's have fallen so short of what they could be over the last decade. They need to stop patting themselves on the back and come up with something good. MMORPGs have been nothing but single player games with some multi player interaction. And it seems like the trend is continuing in the wrong direction (see SWTOR).The current market is tired, boring, and completely unoriginal.This is really a very one-dimensional view of a market that is actually incredibly varied and is experiencing constant innovation.
SWTOR has aggregate review scores around 90/100. It has received perfect scores from some review outlets, including IGN. It is, by the most objective measure available to us, a good game. Maintaining the position that it is not a good game probably means it's a good game, but that your tastes are just very far outside the norm.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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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.
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.
Assuming that teleportation is cheap. Otherwise the economies interact with the added cost of transportation. If teleportation requires resources that have a scarcity, then it becomes an economy unto itself.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Something that might be a bit too much to program into the game, but what happens if there is a 'fixed' level of coin in the game?
IE, the game has a 100,000 platinum coins, 1 million gold coins, 10 million silver coins and 100 million copper coins, all in circulation?
Every time you buy something, sell something or use barter instead of coin, the game is tracking this and adjusting the economy accordingly?
Raiding the Dragon's treasure-horde might sound great now, but when you flood the market with the coins and treasures, what flow-on effects do we have/would we have in play?
Sorry, should have made that a little clearer.
Start of the game, all that wealth is lying around, and the Mods can add or subtract, depending upon the actions of the players, depending upon how much wealth might be sitting around, so on and so forth.
More-over, wealth given to NPCs via buying or selling or hiring should not just 'disappear' from the game. Rather, that wealth is entered into the NPC economy via behind-the-screen taxes, buying materials for themselves, etc etc etc.
Yes you can do nothing but be self-sufficient and sit on a mound of gold that would make cause Tiamat to suffer perpetual wingboners, but the economy of the nearby towns is going to start to suffer without the circulation of currency, unless other players start using a Barter system and can rescue that economy by somewhat bypassing your gold.
This is assuming greed, jealousy or a misplaced desire to not see 'their' region go under not leading other players to go raid your dwelling time and time again, strip it down to a shell and take everything not nailed down....
Thievery is one thing, but in an MMO Sandbox where an economy is dictated by how the players react to the markets and if they cause shortages, flood the markets or just try to crash the whole thing, the NPCs and PCs not involved will likely take steps to rectify the matter, peacefully at first, but drasticly less-so afterwards I think.
I don't think that would really add all that much to the game. True that it would be more realistic, but it seems like it would be a whole lot of work with very little benefit.
The more time they spend on things like the above the less time they have to work on other things. Just my two cents though, I do like the idea and honestly back in the day when I played WoW I had similar thoughts. :)
Edit: Hope everyone is having a happy new year!
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Something that might be a bit too much to program into the game, but what happens if there is a 'fixed' level of coin in the game?
IE, the game has a 100,000 platinum coins, 1 million gold coins, 10 million silver coins and 100 million copper coins, all in circulation?
Every time you buy something, sell something or use barter instead of coin, the game is tracking this and adjusting the economy accordingly?
Raiding the Dragon's treasure-horde might sound great now, but when you flood the market with the coins and treasures, what flow-on effects do we have/would we have in play?
Sorry, should have made that a little clearer.
Start of the game, all that wealth is lying around, and the Mods can add or subtract, depending upon the actions of the players, depending upon how much wealth might be sitting around, so on and so forth.
More-over, wealth given to NPCs via buying or selling or hiring should not just 'disappear' from the game. Rather, that wealth is entered into the NPC economy via behind-the-screen taxes, buying materials for themselves, etc etc etc.
Yes you can do nothing but be self-sufficient and sit on a mound of gold that would make cause Tiamat to suffer perpetual wingboners, but the economy of the nearby towns is going to start to suffer without the circulation of currency, unless other players start using a Barter system and can rescue that economy by somewhat bypassing your gold.
This is assuming greed, jealousy or a misplaced desire to not see 'their' region go under not leading other players to go raid your dwelling time and time again, strip it down to a shell and take everything not nailed down....
Thievery is one thing, but in an MMO Sandbox where an economy is dictated by how the players react to the markets and if they cause shortages, flood the markets or just try to crash the whole thing, the NPCs and PCs not involved will likely take steps to rectify the matter, peacefully at first, but drasticly less-so afterwards I think.
So, do you want to implement a system where coinage floats rather than having a fixed value, or do you want to keep the relative values of the coinage constant? If the latter, coins need to be fungible at some point, simply to make change. If the former, then we end up bartering with coinage: "I'll give you 523GP for that sword and 25SP." with the values of the coins and the goods varying with supply. I suspect that there will be many ways to manipulate that system in realistic (enough) ways; blockading food shipments to a village with a blacksmith, selling food at the inflated prices to wipe out the local supply of cash, and then trading inflated coinage for silk products.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Something that might be a bit too much to program into the game, but what happens if there is a 'fixed' level of coin in the game?
IE, the game has a 100,000 platinum coins, 1 million gold coins, 10 million silver coins and 100 million copper coins, all in circulation?
Every time you buy something, sell something or use barter instead of coin, the game is tracking this and adjusting the economy accordingly?
Raiding the Dragon's treasure-horde might sound great now, but when you flood the market with the coins and treasures, what flow-on effects do we have/would we have in play?
You would have a big problem with:
1) people leaving the game. Every guy that stop playing would froze a portion of the economy.
2) big advantage for the early players. It would not be corrected adding further circulant every time a new area is opened up as the strongest players would be the one to grab it immediately.
3) As Daniel pointed out managing it in a way that will work with NPC economy would be a even larger problem.
Sell 100 swords to a shopkeeper with no sword and get full price. Then the shopkeeper has 100 swords and little or no cash.
Buy the sword back at a deflated price.
Keep the difference and repeat the trick.
It work perfectly in Fables.
In a "closed" economy the NPC can be exploited badly.
I doubt it can be made to work in a persistent world.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Agreed, but it would be an interesting concept, to have a 'Global Economy' at work that the Players can interact with and have to deal with in both positive and negative ways.
That said, you've both pointed out some excellent reasons why A) It would be far to easy for players to abuse and B) has the potential to drag the fantasy out of a fantasy game.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I like the idea of NPC economy, I just don't see it based on a nonfinite resource. Either the gold is finite (with the problems noted above), or it isn't (with all the problems that entails).
What about a fiat currency? Each civilized jurisdiction prints a limited supply of it's own currency, and they buy and sell items at fixed prices -in that currency-. They will buy and sell metal coinage at variable rates, based on the amount of currency in circulation among the NPC's of that location: Buy a lot of goods (with script) and the price of gold (in script) goes down. Sell a lot of goods for script and the price of gold goes up. If there is too little script in circulation, more is gradually/eventually printed.
Abuse of the system in an infinite loop would be accomplished by making the exchange always favor the moneychanger- swapping coinage back and forth would give a gradual loss, as would buying and selling lots of goods at the same location. Trading goods between cities, on the other hand, could be potentially profitable.
The scripts would also enter the player-driven economy, where they would serve a role similar to metal coinage, starmetal, and vorpal swords: as both a medium of exchange and a product to be sold.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would like to see NPCs participate in the market. If I set up shop making furniture in a city, maybe I get some pieces periodically bought by NPCs.
If the market share of NPC action is significant enough, the designers can make the market adjust the price of goods based on how much they're actually moving in the market, and still be able to somewhat control those prices by controlling the aggregate NPC actions.
I'm very interested in following this. Starting with the concept of thinking lean and building on success is a great way to approach an MMO. If they are massively successful and player retention is higher than anticipated, things can move faster, but that allows the game to grow more naturally.
I think that was one of the aspects of success for WoW. They were always trying to catch up to their player base with infrastructure for the first 2 1/2 years. They didn't expect to have the subscription base that showed up that first year, which meant they had to work hard to maintain it, but also provided them the revenue to do so.
Starting with a goal of a manageable player base and working to build it up is a great idea. It also allows the game to grow more organically, instead of making huge investments in developing things that the players end up not liking, you can instead focus on continuing to develop things players do like or ask for.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope this goes well Iv been playing EVE for 6 years and d&d for over 20 years. I mention d&d becouse that's what pathfinder is. Where as 4th edition was not d&d and that's why the failed. There is a special place that the d&d experience creates in the imaginations of players. There is a feeling of being in the game that makes one hungrey for the next gaming session. That is why rpg's succed or fail. MMOs and the CRPGs that came before them feed off of a desire to level rather then a desire to live and experience a world of adventure. Mmos and crpgs are grind fests for the most part. CRPGS were not originally intended to be what they have become. I remmember when all of us d&d nerds were waiting in anticipation for a game that would let us expereience d&d adventure. Sadly the closest we have come to that is arguably NWN's. I find it downright crummy that piazo the people who saved d&d is going to make an mmo and not a virtual table top. I don't know weathere this venture will succeed or fall flat. What I do know is what would be a larger success. An increadably featured virtual table top fantasy adventure simulator. Remmember how 4ed D&D got all it's hype? It was the promise of the Game Table virtual tabletop. If there is a way to combine a virtual table top with a persistant world that's what will get you millions of subscribers. Offer what was promised by D&D 4ed and not deliverd. Improve on it. Make the CRPG that d&d players have been dreaming of for 20 years.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If there is a way to combine a virtual table top with a persistant world that's what will get you millions of subscribers.
This is the dream, indeed.
One major problem with it is that, to make a virtual table top versatile enough to support even a majority of the things that DMs and Players would want to do, the tools to design an adventure would be incredibly complex, making them virtually impossible for most people to use. Not to mention the bugs that the Players/DMs would introduce by failing to use the tools correctly, which they would then blame on the company that made the tools, rather than on their own lack of experience.
I see the whole genre of MMOs as a steady progression, and PFO is a step in the right direction. As more and more MMO worlds/adventures are created, the tools to create them get more and more refined. Given the history of PathFinder, with many designers developing content for the tabletop RPG, I can only hope that Goblinworks will open up development of new areas of Golarion to other small developers. If that model could be sustained, it would lead to very rapid innovation in the tools.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If there is a way to combine a virtual table top with a persistant world that's what will get you millions of subscribers.This is the dream, indeed.
One major problem with it is that, to make a virtual table top versatile enough to support even a majority of the things that DMs and Players would want to do, the tools to design an adventure would be incredibly complex, making them virtually impossible for most people to use. Not to mention the bugs that the Players/DMs would introduce by failing to use the tools correctly, which they would then blame on the company that made the tools, rather than on their own lack of experience.
I see the whole genre of MMOs as a steady progression, and PFO is a step in the right direction. As more and more MMO worlds/adventures are created, the tools to create them get more and more refined. Given the history of PathFinder, with many designers developing content for the tabletop RPG, I can only hope that Goblinworks will open up development of new areas of Golarion to other small developers. If that model could be sustained, it would lead to very rapid innovation in the tools.
I like your idea of opening up Golarion to users and or small developers.
I see what you mean in the context of building custom content. One could implement incrementally complex adventure building tools. From a very basic use of pre made objects to a searchable database of event scripts and objects to the super complex but compleatly custom object creation and scripting. As long as it's open ended the system adventure building doesent need to start out crazy complex. For the most part you automate most of the rules so the dm doesn't need to look things up but at the same time the dm can over rule any event to cause a diffrent outcome.|
Goblin Squad Member
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I like everything blogged thus far except the user cap limit. As a Pathfinder fan it feels (IMO) like you're building a game for Forum addicts. Believe it or not some of us have jobs that preclude us haunting the digital space for hours a day, talking about Golarion. This doesn't make us any less of a Pathfinder fan or make our input any less valuable. If part of the goal was to cut out the standard 'MMO Elitist base' that traumatizes every other game, I'd say you missed the mark. I could understand not wanting to build a framework that encapsulates millions upon millions of 'potential' subscribers, but shooting for 4.5k a month basically tells me no one I know will be able to play until years after launch. To say that's frustrating beyond belief is putting it mild.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Agreed Maccabee, but at the same point it's a lottery for the most part. People on the Forums are helping by coming up with ideas and then debating how practical/fun/useful they might be but, from what I've taken from the Blog and posts in this part of the forums, Goblinwork's 'first pick' will be large, successful Guilds from other MMOS and Paizo subscribers who will be given first 'shot' at the game.
Also remember that Pathfinder Online, players build the world. Starting small means that those self-same players will be developing the immediate area around the towns, putting together farms, clearing out caves and bandit camps, creating lumber camps, quarries and mines.
As frustrating as it is for me, as I would dearly love to get in at ground zero and start world-building alongside a few thousand other peeps, I'll likely be unable to secure a slot until every subscriber has had their shot.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Maccabee the game won't be handled like other MMO's on release. The only way this title is coming to market is on a low budget, paizo isn't willing to back a large scale development.
I'm guessing the usual alpha and beta testing will be very different from what players are used to. This game isn't built by the developers, they are making a small portion. If you let 500,000 players in from the start it would be complete chaos.
This is the way a sandbox should be handled. Think of the first 3 years of the game as part of it's development, players need to flesh out the world.
Ryan,
I've been playing EVE off and on since early January 2004 and have kept my "main" training steadily since that time. After all these years, why do I bother continuing to pay my subscription fee every year? Because of the skill system. About the only thing in EVE that still holds my interest after more than 8 years is the fact that my character is now very close to being able to do almost everything sub-capitol there is. I probably have another 2 or 3 years to go before I will actually be looking around and saying "so what do I do now"?
I have done almost everything there is to BE done in EVE. Alliance, turf control, massive scale industry, wormhole exploration, roaming null-sec, smuggling, you can probably name it and it's done. (Excepting capitol ships, for me they're "meh, I'll figure them out later".) What would I like to see now?
What has always been missing. Story - there's soooo much potential that is just waiting. I spent a ... long time in W-space trying to find that dangling carrot but never did. This was my last hope that there would / could be something "enormously kewl" that the devs have commented is just waiting to be puzzled out and revealed to the public.
Theses days I *like* hi-sec. Not "jita 4-4" hi-sec, but the more entertaining 0.5 systems.
In terms of PFO, it would be incredibly disappointing to have something with the promise of an EVE-like skill system *ever* hit any kind of barrier or cap. If there are caps (level 5 in EVE terms), there should be something else to go onto. I detest the *need* for alts, especially given modern fiscal reality in an MMO. If I distribute my "training time" across all kinds of stuff, that should be my decision. I like being able to craft all my own stuff. It may take a great deal of work to get there, but it is an option that I have in EVE that is completely unique to EVE (at least, it is at present).
If PFO is going to be a sandbox, it will need elements that appeal to those who don't care for it - such as those who enjoy crafting - or that have hardware barely able to handle PvE. It will be outstanding to see towns carved out of the wilderness, kingdoms carved out of the hinterlands, treaties negotiated with the not-small NPC groups and so on.
Lastly, I'm excited to see PFO as a possible contender for my entertainment money.
Keep your knives sharp, your cookbook dry and your skillet clean. You never know what you're going to eat next.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In terms of PFO, it would be incredibly disappointing to have something with the promise of an EVE-like skill system *ever* hit any kind of barrier or cap. If there are caps (level 5 in EVE terms), there should be something else to go onto. I detest the *need* for alts, especially given modern fiscal reality in an MMO. If I distribute my "training time" across all kinds of stuff, that should be my decision. I like being able to craft all my own stuff. It may take a great deal of work to get there, but it is an option that I have in EVE that is completely unique to EVE (at least, it is at present).
If PFO is going to be a sandbox, it will need elements that appeal to those who don't care for it - such as those who enjoy crafting -...
Well while very little has been said on story, whether it is going to be made up by the players or if they intend to have a more in depth story than eve online did, they have made it clear that advancement won't likely end in the games forseeable lifespan. They've mentioned an estimated 2.5 years to max out an archtype, and the ability to train other archtypes after finishing one. 11 archtypes x 2.5 years = 27.5 years... and that isn't counting crafting skills and possible non-connected to archtype skills. Stories they have implied a bit of with the factions involved etc... but there is little explanation of how deep they intend to make those stories.
Well while very little has been said on story, whether it is going to be made up by the players or if they intend to have a more in depth story than eve online did, they have made it clear that advancement won't likely end in the games forseeable lifespan. They've mentioned an estimated 2.5 years to max out an archtype, and the ability to train other archtypes after finishing one. 11 archtypes x 2.5 years = 27.5 years... and that isn't counting crafting skills and possible non-connected to archtype skills. Stories they have implied a bit of with the factions involved etc... but there is little explanation of how deep they intend to make those stories.
Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. grins
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Maccabee, it's 4,500 per month for 7 months, then 12,000 per month until the first year is up, then it's open. So, even at the worst luck, it won't be "years after launch".
I SINCERELY hope you're right, because this is exactly the kind of thing I've been waiting for since pre-WoW. Everyone in my gaming group is frothing at the mouth at the very thought of Pathfinder Online, and I cant imagine ANY table top gamer feeling different.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ugh, sorry, I misstated that.
From the blog:
At launch, and for the first seven months following, we will cap new paying players at 4,500 per month. Four thousand five hundred new paying players monthly. We expect to keep only about 25% of those players on a long-term basis, so after we factor in attrition of each month's signups, we end up with 16,500 paying players at the end of that seven-month period.
Making a game that starts with 4,500 players and grows to 16,500 players is much, much easier and vastly less expensive than making a game designed to accommodate a million players on day one. We'll be able to focus on a relatively small part of the world at first, expanding it only as we need to.
After the first seven months, we'll raise the limit on new paying players to 12,000 per month. That will remain our goal for the next couple years of Pathfinder Online's life cycle. Factoring in attrition, by the end of the game's third year of operation, we expect to have about 120,000 paying players. For many MMOs, that number would be considered a failure, but because of our lean development strategy, achieving that number of paying customers will mean success for Pathfinder Online.
So, they'll stay capped at 12,000 per month for "the next couple years".
Sorry.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One thing I hope for, is they never really explained how they are going to do invites after the initial 4500 (well they haven't gone over the first 4500 beyond selecting from other games guilds). Personally I'm hoping for a semi google-esq granting the established players invites. Perhaps they could offer some invites via the typical online waiting list etc... but offer others in game via random contests and events.
If player created modules are able to be made early on, a module making event, wars, tournaments. Perhaps a few hidden in the middle of the wilderness etc... I could see tons of fun ways they can be handed out, and I do think that allowing existing players to invite would likely get more active players then a lottery or any other random system (since people play longer when they have friends around).
I also think the people stick around longer with friends around, is the largest risk of GW's plan. I can't say for sure how active I will be if I am unable to get my crew in. I also have to say the idea of bringing in established guilds from other games is also risky, I rarely have seen a guild fully move from one game to another, and not shift back after a couple of months. Usually coming from if 1/4th of them dislike the new game, they all agree they liked the old one, and as a whole they would rather both sticking together and not hearing the whining of the 1/4th.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Onish, I think you may be reading something into their statements that might not be as significant as you think it is.
We're also going to be actively reaching out to organized guilds and inviting them in as groups to pre-seed our sandbox with organizations that will help create the political, economic, military and territorial structure that Pathfinder Online will need to be successful. And of course, there will be ways for folks who want to get in without a lot of hassle to do so as well.
We'll do our best to recognize those organizations that get created early, especially if they announce their existence on our messageboards. How awesome will it be to start playing Pathfinder Online and already have the seeds of the early social order in place?
While reaching out to "organized guilds" probably will entail some extent of guilds from other games, I don't think that's going to be the lion's share. In fact, my very sincere hope is that Goblinworks will give preferential treatment to the Chartered Companies who announce their presence on these forums, and demonstrate that they're organized and capable of helping to "create the political, economic, military and territorial structure that Pathfinder Online will need to be successful".
Oh, that reminds me. Everyone should also check out Chartered Company :: The Seventh Veil!