Goblin Squad Member
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Just recently I discussed how excited I was to try Pathfinder Online with my gaming group. Two rather salient points came up. 1)When the server population expands, new players will be in competition with powerful, established players and player-run organizations for resources and land. 2)When the game itself expands, these powerful entities will be perfectly placed to quickly dominate the new content. Both of these concerns are heightened by the apparent fact that there will not be large'theme park' areas safe from pvp in which to skill up or level or whatever it's going to be called. So, two things. Soloers, a large portion of potential players, (including me) will be hedged out. New players will be compelled to join an already established corporation to survive, which is the main complaint I've always heard about EVE online. To put it succintly, my buddy said, "Sounds to me that the Power Gamers will eat that one up from the start. I'd rather just buy the next Adventure Path and run that." Comments/suggestions/mechanics to avoid? Or is this game limited to players with a certain playstyle?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hmm... for all the comparisons this game is getting to EvE Online, and though EvE Online has some good ideas, I don't think it's a good model for what the game will turn out to be. I have enough problems with EvE's cynical, brutal powerclashes in endgame; I'd rather that PFO doesn't turn out to be "WWI with ogres".
That said, the main way to stop the place from getting dominated by powergamers is what is already planned: Although it will take a lot of time to become the best at a skill (fighting, crafting, etc.), it would take much less time to become decent at that skill. So although someone who's been playing since day 1 will always be the best player, someone who joined in 6 months later can get almost as good; good enough to make their mark on the world.
Player-run cities and kingdoms would be awesome, and I'm trying to figure out how to implement them in some way that this doesn't turn into EvE's nullsec politics: Join an existing corp or don't go into nullsec at all. Maybe the large world will help; even years into the game, there will always be parts of the map that somebody hasn't claimed yet.
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Goblin Squad Member
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First, I think there are going to be safe areas that some people will probably choose to play the entire game in. A friend of mine played Eve for years and never once got ganked, because he never left high-sec space.
As to the heart of your post, I think the best way to keep this from happening is to have relatively powerful NPC factions that do the same kind of things that PC factions will do. Whether it's the market or dominating land or anything else, if the total aggregate of all player activity in that sphere is only 20-25% of the total activity in that sphere, with the remainder made up by NPCs, then it's a lot harder for any PC faction to really dominate anything.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, having player-run cities and kingdoms does sound cool. The devil is in the details. In a competitive environment there should be no guarantees of course but how do you give new players a shot? So far they have mentioned three npc organizations you could possibly join; the Hellknights, the Knights of Iomedae and the 'bandit scum'. I wonder, perhaps an npc organization for every alignment? What about chaotic neutral/evil? I enjoy interacting with other players but I prefer to play solo. That doesn't seem to be in the cards.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have generally preferred to solo, as well. But I think that may be a side-effect of games that inadvertently punish grouping. My wife and I tried playing a couple of Worgen together when they became playable in WoW. It was obvious, by level 10 or so, that we weren't getting enough xp to stay on track with our quests.
There are a host of things that the typical MMO does that make it difficult to group. In addition to penalizing xp gain, they also create rapid disparities between players based on level, so that you really just can't group with someone who's not about the same level as you. This is absolutely horrible. I want to be able to play my main character whenever I want to. I certainly don't want to have to roll a separate character for each group I'm likely to want to group with. That's insane.
Of all the things I hope PFO does, the one that I think would make the most impact is create a system where new and veteran players can adventure side-by-side without having to either gimp the vet or super-buff the newbie. I don't know how to make that happen, but I really hope PFO looks for and finds the answer.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That's really strange. I double team with my spouse and ran into the exact opposite problem in that we rapidly out-leveled our quests many of the quests we worked on together we wound up leveling over so that they were green or grey by the time we turned them in.
This may be a play-style issue. My wife insists upon skipping over as many unnecessary kills as possible.
That's actually one of the things I really like about the Skill Progression model PFO is likely to use: it gets rid of the game mechanics that encourage people to do things they would never do in the "real" situation, such as killing everything in sight, or complaining if someone else comes along and helps them kill something.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Actually what I am most concerned about is the idea of Uberguilds taking over, I find that threat far more likely than individual uberplayers.
What I'm meaning is when guild structure changes from groups of say 100-200, to groups of 2000-3000 and just steamroll over anything smaller than themselves. Personally I would rather see 50 guilds of 200, than 4 guilds of 2,500 on the map, and the only way to get on the map being to join one of those super powers.
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Let me rear my ignorant head here and ask...
what do guilds have to do with anything? Perhaps it's a side effect of my low MMO knowledge, but I've never seen a guild be anything more than a group of people--and typically, an uncoordinated group of people. If we're talking team-sized, yeah, that's easy to coordinate and be effective. But 2,000 people? Not a chance.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Let me rear my ignorant head here and ask...
what do guilds have to do with anything? Perhaps it's a side effect of my low MMO knowledge, but I've never seen a guild be anything more than a group of people--and typically, an uncoordinated group of people. If we're talking team-sized, yeah, that's easy to coordinate and be effective. But 2,000 people? Not a chance.
There are a good number of swarm guilds that exist and rely on large numbers, literally hundreds of active members, to try and influence the games they play through sheer numbers. Mentioning an uncoordinated group of people is a valid thing with most swarm guilds. Sheer number are not always a true advantage since running a successful guild of any size, especially in combat, is based on guild structure, leadership abilities, terrain knowledge, tactics, and for the most part individual player skill within such an organized structure. There are guilds that exist which pride themselves on being able to match up against superior numbers by use of these factors, talking upwards to 10-1 odds here. How an alliance system works (if any) is where things can start to get really extreme when it comes to land ownership situations.
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I'm not sure I understand how things like terrain knowledge and tactics matter. Do you mean to expect a few hundred people to show up at a particular time and place to perform some activity? Because that's the sort of activity that I would expect to be impossible under my definition of "uncoordinated."
I am not enough of a MMO player to expect to see this, so I might just be wrong. But are we seriously talking about coordination between hundreds of people to be logged in at the same time, despite each person having a life aiming to prevent that regularly?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not sure I understand how things like terrain knowledge and tactics matter. Do you mean to expect a few hundred people to show up at a particular time and place to perform some activity? Because that's the sort of activity that I would expect to be impossible under my definition of "uncoordinated."
I am not enough of a MMO player to expect to see this, so I might just be wrong. But are we seriously talking about coordination between hundreds of people to be logged in at the same time, despite each person having a life aiming to prevent that regularly?
I think you're making Onishis' point for him. You're right, a lot of guilds are small and uncoordinated. Heck, my guild in WOW was just a bunch of friends ( maybe 30 or 40 total ) getting together on wednesdays and saturdays to raid or quest or whatever. However, we ran into large, power-gaming, organized guilds who considered WOW their life hobby. In that game, all they could do was run raids like clockwork. Win in arena and battlegrounds. Maybe shut down transportation or quest hubs for a couple hours just for laughs. Now, in a game where one of the stated goals is to dominate land and resources, they could do so much more-especially pitted against a 'few, uncoordinated players who get together at a particular time to perform some activity'. It wouldn't take 1000 or even 200. Remember the game is going to start at 4500 and welcome in already formed player organizations from the start.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I was a member of Gaiscioch while I played Rift. They literally had hundreds of people online at one time, rolling over zones closing every rift that opened.
It's not as impossible as it might sound. And Rift was only one of the games the larger family guild played. With advance notice and just a little arm-twisting, I wouldn't be surprised to see them put 2,000 players in a zone at once.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Games such as this can not be compared to WoW really as it does not promote a large PvP environment. You have to look towards games such as UO, Shadowbane, DAoC, EVE, Warhammer Online, Darkfall, to name a few.
UO: It had property ownership at one point where whoever owned the key, owned the building. I took part in "roleplaying" wars that had upwards of 100+ combatants. Battlefield knowledge was usually a deciding factor on living or dying most times.
EVE/Shadowbane/Darkfall: Ownership will probably come close to these games I would venture to guess. Alliances (game or player driven) play a decent part in overall land ownership in these games.
DAoC/Warhammer: Here you could essentially only own specific locations within battlefield areas.
While small uncoordinated guilds are in the majority, that does not mean that they all ignore following the lead of the known guilds within these games, who have the varied attributes to lead them as needed. Many times in the games above have the guilds I take part in rallied others around them to oppose far larger swarms. Usually it would be something as simple as knowing choke points, higher ground locations, blind spots, etc. and putting something even as small as a 5 person guild at one location to give a flanking guild of 30, another force of 3 guilds of 10 enough time to set up to wipe out 100 people. I am being kind here with 100 as I have fought in open world battles where the zerg thought that running head first is an actually reliable tactic no matter the opposing forces seemingly, or actual, lack of numbers. I have seen a small group do just the reverse only to baffle the other side as all they ended up doing was trying to play catch up due to the skill of the smaller kamikaze tactic having enough effect as to force them into a respawn situation that they could not regroup against to hold their position, in this case a keep. There is of course always a tipping point with large numbers, what that number is though is beyond me. The downfall of Warhammer for me was when the Order side on my server got a glut of these types of guilds and it just became too much and the legitimate fun (not the BS idea of complete domination due to imbalance idea of fun), most likely on both sides, just wasn't there anymore.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The downfall... was when... my server got a glut of these types of guilds and it just became too much...
Are you talking about when one side consistently overpowers the other?
I have very limited experience with large-scale PvP, and it's always been on declared Battlegrounds or Warfronts or what have you. I expect PFO battles will not be on static battlegrounds, but will be in different areas at different times. What kind of impact do you think this will have on whether or not a mega-guild of power-gamers is able to dominate the entire server, or even a large area?
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Goblin Squad Member
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The downfall... was when... my server got a glut of these types of guilds and it just became too much...Are you talking about when one side consistently overpowers the other?
I have very limited experience with large-scale PvP, and it's always been on declared Battlegrounds or Warfronts or what have you. I expect PFO battles will not be on static battlegrounds, but will be in different areas at different times. What kind of impact do you think this will have on whether or not a mega-guild of power-gamers is able to dominate the entire server, or even a large area?
Well it becomes twofold. On one hand, they easily mop up the floor with any 1 group that stands in their way. On the other hand in general when one side starts to grow too much for comfort, the other sides join forces to knock them down a few pegs, which works, but it also still winds up in a scenario where the game gets dominated by 3-10 power guilds, and wanting to be successful involves joining one of those power guilds.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Onishi, in a world with an artificial economy, what does "grow too much for comfort" mean?
Every world has an artificial economy, including the real world, our money has no more value then what people decide it has. In the case of eve, I'm not quite sure what the official statute of "grow too much" as that is also randomly decided by the players, but basically a guild takes over an area, and covers a certain amount of land, if they start expanding in a way that the other power corps fear it is getting too strong, they pounce and start tearing it down.
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Every world has an artificial economy, including the real world, our money has no more value then what people decide it has. In the case of eve, I'm not quite sure what the official statute of "grow too much" as that is also randomly decided by the players, but basically a guild takes over an area, and covers a certain amount of land, if they start expanding in a way that the other power corps fear it is getting too strong, they pounce and start tearing it down.Onishi, in a world with an artificial economy, what does "grow too much for comfort" mean?
Although I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments regarding money, the artificial economy of the MMO does not quite resemble the real world economy because it's not money, but resources that define the economy. In the real world, there are hard limits on resources. In the MMO, anyone who performs certain tasks receives access to resources, regardless of the actions of others--at least, as far as I have experienced.
Thus, I can only imagine that the power of an organization can only threaten one's personal growth if the organization can somehow prevent that growth. If I am prevented from, say, gaining XP, amassing treasure, or claiming land by other PCs, then the game's no fun, and I'd leave. But if that's a problem, why program it?
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Goblin Squad Member
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One thing I'd like to see to keep any PC faction from gaining too much power is to have NPC activity represent a significant portion of the economy, something like 75-80%.
For example, let's consider mining Iron Ore. Let's assume the developers want the value of Iron Ore to be 100 coins per unit, with roughly 10,000 units added to the economy per month. I'd like to see NPCs account for about 8,000 units of that. If a PC faction goes hog-wild and tries to corner the market by harvesting as much as they possibly can, the price would increase, and more NPCs would begin harvesting it, bringing it roughly back in line with developer expectations. If that PC faction then flooded the market with their saved resources, the price would fall and NPCs would stop harvesting as much, again bringing it back in line.
Another example would be in creating and purchasing crafted goods. I think it would be really neat if NPCs not only crafted things like tables and chairs that the PCs could buy, but also if the NPC townspeople would shop at player-controlled shops and buy PC-crafted items.
This may be way too complex a system to actually implement, and it may be that the PFO developers would prefer the players to be the majority, if not the entirety, of the economy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Every world has an artificial economy, including the real world, our money has no more value then what people decide it has. In the case of eve, I'm not quite sure what the official statute of "grow too much" as that is also randomly decided by the players, but basically a guild takes over an area, and covers a certain amount of land, if they start expanding in a way that the other power corps fear it is getting too strong, they pounce and start tearing it down.Onishi, in a world with an artificial economy, what does "grow too much for comfort" mean?
Although I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments regarding money, the artificial economy of the MMO does not quite resemble the real world economy because it's not money, but resources that define the economy. In the real world, there are hard limits on resources. In the MMO, anyone who performs certain tasks receives access to resources, regardless of the actions of others--at least, as far as I have experienced.
Thus, I can only imagine that the power of an organization can only threaten one's personal growth if the organization can somehow prevent that growth. If I am prevented from, say, gaining XP, amassing treasure, or claiming land by other PCs, then the game's no fun, and I'd leave. But if that's a problem, why program it?
In a PVP sandbox MMO there is generally a limited amount of resources to an extent. Only X amount of things to mine show up in a sector each day or so on. That is why people are willing to wage costly wars that can result in serious expense to themselves, as if the resources near their back yard are mined out, they have to travel farther away to get what they want etc... They generally don't work on a "a new one pops up right after the old one is depleted" type of system, or else the world would be at 100% peace with each-other 100% of the time.
A system of which the acts of one person or even a group of people has no impact on anyone else, is not a sandbox in any way shape or form, that is the opposite of a sandbox.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The downfall... was when... my server got a glut of these types of guilds and it just became too much...Are you talking about when one side consistently overpowers the other?
I have very limited experience with large-scale PvP, and it's always been on declared Battlegrounds or Warfronts or what have you. I expect PFO battles will not be on static battlegrounds, but will be in different areas at different times. What kind of impact do you think this will have on whether or not a mega-guild of power-gamers is able to dominate the entire server, or even a large area?
For the most part all of the above games didn't have static battlefields even if they were restricted as to where it could happen in some of them. The areas were large enough to see how large numbers worked and what could be done at least on a player level to go up against them. In Warhammer we had 1 swarm guild which was fine, until 2 more joined the server at once and it just got out of hand in conjunction with a flawed PvE system which helped morale sway far enough away to tip the balance.
To fix some possible related issues in a game there are some things that could be done.
Resources: This includes both traditional gathered materials and NPC farmed items. One way to avoid this is to dynamically spawn resource nodes across the world so there is no set spot for specific things. An additional and supplementary option is to tie the varied rarity of resources to the basic node system. This helps to avoid one group from dominating specific resources, while allowing everyone a fair chance to collect what they need within reason of course. Static resource locations, of the material and NPC kind, only strengthens some of the flaws that cause land owning games to weaken in regards to guild/alliance balance.
Guilds: Setting a higher number to form a guild is one way to avoid the issue of so many tiny guilds, which I see as an issue just like mega-guilds but in the polar opposite in the spectrum. While I appreciate the urge to have a family/friend style guild, it is usually flawed when it comes to the health of an online gaming environment. Why? Instead of guilds, the majority end up being more along the line of skeleton crews with no reason to join in on various aspects of mmorpg culture. I find that to be a shame really. Putting more into what comprises a guild gives it more meaning, not only for the members but the server in turn. Having a limit of course helps in some way to avoid swarm guilds until they just form sister guilds and use voice chat and/or an alliance system to get around that, if one exists.
NPC Factions: These are more along the lines of NPC guilds that a player can join instead of a player run one. Not sure if they will exist to any extent or if they will be used merely for reputation purposes.
I had more thoughts on this put the forum ate them.
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In a PVP sandbox MMO there is generally a limited amount of resources to an extent. Only X amount of things to mine show up in a sector each day or so on. That is why people are willing to wage costly wars that can result in serious expense to themselves, as if the resources near their back yard are mined out, they have to travel farther away to get what they want etc... They generally don't work on a "a new one pops up right after the old one is depleted" type of system, or else the world would be at 100% peace with each-other 100% of the time.
So scarcity is programmed into the game to promote inter-PC conflict?
That doesn't sound like any fun to me at all, honestly.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Resources: This includes both traditional gathered materials and NPC farmed items. One way to avoid this is to dynamically spawn resource nodes across the world so there is no set spot for specific things. An additional and supplementary option is to tie the varied rarity of resources to the basic node system.
I'm not really sure I understand what you're suggesting, but it reminded me of Vanguard when it was obvious by the name of the node whether it contained rare resources. This caused people to cherry-pick the rares all the time. They eventually changed this so that the only thing you could tell by the name was the basic type and the tier, but not the rarity.
Guilds: Setting a higher number to form a guild is one way to avoid the issue of so many tiny guilds, which I see as an issue just like mega-guilds but in the polar opposite in the spectrum.
As someone who almost always makes a small, family guild with very few members, I don't really see how this is harmful.
Although, my perfect solution would be to allow an individual character to become a member in any number of different organizations. When it came to guild-based bonuses, if there were any, I would think it would be enough that you would get a guild's benefits while you were wearing that guild's colors.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A node is just a generic term for the container is all. Essentially going with the basic types with chance of rares within that would be the method to avoid camping.
As for the small guilds things, it is just a personal thing for me. I always disliked the too many chiefs and not enough Indians aspect that usually goes along with a glut of super small guilds. They work fine in some games where you can get away with limited social interaction outside your guild but in sandbox games which tend to rely solely on community they can be a burden.
As for joining as many as you like, that hardly works due to the politics that exist between guilds/factions within a world. I would hope that if there are factions, not only based on reputation purposes, that it would require per-requisites and opposing removal of join options in others.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A node is just a generic term for the container is all. Essentially going with the basic types with chance of rares within that would be the method to avoid camping.
As for the small guilds things, it is just a personal thing for me. I always disliked the too many chiefs and not enough Indians aspect that usually goes along with a glut of super small guilds. They work fine in some games where you can get away with limited social interaction outside your guild but in sandbox games which tend to rely solely on community they can be a burden.
I still kind of liked my idea back on multi-tiered organizations That kind of allows simultaneously being part of a small group that is actually a wing of a larger group. Gives a bit of freedom to have your closer groups of friends, working with a large hierarchy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In a player-run economy, there simply must be some sort of scarcity mechanic. By the same token, using economics to somehow limit the power of player guilds/kingdoms isn't going to work. What, cap the amount of money you can have? The amount of resources? Instead, you must limit the supply on the server as a whole so the system is tenable. This therefore allows a player organization to have, say a city, a kingdom and a mine in place before you even start playing in a year or two or whatever. Imagine joining a game with a few of these babies waiting for you! Allowing a guild to join a large npc organization is a good one. The limiting factor the devs are relying on seems to be human nature itself; peoples desire to have their 'own thing' and the tendency to gang up on the big guy you see in tabletop games like Diplomacy or Risk. Or just make sure to join with a lot of friends in the first few months.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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One thing I'd like to see to keep any PC faction from gaining too much power is to have NPC activity represent a significant portion of the economy, something like 75-80%.
For example, let's consider mining Iron Ore. Let's assume the developers want the value of Iron Ore to be 100 coins per unit...
Once the decision is made to want to tie resource values together, the economy fails.
The developers don't just manage supply, they also manage demand- How much does it cost to make each item, and how useful is that item?
Not having competitors producing iron ore lets you set prices; if no players are competing with you, why should NPCs start to compete with you? The price of iron ore (and steel armor) goes up, and leather armor becomes more popular. If you keep hoarding all the ore, eventually a bunch of people in dragonhide armor will take all your ore and trade half of it for all of the other resources required to make steel goods (coal and wood, I guess...) so that they have half the supply of steel polearms in the world.
I'd like to see precious metal coinage have weight and be just as hard to transport and easy to capture as steel bars. I bet that a player organization will jump in and become the bankers, issuing letters of credit or other tokens which are used in regular trade. Anyone who becomes hostile to the bankers gets wiped out by the bank's customers; if the bank loses neutrality, then it goes out of business when everybody withdraws all of their funds at once. (If it can't repay the deposits, it gets folded by the angry creditors. Pathfinder doesn't have bailouts.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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One thing I'd like to see to keep any PC faction from gaining too much power is to have NPC activity represent a significant portion of the economy, something like 75-80%.
For example, let's consider mining Iron Ore. Let's assume the developers want the value of Iron Ore to be 100 coins per unit...
Once the decision is made to want to tie resource values together, the economy fails.
The developers don't just manage supply, they also manage demand- How much does it cost to make each item, and how useful is that item?
Not having competitors producing iron ore lets you set prices; if no players are competing with you, why should NPCs start to compete with you? The price of iron ore (and steel armor) goes up, and leather armor becomes more popular. If you keep hoarding all the ore, eventually a bunch of people in dragonhide armor will take all your ore and trade half of it for all of the other resources required to make steel goods (coal and wood, I guess...) so that they have half the supply of steel polearms in the world.
I'd like to see precious metal coinage have weight and be just as hard to transport and easy to capture as steel bars. I bet that a player organization will jump in and become the bankers, issuing letters of credit or other tokens which are used in regular trade. Anyone who becomes hostile to the bankers gets wiped out by the bank's customers; if the bank loses neutrality, then it goes out of business when everybody withdraws all of their funds at once. (If it can't repay the deposits, it gets folded by the angry creditors. Pathfinder doesn't have bailouts.)
Yummy.
Once the decision is made to want to tie resource values together, the economy fails.The developers don't just manage supply, they also manage demand- How much does it cost to make each item, and how useful is that item?
Not having competitors producing iron ore lets you set prices; if no players are competing with you, why should NPCs start to compete with you? The price of iron ore (and steel armor) goes up, and leather armor becomes more popular. If you keep hoarding all the ore, eventually a bunch of people in dragonhide armor will take all your ore and trade half of it for all of the other resources required to make steel goods (coal and wood, I guess...) so that they have half the supply of steel polearms in the world.
I'd like to see precious metal coinage have weight and be just as hard to transport and easy to capture as steel bars. I bet that a player organization will jump in and become the bankers, issuing letters of credit or other tokens which are used in regular trade. Anyone who becomes hostile to the bankers gets wiped out by the bank's customers; if the bank loses neutrality, then it goes out of business when everybody withdraws all of their funds at once. (If it can't repay the deposits, it gets folded by the angry creditors. Pathfinder doesn't have bailouts.)
Agreed, this would really diversify the economy and provides opportunities to small bandits groups and such if they want to go against the "system". I completely agree with your statement concerning the economy of the game too.
/thumbs up
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Goblin Squad Member
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One thing I'd like to see to keep any PC faction from gaining too much power is to have NPC activity represent a significant portion of the economy, something like 75-80%.
For example, let's consider mining Iron Ore. Let's assume the developers want the value of Iron Ore to be 100 coins per unit...
Once the decision is made to want to tie resource values together, the economy fails.
The developers don't just manage supply, they also manage demand- How much does it cost to make each item, and how useful is that item?
Not having competitors producing iron ore lets you set prices; if no players are competing with you, why should NPCs start to compete with you? The price of iron ore (and steel armor) goes up, and leather armor becomes more popular. If you keep hoarding all the ore, eventually a bunch of people in dragonhide armor will take all your ore and trade half of it for all of the other resources required to make steel goods (coal and wood, I guess...) so that they have half the supply of steel polearms in the world.
I'd like to see precious metal coinage have weight and be just as hard to transport and easy to capture as steel bars. I bet that a player organization will jump in and become the bankers, issuing letters of credit or other tokens which are used in regular trade. Anyone who becomes hostile to the bankers gets wiped out by the bank's customers; if the bank loses neutrality, then it goes out of business when everybody withdraws all of their funds at once. (If it can't repay the deposits, it gets folded by the angry creditors. Pathfinder doesn't have bailouts.)
Hmmm...didn't think about player-run banks...perhaps that could limit monopolization 'cause if you price yourself out of the market, people will just buy something else and concentrate on other trade/crafting skills. So the ability in-game for a PC run organization to issue letters of credit or specie seems highly desirable. Then there's also what the devs want you to do; get together and take the stuff by force. I also agree with Nihimon, small guilds are no problem at all-they can band together or with larger groups; based on alignment/faction perhaps they could join a bigger npc outfit for protection. This wouldn't have to mean players can join as many groups as they want at all.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In a PVP sandbox MMO there is generally a limited amount of resources to an extent. Only X amount of things to mine show up in a sector each day or so on. That is why people are willing to wage costly wars that can result in serious expense to themselves, as if the resources near their back yard are mined out, they have to travel farther away to get what they want etc... They generally don't work on a "a new one pops up right after the old one is depleted" type of system, or else the world would be at 100% peace with each-other 100% of the time.So scarcity is programmed into the game to promote inter-PC conflict?
That doesn't sound like any fun to me at all, honestly.
Actually, I was gonna say that if you go in with the assumption that this is one of the intentions of PFO (and I believe it is) and prepare your character for it, you might have fun after all.
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Actually, I was gonna say that if you go in with the assumption that this is one of the intentions of PFO (and I believe it is) and prepare your character for it, you might have fun after all.In a PVP sandbox MMO there is generally a limited amount of resources to an extent. Only X amount of things to mine show up in a sector each day or so on. That is why people are willing to wage costly wars that can result in serious expense to themselves, as if the resources near their back yard are mined out, they have to travel farther away to get what they want etc... They generally don't work on a "a new one pops up right after the old one is depleted" type of system, or else the world would be at 100% peace with each-other 100% of the time.So scarcity is programmed into the game to promote inter-PC conflict?
That doesn't sound like any fun to me at all, honestly.
Possible, I suppose, but I think I'm better off just not starting and saving my time for other activities I'm more sure I'll enjoy.
It's fine, I've got plenty to do.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I don't think PFO is intended for the same audience that DDO is. I have games that let me play as a D&D character against computer-controlled enemies, and they don't require internet access. I think a game which lets me play against other humans, but within the Pathfinder setting, has a large enough audience. I don't think a game which appeals equally to PvE and PvP players will appeal enough to either.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't think PFO is intended for the same audience that DDO is. I have games that let me play as a D&D character against computer-controlled enemies, and they don't require internet access. I think a game which lets me play against other humans, but within the Pathfinder setting, has a large enough audience. I don't think a game which appeals equally to PvE and PvP players will appeal enough to either.
Agreed 100%, bottom line right now the MMO industry is so crowded and full, games that fill a niche will likely far and wide outperform games that focus on a wide variety of things. Mainly because people looking for games, are looking for the one that does the part they like, best.
If you can do 20 things well, that's great, but odds are fans are looking for something that does the 3 things they like best, meaning if another game does 5 things great and nothing else, it will be preferred by the people who's 3 things fall into that category. when you factor in that there's a good few hundred MMO's right now, each with their own specialty, odds are the specialty games are going to outperform the generalist games by far. WoW is likely the only exception, and that is primarily due to it's timing, at this point WoW can live on entirely off of the it is good because it has a huge population of paying customers, and thus can afford boatloads of developers to keep more coming. Which is not a position any other MMO can move into right now.
This is a quite common discussion on Neverwinter Nights persistent world server as well.
Personally I think both the powergamers and roleplayers can live side by side with some respect to each other and also game design that caters to both.
Lets face it. To some extent we are all powergamers anyway.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just recently I discussed how excited I was to try Pathfinder Online with my gaming group. Two rather salient points came up. 1)When the server population expands, new players will be in competition with powerful, established players and player-run organizations for resources and land. 2)When the game itself expands, these powerful entities will be perfectly placed to quickly dominate the new content. Both of these concerns are heightened by the apparent fact that there will not be large'theme park' areas safe from pvp in which to skill up or level or whatever it's going to be called. So, two things. Soloers, a large portion of potential players, (including me) will be hedged out. New players will be compelled to join an already established corporation to survive, which is the main complaint I've always heard about EVE online. To put it succintly, my buddy said, "Sounds to me that the Power Gamers will eat that one up from the start. I'd rather just buy the next Adventure Path and run that." Comments/suggestions/mechanics to avoid? Or is this game limited to players with a certain playstyle?
With the slow pace of level/xp gain and the sheer size of the world, this should be difficult for groups of players to monopolize the game with only a month between waves of new players. Just a thought: the devs could open up new areas of the world a good distance away from the previous month's set of players. It would take a lot of pre-planning, but the goal would be to minimize the level of disparity between players and guilds within the first 3-6 months only. After you approach a year server time, it may be too much of a challenge for the devs. Hopefully the "power gamers" will have so much else to do at their level by then that they won't have any incentive to meddle with the new players (as a whole - they're always be those that like to grief).
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Goblin Squad Member
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What does power gamer mean in a game in which everyone who is the same age...is essentially equal, and the best items in game are craftable...and deteriorate? In this game it appears "power gamer" means the person who gains control of political factions and builds up their faction...and that is actually the point.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What does power gamer mean in a game in which everyone who is the same age...is essentially equal, and the best items in game are craftable...and deteriorate? In this game it appears "power gamer" means the person who gains control of political factions and builds up their faction...and that is actually the point.
Correct. The point of the game is to 'explore, develop, adventure and dominate'. The point of the thread is to make suggestions to give players who join later-in a game whose population is going to be strictly limited monthly-a fair chance to build factions in the face of what one poster called 'uberguilds' already established. As I stated, newbies will be faced with already monopolized resources and areas and these factions will be perfectly positioned to dominate any new content added later. This is a significant advantage, especially when it seems groups can form before launch and then enter the game together from the beginning. Even on a large map, they don't have to rule, just occupy a space of very desirable resources and the surrounding area. Thus there is a difference between even the first month or two and the rest of the growing population. One obvious option is to create your character then petition to join one of these corporations immediately. Or join with friends in a small guild and ally with, say, the Hellknights, which has been suggested. These family guilds could combine into little ententes. Another idea has been to use the economy to limit monopolistic power, especially if players are allowed to form banks and resources are acquired and transported in a 'realistic' manner. Battlefield and tactical solutions must await more info on how world PVP is going to be implemented, in my view. New, large guilds could wait to join all at once during a monthly population expansion. Or as Saryx suggests, while the entrenched factions fight, trade, assasinate and intrigue maybe a far away Louisiana Purchase (Brevoy, anyone?) could be colonized by the newcomers. And you're probably right-'Power Gamer' might not have been the best description of the problem.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ah got it...I did read all of that, but upon reflection I was a bit confused by the title, as you suggest.
I don't think there is a realistic way for them to compete...many will join the older groups, replacing players who "retire". But, having a strong holding is a double edged sword, players who have accumulated wealth and power will be more reluctant to move as "new lands" are opened to exploration and settlement...and maybe even conquest.
It will be always be the new players who will need to go carve their new life out of the wildness...just as it will be at the start of the game with the initial few thousand.
If you are concerned about the "uberness" of old players...well I am too, and I hope they find a way to make new and old players able to contribute side-by-side instead of being stuck in the rut of separate "high level" content and "noob" content.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A node is just a generic term for the container is all. Essentially going with the basic types with chance of rares within that would be the method to avoid camping.
As for the small guilds things, it is just a personal thing for me. I always disliked the too many chiefs and not enough Indians aspect that usually goes along with a glut of super small guilds. They work fine in some games where you can get away with limited social interaction outside your guild but in sandbox games which tend to rely solely on community they can be a burden.
As for joining as many as you like, that hardly works due to the politics that exist between guilds/factions within a world. I would hope that if there are factions, not only based on reputation purposes, that it would require per-requisites and opposing removal of join options in others.
I have some serious problem with your suggestions:
- random spawning resources mean that today I can have settled a rich country, tomorrow I could suffer from a lack of resources. There is no incentive into owning a section of land.- no small guild: so we should not have Pathfinder like adventuring group but only larger corporations? Why that would enhance the game or make it more enjoyable? It would do the opposite for me, moving the game away from pathfinder into a completely different gaming territory.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd like to see precious metal coinage have weight and be just as hard to transport and easy to capture as steel bars. I bet that a player organization will jump in and become the bankers, issuing letters of credit or other tokens which are used in regular trade. Anyone who becomes hostile to the bankers gets wiped out by the bank's customers; if the bank loses neutrality, then it goes out of business when everybody withdraws all of their funds at once. (If it can't repay the deposits, it gets folded by the angry creditors. Pathfinder doesn't have bailouts.)
Can I say "Ponzi scheme"? or Madoff?
EVE had its share of in-game banks. They always have ended in scams, even when the people in them was hones at the start of the venture.You really want to give your in game money away to someone when there is any form of accountably in the game?
To someone that could sell that money on e-bay for Real Life cash?
Unless they are developer managed the banks will always fall to corruption or player burnout. Even honest people will succumb to burnout and leave the game, all to often without resolving their in game obligation.
Flood the online Market with cheap and available 'Swords of Munchkin Bane' that can only be equipped by low level characters for helping maim the power built high level characters? That or set the Tarrasque on them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...bottom line right now the MMO industry is so crowded and full, games that fill a niche will likely far and wide outperform games that focus on a wide variety of things...
This! This is why I really hope PFO doesn't go with the "same old same old" Talent Tree system that all the other games seem to be using (WoW, Rift, SWTOR).
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Goblin Squad Member
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In terms of powerfull, established guilds vs new or smaller guilds there are some mechanisms that they can use.
First of all, I don't think it's neccesarly a bad thing that powerfull and established guilds (or players) have a dominant position in the game world when compared to smaller, less well established or organized guilds. That's kind of the point to kingdom/guild building and an inherint and important factor in these sorts of games. What shouldn't happen is the lesser guilds end up getting squashed or marginalized to such a degree that there is really no point in thier existing and no real possibility for them to grow and expand.
One mechansim that I think could work to achieve those goals is to setup a "Frontier" style resource dynamic along with a reward feedback loop for guilds that is tied to thier alignment with one of a small number of established NPC factions.
First let me explain what I mean by "Frontier" resource dynamic. In many games of this style conflict is created by competition for limited resources. Typicaly this translates into a limited amount of territory availble for players to control and alot of players/factions competing to control that territory...there isn't enough to serve everyones needs..hence conflict...same thing for recources (wood, stone, ore, etc).
The "Frontier" model turns this on it's head. You have a vast area of unexplored untapped land and resources when compared with the people availble to utilize it. Your "resource scarcity" is the players themselves. There is still the possibility for conflict over territory as there will be spots that are significantly more desirable then others (usualy due to close proximity/access to civilization/trade routes combined with good resource yields) so that groups that have the ability to compete over those will do so. However groups that are unable to compete for those (such as smaller, less powerfull Guilds) aren't completely shut-out of the resource/territory game...they are just forced to seek out less desirable spots to meet thier needs.
Under that model, it makes no sense for the more powerfull guilds to try to squash the less powerfull ones... they've got nothing to gain from doing so (they've already got as much territory/resources as they can possibly work...and there is no point in trying to push a small guild out of a spot that is less desirable then the ones the large guild is already controling).... and they actualy risk alienating a group they could possibly proffit by cooperating with (trade, supplimental labor/auxillary forces, etc)
Combine this with a feedback loop where Guilds (large and small) "align" themselves with one of a handfull of powerfull NPC factions. "Alignment" should provide some small benefit...giving Guilds a reason to want to do it....and an additional benefit that is dependant on how "well" thier NPC faction is doing. Some metric that is used to calculate the sum total of power (say territory controled, resources produced and number of members) of all the guilds aligned to the NPC faction determines how "well" that Faction is doing and the degree of benefit each Guild aligned to it recieves as a result.
By this mechanism you increase the incentive for Conflict (Because I get a bigger reward the more Guilds that are aligned to my faction, I want the other Factions to look less deesirable to join then mine, one of the ways I can do that is by sabotaging the power of the guilds aligned to the rival NPC factions) and create a built-in incentive for powerfull established guilds to support and protect those lesser guilds that share thier alignment (the more the other guilds of my faction increase thier power..the bigger the reward my guild recieves from being a member of that factions). It also means that Large, Powerfull Guilds will most likely target the Large Powerfull Guilds of thier rival factions... as that will yield the largest effect for the effort.
In such a model, you aren't "hard-coding" or forcing any particular behavior.....but you are generaly seeing players do what you want them to do because it's in thier enlightened self-interest to do it. Of course, you'll occasionaly see Groups/Guilds do stupid things that work against thier own self-interest...but that happens in real life as well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd like to see precious metal coinage have weight and be just as hard to transport and easy to capture as steel bars. I bet that a player organization will jump in and become the bankers, issuing letters of credit or other tokens which are used in regular trade. Anyone who becomes hostile to the bankers gets wiped out by the bank's customers; if the bank loses neutrality, then it goes out of business when everybody withdraws all of their funds at once. (If it can't repay the deposits, it gets folded by the angry creditors. Pathfinder doesn't have bailouts.)Can I say "Ponzi scheme"? or Madoff?
EVE had its share of in-game banks. They always have ended in scams, even when the people in them was hones at the start of the venture.
You really want to give your in game money away to someone when there is any form of accountably in the game?
To someone that could sell that money on e-bay for Real Life cash?Unless they are developer managed the banks will always fall to corruption or player burnout. Even honest people will succumb to burnout and leave the game, all to often without resolving their in game obligation.
Or the GM could oversee the dissolution of the now-defunct bank, auctioning off deposits of precious metals like in the real world after letters of credit are paid back in coinage or honored if the requisite gold or silver is on hand. Remember the economy is going to be based on the relationship between resource scarcity and demand for goods. Strictly Middle Ages stuff. No single-column accounting of a Federal Reserve bank today. One of the smaller reasons for the American Revolution was the British law that required us to use British money only. People were using personal checks (basically a written promise that 'this paper represents actual material wealth' like rum in a warehouse) all over the place and they had no idea how disruptive their stupid law was. I don't think the game will allow a player-run bank to issue paper money with no goods or precious metals to back it up. Whether or not PC banks are too difficult to implement in game terms I can see a situation like this: Instead of raiding or whatnot, every saturday the uberguild Volksturm gets together to guard a large shipment of precious ore to the vault of a (npc?) bank in exchange for specie. Waiting for them are monsters, gangs of PC bandits, ambushes by other guilds, and maybe little ole me, hoping to make away with a bar of gold or two. This is the 'we are the content' I believe Ryan is talking about.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In terms of powerfull, established guilds vs new or smaller guilds there are some mechanisms that they can use.
First of all, I don't think it's neccesarly a bad thing that powerfull and established guilds (or players) have a dominant position in the game world when compared to smaller, less well established or organized guilds. That's kind of the point to kingdom/guild building and an inherint and important factor in these sorts of games. What shouldn't happen is the lesser guilds end up getting squashed or marginalized to such a degree that there is really no point in thier existing and no real possibility for them to grow and expand.
One mechansim that I think could work to achieve those goals is to setup a "Frontier" style resource dynamic along with a reward feedback loop for guilds that is tied to thier alignment with one of a small number of established NPC factions.
First let me explain what I mean by "Frontier" resource dynamic. In many games of this style conflict is created by competition for limited resources. Typicaly this translates into a limited amount of territory availble for players to control and alot of players/factions competing to control that territory...there isn't enough to serve everyones needs..hence conflict...same thing for recources (wood, stone, ore, etc).
The "Frontier" model turns this on it's head. You have a vast area of unexplored untapped land and resources when compared with the people availble to utilize it. Your "resource scarcity" is the players themselves. There is still the possibility for conflict over territory as there will be spots that are significantly more desirable then others (usualy due to close proximity/access to civilization/trade routes combined with good resource yields) so that groups that have the ability to compete over those will do so. However groups that are unable to compete for those (such as smaller, less powerfull Guilds) aren't completely shut-out of the resource/territory game...they are just forced to seek out less desirable spots...
Nice Post. I guess I was wrong, the consensus seems to be the limits on uberguilds will be economic. That and the shear size of the world itself. There have been some mentions of warfare but we need more info (can I recriut an npc-humanoid army? Can I then ally with an npc faction that already has one?). Resources will only exist where it makes geographical sense. They will not immediately respawn. The most valuable resources will be further out in open pvp areas. All of this promotes scarcity even while the server population slowly expands. Eventually the devs seem to envision a world resembling the period of The Waring States in ancient China. Cool. How I'm going to solo through this is beyond me but I'm going to try.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ Sepherum
And how that will help if the bank manager were to decide to run away with the money? Or to suspend his account?
The GM can't "rob" a player assets and distribute them to other players that claim "I have deposited X money in his bank".
A GM can't decide if a player has closed his account, decided to go Pay to Play or simply taken a sabbatical from the game.
If the bank owner were to decide to rob the bank and share the vault content between his accounts and those of his friends cancelling those transactions would be a nightmare as the GM had to investigate and decide what were legitimate transactions and what weren't. And before that he need to have a guideline about what constitute a legal transaction.
Then:
How the bank owner will be compensated for his work? As he would be required to work to keep the bank running he should get a pay. He would not give interest, he would ask to be paid for the letter of credit service. If he were to issue loans as a way to get a profit for the bank he would need in game ways to be sure to be paid back. But the player getting the loan could easily leave the game and never return. So again we get to the point where we would need a GM intervention to get the money back.
I could list problems for the next week as I have followed for years the EVE forum and seen several player managed banks fold. All the mechanics that limit bank fraud in RL are missing in a game. The option to replace them are: 1) GM intervention and that will be too costly for Goblinworks to implement after the initial period;
2) in game mechanics that will be very easy to abuse or extremely prone to be exploited, again getting us to heavy GM intervention to clear the consequences
Simply we are missing to many of the RL checks to make it feasible.