Goblin Squad Member
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I started playing EVE, and there were a few ideas I had about the skill system in PFO based off of annoyances in EVE.
1. Give players vacation time, maybe 5 days every month of their subscription. This vacation time extends the length of time you can plan skill training. A player should be able to have skill training running 24/7.
2. If you do an 'inject' system like EvE. Allow us to 'inject' skills that we don't have the pre-req's for, if those pre-req's are before it in the training queue. If the training queue is altered in a way that would void this relationship, the skill is 'un-injected'.
So if 'Advanced Bow Making" requires "Bow Making V" to 'activate', I should be able to put "Advanced Bow Making 1" after "Bow Making V" in my training queue.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The problem is this:
Person A goes on vacation for 10 days, but they longest duration skill they have to train is only 5 days, they just lost 5 days of training time.
Giving only 5 days/month makes it so you can't just make a huge queue and wait.
Anyway, skills are only half the advancement, you still need to fill in other badge requirements, so it's not like someone will be able to pay for 7 months queue a huge string of skills then be able to do anything productive.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would actually hope we're allowed to queue up as much skill training as we have bought time for...
if we are allowed to que up skill training that wll only encourage people to let thier skills train up then play the game.
It's not as much of a problem as it first appears to be because your character won't automatically gain power by training skills. PFO really is more of a hybrid system where offline skill training is combined with in-game advancement via merit badges. Your Pathfinder Online Character goes into this in more depth, especially in the section Character Development in Pathfinder Online.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't know. if we are allowed to que up skill training that wll only encourage people to let thier skills train up then play the game. Personally I would recommend a more attentitive system where you would have to log at least ten or twenty minuts every few days to keep a skill training going. like going to purches fresh materials for people training in alchemy or finding new animals for people training in handle animal. in the sense that for people harvesting materials have to moniter their camps people have to moniter their training to finish a skill.
I think the big thing many people are used to, is "grind 3 months then you are able to do things to actually play the game". The key thing in PFO is, as far as I know they don't intend that wait to be there, what most games consider "End game" starts at day 1. No you won't be the most effective fighter on the battlefield in the first week, but you will be able to be a contributing member on the battlefield. The segregation lines of "do monotonous chore" for 6 months, then start playing for real, is intended to be removed. Instead it is, go in, start doing what you like, and train what you like to be able to do it better.
Sure you could train for 7 months, spend a few weeks doing the merit badges (of course this is assuming the badges don't have to be done before certain skills can start training, this I don't know). But even if so, that will be a pointless thing, If you enjoy fighting, why wouldn't you want to be on the battlefield learning strategies etc... before you have maxed skills for it, why not play and learn, and experience those parts. People who chose to pay without playing the game... really are just robbing themselves of the game. At least to me I highly doubt there will be the same "Teirs" of activity that you run into in WoW and the like, in which areas are clearly seperated by levels, raiding etc... is what you do when you hit level cap, and all gear prior to level cap is just trash that will be forgotten in a week.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The problem is this:
Person A goes on vacation for 10 days, but they longest duration skill they have to train is only 5 days, they just lost 5 days of training time.Giving only 5 days/month makes it so you can't just make a huge queue and wait.
Anyway, skills are only half the advancement, you still need to fill in other badge requirements, so it's not like someone will be able to pay for 7 months queue a huge string of skills then be able to do anything productive.
I've made a suggestion that we be able to manage our skill training queues outside of the game, via the facebook type interface that Ryan mentioned. Therefore if we go away on holiday, we can keep things running as long as we can access the internet somewhere. That said I've never played EVE, so your suggestions may make more sense than mine.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Personally, I'd like it so that a person can plan out character advancement indefinitely.
Take for example a Soldier gets deployed to Afghanistan. It's not unreasonable for this soldier to expect no internet access while deployed, and the soldier to want the character playable after returning from Afghanistan. So long as the account stays paid for the soldier should be able to continue the advancement of the character for the duration of the deployment and only need to pick up badges to catch back up.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Personally, I'd like it so that a person can plan out character advancement indefinitely.
Take for example a Soldier gets deployed to Afghanistan. It's not unreasonable for this soldier to expect no internet access while deployed, and the soldier to want the character playable after returning from Afghanistan. So long as the account stays paid for the soldier should be able to continue the advancement of the character for the duration of the deployment and only need to pick up badges to catch back up.
Good point Hark. I'd rather mulitple ways of being able to queue and alter skill training.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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CCP has wrestled with the issue of skill planning for years.
The counter-argument to "let me queue up all the skills I want" is that some folks will never log in again. Making people log in once in a while helps keep them engaged with the game, helps ensure they're running current versions of the client, see important notices and messages, etc.
I don't know how we'll set up our skill planning system, but I doubt we'll let you set it up to run without attention over months of time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've made a suggestion that we be able to manage our skill training queues outside of the game, via the facebook type interface that Ryan mentioned. Therefore if we go away on holiday, we can keep things running as long as we can access the internet somewhere. That said I've never played EVE, so your suggestions may make more sense than mine.The problem is this:
Person A goes on vacation for 10 days, but they longest duration skill they have to train is only 5 days, they just lost 5 days of training time.Giving only 5 days/month makes it so you can't just make a huge queue and wait.
Anyway, skills are only half the advancement, you still need to fill in other badge requirements, so it's not like someone will be able to pay for 7 months queue a huge string of skills then be able to do anything productive.
1. The facebook-ish thing would be much harder to create, and is less likely to be there at the start of early enrollment
2. The internet isn't always available.
I would like to add, that the vacation time I suggested should cap at 15 days, I would expect people to cancel or put on hold their game subscription if they will be away for any longer. Even if training time is more like a currency you spend it as you use it, I would like to see this, just so having real life commitments doesn't hurt your progression in the game too much.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've made a suggestion that we be able to manage our skill training queues outside of the game, via the facebook type interface that Ryan mentioned. Therefore if we go away on holiday, we can keep things running as long as we can access the internet somewhere. That said I've never played EVE, so your suggestions may make more sense than mine.The problem is this:
Person A goes on vacation for 10 days, but they longest duration skill they have to train is only 5 days, they just lost 5 days of training time.Giving only 5 days/month makes it so you can't just make a huge queue and wait.
Anyway, skills are only half the advancement, you still need to fill in other badge requirements, so it's not like someone will be able to pay for 7 months queue a huge string of skills then be able to do anything productive.
This could be really nice. Especially since where ever you go, you'll probably have internet. If you could log into this just on a phone or some such, you'd always be able to keep track of it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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CCP has wrestled with the issue of skill planning for years.
The counter-argument to "let me queue up all the skills I want" is that some folks will never log in again. Making people log in once in a while helps keep them engaged with the game, helps ensure they're running current versions of the client, see important notices and messages, etc.
I don't know how we'll set up our skill planning system, but I doubt we'll let you set it up to run without attention over months of time.
And if they are paying customers, who cares if they do not take up your server resources. That just makes room for another paying customer.
Also, PfO will not have the same problem as EVE because of the merit badge requirement. A guy who buys the game and trains skills for 2 years will be as much a baby when he finally logs in as a guy who just "bought" the game. They still have to go do the actual work to get their abilities....and will have to learn the game and interact with other PCs to do that, when they finally decide to do so.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Asfrith: If PFO goes down a similar path as EVE, then after the initial character skills (which only take minutes) are done, you get skills that take hours and eventually days to complete. You can queue up to 24 hours worth of training, and all you need to make sure is that the last skill on your list (which has to start within that 24 hour period) goes for several days.
That way, if you don't logon for a few days, your skill training merrily keep on progressing. If you logon for a good 8 hours session on a weekend, you can suspend training you multiday skill, train a bunch of short skills while online, then start the process all over again.
Of all the MMOs, MUDs and RPGs I've played over the years, EVE has one of the better skill training systems going around. Hopefully PFO will steal that mantle in a few years :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with Hark, let us map it indefinitely...or have serious branches in character development that require in-game interaction to choose one (such as going to speak to a specific class trainer), and let us see and plan up to those branches.
The ability to "see" (and hence schedule) up any branch requires speaking to that branch's trainer (or completing a task/mission) once the fork in the branches has been met (or is almost met).
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Goblin Squad Member
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It definitely shouldn't have to be every day. I'd be fine with weekly or so. We should be encouraging people to have lives outside the game I think and many of us do have work and obligations meaning we can't log in to game every day. I don't think people should be highly penalized for that, especially if they are already subscribing and funding the game.
The people actually playing should get their worth too, of course. Actively using skills should help raise them at a faster rate maybe or have its own perk over the people who raise skills the other way.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The people actually playing should get their worth too, of course. Actively using skills should help raise them at a faster rate maybe or have its own perk over the people who raise skills the other way.
That is one model that the dev's really want to avoid. The parts that result in characters doing fairly silly things, such as blasting spells into the air, jumping around non-stop, sneaking around for no reason, swinging swords as they walk etc... Presuming they anticipate that and instead require them to be used effectively, then you'd just find skill grinding groups, say wizard blasting fighter to boost wiz's attack figthers defense, cleric healing fighter to boost his own healing etc... Which then just brings back the grind that the system's goal is to avoid.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And if they are paying customers, who cares if they do not take up your server resources.
Since player interaction is the key driver in MMOs (even in themeparks), GW would prefer active players over passive ones. Just look at the F2P games - they give the server resources away for free just to get more active players. Paying passives are obviously better than nonpaying passives, but the an active playerbase is worth a lot of server resources.
To the general topic of skill training:
I ask for the option to split training between several skills. ie train all my archetype skills in parallel. Manual tweaking would enable you to reach your favorite merit badges sooner, but 'autopilot' would be good if you go away and don't know if you will be able to access for a week.
To the specific topic of controlling training from outside the game:
Fallen Earth has a crafting system where items are queued up in-game and crafted in real time (online or offline) - and a smartphone app to control it from offline.
I'd love a phone app for skill training, mailboxes, inventory, contracts, harvesting/refining/crafting (asuming that also happens offline), and an alarm if my settlement is besieged. I just don't expect that in the first 12 months though.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And if they are paying customers, who cares if they do not take up your server resources.
Since player interaction is the key driver in MMOs (even in themeparks), GW would prefer active players over passive ones. Just look at the F2P games - they give the server resources away for free just to get more active players. Paying passives are obviously better than nonpaying passives, but the an active playerbase is worth a lot of server resources.
Agreed, the fact is an active account is still potential resources anyway. The dev's have to be prepared when any major event, or just dumb luck could cause all inactives to come online at the same time, thus the servers do have to be prepared to handle them anyway. Then you throw in that players are content... a player acting makes the game more enjoyable, adds new challanges etc... to other players. if they have say 4,000 paying subscribers, and all of them are offline, new people pop on, see the game is dead, pass up on buying into the game. No new blood is always bad.