Goblin Squad Member
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Because of the Location we will never see serious Sea Trade, Naval Combat, or Major Ports.
Sure we have a fair sized river, but it really isn't the same, rivers aren't terribly big and the location is terrible for trade as it is out of the way and does not bypass any major geographical features. That river actually serves more as a wall to keep us in. I think the fluff for the MMO even mentions difficulty crossing the river.
Not really a huge complaint, just I'm really disappointed that nearest major body of water is some 200 miles South of our location.
Even if the game were to extend that far south you would probably need the map to go another 200 miles west to get any real value out of it, and that would put the vast majority of the game in Ustalav. Setting there would set a very different tone for the game. Lets not even talk about how much work it would require to generate that much content.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The Battle of Blackwater in A Game of Thrones took place on a river, and several historical battles took place on rivers in history.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Trade up and down it is important, I'm nearly sure. The Sellen river is the biggest around and the most heavily travelled in eastern Avistan, or so the wiki tells me.
Not enough for naval combat, but there's no reason they couldn't have trading along the river.
You can go along the River Kingdoms themselves, up to Numeria and Ustalav and the Worldwound, or down to Razmiran, Kyonin, Galt and Andoran at least, I think Taldor too.
Also far as I see Ustalav if north-west, not south-west. Mind you, all I have to work with is the map in the Pathfinder Wikia, so.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would be in support of River Trade as a good thing, but this river is so far out of the way as to be almost useless. Even if the flowing water makes it faster, it is only faster going from North to South, the other way would be painfully slow making trade by land much more viable.
Were there some terrain feature that made trade by road difficult river trade would be much more viable, but as it stands a good road from north to south with regular patrols to clear the bandits is by far a superior option.
Unless I am completely wrong about the location the game is set, most of Ustalv is to the north-west but nearly half of it is south west. The point is that Expanding the area to make Avalon Bay and parts of Lake Encarthan accessible would result in most of game taking place in Ustalav. Not sure that Razmiran sets the tone for what they were looking for either.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Because of the Location we will never see serious Sea Trade, Naval Combat, or Major Ports.Never say never.
The map will be expanded, and not necessarily on directly bordering hexes. There's nothing stopping them from adding maps that are on the sea.
I have no doubt that, eventually, as people play Pathfinder Online and the game world grows, all of Golarion will be possible to explore.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have no doubt that, eventually, as people play Pathfinder Online and the game world grows, all of Golarion will be possible to explore.
That will never happen, not even close to happening. The 200 mile square I'm discussing will never happen. The 200 mile square is 4000 times larger than what is already planned for the game and only makes up a very small portion of the Inner Sea. Which is in itself only a small portion of the planet of Galarion.
Even if they did all of major cities suddenly included would pretty much trivialize all of the player created content.
I also doubt they could do regions not directly connected as that would require some kind of gating mechanism that would create very obvious choke points in the map where players could dominate and those not located in the immediate vicinity of said gates would be at a sever disadvantage.
If they are going to expand they have about 150 miles east that they can expand without hitting anything significant, but that would trivialize river travel even more. If they go much north or south they hit Mosswater or Scrawnycrossing both of which are detailed in books, and I think that is something they wanted to avoid.
If they want a regular shape that doesn't touch anything significant they could do a 100 mile square or diamond shape with one point in each of the cardinal direction, and the western most corner being the area the game is currently scheduled for. On the plus side that would give access to a good chunk of the the Tolemadia River, allowing for something in the area of 50 miles of good river traffic with access to both side of the river, but the River in the starting area is still pretty much useless. Also other than that southern corner of the map you don't have that kind of traffic going on to support its economy. I guess the eastern corner might also pick up about 20 miles of the Dagger river south of Deadbridge. The real cool part about this approach is that you get access to the vast majority of the Echo Wood.
But any of these plans are pretty useless, they aren't going to expand their game world 1000 times over. If it ends up 10 times the size of the what we start with I will be in shock.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I also doubt they could do regions not directly connected as that would require some kind of gating mechanism that would create very obvious choke points in the map where players could dominate and those not located in the immediate vicinity of said gates would be at a sever disadvantage.
Well, I don't think it's quite as bad as you make out. It could be a feature of a building you add to your settlement, then anyone with access to a reasonably developed settlement would be able to travel. Like a mage's laboratory with a teleportation circle or something. Put them in the NPC starter towns too and it's diversified enough not to qualify as an exploitable choke point.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I started this because those things are awesome. Fortunately, Trade Wars in no way require river travel. Unfortunately, I don't see River Pirates being that viable, they only get one side of the river to hide on and pretty much no place at all to hide their ships. That and as I've said before the river is to far out of the way to be of any real value.
1) the lake of mists is a signifigant sea, surrounded by the coastal states of mendev, numeria, brevoy, mad max viking-kellid stuff to the east, dwarves with iron fortresses to the north, along with the people of the ice/crown of the world. it's plenty large enough of a sea to allow naval combat and strategy.
2) new areas may not be adjacent hexes, but be 'teleported' to, i.e. go south to follow the river all the way south to the inner sea. the entire naval system may well make heavy use of the 'fast travel' system, only 'instantiating' zones of interaction adjacent to land masses, and where determined to be needed (the system can identify highseas encounters on the fly, which don't contain buildings or other persistent object, and thus don't need to exist/be tracked outside the instantiated encounters).
3) PFO doesn't need to follow paizo's map 100% accurately in order to recreate the substantive flavor, intervening areas can be squished
4) i don't understand the opposition to the idea of a new area including ustalav. what's wrong with it? bunches of different noble houses that barely get along, perfect for a civil war. different groups of monsters, ancient evil that could return, strong maritime shipping and naval forces in the region, and sets the stage for further expansion to lastwall/belkzen for mass orcish horde combat. it's a freaking MMORPG economic RPG game, you aren't expected to get into character to be the brooding emo vampire spawn.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Keep in mind the game is intended to be 1 server, so as the population grows, it gives them a way to make more map viable. Other MMOs are as small as they are because everything is instanced and there are tons of servers to play on. This one needs to grow organically with it's subscriber base. It's being produced like Eve and will likely have a lot of word of mouth marketing, so that the subscriber base does keep growing instead of being over-marketed, hyped and abandoned. This leaves a lot of opportunity for them to grow the map!
Besides that, the game will differ from the tabletop and isn't an exact reproduction. If they really wanted to they could add teleportation gates to new areas.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would be in support of River Trade as a good thing, but this river is so far out of the way as to be almost useless. Even if the flowing water makes it faster, it is only faster going from North to South, the other way would be painfully slow making trade by land much more viable.
The primary advantage of river trade is a combination of speed and cargo capacity. Can you sail up a river faster than you can ride beside it? No, but you can carry tons more stuff with you, literally. If you wanted to move those tons by land, you'd need a massive mule train and ample guards, which would slow you down to a crawl at which point river travel IS faster, even upriver.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would be in support of River Trade as a good thing, but this river is so far out of the way as to be almost useless. Even if the flowing water makes it faster, it is only faster going from North to South, the other way would be painfully slow making trade by land much more viable.The primary advantage of river trade is a combination of speed and cargo capacity. Can you sail up a river faster than you can ride beside it? No, but you can carry tons more stuff with you, literally. If you wanted to move those tons by land, you'd need a massive mule train and ample guards, which would slow you down to a crawl at which point river travel IS faster, even upriver.
Yes, trade by river even when you go against the flow of the water it still is the fastest way of transport of goods.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I started this because those things are awesome. Fortunately, Trade Wars in no way require river travel. Unfortunately, I don't see River Pirates being that viable, they only get one side of the river to hide on and pretty much no place at all to hide their ships. That and as I've said before the river is to far out of the way to be of any real value.
River pirates can easily operate with the ubiquitous small vessels used for fishing and ferry travel. Those can be hidden in plain sight along the shore.
The hard part would be hiding the loot from a major score, not the boats.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The primary advantage of river trade is a combination of speed and cargo capacity. Can you sail up a river faster than you can ride beside it? No, but you can carry tons more stuff with you, literally. If you wanted to move those tons by land, you'd need a massive mule train and ample guards, which would slow you down to a crawl at which point river travel IS faster, even upriver.
The only area one can hope to save on river travel upstream is by saving money by using only one barge instead of many wagons. It actually takes more mule-power to move cargo upstream because your mules not only need to pull the cargo's weight, but also pull against the current. The only reason it is done at all is because there tend to be road on the side of the river.
Canal travel is different in that it can easily go both ways because the water is very calm in a canal. River trade is pretty much universally a one way trip, wagons will will pretty much always be faster that trying to haul cargo upstream.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I still say they don't have to follow the lore too closely. If we are not the storytellers, is it not a theme park after all? We can't invade a neighboring kingdom?
If they don't want to add some areas, could they not just add a strip of it? A mountain pass here, a valley there, a river there on the way to a more appropriate area.
I don't know for sure, but couldn't the timing just be in an uncovered period? At least for the area?
I really don't see why there has to even be a lore problem.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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The primary advantage of river trade is a combination of speed and cargo capacity. Can you sail up a river faster than you can ride beside it? No, but you can carry tons more stuff with you, literally. If you wanted to move those tons by land, you'd need a massive mule train and ample guards, which would slow you down to a crawl at which point river travel IS faster, even upriver.
The only area one can hope to save on river travel upstream is by saving money by using only one barge instead of many wagons. It actually takes more mule-power to move cargo upstream because your mules not only need to pull the cargo's weight, but also pull against the current. The only reason it is done at all is because there tend to be road on the side of the river.
Canal travel is different in that it can easily go both ways because the water is very calm in a canal. River trade is pretty much universally a one way trip, wagons will will pretty much always be faster that trying to haul cargo upstream.
Look at the history of river commerce- even before the development of steam engines, rivers were more useful than roads for commerce, both directions.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I grew up with river transportation. The only reasons goods were transported upstream were because you need to get the barge back where it is useful, you could manage a mule team dragging a barge with fewer people than a wagon caravan, and sometimes you actually had a river that was easier to travel than the surrounding terrain, though this is pretty rare. When possible goods were transported on roads that followed the river.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I grew up with river transportation. The only reasons goods were transported upstream were because you need to get the barge back where it is useful, you could manage a mule team dragging a barge with fewer people than a wagon caravan, and sometimes you actually had a river that was easier to travel than the surrounding terrain, though this is pretty rare. When possible goods were transported on roads that followed the river.
in a world of diesel freight, cargo ships the size of small towns, roads that are always opened and reasonably well maintained, this is true.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In a world where no modern technology was available upstream travel was a seriously difficult task only engaged in because the downstream travel more than made up for the extra effort.
They also didn't have magic :p
And is the reason major trade cities have always been on rivers, with a capital or other major city on a coast where river meets ocean.Even in Australia, Melbourne is built at the mouth of the Yarra river, and the city of parramatta (now part of Sydney) is on the parramatta river, flowing to Sydney and Sydney harbour.
It is no coincidence London is on the Thames and Paris on the Seine either. It's not just a case of ease, it's a case of quantity. It is far far easier to float a large number of goods than drag them in a cart up and down hills.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The primary advantage of river trade is a combination of speed and cargo capacity. Can you sail up a river faster than you can ride beside it? No, but you can carry tons more stuff with you, literally. If you wanted to move those tons by land, you'd need a massive mule train and ample guards, which would slow you down to a crawl at which point river travel IS faster, even upriver.
The only area one can hope to save on river travel upstream is by saving money by using only one barge instead of many wagons. It actually takes more mule-power to move cargo upstream because your mules not only need to pull the cargo's weight, but also pull against the current. The only reason it is done at all is because there tend to be road on the side of the river.
Canal travel is different in that it can easily go both ways because the water is very calm in a canal. River trade is pretty much universally a one way trip, wagons will will pretty much always be faster that trying to haul cargo upstream.
You have already said that "river travel IS faster, even upriver" and thats your very own words and now you say that wagons are faster.
I think that you are just arguing for the sake of arguing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You have already said that "river travel IS faster, even upriver" and thats your very own words and now you say that wagons are faster.
I think that you are just arguing for the sake of arguing.
I have only ever said that downstream river travel is faster. It is the reason major cities are located at the mouth of rivers, because you can easily transport good downstream from inland to the city and out for sea trade. A bag full of cash is a lot easier to carry back home home than the years harvest of grain.