Goblin Squad Member
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I appreciate the transparency, and the setting of expectations early. I'm thinking this blog will be linked to for quite some time.
- I think it is a good idea, given the design of PFO, to just say no to respecs up front. Challenging decision, but I give props for setting that expectation early.
Because of this, I believe some of the most interesting and well-known characters will come out of EE experience. Why? Because they won't be "perfect," they will be beautifully flawed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Now since the early parts will only have the four basic calls types (fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric), will the class kits that we backers purchased be apply to these characters while the game is in development...because personally I am not a big fan of those classes and I don't wanna waste my kits on a character that I can't play my favorite class, like sorcerer or monk.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How is EE going to work now? I know in the kickstarter, it said that the first 2000 would get in the first month, second 2000 in the second, etc but what if one of the guys in the first doesn‘t want to play till month four? Will the first guy from month two get into month one, guy from month three getting into month two, etc? Or will the first 2000 get first dibs on what months they want, and slowly move on from there?
Direct unedited quote from the most recent information I know of, my Pledge Fulfillment thingy regarding Crowdforger level:
"Patrons at this level will be invited to join Early Enrollment in the order that they pledged at this level.
Crowdforger Reward Bonus - Early Enrollment Upgrade
We're going to allow all Crowdforger pledgers into the first month of Early Enrollment."
It says right there everyone is in at some point in the first month of EE; though later backers might have to wait a few days/weeks if they're limiting the number of potential new users per day for technical reasons or something.
There are the 3,637 Crowdforgers listed on Kickstarter and around 1,500 people at higher levels that get the same reward.
Then a few that upgraded in the Fulfillment tool.
Then a future number that become backers in the post-KS version of the Fulfillmet tool after June (I'm pretty sure crowdforging will still be an option at some price, though I've seen no promises to these guys about getting in the first month of EE).
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Goblin Squad Member
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We are targeting four roles for the start of Early Enrollment: fighters, wizards, rogues, and clerics.Will we be able to activate our Destiny's Twin at the beginning of Early Enrollment?
Suppose I want to play a Paladin for my Destiny's Twin, but don't want to spend anything in Fighter yet. Could I go ahead and start earning XP and just save it up for later when Paladins are implemented?
Couldn't you accomplish that by creating the character but not playing it? You would accrue experience/time but not spend it on anything. Some 'skills' like greatsword and heavy armour proficiency would fit fighters and paladins equally, but you could avoid even that much commitment, waiting until you have the entire paladin role available before spending anything. The character would essentially be a placeholder, or maybe a storage mule (a Nodwick?).
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Goblin Squad Member
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You don't level a role directly, you level skills which are required to advance in your role of choice.
So if you want to be a sword and board paladin you could start by skilling shield and sword abilities, health and heavy armor, some divine casting, perhaps diplomacy etc.
At the point paladins are released you'll be able to go in and quickly level up any remaining skills you might need and shoot up through the paladin levels with ease.
No reason for respeccing. Respeccing wouldn't work well with this game's skill systems.
i wouldnt be so sure about that. remember if you slot all fighter skills you get a bonus to fighter stuff, but if you slot fighter and cleric skills you dont get the dedication bonus.
now i agree that having say - one hand weapon skill tree, two handed weapon skill tree, shield skill tree...etc would be great, but i bet the one handed weapon skills you learn is based on which archtype tree you are learning it in.
I doubt that, as that would defeat the whole point of starting with skills and building a role from them. They'll likely just consider something like 'shortsword proficiency' to be a skill acceptable in multiple roles. If all of your skills include a particular role, that role's dedication bonus is available to you. It could be considered a bonus slot which can be filled by a dedication bonus that's consistent with everything else you have slotted. If you slot 'heavy armour proficiency' and 'sneak attack' at the same time, then both 'fighter dedication' and 'rogue dedication' might grey out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Don't forget that the dedication bonus is a way to offset the inherent strength of cross-classing. A fighter than can heal himself is much stronger than a fighter that cannot. A rogue with an animal companion would be amazingly strong. So I'm confused at why people are obsessing so much about losing the dedication bonus.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Respects for class: In general, I'm not in favor of doing this. It creates all sorts of problems, especially during Crowdforging. Some people will feel there's an obligation to make every XP they spend 100% perfect vs. their ideal build as we add new features; the min-max issues are extraordinary. Rather than creating a bunch of false impressions or expectations I'd rather just say that we're not respeccing for new Roles and that what we encourage you to do is play interesting characters with the content in the game, or wait until such time as the role you want to play is implemented before you activate your account. That ensures nobody is given a false expectation of some kind of future conversion or upgrade right that doesn't exist. Early Enrollment is going to be incredibly constrained in terms of how many players will be added monthly and there will be a lot of people waiting in line so if you choose not to use your game time until the role you want to play is available it won't hurt the business.
I asked this during the kickstarter and the response given at that time certainly implied GW would be open to respecs as new classes were added to the game so people could play the character they want to play, since this is a role playing game most people will only ever have one or maybe two characters in due to the length of time required to progress with those characters and the characters are the most important part of the game since the gear was intended to be marginalized in importance.
"if you choose not to use your game time until the role you want to play is available it won't hurt the business"
I'm going to be extremely, extremely generous and assume that did NOT come out the way you intended it to because it makes you sound like the only thing you care about is the business and don't give a fig about the people who will make the business a success, i.e. your customers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There's a difference between not caring about customers and making sure the game doesn't collapse under the weight of catering too much to minority opinions.
Respecs for new classes simply don't make sense with the skill model provided. If anything, it'd make sense to only refund the experience devoted to class-specific training.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Respects for class: In general, I'm not in favor of doing this. It creates all sorts of problems, especially during Crowdforging. Some people will feel there's an obligation to make every XP they spend 100% perfect vs. their ideal build as we add new features; the min-max issues are extraordinary. Rather than creating a bunch of false impressions or expectations I'd rather just say that we're not respeccing for new Roles and that what we encourage you to do is play interesting characters with the content in the game, or wait until such time as the role you want to play is implemented before you activate your account. That ensures nobody is given a false expectation of some kind of future conversion or upgrade right that doesn't exist. Early Enrollment is going to be incredibly constrained in terms of how many players will be added monthly and there will be a lot of people waiting in line so if you choose not to use your game time until the role you want to play is available it won't hurt the business.I asked this during the kickstarter and the response given at that time certainly implied GW would be open to respecs as new classes were added to the game so people could play the character they want to play, since this is a role playing game most people will only ever have one or maybe two characters in due to the length of time required to progress with those characters and the characters are the most important part of the game since the gear was intended to be marginalized in importance.
"if you choose not to use your game time until the role you want to play is available it won't hurt the business"
I'm going to be extremely, extremely generous and assume that did NOT come out the way you intended it to because it makes you sound like the only thing you care about is the business and don't give a fig about the people who will make the business a success, i.e. your customers.
#1: Writing about the response that you received then, and showing us with links or quotes so that the actual question, answer, and context can be weighed would be more convincing.
#2: All time fall back applies. Everything and anything is subject to change...
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Goblin Squad Member
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A % increase to the main 'abilities' of a Build would be a nice touch, a feather in the cap of a specialist as it were.
Let's say a 'Fighter' would gain a % more benefit from their armor class, a % more to their Fortitude-like saves, a % more to melee and non-magical ranged damage with weapons they have specialized in ... just something that makes them even better than any 'Generalist' could ever be.
The downside is the narrow-ness of their focus can leave them exposed in specific situations.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Respects for class: In general, I'm not in favor of doing this. It creates all sorts of problems, especially during Crowdforging. Some people will feel there's an obligation to make every XP they spend 100% perfect vs. their ideal build as we add new features; the min-max issues are extraordinary. Rather than creating a bunch of false impressions or expectations I'd rather just say that we're not respeccing for new Roles and that what we encourage you to do is play interesting characters with the content in the game, or wait until such time as the role you want to play is implemented before you activate your account. That ensures nobody is given a false expectation of some kind of future conversion or upgrade right that doesn't exist. Early Enrollment is going to be incredibly constrained in terms of how many players will be added monthly and there will be a lot of people waiting in line so if you choose not to use your game time until the role you want to play is available it won't hurt the business.I asked this during the kickstarter and the response given at that time certainly implied GW would be open to respecs as new classes were added to the game so people could play the character they want to play, since this is a role playing game most people will only ever have one or maybe two characters in due to the length of time required to progress with those characters and the characters are the most important part of the game since the gear was intended to be marginalized in importance.
"if you choose not to use your game time until the role you want to play is available it won't hurt the business"
I'm going to be extremely, extremely generous and assume that did NOT come out the way you intended it to because it makes you sound like the only thing you care about is the business and don't give a fig about the people who will make the business a success, i.e. your customers.
I also recall the allowing of respec when new classes were released, and I would also be cheesed if it was dropped.
And I consider any and all words for raising funds to be like a Contract,given that any features or character rebuilding mentioned as part of the agreement for our money which was invested based on those words.
But I also know that Game development runs on living documents which means the specs are subject to change over the course of development and that the system is more skill than class based.
Now the above should not stop Goblin Work from honouring the agreement of the of the Kickstarter funding.
What Goblin works should do is allow one class respec based on the both the Kickstarter agreement and the needs of the Design Document to be fair.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Couldn't you accomplish that by creating the character but not playing it?We are targeting four roles for the start of Early Enrollment: fighters, wizards, rogues, and clerics.Will we be able to activate our Destiny's Twin at the beginning of Early Enrollment?
Suppose I want to play a Paladin for my Destiny's Twin, but don't want to spend anything in Fighter yet. Could I go ahead and start earning XP and just save it up for later when Paladins are implemented?
My primary question is whether or not we'll be able to activate our Destiny's Twin at the beginning of Early Enrollment. The rest of my post is just more information about what I intend to do, so hopefully the devs can answer my question and elaborate with any details that might be specifically applicable. I expect that, if I can activate my Paladin as my Destiny's Twin, then I will be able to do as you suggested, but wanted confirmation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Azure_Zero
I am not saying that you are wrong, just that I can find nothing in the blog or this forum wherein Ryan said anything about allowing respecs. The closest thing is this:
@Valkenr - if we find that some character abilities are a problem from a balance perspective we'll be very open to fixing that. ... But that's different than a respec, where people assume you get to rebuild the character from scratch, or how it's used in EVE, which meant re-balancing your ability scores. I don't think (I sincerely hope) that we'll have to do that kind of a major change. Pathfinder Online forum - 25 of 25 posts, Oct 26, 2012, 01:02 PM by Ryan Dancey (CEO, Goblinworks)
It seems that Ryan had this opinion at least a far back as Oct 26, 2012. Can you find where he said what you are claiming?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I only recall the wording, but not where it was posted.
I very clearly remember Ryan saying that they would probably allow a single Race change when new Races were released, but I don't recall him ever suggesting they would allow a Role/Class/Archetype respec.
I'll see if I can find anything, though. I can think of a couple of times when that might have come up...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Respects for class: In general, I'm not in favor of doing this. It creates all sorts of problems, especially during Crowdforging. Some people will feel there's an obligation to make every XP they spend 100% perfect vs. their ideal build as we add new features; the min-max issues are extraordinary. Rather than creating a bunch of false impressions or expectations I'd rather just say that we're not respeccing for new Roles and that what we encourage you to do is play interesting characters with the content in the game, or wait until such time as the role you want to play is implemented before you activate your account. That ensures nobody is given a false expectation of some kind of future conversion or upgrade right that doesn't exist. Early Enrollment is going to be incredibly constrained in terms of how many players will be added monthly and there will be a lot of people waiting in line so if you choose not to use your game time until the role you want to play is available it won't hurt the business.I asked this during the kickstarter and the response given at that time certainly implied GW would be open to respecs as new classes were added to the game so people could play the character they want to play, since this is a role playing game most people will only ever have one or maybe two characters in due to the length of time required to progress with those characters and the characters are the most important part of the game since the gear was intended to be marginalized in importance.
"if you choose not to use your game time until the role you want to play is available it won't hurt the business"
I'm going to be extremely, extremely generous and assume that did NOT come out the way you intended it to because it makes you sound like the only thing you care about is the business and don't give a fig about the people who will make the business a success, i.e. your customers.
I don't think 'not giving a fig' was Mr. Danceys' meaning at all. I'm sure he was addressing the concern that many posters throughout the messageboards have voiced: That Pathfinder Online has to make money or there'll be no game at all. I've said this before but it bears repeating: Early Enrollment is joining an incomplete game, during construction, for the experience of crowdforging IF YOU WISH TO DO SO, for the opportunity of seeing the game grow and contributing to that growth. It was never intended, even for Kickstarter backers, to give peeps a head start on min/maxing a favorite class. I've waited years for online games before and got in on betas to 'test' virtually complete games; THIS IS NOT THAT.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I only recall the wording, but not where it was posted.I very clearly remember Ryan saying that they would probably allow a single Race change when new Races were released, but I don't recall him ever suggesting they would allow a Role/Class/Archetype respec.
I'll see if I can find anything, though. I can think of a couple of times when that might have come up...
My memory is same as yours Nihimon. They have been pretty consistent in saying that the race change is a probably yes and the respec is an almost certain no.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I also remember that all of the discussion regarding skill (currently "feat") retraining boiled down to the plan that gaining a skill wouldn't prevent you from gaining any other skill, so allowing skills to be returned for a refund doesn't do anyone any favors.
Likewise, being of one race does prevent a character from being of another race, which warrants the suspension of disbelief required to allow established characters to have secretly been half-orcs or aasamir all along.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I also remember that all of the discussion regarding skill (currently "feat") retraining boiled down to the plan that gaining a skill wouldn't prevent you from gaining any other skill, so allowing skills to be returned for a refund doesn't do anyone any favors.
Likewise, being of one race does prevent a character from being of another race, which warrants the suspension of disbelief required to allow established characters to have secretly been half-orcs or aasamir all along.
That's what it comes down to. You can do other stuff waiting for your class to come out, even make an ad hoc version of the "class" you want.
But players will sit out in droves if the race change is not given.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm going to be extremely, extremely generous and assume that did NOT come out the way you intended it to because it makes you sound like the only thing you care about is the business and don't give a fig about the people who will make the business a success, i.e. your customers.
Whoa now, if you start being generous with your interpretations, we might start to think you understand and accept the idea behind PFO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Doing a quick search across Ryan's posts for the keyword respec, and he's only mentioned it five times. Once in this thread.
The other two times are in the respec thread and the character customization thread, both where he states he would rather not and that he would rather wait years before allowing a respec.
Seem pretty unlikely we will see a full character respec. On the other hand, he does say it is likely we will get a one off race change.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...gaining a skill wouldn't prevent you from gaining any other skill...
...being of one race does prevent a character from being of another race...
To me, this is the key to this entire discussion; thank you, Decius.
Having some skills, feats, or traits one no longer uses doesn't hurt anything at all, and one'll still, having joined the crowdforging, be developing a Paladin as fast as it can possibly be done, because you'll be playing him/her/it from the first moment it's introduced into the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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..."if you choose not to use your game time until the role you want to play is available it won't hurt the business"
I'm going to be extremely, extremely generous and assume that did NOT come out the way you intended it to because it makes you sound like the only thing you care about is the business and don't give a fig about the people who will make the business a success, i.e. your customers.
The good of the business is his job. Making player decisions for them would be out of his professional scope, and probably bad for business in a sandbox model.
If a player decides to not play awhile, Ryan doesn't believe it would have impact on the business. That makes such a decision one way or another outside of his responsibility. His job has to do with the well-being of the business only. He does not think it is his job to encourage or discourage that sort of player decision one way or the other.
He sees reason to provide neither incentive nor disincentive in the matter. If the player wishes to choose one way or the other that is completely up to the player.
It wasn't at all 'extremely generous' of you to assume that he didn't mean it the way you took it, it was merely reasonable. It would have been refreshing of you had you not spoiled it with condescension.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just throwing this out here: It would be nice to see different fighting stances in PFO. To my knowledge there aren't stances in the p&p. But I'm talking about stances that show in animation and that don't necessarily change stats(much). Making stances would probably triple(quadruple) the amount of animation, but it would bring much variety into the game. Or if you are planning on animating different combat animations for different races let the player choose or switch freely among them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well we have Power Attack, 'Normal' (unmodified) Attacks, Combat Expertise and Full Defence in the tablet-top, so maybe a slight variation in combat movements, depending upon if you're going all out for damage, just fighting in a balanced manner, fighting with an eye to self-defence or just parrying for your life.
Again, it's gonna take time, money and resources to work from the basics to the 'finished' game, so for now just a solid array of moves (1-handers, polearms, daggers, unarmed, 2-handers ... and then all the wonderful permutations of those for offense, defence, criticals and misses!) which we the players can build upon, once we actually see them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm going to be extremely, extremely generous and assume that did NOT come out the way you intended it to because it makes you sound like the only thing you care about is the business and don't give a fig about the people who will make the business a success, i.e. your customers.
I believe what Ryan was hinting at in a much more diplomatic way is that there are going to be tons of customers trying to get in on EE even with the minimum viable product because they want to be a part of crowd forging this game, and those customers are just as important as people with guaranteed access making demands that can't be met.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm going to be extremely, extremely generous and assume that did NOT come out the way you intended it to because it makes you sound like the only thing you care about is the business and don't give a fig about the people who will make the business a success, i.e. your customers.I believe what Ryan was hinting at in a much more diplomatic way is that there are going to be tons of customers trying to get in on EE even with the minimum viable product because they want to be a part of crowd forging this game, and those customers are just as important as people with guaranteed access making demands that can't be met.
This is a good spot to point out that making $$ during EE is part of GW's business plan. Most Ks backers see their pre paid time go up after 4 months. So GW knows that there has to be progress in the game for ppl to keep paying.
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Goblin Squad Member
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OK, I am lazy and did a rough scan through 240 some posts. No one seems to address EE versus OE. For the most part the EE characters can not go to OE. It is not fair to OE. Some may be needed say 10% volunteers to hang on and provide a structure only to mysteriously disappear. Later to be born a new. The EE will start anew in OE just like all the other players, but they will know the system, have established relationships, and have all anew their special benefits from kickstart. That is a huge advantage.
EE is about taking some time and having some fun and making a working system, not about a head start. ON the other hand if OE is an Oklahoma land rush, even with everyone starting "even", there will be initial abuses until the collective speaks. So some "elders" remain behind to be the structure (good an bad, chaotic and organized) to be the skeleton that the culture grows upon --later to re-start with maybe some extra benefits to reward their late start. Or we all start as new babes and it is an Evony new server launch.
EE is not so much about gaming as it is about breaking the game, to allow it to be fixed, more resilient and move on. (I love breaking alpha release S/W!)
Will there be one world on multiple server (parallel programming -- tough) or multiple worlds on single servers? How are new server launches handled?
At a certain point, I would have loved to be part of the team, but my skills are arthritic since I moved from development to playing with rela laws and regulations in the shadow world. And I am rooted in So Cal (can't sell this house and minor orchard).
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Lam
I am a little confused. Where did you get the idea that EE players can't keep their character's and everything that they have achieved through EE and into OE?
Unless I am misunderstanding your post, You are either joking or not up to speed on things. There will be no wipe of EE.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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There will be an alpha test phase before EE, and there is no word on a public beta test phase. Alpha and beta characters would be wiped prior to EE.
Wiping at the end of EE would be counterproductive; the entire point is to manage a smaller number of players until player infrastructure is developed which can handle a larger number of players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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OK, I am lazy and did a rough scan through 240 some posts...
There are some few key things you didn't catch in your rough scan.
-EE is a head start in every way. (But we have to pave the road ourselves).
-there will be a single world (on multiple servers). This seems a key point in Ryan's philosophy: the pvp'ers, the pve'ers and the traders all have to be in the same world in order to get the interesting dynamics.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For the most part the EE characters can not go to OE.
This is 100% false.
Our game will have a testing cycle with server wipes and lots of bughunters and all sorts of crazy load-balancing experiments, etc. That will all happen prior to Beta.
When we open the Beta our belief is that the game will be in a stable condition with lots of interesting things for players to do and we'll be able to avoid a server wipe thereafter.
The plan is for everyone in Early Enrollment to keep their character and their territory when the game moves into Open Enrollment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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On the 'no respec for class' issue... correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that the 'class focus' bonus was determined by the abilities you have 'slotted', which you choose from amongst all those you have qualified for.
So, for example, if you start EE as a Wizard with the intent of eventually switching this to a Sorcerer a lot of the things you would be working on should be the same. Sure, you'll probably develop some things which wind up being 'wizard only', but then when the Sorcerer role becomes available you can just swap those out for abilities that DO fit the Sorcerer role and viola! you've got the class focus bonus for Sorcerer.
Thus, the only 'downside' I can see here is the potential for some amount of 'lost' training time... though being in the EE means you're getting 'extra' training time over most players... and other people in the EE will face the same limitations. So maybe there is a time period where an optimized Wizard is ahead of an optimized Sorcerer in power, but the difference shouldn't be huge and will certainly be smaller than if you had to start building the Sorcerer from scratch when the class is released.
If they are successful in constraining the power curve enough to make it viable for OE players to contribute meaningfully alongside EE players then the much smaller gap between EE original class and EE swapped class characters should not be a problem.
Another way of looking at it... the ability to slot different abilities is a form of respec'ing. Slot all your Wizard abilities... hey, you're a Wizard and get the Wizard focus bonus. Slot all your Sorcerer abilities... zounds, you've got the Sorcerer focus bonus! Slot a mix of the two... no focus bonus, but hey maybe you've found some cool synergy between the two classes which is just as good.