Goblin Squad Member
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So, i haven´t read much into the board here and stuff yet, but i got some.
One thing that worries me a bit so far is that i get the impression that this is going to be a game that will rely on something that made a lot of other mmo games totally sour for me.
The need to play as much as possible everyday, else get into some frustrating position, because of PVP with players that spend half their life there and have according achievements (no insult, just a priotity and possibility difference) and some other mechanics.
Someone knows how such things and gaps will be handled?
At least for me, an experience like that could and will make PFO a real bad game then, just as most other MMO out there at the moment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We know that xp will be gained based on RL time, not time spent in game. So character skill levels won't be so dependent on time in game.
I'd guess that time in game will pay off in accumulation of stuff and in forging social power. I expect there will be places for more casual players, too; if settlements are 1000s of characters, there will be players of all types included.
I hope there is a lot of "instanced" stuff on there. One thing that takes me out of character a bit in those MMOs is thousands of wizards, fighters, and clerics running around the world. The world is supposed to be made up of mostly commoners and experts. Player classes are more rare and special. If anyone could be a cleric of Sarenrae, everyone would do it. It kind of carries over into people's attitudes about the tabletop game, too, in my opinion. When I was locked up, I played with guys who'd done video games on the outside, and they wanted to always go buy things at the magic Wal-Mart. They expected every item in the book to be on sale in the "magic store". When I wanted to roll percentages, the response would be, "What do you mean they don't have such-and-such item? What about all the other adventurers that come through here all the time; they have to be selling these items they're finding."
And I know they got that mentality from MMOs. Where thousands of adventurers are buying/selling every day. So, instanced content would make me a lot happier in that regard.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Good mmo game design = wide (range) & shallow (power) as possible skill acquisition. Power range being relatively shallow. The real-time skill training as above is also good.
It's questionable whether 24/7 access per character is good; good for those that have those priorities maybe not so good for others? But I think if those players create a lot of content (interaction) for others it is possible net good?? I don't know but EVE devs probably do.
But I'm anticipating the bigger a group becomes the more it needs players and te more variety of skills across the board required at any time input proffered?
But at smaller sizes it might be more specific skills demanded and sync & quantity of activity expected?
EVE is high dedication game so perhaps any who play that game can provide more insight than me?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Ched: The world is the players as far as I can make out. The concept shift from the imagination of being a few select heroes in your own movie towards the equivalent of a grand game of diplomacy ie same map same large conference hall, brokering deals going on simultaneously between thousands of different "players".
Does that help? Maybe I'm wrong but that is how I see it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope there is a lot of "instanced" stuff on there. One thing that takes me out of character a bit in those MMOs is thousands of wizards, fighters, and clerics running around the world. The world is supposed to be made up of mostly commoners and experts. Player classes are more rare and special. If anyone could be a cleric of Sarenrae, everyone would do it. It kind of carries over into people's attitudes about the tabletop game, too, in my opinion. When I was locked up, I played with guys who'd done video games on the outside, and they wanted to always go buy things at the magic Wal-Mart. They expected every item in the book to be on sale in the "magic store". When I wanted to roll percentages, the response would be, "What do you mean they don't have such-and-such item? What about all the other adventurers that come through here all the time; they have to be selling these items they're finding."
And I know they got that mentality from MMOs. Where thousands of adventurers are buying/selling every day. So, instanced content would make me a lot happier in that regard.
I totally disagree and hope and pray Goblinworks does not share the same mentality as yours. Say no to instancing. Please.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Keep in mind that shallow power-curves also encourage player skill, which tends to be a function of time played. When a game is balanced for low power accretion over time, the mechanical ability of the individual player becomes more and more important. While you may be able to have the exact same power build as a player that is online three times as often as you are, chances are you will still be unable to compete with them on a mechanical level.
This is the basis of every competitive game, and the lengths that the developers would have to go to to mitigate it would destroy any semblance of skill based play. Unfortunately the casual player will always be at a discrete disadvantage to the dedicated. It is better to accept this, and work within your means as much as possible using the time you have.
So, i haven´t read much into the board here and stuff yet, but i got some.
One thing that worries me a bit so far is that i get the impression that this is going to be a game that will rely on something that made a lot of other mmo games totally sour for me.
The need to play as much as possible everyday, else get into some frustrating position, because of PVP with players that spend half their life there and have according achievements (no insult, just a priotity and possibility difference) and some other mechanics.Someone knows how such things and gaps will be handled?
At least for me, an experience like that could and will make PFO a real bad game then, just as most other MMO out there at the moment.
Your assessments are just widely inaccurate. Go read the blog posts and then you'll see why.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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The most powerful characters will be members of the largest, most well organized and run Settlements. Those Settlements will have a lot of work to do and will expect their members to do it. The extent to which you fel the need to contribute to that work will be a social relationship between you and the rest of the members of your Settlement.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Just like the most powerful characters in EvE: Training the skill is just a prerequisite; the only way to fly a supercapital ship is to belong to a corporation that can field one? (But those corporations have a place for someone who logs on once a week and does whatever- it's just that the spot they have isn't necessarily in a supercap fleet.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Instancing removes players from the game world and their fellow players. In a game where players' characters are the primary content, this would be rather self-defeating.
I suppose if there are only ten players online and eight of them were in a player-crafted dungeon for an hour then for that hour the world would seem even more empty. Eight players for an hour if there are hundreds... not so much.
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Goblin Squad Member
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By accruing and thoughtfully applying the time-experience gained in light of what you have learned, by practicing your skills so that they become second-nature, and by forming social networks you can call upon to multiply your forces.
And if you read up on the blogs and what they reveal you will discover that it isn't so simple to overpower even new characters, even so. When they talk of 'flat' power curves they really mean flat: with time and training you will have a greater array of things you can do than the new player, but with a sword in their hand they will have a chance, especially if joined by their brethren.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Playing 80+ hours a week won't be what makes you better.
@All - power curves
I've always thought that the way the power curve will likely work is this:
Newbies
When you are a "new" character, you'll be fragile and weak. That does two things:
1: It encourages you to stay in reasonably safe areas and focus on learning how the game works, rather than trying to be Conan on day one.
2: It makes "disposable alts" a less viable option. Making a new character is not an "I win" button for PvP if you do it with a herd of your friends.
Average
At some point, you move into the "normal" power curve of the game; what we've talked about being equivalent to the kind of power you typically see from about 6th level to about 10th level (what I call the "heroic adventuring" part of a Pathfinder tabletop RPG character's career).
This is where you find that the development of your character becomes a process of being very good at a wide range of activities. You'll be able to "catch up" to a character that's older than you in a given activity given a few months of dedicated play and training, but that older character will have the advantage of being very good at a variety of things, not just one thing.
This is essentially what happens in EVE Online.
A small group of reasonably experienced "heroic adventurers" should be able to fight off a horde of new characters, A heroic adventurer should be able to beat a small number of new characters fairly easily.
Balance comes when you have conflict between groups of heroic adventurers. In such encounters, the absolute age of the characters should be less important than their tactics, gear, coordination, and player skill.
Old Vets
There will likely be a small number of old, experienced, wealthy, well equipped PCs who will be really dangerous. You won't want to cross them.
If they show up in a fight, they can tip the balance quickly. If they act in concert as a group, it will take a lot of Heroic Adventurers to keep them in check.
Moderating the power of these Old Vets is an obvious long-term challenge for the game designers and I'm sure we'll have lots of ideas on how to keep them from getting out of hand. But I'm also sure that it will be pretty fun to play one too. :)
Also, there will likely be some instancing.
Dungeons
"Dungeon" is a catch-all term that refers to any enclosed space for adventuring. It need not be a constructed space; it could be a natural cavern or even a forest, jungle, or other terrain type. Typically, dungeons are designed so that they become progressively more challenging as they are explored, often culminating with a materially hard challenge at the end. A variety of obstacles must be overcome to reach the end content, such as monsters, traps, locks, illusions, hidden doors, puzzles, and complex interactive events involving the denizens of the area.
How much fun would it be to find some huge underground complex only to discover all the monsters dead, the traps sprung, the locks picked, and the treasure looted? This is what would happen if dungeons were created as pure sandbox content. Obviously, we want to have a way for you to be "the first" adventurers to explore a dungeon.
MMOs typically use a concept called "instancing" to achieve this. In an instance, a separate version of the area is created just for you and your companions. Each group that enters the area gets its own instance to play in. The instances usually don't overlap, so you'll never see other characters while you're exploring. This creates the bizarre experience of having dangerous areas of the game that can never be made safe. In other words, if there's an instanced dragon lair nearby, nothing that you can do will make that threat go away—you just have to pretend that since you and your party slew that dragon last week, the problem is solved for you.
What we'd like to do with Pathfinder Online is combine an open world approach to design with this kind of theme park content. As you explore, you may discover a dungeon entrance. So long as you don't go inside, that entrance can be found by other explorers. Once a character enters the dungeon, though, that entrance becomes "locked" to that explorer; other characters won't be able to find that entrance. A character with access to an entrance can form a party and the party can enter the dungeon as a group.
If nobody finds the entrance, or none of the people who find it enter it, the entrance will be removed from the game world after a fairly short period of time, and it will respawn elsewhere. If the dungeon is entered, it will remain in the game world a longer period of time. If the final challenge is overcome, the dungeon will be removed after a short interval (giving you time to make several trips to and from the dungeon to haul out the loot within).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being,
You know how many people out there have only ever known theme park games, removed from open world PvP, and are used to depending on instanced entertainment. Given the choice between hours spent dungeoneering with friends involved in the kind of PvE their used to, free from conflict with people they might wish to avoid (like bandits), I think it's safe to assume a far greater number of players than eight for every several hundred would opt for your scenario. You also suggest they would only be removed from the world for an hour, but what stops them from playing the same dungeon over again, or firing up another player-made dungeon off their list?
You know I very much value player created content, but in the games where player created dungeons/quests exist, none of these are sandboxes. Thus, the player made content is only providing a variation on the existing game provided PvE content, not a venue for entertainment that seems contradictory to the intended game design.
For once in a long while, we are being gifted with a sandbox where player/settlement competition is the content. Why are we suggesting interjecting the same PvE instanced entertainment that every existing game already provides?
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Goblin Squad Member
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We aren't suggesting that the game should be injected with the same PvE instanced entertainment that every existing game already provides. We are suggesting that players should be able to create interesting and developer vetted, hopefully community approved content and rent it out for a session through the GW in game store. That once the dungeon is run it no longer exists unless rented again (and I can imagine few who would continuously rent the same one unless it was somehow especially useful, such as a guild/company initiation piece). From the descriptions I read on how it would work the sponsoring player(s) would gather at the inn and go on an adventure, much like they would in table-top. When finished they would return to the world having enjoyed their adventure. I consider it the integration of a DM into the sandbox just like you (and I) intend to do without benefit of such a specially constructed dungeon. Hobs: Imagine the possibilities for storytellers. If you didn't care to deal with the mechanical details and you knew a player who has mastered the toolset and could tell a good tale you could get together with him or her to create a custom adventure that suits your overarching storyline. It would be invaluable to have such a tool available that could incorporate with Golarion.
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Goblin Squad Member
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SO and then those most powerful characters can easily kill any other playercharacters and raid their villages and efforts in the ground?
And how do you become one of those most powerful characters?
No. This is not how the power curve should work. When Ryan said "most powerful characters" he was not talking individual power. He was referring to characters who are part of a larger organization (the settlements) who can guide their members and residents to perform great deeds, achieve great things through cooperation and setting of common and communal goals, then achieving those goals.
The individual player's power curve is very low. In the original concept players should start around the place where a level 6 D&D type character would be, and will progress up a skill ladder to max out (after about 2 1/2 years of skill gains) to the place where a level 10 character would be. That is a pretty small difference. When you see references to a "level 20" character here, that is not a level 20 demigod character in the old D&D game. It is a structured advancement scheme in PFO so characters can progress in increments, with the 20th increment being the top level of character advancement. (After completing the 20th increment, your character would know all there is to know about being a great warrior.)
Do not fret about one supertoon destroying a settlement. That will not happen. What may happen though is you max your character's skills in warrior and you get jumped, and killed, by a bunch of new characters. That should be possible.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There will likely be a small number of old, experienced, wealthy, well equipped PCs who will be really dangerous. You won't want to cross them.If they show up in a fight, they can tip the balance quickly. If they act in concert as a group, it will take a lot of Heroic Adventurers to keep them in check.
...
Most of us who have been posting here (I am a relative newcomer) expect to be one of these old veterans in 3-5 years.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being,
I would love the ability to make my own in-game modules for role-play purposes, but only if the rewards are provided by myself as the creator and that the moduel is not closed off in an instance.
Hobs I am not invested in instancing, but instancing was part of the mix when the possibility was introduced by the devs. The idea that it would not be terribly interesting for a dungeon to sit around emptied by the first group to find it has merit. Rather it should be re-usable, new to the next group to discover it in some other explorable place.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being,
I would not expect it to stay in the world once it was emptied. I would expect that emptying it (i.e. completing the adventure within) would trigger it's decay, unless the people who discovered it remain inside for some other purpose (perhaps using the space for a further RP experience following the slaying of all the inhabitants). That it could respawn in a new location is fine as well.
I had originally written more for this reply, but it occurred to me that I am not certain whether you are discussing the dungeons that GW has mentioned will be in the game or those that players may some day create for purchase. I have particular opinions about each, but without knowing which you refer to, I'll spare the other readers my extra verbiage. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hobs I am not invested in instancing, but instancing was part of the mix when the possibility was introduced by the devs. The idea that it would not be terribly interesting for a dungeon to sit around emptied by the first group to find it has merit. Rather it should be re-usable, new to the next group to discover it in some other explorable place.Being,
I would love the ability to make my own in-game modules for role-play purposes, but only if the rewards are provided by myself as the creator and that the moduel is not closed off in an instance.
Location based persistent dungeons (such as The Emerald Spire) may exist, though I do not believe they have gone into whether they will be instanced or not.
What I do remember is that they intend to have Dynamic Dungeons that are "claimed" by the first group to find them and that they disappear after a while. The blog entry is called Where The Wild Things Are, but here is the relevant excerpt
How much fun would it be to find some huge underground complex only to discover all the monsters dead, the traps sprung, the locks picked, and the treasure looted? This is what would happen if dungeons were created as pure sandbox content. Obviously, we want to have a way for you to be "the first" adventurers to explore a dungeon.MMOs typically use a concept called "instancing" to achieve this. In an instance, a separate version of the area is created just for you and your companions. Each group that enters the area gets its own instance to play in. The instances usually don't overlap, so you'll never see other characters while you're exploring. This creates the bizarre experience of having dangerous areas of the game that can never be made safe. In other words, if there's an instanced dragon lair nearby, nothing that you can do will make that threat go away—you just have to pretend that since you and your party slew that dragon last week, the problem is solved for you.
What we'd like to do with Pathfinder Online is combine an open world approach to design with this kind of theme park content. As you explore, you may discover a dungeon entrance. So long as you don't go inside, that entrance can be found by other explorers. Once a character enters the dungeon, though, that entrance becomes "locked" to that explorer; other characters won't be able to find that entrance. A character with access to an entrance can form a party and the party can enter the dungeon as a group.
If nobody finds the entrance, or none of the people who find it enter it, the entrance will be removed from the game world after a fairly short period of time, and it will respawn elsewhere. If the dungeon is entered, it will remain in the game world a longer period of time. If the final challenge is overcome, the dungeon will be removed after a short interval (giving you time to make several trips to and from the dungeon to haul out the loot within).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would actually really enjoy a mix. The instanced dynamic dungeons paired with persistent open world replenishing dungeons. Sometimes it is great to set up your group and go wandering in, though I do have fond memories of randomly bumping into folks in Deep Dark Places in other games and teaming up to survive the rest of it.
The problem with instances is really that lack of ability to encounter new players without expecting it. Of course, those experiences largely occurred in UO's Trammel world or games with lower PvP-risk (despite open PvP, the servers I had played The 4th Coming on were pretty sparse on PKers). It might be an exercise in frustration to have folks sitting at dungeon entrances waiting to waylay you for all of your hard-earned loot. Or plugging a couple arrows in your back while you try to fight down a Big Bad.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Lifedragn,
Thank you for the details. I recall their description, but it may prove useful to those who didn't read the blog.
I'm fine with how it is planned until you hit the "locked to that explorer" part. Though I understand it from a marketing perspective, the "I found it first, so it's mine" feel of this plan seems very out of place in a region of Golarion particularly known for "You have what you hold".
Magically sealing the dungeon away to only those the finder cares to invite makes it pretty much an instance. It becomes their private adventure with exclusive rights to the loot within. The only tangible difference is that the finder had to find it, rather than go to the same starting point every other player knows about, as in other MMOs. If we're simulating that the entrance is difficult to find, and only the original finder knows the location, there is still a world of difference between making it difficult for others to find and making it impossible.
As Ryan states, finding a looted dungeon is a bit of a let down. As I said in my reply to Being, I wouldn't expect these dungeons to last in the world much past their being emptied. However, while they're still viable, they should be viable to anyone who finds the entrance - first, second, etc. shouldn't make any difference, except that the first finder has a head start of getting more of the loot before others discover the entrance.
My issue with this proposed plan is that once you find a dungeon, you and your friends have exclusive rights to it. In a game world based on competition, I don't believe you should have exclusive rights to anything unless you can enforce those rights. I have the same issue with the "mother load" gathering exclusive rights mechanic, but that's an argument for another thread.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It might be an exercise in frustration to have folks sitting at dungeon entrances waiting to waylay you for all of your hard-earned loot. Or plugging a couple arrows in your back while you try to fight down a Big Bad.
I remember well how PK infested UO dungeons were. This is why I would advise against persistent dungeons. I like the random spawn that is proposed.
I am not suggesting that dungeons should be "open" simply to allow evil-doers to steal the first finder's loot, though I think that needs to be a possibility. I hope that many second-comers would offer to help for a cut, or that finding the resident nasties too tough for either group individually, the two parties would join forces for mutual profit.
Stumbling upon another group in the dark depths is a very exciting occurrence, either for good or ill, and one I don't see this current mechanic allowing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Lifedragn,
Thank you for the details. I recall their description, but it may prove useful to those who didn't read the blog.
I'm fine with how it is planned until you hit the "locked to that explorer" part. Though I understand it from a marketing perspective, the "I found it first, so it's mine" feel of this plan seems very out of place in a region of Golarion particularly known for "You have what you hold".
Magically sealing the dungeon away to only those the finder cares to invite makes it pretty much an instance. It becomes their private adventure with exclusive rights to the loot within. The only tangible difference is that the finder had to find it, rather than go to the same starting point every other player knows about, as in other MMOs. If we're simulating that the entrance is difficult to find, and only the original finder knows the location, there is still a world of difference between making it difficult for others to find and making it impossible.
As Ryan states, finding a looted dungeon is a bit of a let down. As I said in my reply to Being, I wouldn't expect these dungeons to last in the world much past their being emptied. However, while they're still viable, they should be viable to anyone who finds the entrance - first, second, etc. shouldn't make any difference, except that the first finder has a head start of getting more of the loot before others discover the entrance.
My issue with this proposed plan is that once you find a dungeon, you and your friends have exclusive rights to it. In a game world based on competition, I don't believe you should have exclusive rights to anything unless you can enforce those rights. I have the same issue with the "mother load" gathering exclusive rights mechanic, but that's an argument for another thread.
Hobs, totally get what you're saying, and in general I'm down with open competition as the focus of PFO. But I also get that GW wants to make this a broadly appealing game, and wants to have breadth in the commitment of gamers (something I appreciate). That means some compromises, and this seems like a pretty harmless compromise that gives smaller communities/more casual gamers a chance to have some fun. When it comes to contested resources, larger and more committed groups who have people on 18/7 have a huge advantage. Carving out a very iconic experience (exploring a dungeon) to give more casual gamers a chance to grab some friends and go on an adventure seems pretty harmless, and could be very meaningful for those sort of players--that could be the marginal difference between playing/not playing.
And of course, the largest dungeons will be contested:
There's a third kind of dungeon, the largest and most challenging type. These are often designed to have several different entrances, each of which could be discovered by a different character, and shared by several parties. While exploring this kind of dungeon, you may very well encounter other characters! Fight, parlay, flee, or join forces—the results are up to you. Challenges in these dungeons may even require coordination between groups to complete—one party might have to fight through a room of undead to lower a magical barrier so that another party can access a different part of the dungeon.
These dungeons will also typically have some effects on their hex. They may generate a certain type of random encounter, the frequency and severity determined by how long the dungeon has been active and how effective player characters have been at overcoming its minions. These dungeons may spawn quest threads that take you to other dungeons, or be a source of unique resources needed for certain highly specialized crafting jobs. These dungeons can escalate, changing from a nuisance to a threat, or even evolving to the point where the hex could become uninhabitable.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I was hoping and expecting this to be something similar to missions in Eve.
You go to your faction, settlement, class, etc. contact and ask him if they need help with anything.
They point out that a local nobles daughter has been captured by evil slavers but a source has revealed the location of there base and someone is needed to go in a clean them out and rescue the lady. (In Eve the lady in question seemed to get "captured" and dragged to the brothel on a daily basis...)
At that point a public instance is created, but only YOU know the exact location of the entrance.
You can explore the instance at you leisure, but a wandering explorer, if trained in the right scouting skills, can find the entrance with some effort and enter it as well, perhaps to help or perhaps for other more nefarious reasons.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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@Summersnow here's the problem.
In EVE, you can't fly to every point on "the map". If you just point your ship in a direction and accelerate to max speed, you'll never get anywhere close to any other location.
EVE uses fast-travel between points on the map. You have to have the location of the end point of the trip before you start the journey. So that creates a situation where wandering gangs of attackers don't just "stumble on" the encounter area. They have to actively search it out and then fly there. The time to travel to a location can be quite long; long enough for anyone in that location to recognize they've been detected and to flee.
In Pathfinder Online there's no need to fast-travel to get to any point on the map. You can just walk there. So any location that gets created on the map is subject to being discovered by random wandering gangs. And the map is small enough that a gang could cover a large part of it with scouts, and when a location is discovered, the rest of the gang can run to that location. In other words, every location will be discovered almost as soon as it is created and every location will be infested with gankers.
The net effect will be that nobody will take "missions" unless they do so in protected territory with no risk of being ganked. So we'd end up with a bunch of programming time spent on a system that didn't actually work; in unprotected territory, taking a "mission" would be foolish, and in protected territory there's no difference between a public and a private mission.
Keep in mind that shallow power-curves also encourage player skill, which tends to be a function of time played. ... Unfortunately the casual player will always be at a discrete disadvantage to the dedicated. It is better to accept this, and work within your means as much as possible using the time you have.
I have no problem with this, IF the more powerful players can't just continually hammer the less powerful players. I have played a few games that have no (or at least insufficient) checks on this. So any new player is constantly dying and has essentially no way to get any better, acquire any gear, contribute to a team, or have any fun.
I hope that is how it works in practice.
Pardus is a game that has that type of mechanic. New pilots are incredibly fragile. But it is usually a tough fight into a factions territory to find those new pilots. Of course any new pilot that ventures out into the great unknown (neutral territory) is unlikely to last too long.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The company I belong to will be making sure to establish routes of contact without having to make your way to wherever our home base might be located. Protection of less powerful and starting characters was written into our initial charter which led to significant recruitment success. And I highly doubt we will be the only ones.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It wasn't a particularly successful post, but Aegis Alliance should also give you an idea of the general instincts of some of the regular posters here.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The net effect will be that nobody will take "missions" unless they do so in protected territory with no risk of being ganked. So we'd end up with a bunch of programming time spent on a system that didn't actually work; in unprotected territory, taking a "mission" would be foolish, and in protected territory there's no difference between a public and a private mission.
Public dungeons are similar to public quests in warhammer, neverwinter, etc, anyone in the area gets to play in them.
Private dungeons are instanced encounters that can only be entered via an instance portal.
The portal would obviously be hidden unless you had the skills and took the time to track them down, something that should be hard and time consuming to do. Yes, the boulder covering the entrance to the goblin caves might be visible to everyone that wanders by, but unless they had spent the time and effort to scout it out they wouldn't know it was the entrance and get to clicky the portal to enter.
Your comment "The net effect will be that nobody will take "missions" unless they do so in protected territory with no risk of being ganked." seems misguided to me because it could also be applied to resource gathering and escalations.
Should you stop looking for ways to implement those as well?
My concern is that you need to have a money faucet in the game and that needs to be PVE unless our monthly subscription comes with X amount of in game gold.
There needs to be more PVE then escalations if you want to charge a subscription fee comparable to games that have been out for nearly a decade, if not longer, with tons of content. Resource gathering doesn't cut it because those resources are to be sold to other players, who need to have money to buy them.
You might not like my ideas for actually putting some pathfinder in the game you call Pathfinder online, presumably because it would actually require some work which = money which I understand you don't have an infinite supply of and you need to get the game out as cheaply as possible, and that's fine, but you need to come up with some ideas of your own if you want PFO to have a ghost of a chance to succeed because escalations involving killing random mobs ain't going to do it.
EVERYTHING you want to do, banditry, faction warfare, settlement warfare, settlement building, skill training, tradecrafts, player run economy requires money and ALL of that money has to originate in PVE since the "you lose everything but a few threaded items" means pvp will be always be a money sink.
Don't be in such a rush to get the game out so cheaply and charge so much for it that you kill it before it ever gets out of EE and has a chance to develop into the game it should be.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah that is exactly one point. The terror of guilds.
It´s cool to have those oportunities, but it should not become a must or need. Also if stronger players can constantly harass you somehow, that will end the fun for a lot of other players. I hope there will be some power checks. Else it´s just gonna be the kiddie not going to school or the student or the unfortunately jobless person finding a new mission in life, which in my eyes equals a bad game.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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I think there is a population of players who will happily hunt mobs of monsters without requiring a lot of additional content. I expect that these players will be entertained by the game loop of hunt monster, sell loot, buy new gear, hunt tougher monster, repeat. The same applies for resource extraction.
We can adjust the amount of coin injected via this loop to make it more or less attractive depending on how the economy is functioning.
Snarky comments about putting more Pathfinder in the game aside, I think Pathfinder players who understand the process of releasing a minimum viable product and iterating will be happy with a "wilderness adventure game against wandering monsters" with the expectation that we want to iterate to include dungeon exploration adventures in the future.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This fits with another thread that PvE is essential to input geld and resources into system. economic PvP will drive certain efficiencies. Combat PvP will drain the inputs.
GW will balance supply to match PvP destruction, or not (inflation, deflation and patterns of each). Or this may be reaching too far. Maybe they want steady state which will be more gameable.
PvP is not just the caravans that UNC SADs.
It may be how his crafters rob him blind!
Lam
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am also concerned about the focus on PvP.
Basically, I'm a role player, not a PvPer. I play for fun, and 'fun' for me does not involve wondering if I'm going to log in only to get ganked and camped because someone thinks that's funny, or get ganked so someone can take a resource I was trying to gather, or... really, any one of a number of behaviours I have seen in other games; that kind of garbage is why I don't play on PvP-enabled servers.
I'm not what you would call a 'social' gamer - I like being able to talk to people, and help them out (and get help, if I need it), but I don't like feeling like I have to have a big group backing me up if I want to play the game by myself and just gather stuff, or wander around exploring (and beating on things, as needed).
My previous experiences with other MMOs suggests that MMO + PvP = epic gank fest, with the inexperienced or lone players getting the short end in all the ways I described above and a few others I left out, but I'm sure someone has experienced in the past. Right now, I'm getting the impression PFO is leaning heavily towards a place where that kind of thing happens, if not runs rampant, and that isn't really the kind of game I thought I was signing up for.
That having been said, some of what I have been seeing here does suggest that the community is not likely to go haywire and off-the-rails crazy just because PvP is involved, and that IS reassuring. But I am still concerned.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am also concerned about the focus on PvP.
Basically, I'm a role player, not a PvPer. I play for fun, and 'fun' for me does not involve wondering if I'm going to log in only to get ganked and camped because someone thinks that's funny, or get ganked so someone can take a resource I was trying to gather, or... really, any one of a number of behaviours I have seen in other games; that kind of garbage is why I don't play on PvP-enabled servers.
I'm not what you would call a 'social' gamer - I like being able to talk to people, and help them out (and get help, if I need it), but I don't like feeling like I have to have a big group backing me up if I want to play the game by myself and just gather stuff, or wander around exploring (and beating on things, as needed).
My previous experiences with other MMOs suggests that MMO + PvP = epic gank fest, with the inexperienced or lone players getting the short end in all the ways I described above and a few others I left out, but I'm sure someone has experienced in the past. Right now, I'm getting the impression PFO is leaning heavily towards a place where that kind of thing happens, if not runs rampant, and that isn't really the kind of game I thought I was signing up for.
That having been said, some of what I have been seeing here does suggest that the community is not likely to go haywire and off-the-rails crazy just because PvP is involved, and that IS reassuring. But I am still concerned.
I knew PFO was going to be PVP focused since it is going to be a sandbox game. With players providing most of the content, it can't help but be PVP focused. However, I hope some level of control by the Reputation system and other Players will prevent it from becoming out of control.
When OE happens, I think that will determine the success of PFO. Will those that come from PF TT and others remain in control or will those that come from other MMOs take control and turn PFO into a gankfest.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I suspect if you game alone, you will be a victim. If you adventure with a group, that collaborated PvE will reduce PvP choices. UNC and others will pick their targets. They will avoid targets which have combat capabilities. While characters with more merit badges will be more skilled, but that improvement will be flat and shallow.
PFO was written to be PvP and PvE from the announcement. Both are required. WIthout PvE there will not be important resources. WIthout harvesting and crafting, the resources remain potential, not equipment. PvP will consume the equipment and lead to demand for more.
These, together, will drive the economy.
lam
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am not so concerned about the game being PVP focused but this type of game can tend to bring out a significant number of people who I would classify as anti-social (anything else would tend to be censored by the mods). I like to go out into the world, by myself, at times, and if I tend to get slaughtered every time that I do or spend time mining or gathering and it all get stolen each time - I will stop playing.
A game is supposed to be fun and being killed for the temerity of going out by myself to pick and smell the flowers time and time again is not fun. For example, in Age of Conan on PVP servers some on these ant-social people used to bring high level characters to the Underhalls and White Sands and slaughter all of the low levels there - the reaction seemed to be you shouldn't go to these places if you could not defend yourself! So, because of some people who wanted to ruin other's fun, I shouldn't experience a significant portion of the early game. In none of the MMOs that I play have I ever been challenged by a duel by a character that is lower or at the same level as the one that I was playing. Some people just enjoy lording and gloating over another player's misfortune.
I am getting on a bit in years and my reactions are slowing considerably and so unlikely to be able to win what would be classified as a fair fight. Maybe PFO isn't for me? I have, or will have, materials that I think cover my pledge value and so don't consider that I have lost out, By the time a company decides on wielding a ban hammer for inappropriate behavior, this is one person that will be long gone.
I hope that my fears are unfounded and not realised as I am looking forward to what appears to be an immersive game. Unfortunately, my experience with internet game populations does not fill me with a great deal of hope.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The way I see it, it will need player-driven infrastructure to provide more niches for more types of play-styles.
If the devs are able to achieve part of their design incorporating alignment and reputation, and territory then I hope we'll see this emergence in diversity of playstyles enriching this digital world.
That is pretty much my ultimate interest in this game beyond it being fun for myself. That description is as simple as I can manage.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am also concerned about the focus on PvP.
Concern is certainly understandable, but I think we may redefine PvP. It just might work, what the devs are proposing, to make it meaningful, to make it matter not just for you and me but even for those who enjoy murdering game characters and find their personal expression in optimizing their play toward only that end.
There will be PvP and our characters will be killed, but they will also rise again. Stay with us in courage and help transform PvP into something we can all enjoy. For once we have an opportunity to contribute to that noble goal. It may be that we have here the beginnings of a role-playing game done right, with enabled PvP as a centerpiece for once, instead of as an add-on, yet under the auspices of the best RPG proprietor around, by some measures*.
If you build it, they will come. Kinda takes on a whole new meaning.
* I cannot say this definitively, but I know it is arguable that dungeon masters are proprietors and at least in my day, DMs rule.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
My previous experiences with other MMOs suggests that MMO + PvP = epic gank fest, with the inexperienced or lone players getting the short end in all the ways I described above and a few others I left out, but I'm sure someone has experienced in the past. Right now, I'm getting the impression PFO is leaning heavily towards a place where that kind of thing happens, if not runs rampant, and that isn't really the kind of game I thought I was signing up for.
Ryan has said many times that the community in Early Enrollment will have a large role to play in setting the tone of the game. There are several people active on these forums (Bluddwolf and Xeen most notably) who seem to be trying to paint the picture that PFO will be exactly the kind of thing that worries you. I encourage you to take what they say with a grain of salt.
Here is a typical and incredibly clear statement from Ryan:
The most important thing is not that characters can kill other characters. The most important thing is that there are consequences for doing that. And it's a corollary of that statement that the more often a character kills other characters, or helps a character killer, the harder it must be for that character to recover from doing so.
This is the kind of talking that made me give him well over $1,000 (and that's a lot of money to me).
In contrast, here's a typical twisting of Ryan's words by Bluddwolf.
I think that Early Enrollment is going to be very unstable. I think that people are going to find that what they thought would be fun isn't fun and what they thought would not be fun is fun.
Especially in the beginning the space we will have is very limited. People are going to feel crowded. There will be a natural tendency for people to fight rather than negotiate. The initial PvE content will be extraordinarily limited. You'll find camps of monsters, you'll fight them, you'll get some economic value from winning the fight, and you'll use that to get better gear to fight more monsters. Most people will do that for a few hours (maybe) then realize that the other players are way more interesting to fight than the monsters.
I expect there will be wandering bands of players focused on attacking and killing other characters. The penalties for being a ganker will be hard to make meaningful in a game without player Settlements. I hope that instead of a swirling chaos of everyone for themselves we end up with groups who fight with some cohesion.
I think that it will be very common for the first thing people to try is fighting one another. We may find that we need to create some kind of "Red vs Blue" structure very quickly to accommodate this kind of thing even if other game systems are not mature enough to let it emerge naturally. .
I don't know and can't predict the kinds of things we'll try to mold the community towards something more productive than just endless meaningless PvP. Partly it will rely on a consensus by the players that there needs to be more to the game than meaningless PvP or it won't grow and become interesting to a wider and more diverse audience.
The core game loop needs to make PvP a negative feedback loop. In other words if all you do is engage in PvP you should find that you become noncompetitive due to a lack of gear. The only way to get new gear is to have some economic value, which means you need to kill some monsters or do some crafting to sell gear to people who do kill monsters. We will have to learn as we go how to twist the knobs in the system to inject coin and harvestable resources, and how quickly to degrade and break gear.
Early Enrollment is really an experiment in community building as much as it is in game building. We will clearly make mistakes and have to roll back features and restart systems even fundamental systems like the economy. Everyone who plays in Early Enrollment will know what they're signing on for before they start, and I'm comfortable that some people will want to wait a long while for things to become more settled rather than "waste their time" playing in ways that might be rolled back.
I quoted the whole thing because I think there's a lot in there that will be important for you to read. Not only Ryan's statements like "[t]he core game loop needs to make PvP a negative feedback loop", but also his up-front acknowledgement that it's likely to be rough for a while.
But, to finish my point, here's the twisting that Bluddwolf applied to the bolded and enlarged portion.
The revelation that , will be quite an interesting proposition for the UNC.
I encourage you to carefully consider the source when reading these forums, and I hope you enjoy PFO and find a community that's right for you.