Goblin Squad Member
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When I look at the core list of features that is supposed to be in the game in let's say a year after Open Enrollment (so something like Q1 2017) I get bewildered sometimes, and filled with doubt that some of these systems are simply too hard to implement. That the game has too many features that are each in itself very innovative. But at the same time, it is these systems that make PFO so incredably intriguing for me.
So, mostly for my own sake, I made a list of these core features and gave them a score that indicates how important I feel the feature is, and a personal assessment of how hard it seems to implement.
This is not a doom and gloom post, but one born out of enthusiasm and some hesitation about the hugeness of this project.
Importance goes from 1-10(most important) and off course that score is personal.
1)Player created Settlements; 10, tough balancing act concerning things like DI, Corruption, access-flags, membership, banks and so forth; a major challenge;
2)Settlement Wars; 9, entails so many smaller features that I do not even want to go there;
3)Alignment; 8, pretty hard to create some fun gameplay out of this; potential for grinding and metagaming;
4)Reputation-system; 9, this is imo the hardest thing to get right; metagaming will reach new heights with this feature;
5)Resource-economy/Gathering/Harvesting; 10, awesome feature but dependent on 6;
6)Locality of resources/regionalization of markets; 10, awesome feature, which again seems to be dependent on 7;
7)Transportation-system with sufficient delay/hazards; 11!; this seems to me very hard to balance and make fun; but if they manage it, it will be one of the pillars of the game imo;
8)Feuds; 8, dependent on 9;
9)PoI's;9 these seem to be the biggest incentive for PvP outside of a direct Siege situation; very important to give PvP a purpose and give substance to the political landscape and "spread" PvP across the lands, next to their importance for Settlements (and the Sieges of these); Important system that will need a lot of work.
10)SAD/banditry; 7, tough balancing act, depends on 7 and 5, i.e. enough players that are not holed up in their settlement;
11) Escalation cycles; 8, seems tough to make it into something more interesting then just an accelerating spawn cycle; if sufficient boons then it will add to PvP, crafting and banditry;
12) Personal Travel; 8, this ties into pretty much all other features, from Wars to Harvesting; balance between too slow (unfun) and too fast(will mess up other features) will be tough to keep.
13)Crafting; 10, awesome feature, could be extremely deep when it ties enough into 1,2,5,6,7 and 11
14)Formations; 7, sounds very tough to implement, but if this would cause large PvP battles to be less hectic then I am all for it. :)
15)Corpse looting; 6, balancing act, ties into several other features for balancing, mostly 4,5,7,10 and 12; I can see corpse-looting
and items poofing on death be heavily tweaked against other systems that take items out of the economy.
16)Last but not least: One single world, that expands over time.......; 12! I can not even begin to think about the hardware implications of this, the network-engineering, the melt-downs.... let alone the creation of more "land to play with" when the players are pushing against the boundaries of the game. it is one of *the* biggest draws of the game though, it would in fact put the word EPIC in PFO. I so hope they can stay true to this.
So, my simple take on PFO spiced with my worries! :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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A similar potential roadmap based on your 10 point system with 10 being high priority, high impact:
[10][MVP] (Primary--) secure authentication system
[10][MVP] (Primary--) terrain generation system
[10][MVP] (Primary--) combat system
[10][MVP] (Secondary) melee combat system
[10][MVP] (Secondary) magic combat system
[10][MVP] (Secondary) ranged combat system
[10][MVP] (Primary--) inventory management system
[10][MVP] (Primary--) skill impact system
[10][MVP] (Primary--) creature spawning system
[10][MVP] (Secondary) looting system
[09][EE-] (Primary--) character creation system
[09][EE-] (Secondary) character alignment system
[09][EE-] (Primary--) character grouping system
[09][EE-] (Primary--) in-game communication systems
[09][EE-] (Tertiary-) player-versus-player combat
[08][EE-] (Primary--) stand-and-deliver system
[08][EE-] (Primary--) economy management system
[08][EE-] (Secondary) creature escalation cycle
[07][EE-] (Primary--) settlement management system
[07][EE-] (Secondary) item crafting system
[07][EE-] (Tertiary-) character stealth system
[06][EE-] (Secondary) character traits system
[06][EE-] (Secondary) consumables system
[06][EE-] (Secondary) banking system
[06][EE-] (Secondary) guild support system
[04][OE-] (Primary--) environmental weather system
[04][OE-] (Primary--) fast travel system
[02][OE-] (Secondary) battle formations
[02][OE-] (Secondary) feuds
[01][OE-] (Secondary) day night cycle
Just some thoughts at this early stage...
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Goblin Squad Member
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When I look at the core list of features that is supposed to be in the game in let's say a year after Open Enrollment (so something like Q1 2017) I get bewildered sometimes, and filled with doubt that some of these systems are simply too hard to implement. That the game has too many features that are each in itself very innovative. But at the same time, it is these systems that make PFO so incredably intriguing for me.
If the basic game is "working as intended" enough, I think it is already on the road to an interesting game experience: Freedom of "agency" (as described on the GW website) to effect "persistence" in a "meaningful" way in an "open world". Even the core gameloop achieves those things in small degree: So the seed has all the dna in it to grow to use that analogy.
The real question is how much fun will that be to begin with? I think it depends on the players and on how fun the combat is and roles provisioned for players to usefully take on, on day 1, for the particular audience here and how frequent the devs can add new and interesting systems that elaborate on that.
Often mmorpgs seem to promise a lot that either is not as good as it sounds or never gets made. Hopefully the small budget we'll see when we start as good value for money and over time the budget grows in line with the game growing and we see that albeit in a slow and steady pace. Unlike themeparks that add more of the same if at all.
The systems/features in the design blogs speak for themselves. If the above pattern forms, then we've got a good chance of seeing them. :)