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Welcome back Goblinoids!! Harad has set a Gobbocast milestone! He recently conducted a video interview with Tork Shaw, one of the designers for everyone’s most anticipated game, Pathfinder Online.
We here at Gobbocast are most gracious for the interviews that the Goblinworks staff give us and there are more to come!
In this episode, Tork gives us a good bit of insight into Settlements! He gives us info on Settlement districts, structures and their application, a touch of how alignments will affect sponsorship, and a good bit on the War of the Towers… enjoy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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OK, so 3 large, 6 medium, 10 small. (Plus 10 tiny for lawn gnomes.)
That makes the choices interesting without being too terribly painful. If you spend 5 mids on all the feat schools, you can have 3 sets of 3 related classes in your larges, and a 10th class in your last mid. This lets you train all but one of the core classes but leaves no room for a market or any other large or medium facility. Guard barracks? Not sure what other options we'll have for non-training infrastructure, but that town won't have it anyway if it doesn't fit into a small.
Or, you can choose to specialize just a little bit. Arcane needs 2 feat schools so that's a bigger commitment; with 3 feat schools you can do arcane and divine, arcane and just one of heavy or light martial, or everything BUT arcane. Then approximate that you can free up one large and 2 mediums to do something other than class training, whatever those options might be.
I wonder if we'll see anyone try to offer arcane training with just one of occultist and war wizard, or will that double school model end up being a plot tax on arcane settlements. I suspect the latter.
We need to make sure that hit points and power are trainable at all or at least multiple schools.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The thing is, we have 19 plots of land, now, I thought that the NPC towns were pretty small as it is, but 19 plots is far less than what even Sotterhill currently has.
I am looking at Sotterhill which has 28 buildings, and going by size and what Tork said....
It looks like we have 3 Buildings that weren't discussed:
Auction House
Keep
Tavern
Medium Buildings -
Academy
Drednaught School
Fighter College
Occultist School
Seminary
Skirmisher School
Temple
Thieves Guild
War Wizard School
Small Buildings -
Alchemist Lab
Apothecary
Arcanist's Workshop
Artificer's Workshop
Enchanter
Geologist
Iconographer
Jeweler
Leatherworker
Loom
Quartermaster
Sawmill
Smeltmill
Tailor
Tannery
Woodshop
So, the questions that I have right now are....
1) What slots does the Keep, Tavern, and Auction House cover?
2) Can we convert a Large into 2-3 medium plots? Can we Convert a Medium into 2 small plots of land?
3) Do we get anything outside of those 19 slots? There looks to be some more room within the town to place things, and there is also room outside of the town perimeter itself.
4) Have you considered allowing some buildings to be built outside the perimeter, but within the hex?
5) When placing buildings do we get a measure of control where they go? Or do they have predetermined plots?
6) I believe you said there was a limit to 10 of the Index Boosting items/structures, Is this still accurate? If so are we limited in where they can be placed?
7) Do you have different types of architecture for these buildings? Or are we stuck to just the current look?
8) Can you give us a run down on the aesthetic difference we can see between settlements?
9) When will we be able to see walls? Can we place them or are they predefined?
10) Can we close the door to our settlement?
11) Do defenses, like walls, take up a different set of slots than the 19 we get?
12) What all buildings do you have planned without training options?
Note: If you negate the first three buildings it actually looks like you converted the 3 large land plots into medium buildings, and 3 mediums into half a dozen small.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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I am trying to confirm if the next one will be with Stephen Cheney. It looks like we can get an interview every other Wednesday, but logistically it will be the weekend before it is officially posted.
I was informed by Bonny that I was doing the next one and I said sure, so is that enough confirmation for you? ;)
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Pics or it didn't happen Stephen! Come on you know the internet rules man :P
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Goblin Squad Member
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Nicely done.
A couple of points though.
-the having uhm's an ah's in audio sound more natural and better to the brain then having sudden jump-cuts in it.
-regarding the intro. If you say something out loud you don't actually need to have it in text on the screen also. It's kinda like reading off of your powerpoint in a presentation.
regarding the audio version:
-some devices, be it players or headphones, have trouble or noticable quality loss at frequencies other then 44.1kHz you have 22.05kHz in this episode. It's due to the fact that it's mono and that's fine.
My complaint last time was due to the fact that you had different people on different channels and that can be also avoided while using stereo but still having the same audio on all channels. Provided that any of your listeners actually do run into this issue or try to submit your podcast to iTunes.
- the best quality to file size ratio for podcasting seems to be at a Bitrate of 64kBit/s yours is at 56kBit/s and I can hear a slight quality drop from the video version.
Also if you want to have the recording is full screen without having to have to actually go to full screen in Skype I can show you how to record screen regions. It's sometimes useful if you have to look something up without having to go back from full screen .
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Bluddwolf
In the last podcast they talked about how many towers you would need, and after a certain point you are getting diminishing returns. If you couple that with what Tork said, 1 Level of Training to 1 Tower, then your looking at a situation where in 3-4 months of WotT were not going to get past Level 12-13.
If you add in what was said about the weekly counting of towers towards your end score for the DI boosters, still not going to need more than 14-16, because there is a cut off. IF they end up doing 75% for secondary roles, then I could see the largest groups going for 16 towers to get their secondary roles to Level 12.
Therefore I conclude that the sweet spot for tower taking is 10-14, 10 for the smaller guilds and 14 for the larger ones. Smaller guilds will have a 3 hour window on their towers while the larger guilds will have 5.5 hour window. I think this means that we are going to have even more consolidation at a later date, probably about a month in, when smaller guilds just don't have the numbers to hold/take towers and its limiting their growth. Anyone under 50-60 population 4 months in will be having major issues. I think for the most part we will see a doubling in current Leaderboard numbers, so right now, anyone under 30 people on the Leaderboard might not make it.
Now, if you are looking at distribution of towers we have there are about 320 +/- a couple. If we go by my assumption that all the current Leaderboard members double (roughly) their numbers, and that anything under 60 could not really hold 10 towers, we are left with the following groups about 4-6 weeks:
Brighthaven - 350-400
Talonguard - 180-210
Golgotha - 180-210
Phaeros - 130-160
Keeper's Pass - 120-150
Callambea - 120-150
Ozem's Vigil - 110-140
Aragon - 100-130
Dagedai - 100-130
Forgeholm - 90-120
Kabal - 90-120
Emerald Lodge - 80-100
Tavernhold - 80-100
Blackwood Glade - 50-70
Sunholm - 50-70
Hammerfall - 50-70
Kruez Bernstein - 50-70
Freevale - 50-70
The two groups that might jump in to the list are Beachhead groups like vVv and The Guardians that have large player bases outside of PFO that they can recruit from. For now, we will go for the eighteen I listed.
If we divide 320/18 we get 17-18 towers per settlement. Now, we don't need that many, at most any one group will need 16, but if you need 6 people per company (one of the Blogs said you needed a full party when starting a company) then 96 is what you are going to need to sustain that many towers, minimum.
So, lets give each of the 18 their maximum towers based on an average of the min/max I just posted, but limiting the max towers to 16.
Brighthaven - 375 (16T)
Talonguard - 195 (16T)
Golgotha - 195 (16T)
Phaeros - 145 (16T)
Keeper's Pass - 135 (16T)
Callambea - 135 (16T)
Ozem's Vigil - 125 (16T)
Aragon - 115 (16T)
Dagedai - 115 (16T)
Forgeholm - 105 (16T)
Kabal - 105 (16T)
Emerald Lodge - 90 (15T)
Tavernhold - 90 (15T)
Blackwood Glade - 60 (10T)
Sunholm - 60 (10T)
Hammerfall - 60 (10T)
Kruez Bernstein - 60 (10T)
Freevale - 60(10T)
So, with these groups having the numbers to get the Sweetspot to the max of secondary role levels that leaves 64 Towers for the 15 other settlements. That is 4-5, which is about all they would be able to hold anyways with roughly doubling numbers. At this point, these groups are going to have to make a decision, and I think it is going to be consolidation.
I will be surprised if we enter OE with anything more than 15-20 Settlements, most likely towards the 15, because even some of the smaller groups with a decent amount of towers might merge together with other smaller groups to compete.
Sorry, Bluddwolf this post sort of got away from me, totally just ranted a bit here.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am trying to confirm if the next one will be with Stephen Cheney. It looks like we can get an interview every other Wednesday, but logistically it will be the weekend before it is officially posted.I was informed by Bonny that I was doing the next one and I said sure, so is that enough confirmation for you? ;)
Ah, yes. When Bonny uses words like "I think", I tend to get nervous.
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Goblin Squad Member
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-the having uhm's an ah's in audio sound more natural and better to the brain then having sudden jump-cuts in it.
Agreed.
-regarding the intro. If you say something out loud you don't actually need to have it in text on the screen also. It's kinda like reading off of your powerpoint in a presentation.
I know, but I exported the audio direct from the video, so I knew I would have to speak the titles for the audio listeners.
-some devices, be it players or headphones, have trouble or noticable quality loss at frequencies other then 44.1kHz you have 22.05kHz in this episode. It's due to the fact that it's mono and that's fine.
I re-sampled from 44.1kHz to 22kHz to save on file size. That may not be such an issue as before. That was done after the combining of channels into mono.
- the best quality to file size ratio for podcasting seems to be at a Bitrate of 64kBit/s yours is at 56kBit/s and I can hear a slight quality drop from the video version.
I'll check that out.
Also if you want to have the recording is full screen without having to have to actually go to full screen in Skype I can show you how to record screen regions. It's sometimes useful if you have to look something up without having to go back from full screen.
When I capture from the Skype window the screen resolution is fixed as if for full screen, leaving a lot of black border. I will investigate an alternative and get back to you by PM.
Thanks for the input and advice. It helps.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Cheatle, one of the variables you miss is that some of the smaller companies will simply pretend the war of towers doesn't exist. They will ignore their towers completely, and proceed through the environment, hoping that the fact of having a settlement will be enough, six+ months in, even if they have a DI disadvantage. I think most of the 33 settlements will still be there in six months, but that about 15 of them will be relatively moribund, with little ability to recruit. They will fold after the settlement wars begin in earnest, not during the tower wars.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Cheatle, one of the variables you miss is that some of the smaller companies will simply pretend the war of towers doesn't exist. They will ignore their towers completely, and proceed through the environment, hoping that the fact of having a settlement will be enough, six+ months in, even if they have a DI disadvantage. I think most of the 33 settlements will still be there in six months, but that about 15 of them will be relatively moribund, with little ability to recruit. They will fold after the settlement wars begin in earnest, not during the tower wars.
How will they advance their characters past the minimum levels (of feats allowed) without some towers?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Cheatle, one of the variables you miss is that some of the smaller companies will simply pretend the war of towers doesn't exist. They will ignore their towers completely, and proceed through the environment, hoping that the fact of having a settlement will be enough, six+ months in, even if they have a DI disadvantage. I think most of the 33 settlements will still be there in six months, but that about 15 of them will be relatively moribund, with little ability to recruit. They will fold after the settlement wars begin in earnest, not during the tower wars.
Agreed, some will see the real estate value of the settlement location, and attempt to sell it to the highest bidder during OE.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that most settlements will only be able to realistically hold 8-10 towers. The proto-settlements will be able to train to level 3 without towers, and my read of what Tork was saying is that you would need 4 towers to start to see any actual benifit (i.e, being able to train to level 4). I am not sure that you will be able to upgrade the buildings in the proto-settlements during the WoT period, so sponsoring towers may be the only way to get higher training levels. However, I could be misinterpreting what Tork was trying to say. The devs have said that a normal settlement (not proto-settlement) will need about 8 hexes to be comfortably sustainable. My impression is that the during WoT the rate of return will start dropping off after 8. Real (after the Great Catastrophe) settlements will require an upkeep cost to keep their buildings functional. I do not know if upkeep will be in place for the proto-settlements. If that is so then there will have to be a lot of harvesting and refining effort needed to sustain the towers and the proto-settlements. However, I do not have any substantiating evidence that proto-settlements will have an upkeep requirement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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When I capture from the Skype window the screen resolution is fixed as if for full screen, leaving a lot of black border. I will investigate an alternative and get back to you by PM.
Thanks for the input and advice. It helps.
I'm on Pax ts from time to time and more then willing to help. I'm listening to an average of 4 hours of podcasts on a daily basis and got curious about how to podcast and well.... found out a crapton of stuff about it. sadly I have a horrible voice and can't in good conscience record it.
So my basic situation right now is "have hammer, looking for nail"
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that most settlements will only be able to realistically hold 8-10 towers. The proto-settlements will be able to train to level 3 without towers, and my read of what Tork was saying is that you would need 4 towers to start to see any actual benifit (i.e, being able to train to level 4). I am not sure that you will be able to upgrade the buildings in the proto-settlements during the WoT period, so sponsoring towers may be the only way to get higher training levels. However, I could be misinterpreting what Tork was trying to say. The devs have said that a normal settlement (not proto-settlement) will need about 8 hexes to be comfortably sustainable. My impression is that the during WoT the rate of return will start dropping off after 8. Real (after the Great Catastrophe) settlements will require an upkeep cost to keep their buildings functional. I do not know if upkeep will be in place for the proto-settlements. If that is so then there will have to be a lot of harvesting and refining effort needed to sustain the towers and the proto-settlements. However, I do not have any substantiating evidence that proto-settlements will have an upkeep requirement.
That sounds mostly like what I heard, Harad. I can't see them expecting us to upkeep the settlement structures because: 1. It doesn't sound as though we will have any agency beyond choosing the basic template to start, and 2. We will have no way to get bulk resources for that upkeep.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Cheatle, one of the variables you miss is that some of the smaller companies will simply pretend the war of towers doesn't exist. They will ignore their towers completely, and proceed through the environment, hoping that the fact of having a settlement will be enough, six+ months in, even if they have a DI disadvantage. I think most of the 33 settlements will still be there in six months, but that about 15 of them will be relatively moribund, with little ability to recruit. They will fold after the settlement wars begin in earnest, not during the tower wars.Agreed, some will see the real estate value of the settlement location, and attempt to sell it to the highest bidder during OE.
Towers will disappear completely after the Great Catastrophe and tower hexes will become unclaimed (and empty of structure) hexes. An un-sponsored tower will have a 24-hour PvP window (with respect to conflict conducted to occupy a tower location, not hex wide). This means that a company might get a tower, but if they ignore it, it will be taken from them. I believe that after the GC, settlements will loose all DI benefit that may have had during WoT from having sponsored towers (proto-PoI, if you will). They will have banked resources to help them rebuild their settlement and to build PoI, but I think the the companies will still have to spend influence to build those PoI before they can be sponsored. Companies in WoT may be able to bank influence for after the GC, but I do not believe that company influence banking is a done deal as yet.
Actually Harad, he said the npc settlements will allow training up to level 3, and you'd need 3-4 towers just to equal an npc settlement in terms of training, and further said that if a settlement has a really low amount of people and cant take towers, they won't be able to train above level 1, so proto-settlements start at level 1 for training, not 3.
As far as being able to build/upkeep, it's true we may not be able to until the cataclysm, but as for what bringslite says, we should be able to obtain bulk resources, right? I remember Harad mentioning in the interview that settlements would keep the resources they had gathered during WoT and would use those to rebuild after the cataclysm.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Actually Harad, he said the npc settlements will allow training up to level 3, and you'd need 3-4 towers just to equal an npc settlement in terms of training, and further said that if a settlement has a really low amount of people and cant take towers, they won't be able to train above level 1, so proto-settlements start at level 1 for training, not 3.
As far as being able to build/upkeep, it's true we may not be able to until the cataclysm, but as for what bringslite says, we should be able to obtain bulk resources, right? I remember Harad mentioning in the interview that settlements would keep the resources they had gathered during WoT and would use those to rebuild after the cataclysm.
I was going to point out that the way that came across could be taken two ways. Different little statements at different times, added up. It must be difficult to maintain exact specifics in open conversation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Actually Harad, he said the npc settlements will allow training up to level 3, and you'd need 3-4 towers just to equal an npc settlement in terms of training, and further said that if a settlement has a really low amount of people and cant take towers, they won't be able to train above level 1, so proto-settlements start at level 1 for training, not 3.
As far as being able to build/upkeep, it's true we may not be able to until the cataclysm, but as for what bringslite says, we should be able to obtain bulk resources, right? I remember Harad mentioning in the interview that settlements would keep the resources they had gathered during WoT and would use those to rebuild after the cataclysm.
As far as I am aware (not positive at all) POIs and their outposts are for gathering "Bulk Resources". Toons wandering about are for gathering "Crafting Resources".
Though, when I said gathered, I actually meant collecting bulk resources, not literally gathering crafting resources.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Bringslite, they specifically mentioned twice now that you can, at a loss, turn node resources into bulk resources. That requires a lot of man power.
Ah, I had forgotten that.
So, what are the chances that they will expect us to do that to support these proto settlements with extra effort?
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Goblin Squad Member
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As far as being able to build/upkeep, it's true we may not be able to until the cataclysm, but as for what bringslite says, we should be able to obtain bulk resources, right? I remember Harad mentioning in the interview that settlements would keep the resources they had gathered during WoT and would use those to rebuild after the cataclysm.
I am unsure as to what is going to happen at the Great Catastrophe. One possibility is that the proto-settlements can bank resources they gather/refine during WoT to be used to rebuild after the GC. On the other, the proto-settlements may be given an allotment of resources based on the number of tower sponsored in WoT to rebuild after the GC. I am not sure which has the lead in the current thinking. I am old and my brain is cheese.
