Goblin Squad Member
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Here's a short article: What Went Wrong?
One line in particular hit home so I'll repeat it here; "however, a strong community is just a foundation on which to build."
Once that community gets in the game, what is going to keep them there? What experiences will they have that will make them tell their friends they should play this game instead of another one?
Farther on in the article they talk about delivering new content. That seems like a purely themepark issue but it isn't. As a Sandbox game under constant development PFO's new content will be new graphic models, functions, abilities, etc. They will need to constantly keep us updated and give us something to be excited about to stay in the game. Wurm Online has done a good job of this with their updates and I hope PFO will do the same.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I really don't believe the same will hold true for PFO, but if it does then those who vanish are right to leave. My reasoning is that players who are there to be passively entertained while they pretend to be interactive have no right business, that I can see, in a sandbox. We have to be old fashioned, like before television old fashioned (perhaps pre-radio old fashioned) and live independently from pablum content. We aren't going to be entertained so much by an ever-escalating stream of gear and abilities even if GW has it in mind to feed that into the game. The stream of gear we will see will be from recipe drops and our assiduous crafters. The entertainment we get won't be passively received we will be making the drama all on our own. We will play this game, rather than expecting the game to play itself for us.
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Goblin Squad Member
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PFO will churn through a lot of players unhappy becasue its "not the same as TT Pathfinder" or "has a weird XP system, I want XP when I kill things" etc etc
The test will be whether (despite the churn of players trying and not likely the unique style and leaving) the player numbers gradually build over time or stagnate.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How many customers did WildStar have? Might a smaller customer-base have alleviated some of the problems?
If you read the comments, having a smaller community would have made no difference, and that doesn't even mane sense anyway.
Wild Star failed because it was too Grindy, too much a WoW Clone, and was Soulless.
Goblin Works needs to pay attention to this article, because they may have two of those issues on their own hands.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Wild Star failed because it was too Grindy, too much a WoW Clone, and was Soulless.
Goblin Works needs to pay attention to this article, because they may have two of those issues on their own hands.
Since we players are part of the content, if PFO Is soulless we have no one to blame but ourselves. There will be some grindyness, especially in the begging, but I think that will smooth out of time as other sandbox tools are introduced. And this surely is not a WoW clone (most are, including RiFT and Elder Scrolls).
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Goblin Squad Member
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How many customers did WildStar have? Might a smaller customer-base have alleviated some of the problems?If you read the comments, having a smaller community would have made no difference, and that doesn't even mane sense anyway.
From the article:
WildStar had all the hallmarks of a promising launch: promising reviews and widespread critical acclaim, queues of players waiting to log in, and a burgeoning community that was excited by Carbine’s new IP. It’s difficult to imagine a better environment in which to fire up a brand new MMO.
But the story takes a turn. As I’ve talked to friends, fans and genre veterans, the same question keeps cropping up: where did it all go wrong? It’s not been an easy question to answer, as we all have our opinions on why WildStar came down to earth with a bump. But there are a couple of common threads: on pushing the hardcore angle too heavily, on botched QA that introduced as many bugs as it patched, and on servers that quickly felt deserted.
Sounds like the same Spike & Crash that Ryan's been talking about from the beginning, and been working to avoid with PFO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Since we players are part of the content, if PFO Is soulless we have no one to blame but ourselves. There will be some grindyness, especially in the begging, but I think that will smooth out of time as other sandbox tools are introduced. And this surely is not a WoW clone (most are, including RiFT and Elder Scrolls).Wild Star failed because it was too Grindy, too much a WoW Clone, and was Soulless.
Goblin Works needs to pay attention to this article, because they may have two of those issues on their own hands.
The grindiness is already an issue, when you consider you have to kill hundreds or even a thousand or more of lowly mobs, just to achieve the lower levels of the roles (ie Rogue 7+).
That grindiness helps lead to that "soulless" feeling, just as end game that is nothing more than a gear grind, or having to raid through the same dungeons over and over again.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Since we players are part of the content, if PFO Is soulless we have no one to blame but ourselves. There will be some grindyness, especially in the begging, but I think that will smooth out of time as other sandbox tools are introduced. And this surely is not a WoW clone (most are, including RiFT and Elder Scrolls).Wild Star failed because it was too Grindy, too much a WoW Clone, and was Soulless.
Goblin Works needs to pay attention to this article, because they may have two of those issues on their own hands.
The grindiness is already an issue, when you consider you have to kill hundreds or even a thousand or more of lowly mobs, just to achieve the lower levels of the roles (ie Rogue 7+).
That grindiness helps lead to that "soulless" feeling, just as end game that is nothing more than a gear grind, or having to raid through the same dungeons over and over again.
The principle behind achievements is good. Otherwise people will not login for months, then download the current "awesome min/max rogue build" and go out killing stuff with no effort on their part.
The issue here is lack of alternate ways to get achievements for rogues.
Rogue possibilities to reduce grind:
- daggers as a separate class of weapon from shortsword and and giving seperate achievement
- trap setting in game and giving separate achievement
- disable trap in game and giving separate achievement
- "kills using sneak attack" as a separate achievement
I am not a rogue so there are probably more I have not thought of.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with Edam on at least one point: Either you gate everything behind time, you gate everything behind grind, you go for a hybrid (like PFO), or you just hand everything to the players right away. All of those choices will tick off some of your players, but you've got to make the choice.
Edit: On the other point, clerics also need better ways to earn achievements. They're getting some now, and GW can add more later.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Here is our vision of how this is supposed to work (in the MVP, not long term).
You go into the wilderness and kill monsters to get crafting components and coin. The more monsters you kill, the more components and coin you get.
You bring that stuff back to town and sell it to the crafters. You use the coin you generated in the wilderness and the coin you got from selling the loot to buy upgraded gear so you can kill different monsters and get more valuable crafting components and more coin.
You notice every once in a while while doing this that you've hit an achievement which may be gating your training.
You should find relatively quickly that the time required to accumulate enough XP to advance your training roughly correlates with the time it takes to kill enough monsters to clear the gate.
So it should not feel "grindy" in the sense that you are mindlessly killing monsters for no purpose other than racking up a kill total.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's the Catch 22 of every method all games use to try and slow the speed of progression. And the unfortunate byproduct of any rate- limiting step, is that MMO players will grind ridiculously at it to overcome it - and will do it successfully - while complaining that the grind is unbearable. The end result being dissatisfied players and a failed strategy to slow rapid progression through content or power curve. Does anyone know of an MMORPG that has come up with a novel solution to this?
Edit: Mr. Dancey posts faster than I can! This was in response to the comments above his. I do wonder if the xp-over-time may end up helping put the brakes on more than anything else.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Here is our vision of how this is supposed to work (in the MVP, not long term).
You go into the wilderness and kill monsters to get crafting components and coin. The more monsters you kill, the more components and coin you get.
You bring that stuff back to town and sell it to the crafters. You use the coin you generated in the wilderness and the coin you got from selling the loot to buy upgraded gear so you can kill different monsters and get more valuable crafting components and more coin.
You notice every once in a while while doing this that you've hit an achievement which may be gating your training.
You should find relatively quickly that the time required to accumulate enough XP to advance your training roughly correlates with the time it takes to kill enough monsters to clear the gate.
So it should not feel "grindy" in the sense that you are mindlessly killing monsters for no purpose other than racking up a kill total.
I have the impression some people would like to eventually ONLY do PvP and nothing else. Or at least mainly get their income from PvP at least. For them any killing of PvE content at all is probably an issue.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the biggest thing that can make the game feel grindy right now, for me, is the requirement to get killing blows to earn achievements. For the roles who get killing blows in combat less often (rogues and clerics), that discourages partying (less than the loot bug did, but still to some extent). To me, being in a party makes killing monsters feel less grindy.
Clerics should have it a little easier now, if they can convince their party to go after undead/Razmiran escalations. Rogues, we'll see.
Being able to party with your company/settlement-mates, in the neighborhood of your settlement, should help too.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Here is our vision of how this is supposed to work (in the MVP, not long term).
You go into the wilderness and kill monsters to get crafting components and coin. The more monsters you kill, the more components and coin you get.
You bring that stuff back to town and sell it to the crafters. You use the coin you generated in the wilderness and the coin you got from selling the loot to buy upgraded gear so you can kill different monsters and get more valuable crafting components and more coin.
You notice every once in a while while doing this that you've hit an achievement which may be gating your training.
You should find relatively quickly that the time required to accumulate enough XP to advance your training roughly correlates with the time it takes to kill enough monsters to clear the gate.
So it should not feel "grindy" in the sense that you are mindlessly killing monsters for no purpose other than racking up a kill total.
I have the impression some people would like to eventually ONLY do PvP and nothing else. Or at least mainly get their income from PvP at least. For them any killing of PvE content at all is probably an issue.
That might be a factor for some people, but even if you don't mind PvE in principle, doing it alone can get boring much faster than PvE with friends.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the biggest thing that can make the game feel grindy right now, for me, is the requirement to get killing blows to earn achievements. For the roles who get killing blows in combat less often (rogues and clerics), that discourages partying (less than the loot bug did, but still to some extent). To me, being in a party makes killing monsters feel less grindy.
Clerics should have it a little easier now, if they can convince their party to go after undead/Razmiran escalations. Rogues, we'll see.
Being able to party with your company/settlement-mates, in the neighborhood of your settlement, should help too.
My cleric is almost Divine 7 anyway, and that is mainly from chasing resources not grinding kills.
However more options are good. So I assume by the Risen escalation comment the skeleton achievement is now introduced ? Did it back date to include existing skeleton kills ?
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Goblin Squad Member
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How many customers did WildStar have? Might a smaller customer-base have alleviated some of the problems?If you read the comments, having a smaller community would have made no difference, and that doesn't even mane sense anyway.From the article:
Sounds like the same Spike & Crash that Ryan's been talking about from the beginning, and been working to avoid with PFO.WildStar had all the hallmarks of a promising launch: promising reviews and widespread critical acclaim, queues of players waiting to log in, and a burgeoning community that was excited by Carbine’s new IP. It’s difficult to imagine a better environment in which to fire up a brand new MMO.
But the story takes a turn. As I’ve talked to friends, fans and genre veterans, the same question keeps cropping up: where did it all go wrong? It’s not been an easy question to answer, as we all have our opinions on why WildStar came down to earth with a bump. But there are a couple of common threads: on pushing the hardcore angle too heavily, on botched QA that introduced as many bugs as it patched, and on servers that quickly felt deserted.
PFO will have two spikes and crashes, but only if the population recovers enough after the first crash to actually reach the second spike.
There is no way to prevent the first spike and crash, it is a naturally occurring event. Players play for the first 30 - 90 days (the time that comes along with the initial purchase), and then those somewhat dissatisfied leave. Occasionally some may return, after significant content expansions, but for the most part they are lost for good.
If OE ever happens, the new surge of players will be here for the settlement vs. settlement conquest. If the crafting or other PvE content where the draw for OE, those players would have already been in PFO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You should find relatively quickly that the time required to accumulate enough XP to advance your training roughly correlates with the time it takes to kill enough monsters to clear the gate.
So it should not feel "grindy" in the sense that you are mindlessly killing monsters for no purpose other than racking up a kill total.
Unfortunately, the end result is no different then a mission that asks you to go kill 50 goblins and then rewards xp upon completion.
In both instances you have to kill 50 goblins and you will have a set amount of xp by the time you are finished. Putting a different twist on it doesn't eliminate the feel of a grind. There's always a reason for grinding but that doesn't reduce the tedium.
When it comes to PFO, grinding shouldn't even be an issue. It's supposed to be a sandbox, not a PvE grindfest. In its current alpha state it is at the same level as many Korean MMO's but not as pretty.
The focus needs to return to the PvP. With an xp gate of real time, requiring PvE kill achievements isn't even needed. They can be fun achievements to get and show off but they shouldn't be required for feat or skill gain or gaining a level in a role. If they are mandatory it forces players to go grind mobs when they'd rather be doing other things. Give mobs special resources that players want and they will kill plenty of them all on their own.
The Reputation system is far too harsh to allow the kind of PvP this game needs to be challenging, fun and sometimes scary. I think Reputation needs to stay in but at a far reduced rate of gain. One of Eve's successes is that when unknown ships meet there is a good chance one of them may attack the other but not always. If PFO's Reputation system was applied to Eve Online, how would it fare?
Reduce the Reputation penalties, remove the kill mob requirements for feats/skills and let the players focus on the real content of this game; each other.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Here is our vision of how this is supposed to work (in the MVP, not long term).
You go into the wilderness and kill monsters to get crafting components and coin. The more monsters you kill, the more components and coin you get.
You bring that stuff back to town and sell it to the crafters. You use the coin you generated in the wilderness and the coin you got from selling the loot to buy upgraded gear so you can kill different monsters and get more valuable crafting components and more coin.
You notice every once in a while while doing this that you've hit an achievement which may be gating your training.
You should find relatively quickly that the time required to accumulate enough XP to advance your training roughly correlates with the time it takes to kill enough monsters to clear the gate.
So it should not feel "grindy" in the sense that you are mindlessly killing monsters for no purpose other than racking up a kill total.
I have the impression some people would like to eventually ONLY do PvP and nothing else. Or at least mainly get their income from PvP at least. For them any killing of PvE content at all is probably an issue.
Yep, and I think those people should definitely be welcome in this game as well. I hope they think of something with achievements to allow it to be a possibility.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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We won't have two spikes and two crashes.
We won't have any spikes at all. The only question is if we are able to keep enough people each month to grow incrementally according to our plan (or better).
Most people who have access to Early Enrollment probably won't play in the first month. If 30% of them do I'll be happy. I don't say that because they don't want to play, I say that because most of them are not paying attention. We're still getting people every day asking about the Pledge Manager.
If by some miracle we had an explosion of interest and got a huge influx of new players, we'll turn on the cap. We have to - the game just can't survive being hit with a massive load of new players and it needs time to develop culturally as well as technically. I'd love to have that problem but I don't expect it.
Once we find the right formula in terms of how to market the game and drive steady acquisitions there will be "spikes" but they'll be small variances in the average, not multiples of existing account totals.
Same with Open Enrollment. There are about 2,500 people with Open Enrollment accounts. By January 2016 that should be about half a months' worth of new player acquisition. Even if all of them joined en masse it wouldn't be a "spike" in the Theme Park sense.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Unfortunately, the end result is no different then a mission that asks you to go kill 50 goblins and then rewards xp upon completion.
It's the difference between someone who loves to cook ending up with a meal they can eat and someone who is told "make me dinner".
RyanD
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Goblin Squad Member
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Not really impressed by the article or its content but it is mmorpg so I'm not shocked. Despite the sensationalism and throwing about of big name raid guilds it's not entirely wrong. There was a fair amount of a grind to get raid attuned in Wildstar. I never made it. Honestly the game was just too hard for pug groups (that's not me saying I thought it was hard). I could only take beating my face into a brick wall of three hours of wipes in a normal dungeon with a PUG group. I don't agree with soulless though, just very unfriendly to casuals. I'd still be playing if my fiancée hadn't taken a break from MMOs. At the moment (yeah, yeah, potential and roadmap) the grind in PFO is worse for achievements. I'm hoping the Pax community provides a soul and reason for my grind.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Unfortunately, the end result is no different then a mission that asks you to go kill 50 goblins and then rewards xp upon completion.It's the difference between someone who loves to cook ending up with a meal they can eat and someone who is told "make me dinner".
RyanD
Not really. What you just said, if put to my example, would be someone who really enjoyed killing goblins vs someone who found it boring. In the end they both end up with the same kill count and amount of xp.
Yeah, there will be people who really like killing goblins and they should be rewarded with fun stuff by being an awesome Goblin Slayer, but it should not be a requirement that forces everyone in the game to kill goblins. It makes it a grind for those who don't enjoy it and that's just not fun.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Here is our vision of how this is supposed to work (in the MVP, not long term).
You go into the wilderness and kill monsters to get crafting components and coin. The more monsters you kill, the more components and coin you get.
You bring that stuff back to town and sell it to the crafters. You use the coin you generated in the wilderness and the coin you got from selling the loot to buy upgraded gear so you can kill different monsters and get more valuable crafting components and more coin.
You notice every once in a while while doing this that you've hit an achievement which may be gating your training.
You should find relatively quickly that the time required to accumulate enough XP to advance your training roughly correlates with the time it takes to kill enough monsters to clear the gate.
So it should not feel "grindy" in the sense that you are mindlessly killing monsters for no purpose other than racking up a kill total.
But, that is exactly the feeling that is created. Do you believe players want to kill 500 low level mobs, with each weapon type, to hit those gates?
In order for me to reach Rogue 7, not only did I have to kill 500 lowbies with my Short Bow, but also 250 with my light blade, another 250 with Long Bow and now either another 250 with Long Bow or 150 x 2 with two Martial weapons.... All of this just to unlock Rogue 8 and get Basic Combat 4 and Basic Ranged Combat 3 or 4, I forget....
Soon, I will also have the expenditure of xp to be wasted on crafting skills I have no intentions of using, just so I can raise my attributes to unlock further advancement as a Rogue / Fighter.
There is a whole lot of grinding going on, and it is scary that you don't see it.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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@Ravenlute, @Bluddwolf - you are both proceeding from the same set of assumptions. Assumptions which may be true for you, but will not be true for most players.
Most "Adventuring" players will have the goal of getting better Gear. They get that Gear by purchasing it from "Crafting" players. The Adventurers and the Crafters are symbiotic.
The monsters get killed in pursuit of a larger goal. Killing monsters is not the goal. Most Adventuring players won't be killing monsters to hit an achievement gate. Once they have burned through the stuff you can train for a couple of hundred XP, they'll be waiting for days or weeks to train more Feats. During that time they'll be engaged in the economic loop. For Adventurers that loop is killing monsters. So most of those players won't find it a "grind" to hit achievement goals.
I've said this enough times now that I think you both understand it. You just don't want to play that kind of game so you're looking for a critique of the system. That's a legit criticism but it's not fair to say that most players will be "grinding" to kill monsters. Because they won't. They'll be "grinding" (if we have to use that term) to get loot to enable themselves to buy better Gear.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've said this enough times now that I think you both understand it. You just don't want to play that kind of game so you're looking for a critique of the system. That's a legit criticism but it's not fair to say that most players will be "grinding" to kill monsters. Because they won't. They'll be "grinding" (if we have to use that term) to get loot to enable themselves to buy better Gear.
For me -- i am killing the little buggers looking for recipes and spells.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Personally I've found I HATE killing things with focus objects. Their attacks are crap and utterly useless when compared with the power of a crusader's melee attacks. Love the healing and support, hate the damage.
But I need divine points to advance as a crusader and those come through killing things with focus objects.
Diversity of achievements will hopefully help but I can see how it's being labeled as grindy right now.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hopefully, when WoT starts, some of those mob killing gates can morph into "Kill X Mobs or Y Players with Weapon Type Z". Slashing and blasting enemy players for a Tower should be good practice in our roles, too. (Maybe, if the program can handle it, with a caveat that only rep-neutral player kills count during the WoT.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Personally I've found I HATE killing things with focus objects. Their attacks are crap and utterly useless when compared with the power of a crusader's melee attacks. Love the healing and support, hate the damage.
But I need divine points to advance as a crusader and those come through killing things with focus objects.
Diversity of achievements will hopefully help but I can see how it's being labeled as grindy right now.
To be honest I am tending to use more spells with divine focus these days. The patch should let me accelerate production of a better focus so I can use my level 3 spells.
I agree if you are killing things to get achievements it is clearly a grind.
However I also understand what Ryan is saying, If you are clearing escalations to free up your settlement and killing the ogres to make gathering safer, the achievements will rack up without you noticing.
The achievements will be an issue for EVE style gate-camping gankers who want to sit around all day chatting on team-speak and downloading pron while waiting for the scouts to let them know a good target is passing through. But otherwise I do not see it a big issue.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If Adventurers are killing mobs for their drops, as it should be, and won't even be aware of the gate requirements then why have the gate at all? That is my point of contention. I do not think the kill mob requirement is wanted or needed for PFO. The players who will be killing the mobs will be doing so anyway and those who wish to do other things should not be bound.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I do wonder if the xp-over-time may end up helping put the brakes on more than anything else.
I think it will for the 'keepers' the folks we'd like to stay on, but for most you're asking for them to notice the difference and figure out that after L6 or 7 you might have months before you accumulate enough xp to make the next level and in those months you will have made your achievements several times over if you play every day. I think few are very perceptive.
I think I will have a really good laugh when some of the gamers I've seen in the wild come in to PFO attempting to powerlevel to the endgame.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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If Adventurers are killing mobs for their drops, as it should be, and won't even be aware of the gate requirements then why have the gate at all?
Because we don't want you to log in, start a character, log out, and then log back in a year later and be uber.
Hopefully, when WoT starts, some of those mob killing gates can morph into "Kill X Mobs or Y Players with Weapon Type Z". Slashing and blasting enemy players for a Tower should be good practice in our roles, too. (Maybe, if the program can handle it, with a caveat that only rep-neutral player kills count during the WoT.)
This.
Please this.
So much please this.
@RyanDancey ^ ^ ^
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Goblin Squad Member
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If Adventurers are killing mobs for their drops, as it should be, and won't even be aware of the gate requirements then why have the gate at all?Because we don't want you to log in, start a character, log out, and then log back in a year later and be uber.
My feeling on the current system is that it creates a barrier to entry but after you've been playing regularly awhile you'll have all the achievements you could ever need.
So you may not be able to make a fresh character, come back a year later and make it uber, but if you played it regularly for two months? Seems possible to me given I was able to keep up with my first weeks XP this phase when I worked about 70 hours that week.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If Adventurers are killing mobs for their drops, as it should be, and won't even be aware of the gate requirements then why have the gate at all?Because we don't want you to log in, start a character, log out, and then log back in a year later and be uber.My feeling on the current system is that it creates a barrier to entry but after you've been playing regularly awhile you'll have all the achievements you could ever need.
So you may not be able to make a fresh character, come back a year later and make it uber, but if you played it regularly for two months? Seems possible to me given I was able to keep up with my first weeks XP this phase when I worked about 70 hours that week.
Basically without achievement gating a XP/hour system is pay to win.
Its a little bit like rolling up level 20 D&D/Pathfinder characters. An interesting exercise in min-maxing but that's about it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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End game was...not set up quite properly from how my friend was describing it.
Extremely difficult atunement that was usually interrupted by a instance server going down well past the first month or two of the game coupled by just how precise the raid fights needed to be completed. Replacing people was an impossible task as you needed to basically start over anytime anyone was new which took weeks.
The housing was popular for a while at least.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I also think the mmo genre isn't growing that much in terms of player-base. So people try different games, but if they have an older game they like better they'll probably return to it.
I also think when it comes to grinding the reason to grind is a factor. If your grinding to help your settlement or kingdom to wage war or defend against an attacker it might make the grind more meaningful than just grinding to get something for your own character.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If Adventurers are killing mobs for their drops, as it should be, and won't even be aware of the gate requirements then why have the gate at all?Because we don't want you to log in, start a character, log out, and then log back in a year later and be uber.
That's fair. If the situation is concern that players will just log in to level up and not participate much in the actual game then Aeioun has a good point.
I also think when it comes to grinding the reason to grind is a factor. If your grinding to help your settlement or kingdom to wage war or defend against an attacker it might make the grind more meaningful than just grinding to get something for your own character.
Every character is already required to be part of a Settlement, either player or NPC owned. So rather than make players complete achievements to gain feats directly, give them a more dynamic choice requested by their Settlement. Gate the amount of xp that can be spent by having them complete Settlement quests. Give the player the choice of what type of quest they want to get out of a few options.
For example, they have to complete a quest for their Settlement that requires ridding the hills of a certain amount of nearby bandits or crafting a certain number of items for the settlement guards or scouting particular points out in the wilderness. They only need to do one of these options but it gives them the choice to pick something more suited to their play style.
You could build a Settlement token system off of this. The Settlement produces these simple random quests and upon completion awards the character a non-tradable token. Those tokens in turn can be used as a form of currency along with xp to purchase feats/skills/items from trainers/vendors in a Settlement. They could also be used to improve the Settlement in some way. That would ask the player to make a choice between improving themselves or the Settlement and may encourage them to spend more time in-game acquiring those tokens so that they can do both.
Went off on a bit of a side there but the point is, some grinding is more acceptable than others. At the very base, my suggestion is no different than the current one. You may need to kill a number of mobs. It's the reason, the perception, that matters.
I hope I made sense, it's not always easy for me to communicate my thoughts.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Settlement quests should be implicit in the current system without building an artifice that hands them out as kill or fetch orders. If there is an escalation near then it is already implicit that the player-citizens need to quell the escalation. If player-citizens need gear then it is implicit that resources must be harvested, refined, and gear crafted. And if the player needs achievements, shouldn't that already be manifest in the achievements trackers?
I don't think we should need the game to detect and figure those things out for us, do we?
Maybe the achievements interfaces need to be unified and filterable, but beyond that do we really need the game to figure itself out for us and hand out task lists?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Ravenlute, @Bluddwolf - you are both proceeding from the same set of assumptions. Assumptions which may be true for you, but will not be true for most players.
Most "Adventuring" players will have the goal of getting better Gear. They get that Gear by purchasing it from "Crafting" players. The Adventurers and the Crafters are symbiotic.
The monsters get killed in pursuit of a larger goal. Killing monsters is not the goal. Most Adventuring players won't be killing monsters to hit an achievement gate. Once they have burned through the stuff you can train for a couple of hundred XP, they'll be waiting for days or weeks to train more Feats. During that time they'll be engaged in the economic loop. For Adventurers that loop is killing monsters. So most of those players won't find it a "grind" to hit achievement goals.
I've said this enough times now that I think you both understand it. You just don't want to play that kind of game so you're looking for a critique of the system. That's a legit criticism but it's not fair to say that most players will be "grinding" to kill monsters. Because they won't. They'll be "grinding" (if we have to use that term) to get loot to enable themselves to buy better Gear.
Yeah grinding is an appropriate term, the required mountains of mob skulls just for expert achieves alone got grindy pretty fast.
A wider range of things to fight, and more tactical complexity in fights will mitigate that 'grinding' feeling a lot , I'm hoping.|
Goblin Squad Member
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I don't see how it is rightly thought 'grindy' when that mountain of skulls is built over months instead of within the intensity and repetition of a few hours. I think Ryan's estimation is pretty correct. You have to construe and overgeneralize the definition of 'grindy' to make that allegation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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On Wildstar the things that struck me which led to having no interest at all and possibly little insight to share, hence:-
- The Loony-Tunes aesthetic made me believe it was a young kid's game which suggested I was not the target market nor would find the social community that I'm looking for there.
- The Themepark/WOW game design
And reasons I thought it might struggle:-
- The MMO Market of Content Locust players pattern
- The proliferation of Online Games vs an old mmorpg finite content model ie increased competition across games
As for PFO's current MVP core game loop. Not played but I think territory control and farming resources and mobs in your bit of territory and preventing others raiding it, well jealously guarding our land seems very appealing and farming those mobs and nodes ensuring their harvest is collected for the group and not into the hands of those other gangs of players. That sounds motivating given that context to it.
I guess there will be players who like fighting mobs, again I'm not much of a fan of fighting AI PvE mobs so maybe can't share many insights here either. Cracking other players skulls and taking their harvest though...
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am with Ravenlute and Bluddwolf on this, and most certainly not a PvP player. My hope is at present the achievements are the bare minimum GW can work in for the MVP. If "land the killing blow" remains the major gate for achievements that will most certainly be a grind for me. Why? Because I want to make a character that is not primarily focused on killing stuff--an aristocrat/bard. I want to be the support in the background, the voice rallying my comrades, the scout that brings back information, etc. If I've got to land the killing blow to increase my Arcane and Subterfuge skills/feats, that basically means my concept is in the tank. I may as well sit in town as a Seneschal and forget the rest.
I'm not insisting GW put in alternate achievement routes as MVP, but please, please give us some insight into the long term plans for such. Let us know this is coming at some point. Because without it, PFO will indeed just be a grind by a different name. I signed up for the KS specifically for Highlight #1 - No Grinding when it said "don't train any faster by farming mobs or spamming your abilities than you do exploring the world, role playing with your friends, or even being offline." It does note requiring achievements, and I'm good with that concept, but when the achievement is "farming mobs" it pretty much invalidates the whole concept. I want to explore the world and RP with my friends, and I want that to be as relevant as killing stuff.
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Goblin Squad Member
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re: the looney tune aesthetic
That is what turned me off right from the git-go. I suppose in a way that is shallow of me, the game-play should have been a priority, and player interaction should have been at the top of the list, but visual style immediately suggested a juvenile theme that was about as attractive and interesting as Candy-Land and I never got close enough to find out first hand whether it was just the overwrapping of a good game. I figured I would hear good things about it if it were worth my time, especially since my guild had a sizeable contingent in its beta.
And those who were in were clearly filed with hope about it. They wanted it to be a good game. They weren't looking for problems as some folks will.
On reflection I suppose it is hypocritical of me to judge another game based on appearance like that but excuse whatever visual shortcomings are griped over in our rough diamond here with the meme that great graphics will avail nothing if the game of it isn't good, but there I am. I'm human and fallible, but the potential I see in PFO is so much greater and, really, our visuals have improved quickly over the past month.