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PSA: If your character was not previously a member of a settlement and it had feats trained up above level 7 (or level 3 for attacks, level 6 for Armor), you will find them reduced to those levels. THESE FEATS HAVE NOT BEEN UNTRAINED. You simply cannot access the higher levels until you join a settlement.
How do you join a settlement? The easiest way is to create your own company:
/vccreate <Company Name>
then type:
/settlementapply <Settlement Name>, <Company Name>
I recommend doing this while the leader of the settlement you want to join is online (so some coordination may be required).
A further note: Ryan mentioned ath some of the character's company information got FUBAR'd while they were working on all that stuff. At this point, those characters are SOL since we are too close to EE and the fixes would "take time away from preparing for EE." Ryan apologized for the inconvenience.
Silver lining: We are getting close to EE, folks!
Goblin Squad Member
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PSA: If your character was not previously a member of a settlement and it had feats trained up above level 7 (or level 3 for attacks, level 6 for Armor), you will find them reduced to those levels. THESE FEATS HAVE NOT BEEN UNTRAINED. You simply cannot access the higher levels until you join a settlement.
How do you join a settlement? The easiest way is to create your own company:
/vccreate <Company Name>
then type:
/settlementapply <Settlement Name>, <Company Name>
I recommend doing this while the leader of the settlement you want to join is online (so some coordination may be required).
A further note: Ryan mentioned ath some of the character's company information got FUBAR'd while they were working on all that stuff. At this point, those characters are SOL since we are too close to EE and the fixes would "take time away from preparing for EE." Ryan apologized for the inconvenience.
Silver lining: We are getting close to EE, folks!
This is a dreadful system and a severe punishment for anyone who finds themselves not associated with a PC settlement, for whatever reason.
It is one thing to say, "You can only train to level x in a PC run settlement." It is even acceptable that you have to visit a PC settlement to reestablished that skill if you had U slotted it.
But to have an immediate loss of access to skills you had trained, and to be forced to find a new settlement to join (not just visit) is not very sandboxy.
I have always said, the most devastating loss in the game will be when a number of companies lose their settlement. Not only will months of building up be lost, but it will be virtually impossible for them to ever recapture their lost settlement (all of their skills reduced to level 1).
"One and done" will become to mean so many reasons to stop playing this game. Too many player limitations, it might as well be a "theme park MMO with limited content".
Note: this is coming from someone who will always have access to a company. I have access to a PC settlement. I have access to other PC settlements, should my first fall. It is not for me or my group that I speak out against this plan.
And how does it work in EVE?
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is a dreadful system and a severe punishment for anyone who finds themselves not associated with a PC settlement, for whatever reason.
And yet, this has been the explicitly stated design goal for years.
You must be a Member of a Settlement. If you're not a Member of a Player Settlement, or that Player Settlement is undeveloped, then you will not have access to higher level abilities.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is a dreadful system and a severe punishment for anyone who finds themselves not associated with a PC settlement, for whatever reason.And yet, this has been the explicitly stated design goal for years.
You must be a Member of a Settlement. If you're not a Member of a Player Settlement, or that Player Settlement is undeveloped, then you will not have access to higher level abilities.
Is the immediate loss a temporary thing until the programming is up to speed? I thought the intention was a 30 day cool-down before lack of access to training punted your existing training.
Is the immediate loss a temporary thing until the programming is up to speed? I thought the intention was a 30 day cool-down before lack of access to training punted your existing training.This is a dreadful system and a severe punishment for anyone who finds themselves not associated with a PC settlement, for whatever reason.And yet, this has been the explicitly stated design goal for years.
You must be a Member of a Settlement. If you're not a Member of a Player Settlement, or that Player Settlement is undeveloped, then you will not have access to higher level abilities.
I cannot put a finger on a quote, but I am 100% confident this is an "Up to speed issue." It is not the long term plan for us too loose our skill as soon as the settlement, POI or tower is lost. Rather, we are supposed to have some kind of buffer, be it 2 weeks or 1 month or 3 days, I do not know.
Also, joining another settlement after the loss of your settlement, regrouping, and trying to retake your settlement is always an option. As is joining another settlement, regrouping, and founding a new settlement. The loss of the settlement will be painful enough without also irreparably loosing access to your advanced feat training.
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Looks like a negative feedback loop which will allow a really strong player group to dominate the map in short order. Each enemy you take down won't be able to regroup effectively and counter.
It's like a game of Risk, each continent you take you become harder to beat, and your opponents have less to fight you with. The only counter to this, and which makes Risk playable, is the random aspect of Risk cards spawning you a massive army to take stuff back with.
I can see why the game design would have this kind of set up, but I'm not sure it will adequately deal with large semi-cohesive groups like BOB or goonswarm.
This mechanic in EVE terms would be like losing a player owned station to an enemy, and then being unable to use capital ships until you capture another station - which typically require capital ships to take down.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also, joining another settlement after the loss of your settlement, regrouping, and trying to retake your settlement is always an option. As is joining another settlement, regrouping, and founding a new settlement. The loss of the settlement will be painful enough without also irreparably loosing access to your advanced feat training.
Settlement "A" is defeated by Settlement "B". Refugees from settlement "A" are allowed to join Settlement "C". Citizens of the former settlement "A" begin to plan retaking their former settlement back, but Settlement "C" says "We don't support that actions, because we do not want to get drawn into a war with Settlement "B".
Settlement "C" quickly kicks all of the refugees citizens from Settlement "A" out.
@Nihimon, what they have said for years was that PFO is a "Sandbox MMO".
Here is something I believe Ryan needs to bear in mind:
Definition - What does Sandbox mean?
A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will. In contrast to a progression-style game, a sandbox game emphasizes roaming and allows a gamer to select tasks. Instead of featuring segmented areas or numbered levels, a sandbox game usually occurs in a “world” to which the gamer has full access from start to finish.
A sandbox game is also known as an open-world or free-roaming game.
I can provide a few other definitions from other sources, but they are all about the same on the key point.... "minimal character limitations".
Forced character association is anything but minimal, and it has never been tied to individual character skills as it is being done here.
I also don't buy into that whole "it's temporary". I don't want to be told I have to eat dog crap for two weeks, and then in week three I can have dry toast and water. I think we should all expect to skip over the dog crap phase, and start with the toast and water and settle for that for a few weeks.
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Skipping over the dog crap in your post, Bluddwolf, the scenario you posited in the beginning is possible. The flipside to it is if Settlement C ends up being the next target on Settlement B's list, regardless of whether C has A residents or not- and variations on that theme, or if Settlement D sweeps in and wipes B out while B is on poor footing to defend itself.
As to the sandbox bit, many of the characters in this game are going to be stationary no matter what. Crafters need a place to craft and a community of refiners to support them. In turn, refiners need a place to refine and a community of gatherers and transporters to support them. In turn, crafters, refiners and Gatherers all need protection. These groups can't roam. Some single players can. But the overall system needs to be fixed in space- or fixed in many different spaces- to work.
So Tommy can sit in his corner and Billy in his and each can do whatever they like in their respective spaces. And if Tommy decides he wants to take Billy's corner, he can. But once Tommy has Billy's corner, Tommy has to hold both Billy's Corner and Tommy's corner with the same amount of Tommy- not more Tommy, the same amount of Tommy, just better supplied with more sand. Meanwhile, Billy can go setup shop with Sally or Suzie, and wait for the day he is ready to knock Tommy out of the Sandbox since Tommy is stretched thin across two corners. Or maybe Billy and Suzie settle in together and decide to get married, while Sally siezes on Tommy's moment of weakness and knocks Tommy clean out of Tommy's corner and most of Billy's- leaving Tommy worse off than he was before while Sally, Suzie and Billy are all better off.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The problem is that Tommy don't keep his bucket and his spade after you have taken away his sandcastle. he is left with his bare hands.
And Sally settlement can't welcome all of Tommy people, as they have limited resources: the hexes resources are limited and regrow at a limited rate, one that is reduced if the hex is over harvested, so we have a group of people with gear that has 20 lives or less, no spares and the need to rebuild their resources while the settlement in which they have taken refuge need to keep under control the harvesting.
Not a good situation to regroup and recover.
On the other hand Bill will have 2 resources worth of settlements, enough to allow him to recruit more people and become stronger.
As long as a winning side keep its cohesion it will get a strong advantage. "Empires" will be destroyed by the governing body losing interest in the game or by infighting, not by external threats.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And how does it work in EVE?
You just need to beg borrow or steal the appropriate skill book. Once you train a skill you have access to it forever (unless you die in a Tier 3 ship or die with an out of date clone which is not relevant here).
In EVE the big risk of being kicked from your corp/alliance or having your SOV system over-run by enemies is you lose access to all your stuff in that particular station.
The PFO equivalent is if you have all your stuff in one vault and cannot get into that settlement anymore.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Definition - What does Sandbox mean?
A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will.
Your definition and my definition are not congruent.
In fact, I think the pursuit of your definition is why most sandbox MMOs have failed.
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@Nihimon, what they have said for years was that PFO is a "Sandbox MMO".And how many times has Ryan told you that your vision of a "sandbox" doesn't match his?
At least once.
The problem is that Tommy don't keep his bucket and his spade after you have taken away his sandcastle. he is left with his bare hands.
And Sally settlement can't welcome all of Tommy people, as they have limited resources: the hexes resources are limited and regrow at a limited rate, one that is reduced if the hex is over harvested, so we have a group of people with gear that has 20 lives or less, no spares and the need to rebuild their resources while the settlement in which they have taken refuge need to keep under control the harvesting.
Not a good situation to regroup and recover.On the other hand Bill will have 2 resources worth of settlements, enough to allow him to recruit more people and become stronger.
As long as a winning side keep its cohesion it will get a strong advantage.
Taking a second settlement does not mean they will be able to hold that settlement- or even *want* to hold it. It could be razed, pawned, or negotiated back to the party that was kicked out.
To go with your Tommy loosing his shovel and bucket, it would be more like he gets to keep it for an as-yet unspecified amount of time, then he either finds someone else to share shovels with or yes, looses it.
Sally's ability to welcome Billy could well be limited by Sally's resources; or it could be that Sally and Billy joining forces is the best thing that could have happened to both of them. Its all really relative to where each of those groups are at when the time comes to start merging, refuging, or neither.
Anyways, we could go around and around with these sorts of things, with so many possible permutations of events and outcomes. Long story short, we won't know until it happens- either repeatedly with the same outcome or repeatedly with different outcomes each time.
"Empires" will be destroyed by the governing body losing interest in the game or by infighting, not by external threats.
I hear this is basically what happened in EvE, no? I don't know that anything is wrong with it in the context of settlements changing hands- so long as the dislocated players have someplace to go and are not simply shoved out of the game (an outcome which would be costly to GW, btw, and so not likely to be allowed to happen).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Definition - What does Sandbox mean?
A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will.
Your definition and my definition are not congruent.
In fact, I think the pursuit of your definition is why most sandbox MMOs have failed.
I can't think of any sandbox that failed, because it was a sandbox. Star Wars Galaxies did not fail because it gave too much freedom, it failed because SOE screwed with the game mechanics, especially with CU.
DarkFall has had a recent resurgence, but again it's previous failure was not due to too much freedom, but rather too much grinding (imo).
Fallen Earth is actually a fairly solid game but it's genre (post apocalyptic) at least before the re-dawn of the zombie apocalypse, was a really small niche.
Then we have EvE Online, hardly a failure at all.
Clearly my definition is not congruent with yours, because your's is not congruent with just about anyone else's definition.
You claim PFO is a sandbox, but I don't think the word means what you think it means.
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Goblin Squad Member
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"Empires" will be destroyed by the governing body losing interest in the game or by infighting, not by external threats.I hear this is basically what happened in EvE,...
Well sort of but not entirely.
On a smaller scale alliances like TEST have collapsed under external pressure. In a war of attrition only the biggest survive.
Some major realignments take place becasue of mistakes. The battle of B-R5RB between CFC/Russians and N3/PL occurred because someone forgot to pay the maintenance bill on a station leaving an entire system up for grabs. The battle took place over a full day and involved more than 7500 players.
HOWEVER on a server wide level Eve was originally dominated by racial/language based groups (which still exist, "Russians" for example) and then completely dominated by Band Of Brothers from 2004 until February 5th, 2009 when the entire alliance was disbanded by a spy working for Goonswarm. Since then Goonswarm or more specifically their coalition CFC (Clusterf##k Coalition) have completely dominated EVE.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is puzzling. Just as things are going (a little behind schedule admittedly) along at a pace that is MVP as described, the "workings" of the system (unaffiliated lvl limits) are developing as they were described they would be.
What is shocking, unexpected news here?
What is unexpected is the immediate loss of use of skills already trained. The plans were to allow you a grace period in order to either recapture your settlement or find a new one to take you in. But as I described above, no settlement will take in a group and make the recapture of their old settlement a part of the new settlements primary agenda. It would be like rebuilding someone's home on a flood plain after their house was flooded. Or worse yet, the new settlement may find itself in the sights of the aggressor.
Refugees would likely be better off giving up on recapturing their lost settlement completely. Their companies will likely fracture anyway, since their former leadership will bear the brunt of the blame for having lost the settlement in the first place.
If some people don't believe this will cause some players to not renew their subscriptions, they are naive.
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Goblin Squad Member
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"Empires" will be destroyed by the governing body losing interest in the game or by infighting, not by external threats.I hear this is basically what happened in EvE,...Well sort of but not entirely.
On a smaller scale alliances like TEST have collapsed under external pressure. In a war of attrition only the biggest survive.
Some major realignments take place becasue of mistakes. The battle of B-R5RB between CFC/Russians and N3/PL occurred because someone forgot to pay the maintenance bill on a station leaving an entire system up for grabs. The battle took place over a full day and involved more than 7500 players.
HOWEVER on a server wide level Eve was originally dominated by racial/language based groups (which still exist, "Russians" for example) and then completely dominated by Band Of Brothers from 2004 until February 5th, 2009 when the entire alliance was disbanded by a spy working for Goonswarm. Since then Goonswarm or more specifically their coalition CFC (Clusterf##k Coalition) have completely dominated EVE.
Band of Brothers also had some 200+ accounts banned for exploits and outright cheating, along with a few Dev's / CCP employees getting fired for working with BOB.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is puzzling. Just as things are going (a little behind schedule admittedly) along at a pace that is MVP as described, the "workings" of the system (unaffiliated lvl limits) are developing as they were described they would be.
What is shocking, unexpected news here?
What is unexpected is the immediate loss of use of skills already trained. The plans were to allow you a grace period in order to either recapture your settlement or find a new one to take you in. But as I described above, no settlement will take in a group and make the recapture of their old settlement a part of the new settlements primary agenda. It would be like rebuilding someone's home on a flood plain after their house was flooded. Or worse yet, the new settlement may find itself in the sights of the aggressor.
Refugees would likely be better off giving up on recapturing their lost settlement completely. Their companies will likely fracture anyway, since their former leadership will bear the brunt of the blame for having lost the settlement in the first place.
If some people don't believe this will cause some players to not renew their subscriptions, they are naive.
What exactly leads you to believe that there won't be a grace period when settlements are "really" up and running?
To me it would make little sense to have this "grace period" during the War of Towers. There is very little incentive to fight over towers if you dont lose something with them being taken. A month grace period would be ridiculous in a feature that may only run 6 months. Or they may still have a grace period for WoT. We are not at EE yet.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Definition - What does Sandbox mean?
A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will.
Your definition and my definition are not congruent.
In fact, I think the pursuit of your definition is why most sandbox MMOs have failed.
I can't think of any sandbox that failed, because it was a sandbox. Star Wars Galaxies did not fail because it gave too much freedom, it failed because SOE screwed with the game mechanics, especially with CU.
DarkFall has had a recent resurgence, but again it's previous failure was not due to too much freedom, but rather too much grinding (imo).
Fallen Earth is actually a fairly solid game but it's genre (post apocalyptic) at least before the re-dawn of the zombie apocalypse, was a really small niche.
Then we have EvE Online, hardly a failure at all.
Clearly my definition is not congruent with yours, because your's is not congruent with just about anyone else's definition.
You claim PFO is a sandbox, but I don't think the word means what you think it means.
SWG was a commercial failure before the CU; that's why the CU happened. Granted, it was throwing good money after bad, and killed the struggling revenue stream that wasn't paying back the investment.
DarkFall and Unholy wars are mitigated failures, with (as of 2013) roughly half of the subscribers required to be sufficiently profitable, but at least enough revenue to keep the lights on.
Fallen Earth is Open World Theme Park, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
EVE online is the exception, which is why the same model is being followed in many parts of PFO.
Some major realignments take place becasue of mistakes. The battle of B-R5RB between CFC/Russians and N3/PL occurred because someone forgot to pay the maintenance bill on a station leaving an entire system up for grabs. The battle took place over a full day and involved more than 7500 players.
I read about that one on the BBC a while back. Something like 10's of thousands $ worth of ships destroyed over someone forgetting to pay a bill.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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There is no noticeable parallel to EvE to be found in PFO. This is a farce and one that is not claimed by anyone with any real experience playing EvE.
Pathfinder Online's parallels to EVE are many.
- A player-driven economy
- Character that become more powerful in realtime
- Meaningful travel times
- Powerful NPC enforcers of law
- Local markets and storage
- A balanced emphasis on PvE, crafting, and PvP
- Characters that are customized to a very fine degree by player choice
- But the biggest thing is: Social structures larger than solo players or small groups are the primary drivers of in game persistency
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Goblin Squad Member
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EVE online is the exception, which is why the same model is being followed in many parts of PFO.There is no noticeable parallel to EvE to be found in PFO. This is a farce and one that is not claimed by anyone with any real experience playing EvE.
The no-XP cap, gain XP even when logged off, skill system is very similar to EVE though with some notable differences.
In particular EVE only has 5 levels in each skill and no "roles" as such. The other major difference between the skill systems is EVE does not accumulate XP for you if the skill queue has expired.
There is no EVE equivalent to achievement barriers or ability barriers.
The biggest shame about PFO is pressure from the TT community (crowdforging at its worst) has seen a reintroduction of roles. A key part of why EVE works is there are no roles.
HOWEVER by far the biggest difference between EVE and PFO is EVE is unashamedly a "behave like a brat" murder sim where virtually nothing counts as griefing. Complain about being attacked in EVE and you will be told by everyone "go play WoW" and "can I haz ur stuff" . In particular there is NO roleplay in EVE it is almost entirely about you versus the other player, beating the other player, upsetting the other player, getting a reaction from the other player, collecting tears from the other player, scamming the other player.
Even the recent banning of Eroica1 (who was deemed by CCP to have taken scamming too far when he made players perform random stuff over a webcam to retrieve their ISK they had stupidly invested with him/her) with a lot of players stating that EVE should be "anything goes" and believing the ban was wrong.
It has been made clear form the start this latter aspect of EVE was not going to be encouraged in PFO.
EDIT: Ryan beat me to it :D
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Goblin Squad Member
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I read about that one on the BBC a while back. Something like 10's of thousands $ worth of ships destroyed over someone forgetting to pay a bill.Some major realignments take place becasue of mistakes. The battle of B-R5RB between CFC/Russians and N3/PL occurred because someone forgot to pay the maintenance bill on a station leaving an entire system up for grabs. The battle took place over a full day and involved more than 7500 players.
More like half a million dollar but people DID NOT PAY REAL MONEY FOR THEM, they were built in game. Remember bigger coalitions like CFC have some 30,000 to 40,000 players. Some of those will be alts so say 10,000 to 15,000 real people are members.
The ISK/dollar comparison is a bit of a publicity stunt by CCP . I doubt anyone ever actually goes out and buys the thousand odd dollars worth of PLEX you would need to buy a Titan with real cash.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The ISK/dollar comparison is a bit of a publicity stunt by CCP . I doubt anyone ever actually goes out and buys the thousand odd dollars worth of PLEX you would need to buy a Titan with real cash.
AFAIK, yes, they do.
More like half a million dollar but people DID NOT PAY REAL MONEY FOR THEM, they were built in game. Remember bigger coalitions like CFC have some 30,000 to 40,000 players. Some of those will be alts so say 10,000 to 15,000 real people are members.I read about that one on the BBC a while back. Something like 10's of thousands $ worth of ships destroyed over someone forgetting to pay a bill.Some major realignments take place becasue of mistakes. The battle of B-R5RB between CFC/Russians and N3/PL occurred because someone forgot to pay the maintenance bill on a station leaving an entire system up for grabs. The battle took place over a full day and involved more than 7500 players.
Actually they paid that sum, indirectly. Years of subscriptions shared between all the ship builders and owners.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A couple questions:
1) After a guild is kicked off from a settlement and join another, you recover back all of your skills or only get them back up to the level at which they can be trained in the new settlement?
2) A guild can be a member in several settlement or only one?
If it can be a member only in one settlement the guild members are pigeonholed in 2 roles and the crafting settlement will have no good combatants.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Going back to the losing access to skills when your Settlement is gone, I was doing a lot of thinking on the whole thing. I can understand the concept of some kind of loss for such an event. The River Kingdoms is certainly a tough place (be it not just creatures but political as well). But what I don't fully understand is why, or how logically, a person would lose access to skills that they already know.
It reminded me of previous additions of D&D where you used XP to craft magic items or the XP penalty for multiclassing. Or even losing actual class levels when you are level drained. There was a comment made somewhere on these boards with the folks at Paizo that the idea of losing experience, losing what you already know, did not make any sense - so they found other means of balancing such events that at least made more sense.
Just an interesting thought I had and thought I would share.
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Goblin Squad Member
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About Level drain
Been there, done it, survived it and reported back here.
On my phone - so not looking for a link. It was the two step forward one step back thread
When Emerald Lodge was rebuild we lost all towers and had to retake them. In addition an issue with a failed daily downtime resulted in 48 hours of new towers not counted.
If you where a member you went down to level 5. You would go directly back to 8 if you left the company. We also got everything back after the towers got counted again.
Lee said they wanted to change the formula to 8 + 1/3 per tower. Interestingly the blog states the old formula. Lee also said they will implement a loss over a longer timeframe but this code is not yet programmed.
Bottom line - the sky isn't falling and the game still develops.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The ISK/dollar comparison is a bit of a publicity stunt by CCP . I doubt anyone ever actually goes out and buys the thousand odd dollars worth of PLEX you would need to buy a Titan with real cash.AFAIK, yes, they do.
More like half a million dollar but people DID NOT PAY REAL MONEY FOR THEM, they were built in game. Remember bigger coalitions like CFC have some 30,000 to 40,000 players. Some of those will be alts so say 10,000 to 15,000 real people are members.I read about that one on the BBC a while back. Something like 10's of thousands $ worth of ships destroyed over someone forgetting to pay a bill.Some major realignments take place becasue of mistakes. The battle of B-R5RB between CFC/Russians and N3/PL occurred because someone forgot to pay the maintenance bill on a station leaving an entire system up for grabs. The battle took place over a full day and involved more than 7500 players.
Actually they paid that sum, indirectly. Years of subscriptions shared between all the ship builders and owners.
If you look at what players put into a game with subs over the years, then a lot more money is destroyed in your average succesfull Themepark MMO like Everquest or WoW. Every time a new expansion is released, gear inflation basically destroys a large part of what came before, and what people have been putting their effort in.
But off course you will not see SOE or Blizzard boast about: "Our new expansion obsoletes about 80% of the players gear, with a RL cash value of 20+ million!" ;)
So I am not that impressed by those numbers: seems to me that stuff actually keeps it value a lot longer in a game like Eve.
In the end it is all about the fun players have when they are sinking money into a game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You claim PFO is a sandbox, but I don't think the word means what you think it means.
Maybe we need more words to distinguish. Certainly it's a buzzword that many want to slap on their product and so redefine it to fit.
The way Ryan has used it, I've consistently interpreted it as some sort of "anti-themepark", with the main keyword being emergence (not freedom).
Bascially, it's about Persistence (settlements, escalations, consequences) and Interaction (economy, pvp, settlement, solo-unfriendliness). Competing groups changing the world and the gameplay to make the game into something larger than just mechanics and flavour.
Freedom (as in open world, classless builds, etc) is lower down the list.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The ISK/dollar comparison is a bit of a publicity stunt by CCP . I doubt anyone ever actually goes out and buys the thousand odd dollars worth of PLEX you would need to buy a Titan with real cash.
It's not common, but yes, there was a least one time. A russian bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of PLEX, and tanked the PLEX market for more than a year with excessive supply.
Or maybe that's an urban legend. I'm not sure. But PLEX were 350m for a long, long time, and have only started rising in the past couple of years.
A couple questions:
1) After a guild is kicked off from a settlement and join another, you recover back all of your skills or only get them back up to the level at which they can be trained in the new settlement?
2) A guild can be a member in several settlement or only one?
If it can be a member only in one settlement the guild members are pigeonholed in 2 roles and the crafting settlement will have no good combatants.
To answer your questions that are actually related to the OP in the thread:
1) Level of the new settlement. This may mean you need to help your new home grow a bit to accommodate your own needs.
2) So lets get terms straight real quick: There are no guilds in PFO. There are Companies and Settlements. What you are describing is a Company. It is important to keep straight because some "guilds" from other games have their own settlements in PFO, while other "guilds" from other games have their own companies.
To answer your question: A company can be a member of as many settlements as well welcome it (that is something I hope the Wilderness Wanderers will be doing); however, right now, due to the very young, embrionic nature of the technology in the game, if you want to have your company in many different settlements, you technically have to have a DIFFERENT company in EACH settlement (i.e. Wilderness Wanderers of Brighthaven & Wilderness Wanderers of Phaeros instead of just Wilderness Wanderers). So yes, you can, but not in the way you might be thinking.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To answer your question: A company can be a member of as many settlements as well welcome it (that is something I hope the Wilderness Wanderers will be doing); however, right now, due to the very young, embrionic nature of the technology in the game, if you want to have your company in many different settlements, you technically have to have a DIFFERENT company in EACH settlement (i.e. Wilderness Wanderers of Brighthaven & Wilderness Wanderers of Phaeros instead of just Wilderness Wanderers). So yes, you can, but not in the way you might be thinking.
But if currently a player can only join one company at a time and any one company is limited to just one settlement that effectively limits players to training what is available in a single settlement type.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A couple questions:
1) After a guild is kicked off from a settlement and join another, you recover back all of your skills or only get them back up to the level at which they can be trained in the new settlement?
2) A guild can be a member in several settlement or only one?
If it can be a member only in one settlement the guild members are pigeonholed in 2 roles and the crafting settlement will have no good combatants.
1. You can only access abilities up to the level your Settlement supports.
2. I believe you can only be in one Settlement.
limited to just one settlement that effectively limits players to training what is available in a single settlement type.
Not at all. We can train in any settlement we want. Our personal growth is limited by the settlement we are attached to. Our access to higher level feats is not.
For example:
If I can train Power 16 because my settlement supports it, then I can train Power 16 at any other settlement that also supports Power 16 or higher training.
If my settlement supports me training Level 5 attacks, but I am a Cleric attached to a Wizard/Rogue Settlement, all I need to do is go find a Cleric settlement that also supports Level 5 attacks and train there.
If I am a fighter attached to a crafting town, so long as my crafting town can support the higher levels, I can go train all my fighter stuff on the other side of the map if I so choose.
I know the plan was that a character could join multiple Companies but I don't recall hearing that a Company could be part of multiple Settlements in any way that matters. Becoming chartered to a Settlement ties a Company to it.
Yeah so probably what will happen with Wilderness Wanderers when the multiple company tech comes in is that members will all be a part of the same Wilderness Wanderer company, plus whatever local company they want to join to be attached to a settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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But if currently a player can only join one company at a time and any one company is limited to just one settlement that effectively limits players to training what is available in a single settlement type.
Yes and No. You can train the others to tier 1.
The issue of skill training is so widely different from EvE that the two are barely recognizable. The simplest difference to point to however is, in EvE your associations are separate from your trained skills. The only time you have a skill that us unavailable to you, is if you chose to not use it at that time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is no noticeable parallel to EvE to be found in PFO. This is a farce and one that is not claimed by anyone with any real experience playing EvE.Pathfinder Online's parallels to EVE are many.
- A player-driven economy
- Character that become more powerful in realtime
- Meaningful travel times
- Powerful NPC enforcers of law
- Local markets and storage
- A balanced emphasis on PvE, crafting, and PvP
- Characters that are customized to a very fine degree by player choice
- But the biggest thing is: Social structures larger than solo players or small groups are the primary drivers of in game persistency
1. Yes, but also more localized than EvE. Also, this is something that is not specific to either EvE or PFO, but also found in many other PC titles.
2. Not really. Eve doses not have achievement gates to increase individual skill power, purely time dedicated to training.
3. Meaningful Travel Times are not unique to Sandbox MMOs, mmos in general or even to PC games in general. This seems to me to be more if a grasp at a straw to make a point.
4. Thornguards do roughly equal Concord, a bit short of the mark but good enough.
5. Again, fairly common to many MMOs, if not all.
6. I'm not really convinced they are all balanced in the "engagement" department. That is a really hard balance to strike, to be honest.
7. Character choices in PFO are no where's near that of EvE, but maybe in time PFO may.
8. Social structures in EvE are by player choice, not by requirements tied to character power growth and association with a settlement / alliance. This is by far the greatest departure and honestly obscures what other minor commonalities both games do have.
In PFO, if you are not in a power block you can not compete, even at the individual level. Try selling that as a "sandbox" feature outside of these forums, and see the response you get.
Again, fairly common to many MMOs, if not all.
On that point I would say global storage is the norm in MMO's, from what I've observed, rather than local which you see in EVE and PFO.
What other MMO's out there force local storage?
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Bluddwolf's statement was "no parallels with EVE". I then listed 8 parallels. None of which he thinks aren't parallels except training in realtime, because we have gates and EVE doesn't. The reader can decide for themselves if that's a parallel feature or not.
So I think I won that argument.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To the best of my knowledge, SWG wasn't losing money before the CU. From what I've read, it was roughly following EVE's slow but steady growth curve. Sony, however, wasn't content with slow growth. Considering the massive and enduring popularity of Star Wars, they expected to see a WoW growth curve. Unfortunately, they discovered that totally revamping an MMO a couple of years after release is much worse than slow growth.
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Goblin Squad Member
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But if currently a player can only join one company at a time and any one company is limited to just one settlement that effectively limits players to training what is available in a single settlement type.
To answer your question: A company can be a member of as many settlements as well welcome it (that is something I hope the Wilderness Wanderers will be doing); however, right now, due to the very young, embrionic nature of the technology in the game, if you want to have your company in many different settlements, you technically have to have a DIFFERENT company in EACH settlement (i.e. Wilderness Wanderers of Brighthaven & Wilderness Wanderers of Phaeros instead of just Wilderness Wanderers). So yes, you can, but not in the way you might be thinking.
Exactly what I meant with:
If it can be a member only in one settlement the guild members are pigeonholed in 2 roles and the crafting settlement will have no good combatants.
Where is the benefit of conquering a settlement? If my company can't be part of several settlements I will not benefits from most of its functions. So the best thing to do after conquering one is to raze it hoping to get some resource back from that.
I know the plan was that a character could join multiple Companies but I don't recall hearing that a Company could be part of multiple Settlements in any way that matters. Becoming chartered to a Settlement ties a Company to it.
So my company can't be part of multiple settlements but I can be part of multiple companies and that will allow me to get above level 7 in different skills groups.
So the fighting force of a crafting settlement should be part of a company that has joined a different settlement and if that settlement fall they will immediately lose access to their best skills ....I see a domino effect here.
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Goblin Squad Member
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limited to just one settlement that effectively limits players to training what is available in a single settlement type.Not at all. We can train in any settlement we want. Our personal growth is limited by the settlement we are attached to. Our access to higher level feats is not.
For example:
If I can train Power 16 because my settlement supports it, then I can train Power 16 at any other settlement that also supports Power 16 or higher training.If my settlement supports me training Level 5 attacks, but I am a Cleric attached to a Wizard/Rogue Settlement, all I need to do is go find a Cleric settlement that also supports Level 5 attacks and train there.
If I am a fighter attached to a crafting town, so long as my crafting town can support the higher levels, I can go train all my fighter stuff on the other side of the map if I so choose.
1) Level of the new settlement. This may mean you need to help your new home grow a bit to accommodate your own needs.
1) After a guild is kicked off from a settlement and join another, you recover back all of your skills or only get them back up to the level at which they can be trained in the new settlement?
So what you meant with your earlier statement is that the settlement limit is applied to all the skill, not only to those available in the settlement.
That change things.