Goblin Squad Member
|
I hate to be that guy, could someone, perhaps avena or bludd, give me a quick PM to recap me on just what the hell happened between release and now that caused "blob-friendly", "financial holes", "Ryan being fired", etc. that is the PFO as it exists now.
My own fault for being outa the loop but... well even links to relative articles would be sweet xD.
edit: maybe even relevant articles too!
It would be wrong for me to say I know, because I did not follow or enquire closely when the game went into "delpha" (that's a great coinage term: A mix of alpha and delpha ie being made but being paid).
But we can high-level point out even if it misses the specific details:-
1. Absolutely brilliant, bordering on genius design blogs.
2. Just enough cash (crowdfunding, paizo, other investors) to fund development.
3. Target of subbing perhaps 5k+ of the kickstarter crowd monthly
4. Growing at a projected rate during that time of subs
5. Ploughing investment back to get the game from MVP to about 20-50k a/c's. Not unrealistic for these big mmorpg things comparing numbers.
Remember PFO got much further than a lot of mmorpgs have done. There was another cool idea mmorpg, completely forgotten it's name trying to get deved for over a decade.... it too had great ideas and again another one where you get turned into a cow or something that's still around and a few others. So lots of quirky mmorpgs and comparing PFO did well.
BUT - all of them: For the experience they're trying to generate to the financial requirements and market quality demanded: They all are never going to break-through. It's too technically demanding requiring too much money eg EQN.
So when MVP and the subs at 3. did not really hit it was always going to be a case of running out of cash without that growth spiral. Then I think Ryan must have put in so much work and burnt out and out of options and probably very disappointed as you can imagine. So it needed the skeleton crew approach...
Given it's already got a lot of investment and assets in it ie pipelines and whatnot, maybe some company will also do a financial gamble on it with some spare cash to make the risk-reward calculation with?
I'm sure others can fill in a lot more details than I can.
=
The thing that interests me is not any of the above, it was always "more likely" to go this way than not, going into the kickstarter is knowing that for a mmorpg.
What interests me is taking the good concepts and putting them into a form that is practical and focused on the quality of experience of players that is possible to implement.
* Flag system
* Infrastructure extensions of characters
* Economic Engine and resource diversity
It's all there that's the focus! Not the conventional mmorpg platform tech that's a dead end.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@ Brother Zeal
Can give you a basic run down of what I think led to where we are right now..
The game launched 1 January 2015 - .
Help notes were not in the game- no explanation of how keywords worked , nor any in game resource people could read to see how character progression worked.. how xp was accumulated .. what achievements meant.. what the /w and other / commands were etc ..
Those things could be found in out of game resources but no wher ein the game or at least easily ..
Basically the game went live with a ton of annoying items that ended up being hard is fun but confusing is not worth the time..
Some examples of early issues that probably impacted many of the kick starters/ trial buddy accounts from giving the game a good go..
1. For months there was a blue screen bug- if you used a charge ability it would drop you to a blue screen with your UI intact.. Only way out was to quit the game .. and then you couldn’t get back into the game. They couldn’t nail down the issue.. finally the work around was to run a server side script every hour.. then every 15 minutes .. but that was 2 months or more in the making - ( finally they changed the script to run on a account level for a single character when you loged in.. should have been the first solution imo)
2. First few months - you had no choice were on the map you started . so you and your buddy start the game to play to together.. but you end up in orassin crossing and he is in kindleburn.. have fun with that 45 min run to hook up with your buddy.. - fixed by starting all characters in thorn keep.
3. The sprints that were 3 weeks turned to 4 then to 6 then to 8 .. so when problems were introduced - it was 4-5 weeks before it was fixed and that only gets worse with a smaller staff
4. Stuck in rocks – that was an issue up until 2 months ago with the introduction of /stuck!!
5. For a while 3 weeks or so last march I don’t think we could take coins out of banks..
6. The Auction houses always seem to have some sort of bug associated with them- buy orders took 8-9 months to get in the game, and even now there are still issues with how that works
7. The game hates full screen mode.. not sure why but think that is still a thing ..
I could go on and on about things that came up those first 7-8 months.. The point is last January the game went live, but all the small issues added up to just an annoying experience , so many that tried the game just walked away.. GW spent March of last year through August working on PvP engines to the game as their main focus.. in hindsight they should of stuck to 3-4 week sprints, and fixed the player experience before putting that stuff in..
You guys that say PvP was what you didn’t like about PFO, .. not sure what to tell you, PvP is/was almost non existent - the EoX vs the SE stuff was easy to avoid .. banditry never materialized(folks actually miss it because it adds excitement to the activity) . The only T2 player hunting T1 guys in the starter area was pretty much relegated to a T1 character himself in less than 24 hours.. The greifing you guys talk about never happened..
What kept people from playing? It was the player experience of actually sitting and playing was not the focus of the development, everything was settlement level mechanics , and out of the 33 or so settlements probably 20 people were affected by the changes that took up most the dev time. ( I get those things need to be in the game.. but it should of not been the primary focus for so long).
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
A lot of the early choices in development order seemed to be heavily based around various dependencies for other things they wanted to do and trying to provide content 'quickly' hence the PvP related features.
Unfortunately some of that was because of the reality behind the scenes that we were not privy to until much later: they had a secondary funding source lined up that pulled out on them about 6+ months ago and they were scrambling to try and make up some revenue with subs and look for new backing. Most of the problems, slow downs, and decisions were really closely tied to this particular issue.
Yes, the game was always gonna be rough for awhile it's an early access title, but the cascading 'failures' really seem to have stemmed from the money issues. None of what happened once that was revealed is particularly surprising given the constraints they were working under.
That all said they are finalizing a deal for an established studio to take over the project with a butt load more money than was ever thought of for this project and a desire to build out something closely resembling the original design from what currently exists. Could still fall through technically but last we heard they were pretty close.
So keep an eye out, some good things are probably coming soonish.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I have two MMO's on my radar, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen and Camelot Unchained, one PVE focused game, one PVP focused game, both designed solely for their intended niche without trying to be everything-to-everyone lowest-common-denominator games. Hopefully they both see release (Camelot definitely will, Pantheon is more of a toss up, although its the game I want more).
(Man, I wish I could get back the $185 I gave to the PFO Kickstarter)
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I have two MMO's on my radar, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen and Camelot Unchained, one PVE focused game, one PVP focused game, both designed solely for their intended niche without trying to be everything-to-everyone lowest-common-denominator games. Hopefully they both see release (Camelot definitely will, Pantheon is more of a toss up, although its the game I want more).
(Man, I wish I could get back the $185 I gave to the PFO Kickstarter)
If you still have the account you can probably get it back by selling it ( see top thread in these forums for listing.. i estimate it would take 1-2 days to sell, the DT perk on a new account would garner enough interest in the account to get most if not all that back)
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Tuffon
Well I mean, it is ALPHA, last I heard. Having a crap-ton of bugs that they then work out with the help of the players was the whole point, wasn't it? The "develop the game alongside the creators" idea?
Unless I misunderstood the year I spent investing 20 hours a week into these forums and the development prior to it's release.
So, if that is really what caused all this, then I really am saddened because that sounds like we the players let the GW team down in a hard way after all the promises of being ready for the bugs and the lower-tier graphics and whatnot.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I really am saddened because that sounds like we the players let the GW team down in a hard way after all the promises of being ready for the bugs and the lower-tier graphics and whatnot.
Even if the people who followed the forums were willing to put up with those issues, it's not enough. The forums were only a small slice of the population that you'd need to run a successful MMO.
The big issue so many outside these forums had was the combination of the buggy, unfinished state with having to pay a subscription. There were many who considered the game to still be in an alpha state so they weren't willing to pay for it. Most MMOs are free to play, so to require a subscription in today's market you really need to stand out.
The use of non-standard terms like Early Enrollment didn't help either. To many it made it seem like shady wordplay to pass off an incomplete project as being complete.
Regardless of whether you agree with those viewpoints or not, it's what many people felt. Just go look on any website dedicated to MMOs and look for the PFO section and you'll see that these forums are pretty much the only ones which speak positively about the game.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There's no direct public evidence, that he was fired. However, they said he'd be staying interested and involved after stepping back for personal reasons, yet he has not said a thing about the game since or communicated with the player-base.
In recent posts on social media, Ryan still advertises himself as the CEO of GoblinWorks.
The prospect that he is still involved or could return should give or may be giving any new investors pause.
People forget those so called "personal reasons" did not prevent him from sitting on a panel at the time that it was announced he was leaving.
I think he may just be serving a "time out" and told to lurk well behind the scenes so that the game has some chance of recovering the public relations debacle he had created.
He basically dared MMORPG to treat the game as if it was feature and content ready, and when their review was that is was 4.0 Craptastic, he whined that the game could not get a legitimate review unless it was judged on its potential.
"I'm marketing a race car, with a lawn mower engine in it now, but we will someday upgrade it to a Vespa engine".
So to answer the impossible question of the OP.... The answer is "No" the general direction was flawed as soon as it left the blog posts and began to be developed.
The last time the game was actually fun to play was in Alpha 6, which was also the last time it had a decent population to support the game as an MMO.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I'd forgotten about the review, but ya it didn't do so well. The original reviewer didn't want to finish it and they had to get someone else to do it.
Some articles on mmorpg.com reviewing PFO:
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As far as being "blob friendly" that's something any sandbox faces.
I was just mentioning the hazard of balancing having things worth fight for with being careful not to overly reward the blob.
The game needs to reward people for recruitment and social cohesion while not handing the entire game to one big group.
I usually try to describe it as: numbers ought to give you overwhelming localized power where you focus, without giving you overwhelming global power.
It's good if the biggest powerbloc's numbers allow it to control a good hex near them. It's bad if it means the entire map is theirs to do with as they please. We don't face EITHER situation, at the moment, because there aren't things valuable enough to fight over, yet.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
(Man, I wish I could get back the $185 I gave to the PFO Kickstarter)
That shouldn't be difficult at all, since most kickstarter accounts are selling within a day or so for as much or more than they cost.
(edit: and that's even if you place zero value on the hundreds of dollars of PDF rulebooks that came with the original pledge.)
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Where do you get the info say that? I'm curious.
I want Paizo in all things to be successful, even if I don't like the direction PFO is going.
If you're referencing me the majority of it is from things Lisa and Bob have said either in the public chats or offhandedly, combined with my personal experience dealing with software contracts of this level (mostly ancillary, I don't write them I just have to occasionally deal with them or produce things for them) and asking around the few folks I know in the gaming industry. The things we learned about the company's money issues explains a lot of the early issues and the recent details we have been given are enough to point to decent odds for good things for PFO in the near future.
The one thing I have nothing for is the specifics about Ryan, however I'm pretty sure he's gone for good and don't think it's worth dredging up or speculating at this point, can't change the past and it doesn't matter going forward.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
As far as being "blob friendly" that's something any sandbox faces.
I was just mentioning the hazard of balancing having things worth fight for with being careful not to overly reward the blob.
The game needs to reward people for recruitment and social cohesion while not handing the entire game to one big group.
I usually try to describe it as: numbers ought to give you overwhelming localized power where you focus, without giving you overwhelming global power.
It's good if the biggest powerbloc's numbers allow it to control a good hex near them. It's bad if it means the entire map is theirs to do with as they please. We don't face EITHER situation, at the moment, because there aren't things valuable enough to fight over, yet.
This is a major area to think about for design. I notice that Stellaris will have 32 player multiplayer games. In fact Stellaris and it's ilk have a very very very very lot of lessons to teach about making a story simulation ""mmo-rpg"" imo. More of that later when I write up the GDD summary. Perhaps on Sunday and off with it.
But also player agency to be able to move anywhere. That is something that I think could be tackled very interestingly so you avoid these blob/zerg issues.
You know the armies idea was one of the best for PFO: At the right scale it is very possible.
=
I'm curious where does the interest in PFO a/c's come from? I mean that with reference to what was pointed out the major detractor as above was paying during an alpha as it were and an uncertain future. It is perhaps postive that there is interest even at this low ebb, for future developers.
It probably was critical losing that funding, but even so, I still think even with 20m or 50m the going is tough for these mmorpgs.
Now cutting all that tech overhead and making something very specific to Pathfinder Community and tailoring for example one "region" as a 32 player region... surely that is too sparcely populated... nope... not if the design is clever. And imagine these "blocks" become the LOCAL POWER whereas GLOBAL POWER works entirely differently - armies at war and when is war: Maybe x2 per generation as per World Wars?
For me it's about coming back to those ideas in the blogs, making them work.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I sold mine pretty quick.I sold mine within 30 minutes, but I only asked for exactly what I put into it. I forgot that Paypal charges a transfer fee, that was just $12.00
All in all, I played PFO from Alpha 6 up until about 4 months ago and it only cost me $12.00.
Yeah, I think I got twice what I pledged, thanks to DT.
Still can't help but feel this was a "bait n switch" from the description given for the game around the time of the tech demo.
But, it's somebody else's problem now.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Where do you get the info say that? I'm curious.
I want Paizo in all things to be successful, even if I don't like the direction PFO is going.If you're referencing me the majority of it is from things Lisa and Bob have said either in the public chats or offhandedly, combined with my personal experience dealing with software contracts of this level (mostly ancillary, I don't write them I just have to occasionally deal with them or produce things for them) and asking around the few folks I know in the gaming industry. The things we learned about the company's money issues explains a lot of the early issues and the recent details we have been given are enough to point to decent odds for good things for PFO in the near future.
The one thing I have nothing for is the specifics about Ryan, however I'm pretty sure he's gone for good and don't think it's worth dredging up or speculating at this point, can't change the past and it doesn't matter going forward.
Yes, you. Thanks for answering.
I was hoping the source was more recent than Lisa's post.|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
@Tuffon
Well I mean, it is ALPHA, last I heard. Having a crap-ton of bugs that they then work out with the help of the players was the whole point, wasn't it? The "develop the game alongside the creators" idea?
Unless I misunderstood the year I spent investing 20 hours a week into these forums and the development prior to it's release.
So, if that is really what caused all this, then I really am saddened because that sounds like we the players let the GW team down in a hard way after all the promises of being ready for the bugs and the lower-tier graphics and whatnot.
Sorry, my expectation of a minimum viable product did not match up with Goblinwork's minimum viable product - so I was one that never activated my account.
Nothing I saw from any forum posts or other media was enough to convince me to start paying for access. I think there were a lot of people like me.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Tuffon
Well I mean, it is ALPHA, last I heard. Having a crap-ton of bugs that they then work out with the help of the players was the whole point, wasn't it? The "develop the game alongside the creators" idea?
Unless I misunderstood the year I spent investing 20 hours a week into these forums and the development prior to it's release.
So, if that is really what caused all this, then I really am saddened because that sounds like we the players let the GW team down in a hard way after all the promises of being ready for the bugs and the lower-tier graphics and whatnot.
Sorry, my expectation of a minimum viable product did not match up with Goblinwork's minimum viable product - so I was one that never activated my account.
Nothing I saw from any forum posts or other media was enough to convince me to start paying for access. I think there were a lot of people like me.
There were many more that felt the exact same way which you describe than there were that felt it was adequate. No need to be sorry. We each have our levels of expectation and our own sense of what we will pay to experience/play. GW expected a small start. They may have gotten one a bit smaller than they wanted, but all of that is indeed water way past the bridge now.
Hopefully enough samples were taken that they have a good idea(or NewCorp does) of what to focus on to struggle up to the spot desired+ in the market place.
CEO
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
The one thing I have nothing for is the specifics about Ryan, however I'm pretty sure he's gone for good and don't think it's worth dredging up or speculating at this point, can't change the past and it doesn't matter going forward.
I can get very specific on that. Ryan is gone. For good. He just announced his new job as Director of Alderac Games.
-Lisa
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Still, I hope someone from NewCorp will take a hard look at all those Blogs and can breathe new life into them. I feel that PFO only scratched the surface of what was explained in the blogs, and I am still hoping that most of it materializes.
I am curious what NewCorp will do with the "funnel of suck" that was supposed to curb griefing and a toxic game environment. :)
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Tuffon
Well I mean, it is ALPHA, last I heard. Having a crap-ton of bugs that they then work out with the help of the players was the whole point, wasn't it? The "develop the game alongside the creators" idea?
Unless I misunderstood the year I spent investing 20 hours a week into these forums and the development prior to it's release.
So, if that is really what caused all this, then I really am saddened because that sounds like we the players let the GW team down in a hard way after all the promises of being ready for the bugs and the lower-tier graphics and whatnot.
Sorry, my expectation of a minimum viable product did not match up with Goblinwork's minimum viable product - so I was one that never activated my account.
Nothing I saw from any forum posts or other media was enough to convince me to start paying for access. I think there were a lot of people like me.
Andas is right, or at least this explains my decision too: Never touched the game in the end.
Well I did spend Sunday (Easter) drafting out a GDD, and it's far from complete. But it did remind me that Bigworld loss of Middleware is probably the most important reason PFO did not take off. Losing that Networking tech was the killer. I'm sure the loss of finance did not help.
However I noticed a tech solution:-
And it fits with Unity.
That said, any mmorpg is going to put helluva lot of pressure on the networking nonetheless. So it seems to me even with such new tech solutions, the answer is to strip the game down to the story-generation core as much as possible and build from there.
In some ways this is pure chance: If PFO had been decided to build a few years later with SpatialOS and Unity... who knows...
I personally would have changed a lot of things such as the entire player agency and not focus on an avatar character with all the value of the player's actions in that one object. If this is done all that nonsense about griefing and anti-social motivation can be removed. That's really essential for group dynamic social rewards.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Still, I hope someone from NewCorp will take a hard look at all those Blogs and can breathe new life into them. I feel that PFO only scratched the surface of what was explained in the blogs, and I am still hoping that most of it materializes.
I am curious what NewCorp will do with the "funnel of suck" that was supposed to curb griefing and a toxic game environment. :)
If they're smart, they'll dicard the "funnel of suck" idea because that is what helped create the funnel of suck that PFO was and in most aspects, still is.
I'm hopeful that a valuable lesson has been learned when it comes to developing a SANDBOX MMO with PvP at its core.
I don't believe Ryan ever understood the analogy of my arguement when I tried to explain, he was trying to create a nascar event, but was also handing out speeding tickets. It is not fun to watch a race at 40mph on a simple oval track. It is even less fun to be a driver in that event.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I don't believe Ryan ever understood the analogy of my arguement when I tried to explain, he was trying to create a nascar event, but was also handing out speeding tickets. It is not fun to watch a race at 40mph on a simple oval track. It is even less fun to be a driver in that event.
Yeah, there was too many different markets for the same idea, it became very confusing. Don't work off market data imo: Use gaming intuition for what works and what does not and use other tools to feedback on that "works" criteria.
I read a lot of Ramin Shokrizade's stuff. I think he's been very useful for structuring some ideas. Odd to see he's working on a new project a sort of floating islands minecraft type thing. Anyway one idea of which was:-
PvV (Player vs Victim) compared to PvP (Player vs Player).
I think therefore really you have to remove the former and work towards the latter, and more so the more the latter is a form of cooperative or social combination. In fact I think it's possible to do something with PvV but in such a way that the "victim" actually finds it rewarding! Not only that but the top PvP is massively social is the pinnacle of game play for the PvP players.
I will try to labour on with things, I'm not so good working under pressure and have too many projects on atm. A final write up would clear these ideas up.
=
On another note, just saw some early footage of Crowfall. It looks better graphics than PFO but it also looks like yet another old mmo, the same conventional mmorpg platform curse again. At some stage without a kind of innovation of core ideas, the appetite for playing these games I think diminishes, the experience is just too desiccated.
And on yet another note, there's another Baldur's Gate game out that looks very immersive story and world stage wise. I bet a lot of people who like PF would like that sort of thing. Probably get Paizo writers to drum up some stuff too.
But the idea I have is Kingmaker, different, but if you look at internet games I think that too could be very lucrative.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Thinking that "sandbox" requires open PvP for content was a mistake. I realize this was a decision driven by a meager budget but it really never gave PFO a chance. I don't think Ryan, or anyone else, had bad ideas. The budget forced bad ideas.
They should have realized during the Kickstarter that most of the support was from the TT players who just wanted the goodies.
Thinking that "sandbox" requires open PvP for content was a mistake. I realize this was a decision driven by a meager budget but it really never gave PFO a chance. I don't think Ryan, or anyone else, had bad ideas. The budget forced bad ideas.
They should have realized during the Kickstarter that most of the support was from the TT players who just wanted the goodies.
How would you entertain thousands of players without open world PvP and without a themepark sized budget to spend on PvE?
Low budget sandboxes rely on players to provide the content. That generally is a combination of building and conflict over resources and territory.
All of PFO's competition will be sandboxes with open world PvP. PFO squandered their year head start, though, and their competitors are likely to be in retail release before PFO at the current rate of development.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I would try something new. Some upcoming titles are dipping a bit into this, even if in different ways.
I would spend my money on GM tools that let the GMs set up spontaneous encounters, adventure sites(caverns, dungeons, ruins, pocket planes, etc...), flexible NPC interactives including relevant dialogues, and a huge story line. Lots of unrelated side quests, related story arcs, you name it.
If I had a budget too small for super carnival rides, I'd make sure that I had tools to make superior stories for my persistent world.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Thinking that "sandbox" requires open PvP for content was a mistake. I realize this was a decision driven by a meager budget but it really never gave PFO a chance. I don't think Ryan, or anyone else, had bad ideas. The budget forced bad ideas.
They should have realized during the Kickstarter that most of the support was from the TT players who just wanted the goodies.
Let's say there's a game called 'PFO'.
Let's secondly say that game has a number of features:-
- Single Shard World
- Build Player Run Settlements
- Dynamic Resource Extraction
- Virtual Economy
I can't remember the rest. No why chose these features?
1. EVE is a template for niche to organic sub growth (business model)
2. Longevity increase over time through iterating the simulation via player-driven gameplay
3. Early game can be developed on a budget etc
Ok, if I'm honest, this is VERY LOGICALLY SOUND !!!
However we have implementation and presentation as well as expectations.
If I look at those features, I don't see a Single Individual Avatar as the core UX (User Experience). Nope, it's a higher/bigger more epic scale of narration.
That to my mind is where the design first went wrong. IE PFO being a WOW/EVE thing.
And you know what that's what it was aiming for.
The design is wrong based probably on perspective of design but that also crucially fits with technological problems to harness:-
* Networking for large groups of players (this is the major area to tick) BigWorld Engine was lost and tbh that was that.
* GUI + UX: Too much on the GUI and too little on the UX meant the game looked appalling and played appalling because the demand on graphical assets and networking were too high!
Ok, let's look at things, how to solve those two problems and synthesize the design with those features (well chosen by Dancey).
I'll point out a few things and try to post a summary GDD (keep gaw dang saying that..)
1) NETWORKING: SPATIAL OS or there's a few other companies doing this. That had to be the beadrock for single server simulation.
2) The WOW Platform (GUI + UX) is wrong wrong wrong for this type of scale of game!! Sure it may be possible if you're Star Citizen but just look at the pressure they're under by the fans for that and they still have terrible networking at present in dev. You have to have to simplify this.
3) The big kahuna on perspective which I'll add to my GDD that transforms the possibilities as well as the expectations.
Really for PFO to have even had a chance, it would have needed to get going with Spatial OS (plugs in with Unity btw). But the WOW Platform choice was also a fatal system error.
Curiously there's another mmorpg out Chronicles of Elyria or something which seems in direct competition with PFO's ideas and is using Spatial OS...