Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Not sure I understand this game.
umcorian
Member UncommonPosts: 519
Hey all,
So, I was offered a two-week demo of this game and went ahead to play it. I won't say that this game is bad - that's too easy and maybe not fair. I've logged maybe 20 minutes at best before I thought: "What the heck am I even playing?"
First, a tiny bit of background on me - I'm a long time MMOer who started as a 14-year-old troll in Ultima Online, happily NPKing anyone I could with a buddy of mine and organizing new and wonderful ways to take away people's hard-earned loot. The crowning moment of joy in my hormon-filled pre-pubescent life was when a miner begged me and my friend for his stuff back, telling us he'd worked so hard.
In my elder years, I like to think I've matured. I spent years playing WoW, working with people rather than against them. Spent years as a tank, building my character to survive and strategizing ways to make others jobs easier. Also helping has been my tabletop D&D experiences, where cooperation is essential. That was how I got into Pathfinder - a buddy of mine had me join society play and I'm now hooked.
While I still enjoy an occasional forum troll moment, I've settled down a lot.
So, when I hear about Pathfinder Online, I'm intrigued... only to see a few videos of the gameplay and go bug-eyed. The game looks like something that was designed a year before Everquest 1. I'd compare it to UO, but considering its 2d sprite based medium, the "graphics" actually hold up and even trigger a pang of nostalgia with me. PFO just looks bad, but that's okay - Minecraft looks bad too, right?
So I enter the game and start to move around. I spend a few minutes trying to figure out the controls, deciding I hated them, and went to remap them... only to give up trying to find how to do that. Later learned it's not possible. I then go up to the trainer, click on him, start training my skills. Then, I find a couple of tutorials, but can't advance them because I'd already gotten ahead of it and was told to train more skills. No one seemed to train any more, though, so I shrugged and decided to go adventuring.
I come across a group of goblins outside of town, standing there, waiting to die. I run up, take three down before dying. No problem - I don't understand the game. I go back to loot, find no loot has been dropped. No experience has been gained.
I'm left scratching my head. I wandered around a little longer and just logged out. No real desire to log back in.
Okay - so I get the basic model. EXP is gained over time, regardless of being logged in or not. Loot is - probably - accumulated. But then I hear people talking about this being a Darkfall style full loot PvP game, and what little understanding I think I've grasped of this game just goes out the window. Pathfinder Society and tabletop has always been about cooperating with people to achieve success. Pathfinder Online is more like EvE? Wut?
As far as I can tell, Pathfinder Online is a Full-Loot , PvP-Based MMO with off-line progression and a coat of polish akin to a rusty gardening tool. TLDR of this post: What am I missing here?
Comments
Hold on there! This game has an EvE online style leveling system? You get no experience for doing things in the world? Like, you could literally just subscribe and level up, never logging in?
Is it just me or is this a terrible idea for an RPG?
This works in EvE because you "level' up through missions, ranking in factions and you have a real player driven economy. In an RPG however this seems stupid.
Because we have to make lots of either/or tradoffs, one of the things we decided is that for Early Enrollment the UI/UX would not have a lot of discovery and explanation built into the client and we would off-load that to the New Player Guide. I strongly reccomend that all new players read at least the "tl;dr" 2 pager at the start.
Also,here is a guide to changing the keybindings. I should probably add this to the New Player Guide.
Yeah, but honestly is giving XP for any trashmob not that great either, still better but I think DDO have a point there with awarding you for bosses and completing stuff.
As a pen and paper roleplayer I often gets annoyed on how you gain XP in MMOs, experienced should be recieved for completing challenges, not for doing nothing or farm stuff with zero challenge.
But as a player of Pathfinder pen and paper I am not really sure why this game is called Pathfinder at all, DDO is way closer to Pathfinder than this.
Not that they don't have some good ideas in the game though, but I think Paizo could have licensed someone with a bit more money for the IP(or thow in some money themselves for that matter). After all is Pathfinder actually larger than D&D nowadays.
Some thoughts about your original question, essentially "Why play?"
I think a lot of people want a fantasy sandbox mmo. They want to have an unscripted, self-directed game experience where they can make real, persistent changes on the game world. A lot of what makes the game interesting can also be done in EVE, but many, many people just don't want to play a game where they are primarily represented by a ship hull, or don't like science fiction.
The core of Pathfinder Online is Settlements, because our primary design objective is "maximize meaningful human interaction". So the core of "why should I play" best fits with Settlement related ideas.
The game has 4 areas of emphasis which all have tiebacks to Settlements:
Exploration
There is a huge world to explore. Resources are unequally distributed so figuring out what can be harvested where is very valuable info. There are other important things to discover like where certain Escalations are, and metagaming things like where other Settlemetnts are active.
Development
Now that Holdings & Outposts are in, there are lots of Development options, plus the rich player-driven economy. Harvesters, crafters, transporters and traders have lots of content.
Adventure
There are lots of monsters that have to be fought, and the Escalations provide dynamic content so you don't just stay in the same hex killing the same creatures. Some monsters provide more beneifts for certain acheivements and knowing what to be hunting to maximize efficiency is a useful skill.
Domination
You can be a bandit. You can contest Towers which affect the character power of everyone in your Settlement and your enemies. There is a massive metagame of politics being played - a real "Game of Thrones". Diplomacy, espionage, and war are all tools being deployed by the various Settlements as they struggle for power and resources.
Not quite. You earn Exp at a level rate over time. All skills however are gated by achievements. So for exmaple most clerical skills need divine achievements, which you get from using clerical weapons, killing skeletons and ghouls, discovering divine/clerical places, and so on.
So everyone gets Exp at the same level regardless of how often you log in, but you do need to play and do stuff--with some choice whether that stuff is killing things, making things, going to places, etc--to acquire skills. Does that make sense?
Do the RIGHT THING: come be a Paladin with us! http://ozemsvigil.guildlaunch.com/
Umcorian:
1. This is a really confusing game. The complexity is high, which is kind of good, because there is a lot of depth in the game in terms of building your character and settlement. But it's also kind of bad because it is confusing as heck and when you are new you are like "WTF?" It really helps to get on /help chat and ask folks to help you figure it out. Once you figure what you can do, and why, it gets pretty fun.
2. It might help to think of this game as intended to solve the problem you described in UO (btw what server--I was in STC on Atlantic shard). UO was incredibly compelling, because you dumped people into a box and said "Do whatever you want." It turns out what a lot of people like to do is ruin other people's day. PFO is structured to be primarily social. You can't do much by yourself. You certainly can't craft by yourself. No settlement can train all skills. But resources, including land, are scarce, so there's conflict. The idea is to structure a game where the interactions are meaningful--e.g. building up an alliance with another settlement to trade training, or trade raw goods. But also to rob other people--if you kill someone and take their stuff, you loose reputation, and there may be social and in-game costs. But you also might get a load of diamonds, so maybe it's worth it. Or maybe another settlement keeps coming into your territory without permission, and you don't want that. But that kind of conflict is meaningful--it's for a reason other than to T-bag someone's corpse. Does that make any sense?
3. Yes the game is uh...a little unpolished. All I can say is that each new client brings significant improvements. The delta is high and steady since EE started. That really encourages me.
4. Come be a paladin with us and help beat down those evil a**holes in Golgotha who support banditry and evil!!
Do the RIGHT THING: come be a Paladin with us! http://ozemsvigil.guildlaunch.com/
Thank you all for explaining.
As a fan of what Ultima Online was and what Darkfall tried to do/be, I am definately interested in this game. I can take it as a sort of proof of concept mode that involves development to make it into something better than it is now.
I've read through the New Player Guide now - before I only skimmed the first few pages and decided I'd figure it out as I go - and I'll be revisiting the game soon with a bit more of an open-mind. I'll do some of the intro quests, get some intro gear and start training up a chosen role.
I'm also glad for keybinding options. Having Q and E as strafe and A and D as keyboard turning buttons - and not being able to change it - was driving me batshit crazy and probably contributed more than I'd like to admit to the discomfort I felt playing.
The Paladins sound like they'll be a good fit for me - if you and your group are around sometime tomorrow night, I'll seek you out. Perhaps my long years of rolling with extremely solo-friendly games have had me trying to figure things out alone a bit too much.
The risks of running naked through the woods to Ozem's Vigil are low if you pay attention to the mobs. Hint: Zoom out as far as you can on your mini-map, and don't touch the mobs, you'll be good.
On rare occasion you might run into someone, but death is pretty meaningless unless it's gear damage. Don't worry though, there's plenty of better gear the folks up there will provide you for basically nothing. Join a company, and they'll set you up.
BTW, technically there isn't a Paladin class in the game. You can cobble a decent Fighter/Cleric to fill in that role.
I do suggest that before heading out you take some of the basic weapons in the starter town and go beat up on those desperate goblins to gain some achievement points (martial, divine, arcane, subterfuge). Get your armor feat up to level 2 or 3. Get your two weapons up to level 2 or 3. Makes survival in the hexes away from the starter town a lot easier.
I wouldn't describe PFO as full-on PVP loot fest. It does happen, happened a lot more earlier than now, but lately not so much. Read up on reputation and how attacking other players outside of PVP areas can hurt you (although not permanently). Don't attack anyone in town, the guards will easily kill you.
Also I will put in a plug for Pathfinder University. They are doing outstanding work helping new players in their very first days get the game figured out and providing some structure on "what to do".
So yeah, but then why get experience at all, it seems pointless the way you described it other than justifying a monthly subscription.
Can you freely use that experience for anything like in EvE where you can pretty much skill up anything you want?
Maybe i am missing something but this sounds awful.
It doesn't feel awful
The exp system does a few things:
Do the RIGHT THING: come be a Paladin with us! http://ozemsvigil.guildlaunch.com/