In reply to vesuvias (don't know yet how to quote)
There is a lot wrong beside the graphics
- too much is non intuitive and makes it hard for a new player - a lot harder as it necessarily needs to be. No 'just install and play' - you have a much steeper learning curve and too many players leave in the first half an hour
- A min/maxer nightmare - they still balance the game - this means goal posts keep changing
- A very fast development with lots of changes / new options / features every three weeks - but nearly every new patch also has something that is bugged and needs fixing
- The game is based on communication - but the communication options the game offers is very poor
I guess I miss a few bits. After all I love the game and don't look at the flaws.
So what is good?
The community that is very helpful and despite some egos who tend to clash still tries to work together
A more mature group of gamers - averahe age is closer to 40 then to 25 with hardly any teens around (actually don't know any apart of my son and daughter)
Developers who listen and change the game if needed. I'm now in the game since alpha 8 for approx. 8 month and at least two major formulas have changed thanks to me (or others voicing the same wishes)
The underlying basics of the gameplay. It reminds me of Civilisation - your settlement is Germany or Russia - but yourself only play one of the soldiers exploring and building - off course at company leader or settlement leader level there is more you can do
A small familiar group. I would expect every major player can tell you about Thod. I've had now twice in game some notorious player killers coming my way - only to warn me that I'm in dangerous terrain instead of attacking me.
The latter will be gone eventually when (if) the game truly grows. But that will be a while.
Oh - and a last - interactions are meaningful. Killing the wrong people or behaving in bad ways will haunt you. Off course if you are stronger then you have a lot more leeway what you can do.
Some day my own politics will likely catch up with me and someone I angered now will burn down my whole settlement. But until then I enjoy it.
I forgot to mention - if anyone reading this wants a 15 day free trial, please email me at customer.support@goblinworks.com and I will be happy to issue you one!
One thing I want to say about the development of this game…
I am having an absolute blast with PFO , would I recommend the game at this time? No its not ready it is at least a year away( if not more..). unless you have been disappointed by games over the last few years and want to try something new then this may be for you.
Why am I playing it now? Why would I want to help someone build their game by giving them money while they do so? Because for 5 years I haven’t found a game that has held my interest more than a month, PFO has held my attention now for 3 months even with all the detractors ( which every three weeks get better and better..). The traditional design structures of games have missed me as a consumer for at least 5 years , so why not help crowdforge one and see if my interest in the game is greater than what the market has offered me for 5 + years now.
Why do I believe a new business model can be effective in creating MMO? Lisa Stevens … D&D was the end all be all of RPGs since the late 70’s . She decided there was a better way to design and build a game system and Pathfinder RPG has blown traditional D&D away since Pazio changed up how game systems are designed and tested. Lisa is deeply involved with this project and she has built up enough trust with me as a customer that I trust her to build something really cool even if she doesn’t follow traditional paths when doing so.. Oh and she actually owns Yoda … how can you not trust someone who owns Yoda….
Hi and welcome to the forums! I'd be interested in seeing your take once the game hits "Open Enrollment" so be sure to stop back. In the meantime I hope you stick around and join the community here as we discuss PFO but also other games. Always good to see fresh blood show up! I'm sure you are as interested as anyone in the rest of Bill's Review in progress updates. Should be fun!
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
This is odd. I read the review as negative (clearly the tone was) but the only things I could identify that were really poor is the combat animations (maybe all animations in general) and the jump height. I don't want to defend a bad product but what exactly is wrong with it?
Even if the animation is off a bit aren't we more concerned with gameplay? The animations in minecraft are horrible and yet, 2 billion dollars (to be fair minecraft animations are at least in sync and they fit the character design).
What exactly is wrong with combat other than animations? Is there enough content? Is the content fun? Don't get me wrong I fully expect there to be huge issues with the combat, mechanics, content availability, itemization, bugged bosses and quests. Animations just seem like a petty thing to pick on.
Beyond Thod's response, there are a few things that stood out to me. First, like many sandbox games, there is a lifeless look and feel because they simply put no effort into certain aspects of the game. The way npcs move (or rather don't unless they're chasing you), the way everything is set up. Just like in real life, environments should tell a story. Its what makes it seem believable.
Look at the starter area, and when you walk outside of town there are goblins just plopped down every 10 or so feet, staring towards the city where newbies are coming from. No pathing around, nothing the game is given the illusion of doing anything. Go out beyond that, its the same but with bandits and wolves.
Sandbox games rely too heavily on "players being the content" and they seem to always forget that in the absence of players, they need to keep up the illusion that this is actually a virtual world where stuff happens and people are doing things whether I'm there or not.
I do hope that part of this review will include taking a look at if all the items sold as part of the Kickstarter 2.5 years ago have been delivered now that the game is "released" and available for box price + sub + cash shop.
Bill's 'review in progress' article is pretty good IMV. For purposes of disclosure I sank a fair chunk of change into this project, and I don't know if the estimate of a year is quite right, but the guess that the current state of the game needs a year is reasonable. The game certainly has a ways to go. Accruing XP over time is something to be desired, but since that XP will not be useful without active play (providing skill-gate 'achievements') accumulated XP has little consequence. I think this overcomes one of the big negatives of Eve for the new player.
However, the game is demonstrably not vaporware, as so many believed it was. The economic and crafting systems are robust. Combat is clunky and stiff but it has serious complexity built into it that I think will eventually pay off in spades. The terrain seriously needs to be worked over to enable more reasonable movement and exploration. There are many impassable slopes uphill, but so far there is no falling damage even if you walk straight off an Everest-scale cliff.
The political-economic core of play should already work well in the long term. The problem with it right now is that the non-crafting, apolitical single player game is sorely deficient. This, in turn, renders anemic the function of an otherwise feature-complete, group-centric/community-centric design layer. Community involvement in planning and decisions is more crucial now than it should ultimately be because it is just about the only interesting feature of the whole game, and only so many players in a community can be officers. True, the companies (subunits of a community or town) are now able to control and build holdings like mines and watchtowers which should expand the non-officer roles, but to be complete the game will have to have sufficient solo activity available to support the viability of the whole. In a way it is a lesson in 'trickle-down' theory.
Regarding the dollar costs issue: Different people value differently. If you have plenty of money the value you place on a $15/Mo. sub will vary from someone who is just squeaking by. If you are a lover of multiplayer games and interplayer conflict (goes far beyond mere PvP) then you are going to value community-integrated game development much more than you otherwise could. So I think it is arguable that Goblinworks did not err in making it possible to contribute. It is the responsibility of the consumer to make an informed decision about whether they want to pay a sub so early in the development cycle. Goblinworks offers a free 15-day trial. That means they are affording the player a cost effective way to gain the information they need to make an informed decision.
The responsibility to make a decision belongs to the customer. Customers vary with the individual. It is wrong to complain that it isn't worth it, or to deride those who decide differently from you. None of us are your clone. You don't get to decide our individuality or our values. Our values are just as valid as yours, even when different from your own.
Your decision may be right for you, but don't attempt to force your values on anyone else.
I was looking forward to Pathfinder Online (I even backed the Kickstarter). But the pay-to-test and pay-to-win (to max XP, you must pay-to-test) aspects have soured me almost entirely. I have a few months from the Kickstarter that I'll use once it reaches "production" status but I'm not really looking forward to it anymore.
Active: D&D Online (alpha,beta,&unlimited)
Retired: Anarchy Online, Archlord (beta), Auto Assault (beta), CoH/CoV, Dark Age of Camelot, Dungeon Runners, Elder Scrolls Online, Everquest, EVE, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online (beta,live), Pathfinder Online (beta), Rift (beta,live), Secret World (beta,live), Star Wars Old Republic, Vanguard (beta), Warhammer (beta,live), World of Warcraft
Hi all! I have been posting for a while both here and on Reddit, and must say this review (not arguing whether it is a review or not) seems fair to me. I am still having fun. Things are just getting interesting with players getting set up to start supporting their home settlements. Holdings and outposts are in, and will be generating bulk resources to "pay for upkeep" of the settlement. That is awesome! And the landscape appears much more interesting with little buildings dotting the fields, woods and mountains.
The map is huge, and will get much larger later on (around six times bigger than it is now) so the much awaited mules, donkeys, and carts to haul your gathered, refined and crafted mats around are way overdue.
Combat is pretty tough, as in, the animations are not smooth, and there are lots of little buggy things like action buttons getting stuck in a non-operative mode (usually when you cross a hex boundary). GW is still balancing attacks and defenses, and tweaking potions, spells and other buffs and debuffs to make it as balanced as possible.
In the next 2-3 months we should start the process of training characters to build our own settlements from the ground up (some sort of disaster will knock them all down) and that will really tell us if the player population is ready for prime time. We Dwarves are having fun, have a pretty large group signing in almost every night, and have a few new recruits each week. PFO might not be going gangbusters yet, but it has a good solid core of players that don't mind paying a monthly sub to support development, we get to crowdforge ideas, and we will be some of the most powerful payers in the game, at least until some of you join us and start accumulating experience. Buddy Keys available if you email me at Fanndis.Goldbraid@gmail.com .
There are many Unity games that have fluid motions and use mechanim blending and state machines to produce responsive animations.
Sometimes animations just aren't very good.
But sometimes if there's jerky stuff that isn't flowing smoothly, the game has messed up on prediction, hinting and correction.
Prediction takes into account several factors -- usually the server runs at a lower frame rate than the client, so you can stack more than one server process on a single computer. And so that's one factor being taken into account, that the server processes updates slower than the clients do.
Then, your client has to send the data to the server -- so you press a key, the next frame your client reads that and sends it to the server. The server processes the update at its fixed frame rate, and sends back an answer -- and then the next frame on your client, you process it.
So the art is in covering up that latency -- that's why many games have a 200ms or so "warm up" on moves -- because they can cut that short on other clients, and nobody will notice.
Hitning is used in conjunction with predictions. Except for that guy in your PUG last night, people don't ike to jump in the lava and die. And so you tag the lava with "bad." There's a bridge over the lava, so you tag that with "good." When you're predicting, you predict players running towards the lava are probably heading for the bridge, and you tweak your prediction so you don't draw them falling into the lava. And then when you're wrong, you permanently delete whoever's account it is -- since none of us want to group with that guy jumping in the lava for fun anyway.
Similarly, in a traditional fantasy MMO -- you can hint threat to predict mob activities more accurately client side. So, for example, you know the guy in the silk and lace is going to be the dragon's next snack and the guy in the tin can that's supposed to have agro will be the dragon's last choice (see, I was in your PUG last night -- it's uncanny isn't it?), and so you can track that as well and start predicting the mob's movement. The worst thing that happens is something unexpected happens (the tank, for example, discovers they have a taunt key), and the prediction is wrong.
And then correction comes into play there -- correction says "I predicted the idiot was running for the bridge, but he actually ran into the lava instead, and so I need to reconcile the game state. But I want to do it carefully, so that nobody notices that I predicted he was on the bridge." And so instead of jumping off the chasm into the lava, he junmps off the bridge into the lava -- problem corrected.
Similarly, dragon wanted to eat wizard, tank found taunt button -- so just turn to face the warrior instead. If required, ever so slightly ramp up movement speed, so it's not super obvious you did it, but the issue corrects itself a touch faster.
There's an art to doing it skillfully. If it's not done skillfully, then your transitions suck and you have mobs teleporting around and things.
Based off what I am told the game isn't going to be fully sand-box you will be limited skills based off the guild or settlement you join, and you are pretty much forced to join a Settlement to actually advance.
Over-All I do not recommend this game unless the developers intend on making the game a full sand-box game, and the "Original Dark Fall Online" would be a better game than this game if it were to come back honestly.
PVP wise, the game has too many restrictions as well planned for development, and PK isn't allowed when the game needs an alignment system like EVE Online, or Good Vs Bad with Zero Skill Penalty or limits because a player chooses to pk others but rather if they go into a Good area they will get attacked by guards/towers.
My opinion the developers do not know what they are doing.
Comments
In reply to vesuvias (don't know yet how to quote)
There is a lot wrong beside the graphics
- too much is non intuitive and makes it hard for a new player - a lot harder as it necessarily needs to be. No 'just install and play' - you have a much steeper learning curve and too many players leave in the first half an hour
- A min/maxer nightmare - they still balance the game - this means goal posts keep changing
- A very fast development with lots of changes / new options / features every three weeks - but nearly every new patch also has something that is bugged and needs fixing
- The game is based on communication - but the communication options the game offers is very poor
I guess I miss a few bits. After all I love the game and don't look at the flaws.
So what is good?
The community that is very helpful and despite some egos who tend to clash still tries to work together
A more mature group of gamers - averahe age is closer to 40 then to 25 with hardly any teens around (actually don't know any apart of my son and daughter)
Developers who listen and change the game if needed. I'm now in the game since alpha 8 for approx. 8 month and at least two major formulas have changed thanks to me (or others voicing the same wishes)
The underlying basics of the gameplay. It reminds me of Civilisation - your settlement is Germany or Russia - but yourself only play one of the soldiers exploring and building - off course at company leader or settlement leader level there is more you can do
A small familiar group. I would expect every major player can tell you about Thod. I've had now twice in game some notorious player killers coming my way - only to warn me that I'm in dangerous terrain instead of attacking me.
The latter will be gone eventually when (if) the game truly grows. But that will be a while.
Oh - and a last - interactions are meaningful. Killing the wrong people or behaving in bad ways will haunt you. Off course if you are stronger then you have a lot more leeway what you can do.
Some day my own politics will likely catch up with me and someone I angered now will burn down my whole settlement. But until then I enjoy it.
Hi and welcome to the forums! I'd be interested in seeing your take once the game hits "Open Enrollment" so be sure to stop back. In the meantime I hope you stick around and join the community here as we discuss PFO but also other games. Always good to see fresh blood show up! I'm sure you are as interested as anyone in the rest of Bill's Review in progress updates. Should be fun!
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Beyond Thod's response, there are a few things that stood out to me. First, like many sandbox games, there is a lifeless look and feel because they simply put no effort into certain aspects of the game. The way npcs move (or rather don't unless they're chasing you), the way everything is set up. Just like in real life, environments should tell a story. Its what makes it seem believable.
Look at the starter area, and when you walk outside of town there are goblins just plopped down every 10 or so feet, staring towards the city where newbies are coming from. No pathing around, nothing the game is given the illusion of doing anything. Go out beyond that, its the same but with bandits and wolves.
Sandbox games rely too heavily on "players being the content" and they seem to always forget that in the absence of players, they need to keep up the illusion that this is actually a virtual world where stuff happens and people are doing things whether I'm there or not.
I do hope that part of this review will include taking a look at if all the items sold as part of the Kickstarter 2.5 years ago have been delivered now that the game is "released" and available for box price + sub + cash shop.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/431375/Since-the-game-is-released-are-the-items-bought-in-Kickstarter-25-years-ago-in-game.html
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Bill's 'review in progress' article is pretty good IMV. For purposes of disclosure I sank a fair chunk of change into this project, and I don't know if the estimate of a year is quite right, but the guess that the current state of the game needs a year is reasonable. The game certainly has a ways to go. Accruing XP over time is something to be desired, but since that XP will not be useful without active play (providing skill-gate 'achievements') accumulated XP has little consequence. I think this overcomes one of the big negatives of Eve for the new player.
However, the game is demonstrably not vaporware, as so many believed it was. The economic and crafting systems are robust. Combat is clunky and stiff but it has serious complexity built into it that I think will eventually pay off in spades. The terrain seriously needs to be worked over to enable more reasonable movement and exploration. There are many impassable slopes uphill, but so far there is no falling damage even if you walk straight off an Everest-scale cliff.
The political-economic core of play should already work well in the long term. The problem with it right now is that the non-crafting, apolitical single player game is sorely deficient. This, in turn, renders anemic the function of an otherwise feature-complete, group-centric/community-centric design layer. Community involvement in planning and decisions is more crucial now than it should ultimately be because it is just about the only interesting feature of the whole game, and only so many players in a community can be officers. True, the companies (subunits of a community or town) are now able to control and build holdings like mines and watchtowers which should expand the non-officer roles, but to be complete the game will have to have sufficient solo activity available to support the viability of the whole. In a way it is a lesson in 'trickle-down' theory.
To dream, perhaps to be.
Regarding the dollar costs issue: Different people value differently. If you have plenty of money the value you place on a $15/Mo. sub will vary from someone who is just squeaking by. If you are a lover of multiplayer games and interplayer conflict (goes far beyond mere PvP) then you are going to value community-integrated game development much more than you otherwise could. So I think it is arguable that Goblinworks did not err in making it possible to contribute. It is the responsibility of the consumer to make an informed decision about whether they want to pay a sub so early in the development cycle. Goblinworks offers a free 15-day trial. That means they are affording the player a cost effective way to gain the information they need to make an informed decision.
The responsibility to make a decision belongs to the customer. Customers vary with the individual. It is wrong to complain that it isn't worth it, or to deride those who decide differently from you. None of us are your clone. You don't get to decide our individuality or our values. Our values are just as valid as yours, even when different from your own.
Your decision may be right for you, but don't attempt to force your values on anyone else.
To dream, perhaps to be.
Active: D&D Online (alpha,beta,&unlimited)
Retired: Anarchy Online, Archlord (beta), Auto Assault (beta), CoH/CoV, Dark Age of Camelot, Dungeon Runners, Elder Scrolls Online, Everquest, EVE, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online (beta,live), Pathfinder Online (beta), Rift (beta,live), Secret World (beta,live), Star Wars Old Republic, Vanguard (beta), Warhammer (beta,live), World of Warcraft
Hi all! I have been posting for a while both here and on Reddit, and must say this review (not arguing whether it is a review or not) seems fair to me. I am still having fun. Things are just getting interesting with players getting set up to start supporting their home settlements. Holdings and outposts are in, and will be generating bulk resources to "pay for upkeep" of the settlement. That is awesome! And the landscape appears much more interesting with little buildings dotting the fields, woods and mountains.
The map is huge, and will get much larger later on (around six times bigger than it is now) so the much awaited mules, donkeys, and carts to haul your gathered, refined and crafted mats around are way overdue.
Combat is pretty tough, as in, the animations are not smooth, and there are lots of little buggy things like action buttons getting stuck in a non-operative mode (usually when you cross a hex boundary). GW is still balancing attacks and defenses, and tweaking potions, spells and other buffs and debuffs to make it as balanced as possible.
In the next 2-3 months we should start the process of training characters to build our own settlements from the ground up (some sort of disaster will knock them all down) and that will really tell us if the player population is ready for prime time. We Dwarves are having fun, have a pretty large group signing in almost every night, and have a few new recruits each week. PFO might not be going gangbusters yet, but it has a good solid core of players that don't mind paying a monthly sub to support development, we get to crowdforge ideas, and we will be some of the most powerful payers in the game, at least until some of you join us and start accumulating experience. Buddy Keys available if you email me at Fanndis.Goldbraid@gmail.com .
Fanndis Goldbraid, Ambassador, Forgeholm
I thought this was going to be a weekly feature right up to the full review...
Looking forward to part 2!
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
The moral of the story is, if you don't have a clue how well designed pvp works, most certainly don't design a game where pvp is in the forefront.
My condolences for anyone who invested in this game, the chances that it will get that much better and slim and none.
There are many Unity games that have fluid motions and use mechanim blending and state machines to produce responsive animations.
Sometimes animations just aren't very good.
But sometimes if there's jerky stuff that isn't flowing smoothly, the game has messed up on prediction, hinting and correction.
Prediction takes into account several factors -- usually the server runs at a lower frame rate than the client, so you can stack more than one server process on a single computer. And so that's one factor being taken into account, that the server processes updates slower than the clients do.
Then, your client has to send the data to the server -- so you press a key, the next frame your client reads that and sends it to the server. The server processes the update at its fixed frame rate, and sends back an answer -- and then the next frame on your client, you process it.
So the art is in covering up that latency -- that's why many games have a 200ms or so "warm up" on moves -- because they can cut that short on other clients, and nobody will notice.
Hitning is used in conjunction with predictions. Except for that guy in your PUG last night, people don't ike to jump in the lava and die. And so you tag the lava with "bad." There's a bridge over the lava, so you tag that with "good." When you're predicting, you predict players running towards the lava are probably heading for the bridge, and you tweak your prediction so you don't draw them falling into the lava. And then when you're wrong, you permanently delete whoever's account it is -- since none of us want to group with that guy jumping in the lava for fun anyway.
Similarly, in a traditional fantasy MMO -- you can hint threat to predict mob activities more accurately client side. So, for example, you know the guy in the silk and lace is going to be the dragon's next snack and the guy in the tin can that's supposed to have agro will be the dragon's last choice (see, I was in your PUG last night -- it's uncanny isn't it?), and so you can track that as well and start predicting the mob's movement. The worst thing that happens is something unexpected happens (the tank, for example, discovers they have a taunt key), and the prediction is wrong.
And then correction comes into play there -- correction says "I predicted the idiot was running for the bridge, but he actually ran into the lava instead, and so I need to reconcile the game state. But I want to do it carefully, so that nobody notices that I predicted he was on the bridge." And so instead of jumping off the chasm into the lava, he junmps off the bridge into the lava -- problem corrected.
Similarly, dragon wanted to eat wizard, tank found taunt button -- so just turn to face the warrior instead. If required, ever so slightly ramp up movement speed, so it's not super obvious you did it, but the issue corrects itself a touch faster.
There's an art to doing it skillfully. If it's not done skillfully, then your transitions suck and you have mobs teleporting around and things.
Which is typical of Unity MMO in a box kits.
Based off what I am told the game isn't going to be fully sand-box you will be limited skills based off the guild or settlement you join, and you are pretty much forced to join a Settlement to actually advance.
Over-All I do not recommend this game unless the developers intend on making the game a full sand-box game, and the "Original Dark Fall Online" would be a better game than this game if it were to come back honestly.
PVP wise, the game has too many restrictions as well planned for development, and PK isn't allowed when the game needs an alignment system like EVE Online, or Good Vs Bad with Zero Skill Penalty or limits because a player chooses to pk others but rather if they go into a Good area they will get attacked by guards/towers.
My opinion the developers do not know what they are doing.