Seriously? If you are a fan of MMO's and see this becoming a trend you disagree with it absolutely affects us negatively.
How?
Keep in mind "it makes us pay for a product!" is not a valid answer.
Axehilt is right, even if he seems wrong.
Yeah, it's crappy for a company to charge a monthly fee for an alpha / beta game. Really crappy. But in the end, it doesn't affect anybody in the slightest. So you don't want to pay to play in the alpha... okay then. Don't. Wait until the game is released. You don't need to play right now and, since you're unwilling to pay, you obviously don't even want to very much.
Yeah, they're charging for an incomplete product. So what? They're up front about it being incomplete. If people are willing to pay for it, they'd be fools not to charge.
Possible pay-to-win issues aside, the only people this affects are those who feel entitled to play during a game's alpha / beta phase.
Now with that being said, I see nothing wrong with people who feel slighted calling for others to avoid purchasing the game. Consumers have every right to protest against business practices which they find abhorrent, even if their reasons might be somewhat selfish and petty. After all, that's part of how a free market works.
Now if people start calling for a person or organization of authority to step in, then I'll agree there had better be a damned good reason for it. As in, "This product will kill your entire family even if used properly", kind of reason.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
not only that but a product can't be a "minimum viable product" and be completed at the same time. a MVP is by definition a marketing strategy using prototyping for data acquisition and analysis while spending as little money as possible.
its basically an alternative to having a large marketing department and multiple proof of concept phases.
a good example of a MVP would be Mindcraft's long ass alpha/beta where early adopters recieved essentially a prototype copy of the game for a fraction of the release cost.
In practice GW should be taking the data gathered from the minimum viable product phase and making changes before releasing(and charging) a "completed" product began. The fact that CEO has a smaller then expected player base means A) whoever was in charge of marketing made a major mistake analyzing the MVP data, or the people in charge of making decisions have their head in the sand and ignored said data.
or C) The CEO is out of touch with the MMO community base of players and has no clue of what that player base is actually looking for in a next gen Open World PVP Sandbox MMO.
Ryan, they want "EvE with Swords".... that means full loot, consequences for losing in PVP and not consequences for engaging in PVP. It means player characters have the freedom to move around, create new guilds, travel to new settlements, and keep and USE the skills they have already paid real dollars to to train.
Settlements are locations, not social structures and character skills should not be tied to them. If you don't realize that player guilds are what players socialize around with, than you will never attract a sustainable player base.
You need to educate yourself in what a Sandbox MMO is. The only settlements that have any kind of success all have player bases (as small as they are) playing almost EXACTLY the same way (with no more than 5% variation).
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
I suspect you are employed by Golblinworks or are a died-in-the-wool fanboi.
"Players just want a free game."
Lol. Players don't want to pay a monthly fee for a game in alpha. Especially when they are trying to coerce you to pay because it will give you a pay-to-win advantage (due to skill leveling in the game) over those who start when the game is in a presentable state.
It's really not a hard concept to understand. You should try it!
Look, you're either interested in the product or you're not. If you're interested enough you'll pay for the product. If not (or if after paying you feel it's too buggy to warrant continued play) then you won't pay. This is not complicated, and you do it for every other product you buy in your life, so what's the big deal with this particular product?
I'm neither a fanboy nor a Goblinworks employee. In fact I know little about PFO that wasn't researched when this thread was created. It was created in The Pub and unhelpfully moved here by a mod and of course that's when the actual PFO fanboys descended upon it.
Beyond that? The game looks bad. Seems to lack the polish of a good PVE game, which is the only thing I look for in MMORPGs (MMORPGs universally have awful, casual PVP.) PFO is open world PVP with territory control, which is even worse than the casual PVP of typical MMORPGs. Personally I get PVP from skill-centric genres.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Concurrent players are a great metric, but alone they don't tell you much other than how many are playing at one time.
If every time you look to log into a game and you see a concurrent player count of less than 100, you'll know that the game is in deep trouble.
Rarely does EVE have less than 20,000 online at any given time, outside of the moments before and after daily shut down. BTW, 32,000 at this very moment
The big problem is that GW is developing PFO in an echo chamber of sycophants, with very little MMO experience or so adverse to real risk in an MMO that they are just fine with a population that can't sustain the game in the long term.
I'm beginning to believe that the only way PFO has a real launch into the broader market place is as a F2P game, with a cash shop for a variety of in game items.
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
Originally posted by Talonsin I would like to know how your version of "early enrollment" is different from other games conducting alpha/beta testing?
I have never seen or been involved in a process like Early Enrollment before - not in collectible card games, not in tabletop roleplaying games, not in building software as a service for business clients, and not for massively multiplayer RPGs. (I'll say that my observations of Paizo's process for testing new tabletop RPG content is an exception to this. We inherited a lot of Crowdforging DNA from Paizo and they're pioneers in getting this right.)
I've been on the other side of that curtain and I tell you that in my experience the claims that projects in "testing" are responsive to feedback are mostly bullshit. Projects develop inertia. People become vested in seeing their ideas come to fruition. Reputations are staked on tough calls with little information - and people defend their reputations. Change happens on the edge and at the margins and it's often change that's driven overwhelmingly by business decisions not by feedback. In other words, people's sense that they're contributing is almost all an illusion.
In my previous experience and the experience that I would say is "the standard" for most industries, alpha & beta testing are things that take place after key design issues are finalized. Those fundamental structural decisions can be changed but they can only be changed with extraordinary difficulty and for the most part usually are not. They are almost always primarily focused on finding and fixing "bugs". The scope of those tests is also compromised because they're "not real" in the sense that the users don't feel fully vested in the outcomes because whatever the test environment is, it will end and be reset to something else eventually.
During these tests there is minimal feedback. Testers submit reports and might have a contact person they can interact with who consolidates those reports but it's never very clear to the testers to whom they're speaking and if what they're saying is having any meaningful impact.
Early Enrollment is different.
We built the company around Crowdforging. We talked about all our ideas for the game before we wrote any meaningful code and started soliciting feedback from our community at the very start. Every meeting we have we talk about what the community is telling us. Our staff is tasked with interacting with the community and being available to them to reply to questions and solicit feedback, and we expect (demand) that the staff represent what they've heard as "the voice of the customer" as a fundamental part of our process.
In virtually every meeting and planning session the issue of what the customers are saying, how they're using the game, what their pain points are, what their feedback is, and how we observe what they do is a substantial and meaningful part of our process. At this point it has become so deeply embedded in what we do that I could honestly say that every action this company takes is driven by Crowdforging.
Early Enrollment is meaningful because the game is in live operations and there won't be a wipe. So the feedback we get isn't distorted by people thinking that nothing really matters and it will all be reset at some point anyway. They're living in the world as we build it, and they know that the changes that happen to that world are driven at least in part by what they want the world to be. And that's a continuation of the process that started when we published the first blog about the game and started the loop of interaction.
Early Enrollment is different because there are still major game systems that exist only as very basic features or have not even been introduced yet. Making a change at this stage has leverage. A small shift now means that the eventual iterations and evolution of the feature will end up wildly different than what the result would have been if we'd come to the table with a traditional development process.
Ask people who have been involved with the project for a while if they think that feedback from the community is actually driving the design. Ask if they've seen us make changes in direction based on their feedback. Ask if they've seen us abandon a line of development and adopt a new plan based on pushback from the community. Ask if they think that they're talking directly to the people who are actually doing the work.
Originally posted by Bluddwolf You have said "We are following industry standards", but I can show you the inaccuracy of that statement with the most prominent and appropriate example.... EvE Online
Citing the one outlier (which predates almost every other business in the segment) is not how you establish an "industry standard".
Originally posted by Bluddwolf Ryan, they want "EvE with Swords".... that means full loot, consequences for losing in PVP and not consequences for engaging in PVP. It means player characters have the freedom to move around, create new guilds, travel to new settlements, and keep and USE the skills they have already paid real dollars to to train.
EVE is not "full loot".
Pathfinder Online has consequences for losing in PvP, just like EVE.
Characters can move around and create new "guilds", travel to new Settlements, and keep and USE the skills they've already paid real dollars to train right now.
You just seem to think that because Pathfinder Online isn't exactly the shade of blue that you imagine would be perfect that it's not blue at all.
Originally posted by Bluddwolf You have said "We are following industry standards", but I can show you the inaccuracy of that statement with the most prominent and appropriate example.... EvE Online
Citing the one outlier (which predates almost every other business in the segment) is not how you establish an "industry standard".
As posted above, back in Jan you specifically said you would publish the numbers in a blog. You also had no problem saying you had 4500 or so accounts subscribed at that point. What happened between your statement that you would publish the numbers in a Jan and your statement yesterday that you would not publish numbers?
I mean, it's really not all that important either way... but I think it does point to consistency, or the lack of it. The important part is that you are way short of your expected participation, thus your concept of what is a Minimal Viable Product has not been accepted by the public. Again, I suggest you step back... remove yourself form the echo-chamber that has enabled you to get into this situation.. and course correct. Those 10-20 Evangelists that rubber stamp every idea and shout down anyone who dares suggest you are on the wrong course are doing far more damage to your game than anyone or anything said on this forum. My suggestions for doing that are up above.
This thread has more participation and posts than any discussion in your Crowdforging forum since inception with the exception of maybe 2-3 threads (and one of those was titled "Why My Guild Is Leaving". It's not crowdforging when you base your decisions on feedback from 10-20 guys...
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
In virtually every meeting and planning session the issue of what the customers are saying, how they're using the game, what their pain points are, what their feedback is, and how we observe what they do is a substantial and meaningful part of our process. At this point it has become so deeply embedded in what we do that I could honestly say that every action this company takes is driven by Crowdforging.
How are you gathering this feedback? I dont see any method of collecting meaningful, measurable feedback on the forum. You continue to insist that the players are driving the direction of the game and are a part of every process but you are failing to show us how. For example, after you posted about players going out and marketing on sites like this one, many of your paying customers advised against it based on the current state of the game. Did you retract that statement? Did you post again taking the players feedback into consideration and tell them to hold off until the game could be in a better state? I dont see that anywhere. Where was the "crowdforging" in that?
In this thread on your forum it seems many players are for dropping the box fee, https://goblinworks.com/forum/topic/2970/ will you listen and drop the box fee now? You have already announced a"faction system" can you direct me to where a majority of players came up with this idea in the forum before you announced it? Can you direct me to any place on your website where a fairly large group proposed an idea that you have adopted?
I dont see any difference in your forum from any other developer. I dont see any GW staff directed interaction or data collection efforts. I dont see anything asking the community what they want in the game next. I dont see any real effort to gather feedback on topics you are planning. I dont see a list of pain points for the community to comment on. You say feedback is being used but you did not show me how, how are you doing it differently when your data collection process is the exact same as everyone else's.
I'm with you, I'm more than ready to throw my wallet at a real developer who will actually listen to the players and make the game that many of us want. I'm just not a mindless drone who does so without any evidence and I dont see any evidence that you are doing anything different in the game development or data collection processes.
"Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game." - SEANMCAD
Originally posted by Talonsin How are you gathering this feedback?
We try to talk to lots of different people in lots of different ways. The forums, by their nature, are a very small subset of the player community.
Lisa is engaged in a project where she arranges for a voice chat with every Settlement and any other organization that wants to meet with her. She's constantly reaching out to those groups and scheduling the meetings.
We conduct market research surveys using segments of our mailing list.
We are active on the golarion Mumble system on an irregular but frequent basis.
We broadcast on Twitch and interact with players in the Twitch chat.
We get a tremendous amount of email. That includes email sent to the customer service email address as well as directly to us as individuals.
There is an in-game tool for reporting problems and submitting comments. All of those are read and most are replied to and logged.
Last week we attended PaizoCon, the annual convention for all things Pathfinder. We conducted 5 panels and operated a demo room during the whole event. Our staff was regularly accessible to the players during this event.
I attend PAX East and Pax Prime and talk to lots of players as a part of my work appearing on panels. At GenCon we run Pathfinder Online specific panels and work to meet and interact with the player community.
We are also active on Twitter and Facebook and interact with people on both venues regularly.
Edited to Add: Oh yeah, plus here, MassivelyOP and reddit.
Edited again to Add: I totally forgot about the tool we used to generate and classify ideas, IdeaScale, the output of which is going to seed a lot of our upcoming in-game polls for priorities and either/or choices.
About the primitive crowdforging that has been ongoing since before I discovered this game. I write "primitive" because there are (or at least were) plans to create a better crowdforging system.
One (just one of many actually) example of subscriber input are PVE escalations. Dig deep in both the Paizo forums and the Goblinworks.com forums.
Another, is the slight nerfing of how ranged attack mechanics work. Look around for those also, if you want to see some crowd forging.
The regeneration rate of resources within individual hexes is a third.
Four, and before the above even, would be the move from heavy armor and movement handicaps to increased weight of the armors (for those that choose them) and so a compromise of it just further limiting what a heavy armored toon can carry.
Examples are everywhere if you dig or just read/listen to more recent back and forth. They can be found in recorded community chats and forums.
GW does not change everything that we opine. Nor should they.
No more "BOX" fee. Free 15 day trials at: goblinworks.com/download/ Ozem's Vigil: The largest force for Holy Justice in the River Kingdoms. Are You Ready to Smite Evil? ozemsvigil.guildlaunch.com
Originally posted by Bluddwolf You have said "We are following industry standards", but I can show you the inaccuracy of that statement with the most prominent and appropriate example.... EvE Online
Citing the one outlier (which predates almost every other business in the segment) is not how you establish an "industry standard".
As posted above, back in Jan you specifically said you would publish the numbers in a blog. You also had no problem saying you had 4500 or so accounts subscribed at that point. What happened between your statement that you would publish the numbers in a Jan and your statement yesterday that you would not publish numbers?
I mean, it's really not all that important either way... but I think it does point to consistency, or the lack of it. The important part is that you are way short of your expected participation, thus your concept of what is a Minimal Viable Product has not been accepted by the public. Again, I suggest you step back... remove yourself form the echo-chamber that has enabled you to get into this situation.. and course correct. Those 10-20 Evangelists that rubber stamp every idea and shout down anyone who dares suggest you are on the wrong course are doing far more damage to your game than anyone or anything said on this forum. My suggestions for doing that are up above.
This thread has more participation and posts than any discussion in your Crowdforging forum since inception with the exception of maybe 2-3 threads (and one of those was titled "Why My Guild Is Leaving". It's not crowdforging when you base your decisions on feedback from 10-20 guys...
Exactly this, a long while back I joined the PFO paizo forums and offered some feedback but was immediately chewed out and shouted down by some of the 10/20 you mention and tbh that behavior was even "supported" by Ryan Dancey via a post he made afterwards.
Needless to say I lost interest in participating in the forum a few days later as the forums seemed to be the stomping ground of, I think of him as goatboy as his avatar is a goat can't recall the name though, and his flock of 10/20.
Crowdforging is nice and all but not very effective if you only listen to your 10/20 fanclub and ignore the rest or drive them away.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Originally posted by EdgeX When the MMO world is in a sandbox loving mood these days, and they still want nothing to do with this game, it should tell you something.
Not only is it in an sandbox mood, it is in an open world PvP sandbox mood. Goblin Works / Ryan Dancey initially gave every indication that they understood that but since the game was almost exclusively marketed to the TT and PvP adverse communities, the PvP aspects of the game have been severally limited.
There is actually very little freedom in PFO, so little that I would not call it a sandbox MMO. This has nothing to do with the PvP controls that are in place, it has to do with the social controls. If I trained my skills to level 12 and I decided the settlement I'm in no longer has an active community, I leave for another settlment, but it does not support level 12 skills I will lose access to that level of skills.
This is meant to be a part of a negative feedback loop. The theory is that if you behave in a manner that the community does not like, the threat of kicking you out (and losing access to trained skills) will keep you in line. This would be fine when considering true griefing, hacking or some other form of cheating. However, the community definition of what is Griefing is essentially any form of PvP outside of what they say it is, equals griefing. If you kill for the sole purpose of looting, that is seen as random and meaningless killing, because the only real loot can be found on gatherers (supposed non combatants) and not those looking to PvP (No Duh!).
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
the PvP aspects of the game have been severally limited.
You can attack any character, anywhere, at any time. We ask that you not do so in the new character areas for obvious reasons, but if you're attacking non-newbies in those areas we won't take any administrative action.
You can loot the bodies of any character that dies. The body (we call it a husk) will contain 75% of whatever the character had in inventory when it died (the remainder being destroyed). Items equipped by the dead character remain with the character but lose 5% of their durability each time they take a trip through the dead book with the character and are destroyed at 0 durability.
If you are a member of a Company that has earned Influence you can spend some of that Influence to Feud another Company. While the Feud is ongoing you can attack members of the target Company anywhere, at any time, without consequence.
Barriers to PvP
Guards
There are guards in Settlements and near Thornkeep which will kill you if they aggro on your character. They'll aggro if you have certain flags acquired for attacking other characters outside of Feuds, or if your Reputation is low.
Reputation
Your character has a Reputation statistic. When characters you've attacked die, you lose Reputation. The amount you lose is a function of the amount of Reputation of the dead character. High Rep characters "cost more" to kill than Low Rep characters.
If your Reputation is below -2,500 (on a -7,500 to +7,500 scale) you will be attacked on sight by guards and Settlement facilities like trainers and crafting/refining stations will be closed to you.
Reputation is regenerated automatically in realtime. It takes about 7 days to regenerate Reputation from -7,500 to -2,500.
Social Pressure
If you become known as someone who kills for the lolz and especially if you engage in harassing chat with your targets, the Pathfinder Online community is likely to ostracize you. They have done an amazing job of creating a culture that tolerates "meaningful" PvP and doesn't tolerate random PKing.
Why Bluddwolf Doesn't PvP
Bluddwolf's main character has joined a Settlement that is party to numerous non-aggression pacts and metagame agreements which limit the targets he and his group can attack without social consequences.
He could, at his option, quit that group and become a free agent. Even if no other Settlement in the game would agree to take him in, he'd still get support for the Feats he's trained up to a certain level. He'd continue to be able to use all the armor and weapons he owns and use all the combat actions he's trained - although not at their potential maximum effectiveness.
Bluddwolf has a Destiny's Twin account, which means that for the price of one subscription, two characters are gaining XP in parallel (that was a special perk offered exclusively to backers of our Kickstarter).
Even if Bludwolf decided that with his main he'd like to remain within the system of treaties and non-agression pacts he's accepted with his Settlement, he could create an alt (and it could be anonymous unless he tells people who he is) that could engage in unrestricted PvP with no social consequences to him as long as he preserves that character's anonymity.
He can get support for his character's trained feats higher than the default by joining any player-run Settlement. There are several that likely would take any character's request and that are outside the metagame of alliances. Or he could arrange to become the leader of a Settlement by negotiating with one of the current Leaders (several have changed hands since Early Enrollment began) and he could decide that Settlement would be a home for people who wanted more active PvP outside the metagame, then work to recruit allies to join him in his cause.
Why he doesn't do these things is not clear to me.
Originally posted by Bluddwolf If you kill for the sole purpose of looting, that is seen as random and meaningless killing, because the only real loot can be found on gatherers (supposed non combatants) and not those looking to PvP (No Duh!).
Maybe I'm just not understanding you correctly, but it seems like you are trying to say that murdering a farmer for the produce in his pockets isn't a random or meaningless act because murderers don't carry produce.
Is that really where you were going with that. If so, has it occurred to you that if you want gatherables you could avoid the consequences of murder if you just became a gatherer?
It seems like your argument is "I want to murder gatherers for their loot, but the game mechanics want to punish me for doing so and i feel that's not right." If that's not your stance, could you clarify a bit better?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
1. It would have been a lot better if faction PvP was in sooner.
2. The reputation system prevents lower skilled characters from PvPing, more so than higher skilled characters. The reason for this is that a lower skilled character is locked out from training in a much more inopertune time than a higher skilled character.
for example: when I first started playing, being barred from training for a week slowed down my skill progression. But now, at higher skills, it takes me more than a week to get the higher skills and I can afford to take maximum reputation loss.
What this does is pretty much deter new players from PvPing at all, unless they were the initial victim. However, with the Noob protection, even their opportunity of that PvP experience was diminished.
Now I know someone will chime in and say "you could always organize PvP". My answer to that is, "That isn't pvp, it's practice".
Im not writing this from the perspective of the wouldbe aggressor. I want to be minding my own business and get killed if I let my guard down. There is no sense of danger in PFO, certainly not like most other sandbox MMOs I have played.
3. Because of this, and other reasons, it has been difficult to attract or retain players that are looking primarily for PvP.
4. Why don't I just go out and accept the consequences? I would gladly, but when I can cross 30 hexes and pass through several settlments and not see a single player...... The target rich environment does not exist, even if the mostly defunct NAPs were still in place.
Hopefully faction PvP will improve opportunity. I prefer that character skill training be partially tied to Faction level in lieu of just settlement level.
I had always planned on being the community's "Bad Guy" content, and I'm willing to accept some cap reduction in skill. it also be more conducive to outlaws if Rotter's Hole was more centralized.
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
Originally posted by Bluddwolf 1. It would have been a lot better if faction PvP was in sooner.
Sure. It would be "a lot better" if we had developed the game for 5 years in secret and then hoped we'd gotten everything right. But we're in Early Enrollment and we're Crowdforging, so features are coming on-line incrementally whilst you play and you can therefore contribute meaningfully to shaping how they work - like Factions.
2. The reputation system prevents lower skilled characters from PvPing, more so than higher skilled characters. The reason for this is that a lower skilled character is locked out from training in a much more inopertune time than a higher skilled character.
This is incorrect.
What the Reputation system means is that if you go below -2,500, you train on Fridays instead of every day. Every Friday, you'll have trained to exactly the same place you'd have trained to if you'd had unrestricted access to the trainers. Instead of continuous training, you train once a week. But your rate of character advancement is unaffected.
What this does is pretty much deter new players from PvPing at all, unless they were the initial victim.
New players aren't avoiding PvP because of Rep loss. They're avoiding PvP because they're new and the game is complex, they don't have intermediate gear and there are lots of Feats they need to train before they'll be effective. A month after they start, they're ready to go (if they choose to do so).
Now I know someone will chime in and say "you could always organize PvP". My answer to that is, "That isn't pvp, it's practice".
How about if I chime in and say "you could always hide out in a well-trafficked road area and ambush some people and take their stuff"?
There is no sense of danger in PFO, certainly not like most other sandbox MMOs I have played.
Ask the folks who freak out every time they see someone on the minimap that isn't in their party if there's "no sense of danger".
3. Because of this, and other reasons, it has been difficult to attract or retain players that are looking primarily for PvP.
I think it has been hard to attract and retain people who want a murder simulator. That's by design.
4. Why don't I just go out and accept the consequences? I would gladly, but when I can cross 30 hexes and pass through several settlments and not see a single player...... The target rich environment does not exist, even if the mostly defunct NAPs were still in place.
I can give you several hexes where you'll see several characters and hour pass through mostly crafters & harvesters and virtually none with bodyguards or friends nearby. I'm sure you know exactly where I'm talking about.
I think it has been hard to attract and retain people who want a murder simulator.
I think it has been hard to attract and retain people. Period. Why would PvP people be any different? Feel free to correct me if I am mistaken but I am fairly sure that your attraction and retention of PvE players is not great...
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
let me explain the possible incorrectness or naïveté of this statement:
2. The reputation system prevents lower skilled characters from PvPing, more so than higher skilled characters. The reason for this is that a lower skilled character is locked out from training in a much more inopertune time than a higher skilled character.
This is incorrect.
What the Reputation system means is that if you go below -2,500, you train on Fridays instead of every day. Every Friday, you'll have trained to exactly the same place you'd have trained to if you'd had unrestricted access to the trainers. Instead of continuous training, you train once a week. But your rate of character advancement is unaffected.
Mathematically speaking, you are correct, there is no difference in advancement. However, the perception is different. The newer player will not have that feeling of advancing their character when they otherwise could, whereas the vetern player with a veteran character will know that it will take 8 or more days to train that higher level skill anyway. Automatically banking xp is not enough of an achievement to excite a player or give them that sense of forward progress.
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
Originally posted by YashaX Its old news, but yeah I find it pretty outrageous as well. Like you say, it sets an unwelcome precedent.
How does it affect you negatively?
Why does that matter? Its outrageous for a company to charge a box price and sub for a game in PFO's state while claiming it is complete. It sets an unwelcome precedent because it opens the door to more of such distasteful behaviour. Seems pretty straight forward to me.
I would see the situation completely differently if they had offered a sub option to back the game which allowed players to test it and give feedback while in this developmental stage.
Comments
Axehilt is right, even if he seems wrong.
Yeah, it's crappy for a company to charge a monthly fee for an alpha / beta game. Really crappy. But in the end, it doesn't affect anybody in the slightest. So you don't want to pay to play in the alpha... okay then. Don't. Wait until the game is released. You don't need to play right now and, since you're unwilling to pay, you obviously don't even want to very much.
Yeah, they're charging for an incomplete product. So what? They're up front about it being incomplete. If people are willing to pay for it, they'd be fools not to charge.
Possible pay-to-win issues aside, the only people this affects are those who feel entitled to play during a game's alpha / beta phase.
Now with that being said, I see nothing wrong with people who feel slighted calling for others to avoid purchasing the game. Consumers have every right to protest against business practices which they find abhorrent, even if their reasons might be somewhat selfish and petty. After all, that's part of how a free market works.
Now if people start calling for a person or organization of authority to step in, then I'll agree there had better be a damned good reason for it. As in, "This product will kill your entire family even if used properly", kind of reason.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
or C) The CEO is out of touch with the MMO community base of players and has no clue of what that player base is actually looking for in a next gen Open World PVP Sandbox MMO.
Ryan, they want "EvE with Swords".... that means full loot, consequences for losing in PVP and not consequences for engaging in PVP. It means player characters have the freedom to move around, create new guilds, travel to new settlements, and keep and USE the skills they have already paid real dollars to to train.
Settlements are locations, not social structures and character skills should not be tied to them. If you don't realize that player guilds are what players socialize around with, than you will never attract a sustainable player base.
You need to educate yourself in what a Sandbox MMO is. The only settlements that have any kind of success all have player bases (as small as they are) playing almost EXACTLY the same way (with no more than 5% variation).
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
Look, you're either interested in the product or you're not. If you're interested enough you'll pay for the product. If not (or if after paying you feel it's too buggy to warrant continued play) then you won't pay. This is not complicated, and you do it for every other product you buy in your life, so what's the big deal with this particular product?
I'm neither a fanboy nor a Goblinworks employee. In fact I know little about PFO that wasn't researched when this thread was created. It was created in The Pub and unhelpfully moved here by a mod and of course that's when the actual PFO fanboys descended upon it.
Beyond that? The game looks bad. Seems to lack the polish of a good PVE game, which is the only thing I look for in MMORPGs (MMORPGs universally have awful, casual PVP.) PFO is open world PVP with territory control, which is even worse than the casual PVP of typical MMORPGs. Personally I get PVP from skill-centric genres.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If every time you look to log into a game and you see a concurrent player count of less than 100, you'll know that the game is in deep trouble.
Rarely does EVE have less than 20,000 online at any given time, outside of the moments before and after daily shut down. BTW, 32,000 at this very moment
The big problem is that GW is developing PFO in an echo chamber of sycophants, with very little MMO experience or so adverse to real risk in an MMO that they are just fine with a population that can't sustain the game in the long term.
I'm beginning to believe that the only way PFO has a real launch into the broader market place is as a F2P game, with a cash shop for a variety of in game items.
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
I have never seen or been involved in a process like Early Enrollment before - not in collectible card games, not in tabletop roleplaying games, not in building software as a service for business clients, and not for massively multiplayer RPGs. (I'll say that my observations of Paizo's process for testing new tabletop RPG content is an exception to this. We inherited a lot of Crowdforging DNA from Paizo and they're pioneers in getting this right.)
I've been on the other side of that curtain and I tell you that in my experience the claims that projects in "testing" are responsive to feedback are mostly bullshit. Projects develop inertia. People become vested in seeing their ideas come to fruition. Reputations are staked on tough calls with little information - and people defend their reputations. Change happens on the edge and at the margins and it's often change that's driven overwhelmingly by business decisions not by feedback. In other words, people's sense that they're contributing is almost all an illusion.
In my previous experience and the experience that I would say is "the standard" for most industries, alpha & beta testing are things that take place after key design issues are finalized. Those fundamental structural decisions can be changed but they can only be changed with extraordinary difficulty and for the most part usually are not. They are almost always primarily focused on finding and fixing "bugs". The scope of those tests is also compromised because they're "not real" in the sense that the users don't feel fully vested in the outcomes because whatever the test environment is, it will end and be reset to something else eventually.
During these tests there is minimal feedback. Testers submit reports and might have a contact person they can interact with who consolidates those reports but it's never very clear to the testers to whom they're speaking and if what they're saying is having any meaningful impact.
Early Enrollment is different.
We built the company around Crowdforging. We talked about all our ideas for the game before we wrote any meaningful code and started soliciting feedback from our community at the very start. Every meeting we have we talk about what the community is telling us. Our staff is tasked with interacting with the community and being available to them to reply to questions and solicit feedback, and we expect (demand) that the staff represent what they've heard as "the voice of the customer" as a fundamental part of our process.
In virtually every meeting and planning session the issue of what the customers are saying, how they're using the game, what their pain points are, what their feedback is, and how we observe what they do is a substantial and meaningful part of our process. At this point it has become so deeply embedded in what we do that I could honestly say that every action this company takes is driven by Crowdforging.
Early Enrollment is meaningful because the game is in live operations and there won't be a wipe. So the feedback we get isn't distorted by people thinking that nothing really matters and it will all be reset at some point anyway. They're living in the world as we build it, and they know that the changes that happen to that world are driven at least in part by what they want the world to be. And that's a continuation of the process that started when we published the first blog about the game and started the loop of interaction.
Early Enrollment is different because there are still major game systems that exist only as very basic features or have not even been introduced yet. Making a change at this stage has leverage. A small shift now means that the eventual iterations and evolution of the feature will end up wildly different than what the result would have been if we'd come to the table with a traditional development process.
Ask people who have been involved with the project for a while if they think that feedback from the community is actually driving the design. Ask if they've seen us make changes in direction based on their feedback. Ask if they've seen us abandon a line of development and adopt a new plan based on pushback from the community. Ask if they think that they're talking directly to the people who are actually doing the work.
That's why Early Enrollment is different.
Citing the one outlier (which predates almost every other business in the segment) is not how you establish an "industry standard".
EVE is not "full loot".
Pathfinder Online has consequences for losing in PvP, just like EVE.
Characters can move around and create new "guilds", travel to new Settlements, and keep and USE the skills they've already paid real dollars to train right now.
You just seem to think that because Pathfinder Online isn't exactly the shade of blue that you imagine would be perfect that it's not blue at all.
As posted above, back in Jan you specifically said you would publish the numbers in a blog. You also had no problem saying you had 4500 or so accounts subscribed at that point. What happened between your statement that you would publish the numbers in a Jan and your statement yesterday that you would not publish numbers?
I mean, it's really not all that important either way... but I think it does point to consistency, or the lack of it. The important part is that you are way short of your expected participation, thus your concept of what is a Minimal Viable Product has not been accepted by the public. Again, I suggest you step back... remove yourself form the echo-chamber that has enabled you to get into this situation.. and course correct. Those 10-20 Evangelists that rubber stamp every idea and shout down anyone who dares suggest you are on the wrong course are doing far more damage to your game than anyone or anything said on this forum. My suggestions for doing that are up above.
This thread has more participation and posts than any discussion in your Crowdforging forum since inception with the exception of maybe 2-3 threads (and one of those was titled "Why My Guild Is Leaving". It's not crowdforging when you base your decisions on feedback from 10-20 guys...
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
How are you gathering this feedback? I dont see any method of collecting meaningful, measurable feedback on the forum. You continue to insist that the players are driving the direction of the game and are a part of every process but you are failing to show us how. For example, after you posted about players going out and marketing on sites like this one, many of your paying customers advised against it based on the current state of the game. Did you retract that statement? Did you post again taking the players feedback into consideration and tell them to hold off until the game could be in a better state? I dont see that anywhere. Where was the "crowdforging" in that?
In this thread on your forum it seems many players are for dropping the box fee, https://goblinworks.com/forum/topic/2970/ will you listen and drop the box fee now? You have already announced a"faction system" can you direct me to where a majority of players came up with this idea in the forum before you announced it? Can you direct me to any place on your website where a fairly large group proposed an idea that you have adopted?
I dont see any difference in your forum from any other developer. I dont see any GW staff directed interaction or data collection efforts. I dont see anything asking the community what they want in the game next. I dont see any real effort to gather feedback on topics you are planning. I dont see a list of pain points for the community to comment on. You say feedback is being used but you did not show me how, how are you doing it differently when your data collection process is the exact same as everyone else's.
I'm with you, I'm more than ready to throw my wallet at a real developer who will actually listen to the players and make the game that many of us want. I'm just not a mindless drone who does so without any evidence and I dont see any evidence that you are doing anything different in the game development or data collection processes.
We try to talk to lots of different people in lots of different ways. The forums, by their nature, are a very small subset of the player community.
Lisa is engaged in a project where she arranges for a voice chat with every Settlement and any other organization that wants to meet with her. She's constantly reaching out to those groups and scheduling the meetings.
We conduct market research surveys using segments of our mailing list.
We are active on the golarion Mumble system on an irregular but frequent basis.
We broadcast on Twitch and interact with players in the Twitch chat.
We get a tremendous amount of email. That includes email sent to the customer service email address as well as directly to us as individuals.
There is an in-game tool for reporting problems and submitting comments. All of those are read and most are replied to and logged.
Last week we attended PaizoCon, the annual convention for all things Pathfinder. We conducted 5 panels and operated a demo room during the whole event. Our staff was regularly accessible to the players during this event.
I attend PAX East and Pax Prime and talk to lots of players as a part of my work appearing on panels. At GenCon we run Pathfinder Online specific panels and work to meet and interact with the player community.
We are also active on Twitter and Facebook and interact with people on both venues regularly.
Edited to Add: Oh yeah, plus here, MassivelyOP and reddit.
Edited again to Add: I totally forgot about the tool we used to generate and classify ideas, IdeaScale, the output of which is going to seed a lot of our upcoming in-game polls for priorities and either/or choices.
About the primitive crowdforging that has been ongoing since before I discovered this game. I write "primitive" because there are (or at least were) plans to create a better crowdforging system.
One (just one of many actually) example of subscriber input are PVE escalations. Dig deep in both the Paizo forums and the Goblinworks.com forums.
Another, is the slight nerfing of how ranged attack mechanics work. Look around for those also, if you want to see some crowd forging.
The regeneration rate of resources within individual hexes is a third.
Four, and before the above even, would be the move from heavy armor and movement handicaps to increased weight of the armors (for those that choose them) and so a compromise of it just further limiting what a heavy armored toon can carry.
Examples are everywhere if you dig or just read/listen to more recent back and forth. They can be found in recorded community chats and forums.
GW does not change everything that we opine. Nor should they.
No more "BOX" fee. Free 15 day trials at: goblinworks.com/download/
Ozem's Vigil: The largest force for Holy Justice in the River Kingdoms.
Are You Ready to Smite Evil?
ozemsvigil.guildlaunch.com
Exactly this, a long while back I joined the PFO paizo forums and offered some feedback but was immediately chewed out and shouted down by some of the 10/20 you mention and tbh that behavior was even "supported" by Ryan Dancey via a post he made afterwards.
Needless to say I lost interest in participating in the forum a few days later as the forums seemed to be the stomping ground of, I think of him as goatboy as his avatar is a goat can't recall the name though, and his flock of 10/20.
Crowdforging is nice and all but not very effective if you only listen to your 10/20 fanclub and ignore the rest or drive them away.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Not only is it in an sandbox mood, it is in an open world PvP sandbox mood. Goblin Works / Ryan Dancey initially gave every indication that they understood that but since the game was almost exclusively marketed to the TT and PvP adverse communities, the PvP aspects of the game have been severally limited.
There is actually very little freedom in PFO, so little that I would not call it a sandbox MMO. This has nothing to do with the PvP controls that are in place, it has to do with the social controls. If I trained my skills to level 12 and I decided the settlement I'm in no longer has an active community, I leave for another settlment, but it does not support level 12 skills I will lose access to that level of skills.
This is meant to be a part of a negative feedback loop. The theory is that if you behave in a manner that the community does not like, the threat of kicking you out (and losing access to trained skills) will keep you in line. This would be fine when considering true griefing, hacking or some other form of cheating. However, the community definition of what is Griefing is essentially any form of PvP outside of what they say it is, equals griefing. If you kill for the sole purpose of looting, that is seen as random and meaningless killing, because the only real loot can be found on gatherers (supposed non combatants) and not those looking to PvP (No Duh!).
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
You can attack any character, anywhere, at any time. We ask that you not do so in the new character areas for obvious reasons, but if you're attacking non-newbies in those areas we won't take any administrative action.
You can loot the bodies of any character that dies. The body (we call it a husk) will contain 75% of whatever the character had in inventory when it died (the remainder being destroyed). Items equipped by the dead character remain with the character but lose 5% of their durability each time they take a trip through the dead book with the character and are destroyed at 0 durability.
If you are a member of a Company that has earned Influence you can spend some of that Influence to Feud another Company. While the Feud is ongoing you can attack members of the target Company anywhere, at any time, without consequence.
Barriers to PvP
Guards
There are guards in Settlements and near Thornkeep which will kill you if they aggro on your character. They'll aggro if you have certain flags acquired for attacking other characters outside of Feuds, or if your Reputation is low.
Reputation
Your character has a Reputation statistic. When characters you've attacked die, you lose Reputation. The amount you lose is a function of the amount of Reputation of the dead character. High Rep characters "cost more" to kill than Low Rep characters.
If your Reputation is below -2,500 (on a -7,500 to +7,500 scale) you will be attacked on sight by guards and Settlement facilities like trainers and crafting/refining stations will be closed to you.
Reputation is regenerated automatically in realtime. It takes about 7 days to regenerate Reputation from -7,500 to -2,500.
Social Pressure
If you become known as someone who kills for the lolz and especially if you engage in harassing chat with your targets, the Pathfinder Online community is likely to ostracize you. They have done an amazing job of creating a culture that tolerates "meaningful" PvP and doesn't tolerate random PKing.
Why Bluddwolf Doesn't PvP
Bluddwolf's main character has joined a Settlement that is party to numerous non-aggression pacts and metagame agreements which limit the targets he and his group can attack without social consequences.
He could, at his option, quit that group and become a free agent. Even if no other Settlement in the game would agree to take him in, he'd still get support for the Feats he's trained up to a certain level. He'd continue to be able to use all the armor and weapons he owns and use all the combat actions he's trained - although not at their potential maximum effectiveness.
Bluddwolf has a Destiny's Twin account, which means that for the price of one subscription, two characters are gaining XP in parallel (that was a special perk offered exclusively to backers of our Kickstarter).
Even if Bludwolf decided that with his main he'd like to remain within the system of treaties and non-agression pacts he's accepted with his Settlement, he could create an alt (and it could be anonymous unless he tells people who he is) that could engage in unrestricted PvP with no social consequences to him as long as he preserves that character's anonymity.
He can get support for his character's trained feats higher than the default by joining any player-run Settlement. There are several that likely would take any character's request and that are outside the metagame of alliances. Or he could arrange to become the leader of a Settlement by negotiating with one of the current Leaders (several have changed hands since Early Enrollment began) and he could decide that Settlement would be a home for people who wanted more active PvP outside the metagame, then work to recruit allies to join him in his cause.
Why he doesn't do these things is not clear to me.
Maybe I'm just not understanding you correctly, but it seems like you are trying to say that murdering a farmer for the produce in his pockets isn't a random or meaningless act because murderers don't carry produce.
Is that really where you were going with that. If so, has it occurred to you that if you want gatherables you could avoid the consequences of murder if you just became a gatherer?
It seems like your argument is "I want to murder gatherers for their loot, but the game mechanics want to punish me for doing so and i feel that's not right." If that's not your stance, could you clarify a bit better?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
@ Ryan
1. It would have been a lot better if faction PvP was in sooner.
2. The reputation system prevents lower skilled characters from PvPing, more so than higher skilled characters. The reason for this is that a lower skilled character is locked out from training in a much more inopertune time than a higher skilled character.
for example: when I first started playing, being barred from training for a week slowed down my skill progression. But now, at higher skills, it takes me more than a week to get the higher skills and I can afford to take maximum reputation loss.
What this does is pretty much deter new players from PvPing at all, unless they were the initial victim. However, with the Noob protection, even their opportunity of that PvP experience was diminished.
Now I know someone will chime in and say "you could always organize PvP". My answer to that is, "That isn't pvp, it's practice".
Im not writing this from the perspective of the wouldbe aggressor. I want to be minding my own business and get killed if I let my guard down. There is no sense of danger in PFO, certainly not like most other sandbox MMOs I have played.
3. Because of this, and other reasons, it has been difficult to attract or retain players that are looking primarily for PvP.
4. Why don't I just go out and accept the consequences? I would gladly, but when I can cross 30 hexes and pass through several settlments and not see a single player...... The target rich environment does not exist, even if the mostly defunct NAPs were still in place.
Hopefully faction PvP will improve opportunity. I prefer that character skill training be partially tied to Faction level in lieu of just settlement level.
I had always planned on being the community's "Bad Guy" content, and I'm willing to accept some cap reduction in skill. it also be more conducive to outlaws if Rotter's Hole was more centralized.
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
Sure. It would be "a lot better" if we had developed the game for 5 years in secret and then hoped we'd gotten everything right. But we're in Early Enrollment and we're Crowdforging, so features are coming on-line incrementally whilst you play and you can therefore contribute meaningfully to shaping how they work - like Factions.
This is incorrect.
What the Reputation system means is that if you go below -2,500, you train on Fridays instead of every day. Every Friday, you'll have trained to exactly the same place you'd have trained to if you'd had unrestricted access to the trainers. Instead of continuous training, you train once a week. But your rate of character advancement is unaffected.
New players aren't avoiding PvP because of Rep loss. They're avoiding PvP because they're new and the game is complex, they don't have intermediate gear and there are lots of Feats they need to train before they'll be effective. A month after they start, they're ready to go (if they choose to do so).
How about if I chime in and say "you could always hide out in a well-trafficked road area and ambush some people and take their stuff"?
Ask the folks who freak out every time they see someone on the minimap that isn't in their party if there's "no sense of danger".
I think it has been hard to attract and retain people who want a murder simulator. That's by design.
I can give you several hexes where you'll see several characters and hour pass through mostly crafters & harvesters and virtually none with bodyguards or friends nearby. I'm sure you know exactly where I'm talking about.
Why don't you go there and attack those people?
I think it has been hard to attract and retain people. Period. Why would PvP people be any different? Feel free to correct me if I am mistaken but I am fairly sure that your attraction and retention of PvE players is not great...
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
@ Ryan,
let me explain the possible incorrectness or naïveté of this statement:
This is incorrect.
What the Reputation system means is that if you go below -2,500, you train on Fridays instead of every day. Every Friday, you'll have trained to exactly the same place you'd have trained to if you'd had unrestricted access to the trainers. Instead of continuous training, you train once a week. But your rate of character advancement is unaffected.
Mathematically speaking, you are correct, there is no difference in advancement. However, the perception is different. The newer player will not have that feeling of advancing their character when they otherwise could, whereas the vetern player with a veteran character will know that it will take 8 or more days to train that higher level skill anyway. Automatically banking xp is not enough of an achievement to excite a player or give them that sense of forward progress.
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
Some gameplay footage. I assume the ks stretchgoal "hire an 3D animator" hasn't been reached...
Why does that matter? Its outrageous for a company to charge a box price and sub for a game in PFO's state while claiming it is complete. It sets an unwelcome precedent because it opens the door to more of such distasteful behaviour. Seems pretty straight forward to me.
I would see the situation completely differently if they had offered a sub option to back the game which allowed players to test it and give feedback while in this developmental stage.
im not even sure why this game is getting so much attention..
I tried this game.. and it beyond any early access i encouneted. its pre early access.. more like a tech demo..
Not only that but charging a subscription fee for this is even more mindblogging..
there are alot of games out there guys.. this one will not make it