The Review is Out, Many Gamers Have Spoken, Change is Needed

Bluddwolf · July 2015

As someone who has played the game for nearly 10 months, and as someone who still has 18 months of pre paid time, I honestly believe that PFO needs to move to a Free to Play model.

The number one complaint about PFO, from both the reviewer and gamers looking from the outside (or who tried it briefly) have said that the game is not worthy of a subscription cost in its current state, and not likely for one even months or years down the road. Without a steady stream of revenue PFO will wither and die long before it reaches a "finished" or "near finished" state.

Evidence shows that struggling games get a second wind or a first look when they move to a F2P model. Some have actually found that their revenue actually increased using that model.

Goblin Works needs to start to develop MT store items, in a variety of packages and price ranges, that are cosmetic and or not very game changing.

Next, GW should then convert any pre paid time to a credit system (coins) for use in the MT store. This will adequately compensate Kick Starters for the pre paid time.

Player accounts with DTs will receive a bonus of MT coins during their pre paid time, and a continued stipend of coins thereafter.

Continued subscriptions just continues the stipend of coins.

XP gain is still done as it is, but DT accounts get double XP, to be spent on either of the two characters or just one if they wish.

For those that wonder why I post this here, instead of on the GW forums, it should be obvious... It would get deleted.

Azaron_Nightblade · July 2015

Originally posted by Bluddwolf

For those that wonder why I post this here, instead of on the GW forums, it should be obvious... It would get deleted.

For a company that's all about player feedback they don't seem to handle criticism well then. =/

And I'm a bit surprised to see you make that suggestion, since you're probably one of their biggest fans on this forum. (Which means they'd probably do well to at least consider the suggestion)

[Deleted User] · July 2015

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Rusque · July 2015

You're not reviewing the game properly though. You shouldn't undervalue crowd forging. Here, let me help you:

Pathfinder Online 1/10

Crowdforging 9/10

Total 10/10

PFO is a 10/10 game. You just need to value crowdforging appropriately.

Bluddwolf · July 2015

Originally posted by greenreen
I've never taken a game from sub to free to play behind the scenes but let's do a little brainstorming.

If you have a sub game is your login system tied to having a sub - sure is, need some validation checks changed.

Is your download system also triggered by a login having a sub - must be, need some validation checks changed.

The trial system is going to need tweaking also.

Probably forums too has those systems - hope you wrote the forum software.

How many people play the game as sub - will it increase if goes free. You betcha. That means we need good hardware on the receiving end and some good testing to see the load it can bear as is then estimate the cost to change what needs changin'.

Going to need more bandwidth too, not only will people be downloading the assets all at once on the grand re-opening the pipes need to be good enough to handle it along with more people online at once.

Going to need some support staff around to handle the grand re-opening for technical issues and to restart if things go bad. Maybe a few monitoring global chat banning as needed because now the flood gates are open. This will be ongoing so finish off that report system Jeremy.

Before that need some marketing. No point in re-launching and not screaming about it to everyone. Get together the social media staff, pool boy - quick write us up some flashy text and use the blink tag heavily. We must format a press release and post that to the site. Then we need some staff to make a snazzy video about the switch for all the visual people out there. Get together all the media outlet contacts and blast them before the switch so their users will be keen to come.

Now, once all these free to play people come we need something to sell them - you 4 get into a meeting and start planning it. You 6, meet with them afterward to implement what they plan.

Or.... you can just give away free trials like they are doing and improve the game over time.

A blathering example of "one doesn't just - switch - to free to play". There are things ahead of it.

Now, are you willing to give up all progress on the game just to let them create that new model on the existing system. If they are slacking on content already how long is it going to take them to do what you want that's my thought.

I never suggested that it is something they can just flip a switch, or can be done in a short term. Kick Starters bought time in blocks of 3 months, 9 months, 1 year and some with combinations of all three for a maximum of about 24 months. We are already nearly in the 8th month.

I'd suggest they shoot for the 1 year mark, January 2016.

AndiusMeuridiar · July 2015

*double-post*

AndiusMeuridiar · July 2015

Originally posted by AndiusMeuridiar If I were GW I might try this one:

Pathfinder Online now Free to Play! Get 2 weeks subscriber status when you make an account!

Subscriber status is $7.50 a month and includes:

- Passive training for one character

-The ability to build, equip, and gather materials for T2 and T3 equipment

Also check out our cash shop offering:

-(Subscriber Status Item) 10$ Trade this item to other players so they can use it to get a month of subscriber status or microtransaction currency.

-1mo training for additional characters. $7.50

-Everything offered in the shop on the GW site.

A lot more people are going to consider $7.50 a much more reasonable price for what PFO has to offer and some of the people posting all over these boards and the Paizo boards saying this game is crap in it current state as they learned with in half an hour of play are going to be a lot more willing to come back and try this game again at some point if they don't have to either pay 15$ or create a new account to try it again later.

Figured I would repost this here again, not that I think Ryan or the PFO community will recognize it as this game's last best hope.

F0URTWENTY · July 2015

As a fan of sandbox games, guild leader, and long time player of games like Eve, Darkfall, Mortal Online, and someone who is use to "crowdforged" and early access games I have no interest at all in Pathfinder.

It is clear this game is being sold for a box price and sub fee for players who want to pay for an advantage over others. The few people that play pathfinder right now do so because they want to have years of xp over players that may come when the game is in a playable and fun state.

The CEO is trying to sell Eve's real time skill system, not a good game.

Everything is barebones and made in the quickest and cheapest way possible. They are using a free game engine Unity that makes this game look like a high school computer project. The review was over generous and it should have received an even lower score IMO.

Giffen · July 2015

I'm not sure what the budget was for this game but from the looks of it from my short time in game, the budget must have been under $20M. I just don't get it. The game just doesn't have the graphics, animations, or basic UI that a modern game requires. Those things should be the absolute first things you master before you open it up to the public, and obviously before you start taking money for the game.

All additional systems you can add on later, but the basics of graphics, animations, and UI are necessary.

reeereee · July 2015

Originally posted by Giffen
I'm not sure what the budget was for this game but from the looks of it from my short time in game, the budget must have been under $20M. I just don't get it. The game just doesn't have the graphics, animations, or basic UI that a modern game requires. Those things should be the absolute first things you master before you open it up to the public, and obviously before you start taking money for the game.

All additional systems you can add on later, but the basics of graphics, animations, and UI are necessary.

I imagine they spent too much time listening to those people who say graphics are unimportant and gameplay is everything. They're wrong, of course, but they are around and vocal.

Wizardry · July 2015

Change is needed but payment plan has nothing to do with it.

You don't rate a game by it's payment plan,rating and review should be completely different topics.

The game lacks depth,i felt like all i did was go through the motions,there is simply not enough systems and depth to any of the design.

I don't remeber crafting well enough,i didn't spend time in it so it "might" be decent idk but the rest of the game definitely needs perhaps not so much change but just MORE depth.

Every single game needs an identity,it needs to offer something unique and interesting,you can't just create a same old game and give it some fancy title like "crowdforging",it doesn't do anything to want to play it.

The thing is this,the changes i feel the game needs are VERY doable for starters because it is mostly data base and stat changes adding in a few systems.However over time you need a couple scripted events,likely repeatable ones to keep players interested as well as bring players together for that event.

Wizardry · July 2015

Basically what EVERY single developer or Director,whomever SHOULD be doing is put themselves in the game,then ask themselves,WHAT am i doing today,how am i playing this game.You need to to TOTALLY put aside your bias thinking how great the overall game is and just think about how you play.If you find yourself just waddling around slowly from node to node and say doing quests by yourself,when you look at that at the end of the day,it sounds BORING.

AndiusMeuridiar · July 2015

The issue is in order to make compelling PvE title, you need lots of content. In order to make a successful crafting / building title you need to allow for a massive amount of player creativity and freedom like Minecraft. In order to make a compelling PvP title all you need is a halfway decent combat system and a point to victory / defeat before the players can generate the rest of the content themselves.

That was what PFO was supposed to capitalize on but the combat system is too buggy and unreliable to be called halfway decent and there is little that can really be achieved through PvP.

Had they fixed that problem earlier on rather than focusing on PvE and crafting content while ignoring what should have been their MVP I feel like they would be doing a lot better. At this point though, even if the PvP were amazing the population is too low vs. the map size to make it very exciting. F2P forever could help put enough people out there to keep things interesting once the game itself is worth the time of anyone with halfway decent taste.

MumboJumbo · July 2015

Originally posted by AndiusMeuridiar
The issue is in order to make compelling PvE title, you need lots of content. In order to make a successful crafting / building title you need to allow for a massive amount of player creativity and freedom like Minecraft. In order to make a compelling PvP title all you need is a halfway decent combat system and a point to victory / defeat before the players can generate the rest of the content themselves.

That was what PFO was supposed to capitalize on but the combat system is too buggy and unreliable to be called halfway decent and there is little that can really be achieved through PvP.

Had they fixed that problem earlier on rather than focusing on PvE and crafting content while ignoring what should have been their MVP I feel like they would be doing a lot better. At this point though, even if the PvP were amazing the population is too low vs. the map size to make it very exciting. F2P forever could help put enough people out there to keep things interesting once the game itself is worth the time of anyone with halfway decent taste.

To streamline the problems:-

1. PvE mmorpgs are too expensive and hits a cliff of boredom anyway.

2. PvP combat as a consequence of economic decision-making by groups of players = very do-able (at least comparatively so, still punishing game dev).

3. Using the f-ing WOW-Engine means tab-target combat: It's got no bearing on TT, it's so old and boring and IT STILL requires immense coding effort by the devs to reach "fun" egt GW2 had immense work on it's combat and it still comes across as neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things.

So where did PFO go wrong? The formulae or triangle above:-

..................combat...................

/

economic........................groups

Is still very good. Basically PFO has got bogged down in the "combat" aspect and not devoted enough dev resources to the "group" aspect which would have driven the economic aspect which would have fed the group aspect game play more.

Namely, PFO could have avoided negative marketing of FFA-PvP, avoided shit combat and most importantly reconciled TT people with MMO people.

Q: But combat is still very important part of the triangle so how do you suggest that works?

Over the next week, I'll post some blogs on this subject as I finished some work yesterday. There's a guy Ramin Shokrizade and he absolutely nailed the key fact you have to monetize groups successfully. I'm not sure however he's been able to reconcile fun gameplay in order to do that, but I still think you can do it with combat and other approaches equally.

What we're seeing with PFO is combat as per EVE progression training monetization per character and TT taking the place of ships duking it out ie slotting items to slot skills. The problem is however is that the combat of avatars is imo with tab-target just not sell-able. Ramin Shokrizade did actually come up with part of the solution noticing that different rule-set servers was one of the keys to exploding growth of groups.

In fact here's part of the key, PFO should have started with modular settlement areas for groups with very little need or frequency of pvp, because that's yet another rule-set that is massive to implement atst !!!

Bluddwolf · July 2015

@ Mumbojumbo,

Two points I believe you have wrong:

1. PFO has not really been marketed too much to FFA PvP. It has been and remains primariliy targeted to the TT community. It has no marketing outside of the Paizo forums and social media attacked to Goblin Works or Ryan Dancey (that I have seen) and the only real way people know of that is from the Paizo boards or word of mouth.

Second point on FFA PVP, just because the gane has been called an Open World PvP sandbox does not equate to FFA. There is actually no FFA PvP in the game. The only way to PvP without negative consequences fir participating in it, is to wage a feud, which is not free. There is no zone based, free PvP, like you have in EvE or many other MMOS.

2. PFO does not require PvP as part of playing the role of an individual character, being a part of a company (guild) or in running a settlement. PFO has no built in incentive for PvP at this time. The only reason the two grouos that do PvP do so is to break the utter boredom of doing anything else in the game.

Your post is not addressing the primary problem. The balanced system that you are suggesting requires the one thing that PFO does not have, a population in the thousands. There are only a few hundred players in PFO (even including 15 day trial accounts), and certainly not the 5000+ that it needs to really start talking about building the Combat, Group, Economy dynamic your writing about.

Slapshot1188 · July 2015

Originally posted by Bluddwolf

It has no marketing outside of the Paizo forums and social media attacked to Goblin Works or Ryan Dancey (that I have seen) and the only real way people know of that is from the Paizo boards or word of mouth.

I'd have to disagree. I believe Ryan used his media connections to get gaming sites to hype the game for free. For example there are 64, yes SIXTY + FOUR News Items for Pathfinder Online on this website alone!!

This is a game that by FAR has gotten outsized coverage.

From what I can tell, Star Citizen has a total of 70 News Items on here. That's a Kickstarter game that claims to have over 900,000 active citizens and raised a ridiculous amount of money (as well as have continual drama). How can it just be a funny coincidence that a small game with a fraction of the interest has gotten almost the exact same news coverage?

No, PFOs issues have nothing do do with lack of exposure...

AndiusMeuridiar · July 2015

To contradict that if I talk about PFO in other sandbox communities very few people know about it where almost everyone is aware of Star Citizen. Even in Crowfall which is an extremely popular title among ex-PFO supporters who have left PFO.

Loktofeit · July 2015

Originally posted by AndiusMeuridiar
To contradict that if I talk about PFO in other sandbox communities very few people know about it where almost everyone is aware of Star Citizen. Even in Crowfall which is an extremely popular title among ex-PFO supporters who have left PFO.

Agreed. The nature of my work (MMO marketing) has me in a lot of channels that would be relevant to PFO, but most in both media and player communities have barely heard of it.

Thebeasttt · July 2015

If the game is so terrible it can't use a subscription model, wouldn't the priority be to make the game not terrible?

MumboJumbo · July 2015

Originally posted by Bluddwolf
@ Mumbojumbo,

Two points I believe you have wrong:

1. PFO has not really been marketed too much to FFA PvP. It has been and remains primariliy targeted to the TT community. It has no marketing outside of the Paizo forums and social media attacked to Goblin Works or Ryan Dancey (that I have seen) and the only real way people know of that is from the Paizo boards or word of mouth.

Second point on FFA PVP, just because the gane has been called an Open World PvP sandbox does not equate to FFA. There is actually no FFA PvP in the game. The only way to PvP without negative consequences fir participating in it, is to wage a feud, which is not free. There is no zone based, free PvP, like you have in EvE or many other MMOS.

2. PFO does not require PvP as part of playing the role of an individual character, being a part of a company (guild) or in running a settlement. PFO has no built in incentive for PvP at this time. The only reason the two grouos that do PvP do so is to break the utter boredom of doing anything else in the game.

Your post is not addressing the primary problem. The balanced system that you are suggesting requires the one thing that PFO does not have, a population in the thousands. There are only a few hundred players in PFO (even including 15 day trial accounts), and certainly not the 5000+ that it needs to really start talking about building the Combat, Group, Economy dynamic your writing about.

As above, Ryan was right in his GDD (which again I take time to praise to the skies in so many ways), that PvP + Economy + Groups = Player-Driven gameplay of almost infinite permutations.

However a much more sophisticated and abstracted layer of understanding above this is "Story-Generation" layer of which that pvp player-driven gameplay is merely one form of.

I was recently reading and immensely enjoying, Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, in that story the Mobile Infantry M.I. is the smallest army relative to population in history...

To hint via the above, the way I'd gradually add PvP rule-set features.

Considering this, and then addressing the above:-

1. I see a great deal of posts and negative press /word of mouth from people assuming PFO = FFA because it has any elements of PvP at all. On the other hand as you point it the PvP is not enough for those that really enjoy PvP and the combat may indeed not simply be stimulating enough either. Whereas Crowfall did market itself as PvP-War with solid combat and destruction quite successfully. PFO seems to have forsaken the TT crowd atst as not satisfied the EVE / Darkfall crowd so to speak.

2. I think atm the allure of early playing is "stored value" via skill-training which as above I think could still be a good move on capturing some of the market enough to gradually grow the game to the point future investment of a game already built would possibly be straightforward. But I actually think that model of progression back in 2003 for EVE for sci-fi was a lot more sticky than will be found for fantasy Tab-Target in 2015.

Well I've got a totally different game design to model that I think would resolve all these problems... which I hope to post in the next week if I can polish it off finally. In fact there's parallels to Star Citizen which are coincidental, which leads me to believe when we do finally see Star Citizen it will explode everything off the face of the map in terms of games and games as better than movies.

MumboJumbo · July 2015

Originally posted by Thebeasttt
If the game is so terrible it can't use a subscription model, wouldn't the priority be to make the game not terrible?

As above, I think the model of pricing + progression used has a solid basis and is the main way in which despite it's current defects, PFO could hit that "Thermal Coefficient" that makes it "go" ie become sustainable and profitable; that setting is much smaller remember for PFO due to the dev investment and funding as it develops. So quality is a function of time here and the longer PFO can "limp along" the stronger it will actually get.

rsdancey · July 2015

For those that wonder why I post this here, instead of on the GW forums, it should be obvious... It would get deleted.

That's a ridiculous assertion.

Bluddwolf · July 2015

Originally posted by rsdancey

For those that wonder why I post this here, instead of on the GW forums, it should be obvious... It would get deleted.

That's a ridiculous assertion.

Actually I should better qualify that with a "probably", to make it more of a belief than an assertion. You are correct.

However, to address that one point in all of the others that have been made I believe still causes some concern.

The review should be addressed, point by point, and then shown how or when its concerns will be addressed (if possible). The review itself is a form of crowd forging, is it not?

mrneurosis · July 2015

This game is not going to survive as pay to play. No chance in hell. I hope they listen to feedback and not let their arrogance drive the boat or they will sink.

Dakeru · July 2015

I don't think f2p will help this game. It's pretty niche (which is perfectly fine) and the most loyal players who are willing to ignore bugs and the lack of features are already ingame.

The broad majority who would join on a f2p conversion wouldn't be so forgiving.

In the end they would leave again and PO would miss out on some subscription money.

The only thing that will help PO in the long run is to turn this into a fully fleshed out game.

F0URTWENTY · July 2015

Originally posted by Dakeru
I don't think f2p will help this game. It's pretty niche (which is perfectly fine) and the most loyal players who are willing to ignore bugs and the lack of features are already ingame.

The broad majority who would join on a f2p conversion wouldn't be so forgiving.

In the end they would leave again and PO would miss out on some subscription money.

The only thing that will help PO in the long run is to turn this into a fully fleshed out game.

The reviewer said he could run around for hours without seeing another player so clearly there is a lack of loyal players like you mention. It's not like there are hundreds of people playing Pathfinder right now. There are probably a hundred or so with active subscriptions to be gaining real time xp so they get an advantage over players when the game is finished, but they definitely aren't actively playing the game or it wouldn't be so empty.

If the game was F2P I'm sure my clan would have given it a shot. But we don't need to pay a box fee and subscription to a barebones game like pathfinder when Mortal Online is out and a much more finished and fun sandbox game.

You are right though, open world pvp sandbox games cater to a small niche of players. However a good % of this small niche has been turned off completely by the games monetization methods. You cant cater to a niche of a niche playerbase and expect to have a successful product.

Personally I am a competitive pvper in sandbox games. I would never pay for such a barebones and incomplete game such as Pathfinder. More importantly years from now when the game is in a playable and fun state I would never start a game at a 2 year skill point disadvantage in a skill system like Eve Onlines. Eve Online at least has asyemetrical balance due to ship types to make it balanced and easy to get enough skill points in a specific role to be competitive. In a game like pathfinder the more xp the better without limitations. You cant take the skill system that Eve Online has and forget about the thing that makes it fair: Asymetrical Balance.

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The Review is Out, Many Gamers Have Spoken, Change is Needed

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The Review is Out, Many Gamers Have Spoken, Change is Needed

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