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Harrow posted:Everything about PFO just makes me think Goblinworks/Paizo looked at Star Citizen and went, "Well, they got away with it..." I'm pretty sure PFO predates Star CitiMasterCard, but yeah, it does seem like they're both cut from the same cloth.
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Jan 27, 2015 16:24
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Well, now I feel like a bit silly dunce.  At least Breakfast Cult is on time and on target, unlike that PFO thingy.
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Jan 27, 2015 16:30
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Evil Mastermind posted:I'd actually forgotten all about PFO. Are they still trying to release this year? A potentially relevant quote from their e-mailed cashgrab attempt: Paizo posted:Early Enrollment isn't for everyone, just like the softcover PFRPG Beta wasn't for everyone. There are many systems that are currently bare bones; races that aren't in the game yet, roles that aren't formally realized yet. The graphics aren't as nice as they will be. The game works but it will work so much better a year or two down the line. We like to say that we are two years into a five-year plan to make this game. Not everyone wants to play a game in this state, just as not everyone wanted to be a pioneer exploring the western half of the US back in the 1800's. But if you are that pioneer, that person who loves to build, craft and explore, then this is a great time to jump into this game!
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Jan 27, 2015 16:35
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm pretty sure PFO predates Star CitiMasterCard, but yeah, it does seem like they're both cut from the same cloth. Does it? Jeez. It feels like Star Citizen's been going on forever. Was PFO always this much of a blatant cash-grab? I remember its Kickstarter and then when I decided pretty quickly not to back it I kind of forgot PFO was a thing at all.
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Jan 27, 2015 16:40
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I sort of owe Pathfinder Online for getting me into the hobby. Ryan Dancey was a guest at a gaming podcast I listened to and he spouted off a bunch of claims about how much better Pathfinder was than D&D and how Pathfinder Online was going to be huge that I found incredibly ridiculous, and someone at Games pointed me towards TG when I asked about how much of it was bullshit (all of it)
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Jan 27, 2015 16:44
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I dunno, there's a PFO forum at ENWorld for some reason, which seems active enough to suggest the game isn't 100% smoke and mirrors and emperor-has-no-clothes. 90%, maybe, but not 100%.
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Jan 27, 2015 17:18
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Harrow posted:Was PFO always this much of a blatant cash-grab? I remember its Kickstarter and then when I decided pretty quickly not to back it I kind of forgot PFO was a thing at all.
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Jan 27, 2015 17:58
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Yawgmoth posted:Pretty much. I can't recall ever seeing anything out of them that made me say anything other than "oh, it's like <more successful MMO> except really shoddy looking".
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Jan 27, 2015 18:07
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It was also supposed to have tons of "user created content" so you could RP running an inn and such.
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Jan 27, 2015 18:08
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They're not getting a cent of my money until they officially support Ponyfinder. 
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Jan 27, 2015 18:11
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FMguru posted:Dancey literally bragged about using old off-the-shelf technology instead of developing his own and using programmers hired on short-term contracts living together in a house to do the work. It's a WoW-style MMO, using a years-old engine and graphics, programmed on the cheap and designed to cut every corner imaginable. Oh, and no content - it's going to be a bunch of environments and crafting supplies and players will build their own stories! Ironically it looks like DDO right now 
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Jan 27, 2015 19:56
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Lightning Lord posted:Ironically it looks like DDO right now
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Jan 27, 2015 19:58
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FMguru posted:Hey, remember that underwhelming game you didn't play five years ago? Well, it's back - in Pathfinder form! 
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Jan 27, 2015 20:00
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FMguru posted:Hey, remember that underwhelming game you didn't play five years ago? Well, it's back - in Pathfinder form! Isn't that their entire business model with respect to 3.5 already, though?
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Jan 27, 2015 22:01
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Waffleman_ posted:They're not getting a cent of my money until they officially support Ponyfinder. I'm sure there is a horrible MLP MMO out there that will suit your demented needs. Edit: God, I hate when I'm right! It might actually look less rear end than PFO. Covok fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Jan 27, 2015 |
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Jan 27, 2015 23:11
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...there's poo poo that looks more assy than that?
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Jan 27, 2015 23:22
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well yeah, they're ponies not burros
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Jan 27, 2015 23:23
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Covok posted:I'm sure there is a horrible MLP MMO out there that will suit your demented needs. Man, I love playing a game and not being able to see what I'm doing because my character model blocks everything.
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Jan 27, 2015 23:32
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FMguru posted:Dancey literally bragged about using old off-the-shelf technology instead of developing his own and using programmers hired on short-term contracts living together in a house to do the work. It's a WoW-style MMO, using a years-old engine and graphics, programmed on the cheap and designed to cut every corner imaginable. Oh, and no content - it's going to be a bunch of environments and crafting supplies and players will build their own stories! I think it's important to remember why PFO looks bad. Licensing software is not as nice as custom developing a new thing every time you make a game. Ground-up software development is crazy hard, and is best avoided if you can find a suitable foundation to just buy. As nice as it is to see the individual blood cells flying out of Lara Craft's abused body, WoW met lots of praise for its "old school" graphics because they went for good execution and user access instead of top-spec whale-hunting. Exploiting and abusing programmers and other asset developers is deplorable but also pretty normal for video game development. What's weird is running a Kickstarter to get people to pay for a tech demo so you can shop your idea around to get real investments, because holy poo poo an MMO is expensive to make. And then only a select, rich few get to fart around in your lovely quarter-done physics puzzle for 10 minutes. The reason first-stage tech demos don't get out is because they're poo poo. And then you set off every warning bell in the head of any savvy person by promising all this open world user-generated crap that has gone down with countless other ships. A goals list that has literally never worked—it sounds like the same line of bullshit you'd hear from some high school kid who mastered Java over the summer (PS Nintendo uncle). This is the kind of project you'd love to see a veteran MMO studio tackle because maybe they could pull it off (EQN?). Then, you just keep doing stuff like that, even after you presumably have the necessary budget to create your project. A budget that dwarfs any of the money you would be bringing in on minimally re-skinned taverns and statues. It would be totally awesome if PFO can pull off the things it promises. It would've been totally awesome 15 years ago when I heard that poo poo the first time, or the dozens of other times since then. Somehow, making grabby hands for $5k to texture a sign and consult a fan on what to name a few things doesn't inspire confidence that this is it guys, this is the one that knocks it out of the park.
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Jan 28, 2015 00:09
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I underestimated Ryan Dancey's ability to milk Pathfinder fans for $2.5 million dollars, but I somehow doubt I'm underestimating his ability to deliver on all his fabulous promises.
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Jan 28, 2015 00:23
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Evil Mastermind posted:Man, I love playing a game and not being able to see what I'm doing because my character model blocks everything. Well, it's not like you can really see what's happening once the shading kicks in... Good thing the character is wearing a white hood! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTthT8tn5_o
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Jan 28, 2015 00:23
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Kai Tave posted:I underestimated Ryan Dancey's ability to milk Pathfinder fans for $2.5 million dollars, but I somehow doubt I'm underestimating his ability to deliver on all his fabulous promises. Remember, for a lot of Pathfinder fans, Pathfinder is more than a game, it's a brand they have to show their loyalty to to show they hate 4e, etc.
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Jan 28, 2015 00:31
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Toph Bei Fong posted:Well, it's not like you can really see what's happening once the shading kicks in... Good thing the character is wearing a white hood! This is just...sad.
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Jan 28, 2015 01:10
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That wasn't even amusingly bad. Just boring. Ugh.
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Jan 28, 2015 01:49
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Pathfinder Online has accomplished something no MMO has managed before now: they've made EVE Online combat look visually engaging.
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Jan 28, 2015 01:54
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It's still just bizarre to me that they're trying to go from being a successful tabletop RPG publisher to having of all things an MMO as their first video game project. For the amount they've gotten from Kickstarters alone they could've fully funded the development of at least one solid indie computer game and built up from there.
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Jan 28, 2015 02:12
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Ewen Cluney posted:It's still just bizarre to me that they're trying to go from being a successful tabletop RPG publisher to having of all things an MMO as their first video game project. For the amount they've gotten from Kickstarters alone they could've fully funded the development of at least one solid indie computer game and built up from there. Haha, Lisa Stevens is no dummy, they quarantined that poo poo into its own company. Their first actual computer game is going to be a digital version of the Adventure Card Game developed by Obsidian.
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Jan 28, 2015 02:32
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I always thought retro-style games, patterned after the old Gold Box games, but done in Golarion and targeting mobile devices would have been a good plan for Paizo.
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Jan 28, 2015 03:29
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Which Paizo adventure path is it where you loiter at the tower to cap it at 1000, winning the window? I never got into PF because I didn't think it was videogamey roll-play enough, but I see now that I couldn't have been more wrong.
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Jan 28, 2015 04:25
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Toph Bei Fong posted:Well, it's not like you can really see what's happening once the shading kicks in... Good thing the character is wearing a white hood! I like that the player clans all agreed to not permanently seize each other's territory, making any "user-generated conflict" impossible to get rolling. Even in the worst bare-bones zombie MMOs you can get quality enjoyment out of griefing people and being a murderhobo; PFO doesn't even have that going for it. It's just pitiful.
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Jan 28, 2015 06:39
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Bendigeidfran posted:I like that the player clans all agreed to not permanently seize each other's territory, making any "user-generated conflict" impossible to get rolling. Even in the worst bare-bones zombie MMOs you can get quality enjoyment out of griefing people and being a murderhobo; PFO doesn't even have that going for it. It's just pitiful. Wait, really? Pretty much the only type of MMO that tempts me any more is the EVE-style "the big conflicts are just the players fighting over access to resources" style, so I could have been into an easier-access version of that. If Pathfinder was aiming for that then maybe they could have gotten away with the whole limited money for asset production thing, but now I just don't know what they're aming for.
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Jan 28, 2015 07:20
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Ewen Cluney posted:It's still just bizarre to me that they're trying to go from being a successful tabletop RPG publisher to having of all things an MMO as their first video game project. For the amount they've gotten from Kickstarters alone they could've fully funded the development of at least one si imolid indie computer game and built up from there. I imagine the dream is to have as a cash cow to support the company for the foreseeable future. TRPGs are a volatile business and I think Lisa & Co. have always wanted to be able to move beyond it to have something with a higher profit margin... and as long as they're doing it themselves, they don't have to worry about any other company flaking out on them. I can see what they're thinking, and if they can actually get enough people hooked into playing a socially-oriented version of Progress Quest it may work. I mean, there are a lot of games I personally think are terrible that are wildly successful, and I can't pretend to understand why. But that really looks bad to me. Edit: I mean you can see that tendency in their history with how they wanted to market broad fandom magazines instead of just being stuck in the RPG magazine market, so I'm not just guessing, I'm thinking on what they did back in the past to try and spread out. Of course, all those magazines failed... Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 07:44 on Jan 28, 2015 |
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Jan 28, 2015 07:41
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I imagine the dream is to have as a cash cow to support the company for the foreseeable future. TRPGs are a volatile business and I think Lisa & Co. have always wanted to be able to move beyond it to have something with a higher profit margin... and as long as they're doing it themselves, they don't have to worry about any other company flaking out on them. I can see what they're thinking, and if they can actually get enough people hooked into playing a socially-oriented version of Progress Quest it may work. I mean, there are a lot of games I personally think are terrible that are wildly successful, and I can't pretend to understand why. Seems to me it's more like the MMO is an elaborate way of exiling Ryan Dancey and if something that makes money come from it, hooray.
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Jan 28, 2015 08:17
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Lightning Lord posted:Seems to me it's more like the MMO is an elaborate way of exiling Ryan Dancey and if something that makes money come from it, hooray. I'm not sure what they'd need to exile him for, he was essentially out of the TRPG industry already before being hired on for Goblinworks.
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Jan 28, 2015 08:24
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I'm not sure what they'd need to exile him for, he was essentially out of the TRPG industry already before being hired on for Goblinworks. My bad, I thought he was intimately involved with Paizo beforehand for some reason. So you're telling me someone specifically hired Dancey in TYOOL 2015?
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Jan 28, 2015 08:26
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OtspIII posted:Wait, really? Pretty much the only type of MMO that tempts me any more is the EVE-style "the big conflicts are just the players fighting over access to resources" style, so I could have been into an easier-access version of that. If Pathfinder was aiming for that then maybe they could have gotten away with the whole limited money for asset production thing, but now I just don't know what they're aming for. This doesn't have anything to do with what the game devs are aiming for though -- dude in the video indicated that it was just the community agreeing to a general code of conduct. That's emergent player behavior, and it's not necessarily the kind of thing you can plan for as a designer. You can't even really assume that this agreement is going to stay in place longterm at this early stage of development either. Communities grow and change with the games they're built around. It is interesting, though, because it kind of implies a fundamental unwillingness to get into like... the kind of really cutthroat/sometimes outright meanspirited PVP that you usually see happen in open world PVP games. It would be kind of amazing if it did stay like that, if only because it would be interesting to look at. "Hey, man, we want to fight them but we don't want to like, take their whole village! They worked hard to get that."
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Jan 28, 2015 08:28
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What I'm wondering is why so many digital iterations of D&D obviate the use of the grid. Even TOEE was miniatures-style absolute distances.
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Jan 28, 2015 08:40
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gradenko_2000 posted:What I'm wondering is why so many digital iterations of D&D obviate the use of the grid. Even TOEE was miniatures-style absolute distances. Grids can be useful abstractions for certain modes of table-top play, but if you have a computer to handle positioning and distances you really don't need it. (Deep down they're doing the same thing, but the grid-less stuff tends to "feel more real".) I'm having a hard time thinking of stuff you can do with a grid that you can't replicate with "real" distances in computer games. Grids seem especially suited to turn-based game play, which in typical action/adventure style games is usually not very fun in multiplayer environments.
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Jan 28, 2015 08:50
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I think a modern video game hexcrawler would be cool. Although they didn't use hexes, overland travel in the Gold Box games was kinda like that. I'm sure the map travel of JRPGs was inspired by hexcrawling too.
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Jan 28, 2015 08:53
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Lightning Lord posted:I think a modern video game hexcrawler would be cool. Although they didn't use hexes, overland travel in the Gold Box games was kinda like that. I'm sure the map travel of JRPGs was inspired by hexcrawling too. And Paizo/Goblinworks/Dancey has said they will be actively banning organized Goon invasions of PFO, which is hilarious on about 17 levels. Pro-actively chucking paying customers off your struggling indie game platform? McCarthy-style witch hunts to determine whether someone is a "goon" or not? But the worst is that it implies that players will have to be very careful to play in a Goldilocks zone - feel free to explore and politic and organize and player-create content to your heart's desire but don't do it in an abusive or exploitative way, or else the banhammer will come down on you. So have fun messing with other players - but not too much fun. I'm annoyed when I get banned from a free webgame that I've put one or two dozen hours into - I can't imagine how furious I'd be if I had my account closed for shenanigans after spending $5000 on a virtual tavern.
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Jan 28, 2015 13:38
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