Is there a thread for Pathfinder Online?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The MMO HMO > Is there a thread for Pathfinder Online?

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eonwe: Aug 11, 2008; Lipstick Apathy

lmao

# ? Sep 3, 2015 15:22

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 14:00

Alexander DeLarge: Dec 20, 2013

Reading over the address, they mention a board of directors. What the gently caress, why does a startup gaming company have a board of directors? Shouldn't that be like a sole proprietorship?

# ? Sep 3, 2015 15:23

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

Eonwe posted:

lmao

the sunk cost phallus is a hell of a drug

# ? Sep 3, 2015 16:12

Hesiod: Apr 17, 2003

http://massivelyop.com/2015/09/02/pathfinder-online-lays-off-almost-entire-staff/

Toss this one on the pile of stunning Dancey successes.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 17:28

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

Hesiod posted:

http://massivelyop.com/2015/09/02/pathfinder-online-lays-off-almost-entire-staff/

Toss this one on the pile of stunning Dancey successes.

quote:

Our sympathies extend to the entire studio and its players.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 17:32

Halloween Jack: Sep 12, 2003; I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

So these three remaining employees, are they programmers at all?

# ? Sep 3, 2015 17:32

Hesiod: Apr 17, 2003

Halloween Jack posted:

So these three remaining employees, are they programmers at all?

Paizo Scambot posted:

CTO Mark Kalms, Art Director Mike Hines, and Designer Bob Settles

Maybe one of them can code?

# ? Sep 3, 2015 17:36

Lagomorphic: Apr 21, 2008; AKA: Orthonormal

Yeah at this point they're clearly just doing the bare minimum to maintain the premise that the game ain't dead long enough to sell it off to a publisher and/or get what they can from subbed idiots with sunk costs. This is basically just Weekend at Bernie's 3 now.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 17:42

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

Hesiod posted:

Maybe one of them can code?

reminder-- this was their response to a bug that could cause the whales-- a bad freemium games lifeblood-- encountering an issue that ate their multi-hundred dollar in-game items.

quote:

We have been considering a series of steps whereby a user might lose access to a Smallholding and wanted to make you all aware of that potential so that you can avoid accidentally costing yourself access to a $200 item.

Here's the chain of events we're worried about :

You put a Smallholding deed into the shared vault of another Smallholding.
That Smallholding is torn down with the deed inside it's vault

At this juncture, we believe the deed exists in a database entry for that hex, tied to the character who owned the Smallholding. If that character, and only that character erects a Smallholding in that hex and only in that hex we think the deed will be visible in the Smallholding's shared storage vault.

If you don't know which character built the original Smallholding, the deed might be lost forever in fact, even if not technically.

Which means that if that character is deleted, that deed could be lost forever.

It is a virtual certainty that the same problems will be associated with Holding Vaults and eventually with Settlement Vaults.

Until such time as we get some more advanced tech to manipulate vaults that are no longer connected to structures, be aware that if you lost access to a vault, for whatever reason, you might also lose access to your deed.

Replacement Policies for Items

Unless Goblinworks is able to determine in its sole opinion that an item was lost due to a malfunction or bug in the game (and that determination will be made on the basis of our ability to reproduce the loss in a test environment, or on the basis of having knowledge of a known flaw with the system that would relate to the loss of the item), Goblinworks will not replace lost items. This includes (but is not limited to) items purchased from the Goblinworks Store, or received as a part of a Reward package from the Kickstarter campaign, or any other source.

It is the user's responsibility to protect their items from loss. It is possible to lose items by placing them in vaults, or by carrying them in inventory and suffering a character death, or by scheduling a character for deletion, etc. If you lose an item through accident, misadventure, error, or due to unknown and unreproducible causes, you will not be remimbursed for the loss of that item.

"We don't know how our own database works, we don't have the tools to edit/modify/restore objects in it, we apparently don't have a test environment to find out, and we don't care enough to take the 15 minutes it would require to at least confirm the replication steps and work around on a live server."

I think the only MMO thing I've encountered more "Caveat emptor, assholes, because we're not fixing it" :smug:

was the Wildstar people telling players that if a known bug prevented their max-level characters from attuning to raid endgame stuff after a absurd dozens-of-steps attunement process they should just re-roll a new guy because they wouldn't get any help.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 17:43

Comrade Koba: Jul 2, 2007

That's it, I'm signing up for the free trial so I can at least have a look at this hilarious pile of failures before it goes away forever.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 17:47

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

Comrade Koba posted:

That's it, I'm signing up for the free trial so I can at least have a look at this hilarious pile of failures before it goes away forever.

I think this still requires trusting them with your credit card, and that they'll honor your cancellation during the test period and not "accidentally" charge you for your first recurring month :siren:

# ? Sep 3, 2015 17:49

Hesiod: Apr 17, 2003

I'm pretty sure this has nothing to do with the lack of Advanced Tech and everything to do with the universe righting itself after the Tom Brady thing

# ? Sep 3, 2015 18:00

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

Perhaps someday, not in my lifetime, but in my children's... the Advanced Technology will exist to locate and restore objects in a videogame database.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 18:04

super sweet best pal: Nov 18, 2009

Otisburg posted:

Dancey spent Monday on a panel on successful crowdfunding:
http://prime.paxsite.com/schedule/panel/crowdfunding-options-which-model-is-right-for-you

Let us not forget that the second $1m goal Kickstarter was ridiculously bungled on a basic level--essentially conducted entirely backwards: they set the seven figure goal, and kept adding meaningless "stretch goals" between wherever they were and a million to try and limp it over the finish line, which it only collapsed over, wheezing, because of a suspicious last-minute singular 5-figure "donor."

If I'm not mistaken, most other 7-figure kickstarters in tabletop land tend to have a more modest goal that they blow away by adding actual stretch goals and stoking everyone's enthusiasm about upping and bringing more people on to an already-realized pledge "investment."

To be fair, the crowdfunding itself was successful. Like OUYA's.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 18:17

eonwe: Aug 11, 2008; Lipstick Apathy

I don't even want to see what those tables look like

# ? Sep 3, 2015 18:17

Hesiod: Apr 17, 2003

Eonwe posted:

I don't even want to see what those tables look like

They may not even have a DB. There's some folks in this space who insist on flat file systems. Literally jillions of tiny text files.

:edit: also their lead programmer I BELIEVE spent time at Cryptic and IIRC they used a custom DB stack there.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 18:21

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

Unguided posted:

To be fair, the crowdfunding itself was successful. Like OUYA's.

Only just, and it was a photo finish with a last minute 10k "pledge" spelling the difference between 1 mil and nothing.

I still contend they might have doubled or tripled that if they'd asked for like 50k initially and kept stoking the fire with rewards to entice both the tabletop crowd and the "feathering my nest in my New Digital Life crowd." Case in point, Star Citizen only asked for 500k initially.

Eonwe posted:

I don't even want to see what those tables look like

Owlbear Camus fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Sep 3, 2015

# ? Sep 3, 2015 18:26

Bieeanshee: Aug 21, 2000; Not keen on keening.; Grimey Drawer

Eox posted:

What the gently caress does open enrolment even mean. I can give them my email address, set a password, shell out 15 bucks and sift through this virtual trash pile with dozens of other vagrants already. Does open enrolment just mean it's okay to do that? Should I feel bad for the twenty minutes of my free trial that I played? was I stealing food right out of Danceys mouth by not waiting for the word go?

From context, open enrolment looks like a weaselly way of saying they're dropping any pretense of alpha testing or development, and calling the whole shitpile officially released.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 18:57

Hesiod: Apr 17, 2003

Overall I think I'm going to file this as a prime example of how crowdfunding has enabled people who have no idea what they're doing to make the same mistakes people with experience learned not to make a long time ago then pat themselves on the back for failing while acting like they were forging their way bravely into "new" frontiers.

You'll likely hear this chalked up to the world not being ready for PFO yet like Scott Jennings said when his title died in the womb. People who believe they know more than anyone else tend to have a hard time accepting the fact that they've failed.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 19:08

Uziduke: Jul 2, 2015; A storm over Europe unleashed
Dawn of war a trail of destruction
The power of Rome won't prevail
See the Catholics shiver and shake

It's amazing how active a thread gets when a game dies.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 19:40

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

Uziduke posted:

It's amazing how active a thread gets when a game dies.

Schadenfreude is goon catnip.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 19:46

VoidTek: Jul 30, 2002; HAPPYELF WAS RIGHT

I don't even want this game to die, I want it to continue shambling eternally forward on the backs of the deluded idiots who bought into what has always been nothing more than a completely obvious scam. There is no possible way even a single person on that team thought they were doing anything other than milking people for their early access dollars.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 20:43

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

quote:

Well, I backed the tech demo, and the game, so there goes a couple hundred bucks... Sure, my fault, etc... doesn't suck any less.

Add to that, I didn't play the betas because of their stupid idea that if you log in at any time, that month of playtime that I got for backing, started to count down for a month. So... log in once in an alpha/beta and you lose an entire paid month of gameplay at release.

So... I didn't play it, I wanted to play the final game and get the gametime I paid for. Now... this... Thanks for nothing.

but also

if you thought paid time counting down during beta access wasn't a terrible sign.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 20:54

Comrade Koba: Jul 2, 2007

Wow, this game really is amazingly bad. Reminds me of early vanilla Everquest, but with none of its redeeming features.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 21:56

Uziduke: Jul 2, 2015; A storm over Europe unleashed
Dawn of war a trail of destruction
The power of Rome won't prevail
See the Catholics shiver and shake

Comrade Koba posted:

Wow, this game really is amazingly bad. Reminds me of early vanilla Everquest, but with none of its redeeming features.

First thing I felt when I started up PFO was, hm I think EQ1 would of been better then this is it was also introduced in 2014.

# ? Sep 3, 2015 22:16

Hesiod: Apr 17, 2003

In other fun news that Kalmes fellow has also had the distinction of working at CCP NA and Cryptic in various roles which means it's POSSIBLE he's been in the industry since 2003 and never worked on a title that's shipped

:edit: From programmer to CTO in 12 years. Working on an actual product people bought for maybe 2 of those. Must be the Steve Jobs of Videogame Programming

# ? Sep 3, 2015 23:10

Angrymog: Jan 30, 2012; Really Madcats

I loaded up a second trial account tonight.

PFO is still terrible, but is now empty.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 00:14

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

Angrymog posted:

I loaded up a second trial account tonight.

PFO is still terrible, but is now empty.

An MMO is most useful when it is empty.

Reflect on this, my pupil

# ? Sep 4, 2015 00:25

Calidor: Aug 11, 2012

Angrymog posted:

I loaded up a second trial account tonight.

PFO is still terrible, but is now empty.

Now?

When was it not?

# ? Sep 4, 2015 00:57

Calidor: Aug 11, 2012

An honest to God quote from one of their "fans" on their forum in a wonderfully named "In Praise of PFO" thread:

"Building for quality is always risky, look up IL2 Cliffs of Dover for an example of an amazing game that was beaten in the market place by much inferior competitors. As with trashy TV the way to guarantee money would be to go with big budget shiney graphics and dumbed down play but what would be the point in that. PFO has a chance to be amazing."

These are the same dumb fucks that helped push this mess off the cliff. Still refusing to even acknowledge reality.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 01:00

The Chad Jihad: Feb 24, 2007

Calidor posted:

An honest to God quote from one of their "fans" on their forum in a wonderfully named "In Praise of PFO" thread:

"Building for quality is always risky, look up IL2 Cliffs of Dover for an example of an amazing game that was beaten in the market place by much inferior competitors. As with trashy TV the way to guarantee money would be to go with big budget shiney graphics and dumbed down play but what would be the point in that. PFO has a chance to be amazing."

what sidereal chucklefuckery is this

# ? Sep 4, 2015 01:09

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

Judgement posted:

I don't even want this game to die, I want it to continue shambling eternally forward on the backs of the deluded idiots who bought into what has always been nothing more than a completely obvious scam. There is no possible way even a single person on that team thought they were doing anything other than milking people for their early access dollars.

The best Grifters are the ones who believe in their own con.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 01:18

Calidor: Aug 11, 2012

Goons should seriously make a Kickstarter for a "Revolutionary MMO that will take us back to our roots. Designed for those that can appreciate deep, meaningful mechanics over shiny graphics"

It would have "Placeholder" graphics that were made in 20 minutes and include things like perma character death. When the character dies you need to buy a new acct. Put a disclaimer saying "This game may never be finished (what MMO ever is) and surely could fail along the way. Only YOUR desire to break from the mold of AAA games can sustain us. We need YOU the nuanced gamer, starving for a true gaming masterpiece to help us make this dream a reality"

PLEDGE NOW!

# ? Sep 4, 2015 01:25

oTHi: Feb 28, 2011; This post is brought to you by Molten Boron.
Nobody doesn't like Molten Boron!.; Lipstick Apathy

Can a (large) portion of the proceeds be funneled directly into my wallet, with no effort towards this project required on my part?

# ? Sep 4, 2015 02:01

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

oTHi posted:

Can a (large) portion of the proceeds be funneled directly into my wallet, with no effort towards this project required on my part?

Good to see you again, Mr. Dancey

# ? Sep 4, 2015 02:37

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

Okay who is ready to make Paizo an offer on this dumb game?

I will put in ten bucks. I expect change.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 03:08

Pants Donkey: Nov 13, 2011

dwarf74 posted:

Okay who is ready to make Paizo an offer on this dumb game?

I will put in ten bucks. I expect change.

I think they'd be crazy not to take your ten bucks.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 04:07

Ratzap: Jun 9, 2012; Let no pie go wasted; Soiled Meat

Even with that all but death notice, they still won't acknowledge that the core design is garbage. They should have thrown Dancey under the bus, admitted the game is awful but it was all his fault honest and please come give us more money plebs so we can fix it.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 07:36

Mormon Star Wars: Aug 13, 2005; It's a minotaur race...

Ratzap posted:

Even with that all but death notice, they still won't acknowledge that the core design is garbage. They should have thrown Dancey under the bus, admitted the game is awful but it was all his fault honest and please come give us more money plebs so we can fix it.

Yeah, in the FAQ where they say that Dancey made the design document and they ares ticking to it... why would you do that? His design clearly didn't work.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 08:27

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 14:00

super sweet best pal: Nov 18, 2009

There's a design? From what I've seen it's just an empty land with a bunch of towers to fight over.

# ? Sep 4, 2015 08:47

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