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  1. #1

    Pathfinder


    Pathfinder Online is a hybrid sandbox/theme park-style MMO where characters explore, develop, find adventure and dominate a wilderness frontier in a land of sword and sorcery. The Pathfinder world is high fantasy in the tradition of epics like The Lord of the Rings, Conan, the Wheel of Time and Game of Thrones.

    The Pathfinder setting includes many different classic and modern fantasy elements, from lost cities shrouded in misty jungles to decaying pyramids amidst deserts of burning sands to a fantastic island metropolis where folk from across the world live side by side with all manner of fantastic creatures. The Pathfinder world has a place for any story a player wants to tell. (For more information on the world of Pathfinder and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, please visit paizo.com/pathfinder.)

    Pathfinder Online’s robust trading system puts players in control of the world’s economy with player-created items, consumables, fortifications, and settlements. Character-controlled settlements can grow into full-fledged kingdoms that compete for resources as they seek to become the dominant force in the land, raising vast armies to hold their territory against the depredations of monstrous creatures, NPC factions, and other player characters.

    Social organizations scale from small parties of a few adventurers to player nations inhabited by thousands. As settlements develop, the surrounding wilderness develops more complex and challenging features, including randomly generated encounters and resources as well as exciting scripted adventures.

    To read more about this brand new upcoming MMORPG, visit the following link to Pathfinder Online’s official website : https://goblinworks.com/


  2. #2

    I just read their blog (https://goblinworks.com/blog/) and it makes me really look forward to this game. I'm very curious if they can actually make the type of game you could devote 2.5 years of your time to to cap your character. I'm also looking forward to see if they do a post about what they plan to do for group vs. solo content and advancement.

  3. #3

    https://goblinworks.com/blog/ is a good read.

    Are there are screenshots or videos of this yet?

  4. #4
    Let's go Red Sox!
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    It all sounded good until the part where they will limit the number of subscriptions, and at least the first batch of people allowed to subscribe will be hand-picked by the company. While I certainly have no problem with that system for beta purposes, it's a fucking horrible idea for an actual launch. It's basically FFXI all over again. No thanks on having absolutely no chance to join until a year after people have already established the economy, guilds, etc. If they want to gradually scale up the number of character allowed on individual servers, assuming they would have enough servers to cover the initial subscribers, that would be ok as someone who willfully starts a game after launch can't expect a perfectly even playing field. Forcing people that want to start at launch to wait is just asking people to lose interest in your game.

  5. #5

    Quote Originally Posted by ChairmanMeow View Post
    https://goblinworks.com/blog/ is a good read.

    Are there are screenshots or videos of this yet?
    I don't think they've even picked an engine yet. I'm following it pretty closely but so far we are limited to what we read on the blog (updated biweekly) and what they post on their forums (the developers are fairly active on it).

    Here's the latest blog post for those too lazy to go to the blog:

    LFG! (Looking for Group!)
    posted by Ryan Dancey on Wednesday, February 15, 2012

    This is our sixth development blog, and our topic is groups—the social organizations that make Pathfinder Online Massively Multiplayer.

    We know that people want different levels of social interaction, from solo play to being a part of a huge organization. The game design we're currently envisioning has several layers of grouping to facilitate those needs. As with each of these dev blogs, we're talking about elements of the design which are not set in stone and are always subject to change based on future development and feedback from the community.

    Han Shot First—Playing Solo

    Some people just want to be the lone wolf. A world filled with folks who rely on others is anathema to them. Self-reliance and individualism are their preferences.

    Solo play is going to require a character that has quite a bit of diversity in character abilities. You'll want to be able to explore (to find stuff), to heal (to recover from the monsters that infest the stuff you find), to adventure (so you can cope with the hostile environments you'll be exploring), and to fight (so you can try to kill the creatures that make those environments especially hostile). (Sounds very "ranger-y" or "druid-y" to us.)

    Some solo players won't even leave town. They'll become masters of crafting and market warfare, using their canny ability to time swings in prices and to identify opportunities for arbitrage to make their fortune. These spreadsheet warriors will be ready to pounce on the pricing mistakes of their less focused competitors, and can be the secret to success for the forces engaged in territorial warfare. (Or their downfall—a canny merchant never forgets a previous slight or betrayal.)

    By and large the solo player is going to find that the game is a harder experience than it isfor the folks who play in groups. By design, Pathfinder Online seeks to maximize human interaction, so when you try to avoid other people, you'll find your road is harder and longer than those who seek companions. But there's something to be said for the feeling of accomplishment that comes from "I did it all by myself!" And for those lone wolves who do succeed, we'll salute you!

    A Fighter, a Wizard, a Rogue and a Cleric Walk into a Bar...

    The fundamental social unit that most players will experience is the party. This is a classic adventuring team that self-assembles to go out and kick down doors, whack monsters, and power up. But the party has other functions in Pathfinder Online. Parties may form to go harvest resources: some members will extract the resource while others patrol and fight off hazards that appear (see our previous blog for more info on how this system works). Parties could also be a caravan, with some members moving large quantities of goods from place to place, and some acting as guards to protect the group from hazards and brigands.

    Parties will typically be small, just a few characters. We haven't picked an upper limit, but expect it to be only a couple of dozen characters at most.

    There will be many ways to find a party to join, and lots of ways for parties to find new members. We want to make it really easy for people to group into ad hoc parties that may only last for a few hours while the group completes an objective. The people you meet during these adventures could become friends (or enemies) as you move deeper into the social networks of the game. You'll be able to track those you've been in a party with and see what happened during those adventures, and you'll even be able to note if those individuals were friends, enemies, or neutral for later encounters.

    The Knights of the Round Table

    Sometimes a party will find that its members work really well together, or is comprised of characters who share similar goals and who want to pursue them as a team rather than as individuals, or maybe just as players who like each other and want to stay connected.

    These parties can become chartered companies. Each member agrees to certain terms and obligations as set forth in their charter, and the group as a whole gains some benefits, like shared storage, private communication channels, and the ability to share information about locations on the world map. Chartered companies are the first persistent social organization most players will join in the game. They can grow to be quite large, on the order of several dozen characters (exact sizes have yet to be determined). They can receive messages and can be named as the hunters for bounties (see the previous blog for information on how the bounty system works).

    Some chartered companies will become world renowned. They may be mercenaries called in to tip the balance of a fight, or a guild of assassins that strikes fear into any who are marked for death. They may enforce the law, tracking down criminals and bringing swift justice to the evildoers.

    Chartered companies will have tools to manage its membership, including ways to vote and to appoint leaders. Those tools will include the capability to add new recruits and to boot members who fall away from the ideals of the chartered company.

    For the first six to ten months of the game, these will be the largest social organizations in Pathfidner Online. During this period, characters will be exploring, developing, and adventuring in the Crusader Road, creating all the infrastructure needed to support a robust sandbox experience. Eventually, the conditions will be right to introduce the next level of organization...

    Farmville

    (We're kidding!)

    Keep on the Borderlands

    (That's so much better, isn't it!)

    When the time is right and the sandbox is ripe for evolution, the characters of Pathfinder Online will be able to make a giant step forward and found their own player settlements (different from NPC settlements, which we talked about a little bit in our second blog).

    Player settlements will scale from fairly small communities to quite large social structures with perhaps hundreds of members. A player settlement is a functioning community which can be developed and improved by the collective work of its members. Player settlements add all sorts of new capabilities to the social game, including markets, shared accounts, and access to buildings and workshops needed to earn many new character abilities.

    Think of NPC settlements as a training zone where you can learn how to play the game and master the basic skills you need to pursue your goals in the River Kingdoms. Player settlements are where the training wheels come off, and where you're on your own to survive and thrive... or crash and burn. There won't be automatic systems to enforce the law—you'll need to do that yourselves. There won't be a mass of random characters just itching to put down an invading horde; if you're not monitoring the lands you control, things can rapidly get out of hand.

    To create a player settlement, you'll need to do several things. You'll need to find an area of the wilderness claimed by no other settlement. You'll need to establish territorial control over that area. You'll need to assemble all the materials required to construct the player settlement and guard the area while it is being built. You'll have to create a settlement charter, and that charter must be signed by a fairly large number of characters who pledge their support and loyalty to the new settlement.

    Your charter will set forth things like the alignment of your Settlement (which limits who can be members), how voting authority is allocated, how accounts are audited, and how funds are shared.

    And once your settlement is built and your charter is signed and in force, you'll then have to defend your lands against those who covet them and seek to take them from you.

    The Kingdom Game

    The highest level of social organization is the player kingdom. These are created when two or more player settlements agree to bind themselves together to create a single political entity. The kingdom is the most powerful organization in the game. It has access to the most powerful constructs and workshops. It can marshal and direct the efforts of thousands of player characters. Kingdoms field armies. Kingdoms engage in diplomacy. Kingdoms dominate their surrounding lands.

    Though we use the word "kingdom," the political structures of these entities will be varied. Some will be actual kingdoms with power vested in a single monarch. Some will be oligarchies. Others will be more democratic—even a direct democracy is possible.

    The economic structures of kingdoms will be varied as well. The kingdom may tax its members on their earnings to fund its operations, and that tax rate could vary from nil to 100%. Ayn Rand to Karl Marx and everything in between.

    The combination of politics and economics will create a matrix of variety in kingdoms, and that matrix is further complicated by alignment, creating a three-dimensional structure of options. If you can imagine it, you can likely custom-tailor a kingdom to deliver.

    The Design Objectives

    We want to mirror some of the amazing things that occurred in Ultima Online and EVE Online, but we also want to strike out on our own path. At the size and scale that Pathfinder Online will eventually reach, opportunities for player-driven content to become epic are everywhere, and we're going to be working to maximize those epic stories when they naturally arise.

    We also want to avoid some of the missteps that have happened in other games. We want to ensure that there's always enough space so that new settlements and kingdoms can form. We want to avoid the problem of choke points that restrict access to key resources, making whomever got to those points first the de facto "winners" in the economy. We also want to retain the sense that the land is wild and untamed. You'll be able to leave civilization behind and go out in the dark areas of the map where nothing rules except monsters, robbers, and cults.

    We're going to design Pathfinder Online so that each level of social organization arises when the game is ready for it. Slowly adding these increasing levels of sophistication will allow the society of the game to ramp up gradually and with good cohesion. As new players join, they'll always have ways to become a part of that process. By the time the first kingdoms form, there will be a pyramid of smaller group structures for players to participate in, ensuring lots of content for everyone.

    We're sure that these ideas have already sparked your imagination. We want to encourage folks to begin self-organizing even before the game is ready for testing. We'll do our best to recognize those organizations that get created early, especially if they announce their existence on our messageboards. How awesome will it be to start playing Pathfinder Online and already have the seeds of the early social order in place? We can't wait to see it all develop and we're so excited to have the community along for the ride!

    Discuss this blog on paizo.com. Link.
    I have to say, I really love their blog. It's very interesting to read the process of creating a coherent sandbox game. As an aside, they want people to organize guilds ahead of launch so their limited initial player group have cohesion at the start. Would love to get a group of potentially interested BG players in a guild and state that on their message board. Apparently it'll help get into the first batch of players. From what I've read, they are aiming for launch in about 2 years since they are using a licensed MMO game engine.

  6. #6
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    Goblin works posted a new Work in progress video.




    The game is really coming along. I remember that little tech demo thing they had months back, it was pretty rough and the game looked ugly to be honest. But this, you can actually see the real progress they've made in the past few months.

  7. #7
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    Here is the next update video, looks like things are coming along slowly.



  8. #8
    TIME OUT MOTHERFUCKER

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    that looks awful.

  9. #9
    The Fucking Voice of Actually
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    It isn't even alpha. The earliest any backers will be able to play is at least a full year away. And even after that, they currently don't expect the game to be having a proper launch for 18 months after that happens.
    And a big chunk of the team is former CCP, EVE has had a several of major graphical overhauls since release. The game is very likely to see a graphics pass or two between now and then.

  10. #10
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    Here is the next work in progress video, things are starting to take off.



  11. #11

    I'm by no means a visual-whore, but holy crap this team is either highly inefficient or has really low standards. This game is a farce.

  12. #12
    Relic Horn
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    I made a comment on some Pathfinder thread stating how terrible western devs seem to be at animations and combat when it comes to realistic art style. It seems only Koreans can get that right. Unfortunately they stink at everything content related.

  13. #13
    TIME OUT MOTHERFUCKER

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    I think EQ 1 has better animation. *shrug* in before IT'S ALPHERRRR!!!!!

    edit:
    still gonna play it.

    edit edit:

    The game animation reminded of something, it was bothering me, but now I made the connection. Holy crap, it's like a carbon copy.

  14. #14
    Relic Horn
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    DAoC was the first thing i thought of as well.

  15. #15
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    I'm assuming that the animations aren't in their finished state, considering this is still pre-alpha footage. THe rest of it looks kinda meh too, but can't expect amazing texturework and environmental detail from such a small studio I guess.

    Least the lighting and skybox are both nice.

  16. #16
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    Just received email invite to an alpha stress test and is being handed out to Alpha, Early, Explorer and Open Enrollees. Still rough on stuff but the weekly updates and roadmaps help with development transparency which I like quite a bit.

    Email info:
    Spoiler: show
    State of the Game

    We are very pleased with the current state of the game. Understanding what you are about to experience does require a little explanation.

    Unlike a lot of MMOs which are delivered to players in a nearly-complete state after 5-7 years of closed development, we are pursuing a very different path. Our goal is to begin play with the minimum features we think are necessary to start getting useful feedback from the community. From this foundation, with your input, we will jointly Crowdforge the game by enabling you to directly influence our designs and the prioritization of features.

    The upside to this plan is that you will have a real opportunity to affect the course of the design and the way the game develops.

    Working Features

    This is a very top-level overview of the features already working in the game. In this context a "Game Loop" is a set of mechanics which are designed to enable a specific kind of game experience that you'll repeatedly play.

    Adventuring Game Loop

    A vast world to explore. The Alpha map is approximately 18x16 kilometers of forests, mountains, plains, farmland and swamps.
    Multiple starting NPC Settlements with training NPCs from starter to fairly advanced
    A Settlement for criminals with just basic training NPCs
    Thornkeep, a major NPC City
    33 Player-run Settlements, earned by the winners of the Guild Land Rush promotion
    A variety of threats:
    Goblins
    Humanoids
    Ogres
    Skeletons
    Wolves
    Escalations - large scale threats which respond to player character activity by becoming tougher or easier and which spawn harder encounters than average.
    A variety of resources to harvest:
    Essences
    Middens
    Minerals
    Plants
    Valuable loot from defeating threats
    Crafting components
    Coin
    Expendables and Consumables
    Spells for Clerics and Wizards
    Limited-duration token effects
    Recipes for processing & crafting
    Starter gear for Clerics, Fighters, Rogues and Wizards
    Resurrection at Shrines of Pharasma
    Tutorial in NPC Settlements (find the Priest of Pharasma at the top of the hill in each to begin)
    Ad Hoc parties up to 6 characters

    Economic Game Loop

    Auction Houses in each NPC Settlement for local markets
    Local storage in each Settlement
    Abadar credit, a virtualized monetary system at the Bank in each Settlement
    Trading between characters
    Local storage for characters in NPC Settlements
    Processing and Crafting facilities
    Ability to convert harvested resources into processed materials including "+" value materials
    Ability to convert processed materials into crafted Gear including "+" value Gear

    Character Development

    3 races
    Dwarves
    Elves
    Humans
    4 adventuring roles
    Clerics
    Fighters
    Rogues
    Wizards
    Many economic roles
    Harvesting all resource types
    Processing all harvested resources
    Crafting Gear
    Arms & Armor
    Wands, Spellbooks & Staves
    Holy Symbols, Divine Focii
    Feat Training
    XP earned in realtime
    Trainers in every NPC Settlement
    Feats have tooltips explaining prerequisites and benefits
    Some Feats increase Ability Scores
    Achievements
    Adventure
    Arcane
    Divine
    Exploration
    Martial
    Social
    Subterfuge

    PvP Systems

    Reputation
    Penalties scale vs. Reputation of target
    Recovery in realtime during play
    Attacker Flags
    Criminal State
    Thornguards in NPC Settlements attack low reputation and criminal characters on sight

    User Experience and Interface

    Player can create and manage up to 3 characters per account
    Player can drag Feats and Items to the Paper Doll and the Action Bar
    Player can browse Achievements
    Player can browse Inventory
    Combat UI shows Hit Points, Stamina and Power
    Player can use TAB key to select from nearby targets
    Player can view a World Map and a Local Map
    Player can review assigned and completed Quests
    Player can change screen resolution and graphics quality
    Player can report bugs
    Player can select Actions on the Action bar by clicking their icons or using the number or alt-number associated with each Action

    A Note About Feats & Gear

    Making your character more powerful works in a unique way in Pathfinder Online.

    Equipping an item with "+" values does not inherently make the item more powerful than a version with fewer (or no) "+" values.

    Training and using a Feat at a level above 1st rank does not inherently provide more character power.

    You need to match "Keywords" on your Gear to Keywords associated with the Feats you have Trained. We call this "Activating a Keyword".

    For example, each "+" value on armor has no intrinsic effect. But if you have slotted an Armor Feat on the Paper Doll that Activates the Keywords on the armor then you will get a mechanical benefit for each Keyword that is activated.

    Mousing over an item or Feat will show you which Keywords it embodies. Each "+" on Gear, or rank of a Feat unlocks the next Keyword in the list.

    Thus the game creates a built in incentive to get better Gear as you train higher ranks in Feats!

    Ongoing Development

    We are actively engaged in continuously iterating on the game. Pathfinder Online is just starting, not ending, its development. We will continuously improve the graphics, UI, content, and game mechanics.

    We are very interested in your feedback. You can engage with the community of Pathfinder Online enthusiasts in several venues:

    Paizo.com Pathfinder Online Forums
    Goblinworks.com Alpha Test Forums
    Ideascale Pathfinder Online Crowdforging System
    Goblinworks' Twitch.tv channel

    Roadmap

    This is the current schedule for the next month of activity for the game:

    September and October: Alpha Stress Test
    October 30th: Start of Early Enrollment
    November 6: War of Towers and PvP Upgrade to Test Server
    November 13: War of Towers and PvP Upgrade deployed to Live server

  17. #17
    The Defense is ready, Your Honor
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    Another Darkfall Online-looking game. In 2014. Absurd.

    Everyone thinks they can code, though, and everyone thinks they can do what's already out there far better.

  18. #18
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    It more more pitched as the Pathfinder module with a sandbox/progression system like EVE.

  19. #19
    Relic Horn
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    WTB a pure PVE sandbox.

    Unfortunately anyone wanting something like this is going to have to settle for subpar visuals and animations due to the low budgets of indie teams. I'm willing to put up with it as long and the systems in place are not only deep but also foster community building and teamwork. I'm tired of solo MMO's.

  20. #20
    The Fucking Voice of Actually
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    I've been playing it a bit the past couple of days.
    From what I've seen economy/gear wise, it's a good thing that there's going to be nearly a years worth of some player buildup before launch. Getting the recipes and materials to populate entry gear for a launch population, with the droprates they have set, is going to take some time. (Need leather bad)

    They really do need a graphics pass (and yeah, some responsiveness, little bit clunky) before launch though, to get the people who aren't paying attention already to look at it.
    They also need to do a usability cleanup on the feat, achievement, and quest panels. And auction house, but shit, that was only implemented a couple weeks ago, they're still iterating.