Pathfinder MMO announced

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 1:01 am

Yes. Really.

http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lcut

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 1:08 am

Looks like they are aiming for a Chivony style wargame with a focus on your main hero.

For some reason I keep thinking of the old Birthright CRPG that Sierra released 15 odd years ago.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 2:16 am

Looks like they are still working on getting the funding together and figuring out what the mmo is supposed to entail. I doubt it'll be in beta before 2013.

ModelCitizen · Post by **ModelCitizen** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 2:20 am

A MMO that goes into development in Nov 2011 isn't going to launch before 2015. MMOs have really long development cycles.

malak · Post by **malak** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 10:35 am

ModelCitizen wrote:A MMO that goes into development in Nov 2011 isn't going to launch before 2015. MMOs have really long development cycles.

An MMO that is to be created "by a dedicated group of creative people with backgrounds in tabletop hobby gaming and online videogame development" will not launch. Ever.

If they had anyone with experience with MMO development, they would have announced that.

Edit: Ok, one of the guys is from CCP, so there's a small chance it might work.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 11:40 am

malak wrote: If they had anyone with experience with MMO development, they would have announced that.

Edit: Ok, one of the guys is from CCP, so there's a small chance it might work.

Mark Kalmes also worked on City of Heroes/Villains before CCP.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 2:18 pm

Due to a severe lack of rules differences, won't it be a carbon copy of the D&D Online? I guess it can't be based in the setting DDO is, but still. DDO is really good for a D&D mmo, as it keeps a lot of the "hey look, this is D&D and there are dice and shit" thing going.

I predict a complete copy of DDO (isn't that what they did for their system) or some sort of terrible clusterfuck of a game.

Paizo fanboys will play it anyways, but it will be BAD.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 2:27 pm

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:Due to a severe lack of rules differences, won't it be a carbon copy of the D&D Online? I guess it can't be based in the setting DDO is, but still. DDO is really good for a D&D mmo, as it keeps a lot of the "hey look, this is D&D and there are dice and shit" thing going.

I predict a complete copy of DDO (isn't that what they did for their system) or some sort of terrible clusterfuck of a game.

Paizo fanboys will play it anyways, but it will be BAD.

(a) Who knows if DDO will even exist by the time this game comes out?

(b) Just about every fantasy RPG in the past 30 years has been a clone of D&D to one degree or another.

(b) On their FAQ page, they claim that the game won't be level-based. How that will actually work in practice, I haven't a clue.

https://goblinworks.com/faq/

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 3:08 pm

a. DDO has been around for a while, it's got a lot of players from what I've seen (made a character and tried it, decided MMOs waste too much time and escaped) and they seem to make some decent cash off all those micro transactions they've got. Everyone owns the adventures you have to pay to play, it's weird.

b. The difference is instead of being "a game with completely different mechanics, but with dungeons and dragons" isn't just a clone of D&D. A game based off the Pathfinder rules will literally be a clone of D&D, and there's already a D&D MMO out there that does it well enough. It has dice and shit that show that you're using the D&D mechanics. The Pathfinder game will either be so far removed from the game's actual mechanics (good move by the devs if they do) that it won't resemble Pathfinder or DDO or it will be a clone of DDO. There's pretty much no way to get around that, actually.

c. They are so retarded. They say "you'll gain things like skills, feats and class features at set points, but they aren't levels. You'd better not call them that because they just aren't. Stop calling them levels. Please? Cut it out, guys."

If you advance at a predictable rate (probably from gaining EXPERIENCE at POINTS that make you reach the next LEVEL of advancement) you're still gaining levels. If every other advancement point you gain a feat, then it's levels with a different name.

If it's some weird training thing then it's truly level-less, but that's not like Pathfinder at all so what the fuck are they doing? If I like Pathfinder then if I play the Pathfinder MMO and it doesn't resemble the system I know and love I'll be pissed.

Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp · Wed Nov 23, 2011 3:12 pm

People seem to have some really weird ideas about MMOs and how they have to be designed. Designers seem to have a problem just implementing the game rules into an online format. It's funny because the classic 1980s and 1990s D&D games stayed mostly true to the source material. Such a shame, oh well.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 3:17 pm

Lisa Stevens wrote:Want to become the greatest armorer that Golarion has ever seen? All it takes is hard work. If you can imagine doing something in the world of Golarion, we want you to be able to do that in Pathfinder Online.

This game will actively support the ability to become the greatest basket weaver in Golarion. I apologize for my negativity, I'm getting on this ASAP.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 4:54 pm

So that leaves 4e the only edition of D&D to not have a video game

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 5:07 pm

@Bill Disco

To be fair, game developers try to solve the rule issues that in TTRPGs are brushed aside by the DM.

About DDO, it seems to be doing ok-ish since they went freemium.

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 7:48 pm

OgreBattle wrote:So that leaves 4e the only edition of D&D to not have a video game

Which is heavily ironic, given that it's the one edition of D&D that would be easiest to make a video game of, since it's rules essentially are those of a video game.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 7:56 pm

Gx1080 wrote:About DDO, it seems to be doing ok-ish since they went freemium.

Sure. But will they last three or four more years? Hard to say.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 8:35 pm

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:
Lisa Stevens wrote:Want to become the greatest armorer that Golarion has ever seen? All it takes is hard work. If you can imagine doing something in the world of Golarion, we want you to be able to do that in Pathfinder Online.
This game will actively support the ability to become the greatest basket weaver in Golarion. I apologize for my negativity, I'm getting on this ASAP.

I want to amass the largest collection of Orc-based porn in the whole of Golarion.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 8:51 pm

TheFlatline wrote:
Pseudo Stupidity wrote:
Lisa Stevens wrote:Want to become the greatest armorer that Golarion has ever seen? All it takes is hard work. If you can imagine doing something in the world of Golarion, we want you to be able to do that in Pathfinder Online.
This game will actively support the ability to become the greatest basket weaver in Golarion. I apologize for my negativity, I'm getting on this ASAP.
I want to amass the largest collection of Orc-based porn in the whole of Golarion.

You should send a letter to the developers then.

I want to have a child in every town and village in Golarion.

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 11:02 pm

But Ryan Dancey is on board! What could go wrong?

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Wed Nov 23, 2011 11:09 pm

@hogarth

The fact that going Freemium was a huge sucess for Turbine says yes. I mean, come on, Anarchy Online (another game that went Freemium) is still around.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Nov 24, 2011 3:34 am

TheFlatline wrote:
Pseudo Stupidity wrote:
Lisa Stevens wrote:Want to become the greatest armorer that Golarion has ever seen? All it takes is hard work. If you can imagine doing something in the world of Golarion, we want you to be able to do that in Pathfinder Online.
This game will actively support the ability to become the greatest basket weaver in Golarion. I apologize for my negativity, I'm getting on this ASAP.
I want to amass the largest collection of Orc-based porn in the whole of Golarion.

Yeah, the first thing to spring to my mind was "Second Life with slightly fewer penis shops and slightly more fights."

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Nov 24, 2011 9:21 pm

Here's an interesting quote from Ryan Dancey on the Paizo boards:

Ryan Dancey wrote:In my perfect world, Pathfinder Online will be to EVE Online what World of Warcraft was to EverQuest. That is, the game that came after the game that solved a lot of hard problems but left a path for development towards accessibility and fun.

As someone who not only played through the transition from EQ to WoW, but spent countless hours doing analysis of both games from a business perspective, I have a tremendous appreciation for what Blizzard accomplished. They did not make a "clone", they made an evolutionary step that changed the way people interacted with theme park MMO content.

I think there's an opportunity to do something similar for sand box MMOs too.

To answer the original question, my goal is to attract people who value the idea of an open world, persistent sandbox where the primary drivers of the experience are other players and their interactions. This is not going to be a game that has a big focus on solo play - although there will certainly be ways to play the game as a Lone Wolf. This is not going to be a game where the objective is to gear up the "perfect" party to solve a theme park puzzle - you'll have specialized characters aplenty, but no "best" option for being an adventurer.

Not a big focus on solo play? No thanks.

Rommie · Post by **Rommie** » Thu Nov 24, 2011 10:01 pm

Good luck with that, RD - there are hundreds of thousands, if not MILLIONS, of veteran MMO players out there, ready to theorycraft your brilliant ideas into the ground. They WILL find the "best" options for adventurers no matter what you do to stop them. The harder you swing the nerfbat to foil them, the more determined they'll be in picking the numbers apart to prove you wrong.

That's just MMO history from the past few years. He can ignore it and pay the price, to his game and his ego.

And isn't the consensus around here about Pathfinder is that there are magic-users, other magic-users, and targets? That will go over well if they try a direct translation to a MMO. No complaints whatsoever...

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Thu Nov 24, 2011 11:22 pm

Well theoretically you could for example make a class needed for different stuff. So for some adventures you really need a druid to do something only a druid can. (like if a druid was the only one who could collect plants or something stupid like that)

Not saying that would make a good or fun game though. Just saying it is possible.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Fri Nov 25, 2011 2:33 am

I was thinking more along the lines of his comment that Pathfinder Online will be more like EVE and that there won't be much support for solo play.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri Nov 25, 2011 5:01 am

I hope they preserve the balance of Fighters and Wizards in PF for this MMO environment.