No way of proving this of course, but I would STRONGLY suspect that most of those folks that "faded away" did so because of how bad they felt the game was and not because some group of "11 or 12 PvP newbs" won some kind of battle.
Next post should probably be in a new thread though because one thing ABSOLUTELY proven is that PFO does NOT matter in the larger scheme of things.
I disagree. Not that these posts should be in another thread, but that PfO doesn't matter. The OP was trying to point out (I believe) that what GW was shooting for was/is a worthy twist on typical open world PVP sandboxes. It's different or was different. There are a lot of OWPVP games out there and it is probably safe to say two things about them. The have more players than the game that GW released has, by a great margin. They are not very successful (except maybe EVE) until you match them against PfO.
That isn't really a great benchmark to measure by. New ideas and approaches are important to (hopefully) keep the industry fresh and interesting. The same old thing isn't working real well. If it were, we would all be there playing it.
No more "BOX" fee. Free 15 day trials at: goblinworks.com/download/ Ozem's Vigil: The largest force for Holy Justice in the River Kingdoms. Are You Ready to Smite Evil? ozemsvigil.guildlaunch.com
No way of proving this of course, but I would STRONGLY suspect that most of those folks that "faded away" did so because of how bad they felt the game was and not because some group of "11 or 12 PvP newbs" won some kind of battle.
Next post should probably be in a new thread though because one thing ABSOLUTELY proven is that PFO does NOT matter in the larger scheme of things.
I was one that faded out as I watched the core group feed off of bad ideas. I was in the TS channel many times and got to hear it first hand. A bad idea was thrown out to the crowd like a gaggle of hungry seals. They ate that crap up.
I also was able to sell off my interest in the game before the inevitable crash. Thankfully.
Earth and Beyond, I played from release to close. It was a decent game, better than EVE at the time, and strange why EA closed its doors.
SWG - I played it for nearly 2 years, but got tired of SOE's empty promises; FOTM classes, etc.
EVE - nearly 10 years of play
WOW - about 8 months. really only liked the game up to level 20, hated raid / gear grinding.
COH - played on and off from launch to shut down. COV was a disappointment.
WAR - very short time, month or two. Meh!
POTBS - I alpha / beta tested the game for 2.5 years, then played it post launch another 2 years.
AOC - played about 2 years, also beta tested for a number of months.
LOTRO - about a year, and still have it installed. F2P
Auto Assault - Beta only, crap game.
AO - A few months, played it about 10 years after release, too dated for me.
Fallen Earth - about 2 years, and have gone back to it a few times. Good game, better than PFO, and designed by Lee Hammock.
WWII Online - few days, very confusing game and the maps were too big for my taste.
MWO - a bit over a year, and this is where I first met Goodfellow and Talon Fox.
SWTOR - beta for about 9 months and then played on and off for nearly 2 years.
PFO - I beta tested it for 9 months and played it for about 9 months.
STO - about 2 years, maybe a bit more.
Most of the others, usually about 6 months of play time, a few a bit less.
What you maybe having a hard time understanding is that I have an incredible amount of experience with MMOs compared to yourself. Yes I have played many, and some for a very long time. This is why, once I saw passed Ryan's empty promises and poor decisions, I pointed them out. Only inexperienced MMO players still believed him, and his stable of butt boys who made nothing but excuses for him. Yeah, Ryan Dancey was going to save the MMO genre from itself.... what a delusional fool.
I accurately predicted in January of 2013 that PFO would never launch OE with Ryan at the helm.
As for whether I'll bother playing the game again or not, who really cares? I certainly don't. There are so many better games out there, and I'm still in touch with and playing with the core members of my guild in other games. Unlike some of you, who built players groups around PFO, we did not.
Sword Coast Legends, Albion Online, LIfe is Feudal, 7 Days to Die, Rebel Galaxy, Fallout 4 are just some of the games I'm putting time into, with many other players.... Am I really going to waste my time logging into PFO?
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
It strikes me as really sad how Bringslite has to necro this thread, near the end of the month, when perhaps Lisa Stevens will announce the future of the game. It's as if he is getting ready to either deliver an "I told you so" or "whine, how the naysayers never gave the game a chance".
Stop trying to revive the "Why PFO Matters" rant. It clearly doesn't matter, never has, never will.... It is just a game, one of hundreds, and one that most people have never played or heard of anyway.
If you enjoy it, play it.... I hope it lasts for you.
Post edited by Bluddwolf on
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
It strikes me as really sad how Bringslite has to necro this thread, near the end of the month, when perhaps Lisa Stevens will announce the future of the game. It's as if he is getting ready to either deliver an "I told you so" or "whine, how the naysayers never game the game a chance".
Stop trying to revive the "Why PFO Matters" rant. It clearly doesn't matter, never has, never will.... It is just a game, one of hundreds, and one that most people have never played or heard of anyway.
If you enjoy it, play it.... I hope it lasts for you.
Most of us that play the Pathfinder P&P game have heard of it, but they never really made the game for the crowd that likes the IP.
Pathfinder do matter, because maybe it can teach IP holder to not give away their IP to people who can't afford to turn it into a MMO and wouldn't make it in the spirit of the IP even if they did.
Now, I have nothing against the people who spent hard work on turning Pathfinder into what it became but they should have used another IP and really needed to secure more cash from the start. The idea that sandbox games are far easier and cheaper to make then themeparks just wasn't true, something I pointed out here when the initial letter from the devs came out before they started to work on the game.
Sorry, but I don't see Paizo allowing this game to have anything more to do with their IP now. Pathfinder have a really good name with P&P players and releasing a really low budget MMO is not good for the IPs reputation.
It strikes me as really sad how Bringslite has to necro this thread, near the end of the month, when perhaps Lisa Stevens will announce the future of the game. It's as if he is getting ready to either deliver an "I told you so" or "whine, how the naysayers never game the game a chance".
Stop trying to revive the "Why PFO Matters" rant. It clearly doesn't matter, never has, never will.... It is just a game, one of hundreds, and one that most people have never played or heard of anyway.
If you enjoy it, play it.... I hope it lasts for you.
Most of us that play the Pathfinder P&P game have heard of it, but they never really made the game for the crowd that likes the IP.
Pathfinder do matter, because maybe it can teach IP holder to not give away their IP to people who can't afford to turn it into a MMO and wouldn't make it in the spirit of the IP even if they did.
Now, I have nothing against the people who spent hard work on turning Pathfinder into what it became but they should have used another IP and really needed to secure more cash from the start. The idea that sandbox games are far easier and cheaper to make then themeparks just wasn't true, something I pointed out here when the initial letter from the devs came out before they started to work on the game.
Sorry, but I don't see Paizo allowing this game to have anything more to do with their IP now. Pathfinder have a really good name with P&P players and releasing a really low budget MMO is not good for the IPs reputation.
Except in this case it was the IP holder who thought they could build an MMO on the cheap. Also sandboxes are cheaper to make than themeparks, just not by nearly enough to get by on the shoestring budget they tried to make PFO on.
Most of us that play the Pathfinder P&P game have heard of it, but they never really made the game for the crowd that likes the IP.
Pathfinder do matter, because maybe it can teach IP holder to not give away their IP to people who can't afford to turn it into a MMO and wouldn't make it in the spirit of the IP even if they did.
Now, I have nothing against the people who spent hard work on turning Pathfinder into what it became but they should have used another IP and really needed to secure more cash from the start. The idea that sandbox games are far easier and cheaper to make then themeparks just wasn't true, something I pointed out here when the initial letter from the devs came out before they started to work on the game.
Sorry, but I don't see Paizo allowing this game to have anything more to do with their IP now. Pathfinder have a really good name with P&P players and releasing a really low budget MMO is not good for the IPs reputation.
Except in this case it was the IP holder who thought they could build an MMO on the cheap. Also sandboxes are cheaper to make than themeparks, just not by nearly enough to get by on the shoestring budget they tried to make PFO on.
I got the impression from the start that Goblinworks were independent and that Paizo bought them out.
And no, really railed themeparks are cheaper, actually making tools for the players to create their won content is way harder then just scripting quests. Guildwars for example actually didn't have much better budget when it released in 2005, but the use of instances together with simple railroaded quests made it very cheap to make it. Then again, GW was coded by Strain (who was Blizzard lead programmer before that and made games like WC3) and if GW had a masterprogrammer they might have been able to produce something anyways.
All the quests in Guildwars were made by 3 guys, it is less work then one would think as long as you can get them coming without getting to repetetive. Making tools to create player made content on the other hand is a lot of work. Ask CCP or anyone who worked for UO.
And sandbox mechanics needs far more testing and polishing, simple quests have far less things that can go wrong. Killing 10 rats can just fail in so many ways (escort quests are somewhat tougher but nowhere near good sandbox mechanics).
Of course if you by sandbox just mean "let out all the players in an open world with a little crafting and let them constantly kill eachothers" then it is different, but all successful sandboxes had far more then that so far. Players need to be able to create things together and interact in more ways then just murdering eachothers or you will have the world largest flop. Even small games like DFO and MO have far more advanced mechanics then that.
Most of us that play the Pathfinder P&P game have heard of it, but they never really made the game for the crowd that likes the IP.
Pathfinder do matter, because maybe it can teach IP holder to not give away their IP to people who can't afford to turn it into a MMO and wouldn't make it in the spirit of the IP even if they did.
Now, I have nothing against the people who spent hard work on turning Pathfinder into what it became but they should have used another IP and really needed to secure more cash from the start. The idea that sandbox games are far easier and cheaper to make then themeparks just wasn't true, something I pointed out here when the initial letter from the devs came out before they started to work on the game.
Sorry, but I don't see Paizo allowing this game to have anything more to do with their IP now. Pathfinder have a really good name with P&P players and releasing a really low budget MMO is not good for the IPs reputation.
Except in this case it was the IP holder who thought they could build an MMO on the cheap. Also sandboxes are cheaper to make than themeparks, just not by nearly enough to get by on the shoestring budget they tried to make PFO on.
I got the impression from the start that Goblinworks were independent and that Paizo bought them out.
And no, really railed themeparks are cheaper, actually making tools for the players to create their won content is way harder then just scripting quests. Guildwars for example actually didn't have much better budget when it released in 2005, but the use of instances together with simple railroaded quests made it very cheap to make it. Then again, GW was coded by Strain (who was Blizzard lead programmer before that and made games like WC3) and if GW had a masterprogrammer they might have been able to produce something anyways.
All the quests in Guildwars were made by 3 guys, it is less work then one would think as long as you can get them coming without getting to repetetive. Making tools to create player made content on the other hand is a lot of work. Ask CCP or anyone who worked for UO.
And sandbox mechanics needs far more testing and polishing, simple quests have far less things that can go wrong. Killing 10 rats can just fail in so many ways (escort quests are somewhat tougher but nowhere near good sandbox mechanics).
Of course if you by sandbox just mean "let out all the players in an open world with a little crafting and let them constantly kill eachothers" then it is different, but all successful sandboxes had far more then that so far. Players need to be able to create things together and interact in more ways then just murdering eachothers or you will have the world largest flop. Even small games like DFO and MO have far more advanced mechanics then that.
GW1 is an extreme outlier, that would be like me citing SWTOR as proof themeparks are more expensive.
Raph Koster points to WoW as being far more expensive to make than any previous MMO (which I believe includes SWG, UO, and even EVE) because they packed every inch of the world with quests which no previous MMO had attempted to do and is the hallmark of the modern themepark.
My understand is that Dancy pitched a traditional $50-100 million MMO to Piazo and they countered by challenging him to make one for $5 million, which he unfortunately accepted. Piazo clearly didn't do their due diligence or they would have had some idea of what a $5 million MMO looked like.
I think the shoe-string budget was more Ryan's pitch, than Paizo's demand. Ryan seemed to honestly believe his vision of a PVP centric MMO that severely limited non consensual PVP, would entice players that really hate PVP and players that really love PVP to flock to PFO. He seemed to be under the impression that MMOs that had non consensual PVP and no consequences for that PVP were dying out, games like EVE being a rare exception.
However the pitch was to TT players, more so than MMO players, and PVP is apparently an alien concept to TTRPG players. I'm not sure why that is, I have had several occasions in my TT experience where players attacked other players, but then our DM ran an evil campaign in D&D.
However, your point is well taken, and true. There are a few lessons that can be learned from PFO, and unfortunately for the game, they are all "what not to dos".
* Don't try to make an MMO on a shoe-string budget * Don't try to make your first computer game, an MMO * Don't try to make an MMO, using an obsolete game engine * Don't try to make an MMO that will appeal to widely opposed player bases on the PVP vs. RP-PVE spectrum. * Don't play word games with what stage of development the game is in * Don't monetize the game with a box fee, subscription fee and micro transaction store while the game is still in early alpha. * Don't deny the game has been released when players are being charged for playing time, and the CEO has declared the game to be feature complete. * Don't blame the player base for the lack of a player base * Don't whine that the game is being reviewed, when you have essentially released it
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
I think the shoe-string budget was more Ryan's pitch, than Paizo's demand. Ryan seemed to honestly believe his vision of a PVP centric MMO that severely limited non consensual PVP, would entice players that really hate PVP and players that really love PVP to flock to PFO. He seemed to be under the impression that MMOs that had non consensual PVP and no consequences for that PVP were dying out, games like EVE being a rare exception.
However the pitch was to TT players, more so than MMO players, and PVP is apparently an alien concept to TTRPG players. I'm not sure why that is, I have had several occasions in my TT experience where players attacked other players, but then our DM ran an evil campaign in D&D.
However, your point is well taken, and true. There are a few lessons that can be learned from PFO, and unfortunately for the game, they are all "what not to dos".
* Don't try to make an MMO on a shoe-string budget * Don't try to make your first computer game, an MMO * Don't try to make an MMO, using an obsolete game engine * Don't try to make an MMO that will appeal to widely opposed player bases on the PVP vs. RP-PVE spectrum. * Don't play word games with what stage of development the game is in * Don't monetize the game with a box fee, subscription fee and micro transaction store while the game is still in early alpha. * Don't deny the game has been released when players are being charged for playing time, and the CEO has declared the game to be feature complete. * Don't blame the player base for the lack of a player base * Don't whine that the game is being reviewed, when you have essentially released it
No, there is a link in one of the PFO threads from right after Dancy being fired. The shoestring budget was Lisa's idea. Dancy certainly embraced it after thinking it over but Lisa was the originator of the idea.
Comments
I disagree. Not that these posts should be in another thread, but that PfO doesn't matter. The OP was trying to point out (I believe) that what GW was shooting for was/is a worthy twist on typical open world PVP sandboxes. It's different or was different. There are a lot of OWPVP games out there and it is probably safe to say two things about them. The have more players than the game that GW released has, by a great margin. They are not very successful (except maybe EVE) until you match them against PfO.
That isn't really a great benchmark to measure by. New ideas and approaches are important to (hopefully) keep the industry fresh and interesting. The same old thing isn't working real well. If it were, we would all be there playing it.
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Ozem's Vigil: The largest force for Holy Justice in the River Kingdoms.
Are You Ready to Smite Evil?
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All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
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Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I also was able to sell off my interest in the game before the inevitable crash. Thankfully.
E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO
Earth and Beyond, I played from release to close. It was a decent game, better than EVE at the time, and strange why EA closed its doors.
SWG - I played it for nearly 2 years, but got tired of SOE's empty promises; FOTM classes, etc.
EVE - nearly 10 years of play
WOW - about 8 months. really only liked the game up to level 20, hated raid / gear grinding.
COH - played on and off from launch to shut down. COV was a disappointment.
WAR - very short time, month or two. Meh!
POTBS - I alpha / beta tested the game for 2.5 years, then played it post launch another 2 years.
AOC - played about 2 years, also beta tested for a number of months.
LOTRO - about a year, and still have it installed. F2P
Auto Assault - Beta only, crap game.
AO - A few months, played it about 10 years after release, too dated for me.
Fallen Earth - about 2 years, and have gone back to it a few times. Good game, better than PFO, and designed by Lee Hammock.
WWII Online - few days, very confusing game and the maps were too big for my taste.
MWO - a bit over a year, and this is where I first met Goodfellow and Talon Fox.
SWTOR - beta for about 9 months and then played on and off for nearly 2 years.
PFO - I beta tested it for 9 months and played it for about 9 months.
STO - about 2 years, maybe a bit more.
Most of the others, usually about 6 months of play time, a few a bit less.
What you maybe having a hard time understanding is that I have an incredible amount of experience with MMOs compared to yourself. Yes I have played many, and some for a very long time. This is why, once I saw passed Ryan's empty promises and poor decisions, I pointed them out. Only inexperienced MMO players still believed him, and his stable of butt boys who made nothing but excuses for him. Yeah, Ryan Dancey was going to save the MMO genre from itself.... what a delusional fool.
I accurately predicted in January of 2013 that PFO would never launch OE with Ryan at the helm.
As for whether I'll bother playing the game again or not, who really cares? I certainly don't. There are so many better games out there, and I'm still in touch with and playing with the core members of my guild in other games. Unlike some of you, who built players groups around PFO, we did not.
Sword Coast Legends, Albion Online, LIfe is Feudal, 7 Days to Die, Rebel Galaxy, Fallout 4 are just some of the games I'm putting time into, with many other players.... Am I really going to waste my time logging into PFO?
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
Stop trying to revive the "Why PFO Matters" rant. It clearly doesn't matter, never has, never will.... It is just a game, one of hundreds, and one that most people have never played or heard of anyway.
If you enjoy it, play it.... I hope it lasts for you.
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
Pathfinder do matter, because maybe it can teach IP holder to not give away their IP to people who can't afford to turn it into a MMO and wouldn't make it in the spirit of the IP even if they did.
Now, I have nothing against the people who spent hard work on turning Pathfinder into what it became but they should have used another IP and really needed to secure more cash from the start. The idea that sandbox games are far easier and cheaper to make then themeparks just wasn't true, something I pointed out here when the initial letter from the devs came out before they started to work on the game.
Sorry, but I don't see Paizo allowing this game to have anything more to do with their IP now. Pathfinder have a really good name with P&P players and releasing a really low budget MMO is not good for the IPs reputation.
And no, really railed themeparks are cheaper, actually making tools for the players to create their won content is way harder then just scripting quests. Guildwars for example actually didn't have much better budget when it released in 2005, but the use of instances together with simple railroaded quests made it very cheap to make it. Then again, GW was coded by Strain (who was Blizzard lead programmer before that and made games like WC3) and if GW had a masterprogrammer they might have been able to produce something anyways.
All the quests in Guildwars were made by 3 guys, it is less work then one would think as long as you can get them coming without getting to repetetive. Making tools to create player made content on the other hand is a lot of work. Ask CCP or anyone who worked for UO.
And sandbox mechanics needs far more testing and polishing, simple quests have far less things that can go wrong. Killing 10 rats can just fail in so many ways (escort quests are somewhat tougher but nowhere near good sandbox mechanics).
Of course if you by sandbox just mean "let out all the players in an open world with a little crafting and let them constantly kill eachothers" then it is different, but all successful sandboxes had far more then that so far. Players need to be able to create things together and interact in more ways then just murdering eachothers or you will have the world largest flop. Even small games like DFO and MO have far more advanced mechanics then that.
Raph Koster points to WoW as being far more expensive to make than any previous MMO (which I believe includes SWG, UO, and even EVE) because they packed every inch of the world with quests which no previous MMO had attempted to do and is the hallmark of the modern themepark.
My understand is that Dancy pitched a traditional $50-100 million MMO to Piazo and they countered by challenging him to make one for $5 million, which he unfortunately accepted. Piazo clearly didn't do their due diligence or they would have had some idea of what a $5 million MMO looked like.
However the pitch was to TT players, more so than MMO players, and PVP is apparently an alien concept to TTRPG players. I'm not sure why that is, I have had several occasions in my TT experience where players attacked other players, but then our DM ran an evil campaign in D&D.
However, your point is well taken, and true. There are a few lessons that can be learned from PFO, and unfortunately for the game, they are all "what not to dos".
* Don't try to make an MMO on a shoe-string budget
* Don't try to make your first computer game, an MMO
* Don't try to make an MMO, using an obsolete game engine
* Don't try to make an MMO that will appeal to widely opposed player bases on the PVP vs. RP-PVE spectrum.
* Don't play word games with what stage of development the game is in
* Don't monetize the game with a box fee, subscription fee and micro transaction store while the game is still in early alpha.
* Don't deny the game has been released when players are being charged for playing time, and the CEO has declared the game to be feature complete.
* Don't blame the player base for the lack of a player base
* Don't whine that the game is being reviewed, when you have essentially released it
Played: E&B, SWG, Eve, WoW, COH, WAR, POTBS, AOC, LOTRO, AUTO.A, AO, FE, TR, WWII, MWO, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, NWO, WoP, RUST, LIF, SOA, MORTAL, DFUW, AA, TF, PFO, ALBO, and many many others....
Amaziah Hadithi is waiting for you guys, come on over!
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!