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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senrath: Nov 4, 2009; Look Professor, a destruct switch!

Owlbear Camus posted:

Did the game finally die or is it still on limited palliative care?

Fully dead for at least a few months now.

# ? Mar 8, 2022 18:03

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# ? Apr 20, 2024 02:38

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

senrath posted:

Fully dead for at least a few months now.

I remember prognosticating years ago on rpg.net that it wouldn't make it over the finish line and making whatever passed for a toxx bet on that site (I think it was just a public apology when I was wrong) only to watch it get shoved over the finish line by a very suspect last second 5-6 figure pledge.

Sadly it lacked the ambition to even be a funny grift like Star Citizen.

# ? Mar 8, 2022 21:58

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

I dunno, it was pretty funny the number of people who kept buying alt accounts to try to inject life support into the game.

Also the posts begging the community to not do things because they had no tools to fix things or enforce policies.

# ? Mar 9, 2022 02:05

Kwyndig: Sep 23, 2006; Heeeeeey

My favorite part of PFO was if somebody burned your house down, you could rebuild it with the title. Of course due to the way PVP worked in PFO you didn't want to carry your deed around, so, like an idiot, you stashed it in your house. So when you house burnt down there was no way to retrieve your deed. It went into an inventory array that even the GMs didn't have access to and because this was PFO actual houses cost real money. So if you store your deed in a safe place an arsonist can cut you out of like 100 bucks or however much a house or nonfunctional tavern cost.

My second favorite part of PFO was how Dancey was terrified of Goons coming in and ruining his perfect game. Of course, when the first handful of goons showed up they proceeded to determine that the game was not worth ruining and stopped playing.

# ? Mar 9, 2022 13:24

Angrymog: Jan 30, 2012; Really Madcats

I streamed it way back when and had a PvP encounter with what was probably the other goon who tried it

# ? Mar 9, 2022 13:31

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

Kwyndig posted:

My second favorite part of PFO was how Dancey was terrified of Goons coming in and ruining his perfect game. Of course, when the first handful of goons showed up they proceeded to determine that the game was not worth ruining and stopped playing.

They were so TERRIFIED of Goons messing up their little playhouse.

I never could nail Dancey down on how he was squaring the circle of "You can do ANYTHING it's a total sandbox" with "If you do MEAN things though we will punish you." Like, how are you going to say "You're bad trolls" when that's indistinguishable from "You're roleplaying as evil, murderous cultists the likes of which you can find bashing down every other door in D&D."

Another funny thing is how Pathfinder the tabletop hung it's hat on "This is a fork of 3.5 D&D, so you don't have to play the Bad New Edition of actual D&D" and then proceeded to put basically zero mechanics from the TTG in the game.

Its other draw was it's "adventure paths" and rich setting, so the MMO took place in some undeveloped hinterland with no real narrative structure.

# ? Mar 9, 2022 14:56

VoidTek: Jul 30, 2002; HAPPYELF WAS RIGHT

Angrymog posted:

I streamed it way back when and had a PvP encounter with what was probably the other goon who tried it

I think that was me. I dont remember anything about the encounter, but that's not surprising because I barely knew what was happening while it happened. I'm pretty sure we fought entirely by accident.

Anyway, here's the only screenshot I still have, completely unaltered.

RIP to this piece of poo poo

# ? Mar 9, 2022 15:27

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

That Old Tree posted:

FactsAreUseless posted:
https://goblinworks.com/forum/topic/3769/

quote:
Huran and I are both in, and solidified our decision to continue a third account as well.

quote:
I am in. Just signed up a fourth account 8)

quote:
I'm in with my 4 accounts, and I am interested in picking up a couple more DT accounts.

quote:
Actually given the risk things might change drastically (and turn into another boring cookie cutter MMO) if the game is sold off, I am actually MORE inclined to get a second account now just to get some extra playtime in and try some stuff out under the current setup just in case.

lololol

# ? Mar 9, 2022 16:37

Kwyndig: Sep 23, 2006; Heeeeeey

Oh remember how there was some mystery backer who was going to save the game and then when Dancey finally shared the financial with him he evaporated like smoke?

That was loving hilarious.

# ? Mar 9, 2022 18:08

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

Hard to believe the downfall after things were looking so rosy at GenCon four years ago.

That Old Tree posted:

Report from GenCon 2018 presentation, posted a month ago in the PFO reddit—most recent post, no comments posted:
This was streamed on the official Paizo twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/officialpaizo. Small room, about a dozen folks there, just Lisa Stevens talking (and a couple helpers running tech, monitoring chat, etc.).

Lisa spent about 10 minutes going over the last few updates of patch notes.

Future milestones:
Enchanting. Most of the design is done, working on the code. Hoping for October.

Factions. Join a faction, increases your standing, etc. Golarion factions, gods, etc.

New Player Experience. Lisa says the game is "sexy" and "fun to play" but hard to get into. There's a new VP of marketing who worked for TSR and WotC, and MMOs like DDO, WizardsOnline (?), something else (I didn't hear this clearly).

Azoth Store. A type of currency sold for real money, can be traded in-game, and used to pay for a subscription. Cash Shop will be expanded in the future.

New Art. A house will be added to the game. There are currently no staff artists. New art needs to already be made, but not implemented. They can acquire it from hiring people, Unity store, etc. They have a tech artist willing to convert some existing monster art, once the contract gets finalized (30-40 new monsters). They might be able to pay some artists to finish Gnomes.

New Pricing Options. Currently $15/mo. They want more options, but don't know what they are yet. Crowdforging. There needs to be a free trial of some sort, but balanced better than before (people abusing free accounts).

New Classes. There are currently four: Cleric/Rogue/Wizard/Fighter. Focus on easy ones first like Paladin, Sorcerer. Rangers and Monks take more effort and will come later.

Unity Upgrade. Currently on Unity from 4 years ago. Not being updated means limited options to buy things from the Unity store (Dev assets, not player-purchased stuff). They decided two weeks ago they need to upgrade Unity, big task - Add staff or contract out.

Pathfinder 2.0. Opportunity to tweak the rules in-game. Player disconnect when PFO doesn't really work as Pathfinder RPG. It will not be a faithful implementation of the RPG rules, just similar terminology.

Timeline. Social stuff will come after GenCon. Enchanting in October. The rest is an open schedule. Here's a picture of Thornkeep.

Questions (Heavily, heavily paraphrased):
Q: Do you play?
Lisa: Yes I played this morning.

Q: Something about Settlements
Lisa: Haven't seen Duffy... Settlements: Most active are Bandits. Talk of alliances. People are focused on leveling up buildings. Keeping busy.

Lisa: We've been doing a lot of stuff with a Discord channel for voice chat. Bandits and Commonwealth are in there helping new players.

Q: Something about changes to the way it was
Lisa: Changes to feats that didn't match up well. Line of Sight changed things, and AI is more deadly.

Q: Something about Kingmaker?
Lisa: Coming out in the end of September. Sept 25th. Testing is done, gold master. Ready for Steam.

Q: More Kingmaker
Lisa: Owlcat-games, they made a lot of MMOs. Getting back to CRPGs.

Q: Something about finishing PFO?
Lisa: If we had more people, more money, and people who knew what they were doing, they could finish it like that snaps fingers. It's my pet project, I play every day, I love the game.

Q: What advice for a player from launch that's interested in coming back?
Lisa: Hook up with an active Settlement in your timezone. Read the release blogs to see what's put in and changed. Forums to get rapid answers to specific questions.

Q: Digital version of Starfinder
Lisa: Interest from various companies reaching out to use about Starfinder, but nothing concrete. Interest from any type of game you can imagine. I think you'll see an explosion of games over the next 5-7 years. Takes a lot of time and effort to nail down contracts.

Q: At release, will players starting out be at disadvantage compared to original backers?
Lisa: People playing will be higher skilled and know the game. There are tiers: Tier 1 is beginning tier and you stay there for maybe a month. Tier 2 is where a lot of players will end up. Tier 3 is better than that, but a group of T2s can kill a T3 player if they're competent. Can get to Tier 3 in less than a year, after that's it's how well you play the game. Not a huge advantage, and the world has a lot of space. Grouping helps a lot.

Q: Something about monetization?
Lisa: That decision was made before I got involved. Originally licensed to Goblinworks. The people who started the company came out of Eve online ("Eve with swords"). They never got the funding they needed. Free-to-play... Nothing is really free. We're looking at free trial stuff, but don't think we'll ever go F2P (Never say never). We need more people playing, so we need to reduce the barrier to entry for people coming from F2P games.

Q: Marketing, kingmaker?
Lisa: I have levers to move people in game. If you're going to throw new players in game, need to fix the pricing models, free trial option. How quickly we can do that will determine. Kingmaker people might help advertise PFO if I ask. Humble Bundle.

If anyone else watched or has anything to add (or correction) please feel free.

"We need to look at a pricing model to attract more players, we don't have a lot to offer but we do want microtransactions without being honest enough to go free-to-play, also we have no staff to actually do anything."

# ? Mar 9, 2022 18:46

dwarf74: Sep 2, 2012; Buglord

I simply don't know how this downfall was possible with the Steve Jobs of MMO Marketing on board

# ? Mar 9, 2022 19:42

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

The number of times that this thread got updated about PFO months after the fact because one of us went "hey does this loving thing still exist?" says it all, I think.

# ? Mar 9, 2022 21:30

John Dyne: Jul 3, 2005; Well, fuck. Really?

rip PFO gnomes, no one was ever hired to fuckin' finish them

e: in memoriam, i share their 'PLEASE RESUB AND GIVE US MONEY' emails they sent me back in 2015

quote:

Dear buttlord,

First off, thank you so much for trying out Pathfinder Online! We are building something special here and I am glad you took the time out of your busy life to see what we are up to!

In 5 days your Pathfinder Online 15-day trial game account will be deactivated unless you purchase your first month of game time. Please visit your Purchase Enrollment page to set up automatic billing. You can stop billing at any time by visiting your Subscription page and clicking Suspend.

Building a game like Pathfinder Online takes many individuals like yourself, both in creating the online world and making it a vibrant place to virtually live; and in helping us to crowdforge the game, helping to shape it into one that you will be excited playing for a long time to come. This is a rare opportunity to be able to affect the game systems before they become too ingrained.

But we can't build this game together without your support! Please join us online.

In the coming months, we will be putting in the systems that will allow players to direct and decide what their settlements look like and how they behave in the game. Should be exciting times!

Thanks for trying out Pathfinder Online and I hope to see you online soon!

Lisa Stevens
CEO Paizo Inc.
COO Goblinworks Inc.

quote:

Dear buttlord,

Like a good sneak attack, the end of your subscription to Pathfinder Online has snuck up on you and you have no time left on your account! I assume that this is just because you didn't have high enough Perception to see it coming. But all is not lost!

Please visit your Subscription page to set up automatic billing. Or you can purchase additional months of Game Time at the store. When your account is deactivated your characters will cease training XP and you will not be able to log into the game.

If you stick around and help us to build this game, both through your financial support, but also through your in-game activities, I promise you that the Goblinworks team will continue to work hard to deliver the game that we pitched to you in the original Kickstarter. I also promise that we will continue to crowdforge with the community to shape the game into something great. Should be exciting times!

Again, thanks for your past support of Pathfinder Online and I hope to see you online soon!
Lisa Stevens
CEO Paizo Inc.
COO Goblinworks Inc.

John Dyne fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Mar 11, 2022

# ? Mar 11, 2022 17:25