Coming Games You Are Looking Forward to Playing

Didn't know about this. Suddenly very interested. D:

Pathfinder Online is a fantasy sandbox MMO by Goblinworks based on the Pathfinder tabletop game. It uses a unique process called "Crowdforging" to determine what features are implemented in the game, in what order.
Goblinworks landed another million for Pathfinder Online from another successful Kickstarter on top of their investor funding.

Here is a brief list of some of the highlights of this game:

1. No Grinding- Pathfinder Online uses a skill training system like that of EVE Online. You train skills by choosing what skill you want to train and allowing the time required to elapse. You don't train any faster by farming mobs or spamming your abilities than you do exploring the world, role playing with your friends, or even being offline. You will need to complete certain achievements to complete a skill and open up new avenues of training, but time-based training means you always get full value from your purchased game time whether you're casual or 'hardcore', an adventurer or crafter, or one who enjoys a lot of roleplaying chat or one who spends much of their time in combat.

2. No Classes- Unlike other games that give you a narrow range of abilities as you train your class, in Pathfinder you gain levels in different Roles based off what you have trained.

3. Player Structures- Build your own homes, taverns, farms, and even cities! The Pathfinder Online world will be filled with places players can use to build and customize their own homes, businesses and communities.

4. Freedom of Allegiance- Unlike games that give you a few factions to pick from like Alliance vs. Horde, in Pathfinder Online you can join a vast array of organizations run by players, create your own organization, or even be a lone wolf! Fight for your friends, your ideals, power, profits, or personal freedom. The choice is yours. The alliances, the betrayals, crushing defeats and glorious victories are all real, meaningful, and player-driven.

5. More Than A Gankfest- Unlike other Open World PVP MMO's currently on the market, Pathfinder Online actively discourages meaningless PVP. A meaningful alignment system that actually offers mechanical advantages to lawful and good aligned organizations, and a functional bounty system that allows the player to choose which players and organizations can collect the bounties they set discourages random and meaningless killing. Beyond this, the admins are taking a hard stance against 'griefing', in which players specifically seek to ruin the experience of other players, often through using game mechanics in ways that weren't intended. Griefing in PFO can be a bannable offence.

6. Real Battles- Large scale combat won't be the total chaos most MMO players are used to. PFO will make use of a formation system that gives groups significant bonuses for fighting in formation and coordinating their ability usage.

7. Less Tedious Crafting- Crafting won't be done by sitting and watching your character create the same recipe over and over. First you build the structure you need for the kind of crafting you want to do, like a sawmill, bakery, or smithy. Then you fill out work orders that your NPC subordinates execute for you. Meanwhile, you can go do other things, or later in the game's development there may be activities you can do to help the process along. PFO will also launch with both traditional resource harvesting and camp-based harvesting.

8. More Meaningful PVE- NPCs aren't all just sitting there in groups which never move, never change in size, and respawn every few minutes. There will be random NPC infestations that escalate in severity if not dealt with. For instance, a goblin camp left undealt with may turn into a goblin tribe that begins attacking your harvesting camps. Leave dragons, vampires, or giants alone long enough and they may attack your town. This creates a need to work together to deal with these threats and generates demand for players who train abilities specialized for hunting NPC types like vampire hunters and dragon slayers.

9. All Players are Useful- This won't be like games where a new player has 49 health and a veteran has 49,000. The attacks from that new player won't automatically miss the veteran. A new player will be weaker, but still able to make a meaningful contribution to combat. As a sandbox where group sizes aren't limited, this means all players are useful, and don't have to segregate themselves by level.

10. Trade is Meaningful- In Pathfinder Online players must manually transport items to their intended destination. Most shops are player-run, and there will be goods more abundant in or even exclusive to certain regions. Merchants, traders, and even auctioneers are all viable professions.

"Every 2 weeks we publish a Development Blog about Pathfinder Online on the Goblinworks website. Those blogs contain a wealth of information about the design and the ideas we have for the game."
 
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Suddenly very excited about PFO. Sandbox MMOs are so appealing to me. EVE is great. Age of Wushu has a ton of potential, but it needs a lot of polish and refinement (which it's supposedly getting). Still, PFO sounds excellent.

Except for this:
Griefing in PFO can be a bannable offence.
I'm not one for much griefing, but I like the idea of in-game punishment a lot (bounties in Age of Wushu are great). Possibility of getting banned for it, even if I'm not gonna be personally at risk for it, makes me go "errrr... not a fan." But, I suppose, if it's a last-resort method for dealing with a significant problem, then I can accept it.

Thanks for all the details on the game. :D
 
Yeah, I would say, that was the only eyebrow-raiser I had too. I am sure Goblinworks will clarify the topic in the future. The statement itself leaves too much to the imagination. My interpretation of a bannable offense would be someone who relentlessly rez-kills at an enemy respawn area after receiving prior warnings. This game is going to be very volatile in the PvP sense, and I doubt Goblinworks wants to expend an exhaustive amount of customer service resources defining what this is on a case by case basis. Thnk of how many players would abuse customer service reps by embellishing situations. In their video they say you can play as a robber. If you are waylaying merchants, someone is bound to come fight you before long. I would consider this within their scope of reasonable PvP.

I am liking that more MMO's are coming back full circle to sandbox design. I think that would give the development teams some breathing room to create real, meaningful content, instead of trying to keep up with hardcore raiding guilds.

PS: They will have a limited land mass for housing intially, and as that fills up, they will release more space for more housing.
 
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Man, not sure if it counts as an upcoming game, but I am looking forward to the possibility of Jagex hosting a 2007 era runescape server.

The economy at that time was incredible. The depth of economy that this browser based mmo, mostly played by boys in the age range of 13-18 in computer labs and school libraries, had was truly incredible. The quests were/are some of the best written quests ever. The freedom to do what you want, mostly wherever you wanted to (regarding skills) was also awesome.

I am excited.
 
Pathfinder Online is a fantasy sandbox MMO by Goblinworks based on the Pathfinder tabletop game. It uses a unique process called "Crowdforging" to determine what features are implemented in the game, in what order.

/snip
Okay, definitely interested.

And it sounds like they're taking an interesting approach with the pay model:

There are two ways that most companies operate the business of their MMO; either subscription or microtransactions.

Pathfinder Online is going to allow players to use both systems. If you wish to pay a flat monthly subscription that’s automatically billed to your payment method, you’ll be able to do that. Or, if you want to pay as you play in smaller incremental amounts, we’ll enable you to do that as well using microtransactions.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...pathfinder-online-sandbox-mmo-on-kickstarter/
 
My MMO senses are saying "meh." There's some ideas in there that seem pretty solid and some that seem like they aren't well thought through.
 
Speaking of MMOs, Star Citizen. I don't know how I forgot to mention that before.

Also, A Machine for Pigs.
 
Most of the EvE community is very interested in Star Citizen. If its well done, it could be the dagger in the heart of Eve
 
You enjoy having nightmares?

I enjoy trying to think clearly under pressure. For me that's more exciting than any digits of guns or swords or loot-fests. Frictional makes horror games that focus more on tension built by frantic problem solving rather than grotesque violence. The penumbra games were the same way.

Frictional has a fan in me.
 
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