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Pathfinder Online: Creating a "Minimum Viable Product"
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Pathfinder Online's Ryan Dancey has penned a new developer blog that discusses his team's philosophy with regard to making a compelling sandbox MMO that is also one in which the community has a viable ongoing dialog with the development team. Calling the process a "minimum viable product", Dancey outlines several key areas in which the team engages the community in ways that not only generate feedback, but also help lead the team to ever widening circles of development.
To make our MVP, we had to figure out what the smallest number of features were needed to implement a compelling game loop with meaningful human interactions. We decided that our loop would have two interconnected segments.
Segment one would be finding monsters in the world, killing them, and taking their stuff.
Segment two would be finding resources, harvesting those resources, and turning the resources into crafted goods.
The interconnection would be that the stuff one character crafted would make another character better at killing monsters.We also accepted that there would be a complication of this interconnection:
Killing another character and taking its stuff would be a shortcut.We have a grand plan for where our game will eventually take us that involves vast territorial battles for control of the map, fought by huge organizations of players collectively working together for common purpose. We imagine a time when players can build characters that are experts in a wide range of careers from soldier to diplomat to teamster to spy and hundreds more. But for the purposes of our MVP, we think we can be viable with the game loop described above. Everything else can (and will) come later.
Read more at the link above.
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Comments
I lost some hype for this game when I watched the last combat video...once it was evident that they are using a Tab-target system and claiming to be straying from the normal MMO out there...I called BS!
I still have hope for this game but as long as they keep a tab target system in a full loot pvp game i will never step foot in the world.
The core game loop looks promising and the integration of pvp is definitely the game space that has the most potential even if the risk of overkill is also warranted. As it's MVP is basic in features, I think combat needs to be engaging and likewise non-combat roles need to be rewarding equally.
Only a few months to alpha, so hopefully more improvements on all aspects of the game are scheduled over the next few months towards April.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Tab target is better in a game based on a pen and paper game. I'm sick of every new game requiring twitch skills. I'm very glad they did not use a kiting and rolling combat system like so many newer games do.
Good to see at least one game appealing more to the old school RPG than the console game crowd.
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire:
Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
It's not full loot though you can loot corpes: Some Good Reason for Your Little Black Backpack
There's also Item Decay and Encumbrance as part of the system. The rationale:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
I second this. It is interesting that all of the action type games out there have pretty much failed, yet people want this to be twitchy also. I'm so glad it is going the more traditional way. For the people judging the combat based on the last video; the game isn't even in ALPHA yet, get it? You should be applauding the openness as it is people like you that keep games from showing in game footage until they're practically released.