Right, but the funding worked in conjunction with money Paizo gave them, I believe. Based on their original pitch and budget talks that probably wasn't shit either though. All these delusional MMO fuckers promising the world when 2D platformers run through Kickstarter money like it's going out of style.
Pathfinder Online
- Thread starter Treesong
- Start date
Mughal
Bronze Knight of the Realm
- 279
- 39
25-30 people working for 4 years plus overheads.
EDIT: Paizo or any RPG company do not have any significant capital to deploy or ability to raise. Too niche.
PS. FYI another reason why it's hard to finance MMOsTobold's Blog: Decreasing relevancy
This game is hilariously bad from what I saw in the YouTube review. Why don't smaller development companies without a lot of resources focus on a isometric game to begin with? Get a product out there that works and once you have proved yourself shoot for the moon.
Big Flex
Fitness Fascist
- 4,314
- 3,166
Mughal
Bronze Knight of the Realm
- 279
- 39
In here you have found the problem of why we don't have games that manage to compete with Blizzard.
That's how it should work, but mostly consumers buy because of flashy graphics rather than gameplay (but stay and pay because of gameplay). This create a vicious cycle that makes it hard to launch without a full 3d game etc etc. But yeah today if I were to launch a new MMO would do something in 2d or isometric first.
Things like a walking/running animation that doesn't look like shit, or armor/weapon clipping are very hard problems that can be solved when you have everything else nailed down. So even if you have 50% of your game finished what the user see all the time during a game session is their character looking like cheap shit and feet out of synch with the terrain.
Srathor
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 1,846
- 2,965
Mughal so many other games have solved the hard problems. I certainly do not expect graphics to make the game, but I do expect to be able to tell what I am fighting. I do expect the game to at try and be fun. Pathfinder for the 3 hours I gave it was not fun. It was not special, it was not even interesting. Why did I give it three hours then? Because the idea of player created content is very very good. But with how the start of the game is I have zero faith they will do any justice to the ideas they have posted.
If they can't have decent graphics they should not be showing the damn thing to everyone. They should not be charging for the privilege either. Hoping for a miracle patch for a shitty game has always worked in the past too, obviously.
If they can't have decent graphics they should not be showing the damn thing to everyone. They should not be charging for the privilege either. Hoping for a miracle patch for a shitty game has always worked in the past too, obviously.
arallu
Golden Knight of the Realm
- 536
- 47
Well Paizo finally stopped the shit show. Goblinworks closed, Ryan Dancey out.
Pathfinder Online: Paizo Restructuring the Team, Goblinworks Office Closes
Pathfinder Online: Paizo Restructuring the Team, Goblinworks Office Closes
Awanka
Molten Core Raider
- 327
- 422
Repeat after me, making MMOs is hard. Repeat after me, the last thing the world needs is another bog-standard generic fantasy MMO.
This particular project looks like it was conceptually flawed, and throwing 10x as much money at it wouldn't have made any difference. It was doomed from the word "go."
Pathfinder has the benefit of already having a rich gameworld and robust set of rules governing combat and game mechanics. I would have leveraged those as much as I could. I would have made a party-based MMO that's a mix of real-time and turn-based kind of like Fallout's VAT system. Like everyone moves and acts in real time until combat or a dicey dungeon encounter of some sort occurs, and then the game would switch to a turn-based system. It wouldn't be exactly like Pathfinder 3.5 dnd where turns are all sequential. I would have groups of characters/monsters with similar initiative rolls resolve their turns at the same time in waves, so it wouldn't get too boring with everyone waiting. I would also throw in some stuff like interrupts and fast action/destiny point type stuff to keep things interesting. Essentially I would have tried to make an MMO version of the pen and paper game.
Would it have worked? Probably not, but it would have been a damn sight more playable than this.
This particular project looks like it was conceptually flawed, and throwing 10x as much money at it wouldn't have made any difference. It was doomed from the word "go."
Pathfinder has the benefit of already having a rich gameworld and robust set of rules governing combat and game mechanics. I would have leveraged those as much as I could. I would have made a party-based MMO that's a mix of real-time and turn-based kind of like Fallout's VAT system. Like everyone moves and acts in real time until combat or a dicey dungeon encounter of some sort occurs, and then the game would switch to a turn-based system. It wouldn't be exactly like Pathfinder 3.5 dnd where turns are all sequential. I would have groups of characters/monsters with similar initiative rolls resolve their turns at the same time in waves, so it wouldn't get too boring with everyone waiting. I would also throw in some stuff like interrupts and fast action/destiny point type stuff to keep things interesting. Essentially I would have tried to make an MMO version of the pen and paper game.
Would it have worked? Probably not, but it would have been a damn sight more playable than this.
This probably spells doom and gloom for future endeavours to translate Pathfinder to a PC RPG. Too bad, because I love the setting and the ruleset. I never understood why they chose to shoot for an MMO and not something like Neverwinter Nights. Oh well, Sword Coast legends is out later this month.
Harkon
Vyemm Raider
- 1,549
- 4,090
Well thanks to Pathfinder I at least got to listen to Natalie 2.0. I checked out some of her other reviews and they are pretty spot on as well.
edit:
If they sunk this much money into a Pillars of Eternity type RPG they'd probably be doing Kickstarter round 2 for the sequel right about now ...
Wow, its been 3 years already. Not surprised this was a failure. Pathfinder is an established IP, but its mostly known among D&D grognards. The last thing they want is a territorial based PVP MMOG whose mechanics have very little resemblance to Pathfinder tabletop.
If they sunk this much money into a Pillars of Eternity type RPG they'd probably be doing Kickstarter round 2 for the sequel right about now ...
Mughal
Bronze Knight of the Realm
- 279
- 39
This was the only possible outcome given the money raised. Once they figured out that the self-styled "Steve Jobs of MMOs" was not able to raise jack shit from investors or pre-sales they should have switched to a single player or a simpler game instead of wasting $$$ on pointless animations and textures.
Completely agree with Awanka. 10x the money would not have made a difference.