alt="Pathfinder Online Interview" />

We recently had the opportunity to discuss many of the design concepts

behind Goblinworks'

target="_blank">Pathfinder Online

with CEO Ryan Dancey.Learn more about what makes this fantasy sandbox MMO tick, including howcharacter advancement works, how open world PvP will be handled to adddepth to the game, and lots more in this exclusive Q&A.

Most online roleplaying games tend to use heavily modified rule

sets based on tabletop gaming. How will Pathfinder Online

leverage the core strengths of the Pathfinder RPG?

With Pathfinder we get a huge library of "objects" that we

can immediately use, many of which have been extensively playtested in

the tabletop game. There are thousands of monsters, magic items, spells,

and character abilities in that library, and we'll use them as the

baseline for our design.

While the game mechanics will be different between the tabletop game

and the online game, the tabletop game is a very good testbed for the

online game. There will of course need to be lots of balancing and

tweaking to bring something from the tabletop game into the online game

but we don't have to start from a blank sheet of paper.

Will there be any major concessions made to help translate the

Pathfinder RPG into a massive, online gaming environment, or is the

goal to remain as true as possible to the original IP?

The rules of the online game will be different than the tabletop game.

The tabletop game is designed to focus on small parties of heroic

adventurers. The online game is a bigger game in scope - it's a superset

of the tabletop experience.

The tabletop game is built around each player having an essentially

unlimited amount of real time to make decisions but the online game

will operate in real time so players will not have that luxury. The

tabletop game assumes there's rarely more than 10 people at a table and

often less, whereas the online game will enable hundreds and eventually

thousands of people to be interacting directly - and that has huge

implications. These things make the tabletop rules unsuitable for online

play.

The tabletop game is built around a combat engine. The online game is

built around an economic engine - combat is a part of that but a subset

of the whole. In the tabletop game you have lots of rules for combat and

things that happen during combat like spellcasting. In the online game

combat is a much smaller portion of the rules - we need rules for

crafting, and exploration, and social interaction, and logistics and

operating markets, etc. Since the tabletop doesn't have to worry too

much about those kinds of systems we have to create much of those rules

from scratch.

In the end, I expect that folks who come over from the tabletop will

find so much that is similar that they'll have an intuitive grasp on how

to play a fighter type character or a wizard type character and they'll

intuitively understand how the rules for those kinds of characters work,

because of the familiarity they have with the tabletop experience.

The concept of Crowdforging intrigues us. Could you expand on

how this process will help players determine what features are

implemented in the game?

Every software project has three variables: Time, money and resources.

You start with a big list of things you would like to build, and then

you start prioritizing that list and the factors that dictate the

priorities are those three variables.

Pathfinder Online is going to enable the players to have an

active voice in how those variables are manipulated. They'll know what

the priority list is for the development team, and they'll be able to

give input on how that list is built and how it is restructured from

time to time.

They'll also be involved in helping set game design policies that will

have deep and significant effects on the overall game. They'll be

helping decide things like how powerful a character should be at various

parts of its lifecycle, how much the economy should be affected by NPCs

and how long it should take to achieve various in-game objectives across

a wide variety of character types.

To do this we'll have a variety of tools. Sometimes we'll run polls or

votes. Sometimes we'll have a system where folks can submit ideas that

are peer reviewed and then reviewed by the designers. We'll likely have

a Player Council similar to what

target="_blank">EVE Online

has with the Council ofStellar Management - a formal relationship with elected leaders of thecommunity who will represent the interests of that community directly.

To make this work we need a level of transparency that is rare in the

gaming industry. We can't have a lot of "secrets" or "surprises". And

people will need to educate themselves on what can be done with the

resources available; some of the best ideas are unfortunately

impractical despite their merits.

Our sister company Paizo Publishing has operated in this manner for

quite some time, subjecting a lot of their core rule design process to

public scrutiny. And my experiences at CCP put me in direct contact with

the Council of Stellar Management so I was able to see up close how that

kind of body can have a dramatic and positive impact.

It will be a wild, exciting, interesting and entertaining ride for

everyone involved.

alt="Pathfinder Online Tech Demo" />

Pathfinder wont have traditional MMO classes. Could you

discuss how players will be able to shape and advance their

characters skill set? Will there be any major limitations on how you

choose to pursue different roles?

This is a critical part of our design concept. We want to encapsulate

the idea of classes from the tabletop game but we also don't want to

limit players to the kind of rigidity that comes from class-based

systems. Sandboxes work best when players are able to make a very

diverse range of characters and they often come up with ways to advance

a character that are not anticipated by the developers but make perfect

sense within the logic of the game world.

We think we have a pretty innovative solution. In the tabletop world,

characters gain power by earning experience points. When a level

threshold is reached, the character is given a number of new benefits as

a result of "leveling up".

In Pathfinder Online, we stood that paradigm on its head.

Instead, as your character gains benefits, it moves closer to being

recognized as having "earned a level". The process of earning those

levels involves a character doing things that are meaningful to that

"role". So a character that is becoming more skilled with weapons and

becoming stronger and tougher will be recognized by earning a "level" of

Fighter, rather than vice-versa.

This makes it possible for us to anticipate a wide range of character

development options that we would be very challenged to make if we had

to pre-plot all the benefits of a traditional level-based system. In Pathfinder

Online, you might find that you've specialized as a character who

is really effective fighting other humanoids, whereas I might have

specialized as a character good against monstrous creatures and

aberrations. We might both have earned recognition with "levels" of

Fighter, but we'll be very different characters with very different

histories.

Folks who want to pursue the traditional roles in traditional ways will

have no problem doing that and they'll end up with characters that are

very similar to those you might find in a tabletop Pathfinder

game. But the system is broad enough that it enables players to explore

a fractal space of options and there will be a near-infinite combination

of character development options so that those "traditional" characters

will be joined by hundreds (or thousands) of other character types as

the players mix-and-match the system to suit their own needs.

Pathfinder Online will feature open world PvP; something that

can often be a deterrent for more casual gamers. Could you shed some

insight on how the PvP system will work, or how it will appeal to

gamers outside of the hardcore crowd?

"We've raised a generation of MMO players

who have a visceral negative reaction to the idea of PvP."

I think that PvP is the original sin of the MMO genre. It is the most

obvious place where the games have failed to match expectation and

potential with implementation. As a result we've raised a generation of

MMO players who have a visceral negative reaction to the idea of PvP. If

we were a supermarket, it would be like not having a dairy section

because some people got sick from drinking the milk. Rather than

abandoning dairy, you'd fix the supply chain to protect people's health,

and reward them with cheese, eggs, milk, etc. to make their lives more

interesting. The MMO industry mostly just shut down the dairy section

and walked away.

But I look at the successes and failures over the last 10 years and I

see PvP being a component of the successes, not the failures. I see EVE

Online growing from 20,000 to 350,000 subscribers in that

timeframe. I see World of Tanks exploding in popularity. I

see League of Legends become a titan in the online gaming

space. Call of Duty and Battlefield are

billion-dollar franchises. Halo effectively defined XBox. I

can't name an multiplayer online gaming success in those 10 years that

didn't have a strong PvP component. (OK, I can maybe put Minecraft in

that category - props to Mojang!)

Human conflict is fascinating. It drives the narrative of much of our

lives and much of our storytelling. When two people disagree about

something or compete for something, it introduces meaning to the

experience. The fundamental design goal of Pathfinder Online

is "maximize meaningful human interaction", and PvP is one facet of how

we intend to do that.

We look at the kind of PvP that exists in MMOs and in previous MMOs,

and we listen to what people say about those systems. We see some

patterns and hear some standard complaints. PvP brings out the very

worst in some folks - it's a license to act badly. PvP often has a

terribly unbalanced risk vs reward; you can get more out of attacking

other players than they get from defending against you or running away.

We think these are addressable issues. People behaving badly is

fixable. People exploiting a game system is fixable. It will take time,

a lot of iteration, and a lot of careful development and community

input, but I am convinced we can get PvP into the game in a way that

adds value rather than removes it.

PvP should be considered no more "hard core" than any other aspect of a

successful MMO that requires attention and effort to master.

In a recent blog post you noted that the end of the theme park

era for MMOs is nearly over. How will PFO help usher in the next era,

and what do you feel will be the major gameplay hooks that make it

possible?

The problem with Theme Park MMOs is that they cost too much to make,

take too long to develop, and don't sustain large communities over the

long term. Everyone looked at the exception -

target="_blank">World of Warcraft

- and assumed it wasthe average. But we look at the history of the MMO market sinceWarcraft released and we see the same pattern repeat itself over andover: A big spike of interest on release, followed in six to ninemonths by a collapse of player interest, followed by serverconsolidations and staff downsizing, followed by a game that losesdevelopment momentum and stagnates. Every major MMO release sinceWarcraft has followed this pattern.

Along the way budgets have gone crazy. I would guess the baseline

budget for the games you've seen released in the past 2-3 years is $100

million. Star

Wars: The Old Republic cost more than $300 million. Yet

none of these games - not one - has managed to attract a paying player

community of more than a million people and hold it for more than 6

months. The economics of these games don't work. And that's why after

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/games/elder-scrolls-online" target="_blank">The

Elder Scrolls Online

, there are no announced, high profile,big budget AAA MMOs from any credible studio.

But MMOs as a business are doing really well. Millions of people are

playing them. In Asia, they're rapidly becoming as dominant an

entertainment format as TV or motion pictures. In the West, whole

generations of people are growing up with a virtual identity - nurtured

in venues like Club Penguin and Habbo. MMOs as a

concept are not going away and the demand for quality virtual worlds is

growing, not declining.

"Theme Parks require that development

teams keep churning out more content to keep players engaged.

Sandbox games can be built around the idea that the players ARE the

content."

The answer seems to be Sandbox. Theme Parks require that the game be

nearly feature complete before the first dollar of revenue can be

earned. Sandbox games can ship with limited features and add more

through iteration while still maintaining a high level of customer

satisfaction. Theme Parks require that development teams keep churning

out more content to keep players engaged. Sandbox games can be built

around the idea that the players ARE the content; give them tools to

interact with one another and they will happily do so. Theme Parks have

a business model that rewards short-term thinking, boom & bust

cycles, hiring binges and deep layoffs. Sandbox games have a business

model that rewards long-term thinking. You need to scale a Sandbox

carefully so that the population doesn't overwhelm the game, and the

staff needs to have a good coherence and continuity so that the game can

leverage its institutional knowledge.

To me the core defining virtue is persistence. Players being able to

make a mark on a game world shared by thousands of other humans is a big

deal. Sandbox is all about persistence. You build it, I see it, use it,

and maybe try to tear it down. That's a dynamic as old as human

civilization. Pathfinder Online is packed full of persistence.

Most of the objects in the game, from consumables to weapons and armor

to buildings will be created by player characters. Everywhere you go,

everything you do, everything you see, will have some aspect of

persistence.

I hope Pathfinder Online is a trendsetter. We

think we can make a compelling game with a smaller budget and a shorter

timeline than the industry has seen with Theme Park MMOs. We think we

can get to positive cashflow quickly, and that makes the business

self-sustaining. We think there's a nice market segment looking for a

fantasy Sandbox MMO and that we have a first-mover advantage. It will be

nice to look back in 10 years and see how accurate these predictions

are, but I have a pretty high confidence we're on the right track.

We'd like to thank Ryan Dancey and the Pathfinder Online team for

taking the time to talk to us about the game. There are a lot of great

design concepts behind PFO, and we'll certainly be paying close

attention to the game throughout development.

If you want to get involved more directly, be sure to visit the current



target="_blank">Pathfinder Online Kickstarter project

by Monday,January 14 at 9:00pm EST where you can become a backer and snag a prettyawesome variety of perks in the process.