The newest Pathfinder Online video is out, and um… yikes.
I’ve said here before that I like a lot of the ideas Pathfinder has behind it. On paper, a lot of things that I believe make a sandbox work they have, and the game is certainly on my radar in terms of upcoming MMOs.
That video though? The reason I’m not a Pathfinder backer to begin with is their first video during the Kickstater campaign was terrible, and at the time the effort looked like some good ideas on paper without a team to execute them properly (Which, you know, is how one could describe 90% of Kickstarter efforts). The newest video, while better in many areas, still at its core looks terrible in terms of combat.
Now I don’t need Darkfall-level combat in an MMO to enjoy it. I think EVE is the best thing out by a mile, and while it’s combat is a lot deeper than F1 and walk away (unless you’re into that and only engage is such things), it’s certainly not what most would call great. But there is a lot of space between great combat and what this latest video is showing, and I’m left wondering if I could really get into a game should the combat remain this… well terrible.
I know the game is still in the early phases, and like I mentioned, this video is a lot better in many areas than earlier videos, but yea, the combat needs to improve between now and release. I don’t need perfection, but what was shown here is asking just a little too much from me.
(Totally unrelated side-note: My latest Banished town went into an amusing death-spiral. First I had an event occur that lowered food supplies, and while I was able to increase production to make up for it, that caused secondary production to suffer. That caught up to me when I ran low on coats and tools. Without coats and tools, people worked slower and did far less during the winter. This in turn further pushed food production down, resulting in starvation. As starvation killed people off, production dropped far faster than the population, as workers would die and would sometimes be replaced by a newborn. Babies eat food, but don’t contribute until they grow up, so things just accelerated down and down. A harsh lesson learned. Game is fantastic.)
Hardcore Casual 
Something has always felt off to me about the Pathfinder MMO. Maybe it stems from the fact they did a kickstarter for a tech demo, or that they talk a lot about stuff but show little. I don’t know.
I don’t know if I would say ‘yikes’ .. but yeah, the animations, particularly those related to combat, are terrible and sloooow.
I can’t speak to the combat mechanics themselves — it didn’t look like tab-targetting to me, more like a cone of attack. If so, that’s definitely +1 in it’s favor.
But yeah, they have to fix those animations. Hire a mo-cap team or something but those were terrible. The graphics on the models looked pretty good – fix the animations and I think we’d be having a different discussion.
Oh — and for the love of god, get rid of the scrolling combat text. I forgot how much I hated “Target Too Far Away”.
I don’t usually care about graphics, but since you bring it up I will comment. This is not good. It looks like something from the early 2000s.
You are right. ‘Pretty good’ is too generous. It would have been more accurate to say ‘acceptable’. I think early 2000s goes to far though. The models at least looked are on par with WAR, which was 2008, so I agree that they aren’t exactly ‘fresh’ but they aren’t early 2000s.
My main point is that if the animations were fluid, I think we would be having a slightly different conversation. Right now, they are in that uncanny valley where they just look wrong.
The models and animation remind me of DAoC for some reason. Is it just me?
The capes look very DAoC-like, yes.