Sarim said:
Gearing up in games is pretty much identical after some point: You have a set of gear, and when you see an item, you check wether it is an upgrade for you, and eventually replace the old item.
But lets look at the start of the game (at least as it was/is in EQ). You start basically "naked", with only a shirt and sword (or whatever weapon is used by your class). Now how should the newbie go about getting a first set of gear?
- - Guild master quests: I think these were available for all classes. They didn't award a full set of armor, only a shirt and maybe another item. These were however barely any better than your starter shirt, so basically worthless.
- - Newbie armor quests: These weren't available originally, but got added later. They are actually "crafting" quests, in that you have to assemble stuff and combine it in some container. They award a basic set of armor and a weapon (no jewelry though), iirc with a few stat enhancers, but the weapon you get is magical (which is quite useful if you remember that some mobs even in early game require magical weapons to be hit).
- - Crafted: Depending on how much the game nudged you towards it, you could craft yourself a basic armor set. I remember how my barb warrior learned tailoring to make some very simple leather armor. But I only knew about that because there was a tailoring merchant right at the zone in from Halas, who sold the tailoring kit and basic instructions.
- - Common drops by NPCs: My memory is foggy, but I think there were very few armor drops in most starter zones. You got a fair amount of weapons tho (cracked staffs, rusty swords etc), which gave you the money to go to...
- - Merchants: There were merchants which sold basic cloth, leather and plate armor (and weapons). I think leather came in two qualities, one cheap and equivalent to the basic crafted stuff, the other a bit better and more expensive. So you could buy the basic stuff first and then save for the upgrades. Plate armor had only one quality on the vendor, but it was so expensive that I wondered how/why anyone would ever buy that.
I think that's it for what you could do as a newbie in EQ. Now how do you like each of these methods?
The guild master quests were pretty bad IMO. The shirt you got was worse than the basic merchant bought stuff, and in most cases didn't even show on your character. At least that quest led you to your class trainer..
About the newbie armor quests: I think they are not bad, since they lead you around quite a bit, and introduce you to crafting as well. On the other hand, I think newbie armor must be strictly non magic (except for the weapon maybe).
While I remember fondly of crafting that armor for my barb warrior, I think crafting is not something that should be required in this way for a newbie.
So, my preference would be the last way: Fight mobs to get money, then buy your first basic set of armor. It was great to get a cracked staff in EQ (almost 1 plat! ;). So this method is one I'd like to see in Pantheon too.
Great points,
In early EQ, even mob-dropable armor was rare. And correct, certain city's always had Merchant Crafted basic armor (over priced). That if you die... and need. Oh well.
I don't think "newbie" quests should be focused on armor, or weapons. You should never be given weapons or armor, always taken. Or, it may be worth One's while, to stand around an hour or so wherever people are hocking warez (tunnel) and try and get what you can.
Money will always be hard to come by in Brad's games. Mobs like Gornit, didn't live but seconds... expect a good mix of what you've described, with some hopefuls from what I've mentioned.
Pantheon, early on.. 6 months after release.. only the very wealthy, will be able to afford a full set of GM hand-crafted armor. Rare in itself.
Venjenz said:
@Niien - I mostly agree with you, but as far as NO DROP/Bind on Pickup, I couldn't disagree more. I am OK with a system similar to WoW for accounts, where you can trade stuff between characters to some limited degree (one of the few great things WoW did was the heirloom system for an account), and EQ1 already has a shared bank for moving items between characters on the same account. Beyond that...nothing above green, maybe the occasional blue item should ever be tradeable between accounts.
Here's the reason - it encourages playing the Bazaar/Auction House instead of the game, which flies directly in the face of the kind of immersion Pantheon is allegedly going for.
The only way anyone should ever see a piece of gear within 80% of the top tier is to see it on the corpse of the bad guy who dropped it in the super dangerous zone that few ever set foot in. I once again refer to Velious (the perfect raid, gear and faction grind xpac in the history of MMOs), and consider an item like Sal`Varae's Robe of Darkness off of Vulak'Aerr. At the time, that might have been the greatest caster robe in the game. Let us look at what looting that robe would have taken back in the day:
- kill Vulak'Aerr, which requires...
- killing every named dragon in NToV (itself a task of maybe 6 hours for a good guild that has experience), which requires...
- getting past Aaryanar, which requires...
- a few months of guild farming the two wings of lesser ToV to get the gear necessary to beat Aary, which requires...
- a few months of guild farming either giant of dragon faction to get enough well geared people to beat Sontalak and even enter ToV, which requires...
- a few months farming all the necessary tank, healer and DPS drops, like 10th rings, 8th shawls, and other items just to be able to beat the bosses that enable real Velious farming, which requires...
- the 3-6 months it took to equip a bunch of your guild in epics to be able to deal with Velious mob HP and DPS.
(off the cuff estimates, btw, please don't anyone argue how fast your guild did it as I am simple illustrating proper "grindy" for gear acquisition)
That's the kind of dedication it took to see that robe. Make that robe tradeable, and now the person wearing it might indeed be a super MMO badass, or they could be someone who paid $50 on PlayerAuctions for the plat to buy it. Making anything past random green/blue gear sellable is just wrong. If someone is wearing an ooh ahh piece of gear and you want it, then you should have to buckle your chin strap and put your grind on...for months, then when you are in the town square and strutting your stuff, everyone knows you walk the walk. You cheapen and trivialize gear when it becomes sellable.
If Pantheon is to be the game this particular niche of MMO gamers is hoping for, expect NO DROP, NO TRADE, Bind on Pickup, whatever, to be the rule, not the exception. It may sound inconvenient, but in that inconvenience is where you'll find the epic, the cool, and the reason to keep logging in.
/rant off. LOL
Sorry, but serious gear/weapons being sellable is an obviously sore point with me, and it is imho the biggest reason why I will never play a loot pinata game like WoW again and will always seek out a game like EQ1.
i would actually like the gear to be tradeable / sellable, but i would also like to see some kind of tribute system to make someone think about if they actually want to sell the item or if they benefit more by giving it to a NPC as a tribute. this could benefit in 2 ways:
1 tribute to god - give the item as an offering to a god in return for their favor. (some kind of buff or status clensing)
2 Tribute to a city - if we gift an item to the city's quartermaster you gain fame or faction in that place allowing access to previously hidden quests that have some of the better gear as rewards.
there are ways to mitigate having truckloads of items just floating around the world if we just think a bit. it is soo immersion breaking when EVERY bit of decent gear is BOP or BOE when was the last time you were unable to send a shirt to the salvation army?
now as far as the super rare raid drops and such i can see the magic of those making them unable to accept an owner who didnt earn the right to wear it, making it only suitable for tribute. but i think anything dropped in a single group situation should be tradeable. if my guild gets a new caster or healer that hasnt grinded his gear verry well yet, i should be able to goto the guild bank and pull out top tier single group gear so he doesnt drag the group down from lack of gear while we grind out those notrade super quest rewards, and raid gears.
Xonth said:
Rallyd said:
On top of agreeing with most of this conversation, I would also like to see a return to gear not having colors or grades. Don't tell me how good something is supposed to be just by looking at the icon, deciding what gear was good for you and sometimes maybe even wearing things that may not have been better than something else you had was part of the right of passage of Everquest.
***Hundred thumbs up!***
I would think they wont but I don't think I have read anyone officially say they wont.
I also agree with the general tone of this thread. Searching out gear was what made EQ a powerhouse in the first couple expansions.
I would Like to add in I personally do not have a problem not giving starting spells also beyond the very basic. I liked that my Mage in EQ only started with a single DD. I had to WORK for my first pet spell. But when I finally had it I was so pumped.
Quoted this because both these post are genius!
I would like to add that I hope that casters only get one or two starting spells that are the basis of their class...A heal and buff for a cleric, a DD and a teleport for a wizzy, A pet spell and a dd for a summoner...but I also hope that melee abilities are treated almost (or identical) to spells in that you have to expend energy to use them etc etc...and when a warrior starts out he gets a Slash skill and a taunt, a Dreadlord gets an attack skill and maybe a debuff. Please for the love of all the Pantheon give us the basics to start and then let us pay for the rest with our blood sweat and tears. Even if they are buyable we still have to bust our buns to earn the gold to purchase them.
Just a added personal example.
When I played my mage I remember spending my recess in school looking up caster items and finding the Queynos Catacomb quest. Spent most of my Saturday night learning the zone (literally a maze). Then spending about 5 hours camping Cuburt for the quest robes to turn in for.
[(FYI) did not have that effect when I camped it, just +3 INT ]
It was a great weekend and that one item probably consumed about 10 hours in and out of game to EARN it.
I was getting tells for weeks asking me where such a powerful item was because at level 5 people had never even seen a INT items, some had never seen a earring with any stats on it.
Now multiply this experience times a hundred and you can understand how some one can play one game for several years strait without worrying one bit about "Max Level" and be happy.
The idea of earning things oneself was always a draw for me in the EQ games. I never stood around and begged (although there were many that did) I got to work and did it myself. The independence and the sense of achievement were important to me, part of building my character myself. That's why games that promise a fully capped character to join them, don't appeal to me at all.
Camping for Jboots in Najena was that kind of experience for me (before they implemented the quest.) It also became a way to make new friends, as we all waited our turns in group to kill the mob that dropped the boots. :)
Not surprisingly, the feeling of "REWARD" from working toward something and earning it in Norrath elicited similar feelings of satisfaction, happiness, and pride as you would get from actually working toward something and achieving it in real life.
It's one of those things that made EQ better because the prime design tenet of the game WASN'T "Am I having fun right now" (as was specifically stated in a blue post by a WoW dev stating their prime directive for that game)
Food for thought.
I always thought a very natural (natural as in logically making sense) approach to looting items has been interesting. You fight a demon? You get a broken horn as a weapon. You find a rock? You find another one and use them as shields as that is the only way to play Pantheon!
I know this might be close to impossible to implement. However, I do mostly agree with previous posts. I especially want to stress the importance of achieving a specific piece of gear. It has to be an accomplishment, something that would make me want to spend my last piece of gold on a bottle of wine to celebrate!
Niien said:
I think the echo from almost everyone in the thread is stating they want to have to work hard for every piece of gear, skill, spell, etc that they attain. They want to be challenged and don't want anyone to hold their hand.
Truly my long lost companions on these forums.... I can't wait to travel beside you all into the unknown. Many good memories await us...
Isn't it crazy? I felt the same thing on another forum recently; a poster made a topic about going through the game without twinking or using items that were outside your appropriate level range. Typically this results in a dead topic. The topic filled with people, literally a dozen pages!!! I've NEVER seen that before.
Honestly, I expect the FBI to infiltrate our group and dismantle it somehow, like with unions in real life. Gotta atomize the population, ya know. This is too healthy, brings too much strength to the people.