Bazgrim said:Please make guards and NPCs killable! I so look forward to being high enough level where I can go to a rival racial city and just slaughter their guards. I want to invoke utter fear in the newbies as they helplessly watch me slay their beloved guards lol.
I did that...and then ended up having to fix my bad faction :) (Halas)
I always loved doing orc pawn pick quest as a dark elf on Rallos/Vallon/Tallon/Sullon. Farm those pawns picks in the off-hours for server population when no one is around, hand em to the guards in WC, and and once you had enough, go stand beside guards in West Freeport or in EC etc. Faction fixed, guards now con amiable.
Why?
Primarily to have a place to afk safely, and not get ganked by mobs, but also for incidental PvP comedy. Inevitably some hotshot PKr would come by and see a DE that looked maybe AFK and try to gank as quickly as possible... only to find that the guards now protected that DE necromancer and smashed their faces into the dirt. First time this happened I had no idea the guards would actually protect me, I was in shock and spitting coffee across the room from laughing so hard at the same time! I thought good faction only meant the paladin type guards would no longer kick and smash your face into the dirt and some merch's would sell to you now. I was pretty pleased with my little discovery
Of course I became too cocky and I did lose an item and some gold when a smart PKr asked some high levels to pull the guards and kite them for a minute so they could gank me while afk. Sent a tell to the guy that killed me saying nicely done, good thinking, and ended up being friends with the guy for a long time in-game
Faction is one of the coolest things in MMO's, really looking forward to seeing Panthon's flavor of faction in game
- edit: spelling...
I'm not really sure whether I want mechanics like rest experience bonuses in PRF, but maybe you could do that, and link it to the starting cities? A wood elf could only 'rest' in Kelethin. A Qeynos human could only 'rest' in Qeynos. I dunno. I don't really like mechanics that herd people. I think it kind of is what it is. People are going to gravitate toward the most convenient cities, especially in a game where travel is significant. When I played EverQuest, I liked to hang out in the towns that weren't super busy. I spent a lot of time in Rivervale, Surefall Glade, and the smuggler part of Highpass. I think the best thing they can do to keep the starting cities bustling is to make sure they evenly spread the dungeons for each level range so that no one city is so much more convenient than another. Even with that, though, players will probably gather in a centralized location.
Sevens said:I really hate resting bonuses, and dont want just artificial ways of herding players. I want logical reasons for the starting cities to remain viable for the life span of the game
Agreed. It's always seemed pretty pointless to me. I don't like feeling pressured to go out of my way or log off in a particular place - just to have to walk back to where I was when I log back in. I pretty much just wanna go where I wanna go and do what I wanna do.
Considering Pantheon will have a caravan system, I don't think we really have to worry about it.
Anyone thinking that there is a way to benefit hardcore-style off rested bonus has probably never tried to min/max with it. It does not offer the magicaly incredible un-earned entitled game-changing advantage the some make it out to be.
I'm not 100% certain, but I am pretty sure rested bonuses were not ever there to get people to flock togther or control behaviour, or to get them free, entitled EXP without having earned it to any real degree, or for any other reason other than to give the players that cannot be online as long and/or as often as some of the others a chance to not get left so far behind. There was nothing game-changing about it in any MMO I played, even WoW which had a VERY generous rested EXP set implemented. For some reason, ever since EQ1 people feel threatened in some unexplainable way by these players that cannot play as often, and for years and years I have seen the other types of players try to ruin their ability to enjoy the game as well.
Yes there are arguments for entitlement, and other buzzwords but most of it is neither here nor there and the reality for me is this:
I never once met anyone who ran around going "omg you are all so wrong and stupid, I've benefitted SO MUCH from rested EXP that it was the most gamechanging expereince ever!!!one1!! You are all playing this game wrong lol!!" or anyone that ever even alluded to rested EXP being worth it past being a nice little boost for not being able to play as often as your friends etc
Rested EXP is a top up of a tiny amount for the people that cannot play as often and it is up to the DEV's how much or how little or even if it will be in the game. No need to convolute and confuse rested exp with buzzwords and extreme case scenarios imo.
On a final note, if players want total reality in a game and to avoid mechanics that don't make sense, we better code in that you get one character, one life. If you die, the game deletes itself and you can never, ever play again.
Bam. Realism.
Obviously this example is an extreme and a terrible attempt at dark comedy too, but there has to be a balance of realism and mechanics imo for MMO's to function smoothly and not be problematic for players,
I think every race needs a city and zone that have the races feel to it.. i dont know how racial faction will work in this game but i loved Darkfall onlines map/cities.. you could really tell when you got into the orc lands, or dark elf lands and so on.. and even tho you could be in a guild with any race some races didnt like eachother (when it comes to NPC)
so here is how it worked
1. Humans, Dwarfs and "highelf"(mirdain) was one racial alliance and Orc and Mahirim(wolf people) was one racial alliance and then the Dark elf aka Alfar had no racial allies..
2. they all had Racial zones with 1 big main city and smaller citys around their lands.. but there was also neutral citys with no guards that all races could travel to and each race had some in their lands..
2.1 These big racial zones was so mutch fun to go to.. even tho you could kill your own race in darkfall you where atleast somewhat safe in your own lands but lets say you wanted to grind a mob type and they where only located in an enemy lands you had to travel there and you knew that its a popular mob type and you will either run into a enemy player farming that spot already or someone can turn up any second when you where grinding there so you never wanted to get to low on mana/stamina/HP and that added an extra layer and i hope we get that same feeling on the PvP servers in pantheon.. fighting over grind spots is always fun and i hope they do it well!
3. In darkfall you could build clan citys that had pretty mutch had everything the main citys had so after awhile most people lived in their clan citys.
4. all races could join guilds together and build a clan city so even tho Humans and Orc are enemies they could still be friends and trade and all that but could not visit eachother main citys so if you wanted to trade with an orc you had to go to a neutral city with no guards but mr orc and mr human could still join a guild a live together in that city and i loved that system..
We dont know how Pantheon will do all this yet but i hope they do something like that.. maybe even a long grind to gain entry to a factions city since its a more PvE focused game and darkfall was focused on PvP/Guild vs Guild sieges..
I just hope that each race feel unique and have different armor types because thats another thing i loved with darkfall.. you crafted all the armor in the game (for the most part.. the good armor anyway) and if you where a human and crafted plate armor for example it was very well crafted kinda like the stormwind guard armor in WoW but if an orc made a plate set it had the same exact stats but the orcs had a more spiky and "orcish" look to it and i looooved that about the game that even tho all 6 races could craft plate armor it looked alot different depending on what race had it equiped and i dont think enough mmos does that..
Portalgun said:Anyone thinking that there is a way to benefit hardcore-style off rested bonus has probably never tried to min/max with it. It does not offer the magicaly incredible un-earned entitled game-changing advantage the some make it out to be.
I'm not 100% certain, but I am pretty sure rested bonuses were not ever there to get people to flock togther or control behaviour, or to get them free, entitled EXP without having earned it to any real degree, or for any other reason other than to give the players that cannot be online as long and/or as often as some of the others a chance to not get left so far behind. There was nothing game-changing about it in any MMO I played, even WoW which had a VERY generous rested EXP set implemented. For some reason, ever since EQ1 people feel threatened in some unexplainable way by these players that cannot play as often, and for years and years I have seen the other types of players try to ruin their ability to enjoy the game as well.
Yes there are arguments for entitlement, and other buzzwords but most of it is neither here nor there and the reality for me is this:
I never once met anyone who ran around going "omg you are all so wrong and stupid, I've benefitted SO MUCH from rested EXP that it was the most gamechanging expereince ever!!!one1!! You are all playing this game wrong lol!!" or anyone that ever even alluded to rested EXP being worth it past being a nice little boost for not being able to play as often as your friends etc
Rested EXP is a top up of a tiny amount for the people that cannot play as often and it is up to the DEV's how much or how little or even if it will be in the game. No need to convolute and confuse rested exp with buzzwords and extreme case scenarios imo.
On a final note, if players want total reality in a game and to avoid mechanics that don't make sense, we better code in that you get one character, one life. If you die, the game deletes itself and you can never, ever play again.
Bam. Realism.
Obviously this example is an extreme and a terrible attempt at dark comedy too, but there has to be a balance of realism and mechanics imo for MMO's to function smoothly and not be problematic for players,
Along with man bad decisions that Daybreak Games made on the EQ2 TLE server, they made vitality/rest XP over 6 times more than regular XP. Then, their cash shop sold potions to restore your rest status to 100%. They raked in the cash because people wanted to level quickly.
Beefcake said:Along with man bad decisions that Daybreak Games made on the EQ2 TLE server, they made vitality/rest XP over 6 times more than regular XP. Then, their cash shop sold potions to restore your rest status to 100%. They raked in the cash because people wanted to level quickly.
I only played EQ2 for 2 months or so at release, then stopped and never went back.
6x rested though, with a mechanic to get it 100% with real money? Damn.
Thet feels very... corporate. So glad we will never see that here
I agree with much of what has been said here. Where my wishes lie is the scope and scale of the city. It's a city, it is the place holding the entire population of a given race. They all need to be big. Really big. And each city needs all of the buildings, services and population to make it a viable city. This means there should be bars, inns, all the shops (butchers, grocers, leatherworkers, clothiers, carpentry, stonemasons, etc, etc etc. There should be multiples of all of these. Including multiple banks. What this requires, then, is a very large NPC population. People should be walking around all over the place. Players should have to work their way through the crowds.
Computers are powerful enough these days to handle high populations of NPCs in an area all following their individual AI needs each day. I don't want to see nothing but static shop keepers like we saw in EQ1 and even EQ2.
Give me a city and make it be an actual city.
Can't really go for this. Having all multiple of everything does not provide any real utility or liveliness, just clutter and wasted resources.
You want busy cities, give players a good reason to be there. Feeling the world with extra NPCs just for the visual aspect is a waste.
It really depends on the lore. I like the classic way races were.
Going by tradition elves should live in forested areas that are secluded and hard to get to/find by non elves. Its easy to lose your way in theses forests. I got that sense in Greter Faydark and Lesser Faydark. It was easy to get lost, the music was mesmerizing, and they were set in a backwater of the world.
Humans are jacks of all trades and masters of none. They are the most ambitious race and are encrouching upon other rraces territories. I'm hopeful there will be a good human settlement like Qeynos and a more shady one like Freeport.
Gnomes appear different in this game. Classically they are tinkerers and mechanical engineers.
Halflings are basically Hobbits. I wouldn't say they are all theives just because of Bilbo Baggins. It's likely they would live in some fare off hilly region segregated from other races.
I see races like Orgres and Trolls as warlike and barberic. The Ogre would likely live in a harsh environment like a cold plains, desert, or jungle.
It was nice how Rangers and Necromancers got their own areas (Surefall and the sewers).
The classic MIDIs were great and added a lot of personality to areas. I don't think complex musical pieces are needed.
Beefcake said:Can't really go for this. Having all multiple of everything does not provide any real utility or liveliness, just clutter and wasted resources.
You want busy cities, give players a good reason to be there. Feeling the world with extra NPCs just for the visual aspect is a waste.
Even with givng players a good reason to be in a city, lets look at those numbers for a bit.
Lets assume a server has a maximum population of 3000 players. Now, at any given time, how many of those might be online? Half? Maybe more? Then of all places in the entire game players can go, what are the chances any given individual will be in the same city as I am at the same time? I'll tell you what it means, it means empty towns. A few players here and there, and blank eyed non-moving, doing nothing NPCs staring vacantly at you from behind their counters. Boring.
Waste of resources adding more pizzaz and flavor to a city? No, it wouldn't be a waste especially if city can be kept important places for players to go. It will make citys more enjoyable while you are there.
If, as you say, no one but you is in the city, why waste resources filling it up with redundant NPCs just for one person to see?
Cities should not be artificially populated. If people want to be in them, they will. If the devs don't give us a reason to be, they won't. But don't fake it with multiple NPCs for no other reason.
I dunno. I think having a lot of NPCs in cities and towns is pretty important. If you can make their AI more dynamic, even better. There are so many NPCs in EverQuest that seem pointless...until you're doing that obscure quest that they are a part of and you realize why they are there. I do agree that it's a bad idea to have NPCs in cities that serve no purpose but to make the city seem more populated, though.
Shucklighter said:I dunno. I think having a lot of NPCs in cities and towns is pretty important. If you can make their AI more dynamic, even better. There are so many NPCs in EverQuest that seem pointless...until you're doing that obscure quest that they are a part of and you realize why they are there. I do agree that it's a bad idea to have NPCs in cities that serve no purpose but to make the city seem more populated, though.
If they serve a purpose, such as quest, lore, etc., they should definitely be there. Just not ones for the illusion of a population.
Sometimes, duplicates ARE needed, such as certain vendors that are often busy, but not just for show.
I don't mind seeing some fluff NPC's, like the pug on the bridge in Stormwind trying to itch his butt cause he has worms... as much as I like to think I am an adult, I laugh at that every time. Just keep them kinda rare maybe?
If there is aesthetic value, comedic value etc, I'm all for "extra" NPC's, but I agree with the majority here, throwing in a bunch of NPC's just to make a city feel more populated is probably not for the best.
I like the idea of cities feeling very populated, but I wouldn't go so far as to use the word "busy." Because that runs the risk of having clutter for no real reason. It also brings up that character collision debate, such as "will I be able to just run straight through all those citizens or will they actually bump into me and create traffic jams?" I think we can all agree we have enough traffic in real life, none of us wanna deal with that in a game. I also think if you are going to have that, then they should behave as real citizens in that most of them go to their homes at night. Perhaps even some shops close at night? That might be a little tricky in an MMO world, but you gotta admit it would be immersive. Practicality probably wins that one though. Additionally, since there will be no way to quickly identify quest NPCs, would we have to go around talking to hundreds if not thousands of NPCs to see which ones have tasks for us? I think not. Because not all Quest NPCs are going to be kings, generals, or other notable people of title. I really like the way Skyrim did cities, but of course some single-player stuff just doesn't translate well to MMO's and probably never will. Busy cities may bring up cause more issues than they are worth.
Anyway, on the other hand, I also think it would be cool to have a lot of killable regular citizens for those that would find it fun to take their Ranger-assassin type character to an enemy city (or home/ally city) and go on a serial killing spree murdering dozens of innocent citizens with a longbow while trying to not be noticed by the guards or something like that lol.
Suffice to say, I'm in favor of populated home cities and truly making them feel more like actual cities... on the condition that it is done reasonably and thoughtfully. And also on the condition that it is not so resource-intensive that it detracts from more important things.
Beefcake said:Can't really go for this. Having all multiple of everything does not provide any real utility or liveliness, just clutter and wasted resources.
You want busy cities, give players a good reason to be there. Feeling the world with extra NPCs just for the visual aspect is a waste.
I agree, NPC'S just to have more population for a visual is a waste. My thoughts are the population should be the players. IMO the largest improvement for the sake of liveliness in the city's would be animations for the NPC'S that they do have, not just standing there unless a player is currantly talking to them.
Bakers should be neading dough and removing bread and rolls from the oven.
Blacksmith's should be beating on an anvil and moving back and forth from the forge.
Tailors should be running the loom and cutting cloth.
Put some LIFE into the city's not numbers.
Animations like this could be harder to make than just placing a bunch of NPC but I think it would go a lot further to solving the oroblem, and they could be used in each city, pull out the elf, replace it with the Dwarf.