Laura said:Myth 1: People will not tolerate a game without Inta-Travel
In reality, I've recently played Black Desert Online for months non-stop and surprisingly I've NEVER, EVER, heard anyone on Reddit, In Game or on the Official Forums EVER complain about the lack of insta-traveling. Black Desert Online has ZERO teleportation/inta-travel. The only means of travel there is either on a mount or running and the world is not small. Can you imagine not hearing ANYONE EVER complaining about the lack of insta-travel? People in Black Desert Online usually complain about RNG, Cheating, Cash Shops..etc but no one ever said "Oh boy I wish I can insta travel to Valencia."
While I do agree that not having insta travel is not game breaking so long as there are ways to get around the world efficiently. If that treck to a dungeon takes 3 hours however, then it's too much. People don't have the time to spend hours running places. Which brings me to BDO ... As someone who played in one of the top guilds for months there and at one point was the best geared sorc on the server, I can easily say that BDO does in some ways have insta travel. Being able to get on a mount and click to a point on the map then go afk for 5 minutes while it runs me there is basically the same thing. The only threat you faced there was other people, and dam i loved wrecking afk people running by. But all in the same it acted in the same manner just took a little longer.
Laura said:Myth 2: We're not college students anymore; no one got time for six hours dungeon
Sure on a weekend I can see doing 6 hour dungeon crawls. But on a weekday, that's about all the time I have and I tend to play a lot more than most do. You simply can not judge other people based on what you and your close friends do. Read the other thread on here about how much time people have to play. Lots plan to spend sub 3 hours at a time in game.
Laura said:
Myth 3: Corpse Runs are a thing of the past and will make you lose subscribers if you implement it
Corpse runs are both good and bad. They bring the fear of death. They make it important when you live and die. But they can also be a huge time sink to people. When Pantheon launches, provided CRs are in, you will so very quickly get to see who the old EQ vets are and who the people new to this type of game are. The old EQ vets are the ones that will know exactly how to save a wipe. Seeing a cleric spam a macro that says "Train out so I can log" means that he knows wth he is doing. Seeing a cleric spam heal a tank with 10 mobs on him ... yea you get the picture.
Some people really do not like CRs and wouldn't be a part of a game that has them. Others love the mechanic and want it back. Does that mean either are wrong though? I prefer to have them, but if they aren't in it wouldn't stop me from playing and enjoying the game. It would make me much more fearless however.
I'm all for no instant travel. Though depending on the game world size, I would really want something like Druid and Wizard ports. Set the groundwork for cool stuff like I used to enjoy - sitting in town charging for buffs/ports.
As a full time worker - I certainly have limited time - but that won't stop me from 6 hours a day. :)
And finally... Corpse runs. I'm fine with classic corpse runs, the only thing I would change is make it so gear simply doesn't decay. Maybe make it so after a week your corpse is only visible to you and your party members and exp is 100% lost past a certain time.
I enjoyed the heartpounding runs through terribly frightening areas as a low level toon in EQ. I enjoyed it so much that I made it a requirement for myself to sneak whatever toons I created into the scaryiest zones I could before I really got down to playing that toon.
Some of my best memories were grouping up to help a naked toon on thier corpse runs. Damn fine stuff.
My vote, if I had one of any value, would be to make the experience loss for death without finding your corpse considerably painful. I would even be cool with a XX% loss of experience which could be huge between the last few levels. But please don't throw away my equipment. I personally wouldn't be all that concerned with the loss and would just starting working on getting it back again. But if my wife lost equipment she spent a couple of weeks trying to get.... well, her subscription would end and eventually I would quit as well so we could do something together. And I REALLY want to keep my wife playing this game so I CAN spend 6-8 hours a day playing after work.
Maximis said:Laura said:I'm tired of having to yield to all those pussies who wants to play easy games, I'm tired of it.
I agree with everything except this line. This line alone kills any real message you are trying to send in my opinion. It closes the door for any type of discussion.
Meh, that particular point of discussion is a dead horse, anyway. Practically everyone has made it known which side of that fence they're on and all the reasons for it. I agree with Laura in that, while the percentage of the gaming demographic that prefers a more traditional, challenging experience as opposed to something more accessible may only be 30% or so, it still sucks to see 0% of the games designed to cater to that.
bluefoxcode said:I enjoyed the heartpounding runs through terribly frightening areas as a low level toon in EQ. I enjoyed it so much that I made it a requirement for myself to sneak whatever toons I created into the scaryiest zones I could before I really got down to playing that toon.
Some of my best memories were grouping up to help a naked toon on thier corpse runs. Damn fine stuff.
My vote, if I had one of any value, would be to make the experience loss for death without finding your corpse considerably painful. I would even be cool with a XX% loss of experience which could be huge between the last few levels. But please don't throw away my equipment. I personally wouldn't be all that concerned with the loss and would just starting working on getting it back again. But if my wife lost equipment she spent a couple of weeks trying to get.... well, her subscription would end and eventually I would quit as well so we could do something together. And I REALLY want to keep my wife playing this game so I CAN spend 6-8 hours a day playing after work.
If the races I want and she wants are not close to each other, I may have to do this run.
I want my Ogre. She wants a Dark Myr or Archai.
I anticipate a long, corpse-filled day getting there.
Aradune said:Maximis said:Laura said:I'm tired of having to yield to all those pussies who wants to play easy games, I'm tired of it.
I agree with everything except this line. This line alone kills any real message you are trying to send in my opinion. It closes the door for any type of discussion.
Yes, was a great post, but let's try to avoid pejoratives. Plus, it's Christmas time! :)
I just look at it this way -- there are plenty of MMOs out there on the easy side, plenty of options. It's true that some who play those games complain that Pantheon isn't the same way too, coming across 'entitled', and it can get annoying. That's why I wrote https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/blogs/151/175/how-to-respond-to-skeptics
I can't even remember posting that line! I guess it's my anger of waiting 12 years for a game like this. 12 years makes you angry, you know!
Thank you Brad for understanding and Happy New Year!
Slow leveling. Difficult enemies. More incentive than usual to group. Better tools for socializing/guilds. This can be the game we have waited for without needing a long arduous trip between two points the 50th time you make the trip.
Now I will say that I'm biased by playing many games where you have to go back and forth a lot. If the plan is to give you a zone that takes a month then another zone that takes a month and you don't need to go back to city one to train or shop that would be a different story. But a lot of the people posting *want* incentives for more advanced adventurers to return to earlier zones. And I pretty well can guarantee that the number of people that will try to form a group and be willing to wait an hour for someone to get there is not large. Many of us may not have over an hour to play in one stretch without having to take a break. Not every day and maybe not most days.
LOL I was 46 had a full time job, commuted to and from work, and I STILL spent many hours on EQ (last beta phase) after it launched. Now that I am retired I would probably spend even more hours, improving my character, spells, armor, faction, crafting, adventuring. :) Left EQ sometime during the Luclin expansion. Eq was a learning curve, learning how to be aware of my surroundings, stop getting lost, avoid orc centurions, learn how to use /loc, improve casting skills. It was a game chock full of things to do and learn, along with the great social aspect..pretty much everyone knew everyone. It was a virtual world that I could live in..to get away from the intense stress I encountered at work as a front-line customer service rep for the government. I WANT to experience these things again. *keeping my fingers crossed* and YES that included corpse runs..
Aradune said:Banks will most likely be local, not global.
That's going to be interesting to see how it works in a big game.
I hope you guys would also consider doing a shared bank so you can move items between characters on the same server. Sometimes it can be hard to find someone you trust to 'hold' items for you. It could be as simple as bank and money slot in the bank UI that is accessible by all of your characters.
bigdogchris said:Aradune said:Banks will most likely be local, not global.
That's going to be interesting to see how it works in a big game.
I hope you guys would also consider doing a shared bank so you can move items between characters on the same server. Sometimes it can be hard to find someone you trust to 'hold' items for you. It could be as simple as bank and money slot in the bank UI that is accessible by all of your characters.
Vanguard actually had this, one bank per continent, three banks in total (until later when they merged them all with a very low population) but it worked very well when the game was at its peak and encouraged travel and thinking about where you stored items :)
Kilsin said:Vanguard actually had this, one bank per continent, three banks in total (until later when they merged them all with a very low population) but it worked very well when the game was at its peak and encouraged travel and thinking about where you stored items :)
Weird, it never really impacted my gameplay that way for me personally. Instead, I just got 3x the amount of bank space that I would normally, which I was grateful for.
Liav said:Kilsin said:Vanguard actually had this, one bank per continent, three banks in total (until later when they merged them all with a very low population) but it worked very well when the game was at its peak and encouraged travel and thinking about where you stored items :)
Weird, it never really impacted my gameplay that way for me personally. Instead, I just got 3x the amount of bank space that I would normally, which I was grateful for.
This was back when the rift ways were networks and required shards, so people usually stored things on continents relatable to what they usual did on those continents, for instance, Qalia was a popular crafting cont. so many stored there crafting mats etc. there, while many raiding targets were on Thestra (including APW) so many of us stored raiding gear and pots there for convenience but yeah the extra space was nice too, once they opened up the rift ways and made the cost currency based and merged the banks it kind of lost its appeal and just became a mass storage but it worked well while it lasted and didn't cause any huge problems.
bigdogchris said:Aradune said:Banks will most likely be local, not global.
That's going to be interesting to see how it works in a big game.
I hope you guys would also consider doing a shared bank so you can move items between characters on the same server. Sometimes it can be hard to find someone you trust to 'hold' items for you. It could be as simple as bank and money slot in the bank UI that is accessible by all of your characters.
I'm also curious, if not a little skeptical. There are of course pros and cons. But I can conceive of the following situation:
- Gear is situational, therefore we will have to acquire a lots of different items to be successful.
- Inventory space is likely to not be sufficient to constantly carry all of your situational items
- Banks are the next logical place to keep items when you are not planning on going on an adventure that would warrant using them.
- If banks are local, then you need to return to that particular location to retrieve an item that you need for the next adventure
- With very limited fast travel, you could spend half of your time logged in just on your way to/from the bank and that's simply not a fun experience.
Of course this is kind of a worst case scenario, but it's something to think about. Situational gear + limited inventory space + local banks + limited fast travel sounds like a recipe for boredom. Probably pick 3 out of the 4? Don't get me wrong - I'm almost always an advocate for realism in games. And we always find ourselves trying to draw the line between realism and practicality. Because it can definitely be taken too far one way or the other. I hope the pack mule system will be a good way to alleviate some of the inventory storage issues. We shall see...
Ultros said: Risk vs reward . Pvp ... pve...mmo or mario 3ds ... even pen and paper role play .... risk vs reward. Thats what makes good gaming.
Whenever people mention risk v. Reward, all I can think about is this commercial, I think it's for insurance.
Convenience store hot dog. High risk, but the only reward is a convenience store hot dog.
beautifully said:Ahh man, this brings back so many fond memories:
(Some level 20) Hey, I died real deep in this dungeon, can you go get my corpse?
(Me, lvl 50) Sure! Consent me.(Proceed to drag it even deeper)
This was hilarious and great, but also abused rampantly later on when the game was more mature and there were a lot of people begging for handouts. Getting help getting back to your corpse was important, but if no one you knew was around, you were basically at the mercy of strangers (or luck) until people capable and willing were able to log in and help. Assuming you knew people of that persuasion, and hadn't outleveled them with PUGs.
So the mechanic makes sense to get your corpse, but on the other hand, can punish players new to an area if they unwitingly push too deep, or are abandoned (maliciously or apathetically or through unfortunate timing, such as a dungeon run at the end of the night) after a deeper death than they can get their corpse at.
I can remember being on both sides of the coin, especially when it came to rez's as a high level cleric. Sure I'll drag your corpse and rez you, oops, you're still deep in the dungeon, you died. Funny for my friends who didn't mind the exp loss, not so funny for someone who was desperate. And how do you differentiate between the earnestly unknowing and the begging snotlickers who just wanted handouts?
Assuming corpse rot will exist, I think a way to summon the corpse but eat the exp loss will be important, so that at least you have your items.
Veranscoto said:beautifully said:Ahh man, this brings back so many fond memories:
(Some level 20) Hey, I died real deep in this dungeon, can you go get my corpse?
(Me, lvl 50) Sure! Consent me.(Proceed to drag it even deeper)
This was hilarious and great, but also abused rampantly later on when the game was more mature and there were a lot of people begging for handouts. Getting help getting back to your corpse was important, but if no one you knew was around, you were basically at the mercy of strangers (or luck) until people capable and willing were able to log in and help. Assuming you knew people of that persuasion, and hadn't outleveled them with PUGs.
So the mechanic makes sense to get your corpse, but on the other hand, can punish players new to an area if they unwitingly push too deep, or are abandoned (maliciously or apathetically or through unfortunate timing, such as a dungeon run at the end of the night) after a deeper death than they can get their corpse at.
I can remember being on both sides of the coin, especially when it came to rez's as a high level cleric. Sure I'll drag your corpse and rez you, oops, you're still deep in the dungeon, you died. Funny for my friends who didn't mind the exp loss, not so funny for someone who was desperate. And how do you differentiate between the earnestly unknowing and the begging snotlickers who just wanted handouts?
Assuming corpse rot will exist, I think a way to summon the corpse but eat the exp loss will be important, so that at least you have your items.
I think that was the point. The world was dangerous to travel through. You had to take a gamble on strangers you didn't know for help. That was part of the excitement.
UnknownQuantity said:
I think that was the point. The world was dangerous to travel through. You had to take a gamble on strangers you didn't know for help. That was part of the excitement.
Yes, and there was an etiquette that really hasn't survived very well. You didn't abandon group members in situations like Veranscoto mentioned. There also really wasn't an 'end of the night' in a lot of zones. If you had to go, you gave half hour notice minimum -and- looked for your own replacement so that the group could continue. Sure, there were times when it wasn't possible to do all of that, but those times were exceptions. If you made a habit of playing that way it would hurt your reputation and you'd have a much harder time finding groups. That's one of the reasons P1999 and TLPs can't match the original EverQuest experience. The culture has changed. I hope the developers here can bring it back for PRF, but it definitely won't be easy.
Shucklighter said:UnknownQuantity said:
I think that was the point. The world was dangerous to travel through. You had to take a gamble on strangers you didn't know for help. That was part of the excitement.
Yes, and there was an etiquette that really hasn't survived very well. You didn't abandon group members in situations like Veranscoto mentioned. There also really wasn't an 'end of the night' in a lot of zones. If you had to go, you gave half hour notice minimum -and- looked for your own replacement so that the group could continue. Sure, there were times when it wasn't possible to do all of that, but those times were exceptions. If you made a habit of playing that way it would hurt your reputation and you'd have a much harder time finding groups. That's one of the reasons P1999 and TLPs can't match the original EverQuest experience. The culture has changed. I hope the developers here can bring it back for PRF, but it definitely won't be easy.
I'd say that is a reflection of current society where parents, teachers, and managers at work are increasingly controlling the people around them instead of allowing them to police themselves amd taking away creative freedom.
Shucklighter said:UnknownQuantity said:
I think that was the point. The world was dangerous to travel through. You had to take a gamble on strangers you didn't know for help. That was part of the excitement.
Yes, and there was an etiquette that really hasn't survived very well. You didn't abandon group members in situations like Veranscoto mentioned. There also really wasn't an 'end of the night' in a lot of zones. If you had to go, you gave half hour notice minimum -and- looked for your own replacement so that the group could continue. Sure, there were times when it wasn't possible to do all of that, but those times were exceptions. If you made a habit of playing that way it would hurt your reputation and you'd have a much harder time finding groups. That's one of the reasons P1999 and TLPs can't match the original EverQuest experience. The culture has changed. I hope the developers here can bring it back for PRF, but it definitely won't be easy.
I agree but also disagree. Yes it'd hurt your reputation some, but then, once you get to a certain population level, it almost doesn't matter. The few assholes aren't remanded because they fade into the crowd. When most of the population is at 'max level', reputations aside from the extremes get lost in the noise.
The old EQ just wasn't so seriously populated. Sure, there were a bunch of people, but you could reliably know a significant portion of the high level crowd. Now, the min/maxers race to the end, and everyone else does to keep up, and thus we're at the same point as before. I'm pretty sure history has proven that content isn't a reliable method to keep people engaged and lower level - it's why grinding exists after all. It's indicative of a mindset thats become about progression and being at 'the top' over everything else. I don't believe the majority of the original EQ players had that; it was more people coming from D&D and the like, where being maxxed out wasn't the whole goal.
I remember seeing a point where Aradune stated they wanted to have compelling reasons to have people not do that, but with levels come power, and everyone wants to be powerful. I'm interested to see what they'll put together for this.
I remember reputation mattering in the end game when I played EverQuest. You also had trouble reaching the end game with a bad reputation unless you were a solo class. I remember knowing almost all of the max levels players of my class and many of the max level players of other classes...definitely the ones I had grouped with before. I agree with you that bad / toxic players have an easier time blending in these days, but I'm hoping the developers have plans to create servers where reputation matters again.
Veranscoto said:
I remember seeing a point where Aradune stated they wanted to have compelling reasons to have people not do that, but with levels come power, and everyone wants to be powerful. I'm interested to see what they'll put together for this.
We know the progeny system is one way they will address this issue. I am really looking forward to learning more about it. I think that will go a long way towards answering many of these questions.
Deadshade said:That's why I would say that this particular decision REALLY depends on the player basis and can only be rationally decided by voting (f.ex during beta) . If the player basis is around 50/50 then the safer way to go is to eliminate corpse runs . Should it be 90/10 in favour of corpse runs then corpse runs are fine .
Personnaly I vote no corpse runs as unique way to recover equipment after death . I can live with corpse runs to recover XP but NOT equipment .
I feel like there's two real ways you can make any form of entertainment. You can aim it at the majority of people in the world and compete with all the others doing the same, and deal with a very flaky fanbase; or you can make it for a niche of people. This niche may never get quite as big, but is less difficult to compete for, and far more loyal.
Reading through the tenants of Pantheon, this game seems to be made for a niche of hard core, social players.
To me, this means that things like votes, while they have their place, are slightly aimed at other kinds of games then Pantheon. Yes-VR should listen to our opinions and ideas, but I feel they should consider those opinions and ideas among themselves. Then they could come up with their own final decisions based on developer tenants, rather than feeding the majority exactly what they want. Otherwise, Pantheon would be very likely to turn into just another game aimed at the masses.
To go back into the actual topic at hand, I agree with corpse runs. I was the guy who was level 15 hoping to find a shovel noone wants in najeena, casting invis and invis vs undead on myself every few seconds as I ran through (I had to make alot of corpse runs). Patience and sociality always won out in the end for getting me my corpse. Hopefully, time zones won't be such an issue in Pantheon and you will be able to have patience and sociality too. Maybe corpse decay times could be improved as well. Maybe decay could be based on hours the player is playing and just have a very lenient decay time for players that are not playing.
If I had complaints, they would be the actual combat gameplay, which so far looks as simple as mmo combat gets; watching cooldowns, pressing about 5 buttons, and doing your role (which you likely have plenty of practice with from several games so far). Also, the perception system looks like it replaced visible exclamation points... With a skill and visible words in your text box.. which does not seem all that different. But hey, I'm still positive about Pantheon.
Completely agree on the corpse runs, they should exist.
Never experienced it myself, and probably only ever knew 1 or 2 people that did lose stuff to a rotting corpse, but I can see how some people might have trouble with recovering their corpse within 7 days at times. Perma rot really did have the right amount of fear attached to it IMHO however, I do think you can still have that fear without perma rot.
And its that fear that really matters when it comes to achieving the right consistancy of immersion many of us are looking for.
A compromise might be to wait 7 days then hide the corpse in the world unless that player is online, but the corpse never rots, however your stuff is still on it.
In addition only allow XP res for some period of time but always allow a res on the corpse so you can be summoned back to it at any time.
Thus no one can ever complain that they don't have a way to get their stuff back but will still very likely fear death just as much.
So, you die in a really bad way? Don't have the social skills/time to get your corpse back?
No problem, its still there whenever you want to undertake the retreive corpse quest and get your stuff back. This is sandbox after all, some quests come from organic play.
Just keep trying, eventually somone will summon it for you or you can follow somone in to get it, no one is going to lose their stuff forever.
Unless of course you don't care, then feel free to delete the corpse with the /deletecorpse command and go on with your life.
Maybe after 14 days you can pay an NPC to summon it for you.
One nice feature would be allowing you to /consent one of your your other toons, perks of playing an alt, you have a big brother/sister to help you on corpse runs.
Whatever form the death penalty takes, and I vote for EQ style, it must have true fear of death. So many other systems both active and passive, indirectly rely on this fear in order to achieve their potential; resurrection, summon corpse, soloing, group/raid tactics, questing, faction, exploration, sense of achievment, solicialization just to name a few.
-Az