From Bandits to apple trees and mysterious relics, there is something new to experience in Terminus around every corner, what are you most looking forward too?
It is the hallmark of a great environment that as you wander off the beaten path you discover unusual oddities, dangers and treats. Things that make you run for your life or smile while stopping to smell the roses. There must be elements that will evoke vivid memories long after you have out leveled an area. I like seeing rock cairns in the mountains, both small historical markers and visually stunning monuments (ancient, worn, perhaps not even legible), clusters of gravestones (or just burial mounds), pockets of wildlife (that may or may not want to kill me) - things that fill up the world with interest. Don't overdo it like some past single player games have, not every geographic feature needs to hide a treasure. There should be balance so that the unexpected remains surprising. And not every treat has to be fully explained, some should just inspire mystery - i.e. why is this broken down statute here? Let the roleplayers explain a few parts of the wonderful world, you know they will.
By the way, I listed visual cues, but sounds / music add to this just as much. Bustling noises in town, crickets at night in the woods, babbling brooks actually babbling (not every stream, but some please), whooshing at waterfalls, music in taverns, crackling campfires and hearths...ambient audio matters for immersion.
Lastly, wandering bands of minstrels...once bards exist of course.
Not to be too critical, but the space between the ground and the bandits arms makes the dead bandits look like they are doing push-ups.
But, I love cairns and ruins.
Maybe they are hinting these days that the next secret class will be the farmer?
Beefcake said:Not to be too critical, but the space between the ground and the bandits arms makes the dead bandits look like they are doing push-ups.
But, I love cairns and ruins.
Maybe they are hinting these days that the next secret class will be the farmer?
Shh, it's just rigamortis setting in ;)
I'd love to try this exotic food from the landwalkers called apples
Next,an attempt to gain the trust of some baby goats by luring and feeding them apples
Then I'd send an army of bloated baby goats upon the bandit camp
On the graves of bandits the first goat town would be established and i'd help them create a banner so cute everyone will surrender
Farmers from all over Terminus will offer their apples freely,the goat emmpire will rise
In the end goats will rule the landwalkers
And the Dark Myr shall rule the world <3
I am looking forward to exploring Terminus. I love the idea of just walking around and seeing what is ahead or behind the next corner. The fact that everything will be new is awesome. I also would like to pick those bandits clean of all items. lol In some games it is almost impossible to walk 10 feet without getting attacked by somethig. That is not my idea of fun. Fun is seeing the things that will aggro you and being able to avoid them if you were not in the fighting mood. I am sure there will be stealth critters out there someplace but I hope they are not everywhere. I do remember the first shadowman I encountered in eq.
It took me a while to recover my corpse since I walked right into there camp in South Karana.
But I mostly look forward to alpha and getting in game.
Isaya said:In some games it is almost impossible to walk 10 feet without getting attacked by somethig. That is not my idea of fun. Fun is seeing the things that will aggro you and being able to avoid them if you were not in the fighting mood. I am sure there will be stealth critters out there someplace but I hope they are not everywhere.
This is a good point - I have noticed that in a lot of games, newbie zones are just littered with mobs to fight. Even if they're not aggressive, the area is covered in mobs and there seems to not be much thought put into where they are. That's probably to make it easier so that newbies can easily find stuff to give them xp. If you stand on a hill and look down and see dozens of mobs just wandering around, it just doesn't look very realistic. Creatures in nature tend to be much more spread out. Skyrim does it well - when walking through the woods, it could be several minutes in between when you see deer, bears, or wolves. It's just enough to keep it interesting. But not ridiculous. Of course that's a single player game so the areas don't need to support dozens of players looking for xp. But I still hope that mob density is reasonable in Pantheon.
>This is a good point - I have noticed that in a lot of games, newbie zones are just littered with mobs to fight. Even if they're not aggressive, the area is covered in mobs and there seems to not be much thought put into where they are. That's probably to make it easier so that newbies can easily find stuff to give them xp. If you stand on a hill and look down and see dozens of mobs just wandering around, it just doesn't look very realistic. Creatures in nature tend to be much more spread out. Skyrim does it well - when walking through the woods, it could be several minutes in between when you see deer, bears, or wolves. It's just enough to keep it interesting. But not ridiculous. Of course that's a single player game so the areas don't need to support dozens of players looking for xp. But I still hope that mob density is reasonable in Pantheon.<
It is a good point.
While this won't help much in exploring every corner, I would hope that at least the roads would be reasonably safe. Games where you can't even go 50 feet down a road in peace can be enormously frustrating if you are trying to look around and enjoy the scenery.
Thanks Kils! It is so nice to see some shots with NPC's populating the landscape! Always loved spending some time creating havoc for the local bandits in EQ. Cant wait to see more shots and some of the unusual creatures you guys are going to be creating!
Re: the last few comments, I dont mind a zone that is heavily populated with mobs in a MMO, especially a newbie zone, Gfay and Nek Forrest always felt just right, outside of freeport didnt feel very real but that was probably more attributed to the landscape. Certainly as you traverse through the world you dont want to see mobs at every turn like mentioned but we do need a lot of mobs around to keep the sheer number of people in a zone busy with things to stop and kill for xp. Dreadlands had a lot of mobs around but when you think about it just a single group working well could clear a massive chunk of Dreadlands before repops started. Will be interesting to see how it is populated in Alpha / Beta and go from there.
Side note: I am primarily talking about wandering mobs too, dont want a ton of mobs just standing, they should be in specific camps spread out far and wide.
Bazgrim said:Isaya said:In some games it is almost impossible to walk 10 feet without getting attacked by somethig. That is not my idea of fun. Fun is seeing the things that will aggro you and being able to avoid them if you were not in the fighting mood. I am sure there will be stealth critters out there someplace but I hope they are not everywhere.
This is a good point - I have noticed that in a lot of games, newbie zones are just littered with mobs to fight. Even if they're not aggressive, the area is covered in mobs and there seems to not be much thought put into where they are. That's probably to make it easier so that newbies can easily find stuff to give them xp. If you stand on a hill and look down and see dozens of mobs just wandering around, it just doesn't look very realistic. Creatures in nature tend to be much more spread out. Skyrim does it well - when walking through the woods, it could be several minutes in between when you see deer, bears, or wolves. It's just enough to keep it interesting. But not ridiculous. Of course that's a single player game so the areas don't need to support dozens of players looking for xp. But I still hope that mob density is reasonable in Pantheon.
I've noticed that too. I also recall that in EQ newb zones different kinds of mobs were all jumbled up with out and reason or sense. Skellys were running around with orcs and all kinds of things. At least undead could've been around crypts or something. Looking back it would've been nice if mobs had their own habbitats, so to speak.
dorotea said:>This is a good point - I have noticed that in a lot of games, newbie zones are just littered with mobs to fight. Even if they're not aggressive, the area is covered in mobs and there seems to not be much thought put into where they are. That's probably to make it easier so that newbies can easily find stuff to give them xp. If you stand on a hill and look down and see dozens of mobs just wandering around, it just doesn't look very realistic. Creatures in nature tend to be much more spread out. Skyrim does it well - when walking through the woods, it could be several minutes in between when you see deer, bears, or wolves. It's just enough to keep it interesting. But not ridiculous. Of course that's a single player game so the areas don't need to support dozens of players looking for xp. But I still hope that mob density is reasonable in Pantheon.<
It is a good point.
While this won't help much in exploring every corner, I would hope that at least the roads would be reasonably safe. Games where you can't even go 50 feet down a road in peace can be enormously frustrating if you are trying to look around and enjoy the scenery.
Good point. Mobs roaming raods thicker than fleas are not much fun. Still.... should the road have a bridge a mean old troll under it might be fun.
Roads should be somewhat safe, I like how they did it in Oblivion where occasionally you would run into a guard fighting a monster on the road a ways out from the main town. However the farther you get away from town the more preilous it shoudl be- with higher level bandits lurking by the roadside. Someone has ot keep the way safe for newbie travelers.
That apple orchard must to good business being so close to the ramparts