I remember in EQ 1 when my first stack of rations and drink ran out and I quickly realized that I wasn't gaining health and mana anymore that it was time to head back to town for some shopping.
Heading out to the desert areas I knew I would have to stock up on twice as much water as usual.
This early type of survival gameplay was fun and I wish it would have been expanded on a bit.
With Pantheon having climates and acclimations I'm hoping to see some situations where survival of the environment can be just as much of a challenge as the mobs.
Areas like deserts where water is scarce and is used up quickly forcing you to move from watering hole to watering hole and not just camp out in one spot for long.
Spots where if you are in the sun you are fine but in the shade you start to freeze and at night you might even freeze to death.
Dust storms that limit visibility greatly making it hard to locate even landmarks.
Nights so dark that it might just be a better idea to camp out and wait til morning before moving on.
Maybe some mundane game animals that could be hunted or trapped then made into foods(hunting mini game).
I really can't wait to see what VR has in store for us with this kind of thing.
Thanks for reading,
Kiz~
I agree. I'd like to also see crafting gathering seperated from loot. In other words, one doesn't kill an animal and find "skins" as just another loot item. But one needs to use a skinning skill (perhaps with a skinning knife of varying qualities and also crafted) to get decent skins off of an animal or fibers off of plants, ore from nodes, etc. Of course a mob that was clearly a blacksmith for the orc tribe you just attacked might have some ore on him, but that's not the rule.
Turn crafting into its own survival mini-game. One doesn't need much to just "survive" and regen one's mana/health/stamina, but getting bonuses and such, longer lasting food and drink, etc. requires at least work some of these skills or money to buy it off of venders or PC crafters.
There was a game called Horizons, that became Istaria I think. There was a lot that the game got wrong. Combat was slow and laggy. But it got two things really, really right. 1) you could play a dragon and it was awesome, 'nuff said and 2) you could level to max level on crafting alone and crafting was fun even if you didn't have adventurer levels and couldn't fight a thing. I remember being in a mine to farm some high level metal. There were mobs that patrolled that tunnels that could wipe the floor with my character but I could hide behind some rocks and wait for them to pass and then mine the ore. It was exciting and fun. There were similar mechanics for getting grains or fibers from plants. I could also go to some area where adventurers were hunting animals for XP and the corpses would lay there for awhile and after a few minutes if the killer hadn't taken the skins, I could do it. Players could even give permission to skin their kills to a player or group or guild members.
Anyhow, this kind of thing would make crafting, or at least gathering materials for crafters fun in and of itself. There are few games in which I have had any interest in crafting that that was one of them.
Yes, and make sure that adventurers need crafters. I also played Horizons and loved the fact that you could level up a lot of different classes/tradeskills, but had to switch classes to level in a particular class/tradeskill. And enchant gathering/crafting items for specific purposes. Cargo gear for crafters to be able to hold more was a nice idea. And cargo disks that floated along behind you allowed you to carry huge amounts of resources, but moved along very, very slowly leaving you vulnerable to attack in dangerous areas.
Dragonfist/Nolry,
I agree that Horizons had alot of great things about it. Crafting which I mentioned in the crafting section was one of them along with building houses, making items out of mats etc. The fact your guild could build a town in the country and put guards there then come back and have it overrun by mobs. How often cities were attacked by mobs and I would run to help. They had world events where your server would in effect compete with other servers. I helped many a time with my crafter to help further my server. Being a dragon was unique and being able to age in the game from one type of dragon to another which took a quest was another facet I liked. To me the only thing they screwed up on was the loot. No mobs dropped loot, it was all crafting mats. That is why I felt that Horizons fell apart. Even if you had ALL of the mats to make that +5 sword of god slaying its not the same as actually SEEING that sword laying there. I had many rl friends who played and they all left because they just felt not getting real loot vs crafting mats wasnt enuf. I still remember going in slow motion with that cargo disk following me lol. Loved the game as it had many ideas WAY ahead of its time.
As to survival of the fittest it wasnt always the fittest unless you counted your connection speed as being the fittest. I remember dying once in Mistmore when someone shouted TRAIN TO ZONE!!! and I was literally 1 step from the zone line and was looking around the corner to see what was coming. I saw a blur or mobs rushing up the ramp and I turned and ran to zone. It said zoning please wait. I get out of zoning and I have no spells memmed. I told my gf who was also playing that that was an amazing ability or spell that had me unmem ALL of my spells. She looked at my char and said you died. I was like what? so I looked at myself and saw I was naked. I had bound just outside of the zone and was right at the zone point coming out. As bad as dying was that is still one of my funniest moments ever in EQ because I thought the mobs had some super ability/spell when in fact I had never made it to the zone. They had killed me so fast I couldnt even take a step. I zoned back in and there was my broken corpse lol. After that I learned to respect that TRAIN TO ZONE!!! in that zone as very few others were nearly as bad but I digress.
I had the exact same thing in UO as I had joined one of the knights, forget which side, and was dueling a rl friend in town. We were on the phone talking while playing and he tells me that a portal had opened up next to him and they were attacking me. I was like umm I dont see them, what are you talking about? Then hes laughing and telling me I'm dead. I was still alive on my screen. Well a few seconds later they showed up, killed me and stripped my char. That game was VERY unforgiving if you were lagged or had a bad connection. So survival of the fittest can also mean survival of the person who has the best connection, not necessarily who is the better player. Sorry to have strayed a bit but survival is survival and thats one facet nobody nowadays ever seems to remember lol.
@sunstalkr - I remember playing EQ1 on a dial up AOL connection and when someone else would pick up the phone you would lose your connection to the game.
I don't think I've had a dropped connection in over 10 years at this point so hopefully we are past the days of this being a problem for most people.
One thing that does concern me tho is the lag of having too many players on the screen at once. I recently ran into this in EQ1 of all games when I did a run on the Phinigel server.
500 characters all standing around in PoTranq caused all kinds of lag and this is on a 18 year old game.
I remember in Vanguard having 100 characters on screen could cause some slowdown for me at the time.
Here's to hoping that their server infrastructure and game optimizations will be up to the rush of players waiting to join in the fun.
Thanks,
Kiz~
I agree with much of what was said above, but let us remember also that this is a CRPG MMO not a survival game.
Having elements of other types of games in Pantheon is fine but only if they do not overpower its basic CRPG nature.
If it ever got to a point where we had to spend as much time micromanaging gear for different environments, food, drink, bolts or arrows, etc. as we did fighting or exploring or roleplaying or only going to certain areas at specific times of the day or night and in specific ways lest the heat or cold or humidity be too much for us Pantheon might not be appealing to the target market.
Thanks for the hit of nostalgia, Angrykiz. I deffinitly recall packing accordingly, spending time running around, buying food items and recovery items in the local town. All depending on how far I was traveling, if solo or with others.
And when traveling with others, at times scrounging together whatever coppers (gold and plats, really) we had and pitching in for a few bits of armour upgrade for our meatshield.
Not a fan of survival aspects in games like this. I'll echo dorotea's sentiments with regards to this topic.
Food and drink are, in my opinion, a worthless waste of bag space. There's nothing challenging about remembering to keep food and drink in your bag.
Outside of the acclimation system (as a horizontal progression gating mechanism) I'm not a fan of weather affecting character status, either. I'd rather just log out of the game than have to deal with being unable to play due to a weather mechanic. Why would I stare at my screen for 30 minutes waiting for daylight when I can spend that time playing a different game instead?
Liav said:Not a fan of survival aspects in games like this. I'll echo dorotea's sentiments with regards to this topic.
Food and drink are, in my opinion, a worthless waste of bag space. There's nothing challenging about remembering to keep food and drink in your bag.
Outside of the acclimation system (as a horizontal progression gating mechanism) I'm not a fan of weather affecting character status, either. I'd rather just log out of the game than have to deal with being unable to play due to a weather mechanic. Why would I stare at my screen for 30 minutes waiting for daylight when I can spend that time playing a different game instead?
Then you and I are waiting for two very different games and I hope you don't get yours as that means that I won't get mine. Fortunately, much of what I want (Day and Night, weather, etc.) is intended to be coming.
I agree with everything you are saying Kiz! Would love to see hunting/fishing mini games kind of like how the Breath of Fire 2 did it. Random nodes for both hunting and fishing, where the hunted animals have a chance to get a way and the fish can only be caught by using certain combinations of lure/bait. Also, make it so that environmental changes can have an impact on these sort of things such as rare fishing nodes being more common during a storm, or certain prey only being available in specific conditions related to season, night/day/morning, weather, etc. I like the aspect of night/day/weather for PVE as well and hope that only the bravest and well equipped of adventurers dare to venture into dangerous areas while they are frigid, dark, or in the middle of a sandstorm.
DragonFist said:Then you and I are waiting for two very different games and I hope you don't get yours as that means that I won't get mine. Fortunately, much of what I want (Day and Night, weather, etc.) is intended to be coming.
Day, night, and weather are coming.
However, day and night do not prevent you from playing, and weather does not cause status effects on your character as far as I've heard.
If I had to deal with EQ's hard-coded blindness again, I'd play something else. If I wanted to play a starvation simulator I'd play The Oregon Trail.
Some great concepts here but not sure how well they would fit into PRF. One thing I would like to see is if in dry or arrid climates (remember some of the driest places in the world are on antartica) you consume water quicker, In cold areas maybe you need more food to stay warm, in wet areas maybe you go throgh both at 1.5 times etc. This wouldn't take a whole lot of game mechanics or coding and would add a certain level of "survivability planning" to the game.
Liav said:]Not a fan of survival aspects in games like this. I'll echo dorotea's sentiments with regards to this topic.
Food and drink are, in my opinion, a worthless waste of bag space. There's nothing challenging about remembering to keep food and drink in your bag.
Outside of the acclimation system (as a horizontal progression gating mechanism) I'm not a fan of weather affecting character status, either. I'd rather just log out of the game than have to deal with being unable to play due to a weather mechanic. Why would I stare at my screen for 30 minutes waiting for daylight when I can spend that time playing a different game instead?
counting in dusk/dawn it was really more like 20 minutes of darkness :D but yes I agree it was a bit unerving to have this happen. The first time I was blinded I thoght my old CRT monitor had gone out and restarted it several times!
Hmm what's a poor adventurer to do... I'd like to set out on a journey but I can't afford these store bought rations.
Maybe I could make some fish rolls. Out to that nearby cave I go in search of bat wings. Then it's off to do a bit of fishing. Damn it broke my pole with only 3 perch caught... O well it will have to be enough.
Skin the fish, prepare the bat wings and roll em up... a short baking in the communal oven and I'm ready to hit the dusty trail.
...Yes please
Kiz~
Angrykiz said:Hmm what's a poor adventurer to do... I'd like to set out on a journey but I can't afford these store bought rations.
Maybe I could make some fish rolls. Out to that nearby cave I go in search of bat wings. Then it's off to do a bit of fishing. Damn it broke my pole with only 3 perch caught... O well it will have to be enough.
Skin the fish, prepare the bat wings and roll em up... a short baking in the communal oven and I'm ready to hit the dusty trail.
...Yes please
Kiz~
I remember in EQ how little space you had to store anything on you so the easiest way for me was to just go fishing, catch those rusty daggers, they put up quite a fight lol, then go buy a backpack. Go back to the lake, dock etc and now that I had more slots I could fish longer and buy more backpacks until I finally got all of my slots filled with backpacks. To me those were good times/memories. I honestly believe the struggle is why those memories are stronger for me in EQ than in any other game. Its why I felt when I finally reached max lvl then got my epic I actually felt like I had accomplished something vs many other games where I felt no sense of anything. I was just max lvl. *shrug*
That must have been before weight reduction bags became the standard bearer. Early on in EQ I used to deal with weight issues also and limited my bags purposely to avoid them by encouraging myself not to carry as much. However (and I don't remember quite when) when the 100% weight reduction bags became commonplace from crafting, I swapped out as fast as I could an I'll admit I started having more inventory issues because I ended up going out of my way to carry tons of potions and other clickies that were handy to have.
As for weight reduction bags here, well I hope they remain a rarity, maybe offer one that players can obtain by quest but other than normal backpacks or other items to make weight relevant.
Iksar said:It was pretty uncommon for me to ever run out of bag space in EQ as it was far more likely that I would run out of carry weight well before filling all my bags with items.
When you 1st started the game you had zero backpacks and I believe you only had 6 slots so every single item you picked up took up a slot unless it was stackable like bones etc. Once I got some money to buy some normal backpacks I never really had much trbl and also those that were crafted became bigger and bigger over time. In general once I got past a certain lvl which wasnt very high money and weight werent a problem.
sunstalkr said:Iksar said:It was pretty uncommon for me to ever run out of bag space in EQ as it was far more likely that I would run out of carry weight well before filling all my bags with items.
When you 1st started the game you had zero backpacks and I believe you only had 6 slots so every single item you picked up took up a slot unless it was stackable like bones etc. Once I got some money to buy some normal backpacks I never really had much trbl and also those that were crafted became bigger and bigger over time. In general once I got past a certain lvl which wasnt very high money and weight werent a problem.
In EQ it often depended on class.
Casters generally have less strength than melee, so often you would find melee friends willing to carry some load until we could all get to the vendor to sell and split loots for the night.
But due to these restrictions it opened up horizontal development in the aquisition of weight reducing bags. Crafted, Quested and Dropped as I recall.
You come up with inventive ways of dealing with the weight.
It was always somewhat comical to see a toon struggling to get to the banker so weighted down they had to be buffed just to move.
Or if money has weight, remember the JBoos quest? You have to carry 1000 Gold to this super fast little Gnome. Usually this required the help of a friend to stop the little bugger while you wattled over with your 1000GP.
Fun times :P
-Az
-Az