On Discord, we discussed the idea of a Beastiary that would fill up the more you killed a certain monster. You would also get bonus XP from each kill until your Beastiary was complete after you filled it up completely. Once you completed the Beastiary entry, you would see all of the stats, strengths, and weaknesses of that particular monster. You would have an entry for each monster, not just the type. For example, an Orc Centurion would have a different entry than an Orc Oracle.
To offset the added XP, overall XP gains would decrease slightly to offset the Beastiary XP. This change would benefit players by:
1) encouraging players to kill new monsters and experience new content;
2) discourage players camping the same monsters for hours on end;
3) encourage dungeon delving;
4) makes the fastest way to level to experience as much content as possible.
What are your thoughts?
Love it!
Perhaps the beastiary should not quite give away ALL the secrets of a particular entry, but I like where this is headed.
I'm in favour of anything that encourages people to travel, experience new content and not just grind a zone until their eyes bleed.
The beastiary should have some method to know how you are progressing, without giving away lists of mob types or anything quite so encyclopaedic.
metteec said:On Discord, we discussed the idea of a Beastiary that would fill up the more you killed a certain monster. You would also get bonus XP from each kill until your Beastiary was complete after you filled it up completely. Once you completed the Beastiary entry, you would see all of the stats, strengths, and weaknesses of that particular monster. You would have an entry for each monster, not just the type. For example, an Orc Centurion would have a different entry than an Orc Oracle.
To offset the added XP, overall XP gains would decrease slightly to offset the Beastiary XP. This change would benefit players by:
1) encouraging players to kill new monsters and experience new content;
2) discourage players camping the same monsters for hours on end;
3) encourage dungeon delving;
4) makes the fastest way to level to experience as much content as possible.
What are your thoughts?
While I like the idea of filling up a personal beastiary as you adventure through the world, modifying XP through some gimmicky mechanic is bad design. People who want to fill such a bestiary will do so regardless of any XP changes and people who don't care won't be swayed either way. So it becomes irrelevant. If you want some reward other than just filling the book make completeting an entry for each race let the player choose a title (EQ2 had this), or perhaps some small statue to put in a house or guildhall (if those ever become a thing).
The primary purpose of the system is not to fill up the beastiary. It is to incentivize players to try other content because they would get better XP. As Celandor stated, less players would grind a single spot because there was a benefit of trying different content.
metteec said:On Discord, we discussed the idea of a Beastiary that would fill up the more you killed a certain monster. You would also get bonus XP from each kill until your Beastiary was complete after you filled it up completely. Once you completed the Beastiary entry, you would see all of the stats, strengths, and weaknesses of that particular monster. You would have an entry for each monster, not just the type. For example, an Orc Centurion would have a different entry than an Orc Oracle.
To offset the added XP, overall XP gains would decrease slightly to offset the Beastiary XP. This change would benefit players by:
1) encouraging players to kill new monsters and experience new content;
2) discourage players camping the same monsters for hours on end;
3) encourage dungeon delving;
4) makes the fastest way to level to experience as much content as possible.
What are your thoughts?
While I'm not against things like this, I'm not too keen on features that try to get players to play a certain way or with a certain mindset. A player shouldn't be penalized if they like to stay in one area. If they wish to move to another area, then they can on their own. Giving someone a bonus for playing a certain way is nothing more than penalizing those that don't play in that way.
To me this falls into the same category as other mechanics that dictate play style, such as bonus XP for staying logged out.
While I get the point of the idea, I think it also has a detrimental community effect...
Hey so and so, we're going to kill such and such... want to come?
Nah... my bestiary is full of them, I get crap exp.
AND - even if you don't have that conversation, you have different people of the same level getting different exp from killing the same mob...
Love the idea, and agree that it shouldn't be tied to experience gain. Although some sort of reward would be nice, something cosmetic to show off your achievement. I like the suggestion of a title. You could earn a title for filling out 20%, 40%, and so on, values subject to change.
This could be a pretty good tie in with the perception system. Rather than have the Beastiary modify the incoming exp directly have the benefit to the perception system be limited to a certain number of kills. As you kill mobs in a zone of the same type it slowly unlocks a listing of the different mobs of that type in the zone appears. When you have "studied" the enemies enough in the zone you gain the ability to trigger named spawns, with a frequency limitation, as a means of getting the valuable drops in a slightly more controlled manor.
Additionally when you have killed enough in the zone you learn other locations where similar creatures are located. As you travel around Terminus hunting that specific type of creature you gain bonuses when fighting them and increased chance to receive rare item drops as your experience with them increases. Further down the road, after learning enough from say 6 different zones with Orcs, you gain the ability to spot the hidden entrance to a high level temporary dungeon. The entrance to that dungeon moves around and is not always open. Only those with a high enough total Orc perception can find the trigger to open the entrance.
This could also be tied into things like collecting hides. As you collect hides from different animals you become better at preserving the quality of the hide. Without a minimum amount of experience taking the hide off of different creatures you may not even be able to get hides off of high level magical creatures.
I wonder if VR has considered moving dungeon enterances. Regardless of if it is tied into the perception system the idea seems pretty cool. It would force people to wander around a zone to find something rather than running across x zoneline until you find the zone wall you want.
Trasak
I'm okay with a slight XP boost for killing a unique mob or mob-type, but only for the first time. Something like this still encourages exploration but also wouldn't penalize people for staying in a specific area.
My personal preference as it relates to "bonus XP" would be using an XP Chain feature similar to what was available in FFXI. That's another topic but here is a link where it was explained/discussed: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/6403/xp-bonus-chains
So in the Discord conversation, the idea originally came up as a penalty for killing the same thing over and over - diminishing returns. The thoughts that were driving that were around trying to find ways to prevent people from monopolizing camps just for XP purposes.
Along the way in that discussion, it was suggested that switching it to some kind of a bonus for the first few kills, instead of a true penalty, would be a better idea, so that it wouldn't penalize players who just wanted to play with their friends or something.
Personally - I don't see a bestiary system as a negative. You're not losing anything if you continue to kill mob X after your bestiary is full. You've just exhausted your bonus for them. I also like the idea of tieing it to other things, perhaps a lore system as we've talked about previously.
I think the responses I'm seeing so far range from "a temporary bonus is a penalty in disguise" (which, honestly, I think is a little over the top) to "I don't really like the idea of XP bonuses at all" (which I can understand somewhat), to "I don't want anything that even remotely tries to influence how I play!" (would you like a sign to tell the game to get off your lawn? It just seems silly).
Yes, I'm uppity today.
Anyway, I like this idea, because:
1) It grants a benefit to people who move around and explore different areas, rather than staying in the same "most efficient" camp spot to level.
2) It acts as a vehicle/tie-in for other interesting systems like lore bonuses that might be related to the killing of monsters.
DDO had a very similar system called the Monster Manual that was pretty cool. We were just talking about this here: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/7486/lore-and-legend
I like the idea and think there should be xp rewards for the first kill of a new type of enemy to encourage exploration.
Killing a large number of the enemy could give an xp reward but I would prefer it giving a bonus for future combat with that enemy. After killing 10,000 deer getting +1 against Bambi is eminently logical - one would have considerable skill in knowing and hitting the most vulnerable spots and hunting it very efficiently.
My opinion might not be the same in a different game but whether we like it or not (and most probably do) Pantheon will involve a lot more grinding and less questing than many of us are used to. Anything that makes the grinding less tedious is good and different rewards for different types of mobs can do that.
Or maybe the 10.000th deer drops "a perfect antler" that a skilled crafter (player or NPC) can make into a nice house trophy, special looking helmet or the like. Not necessarily useful rather than cosmetic. Or alternatively every deer has a .00001 chance to drop such.
Limiting the number of static spawns will also significantly change the "camp" dynamic. If a certain area has a target mob population then the rate at which mobs respawn is based on how many are missing bellow the target and which mob randomly spawns is weighted based on the target population. All spawn locations can theoretically spawn any of the mobs in the zone. Each mob has a “daily life” pattern based on what it is and will begin to run that script after it spawns, moving about the area. Potentially there could be 5 different orc pawns coded in the camp and each has their own “daily life”.
An example would be that Pawn A moves from the wood pile on one side of the camp and walks to the baking tent. Then walks to the guard station do deliver lunch then goes back to the wood pile. Regardless of where Pawn A spawned from he would start that rotation.
I like the idea of an evolving beastiary, but I'm not a fan of a bonus experience incentive. Also, I would like the player to have to be more involved in its completion than just killing X number of mob. The perception idea above proposed by Trasak is a good idea, and I'd like to take it even a bit further.
I've discussed it on these forums in the past, but I would love to see Pantheon have more depth to skills and cherry-pick a few ideas from Project Gorgon - I think you could add to the depth of the game and give someone an alternative (horizontal) form of progression without penalizing others.
Here is a link to the Project Gorgon System and I've pasted the summary below:
http://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Anatomy
Anatomy is a general knowledge skill that encompasses a great number of species-specific Anatomy skills. Elemental, Fungoid, and Crone-Kin are just a few of the Anatomy sub-skills you may encounter. As you improve your skill at reading the Anatomy of various creatures, you will begin to learn more about them. More details will be available in a monster's target window. Eventually, students of the Anatomy skill will learn to read an opponents combat abilities and weaknesses at just a glance.
You learn the mobs by conducting "autoposies" on them. Obviously, the wording could be changed to fit Pantheon better and perhaps tie it into Perception as well, but Project Gorgon has a lot of good ideas in it that adds to depth.
Or maybe from a horizontal perspective, keep the initial bonus exp to encourage exploration and either 1. have the bestiary include some information, like caster, shaman, warrior, rogue (rare war-wizard!) so you can decide what you are up against or 2. keep the exp the same but have bane damage learned? so you there is a RNG chance at proccing bane damage against a certian monster.The second idea may be a bit like min-maxxing, but with the random nature it might balance it out.
FFXIV has hunting logs that give a ton of exp when an entry is completed or a set of ten entries is finished. FFXIV can be a grind but they put in a ton of quests and leves that let you get through lower levels so you can continue with the Main Scenario Quests, because in the end the game is about the story (which is set in stone, like a typical single player FF game). My thoughts:
For a grind-oriented game I'm against an auto-filled bestiary that gives exp bonuses. It either prompts players to become roving gangs of bonus exp hunters, or it ends up a negligible feature if it's too hard to get those bonuses.
What I think would be a cool thing is if, by hunting new creatures, we could get a page to put in the bestiary that we fill out ourselves. Things like how much HP they've got, resists, weaknesses, etc, and random notes like what happened in our first encounter with the creature. That way we're more invested in figuring out the mobs ourselves (or getting info from other players).
If we get a page in it and it's already filled out with generic lore info like a Pokedex, psshhhht. I don't read those! Okay, maybe like once a month when I feel like being entertained. But if its only purpose is to give a random exp bonus to encourage exploration I'm probably just going to ignore it or only think of it in passing, especially if we're meant to be grinding. Min-maxers will exploit it hard to level up as fast as possible.
Bottom line, I am against auto Pokedex bestiaries that give exp bonuses. I am for in-game wiki-style bestiaries where we put in info ourselves.
I liked the idea of various body parts dropping that can be studied to complete an entry in the Beastiary and award bonus XP (one time per unique body part). Having your Beastiary full could open up the perception mechanic for additional quests and bonuses (such as +damage to that particular monster or -damage taken). Completing the beastiary for an entire zone could also reward a title for that zone (e.g., Konan, Orc Slayer).
Once again, I'm not against this idea, but I do have the following though. How is this any different than going to an area and getting a bunch of quests involving you to kill orcs (kill 10 orcs, gather 10 orc ears, kill a specific orc in a camp that requires you to kill other orcs to get to)? Basically we're taking away quests to give bonus experience for doing certain things in an area and then moving characters to the next area to get the next set of quests to kill things in that area; so that we can give bonus xp to characters killing things in an area for a while and then incentivising them to move to another area to kill things?
I still come back to, let me play how I want to play. If I don't want to move to another area, I shouldn't feel like I need to just because it would be more effecient. Other standard game mechanics should decide that, and when I want to go I will. I should want to leave because another area might have items me or my friends need, or the current area is too low level now, or I just want to explore, or I'm bored of killing orcs over and over again.
One of the tenants of Pantheon is to remove that feeling like you're on rails. Don't replace the mechanics that did it with different mechanics to do it. While this isn't exactly rails, since it doesn't take you from place to place, it is close as it penalizes you for not moving on from where you are.
From how I read VRs vision of the perception system it is intended to replace the common questing system so that only good story quests are put into the game. The perception system is also a source of horizontal progression. The default way to play is just grind what every you want from level 1-50. Everything else is just bonus content to do.
There is a manga called Goblin Slayer that is pretty cool and focuses on a character that only ever hunts goblins and never goes after anything else his entire adventuring carrier. It would be interesting if something like that would be possible. This is another instance where the log power curve would facilitate really personalized play choices.
Trasak
metteec said:The primary purpose of the system is not to fill up the beastiary. It is to incentivize players to try other content because they would get better XP. As Celandor stated, less players would grind a single spot because there was a benefit of trying different content.
I'm unsure if that would actually work other than in theory. To kill other types of monsters players will have to go seek them out... moving to find other monsters is not gaining exp. That is down time.
In order to make the exp better than staying in one spot the bestiary would have to VERY heavily modify exp. The exp bonus would have to be so extreme that it makes up for the down time of searching out other mobs, otherwise it is simply best for the player to stay in the same spot and not stop killing.
I don't think you are taking into account how extreme the exp bonus would have to be to make people move from their spot...it would be unbalanced.
Wandidar said:While I get the point of the idea, I think it also has a detrimental community effect...
Hey so and so, we're going to kill such and such... want to come?
Nah... my bestiary is full of them, I get crap exp.
AND - even if you don't have that conversation, you have different people of the same level getting different exp from killing the same mob...
That was exactly my first impression. People will be looking for groups based on creature type and not just the social aspect. More mobs will have more spawns then others and bottle necks will be created. Rare gear is bad enough. Don't need to thrown in dps races for certain mob types.
I do like the idea of something to do with beastiary but it should be tied into the perception system and not offer xp bonuses but perhaps a bane type damage modifier % chance or crit chance on that type of mob. damage modifier would be useful and encourage people to seek new content but not as important as xp gain.
To the OP, I like the idea but in my opinion it needs a bit of tweaking.
I didn't think the idea was to give higher xp for a bestiary mob kill, I thought the idea was to give a bit of xp upon completion of the bestiary. As well as, possibly, a non-xp reward such as "Bambi bane" as a title for killing deer or a bearskin rug for a house (if we get those) for killing bears. Emphasis "a bit" of xp. Not enough to e.g. raise xp per kill from 50 to 60. Just a little because many of us do things that give xp and skip things that give none whatever. I don't necessarily see that as unbalancing.
dorotea said:I didn't think the idea was to give higher xp for a bestiary mob kill, I thought the idea was to give a bit of xp upon completion of the bestiary. As well as, possibly, a non-xp reward such as "Bambi bane" as a title for killing deer or a bearskin rug for a house (if we get those) for killing bears. Emphasis "a bit" of xp. Not enough to e.g. raise xp per kill from 50 to 60. Just a little because many of us do things that give xp and skip things that give none whatever. I don't necessarily see that as unbalancing.
When powerlevelers and other smart people create leveling rotations on mob types and zone locations then yes that will become the norm to leveling up and even more camped. Ever try the SSRA emp key on EQ progression servers? Would be the same thing. Someone made a thread on Emergent Phenomena, this would be an example.