We're all true believers here. We're participants in the forums for an MMO that isn't even in alpha. But it's an MMO that strives to return to lost norms of the genre, in terms of pacing, style, and social expectations. But let's sit down for a moment to discuss some of the "social expectations" of more modern MMOs, the inherent conflict they present, and whether either we or the developers can do anything about it.
A lot of people here hate the WoW-style philosophy that players, and especially DPS, live and die by meter performance. Pretending that won't happen here is somewhat facile. An entire generation of gamers in this genre know nothing else. And besides, the better-performing your group or raid is, the more it benefit you as well. The fetish for characters with "correct" builds and gear, and who make established performance targets, is enlightened self-interest.
But I think we all deplore the culture. It's probably impossible to prevent parsing. And we probably shouldn't want to, anyway. Even if there's no way to parse in-game, log analyzers existed in the ancestral before-time. Besides, being able to analyze your performance IS a good thing. The days when EQ spells didn't even have mechanics in their descriptions and you were just supposed to feel everything out are gone, and they will never come again. Even in EQ! But of course, parsing analysis is the back half of a problem. The front half is the modern MMO social expectation that characters are built to a single perfect target, or as close as possible. That other spell choices, stat allocations, or talent selections are wrong, and bad, and make you, the player, less desirable prima facie.
And that, to some extent, isn't wrong. Because MMO mechanics are math, when it comes down to it. And not very complicated math. WoW sports all of 4 stats these days (the "attribute" stats just scale with gear quality and offer no choices): crit, haste, mastery, versatility. What they do doesn't matter here. What matters is that the math involved is solvable, fairly trivially. Usually that means there's a "best stat" and a "second-best stat", and the goal is to merely assemble gear with those two stats (gear has two stats there), with the best stat ideally having the bigger value. Presto, a best in slot list emerges (not counting the titanforging mechanic, but that's inane and Pantheon won't be that dumb). Now and then, the optimal solution involves a benchmark. Something like: get 16.2% total haste, and afterward crit > mastery > the rest. Other times, a single mechanic ends up so influential that literally nothing else matters, although that frankly becomes a development problem rather than a social expectation problem (headline example would be late-Burning Crusade era Armor Penetration, where stacking it became superior to just about any other possible action; ultimately, the stat was literally removed entirely from the game).
If Pantheon is successful, people WILL build simulators, and the combat math WILL be solved, even if there are efforts to keep some of the mechanics under the hood. Frankly, I do professional software design and statistical analysis, and I've built from-scratch stat modelers for MMOs before. I could probably have a modeler before Live if I wanted to.
But most of us agree that's not the goal of this game. So how do we fix things? Broadly, I can think of two ways to help the situation...
The hard way is to make the math work in a way that prevents there from being universally right stats. Most likely, that means somewhat carefully tuned diminishing returns. Stacking crit > all no longer becomes optimal, because the overall net benefit of splitting the same "item level" worth of stats across N different values is superior. That encourages stat diversity in gear, and means that many different combinations of loot are approximately equivalent in terms of total value. But that's challenging to accomplish, because balancing that many spinning plates makes it hard to prevent something accidentally winding up an overperformer. Also, it sometimes risks making bonuses seem irrelevant, and it doesn't scale at all, especially as the game advances to higher-quality gear (unless the curves are periodically resealed, which is it's own issue).
Alternatively, "optimization" could be broken by externalities. For example, the effectiveness of various stats could differ based on the enemy types involved. Maybe it's harder to crit golems, for example, and so the optimal solution varies based on the encounter, or the zone, or whatever. The drawback here is that it encourages a LOT of gear swapping, and many people seem to really, really hate that (WoW, in particular, largely abandoned this model expansions ago). Also, there would still be "best" choices for specific bosses, so a certain segment of the population would expect (or at least encourage) that for whatever element of the content ends up being the hardest. The "environmental gear" model posited for this game suggests that's at least a consideration, but I cannot imagine that environmental adaptation is remotely sufficient.
Thoughts?
You're missing factors that WoW don't have...
For instance, there's not just the regular stat boosts. Pantheon has climate. That climate has positive and negative effects on the players. Different gear adjusts those positive and negative effects. So you could have the absolutely best dex stat gear and still die of cold. There is also situational gear and weapons. As an example. A piercing weapon will not do as much damage against a skeleton as a club will do, even if they both have the same stats. With Pantheon it's going to end up being more than 1+1=2.
Keep in mind that all of this is based on what I have seen and heard in the videos, no first-hand knowledge.
I, and others, definitely hate gear swapping...like you mentioned near the bottom of your post. It will be a thing in Pantheon. Hopefully it is minimized. I'm fine with it for a specific encounter but in everyday grouping where you might be in a variety of situations and have a variety of gear you should switch back and forth to for the best outcome...please please no. That's not fun. (even if it is easy to swap in and out)
You mention diminishing returns and how it effects gear. It reduces best in slot type of gear because what is best for you is dependant on your other stats. I'm for this. That was a thing in EQ. It still ends up where everyone is trying to generally hit the same number totals in the end, there are just multiple ways to get there. Projections of what are the most optimal stats are a given. I don't see that as a bad thing. Everyone wants to make the best character possible.
You bring up a very valid point and im wondering how they will address this. I for one hate, with a passion, the item level thing WoW has gotten use to using. To them and the entire player base, the stats honestly mean NOTHING until end game. Everyone is just pumping the highest item level gear just to get into higher end raids or dungeons. Frankly its retarded and they should go back to the way it use to be where we would inspect peoples gear to make sure they were up to par and fully enchanted and blah blah.
As much as I would like the whole item swapping aspect, thats just to much crap to deal with in inventory. Kind of like FFXIV where all your gear goes in an armory type inventory but it makes everything feel so cluttered.
I honestly can't think of a good balance besides MAYBE diminishing returns that change based on content release. Maybe even randomizing the amount of changes so trying to figure out the math wil be close to impossible.
Kalok said:You're missing factors that WoW don't have...
For instance, there's not just the regular stat boosts. Pantheon has climate. That climate has positive and negative effects on the players. Different gear adjusts those positive and negative effects. So you could have the absolutely best dex stat gear and still die of cold. There is also situational gear and weapons. As an example. A piercing weapon will not do as much damage against a skeleton as a club will do, even if they both have the same stats. With Pantheon it's going to end up being more than 1+1=2.
Keep in mind that all of this is based on what I have seen and heard in the videos, no first-hand knowledge.
Also of note, if they are still doing the diffrent colored mana, your build might require you to have gear that grants the color you need vs a stat you need.
Trust the devs. WoW was built with the goal of simplifying MMO's and making them more mass marketable. It did a fantastic job and was wildly successful. The devs here are aiming to fill a totally different niche that caters to people who enjoy a different style of game. I think they are way ahead of us on this one.
Great post, Qalyar.
When people talk about math, I tend to Zzzzzzzone out. It's my least favorite subject, which bums me out, given how pervasive and important it is. As such, I can't give any input on how to manipulate or "fudge" the math in order to solve this problem.
I think the way to do it is to create classes that require a modicum of skill - situational awareness, reflex, planning ahead, etc - in order to play effectively. The tanks in LOTRO come to mind.
The Guardian was your typical tank. They wore heavy armor, relied on mitigation, and used aggro generating taunts that were straightforward in nature. A guardians job consisted of finding the best armor, learning how to target what needs to be targeted, and making liberal use of their force taunts and snap aggro skills.
The Warden was not your typical tank. They wore medium armor, relied on avoidance and self-heals of many variations for survivability. Aggro was generated by leeching from fellow groupmates, by hate-over-time actions, and through their own self-heals. Skills were done through a "gambit" system using a variation of 3 base skills - Spear, Shield, Shout, effectively - to create more powerful actions as a result. (E.g. Shield, Shout, Shield, created a stronger AoE war cry or Shield, Spear, Shout, Shield, created a Heal-Over-Time for all group mates along with an aggro leech).
It was said, of the two tanks, that if you want a tank, find a Guardian with good gear - if you want a great tank, find a Warden played well.
You couldn't throw a stick without finding really crappy Wardens, but the ones that were played well were beasts of a tank.
Sure, gear was still important, but the deciding factor when determining who played a good Warden, and who played a bad warden, was skill every time. It didn't matter how much Vitality (Health) a Warden had as much as it did someone's ability to be able to keep themselves alive with self-heal gambits, while rotating between aggro and avoidance gambits.
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I don't think we can make math not matter completely, but if VR can find a way to make classes in such a way that require a degree of skill independent of what gear they're wearing (within reason. A Lvl 60 wearing patchwork won't be on the upper echelon now matter how good he/she is), then that would go a long way.
My hope is that situational gear is heavily emphasized, both in it's effectiveness and the challenge of acquiring it. You mention how critical strike might not be as effective against golems and I think that's a really good example of how things could be spiced up. My understanding is that we will indeed be able to swap out our gear, and be able to do it quickly. I imagine we'll have multiple load-out options. To me, I see all of this as a good thing. Rather than there being a single best formula for "BiS" there could be a large variety of pieces that can situationally thrive. Rather than making it so you have a few memorable items, you can make it so there can be a bunch of them. I think it should feel rewarding, for example, if a player acquires something that would allow them to be more powerful vs undead even if the area they acquire it in doesn't contain undead mobs. Another example is a piece of gear that allows them to be more adpative in various environments or atmospheres. The more situational gear there is, and there more kinds of environments where different situational gear can thrive, the better. Progression would feel more consistently rewarding, and there would be more potential NPC's or events that you can associate with the opportunity to earn that progression in the first place.
The key, I think, is balancing all of the spinning plates as you put it. You can create a game where you have 10 environmental resistances that you can progress toward but if 2 of them represent 80% of the content, players will naturally gravitate towards those areas and progression will start to become linear. If it were me, I would create a really large road-map of "situations" (that can be countered) and make an effort to have them all represented as evenly as possible. After that you start building the items that would allow players to counter these situations (let's call them solutions) and try to mix them around as diversely as possible. Rather than tanks being concerned about achieving the highest possible AC or HP, all resistances should come into play as something that they would like to start building up for. Additionally, I think there is merit in having a type of situational AC. You can plug in flat AC for the majority of armor but then also create secondary bonuses that offer additional piercing, slashing, or crushing resistance. I think this would give players another layer of progression to consider and reinforces the idea of preparing for the next battle.
I like to think that all of this could be a real boon for the questing system as well. I can't tell you how many quest rewards I have sold to merchants that literally had zero value outside of the coin it was sold for. If you create a diverse network of situational painpoints, you can now start gating the solutions to those painpoints behind quests (in addition to rare names). Now when you complete that quest for the remote desert tribe, you can acquire an item that will eventually have a situational value. This would be a breath of fresh air compared to 99% of quest rewards being merchant trash. This could also blend in really well with the lore. If you help the desert nomad tribe, maybe they can offer you a piece that can help you thrive in situations that occur more frequently in deserts. If you help a Dark Myr vagabond, maybe they give you a trident that is more effective vs certain kinds of water creatures. When you help the dwarven forgemaster, maybe he allows you to choose which kind of bonus (pierce/slash/crush resist) that he will apply to the breastplate that he is going to craft for you.
I really think it's important to have a large roadmap for itemization rather than plugging things in as you go along, zone by zone, or tier by tier. Someone should be monitoring which situations/solutions may be over or under represented on the grand scale and do what they can to keep things as balanced as possible. Outliers could be purposely plugged in and could be used to create rare, niche situations/solutions. Being the player that has the solution for those kind of situations would feel really rewarding. I guess that pretty much sums it up for me. What I don't want to see is a single set of bracers that drops from one mob that you can only kill once per week that is ideal for 75% of content. I saw that crap in EQ2 and sometimes it was even worse than that. I suppose someone could make the argument that acquiring that set of bracers would feel more meaningful or rewarding but at the end of the day it came down to pure luck. I would rather see a little more power put into the player's hands that allows them to semi-consistently progress toward a specific aspect of their progression if they possess the knowledge on how to do so, and have the willingness of friends to help them along the way.
More important than this robust itemization I speak of is creating content where the gear would be meaningful. If players can blast through the majority of content without considering situational gear at all, none of that could really work. I personally think it would be really cool if there are specific bosses or areas of the world that are too dangerous unless I have achieved very specific counters (solutions) that would allow me to survive. I would like to visit a new area and realize quickly that unless I bring a set of gear that is effective vs undead, has high cold resistance or crushing resistance, I'm going to have a really hard time and the risk vs reward might not be feasible. Obviously class spells/abilities will come into play which will definitely contribute as a factor. I guess it depends on how people want to be challenged. I would love to see content that I stand no chance against unless I am properly prepared. I don't want to see mindless tanking and spanking. I would enjoy having personal player driven side objectives to seek out specific types of situational gear that would allow me to adventure in an area I previously found that was simply too dangerous for me to be in at the time.
There are a few things I can think of that will help with this.
1) Challenge based on environmental factors and overall encounter complexity, rather than just raw power. One of the reasons that WoW (and other games) have gone the way that they have due to the heavily scripted encounters that they present players with. "Ok, the boss is going to do this set of attacks, then he's going to bring in adds, then he's going to switch to this other set of attacks". Because there's a set pattern, players learn the pattern, they learn how to counter it, and it then becomes all about how fast they can counter that pattern.
What if, instead, encounter design is more about setting up the situation than it is about setting up the individual mobs? "Ok there's a boss orc, he has a big cleave, and a knockback that he'll do on whoever has hate. He has three retainers that spawn with him when he's triggered, one's a cleric, the other's an enchanter, and the third is a rogue. His camp's at the top of a big cliff, and on the other side of the camp there's a bear cave with really angry bears (and the named shaman that spawns sometimes. In addition, there's three orc patrols that will path up through and around the camp periodically. Let's see what players do with that".
2) Breaking effects up into different attributes/skills, rather than piling them into a smaller number of stats, setting up player abilities to emphasize different stats within the same class, and then purposely doing itemization s that players sort of have to choose what different stats they want to build up on their characters. "Huh, If I go with a crit build, my backstabs get better, but they require me to be in stealth to really use them and that's hard to pull off in some fights. Or I could go with a dex/str build, which boosts my damage on most other abilities, but I won't do as much from stealth. Which should I do?"
3) Tie different attacks and combat effects to equipment choices, and then LIMIT how many corresponding skills people can cap simultaneously and ensure that there's content where each/all of them would be useful. . "If I'm using a shield I can bash for an interrupt chance and a pushback, but if I'm using a two handed sword I can cleave against multiple opponents. Oh but if I'm using a halberd I get a knockdown chance. Oh wait, axes let me do an armor strikethrough. Which skills should I raise? Man this is a hard choice."
4) Incorporate puzzle solving into encounters. "Guys, in order to damage the ancient golem we have to first deactivate the pillar behind him. To do that we need to pull out the three crystals in the rooms around him - you know, the ones with the spiders that spawn in them, but that little goblin that paths around will put the crystals back if he finds them out. How are we going to tackle this since we only have the 6 of us?"
Just some thoughts :)
Maximis said:Kalok said:You're missing factors that WoW don't have...
For instance, there's not just the regular stat boosts. Pantheon has climate. That climate has positive and negative effects on the players. Different gear adjusts those positive and negative effects. So you could have the absolutely best dex stat gear and still die of cold. There is also situational gear and weapons. As an example. A piercing weapon will not do as much damage against a skeleton as a club will do, even if they both have the same stats. With Pantheon it's going to end up being more than 1+1=2.
Keep in mind that all of this is based on what I have seen and heard in the videos, no first-hand knowledge.
Also of note, if they are still doing the diffrent colored mana, your build might require you to have gear that grants the color you need vs a stat you need.
I completely forgot about that. Good catch.
I hope that rapid gear swapping is not a thing mid-fight. I hope that easy gear swapping is.
I don't want to have to root through my bags to find all my cold gear each time I need it. Invariably I'll forget to re-equip a slot or two and the whole inventory management thing becomes a nightmare. Nor do I want a situation where the raid leader yells "Switch gear" and we press a magic button that essentially means we called for a time-out, all the adventurers put down their weapons, stripped down to their knickers, redressed and resumed the fight. Changing gear should perhaps be a UI element that's not available if you're in combat.
LOTRO had a system that was designed for players to have multiple cosmetic outfits. You essentially had the character gear UI with tabs for each gear set. I think something similar could be used for Pantheon, but for your main gear. I'd like to see armour stored separately from normal inventory so we can fill up the armour storage without having to sort through junk loot, food, stuff you're planning to sell to a vendor, etc...
Min-maxing is always going to be a thing. I believe the alternative is "nobody gives a crap about their gear because it doesn't matter". A big part of playing a game like Pantheon is improving your gear. In order to improve, you need to make careful selections about what matters most to your class, situation or play style. Situational gear is going to be important but it does need to be relatively easy to manage.
From an old Chris Perkins blog:
"There will be 6 Extreme Climates at launch: Frigid, Scorching, Toxic, Anaerobic, Pressure and Windshear. Each of these Extreme Climates will have five tiers of potency with which they can exist in the world, which will determine the scope and severity of its effects on the player."
So I assume we will need at least 7 sets of gear, our main set and then one for each climate. I can imagine you will only need a few pieces of gear to acclimatise you and the bulk of your main set will be constant. You may just bring in a few items that have the necessary bonus to help you deal with the relevant climate.
Combine this with different types of weapons affecting different types of mobs I think we will all have very varied sets of gear... It just needs to be easy to store, access and equip them.
Kipling said:Preechr said: Didn’t they already explain that environmental acclimatization will exist on the player body parts, not on armor parts?Having just re-watched a stream... yes! So we will not have to keep swapping gear for the enviroment...
I believe there still will be some gear that gives you bonuses or makes it easier for you to acclimate, but gear certainly won't be the only factor, so gear swapping won't always be necessary.
As you say, the math is really not that difficult, and figuring out what stats and powers work together the best with your class and build (to many of us) is where all the fun is
By experimentation we learn what works and what doesn't, but then kids come in with the idea that the best way to have fun is to skip all that and just ask people to do all that for them
It is a niche game, and the niche is pretty much that this is the game that doesn't work like that
This will be a social game that relies on players grouping with and helping other players, however, and that, to me, is where the issue emerges
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If I am the player that that is hyper focused on getting the gear I read was BiS in the build guide everyone recommended to me, I can just treat that as a shopping list
I found out what I need to do to get each of those pieces and I get people to help me attain my goals
Sure, along the way I will likely be told by many players that it is more important that I learn my class and develop my skills, but because this cheat-sheet method has always worked so well for me in all the other games I've played and the rotation I read I should use seems to work just fine, I just ignore all that and keep on truckin
The people I group with that yell at me in dungeon groups for using the "wrong" skills for the situation are probably just grumpy
Once I finally get all that gear on my shopping list, I am disappointed that after expending all that effort, doing what has always worked for me, I am not the God of all DPS I was led to believe I would be
Since stubbornness and refusing to listen to others is what got me in this position, I am really unlikely to stick around
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So, while I didn't have the wrong goals, I had a bad understanding of the game itself and ended my experience feeling I had wasted my time
In a way, maybe that's true, and to a degree, I also wasted the time of all the people that helped me get all that BiS gear... all because I had the wrong motivations going in
Had I started my time in Pantheon with the proper long term goals in mind, I would have been much more likely to have remained in the game and become a skilled and valuable player with great gear
There's no way to counter that mentallity, if players wanna have an advantage and only play with the best geared players, or the best group/raid composition possible there's nothing you can do about it, and there's nothing wrong with it, everyone has different goals in the game.
But there are measures VR can take to diminish/Not facilitate that mentalitty and make the overall community more accepting of "off meta" playstyles.
One major step for this has already been taken, No ingame damage/threat meters. By not allowing easy access to tools that determine if you're good or bad based only on Dmg/healing done you eleminate one of the most commom metrics to supposedly find good/bad players. This will make it a lot harder to distinguish a player using a build that 5-10% behind on perfoemance, because there's no instant method of determining if their Dmg/healing output. Obviously if you have a terrible player in your group that AFK most of the time, just auto-attacks and is dealing terrible dmg you'll eventually notice it, it's not that hard, but if you have a player that's using a build that's 5-10% behind (on paper) but he's doing everything correctly you'll not notice any difference from a player using the optimal build, because there's no way to instantly check dmg/healing output.
Another big step (already taken I believe) is not having gear score, item level, or achievments, these things create a system where "everything below gearscore/Itemlvl X is crap and cannot joing our group" aswell as achievemtn checks being used to determine your skill "no achievement X, well to bad you cannot join". By not having these easy metrics to evaluate players, Pug groups will have to trust the players they're inviting, inspect their gear to see if they're actually decently geared and eventually deciding if the player in question is good or bad after having played with them, not beforehand (basing their judgment only on a number or achievement system).
qalyar said: I do not believe it is possible to "counter" the desire of players to want to know the best build, the best gear, and the best rotation for their class.
I agree. I think the trick is to make gear choices sufficiently meaningful and complex. I think PRotF will end up having a number of BiS options based on the monsters body type, resistances, weaknesses, spells, abilities, area cimates, and so on rather than a static BiS.
Preechr said: It’s my impression that gaming in general is teaching young players that everything but skill matters,
I disagree. There is a huge demand for skill based games. LoL is now the most popular competitive video game in the world mostly because of the incredibly high skill cap. I think one of the major challenges VR has is setting the skill cap at a level that will challenge average players without alienating less talented players. A very hard balance to find if you ask me.
For me the biggest part is making it feel less like a math problem and more like a cost benefit analysis. You can expand horizontally as some have described and that certainly helps open up the field of what is optimal when. If there is enough of that situation differentiation, then the question "what's best for me" will be answered with a "well....", which is wonderful. However, I think a big part of it comes into accessibility and what I want is a game where you can determine what the BiS is, but the top BiS for a situation is outrageously difficult to acquire, the second top BiS would be absurdly difficult to acquire, the third being very difficult, and so on and so forth. What I would like is for people to be able to calculate what the BiS is, then say "that's far too difficult for me to get, what is the best value for the commitment that I'm willing to put in?" If it is reasonable to acquire anything that exists, then you might as well save time by only getting the best. If there are better options that you cannot reasonably acquire, then the question becomes a cost benefit analysis. Sure, the BiS dragon killing sword may be A and the next best is B, but if I spend a few days farming C or D, then maybe that's good enough for me. If A/B aren't in the game, then it is instinctive to say "I'll figure out whether C or D is better, then get the best and be done sword hunting and move onto other tasks". I want people to be ask "what's best for me vs. dragons" and still be answered with a "well.....".
There may or may not always be the "correct" answer, but the more you muddy the waters, the more room there will be for people to move in different directions.
Also...
Not all modern MMO players have toxicity coursing through their veins and I hope everyone here recognizes that. It's only human to learn as much as is necessary to accomplish your goals and I think qalyar did a good job in acknowledging the practicality of parsing and googling the BiS list and optimal rotation for your class. We all hope that Pantheon will be different, but another important question is what happens to those players from modern MMOs when they get to Pantheon. Anticipating their issues is only the first step.
It is my opinion that it is the duty of both the developers and the community to welcome good meaning players and teach them how the game works with understanding and kindness. If Pantheon is filled with players who shout "go back to WoW you rotation seeking nub", then I think we have failed.
jpedrote said:There's no way to counter that mentallity, if players wanna have an advantage and only play with the best geared players, or the best group/raid composition possible there's nothing you can do about it, and there's nothing wrong with it, everyone has different goals in the game.
But there are measures VR can take to diminish/Not facilitate that mentalitty and make the overall community more accepting of "off meta" playstyles.
One major step for this has already been taken, No ingame damage/threat meters. By not allowing easy access to tools that determine if you're good or bad based only on Dmg/healing done you eleminate one of the most commom metrics to supposedly find good/bad players. This will make it a lot harder to distinguish a player using a build that 5-10% behind on perfoemance, because there's no instant method of determining if their Dmg/healing output. Obviously if you have a terrible player in your group that AFK most of the time, just auto-attacks and is dealing terrible dmg you'll eventually notice it, it's not that hard, but if you have a player that's using a build that's 5-10% behind (on paper) but he's doing everything correctly you'll not notice any difference from a player using the optimal build, because there's no way to instantly check dmg/healing output.
Another big step (already taken I believe) is not having gear score, item level, or achievments, these things create a system where "everything below gearscore/Itemlvl X is crap and cannot joing our group" aswell as achievemtn checks being used to determine your skill "no achievement X, well to bad you cannot join". By not having these easy metrics to evaluate players, Pug groups will have to trust the players they're inviting, inspect their gear to see if they're actually decently geared and eventually deciding if the player in question is good or bad after having played with them, not beforehand (basing their judgment only on a number or achievement system).
My hope is that players will have the option to /hide their gear from inspection. This was the case in EQOA and it's my understanding that it is at the very least being considered for Pantheon. Some groups may require you to /unhide your gear so that they can inspect you, but it is what it is.