Has there been any thought and/or discussion about having quests that are group quests, based on characters race? i.e. it takes a group of 3 or 6 or some number, all of the same race, to complete a race-based Terminus quest? For instance, maybe a group of Ogres goes looking for their Tomes, and each class in the group gets a separate reward? Terminus seems to be heavily entrenched in the race segregation, at least with respect to how each one came separately to the realm, so this might be a cool little wrinkle?
Interesting idea, for sure. I don't know that I would want to limit it to groups though. I don't see why a solo player shouldn't be able to do a specific racial quest on their own, if they can. Additionally, this could be another factor in how people choose their races. Maybe different races have access to different quests that offer different rewards / faction gains.
I think it would be cool to have racial rites of passage. To become a warrior, you have to lead a party to hunt down and kill a boar or some appropriate mob for your region/lore. I'm not sure whether your hunting need be all from your hometown, but they should be below a certain level cap.
Somewhat related, I'd like to see racial foods and beverages across Terminus. Not just racial in name, but actually have food and drink which is not palatable to other races unless they acclimatize and develop a tolerance (or even liking) to them. While you're building up your tolerance, you may start off making yourself sick, work your way up a scale of decreased negative and more positive impact. Some foods may have more value for certain races and lower bonuses for others. The trick will be to find and develop a taste for food in different regions to find what benefits you most.
Celandor said:That second idea seems really complicated implementation-wise, particularly since we have 'Provisioner' as a crafting category. It sounds like a fun idea to collect racial recipes by traveling to their cities, that's great, but the individual tolerance mechanic seems extremely resource-intensive. Probably not even close to being worth the time, computing power, and money it would take to implement.I think it would be cool to have racial rites of passage. To become a warrior, you have to lead a party to hunt down and kill a boar or some appropriate mob for your region/lore. I'm not sure whether your hunting need be all from your hometown, but they should be below a certain level cap.
Somewhat related, I'd like to see racial foods and beverages across Terminus. Not just racial in name, but actually have food and drink which is not palatable to other races unless they acclimatize and develop a tolerance (or even liking) to them. While you're building up your tolerance, you may start off making yourself sick, work your way up a scale of decreased negative and more positive impact. Some foods may have more value for certain races and lower bonuses for others. The trick will be to find and develop a taste for food in different regions to find what benefits you most.
Racial rites of passage are a great idea though. There's some problematic connotations with the phrase, since it's usually used to denote a ceremony that marks a crossing from childhood to adulthood, and that makes some backstories for the roleplayers a little complicated, but with the correct implementation it could be a really great and flavorful bunch of quests.
TripleD said:Has there been any thought and/or discussion about having quests that are group quests, based on characters race? i.e. it takes a group of 3 or 6 or some number, all of the same race, to complete a race-based Terminus quest? For instance, maybe a group of Ogres goes looking for their Tomes, and each class in the group gets a separate reward? Terminus seems to be heavily entrenched in the race segregation, at least with respect to how each one came separately to the realm, so this might be a cool little wrinkle?
I don't think there should be many quests, but this would be a cool way of doing one.
LOTRO, I believe, had class specific quest-lines (at least until a certain level. I believe they trickled off after a while.) with pretty interesting story lines. For instance, as a Warden, one quest transported you to an instanced event where you would stand in a line with other NPC wardens, fighting against an onslaught of rushing orcs or bandits - the idea being to "Hold the line!". Upon completion, you'd receive a new attack skill.
It was a cool idea, and one I wouldn't mind seeing implemented by race in Pantheon - minus the instanced event, that is.
Anything that incentivizes helping others with something you don't need is good in my book. The idea is to create a culture where you generally want to help others, because you know that you're going to be in a situation where you have to ask others for help with something they don't need at some point.
Not a fan of this idea. Some races have very few classes to pick from, and not all of them have all four parts that a group needs (healer, tank, dps, cc) so you wouldn't be able to have a traditional style combat during your quest if you were one of those races. I'm sure a creative dev could find a way around this, but I am also not a fan of handing dev's additional work that is going to further slow the release, especially for such a small payoff.
LOTRO had class quests at levels 15, 30, 39, 45 and 58. The one at 39 was the same for every class in the game and the last two had little or nothing that actually had anything to do with what class you were. They seemed to lose interest after designing the level 30 quests. LOTRO also had quests needed to advance your crafting profession but those have long since been abandoned as the game was oversimplified and made far too easy. Quests tied to class, race or profession are IMO a very good thing.
EQ2 also had class quests way back when. You picked an overall class at character creation but you needed to do a quest to specialize within the class and then later on (level 20 as I recall) another quest to specialize further. I liked that system too.
Other MMOs had crafting or class quests too, of course. I do not recall race based quests unless one counts the quests in a racial starting area where ALL quests were intended for the race in question and often tied to that race's lore.
I like the idea of racial quests but Xbachs raises a good point (its the same reason I won't join a single-race guild even if I am roleplaying). The two obvious solutions are to make racial quests solo (something that I normally would push for as I tend to play with m .....er I tend to play solo a lot) or to make them small-group to encourage socialization but doable without a tank, healer or crowd control class so it won't matter what roles are available within the group. Oddly enough for me I prefer the latter option in a game focused on grouping.
Gnomes don't have healers or tanks and (surprisingly) Ogres don't have a true DPS class assuming that Warrior and Dire Lord end up tank only classes, but all other races have a decent trinity/quatrinity available
Thing is, the quests in question could easily be engineered around any deficiencies in the race/class offerings, and the quests wouldn't have to be strictly of a running a dungeon type
Even so, using Gnomes as an example, lets say some field scientists captured a strange creature and brought it back to Skyhold for study, but it got loose, grabbed some important McGuffin and escaped
A group of intrepid Gnomes band together to track down the thing-a-ma-bob, but the head of the science department gives them a few prototype tools to aid in their search:
1. A magical tracking device that only works at higher elevations
2. A strobe ball that flashes bright lights in aggravating patterns that will draw the attention of any mobs (tank substitute)
3. A big bag of healing kits
4. A strongbox to hold the McGuffin
Then, off they go to track the creature back to his lair, which is obviously a dangerous cave filled with all sorts of subterranean monsters they'll have to fight through using their gnomish ingenuity along with their class skills
I don't know what the Ogres could do to make up for their lack of a DPS class... Maybe eat beans and take matches?
Barefoot, through the snow, uphill, BOTH WAYS!
Sneaky roleplay, subtle immersion- that may sneak up on the player as nostalgic early on.
Let me explain the above thoughts I got from reading this post and the comments. First of all I like the idea, because even with the class limitations and no mcguffins, it makes the player learn their class, and more importantly learn how to play with their own race and be competent even with the limitations.
When they finally get to a Human settlement ths Skar may be in shock of the human healer and scoff "we dont need no steengkeeng heelers!" Thats subtle rolepay, thats accidental immersion in the "way of the skar" that creates a culture clash completely outside RL that can be explored in game while trying to figure out how to include this human healer in this hunt you are going on. Of course, Skar and gnomes may get along- the human may wonder why they are so frantic to kill the one monster and try to expres how- more than one can be held... through the snow, both ways... like we humans USED to do it. While the gnomes can say how THEY do it barefooted and uphill- with no problem at all.
I think Racial group quests would do all of that without it being too obvious.
Manouk said:Barefoot, through the snow, uphill, BOTH WAYS!
Sneaky roleplay, subtle immersion- that may sneak up on the player as nostalgic early on.
Let me explain the above thoughts I got from reading this post and the comments. First of all I like the idea, because even with the class limitations and no mcguffins, it makes the player learn their class, and more importantly learn how to play with their own race and be competent even with the limitations.
When they finally get to a Human settlement ths Skar may be in shock of the human healer and scoff "we dont need no steengkeeng heelers!" Thats subtle rolepay, thats accidental immersion in the "way of the skar" that creates a culture clash completely outside RL that can be explored in game while trying to figure out how to include this human healer in this hunt you are going on. Of course, Skar and gnomes may get along- the human may wonder why they are so frantic to kill the one monster and try to expres how- more than one can be held... through the snow, both ways... like we humans USED to do it. While the gnomes can say how THEY do it barefooted and uphill- with no problem at all.
I think Racial group quests would do all of that without it being too obvious.
Ha. Totally behind this line of thinking.
I think race based quests is a fantastic idea. Especially if you're looking to "gain favor" with the leaders of a specific race/city.
I think faction quests would be a good idea too. Are you an Ogre that wants to visit a city where you're ordinarily KoS? Maybe you have to go do a series of quests for the guards of that city, say bounty hunting or something, to gain faction with the city guards. Once you have that, maybe you have to do a series of quests to gain favor with the merchants of the city, say obtain "food stuffs" from a place where they are normally KoS in order for them to offer "dellicasies" to their customers. Once you have that maybe you have to perform some quests for the city leadership to finish off the "trifecta" to be viewed warmly. I think, depending on the faction quests, you shouldn't necessarily take a big faction hit with your own people as well. For instance, using the food one as an example, why should you now be KoS in your city for doing it? Maybe worst-case for some of the quest lines, you are "looked down on", but not necessarily hated in your city for "currying favor with those dogs".
To take that a step further, maybve there are multiple kinds of querst lines that take longer or shorter. For instance, a quest line that wouldn't make you KoS to your own people would take longer than a quest line that would make you KoS to your own people. Then players would have the choice of being liked in their home city or not. Maybe the above-example Ogre really wants to become "a good guy" so he doesn't care that he is KoS ion his own lands and wants to live in a new city. He could mow down his brethren like it's the national past time tin order to curry favor quicker. Maybe he just wants to expand the places that he can travel, so he takes the slower-speed quest line in order to remain freiendly in his own home city and expand his horizons to other cities.
TripleD said:Has there been any thought and/or discussion about having quests that are group quests, based on characters race?
There was a quest like this on the venerable Final Fantasy XI MMORPG. I beleive it was a quest at San d'Oria city called "Intermediate Teamwork", the second quest in a 3-part quest with the teaching of teamwork.
This quest was openly mocked by a lot of players starting out in San d'Oria stating that it was a racist quest. Looking at EQ1, I think they did it right with the racial armor quests.
Krixus said:TripleD said:Has there been any thought and/or discussion about having quests that are group quests, based on characters race? i.e. it takes a group of 3 or 6 or some number, all of the same race, to complete a race-based Terminus quest? For instance, maybe a group of Ogres goes looking for their Tomes, and each class in the group gets a separate reward? Terminus seems to be heavily entrenched in the race segregation, at least with respect to how each one came separately to the realm, so this might be a cool little wrinkle?
I don't think there should be many quests, but this would be a cool way of doing one.
I disagree... there should be a lot of quests but they just shouldn't provide exp only faction +reward.
The real problem is quests that are the best way of leveling up so people use them as the path of least resistance to advance.
Kiz~