TLogan said: You're also discounting the fact that ports will exist... You want to be able to get somewhere fast? Make a wizard or a druid so you can port places. You don't want to do that? Pay a druid or a wizard to port you? Don't have any cash? I'm sure people will be buffing movement speed relatively frequently and likely for free. Potions will likely exist (crafted) to boost movement speed.
I'm not sure if this is confirmed, but I thought I read that there are some ideas, such as offline caravans being tossed around too. A player could utilize a caravan for a long journey while offline. Again, I have no idea if this is confirmed, or if it will make it in, but if they are considering things like this, then they are considering travel time and how it cuts into available play time.
Me personally? I'll just accept that some of my play sessions might mean I'll be traveling only. If I can do a long journy while offline for some cost? Great.
Parascol said:TLogan said: You're also discounting the fact that ports will exist... You want to be able to get somewhere fast? Make a wizard or a druid so you can port places. You don't want to do that? Pay a druid or a wizard to port you? Don't have any cash? I'm sure people will be buffing movement speed relatively frequently and likely for free. Potions will likely exist (crafted) to boost movement speed.I'm not sure if this is confirmed, but I thought I read that there are some ideas, such as offline caravans being tossed around too. A player could utilize a caravan for a long journey while offline. Again, I have no idea if this is confirmed, or if it will make it in, but if they are considering things like this, then they are considering travel time and how it cuts into available play time.
Me personally? I'll just accept that some of my play sessions might mean I'll be traveling only. If I can do a long journy while offline for some cost? Great.
Some of my best memories were just "traveling". All the sights you see... all the monsters you run into... all the exploration off the beaten path just to see whats over there??? WHY IS THIS DAMN HERMIT LIVING OUT HERE?! All the laughs and scares of dying I had with people... JUST traveling. Miss that.
Kastor said:Parascol said:TLogan said: You're also discounting the fact that ports will exist... You want to be able to get somewhere fast? Make a wizard or a druid so you can port places. You don't want to do that? Pay a druid or a wizard to port you? Don't have any cash? I'm sure people will be buffing movement speed relatively frequently and likely for free. Potions will likely exist (crafted) to boost movement speed.I'm not sure if this is confirmed, but I thought I read that there are some ideas, such as offline caravans being tossed around too. A player could utilize a caravan for a long journey while offline. Again, I have no idea if this is confirmed, or if it will make it in, but if they are considering things like this, then they are considering travel time and how it cuts into available play time.
Me personally? I'll just accept that some of my play sessions might mean I'll be traveling only. If I can do a long journy while offline for some cost? Great.
Some of my best memories were just "traveling". All the sights you see... all the monsters you run into... all the exploration off the beaten path just to see whats over there??? WHY IS THIS DAMN HERMIT LIVING OUT HERE?! All the laughs and scares of dying I had with people... JUST traveling. Miss that.
Yes. Same. Half the fun was traveling through the world. And after a few times, when the tedium started to sink in, I was high enough to start paying for limited fast travel. It was a good balance.
Ruar said:Nothing stops you from traveling the slow way if you so choose. There is no requirement to use a fast travel system. However, if it's not included then only people who agree with you will play the game for any length of time.
Yes, it will. When I decide to do it "the slow way" and I join a group and tell them "okay, everyone, I'm taking the slow way I'll be there in 30 minutes!" they will drop me like a hot potato and find someone else willing to use the fast travel systems. Once those are introduced - much like the Wild West analogy you used earlier - I will either have to adapt to this new faster system or struggle and hope to find a core of like-minded individuals to consistantly group with, because the causal PUG is now dead to me.
Also, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is not trying to cater to the masses. They are specifically self-labled a "niche" game for those looking for a more challenging, old-school feel to their MMORPG. Trying to easy it up/dumb it down to appeal to the instant gratification crowd is no where in their vision or mission statement for this game.
If you're interested in this game, great!! Sit back, enjoy the on going discussions, watch the development, trust the developer's vision. You may be pleasantly surprised with what will be produced in the long run. Should you try it and discover it isn't your thing, well, thank you for trying it anyway. Every little bit of interest helps us keep this game progressing.
Yes, I've spent some money on the game already knowing they intend it to be challenging in a way games aren't now a days. At the same time that doesn't mean I expect a game that is full of tedious design simply for the sake of being tedious.
There's something to be said for this. However, there is also a pretty fine line between "tedious for the sake of being tedious" and "immersion due to requiring effort to progress".
One good example is zone travelling and exploration. Being required to go out and look around on your own, make the trip between cities on foot first, etc. is something I don't have any problem with. I'm not so sure about the whole "no in-game mapping" thing though. It makes no sense that I can walk back and forth through an area 20 or 30 times and my character not actually learn what the layout is (or have any ability to make notes). Selling "fast travel" between locations has been going on for centuries, surely some enterprising townsman will start selling such services, etc.. Riding my horse through lower level zones I've travelled through multiple times before for 40 minutes because I needed to visit an NPC for something isn't fun or otherwise rewarding, it's just tedious.
I don't want instant teleportation to every tiny village at will but at least give me an option to pay to ride a stagecoach and let me log off and do something else for a half hour or something instead of inflicting a manual 40 minute ride through lowby zones "for the realism".
There are way too many of these types of posts lately. I don't want Pantheon watered down into another quick n easy game and that's what most of these suggestions would do. Honestly I won't have any interest in the sort of game you have described, I would not play it. Let's go through these points:
1) Selling Items: I want player to player trading, no auction house. I want player interaction, I want haggling.
2) Travel: I don't want fast travel points. Boats, airships, or some other form of mass transit is OK. Ground mounts are OK. Flying mounts if implemented should have extreme limitations.
3) Game Time: Players can always spend as much or as little time as they want in a game, the main beef casuals have is their speed of progress. When I don't have time to play I accept that fact.
4) CRs: Dying should be painful. People should plan carefully or suffer the consequences. Casual players should avoid going deep into dungeons if they have 1 hour or less to play.
5) Rare Spawns: I'm ok with them. Pantheon isn't going to be quest heavy by the way.
6) Flags/Keys/Gearchecks: Gotta have em. But I will say it is unwise to go crazy with flags and keys...much better to make the barrier of entry a gear check imo.
7) UI/Macros: I'm not a fan of these I used them heavily in WoW for PvP and Raiding, basically forces every player to use numerous addons to be relevant/competitive. I don't like how easy it makes the game either PvE side. I'd prefer the devs just release the game with a decent UI.
8) Housing: I don't think Pantheon is going to have this feature at launch. The dev team and budget is small, better to focus on the essentials. As for your comment about ArcheAge I really enjoyed their housing system...I simply shared land with a guild and then bought land from other players when I had the gold. There were 100 reasons to quit ArcheAge...but housing? I doubt that's why people quit when the game had so many major flaws. I prefer non instanced housing like what I saw in Vanguard and yes ArcheAge.
It's kind of funny how many of us come to these threads and post demands. "Things have to be a certain way or I won't play". I mean, I can respect that some things might be deal breakers - like for example, for me, I think the trading thing might actually be a deal breaker. I'm not saying that to be argumentative, but I'm just being honest about it. A lot of other stuff, I could probably live with, even if it's not exactly how I would like it. That one I'm not sure I could.
I feel like we all need to quit arguing for everything we want, and instead talk about what we'd be willing to accept. I can understand people having one or two deal breakers, but posting lists of like 8 or 9 things? Really? You'll never be satisfied that way.
Nephele said:It's kind of funny how many of us come to these threads and post demands. "Things have to be a certain way or I won't play". I mean, I can respect that some things might be deal breakers - like for example, for me, I think the trading thing might actually be a deal breaker. I'm not saying that to be argumentative, but I'm just being honest about it. A lot of other stuff, I could probably live with, even if it's not exactly how I would like it. That one I'm not sure I could.
I feel like we all need to quit arguing for everything we want, and instead talk about what we'd be willing to accept. I can understand people having one or two deal breakers, but posting lists of like 8 or 9 things? Really? You'll never be satisfied that way.
I don't think it's really a demand thread, i think he's just saying what he thinks will appeal to both player bases. I think it is his honest opinion as to how the game could be received by a wider audience. It's just an oversight that those things would infringe on the tenets.
It's a good idea about discussing the compromises we could accept instead of all the things we'd quit over though!
I think it has very little to do with casual vs. hardcore players, and more to do with the vision of a game a player wants. I'll very much fall into the casual play-time category for Pantheon compared to my playtime ability with EQlaunch, but, I very much want a virtual world vs. a "game" feel (basically many of the features you claim as hardcore OP). I do not want Pantheon to fold or change its tenets/vision for me. Some of the world needs to be tedius, time comsuming, punishing, and unforgiving to have that feel (where you claim tedious, I claim it makes it part of the journey). Will it scare away some players? Sure, but it will also draw the crowd that has been abandoned/orphaned for years also. Change the vision or blur the lines, and you may have a new influx of players that try Pantheon at launch, but like every other MMO they will move on to the next shiny object while also losing many/most of the original orphaned player-base. Pantheon needs to be different to have the longetivity and stick to what would differentiate it.
The difference being is I accept the fact that I may never be a server first, or be the "best" with Pantheon as I had the chance to be with EQ. I will probably be one of the "have-nots" vs. the "haves" as far as raid gear goes. But that is what makes the game memorable - it gives me something to continually strive for instead of being gifted everything. Instead, my goals would change and I'll be the best at the class I choose as I can be, while not experiencing burnout. I'd even argue that I may even enjoy Pantheon more as I'd always have that desire wishing to play more.
And for the record, I do not want EQ-reskinned, you could remove the Word "EQ" and insert challenging virtual world MMO and I would want the same (or improved upon) mechanics, it's just unfortunate that EQ to this day (and VG to a lesser extent) is really my only baseline for comparison - which is why I put my money where my mouth is and backed Pantheon early when it released its vision/tenets etc. during the Kickstarter.
Raidan said:I think it has very little to do with casual vs. hardcore players, and more to do with the vision of a game a player wants. I'll very much fall into the casual play-time category for Pantheon compared to my playtime ability with EQlaunch, but, I very much want a virtual world vs. a "game" feel (basically many of the features you claim as hardcore OP). I do not want Pantheon to fold or change its tenets/vision for me. Some of the world needs to be tedius, time comsuming, punishing, and unforgiving to have that feel (where you claim tedious, I claim it makes it part of the journey). Will it scare away some players? Sure, but it will also draw the crowd that has been abandoned/orphaned for years also. Change the vision or blur the lines, and you may have a new influx of players that try Pantheon at launch, but like every other MMO they will move on to the next shiny object while also losing many/most of the original orphaned player-base. Pantheon needs to be different to have the longetivity and stick to what would differentiate it.
The difference being is I accept the fact that I may never be a server first, or be the "best" with Pantheon as I had the chance to be with EQ. I will probably be one of the "have-nots" vs. the "haves" as far as raid gear goes. But that is what makes the game memorable - it gives me something to continually strive for instead of being gifted everything. Instead, my goals would change and I'll be the best at the class I choose as I can be, while not experiencing burnout. I'd even argue that I may even enjoy Pantheon more as I'd always have that desire wishing to play more.
And for the record, I do not want EQ-reskinned, you could remove the Word "EQ" and insert challenging virtual world MMO and I would want the same (or improved upon) mechanics, it's just unfortunate that EQ to this day (and VG to a lesser extent) is really my only baseline for comparison - which is why I put my money where my mouth is and backed Pantheon early when it released its vision/tenets etc. during the Kickstarter.
Nicely said. The journey will be just as fun, if not more fun, than "end game". I'm in the same boat.
Literally disagree with every suggestion. You basically want this game to make the same concessions to QoL that have watered down the MMO genre and put us in the position to fund this exact game as a response. I half suspect that this entire thread is an elaborate troll.
Your analogy to an old west town shows just how poorly you understand the idea of a virtual “world”. What you‘re looking for is a casual RPG game. You have lots of options, congrats!!
Gnog said:Literally disagree with every suggestion. You basically want this game to make the same concessions to QoL that have watered down the MMO genre and put us in the position to fund this exact game as a response. I half suspect that this entire thread is an elaborate troll.
Your analogy to an old west town shows just how poorly you understand the idea of a virtual “world”. What you‘re looking for is a casual RPG game. You have lots of options, congrats!!
Yeah, there have been quite a few of these types of threads. A few minutes in the Game Features and Game Tenets areas would have answered sooo many questions.
But my thought after reading the OP was why (or how for that matter) is Pantheon either a 'casual' or a 'hardcore' game as it is now or will be when released? How is not already a game capable for both playstyles as it is, and will be, developed? I'm not so sure I want to assume that it has any deficit for either playstyle without actually knowing that it does first.
Besides, most all of what we've seen is small group combat and that only in a few areas. There's been no information on crafting, little information about raiding, hardly anything on factions, questing, etc. and all the other myriad of game features that will roll out with release. All of that matters a great deal too in terms of how someone will play. I think so far it looks great, steady improvements over time, and so much more to reveal!!
Personally, I think 'Casual' and 'Hardcore' are playstyles not specific types of games. It's more about how a person asserts themselves in the game rather than the features of the game or the type of game. And truthfully, there have been both casuals and hardcore players in every single game I've ever played starting with Everquest.
For casual and hardcore to coexist you need to split their progression paths and expectations which in turn really forces a developer to create two games in one, which realistically isn’t feasible. The only option I can think of would be to specifically have different ruleset servers with a range of these options skewed more or less hardcore. The server which you play on more or less counts as you voting with your wallet and additional servers will be opened based on popularity and demand.
Selling items.
As ease of use goes up, player to player interaction goes down. Global Auction House, to Regional Auction House, to Local Auction House, to Programmable player vendors, to live person to person trading through shouts or classified.
Attaching cash caps to automated Auction House/Vendors is a way to hybrid selling between ease of use and live interaction. Anything under a certain bar is faster and easier to use the automated tool but high value items would be traded live only. In the future if player housing allows for personal merchants raising the cash cap of their transactions could be a form of horizontal progression.
I would personally pick regional auction houses with a fairly low cash cap with a delay to receive, automated commodities vendors who will buy and sell raw materials at complicated real value reflected amount, and a classified board system that also features occasional live auctions.
Travel.
Travel needs to be approached more from the angle of why you should travel rather than specifically the time it takes to do so. Needlessly traveling long distances to dungeons every time you want to adventure is not helpful and needing to relocate super long distances each play session in order to group in your optimal zone is also not helpful.
Rather than having camps that player move to have a succession of small villages extending out from a major city that is easily accessible to low level players. Each village will have all the necessities of daily game but otherwise are intended to be a player gathering point. Each village will service a 4-8 level range with camp locations arranged radially around the village at a 5-10 minute walk to get to. Each camp node should support 2 groups and there should be at least 3 such locations per level the village is intended to support. There could additionally be high challenge locations related to many of the villages where the reward is high but so is the risk. The village Inns would be the common bind point and the preferred location to log out from.
If each major city has 3 such paths extending out from the cultural center there will be a lot of content in condensed areas but with a fair amount of additional options should player populations be high. There would be no need for a casual player to travel far in individual play sessions as there would be plenty of local content and players but the hardcore players may want to travel to the more remote challenge locations for better loot though with higher risk and competition.
Public transportation between the major cities and their hub villages definitely is reasonable as well as large scale public transportation between major cities. While this is available it should not be any faster than a player actually running there via the road and would be subject to departure and arrival times. To partially counter act the time it takes to travel via public transportation I would make it so that you can logout once you board the vehicle. After the appropriate amount of time passes your character would be at the destination that you purchased a ticket too, if you login before that time you log in on that wagon or boat. Multi leg tickets should be purchasable. This way when you log back in the next day you are where you want to be so that your play time is focused on playing not traveling without resorting to instant travel mechanics.
Game time.
Game time is a relative concept. Somethings should be hard and time consuming to preserve the effort vs reward game balance but incremental successes help alleviate the difference in capability between someone who can play for 8 hours and someone who can only play for 2 hour blocks.
The village hub system would also alleviate a fair amount of the game play time loss as characters of the appropriate level will be in the village you logged out in. They would be natural places for group making, item trading, item crafting and general player interactions. Depending on the group you are able to assemble you may need to stick with the closer easier nodes or you could adventure further out to the more challenging but higher exp nodes with a good group.
Corpse runs.
Similar and related to game time Corpse Runs are intended to be a balance to the reward. Leveling at the nodes surrounding the hub villages would be fairly safe but should the worst happen it is a fairly short run from the Inn back to your body. If on the other hand you have chosen to challenge one of the high risk dungeons then the effort required to retrieve your corpse is part of the risk and the thrill. I personally feel that there still should be some form of corpse retrieval tool that sacrifices all your gains just to get your body back should corpse retrieval be deemed impossible.
My idea focuses on “insuring” your gear. If you die you can choose to go to the bank and retrieve your insured gear but your corpse is destroyed, you lose the ability to get any exp back, all uninsured items on your body are destroyed (specifically all the loot you have gotten since you last insured) all cash is lost, and you must pay again to insure your gear. Pretty brutal in my opinion and almost impossible to exploit but still give player an out when things go really bad.
Rare spawn mobs.
There is rare and there is unique. Long respawn unique mobs with a truly unique drop table are kinda a pain. If the only have a 5% better item that fair as a reward for actually finding them but if the items are one, two or even three times as power then that is a problem for game balance as the have and have nots will spread far apart in power level. Having important quest mobs also be the same is fine for long optional quests that are not mandatory but for class epics and the like where demand is really high its not a good design in my opinion.
I much prefer many points of getting equivalent items so that one particular mob does not become the BIS bottleneck. I truly hope that Pantheon does not really have any specific BIS for any slot for any class.
Flags/keys/gear checks.
Checks are usually methods to subdivide content into tiers. When you have many checks in series along character progression it becomes rather frustrating and time consuming. Long grind attunements are usually the true dividers between hardcore and casual players as the casual players usually never have enough time to play much less grind one specific thing for many many hours.
On the other hand if checks are in parallel rather than in series where you can pick which path you want to focus on then checks become a form of horizontal progression. For example you as a player could decide that you want to focus on cold weather zones. You build up basic climate gear to adventure in the basic cold weather zones. While there you can quest and gain faction in order to make a higher level of gear that will allow you to challenge the truly cold places in the world. At the same time you can hunt down the gear and skills that cold weather denizens are weak too. Eventually you can team up with other cold minded folks to challenge the lords of the cold zone and gain royal quality gear and skills.
The base stats on the items are equal to the same tier of gear in the fire zones, the poison zones and the negative energy zones but the secondary stats are different and focused on your area of expertise. Once you truly master two areas you may be able to combine the secondary stats onto the same piece of gear. The magnitude of your gear has not gone up but the versatility of it has.
Through this a hardcore player may try and build a full set of gear combining all 4 sets of secondary benefits but it’s not much more powerful than the single set a casual could work towards.
UI/Macros.
I’m going to break with my pattern of trying to find two path method for UI tools and macros and vote for a hard no. To me there are too many advantages and exploits involved with enabling complex use modifications of the client. To that end an client that accepts more than key strokes and mouse clicks and returns more than a video feed is ripe for hacking and exploitation. If it is so critical you need a mod for it then it should be part of the base UI and if you need a macro to play your class properly then game difficulty needs looked at.
Housing
Housing is an absolutely mammoth beast and takes a lot of development work to implement, especially if it is non instanced. I think there should be prime real estate but there should be methods of it changing hands and more stable subprime locations. There is also a big difference between a player only city, a temporary outpost and in city buildings a player can own and control. A lot depends on how VR wants to implement it.
Trasak said:For casual and hardcore to coexist you need to split their progression paths and expectations which in turn really forces a developer to create two games in one, which realistically isn’t feasible. The only option I can think of would be to specifically have different ruleset servers with a range of these options skewed more or less hardcore. The server which you play on more or less counts as you voting with your wallet and additional servers will be opened based on popularity and demand.
Selling items.
As ease of use goes up, player to player interaction goes down. Global Auction House, to Regional Auction House, to Local Auction House, to Programmable player vendors, to live person to person trading through shouts or classified.
Attaching cash caps to automated Auction House/Vendors is a way to hybrid selling between ease of use and live interaction. Anything under a certain bar is faster and easier to use the automated tool but high value items would be traded live only. In the future if player housing allows for personal merchants raising the cash cap of their transactions could be a form of horizontal progression.
I would personally pick regional auction houses with a fairly low cash cap with a delay to receive, automated commodities vendors who will buy and sell raw materials at complicated real value reflected amount, and a classified board system that also features occasional live auctions.
Travel.
Travel needs to be approached more from the angle of why you should travel rather than specifically the time it takes to do so. Needlessly traveling long distances to dungeons every time you want to adventure is not helpful and needing to relocate super long distances each play session in order to group in your optimal zone is also not helpful.
Rather than having camps that player move to have a succession of small villages extending out from a major city that is easily accessible to low level players. Each village will have all the necessities of daily game but otherwise are intended to be a player gathering point. Each village will service a 4-8 level range with camp locations arranged radially around the village at a 5-10 minute walk to get to. Each camp node should support 2 groups and there should be at least 3 such locations per level the village is intended to support. There could additionally be high challenge locations related to many of the villages where the reward is high but so is the risk. The village Inns would be the common bind point and the preferred location to log out from.
If each major city has 3 such paths extending out from the cultural center there will be a lot of content in condensed areas but with a fair amount of additional options should player populations be high. There would be no need for a casual player to travel far in individual play sessions as there would be plenty of local content and players but the hardcore players may want to travel to the more remote challenge locations for better loot though with higher risk and competition.
Public transportation between the major cities and their hub villages definitely is reasonable as well as large scale public transportation between major cities. While this is available it should not be any faster than a player actually running there via the road and would be subject to departure and arrival times. To partially counter act the time it takes to travel via public transportation I would make it so that you can logout once you board the vehicle. After the appropriate amount of time passes your character would be at the destination that you purchased a ticket too, if you login before that time you log in on that wagon or boat. Multi leg tickets should be purchasable. This way when you log back in the next day you are where you want to be so that your play time is focused on playing not traveling without resorting to instant travel mechanics.
Game time.
Game time is a relative concept. Somethings should be hard and time consuming to preserve the effort vs reward game balance but incremental successes help alleviate the difference in capability between someone who can play for 8 hours and someone who can only play for 2 hour blocks.
The village hub system would also alleviate a fair amount of the game play time loss as characters of the appropriate level will be in the village you logged out in. They would be natural places for group making, item trading, item crafting and general player interactions. Depending on the group you are able to assemble you may need to stick with the closer easier nodes or you could adventure further out to the more challenging but higher exp nodes with a good group.
Corpse runs.
Similar and related to game time Corpse Runs are intended to be a balance to the reward. Leveling at the nodes surrounding the hub villages would be fairly safe but should the worst happen it is a fairly short run from the Inn back to your body. If on the other hand you have chosen to challenge one of the high risk dungeons then the effort required to retrieve your corpse is part of the risk and the thrill. I personally feel that there still should be some form of corpse retrieval tool that sacrifices all your gains just to get your body back should corpse retrieval be deemed impossible.
My idea focuses on “insuring” your gear. If you die you can choose to go to the bank and retrieve your insured gear but your corpse is destroyed, you lose the ability to get any exp back, all uninsured items on your body are destroyed (specifically all the loot you have gotten since you last insured) all cash is lost, and you must pay again to insure your gear. Pretty brutal in my opinion and almost impossible to exploit but still give player an out when things go really bad.
Rare spawn mobs.
There is rare and there is unique. Long respawn unique mobs with a truly unique drop table are kinda a pain. If the only have a 5% better item that fair as a reward for actually finding them but if the items are one, two or even three times as power then that is a problem for game balance as the have and have nots will spread far apart in power level. Having important quest mobs also be the same is fine for long optional quests that are not mandatory but for class epics and the like where demand is really high its not a good design in my opinion.
I much prefer many points of getting equivalent items so that one particular mob does not become the BIS bottleneck. I truly hope that Pantheon does not really have any specific BIS for any slot for any class.
Flags/keys/gear checks.
Checks are usually methods to subdivide content into tiers. When you have many checks in series along character progression it becomes rather frustrating and time consuming. Long grind attunements are usually the true dividers between hardcore and casual players as the casual players usually never have enough time to play much less grind one specific thing for many many hours.
On the other hand if checks are in parallel rather than in series where you can pick which path you want to focus on then checks become a form of horizontal progression. For example you as a player could decide that you want to focus on cold weather zones. You build up basic climate gear to adventure in the basic cold weather zones. While there you can quest and gain faction in order to make a higher level of gear that will allow you to challenge the truly cold places in the world. At the same time you can hunt down the gear and skills that cold weather denizens are weak too. Eventually you can team up with other cold minded folks to challenge the lords of the cold zone and gain royal quality gear and skills.
The base stats on the items are equal to the same tier of gear in the fire zones, the poison zones and the negative energy zones but the secondary stats are different and focused on your area of expertise. Once you truly master two areas you may be able to combine the secondary stats onto the same piece of gear. The magnitude of your gear has not gone up but the versatility of it has.
Through this a hardcore player may try and build a full set of gear combining all 4 sets of secondary benefits but it’s not much more powerful than the single set a casual could work towards.
UI/Macros.
I’m going to break with my pattern of trying to find two path method for UI tools and macros and vote for a hard no. To me there are too many advantages and exploits involved with enabling complex use modifications of the client. To that end an client that accepts more than key strokes and mouse clicks and returns more than a video feed is ripe for hacking and exploitation. If it is so critical you need a mod for it then it should be part of the base UI and if you need a macro to play your class properly then game difficulty needs looked at.
Housing
Housing is an absolutely mammoth beast and takes a lot of development work to implement, especially if it is non instanced. I think there should be prime real estate but there should be methods of it changing hands and more stable subprime locations. There is also a big difference between a player only city, a temporary outpost and in city buildings a player can own and control. A lot depends on how VR wants to implement it.
I actually like some of your ideas. Not really the gear or travel ones, but the AH one is fine. I particularly like your appoarch on the corpse run aspect. I think I would care if I would lose all the money and items in my inventory, not the ones I have equipped. Unless you can insure your inventory and bags. That would be a great money sink in a good way. I would go a little further and make an exp penalty by losing a little more than you would when looting your body without a rez.
Edit: Various grammar mistakes
RuarHere's a hint... you aren't a better gamer, you just have more time to spend playing.
This is widely inaccurate. While there will be various players scattered throughout the world that are very very good. A large majority of the skilled players on the server will congregate in the better guilds.
People that have the mentality needed to play the "hardcore" game will typically spend much more time researching, theorycrafting and perfecting their playstyle. In essence the pure fact that hardcore players play more in most cases leads to them being better at the game.
Also this thread is hilarious.
I feel similar to you in some cases. And agree tedium is not a way to increase difficulty. But I also know most of the proposed things you mentioned have 0 chance of getting put in the game.
Keep fighting the good fight tho.
Watemper said:I actually like some of your ideas. Not really the gear or travel ones, but the AH one is fine. I particularly like your appoarch on the corpse run aspect. I think I would care if I would lose all the money and items in my inventory, not the ones I have equipped. Unless you can insure your inventory and bags. That would be a great money sink in a good way. I would go a little further and make an exp penalty by losing a little more than you would when looting your body without a rez.
Edit: Various grammar mistakes
I was including the items in your inventory as insured. If you hand an item to another player then acccept it back it becomes uninsured. Insured is a really stupid phrase and sounds forced but thats really what it is. I could see the cost to insure an item be proportional to the value of the item making more painful for a highly geared and wealthy player to give up on retrieving their corpse. The exact penalty for abandoning the body can be tuned relative to what ever the death penalty ends up being.
Trasak said:Watemper said:I actually like some of your ideas. Not really the gear or travel ones, but the AH one is fine. I particularly like your appoarch on the corpse run aspect. I think I would care if I would lose all the money and items in my inventory, not the ones I have equipped. Unless you can insure your inventory and bags. That would be a great money sink in a good way. I would go a little further and make an exp penalty by losing a little more than you would when looting your body without a rez.
Edit: Various grammar mistakes
I was including the items in your inventory as insured. If you hand an item to another player then acccept it back it becomes uninsured. Insured is a really stupid phrase and sounds forced but thats really what it is. I could see the cost to insure an item be proportional to the value of the item making more painful for a highly geared and wealthy player to give up on retrieving their corpse. The exact penalty for abandoning the body can be tuned relative to what ever the death penalty ends up being.
That's what I assumed. So basically w/e money and drops you get down there and whatever you go down there that you didn't insure would be destroyed with your body if you went to the bank to retrieve your corpse. I like that idea. I would say it will take the edge off somewhat, but not to the degree of breaking immersion. So you still have CR runs, but can opt out with a pretty big penalty that doesn't really break you, but hurts nonetheless depending on what you insure. I like it. First idea I am actually cool with that meets a middle ground pertaining to Corpse runs.
Edit: Spelling Mistakes
I am a casual player. I will try very hard to find a guild that is big enough to have 20 - 30+ (as an estimate) on at any one time, thus giving me a number of people to group with in my range. I will know my class as best as I am able. In the past I have been able to do this, and it has been good enough to have fun and reach all the content a game world had, albeit later than hard core raiding guilds. I will never know as much as much about the spells/stances/abilities of the other classes as what I think of as “hardcore” players. And that is how I differentiate between the two types of players. Some people will know every spell, every part of the world, every class ability, those are hardcore gamers. My brain simply can’t do that. Everything I have seen about Pantheon makes want to play this game. In my mind VR is making this game for me, the casual gamer. Targeting “group play” over the raiding game, it is aiming squarely at the two hour gamer. VR has already said many times they will target two hour group play times but have raid content, and I think that’s great. I am a social gamer. I will not investigate Terminus via what I call spoiler sites. I want to investigate, figure out, group with others and master Terminus, at my own speed. I want travel to take some time. I hope ports aren’t common. I want corpse runs. Traveling by ship sounds fun. I want some spells to be easy to get and some to be hard to get. The perception system sounds like a blast! I want housing eventually, but I don’t want players to be able to blacksmith, or make potions etc in their house. I want housing to be able to show off loot I’ve won and little else. I want to need to return to my starting city occasionally. It would be fun for me to get a small buff if I log out in an inn. I want to craft food in a pub, sell my drops at a town fair ”but not if I have to be there spamming magic axe of tree limbs for sale” every fifteen seconds, that’s not fun. I love climates, atmospheres and colored mana, sounds challenging.
Selling IMHO setting up an offline shop should be in the game. You click log out and have the option to setup shop where you stand after 30 secs. This would be instant in a designated zone or area like EC tunnel. Could add an online shop with some customisation e.g. rugs etc. Next perhaps more important addition to selling i would be to discourage people farming the same item and selling it over and over. Could add is a compounding charge for the same item if not crafted and sold within your shop within a period of time e.g. 1 week. Shoudl make all desirable items lore as well.
Travel I like the way druids and wizards already port back in EQ1 with a few tweaks. For example, you cannot be ported somewhere unless you have been there already.
Corpse runs I personally like the idea of exp debt (no de-leveling) and going back to your bind point with your gear.
Exp loss Can we please consider sharing the exp loss with the whole grp who are within range and/or time duration e.g. 30 secs. This would definitely make the group more accountable and stop certain classes suffering more than others /cough chanter and warriors, while others rarely suffer any penalty /cough monk/necro err secret class.
Rare spawn mobs I would make them all activated after killing a certain type of mob or pressing a hard to get to switch etc so you are active and not just sitting there killing 1 mob over and over. I would also introduce diminishing returns on the loot table to discourage the same people constantly looting the same item i.e. progressively reduced chance to drop for the same player(s) e.g. 7 days. Everytime someone new joins that hasn't looted the item, the drop rate increases until no one in the grp has looted over the last 7 days = normal drop rate.
Flags Remove them. I always saw these as lazy time sinks. Instead, the flag should be a gear check in the form of resists and strategy with emphasis on strategy. I like the idea that it should be possible with bad gear but you would need to have perfect stretegy and placement etc.
UI/macros More customisation the better imho
Housing Yes. I like housing. I think EQ2 actually did this quite well apart from the quick travel = pls remove because it made the cities into ghost towns.
Man this thread is scary, I really hope none of the suggestions in the OP make it in :(
Also, I'd categorize hardcore vs. casual as more of attitudes of players than styles of games. I do know the rules of chess, last christmas I had a game with my friend's spouse (and lost), not sure if I've played since. Pretty casual. On the other hand there are people who are pros too, I'd say they're hardcore. That's still just chess, same game.
Ruar said:Selling items. Should Pantheon have automated auctions or require live interaction? A way to include both is to have an automated auction house buying and selling while at the same time adding in a fee for convienence. Players can log onto the auction system and offer their goods at a booth and there is no fee for using that player provided service. A captcha like system requiring the player to read a sentence and then answer a question can be used each hour to avoid being kicked out of the auction interface. Players who want to interact are rewarded while others who prefer to just buy and sell can do so at a cost.
No. An auction house reduces players interaction. The bazaar in EQ's luclin period ruined EQ players interaction. Player interaction is what made EQ great, let's not add elements that ruin this aspect of the game.
Ruar said:Travel. This one can also cater to both types of people. I think most will agree that any fast travel unlocks would require finding that location manually before being allowed to use it. There should be a system of teleport hubs and automated horse/griffin/boat routes. Requiring people to run back and forth from one side of the map to the other is just tedious design. At the same time the teleport hubs should be on a timer system to allow a market for player provided teleports. Additionally the player teleport locations should be placed closer to the popular assembly locations while the system teleports and transportation hubs should require a small amount of running to hit the popular areas. Example would be system travel to city gates while player travel is to dungeon entrances.
No. Fast travel systems reduce players interaction. The nexus in EQ's luclin period (and later, Plane of Knowledge) ruined EQ players interaction. Player interaction is what made EQ great, let's not add elements that ruin this aspect of the game.
Ruar said:Game time. How much time should be considered a normal playing session? Over the years a consistent answer I've seen for this question has been two hours. Then the question becomes what can be done in that two hours. If players spend 30 minutes LFG or 30 minutes travelling at the front end and another 30 minutes travelling at the back end then they only end up with an hour of actual play time. It's another reason why I think we need system travel to cut down on the tedium of losing play time. Even with two hours being an average play time there still needs to be content for people who have less time to be logged in. I think this is where instanced content is the answer. Having instanced dungeons or challenges that allow players to have fun and make some progress while not providing the best rewards is a good compromise. Someone can do an instanced dungeon with three people and get a decent item that isn't as good as the same item but from the non-instanced dungeon.
No. Instancied dungeons reduces players interaction. The instances introduced in EQ's Gates of Discord have added another nail on EQ's coffin. Do we want that mistake to be done again ?
Ruar said:Corpse runs. Graveyards are an amazing stress reducer and I think they should be a staple of every MMO simply because they make mistakes bearable. That being said I think there is a very good argument for having corpse runs still be an integral part of the gaming experience. A good compromise is to allow a graveyard to be instantly used once every 36 hours or so and then there's a 60 minute timer before it can be used again. So one mistake doesn't ruin a gaming session but the player has to be careful afterwards or they will need to do a corpse run or do something non-combat until the timer expires. Having a 10 minute debuff timer after using the graveyard and having an additional 10% exp penalty as well can provide incentive to do the corpse run while not being so punishing that players are afraid to play the game.
No. Death penalty needs to be really meaningful.
Ruar said:Rare spawn mobs. This is always a big contention point because people who want to feel elite in a game need some kind of yardstick by which to measure their success. Being the first to complete a goal isn't enough because there needs to be some way to show others who is at a higher level of the game. Traditionally this is done by bottlenecking higher end gear or quest content so that only a few can complete it until the next expansion comes out. Once new content is released the elite players move on allowing more casual players the chance to get items that were previously fought over. The problem with this idea is that the majority of your players are unable to participate in content which pushes people away. A better way of designing content is to ensure all quests can be spawned by the person doing the quest and have no requirement for a rare spawn mob. Quests are what really drive a game so bottlenecking quests is a good way to kill the interest of your player base. To provide more than just rare gear items the rare spawn mobs need to have unique, and limited, cosmetic items. Mounts, wardrobe, housing, or banner items can all be used to help elite players show they are elite while still allowing casual players the ability to complete quests and occasionally get a cool item.
No. Pantheon isn't going to be a solo game. Having a guild needs to be meaningful. Hardcore gamers in your guild will (hopefully) help casual gamers. If not, you're in the wrong guild.
Ruar said:Flags/keys/gear checks. Using flags or keys is a way to ensure players are forced to participate in different content. The problem with these mechanisms is too often they create a lot of work for guilds to ensure new members are flagged and keyed only to watch those members move on later. The keys do differentiate the hardcore players from the casuals be creating a gear check or time check system. A way to compromise on this is automatically awarding keys for old content once new material is released. Casual players will still have to get keyed for new content if they want to experience it sooner, but guilds will not have to spend endless cycles going through old content in order to raid specific areas.
Flag / keys / gear checks were means for guilds to compete with each other, in the high-end content race.
Guild competition (without trains and exploits) was core of the high end game.
Do not remove that aspect of the game, do not turn Pantheon into My-Little-Poney-Land (or WoW) where everyone gets everything he wants without efforts.
bobwinner said:*snip*
*small edit* No. An [insert quality of life automation function here] reduces players interaction. The bazaar in EQ's luclin period ruined EQ players interaction. Player interaction is what made EQ great, let's not add elements that ruin this aspect of the game.
*snip*
Bobwinner sorry to use your post as an example as this is a general response a specific group of posters use over an over to shoot down ideas.
I get the point that Pantheon will be way more of a social game than other MMOs and player to player interaction is one of the keys, but how much is enough interaction?
We already have very group centric combat. It also sounds like travel will actually be fairly group centric as well as almost all classes have some form of player versus environment tool. VR has also stated that they want the world to feel big and one of the ways to do that is to limit fast travel methods but often fast travel is really just faster travel as teleport locations are not always all that convenient.
We may even get a crafting system that allows for a very high level of visual customization at which point there might be a joint design window between the crafter and the customer for the look.
But at what point does the player interaction vs needless tedium ratio become not really worth it? From my perspective multiboxing, account wide banks, large number of characters and their crafting classes, and dropped items are king over crafted items all do a lot more to damage player interaction opportunities than a regional automated offline trade function.
Those of you who put maximizing player interaction as a top priorety might want to take up the No-Multiboxing and One character per server banner rather than the anti auction house banner as your return on interaction will be an order of magnitude or more higher.
Questaar said:I am a casual player. I will try very hard to find a guild that is big enough to have 20 - 30+ (as an estimate) on at any one time, thus giving me a number of people to group with in my range. I will know my class as best as I am able. In the past I have been able to do this, and it has been good enough to have fun and reach all the content a game world had, albeit later than hard core raiding guilds. I will never know as much as much about the spells/stances/abilities of the other classes as what I think of as “hardcore” players. And that is how I differentiate between the two types of players. Some people will know every spell, every part of the world, every class ability, those are hardcore gamers. My brain simply can’t do that. Everything I have seen about Pantheon makes want to play this game. In my mind VR is making this game for me, the casual gamer. Targeting “group play” over the raiding game, it is aiming squarely at the two hour gamer. VR has already said many times they will target two hour group play times but have raid content, and I think that’s great. I am a social gamer. I will not investigate Terminus via what I call spoiler sites. I want to investigate, figure out, group with others and master Terminus, at my own speed. I want travel to take some time. I hope ports aren’t common. I want corpse runs. Traveling by ship sounds fun. I want some spells to be easy to get and some to be hard to get. The perception system sounds like a blast! I want housing eventually, but I don’t want players to be able to blacksmith, or make potions etc in their house. I want housing to be able to show off loot I’ve won and little else. I want to need to return to my starting city occasionally. It would be fun for me to get a small buff if I log out in an inn. I want to craft food in a pub, sell my drops at a town fair ”but not if I have to be there spamming magic axe of tree limbs for sale” every fifteen seconds, that’s not fun. I love climates, atmospheres and colored mana, sounds challenging.
I really hope we meet one fine day in Terminus, Questaar. I'm sure we'll get along very well. :-)
Kastor said:Parascol said:TLogan said: You're also discounting the fact that ports will exist... You want to be able to get somewhere fast? Make a wizard or a druid so you can port places. You don't want to do that? Pay a druid or a wizard to port you? Don't have any cash? I'm sure people will be buffing movement speed relatively frequently and likely for free. Potions will likely exist (crafted) to boost movement speed.I'm not sure if this is confirmed, but I thought I read that there are some ideas, such as offline caravans being tossed around too. A player could utilize a caravan for a long journey while offline. Again, I have no idea if this is confirmed, or if it will make it in, but if they are considering things like this, then they are considering travel time and how it cuts into available play time.
Me personally? I'll just accept that some of my play sessions might mean I'll be traveling only. If I can do a long journy while offline for some cost? Great.
Some of my best memories were just "traveling". All the sights you see... all the monsters you run into... all the exploration off the beaten path just to see whats over there??? WHY IS THIS DAMN HERMIT LIVING OUT HERE?! All the laughs and scares of dying I had with people... JUST traveling. Miss that.
So true haha. Definitely agree with you.