I am hoping this game stems away from toxic tools of item levels, gear scores and poisonous elitism that evolves from them. i dont think that Pantheon will have these implemented, but i was just wondering to have the record set. it is that that type of behavior in game in my honest opinion that drives alot of good people away over time. Not alot of people like to group with jerks.
I think I am following what you are saying. You mean Gear Scores like The Division had? Where it was Critical to have a specific rating or no matter what you were forcefully underperforming by the games own mechanics?
Otherwise no matter what, an MMORPG will have a Gear Score regardless of how it is named. EQ has done it, Tera Online, WoW has had one for ages (I know we should talk about that one), otherwise you would get crushed everytime you were hit in a Raid. Unfortunately that trait will always be there even if its not visually represented in item stats or character sheet. Sadly enough, in the end it will come down to similar groups like the "Elitist Jerks" that will grind out the math and make Gear Scores where there may not be.
BrokeMyNinja said:I think I am following what you are saying. You mean Gear Scores like The Division had? Where it was Critical to have a specific rating or no matter what you were forcefully underperforming by the games own mechanics?
Otherwise no matter what, an MMORPG will have a Gear Score regardless of how it is named. EQ has done it, Tera Online, WoW has had one for ages (I know we should talk about that one), otherwise you would get crushed everytime you were hit in a Raid. Unfortunately that trait will always be there even if its not visually represented in item stats or character sheet. Sadly enough, in the end it will come down to similar groups like the "Elitist Jerks" that will grind out the math and make Gear Scores where there may not be.
i just dont want be reduced down to a number to say it simply. id like to see if it is done by a skill based merit.i was refering to WoW's Gear score system specifically. where you must have a min "X" score even though the game states it can be done a a lower certain gear score. but no one will let you group because they want it done easily. thanks you for your response Ninja.
stellarmind said:from what i understand with items, it looks like all items can be lost or traded(no soulbound system) so it'll boil down to your skills and team more than anything. items and equip are a resource not the end all be all.
Reminds me of Lineage II. There was no Gear Score per say, there was Gear Tier Grades, starting from D-Grade = level 10-19, C = 20-40, B = 40-50, A = 50-60, S = 60-70, etc... I'm sure it changed since the last time i played, but no matter what the Gear was the same for everyone which was cool, you just had to either farm or craft it. But nothing was soul bound, you always had a (very small 0.5%) chance on death to drop any piece of equipment, more so in PVP were its exponentially greater if you became a PK (Player-Killer for us old schoolers) aka Ganker/Griefer depending on your Karma level.
I believe they've stated they want epic quest rewards and items that were upgraded by crafters to become 'soulbound' or nodrop/notrade. Also, if you're using a more powerful item as a low level character it'll get scaled down.
But the whole idea of gear scores and item levels is extremely artificial, and I doubt it's something VR would be going for because it just breaks immersion. Something we all would like to avoid where we can.
Gear scores in my 'carreer' only happened to match PVP to create more of a balance or for instances when there was rolespecific ability's needed (think off a cleric tank in Rift, you needed certain gear stats before being allowed). Since Pantheon will try to avoid instancing as it contradicts immersion, i do not believe this will be an issue at all.
When it comes to gear, i am still a strong believer there should be level requirements that meet the requirements needed to obtain it. I do not want to see level 10's walking around with gear you need max level for to obtain. If they want it scale-able sure, this promotes mentoring to increase immersion even more. But this scaling should be on par with the level you 'mentor down to' and not be ultimately more powerfull, stripped off the effects even and the likes. Mentoring down should NOT give you a benefit over a new player, aside of it being easier to do a corpse run when losing the appopriate level for the area. This also means you cannot 'instantly' change levels like you could in Rift. If you are mentoring, you need to be dedicated, have the same experience as the actual same level of players. So run to a town or remote location to get your level back up or down to the desired level.
I'm not at all interested in seeing gear scores posted on items, or on your character.
@decarsul - How can you possibly say in one paragraph that you don't want gearscore because it breaks immersion, and then in the next paragraph say that you want level requirements for gear? /boggle.
decarsul said:Gear scores in my 'carreer' only happened to match PVP to create more of a balance or for instances when there was rolespecific ability's needed (think off a cleric tank in Rift, you needed certain gear stats before being allowed). Since Pantheon will try to avoid instancing as it contradicts immersion, i do not believe this will be an issue at all.
When it comes to gear, i am still a strong believer there should be level requirements that meet the requirements needed to obtain it. I do not want to see level 10's walking around with gear you need max level for to obtain. If they want it scale-able sure, this promotes mentoring to increase immersion even more. But this scaling should be on par with the level you 'mentor down to' and not be ultimately more powerfull, stripped off the effects even and the likes. Mentoring down should NOT give you a benefit over a new player, aside of it being easier to do a corpse run when losing the appopriate level for the area. This also means you cannot 'instantly' change levels like you could in Rift. If you are mentoring, you need to be dedicated, have the same experience as the actual same level of players. So run to a town or remote location to get your level back up or down to the desired level.
I strongly disagree. Twinking or handing down high level gear to lower characters is what made EQ fun. Do understand that the power gap between a level 1 with level 50 gear is large in the begining, but as the character levels closer to 50, the power gap shrinks until it equal with the power level of the gear. Taking that way would not be good for the game as replayability is important.
@Feyshtey I don't think you got what i was saying, let me try to explain it again. No i do not want gearscore to be implemented because when passing down gear without restrictions it would mean a level 10 and level 50 would score equally with equal gear (not factoring levels) and they can never ever 'score' the same as minor healing at level 50 won't work.
This also brings me to the point @sevnptsixtwo makes. When you pass down or twink, that character at lower level shouldn't be as powerfull as the level 50 who obtained it. And this is where i suggested the scalability. I'm not apposed to handing down gear, all in favor really as it gives immersion, but i do not want the gear to be as powerfull at lower level.
If you want examples from EQ: I do not want to see a level 1 monk with a fungi tunic being fully healed per tick with it. I do not want to see a level 1 warrior with 'Rocksmasher' having 41% haste. I do not want to see a level 1 bard with a Flowing Black Silk Sash having 41% haste. I do not want to see a level 1 cleric with epic and a 96% res clicky being usable (i know this one is (nearly) impossible).
So in other words, i prefer them not to have it at all, or atleast have a level limit 2/3rds of its content (lvl 50 mob drops it, wearable by 34) or make a combination of the two. Make it wearable at level 1 with appropriate stats for that level and a mitigated effect (for fungi as example, double normal regen rate?) and make the full effect available at level 34.
And to comment further, isn't replayability the art of keeping the experience as close to the initial experience as possible? If that is so, why would you want to make it easier on yourself? If you can pass down gear, thats fine saves you looking at loot along the way. But it should never ever be a walk in the park, regardless of the gear you're wearing. (don't want to see a low level warrior with raid quality gear being unhittable by mobs because of extremely high AC)
Gearscore and other similar concepts are not a bad thing in and of themselves. It's how players use them. Players requesting people have gear levels that severely outstrip the content they are doing is what made gearscores look stupid but it had nothing to do with the gearscoring and instead people's silly restrictions on who could do what content.
decarsul said:And to comment further, isn't replayability the art of keeping the experience as close to the initial experience as possible? If that is so, why would you want to make it easier on yourself? If you can pass down gear, thats fine saves you looking at loot along the way. But it should never ever be a walk in the park, regardless of the gear you're wearing. (don't want to see a low level warrior with raid quality gear being unhittable by mobs because of extremely high AC)
We've already been told that high level gear in a low level character's hands would be scaled down to that character's level. That level 50 41% haste item would be scaled down to (just guessing here) 1/50th for a level 1 character. I don't know the actual formulae but scaling is already in the plan.
decarsul said:@Feyshtey I don't think you got what i was saying, let me try to explain it again. No i do not want gearscore to be implemented because when passing down gear without restrictions it would mean a level 10 and level 50 would score equally with equal gear (not factoring levels) and they can never ever 'score' the same as minor healing at level 50 won't work.
This also brings me to the point @sevnptsixtwo makes. When you pass down or twink, that character at lower level shouldn't be as powerfull as the level 50 who obtained it. And this is where i suggested the scalability. I'm not apposed to handing down gear, all in favor really as it gives immersion, but i do not want the gear to be as powerfull at lower level.
If you want examples from EQ: I do not want to see a level 1 monk with a fungi tunic being fully healed per tick with it. I do not want to see a level 1 warrior with 'Rocksmasher' having 41% haste. I do not want to see a level 1 bard with a Flowing Black Silk Sash having 41% haste. I do not want to see a level 1 cleric with epic and a 96% res clicky being usable (i know this one is (nearly) impossible).
So in other words, i prefer them not to have it at all, or atleast have a level limit 2/3rds of its content (lvl 50 mob drops it, wearable by 34) or make a combination of the two. Make it wearable at level 1 with appropriate stats for that level and a mitigated effect (for fungi as example, double normal regen rate?) and make the full effect available at level 34.
And to comment further, isn't replayability the art of keeping the experience as close to the initial experience as possible? If that is so, why would you want to make it easier on yourself? If you can pass down gear, thats fine saves you looking at loot along the way. But it should never ever be a walk in the park, regardless of the gear you're wearing. (don't want to see a low level warrior with raid quality gear being unhittable by mobs because of extremely high AC)
All else being equal, a level 1 and a level 50 with the same gear would have the same combat effectiveness. But I'm not aware of any MMO where all else is equal between a level 1 and a level 50. The skills and combat systems add many layers of compounding number crunching that scale the effectiveness of a 50 exponentially over that of a 1.
Now, you have a point, that with no level limits on gear it might be possible for a level 1 to have the same gearscore as a level 50, IF the score of every item is the only consideration. But, being one that would prefer there not be a gearscore displayed anywhere on any thing, that's not really something I'm going to explore. What I will say is that it seems entirely counterproductive to impliment level requirements on gear (which i don't want) in order to make gearscores (which I don't want, and you said you didn't either), meaningful in any way.
Replayability (an entirely different topic) isn't about reproducing the experience as closely as possible at all. It's about having a flexible enough game that a person who played one time can find a multitude of new ways to play the same game in new ways and still have a lot of fun.
LucasBlackstone said:Gearscore and other similar concepts are not a bad thing in and of themselves. It's how players use them. Players requesting people have gear levels that severely outstrip the content they are doing is what made gearscores look stupid but it had nothing to do with the gearscoring and instead people's silly restrictions on who could do what content.
This is true. There was a good point to them. A lot of players are wives and even my 80 year old mother in law plays, to look at a potential new item before deciding to need or greed on it then comparing multiple stats against each other to see if it's actually an upgrade or not all the while people waiting for her to roll. Just looking at one location, gear score to tell if it's an upgrade or not is a good thing.
You will not avoid Gear Score or a similiar system. I don't believe VR will have a score value on their items. But...
HP/AC/other stats are also another kind of gear score. Espacially stats like HP/AC/Damage Mitigation could be very important to have success in a specified area. In other areas there will be other stats like climatic values and your hitpoints. You see there will be different ways of gear score but not just one value. this is what i hope.
I'm not super invested in this concept, but I do think "gear scores" in some capacity are helpful. For example, in classic EQ if you wanted to do a major raid mob or dungeon crawl you had to have a certain "party score." Often times, when it was a raid mob, the party score meant you had to have X number of clerics with Y sized mana pools. As X got lower, Y got significantly higher, and there was always a minimum X. You could only know this information, and tell if you had a chance to succeed or not (bc that was only the first potential layer of success on an encounter), if you had access to some type of gear score - mana pool in this example.
IDK I like the idea of knowing this additional information about my character, my group and my guild.
Sylvanfox said: I personally I hope all of these things are left out of Pantheon. They are tools used to make a game easier and force game play on rails. Classic Everquest has none of these things and the game was better for it. I hope they leave item level requirements out of the game also.
You're still double posting lol.
And classic eq absolutely had gear requirements once it was reasonable for someone to have a full set of decent gear. Just because there wasnt a "number" or a "score" doesnt mean players in EQ didnt use gear as a deciding factor when it comes to inviting someone.
And eq also had an external damage meter that worked with love parsing... so idk why you think they didnt exist.
Fact of the matter is that EQ was a "better game" for various reasons. But none of which had anything to do with ui and addons.
LucasBlackstone said:Gearscore and other similar concepts are not a bad thing in and of themselves. It's how players use them. Players requesting people have gear levels that severely outstrip the content they are doing is what made gearscores look stupid but it had nothing to do with the gearscoring and instead people's silly restrictions on who could do what content.
This is a broadly generalized comment. It would be akin to me saying all casual players are lower dps than hardocre players.
Never has there been a situation where EVERYONE in a game was restricting people by gearscore. Its waves of people that act this way, and most likely it's because they dont want to spend 3 hrs doing something if it can be done in 1.5 with better geared players.
Theres always players that don't care about gearscore. And theres always the ability to start your own group.
I've been on both the high end and low end of the gearscore train, and while it can be frustrating... it's never actually stopped me from doing what I want... I just find a group that's more in line with my level of gear.
BrokeMyNinja said:I think I am following what you are saying. You mean Gear Scores like The Division had? Where it was Critical to have a specific rating or no matter what you were forcefully underperforming by the games own mechanics?
Otherwise no matter what, an MMORPG will have a Gear Score regardless of how it is named. EQ has done it, Tera Online, WoW has had one for ages (I know we should talk about that one), otherwise you would get crushed everytime you were hit in a Raid. Unfortunately that trait will always be there even if its not visually represented in item stats or character sheet. Sadly enough, in the end it will come down to similar groups like the "Elitist Jerks" that will grind out the math and make Gear Scores where there may not be.
I feel there is a difference between a gear score, or an item level, and a gear check in a raid. WoW is the classic example (to show what not to do lol) of an item level system. Literally people would ask you your gear score and if it wasn't high enogh you weren't joining that group/raid. Even if you were at the level needed people would always want higher item levels because they don't want "noobs" or "scrubs". This type of a system in no way promotes a social environment. It makes a person with a "low" gear score or item level feel like they aren't as good as players their same level.
Now with that being said of course you should not be allowed to raid the toughest raid boss in gear you found in the very beginning of the game. That would defeat the purpose of wanting to explore and do other content in between. You may be able to get up to a certain point doing high level content in lower level tier gear but eventually you will come across that boss that will two shot your tank unless he has magical, epic tier gear that allows him to resist or deflect the blows of such a mighty foe. I am not saying that gear should 100% determine the outcome of a battle but having better gear should certainly help you out.
Bankie said:I feel there is a difference between a gear score, or an item level, and a gear check in a raid. WoW is the classic example (to show what not to do lol) of an item level system. Literally people would ask you your gear score and if it wasn't high enogh you weren't joining that group/raid. Even if you were at the level needed people would always want higher item levels because they don't want "noobs" or "scrubs". This type of a system in no way promotes a social environment. It makes a person with a "low" gear score or item level feel like they aren't as good as players their same level.
If a person declining to invite you to a raid group affects your self esteem, you have bigger problems to deal with.
Theres nothing wrong with wanting to cruise through a raid zone without struggling to kill every boss, the issue with WoWs gearscore was that most MMO players are lazy. Wanting someone else to do the legwork for them (starting a group, finding players, leading to success).
People act like every single person In WoW cared about gearscore or required an item level way beyond what was intended at that range. This is not the case. People only make it out to be this way because it fits their arguement of not wanting something similar in Pantheon.
Besides, without gearscore, what would happen is you would join the raid as the lowest item level player. If there were ANY issues with the boss, you would likely be removed. Most of the first few bosses in wow raid zones were easy... maybe you get removed half way through and now have a lockout for a raid you cant finish. People only look at the negative aspects of gearscore but none of the positives.
The stupid part about WoW's gearscore check was that the majority of people wanted you too basically have a gear score where you would maybe need 1 or 2 upgrades from that raid. If you have pre raiding gear, then you usually get barred. However, that is due to the Pug life WoW has become. However, I would think this game will be a lot more guild centered and you won't have to worry about gear scores really. You will still need pre raiding gear though. Like in any game.