Giocefalu
Gosh I hope nobody flames you. I think I disagree with you, but that's all. I feel that VR has taken the path of a more "old fashioned" mmo. Group centric, slower paced, impactful travel, while trying to bring new features too. Perception, climbing, better crafting, a more meaningful death penalty. And while I think all that is still somewhat subject to change, I think that kind of describes the game most here seem to want. I think Aradune had a big part some would say the major part of designing EQ. And many want a newer better EQ. From what I see the death penalty just described by VR is ..less.. harsh than many want, indeed there are those complaining about it on this thread. I personally want deleveling in game. I like the durability loss of equipment on death. I'm good with everything so far even though I'm not getting everything I want for Pantheon. It still sounds better than any other game I've ever tried.
GioCefalu said:
So I know I'm in the minority on this, and everyone will bash me for this and tell me not to let the door hit my butt on the way out
So, yes, I am going to disagree, but I'll try and be constructive and reply to comments, not rant at you ;^)
GioCefalu said:
death penalty is a dealbreaker for me, and I wish I had not even pledged at this point
Whilst details weren't specified in the FAQ, the fact they made a point to address it in the FAQ from the beginning and everything else is quite old school might have tipped you off.
Ok, I'm already perhaps not being helpful, but I just hope you don't blame VR for not highlighting the death penalty details when you pledged.
GioCefalu said:
First, they have completely and totally over-complicated a series of mechanics, and I don't understand why
Like many systems, they are perhaps complex, but necessarily so. It's as complex as it needs to be. If it were simpler it would be inadequate.
The wording/naming is simply to make the concept work within the lore for immersion's sake. The terms are new, but make perfect sense once you are used to them and explain the mechanic in a lore-based way.
We play a game, sure, but we like to feel immersed in a world, so things having a basis in lore such that we can suspend disbelief is excellent.
Yes, "corpses" in EQ worked and we got used to it, but it was a gamified nonsense to leave multiple corpses all over the place. In some zones it would often get in the way of gameplay, obscuring dangerous flooring, for example. People would die multiple times and make corpse 'patterns' just to entertain themselves.
You might think Remnances and Soul Memory to be weird, but physical corpse clones littering the place and XP debt is no more 'sensible'.
GioCefalu said:
Second, the entire concept is totally contradictory. In the beginning of the newletter, they specifically say: "While it isn’t our goal to make Death an overly-steep obstacle in which players lose hours of effort in a single moment," but then they describe a system which does exactly that
This is a matter of degree. There is a balancing act. What they have described has the potential to be way *less* punishing than old school gamers might like, but also could be tweaked to be more punishing. Though they are using several mechanics, that doesn't mean they will all be dialled up to 11, so they totally weren't being contradictory, they were acknowledging that death penalty requires balance.
GioCefalu said:
[Stuff about dying making re-attempting much harder]
Yes, this is a thing, but this is part of the excitement equation. If you are truly pushing so hard that being without your bags (not your equipped gear) or losing a level means you now have no chance, then, yes, you may struggle to get back there. But you were pushing it right to the edge. That knowledge should make it very exciting and meaningful and this is good.
If, however, you can attempt encounters that are right on the edge of your ability and die with little consequence, that makes it unexciting and meaningless. Just try again. And again. And again. Until you get lucky. This is not good.
In reality, though, you will not often be playing that close to the edge. The fact that you probably learned from your death what to do next time, what you did wrong, the fact that you can now prepare better or bring another friend, or ask for other help, means that the second time it will probably be easier, not more difficult, even without your bags or if you dropped one level.
GioCefalu said:
waste what precious time I have trying to get my corpse
If the gameplay loop is entertaining, unlike modern MMORPGs, where the game 'starts' at max level and death is near meaningless, then the social and challenging activities sometimes made necessary by a Remnance Run *are* the entertainment. The gameplay loop doesn't change much at all, since you keep your equipment, so assuming you enjoyed fighting your way to the tough spot you died in in the first place, you'll probably enjoy it again. Even more so, from the satisfaction of beating something you personally know is tough and beat you before.
Honestly, I don't understand this "waste my time" concept. If you enjoy a social, challenging game, then how can you not enjoy it when it is its most social and challenging like during a Remnance Run?
GioCefalu said:
I suppose I could gloss over all of this if somehow the game were an easy game, and thus death would be incredibly rare. Instead, this game is already brutally difficult
Pantheon will be as difficult as you want it to be, thankfully with a very difficult (or impossible) high end *if you chose it*. In modern MMORPGs, you have to struggle to find a challenge. Playing FF14 recently if you chose encounters at your level they were easy even solo. If you grouped up, it was trivially boring. You had to go out of your way (and certainly ignore the intended storyline) to get anything challenging to do.
In Pantheon, yes, they aim that 'level appropriate' content is a challenge and that most content requires a group, but you can always solo lower level stuff, or form duos, trios, non-optimal groups of various kinds and work out what level of challenge you want. You won't be pushed along a rollercoaster of flashy, easy content. You will be encouraged to explore and discover the encounters you enjoy and the challenge you are willing to take on.
As for what we've seen in streams, it's pre-alpha and fine-tuning the balance isn't the focus of streams. In some streams they had a very easy time. In some it was difficult. Even in streams where they were showing the difficulty - I remember one they first showed wolves with dispositions and died a lot - this is pre-alpha...
GioCefalu said:
Since I can't get my corpse back, I will have to The Eternum, which means I'm potentially going to lose an item I spent forever trying to get?
I believe this is only if you are taking 'the lazy option' and doing that before your Remnance times out. Personally, I think that a bad idea, as it will lead to players simply not carrying valuable items very often and almost always choosing the lazy option with little consequence.
GioCefalu said:
I just don't understand how they think this is NOT losing hours of work in a single moment. That's precisely what it is. Repairing your gear, fighting back to your corpse, finding someone to rez your body, or even grinding mobs to get back your "soul memory" all sounds like hours of loss time from a single moment.
Only the 'manual' remnance run has potential for hours of gameplay and that would be very rare. Even in games like Everquest it was extremely rare to get a very difficult corpse run and in Pantheon there are even more ways to shortcut that.
Getting a rez = no remnance run. You get teleported there.
Using the Eternum = no remnance run or even waiting for a rez.
Finding a group to help (if you didn't already have one) should be easier.
Concepts like campfires make it easier.
Having you equipment makes it easier.
Even if you do have to 'grind' kills to get back your XP, Soul Memory makes that quicker unless you died many times.
Even if you have no soul memory, were you going to not kill monsters in the future? Are you racing to max level for some reason? If the gameplay is fun, it's fun whether or not you are re-gaining XP, surely?
GioCefalu said:
Go ahead and flame me and tell me that I'm too modern or weak or whatever to play an MMO like this. The truth is, this looks like original EQ but worse
I'm not going to flame you. I hope you don't take my reply as something like that. It's not a matter of being 'too weak', but a matter of what you enjoy, I suppose.
If you enjoy challenge you can't mind dying. If you enjoy meaning you can't mind some struggle and even frustration. If you want satisfaction you can't mind effort. If you enjoy group-focused and social games you can't mind needing help sometimes.
Re. Everquest, Pantheon does not sound as punishing at all to someone who played many years of Everquest at all levels. There are lots of compromises to players that are not hardcore old school. Even if it is tuned to be somewhere as punishing as EQ, there are more interesting, meaningful and, thus, fun ways to mitigate that punishment than EQ had.
To be honest, I don't think you will be as put off as you think. The death system and related systems are all very configurable. I think 'old school' players will be fine with VR dialling the 'punishment' in at a level that isn't off-puttingly punishing and I hope that's how you find it. I also think that the game itself will be that much better that players won't find death as punishing because recovery will be as enjoyable as the initial progress and you won't be rushing to progress progress progress anyway.
If a group has a difficult time completing content but takes on a challenging area (which the devs are wanting groups to do), and they die, then it's going to be difficult to get their corpses back, or else they will chain die, which then punishes them even harsher! I dont' see how this lines up with their idea that death isn't going to have players lose hours of effort in a single moment. That is precisely what is going to happen when you die.
- I'm seeing, lessons learned, content is too hard for us, lets go somewhere else. We can come back to energist/Emergent or whomever the corpse summoner was to get our stuff. This precludes the random, unp[redictable happenstance of another Player group coming upon your corpses and offering rezzes- wherin all this is moot, except the lesson learned where this area is too tough.
Then, if you were freshly leveled and using gear or spells of the new level, and you die and lose a level, you are stuck in a really tight spot. You have to have your old set of gear ready to be used. Everyone either needs to run around with an extra set of pre-level-up gear just in case they die and have to go back to old gear, which is just plain silly, or never equip new gear until you're significantly into the new level; it takes away the excitement of gaining the new level. An experience debt would have been perfectly acceptable solution here.
Now, I'm not a young kid with tons of time on my hands like I used to. I was excited to play Pantheon because I wanted a slower paced, more socialized game, but not necessarily a more "hardcore" game. With a full time job, a wife, and 3 kids, I am busy enough doing other things. I don't want to waste what precious time I have trying to get my corpse and chain dying, or spending an hour trying to grind back to the same spot, or spend hours grinding lost exp, etc. If I have to log soon because of work maintenance, to make food for my family and tuck in the kids, or because it's getting late and I need to sleep, and I end up dying, then I don't have the opportunity to get back to my corpse. Since I can't get my corpse back, I will have to The Eternum, which means I'm potentially going to lose an item I spent forever trying to get?
- patient: Doc, it hurts when I do that.
- doctor: So don't do that
Knowing this, I can only - I would be thinking to maybe get a buffer into next level before jumping into a higher level zone where a death may cause this to happen, does this line of thinking make sense to you as a adult with time management responsibilities? I mean if you are willing to take the risk, you do you- you have clearly spelled out the possible negative outcome. You mess with the bull, you get the horns. Personally? I would get a buffer first so I could survive maybe 3 deaths with exp loss if there was no healer of possibility of rez. I can come back on a day off when I have time to get my corpse from the summoner guy if Im in a non-standard group or there is no one around to help on my CR to get the rest of my stuff.
- What I am saying is, you know this going in, so, this will affect your gameplay. wether it makes you overly cautious or wether the game becomes a cathartic experience where you overcome your initial fears to become bold as a player and discover snap situational awareness decisions that saves the group, each of you acting independently without saying a word to then wonder wtf happened? and patting yourself down(figuratively) to confirm that you are still alive? then, awesome.
Manouk said:Then, if you were freshly leveled and using gear or spells of the new level, and you die and lose a level, you are stuck in a really tight spot. You have to have your old set of gear ready to be used. Everyone either needs to run around with an extra set of pre-level-up gear just in case they die and have to go back to old gear, [...]
Most gear isn't level locked, so it's unlikely that de-leveling will create gear issues. Also, most gear is designed to last many levels, so we aren't upgrading very frequently (meaning we will likely have most of the same gear for many levels).
I'm not sure if de-leveling will cause you to lose access to abilities (they may just level-scale down a tad). But even if you do lose them, it will only require minor changes to your LAS action bar since I can't imagine we get more than one or two new abilities per level.
The current death penalty has many facets to it, but ultimately it will require lots of testing before we know how harsh it ends up feeling. My impression of it is that it's an attempt to get the best aspects of old EQ corpse runs while not being nearly as harsh or limiting. There's a lot to it, which is partly why I think we're seeing such a wide variety of reactions to it.
Counterfleche said:Manouk said:Then, if you were freshly leveled and using gear or spells of the new level, and you die and lose a level, you are stuck in a really tight spot. You have to have your old set of gear ready to be used. Everyone either needs to run around with an extra set of pre-level-up gear just in case they die and have to go back to old gear, [...]
Most gear isn't level locked, so it's unlikely that de-leveling will create gear issues. Also, most gear is designed to last many levels, so we aren't upgrading very frequently (meaning we will likely have most of the same gear for many levels).
I'm not sure if de-leveling will cause you to lose access to abilities (they may just level-scale down a tad). But even if you do lose them, it will only require minor changes to your LAS action bar since I can't imagine we get more than one or two new abilities per level.
The current death penalty has many facets to it, but ultimately it will require lots of testing before we know how harsh it ends up feeling. My impression of it is that it's an attempt to get the best aspects of old EQ corpse runs while not being nearly as harsh or limiting. There's a lot to it, which is partly why I think we're seeing such a wide variety of reactions to it.
This was actually a constructive post. I didn't think about the fact that Pantheon might not have the same level required gear that EQ does. That does alleviate part of my concern, though I do wonder how abilities would be handled. If you were still able to use your new ability after you de-leveled, then as much as it would suck to de-level, it wouldn't be quite as bad as I had imagined.
For those trying to explain how "harsh" EQ's death penalty was, you don't have to go into detail because I lived through it. I have been playing EQ (and still do today) since 2001, so I am very aware of naked corpse runs, chain dying, and wasting hours of time waiting for a cleric to rez me, only to spend what little platinum I had on a rez. It was miserable. I want to spend my time playing the content of the game, not suffering the effects of a harsh death penalty.
There were some comments about time management, taking it easy if I think we're going to die, etc. I think that defeats the whole purpose of what VR stated they wanted. They WANT players to challenge themselves, push the limits, etc, but if they turn around and make the death penalty cause you to lose hours of time (which they claim isn't the intent), then they are dis-incentivizing people to challenge themselves and take on challenging content.
Also, I still stand by my comment that the game appears too difficult to also have a harsh death penalty. If you're playing an easy game, deaths should be few and far between. With a difficult game, death will be more common, which means there should be more sensitivity. As I stated before, almost every gameplay stream I have seen by the devs and streamers or guests like COHH and Jim Lee end up with wipe after wipe. If the game's own developers, who understand the mechanics better than any fresh players would, cannot accomplish the content, then I don't see how players are expected to do so without dying frequently.
Don't overlook the near death aspect. If you go down, it will be to 'not quite dead yet' first and you will drop to the bottom of the aggro list. This gives you time to either be healed or stabilized, preventing death. And if you do die, so long as your healer survived, you will be rez'd (with no major downside).
Some are worried that this means the death penalty isn't harsh enough and will only really matter if you're solo or your whole group wipes since you will otherwise either be stabilized or rez'd.
While we need to experience it to really know how harsh it is, I like that it has several levels of consequences that correspond to how much convenience you want
@Giocefalu
Ok, I'll give you the most 'flaming' comment right at the start and get it out of the way :) Then my resonse to some of your comments. I don't want this to sound rude, so if I word it wrong and it does, my apologies.
You seem to be lacking a fair bit of knowledge about Pantheon and it's development over the past several years, that those of us who have been following for a while have learned. That doesn't mean you shouldn't post your concerns, but it does mean you have come to some conclusions that are either not likely to happen at all, or are 'worst case scenarios' that a player might encounter but certainly not as a regular part of play.
That's a harsher penalty than any MMO I have ever seen, including original EQ. It blows me away that there are people on here talking about how it light this death penalty is.
Years ago, it was the intention to have death cause you to drop everything, and yes to have naked corpse runs. VR has since softened that plan. Everything is relative. The newly announced plans that you are claiming to be "so brutal" are not taking away anything from what we expected before this, just giving players more options to deal with death, in addition to the traditional "get rezzed" or "recover your corpse". Most longtime fans are sadly expecting the death penalty to get even less harsh before release.
I don't want to waste what precious time I have trying to get my corpse and chain dying, or spending an hour trying to grind back to the same spot, or spend hours grinding lost exp, etc.
So, If you enjoy setting up camp somewhere to grind XP or exploring a dungeon with friends, then why would it matter if you were gaining 'new' xp, or recovering some you lost in a death? XP is just a number on your inventory. The gameplay would be exactly the same, the only real difference would be your attitude about it while you are doing it. If you enjoy that kind of gameplay, it should be just as enjoyable. If you don't enjoy that gameplay, then why are you doing it in the first place?
If I have to log soon because of work maintenance, to make food for my family and tuck in the kids, or because it's getting late and I need to sleep, and I end up dying, then I don't have the opportunity to get back to my corpse. Since I can't get my corpse back, I will have to The Eternum, which means I'm potentially going to lose an item I spent forever trying to get?
You should know that VR has promised a VERY long corpse decay timer. The last example I heard was the potential for an "ingame week". That's 7 days of elapsed time IN the game. If you die, have to log off, and can't get back into the game for a month, your corpse will still be there, with 7 ingame days left to retrieve it. You will have ample time to recover a corpse. Also, based on the strong group-centric nature of the game, it is expected that recovering corpses will often if not usually require getting help. Either an entire group works to recover everyone's corpse after a wipe, or you are expected to ask friends to come help a solo death.
There were some comments about time management, taking it easy if I think we're going to die, etc. I think that defeats the whole purpose of what VR stated they wanted. They WANT players to challenge themselves, push the limits, etc, but if they turn around and make the death penalty cause you to lose hours of time (which they claim isn't the intent), then they are dis-incentivizing people to challenge themselves and take on challenging content.
VR certainly does emphasize the challenge of Pantheon. But they also emphasize strategy. Individual player strategy as well as group strategy.
this game is already brutally difficult. They recently mentioned that overworld mobs were 1-shotting adventurers who attempted to go solo. Yes,I understand they made a pass a this to make it more do-able, but that goes to show you how over-tuned this game currently is.
I trust you know that this game is in Pre-ALPHA? The 'tuning' is just beginning, not finished. They are still building characters and abilities. Tuning the numerical values of everything from the value of stats to damage dealt - both for players and NPCs - won't begin for real until Alpha.
almost every gameplay stream I have seen by the devs and streamers or guests like COHH and Jim Lee end up with wipe after wipe. If the game's own developers, who understand the mechanics better than any fresh players would, cannot accomplish the content, then I don't see how players are expected to do so without dying frequently.
In every stream VR has posted, the characters that were being played - both by the Devs and by the streamers - were not nearly as powerful as real characters of that level would be. Every one of them was created just for the stream. That means that none of them had realistic levels in their offensive & defensive skills. Every time one of them showed their inventory, you can see that they never spent the Mastery Points that went with their level. MPs are a huge part of 'powering up' your character. Plus, a character can find or earn more MPs than just what they get for leveling. Also, when the characters opened up their inventory, we could see that they were wearing very plain, basic gear and weapons. Not "anything they want". Real players in the game will have higher skills and better gear for a given level than those you saw in streams.
Additionally, every streamer you saw was playing a character that they had never played before that stream. And if you look close, you'll see many of those streams were played at levels far above starting. Lvl 10, 20, even 30. Are you expecting a total newb to sit down to the controls of a poorly equipped, lvl 20 character for the first time and NOT wipe frequently?
And most important, this game is intended to be a group effort. That means learning not only your own class, but how it interacts with and supports other classes. No streamers have that experience. Nor should you assume that ALL the Devs have played so much that they are masterful at teamwork, or experienced at playing classes that they don't intend to play in the released game.
Most times that VR reveals a game mechanic for the first time, a significant percentage of players see some serious possibility for disappointment and failure in it. As more info gets out, those concerns find solutions. VR has been pretty good this way, about many issues.
Could Pantheon flop and fail totally? Sure, any new game could. But we are still in early development. Give it some time and see how things like this new Death mechanic pan out, especially when some 8000 or more players get to test it in Alpha.
Hope to see you in the game.
Jothany said:@Giocefalu
Ok, I'll give you the most 'flaming' comment right at the start and get it out of the way :) Then my resonse to some of your comments. I don't want this to sound rude, so if I word it wrong and it does, my apologies.
You seem to be lacking a fair bit of knowledge about Pantheon and it's development over the past several years, that those of us who have been following for a while have learned. That doesn't mean you shouldn't post your concerns, but it does mean you have come to some conclusions that are either not likely to happen at all, or are 'worst case scenarios' that a player might encounter but certainly not as a regular part of play.That's a harsher penalty than any MMO I have ever seen, including original EQ. It blows me away that there are people on here talking about how it light this death penalty is.Years ago, it was the intention to have death cause you to drop everything, and yes to have naked corpse runs. VR has since softened that plan. Everything is relative. The newly announced plans that you are claiming to be "so brutal" are not taking away anything from what we expected before this, just giving players more options to deal with death, in addition to the traditional "get rezzed" or "recover your corpse". Most longtime fans are sadly expecting the death penalty to get even less harsh before release.
I don't want to waste what precious time I have trying to get my corpse and chain dying, or spending an hour trying to grind back to the same spot, or spend hours grinding lost exp, etc.So, If you enjoy setting up camp somewhere to grind XP or exploring a dungeon with friends, then why would it matter if you were gaining 'new' xp, or recovering some you lost in a death? XP is just a number on your inventory. The gameplay would be exactly the same, the only real difference would be your attitude about it while you are doing it. If you enjoy that kind of gameplay, it should be just as enjoyable. If you don't enjoy that gameplay, then why are you doing it in the first place?
If I have to log soon because of work maintenance, to make food for my family and tuck in the kids, or because it's getting late and I need to sleep, and I end up dying, then I don't have the opportunity to get back to my corpse. Since I can't get my corpse back, I will have to The Eternum, which means I'm potentially going to lose an item I spent forever trying to get?You should know that VR has promised a VERY long corpse decay timer. The last example I heard was the potential for an "ingame week". That's 7 days of elapsed time IN the game. If you die, have to log off, and can't get back into the game for a month, your corpse will still be there, with 7 ingame days left to retrieve it. You will have ample time to recover a corpse. Also, based on the strong group-centric nature of the game, it is expected that recovering corpses will often if not usually require getting help. Either an entire group works to recover everyone's corpse after a wipe, or you are expected to ask friends to come help a solo death.
There were some comments about time management, taking it easy if I think we're going to die, etc. I think that defeats the whole purpose of what VR stated they wanted. They WANT players to challenge themselves, push the limits, etc, but if they turn around and make the death penalty cause you to lose hours of time (which they claim isn't the intent), then they are dis-incentivizing people to challenge themselves and take on challenging content.VR certainly does emphasize the challenge of Pantheon. But they also emphasize strategy. Individual player strategy as well as group strategy.
this game is already brutally difficult. They recently mentioned that overworld mobs were 1-shotting adventurers who attempted to go solo. Yes,I understand they made a pass a this to make it more do-able, but that goes to show you how over-tuned this game currently is.I trust you know that this game is in Pre-ALPHA? The 'tuning' is just beginning, not finished. They are still building characters and abilities. Tuning the numerical values of everything from the value of stats to damage dealt - both for players and NPCs - won't begin for real until Alpha.
almost every gameplay stream I have seen by the devs and streamers or guests like COHH and Jim Lee end up with wipe after wipe. If the game's own developers, who understand the mechanics better than any fresh players would, cannot accomplish the content, then I don't see how players are expected to do so without dying frequently.In every stream VR has posted, the characters that were being played - both by the Devs and by the streamers - were not nearly as powerful as real characters of that level would be. Every one of them was created just for the stream. That means that none of them had realistic levels in their offensive & defensive skills. Every time one of them showed their inventory, you can see that they never spent the Mastery Points that went with their level. MPs are a huge part of 'powering up' your character. Plus, a character can find or earn more MPs than just what they get for leveling. Also, when the characters opened up their inventory, we could see that they were wearing very plain, basic gear and weapons. Not "anything they want". Real players in the game will have higher skills and better gear for a given level than those you saw in streams.
Additionally, every streamer you saw was playing a character that they had never played before that stream. And if you look close, you'll see many of those streams were played at levels far above starting. Lvl 10, 20, even 30. Are you expecting a total newb to sit down to the controls of a poorly equipped, lvl 20 character for the first time and NOT wipe frequently?
And most important, this game is intended to be a group effort. That means learning not only your own class, but how it interacts with and supports other classes. No streamers have that experience. Nor should you assume that ALL the Devs have played so much that they are masterful at teamwork, or experienced at playing classes that they don't intend to play in the released game.
Most times that VR reveals a game mechanic for the first time, a significant percentage of players see some serious possibility for disappointment and failure in it. As more info gets out, those concerns find solutions. VR has been pretty good this way, about many issues.
Could Pantheon flop and fail totally? Sure, any new game could. But we are still in early development. Give it some time and see how things like this new Death mechanic pan out, especially when some 8000 or more players get to test it in Alpha.
Hope to see you in the game.
Excellent points. I just wish folks would stop acting like everything they see and hear about Pantheon are release game ready and final. They gloss over facts like VR changing many aspects of class abilities and gameplay due to VIP feedback from PA sessions. That alone should let you know nothing is hard coded in stone and there is room for improvement/change/updates to evey system in game. Watching old streams of combat are different from new streams of combat. I enjoy them all becasue I know that this game is still in development and everything is subject to change or adjustments. Most importantly, VR has obejectively shown they listen to player feedback. The Death system will most certainly go through iterations before Alpha and release.
You seem to be lacking a fair bit of knowledge about Pantheon and it's development over the past several years...
Stop right there. I have been following Pantheon for years, and I have watched nearly every live stream I could find. I have read every newsletter as they became available. I have been reading the forums for years, including back when we were on the old forums before the upgrade. I have been following this project and listening to details for a LONG time.
Years ago, it was the intention to have death cause you to drop everything, and yes to have naked corpse runs. VR has since softened that plan. Everything is relative. The newly announced plans that you are claiming to be "so brutal" are not taking away anything from what we expected before this, just giving players more options to deal with death, in addition to the traditional "get rezzed" or "recover your corpse". Most longtime fans are sadly expecting the death penalty to get even less harsh before release.
No, they haven't "softened" their stance. Joppa specifically said that the reason there will NOT be naked corpse runs is became the game will be too challenging for naked characters to receive their corpses. I mentioned in one of my previous posts that a harsh death penalty is harsher when the game content is already difficult, which is precisely why they had to remove the naked corpse runs.
So, If you enjoy setting up camp somewhere to grind XP or exploring a dungeon with friends, then why would it matter if you were gaining 'new' xp, or recovering some you lost in a death? XP is just a number on your inventory. The gameplay would be exactly the same, the only real difference would be your attitude about it while you are doing it. If you enjoy that kind of gameplay, it should be just as enjoyable. If you don't enjoy that gameplay, then why are you doing it in the first place?
This is a straw-man argument. I pointed out that VR says we won't lose hours of progress in a single moment. Instead of arguing against that, you change the argument and say, "Well, you should enjoy those lost hours of gameplay because that's 'fun' for people playing the game." The fact is that it's obvious that a death will absolutely cause lost hours of progress. They've stated that their won't be fast travel and that the pace of progress will be slower, which means a death will definitely cause hours of lost progress. VR at least needs to admit that instead of pretending that lost experience and de-leveling isn't hours of lost progress in a single moment.
You should know that VR has promised a VERY long corpse decay timer. The last example I heard was the potential for an "ingame week". That's 7 days of elapsed time IN the game. If you die, have to log off, and can't get back into the game for a month, your corpse will still be there, with 7 ingame days left to retrieve it. You will have ample time to recover a corpse. Also, based on the strong group-centric nature of the game, it is expected that recovering corpses will often if not usually require getting help. Either an entire group works to recover everyone's corpse after a wipe, or you are expected to ask friends to come help a solo death.
Where did VR say that there will be a VERY long corpse decay timer of 7 in-game days? I can't find that in the newsletter at all. It simply says that players will want to get their Remnances in a timely matter. "Remnances will eventually dissipate as they are inclined to do, making their timely retrieval a prudent choice. For those who are unable or unwilling to retrieve their Remnances prior to their decay however, they will be able to seek out a representative of The Eternum..."
I trust you know that this game is in Pre-ALPHA? The 'tuning' is just beginning, not finished. They are still building characters and abilities. Tuning the numerical values of everything from the value of stats to damage dealt - both for players and NPCs - won't begin for real until Alpha.
I understand there will be more tuning, but the game is not entering pre-alpha just now. It's been in pre-alpha for YEARS. We are in 2022. In Sept of 2020 (almost 2 years ago), they were talking about Pre-Alpha 5 testing coming up. https://www.pantheonmmo.com/news/category/pre-alpha/
I was looking for a date on Pre-Alpha 1, but I couldn't find a specific date; this thread is the closest which mentions pre-alpha starting Dec 2017: https://seforums.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2514/pre-alpha-alpha/view/page/8 ;
This game is NOT "just beginning" the tuning process. The tuning process has been going on for years, and Pre-Alpha has been around for an incredibly long time. They have been tuning as they develop for years. This is hardly the beginning.
In every stream VR has posted, the characters that were being played - both by the Devs and by the streamers - were not nearly as powerful as real characters of that level would be. Every one of them was created just for the stream. That means that none of them had realistic levels in their offensive & defensive skills. Every time one of them showed their inventory, you can see that they never spent the Mastery Points that went with their level. MPs are a huge part of 'powering up' your character. Plus, a character can find or earn more MPs than just what they get for leveling. Also, when the characters opened up their inventory, we could see that they were wearing very plain, basic gear and weapons. Not "anything they want". Real players in the game will have higher skills and better gear for a given level than those you saw in streams.
That is purely conjecture. I would argue the opposite. There was a stream where they specifically pointed out a weapon upgrade for a streamer who was playing with them, but the streamer's character actually already had better weapons, implying that the gear they came with was more powerful than the area in which they were playing. Also, unless you have pre-alpha experience (I don't), we don't know how "huge" the mastery points will be in terms of leveling up your character.
Additionally, every streamer you saw was playing a character that they had never played before that stream. And if you look close, you'll see many of those streams were played at levels far above starting. Lvl 10, 20, even 30. Are you expecting a total newb to sit down to the controls of a poorly equipped, lvl 20 character for the first time and NOT wipe frequently?
I'll give you half credit here because the streamers haven't been playing their characters for the full 20 or 30 levels. However, many of them DO have experience playing the character before the stream went live. I'd have to dig up the specific stream, but one of the streamers (I think it was COHH), mentioned playing the character for a bit to get familiar with his abilities. Also, these streamers and guests, like Jim Lee, are NOT total newbs. These are MMO veterans who have played for years in the past. Yes, I would expect a brand-new group of play testers who have never played an MMO coming in at level 30 to wipe frequently, but 4 experienced devs + 1 MMO veteran should have a good chance at success. And most important, this game is intended to be a group effort. That means learning not only your own class, but how it interacts with and supports other classes. No streamers have that experience. Nor should you assume that ALL the Devs have played so much that they are masterful at teamwork, or experienced at playing classes that they don't intend to play in the released game.
I'll halfway agree with you here again. The devs know the mechanics and often play characters they enjoy or are familiar with. Outside of the streams we see, there is a lot of internal testing they do in order to test out bugs, mechanics, fun value, etc. Yes, many of the devs are playing characters they don't necessarily find as their "favorite" class; that's part of their job. That doesn't mean they will be as good as players will be playing the same class, so I agree with you on that part.
Most times that VR reveals a game mechanic for the first time, a significant percentage of players see some serious possibility for disappointment and failure in it. As more info gets out, those concerns find solutions. VR has been pretty good this way, about many issues.
Could Pantheon flop and fail totally? Sure, any new game could. But we are still in early development. Give it some time and see how things like this new Death mechanic pan out, especially when some 8000 or more players get to test it in Alpha.
I hope you are right. I was glad to see that they changed the gates and chakras on the monk, which felt like a clunky mechanic to me, and I hope they really do fine-tune the death mechanic so that it's just a sting and not hours of lost progress in a single moment.
streeg said:If I understand it correctly, a dps class can burst a mob, grab aggro, get beat down to 0 health, get healed by a healer class, pop up and go back to burst dps because they're now at the bottom of the aggro list. I'm not sure if I explained that very well, but it feels like we'll be giving a free pass to players that can't/won't control their aggro. Maybe it's not a big deal, but it makes me a little nervous anyways.
There have been discussions across various Discords about this point and one thing was not quite clear. Lets presume a few things first, things which VR has not yet stated are not a thing. The first is Low Health Aggro (LHA) where an NPC will ignore everyone else and attack a PC that is in the LHA state. Let us also presume that LHA starts when you're at/below 15% HP. Let us also presume that the Neart Death Pool (NDP) is equal to 10% of your total HP.
If we then have a character with 200hp, they enter LHA at 30hp. The NPC focuses on them completely and drops them into their NDP somewhere between 0 and -20hp and now that PC is at the bottom of the hate list. If that player gets healed but that heal does not immediately take them above the LHA point, the NPC will immediately refocus on them and put them right back into their NDP. Ping..Pong..Ping..Pong.
What also hasn't been answered is if, after a PC who enters the NDP realm (and has their aggro dropped to the bottom of the hate list) then regains their initial aggro point on the hate list once they are healed beyond the LHA point. It would stand to reason that an NPC would see that character brought back and would 'remember' how much they hated them and put them back at the appropriate point on their hate list.
Oh and this NDP brings up even more questions. If an NPC hits you for so much that you would immediately blow past your NDP, do you immediately die or does the extra damage which would have taken you past the NDP magically vanish so that you only ever somewhere inside your NDP? By this I mean if you have 200hp and a mob hits you for 600hp, does the extra 370-379 damage just magically disappear so that you don't immediatley die but instead enter your NPD?
Vandraad said:Oh and this NDP brings up even more questions. If an NPC hits you for for so much that you would immediately blow past your NDP, do you immediately die or does the extra damage which would have taken you past the NDP magically vanish so that you only ever somewhere inside your NDP? By this I mean if you have 200hp and a mob hits you for 600hp, does the extra 370-379 damage just magically disappear so that you don't immediatley die but instead enter your NPD?
I wonder about that as well. I hope it causes full death, otherwise it's rife for exploitation. It could be used to draw an initial, massive alpha strike without dying. It could be used to fall from massive heights instead of climbing down.
GioCefalu said:There were some comments about time management, taking it easy if I think we're going to die, etc. I think that defeats the whole purpose of what VR stated they wanted. They WANT players to challenge themselves, push the limits, etc, but if they turn around and make the death penalty cause you to lose hours of time (which they claim isn't the intent), then they are dis-incentivizing people to challenge themselves and take on challenging content.
Also, I still stand by my comment that the game appears too difficult to also have a harsh death penalty. If you're playing an easy game, deaths should be few and far between. With a difficult game, death will be more common, which means there should be more sensitivity. As I stated before, almost every gameplay stream I have seen by the devs and streamers or guests like COHH and Jim Lee end up with wipe after wipe. If the game's own developers, who understand the mechanics better than any fresh players would, cannot accomplish the content, then I don't see how players are expected to do so without dying frequently.
The death penalty presented doesn't really seem like it causes hours of lost time at all. Maybe the time of a corpse run and some repairs every so often? If you get back to your corpse then you can fully regain all that lost experience with bonus exp by just continuing to play, if you get a rez (all healers will have this so most any group will) then you get half back immediately. If you die a few times in a row with no kills or rez between then perhaps you will start losing permanent exp, but I imagine that will be rather rare. All of this means players/groups will have a substantial buffer against actual loss the vast majority of the time, after one or two deaths they should consider going elsewhere and if they are stuck still trying to get to their corpses then reaching out to others to drag their bodies would be warranted. In the meantime they'd still have all their equipped gear to stay somewhere safer and start working on a little exp.
As for the streams and deaths etc? It is still very much in early implementation and tuning. Just because the game has been in PA for a long time doesn't mean they are anywhere near dialed in for tuning as everything keeps changing be it the world itself, classes, abilities, mobs and their ai/traits/dispositions, the stats and stat effectiveness, etc. And chaning any one of those can throw off the others. I would not expect truly dialed in tuning until beta at the soonest.
So yes the game will be challenging for those that seek the high risk/reward, but not everyone has to do that if dying is too "harsh" for them. I'd wager plenty of people will spend time fighting blue or white con mobs or avoid dungeons until they are a little over the normal levels so they have a better chance of living.
GioCefalu said:
You seem to be lacking a fair bit of knowledge about Pantheon and it's development over the past several years...Stop right there. I have been following Pantheon for years, and I have watched nearly every live stream I could find. I have read every newsletter as they became available. I have been reading the forums for years, including back when we were on the old forums before the upgrade. I have been following this project and listening to details for a LONG time.
Well, since you have been following closely, you must know VR have a good record of improving old school aspects and you must realise that assuming pretty much worst case scenario from every aspect of the mechanic is a tad unreasonable.
Also that if you assume the 'best case' that death will be a nothing of a penalty like any modern MMO where death is a minor inconvenience, which would actually be a bigger disaster than a tough one.
There is a huge realm in between ridiculously hard and pathetically easy for VR to get it tuned right and no reason to assume either extreme.
GioCefalu said:
Years ago, it was the intention to have death cause you to drop everything, and yes to have naked corpse runs...
No, they haven't "softened" their stance. Joppa specifically said that the reason there will NOT be naked corpse runs is became the game will be too challenging for naked characters to receive their corpses. I mentioned in one of my previous posts that a harsh death penalty is harsher when the game content is already difficult, which is precisely why they had to remove the naked corpse runs.
You've been following closely so you must know that to not leave equipment on a corpse is indeed a 'softening' of original ideas for death penalty. Yes, Joppa explained the reason for that softening, but it *is* a softening and a compromise compared to traditional old school death penalty in games like Everquest and Vanguard.
As for 'difficult' content, that too is relative and to be tweaked. It will for sure be more difficult than modern MMOs (it had better be!) where you can go for many days without the slightest risk of dying, but that doesn't mean we'll be dying in Pantheon every few minutes (or scared to do anything for fear of death).
GioCefalu said:
So, If you enjoy setting up camp somewhere to grind XP or exploring a dungeon with friends, then why would it matter if you were gaining 'new' xp, or recovering some you lost in a death?...
This is a straw-man argument. I pointed out that VR says we won't lose hours of progress in a single moment. Instead of arguing against that, you change the argument and say, "Well, you should enjoy those lost hours of gameplay because that's 'fun' for people playing the game."
But that is a germaine and important point. If the gameplay is good - unlike a modern MMO where leveling up is just a dull race to endgame - it isn't a 'punishment' to play that game more. You aren't "wasting time" if you're enjoying that time whether you're making 'new' progressing or redoing something you failed at (and getting XP back while you're at it).
GioCefalu said:
The fact is that it's obvious that a death will absolutely cause lost hours of progress. They've stated that their won't be fast travel and that the pace of progress will be slower, which means a death will definitely cause hours of lost progress. VR at least needs to admit that instead of pretending that lost experience and de-leveling isn't hours of lost progress in a single moment.
How is this a "fact" when we have no idea how this will be tuned? It is a very slim possibility based on assuming pretty much the hardest tuning of every part of the mechanic. Not only that, VR have said many times, it will be tuned in testing, so a penalty that hard is just not going to happen.
Also, as above, "lost progress" is only literal regarding XP, and even then they may be ways to get it back in little time (unfortunately, even Everquest, considered a 'hard' death penalty game, could be almost completely dodged by a high level resurrection teleporting the player to their corpse and returning 96% XP. I hope Pantheon isn't that trivial).
But progress is more than earning XP and racing to end game. Progress is learning from your defeats. Progress is becoming a better player. Progress is getting to know your group and/or guild and the world of Terminus and its monsters. You don't get that progress from a trivial death penalty that results players to throwing themself repeatedly at a 'challenging' encounter until they get lucky because death does near nothing.
Not to mention the other horizontal progression systems that you won't "lose" when you die, in fact you'll get more chance to progress them as you work on lost XP or whatever.
GioCefalu said:
You should know that VR has promised a VERY long corpse decay timer...
Where did VR say that there will be a VERY long corpse decay timer of 7 in-game days? I can't find that in the newsletter at all...
That detail is not in the latest newsletter, or even a recent one that I know of, but I also seem to remember it 'said' by VR. Maybe it was a roundtable or Discord, but anyway that's not set in stone and is another setting to tune. Certainly there's no reason to assume a *short* decay timer.
GioCefalu said:
I trust you know that this game is in Pre-ALPHA? The 'tuning' is just beginning, not finished. They are still building characters and abilities. Tuning the numerical values of everything from the value of stats to damage dealt - both for players and NPCs - won't begin for real until Alpha.
I understand there will be more tuning, but the game is not entering pre-alpha just now. It's been in pre-alpha for YEARS...
This game is NOT "just beginning" the tuning process. The tuning process has been going on for years, and Pre-Alpha has been around for an incredibly long time. They have been tuning as they develop for years. This is hardly the beginning.
Maybe 'tuning' is a misunderstood term, but Pre-alpha is not for tuning, it is for testing core systems and general gameplay concepts. There has been some basic setting of difficulty levels so it's 'playable' of course, but little tuning has occurred or is likely to occur until well into alpha, as VR has said several times, I believe.
It would be pointless tuning anything to a detailed degree in pre-alpha when concepts like Near Death are still being introduced, and those kind of design additions/refinements are being made in many areas (Readiness, States, etc).
GioCefalu said:
In every stream VR has posted, the characters that were being played - both by the Devs and by the streamers - were not nearly as powerful as real characters of that level would be...
That is purely conjecture. I would argue the opposite. There was a stream where they specifically pointed out a weapon upgrade for a streamer who was playing with them, but the streamer's character actually already had better weapons...
Yes, there is much inconsistency in pre-alpha streams when it comes to subtlety like encounter difficulty. You can point to an example where streamers were overleveled and had good gear. Others can point to streams where they were underleveled and had bad gear.
A point is proved by that inconsistency. You can neither assume the game will be too easy or too hard when showing off balanced challenge levels was never the point of a pre-alpha stream. It was clear that challenge tuning was very far from good and this is because tuning is not a priority in pre-alpha.
GioCefalu said:
Additionally, every streamer you saw was playing a character that they had never played before that stream. And if you look close, you'll see many of those streams were played at levels far above starting. Lvl 10, 20, even 30. Are you expecting a total newb to sit down to the controls of a poorly equipped, lvl 20 character for the first time and NOT wipe frequently?
I'll give you half credit here because the streamers haven't been playing their characters for the full 20 or 30 levels. However, many of them DO have experience playing the character before the stream went live...
Playing a 30th level character, that would take hopefully many dozens of hours (hopefully many more) in game to reach (never mind master), for a bit before the stream is nothing, even for an MMORPG pro, especially in a game they don't know.
And if you've seen Roenick play you know that few of the devs actually have much in game experience.
GioCefalu said:
And most important, this game is intended to be a group effort. That means learning not only your own class, but how it interacts with and supports other classes. No streamers have that experience. Nor should you assume that ALL the Devs have played so much that they are masterful at teamwork, or experienced at playing classes that they don't intend to play in the released game.
I'll halfway agree with you here again. The devs know the mechanics and often play characters they enjoy or are familiar with. Outside of the streams we see, there is a lot of internal testing they do in order to test out bugs, mechanics, fun value, etc. Yes, many of the devs are playing characters they don't necessarily find as their "favorite" class; that's part of their job. That doesn't mean they will be as good as players will be playing the same class, so I agree with you on that part.
Also you might hear devs say they *are* playing their 'favourite' classes, but they are often talking about classes they play in other MMORPGs. I'm pretty sure most of them haven't actually played much Pantheon. The pre-alpha testers probably have more time online playing 'normally' than most of them.
GioCefalu said:
Most times that VR reveals a game mechanic for the first time, a significant percentage of players see some serious possibility for disappointment and failure in it. As more info gets out, those concerns find solutions. VR has been pretty good this way, about many issues...
I hope you are right. I was glad to see that they changed the gates and chakras on the monk, which felt like a clunky mechanic to me, and I hope they really do fine-tune the death mechanic so that it's just a sting and not hours of lost progress in a single moment.
And I hope it's more than a 'sting' and something that really makes players 'fear' death so that staying alive is genuinely exciting, but I recognise there's a middle ground between 'so harsh that no one does anything challenging' and 'so easy that everything is boring and meaningless'.
I have faith VR will find that balance with death penalty and all the aspects that could be taken 'too far old school'. I'm certainly not assuming the harshest tuning, but I'm also hoping for far from the easiest tuning, as that would be worse than any of the homogenised, watered down, bland, modern MMORPGs.
As with any aspects, expressing concern is great and interesting to discuss - I am concerned that the new death penalty concepts might make it way too weak, but it's just as pointless to assume 'the worst' (whatever your viewpoint) as it is to assume 'the best'.
@GioCefalu To be clear, I think the direction of your concern is a valid one - that the death penalty has potential to put people off attempting challenging content - and your comments hit on some interesting points, I just think you are also assuming the worst and making some alarming claims based on that assumption.
As I've said, personally I'm worried that concepts like Near Death have great potential to make death a gamified triviality - even susceptible to abuse - but I express that worry in the hope of discussing it's merits and with faith that VR are very good at finding compromise that still meets their 'old school' tenets and vision.
Also in the knowledge that a lot of these things we just cannot know with anything like sureness until we get further into pre-alpha and even into alpha, really.
@disposalist
There was too much in that previous long post to counter-argument, so I will summarize by saying this:
There's a lot of conjecture about how much gaming experience the devs have, how many hours they've played, whether or not they are playing their favorite classes, etc. I'm not going to comment any further on that because it's just guessing how much actual experience and expertise they have in those classes, but from what I've seen, people "playing" Pantheon are dying on a typical stream, which runs roughly an hour. I seriously hope the death rate of the game is not once per hour, and that's with a group of people who understand the mechanics of the mobs they are facing because they programmed those mechanics!
I'm going to stick with my main concern which is that dying causes you to lose a lot of time and progress. If I can only play 2-3 hours a night (I'm not a college kid anymore), I don't want a death to forfeit everything I gained that evening. Even if I enjoy a good camp grind with a group, and we die and lose time, which requires a repair, a corpse run, and a re-grind to get the experience back, then my character doesn't progress. I am in agreeance with most on these forums that I do NOT want "easy mode," or face-rolling abilities on 12 hotbars in order to solo your way to max level, or quest hubs that point you from A to B to C. That being said, I still want my character to progress, and since I can't play 8-9 hours at a time, if a death does cause you to lose that whole night's worth of exp and time, then that seems harsh to me.
I don't know what to say about the near-death experiences because there aren't enough details about how this is going to work yet. As others have mentioned, can you "game" it to burst DPS a mob down and use near-death as a way of reducing your aggro and then bursting the mob again? I hope that's not the case.
Until I can actually test the game out myself or see more updated gameplay videos showing otherwise, I'm going to stick with the assumption that lost exp and level loss (if low enough) is too harsh for the current rate of progress and death seen in the gameplay vids.
It won't cause the loss of a whole nights worth of exp and time unless you are playing for a very short session and die maybe.
Even if it is 10% exp "lost" on death it wouldn't be until it is around 10 hours per level for that to equal an hour "lost." Except it isn't actually lost here, with a rez you get half of it back (in which case it would take 20 hours per level for that 10% lost to equal a single hour of "lost" time) immediately and the rest of it becomes bonus exp on each kill until regained so nothing is actually lost in that. So really if one keeps playing and doing what they were doing to begin with without dying excessively then they fairly painlessly regain everything except any time spent on the corpse run and occasional repair.
