We all know the scenario. You start a game , level up , gear up via dungeons and then get raidgear.
Now there is raid off days ... some people craft stuff , help others etc. But you want to advance your character even on non-raid-days and do some PVE adventures. What makes you do dungeons? Gear is probably going to be inferior to raidlevel gear. What can dungeons give you that makes you farm mobs there?
Maybe special augmentions that only drop in dungeons and can be inserted into your raidgear? What else can you think of? What activities do you wanna see when you are raidgeared and still want to do groupstuff with your friends thats a challenge?
With a stronger focus on adventuring and dungeons I suspect that raid mobs will not drop gear that fills every slot. I expect some raid loot to be best in slot, but if we look at early EQ, most of the loot from say Nagafen/Vox is actually pretty bad minus the Cloak of Flames & Runed Bolster Belt.
That could be a theme we see in various forms for each expansion. Maybe at first raid mobs drop cloaks/belts/rings but in the first expansion we see breastplates, helmets, weight reduction bags and clicky items. In all other slots dungeon or crafted gear remains the best.
Nolaen said:Gear is probably going to be inferior to raidlevel gear.
This is the issue and it's easily solved. Just make it so that raid gear does not make dungeon gear obsolete and that means not having "best-in-slot" gear. Playing Pantheon well will require having a lot of situational gear and I'm sure VR knows better than to put all useful gear in raids. Pantheon does not at all fall victim to the "endgame" mentality. Raids do not inherently have to be more difficult than dungeons. As such, raid gear does not inherently have to be better than other gear. Certain crafting reagents and other useful consumables could also drop only in dungeons. There'll be plenty of methods of horizontal progression that will keep all types of content relevant.
Here are some threads you might find helpful. Some include comments from Aradune himself about how to solve this. It's actually not as hard as you may think. Most game studios these days are just lazy with their design:
http://pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2359/avoiding-bis-gear-labeling
http://pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2398/a-problem-with-modern-mmo-s-gear-is-the-goal
http://pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2224/gear-itemization
http://pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/1968/non-linear-gear-progression-please
Some best in slot gear should be available through grouping, which will then require even the most hardcore raider to spend some time in group dungeons if they want to be completely decked out in the best gear. There can also be trinkets, items with unique effects, tradeskill items, etc, that keep dungeons relevant.
Furthermore, this is related to another problem that I've seen in a lot of games - the gap between raid gear and even the best group gear is often times far too wide. This allows raiders to completely trivialize group content. In my opinion, raid gear should gear only be about 10-20% better than the top tier group gear. EQ was actually pretty good about this early on. Plane of Fear and Hate gear wasn't that much better than stuff from LGuk, SolB, or quested items. They unfortunately got away from this, particularly during the Luclin era, where VT gear was light years ahead of everything else, and it only got worse as exapnsions went on.
snrub said:Some best in slot gear should be available through grouping, which will then require even the most hardcore raider to spend some time in group dungeons if they want to be completely decked out in the best gear. There can also be trinkets, items with unique effects, tradeskill items, etc, that keep dungeons relevant.
Furthermore, this is related to another problem that I've seen in a lot of games - the gap between raid gear and even the best group gear is often times far too wide. This allows raiders to completely trivialize group content. In my opinion, raid gear should gear only be about 10-20% better than the top tier group gear. EQ was actually pretty good about this early on. Plane of Fear and Hate gear wasn't that much better than stuff from LGuk, SolB, or quested items. They unfortunately got away from this, particularly during the Luclin era, where VT gear was light years ahead of everything else, and it only got worse as exapnsions went on.
I think we need to remove the term "best in slot" from our vocabulary when discussing Pantheon. It simply does not apply to the design here.
From The Pantheon Difference: "In Pantheon, there often won't simply be a weapon or piece of gear that is the absolute best item for your character’s class and level. Instead, many items will be more situational, and the player will need to ask himself, 'where am I?', 'what am I going to fight next?', and 'who in my group is what class, and what items do they have that may help defeat the next encounter?' Items that protect against climates/atmospheres (areas of extreme heat or cold, or disease, or absolute darkness) will often be important. So also will 'bane' items that are especially effective against certain types of mobs (for example, the Undead, or Dragonkind).
Dubah said:Even if the best gear was raid dropped do you know how long it would take to get fully geared? I'm sure it's not gonna be easy, raid target that drops maybe 4 pieces to go around to even just a 24 man raid will take a long time to gear up
This is true. It will take a long time. From the FAQ: "Our desire to bring back the value and personality of items drives our item design. This means that the frequency of upgrades will be slower and when you do get a new piece of gear not only will the experience be memorable but so will the item. We want you to collect your items and be able to remember their names. When you get that epic item or rare drop after an incredible dungeon crawl, we want you to be in awe of what you have accomplished and the reward that came from it. Items will be memorable, deserved, cherished, and desired."
However, provided their are long boss respawn timers or lockouts, there will inevitably be some downtime between raids regardless of whether or not you got an item you wanted.
Sounds like the conversation is just gear focused. What about needing special drops for crafting? What about perception quests that specifically require you to go into the deepest dungeons for a nice reward. How about specific colored artifacts at certain camps within a dungeon, or maybe just a % chance off any mobs within that dungeon? They could run "hot" zones like they did in EQ where you get a 15% bump in experience. There are still a lot of options to bring people into dungeons.
If they keep their promise and give us memorable and meaningful items, you'll have a lot of people grouping to get items to sell, or to get items for their alts. We're so used to everything being no-drop and all of these garbage BoE items that no one cares about, but I'm hoping to care about items again. Even items that I'm not going to wear.
I hear what the OP is saying, and it's a worthy, if oft-repeated, discussion. However, as many before me have said: if "advance your character" becomes synonymous with "get better gear" then we're in a sad place. Like Pyye says, I hope there are many different reasons to enjoy a dungeon.
Pyye said:Sounds like the conversation is just gear focused. What about needing special drops for crafting? What about perception quests that specifically require you to go into the deepest dungeons for a nice reward. How about specific colored artifacts at certain camps within a dungeon, or maybe just a % chance off any mobs within that dungeon? They could run "hot" zones like they did in EQ where you get a 15% bump in experience. There are still a lot of options to bring people into dungeons.
Right. I briefly mentioned unique crafting reagents, but that's just a drop in the bucket compared to the endless possibilities of ways to keep dungeons relevant by being the go-to place for certain desired items. Tbh I think "hot zones" are a pretty cheap way to incentivize people to run outdated and otherwise useless content. At least that's how it feels. But I'm sure there will be some zones that are just more xp efficient anyway. Other things that keep you coming back to dungeons:
-Prime scrolls for Transcendent abilities
-temple within a dungeon where you can sacrifice items at an altar to get a special longterm buff
-weight reduction bags
-tools that grant a bonus to crafting success chance
-unique potions
-cosmetic gear
-ammunition (unique arrows)
-very rare mounts
I could go on haha...
I imagine raids will account for no more than 20-30% of "BiS" items. But I think there will still be some BiS gear in this game, regardless of what you are doing. I don't think you want the other extreme of item fatigue where you need to get 3 full sets of different gear to do different things, remember how hard it was to even fully gear out a single character in EQ with one set? What I am imagining for Pantheon is that you will need various weapons to capitalize on different enemy weaknesses as a melee, maybe different spell modifiers as a caster, and a handful of different armor items you swap out to meet the tier of resist needed for whatever climate. I know I saw Brad mention somewhere that you won't need full sets for different climates and that if you did equip a full set you'd be far less effective, just a limited number of items to swap.
I could be wrong.
Nolaen said:We all know the scenario. You start a game , level up , gear up via dungeons and then get raidgear.
Now there is raid off days ... some people craft stuff , help others etc. But you want to advance your character even on non-raid-days and do some PVE adventures. What makes you do dungeons? Gear is probably going to be inferior to raidlevel gear. What can dungeons give you that makes you farm mobs there?
Maybe special augmentions that only drop in dungeons and can be inserted into your raidgear? What else can you think of? What activities do you wanna see when you are raidgeared and still want to do groupstuff with your friends thats a challenge?
You can make it to where There are certain materials that are dropped for tradeskill like ore, and other things, something else could be that have certain dungeons tied to specific reps and you could farm them to gain rep with them to get access to certain quests that give a reward you want, or maybe some of those reps could advance you on your epic. there could be plenty of other reasons why to go to a certain area some are just more or less important than others depending on the player.
Nolaen said:We all know the scenario. You start a game , level up , gear up via dungeons and then get raidgear.
Now there is raid off days ... some people craft stuff , help others etc. But you want to advance your character even on non-raid-days and do some PVE adventures. What makes you do dungeons? Gear is probably going to be inferior to raidlevel gear. What can dungeons give you that makes you farm mobs there?
Maybe special augmentions that only drop in dungeons and can be inserted into your raidgear? What else can you think of? What activities do you wanna see when you are raidgeared and still want to do groupstuff with your friends thats a challenge?
Have you actually been to the point in an MMO where you have all the best items available in the game? That you have the highest stats, greatest manapool, most hitpoints, best armor class, etc? Max level, all AAs earned, so that you literally want for nothing? If so, mark me as jealous. It would only be at that point where grouping would be pointless, at least for that character. But then there are the alts and alts of alts that then take over from that maxed out character to keep me going...until the next expansion!
My thing with gearing is... I'd like a couple things where BiS is real, and obvious. Raid drop class specific chest piece, has my highest ac and primary/secondary stats along with a couple whatever stats. Maybe one or two other pieces, but beyond that my boots or my neck or my head or my socks ... it becomes more difficult to determine what is BiS. Maybe a pair of boots with almost nothing stat wise but with an innate run speed buff only while worn. Or a helm that adds to my ability to survive cold, but lowers my abi to survive heat. Some things that are situational, and others that are always (or almost always) BiS. And gear should be dropped that way as well. So that if I have the raid gear, all the gear I can get from the raid, some of it will always be the obvious BiS, but other parts will be situational, so now I have to spend time in the dungeons to get the situational gear from those dungeons.
I hope that group content can have a very high ceiling as far as difficulty is concerned.
I feel that all content group and raid should contain mobs that players have to be at the bleeding edge of gear and skill to defeat.
This adds a sense of mystique to some mobs that are rarely beaten. A world where every mob is on farm is a sad game world in my eyes.
Why can't there be a group dungeon designed to test raid geared players ?
Thanks for reading, Kiz~
One of the other things that dungeons could provide is a boost to being aclimated to certain enviroments. The dungeon could take place for example with-in a volcanic area which for each hour you've been active(gaining xp) in it you build up a 0.1 point of heat enviroment resist to a max of a 10%. Downside is if you then spend time in a dungeon say in a frozen tundra enviroment for every point of frost enviroment resist you gain you lose your heat enviroment resist.
This way you can never just max and forget your personal enviroment resist to a pecticular enviroment. So not only would you have to work on building sets of different resist gear you also have to work on your personal resists based on where you want to farm/raid.
I personally don't see raiding as the be all end all in Pantheon, whether you are talking about gear or content. Yes it will be there, but will it really be so important that everyone needs to do it? I'm not so sure. We have gotten used to the same race to "end game" in all recent MMO's, and I just don't see that same path being as valid in Pantheon. Guess we will see :)
Vandraad said:Nolaen said:We all know the scenario. You start a game , level up , gear up via dungeons and then get raidgear.
Now there is raid off days ... some people craft stuff , help others etc. But you want to advance your character even on non-raid-days and do some PVE adventures. What makes you do dungeons? Gear is probably going to be inferior to raidlevel gear. What can dungeons give you that makes you farm mobs there?
Maybe special augmentions that only drop in dungeons and can be inserted into your raidgear? What else can you think of? What activities do you wanna see when you are raidgeared and still want to do groupstuff with your friends thats a challenge?
Have you actually been to the point in an MMO where you have all the best items available in the game? That you have the highest stats, greatest manapool, most hitpoints, best armor class, etc? Max level, all AAs earned, so that you literally want for nothing? If so, mark me as jealous. It would only be at that point where grouping would be pointless, at least for that character. But then there are the alts and alts of alts that then take over from that maxed out character to keep me going...until the next expansion!
Hpnestly i have faith with VR in trying to make it to where Raid mobs hopefully wont be on farm, til maybe an expansion later or at least make it to where the raid mob can drop a ton of items but all of them have a low % to drop so if you see it once you might not see it again in what could be 3 weeks, that way it would be hard for anyone to be fully raid geared. this is my hope and to be serious i hope its both that way the accomplishment you get from it is exciting and you feel like all your hard work paid off, that way doing your dungeons and everything always has a place for everyone since getting fully raid geared is one rare and if you are you deserved it.
Dungeons seem to me like a good place to have specialized factions that have long-term benefits.
Ex. You've killed so many goblins in an enormous goblin cave city that you are known amoung them as being a serious threat. If you obtain such a reputation with them there is a chance to spawn certain mob types or bosses in certain areas etc.
I think there's a lot of ways you could use faction/reputation with dungeons that can encourage people to come back to dungeons or master them. Maybe even having multiple routes of faction progression. Thoughts?
This seems to be an easy answer to me. If you can play a normal mmo and have a 1 group raid dungeon, then why can’t Pantheon have a one group non instanced dungeon that drops gear similar to raids?
Imagine if you had Temple of Veshann from EQ1 but you made it revolve around single groups. People would start by working on the content near the zone in and as they get better gear and tactics they slowly move deeper in. Maybe weaker guilds might run it with two groups to make up for less skill but in the end its still group content.
Mushman said:I think there's a lot of ways you could use faction/reputation with dungeons that can encourage people to come back to dungeons or master them. Maybe even having multiple routes of faction progression. Thoughts?
Encouraging people to go places in order to *master* them.I like it
I think it would be better if gear only has basic protection at the core on acquire
and rather than fixed stats,no longer players have to farm in one place for it this way.
They can wear whatever they like cosmetically and the adventure itself will refine the gear over time
Some creatures have the ability to put curses on the gear too that drain hp (clerics or cabalists can remove them ?)
Sometimes gear you find is special: it has powers you have not uncovered yet on the adventure.And it is only in certain places that you will uncover these magical properties of your gear.
Fighting in different environments is good for you gear master ranking.And armor durability could have the positive effect of honing your gear over time,depending on the multitude of the type of monsters that attack you on your adventure.
Gear you find only has basic protection and rather than fixed stats,no longer players have to farm in one place for it this way.
They can wear whatever they like cosmetically and the adventure will refine the gear over time,or reveal which special (or magical) properties it possesses.
Adding a recovery penalty according to the protection armor provides,heavy slowing your character down
Light slows your character down the least.This can be reduced by master ranking.Master ranking can go up and down based on the variety of mobs you fight and the places you venture to
What also blends in well with your idea of faction/reputation is:Identify monster
Normal: Learn Hit Points and Armor Class.
Expert: Learn attack type and ability to do damage.
Master: Learn what spells the monster can cast.
Grandmaster: Learn resistances
So instead of giving players the resistance on gear automatically
They have to learn about it by killing certain mob types
This not only encourages players to farm one dungeon :it encourages people to adventure and master all of the game.
Gear grows with player adventure
Why is this a good thing?
;It shifts the suffocating attachement/fixation players have to gear ) to the actual adventure.
Protection on gear could also depend on season as I mention earlier.But this would require players to switch gear more often.
Begs for a wardrobe too.That would be a good thing because it makes environment matter.
So adventure and environment having impact on protection,rather than having fixed stats on gear