Questaar said:There needs to be a lot of individual bank storage and a lot of account sharing bank storage, as well as guild storage. For me this is a QOL issue I require. Mostly I want the game to be as “real world” as possible. The whole individual bank account which can be accessed from any city is not realistic, but it’s a QOL issue. It’s a game play requirement for me.
Teleporting is also branded as a QoL feature but it negatively influences meaningful travel. What you're speaking for is essentially teleporting of items, which negatively influences the idea of a diverse global economy where certain goods are rare on one continent and plentiful on another, providing a business opportunity for traveling traders.
I can accept that some means of exchanging items between alts may as well be implemented because people will find ways of doing it anyway, but making items globally available would be harmful to a world where locality really means something. At the very least it should be severely restricted.
Everybody likes convenience, but for me the game world and what people do in it is much more important.
It's interesting what people consider "realistic" in a world with magic and teleportation.
I mean, I get that some people have an idea that any game mechanic which allows the player to focus on playing the game instead of fighting the game's systems ruins immersion or whatever, but at least come up with justifiable reasons for your opposition to these things.
Local-only bank accounts will be annoying and I don't think they do anything to promote community. Localized economies may in fact simply end up with one area being the objective best area for items and thus result in people overwhelmingly choosing that area as their character's home, leaving other areas barren for new players. You have to balance things extremely carefully to not create a highly imbalanced world. Global access to items actually alleviates that problem. Another alternative is to avoid having to balance items by just having them all be reskins of the same core, but that's not acceptable to some players either.
There can't be local anything with teleportation. The combination of approved multi-boxing and Druid/Wizard teleportation guarantees it.
Shroud tried the same thing, and the attempt failed for the exact same reason.
Pesonally, I've never heard a developer or designer justify local markets and teleportation at the same time, I suspect, because the overwhelming illogic of it two mechanics in conjunction is pretty jarring.
I'm in favor of temporal delays in the public market, but in trading a bag or harvest mats to my crafting alt? Nope. Don't see the value in making that difficult, myself.
Kilsin said:Community Debate - Shared bank storage with your account or separate bank storage for separate characters? Please explain your answer. #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
I like the idea of at least having a couple slots that are shared, as I tend to have a lot of characters. I've discovered that I unexpectedly enjoyed classes filling needs of group or guild friends, so shared space helps with equipment and such. If the banks aren't centralized/linked, that's fine. This, like most QoL features could be debated into the ground as to how it's good or bad, ruins the game or is just a nice thing, etc., but it's just a convenience that I'd like.
((It's interesting what people consider "realistic" in a world with magic and teleportation.))
My take on this is simple. Yes the natural rules of Terminus are different but once the stage is set things should all work more or less in accordance with those rules without obviously impossible or unlikely things being allowed simply for "quality of life".
Will it be possible for all banks in the world to be linked by teleportation spells so that a safe deposit box exists simultaneously in every single one at all times? So that you can just walk in to a branch half way around the world and without even making arrangements to contact the original branch and activate a spell you can simply pick up any item you want? Seems like a stretch to me but who can say.
Will it be economically feasible for banks to offer this service for little or for free rather than having a huge monthly charge to keep the spell running. Highly unlikely.
Will a bank in region X have reciprical arrangements to permit such access to vaults with banks in areas on the other side of the world that they have never even heard of. Or with racial "kill-on-sight" enemies, Um .....no.
((There can't be local anything with teleportation. The combination of approved multi-boxing and Druid/Wizard teleportation guarantees it. ))
Some truth to this which is why I question the reasoning behind allowing this type of transportation spell in the first place in a game focusing on large world, slow progress. I think it is more "EQ had it and hardcore EQ players expect it" than "it supports and improves our vision of how Terminus should work."
That said - I hope the teleportation spells won't be quite as world-shrinking and unbalancing as you hope/fear. Hypothetically, suppose there are 6 mage and 6 druid teleportation loci on a continent. Each and every one in a neutral area not controlled by one of the races/factions. Thus, requiring getting to and entering any towns and cities within range of the locus in order to do any banking. Further suppose that some or all of the local towns and cities wherein reside the banks are not automatically friendly to strange visitors who may not even be of their race. Thus, you have some convenience in getting to places if you are a mage or druid or use the abilities of such - but getting to banks and markets in any particular area may still be non-trivial. Someone with positive faction in every area (which may not be possible) and the time to make the trek from locus to market may well be able to make money from differences in prices. So what - to many of us this is a positive not a negative. It most certainly does not dictate that we have world markets and banking and mail rather than regional markets and banking and mail.
Kilsin said:Community Debate - Shared bank storage with your account or separate bank storage for separate characters? Please explain your answer. #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
To quote a disagreeable pessimist (but yet fun guy) from Discord; Just follow the righteous path of EQ DAoC and give us housing with vaults (shared), personal vendors (shared), but also banks (not shared).
zoltar said:I'm in favor of 100% shared storage across your account. Gets rid of the silliness of mule characters.
I'm fine with shared storage so long as it is adequate for having multiple characters use it. Most of the time shared storage just means enough space for one character to use, but you can use it with all your characters.
If we're allowed eight character slots, you better believe I will eventually have eight characters because rolling alts is a large part of my enjoyment of playing MMOs. If that means I will constantly be fighting my bank space because they don't give me enough to keep a reasonable amount of items per character, then this isn't a tenable solution just to solve the not-actual-problem of alt mules.
There are a number of ways to deal with the issue of inventory and bank space, but avoiding item bloat never seems to be the one implemented, so available space will need to be adequate for this.
Kilsin said:Community Debate - Shared bank storage with your account or separate bank storage for separate characters? Please explain your answer. #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
Shared for sure...I like passing cool stuff from my main character to an alt or being able to craft something useful for my lowbie as I explore different classes and their abilities. I made plenty of friend in all the games I’ve played...shared banks have no bearing on “community“ to me. But honestly whatever you, the game designers come up with I will adapt to it and make it work for me.
Soaren
Humble Ranger
I don't think I'm for or against a certain amount of shared bank slots, or being able to send items/coin to your alt via mail.
Do we know if Pantheon is going to have ACCOUNT BOUND items? If so, you HAVE to have a way to share with your alts.
One thing I definitely don't want to see though - is an ENTIRE shared bank - like what is in Guild Wars 2. I hate it, my main character has collected tons of stuff, and I log in to an alt, and there's hardly any room for him to use since my other characters are also using the same entire bank. And everything's getting mixed together. If there's going to be shared bank slots, please make the main portion of the bank for individual characters!
And yes I know you can keep spending money to buy more bank slots in GW2 :(
vjek said:If you don't allow it on a single account, people will just use a second account of their own. Which is fine, if that's your design goal and target demographic (people who can afford to have/buy two accounts).
Otherwise, yes, you are limiting (arguably, further) your target demographic by not including such a simple, basic, expected feature in 2022.
And this is excatly what is wrong with genres dev's today and/or the player base as a whole. The expectation that "we're in 2022, not 1982, we should have this" is the most ridiculous thing that I've ever heard.
Inventory management might seem annoying, but it plays a huge strategic part of a game when it's part of the game. Having 1000's of bank slots across all your accounts makes EVERYTHING in the game worthless because you can have so much of it. A single 20 stack of skelly bones is worthless if you can have 300 stacks. But limit that to 100 slots and then all of a sudden, that single 20 stack becomes much more valuable because it's taking up space you might need for something else, so the game of "how much does this mean to me" comes into play.
Look at New York. Why is real estate there so expensive? Becaue there's not much of it. Limited space increases value. Always has, always will in every medium.
Mod Edit: Replaced profanity with something more appropriate. Next time the whole post gets removed without warning for trying to get around the profanity filter.
One other aspect of limited bank space (in case of account wide shared bank, and no per-character slots): Since it looks like we will have no real auction house, you may be pressed quite hard to get rid of stuff. Can't store it in the bank (no space!), can't "quickly" sell it to other players (no auction house!), probably unreal vendor buy back prices (might as well destroy the item!). Handing in gear for buffs, as was suggested, may be a solution - but will that work for crafting items, or crafted intermediate components?
Inventory management on my character is fine, and to be expected for an adventurer. But inventory management in the bank should not be a hassle IMO.
Kittik said:vjek said:If you don't allow it on a single account, people will just use a second account of their own. Which is fine, if that's your design goal and target demographic (people who can afford to have/buy two accounts).
Otherwise, yes, you are limiting (arguably, further) your target demographic by not including such a simple, basic, expected feature in 2022.And this is excatly what is wrong with genres dev's today and/or the player base as a whole. The expectation that "we're in 2022, not 1982, we should have this" is the most bullsheit thing that I've ever heard.
Inventory management might seem annoying, but it plays a huge strategic part of a game when it's part of the game. Having 1000's of bank slots across all your accounts makes EVERYTHING in the game worthless because you can have so much of it. A single 20 stack of skelly bones is worthless if you can have 300 stacks. But limit that to 100 slots and then all of a sudden, that single 20 stack becomes much more valuable because it's taking up space you might need for something else, so the game of "how much does this mean to me" comes into play.
Look at New York. Why is real estate there so expensive? Becaue there's not much of it. Limited space increases value. Always has, always will in every medium.
I don't think it's reasonable to argue the real estate situation in NYC is a good thing and a model to be followed.
You camp both characters in the same "well hidden location, drop the item on the ground. Logoff and login real fast and hope the item is still there when you pop.
Anyone here play EQ and not pickup a random bag that was half-hazardly left on the ground?
I vote for a localized shared bank slots. Enough slots to hold a complete armor set. Your other character can be KOS at the local bank where the item is stored. so faction /race / alignment matters.
Maybe we are looking at this in the wrong way as well. Why do people keep/collect/horde items?
Items are usually kept for the following reasons:
1) Equipment used or to be used by their current character.
2) Quest items
3) Trade skill raw materials (which are occasionally quest items as well)
4) Vendor trash to be converted to cash
5) Character maintenance consumables (Food, water, spell reagents ect)
6) Player viable items to be used by other characters, either sold or passed to an alt.
1) Equipment to be used should have a place on your characters paper doll and not stored in your general inventory. It is often also commonly expected to have situational gear. I would suggest that it would be best if the paper doll also had some way to store situational gear. Perhaps this would be only available for accessories as most resistance items are not on armor anyway. A character could have a drop down of say 4 rings and amulets to select from to be active at any one time but all have a slot on the paper doll. Additional weapon sheaths could also be available for the same purpose and effect. Switching weapons could be part of encounter design. Environmental gear already I believe has a secondary paper doll.
2) Quest items to me are fairly worthless inventory clutter unless it is specifically an assembly puzzle. There is no reason that most quest items could not be treated as character flags once looted and therefor take up no inventory space, this could also be part of a loot drop check system such that quest items stop dropping once you have them. Super rare quest items could still be physical if they are intended to be world drops but at that point they become more like equipment to be traded.
3) Trade skill items usually come in two forms: tiny pieces of high value and high interest or big bulky items that you need a great deal of but have relatively low value. It would be nice to some way to split crafting inventory from general inventory and doubly so for long term storage. A trade skill commodities vendor could be used to turn in items too either for storing your goods or listing them for other players to purchase. The small rare components are where things get tricky as there could be a huge number of unique items in this category (possibly more than there are equip able items in the game). A strong enforcement of either volume or item size i.e. a primary inventory slot can hold 1 giant (8 cubic feet) item or a bag that can hold 8 large items (1ft^3), 64 medium items (6in^3), 512 small items (3in^3) or 4096 tiny items (1.5in^3 stupid base 12 number system). Another way to look at it might be that medium items can stack up to 8, small can stack up to 64 and tiny up to 512. The issue with stacking again becomes an issue of the number of unique and therefor non stacking items.
4) Vendor trash in general should be avoided. Vendor trash is often the source of most item dupe cash generation and are just a pain in both inventory management and item generation. Cash generation should be tightly controlled to prevent high inflation. If they are needed as a cash source then have the trade skill items be the sudo cash drops that must be processed by a crafter before they gain their final value. That will tie trade skills directly into the economy and limit what can be quickly bot farmed.
5) Similar to situational gear I would like to see maintenance consumables have a paper doll slot that you can fill with your consumables too keep them out of the general inventory. Things like potions or one use clickies will still need inventory slots but even those might deserve a potion belt or charm bracelet.
6) Category 6 is the real purpose of both general inventory and long term item storage, phat lewtz. Basically any item of high value intended to be traded to other characters (even if it is one of your own characters). These are the exciting items to see drop or the purpose of adventuring if it is an assembly quest item. This category is also the one that makes the most sense to have be inventory space restricted in order to drive both choices and general item scarcity. The transfer of category 6 items is also the center point for the majority of player interaction and should be the focus of the design.
TLDR
1) Situational gear and Consumables should have paper doll slot
2) Quest flags gained when quest items looted not inventory items
3) Trade skill items need a bulk storage option for generic materials and a large unique item storage system for unstackable specialty rare ingredients
4) No vendor trash items please
5) General inventory should be for loot items of significant value
6) If situational gear, quest items, tradeskill items and consumables do not take general inventory space then item mules and complex inventory transfer system are a lot less needed.
It could be argued vendor trash items serve a purpose of taking up space so you can't just infinitely run out and farm cash without having to stop and manage your inventory.
I do agree with items that are solely quest items should just flag instead of taking up space. Use this in conjunction with quest items only dropping if you have the quest and you eliminate the problem of hoarding those.
I think those two things together would solve most common inventory problems and reduce the need for anything more than a simple few slots through which you can transfer items to alts.
Love the thinking Trasak and I am very much in agreement with you on this - especially vendor trash.
If an item is going to take space in my inventory/bank/whatever, let it have a purpose beyond being sold to an NPC. I've said before that if those NPCs are buying the item there must be a crafting-like reason for that, and that reason should be able to apply to PCs as well.