I have a question about "rent gear". I'm watching an older Cohh stream and he asked Joppa to explain rent gear. He said it is gear that you can get from a drop, but once you log out, you lose the gear.
Having never played an MMO with that feature I'm a bit confused by it. What is the purpose of it? Not that a high fantasy MMO is supposed to be a life simulator, but it removes some of the immursion if gear "magically" dissapears by simply logging out.
I will throw in a caveat that there have been other features that I was not familiar with and was initially scared by only to learn more about them and now I'm completely on board. One of which is open world dungeons. So at this point my default position is to trust the devs, but I would still like to understand more.
In Everquest, the magician (most comparable to Pantheons summoner) could summon a lot of stuff: Bags, staffs, swords, focus items that would allow you to cast faster or more mana efficient, ModRods.
All of that stuff was flagged as "no rent", to show that it will disappear if you log out for long enough. That made the mage more desirable, since people wanted some of these items while grouping witht the summoner. From a roleplaying point of view it also made some sense, since these items were summoned, and therefore temporary.
If these items had a fixed duration, and then they just disappeared, that would not be too nice :)
Often gear will be tagged this way to use it as a gating item. For example, you might get a key from a guard in a dungeon that gets you past a door to delve deeper. Once you log, that key poofs so you need to acquire it each time. Another example may be a special cloak that protects you from a nasty environment. You can't pass the barrier without the cloak, but once you log it poofs. There may be a special weapon that you need to down some ugly dungeon dweller - but once you log, poof.
This tag isn't used on gear you would normally camp as upgrades to your character, but as puzzle pieces to overcome obstacles. One bard's experience anyway...
The Journeyman boots quest and the shadowed rapier comes to mind as well..
"You say, 'What shadowed rapier?'
Hasten Bootstrutter says 'Shadowed men, foes to all, have appeared. Many lands do they walk. Invisible are they, but for the items they wield. Seek them out and return to me a shadowed rapier. Return it with haste before 'poof' goes the rapier!! No time to camp have you.'
"
I really like the idea of a summoner being able to summon temporary items. To me that makes sense and adds tons of value to that class.
As far as a key or cloak, I'm halfway on board with that. Conversely I like the idea of grouping with someone that has a key because he's been here before. Makes them feel valuable/important.
I am comforted a bit by the suggestion that it won't simply regular upgradeable armor/weapons that will disappear when you log.
No rent does seem to be a less than readily understandable description. To someone not already familiar with the system perhaps the plain but entirely descriptive word "TEMPORARY" would work better.
There is certainly nothing immersion breaking in magic being able to create items that last for a limited timeframe.
No-Rent keys in EQ were just a major inconvenience. People would "corpse" Howling Stones or Plane of Sky keys so they didn't rot. If your guild was doing weekly Sky raids for example, at the end of the raid everyone would just suicide on an NPC, get rezzed and loot everything except the bag with your keys. That way you had 7 days to come back and recover your keys or make a new corpse.
Corpsing was also used by people who were farming LORE items for resale.
So in my mind, NO-RENT as an item flag only makes sense if there isn't some major loophole as above to completely circumvent it's intent.
Celandor said:....So in my mind, NO-RENT as an item flag only makes sense if there isn't some major loophole as above to completely circumvent it's intent.
Agreed. If "No Rent" items are going to be in game, they should all poof upon logout - even if on a corpse. Although that probably means folk leave themselves AFK, so the no rent coding needs to take into account auto-kick for AFK as well. But then folk will be using gaming keyboards / mice to wiggle and jiggle a bit to fool the AFK checker....the measure / counter-measure coding nightmare begins.
Zorkon said:The Journeyman boots quest and the shadowed rapier comes to mind as well..
"You say, 'What shadowed rapier?'
Hasten Bootstrutter says 'Shadowed men, foes to all, have appeared. Many lands do they walk. Invisible are they, but for the items they wield. Seek them out and return to me a shadowed rapier. Return it with haste before 'poof' goes the rapier!! No time to camp have you.'
I remember one small valley where I found no rent weapons in Vanguard. The name 'Shadowed men' seems vaguely familiar, though I have no memory of a quest with a rapier.
Is that what you are referring to here?
Jothany: J-Boots was an EQ quest ( https://wiki.project1999.com/Journeyman%27s_Boots_Quest ) for a clicky pair of shoes that granted a run speed buff. Hasten was a key NPC for the quest, shadowmen camps were in several zones, their weapons were one of the items Hasten wanted....but they were no rent. Once you acquired it, you had to get across the world to Hasten without going linkdead or logging for lack of time.
Fulton: some of the No Rent keys (e.g. Najena deeper doors) were not difficult to obtain, but folk (at least on my server) would still leave corpses littering the entrance while camping / farming desired items to save time. Thank goodness for /hidecorpse command.
Kilsin: I just realized none of this reply is about Pantheon (all EQ) feel free to delete my post. Bad bard, Bad!
Grayjackgaming said:Think of it this way, any no-rent item you may obtain is designed and balanced to be used during your current session only. It's going to either be something for a quest that may be designed to complete in one session, or an item that is quirky or a bit OP to be able to be created from nothing. It's not designed to be something you are expected to have but a flavor item that adds to the fun/lore/experience.I really like the idea of a summoner being able to summon temporary items. To me that makes sense and adds tons of value to that class.
As far as a key or cloak, I'm halfway on board with that. Conversely I like the idea of grouping with someone that has a key because he's been here before. Makes them feel valuable/important.
I am comforted a bit by the suggestion that it won't simply regular upgradeable armor/weapons that will disappear when you log.
bigdogchris said:Grayjackgaming said:Think of it this way, any no-rent item you may obtain is designed and balanced to be used during your current session only. It's going to either be something for a quest that may be designed to complete in one session, or an item that is quirky or a bit OP to be able to be created from nothing. It's not designed to be something you are expected to have but a flavor item that adds to the fun/lore/experience.I really like the idea of a summoner being able to summon temporary items. To me that makes sense and adds tons of value to that class.
As far as a key or cloak, I'm halfway on board with that. Conversely I like the idea of grouping with someone that has a key because he's been here before. Makes them feel valuable/important.
I am comforted a bit by the suggestion that it won't simply regular upgradeable armor/weapons that will disappear when you log.
I'm glad I asked here because with all the info I know more and feel much better about the system. I initially thought it would just be an artificial way to temporarily boost your armor and weapons.
Real game example:
We were juuuust too young for kaesora, just. "Technically" it was a city so you could bind outside, but no where else. The Troll SK wanted to go in, we met a crazy Iskar monk, so, me, (mage) the troll, druid, cleric chanter and crazy monk went in. I thought maybe, just maybe I could subtly influence them to go a bit deeper and maybe I could get a power of water.
The Troll knew where the pitfalls were, the others had never been there before, the monk had to be told to hang back. I kept making up rhymes in my head to quickly learn the way (down the hall and to the left, the other way is certain death)
Everything was so close, certain things couldnt be mezzed or lulled, and roamers- we couldn't... we had to keep switching targets and off-tanking when we could - Protect Cyl! (he ws the cleric) very few corners to rest in and get what little mana.
and whoah, we made it down to the library!, there was a calm corner, we could med up and....something happened, we weren't prepared. No one else was there, buit like 5 mobs converged. we died.
Our corpses were way down, everything woud have respawned by now. We were naked. "What is your bestweapon skill?" I asked the group. the monk asked why. I told him I could summon weapons and armor.
the monk excitedly asked for a 2hb as he needed to work on it, the Troll admonished him and asked him what is his BEST weapon skill since we are naked, we would need the best possible advantage in our weakened state. the weapons woud be something, but not as good as our quested/crafted/earned stuff we had on our corpses.
So I summoned phantom plate for the SK and cleric, phantom leather for the druid and monk. chanter and I had to make due with summoned jewelry only. everyone else got that, too and of course, weapons that matched their best weapon skill.
I was never so nervous, we had to make it back down and of course everything had respawned. The first room with three drachnids was a test, and we made it! almost died, really low on mana (we didnt have our stuff to help boost anything, just our spells) and health- I summoned bandages for everyone and we all bound wounds as quicklya s possible, mindful of time and the need to move because of respawns.
We did make it back. we were about to rez ourselves (thank goodness for Cyl!) and Jeyna to port us out- I was kind of bummed that we could not have spent that time maybe in that corner camping a bit for exp and maybe a power of water would drop- when a group of way high levels breezed in- killed everything, they were after the librarian for her book which we were thinking of trying but not now because we had died. It would have been a reach for us anyways. Their cleric stopped by us and rezzed us all with the highest rez (thank you) and they buffed us all up. Then one turned ot me and asked if I was a mage. I nodded, yes, and he gave me a power of water that ahd dropped on their way down.
yay!
then we ported.
It is things like the "no rent" tag that many of us take for granted that everyone knows what that is.
I think Dorotea brings up a good point. If it was renamed something like "temporary" that might be a better name for it (granted I still expect there to be a description explaining what it is if you inspect the item).
I think this happens more than some of us realize on this forums. I know I have expected people to understand what I'm talking about on this forum and then run into issues when they don't. While there is a much larger group of experienced mmo players here than on most game forums, I know I need to be careful in assuming everyone has played MMOs heavily from 1st gen and beyond. It has lead to misunderstanding in the past.
An example is yesterday I watched an old stream. At one point either Chris or some other dev said...the mob is green. One of the streamers responded something like: my color is off it looks blueish to me. They had to explain that they meant it conned green.
That seems like super basic stuff to most of us but this streamer...who plays video games on twitch that people watch... didn't know what they meant. That might be an extreme example but, it happened. There is going to be a steep learning curve for people who haven't experienced many of the game systems that some of us, who have been playing mmos since the 90's, take for granted.
It is important that we are aware of this kind of thing and try to explain what we mean instead of just assuming other people have the same amount of experience.
Typically "no rent" gear is often the same as summoned items that have a limited duration and expire shortly after being logged off for a set period of time. This gear also usually provides utility VS a means of stat generation.
Modern games don't typically have many examples of this, however, you could consider summoned food, ammo, or other temporary conjured items as this type of mechanic.
I think the best example of this system comes from EQ. Mages had the ability to summon food, water, and ammo for the party. However, they also were capable of summoning limited time bags that removed weight restrictions, weapons/shields/armor for pets (which would increase their stats until the pet expired), rings of levitation (for slow falling, or perhaps having to run over lava,), just to name a few. Again typically this type of gear was more for utility VS stat acquisition and this utility had value based on the group's needs and environmental navigation.
I like the idea of temporary items as long as it's not too prevalent. The whole point of an MMORPG is it is a persistant world, but even in a persistant world, some things are *supposed* to be temporary, and yes, the examples of summoned items are perfect for that kind of treatment.