Manouk said:And what of the group that is not fully acclimated or partially acclimated that goes in, and succeeds? Wjhat of the group that tries and prevails with no pre-conceived notions? what is to be said of them? what is that group to say, to those that are better geared and failed and now dare not venture and turn that group down for not being as acclimated as they should? does the group tell them to calm down and try? or just walk away quietly, anmd go in again with their old friends, and prevail as they did.
Unsure if you are responding to me or not?
We do know there will not be ways to 100% acclimate to all encounters. Groups will have to decide what they need to get by as far as acclimation. So, of course, that is a thing. Hopefully that is understood that 100% acclimation won't be possible at all times? That is not the same as tiered, stepping stone content that requires characters to have completed earlier content in order to beat future content. That is where the gear = key, check comes into play.
Personally, I don't have issues with gear checks or keys or acclimation checks etc. to me the more content can be extended the better, but I think it should be understood why some do.
What people are really saying is that they don't like horizontal progression. They prefer the checks to be based on lvl/overall power. Not situational power.
@motive I know you weren't responding to me but, it is just like any other kind of indirect or environmental damage. In some cases it is an extra source of damage coming in so of course there will be a greater load on the healer in those circumstances.
That being said, we don't know how it will be balanced. We do know some classes at least will have access to healing potions. It might not end up being 100% of an extra load on the healer but...we have to assume it will be some.
I said it before but, if you are worried about healing at this point maybe look into a different class?
disposalist said:Counterfleche said:I don't think that the burdeon will be on healers. I fear the acclimation system will end up being content gating and require more time be spent managing inventories and farming glyphs. People who are undergeared won't be burdeoning the healer because they won't be allowed on the team. I think VR is really missing an amazing oppurtunity with the acclimation system. Instead of using it to be a 'in order to participate in content in these areas, here is how you will need to adjust your tactics', it's a 'in order to participate in contentin in these areas, here is a list of gear you need to grind for first'. Sure, since there are different climates and we can't max out for all, this means we need to make trade-offs, but this wil also mean even more time spent grinding more glyphs / managing inventory and less time actually playing.
What would be fun would be a system where extreme weather caused you to adjust your tactics (and that weather would come and go, forcing on-the-fly adjustments). For example, the high wind sheer could reduce the range of ranged weapons (all the way to point blank for the worst case senario), so if you're in a fight and the wind kicks up, you have to get close or switch to melee. Other examples could be more static and still be made fun. For example, a zone with extreme heat that requires you to remove most clothing / armor and reduces your stamina and weight carrying capacity. That would force you to adjust tactics and gear, but not in a 'you must collect X of these glyphs before you can do this content' way.
I agree with your assessment to some extent. Acclimation is surely a 'keying' system, *but* much more 'natural' (usually literally) and less arbitrary and binary.
I agree with your ideas with what would be fun, but I don't think we can assume it won't be like that.
I think even from what we've currently know about levels of climate behaving like debuffs and about self-acclimation, etc that there will be a 'tactical' approach possible to overcoming climates.
Sure, there will be some grind to obtain glyphs, but that's no different than any 'grind' to achieve the gear and the level to take on the content you want to. There will also be opportunity to do just as you like, with ranged attacks and line-of-sight being limited by windsheer or blizzard or whatever, and, yeah, heat climate might need you to take off gear in order to self-acclimate, but perhaps put it back on later.
Those with less glyphs will have to load their action bars with short-term protections and buffs and fight differently because of the climate debuffs (eg. must burn enemies down quickly in hot climate, else an 'exhaustion' buff will drain stamina levels before the fight is done).
The acclimation system has great potential and we just don't know how it will work out... yet!
I hope you're right and I agree that we really don't know yet at this stage. Content keying is a big concern of mine so I bring it up when I see game elements that look like they are at risk of being defacto content keying (and the Acclimation system really looks like that from what I've seen). I hope I'm wrong andI appreciate your pragmatic counter-point. But if I am right, please don't kick me from the team if I'm slightly under-glyphed for the content. :)
Ranarius said:I'm not understanding the arguments about gear check systems or the "farm this before you can go there" arguments. That's what character development games ARE. Every single thing you do in the game is a level check, or a gear check, or a "did you finish this task first" check. If you want to do a level 20 dungeon you better be ready to face level 20 mobs. If you want to go raid a dragon you better be equipped in the right way to fight that dragon. If you want to go to a zone that is freezing cold you better wear warm clothes, etc.
I thought the whole point of develping your character is to "unlock" new content. If you're not willing to develop the character then I'm not sure what to tell ya. The arguments are a little confusing.
I will explain why it's a big deal to me personally. I fully understand that everyone is different and some people like content keying. And note that, for me, character development is me develping my skill and my character exploring the world.
Keying overly subdivides the already limited pool of eligible teams / teammates: Finding a team can be a challenge or time consuing enough already (especially if I have limited time avalable). Each time we add a requirement, we reduce the number of available teammates and make finding teams harder. Not only is the list of available teams limted by location, faction, and level, but with content keying we are now subdividing that small enough group by requiring specific gear, quests completed, items unlocked, etc.
Gear-based keying causes otherwise skilled, level appropriate players to be a burdeon to a team or even get kicked: Sometimes the only team people can find are teams running content which the player is undergeared for. That player has to either not play, play but feel bad about it and be a liability, or try to play, but end up getting kicked and feeling bitter about the game and the other players. This is unnecessarily divisive and can often lead to bad feelings.
It adds a complexity that rewards memorization, not strategy or ability: MMOs are rather complex and I love certain types of complexity, like the kind that allows for great player skill in combat. But content keying add a different kind of complexity, the kind where you have to memorize a bunch of 'if you want to go to Zone 25, you first have to find Items A, C F, Q, R, and Z and have visited Zone 13 and 19 first. I want to play an immersive, tacticaly complex game, not consantly Alt+Tab to google to look up content checklists. I'm playing a game, not preparing the Space Shuttle for take-off. Level locked content is fine because it's simple to understand the requirement and no one needs to spend 5 minutes explaining to another player a 23 step process and where to find all the necessary items.
It's never just one key: Games that use defacto content keys never have just one. They typically have all kinds of them, further adding to the bad kind of complexity I mentioned above. So even if each key isn't that hard to obtain, learning them all and keeping them straight becomes a big headache. This is especiallybad for players who aren't able to play all the time or who like to jump around between alts.
Content keying is specifically designed to slow players down and can contribute to game addiction: It's basically the equivalent of speed bumps. How do you keep people from burning through the content too fast? Build in speed bumps. It's not fun and it's not respectful of the players, but it gets overused by less moral game compaies to keep people subscribed longer when a game is light on content. It also contributes to the addictive aspects of MMO gaming where players feel compelled to put in an unhealthy amount of play time so they can get through the intentionally grindy content.
Keying forces players to run / farm specific content and is the antethesis of "Open World": I want to be able to play how I want, explore wherever I want (within the constraints of level-appropriate content and my skill), and explore the world. I don't want to be blocked from content / zones because I didn't play the game exactly how the developers want me to. To me, real exploration should require nothing more then a compass heading, skill, and some luck. Not farming a specific group of mobs for enough rare drops that I can now meet a gear check requirement. If I wanted to be told what to do and follow a specific narrative path, I would play single player games.
Players will try to rush through the required pre-requisite content anyway, making the content itself less enjoyable: If you want to make someone not enjoy something, force them to do it. The required content will become something players try to rush through and completing it will be like another form of powerleveling. And people with a lot of alts will end up doing it many, many times.
Even if you have the gear, you still have to spend time with inventory and set-up: There will be delays as players have to spend time running back to town and swapping out gear. I don't like to keep a team waiting and I really don't like spending too much time on inventory management.
Content keying is especially hard on on people who play in PUGs: Many people don't have a dedicated group of friends who always play together and thus all have the same unlocks and required gear. Some people work odd hours or have long gaps in availability. They rely upon PUGs for most gaming sessions so they are at the whim of others and will thus often won't have met all the gear prerequistes.
Motive7's quote sums it up pretty well for me:
Motive7 said:This is essentially a gear score check system which I absolutely despise and was hoping wouldn't make it into the game. I hope it isn't this way for the last thing I want is for someone to judge group members on there acclimation score.
philo said: I guess I just feel differently. I like quite a few of the things that are pointed out as negatives in the above list.
Yeah me too.
Though I don't want it *all* to be about gear gathering and management, that is and always has been a major part of RPGs and I enjoy it. A huge part of progression is about the gear you loot incidentally and actively seek out.
It doesn't mean player skill isn't important and, obviously level is important, but I'm fine with gear being very important in some situations. How would Perseus have gotten on with the Medusa without his mirror shield?
Yes, glyphs are really quite specific gear that will be 'needed' for certain areas, but it sounds to me that the intention is they will act as a much more tactical and interesting 'key' than the literal keys we've had to collect in some games. In combination with buffs, self-acclimation and the various degrees of climate severity, it sounds pretty far from being like traditional 'keying'.
@Philo About that Cohh stream acclimation example; I was just saying it wasn't a great example of how acclimation will work, because it was the most extreme example of a rare multiple climate and Cohh made no attempt to mitigate it. He would have died in seconds because he was just messing around, not because that's how climate and acclimation should work. That made it seem much more like a binary keying barrier than it should/could/would be, I think.
I Like the Acclimation System as well, you can call it a keying system, which i don't see as a bad thing, if it is than why does litterally every single game have them in one way or another, whether it be gear score/Resistances/Knowledge it doesn't really matter it lives inside of every single game.
To me if you don't like acclimation, than come up if a way to have acclimation still stay in the game, but make it more manaageable so it doesn't feeling as bad as you think it will be. Like for one the Devs have already stated their will be comsumables you can use to help with acclimation, so probably in a lot of areas you won't need to have a whole lot of the right gear to enter into those areas. We don't even know if all the pieces of gear help with acclimation, like it could just be the visual pieces that give ti that would lessen the amount of farm to get good acclimation, again not saying this is true, but it could be.
Plus to me having to go places to farm peices of gear all over the world to enter into other places of the world to farm that gear sounds like a success, it makes all content at any given time important, and i dont see how that can be looked at in a bad way.
disposalist said:@Philo About that Cohh stream acclimation example; I was just saying it wasn't a great example of how acclimation will work, because it was the most extreme example of a rare multiple climate and Cohh made no attempt to mitigate it. He would have died in seconds because he was just messing around, not because that's how climate and acclimation should work. That made it seem much more like a binary keying barrier than it should/could/would be, I think.
I get that point. He was just messing around and it was a large amount of damage so probably not the best example for a group that will be fighting in an area. There was another stream prior to that one where they were fighting orcs at a fort and they moved through/on the edge of an atmosphere system that they weren't acclimated to. They had to heal through it...I think someone might have died but they made it past it (its been awhile, i might be misremembering details). That one was probably a better example as far as how it will effect a group. More often than not you will try to bypass the area if possible. Another example is the dwarf forge in halnirs cave but it is a small area so if you get near it and aren't acclimated it is easy to move away.
We agree that it is not a "binary keying barrier". There is some grey area there. A lot of it will depend on how it is balanced.
I'm unsure how players will perceive it in the long run?
Will they like that it is not binary and they can try to get through being under equiped? Or will it lead to animosity between players who try to get into areas before they are ready and cause issues for their groups?
Part of me thinks that a binary system is just cleaner and simpler. Maybe that is just me though?...they seem to be over doing/ over thinking a lot of things lately that I feel would be better off keeping them simple.
philo said:Part of me thinks that a binary system is just cleaner and simpler. Maybe that is just me though?...they seem to be over doing/ over thinking a lot of things lately that I feel would be better off keeping them simple.
You're not wrong, but I think there probably will be more traditional binary keying systems as well, but overall, I like the idea of climate/environment being something that can be dangerous/deadly and has to be 'fought' like an encounter.
Not pointing at you, but I think people here are maybe over-thinking it and over-worrying. It's just an interesting feature. Think of it as debuffs/damage that the environment throws at you that need to be mitigated just like debuffs/damage thrown at you by monsters *shrug*.
I don't see it as any more problematic or weird than an encounter. If the encounter turns out to be something you can't yet 'beat', you can't progress past it.
Not pointing at you, but I think people here are maybe over-thinking it and over-worrying. It's just an interesting feature. Think of it as debuffs/damage that the environment throws at you that need to be mitigated just like debuffs/damage thrown at you by monsters *shrug*.
I don't see it as any more problematic or weird than an encounter. If the encounter turns out to be something you can't yet 'beat', you can't progress past it.
I agree, I think people tend to over-worry about many issues, this being one of them. This is one of the many 'horizontal progression' ideas that are being developed and I think it's pretty cool. Definitely adds a layer of adventure and danger to zones. I might want to go check out this placed I've heard so much about, but when I show up it's just too cold for me! I could try to adventure there and risk it, or I could go back home and get better prepared. The getting better prepared might take some time, but is it worth it? Certainly! The getting better prepared is what makes it worth it.
Also want to add (or re-state) that is the exact same situation as wanting to go fight some raid dragon. Onyxia for example. I knew about her at a fairly mid-range level. I ran up to check her out and REALLY wanted to fight her. I could have given it a try but I would have very quickly found out I was not prepared. So, I had to leave, go get better prepared, and give it a try again. That "getting better prepared" took a long time but that's what made the eventual encounter so exciting. It was something I really had to work for. Things that don't take work to achieve rarely have any lasting value. The instant gratification so many long for is fleeting.
Just a few thoughts:
1) We should all remember that there are different tiers of climates. A tier 1 scorching climate will (at least, in theory) be far easier to handle than a tier 5 scorching climate. At least as far as we know, the higher tier climates will be reserved for things that are meant to be very difficult.
2) Just like any other aspect of the game the damage dealt by climate effects will be subject to tuning during testing. We shouldn't be freaking out about how much or how little damage it does until that testing actually happens.
3) It's a safe bet that there will be multiple ways to mitigate climate effects. Whether it's glyphs, acclimation, specialized equipment, or even crafted consumables - at least as far as VR has said right now, they don't expect us to have to have *all* of those things to handle a climate. Players will have options.
I'm in agreement with Philo and Disposalist in that some negatives are actually things I'm looking forward to in this game.
When it comes to the original remark of the OP, I'll follow Nephele's thoughts and add; Not until things are tested, we don't know if it's senseable to venture deep into areas where one is hardly skilled or equipped for. I don't expect to be able to run past Orc encampment of level 30 when I'm level 4. Not even in a group with a healer. Now if I replace that level 30 orc camp with an acclimation impact of 3 detriments on my 20 hit points, I would think the same way. It's just not meant for me, yet.
I don't see me blaming the healer or any other class for that.
Does anybody know if having higher resistances to elements like fire, poison, cold etc.. will have an impact on how the character will be affected by zone/area-wide acclimation?¿
Abusedalot said:Does anybody know if having higher resistances to elements like fire, poison, cold etc.. will have an impact on how the character will be affected by zone/area-wide acclimation?¿
That is a good question and I don't know for a fact but it would make perfect sense for the acclimation to determine how much of an effect the climate has on you and then your resistence to that effect would determine how much of that effect actually effects you. That's a lot of effect.
I'm sure the staff might have already thought about such a mechanic since i've been reading about the possibility of them adding glyphs, racial traits (was also impressed by the gusts of wind moving the characters backwards). I still think it might be a good idea to use player resistance as a general rule for places like, say, any fire dragon's lair might make sense to use the FR score, or a dungeon where undead mobs are present might have poison/disease affected areas, and so on... That way people could find yet another use for what's already in place; it would definetely encourage us to look for those items and i'm sure we'd feel a better sense of accomplishment once we entered the areas with a noticeable damage reduction. I strongly believe the resistance tables are one of the best features that made Everquest so special and different from other mmo's; i was happy to see them added in here just like back in the day. I just hope this time, they're better balanced so characters/npcs don't always resist the spells once a certain score has been reached.
Shadestomp said: They stated in the April 30 stream that acclimation and resistances from buffs are separate.
I see, well thanks for letting us know.
* Now that i'm watching the youtube video i see that acclimation has its own perks and that it's an extense system in itself. For anybody interested it's here: https://youtu.be/Zjq5ClNL5hM?t=665
Jobeson said:They want crafters to be meaningful. I think the climate system plays into that where you will be wanting buffs, items, gear, glyphs, food, and potions that can protect you from the harsh climates. You can find a summoner for temporary gear to cross the problem area.
They talked about it on the last stream I'm sure. There will be lots of ways to mitigate climate, though the main one is glyphs, of course.
It's like any other challenge to overcome. You level and health is, of course, very important. Your armor is too (in this case glyphs are your acclimation 'armor'). Then there will be other enhancements, from various places, like your 'normal' gear having magical bonuses (a cloak that has a magical fur lining for cold acclimation - a helmet that channels the plane of air for heat acclimation - boots that keep you sure-footed in windsheer, etc), and consumables, clickies, buff spells, etc, blah blah blah.
All of which will no doubt have crafted options, just like for 'normal' challenges and probably all classes will be able to help in some way, as said above, Summoners are an obvious choice for summoning temporary acclimation gear, but Enchanters could provide visual bonuses in Darkness, Wizards could provide elemental protection, Clerics could buff magical breathing capacity in anaerobic situations, Dire Lords could heat or cool your blood, or even oxygenate it.
There's a ton of cool potential for the system.
Shadestomp said: They stated in the April 30 stream that acclimation and resistances from buffs are separate.
I reckon that, yes, a Fire Resistance buff won't necessarily help you in a Scorching Climate, but that doesn't mean there won't be acclimation buff abilities at all.