This documents all the Q/A from Twitch chat as well, along with tons of other stuff that you may have missed.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CjssQPmQhP2MA6W3zo0IL0kr2h9FBgbwGweNZZd3GP4/
Talk about viewing things under a magnifying glass.
I did not see an image stating at level 1, killing 1 bat gives you 15% xp though.
Also, No Xp gain from handing in a quest is a big thing. But couldn't be caught on screen.
It's good to remember that what is shown it's still under development.
Great overview! Well done.
Barin999 said:I did not see an image stating at level 1, killing 1 bat gives you 15% xp though.
Roenick's first kill was a level 2 wolf. He killed it at level 1 and gained 8 exp. His second kill was a level 3 bat which he also killed at level 1 and received 15 exp. It wasn't 8% and 15%. I imagine the level 3 bat would've been impossible for any class but a healer. That HoT seemed very powerful especially with the ability to crit heal for 16 on a tick at level 1.
((Well to be fair, I do believe that was a Task rather than a Quest))
There should be some reward for doing either a quest or a task or why bother to put them in the game to begin with? Though the reward does not need to be experience - it can be cash or an item. We are all used to experience as the main incentive but if the goal is to slow progress dramatically I can see giving a different reward.
But I do disagree if the game design is having mindless grinding as the primary source of experience. There is a reason the MMO launched in 1999 wasn't named Evergrind though it sometimes felt that way. Quests were very important both for experience and other rewards and I hope Pantheon will follow along with EQ and Vanguard in this respect.
Some of the things I noticed and made note of while watching:
- There are 18 armour gear slots (not counting weapons and ammo). These seem to be: Head, Ear x2, Neck, Face, Shoulders, Arms, Back, Chest, Wrists x2, Legs, Hands, Rings x2, and Feet. There was another one across from the Hand slot that I was not sure what it was supposed to be for; Perhaps kneepad slot or Ankle. If anyone has any other idea let me know.
- When he appeared for the first time after creating the character he did not have full health and mana and had to regen up.
- The compass was active and accurate right from the start with no need of a 'sense heading' type skill to be leveled up first. Not sure if this is just for during testing and maybe at launch you'll still need to level up a skill to get an accurate compass.
- There are 10 inventory slots on top of the 5 bag slots. This would be like the WoW system where you have a primary backpack that cannot be changed and then 5 extra bag slots.
- Not sure of the status of 'coin weight' atm since I know there was lots of debate over it a few months ago, but I will note that Roenick started the game with 1234567 of each coin type (there were 5 types of coin) and yet his inventory screen read 'Total Weight: 35/45'.
So it seems that either they decided not to use coin weight, or they haven't implemented coin weight, or coins have only a very tiny amount of weight.
- The scroll he used to learn his first spell had a tooltip that said 'Requires level 1', but once he learned it and looked at it in his Tome it said 'Level ???'. Not sure what's with the ???.
- The details for the spell had a line for 'Cooldown' and for 'Global Cooldown'. This suggests that the GCD caused after using an ability may be different for each ability. Or some abilities may not cause any GCD at all.
- When he cast this Heal over time it did it's first tic of healing instantly when it landed. This may be because it has a cast time instead of being an instant cast. Perhaps if a similar ability had zero cast time, it would apply the buff but not start doing the healing until a second or 2 later.
- At level 1 this heal lasted for 24 seconds and healed for 8hp every 2 seconds. This would suggest 13 tic's since there was a heal instantly at the start at and then again a last tic when it reaches zero. But when I watched it back it actually only did 12 tic's of healing. So I watched it back carefully again and I noticed that the tick at 14 seconds left didn't actually happen until the countdown said 13 seconds left. This suggests that the 'tic' time for this Heal is actually slightly less than 2 seconds and is instead tic'ing every 1.91 seconds so that it can have an initial tic as it lands and a last tic as it fades.
- So 12 total heals of 8hp which is 96hp total healing. But the tooltip of this spell said 'Restores 18 Health over 24 seconds'. This is 5 times as much healing as the tooltip suggested.
Now we may guess that this is just because they have tuned the healing of this spell since the Description was first written, but that would then tell us that the Tooltip for the spell is not coded to calculate the value of the heal but rather was written with the 18 value as normal text. It's the difference between coding the tooltip to say 'Restores X Health over Y seconds' (where X and Y is substituted by the actual values that may be different depending on your attributes or buffs or anything else that may contribute to those values; as opposed to just coding the tooltip with a specific value that does not change at all.
Why this is important is due to if the Tooltip of an ability will adjust it's numbers in real time to display the 'true' value that the ability will do, or if it will be hard coded with a 'base' value which does not tell you what the ability will Actually do based on your stats or buff/debuff status.
- As somebody else mentioned, there were some tic's of the heal that did 16hp of healing, and these showed up bolded in the floating combat text which usually means it's a crit. This tells us that 'Over time' abilities still have a chance to crit on any given tic.
- Of note, when he hovered his mouse over the abilities on his hotbar they only showed the name of the spell but did not include a Tooltip description. I'm curious if this is just a setting in the options to disable tooltips on mouseover or if it is intended not to have tooltips to force the player to look up the spell in his Tome to get details.
- When Roenick first runs around the little lake you get to see the amazing water effects. It's awesome how they get the reflective effect of the lights and shadows bouncing off the water, but at the very same time there is still the transparentness of the water as you can still see the little checkerboard ground effect under the water along the shore. Very cool (source)
- At the 8:46 timestamp of the video we see the Bat 'Counter attacked Roenick's Auto Attack' but did not show any hit or miss or damage value. The next line of text was not an attack by the Bat but instead was the Heal over Time tic. This suggests that this 'counter attack' didn't seem to trigger an actual counter attack (in EQ this was called a Riposte). Perhaps this feature is still not active and for now is instead being treated the same as a parry would be.
- Targets had a Level number next to their Floating Health Bar, but did not have a Level value on the actual Target window. It is unclear if this is intended for players to see actual Level values for NPC's or if this is only active during testing. The colour of these level values was what you would expect the 'consider' text would be in the main chat window if Roenick had used the 'consider' hotkey. But Roenick did not use this 'consider' key to give us the expected 'Target scowls at you ready to attack..." or whatever it would be.
- Of note, the Circle under the targets feet was always Red for NPCs and Blue for players. This is likely to denote and link with the 'Hostile' and 'Friendly' target windows, since you can have one of each targeted at the same time. This is shown later when they are fighting as a group and Roenick has both Joppa and an enemy targeted at the same time and there is a circle under both of them; Blue and Red respectively.
It would be nice though if the Hostile circle under their feet could be colour coded to match the 'consider' colour for that target. While still showing 'friendly' vs 'hostlie' perhaps by it's shape. Maybe triangle's under friendly and circle under Hostile.
- The target frame seemed to have about a least 26 character length.
When Roenick first walked into town he targetted an NPC named 'Backwood Boal MacConaill' (24 characters including spaces) and it seemed to fill almost the entire frame.
A few minutes later he targets 'Arte "Bravado" Songweaver' (25 characters) and again it fills the entire frame.
He walks by a NPC named 'Sadie Flintfinger, Armorsmith' (29 Characters) but does not target her so we don't know if the name would fit.
He then walks around and finds 'Sir Trias the Unyielding' (24 characters) which also almost fills the entire frame.
Eventually he finds Finn Kalvoy, Leatherworker (26 characters with the comma) and it shows the full name.
I really wish he had targeted 'Sadie Flintfinger, Armorsmith' so we could see if the font shrinks to fit the name into the frame or if names will be truncated after a certain point.
- When slaying a Level 2 wolf it actually has in brackets (+8xp) and when he killed the Level 3 bat it had (+15xp) and then the Level 1 Small Rat gave (+6xp). Not sure if this text is just in for testing and when the game goes live you will not get to see exact xp values when you kill mobs.
- When Roenick found the Leatherworker and was told that he could make him a sturdier Tunic if he brought a 'Standard Wolf Pelt'. Roenick accepted this quest, but did not check his bags to see if he had already looted such a Standard Wolf Pelt. Instead he ran back out to the woods to find a Wolf to kill.
This brings up the debate of if quests will flag you to be able to loot new quest items that you can only find if you already have a quest for them, or if items will drop for anyone at any time and thus you could already have the item ready for when you find the quest giver.
It's important to know if each Quest will require their own unique collected items, or if a specific item could have multiple uses, only one of which is for a specific quest. Perhaps 'Standard Wolf Pelt' could be required for multiple quests in different areas. Such as in EQ when you could hand in Deathfist Belts to different faction quest givers (sometimes in different parts of the world) to gain reputation with said group.
Not to mention that perhaps a 'Standard Wolf Pelt' might also be used by a Player crafter to make the same or similar item that this quest rewards you with.
- When Roenick returned after finding a 'Standard Wolf Pelt' it was automatically taken from his inventory and he was given the Reward as soon as he activated conversation with the Leatheworker.
The following text appeared in his Main Chat:
You completed Task: "A fresh start"!
Wolf Fur Tunic has been added to your inventory!
He did not need to click anything to 'complete' the quest or selectively hand in the Pelt to the NPC.
Since there was no confirmation of if he wanted to hand in said Pelt for the reward, this suggests an answer to the above question of this item only being lootable for this quest, and thus there would be no other use for it other than to complete this quest.
It should be noted though that the tooltip of 'Standard Wolf Pelt' listed it as a 'Reagent' and not 'Quest item'. This would normally suggest to us that it could be used in Crafting. So it's strange that an NPC could just 'steal' it from you when you speak to them instead of asking you if you'd like to hand it in for the quest reward.
- Roenick did show us his Journal that showed the Quests/Tasks he was on and it showed:
Aquire a Standard Wolf Pelt | 0/1
Bring a Standard Wolf Pelt to Finn Kalvoy | 0/1
There was also a button that says 'Abandon Task'. Again this makes me wonder if these 'Standard Wolf Pelt' only drop for people who have this Task in their Journal. If he already had looted the Pelt but had not yet returned to Finn Kalvoy would the item poof from his inventory if he abandoned the task?
This Journal entry also had the Text that was given when he was speaking to Finn Kalvoy but Roenick did not scroll down to see if it showed the actual quest reward he would get when completed.
This is more in line with how EQ quests were; where you didn't know what the result would be until you actually got it.
- The Wolf Fur Tunic he obtained from the quest has tooltip text that says 'A simple, light leather tunic fashioned by Master Zavi'. This is odd since the Leatherworker who gave it to him was named 'Finn Kalvoy'. Does Finn Kalvoy outsource his Leatherworking jobs to Master Zavi? Sneaky.
It will be interesting to see if Player crafted items will list the name of the crafter in the tooltip: 'A simple, light leather tunic fashioned by GoofyWarriorGuy'.
- Once Roenick had finished this quest and got his reward, he spoke to Finn Kalvoy again and he was told "If you bring me a Standard Wolf Pelt, I will use it to fashion another piece of leather armor." but this time there was not 'Accept' or 'Decline' buttons. Thus suggesting that this would not show up in his Journal as a Task.
So this tends to suggest that yes he could get Standard Wolf Pelts if he went out and killed wolves without having a quest for them.
It also brings up the question of if Finn Kalvoy would automatically steal any Standard Wolf Pelts you have in your inventory when you speak to him and then give you a random Wolf Fur armour item.
Would players collecting these Pelts to sell to other players need to avoid Finn Kalvoy so they don't get them pick pocketed by Finn 'StickyFingers' Kalvoy?
Or would there be Trade interface for you to buy an armour item you would like using these Pelts as currency, when you visit Finn Kalvoy the next time?
- These quest related questions are all important because it plays into trade between players in regards to quest items. Could players collect Standard Wolf Pelts to then sell to other players thus saving them the time of going out to collect one.
This quest is not about the NPC wanting dead wolves or he would have said "Please clear out the wolves in the area" and the quest would be about killing X number of wolves.
Instead this was just an 'Aquire a Standard Wolf Pelt' quest, and players should have the option to Aquire it in different ways, such as purchasing from other players.
But if these Pelts only drop for players who have the Task/Quest it means you could only collect and sell these items if you keep the quest active and never turned it in. And since Joppa told us that Dire Lords cannot speak to this Leatherworker guy and can't get this quest, the question is could Dire Lords collect these Pelts to sell to Shaman players.
Hopefully as PA5 gets into full swing and we see some more gameplay these things might be cleared up for us.
- During the later grouped portion, the floating Health bars were only showing Debuffs. When Roenick applied his Heal over Time onto Joppa it did not show on his Floating Health bar over his head. Not sure if this is just a setting that can be adjusted in the options and it's just OFF by default atm. I'm assuming that 'long' duration buffs will not show up on this healthbar, but short duration ones like HoT's should be visible I would hope.
Since the party frame was currently disabled during this Testing day this meant there was no way for Roenick to monitor his HoT on his allies.
- Of note: NPCs did not show a floating Health bar above their heads until Roenick targeted them. But later on when they were grouped together in the Cave the first enemy called 'Gadai Thief' did instantly get a Health Bar above his head as soon as Joppa engaged it even though Roenick had not yet targeted it himself or moved in towards it.
Machail did NOT get a floating health bar immediately when Joppa engaged the enemy, but Machail DID get a floating health bar as soon as he himself engaged the enemy even though Roenick was not targeting Machail.
So there is some interesting interaction with how these floating bars activate when it comes to friendlies and enemies and comat, regardless of who you personally have targeted or are in combat with at any given moment.
Since we know that 'Feign Death' is a thing, it will be interesting to see if this Floating Health bar on the enemy would disappear again if Joppa had been a monk and had Feign Death the target before it came close to Roenick to 'aggro' on him as well.
Those are the things I thought about while going over the footage. Let me know if you noticed something else that I didn't mention.
dorotea said:((Well to be fair, I do believe that was a Task rather than a Quest))
There should be some reward for doing either a quest or a task or why bother to put them in the game to begin with? Though the reward does not need to be experience - it can be cash or an item. We are all used to experience as the main incentive but if the goal is to slow progress dramatically I can see giving a different reward.
But I do disagree if the game design is having mindless grinding as the primary source of experience. There is a reason the MMO launched in 1999 wasn't named Evergrind though it sometimes felt that way. Quests were very important both for experience and other rewards and I hope Pantheon will follow along with EQ and Vanguard in this respect.
I agree, but I didn't think for a moment that quests in Pantheon might not give XP *or* gear/gold. Other posibilities are mastery points/shards, class essenses, faction, repairs, buffs, consumables...
As for 'mindless grinding' being the primary source of XP... that *is* following EQ. It was a regular source of wry humour that Everquest had very few quests. Also, people did not see monster killing as 'mindless grinding' to get XP (not unless they got 'stuck' having to repeat the same monsters again and again, which was almost always their choice, not the game). It's pretty much what all RPGs have been based on, to some degree, old and new. In EQ, there were very few quests that gave significant XP apart from repeatable hand-ins like Orc Belts and that encouraged a grind worse than the actual orc fighting would be and also lead to other undesirable effects like twinks effectively buying their early levels by trading for orc belts to hand in. Apart from the orc belts I'm struggling to remember doing any quests in EQ because I thought I'd get a good chunk of XP - it was all about the treasure (and the adventure itself, of course).
To be honest I have nothing, in theory, against a chunk of XP for non-repeatable quests, but nothing against not having it either.
In games like WoW, the XP for quests feature regularly lead to characters out-leveling areas before they had fully explored/enjoyed them. That doesn't mean Pantheon couldn't be designed better such that the XP reward isn't too significant, but then, if it's not significant, why not remove that altogether to concentrate on rewarding something worthwhile, but that doesn't effectively push you out of the area you are, presumably, enjoying?
