I don't know if it still works like this, but I remember seeing a clip where someone ran out of climbing energy and fell off a ladder. It seemed really ridiculous and I wondered if it was a settled feature or if it was just not finished yet.
I have done a lot of climbing in my life; rock climbing, trees, ladders etc... and I can't think of a single time where I was like "this was harder than I expected" then just let go and fell to my death. Ladders are about nerves more than strength or endurance. They are nearly as easy to climb as stairs and if you do get tired you can stand on whatever rung you are on and wait a while. The limiting factor for ladders is once you realize you are too high you get scared and climb back down. Also I have done the fireman slide down a ladder of about 50 feet or so and it takes almost no effort. Rock faces are obviously harder than ladders, but it is pretty unusual to not find spots where you can stand or lean to rest your arms.
Anyway, back to my original thought. I just think it would make more sense for players to be able to climb back down or slide down rather than fall if they realize they have bit off more than they can chew.
Climbing will have a resource. If you find a place to sit/stand, then you aren't using that resource up. It can regen. But if you are clinging to the side of a cliff face for too long and your resource gets to zero, then you slip and fall off.
I believe the issue with 'climbing a ladder' has been changed.
Perhaps the skill is a total combination of all factors in climbing. Stamina; Concentration; Confidence; Self Control; Itchy nose resistance. When the bar reaches zero you detect an itch you can't ignore, then loose your grip, flail and become scared then fall. Very plausible I think we can all agree.
Just as an IRL aside, down-climbing in the western Washington Cascades can be more treacherous than going up. Poor quality rock, ferns, thorny plants of all types, moss, and wet dirt.
"and I can't think of a single time where I was like "this was harder than I expected" then just let go and fell to my death" I found this to be quite humorous, and true.
I look forward to alpha (next year?) testing the climbing system and submitting feedback.
I agree that climbing has seemed 'a bit weird' so far. Lots of potential but quite basic and not quite right.
This may well be, though, because we have only ever seen climbers that have little to no skill built up in climbing?
But, assuming we are seeing it as fundamentally intended, even though, as with every feature of the game, it's an analog for 'reality', not a simulation, I'd like to see it 'feel more realistic'.
A few things 'feel weird' at the moment: -
You have little idea, until a few seconds into a climb, whether you will make it or not. Few climbers would climb at all if this were the way it actually worked. The ones that did wouldn't last long.
It seems stamina restricts any climb to a matter of seconds, when 'in reality' climbers can go for many minutes at a time if not hours.
You can, halfway through a climb, know for sure you can't make it and are doomed to fall.
Worst for me is: You can't rest. Pausing at all can be deadly to an attempt. Climbing being a speedrun feels very wrong.
The problem?
I think the concept of climbing failing utterly and only when stamina runs out is not ideal. Just seeing stamina depleted at a rate defined by skill level and surface difficulty is too crude.
Climbing is a skill test at every point, not just a resource you 'run out of'.
The obvious answer is for a skill check to apply regularly over the climb, but of course, this would also feel bad when an 'expert' climber, not tired at all, has an 'unlucky roll' and plummets to their death.
My idea: I think you need a climbing 'dialog' in the UI and a new resource 'Grip', so it can be a simple 'minigame' that is less of an all-or-nothing speedrun: -
Difficulty indicator: Coloured gradient indicating your 'sense' of the surface you are on/near
Grip indicator: A level that drops as you move if you fail skill checks giving you a change to pause and rest or even move back to an easier surface to regain grip
Stamina: Of course, but not causing instant 'failure', but reducing Grip as it is used
This gives the opportunity for things like using consumables or climbing 'abilities' to make climbing more satisfying and realistic. Hammer in a piton to take a rest (at least arresting stamina/grip loss). Powder ones hands to restore some Grip. East a snack to boost Stamina. Etc.
TL;DR: The climbing we've seen in Pantheon has usually been unskilled climbers and is an analogy, not a simulator, but, yes it seems weird, though I'm not sure how it could be made more convincing without making it quite a complex 'minigame' in itself.
Pretty sure you would lose your grip and fall upon losing all stamina in Breath of the Wild too, and that game won game of the year so we might be setting the bar a bit high here.
Heebs said:Pretty sure you would lose your grip and fall upon losing all stamina in Breath of the Wild too, and that game won game of the year so we might be setting the bar a bit high here.
Setting the bar just 1 inch beyond how long my stamina lasts ;^)
Breath of the Wild is an action adventure mini-console game, though... I kinda want a PC MMORPG to be a bit less... action-y and console-y. A bit deeper and more sophisticated?
It's interesting that BotW has the same mechanic. As I mentioned above in a previous post, the moment you climbing it does suddenly feel high-paced and over-simplified... like a console mini-game?...
Disclaimer: I play console games. I like them. They are generally very differently paced than PC MMORPGs, though...
To the tune of "I've Just Seen a Face" by the Beatles.
"I've seen a cliff face,
I don't yet know the time and place,
That we will meet.
It's just the world for me,
Oh Terminus is all that I can see,
Mm-mm-mm-mm'm-mm!
Had I gone another way,
I might have missed those cliffs that day,
And I'd have never dreamed to dare,
But as is it is it's up that cliff I fare,
Di-di-di-di'n'di!
Falling! Yes I am falling!
But it keeps calling!
Climb up again!
I have never known the likes of this,
I've been aground,
And I have missed things that kept out of sight,
But other games were never quite like this!
Di-di-di-di'n'di!
Falling! Yes I am falling!
But it keeps calling!
Climb up again!
Oh falling! Yes I am falling!
And it keeps calling!
Climb up again!"
Heebs said:Pretty sure you would lose your grip and fall upon losing all stamina in Breath of the Wild too, and that game won game of the year so we might be setting the bar a bit high here.
There are also a ton of great console games out there with really good climbing mechanics that don't put a time limit on how long you can hold on to a ledge. Would I love to see something like you would find in Farcry, Horizon, Assasin's Creed, Uncharted, or Jedi: Fallen Order? Would I love to see dangling mechanics where you can shimmy laterally around the edges of ledges, walls and bridges? Would the ability to spring from your wall to the one behind you then leap from handhold to handhold be sweet? Do I love swinging from rope to rope or sliding down a zip line? Absolutely! But as flashy as they are on their own, I am not expecting those kinds of mechanics because climbing in Pantheon is being designed to support exploration and discovery.
There are also a ton of great console games out there with really good climbing mechanics that don't put a time limit on how long you can hold on to a ledge. Would I love to see something like you would find in Farcry, Horizon, Assasin's Creed, Uncharted, or Jedi: Fallen Order? Would I love to see dangling mechanics where you can shimmy laterally around the edges of ledges, walls and bridges?
A lot of those games if not all of them only allow you to climb specific ledges that have been coded (and colored visually for the player) for it. So it doesn't matter you can start climbing and then go grab a cup of coffee without your character falling in those games - you can never climb anywhere the developers did not want you to climb.
In a game like BotW or Pantheon where you can literally climb any surface anywhere, the way to limit where you climb is by limiting the distance your character can climb via a resource like stamina. If a player can simply pause for a moment and recover their stamina in order to continue climbing, then there is no longer any progression to be had around climbing other than time gating (IE making it more convenient to climb by not needing to pause as often). This would be antithetical to the stated design goal of being able to gate horizontal progression behind climbing skill.
Unfortunately this means things might feel a little "video gamey" in that your character will lose their grip and fall when their stamina is depleted instead of busting out some pegs and a hammock and sleeping on the rock face. But we are all cool with playing a game where someone can be struck in the face with swords and fireballs multiple times and continue fighting, so some willingness to suspend disbelief is a requirement here.
Telepath said:Anyway, back to my original thought. I just think it would make more sense for players to be able to climb back down or slide down rather than fall if they realize they have bit off more than they can chew.
If it was something easy to climb like a ladder I would think climbing down should be an option. If the players are needing to climb back down mountain then no, not at all. Climbing down is often even harder than climbing up strange surfaces, you should fall.
I do not care if VR actually lets players climb down or slowly rest on proper ladders, but I think it makes sense if they choose to.
Balanz said:To the tune of "I've Just Seen a Face" by the Beatles.
"I've seen a cliff face,
I don't yet know the time and place,
That we will meet.
It's just the world for me,
Oh Terminus is all that I can see,
Mm-mm-mm-mm'm-mm!
Had I gone another way,
I might have missed those cliffs that day,
And I'd have never dreamed to dare,
But as is it is it's up that cliff I fare,
Di-di-di-di'n'di!
Falling! Yes I am falling!
But it keeps calling!
Climb up again!
I have never known the likes of this,
I've been aground,
And I have missed things that kept out of sight,
But other games were never quite like this!
Di-di-di-di'n'di!
Falling! Yes I am falling!
But it keeps calling!
Climb up again!
Oh falling! Yes I am falling!
And it keeps calling!
Climb up again!"
A+ effort
I'm not looking for a climbing sim but I do hope climbing feels somewhat like actual climbing. Real climbing is like playing connect-the-dots with holds / ledges and it isn't simply a matter of steepness or height. I don't know how it works in Pantheon, but I really hope it's more than steepness that is the limiting factor and that we simply stop moving up as though we hit an invisible barrier when the climb exceeds our skill.
I'm not sure how Pantheon will inform us that the climb is getting hard or exceeds our skill. Slipping sounds? A red shading overlay on unalienable sections?
I hope that we will have climbing-specific abilities and when climbing, our LAS presets switch to a climbing preset. Some abilities could include a reaching jump that can help you clear a difficult section but may also cause you to fall.
We should have combat possible while climbing, and hits can cause falls if the challenge of the climb is our max skill. Only one-handed weapons could be used, and we should have a large penalty with all but the smallest weapons. Same goes for spells--they should all have a complexity level and we would be limited to the less complex while climbing. This added vulnerability feels more realistic and adds challenge, requiring us to make interesting tactical decisions. Note that having a complexity rating would offer other game opportunities--like some mobs who create confusion, causing us to temporarily lose our more complex abilities.
Climbing should use stamina, but we should be able to pause climbing in easier sections and restore stamina. Stamina use should be per movement and a lslow drain to hold hard positions, but it shouldn't be a constant countdown that forces rapid climbing.
Also, will there be the ability for one person to climb up and throw down a rope? This would create a lead climber group role that could be fun. If we don't have something like this, we risk climbing to be something that breaks up groups. How will Pantheon handle climbs that only some group members can make? It's not going to be fun if part of the group is preventing the rest from going to content they can't all reach.
I hope to see NPCs that try to knock us off and I would love to see a raid which required a steep climb while under attack. It would feel like a medieval castle siege.
Counterfleche said:Also, will there be the ability for one person to climb up and throw down a rope? This would create a lead climber group role that could be fun.
Rogue ability: Length of Rope - Let down a length of rope which other players can climb.
I believe we were told that this ability, like most others 'special' abilities, can be improved over time. Perhaps with skillup, the rope gets longer or easier to climb.
I like your description of a 'lead climber' role. I already plan to put lots of time & itemization into bolstering my rogue's climbing and sneaking skills.