I recently got dragged back into WoW Classic with some friends and we ran into some game design decisions that seemed determined to ether limit our choices of races/classes or force us to play apart. I get why game design decisions like limiting what races can be what classes I also get why people want travel to matter. But it comes at a cost that I am not sure is worth it. Playing with friends is the major reason I play MMOs after all.
Keep in mind In Wow Classic it really was not that hard to solve once you learned they added in Shattrath (essentially an EQ nexus) but I get the instinct impression VR does not plan on having a Nexus with ports to all major towns. I find it difficult to make up my own mind if I would want a nexus in Patheon or not.
Over the years I have learned that to enjoy your time in an MMO to the fullest extent one should play the Class/Race that speaks the most to them. I am mostly done trying to make the perfect group. I was happy to hear others say the same thing in my recent WoW group. But as stated above this made some difficult situation of well, we ether pick the same race or we play apart.
Thinking about how I might design Pantheon if it was in my control to do so….
What do others think? How important is it that people that want to group together can even if they want to play completely different races?
WoW is not very limiting in travel or well just about anything QoL. Can people think of any other current planned game design by VR that will limit friends from playing together?
I have run into this kind of thing with my friends over the years as well. Typically when we start a new game together we actually sit down and discuss / strategize about what race/class/alignment choices we will make to be able to play together in an effective way. We know someone has to tank, and someone has to heal. We know that we have to pick races friendly to each other, or light side, or whatever. We also tend to have many alts to fill in the times when we are not playing together so we don't outlevel each other. In many cases our alts become more powerful than the characters we play with together. No big deal. It is important to be able to keep your solo identity and explore the class/race/alignment combinations that might be interesting to you while also making sacrifices for the collective of your friendship circle.
For me the world and the individual journeys matter. There was a certain notable accomplishment in the days of old of having navigated the world and its dangers to meet up with friends, it's something that I value. It also allows for more leeway to have very distinct factions between player races.
If one friend wants to play a Skar then that is something they and the group would need to deal with collectively should the others all start on Kingsreach. The person who plays the Skar will likely need help from other friends/players in getting class spell/ability scrolls or even vendoring for some time. There might be some small hidden away Skar outfit on each continent or not, never know. But the game shouldn't throw that entire experience out in the name of making it easy for friends to quickly get up and running.
Additionally this can create unique and interesting gameplay experiences. If a group was deadset on all starting in the same place they could mitigate some portion of the risk of getting the Skar player(s) to Kingsreach/Thronefast by all rolling Skar and traveling as a pack with the players not intending to stay Skar being shields/sacrifices if something dangerous does aggro the party. Sounds kind of fun!
In the grand scheme of things the time it might take to reach a point ones friends can all group is minutes to hours in a multi-hundred hour journey.
Susurrus said:Thinking about how I might design Pantheon if it was in my control to do so….
- All races could pick any starting area?
- Each race could pick 3 of the starting areas?
- Have one starting area to rule them all?
What do others think? How important is it that people that want to group together can even if they want to play completely different races?
WoW is not very limiting in travel or well just about anything QoL. Can people think of any other current planned game design by VR that will limit friends from playing together?
There would be problems witht those choices: Each won't work if your class isn't available at the starting city you decided. You pick DireLord but then want to start in the Gnome starting city but gnomes can't be direlords. What are you going to do? Also, there will be faction problems with some classes being KOS to some races regardless of race. You don't want to start in a city to which your KOS.
This is where you plan ahead with your friends. People will need to compromise, picking a 2nd or 3rd choice of race/class if they really want to start together or just accept that they wont be grouping up until later. But with discord and other voice comms it doesn't mean you can't all enjoy the game together through voice comms.
Iksar said:For me the world and the individual journeys matter. There was a certain notable accomplishment in the days of old of having navigated the world and its dangers to meet up with friends, it's something that I value. It also allows for more leeway to have very distinct factions between player races.
If one friend wants to play a Skar then that is something they and the group would need to deal with collectively should the others all start on Kingsreach. The person who plays the Skar will likely need help from other friends/players in getting class spell/ability scrolls or even vendoring for some time. There might be some small hidden away Skar outfit on each continent or not, never know. But the game shouldn't throw that entire experience out in the name of making it easy for friends to quickly get up and running.
This is exactly how I view it. For one thing, the time friends will have to play apart early in the game before they are able to meet up will be miniscule compared to all the adventures they will be able to share afterward. For another, I've always felt that traversing the world in order to meet with friends who start in a different corner of it was a great adventure in itself. I do understand that some feel differently about it, and that's cool. But for my money, separate starting areas for each race work great.
Susurrus said:Thinking about how I might design Pantheon if it was in my control to do so….
- All races could pick any starting area?
- Each race could pick 3 of the starting areas?
- Have one starting area to rule them all?
I am a big fan of #2 when it comes to starting out with friends, but I am happy to have it constrained by lore and logic. Perhaps each continent only would be a set to pick from. IE Humans, Elves, and Halflings could start on eachothers cities so people would have those 3 races to pick from if they wanted to play together easily. Lore wise it makes sense from what I know due to how they at least get along with eachother on the same continent. Also if VR wanted to make it easy to travel between the 3 cities on each continent that would be great but also help explain why they could start in eachothers cities.
I loved the boat from Erudia to Qeynos and it was clear enough where it went, but if I had to get there in a hurry for a friend that would have taken a really long time to find and to make it across the world at lvl 1.
All that said, I never understand people wanting to start at lvl 1 together.
This is a similar arguement to that in favor of cross-server play or having a single server only. Anybody who starts playing on one server and realizes that his friends all play on different servers typically has to either reroll or do a paid transfer to play with them.
How about 4. Instant travel by ship between the starting areas.
This would not reduce the time or effort needed to travel from a starting town to an adventure area. It would not have characters start in areas that did not have any stories or amenities tailored to their race. It would let people adventure in the same adventure area regardless of race.
Perfect compromise - no. As good as 1-3 above - maybe.
Eeryone is still forgetting the issue of faction. I will bet money that Ogres and Skar will, in all likelyhood, be KOS to all the races on Kingsreach and conversely, the good races would be KOS to them. So even if someone who wanted to play Ogre or Skar while their friends are playing Human and Elves wanted to join up early, the issue of faction would make that nearly impossible. I would go so far as to say the goodies would insist that the Ogre/Skar travel to Kingsreach instead of vice versa because that is usually the case.
@Vandraad I did not forget it but I did not address it ether. I have been reading all the posts it is not like I have it all figured out so I find peoples point of view interesting. Your point is a valid one for sure. This would rule out any race picking any starting town but you could still do multiple starting areas per race or a single starting area to rule them all.
I still like the idea of having each race being able to start in more then one starting area. Even if it was only two locations. People would still need to communicate and work out a plan with their friends but it makes it a lot more likely people will be able to play together while still picking a class/race they enjoy.
As for immersion I you might have me there I have not read the lore and well I am not sure anything will ever get me too. It is just not why I play an MMO I hope I give no offence to the writers. I am assuming many races are friendly with one another, right? It seems odd to me that each race would be like mixing oil and water. Some must live in the same cities?
As a side note do, we really want to live in a world where every race is a xenophobe. Sure we need conflict but if two races are friendly I hope they can get past they are just a different race.
Susurrus said:I am assuming many races are friendly with one another, right? It seems odd to me that each race would be like mixing oil and water. Some must live in the same cities?
As a side note do, we really want to live in a world where every race is a xenophobe. Sure we need conflict but if two races are friendly I hope they can get past they are just a different race.
It stands to reason that races on a given continent would be friendly amongst themselves. So Human, Elves and Halflings would be on speaking terms, but..and this has yet to be proven..that 'evil' classes like DireLord and Necro might cause even two friendly races to drop the faction into hostile. So a default Human would not, necessarily, be KOS to Elves, but a Human DireLord would.
Having races with bad faction just makes for a more real world. I expect, even pray/hope/need, the Skar to be KOS to everyone.
I had thought that Pantheon playable races might not all be 'friendly' but also would not be strictly 'KOS'. Also some classes may have 'issues', but will not find it impossible to exist in the varying regions if careful and/or expending some effort.
I am all for 'difficult' choices, like taking a Skar and having to find the 'back door' to the 'basement' of the warriors guild to get trained in some regions (probably all regions except their home... and even some places in their home might be unfriendly hehe).
Maybe above level 10 you even have to gain more faction to get trained.
This is definitely one of those QoL/convenience/whatever-you-want-to-call-it versus immersion/challenge/social/quality issues.
Old school players in EQ relished the prospect of choosing an Ogre and trying to sneak into Freeport to get trained or having to go to the black market vendors to sell loot. Having to get help from other players to do stuff locals could do easily. It *did* go over-the-top somewhat in EQ, as we know, when some races had to go through several weeks of faction grinding to be non-KOS even, but *shrug* maybe that was ok for *some* 'over-the-top' race/class/region combos?
'Modern' players are horrified by the extra effort just to play the odd class/race/region combo they fancy. How dare they be victimised for their preferences!
To me, it comes down to the same issue over and over: If you 'want it your way' you have to accept the consequences. To be able to 'do everything' is no choice at all.
If you want to solo, you can choose that, but will find it much harder than grouping and have to make do with lesser opponents (and thus lesser reward). If you want to fast travel everywhere, you possibly can, but will no doubt have to pay for the privilege (other players, or consumable materials, probably). If you want to play with your friends from day one, you can, but you may have to choose the same race and region and from a sub-set of classes.
It's not a 'failure' of 'old school' 'hardcore' design. It's an immersive, challenging, social world with meaningful, interesting, risk-vs-reward choices and consequences.
For this particular example, nothing is 'limiting the players' except the players. If you prioritise instantly playing with your friends, choose the appropriate race/class/region. If you are interested in a different race/class/region, persuade your friends to choose the same, or persuade you friends that the adventure of getting together will be fantastic, because it will.
Choosing 'the harder choice' is not a bad thing, it's a good thing. If the game itself is fun (and it will be) then choosing to experience more of that game, not take the optimal path of least resistence, is a good thing, not a bad thing.
These things only seem a waste of time and bad design in games where the journey to end game is crappy, so players will happily skip as much as possible and be annoyed by anything holding them back. Designing a game with that in mind is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You all have friends, I get that, but are you entirely sure those are the highest quality friends out there? The opportunity to upgrade your friends should not be squandered. Take the chance and play the race/class you personally want to play and make new best, shiney and fresh friends. Fresh friends allow you to reinvent yourself. Make up a glorious origin story, tell tales of how great you can make banana nut bread, find some followers and create a cult. Use that cult to extract money and servitude. Demand the new fresh friends move to your location and start a congregation church. Churches pay no taxes people! Use wealth and status to pay your Pantheon subscription and play all day. Boom, success! Seems straight forward to me.
Susurrus said:I get why game design decisions like limiting what races can be what classes I also get why people want travel to matter. But it comes at a cost that I am not sure is worth it. Playing with friends is the major reason I play MMOs after all.
What you described is literally the reason half our New World guild quit before even playing with each other. I got like 20 guys from work, friends, family to sign up and coordinate starting play times. We picked a server, and all tried to login. Between the server issues, the loging Ques, AND not starting in the same spot once begining...we lost half our players in like 2 days.
Maybe for the 1st 5-10 levels there is an instant transport system or something that doesnt carry over in the later levels, or even for the 1st 2 hours of play and NOT based on levels. And maybe then only the 1st toon an on account gets it.
Tomwandro said:What you described is literally the reason half our New World guild quit before even playing with each other. I got like 20 guys from work, friends, family to sign up and coordinate starting play times. We picked a server, and all tried to login. Between the server issues, the loging Ques, AND not starting in the same spot once begining...we lost half our players in like 2 days.
I'm curious about one thing. You did get to choose what city to start in, did nobody coordinate that at all? If you all just picked random starting areas, sure, but that wasn't a game mechanic fault but your own fault. My friends and I also played NW for a bit and we all choose to start in the same starting area.
I figured there would be people that did not like the idea of making changes to races starting options. I was not expecting a clear no from so many people though. For example, the idea of having races getting to choose three starting areas I felt made sense. Is there no wiggle room at all on races starting areas?
Let’s say some or all races if it makes sense with the lore have two starting areas. Is this really something people would be against? It would have other benefits like being able to start an alt of the same race but be able to play a different starting area if you wanted.
I am also a little surprised people seem to be ok with game design decision that clearly make it harder for friends to play together. I get that with planning it can work, but that is not always an ideal option. I hope it is at least not like in WoW were if you want to play a Druid or a Shaman you only have one class that can play them leaving only one starting area.
Susurrus said:I am also a little surprised people seem to be ok with game design decision that clearly make it harder for friends to play together. I get that with planning it can work, but that is not always an ideal option. I hope it is at least not like in WoW were if you want to play a Druid or a Shaman you only have one class that can play them leaving only one starting area.
Humans, regardless of class, all start in Thronefast. Within Thronefast it is expected that the different classes may start in different areas within Thronefast but they are all still in Thronefast. Is that not close enough?
The only distinction here is that Halfings will not start in Thronefast but in Wild's End...because that's the racial home of Halflings. Honestly, this is where people who want to play together just need to coordinate and make decisions with some people compromising if starting together is a greater desire than playing a particular race.
Start the game with each race starting in its own city. Down the road, when the game has been out for a while and the population of new characters is too low to reliably find a group, then create one starting outpost per continent. That, or add a fast travel betwixt the home city and the outpost.
Vandraad said:Susurrus said:I am also a little surprised people seem to be ok with game design decision that clearly make it harder for friends to play together. I get that with planning it can work, but that is not always an ideal option. I hope it is at least not like in WoW were if you want to play a Druid or a Shaman you only have one class that can play them leaving only one starting area.
Humans, regardless of class, all start in Thronefast. Within Thronefast it is expected that the different classes may start in different areas within Thronefast but they are all still in Thronefast. Is that not close enough?
The only distinction here is that Halfings will not start in Thronefast but in Wild's End...because that's the racial home of Halflings. Honestly, this is where people who want to play together just need to coordinate and make decisions with some people compromising if starting together is a greater desire than playing a particular race.
Having all classes being able to pick multiple races in Pantheon is better decision than WoW for example having some classes only being able to pick one race. I am really not sure how I feel about humans being able to pick all classes. Just sounds a little odd seeing as no other race has that option. But sure, it is cool that humans all start in Thronefast. But is that not how all races will work having one area to start in? Or am I missing something.
Do you feel having some races having two starting areas would be bad for the game?
Tomwandro said:What you described is literally the reason half our New World guild quit before even playing with each other. I got like 20 guys from work, friends, family to sign up and coordinate starting play times. We picked a server, and all tried to login. Between the server issues, the loging Ques, AND not starting in the same spot once begining...we lost half our players in like 2 days.
Maybe for the 1st 5-10 levels there is an instant transport system or something that doesnt carry over in the later levels, or even for the 1st 2 hours of play and NOT based on levels. And maybe then only the 1st toon an on account gets it.
I'd bet that was more on account of the login/world issues at launch than anything else. If you all couldn't be moved to spend the ~15 minutes it would take from different starting zones to a specific one then...
Not to mention for that game specifically you would all likely end up quest locked from one another if anyone did anything without others. No sharing etc.
Susurrus said:I figured there would be people that did not like the idea of making changes to races starting options. I was not expecting a clear no from so many people though. For example, the idea of having races getting to choose three starting areas I felt made sense. Is there no wiggle room at all on races starting areas?
Let’s say some or all races if it makes sense with the lore have two starting areas. Is this really something people would be against? It would have other benefits like being able to start an alt of the same race but be able to play a different starting area if you wanted.
I am also a little surprised people seem to be ok with game design decision that clearly make it harder for friends to play together. I get that with planning it can work, but that is not always an ideal option. I hope it is at least not like in WoW were if you want to play a Druid or a Shaman you only have one class that can play them leaving only one starting area.
Like I mentioned above, it is a decision that can have big ripples in the game/world all to save players who want to play together (and only together?) some precious minutes to hour(s) in a journey that will span hundreds of hours or more.
Adding other starting areas more or less also means designing those areas to accomate each possible class any race that might start there can be so they have access to certain quests and/or abilities etc. Even if it makes no sense for them to exist there.
Ultimately I just don't see the goal of getting players together to start as a group and close to instantly as possible as a worthwhile thing to cater to. A goal that seems to be bent toward becoming more/entirely insular as soon as possible in an MMORPG world.
Embrace the adventure of the world, work together to meet up somewhere, etc.
Thinking about this more I figured I should make my own stance a little clearer on what I consider an issue when it comes to distance and time required to group up with friends.
I have no issue with there being some separation between starting areas, due to race or class. For example, having a human wizard stating in a tower and a human warrior starting in the barracks near the edge of town is no issue at all.
What I would like to limit is a separation that might take a new player more then an hour and maybe even needing help from a high-level player to navigate a zone they have no business being in, just so they can group up with a friend. If it was 15 minutes and any level could make the journey then I could care less.
I think if it was up to me, I would make all races be able to start in any other friendly race starting areas. But just about as good would be to let most if not all races have two starting areas. With that much overlap the odds of not being able to come up with a compromise with all your friends would be low enough to meet my expectations.