Garmr said:I'll start.
One of my biggest gripes with the modern MMO is the lack of interaction between players EVEN when grouped. So, NO dungeon finders, NO LFG group builders other than /lfg, absolutly NO linear dungeons, especially when when mobs die, they stay dead. Dungeon treadmills for tokens, for armor sets etc are the worst. This is the scenario I will never tolerate in a game again:
Dungeon finder places me in group
Ports me to dungeon when group fills with game prescribed roles...
MAYBE a "hi" usually just a "rdy?" from other members
Run full tilt with literally zero discussion going on (I prefer typing to voip but can deal) and no chance to even if they wanted to because YOU DONT STOP moving.
Kill the mobs and bosses, everyone "needs" the item rolls, again no discussion
Kill final boss
Get ported out by game
Group splits without a word so everyone can que for the next treadmill.
Now, Im a pretty affafable guy and I dont use this word alot in my life but I HATE this about the modern game and is why I no longer play them.
Please, do NOT have the above in your game VR.
So, what about you, what do you not want to see?
Reminds me of Rift...race like mad to the end of the dungeon. Battles done..poof everyone leaves. No chat, no kidding around....left me with the feeling...WHY did I participate in that. Oh and cross server groups...even worse..same effect.
Celandor said:ALL of the above...thanks Celandor. :)I almost hate to weigh in on this thread as it seems to be diverging from the OP's intent to trashing the folks who are supporting the idea of a hard core old school MMO.
Here's what I don't want to see:
Game mechanics that trivialize the size of the world.
No clicky portal stones. If you need to travel far, portal travel should be a skill/service provided by specific classes.
Mounts (if any) should be difficult to acquire and not be available to low level characters. When your character is young, the world should feel big and scary, regardless of whether this is your 5th alt or if the game has been online for 5 months or 5 years.
Faster travel should come from learning the world, gaining experience in skills like mapping/navigation and from making new friends who can augment your travel through skills, ports, etc...
Multiquesting
There should not be a way for players to hand in quest components for other players. This is totally out of control on P99 where you have a handful of people camping jBoots or other key items and essentially holding the rest of the server for ransom with ridiculous prices on these items.
Players should complete quests and obtain items on the character which will get the quest reward - exclusively. If you have an epic quest with 20 subquests or items to be obtained, then do it in person.
Boxing
Multi-boxing has two major faults. It gets used heavily by gold farmers for RMT and it destroys community by letting players permanently bypass interaction with other players in groups.
I'm not saying you should have to group 100% of the time, but neither should be able to "solo" group content by having multiple accounts.
Equipment Decay
I love games that force you to do difficult corpse recovery, but PLEASE, don't make me constantly repair my armor/equipment after death or extended combat. That just seems like a mindless time sink. Corpse runs are "fun" and they teach you to be cautious and hone your strategy. Corpse runs discourage "zerging" which seems to be all too prevalent as a valid strategy in modern games. If you can die and run back and die and run back all in under 5 minutes, the game is flawed in my opinion. But repairing my gear all the time? No thanks. No real lesson here, just inconvenience and a resource sink.
Tiny Fonts
OK, so I'm not just an "old school" gamer, I'm an OLD gamer. My eyes aren't what they once were so I'm hoping that the UI has some flexibility for resizing text.
Xonth said: Raid Caps: telling guilds that they can only bring X amount of people to a raid always means people are sitting on the bench. If a guild can do it with 25 and another with 50 who cares. The larger one gets the same amount of loot so the insentive to be small is still there. But it lets everyone enjoyed a raid. Not just a % of you guild. Colored Items: Nothing looks more arcade like then making commons green and rares purple. It means you think your audience are to stupid to judge thier own items. This is as hand holding as glowing lines and quest markers. When i think colored gear i think games like Diablo where you churn through gear continuous and nothing is special
100% agree on your first point. Forgot to mention that myself but i am feeling exactly like you on this one and it is actually one of my biggest complains in modern mmos.
Don't mind the color code all that much tho. If it's there, meh. If not, meh.
Rattenmann said:Xonth said: Raid Caps: telling guilds that they can only bring X amount of people to a raid always means people are sitting on the bench. If a guild can do it with 25 and another with 50 who cares. The larger one gets the same amount of loot so the insentive to be small is still there. But it lets everyone enjoyed a raid. Not just a % of you guild. Colored Items: Nothing looks more arcade like then making commons green and rares purple. It means you think your audience are to stupid to judge thier own items. This is as hand holding as glowing lines and quest markers. When i think colored gear i think games like Diablo where you churn through gear continuous and nothing is special
100% agree on your first point. Forgot to mention that myself but i am feeling exactly like you on this one and it is actually one of my biggest complains in modern mmos.
Don't mind the color code all that much tho. If it's there, meh. If not, meh.
Although I agree with the part about raid size caps causing people to sit out causes some guild issues, I also see that having no raid cap trivializes raid content. The kind of raiding i prefer is tactical not zerging. I have been in raids with and without caps and by far prefer the way Vanguard did it.
To another point i have read in this post regarding old school and new school ideas. I believe that a lot of what Pantheon will become will be somewhere between the harsh early world of EQ and Vanguard. EQ would have benefited from many things Vanguard did and vice versa.
Krixus said:I agree 100% about no raid caps. That is highly artificial. You can engage the dragon with 40 people but not 41? Really?
Raids have to be capped in order to control content difficulty. There is no getting around this with the exception of scaling but it is almost impossible to get that right.
Prominus said:Krixus said:I agree 100% about no raid caps. That is highly artificial. You can engage the dragon with 40 people but not 41? Really?
Raids have to be capped in order to control content difficulty. There is no getting around this with the exception of scaling but it is almost impossible to get that right.
If the rest of the game is paced correctly then this is just not true at all.
-No global auction house.
-No instanced areas. (Something like how APW in VG had shards is ok)
-No one click crafting.
-No LFG group finder. (Especially cross-server grouping)
-No fetch or kill quests.
-No unlimited size to raids. (I prefer a maximum number to raid size)
-No limit on spell slots. (This looks like it is happening so I'd say no to having only 10 slots)
-No free trial for the first 10 levels. (I just see this being the gateway for RMT)
-No player housing whose only purpose is for building and decorating. (I want housing similar to Wildstar's where the housing has purpose and gives players many benefits)
Wolfsong said:Ondark said:xtnpd said:Short Leashing of Mobs
It's funny, because I thought I'd love NOT having this in other games. But I miss it, too.
Im not against leashing per se but usualy i tried to pull togheter 10 Mobs and 8 leashed back right away when its so much fun to ae Nuke 10 at once ..which was one of my biggest problems with all the short leashes out there. I understand that a Zoneless game (if Pantheon should be Zoneless needs some kind of Leashing or deaggro mechanic just dont make it so crappy) it should feel real.
I've always wanted to see a mixed kind of system.
Say, some enemies are purely territorial, and will only chase you to the boundaries of their territory (a set area around their spawn point, or a static area defined during zone design, etc), but then will leave you be once you're beyond that, returning to their normal patrol area or path. Some of these territories can be pretty large, so you could be running for a lot longer than just a few seconds; unless you're lucky and are aggroed near the edge of its territory. Further, how cool could it be if certain types of enemies behaved as a pack, so the one aggroing you might let out a cry or howl or something, which calls any others within a certain radius to join the chase. How frantic would that be, running away from one, and seeing 2 or 3 others converging on you from other directions? I'd love something like that lol.
Still others will chase you to the ends of the world (or the zone, anyway) until either you escape them, you're dead, or they're dead.
And then others might only chase you until/unless you get a certain amount of distance between you and them. So if you have a good run buff you can apply, and can manage to get that distance, they'll drop aggro and give up.
I'd like to see this all mixed with a system of different aggro types - sight, scent, sound, etc.
And of course, it's up to the player to learn what mobs are aggressive, what they aggro to, and how to avoid them if a confrontation is not desirable.
On a similar note, of mob behavior... I've always thought it could be cool to see different aggro behaviors, based on the type of enemy. So, say it's a humanoid enemy who's capable of discerning how strong you are relative to themselves, based on your gear, or your character's "presence" (something calculated purely in the background), they won't necessarily attack you, unless you get too close for too long, or attack them first. But on the other hand, non-humanoid creatures who wouldn't be able to gauge your strength relative to theirs, or who might purely be protecting their territory or their young, etc... they'll attack you straight away.
Just some thoughts.
EQ already had a system like that. Depending on the mob type the aggro range was different. Some mobs would detect you (and attack) from pretty far and others would allow you to get pretty close before attacking. Some mobs assisted each other (social mobs) so if you pulled one and another was close enough it would automatically assist and others would not assist each other. Some mobs did call for help as well and others were "runners" and would usually try to run and get friends when it hit a certain health % (classes with snare were essential to preventing a mess in places like Guk or Sebelis). If you didn't snare/root the mob before it got away it usually returned with A LOT of friends.
I hope Pantheon will continue in that tradition and make mob behavior like that and more. It sure makes the gameplay much more dynamic and fun.
I don't want to see vertical progression relaced by horizontal progression for the sake of keeping a level cap.
Instead I would hope we have both at launch. It would be a nice way to choose and define your character on your own terms. I feel this helps with character immersion/investment.
I'm ok with limiting the horizontal progression, such as, basing it off of a level requirement. I'm also ok if they didn't do that.
Edit: I read more deeply into the projected gameplay and I see that this was taken into account. Good deal.to see.
Ok sure there were some mistakes made with EQ that turned players off the biggest one was when they removed the need for players to port/tl around and the like. there were other things that helped as well like real life, players out growing the game. Just to name a few so yes old school and new are going to have to overlap a little. I dont want to wait 1.5 hours to take a boat from bb to Freeport I have said amount of time to enjoy the game and sitting waiting for a boat just doesn't do it for me. There needs to be a merging of the two schools because face it it's a different world out there now people just don't have the time they used to, some might most don't heck some might even have more. Should I be able to move from one end of the game to the other in moments at level one, no, should it take me all day to run there at max level, again no. So yes have mounts have flights from one place to another or boats or what ever but for mounts make it a certain level and a quest to get. For other means I like the idea of having have had to travel there before on foot first. Make it the same as with ports you can get a port there if you've been there before and accomplished certain tasks to get attuned to the area. Unless a port in area only then you need to get a key or attuned prior. No open world bosses for class epic quest items, or have one as well as a closed dungeon style raid boss that drops the loot this will give a slightly better chance at needed loot because who said it will drop all the time. It's not 1990 anymore the world has sped up so games need to find a happy balance between the 2. Everything costs money these days and a quality end product requires a lot and the more versatile it is the better because not all hard core gamers can sit at home and play games for as long and a regular schedule as before. I consider my self a hard core gamer yet I'm on call 24/7 so when work calls I have to go There are a lot of people in similar situation.
Zaketh said:Rattenmann said:Xonth said: Raid Caps: telling guilds that they can only bring X amount of people to a raid always means people are sitting on the bench. If a guild can do it with 25 and another with 50 who cares. The larger one gets the same amount of loot so the insentive to be small is still there. But it lets everyone enjoyed a raid. Not just a % of you guild. Colored Items: Nothing looks more arcade like then making commons green and rares purple. It means you think your audience are to stupid to judge thier own items. This is as hand holding as glowing lines and quest markers. When i think colored gear i think games like Diablo where you churn through gear continuous and nothing is special
100% agree on your first point. Forgot to mention that myself but i am feeling exactly like you on this one and it is actually one of my biggest complains in modern mmos.
Don't mind the color code all that much tho. If it's there, meh. If not, meh.
Although I agree with the part about raid size caps causing people to sit out causes some guild issues, I also see that having no raid cap trivializes raid content. The kind of raiding i prefer is tactical not zerging. I have been in raids with and without caps and by far prefer the way Vanguard did it.
To another point i have read in this post regarding old school and new school ideas. I believe that a lot of what Pantheon will become will be somewhere between the harsh early world of EQ and Vanguard. EQ would have benefited from many things Vanguard did and vice versa.
disagree 100% on all issues
no raid cap means you don't need to be any good at your class just need enough people that it will get killed no matter what happens. It's not about who can and can not go it's about making it a challenging experience. Yes have instance raids as I mentioned not everyone can re arrange real life around a game which means no players, no money no game Just have the same loot off a open world boss as well The the players can decide. Yes have color coded loot it's another way to show a sence of accomplishmen for players not all need it but a lot do why do you think they have titles in game or EQ allowed a sir name at level 20? It was to show accomplishments. You killed that epic mob you know you did your guild friends know you did now comes this lowly lvl 5 or so sees you standing there clicks inspect and can see all the purple blue what ever so clicks on it and sees name level stats and such now they want that piece so now they push to get it. A sense of accomplishment it's what drives us all weather we admit it or not. Why do you think a certain MMO did so well for so long? They gave people a sense of accomplishment something to push for. Now that they really dumbed it down and made it mean nothing they are losing all their subscribers. Make the game fun rewarding and the players a gaol that is attainable and you will have a successful game. Just dont make it to easy to attain. Speaking of work off I go will catch up on forums as I can.
Having just come off an hour or so of D&D Neverwinter, I definately don't want a game that emphasises chain-quests as a primary leveling mechanism. I can honestly say I paid no attention to my surroundings while playing, other than the minimal amount of time required to decypher my quests! As much as I dislike grinding, I think the connect-the-dots quest for levels mechanism is old, outdated and does not give level designers justice for their hard work.
I dont want
1. WOW clone
2. Rift clone
3. Sandbox "Anything" clone
4. Europe MMO, Asia MMO
5. Easy mode
6. Ingame voice
I want
1. VG or EQ orginal, and some of EQ 17 years is ok with me. Anything else fails as a MMO.
2. Lots of Raiding, grouping, Soloing, crafting, traders, farming, placeholders, dugeons, open zones, instanced, spells like EQ are good, chat text, guild tools, guild houses, player houses, mounts, zoneing, parse tools or output, multi account boxing with isboxer, a bottle of beer......
Rhelic said:The main thing i do not wish to see in pantheon would be severe class limitations. going from eq1 to eq2 was terrible for me. for example some of my greatest memories were fear kiting in PoD, or duo'ing with a druid in PoF. having a croud gather to watch some bard attempt to kite a raid dragon, or as simple as getting levitate and taking screenshots on some place that you were never really meant to be. these things though small and generally boreing and fruitless are what makes the game unique and give a unique experience, when i went to eq2 i got the feel that all classes were basically the same, yes you can still root and fear and mez and snare/kite however anytime you hit the mob it broke and you were forced to fight face to face. i also remember "splitting" via monk mainly or SK if no monks. it took allot of practice, patience, teamwork and knowledge these are all things lost to all modern MMO's and instead were replaced by copy and paste mobs/abilities that take away from what a character is. there is generally no imagination to characters anymore, there's only 1 or 2 ways to do an encounter, or gain exp, if you do not have that ability you do not progress, raiding in eq1 for example, yes there may have been a prefered method but if you asked every guild how they killed said encounter you would have 100's of variations, latelely you may have 5, if your lucky. so as earlier stated i would NOT like to see cookie cutter classes, i want abilities to matter and let our imagination determine whats possible.
I've thought a little bit about this. I agree 100%, but I wonder (Brad?) if ANY of those things were working as intended. Which, in my head, is even greater. Players finding new and unique ways to play their class and use the skills provided by the devs to create strategies the devs never even imagined. Splitting with FD comes to mind. I have a hard time believing this was thought of when FD was implemented.
So in hindsight, sure, they can now make sure those skills are useable in game, but what I would like to see is what EQ did in that, if players find new and interesting ways to use skills and play classes, unless it's obviously an exploit, work around it, don't take it away. That's what makes games unique.
-Tralyan
Sevens said:Kalgore said:Liav said:Constant circlejerking about how every game made after the year 1999 is inferior.
This forum is tainted by purists and it's disgusting. That's what I don't want to see.
I wil agree to this. While I wish for some old school elements and stuff. Way to many people are demanding things that make no real impact on how they could play the game but could end up costing a lot of subscriptions due to how annoying it is. Many people needs to realize that some things need to be changed for convience that used to not exist just to give this game a chance instead of stonewalling and demnding things like 3 hour on foot travel to zones and corpse decay and equipment that gets destoryed and lost on death.
I have played Ultima, EQ, EQ2, EVE, even tried WOW not one of these games was perfect but Pantheon and borrow ideas from all of them to make an amazing MMORPG
You do realize that Pantheon Rise of the fallen has been promised to be exactly that...aiming for the niche group that other games dont cater to. We have been promised from day 1 a return to old school MMOs and to not bow down to popular demand for the modern conviences such as dungeon finders, fast travel. The majority of people supporting this game are the old schoolers that have not been able to find an mmo since leaving EQ. The current batch (last 10 years or so) of MMOs has catered to the instant gratifacation welfare epic twitch play players and we want a return to the slower, harder more thoughtful gaming experience.
This indeed. There are tons of the other kind of MMO out there, pvp in a box ..walk two steps ingame and win a cookie type games. FED UP. I don't want easy pap ..I want challenge. I don't want a game that sends me to sleep I want a game that keeps me on my toes. Thinking gamers. Drive by inviter? Begone. Talk to me...let me find out whether or not I want to join your guild, or group. I am not a puppy that you can lead around on a leash. Geeve me challenge. :) AND COMMUNITY.
Cana
EQBallzz said:
What about the old school "LFG" tag? I mean that seemed to work well enough. Just type /lfg and it put a LFG tag on your name and anyone in zone who did a /who command or /who lfg would see all the players LFG in the zone. You could just expand on that and maybe have a LFG chat channel that the game automatically put you in if you put on the LFG tag. Maybe an ability to do /lfg so people could see what type of group you were looking for when they used the /who lfg command. For instance, /lfg sebelis or chardok. Then anyone who does a /who lfg sees... sebelis or chardok. I really do miss all the available commands in EQ like /who where you could see who was in zone..what their guild tags were their level etc..No MMOs use that anymore for some reason.
I totally second this idea. I don't want to see a "lfg" tool either, and I really don't mind it in chat, but I remember this and I think it's perfect. I loved the /who function in eq.
I’m not a big fan of using the word hate or just listing dislikes. I think its fine to mention an issue or problem but make sure you list a solution. In the context of an MMO and this thread I think it’s important to look a features someone my dislike and understand the context of why they exist. Convenience doesn’t always mean easy mode or lazy or not hardcore. Just like old school and Innovation can’t coexist it’s not a zero sum equation.
So that being said here is what I would like to see:
LFG tool but with a name change to Looking for Adventure (LFA). It works like a bulletin board. Think of the mages guild has setup these magical boards in every city and town. You walk into one of the shops and purchase a magical parchment which whenever you are looking for an adventure you write it on the parchment and it transfers to all the boards and to anyone else carrying one of these magical parchments. It doesn’t transfer you anywhere it doesn’t auto form group. It just puts you in touch with other people looking to group up. Now it can have a calendaring system so you can schedule days out and allow to pick the type of adventure you are looking for like a dungeon, raid, quest etc.
No raid size limits or really large ones like 100 or 150 people. This of course requires the content and loot to scale based on the numbers you have in raid. I would like to think that the technology today can handle this fairly well. The other option but I like less is to have the inverse work in that the larger the raid the less amount and quality of the loot. This could also mean that if you win with less numbers the loot scales up. I tend to like things that are inclusive and not exclusive. Exclusive tends to being out the bad side of human nature.
Instancing of content, speaking of the bad side of human nature and one reason why instancing exist. While I’m not a fan of instance raids there is a reason they need to be instanced. I’m sure more than a few of you were either giving or receiving on the raid progression blocking that existed in EQ. Let’s also not forget the camping of quest mobs either for the need to instance some content. Unless someone has a better solution to those issues I have no problem with instancing where it makes sense based on quest and raids. Besides there are games now that are open world but instance that same content when needed for a quest or progression.
Traveling around the game should be balanced and real to the fantasy world. I have a tough time with this as see both sides of the discussion but again it’s really not a zero sum equation to me. I never understood the issue people have with fast travel. No one was forcing you to use it. It you wanted to run across 5 zones every time to get to your destination no one is stopping you. Generally speaking porting classes should be the primary source early in the game. I do think mounts should exist and have some usefulness to them besides just travel speed. As an example they should give a combat bonus when fighting non-mounted. They should not be allowed in dungeons or other area’s that they don’t fit or wouldn’t normally go. They will remain outside of said dungeon until you return. Each class of mount has a set speed base AC and other modifiers that can moved up or down. An example if they wear armor their AC goes up but would lower speed. Being used mainly as a pack mule would lower speed as well. There would be a lot you could do with this from a loot perspective and adds another element to the game. Flying mounts (always loved the Pegasus and Griffon) should be an option down the road. All mounts should be expensive and have a maintenance cost for upkeep and feeding. I could write 3 pages on this topic alone so this is not all my thoughts and ideas on this subject.
Combat and mob AI is another topic that I could create a book on so I will try and keep this simple. Mob AI first, all mobs in the game should have an intelligence rating. Based on that rating it will determine the interaction with the world and their perception of the world around them. Lower intelligence means they just survive, eat, sleep and multiple. Higher intelligence are more organized and more skilled in task they will do. As an example let’s take the Orc camp from the play demo the team did back in mid-March. Every orc should being doing a task. During the day the camp may be less populated due to hunting parties out looking for food or attacking a rival or village. You should have some training or cooking the night shift guards sleeping, the officers planning or out on a raid. A night maybe a larger portion of the camp is sleeping. I never liked a camp of mobs that they all of the just wondered around in circles waiting for you to pick them off one by one. Which gets to the point of pulls not that the whole camp should come when you attack one guard but you certainly should not be able to pull just one when another one is standing 10 feet away and looking right at you. The noise of fighting close to other mobs should bring more mobs in staggered waves but not all at once. Unless of course it’s the middle of the day and you’re in the middle of the camp and pull the boss then yeah everyone comes. Respawn times should be long enough to allow for a wipe or two generally speaking. If a mob on guard duty is moving between 2 camps or 2 guard spots and it doesn’t show up at its regular interval them maybe the other camp sends another mob to check and see what is up. The idea is to take the intelligence of the mobs and make logical assumptions on how they will react to what is going on in the world around them.
Combat should be cross between old school and twitch. Basically GW2 has one of the better combined combat system. It requires both knowledge and skill to play effectively. I don’t like how GW2 abilities are strictly tied to the weapon and prefer a more class driven skill set. I do think weapon and armor proficiencies should be part of the game and have a big impact. Their skill up should be based on how often you use said weapon and armor. The twitch element to combat more centers around block, dodge and defense. If I have a shield and a dragon breathes fire if I block that helps me from being a smoldering pile of ash. If I’m a thief then I should be able to roll/dodge back or to the side and out of the blast area. As a mage I might have a blink ability that teleports me 10 feet back or something like along those lines. The other part of this is the combat animation as well. The old EQ way of turn and walk out the circle is so 1990’s. A combat system should never get to the point that 90% of the time you’re mashing the same 10 buttons in a rotation until the mob is dead (EQ’s combat). The challenge in EQ combat was not the class but knowing the encounter. More buttons does not equal skill. Mobs should be reacting to everyone in the group or raid. I think mobs that have secondary type attacks should use those on the group of raid not just the tank. Smart mobs should use their surroundings to their advantages. You should never want to pin a mob in the corner or let it get its back to a wall. This protects it from getting attacked form behind. You should be able to run through mobs unless of course they are giants and you can run under them but they should try and stomp on you. If a mob can melee and range it should use it range attack on ranged targets. I think over healing and over DPSing should have big ramifications and not a simple snap from the tank to get aggro back. Combat facing should be important. If you or a mobs attacks from behind or the side it should hurt.
Housing should have benefits besides decorating. You should be able to build a keep (lots of coin) and upkeep you have to hire guards and staff. Other benefits and types like mines, smiths, shops, inns etc.
Regional Auction or market places. This has a benefit to crafters and pricing of resources based on the region. As an example all regions don’t have all resources so bringing a rare resource from another region increases its price.
Crafting just improve upon VG’s system and you are golden. And VG’s system doesn’t need much improvement. Crafting should be able to make some of the best in slot items in the game. Now that should require someone to be a master at their craft which requires lots of training. Real time should be a requirement not just a level. As an example once you are an advanced smith you go see a master trainer pass a test and then “spend/wait” the next 30/60 days before you can become a master. These best items should also require more than one master to make. As a side not Artifact or epic type items should increase in power with you. This will avoid the whole making these rare items obsolete as the game grows.
Aneadorn said:I’m not a big fan of using the word hate or just listing dislikes. I think its fine to mention an issue or problem but make sure you list a solution. In the context of an MMO and this thread I think it’s important to look a features someone my dislike and understand the context of why they exist. Convenience doesn’t always mean easy mode or lazy or not hardcore. Just like old school and Innovation can’t coexist it’s not a zero sum equation.
So that being said here is what I would like to see:
LFG tool but with a name change to Looking for Adventure (LFA). It works like a bulletin board. Think of the mages guild has setup these magical boards in every city and town. You walk into one of the shops and purchase a magical parchment which whenever you are looking for an adventure you write it on the parchment and it transfers to all the boards and to anyone else carrying one of these magical parchments. It doesn’t transfer you anywhere it doesn’t auto form group. It just puts you in touch with other people looking to group up. Now it can have a calendaring system so you can schedule days out and allow to pick the type of adventure you are looking for like a dungeon, raid, quest etc.
No raid size limits or really large ones like 100 or 150 people. This of course requires the content and loot to scale based on the numbers you have in raid. I would like to think that the technology today can handle this fairly well. The other option but I like less is to have the inverse work in that the larger the raid the less amount and quality of the loot. This could also mean that if you win with less numbers the loot scales up. I tend to like things that are inclusive and not exclusive. Exclusive tends to being out the bad side of human nature.
Instancing of content, speaking of the bad side of human nature and one reason why instancing exist. While I’m not a fan of instance raids there is a reason they need to be instanced. I’m sure more than a few of you were either giving or receiving on the raid progression blocking that existed in EQ. Let’s also not forget the camping of quest mobs either for the need to instance some content. Unless someone has a better solution to those issues I have no problem with instancing where it makes sense based on quest and raids. Besides there are games now that are open world but instance that same content when needed for a quest or progression.
Traveling around the game should be balanced and real to the fantasy world. I have a tough time with this as see both sides of the discussion but again it’s really not a zero sum equation to me. I never understood the issue people have with fast travel. No one was forcing you to use it. It you wanted to run across 5 zones every time to get to your destination no one is stopping you. Generally speaking porting classes should be the primary source early in the game. I do think mounts should exist and have some usefulness to them besides just travel speed. As an example they should give a combat bonus when fighting non-mounted. They should not be allowed in dungeons or other area’s that they don’t fit or wouldn’t normally go. They will remain outside of said dungeon until you return. Each class of mount has a set speed base AC and other modifiers that can moved up or down. An example if they wear armor their AC goes up but would lower speed. Being used mainly as a pack mule would lower speed as well. There would be a lot you could do with this from a loot perspective and adds another element to the game. Flying mounts (always loved the Pegasus and Griffon) should be an option down the road. All mounts should be expensive and have a maintenance cost for upkeep and feeding. I could write 3 pages on this topic alone so this is not all my thoughts and ideas on this subject.
Combat and mob AI is another topic that I could create a book on so I will try and keep this simple. Mob AI first, all mobs in the game should have an intelligence rating. Based on that rating it will determine the interaction with the world and their perception of the world around them. Lower intelligence means they just survive, eat, sleep and multiple. Higher intelligence are more organized and more skilled in task they will do. As an example let’s take the Orc camp from the play demo the team did back in mid-March. Every orc should being doing a task. During the day the camp may be less populated due to hunting parties out looking for food or attacking a rival or village. You should have some training or cooking the night shift guards sleeping, the officers planning or out on a raid. A night maybe a larger portion of the camp is sleeping. I never liked a camp of mobs that they all of the just wondered around in circles waiting for you to pick them off one by one. Which gets to the point of pulls not that the whole camp should come when you attack one guard but you certainly should not be able to pull just one when another one is standing 10 feet away and looking right at you. The noise of fighting close to other mobs should bring more mobs in staggered waves but not all at once. Unless of course it’s the middle of the day and you’re in the middle of the camp and pull the boss then yeah everyone comes. Respawn times should be long enough to allow for a wipe or two generally speaking. If a mob on guard duty is moving between 2 camps or 2 guard spots and it doesn’t show up at its regular interval them maybe the other camp sends another mob to check and see what is up. The idea is to take the intelligence of the mobs and make logical assumptions on how they will react to what is going on in the world around them.
Combat should be cross between old school and twitch. Basically GW2 has one of the better combined combat system. It requires both knowledge and skill to play effectively. I don’t like how GW2 abilities are strictly tied to the weapon and prefer a more class driven skill set. I do think weapon and armor proficiencies should be part of the game and have a big impact. Their skill up should be based on how often you use said weapon and armor. The twitch element to combat more centers around block, dodge and defense. If I have a shield and a dragon breathes fire if I block that helps me from being a smoldering pile of ash. If I’m a thief then I should be able to roll/dodge back or to the side and out of the blast area. As a mage I might have a blink ability that teleports me 10 feet back or something like along those lines. The other part of this is the combat animation as well. The old EQ way of turn and walk out the circle is so 1990’s. A combat system should never get to the point that 90% of the time you’re mashing the same 10 buttons in a rotation until the mob is dead (EQ’s combat). The challenge in EQ combat was not the class but knowing the encounter. More buttons does not equal skill. Mobs should be reacting to everyone in the group or raid. I think mobs that have secondary type attacks should use those on the group of raid not just the tank. Smart mobs should use their surroundings to their advantages. You should never want to pin a mob in the corner or let it get its back to a wall. This protects it from getting attacked form behind. You should be able to run through mobs unless of course they are giants and you can run under them but they should try and stomp on you. If a mob can melee and range it should use it range attack on ranged targets. I think over healing and over DPSing should have big ramifications and not a simple snap from the tank to get aggro back. Combat facing should be important. If you or a mobs attacks from behind or the side it should hurt.
Housing should have benefits besides decorating. You should be able to build a keep (lots of coin) and upkeep you have to hire guards and staff. Other benefits and types like mines, smiths, shops, inns etc.
Regional Auction or market places. This has a benefit to crafters and pricing of resources based on the region. As an example all regions don’t have all resources so bringing a rare resource from another region increases its price.
Crafting just improve upon VG’s system and you are golden. And VG’s system doesn’t need much improvement. Crafting should be able to make some of the best in slot items in the game. Now that should require someone to be a master at their craft which requires lots of training. Real time should be a requirement not just a level. As an example once you are an advanced smith you go see a master trainer pass a test and then “spend/wait” the next 30/60 days before you can become a master. These best items should also require more than one master to make. As a side not Artifact or epic type items should increase in power with you. This will avoid the whole making these rare items obsolete as the game grows.
Lot of great suggestions here. I especially agree with uncapped raids, raid scaling and with having more distinct levels of intelligence among npcs and it leading to more dynamic scenarios like npc raids and other scripted events.
Two things I disagree with strongly though, and that is instancing and adopting a semi-twitch combat system. I believe both of these suggestions would irreparably harm Pantheon on a fundamental level, changing the very nature of the game.
Instancing I will not discuss in much detail, because its been covered ad naseum on these forums, not the least of which was here. In short, some content is not for everyone, and should remain prestigious and highly contested. Making such things available to everyone raises the bottom line and will, once again, shift the paradigm from a group-focus to one of raid-focus and inevitably place emphasis on "end game" rather than the journey. It happens every time.
I will shamelessly quote myself here:
If items are supposed to be "memorable, deserved, cherished and desired", then raid gear, in particular, should be highly prized. By making raiding readily accessible (via instancing) to anyone who plays, it will become the standard by which everything is judged. When everyone can raid, its no longer special, and the rewards become mundane. And when that happens, where does that leave everything else in a game designed primarily for group play?
Regarding combat, I'm not sure you played the same EverQuest that I played if you experienced ability "rotations." Granted, melee classes had very few abilities and no resources (mana) to manage, so yes, pressing those few abilities on rotation could be a thing. With casters, that was simply not the case due to the number of variables and the unpredictable nature of the game (resists, aggro/threat, conservation of mana, and dozens of other things).
Many people may have never considered that there were a number of action combat type elements present in EQ. You had various area of effect abilities, both spells and melee, not to mention a need to move around to avoid being hit. Furthermore, melee classes were often very dependant on movement and positioning. I think a mix of this type of "action" is a good thing, however, I believe its a mistake to design combat in a game such as Pantheon, heavily around action, twitch or more succintly, the players reflexes and dexterity.
It wasn't the player's personal prowess that made RPGs great, and it was certainly not what made EQ great, though it still provided skillful players with the ability to stand out. It was actually quite the opposite. Fantasy games, be they tabletop, rpgs or early MMOs were different largely because they allowed the player, despite their shortcomings, to play a hero without needing to be one in real life. As such, combat gameplay was more about knowledge, preparation and strategy rather than how fast you are able to press buttons to actively block incoming attacks or abilities. I explained this further in this thread.
Aneadorn said:I’m not a big fan of using the word hate or just listing dislikes. I think its fine to mention an issue or problem but make sure you list a solution. In the context of an MMO and this thread I think it’s important to look a features someone my dislike and understand the context of why they exist. Convenience doesn’t always mean easy mode or lazy or not hardcore. Just like old school and Innovation can’t coexist it’s not a zero sum equation.
So that being said here is what I would like to see:
No raid size limits or really large ones like 100 or 150 people. This of course requires the content and loot to scale based on the numbers you have in raid. I would like to think that the technology today can handle this fairly well. The other option but I like less is to have the inverse work in that the larger the raid the less amount and quality of the loot. This could also mean that if you win with less numbers the loot scales up. I tend to like things that are inclusive and not exclusive. Exclusive tends to being out the bad side of human nature.
You do understand that content can only be developed within a certain range of paramenters, right? It would be nearly impossible to design content which can adaptivly adjust to any number of players with any combination of classes. All content needs to have limits. The difference between 100 people and 150 people would completely trivilize any encounter designed for 100. Now think about what happens when you, who wants raids to need 100+ people can't get a guild to pull together 100 people? You're now stuck with no content because you can't get enough people. Oh, you say, you'll just get a few guilds together and raid. Good luck with that. Guilds tend to compete more than cooperate. Why should another guild help your guild gear up? What's in it for them?
Aneadorn said:
Instancing of content, speaking of the bad side of human nature and one reason why instancing exist. While I’m not a fan of instance raids there is a reason they need to be instanced. I’m sure more than a few of you were either giving or receiving on the raid progression blocking that existed in EQ. Let’s also not forget the camping of quest mobs either for the need to instance some content. Unless someone has a better solution to those issues I have no problem with instancing where it makes sense based on quest and raids. Besides there are games now that are open world but instance that same content when needed for a quest or progression.
VR has already stated time and time again that instancing will exist in only limited application. Everyone who has ever complained about another guild beating them to content or monopolizing content rarely, if ever, put forth the effort to beat the other guilds to content rather they just whined to the developers to fix it for them. You want content? Do what it takes to get there first.
Aneadorn said:
Traveling around the game should be balanced and real to the fantasy world. I have a tough time with this as see both sides of the discussion but again it’s really not a zero sum equation to me. I never understood the issue people have with fast travel. No one was forcing you to use it. It you wanted to run across 5 zones every time to get to your destination no one is stopping you. Generally speaking porting classes should be the primary source early in the game. I do think mounts should exist and have some usefulness to them besides just travel speed. As an example they should give a combat bonus when fighting non-mounted. They should not be allowed in dungeons or other area’s that they don’t fit or wouldn’t normally go. They will remain outside of said dungeon until you return. Each class of mount has a set speed base AC and other modifiers that can moved up or down. An example if they wear armor their AC goes up but would lower speed. Being used mainly as a pack mule would lower speed as well. There would be a lot you could do with this from a loot perspective and adds another element to the game. Flying mounts (always loved the Pegasus and Griffon) should be an option down the road. All mounts should be expensive and have a maintenance cost for upkeep and feeding. I could write 3 pages on this topic alone so this is not all my thoughts and ideas on this subject.
I agree that travel should be appropriate to the world. Fly mounts, though, are very problematic because they allow you to bypass all ground-based content. Teleporting does the same thing but only between two specific points. A player controlled mount can let you bypass content pretty much everywhere and that's overpowered. What you'd probably end up with are severe limitations on where flying mounts can be used because there will be places developers want you to be required to deal with the content in the zone. That said, if there were much more airborn content then flying mounts wouldn't allow you to bypass content. Good luck fighting on the back of Griffon or falling off and surviving the fall. :)
Aneadorn said:
Combat and mob AI is another topic that I could create a book on so I will try and keep this simple. Mob AI first, all mobs in the game should have an intelligence rating. Based on that rating it will determine the interaction with the world and their perception of the world around them. Lower intelligence means they just survive, eat, sleep and multiple. Higher intelligence are more organized and more skilled in task they will do. As an example let’s take the Orc camp from the play demo the team did back in mid-March. Every orc should being doing a task. During the day the camp may be less populated due to hunting parties out looking for food or attacking a rival or village. You should have some training or cooking the night shift guards sleeping, the officers planning or out on a raid. A night maybe a larger portion of the camp is sleeping. I never liked a camp of mobs that they all of the just wondered around in circles waiting for you to pick them off one by one. Which gets to the point of pulls not that the whole camp should come when you attack one guard but you certainly should not be able to pull just one when another one is standing 10 feet away and looking right at you. The noise of fighting close to other mobs should bring more mobs in staggered waves but not all at once. Unless of course it’s the middle of the day and you’re in the middle of the camp and pull the boss then yeah everyone comes. Respawn times should be long enough to allow for a wipe or two generally speaking. If a mob on guard duty is moving between 2 camps or 2 guard spots and it doesn’t show up at its regular interval them maybe the other camp sends another mob to check and see what is up. The idea is to take the intelligence of the mobs and make logical assumptions on how they will react to what is going on in the world around them.
Agreed, NPCs should be doing things all the time. I really did hate seeing an orc camp or dervish outpost where the NPCs just stood there. Guards should be roaming, someone should be tending the fire, etc. The point being is there should always be activity. The larger the encampment the greater the level of activity. By extension, then, NPc should fight like their class when engaged in combat. Casters should never rush into melee range and they should all have access to and capability to use the entire spellset that players have at the same level.
Aneadorn said:
Regional Auction or market places. This has a benefit to crafters and pricing of resources based on the region. As an example all regions don’t have all resources so bringing a rare resource from another region increases its price.
Not having a global auction system or even a single centralized auction place is important. Having regional differences in pricing is yet another way of allowing enterprising players to benefit from putting forth the effort to exploit those regional differences.
Aneadorn said:
Crafting just improve upon VG’s system and you are golden. And VG’s system doesn’t need much improvement. Crafting should be able to make some of the best in slot items in the game. Now that should require someone to be a master at their craft which requires lots of training. Real time should be a requirement not just a level. As an example once you are an advanced smith you go see a master trainer pass a test and then “spend/wait” the next 30/60 days before you can become a master. These best items should also require more than one master to make. As a side not Artifact or epic type items should increase in power with you. This will avoid the whole making these rare items obsolete as the game grows.
Best in Slot doesn't, and should never, apply to every level in the game. What is determined best in slot can, and should change. At points it should be a player crafted, at others group dropped and at other times raid dropped. This allows all three sources for items to be applicable throughout the game.
You want content? Do what it takes to get there first.
With a high contested content it propably means quitting jobs to get it first when the other players are at work. But i'm sure the players will quit their subscriptions first instead of quitting jobs. But please do not complain when the game will get a cash shop or is going free to play when too many people quit their subscription because there is no content for them.
Greetings
Larirawiel said:You want content? Do what it takes to get there first.With a high contested content it propably means quitting jobs to get it first when the other players are at work. But i'm sure the players will quit their subscriptions first instead of quitting jobs. But please do not complain when the game will get a cash shop or is going free to play when too many people quit their subscription because there is no content for them.
Greetings
Because giving everyone unrestricted access to everything worked so well for subscriptions in the past.
