alephen said:i am not going to respond to each post since, but instead will make one post, hopefully not as long as the original.
first thanks for responses. i hope it is not so much as a sneeze, since i really do hope to understand.
i think discribing vanguard as instant gratification is a bit of a stretch. while not quite so long as EQ, perhaps, i am not instant gratification player, as i tried to establish. i am in fact one of the grindiest players you may ever meet, i just don't want grind for the sake of grind.
regarding camping, i disagree with the idea of it being hard. i think of hard as in difficult. a relatively easy fight that you must do 500 times is still relatively easy. perhaps a valid example would be when i worked as a security guard. it was incredibly easy work (99.95% of the time.) working with autistic kids is far more difficult work but far more intrinsically rewarding. so i am not advocating easy, but difficult over tediuos. why is 50 hour camp better than a fight that takes 50 hours to learn? how does killing Lord BAMF for the 150th time in 2 days add to immersion?
also, i am wondering how much these features depends on population base, since there is much depending on the kindness of others.
comparing EQ or it is wow, i think is dishonest. vanguard did not have the community isues i saw in wow. vanguard was not a lobby game. vanguard was not lvl 5 gets instant travel anywhere (rifts needed to be unlocked first so you had to run to the gestalts for psi spells, for example.)
I dont think VG would be described that way either for what its worth. There are people coming from a few old school games. While most are from EQ some are not. I think its safe to say most people think that their game of choice was the best one right? So you have to forgive some folks and just think of them being passionate about their game (XI vet here and guilty as well).
I dont think camping is a bad thing but I do think it needs to be balanced with other approaches to content. Even having some long camps might be good particularly for a raid. But like I said above I would like a varied approach to content. My biggest concern would be too much camping and not enough actual boss killing. Im not concerned with a 5% drop rate personally though. Because that becomes part of bleeding and sweating for the win. It also adds longevity to the game. I have proposed it before but I would like top end gear to be divided from 5 sources all different from class to class and slot to slot: Raid bosses, dungeon bosses, Epic Quests, and Faction Quests, and Epic Crafts. This would force anyone that wanted to be the best of the best to invest heavily in all content. You couldnt just get away with only Raiding. I also think the way bosses spawn should be varied: Long Camps (hours, days?), Short Camps (30 mins to 2 hours), Events (special conditions or maybe Dev run?), Triggered (item spawned or quest spawned or maybe even perception spawned). These would vary and need to be balanced according to the value of the loot, the source, the amount of bodies needed, difficulty of encounter, and drop rate.
I too worry about 2 things of a social nature: 1. Finding enough people for multi-group encounters (Yet to be seen). 2. Hoping for old school EQ etiquette (some think we will be able to rely on this and police our selves) I hope this is true but people are people and I would rather prepare for a natural disaster than simply hope one doesnt happen. Many disagree with me on this, and they might be right. Time will tell what the devs end up doing.
Again it gets passionate around here. Sometimes people talk in extremes. And some are worried that the closer it is to WoW (even if it isnt that close), the more likely and quicker the slippery slope to WoW. And while I do think we can expect a lot of things to be somewhere between vanilla EQ and Last Days VG. I dont think we have to worry about the game the devs want to make. At the end of the day for me its about having more good than bad to look forward too. I doubt everyone will like every single aspect of Pantheon. Just like I didnt like every single thing about XI. But you take the bad with the good (In my case im thinking it will be 90:10 for good:bad at the most. But thats a damn sight better than the MMO wasteland that I see everywhere else which is close to exactly the opposite. Just some things to consider. Hope I didnt bore you lol.
philo said:I completely agree. Spamming WTS ..or watching others spam WTS is not fun for me. The "commons tunnel nostalgia" has gone way to far. It was never as good as some people remember it being.
I know many people are anti auction house, or bazaar/afk player vendor or npc vendor etc. Call it what you will, they are all basically the same. I am in the minority it seems who thinks this type of system is one of the things newer MMOs got right.
I was starting to think I was one of the only people here that doesn't actually mind an AH or AFK shop type mechanic :) Each to their own I guess.
Amsai said:alephen said:stuff
I dont think VG would be described that way either for what its worth. There are people coming from a few old school games. While most are from EQ some are not. I think its safe to say most people think that their game of choice was the best one right? So you have to forgive some folks and just think of them being passionate about their game (XI vet here and guilty as well).
I dont think camping is a bad thing but I do think it needs to be balanced with other approaches to content. Even having some long camps might be good particularly for a raid. But like I said above I would like a varied approach to content. My biggest concern would be too much camping and not enough actual boss killing. Im not concerned with a 5% drop rate personally though. Because that becomes part of bleeding and sweating for the win. It also adds longevity to the game. I have proposed it before but I would like top end gear to be divided from 5 sources all different from class to class and slot to slot: Raid bosses, dungeon bosses, Epic Quests, and Faction Quests, and Epic Crafts. This would force anyone that wanted to be the best of the best to invest heavily in all content. You couldnt just get away with only Raiding. I also think the way bosses spawn should be varied: Long Camps (hours, days?), Short Camps (30 mins to 2 hours), Events (special conditions or maybe Dev run?), Triggered (item spawned or quest spawned or maybe even perception spawned). These would vary and need to be balanced according to the value of the loot, the source, the amount of bodies needed, difficulty of encounter, and drop rate.
I too worry about 2 things of a social nature: 1. Finding enough people for multi-group encounters (Yet to be seen). 2. Hoping for old school EQ etiquette (some think we will be able to rely on this and police our selves) I hope this is true but people are people and I would rather prepare for a natural disaster than simply hope one doesnt happen. Many disagree with me on this, and they might be right. Time will tell what the devs end up doing.
Again it gets passionate around here. Sometimes people talk in extremes. And some are worried that the closer it is to WoW (even if it isnt that close), the more likely and quicker the slippery slope to WoW. And while I do think we can expect a lot of things to be somewhere between vanilla EQ and Last Days VG. I dont think we have to worry about the game the devs want to make. At the end of the day for me its about having more good than bad to look forward too. I doubt everyone will like every single aspect of Pantheon. Just like I didnt like every single thing about XI. But you take the bad with the good (In my case im thinking it will be 90:10 for good:bad at the most. But thats a damn sight better than the MMO wasteland that I see everywhere else which is close to exactly the opposite. Just some things to consider. Hope I didnt bore you lol.
not at all. i think you described my feelings VERY nearly. and i do understand the passion, and the prejudice. SWGs was my first mmo of any duration, and thus will always be my favorite game as long as i forget that the rail pathing of kashyyk and the abominations of NGE ever existed. (didn't like CU, but it was bearable.) (Vanguard would have surpassed it but for the playability issues, and the reindeer...)
i actually do understand the different of opinions better from this thread, and am mostly responding to what i think are incorrect statements, which i feel make the discussion less productive.
i also think that the difference of opinions can be helpful, since, while The Team likely has much of what they want this game to be in mind if not in code, the game is far enough away /sniff that brainstorming can't hurt.
I personally believe alephen has the wrong premise, or overview of each. And has only "heard" such things he has asked about. And was simply asking what ifs..?
Rightly so!
If you've liked brad's games, but never cared much about why, or what drives the game's unique'ness underneath. I think if you spend some time playing Everquest( https://www.everquest.com/register Phinny server), you might get a knack for the EQ side of the equation. The underlaying mechanics, that are so open (for 1999 +)... and why many of the oldschool are here now. Because a 20 year newer game will allow for more freedom, more uniquness and more of depth of everything.
And since we are talking about what ifs... what if VRi just eliminated "camps" as you know them... and could turn all of them into "crawls" instead, with nearly the same outcome. The idea of camps to crawls 100% easily doable and more more natural than one would think. Not that they would eliminate camping all together.
Looking at the latest live stream, & one of the char's abilities he noticed something, which in turn revealed a key behind a rock...!
Imagine that key to something like in EQ & unlocking the dead side door to lower guk..? That now... only Your party (once they find the door, hidden or not) can have acces to the Magi, Assasin, etc.. but once you get to the King and kill him... nothing more spawns. <-- That is a crawl. (Orc camp 1 ~5 will always be static newbie style rinse & repeat camps, but as you travel outwards, expect more random chaos in the world.). PUGs in certain dungeons, might have the same oppertunity to "crawl" on a named, as a major guild.
Who has the highest perception skill again ..?
Additionally, these keys, or subtle mechanics can be random, timed or triggered for whichever way VRi wants to use them to tell a story, or keep within a theme, etc.
So, using such a very simple mechanic means you really can't camp a mob, or an item per se... because things such as I just described (dynamic gameplay) will be the norm for Pantheon using a 64bit game world & mechanics. Also.... imagine it would be really hard to camp a hidden key... (that happens to be no rent) that someone already has currently just found... & is in the nearest town /auctioning it off in town square to the highest bidder.!
It begs, what would you do with such a (no rent) key..? Call some friends if you found it?
-hiero
In no way am I saying that the OP wants an instant gratification game. I too loved VG and dont feel it was anything like WoW or any of the other instant theme park style MMOs. But what I'm hearing from people is that all they want to do is group and combat. They want to travel instantly to their group so they can fight. They want to buy and sell items quickly...so that they can get back to grouping and fighting. Possibly some will craft but for most part it seems the only thing people want to do is group and fight. Which is basically what MMOs have come to.
And they ask what was so fun about EQs lack of global AH. Having to spam WTS/WTB for periods of time was not fun. They ask what is fun of having to travel long periods of time to group and fight with your friends. This isn't what made EQ great. EQ was magical and beautiful.
What made EQ magical was the fact that you could find people everywhere doing anything and everything OTHER than grouping and fighting. It's truly the last MMO to function like this. As much as VG relied on its community it just wasn't as social as EQ was. Players would sit around in all sorts of places for hours just socializing giving away buffs. They could be found in many places giving away ports...but also socializing. The EC Tunnel wasn't great because you had to travel long distances just to trade your items. It was great because players came together in a zone with nothing but a safe tunneled area with a couple of vendors and created a social environment that players could count on to be there if they needed to trade some harder to find items. Even death brought people together with necros and SKs summoning corpses.
People want a global AH or automated traders so that they don't have to waste their time on something so trivial. Not understanding that some players don't want to just group and fight. Some like to hang out and socialize and do things like craft. Or enjoy the fruits of their labor by selling their items in person and kicking back to socialize. I don't understand how MMOs became strictly a grouping and fighting game/genre. I thought they were so much more than this. And asking for a global AH robs the players of being able to hang back and sell their items.
Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that for all the points that you made I'd prefer them NOT to do it like they did in VG. But that doesn't mean I want them to do it like they did in EQ. I'd prefer the community sorting out traveling the world. Player port spells and/or player-ran travel systems whatever they may be. The co-signment shop is a great idea for players to run their own trading post. Get the players and community involved as much as possible.
As for the camping and death penalty; I prefer the crawl that VG had and how it mixed in a little bit of camped areas. I like how EQ handled the death penalty but just throw in the altar summoning like VG had and I'd be happy. Or create something entirely new.
I will start off by saying is I hope that development continues to take in feedback from what is being said in the forums but also makes decisions in which will keep the game up and floating. There are times to be nostalgic and there are also times to be realistic. Would a direct EQ or VG game survive in today's marketplace? Maybe, I don't know, its a topic to be considered when development makes these decisions I want them to make the right call on what makes sense and not because "we loved it or it worked 10+ years ago".
Now to premise, this is an opinion from a 5-year EQ, 3-year EQ2, 3-year VG, 4.5-year RIFT guy (see the linear progression there?)
1 - Travel
I feel yes, traveling some place that takes up to 20-30m gets a bit tedious and less immersive. While traveling some place at a near instant is the complete opposite. I do believe the game's landmass SHOULD determine travelling options. As the game expands, 100% reliance on teleporters will prove more harmful than good as say if availability is limited per play-times or specific servers. I do like say the VG spire system (similar to RIFT's travel) but downscaled to more restrictive usage however aiding in the traveling. Community will still be able to work off using porting services of certain classes but also not feeling completely hindered if they have a hike ahead of them. As the game expands in landmass, the spire system should slowly expand. If you had to ask me what my travel time threshold is before it becomes "not fun": 15-20minutes.
2 - Spamming WTS
To alot, this is purely a community building aspect and immersion of being an actual merchant. While I am not entirely against an Auction House, I do feel people should want to be active sellers and have options to be able to sell goods if offline or off adventuring. Commision costs, region/city based auction houses to provide a bit more restictive usage. However I do feel if the game population/size grows, auction houses/bazaars become more favorable as being a consumer, watching trade chat isn't the the way i'd want to shop. Had to do it, but I do feel with times changing, these are one of the things that has to move with it but by providing players with OPTIONS.
3 - Camping mobs
Here it depends on the kind of mob we're talking. If we're talking epic-quest scale mobs then I'm fine with it being a lengthy camp. For your typical dungeon crawl, I would hope for mob camps to be to move away from our old-school 25-30m repops down to a good 10m-15m but with drop percentages to scale appropriately. Keeping the players engaged at a good rate with providing chances to see content but may have to do the content few times to get whatever drop they desire. This again is also a social aspect where your group can actually get time to communicate with one another. I will say when I did some time on P99, I was always hoping for named camps to be just a tad bit faster even if it meant reducing the drop chance, as I cared more about actually playing than whatever loot I may be collecting. I do hope they have an array of content where some dungeons are a bit faster than others. Again, options.
4 - Death Penalty
I've never really had issues with a death penalty. It only sucked when it came to raiding. And I ran a necro in EQ1 so I mean, #firstWorldProblems
@Alephen
I'll post my thoughts I had shared in an old thread, which I think are directly related to your questions/points in this thread - linked below:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2433/define-difficult-challenging
For me, it's easy, EQ had all the "hard" mechanics as previously discussed and other posters have mentioned, but the one element that may not directly affect challenge, but magnifies all other challenging aspects is time. EQ made you fear/respect everything because time is finite, and EQ was a major time investment. You feared death, you dreaded traveling through Kithicor, you respected the warrior that had their epic, you were amazed at the person that was in full Plane of Fear Raid gear, you wished you were level 50 and knew you would be one... day... etc. etc.
Much like anything, if you feel that you've invested yourself and time into accomplishing a challenging goal, it feels more rewarding. Vanilla EQ just mastered the ever dangling, yet masterable challenge - you just had to put in the time/effort/blood/sweat/tears. You need slow progression.
Raidan said:Much like anything, if you feel that you've invested yourself and time into accomplishing a challenging goal, it feels more rewarding. Vanilla EQ just mastered the ever dangling, yet masterable challenge - you just had to put in the time/effort/blood/sweat/tears. You need slow progression.
I feel exactly the same way. I want to invest time and effort for achievements and accomplishing things. If things are so easily accessible it seems to lack depth.
1) How is waiting a half hour for someone to reach you fun? how is running a half hour while they are waiting fun?
2) how is sitting and spamming area chat 'WTS weapons, PST' fun?
3) how is camping the same mob/group of mobs for 10+ hours fun?
4) how does punitively high death penalties make game play fun?
Honestly … you got me alephen. I’m having a hard time with these four things myself. I’ll do my best but both I and my husband are conflicted with the same things. We play World of Warcraft but come from backgrounds like Lineage 2 (him) and Everquest (myself). So it’s not like we don’t know how it ‘used’ to be.
[1] About the Travel Time. When playing MMO’s these days they like to throw you right into the instance to get on your carnival ride. Because you have instant access to all of the rides people often cease to understand they are in a park that is a lot larger than one or two rides. Players are drained away from ‘the world’ and are only in a few ‘stress points’.
Limiting fast travel lets players experience much more of the world and be more connected to that world. In terms of ‘realism’ I can connect with this. When I was dating I drove 3 hours to get to see my now husband. I couldn’t wait to see him, and that entire ride was nostalgia driving up every week. The funniest thing is … now we are married and we’ve been together for close to 8 years we both have the same feeling about ‘missing’ the drive. When he drove down to see me and I drove up to see him we remember the travel itself was special.
So I guess in tldr fashion: waiting builds anticipation.
[2] This is difficult because I love the convenience of the auction house and I don’t like having to always be selling all the time. I mean, if I have a high quality bear pelt on me I’m trying to sell but I also need to kill stuff to get exp, it gets old spamming trade inbetween pulls or having to back away from a group for 5 minutes to meet somebody to trade. On the flip side … people love that also. You could be in a different zone entirely and spamming something and might get a hit. It’s like fishing no matter where you are. Sitting one place and selling doesn’t seem that fun honestly.
I don’t have answers for this … I’m not looking forward to no auction house. I kind of wish I could just dump all my items and get a good price, but the Vendor always stiffs you. So instead of dumping everything into an auction house and getting easy profit I have to do a lot of hard work. Again … people LIKE that. It’s just hard because not everyone likes it. The hubby definitely does not like the thought of there being NO auction house.
[3] camping mobs is fun, I miss doing that! I really do! And systems where the enemies you kill dropping the weapons they wield is also really cool. I’m not ok with shitty drop-rates though. I’m currently trying to get a 1% drop-rate in a World of Warcraft raid (it’s an old one so I can solo it)
I definitely want there to be camping, and also dungeons and raids. Instanced dungeons and raids? I duno … I might be happy without. A lot of Pantheon for me is trusting Brad McQuaid when he said that peoples tastes don’t change over the years. I guess I will find out if this is true when I play Pantheon. I’ll be balancing my thoughts between: is this game just lacking money to give me a good experience? Or am I not enjoying this because my tastes have changed over the years? My hope is a third alternative I’m kind of ‘banking’ on which is I LOVE the game for all that it is. I think I’ll be pleasantly surprised based on my experience from playing P99 recently.
[4] Honestly in World of Warcraft dying means nothing, and so throwing your life away is not such a bad thing. I find it interesting that when dying means long travel time, losing experience/money/items, or even having to start the level ALLLLLLL over again … these negative things at stake create an atmosphere of tension where something truly important is at stake. This is the reason why it’s important to have death mean something. It’s to make you treat the encounter as more important, that your actions and everything you do matter each button press of the way. Your and your groups survival becomes paramount in your struggles. In World of Warcraft you can make a mistake, wipe, and try again because ‘woop D doo’. I’m interested to have a firmer tension.
But here’s the thing … something very important.
When World of Warcraft first came out, it WAS hard. And it was enjoyable. They were not going to have a death penalty because (and I quote) they “Don’t believe in punishing the player.”. To them punishing the player is a bad thing. I ENJOYED my time playing early World of Warcraft, it was difficult to play. Dying still meant I had to run all the way back and that I’d lose money. People became BROKE because they died so much (I should know …being the Tank.)
How the game chooses to do their ‘punishment’ is important. I see now that World of Warcraft punished ‘differently’ and so they lied about not believing in punishing the player. Pantheon gets the opportunity to spin the dial back or forward with how they want punishment to work but the end is still the same--- the players have to feel like something is at stake. If dying means nothing, are you really hooked into the game? If not you could get bored and say ‘this isn’t for me.’.
That’s how I feel about this one.
It’s a balancing act right now with how I feel about going back in time to 1999 style gameplay. I hope it doesn’t suck. But again I think I’ll be delightfully surprised.
-Todd
Dullahan said:The OPs question basically describes instant gratification. I don't mean this in the wrong way, but when an mmorpg lacks those innate challenges, what is the point of even playing an MMORPG? There are so many more convenient ways to have fast fun at a computer. An mmorpg doesn't sound like the right option for someone of that mindset.
There are many types of games to play. The lobby games of today are not virtual worlds. They aren't even mmorpgs. There is little to no sense of community, no role play, no risk, only the game part. When you remove the parts of the game that make it seem like a world (like traveling, danger of dying, rarity of resources), all that is left is a game. No believability, no immersion.
If nothing else, at least this post sums up what I liked about EQ vs what I didn't like about Vanguard.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
tehtawd said:[1] About the Travel Time. When playing MMO’s these days they like to throw you right into the instance to get on your carnival ride. Because you have instant access to all of the rides people often cease to understand they are in a park that is a lot larger than one or two rides. Players are drained away from ‘the world’ and are only in a few ‘stress points’.
Limiting fast travel lets players experience much more of the world and be more connected to that world. In terms of ‘realism’ I can connect with this. When I was dating I drove 3 hours to get to see my now husband. I couldn’t wait to see him, and that entire ride was nostalgia driving up every week. The funniest thing is … now we are married and we’ve been together for close to 8 years we both have the same feeling about ‘missing’ the drive. When he drove down to see me and I drove up to see him we remember the travel itself was special.
So I guess in tldr fashion: waiting builds anticipation.
Limiting fast travel lets players experience much MORE of the world? HUH? IMO its the exact opposite! Because travel is so slow, people won't want to move around much, and instead stick to the places they're currently at. Why do you think EQ (on a progression server like Phinigel) has those "hotspots" like Unrest, Guk etc? Even when there are many other places around where a group might go? I actually asked that question a while ago in another thread, and there are many reasons of course. But poor accessibility is very clearly one of the reasons.
Just a few days ago, I was with a group in Unrest. Everything was camped, so we just fought for scraps with other groups in the yard around the mansion. I (and I think the others in the group too) would have loved to go somewhere else, but it was already getting late for some of us and there was no point because it would have taken too long to get anywhere.
See what I mean? With better travel options, we might have tried other places, seen more of the world. Instead we stuck to one single place. Now I will agree that of course you don't need to "do it all in one day". But honestly getting around in EQ is TOO SLOW (in this early era). In Vanguard you still had to travel quite a bit, but at least you had better options there.
Sarim said:tehtawd said:[1] About the Travel Time. When playing MMO’s these days they like to throw you right into the instance to get on your carnival ride. Because you have instant access to all of the rides people often cease to understand they are in a park that is a lot larger than one or two rides. Players are drained away from ‘the world’ and are only in a few ‘stress points’.
Limiting fast travel lets players experience much more of the world and be more connected to that world. In terms of ‘realism’ I can connect with this. When I was dating I drove 3 hours to get to see my now husband. I couldn’t wait to see him, and that entire ride was nostalgia driving up every week. The funniest thing is … now we are married and we’ve been together for close to 8 years we both have the same feeling about ‘missing’ the drive. When he drove down to see me and I drove up to see him we remember the travel itself was special.
So I guess in tldr fashion: waiting builds anticipation.
Limiting fast travel lets players experience much MORE of the world? HUH? IMO its the exact opposite! Because travel is so slow, people won't want to move around much, and instead stick to the places they're currently at. Why do you think EQ (on a progression server like Phinigel) has those "hotspots" like Unrest, Guk etc? Even when there are many other places around where a group might go? I actually asked that question a while ago in another thread, and there are many reasons of course. But poor accessibility is very clearly one of the reasons.
Just a few days ago, I was with a group in Unrest. Everything was camped, so we just fought for scraps with other groups in the yard around the mansion. I (and I think the others in the group too) would have loved to go somewhere else, but it was already getting late for some of us and there was no point because it would have taken too long to get anywhere.
See what I mean? With better travel options, we might have tried other places, seen more of the world. Instead we stuck to one single place. Now I will agree that of course you don't need to "do it all in one day". But honestly getting around in EQ is TOO SLOW (in this early era). In Vanguard you still had to travel quite a bit, but at least you had better options there.
You do see the world, but it takes time and that adds to the feeling of vastness, and you have to WANT to adventure to see it, if you cant be bothered to travel the roads then you will be stuck in a localised area. All great journeys start with 1 step :p
There are options available for you in your above mentioned situation, but yes they take more time than opening your map and clicking on a location that instantly takes you there.... If the going isnt good in unrest its just a matter of packing ya swag and throwing the billy water on the fire and hoofing it to BB Mountains (2 zones) (sorry went for older aussie language then) ... See if you can grab a druid port somewhere else, probably would have taken 15 mins total. There are guilds of druids who port on demand... this is EQ's version of fast travel and it is player made and awesome! And true to form with this game the lack of 100% certaintly and it not being automated gives it a real life feel, sometimes you need other people in EQ to do things... sound familiar? :)
Limiting fast travel lets players experience much MORE of the world? HUH? IMO its the exact opposite! Because travel is so slow, people won't want to move around much, and instead stick to the places they're currently at. Why do you think EQ (on a progression server like Phinigel) has those "hotspots" like Unrest, Guk etc? Even when there are many other places around where a group might go? I actually asked that question a while ago in another thread, and there are many reasons of course. But poor accessibility is very clearly one of the reasons.
Just a few days ago, I was with a group in Unrest. Everything was camped, so we just fought for scraps with other groups in the yard around the mansion. I (and I think the others in the group too) would have loved to go somewhere else, but it was already getting late for some of us and there was no point because it would have taken too long to get anywhere.
See what I mean?
I do see what you mean. Thanks a lot for bringing that up because it is a valid point. Infact I think both your points and mine are spot on and the hard part is ... the Dev's have to find that happy middle ground which will give us the perfect mix. I don't think the answer here is one way or the other but a good mixture of both. Finding that right mix sounds very difficult. All I can say to that is 'good luck dev's'
-Todd
Alephin said:1) How is waiting a half hour for someone to reach you fun? how is running a half hour while they are waiting fun?
2) how is sitting and spamming area chat 'WTS weapons, PST' fun?
3) how is camping the same mob/group of mobs for 10+ hours fun?
4) how does punitively high death penalties make game play fun?
1. Make friends. Socialize. A Druid or Wizard could port you close to where you need to go for a small tip. The Druid would give you a run speed buff as well usually. It rarely took that long to get somewhere if you had friends or simply /ooc'd for a port/buffs. And it added to the community and social aspect of the game. As well as highlighting the uniqeness and ancilliary benefits of various classes. And if you're talking about getting down to a group in the bottom of a dungeon, well, that's where intelligence and skill comes in, as well as the social aspect of asking for an invis or other useful buff. And as far as the group, I played EQ for many years, usually the party member didn't leave until his replacement got there, so the group never stopped.
2. I loved EC. I liked the atmosphere and population of the zone. Chat filters allowed me to finetune exactly what I wanted to experience in the zone, be it hunting or auctions. I found the bazaar useful and convenient, but it definitely took away from the merchant concept the tunnel alone provided. I really enjoyed shouting out my wares, bartering and bickering about price with the million tells I would receive. When the actual game got tedious, or guild drama was too much, I could log in and play as a pure merchant. And I loved it. And since there wasn't a bazaar or auction hall, I always had a ton of customers needing my products. I would actually like to see several area markets develop. I think every main continent should have a designated player determined zone to sell in, and it would be fun to have to travel the world and play the various markets. It just gave me an alternate way to enjoy the game, essentially making my toon a merchant subclass.
3. Camping is phenomenal fun because it allows you to socialize and make friends. You can discuss politics, relationships, loot goals, anything... And the downtime between spawn repops is what allows it. All while waiting for the elusive rare spawn that could drop a game changing item you'll use for forever. It also allows you to accomplish RL chores, deal with your kids, make dinner, etc... once you get a spawn timer down. And not to mention, breaking the spawn and gaining the camp was sometimes quite a challenge. And steamrolling or training others to take a camp was one way to guarantee keeping the camp was never going to get boring. Plus, camping gave rise to the role of pulling. I loved pulling. Keeping mobs chained and coming to your group was an art form. Timing repops so you could tag a PH or rare as soon as they popped was skillful and fun, especially when you had other groups trying to snag your mobs. I think camping deep down in a dungeon, hunting rare mobs, and competing with other groups is the greatest aspect of an MMORPG, outside of doing the same thing on a larger scale for raids.
4. If you are social and have friends, death penalties mean squat because someone will rez you the vast majority of the time. They foster social interaction. And they curb stupidity and put the umph in risk, especially deep in dungeons where even a cleric friend may not be able to get to you easily. Though, they still will eventually, and that might be a tale in its own right. In terms of raiding, which often has a ton of deaths where the small penalties eventually add up, I think it's needed to balance the reward of obtaining elite items. You have to be willing to sacrifice something significant to attempt to gain something significant. Here, that's time. I think EQ nailed the death penalty, especially at higher levels. Maybe the Cleric should have started with a higher xp rez % earlier on, and I'd be fine with that.
Fairchild said: alephen said: 1) How is waiting a half hour for someone to reach you fun? how is running a half hour while they are waiting fun? 2) how is sitting and spamming area chat 'WTS weapons, PST' fun? 3) how is camping the same mob/group of mobs for 10+ hours fun? 4) how does punitively high death penalties make game play fun? You put it like that and I don't know why I enjoyed it so much.
Umm the point is we DID enjoy it for VERY good reasons.
1. How is waiting....
HOW did you contact that group waiting for you??? In EQ you travelled *to* the zone/area you wanted to fight in and *then* looked for a group (unless they were Guildies or frineds). This is NOT a lobby game or one with a global channel ... So, unfortunately your question is flawed. You *never* had to wait 30 mins unless there was a CR involved. From levels 1-20 you almost never travelled 4 zones from the starter city... ever. [YES, apart from the nut-jobs who ran from Qeynos to Freeport at level 4... and yes, I am one of those.. tho technically Halas -> FP].
2. How is sitting ....
Players invented trade in EQ1. All pantheon has to do is provide appropriate tools for them to do so and they will again!
I direct you to a post I made on the 'Ban the AH' thread.
3. How is camping....
Aaaaargh. I assume you mean 'camping for a rare (likely quest-related) loot drop'? For anything other than an EPIC piece, the only camping for 'rarer' items was by choice. If you *want* the PGT, then camp for it. But the camp offered steady XP while you were dooing it and cash and friendly banter. Remember that, *unlike* 99% of modern MMOs EQ quests did *not* give XP greater than killing the mobs needed to drop the quest item. Quest XP was almost non-existent.
HOWEVER.... I played an epic Mage in EQ. FYI since you never played EQ, but epic quests were... errr epic. Some more than others, and arguably the Mage epic was the harshest!!
10 hours?? are you KIDDING me? I just WISH 10 hours for Quillmane. Took me closer to 10 months than 10 weeks!!! ...and don't get me starter on Plane of Sky... 2 weekends consecutively to raid it while my char was camped out for the intervening week so i couldn't play! Epic Mages were all bonkers-mad for a reason you know!!
4. How does punitively high
As others have stated, the death penalty was to balance risk vs reward. You imagine people were risk-averse because of 'overly punitive' penalties. Not so. At all.
Up until level 20 you would *never* have had a corpse run of any significant duration unless you died at sea. There was nearly always somebody about happy to help drag your corpse to safety... *even* while you were running back to the zone you died in. I have even had passing clerics /tell me while running back to ask if i wanted a rez. The community rallies round in the face of a common enemy (death).
As for risk-averse... let me tell you a tale.
Mage sitting bored on a sunday conjuring stuff for people and chatting, contemplating what I should do when i see '/ooc raid 100% wiped in PoFear, need help trying to get to corpses'. Myself and about 5 others offered to help. We lent some of the naked gear, summoned some, then bought gems, coffins, potions and headed out. Breaking back in was a nightmare... took three attempts (I died each time) and the last attempt succeeded. We then fought to a clear space, started dragging corpses, letting theose essential eat mana sticks whiel off-tankng adds and wanderers for ages. Finally, at 1 am, everyone was out or camped. Was the action of myself and the others who helped 'risk averse'. No... we judged the risk vs the reward (saving the whole raid) and judged it worth the risk.
So, I *do* remember the highs and lows.
PS: any epic'd non-mage from EQ who thinks their epic was harsher ..... /raspberry
