Speed of travel or lack thereof is one of the core structures of overworld design in older model mmos. It's kind of baffling we're even discussing this. Teleports were useful in old mmos to get you approximately to a region close to where you needed to go, but you still had to travel and traverse dangerous territory.
But even on a basic level the proposition that the movement speed you travel at makes no difference to danger is pretty ridiculous. To be extreme, if you move at 500% of base movement speed then no monster in basically any game can realistically do anything to you. The textbook example of speed of travel obviating dangers is the transition to flying mounts, which at their core are basically speed hacks that divorce you from the y axis.
I don't see why we don't examine how mounts function(ed) in real life, which was as exacerbaters of travel on safe paths from town to town. Why not just make mounts have their place as things we can use to speed up overland travel along roads from haven to haven. That gives them a much more logical place in the world then modern games. After all, a horse is decidedly not an all-terrain vehicle, it's only modern games who do not care about their worlds who have warped player perceptions to expect that.
edit: as an example of even minor permanent speed buffs having massive unintended consequences, I present you the herald's gaiters from FFXI. Even a 12% movement speed buff was enough to allow black mages to solo current endgame content. The same was true of red mages with their 12% movement speed buff. The sheer fact that monsters on average ran slower than the player was enough to trivialize their difficult, because they couldn't realistically catch you.
Gurt said:UnknownQuantity said:
UnknownQuantity said:One way to avoid having only one best in slot item is to have a variety of different items drop with similar statistics. For instance you might have the sword of fire damage 2 delay 25 and a chance to proc fire damage. Then you have the sword of ice damage 2 delay 25 and a chance to proce ice damage. You could have a variety of one handed weapons with similar statistics. You could have the same variety for armor. This would also encourage players to spread out to different areas and explore instead of camping for specific items all the time. I think you are very set in the era and terminologies of modern MMOs to think outside the box in this instance.
That doestn't really solve the best in slot problem though. In you example you moved from having 1 sword to being best in slot to having three or four swords share that distinction unless you're fighting an enemy with low or high resists to a specific element. If there is an item (or a small group of items) that can be seen as hands down better than the other choices, then best in slot exists. The only ways around this is to remove all superfluous stats from items: armor gives only armor, weapons give only damage; or to have every stats combination that exists on a particular peice of gear be duplicated dozens of times with different graphics. The first is boring and the second is expensive to code and frusterating for players to keep track of.
I don't see how that doesn't solve the 'players looking the same due to the BiS item conundrum'. This is actually a pretty efficient way to handle it. It's not really expensive to code and I don't see how it's frustrating for players to keep track of. It's how many MMOs handle their items in the first place. If you have 5 items of the same slot all supposed to be the cream of the crop with all comparable stats then players have 5 viable items to choose from where one player may prefer one over the other due to their playstyle. Thus resulting in eliminating everyone looking the same. It's simple to code because all it is is a database which links the items with their graphical counterpart. On top of this, since these items are the best of the best they will be hard to aquire. So not every player will obtain them at the same time.
But really, an easy way to handle players looking unique and still having the best gear is appearance gear. But I wouldn't do appearance gear like most other MMOs. I'd make it so that the only gear you could use in your appearance slots is gear that you have looted yourself. So that way when people see you and recognize some of your items by looking at you they can be assured that you have completed the task to obtain said item. Rather than wondering did they buy it from the marketplace or from an appearance shop vendor or did they actually defeat whichever mob needed.
I never really found mounts to be a problem and LOVED my Griffon in VG lol. But one way to handle it could be by making them more realistic. Mounts can be owned but they don't have a clicky that makes them and disappear out of thin air. They are static and have to be kept in a stable. If you are going to a far off dungeon then you either have to ride your mount ALL the way from whever you are located, or port to that dungeon and possibly rent a mount nearby, OR buy multiple mounts and have them located at various stables all over the world. This could be a good money sink too because you could be required to pay rent on multiple stables if you wanted to own multiple mounts. But there would be no way to clicky poof them and porting them magically should be mainly discouraged (maybe). I don't know how I feel about magially teleporting mounts, maybe it wouldnt be too bad.
EIther way, on top of all this, you can get knocked off your mount by passing mobs. Your mount can die from too much damage (mobs can attack your mount and your mount can take falling damage). And your mount can run away too. Say you go to a dungeon with your mount you either have to tie it up outside the dungeon or hope it stands outside patiently. If you don't tie it up, or if you get knocked off your mount, there is a chance it will run off and forever be lost. Mainly if mounts function like real live mounts, or at least more like real live mounts, then they will have major drawbacks to using them. Which could offset how they make traversing the world more easy.
NoobieDoo I understand your logic and it makes sense, but I would personally rather not see sets of items in game. The whole concept of sets seems against what I saw they say in the videos I watched. They said they want people to explore and get different items. Not just camp for the BiS gear like most other modern MMOs. There is supposed to be a variety of items available that will encourage players to continue to explore. I like the variety that comes with not having BiS items. That will just give people a far to straightforward goal to achieve and detract from the point of the game which is to bring back adventure and focus less on just getting the best items available. You also don't want everyone to feel they need to get that best set. Some may not be able to easily do this in a non instanced game. Instead they should feel content with whatever items they are able to pick up along the way and enjoy the journey IMO.
UnknownQuantity said:NoobieDoo I understand your logic and it makes sense, but I would personally rather not see sets of items in game. The whole concept of sets seems against what I saw they say in the videos I watched. They said they want people to explore and get different items. Not just camp for the BiS gear like most other modern MMOs. There is supposed to be a variety of items available that will encourage players to continue to explore. I like the variety that comes with not having BiS items. That will just give people a far to straightforward goal to achieve and detract from the point of the game which is to bring back adventure and focus less on just getting the best items available. You also don't want everyone to feel they need to get that best set. Some may not be able to easily do this in a non instanced game. Instead they should feel content with whatever items they are able to pick up along the way and enjoy the journey IMO.
Well said. Sums up my thoughts on the matter quite nicely.
Grymmlocke said:UnknownQuantity said:NoobieDoo I understand your logic and it makes sense, but I would personally rather not see sets of items in game. The whole concept of sets seems against what I saw they say in the videos I watched. They said they want people to explore and get different items. Not just camp for the BiS gear like most other modern MMOs. There is supposed to be a variety of items available that will encourage players to continue to explore. I like the variety that comes with not having BiS items. That will just give people a far to straightforward goal to achieve and detract from the point of the game which is to bring back adventure and focus less on just getting the best items available. You also don't want everyone to feel they need to get that best set. Some may not be able to easily do this in a non instanced game. Instead they should feel content with whatever items they are able to pick up along the way and enjoy the journey IMO.
Well said. Sums up my thoughts on the matter quite nicely.
Well just because there are sets of gear doesnt mean they need to be BiS, and it also wouldnt bother me if people mixed and matched despite the gear sets. In XI they had a lot of class based and role based gear sets. Some people would use them others wouldnt and others still mixed and matched but what probably helped this alot was the horizontal gear progression and the very shallow vertical progression curve. Gear was much more valuable for longer amounts of time. There were pieces in my Ninjas main tank gear from the 1st expansion that I was still using in the 3rd expansion. But not everyone would use the same items. But would mix and match as they saw fit based on their build, racial stat differences, and merit points (AAs). Oh there were some items that were accepted as the BiS, but those were the exception and not the rule due to that mostly horizontal based gear progression and use of situational gear.
So while I wont say we have to have class specific gear, I hope that my example has shown how it can work together with unmatched gear in a game that has horizontal and situational gear progression.
On mounts......... no mounts ever LOL. I know this wont happen, but I wish ALL player transportation and movement modifiers were spell/ability based only and sparse and unique to specific classes. If I had my way thats what it would be. Im sure that isnt a very popular opinion, but I like what I like.
