Malsirian said:Someone (I'm sorry I don't remember who) shared this link a while back. https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/2vhlbn/did_anyone_play_on_everquests_firiona_vie/
Its another person's account EQs Firiona Vie server and its ruleset. It sounds awesome to me and the fact that Kilsin mentioned an immersion server gives me hope! I would love to see Pantheon launch with it. :) *crosses fingers*
When FV launched I was not in the mindset to start over. Knowing what I know now though if PRF launches with a free trade server I would probably go on that server.
Nimryl said:Dullahan said:The whole "dividing the community" thing makes no sense to me. The only real community once the game launches will exist within each server anyway. The greater Pantheon community of all players will take a distant backseat to the people you deal with in game on a daily basis.
As such, making decisions based on trying to keep only a uniform audience makes little sense. Just having PvP servers alone will mean Pantheon's playerbase will be radically diverse... and I don't see any drawback to that. What's the worst that can happen, people might disagree on a forum thread?
If there's enough interest in a ruleset to draw thousands of people by merely toggling server settings or adjusting a few formulas, and without making drastic changes to the game, that's going to be the best business decision.
Sorry Dullahan I've agreed with you in the past but what VR is doing is actually making sense. The main problem when you think about it is that no one actually knows how many other "Fantheons" in total we'll actually get. Remember this isn't one of those "cater to all"/modern type mmo's..
Plus this game is totally dependant on groups.. and to get groups you need high populations of players... fact. For Pantheon to be successfully "fun" and want people to come back again and again there needs to be a high enough population for groups to occur. By spliting them down you're only making it harder for new groups to form and be found... And what happens when you can't find a group?
Boredom over time = Log off = No sub. So to keep the people they have they really need to the populations as high as possible... - so no spliting until later makes sense to me.
I agree with Nimryl. Splitting the community is a bad idea. Pantheon servers need to be as full as possible in order to make finding a group easy for all players no matter what level they are. That can only be accomplished by having a high population on all the servers.
I'd rather there just be one type of server. All the servers should be hardcore in my opinion. That is the whole point of the game. It should be a challenging game for everyone.
Dullahan said:The whole "dividing the community" thing makes no sense to me. The only real community once the game launches will exist within each server anyway. The greater Pantheon community of all players will take a distant backseat to the people you deal with in game on a daily basis.
As such, making decisions based on trying to keep only a uniform audience makes little sense. Just having PvP servers alone will mean Pantheon's playerbase will be radically diverse... and I don't see any drawback to that. What's the worst that can happen, people might disagree on a forum thread?
If there's enough interest in a ruleset to draw thousands of people by merely toggling server settings or adjusting a few formulas, and without making drastic changes to the game, that's going to be the best business decision.
I see what you're saying. But as I said in my previous post, it's a problem when different servers appeal to completely different demographics. Casual and hardcore are polar opposites. Roleplaying and hardcore are not necessarily opposites. The community at large will still interact on the forums, at conventions, etc. so if there are different servers attracting different playstyles, those playstyles can still clash in places other than actually in the game.
But to explain the more pertinent point, let me use some very basic numbers. Let's say there are 100,000 active subscriptions. Let's also say there are 5 live servers all with the same rulesets. In a perfect world, that would mean there are 20,000 accounts on each server. But now let's say there are 10 servers - 5 regular servers and 5 additional servers, each with different rulesets: permadeath, easymode, no voice chat, etc. Now there would theoretically be only 10,000 accounts on each server. That's literally dividing the community. Less chances for people to find groups, make friends, etc. Alternate servers pull people away from the regular servers, where everyone would have a better chance of meeting people. I know that's extremely basic example, but I think that's what VR is essentially trying to avoid.
Kilsin said:oneADseven said:Zircon said:oneADseven said:As long as said rulesets don't require high amounts of time/resources when it comes to balancing the game down the road, I would agree. Let's say there is a hardcore server ... and some new "extreme" raid boss. Because of the extra severe death penalty on that hardcore server, this extreme mob becomes impossible. Now the team needs to rework it, specifically for that server. This is just a single example but scenarios like this must be avoided. We already know that PVE/PVP will be designed in a way where if a change needs to be made to a PVP paladin spell, it won't screw up PVE paladins. I just think it's a slippery slope when you start to create all of these fancy rulesets. I would prefer the game to just be challenging on all servers and not even need to consider needing a hardcore server. PVE/PVP/RP has worked well in the past. I'm not saying I am completely against the idea of other server types ... just that I wouldn't want them to take away from the experience of the game as a whole. If a single dev is dedicated to a specific server type, that's one less dev working on the game that the majority of the players will be experiencing.
*Edit -- There is the caveat, of course, that if the demand is high enough and that creating said server would open up the potential of maintaining X amount of accounts, the cost of having specific devs assigned to those servers could be justified. Once you open up this can of worms, though, everybody may want a "special rulesets server" only to find that it wasn't that big of a difference and still end up quitting the game. Any server with special rules is an investment in my opinion and before investing in something like that, it needs to be unequivocally clear that the demand is there and that it will remain solvent.
I never said "extra severe", I would just want an actual penalty. Not deaths that are 95%+ mitigated by res, and
bool canLoseLevel = true;
If a boss can be killed on a softcore server you won't hear a peep from us on the hardcore server. I will go out of my way to mock anyone who complains about a boss mob after joining a 'hardcore' server. It would be an afront to the hardcore server itself if they changed a boss mechanic, pfft to that. It would just be that much more epic when said boss you describe goes down on a hardcore server.
A hardcore server would be perfect because everyone would be on the same page that death is not an option, and that no one is allowed to complain about it.
I share your sentiment my friend and that is why I not only started a thread to spell that observation out, but have also dedicated a significant amount of time toward trying to stir up conversations that could unearth a potential solution.
We have made our stance pretty clear on this and there is no solution needed, there is nothing to fix, we will have as many normal servers, separate PvP servers and possibly some RP/Different ruleset servers as needed after launch but we have things in place and you will see them when we release testing and that is when we will take feedback on board when people can actually get in and experience what we have in place, rather than debating them on the forums with hardly any information to base their arguments on, it is much better to wait and try out what we have implemented, on our servers when we are ready for you all to do that, than to try and "fix" things without knowing what is in place.
We understand people are impatient and waiting to test but these things cannot be and will not be rushed, once it is ready you can all jump in and help us test our systems, mechanics and features and give feedback to help us improve and tweak them to better suit the game and our community, that way we also hear many more voices than just a few vocal ones on the forums which allows us to get a much better understanding of the wider community and majority consensus. :)
I was talking about my thread "Spirit Conversion" where both Zircon and I have exchanged several messages that have contributed toward the stance of wanting a more hardcore environment, particularly at max-level. As far as what the argument is based on, I used the information (or potential lack of in this isolated example) found on the game tenets and FAQ page which I consider to be a pretty robust wealth of knowledge as it pertains to what we can expect to see or not see in the game.
This appears to be one of those gray areas where the stance on death is pretty concrete, but as far as features/mechanics go, we know what we won't be seeing as opposed to what we could be seeing. In this case, what we won't be seeing (at least on launch) are de-leveling or AA's which are mechanics that were used in EQ to combat the issue that has been observed. I apologize if this observation is premature and would feel relieved to know that it was already recognized and that there is a plan in place in regards to how it will be dealt with. I spent many years playing EQ2 where the penalty for death at max level was obsolete compared to every level prior due to not having those same mechanics in place. I consider EQ2 a decent example in gauging how the genre evolved and while there were many aspects of that game I enjoyed, their pansy death penalty was not one of them.
I have a ton of faith in VR delivering an epic MMO experience. The game tenets and history of your team are the main reasons I am here and the FAQ page has served as a great resource as it provides many scenarios where common issues in this genre have been observed and shared. Likewise, it serves as a database that provides some truly wonderful solutions to those issues that also reinforce the game tenets that make Pantheon so attractive. It's a powerful asset and I appreciate all of the hard work that went into it's creation. Again, I apologize for my oversight on this matter. It was an illegitimate observation and perhaps warrants my "spirit conversion" thread to be locked as it appears to serve no purpose.
>But as I said in my previous post, it's a problem when different servers appeal to completely different demographics.<
This seems a bit counterintuitive. I would have thought that 5 servers (to use your example) with the same ruleset would divide the community more than 5 servers with 5 different rulesets.
Suppose there were 5 "normal" servers. Players would chose a server based on a coin flip, the name of the server, where they thought friends might be playing, the roll of a die, size of the server (if known) etc. So the community would split into 5 pieces for no reason other than VR chose to make 5 servers available.
Now suppose one pvp server, one roleplaying server, one free trade server, one Oceanic or West Coast or European time zone encouraged server and one "normal" server (no I don't think that is a rational arrangement but I just quickly came up with reasons for 5 different servers). We would be just as divided but the community on each server would be somewhat more homogenous and some of them wouldn't be playing (and wouldn't be in the community at all) if we didn't have the type of server they wanted. How is this MORE of a problem than having 5 "normal" servers in terms of community division?
Dullahan said:The whole "dividing the community" thing makes no sense to me. The only real community once the game launches will exist within each server anyway. The greater Pantheon community of all players will take a distant backseat to the people you deal with in game on a daily basis.
As such, making decisions based on trying to keep only a uniform audience makes little sense. Just having PvP servers alone will mean Pantheon's playerbase will be radically diverse... and I don't see any drawback to that. What's the worst that can happen, people might disagree on a forum thread?
If there's enough interest in a ruleset to draw thousands of people by merely toggling server settings or adjusting a few formulas, and without making drastic changes to the game, that's going to be the best business decision.
From a developer point of view I would much rather not have many different rulesets. While it might be an easy thing to tweak some server settings, it's another to monitor game balance across many iterations of the game. Developers find it difficult enough to maintain the normal PVE/PVP configurations. I'd hate to see what it would be like if there's a PVE/PVP/PVE-Hardmode/PVP-Hardmode/PVE-no corpse run/PVP-no corpse run/PVE-fast travel/PVP-fast travel. I've been in the postion of having to support several iterations of an application and it sucks. Badly.
And I recognize that I'm muddying the waters with adding in more server options. But that's precisely the problem. As soon as developers start spinning off special snowflakes everyone is going to demand that their special snowflake get created as well.
It's sort of like the zero-tolerance stance VR has taken with addons. The answer is no. It's not, "no, if it's a DPS meter, but yes if it's a mapping function." The answer is simply no. And it is that way (my speculation) so that there's no treading the line or making evaluations on what is accetable and what is not. There's no argument, there's no ambiguity, there's no fits of rage because so-and-so got his now I want mine!
Not wanting to divide population is more so undermined by having a roleplaying and non-roleplaying server, someone make an argument to me that roleplayers cannot coexist on the normal servers? It makes no sense. You can't build a roleplay option into the LFG system so people who want to find other people to speak orcish with can? Then why are we dividing the population for sake of what, tradition?
Pantheon is going to be a compromised EQ death penalty that's what VR has said all along. "Somewhere between EQ and Vanguard," but a lot of us want an uncompromised EQ death penalty. I'm not saying either side is wrong, just that it's easy to appease both. Trying to strong arm me to just accept a softcore version and play along won't work. I will just not play.
Look you can fit people into two categories, there are people who want a softcore game they can pretend is hardcore, and there are people who actually want a hardcore game. Neither one makes you a bad person.
Zircon said:Look you can fit people into two categories, there are people who want a softcore game they can pretend is hardcore, and there are people who actually want a hardcore game. Neither one makes you a bad person.
They've actually said a few times that the death penalty will be finalised in testing. If enough people say they want an EQ style death penalty I'm sure they will have one. That is what testing is for. To make sure that they get these things right.
I agree with you though. I'd like to see an EQ style death penalty in the game. Vanguard was pretty easy. If you died it didn't really matter at all you kept your gear so it was easy to fight back to your tomb stone. I don't ever really remember fearing death in Vanguard like I did in EQ.
Cromulent said:They've actually said a few times that the death penalty will be finalised in testing. If enough people say they want an EQ style death penalty I'm sure they will have one. That is what testing is for. To make sure that they get these things right.
I agree with you though. I'd like to see an EQ style death penalty in the game. Vanguard was pretty easy. If you died it didn't really matter at all you kept your gear so it was easy to fight back to your tomb stone. I don't ever really remember fearing death in Vanguard like I did in EQ.
Well in EQ you could delevel and that's already out so... I'm just going off what they're telling me. Death penalty will "not involve losing an unreasonable amount of experience". This isn't exactly wild speculation. Honestly they just need to rewrite their answer to that question. It reads like backpedaling.
Iksar said:The more I have thought about it the more I realize I am not in favor of the idea because I really don't want an overly punishing death system. I want the game itself to be challenging but I don't want it to be punishing. EQ was more or less fine for me (mostly because I was an early teen at the time and had nothing but free time to kill anyway) but looking at that now it could be a bit harsh. If you didn't have a max XP rez you were looking at hour(s) of lost progress, which today would mean one death is the loss of an entire play session for many many people. The problem being that death is a poor indicator of personal skill as I think more often than not your death is the result of other people. The tank messed up holding aggro, the healer messed up his heals or had an emergency and had to run out of the room, someone trained your group, etc.
I happen to recall your post from the other thread, you want a softcore game. If the game is catered to what you described here it's not a game that I will play, personally. Not saying you're wrong for wanting that, back to the original point of the thread, why can't they have a softcore server like you want and a hardcore server? Just seems obvious to me.
Got some real crusaders here. Wanting one mechanic that doesn't often relate to personal skill to not be too harsh = wanting a softcore game? Okay bud. I keep seeing people say Pantheon is "hardcore" and intended to be brutal but with no evidence to back it up. Nowhere do they claim it will be a "hardcore" game other than saying it will be harder than the run of the mill modern MMO, going back toward the foundation of MMOs.
Iksar said:Got some real crusaders here. Wanting one mechanic that doesn't often relate to personal skill to not be too harsh = wanting a softcore game? Okay bud. I keep seeing people say Pantheon is "hardcore" and intended to be brutal but with no evidence to back it up. Nowhere do they claim it will be a "hardcore" game other than saying it will be harder than the run of the mill modern MMO, going back toward the foundation of MMOs.
Death penalty is not just one mechanic to be lumped in with a dozen others, it's the most vital component that made EQ what it was.
If the journey and community is the center of their vision to build all the game systems.
Dividing players in special servers makes no sense at all
Don't know if this is true what i'm about to say ,but it is how I see it
*hardcores* and the min/maxers desire this separation in MMOs that are overly focused on power(huge power gap) and levels.
They feel like playing with the *casuals* is like carrying them through content.Power has negative impact on community
Many start to think of player only as useless and useful because they are fixated on max proficiency,gearscore and all that rubbish.
Also hardcore,casual ;what a hardcore is in the eyes of one player is a casual in the eyes of the next.
You can't solve the problem,even if casual and hardcore servers would have made sense (which they don't)
In my opinion,any effort put into separate servers is valuable time and resources wasted
Nimryl said:Dullahan said:The whole "dividing the community" thing makes no sense to me. The only real community once the game launches will exist within each server anyway. The greater Pantheon community of all players will take a distant backseat to the people you deal with in game on a daily basis.
As such, making decisions based on trying to keep only a uniform audience makes little sense. Just having PvP servers alone will mean Pantheon's playerbase will be radically diverse... and I don't see any drawback to that. What's the worst that can happen, people might disagree on a forum thread?
If there's enough interest in a ruleset to draw thousands of people by merely toggling server settings or adjusting a few formulas, and without making drastic changes to the game, that's going to be the best business decision.
Sorry Dullahan I've agreed with you in the past but what VR is doing is actually making sense. The main problem when you think about it is that no one actually knows how many other "Fantheons" in total we'll actually get. Remember this isn't one of those "cater to all"/modern type mmo's..
Plus this game is totally dependant on groups.. and to get groups you need high populations of players... fact. For Pantheon to be successfully "fun" and want people to come back again and again there needs to be a high enough population for groups to occur. By spliting them down you're only making it harder for new groups to form and be found... And what happens when you can't find a group?
Boredom over time = Log off = No sub. So to keep the people they have they really need to the populations as high as possible... - so no spliting until later makes sense to me.
If there isn't enough people to populate a server and fill groups, obviously you wouldn't create such a server. But I'm talking about a scenario where there would be enough players to fill a server. There are more than enough people to fill an RP server, several pvp servers, and at least one hardcore server, and that's being conservative with estimates.
I think most of you are thinking too small. Pantheon is going to be big and capable of accommodating many different types of servers, and by not providing them will only mean less longevity for the game, and "the community", as a whole.
Dullahan said:Nimryl said:Dullahan said:The whole "dividing the community" thing makes no sense to me. The only real community once the game launches will exist within each server anyway. The greater Pantheon community of all players will take a distant backseat to the people you deal with in game on a daily basis.
As such, making decisions based on trying to keep only a uniform audience makes little sense. Just having PvP servers alone will mean Pantheon's playerbase will be radically diverse... and I don't see any drawback to that. What's the worst that can happen, people might disagree on a forum thread?
If there's enough interest in a ruleset to draw thousands of people by merely toggling server settings or adjusting a few formulas, and without making drastic changes to the game, that's going to be the best business decision.
Sorry Dullahan I've agreed with you in the past but what VR is doing is actually making sense. The main problem when you think about it is that no one actually knows how many other "Fantheons" in total we'll actually get. Remember this isn't one of those "cater to all"/modern type mmo's..
Plus this game is totally dependant on groups.. and to get groups you need high populations of players... fact. For Pantheon to be successfully "fun" and want people to come back again and again there needs to be a high enough population for groups to occur. By spliting them down you're only making it harder for new groups to form and be found... And what happens when you can't find a group?
Boredom over time = Log off = No sub. So to keep the people they have they really need to the populations as high as possible... - so no spliting until later makes sense to me.If there isn't enough people to popular a server and fill groups, obviously you wouldn't create such a server. But I'm talking about a scenario where there would be enough players to fill a server. There are more than enough people to fill an RP server, several pvp servers, and at least one hardcore server, and that's being conservative with estimates.
I think most of you are thinking too small. Pantheon is going to be big and capable of accommodating many different types of servers, and by not providing them will only mean less longevity for the game, and "the community", as a whole.
If you are right about the population I will be over the moon. VR obviously haven't released any numbers though so it is all guess work. I'd love to be on a hardcore PvE server.
Nimryl said:Dullahan said:The whole "dividing the community" thing makes no sense to me. The only real community once the game launches will exist within each server anyway. The greater Pantheon community of all players will take a distant backseat to the people you deal with in game on a daily basis.
As such, making decisions based on trying to keep only a uniform audience makes little sense. Just having PvP servers alone will mean Pantheon's playerbase will be radically diverse... and I don't see any drawback to that. What's the worst that can happen, people might disagree on a forum thread?
If there's enough interest in a ruleset to draw thousands of people by merely toggling server settings or adjusting a few formulas, and without making drastic changes to the game, that's going to be the best business decision.
Sorry Dullahan I've agreed with you in the past but what VR is doing is actually making sense. The main problem when you think about it is that no one actually knows how many other "Fantheons" in total we'll actually get. Remember this isn't one of those "cater to all"/modern type mmo's..
Plus this game is totally dependant on groups.. and to get groups you need high populations of players... fact. For Pantheon to be successfully "fun" and want people to come back again and again there needs to be a high enough population for groups to occur. By spliting them down you're only making it harder for new groups to form and be found... And what happens when you can't find a group?
Boredom over time = Log off = No sub. So to keep the people they have they really need to the populations as high as possible... - so no spliting until later makes sense to me.
What you and everyone else seem to be describing is an extreme of dividing the community. That is dividing so much that each server doesn't have enough people.
VR will no doubt do enough testing to find out how many people make a server full but not too full. I can't see them ruining their servers just because a small number of people ask for some radical ruleset.
The argument against that extreme, is that you can have several fully populated servers. If it's easy for VR to implement, and there's sufficient interest on the matter, then why can't these fully populated servers have slightly different rulesets?
People may disagree on forums and there will probably be inter-server competition/flexxing. But as Dullahan pointed out I doubt any inter server community will really be THAT important to people, as you won't be able to group, trade, or even spam politics in general chat with them.
In fact, some people might get more out of the game by having characters on several different rulesets. I know already I'll have an RP character, a regular pve character, and maybe a pvp character as well.
A community full of people with opinions so different they are willing to play on different rulesets is going to be divided in some cases anyways. I just can't understand why it's so scary to acknowledge their different opinions so long as it doesn't take too much effort or go directly against game tenants. This way, in some cases at least, they can flex at each other instead of fighting over what VR "should be doing".
EX: The folks in their auction house server can play how they want, the folks in the no auction house server can have a jolly old time in their emergent barter community(In this case, VR would only need to make the npcs in the auction house not work)..So long as each server has enough people to be full and justified.
>Death penalty is not just one mechanic to be lumped in with a dozen others, it's the most vital component that made EQ what it was.<
The trouble is, there are literally dozens of different features that get debated and for each and every one SOME people feel it is the "most important" or "the thing that made EQ great". And others say "that wasn't a desirable feature that was a piece of crap that was there by mistake or because hardware/software was so primitive then and we need to ditch it to have a MODERN game with an *EQ feel* not an EQ clone."
If every one of us feels that they need to do it our way or we won't play the game is dead already.
There are many critical design decisions. What the penalty is for dying. To what extent a corpse run will obviate the penalty. Will there be mounts and how fast will they be and how easy to get dismounted. Will there be flying mounts. Will there be means of instantaneous travel, or at least easy travel, between certain locations. Will there be any type of group or raid finder and how will it work. Will there be instances for anything - if so, what. What items if any will be tradable - what items if any will be bind on pickup. Will half the content be soloable, or 1/3 or 1/10 or what? Will solo play allow you to hit maximum level with semi-decent gear or will it just be a time waste so they can say they have it. How will crafting work (this by itself includes many design decisions). How will harvesting work. What about group crafting and/or group harvesting. Etc etc etc. Apologies if I left anyone's key issue out I was too lazy to check the last 100 posts to come up with a list of issues and it really doesn't matter for this point.
Guess what - there isn't one single person on these forums that will be happy with every decision - not one. There isn't one single DEVELOPER that will be happy with every decision not even the boss, who is smart enough to want a game that people will play, including people that weren't even BORN in 1999, rather than an ideologically pure game that is his idea of perfection but will fail.
I hope that when someone says do it my way or the highway on just one of dozens of issues they are blowing smoke (or something else) out of their nether regions to try and persuade the decison makers to do it their way, but will be in the game and playing when things go their way on 18 of 29 important issues (numbers made up at random).
@dorotea
If the game was instanced or solo-driven I would have no interest. Mounts or no mounts, don't really care. From my point of view they are welcome to take liberties on most parts of the game. What I don't want, and I don't expect that I'm alone, is a toned-down EQ. EQ was really borderline softcore as it was. Sure you learned pretty quick that death wasn't an option, but in the end you were res'ing back virtually all the XP you lost. It wasn't so hardcore that you weren't going into the deep dungeon spots for fear of the group wiping.
They're going to design the "normal" servers for mass appeal which they're going to be compromising on death penalty. Does anyone not expect this? They've already said as much. I support them doing that if there is appeal for a softcore EQ. I want Pantheon to be successful so they continue to release content and make new games. Also Kilsin saying they're open to alternate rule-set servers is great if there is interest.
I expect a true "EQ" themed server, a "hardcore" server if you will, will attract more players than whatever the normal server settings will ultimately be.
If VR released a hardcore-pve, RP, normal-pve, and pvp server, I'd put money down the hardcore-pve server would be the most populated.
@Zircon - If you think EQ was borderline softcore by today's standards, then you dont want a traditional MMO. You want a survival game. That's perfectly valid, and I dont fault you for it. But it's not what this game has ever been marketed as, and probably way too far for even most of the people here.
Kilsin has said that they are open to the idea of a limited number of alternate rules servers. He's also clearly stated that they will not spin up many different iterations of the game. By every industry standard that suggests things like PVP, Role Play, and maybe 1 or 2 others. It does not mean that every 1000 people that want a different flavor for whatever reason will have a realistic shot at it.
Managing multiple code sets is hell. It sucks. And that's just for applications, not a living, breathing gameworld where it's got to be exponentially more complex and costly. It costs extra staff resource's time for every new iteration. It complicates support issues for the customers as well.
Let's pause for a second here and see if VR can successfully deliver a AAA experience for PVP and PVE. If they can hit that outa the park then I'll be more willing to listen to any number of alternate rulesets.
Feyshtey said:@Zircon - If you think EQ was borderline softcore by today's standards, then you dont want a traditional MMO. You want a survival game. That's perfectly valid, and I dont fault you for it. But it's not what this game has ever been marketed as, and probably way too far for even most of the people here.
EQ was not a survival game. Let's not get crazy.
Zircon said:Feyshtey said:@Zircon - If you think EQ was borderline softcore by today's standards, then you dont want a traditional MMO. You want a survival game. That's perfectly valid, and I dont fault you for it. But it's not what this game has ever been marketed as, and probably way too far for even most of the people here.
EQ was not a survival game. Let's not get crazy.
...That's exactly my point. You said EQ was borderline softcore. By any reasonable modern standard, it wasnt. A very common stance taken against those that wish to return to EQ-type standards are rebutted with arguments that hardly anyone in today's market would be willing to play such a punishing game. Unless you were suggesting that EQ was softcore (which I argue is false) and that's the type of softcore game you desire, then you are promoting something even more punishing than EQ was and approaching survival game levels.