I believe one of the things that made eq1 so great was that if you wanted to do anything, you had to commit to it. If you wanted to sell, you had to travel to the tunnel and sit and sell, If you wanted a group in x location, you litterally had to walk, risking your life in most cases, to x location, before even knowing for sure if there would be a group there in the first place. You had to plan things out, map out what locations would be benificial to you, and really, you had to stick to that plan or youd lose a couple hours of work, which is GOOD!
And the biggest commitment, your race/faction/! even in your own starting cities your diety could get you killed! EXCELLENT. Different cities, even entire zones were pretty much off limits to certain factions, as it should be.
Anyways, make us commit, punish moderately for breaking the minor commitments, and make some commitments permenent.
Some things committment in the sense you use it is good IMO. Faction and race mean nothing if there are no consequences. I am entirely in agreement here.
Other things I am less persuaded. If I want to sell I'm not sure a bazaar should be the ONLY way I should be able to sell. See auction house threads where the debate has been active. If I want to group with someone I'm not sure that I should need to make a risky trip for 30 minutes over territory that I have thoroughly explored multiple times. This raises the debate about where challenge and excitement becomes tedium and boredom. And the difficulty of getting a group to form before some members run out of time to actually do the content. See various other threads.
I mention these points not to debate any of them but to point out that there there may be rational reasons to treat the three things you mention (race/faction, grouping, selling) in three very different ways. Perhaps light "punishments" for some not just moderate or heavy.
What does light mean in this context? I don't really know but suppose the team allows both bazaar and auction house/broker but with a significant penalty for the convenience of the latter. A large fee not a trivial one. Suppose the team doesn't ...like ...instant travel even to places that we have been many many times, but accepts that it is necessary within limits. Perhaps they let us do it to a limited number of places but there is an xp penalty of 10% of earned xp for an hour logged in afterwards. I'm not suggesting either of these "punishments" just trying to toss out some quick and maybe not all that good thoughts on what light, moderate and heavy "punishments" might entail.
They have stated much of this already. There will be no fast travel to dungeons, but there will be a mechanism to allow groups to group up together quickly. How this will work exactly hasn't been outlined yet. I would assume that it will be a system that will allow the leader to "summon" others to their location. So if one person was standing outside the dungeon he could bring the rest of the group to his side quickly, allowing fast travel for some, but it would not allow everyone to magically appear at the dungeon without someone having physically travelled there currently.
They have said that faction will have a big impact on your experience. Your faction choices (diety/race/class/etc included) will matter.
It sounds to me like they intend for Pantheon to fall in line with EQ and Pantheon to a good degree in my opinion.
While VR is bringing things back to old school as they said in the FAQ. They took what made sense. This will still be a modern MMO but done in a way to bring people together. Like with the AH thread they did say yelling for hours WTS is not the plan but what ever plan it will make people explore the world and interact with people. I can’t wait for more info to see how they plan om doing this on all sides.
The only way ANYONE should be able to be summoned is by Call of the Hero. Allowing a group leader to summon group members to where they are is just plain lazy. I could see some mechanic if you were to go LD or DC or something it allowing you to somehow be moved to your group if you log back in within a certain amount of time. But even then I feel like this just creates laziness and people will find some way to exploit it. If you LD/DC and come back dead then tough. Your group can drag you to them or fight back to the entrance to help you get back down. It isnt hard to travel. People seem to overly exaggerate travel making it sound soooooo tough cause they are so used to dungeon finders and instances. This is an open world. There shouldnt be group summons and easy mode. There will be things to do no matter where you are. Sometimes you may have to decline a group offer if you are too far away. Its no big deal guys. I know when I played EQ people used to always tell me how fast I made it to groups when I would be far away. An example would be I am in Freeport banking or whatever and then I get a group invite to say Karnors and then they say '' Oh nevermind you are in freeport.'' Then I say I will brt asap. So I click my j boots and head to WC to find a port and spam EC as I am running thru in case there is a porter there. Then a druid says he can port me at the tunnel. I am already at the tunnel as I was spamming already so I port over to DL. I tip the guy 50pp ask for a fresh sow and click my lev cloak and I am in KC in less than 9 mins whereas someone lazy would take 20-30 minutes or just decline the group invite cause they are too far away and dont want to put forth the effort for a speedy travel. The guy that invites me says '' how the hell did you make it here so fast?'' You send tells for ports, take boats, run, whatever you have to do to get to a group. Not just accept a global invite and then be summoned to your group. Even call of the hero should make you be in the group and in the same zone to be summoned and there should also be zones/dungeons where it doesnt work as well... especially some raid areas. I do NOT agree with global group invites. You want to join a group? Then put the effort in to get there. Its not hard I mean cmon. Travel is what you make it. Preparedness will cut your travel times exponentially. I understand sometimes there are places that are long travels no matter what you do but these are few and far between and situational. So what if some places take longer to get to than others. If you put in the effort to attain utility items you can really decrease travel time. Your bind point is also critical for travel. I know this is a new age but dumbing down travel will just make for lazy people. It will make those utility items that much more valued. If you can quickly move from one spot to another then what is the point of even having items, potions, etc that will increase movement speed. You make people have to work to travel and they will REALLY value the things that help them get around quicker. Just my 2cp...
Xaleban said:The only way ANYONE should be able to be summoned is by Call of the Hero. Allowing a group leader to summon group members to where they are is just plain lazy. I could see some mechanic if you were to go LD or DC or something it allowing you to somehow be moved to your group if you log back in within a certain amount of time. But even then I feel like this just creates laziness and people will find some way to exploit it. It isnt hard to get somewhere. You send tells for ports, take boats, run, whatever you have to do to get to a group. Not just accept a global invite and then be summoned to your group. Even call of the hero should make you be in the group and in the same zone to be summoned and there should also be zones/dungeons where it doesnt work as well... especially some raid areas. I do NOT agree with global group invites. You want to join a group? Then put the effort in to get there. Its not hard I mean cmon.
This isn't EQ. This isn't 20 years ago. This is a more modern game that will have some modern features that ease some of the woes of past games. The difficulty of getting the group together after one has been formed is one. They have already stated there will be tools like Vanguards caravan system to help with these types of problems. How they will work, no one knows yet. I am betting there will be a campfire summon or some such thing that will allow for people to be summoned. It might require a majority of the group be in one place already or some such. At this point all we have is conjecture.
kellindil said:This isn't EQ.
Its always so easy to distinguish new schoolers from old schoolers or rather easy mode from hard mode. The new schoolers always say ''This isnt EQ'' and the old school (/respect) say ''This aint WoW.'' Well I hate to burst your bubble but this game is basically EQ and VG mixed in a bowl then baked and served. So you are partly right but mostly wrong. I just dont understand why people who are fans of this game, which is supposed to bring hard mode back, want so much easy mode. I keep hearing the argument of '' I dont have the time like I did back then.'' Let me tell you something about that. If this game is what its supposed to be people will find the time. None of us really ever had the time but we made the time. I cant tell you how many times back in the day someone would say '' I will join but I only have an hour or 2.'' Then it turns into 5 or 6 hours or even all night. If the game is fun and exciting people will put in the time. Its just how it is. I know there are some of us who live different lives now and actually cant put that kind of time in. But for everyone of those will be just as many who have never experienced something like this who will be able to. I started playing Project 99 a few years ago after a couple old guildess from back in the day asked me to try it. Next thing I know I have 5 lev 60s and am waking up to 4am batphones to kill Naggy or VP dragons. I didnt have the time either.
What is hard mode? Sitting in a tunnel yelling WTS for hours on end? Waiting 30-60 min for everyone to get to the dungeon so you can play? What’s hard about that? Is there more depth in waiting for the sake of waiting? They already said tools like "Call Hero" or something close to that will be in the game so you can summon players. Caravans to keep your team together even when some take some time offline. At this point we will have to wait and see but what we do know. Teaming and exploring are top dog in this game. Class roles that are impactful.
BumpyBeaver said:I believe one of the things that made eq1 so great was that if you wanted to do anything, you had to commit to it. If you wanted to sell, you had to travel to the tunnel and sit and sell, If you wanted a group in x location, you litterally had to walk, risking your life in most cases, to x location, before even knowing for sure if there would be a group there in the first place. You had to plan things out, map out what locations would be benificial to you, and really, you had to stick to that plan or youd lose a couple hours of work, which is GOOD!
And the biggest commitment, your race/faction/! even in your own starting cities your diety could get you killed! EXCELLENT. Different cities, even entire zones were pretty much off limits to certain factions, as it should be.
Anyways, make us commit, punish moderately for breaking the minor commitments, and make some commitments permenent.
I don't want faction choices to be permanent. If I play this as I did EQ or WoW, I'll play for years. During those years, I changed and my friendships changed. My Dark Elf cleric, at times in her career, was once "could not get worse" faction in Kelethin and later Ally. It took months and months to make the change, but it was available. As it should be, in my opinion.
As for instant travel, EQ always had that, from inception. The thing was, you had to speak with PEOPLE to get access to it, and those people has earned it through hard work. I'm not against instant travel, exactly... I'm against easy to achieve far travel available to everyone all the time without speaking to another human being at a keyboard. Instant travel is okay. Easy instant travel for everyone all the time, not so much, in my opinion.
Xaleban said:Its always so easy to distinguish new schoolers from old schoolers or rather easy mode from hard mode. The new schoolers always say ''This isnt EQ'' and the old school (/respect) say ''This aint WoW.'' Well I hate to burst your bubble but this game is basically EQ and VG mixed in a bowl then baked and served. So you are partly right but mostly wrong.
Nice. Not only did you say nothing that contradicted anything they said, but you managed to do so whilst being condescending and elitist.
This isnt EQ, and its not WoW either. It is a modern MMO that incorporates old school gameplay with a return to the genres roots, but with a modern twist.
Pantheon, therefore, will indeed bring back some of these conventional mechanics and ideas but with a fresh perspective, some tweaks and revisions. We also understand that while gamers’ tastes don’t fundamentally change over time, their situations, lives, and responsibilities do. Likewise, some game mechanics often associated with earlier MMOs involved inordinate amounts of downtime, overly severe penalties, too much competition over content and resources, and even downright boring or overly repetitive gameplay. Our intention, therefore, is not to bring back ‘everything’ from the old days, but rather to pick and choose those which make sense and are needed to make a fun, social, cooperative, and challenging game.
That is from the official FAQ, so the person you were responding to is fundamentally correct.
So many people claim this game is this or this game is that to jplay study their opinions.
Honestly, we really don't know what it is yet. The amount of information we have is minimal. The FAQ, features, and Tenants, along with occasional cryptic devs posts gives us a hint, but very little definitive details.
But, they have made it clear that it's not EQ, it's not WoW, or anything else. It's Pantheon.
Its going to be different than you expect, which hopefully will be for the best of everyone.
I think what I miss mostly is that things took their time and few people were in a hurry. I wonder at times whether that was just our generation or whether a game could force us into that mindset (again). Imho people are generally more nice and considerate when they aren't in a constant rush but feel they have the time to chat. Or to walk a long way with a group. To wait for a boat and fish for a while. To help a stranger out with their cr. I'm hoping something can be recreated where it'll be less about what people want for themselves and more about what they can achieve with and give to others. In that sense I think slowing us down, inconveniencing us somewhat and making us depend on each other again could perhaps be the thing that does the trick. I'll just wait and see :).
Xaleban said:kellindil said:This isn't EQ.
Its always so easy to distinguish new schoolers from old schoolers or rather easy mode from hard mode. The new schoolers always say ''This isnt EQ'' and the old school (/respect) say ''This aint WoW.'' Well I hate to burst your bubble but this game is basically EQ and VG mixed in a bowl then baked and served. So you are partly right but mostly wrong. I just dont understand why people who are fans of this game, which is supposed to bring hard mode back, want so much easy mode. I keep hearing the argument of '' I dont have the time like I did back then.'' Let me tell you something about that. If this game is what its supposed to be people will find the time. None of us really ever had the time but we made the time. I cant tell you how many times back in the day someone would say '' I will join but I only have an hour or 2.'' Then it turns into 5 or 6 hours or even all night. If the game is fun and exciting people will put in the time. Its just how it is. I know there are some of us who live different lives now and actually cant put that kind of time in. But for everyone of those will be just as many who have never experienced something like this who will be able to. I started playing Project 99 a few years ago after a couple old guildess from back in the day asked me to try it. Next thing I know I have 5 lev 60s and am waking up to 4am batphones to kill Naggy or VP dragons. I didnt have the time either.
You seem to be using the word "hardmode" when you actually mean "timesink". There's nothing difficult about having a 45 minute run to meet up with your group, camping the same spawn for 24 hours straight, etc.
This game is obviously meant to cater to EQ fans, but if it is a carbon-copy of EQ, a lot of them (including me) won't play it. This game interests me because I want to play an MMO that emphasizes grouping and open world play rather than solo quest hub grinding and instanced dungeon runs. That doesn't mean I want an EQ clone. That's not what most people want, either, and luckily, I think the devs are smart enough to understand that.
The more I read through these different topics the more it seems there are two different thoughts on what people want from Pantheon. On the one hand you have those describing what they want out of the "world", and the other talks more about "systems/mechanics". This thread is a perfect example of that. We all want a game that requires "commitment", but how we define that concept seems to be the big difference.
Travel - make it take time regardless of friends (world), let me play with my friends regardless of distance (system)
Faction - make it have a strong impact in the game, regardless of situation (world), let it have an impact in my questing and such, but not when i want to group (system)
Trade - require time and interaction, with systems that augment that (world), allow quick management with little requied interaction so I can get back to the things I enjoy (system)
Time - everything should take time and commitment, I plan on being here a long long time (world), things that are tedious and don't have real impact on the things I like should not be time consuming (system)
Combat - grueling combat, slow levelling, severe death penalty, with weak items and epic quests (world), difficult combat, well-paced levelling, death that stings but doesn't degrade, decent items with rare drops and epic quests (system)
The tension around these issues comes from no real sight on what a reasonable compromise could be. For many from the "world" view, any compromise is too much as it would inevitably lead to the "watering down effect" as it has in past games. For the "system" view, willing to allow for more stringent systems as long as there's a reasonable amount of decrease in tedium.
I'm not sure what the answer is here. If you know my past posts, it's pretty clear I'm part of the "world" view and this gets me into trouble at times arguing for what I really want Pantheon to be. As much as those disagreements can get heated, it's good to see people giving their input on what they want from Pantheon as well. Of course, this drives Kilsin nuts and at times can be rather counterproductive; but at least the passion is there for a game like Pantheon.
My biggest reassurance in all this is the dev team. They have the experience, the passion and the commitment; and from the streams so far, they have done a great job with the game. I'm very excited for the upcoming stream and the eventual alpha/beta that will let us all see what a great "world" with fun, exciting "systems" this game will offer.
At some point EQ added fellowships and guild banners. Basically, if three people in your fellowship were in the same location, you could set down a campfire and anyone else in your fellowship could use an item to teleport there (it had a cooldown, don't remember what it was though). Likewise, if 12 (I think) members of your guild were in the same location, you could set down a guild banner that accomplished the same thing. There were some restricitons on where they could use used.
I think something like this would work pretty good. I certainly don't want unlimited fast travel anywhere, but at the same time, adding someone to your group when you're deep in a dungeon full of see-invis mobs can be nigh impossible if you don't have something like this or a Call of the Hero type spell (which of course was limited to one class).
Nanfoodle said:What is hard mode? Sitting in a tunnel yelling WTS for hours on end? Waiting 30-60 min for everyone to get to the dungeon so you can play? What’s hard about that? Is there more depth in waiting for the sake of waiting? They already said tools like "Call Hero" or something close to that will be in the game so you can summon players. Caravans to keep your team together even when some take some time offline. At this point we will have to wait and see but what we do know. Teaming and exploring are top dog in this game. Class roles that are impactful.
Well, traveling was the hard part. Normally most people would find a wizard or a druid that could teleport them rather close to wherever they wanted to go. Travel wasn't as big as people claim, yes there was still a lot of travel time, but that's exactly what you had to plan out. If you were an iksar, you knew it was not going to be easy to get to Unrest to find a group, and if you were a dwarf you knew it was not going to be easy to get to kurns to group. That's the hard mode about it. We shouldn't be able to go wherever we want just because a group leader has a personal CoTH, that system would be used and abused. Why not just create an account just to get one of your chars from a to b and back to a really easily. Gotta measure the consequences of traveling.
But the developers made EQ in a way that you didn't need to go back to town. There were times where i spent like 10 level gaps away from any kind of a town just to stay somewhere i knew i would get a group. That was the hardmode of the game. Traveling is what made EQ fun, and most of the time hard. If you got caught by something good luck retrieving your corpse. I remember the days when if you looted everything off the corpse it would decay, i used to have to grab my corpse on the run just to find a safe place to loot it. And that was the cost of traveling.
I hope they don't make stupid fast travel type of things. Let the wizards and druids teleport people around, and make us run across the continent to go get a group.
Xaleban said:kellindil said:This isn't EQ.
Its always so easy to distinguish new schoolers from old schoolers or rather easy mode from hard mode. The new schoolers always say ''This isnt EQ'' and the old school (/respect) say ''This aint WoW.'' Well I hate to burst your bubble but this game is basically EQ and VG mixed in a bowl then baked and served. So you are partly right but mostly wrong. I just dont understand why people who are fans of this game, which is supposed to bring hard mode back, want so much easy mode. I keep hearing the argument of '' I dont have the time like I did back then.'' Let me tell you something about that. If this game is what its supposed to be people will find the time. None of us really ever had the time but we made the time. I cant tell you how many times back in the day someone would say '' I will join but I only have an hour or 2.'' Then it turns into 5 or 6 hours or even all night. If the game is fun and exciting people will put in the time. Its just how it is. I know there are some of us who live different lives now and actually cant put that kind of time in. But for everyone of those will be just as many who have never experienced something like this who will be able to. I started playing Project 99 a few years ago after a couple old guildess from back in the day asked me to try it. Next thing I know I have 5 lev 60s and am waking up to 4am batphones to kill Naggy or VP dragons. I didnt have the time either.
I agree with you to a point but i rememebr me being a dwarf paladin and not being able to find a porter and i had to run 1 hour to get to the hole in paineel, and honestly it wasnt even hard just a long journey the only zone i had to worry about was kilitchor forest with the dark elves in the middle of the zone which was easily avoided by walking along the edge, now im not saying to make it easy mode and have it to where you can be instantly ported to a good camping spot but i would like to know if i invited someone to a grp that i can expect to se him in at least 10 minutes from the beginning of the zoneline at least so we can push back up to him and bring him to our known spot instead of waiting for him to get there in an hour and than prolly see 2 other people leave due to waiting depending on the role hes playing and such like that.
I really don't like the idea of making travel to groups etc really easy. A couple classes with ports, sure. A couple with Call of Heroes-like summoning with a moderately expensive reagent? No problem. Any group can summon anyone whenever? No. The more options you open up for pulling groups together quickly, the more ripe for forms of abuse there are. If any old group regardless of class can just make a campfire or whatever and summon group members then you can bet people will be sending tells across the world to get invites to groups for fast travel. Summoning to a specific location should always have a noticable expense associated with it. Ports not withstanding as those are most often just to a general area near(ish) to wherever someone is trying to go/any dungeons etc.
snrub said:You seem to be using the word "hardmode" when you actually mean "timesink". There's nothing difficult about having a 45 minute run to meet up with your group, camping the same spawn for 24 hours straight, etc.
This game is obviously meant to cater to EQ fans, but if it is a carbon-copy of EQ, a lot of them (including me) won't play it. This game interests me because I want to play an MMO that emphasizes grouping and open world play rather than solo quest hub grinding and instanced dungeon runs. That doesn't mean I want an EQ clone. That's not what most people want, either, and luckily, I think the devs are smart enough to understand that.
This. Exactly this. What people want are meaningful content, diversified roles, and challenging encounters. There's nothing pleasurable about having to wait 45 minutes for the replacement healer to get to the zone. I expect Pantheon will make a nod to EQ and VG, but it will be its own modern game.
My commitment is to enjoy groups and challenging encounters. I want to be adventuring and seeing/experiencing the world. I want to advance and feel like I have earned something. I want to help others get the same feeling. I want to be part of large scale community adventures.
However, I am fully uncommitted to spending my precious game time on mundane tasks like buying/selling items. There is a reason I never got into sales as career. For me, unlike many others, I dread this part of the game. It becomes too much work and not enough fun.
I spend thousands on computers, games, and peripherals for my family as our main source of entertainment. I am not about to spend that time doing something that angers me to no end.
This is a game that is meant to be enjoyed by many different people, each in their own way.