The perception system is interesting, but so far we haven't seen any reason not to participate. You're literally just missing content / gear /xp by ignoring it as far as I can tell. Having to make choices are what make games interesting. What am I going to have to give up to follow the path of the Keeper?
Edit:
Someone asked a version of my original question on the stream that ended a little bit ago. You can see the answer here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/138486792?t=00h53m25s
There was a bit of a long tangent about the inception of the perception system itself, but my takeaway is that being a Keeper is indeed just a value add and that you won't be giving anything up by choosing to participate.
quietus said:The game will be faction based. I would imagine that some choices to help some people may impact your relationship with other groups.
Sure, but I've probably already made that choice by questing in a particular region. Being a Keeper seems like a pure value add that costs me nothing. Unless I have to choose being a Keeper over something else it's basically a non-decision because it's the objectively best way to play the game.
I think its going to be like a Tradeskill....something that you have to actaully work at to improve. So its going to take time and effort to improve your perception and investigation skills enough to get more and more quest open. Plus as was mentioned there is the faction work involved too.
Double post
please delete if ya can, thanks
It's possible that making a 'yes' / 'no' decision on a perception call have an affect on future perception calls based on faction / race / religion etc [like an invisible decision making tree].
It opens up a lot of opportunities and I am hopeful that the VR team will design a fun and interesting system for us.
If nothing else, it definately provides a Roleplay element to your character - which is always a bonus in my mind!
Sevens said:I think its going to be like a Tradeskill....something that you have to actaully work at to improve. So its going to take time and effort to improve your perception and investigation skills enough to get more and more quest open. Plus as was mentioned there is the faction work involved too.
This would make sense and sounds like a good way to do it, however theres still no reason to not participate in the perception system. I had the same thought that the OP did when watching the preview clip, why would you not participate and be a keeper?
jimm0thy said:Sevens said:I think its going to be like a Tradeskill....something that you have to actaully work at to improve. So its going to take time and effort to improve your perception and investigation skills enough to get more and more quest open. Plus as was mentioned there is the faction work involved too.
This would make sense and sounds like a good way to do it, however theres still no reason to not participate in the perception system. I had the same thought that the OP did when watching the preview clip, why would you not participate and be a keeper?
There is no reason NOT to be a Tradeskiller...but many many players arent, me included. Why? you might ask, because of the time and effort involved and its just something that never caught my fancy...same here, Im not a lore person nor am I a quest person so honestly I am more inclined NOT to be a keeper just because of reasons. Im sure being a keeper will be fun and rewarding as many feel Tradeskilling is, but its just not for me.
I can think of a couple ways choosing to be a Keeper could be made to feel meaningful.
If I have to choose between being a Keeper and being a blacksmith (for example) because of limited 'profession' slots. Basically similar to how you only get 2 primary professions in WoW or (if I recall) how you could only master 1 tradeskill in EQ.
Alternatively if progression as a Keeper requires a significant time / resource investment that doesn't involve doing something I was going to do anyway (i.e. clearing a dungeon). Not sure what that investment would entail specifically.
There are many ways to force trade-offs and we don't know the plans yet. In fact the plans may not have been finalized yet, and assuredly are subject to testing in any case.
Thus, as Rojo said, perception could be subject to tradeskill limitations. It could be subject to unusually severe faction or racial limitations. There could be attribute restrictions (you can only have one attribute over 20 and if you choose perception you can't have intelligence or strength etc.). There could be overall level restrictions (you can skill-up to a combined total of 200 in all tradeskill, harvesting and perception areas combined - max one out and you have less for others).
These are neither predictions or requests - in fact some of them are absurd. Just giving a quick example of some of the things that could be done.
rojo said:The perception system is interesting, but so far we haven't seen any reason not to participate. You're literally just missing content / gear /xp by ignoring it as far as I can tell. Having to make choices are what make games interesting. What am I going to have to give up to follow the path of the Keeper?
It's a great question and we don't have an answer. Right now what we actually know of the system is extremely shallow. People are making a ton of assumptions. I agree with you 100%. Based on what we've seen, there's no choice. It is simply a question mark replacement. Maybe we'll see more tonight.
philo said:rojo said:The perception system is interesting, but so far we haven't seen any reason not to participate.
My guess is that the benefit of not participating is not having to deal with the screen spam. Pop up quest windows will be poping up on your screen a lot.
They'd better not be. They've said no quest hub yoyos multiple times.
Krixus said:philo said:rojo said:The perception system is interesting, but so far we haven't seen any reason not to participate.
My guess is that the benefit of not participating is not having to deal with the screen spam. Pop up quest windows will be poping up on your screen a lot.
They'd better not be. They've said no quest hub yoyos multiple times.
They have only showed it in a stream once. Walking down the path, get in range of a NPC, a window pops up on your screen asking if you want to continue with the dialogue...
Krixus said:They'd better not be. They've said no quest hub yoyos multiple times.they also said no instances, but they're at least considering "shards". probaby they see pop up quests as something entirely different from quest hubs.
letsdance said:they also said no instances, but they're at least considering "shards".
What does this mean? Shards is just another word for servers. Are you using it to mean something else?
philo said:letsdance said:they also said no instances, but they're at least considering "shards".
What does this mean? Shards is just another word for servers. Are you using it to mean something else?
it is essentially another instance, but it is open, as opposed to pure instances that are limited to your group only. It's a way of Controlling the population of an area so that things are still open world, but not crowded to the point that nobody can get anything done.
in eq2 they would do the same thing so when you zoned in you'd have choices like Antonica, Antonica 2, Antonica 3, etc. you could fairly freely move between instances to meet with group mates, etc.
philo said:What does this mean? Shards is just another word for servers. Are you using it to mean something else?
Kilsin cleared it up a bit recently in a now locked thread on enforcing of camps:
Kilsin said:Shards can be Servers or Copies/Mirrors of zones/dungeons etc. for example, many older games referred to their Servers as Shards, some call them Realms. In Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Ancient Port Warehouse (APW) was a huge level 50 raiding dungeon that often got overcrowded so the developers added 6 shards, which were mirror images copying the same dungeon 6 times, they were all un-instanced and open to anyone at any time and were coded to go to "sleep" when not in use for any amount of time.
When we talk about Shards we mean the possibility of copying caves/dungeons to deal with overcrowding and sometimes Brad uses the word Shard to speak about a server because eh is old school and played games with that word used instead of servers lol :P
I hope that clears things up.
I see what you are saying. Switching to version 1 or 2 etc of the same zone. That seems like an expanded definition of the word shard that was used synonymous with server for years. I guess I'm old.
Sorry to derail this with my question...back on topic...
I'm a bit concerned about the amount of pop ups on our screen from the perception system. I want there to be a lot of quests...but I don't want there to be a lot screen spam when I'm running around.
Maybe there could be a toggle on/off? Is that how it is going to work?
quietus said:The game will be faction based. I would imagine that some choices to help some people may impact your relationship with other groups.
Yes, but they never said that faction would only play a role if you were a Keeper.
We've talked about this topic before, but I agree in questioning the "optional" status of being a Keeper.
If there is no downside to it, why won't everyone become a Keeper? At that point, why even make it an option and just have it on by default? In the current form it may be seen as just a tacked on feature. I'd rather just see it be added to the game as a perception skill that everyone gets. Then add other ways into the game to exercise the skill.
Larr said: I think the alternative is your typical grind station progression. Being a keeper means travel, discovery , lore... Being a grinder means unidirectional travel, maxlevel, pewpew gear faster. From what I can tell there are plenty of pew pew hungry players around so everyone may not choose to be a keeper. Of course this includes an assumption that exp rewards are terrible/unnoticeable from quests (like EQ).
This...
I HATE questing for EXP. I hope to GOD questing is trivial experience and the killing grind is what will drive progression. Quests are something you do for the reward or the story, not progression. I honestly would probably skip working on faction and perceptions skills and such and would just grind and have a good times with friends.
Iksar said:philo said:What does this mean? Shards is just another word for servers. Are you using it to mean something else?
Kilsin cleared it up a bit recently in a now locked thread on enforcing of camps:
Kilsin said:Shards can be Servers or Copies/Mirrors of zones/dungeons etc. for example, many older games referred to their Servers as Shards, some call them Realms. In Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Ancient Port Warehouse (APW) was a huge level 50 raiding dungeon that often got overcrowded so the developers added 6 shards, which were mirror images copying the same dungeon 6 times, they were all un-instanced and open to anyone at any time and were coded to go to "sleep" when not in use for any amount of time.
When we talk about Shards we mean the possibility of copying caves/dungeons to deal with overcrowding and sometimes Brad uses the word Shard to speak about a server because eh is old school and played games with that word used instead of servers lol :P
I hope that clears things up.
Shards, or whatever you want to call them, make getting gear vastly easier but also tank the market on items. When Kunark dropped on Phinny there were upwards of 12-15 "shards" of seb. The Fungi went from 10 krono to 2 krono in like 3 weeks because the market was flooded with them, 12 seperate camps running basically 24/7, there are down sides to handling zones like this. Not to mention groups just cycling through shards at a single camp after each pop to increase the chances of named.
Larr said: I think the alternative is your typical grind station progression. Being a keeper means travel, discovery , lore... Being a grinder means unidirectional travel, maxlevel, pewpew gear faster. From what I can tell there are plenty of pew pew hungry players around so everyone may not choose to be a keeper. Of course this includes an assumption that exp rewards are terrible/unnoticeable from quests (like EQ).
This makes sense, but the way they have been talking about it, and the fact that they gave it a name like that, makes me think otherwise. Pretty interesting question from the Original Poster. In my opinion, it would be awesome if they forced a choice between being a 'Keeper' and engaging in tradeskills (like others have said), but they'll never do that.