It's way to early to say this needs to be scrapped. There's a ton they can do with this system. People seem to be forgetting that it doesn't just trigger dialogue with NPC's....some environments will trigger it too. Like the key in the rubble.
My two cents...have perception cap at 50 for regular folks. These people can still play the main stuff and trigger quests and all that. Then for those that want to be a keeper and become engrossed in the lore have it cap at 100(?). The triggers a Keeper would trigger would be more nuanced and related to the world of terminus. Personally, if being a Keeper take up my profession spot that's fine with me. I'm more interested in lore than crafting. But I know others wouldn't like this and would really make people think before choosing to be a keeper vs crafter.
How about this:
Decouple the perception system and quest starts. No quest pop-ups, period. That way, a woman might be crying in the town, but even with perception, we don't get a pop-up telling us to check it out. We simply notice a woman is crying and organically go talk to her if we're interested.
Then, keep the perception system for noticing interesting details in the environment, lore, hidden door levers, clues to find some semi-hidden place, etc.
Seems like an issue may arise if the only way to actively start most "quests" is by becoming a keeper. But if this system wasn't related to initiating quests, it may become more interesting by being more specialized. Starting perception could require a player to carry around a (3 lb?) journal they'd scribble notes in about all the interesting finds they make. Maybe they'd need a quill, too. 2 inventory slots could be enough to dissuade many from pursuing that. And those who didn't want to invest in perception would be able to access quest starts in the same way as keepers - though maybe keepers would have a little head-up on some questing areas from details they'd discover in the world. But as far as the more obvious quest starts go, such as an NPC in a town telling us about something far away to check out, perhaps this should not be a part of the perception system. Sorry these last few sentences became a bit convoluted.
The point people and others are bringing up (large population of the stream viewers and community), is VR has been marketing Perception as a new system "not questing and something more interesting/organic than questing (i.e. not running to quest mark NPCs/hubs, collect X....);" however, in its current iteration, it looks to be (generally speaking) a re-branding of questing, minus the markers, golden paths, hubs etc. We understand it's "optional" (same as questing), but it feels contrary to what has been marketed as this giant interwoven system/sphere that is entirely unique, possibly encouragingyou to play/level up entirely differently. As with the acclimation system, we understand this "may" be a misinterpretation, but at some point we need to look at how these systems are being presented/described to the public, specifically on stream. I understand confrontation is trying to be avoided, but it really isn't the consumers fault if inaccurated assumptions are made due to perfunctory/ambiguous expalantions (people are nuts for updates, you should know by now they will disect every detail (but honestly, no one is overanalyzing here, I agree with these amorphous system expalantions, which just makes it harder for people to invest).
I think what we can expect from Perception is horizontal progression. Basically, yes some story, which could be great, but what it's going to be is very similar to questing, without equivalent exp reward, which means its going to be similar to acclimation in the sense that you're going to want to do Perception to be able to get all those extra quests, drops, faction hits etc, hidden areas, but it's just not going to yield the same exp rewards, so you may be better off just grinding and letting your boys/guild grind that out and jump into a group with whoever has the perception needed for you to do X quest that you want for your class. A bit underwhelming as opposed to this grand system we all expected, but Coupled with different classes unveiling different perception quests, different skill levels or maybe languages coupled with it to open up further depths of horizontal progression, I feel the system can be really deep/imersive if done right. In the grand scheme of everything wanting to be accomplished however, we would be making amazing time to make beta this year. A release in 2018 would be amazing (although I don't know how I'll last that long :D )
Maybe some of these skills related to perception are going to grow much more organically than people are expecting. And will grow with effort of course, but still in a fairly natural way as the character progresses who is choosing to engage closely with the world around them instead of powering through.
Zuljan said:The point people and others are bringing up (large population of the stream viewers and community), is VR has been marketing Perception as a new system "not questing and something more interesting/organic than questing (i.e. not running to quest mark NPCs/hubs, collect X....);" however, in its current iteration, it looks to be (generally speaking) a re-branding of questing, minus the markers, golden paths, hubs etc. We understand it's "optional" (same as questing), but it feels contrary to what has been marketed as this giant interwoven system/sphere that is entirely unique, possibly encouragingyou to play/level up entirely differently. As with the acclimation system, we understand this "may" be a misinterpretation, but at some point we need to look at how these systems are being presented/described to the public, specifically on stream. I understand confrontation is trying to be avoided, but it really isn't the consumers fault if inaccurated assumptions are made due to perfunctory/ambiguous expalantions (people are nuts for updates, you should know by now they will disect every detail (but honestly, no one is overanalyzing here, I agree with these amorphous system expalantions, which just makes it harder for people to invest).
I think what we can expect from Perception is horizontal progression. Basically, yes some story, which could be great, but what it's going to be is very similar to questing, without equivalent exp reward, which means its going to be similar to acclimation in the sense that you're going to want to do Perception to be able to get all those extra quests, drops, faction hits etc, hidden areas, but it's just not going to yield the same exp rewards, so you may be better off just grinding and letting your boys/guild grind that out and jump into a group with whoever has the perception needed for you to do X quest that you want for your class. A bit underwhelming as opposed to this grand system we all expected, but Coupled with different classes unveiling different perception quests, different skill levels or maybe languages coupled with it to open up further depths of horizontal progression, I feel the system can be really deep/imersive if done right. In the grand scheme of everything wanting to be accomplished however, we would be making amazing time to make beta this year. A release in 2018 would be amazing (although I don't know how I'll last that long :D )
Preception isn't anything at all like have a golden question mark around his head at all, for one in that one stream where they were in a village and yes they had there system go off to let you know someone was crying but do you really think in that entire village they were in there was only one qyest giver? That wouldn't make any sense to me honestly, plus also if you were actually paying attention to all of the streams you would of realized before that they showed the preception system where it helped them find a key in a dungeon and it wasn't even a quest just a means to get further ahead in a zone.
I can basically guarantee you that beta will not be out of the end of this year, For one they will release beta when they are ready to release it not when we want them to release it.
I can honestly say to most of your points to you on preception is simply flawed for one were still in pre pre alpha they are merely just showing us the idea of what it is all about and that is it in my personal opinion, they aren't showing you everything it can do just enough for you to understand the concept behind it, simply becuase they cant show you everyhing becuase we are still in pre pre alpha.
I'm sure there will be plenty of questes that will be class and/or race specific quests so maybe the preception will only trigger if you are the right class and/or race so it might be harder to find these certain quest givers if only a handful of people in your guild are using the preception system just saying it isn't making it mandatory to use the system it is just merely a possibility to miss some of these quests.
They aren't Forcing you to use preception if you notice in there last stream, i was seeing some gear drop that actually looked kind of decent, now i could be wrong of course just t looked like is had medium ac with some hp's i think which is great for being at that level so this is also something to look at as in you don't really HAVE to do precepion and like Kilsin said " your entire guild can ignore them both and still raid at the same level as a guild who did max them both out." So you DON'T have to do them you might WANT to do them if your a completionist or want to get to a certain point in a zone, BUT having to feel FORCED to do it is all in your head and your drive to find out what is over there and that is all.
Riahuf22 said:Zuljan said:The point people and others are bringing up (large population of the stream viewers and community), is VR has been marketing Perception as a new system "not questing and something more interesting/organic than questing (i.e. not running to quest mark NPCs/hubs, collect X....);" however, in its current iteration, it looks to be (generally speaking) a re-branding of questing, minus the markers, golden paths, hubs etc. We understand it's "optional" (same as questing), but it feels contrary to what has been marketed as this giant interwoven system/sphere that is entirely unique, possibly encouragingyou to play/level up entirely differently. As with the acclimation system, we understand this "may" be a misinterpretation, but at some point we need to look at how these systems are being presented/described to the public, specifically on stream. I understand confrontation is trying to be avoided, but it really isn't the consumers fault if inaccurated assumptions are made due to perfunctory/ambiguous expalantions (people are nuts for updates, you should know by now they will disect every detail (but honestly, no one is overanalyzing here, I agree with these amorphous system expalantions, which just makes it harder for people to invest).
I think what we can expect from Perception is horizontal progression. Basically, yes some story, which could be great, but what it's going to be is very similar to questing, without equivalent exp reward, which means its going to be similar to acclimation in the sense that you're going to want to do Perception to be able to get all those extra quests, drops, faction hits etc, hidden areas, but it's just not going to yield the same exp rewards, so you may be better off just grinding and letting your boys/guild grind that out and jump into a group with whoever has the perception needed for you to do X quest that you want for your class. A bit underwhelming as opposed to this grand system we all expected, but Coupled with different classes unveiling different perception quests, different skill levels or maybe languages coupled with it to open up further depths of horizontal progression, I feel the system can be really deep/imersive if done right. In the grand scheme of everything wanting to be accomplished however, we would be making amazing time to make beta this year. A release in 2018 would be amazing (although I don't know how I'll last that long :D )
Preception isn't anything at all like have a golden question mark around his head at all, for one in that one stream where they were in a village and yes they had there system go off to let you know someone was crying but do you really think in that entire village they were in there was only one qyest giver? That wouldn't make any sense to me honestly, plus also if you were actually paying attention to all of the streams you would of realized before that they showed the preception system where it helped them find a key in a dungeon and it wasn't even a quest just a means to get further ahead in a zone.
I can basically guarantee you that beta will not be out of the end of this year, For one they will release beta when they are ready to release it not when we want them to release it.
I can honestly say to most of your points to you on preception is simply flawed for one were still in pre pre alpha they are merely just showing us the idea of what it is all about and that is it in my personal opinion, they aren't showing you everything it can do just enough for you to understand the concept behind it, simply becuase they cant show you everyhing becuase we are still in pre pre alpha.
I'm sure there will be plenty of questes that will be class and/or race specific quests so maybe the preception will only trigger if you are the right class and/or race so it might be harder to find these certain quest givers if only a handful of people in your guild are using the preception system just saying it isn't making it mandatory to use the system it is just merely a possibility to miss some of these quests.
They aren't Forcing you to use preception if you notice in there last stream, i was seeing some gear drop that actually looked kind of decent, now i could be wrong of course just t looked like is had medium ac with some hp's i think which is great for being at that level so this is also something to look at as in you don't really HAVE to do precepion and like Kilsin said " your entire guild can ignore them both and still raid at the same level as a guild who did max them both out." So you DON'T have to do them you might WANT to do them if your a completionist or want to get to a certain point in a zone, BUT having to feel FORCED to do it is all in your head and your drive to find out what is over there and that is all.
1) Explain how the triggering of perception was any more or less organic in the town compared to in the dungeon (or glaringly different/more immersive than a quest)? They walked by an area and it triggered. So, no exclamation point, but quintessentially identical as I pointed out (but again tell me what you're seeing that I'm not). And, if there is more, again this falls on the lack of depth of an explanation of systems (as was a premise of my thoughts), leaving us to "guess" at what else could be. Additionally, it was pointed out perception will unlock new areas/mobs as per the key given in stream, which would obviously give different (and one would assume better or horizontal loot in some way).
2) Where (anywhere) did I say Perception is forcing you to do anything? In fact, I explicitly said it's going to be something one may or may not want to do, given everyone will have guildmates who will definitely be completing Perception, while others may want to speed ahead grinding mobs. And, as I already mentioned, traditional themepark quests are also optional, so nothing different there.
3) You re-iterate my point about them "not showing us enough" to understand the system. That is to be expected; none of us were expecting a finished system; rather, we wanted to see progress. The issue (as we have pointed out) is they don't even go into any detail to allude to any possible direction or real influence/options these mechanics are going to open up. I've seen the latest stream 4 times now, and even with the acclimation system, it was presented with such little detail as to the actual day to day impact it will have on us, our travels and adventure, that it appeared and felt like it would just be another grind to get flagged to cross bridge to enter this area type of system/mechanic (which has obviously been seen before), and simply because the explanation was so limited and superficial (if you watch it again, there's honestly nothing presented other than the potion system that we didn't already know) people are naysaying, sizing it up saying "told you so" remarks. This is by no means ground breaking! Progress has been great, but all of this is easily remedied by better expalantion and communication on stream, and will only net us more investors/praise.
Kilsin and others have had to go clarify the acclimation system on several pages and threads where people are confused, asking the very questions/concerns I'm recognizing now. The goals with my original post is to deter others from continually pointing fingers at people like Rojas, who are logically and politely raising aforementioned concerns (concerns that frankly the entire public/stream chat were raising) due to obscurity of the explanation on stream, and to encourage a more concise/inspirational explanation of the new systems, which would have people much more enthusiastic about them. It seems small in the grand scheme of things, but word of mouth is always the best form of advertising, and the chat spam and "told you so" remarks on stream and forums about our systems are innaccurate, and, as I've mentioned before, easily remedied. Ultimately this leads to the game getting released faster, so I'm just trying to be objective. It'll be a good game regardless, but we should always be critical of our performance, so that we can make it even better.
Zuljan said:
1) Explain how the triggering of perception was any more or less organic in the town compared to in the dungeon (or glaringly different/more immersive than a quest)? They walked by an area and it triggered. So, no exclamation point, but quintessentially identical as I pointed out (but again tell me what you're seeing that I'm not). And, if there is more, again this falls on the lack of depth of an explanation of systems (as was a premise of my thoughts), leaving us to "guess" at what else could be. Additionally, it was pointed out perception will unlock new areas/mobs as per the key given in stream, which would obviously give different (and one would assume better or horizontal loot in some way).
2) Where (anywhere) did I say Perception is forcing you to do anything? In fact, I explicitly said it's going to be something one may or may not want to do, given everyone will have guildmates who will definitely be completing Perception, while others may want to speed ahead grinding mobs. And, as I already mentioned, traditional themepark quests are also optional, so nothing different there.
3) You re-iterate my point about them "not showing us enough" to understand the system. That is to be expected; none of us were expecting a finished system; rather, we wanted to see progress. The issue (as we have pointed out) is they don't even go into any detail to allude to any possible direction or real influence/options these mechanics are going to open up. I've seen the latest stream 4 times now, and even with the acclimation system, it was presented with such little detail as to the actual day to day impact it will have on us, our travels and adventure, that it appeared and felt like it would just be another grind to get flagged to cross bridge to enter this area type of system/mechanic (which has obviously been seen before), and simply because the explanation was so limited and superficial (if you watch it again, there's honestly nothing presented other than the potion system that we didn't already know) people are naysaying, sizing it up saying "told you so" remarks. This is by no means ground breaking! Progress has been great, but all of this is easily remedied by better expalantion and communication on stream, and will only net us more investors/praise.
Kilsin and others have had to go clarify the acclimation system on several pages and threads where people are confused, asking the very questions/concerns I'm recognizing now. The goals with my original post is to deter others from continually pointing fingers at people like Rojas, who are logically and politely raising aforementioned concerns (concerns that frankly the entire public/stream chat were raising) due to obscurity of the explanation on stream, and to encourage a more concise/inspirational explanation of the new systems, which would have people much more enthusiastic about them. It seems small in the grand scheme of things, but word of mouth is always the best form of advertising, and the chat spam and "told you so" remarks on stream and forums about our systems are innaccurate, and, as I've mentioned before, easily remedied. Ultimately this leads to the game getting released faster, so I'm just trying to be objective. It'll be a good game regardless, but we should always be critical of our performance, so that we can make it even better.
A very well balanced reply. I think you summed it up perfectly.
I see all these issues being raised with the simple demos and explanations of these systems and I can't help but think that its intentional by VR. They do not want to get into too much detail because all of this is under development and might change completely by launch. If they gave us all the details of what they are TRYING to do, and then fall short, the community will turn on them like wolves, much like someo are doing now. They will not go into more detail until, most likely, beta at the earliest when the NDA gets lifted on testers. Which means LATE beta.
They most likely also don't want to spoil some of the suprise on how mechanics work and how they may impact us on a daily basis. The VR team seems to value mystery quite a bit. They may not want to give too much of a peek behind the curtain as to intentionally keep us in the dark until we can discover this for ourselves.
All it boils down to is, SLOW DOWN, WAIT, and TRUST THE DEVS for god's sake. We do not need the key to every damn thing fed to us on a spoon. Just chill. Once we enter actual Alpha the tester will be able to see how they intend the systems to work and can bring up any issues then. This is going to be the crucial time when they will be looking for feedback on these systems. They are NOT looking for feedback on a system none of us have even experienced yet.
If you have ideas for how you'd like the system to work, awesome! Please share. If you have ideas on how you'd not like the system to work, awesome! Please share those too. It is FAR too soon for ANYONE to be spouting fear and doom. You are confused by the system because you are taking the few small peeks into the early stages of a system that isn't fully developed or even remotely close to being finalized.
Alpha is the time to pick apart these systems, not based on an hour long early dev stream of a partially completed game that you haven't even experienced yet.
Keep calm and just enjoy the ride until Alpha, then you can all go nuts on the doom and gloom on the alpha test boards.
Zuljan said:1) Explain how the triggering of perception was any more or less organic in the town compared to in the dungeon (or glaringly different/more immersive than a quest)? They walked by an area and it triggered. So, no exclamation point, but quintessentially identical as I pointed out (but again tell me what you're seeing that I'm not). And, if there is more, again this falls on the lack of depth of an explanation of systems (as was a premise of my thoughts), leaving us to "guess" at what else could be. Additionally, it was pointed out perception will unlock new areas/mobs as per the key given in stream, which would obviously give different (and one would assume better or horizontal loot in some way).
2) Where (anywhere) did I say Perception is forcing you to do anything? In fact, I explicitly said it's going to be something one may or may not want to do, given everyone will have guildmates who will definitely be completing Perception, while others may want to speed ahead grinding mobs. And, as I already mentioned, traditional themepark quests are also optional, so nothing different there.
3) You re-iterate my point about them "not showing us enough" to understand the system. That is to be expected; none of us were expecting a finished system; rather, we wanted to see progress. The issue (as we have pointed out) is they don't even go into any detail to allude to any possible direction or real influence/options these mechanics are going to open up. I've seen the latest stream 4 times now, and even with the acclimation system, it was presented with such little detail as to the actual day to day impact it will have on us, our travels and adventure, that it appeared and felt like it would just be another grind to get flagged to cross bridge to enter this area type of system/mechanic (which has obviously been seen before), and simply because the explanation was so limited and superficial (if you watch it again, there's honestly nothing presented other than the potion system that we didn't already know) people are naysaying, sizing it up saying "told you so" remarks. This is by no means ground breaking! Progress has been great, but all of this is easily remedied by better expalantion and communication on stream, and will only net us more investors/praise.
Kilsin and others have had to go clarify the acclimation system on several pages and threads where people are confused, asking the very questions/concerns I'm recognizing now. The goals with my original post is to deter others from continually pointing fingers at people like Rojas, who are logically and politely raising aforementioned concerns (concerns that frankly the entire public/stream chat were raising) due to obscurity of the explanation on stream, and to encourage a more concise/inspirational explanation of the new systems, which would have people much more enthusiastic about them. It seems small in the grand scheme of things, but word of mouth is always the best form of advertising, and the chat spam and "told you so" remarks on stream and forums about our systems are innaccurate, and, as I've mentioned before, easily remedied. Ultimately this leads to the game getting released faster, so I'm just trying to be objective. It'll be a good game regardless, but we should always be critical of our performance, so that we can make it even better.
What was shown was one of 1000's of potential manifestations of the perception system. Yes, that one example was pretty obvious, and yes it would be comparable to a "Hey! quest here!" system. But that doesnt mean that every quest must or will present itself that obviously. Maybe there's a guy kicking over rocks and doesnt give any indication that he has an available quest unless you actually stop him and ask wtf he's doing. Maybe there's a tapestry on a wall, and you don't know that it has information that leads to a quest or updates a quest unless you inspect it. Maybe both of these examples give a single line of text in your chat bar that says "seems like you're missing something here..." , and its then up to you to notice that and investigate before things progress.
The point is that just because the devs gave an example of the system that's hard to miss, designed specifically for a brand new player and audience to the system, it doesnt mean that's the only way the system can or will work.
Imagine if they'd given an example of a system that was really obtuse, and Cohh had missed it and it had to be spoon fed to him by the staff that was running the stream. Instead of the "it's too obvious!" cries we're hearing now, we'd instead have screaming about "so it's possible to just miss something really obscure and I dont get the quest?!??!".
Give them a chance to flesh this out a little and show you if it's versatile.
Feyshtey said:What was shown was one of 1000's of potential manifestations of the perception system. Yes, that one example was pretty obvious, and yes it would be comparable to a "Hey! quest here!" system. But that doesnt mean that every quest must or will present itself that obviously. Maybe there's a guy kicking over rocks and doesnt give any indication that he has an available quest unless you actually stop him and ask wtf he's doing. Maybe there's a tapestry on a wall, and you don't know that it has information that leads to a quest or updates a quest unless you inspect it. Maybe both of these examples give a single line of text in your chat bar that says "seems like you're missing something here..." , and its then up to you to notice that and investigate before things progress.
The point is that just because the devs gave an example of the system that's hard to miss, designed specifically for a brand new player and audience to the system, it doesnt mean that's the only way the system can or will work.
Imagine if they'd given an example of a system that was really obtuse, and Cohh had missed it and it had to be spoon fed to him by the staff that was running the stream. Instead of the "it's too obvious!" cries we're hearing now, we'd instead have screaming about "so it's possible to just miss something really obscure and I dont get the quest?!??!".
Give them a chance to flesh this out a little and show you if it's versatile.
Thats what I believe. I think they created the entire quest to be simple and obvious just to bluntly say, "This is the general idea". I wouldn't be suprised if the entire quest was completely staged JUST for the stream and that won't even be the norm when it comes to these quests. The key that was found might have been there for the purpose of the stream and in the real game there might be 3 or 4 different ways you might have gotten past the "key" issue. It is just WAY to early to even speculate.
kellindil said:I see all these issues being raised with the simple demos and explanations of these systems and I can't help but think that its intentional by VR. They do not want to get into too much detail because all of this is under development and might change completely by launch. If they gave us all the details of what they are TRYING to do, and then fall short, the community will turn on them like wolves, much like someo are doing now. They will not go into more detail until, most likely, beta at the earliest when the NDA gets lifted on testers. Which means LATE beta.
They most likely also don't want to spoil some of the suprise on how mechanics work and how they may impact us on a daily basis. The VR team seems to value mystery quite a bit. They may not want to give too much of a peek behind the curtain as to intentionally keep us in the dark until we can discover this for ourselves.
All it boils down to is, SLOW DOWN, WAIT, and TRUST THE DEVS for god's sake. We do not need the key to every damn thing fed to us on a spoon. Just chill. Once we enter actual Alpha the tester will be able to see how they intend the systems to work and can bring up any issues then. This is going to be the crucial time when they will be looking for feedback on these systems. They are NOT looking for feedback on a system none of us have even experienced yet.
If you have ideas for how you'd like the system to work, awesome! Please share. If you have ideas on how you'd not like the system to work, awesome! Please share those too. It is FAR too soon for ANYONE to be spouting fear and doom. You are confused by the system because you are taking the few small peeks into the early stages of a system that isn't fully developed or even remotely close to being finalized.
Alpha is the time to pick apart these systems, not based on an hour long early dev stream of a partially completed game that you haven't even experienced yet.
Keep calm and just enjoy the ride until Alpha, then you can all go nuts on the doom and gloom on the alpha test boards.
Thank you kellindil this is basically what i was trying to say but you worded it better than me, it almost like people are having single piece of a 1000 piece puzzle and are trying to based everything off that tad bit of infomation. We all need to calm down, preception can be used in so many ways including what they showed us alrdy, for one it is a brand new concept i can see it getting better while time goes on like in xpacs when they realize that it can be used in different ways later down the road. This is okay like i said its totally new and never never seen it used before so figuring out other ways for it to be implemented is a great thing. So please people give the devs a chance to put it into testing before we even attempt to pick it apart, you can list your concerns and everything but be constructive about it instead of just cuasing fear and doom to a system that has never been attmepted before.
itvar said: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.
I have seen VR refer to shards, realms, servers in the same sentence...taken to mean the same thing. Instancing would be /pick same zone only different instance, like I've seen on Agnarr in EQ.
Shards are an alternative word for servers in some contexts. In this context, it means an open world zone of which multiple copies exist simultaneously. It's different from an instance in that it is still a persistent zone where players can enter and leave freely.
Examples would be APW in Vanguard, and the systems in EQ2 and EQ TLP servers where zones will spawn additional versions when they become overpopulated. Imagine zoning into Freeport and getting "Freeport 1, Freeport 2".
I guess I never contributed to the actual topic of this thread. I'll just say that I agree with the sentiment that Perception is probably going to be required if it gets implemented.
People can dance around the word "required" all they want, but they're missing the point. Installing Pantheon in the first place is technically optional. It's very clear what is meant by "required" if you aren't being obtuse, which is that it will practically be required for players to participate in if they want to progress.
Casuals who don't care about progression don't care in the first place, so arguing that Perception is "fine" from that gameplay perspective basically just spits in the face of people who actually want to progress in a game based around progression. Wearing gear is "optional" in a video game, but it's abundantly clear that wearing gear is "required" to experience everything the game has to offer.
I talked about it in Discord yesterday, but to me, "perception" is just a buzzword to hype a slightly different (but functionally identical) method of getting quests and progressing through the game world. To me, it's just marketing buzz. /shrug
Edit: I know this thread is about the "Keeper" thing, the same arguments apply.
Liav said:Shards are an alternative word for servers in some contexts. In this context, it means an open world zone of which multiple copies exist simultaneously. It's different from an instance in that it is still a persistent zone where players can enter and leave freely.
Examples would be APW in Vanguard, and the systems in EQ2 and EQ TLP servers where zones will spawn additional versions when they become overpopulated. Imagine zoning into Freeport and getting "Freeport 1, Freeport 2".
Yes only in EQ (progression servers don't know about the regular servers) you have the command /pick now it gives you a list of instances 1 through 32 (probably more depending on population for that zone) you choose one and it zones you in.
Alexander said:How about this:
Decouple the perception system and quest starts. No quest pop-ups, period. That way, a woman might be crying in the town, but even with perception, we don't get a pop-up telling us to check it out. We simply notice a woman is crying and organically go talk to her if we're interested.
Then, keep the perception system for noticing interesting details in the environment, lore, hidden door levers, clues to find some semi-hidden place, etc.
I second this idea. Simple yet effective and it uses the perception system already in place.
To further that, maybe a perception check is only made once you are in dialogue with an NPC that might give extra dialogue options. The key is to minimize unwanted pop ups.
CanadinaXegony said:Liav said:Shards are an alternative word for servers in some contexts. In this context, it means an open world zone of which multiple copies exist simultaneously. It's different from an instance in that it is still a persistent zone where players can enter and leave freely.
Examples would be APW in Vanguard, and the systems in EQ2 and EQ TLP servers where zones will spawn additional versions when they become overpopulated. Imagine zoning into Freeport and getting "Freeport 1, Freeport 2".
Yes only in EQ (progression servers don't know about the regular servers) you have the command /pick now it gives you a list of instances 1 through 32 (probably more depending on population for that zone) you choose one and it zones you in.
Again it's about the keeper or the requirement to be one. But if they put in /pick in pantheon, I won't be playing. I am not one for "everyone gets a trophy"
So, I just wanted to throw some of my own opinions out there for consideration. How closely these align to what everyone else wants to see I can't say, but I feel like it is the best way to contribute meaningfully to the discussion.
1) I don't like quest markers or popup windows and feel like their use should be minimized. I get that sometimes we have to have something in our face to tell us that something is happening, but the less the game can use "DM narration" on us, the better.
2) I want to see perception be something that we really have to spend time working on if we want to get it really high. That doesn't mean that it has to be mutually exclusive with other things, but it does mean that there needs to be an incentive for getting it up high, and that incentive can't be so overpowering that someone who doesn't spend time boosting their perception is crippled in their ability to play or progress.
3) I do not want to see players forced into a gameplay style they do not enjoy solely to progress their character. If someone really doesn't like questing, they should not feel like a second class citizen. However that same thing applies in reverse as well.
4) I would like perception to do more than just unlock quests. I envision branching dialogue trees with NPCs where perception (along with other attributes and factors) might give us different options. Some of these might just be for flavor. Or they might lead us to shortcuts in things we are working on. "Wait, what hidden entrance?"
5) I want perception to be organic enough that it is not easily gamed. For example I don't want to see a bunch of players all running back and forth at the same spot until RNG triggers the quest the perception event they wanted.
6) I want perception to benefit my group as well as me. Maybe just something as simple as allowing me to spot the trap in the dungeon, but something where having a person in your group with high perception is a benefit.
Anyway those are my thoughts for now.