kelenin said:Once again, I'm not against this idea, but I do have the following though. How is this any different than going to an area and getting a bunch of quests involving you to kill orcs (kill 10 orcs, gather 10 orc ears, kill a specific orc in a camp that requires you to kill other orcs to get to)? Basically we're taking away quests to give bonus experience for doing certain things in an area and then moving characters to the next area to get the next set of quests to kill things in that area; so that we can give bonus xp to characters killing things in an area for a while and then incentivising them to move to another area to kill things?
I still come back to, let me play how I want to play. If I don't want to move to another area, I shouldn't feel like I need to just because it would be more effecient. Other standard game mechanics should decide that, and when I want to go I will. I should want to leave because another area might have items me or my friends need, or the current area is too low level now, or I just want to explore, or I'm bored of killing orcs over and over again.
One of the tenants of Pantheon is to remove that feeling like you're on rails. Don't replace the mechanics that did it with different mechanics to do it. While this isn't exactly rails, since it doesn't take you from place to place, it is close as it penalizes you for not moving on from where you are.
That's about how I feel about it.
I'm not sure I understand the desire to force/heavily incentivize having players move around a lot and not camp, it really does sound like it would end up similar to quest hub grinding. Another side effect would be reducing general variety between playthroughs as many would end up following the optimal path that likely hits all zones of any given level at some point. Compare that to having many characters who may never see any number of zones in the game at all for their first character which makes leveling the second in new areas all the more fresh. I certainly remember some players in EQ who leveled 1-50 while barely leaving the Grobb area at all, just diving deeper and deeper into Guk as they leveled.
kelenin said:metteec said:On Discord, we discussed the idea of a Beastiary that would fill up the more you killed a certain monster. You would also get bonus XP from each kill until your Beastiary was complete after you filled it up completely. Once you completed the Beastiary entry, you would see all of the stats, strengths, and weaknesses of that particular monster. You would have an entry for each monster, not just the type. For example, an Orc Centurion would have a different entry than an Orc Oracle.
To offset the added XP, overall XP gains would decrease slightly to offset the Beastiary XP. This change would benefit players by:
1) encouraging players to kill new monsters and experience new content;
2) discourage players camping the same monsters for hours on end;
3) encourage dungeon delving;
4) makes the fastest way to level to experience as much content as possible.
What are your thoughts?
While I'm not against things like this, I'm not too keen on features that try to get players to play a certain way or with a certain mindset. A player shouldn't be penalized if they like to stay in one area. If they wish to move to another area, then they can on their own. Giving someone a bonus for playing a certain way is nothing more than penalizing those that don't play in that way.
To me this falls into the same category as other mechanics that dictate play style, such as bonus XP for staying logged out.
If the goal is to remove the rails, adding a mechanic that serves as rails is a bit counterproductive. By week 2 there will be guides telling players exactly where to go, and when to go there, to get the max from this bonus exp. Quest hub rails will then be replaced by bonus exp rails.
Let people kill orcs for 50 hours if that's what they want to do. It's up to the devs to make sure there are enough orcs to kill, or enough other mobs with equal risk/reward ratios to kill.
Just because it's YOUR idea for guiding content doesn't mean it's any better than all the other ideas for guiding player activities.
Filling out a beasiary with titles as rewards is a rpetty cool idea that I'm sure many people will complete. Just completing it will be enough incentive for many folks to explore different areas.
Long day, still grumpy. So, apologies if this comes off the wrong way.
What I am struggling to understand is why so many people feel that something intended to "level the playing field" a little bit and grant a boost to people who choose to do things in an arguably less efficient way, somehow completely invalidates the fact that years of MMO history have shown that, in general, camping the same thing for experience is going to be more efficient than moving around?
Even with a system as has been proposed, if someone's goal is just to level, sitting in one spot and pulling the same stuff over and over until they ding is going to probably be the fastest way to do it. As someone pointed out above, the XP bonus for bestiary kills would likely have to be extreme to change that equation.
What's the problem? Is it just a concern about implementation and tuning? Or is it something else? Since Pantheon will have slow progression, those powerleveling guides and etc. are going to exist regardless of what the best "method" is to level. Players will always find the shortest path to the cheese.
Didn't LOTRO do something like this ? only i too don't think XP should be in the equation, however why not damage ? lets say the beastiary works on a % based system, so at 20% you gain a 1% extra dmg to that mob. At 100% it would only be a 5% bonus to dmg, however i would like how it makes sense, i've been killing *random creature* for like 3 days, and i've killed hundreds you would think i should be very proficient in knowing where to stab,bonk them. Just a different take on the bonus from beastiary. That being said, i would love it just for the lore, like if you killed 500 .... chickens ?......the beastiary would maybe hint at where a rare ....chicken?... would be, thus encouraging you to go explore and maybe get a group to go hunting for it. Downside would be once the first one is found, BOOM wiki'd and farmed, which would be unfortunate.
Collections and Achievements for completionists (and later, console players if the game gets ported) are great
Incentivizing certain types of play, adding bonus damage, other additional mechanics... unnecessarily complicated
Once you've killed a thousand bears, you already get bonus damage against bears... YOU know all about killing bears and your character has probably leveled up and is much more powerful than bears
If someone wants to play the game in the most boring way possible, that doesn't do any harm to anyone so there need not be rules against it
Hadekin said:On Discord, we discussed the idea of a Beastiary that would fill up the more you killed a certain monster. You would also get bonus XP from each kill until your Beastiary was complete after you filled it up completely. Once you completed the Beastiary entry, you would see all of the stats, strengths, and weaknesses of that particular monster. You would have an entry for each monster, not just the type. For example, an Orc Centurion would have a different entry than an Orc Oracle.
To offset the added XP, overall XP gains would decrease slightly to offset the Beastiary XP. This change would benefit players by:
1) encouraging players to kill new monsters and experience new content;
2) discourage players camping the same monsters for hours on end;
3) encourage dungeon delving;
4) makes the fastest way to level to experience as much content as possible.
What are your thoughts?
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Dark Age of Camelot have a system where the longer monsters were alive they slowly gained a plus ton XP modifier. So it encouraged players to explore out and kill monsters in other parts of the world less traveled? I think that might be a good system for Pantheon to encourage pushing out to other world camps. It wouldn't need to be huge but would remain in effect for a bit, slowly decreasing as you kill the respawns. Maybe do something like that and cap it at a given % and with each kill decrease it to normal on a % balanced with the increase ammount in mind. Just an idea. :) Could be something to go hand in hand with that.
Kratuk said:Hadekin said:On Discord, we discussed the idea of a Beastiary that would fill up the more you killed a certain monster. You would also get bonus XP from each kill until your Beastiary was complete after you filled it up completely. Once you completed the Beastiary entry, you would see all of the stats, strengths, and weaknesses of that particular monster. You would have an entry for each monster, not just the type. For example, an Orc Centurion would have a different entry than an Orc Oracle.
To offset the added XP, overall XP gains would decrease slightly to offset the Beastiary XP. This change would benefit players by:
1) encouraging players to kill new monsters and experience new content;
2) discourage players camping the same monsters for hours on end;
3) encourage dungeon delving;
4) makes the fastest way to level to experience as much content as possible.
What are your thoughts?
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Dark Age of Camelot have a system where the longer monsters were alive they slowly gained a plus ton XP modifier. So it encouraged players to explore out and kill monsters in other parts of the world less traveled? I think that might be a good system for Pantheon to encourage pushing out to other world camps. It wouldn't need to be huge but would remain in effect for a bit, slowly decreasing as you kill the respawns. Maybe do something like that and cap it at a given % and with each kill decrease it to normal on a % balanced with the increase ammount in mind. Just an idea. :) Could be something to go hand in hand with that.
I would like to see that same kind of bonus extended to harvest nodes. The longer any specific node exists in the world, the higher the chance a player can harvest a rare material. Anything that encourages players to adventure off the beaten path is a good thing. Plus, how cool would it be to have a secret harvesting spot? I'm sure some people would make the argument that this would feel fake or contrived but at the end of the day it's purposely designed to make the video game feel more like a world, even if it is using a video game mechanic.
Kratuk said:Hadekin said:On Discord, we discussed the idea of a Beastiary that would fill up the more you killed a certain monster. You would also get bonus XP from each kill until your Beastiary was complete after you filled it up completely. Once you completed the Beastiary entry, you would see all of the stats, strengths, and weaknesses of that particular monster. You would have an entry for each monster, not just the type. For example, an Orc Centurion would have a different entry than an Orc Oracle.
To offset the added XP, overall XP gains would decrease slightly to offset the Beastiary XP. This change would benefit players by:
1) encouraging players to kill new monsters and experience new content;
2) discourage players camping the same monsters for hours on end;
3) encourage dungeon delving;
4) makes the fastest way to level to experience as much content as possible.
What are your thoughts?
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Dark Age of Camelot have a system where the longer monsters were alive they slowly gained a plus ton XP modifier. So it encouraged players to explore out and kill monsters in other parts of the world less traveled? I think that might be a good system for Pantheon to encourage pushing out to other world camps. It wouldn't need to be huge but would remain in effect for a bit, slowly decreasing as you kill the respawns. Maybe do something like that and cap it at a given % and with each kill decrease it to normal on a % balanced with the increase ammount in mind. Just an idea. :) Could be something to go hand in hand with that.
Thanks, I was just going to add this. On paper it doesn't sound like much but it absolutely did get our group moving around, hunting for great spots and served as the catalyst for a lot of unexpected little adventures (which was its biggest strength in my opinion).
While Pantheon won't have the added danger of RvR, which I admit probably added a lot to the thrill of carefully creeping around and scouting out camps while out in the frontiers, I am all for any incentives that work towards getting groups moving and adventuring through the world.
I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities for traditional camping as well, some nights are just suited to it, but like kiting and FD pulling I'm pretty sure camping was the result of emergent gameplay rather than intentional design. Just because we've gotten used to it and accept it doesn't mean there isn't room to explore new ways of interpreting a fantasy adventure in the MMO medium - realistically the whole genre is baby steps into what will probably be a decades long journey towards working that out. Prior to EQ making camping something that I accepted, I distinctly recall that I never had the urge to jump into a CRPG/MUD/Tabletop game in order to play out the fantasy of sitting in a room all night (if the focus is not 100% on pure roleplay).
We have camping, that's great, one generally reliable option sorted - one of the tools we can use to offer a broader spectrum of gameplay, but it's hardly as far as the mmo adventuring experience can be taken considering how much room there is for online worlds to grow and evolve.
If VR are planning on doing something that rewards XP for killing different monsters I would rather have a system like DAoC Camp bonus XP, as opposed to a checklist bestiary that rewards with power increases or permanent bonus XP on that mob type.
To me Camp bonus XP is way more integral to gameplay and does not "point" a player in a certain direction like Checklist type bonuses do. It also eleminates the possibility of the bestiary ever becoming a requirement for doing "x,y,z" content.
"A temporary bonus is a penalty in disguise" is a pretty good game development maxim, I'm gonna use it. The important thing here is that the bonus happens at the start of encountering a new monster. It would need to drop off pretty sharply to not feel like it's a penalty for killing the same monster over and over. It's not about reality, it's about the perception of reality. The exact numbers involved can have a huge impact on how the average (emphasis on the average player, please don't give me anecdotal, 'this is how I would react' ) player perceives this difference.
If for the first hour of gameplay the bonus is applied, and it's a noticable increase (we'll say.... 15% more), then the player is going to get used to that rate of experience pretty quickly. I use a time unit rather than a strict number of monsters because of differences in mob strength. Pretend that hour could be 18 mobs that take roughly 3 minutes to kill each or 30 mobs that take roughly 2 minutes each (for pull, kill and recovery.) Take that 15% away after the first hour and it will definitely, emotionally, feel like a penalty. At the same time, a different player might view it precisely as the developer intended and move on to a new area when that experience amount dries up, even if there are (for example) members of their party who might have arrived later and not finished the bonus, or perhaps needed drops off of those mobs. So the player might, instead of sticking around in this area, decide to leave the group.
Another option is to make the bonus much larger, while vastly shortening the timeframe it applies. Say it only applies to the first three examples of a mob, but the bonus is more like 200-300%. This extreme example would encourage exactly what people above feared: A group running as quickly as possible through zones in order to farm a large variety of monsters, with powerlevel paths being debated and discussed on forums all around. This, while engaging gameplay for some, is probably not what VR is hoping to happen.
Another option is to make the bonus fall off gradually as you kill them. The first mob provides 200% experience, the second 190%, the third 180%, the fourth 175%, etc... or whatever rate or values you would prefer. Depending on the rate of decline on the bonus, it can vary to players being keenly aware of how much experience is being reduced over time, encouraging them to move on quickly, or it can be so gradual that after an hour of farming the same mob, players turn to each other and say "Weren't these giving more experience earlier?" Keep in mind, not every player is eagerly consuming all possible information on the game, there's going to be a fairly significant portion of the playerbase that just download and play. You can mitigate this confusion by having the experience text note the bonus experience seperately from the normal experience from the kill, but there's a lot of players (particularly in this subset of the population) that just pass over those messages, not reading them. To have broad appeal, these players need to be taken into account as well.
Another option is to make the bonus so small that it doesn't actually impact player behavior. Make the only bonus you get is some sort of bestiary journal, as seen above, that gives flavor on the monsters or a few gameplay statistics, maybe some notes on common behaviors or habitat. This is useful for players that like lore, but essentially valueless for players who aren't. This kind of thing is a lot of time by writers, programmers, quality assurance, and artists for a product that would be ignored by a majority of the playerbase. This argument sort of defeats itself however, since if only a small subset of the playerbase gives a **** about lore, why do lore at all? However, I believe that a bestiary of this sort would be a fun and interactive feature that I whole-heartedly approve of. I am just concerned about the cost/benefit ratio of such a feature.
This dynamic, where people disagree on the value of the bonus, makes pickup groups less stable and inhibits the making of new friends, which is one of the cornerstones of Pantheon's gameplay. On the other hand, it will also help people make pre-made groups, since the shifting of priorities would eventually sort people into 'bestiary roamers' and 'bestiary ignorers,' making people have common ground and playstyles that helps a group form. People will remember those who follow them from camp to camp and they will also remember who stuck around when people leave the group to go kill somewhere else. It's up to the devs to figure out what behavior they want to encourage or discourage in their playerbase, and while I think I have a fairly good bead on their intentions, I could be entirely wrong. I think that this bestiary idea, while fairly interesting, has a lot of problems with implementation, inlcuding cost, player influence, and the effect on groups as a whole.
((I would like to see that same kind of bonus extended to harvest nodes. The longer any specific node exists in the world, the higher the chance a player can harvest a rare material. Anything that encourages players to adventure off the beaten path is a good thing. Plus, how cool would it be to have a secret harvesting spot? I'm sure some people would make the argument that this would feel fake or contrived but at the end of the day it's purposely designed to make the video game feel more like a world, even if it is using a video game mechanic.))
The law of unintended consequences may have something like this toss out more bad results than good ones. Such as harvesters camping nodes, trying to warn people off and getting really upset if someone that simply needs the materials says "if you don't take it I will" or maybe just takes it.
I like the idea of out of the way nodes being more lucrative (there was a hard to find cave in Vanguard that was a wonderful secret harvesting spot but eventually they got around to putting high level mobs in the cave so it became unusable - you may have had that cave in mind it became fairly well known among dedicated harvesters).
Hadekin said:On Discord, we discussed the idea of a Beastiary that would fill up the more you killed a certain monster. You would also get bonus XP from each kill until your Beastiary was complete after you filled it up completely. Once you completed the Beastiary entry, you would see all of the stats, strengths, and weaknesses of that particular monster. You would have an entry for each monster, not just the type. For example, an Orc Centurion would have a different entry than an Orc Oracle.
What are your thoughts?
Why not just learn from experience instead of having a dictionary that tells you about mobs?
Hijaks said:Didn't LOTRO do something like this ? only i too don't think XP should be in the equation, however why not damage ? lets say the beastiary works on a % based system, so at 20% you gain a 1% extra dmg to that mob. At 100% it would only be a 5% bonus to dmg, however i would like how it makes sense, i've been killing *random creature* for like 3 days, and i've killed hundreds you would think i should be very proficient in knowing where to stab,bonk them. Just a different take on the bonus from beastiary. That being said, i would love it just for the lore, like if you killed 500 .... chickens ?......the beastiary would maybe hint at where a rare ....chicken?... would be, thus encouraging you to go explore and maybe get a group to go hunting for it. Downside would be once the first one is found, BOOM wiki'd and farmed, which would be unfortunate.
I believe LOTRO did have something like this, yes - Can't recall if you received XP for completing these kinds of bestiary tasks, but you would receive certain bonuses whether through unlocking a particular skill, or some kind of mitigation vs whatever-damage-type-that-mob-used. May be wrong about that.
All for a bestiary that, when filled, gives you knowledge about that particular type of creature. Nay to the experience.
Tralyan said:Hijaks said:Didn't LOTRO do something like this ? only i too don't think XP should be in the equation, however why not damage ? lets say the beastiary works on a % based system, so at 20% you gain a 1% extra dmg to that mob. At 100% it would only be a 5% bonus to dmg, however i would like how it makes sense, i've been killing *random creature* for like 3 days, and i've killed hundreds you would think i should be very proficient in knowing where to stab,bonk them. Just a different take on the bonus from beastiary. That being said, i would love it just for the lore, like if you killed 500 .... chickens ?......the beastiary would maybe hint at where a rare ....chicken?... would be, thus encouraging you to go explore and maybe get a group to go hunting for it. Downside would be once the first one is found, BOOM wiki'd and farmed, which would be unfortunate.
I believe LOTRO did have something like this, yes - Can't recall if you received XP for completing these kinds of bestiary tasks, but you would receive certain bonuses whether through unlocking a particular skill, or some kind of mitigation vs whatever-damage-type-that-mob-used. May be wrong about that.
All for a bestiary that, when filled, gives you knowledge about that particular type of creature. Nay to the experience.
LOTRO had what was called Deeds, and I kind of hated those. They required you to often times kill X amount of creature X to unlock the next part of the deed that may also require you to kill X amount of creature X. The first part would usually give some XP and maybe a few Turbine Points (as they were once called) and the second part sometimes unlocked a trait. Later versions could be done on a larger scale to unlock mounts and other things.
Kratuk said:Tralyan said:Hijaks said:Didn't LOTRO do something like this ? only i too don't think XP should be in the equation, however why not damage ? lets say the beastiary works on a % based system, so at 20% you gain a 1% extra dmg to that mob. At 100% it would only be a 5% bonus to dmg, however i would like how it makes sense, i've been killing *random creature* for like 3 days, and i've killed hundreds you would think i should be very proficient in knowing where to stab,bonk them. Just a different take on the bonus from beastiary. That being said, i would love it just for the lore, like if you killed 500 .... chickens ?......the beastiary would maybe hint at where a rare ....chicken?... would be, thus encouraging you to go explore and maybe get a group to go hunting for it. Downside would be once the first one is found, BOOM wiki'd and farmed, which would be unfortunate.
I believe LOTRO did have something like this, yes - Can't recall if you received XP for completing these kinds of bestiary tasks, but you would receive certain bonuses whether through unlocking a particular skill, or some kind of mitigation vs whatever-damage-type-that-mob-used. May be wrong about that.
All for a bestiary that, when filled, gives you knowledge about that particular type of creature. Nay to the experience.
LOTRO had what was called Deeds, and I kind of hated those. They required you to often times kill X amount of creature X to unlock the next part of the deed that may also require you to kill X amount of creature X. The first part would usually give some XP and maybe a few Turbine Points (as they were once called) and the second part sometimes unlocked a trait. Later versions could be done on a larger scale to unlock mounts and other things.
Thaaaaaaat's right. Thanks for the reminder. Forgot all about the deeds - and about how long and tedious some of them could be.
It was a hell of a boring grind sometimes, I'll give you that.
kelenin said:metteec said:On Discord, we discussed the idea of a Beastiary that would fill up the more you killed a certain monster. You would also get bonus XP from each kill until your Beastiary was complete after you filled it up completely. Once you completed the Beastiary entry, you would see all of the stats, strengths, and weaknesses of that particular monster. You would have an entry for each monster, not just the type. For example, an Orc Centurion would have a different entry than an Orc Oracle.
To offset the added XP, overall XP gains would decrease slightly to offset the Beastiary XP. This change would benefit players by:
1) encouraging players to kill new monsters and experience new content;
2) discourage players camping the same monsters for hours on end;
3) encourage dungeon delving;
4) makes the fastest way to level to experience as much content as possible.
What are your thoughts?
While I'm not against things like this, I'm not too keen on features that try to get players to play a certain way or with a certain mindset. A player shouldn't be penalized if they like to stay in one area. If they wish to move to another area, then they can on their own. Giving someone a bonus for playing a certain way is nothing more than penalizing those that don't play in that way.
To me this falls into the same category as other mechanics that dictate play style, such as bonus XP for staying logged out.
Do you remember how everyone loved rested experience when that idea first came about? Rested xp is a penalty (fatigue) framed as a bonus. You could do the exact same thing with this idea.
Edit: About Deeds in LOTRO: The problem with deeds is that they feel mandatory because of the permanent progression rewards they give. The suggested mechanic in the OP isn't something you should feel obliged to complete, but you can make use of it as long as it's available, to get the extra experience, then move on once the mobs are too low level for you.
Lortex said:Love the idea, and agree that it shouldn't be tied to experience gain. Although some sort of reward would be nice, something cosmetic to show off your achievement. I like the suggestion of a title. You could earn a title for filling out 20%, 40%, and so on, values subject to change.
I agree with no bonus XP. At most, it's just something to do, an enticement for players to continue to explore and experience things. I would not do the title thing though. The achievement itself is reward. Perhaps something you could show others through a link of some sort. Adding too many titles cheapens them.
nscheffel said:If the goal is to remove the rails, adding a mechanic that serves as rails is a bit counterproductive.
I agree with this. The idea of an incentivised monster encyclopedia seems counter to the sandbox style world VR is creating. I am in favor of anything that reduces the dev's footprint on the world and contributes to individual choice. Also, what is the point of coding this in when there will be a Wiki with 10 times more information about every mob way before you can fill your encyclopedia? No in game maps or encyclopedias or helpers if you ask me.
I liked the beast mastery that was in EQ2. It was a part of the 'collections' system they had, which I also enjoyed.
I may remember incorrectly, but I believe with beast mastery, you would see drops from the monsters you killed, say Goblin ears, teeth, hair, fingers, toes and brains. Once you collected all the required items and had performed X kills, you achieved 'mastery' and gained a small damage bonus when fighting Goblins in the future.
I like the idea of embellishing such a system with filling pages and chapters and books of a bestiary. Completion could give minor single use potions, or more useful permanent items like weight-saving bags, or more exciting stuff if it took a lot of achieving.
There's no reason any such system would give any kind of 'rails' to the game - rewards shouldn't be so good that beast mastery feels obligatory and neither should these kind of collections give lore insights or whatever - there doesn't have to be a Goblin page before you've ever found a Goblin, just a page that fills as you do encounter things.
It's just something to do for people that like that kind of thing. Don't like it? Don't do it.
Nephele said:Long day, still grumpy. So, apologies if this comes off the wrong way.
What I am struggling to understand is why so many people feel that something intended to "level the playing field" a little bit and grant a boost to people who choose to do things in an arguably less efficient way, somehow completely invalidates the fact that years of MMO history have shown that, in general, camping the same thing for experience is going to be more efficient than moving around?
Even with a system as has been proposed, if someone's goal is just to level, sitting in one spot and pulling the same stuff over and over until they ding is going to probably be the fastest way to do it. As someone pointed out above, the XP bonus for bestiary kills would likely have to be extreme to change that equation.
What's the problem? Is it just a concern about implementation and tuning? Or is it something else? Since Pantheon will have slow progression, those powerleveling guides and etc. are going to exist regardless of what the best "method" is to level. Players will always find the shortest path to the cheese.
I don't like the idea of exploration being dictated to the player. Playing the game should be the bonus. Seeing new zones and mobs and graphics and loot is the reward. If one area is overcrowded and another area is dead, it's incumbent upon the dev team to balance those areas. I keep making this point, but playing the game is the quest, playing the game is the reward. The loot, availability, risk/reward should dictate where people go. If the game itself doesn't provide people with the incentive to travel and explore, then there's a fundamental problem that providing a little exp bonus beastiary won't help fix.
If people don't already want to visit all these different areas, then it just becomes a checklist "I wasn't going to do this zone but I want to finish Western Antonica in my beastiary" checkmark goes here. And the people who do want to do all the things in the beastiary are already going to do it, regardless.
Also, I don't think this is a bad idea or a big deal one way or the other. I don't like the idea of giving EXP but if people want a beastiary filled out to create more of a sense of connection to the world, that's great.