Darch said:I'm hoping something is implemented to help mitigate the god-awful countless hours of LFG if you weren't a healer or able to solo well because people aren't going to have time for that. i.e. 4 hours of daily contiguous playtime is probably going to be a generous duration for those of us working and/or with families - if 1 hour is spent LFG, I think a safe estimate would be another hour to gather the group and get to your location leaving you with 2 hours of playtime... so if you only have 2 hours of contiguous time to play, then are you better off playing a class that can solo or heal (for instant groups)?
This is one of the primary ways Pantheon will differ from older games in order to allow you to feel accomplished after only playing for a couple of hours. It's true that there really is no point in making you stand around LFG for hours. That is certainly an area where the genre can be improved upon. Therefore, there will be systems (with more details to come) that help you find groups and keep those groups together over the course of several sessions, such as the aforementioned Caravan system. Another innovative idea is to design more areas in dungeons that allow for a group to safely log off, so that at the beginning of the next session, they can pretty much just pick up where they left off, rather than having to take the time to clear the same parts of the dungeon all over again. And that's just one example. Little details like that can really make a difference in the long run.
In cases where characters are very different levels, the Mentoring system will allow pretty much any two people to group up and have fun and make progress in a meaningful way. There will probably even be ways to reward the higher level characters to do this, so that their time isn't wasted either. It shouldn't matter if one person plays 10 hours a week and the other plays 100 hours a week.
But lastly, I want to address a misconception that seems to underlie this thread. If you can only play 5-10 hours a week, there's nothing wrong with that, but you cannot realistically expect to be getting world-firsts or churning through content at the same rate as someone who plays 50+ hours a week. By definition, sheer time spent is a fundamental aspect of progression in MMO's. If your entire sense of accomplishment in the game is based on being top tier, world/server first, etc. but you can only play for an hour or two a night, you may want to rethink your priorities. But fortunately, there is a LOT more to the game than just that. You will still definitely be able to consistently make noticeable progress thanks to group finding tools (not to be confused with matchmaking systems), creative dungeon design, mentoring, the fact that you won't always have to poopsock camp a certain spawn to get a particular BiS item, and more. You will be able to experience all the same things as everyone else, just at a different rate.
nscheffel said:phahmaqu said:I'm not interested in all of the discussions of days or hours to level cap. That's all speculation on detail. My question is foundational.
VR have talked a lot about the people who played Everquest, people who miss the "old school" and "hardcore" MMOs. That was a long time ago, and those people are at least in their mid-30s, if not much older*. Few of us have lives at all similar to the lives we had then. So here's my question to VR:
Is PRF being designed for the time the people who played back then had available back then? Or is it being designed for the time the people who played back then have available now?
Either is legitimate, but it's a vital design choice. I can't spend 12 hours in LGuk waiting in line to join the group camping the Frenzied spawn for 3 hours for my turn at a FBSS. If PRF is designed for people to spend long sessions in order to accomplish large numbers of meaningful things, it precludes what I suspect is the majority of the old school playerbase. Again, that's a legitimate choice, but it has to be an intentional choice.
Is PRF for those of us who played the "old school", "hardcore" MMOs? Or is it for those who are now like we were then?
* I am preemptively deaf to the 20-something who claims to have been a hardcore Everquest player. Don't bother.
Excellent, excellent post. This post dovetails perfectly with my main concern about Pantheon: folks are mis-remembering what made EQ1 great.
Like you said, anyone who spent a full day grinding in LGuk for a FBSS, or in some Luclin zone for a shard to complete their Vex Thall key is most certainly not going to be able to commit that same amount of time to a game in their 30s or 40s. We certainly aren't going to be able to spend the time "waiting in line" for a spot in a group.
This is the "challenge" everyone reminisces about when they talk about EQ1. How long it took to get that FBSS, so it "really meant something" when you got it. Never mind the fact that none of us can sit in a zone for hours staring at a rock waiting for a chance to have a chance to /ran for it, we want it to "be a real accomplishment!".
They also seem to think that "slow combat where I can chat with my group mates" is going to make this game amazing.
So let's summarize what Pantheon needs to be to satisfy these people:
1. accomplishments that "really mean something".
2. slow combat that allows for plenty of chatting
3. since nobody under 30 will play such a slow game, and nobody over 30 can spend 10+ hours per day camping an item, the required play sessions must be available in 1 hour increments...or less
How, exactly, is such a game going to work?
Easy.
1. Accomplishments can still be very meaningful without countless hours of camping. Even if they don't take very long, the encounters themselves can be extremely tactically challenging. Or, for example, a quest could take a long time, but be designed in such a way that you can steadily make progress over the course of several shorter sessions. So someone who completes it over the course of twelve 2-hour sessions would have the same result as someone who banged it out in one 24-hour session. Long camps are an outdated and uncreative way to proliferate items. This is an area where VR is looking to push the genre forward.
2. The combat itself does not necessarily have to be "slow" to facilitate social downtime. The primarily way downtime can be implemented to promote socialization is in between battles. The battles themselves can still be engaging and tactical to such a degree that you won't really have time to just sit back and chat. But that also doesn't mean they will be the other extreme of "twitchy" combat. As usual, the best answer lies somewhere between the two extremes. Combat will be engaging, but afterward, you will probably have to rest to regen HP/mana for a bit and that is probably when most of the banter between group members will occur.
3. This is simply not true - a gross overgeneralization. But also, see #1 earlier points about camping not being the only way to make the acquisition of rare items meaningful.
((My personal concern when it comes to play time of other people is level disparity between friends in regard to grouping. I know it has been stated that there will be some kind of system to allow people of varying levels to group together but what if friend A can play 10 hrs/day and friend B can only play 2 hrs/day, until these players reach end game, they realistically won't be able to adventure (discover new/higher level areas) together ))
My short answer to this is that if friend A cares he or she will play one character 8 hours a day and another one with friend B two hours a day. If friend A would rather push a single character to level cap with every possible minute of time instead of spending some of the time with friend B that isn't exactly a game design issue.
Alternately, in a game designed around social behavior and bonding, it should be simple for the friend with less play time to make a few new friends that are trying to work on the same content
By the time the friend with less playtime catches up to their other friend, maybe they have a few new people to group up with
That's the way it works in real life, usually: I have friends that live all over the place, and there's no pressure to do everything with them every day...
They meet people I don't know and I do that too, and we all manage just fine
We catch up on the phone or on voice chat fairly regularly
If one of us happens to be in the neighborhood of another, maybe we'll drop in for a visit, and maybe some of us meet up every once and a while to catch a movie or grab dinner somewhere
I do know that if I ever needed help with something, a true friend would be there for me, just as I would for them
I understand we all know how having friends works... I'm not trying to talk down to anyone here
I do think some of us, myself included, have built up some "defenses" against the toxic cultures we've experienced in other MMOs that simply didn't understand how people work
We are social when our environment is comfortable, and the comfortable thing is the thing that feels most normal
If Pantheon gives us a place where doing things with strangers is mostly a fun experience where we can even make a few new friends every once and a while, I think it will have gone a long way toward accomplishing its social goals, but they can't really start from a place that isn't much like the way we live our normal lives, right?
Anytime a thread vaguely similar to this you can be sure there will be people posting useless quips about "you shouldn't be competing with other players" or "you can't play 10 minutes a week and expect to progress as fast as someone who plays 3,928 hours per week".
Completely useless comments that are not on subject, everybody already knows, and aren't being asked for.
So here's my prediction as someone who has not played the final, shipping version of Pantheon (so feel free to scroll on past), there is zero chance that this game will have the same amount of nothing-done time that EQ had. Zero. EQ was a first gen title of its kind, and things have changed a lot since then. The EQ style of a lot of classes being stuck trying to find a group for hours on end isn't going to happen. The EQ style of anything worthwhile requiring long lines just to get your turn for ridiculous camp times isn't going to happen. Maybe a rare thing here and there, but very rare. Brad is many things, but stupid isn't one of them. And he knows people won't continue paying month after month to sit around not doing anything. There are too many other things in the world today that people can be doing rather than sitting and spamming LFG for hours on end or sitting in a corner waiting on one particular mob to spawn from one particular placeholder every 12 minutes.
I know it's popular to think of this game as "the EQ2 that never was", but I'd imagine it would be more accurate to liken it to a modern day Vanguard with fewer bugs. That's not based on anything written anywhere, just what my gut says. So when I try to imagine how long it will take me to progress a little and feel like I've done something that's where my mind goes.