There are (currently) 12 classes, 9 races, 7 crafting professions, and 6 harvesting professions. Some people will play one and only one character and some will have characters to cover all combinations, however I think most people are going to play "a few combinations". Managing your couple of characters is an area that can be dramatically affected by QoL features (or the lack thereof). I wasn't able to find a specific methodology for Pantheon's approach to this, so I'm asking -- how many characters/alts is Pantheon being designed for day one?
Different games approached this different ways. Vanilla WoW required character switching with sharing via the bank and (somewhat dangerous) mail. It wasn't until the Reagent Bank and mods that track all items on all alts that WoW's approach became reasonable. OTOH, FFXIV went to the opposite extreme by allowing one character to take on all classes and professions, but you end up drowning in gear, ingredients, and bags.
For Pantheon, there is a strong social aspect to the game, so I don't think the FFXIV approach makes sense. However, as someone who lived through the early WoW days, having to constantly swap characters to shuffle things around and/or to find the 4 pieces of iron ore you need is something I'd like to avoid.
Thanks,
-Foam
We don't know the number of character slots that will be available, and there's already a thread on that hotly-debated topic, so I'll just leave it alone haha.
In line with your last paragraph, I think some form of account bank would be nice (separate from individual bank space) to make it a bit easier to transfer things from one character to another, but I'd settle for simply mailing things to alts.
As someone who typically has several alts, I'm not against some basic QoL features to make things easier. Some shared bank slots is one thing I wouldn't mind. But I don't really see much need for more than that.
I thought FFXIV's approach was atrocious. Because my character was capable of being anything/everything, I never falt any different from anyone else I saw, and I never felt any attachment to my character whatsoever. How am I supposed to be hyped about playing Kaen the Dragoon with his awesome armor and wicked spear when the next minute he's the physically feeble, robed Kaen the Mage. It just didn't feel right. I hated everything about that game, and I tried SO hard to like it because at the time I was desperate for a decent MMO. But I hardly lasted three weeks.
But I would agree that dropping bags on the ground or needing a friend (or stranger) to help with a transfer is meh, though I also don't see the need for some super-intricate, complex system. If someone needs to keep track of which character has which crafting materials and all that, a piece of paper and a pencil should work just fine. If this game is made the way it should be (Yes, I know I'm saying this very bluntly...), you're not going to have a million crafting materials and tons of semi-useless crap filling the inventories of your five characters, and overflowing from your five characters' banks. That's just terrible game design.
To answer your question about character slots, I imagine it will be the same as EQ. You'll probably have 6-8 character slots on day 1.
No comment on slots - let's keep that discussion in the character slot thread.
FFXIV made having alts very difficult - you couldn't even mail anything to alts - that was ridiculous.
If banks in Pantheon are local and you can't go into one bank and get things deposited in another (topic of older threads) then the only ways to trade between alts is to have both go to the same branch, or use the mail. How the mail will work is certainly unclear at this point (see yet other older threads).
I am an altoholic and will have many alts - if allowed to. I do not like difficulties imposed just to make life tedious in the name of being "old school".
Nevertheless I see no reason to have special rules for alts. If unrelated characters can use the mail - alts should be able to use the mail. If not, not. So if I have alts in two cities that cannot mail to each other or where mail takes a month to arrive - that was my choice - no instant transfer of items by mail.
If a character can only get things deposited in a bank by going back to the branch where it was deposited, any alt that wants the item should need to go to the same branch.
I do think that items a character deposits should be available to that character (no one will dispute this), any alt of the character, or any unrelated character given access to the bank by the character. Much as in real life. Failing this there should be a shared storage account if VR doesn't want to make any item deposited available to alts.
I love alts, however I see "shared bank slots" or "mailing alts" as a feature that decrease your dependency of others.
Having numerous alts (withouth considering how long it will take to level them) is already somehow a big advantage to fit in many situations, and beeing able to trade between them withouth any exterior interaction reduce even more your need of others.
How many time did I get asked, or have I asked, for someone to hold my gear for a secondary toon. Sometimes I gave them a few plats for the trouble, sometimes I used the crafting stations in EQ during low pop hours, but it was more stressfull. When the shared bank slots appeared in EQ, it broke a few connections with others, even if minimal. I feel the game need to keep most possible connections open as long as it doesn't hinder the freedom of play of anyone.
If it's an evil versus good world. I understand that I will not be able to sent anything to from my good wizard to my evil necromancer. If I want to give it to them, i'll need to find players to be the in between key to getting my stuff across. It make sense and it will fits the character and world my characters are playing in.
I've seen it shift in eq2 and yes it became a lot easier and it was convenient for players to level up, set up alts quicker etc, but I lost the meaning of being bad versus evil. And everything became blurry, lorewise at least for me.
If there is no good races versus evil races..everything should be transferrable and 1 shared bank/account/server should be just fine. I would not be a fan of between servers sharing of items or mails.
Before RMT blew up and ruined one particular MMO, small little things were suggested and creeped in that were part of the path that lead to making things easier for RMT'ers. Shared bank slots was one. A little thing, no big deal- but it was to facilitate one owner in a raiding guild with lots of gear left over to level another alt to give that gear to, and then sell in RMT, because characters could also be anonymous and no one would know that was the same player. 16 year old's would brag that they got 700 bucks for their char and not know that they were "doing it wrong" in my opinion.
*edit- took out draconic and broad judgmental generalizations*
I’d like to see some method to be able to securely transfer items between characters on an account. I don’t see this as being a socialization breaker. So many times I’ve seen situations where a player was ripped off by another when trying to transfer gear. People took to dropping a bag of gear on the ground in some obscure location (logging in with their other character already parked there to pick it up) in order to avoid being ripped off or to avoid inconveniencing someone else. I recall also in EQ when I was a guide, getting petitions about someone ripping them off while doing this transfer. Avoiding these situations with some in-game mechanics will save on customer support headaches later on.
I preferred the EQ2 method. A bank, with a number of slots (bags/boxes to add more slots - and 8 slots for shared account access between characters - that can also use bags/boxes to add more storage. You were also able to mail items/coinage to other characters - including your alts. attachments (items and coins) took an hour or so to travel. These banks were accessible between races/alignments/locations. BUT - you had to utilize an actual city for the bank - so - at the start there were only 2 locations for banks. One for each alignment. And with the crafting area and auction house in a nearby area for the banks as well - it made it easier to socialize.
Each game and game company will have different variations of this - but - there is only so much that can be new/unique or different between these games. If a person isn't going to socialize, then they're not - and bank space/alts or lack there of isn't going to change that. Same thing with people that do socialize.
There will be at least a couple character slots available per account. the number hasn't been decided yet - although the average for most games is about 6-10 at most. (2-6 for free and 6-10 for paying customers).
Mechanically, I think there needs to be a way to transfer items between characters on the same account securely. Let's be real. Regardless of how any of us feels about immersion, lore appropriateness, etc, this is the single most common activity that people do with their alts in games, for a lot of reasons We cannot go back to 1999 here where we're running out into the woods to drop a bag on the ground. It simply won't fly with a lot of people, not to mention it generates a huge CS burden. We should understand and accept that if there are severe limits on item storage, people will use alts as mules, which seems to be the thing that most people object to. The same goes for limits on posting items for sale. The tighter the limits, the more they'll do it.
Please don't get me wrong. I'm the person who makes alts because I want to do something different or see different parts of the world. I like having each character separate. I even joke with my friends that my main kicks the alts out onto the street and doesn't support them at all because he's mean.
I just know that I'm in the minority. Whether it's storing crafting materials or having a character for druid ports or the ability to sell more stuff on the market, a lot of people see their alts as extensions of their main. A LOT.
So because of this, I'm of the opinion that trying to restrict it will just frustrate people and lead them into doing stupid things, which then will create opportunities for scams and generate CS tickets. Instead, I feel like the game should look at what people actually do and why, and think about that in its design. Either reduce the perceived need for that activity, or implement mitigations in such a way that people can't easily get around them.
Also, I'll end with one word that we should all be hopeful to get more information about soon.
Progeny.
Itchies500 said:I preferred the EQ2 method. A bank, with a number of slots (bags/boxes to add more slots - and 8 slots for shared account access between characters - that can also use bags/boxes to add more storage. You were also able to mail items/coinage to other characters - including your alts. attachments (items and coins) took an hour or so to travel. These banks were accessible between races/alignments/locations. BUT - you had to utilize an actual city for the bank - so - at the start there were only 2 locations for banks. One for each alignment. And with the crafting area and auction house in a nearby area for the banks as well - it made it easier to socialize.
Each game and game company will have different variations of this - but - there is only so much that can be new/unique or different between these games. If a person isn't going to socialize, then they're not - and bank space/alts or lack there of isn't going to change that. Same thing with people that do socialize.
There will be at least a couple character slots available per account. the number hasn't been decided yet - although the average for most games is about 6-10 at most. (2-6 for free and 6-10 for paying customers).
Yep, that's what I see happening as well. 1 shared bank per server with multimple bank slots ofc.
What the dev's do with the one faction can not transfer to an opposite faction is up to them. I'll take my cookie and eat it then.
Having no shared bank option, will make things a lot more difficult, the question here is..why would you risk a lot of frustration in your playerbase with this restriction?
((I've seen it shift in eq2 and yes it became a lot easier and it was convenient for players to level up, set up alts quicker etc, but I lost the meaning of being bad versus evil. And everything became blurry, lorewise at least for me.))
I couldn't possibly agree more. I have left more than one MMO because they focused on faction, and many players actually cared about faction, and then they got lazy or caved in to complaints and made faction almost meaningless. Such as allowing shared bank slots and mail to be used by opposing factions that were supposed to hate eachother.
Pantheon probably won't have that type of faction. But it will have communities/races/civilizations that are disparate because of hostility or distance. You don't need global faction - good versus evil, horde versus alliance, Albion verus Hibernia versus Midgard, Sith versus Republic, etc. to have races that simply do not *like* eachother or races that cannot share banks or mail because they are too darn far apart and no one has had a reason to set up an intercontinental banking or postal service.
If Sally is in an area that doesn't communicate with the area Fred is in they should not be able to trade things by mail or shared banking unless one of them or both of them go to areas that do communicate. Even if Fred and Sally are on the same account.
I do want to point out that a shared bank will make the location based AHs inconsequential.
If you can have one character parked at the AH on one continent and another parked at the AH on the other continent, and they share money/bank space, it pretty much negates the reason for localized auction houses to begin with (we do know AHs will be in game but be localized).
I'd be surprised if a shared bank is readily available because of it.
philo said:I do want to point out that a shared bank will make the location based AHs inconsequential.
If you can have one character parked at the AH on one continent and another parked at the AH on the other continent, and they share money/bank space, it pretty much negates the reason for localized auction houses to begin with (we do know AHs will be in game but be localized).
I'd be surprised if a shared bank is readily available because of it.
That's a good point, but I also think it might be mitigated by just how localized/regional the markets are. For example, if there are 10 markets on Kingsreach, 12 on Reignfall, and 9 on Whitethaw, is this still as much of an issue? I think you can also mitigate it a bit by keeping the number of shared bank slots small, so that people would have to do multiple transfers to move bulk goods across. However, none of that invalidates your original point at all.
In my mind I was thinking the AHs would be localized per continent (I thought that was mentioned but maybe not?)...maybe they might be localized in much smaller areas like you mentioned Neph. It seems to me that might compound the problem?
Then, with a shared bank, players would have all of their alts always camp out at as many AH locations as possible. Instead of 1 per continent you now have as many characters, as slots you have available, camped out at all of the busiest AH locations. It still seems counter to why the AHs were decided to be localized in the first place.
Ya, we agree that point might be an issue.
Edit: I guess with a shared bank slot but not shared money that might not be as much of an issue.
Philo - keep in mind that shared bank may not mean what some people assume.
It isn't necessarily a shared vault accessable from all over the world. I agree with you there.
But it may be a shared vault subject to all of the limitations they choose to impose on banks. In other words all of my characters may have access to materials left in the Butt Cheeks vault. They may just need to go to Butt Cheeks to get to the vault.
True Doro, we don't know specifics. It could be that banks are localized just like the AHs. Then even if they were shared that would solve the issue mentioned above that would negate the reason for localized AHs.