((Sure, in the context of some game that's entirely devoid of danger (outside of a handful of raids or heroic dungeons), with no significant penalty for death or failure, optimized for solo play, and with environments that are just scenery, I can understand your point of view. But that is not this game! ))
We have here a classic example of setting up a strawman argument and then demolishing it. You get neither treasure nor experience points for this kill!
1. I want the game to be as slow as you want it to be. As I have said repeatedly if it takes 6 months to get to maximum level by grinding it should take 6 months by questing. I dislike how WoW amd EQ and Rift and SWTOR etc etc use quests as much as you dislike it.
2. I want the same level of danger you want. I want the same significant penalty for dying as you want. What in the name of all Gods of Terminus makes you think that doing a quest to kill 10 pigs is safer than going out to grind and killing 10 pigs? Yes some quests involve running around rather than killing but even in watered down modern MMOs this is the exception not the rule - and most players prefer quests that send you out to kill things.
3. Optimized for solo play, you say. You are stretching quite unreasonably to find an argument so unrelated to what I actually said that you can demolish it. This discussion has nothing whatsoever to do with solo play. Quests can and in Terminus usually will require groups. Most content will require groups. Sure some quests will be soloable. But a lot of grinding will be doable solo too. Totally irrelevant argument.
4. Environment that is just scenery. Ooops I made a mistake in saying your last point was irrelevant I should have saved that comment for this one which, if possible, is even *more* irrelevant.
No actually I don't think you understand my point of view. I want the same old school, slow, meticulously detailed game that most of us do.
But whereas you see going out with a few friends to kill 10,000 pigs as "challenging and inherently social" I see going out with a few friends to gain the same experience per hour doing quests as just as challenging and just as social. And a whole lot less *boring*.
Its when they are unequal, yes. As long as your fighting skills level seperately or it costs you hefty coin to train them i am ok with leveling your main level any way you want. It should be a grind either way.
I listened to the VOT episode about quests and such and i like how Leksur divided quests. You have Tasks, then you have Adventures, and then you have Epic Quests. Rewards for tasks (kill 10 mobs, fedex tasks, ect...)should be lower and should be a grind. Adventures give you a little more as you usually need a group and a dungeon to complete these. And Epic Quests you would most likely do near max level so even if you got a large chunk of exp you probably wouldnt notice much.
Damacon said:I have always enjoyed the leveling up process more than end game, the longer it takes me the more rewarding those new abilities feel its one of the main things I loved about Everquest. End game is exactly that the end of your game, you can pretend like farming those raid bosses for the chance to get a piece of gear is somehow going to accomplish something but deep down you should know if you have the best gear you have nothing to use it on so its pointless.
I understand what you're saying. But this is just your opinion. For me. I despise leveling. I despise it so much that in my entire time playing MMOs I have only leveled 2 alts. To me the entire game BEGINS at max level. This is when you ARE you'r character. You have all of your skills. You're constantly fighting harder content, refining your abilities and improving your character.
It's like if you were a piano player... your career doesnt start when you learn Mary had a little lamb.
Porygon said:I understand what you're saying. But this is just your opinion. For me. I despise leveling. I despise it so much that in my entire time playing MMOs I have only leveled 2 alts. To me the entire game BEGINS at max level. This is when you ARE you'r character. You have all of your skills. You're constantly fighting harder content, refining your abilities and improving your character.
It's like if you were a piano player... your career doesnt start when you learn Mary had a little lamb.
Yep thats why I said its probably unpopular opinion, its funny because its kind of coming from the same place I depised leveling alts also and I rather just have one character that I can constantly feel like I am progressing. But once you get max level you have stopped progressing gear is not progressing its just the place holder for a better piece of gear. I have not seen many games where at end game you're constantly fighting harder content, its more like you are doing the same raids over and over again to get everyone gear. Nothing is more tedious and boring as the gear treadmill that is "end game" with leveling at least you are constantly seeing new things.
The thing about piano, drawing and many other skills is you can never master them you are always learning (leveling up) thats what makes them fun.
dorotea said:((Sure, in the context of some game that's entirely devoid of danger (outside of a handful of raids or heroic dungeons), with no significant penalty for death or failure, optimized for solo play, and with environments that are just scenery, I can understand your point of view. But that is not this game! ))
We have here a classic example of setting up a strawman argument and then demolishing it. You get neither treasure nor experience points for this kill!
1. I want the game to be as slow as you want it to be. As I have said repeatedly if it takes 6 months to get to maximum level by grinding it should take 6 months by questing. I dislike how WoW amd EQ and Rift and SWTOR etc etc use quests as much as you dislike it.
2. I want the same level of danger you want. I want the same significant penalty for dying as you want. What in the name of all Gods of Terminus makes you think that doing a quest to kill 10 pigs is safer than going out to grind and killing 10 pigs? Yes some quests involve running around rather than killing but even in watered down modern MMOs this is the exception not the rule - and most players prefer quests that send you out to kill things.
3. Optimized for solo play, you say. You are stretching quite unreasonably to find an argument so unrelated to what I actually said that you can demolish it. This discussion has nothing whatsoever to do with solo play. Quests can and in Terminus usually will require groups. Most content will require groups. Sure some quests will be soloable. But a lot of grinding will be doable solo too. Totally irrelevant argument.
4. Environment that is just scenery. Ooops I made a mistake in saying your last point was irrelevant I should have saved that comment for this one which, if possible, is even *more* irrelevant.
No actually I don't think you understand my point of view. I want the same old school, slow, meticulously detailed game that most of us do.
But whereas you see going out with a few friends to kill 10,000 pigs as "challenging and inherently social" I see going out with a few friends to gain the same experience per hour doing quests as just as challenging and just as social. And a whole lot less *boring*.
Actually I didn't say you were asking for the game to be easy/quick/solo/etc. I acknowledged that the questing experience you are talking about would have value in a game like that, but because Pantheon isn't that game, there isn't a value in that type of questing for Panteon.
I'll take your word that you do really want a social/group focused game. But group focused and quest-chain focused are antithetical characteristics. Quest chains like you say you want inherently fragment the alignmnet of player objectives. it's just a fact that the two designs don't mesh well. You can still have quests be a part of the game, they'll just be higher quality emphasis points in the grouping/leveling process as opposed to an entirely parallel process.
Damacon said:Yep thats why I said its probably unpopular opinion, its funny because its kind of coming from the same place I depised leveling alts also and I rather just have one character that I can constantly feel like I am progressing. But once you get max level you have stopped progressing gear is not progressing its just the place holder for a better piece of gear. I have not seen many games where at end game you're constantly fighting harder content, its more like you are doing the same raids over and over again to get everyone gear. Nothing is more tedious and boring as the gear treadmill that is "end game" with leveling at least you are constantly seeing new things.
The thing about piano, drawing and many other skills is you can never master them you are always learning (leveling up) thats what makes them fun.
Yea, I mean we are just going to disagree. But I find it extremely challenging to take on current content with various mixes of classes. In WoW I would regularly solo heal raid content on my paladin to create more of a challenge. Not only is this extremely challenging for me. But it allows my guild to bring 2 or sometimes even 3 additional DPS classes and expedite the fight.
The thing I dont really get, is that if there is no max level, you just continue leveling, well now that just becomes the same mechanic as upgrading a piece of gear. At some point you're going to have all of your spells and abilities and all that leveling up will do is provide you with a minor amount of additional stats, just like a gear upgrade .Even in a situation like with everquest and their AA system... gear progression was still MUCH more important than your AA number.
Porygon said:Yea, I mean we are just going to disagree. But I find it extremely challenging to take on current content with various mixes of classes. In WoW I would regularly solo heal raid content on my paladin to create more of a challenge. Not only is this extremely challenging for me. But it allows my guild to bring 2 or sometimes even 3 additional DPS classes and expedite the fight.
The thing I dont really get, is that if there is no max level, you just continue leveling, well now that just becomes the same mechanic as upgrading a piece of gear. At some point you're going to have all of your spells and abilities and all that leveling up will do is provide you with a minor amount of additional stats, just like a gear upgrade .Even in a situation like with everquest and their AA system... gear progression was still MUCH more important than your AA number.
I don't dislike end game content or challenge, I just hate doing the same thing over and over again it starts to feel like a job instead of a game. Once you have your gear if you managed to get it before everyone else pretty much the only thing that is keeping you going is your friends its mind numbing.
I think the big difference with the always leveling thing is that its permanent and the effort you put in will always be there. Where as with gear its just a place holder for that next piece of gear which becomes even more apparent if its tiered raiding. I get where your coming from, there has to be something other than leveling and getting cool gear is completely satisfying. I think it would be great if they could figure out a way to have end game yet you always feel like you are gaining something more permanent maybe like raid group levels where the more you group with people you get stat bonuses or special skills. I would be happy just having that feeling of progression even after I have seen all the content.
Damacon it sounds as if what you want is a system where what you do after reaching the level cap slowly gives you permanent improvements in certain character abilities rather than just giving you gear. Which, as you so correctly point out, is temporary.
Some games, not all, do have systems where experience gotten does not increase your character level (in other words there is a hard cap on character level) but does improve things you are intended to keep "forever". One advantage to such a system is that players have an incentive to keep playing even when an expansion is expected - an expansion that will make all current gear outdated (Pantheon may not work this way but I am discussing what current MMOs do now not what Pantheon *will* do in five years).
A corresponding DISadvantage is that if characters keep improving after level cap the content that was carefully designed to be challenging will slowly become trivial. This can be handled in games relying heavily on instancing - new level caps can play a dungeon at tier one, slightly improved level caps can play it at tier two etc. This is not the road VR says it wants to travel.
Ways to make experience (not just item drops) relevant at maximum level range from AA type systems permanently giving the character better abilities to LOTRO's system of slowly and laboriously upgrading a "legendary" weapon that is intended to never be replaced. So instead of the *character* gaining new levels, in effect the *weapon* gains levels. I vaguely recall DAOC having a similar leveling system for gear after the disasterous Trials of Atlantis expasion (ToA was awful for many reasons but this was not one of them).
I am not sure how this can be done without trivializing content, however. I doubt if making the character so powerful that mobs die when he or she looks at them is a really good incentive to keep playing.
Yep Dorotea that is basically what I am getting at that even if eventually makes the content easier I would prefer a system that permanently makes the characters stronger. I think if you make the system with time and players in mind you can make a system that wont ruin the game. If you ask me its actually not a bad idea to give players who are not as good as others a chance to complete all the content as long as you don't hand it to them right off the bat. This would actually stop the need to scale things down as people would just gradually get more powerful instead. Like I said above I think something that leveled as a group or raid would be awesome plus it would tie in with the whole bringing comunity back theme Pantheon has. That way the benefits are only present when you are with your friends and gives a incentive to form strong bonds with all your guild members.
Originally in a earlier post I said that I would rather it just take like a year to level to max level but if I can't have that I would take something like a steady progression system that is permanent. I just don't want that feeling of oh I have done everything and its only been a couple months that plagues almost every MMO nowadays. Just adding a new dungeon every couple of months with new gear is not a fix either its just a gear treadmill like I was explaining above it feels pointless. Pantheon at least has some ideas in place to help like the progeny system and they plan to update content in zones.
shuk said: Thinking outside the box a bit, mob grind and traditional questing aren't the only two options. An environment could tell a story as well as any questgiver. Like most, I'm not super keen on grinding endless mobs for seemingly no reason - so tell me what's going on through environmental clues, notes, etc. I hope the perception system will really employ this a lot. They need not be missions with objectives, but rather paths that might lead you to more information and perhaps additional reward... if you pay attention. You might learn a name, or a secret place, or some history you can later use to unlock another path. No big gold arrow, no set objective, just a story to follow that links the places you go together in cohesive ways.
Exactly. It's a false choice to say that if you don't have hundreds or thousands of menial tasks to complete as "quests" that all you have is mindless grinding of the same enemies. The perception system is brilliant for allowing groups to encounter objectives/lore/etc organically as they explore the world. Using the conventional quest-hub with quest-chains will just bog people down by making them go through the whole "I'm on X"; "I've already completed that chain"; "I'm on it, but on an earlier parts" BS.
One of the things I hated about constant questing is that fact that I am forced into a story line that everyone follows. This to me is very dumb and a cop out to what real MMOs should be like. Which is why I liked the grinding part of killing mobs vs having to do quests. I am fine with turn in quests, like Gnoll fangs to the guard in the arena area in Qeynos, but I don't like quests that dictate me into following a story. I don't like how MMOs do that. I understand RPGs and other types of games and love it, but MMOs are a persistent living world with a back story, and thats it. I shouldn't have to do quests to progress to the next area and questing being the superior way to level vs grinding. Quests are also hand holding because it basically tells players where to level.
Now with the negatives out of the way I do like questing, but to the extent of how EQ mainly did it and not how WoW did it. EQ still allowed you to discover lore through dungeon crawling, and left a lot of mystery that you can kind of make your own lore with.
Example of Questing: I loved Blackburrow. A lot of memories in there. They had a quest of collecting gnoll fangs for the guard and you gain exp for it and faction and also negative faction with the corrupted guards in Qeynos. You could also take the gnoll fangs to Halas and turn them in for all positive faction with the Barbarians, however less exp. There were also a few other quests in Blackburrow, but you had to find them, were for certain classes, and didn't hand hold you. This is how you do quests.
Example of Mystery: Not everything has to be explained. Anyone who experienced Blackburrow will also know of a gnoll by the name of Tranix. Tranix was pretty high level gnoll that pathed all the way to the entrance. The mystery of him is no matter how many gnolls you killed he never tried to kill you, unless you hit him first. No one knew why though, but I noticed a scar around one of his eyes and pieced together my own lore using the werewolf outside of the commonlands and night near the entrance to Qeynos Hills. If anyone remembers that thing...good times. Anyways, I pictured Tranix getting into a fight with the werewolf and getting injured and a human saved him. Thus the idea of him not attacking humans.
I liked doing this stuff because it felt like my story, rather than me being followed by the nose. If I am questing...I never look at the lore, because I don't really care. Click as fast as you can and follow the marker. Or just look up the quest online and follow the step by step guide.
I think questing is a good thing, but not the main focus, like the OP mentions.
So one thing I would do with the lore is not have some over arching lore that encompasses everything, except maybe for the formation of the world. I would rather have series of events that can tell a cool story. One way to do this would be to have notes or lore drop from the mobs themselves. You can read it if you want or sell it, but you can gain information about events that happened here through dungeon crawling. Maybe with the inscription skill you can craft your own lore book that is empty and you can go around and put pieces in there and try to put together some lore and maybe from the lore discover secret areas.
One thing I think EQ1 did that was probably an odd mistake rather than intetinoal was that they made soloing give more xp per kill for harder mobs and grouped xp is less but more frequent. Games like wow are designed so that you can play casually solo and in groups its more strategic(harder), where EQ's style of grouping was the casual style and soloing was the strategic method. Either way, they got lucky with the design of making soloing hard and rewarding you with great xp at even con or higher....that is if you excelled at it.
I hope that same system goes into Pantheon becuase its based around the community and culture grouping up brings people together, but it will limit the games clientele for those who enjoy the modern style of soloing.
The problem with making never ending levels is that eventually it creates a massive game imbalance. You end up with encounters designed for level 100 characters, and anyone below that is at a serious disadvantage. If you go the route of designing encounters for level 60, then the content becomes extremely trivial, which is a really poor way to design a game.
Honestly. From reading your responses, you are either going to have to invest heavily into alts or tradeskilling. Because theres no system that pantheon is going to implement that is going to do what you want it to.
Porygon said:The problem with making never ending levels is that eventually it creates a massive game imbalance. You end up with encounters designed for level 100 characters, and anyone below that is at a serious disadvantage. If you go the route of designing encounters for level 60, then the content becomes extremely trivial, which is a really poor way to design a game.
Honestly. From reading your responses, you are either going to have to invest heavily into alts or tradeskilling. Because theres no system that pantheon is going to implement that is going to do what you want it to.
It is more difficult for sure. In asheron's call, the benefits of leveling were logatithmic. Levels werent completely infinite, but it almost felt that way. One nice thing about it was that it made grouping work even at very disparate levels. A level 100 player and level 200 player would basically do the same content.
Porygon said:The problem with making never ending levels is that eventually it creates a massive game imbalance. You end up with encounters designed for level 100 characters, and anyone below that is at a serious disadvantage. If you go the route of designing encounters for level 60, then the content becomes extremely trivial, which is a really poor way to design a game.
Honestly. From reading your responses, you are either going to have to invest heavily into alts or tradeskilling. Because theres no system that pantheon is going to implement that is going to do what you want it to.
I'm curious how you think they *should* go about designing encounters if not for specific level ranges and group/raid sizes.
Just playing devil's advocate, levels could be replaced with "ability skills" if the game wasn't level-bound. Other games have done this with roughly the same level of success as those that are level-based. In any game not having the requisite level/skill has always put that player at a disadvantage, as it ought to be. One shouldn't expect to take down much of anything that is well beyond your abilities.
Designing an encounter is all about matching the difficulty to the capability and number of players to which you want to limit that encounter. Unless the game implements scaling of some kind that allows any number of any level players to engage it and always end up with a challenging yet winnable fight this will always be true.
What is it about what you expect VR to build for encoutners that makes it the game *you* want it to be?
Akilae said:I'm curious how you think they *should* go about designing encounters if not for specific level ranges and group/raid sizes.
Just playing devil's advocate, levels could be replaced with "ability skills" if the game wasn't level-bound. Other games have done this with roughly the same level of success as those that are level-based. In any game not having the requisite level/skill has always put that player at a disadvantage, as it ought to be. One shouldn't expect to take down much of anything that is well beyond your abilities.
Designing an encounter is all about matching the difficulty to the capability and number of players to which you want to limit that encounter. Unless the game implements scaling of some kind that allows any number of any level players to engage it and always end up with a challenging yet winnable fight this will always be true.
What is it about what you expect VR to build for encoutners that makes it the game *you* want it to be?
Sorry. I wasnt clear. Encounters should absolutely be designed around levels (and gear levels). My comment was more that if you dont have a max level. As time goes on you end up with encounters designed for level 100 characters which are too hard for most players, or you end up with encounters that are severely trivialized for "higher level" players.
Pantheon is going to base their difficulty off of level 50 players, (whatever # of players), and gear level... like most MMOs. Because these are the easiest things to control. Which is fine, as long as the encounters are difficult enough.