Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

Big Flex_sl said:

stop trying to reinvent the wheel with talk of paradigm shifts etc. leave that shit to ponytail.

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Paradigm shift is tounge-in-cheek, used to mock mr ponytail.

Really it's not reinventing the wheel at all. It's looking at the same old wheel from a different angle. These games have to be different from one another. 15 years should have proven to us that content itself is not enough. We consume it far more quickly than even the most prolific can produce it. So it has to be more than content. It has to be delivery. If they "don't reinvent the wheel" with each iteration why play the new iteration? It's just the same as what you've already played with +/- red.

If every show on TV was Mad Men (but the characters switch places depending on the network) I wouldn't ever watch TV. Because that would be stupid. And that's the rut that MMOs have fallen into.

Theres more than one way to skin a cat. Cheve based gameplay seems like the most straightforward and easiest way but it isn't the only way. As long as the developers are aware that the rut actually exists then I'm perfectly willing to give their product a look.

And some of them like the rut. Some players like it too. That's perfectly fine, actually, but it's not for me.

Khane_sl said:

I gotta be honest, I understand the argument for not wanting a minimap and GPS but... there are certain conveniences I don't want to be without ever again in my actual everyday life and if simple conveniences like GPS are gone from a game and I have to fumble and flounder with land marks to find my around I'm probably going to just get frustrated.

If you want slow, dangerous travel and also have it be completely unaided by a minimap or GPS grouping is going to be hell on earth.

"Ok, you guys know how to get to this stupid new water zone?"
"Sorry, first time, no idea how to get there"
"Alright where are you now? Kaladarp? Shit, OK I'll try to walk you through it. First follow the wall to your east"
"Which way is east?"
"Use your true north spell, face north, then turn right, ok now follow that wall til you hit the crimson plateau, follow the road til you get to the whispering tree and make a left. Zone into Gorky Park but watch out for the winds of change. If you hear a "wooosh" just fucking run, super high level air elementals are after you. Actually make sure you bind at the whispering tree"
"Hold on a second, how do I take a screenshot? I don't want to write all this down"
"Sigh, OK I'll come get you *45 minutes later* Whew we made it! Let's Pull"
*20 minutes later* "Gotta leave for work in about 15 minutes, how do we get out of here?"
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
"Sorry, didn't think it would take an hour and a half for the group to form, but I have a replacement. Thanks guys, ttyl!"
*Spiritfondler has joined the party*
"Sup guys? So how do I get there, first time for me"
"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU"

You're right, there needs to be a compromise but I don't think a plain old map with no visual representation of where you currently are is it.

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"Use your true north spell,

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fucking quest helpers.

I demand an accurate starmap. and only an accurate starmap for orientation.

Quaid_sl said:

Is there anyone advocating unassisted navigation at all? I haven't seen it. Most are asking for a cardinal directions compass + in-game 'fog of war' style maps (vanilla wow) from what I have seen. It's the GPS mob-location mini map constantly on the UI that people don't like.

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It's hard to tell what some people are asking for when they talk about "meaningful travel". Why the "fog of war" though? I kind of like the idea of a "pioneer fog" where the second the game goes live every single portion of the map is fogged out but as people find and explore new areas they get mapped for everyone once they go back to town and talk to a cartographer or something. The regular old fog of war never made much sense to me, especially on subsequent playthroughs.

tad10_sl said:

Rangers should pretty much have Maps + tracking info on a mini-map from the get-go for outdoor zones, Druids should have something similar. It breaks my immersion when the Ranger is lost in the woods. If you want to be clever, you can, as mentioned, do the WoW map reveal thing for Rangers/Druids.

Everyone else can either download the maps that will show up online or just follow the Ranger.

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But the map reveal and tracking should only be for outdoor, nature areas. Areas heavily affected by death and undead should be SK/Necro tracking and map reveal. Underground = dwarfs. Or if they're mountain dwarves, then hilly zones. Cities = humans for their love of urban filth. And gnomes/asslings should only have the bottom half of every map and mob revealed.

popsicledeath_sl said:

And gnomes/asslings should only have the bottom half of every map and mob revealed.

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And they should be immune to any odor based debuffs. The world smells a lot different from that height and you need to have strong nostrils.

They could always make plugins for the game. Add the map system if you want, leave it out if you don't. Would be like an official addon instead of using one that a player has made. That would be one way to make sure everyone is happy. I personally probably wouldn't make use of the maps. The only reason I ever used one in the first place is because WoW made me lazy (which I hate) and I could see my next objective on the map.

Zoeii_sl said:

They could always make plugins for the game. Add the map system if you want, leave it out if you don't. Would be like an official addon instead of using one that a player has made. That would be one way to make sure everyone is happy. I personally probably wouldn't make use of the maps. The only reason I ever used one in the first place is because WoW made me lazy (which I hate) and I could see my next objective on the map.

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The argument against this from the purist's perspective is "If it's there it ruins my immersion just knowing other people are using it". And of course, you say you wouldn't use it and you really might not, but I don't believe you.

The objectives being shown actually was not part of the initial design of wow. It didn't flash at you where you were supposed to go, you still had to figure it out yourself. A player came along and invented questhelper. EVERYONE used it so Blizzard incorporated it into the default UI. Blame the players for that one, not Blizzard.

Zoeii_sl said:

There is a "Remind Me" button on every Kickstarter homepage. You will find it under the the main video on Pantheon's site. The reminder emails start going out 48 hours before the campaign ends. I have used this on many occasions because I wanted to think it through before I pledge but also didn't want to miss out. That is how I backed CastAR in fact. I think that is a major reason why you see those spikes.

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I did not know that..thanks.

In regards to instancing. Like everything else, I hope the bad effects of it won't force it to be rejected out of hand. I think it's important to actually examine what those problems were. For example, I think how instancing forced changes to loot, and scarcity of loot (IE it became less of a trophy/prize and more of a time card to punch letting you know you did work)? These bad aspects were some of the big problems with instancing that have never been addressed. However, I don't think those problems are so inherent that you can't design the raid/dungeon/instancing system to account for them, and so item scarcity and competition can be kept alive, but perhaps in a less aggressive nature than EQ. (Again, I don't think anyone wants P99 in a modern MMO.)

I'd really like a game, in fact, to merge the two. For example--Every raid mob would be default open world. However, at the start of each raid there'd be a switch that allowed you to enter an instance for that raid mob. The caveat being though that you only had a limited number of instance kills per cycle (Week or whatever)--and that number? Would besignificantlysmaller than the amount of bosses in game. So, if there are 6 current end game bosses, the number you can kill within an instance is3. The benefit to a system like this would be making sure there is still ahugeincentive for competition in order to maximize farming, but there is a stop gap so guilds can actually see/do content; at the cost of doing less of it. (And the number of instances you can do should remain stable, or only increase slightly, as more content gets added. Again, these instances should be used to see content for raids, and give guilds the means to do things even when everything is down but the point would be not to replace the over world.)

Combine that with other small details--like instanced loot would be BoP, while non-instanced loot would not have any soul binding--therefor creating a very valuable twink/exchange market if guilds can down the "prime" (open world) target. That economic incentive would also give a strong impetus to compete in the over world--because the items obtained from there could be traded to other guilds to fill in missing pieces of loot, or sold for twinking so said loot could be bought. Regardless, the point here is that you'd still have a very strong impetus to go out and do these mobs in the over world, and compete for them but if you fail, you're not left out in the cold--there is a certain amount of "consolation" content (It's just more restrictive than open world.)

Heck, with your game having weird planar intersections, it would even be easy to write into the lore! Instances would actually be mirror planes that collided with X or Y dungeon. Your guild needs to collect components to open them. However, loot that's gotten from there can only remain corporeal when worn (Hence the BoP) and mortal beings can only enter these unstable planes X number of times per week! (Hah)

I don't know, I know that's just some vague thoughts. But I think the main point I'd like to express is that--yes instancing had a lot of bad effects. But it also had good ones. On the same token, non-instanced content had a lot of bad effects as well, but also had good ones. Right now we only really have games that either do full bore instancing, or used to use full bore non-instance dungeons. Hopefully, Brad, you find a balance between the two and explore the one place no game really has (Except for some parts of EQ2)--which is a combination of instancing and community content that ensures the best aspects of both systems remain in your world (Best aspect of community content: Scarcity of loot, competition, investment in loot/characters. Best aspect of instancing: Content available, social activities for guilds not poop socking ect.)

Anyway, just my .02$.

There's a big difference between maps and maps with a player marker on them.

I'm fine with maps. Make maps be able to be annotated. Mini-maps take you out of the game world, and drawing a marker / player arrow on a big map does it even worse.

Khane_sl said:

The argument against this from the purist's perspective is "If it's there it ruins my immersion just knowing other people are using it". And of course, you say you wouldn't use it and you really might not, but I don't believe you.

The objectives being shown actually was not part of the initial design of wow. It didn't flash at you where you were supposed to go, you still had to figure it out yourself. A player came along and invented questhelper. EVERYONE used it so Blizzard incorporated it into the default UI. Blame the players for that one, not Blizzard.

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I played vanilla WoW so I do know how this came to be. And I figured someone would say exactly what you did. "But that guy in our party is using a map and now I don't feel the game is hardcore enough." Let's face it, there are going to be things everyone loves and hates about this game no matter what they do. I personally wanted it to be seamless, but there is enough about the game that I love to counter my desire for a seamless world.

Also, your odor based comment spiked a memory I have of FFXI. I loved how mobs aggroed differently. Some aggroed strictly by sight, others by sound, others by both and some mobs aggroed by smell. I would love to see a system like this added to Pantheon.

Zoeii_sl said:

They could always make plugins for the game. Add the map system if you want, leave it out if you don't. Would be like an official addon instead of using one that a player has made. That would be one way to make sure everyone is happy. I personally probably wouldn't make use of the maps. The only reason I ever used one in the first place is because WoW made me lazy (which I hate) and I could see my next objective on the map.

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They could also make a plugin for fast travel, making all zones instanced, triple exp, and to add quest hubs to the game. Then everyone will be happy and those who want to play a different game can without having to actually play a different game. Because making me play your game, and not a different game, is really a denial of my rights as a gamer to play whatever game I want while playing your game.

I don't mind as long as the zoning is eq-like. Yes, it is not seamless technically, but it is visually seamless upon zone-line.

I liken it to teleport and map hacking in D2. People hated map hackers unless they were grouped with them. They were the bane of D2 and caused heartache and grief for everyone, until they could get you the staff for Duriel in 2 minutes flat and you could skip all the tedium of Act 2 and find the summoner ASAP. Then they were your best friend.

"I HATE ALL THIS EFFICIENCY!!!"

Soygen_sl said:

Yeah, what did Pathfinder do on that final day that garnered almost 25% of their total funding? At first I figured it was some very large donations from a few people, but they added over 1000 new backers on that day alone and the average pledge for the final day was actually lower than the average across the entire KS campaign. Was anyone involved/following that? I'm very curious how it was hyped/marketed on that final day.

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This happens on just about every successful Kickstarter campaign. Again, there is a reminder system for Kickstarter. A lot of people hit that Remind me button and when they get the reminder email (1st one is sent out 48 hours before the end time), they pledge. There is really no other way to explain all the spikes. You can do the research yourself by looking at some campaigns on Kicktraq. A lot of people like to wait until the last minute, myself included. Although, I already backed Pantheon.

Iannis_sl said:

Achievement based game structures is the next step. Levels have gone as far as they can go. Not just about as far as they can go, completely as far as they can go.

TIME FOR A PARADIGM SHIFT UP IN THIS BITCH.

A lot of MMO's have been trying to incorporate them. But as a hybrid it's not going to be anything much. As a foundational structure -- well, in theory you could remake UO without all the fagged up parts of UO.

And it seems like there is a wide area doing that where you can incorporate pvp into your pve game much more accessibly and readily. Which is an issue that every mmo since mmo's have struggled and all failed (even daoc) with.

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First, I 100% agree with you that as a whole something needs to change with levels or skills or anything that functions how levels currently work. Meaning doing something repetitive to gain power that immediately trivializes things that were once difficult. To me it's the same whether I am grinding to level 10 to beat that monster or grinding my sword skill to 50 to be able to hit it to beat that monster.

That said, I don't think this is the game for that paradigm shift. This should be the game that is taking it back to basics. Warriors hit things, rogues stab them, clerics heal you, wizards nuke shit, necros fuck the dead, etc. You level up, you fill lots of slots with unique and interesting gear (a la everquest) that doesn't have stupid arbitrary requirements outside of maybe your class type to equip. While I love to see innovation in this industry it almost always leads to a disappointing game. As this is considered by many to be the ONE CHANCE OMFG to go back to Everquest feels, I don't think it is a game that should be looking to innovate. It should be looking to polish what already worked.

As for PvP, maybe I am fucking weird but I thought DAoC PvP (at least the first 6 months the game was out) was a bit boring. Sure the early days of keep fights and seeing massive slide show battles was kinda epic feeling but it quickly turned repetitive and dull. Later on Darkness Falls amplified this dullness about 1000 fold. I'd wake up in the morning, put together a small gang, go take enough keeps to open Darkness Falls plus a few so it didn't get taken while we actually went there to farm, someone would take our keeps an hour later and then it would be a repeat. Actual PvP almost never happened during this time. (disclaimer: I was unemployed when DAoC was released so I played a LOT) The only real fun I had was hooking up with one of a few Skald buddies (I played a warrior) and duoing random stragglers and small groups in the frontiers. I think generally that the "PVP as a side game" approach is less fun to me. I like PvP in the world where it adds "something" to the game.

This is why I think EQ PvP (which sadly I was late to join in on though I did do Sullon Zek beta/launch) always seemed more exciting to me. You run into people in the world and you have a moment to decide whether or not you can/should take them, run away, or wait and see what they do. Sometimes everything is copacetic and you both continue doing what you were doing. Other times they think you have a pretty mouth and attempt to make you squeal like a pig. It's just well TENSE..

In DAoC if I was in the frontier I was already looking for some kind of action so I didn't exactly care if someone attacked me. It was way less exciting to me.

Not that I think this game needs PvP as a primary ruleset. I'm just saying I think just flat out unlocking PvP in the PvE world on a few servers is plenty awesome.

Navigation throughout the world should work in tandem with community interaction. It is nice to have to ask the trackers for help finding something, or other classes for finding a mob. This is one of those categories that falls under the "What the players need, but don't want" sort of thing.

Yes not having a GPS style navigation system is "inconvenient", but what ends up happening is those players seek each-other out for assistance, thus creating more of a positive impact for the game immersion as a whole. Yes it may suck, but the benefit of forced social interaction outweighs this by a landslide. Ultimately, this could not be achieved with an easy map system.

popsicledeath_sl said:

They could also make a plugin for fast travel, making all zones instanced, triple exp, and to add quest hubs to the game. Then everyone will be happy and those who want to play a different game can without having to actually play a different game. Because making me play your game, and not a different game, is really a denial of my rights as a gamer to play whatever game I want while playing your game.

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You are so funny, thanks for being here Mr. Popsicledeath.