Watching that stream made me want to turn back the clock. I never did play EQ1, but vanguard was the most fun I had in a game by far. The only thing that I would have changed about Vanguard was a button to turn off xp so I wouldn't out lvl any dungeons.
They actually put that in at one point. It was a buff available to everybody that gave you -100% XP.
Up to this point I had about half an eye on Pantheon. I was never an EQ player, so the nostalgia button doesn't do anything for me. And I'm not sure the old school gameplay will really work for me. But I loved Vanguard, and what I saw on the stream impressed me. It's clearly not ready, but it's just as clearly come a LONG way.
My wife watched the video too and when she hear XP Loss she said hell no. She played AA and hated loosen levels. Me I played UO and FFXI and I can tell you if you think harsh Death penalties will make better players it will just do 2 things. Make people quit and make people not even try to play the game. While yes Pantheon is a niche game. Too many of these niche games are trying to copy old school ideas that kept many people away from these games. In todays MMO world you cannot be that exclusive.
Hell I had several friends watch a few who played UO, EQ, or FFXI and even they were like.... Yea no thanks I am not doing corpse runs and EXP loss. But most of them did say if they have to spend any length of time learning a boss fight like in FFXI, EQ1, or even Vanilla WOW the death penalties will keep people from even being involved.
They talked about this later on, during the Q&A part. The team appears to be aware that the death penalty needs to be balanced. They way it worked in the stream is unlikely to be how it shakes out at launch.
30 min into the stream and I am loving what I am seeing. I think you may have taken wanting a EQ throwback to literally. IMO things like losing EXP on death is not needed any more. Just stops people from taking risks and sometimes breaks up teams before they can learn each other styles of play but I can deal with it. As far as the graphics, I would play it as it stands but I would not get upset if they got an upgrade. For Alpha state, I have no clue why people are upset. Going to watch the rest and may post more thoughts.
Losing xp is exactly what the majority want. We want to know we need to be careful and not chew off more than we can handle.
To many games now have little to no repercussions for dying.
I have seen all the other brilliant ideas and no thanks for me...i want to know that if i die i will be penalized...it makes you try and get better as a player and make more informed decisions about who or what you are attacking.. Too many games just let you zerg content over and over with no real penalty for dying.
Oh here go repair your gear...slap on hand.....you should not have died you bad boy...
Eq actually made me think..shit do i really wanna try and kill this? Nowadays just run in and try...nothing to lose if you die.
Screw that.
I hate to break it to you. But NO harsh death penalties did not make you be a better player. I met so many players in UO and FFXI that had harsh death penalties and they never learned. Most quit. Harsh death penalties are wanting by a handful of people on this forum. Just like LFR is wanting by a handful of people on the WOW forum. Yet why has WOW been bleeding subs? Thats right because tools like LFR yet Developers think that is what the majority want. Yet of the 10 or so friends that where on the Pantheon stream that got me into it, not 1 of them posted on the Pantheon forums or here. Guess what they just voted with their wallets.
There is a huge disconnect between what Forum goers like me want and what people like my wife wants who has posted on any forum a whole 10 times, And that was to jump into a conversation she wanted to be a part of or my 2 best gaming friends who only posted on MMO Technical help for that game forum. Most people dont post on a forum to give their opinions. They just will or will not spend their money.
Now in the defense of Pantheon. The game should do what it wants because its what the developers love and what they feel passionate about they should TRY To do. It does not mean they will be successful but there is no reason to stop them. Right now if my group of friends is not interested either am I. I have the right to say that.
Wont make better players, it will just make people not want to play. As for penalties, there are planty already. Run back time in this game is a real problem. Mobs you cant solo, so teams will need to fetch people when they die. Time is the penalty. That time penalty does not need to be compounded with exp loss (more time to recover).
I get taking a step back and taking notes from old school. But we have to remember why there was changes sometimes. EQ1 and exp loss shut down to many teams and in a game where team balance is needed, Breaking up teams that take time to make. Again dumb move.
Strange, it certainly made better players in EQ. I remember when WoW first launched, I could almost 100% spot anyone that had played EQ. That was because they were used to harsher mechanics, and were better players.
Much of the time penalty will be mitigated a matter of weeks into the game. Many classes will, no doubt, have revive and resurrect types of spells to prevent players from running back. As such, a loss of experience is necessary. There will still be full wipes and less convenient places to do corpse recoveries, but that is part of high risk versus high reward gameplay.
To those who say, "such and such won't work", I kindly point out to you how the easy alternative isn't working either. Pantheon won't be for everyone, but please spare us your prophesying when you don't even seem to have a handle on what does and doesn't work in games today.
I just have top say one thing because well i want the best game experience i can get. I don't like Raids,imo they are never necessary and will alienate a lot of players all the time.
You are of the minority here. Most players want content that is a challenge for a group.. ie.. raiding.
Just because I'm a gamer doesn't mean I drive a Honda.
30 min into the stream and I am loving what I am seeing. I think you may have taken wanting a EQ throwback to literally. IMO things like losing EXP on death is not needed any more. Just stops people from taking risks and sometimes breaks up teams before they can learn each other styles of play but I can deal with it. As far as the graphics, I would play it as it stands but I would not get upset if they got an upgrade. For Alpha state, I have no clue why people are upset. Going to watch the rest and may post more thoughts.
Losing XP on death is one of the core mechanics of making death actually be meaningful. People need to fear death in an MMO.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I think alot of people need to remember that even though they are going for the old-school community/grouping/challenge vibe, that this is still going to be a more modern game. They want a challenging PVE game, but I don't think they are building the game for the rose-colored glasses masochists.
I seriously can't imagine they will do all the things that nearly everyone hated. I'd be really surprised if they have level loss + long corpse runs + no map, etc. They may not show quest objective markers and such, but I am quite certain they'll have some type of in-game maps, even if they are low in details or even player-made or something.
And, as for massive death penalties, they don't add anything to a game but frustration/tedium. The amount of people who actually want severe punishments are a pretty small minority. In other words, tacking death penalty onto death penalty for masochists would be developmental suicide in this day and age. I know they aren't aiming for the moon in population, but I assume they would like to actually have more than a couple thousand players.
Personally, I can live with some type of xp debt pool, but I wouldn't play a level-centric game with level loss ever again. Especially if you could lose levels on raids and such.
I just have top say one thing because well i want the best game experience i can get. I don't like Raids,imo they are never necessary and will alienate a lot of players all the time.
This is the same type of attitude which has lead us down the path we're at now with the industry.
Nobody is forcing you to raid. They've already said raiding will be around 5-10% of the games content. So, basically you're just being petulant and selfish based on...? Jealousy? I don't know. I mean i really don't get that mentality. If you don't like doing something, don't do it.
It's like saying that a grocery store shouldn't carry oreos cus you're gluten free and since you can't have them, nobody should be able to, and that having them will "alienate" players. No, the only people who it will alienate are irrational people who operate on a me me me mindset 24/7
I agree with you on this Hrimnir. However he does have a point about group content. Thats something that WOW did wrong which was to kill the smaller group content in favor of raids. Now I think the problem with people hating Raids is the Drama surrounding them because getting larger groups of people is a real pain in the ass. I know I was a raid leader back in the MC days and dealing with people was a pain in the ass and why I stopped wanting more than 10 people raids. You get so many different personalities in there and the raid would turn into a bitch.
Its much easier to find 4 to 10 or so like minded people who will keep the drama to a minimum than it is to get 39 or 19 other people. Again this is something WOW really screwed up
Now when it comes down to a me me me mindset. Yes there are a lot of people like that. But take me for example. I been bringing friends from game to game since I started MMOs. If we collectively dont like a design like for example corpse runs. We are not coming and from experience there are certain things like corpse runs that will make games like Pantheon ghost towns. That is not a ME ME ME deal its the truth; while you dont want a game for everyone if you pander to a very small market you will not make enough money to keep the likes on.
He does have a point about group content to the detriment of raid. However, VR has said in no uncertain terms that raiding will not be the focus of the game.
As to your second point, yes, there is a line to be drawn. But I have argued this in the past. The issue is doing anything to the complete exclusion of one playstyle or another. Or I should say the de facto exclusion. WoW is a great example. The emphasis was so heavily towards solo questing to level that if you grouped and ran dungeons to level you would get completely left in the dust by your friends. I had exactly this happen as me and a buddy went and ran a mid 20's dungeon, and in the 3 or so hours of us running it, our other friend got almost 4 levels ahead of us.
So to be more clear, raiding, soloing, etc, absolutely should exist, and should be a viable path to advancement. However given that the focus of this game is grouping, it should not be the primary or the most efficient form of advancement.
Many people don't realize EQ was this way. You could solo, you could make levels, it wasn't insanely slow, but it was significantly enough slower than grouping that it properly incentivized grouping.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I just have top say one thing because well i want the best game experience i can get. I don't like Raids,imo they are never necessary and will alienate a lot of players all the time.
You are of the minority here. Most players want content that is a challenge for a group.. ie.. raiding.
I don't mind a couple of interesting raid bosses like Vox and Naggy, but I would hate to see Pantheon become a worthless max level raid grinder like WoW. Lets have a game with meaningful content for groups of all sizes and keep that "end-game" raid treadmill to a minimum.
Wont make better players, it will just make people not want to play. As for penalties, there are planty already. Run back time in this game is a real problem. Mobs you cant solo, so teams will need to fetch people when they die. Time is the penalty. That time penalty does not need to be compounded with exp loss (more time to recover).
I get taking a step back and taking notes from old school. But we have to remember why there was changes sometimes. EQ1 and exp loss shut down to many teams and in a game where team balance is needed, Breaking up teams that take time to make. Again dumb move.
Strange, it certainly made better players in EQ. I remember when WoW first launched, I could almost 100% spot anyone that had played EQ. That was because they were used to harsher mechanics, and were better players.
Much of the time penalty will be mitigated a matter of weeks into the game. Many classes will, no doubt, have revive and resurrect types of spells to prevent players from running back. As such, a loss of experience is necessary. There will still be full wipes and less convenient places to do corpse recoveries, but that is part of high risk versus high reward gameplay.
To those who say, "such and such won't work", I kindly point out to you how the easy alternative isn't working either. Pantheon won't be for everyone, but please spare us your prophesying when you don't even seem to have a handle on what does and doesn't work in games today.
I have to agree with Nanfoodle on this. From my experiences in EQ1, what it actually did, was make more scared and frightened players, not better ones.
Effectively, many people shied away from any type of challenge(outside of raids) or risk because they were afraid there may be a chance of death. I can't even count the number of times in EQ I'd pull a bunch of mobs to a group and see people freak out because it wasn't a risk-free safe pull.
I say, make the mobs harder and require more teamwork, but leave the harsh death penalties in the past. If enemies are designed the correct way and require actual grouping synergy, then players will become better through natural experience and there's no need for compounding it with brutal ancient death mechanics.
To summarize: Developers should focus more on mobs that brutalize, and less on brutalizing the players directly.
Wont make better players, it will just make people not want to play. As for penalties, there are planty already. Run back time in this game is a real problem. Mobs you cant solo, so teams will need to fetch people when they die. Time is the penalty. That time penalty does not need to be compounded with exp loss (more time to recover).
I get taking a step back and taking notes from old school. But we have to remember why there was changes sometimes. EQ1 and exp loss shut down to many teams and in a game where team balance is needed, Breaking up teams that take time to make. Again dumb move.
Strange, it certainly made better players in EQ. I remember when WoW first launched, I could almost 100% spot anyone that had played EQ. That was because they were used to harsher mechanics, and were better players.
Much of the time penalty will be mitigated a matter of weeks into the game. Many classes will, no doubt, have revive and resurrect types of spells to prevent players from running back. As such, a loss of experience is necessary. There will still be full wipes and less convenient places to do corpse recoveries, but that is part of high risk versus high reward gameplay.
To those who say, "such and such won't work", I kindly point out to you how the easy alternative isn't working either. Pantheon won't be for everyone, but please spare us your prophesying when you don't even seem to have a handle on what does and doesn't work in games today.
I have to agree with Nanfoodle on this. From my experiences in EQ1, what it actually did, was make more scared and frightened players, not better ones.
Effectively, many people shied away from any type of challenge(outside of raids) or risk because they were afraid there may be a chance of death. I can't even count the number of times in EQ I'd pull a bunch of mobs to a group and see people freak out because it wasn't a risk-free safe pull.
I say, make the mobs harder and require more teamwork, but leave the harsh death penalties in the past. If enemies are designed the correct way and require actual grouping synergy, then players will become better through natural experience and there's no need for compounding it with brutal ancient death mechanics.
To summarize: Developers should focus more on mobs that brutalize, and less on brutalizing the players directly.
Honestly, that had more to do with the possibility of losing your items than it had to do with the XP penalty. I played EQ extensively, over 4000 hours, was in many different guilds, etc. I really rarely encountered a situation where a person denied a group because they were worried about XP loss. I however did have people deny raids and some of the harder groups because they were worried about spending 4 hours getting back to their corpse.
This is one of the reasons I proposed that pantheon have a similar setup later EQ as far as corpse retrieval, in so much as that after a period of time, lets say 12-48 hours, your corpse would pop up in a graveyard.
It didn't remove the penalty of death, but it did make it so if someone was going to have a situation where they knew for a fact it was going to take hours upon hours to get back to their corpse, they could essentially just call it a day, and go grab their stuff tomorrow or whatever. This is enough of an incentive to keep the risks of death relevant, but not to the extreme detriment of causing ragequits.
For example I had a buddy who was trying to run from Halas to Qeynos and died in Blackburrow, spent several hours trying to get his corpse, died a bunch more times, and just quit. Eventually I talked him back into just making a new character, gave him some items to get him back on track, and he ultimately enjoyed the game. But these types of experiences are just bad overall, there really isn't a plus side.
Another examples is my guild had done a Fear raid, had CT pop on top of us, and wipe the entire group. Because our corpses were literally under CT, any real level of corpse retrieval was just about impossible, and we were incapable of killing CT.
I ended up getting to having less than 24 hours where I was going to have my corpse poof and lose all of my stuff (at the time EQ had a 7 day corpse rot timer). Thankfully things got so desperate that a guild called Afterlife took time out of their day to get some people together, and to go get our corpses for us.
However, had they not done that, my entire guild would have lost all of their equipment. You can imagine how many people would have just quit at that point.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I think there's two schools of thought on XP loss death penalties. The first, we see in games like EQ and FFXI where XP loss results from death and can even delevel you. The other is at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum. Bioware, for example, stated their philosophy when SWTOR was in development. They preferred a very forgiving death penalty so that the encounters could be harder. In other words, they didn't want to penalize a player for attempting multiple strategies or approaches.
I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle, myself. Death should be meaningful, but with the very real possibility of death during the run back, a chain death XP loss scenario might have me rage-quitting like I haven't since . . . well, FFXI. I say keep the XP loss, but if a player can recover their tombstone / corpse, then that penalty should be entirely negated. Obviously, a second death before recovery would result in a total loss of XP from the first, and so on. At the very least, one should NEVER lose max level due to a death. I'm actually OK with it during leveling as typically your XP gain will far outshine the losses for death during a leveling session. If it doesn't, then your group was doomed to fail anyway. Losing a level after cap however, only serves to discourage players, and in the long run, could severely limit the content devs are able to release due to a necessary limited difficulty.
Well I for one love xp hits for death and long leveling.I do not want a power leveling type of game,where some dude yaps out in a couple days I'm level 50 or what ever the maximum is .Miss EQ1 days of everyone in raid had to do the key quests to get in was awesome times. If you don't like long quests and slow leveling types of games get over it and move along. I'm all for it and btw I work 45 hrs a week at a job and have a household to look after.And I do agree with some of the others that posted about it does make you a better player .
Well I for one love xp hits for death and long leveling.I do not want a power leveling type of game,where some dude yaps out in a couple days I'm level 50 or what ever the maximum is .Miss EQ1 days of everyone in raid had to do the key quests to get in was awesome times. If you don't like long quests and slow leveling types of games get over it and move along. I'm all for it and btw I work 45 hrs a week at a job and have a household to look after.And I do agree with some of the others that posted about it does make you a better player .
I like it too but I don't know if it makes us better players. I liken it to climbers who're freestyle--the risk taker ones. No ropes. No high tech gear. The most extreme will climb cliffs with their bare hands, evne hanging from outcroppings of rock hundreds of feet from what would be a certain death. Why do they do it? Many of them don't do it for the risk, but some do. Nothing else makes htem feel more alive. To hold your life in your hands. All you have to do is take one step forward or remove a finger and you're dead. But you don't. Your heart is racing. Nothing else will wake you up more than that!
Personally I think games should try to have some content or servers or classes where consequences are higher. But the rewards should only apply to them or their server, not to everybody. Players who don't want the additional consequences should not feel they're losing anything by avoiding it. Maybe some classes are flagged for it. But a means would have to be found to balance it, so it doesn't conflict with the rest of the game. If a player has the flag, death is much worse. And so on. The only reward would be a title.
This is all very tricky. Hard to get right. And unpopular.
It's like in those games where you can't fall off the cliff because of an invisible wall. Since it's not always easy to prevent someone from falling off a cliff ONLY when they couldn't make a choice to avoid it, games usually either end up on two extremes. One allows you to fall off and the other has invisible walls everywhere. Invisible walls are the most popular by far.
It's C&C. A common term in RPGs. The probem with C&C is sometimes a player doesn't know or can't know they're making a bad choice. So they get mad when they suffer a penalty or hard hitting consequence--which is understandable. For example, if you're killing in Splitpaw and a train plows into your group, killing you, you feel somewhat cheated by the game because you couldn't have seen it coming. This is hte reason most games are conservative. It's just too hard to make sure every player finds a perfect balance between failure and success, or what htey can and can't do to create desired outcomes.
Example of the problem: A trap on the ground you can't see. You step on it and--being already weak--die. This means you couldn't make a choice to avoid it because you couldn't see it. A consequence without a choice! This is universally a frustrating experience for anyone. Games try to either make hte trap at least halfway visible so you have a chance to avoid it or they make the damage it inflicts low. The most common answer is to make the damage low because--for whatever reason--making the trap perfect is too much trouble and different players will have different aptitudes avoiding it. If the trap is too visible it's--once again--a consequence without a choice!
That can apply to anything, not just traps. It could apply to the positioning of monsters or character development, for instance.
EDIT: I was one of those new players who "stumbled" into the Qeynos sewers (or otherwise the rogues guild) and fell through the invsible ground and died. Try that in a modern MMO. Watch it get removed immediately (in Alpha). But do keep in mind the entrance to the underground was an invisible wall in the tavern. So it's not like every player who passed through Qeynos experienced it. Lol, those sewers were mazes. Losing a corpse was possible. Between all the invisible walls, water passages and twists and turns and high level monsters. There were many places I never saw for years and years, maybe still haven't.
Too harsh death of penalties cause groups to suffer, and gets other players mad at the guy all the time.
If it takes someone too long to come back, groups get angered from unneeded downtime.
In reaction , we all (players as well as devs), moved on from those things years ago. Make the player fight the world, make it hell to do, but don't make them fight the game. That's the essential difference between challenge and tedium.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I just have top say one thing because well i want the best game experience i can get. I don't like Raids,imo they are never necessary and will alienate a lot of players all the time.
Sure you can get a large guild and organize one but not whenever you want and some players will simply not be able to make it and WILL feel extremely left out.I have a long history in this type of gaming and i have seen YES a lot of happy faces when and if all can make it but there is also a lot of discouraged players when they can't.
At least with group only content 4/5/6 man groups,it is much easier to get enough players together from all tine zones to do any content,IF the content allows it and Raids do not.
Even if you just look at last nights video,that was no raid,what if you could not do anything without a raid last night?Yes of course obviously i understand there are other things to do,i am talking specifically about alienating players from certain or some content.
The other point is that in gaming or guild type Raid content,it is a never ending forward movement,anyone that missed last weeks Raid content will miss out forever because next week is likely a higher level/tier raid.It is just a content idea that causes a lot of problem which is not needed when players just want to have fun,my point keep it to 6 man groups.
With regard to raids, I agree 90%. I'm not a huge fan of Raids being a regular occurance in MMO's. I don't hate them. I think they can be fun when done on a case by case basis. What I hate is the social commitment required. There was a point where guilds were deciding membership based on how much of your free time you dedicated to raiding. If you weren't putting in at least 25 hours a week, you were booted. Talk about anti-social!
Personally I think there is way more fun to be had while mixing risk and reward with a six person group than there ever is with a 40 person group. Lets face it, once you get the dance steps down, a Raid is pretty much trivialized. Now it's just a time sink and no fun at all.
Make raids world events! Make them dynamic! Make them a big deal and make it so all players can partake, not just one guild because they stomped their feet and said "First!".
The required daily raiding (5+ hours at least) was what made me leave EQ and WoW in the first place. I have kids and a social life. I have shi.....er...stuff to do! Besides, less time raiding is more time players being able to interact and enjoy the game. People don't stick around because they played 6 hours a day in a large group, not being able to speak unless spoken to and doing the same boring stuff over and over, at least not wholly for this reason. People stick with an MMO because of the friends they make and the fun they have. Gathering mats for tradeskilling, camping certain spawns for epic quests, grinding out exp and trying to avoid certain death. I've not experienced that since EQ because every MMO since EQ has focused solely on Raiding as being the end game. I think we can all agree that the EQ/WoW raiding model has been beaten to death?
Too harsh death of penalties cause groups to suffer, and gets other players mad at the guy all the time.
If it takes someone too long to come back, groups get angered from unneeded downtime.
In reaction , we all (players as well as devs), moved on from those things years ago. Make the player fight the world, make it hell to do, but don't make them fight the game. That's the essential difference between challenge and tedium.
They can do other things than make the group suffer. Like
- major weapons damage to your favorite weapons making players carry extra weapons as back up.
- a simple 30 sec timer to re spawn.
- EXP loss
Things to not piss off the group. Stuff to make the player say.....I have to get better, or I have to be more careful in my actions.......Pissing off your groups makes players feel like quitting an mmo, when all they need to do is work it out on becoming better !
Too harsh death of penalties cause groups to suffer, and gets other players mad at the guy all the time.
If it takes someone too long to come back, groups get angered from unneeded downtime.
In reaction , we all (players as well as devs), moved on from those things years ago. Make the player fight the world, make it hell to do, but don't make them fight the game. That's the essential difference between challenge and tedium.
They can do other things than make the group suffer. Like
- major weapons damage to your favorite weapons making players carry extra weapons as back up.
- a simple 30 sec timer to re spawn.
- EXP loss
Things to not piss off the group. Stuff to make the player say.....I have to get better, or I have to be more careful in my actions.......Pissing off your groups makes players feel like quitting an mmo, when all they need to do is work it out on becoming better !
I agree, in combination with long treks things like weapons/gear damage, some type of healing needed (negative stats on death IE low strength, mana etc) , rebuffing, etc...equates to plenty of downtime.. Which can be even more punishing in combination with the environment itself. Mob respawn/reset, other players (if there is PVP) etc.. All of that serves just fine as a deterrent to dying, as well as fuel to get better.. rather than losing systematic progress like XP/levels.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I just have top say one thing because well i want the best game experience i can get. I don't like Raids,imo they are never necessary and will alienate a lot of players all the time.
Sure you can get a large guild and organize one but not whenever you want and some players will simply not be able to make it and WILL feel extremely left out.I have a long history in this type of gaming and i have seen YES a lot of happy faces when and if all can make it but there is also a lot of discouraged players when they can't.
At least with group only content 4/5/6 man groups,it is much easier to get enough players together from all tine zones to do any content,IF the content allows it and Raids do not.
Even if you just look at last nights video,that was no raid,what if you could not do anything without a raid last night?Yes of course obviously i understand there are other things to do,i am talking specifically about alienating players from certain or some content.
The other point is that in gaming or guild type Raid content,it is a never ending forward movement,anyone that missed last weeks Raid content will miss out forever because next week is likely a higher level/tier raid.It is just a content idea that causes a lot of problem which is not needed when players just want to have fun,my point keep it to 6 man groups.
Just as not every game can be designed to suit every player, so not every system in a game can suit every player's preferences or capabilities.
Eliminating systems so "people don't feel left out" is silly, especially since, ultimately, no one's "leaving them out" but themselves.
After all, there are going to be people who aren't really interested, or perhaps have difficulty grasping certain concepts in a crafting system. Should they not include crafting so those people don't feel left out?
Some people don't work well in groups, being more lone-wolf types and prefer to play by themselves. Should they not include group content so those people don't feel left out?
Some people have difficulty understanding player-driven market systems, or figuring out how to play and benefit from them. They have no interest in learning them. Should the devs alter the market system so those people don't feel left out?
It's just another take of the whole "If I don't like or can't do it, no one else should be able to either" mentality. It's ultimately a very self-centered point-of-view. In my humble opinion, those who feel any given content shouldn't exist for anyone else because it doesn't suit them in some way need to get over themselves and realize they and their preferences are not the center of anyone else's universe.
I'm not particularly interested in raids. Never have been, in any MMO. Yet, I can appreciate that others do, and I enjoy watching videos, or hearing discussions about those experiences, seeing the coordination and such that goes into completing them. And of course, if at any time I feel I'd like to get into it, I need only make the effort and do what's needed to participate as well. Again, nothing's stopping me, but me. And if I don't? That's fine, too. I'm not being left out. I'm choosing not to participate.
On that note, the idea that people with busy lives can't do raiding is nonsense. It's been proven untrue many times. I've known plenty of people with families, full-time jobs/careers, businesses - even other hobbies outside of gaming. They still raided, and had their group they met up with once or twice a week to do that content. An old friend of mine had a wife, child, dog, full-time job, etc... He got further and accomplished more in FFXI than I did, and I was single with all the time in the world outside of my job. He completed all of CoP (pre-nerfs), all of Aht Urghan, had a regular Sky group, etc. He played at odd times, but still managed to put together a group who stuck it out and saw it through.
So I don't buy it when people say "my life is just too busy". If there's time to play the game *at all*, there's time to arrange a raid group and get those things done. People just don't want the responsibility of scheduling their game time around their other priorities, and would rather the devs make it so they don't have to. It's not a matter of "not enough time". It's a matter of "poor time management".
Overall, someone feeling left out of "x" content is not the developer's doing - they're not physically stopping that person from participating if they're interested and motivated enough. The individual is the one keeping themselves from doing that content, and that's not the dev's problem or responsibility. I realize certain other devs of certain other MMOs have gone out of their way to make these people feel otherwise, but that's because those other MMOs are literally reaching for the lowest common denominator, the largest possible playerbase.
A MMO that's focused on a certain type of experience, targeted at certain types of players, needn't worry about that, and this seems to be the direction Pantheon is taking, which is a very good thing. In the face of what I'm sure will be a wave of people demanding everything about Pantheon be changed to be "more like WoW", "more like FFXIV", with cries for "faster!", "easier!", "less punishing!", "more soloable!", "more reward!", "less time/effort!" - I hope its devs stand firm and simply say "Sorry, this isn't that kind of MMO".
Well I for one love xp hits for death and long leveling.I do not want a power leveling type of game,where some dude yaps out in a couple days I'm level 50 or what ever the maximum is .Miss EQ1 days of everyone in raid had to do the key quests to get in was awesome times. If you don't like long quests and slow leveling types of games get over it and move along. I'm all for it and btw I work 45 hrs a week at a job and have a household to look after.And I do agree with some of the others that posted about it does make you a better player .
snip
It's like in those games where you can't fall off the cliff because of an invisible wall. Since it's not always easy to prevent someone from falling off a cliff ONLY when they couldn't make a choice to avoid it, games usually either end up on two extremes. One allows you to fall off and the other has invisible walls everywhere. Invisible walls are the most popular by far.
It's C&C. A common term in RPGs. The probem with C&C is sometimes a player doesn't know or can't know they're making a bad choice. So they get mad when they suffer a penalty or hard hitting consequence--which is understandable. For example, if you're killing in Splitpaw and a train plows into your group, killing you, you feel somewhat cheated by the game because you couldn't have seen it coming. This is hte reason most games are conservative. It's just too hard to make sure every player finds a perfect balance between failure and success, or what htey can and can't do to create desired outcomes.
The thing is, the vast majority of the time, you can avoid it. If you truly can't, thats simply bad mechanics. I don't consider dying to a train an unavoidable death. I very rarely died to trains, because I would not allow my group to stay in the path of them. Sometimes you would, because your group was unknowledgeable or lazy, and you suffered for it. For instance, fighting near a zone out was always a risk. Parking a group in the main hallway of a dungeon, always a risk. It was up to the player to learn to avoid those areas. Otherwise, you suffer the consequences.
Lastly, things are not always fair in life. That was part of the appeal of older MMOs. You didn't get your personal instance of a dungeon just because people were occupying a popular camp. You didn't necessarily win that prized item, just because you spent an entire day camping it. Those are the things that actually made your achievements rewarding. I believe there are millions of people who once loved mmos who no longer play them due to a lack of such things.
Watching that stream made me want to turn back the clock. I never did play EQ1, but vanguard was the most fun I had in a game by far. The only thing that I would have changed about Vanguard was a button to turn off xp so I wouldn't out lvl any dungeons.
They actually put that in at one point. It was a buff available to everybody that gave you -100% XP.
Up to this point I had about half an eye on Pantheon. I was never an EQ player, so the nostalgia button doesn't do anything for me. And I'm not sure the old school gameplay will really work for me. But I loved Vanguard, and what I saw on the stream impressed me. It's clearly not ready, but it's just as clearly come a LONG way.
My wife watched the video too and when she hear XP Loss she said hell no. She played AA and hated loosen levels. Me I played UO and FFXI and I can tell you if you think harsh Death penalties will make better players it will just do 2 things. Make people quit and make people not even try to play the game. While yes Pantheon is a niche game. Too many of these niche games are trying to copy old school ideas that kept many people away from these games. In todays MMO world you cannot be that exclusive.
Hell I had several friends watch a few who played UO, EQ, or FFXI and even they were like.... Yea no thanks I am not doing corpse runs and EXP loss. But most of them did say if they have to spend any length of time learning a boss fight like in FFXI, EQ1, or even Vanilla WOW the death penalties will keep people from even being involved.
Yet numerous MMORPGs maintained 10s, even 100s of thousands of players for a decade or longer, even with a death penalty/xp loss in place. Even as newer MMOs with lower, or no penalties cropped up around them. Some of them are still going and have a player base. Clearly it wasn't as big a problem for many others as it is for you or your wife. You should really avoid trying to use yourself, or your wife, or anyone else you know as the standard bearer of "what people will accept or enjoy".
As for people not playing or walking away from MMOs... People have cited everything from the graphics, or the animations, or the combat system, or the crafting, or not enough RP elements, etc as reasons for not playing, or not staying. There's a point in there, and I'm sure I don't have to explain it.
So, perhaps the conclusion to draw from it is Pantheon may not be for you or your wife, but it will certainly be for plenty of others. And that's fine, as it happens to fall perfectly in line with VR's view that MMORPGs should focus on a core type of player, seeking specific kinds of experiences in their MMORPGs, rather than trying to "appeal to everyone".
Also, death penalties absolutely do make better players, I'd say objectively so. Even the crappier players in a MMO with a DP are better than those in MMOs with out it. Why? Because death penalties suck - which is exactly the point of them - people want to avoid them, and so they are more careful in how they play.
If you realize trying to bash through a brick wall with your head is getting you nowhere, but leaving you with welts and headaches and making your head bleed... you don't say "Well, clearly they need to make this wall out of a softer material so I don't injure myself while using my head to break through it". You realize, "hmm.. okay.. clearly, smashing my head into this wall is not going to work, and it's messing me up. I need to find another way to break through, or get around it."
That's the purpose death penalties serve. It's not to arbitrarily punish players for failing. It's to make them play more carefully and strategically, so they don't die in the first place. Yes dying sucks... because you're not supposed to die!
Also, in MMOs without death penalties, players don't play better because they don't have to. Doesn't matter if they die 10 times to some enemy because they just keep running in face first without thinking it through. Why bother being careful when there's no penalty for failing to do so?
Too harsh death of penalties cause groups to suffer, and gets other players mad at the guy all the time.
If it takes someone too long to come back, groups get angered from unneeded downtime.
In reaction , we all (players as well as devs), moved on from those things years ago. Make the player fight the world, make it hell to do, but don't make them fight the game. That's the essential difference between challenge and tedium.
They can do other things than make the group suffer. Like
- major weapons damage to your favorite weapons making players carry extra weapons as back up.
- a simple 30 sec timer to re spawn.
- EXP loss
Things to not piss off the group. Stuff to make the player say.....I have to get better, or I have to be more careful in my actions.......Pissing off your groups makes players feel like quitting an mmo, when all they need to do is work it out on becoming better !
I agree, in combination with long treks things like weapons/gear damage, some type of healing needed (negative stats on death IE low strength, mana etc) , rebuffing, etc...equates to plenty of downtime.. Which can be even more punishing in combination with the environment itself. Mob respawn/reset, other players (if there is PVP) etc.. All of that serves just fine as a deterrent to dying, as well as fuel to get better.. rather than losing systematic progress like XP/levels.
100% agree...
Other side of it is time. Games like this require time to make a balanced team. LF-Healer, LF-Tank, 20-30 min later you have a team. Your team moves out and starts its trek to it goal. Few deaths here and there and then you reach your goal. Fighting a boss your team chain wipes a few times leaning the fight. People leave the team because they dont want to risk any more exp loss. Now you need to fight your way back down, spend 30 min to a few hours looking for new team mates. I have even seen people camp in the middle of a fight because it was not going well to avoid exp loss.
EXP loss only breaks up teams. Stops people to taking risks and trying new approaches. EXP loss is a lazy mechanic to make death meaningful. There are so many ways this can be done without the need to add EXP loss. Also in the end, people learn from mistakes. EXP loss makes no sense in the face of that.
Well I for one love xp hits for death and long leveling.I do not want a power leveling type of game,where some dude yaps out in a couple days I'm level 50 or what ever the maximum is .Miss EQ1 days of everyone in raid had to do the key quests to get in was awesome times. If you don't like long quests and slow leveling types of games get over it and move along. I'm all for it and btw I work 45 hrs a week at a job and have a household to look after.And I do agree with some of the others that posted about it does make you a better player .
snip
It's like in those games where you can't fall off the cliff because of an invisible wall. Since it's not always easy to prevent someone from falling off a cliff ONLY when they couldn't make a choice to avoid it, games usually either end up on two extremes. One allows you to fall off and the other has invisible walls everywhere. Invisible walls are the most popular by far.
It's C&C. A common term in RPGs. The probem with C&C is sometimes a player doesn't know or can't know they're making a bad choice. So they get mad when they suffer a penalty or hard hitting consequence--which is understandable. For example, if you're killing in Splitpaw and a train plows into your group, killing you, you feel somewhat cheated by the game because you couldn't have seen it coming. This is hte reason most games are conservative. It's just too hard to make sure every player finds a perfect balance between failure and success, or what htey can and can't do to create desired outcomes.
The thing is, the vast majority of the time, you can avoid it. If you truly can't, thats simply bad mechanics. I don't consider dying to a train an unavoidable death. I very rarely died to trains, because I would not allow my group to stay in the path of them. Sometimes you would, because your group was unknowledgeable or lazy, and you suffered for it. For instance, fighting near a zone out was always a risk. Parking a group in the main hallway of a dungeon, always a risk. It was up to the player to learn to avoid those areas. Otherwise, you suffer the consequences.
Lastly, things are not always fair in life. That was part of the appeal of older MMOs. You didn't get your personal instance of a dungeon just because people were occupying a popular camp. You didn't necessarily win that prized item, just because you spent an entire day camping it. Those are the things that actually made your achievements rewarding. I believe there are millions of people who once loved mmos who no longer play them due to a lack of such things.
You either didnt play EQ1 or you are forgetting. Walking into a dungeon there could be a train just waiting at the zone. More popular the dungeon, playing at peak time. The bigger the risk this would happen. I have seen players train teams to get them to leave a camp. This happened often. I have even seen FD classes trying to get somewhere FDing as they go messing up an entire zone. Killing many teams of people.
This does not even take into account teams wiping because someone crashed, people just camping in the middle of a pull because they were done for the night or had died to many times. Game lag killing a team. EXP loss from death is just not something needed any more. Death penalties can be added so many other smarter ways.
Watching that stream made me want to turn back the clock. I never did play EQ1, but vanguard was the most fun I had in a game by far. The only thing that I would have changed about Vanguard was a button to turn off xp so I wouldn't out lvl any dungeons.
They actually put that in at one point. It was a buff available to everybody that gave you -100% XP.
Up to this point I had about half an eye on Pantheon. I was never an EQ player, so the nostalgia button doesn't do anything for me. And I'm not sure the old school gameplay will really work for me. But I loved Vanguard, and what I saw on the stream impressed me. It's clearly not ready, but it's just as clearly come a LONG way.
My wife watched the video too and when she hear XP Loss she said hell no. She played AA and hated loosen levels. Me I played UO and FFXI and I can tell you if you think harsh Death penalties will make better players it will just do 2 things. Make people quit and make people not even try to play the game. While yes Pantheon is a niche game. Too many of these niche games are trying to copy old school ideas that kept many people away from these games. In todays MMO world you cannot be that exclusive.
Hell I had several friends watch a few who played UO, EQ, or FFXI and even they were like.... Yea no thanks I am not doing corpse runs and EXP loss. But most of them did say if they have to spend any length of time learning a boss fight like in FFXI, EQ1, or even Vanilla WOW the death penalties will keep people from even being involved.
Yet numerous MMORPGs maintained 10s, even 100s of thousands of players for a decade or longer, even with a death penalty/xp loss in place. Even as newer MMOs with lower, or no penalties cropped up around them. Some of them are still going and have a player base. Clearly it wasn't as big a problem for many others as it is for you or your wife. You should really avoid trying to use yourself, or your wife, or anyone else you know as the standard bearer of "what people will accept or enjoy".
As for people not playing or walking away from MMOs... People have cited everything from the graphics, or the animations, or the combat system, or the crafting, or not enough RP elements, etc as reasons for not playing, or not staying. There's a point in there, and I'm sure I don't have to explain it.
So, perhaps the conclusion to draw from it is Pantheon may not be for you or your wife, but it will certainly be for plenty of others. And that's fine, as it happens to fall perfectly in line with VR's view that MMORPGs should focus on a core type of player, seeking specific kinds of experiences in their MMORPGs, rather than trying to "appeal to everyone".
Also, death penalties absolutely do make better players, I'd say objectively so. Even the crappier players in a MMO with a DP are better than those in MMOs with out it. Why? Because death penalties suck - which is exactly the point of them - people want to avoid them, and so they are more careful in how they play.
If you realize trying to bash through a brick wall with your head is getting you nowhere, but leaving you with welts and headaches and making your head bleed... you don't say "Well, clearly they need to make this wall out of a softer material so I don't injure myself while using my head to break through it". You realize, "hmm.. okay.. clearly, smashing my head into this wall is not going to work, and it's messing me up. I need to find another way to break through, or get around it."
That's the purpose death penalties serve. It's not to arbitrarily punish players for failing. It's to make them play more carefully and strategically, so they don't die in the first place. Yes dying sucks... because you're not supposed to die!
Also, in MMOs without death penalties, players don't play better because they don't have to. Doesn't matter if they die 10 times to some enemy because they just keep running in face first without thinking it through. Why bother being careful when there's no penalty for failing to do so?
Finally, saying that
No point in saying much more than the above, people who don't like the death system can play many of the other MMOs that have no risk vs reward.
Good thing Pantheon is a niche game but now EQN has gone me will have the people who like the changes they were going to make to the EQ legacy.
Brad and Co will stick to there vision of Pantheon.
Comments
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There is a huge disconnect between what Forum goers like me want and what people like my wife wants who has posted on any forum a whole 10 times, And that was to jump into a conversation she wanted to be a part of or my 2 best gaming friends who only posted on MMO Technical help for that game forum. Most people dont post on a forum to give their opinions. They just will or will not spend their money.
Now in the defense of Pantheon. The game should do what it wants because its what the developers love and what they feel passionate about they should TRY To do. It does not mean they will be successful but there is no reason to stop them. Right now if my group of friends is not interested either am I. I have the right to say that.
Much of the time penalty will be mitigated a matter of weeks into the game. Many classes will, no doubt, have revive and resurrect types of spells to prevent players from running back. As such, a loss of experience is necessary. There will still be full wipes and less convenient places to do corpse recoveries, but that is part of high risk versus high reward gameplay.
To those who say, "such and such won't work", I kindly point out to you how the easy alternative isn't working either. Pantheon won't be for everyone, but please spare us your prophesying when you don't even seem to have a handle on what does and doesn't work in games today.
Lets see your Battle Stations /r/battlestations
Battle Station
Losing XP on death is one of the core mechanics of making death actually be meaningful. People need to fear death in an MMO.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I seriously can't imagine they will do all the things that nearly everyone hated. I'd be really surprised if they have level loss + long corpse runs + no map, etc.
They may not show quest objective markers and such, but I am quite certain they'll have some type of in-game maps, even if they are low in details or even player-made or something.
And, as for massive death penalties, they don't add anything to a game but frustration/tedium. The amount of people who actually want severe punishments are a pretty small minority. In other words, tacking death penalty onto death penalty for masochists would be developmental suicide in this day and age. I know they aren't aiming for the moon in population, but I assume they would like to actually have more than a couple thousand players.
Personally, I can live with some type of xp debt pool, but I wouldn't play a level-centric game with level loss ever again. Especially if you could lose levels on raids and such.
He does have a point about group content to the detriment of raid. However, VR has said in no uncertain terms that raiding will not be the focus of the game.
As to your second point, yes, there is a line to be drawn. But I have argued this in the past. The issue is doing anything to the complete exclusion of one playstyle or another. Or I should say the de facto exclusion. WoW is a great example. The emphasis was so heavily towards solo questing to level that if you grouped and ran dungeons to level you would get completely left in the dust by your friends. I had exactly this happen as me and a buddy went and ran a mid 20's dungeon, and in the 3 or so hours of us running it, our other friend got almost 4 levels ahead of us.
So to be more clear, raiding, soloing, etc, absolutely should exist, and should be a viable path to advancement. However given that the focus of this game is grouping, it should not be the primary or the most efficient form of advancement.
Many people don't realize EQ was this way. You could solo, you could make levels, it wasn't insanely slow, but it was significantly enough slower than grouping that it properly incentivized grouping.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Effectively, many people shied away from any type of challenge(outside of raids) or risk because they were afraid there may be a chance of death. I can't even count the number of times in EQ I'd pull a bunch of mobs to a group and see people freak out because it wasn't a risk-free safe pull.
I say, make the mobs harder and require more teamwork, but leave the harsh death penalties in the past. If enemies are designed the correct way and require actual grouping synergy, then players will become better through natural experience and there's no need for compounding it with brutal ancient death mechanics.
To summarize:
Developers should focus more on mobs that brutalize, and less on brutalizing the players directly.
Honestly, that had more to do with the possibility of losing your items than it had to do with the XP penalty. I played EQ extensively, over 4000 hours, was in many different guilds, etc. I really rarely encountered a situation where a person denied a group because they were worried about XP loss. I however did have people deny raids and some of the harder groups because they were worried about spending 4 hours getting back to their corpse.
This is one of the reasons I proposed that pantheon have a similar setup later EQ as far as corpse retrieval, in so much as that after a period of time, lets say 12-48 hours, your corpse would pop up in a graveyard.
It didn't remove the penalty of death, but it did make it so if someone was going to have a situation where they knew for a fact it was going to take hours upon hours to get back to their corpse, they could essentially just call it a day, and go grab their stuff tomorrow or whatever. This is enough of an incentive to keep the risks of death relevant, but not to the extreme detriment of causing ragequits.
For example I had a buddy who was trying to run from Halas to Qeynos and died in Blackburrow, spent several hours trying to get his corpse, died a bunch more times, and just quit. Eventually I talked him back into just making a new character, gave him some items to get him back on track, and he ultimately enjoyed the game. But these types of experiences are just bad overall, there really isn't a plus side.
Another examples is my guild had done a Fear raid, had CT pop on top of us, and wipe the entire group. Because our corpses were literally under CT, any real level of corpse retrieval was just about impossible, and we were incapable of killing CT.
I ended up getting to having less than 24 hours where I was going to have my corpse poof and lose all of my stuff (at the time EQ had a 7 day corpse rot timer). Thankfully things got so desperate that a guild called Afterlife took time out of their day to get some people together, and to go get our corpses for us.
However, had they not done that, my entire guild would have lost all of their equipment. You can imagine how many people would have just quit at that point.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle, myself. Death should be meaningful, but with the very real possibility of death during the run back, a chain death XP loss scenario might have me rage-quitting like I haven't since . . . well, FFXI. I say keep the XP loss, but if a player can recover their tombstone / corpse, then that penalty should be entirely negated. Obviously, a second death before recovery would result in a total loss of XP from the first, and so on. At the very least, one should NEVER lose max level due to a death. I'm actually OK with it during leveling as typically your XP gain will far outshine the losses for death during a leveling session. If it doesn't, then your group was doomed to fail anyway. Losing a level after cap however, only serves to discourage players, and in the long run, could severely limit the content devs are able to release due to a necessary limited difficulty.
Personally I think games should try to have some content or servers or classes where consequences are higher. But the rewards should only apply to them or their server, not to everybody. Players who don't want the additional consequences should not feel they're losing anything by avoiding it. Maybe some classes are flagged for it. But a means would have to be found to balance it, so it doesn't conflict with the rest of the game. If a player has the flag, death is much worse. And so on. The only reward would be a title.
This is all very tricky. Hard to get right. And unpopular.
It's like in those games where you can't fall off the cliff because of an invisible wall. Since it's not always easy to prevent someone from falling off a cliff ONLY when they couldn't make a choice to avoid it, games usually either end up on two extremes. One allows you to fall off and the other has invisible walls everywhere. Invisible walls are the most popular by far.
It's C&C. A common term in RPGs. The probem with C&C is sometimes a player doesn't know or can't know they're making a bad choice. So they get mad when they suffer a penalty or hard hitting consequence--which is understandable. For example, if you're killing in Splitpaw and a train plows into your group, killing you, you feel somewhat cheated by the game because you couldn't have seen it coming. This is hte reason most games are conservative. It's just too hard to make sure every player finds a perfect balance between failure and success, or what htey can and can't do to create desired outcomes.
Example of the problem: A trap on the ground you can't see. You step on it and--being already weak--die. This means you couldn't make a choice to avoid it because you couldn't see it. A consequence without a choice! This is universally a frustrating experience for anyone. Games try to either make hte trap at least halfway visible so you have a chance to avoid it or they make the damage it inflicts low. The most common answer is to make the damage low because--for whatever reason--making the trap perfect is too much trouble and different players will have different aptitudes avoiding it. If the trap is too visible it's--once again--a consequence without a choice!
That can apply to anything, not just traps. It could apply to the positioning of monsters or character development, for instance.
EDIT: I was one of those new players who "stumbled" into the Qeynos sewers (or otherwise the rogues guild) and fell through the invsible ground and died. Try that in a modern MMO. Watch it get removed immediately (in Alpha). But do keep in mind the entrance to the underground was an invisible wall in the tavern. So it's not like every player who passed through Qeynos experienced it. Lol, those sewers were mazes. Losing a corpse was possible. Between all the invisible walls, water passages and twists and turns and high level monsters. There were many places I never saw for years and years, maybe still haven't.
Too harsh death of penalties cause groups to suffer, and gets other players mad at the guy all the time.
If it takes someone too long to come back, groups get angered from unneeded downtime.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Personally I think there is way more fun to be had while mixing risk and reward with a six person group than there ever is with a 40 person group. Lets face it, once you get the dance steps down, a Raid is pretty much trivialized. Now it's just a time sink and no fun at all.
Make raids world events! Make them dynamic! Make them a big deal and make it so all players can partake, not just one guild because they stomped their feet and said "First!".
The required daily raiding (5+ hours at least) was what made me leave EQ and WoW in the first place. I have kids and a social life. I have shi.....er...stuff to do! Besides, less time raiding is more time players being able to interact and enjoy the game. People don't stick around because they played 6 hours a day in a large group, not being able to speak unless spoken to and doing the same boring stuff over and over, at least not wholly for this reason. People stick with an MMO because of the friends they make and the fun they have. Gathering mats for tradeskilling, camping certain spawns for epic quests, grinding out exp and trying to avoid certain death. I've not experienced that since EQ because every MMO since EQ has focused solely on Raiding as being the end game. I think we can all agree that the EQ/WoW raiding model has been beaten to death?
They can do other things than make the group suffer. Like
- major weapons damage to your favorite weapons making players carry extra weapons as back up.
- a simple 30 sec timer to re spawn.
- EXP loss
Things to not piss off the group. Stuff to make the player say.....I have to get better, or I have to be more careful in my actions.......Pissing off your groups makes players feel like quitting an mmo, when all they need to do is work it out on becoming better !
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Eliminating systems so "people don't feel left out" is silly, especially since, ultimately, no one's "leaving them out" but themselves.
After all, there are going to be people who aren't really interested, or perhaps have difficulty grasping certain concepts in a crafting system. Should they not include crafting so those people don't feel left out?
Some people don't work well in groups, being more lone-wolf types and prefer to play by themselves. Should they not include group content so those people don't feel left out?
Some people have difficulty understanding player-driven market systems, or figuring out how to play and benefit from them. They have no interest in learning them. Should the devs alter the market system so those people don't feel left out?
It's just another take of the whole "If I don't like or can't do it, no one else should be able to either" mentality. It's ultimately a very self-centered point-of-view. In my humble opinion, those who feel any given content shouldn't exist for anyone else because it doesn't suit them in some way need to get over themselves and realize they and their preferences are not the center of anyone else's universe.
I'm not particularly interested in raids. Never have been, in any MMO. Yet, I can appreciate that others do, and I enjoy watching videos, or hearing discussions about those experiences, seeing the coordination and such that goes into completing them. And of course, if at any time I feel I'd like to get into it, I need only make the effort and do what's needed to participate as well. Again, nothing's stopping me, but me. And if I don't? That's fine, too. I'm not being left out. I'm choosing not to participate.
On that note, the idea that people with busy lives can't do raiding is nonsense. It's been proven untrue many times. I've known plenty of people with families, full-time jobs/careers, businesses - even other hobbies outside of gaming. They still raided, and had their group they met up with once or twice a week to do that content. An old friend of mine had a wife, child, dog, full-time job, etc... He got further and accomplished more in FFXI than I did, and I was single with all the time in the world outside of my job. He completed all of CoP (pre-nerfs), all of Aht Urghan, had a regular Sky group, etc. He played at odd times, but still managed to put together a group who stuck it out and saw it through.
So I don't buy it when people say "my life is just too busy". If there's time to play the game *at all*, there's time to arrange a raid group and get those things done. People just don't want the responsibility of scheduling their game time around their other priorities, and would rather the devs make it so they don't have to. It's not a matter of "not enough time". It's a matter of "poor time management".
Overall, someone feeling left out of "x" content is not the developer's doing - they're not physically stopping that person from participating if they're interested and motivated enough. The individual is the one keeping themselves from doing that content, and that's not the dev's problem or responsibility. I realize certain other devs of certain other MMOs have gone out of their way to make these people feel otherwise, but that's because those other MMOs are literally reaching for the lowest common denominator, the largest possible playerbase.
A MMO that's focused on a certain type of experience, targeted at certain types of players, needn't worry about that, and this seems to be the direction Pantheon is taking, which is a very good thing. In the face of what I'm sure will be a wave of people demanding everything about Pantheon be changed to be "more like WoW", "more like FFXIV", with cries for "faster!", "easier!", "less punishing!", "more soloable!", "more reward!", "less time/effort!" - I hope its devs stand firm and simply say "Sorry, this isn't that kind of MMO".
Lastly, things are not always fair in life. That was part of the appeal of older MMOs. You didn't get your personal instance of a dungeon just because people were occupying a popular camp. You didn't necessarily win that prized item, just because you spent an entire day camping it. Those are the things that actually made your achievements rewarding. I believe there are millions of people who once loved mmos who no longer play them due to a lack of such things.
As for people not playing or walking away from MMOs... People have cited everything from the graphics, or the animations, or the combat system, or the crafting, or not enough RP elements, etc as reasons for not playing, or not staying. There's a point in there, and I'm sure I don't have to explain it.
So, perhaps the conclusion to draw from it is Pantheon may not be for you or your wife, but it will certainly be for plenty of others. And that's fine, as it happens to fall perfectly in line with VR's view that MMORPGs should focus on a core type of player, seeking specific kinds of experiences in their MMORPGs, rather than trying to "appeal to everyone".
Also, death penalties absolutely do make better players, I'd say objectively so. Even the crappier players in a MMO with a DP are better than those in MMOs with out it. Why? Because death penalties suck - which is exactly the point of them - people want to avoid them, and so they are more careful in how they play.
If you realize trying to bash through a brick wall with your head is getting you nowhere, but leaving you with welts and headaches and making your head bleed... you don't say "Well, clearly they need to make this wall out of a softer material so I don't injure myself while using my head to break through it". You realize, "hmm.. okay.. clearly, smashing my head into this wall is not going to work, and it's messing me up. I need to find another way to break through, or get around it."
That's the purpose death penalties serve. It's not to arbitrarily punish players for failing. It's to make them play more carefully and strategically, so they don't die in the first place. Yes dying sucks... because you're not supposed to die!
Also, in MMOs without death penalties, players don't play better because they don't have to. Doesn't matter if they die 10 times to some enemy because they just keep running in face first without thinking it through. Why bother being careful when there's no penalty for failing to do so?
Finally, saying that
Other side of it is time. Games like this require time to make a balanced team. LF-Healer, LF-Tank, 20-30 min later you have a team. Your team moves out and starts its trek to it goal. Few deaths here and there and then you reach your goal. Fighting a boss your team chain wipes a few times leaning the fight. People leave the team because they dont want to risk any more exp loss. Now you need to fight your way back down, spend 30 min to a few hours looking for new team mates. I have even seen people camp in the middle of a fight because it was not going well to avoid exp loss.
EXP loss only breaks up teams. Stops people to taking risks and trying new approaches. EXP loss is a lazy mechanic to make death meaningful. There are so many ways this can be done without the need to add EXP loss. Also in the end, people learn from mistakes. EXP loss makes no sense in the face of that.
You either didnt play EQ1 or you are forgetting. Walking into a dungeon there could be a train just waiting at the zone. More popular the dungeon, playing at peak time. The bigger the risk this would happen. I have seen players train teams to get them to leave a camp. This happened often. I have even seen FD classes trying to get somewhere FDing as they go messing up an entire zone. Killing many teams of people.
This does not even take into account teams wiping because someone crashed, people just camping in the middle of a pull because they were done for the night or had died to many times. Game lag killing a team. EXP loss from death is just not something needed any more. Death penalties can be added so many other smarter ways.
Good thing Pantheon is a niche game but now EQN has gone me will have the people who like the changes they were going to make to the EQ legacy.
Brad and Co will stick to there vision of Pantheon.