I really don't understand the controversy here. Part of the fun of EQ early on was traveling across the world. I remember when I was around level 12, I first visited Freeport. I was one of the only erudites in any group I joined. It was almost prestigious at that point to have a low level character from across the world in that region.
That was something unique to older mmorpgs. Instead of focusing on accommodations and making everything accessible, they just created a world which naturally provided players with ways to stand out and be exceptional.
Just this same small group of 2-4 people that have always doubted/had a tough time "understanding" features of Pantheon. Can read through the old thread topics and clearly see its the same names of people who are on here all day making the same similar types of irrational comments we see here lol. Just have to take the good with the bad like any online chat and know when to stop feeding the trolls. Pantheon is going to be a solid game when it's said and done : )
There's a small group of people who aren't taking the word of a company that hasn't yet produced a product. I suppose you could call me one. I tend to make the same type of statements because no one has yet to substantially refute any of the statements I've made. I just don't happen to fall in line with the rest of the group mentality, believing that what has been stated has been shown or attempted. It's happened with almost every MMORPG I've seen -- the pre-game hype doesn't match the delivered functionality.
If you'd like to actually discuss what the detractors are saying, feel free to actually look at the ideas presented and discuss / debate those. That promotes the purpose of a forum -- to discuss ideas. You are indirectly calling people names and questioning their comprehension abilities. Those who are presenting alternative ideas aren't stooping to name-calling. That's happened enough, already, and it doesn't help the discussion.
If you don't like the group of people who question VR's decisions, why do you choose to try to shout them down or insult them? Are you that unsure of your own convictions and beliefs that you are afraid of different opinions and interpretations?
There is a small group that is more repeatedly opinionated or dubious than others, but there is only 1 person that I would not openly converse any topic with. If you have opinions about me or my direction, you are entitled to such, my friend. I know who I am, and I know my intentions are positive and constructive. Taking a non-bias approach, it is blatantly clear one person from the "small group" took a very different/personal approach to this argument than the others. I really have no desire or time to quarrel about our personal differences in opinion anymore.
Let's keep it civil and constructive (I think I've gone out of my way, multiple times to do this, often rewording the same idea just to get immersion across). Even then, there is no "thanks Zuljan, now I have a better idea of what they're attempting to establish with immersion/starting cities" from anyone in this small group. I don't need praise or likes on my comments; I made this account for Pantheon. But my point is, it certainly is not me at the center of what catalyzed into an almost personal argument, completely separate from Pantheon, and, on the contrary, I give credit where its due (regardless of who is saying it) as opposed to many others.
You may be one of those people that always mark "lol" comments or doubt certain aspects of the game, but that is natural and maybe even healthy for the community (forces people to go in depth about a game to try to convince others, which can attract more people). However, when one person draws a line in the sand in many ways, never opening up in ideology after many attempts (albeit everyone else did in some way), and wants to carry on a personal argument spanning multiple days, it is simply counter-intuitive to the progress of this game in its entirety.
This problem with starting cities isn't one I am worried about as I can take my time and have never had an issue even in the old Everquest because I was a wizard but I can totally understand what some people here are trying to say about friends who join a game wanting to game together and I feel the long distances will dampen their enthusiasm.
However the most horrible aspect of Everquest which I sincerely hope never makes it to this game is camping and allowing groups of individuals to claim a spot and camp it for hours and hours. This is simply not right and should have a rule or diminished experience because it defeats the whole purpose of game with a wide open world when people sit on their butt in one place for hours and hours gaining experience. Further like every game when they find something valuable the place will be camped 24/7 and making it worse for others who might want that loot. Currently on Project 1999 this is an absolute blight on the end game experience that only select guilds get to do the best content.
If this is how Pantheon intends to run their servers this is the one thing that will definitely drive me away from this game.
This problem with starting cities isn't one I am worried about as I can take my time and have never had an issue even in the old Everquest because I was a wizard but I can totally understand what some people here are trying to say about friends who join a game wanting to game together and I feel the long distances will dampen their enthusiasm.
However the most horrible aspect of Everquest which I sincerely hope never makes it to this game is camping and allowing groups of individuals to claim a spot and camp it for hours and hours. This is simply not right and should have a rule or diminished experience because it defeats the whole purpose of game with a wide open world when people sit on their butt in one place for hours and hours gaining experience. Further like every game when they find something valuable the place will be camped 24/7 and making it worse for others who might want that loot. Currently on Project 1999 this is an absolute blight on the end game experience that only select guilds get to do the best content.
If this is how Pantheon intends to run their servers this is the one thing that will definitely drive me away from this game.
I'm hoping mobs with awesome drops will have multiple different spawn locations so it would not be possible to camp the same exact location for days on end till it popped. Or at least a good amount of random spawning mobs would be nice. A little surprise would be welcoming
"/guild Guys you won't believe who just spawned in this zone, come quick"
This problem with starting cities isn't one I am worried about as I can take my time and have never had an issue even in the old Everquest because I was a wizard but I can totally understand what some people here are trying to say about friends who join a game wanting to game together and I feel the long distances will dampen their enthusiasm.
However the most horrible aspect of Everquest which I sincerely hope never makes it to this game is camping and allowing groups of individuals to claim a spot and camp it for hours and hours. This is simply not right and should have a rule or diminished experience because it defeats the whole purpose of game with a wide open world when people sit on their butt in one place for hours and hours gaining experience. Further like every game when they find something valuable the place will be camped 24/7 and making it worse for others who might want that loot. Currently on Project 1999 this is an absolute blight on the end game experience that only select guilds get to do the best content.
If this is how Pantheon intends to run their servers this is the one thing that will definitely drive me away from this game.
While I agree that they should encourage more mobility through game mechanics and experience bonuses, I do not think camping should be done away with altogether. Considering the alternatives, it was really the logical solution and a staple of EQ and open world games. It was also a lot of fun for most people.
A pure crawl format just isn't compatible with a non-instanced game.
This problem with starting cities isn't one I am worried about as I can take my time and have never had an issue even in the old Everquest because I was a wizard but I can totally understand what some people here are trying to say about friends who join a game wanting to game together and I feel the long distances will dampen their enthusiasm.
However the most horrible aspect of Everquest which I sincerely hope never makes it to this game is camping and allowing groups of individuals to claim a spot and camp it for hours and hours. This is simply not right and should have a rule or diminished experience because it defeats the whole purpose of game with a wide open world when people sit on their butt in one place for hours and hours gaining experience. Further like every game when they find something valuable the place will be camped 24/7 and making it worse for others who might want that loot. Currently on Project 1999 this is an absolute blight on the end game experience that only select guilds get to do the best content.
If this is how Pantheon intends to run their servers this is the one thing that will definitely drive me away from this game.
This has been a popular topic of discussion on the dev forums for awhile. Most people share your opinion of not wanting to camp mobs (or at least to the extent we had to in EQ). I don't want to camp Lodi for 2 weeks fighting for a ranger epic piece when everyone else just wants to sell the adamantine belt, but as others have pointed out, having no camps at all has its detriments too. Hopefully they can find a balance, maybe separating church and state (make epic piece dropping mobs separate from named treasure/loot mobs, or at least make it to where a long process has to be done to spawn the epic named so it isn't griefed or just killed by guilds clearing everything on the way to a raid).
In the recent stream where they officially announced pre-alpha, they said everything will 100% be open world. But they did say bosses and certain mobs will have built in scripts, to where if you bring a zerg army (there are many other conditions as well), the NPC will flee, despawn (I think they said despawn) or send an unkillable/massive wave of enemies at you. I hope they can come up with unique mechanics like this to serve for camping mobs to change it up a bit. Maybe do something to force people out after a certain time, allowing others to get in etc. Or maybe keep only a handful of the 5-7 day camp mobs for those that really want it, and use a new system for the rest. The old ways seem kind of primitive in retrospect, but it felt so epic finally getting Tolan's or whatever it was you were gunning for for days.
While some camps I agree were terrible in duration, overall I loved the spawn system in EQ (and the many ramifications of that system).
The thrill of spotting a long awaited rare spawn and trying to get your friends to the location in time to down it (race mobs) was fun and exciting to me. I also liked that you could be killing some type of creature and it spawn a "frenzied" version with better loot.
I hated in WoW that the mobs mostly re-spawn in short intervals, so you just stand and wait like getting a bag of carrots at the grocery store. What a buzzkill.
My 2 cents.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
not having to mash a billion buttons and the camps was what made my eq1 time most enjoyed. Chatting and/or pulling or whatever. The social aspect was great in those days, partly due to this. But yeah, it has its downsides aswell.
Agreed, camping is nice for the social aspects sometimes. Maybe they'll have a nice mix of stay put and random spawning mobs.
Personally, I would support the idea of random spawn locations/intervals for named mobs.
Not having a precise time and location for the next spawn goes a long way towards preventing one or two groups from dominating a particular named.
I think the system introduced in Kunark where mobs would spawn throughout a dungeon or a wing of a dungeon was great. Was really hard to lock down a certain named. Also like super rares off of particular common spawns such rune branded girdle off krup knights in sebilis was a great way to give multiple groups a shot at goodies.
Not to say I don't think there's a place and a time for static spawns when it fits surroundings (like a throneroom), but in general, there are ways to make it harder to lock down. Having multiple spawnpoints/triggers/place holders or even random spawnpoints also increases the value of tracker classes.
However the most horrible aspect of Everquest which I sincerely hope never makes it to this game is camping and allowing groups of individuals to claim a spot and camp it for hours and hours. This is simply not right and should have a rule or diminished experience because it defeats the whole purpose of game with a wide open world when people sit on their butt in one place for hours and hours gaining experience. Further like every game when they find something valuable the place will be camped 24/7 and making it worse for others who might want that loot. Currently on Project 1999 this is an absolute blight on the end game experience that only select guilds get to do the best content.
If this is how Pantheon intends to run their servers this is the one thing that will definitely drive me away from this game.
Hi all. I got away from this forum a few weeks back after people were saying that Pantheon is still years from release. I found that a bit depressing and was really only posting here in anticipation of its not too distant launch. I was hoping that the people who were saying that were joking. Do you really think it's going to take that long to finish? If so, I probably won't visit here that often because it only makes me more eager to play. Anyway, I digress...
But I saw this post and had to respond. While camping locations can be frustrating for those who need a particular mob and have trouble getting into the group, I think this is a bit of an overstatement. The first thing I thought about while reading this is that it's pretty rare for an entire group to remain intact for the hours on end you mention above. While it's true there were many times I had to wait for a spot to open at a particular camp, if I was patient, one almost always eventually did. It's also true that a group might remain at a camp for an entire day, but it was likely to undergo so many changes that the members were completely different at the end of the day than they were at the beginning.
The thing that caught my eye in your post was the part about having a rule preventing groups from camping the same spot for hours on end. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that, but if taken at face value, it can't be done in a game; certainly not an MMO. You can't have a DM come along after an hour and say, "Ok, you've been here long enough, it's time to move on."
At the same time, I don't want to downplay your concerns because they're valid and it's likely you meant some sort of in game mechanics to prevent marathon camping. I think some of the ideas posted here have been pretty good. The one about having boss mobs spawn at random locations might do the trick; however, it might also lead to some confusion as a number of groups all try to occupy its various spawn points.
Personally, I found camping pretty boring and tried to do it as little as possible. I preferred joining groups that liked to be on the move and travel deep into dungeons. Not always and option, but I got to know some people who felt the same way.
I really liked the many starting cities in EQ/VG, I went to play Rift after VG and they only had 2 starting cities, they made a story for the reason why, but it felt like they did it to make everything easier for them. I see limited starting places in a lot of games, and it makes sense for the developer, but it doesn't maximize the enjoyment for me. I like having areas more unique to your race.
I remember being a dark elf necro when I started EQ and having to make the run to Qeynos and the barbarian area (having mental block on the name). I did faction work to try to not be kos to wandering NPCs that could kill me, guards and such. I had like 2 guards in Qeynos that would attack me being on some weird faction, the rest of the guards would leave me alone. Killing skeletons at lower level in the barbarian land for my bone chips to summon skeletons. I liked the roaming higher power mobs that would kill you, if you weren't on the lookout and paying attention.
I look forward to this game, and I look forward to a sub based, promise of no p2w cash shop. I am playing Archeage right now and it is a mess in many ways.
Multiple starting cities is important for many reasons. Having a cultural feel for your character, having more replayability options, and not least having a dispersed population early in the game so that there isnt 1 or 2 hubs so overpopulated with newbies that framerate is crap and even if you could move around there's nothing to fight because it's all perma-dead.
I also think there's value in having that dangerous separation by geography between starting locations. Yes, there's a rougher time early on meeting up with your friends. But those early highly dangerous runs in EQ to gather our group together taught every single one of us a lasting respect for the environment, and a sense of fear that really reinforced our immersion in the game.
In a game like Pantheon that means to roll back the encroachment of hand-holding in the MMO genre, setting that expectation early and firmly is a good introduction, IMO. It might turn some off, but I believe it will more completely draw in many more.
I dont know exactly how it will be in Patheon but I expect them to have one starter city per race.
Freely choosing the starter city would be a cool feature though.
Personally I hope the starter cities themselves will be relatively short, then you'll go to the newbie area of the continent, and then you'll have to do big travels to the various areas for your level on the various continents.
Freely choosing the starter city would be a cool feature though.
You know, that is a good idea. It would reconcile both issues at once, allowing friends of different races to start in the same city without having to provide instant travel between cities. I mean nothing says you should have to start the game in the city of your race.
The only restriction would be faction. You could not start in a city where you are KOS. So you and your friend would still have to make characters that are on the same faction with one another.
Freely choosing the starter city would be a cool feature though.
You know, that is a good idea. It would reconcile both issues at once, allowing friends of different races to start in the same city without having to provide instant travel between cities. I mean nothing says you should have to start the game in the city of your race.
The only restriction would be faction. You could not start in a city where you are KOS. So you and your friend would still have to make characters that are on the same faction with one another.
I could see where this could work, but I think if you are starting in a evil city, you should be KOS in good cities, like the inhabitants of the city you are in, but also be barely non-kos in the evil city you are starting in....Kind of like a outsider. So if you were say a barbarian in EQ1 and started in the dark elf city Neriak, you would be kos in the barbarian city Halas, like you were a traitor, and you would need to gain faction. I was the opposite and EQ, played a Dark Elf and I got faction in Qeynos/Halas so roaming npcs would not attack me, I could use the bank, and play with friends (I had to do the run to do it in EQ1 though).
Freely choosing the starter city would be a cool feature though.
You know, that is a good idea. It would reconcile both issues at once, allowing friends of different races to start in the same city without having to provide instant travel between cities. I mean nothing says you should have to start the game in the city of your race.
The only restriction would be faction. You could not start in a city where you are KOS. So you and your friend would still have to make characters that are on the same faction with one another.
I could see where this could work, but I think if you are starting in a evil city, you should be KOS in good cities, like the inhabitants of the city you are in, but also be barely non-kos in the evil city you are starting in....Kind of like a outsider. So if you were say a barbarian in EQ1 and started in the dark elf city Neriak, you would be kos in the barbarian city Halas, like you were a traitor, and you would need to gain faction. I was the opposite and EQ, played a Dark Elf and I got faction in Qeynos/Halas so roaming npcs would not attack me, I could use the bank, and play with friends (I had to do the run to do it in EQ1 though).
Functionally, choosing the starting city is identical to a one-time transport event, which was discussed (rather, shouted down) earlier. It's a good idea, either way.
The fiction just changes from a 'character grew up here' to 'character comes here'. As long as the character's family isn't represented in the game (NPC parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, siblings, etc. which would be incredibly neat), there's no tie to the starting city. I actually think I like the 'refugee' over the 'born here' lore better, because it gives a bit more latitude for role-playing. Starting point wouldn't need to be at the singular trainer's feet (as in EQ1), but at the outskirts of the city. Really simple to achieve.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Comments
Let's keep it civil and constructive (I think I've gone out of my way, multiple times to do this, often rewording the same idea just to get immersion across). Even then, there is no "thanks Zuljan, now I have a better idea of what they're attempting to establish with immersion/starting cities" from anyone in this small group. I don't need praise or likes on my comments; I made this account for Pantheon. But my point is, it certainly is not me at the center of what catalyzed into an almost personal argument, completely separate from Pantheon, and, on the contrary, I give credit where its due (regardless of who is saying it) as opposed to many others.
You may be one of those people that always mark "lol" comments or doubt certain aspects of the game, but that is natural and maybe even healthy for the community (forces people to go in depth about a game to try to convince others, which can attract more people). However, when one person draws a line in the sand in many ways, never opening up in ideology after many attempts (albeit everyone else did in some way), and wants to carry on a personal argument spanning multiple days, it is simply counter-intuitive to the progress of this game in its entirety.
However the most horrible aspect of Everquest which I sincerely hope never makes it to this game is camping and allowing groups of individuals to claim a spot and camp it for hours and hours. This is simply not right and should have a rule or diminished experience because it defeats the whole purpose of game with a wide open world when people sit on their butt in one place for hours and hours gaining experience. Further like every game when they find something valuable the place will be camped 24/7 and making it worse for others who might want that loot. Currently on Project 1999 this is an absolute blight on the end game experience that only select guilds get to do the best content.
If this is how Pantheon intends to run their servers this is the one thing that will definitely drive me away from this game.
"/guild Guys you won't believe who just spawned in this zone, come quick"
A pure crawl format just isn't compatible with a non-instanced game.
In the recent stream where they officially announced pre-alpha, they said everything will 100% be open world. But they did say bosses and certain mobs will have built in scripts, to where if you bring a zerg army (there are many other conditions as well), the NPC will flee, despawn (I think they said despawn) or send an unkillable/massive wave of enemies at you. I hope they can come up with unique mechanics like this to serve for camping mobs to change it up a bit. Maybe do something to force people out after a certain time, allowing others to get in etc. Or maybe keep only a handful of the 5-7 day camp mobs for those that really want it, and use a new system for the rest. The old ways seem kind of primitive in retrospect, but it felt so epic finally getting Tolan's or whatever it was you were gunning for for days.
The thrill of spotting a long awaited rare spawn and trying to get your friends to the location in time to down it (race mobs) was fun and exciting to me. I also liked that you could be killing some type of creature and it spawn a "frenzied" version with better loot.
I hated in WoW that the mobs mostly re-spawn in short intervals, so you just stand and wait like getting a bag of carrots at the grocery store. What a buzzkill.
My 2 cents.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Personally, I would support the idea of random spawn locations/intervals for named mobs.
Not having a precise time and location for the next spawn goes a long way towards preventing one or two groups from dominating a particular named.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Not to say I don't think there's a place and a time for static spawns when it fits surroundings (like a throneroom), but in general, there are ways to make it harder to lock down. Having multiple spawnpoints/triggers/place holders or even random spawnpoints also increases the value of tracker classes.
Hi all. I got away from this forum a few weeks back after people were saying that Pantheon is still years from release. I found that a bit depressing and was really only posting here in anticipation of its not too distant launch. I was hoping that the people who were saying that were joking. Do you really think it's going to take that long to finish? If so, I probably won't visit here that often because it only makes me more eager to play. Anyway, I digress...
But I saw this post and had to respond. While camping locations can be frustrating for those who need a particular mob and have trouble getting into the group, I think this is a bit of an overstatement. The first thing I thought about while reading this is that it's pretty rare for an entire group to remain intact for the hours on end you mention above. While it's true there were many times I had to wait for a spot to open at a particular camp, if I was patient, one almost always eventually did. It's also true that a group might remain at a camp for an entire day, but it was likely to undergo so many changes that the members were completely different at the end of the day than they were at the beginning.
The thing that caught my eye in your post was the part about having a rule preventing groups from camping the same spot for hours on end. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that, but if taken at face value, it can't be done in a game; certainly not an MMO. You can't have a DM come along after an hour and say, "Ok, you've been here long enough, it's time to move on."
At the same time, I don't want to downplay your concerns because they're valid and it's likely you meant some sort of in game mechanics to prevent marathon camping. I think some of the ideas posted here have been pretty good. The one about having boss mobs spawn at random locations might do the trick; however, it might also lead to some confusion as a number of groups all try to occupy its various spawn points.
Personally, I found camping pretty boring and tried to do it as little as possible. I preferred joining groups that liked to be on the move and travel deep into dungeons. Not always and option, but I got to know some people who felt the same way.
I remember being a dark elf necro when I started EQ and having to make the run to Qeynos and the barbarian area (having mental block on the name). I did faction work to try to not be kos to wandering NPCs that could kill me, guards and such. I had like 2 guards in Qeynos that would attack me being on some weird faction, the rest of the guards would leave me alone. Killing skeletons at lower level in the barbarian land for my bone chips to summon skeletons. I liked the roaming higher power mobs that would kill you, if you weren't on the lookout and paying attention.
I look forward to this game, and I look forward to a sub based, promise of no p2w cash shop. I am playing Archeage right now and it is a mess in many ways.
I also think there's value in having that dangerous separation by geography between starting locations. Yes, there's a rougher time early on meeting up with your friends. But those early highly dangerous runs in EQ to gather our group together taught every single one of us a lasting respect for the environment, and a sense of fear that really reinforced our immersion in the game.
In a game like Pantheon that means to roll back the encroachment of hand-holding in the MMO genre, setting that expectation early and firmly is a good introduction, IMO. It might turn some off, but I believe it will more completely draw in many more.
-Feyshtey-
Freely choosing the starter city would be a cool feature though.
Personally I hope the starter cities themselves will be relatively short, then you'll go to the newbie area of the continent, and then you'll have to do big travels to the various areas for your level on the various continents.
You know, that is a good idea. It would reconcile both issues at once, allowing friends of different races to start in the same city without having to provide instant travel between cities. I mean nothing says you should have to start the game in the city of your race.
The only restriction would be faction. You could not start in a city where you are KOS. So you and your friend would still have to make characters that are on the same faction with one another.
I could see where this could work, but I think if you are starting in a evil city, you should be KOS in good cities, like the inhabitants of the city you are in, but also be barely non-kos in the evil city you are starting in....Kind of like a outsider. So if you were say a barbarian in EQ1 and started in the dark elf city Neriak, you would be kos in the barbarian city Halas, like you were a traitor, and you would need to gain faction. I was the opposite and EQ, played a Dark Elf and I got faction in Qeynos/Halas so roaming npcs would not attack me, I could use the bank, and play with friends (I had to do the run to do it in EQ1 though).
The fiction just changes from a 'character grew up here' to 'character comes here'. As long as the character's family isn't represented in the game (NPC parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, siblings, etc. which would be incredibly neat), there's no tie to the starting city. I actually think I like the 'refugee' over the 'born here' lore better, because it gives a bit more latitude for role-playing. Starting point wouldn't need to be at the singular trainer's feet (as in EQ1), but at the outskirts of the city. Really simple to achieve.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.