Will both seem random/low in importance, but.. humour me.
1) Will there be a 'No XP' self-buff like we had in Vanguard? And of course, one also taught real early on?
[if, if, according to what was once promised you seggregate PvP from PvE entirely, there should be no reason not to implement this; it only poses one issue, that of "twinking"; an issue that you're aware of anyway, i remember Brad's early blogs on this, and an issue that in this specific instance, only affects a segment among the PvP people; but, with servers being separate according to what we know, it can be a buff available on the PvE servers, unavailable on the PvP ones. Zero issues. Unless of course claims and statements aside, you really do wish to err, push everyone to higher levels? The goal above the journey and all that]
2) Am unaware of the technical term, so allow me to explain from the empirical point of view; most games, they're made for 16:9 monitor ratios; something about the view/angle and how its interpreted or rendered. So in practice, if they've been built such and you have, say a 16:10, or any other non-"gaming" monitor, you actually lose a portion of your.. "view"? (sides?) and never mind your monitor's increased "real estate". So with said context in mind, will Pantheon support non-16:9 ratios?
[i can understand why with a limited budget and a million things on your list this will not exactly sit near the top; would just sincerely appreciate knowing if i need buy a monitor or not for Pantheon. No comments, no judgements, just me in need of information]
And my thanks for your (hopefully) responding :)
Edit: And apologies if either/both have already been covered.
IIRC, eq2 has/had the no-xp thing as well, and to a degree, EQ1 with AA's does, if you put 100% to AA's. It's just a choice that allows players to remain the level they are, for whatever reason they choose.
In some cases, it's so that they can stay adventuring with friends without mobs greying out.
Mentoring, self-mentoring, and/or the ability to set your own level to any previous level, out of combat, may also address some of the use cases.
vjek said:IIRC, eq2 has/had the no-xp thing as well, and to a degree, EQ1 with AA's does, if you put 100% to AA's. It's just a choice that allows players to remain the level they are, for whatever reason they choose.
In some cases, it's so that they can stay adventuring with friends without mobs greying out.
Mentoring, self-mentoring, and/or the ability to set your own level to any previous level, out of combat, may also address some of the use cases.
Thanks that makes sence now. I do remember having put AA up to 100% at one time or another, to stay with group and still make progress. It was just the idea of getting nothing for your efforts that was kinda throwing me off.
Both good questions, and I don't think either has been directly answered yet anywhere.
Realistically, we probably won't know how they plan to approach the first question until Beta. It doesn't make sense to implement a method of disabling experience gain until you know how experience gain is going to work everywhere in the game :) But I think it will still be something that we want to bring up during Beta testing for sure.
Likewise no idea about the answers - though items to disable xp gains are common on other games and I would be a bit surprised if Pantheon doesn't have one.
Other games have them in the in-game cash shops and since the plan is for Pantheon not to have such ...abominations .... I assume that items like this could be available for in-game money.
The other alternative is a website (not in-game) market. Such things are traditional for selling character slots, transfers between servers, changes of name, changes of race, changes of gender and the like. It is by no means ruled out that Pantheon will have such and conceivably it will sell in-game items that are *not* pay to win; meaning they do not help anyone do better in the game. Such things could include cosmetic clothes, non-combat pets, mounts that are no faster or better than in-game mounts and that cannot be purchased until the character already has a mount, etc. An xp disabler would fit in as an item that does not help a character do better in the game.
Note that I do not advocate for the sale of *any* in game items via a market - as with almost all of us I very much dislike the possibility. Likewise the sale of things that can help people avoid a bad reputation without having to start a new character - such as renaming or server transfer. This kind of market isn't as bad as an in-game store but it is still a negative. I mention it because VR is keeping its options open until closer to release as to its precise business model - and a website market has often been discussed in these forums. although rarely ...positively.
curious about the monitor question too, will be upgrading that as well in the future.
Aenra said:2) Am unaware of the technical term, so allow me to explain from the empirical point of view; most games, they're made for 16:9 monitor ratios; something about the view/angle and how its interpreted or rendered. So in practice, if they've been built such and you have, say a 16:10, or any other non-"gaming" monitor, you actually lose a portion of your.. "view"? (sides?) and never mind your monitor's increased "real estate". So with said context in mind, will Pantheon support non-16:9 ratios?
I think what you are saying here is that if you use a non-16:9 ratio, will it just stretch it to fill the screen? Say the game is rendering 1080p vertical resolution but you own a 1440p monitor, will it just stretch the image rather than provide more pixels?
They've said before they plan on supporting a wide variety of resolutions. 16:10 is not typical but by no means unusual or exotic. I would be confident that aspect ratio would be supported.
Now if you had a 21:9 or 32:9 monitor, I would be more reserved regarding my expectations of support since those are highly unusual and exotic. However, you can render a smaller frame within that and just have black bars on the side so that the image does not stretch.
Thanks for chipping in folks;
As to @bigdogchris' stretching, am not sure if this is accurate to be honest, as stretching usually entails a software-based method of "filling" your monitor real estate with something originally meant for a lower resolution, ie the actual content itself is insufficient. Not the case with any modern MMO or game altogether.
In this instance, i have the impression it is more of an engine issue, ie that unless made to, it cannot "see" above that vertical '9' (see: 16:9), resulting in its downgrading you to a lesser resolution that it can understand, ie taking you "down" one step to a resolution that does fit in a 16:9 ratio. It's why, if you Google it, you'll see people stating that in reality, they have less of a.. field(?) with a 16:10 running at 1080p than with a 16:9 monitor at said same resolution.
(again, this is a technical issue and as glaringly evident, not exactly my expertise; i do know it exists and i do know that it needs to be planned for. I cannot really provide a proper explanation)
Now as to experience, in this context, i don't think it matters how it will be handled ingame. There is no perfection to be found in this.. one man's pace is not another's and this is all about pacing. A very important aspect in any game.
So even with measures taken and the dev team's best intentions made evident, i think ultimately? What matters is letting the player -optionally- enjoy the content available in its entirety, at a rhythm they're comfortable with, as per their level; rather than say skipping some of it by necessity as they level up and need look elsewhere as it were. Not much fun doing gray content now is there?
I had a great time farming for my goblin shammie with the EXP buff on, got some good loot while at it, made some money. But most of all, met some great people! People i'd have never met because in a couple of days, zone's usually over for you, time to move. If they're not as 'fast' as you, have a more busy schedule, there you go, gap between you; you must have come across this. I'd never have had the chance to talk to certain people, except for that buff which allowed me to.
We talked and talked about the "journey" here, and while this is all well and good, i would like to see actual mechanics that allow me to -again, optionally- do just that. Hence the question above :)
Edit; and apologies for double posting, but this bears some clarification:
Some might mention mentoring here and the answer is no, not the same, and for two reasons :)
i) Mentoring entails either or both of two prerequisites; knowing them in advance and thus agreeing to mentor or be mentored, or agreeing to do so (with strangers) for the purpose of pew pewing; see: loot(z) or XP gaining.
Not what i'm talking about here. Maybe i want to be able to craft things my current Leatherworking Tier allows me to at the level i'm supposed to wear them; ie not 7,8 levels later. No freebies here, yes? More work for me, i gotta fight mobs my level or higher. But because i want to to do this now, not later when they're gray/green ('cause that's when it gets boring, that's when the "job" element of an MMO starts taking hold), i activate my no EXP buff, get to it. When i'm done, i can continue leveling. Maybe i want to grind for tokens, maybe i want to farm for something that is not a must, but would just really love to acquire.. and so on. It can be very personal as well.
ii) I mentioned another critical element, time. It takes time to meet people. And often enough, it takes odd circumstances :)
"These are my mobs, you %*(%###!"
"You stupid cow, i was here before you!"
Two days later, we're best friends. This happened. Mentoring wouldn't have helped here, i didnt need mentoring, she didn't either. All it took was having the allowance, the time, to linger more, to do more. Rather than rush rush rush, as is so prevalent these days. This buff does that.
As far as the aspect ratio or curved monitor or multi-monitor support goes... If you can find one Unity game that does it, then VR could probably do it, too, provided such support was part of native Unity. The documentation isn't 100% clear, but it appears at least multi-monitor is supported.
Multi-display allows you to display up to 8 different camera views of your application on up to 8 different monitors at the same time. You could use this for PC games, arcade game machines and simple installations for public display.
Multi-display only runs in standalone mode, and is supported on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
100% sure they will have a way to turn XP off if you choose. That's a must have feature in modern MMOs, especially a game like this that is desiring to add a multitude of horizontal content. Zero doubts that gets put it.
On top of that feature, I still think they should have a hard and soft cap for XP gain within a 24 hour period. Power gamers can push to the hard cap, but it'll take some extra work, over time, they still get to max level a month or two prior to casuals. The reason is that VR can then actually determine at what point in time the first players will be hitting max level. If they put the xp slow enough, this gives them a lot of extra time to polish end game content. Seems to me that the dumbest thing any company can do at this point after seeing all these recent games struggle is allow for the possibility of people poopsocking and hittng max level in a week. That needs to end. And I'm a power gamer, I'll be cutting edge. All I want is a carrot to make me have to play for months and months to be better and faster than everyone else. If they leave xp open ended, I'll be capped in a week.
2560x1440 IS 16:9. The game already supports 4k so why would they have 1920x1080 and 3840x2160 but not 2560x1440? It's 2019. It's going to support all major resolutions. People will play on laptops, etc. If it doesn't support 21:9 I will RIOT.
Mathir said:
100% sure they will have a way to turn XP off if you choose. That's a must have feature in modern MMOs, especially a game like this that is desiring to add a multitude of horizontal content. Zero doubts that gets put it.
Another argument for having this: My Wife and I play, and like to level at the same time. If I inadvertanly end up getting more XP when she is offline, I would like a way to let her catch up without consiquece, or having to do it solo.
Bonechip said:
Mathir said:100% sure they will have a way to turn XP off if you choose. That's a must have feature in modern MMOs, especially a game like this that is desiring to add a multitude of horizontal content. Zero doubts that gets put it.
Another argument for having this: My Wife and I play, and like to level at the same time. If I inadvertanly end up getting more XP when she is offline, I would like a way to let her catch up without consiquece, or having to do it solo.
"Brotherhood" as Vanguard had would be your solution.
Any number of players can join into a brotherhood that shares XP between them all, whether online or offline.
My buddies and me would start our brotherhood alts at zero and they would keep exact pace to max level. We loved it.
Brotherhood would fit quite well with the Pantheon design goals. It makes it easier for the underplayed character to level-up but makes it harder for the over-played character - thus slowing progress to maximum level. It also encourages and facilitates grouping.
What I like most about it is that it facilitates fixed groups - characters that are intended to mostly or entirely play grouped together. Even if none of them *ever* adventures without the rest of the group Brotherhood adds value since it allows them to play on days when one or two of them cannot log on, without destroying group level equality.
While I personally never use xp disablers - it just feels wrong to refuse to accept xp - those mobs *died* for us - many others do use it and it also is quite consistant with Pantheon's goals.
So let us have both if feasible.
Either Brotherhood can automatically override the disabler or this can be an option given when selecting Brotherhood.
But let us not copy slavishly from Vanguard any more than from Everquest. Let us have some creativity and originalty. This time call it Sisterhood!
dorotea said:But let us not copy slavishly from Vanguard any more than from Everquest. Let us have some creativity and originalty. This time call it Sisterhood!
Wouldn't we all have to wear habits if they did that?
I had forgotten entirely about the fellowship/brotherhood feature. I agree that would be a good fit for Pantheon :)
The mechanics mentioned presuppose three things :)
i) That you know someone in advance. I cannot understand how we all fail to grasp that some folks, if only occasionally, start MMOs from scratch as it were.. this guild-hoping (we played WoW, EvE, whatever other game that's also literally unrelated to the previous ones, but hey, we did that too) trend notwithstanding, i'd remind of the term 'newcomers'.
ii) Assuming that people are found or friends have been made? That whatever it is -you-, personally, are after, someone else is willing to oblige/accommodate accordingly; for you and only for you.
iii) Assuming that friends have been made and that common goals have been set in the first place? That the goals thereof (be they of the formed brotherhood or mentoring status) are usually related to the positioning of said players in relation to one another; not in relation to their status/level inside the game as a whole. I mentioned the word pacing for this very reason. Pacing is crucial, central and sadly (for any developer) very subjective; as such, rather impossible to nail down.
While i'd welcome either or both (mentoring/brotherhood), neither of them equates to that amazingly simple yet so amazing 'no exp' buff :)
If only occasionally, we need try and forget the carrot, focus on where it's leading us instead. Because sometimes, it may be leading us there too fast. We can still have positive expectations about said destination, but we can also have those while realizing the pace is too fast, too forced.
We called it the journey once.
No XP buff makes sense to me.
An alternative is not leveling automatically, and having to accept every level advance. Build up as much XP as you want. If you pass the threshold to level, you'd have to click to go up a level. You are banking all the XP you make. You could bank multiple levels worth depending on how the XP rate increases.
And I like having an alternate advancement system as well.
And I agree on Sisterhood as a term.
Mal
((Wouldn't we all have to wear habits if they did that?))
Not a bad idea - that has to be at least as attractive as what the monks wear.
It could lead to immoral activities that would give the game an X rating - if they looked too plain, or outright ugly, people would be tempted to just take them off - probably using their feet we have all heard of kicking a bad habit.
Throwing them at enemies could do real damage - aren't nun chucks a weapon used in many games?
bigdogchris said:Aenra said:2) Am unaware of the technical term, so allow me to explain from the empirical point of view; most games, they're made for 16:9 monitor ratios; something about the view/angle and how its interpreted or rendered. So in practice, if they've been built such and you have, say a 16:10, or any other non-"gaming" monitor, you actually lose a portion of your.. "view"? (sides?) and never mind your monitor's increased "real estate". So with said context in mind, will Pantheon support non-16:9 ratios?
I think what you are saying here is that if you use a non-16:9 ratio, will it just stretch it to fill the screen? Say the game is rendering 1080p vertical resolution but you own a 1440p monitor, will it just stretch the image rather than provide more pixels?
They've said before they plan on supporting a wide variety of resolutions. 16:10 is not typical but by no means unusual or exotic. I would be confident that aspect ratio would be supported.
Now if you had a 21:9 or 32:9 monitor, I would be more reserved regarding my expectations of support since those are highly unusual and exotic. However, you can render a smaller frame within that and just have black bars on the side so that the image does not stretch.
You usually don't need any black bars, even older games like Everquest Titanium supports very high resolutions in odd aspect ratios. The problem is the FOV (field of view). I took a screenshot and made a glorious paint masterpiece of it from the p99 server.
as you can see in this picture (both are at max zoom out), when using a wider aspect ratio everquest will... I guess internally(?) letterbox the picture so you can not actually see a wider field of view but instead just a less tall one. The picture will, however be fullscreen on your 21:9 monitor, except there are imaginary black bars above and below your physical screen :P
EDIT: tried to make a spoiler for the picture to sit under but I have no idea how to do it tbh. also it gets squished in the forum layout so you have to right click and view image to see the correct aspect ratio of the picture itself, sorry guys
dorotea said:((Wouldn't we all have to wear habits if they did that?))
Not a bad idea - that has to be at least as attractive as what the monks wear.
It could lead to immoral activities that would give the game an X rating - if they looked too plain, or outright ugly, people would be tempted to just take them off - probably using their feet we have all heard of kicking a bad habit.
Throwing them at enemies could do real damage - aren't nun chucks a weapon used in many games?
Note to self. Never get in a pun war with dorotea :)