BamBam said: So with the latest video where quest is locked behind factions and standings towards certain races. How difficult will it be to do standart quest as an Ogre Direlord and Human Cleric? Will it be somthing that will be a thing throughout the entire lvling experiance? Or will players have options to do neutral quest even in an area where ur race is hated?
If they do something similar to Everquest, you will be able to farm specific mobs to gain specific reputation towards a faction.
Usually, the newbie area mobs are linked to the faction of the nearby faction.
Bring your DireLord to the Human newbie area, farm the newbie mobs and you'll get positive Faction Hits for the Human Faction.
Once your Faction Reputation is good enough, Human quests will be available to your Ogre DireLord.
In theory :P
Quest availability based on race or class (or faction, or level, or skill, or any number of other things) is a near universal characteristic of MMO's. I would expect it to be a thing here. In fact it sounded to me like it'll be even more so a thing based on what you have done in the past. Probably progressively so the longer you play and the more you advance. They've eluded to it repeatedly with the Perception system already, saying that just because you're at an XYZ coordinate in the game at which a perception trigger exists you wont necessarily trigger it unless you've met certain criteria.
And I'd imagine that there will be nuetral quests that will both be readily available and locked behind the same kinds of personal history gates as others.
bobwinner said:BamBam said: So with the latest video where quest is locked behind factions and standings towards certain races. How difficult will it be to do standart quest as an Ogre Direlord and Human Cleric? Will it be somthing that will be a thing throughout the entire lvling experiance? Or will players have options to do neutral quest even in an area where ur race is hated?If they do something similar to Everquest, you will be able to farm specific mobs to gain specific reputation towards a faction.
Usually, the newbie area mobs are linked to the faction of the nearby faction.
Bring your DireLord to the Human newbie area, farm the newbie mobs and you'll get positive Faction Hits for the Human Faction.
Once your Faction Reputation is good enough, Human quests will be available to your Ogre DireLord.
In theory :P
This...I have a Necro Iksar that is chummy with the Paladins in North Freeport. :) Took a whole lotta orc killin.
BamBam said: So with the latest video where quest is locked behind factions and standings towards certain races. How difficult will it be to do standart quest as an Ogre Direlord and Human Cleric? Will it be somthing that will be a thing throughout the entire lvling experiance? Or will players have options to do neutral quest even in an area where ur race is hated?Well, you are looking at this from the perspective of an Ogre Direlord playing in the Human starting area (Thronefast). Unless you go out of your way to travel across the world as an Ogre into the Human starting city, this simply won't happen. You'll have starter quest, perception, and lore around the Ogre starting area (Broken Maw) that Human's won't be able to use.
bobwinner said:If they do something similar to Everquest, you will be able to farm specific mobs to gain specific reputation towards a faction.
In theory :P
I specifically asked Jopppa if every faction, regardless of its initial state (ally, indifferent, kos, etc) could either be ruined (ending up KOS through some action) or raised, even raised out of KOS. His response that while pretty much every faction can be ruined through actions, there will be some factions that cannot be improved.
Unfortunately I disagree with that approach. Every faction should have some faction that dislikes them and others that do such that you could take actions against their enemies to gain their favor while ruining the other. The more interweaved the factions are the better I say.
On quests -
I think it's important for us to remember that Pantheon is probably *not* going to be a quest-heavy game, like some that we may be used to. It's not that there won't be quests, but the team has said a few times that they want those quests to feel meaningful, and the community has been *extremely* vocal about this as well in the past. I think it's very likely that we will see more stringent faction requirements along with other prerequisites on quests in Pantheon than what we're used to in previous games.
On faction -
Personally, I strongly feel that faction mechanics need to evolve from what we saw in EQ and other games of its generation. We like to look at faction as something that we should be able to easily manipulate by slaughtering things - ie, if I want the dark myr to like me I go kill ten thousand elves or something. The problem with that though is that it's a very primitive system and as players learn the best things to kill to raise their faction, it becomes very easily abused. Left to go on long enough, faction effectively becomes meaningless.
While fighting someone's enemies should help with gaining faction, I don't think that it should be the only requirement. If you want to get in good with a race or culture that you are KOS to, you're going to need to really earn their trust - and that needs to require something above and beyond simple mass murder.
Bottom line, my opinion is that faction needs to stay meaningful in Pantheon, and that means it needs to have more depth than simply what we've killed lately.
Vandraad said:I specifically asked Jopppa if every faction, regardless of its initial state (ally, indifferent, kos, etc) could either be ruined (ending up KOS through some action) or raised, even raised out of KOS. His response that while pretty much every faction can be ruined through actions, there will be some factions that cannot be improved.
Unfortunately I disagree with that approach. Every faction should have some faction that dislikes them and others that do such that you could take actions against their enemies to gain their favor while ruining the other. The more interweaved the factions are the better I say.
Indeed...one-way factions are kind of pointless. Particularly when you start out KOS already (iirc EQ had some such..).
I think modifiers could make sense however: For example, race A might gain faction X easily, while race B might get a negative modifier to faction gain for being a "natural enemy". So they could gain that faction, but slower than race A.
As for starting quests: IMO this should be done similar to EQ. You couldn't simple take your DE and head over to Freeport (tho for some class/deity combinations it might work) to quest there. Even if you were not KOS, you would probably have dubious faction, so noone would give you quests. This is how it should be IMO, to have a believeable world.
Vandraad said: ... Every faction should have some faction that dislikes them and others that do such that you could take actions against their enemies to gain their favor while ruining the other. The more interweaved the factions are the better I say.Yep, agreed. The problem is, if you have factions that can be raised, there needs to be a point to raising them. If you could raise your faction with a "KoS to everyone" group, then you could walk through their areas without being attacked. At a glance; If harvest/resource/quest nodes exist there, you could then consume that content with impunity. I'm not saying it shouldn't be that way, (IMO it would be awesome) I'm just saying their other design decisions are fundamentally at odds with a more "balanced world" approach to factions. There should also be more than one way to raise those opposing factions, too, (aside from the combat loop) but this isn't the game for that, so far.
Also if they dont put as much effort behind each faction, race and class with the story I would be shocked. RPGs should always be built with doors opening and closing by the choices you make. Im sure no matter what you play, you will find lots of fun stuff just for you.
Don't forget about Alignment. Joppa explained that there will be both faction (your reputation with a specific group) and also Alignment (based on the Good or Bad things you might have been up to).
Joppa said: "You can't talk about having an open and living breathing world without having real dynamic faction relationships between the different denizens of the world. From the get go you will be making decisions, performing actions, that will start to effect your faction with certain races and other factions within the game world. It's not limited to factions. Alignment will also play a role. We will see some of that in the perception system where not only are your decisions and actions effecting your faction alignment with other denizens of the world, but you will also be progressing along a moral alignment as well. So you may have some NPCs that respond to faction, and you may have some that respond to alignment. And you may have some that respond to both. Our hopes is that it will create a pretty deep system of interaction between NPCs and the other denizens of the world as your character takes shape throughout the game." (Source)
I am looking forward to restrictive factions and alignments. It makes sense to me that if my race/class is hated by NPCs, that I will suffer their wrath. It also makes sense that if I improve my faction at the expense of another, that I will benefit and suffer equally.
Killing good guys will get you in with the bad guys, but you should also become less and less welcome with the good ones as you go. It is a role playing game and your choices and actions should make a difference to all you encounter. I would expect both a positive and negative effects on the NPCs of the game as I make my choices.
I think there is too much expectation on everything being available to all characters, being friends with every quest giver seems ridiculous to me. Killing with impunity seems ridiculous too. If I help a sworn enemy then I would expect my current friends to question my motives and eventually say enough is enough.
vjek said: Objectively, I doubt they could, Nanfoodle. That would require adding things like home cities and/or kingdoms for every humanoid / intelligent / sentient faction or race.That wasn't even in EQ1 for Orcs and/or Goblins, and they were probably the most common KoS non-playable factions in the game.Again, it -should- be like that, but that amount of scope creep would likely postpone launch indefinitely. If we're lucky, we might just see equal amounts of content for evil races as good, but even on that front, I wouldn't be shocked to see a disparity.
I think you are looking at this with a narrow view. Even when you look at WoW and their quests, they were designed for grouping, class quests, faction quests, crafting type quests and everyone quests. Not hard too do. So all quests in Pantheon could be grouped in the same way. Race quests (dont need allot of them) faction quests (some for each race) Deity quests (again you dont need tones) Quests for everyone (the majority or what they need to design) Joppa has already said your deity and class will affect what you will interact with and we seen one example of that. Of corse there will be more.
Nephele said:On quests - General Pantheon Discussion
I think it's important for us to remember that Pantheon is probably *not* going to be a quest-heavy game, like some that we may be used to. It's not that there won't be quests, but the team has said a few times that they want those quests to feel meaningful, and the community has been *extremely* vocal about this as well in the past. I think it's very likely that we will see more stringent faction requirements along with other prerequisites on quests in Pantheon than what we're used to in previous games.
It may not be a quest heavy game, but, I could also see factions playing a role in the perception system as well - being KoS to a lot of NPCs may limit your ability to obtain triggers that may be inside cities, or peception quest? lines leading to cities etc. With the introduction of the Perception system, I actually think Pantheon will have many quests, they will just be reimagined using that system and not obtained how a player would traditionally do so in an MMORPG.
Im fine with race KoS, reputation KoS and faction Kos, what you do should matter and what you choose should matter. In a world where you can create carnage, I would expect that world to retaliate. KoS, NPCs not willing to interact, no go areas should be there. If you want those interactions, then make different choices.
As long as there is another way to achieve whatever it is you want to do, then I have no problems with a game that is making you slow down and look around before you rush head long for the next update point.