I've noticed lately there's a lot more people looking around on this site and some socials and other content creator's sites discussing the lore of the game and how it seems interesting to them. I just wanted to make sure everyone who didn't know already...
KNOWING THE LORE IN PANTHEON WILL HELP YOU BE A BETTER PLAYER!
The Perception system is built around this premise. There are secrets in the world that those who know the lore or find out tidbits will be able to uncover about locations, bosses, dungeons, and loot that would otherwise go undiscovered. There will be world events that are triggered by those that are Keepers.
There are plenty of places where you can get your hands on the game's lore even while the lore part of the website here is still under construction. In the forums, you have Pantheon Lore, Keeper's Vault, Keepings of Castigue. They don't have everything that was on the old site, but a good bit of it. The fan fiction section is full of stories that people took time and researched for you and distilled the lore and even class and race gameplay mechanics down into easy to digest stories that aren't too long to sit and read in 5 minutes. I have read almost all of them and there's a LOT of lore peppering the stories.
There are content creators that have captured the lore as well. Chris Kane has made youtube videos with most of the released content and he is very good. There are many articles on Pantheon.plus that have researched the lore of the game in detail. I have even made some articles in there that connect the dotted lines from lore directly to ingame loot and best camping spots that you should expect to find in the world even though it's not in a website wiki yet. Info is out there and we can actually infer a good deal of what's in game from what we do know.
Support these folks making this stuff available to you if you haven't already. You'll be glad you did.
KNOWING THE LORE IN PANTHEON WILL HELP YOU BE A BETTER PLAYER!
Knowing the lore does not make you a better player, knowing your character's role and abilities, how they interplay with other players ability and knowing how your opponents behave makes you a better player. Consuming and understanding the lore makes you a more rounded player. Semantics, I know, but if you are going to shout something out, then I think it should be 100% correct.
The perception system will indeed give you insights into aspects of the game world that you would not have if you do not become a Keeper, however, you do not need to be a keeper to be a "better player" either. VR have said it is a choice to pursue or not.
I agree with your underlying premise that the lore is important, and I do applaud anyone who takes the time to organise or simplify that lore to make it more understandable and easier to digest.
I would change the above statement to "Knowing the lore in Pantheon will make you a valuable player".
I think it boils down to, do you want to solve and understand many of the quests quests or follow a guide. At best you are a better quester.
I hope paying attention to lore means something. If I find a book in Pantheon, I fully expect that it has some information in it will lead me to; a hidden quest, or a perception ping, a secret trainer with rare skills, learn a particular tactic against MOBs, tell of a secret dungeon location, lead to somethin tangible in the world.
Back story is great, but I will stop reading, if it never amounts to anything tangible in the world.
Horizontal leveling should be about utilizing Lore in a big way, otherwise don't even bother with lore.
Caine said:I hope paying attention to lore means something. If I find a book in Pantheon, I fully expect that it has some information in it will lead me to; a hidden quest, or a perception ping, a secret trainer with rare skills, learn a particular tactic against MOBs, tell of a secret dungeon location, lead to somethin tangible in the world.
Back story is great, but I will stop reading, if it never amounts to anything tangible in the world.
Horizontal leveling should be about utilizing Lore in a big way, otherwise don't even bother with lore.
I'm not sure about picking up a book always being useful.
Making lore meaningful is the job of the Perception and Keeper systems, isn't it?
I'm looking forward to lore in Pantheon finally being something engaging.
Nothing against those that love the lore and will happily read everything they come across, but making it more accessible with Perception is an excellent idea from VR.
I would like to point out most of the useful lore people ignore as they just look up monster stats online.
Lore player: The ___ behind this towns attack have only one reference to being slain... ... ... Fire was used it seems?
Non-lore player: Google
I agree with the OP's premise insofar as it relates to quest/encounter design.
Cohesiveness
The information recveived by the player in game or in lore should be important/usefull to the encounters they are getting into in game withoiuth the need to look up third party sites.
Oh sure, that will happen and for which we can thank the hard-cores. I think there is still a pantheon unique Wiki created that all can contribute to, I hope that takes off and becomes the sole source.
What I understand it to be is something like: There is a legend in lore that says person A and person B were in love, they died from something tragic but violets grow on their grave all year round for their hearts were full of spring. Player is in the county where the legend persons were, and there is a field full of violets, Some remember the legend- aww- one plucks a violet in foraging. They get to a graveyard and need a key to get in the tomb, no key around, hey there are the decayed tombstones of those people in the legend, and the one person puts the violet they plucked on the grave and -bamf- they get the key. Very much like the: Speak "friend" and enter. from Lord of the Rings.
Because one person remembered or had lore queues from that bit of lore. The crucial thing is it has to be intuitive, and broad in scope so that it is not impossible. Like Personal biases of the designer have to be put aside, same as with the player to encompass the totality of the world and the lore.
I have yet to play a game where an indepth knowledge of game lore actually makes a noticeable difference, where knowing the lore of something vs not knowing meant the difference between success and failure. When you distill the game down, it is all about the numbers, the equations and algorithms that run the game. Are you doing more damage to it than it is doing to you? Are you killing it faster than it is killing you?
Sure, lore might play a part in quests, but only in explaining the backstory and even then I'll bet money it won't be necessary to intrinsically know it. People will figure out the meaning of something even without the lore..the game just won't be that complex.
Vandraad said:I have yet to play a game where an indepth knowledge of game lore actually makes a noticeable difference, where knowing the lore of something vs not knowing meant the difference between success and failure. When you distill the game down, it is all about the numbers, the equations and algorithms that run the game. ...
IMO:
Yep, exactly. And entirely because if you make the content so obscure or difficult that no-one (or a very very very small part of your target audience) can consume it, why are you spending the time & effort putting it in your fun game at all?
I remember when SOTA went through this multi-year development cycle of a niche game with a small team, and they spent months/years working on their NPC dialogue interface. They were going to have the BEST Lore.
They talked about natural language parsers, and the need to learn NPC languages, but ultimately, it came down to this:
The group of players who support the game the most, by quantity, do not have the time or inclination to spend hundreds of hours learning a new actual spoken or written language, especially one that isn't phonetic and/or alphabetic (like a logographic/ideographic/syllabaric and/or those utilizing abugidas). So, NPC languages or scripts (other than fonts) in dialogue was removed as a design goal.
So, they talked about even the most simple user/UI interaction, typing versus clicking. Guess which won? :) You'll recall in EQ1 you had to type responses to try and get the NPC to give you the information you needed for the next step. Initially, these keywords or phrases weren't in any way highlighted. Essentially, players figured out that if you repeated back the dialogue the NPC was saying in a certain way, it prompted them to move on to the next step of the quest. Well, ultimately, that's a UI issue, not a knowledge issue. You just write a script that parses and parrots words or phrases back, and you get the whole quest. They saw players in SOTA doing this during Beta testing, and said, well.. that was a waste of time, and put in highlighted words to click on, and then ultimately menu choices.
Which then most paying customers clicked through as quickly as possible to get to the next step of their assigned task.
Then you have some situations where only the developers themselves knew that certain NPCs required you to state certain phrases to them, without any prompting whatsoever. So, once whole classes (Shaman, Wizards, etc) were stuck on a particular step of their EQ1 Epic, they went and spoke random gibberish to every NPC in the world that had no other apparent purpose, and then to every NPC in the world, period, in a desperate attempt to get thousands of players the choice to consume this content. In some cases, the developers had to assist these thousands of players, because there was no causal link between the phrase and the NPC. It's just "you then go say this to this NPC" Why? Because that's what's required.
Ultimately, in some rare edge cases, it makes no sense in a thematically consistent world and was monumentally frustrating before being put in a Wiki.
For over 20 years, 99% of the content in MMO's is moving from A to B, with either a database flag or inventory item, or both or neither, and interacting with NPCs at A and/or B. The time spent is rewarded with varying character record adjustments in the centralized database, and this is repeated. No surprises.. no Lore impact.
I think a huge potential positive feature for Pantheon was discarded when it was revealed that Perception would play no meaningful or tangible combat role, and resistances or weaknesses along with states/exploits/effects wouldn't be better than Vanguard.
There was an opportunity there (still is) to allow a player to acquire in-game knowledge about their targets to let them be more effective in multiple game loops (adventuring, crafting, diplomacy, more) but so far, nothing like this has been enumerated, so the practical impact of "Lore", that is, your character (rather than the player) acquiring that knowledge isn't even a public design goal, so far. In the latest videos, Perception pings have been reduced to 'flavor text', and that's a real shame. A whole bunch of lost opportunities, again.
Why would lore have to make 100% difference? If you know it you live, if not, you die? Nah
What about lore that gives clues to monster weaknesses or a fortress' defenses?
It doesn't have to be so black-and-white.
Lore could be in-game useful without being win-or-lose stuff.
It could just give a glimpse to what is 'under the hood'.
vjek: Perception pings have been reduced to 'flavor text', and that's a real shame. A whole bunch of lost opportunities, again.
I would say that we have not seen the full impact of the perception system in play because of spoilers and the like. I know from earlier alpha testing that players were "led" to specific areas because of the perception guiding them in a direction until they came across a ritual that they could then interact with. Later, they were led to a tomb stone which pinged perception messages that were different for some players because of their perception/lore keeper level. It is a bit misleading to say that perception has been reduced to flavour text because thats all there was on show in the current stream. Earlier streams suggested a lot more. We have only seen hints of what it can do. We certainly cannot assume it is a missed opportunity at this stage.
As for your other points regarding lore in Pantheon and gaining knowledge of races etc., again, we just dont know whether they are in game or not. Assuming they are not because we have not seen the like is at best a stretch. VR have repeatedly said they dont release everything they can because they do not want to spoil the in-game experience when players actually get their hands on it. I for one am happy with this arrangement and am willing to hold judgement until such a time as it is confirmed or denied by VR or if I see it for myself in a stream or in game.
You may be right, but absence of proof is not proof of absence.
The Perception system hasnt missed any mark because we dont know what it can do yet. The in game lore affects are yet to be experienced not that they dont exist.
disposalist said:Why would lore have to make 100% difference? If you know it you live, if not, you die? Nah
What about lore that gives clues to monster weaknesses or a fortress' defenses?
It doesn't have to be so black-and-white.
Lore could be in-game useful without being win-or-lose stuff.
It could just give a glimpse to what is 'under the hood'.
What I'm saying is that Lore never makes any difference, at all. If the need to know the lore* (in this case some secret information) about a given NPC or location, does not provide a noticeable effect then that knowledge is unnecessary. You can, just as easily, proceed without it and enjoy a similar chance of success. I never paid any attention to lore in EQ1 or EQ2 and never once felt that ignore it had even the slightest negative impact on overall success of my character.
*I think there needs to be a clear deliniation between lore that gives just historical background information (like the information you see on a plaque at some real word historical site) and lore which provides secret information which provides a strategic advantage against an NPC. The latter is more clearly useful, is actually applicable to the situation while the former is general information (i.e. fluff).
I agree with Van and Vjek. I've never played a game where knowing lore mattered. But also, I don't think that's what most people want.
I've never heard anyone say I wish lore had more of an impact on gameplay other than Joppa (paraphrased) ...which leads to concern about the perception system.
VR originally advertised perception as optional. At this point, given what we know, that is completely inaccurate.
Hopefully it doesn't push people away. To much lore/story was a major part of why I quit playing one game...
philo said:I agree with Van and Vjek. I've never played a game where knowing lore mattered. But also, I don't think that's what most people want.
I've never heard anyone say I wish lore had more of an impact on gameplay other than Joppa (paraphrased) ...which leads to concern about the perception system.
VR originally advertised perception as optional. At this point, given what we know, that is completely inaccurate.
Hopefully it doesn't push people away. To much lore/story was a major part of why I quit playing one game...
What do you mean by that is completely inaccurate given what we know? As recently as this month, Joppa said that the primary reason a player would choose to engage in Perception is out of a curiosity for the lore. Those who do spend time on Perception will likely be have an easier time "making sense" of certain things in the world, but nothing so exclusive that everyone would feel the need to be a Keeper. It's more of a social component, so if you don't care about the lore yourself, there may be some situations where it will be beneficial to at least have a friend who's knowledgeable in the lore to help explain to you what's going on.
Full explanation here: https://youtu.be/sqwwn6TVAWE?t=2677
I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing. This is just what we actually have been told so far.
philo said:VR originally advertised perception as optional. At this point, given what we know, that is completely inaccurate.
Is it? Why? What do we know that leads to that inference?
As far as I know, it's just a cool way of giving out lore and maybe some info about zones/monsters.
Even if it hints at 'shortcuts', there will be ways for non-keepers to do exactly the same thing encounters/quests/tasks, they just won't know the detail and background of the situation like a keeper will.
If people feel they 'have' to do it because of Fear Of Missing Out, then *shrug* that's no different than anything else. If you're not a rogue you can't use stealth. If you're not a wizard/druid, you can't teleport. If you run around focused on killing stuff, you might miss other stuff. If you take your time, you'll experience more.
If you're not a keeper, you miss out on interesting and possibly even useful lore.
Bazgrim said:philo said:I agree with Van and Vjek. I've never played a game where knowing lore mattered. But also, I don't think that's what most people want.
I've never heard anyone say I wish lore had more of an impact on gameplay other than Joppa (paraphrased) ...which leads to concern about the perception system.
VR originally advertised perception as optional. At this point, given what we know, that is completely inaccurate.
Hopefully it doesn't push people away. To much lore/story was a major part of why I quit playing one game...
What do you mean by that is completely inaccurate given what we know? As recently as this month, Joppa said that the primary reason a player would choose to engage in Perception is out of a curiosity for the lore. Those who do spend time on Perception will likely be have an easier time "making sense" of certain things in the world, but nothing so exclusive that everyone would feel the need to be a Keeper. It's more of a social component, so if you don't care about the lore yourself, there may be some situations where it will be beneficial to at least have a friend who's knowledgeable in the lore to help explain to you what's going on.
Full explanation here: https://youtu.be/sqwwn6TVAWE?t=2677
I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing. This is just what we actually have been told so far.
Please don't link your videos to me ever again. I'm tired of explaining to people why much of what you present is inaccurate.
We have seen keys found through perception. We have seen perception quests that provide additional advancement opportunities/loot that would not be an option without perception. There will be tangible benefits to participating in the perception system. To think otherwise is uniformed or naive.
chenzeme said:KNOWING THE LORE IN PANTHEON WILL HELP YOU BE A BETTER PLAYER!
Knowing the lore does not make you a better player, knowing your character's role and abilities, how they interplay with other players ability and knowing how your opponents behave makes you a better player. Consuming and understanding the lore makes you a more rounded player. Semantics, I know, but if you are going to shout something out, then I think it should be 100% correct.
this statement, in my humble opinion, is completely falso. This shallow view is exactly why I wanted to write this post. I'll say it's my fault for not being clear enough in my point. So...
Knowing where to camp to find the best loot makes you a better player. Knowing how certain mobs may react to situations before engaging them makes you a better player. Being able to help other players find something they're looking for makes you a better player. Knowing how to maneuver in a dungeon and how to load out to defeat stuff makes you a better player. Knowing where a certain craftable component most likely would be makes you a better player. All of these things, we have seen examples, have been shown to be in the lore that hs been made available, whether in character stories, histories, or in=game dialogue.
"Playing" the game is NOT limited to combat. If it were, you'd be playing an FPS and not an RPG. That's the misconception in the community and has been noticeable since the Pantheon Plus stream with Chris Kane. In this game, knowing things about the world around you has benefits in the world in ways games in the past have not. The chess board in EQ, while it was cool, had no relevance to the game itself. We've already seen in this game, that small things you find that catch your eye can lead you to mobs and new xp areas and loot and resources. This is all part of playing the game. And the lore is important enough in this game for it to matter.
And to yall that say"Nerds read the lore about something and cool, normal people google it," figure out why you're in my R(ole) P(laying) G(ame) and not just playing multiplayer Battlefield V. And, by the way, world firsts in this game are going to be important as well, and it will happen because someone knew the lore. I challenge those that scoff at my headline to go look at my Lore 2 Loot articles on Pantheon Plus and tell me lore is irrelevant to "playing."
Please don't link your videos to me ever again. I'm tired of explaining to people why much of what you present is inaccurate.
We have seen keys found through perception. We have seen perception quests that provide additional advancement opportunities/loot that would not be an option without perception. There will be tangible benefits to participating in the perception system. To think otherwise is uniformed or naive.
This answer is completely skewed and downright slanderous and not ok.
First, Bazgrim can post whatever he wants. You don't have to explain anything to anyone. You do it because you want to. if you think there's a better explanation of something, start your own content creation platform and make it entertaining enough for others to engage, but nobody is gonna die if you don't so don't worry about Bazgrim turning the hearts and minds of the masses toward jumping to their doom.
Secondly, CP has been VERY clear as to what Perception's role is and even shown us examples in-game and given us anecdotal evidence. The lore IS NOT NECESSARY to play the game and make it to max level and endgame content. But guess what? Neither is crafting. Neither are quests. If tangible benefits to you boils down to making people use the Perception system, I don't know what to tell you. Are you that upset over having to do blacksmithing becuase without doing it you're missing out on a tangible benefit to the game? If you're not a blacksmith, yes, you miss out on the part of the game that deals with blacksmiths. Why should we need to speak to NPCs to get tasks or quests? If I miss one, it wouldn't be fair since I'm being robbed a tangible benefit in the game that someone else had. There should be tangible benefits to doing everything in the game. Risk vs rewards is what games are all about.
CP has made it clear that you dont have to be a Keeper to play this game. Plenty of content, loot, dungeons for you to max lvl. And that's exactly what Baz was saying. And me. And everyone else on here that has agreed with me.
Counterfleche said: If lore conveys any kind of meaningful benefit (besides simple enjoyment) there's basically two ways this will happen:1. Lore gives information (locations, shortcuts, mob weaknesses, etc). Any of this information that's useful will be passed along, so no use of the perception system is needed. Word-of-mouth and Google are sufficient.
2. Lore unlocks things / gives items. This requires active participation. It's more engaging, but if the rewards are too good, it becomes a defacto requirement and just another way to gate content behind tasks that many of us find tedious.
What's up with everyone and this whole Google it mindset? You do realize that all that info is not going to be available at launch right? Unless some illegal datamining happens and there's a big release, you'll never know everything about the game. There's stuff I'm still figuring out about EQ1 that I'd never seen before and couldn't find any other info about it either. There will be world first discoveries AFTER Beta, so this is an argument just to say you'd like a quest marker on a map and want to go directly to the dungeon and kill stuff. Fine, but don't get mad at everyone else who is not like that. If you only care about doing combat loops with suggested builds from a website, why release this game at all? We can all go play Smite or LoL or any number of other games solely about the combat loop. This is an R P G. If you don't wanna know anything unrelated to button mashing, maybe MMORPGs aren't the right kind of game for you.
Looks like you're saying we shouldn't have any rewards in the game that aren't combat related because it would make some people have to do that particular thing in order to get it and it's not fair if you don't like to do that particular thing. I'm telling y'all, in this game as it has been described and presented, knowing info from the lore will give advantages to those who take the time. Eventually, everything makes its way into a wiki somewhere, but you are still getting the lore but in a crude and condensed version. And it will be after someone else does the actual fun part of the game, which is the wonder and exploration of a new world.
philo said:Please don't link your videos to me ever again. I'm tired of explaining to people why much of what you present is inaccurate.
lol it's literally a direct link to Joppa's answer.
If you've decided to clutch onto an outdated perspective of my content by ignoring anything new, I'm not going to stop you. The link is there for anyone else that may be reading and finds it helpful.
philo said: ... I've never played a game where knowing lore mattered. But also, I don't think that's what most people want. ...
However, I think if the time-investment actions of the character are rewarded, in general, players like that, and will stay subscribed for as long as they can continue doing that.
To me, that means if my character can absorb thematically consistent in-game Lore through actions, like observation of races and/or species, and gain an advantage in a, some, many, or all game loops as result, it would be in the best interest of VR to impelement such a mechanic. Myself and many potential customers I know would play the hell out of a game like that.
As a player and potential customer, I have almost no interest in learning about yet another fictional history. If your expectation is that I MUST spend hours or days reading through poorly written fiction on your web site in order to play your game? I simply will not do it. If that's a requirement, I'm not in the target demographic. It should be, again, imo, all in-game.
However, if it means my character gains an option in combat to apply a larger, more powerful, or longer duration status effect on an Orc because my character knows this tribe lived their entire life underground, and sun-blindness affects them 25% more? Sign me up.
Put whatever hoops in the game are required for my character to jump through to gather that "Lore" into my characters head so that flag in the database is set, and I can blind them for 25% longer, or while blind, it applies confuse, and they attack their non-CC'd allies. Again, I'll be the first in line to gain that advantage.
Similarly, if knowing in-game lore and history from my character reading in-game books gives me dialogue options for diplomacy, or opens up optional steps in quests or tasks, or provides me with race-specific schematic locations for crafting, or better/race-specific/item-specific/material-specific harvesting locations? (as in, they're now only visible to us, post learning) Great. Do that more. That's thematically consistent, and another task on the task list.
If the Perception system is going to be used to, through/via any number of degrees of separation, lead to or eventually open up actual persistent in-game advantages in all game loops other than simply event triggered flavor text? Awesome, enumerate those mechanics, and I'll be excited about Perception. But as described and demonstrated over the past 7 years, it's a dud, imo.
For example, if the equivalent of Epic quests of any kind are going to be in Pantheon, and the current public design goal for launch is: Perception is going to be required to complete those quests? Tell us that now.
If it's going to be "Hey, that's an apple" and "Hey, it's a book" and "Hey, it's a sword" and "Hey, here's a key" and "Hey, you notice someone crying" and more and more examples of this "push-notification" equivalent nonsense? Meh.
In our guild, the only thing people want to know at this point is how fast to reach the level cap, because perception pings are skill gated, and skills are level gated. Ergo, the most efficient use of time is still: Get to max level, get perception to max skill, THEN go back and you won't miss any perception pings.
Intentionally designing a system within which you are forcing players to re-visit areas randomly, unpredictable, or asynchronously, because they can't perceive everything required at-level.. that is, guaranteeing failure, at-level ?
That's not going to create the emergent behavior you want, as history has demonstrated repeatedly with similar attempts. :)