Howdy doody,
I see a lot of posts that emphasize a very particular group of MMO's. A lot of "I hope Pantheon takes this idea from X mmo" or "Remember the way X mmo did this? How do you think it'll be done in Pantheon?"
X mmo usually being 1 of a very select few, most notable Everquest, Vanguard, and to a certain extent EQ2 and even Final Fantasy 11 (Which I found interesting) - while the rest have been ridiculed, or noted only for their failures.
Now, back it up, I'm not disagreeing here. One of the reasons we're all here is precisely because of these "failures", or at least what we perceived as failures. I will be one of the first that yells about how WoW, Rift, Aion, ESO, and any other cookie cutter MMO you can think of has let us down. As a result, we get questions like "What do you NOT want to see?" or "How things went wrong", with the proverbial fingers being pointed at these cookie cutters. I propse a different thought experiment.
What did these cookie cutters do RIGHT? What feature/mechanic/class/idea from Rift, or WoW, or ESO, or any of these other MMO's that normally makes us all make a giant self righteous doodoo in our pants, would you like to see in Pantheon? What did they do RIGHT? Surely you can find something, pals.
Example: I played Lord of the Rings On-line for a good while. Created a guild (Kinship), raided extensively, put a lot of time into it. Much of it was a perfect example of what I hated in today's MMO market. In fact, if it weren't for the lore and the giant nerdgasm I got from anything Hobbit related, I never would've touched it. But I did, and I liked it. For the following reasons.
Graphics: They tried for the realistic in a fantasy driven game. There weren't any giant friggin' mushrooms (EQ2 Gfay, anyone? comeon), the colors and terrain were impressive in their depth, and scope, and natural beauty as opposed to impressive just because of their size or ridiculous color schemes.
Classes: I absolutely loved the classes in this MMO. Warden's have been my favorite class of any MMO I've played to date. Loremasters and burglars were a fresh take on an old staple. Sure, they had their share of the same (Hunters and Guardians) that pretty much played like you'd expect, but overall they broke some ground, I believe. Many people like to say "Don't re-invent the wheel", and in many cases I agree. But not when it comes to classes. Make it innovative. You'll always have a class that you can point to and say "Thats a DPS, that's a tank, that's a healer". Don't deviate from that, but make how you achieve those roles spectacular and new.
Raiding: I may get flak for this, and my discaimer is this - I never really raided in EQ. I was young, and pizza faced, and hormonal and weird. I never got a toon past lvl 48, and stopped once Luclin was out. So correct me if I'm wrong here, please, but I don't recall hearing that raiding in EQ was very complicated. Sure, you have your need for CC, off-tanks, maybe even some positional awareness with frontal or full AoE's, but that's about it. Am I right? I'd like to see some more added to the mix. I want my surroundings to pose a threat. I want my focus to have to be on more than just the mobs, regardless of my class.
I recall one raid, in Isengard, where every once in a while the acid in the floor would rise up, and you'd have to hop around like an idiot to avoid getting hurt. It was ridiculous, and I actually HATED that mechanic, but I did appreciate that they tried. It was the same kind of hate that I felt for EQ Corpse runs. Hated it at the time, but now I miss it. A room full of idiots hopping around while getting beat on, wondering why that one hunter can't seem to just hop around good enough (Seriously, how hard is it to hit the spacebar?!). It was ridiculous, but at least they tried. I can't imagine how upsetting that would be if death in Lotro was as serious as death in EQ. I think I would have blown things up.
Anyway, that's all I got. What are some MMO's that you've played outside of the ones most commonly spouted here with mechanics that you actually liked and would like to see in Pantheon?
-Tralyan
Rift used terrain/obstacles in raid encounters more than other games I've player. They weren't genuis level but some examples:
Jornaru and Akylios (water plane dragon, Hammerknell Foretress) - jumping from rock pedestals that fell from the ceiling between phases, avoiding waves that blew you off the sides of them during encounters. Falling off the edge equated to permanent encounter death.
Laethys (earth plane dragon, Infernal Dawn) - jumping onto spawned gold piles as a zone wide ae went out, hiding behind those piles as a frontal ae went out
Dragon Eggs (encounter, Infernal Dawn) - launching between multiple magma platforms during encounter to get to different sides
Land said:Rift used terrain/obstacles in raid encounters more than other games I've player. They weren't genuis level but some examples:
Jornaru and Akylios (water plane dragon, Hammerknell Foretress) - jumping from rock pedestals that fell from the ceiling between phases, avoiding waves that blew you off the sides of them during encounters. Falling off the edge equated to permanent encounter death.
Laethys (earth plane dragon, Infernal Dawn) - jumping onto spawned gold piles as a zone wide ae went out, hiding behind those piles as a frontal ae went out
Dragon Eggs (encounter, Infernal Dawn) - launching between multiple magma platforms during encounter to get to different sides
Rift had possibly the best raiding I have seen to date. Granted I only played up through Hammerknell so anything past that IDK. But to taht point they were very well done. Lots of great mechanics. The classes in the game, at the time, were pretty unique in some ways as well. Cleric tanks, rogue tanks, mage healers, etc. Rift did a lot of things right. Where I think it fell off badly was early on having pvp gear being some of the best for pve. That chapped a lot of peoples sore butts. Trion also handled the game poorly early on which hurt it pretty bad.
WoW - Mythic raiding is also some of the best. Hard to come up with brand new mechanics constantly but they do a great job at it. Class balance is always an issue which is one of my biggest gripes. WoW tends to have a revolving door on what classes are good and bad so from time to time you find your favorite class being not wanted in raids. The lack of end game outside of raiding and the fact that past month 1 of an expac there is nothing to do is the hardest hitter. Not having to farm and the easiness of gearing plays a huge part of this.
Xonth said: The raiding in Rift was the very definition of DDR raiding. Its basically: step one is watch the YouTube video on the correct sequence of events and you win. It became like a dace routine, and as soon as you had that down it was a cakewalk. I never really felt like I was beating a real monster because the fights are so heavily scripted. Run left when he does this or run to the middle platform when he does that.
Absolutely, scipting made it more artificial, but the mechanics across a raid zone were different enough to break monotony. This is what we are talking about. All we can initially ask for from Pantheon is the same variety, since we'll all DDR soon after that. Even after learning the dance, people can still have problems with the shear number of mechanics in a given short period of time...Laethys initially was just crazy. I hope there's a better way to provide difficulty rather than just mob ability stacking.
Xonth said: EQ early raid felt like you are beating a real dragon not some kind of programed script.
Your criticisms were well fleshed out, but this wasn't useful enough to accurately portray a counterpoint and just comes off as nostalgia. Can you detail it a bit more in terms of scripting or realted features?
That was my problem with games like Rift, Elder Scrolls Online end game. it felt very mechanical, do this, hide there, cast that, hide jump run fast win repeat.
Lost Dungeons of Norrath was the same thing. I'm not sure if Pantheon wil it but things i'd love to see:
Dungeons that change or have dynamic content, "Wow, Last time I was here "That" didnt happen"
Progression/Class Checks, EQ2 had a quest that tested your abilities as an Enchanter somewhat to progress or advance at one point, I forget the exact quest but you ended up in a bar and had to fight multiple mobs.
Tralyan said:So correct me if I'm wrong here, please, but I don't recall hearing that raiding in EQ was very complicated. Sure, you have your need for CC, off-tanks, maybe even some positional awareness with frontal or full AoE's, but that's about it. Am I right? I'd like to see some more added to the mix. I want my surroundings to pose a threat. I want my focus to have to be on more than just the mobs, regardless of my class.
I pretty much raided all of EQ through Rain of Fear, so, like until approx. 2 years ago. Things gradually became more complex, and more complex, sometimes to the point of being ridiculous but for the most part I think raids in general were well done. But there were some if you weren't friggin perfect, and I do mean PERFECT within seconds 54 people just got screwed out of another 30 minutes of their life. I'm talking about you, House of Thule, Ritual of Terror event. You had to keep four leezards preoccupied in their huts around the zone while the rest of the raid dealt with adds and mini bosses. The leezards couldn't leave their huts because if they did even more adds would spawn. There were about 99 ways to screw the event up and only 1 way to win. I think we probably wiped, crap, I dunno, 30, 40, 50 times until our first win.
Then there was Uqua in Gates of Discord which became the trend-setter of raid mechanic asshattery in EveQuest. The only good thing about doing Uqua was that afterward you could say you lived to do it.
But there were a variety of different raids. Some mechanics were like ... you had to position a boss just right deep down below and communicate with the team up top where you were going to drop boulders on the boss' head to take invulnerability off in stages.
There were raids where lava would overflow the room and you had to get on platforms.
One of the classic raids of EQ was the Skeletal Bard raid in Demiplane where random people would have to quote random verse of a song in order to progress. Still have the stuff saved to this day.
There were a lot of different raids that did many different things and since they were designed around having 54 people many people actually did have particular jobs to do. You could come in god-geared but if you can't be at X Y and Z location at the same time you're still not going to win. It was rare for a top geared group to stroll back through any raids unless you're talking 5 expansions or older just because of so much crap that needed to be addressed.
So yes, EQ definitely wasn't whack-a-mole. SOE generally wouldn't make it so an event could be zerged and punish you if you tried.
Xonth said: The raiding in Rift was the very definition of DDR raiding. Its basically: step one is watch the YouTube video on the correct sequence of events and you win. It became like a dace routine, and as soon as you had that down it was a cakewalk. I never really felt like I was beating a real monster because the fights are so heavily scripted. Run left when he does this or run to the middle platform when he does that. EQ early raid felt like you are beating a real dragon not some kind of programed script.
Wait wut?
Early EQ raids felt like real raids to you? So basically standing there beating on a pinata while he claws and breaths at the tank felt good? There were no mechanics at all in the early game. That's the reason people are able to cheese them today using mages because there never was anything to counter it. You didn't even need a real tank to beat them. If that's your idea of a good raid then I really hope you are in for a disappointment because everyone I know would drop the game if that was the level of raiding.
Enitzu said:Xonth said: The raiding in Rift was the very definition of DDR raiding. Its basically: step one is watch the YouTube video on the correct sequence of events and you win. It became like a dace routine, and as soon as you had that down it was a cakewalk. I never really felt like I was beating a real monster because the fights are so heavily scripted. Run left when he does this or run to the middle platform when he does that. EQ early raid felt like you are beating a real dragon not some kind of programed script.Wait wut?
Early EQ raids felt like real raids to you? So basically standing there beating on a pinata while he claws and breaths at the tank felt good? There were no mechanics at all in the early game. That's the reason people are able to cheese them today using mages because there never was anything to counter it. You didn't even need a real tank to beat them. If that's your idea of a good raid then I really hope you are in for a disappointment because everyone I know would drop the game if that was the level of raiding.
Agree with this. They need insane raid mechanics or else there would be no challenge.
Vade said:Then there was Uqua in Gates of Discord which became the trend-setter of raid mechanic asshattery in EveQuest. The only good thing about doing Uqua was that afterward you could say you lived to do it.
Uqua was such a ***** of a raid but I have never felt a greater sense of relief after we finally beat it. Nothing prior compared. I think I was one of but a few people who actually liked that expansion.
Shifting gears on the current theme of conversation yet responding to the original post, there's two things from Star Wars Galaxies I'd like to see again:
1) The ability to place a house ANYWHERE. I believe VR has stated there will not be instanced housing. I prefer SWG's style as opposed to say Vangaurd's, where you had to place a house in a pre-set neighborhood. In SWG, you placed a house anywhere in the world, or your guild could create a neighborhood somewhere. (I'd be fine with no housing at all, to be honest).
2) I thought the gathering of resources in SWG was cool. I don't remember the exact names, but let's say you were looking for a metal, IRON. You would go out and survey and find iron, but not all iron was equal - you could find some of high quality at 98.31%....or lower quality at 73.97% for example. Depending on the quality of the iron found, that would affect the quality of the crafted item made with it. I wasn't a crafter - but I was all over the world adventuring. So I would survey what the guild crafters were looking for, and if a high quality was found, notify them, they'd bring out their harvesters and I'd help protect them from hostiles while they set them up.
I had a feeling that this would turn into a comparison of raids. Ha.
That's interesting to me. With the myriad of mechanics we, as gaming nerds, could talk about it really comes down to raids. I don't consider myself a "raider", even though I have had my moments as a raider. If a label were forced, I'd say half socializer, half explorer. But even I know that raids and the endgame are typically what it boils down to. Like it or not, raiders are a huge part of the gaming world.
It's a tough tightrope to walk. Making raid mechanics both innovative, and not feel like a scripted dance routine. Much of that is a lack of imagination by developers, but a lot of it is also simply limited by technology. Either way, there will always be malcontents to an idea. What some see as ingenuity, others see as lazy, tedious, and filler for real content.
Somebody mentioned classes in rift, and how classed could fill a variety of roles. While I see the draw of this feature, I don't necessarily believe it has a place in Pantheon where class roles are being so defined. I believe they're trying to get away from the idea that all classes can fill all roles, for which I'm thankful. But it's not so much the direction of how they're building their classes that I'm interested in, as much as the details.
How will tanks take and hold aggro? Through snap or force aggro? Aggro leeching from groupmates? Aggro over time?
How will clerics heal? Will it be entirely based off mana consumption? How many reagents will be involved for buffs? Heal over time? Group heals?
Will there be added CC skills other than the tried and true mez/root/charm?
Many games have approached classes in many different ways. Some of them the same ol' same ol'. Some of them they tried for something different, and fell short. Some were genuinely unique and enjoyable.
I hope that the developers of Pantheon, and we the community, is able to take the good from these games we ridicule so often.
-Tralyan
The good things in World of Warcraft ... i mean Vanilla & BC.
* The game was not easy.
* No questhub centric questing. Yes, there were quest hubs but there were also many quest givers in the wild.
* Good, fluent animations.
* Good artwork. You could almost feel the dust in your lungs in the searing gorge.
* Many very interesting quests and quest chains.
* Very good translation. No mixture between german and english etc.
* No wellfare epics. Epic meant epic and it was hard and time consuming to get good gear or rare mounts.
* No hard/easy/mythic/whatever mode in instances/raids. There was one difficulty level.
* Very snappy and direct behavior in the game. There was not much lag and delays when you performed some actions like opening your bags, looting etc.
* To build a group you had to communicate with other players.
* Talent trees! I hope Pantheon will have something similar.
* Deep game mechanics which allowed theory crafting.
* Addons. You could modify and build very beautyful and useful interfaces.
* Good music and sound.
Greetings
Land said:Rift used terrain/obstacles in raid encounters more than other games I've player. They weren't genuis level but some examples:
Jornaru and Akylios (water plane dragon, Hammerknell Foretress) - jumping from rock pedestals that fell from the ceiling between phases, avoiding waves that blew you off the sides of them during encounters. Falling off the edge equated to permanent encounter death.
Laethys (earth plane dragon, Infernal Dawn) - jumping onto spawned gold piles as a zone wide ae went out, hiding behind those piles as a frontal ae went out
Dragon Eggs (encounter, Infernal Dawn) - launching between multiple magma platforms during encounter to get to different sides
Frankly I detested that in Rift...avoid the green goo and the red poo...hehehe
- GW2: Different combat mode/skills for land and underwater fighting
- Archeage: Building and sailing your own boat...need I say more? :)
- Archeage: Crafting/Farming in general was quite enjoyable (apart from the labor point mechanic)
- Archeage: Gliders (real flight would make skipping content too easy, but maybe some form of gliding would be possible, similar to Levitation)
- Blade&Soul / Age of Conan: Run skill (short duration, drains endurance). Yeah yeah we will have SoW, but...not all the time!
- Blade&Soul / Vanguard: Super Jump
As you can see, many of these are skills or things that change or improve the mobility of a character, which I like. On the other hand I hope that mounts in Pantheon will be uncommon (especially for the early levels). Some games make totally unrealistic or simply silly mounts...can't stand those!