I have seen some specific examples of stuff the people wanted to see implemented, but there is definitiley a scattering of subjects. If this game lives up to it's promise then there are hard mode things I think absolutely should be implemented. These are the things that while sometimes created incredible frustration, also resulted increased dialogue between players through need. Also at certain times these requirements led me from frustration to uncontrollable laughter of hopelessness. So here my initial thoughts.
Corpse Runs: Ahh the good ole EQ1 corpse run. Whether is was Plane of Fear wipes for first expansion endgame players, or deep Seb and Cazic Thule wipes for the mid to high range players, corpse runs represented some of my most frustrating, hillarious, and empowered times. I think it is essential that gear is retained on the corpse after death. This helps for realism, but more importantly to me is a better tool for a death penalty than lost experience. It also can increase community relations, cameraderie, and preparedness. In many cases people will have to call on outside help to recover corpses. Those people that save them can be paid, and regardless usually it creates some form of friendship. While frustrating some of my hardest laughs ever were in EQ1 on constantly failing corpse runs. Sometimes it gets so bad all you really can do is laugh. Lastly having a spare set of gear in the bank becomes important.
No Maps: One of the best things for me about EQ1 was actually getting lost on long trips. Direction sense became important, and paying attention while running away from a stronger aggroed mob was a big deal. The farther you travel from hom the bigger the chance of becoming lost, and the ante gets considerably higher (see Corpse Runs). I have always felt true immersion in a game really does involve the possibility in getting lost and I strongly believe that possibility should exist.
Extremely Limited Fast Travel: Another element I loved in EQ1 was that the ability to get from point A to point B was limited. I see nothing wrong with Druid Rings and Wizard Spires that can get you places, but usually in an area that moving beyond the Spire or Ring has dangers. These places did not take you exactly where you needed to be, they just got you kinda close. Not skipping huge areas through fast travel heightens the game experience, both with the dangers of travel, and with having to actually experience all that each zone has to offer. I feel mounts are okay, but they should be hard to acquire, and not make you so fast that nothing can catch you.
Meditating/Resting: While annoying I think learning to manage mana, and health (when soloing) is a separator between the normal, good, and great players. It also can add different strains of gear as in EQ1's Flowing Thought and Health Regen items.
Limited Bind Spots: Death should have heavy repercussions, to me part of that is the fact your gonna have to hoof it to go get your corpse. I like limited Binding Areas.
No Auction Houses: As in EQ1 (EC Tunnel) I think it is essential to make the economy player driven. When a store is closed you can't go in and buy something and this should be true for player to player negotiations. It forces interaction between people. I also liked that the distance from the EC tunnel played a massive part in the early days on how valuable the gear sold was. If stuff cam from Felwithe or Qeynos areas there was a mark up from the amount of travel and dangers required to get said good to the tunnel.
Factioning: Self explanatory. Your actions should be represented through the reactions of NPC's. I would like to add that I think distance from that factions area should be a factor. If your group kills a mob of a certain faction, with no possibility of word getting back to the main hub of that faction, then maybe it's as if it didn't happen.
Item Repair: If implemented properly adds to the gaming experience, if not it's terrible.
Crafting: I personally hate doing it myself, but I think it is essential to any great game. The harvesting of materials should be included. Items that can be crafted should have the possibility to be as good or close to as good as some of the best items in game. Those items should have incredibly rare success rates and costs associated similiar to the timesink involved with getting dropped gear of similiar caliber.
Home Cities: They should matter. There needs to be some form of reliance on NPCs in home cities through quests, available materials, etc. I hope they never turn into ghost towns.
Guild Halls: If implemented should have some benefits, but in no way cause the loss of immersion of the general cities benefits.
Food/Drink: You should need them, and should be penalized if you run out for extended periods of time.
Weight: Having to manage what you wear, what you take with etc adds to the realism of the game. I think it is an important aspect.
*added Language Learning: I liked this both for quest use as well as group communicating. I do believe a common tongue is necessary, but NPC interaction should be dependant on learning the language, unless that praticular NPC is well traveled and has learned to use multiple languages.
These are all I could think of at the moment. I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on my inputs as well as any new inputs folks may have. I think it is important for Pantheon to stay true to the gamer who does NOT want easy mode. If easy mode is the desire of the player there are plenty of good platforms to explore.
You are in good company because majority of the community here, while not 100% exact, share your feelings.
As Kalgore stated there is almost an entire thread dedicated to each and every one of your topics. While using the search function requires a lot of finesse and luck lol, if you just scroll through a few pages of the general discussion and a few pages of the off-topic discussion you will find most of these threads. For the corpse run topic look for threads with titles similar to 'death penalty' on top of 'corpse runs' and you should get some good discussions. You will even find some threads that discuss having separate servers gametypes such as 'hardcore' or 'survival' or 'veteran' etc etc.
I feel item durability/repair and corpse runs should not be both in game, in reality it should be one or the other. Eq1 had corpse run which made it fun and important to know that you should cannot die if you don't want to CR. Item repair takes a toll on money usually, while if in a raiding guild and you are wiping on the same boss over and over, it is enough for Corpse recovery to factor in item repair, that is too much.
I feel like if there are limited classes that can bind, such as your priests/casters, they should be able to bind themselves anywhere, while can only bind others in cities. I always felt like the bind system in eq1 was actually perfect when it came to binding to a location. While there could be bind stones in certain cities for those that may not have bind to be close to where they plan on fighting in case of a corpse run.
I feel like an idea like Plane of Knowledge was a bad move, pretty much made Druids and Wizards in eq1 almost useless other than nukes. Nexus wasn't bad, where each spire would take 20 minutes to "recharge" to teleport to a specified location. It still gave porter classes a purpose for those in a hurry. I remember there was the hidden firepot room in Timorous Deep where at first players were able to bind there and could use them whenever which was an awesome idea initially because it was a hidden area that people strolled across, then when enough players started discovering it they removed the ability to bind there. This made me think of the limited time items they had like Manastone where you got it before it got nerfed or removed and you can keep it if you wanted to and you almost felt priveledged being able to stay bound there, or have those items.
Azraell said:@Mayadar have you seen the last live stream they did? When Brad, Kilsin and company where playing the game? There is a lot of detailes reveiled on that stream alone. Worth to watch..
Live stream that Az is talking about, almost 2 hours worth of information and visual goodness :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INd9SfIbWN4
FAQ and Features/Tenents etc.
Mayadar said:I know, I was trying to get a consolidated thread, especially for folks new to the forums like myself. I searched corpse runs for example, and while a couple threads mentioned it, I did not see much specific on ya or nay, implemetation etc.
You are in good company :)
Kilsin said:Azraell said:@Mayadar have you seen the last live stream they did? When Brad, Kilsin and company where playing the game? There is a lot of detailes reveiled on that stream alone. Worth to watch..
Live stream that Az is talking about, almost 2 hours worth of information and visual goodness :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INd9SfIbWN4FAQ and Features/Tenents etc.
Believe it or not I just watched this again, still engaging. I just caught the reference to the blunt better against bones and blades better against flesh comment. It got me thinking, you know the Mining pick meme? and the Pick in skyrim in the first dungeon that was a reference to whatever and somesuch. So maybe a class or race specific (cleric dwarf maybe?) weapon that was a mining pick that was both blunt and piercing and the only one of its kind and one of those things that would stay in your arsenal for a while.
I cant wait for the next one.
I will watch the live stream today. It had been a while since I was in the MMORPG world which is why I was late to finding out about Pantheon. Honestly I had given up on any MMORPG's that I would be interested in playing. Thanks for the comments all, look forward to meeting you in game.
Kalgore said:Everything you have listed has been discussed in detail in many different threads
Maybe its not such a bad idea to revisit some of this stuff Its nice to progress with forums/threads rather than go back and read every post in every thread. The forums are pretty dead right now anyway.