I have been toying with this idea for a while now and thought i would finally post it here on the forums.
I would very much like to see more options for Guilds and the Artist under us to make Ingame Videos.
While talking to my Guild on the Topic we came up with alot of Ideas.
One of the Ideas i would like to touch on here is the so called "Spectator Mode". Lets just go with the Numbers 6 for a Group and 24 for Raid for the purpose of this idea.
Now i would love to be able to add a 7th person to the Group or 25th to the Raid as a "Spectator" in that stance he or she is invisable to the World so to speak. Gains no Exp and cannot engage in combat or anything of the sort. The Role of the "Spectator" would be to Record the Groups or Raids Adventure. This gives Guilds and the Artist under us more ways to interact with the game and the chance to tell really nice stories. For Raids this offers a tutorial option. Raids can be reviewed and the mistakes made, corrected. It`s also another way of teaching the basic mechanics of Raids to those that never had the pleasure.
The "Spectator" would be free to roam around the Dungeon/Raid as he/she wishes to get that perfect shot or scene.
This brings up another idea we had: The Action Shot!
Wouldn`t it be cool if you could take screenshots ingame that record certain Events i.e.
- Your first Death
- Your first Named kill
- Your first near death experience
- memorable moments
- etc.
How could this be archieved is the biggest question of all and the biggest obstacle. We have seen other games add action cam features to the game, like Batman, Assassin Creed just to name the latest.
While i am very excited for Pantheon as a whole just like everyone else....i too look at other options that would make the experience so much more worth while. If we had a easy way to record those "Greatest Hits" would be a nice thing.
The Video Tools in Landmark are a good example on how to do this. What do you all think would you like to see features like this or do you have any other ideas towards these. Is this something that only attracts few or have we all thought about something like this in a long time and would finally love to see it done ?
Lets us know what you think.
Just a quick thought on this topic...
I think this is a pretty good idea, with one big caveat.
The "Spectator" would be free to roam around the Dungeon/Raid as he/she wishes to get that perfect shot or scene.
As decribed, the exploitability of this tool would be huge.
Maybe if the only mobs/npc's/harvestables etc that will even render for the Spectator are those that would render for at least one normal group/raid member, that way there is a limit to how far ahead the Spectator could see.
A decent twist could be simply to lock the spectator into the Raid NPC's perspective and if you really wanted to have some fun make some quippy comments about the most hated PC on agro and comments of how many times do I need to squash this puny human/skar/gnome before it finally takes a dirt nap!
Again, exploitability is there, because the 3rd party application can be used to communicate with the other Player characters from the NPC's view for splitting up the room or other mechanics.
However, if the raid/group content is as described having 1 member of any raid not performing to peak performance to record events may impact the capability of that raid force!
I think we're dealing with two separate ideas here that can take this in multiple directions.
For a spectator mode in this type of game, I share the same concerns others have mentioned about resource management and possible exploits. In my mind the benefits for video production don't yet outweigh the possible risks. However, I think a lot of this could still be accomplished still through the amazing surge in game broadcasting on Twitch and Youtube. I think it will be very important for us to have connected, cooperative, big picture focused content creators who are collaborative rather than competitive when it comes to building up a solid broadcast directory for this game. You guys at VoT have led the charge in a huge way to keep people talking about it right now, so I think that's a great sign. I think at this point I just prefer that all members of the party in-game be involved in the action. Now, if they could come up with a broadcast mode that allowed a player to pivot between available in game cameras for all members of a specific group they were broadcasting... that might lead to some interesting ideas, much like Landbert is discussing.
On the second topic of action shots and memorable moments. It kind of reminds me of an old SNES RPG called Earthbound, where at certain moments in the game a photographer would drop out of the sky and make you say "Fuzzy Pickles" while he snapped a photo that would ultimately end up in the end of game montage. I am very much pro-anything that will help make memories out of the time I am spending in game. Whether this is an automated screen shot command triggered by certain events I can select from, or even some long term completionist and OCD driving mechanics like "collections" from EverQuest II (which were fantastic).
One way to deal with exploits would be like an "Eye of Zomm" (EQ1), but only via the raid members 1st person view, and the "spectator" could tab through the spectators to change views. Then the spectator would be seeing nothing more than any current raid member can see.
If you really wanted to carry it out, the change the spectator to a "director", and they get say 4-5 mini-windows of the group leaders' PoV, and can edit/cut from that.
But in truth, I just never got into the videoing of my gaming sessions. But I know there are a lot of folks that do.
For a game that does not intend to have filled in maps if any at all, I find it hard to believe that anyone would ever agree to built in functionality that would essentially allow you to film content and later on review where you did well and where you did not. Seems like a huge potential to exploit content even if it was not intended that way. Again it seems odd to me that we would allow some form of instant reply or video tutorials for guilds to use, but no map? Not arguing against the map discussions, but more so saying I think video is a little over the top for an in game mechanic.
Technologically speaking it would be very simply in Unity to have a free moving camera that does not trigger mob agro adding in the video capture again is pretty easy........
Riply said:For a game that does not intend to have filled in maps if any at all, I find it hard to believe that anyone would ever agree to built in functionality that would essentially allow you to film content and later on review where you did well and where you did not. Seems like a huge potential to exploit content even if it was not intended that way. Again it seems odd to me that we would allow some form of instant reply or video tutorials for guilds to use, but no map? Not arguing against the map discussions, but more so saying I think video is a little over the top for an in game mechanic.
Technologically speaking it would be very simply in Unity to have a free moving camera that does not trigger mob agro adding in the video capture again is pretty easy........
I agree. Having a totally risk-free way to teach someone raid mechanics without them having to actually run it is 100% completely contradictory to what Pantheon is all about. Sure, some people are gonna use their own video capture software and post raid tutorials on YouTube. Just like some people are make their own maps and quest walkthroughs and post them online. But VR has already said they are not going to help facilitate that sort of thing. It's so much better to just throw people right into the fire and make them learn it first-hand for themselves! I'm not saying it's a terrible idea, I can envision some pretty sweet videos. But unforunately, I just cannot see how it fits in the MMO genre. Leave spectator mode to competitive games like Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, Rocket League, etc. NOT exploration games. I would be extremely surprised and even disappointed if VR decided this was in line with their vision for Pantheon.
Great responses guys. Keep them coming. EXPLOTING is the major issue here, that i see myself too. That makes this a very hard one to chew on. I like making videos personally and do plan on telling stories in pantheon as much as i can. Its just really hard to find that even balance without exploiting the dungeons or raids.
As said by Bazgrim people will make maps, quest walkthroughs, Raid videos etc. I was looking for the Artistic Approach on this. Its all about having fun and creating quality entertaining content for me, but there would be people out there that would seize every chance they can to exploit and that is not in any of our intrests.
*looks at thread title*
Yarn, are you suggesting we all start eating hallucinogenic mushrooms?
I think the only way to capture moments or meaningful game play without exploits would be to have the artist stream a lot via Twitch and save / edit video content as needed. You would get enough good content if really active... This is basically the way it takes place now.
Pyye said:I think the only way to capture moments or meaningful game play without exploits would be to have the artist stream a lot via Twitch and save / edit video content as needed. You would get enough good content if really active... This is basically the way it takes place now.
The only difference is that you wouldn't have all the different camera angles for cool action shots.
The ONLY way I can possible think of it being feasible is if at the beginning of an instanced dungeon, it asks you if you want the record the run. If you say yes, then the game is passively recording your character from a variety of different angles simultaneously. Kinda like the different camera angles in EQ1 (by cycling through the F9 key if I remember correctly) that almost no one used lol. Then after the dungeon is complete, the recordings are saved somewhere on your computer and you can go back and use built-in tools to view/edit it as you want - angles, close-ups, slow mo, etc. It would certainly look pretty darn cool and I'm sure there are plenty of artsy fartsy video editing people that would love to take the time to dig in and do that sort of thing. But I'd be afraid it would basically be asking "Would you like lag in this dungeon?" as well the undeniable fact that this is still a feature that would require more time and effort by the development team while it just does not at all seem like it works with the overall feel of the game that they are going for. Especially since there's probably not gonna be that much instanced content to even make it worthwhile. Maybe it would work in WoW, but not Pantheon.