MauvaisOeil said:I can't help you're often against most moneysink and consider them punishments of some sort, is there a reason to that ?
If you think that, you didn't actually understand my post. Vjek said "punitively cost", which translates into something that's so high you probably wouldn't want to spend it - and he also didn't want to allow item or currency attachments.
Naunet said:MauvaisOeil said:I can't help you're often against most moneysink and consider them punishments of some sort, is there a reason to that ?If you think that, you didn't actually understand my post. Vjek said "punitively cost", which translates into something that's so high you probably wouldn't want to spend it - and he also didn't want to allow item or currency attachments.
I was refering to the same ~subjet around housing. You seem to consider anything beeing a cost over the long term against beeing bought once and for all, to be bad and negative. I'm wondering why ? Prohibitive moneysink aren't good or realistic but average one ensuring things like mail, housing, fast travel or such aren't bad as they are meant to make thoses tasks "more than an obvious choice".
MauvaisOeil said:I was refering to the same ~subjet around housing. You seem to consider anything beeing a cost over the long term against beeing bought once and for all, to be bad and negative. I'm wondering why ? Prohibitive moneysink aren't good or realistic but average one ensuring things like mail, housing, fast travel or such aren't bad as they are meant to make thoses tasks "more than an obvious choice".
Read my housing posts again. I don't like maintenance costs for housing; that's all. I'm perfectly happy to drop ridiculous sums of in-game coin when gathering up the decor for housing. I think I've probably spent thousands of plat cumulative in WildStar on housing decor alone - even more if you add in all the money I've spent dyeing costumes.
And as I've said more than once in this thread - mail systems usually have a coin cost. I just don't think that cost should be "punitive".
I think you're just reading into things that are not there.
If there is no maintenance cost how do you get rid of the unused houses that build up? Maintenance not only acts as a gold sink to limit mudflation but also as a simple way to regulate use.
philo said:If there is no maintenance cost how do you get rid of the unused houses that build up? Maintenance not only acts as a gold sink to limit mudflation but also as a simple way regulate use.
Maintenance costs are only necessary in non-instanced housing. And I dislike that type of housing system for a number of reasons irrelevant to this particular thread, which is about mail. Not housing.
Jeron said:While Pantheon is billed as a game more in-line with the older generation of MMORPG's challenge, you do sort of eventually reach a point where you're makng systems punitive just for the sake of making systems punitive.
I generally have the opinion that Time Spent does not equal Difficulty. Making something take a long time doesn't automatically mean it's more challenging - it just means it takes longer.
Whether mail is received in ten minutes or two hours later, you have to ask yourself what meaningful effect on gameplay does the two-hour letter delivery have versus the ten-minute letter delivery. Does it make the player feel as if they achieved something? Do they feel as if their time investment was well spent by waiting on a letter to arrive?
If not, then he player was punished with an excessive wait time just for the sake of having an excessive wait time.Things to think about! :)
Yes but this is not a question of "challenge" or "difficulty". This is a pure RPG feature to make the world interesting and less shallow. With the added player interactivity of delivery through quests/tasks and perhaps even a posibility of mail not being guaranteed to be delivered this is a feature that together with other similair small features would make the world actually come alive.
I have grown to dislike the phrase "Quality of Life" when it is used in the context of an MMO. I personally play an MMO to experience, participate and (sometimes) endure things not having the game do it for me. As someone mentioned above: if everything is fun and easy, nothing is fun and easy. It just is.
Vaultarn said:Hi all,
(did a search couldn't find anything regarding this)
Been running around in Lord of the Rings Online(Lotro) and have been using the postal service to mail items to my other characters and my Kin mates and it made me wonder how mail might be handled in Pantheon. In Lotro (and a lot of other mmos) when you send mail it is instant, all you really have is a small fee to pay.As Pantheon is going to be less like other cruisey mmos how should mail be handled in Pantheon? I think we will all agree that there should be a fee for the use of the postal service. But how long should the mail take to be delivered?
Should there be a timeframe based on distance? Some would ask how could distance be calculated as the item might actually be retrieved from the same mailbox as was used to send it. My answer to that would be that when you send mail you must choose a destination. So if it is the same mailbox then it would be there and could be retreived anytime after it was placed in that mailbox by the recipient. But if the recipient needed it in a place that was 10 kilometers away then there could be a timeframe given based on the distance. Perhaps should be a similar timeframe to what it would take to ride to that other location, maybe 20% longer. Perhaps you could pay for faster deliveries, or am I just getting to intricate for a system that doesn't need to be that complex?
Would like to hear everyones thoughts on this, I'm assuming there will be a postal service.
Cheers
I have been in MMOs that tried this type of money sink. Players just get annoyed and simply meet up to trade items to avoide large costs to mailing. Also it ends up hurting one group of players more than another such as crafters vs. adventurers.
Pretty sure buzzing around to meet other players in Pantheon will supersede any gimicky mail system.
To build on my last post. A mail system that is fiscally onerous will be just avoided by players porting around to do in-person trades.
The real question will be how hard is long distance travel going to be, and for how long? Meaning by the time I'm level 40 I would expect to be able to travel around fairly easily? Or will I still be waiting for 20 min. boat rides across oceans?
zewtastic said:Meaning by the time I'm level 40 I would expect to be able to travel around fairly easily?
I personally hope not :)
zewtastic said:Or will I still be waiting for 20 min. boat rides across oceans?
Yes, I would like that. If not only to meet other people waiting for the same ride.
Perhaps it will be some compromise between our wishes :)
I believe that for the world to feel like a real place, distance must matter when traveling. Consequently, I dislike easy access to instant teleportation everywhere. An instant mail system is nothing but instant teleportation of things, so I think that mailing stuff should be at least as slow as if you brought your parcels yourself.
Making it difficult and time consuming to travel and trade over long distances and between continents is not punitive to crafters. It provides opportunities for setting up player-driven trade routes and specializing in crafting luxury goods made of materials that are rare -- and therefore expensive -- in your part of the world. In theory, at least. :)
Naunet said: Why do you hate the idea of people being able to send other people free stuff? This is not something that needs punishment.
Because it leads to an escalating war of exploits that hurts legitimate players and doesn't affect malicious players in the slightest.
I understand your perspective, Naunet, and if you could show me statistics that said: more than 51% of all mail attachments in all MMOs are unsolicited gifts from veterans to other new players? I would change my mind.
As that's clearly not the case, and every mail system that has any feature remotely like what you've outlined has been exploited, I'm not in favor of them.
In short, if you want to give someone a gift? Hand it to them.
What do I mean by exploited? I mean this: Any mail system that permits attachments can be used to bypass travel limits, as has been pointed out in this thread. Any mail system that holds an item/attachment for any length of time becomes a global bank. It also allows gold sellers the ability to trivially & immediately deliver currency to their buyers under the guise of "gifts".
I'm not just saying these are bad ideas because I woke up tired yesterday, I'm saying these are bad ideas because history has demonstrated and proven they are logically flawed and subject to trivial exploitation by malicious players.
But if Visionary Realms wants to put in a mail system that allows attachments? I will gladly continue to use such an exploitive system along with all the other players. :) But it will be, in my opinion, a missed opportunity to fix a solved problem.
vjek said:I understand your perspective, Naunet, and if you could show me statistics that said: more than 51% of all mail attachments in all MMOs are unsolicited gifts from veterans to other new players? I would change my mind.
As that's clearly not the case, and every mail system that has any feature remotely like what you've outlined has been exploited, I'm not in favor of them.
Do you have any statistics you can share?
[ sarcasm ] Yes, I work for all the MMO's, concurrently, and have access to all their server side logs, and access to all the mental data of all customers, telepathically, oneADseven. ;) [ /sarcasm ]
Hence the way I phrased my response. No-one can prove or disprove a claim like this.
I would conjecture that a mail system is not just a discussion of it's own but has to take into consdieration that overarching philosphy of player movement and travel in the game world at large.
If instantaneous porting and otherwise fast travel solutions are in place then placing onerous financial restrictions on mailing will fail.
If fast travel will be available but is limited by level then even worse as this unfairly penalizes lower level players forced to mail vs. travel.
If no fast travel whatsover then mail will define lots of economic aspects of the game and money sinks as a whole.
So to sum up:
Any mail system has to consider travel, in-game market systems, trading limitations, and any other aspects that affect the economy..
vjek makes some good points though not necessarily the way I would have made them. I am also not sure his conclusion is the one I would have reached. But I am closer to his conclusion than to the instant mail system many games have. All conclusions assume for the reasons zewtastic cogently points out a world with regional banking and regional brokers. Meaning you can only get items from a bank if you go back to the branch you put them in - or perhaps a branch in the same area. Meaning when you list an item it is available for sale only in the area where you list it - and if you check the listing while in that area it includes only items placed for sale in that area.
Mail with no attachments ideally will take some time to arrive. It is a large world. Perhaps instant within an area perhaps one day - but slower between areas. If you are in a rush go to the area that you are sending the mail to and mail it there.
Mail with no attachments should not have a punitive cost - that word is calculated to generate opposition, but apart from terminology it is not necessary. A modest cost should be more than sufficient to deter gold spammers advertising by mail. Nor is any cost necessary a spam filter will do the job even better. But I agree there should be a modest cost and this is traditional as well as realistic.
Mail with attachments should cost more - again as is both logical and traditional. Timing of delivery should be the same (unless you try to mail an elephant in which case it should take a lot longer for the trunk to arrive - not to mention the rest of the beast).
Editing my post as it was in bad taste. My apologies.