Porygon said:I think at minimum you should have:
Some form of damage meter in game.
The ability to mail items and money to players.
Some form of LFG tool.
A basic map with or without a location indicator.
Some form of fast travel after you discover a certain area or hit a certain level. (Once your maxxed idc about discovering the world).
The last two won't happen. Brad and VR as a whole have stated many dozens of times over last 4 years that an in-game map will not exist and that travel will be meaningful...thus slow. Yes, they have said that wizards might have some porting ability, but it was specifically mentioned that such abilities would not allow the ultra-fast EQ1 speed of moving massed groups of people across the world. So if you want to go from the Skar city to the Elf city, it is going to take time.
>The last two won't happen<
In this you may be correct. But, then again, you may not be.
It is entirely possible that what he meant was there will be no modern type of map. Or perhaps no map of any kind showing unexplored areas. But maybe you can create a map (with a cartography skill or otherwise) or buy a map.
It is entirely possible that what he means about travel is there will not be a lot of fast travel - or there will not be any to or from adventure areas. But maybe there will be travel between mercantile areas.
When you say there will definitely not be fast travel, you are saying that it may take hours or days of game time to go from one continent to another. In this you are most certainly incorrect. Oversimplify his views on one thing you may be oversimplifying on others.
It is entirely possible that what he means *now* is not the way things will turn out. Only a fool would say "this is how it will be regardless of testing results" and I am certainly not calling him a fool.
Kittik said:What Quality of Life systems do we come to expect now a days that EQ didn't have on release? Or what are some you know of that we shouldn't have.
Things you absolutely don't need and really don't want:
1) Map and minimap. Game is better without either.
2) Quick travel outside of asking someone else to do some sort of travel magic. No no and more no.
3) Damage/performance meters. If you need the numbers to figure out who is gimp, parse your logs or pay attention during encounters. My cleric knows who is a mana sponge and who isn't. The group knows who brings the DPS and who doesn't. The group knows who is afk and who isn't. Etc. No need for dev cycles to be wasted on something anyone paying attention can see with their own eyes, and can back up with parsed ogs.
4) LFG tools beyond an "/lfg on" tag and then a "/who all lfg min_lvl max_lvl" chat command. No need. In early EQ, you could find any class in any level range anywhere in the world with a simple chat command. It doesn't need to be some fancy UI thing.
5) A bazaar or other impersonal method of trade. Nope, all trade should be made face to face, period. People gripe the EC tunnel sytem, but between that and uhm...Discord....there are plenty of community driven ways to trade and run an economy. Community driven solutions ftw.
Basically, give the bare essentials of classic EQ1, let the community drive the emergent development of QoL systems. The community will respond with vigor.
Since others have brought it up, I wanted to share my opinion on systems to support the game economy. This is probably with a much longer post at some point, and I am typing this on my phone, so I will try to be very simple, clear, and direct.
A barter economy (EC Tunnel style), while certainly great for social interaction, locks out a huge percentage of players from effectively participating in the economy. Vast numbers of people simply do not have the time to spend hours standing in a crowd of other players just to buy and sell things. Especially not these days when the average age of an MMO player is over 30. If you ask folks to choose between playing the game and trading with others, most of them will simply choose not to participate in the economy, best case.
The economy needs to scale to all players, and needs to be easily accessible to all players. You can not accomplish this by cramming everyone into spammy chat channels that scroll so quickly that no one can keep up.
This does NOT mean that I support a global auction house. That system limits participation in the economy as well in several important ways. What I do support is a middle ground approach that leverages offline trading, local or regional markets, and provides sellers the opportunity to compete fairly based on quality, convenience, or price.
If folks are passionate about this particular topic I highly recommend that they participate in some of the discussions in the Crafting forum. Because if there is a group of players that really cares the most about an economy that works, it's crafters.
Nephele said:Since others have brought it up, I wanted to share my opinion on systems to support the game economy. This is probably with a much longer post at some point, and I am typing this on my phone, so I will try to be very simple, clear, and direct.
A barter economy (EC Tunnel style), while certainly great for social interaction, locks out a huge percentage of players from effectively participating in the economy. Vast numbers of people simply do not have the time to spend hours standing in a crowd of other players just to buy and sell things. Especially not these days when the average age of an MMO player is over 30. If you ask folks to choose between playing the game and trading with others, most of them will simply choose not to participate in the economy, best case.
The economy needs to scale to all players, and needs to be easily accessible to all players. You can not accomplish this by cramming everyone into spammy chat channels that scroll so quickly that no one can keep up.
This does NOT mean that I support a global auction house. That system limits participation in the economy as well in several important ways. What I do support is a middle ground approach that leverages offline trading, local or regional markets, and provides sellers the opportunity to compete fairly based on quality, convenience, or price.
If folks are passionate about this particular topic I highly recommend that they participate in some of the discussions in the Crafting forum. Because if there is a group of players that really cares the most about an economy that works, it's crafters.
One word answer/rebuttal to the above - Discord.
/topic
Watemper said:I believe your fast travel options are a wizard, and a druid. Good enough
Also for maps, I am completly fine with some sort of inscriber profession that allows you to make maps that you can put in your inventory and take out every now and then to look at, but it doesn't show where you are. I would just want it to show the layout of the land. You can also mark on the map too if you want to indicate dungeons and coords and stuff.
Venjenz, have you ever actually been part of a discord chat channel that had more than three or four people actively typing at once?
Please feel free to offer an actual workable solution if you know something I am missing. In the meantime I will go try to catch up on the 8000 or so words that people have typed in Discord while I was writing this post.
Venjenz said:One word answer/rebuttal to the above - Discord.
/topic
Weren't you the one who deleted all posts and changed them to be less argumentative and supportive of VR...
Cause this comment literally does nothing to support your arguement regarding not having auction houses... soooooooo yea....
Porygon said:Weren't you the one who deleted all posts and changed them to be less argumentative and supportive of VR...
Cause this comment literally does nothing to support your arguement regarding not having auction houses... soooooooo yea....
I am being supportive of VR. And my guild in p1999 has a bazaar channel where people WTS/WTB outside of game, with links to every item they want to sell/buy. Actually, they have two channels, one for high value, another for low. Separate channel for tradeskill requests as well.
VR, the fine folks that they are, simply does not need to waste any of their extraordinarily valuable development time creating something that the players can handle with Discord or a standard forum.
Nephele said:Venjenz, have you ever actually been part of a discord chat channel that had more than three or four people actively typing at once?
Sure. I belong to several.
Nephele said:Please feel free to offer an actual workable solution if you know something I am missing. In the meantime I will go try to catch up on the 8000 or so words that people have typed in Discord while I was writing this post.
A bazaar channel, or many of them. WTS, WTB, WTT, tradeskill requests, MQ requests, etc. If it got really big, it could be separaed by class, tradeskill, stat buffed, etc. That's all an auction house really is. But why do the devs need to spend time making something the players can handle easily? I'd much rather have them spend time dealing with making sure a dungeon can hold 50 people and have zero lag.
In regards to "fast travel" I fail to see how me spamming general looking for a port vs me paying an npc for the same port makes a difference.
Infact it could be potentially a great money sink. Each time you decide to use the portal the price increases. Not using the portal over a time frame would decrease the price.
Venjenz said:Porygon said:Weren't you the one who deleted all posts and changed them to be less argumentative and supportive of VR...
Cause this comment literally does nothing to support your arguement regarding not having auction houses... soooooooo yea....
I am being supportive of VR. And my guild in p1999 has a bazaar channel where people WTS/WTB outside of game, with links to every item they want to sell/buy. Actually, they have two channels, one for high value, another for low. Separate channel for tradeskill requests as well.
VR, the fine folks that they are, simply does not need to waste any of their extraordinarily valuable development time creating something that the players can handle with Discord or a standard forum.
If the solution of an issue, is creating a way to make it happen outside of the game... then that mechanic should probably just be included inside of the game.
Solving maps by having websites people can go to with maps is not a solution.
Having an outside of the game parser to utilize logs and report back dps is not a solution.
Having a discord channel or website to facilitate trading is not a solution.
All these things do is alienate those who are unfamiliar or unwilling to use the "alternatives". Its just creating a larger gap between the elite and the casual which is easily the quickest way for a game to fail.
Given that most of not all games have some form of these programs in place should make for an easy development.
Watemper said:If it doesn't make a difference, then why argue it. Also the difference is real player interactiov vs npc. The more real player interaction their is the better imo.
The more "QUALITY" player interaction the better. Me spamming /OOC wtb port to xxxx tipping 10pp, and having someone answer me and port me is not quality interaction. There are many other ways the game can be designed to spark ACTUAL player interaction.
Porygon is, of course, right.
Having certain classes get rich selling taxi services makes the game world feel larger and foces us to explore just how?
If we are going to have no rapid transit at all okay I may disagree but I can see the logic.
But forcing me to spam for a taxi service or play a class with that ability - there is no logic at *all* to having a small convenient world for some classes and a large inconvenient world for others.
Does anyone think this is a good idea for any reason other than EQ did it in 1999?
dorotea said:Porygon is, of course, right.
Having certain classes get rich selling taxi services makes the game world feel larger and foces us to explore just how?
If we are going to have no rapid transit at all okay I may disagree but I can see the logic.
But forcing me to spam for a taxi service or play a class with that ability - there is no logic at *all* to having a small convenient world for some classes and a large inconvenient world for others.
Does anyone think this is a good idea for any reason other than EQ did it in 1999?
I'm in total agreement. I think it's simply a meaningless throwback to have certain classes have instant transport. Being able to get around the world is such a fundamental ability. Fast travel is an enormous advantage.
The taxi services that will inevitably spring up trivialise the whole thing and are a goldmine for those classes.
I've ranted on this and given many alternatives before.
I don't get why people are so set of a couple of classes having the monopoly on something so important. Why not have paladins control banking like the knights templar did? Rogues could control trading. Clerics could have corpse summoning to bypass CRs. Summoners could be the only source of decent food and drink. Bards could have instant fantasy emailing.
Why not give all classes the chance to trivialise vital functions and flog them to each other?
If anything, fast travel should be something crafted so at least all players/classes can choose to do it, except of course, then you'd have very few people choosing anything else because it's so hugely powerful...
I think there is a huge differnce between quick travel and making some travel a bit more easy is a question to ask.
QUICK TRAVEL..... To click on a totem in guild hall or city and transport anywhere in the known world........this im not a fan of
EASE OF TRAVEL.......Doing a quest to open a port in a city for a boat to take me to another city or port of landing im ok with. The quest would need to be detailed and extensive to the point where you have to travel all over the known world to complete said quest. I weould still have to wait at the harbour for the boat interact with players waiting for the boat and socialize.
While we are at it let's also get rid of player summoning, resurrection, movespeed buffs, invisibility, "clarity", and really all specialized utility spells from players and put them on buffing NPCs around the world. It's not fair that I am forced to spam for a rez, invis, corpse summon, movespeed, or mana regen buff. And don't get me started on damage shields, haste, and other buffs being sold to powerlevel.
They are worse than teleports because at least I can travel to any of the destinations without the spells, but no mattter what I can't do any of the other things without dealing with other players.
@Iksar not sure what your getting at here
Im not a fan of corpse runs but if the game is going to have them then the game has them and i will adjust....still not a fan lol
player summoning is a tool on a character class just like healers have rezes and some charcters will have invisablity im sure. Every character class will get someting that will help a group which this games is being designed around ...group interaction to complete an objective.
The game is beinging designed around the hard core MMO players that want a challenege. Im not a big fan of some of the ideas but then again i havent played the game yet so i dont know how much i will like or not like there ideas. I would like some creature comforts that make a game less time sinky but still have the challenege that i miss in a MMO.
I never had issue with the porting in EQ, or that some classes got it while others didn't. Eventually I had enough friends that I rarely had to pay for a port. People also paid for spirit of wolf, or mana regen from other classes. There were also so many intances of altrustic people who'd just toss a SoW on you as you ran by. Some could quad kite mobs, while others were forced to group 95% of the time. As a paladin, I never got rich from selling buffs, but I had always had a blast grouping and meeting new people! It really wasn't game-breaking... Half a million people played the game back then and there are still people that play it to this day. Being able to port was a perk to playing wizard, just like being able to solo fairly efficiently was a perk to playing necro or enchanter. It made the game interesting.
If being able to travel around without asking for help is THAT important to you, then play a class that can port :)
I was always relatively poor in EQ, yet I wore the best gear available because it couldn't be obtained with platinum anyway. Sure, wizards probably had a huge wad of platinum, but they couldn't spend it with Cazic Thule anyway.
Also for what its worth i do hope someone creates a 3rd party DPS tool like ACT. I have never used it to boast my skill but a tool i use to help improve my toon. I like to min/max my toons and such a tool is a great way to do that. Also hoping the game has training dummies to practice on :) there a great easy tool that the devs can put into game