jadaski said:I have to admit, I Really hope they keep localized banks. I've discovered in my MMO career that the more convenient the MMO is, the less interested I am in the game. Local banks will force me to make choices about my location, what and how much I place in each bank, and potentially how I invest in services to move my bank to a new city. Bonus points if VR complicates matters, like making different cities more enticing for different items. Such as crafting cities with high level trade guilds and smithing equipment that prompt you to store crafting materials there. Cities with cheap bulk storage but terrible positioning on the map. Expensive or limited storage in cities that would normally become default player hubs at high levels. I realize some people will find it tedious to manage inventory across the game world, but I welcome this. I miss making real choices about more than just gear and ability points.
Non-global banking may also entice VR to introduce new gameplay options. For example:
- NPC caravans that allow players to move their entire bank in one trip, but require protection.
- Player caravans that require more effort to fund (see #4 and #6) but provide more options, such as #5.
- Unique bandit mobs (and bosses!) that spawn along caravan routes.
- Expensive, craftable wagons.
- Trade goods that are essentially junk items to players, but have varying prices across the world and require filling the hefty storage space of a wagon to make a trip across the game world worthwhile.
- Trainable riding skill for players to fill the role of wagoners, which requires a significant time, money, or gameplay investment to obtain, but are necessary for each wagon.
Time consuming and "tedious" design features are vectors for new gameplay, player interaction, and immersion. Even if VR does nothing but localize banks, I'm all for it. Features like this are why I'm even interested in this project in the first place. Modern MMOs are tripping over themselves to be the most convenient and accessible MMO experience. I yearn for an MMO that innovates in the opposite direction.
I was thinking about these things as well. Kind of like the escort npc quests in Guild Wars 2, but much more important. Great post and you sold me on having these local banks. VR could do a lot regarding this and make it more of a living world.
The are some great thoughts in this thread.
Now I'm wondering: why wouldn't there be room for both?
Certainly, in a world where wizards can open portals to jump between continents, interdimensional, all-access storage might be a reality.
Of course, I can't see many arcane practitioners providing such a service without due payment- and perhaps there would be limits to it.
Through a lot of this thread I've imagined players who (through emergent gameplay) start delivery services. They advertise the ability to ship items from one city to another, and deposit goods for you into your bank. The problem is the mechanics of how to actually go about it, since it could be highly subject to abuse. That idea might be worth a theory-crafting thread though. :)
Nephele said:In almost every MMO, ever, including EQ/P99, we're used to banks and item storage being globally accessible. Meaning we can access our stuff from any banker NPC anywhere in the world. If that's not the case in Pantheon, what could it potentially mean for the way we play the game?
It means I'm going to never remember where I put what, and it's ALWAYS going to be in the most inconvenient location. T_T
Naunet said:Nephele said:In almost every MMO, ever, including EQ/P99, we're used to banks and item storage being globally accessible. Meaning we can access our stuff from any banker NPC anywhere in the world. If that's not the case in Pantheon, what could it potentially mean for the way we play the game?It means I'm going to never remember where I put what, and it's ALWAYS going to be in the most inconvenient location. T_T
Remembering is easy.
1. Buy a folder prior to game release
2. Buy some paper prior to game release
3. Buy some pencils with good erasers
4. Title each peace of paper with local bank
5. When you place stuff in bank jot it down on paper with correct title of bank....Takes seconds to a minute to do this.
As for the inconvenience part...plan ahead if you are leaving an area and you like to craft you may want to move those crafting materials and put them in another bank.
As for local banks...I like the idea but hopefully Pantheon adds interesting gameplay for moving bulk materials via caravans as suggested earlier. For example a particular resource may be common in a particular area but rare everywhere else. You gather and gather and store it in the closest bank. You could sell it their low or move it to another bank and sell the material for a higher price where it is rare.
Porygon said:The unintended outcome of this is that its going to create "bubbles", areas which players do not want to leave because the difficulty in storing and retrieving various items. You'll end up with several of these areas throughout the world further segregating the playerbase.
I actually like that this could be a result of the local banking design. Those people scared to, unwilling to, or for whatever other reason, get too far away from their bank will means those people who will venture into those far away areas will reap the benefits. Less competition for content.
I just don't see the benefit. All it's going to do is segregate players, which is the exact opposite of what we are trying to accomplish.
Over time, items from location a will be available in location z... this is just a temporary delay.
Also depending on how much exp is gained when you rez, you'll just have people store everything near their bond and kill themselves to get items or gear from their bank. If it would take 15 mins to get that exp back vs 1 hour to travel there...
Just like every other "ridiculous" suggestion I'll deal with it if I have to. But would prefer not to lol.
Porygon said:I just don't see the benefit. All it's going to do is segregate players, which is the exact opposite of what we are trying to accomplish.
Over time, items from location a will be available in location z... this is just a temporary delay.
Also depending on how much exp is gained when you rez, you'll just have people store everything near their bond and kill themselves to get items or gear from their bank. If it would take 15 mins to get that exp back vs 1 hour to travel there...
Just like every other "ridiculous" suggestion I'll deal with it if I have to. But would prefer not to lol.
Ridiculous remain a perspective fact, as is a ridiculous "exploit" highlighted here.
Everything in a game is temporary , gear, level cap, possessions, even player skill and monster difficulty. Shoutouts not to make something "temporary" is like casting out the whole RPG genre, where everything is only relative to a specific relevel, timeframe, and context.
Nephele said:zewtastic said:Maybe it was just more a pain if you were a heavy duty crafter. I was max in all spheres, but to craft houses styles for each continent you had to raise skills for each continent. So essentially you had to max crafting three times. One for each continent. So it was brutal. And yeah, that plat cap eesentially made it necessary to have a 2nd account.
Frankly I was surprised to see such a crippling game mechanic in place just to defeat hackers. If it comes to that, there wont be much game to play after all the fun stuff get nerfed.
Ah ok I can totally see that. Nephele was a leatherworker (outfitter?) in Vanguard, so while I went and learned all three styles, I didn't need massive quantities of stuff to accomplish it - even the thatching and rigging recipes for houses and ships. But if you were doing the actual wood/stone for ships and houses? oof. that was a ton of resources. I had a couple of guildies who did all that, the rest of us just helped keep them supplied.
You must remember what it took to make a guild hall as well. That was one of the most amazing construction projects any MMO has ever had.
A massive amount of resources required, special harvest and crafting abilites that dropped from esoteric named mobs all over the world.
Wonder if we will see anything like that in Pantheon? Or any game ever again.
Naunet said:Nephele said:In almost every MMO, ever, including EQ/P99, we're used to banks and item storage being globally accessible. Meaning we can access our stuff from any banker NPC anywhere in the world. If that's not the case in Pantheon, what could it potentially mean for the way we play the game?It means I'm going to never remember where I put what, and it's ALWAYS going to be in the most inconvenient location. T_T
Yes as a very major crafter, this was always a problem.
But once again, in Vanguard, you would build houses, and then use them for storage. They could hold a good amount. More than your bank.
Most crafters ened up using houses for that type of use. banks were secondary. And your house had a recall point, banks did not.
I actually had multiple house close together (each character could have a house and share access), each kept different items. One for harvested items, one for adveturing drops, one for crafted items, etc.
Anyway, I am very curious how much of Vanguard crafting makes it to Pantheon.
zewtastic said:Nephele said:zewtastic said:Maybe it was just more a pain if you were a heavy duty crafter. I was max in all spheres, but to craft houses styles for each continent you had to raise skills for each continent. So essentially you had to max crafting three times. One for each continent. So it was brutal. And yeah, that plat cap eesentially made it necessary to have a 2nd account.
Frankly I was surprised to see such a crippling game mechanic in place just to defeat hackers. If it comes to that, there wont be much game to play after all the fun stuff get nerfed.
Ah ok I can totally see that. Nephele was a leatherworker (outfitter?) in Vanguard, so while I went and learned all three styles, I didn't need massive quantities of stuff to accomplish it - even the thatching and rigging recipes for houses and ships. But if you were doing the actual wood/stone for ships and houses? oof. that was a ton of resources. I had a couple of guildies who did all that, the rest of us just helped keep them supplied.
You must remember what it took to make a guild hall as well. That was one of the most amazing construction projects any MMO has ever had.
A massive amount of resources required, special harvest and crafting abilites that dropped from esoteric named mobs all over the world.
Wonder if we will see anything like that in Pantheon? Or any game ever again.
OMG Yes. I would absolutely *love* to see guild projects of that scale in Pantheon. It was almost the only time I've seen a game provide a way to bring a guild together for a common purpose that was NOT raiding.
+1 for Panthoen == VGNext in many ways :)
The old online games I use to play back in the day (before EQ) one was called Legends of Kesmai and the other was Kingdom of Drakkar. Both of those games had Localized Banks (was called Lockers back then). Basically you would store items needed for the area you are playing in. Store special gear needed of certain hunting area's as well as back up gear. So not a new concept but I do want to see how VR is going to keep a localized economy when people get access to Wizard & Druid Ports. How they handle that aspect (ports) will drasticaly effect how it will all play out.
Porygon said:I just don't see the benefit. All it's going to do is segregate players, which is the exact opposite of what we are trying to accomplish.
Over time, items from location a will be available in location z... this is just a temporary delay.
Also depending on how much exp is gained when you rez, you'll just have people store everything near their bond and kill themselves to get items or gear from their bank. If it would take 15 mins to get that exp back vs 1 hour to travel there...
Just like every other "ridiculous" suggestion I'll deal with it if I have to. But would prefer not to lol.
This calls to mind the difference in human interaction in those who live in small towns and big cities in real life. Studies indicate that people in small towns tend to gather a social network of friends and acquaintances that are roughly equal in size to people who live in big cities. Simply having access to a larger pool of potential people to socialize with doesn't automatically result in a larger pool of friends, but instead allows people to create microcommunities, niche groups of people with a common interest or background. Whereas, people in small towns form social networks more based on proximity than commonalities. Put another way, a person has an optimal number of people in their social network based on their personality (introvert, extrovert), and increasing the number of people around you just allows you to be more picky about who you associate with.
How this relates to Pantheon is that I can see high level zones becoming the "big city" while low level zones depopulate to the point where they aren't even small towns anymore; they have depopulated into ghost towns. Since I would argue that after a certain point the high level zones will become more populated than they need to be for a healthy social experience in those zones, encouraging players to spread out instead of congregating in endgame areas will help reduce the problem of a top heavy server, as more "small towns" naturally form around the world, instead of high level zones housing nearly all of the population. This won't immediately help low level players find same level groupmates, since the players lured away from high level zones will be too high level to group with them (without trivializing the game). (EDIT: Mentoring!) However, it will at least provide people to talk to, to fill in their social network, and may entice high level players to level an alt to help a newfound lowbie friend, whereas before that high level player would only associate with similarly leveled players and would have little social impetus to reroll.
I would not call a dispersal of the population "segregation" any more than I am segregated from my neighboring town. If I have to drive 20 minutes to reach a friend in another town (which I do all the time in real life), am I segregated from him? For me it's a hassle, but not an insurmountable obstacle. Should we all move to large cities because living in small towns are a more intensified form of segregation? In the end, there will still be plenty of people in high level zones regardless of how many move to other zones. I'm personally far more worried about low level zones becoming ghost towns than I am about a dispersal of the population away from endgame zones. Local banks seems like a natural remedy for alleviating top heavy server populations, and a far less disruptive one than the tech that modern MMOs use to make low level zones seem populated.
This brings up a number of questions. How many friendly NPC towns will exist in Pantheon? How are they going to be positioned on the map? How large is the map? How dangerous is it to travel from any given city to another?
Also, what was it like later in EQ's life; were lowbie zones sufficiently populated? Hell, what is it like now on old, existing EQ servers? (It should be noted that I've never played EQ.)
Edited for a more logical structuring of the second and third paragraph.
jadaski said:I have to admit, I Really hope they keep localized banks. I've discovered in my MMO career that the more convenient the MMO is, the less interested I am in the game. Local banks will force me to make choices about my location, what and how much I place in each bank, and potentially how I invest in services to move my bank to a new city. Bonus points if VR complicates matters, like making different cities more enticing for different items. Such as crafting cities with high level trade guilds and smithing equipment that prompt you to store crafting materials there. Cities with cheap bulk storage but terrible positioning on the map. Expensive or limited storage in cities that would normally become default player hubs at high levels. I realize some people will find it tedious to manage inventory across the game world, but I welcome this. I miss making real choices about more than just gear and ability points.
Non-global banking may also entice VR to introduce new gameplay options. For example:
- NPC caravans that allow players to move their entire bank in one trip, but require protection.
- Player caravans that require more effort to fund (see #4 and #6) but provide more options, such as #5.
- Unique bandit mobs (and bosses!) that spawn along caravan routes.
- Expensive, craftable wagons.
- Trade goods that are essentially junk items to players, but have varying prices across the world and require filling the hefty storage space of a wagon to make a trip across the game world worthwhile.
- Trainable riding skill for players to fill the role of wagoners, which requires a significant time, money, or gameplay investment to obtain, but are necessary for each wagon.
Time consuming and "tedious" design features are vectors for new gameplay, player interaction, and immersion. Even if VR does nothing but localize banks, I'm all for it. Features like this are why I'm even interested in this project in the first place. Modern MMOs are tripping over themselves to be the most convenient and accessible MMO experience. I yearn for an MMO that innovates in the opposite direction.
This is a great post. It is the "tedious" often overlooked mechanics that as a one-off don't mean a great deal, but when combined with many other similar mechanics they create a virtual world feel versus a playing a game. And, it's also when discussing each mechanic individually in a vacuum that removing one doesn't seem detrimental, but it is when many of these types of features either don't exist, or are removed, that immersion is removed for accessibility and convenience, and ultimately, I'd argue a much less rewarding experience.
Excellent ideas on how local banks could enhance the world as well, I would love to see all those features ultimately created.
MauvaisOeil said:Ridiculous remain a perspective fact, as is a ridiculous "exploit" highlighted here.
Everything in a game is temporary , gear, level cap, possessions, even player skill and monster difficulty. Shoutouts not to make something "temporary" is like casting out the whole RPG genre, where everything is only relative to a specific relevel, timeframe, and context.
I specifically used quotes because I know that my opinion is what defines something ridiculous or not. And yes, lots of the mechanics can be temporary... but the things you listed vs local banks are all different.
While playing the game and progressing you're able to grow from your previous self/gear/knowledge and surpass your levels, gear and monster difficulty... you can never grow beyond needing to travel to different cities to gather your belongings. It just doesn't serve any positive purpose.
Vandraad said:I actually like that this could be a result of the local banking design. Those people scared to, unwilling to, or for whatever other reason, get too far away from their bank will means those people who will venture into those far away areas will reap the benefits. Less competition for content.
I don't think that will be the case.
jadaski said:
I would not call a dispersal of the population "segregation" any more than I am segregated from my neighboring town. If I have to drive 20 minutes to reach a friend in another town (which I do all the time in real life), am I segregated from him?
You also have the ability to fly from city to city or take a train (fast travel) and have GPS letting you know where in the world you are (maps and location).
Both of these are widely frowned upon by most people in the community. Using real life examples isn't going to work because it contradicts a lot of the things people forum warrior for.
The issue with the segregation of people through our the world, is that most people will not be able to do anything on their own. You need 5 other players. If a majority of the players on your level range won't leave their continent because of the difficulty in banking it's going to limit the player pool you have to form groups from. Which is also contradictory to the world we are trying to create.
I understand the rationale behind wanting this featured but if you want to make the game tedious and "more realistic" their are a lot of other ways you can do that (and most of them are already planned on being implemented).
Some of these ideas are cool. It would be even cooler if high level players could do a player generated quest to facilitate that. The reward just needs to be worth it for the player to help get the stuff over. Without knowing more details on how this would work, it's really hard for me to form an opinion one way or the other.
I could see maybe needing specific gear in different areas though. You might need different items in different regions depending on the local environments and their acclimation requirements. If they design it well, I think it could be cool to have to consider where I store my things and then plan to move them as needed. As long as it doesn't result in 5 hours of traveling around to move one item, I'd be okay with it.
Honestly what will happen is people will figure out how to most efficiently store stuff and that initial time sink during the discovery process will be over and you'll just adapt and know exactly where you need things.
I specifically used quotes because I know that my opinion is what defines something ridiculous or not. And yes, lots of the mechanics can be temporary... but the things you listed vs local banks are all different.
While playing the game and progressing you're able to grow from your previous self/gear/knowledge and surpass your levels, gear and monster difficulty... you can never grow beyond needing to travel to different cities to gather your belongings. It just doesn't serve any positive purpose.
That's only presuming travelling won't be faster at higher levels. I can't argue it will be the case, but what IF it was ? Inventory is usually expanding with levels and goodies avaliability, what if walking or mounting did increase as you level thought things like "wilderness knownledge" "Riding skills" etc ... ?
Thoses things would cut off the time you take to go from X city to Y city, and while not aleviating the restriction of local banks, it would reduce the time you need to access your wares by going to another city.
Moving items from bank to bank would be an opportunity for some great player-driven content! This ties into two sets of ideas I've been thinking of which I'll pull from other threads. (deep breath)
Dynamic Environments
Kalgore has got the right idea, Eve is the gold standard for a successful player-driven economy. The problem is I would not want Pantheon to turn into "Spreadsheets with unicorns, and we're all out of unicorns". The whole reason we made fiat currency in the first place is easy of transportation. As far as I'm concerned, the "gold" we see is simply the paper cash value. Gold sinks are great though, inflation must be combated a much as cheating.
1. The Eve example is a good one, developed through a lot of trial and error. There are NPC stations and player stations (markets and crafting staions in one); the NPC stations charge a higher tax than the player owned ones to craft, the player owned one have bonuses to production and you can fix the tax rate and access rights.
2. In this discussion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNdDllfy2zM) there is mention of a market in EQ1 that was a central hub. In Eve there are 4 large hubs, one of which (Jita) is the largest, by far. There are also player-run hubs, but due to the nature of the game they are generally only accessable by certain blocs. In another discussion there was mention of cities growing dynamically in Pantheon to accomodate the player base. What I would recommend for NPC cities are markets that are small at first and which grow in size as local market activity increases. So players can watch their market grow from a small square with a few vendors to a larger more sophisticated market to a full blown economic hub. Gold sink #1 Taxes in NPC markets + crafting rise with more activity, incentivising people to make player-run markets.
3. Gold sink #2 NPC Factional demand for items, activity and taxes that have a dynamic influence on the infrastructure. There will be a "base level of development" for any given region/faction, which can be upgraded with more economic activity. You get better roads with more people paying taxes, more (defend and attackable) NPC caravans, better sanitation (lower chance of contracting a disease status), better quality crafting stations, more patrols in more places, making the roads safer to travel. Alternatively, if economic activity dwindles, the infrastructure collapses noticeably, roads are treacherous and dangerous, until it drops to the base level of development.
4. Have the backend tools or at least make space/room to monitor economic data like this: https://www.eveonline.com/article/pbrbgr/monthly-economic-report-june-2018. You don't need to release the info if you don't want to, but do have the info available and tied into the world in a dynamic fashion.
5. If you want regional markets, you will get market manipulation, be prepared for that and be prepared for dumping, artificially high demand from hoarding/cornering the market, and all sorts of nefarious goings on. The devs in Eve are notorious for not giving a hoot about your little squeals when prices go crazy, so if the devs want a real market, they had better turn down the volume of their headsets, because it'll get pretty whiny.
6. Devs, give absolutely no item away for free. Ever. Except for maybe beginner stuff.
7. Risk vs. Reward. If there are benefits to guild-run markets, then there must be risks as well. In eve, it's the fact all your stuff might be blown up. Will it be possible to theive, raze or raid guild markets?
NPC Caravans/Merchant Ships
I would recommend the following:
1. NPC Caravans and merchant ships that are attackable and defendable by players.
2. The routes they take are more or less secure given the infrastructure upgrades from player activity.
3. This may or may not be a pvp opportunity. Maybe PVE with 2 warring sides, whichever accomplishes their goal first wins.
4. Caravans can be modularly destructable, wheels, axels, tarp covering, all destructible from battle and replaceable through the player economy. (gold sink) Even not attacked, rough roads/seas can damage goods.
5. If the caravan runs over rough roads, it wears on the items being transported. These items might need repair when they arrive (gold sink)
6. Players can pay a variable of the total estimated value of their item to have it transported via caravan, let's say 8% for an easy road, 15% for a long hard road. Player caravan guards can be paid a % of a succesful run, player raiders/pirates/theives can get a chance to get some of the items in the caravan. The rest is destroyed. (gold sink)
7. The benefit of caravans (or maybe their necessity) is that you can reach other markets you otherwise couldn't due to the encumbrance/inconvenience of transporting of so many items yourself.
8. Perhaps an insurance system (very exploitable would have to be watched). (gold sink)
Benefit to this system: optional pvp, roleplay, risk/reward, and gold sink.
jadaski said:I have to admit, I Really hope they keep localized banks. I've discovered in my MMO career that the more convenient the MMO is, the less interested I am in the game. Local banks will force me to make choices about my location, what and how much I place in each bank, and potentially how I invest in services to move my bank to a new city. Bonus points if VR complicates matters, like making different cities more enticing for different items. Such as crafting cities with high level trade guilds and smithing equipment that prompt you to store crafting materials there. Cities with cheap bulk storage but terrible positioning on the map. Expensive or limited storage in cities that would normally become default player hubs at high levels. I realize some people will find it tedious to manage inventory across the game world, but I welcome this. I miss making real choices about more than just gear and ability points.
Non-global banking may also entice VR to introduce new gameplay options. For example:
- NPC caravans that allow players to move their entire bank in one trip, but require protection.
- Player caravans that require more effort to fund (see #4 and #6) but provide more options, such as #5.
- Unique bandit mobs (and bosses!) that spawn along caravan routes.
- Expensive, craftable wagons.
- Trade goods that are essentially junk items to players, but have varying prices across the world and require filling the hefty storage space of a wagon to make a trip across the game world worthwhile.
- Trainable riding skill for players to fill the role of wagoners, which requires a significant time, money, or gameplay investment to obtain, but are necessary for each wagon.
Time consuming and "tedious" design features are vectors for new gameplay, player interaction, and immersion. Even if VR does nothing but localize banks, I'm all for it. Features like this are why I'm even interested in this project in the first place. Modern MMOs are tripping over themselves to be the most convenient and accessible MMO experience. I yearn for an MMO that innovates in the opposite direction.
I completely agree with this, love the ideas, very similar to my own line of thought.