Evade said:But wouldn’t it also make it damn near impossible for a non gold farmer to obtain the item through camping it themselves?
Its basically solving a problem by creating another.
It can only present a problem if you don't accept that some items are not for everybody to have. I see nothing wrong with luck being part of the equation, as long as hard work, skill and dedication increase your chances.
Evade said:One of the things I loved in EQ was that almost all gear was tradeable and very few had level requirements. Making level 1 characters and giving them end game gear was always super fun. Has anyone heard what Pantheon is going to do regarding gear? If so, please link the video or article where Pantheon states their intentions
I've heard that gear will not be locked, "which is how it should be" but it won't have the same effect as in EQ. There will probably be restrictions based on level, as it should be.
The only gear that should be considered "No Drop and Untradeable is epic quest armor/weapons.
Many ppl here don't want to play a rollercoaster MMORPG. Where you need new gear every 3 levels until max, and that's BOE. If you get something rare, and which took a long time to acquire, you should be able to sell it once you get an upgrade months later.
I vote to no with BOE and untradeable dungeon or rare mob dropped gear.
Vandraad said:Kalok said:Evade said:One of the things I loved in EQ was that almost all gear was tradeable and very few had level requirements. Making level 1 characters and giving them end game gear was always super fun. Has anyone heard what Pantheon is going to do regarding gear? If so, please link the video or article where Pantheon states their intentions
Based on what they have said in the various streams, gear does not have level requirements to work, but will be more effective if you are of the "proper level" for it. For instance, you can "twink" a low-level character wwith a high level sword, and you will still be able to use it; however you will need to be of the "appropriate level" to be utilizing it to its maximum effectiveness. They said that they don't plan on having requirements to equip gear, but that they support having level requirements for procs and clickies.
If this comes to fruition, a twink with higher-level gear will still be far better off than using level appropriate gear mostly because that higher level gear will scale up as the twink levels up thus negating the need to replace any of the gear in the process. So if you are twinking out a Paladin and you give it some plate armor from level 35 mobs, a big honking hammer, etc it can just stay in that gear until level 35+.
The other half of this coin is buffs. Will buffs scale down to be 'level appropriate'? If you don't do both, the gear could be junk and the buffs will overcompensate. As a person who twinked a dozen characters in EQ1, putting level 50+ Shaman buffs on a level 1 ShadowKnight twink (naked at that) made it an unstoppable killing machine for as long as the buffs stayed active.
I absolutely loved that about EQ1. I hope to see that in Patheon as well. It felt good to me to run around lower zones and buff lowbies with HP, haste, health regen, and mana regen. If someone didn't like, they had the option to click the buff off their character, but most of the time I would get a big thank you from players. Twinking was also amazing for the replayability of the game for myself. Yes, the power gap begins very wide at level 1, but as I would level up to the proper level of the twinked gear, that power gap would shrink to be inline with what is required for that level. It was fun to bring the payback to mobs that would crush me when I was first leveling without that gear.
Kalok said:Vandraad said:Kalok said:Evade said:One of the things I loved in EQ was that almost all gear was tradeable and very few had level requirements. Making level 1 characters and giving them end game gear was always super fun. Has anyone heard what Pantheon is going to do regarding gear? If so, please link the video or article where Pantheon states their intentions
Based on what they have said in the various streams, gear does not have level requirements to work, but will be more effective if you are of the "proper level" for it. For instance, you can "twink" a low-level character wwith a high level sword, and you will still be able to use it; however you will need to be of the "appropriate level" to be utilizing it to its maximum effectiveness. They said that they don't plan on having requirements to equip gear, but that they support having level requirements for procs and clickies.
If this comes to fruition, a twink with higher-level gear will still be far better off than using level appropriate gear mostly because that higher level gear will scale up as the twink levels up thus negating the need to replace any of the gear in the process. So if you are twinking out a Paladin and you give it some plate armor from level 35 mobs, a big honking hammer, etc it can just stay in that gear until level 35+.
The other half of this coin is buffs. Will buffs scale down to be 'level appropriate'? If you don't do both, the gear could be junk and the buffs will overcompensate. As a person who twinked a dozen characters in EQ1, putting level 50+ Shaman buffs on a level 1 ShadowKnight twink (naked at that) made it an unstoppable killing machine for as long as the buffs stayed active.
Yes, buffs will scale down.
As far as twinking and gear, they said something about putting in reasons to NOT hand your gear to lower levels as you levlel up and get better gear, but they didn't elaborate on what it would look like.
If buffs scale that will be good, but it won't fix the problem. VR has stated time and time again that they want to avoid the pitfalls of 'Best in Slot' gear, especially for complete sets. They have stated that players should not expect to have the absolute best item for every slot at any given time. But outfitted with gear far above the recommended level, the calculations that scale the buffs/gear down will always result in those items being at the maximum allowed for the level, potentially being 'Best in Slot' anyway. Even if there is a piece or two out there that might be better, I will bet that full set of twink gear even when scaled down will be greater in effect that havin to piecemeal gear every X levels or so.
On the no gold farmers in Everquest. You're partially right, they were called platinum farmers. And there were plenty of them.
Same goes for item and account selling. It happened a lot.
SoWplz said: I would think making raid/boss loot lore will help with a lot of the farmers. They will still find away to transfer gear to other towns I'm sure, but it helps slow them down from just stockpiling drops from one mob and mass selling. I would hope to see some undercover VR team that once these real world gold/item sellers are caught they would be banned.
Being a modern game, they'll be able to use analytics to look for statistical outliers for things like "amount of gold traded", "amount of times the FBSS has been looted", "amount of time spent logged on" and this will make it really clear who needs to be monitored more closely by a GM. I hope the ban hammer is swift and final for professional farmers and content monopolisers, for they are not welcome here.
I think there are plenty of good reasons to have level requirements attached to gear. In no particular order:
1) Balance. Level requirements offer a surefire and easy way to balance the power that can be achieved through gear relative to the level that the gear can be equipped. Some people call level requirements lazy design. I think it's intelligent design, especially when you consider the longstanding and recently reinforced goals of having a) stats that do the majority of lifting (rather than levels) when it comes to performance and b) stat values being weighted more heavily than what you typically see in most MMO's.
2) Situational Gear. Level requirements add another layer of possibility to this differentiator. "In Pantheon, there often won't simply be a weapon or piece of gear that is the absolute best item for your character's class and level. Instead, many items will be more situational, and the player will need to ask himself, 'Where am I?', 'What am I going to fight next?', and 'Who in my group is what class and what items do they have that may help us defeat the next encounter?'" -- level requirements add another variable to these questions, expanding the scope of potential situations.
3) Economy / Mudflation. Without level requirements, every ring in the game is forced to compete with the relative value/power of every other ring in the game. By eliminating the situational gear variable outlined above, you lose out on the possibility of leveraging "relative power" as a defining characteristic of any given piece of armor. A level 5 ring that provides 2 Stamina and 20 HP has a higher "relative power" rating than a level 25 ring that also provides the same 2 Stamina and 20 HP. Leveraging the relative power ratio of gear is an excellent way to create more meaningful itemization and thus more meaningful content, overall.
4) Twinking. Level requirements help create an environment where healthy/balanced twinking is naturally integrated into the gameplay. If you want an item like Fungi Tunic to exist as something that can be equipped at level 1, that can very easily be achieved. If you think the health regen on that item would be over-powered for the first 20 levels ... then you simply add a level 20 requirement to equip it. Rather than every item in the game being beholden to some sort of complex scaling algorithm, items are more hand-crafted in nature. If you want something to feel slightly over-powered, or very over-powered, it's just a matter of intentionally leveraging that relative power ratio. You can have a tunic with 15 HP regen that is intentionally over-powered while having another tunic with 35 HP regen that is highly situational or niche, if desired.
5) No-Trade Flag. The no-trade flag becomes less necessary when level requirements are managed responsibly. You don't have to worry about item #327 being broken while being wielded by a level 5 player. They may be able to acquire the item and carry it around in their inventory but if it's determined, for whatever reason, that the item would simply be too powerful to allow anybody level X or lower to equip it ... that is very easily achieved. Using no-trade as a crutch to prevent twinking would feel awful; player-driven economies are fun. Bind-on-Equip / No-Trade flags are not fun.
6. IKEA Effect / Sunk Cost Fallacy. It is well documented that many players enjoy the anticipation of being able to grow into an item they acquire but cannot yet use. Many game companies try to monetize this psychological phenomenon because of how compelling and stimulating the sensation it produces can be for the average gamer's brain. No loot crates or progression keys here, though. (Looking at you Team Fortress 2!) Just good old fashioned and organic RPG progression that makes sense for a shared world where most items are tradeable.
I would strongly assume items will be level locked since (based on the demo video) they seem to be doing the common magic item flood where magical gear is thrown at you from every other encounter. I hope the video was more of a possiblity than real gameplay when it comes to gear aquisition. Assuming VR keeps this common mmo trend to flood the game with common magic items then the economy wouldn't work out at all if VR doesn't accompany the gear with strict level locks.
The reason table top games and early EQ worked without a flood of magic gear with bonus stats is because it was more or less balanced around mundane armor and magic gear was so rare. Twinking was an option, but never the end of the world outside of pvp servers. When high stat items dropped it was a shock at how good they were, not simply people monotonely saying, "They have 8% more stats than the ones you are wearing, congrats."
I could be wrong but I'm mostly sure that we will not be having level/bind elements to our gear except in extreme situations, like high end raid gear.
We will however have limitations to low levels using high level gear, through skills.
If you are low level and therefore have a low bladed weapon skill, your ability to properly use the epic blade that drops off of a lvl 60 dragon will be drastically reduced.
The ultimate result would probably be that twinking is still worthwhile but mainly just so you don't have to worry about your gear any more.
My one personal dislike for level requirements is that I'm lazy and prefer to get all my desired gear asap so I can focus on the actual game, in one big, happy chunk.
In other words, I like VR's intentions for gear.
If they have common level based magic items even if a lower level player would not be able to effectively use the item it would still lead to low level players and twinks buying only lvl 50 items to grow into. Items that would grow with them rather than needing to be replaced all the time. That goes against their talk on low level crafting still being useful.
I like the idea of items not being level locked, but I feel that only works when items are rare if items are not rare then level locks are needed to prevent the obvious problems.
((If they have common level based magic items even if a lower level player would not be able to effectively use the item it would still lead to low level players and twinks buying only lvl 50 items to grow into. Items that would grow with them rather than needing to be replaced all the time. That goes against their talk on low level crafting still being useful. ))
Firstly I consider systems like this awful. No - beyond awful. Gear that you keep forever and that grows with you is an atrocity. It marginalizes or destroys all incentive to go out and do things to get better gear. It eliminates so much of the fun of getting occasional upgrades.
If you start giving out items that aren't gear at all - that are used to improve your "permanent" gear you have the trainwreck that is LOTRO. Over the years LOTRO has added seemingly endless grind to get scrolls and crystals to improve your "permanent" gear.
Gear should not - never - under no circumstances - grow with you. It should either be usable only when you reach its level or, every bit as good, it should adjust to your level when you equip it but then never change. So a twink helps for 5 levels not for 50 levels.
Jobeson said:If they have common level based magic items even if a lower level player would not be able to effectively use the item it would still lead to low level players and twinks buying only lvl 50 items to grow into. Items that would grow with them rather than needing to be replaced all the time. That goes against their talk on low level crafting still being useful.
You are assuming that a 'lvl 50' sword would work as well as a lvl 5 sword when used by a lvl 5 character. There's no reason that whatever algorithm 'de-rates' the sword can't be set to make it work worse than the lvl 5 sword. In which case the lvl 5 would be using a sub-par sword from lvl 5 to lvl 45, or whenever the algorithm stops working.
It would be downright foolish for VR to NOT make it work that way, for the reason you mentioned and others. I don't think they are foolish.
I am against the idea of twinking altogether. In a game designed to bring difficulty back to the mmo genre i find buying or trading more powerful items than they would normally have access to items to lower level players to be the definition of casualization. It ruins the balance of low level content and creates a divide between twinked and non twinked characters. With the progeny system supposedly encouraging an endless cycle of low level players it seems wrong to casualize that part of the game by allowing the characters to be more powerful than they should be for the content they are doing. Obviously its not clear how much more powerful they would be than non twinked characters. Even aside from that it encourages monopolization of twink dropping content and buying a list of BiS twink items instead of having to do the content to earn it yourself.
I would rather see the low level content keep as much integrity as possible and have characters not able to have god mode level specific gear or buffs active that completely trivialize the content. Also providing reasons to visit the various low level areas of the world instead of "oh i have X Y and Z, that should last me until level 30 so i can just turbo farm exp and skip these low level dungeons."
If they do it strongly enough it will just be a level lock. Sure you could equip the high level item, but why would you? You might as well use the trash drops the game throws at you. How VR implements a level lock is meaningless. A mechanical level lock holds the same meaning as a hardline requirement.
If they only turn a "purple" into stats of a "blue" while leveling people just buy the high level items to have full sets of always blue armor. (its not a rare it is simply blue, people may as well call it one of a kind)
I don't think VR is foolish either. I think the moment they decide to flood the game with magic items (not just a demo video) will be the moment they level lock items. As soon they decide on having Boots of every level we remove the main reason to have gear unlocked.