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Bring back the beat down
Amathe
Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
Everquest was filled with ways for you to get killed when you least expected it.
Opps there is a wandering mob 20 levels higher than the other mobs in the zone. Dead.
Enter a zone and get trained immediately, or aggro what someone left there as they exited. Dead.
Rare mob spawns next to you. Dead.
Look I'm following the road that goes through the zone. Won't save you. Dead.
Mob under the ground. Dead.
Tiny little brownie behind a tree. Dead.
Equestrielle the Corrupted comes half way across the zone to ambush you. Dead.
I could list 500 other things. Your head was always on a swivel. The game was not trying to set you up to succeed. It stole your lunch money and kicked you to the curb.
That's the fear I want to see again.
Opps there is a wandering mob 20 levels higher than the other mobs in the zone. Dead.
Enter a zone and get trained immediately, or aggro what someone left there as they exited. Dead.
Rare mob spawns next to you. Dead.
Look I'm following the road that goes through the zone. Won't save you. Dead.
Mob under the ground. Dead.
Tiny little brownie behind a tree. Dead.
Equestrielle the Corrupted comes half way across the zone to ambush you. Dead.
I could list 500 other things. Your head was always on a swivel. The game was not trying to set you up to succeed. It stole your lunch money and kicked you to the curb.
That's the fear I want to see again.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Comments
1) Become a better player through challenging encounters and quests, and cooperate with others to defeat the biggest foes
2) Ruthless enemies who'll hunt you down using our swarm-AI algorithms, extreme danger at every turn, permanent death, FFA PvP and no solo content makes our MMO the deadliest you've ever played
It's just not sexy to sell a game on this. But I understand. I agree with you. It's sad because most plaeyrs don't agree and don't want those thigns again.
It could be (1) and (2), but (2) isn't popular enough, so it won't happen. It all can be simplified down to the fact consequences are immersion and immersion isn't necessarily fun. It's not universally fun.
Game design schools are also discouraging things like this. So it's understood a high level monster in a low level zone is bad design. Essentialy anything which can have negative consequences is bad design. What they go for instead is to hve positive reinforcement. So rather than smacking you upside the head when you fail they instead ignore your failures and give you a cookie when you do well. The intent is to diminish failure and emphasize success.
The downside of this latest thinking is it makes MMO's too safe, IMHO. Cliffs aren't cliffs. Dangers aren't dangers. It's carebear. I hate to use that word because only a small minority will agree with me. But you have to understand from MY standpoint it's carebear. I'm extremely niche.
But, at the same time, the death system was built for tons of death there. It should be interesting to see how they go about balancing it out in Pantheon.
I wonder if they'll just expect people to die constantly come release, or if they'll take the opposite road and design so you are expected to stay alive at all costs.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
This whole players won't play a game that is challenging is BS, most gamers today have never had the chance to play a challenging game. And I suspect once they do, just as we did, they'll be hooked by the real challenge and meaningful content.... Achieving something will actually mean something and that is what hooks ya.
So don't start the tears till you actually play the game, then if you decide to cry make sure to put on your pink dress first... That'll be a good laugh...
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Not too sure what a neckbeard is either, but I like the sound of that. And yes it's gonna be a fun game.
First time in a long time I agreed with DMKano
Some people like a real challenge, but I don't believe alot of the newer gen gamers will be able to bridge the gap very well with the time-sinks(like the long corpse runs you mention, as an example).
Point is, you can hardly use P99 players as an example of how modern gamers are going to react in Pantheon.
i think the best way to do it is just have the mobs only aggro the first person to initiate combat and their group/raid. if they chase a player across a content and then the player dies, then the mob could aggro anyone else on it's way back to it's spawn point.
which would add an element of danger but wouldn't allow people to purposely train mobs onto your camp to grief you or steal your camp.
well they might still if they are creative with their FD's and judge the mobs pathing correctly. lol
but at least the group would see it coming and have time to react since its walking and not pursing a player.
just my opinion.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I agree it should have some limiting factors, like not training on others until the initial target is dead/gone, but there's so many ways around that. Even just doing a suicide run into another group could train them. Many people did that since their characters had no FD.
I agree that it's pretty exploitable as a griefing tactic, but I'd take that over the silly mob tethers like in WoW and such any day.
Definitely some of my most fun times in EQ were fighting other people's trains though. Fighting dungeon trains was just an exciting and enjoyable experience.
Plenty of easymode auto win MMOs for all your needs on the market. Let me have this one game that does not hold my hand
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
Pantheon is aiming at the same people P99 does. NOT at the modern gamer kid. If they join and have fun, great for them. If not... noone cares. Pantheon is not even trying to reach a huge userbase. They said numerous times that they expect a SMALL userbase and their development is based around that. So they don't go under if they don't hit a million subs like most MMOs do.
So to sum it up: VR is targeting EQ and P99 people, so that challange will return. Also a 15min corpse run is not "long". That should be the absolute minimum to even TRY to avoid death. You know...death should not be a form of fast travel anymore ;-)
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
hopefully with no zone lines (i'm assuming this at least) it will make it even more challenging to drop aggro as well. that is something i don't know if many think about because in EQ many popular camp spots were at zone lines for an easy escape.
if there are no zone lines that is going to make it more challenging than EQ in that regard.
i just think it's the better way to do it and it still adds elements of challenge because you have mobs pathing back to their original spawn points aggroing anything in their path, after their original target is dead or dropped aggro.
people could still train high level mobs and have them slowly pathing all over the place (after they die or FD) which would add a lot to the fun and challenging actor IMO
How about a zone where all of the groups have to try to coordinate somewhat? Like a raid, kind of? Except it wouldn't be a raid. It'd be more like how in EQ someone would /shout Train! Instead of warning other players there's a train, they might warn them the commander is sending his sentinels, or the bridge is going to be drawn up, or something similar. If the players say nothing, everybody suffers because it'll make the dungeon harder. So each group is more reliant on each other to be communicating and alert.
I know that might piss some playrs off, having to rely on others like that, but I personally like the idea. We SHOULD coordinate somewhat, even if we're not in raids. It's an MMO after all, not a single player game.
The trouble is many gamers play MMO"s to relax and have fun. For them anyway, having to be "alert" and "communicating" is taxing.
I liked trains, for the record. Like another poster stated, they made it more exciting. In all my years of playing I can't recall anybody purposefully starting a train, except once or twice on Sullon Zek--which had no Play Nice rules.
I think the reason I liked it so much compared to many players is because I'm--as a gamer--a thrill seeker. I like danger in games. Nothing else communicates danger quite like consequences which hurt.
Pantheon needs to be very careful how it approaches all this "bring back the beat down!" It's a very contentious topic. For one, I hope there's no PvP server. It'll be hard enough just figuring these things out.
Not coming from the original formula of mmos ( EQ1 and FF11 ), I'll admit, I was in some shock at the difficulty of the Developers Twitch presentation.......The more I let it soak in, the more I like a "Beat down"
However, I think dying all the time could even turn off the old school players to a degree.
Maybe their is another way to install consequence's other than dying all the time ?