EQ1 Vets Get in Here

NorseGod

It's easy to find people that basically describe this game as "EQ1, but with a new world and graphics". Now, before I let that get me excited, I want to know how does it differ.

Do any of you, as EQ1 Vets, see any hidden negatives? If yes, can you list them with citations?

Have you thrown any money their way?

PottedPlant22

The single biggest drawback I see to this type of game is the death penalty.  I think corpse runs like how they use to be isn't a good thing (imo).  My hope is that there will be enough ways to mitigate a true corpse run.  Holding a second and third set of armor in your bank 20 minutes real time run back to doesn't sound that appealing to me.  They need to find a balance without making death trivial.  And honestly, I think that's one of the hardest parts of an MMO.  Risk vs Reward.  I'm pretty impressed with what I've seen from Chris Perkins so far, hopefully they'll be able to come up with something.

svann

I agree.  There needs to be a middle ground on corpse runs.  Another method of corpse recovery.

cheyane

Big guilds rotating a dungeon or dragon or plane between their guild members with no one outside their guild getting a chance. Everything else including the death penalty was fine but one aspect I detested was the way they excluded other smaller guilds and individuals.

NorseGod

cheyane said:

Big guilds rotating a dungeon or dragon or plane between their guild members with no one outside their guild getting a chance. Everything else including the death penalty was fine but one aspect I detested was the way they excluded other smaller guilds and individuals.

Could do what the Anarchy Online community does. Award participants with points. The points go to a pool linked to your character. When an item you want drops, you bid on it.

Been playing many games for 20 years now. Guilds have been pointless for me.

Every guild I have ever been in was us "scrubs" working to get gear for the core group of friends and none for us. So I never get endgame loot anyways unless it can be done solo, like in SWG.

Mylan12

cheyane said:

Big guilds rotating a dungeon or dragon or plane between their guild members with no one outside their guild getting a chance. Everything else including the death penalty was fine but one aspect I detested was the way they excluded other smaller guilds and individuals.

In EQ early on at least ( I left after the SoV expansion), On my server its true that most big raids were done by guilds. I don't remember ever hearing of a PuG doing them. As far as smaller guilds, they could form alliances to do the raids if needed. We did that for the Plan of Sky early on.
As far as individuals go, well it was possible to go with some guilds if they had room, needed your class and you had a good reputation but it was easier to join a raiding guild.

We had a group that kept a calendar and once a guild proved they were capable of doing the raid they got added and got a spot on the calendar. This was so every capable guild could go. 
Here a link about it. This of course depends on the players on the server respecting it and obeying it. I not sure if something similar could be coded into the game itself. I doubt it. And I also doubt players now days would respect such self imposed rules.
On a server without multiple instances of raid zones, I not sure how this could be handled today.

craftseeker

NorseGod said:

cheyane said:

Big guilds rotating a dungeon or dragon or plane between their guild members with no one outside their guild getting a chance. Everything else including the death penalty was fine but one aspect I detested was the way they excluded other smaller guilds and individuals.

Could do what the Anarchy Online community does. Award participants with points. The points go to a pool linked to your character. When an item you want drops, you bid on it.

Been playing many games for 20 years now. Guilds have been pointless for me.

Every guild I have ever been in was us "scrubs" working to get gear for the core group of friends and none for us. So I never get endgame loot anyways unless it can be done solo, like in SWG.

That's called DKP (Dragon Kill Points), and it was originated by a player called Thott in Everquest back in 1999.

bgzgamer

This is coming as someone who has donated thousands to Pantheon... Possible bias here..

I grew up with EQ1 since 99. The thing that has me worried is them giving in to masses. I have high hopes, but companies need to make money. How profitable do they WANT to be? Thats the big question. Yes, you c an be profitable.. but who is giving the "head way" to the business? Is some suit going to step in and screw it up ala blizzard? Short term big profits vs long term smaller profits.

I think about it all the time... but hey.. i am just one dude.

Vhayne

Present.

Waiting until the game is closer to release before diving into all the details of it.  So no real opinion yet.  Just hoping it's EQ1 in a different world with new classes and modern technology.

Jimmydean

EQ Vet - Played pretty hardcore (5-15 hours per day) when it was in classic > PoP.  I've tossed $100 to funding Pantheon as it appears to be the closest we will get to EQ1 any time soon.

However, I am already seeing some downfalls. Combat has way too many abilities and is too fast paced to promote a social atmosphere as EQ1 did. Groups appear to work through dungeons instead of stop at camps *maybe this is just streams?* I'm not seeing how this game is fostering any sort of social aspect any more than any of the other new games that came out do.  Games like FFXI and EQ slowed down combat dramatically so that people could socialize and not have to always be pressing abilities to min/max dps.

Theocritus

I've watched a few youtube videos on Pantheon...It loosk like I have already played it...To me it looks identical to the EQ1 gameplay....tbh I dont know if I want to do that again....It took up too much time and money and I think i'd rather spend it elsewhere at this stage of life.

Ltldogg

I am perfectly fine with Pantheon being like Original/Classic (up to SoV)  and hopefully they learn from SoE of what NOT to do; in other words, stick to the slow, hard group-centric gameplay, mechanics, classes, factions, etc that make EQ great.  I want more of that and if Pantheon can deliver that then great.  What I don't want is too many quests, too many abilities and spells, fast paced combat, too many mechanics, etc.  

cochs

Trying to duplicate a social aspect of a game that existed 20 years ago, you won't get there by just copying gameplay.  The social aspects worked largely because of the larger context at the time period.  I think it takes a complete re imagining of certain things if you want to nail it.

We didn't have social networks when EQ1 came along.  That's just one thing as an example.  Many people did a lot of their socializing via the game.   I think there are a number of things like that which are indirectly related but key when it comes to trying to re create an experience from years ago.

If they are making combat pace faster, there is likely a good reason for it.  It's easy to think back and remember how you liked the EQ pace, but chances are you aren't really digging deep and examining the larger picture of what made that actually work well.  The designers most likely are.

MrMelGibson

Theocritus said:

I've watched a few youtube videos on Pantheon...It loosk like I have already played it...To me it looks identical to the EQ1 gameplay....tbh I dont know if I want to do that again....It took up too much time and money and I think i'd rather spend it elsewhere at this stage of life.

I think a lot of people from the old days will be in this boat. The amount of time I had 15+ years ago to game is only a fraction of that today. If I have to spend 20+ mins running to my corpse or an hour to form a group. I'll lose patience quick. I'm positive I won't be the only one. If it's a carbon copy of EQ1, it will be niche at best.

wanderica

Arterius said:

As someone who has pledged to get into Alpha my biggest fear is this... That it is too much like EQ. I think Pantheon needs to stand on its own. I think it is fine if they use EQ as the blueprint but I think they need to expand it from there. I just hope that all the people who are in PA because they paid the big bucks realize this as well.

We don't need a EQ clone. I think a game like that would fail now a days as a lot of people just don't have the time to dedicate to a game like that. I mean most people I know now a days play MMO's for 3-4 hours a day because they work two jobs or more. I want it to be good and I want it to be EQ like but not a EQ clone.

I also don't want them to give up on there vision for the game because people complain as BGZ said above. I however hope that the vision they have is at least 40% EQ and %60 there own ideas.

You and I, my friend, seem to be in a very small boat of people.  While I did play at EQ back in the day, it wasn't nearly as much as I did FFXI (modeled after EQ).  I certainly enjoyed it, but that time is past.  I'm not 19 anymore, and I'm just not interested in the time commitment that those 2 games demanded.  However, I certainly want the social aspect they had.

I too donated to Pantheon, and eagerly await more news and the chance to play Alpha.  My greatest concern is, like you, that it will be too much like EQ.  We had a many page thread on the official forums dedicated to whether there should be an in-game map.  The general attitude from the majority of folks there was simply "no."  People don't want maps at all.  In any form.  Far be it from me to tell someone their opinion is wrong, but I can disagree.  That told me one thing: Most of Pantheon's contributor base mostly just wants EQ-redux (2020 version).  I think that's a mistake for many reasons that I won't rehash here.

There is hope though.  Devs have stated that Pantheon will draw inspiration from EQ, FFXI, and Vanguard for its development.  If, for example, we get Vanguard style boss fights in open dungeons that make use of modern technology, such as phasing, then it could present with enough of a departure from 1999 without destroying all of the social aspects that were a key part of EQ.  FFXI had quests that capped your level requiring you to toss on lower level gear to complete in a group with similarly capped players.  Why not explore something similar like a mentoring feature or a form of level scaling to support Pantheon's stated goal of horizontal progression?  Many hardcore EQ purists would be against this idea from the outset simply because it wasn't in EQ.

In the end, I trust that the devs know what they're doing, and getting more people actually in-game may begin to clear up a bit of that rose tinting on those glasses.  I hope we end up with the spirit of EQ guiding the ship without ignoring all of the amazing things we can do with MMOs these days.  You CAN have an amazing social experience in a group focused MMO without ignoring many of the amazing technological advancements of the last 20 years.

kjempff

- Concern: will Pantheon capture the free spirit of eq, the open ended questing, the pve sandbox virtual world feel; or will it be another story driven mmo herding players through content.
- Concern: will Pantheon inherit all the problems of eq's group centric play and make it even worse, with their stubborn group only approach, or allow for more freedom in playstyle (as eq did in various ways). There are reasons half of players playing some form of eq today are boxing, one is that it is mindblowingly dull to play only one character, one is wasting absurd amount of time doing nothing because you are 100% reliable on the availability of a handful of specific roles.. It was a problem then and that has only mulriplied since, so they need to have real fixes in place for these.
- Concern: The anti social of group centric games. Players tend to form tight bonds with only a few other people and closing themselves off from other players. A mmorpg claiming to be social should provide game design to break up these tendencies, and tbh I see the opposite with their table-top mindset and idea of playing with friends. This is where I feel that opening up the game is the way forward and the evolution eq deserves, make it more mmorpg and virtual world and less table-top.

And of course the all important "will it click"; suspension of disbelief; the elusive fun factor; the fine line between design and overdesign ... And all those thing that require an extremely attentive and flexible developer.

In the end it may just be "yeah the game is very far from perfect, but what else are you going to play when every other so called mmo are utter crap with microtransaction crap on top".

Mensur

NorseGod said:

It's easy to find people that basically describe this game as "EQ1, but with a new world and graphics". Now, before I let that get me excited, I want to know how does it differ.

Do any of you, as EQ1 Vets, see any hidden negatives? If yes, can you list them with citations?

Have you thrown any money their way?

LoL - 

It feels like EQ it Smells like EQ and is developed by old EQ veteran- So yes!

Yes- I have thrown my money at them!

Scot

If they are going to have corpse runs that does sound as if they are keeping in old school gameplay without thinking of the effect that will have. I assumed this was not just going to be a copy and paste exercise from EQ1. Not everything about old school is better than what we have now and that's pretty obvious.

Kyleran

Scot said:

If they are going to have corpse runs that does sound as if they are keeping in old school gameplay without thinking of the effect that will have. I assumed this was not just going to be a copy and paste exercise from EQ1. Not everything about old school is better than what we have now and that's pretty obvious.

For many EQ fans corpse runs are a defining pillar of an old school game so removing them completely would be perilous. 

My guess is they'll go with a modified version which gives players some way recover their character without a corpse run but with some significant penalty. (Besides total loot and gear loss)

I thought Vanguard had something similar as I described, but it's been so long since I've played perhaps I'm remembering another game.

Being a long time EVE  player concerns about corpse runs largely escape me, it isn't often one can recover much of anything after getting killed, even in safer high sec space.

ConstantineMerus

I got in as an EQ vet, but will get out as a free man!

kjempff

About the too many abilities comments.. I think the problem in those mmos with too many abilities (for example eq2) is that they are mostly wack-a-mole buttons (keep on cooldown), instead of having any significant tactical functionality.

Eq had a lot of abilities but most were tied to important uses (debuffs, buffs, cc, snare, stun/interrupts, etc) or situational variations.. aka they meant something. Transferring to wow after eq made it really obvious how simple wow was compared to eq.

I am not a fan of many pointless abilities but also not the simplification(reduction) of abilities like wow, but I love many abilities with significance like eq has because it makes the game deep and allow for diversity in playstyle and tactics.

Scorchien

Kyleran said:

Scot said:

If they are going to have corpse runs that does sound as if they are keeping in old school gameplay without thinking of the effect that will have. I assumed this was not just going to be a copy and paste exercise from EQ1. Not everything about old school is better than what we have now and that's pretty obvious.

For many EQ fans corpse runs are a defining pillar of an old school game so removing them completely would be perilous. 

My guess is they'll go with a modified version which gives players some way recover their character without a corpse run but with some significant penalty. (Besides total loot and gear loss)

I thought Vanguard had something similar as I described, but it's been so long since I've played perhaps I'm remembering another game.

Being a long time EVE  player concerns about corpse runs largely escape me, it isn't often one can recover much of anything after getting killed, even in safer high sec space.

Vanguard does/did have a system where you could get all your stuff back at the graveyard , the cost for repairs was/is steep ....

  Its a fair tradeoff

Amathe

My concern is that you can't just add up a list of EQ-like features (corpse runs, no GPS map, no NPC quest indicators, etc.) and "presto" produce something akin to Everquest.

That would be like adding up two lost travelers in Transylvania who meet a boisterous transsexual and expect The Rocky Horror Picture Show. There are hundreds of micro considerations that all have to add up to make the magic happen. It's not a tractor being assembled - it's a world.

So my concern is it will have desired features but just not feel like EQ.  

svann

Even in eq1 corpse recovery wasnt always the major death deterrent people imagine. 

Raids often camped a necro out at zone in just in case to summon corpses out.  Or a rogue to drag corpses out. 

If you werent raiding there was the option to beg a necro to come help get your corpses.  But is begging random players for help really something to design for?

Wellspring

NorseGod said:

It's easy to find people that basically describe this game as "EQ1, but with a new world and graphics". Now, before I let that get me excited, I want to know how does it differ.

Do any of you, as EQ1 Vets, see any hidden negatives? If yes, can you list them with citations?

Have you thrown any money their way?

EQ1 vet here, I went in on the lifetime sub package back right after the KS failed.  

I'm not in the pre-alpha, but for me, the hidden negatives are that a lot of the mechanics are still undecided. AFIK they haven't finalized things like death penaltys, raid sizes, leveling speed, etc. Until they do, it's a bit of a gamble and you might get disappointed if a mechanic falls in a direction you don't like. 

Also, the game is described as being the spiritual successor to EQ1 and Vanguard. So, if it's just a EQ1 clone your looking for, with updated graphics, you'll probably be disappointed. 

NorseGod

Wellspring said:

NorseGod said:

It's easy to find people that basically describe this game as "EQ1, but with a new world and graphics". Now, before I let that get me excited, I want to know how does it differ.

Do any of you, as EQ1 Vets, see any hidden negatives? If yes, can you list them with citations?

Have you thrown any money their way?

EQ1 vet here, I went in on the lifetime sub package back right after the KS failed.  

I'm not in the pre-alpha, but for me, the hidden negatives are that a lot of the mechanics are still undecided. AFIK they haven't finalized things like death penaltys, raid sizes, leveling speed, etc. Until they do, it's a bit of a gamble and you might get disappointed if a mechanic falls in a direction you don't like. 

Also, the game is described as being the spiritual successor to EQ1 and Vanguard. So, if it's just a EQ1 clone your looking for, with updated graphics, you'll probably be disappointed. 

Thank you. This was the kind of response I was looking for.