That's a good example, but it wouldn't surprise me if names start popping up for common camp locations. Someone might start calling it the "Spirit manor front steps" or "Spirit manor back yard" or some such. Not that different than the different names for camps in Unrest. EQ devs didn't name those locations, players did. I'm not trying to suggest that by naming them that camps will be enforced, I'm suggesting that by naming them players will be able to communicate easier.
Ranarius said:No one ever said camps don't exist. They said to be respectful to each other. If players want to name camps to make communication easier I'm sure that'll happen.
That's not what I have been reading... It was stated that you can't own a mob; how can you own a camp? What I am reading is that if your group is at what I would call a camp and you were pulling mobs my group can come to that same place that I would call a camp and start pulling mobs. We are not supposed to kill steal from each other like if your enchanter had a mez on something, my group should not pull it. I think that will get weird because I am sure if another group sees what you pulled and thinks they are trying to help you out by taking a mob off you or your group is in the gray area.
I'm not trying to say you are wrong; just how I am reading what is being said.
vjek said:The only way to stop humans from being humans is to limit the actions they can perform. That's why so many modern MMOs don't have training, kill stealing, camps, ninja looting, or anything remotely similar. They removed those mechanics and replaced them with mechanics that don't permit negative social interactions.
Just taking the other side of the debate here... sometimes it's ok to leave in features that 'Might' be abused and simply put in a rule that says 'Do not abuse this mechanic' knowing full well that many 'undesirables' will cave into their primative instincts to disobey and you can then safely ban them from the game and you then have less 'undesirables' running around causing problems for others.
If the game just didn't allow any mechanics that could be abused you would instead have these 'undesirables' finding other ways to cause problems (ie show their true colours) which may be more difficult to punish them for since they may not be any specific rules they are breaking, but still causes problems for other players.
dorotea said:But mechanics that have often been abused and are very easy to abuse - like training - should require a compelling justification. Otherwise just leave them out.
I think topics like training will be a very hard discussion. I'm sure you do not mean people trying to save themselves and running out to safety in a dungeon. I think you mean training, like if someone has a node and you train them to get it. proving malicious intent, I think, will be difficult.
Training is a topic that the tears will flow in forums
Nytman said:Ranarius said:No one ever said camps don't exist. They said to be respectful to each other. If players want to name camps to make communication easier I'm sure that'll happen.
That's not what I have been reading... It was stated that you can't own a mob; how can you own a camp? What I am reading is that if your group is at what I would call a camp and you were pulling mobs my group can come to that same place that I would call a camp and start pulling mobs. We are not supposed to kill steal from each other like if your enchanter had a mez on something, my group should not pull it. I think that will get weird because I am sure if another group sees what you pulled and thinks they are trying to help you out by taking a mob off you or your group is in the gray area.
I'm not trying to say you are wrong; just how I am reading what is being said.
I understand, I'm just pointing out that something can exist even if you can't own it. Just because you can't own a mob or a camp doesn't mean mobs and camps don't exist. My group and I might decide to go camp a spot, and pull mobs from a certain "camp" for an hour. I'd still call that a camp even if I don't own it. I might even name that camp "Spirit manor front steps" so that when I describe where I am to people it'll be easier to talk about. Calling it that doesn't make it mine, it just describes where I currently am.
StoneFish said:So where would the casual gamer land in terminus? I assume the casual gamer will make up a percentage of the community and their coin has just as much shine as any other players. Is this an environment where they will want to return? This may be the type of thing that pushes a reconsideration of server decorum variants. We know the probability of a RP server is likely, should an RP server have a more rigid code of conduct? Or should a sever with a code of conduct more attuned towards anything goes. If a guild can achieve any monopoly upon real estate, resources or quests then that guild can use its conquest for gain. Charge a fee for entry to dungeons, charge a fee for passage through the mountains, raise or tank the cost of a crafting resource to fill their coffers. All wonderful options if you assume you'll be on the side of the powerhouses. How many people want to pay a monthly fee for that world, when it so closely resembles the real one, only without goblins and talking lizard people lacking lips.
IMO:
You have to build the game with your target demographic in mind. So far? Pantheon is not for any 'casual' anything, given how catastrophically all of the revealed mechanics to date will be abused in light of history and humanity.
I fully expect for-profit guilds will do exactly as you describe, with the mechanics as designed. Fees for everything, full monopolies, cartels, all of it. Full epics charged for. Full dungeon crawls, charged for. Raids, charged for. Boosting, leveling, and all facsimiles. RMT for Mastery Points. Complete and wholesale capitalization/monetization of every aspect of all of the gameplay loops the game permits.
Again, why would it be any different than any other game that permits it?
For clarity, StoneFish, this isn't how I would make any game, personally. I would not implement ninja looting, kill stealing, training, competitive loot, camps, mob ownership, or anything even slightly similar.
It is how Pantheon will be, given their public design goals revealed to date, and the benefit of 25+ years of hindsight of humans playing MMOs.
Ideally, they will change these designs at some point in the future, after they have learned from their own failures or the historical failures of others. Or they will simply repeat history. :)
I'm a little confused about the 'casual' not having a place idea. Even if some of that stuff does happen in this game there will still be plenty of room for casual players. I consider myself casual (when it comes to total hours played anyway) and I'm not worried one bit about any of those things. There will be room for me to do all kinds of things. There will not be some guild blocking my path at every turn, no way that's worth their time. VR has also made it clear that guilds won't own parts of the game, they will not have rights to set up blockades and pretent to own it so they can make profits on it. They've talked about not allowing and/or shutting stuff like that down.
There will be plenty of room for casual players, if they need help finding something fun to do, send them my way. I'll show em around.
Imagine if you suffered a head injury that caused brain damage and now you want to prevent the monopolization of parts of the game by large guilds. How would you go about it? Can anyone think of a way to create a negative or positive pressure to herd a guild or group in the direction you desire? No account banning or threatening to call someone's mother, try and think of creative solutions.
Give them something better to do. But that also creates a problem for some people. For someone like me, giving them something better to do moves them out of something I was interested in doing. But for someone else they look at it differently and now want to do that new thing too and aren't as interested in the old thing that they now have access to. Hmmmm.
StoneFish said:Imagine if you suffered a head injury that caused brain damage and now you want to prevent the monopolization of parts of the game by large guilds. How would you go about it? Can anyone think of a way to create a negative or positive pressure to herd a guild or group in the direction you desire? No account banning or threatening to call someone's mother, try and think of creative solutions.
This is not a popular idea, but the only thing I can think of is instances... for the stuff that matters so all guilds have a chance at progressing... There could be world bosses that are not, but that will be interesting to see how that's dealt with.
Ranarius said:I'm a little confused about the 'casual' not having a place idea. Even if some of that stuff does happen in this game there will still be plenty of room for casual players. I consider myself casual (when it comes to total hours played anyway) and I'm not worried one bit about any of those things. There will be room for me to do all kinds of things. There will not be some guild blocking my path at every turn, no way that's worth their time. VR has also made it clear that guilds won't own parts of the game, they will not have rights to set up blockades and pretent to own it so they can make profits on it. They've talked about not allowing and/or shutting stuff like that down.
There will be plenty of room for casual players, if they need help finding something fun to do, send them my way. I'll show em around.
It's that you and your level 25 group might spend 40 minutes clearing down to X "camp" deep in a dungeon and one level 50 wizard shows up and starts blowing up the vast majority the mobs in your area to force you out so they can get X named mob (or just getting their kicks). Your choice is to get lost or waste time with pitiful exp. And they'd have every right in this system to do that.
StoneFish said:Iksar. How would you try and stop or hinder this type of behavior?
I wouldn't, because when the rules allow it, I'll be the one ensuring that I benefit from it as often as I possibly can. Sometimes I'll win, sometimes I won't but the wins will always outnumber the losses. Why? Because I have more time to spend doing this than most. And that's a key point.
A bit of a tangent here but it does play a huge part in how players approach the game and the ramifications that can affect player etiquette.
Many people who fall into the 'casual 'category are there because of the limited playtimes maybe not in total number of hours to spend in a month but in the number of consequtive hours at any one time. Someone with an hour or two here and there would see most of their playtime spend doing nothing because others who have more time got to that piece of content first and can hold it longer than the casual can play for a given day/evening.
Secondly, and this is my experience over decades of playing, that casuals are also far less efficient in the use of the time they do have. They do not plan ahead, not even a day or two let alone week or more. They dont have contingency plans should their first choice of content be unavailable. These are the people who go back to town every night, dont plan ahead for the next play session to figure out what places they could choose from. Many dont schedule groups, relying upon pick-ups and LFGs. They waste time, basically. That is their biggest opponent.
Iksar said:It's that you and your level 25 group might spend 40 minutes clearing down to X "camp" deep in a dungeon and one level 50 wizard shows up and starts blowing up the vast majority the mobs in your area to force you out so they can get X named mob (or just getting their kicks). Your choice is to get lost or waste time with pitiful exp. And they'd have every right in this system to do that.
So in this scenario there is a group of players that are all interested in the same named spawn. Is there a reason why my group of level 25's "deserves" it more than the level 50 wizard? Is it because we had to "work harder" to get there? Technically the level 50 wizard has worked hard to get there too. In the perfect world he'd come down and ask to share, or take turns, but of course the scenario you offered is not a perfect world scenario. So, who am I to say that I deserve it more than him? Yes, I was hoping to get it, but so was he. I wouldn't say that I deserve it just because I'm "on level" and he's not. I wouldn't say I deserve it because I took 40 minutes to get there and he didn't (because he did work hard to get to a level where he could solo that mob). Do I deserve it because it's an item that I can use? Hmm, I'm sure he wants it because he can use it too.
So, that leaves us with all people that deserve that named mob equally. You're right, I can choose to stay and fight him for it, or I can come back another time when he's not there. Either way I can say that this scenario has been very rare in my experience. Yes, it does happen, but not nearly as much to me as other people claim it happens to them.
Can a tax be applied to undesirable behavior? (In the form of in-game XP or coin or equipment status or curses or opposition buffs). Can it be based upon (time in area, level disparities, agro of MOBs, grouping status or past interaction data)?
How can a player avoid future interactions with players that they personally feel are detrimental to their enjoyment of the game?
How can this game be broadly attractive to the largest audience and player base without falling into the binary trap of either/or reasoning errors. control vs personal freedom . Balance is the goal. Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality-Edmund Burke
Ranarius said:Iksar said:It's that you and your level 25 group might spend 40 minutes clearing down to X "camp" deep in a dungeon and one level 50 wizard shows up and starts blowing up the vast majority the mobs in your area to force you out so they can get X named mob (or just getting their kicks). Your choice is to get lost or waste time with pitiful exp. And they'd have every right in this system to do that.
So in this scenario there is a group of players that are all interested in the same named spawn. Is there a reason why my group of level 25's "deserves" it more than the level 50 wizard? Is it because we had to "work harder" to get there? Technically the level 50 wizard has worked hard to get there too. In the perfect world he'd come down and ask to share, or take turns, but of course the scenario you offered is not a perfect world scenario. So, who am I to say that I deserver it more than him? Yes, I was hoping to get it, but so was he. I wouldn't say that I deserve it just because I'm "on level" and he's not. I wouldn't say I deserve it because I took 40 minutes to get there and he didn't (because he did work hard to get to a level where he could solo that mob). Do I deserve it because it's an item that I can use? Hmm, I'm sure he wants it because he can use it too.
So, that leaves us with all people that deserve that named mob equally. You're right, I can choose to stay and fight him for it, or I can come back another time when he's not there. Either way I can say that this scenario has been very rare in my experience. Yes, it does happen, but not nearly as much to me as other people claim it happens to them.
I don't know, Ranarius; if more people thought like that, the world might be better...
I like what you said, but there are other things to consider...
I ask these questions because I find it hard to believe a level 50 wants a level 25 item to use. I think the level 50 wizard would want the item to twink out an alt they have made, and maybe you can transport items through a shared bank spot. Is the item in question sellable? I imagine you might want a really good item at level 50, and perhaps this level 25 item from this mob sells well. There is more to what you suggest and what is behind a player's motives.
These are the types of things that should be considered when a game is in development. In my opinion, what would be a better solution is that the named mob could still drop that excellent item, but another way to get an item close to or maybe on par with that is to have the adventurers be able to collect materials for crafters and have a crafter make you an item that is similar if you cannot get that item. I think the times of having 3% of your player base have an item should be over. I would like to see crafters fill that role in supplying items that you may not be able to get because a place is so heavily camped.
A group of people could still go into the dungeon's heart and collect materials to make an item as good, if not better, than the item the mob dropped off. I want to see crafters take drops from mobs and improve them. With raids, the items that drop should be among the best stuff possible in-game. The raids should also be dropping crafting material to upgrade drops or just make legendary items that regular materials could not do.
I am not saying there shouldn't be significant drops from killing named mobs but give other avenues for the player base to compete. These things might help out the problem with camps and named mobs being such a high target that people act badly.
I think these types of things that we are talking about in this post have more to do with game design than having to make policy. The more a game developer puts into the game, like places to go for groups and not making mobs so scarce that everyone fights over the same camp, the better off the game will be. If you look at the last video from the streamers, VR could use the lay of the land better to make more camps for mobs that groups can go to and have fun. VR made the game look much bigger than it used to be; now, they have to design the game better than what EQ was, with the same amount of fun or more to pull people in.
Instead of group and player etiquette, we should discuss is good vs. bad game design. I forget who it was, but in these posts talk about whether VR will make the same mistakes as games in the past, and that statement is more to the point than anything else.
Nytman said:Instead of group and player etiquette, we should discuss is good vs. bad game design. I forget who it was, but in these posts talk about whether VR will make the same mistakes as games in the past, and that statement is more to the point than anything else.
I've been saying it for years: However much content you think the world needs...double it. However many simultaneous players you think the server can handle..halve it. Overpopulation is the breeding ground for most (if not all) of the problems we're discussing here. It is far easier to add players to a server but much more difficult to subtract them.
Another aspect is the tying of a specific item to a specific named NPC. Only X mob drops Y item. While that can be a good thing in that when you see someone wielding said item, you know what they did to get it. Showing off gear is a strong attractive force that helps to keep other players in the game. But you can also have equivalencies where some number of NPCs equal in status/difficulty all drop an item equal in status/power such that you aren't force to only go to Mob X to get Item Y but you can go to Mobs A, B, C, D or E to get Item F, G, H or I which are quite similar.
Lastly, on the topic of design, I really hope VR avoids what EQ1 did where it funnels more and more players into fewer and fewer zones. EQ1 had a dozen+ starting zones but by the time you got to 45+ you were all funneled into what..3 zones? In terms of gear, though, just two..SolB and LowerGuk. You cannot built a world were the progression upwards through the levels is shaped like a pyramid. It should be more of a cylinder, or better yet, an inverse pyramid. The higher level you go the broader/wider/deeper the choices you have available.
Which route will VR take?
Vandraad said:Nytman said:Instead of group and player etiquette, we should discuss is good vs. bad game design. I forget who it was, but in these posts talk about whether VR will make the same mistakes as games in the past, and that statement is more to the point than anything else.
I've been saying it for years: However much content you think the world needs...double it. However many simultaneous players you think the server can handle..halve it. Overpopulation is the breeding ground for most (if not all) of the problems we're discussing here. It is far easier to add players to a server but much more difficult to subtract them.
Another aspect is the tying of a specific item to a specific named NPC. Only X mob drops Y item. While that can be a good thing in that when you see someone wielding said item, you know what they did to get it. Showing off gear is a strong attractive force that helps to keep other players in the game. But you can also have equivalencies where some number of NPCs equal in status/difficulty all drop an item equal in status/power such that you aren't force to only go to Mob X to get Item Y but you can go to Mobs A, B, C, D or E to get Item F, G, H or I which are quite similar.
Lastly, on the topic of design, I really hope VR avoids what EQ1 did where it funnels more and more players into fewer and fewer zones. EQ1 had a dozen+ starting zones but by the time you got to 45+ you were all funneled into what..3 zones? In terms of gear, though, just two..SolB and LowerGuk. You cannot built a world were the progression upwards through the levels is shaped like a pyramid. It should be more of a cylinder, or better yet, an inverse pyramid. The higher level you go the broader/wider/deeper the choices you have available.
Which route will VR take?
I agree with what you are saying and like the ideas you suggested... Curious, though, how do you feel about the ideas I had with making crafting more involved with adventurers and crafting and being able to get material to make an item that is on par with drops?
Nytman said:I agree with what you are saying and like the ideas you suggested... Curious, though, how do you feel about the ideas I had with making crafting more involved with adventurers and crafting and being able to get material to make an item that is on par with drops?
VR has been quite adamant that crafting is going to be integral to the game and will provide a solid source for gear equivalent to dropped and/or quested. The caveat is that not every item slot will have equivalent options from all potential sources at all times. So sometimes your 'best' choice (best here meaning what you want specifically for your character in that slot) might only be dropped but later on could be quested or crafted.
Neph has said in several streams that crafting will be used as a mean to improve/modify/alter items. So that dropped sword could be changed through crafting. I'm a big proponent of the idea that at any point in the leveling from 1 to max your gear will be various combinations of all these sources and if you pick a different point, that makeup will also be different.
So if you can spread out the population across content which is of a greater quantity that what the playerbase could simultaneously engage and you spread out the sources for all the items (armor, weapons, consumables,etc) you do help minimize the opportunity for toxicity to arise.
All this doesn't eliminate the need for group and player etiquette because player-player interactions are a primary aspect of these games, but those interactions in such a world as described aren't going be primary because of competition over too limited content.
Vandraad said:Nytman said:I agree with what you are saying and like the ideas you suggested... Curious, though, how do you feel about the ideas I had with making crafting more involved with adventurers and crafting and being able to get material to make an item that is on par with drops?
VR has been quite adamant that crafting is going to be integral to the game and will provide a solid source for gear equivalent to dropped and/or quested. The caveat is that not every item slot will have equivalent options from all potential sources at all times. So sometimes your 'best' choice (best here meaning what you want specifically for your character in that slot) might only be dropped but later on could be quested or crafted.
Neph has said in several streams that crafting will be used as a mean to improve/modify/alter items. So that dropped sword could be changed through crafting. I'm a big proponent of the idea that at any point in the leveling from 1 to max your gear will be various combinations of all these sources and if you pick a different point, that makeup will also be different.
So if you can spread out the population across content which is of a greater quantity that what the playerbase could simultaneously engage and you spread out the sources for all the items (armor, weapons, consumables,etc) you do help minimize the opportunity for toxicity to arise.
All this doesn't eliminate the need for group and player etiquette because player-player interactions are a primary aspect of these games, but those interactions in such a world as described aren't going be primary because of competition over too limited content.
Thanks, I hope they are reading these posts so they are more in line with this type of thinking while designing the game. =)
StoneFish said:Iksar. How would you try and stop or hinder this type of behavior?
Ranarius said:So in this scenario there is a group of players that are all interested in the same named spawn. Is there a reason why my group of level 25's "deserves" it more than the level 50 wizard? Is it because we had to "work harder" to get there? Technically the level 50 wizard has worked hard to get there too. In the perfect world he'd come down and ask to share, or take turns, but of course the scenario you offered is not a perfect world scenario. So, who am I to say that I deserve it more than him? Yes, I was hoping to get it, but so was he. I wouldn't say that I deserve it just because I'm "on level" and he's not. I wouldn't say I deserve it because I took 40 minutes to get there and he didn't (because he did work hard to get to a level where he could solo that mob). Do I deserve it because it's an item that I can use? Hmm, I'm sure he wants it because he can use it too.
So, that leaves us with all people that deserve that named mob equally. You're right, I can choose to stay and fight him for it, or I can come back another time when he's not there. Either way I can say that this scenario has been very rare in my experience. Yes, it does happen, but not nearly as much to me as other people claim it happens to them.
I'd go more towards the "old way" (Play Nice Policy of old EQ outlined a basic version that "worked" well enough for that time in history). If player(s)/a group is inhabiting an area then you don't pile on top of those players, you respect that they were there first and leave them be. Same as in the real world if all the patio seating at a restaurant is taken or a swing at the park - you wait until there is an opening and/or you go somewhere else in the meantime.
That said I think additional valves should be around. Named mobs that spawn in multiple locations if not able to spawn in any spawn point in an area of a dungeon. Crafted near or full equivalents. Other dungeons/areas of the world with equivalent drops. The ability to force pop named mobs via some form of rare token. Really anything along those lines. In this case there is little to no reason to actively disrupt/force other players/groups out on a PvE server save for intentionally being a jerk.
Otherwise not sure what experiences from what games you are referencing for it being rare.
not sure what experiences from what games you are referencing for it being rare.
Specifically the idea of a super high level character coming in and taking a spot my group and I were farming.
But in more general terms I'm referencing "bad things happening." In all the years I've played MMO's I have had very few encounters with other players that weren't worked out through an attempt at a mature conversation.
"I think topics like training will be a very hard discussion. I'm sure you do not mean people trying to save themselves and running out to safety in a dungeon. I think you mean training, like if someone has a node and you train them to get it. proving malicious intent, I think, will be difficult."
Obviously there is nothing wrong with the player running to the zone line to save himself or herself - my point was that game mechanics can and should be looked at not just player behavior. The more a game mechanic lends itself to abuse the more VR should consider whether it is worth using that mechainc.
Two mechanics that should be considered from this perspective are the most-damage-done system of giving credit for mob kills, and training. Do not misunderstand - VR may well decide that both of these have advantages that outweigh the risk of abuse. I am not saying that MDD and training are evil and no rational developer would use them. But the discussion needs to be had within VR (probably already has on these two topics they are rather obvious).
Training, as most of us know but maybe not all of us, is an EQ mechanism where a character has mobs attacking him or her and runs past other players to either leave the area or otherwise get the mobs to stop attacking. By feign death for example. Once released from attacking the player who has left or feigned death, the mobs attack other players in the area - well away from their normal spawn or patrol points. Depending on levels and number of mobs this can be quite deadly. Polite players try to give warning e.g. by yelling "TRAIN".
Trainiing is usually not done with malice - the trainer is just trying to escape. But it IS done with malice more than rarely. To get other players killed for fun, for spite, or to take their camp or their harvestable nodes. Where malice can be established it is griefing and the trainer is subject to punishment up to a ban from the game. This is hard to prove, of course, unless training is done repeatedly in a questionable manner. Very few MMOs allow training - the normal game mechanic is that the released mobs go back to where they started and leave "innocent" players in peace. Quite a few people here argue that training is good - it adds unpredictability. Many of them probably like it because this is what they were used to in their first significant MMO. Some argue that allowing pvp conduct on a pve server is bad. The supporters outnumber the detractors at least as judged by number of forum comments.
Most-damage-done is a system where the person or group that does the most damage to a mob gets credit for purposes of xp, looting and quest rewards. Even where someone else had pulled that mob and was quite capable of killing it. Taking a mob that another player is fighting, when that player needs no help, is often called kill-stealing. This term is not used as praise. Most-damage-done has advantages and disadvantages - that is a topic for other threads. But it is the only significant way of assigning kill credit for a mob that allows this kind of abuse. As with training it is quite unusual in other MMOs. More typical by far is shared credit where everyone that does at least significant damage to the mob shares in the credit. So if someone comes over and takes the mob away the puller does not have credit "stolen" - the puller still gets the same rewards as if this had not happened. Also common, though declining, is first-to-engage. The puller gets credit regardless of what anyone else does - as long as the mob dies. Obviously there too the puller cannot have credit "stolen".