dorotea said:"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".
I agree with you up to a point. I mean in this game the only one that could do what you are talking about is a monk. Im not really sure how this game design is going to handle that.
When a mob leashes it is only going after that person so a monk would have to feign death at another player's spot or at a node. I will have to go back and look at the videos to see if this even happens like this. I thought in this game let's say a person with a mob dies and other players are there it just walks back to where it is supposed to be.
I agree if anything is being done to grief a player that it should be looked at.
Why does this game have to follow etiquette set by another game?
If a guild is at a node there's nothing stopping you from going to it also, some may need to readjust their preconceived notion of what's right and wrong. Play within the rules the game allows.
Has anyone ever encountered a hybrid MDD/F2E where 1st to engage gets credit unless other party does 75% or 80% of dmg? Wouldn't that help for times you want to help a party out and still get credit while if someone was trying to steal it make it much more difficult or on the reverse site a raid mob being kited while a guild preps but another guild could step in?(raid target may need to have a lower MDD threshold)
It does leave room to tweak numbers.
"Why does this game have to follow etiquette set by another game?"
It dowsn't. What is more it shouldn't. Most of us want a game that is different in significant respects than the norm. That is the whole point of Pantheon. We each have a different view of what "old school" means but the great majority want an "old school" game not a minor variation on what is popular today. My comments on how training and most-damage-done were very uncommon today were intended as part of the background not as a reason to either use those mechanisms or not to use them.
"Play within the rules the game allows."
Precisely my point. In determining gameplay mechanics VR needs to consider many things and one of them (not necessarily the most important) should be how the mechanic in question rates in terms of reducing conflict between players and reducing the calls on GM time to resolve such conflicts. Many people will do what you say - decide that anything the game allows is OK even if the great majority consider it rude or selfish. Such as rolling "need" on a bind-to-character item their class cannot even use if the game allows that. Or swooping in and taking a mob away from someone else that is fighting it. Or harvesting a node while another player is already there fighting a mob in order to get to the node. Making these things impossible (not always desirable or even possible) reduces the amount of conflict and petitions for help by GMs.
I would think it is fairly obvious. The world has moved on from all this for the most part.
At best what most people can agree on is:
1. Do not ninja-loot.
2. Do not kill steal.
Camps are an ancient construct of the past. It doesn't really belong in a modern game. People are not paying money to watch others act as if they own something which they do not.
The whole point is for an MMO to be inclusive, not exclusive. I get you want to be the "spiritual successor" to EverQuest, but times have seriously changed.