Ghool said: I think everyone concerned about the supposed Elephant, is that this game is specifically designed for community-minded and cooperative players. As evidenced by the kinds of folks posting these concerns. Honestly, think about that for a second. This game is not designed, marketed to, or sold to a niche that doesn't enjoy cooperation and group challenges. I really think this is going to be less of an issue than most realize, simply because of the nature of the type of player it is being created for. This isn't a game for solo kings and griefers. It's quite obvious that those types will have a hard time. And yes, I've played modern MMO's. At this point it's beating the dead horse. These are problems that can happen, sure. But are they really going to be that bad? I can put my trust in people to not be jerks. I think we need a little more faith in our fellow players and especially the ones subscribed to these boards.
I don't think it should be downplayed at all and the concerns are quite valid given it took less than a year for even EQ to realize these things (griefing/content denial/kill stealing/training/etc) were hurting the game/playerbase and that was in 1999...the gaming world has only grown more toxic and troll embracing.
Why “Play Nice Policies?”
— by Gordon Wrinn, Internet Relations Manager, Verant Interactive, 3/14/2000
Before we get into the wording of the “Play Nice Policies”, I’d like to take a moment to discuss their spirit, and why we feel that they are necessary.
EverQuest almost daily continues to astound everyone involved with it. Nearly one year since we opened our doors, EverQuest boasts a community of current players numbering nearly 200,000, most of whom still play on a daily basis. In all actuality, EverQuest has gone beyond what could be described with a term such as “community”. We are all, in fact, part of the EverQuest Society.
Like any society, each person has the ability to place his or her mark upon it. The vast majority of people in our society do their best to insure that their mark is positive, by abiding by the laws that we, much like the government, bring forward. Some of you choose to become pinnacles of honor, dignity and respect in your individual communities by forming guilds,promoting honorable actions by your members, and by supporting EverQuest on your web-sites.
Also like any society, we have our underbelly, a relatively small number of people who live to prey upon the honorable. It is frequently the goal of these people to see to their desires, no matter the effect of their actions upon others around them. They are the ones who claim ownership of servers, zones, or spawns, and cause or threaten harm to anyone who does not share their disregard and contempt. They are the ones who live, not to enjoy the game with everyone else, but to enjoy at everyone else’s expense.
For the first few months after EverQuest’s release, we felt that a policy of non-interference in many of these matters was warranted. However, we continued to lose good players. This was not due to any deficiency or dissatisfaction in the game, but due to dissatisfaction with the treatment that they received from their fellow players, and the perceived inability of our Customer Service department to intervene. Late last year, we made a commitment to our players to begin playing an active role in many of these situations.
The intent of these policies is to provide the players with general guidelines for what is or is not acceptable behavior in EverQuest, and give them the opportunity to work out differences prior to involving the EverQuest Customer Service Staff. Naturally, in a game as multifaceted as EverQuest, we are not able to cover every possible issue that could arise as part of these policies. In these cases, it is the spirit of a rule that will prevail over any discrepancies in the letter.
Very bad behaviors that can be /ignored
- Extreme chat channel or message board text/voice harassment be it emotional, political, sexual or directed at any other protected class identity.
- Possibly stalking if the /ignore command also blocks you from them though a determined stalker can use other accounts to be a creeper
Very bad behaviors that can be avoided by not grouping with someone once the behavior is known.
- Ninja looting
- Chronic AFK
- Multiboxing where the player is less effective than the average player.
- Group ditches in less time than agreed upon in such a way that the group is forced to disband
- Trade scams
Very bad behavior that cannot be stopped by either /ignore or refusing to group with said character
- Aggressive Stalking
- Intentional Kill Stealing
- Deliberate Training of Mobs
- FFA loot ninja looting mob or ground spawn
- Hacking/Botting
- High level players monopolizing lower level content for personal gain other than EXP
The first group is personally nasty but fairly easy to stop with no impact to game play.
The second group is really annoying but over time can be avoided. Some way of sharing experiences among trusted friends would be really nice. Sure it can be abused and if done incorrectly might violate the GDPR but if done right both exposures could be minimized. If given a choice I would play on a server with a reputation system than one without one.
The third group is really tough. On one hand its hard to determine intent. Unless its clearly defined by VR or agreed upon by the players at large what is considered acceptable is up to interpretation and without some enforcement technically it is all acceptable. What the third group really needs is game architecture and design solutions.
- Aggressive Stalking
o Combination of Global Account ignores, Possible IP ignores and the potential for direct VR and RL law enforcement intervention procedures may be needed.
- Intentional Kill Stealing
o In an open world game kill stealing is rude but not really a social crime as in theory everything is a competition. I would however like to see some form of loot and exp assignment based on the first group to do 10% of the mobs HP in damage. It’s a compromise between first to engage and most damage done that counters most of the flaws in both (assuming that no class can safely do 10% damage to a group mob in one initial hit)
- Deliberate Training of Mobs
o Both tethered mobs and once on the agro table they will chase you out of the zone are cluncky. Of the two I prefer the tether as it forces players to move into dangerous areas if they want to engage the mob. The best of both worlds in my opinion would be to utilize a combination of the hate meter, AI behaviors and their spawn zones to control how far they will pursue. Each mob will have a “defend zone” based on their AI disposition. Any targets outside of their defend zone will have their agro degrade at an exponential rate after their last hate causing action. If you have killed a mob out of a group of linked spawns then the group of linked mobs will not degrade agro when outside of their defense zone and that applies to all group members. This solution will require some advanced behavior programing but I think would help make Pantheon a great game while also massively decreasing the ability to intentionally cause trains.
- FFA loot ninja looting mob or ground spawn
o See the kill stealing example, pretty much the same
- Hacking/Botting
o As a few others have posted the truly tech savvy people who are willing to break the ULA will be tough to stop. This can really only be stopped by direct VR intervention but finding suspects will likely be easier with the assistance of player reporting if it is not over used.
- High level players monopolizing lower level content for personal gain other than EXP
o This is usually a failure of Risk Vs Reward game design. It should always be more profitable to do group content at level than solo lower level content. If there is a good reward from a lower level area then make it a level restricted challenge quest that must be done in a group where all members are or are mentored down to a certain level for the entire time of having the quest.
o A good crafting system should not rely on or award using mountains of raw materials. Crafting should be time/effort dependent to level and not wealth dependent. The second you take away the benefit of farming mountains of crafting materials the incidence of low level zone over farming will disappear. Rare crafting components should be achieved through Challenge quests either of the adventuring or crafting variety.
There may be other methods to solve these issues and there may be other instances of toxicity that I am not thinking of but this is at least a start.
I only read the OP so I'm sure this has been said already but at the end of the day you are playing a game online with children. There will always be trolls. There will always be flame wars. There will always be KS'ing. There will always be hurt feelings. You might as well ask the Devs to make it so the Sun doesn't set tonight because you don't like the cold. If someone is giving you **** in game you either flag on them and kill them or you let them win and move to a different spot. Unless someone is flat out harrassing you in chat and saying things way out of line the GMs aren't going to do anything about someone training mobs on you.
Iksar said:I don't think it should be downplayed at all and the concerns are quite valid given it took less than a year for even EQ to realize these things (griefing/content denial/kill stealing/training/etc) were hurting the game/playerbase and that was in 1999...the gaming world has only grown more toxic and troll embracing.
Thank you, Iksar, that quote you provided is really insightful. I think it's apparent that some people are having a difficult time remembering just how toxic things got even in the prime days of EQ. That, or they're the types of people who enjoy such activities themselves (there are few who openly admit this even in the Pantheon community, so it's not a situation of "if" it happens but of "how fast" it happens). So, I agree completely: downplaying the possible severity of such abuse is a terrible idea, and neglecting to think about systems to prevent such abuse to begin with will result in a situation where the devs realize a year in that good players are leaving. By then, it's too late, damage has been done.
Let's protect the community from launch-day with well-thought-out mechanics that find a proper balance between maintaining the integrity of an open-world and preventing toxicity.
100% agreed. I think it would be great to have a GM team that isn't bogged down by countless tickets that could have otherwise been avoided with sound game mechanics. I want the GM team to love their job and host events. I don't want them to dread every ticket and feeling like they have to render verdicts that can't be backed up with solid rationale or precedence. Was someone stealing or was it a fair attempt at open world competition? Was someone trying to run for their life, in fear of the death penalty, or trying to sabotage other players? I don't think it's fair to have GM's fulfilling the primary role of babysitter. If it's every now and then because players figure out a way to skirt the edge of a rule, fine. That's inevitable.
There should be clearly defined rules that allow players to manage their expectations ... both of themselves, and other players. I have enjoyed amazing open world MMO experiences that were completely free of kill-stealing and malicious training. It's wonderful for the community, for morale, and for culture. Knowing the history of these issues ... and the severe impact they can have on an MMO world ... a lot of people will expect better. It's not like they are something that might come out of left field. Again ... "It's open world ... how do you deal with X" was the most popular question asked at the various conventions that VR attended. They are designing the game with these challenges in mind, and with "eyes wide open." Getting this right is critical to the success of Pantheon.
((personally id rather see a guilty man walk than an innocent man hang))
Many people say this.
If the choice is between a system of government that can hang innocent men to enforce obedience to its will, or a system of government that gives protection to individuals even at the cost of weakening the enforcement of criminal laws, I heartily agree. This is the "macro" analysis.
But given the same general system of government - is it worth spending enormous amounts on trials and incarceration so that occasionally an innocent person is spared the noose - at the cost not just of the money and resources but of letting not-so-innocent people out to murder *different* innocent men? I would argue to the contrary. That a quick cheap system that occasionally fails by letting an innocent man see the rope is better for the society than a slow expensive one that fails by letting some murderers walk free to kill again.
Very far off-topic? Maybe not. If banning the occasional player unfairly is the cost of a smooth and pleasant gaming experience I would support it.
But I agree with the great majority here that the suggested system is more likley to give the inmates the keys to the jail than it is to punish mostly guilty people and only rarely the innocent ones.
yeah but the problem here is the prosecuter - judge - and jury is the people, and people these days are way too sensitive to hold this kind of power, you cant judge on emotion. And if you start hanging innocent people it gives the bad people a tool to further their objectives, and takes the positive reinforcement out of the picture, and part of positive reinforcement is constructive criticism, which gets people banned these days, I play alot of Heroes of the Storm and blizzards devout dedication to cater to the super sensitive people is astounding, you litereally will lose your account for stating something could have been done better if it is said to the right random group of people you have no control over having to play with or against.
I honestly think you should leave it up to the good players to deal with the bad players. I will give you an example of something my guild on WoW did to curb some toxic behavior:
During the BC era I was in a pretty solid guild that had all of our mains doing sunwell at that point and our alts were more or less doing BT pugs and the first 3 encounters on Sunwell. We figured out there was a guild that had characters outside of their guild that were healers and tanks go into these pugs and clear BT up to a certain point and then disband and leave everyone else there with no way to recoup. With the idea of everyone coming back to attempt tomorrow people would get back on only to see that BT was cleared. So, this guild, forgot their names, were basically instance stealing BT pug groups and ruining runs for other people. Only reason I knew about this was because it happened to me a few times. So I told my guild and because we weren't running BT on our mains anymore when this stuff happened in one of our pugs we would get some of our mains in to fill in the spots and complete Black Temple with the pug group. Other guilds saw this and started to mimic this and calling out character names to watch out for in pug groups that will leave. After around 3 months of combating them there was a blacklist of character names to watch out for in Pug and they ultimately had to stop because no one would Pug raid with them outside of their guild.
So, I say leave it up to the community. If some guild, which I know there are a few that will do this that already made guild topics, does this in your server...then band together and grief them back.
Another example is on the EQ progression servers. They are riddled with bots and guilds who train and kill people at the GEBS camp. So our guild, after our Lady Vox and Nagafen kill would spend 2-3 hours after the raid for everyone to split into 2 groups and shard jump to the various shards and just take over the camps of the guilds who usually trained or obvious bot campers with 3-4 mages/wizards. We would usually get 13-14 gebs in one night and sometimes a ring drop here or there.
Riqq said:sadly with automation comes just as much injustice as justice, personally id rather see a guilty man walk than an innocent man hang.
Fortunately, since this is a game world, we can implement mechanics that prevent us from having to deal with this situation to begin with :)
Ghool said: I think everyone concerned about the supposed Elephant, is that this game is specifically designed for community-minded and cooperative players. As evidenced by the kinds of folks posting these concerns. Honestly, think about that for a second. This game is not designed, marketed to, or sold to a niche that doesn't enjoy cooperation and group challenges. I really think this is going to be less of an issue than most realize, simply because of the nature of the type of player it is being created for. This isn't a game for solo kings and griefers. It's quite obvious that those types will have a hard time. And yes, I've played modern MMO's. At this point it's beating the dead horse. These are problems that can happen, sure. But are they really going to be that bad? I can put my trust in people to not be jerks. I think we need a little more faith in our fellow players and especially the ones subscribed to these boards.
EQ was also made to be community-minded and for player cooperation... If you play it on P99 now you have camps on permanant lockdown and people figuring out how to do content meant for groups completely solo. I won't even dive into the raiding aspect of things happening there but "toxic" would be putting it lightly. It is inevitable that this behavior will be in the game since there will always been a hardcore population of people looking to monopolize content or find ways to do it with less than than the intended amount of players.
Sicario said:Riqq said:sadly with automation comes just as much injustice as justice, personally id rather see a guilty man walk than an innocent man hang.
Fortunately, since this is a game world, we can implement mechanics that prevent us from having to deal with this situation to begin with :)
oh really than why hasnt it been done yet?
Ill tell you why, because automated systems are simple and have to be due to the fact ai cannot accurately guage a random situation, therefore you have things like what are you reporting for? and then given options, one of those options is considered more severe than the other, and sent through to the next filter - keywords, which would be things like toxic abusive, negative, mean etc you get my point, so by doing this you now have a system that can be exploited for maximum penalty and its automated so it never gets caught, now the victum can call the company, you cant email, because this is automated as well, but you can call and actually talk to someone to get your account unbanned which will more than likely happen, but still youre going to spend hours of your time, and they have to hire a receptionist handling all the calls they are going to be getting, you see where this is going? i could break it down farther but this is short and simple for the simplicity of this conversation.
Riqq said:oh really than why hasnt it been done yet?
You may be misunderstanding what I'm talking about specifically. The idea is to not have to rely on a reporting system to begin with. It has been done in various forms in other games, and there are even theoretical mechanics that have been discussed extensively, both within this thread and others. We haven't really been discussing relying on any form of "automation," I haven't seen that idea being discussed here (unless I clearly missed it). What many of us have been discussing are systems that prevent players from abusing others to begin with, i.e. designing the game to prevent others from griefing/kill-stealing/monopolizing content/training camps/etc. If it's impossible or impractical to do these things, then there's no need for reporting that behavior to begin with since it doesn't exist.
I'm all for preventing something like kill stealing or griefing, as long as the systems that prevent it don't cripple the way the world feels.
For example; a locking system where you simply can't attack monsters other people have engaged. Yea, it prevents kill stealing... but personally, I think it makes the world feel incredibly un-immersive, knowing that there's some magical hand of the gods preventing me from attacking a monster, for a noble reason or otherwise.
I suppose I'd rather see a tagging system than that, or something where the xp/loot is divided among those concerned after a thresshold of %damage has been achieved with min/max levels to benefit being taken into account. I dunno. Don't have a lot of ideas on that front, I more so know what I wouldn't want than what I do, haha. Hoping that VR has some good ideas that won't make the world feel too much like a controlled environment rather than a fantasy world to adventure in.
Rokuzachi said:I'm all for preventing something like kill stealing or griefing, as long as the systems that prevent it don't cripple the way the world feels.
For example; a locking system where you simply can't attack monsters other people have engaged. Yea, it prevents kill stealing... but personally, I think it makes the world feel incredibly un-immersive, knowing that there's some magical hand of the gods preventing me from attacking a monster, for a noble reason or otherwise.
I suppose I'd rather see a tagging system than that, or something where the xp/loot is divided among those concerned after a thresshold of %damage has been achieved with min/max levels to benefit being taken into account. I dunno. Don't have a lot of ideas on that front, I more so know what I wouldn't want than what I do, haha. Hoping that VR has some good ideas that won't make the world feel too much like a controlled environment rather than a fantasy world to adventure in.
There is no way to prevent griefing, or kill stealing. If people are hell bent on griefing you or ksing you...they will. If it is FTE then you allow for less ksing, but can still happen if someone goes into your camp and tags the boss first...then you have no way of getting the benefits of the mob. If it is MDD then you might be able to get it back. But if the person who tags it is a max level and kills the boss in a few seconds then you won't out dps him, however if you hit the mob first and then the max lvl kills it in a few seconds, then you get the loot. The only problem with this is the exp. If you get the loot and exp by FTE then you can easily powerlvl by tagging a bunch of mobs first then having the higher level kill them all. That would be bad game design.
So if you don't get the exp, but you get the loot, then that person can still grief your whole group by denying you atleast the exp you will get. Now if they do the FTE model where anyone outside of the group that tagged the mob can't even touch it...then that does help, but also defeats a few other aspects of the game. For instance, helping a group about to wipe. If the target is locked..then at best only healers can save you and no other class can touch the mob.
It is quite complicated and w/e method they do you will see griefing, and ksing. You will also see a lot of fun aspects of the game taken away depending on the method they go with also.
Sicario said:Riqq said:oh really than why hasnt it been done yet?
You may be misunderstanding what I'm talking about specifically. The idea is to not have to rely on a reporting system to begin with. It has been done in various forms in other games, and there are even theoretical mechanics that have been discussed extensively, both within this thread and others. We haven't really been discussing relying on any form of "automation," I haven't seen that idea being discussed here (unless I clearly missed it). What many of us have been discussing are systems that prevent players from abusing others to begin with, i.e. designing the game to prevent others from griefing/kill-stealing/monopolizing content/training camps/etc. If it's impossible or impractical to do these things, then there's no need for reporting that behavior to begin with since it doesn't exist.
I get what you are saying, Its kind of hard to guage the end game of a topic like this, there are pros and cons to everything they try to do as there is no real answer to any of it, I just hope im fortunate enough to be part of a top guild so we can succefully retaliate against our offenders in the same or worse manner in which they offended us. Which is fair in an open world, and its going to be a battle for the rest of MMORPGing, everything can and will be exploited, the only real fix is for investigation and then IP bans, which still isnt a 100% fix, but it will cost the offender some money, that OR the best solution is to hold entire guilds accountable for each individual in them, and they could even further this agenda by making gated content by guild instead of player. I think the only one that would argue with that would be the offenders, and guildless players wouldnt be able to get passed the gates, now they could make a different guild and stack it with alts, but they could also make it so in order to enter a gated portion of the game you needed x amount of players online, this is just my thoughts rambling, but i believe they could make it so costly to actually be jerks to people that people just wouldnt bother with it? one account per IP, or alot of games are going to phone numbers now, which is pretty good. Sucks for me because i dont have a phone but not many people have enough phones to just let accounts get banned left and right. This sounds taxing is it all even worth it for a video game?? lol
Watemper said:So if you don't get the exp, but you get the loot, then that person can still grief your whole group by denying you atleast the exp you will get. Now if they do the FTE model where anyone outside of the group that tagged the mob can't even touch it...then that does help, but also defeats a few other aspects of the game. For instance, helping a group about to wipe. If the target is locked ... then at best only healers can save you and no other class can touch the mob.
They could include the /yell option which would allow outside players to help. It's actually nice because it lets players know when others actually want/need help. To be honest with you, I think the whole argument of "being able to help a group that is about to wipe" is really played out. Maybe they should wipe? Then, afterward, they can devise a plan on how to beat the encounter without wiping? Without encounter locking there is no integrity in "challenging content." Rather than players dying to NPC's, as they should, the players just overwhelm them ... because they can. Has anybody ever seen a dueling system in an open world PVE game that allows other players to jump in and interfere? That would be awful. Two players square up for some friendly 1v1 action ... but then someone jumps in and ruins it because "I wanted to help the guy that was about to die!" It's the same concept. If we want content that is designed, specifically, to offer high levels of challenge to players ... we can have that in an open world game. The design team can tune/balance their content to ensure that players don't steamroll it. They can ensure that accomplishments are meaningful ... and earned.
It's totally possible to eliminate kill-stealing from the game while still allowing players to "help each other" in an open world, and do it without compromising the "challenge factor." If people want to yell for help, great, no issue at all with that. But at that point ... risk vs reward has been tainted. If you yell for help then the encounter is no longer worth rewards. Simple as that. The same way if players were attempting a 1v1 duel ... if other folks jumped in and ganged up on a single player ... nobody would respect that. It wouldn't be considered a legitimate duel. Whatever happens on PVP servers stays on PVP servers but right now I'm talking about a 1v1 duel on a PVE server. If the game prevents others from interfering with that ... that isn't a bad thing. They do that for a reason ... it's to ensure that the duel is fair and to prevent asshats from interfering. I don't want to DPS race content. I want the full encounter from 100-0%. If I can't beat the encounter from start to finish without outside help then I don't deserve the rewards.
So many people act like DPS racing is hardcore. It's a joke and everybody loses when it happens. That isn't legitimate PVE, it's pseudo PVP ... and it's infinitely easier to monopolize content with it. This is probably a bad analogy but imagine a hotdog eating contest. Usually each contestant gets a little space ... an unlimited amount of hotdogs, their own drink, condiments, etc. It's a test of endurance. You have X amount of minutes to see how many hotdogs you can eat. Now ... imagine the contest being changed to where everybody is huddled directly beside each other and there is a single giant bowl with 100 hotdogs inside of it. Instead of people having a chance to pace themselves and see if they have the stamina to keep going for the full duration of the contest, they are limited by other contestants. Suddenly ... drinking is a bad idea. Using condiments is a waste of time. Any time spent on anything other than sticking your hand in that bowl, grabbing hotdogs, and scarfing them down, is inefficient.
There are only 100 hotdogs to go around between everybody and as such, the entire dynamic around the competition would change. Contestants would feel compelled to just scarf them down as fast as possible because every hotdog they eat is 1 less that a competitor gets to eat. It removes layers of strategy and replaces them with 1 constant. It removes endurance. It removes ... finesse. Sounds weird saying that about a hotdog eating contest but this is reality. The strategy and planning that goes into it would change, dramatically. Instead of focusing on doing the best you can do and sticking to your own gameplan ... you need to worry more about what other contestants beside you are doing. For all intents and purposes ... it becomes a "burst eating fest" rather than a battle of endurance and determination. Instead of someone holding the world record for most amount of hotdogs eaten in 10 minutes ... it would be a world record for how many hotdogs someone could shove down their throat in 90 seconds (most likely less, depending on how many people are "competing") while they lasted. That isn't fun/healthy competition, IMO. Content shouldn't be a bowl of hotdogs where people scramble for every scrap before the bowl is inevitably gone. That's garbage, IMO. Zerging sucks.
oneADseven said:Watemper said:So if you don't get the exp, but you get the loot, then that person can still grief your whole group by denying you atleast the exp you will get. Now if they do the FTE model where anyone outside of the group that tagged the mob can't even touch it...then that does help, but also defeats a few other aspects of the game. For instance, helping a group about to wipe. If the target is locked ... then at best only healers can save you and no other class can touch the mob.
They could include the /yell option which would allow outside players to help. It's actually nice because it lets players know when others actually want/need help. To be honest with you, I think the whole argument of "being able to help a group that is about to wipe" is really played out. Maybe they should wipe? Then, afterward, they can devise a plan on how to beat the encounter without wiping? Without encounter locking there is no integrity in "challenging content." Rather than players dying to NPC's, as they should, the players just overwhelm them ... because they can. Has anybody ever seen a dueling system in an open world PVE game that allows other players to jump in and interfere? That would be awful. Two players square up for some friendly 1v1 action ... but then someone jumps in and ruins it because "I wanted to help the guy that was about to die!" It's the same concept. If we want content that is designed, specifically, to offer high levels of challenge to players ... we can have that in an open world game. The design team can tune/balance their content to ensure that players don't steamroll it. They can ensure that accomplishments are meaningful ... and earned.
It's totally possible to eliminate kill-stealing from the game while still allowing players to "help each other" in an open world, and do it without compromising the "challenge factor." If people want to yell for help, great, no issue at all with that. But at that point ... risk vs reward has been tainted. If you yell for help then the encounter is no longer worth rewards. Simple as that. The same way if players were attempting a 1v1 duel ... if other folks jumped in and ganged up on a single player ... nobody would respect that. It wouldn't be considered a legitimate duel. Whatever happens on PVP servers stays on PVP servers but right now I'm talking about a 1v1 duel on a PVE server. If the game prevents others from interfering with that ... that isn't a bad thing. They do that for a reason ... it's to ensure that the duel is fair and to prevent asshats from interfering. I don't want to DPS race content. I want the full encounter from 100-0%. If I can't beat the encounter from start to finish without outside help then I don't deserve the rewards.
So many people act like DPS racing is hardcore. It's a joke and everybody loses when it happens. That isn't legitimate PVE, it's pseudo PVP ... and it's infinitely easier to monopolize content with it. This is probably a bad analogy but imagine a hotdog eating contest. Usually each contestant gets a little space ... an unlimited amount of hotdogs, their own drink, condiments, etc. It's a test of endurance. You have X amount of minutes to see how many hotdogs you can eat. Now ... imagine the contest being changed to where everybody is huddled directly beside each other and there is a single giant bowl with 100 hotdogs inside of it. Instead of people having a chance to pace themselves and see if they have the stamina to keep going for the full duration of the contest, they are limited by other contestants. Suddenly ... drinking is a bad idea. Using condiments is a waste of time. Any time spent on anything other than sticking your hand in that bowl, grabbing hotdogs, and scarfing them down, is inefficient.
There are only 100 hotdogs to go around between everybody and as such, the entire dynamic around the competition would change. Contestants would feel compelled to just scarf them down as fast as possible because every hotdog they eat is 1 less that a competitor gets to eat. It removes layers of strategy and replaces them with 1 constant. It removes endurance. It removes ... finesse. Sounds weird saying that about a hotdog eating contest but this is reality. The strategy and planning that goes into it would change, dramatically. Instead of focusing on doing the best you can do and sticking to your own gameplan ... you need to worry more about what other contestants beside you are doing. For all intents and purposes ... it becomes a "burst eating fest" rather than a battle of endurance and determination. Instead of someone holding the world record for most amount of hotdogs eaten in 10 minutes ... it would be a world record for how many hotdogs someone could shove down their throat in 90 seconds (most likely less, depending on how many people are "competing") while they lasted. That isn't fun/healthy competition, IMO. Content shouldn't be a bowl of hotdogs where people scramble for every scrap before the bowl is inevitably gone. That's garbage, IMO. Zerging sucks.
Regardless if they do FTE and do a complete lock out..it defeats a lot of interaction in the game, but it also doesn't stop ksing. Infact....I bet there will be a class that will be the best at tagging mobs..and that class will KS from your group everytime and lock the mob out. So there will still be ksing...no matter what model you do.
Watemper said:Regardless if they do FTE and do a complete lock out..it defeats a lot of interaction in the game, but it also doesn't stop ksing. Infact....I bet there will be a class that will be the best at tagging mobs..and that class will KS from your group everytime and lock the mob out. So there will still be ksing...no matter what model you do.
Kill-stealing would be invalidated as a term with that model. If you win the tag then you get the chance to defeat the content. Also, I think content should be challenging enough to where "being the best at tagging mobs" wouldn't be that much of an advantage. I mentioned this previously but just imagine if bosses were a bit more dynamic. Instead of "Ghoul Lord" always spawning as the same exact mob ... it can spawn in multiple locations and with a few encounter variations that should require planning/strategy. A basic example would be "Ghoul Lord." It's normally a necromancer boss with 2 adds.
Start layering in the variance and there are a bunch of different variations of the same mob. The boss itself could spawn with any number of dispositions. One disposition might cause it to focus on healers. Another disposition might cause it to go berserk at a certain HP percentage. Another disposition might make it immune to CC, or highly resistant to certain types of damage. Then you can do the same thing with the adds. They could have random dispositions or even archtypes. Players wouldn't engage a "Bully (disposition) Ghoul Lord with 2 Cleric (archetype) Minions" the same way they would engage a "Craven (disposition) Ghoul Lord with 2 Wizard (archetype) minions."
As long as content is designed, balanced, and tuned in such a way where players need to plan/strategize prior to engaging, there wouldn't be much of an advantage for "being a fast tagger." If anything, the over-eager players should get punished for not adjusting their strategies to compensate for the variance. In any event, this is what I would call fun/healthy PVE competition. Bosses should be challenging enough to warrant a meaningful preparation phase. Not just strategy ... but also coordinating the engage. Whether it's positioning, temporary buffs, aggro modifiers, debuffs, etc -- players should be thinking about their actions before doing them.
If that doesn't happen then we're already behind the curve. Players shouldn't be standing on spawn sites and spamming abilities hoping to win the enage. That should be considered reckless behavior that gets people killed. The challenge would come down to players being able to identify the variance of any boss encounter and then playing around it. We shouldn't be able to just faceroll everything without planning and strategy. Especially in a game with a meaningful death penalty ... the people who rush should end up with egg on their face. None of this is ground-breaking stuff. I'm honestly kind of shocked that people think it's so farfetched. Are people really used to seeing a bunch of bosses that are auto-win? Planning/Strategy/Coordination are all important but even beyond that, executing a clean pull and finishing an encounter from 100-0 should be challenging. I have seen a lot of people suggest that "winning the tag" is the most important thing when it really comes down to it. They assume that because they win the tag that they will also be able to defeat the encounter. That logic doesn't fly with me because it's assuming easy content.
Bosses should be dangerous. That's what risk vs reward is ... it's not just a matter of "this thing has a long respawn timer and a really low drop rate on the good item." That's super weak and basic. It should absolutely be possible for bosses to destroy ill-prepared or poorly managed groups. If you're out in the world and see a boss ... players shouldn't instantly think "loot pinata!" -- they should be thinking "Ohh, that thing is dangerous. We might be able to kill it if we play our cards right. We don't want to fail because dying really sucks so let's plan this out and make a determination of whether or not we should attempt this." A big part of risk is dying ... spawn rate and drop rates should always be a lesser consideration, IMO.
oneADseven said:Watemper said:Regardless if they do FTE and do a complete lock out..it defeats a lot of interaction in the game, but it also doesn't stop ksing. Infact....I bet there will be a class that will be the best at tagging mobs..and that class will KS from your group everytime and lock the mob out. So there will still be ksing...no matter what model you do.
Kill-stealing would be invalidated as a term with that model. If you win the tag then you get the chance to defeat the content. Also, I think content should be challenging enough to where "being the best at tagging mobs" wouldn't be that much of an advantage. I mentioned this previously but just imagine if bosses were a bit more dynamic. Instead of "Ghoul Lord" always spawning as the same exact mob ... it can spawn in multiple locations and with a few encounter variations that should require planning/strategy. A basic example would be "Ghoul Lord." It's normally a necromancer boss with 2 adds.
Start layering in the variance and there are a bunch of different variations of the same mob. The boss itself could spawn with any number of dispositions. One disposition might cause it to focus on healers. Another disposition might cause it to go berserk at a certain HP percentage. Another disposition might make it immune to CC, or highly resistant to certain types of damage. Then you can do the same thing with the adds. They could have random dispositions or even archtypes. Players wouldn't engage a "Bully (disposition) Ghoul Lord with 2 Cleric (archetype) Minions" the same way they would engage a "Craven (disposition) Ghoul Lord with 2 Wizard (archetype) minions."
As long as content is designed, balanced, and tuned in such a way where players need to plan/strategize prior to engaging, there wouldn't be much of an advantage for "being a fast tagger." If anything, the over-eager players should get punished for not adjusting their strategies to compensate for the variance. In any event, this is what I would call fun/healthy PVE competition. Bosses should be challenging enough to warrant a meaningful preparation phase. Not just strategy ... but also coordinating the engage. Whether it's positioning, temporary buffs, aggro modifiers, debuffs, etc -- players should be thinking about their actions before doing them.
If that doesn't happen then we're already behind the curve. Players shouldn't be standing on spawn sites and spamming abilities hoping to win the enage. That should be considered reckless behavior that gets people killed. The challenge would come down to players being able to identify the variance of any boss encounter and then playing around it. We shouldn't be able to just faceroll everything without planning and strategy. Especially in a game with a meaningful death penalty ... the people who rush should end up with egg on their face. None of this is ground-breaking stuff. I'm honestly kind of shocked that people think it's so farfetched. Are people really used to seeing a bunch of bosses that are auto-win? Planning/Strategy/Coordination are all important but even beyond that, executing a clean pull and finishing an encounter from 100-0 should be challenging. I have seen a lot of people suggest that "winning the tag" is the most important thing when it really comes down to it. They assume that because they win the tag that they will also be able to defeat the encounter. That logic doesn't fly with me because it's assuming easy content.
Bosses should be dangerous. That's what risk vs reward is ... it's not just a matter of "this thing has a long respawn timer and a really low drop rate on the good item." That's super weak and basic. It should absolutely be possible for bosses to destroy ill-prepared or poorly managed groups. If you're out in the world and see a boss ... players shouldn't instantly think "loot pinata!" -- they should be thinking "Ohh, that thing is dangerous. We might be able to kill it if we play our cards right. We don't want to fail because dying really sucks so let's plan this out and make a determination of whether or not we should attempt this." A big part of risk is dying ... spawn rate and drop rates should always be a lesser consideration, IMO.
In some of your text you are assuming the tagger is the same lvl. If this game isn't doing the WoW gear throw away model, then gear will mean something for a long time when you get it. Higher levels will come back to lower lvl areas and boss kill to sell loot. Also, there is a system in EQ where they set up things called camps. Groups would usually come in and ask what camps are taken and whatever ones weren't shouted out that group would go there and set up camp. If camps are going to be a thing in this game, then the FTE doesn't hold water if some other group/higher level player comes into an already claimed camp and boss steals. The idea of ksing in EQ wasn't MDD really, or FTE, it was simply when a foreign group or higher level comes into the camp that your group claimed and then having your mobs stolen from you. So encounter locking with mobs in this case is still ksing by this standard. But it mainly comes down to respecting a groups camp, which there will be people that won't and by that standard that is technically ksing by community camp rules, like what was established in EQ.