oneADseven said:Tanix said:See, I don’t want forced mechanics put on me.
Busy body design mechanics are at the center of modern MMO gaming design. It is a cancer where every behavior had to be approved by the social mob because someone might get offended at a solution someone applied to content and so they would whine and cry until developers put in artificial mechanics to curb the behavior, only to destroy many types of game play in the process.
I watched this happen game after game over two decades of MMOs. Your argument isn’t new, it isn’t special, and the only problem it solves is your expectations, but at the cost of other play approaches. IF Pantheon chooses to take this modern design directive, fine…I don’t have to be a part of it. /shrug
We clearly have different priorities and that is fine. At the end of the day ... I definitely do care that the world is constructed in a way where the super obvious cheese tactics aren't applicable. I understand what you are saying about "emergent gameplay" but let's keep things in perspective. Zerging is no longer emergent gameplay. Power-leveling is no longer emergent gameplay. These tactics were discovered a long time ago and it would be irresponsible to ignore them, especially if they trivialize any aspect of the game that is intended to be challenging. I mentioned that I pledged because of the game tenets. Whenever a topic is being debated for this game I think it makes sense to consider both sides of the argument and then weigh them against each and every tenet. "Artificial Rules" as a term is completely subjective. It's a new game ... a new world ... and when it comes time to create "rules" they need to enhance/reinforce the game tenets. I'm not going to argue about your "approach to gaming" or "style of play." To each their own.
Zerging never was emergent game play, nor was power leveling, or any of those other cheese tactics.
Those are the result of poorly skilled players trying to win.
Emergent game play was figuring out how to split mobs that Verant designed to be unsplittable. It was learning to do things like pulling King Tormax to the zone line as a single monk solo without having to fight a single one of his guards (this was a very difficult feat for all but few pullers), or pulling Dane Frostweaver with a team of monks to the zone line and setting up a CoH group to cycle players who got banished every 45 seconds to the pit rather than fighting down to the pit and fighting constant respawns for hours during the fight.
There are numerous issues throughout EQ that were means to which players through clever tactics, could defeat an intended design. The things you describe are just dumb play, brute force tactics by very narrow and limited minds. Thing is, if you put in all these "restrictions" to FORCE a certain play style, all you end up doing is taking away the creativity of play, you destroy emergent play and essentially make a game on rails. That is, you make if bad for everyone just because the behavior of a few, which is exactly what modern game design did, it forced everyone to a specific play, made the games dumbed down, boring, and mundane.
Like I said, much of that you want to stop can be done on the PvP servers. You can crusade to stop all those who you dislike in play style. Enjoy!
@Tanix...Kind of reminds me of Dark Souls. When everyone first played Dark Souls it was a nightmare. All the bosses were seen as very tough to beat...but then when people started to figure out the tricks using the enviroment...or like cutting the tail off the dragon/Gargoyle etc...then it became a much easier fight.
((to FORCE a certain play style, all you end up doing is taking away the creativity of play))
Playing fairly and not screwing other players over *should* be forced.
The creativity of play reflected by training other players or zerging encounters designed to be done by a single group or raid *should* be prevented.
Allowing a few greedy or outright nasty people to have more fun at the expense of 95% of the player base is an *atrocious* game design.
Beating encounters by essentially cheating isn't emergent play it is exploiting and in many games will get players suspended or banned.
You use terms in a carefully slanted manner but in this context "creativity" is often obnoxious and harmful to the game and the great majority of players.
In this contest "force" just means to fairly and appropriately have rules preventing total chaos and dog-eat-dog.
SWTOR was a game on rails - everytime through the same planets the same way in the same order.
Preventing known ways to cheat and grief is not "rails" it is sense and reason and rationality.
Extremism in the defense of proper gameplay enjoyable to the great majority is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of such is no virtue.
stellarmind said:1ad7 it'll be fine ^.^ i'm a bit sad they decided to split the servers between pvp and pve, but i can understand the reasoning so(really can't call it true open world, however, that's okay).
Pantheon has always been a PVE focused game with little to no focus on PVP design. This is the main reason why the "let us police ourselves" concept really doesn't work. Any aggressive action one player makes towards another player is going to count as harassment if it is not part of an in-game mechanic. Even the concept of Black Listing could be a form of targeted harassment, especially if it is done for non game reasons.
For better or worse virtual spaces are becoming less removed from the legal world. Without an acknowledged and agreed upon behavior code that is then enforced then VR and other gaming companies could be opening themselves up to litigation both for game disciplinary actions and in actions. There are cases based on Facebook interactions going through the court systems now that will likely set legal precidence.
Tanix said:Emergent game play was figuring out how to split mobs that Verant designed to be unsplittable. It was learning to do things like pulling King Tormax to the zone line as a single monk solo without having to fight a single one of his guards (this was a very difficult feat for all but few pullers), or pulling Dane Frostweaver with a team of monks to the zone line and setting up a CoH group to cycle players who got banished every 45 seconds to the pit rather than fighting down to the pit and fighting constant respawns for hours during the fight.
There are numerous issues throughout EQ that were means to which players through clever tactics, could defeat an intended design. The things you describe are just dumb play, brute force tactics by very narrow and limited minds. Thing is, if you put in all these "restrictions" to FORCE a certain play style, all you end up doing is taking away the creativity of play, you destroy emergent play and essentially make a game on rails. That is, you make if bad for everyone just because the behavior of a few, which is exactly what modern game design did, it forced everyone to a specific play, made the games dumbed down, boring, and mundane.
It's kind of ironic that you mention pulling mobs to the zoneline as the kind of emergent gameplay that you prefer to see possible. That's ... horrible, IMO. Players were suspended for doing that in EQ2. I remember seeing someone pull Pantrilla to the entrance of Temple of Scale with a summoner pet. This mob was purposely put at the bottom of the dungeon and it was considered an exploit to pull it to the zone entrance. You're only reinforcing my argument here. Players will take the path of least resistance and cheese the game if you let them. They did this in EQ2 despite there being encounter locks. There is a difference between being creative and exploiting.
If the design team says that they want to create "really challenging raid tier single group content" that doesn't mean the game is "on rails" if players are limited to a single group while fighting it. It's just common sense. Circumventing content is a joke and that is exactly what I want to see removed from the game. The design team needs to think two steps ahead of these ridiculous tactics and ensure that the integrity of their game isn't compromised. Otherwise we'll see a raid of players that spends an hour fighting their way to the bottom of a dungeon ... who then gets ready to pull a boss ... and watch it run right through them to the zone entrance, engaged by someone who wanted to be "creative" and avoid "wasting time." Please add me to your blacklist because I don't get down with cheese.
If it's obvious that Verant created an encounter that was designed to be unsplittable ... this is when a reasonable player reports their finding rather than using it for personal gain. Hopefully you did that. And maybe they couldn't fix it. I think it speaks volumes, though, that when Vanguard was created ... this kind of cheese play wasn't viable. It speaks volumes, to me, that design teams did think two steps ahead and eliminated the viability of bad tactics. I started gaming a long time ago and I have seen plenty of cheese in my day. There was a ton of it in EQOA. I expect better in 2019 and beyond. I will be going out of my way as a tester for this game to apply and report every cheese tactic I know of. I don't want to see mobs stuck in walls, stuck in rocks, teleporting through walls, glitching out, or getting ransacked by zerg-blobs. I don't want to see low level groups having the rug pulled from beneath their feet by a single high level player. I want to see a World that is sacred, and where content is King.
So I’ve thought a lot about this recently. EQ was very unique in that the community policed its self, for the most part. People behaved, to an extent, because they did not want to get black listed. Ninja loots was extremely rare, same with obvious training. Now people had alt monks they did it on, but that wasn’t very common.
You can’t just say “let the community police its self” without also taking into account why the community was able to do so. EQ had three important things going for it.
Bottom line is that the community was able to police its self because you were stuck with that community. You couldn’t leave the server if you upset people, short of putting in a lot of work. If you can server transfer, name change, or getting exp is extremely easy a server cannot police its self.
**edit for formatting**
"Community policing" often worked only because the issues were backed by the play nice policy that covered kill stealing, camp theft, training, etc. and few players wanted to take their chances with the real "police" showing up and giving punishment.
If you are on a server with a large guild that is self sufficient enough to not have to care much about outsiders then you have little to no means to "police" them, especially if there is enough leeway in the rules or otherwise an absence of a PNP for them to really toe the line of being total jerks. Likewise if you aren't in a guild or are in a small/family guild, then your attempts at policing tend to fall upon deaf ears as most people don't care about the squabbles or accusations/finger pointing of others (rightly so).
The FFXI community was unique because Square Enix took player reputation a step further. Their sub-class system allowed players to re-level multiple times on the same character. Players didn't really roll alts that often because of how the game was designed. There was nothing preventing someone from rolling an alt but when given a choice, the vast majority of players preferred to level up multiple classes on the same character. The impact this had on player reputation was incredible. There were restrictions in the game that prevented players from being able to switch their class on a whim which kept it balanced. In the end ... it wasn't uncommon to see veterans mixing it up and grouping with brand new players. The leveling journey in FFXI was extremely long and players were absolutely reliant on grouping for XP. I have high hopes for progeny being able to recapture that magic from FFXI. I want to see 1'st, 2'nd, 3'rd, 4'th, and 5'th generation characters. The character name shouldn't change between generations and that would be great for meaningful player reputation.
Only solution I can see is to have servers where the rule sets can be drastically configured to different tastes and players can either vote, pay to configure the server, etc...
As I said, some of you are from a different gaming generation of play than I. I hated EQ 2's design (my friends disliked it as well), and FFXI was another game we wanted nothing to do with, all because of the opinons some you share on community and game play.
Fact is, if you guys get what you want, I won't be playing Pantheon. I have "been there, done that" over two decades as these same arguments were hashed out each time, and when they were used by the company, we got yet another mainstream game designed to solve all the problems of play and only turning the game into garbage.
Time will tell if Pantheon tries to really achieve the subtle aspects of games like EQ, or if they end up making another modern mmo with some past core designs.
There will be no compromise between us as our gaming ideals are at odds.
VR has stated that they desire fun/healthy competition. They realize that competition is inherent in an open world game and that resources can/will be hotly contested, at times. I think it's best to allow players to evaluate the opportunity cost of how they spend their time. Competition shouldn't be viewed as invasive, rude, or unreasonable. It's a reality of open world MMO's. If multiple players/groups are willing to spend time at a single camp ... for the chance to claim an encounter and then beat it, there is nothing wrong with that. It's a great way to open up the world and encourage player interaction. Based on what I have heard ... it was reasonable for players to contest raid spawns in EQ, but players drew the line with group content.
I don't think it's reasonable that a player/group can kill a place holder and then lock that camp down for an unlimited amount of time. To me, it sounds like an attempt to justify content monopoly with a facade of honor. A single group can lock down a given camp for an entire week/month straight ... cycling in friends or guild mates as needed. This is where I think the training wheels need to come off. Kill-credit should be determined by an in-game mechanic. If a group earns kill credit, there should never be a question on whether or not it was legitimate unless intentional training was involved. Back in FFXI ... if multiple groups were contesting the same camp, it was considered honorable to cheer another player who acquired a coveted drop.
This is because players both accepted and embraced that competition was inherent in an open world game. Resources are shared and can/will be hotly contested. It's not like players were jumping for joy when they had to compete. Quite the opposite ... players preferred to have a camp to themselves. But if other players came along ... evaluated the situation, and determined that it was worth competing ... this was perfectly fine. There were over 150+ XP camps that emerged organically. Players would generally respect the boundaries of an XP camp without the need of an official rule, guideline, or fear of GM intervention. Bosses, on the other hand, were highly dangerous, and rare. Their drops were very desirable. It was natural for competition to brew in an area where the most valuable items would drop and at the end of the day, I think it was good for the game.
Rather than players getting irritated that another character was invading their territory ... there was always one constant. The world was shared. At the end of the day, I think it's important to allow social constructs to emerge in Pantheon. All I am asking for as a player is to have clearly defined rules, and then set the players free. If certain people can't handle fun/healthy competition in an open-world MMO because it goes against their 1999 Code of Conduct, so be it. It sounds like an opportunity for a community goal. Round up people who buy into that logic and then play on the same server(s) where you're more likely to see those ideals accepted and enforced. But don't assume that it's the "right way" and that it will dominate the entire landscape of Pantheon ... especially when fun/healthy competition is something VR wants to achieve.
I have heard plenty of stories about EQ and I never hear much on the front of fun/healthy competition. All I hear about is complaints of content denial, perma-camping, and stealing. Forgive me ... but that isn't the kind of culture that I want my MMO experience to be governed by. Competition needs to be "fair game" if it's going to be fun/healthy. That means rules need to be clearly defined. Based on what I have seen thus far, it sounds like Pantheon will feature plenty of opportunities for fun/healthy open world competition. It all comes down to how players manage their expectations. Should it be reasonable that a player can send in a compelling complaint ticket on another player and expect some form of punishment? Will GM's need to "interpret" the "intent" of that player ... and decide if they were trying to compete fair and square, or if they were attempting to "steal?" That sounds like a big headache, to be honest. Set the rules and let the players figure the rest out. Kill-stealing is only a valid term if competition is tainted by some sort of negative undertone. I don't think that's something we should bring back for an open world MMO. FTE with encounter locking is the best option, IMO, to allow fun/healthy PVE-centric open world competition. It eliminates zerging/kill-stealing. It frees up the CS team. It makes content more challenging. It makes accomplishments more earned.
oneADseven said:
VR has stated that they desire fun/healthy competition. They realize that competition is inherent in an open world game and that resources can/will be hotly contested, at times. I think it's best to allow players to evaluate the opportunity cost of how they spend their time. Competition shouldn't be viewed as invasive, rude, or unreasonable. It's a reality of open world MMO's. If multiple players/groups are willing to spend time at a single camp ... for the chance to claim an encounter and then beat it, there is nothing wrong with that. It's a great way to open up the world and encourage player interaction. Based on what I have heard ... it was reasonable for players to contest raid spawns in EQ, but players drew the line with group content.
Fun, healthy? What does that even mean? It is a subjective word, meaningless in these discussions. What is fun and healthy to you, may not be fun and healthy to me. Contested does not mean someone walks in and KS's a mob that pops because they happened to be sitting around the corner waiting to snag it while the camp group was recovering from breaking the camp. Contested as it was in EQ, meant you raced to the camps and winner took all (ie if you were able to get to the camp first and start it, it was yours IF you could hold it, if you wiped, all bets were off).
oneADseven said:I don't think it's reasonable that a player/group can kill a place holder and then lock that camp down for an unlimited amount of time. To me, it sounds like an attempt to justify content monopoly with a facade of honor. A single group can lock down a given camp for an entire week/month straight ... cycling in friends or guild mates as needed. This is where I think the training wheels need to come off. Kill-credit should be determined by an in-game mechanic. If a group earns kill credit, there should never be a question on whether or not it was legitimate unless intentional training was involved. Back in FFXI ... if multiple groups were contesting the same camp, it was considered honorable to cheer another player who acquired a coveted drop.
I don’t think it is reasonable for players to hide behind the protections of PvE mechanics so they can grief players over an odd sense of what they believe is competitive and “honorable” play. In fact, I think such behavior is absolutely dishonorable as there is no repercussion for the PvE player. You walk in, steal a pop, without doing any of the work and claim it is “competition”. That sort of behavior would get you perma-camped on a PvP server.
oneADseven said:
This is because players both accepted and embraced that competition was inherent in an open world game. Resources are shared and can/will be hotly contested. It's not like players were jumping for joy when they had to compete. Quite the opposite ... players preferred to have a camp to themselves. But if other players came along ... evaluated the situation, and determined that it was worth competing ... this was perfectly fine. There were over 150+ XP camps that emerged organically. Players would generally respect the boundaries of an XP camp without the need of an official rule, guideline, or fear of GM intervention. Bosses, on the other hand, were highly dangerous, and rare. Their drops were very desirable. It was natural for competition to brew in an area where the most valuable items would drop and at the end of the day, I think it was good for the game.
Sounds like a bunch of players seeking to mess over another by rushing in at an opportune time to take advantage of the situation. Let the other group work the camp, then run in and snag the rare without putting in the effort. Sounds like a lot of Asian games out there, not much “honor” in that though, especially when you couldn’t retaliate against a player because they were hiding behind PvE.
oneADseven said:
Rather than players getting irritated that another character was invading their territory ... there was always one constant. The world was shared. At the end of the day, I think it's important to allow social constructs to emerge in Pantheon. All I am asking for as a player is to have clearly defined rules, and then set the players free. If certain people can't handle fun/healthy competition in an open-world MMO because it goes against their 1999 Code of Conduct, so be it. It sounds like an opportunity for a community goal. Round up people who buy into that logic and then play on the same server(s) where you're more likely to see those ideals accepted and enforced. But don't assume that it's the "right way" and that it will dominate the entire landscape of Pantheon ... especially when fun/healthy competition is something VR wants to achieve.
If VR agrees with you, I can promise you I won’t play the game, nor will many of my old school EQ friends in the past. Again, most EQ players didn’t all rush off to FFXI, they stayed playing EQ until finally the decided to move on to WoW.
There is nothing healthy or fun about your idea of behavior in the game. In fact, I have no desire to play with people like that at all. I see no means of building a community with people who have a very odd concept of what competition is (it is akin to the PvP griefers going on about how competitive they are while they are perm-camping new players 50 levels below them).
oneADseven said:
I have heard plenty of stories about EQ and I never hear much on the front of fun/healthy competition. All I hear about is complaints of content denial, perma-camping, and stealing. Forgive me ... but that isn't the kind of culture that I want my MMO experience to be governed by. Competition needs to be "fair game" if it's going to be fun/healthy. That means rules need to be clearly defined. Based on what I have seen thus far, it sounds like Pantheon will feature plenty of opportunities for fun/healthy open world competition. It all comes down to how players manage their expectations. Should it be reasonable that a player can send in a compelling complaint ticket on another player and expect some form of punishment? Will GM's need to "interpret" the "intent" of that player ... and decide if they were trying to compete fair and square, or if they were attempting to "steal?" That sounds like a big headache, to be honest. Set the rules and let the players figure the rest out. Kill-stealing is only a valid term if competition is tainted by some sort of negative undertone. I don't think that's something we should bring back for an open world MMO. FTE with encounter locking is the best option, IMO, to allow fun/healthy PVE-centric open world competition. It eliminates zerging/kill-stealing. It frees up the CS team. It makes content more challenging. It makes accomplishments more earned.
So your solution is to advocate for encounter locking because people like you will try to kill steal because you think it is a fun and healthy play mechanic, yet don’t want to apply this behavior to a PvP server.
I would rather we don’t and you go ahead and be yourself, get black listed or eventually banned because you are just “honorably” playing the game in a fun and healthy fashion. /shrug
Sorry, you and I won’t get along at all in game.
The good news is that either VR designs the game to be FFXI like, or more EQ like.
Time will tell, but I can promise you I won’t waste my money on the former. Like I said, this isn’t my first rodeo and your arguments were made MMO after MMO over the years, to which each one turned into garbage.
Worst case, I stick to the growing survival server type systems where eventually players will be able to make their own MMO like games easily.
@SoWplz Exactly. There were no game mechanics stopping someone from ksing or camp stealing. It was a community unwritten rule that the majority of people followed. This is the very definition of emergent gameplay.
Another big factor in this was the corpse run. If you acted like an a$$ and trained killed someone and they had friends that were high lvl...they would come and train kill you. In this sense no one wins and people would have to run back to their corpse, which took a lot of time in some cases. So it wasn't beneficial at all to grief another person because you don't know who they are and what connections they had. You messed with an alt to a top end guild...they would black list you from end game fairly easily. EQ provided the most freedom in a game I have seen and with that comes responsibilities from the community to respect certain aspects of the game, such as camps, raid rotations, etc.
I am for encounter locking on raid targets only. That was one of the biggest negatives in EQ was content blocking, but in terms of average mobs/bosses in group content and not raid content, shouldn't be encounter locked IMO.
Watemper said:@SoWplz Exactly. There were no game mechanics stopping someone from ksing or camp stealing. It was a community unwritten rule that the majority of people followed. This is the very definition of emergent gameplay.
There were written rules against kill stealing and, to a degree, camp stealing/attempting to hunt the same mob or in the same area as another group...
As for the above with "competition." I really don't think I would find myself sticking with/paying for a game in this day and age if the time I put into it isn't respected. If I put in hour(s) at a camp only for someone else to show up and swipe the rare/named mob I wouldn't view that as fun or healthy competition so much as completely disrespectful or "BS", it would be maddening and I would ask myself why I even bother putting in the time.
Watemper said:I am for encounter locking on raid targets only. That was one of the biggest negatives in EQ was content blocking, but in terms of average mobs/bosses in group content and not raid content, shouldn't be encounter locked IMO.
Emcounter locking won't stop this. In EQ, guilds blocked content mainly by perm-camping progression mobs to keep other guilds from getting flagged or they would hit key mobs that were important for gear progression to slow the progression of other guilds. In Velious it was a problem for instance with keying for ToV where guilds would perm camp the key drop mob, and in PoP it was camping all the specific flag bosses. Poop socking was the main problem here where players would be on 24/7 watching for a raid pop and then calling in the guild to come and kill the boss the moment it poped (random timers were not effective in stopping this). It is one of the reasons why I and my friends didn't raid release content, we had jobs and couldn't "live" the game, and it is also why I won't be raiding much in Pantheon (unless there is a rotation system or special server with such like EQ Stormhammer).
If a raid tried to step in and KS a boss from another raid, this was an action that could be reported and a GM would have to resolve it. So encounter locking won't stop players from Ksing, in fact it will even assist in such as the player will then just have to get the lock on starting the encounter. Fact is, none of these mechanics solve problems, they merely solve one very specific issue and then create or ignore additional problems that circumvent its intention.
This is one of the reasons why many people (it was expensive though) moved to the Legends server (Stormhammer) because on that server, raid mobs were not contested. Guilds had to apply for rotation of a specific teir of mobs by showing a GM in the Arena who would spawn that mob for them to defeat. If they could show they could defeat one of the hardest mobs of the teir, they then would be put into a rotation for specific mobs each week of various teirs to which the guild would sign up for. If a guild KS's, or violated this agreement, they were banned from the server (the entire guild). Guilds could trade targets though if they wanted, but KSing went away.
That was a SoE sanctioned agreement though, but some regular servers made up their own systems for rotation similar to that and all guilds followed it. Those that didn't got black listed and all the other member guilds would then begin showing up to the targets to kill the mob before the other guild.
That is an example where zerging had a positive result in that a bunch of the guilds would show up and be able to take the raid mob from a guild who was KSing targets from the agreement.
Fact is, I see more problems that come from these artificial mechanics than I do solutions. In the above case, encounter locking would aid a KSing guild as they then could grab content without any repprecussions due to the mechanic locking the other players out from interferring.
I would much rather have community deal with things or ultimately a GM than have artificial mechanics blanket dictating play. It is one of the major failures of modern MMOs.
Edit: oh and this is another problem with servers open to all time zones world wide. On many NA servers, EU guilds would setup shop on the NA ones. Then, they would work to set all of the mobs timers (the had a random, but with a spread of so many hours) to coincide with the hours where most of NA would be asleep. It gave them the run of the house on many mobs. It was a batle back and forth between who had members that had no life or job to sit 24/7 to raid and it is why EQ became a game all about raiding for kids and the jobless. At least with group mobs, their timers were 30 mins, so you could get in and try for a rare pop, but if it was a raid target of any note, it was perma camped.
Iksar said:Watemper said:@SoWplz Exactly. There were no game mechanics stopping someone from ksing or camp stealing. It was a community unwritten rule that the majority of people followed. This is the very definition of emergent gameplay.
There were written rules against kill stealing and, to a degree, camp stealing/attempting to hunt the same mob or in the same area as another group...
As for the above with "competition." I really don't think I would find myself sticking with/paying for a game in this day and age if the time I put into it isn't respected. If I put in hour(s) at a camp only for someone else to show up and swipe the rare/named mob I wouldn't view that as fun or healthy competition so much as completely disrespectful or "BS", it would be maddening and I would ask myself why I even bother putting in the time.
Content locking won't stop that though. All the modern means to stop that will not work with this game as what stopped KSing in games was "instancing", and that will not be present in Pantheon. In EQ2, KS happend (and stil does) all the time. It is just that instead of damage to a mob being the factor to which ultimately determines the fight, the first to tag the group is. I watched it happen all the time when a group of mentored over powered characters would rush into an area, jump past you and tag the rare mobs locking the encounter.
KSing will stil happen and the solutions offered will not work because they don't work in the games today.
People will simply find other ways to cheat the system. So instead of people figuring out ways how to defeat an encounter, pull a mob single, etc... they will spend their time figuring out how to work around the system to KS.
Although I suspect there is a lot of exaggeration here as people try and make their points - you folks are making every system seem pretty bad and the complete lack of any system at all doesn't sound any better.
Therefore with little hope but a certain level of tenacity I repeat my comment that limited instancing will not turn Pantheon into WoW but will at least allow us all to do a few (not too many) boss encounters without fear of killstealing and griefing, and I can't think of a better term than griefing for guilds killing things they don't even need just to block the progress of others - IMO done repeatedly that should be grounds for the guild being dissolved and the leaders banned.
I am sure that Pantheon will have more than a few interesting boss encounters that VR will spend a lot of effort on. All I am asking is to have a few of them instanced so the entire community can get to them and enjoy them.
Tanix said:Watemper said:I am for encounter locking on raid targets only. That was one of the biggest negatives in EQ was content blocking, but in terms of average mobs/bosses in group content and not raid content, shouldn't be encounter locked IMO.
Emcounter locking won't stop this. In EQ, guilds blocked content mainly by perm-camping progression mobs to keep other guilds from getting flagged or they would hit key mobs that were important for gear progression to slow the progression of other guilds. In Velious it was a problem for instance with keying for ToV where guilds would perm camp the key drop mob, and in PoP it was camping all the specific flag bosses. Poop socking was the main problem here where players would be on 24/7 watching for a raid pop and then calling in the guild to come and kill the boss the moment it poped (random timers were not effective in stopping this). It is one of the reasons why I and my friends didn't raid release content, we had jobs and couldn't "live" the game, and it is also why I won't be raiding much in Pantheon (unless there is a rotation system or special server with such like EQ Stormhammer).
If a raid tried to step in and KS a boss from another raid, this was an action that could be reported and a GM would have to resolve it. So encounter locking won't stop players from Ksing, in fact it will even assist in such as the player will then just have to get the lock on starting the encounter. Fact is, none of these mechanics solve problems, they merely solve one very specific issue and then create or ignore additional problems that circumvent its intention.
This is one of the reasons why many people (it was expensive though) moved to the Legends server (Stormhammer) because on that server, raid mobs were not contested. Guilds had to apply for rotation of a specific teir of mobs by showing a GM in the Arena who would spawn that mob for them to defeat. If they could show they could defeat one of the hardest mobs of the teir, they then would be put into a rotation for specific mobs each week of various teirs to which the guild would sign up for. If a guild KS's, or violated this agreement, they were banned from the server (the entire guild). Guilds could trade targets though if they wanted, but KSing went away.
That was a SoE sanctioned agreement though, but some regular servers made up their own systems for rotation similar to that and all guilds followed it. Those that didn't got black listed and all the other member guilds would then begin showing up to the targets to kill the mob before the other guild.
That is an example where zerging had a positive result in that a bunch of the guilds would show up and be able to take the raid mob from a guild who was KSing targets from the agreement.
Fact is, I see more problems that come from these artificial mechanics than I do solutions. In the above case, encounter locking would aid a KSing guild as they then could grab content without any repprecussions due to the mechanic locking the other players out from interferring.
I would much rather have community deal with things or ultimately a GM than have artificial mechanics blanket dictating play. It is one of the major failures of modern MMOs.
Edit: oh and this is another problem with servers open to all time zones world wide. On many NA servers, EU guilds would setup shop on the NA ones. Then, they would work to set all of the mobs timers (the had a random, but with a spread of so many hours) to coincide with the hours where most of NA would be asleep. It gave them the run of the house on many mobs. It was a batle back and forth between who had members that had no life or job to sit 24/7 to raid and it is why EQ became a game all about raiding for kids and the jobless. At least with group mobs, their timers were 30 mins, so you could get in and try for a rare pop, but if it was a raid target of any note, it was perma camped.
Correct, but keying for stuff like VP and TOV was bad design. By Encounter locking the raid target, like in VG, the raid will down the boss and then the toon/account is flagged for several days before that toon/account can do it again. The boss will then spawn in like 30 mins and another guild can down it. As for the other slowing down progression from getting keyed...if they make the key/flagging targets raid bosses, like in POP, then it won't matter much. They just have to be smart with the keying/flagging system and it will work out. They also need several different routes to take for getting keyed. So I won't fret too much with how EQ handled Keying and flagging. Even though I take a lot of inspiration from EQ, I know that there was definetly some bad design choices throughout the game, keying for VP and TOV wasbad desgin, although TOV wasn't as big of a nightmare and bottleneck as VP.
I understand your sentiment and agree that there are alot of bad modern MMO design, but it isn't fun getting content blocked because of players, unless on a PVP server, instead of a hard boss fight. And since Instancing is stupid and defeats the purpose of an open world game, encounter locking raid targets is the best solution as far as I can tell. That was the only cancer in EQ that made a lot of people quit. It wasn't because they couldn't do the boss, but because a few guilds stopped them from doing the boss. Not being able to do the boss because your guild sucks is one thing, but not being able to do a boss because of some Zerg 24/7 no life guild stops you from doing it is another. I like to defeat the bosses in era, not wait until another expansion and then fight the bosses again with better gear and an increase in level. It's just stupid to me.
I know that there was definetly some bad design choices throughout the game))
None of us gets everything right and I doubt if one single EQ designer will disagree.
Even more important - things that simply could not be done in 1999 are trivially easy now so designers have a far better range of options.
Some things that were in EQ should be in Pantheon because they remain excellent ways to design a game even today.
Some things that were in EQ should be in Pantheon for nostalgia - where they neither help nor hurt so why not?
Some things that were in EQ should be written off as not the way to go today.
Easy to say - chosing which feature falls in which category gives rise to endless debate on these forums.
Watemper said:Tanix said:Watemper said:I am for encounter locking on raid targets only. That was one of the biggest negatives in EQ was content blocking, but in terms of average mobs/bosses in group content and not raid content, shouldn't be encounter locked IMO.
Emcounter locking won't stop this. In EQ, guilds blocked content mainly by perm-camping progression mobs to keep other guilds from getting flagged or they would hit key mobs that were important for gear progression to slow the progression of other guilds. In Velious it was a problem for instance with keying for ToV where guilds would perm camp the key drop mob, and in PoP it was camping all the specific flag bosses. Poop socking was the main problem here where players would be on 24/7 watching for a raid pop and then calling in the guild to come and kill the boss the moment it poped (random timers were not effective in stopping this). It is one of the reasons why I and my friends didn't raid release content, we had jobs and couldn't "live" the game, and it is also why I won't be raiding much in Pantheon (unless there is a rotation system or special server with such like EQ Stormhammer).
If a raid tried to step in and KS a boss from another raid, this was an action that could be reported and a GM would have to resolve it. So encounter locking won't stop players from Ksing, in fact it will even assist in such as the player will then just have to get the lock on starting the encounter. Fact is, none of these mechanics solve problems, they merely solve one very specific issue and then create or ignore additional problems that circumvent its intention.
This is one of the reasons why many people (it was expensive though) moved to the Legends server (Stormhammer) because on that server, raid mobs were not contested. Guilds had to apply for rotation of a specific teir of mobs by showing a GM in the Arena who would spawn that mob for them to defeat. If they could show they could defeat one of the hardest mobs of the teir, they then would be put into a rotation for specific mobs each week of various teirs to which the guild would sign up for. If a guild KS's, or violated this agreement, they were banned from the server (the entire guild). Guilds could trade targets though if they wanted, but KSing went away.
That was a SoE sanctioned agreement though, but some regular servers made up their own systems for rotation similar to that and all guilds followed it. Those that didn't got black listed and all the other member guilds would then begin showing up to the targets to kill the mob before the other guild.
That is an example where zerging had a positive result in that a bunch of the guilds would show up and be able to take the raid mob from a guild who was KSing targets from the agreement.
Fact is, I see more problems that come from these artificial mechanics than I do solutions. In the above case, encounter locking would aid a KSing guild as they then could grab content without any repprecussions due to the mechanic locking the other players out from interferring.
I would much rather have community deal with things or ultimately a GM than have artificial mechanics blanket dictating play. It is one of the major failures of modern MMOs.
Edit: oh and this is another problem with servers open to all time zones world wide. On many NA servers, EU guilds would setup shop on the NA ones. Then, they would work to set all of the mobs timers (the had a random, but with a spread of so many hours) to coincide with the hours where most of NA would be asleep. It gave them the run of the house on many mobs. It was a batle back and forth between who had members that had no life or job to sit 24/7 to raid and it is why EQ became a game all about raiding for kids and the jobless. At least with group mobs, their timers were 30 mins, so you could get in and try for a rare pop, but if it was a raid target of any note, it was perma camped.
Correct, but keying for stuff like VP and TOV was bad design. By Encounter locking the raid target, like in VG, the raid will down the boss and then the toon/account is flagged for several days before that toon/account can do it again. The boss will then spawn in like 30 mins and another guild can down it. As for the other slowing down progression from getting keyed...if they make the key/flagging targets raid bosses, like in POP, then it won't matter much. They just have to be smart with the keying/flagging system and it will work out. They also need several different routes to take for getting keyed. So I won't fret too much with how EQ handled Keying and flagging. Even though I take a lot of inspiration from EQ, I know that there was definetly some bad design choices throughout the game, keying for VP and TOV wasbad desgin, although TOV wasn't as big of a nightmare and bottleneck as VP.
I understand your sentiment and agree that there are alot of bad modern MMO design, but it isn't fun getting content blocked because of players, unless on a PVP server, instead of a hard boss fight. And since Instancing is stupid and defeats the purpose of an open world game, encounter locking raid targets is the best solution as far as I can tell. That was the only cancer in EQ that made a lot of people quit. It wasn't because they couldn't do the boss, but because a few guilds stopped them from doing the boss. Not being able to do the boss because your guild sucks is one thing, but not being able to do a boss because of some Zerg 24/7 no life guild stops you from doing it is another. I like to defeat the bosses in era, not wait until another expansion and then fight the bosses again with better gear and an increase in level. It's just stupid to me.
Well, there is a subtle issue that has large over all effects with that system. The solution presented to the encounter locking being an abuse is the kill flag and a cool down. Ok, we can go with that for a moment, but a 30 min respawn? This I think is a huge problem. All it is doing to solve the problem of the KS is to hand the raid mob to the next group quickly. This may seem like a good solution, just as instancing was considered such, but remember what instancing did in the game? It made it where gear was not rare because every guild could do the instances and obtain the gear.
In EQ, the gear being released on to the server had a cap. That is, a raid boss only spawned every 7 days. So, if a boss had a list of items, lets say Items A - H for instance, and only 2 of those 8 items randomly dropped each time the boss was killed, it means that only 2 items could be released on to the server from that mob each cycle (ie 2 every 7 days). Now, take VG's system and you now have 12 times the mob could be killed (more like 6-8 if we being more practical) in a single day. Multiply that by 7 to compare it to EQ and you get 42 - 56 items being released into the game every 7 days.
See the problem here? The mystery and rarity of an item in EQ off raid bosses took years to become common place, but in a system like this, the game will be flooded with top raid gear in a week or two. Not only that, but you will have guilds obtaining most of the gear off a raid boss in short time unless the you design the drop rates to be so ridiculous that the raids would most of the time come home without anything or with the same stuff weeks on end.
Subtle changes completely change the over all game and this is what I am talking about with modern mechanics like this. Each small change has a rippling effect that cascades out changing the entire game. It is why changed so drastically in a short period of time.
Personally, I think the best solution is a raid calendar system that is promoted right off the bat by VR and a required adherance to such (for raid targets only) by all, with some kind of testing system similar to how the legends server was on EQ. A server devoted to this would be nice, but I doubt most will want such a system for many reasons.
I doubt many would like that, but I will say havingraid gear being allowed into the game that fast will only have negative impacts on the over all game itself.
edit: oh, just to be clear on this, if you upped the respawn timer to a much longer time, then that could solve it, but it would have to be much longer for the one that kills. So for instance, if you kill a raid target, and the respawn is 7 days, then you can't kill that target for 8-9 days. This would then allow other groups an in to raid, but it would not dump raid gear into the game at a fast pace. I doubt people will go for that either. Most will want raid mobs for all, similar to instancing where everybody can have access to the raids at any time, which then is a problem as I explain.
Tanix said:Content locking won't stop that though. All the modern means to stop that will not work with this game as what stopped KSing in games was "instancing", and that will not be present in Pantheon. In EQ2, KS happend (and stil does) all the time. It is just that instead of damage to a mob being the factor to which ultimately determines the fight, the first to tag the group is. I watched it happen all the time when a group of mentored over powered characters would rush into an area, jump past you and tag the rare mobs locking the encounter.
KSing will stil happen and the solutions offered will not work because they don't work in the games today.
People will simply find other ways to cheat the system. So instead of people figuring out ways how to defeat an encounter, pull a mob single, etc... they will spend their time figuring out how to work around the system to KS.
Tanix you are ignoring a very important element which is very telling of what was emphasized in EQ, and something that I personally do not want to see "brought back" in the context of Pantheon. Encounter locking increases the challenge of the content -- this is not up for debate, it is fact. Encounter locking ensures that players must defeat an encounter from 100-0%. This means that the content will be designed, tuned, and balanced for a specific amount of players. What you are describing is generally referred to as "leap frogging." Leap Frogging is an open world phenomena that will happen regardless of MDD/FTE, or whether encounter locking is used.
"It is just that instead of damage to a mob being the factor to which ultimately determines the fight, the first to tag the group is."
Again ... with encounter locking, the "ultimate factor" comes down to which group is capable of defeating the full encounter. Since the content can be designed, tuned, and balanced to be more difficult, victory should not be assumed. It must be earned. It wasn't uncommon in EQ2/FFXI/Vanguard for multiple teams to contest the same target, taking turns wiping. Again, this is because the content was tuned/balanced to be challenging. Had encounter locking not been implemented, the mobs that were designed/tuned/balanced for 24 players would have been steamrolled by an unlimited amount of players. Instead of the focus being on PVE -- it would have been pseudo PVP.
When a game is designed to be challenging, "winning the engage" shouldn't be the primary focus. Winning the engage meant nothing in EQ2 if you weren't capable of defeating the full encounter. I have seen countless raid teams wipe because of their eagnerness to engage. Difficult content should require a meaningful preparation phase. Whether it's changing situational gear, abilities, group composition, buffs, positioning, etc. Knowing that Pantheon will have more advanced AI than what was observed in EQ and other old school MMO's, this can add a lot of emphasis to strategy and planning.
If bosses (or their minions) have a chance to spawn with different dispositions or archetypes, or buffs, or locations, this creates a layer of strategy. You wouldn't engage 4 clerics the same way you would engage 4 warriors, right? Knowing that VR has placed such a high emphasis on the strategy/planning phase before combat, we must assume that they are going to deliver on that. Stop thinking that players are going to sit on top of a spawn site chaining their abilities to "win the tag." It shouldn't work like that if the game is truly difficult and strategy/planning are actually required. Over eager players will end up with egg on their face because they were more focused on winning the tag than they were being prepared to defeat the full encounter.
When a game has a meaningful death penalty, players won't be so careless that they are willing to risk their life just to ensure that they win the tag. That would be a stupid decision. Again, if the game is difficult, players should have to spend time preparing for any major encounter. You're making broad sweeping exaggerations and assumptions that aren't aligned with the goals that have been stated. Let's consider the following excerpt ... the very first one listed on "The Pantheon Difference" page:
An MMO Evolved
"Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen will likely be a fundamentally different game compared to what you may have experienced playing other modern MMORPGs. From the moment you log in you will notice that the game is more social and has an emphasis on cooperative play. The monsters are often tougher and exploration is more involved. You will need friends in the game and your reputation can either help you progress or hinder it. Death in-game is meaningful and you’ll want to avoid it when possible. You’ll learn your surroundings and the lay of the land, spending meaningful time in each area and not just running through as quickly as possible to collect ten hides. You will need strategy, cunning and endurance to uncover all that Pantheon has to offer. You will find yourself in group and guild chats as you strategize or even just to pass the time between battles. Pantheon is social, thought-provoking, and the memories from your experiences in Terminus will last a lifetime."
When considering the above, and then also factoring in the potential for "Dynamic NPC Encounter Groups" and "NPC Dispositions and Behaviors" and "Situational Gear" -- all three of these things have elements of planning and strategy. If people are assuming that encounters are going to be so easy that "winning the engage" is all that will matter, it would seem to me that they are ignoring all of these major "differentiators." Winning the engage means nothing if the encounter kills you! It boggles my mind that the idea of encounters getting the best of players is such a foreign concept. Pantheon isn't going to be an easy or thoughtless game. Bosses should wipe the floor with a group of over zealous players. That should be the rule, not the exception. All of that is much more likely with encounter locking in tact.
Without encounter locking ... everybody bum rushes the boss (even though it's designed for a single group or raid) and focus more on out-performing other players than playing around the actual encounter mechanics. This means that the NPC Boss is far more likely to die than the players. For all intents and purposes, DPS Racing is zerging. If content is designed for a single group or raid (again let's consider the recent descriptions of "really challenging raid tier single group content / 12 man raids / 24 man raids") then the challenge is being trivialized. Period! Again ... leap frogging is going to occur in an open world game no matter what. It doesn't matter if you use MDD or FTE. It doesn't matter if you use encounter locking.
The one thing that that will reduce the effectiveness of leap frogging is having challenging content. Bosses that punish players for being over eager. A non-debuffed boss should hit really, really hard. Timing temporary buffs, shields, aggro modifiers, positioning, reactive heals, and debuffs ... all of these are critically important. Encounters can be designed to be incredibly challenging in the first 10-15 seconds ... so much so, that only the groups who properly prepare for them will have a chance to survive that initial barrage. This meaningful preparation phase has been emphasized greatly for this game. If we can't agree that Pantheon will be a difficult game that requires strategy/planning/coordination before engaging a boss then we are clearly talking about two different games. I have played MMO's that featured plenty of challenging content that generally required a countdown. Yes ... even when multiple groups/raids are contesting the same target ... getting that countdown is still important! If you mess up the engage then you end up dying and giving the competition extra time to prepare. You remove the pressure and tension from the situation and put them in a great position to execute a clean pull.
In other words ... your remark of "People will simply find other ways to cheat the system. So instead of people figuring out ways how to defeat an encounter, pull a mob single, etc... they will spend their time figuring out how to work around the system to KS." does not apply. The over eager and greedy players will end up getting themselves killed, much to the delight of those who plan and coordinate their moves as they work together as a team to land a clean pull/engage. Your example of over-powered characters rushing in to tag a rare named just seems so contradictive. How would it be any better without encounter locking? If they are over-powered then they are clearly going to win the DPS race. At least with encounter locking ... the at-level group has a chance to win the engage and beat it fairly rather than having to duke it out with twinks. PVE or Pseudo PVP? Challenging content or zergable content? Fair Competition or Kill-Stealing? Earned Accomplishments or Compromised Integrity? Strategy & Planning or bumrushing and trampling? Risk vs Reward or Who gives a damn?
@Tanix
Gear can still be relatively rare given the time it takes to level, and the time people usually get off the server. So for instance, aside from the no lifers, like myself sometimes, and the foreign people in different time zones, the majority of people will be on around the same time. Most people will work till around 5-6pm and then drive home, get some dinner, and then play the game until 11pm-1pm usually. So around 4-5 hours in a window. Weekends will be a different story, but you get the point. So if you play 3-4-5 hours on a weekday then that is 6-8-10 spawns a day if we take 30 mins, 3-4-5 spawns a day if we just do a straight up hour for most people with jobs. Assuming you won't wipe the fight, if done like EQ, it would take around 15 mins-20 mins to down the boss if you aren't over geared for the fight. So there is really a 45-50min to and hour and 15 mins to an hour and 20mins spawn time since the raid mob has to die before the timer activates for the next group assuming wipes don't occur. Now if the bosses are going to be hard, which I hope they are, then you will see a lot of wiping and recovering going on also.
I think the items will be relatively rare still, and if the bosses are tough, then there will be a lot of people that can't fight the boss anyways. I am fine with raid gear being sparse because the encounter is difficult, but I think it is stupid for the gear to be sparse because of content blockers.
Rergardless, with the spawn time being 30min- an hour you will probably have a line of guilds waiting their turn once the first guild wipes to try their hand at the boss etc... So if it is anything like Fireland raid in WoW where the top guild wiped around 300 times before they got the world first, Method I think is the guild, then even if the bosses in general took 100 wipes before you got them down, that is a significant time investment. So I am hoping for harder raid bosses to be the cause of raid gear being rare and not because of content blockers.
And even with 30 min-an hour spawn timer for the raid boss and most guilds getting on at the same time, there will be some competition still.
Also Tanix let me know if this is a good idea for you for raiding:
Since you are worried about the restrictions of encounter locking,why don't we make the raids dynamic instead of static. So there is no limit to your raid size, however, because of encounter locking, that raid, with however many people are in it, will be flagged for the fight and down the boss. Maybe they can have a minimum raid size for the boss, and then dynamically increase the difficulty of the raid boss depending on how many people are in the raid. If the players leave the raid during that time period to try to abuse the system, then the boss stays the same and counts that player as dead and they can't invite other people to the raid once the encounter starts. Should be fairly easy to program in terms of conditions. Also, even though the raid is dynamic and the boss gets harder with more people, in terms of hp and extra abilities, and even extra dmg to a certain point, the loot is still the same as you would do it with the minimum amount of people.
Anyhoo something along those lines. It's a messy thought, but could work imo with encounter locking while still making the world feel organic.