Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Instance vs Open World

    • 1714 posts
    February 15, 2019 10:51 PM PST

    Fragile said:

    Open World Dungeons/Leveling/Questing

    50/50 Mix of Instanced & Open World Raids

     

    Boo you!

    • 379 posts
    February 15, 2019 10:53 PM PST

    Keno Monster said:

    Fragile said:

    Open World Dungeons/Leveling/Questing

    50/50 Mix of Instanced & Open World Raids

     

    Boo you!

    LOL

    • 123 posts
    February 17, 2019 6:51 AM PST

    I prefer open world, it gives more the impression of a a living world.

    I'm not totally closed to instances though, but only for one-time generated small dungeons, not for common dungeons. If I well remember, in FFXIV there are treasure maps with very few part drawn and a cross on it, then you have to find the location, dig and fight and you get a reward. We could imagine same kind of feature with treasure maps dropping, players have to find the location and during a limited time they can access to an instanced generated dungeon. Could be fun.

     

    • 1033 posts
    February 17, 2019 9:33 AM PST

    Just going to describe a "feeling" I had with playing EQ and what I realized by playing EQ 2 for a while (these are the reflections I had, and evolution of my opinons on game design as the years progressed). EQ was for the early game non-instanced. EQ 2 however when I later came back to play it after some years of it being released, started to add instanced designs to its game. A good example was Ruins of Varsoon. It was predominately an open dungeon with contested content (ie key rooms with place holder mobs that through killing had a chance to spawn a rare). In the early days of coming back, these mobs were very rare, EQ like rare, requiring long camps to produce a rare pop. 

    In that dungeon there was an "end instance" to kill the main boss of the zone. It was as I said, an instance. You entered and it became a private instance just for you where you could then go through an entire encounter process to finallly kill the boss and get your rewards. 

     

    Of those two, I found that what exicted me most, what was the most rewarding play was not the instance, but the contested rare spawn content. With the instance, I KNEW the boss would be up and that I was guarenteed a win (though randomly from the loot table). It was a "ho hum" event each time we went there. The only uknown was if I would get my drop this time. 

    With the contested content, there was always that anticpation both when we first worked our way to the room to see (or called out to the zone when we got to the dungeon) ;

    1) Was someone already there.

    This was the anticpation of the camp, was it up? Could we actually try for it? Could this be the night? Please let it be empty OR please let me get into the group!

    2) Was the Rare up? Is he up when we get there? When will he pop, will it be this round, next round? Will we see him tonight? 

    3) He popped!!! AWESOME!!! Will he drop the item I am looking for? Maybe this time? Next time? Please???

     

    Now certainly you can add some of these aspects to instance play. You could put in random spawns for the instance (EQ 2 did this with some of the Kunark content) which were on a timer (not a big fan of this to be honest as it reminds me of "daily quests"), which meant you would have to wait next reset to see if the mob pops. 

    To be honest though, with all the headaches, the reasonable arguments about immersion, etc.. I honestly prefer the open shared instances of EQ over the EQ 2 later adaptions. I felt more elated playing EQ than I did EQ2, WoW, or even LoTRO (which I was a huge fan of before it was killed by mainstream). 

    There is something about contested content with place holder spawned rares to which... I don't know... brings about a "hope" and "antcipation" in play that is missing from most games. 


    This post was edited by Tanix at February 17, 2019 9:36 AM PST
    • 223 posts
    February 17, 2019 9:58 AM PST

    I am all for the open world, when you finally get that pop or that item you have been wanting for some time..oh how sweet!! knowing you are guaranteed a win takes away from inmersion.

    • 3852 posts
    February 17, 2019 1:26 PM PST

    Will someone come to my camp after I have spent hours waiting for a boss to spawn and take it away from me?

    Will someone that wants my camp train my group so they can steal it?

    Will a high level come over and kill every mob in half a zone so that people at the level of the zone will have nothing until the mobs respawn - and not even then if he or she comes back?

    Tanix - we understand that you get a big thrill out of competing with other players. You don't seem to understand that most of us do *not* when it reaches these extremes. A few rules so that competition is mostly fair will go a long way to make the game a lot more pleasant for almost all of us.

    Yaladan I do not especially want to play a game where my big thrill is "Woot - finally after a week I got a boss despite all the campstealers, killstealers, trainers that killed me 6 times and a few high levels that wandered past and turned the zone into a wasteland".

    • 1247 posts
    February 17, 2019 1:38 PM PST

    @Dorotea You *are* wrong. Most of the community is returning here because we do *not* want both of our hands held. You *will* have to learn the ropes of Pantheon. Pantheon is being made to be very different from WoW, ff, and the others. 


    This post was edited by Syrif at February 17, 2019 1:40 PM PST
    • 3852 posts
    February 17, 2019 3:22 PM PST

    Perhaps I am wrong - it has been knwon to happen. I have even been known to acknowledge it.

    Most of us want far less handholding than is common today. I think you and I will agree on that with certainty. 

    Most of us want a game very different from WoW and FF and Rift etc etc. I think we will agree on that with the same certainty.

    I think most of us want some restrictions where the last 20 years have demonstrated that failing such restrictions abuses - well that is a loaded word - where conduct that is not good for the game occurs. You think most of us want almost no restrictions and believe that even a modest number of artifical restrictions such as perhaps encounter locking or no drops from gray mobs move Pantheon too far towards the mainstream and destroy the uniqueness that most of us are longing for. 

    In other words I think we want a far more open world game than is typical today but not *totally* open to whatever the players want to do. You think we want to go past "far more open" and reach "almost totally open". 

    I am trying to phrase this as fairly as possible without slanting it towards my own views - just to outline what the underlying disagreement is here.

    You may well be correct - counting opinions on this forum is meaningless - the great majority of us are wise enough not to get involved in these debates.


    This post was edited by dorotea at February 17, 2019 3:23 PM PST
    • 999 posts
    February 17, 2019 4:43 PM PST

    @Dorotea

    As the devs have already been on record stating no or limiting instancing outside of major events (I'm guessing epic quest triggers etc.) this is more of a discussion on why I prefer open world vs. instances.

    Wanting instancing vs. open world has nothing to do with competing with other players for me, less to do with lack of hand-holding for me (outside of not everyone should be able to get their shiny loot piece instantly), and more of the feeling of a living, breathing world.  There is a major difference in being in a dungeon with 50-60 people versus being in a dungeon with 5-6.

    1. Zone Design: Open world vs. instancing it creates a different gameplay style where instancing are more "Crawl" type dungeons - beginning to end, where open world are more "camp" style - work your way through a zone to a specific spawn/camp which caters to socialization (as usually there is some downtime).

    2. Itemization: it controls itemization entering the world as there is not 10 (100, 1000x) of the spawn killed at any one time.  If there is only one Kobold King, then the drops are loot table are restricted.  So, this creates two-fold benefit for me.  Prestige of items and items retaining value.  Yes, you have the potential con of a player, group, guild camping them, but I'd rather the game design loot options in various zones, or random spawn points at times, or other creative design mechanics to prevent content monopolization rather than artificially create instances which ultimately cause much greater unintended consequences.

    3.  Fame/Infamy.  Player Reputation is formed from open world dungeons.  Both good and bad.  The Kill stealers, ninja looters, trainers etc. are definitely remembered, but so is the cleric offering resses at zone lines, the paladin that threw the random LoH to save you, or the high leveler derailing trains at the zoneline etc.  In a game that is striving to foster socialization and community, there will be both good and bad, and I'd argue that is a very good thing. 

    4.  Camp style open world dungeons:  With limited playtime (which I'll have), it allows me to join a group that may already be formed, or find a replacement for myself without affecting the group negatively.  With instances, they are typically stay till completion.  Yes, it seems counterintuitive as games like EQ required an abundance of playtime, but I would often camp in the area I was seeking groups next and would find them instantaneously often after my friend's list was developed sufficiently.  And, if instances were implemented to appeal to a casual 1h or less playtime, then that's even worse as you would have a WoW-like clone.

    5.  Community:  It's surprising here to me that many (most?) people here think that people won't respect camps at all.  I will be surprised if the opposite occurs and everyone swoops in to try to steal camps after they're broken.  Even in P1999 today, which isn't a great reflection of EQ launch for numerous reasons (mainly due to the content being locked at expansions for years past the timetable at launch) people still respect camps.  I saw another poster ask in this or another thread, but I'd be curious if an honest assessment poll was conducted of the posters here, if people would vote that they would respect cmaps, or they'd be kill stealers.  I'd guess the majority would pick the former.  I also think people grasp to hard at the straw that this isn't 1999 anymore.  You all are right, it isn't, but no game has required grouping since either.  If Pantheon does, community will be necessary again, which I also think will reflect in the respect given to camps in open world dungeons.  Raiding and monopolizing raid content is a different discussion entirely though, I'm specifically referring to small dungeon groups here.

    6.  Sheer Randomness:  With instances, a dungeon is much more stale.  Yes, it's "safer" in that the only way you fail is if because your group does something wrong, but the most memorable moments in any MMORPG I've played is due to open world environments.  It is another layer of strategy that you have to account for, or be situationally aware about.  Is another group pulling to close?  Is another group about to die and their mobs come running my way?  It's not always bad, and most bad moments I've ever had in an open world weren't conducted maliciously (subjective I know).  Also, I've been saved by other groups and have saved others before as well. 

    I could think of other reasons as well, but I hope that gives you an idea of my thoughts anyway.  It's funny, I never thought of what made MMORPGs work for me while I was playing them, but it wasn't until years later reflecting that I realized it.  When instances were first introduced, I thought they were a great idea until I experienced them for a few years.

    Anyway, you are correct, opinions on this forum are meaningless, but here's to me sharing another - *cheers*

    • 1033 posts
    February 17, 2019 6:08 PM PST

    dorotea said:

    Will someone come to my camp after I have spent hours waiting for a boss to spawn and take it away from me?

    It is possible. Is it likely, will it happen often? All I can say it was uncommon and when it did occur, it was usually when two parties were disputing a camp they both arrived at. Very rarely did you have a group (or individual) just walk into a camp and try to take a rare. Partly because you could do many things to stop it. That is, youl could outdamage them, train them to wipe them, etc... So most people didn't bother as there were too many consequences to such actions.

    I will tell you that beware people advocating encounter locking as it is the kill stealers best tool to take content without consequence. It happend ALL the time in games like EQ2 because there were no consequences to tagging the group first, no means for a party to retaliate. 

     

     

    dorotea said:

    Will someone that wants my camp train my group so they can steal it?

    Can it happen? Yes. Will it happen? It may once in a while, but keep in mind that this type of behavior has consequences in a game world where grouping is the only real means to progress. People who act like this will find themselves very quickly without support and will often be griefed themselves. One guy on our server was a real... well... character and he was always causing trouble. He died partly into the zone and was complaining about his corpse. One of our guild mates sent him a tell, letting him know he would drag his corpse to the zone line, but once he got permission, he took the corpse and drug it straight to the raid boss room and left it in the worst possible spot. 

    Remember, there are consequences for bad behavior, your reputation is everything. There is a reason why we didn't have this behavior rampant in EQ, it was because servers were local and your reputation would eventually get around. This is also why many of us were extremely upset when SoE starting offering name changes and server changes to the player base. It was a get out of jail free card for abusers who had ruined their reputation so much they could not interact with the server without getting crap for it. 

     


    dorotea said:

    Will a high level come over and kill every mob in half a zone so that people at the level of the zone will have nothing until the mobs respawn - and not even then if he or she comes back?

    I have seen high levels in lower zones, but the way EQ worked, you couldn't just run in and mow down entire zones in most cases. I mean, if it were low enough, sure... but most of the extremely low level gear was not of value to high level players unless it was a very specific hot item. They had the Journeyman boots which were clicky run speed boots dropping in a dungeon and it caused a serious issue with high levels camping it 24/7 as the boots were extremely useful all the way up to max level. The moved the item out of the dungeon and turned it into a long quest like progression of multiple rares accross the world and turn ins. Other than that, most low level stuff was not camped constantly. 

    Will this be a problem? I am not completely sure, but again like it always is, the culprit will be the player trade market which spurs this type of behavior. Even so, all I can say is this is another reputation issue and in most cases, all but a massive level disparity, the high levels will still not be able to just mow down entire zones or areas with ease. Mobs in EQ weren't like modern MMOs with shallow HP pools where you could AoE everything down instantly. Even high levels wizards had to becareful about being overrun while working in a lower level zone. 

     

     


    dorotea said:

    Tanix - we understand that you get a big thrill out of competing with other players. You don't seem to understand that most of us do *not* when it reaches these extremes. A few rules so that competition is mostly fair will go a long way to make the game a lot more pleasant for almost all of us.

    If I got such a thrill out of competition, I would play on a PvP server. There are many subtle elements of play that contested content brings and it has nothing to do with the "thrill of competition". I have explained this to you many times, even in this thread. I have experienced both this system and the modern MMO systems and over the years I realized what the current systems have taken away from game play and how that very "protectionism" approach of play has had the opposite effect on players behavior. There are no consequences because all of the systems exist to protect everyone from each other. 

     


    dorotea said:

    Yaladan I do not especially want to play a game where my big thrill is "Woot - finally after a week I got a boss despite all the campstealers, killstealers, trainers that killed me 6 times and a few high levels that wandered past and turned the zone into a wasteland".

    That is what it means to be in an intensely social game. It means you may end up dealing with bad people from time to time. If you try to socially engineer player behavior, you end up with WoW, which is not what many of us here want. We have been there, done that, we don't want to play those games and if you put in all those social engineering mechanics, you end up with yet another EQ 2, WoW, or modern game. Much of what changed from EQ to today was developers trying to protect everyone from ever having to deal with the possibility of poor social behaviors which defeats the point of a social game. You will have good, you will have bad, but because of the need of social reliance, people will have to adapt to survive, or if they act like morons, they will be relegated to th corner as a dunce, groupless and whinng about how nobody will play with them. 


    This post was edited by Tanix at February 17, 2019 6:12 PM PST
    • 3852 posts
    February 17, 2019 6:48 PM PST

    I believe that the various active threads debating this and similar points at the moment have one thing in common.

    Little if anything new is being said and both sides are largely repeating the same arguments. Likely this is as true for me as anyone else.

    Not only is the chance of anyone persuading anyone else extremely low, but the chance of anything new that could influence VR is likewise low.

    I suggest we all turn our attentions to issues that are less talked out - at least for a while. I certainly will do that.

    • 37 posts
    March 11, 2019 2:04 AM PDT

    threads like these are worthless, why are they even pledging for the game and creating thread like this if they just want another modern generic instanced MMO 

    replay value tends to be minimal.  You "do" the dungeon, and then you're done.  The next time you go in, it's the same as the last time. and for what? some stupid daily quest and " reward" after we speed through an instance in 30 mins? GOD, clealry you just want another WOW clone or a clone with a skin like elder scroll, you should have just go for the elder scroll online for those mindlessly instance dps instance 

    An open dungeon (done right like in everquest , those public dungeon in elderscroll online is such a joke )is designed to present an area with a variety of themed content and encounters that can be experienced by multiple groups of players simultaneously. 

    This approach allows you to set up scenarios where the multiple groups of players can actually enhance the experience for each other.  It also tends to create much larger dungeon areas, which encourages repeat visits and adds to replayability.  

    that you can't control how many players will be in the area or what they'll be doing, so conflicts and overpopulation are real issues that can occur. which also make eq  addictive , all those group and people running around trying to get tot their destination or some in band up together to help clear the way to the deepest of those crazy zone 


    This post was edited by henrycc265 at March 11, 2019 2:05 AM PDT
    • 37 posts
    March 11, 2019 2:48 AM PDT

    Fragile said:

    Open World Dungeons/Leveling/Questing

    50/50 Mix of Instanced & Open World Raids

    seriously? have you actually been through the everquest era or is your profile pic was just a joke ? 

    why would anyone who have experiecned EQ will want to be instanced all over again like wwe havnt been instanced to death for these 17 years ? 

    • 1714 posts
    March 11, 2019 3:30 AM PDT

     

    dorotea said:

    Will someone come to my camp after I have spent hours waiting for a boss to spawn and take it away from me?

    I have well over a year /played in EQ and I have had this happen maybe 2 or 3 times at most.  Additionally, in general, the vast majority of kill stealing behavior that I witnessed came at low level. The more time people put in to their character the more they realize that reputation is everything. 

    dorotea said:

    Will someone that wants my camp train my group so they can steal it?

    I have seen it happen and the person was banned. It has never happened to me. 


    dorotea said:

    Will a high level come over and kill every mob in half a zone so that people at the level of the zone will have nothing until the mobs respawn - and not even then if he or she comes back?

    I have literally never seen this happen. This is the worry I see people blowing the most out of proportion.  

     

    dorotea said:

    Yaladan I do not especially want to play a game where my big thrill is "Woot - finally after a week I got a boss despite all the campstealers, killstealers, trainers that killed me 6 times and a few high levels that wandered past and turned the zone into a wasteland".

    I think you're employing a rather thick layer of hyperbole and washing it down with some logical fallacies. If that's your first big thrill then the game is complete garbage and that's nothing that will be solved with a heavy dose of instancing. 


    This post was edited by Keno Monster at March 11, 2019 3:39 AM PDT
    • 793 posts
    March 11, 2019 5:01 AM PDT

    Tanix really hit it with his first post. It really about item introduction. It is really hard to control the number of item, especially rare items when bosses can be instanced so multiple of them could be done at one time. and continuously. Even capping the number per day is an issue.

     

    This game will be very gear/item driven. iItems and thier uniqueness is going to be important to this game. It won't be like newer games where your entire gearset is rotated every 2-3 levels.

    Many of these items you collect will last you a large portion of your adventure, and they becaue of that, some will have emotional value to players. 

    Controlling item flow creates that sense of awe when you see someone run by with a flaming sword. Where as when an entire group runs by with the same sword, same shield, same BP, same helm, those items kind of lose their sense of envy.

     

     

    • 1584 posts
    March 11, 2019 6:48 AM PDT
    Ok, to start badically everything should be open world, like people have said your reputation in a open world game is everything, if your a great individual and are known for helping others and such you will be respected and if someone crosses paths with you and harasses you I have seen the server raise up to defend the player who has helped many, and the player who did wrong normally apologize publicly and accepted by the other player so the server would calm down, or the player doesn't apologize and will be remembered by many forever, though in some instances I can see instanced being used to make it feel smoother for people but I'll leave that to the devs it seems like they have plans to use it in certain cases do let's see what it is. But to separate the community from the communtiy when going into huge dungeons will feel boring, uneventful, and honestly it would make it no different than any other mmo we have today.
    • 1315 posts
    March 11, 2019 7:22 AM PDT

    There is a big difference between fully instanced, mostly instanced other than world bosses, partially instanced (zone sharding based on population loads), Non trivial instance triggers, and open world only.

    I could see the last three all fit with Pantheon for different reasons.

    Zone sharding:

    This would be for load balancing on leveling zones.  Sharding is an inelegant method of enabling more players on the same server than the base number of zones can properly support.  This is especially important when you have a lot of players clustered in the same level ranges.  I could see some argument that rares will only spawn in the primary Shard and the threshold for a new Shard is a very high zone density.

    The main reason I feel that zone sharding could be an asset to Pantheon is that in the early days of the game there will not be as many zones created simply due to the manpower cost of each zone.  Rather than totally killing the play experience for players who logged into a zone where all the reasonable camps are already taken with a few groups already waiting for a slot the game could split off another shard for the waiting groups.  Each zone would have its own population support number that needs to be reached before a second shard pops.  After that a third shard would only open if both previous were maxed out. 

    Once there are enough zones created to support the server population then sharding could be turned off.

     

    Non trivial instance/raid triggers:

    One of the issues with fully instanced raiding is it is too trivial to gain access to and creates a huge influx of top level items that quickly bloats the item economy.  The positive of instanced raiding is that teams can coordinate times to meet up and challenge the highest level difficulty content.  In an open world there is virtually no way too schedule raids unless the entire server has agreed to a schedule that is somehow enforced, at best you can schedule a time to be on and see if anything is up which 9 times out of 10 nothing will be.

    If on the other hand you could trigger the respawn of a raid instance or zone with the use of a consumable object you could still schedule raids and as long as no one else is currently challenging the raid you would be able to jump in.  This one time consumable item would need to represent around 100 hours of group play to create or it would make the raid triggers too trivial to create.  There would also end up being a realistic maximum number of triggers that could be farmed across the game based on the total weekly respawn of rarer mobs and materials.  If possible I would design the triggers to be half achievement quests and half material collection so that they cannot just be bought.

     

    Open World Only: 

    For Open World Only to actually work then the population density needs to be very low.  You either need to limit server populations to the low 1000s or have many, many zones over a square mile in size with a great many points of interest and multi group targets at all level ranges.  Without one or the other the play experience will be terrible.  All of you who swear up and down that competition is what makes the game fun and anything that makes life easier ruins the game and makes it carebear/hand holding are just fooling yourselves.  The math doesn’t add up, the input vs output will leave you idle most of your play time and judging by how many unkind and vicious posters we have on this forum there will be more than enough griefing for VR to need to come up with mitigation tools to handle it.

     

    Alternate Ruleset servers:  A setup for everyone

    This may be a good example of what might make a good alternate rule set.  One or two servers can be super hardcore, open world only with no fast travel or auction houses.  Another set could have load balance sharding, raid triggers with local only bazaars and a few point to point fast travel methods.  A final could have fully instanced raid and group dungeons, conjoined automated auction houses, with many fast travel options.  Let the players decide the type of game play they want to have by which server they join.  I really can’t predict which server set would get the most users but I suspect that it would end up being hardcore < semi hardcore < WoW mode. 

    It likely would not take much extra work to create these setting but the return on the number of players that would not be willing to play hardcore mode but would jump at the other versions would be well worth the cost.  Pantheon may be targeting a niche but at the end of the day VR is still a business and money talks. If they can increase their customer base by 300% by creating more mass appealing rulesets while still delivering the niche ruleset you better bet your ass they will heavily consider it.

    • 3237 posts
    March 11, 2019 7:31 AM PDT

    Open world content feels like a real flower (life) while instanced content feels like a plastic flower (attachment.)  You can dress up a plastic flower to look very similar to a real flower, or even spray exotic fragrances on it to make it smell better than a real flower.  In the end, it could never be a real flower.  You have to nurture real flowers.  You water them, feed them, and ensure that they have enough sunlight.   Plastic flowers don't require that kind of work ... they are basically guaranteed to fulfill their function for an extended period of time with no maintenance.  In many ways, it's easy to think that plastic flowers are superior.  Guaranteed to last ... no maintenance ... cheaper.  Everything about them seems to make so much sense ... but why is it that people have such a deeper appreciation for real flowers?  It's because at their core, they are more beautiful, and more majestic.  We appreciate them because their existence is fragile, and while they require more work than a plastic flower, we get to enjoy their authenticity.

    • 1584 posts
    March 11, 2019 7:39 AM PDT

    @trasak I never saw sharding as instancing but it is to a point, I believe it probably will be needed, or something that resembles it. Their is a huge difference between 50 people trying to share a zone to 200 people trying to share it that is for sure, so having the zone have split versions of itself could be helpful to that, especially if the rare spawns spawn significantly less than in the original zones and other not spawn at all due to quest lines and such like that. I believe the devs have alrdy considered something to make our experiences pleasant and not deal with always over crowded zones. For one if you always have over crowded zones, and camps always occupied you will bring out the worst in people even from good people due to never being able to do anything.


    This post was edited by Cealtric at March 11, 2019 7:39 AM PDT
    • 1315 posts
    March 11, 2019 8:32 AM PDT

    @187

    Like real life flowers, Open worlds once plucked they will soon rot and be no good to anyone.  There is also only so much ground to grow flowers so if the rich buy them all up at prices no one else can afford then only the rich can ever enjoy flowers.

    Maybe what works is a mix of real and fake flowers.  Those with the resources can have their Real flowers and keep them all to themselves (they were going to anyway) and those with fewer resources will still have their Fake flowers.  If the stars align they might get to see a real flower but getting it picked before a rich players army of gardeners shows up may be another issue entirely.

    Maybe there could be a universe where there were no Fake flowers or a universe with almost no Real flowers.  Each one will favor a different type of player.

    In this metaphor money/resources is time not currency.

    • 1921 posts
    March 11, 2019 8:44 AM PDT

    In one 1km x 1km resource/wilderness zone, with 2500 players per server, there would be four 10m x 10m plots of growing land available per player, in a shared, persistent, open world.
    Those four plots could be divided down to 1m x 1m subplots, allowing for up to four hundred 1m x 1m growing spots, if desired, per player.  That's a fair bit of flowers. ;)

    • 1247 posts
    March 11, 2019 9:00 AM PDT

    Keno Monster said:

     

    dorotea said:

    Will someone come to my camp after I have spent hours waiting for a boss to spawn and take it away from me?

    I have well over a year /played in EQ and I have had this happen maybe 2 or 3 times at most.  Additionally, in general, the vast majority of kill stealing behavior that I witnessed came at low level. The more time people put in to their character the more they realize that reputation is everything. 

    dorotea said:

    Will someone that wants my camp train my group so they can steal it?

    I have seen it happen and the person was banned. It has never happened to me. 


    dorotea said:

    Will a high level come over and kill every mob in half a zone so that people at the level of the zone will have nothing until the mobs respawn - and not even then if he or she comes back?

    I have literally never seen this happen. This is the worry I see people blowing the most out of proportion.  

     

    dorotea said:

    Yaladan I do not especially want to play a game where my big thrill is "Woot - finally after a week I got a boss despite all the campstealers, killstealers, trainers that killed me 6 times and a few high levels that wandered past and turned the zone into a wasteland".

    I think you're employing a rather thick layer of hyperbole and washing it down with some logical fallacies. If that's your first big thrill then the game is complete garbage and that's nothing that will be solved with a heavy dose of instancing. 

    YIKES! Anyway, thanks Keno for clarifying this.

    • 3237 posts
    March 11, 2019 9:16 AM PDT

    Trasak said:

    @187

    Like real life flowers, Open worlds once plucked they will soon rot and be no good to anyone.  There is also only so much ground to grow flowers so if the rich buy them all up at prices no one else can afford then only the rich can ever enjoy flowers.

     

    I disagree that a plucked flower wouldn't be good to anyone.  Enjoying that flower while it's alive is the key element of what makes it feel special!  I am under the impression that the standard respawn mechanic would serve as a platform for plucked flowers to regrow.  It's fine that not everybody gets every flower.  I'm sure there are some people who are surrounded by flowers in their everyday life ... or who get them daily.  For others, it's more of a special event.  That is the phenomenal difference.  Flowers are supposed to feel special.  

    Trasak said:

    Maybe there could be a universe where there were no Fake flowers or a universe with almost no Real flowers.  Each one will favor a different type of player.

     

    I could never support this.  I understand the idea of alternate ruleset servers but Pantheon needs to be consistent as a core game.  Having both real/fake universes sounds absolutely dreadful.  Pantheon has been dubbed as an open world game.  Competition is inherent.  VR can control the amount of competition/accessibility they want for each individual encounter and make it a consistent experience across the board for every server.  They should not cave and make servers where everything is accessible to everyone just so everyone can be happy.  We know where that leads!  It doesn't lead to happiness ... it leads to a world of fake flowers and if that's what some people get into, that's fine ... it's apparently a popular opinion, for whatever reason.  There are tons of options out there for fake walmart flowers.  The plan is to offer a bunch of content and manage server populations.  The plan is to alleviate the major bottlenecks as a way to reduce competition ... not eliminate it.


    This post was edited by oneADseven at March 11, 2019 9:24 AM PDT
    • 1315 posts
    March 11, 2019 11:02 AM PDT

    @187

    I really don’t see how having alternative rule servers will hurt you on the hardcore server.  It seems the simplest and most logical method to make a large number of people happy and fund future expansions and maybe Brads VRMMO that I’m sure he would love to build next.  The core design would still be based on open world only.

    Just like if you don’t want open world pvp don’t play on a red server.  If you want hardcore open world then play on the hardcore open world server.  I just think the ultimate play experience on a hardcore open world will be garbage.  I’ve played in that era of EQ and it was a garbage experience.  I can’t even calculate the number of hours I spent waiting for a camp to finally open up or to have a raid target taken before we could get there leaving use with nothing for yet again another week.  I would guess at least 40% of my days played was spent waiting around.

    I want to play Pantheon for strategic group combat and a robust crafting system, not to sit on my bum for hours waiting for something that won’t come. That being said I would still choose to play on the semi hardcore server and now the WoW style server but a WoW style server is going to be more popular.

    • 264 posts
    March 11, 2019 11:43 AM PDT

     Trasak I think that statement "WoW style server is going to be more popular" is largely irrelevent here. If Pantheon goes the route of heavy instancing, it will have gone against it's core tenets. There should not be one single server alternate ruleset or not that has any significant form of instancing. This is why I press my question: is Pantheon a raid focused game? If it isn't raid focused then non instanced raids won't be a big deal, players will simply go do other content when that content is blocked. But when raiding becomes the only way to progress and the content can be blocked by other players well Trasak isn't wrong about how it went in classic EQ era.