urgatorbait said:Baldur said:I think it would be cool to see for players to be able to flag people for various reasons. Such as verbal harassment, loot stealing, intentionally wiping groups, After a certain amount of Flags, this player's transgressions would be made publically known to group leaders who are trying to recruit. This system could warn a player after they have been flagged as a warrning, and it could also clear its self every to 4 months. The flagging could also alert GMs to potentially abusive behavior and they could impose bans on people.
No, no, no, and for the love of all that is Holy.... NO. This is a horrible idea and one that has been discussed here in these forums before. It would lead to griefing and abuse and would cause way more problems and drama than it would solve. The community will organically, and without systems, police the bad actors themselves.
That said, I’m perfectly fine if the in-game friends/blocked list has either a note field or drop down list of predefined choices where each player can note why that person is added to those lists but where it can only be seen by the player whose list it is.
Just my two coppers....
And you are right. If you had you continued to read down you would have read
However, I think that any system that is controlled by players has the potential to suffer from abuse. I feel like a player council puts too much power in the hands of the players when it comes to the topic of a punishment based system, as does the idea of a flagging system. I think that each could be abused by guilds that have a higher number of players, votes or flags could be multiplied by creating alt guilds or reporting someone on a guild-wide scale. As is the case I doubt we will ever see either of these systems.
People simply lack the ability to police themselves. Power is a great thing when it is wielded by a person or group of people who know the consequences of using that power. However the majority of people usually don't understand the responsibility that comes with power, and people are way too sheepish and tend to either jump on the bandwagon or jump to conclusions that lead to the abuse of this power. As such, I highly doubt we will ever see such systems in Pantheon.
This is not something we are thinking about implementing, we would rather gather feedback from everyone rather than a select few as the power those few holds can sway big decisions and it isn't a risk I would ever take with our community.
I am sure it can work in some situations but it just isn't worth the trouble for a game and community like ours.
On some of the EQ progression servers, daybreak actually allowed the guilds to form a council, in order to develop a rotation for the raids prior to them instancing everything. The guilds would appoint delegates, those people would meet and work out the details of the roatation etc. And then daybreak would honor the agreement between the guilds. Therefore providing a hammer to enforce the agreements.
It wasnt the worst thing in the world.
As long as VR empowers the guilds and is willing to help them uphold the details of the agreements I think it would be a very effective way of enforcing a PNP.
HOWEVER. This will lead to servers that have massive differences in cultures and is only going to alienate the players that choose to play differently. VR is creating an open world game, which means part of the excitement of this game will revolve around open world conflicts and competition. If the majority of the server does not want this. You are forcing players to reroll on a different server or be forced to play a game differently than they want to. I honestly feel like this would do more harm than good.
I think the only solution is for VR to come out with a policy that they want people to abide by, and be willing to enforce that through GM moderation.
Kilsin said:This is not something we are thinking about implementing, we would rather gather feedback from everyone rather than a select few as the power those few holds can sway big decisions and it isn't a risk I would ever take with our community.
I am sure it can work in some situations but it just isn't worth the trouble for a game and community like ours.
I tip my hat to VR!!!
as a casual player I'm sitting here reading this thread thinking OMG you got to be kidding... this has to be a troll thread!
NO WAY do I want large guilds (ie. Raiders) having any kind of control in pantheon like this. That would be the biggest mistake they could ever make.
By the gods, I'm just sitting here flabbergasted that this is even a thread.
Zorkon said:Kilsin said:This is not something we are thinking about implementing, we would rather gather feedback from everyone rather than a select few as the power those few holds can sway big decisions and it isn't a risk I would ever take with our community.
I am sure it can work in some situations but it just isn't worth the trouble for a game and community like ours.
I tip my hat to VR!!!
as a casual player I'm sitting here reading this thread thinking OMG you got to be kidding... this has to be a troll thread!
NO WAY do I want large guilds (ie. Raiders) having any kind of control in pantheon like this. That would be the biggest mistake they could ever make.
By the gods, I'm just sitting here flabbergasted that this is even a thread.
Isn't this the truth Blizzard made this mistake in Cata and instead of listing to the majority the player base they appealed to the top 10-15% of the player base. They upped the raid difficulty so drastically in normal mode that it more or less killed raiding until the last half of the expansion (this isn't taking into consideration all the bugs that were in the earlier raids either). Then, they wised up to the player base and instead of making normal mode raids more reasonable they implemented LFR... which was another mistake within its self.
Regardless of the game or company, it is never wise to listen to the top 10% of the player base. I don't really know where I myself fall at either. I love challenging content, but I think that there needs to be multiple ways to approach this content and still complete it. With WoW there were usually optimal classes that you had to take to make some of the mechanics easier or obsolete in some cases. Which in my opinion isn't decent game design. I am also not a fan of the 4 levels of difficulty that they implemented. A raid needs to be a raid, with one difficulty, a set number of people required, loot that remains relevant (be that situational relevance, proc relevance, or how long it lasts before upgrading), and there needs to be multiple ways that players can approach this content.
Zorkon said:Kilsin said:This is not something we are thinking about implementing, we would rather gather feedback from everyone rather than a select few as the power those few holds can sway big decisions and it isn't a risk I would ever take with our community.
I am sure it can work in some situations but it just isn't worth the trouble for a game and community like ours.
I tip my hat to VR!!!
as a casual player I'm sitting here reading this thread thinking OMG you got to be kidding... this has to be a troll thread!
NO WAY do I want large guilds (ie. Raiders) having any kind of control in pantheon like this. That would be the biggest mistake they could ever make.
By the gods, I'm just sitting here flabbergasted that this is even a thread.
Family style guilds are typically the largest guilds on the servers. So I'm not sure why you assume that raiding guilds are the large guilds. That really doesnt make any sense in any game that existed after EQ ... and it only made sense in EQ cause the raid size was absurd.
Baldur said:Isn't this the truth Blizzard made this mistake in Cata and instead of listing to the majority the player base they appealed to the top 10-15% of the player base. They upped the raid difficulty so drastically in normal mode that it more or less killed raiding until the last half of the expansion (this isn't taking into consideration all the bugs that were in the earlier raids either). Then, they wised up to the player base and instead of making normal mode raids more reasonable they implemented LFR... which was another mistake within its self.
Regardless of the game or company, it is never wise to listen to the top 10% of the player base. I don't really know where I myself fall at either. I love challenging content, but I think that there needs to be multiple ways to approach this content and still complete it. With WoW there were usually optimal classes that you had to take to make some of the mechanics easier or obsolete in some cases. Which in my opinion isn't decent game design. I am also not a fan of the 4 levels of difficulty that they implemented. A raid needs to be a raid, with one difficulty, a set number of people required, loot that remains relevant (be that situational relevance, proc relevance, or how long it lasts before upgrading), and there needs to be multiple ways that players can approach this content.
The irony of your post is that it's completely incorrect. Blizzard ACTUALLY listened to the casual playerbase and started changing the entire game to revolve around a more casual player. Including things like LFR, LFD, class homogenization etc. The last time blizzard catered to the raiding population was when they designed Sunwell Plateau. I find it humorous how people just bring up WoW anytime they want to try and force it to fit into their arguement.
Sarim said:Just to make a thing clear, that I think was misunderstood: It should be "one guild, one representative on the council":
- Guild A has 100 members -> 1 representative
- Guild B has 500 members -> 1 representative as well
- Guild B has 10 members -> none (too small, number obviously arbitrarily chosen)The idea is not that the biggest guild has the most votes or something like that! What I want is something like: Guild XY is intentionally blocking content etc. The council could come together and discuss this with the guild XY...if they do not respond to a warning, then the other guilds on the council can, by vote of majority, decide that something should be done about guild XY. Unless guild XY has enough friendly guilds that vote for them, they will probably be punished.
I readily admit that there are a number of problems that need solving. Alt guilds for example. Also, there would have to be a minimum number of guilds taking part in votes of course to make them binding.
But I still think it might be an idea that could help to make the community stronger overall if we solve these problems.
The guild with 10 members (with no votes) complains about the guild with 100 members kill-stealing/corpse-camping/ninja-looting/pick your ahole behaviour.
The guild with 10 members can be silenced/punsihed/banned by the ahole guild and it's ally guilds for simply speaking up about being abused.
Great plan.
Porygon said:Zorkon said:Kilsin said:This is not something we are thinking about implementing, we would rather gather feedback from everyone rather than a select few as the power those few holds can sway big decisions and it isn't a risk I would ever take with our community.
I am sure it can work in some situations but it just isn't worth the trouble for a game and community like ours.
I tip my hat to VR!!!
as a casual player I'm sitting here reading this thread thinking OMG you got to be kidding... this has to be a troll thread!
NO WAY do I want large guilds (ie. Raiders) having any kind of control in pantheon like this. That would be the biggest mistake they could ever make.
By the gods, I'm just sitting here flabbergasted that this is even a thread.
Family style guilds are typically the largest guilds on the servers. So I'm not sure why you assume that raiding guilds are the large guilds. That really doesnt make any sense in any game that existed after EQ ... and it only made sense in EQ cause the raid size was absurd.
A Family style guild doesn't bother with server politics and other such drama nonsense. There too busy exploring, gaming and enjoying a virtual world.
And with having stated my position, and Kilsin's comments stating VR's, I'm done with this nonsense.
Porygon said:On some of the EQ progression servers, daybreak actually allowed the guilds to form a council, in order to develop a rotation for the raids prior to them instancing everything. The guilds would appoint delegates, those people would meet and work out the details of the roatation etc. And then daybreak would honor the agreement between the guilds. Therefore providing a hammer to enforce the agreements.
It wasnt the worst thing in the world.
As long as VR empowers the guilds and is willing to help them uphold the details of the agreements I think it would be a very effective way of enforcing a PNP.
HOWEVER. This will lead to servers that have massive differences in cultures and is only going to alienate the players that choose to play differently. VR is creating an open world game, which means part of the excitement of this game will revolve around open world conflicts and competition. If the majority of the server does not want this. You are forcing players to reroll on a different server or be forced to play a game differently than they want to. I honestly feel like this would do more harm than good.
I think the only solution is for VR to come out with a policy that they want people to abide by, and be willing to enforce that through GM moderation.
Interesting, I didn't know about that in EQ - it confirms that it may work when implemented well. But, Kilsin said it's not on the table for Pantheon, so I guess that's it then.
I still hope that we can come up with better ways for the players to deal with problem makers than just relying on reputation, or hoping that VR will create and actually enforce a play nice policy.
/peace out
Porygon said:Baldur said:Isn't this the truth Blizzard made this mistake in Cata and instead of listing to the majority the player base they appealed to the top 10-15% of the player base. They upped the raid difficulty so drastically in normal mode that it more or less killed raiding until the last half of the expansion (this isn't taking into consideration all the bugs that were in the earlier raids either). Then, they wised up to the player base and instead of making normal mode raids more reasonable they implemented LFR... which was another mistake within its self.
Regardless of the game or company, it is never wise to listen to the top 10% of the player base. I don't really know where I myself fall at either. I love challenging content, but I think that there needs to be multiple ways to approach this content and still complete it. With WoW there were usually optimal classes that you had to take to make some of the mechanics easier or obsolete in some cases. Which in my opinion isn't decent game design. I am also not a fan of the 4 levels of difficulty that they implemented. A raid needs to be a raid, with one difficulty, a set number of people required, loot that remains relevant (be that situational relevance, proc relevance, or how long it lasts before upgrading), and there needs to be multiple ways that players can approach this content.
The irony of your post is that it's completely incorrect. Blizzard ACTUALLY listened to the casual playerbase and started changing the entire game to revolve around a more casual player. Including things like LFR, LFD, class homogenization etc. The last time blizzard catered to the raiding population was when they designed Sunwell Plateau. I find it humorous how people just bring up WoW anytime they want to try and force it to fit into their arguement.
Your right, I am wrong, but only partially. The truth? Well, the truth is that that Blizzard has listened to both extremes in the past. I was correct in saying that Blizzard catered to the high end raiding population in cata just like you are correct in saying that it catered to its casual player base and implemented systems like LFG, LFR. I would argue that no one wanted class homogenization, better class balance sure but homogenization no. The main reason this was even an issue in PvE content was due to the fact that certain boss mechanics could be ignored completely by certain classes, as such other classes were overlooked completely. This isn't a huge issue in 25 man content because there is more room for people but in 10 man content classes were being overlooked, which is one of the issues in having multiple difficulties. You also have to take into account that Blizzard has to balance around PVP... reworking one ability would mean reworking other abilities... and Activision Blizzard is lazy. I'm pretty sure this is why they removed most class buffs in WoD and went a step further in BFA and removed class set bonuses.
You said "I find it humorous how people just bring up WoW anytime they want to try and force it to fit into their arguement.". The ironic part is that it usually can fit into any argument because what most people fail to take into account is that WoW in its entire life span has been controlled by TWO companies. You have the original blizzard who controlled it up until the last half of Wrath, and then you have Activision that took over at the end of Wrath. Both of these companies have had different design philosophies and it shows.
You brought up Sunwell Plateau and the fact that it was designed to appeal to a more hardcore player base. Sunwell was designed by the original Blizzard, it was released after BT and Hayjal. The raid required tier sets from each and optimizing class rotation. However, I would argue that the jump in difficulty was reasonable given that it was released at the end of the expansion after BT which is considered by most to be the ending raid of BC. I wasn't a huge fan of how some fights required specific classes, or how certain bosses had one shot mechanics. However, I was in a 25 man raiding guild at the time so the class issue wasn't as big of an issue compared to 10 man, and given when the raid was released it was nice to see Blizzard try their hand at harder content. Now if you compare difficulty jump from BC to Wrath to the difficulty jump between Wrath and Cata... the difficulty leap in Cata was exponential. It was unlike what the majority of the player base was used to, and I think that the drop sub numbers are enough of a reflection for this.
As for why the insane jump in difficulty happened... Activision merged with a blizzard in July of 2008 and Wrath was released in November of 2008. This means that Activision had no part in Wrath's initial release. Since most companies also plan at least one patch in advance it also means that Activision had very little input in to patch 3.1 which was when the Ulduar patch released in April 2009. The next patch was released in August 2009 almost 1 year after the merger. This patch was the release of Trial of the Crusader and most of this was also the start of huge player malcontent. Players were complaining about lackluster mechanics and having to run it multiple times a week to get the most out of it. The next major patch was ICC in patch 3.3.0 and overall this raid was well received and most people raved about the lich king fight on heroic. I can only assume the difficulty jump between the expansions was due to the fact that most players loved the optional heroic challenges in Ulduar (which only had one difficulty), and ICC and its heroic counterpart were so well received after Trials flop.
You bring up the fact that LFG/LFR were added to the game and that both support more of a casual play style. While this is true, if this was necessarily the original intent for these systems is debatable. LFG was added in path 3.3.0 towards the end of Wrath and it was primarily added for convenience sake of the whole player base, not necessarily because of casual play styles. The LFR feature of the other hand was added towards the end of Cata during its last raid. Its primary function was that of a catch-up mechanic. However, it also allowed players to get experience with the raid encounters even if this was a nerfed version of the raid encounter. That fact alone made it worth it because the Achievement system in WoW has been taken to extremes by the player base, and players are refused entry into most pug raids unless they can provide proof that they have completed the encounter. I can't speak for other people, but I didn't start truly raiding in Cata until Dragon Soul. I was on a dying server for the first half of the expansion, back in wrath the server had a moderate population. After Cata hit the population of that server took a HUGE hit, the guild that I was in during Wrath had decided to switch servers, and finding a guild/ pug raids on that server was extremely difficult. I think I server switched right after the Firelands patch. I spent most of the fire lands patch looking for a guild and other than doing some trash runs I didn't experience the Firelands. I found my guild at the tail end of the fire lands to raid, and the LFR/ new dungeons released with the Dragon Soul patch were a revival for me because they allowed me to get back into raiding.
Now over time, LFR has been made into a casual playground. This version of the raid is easier than normal mode and even invalidates normal mode by allowing players the chance at getting items that are the same level as normal mode. At this point, you have to consider that the next logical step in raiding progression is dive headfirst into heroic raiding. Heroic raiding is even more difficult than normal raiding, and because LFR invalidates normal raiding most people don't want to dive into something that is twice as hard as what they are doing. I don't blame these people because heroic + raiding can be a nightmare of an experience. I have been in 25 man groups and in some encounters it only takes one person to instantly screw the entire raid over in a matter of seconds. I don't blame people for not wanting to deal with this. But here again, this issue comes down to the fact that there are multiple difficulties for the same content instead of one standard difficulty level.
The issue with WoW is not to which extream of the player base it caters to because it caters to both the hardcore and the casuals. The real issue is where does the middle man fall? If casuals are your lower end of the bell curve and the hardcore players the upper end of your bell curve where do 60% of the player base fall? Well, they should be the people who prefer to do normals and heroic raids. But wait doesn't LFR pretty much undermine normal raids to the degree that most people are better off running heroics... but wait... aren't heroics vastly more difficult than LFR? (there's that insane difficulty jump again)
Then you have to take into account mythic + dungeons... these further muddy up the bell curve. I see people making this statement all the time "Mythic+ dungeons were designed for casual players.". Ok... this may be true, but when you can push higher keystones and get gear that is better than some of the raid gear at this point it is your hardcore players that are benefiting. So really what population was this content designed for again? Now if someone wanted to make the argument that Mythic + dungeons invalidate raiding... yeah they do and so does LFR to a degree.
The main point is that when you appeal to one extream and then try to balance by appealing to the other extream, this formulation DOES NOT equal a regression to the mean. Going back to the bell curve all this method doe leaves the middle 60% of the player base out in the cold. They either acclimate themselves to one extream or the other, or they move on. Good decision making should always be made of what affects the majority of your player base, and the majority isn't the 40% of people that make up both of the extremes it's the 60% that sits in the middle of both. It is also the developer's job to facilitate what they expect 60% of the population to be able to do. In Blizzard's case it set up this standard through the end of Wrath, then Activision changed that formula from the start to the end of Cata and below is the result.
Kilsin said:This is not something we are thinking about implementing, we would rather gather feedback from everyone rather than a select few as the power those few holds can sway big decisions and it isn't a risk I would ever take with our community.
I am sure it can work in some situations but it just isn't worth the trouble for a game and community like ours.
Was relieved when I saw this post, I don't think having a few guilds dictating to the masses is a good idea.
Porygon said:On some of the EQ progression servers, daybreak actually allowed the guilds to form a council, in order to develop a rotation for the raids prior to them instancing everything. The guilds would appoint delegates, those people would meet and work out the details of the roatation etc. And then daybreak would honor the agreement between the guilds. Therefore providing a hammer to enforce the agreements.
It wasnt the worst thing in the world.
It actually lead to Daybreak literally throwing their hands up in disgust and walking away from almost all in-game CS for anything outside of bugs because of how toxic the community was toward each other and the lengths they went with to bend the rules in their favor.
Zorkon said:A Family style guild doesn't bother with server politics and other such drama nonsense. There too busy exploring, gaming and enjoying a virtual world.
And with having stated my position, and Kilsin's comments stating VR's, I'm done with this nonsense.
Maybe YOUR family style guild doesnt. But alot of them do. To group every guild in with how you think they would play is extremely close minded.
Chanus said:Porygon said:On some of the EQ progression servers, daybreak actually allowed the guilds to form a council, in order to develop a rotation for the raids prior to them instancing everything. The guilds would appoint delegates, those people would meet and work out the details of the roatation etc. And then daybreak would honor the agreement between the guilds. Therefore providing a hammer to enforce the agreements.
It wasnt the worst thing in the world.
It actually lead to Daybreak literally throwing their hands up in disgust and walking away from almost all in-game CS for anything outside of bugs because of how toxic the community was toward each other and the lengths they went with to bend the rules in their favor.
You're mistaken. The CS on the servers was absurdly limited as is. The rotation council allowed daybreak a chance to regulate the server without having to maintain an active presence and deal with fights between guilds. Daybreak had already washed their hands of the servers at this point.
Baldur said:lots
My friend. You have a strange view on the events of WoW. LFR never invalidated normal raiding. The gear was always an item level tier below. LFR was put in the game, not asa catch up mechanic, but as a way for the casual playerbase to experience the endgame raids, since prior to that, it was nearly impossible.
LFG was absolutely put in the game for casuals. Hardcore raiders were in a guild with players that wanted the same thing as them. I never had issues finding groups for dungeons and heroics before LFG. But that 1 guy in trade chat did.
You're right that noone wanted class homogenization, but casuals called for it because they wanted to "play what they liked" and not be forced into a spec they didnt enjoy. Now you can absolutely argue this benefited hardcore raiders as well. But I dont think it was ever a problem for the top tier guilds anyways.
And I'm just going to have to disagree regarding the difficulty jump from TBC to Wrath to Cata. With the exception of the Lich King fight, Ulduar hard modes were the most difficult content in Wrath. And they paled in comparison to Sunwell. Lich king himself was difficult. But Kil Jaeden was much harder. I never found any of the cata raids overly difficult. I mean most people will agree that spine was an absurd fight. But it wasnt difficult, it was essentially a modified patchwork fight. It was just a gear check (and idiot check)
But we can agree that catering to the top end of bottom end of the spectrum is a terrible idea... you still have to design content for those players. I'm interested to see how pantheon does it.
Porygon said:Baldur said:lots
My friend. You have a strange view on the events of WoW. LFR never invalidated normal raiding. The gear was always an item level tier below. LFR was put in the game, not asa catch up mechanic, but as a way for the casual playerbase to experience the endgame raids, since prior to that, it was nearly impossible.
LFG was absolutely put in the game for casuals. Hardcore raiders were in a guild with players that wanted the same thing as them. I never had issues finding groups for dungeons and heroics before LFG. But that 1 guy in trade chat did.
You're right that noone wanted class homogenization, but casuals called for it because they wanted to "play what they liked" and not be forced into a spec they didnt enjoy. Now you can absolutely argue this benefited hardcore raiders as well. But I dont think it was ever a problem for the top tier guilds anyways.
And I'm just going to have to disagree regarding the difficulty jump from TBC to Wrath to Cata. With the exception of the Lich King fight, Ulduar hard modes were the most difficult content in Wrath. And they paled in comparison to Sunwell. Lich king himself was difficult. But Kil Jaeden was much harder. I never found any of the cata raids overly difficult. I mean most people will agree that spine was an absurd fight. But it wasnt difficult, it was essentially a modified patchwork fight. It was just a gear check (and idiot check)
But we can agree that catering to the top end of bottom end of the spectrum is a terrible idea... you still have to design content for those players. I'm interested to see how pantheon does it.
1. "LFR never invalidated normal raiding", you must have stopped playing before the siege of org came out in Pandaria. I would tell you to go play BFA and see how bad it's gotten but you really don't want to do that.
Basically, Titan forge can add +15 item levels to a piece of gear. In BFA the newest expansion, the Uldir LFR dropped 340 without any modifications. Players could get titan forged gear which put the item level up to 355 which is what the normal version of Uldir dropped. The added benefit of raid finder is that everything is personal loot now, and nothing is soul bound for 2 hours unless the player makes a modification to it within that time. Que the massive amounts of begging for items in LFR that are the same (or almost the same 350 warforged items) as normal.
I suppose you could make the argument that well normal mode can do the same thing and grant you something that was item level 370 which is what a normal item in Heroic drops without any modifiers. But going back to my argument if you are getting 355 gear in LFR why would you want to do normals, if normals drop 355 gear without modifiers then your next jump up is into heroic raiding. Maybe this is just me but if I'm receiving 355s in raid finder, why would I want to normal more than once for the achievement? I personally would want to jump straight past normal into heroics.
This also doesn't touch on the overall issues with the gearing system. The truth is that there are many situations where 340s were better than 355 gear pieces, and situations where 355 gear was better than 370 gear. This is primarily due to how classes are balanced around their secondary stats and those stat weights and this was an issue in Legion as well.
Your right that Ulduar hard modes were some of the most challenging content in Wrath, but this content was optional. Groups could easily disregard or disable these and then there was a lot more room for errors and chances for people to learn in a battle. If you were to truly take the time and compare normal dungeons at the start of BC, the start of wrath, and then the start of Cata... there's no denying that Cata upped the difficulty in almost every aspect while reducing the room for error to almost none. This alone upped the base skill required to complete content, and while not a bad idea, when one person can screw an entire fight up by making ONE SINGLE MISTAKE, This. is. not. good. game. design. And, truthfully you can't blame these players and their lack of skill because they are what made up the average player base back in wrath. All this switch in difficulty did was promote elitist mentality and anyone who didn't fit in with it quickly became a casual player. I myself became a "casual" player for most of Cataclysm because I quickly grew tired of the elitest mentality, and the wipes that screwed entire raid groups over because of one person's error. You then take into account the "hardcore" player has resorted to calling most people who lacked skill "Wrath Babies" its no wonder that most of these people didn't want to deal with the headache of challenging content. I don't blame people for wanting for an LFR version so that they could experience raids that were on Wraths difficulty level.
That being said I feel like LFR should have been removed in MoP. However, I also understand that you can't give someone something, then take it away and not expect an immediate backlash from this. Blizzard literally dug its self a hole with this system.
2. "LFG was absolutely put in the game for casuals. Hardcore raiders were in a guild with players that wanted the same thing as them. I never had issues finding groups for dungeons and heroics before LFG. But that 1 guy in trade chat did."
You say that it was for casuals and I say that it was for convenience. Either way, it didn't hurt hardcore raiders, if anything they benefited from this. As a healer it allowed me to level up faster due to back to back queuing, and it allowed me to gear faster for raids. If you want to make the argument that dps suffer from long queue times, yeah they do, but what's stopping them from finding a tank/ healer to queue with. Now, if you want to make the argument that LFG hurts social aspects of a game... this can't be argued with. While its implication has benefited me, I despise it because of the damage it inflicts on the community. People take the path of least resistance and lest effort, when you have a system that removes the need to communicate with other players, of course, people are going to take it because there is less work on their end. (This same argument can be made in the case of LFR it is the path of least resistance, and less effort is required). To be perfectly clear on my personal stance of LFG, if I had my way it would disappear completely. I was fine without it before and I'll be fine without it again, the damage that it does to the community is not worth it.
3. You're right that noone wanted class homogenization, but casuals called for it because they wanted to "play what they liked" and not be forced into a spec they didnt enjoy. Now you can absolutely argue this benefited hardcore raiders as well. But I dont think it was ever a problem for the top tier guilds anyways.
WoW, set its self up for this on day one when it allowed each class to have multiple specs instead of certain niches. It wanted to give the player options of how they could play that class instead of locking that class into a specific niche. It was a faulty design choice from its implementation, and you can't blame players for wanting to play what they like, and not wanting to be forced into specs they didn't enjoy because blizzard themselves started them down this road.
As for how it use to affect hardcore raiders, I would argue that back in the early days hardcore raiders understood the need for class niches, and they understood that everything should have its strengths and weaknesses. As for how it is currently affecting top end raiders... there are still certain classes that are preferred in high end raiding, but there are classes that are less than desirable. Two examples of this are druid tanks and frost death knights. Druids have been the worst tank since the start of this expansion and on the same note, frost death knights have been the worst dps. You might see a frost DK in higher content because the difference in DPS is more balanced, but you will hardly ever see a druid tank because every other tank does can do the same thing just better.
You stated I have a strange view on the events of WoW. No, I just have experienced WoW from its Vanilla era to its BFA era first hand (with the exception of WoD). I understand that every change causes a ripple effect, and this ripple effect can affect other aspects, systems, or even the player base of a game. As such, I am able to view events holistically VS atomistically and can see where problems originate. I also have a good understanding of human emotion and the mindset of most people, and as such when it comes to "casual" VS "hardcore" I can see both sides of the argument.
I will be honest, when it comes to the debate this is where I stand "Not everyone should be able to do everything". This statement applies to classes and class balance, it applies to a casual player complaining about not having enough time to complete things, it applies to professions, life in general... etc.
bigdogchris said:I imagine in a world without instancing, like Pantheon is, that high level guilds will have to come together and work out schedules for raiding. This seems natural conclusion to me.
They do this on p99 and is garbage. Leads to certain guilds only getting content and leaves out smaller ones. Then ti has to be policed all the time, I don;t think VR wants to policy raid schedules.
A Council for player decisions that might handicap the whole server, sounds like the best structured griefing with fake chairs and strawmens paid by other guilds or even just dual accounts with ghost guilds.
A Council for shared organisation on target rotation seems good for me IF it's policed to force a compromise and fair share by VR's employées, but I fear it might take a lot of work depending of server size, frequence of meetings, etc...
Might be troublesome with different time zones.
This whole thing reminds me of
I don't believe a Player Council is viable- You would be giving power and decision making to those who represent the guilds/groups that match criteria- Effectively making them State Officials- Which means they are not Elected Representatives by the general population of the server... So basically it would be a Bureaucracy...
Kilsin said:This is not something we are thinking about implementing, we would rather gather feedback from everyone rather than a select few as the power those few holds can sway big decisions and it isn't a risk I would ever take with our community.
I am sure it can work in some situations but it just isn't worth the trouble for a game and community like ours.
Really wish this forum had the ability to do BIG thumbs up.
Any time ive encountered player councils on any games, it only increases the toxicity.
Very glad to hear this won’t be considered.
I was working on a system that is intended to fill the same role as the OPS idea but I was never able to come up with a system that I was comfortable with and even some of the other posters who are usually more tolerant of my crazy ideas thought it was bad.
The basics:
A specific server is created that has player created and enforced by-laws:
1) Prior to launch of the server interested players can register for the server. These registered players can nominate and vote on what optional configurations will be chosen for that server (pvp, single box, RP, no teleports, everyone pays a tithe to Trasak . . . )
2) Then the registered users are able to vote on what is acceptable behavior on common social game issues and from a selectable list of possible punishments for infractions.
3) Additionally they would be able to select key good deeds they want to encourage and set certain rewards for doing them.
Through game play players will be able to select a character and be able to commend them for a good action or condemn them for one of the proscribed actions. A character receives or loses reputation points based on the reports on themselves. An account has a limited number of reputation flags per day and the strength of their vote is relative to how high their personal reputation is.
When a players reputation reaches a certain negative level then in game issues begin to come into effect proportional to the actions and the history of past actions. This could include loss of access to chat channels, public transportation, and access to NPCs all the way to a temporary ban. Over time the negative points would degrade which removes the penalties.
The challenges:
1) Dog pilling: Something would need to be done to prevent several massive guilds from unjustly targeting a specific person, possibly through a stiff penalty through the appeals process.
2) Would need an appeal process if someone unfairly is accused of wrong doing. In theory a chat channel harassment report would capture a chat log, a kill steal report would include a combat log and a dogpile would show the history of said flags.
3) A separate tab would have a society judgement window where you can review redacted appeals logs and vote, a 75% agreement to the appeal would remove the infraction and a 95% agreement would punish the false accuser (there will be times where it is obvious that griefing is being done). Players would gain reputation points for taking the time to review reports and so the GMs would have nothing to do with them.
4) Over time the server as a whole will be able to adjust the server society rules through nominated and voted upon measures.
The real issue though is does this add anything to the game? Despite liking the idea in general I am leaning to not really. I still am in favor of a thumbs up/ thumbs down reputation system that has no in game effect. My wife is not going to know people well enough to know who to avoid when she has time to play so it would be helpful if she could just ignore and avoid the real trolls. It would be nice to have an auto ignore setting for anyone below a certain rating.
Sadly. I don't think that the idea of player-driven reputation using game mechanics will work. As many have said - too easy to abuse with the trolls and bad guys being more active in destroying the reputations of the good guys than the reverse.
Most of us just want to play - to the trolls and juveniles and just plain nasty people hurting the reputation of anyone that complains about them will be the game-within-a-game and they will spend endless amounts of time using such systems to make life more unpleasant for the rest of us.