Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Marathon Playing - Antisocial Menace or Who Cares? It's Fine!

    • 297 posts
    July 12, 2019 6:56 AM PDT

    I worry this topic encroaching on another thread might be getting off-topic, so I figured I would start a discussion of it in its own thread in case anyone was actually interested. 

    Personally, I have certainly been known to play games for extended periods of time over the course of a weekend, or a staycation, or what have you. I don't think it is inherently problematic to do so when you have the time and availability. Video games are entertainment and sometimes I needs to be entertained, like, rull bad.

    I do, however, think that there should be a design philosophy discrete "chunk" where no single task should take more than said number of hours to complete. Let's say four, for the sake of this being an entirely arbitrary and theoretical point I'm making. Anything in the game can take however long the developers deem necessary for it to feel like a rewarding and meaningful accomplishment. I have no problem with 100-hour quests.

    I do think any individual step of that quest should be able to be accomplished by most players in a reasonable play session. I think four hours is a decent enough baseline that it's not entirely prohibitive but allows for some step of meaningful challenge to be done. If it takes me 25 four hour sessions to complete the 100 hour quest, that's fine. That's ideal to me. It's something I can plan out and work toward and can reasonably expect to finish, given I put in the time, but doesn't feel like the experience is a cheap reward that didn't require adequate effort.

    If I want to complete the 100 hours quest in five 20-hour play sessions, that's fine too. I will likely get it done sooner than others because I devoted that much time to playing the game. Some people consider that an accomplishment and I don't really have much interest in disputing it even if I disagree it's a valuable use of time.

    I see no value in requiring players to sit at their computers for 12, 20, 48 hours at a stretch in order to accomplish a single task. To me that is an entirely unreasonable game design decision and rewards the wrong kind of behavior.

    Thoughts?

    • 521 posts
    July 12, 2019 7:24 AM PDT

    The longest run Ive done was 72 hours playing the adventures of link, but I was maybe 13 then. I don't see myself taking on any quest longer than about 8 hours and that would be only on occasion.

    • 3237 posts
    July 12, 2019 7:37 AM PDT

    Do you have any examples of gameplay that require stretches of 12, 20, or 48 hours?

    • 297 posts
    July 12, 2019 7:41 AM PDT

    oneADseven said:

    Do you have any examples of gameplay that require stretches of 12, 20, or 48 hours?

    Things like 12, 20, 48 hour respawn camps would be what I'd consider a required stretch for a single task.

    It's entirely possible you could get lucky and happen upon the spawn being up, but most people would interact with these camps by taking them when they're available, which would usually be after someone has gotten their drop. If you sit at this camp for 11.5 hours and then leave, you fail the task. I don't think that's good design. I would prefer to see three separate four-hour tasks required to complete the step than a single 12-hour task.

    • 297 posts
    July 12, 2019 7:51 AM PDT

    Ultimately I think actively playing the game is better than passively playing the game and it is not likely 12 hours of unbroken active content could be created in a way that is actually compelling and not just a tiresome slog.

    And I think it should be part of the design principle that gameplay sessions should always be able to result in some sort of meaningful progress (aside from, like, logging in for twenty minutes a day type things), even if it's just making progress on a much larger goal.

    I think it is bad design to have people potentially play for hours and hours on end and come away from it with nothing gained.


    This post was edited by Chanus at July 12, 2019 7:51 AM PDT
    • 73 posts
    July 12, 2019 8:08 AM PDT

    Chanus said:

    oneADseven said:

    Do you have any examples of gameplay that require stretches of 12, 20, or 48 hours?

    Things like 12, 20, 48 hour respawn camps would be what I'd consider a required stretch for a single task.

    It's entirely possible you could get lucky and happen upon the spawn being up, but most people would interact with these camps by taking them when they're available, which would usually be after someone has gotten their drop. If you sit at this camp for 11.5 hours and then leave, you fail the task. I don't think that's good design. I would prefer to see three separate four-hour tasks required to complete the step than a single 12-hour task.

    what you have to do in those missions is to go and kill the mob in question 30 min at the most
    that has a respawn of 20 48 or 72 hours is to make the item feel rare and unique not for some crazy person to sit on the floor afk 72 hours to wait for it
    you go if the mob is not going to perform another task
    you could try to find out when it was the last time they killed the mob to know more or less the respawn time


    This post was edited by Elki at July 12, 2019 8:14 AM PDT
    • 297 posts
    July 12, 2019 8:19 AM PDT

    Elki said:

    Chanus said:

    oneADseven said:

    Do you have any examples of gameplay that require stretches of 12, 20, or 48 hours?

    Things like 12, 20, 48 hour respawn camps would be what I'd consider a required stretch for a single task.

    It's entirely possible you could get lucky and happen upon the spawn being up, but most people would interact with these camps by taking them when they're available, which would usually be after someone has gotten their drop. If you sit at this camp for 11.5 hours and then leave, you fail the task. I don't think that's good design. I would prefer to see three separate four-hour tasks required to complete the step than a single 12-hour task.

    what you have to do in those missions is to go and kill the mob in question 30 min at the most
    that has a respawn of 20 48 or 72 hours is to make the item feel rare and unique not for some crazy person to sit on the floor afk 72 hours to wait for it
    you go if the mob is not going to perform another task
    you could try to find out when it was the last time they killed the mob to know more or less the respawn time

    You often have to hold the camp, though, or some other player will get there first. It is almost never the case you can just walk up to a spawn, knowing the last time it was killed, and find it just sitting there waiting for you, or find the camp empty waiting for you to claim it.

    At least, not in current and active content.

    • 2419 posts
    July 12, 2019 8:32 AM PDT

    Chanus said:

    oneADseven said:

    Do you have any examples of gameplay that require stretches of 12, 20, or 48 hours?

    Things like 12, 20, 48 hour respawn camps would be what I'd consider a required stretch for a single task.

    It's entirely possible you could get lucky and happen upon the spawn being up, but most people would interact with these camps by taking them when they're available, which would usually be after someone has gotten their drop. If you sit at this camp for 11.5 hours and then leave, you fail the task. I don't think that's good design. I would prefer to see three separate four-hour tasks required to complete the step than a single 12-hour task.

    Just because the spawn timer is 12, 20 or 48 hour repsawn does not, in an of itself, actually requires the player to stay there that entire duration. The decision to stay is wholly yours.  You have determined, in your own mind, that you must obtain whatever item (or complete whatever task) must be done in the least amount of time.  You have decided it must be done now.  The game isn't forcing that upon you.

    In your example you want 3 separate 4 hour tasks and not a single 12 hour task, yet respawn timers are not tasks.  Do not equate them as such.

    • 297 posts
    July 12, 2019 8:35 AM PDT

    Vandraad said:

    Chanus said:

    oneADseven said:

    Do you have any examples of gameplay that require stretches of 12, 20, or 48 hours?

    Things like 12, 20, 48 hour respawn camps would be what I'd consider a required stretch for a single task.

    It's entirely possible you could get lucky and happen upon the spawn being up, but most people would interact with these camps by taking them when they're available, which would usually be after someone has gotten their drop. If you sit at this camp for 11.5 hours and then leave, you fail the task. I don't think that's good design. I would prefer to see three separate four-hour tasks required to complete the step than a single 12-hour task.

    Just because the spawn timer is 12, 20 or 48 hour repsawn does not, in an of itself, actually requires the player to stay there that entire duration. The decision to stay is wholly yours.  You have determined, in your own mind, that you must obtain whatever item (or complete whatever task) must be done in the least amount of time.  You have decided it must be done now.  The game isn't forcing that upon you.

    In your example you want 3 separate 4 hour tasks and not a single 12 hour task, yet respawn timers are not tasks.  Do not equate them as such.

    What definition of required do you have that isn't "either do this or you don't succeed"? 

    • 2419 posts
    July 12, 2019 8:49 AM PDT

    Chanus said:

    Vandraad said:

    Chanus said:

    oneADseven said:

    Do you have any examples of gameplay that require stretches of 12, 20, or 48 hours?

    Things like 12, 20, 48 hour respawn camps would be what I'd consider a required stretch for a single task.

    It's entirely possible you could get lucky and happen upon the spawn being up, but most people would interact with these camps by taking them when they're available, which would usually be after someone has gotten their drop. If you sit at this camp for 11.5 hours and then leave, you fail the task. I don't think that's good design. I would prefer to see three separate four-hour tasks required to complete the step than a single 12-hour task.

    Just because the spawn timer is 12, 20 or 48 hour repsawn does not, in an of itself, actually requires the player to stay there that entire duration. The decision to stay is wholly yours.  You have determined, in your own mind, that you must obtain whatever item (or complete whatever task) must be done in the least amount of time.  You have decided it must be done now.  The game isn't forcing that upon you.

    In your example you want 3 separate 4 hour tasks and not a single 12 hour task, yet respawn timers are not tasks.  Do not equate them as such.

    What definition of required do you have that isn't "either do this or you don't succeed"? 

    Just because the spawn timer is X minutes/hours/days does not require you to sit there the entire time. The only requirement to succeed is to eventually kill the mob.  Yes, you could sit there for 12 hours waiting or you could run by, camp for a bit to see if it spawns, go elsewhere for awhile, come back in a day or so until, eventually, you're there when it is up and succeed.  Yes, you cannot progress long that particular quest/story until you kill the mob but it does not exlude you from continuing on in other quests.

    A smart player, when facing a 12 hour spawn timer, finds out when it was killed the last time and then comes back about 30 mins before the expected respawn.  If someone is there already, you wait till they kill it, mark the time, and come back 11 hours later (or 22 hours later depending upon your schedule).   The point being is you don't just sit there like a lump for 12 hours..that's stupid.

    • 1785 posts
    July 12, 2019 8:51 AM PDT

    I don't believe that holding a camp for a multi-hour spawn is a good example to use of the sort of target gameplay we really want for Pantheon.  Even in EQ, the design intent of those long spawns was not that people would sit there waiting them out, but rather that they would be seen as rare and special.  Camping came about as a player behavior because we players were smart enought to figure out that if we waited long enough, or killed enough placeholders, the thing we really wanted would appear.

    In hindsight, while it was great to have things that required that level of effort, it resulted in terribly unhealthy play habits for many of us - not to mention, introducing contention and toxicity between players.  I firmly believe that there are far better ways to do things that don't involve encouraging players to sit in one place and camp rare spawns for hours and hours at a time.

    But this thread is about long play sessions, not camping.

    I like to think of myself as a fairly balanced, health-conscious adult these days.  Yet even with that, there are still times where I will get so engrossed in what I am doing in an MMO that I end up spending 5-6 hours online.  The average, of course, is more like 2-3 hours.  And let's be clear:  I have a *LOT* of free time.  I'm single, I live alone, and at least at the moment I am unemployed and riding out a severance check from my last job while I look for a new one.  So I truly can spend hours and hours in front of the PC every day without any negative consequences other than gaining weight and advancing my risk of heart disease.  I generally try not to, but I can.

    When SOE released the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion, they built the randomized dungeon instances with the idea that players could complete those in 90 minutes.  If you look at other games that use group instances, you'll find that most of those games tend towards a 60-90 minute timer for their instances as well.  This isn't a coincidence.  It comes about because industry data and research over the years has shown that 60-90 minutes is an optimal time frame for more time-limited players to be able to get into the game and get something accomplished before they have to log out.

    That doesn't mean that content that would take longer to complete in full can't exist.  In EQ, VG, and several other games with open world dungeons, I used to set dungeon crawls or raids for my guild for 3 hour time blocks - because that was simply how long it took to get in, get to the target, hopefully defeat it, and split the loot afterwards, with some room for recovering if we wiped.  Even in games where raids are little more than instanced fights, 3 hours is still a standard time frame that I use quite often, simply because it's about the maximum amount of time I can expect people to spend before someone on the raid gets tired and their reaction time starts to suffer, or someone needs to leave because of a family thing, or whatever.

    So how long is too long?  I actually don't think there is a number.  When we used to raid the Plane of Sky in EQ, we would break in and get halfway through the zone in the first session, and then have everyone log out and come back the next day to continue.  In the Temple of Veeshan in EQ, we targeted a wing for the raid, not the entire zone.  In Vanguard, once we cleared the first wing of APW, we would then use the teleport system in the dungeon to target the wing that we were working on as well.  So, it's eminently possible to have dungeons or zones that might require dozens of hours to explore and conquer from start to finish.

    We just shouldn't expect players to do that all at once.

    So, good design is having a really big dungeon with lots of interesting encounters that players can break up and take at their own pace - either via branching paths from the entrance, or an unlockable teleport system inside, or a safe room for logouts in the middle, or whatever.

    Bad design is having a long linear dungeon that takes players 5 or more hours to clear through to the very end.  In this situation, unless they can somehow join up with a group halfway in, very few players will ever see the end of that dungeon.

     

     


    This post was edited by Nephele at July 12, 2019 8:52 AM PDT
    • 3237 posts
    July 12, 2019 8:53 AM PDT

    Chanus said:

    Things like 12, 20, 48 hour respawn camps would be what I'd consider a required stretch for a single task.

    It's entirely possible you could get lucky and happen upon the spawn being up, but most people would interact with these camps by taking them when they're available, which would usually be after someone has gotten their drop. If you sit at this camp for 11.5 hours and then leave, you fail the task. I don't think that's good design. I would prefer to see three separate four-hour tasks required to complete the step than a single 12-hour task.

    If an NPC has a 12 hour respawn that doesn't mean that players are required to spend 12-hour shifts camping it.  You can spend an hour a day checking on the mob to see if it's up.  Maybe you camp it for a few hours at one point.  Either way, nobody sits at these camps for 12 hours unless you're 100% dedicated to finding out when it spawns.  You learn their respawn timer, or range of timers, and try to be in the right place at the right time.  If you notice multiple players camping an area where a rare boss is known to spawn, that is usually a good sign that it's probably coming due.

    There isn't an exact science or art form that is going to make things easy on players but there are plenty of ways to be more efficient with your time than camping an NPC for 11.5 hours straight and then leaving.  That would be a horrible player decision.  It's a living/breathing world ... so even if you are at the camp when it spawns, that doesn't mean you "complete the task."  Being at the right place at the right time is all about having awareness of the world and opportunistically taking advantage of the wisdom that players develop over a period of time.  After that, players still have the burden of beating the encounter or securing credit, however that ends up working.


    This post was edited by oneADseven at July 12, 2019 9:09 AM PDT
    • 297 posts
    July 12, 2019 9:02 AM PDT

    Well, rather than focusing on a pointless semantics argument over the definition of requires, my point is that there are people advocating for the game to be designed with specific 12+ hour play sessions in mind for single tasks and I think that is bad design, while at the same time I have no problem with shorter "chunks" or time being strung together into a task-arc that takes a total of 12+ hours. 

    Several threads have had people asking for these 12+ hour tasks to be in the game, which is why I brought it up and have been attempting to come up with a solution that will be suitable to the most people possible. If you want to knock out all the separate tasks in a 12+ hour arc, there's no reason anything should stop you. 

    • 3237 posts
    July 12, 2019 9:09 AM PDT

    To expand on my previous post, plenty of games offer a "force-pop" mechanic for certain bosses.  So in some cases, you may be able to spend X amount of hours building up resources or doing other things that then allow you to trigger the spawn when you're ready to engage it.  Sometimes these trigger locations/conduits have respawn timers / cooldowns of their own.  I can say with certainty that I would have zero interest in "claiming a camp for 12 hours" straight.  That's just obnoxious.  Maybe it worked in EQ but I don't get into that whole stand in line at a concession stand, take your turn, every piece of content is considered a piece of merchandise in your shopping cart type of experience.  Resources either are, or are not, contested.  If you create a rule that says that players who spend 12 hours straight at a camp get to claim it, regardless of whether or not other players show up before it spawns, that is encouraging degenerate gameplay.

    • 73 posts
    July 12, 2019 9:52 AM PDT

    Chanus said:

    Well, rather than focusing on a pointless semantics argument over the definition of requires, my point is that there are people advocating for the game to be designed with specific 12+ hour play sessions in mind for single tasks and I think that is bad design, while at the same time I have no problem with shorter "chunks" or time being strung together into a task-arc that takes a total of 12+ hours. 

    Several threads have had people asking for these 12+ hour tasks to be in the game, which is why I brought it up and have been attempting to come up with a solution that will be suitable to the most people possible. If you want to knock out all the separate tasks in a 12+ hour arc, there's no reason anything should stop you. 

    I understand your concern but Brad already said a long time ago that the game is designed so that it can be played in 2-3 hour stretches
    that there would be large dungeons that would take much longer but there would be a kind of check point every 2-3 hours where you and your group could leave it and continue the next day at that point

    • 696 posts
    July 12, 2019 9:54 AM PDT

    No one is advocating for a 12 hour straight encounter that once you trigger you willbe forced into a 12 hour long event and if you stop then you have to do it all over again...but rare mobs that are on long spawn cycles aren't the same thing.

    • 297 posts
    July 12, 2019 10:02 AM PDT

    Elki said:

    Chanus said:

    Well, rather than focusing on a pointless semantics argument over the definition of requires, my point is that there are people advocating for the game to be designed with specific 12+ hour play sessions in mind for single tasks and I think that is bad design, while at the same time I have no problem with shorter "chunks" or time being strung together into a task-arc that takes a total of 12+ hours. 

    Several threads have had people asking for these 12+ hour tasks to be in the game, which is why I brought it up and have been attempting to come up with a solution that will be suitable to the most people possible. If you want to knock out all the separate tasks in a 12+ hour arc, there's no reason anything should stop you. 

    I understand your concern but Brad already said a long time ago that the game is designed so that it can be played in 2-3 hour stretches
    that there would be large dungeons that would take much longer but there would be a kind of check point every 2-3 hours where you and your group could leave it and continue the next day at that point

    I had not caught that but it's good to hear.

    • 1584 posts
    July 12, 2019 10:22 AM PDT

    oneADseven said:

    Chanus said:

    Things like 12, 20, 48 hour respawn camps would be what I'd consider a required stretch for a single task.

    It's entirely possible you could get lucky and happen upon the spawn being up, but most people would interact with these camps by taking them when they're available, which would usually be after someone has gotten their drop. If you sit at this camp for 11.5 hours and then leave, you fail the task. I don't think that's good design. I would prefer to see three separate four-hour tasks required to complete the step than a single 12-hour task.

    If an NPC has a 12 hour respawn that doesn't mean that players are required to spend 12-hour shifts camping it.  You can spend an hour a day checking on the mob to see if it's up.  Maybe you camp it for a few hours at one point.  Either way, nobody sits at these camps for 12 hours unless you're 100% dedicated to finding out when it spawns.  You learn their respawn timer, or range of timers, and try to be in the right place at the right time.  If you notice multiple players camping an area where a rare boss is known to spawn, that is usually a good sign that it's probably coming due.

    There isn't an exact science or art form that is going to make things easy on players but there are plenty of ways to be more efficient with your time than camping an NPC for 11.5 hours straight and then leaving.  That would be a horrible player decision.  It's a living/breathing world ... so even if you are at the camp when it spawns, that doesn't mean you "complete the task."  Being at the right place at the right time is all about having awareness of the world and opportunistically taking advantage of the wisdom that players develop over a period of time.  After that, players still have the burden of beating the encounter or securing credit, however that ends up working.

    Not to argue with you here 1AD7, but he made this topic because of  QoL topic that came up, and I agree that if  there is a 12 hour respawn you don't just sit there, unless your simply just guessing and hoping lol.  But on the QoL topic people were trying to avocate making dungeons 16 to 20 hours long in itself to get to a mob, but I could be wrong as he clearly stated something different but I do know what was mentioned in the QoL topic might of influenced this topic to some degree.


    This post was edited by Cealtric at July 12, 2019 10:40 AM PDT
    • 23 posts
    July 12, 2019 10:28 AM PDT

    The idea of 'camping' a special NPC spawn for a special item is actually really good for a game.  The idea of 'camping' a random NPC for a random chance to drop a required item?  Terrible game design.

    • 1584 posts
    July 12, 2019 10:43 AM PDT

    sevnptsixtwo said:

    The idea of 'camping' a special NPC spawn for a special item is actually really good for a game.  The idea of 'camping' a random NPC for a random chance to drop a required item?  Terrible game design.

    So when you see a rare spawn come up you want to be guaranteed the item that he drops?  Which than would make it not unique or even valuable but you think that is good gamed design, nah the rare spawn with chance of drop is way better, shouldn't be guaranteed anything in an mmo other than playing it with others.


    This post was edited by Cealtric at July 12, 2019 10:44 AM PDT
    • 297 posts
    July 12, 2019 10:54 AM PDT

    Riahuf22 said:

    sevnptsixtwo said:

    The idea of 'camping' a special NPC spawn for a special item is actually really good for a game.  The idea of 'camping' a random NPC for a random chance to drop a required item?  Terrible game design.

    So when you see a rare spawn come up you want to be guaranteed the item that he drops?  Which than would make it not unique or even valuable but you think that is good gamed design, nah the rare spawn with chance of drop is way better, shouldn't be guaranteed anything in an mmo other than playing it with others.

    I think he's saying required items, like quest turn-in pieces, shouldn't be so random.

    • 23 posts
    July 12, 2019 12:02 PM PDT

    Chanus said:

    Riahuf22 said:

    sevnptsixtwo said:

    The idea of 'camping' a special NPC spawn for a special item is actually really good for a game.  The idea of 'camping' a random NPC for a random chance to drop a required item?  Terrible game design.

    So when you see a rare spawn come up you want to be guaranteed the item that he drops?  Which than would make it not unique or even valuable but you think that is good gamed design, nah the rare spawn with chance of drop is way better, shouldn't be guaranteed anything in an mmo other than playing it with others.

    I think he's saying required items, like quest turn-in pieces, shouldn't be so random.

     

    Exactly.

    • 73 posts
    July 12, 2019 12:29 PM PDT

     

    I had not caught that but it's good to hear.

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BhUKChiOPI

     

    min 8:30

    • 945 posts
    July 12, 2019 12:39 PM PDT

    Watemper said:

    No one is advocating for a 12 hour straight encounter that once you trigger you willbe forced into a 12 hour long event and if you stop then you have to do it all over again...but rare mobs that are on long spawn cycles aren't the same thing.

    Unfortunately, although you and I (and many others) don't want to have to play more than a few hours at a time, some people are looking for VR to require playing long hours.  Possibly in an attempt to have themselves stand out from others in a game where having a unique identity relies solely uponn reputation since unique identity will be non-existant through character creation. 

    Some people are confusing "more time speant" with "challenge".  Some players aren't happy unless a corpse run is as uncomfortable and time consuming as possible because to them, THAT is a challenge they desire.  As some others have mentioned, people are having nostalgic delusions of grandeur and are hoping that VR will make a game that only a small population will be interested in, but the fact is that VR will try to accomodate the majority as much as possible without dissapointing fans too much.

    To respond to the OP, I'm opposed to the "needless" time sinks that existed in EQ for no other reason than to be a roadblock in player progression;  I feel if any game is going to "require" more than 4hrs of playtime at a stretch to "complete" a single objective/step in a quest as a staple of the game design (like EQ) it will be changed very quickly.  They would have to dumb down so much other content to accomodate - like having to use crap like dungeon finders and teleporters all over the world to compensate or lose subs in droves.  EQ had very little competition in its hayday, there are other developers going more toward the harder MMO experience now... and some will likely be introduced before PRotF is released and even at the same time due to pacing/funding.  Again, they will need to appeal to the majority (for future funding) without upsetting their fanbase - a thin line to walk.


    This post was edited by Darch at July 12, 2019 12:41 PM PDT
    • 3852 posts
    July 12, 2019 5:28 PM PDT

    I essentially agree with Nephele in all respects.

     

    Specifically on the topic of respawn timers and moving away from what Nephele said - I can see having a long respawn timer for a boss that drops non-essential items that basically are just for prestige. OOOOH I have the Pink Panties of the Rarely Spawning Madam envy me and think of how good I must be.

    But for anything that is really important such as unlocking content or finishing an epic-level quest or getting a best-in-slot item at level-cap I find the idea of having to camp for 12 hours or even worse being on call in real life for a weekend ...abhorrant. 

    People often post that certain things shouldn't be in the game because if they are some guilds or raid groups will require them and they will thus become almost mandatory. There is much truth to these concerns - raised over the years in many threads. I shudder at the thought of a group or guild only accepting people that commit to being on call in real life by phone of other device 24/7 in case a mob spawns.