The issue with alternate rule sets for specific servers is that it divides the developer's attention on the overall direction of the game.
It's a snowball effect and it goes on and on and on... Here is a brief example:
Server A has instanced raid zones and is capped to X amount of players. Server B is an open world raid zone and has no cap on the amount of players.
Issues that arise:
1) How many pieces of raid gear should be dropped on Server A versus server B?
2) If we keep the number of pieces dropped the same do we make some of them "No-Drop"?
3) If we keep the number of pieces dropped the same but don't make some of them "No-Drop" how will that affect the overall economy of the entire server?
4) How long should players be locked out of the instance for on Server B?
5) Does each raid boss need to be tuned differently since we capped the amount of players vs. a non capped zone?
6) If we do tune the raid bosses differently do we need to change any of the mechanics instead of a simple hp/damage reduction?
7) Now with different loot settings do we allow players to transfer from Server B to Server A? And vice-versa?
All of these issues have to be considered (And quite frankly there are many more) for addressing the issue of a what some might consider a "simple solution".
I would much rather see developers spending time on things that mattered than spending it on different outcomes spawning from a single issue.
Capped Vs Uncapped raids.
Capped:
Uncapped:
I just wanted to post this to try an be nuetral and let people think about these things for themselves. But lastly I just want to point out that RotF is supposed to bring back that social evnviroment that we loved so much 16 years ago. When I play a game with instanced raiding I log on to raid and then I log off and play other games with my guild. I want to be able to log on any time of day and enjoy myself because I can go group up with another team that has found a mob that is up and needs people. Even though it is not my guilds raid time. One more thing I am going to put here just incase Brad reads my post. When AA's were introduced into EQ I think it was the greatest thing ever. It gave me a permanent reason to group up and grind mobs even after hitting max level. I would love to see something like this in RotF because I just dont want to be jumping around waiting for something to happen. I want to be able to gain something from my time spent grinding even post max level.
Anyway thank you all for reading sorry if my bias showed.
I think capped still means instanced. You can limit raid size sure. But you can not stop there from being multiple raids zerging something down. Unless you put in a no combat mechanic with a tagged mob. That however, would lead to you being unable to help someone in trouble which would be a disaster imo.
End game content aside, a huge part of community is being able to assist one another when someone does bite off more than they can chew. If I am level 15 and I attack a level 15 orc and it proves to be to tough for me, I do not want to die because of the stiff penalty for death. If there are people around I want to be able to run jumping and /yell ing until someone saves me. When that person does save me I will turn to them and say thank you and maybe a group will be formed so we can kill the level 15 orcs effectively. Maybe it will be a lasting friendship. Now say it is just applicable to end game/bosses, that is possible. However, how immersive is the world that I am not able to take action against something because someone else hit it first. That is not true open world because at that point I no longer have a choice.
Well remember though that if you trivialize the risk you also trivialize the reward. If a boss intended for 30 players drops 3 pieces of loot then 10% of your raid gets loot. If 60 players kill it then 5% of your raid get loot. This means that team A that kills the boss with 30 players gears up more quickly and is able to advance to the more challenging bosses before group B that takes twice as long to gear. Now of course group B could double their raid size and keep up but then even less get loot. So with an uncapped raid there is essentially a stronger risk vs reward mechanic than if you have a certain number of people. Finally, the smaller team will have the advantage in most open world scenarios. If one team can kill with 30 and one team needs 60, the team that needs 30 can probably get a few pulls in before the team of 60 is even online. So while a large zerg may trivialize the risk of death it does not trivialize risk vs reward. It strengthens it.
Angrykiz said:In Vanguard you simply got locked out if you weren't in the raid group that engaged the raid mob.
In addition to this if you killed said raid mob you were flagged for 3-5 days and this flag would prevent you from engaging this mob again until it was gone.
Guilds that had 2 full raid groups would strategically divide so that they would get 2 kills out of their flags or even log in alts to fill in a second raid.
Very high end encounters would straight up banish you if you were not in the raid and you engaged the raid mob... this was mostly saved for ring events or other multi part battles.
Raid mobs had specific circumstances that if met would reward you with a better loot table.. this always involved a more difficult strategy for beating said mob.
I'm sure there is more I'm missing but that is the basics of it,
Kiz~
P.S. This topic has more to do with that feeling of epicness that raid targets bring to a game... How are you gonna fight gods and dragons with just one group, to me that sounds absurd. How boring would a game be that doesn't have these massive boss at the end of the progression. If you take raids out of these old school mmo's their longevity drops sharply. I know that personally without huge raid bosses to look forward to I won't have much motivation to even level up to the endgame.
Thanks for explaining that, I didn't play VG long enough for anyone in the game to be raiding yet. Hmm, this doesn't sound too bad. I'm definitely in favor of lockouts/flags/cooldowns, and I expecially like that you brought up banishment - I completely forgot about that! EQ used that mechanic for Naggy/Vox on I think lvl 52 players or over? Since Brad used that in both games - and apparently Vanguard was pretty popular with a lot of people - I would expect to see that used again here.
Chaj said:Well remember though that if you trivialize the risk you also trivialize the reward. If a boss intended for 30 players drops 3 pieces of loot then 10% of your raid gets loot. If 60 players kill it then 5% of your raid get loot. This means that team A that kills the boss with 30 players gears up more quickly and is able to advance to the more challenging bosses before group B that takes twice as long to gear. Now of course group B could double their raid size and keep up but then even less get loot. So with an uncapped raid there is essentially a stronger risk vs reward mechanic than if you have a certain number of people. Finally, the smaller team will have the advantage in most open world scenarios. If one team can kill with 30 and one team needs 60, the team that needs 30 can probably get a few pulls in before the team of 60 is even online. So while a large zerg may trivialize the risk of death it does not trivialize risk vs reward. It strengthens it.
Exactly. Beyond those very important things, you also have many mechanics that can be used to thin out the ranks of a zerg. The first mechanic in EQ to do this was the AoE. They had a way of separating the men from the boys so to speak. Without proper resist gear (as well as proper buffs/healers), you needed much more people. Some fights like Gorenaire were thought to be nearly impossible early on because she would kill raids of 70+ with her high damage AoE+Slow component. Players with the proper gear, however, could kill her with less than 4 groups. There are actually quite a few similar mechanics that could be used, such as a mechanic that heals the boss every time a player dies. I bet I could come up with 10 more anti-zerg mechanics if I gave it some thought, and no doubt the team is doing the same.
I highly doubt we will see uncapped raids... Anti zerg mechanics only go so far and I dont want to see them used on every raid mob.
One huge mistake to be avoided is lagging out people with mid range systems during raid time.
Can you think of any MMO's in recent years that runs well with hundreds of people on the screen ? The last one I can think of was City of Heroes lol.
I'd be very happy with 36 person raids but in all reality I'm betting we will only get 24.
In Vanguard raids were capped and raid mobs still healed on player death and had nasty AoE.
Thanks for reading,
Kiz~
I think it would be interesting to see a hybrid raid cap encounter if a cap would be implemented at all. Quite frankly I'd prefer it to be like EQ with no cap. You might have a much easier time defeating Dragon_A but that drastically decreases the chance of spoils for all of your raid members.
Hybrid system example: Dragon_A is tuned for 24 players, if you engage him with fewer his difficulty won't change. However, for every player who engages above 24 players his difficulty starts to grow. So if you were to bring a 48man raid Dragon_A (Who is normally defeated with 24) it becomes a scaled encounter.
Any raids need to be open world bosses with spawn timers similar to EQOA. The best part of this system was that you couldn't just kill a boss at will on a set schedule. The beauty of the random raid boss spawns were that it wasn't always the same players, groups or guilds on when the boss spawned. This allowed for the "oh crap hurry up, get who we can in guild that's online and start trekking for 30 minutes to the boss!". That feeling is like no other. When you down the boss, if you are one of the lucky few to get loot, that loot really meant something. You were always proud of that shield or helmet you got because people knew it wasn't easy to get. None of this "hey lets pop in an instance once a week and kill the same boss and see 4 items drop"...that model is just so bland. Remember waiting for Lady Vox to come up in EQOA? it sure felt good when you got the kill and it wasn't every week you got the chance, so it meant that much more.
Another great feature from EQOA that made smaller raids fun was Isle of Dread. This island was crazy dangerous and not soloable. Sogranted you didn't need 40 people....but you needed a good group of 5 or 10 to kill the open world mobs on the isle (who were like min raid bosses in themselves) which dropped great loot. You also really had to avoid aggroing dangerous mobs so you didn't just run around like a chicken with your head cut off.
I mention EQOA a lot in my posts and i wish MMO gamers today really got to experience this game. It was way before it's time and i have yet to see a game with a similar model since, it was the true feeling of openworld sandbox MMORPG's.
I would greatly enjoy a game that had a raid set up similiar to Vanguard. I enjoyed both Vanguard and Rift raiding systems a lot. In both these games I could easily set up raid nights that people could plan around.
The only thing that killed my raiding experience in Rift was making people sit out every night because of the raid cap. My officers and I would sit out of raids all the time. We also had to keep track of how well people performed. What ended up happening is new players, and players who had bad builds (Sometimes in Rift if you didn't play the flavor of the month you did half the DPS) were left on the sideline and never got to raid. This caused a lot of grief in my leadership and the members. In Rift for example some encounters were DPS burn targets. People ended up never getting to raid these encounters because of their poor numbers/class. In Rift if you played a scout class for example some DPS builds did 2-3 times the DPS as other builds.
This could have happened in Vanguard to some degree (Rift had a different class set up) also. In my guild it only happened a little bit during the beginning when we had a big guild and we just started raiding. But after no updates and improvemend to the game we lost players and it didn't remain an issue but in Rift I had this issue for almost two years.
I can be honest I over recruited initially but cut back a ton after raiding started. Then it became a point where you always had too many players or not enough. This is a problem you encounter when you have raid caps. You are always telling people they can't raid or you are begging players to show up. After awhile players get tired of being benched and they dislike it when you actually beg them to attend a raid now because you need them.
I'd be carefull when creating raids also that are built for only 24 players. In Rift I used to always have to sit people out of raids because no matter how hard they tried they would never reproduce the numbers other players were able to pull. This wasn't because these players had the wrong build, or that they didn't know what they were doing. These players that couldn't pull the same numbers would practice their rotation for hours with those that could. They had the same gear same system specs sometimes but just because they lived in Australia/Italy for example with poor connections they would never be able to attend a raid because if they did somebody else would have to make up their lack of DPS. In Vanguard I saw these same players kick butt and tank/DPS/Heal just fine.
I'm all in favor of a raiding system similiar to Vanguard. I would however like a system in place that allows me to pull (carry) a couple extra people along. These players could be brand new to the game with terrible gear. They maynot last long enough to live through the entire encounter but they will start learning the target and eventually over time they will have the expierence and the gear to help the team/community. I'm ok with a system that increases the encounters difficulty or a system that the more people you bring the lower amount of drops you will attain. This type of system allows the GUILD to decide how they want to raid.
So my vote is a Vanguard raiding system with an Everquest twist. :)
Chaj said:Well remember though that if you trivialize the risk you also trivialize the reward. If a boss intended for 30 players drops 3 pieces of loot then 10% of your raid gets loot. If 60 players kill it then 5% of your raid get loot. This means that team A that kills the boss with 30 players gears up more quickly and is able to advance to the more challenging bosses before group B that takes twice as long to gear. Now of course group B could double their raid size and keep up but then even less get loot. So with an uncapped raid there is essentially a stronger risk vs reward mechanic than if you have a certain number of people. Finally, the smaller team will have the advantage in most open world scenarios. If one team can kill with 30 and one team needs 60, the team that needs 30 can probably get a few pulls in before the team of 60 is even online. So while a large zerg may trivialize the risk of death it does not trivialize risk vs reward. It strengthens it.
The risk isn't about how many people in the raid get a reward, it's whether you win the fight or not. Your idea only addresses the quantity of the reward. Risk vs. Reward is suppose to be about the risk justifying the quality of the reward, not the number of pieces that drop. You might have a foot to stand on if you cannot repeat the raid, but since you can, the rate of drop is not a factor against the risk. If you want open raids and bring 60 for a 40 person raid, then the loot should drop in quality as well as in quantity commensurate with how much you cheat the system.
Vorthanion said:Chaj said:Well remember though that if you trivialize the risk you also trivialize the reward.
The risk isn't about how many people in the raid get a reward, it's whether you win the fight or not. Your idea only addresses the quantity of the reward. Risk vs. Reward is suppose to be about the risk justifying the quality of the reward, not the number of pieces that drop. You might have a foot to stand on if you cannot repeat the raid, but since you can, the rate of drop is not a factor against the risk. If you want open raids and bring 60 for a 40 person raid, then the loot should drop in quality as well as in quantity commensurate with how much you cheat the system.
I am having a lot of trouble responding to this... It seems to me that you are saying that the reward is just killing the boss and not the loot? However your second part says that the loot is the reward. I think that if the only reward is killing the boss then you are right. But quantity of loot is definatley a major part if loot is the reward. Assuming that you kill bosses on equal frequency with a smaller group then the smaller group will pull ahead in terms of gear and their ability to progress. So if you risk dying twice as much you will be rewarded with twice as much gear and vice versa? It seems like a pretty literal sense of risk vs reward.
Angrykiz said:One huge mistake to be avoided is lagging out people with mid range systems during raid time.
Can you think of any MMO's in recent years that runs well with hundreds of people on the screen ? The last one I can think of was City of Heroes lol.
Archeage, Aion, World of Warcraft, Tera, Wildstar, C9.
If we date back a little further than there is Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot.
I am sure I am missing some, but hundreds of people is not really a challenge anymore. It is almost always possible to tweak your settings so that you wont lag. If you do maybe you should consider upgrading your PC.
Also this is a social MMO. Massive Multiplayer. If I want to see the same 20 faces everyday I should play WoW.
Anasyn said:The only thing that killed my raiding experience in Rift was making people sit out every night because of the raid cap. My officers and I would sit out of raids all the time. We also had to keep track of how well people performed. What ended up happening is new players, and players who had bad builds (Sometimes in Rift if you didn't play the flavor of the month you did half the DPS) were left on the sideline and never got to raid. This caused a lot of grief in my leadership and the members. In Rift for example some encounters were DPS burn targets. People ended up never getting to raid these encounters because of their poor numbers/class. In Rift if you played a scout class for example some DPS builds did 2-3 times the DPS as other builds.
This is another very good point, especially when we look at what has been said about the classes and what the definition for balancing is in RotF. Capped raids will cause a large amount of people to be left out simply because their class is not effective. Take enchanters for example. Lets assume that their role is to be a CC class and have a mana regen buff. If I can only bring 24 players to a raid and it is a single target fight or mobs are immune to CC as is the case with most bosses, then I am not going to bring an enchanter. The same could be said for any lower performing dps/tank/healer. Raid comps will become things like 2 warriors, 10 wizards, 5 rogues, 1 monk(to pull), and 6 clerics. Obviously there will be some variation but people will definatley get passed on because of the class they chose.