GoofyWarriorGuy said:A lot
Dont pick apart my words and try to use them against me. You are clearly a very intelligent person and you know the intent of what I was saying.
If YOU CHOOSE to stay and compete for 5 hours. Noone is harassing anyone. You made a choice knowing what the foreseeable future would entail.
The harassment comes when the player who came into "your camp" follows you around after you leave and continually attempts to KS you. That is griefing. Not someone walking in and competing vs you on a named mob.
disposalist said:A lot
And then this goes to the both of you. Again. Both clearly intelligent people. You know for a fact regardless of what your personal stance is on it. You dont own the mob. You dont own any of them. Its NOT the same as something stealing your drink that you PAID for and now own. All you own is your copy of the game.
It seems like... and this tends to happen a lot, that people are thinking the sky is falling because of VRs stance on 1 aspect of the game that we dont even know will matter. A stance that has pretty much been the same in EQ as well... a game that most people hope Pantheon will "re-create".
dorotea said:((most people will *want* to be courtious but simply don't know what that *is* in an MMORPG or indeed specifically in Pantheon.))
Much like the endless debates over what need versus greed means in rolling for loot.
Back in the day it was generally accepted that "need" meant the character rolling could use the item as an upgrade for itself.
Over the years more and more people rolled "need" on everything and seemed to genuinely not understand the difference between needing the specific item and needing gold (which almost everyone does) so that any sellable item is "need". Some were just greedy or stupid but many didn't want to be rude they just had no idea what "need" meant. Ditto with the concept of a "camp".
I just wanted to touch on this particular point.
I'd argue that it's not so much new players not understanding the difference between OUR version of "need versus greed", but rather that they simple don't agree with it. To them (and the more I think about it, me too), "needing" an item is inherently MORE greedy than everyone simply rolling, as the person in question not only gets their immediate upgrade, but also the subsequent funds from selling what was just replaced.
This isn't to try and derail the thread with that philosophical argument, but to point out that the new generation not agreeing with us old SoB's isn't necessarily the same as them not understanding. Understanding our little EQ nuances isn't going to be the problem - disagreeing with it will be. I'm willing to bet that we'll find our antiquated ways obsolete even in Pantheon once the population becomes swollen with players that didn't grow up in the same MMO environment that we did.
Tralyan said:I just wanted to touch on this particular point.
I'd argue that it's not so much new players not understanding the difference between OUR version of "need versus greed", but rather that they simple don't agree with it. To them (and the more I think about it, me too), "needing" an item is inherently MORE greedy than everyone simply rolling, as the person in question not only gets their immediate upgrade, but also the subsequent funds from selling what was just replaced.
This is so true. I always abided by whatever loot method the group wanted. But the old school need the item cause you can use it... I just dont agree with. I've seen people need on items that were valued at thousands of pp. And they upgrade 1 slot... what about the 9 slots I can upgrade by selling it... how is it different? I just never will understand that mentality. I almost feel it's more selfish than just everyone rolling lol.
Porygon said:Tralyan said:I just wanted to touch on this particular point.
I'd argue that it's not so much new players not understanding the difference between OUR version of "need versus greed", but rather that they simple don't agree with it. To them (and the more I think about it, me too), "needing" an item is inherently MORE greedy than everyone simply rolling, as the person in question not only gets their immediate upgrade, but also the subsequent funds from selling what was just replaced.
This is so true. I always abided by whatever loot method the group wanted. But the old school need the item cause you can use it... I just dont agree with. I've seen people need on items that were valued at thousands of pp. And they upgrade 1 slot... what about the 9 slots I can upgrade by selling it... how is it different? I just never will understand that mentality. I almost feel it's more selfish than just everyone rolling lol.
This tells me that NBG had even more interpretations. As with my friends and guildmates, NBG only applied to simple loot, not any high value items, unless that item was declared as a possible drop and everyone agreed to allow a certain player to have it for the betterment of the guild.
Any rare items tended to be a discussion and a RNG roll for all.
We also often did NBG round robin, so once you got an item, you could only roll greed until everyone collected something. And often if I won something and someone in the group said "Dang, that would have upgrade my xxxx slot.", I usually passed it to them. Guess that's why I was always poor. :)
Fulton said:Porygon said:Tralyan said:I just wanted to touch on this particular point.
I'd argue that it's not so much new players not understanding the difference between OUR version of "need versus greed", but rather that they simple don't agree with it. To them (and the more I think about it, me too), "needing" an item is inherently MORE greedy than everyone simply rolling, as the person in question not only gets their immediate upgrade, but also the subsequent funds from selling what was just replaced.
This is so true. I always abided by whatever loot method the group wanted. But the old school need the item cause you can use it... I just dont agree with. I've seen people need on items that were valued at thousands of pp. And they upgrade 1 slot... what about the 9 slots I can upgrade by selling it... how is it different? I just never will understand that mentality. I almost feel it's more selfish than just everyone rolling lol.
This tells me that NBG had even more interpretations. As with my friends and guildmates, NBG only applied to simple loot, not any high value items, unless that item was declared as a possible drop and everyone agreed to allow a certain player to have it for the betterment of the guild.
Any rare items tended to be a discussion and a RNG roll for all.
We also often did NBG round robin, so once you got an item, you could only roll greed until everyone collected something. And often if I won something and someone in the group said "Dang, that would have upgrade my xxxx slot.", I usually passed it to them. Guess that's why I was always poor. :)
We often did some iteration of round robin as well in my guild. Once someone successfully needed an item, upgrading something in the process, they no longer rolled on anything until everyone got an item. That way, at least everyone was getting some kind of financial gain and not just the guy who got the upgrade.
I think a lot of the confusion here is due to people having had completely different past game experiences. To those coming from an Everquest background, reading things like "It's not kill/camp stealing it's competition! Adopt a competative mindset!" the only reaction is "lol wut?!". The game design really did not allow for this to be a realistic answer in 99% of all game interactions. The PNP was added specifically due to this fact. Most of this will be based on classic Everquest as that's what I am familiar with...
You have to look at the way gameplay worked. The vast majority of desirable items dropped off a single spawn. A large number of these outside of raid mobs were either fairly rare spawns, the drop was rare or it was the worst...a rare drop from a rare spawn. These were almost always static spawns though some had weird methods of spawning them. A lot of them required some work to clear to or to "break" the spawn by killing it in such a way that it would become more manageable. Add to this that mana using classes in Everquest were essentially required to sit on the ground to regenerate the resource that allowed them to cast spells. This was a slow process so these classes needed to spend more time sitting than they did moving around or fighting. All of this led to the idea of "camping" or essentially staking your claim to an area that you or your group would sit in where someone would venture out of camp and pull mobs back to you to kill.
In Everquest the price for failure was typically pretty steep. If you died you'd lose experience, your gear would remain on your corpse, and depending on where you were, getting back to your corpse could be challenging. On top of this, with spawns being static, there were a limited number in any given area. The further away from camp you tried to pull mobs from the more likely you were to experience unintended consequences such as your puller dying, mobs pathing an odd direction and aggroing additional mobs you possibly could not handle, etc. With limited mobs in any given area/reasonable pull distance and the possibility of dying due to another group's failure it was almost never ideal to have two competing groups in the same "camp".
Classes in Everquest also contributed to the equation. Classes in Everquest were VASTLY different and had different strengths. Enchanters, Shaman, and Necros could solo things that other classes had virtually no hope of even attempting. Wizards, Rogues, and Enchanters (with charmed pet) could do damage that no one else could compete with (especially burst damage in the wizard's case). Clerics being the only class with Complete Heal were a requirement if anything for any endgame content. There was no balance. The vast majority of classes could not compete directly. Some classes like Warriors, Rogues, Clerics, would really shine in a group scenario but solo were pretty weak.
So to get back to the initial topic... You take a mob/camp that requires a ton of time if you are unlucky on spawns/drops and the logistics of camping it become absurd to do as a group and tend to fall into a situation where a solo character of a capable class is camping it. The "challenge" of most of these camps is being able to devote a large portion of time to clearing/breaking into the spawn, and then keeping it clear until you get the item you want.
Now let's say you are playing a shaman. You are a capable solo class but your damage is done with DoTs and it tends to be a slower process of killing. If someone shows up on a necromancer and decides that when the mob you are waiting for spawns, they are just going to kill it, there is absolutely nothing you can do to outcompete them. They do more damage than you, they have tricks you cannot hope compete with. You are essentially powerless if they decide to take the camp from you. You can swap in any number of classes here and the specific camp does have some impact etc but the described scenario will always play out. I know people will be like bring a friend or bring a group or whatever so let me just state that no class could out burst damage a wizard. To take it to the extreme level of absurdity before people say silly nonsense like that... MostDamageDone in Everquest was group based. If you had a group of 6 wizards no one is going to out MDD you on a single mob period.
The point of all this being... From an Everquest perspective... Making friends, grouping, gitting gud, whatever your idea of "outcompeting" someone is, is simply not a logical/realistic solution.. Hence where the idea of camp "ownership" comes in. This being a simple idea of if you were there first, it's temporarily yours until you leave or log off. It was essentially a neccessity to avoid a large percentage of the population being **** on. Initially staff had a hands off approach to this but as it started to cost them players the PNP was adopted and for the most part people were good to one another.
So from the perspective of someone who is looking to play Pantheon in hopes that it is the spiritual successor to the magic of Everquest seeing things like "Killstealing is not a punishable offense" raises a million different red flags.
1.) OMG It's going to be chaos how will I have nice relaxing game play with my friends when some doucher can just show up and stomp all over us and take our mobs without repurcussions
...then after having a bit to chill and hearing repeated comments about how Pantheon is not EQ and there won't be a need to camp things or there will be a way to compete etc etc blah blah..
2.) Wait so if killstealing won't matter because Pantheon won't be like EQ...
a.) Does that mean gameplay won't be the relaxing camp style gameplay of days of yore where we had time to socialize and now we're going to have to crawl all over dungeons to accomplish anything?
b.) Or does that mean that classes in Pantheon will be balanced to where they have some potential to compete 1v1 and end up with that boring WoW feel?
c.) Back to original...Oh god are they really going to go with an MDD based might makes right means of handling disputes over content?!?!?
d.) OMG are they planning to do something super crazy like the separate loot table everyone gets loot nonsense from WoW?!
e.) AHHHH IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD EVERYTHING IS GOING TO EXPLODE SAVE ME NOW WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE
...a bit later after actually calming down...
3.) Okay let's hope for the best... They probably just mean that if you are running around outside and you and some dude nukes the bat you just shot with an arrow and you petition the GM they are going to ignore it... Or if you are in an xp camp and some guy pulls one of the mobs that would typically be part of your camp and you cry to the GMs saying they are stealing your mobs they will probably ignore it... But hopefully if you are sitting at a camp for an item for 7 hours killing the same mob over and over and someone shows up with a wizard and just starts killing the spawn while you sit by helpless that this will be frowned upon and if you petition it you might get a response..maybe...
Also for the record I would like to throw my agreement behind the people who say that reputation is important but will not matter even the tiniest bit if the server rules allow for this sort of behavior. My opinion is that the game mechanics should allow for it but VR should have some loose social interaction rules/guidelines condemning it. I feel this would dissuade the majority of offenders. Make it like a RL speeding ticket. If you get caught you pay the penalty. I feel like having it be a grey area rather than set in stone or worse in game mechanics allows for emergent gameplay without having the general population feel like it's okay to be an ****** just because no where does it say they shouldn't. It worked pretty well in EQ imo. *shrug*
philo said:Instating rules that can't be enforced isn't a viable solution.
Most people will behave regardless.
They can be enforced, just not 100% of the time...much like real life. The police/laws don't stop all crime but their existence is a strong deterrent to most people, and those who do go ahead and commit crime still sometimes get away.
I get that some people hate camps because they might risk being blocked out from content by a group/guild monopolizing a spawn/area for a long period of time or just otherwise have a difficult time getting in due to popularity...but the alternative isn't better and only creates more problems/conflict. If it's all about competition then it's about might makes right, the stronger person wins and takes what they want. So you could have a nice camp somewhere and have been working for a long period of time toward getting a drop you were after when suddenly a better geared/higher level player or group rolls up and forces you out (there is no competition to be had there), now you expose players to the awful feelings of both loss and powerlessness not due to the game in any way but at the hands of other players. For a cooperative/teamwork/community based game centered on the challenge of the AI/Environment (PvE) this is entirely detrimental to player experience and very likely (as has been seen in the past) player retention. If someone is just holding a camp and you can't get in you don't experience those feelings of loss and powerlessness due to the aggression of other/stronger players.
Something to think about as well. I know alot of people are concerned that some people might not care about reputation. They might find others like them and band together to form groups of griefers etc.
In most games and on most servers... alot of the rules are determined by who is "in charge" or in other words the #1 guild. If the top guild has guidelines and morals they expect their members to follow... well most players will fall in line with those as well. If you're a competitive raider your eventual goal is to probably be the best. You can not be the best if you have the reputation of being a dick.
If the top guilds have a good relationship with each other, this is even more so.
Family guilds typically already follow a set of "rules" that show they are looking out for everyone and not just themselves.
The only issue with this. Is of the top guild decides to allow their members to do whatever they want. Well then we as a community have a few choices. Completely alienate that guild and never group with them, buff them, res them, sell to them etc. OR... (my favorite answer) leave the server. Abandon them on their own server and let them do whatever they want. Is exponentially easier for someone to leave a server and start a new who isnt max level in raid gear already..
Heck. I'll do one better to. If you end up choosing a server where the top guild is an entire group of dbags and you want to reroll. Seek me out, and I will personally help you make this jump to a new server and even assist in your leveling process if you so wish.
BeaverBiscuit said:I fully agree VR should ignore "he said, she said", but remember that videos are pretty easy to make and pretty hard to dispute. I'll even go so far as to say that if your rig can handle Pantheon when it comes out, it can handle having a clip to attach to a petition.
Also, combat logs with all the numbers can be easily stored. A camp can be proven especially if they assign temporary id numbers to their monsters, without even needing a video at this point.
And if VR can't afford to enforce the rules, the community may be able to help or might not, but it is ultimately a problem VR must fix or eat the loss in fanbase. I trust them enough that I doubt they will pick the loss in fanbase without a strong reason related to positive lore/gameplay.
To be frank, I can't think of a good gameplay reason to allow camp stealing except in the cases of people who camp something for a ridiculously long time (But honestly, just make that against the rules too), or the game costing too much to enforce the anti-ksing rule and still attract customers.
You're correct. Videos can show a whole lot. But that's assuming that you had something recording at the time that the event took place. And I think we can both agree that a majority of folks won't be recording for any old reason all the time unless they're capturing footage for videos or Twitch streaming.
You're second point comes back to the camps. I'm with you on this and am an old EQ guy myself. I think camps should be respected once claimed. But there's a lot of folks these days that just don't, even in EverQuest these days, and I'm not sure there's a good answer to fixing that. Etiquette would be the reasonable solution, but we know that only works if you have it. If it's a small few you're correct, there are things the community can do to help curtail it, but I think we can all be honest and say that the old way of community blackballing bad players probably won't work in this day and age, so another solution may have to be found. Preferably one that doesn't do more harm than good.
This would probably be a good place to make such suggestions but ponder this before you do. How can I fix this problem? And how can my idea go horribly wrong? It's a fun excercise. ;p
Kratuk said:You're correct. Videos can show a whole lot. But that's assuming that you had something recording at the time that the event took place. And I think we can both agree that a majority of folks won't be recording for any old reason all the time unless they're capturing footage for videos or Twitch streaming.
Windows has a built in record/capture that can recall the last 30 seconds and Nvidia has one that can be set to remember/recall the past 30 seconds to 20 minutes of gameplay (I imagine ATI cards have the same).
Porygon said:Something to think about as well. I know alot of people are concerned that some people might not care about reputation. They might find others like them and band together to form groups of griefers etc.
In most games and on most servers... alot of the rules are determined by who is "in charge" or in other words the #1 guild. If the top guild has guidelines and morals they expect their members to follow... well most players will fall in line with those as well. If you're a competitive raider your eventual goal is to probably be the best. You can not be the best if you have the reputation of being a dick.
If the top guilds have a good relationship with each other, this is even more so.
Family guilds typically already follow a set of "rules" that show they are looking out for everyone and not just themselves.
The only issue with this. Is of the top guild decides to allow their members to do whatever they want. Well then we as a community have a few choices. Completely alienate that guild and never group with them, buff them, res them, sell to them etc. OR... (my favorite answer) leave the server. Abandon them on their own server and let them do whatever they want. Is exponentially easier for someone to leave a server and start a new who isnt max level in raid gear already..
Heck. I'll do one better to. If you end up choosing a server where the top guild is an entire group of dbags and you want to reroll. Seek me out, and I will personally help you make this jump to a new server and even assist in your leveling process if you so wish.
Thank you. Yes. Most often the top guild determines the entire sub-formation of server issues. If the top guild decides they want competition they will create a rotation schedule. I played on Nameless with LoS and even though they had the Batphone.... They still agreed to a rotation schedule with some boss mobs at one point in time. They might have blocked family guilds, but they agreed to share some of the more competitive spawns at one point in time. This might have been after they had moved onto the new expansions, but it still happened.
People quoted in this post: dorotea, Porygon, jezebel, Kratuk.
dorotea said: Goofy - I don't necessarily disagree with any of your conclusions but I *do* disagree with your interpretation of the term "griefing".
Griefing, and I suspect most of us would agree, goes beyond selfishness or rudeness. It goes beyond someone wanting mobs and taking them even though you are there first. It goes beyond someone wanting a boss and taking it after you cleared the way to it.
Griefing by general definition means doing things specifically directed at another player with the intent to harm that player. It means an intent to cause another player grief, not simply doing something for one's own benefit without caring if it hurts another player. By analogy, think of the distinction between amoral and immoral.
If I steal your boss or mobs once there is no way to prove it is griefing unless I come out and say it is. If I do it to the same player over and over, now there is clear evidence of a violation of anti-griefing rules.
I don't think kill-stealing should be allowed. I don't think training should be allowed. I think the game mechanics should prevent either of these so they cannot even be done once. But neither is griefing without a specific intent to do them to hurt someone else not to help yourself.
I understand where you are coming from, but I don't really agree. You use the word 'intent' to decide if it's griefing, assuming that if a person doesn't really intend to hurt you then you can't really call it griefing. As if his real reasons for doing something are what define the result. "I only stole his watch because I'm greedy, not because I wanted to hurt the guy." The result is still stealing. Your intent doesn't play a part on if it's griefing or not.
I would postulate that it's your knowledge that it will cause grief that determines if it's griefing and malicious or not. Not your underlying motivations for doing it.
Now of course there is the idea that you may not know that you are stealing a kill and it could just be an honest mistake. If the person/group just wanders in and attacks a boss not realizing that another group was there, then yes it may not be griefing since there was no knowledge that this might offend or harm the other players. They just saw what was there and took it without a care.
When it becomes griefing from my point of view is when the action you are doing is something you know will cause the other person grief. If the group came in and saw the other group getting ready to engage, and they make the choice at that point to 'beat them to it', they KNOW that this will cause the other group to become upset. So it doesn't matter if they are doing it just because they are greedy, or because they just want to annoy the other group. The point is, they knew it would upset the other group and they made the choice to do it. That in my mind is griefing. The true motivations for the actions are not what define the result, only the knowledge of it.
Porygon said: Dont pick apart my words and try to use them against me. You are clearly a very intelligent person and you know the intent of what I was saying.
I am sorry that you took that as a personal attack. I was not targeting you as a person and I would never have assumed that disagreeing with your opinions would make you feel like I thought you were a bad guy in any way. Just because somebody disagrees with me does not mean I dislike the person, and I do appreciate that you can have a different point of view than mine. I was just hoping to show Kilsin that many of us don't agree with your view and we would hope that he and the rest of VR take our viewpoint into consideration rather than just assuming everyone will be ok with their current viewpoint.
This kinda plays into what I was referring to. It never occurred to me that if I disagreed with Porygon that he would take this as me griefing him. It was my knowledge of the event that would make it griefing or not. If it could clearly be displayed that I understood that my words were going to make him feel like he himself was under attack, then you might make the argument that I griefed him, since I would have knowledge that he was going to have grief over it. That doesn't mean I might not have done wrong, and perhaps I did do something wrong since he did feel bad about it and I appolgize. I will take more care in the future to try and be clear that I never have any desire to target a person because of their opinions.
Porygon said: The harassment comes when the player who came into "your camp" follows you around after you leave and continually attempts to KS you. That is griefing. Not someone walking in and competing vs you on a named mob.
'Continually attempts to KS'. See... again you use words that suggest to me that you know that the first KS was still a KS. You seem to connect griefing with a repeated offense. If I offend you on purpose one time it's ok, but if I offend you multiple times on purpose only then am I wrong.
'competing vs you on a named mob'. As I mentioned before that I thought many people were equating Compete with Kill Stealing. Competition is still a good thing and I used an example in my post about how two groups working towards the same target was all fair. The point I was making though is that there are times when players will choose not to compete and will instead take what they did not earn, knowing that this is what they are doing. I was asking Kilsin to admit the difference between these actions and tell us that the Kill Stealing version is not healthy competition and thus should be condemned in the Play Nice Policy.
Porygon said: You know for a fact regardless of what your personal stance is on it. You dont own the mob. You dont own any of them. Its NOT the same as something stealing your drink that you PAID for and now own. All you own is your copy of the game.
Ah, see this is actually part of the debate. What is it you are paying for when you pay your subscription fee. We all know that when we pay we are agree'ing to abide by the rules of the game. Anyone who fails to follow the rules can be excluded from the game. We are asking VR to add to the game a specific rule. We are doing this ahead of time so that the rule is in place before we click any 'I agree' button and start playing.
You are correct that it is not exactly like stealing a drink in real life. But we are asking that part of our subscription fee includes protection from a player griefing us while we play this game. As you have said before, we have a choice on if we play. If we don't like the rules we can choose not to play. My point to Kilsin was that many people are not going to like KS'ing not being against the rules and they should really consider making it against the rules, or many people might choose not to play.
jezebel said: My opinion is that the game mechanics should allow for it but VR should have some loose social interaction rules/guidelines condemning it. I feel this would dissuade the majority of offenders.
I agree. I do concede that not every case of kill stealing will be dealt with if there is a rule against it. Yes some people will get away with it. But generally it works out that many people will obey rules that are put in place. An old saying I've heard is... "There are three types of people who obey a law... those who agree with the law, those who agree that laws should be followed, and those who are afraid of the consequences of being caught disobeying the law." To take a D&D view of that statement, "Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil" (it doesn't fit exactly, but kinda).
Porygon said: In most games and on most servers... alot of the rules are determined by who is "in charge" or in other words the #1 guild. If the top guild has guidelines and morals they expect their members to follow... well most players will fall in line with those as well. If you're a competitive raider your eventual goal is to probably be the best. You can not be the best if you have the reputation of being a dick.
If the top guilds have a good relationship with each other, this is even more so.
Family guilds typically already follow a set of "rules" that show they are looking out for everyone and not just themselves.
The only issue with this. Is of the top guild decides to allow their members to do whatever they want. Well then we as a community have a few choices. Completely alienate that guild and never group with them, buff them, res them, sell to them etc. OR... (my favorite answer) leave the server. Abandon them on their own server and let them do whatever they want. Is exponentially easier for someone to leave a server and start a new who isnt max level in raid gear already.
This is a big part of the game, the community and the choices they make to create the culture of the server/shard. I really am looking forward to becoming part of a server community as well as a guild community in Pantheon. But I also am aware that as a community grows in size, so does the difficulty in maintaining a consistent culture and ideology. Just as in the real world, as a population increases, so will the differences in values and what one accepts as ok and not ok. Just look at the polorization you see in the real world where one part of a country has a much different view on things than another part of the same country. In democratic countries we try to make laws jointly and with consensus but that doesn't always work out since as you brought up 'Who is in charge'. Sometimes rules need to be put in place that protect us from 'who is in charge'. (please don't start debating real world politics, I am trying to talk about the concept of politics without bringing up any specific real world politics).
As for your idea of 'leave a server and start new'. This is always an option, and I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't choose this option. I'm glad we can have that option. I'm not talking about taking away the choice to start new on a different server (or maybe even transfering your character over). But I do think that we should have rules that can protect us from that being our best option. Because in a situation you describe where a very powerful and large guild rampantly KS other players with no checks from their leaders... leaving the server probably would be your best option. I'd rather that not be my best option.
Kratuk said: You're correct. Videos can show a whole lot. But that's assuming that you had something recording at the time that the event took place.
I'm guessing that you won't see this, since you probably didn't read my long post before and you might skip over this one, but I will respond anyway and refer you to my post about how a GM might be able to view what happend without the player needing to 'record' anything. https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/8659/death-cam-type-feature-as-a-gm-tool/view/post_id/164166
Not only does it not require the player to record and send a video, but it takes up tons less space than a video would and it's using data the server would already be logging and saving anyway.
The least toxic environment I have ever played in was when all NPC's were contested in FFXI. There was no such thing as kill-stealing. There was no expectation of ownership just because a player was hanging out in a given area, but players did still form organic boundaries for XP camps because it just didn't make sense to try and over-crowd an area when there were generally better options elsewhere. If mobs are truly contested then we should probably stop using the term kill-stealing. When the word stealing is used, it implies both ownership and theft. If VR takes on the stance that they frown upon KS'ing then yes, there will be drama. People have a reason to be upset because now these legal actions being taken already have that negative connotation attached to them and it's not just them who feel it's crappy behavior, it's also recognized by the developers. In a nutshell, it just comes off like a necessary evil that cannot be overcome.
If it is instead stated that all mobs are contested (other than those that are force-popped which can be temporarily locked to those who spawn them) there is no sense of ownership, period. Nobody has their mobs stolen from them because they aren't owned in the first place. Language is extremely important when it comes to settling how all of this will work, especially when it comes to players managing their expectations. I totally understand both sides of the argument here. Personally, I would like to see things remain exactly the way they are now but with a few changes to the language for more transparency. I think it's reasonable for people to make the argument that having something stolen from them causes them grief -- grief is subjective after all and if a player experiences something being stolen from them and it's an action that is viewed negatively by the Gods, sure, they have a point. What this comes down to is two separate forces that conflict with one another -- ownership versus kill credit. There should probably only be one. It's complicated because kill-credit is what the game recognizes while ownership is something the players have to agree on.
oneADseven said: If mobs are truly contested then we should probably stop using the term kill-stealing. By adopting that term, we're suggesting that someone owns something that is then stolen by another player.
You make a valid point. If everyone agreed ahead of time that there was no such thing as Kill Stealing and that every mob was always contested all of the time, then nobody could cry foul. Perhaps this is the reality VR is hoping to create. My point was to suggest that most players will not enjoy this and will eventually choose not to play. I may be wrong and maybe this will be a total non-issue. I obviously don't know exactly how every player is going to react and this is my guesses on how they will feel based on my experiences and seeing the complaints that this caused throughout the history of EQ1 (even to this day people complain about this and it causes attrition). Let's just hope that what ends up being the rule will cause the best game experience for the most players.
It sounds like camp recognition was an emergent behavior in EQ. Are we going to try and force it into existence in Pantheon? If so, will it be officially recognized? If camping is already established or recognized then it can never be emergent and it makes sense for people who are familiar with this type of social construct to cling to the nuances that have been associated with it in the past. At the same time, I would like to point out that I have been playing MMO's for 15 years and "camping" has never been an officially recognized thing in any of the games I have played. I like to think that Terminus will be a new world that fosters it's own wave of emergent behavior and it's hard to get excited about that when it seems like there is an expectation that emergent behavior from 16+ years ago that I have never personally experienced has already been adopted by a segment of the playerbase. I don't like the idea of invisible quarantines populating an open-world game before it's even built. If we want those then just make it an in-game feature that players will absolutely recognize instead of assuming that everybody is looking through the same rose colored glasses.
oneADseven said:It sounds like camp recognition was an emergent behavior in EQ. Are we going to try and force it into existence in Pantheon? If so, will it be officially recognized? If camping is already established or recognized then it can never be emergent and it makes sense for people who are familiar with this type of social construct to cling to the nuances that have been associated with it in the past. At the same time, I would like to point out that I have been playing MMO's for 15 years and "camping" has never been an officially recognized thing in any of the games I have played. I like to think that Terminus will be a new world that fosters it's own wave of emergent behavior and it's hard to get excited about that when it seems like there is an expectation that emergent behavior from 16+ years ago that I have never personally experienced has already been adopted by a segment of the playerbase. I don't like the idea of invisible quarantines populating an open-world game before it's even built. If we want those then just make it an in-game feature that players will absolutely recognize instead of assuming that everybody is looking through the same rose colored glasses.
Yes, in EQ, camping was emergent behavior, which Jezebel explained why. Quite simply, there was a certain number of players, and a certain number of desirable mobs. Zones had a wide level range, so while you and your group may be capable of adventuring into SolA, you may not be high enough to go deep into it. But other groups of higher level, find the entrance a little low for them but can find good camps deeper in.
So what eneded up happening is that zones and dungeons, ended up with camps.
Since the named mobs weren't always "up" or had to be spawned, or had placeholders that you had to kill repeatedly until the RNG let the named you sought to spawn, you could spend hours and in some cases days fighting the same few mobs hoping to get the named mob to spawn.
So what many EQ players are really kind of thinking in the sense of camp or KSing, is that they may have spent hours killing these mobs to get the nmed to spawn, only to have some random player run by as the named spawns and they kill them and call it competition.
In most games that came later, you had instances so there was less mob competition since you could have a whole set of your own mobs, and most areas tended to be geared toward a specific narrow level range of players, so if you were there, chances were you could handle any mob in the zone. Add the lack of consequences on death, so taking the risk to go somewhere you weren't the proper level for was never really a concern, you try, you fail , you move on. In EQ, if you try and you fail, you spend the next hour or more trying to get your stuff back and then have to go make up for the lost XP. There was good reason to use caution and play smart.
Fulton -- The game I referred to was FFXI which was 99% open world. There was also a meaningful death penalty, meaningful travel, and de-leveling. EQ and FFXI were very similar in those regards. The big difference between the two is that in FFXI, it was only the XP "camps" that formed organically and served as boundaries that players would generally respect. Most folks wouldn't over-crowd a given area for XP purposes because it just wasn't efficient for progression. If an area was easily accessible and loaded with NPC's then you would probably see some competition ... if you didn't want do deal with that, you might have to venture a bit deeper into the zone and find a more secluded and less "convenient" area. When it came to names, however, these were considered a precious resource and competition was always accepted as fair play. This sense of open competition started in the very first zone. FFXI had the most meaningful loot and best economy I have ever seen in an online world and that's mostly because of how the supply vs demand worked in that game. If you wanted something, you couldn't just go lock down an area and hold it for 24 hours or however long you wanted until you got it. Sometimes, you would see multiple groups "camping" the area where a named would spawn, each attempting to kill place-holders or other nearby mobs and hoping for a chance to kill the named when it spawned.
There was never an assumption that players owned the land or the mobs that spawn on it. Competition was universally accepted as a good thing and as such, kill-stealing and all the drama that goes along with it was never a thing. Killing names felt more like a treasure hunting expedition. Navigating a zone, or crawling a dungeon was always great from start to finish. You don't zone in and ask "Hey what part of this zone isn't locked down so I can go lock it down?" Every zone was meaningful from beginning to end. If you wanted to get an XP Camp going, that was relatively easy and the boundaries for these were almost always respected. If you wanted to go hunting for a named, you could join the club with everybody else that enjoyed the thrill of hunting and go about your business. Competition was fun, not something to be feared. Where I come from, player etiquette is respecting fair/healthy competition and congratulating people when they got the named and it's rare drop even if you were trying to compete with them for that same achievement.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:People quoted in this post: Porygon
Let me be clear. I never took you responding as a direct attack or "griefing" of me. You apologized and then literally twisted my words once again. I'm trying to use the terminology that was provided in this thread. If I didnt use that, the example would look like this.
A player walking into an area that you decided to hunt in, and starts killing mobs in said area is not griefing.
You make the decision to stay in that area and compete directly with this player for several hours for some or all of the mobs is also not griefing.
The griefing comes when you leave the area, and said player decides to follow you wherever you go. Also killing mobs you decide to attack. In this instance they are personally attacking you and attempting to ruin your gameplay.
Here's the fact of the matter. If pantheon wanted to regulate KSing, they would make some sort of "first to engage" mechanic. They wont, because competition is supposed to be a fundamental aspect of an open world game. Whether competition for raid mobs, or solo names.
If you dont like any form of player competition, I'm not sure what you're expecting.
The people that want "camps" and "KSing" to be recognized and respected by GMs and guides are the same people that say they dont wsnt to see instances because it ruins the social aspect of the game. You want instances... just not actual instances. You want little portions of zones that you can call your own and not have to deal with anyone ever trying to take that away. It's silly.
oneADseven said:Fulton -- The game I referred to was FFXI which was 99% open world. There was also a meaningful death penalty, meaningful travel, and de-leveling. EQ and FFXI were very similar in those regards. The big difference between the two is that in FFXI, it was only the XP "camps" that formed organically and served as boundaries that players would generally respect. Most folks wouldn't over-crowd a given area for XP purposes because it just wasn't efficient for progression. If an area was easily accessible and loaded with NPC's then you would probably see some competition ... if you didn't want do deal with that, you might have to venture a bit deeper into the zone and find a more secluded and less "convenient" area. When it came to names, however, these were considered a precious resource and competition was always accepted as fair play. This sense of open competition started in the very first zone. FFXI had the most meaningful loot and best economy I have ever seen in an online world and that's mostly because of how the supply vs demand worked in that game. If you wanted something, you couldn't just go lock down an area and hold it for 24 hours or however long you wanted until you got it. Sometimes, you would see multiple groups "camping" the area where a named would spawn, each attempting to kill place-holders or other nearby mobs and hoping for a chance to kill the named when it spawned.
There was never an assumption that players owned the land or the mobs that spawn on it. Competition was universally accepted as a good thing and as such, kill-stealing and all the drama that goes along with it was never a thing. Killing names felt more like a treasure hunting expedition. Navigating a zone, or crawling a dungeon was always great from start to finish. You don't zone in and ask "Hey what part of this zone isn't locked down so I can go lock it down?" Every zone was meaningful from beginning to end. If you wanted to get an XP Camp going, that was relatively easy and the boundaries for these were almost always respected. If you wanted to go hunting for a named, you could join the club with everybody else that enjoyed the thrill of hunting and go about your business. Competition was fun, not something to be feared. Where I come from, player etiquette is respecting fair/healthy competition and congratulating people when they got the named and it's rare drop even if you were trying to compete with them for that same achievement.
In EQ those named camps most often were XP camps where groups/players would go to get exp and a chance to see/obtain some better than normal loot. If there were multiple groups contesting the same area then that dies as you can't really pull and level when you have to focus on competing. There was a lot of excitement in EQ as you approached different levels and knew you would be at the minimum socially accepted level to join the next named camp etc, it really went a long way to alleviate the monotonoy and "grind" of leveling when at any moment the next repop might be the rare. The excitement that the next pop might be the named is robbed to people like me if it's open competition, that excitement becomes anxiety and if popped and someone else claims: dejection (and total frustration if you had been working at it for a long period of time and some new person shows up and takes it).
The competition you speak of is fun to *some* people, the "thrill of the hunt" is only thrilling to some. In EQ if you weren't in a camp you didn't expect to get the loot from it and you had no loss, your time was spent elsewhere and not at a loss. So when you were in a camp trying to get an item all the time spent toward getting the name pop and winning a roll were progress toward the goal, with reasonable odds of return for your effort. Generally speaking people like to know their efforts aren't for nothing and they aren't wasting time, in open competition you could spend days/weeks or more with countless hours trying to claim/kill a contested named and have absolutely nothing to show for it but if it were a camp you would at least have earned that amount of time worth of exp, basic drops, and maybe even a common drop or two from whatever named.
Camps weren't a guarantee for players to get what they wanted though, sometimes they would have a hard time getting into the camp(s) due to popularity and when they did get in RNG might not pop the named spawn for hours and when it did spawn it might just have the common drop no one really wants, then when it did drop the rare you still had to win a roll vs the other 5 players. So in that sense even with camps you were generally (outside of friend and some guild groups that practiced NBG) in "competition" and might see a handful of rare drops but lose the rolls on them. But at least you got the exp and some basic drops in the meantime, your efforts weren't for nothing and you still got the excitement every time you saw the named pop and the subsequent excitement clicking loot to see what dropped.
Iksar said:Stuff
I feel like you missed the entire point of his post. He stated because the rules were laid out from the get go, it created a less toxic environment because people understood the rules and abided by them. Yet the community was still able to hash some things out... like organically formed camps.
If the rules are clearly laid out from the beginning. We can allow each server to dictate the "social rules" it wants to abide by.
@ Iksar
The excitement you speak of sounds like a snoozefest to me. It's just a matter of time ... it's just a matter of time ... it's just a matter of time. Grinding in FFXI was amazing because of XP chains so the idea of having to hunt names in order to alleviate the monotony of the grind was non-existent. Grinding was fun. Hunting names was also a ton of fun. Sometimes you might be able to get away with both at the same time, but if you were ever limited to just one, it was still fun. Much like you explained, there was a lot of excitement in FFXI as you approached different levels and knew you would be at the minimum socially accepted level to join the next XP camp. This is because players mostly strived to fight even-con or higher NPC's as a way to maximize the value of chaining and you wanted to keep the group within a reasonable level range to yield the best results for everybody.
It sounds like FFXI offered that same "having fun while camping" gameplay but it didn't require a named boss or forced policy to pull it off. Because of that, the entire game felt meaningful. You didn't have people feeling anxiety about losing their XP camp because there was always another camp. I'm sorry but what you describe sounds like a player-driven solution to make the most out of the (super limited or at least bottleneck-centric content) hand you guys were dealt. That same hand doesn't need to be dealt again 20 years later when there are clearly ways to make the entire world fun for everybody that doesn't equate open-world competition with anxiety. If people want to form boundaries organically, that's magic. If there is a PNP that says I absolutely have to, that's a rail. If kill-stealing and camps are an official/unofficial - forced/optional - ownership/kill-credit - compete/steal - agree/disagree conundrum then I can better relate to your position. My hope is that we don't need to relive that exact concoction of conflicting elements to find satisfaction in the semi-enforced / player driven solution that overcomes it in our average session. I love playing in a world full of people who aren't constantly feeling like they want to report someone because of organic interaction.
Of course it sounds like a snoozefest to you, you are a highly competitive player. If I am working toward a goal I'd rather it be just a matter of time instead of chasing a white whale with possibly nothing to show for it, especially when I have 20+ item slots to fill (not even including situational gear).
I'd find it very hard to recommend the game to a more casual playing spouse/kid/friend under high competition circumstances, where they'd likely end up spending way too much of their time being overrun by hardcore/competitive players. Most of my EQ friends didn't play FFXI because the gearing grind was absurd to them and (again) spending countless hours staring at a spot hoping for a spawn with likely nothing to show for it was a joke. The better option for more casual/time limited players at that point tends to be to become a gold farmer and hope to just buy the items they want. How exciting!
FFXI wasn't centered around competition. If someone wanted to relax and kick back in a camp, they could do that. Sometimes there might be a named nearby that you had a chance to claim, sometimes not. The excitement for me was playing in a living breathing world free of invisible quarantines. The excitement was interacting with other players in an environment where competition is socially accepted rather than feared. To your point ... if you didn't want to spend your time hunting a specific name, there was a giant world available with plenty of other meaningful names. If you didn't feel like hunting at all, crafting and harvesting were both excellent money makers, especially when combined. Things got really interesting when you focused on PVE adventuring through dangerous areas to harvest rare resources that could then be crafted into something desirable. Crafted gear was worth a lot in that game because it wasn't just a matter of time before everybody got what they wanted. Some of my favorite memories in that game are the exact scenario I just outlined ... adventuring to harvest, and then crafting stuff with what I found. You don't have to be a hardcore competitive player to enjoy some competition now and then just like you don't have to be a casual carebear to enjoy crafting and harvesting. In most other games, I couldn't stand crafting or harvesting. There was a trend in those games that didn't exist in FFXI.