Prefer Vanguard.
Dungeon crawling is preferable if I had to choose two. Standing in one place for hours is boring as hell.
Nimryl said:A camp is where you make it.. you dont have to camp and you don't have wander/roam for exp.
A camp is an unintended side effect of an unintended mechanic that has only existed in one game ever.
It's an important distinction, in my opinion, because it can potentially shape the entirety of how the group game is played.
Camps personally, most crawls turn into some weird linear complete tasks A-Z, kill boss mob that was waiting for you, rinse repeat. Where as, I feel with camps you can go into a dungeon, pick a section of that dungeon, camp specific inhabitants of said section of dungeon, which to me feels more natural.....just my 2 cents.
Liav said:Nimryl said:A camp is where you make it.. you dont have to camp and you don't have wander/roam for exp.
A camp is an unintended side effect of an unintended mechanic that has only existed in one game ever.
It's an important distinction, in my opinion, because it can potentially shape the entirety of how the group game is played.
One game ever? There's atleast two in my book. (EQ+FF11).
But regardless of that..
Like I said I don't see a problem. You either camp or you roam.. surely it's up to the group to decide?
Riply said:Camps personally, most crawls turn into some weird linear complete tasks A-Z, kill boss mob that was waiting for you, rinse repeat. Where as, I feel with camps you can go into a dungeon, pick a section of that dungeon, camp specific inhabitants of said section of dungeon, which to me feels more natural.....just my 2 cents.
Sounds like instanced dungeons in World of Warcraft.
That's not really dungeon crawling in the way I would use the term.
Nimryl said:One game ever? There's atleast two in my book. (EQ+FF11).
But regardless of that..
Like I said I don't see a problem. You either camp or you roam.. surely it's up to the group to decide?
You're right. One game ever is an exaggeration.
The problem is that in EQ for instance, roaming doesn't exist at all. It is kind of a problem because if camping becomes too mainstream, there's no reason to crawl.
Vanguard did this perfectly, imo. You could spend hours in a dungeon and roam all over the place. Maybe you find one quest way deep in the dungeon and you stay in that area for a bit until you finish it, then you continue.
Either way, after I came back to Phinigel I wanted to gouge my eyes out after the first 3 hours standing in one spot at GE gate.
Camps were never an intended thing. It's something the community as a whole began to use and mutually respected. Well in the beginning anyway. Now a days people generally don't even care if they are in your camp. It's the reason I stopped playing on the TLPs. 150-200 people in Lguk was a freaking nightmare. Would be lucky to get 4 mobs per respawn.
I personally prefer dungeon crawling for the most part but camps have their place as well.
Liav said:Nimryl said:One game ever? There's atleast two in my book. (EQ+FF11).
But regardless of that..
Like I said I don't see a problem. You either camp or you roam.. surely it's up to the group to decide?You're right. One game ever is an exaggeration.
The problem is that in EQ for instance, roaming doesn't exist at all. It is kind of a problem because if camping becomes too mainstream, there's no reason to crawl.
Vanguard did this perfectly, imo. You could spend hours in a dungeon and roam all over the place. Maybe you find one quest way deep in the dungeon and you stay in that area for a bit until you finish it, then you continue.
Either way, after I came back to Phinigel I wanted to gouge my eyes out after the first 3 hours standing in one spot at GE gate.
I don't which way they'll go. But all I can say is like.. in EQ you could roam but it was zone specific.. usually just in a big circle/path route.. but you could do it and it was actually much better exp than just being a static camp. So I mean for me it doesnt matter which way.. but if they design it without these design aspects in mind people will naturally create camps/roam anyway. I think it's mainly a choice thing.. I dont think they have to specifically design areas like that because it wouldn't feel like a real place. It's best left to people to decide.
Liav said:Riply said:Camps personally, most crawls turn into some weird linear complete tasks A-Z, kill boss mob that was waiting for you, rinse repeat. Where as, I feel with camps you can go into a dungeon, pick a section of that dungeon, camp specific inhabitants of said section of dungeon, which to me feels more natural.....just my 2 cents.
Sounds like instanced dungeons in World of Warcraft.
That's not really dungeon crawling in the way I would use the term.
Yea, it's going to be interesting to see how this shakes out. I will agree with @Liav in that such a linear experience is more often associated with an instanced scenario. With that said, much (if not all) of the non-instanced dungeons from Vanguard had quests associated with them, so in many ways the group was incentivized to always be moving forward to the next area (albeit, at a much slower pace). I think many players, myself included, tried to play Vanguard in a similar manner to classic Everquest (find a cool area, kill respective denizens, etc.) but often found it jarring and/or inefficient because the game just simply didn't encourage or reward that style of play.
With that said, there was much about the Vanguard dungeon style that I liked and early iterations of Pantheon feel more similar to Vanguard in that sense than Everquest, IMO (though many of the classes feel more like Everquest). I believe much of this will revolve around how much the Perception System plays into things and how much/little players are incentivized for pushing forward.
I guess we are all quite a bit different on this topic, as I use to love getting a good exp camp setup, and spending hours in the same spot. I like to kick back, have some drinks, listen to music, and just relax and grind while socializing. Don’t get me wrong, I also enjoy a good dungeon crawl from time to time, but ultimately, I prefer the camp alternative most of the time.
The first place that comes to mind, back in my EQ days, was setting up camps outside of Karnor’s castle, in Dreadlands, and camp grinding for hours. I can see why some people wouldn’t like it though, so I’m hoping we have multiple options.
I really didn't feel like the quests in Vanguard that "incentivized" you to crawl on where much different then instances in WoW. Following the quests still had you doing the step 1 "Go here search for this", step 2 "Kill that". It wasn't as rushed or clear in the exact sequence of events, but just as linear feeling in the end to me. Granted I only played Vanguard for beta and about 6 months after which.
Katalyzt said:I guess we are all quite a bit different on this topic, as I use to love getting a good exp camp setup, and spending hours in the same spot. I like to kick back, have some drinks, listen to music, and just relax and grind while socializing. Don’t get me wrong, I also enjoy a good dungeon crawl from time to time, but ultimately, I prefer the camp alternative most of the time.
The first place that comes to mind, back in my EQ days, was setting up camps outside of Karnor’s castle, in Dreadlands, and camp grinding for hours. I can see why some people wouldn’t like it though, so I’m hoping we have multiple options.
I loved grinding outside as well as inside Karnor's! Liked the area so much would bring back my higher level characters later on to sit outside some group and smack their mobs around while I worked on whatever weapon skill needed improvement. Great area to grind and socialize.
Riply said:Katalyzt said:I guess we are all quite a bit different on this topic, as I use to love getting a good exp camp setup, and spending hours in the same spot. I like to kick back, have some drinks, listen to music, and just relax and grind while socializing. Don’t get me wrong, I also enjoy a good dungeon crawl from time to time, but ultimately, I prefer the camp alternative most of the time.
The first place that comes to mind, back in my EQ days, was setting up camps outside of Karnor’s castle, in Dreadlands, and camp grinding for hours. I can see why some people wouldn’t like it though, so I’m hoping we have multiple options.
I loved grinding outside as well as inside Karnor's! Liked the area so much would bring back my higher level characters later on to sit outside some group and smack their mobs around while I worked on whatever weapon skill needed improvement. Great area to grind and socialize.
Just don't get caught slipping, or you may feel the wrath of Gorenaire. I remember when she would start flying around everyone in the zone would start to panic in /ooc and /shout.
In many ways I think this comes down to efficiency. If a group feels like they have the ability to stay in one spot and pull consistently, there's no reason for them to roam. Consider The Overthere in Kunark. Players would hang out at the entrance or camp on a side wall because there was such an abundance of roamers that there was no reason to move throughout the zone. You could theoretically do so, but it would be less efficient because you would frequently be fighting enemies that pathed too close to your group and triggered aggro when you were not ready. It was more efficient to sit in a safe spot and pull when ready.
That readiness was based on how they could manage their down time. In dungeons you're basically camping because you want a specific item or because it's the safest way to manage adds and roamers as well. The goal is to control it so that you fight when you want to fight.
Dungeon crawling is tough in a game with significant down time, unless there are way more empty spaces and rest areas than we are used to.
Safety, convenience, efficiency.... it's going to be tough to break that cycle of player behavior if they view camping as the best play style to progress and obtain loot. You'll definitely have to incentivize roaming in some way.
Hannar said:Dungeon crawling is tough in a game with significant down time, unless there are way more empty spaces and rest areas than we are used to.
Safety, convenience, efficiency.... it's going to be tough to break that cycle of player behavior if they view camping as the best play style to progress and obtain loot. You'll definitely have to incentivize roaming in some way.
I don't think that it's tough to do just really depends on how fast the respawn timer is set in my opinion. We used to dungeon crawl a lot in EQ. Stay at one camp for 5 minutes or so while pulling the next 2-3 packs then move up so you don't catch the respawns. Long as it's a well oiled group it works out pretty well. The only real downside is when you get a bad pull that can't be FD'd off. Then you end up behind on timing and possibly catch respawns.
I do agree that if they don't want static camps to happen there will have to be either a lot of randomness or some incentives to roam. Personally, I would love to see non static named. Meaning that named can spawn out of any of a certain type of mob rather than just 1-2 PHs, outside of quest mobs who imo should have their own static spawn points. This way the need for getting into a certain camp would be gone. Long as you were in the right zone and fighting the right type of mobs you had the chance to spawn the named you want/need. More incentive to explore the areas that don't have named rather than to just claim every named camp in the zone
To the OZONE could argue that their intended camp was the boss mobs and they were just making their way to them. They did mention responding and such so I do not see why it would not be possible. however, I could see this game setting up Xp camps all over any of those zones. I for one don't mind camps I really have had enough of the whole running dungeons as fast as possible thing.
I really enjoyed the hybrid dungeon crawl/camp and combat pacing of Vanguard. You would crawl from camp spot to camp spot, pulling and clearing mobs ahead so the group could safely move up. I loved this slow and tactical approach, and saw major similarities in Twitch stream #3. Once you reached your intended destination or found a good spot, you could set up a more permanent camp if desired, or roam the general area. Compared to EQ, VG had less downtime for mana regeneration, so you could crawl more judiciously without major complaints from heavy mana users. Even with moving the camp forward every dozen pulls or so, there was plenty of time for conversation.
Old school EQ camping is fine with me as well. There is plenty of room for good conversation to get to know your group mates. However, things get stale quickly when content is too trivial. The key here for devs will be making sure there is plenty of challenge in every pull.
In my experience it always came down to what your goal was. If you were camping a named for loot (camp) then you pulled the PH and spawns in the area. if you were going for exp then you killed everything in sight and moved until you couldnt find anything to kill (crawl).
Named camping is a fundamental part of building communities. Several groups may sit at a named mob and workout a rotation together, bonding as a community. If some ****** comes along and and tries to cause problems, the groups already there simply screw with the bad people by training mobs to them or causing them grief until they learn to behave and leave.
The community is better off afterwards.
I think the only real fundamental part is the downtime element. Whether you are sticking mainly to a single room and pulling to it, or your group is roaming, there has to be a point where you have to stop and rest that allows talking and strategizing. I'm fine with either as long as that downtime exists.