I hope they can try out all these ideas in alpha with us so we can give some feedback on what would be best. I was actually only talking about random times for SPECIFIC camp spots or bosses. The issue I see with random locations is when people are first starting out and trying to find maybe that specific boss that is being farmed but is for a quest, they will be looking around for a while for that boss to spawn. If it has 5 different locations and its random, and even with a random timer set at 2 minutes, it could still take a while for newbies to get that boss depending on the specifics and randomness they put in for camps.
I guess the best idea for this is to hope the community tries to help out ya know? If someone needs it for a quest, be a kind person and allow them the kill for the quest. If not, hopefully the community finds out how selfish and not cooperative you are and shuns you.
Or hopefully there are multiple dungeons around certain levels so you aren't just hoping to complete one dungeon in a specific area being heavily camped.
I can certainly see the buzzkill in camping sites as much as I see the nostalgia in the idea of camping/farming again.
Aduna said:We're saying the same thing. You said things got better by Kunark because people could spread out. You are basically saying x number of people per amount of content allows dungeons to feel dangerous. The question is only how many people, and how much content. That's what I'm saying too. The difference is we have different solutions. Of course, I prefer your solution. Adding massive expansions and volumes of content is the best way to reduce levels of player contested resources. Now let's get realistic, it's very idealistic to expect a huge amount of content for this game at launch. What then?
Again, what the OP was really talking about, in my opinion, was resources contested by other players, his case a high level camper as an example. World of Warcraft made 0% contested resources by doing full dungeon instancing, quick respawns, not allowing kill stealing. EverQuest made 100% contested resources by doing no instancing at all, full kill stealing, etc.. Neither "extreme' works well, for a variety of reasons.
I don't know why you keep saying contested content doesn't work very well, when in fact it worked fine, going strong for over a decade.
Aduna said:In my opinion, the ideal would be something in between these extremes. We can debate how much content vs how many people is ideal to achieve the right amount of contestation, but what we can't debate is that when there is no system in place, there is no way to control things to hit that "right amount of contestation". From where I'm sitting, the only systems in place for Pantehon is to limit the overall server population, and to push out more content. Both these systems are clumsy and allow no fine tuning. For anyone playing recently on Project 1999 in the last few years on a double exp weekend, with a 150+ people crammed into a single dungeon, every group fighting for pulls ...it's just no where near the same experience as say, what we saw in the latest Pantheon stream ...no where near. It'd be really cool if the game itself could organically balance in such a way that could curate dungeons and other experiences to be more like the last Pantheon stream, and less like Lower Guk pre-Kunark or World of Warcraft. Again, I know the developers are going to dissmiss my suggestions, but it doesn't mean what I'm saying is wrong.
Preventing the extreme scenarios you're referencing is actually fairly easy by content/population balance. This will need to be tested to get right to some degree, and probably adjusted again post-launch because the average player will probably play less than those who pledged. You will never be able to tune it to an exact amount, because you will have some servers that are more competitive with players who play more frequently than others.
Still, the world being completely open with contested content is a huge part of what this game is designed around, and honestly, part of the reason why content last longer in the first place.
Aduna said:Nostalgia aside, the way forward for MMOs to bring in old school social elements of the early MMOs, and some of the advancements of the later ones. Pantheon looks to me like it's going to be a super fun game, but it's clearly also going to be a niche game and in MMO terms a relatively unsuccessful one.
Pantheon is going to be bigger than you think, and far more successful. A game where travel takes time, death is punishing, and content is contested will never be WoW. It also won't turn over players like WoW either.
Aduna said:It's not going earn 2.1 billion dollars in sub fees for just one year of operation like World Of Warcraft did at it it's height. I don't want to see Pantheon anything like Word of Warcraft ...but in a community driven and focused MMO, I DO want to see a strong and active community. If there are no tools in the bag of developers to fine tune the experience of the individual players as the server populations expand and contract, striking that perfect balance of player contestation to create community without also creating aggravation, you might still be ok with that, I might still be ok with that ...but many, many people will not be ok with that, and there will be a high new player churn, and the community will ultimately be anemic. That's the real problem.
Some of the people who aren't okay with it will learn to love it. Others won't, and will find a game they enjoy more. What shouldn't be done is fundamentally changing the game to capture that audience, because it will cost just as many if not more from the core audience.
Feyshtey said:There are several things here that just dont add up.
"Content is King" - This is a tenent based on the notion that there needs to be plenty of engaging content. This is in part so that contention for a camp in a dungeon is minimized, because players have options of content available to them and when a named is camped there's another to which the group (or player) can go and have the possibility of a comparable gear drop. It is not a tenent that states unequivocally that gameplay must necessarily involve only going thru a prescribed path and must involve a presecribed level of risk to get gear. That's sort of the antithesis of deviating from theme park style MMOs that are currently so pervasive in the market.
"Bypassing Content" - The economy and player interactions are also key tenents. Engaging in either, or both, is not bypassing content. It's participating in one or more of the several avenues available to immerse yourself in the gameworld. If the organic nature of a player-driven economy is bypassing content, then I wonder if you truly understand the idea of a sandbox MMO or if you instead desire player interaction to be limited to who's in your group for a kill in a dungeon?
"Farming for your alt" - How do you suppose a main character was able to gain sufficent power and skill to be able to farm lower content? It has been stated repeatedly that twinking and replayability are important aspects the devs wish to support. Twinking might have some scaling so that a low level character can't have the uber sword of badass and mow thru content at a completely unintended rate, but the specifics of that remain to be defined. I've personally started multiple alts specifically because I got a nice drop that was great for class-X. And I've gone out of my way from there to get more for that class. It has led to a multitude of alts that I wouldn't have otherwise played at all without a leg up, and which I have occasionally focused on entirely after effectively making them my main. Your argument of bypassing content comes back into play here, in that while I did give a "leg up" to an alt by farming some drops, I ultimately ended up playing thru a great deal more content at appropriate levels with the alts precisely because I engaged in farming lower level items with a main.
"FBSS" - Having an FBSS didnt remove the need to have groups. Far from it. It was absolutely impactful, and it combined with other gear items certainly made leveling less time-consuming. But only because it allowed killing at a greater rate in a group. It didnt bypass the need to have a group in order to get the best xp rewards. It simply augmented the rate at which that group could move thru appropriate level content, and perhaps rarely allowed engaging in content that was perhaps very slightly higher than they could have otherwise tackled. Again, no content was bypassed. No content was trivialized thru the farming or twinking, and suggeting otherwise is a bit disengenuous.
"Crafting" - It has been stated that many, or perhaps most dropped items will also be craftable. So farming may just well be made pointless by that very notion alone. However, arguing that farming will eliminate the value of crafting is entirely contradictory to also arguing about bypassing content. You can't argue that you must make crafting not only viable but compelling, and argue that farming allows people to bypass content. If the latter is true, does not the former allow the same?
Feyshtey, I hope I didn't come across as too ignorant and presumptuous. I'll try to clarify my points;
Since the OP specified "high level farming in lower level zones" I was speaking to that generally. If the discussion has since veered toward dungeon specific content then I admittedly was unaware of that. Minimization for contention is really what I mean when I quote that "Content is King" and not an unequivocal, discreet path through content. I was not very clear about that so accept my apology there. My point is that if higher level players have an abundance of content to involve themselves with then there should be very little (if any) reason for them to spend time farming in lower level zones. Risk is also an important component to the game's development. I don't see any reason why there shouldn't be some risk involved for a higher level players farming lower levels. Particularly if the farm concerns high priority items. Especially when the disparity gap negatively affects those who are partaking in level appropriate content. If exceptional items are being farmed in lower level areas then those items have value. There ought to be some risk associated with that value regardless of level. And quite frankly, risk free farming of lower level zones by higher level characters is also a rather pervasive concern in gamer culture as well and I would like to see a move away from that.
If I purchase exceptional, difficult to acquire items from an auction hall (or seller) I am essentially bypassing the conent involved in obtaining said item myself through direct engagement of that content. This doesn't sound organic to me at least on a scale where I believe the concern is. I am not saying that selling exceptional gear should be banned or punitized. But if an item drops exclusively from one camp and that camp is on near constant farm then there's a problem. The organic nature of a player-driven economy does not revolve solely on a handful of farmed and exclusive items. I have not stated anything to indicate that the whole of the economy be affeted in a negative manner. Just to be clear, I don't want to see trivialization in the acquisition of game items. Because to me that trivializes game content as well.
I don't disagree with your third rebuttal. I have kept obtained items for alts as well and would like to continue to do so. I just don't think it the designers intention to lock-down drop points by higher level players farming in lower level zones.
Other than that, in regards to crafter, I only hope the gear drops are not so extraordinary as to making crafting obsolete.