Deadshade said:It seems you have not played on EQ TLPs (Time Locked Progression) . I think that there must be a thread somewhere about the lessons from the EQs TLPs .
They use exactly the same system but they call it "pick" instead of "shard" .
The principle is that above a certain number of players in a zone (variable with the size, level of the zone), a copy is created automatically . The system introduced with the last TLP (Ragefire), appeared to be a HUGE success because it solved many problems with a single and simple concept .
1) The initial rush. During the first 2 weeks there were log in queues because it is impossible to predict how many players will appear at release . Imagine Greater Faydark with 300 people ! It would be unplayable and every single skeleton would be slaugheterd as soon as it spawns . This would be a very bad first impression and would deter many players to continue . But with this system, there were several copies of G Faydark (I think the limit population to create a new shard was 60 or something like that) so that every player could find a playable yet populated environment .
2) The toxic players. If you had a camp and would be trained, KSed and harassed by a toxic player, you could change the shard and get rid of him . If he followed and harassed you again, it was easy to flag him and report. It is one thing to say "nobody owns a camp" and quite another to follow somebody wherever he goes and to destroy his gaming fun . It significantly decreased the toxicity .
3) A shot at interesting camps. This one may be debatable but the experience showed that the result was positive . Some zones/camps have interesting loot and tend to be monopolised by "no lifers" 24/24 . Here however if a casual guild wanted to have a shot at that camp, they came with enough numbers to create a new shard and to take the camp in the new shard .
Of course not all zones could be duplicated . I seem to remember that the top level raid zones stayed open world , single "non shardable" zones . I think they changed that on the last TLP, Phinnigel by instancing (some) high level content too but as I didn't play on Phinnigel, don't quote me on that .
Actually i do play on a TLP server and I'm still positive that the shard is based of server pop and not dungeon pop to prevent the exploit that someone above mentioned.
Krixus said:Iksar said:Well it doesn't go against any of their listed tenets and is pretty much addressed at the beginning of the FAQ:
Pantheon is most definitely a modern MMO with modern graphics and new and exciting features and mechanics. There are already emulators out there that are clones of earlier MMOs and Visionary Realms has no desire to make another emulator. That said, we also feel that many of the features and mechanics of previous MMOs have been abandoned in more recent games, resulting in a less challenging, compelling, deep, and social experience. Pantheon, therefore, will indeed bring back some of these conventional mechanics and ideas but with a fresh perspective, some tweaks and revisions. We also understand that while gamers’ tastes don’t fundamentally change over time, their situations, lives, and responsibilities do. Likewise, some game mechanics often associated with earlier MMOs involved inordinate amounts of downtime, overly severe penalties, too much competition over content and resources, and even downright boring or overly repetitive gameplay. Our intention, therefore, is not to bring back ‘everything’ from the old days, but rather to pick and choose those which make sense and are needed to make a fun, social, cooperative, and challenging game.
The old EQ model of just one single open world just wouldn't fly without an absolutely massive world with many redundant item copies throughout. I don't imagine items will suffer with the amount of incentive they are putting in to get them out of the economy, and with augmentation/enchants making items no-drop then most higher end drops will likely end up harder to buy than EQ so you will end up farming them yourself.
Shards are going to get abused to hell, just like they always are. People are going to tip zones over to the shard population and then have free run in a brand new zone . Hey everyone, zone out and zone back into shard 17, there are only 3 people in there!
That sounds like great gameplay to me. Gag
QFT.
They tried this on the EQ progression servers and I saw it abused to the moon and back. Guilds and/or large groups of individuals would hop into an overpopulated instance, shard, whatever you want to call it and overload it to the point to trigger whatever programming/algorithm the devs put into the code to spawn a new instance/shard. Then those same people would quickly /zone over to the newly created instance/shard and rush to whatever camp they wanted that was already taken in the already existing instance/shards. That led to mudflation and the rapid introduction of rare items into the economy and took some of the "shine" off those rare items and made them less rare and meaningful.
You don't need sharding in Pantheon. As long as you make the world and subsequently dungeons big enough to host a large number of people and also make sure there are enough servers overall to accomodate the overall number of subscribers playing Pantheon and spread the population out where the average number of players per server isn't ridiculously high then you will be ok.
*Edit/Addition* I forgot to mention I saw people in zones like Upper Guk shouting/begging/asking people to zone into LGuk to help trigger a new instance and the same in Lavastorm with Sol B, etc. Because a lot of the people that were zoning in to help spawn a new instance/shard had no intention of actually staying in the dungeon. Again which led to people bypassing the open world aspect of the game and creating mudflation.
I will post it again:
Overcrowding and too much competition are indeed problems that have plagued both MMOs with and without instancing. If there are not enough players around, it can be hard to group and socialize. But if there are too many people around, the world feels crowded and people have to wait for encounters or spawns, or even compete for them. Our answer to this issue is twofold: first, primarily during the later phases of beta, we will determine how many people online at one time in our game world feels right -- neither under-crowded nor overcrowded. Second, if and when a server’s/shard’s population grows too large, we will launch a new shard with incentives for players to spread out. And with our harnessing of cloud hosted servers/shards, this is actually something we can do dynamically, easily, and quickly.
This is Referring to the whole server/world before a new shard is in play not to a dungeon, so the expliot of leaving and coming back 20 minutes later will not spawn a new zone or anything of the like but if enough people log in as aa whole which no one can predict than a new shard will pop or drop depending on if it went up or down.
raelsmar said:They tried this on the EQ progression servers and I saw it abused to the moon and back. Guilds and/or large groups of individuals would hop into an overpopulated instance, shard, whatever you want to call it and overload it to the point to trigger whatever programming/algorithm the devs put into the code to spawn a new instance/shard. Then those same people would quickly /zone over to the newly created instance/shard and rush to whatever camp they wanted that was already taken in the already existing instance/shards. That led to mudflation and the rapid introduction of rare items into the economy and took some of the "shine" off those rare items and made them less rare and meaningful.
You don't need sharding in Pantheon. As long as you make the world and subsequently dungeons big enough to host a large number of people and also make sure there are enough servers overall to accomodate the overall number of subscribers playing Pantheon and spread the population out where the average number of players per server isn't ridiculously high then you will be ok.
*Edit/Addition* I forgot to mention I saw people in zones like Upper Guk shouting/begging/asking people to zone into LGuk to help trigger a new instance and the same in Lavastorm with Sol B, etc. Because a lot of the people that were zoning in to help spawn a new instance/shard had no intention of actually staying in the dungeon. Again which led to people bypassing the open world aspect of the game and creating mudflation.
I must be missing something because I still don't see the issue. As long as named mobs aren't spawned in when the new shard is populated and instead their placeholders are there and the named "timer" begins at creation then there shouldn't be an issue. Will there be more items eventually making it into the market? It is WAY too early to say. I will say I have never seen such an aggressive move towards getting items out of the economy as VR seems to be going for.
This whole thing is to combat over crowding, too much resource/item competition, and monopolizing of content by limited individuals. So yes, more people will have access to the same drops but that doesn't mean things can't be adjusted and balanced to the point it feels right.
Riahuf22 said:This is Referring to the whole server/world before a new shard is in play not to a dungeon, so the expliot of leaving and coming back 20 minutes later will not spawn a new zone or anything of the like but if enough people log in as aa whole which no one can predict than a new shard will pop or drop depending on if it went up or down.
No it is on a zone by zone basis. Again, per Kilsin: "A Shard is an open world copy of the same thing, like a Dungeon, so for arguments sake we could have a loading screen that lets you choose between 50 copies of the same dungeon and you guild could already up and jump into shard 47, other players could still come along and jump in there too as it isn't locked like a normal instance but it just provides more copies to help with overpopulation."
If it were server wide then it would make an entire new shard for every zone based on server population logged in, which would be bad.
Riahuf22 said: ... Actually i do play on a TLP server and I'm still positive that the shard is based of server pop and not dungeon pop to prevent the exploit that someone above mentioned. ...
It's based off of zone population. For example, Karnors Castle. Bring 40 people, zone into the base/real/live version, wait a few seconds/minutes, a new pick will spawn. Everyone picks over to the new pick, clears that zone and any associated targets. Bring another 40 in, spawn another pick. Repeat as desired. Did it all through Velious/Luclin with my guild.
However, some targets will not spawn in picks. Daybreak Games made the policy decision (there is no technical reason it has to be this way) that certain mobs will not spawn in picks. A crystal clear example is The Broken Golem in the Plane of Fear for the Wizard Epic Quest. That mob will not spawn in a pick. It only spawns in the base/real/live version.
As a result, picks don't solve some problems (like killing the broken golem every week for an entire expansion, if you're so inclined just because you can, to prevent any Wizards from completing their Epic). Not that anyone would do such a thing, RIGHT? Of course they would. It's humanity. Give your head a shake. :)
For the common situation that there are too many players and not enough mobs for xp, though? Picks work great. Recently DBG has made some backwards changes to picks, that directly creates the problem they were created to solve. No idea why, no public explanation has been forthcoming. Many of the bugs with picks are the result of EQ1 zones not originally being written with picks in mind.
Sharding, as described to date by Visionary Realms, is, as far as I can tell, the same as EQ1 'picks', at least in the broad strokes. All the same toxic behavior and consequences. The devil is in the details, though, for implementations like this. Will contested/epic/quest mobs spawn in Shards, in Pantheon? If so, great, if not, well... not so great. Same goes for raid targets, nameds, ground spawns, harvesting areas/nodes, pickpocketable NPC's, reward chests, etc. There's going to be strong opinions pro/con for reach. Again, this is why so many companies simply put in private instances for things like this... it solves ALL these problems and eliminates ALL this toxic behavior. smh.
Either way i don't mind and thank you for correcting me Iksar. It isn't a bad thing one way or another and you are also correct in knowing it is way to early to determine how it will effect the economy for the fact no one knows. For one we don't even know where the good loot is or what we think is good loot could be not as good as a rare spawn a lot of people havent found yet or hasnt dropped his "good" item to know he even has it, there just isn't anyway for anyone to know.
We need to move as far away from instances as possible, I hope that shards are used very, very, sparingly. I want there to be competition. I don't want multiple copies of the same item floating into the world at the same time because it completely devalues those items, and that sucks.
NEXTLEVL said:We need to move as far away from instances as possible, I hope that shards are used very, very, sparingly. I want there to be competition, and I don't want multiple copies of the same item floating into the world at the same time because it completely devalues items, and that sucks.
Again it isn't instancing and i think people are forgetting that the population that played when EQ first came out is nothing compared to the amount of players that play today it almost nothing compared to what it used to be which is why the whole open world idea worked but in this day of age if there wasn't something like shards even getting pasted lvl 5 would be simply frustarting, plus we alrdy know VR plans on using shards. And like Iksar said early today they know so much more about MMORPG's than all of us, and they know what they are doing when they implemented shards into their game, they want it to be competitive but not so competitive to where if you logged on you had no where to go becuase everything around your lvl was being camped and forcing you to do something you didn't plan on doing that day and simply log off becuase you weren't able to exp or gather mats or whatever it was. Shards is a good idea and in the long run I'm sure you will see the benefit of it.
Iksar said:raelsmar said:They tried this on the EQ progression servers and I saw it abused to the moon and back. Guilds and/or large groups of individuals would hop into an overpopulated instance, shard, whatever you want to call it and overload it to the point to trigger whatever programming/algorithm the devs put into the code to spawn a new instance/shard. Then those same people would quickly /zone over to the newly created instance/shard and rush to whatever camp they wanted that was already taken in the already existing instance/shards. That led to mudflation and the rapid introduction of rare items into the economy and took some of the "shine" off those rare items and made them less rare and meaningful.
You don't need sharding in Pantheon. As long as you make the world and subsequently dungeons big enough to host a large number of people and also make sure there are enough servers overall to accomodate the overall number of subscribers playing Pantheon and spread the population out where the average number of players per server isn't ridiculously high then you will be ok.
*Edit/Addition* I forgot to mention I saw people in zones like Upper Guk shouting/begging/asking people to zone into LGuk to help trigger a new instance and the same in Lavastorm with Sol B, etc. Because a lot of the people that were zoning in to help spawn a new instance/shard had no intention of actually staying in the dungeon. Again which led to people bypassing the open world aspect of the game and creating mudflation.
I must be missing something because I still don't see the issue. As long as named mobs aren't spawned in when the new shard is populated and instead their placeholders are there and the named "timer" begins at creation then there shouldn't be an issue. Will there be more items eventually making it into the market? It is WAY too early to say. I will say I have never seen such an aggressive move towards getting items out of the economy as VR seems to be going for.
This whole thing is to combat over crowding, too much resource/item competition, and monopolizing of content by limited individuals. So yes, more people will have access to the same drops but that doesn't mean things can't be adjusted and balanced to the point it feels right.
I don't know how much you know about EQ and/or if you played on the progression servers, but I'll try to explain the point I'm trying to make.
EQ as you probably know started out as an open-world, non-instanced game and remained that way for a very long time. On the progression servers that have been released over the last few years, the new progression servers were extremely (relative term) popular each time a new one was released. The server(s) population was so overcrowded that they decided to introduce extra instances/shards/copies of the same zones to address this issue for zones that were vastly overcrowded.
I'll use the example of Lower Guk. It was/is the largest and most highly camped upper-level dungeon in classic EQ. The dungeon itself could comfortably accomodate 50-100 people, depending on how well groups were spread out, what groups were willing to settle for as far as loot/exp, etc.
There were/are three camps that were/are considered the "big ones" so to say in Lower Guk that people want to camp above all others. The Ghoul Lord (dropped a really nice one-handed melee weapon), The Arch Mage (dropped a really nice caster robe) and the Frenzied Ghoul (dropped a haste belt for melees).
On the progression servers the main Lower Guk instance always had a high number of people in it (usually 50+) and you may have as many as 7-8 other instances/shards/copies of Lower Guk during prime time. The other instances/shards/copies usually never had nearly that many people in it and in a lot of cases would only have 10-20 people in them. And you could bet your sweet butt that if you zoned into any of those 7-8 other instances the Arch Mage and Frenzied Ghoul would be camped for sure and probably the Ghoul Lord too and the rest of the massive dungeon would be left untouched.
And that was because as I and Krixus mentioned earlier you had people abusing the system using the code the devs had put in to spawn extra instances/shards/copies of the dungeons just to camp those three camps and creating a bunch of extra unnecessary instances/shards/copies of the dungeon based purely on greed and/or impatience. Because realistically to provide enough camps to accomodate everyone you did not need 7-8 copies of the same dungeon, maybe 2 or 3 at best. But again people are greedy/impatient and wanted to camp those specific camps, rather than settle for a "lesser' camp. Which again as I mentioned before resulted in some of the best group-content items in the game flooding the market, when it was originally intended for those items to be rare and status symbols to a degree.
I dont' want sharding/instancing at all if it can be helped, but if it is put in I don't want it to be like the situation I spelled out above on the EQ progression servers (and perhaps other games) were the code can be abused to help individuals camp high-end, extremely valuable loot that should be not flooded into the game.
Hope that helps and/or makes sense.
Riahuf22 said:NEXTLEVL said:We need to move as far away from instances as possible, I hope that shards are used very, very, sparingly. I want there to be competition, and I don't want multiple copies of the same item floating into the world at the same time because it completely devalues items, and that sucks.
Again it isn't instancing and i think people are forgetting that the population that played when EQ first came out is nothing compared to the amount of players that play today it almost nothing compared to what it used to be which is why the whole open world idea worked but in this day of age if there wasn't something like shards even getting pasted lvl 5 would be simply frustarting, plus we alrdy know VR plans on using shards. And like Iksar said early today they know so much more about MMORPG's than all of us, and they know what they are doing when they implemented shards into their game, they want it to be competitive but not so competitive to where if you logged on you had no where to go becuase everything around your lvl was being camped and forcing you to do something you didn't plan on doing that day and simply log off becuase you weren't able to exp or gather mats or whatever it was. Shards is a good idea and in the long run I'm sure you will see the benefit of it.
Again, I am fully aware what they are referring to as a "shard" and they're literally nothing more than a multi-group instance, and as far as your population concerns, I will respectfully disagree with you. There are other ways to solve this issue without resorting to single-group instancing or multi-group instancing (aka "shards").
Well again i will say VR has already deciding to implement shards into there game and they know more about MMORPG's than we do and i trust them into making the right decision which i think they are.
I would love to see as much competition for loot as possible. FFXI did an amazing job balancing NM (Notorious Monsters) populations and the value of their drops and had what I would consider the best overall loot system of any game I have ever played. Competition was key.
I like the idea of competition and got used to all the good camp spots being taken in EQ but there is a limit. I'm guessing that on launch day all of the newbie zones will be so busy that there will be hardly any mobs to kill which will make the first couple of days painful to play until some people have out leveled the newbie zones and things calm down. It would be good to have say some way to combat that problem in newbie only zones and have the mid to high level zones being open competition.
But I did enjoy getting a good camp in EQ and then staying there for hours because you didn't want to lose your camp. That made it so much more fun and you'd often meet multiple people as you had to replace leaving people with new people.
raelsmar said:And that was because as I and Krixus mentioned earlier you had people abusing the system using the code the devs had put in to spawn extra instances/shards/copies of the dungeons just to camp those three camps and creating a bunch of extra unnecessary instances/shards/copies of the dungeon based purely on greed and/or impatience. Because realistically to provide enough camps to accomodate everyone you did not need 7-8 copies of the same dungeon, maybe 2 or 3 at best. But again people are greedy/impatient and wanted to camp those specific camps, rather than settle for a "lesser' camp. Which again as I mentioned before resulted in some of the best group-content items in the game flooding the market, when it was originally intended for those items to be rare and status symbols to a degree.
I dont' want sharding/instancing at all if it can be helped, but if it is put in I don't want it to be like the situation I spelled out above on the EQ progression servers (and perhaps other games) were the code can be abused to help individuals camp high-end, extremely valuable loot that should be not flooded into the game.
Hope that helps and/or makes sense.
That sounds like something that could be better solved by using a smarter system for spinning out new shards as well as tuning drop rates based on server population and/or average # of active shards per dungeon. They can also use the sum of all players in the zone's shards before churning out a new one so even if you manage to spawn 1 new shard, jumping to the new one with all your numbers wouldn't spawn a new one unless a large number of additional players also enter and STAY in the zone.
Speculating about the item economy is pointless right now. It's fine to have worries based on other experiences, but this isn't going to be those games. Wait until beta or release before getting riled up or threatening to not play/wanting a refund. There are too many variables.
Iksar said:That sounds like something that could be better solved by using a smarter system for spinning out new shards as well as tuning drop rates based on server population and/or average # of active shards per dungeon. They can also use the sum of all players in the zone's shards before churning out a new one so even if you manage to spawn 1 new shard, jumping to the new one with all your numbers wouldn't spawn a new one unless a large number of additional players also enter and STAY in the zone.
Speculating about the item economy is pointless right now. It's fine to have worries based on other experiences, but this isn't going to be those games. Wait until beta or release before getting riled up or threatening to not play/wanting a refund. There are too many variables.
Again I don't think shards/instances are necessary if the game is designed right, but I agree with you that a smarter system for spinning out shards is a potentially good answer to such a problem, if sharding/instancing becomes necessary or is the direction VR decides to go. Whether it be as you said where the number of shards is based on the sum of all players in a zone and not just how many are in the primary/main zone and as you said also contigent upon players staying in the zone and not just doing a mad rush into the zone to trigger the new one and then walk out afterwards.
Another idea/possibility if it did end up coming down to sharding/instancing being implemented, and this might be more difficult to program than is justifiable, is to make it where the rares/named mobs only drop loot in the main shard/instance of a zone, or make it where they are much less likely to drop loot in the non-main shards/instances. That way people could still camp spots for experience and/or for the challenge, but would not be able to flood the economy with rare drops.
And you are right about speculating on the economy at this point, it's way too early. That being said, as I mentioned earlier I don't want to see the devs putting in a lot of work to create awesome dungeons and put some really awesome drops on some rare/named mobs where they intend for those mobs and items to be rare and a status symbol, only to see people abuse the shard creation system to flood those items into the economy and take away some of the symbol/status/prestige/accomplishment they were intended to convey.
And not sure if you were referring to me or someone else, but I can assure you I am not riled up or threatening not to play and wanting a refund. I am patiently (anxiously) awaiting pre-alpha and beyond and waiting to test whatever VR gives us. : )
raelsmar said:Another idea/possibility if it did end up coming down to sharding/instancing being implemented, and this might be more difficult to program than is justifiable, is to make it where the rares/named mobs only drop loot in the main shard/instance of a zone, or make it where they are much less likely to drop loot in the non-main shards/instances. That way people could still camp spots for experience and/or for the challenge, but would not be able to flood the economy with rare drops.
The whole point to a shard system is to give multiple people access to the same content simultaneously. Making named mobs only appear in a prime shard defeats the entire purpose of a shard system.
Beefcake said:raelsmar said:Another idea/possibility if it did end up coming down to sharding/instancing being implemented, and this might be more difficult to program than is justifiable, is to make it where the rares/named mobs only drop loot in the main shard/instance of a zone, or make it where they are much less likely to drop loot in the non-main shards/instances. That way people could still camp spots for experience and/or for the challenge, but would not be able to flood the economy with rare drops.
The whole point to a shard system is to give multiple people access to the same content simultaneously. Making named mobs only appear in a prime shard defeats the entire purpose of a shard system.
Re-read what I typed.
I never said make named mobs only appear in the prime shard. I suggested those named mobs spawn in all shards, but only drop loot in the prime shard or have much a smaller chance of dropping loot in the non-primary shards. I said they could still spawn in the non-primary shards so people could still camp them for experience and/or camp them for the challenge/achievement of defeating them and at the same time not flood the economy with drops off of them.
raelsmar said:Beefcake said:raelsmar said:Another idea/possibility if it did end up coming down to sharding/instancing being implemented, and this might be more difficult to program than is justifiable, is to make it where the rares/named mobs only drop loot in the main shard/instance of a zone, or make it where they are much less likely to drop loot in the non-main shards/instances. That way people could still camp spots for experience and/or for the challenge, but would not be able to flood the economy with rare drops.
The whole point to a shard system is to give multiple people access to the same content simultaneously. Making named mobs only appear in a prime shard defeats the entire purpose of a shard system.
Re-read what I typed.
I never said make named mobs only appear in the prime shard. I suggested those named mobs spawn in all shards, but only drop loot in the prime shard or have much a smaller chance of dropping loot in the non-primary shards. I said they could still spawn in the non-primary shards so people could still camp them for experience and/or camp them for the challenge/achievement of defeating them and at the same time not flood the economy with drops off of them.
I think what you have suggested is a reasonable way around the problem. The worst thing for the economy is for loot to be so easy to get that it becomes trivial. If that happens then the value drops through the floor.
I was always under the impression that Pantheon was all about making rare loot really rare so that people seeing you with rare loot will really want to find out where you got it and how you got it. So yeah restricting named mobs to the primary zone and just using shards for experience seems like a great way to solve that problem.
raelsmar said:Beefcake said:raelsmar said:Another idea/possibility if it did end up coming down to sharding/instancing being implemented, and this might be more difficult to program than is justifiable, is to make it where the rares/named mobs only drop loot in the main shard/instance of a zone, or make it where they are much less likely to drop loot in the non-main shards/instances. That way people could still camp spots for experience and/or for the challenge, but would not be able to flood the economy with rare drops.
The whole point to a shard system is to give multiple people access to the same content simultaneously. Making named mobs only appear in a prime shard defeats the entire purpose of a shard system.
Re-read what I typed.
I never said make named mobs only appear in the prime shard. I suggested those named mobs spawn in all shards, but only drop loot in the prime shard or have much a smaller chance of dropping loot in the non-primary shards. I said they could still spawn in the non-primary shards so people could still camp them for experience and/or camp them for the challenge/achievement of defeating them and at the same time not flood the economy with drops off of them.
Same thing. It's the loot people kill names for. Get real.
Cromulent said:raelsmar said:Beefcake said:raelsmar said:Another idea/possibility if it did end up coming down to sharding/instancing being implemented, and this might be more difficult to program than is justifiable, is to make it where the rares/named mobs only drop loot in the main shard/instance of a zone, or make it where they are much less likely to drop loot in the non-main shards/instances. That way people could still camp spots for experience and/or for the challenge, but would not be able to flood the economy with rare drops.
The whole point to a shard system is to give multiple people access to the same content simultaneously. Making named mobs only appear in a prime shard defeats the entire purpose of a shard system.
Re-read what I typed.
I never said make named mobs only appear in the prime shard. I suggested those named mobs spawn in all shards, but only drop loot in the prime shard or have much a smaller chance of dropping loot in the non-primary shards. I said they could still spawn in the non-primary shards so people could still camp them for experience and/or camp them for the challenge/achievement of defeating them and at the same time not flood the economy with drops off of them.
I think what you have suggested is a reasonable way around the problem. The worst thing for the economy is for loot to be so easy to get that it becomes trivial. If that happens then the value drops through the floor.
I was always under the impression that Pantheon was all about making rare loot really rare so that people seeing you with rare loot will really want to find out where you got it and how you got it. So yeah restricting named mobs to the primary zone and just using shards for experience seems like a great way to solve that problem.
I was/am under the same impression Crom and I think you hit the nail on the head with rare loot. To me, those type items are meant (or should be meant) to put people in awe of their awesomeness and give them a sensation of wonder and amazement. It should make them want to find out where it came from, search for it themselves and put the time/effort into getting it.
If everyone is able to camp/slay Aradune and acquire his awesome flaming sword with little to no time/effort/challenge involved, then all of a sudden Aradune and his flaming sword don't seem quite as cool anymore. :)
Iksar said:raelsmar said:And that was because as I and Krixus mentioned earlier you had people abusing the system using the code the devs had put in to spawn extra instances/shards/copies of the dungeons just to camp those three camps and creating a bunch of extra unnecessary instances/shards/copies of the dungeon based purely on greed and/or impatience. Because realistically to provide enough camps to accomodate everyone you did not need 7-8 copies of the same dungeon, maybe 2 or 3 at best. But again people are greedy/impatient and wanted to camp those specific camps, rather than settle for a "lesser' camp. Which again as I mentioned before resulted in some of the best group-content items in the game flooding the market, when it was originally intended for those items to be rare and status symbols to a degree.
I dont' want sharding/instancing at all if it can be helped, but if it is put in I don't want it to be like the situation I spelled out above on the EQ progression servers (and perhaps other games) were the code can be abused to help individuals camp high-end, extremely valuable loot that should be not flooded into the game.
Hope that helps and/or makes sense.
That sounds like something that could be better solved by using a smarter system for spinning out new shards as well as tuning drop rates based on server population and/or average # of active shards per dungeon. They can also use the sum of all players in the zone's shards before churning out a new one so even if you manage to spawn 1 new shard, jumping to the new one with all your numbers wouldn't spawn a new one unless a large number of additional players also enter and STAY in the zone.
Speculating about the item economy is pointless right now. It's fine to have worries based on other experiences, but this isn't going to be those games. Wait until beta or release before getting riled up or threatening to not play/wanting a refund. There are too many variables.
There is a difference between speculation and history. It seems that Raelsmar is referring to his direct knowledge of prior experiences, not just conjecture of what could/would happen. I'll admit I zipped through some of this thread but I didn't really sense a vibe of anybody threatening to not play or demand a refund. A lot of people seem to think that speculation is pointless ... I am not one of them. I enjoy speculative dialogue and appreciate the experience that Raelsmar is tapping into. Speculation is based on opinion and if you're suggesting that opinions are pointless, kudos to you. Maybe our opinions are pointless. Or maybe there are a lot of folks who have flocked to this game together because in their shared opinion, Pantheon will be their best chance of reliving the MMO golden years in the platinum age. Opinions aren't pointless ... this game is literally founded on very strong opinions of the need to bring back some of the oldschool mechanics that we miss very much.
Item economy is a pretty big deal and is definitely worthy enough of a subject to warrant having an opinion on it. I have never played with shards personally but from the sound of them, they are basically an open world instance. I'll take that over private instances all day every day but would still prefer to see them used very sparingly. EQ2 did this pretty well. In the many years of playing that game, it was semi-rare to see a second instance (same thing as a "shard" I'm pretty sure) even in popular zones like Runnyeye, Permafrost, Cazic Thule, etc. I saw a 3'rd instance only twice (Thundering Steppes and Nektulos Forest shortly after release) and it wasn't really an issue. I do remember seeing the same "contested" raid mob spawn in multiple instances though and know for a fact that guilds exploited it. They would literally offer newbs 1 plat to zone in. 50 plat for a top tier raid item from an NPC that should only spawn once per 7 days? Was a no brainer and something fairly easy to do.
That was really grey area in my opinion and that's something I would have some questions about in regards to what kind of impact "sharding" can have on "contested" (or rare named) loot acquisition. I understand that these concerns are just based on an opinion and I don't expect an answer from anybody. I also have an opinion that competition should play a major role in how rare loot is. I would like to see rare names (group mobs) that only spawn once every 1-3 days. I would like to see other bosses that can be force popped by turning in collected items. I would like to see other bosses that can be trigger popped by killing their place holder or specific mob types that roam a large area. I would like to see other bosses that spawn every 30-40 minutes that have a really low chance of dropping something exceptionally valuable. I would like to see other bosses that can spawn every 45 minutes to 1 hour that have a 65% chance of dropping valuable crafting materials (sometimes they can drop 2-3) -- these are all very different kinds of farming experiences and provide plenty of different kinds of risk vs reward and could satisfy most tolerance levels. Having a healthy balance like that can feel extra gratifying because people can be strategic with their play-time rather than just going to whatever area has the least competition.
Competition is good. I want to see other people when I play. I want to get lucky and then feel lucky ... again I cite FFXI as having had the best item economy of any game I have ever played and it wasn't even close. I hate to think that instancing is "needed" but I do acknowledge that a lot of people can't handle competition and always want to feel like they accomplish something when they play. I am more of a poker player and enjoy the rush of playing the cards I'm dealt, taking chances, and getting lucky. The more risk there is with loot and death, the more fun I will have. If I get burned a couple times trying to tag the uber rare named but failing, maybe I'll switch it up and go farm something with a steady eddie approach.
In your quote you said it's fine to have worries based on past experiences, but that Pantheon won't be those games. What I'm referring to with FFXI, I want Pantheon to be like that game. I want a game that captures the risk vs reward, fear of death, and robust item economy very similar to how FFXI did it. That's just my opinion of course but I'm sure there are plenty of FFXI vets out there who probably feel similar. If we don't get those things, hey, not the end of the world. I'm sure Pantheon will be great either way and hopefully, they'll even improve upon many of the features we loved from other games and surprise us with some truly awesome and revolutionary stuff. I'm looking forward to finding out.
Shards are nothing more than selective instances. I think what VR are talking about when speaking of shards/servers is just using the term "shard" to describe "server". They have clearly stated there will NOT BE INSTANCES. Instances = any copy of a zone that is created in ANY WAY.