I know this forum has beaten to death the topic of competitive raiding and the various solutions to content domination, poopsocking, and so on. I would just like to add one idea to the mix, which I don't think I've seen discussed in prior threads. Apologies in advance, of course, if I have accidentally internalized someone else's idea or if I'm duplicating another thread.
The idea is to create raid zones that address the competing interests that always seem to come up in any discussion of competitive raiding. I think this post by Dullahan from circa 2015 summarizes well one of the primary arguments in favor of competitive raiding:
Dullahan said:The reason raiding was so appealing in EQ (and totally unappealing in every game since), was largely due to the exclusivity and challenge of coordinating a large number of players with the necessary skill and gear prep, to kill a raid mob often with other guilds nipping at your heels.
On the other side of the argument, people say that competitive open world raiding leads to (i) single guild domination, (ii) batphoning, (iii) poopsocking, and (iv) content denial. There is also a large segment of players who advocate for instances, because instances allow guilds to actually schedule their raids, which obviously is a good thing for people who have commitments outside their MMO. And many players express the view that player skill (and not the ability to spend 24 hours a day playing the game) should dictate, or at least have a big influence, on who takes down the high-value raid targets.
So after reading way more forum posts than I should have about raiding in Pantheon, it occurred to me that maybe VR could design raid zones that open only during certain times of the day or week or month. For example, maybe there is a zone that only opens during a full moon (in game, assuming a moon), or only during certain seasons (assuming seasons pass quickly). Guilds who want to raid that zone will learn when (in game time) the zone is going to open, and, when it opens, the competitive (and not-so-competitive) raiding guilds will rush in. The next few hours will be all-out competitive raiding within the zone (or zones). Assuming multiple raid targets in different parts of the zone, competing guilds will strategize about what route to take through the zone and which bosses to target or contest, DPS racing as necessary. To the victors go the spoils. The zone closes down (based on some lore mechanic) after a few hours, or after everything is dead.
The advantage of this kind of zone is that (i) guilds can plan their raids to align with the opening of the zone, (ii) it does not involve batphoning or poopsocking, yet (iii) the raiding is competitive, and (iv) skill and strategy should dictate, or at least influence, the outcomes.
This kind of zone (or zones) could be designed to "open" periodically at times that make sense for the server's timezone. So, maybe, in a given real-time week, three time-locked raid zones open, respectively, on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and then the next week they open on Monday, Wednesday, Sunday. Or maybe the intervals don't line up exactly that way with real-time weeks, but you get the point. Guilds would be able to schedule when they want to join the competition in those raid zones.
The idea, obviously, would not be to make all raid targets exist only within these types of raid zones. But I think they could be part of the solution to the ills of open-world, non-instanced raiding.
Please don't flame me too hard. And again, sorry if this is an old idea or duplicative of another thread. I did search, I swear.
The disadvantage is that guilds will logically not pursue the same target unless the zone is designed in an extremely linear format where you must kill a given mob to progress.
The reason this is a problem is that pursuing different targets will invariably lead to loot tables neglecting specific members of your raid with no opportunity to go back and redo that same content within a short time period. If the time period is short, you might as well just make the zones instanced and call it a day.
Repeatability of content is a necessity.
I don't think the competition would always shake out that way. As you noted, some guilds may need certain targets more than others due to class needs. They may be willing to DPS race for those. Some guilds may wipe. That would open a window for a guild that doesn't wipe to clear more. Some guilds will clear faster and get more drops. Some guilds may just stack dps and try to poach kills. Some guilds may play it safer and go for less desirable spawns. It is better to compete on these terms, at least for some content, than to compete on batphoning.
Re your comment about "might as well make instances", I'm not suggesting super short respawns. More like five days to one week. The amount of loot that would be introduced into the server could be waaay less than if every guild gets its own instance. And instances are not contested and generally don't have meaningful time pressure imposed by competition. I don't think this idea is the functional equivalent of instances.
On the positive side, I think that confining some/much/all of the /shout & /ooc drama that would ensue with such a system would be great. It would keep it out of the open world inside these raid zones, at least a little bit.
But as far as a solution, all this does is ensure that one guild would train the other until the guild being trained left. The best train-ers would get the attempt. Which is fine, if that's the design goal? I mean, that's going to happen in open world dungeons and outdoor zones too, so I guess it's a natural desire to have it in raid-only zones as well. Bring all your monks. Train the other guild until they leave, log on your mains, get your kill, repeat as desired.
This happens on EQ1 TLP servers in the Plane of Fear all the time, as only Epic Quest mobs spawn in the real/base/non-pick/non-instanced version of the zone, so guilds train each other constantly there to prevent Epics from being completed.
It's an interesting idea.
What if it wasn't a zone, but just an encounter? Similar to how dragons were in EQ, but with a game-lore based trigger rather than just a spawn timer.
"Once every few years, the moons of Terminus align and the sky becomes alight with etherial flames. Legend names this the time of the Yefarim. During this time, smart folk lock and bar their doors, and venture out only if in great need. Rumors abound of travelers gone missing, hamlets destroyed, and earth-shattering roars that echo across the plains during this time. No one knows the source, but most who have gone looking never return"
I think that having a dozen or so things like this (all with different lore triggers/explanations) might fulfill the same thing you're getting at and be easier to balance and implement? Just a thought :)
Gnog said:I don't think the competition would always shake out that way. As you noted, some guilds may need certain targets more than others due to class needs. They may be willing to DPS race for those. Some guilds may wipe. That would open a window for a guild that doesn't wipe to clear more. Some guilds will clear faster and get more drops. Some guilds may just stack dps and try to poach kills. Some guilds may play it safer and go for less desirable spawns. It is better to compete on these terms, at least for some content, than to compete on batphoning.
Re your comment about "might as well make instances", I'm not suggesting super short respawns. More like five days to one week. The amount of loot that would be introduced into the server could be waaay less than if every guild gets its own instance. And instances are not contested and generally don't have meaningful time pressure imposed by competition. I don't think this idea is the functional equivalent of instances.
I don't see the point. The only difference is that there's more congestion/lag (more people in one place) and you're competing for mobs directly. If you had two guilds in two instances and the better guild killed it first, the race is won regardless.
The only functional difference between your suggestion and an instance is that only one guild gets loot from a given mob, so the loot output is diluted. Even so, it's been said elsewhere on these forums that the number of people who actually kill the highest tier of content and get the really good loot are a staggeringly small portion of the playerbase.
In short, I don't believe this suggestion has any benefits over instancing other than "feeling" like it's open world.
So basically NToV or VT, but time gated instead of key? Or am I misunderstanding? What does this resolve, though? Whether the mobs are crammed into a single zone or spread across the world the same issues everyone seem to have with raids still apply though. They don't want them to be exclusive, they don't want them to be contestable, they don't want guilds competing for the same content, they don't want them capable of being monopolized, they don't want it to happen at 4:00AM, they don't want long respawns, ad nauseam (and when I say "they" I am referring to the supposed "majority" and their paraphrased issues with raiding as stated in the Raiding and Alternatives thread). I mean, don't get me wrong, I really like the idea of a raid zone. I just don't get how it addresses the million issues that people appear to have with raiding in general.
There is no reason to assume most of what is being assumed as fact in this thread. There is no reason to assume loot distribution would be linear in a non-linear dungeon. There is no reason to assume any one guild or organization could, or would be motivated to, control access to raid content. There is no reason to assume scheduling will be a vital conflict between the instant something spawns to the average minutes it takes to batphone in the troops.
None of those concerns are legitimate without far more information, otherwise you need a pile of other assumptions to support them.
There are many published bits of information describing every way all of these concers are rendered moot. There will be shared raid dungeons at every level range. There will be contested raid content. You can assume there will also be triggered raid events, and unique events with unique rewards.
Instancing is not on the agenda. Shared open wolrd content that brings the community together is. Scheduled events like in the original post are perfectly reasonable and would offer a massive range of content delivery for every player on the server. There would be no reason to limit a large scale scheduled event to just raid groups.
just have three different events simultaneously. One guild won't be able to go do all three at the same time.
And this is a perfectly sound way to turn a triggered raid event into a shared event that many different guilds can participate in. If the raid event spawns enough for several raid groups, or better yet, triggered events are too powerful for a single raid group, without help from the rest of the server participating in the event, there is no motivation left to be a raging toddler gamer so tired of their game experience that they turn to anti-gamer exclusion as a means to troll the boredom away.
Item distribution won't support much of this argument either. We've already been told to expect many different possible options for filling inventory slots. That bit of information is enough to eliminate the whole idea of competitive guilds blocking content. Let alone the "years down the road" perspective of guilds trying to make money off the scarcity of content limited by years or poor design choices.
The fresh to Pantheon experience will be full on group mode, and be supplimented with raid content all the way up. Maybe there is a specific unique item you might want, but maybe there is an alternative from another mob that is similar. There is no reason to expect everyone will be farming one spawn for a single item that everyone needs. It is far more likely that every starting area will have a nested series of item targets that provide similar stats to all the others in similar level ranges. And these will branch our to merge with others to form a web of possible targets and an abundance of content.
Content is King. There will be more content than any one group of players can digest. I fully expect far more than a whole server actively working together could digest. The very idea that guilds would be allowed to dominate the progression of other guilds, or that they would be motivated in any way to do so, is silly to me.
Good points.
Liav, I thought more about your point that, unless the dungeon is linear, all guilds will not logically pursue the same target. One solution is to design the dungeon to have multiple entrances, with each player having a choice of what entrance to use. For example, maybe a dungeon is accessible only through underground tunnels that are submerged (and impassable) most of the time. When tide recedes and the tunnels become passable, each player who enters the tunnel entrance will have a choice of what route to take. The route chosen dictates which "zone-in" the person gets. Sometimes guilds would choose the same zone-in, either by coordination or by chance. But when they get different zone-ins, it will be a race through the dungeon to reach key targets.
Nephele, I think you're right. This idea is just a variant of a triggered event. But the event is the opening of an entire raid zone. Good point. I guess the primary difference is that, with a periodically opening raid zone, you'd get the values of repeatability of content and predictability, some of which is a good thing, as Liav said.
Vjek, re: grief-training. Look, if training (using Monk FD or whatever) is a viable means to thwart another guild's progress toward a raid target, then we're going to see that gameplay everywhere. It's not really a counterpoint against the kind of time-limited raid zone described here. Optimistically, I am hoping that grief-training will be punished. Also, because these raid zones would be open for limited time windows, they would be very easy (inexpensive) to police by GMs. So, unlike grief-training in the open-world competition 24/7, grief-training in these designated competitive raid zones would be easy to monitor and punish.
Durp's point: have three zones open simultaneously. Yea, I agree, this is a potential solution. A similar goal can be accomplished by having multiple entrances to the same zone, as described above. The concern about having three zones open simultaneously is just one of loot-dilution, but if the balancing is right I don't see why not.
arcsbane said:So basically NToV or VT, but time gated instead of key? Or am I misunderstanding? What does this resolve, though? Whether the mobs are crammed into a single zone or spread across the world the same issues everyone seem to have with raids still apply though. They don't want them to be exclusive, they don't want them to be contestable, they don't want guilds competing for the same content, they don't want them capable of being monopolized, they don't want it to happen at 4:00AM, they don't want long respawns, ad nauseam (and when I say "they" I am referring to the supposed "majority" and their paraphrased issues with raiding as stated in the Raiding and Alternatives thread). I mean, don't get me wrong, I really like the idea of a raid zone. I just don't get how it addresses the million issues that people appear to have with raiding in general.
Yes, I suppose I do mean something akin to NToV or VT. But I do think you're missing something. Not all the "same issues" will arise in a time-limited/locked raid zone. For one thing, guilds can schedule their raids around the opening of these zones, and the zones could be designed to open at times that make sense for the playerbase on a server. (In other words, not usually at 4:00 AM.) As for monopolization, you are right that monopolization could still occur, but it will not occur sheerly due to batphoning and poopsocking. Instead of competing on who can wake up at 4:00AM in response to a batphone, guilds will compete on their ability to tackle the content. If you read closely the complaints about guild domination, I think you'll see that a significant portion of people who complain about guild monopolization are really most upset about guild monopolization through batphoning/poopsocking. As for exclusivity, a time-locked raid zone would be much less exclusive than raid targets scattered around the world, for the simple reason that more "casual" players will be able to schedule their gaming session to align with the opening of the zone.
This leaves your points about "they don't want [raid targets] to be contestable" and "they don't want long respawns." I don't think this idea addresses those concerns. But I also don't get the sense those concerns are the driving force behind the anti-competitive-raiding movement. And in any event, nothing is perfect.
I don't want to have to do it at 4am or 3-5hours a day/7 days a week, but I don't want a "Redistribution of Loot" system either. The stuff of dreams should be difficult to get. There is only so much you can do on the "skill" point. Sooner or later guides exist and some dude with a couple of over leveled boxes will being doing the same content that used to take raids days to complete. (If the power creep is slow, this might take a long time, but if we are lucky enough to have Pantheon be a great game that still exists 20 years from now, it will happen.)
I used to complain about how group mobs became less and less soloable in EQ1 as you leveled up. I felt that a level 50 mob should equal a level 50 player and the outcome should be about 50/50 who would win, without taking player skill into consideration. I WAS WRONG! I've played games that operate that way. They suck. They are not fun and pose no challenge.
Games are not and should not be "fair." There are winners and losers. If someone gets up at 4am and kills that mob that I've been hoping to get, then I'm the loser. I'll have to get over it. Sure, put in other kinds of content so that the rest of us have things to do. I'm all for some repeatable instanced raids and so on. But if that clicky that I want only drops on that contested open world dragon, that spawns randomly between 3 days and 4 days, I'm gonna have to work that out if I really want it that bad. If not, there should be a slightly less nice clicky from an easier source and I will have to live with that. Content denial isn't a thing, really. Just like money denial isn't really a thing. If you are willing to put in the work and/or time, you can get either. And there is nothing "unfair" about that.
All that said, I do want alternatives. I am totally okay with those alternatives not being the shiniest, as long as they exist and can be done in a grown-up's gaming schedule. But you won't hear me complaining because some teenager has the better item because he did wait till 4am with his guild. Here's the thing. YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE IT. (And that is a in import game design point, you shouldn't need to have the those extra hard and rare items to complete other content. Tuning should be around the slightly less shiney stuff.
My issue with timelocked events is everyone will just gather in one area for the event to open and once it does it will just be madness. What i think would work best would be a system as follows:
- Make all raid targets respawn after one day +/- a few hours
- If a guild kills a raid target they are locked out from that encounter for a week or so.
- Put in controls to prevent abuse of system (i.e. switching guilds doesnt drop locks for the individual)
- Measure contribution (dmg, healing) to encounter so only the top contributing guild or guilds up to lets say 85% of total contribution get the lock thus allowing guilds to get minimal help from friends in other guilds if need be without those people worrying about them locking out their own guild. Also put in threshold so that accidental/minimal contributions (i.e. pulling/running by) doesnt put u on contribution list.
System like this solves most problems i see with other end game raiding setups. No need for instancing, reduces competition but does not eliminated (guilds still will compete for better raiding days), allows guilds to better set days they wanna raid, and one/two guilds cannot monopolize content. Obviously a system like this would need the timing of lockouts and respawn to fit the game (number of encounters vs guilds capable of doing them) so as to limit competition but not eliminate it. Also being smart on the placement of the lockout mobs cause you dont want to make a gatekeeper mob a lockout mob.
DragonFist said:I don't want to have to do it at 4am or 3-5hours a day/7 days a week, but I don't want a "Redistribution of Loot" system either. The stuff of dreams should be difficult to get. There is only so much you can do on the "skill" point. Sooner or later guides exist and some dude with a couple of over leveled boxes will being doing the same content that used to take raids days to complete. (If the power creep is slow, this might take a long time, but if we are lucky enough to have Pantheon be a great game that still exists 20 years from now, it will happen.)
I used to complain about how group mobs became less and less soloable in EQ1 as you leveled up. I felt that a level 50 mob should equal a level 50 player and the outcome should be about 50/50 who would win, without taking player skill into consideration. I WAS WRONG! I've played games that operate that way. They suck. They are not fun and pose no challenge.
Games are not and should not be "fair." There are winners and losers. If someone gets up at 4am and kills that mob that I've been hoping to get, then I'm the loser. I'll have to get over it. Sure, put in other kinds of content so that the rest of us have things to do. I'm all for some repeatable instanced raids and so on. But if that clicky that I want only drops on that contested open world dragon, that spawns randomly between 3 days and 4 days, I'm gonna have to work that out if I really want it that bad. If not, there should be a slightly less nice clicky from an easier source and I will have to live with that. Content denial isn't a thing, really. Just like money denial isn't really a thing. If you are willing to put in the work and/or time, you can get either. And there is nothing "unfair" about that.
All that said, I do want alternatives. I am totally okay with those alternatives not being the shiniest, as long as they exist and can be done in a grown-up's gaming schedule. But you won't hear me complaining because some teenager has the better item because he did wait till 4am with his guild. Here's the thing. YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE IT. (And that is a in import game design point, you shouldn't need to have the those extra hard and rare items to complete other content. Tuning should be around the slightly less shiney stuff.
This. This is pretty much identical to the way I feel about it. Well said, DragonFist.
While I see value in competition and exclusivity of items, I think it would likely be a trainwreck of epic proportions to unlock a zone at a known time with known rewards waiting inside. While a 4am spawn of a raid boss might give advantage to overseas guilds raiding on their primetime, or to guilds of players willing to accept batphoning, this alternative could be far worse. Imagine 25 guilds with 100 members each stockpiled at the zone entrance waiting for the clock to count down. If the zone didnt crash when a couple of thousands players entered at once then there would be absolute bedlam inside as people bulldozed everything racing for the raid kill.
If there's argument with 3 guilds making charges of kill stealing and inteference when a mob pops at 4am, imagine the customer service nightmare of a dozens of guilds.
Mastere said:My issue with timelocked events is everyone will just gather in one area for the event to open and once it does it will just be madness.
A few responses to this. One, not "everyone" would gather; guilds and players that know when the zone will open, and who are high enough level to make it to the entrance, will gather. Two, your belief that it will be "madness" has a lot of assumptions baked into it, including presumably an overwhelmingly large number of participants. Three, if the "madness" you're describing is a popular event that brings together the top guilds to fight it out, that seems like it would be fun and a good thing.
Dragonfist, I don't know, man, I don't see why anyone would WANT the competitive raid scene to be won and lost based on who stays up until 4am. I get your point that it COULD work that way, but I can't see why you'd prefer to have raid targets all go to the guild that can batphone the best. But that's kinda beside the point; a premise of this idea is that raiding should not be dominated, at least not completely, based on spawn-watching and batphoning.
Your point about guides being available and "over leveled" boxing crews is kinda far afield. Neither a zone guide nor a few multi-boxer crews will have much impact on a guild v guild race to clear a raid zone when it opens.
Feyshtey said:While I see value in competition and exclusivity of items, I think it would likely be a trainwreck of epic proportions to unlock a zone at a known time with known rewards waiting inside. While a 4am spawn of a raid boss might give advantage to overseas guilds raiding on their primetime, or to guilds of players willing to accept batphoning, this alternative could be far worse. Imagine 25 guilds with 100 members each stockpiled at the zone entrance waiting for the clock to count down. If the zone didnt crash when a couple of thousands players entered at once then there would be absolute bedlam inside as people bulldozed everything racing for the raid kill.
If there's argument with 3 guilds making charges of kill stealing and inteference when a mob pops at 4am, imagine the customer service nightmare of a dozens of guilds.
These all seem like technical issues and server population issues. You assume a server with 25 raiding guilds of 100 members each. You also seem to be making an assumption about the number of players that can be in a zone concurrently without causing gameplay problems or a crash. If either of those assumptions is off, your argument here falls away.
I'll admit to not having read Mastere's post before I made mine. But I completely agree. People will schedule their lives around that timer. They will be there for that event, and they will race, block, interfere, etc, in any way they can to win the race.
Hell it was common in EQ for there to be 3 raids racing to a dragon spawn back in the day, and that with no known spawn time and at ridiculous hours of the night. It would be naive to assume that there wouldnt be at least a few times that number of guilds wanting to take a shot. Part of the situation that limited the number of guilds that would even attempt raids back int he day was that their particular membership couldnt/wouldn't drop everything at the drop of a hat to make the race to the boss. You don't think they'd at least try to run thru a zone faster than another guild when they can literally put it on their calendar and just be standing there when the starter's pistol goes off?
Gnog said:Feyshtey said:While I see value in competition and exclusivity of items, I think it would likely be a trainwreck of epic proportions to unlock a zone at a known time with known rewards waiting inside. While a 4am spawn of a raid boss might give advantage to overseas guilds raiding on their primetime, or to guilds of players willing to accept batphoning, this alternative could be far worse. Imagine 25 guilds with 100 members each stockpiled at the zone entrance waiting for the clock to count down. If the zone didnt crash when a couple of thousands players entered at once then there would be absolute bedlam inside as people bulldozed everything racing for the raid kill.
If there's argument with 3 guilds making charges of kill stealing and inteference when a mob pops at 4am, imagine the customer service nightmare of a dozens of guilds.
These all seem like technical issues and server population issues. You assume a server with 25 raiding guilds of 100 members each. You also seem to be making an assumption about the number of players that can be in a zone concurrently without causing gameplay problems or a crash. If either of those assumptions is off, your argument here falls away.
EQ servers had around 2000 people live at any given time and there would be multiple guilds going for a spawn pop. Server technology today would allow for many times that on a shard, but not necessarily for a notable percentage to be in a zone at once, let alone entering a zone all at once. That's a technological issue to be sure. But it's not something that most MMO's design for because its not something that really happens. You're asking for a whole new level of engineering to support a mechanic that's really just going to leave a lot of people pissed to begin with.
Feyshtey said:I'll admit to not having read Mastere's post before I made mine. But I completely agree. People will schedule their lives around that timer. They will be there for that event, and they will race, block, interfere, etc, in any way they can to win the race.
Hell it was common in EQ for there to be 3 raids racing to a dragon spawn back in the day, and that with no known spawn time and at ridiculous hours of the night. It would be naive to assume that there wouldnt be at least a few times that number of guilds wanting to take a shot. Part of the situation that limited the number of guilds that would even attempt raids back int he day was that their particular membership couldnt/wouldn't drop everything at the drop of a hat to make the race to the boss. You don't think they'd at least try to run thru a zone faster than another guild when they can literally put it on their calendar and just be standing there when the starter's pistol goes off?
I absolutely agree. Guilds will schedule around the opening of this kind of zone. That is the point! They will plan, prepare, strategize, show up, race, win, lose, cheer, cry. And it won't be freaking 4AM in response to a batphone.
Your argument against the idea is based on some assumptions that could be addressed. One is the number of guilds. Another is the ability to grief and a GM's ability to regulate griefing. Another is server load. I don't think you can say in the abstract whether those challenges are insurmountable.
Edit: Fey, unless you know the zone capacities that VR can reasonably support, I don't see the point of poo-pooing the idea based on a concern about overpopulation of a zone. Also, I don't follow what you're saying about how the mechanic would leave everyone pissed off. Again many assumptions baked in there.
Or you could just make every dungeon a contested resource that NPC/Mob factions fight for control over. And then offer players the ability to "pave the way" for certain raid bosses to take over a dungeon area through quest mechanics or kill counts... whatever floats the balloon.
Then once a dungeon is taken over it spawns as a raid zone with many different competitive levels of content, from smaller fast spawning and high volume, all the way up to the big dog themself. Giving many different guilds access to part of the raid, but the main temporary leader is the competitive target. And you can make these raid bosses completely unique with one-time only unique drops as long as they are so hard that it is unlikely any guild can clear them.
Then just despawn them for the next event, or when certain conditions are met.
Poof unique, inclusive, and time limited content, same sammich. Just bite it. I dare you.
Gnog said:I absolutely agree. Guilds will schedule around the opening of this kind of zone. That is the point! They will plan, prepare, strategize, show up, race, win, lose, cheer, cry. And it won't be freaking 4AM in response to a batphone.
Your argument against the idea is based on some assumptions that could be addressed. One is the number of guilds. Another is the ability to grief and a GM's ability to regulate griefing. Another is server load. I don't think you can say in the abstract whether those challenges are insurmountable.
So what's the point? Many guilds in a race, all able to damage everything, no realistic challenge to mow thru everything including the boss at the end, and he who does the most damage wins the prizes? This doesn't require cooperation, or strategy. It's a deliberate design to encourage a mass zerg attack the outcome of which is not even remotely in question, unless you build the encounters to require hundreds of attackers to begin with. Which I suppose is possible, but to what end?
And none of my argument is based on any assumption. It is not an assumption that when you make something predictably timed participation will increase manyfold. That's human nature, so long as the incentive is sufficient to attend at all. And for the server/software side, I'm a datacenter engineer, leading a team that manages 3 datacenters each with about 1000 servers, and servicing about 140,000 people. The difference between having a service that supports a mean of 100 concurrent connections with peaks in the 200-300 range, and a service that sits entirely idle for 23 hours of the day then supports 1000 concurrent connections is very significant. You're talking about a really uncommon use case, particularly when the bulk of the load comes in a matter of a few seconds. And that's aside from the compute power required for all the participants on their local pc's. MMOs are not designed to render 1000 players in one spot. It is know that they will be dispersed and 1000 in one location is something that just doesn't really happen. Every person there would lag all to hell from just the rendering of everyone else. Framerate would be atrocious.
Gnog said:Dragonfist, I don't know, man, I don't see why anyone would WANT the competitive raid scene to be won and lost based on who stays up until 4am. I get your point that it COULD work that way, but I can't see why you'd prefer to have raid targets all go to the guild that can batphone the best. But that's kinda beside the point; a premise of this idea is that raiding should not be dominated, at least not completely, based on spawn-watching and batphoning.
Your point about guides being available and "over leveled" boxing crews is kinda far afield. Neither a zone guide nor a few multi-boxer crews will have much impact on a guild v guild race to clear a raid zone when it opens.
Gnog said:Edit: Fey, unless you know the zone capacities that VR can reasonably support, I don't see the point of poo-pooing the idea based on a concern about overpopulation of a zone. Also, I don't follow what you're saying about how the mechanic would leave everyone pissed off. Again many assumptions baked in there.
Addressing the edit :
Alright, leave out the server hardware and management entirely.
Name a game with high rez characters, each with 1000's or even 10's of 1000's of unique appearance configurations, with complex animations that are dynamic based on player actions, that would allow 1000 people in one place without every client system being heavy with video lag. Now have them all racing thru a high rez dungeon with lighting effects, partical effects etc, and then fighting with a compounded number of effects and animations, against high rez mobs.
Completely disregarding whatever service designs would be needed to get the all connected in a few seconds, and keeping them all synched during the execution of potentially hundreds of different actions, do you mean to suggest that a "normal" game pc today would allow players to be there and not be getting 5FPS?