I am a fan of a good mixture of open world and instanced raid targets. Or a third option, spawned open world targets. Let me explain why.
Open world contested mobs are fine but.
- It happend to be the case that a lot of raid targets respawned after server down. Due to international servers and the work schedule of american developers it happend to be in european prime time. That had two impacts. First, we can't play at downtime in primetime. Second, if the server comes up in prime time we killed each and every raid target in our price class. Locking out oversea guilds for another week and in some cases even for month if server down gods where nice to us. That lead to lots of threads how unfair that is... there goes the "Contested mobs"...
- On some servers raid calendars where introduced. Who is scheduled to kill a mob. I am sorry, this might work but it also takes away the dignity of a boss. It is one thing to know that you can kill and farm it but another thing is to have it "black on white" in a "Kill schedular".
Instances relax it a little for everybody and a good healthy mixture of both would be the way I'd go If I would be a game designer.
Spawned Open World targets.
In short: You can spawn a mob via an item that has a timer to obtain.
Let me paint a picture: There is a cave entrance and in front of it stays a creature. You hand over an item and the creature goes nuts and calls for help. The boss is comming out of the cave entrance and you can kill it. The item to spawn it can be optained every x days via a guild quest or by killing another mobs that drops it to the guild that made the most damage (over all participants). Leaving and rejoining a guild has to be limited to x days of course. The item is either no trade or - if all holes of the system are closed - tradeable. This visionary cave could also be near a town or in a low level zone where a high level guild can "show off" a little.
Best regards,
Isa
Disclaimer: English isn't my native so bear with me.
Having a game PvE focused game centered on teamwork, cooperation, and community against the challenges of the environment doesn't lend itself well to pulling the rug from everyone when you get to high end content/raids. It would be similar to selling people on playing co-op Halo but toward the end being told "oh sorry, if you want to finish the last two chapters you have to beat these pro-league teams. I mean you technically have a chance...so that's good right?" Except in this case you might be more skilled than than most of them (which they probably fear because if everyone could try their hand at the content they would actually have to compete with other guilds) but you don't have the time to poopsock/batphone/etc. Do people honestly think they can't make content hard enough that the vast majority of players can't complete? Shouldn't your prestige come from besting extremely hard content not simply having more time?
Louden said:Back on track, no one likes lockout timers, but I understand why they are utilized. They slow progression to increase player retention and provide developers additional time to generate new content. Once guilds learn the mechanics, bosses are easily put on farm status and become exponentially easier with every new piece of loot obtained by the raid. It’s unreasonable without lockout timers or similar gating mechanics to expect new content keep pace with guilds’ ability to totally farm out an instance.
I am concerned though, that lockout timers will be used in addition to the Progeny System to buy additional development time and incentivize the community to recycle old content instead of focusing on new content.
I keep seeing this being said and I don't get it. If a raid boss had a 7 day respawn timer and they instead put in lockouts for 7 days then how would anything change in terms of a player/guilds personal progression?
Lyyr said:Now I have to question if you ever raided in Everquest before it was infected with instancing. You are viewing it entirely as raid force vs. raid force.
Did you ever get to raid Temple of Veeshan when it was new? Multiple guilds raiding the same zone was awesome on so many levels.
Pretty much no one raided Veeshan's Peak or Temple of Veeshan after that when they were new. Afterlife (one of the worlds biggest/best raid groups in EQ) didn't even make it IN to Veeshan's Peak until August 2000 and didn't clear it until November 11th, less than a month before Velious. In Velious people didn't even get into Temple of Veeshan until April 2001, one guild of people with most raiders nowhere near that. Other than that anyone not in the top two or three guilds would be extremely lucky to claim a Vox or Nagafen even by the time of Velious. As the top guilds climbed it got easier and easier for them to monopolize content; sure there were more targets but since they were far better geared players they could get away with doing older content with far fewer bodies when/if they needed to contest multiple targets (they only needed to race for a limited few due to no one being able to contest the higher raids anyway).
Instances were a lazy/easy answer to the problem of content denial/competition that started to plague EQ raiding, but it was a system created by the most hardcore raiders in EQ because even they saw the competition as toxic to a PvE focused game.
From a Rob Pardo interview (VP of Game Design/Mastermind of early WoW):
You were originally the guild master of [renowned hardcore EverQuest raiding guild] Legacy of Steel, correct? What did your experience as a hardcore MMO raider make you want to bring to WoW, and what did it make you want to leave out?
As a hardcore guild leader, I realized the depth that there is to these games. Previous to that experience, there weren't a lot of games out there that you wanted to continue, to be powerful with a large group of other players and constantly beating new content. I'd been hardcore in other games before it, like FPSes and RTSes, but in those games the joy of the game comes from the competition, and the only thing unique that changes is the competition. I think that when you look at EQ, the high-end guild game and the raiding, you realize: Wow, if you could be in a cooperative game, you get to know people, build up these bonds and teamwork, as you're presented with challenge after challenge? It's a very positive thing.
If you weren't a designer, but a hardcore WoW raider, do you think you would think the game was too "casual" these days?
Quite possibly. I have this theory that, when you're a really elite hardcore gamer, what you really want - what drives you - is that sense of competition; really having that gap between you and the less skilled, and more casual. That's what drives you, and that's not different no matter what game you're playing: WoW, Counterstrike, Warcraft III, games like that. You strive to make the gap as big as possible.
So I certainly think that there is that sense that "Hey, I remember back when I had to walk uphill to school in snow both ways, and other players don't have to do it as hard as I did!" There's naturally going to be some resentment, but in the bigger picture, it doesn't diminish their accomplishment at all. They're still better and more skilled - but the gap has changed.
I was in Legacy of Steel from early 2000 until the end of 2001.
There was no sharing going on. We killed everything. We manned the bat phone. Hell, we pretty much invented the term "bat phone" pertaining to waking people up at any hour of the night to kill a dragon.
The entire MO of LoS was to keep everything locked down as tight as possible, so that we were the only guild on the cutting edge on Nameless. Once we moved on from content, other guilds got their crack, and there were guilds that were nipping at our heels, but they simply were never given the opportunity to fail and learn. We failed and learned a lot, but we got the chance to fail and learn, because nobody else could tackle what we could.
Partly because of key lockouts, and partly because of power creep. We power creeped everyone to the point that we could try the latest content first, and nobody else could, they had to work through the previous tier we had on lock down.
So make no mistake about it, Legacy of Steel was not sharing content, and we certainly did not give other guilds opportunities to challenge our monopoly on sweet sweet lewt.
This is, in part, why I think Tigole and Ariel (Kaplan and Pardo) designed WoW the way they did. As much as they took advantage of non-instanced content in EQ when I played with them, they also were vocal about how obnoxious it was. Instancing is democratic in a sense, it gives everyone a chance. That's good from an ease of access stand point. However, instancing led down a rabbit hole imo that lead to more and more corner cutting and compromising of the "virtual" world, to the point where WoW became a browser game. Login, queue, log out. You didn't have to travel. There was no risk. No server community (became even WORSE after cross server queuing). Very little interaction between players.
My opinion on lock out timers is, that it is absolutely immersion breaking and only the try to fix some problem, because of other game design decissions.
Of course an instance is not really immersive and in am MMORPG you will have respawn, what is also not really immersive, but having a lock out timer is even more killing the immersion. Because with lock out timers, you have a even quicker respawn rate, even of boss mobs and depending on how it is solved, you see the respawned mob maybe even fighting against a group, but are not able to participate, because you are on the timer. This in my opinion is more immersion breaking than having instances.
I read somewhere Pantheon will have some type of instances. Different phases of the dungeon opening, when the dungeon is overcrowded. But this compromise maybe can be abused by large guilds to unlock a new phase for them, if their desired boss is already down or in combat by other groups.
Next thing is, depending on how open the dungeon really is, you will not have hard boss fights. Or at least let's say a big guild can avoid them. A boss is designed to be pretty hard for a group of 10. Just go there with 30 or more people and even the hardest boss will become easy.
As most of you like to have no instances and because I know what is written in the FAQ I will not start an agrue with kill stealing and other things...
Okay, there are LOCKOUTS to raids. Meaning you can't just go into other peoples raids and continuously farm the same raid with multiple guilds. That is what we call a "Lockout" I know they had they in RIFT. You had to wait a whole week before you could do the same raid.
Now, what people are asking is for a Lockout TIMER. Meaning, they get locked out of that instance after spending too much time in it. Maybe too much time in a day. Or in a week? It prevents guilds from trying to spend 16 hours a day in a brand new raid banging their heads against a wall until they finally figure it out. That doesn't really take skill. Yet they will end up with server first.
That actually happened in Rift when I played. One guild completed the first boss and raid, because their members took time off work and just spent massive amounts of hours in the new raid. Kinda defeats the purpose of needing "skill" when you just need more time than anyone else. Server firsts are almost worth nothing now. It just shows how much more time you have than anyone else. A group that can go in, work together, and kill the boss in less time... Now THAT is an achievement.
Louden said:Back on track, no one likes lockout timers, but I understand why they are utilized. They slow progression to increase player retention and provide developers additional time to generate new content. Once guilds learn the mechanics, bosses are easily put on farm status and become exponentially easier with every new piece of loot obtained by the raid. It’s unreasonable without lockout timers or similar gating mechanics to expect new content keep pace with guilds’ ability to totally farm out an instance.
I am concerned though, that lockout timers will be used in addition to the Progeny System to buy additional development time and incentivize the community to recycle old content instead of focusing on new content.
Iksar said:I keep seeing this being said and I don't get it. If a raid boss had a 7 day respawn timer and they instead put in lockouts for 7 days then how would anything change in terms of a player/guilds personal progression?
If you review my initial post, you'll see I mentioned "similar gating mechanics" which would include long respawn timers.
Iksar said:Except in this case you might be more skilled than than most of them (which they probably fear because if everyone could try their hand at the content they would actually have to compete with other guilds) but you don't have the time to poopsock/batphone/etc.
Amazing reply, I only took a snip, but I couldn't agree more with everything. People vastly underestimate the capability and drive of top end guilds.
Philo said:Improve
That's the thing man. A server typically develops in one way. A majority of the players that want to be endgame funnel into one guild, and as long as that guild is successful people stay.
Theres only so much you can do in order to mobilize quickly, it's not like some people can run faster than others. If a guild has twice the number of players, and is able to mobilize the same speed... even if they are worse players you'll still lose to them 95% of the time.
On the eq1 tlps this happened often. I was in guild 2, the batphone would go out. Within 10 minutes we would have a raid force of 30 people ready to pull vox. And guild 1 would have 60. The parse of the top 10 in damage was typically 8 of our players and 2 of theirs. Its not fun to lose over and over just due to sheer number of people.
I know this isnt going to change your viewpoint. But I enjoy having the conversation none the less. I'm ok with whatever VR determines they feel is best.
To another point that iksar posted, in the interview with rob pardo he mentions how what really elite hardcore gamers want is the challenge of competition. This is 100% correct for me. I've been both on the giving and receiving end of denying content and it's not really that satisfying either way.
The most fun I had was during the races to server first in eq tlp servers that were instanced and wow classic servers that were instanced. Having that other guild 15 mins 8n front or behind you. Unable to know how quickly they are progressing, that's excitement!
Very interesting discussion! It seems like there are two main camps and lockouts have different tradeoffs for each. For players who are driven by competition, lockout timers remove a very fun aspect of gameplay involving scouting, strategizing, racing, and ultimately defeating (camping) the hardest content in the game. For more casual players, lockouts give them a chance to engage in raid content that they otherwise wouldn't. For some, a core enjoyment of this genre of game is collaborating with a large number of players towards a common objective. They may not have as much time but the raid experience is still very important.
Looking at these two camps, perhaps there is a way VR can design encounters to appeal to both. For example, raid mobs could have standard mode and enraged mode. Defeating a raid mob on standard mode triggers a lockout timer, while enraged mode doesn't. Every time the mob spawns there's a chance it is enraged until it is defeated. Enraged mobs could have an additional mechanic and one or some unique drops. This solution would mean top guilds would need to scout all possible targets to see which are enraged, but they wouldn't be able to camp the mobs. In this case the top guild would even have an incentive to help/support other guilds to defeat the standard version of the mob, as every respawn is a new chance at enraged mode.
That is just one idea, but my main takeaway from this discussion is that there are two groups who perceive lockout timers in different ways. Rather than choosing one side or the other I hope VR spends time trying to come up with ideas that serve both groups.
Porygon said:To another point that iksar posted, in the interview with rob pardo he mentions how what really elite hardcore gamers want is the challenge of competition.
You should really be more sceptical of developers when they are criticizing their competition. Especially the ones known for massive amounts of (entertaining!)exageration. Pardo and Kaplan are not the gods of MMORPG design that they are made out to be. They had all the resources of Activision/Blizzard behind them along with the mandate to create a next-gen MMORPG and wound up blowing millions upon millions of dollars, with a staff of over 200 full time employees on thier project alone, they failed to even reach alpha. After Kotick avoided a leveraged buyout of Activision/Blizzard he'd had enough of the aimless wandering and pissing away of capital going on with Titan and mandated they release something that year. So what did Blizzard get out of their best and brightest next-gen MMORPG team after 7 years of development? A team based arena shooter! Pardo is gone from Blizzard, he was allowed to reach his 20 years, get his crown and save face with a leave of abscence followed by his resignation. If the Overwatch league fails Kaplan will most likely be out too. Pardo and Kaplan are not innovators. They do not have the necessary creative vision to boot strap MMORPG's like Brad McQuaid and his team does.
Porygon said:The most fun I had was during the races to server first in eq tlp servers that were instanced and wow classic servers that were instanced. Having that other guild 15 mins 8n front or behind you. Unable to know how quickly they are progressing, that's excitement!
That's great you have content that currently serves your niche! You've got WoW, and you have EQ TLP, all providing you with instanced raid content to race other guilds to complete. You can currently enjoy the kind of content you have the most fun playing and when Battle for Azeroth launches soon you will have a whole new set of instanced content to race to #1 for! Does it really serve Pantheon to try and move into this same already occupied niche of the market?
Porygon said:Lol, ok. Few things. A very very few people had the capabilities to farm fire and ice giants. So raiding naggy and vox literally meant plowing thru the zone until you were outside those areas. Which noone was.. so the only socialization involved is the raid running over the other players. Same with velketor, venril sathir and even trakanon. There for a guild running to these mobs and zoning into an instance would be the same as it was when it was a single persistent world.
Ok I am pretty much 100% sure you didn't play much EQ, or were very young when you did. It's great you are enjoying TLP, but please realize that it is nowhere near the original experience. Lots of people could do fire/ice giants when it was current content, same with hate and fear(lots of servers had calendars for the planes). I don't even know you would say such a thing. Raids didn't in general run over players, they played through and respected camps for the most part. I am sure someone somewhere can dig up an andecote or old server message board flame war of some raid training someone on the way to voxx/naggy but in general people didn't do that. Call of hero all but eliminated that risk of getting trained.
How are you envisioning these instances working? how much of the zone is instanced? just the room with the raid target?
Porygon said:As far as the keying processes... you are miles off on this one. The keys for VP and VT weren't the issues. Everyone on the server had those 99% completed... with the exception of the last pieces. Which they couldnt get because they were c-blocked from killing trak and emp.
That would be nice if it were true. I spent so much time tracking medallion mobs for VP keys for people. 12 hour spawns on that crap, and they were contested as well. Trak dropped what 2-4 teeth per kill? No guarantee you got him every time he popped either, especially if you had a competant euro guild on your server, so yeah it could take a lot of freakin time to get a raid force keyed for VP. I am sure to outside players it may look like deliberate blocking, but really for all you know it could be getting hosed on teeth drops. I don't remember planar rifts bieng as much of a pita, Luclin had other ways of sinking your time though. A lot of this so called blocking was most likely keying new recruits and gearing people. Like it or not the design of EQ requires farming content you've already beaten in order to progress. Remember PoP? Once a guild got to the elemental planes the only reason they bothered to do previous planes was to back flag. RZ, SolRo and lower would stay up for weeks completely unchallenged. Yet for some reason with these targets wide open none of the more casual guilds ever took the opportunity. The simple fact was those other guilds just weren't up for the challenge.
Porygon said:Your fear of vr instancing everything is completely ridiculous. That's basically akin to saying you dont trust them to even remotely stick to what they have said (since they've never ruled out instancing) If that's true, why are you here? Instancing raids would do nothing to impact the socialization on the server... as mentioned in my previous post.. it would actually increase it. By allowing more guilds to recruit for raids and allowing pugs to take chances.
It's not ridiculous at all when every game that implements instancing in some form allows it to spread to other areas in the name of convienance and 'fairness'. In this very thread we all ready see theappeals to 'fairness'. I am here because I have played Brad's other two MMORPG's and enjoy the work of him and his team. I am greatly encouraged by the point of view him and his design staff have expressed for the direction of this game, which includes a dim view of instancing content, with an understanding of what the ill effects it has on the game.
bryanleo9 said:But when the vast majority of the paying customers have the level to engage the best content but are denied on purpose by the top guilds....well that's just terrible game design in this day and age
This right here is the attitude that will encourage the developers to instance more of the game. What happens when the family guild finds out that you need more than level to beat the content? Why they will ask for easier versions of the content! and why not it's already instanced! and other games do it, so why not Pantheon? Every game that starts down this path continues down it, they never turn around and change course.
Iksar said:Pretty much no one raided Veeshan's Peak or Temple of Veeshan after that when they were new. Afterlife (one of the worlds biggest/best raid groups in EQ) didn't even make it IN to Veeshan's Peak until August 2000 and didn't clear it until November 11th, less than a month before Velious. In Velious people didn't even get into Temple of Veeshan until April 2001, one guild of people with most raiders nowhere near that. Other than that anyone not in the top two or three guilds would be extremely lucky to claim a Vox or Nagafen even by the time of Velious. As the top guilds climbed it got easier and easier for them to monopolize content; sure there were more targets but since they were far better geared players they could get away with doing older content with far fewer bodies when/if they needed to contest multiple targets (they only needed to race for a limited few due to no one being able to contest the higher raids anyway).
People did in fact raid Temple of Veeshan when it was current, clearing the north wing was not the only objective. Same with Veeshan's peak. Do you not remember people being pissed that Seb and Karnor's loot was better than VP loot? Vox and Nagafen had the ability to banish players over 53 shortly after Kunark launched so if they were bieng killed by top players it wasn't with thier main characters. Making the death of Nagafen a requirement for Ragefire did contribute to Nagafen bieng camped more than he would have otherwise, trust me though it was only because of the cleric epic. Nobody enjoyed camping ragefire, nobody wanted to do that anymore than was necessary.
It was a very happy day for everyone in EQ when alternative methods of spawning epic NPC's were introduced. It's pretty clear to me that the design team learned from the ragefire experience since they did introduce other methods of moving things forward. I really doubt we will see a repeat of a Ragefire type of scenario in Pantheon.
The thing I want out Pantheon more than anything else is getting the vision of the MMORPG back on track and move it forward again. I am encouraged by the informed hard line stance against instancing. The desire to make sure every step of the journey of our characters is enjoyable and meaningful and not a race to some 'end game' that revolves around grinding the same set of content over and over. If anyone is going to pull the MMORPG genre out of the death spiral it's in, it's the team at Visionary Realms.
I see 3 groups of people commenting in this thread mostly.
Group A: Wants to see lockouts or some other tool implemented that stops monopolization of raid content so that 1 guild can't stop or slow the progression of an entire server just so they can be exclusively at the top and feel superior to everyone below them in progression.
Group B: Wants no lockouts because they feel if guilds other than themselves get to raid the content they are raiding, without having to passive-aggressively battle with them first, then its hand holding or some such thing, they think the true challenge should not be the content itself but the battle to poopsock/batphone more than the other guys.
Aka those with more time and fewer responsibilities are the winners of the race to the boss first and therefore should be the only ones who get to experience the raid content until they allow it. They also seem to have the misconception that lockouts would keep them from getting loots as fast as not having them. This is not true, if there are no lockouts there will just be longer re-spawn timers to prevent bosses from becoming loot pinatas.
There is no reasoned, moral argument for not having a means to prevent content monopolization, that is why they have not expressed one yet, and won't be able to.
Thus, they ever resort to false arguments and direct ridicule of the people making well-reasoned arguments as to why there should be lockouts or some other tool to prevent content monopolization.
Historically factual accounts of not having a system in place to stop content monopolization are discounted as being hyperbolic or irrelevant to the discussion without making a reasoned argument against it.
Group C: Very small group, mostly one very active person arguing against both group A and group B because they want to see instanced raids, even though VR has expressly stated there will not be instanced content of that ilk, from day 1.(notice I didn't say no instancing at all.)
This group continues to state that lockouts cannot be done without exploits, even though, a way was presented, that they themselves could not find an exploit for.
This thread has grown beyond any expectation I may have had when I started it to discuss lockouts and how they could possibly be beneficial to Pantheon, I would like to thank everyone who has helped shape the discussion in a positive way. I look forward to seeing how VR addresses these important issues.
Tal
I'm going to share my thoughts from another thread (posted this 15 months ago) as I feel it relates to what is being discussed here and has some similarities to what Cenalan proposed:
We already know that Pantheon will be an open-world game that rarely uses instancing. Many of us have been able to enjoy a variety of raid systems over the years but who can truly say that any one in particular would be ideal for Pantheon? My personal favorites were from EQOA and FFXI where the raid environments were purely contested. I enjoyed this style of raiding because I place an enormous value on the thrill of competition. While there are many others out there who share this sentiment, we're definitely the minority. For every 1 player that is able to experience killing a contested raid spawn, there are dozens out there who wanted the same but ultimately would not get to. Because of this, a truly contested FFA environment with long respawn timers will always promote more bad than good as the majority of players will feel like they are on the outside looking in. Because of this, contested content began to slowly dissipate as the MMO genre continued to evolve.
The opposite side of the spectrum is instanced content . We already know that we won't be seeing much of it in Pantheon, but it's important to note why it has been viewed so favorably by a large portion of the raiding community. When a raid is instanced, all players have their fair chance to experience it. There is no way for a competing guild to monopolize the content and this is a great way to ensure that less competitive guilds have their fair shot at experiencing all that the game has to offer. While there are definitely some positives to be had here, there are also some consequences. Most importantly, it ruins social immersion. Instancing content removes players from the world and prevents the opportunity for us to interact with each other while we play. Considering that Pantheon is an "intensely social group-centric" game, instancing simply does not make sense. VR wants the world to be bustling with social activity and creating a bunch of instanced content will prevent that from happening.
So how do we get to a fair middle ground? A world that allows the hardcore folks to enjoy the thrill of competition without blocking other guilds from important end-game content? My proposed solution is to implement a hybrid of FFXI / Vanguard raiding systems. In FFXI there were raid bosses called "Hyper Notorious Monsters" and I would like to use Behemoth / King Behemoth as an example. In FFXI, all raids bosses were contested -- Behemoth would spawn every few days or so, and had about a 20-35% chance of spawning as King Behemoth. King Behemoth was basically a harder version of Behemoth that also happened to drop more/better loot. In Vanguard, when a raid boss was killed, participating players would receive a lockout and it would then respawn as a "ghost" version after a short to moderate period of time. This allowed all guilds to have a chance at learning the encounter and to reap the rewards of victory should they beat it.
When you blend these two concepts together, I believe we have an ideal scenario that can/will cater to the entire raiding community. Let's say, for example, that the first spawn of every raid boss is considered a "hyper" version or "King Behemoth" from the above reference. It should be so difficult that only the most experienced/coordinated raid forces will be capable of beating it. It should drop 3-4 pieces of loot, with 1-2 of those pieces being exclusive to the "hyper" version loot table. Once killed, the standard version, or "Behemoth" would spawn about an hour later. This version would be less difficult (but still quite difficult) and only drop 1-2 pieces of loot. Players who kill the standard version would receive a "lockout" on the mob to prevent over-farming and loot saturation. The standard version would continue to respawn approximately once per hour after being killed until finally evolving into the "hyper" version 3-5 days later. Due to the nature of this lockout, raid teams would be inclined to try and beat the encounter with the fewest amount of members possible. This would allow a great sense of progression because as our characters grow in power, what once took 24 players to kill may now only take 18, and eventually 12. This would be very exciting from a raid leader perspective as it would be an ongoing challenge to try and beat content with the smallest force possible. It would also provide more flexibility when it comes to scheduling primetime hours and being able to accommodate all of the players who want to raid.
My understanding is that raiding will only be a small fraction of the content that we can look forward to in Pantheon. If the above solution were to be implemented, I think the amount of naysayers opposed to raiding would start to fade away. Rather than being frustrated by the uber guilds and their fierce competitive ways, they would actually look at them as a necessary component to the raid environment as a whole. Instead of the top guilds "robbing" other guilds from content, they would be enabling it. The ultra competitive guilds would have their "hyper" bosses to battle for and also play a vital role in the raid community for their server as their ability to progress could create a chain reaction of positivity. It would be absolutely amazing if the hardcore guilds could be viewed as the hero rather than the villain for a change. Those fortunate enough to lay waste to the hyper bosses would be rewarded with some extra higher quality loot and praise from their peers. Those who missed out still have their chance to get some awesome loot from the regular version and try for the hyper kill again in a few days. Having a chance to actually learn the encounters is incredibly important as that experience will better position players to contest the hyper version when it respawns. This sytem allows players to compete while also preventing content monopolization. It promotes content accessibility and also makes the competition feel more authentic as players will have a much better chance to contest after they learn the ropes of each encounter.
Thanks Sarim. A lot of people seemed to like the idea when I originally proposed it so I did end up expanding on the concept a little bit. Keep in mind that the original/simpler version could absolutely be ideal, but there are some other elements that might warrant consideration. I apologize in advance for this long-winded post but I know this topic is really important because challenges related to content accessibility are at the forefront of any open-world game. Here is the expanded version I posted a couple weeks later:
I want to touch on a subject that is near and dear to my heart as it pertains to raiding in MMO's. I've played plenty of games over the years and if there was one thing I noticed getting more and more popular, it was the use of "instanced raiding." Why did this become so popular? The short answer is simple ... supply vs demand. When it comes to contested content that operates on a 3-5 day respawn cycle, it's accessibility is extremely limited. Generally speaking, the first couple guilds to reach max-level would be in the best position possible to learn and master the encounter mechanics of any given fight. While the majority of a server is still leveling up, there are always a select few that are already pushing the limits of end-game content. There is always a race to see who will conquer the biggest and baddest bosses in the game.
What ends up happening is these select few players end up beating the content and putting it on farm status. Eventually, the rest of the server will catch up ... and when it comes time for them to attempt this "contested content" they quickly learn that their chances are slim to none. As soon as these encounters spawn, several competing guilds will attempt to down them. This isn't in an effort to "block" other guilds from experiencing the content, but rather to lay claim to the awesome rewards that are so commonly associated with high-end contested raid content. So for all the other guilds out there that would like to eventually take a crack at these encounters, the opportunities will be few and far between. Even if you are lucky enough to get a couple pulls in, the encounters are so tough that they usually require dozens of pulls to master the mechanics.
So after your pull is over, the competing guilds step in and attempt to down the boss using the tactics that they came up with weeks or months ago while practicing freely against the boss. Soon enough, it's laying on the ground dead and those same players are jumping with joy as they distribute the uber loot they just obtained. So where does this leave you? You really want to attempt that same boss ... you want that same loot ... but how will you get it? Do you abandon your current guild and move on to greener pastures, increasing the likelihood of you experiencing that content? Do you hold a pep rally and tell your members you'll get it next time? Well, many will be quick to remind you that you might get it next time if only you actually had the chance to battle the encounter in the first place and get those darn mechanics down. This is where the Hyper/Ghost concept comes into play.
I'm going to provide an explanation here to make sense of it. Basically, the hyper/ghost concept is something that allows competitive guilds the opportunity to compete for contested content, but also allows others to attempt that same fight afterward. Here is how it works:
"True Hyper Dragon"
Respawn: 3-5 days.
Lockout: None.
Loot: 4-6 pieces from the "Dragon Loot Table" -- 2 to 3 of which are exclusive to the "True Hyper Loot Table"
"Ghost Dragon"
Respawn: 30-60 minutes after any version of the "Dragon" is killed.
Lockout: 3-5 days.
Loot: 2-3 pieces from the "Dragon Loot Table" and 1 "Hyper Dragon Essence"
"Hyper Dragon"
Respawn: Force popped by using 3 "Hyper Dragon Essences"
Lockout: 3-5 days, shared with the "Ghost Dragon."
Loot: 3-4 pieces from the "Dragon Loot Table" 1 to 2 of which are exclusive to the "True Hyper Loot Table."
As you can see, the "True Hyper" or "THV" version is basically a bonus kill. This is the contested version that all competing guilds will be striving to conquer. After it's killed, though, it will later respawn as the "Ghost Version." This version is toned down some, both in difficulty and the quality of loot that is rewarded. Nonetheless, the ghost version is still incredibly difficult and it's loot highly desirable. Upon killing the ghost version, players involved in the raid receive a lockout that prevents them from continually farming the mob as it respawns every 30-60 minutes. This gives other guilds an opportunity to experience that same content. On the flip side, successfully killing the ghost version will also reward your raid with a "hyper essence" that can be used to force pop a "Hyper Version." Once you accumulate 3 of these essences, you can transform the ghost version into the hyper version. The hyper version is nearly identical to the "True Hyper" version except for a couple small differences. The first is that it has a lockout, and it's shared with the ghost version. The second is that the loot is slightly toned down from the true hyper version. Other than that, the encounter is the exact same.
The benefits of a system like this are abundant. Competitive guilds still have a "bonus kill" that they can compete for each and every week. Those who miss out still have the opportunity to experience the encounter and obtain some loot with the ghost version. This is invaluable as the experience is necessary if they ever want to compete for the contested version, and they still get some loot to ensure that their characters are progressing enough to have a chance to beat it. After downing the ghost version a few times, guilds then have the option to force pop the hyper version. This drops better loot and allows guilds the opportunity to experience the full version of the encounter. The more guilds who are able to kill the ghost version, the more there will be who can kill the hyper version. The more who can kill the hyper version, the more that can "compete" for the true hyper version. Not only does this make the competitive raid scene more broadly competitive (it diminishes the insurmountable power gap that can be achieved by rushing to end-game), but it also serves as a platform to keep the "gear gap" in check. It won't close the gap completely, and it shouldn't ... risk vs reward is important, and those who kill the contested version should receive their appropriate bounty. But at the end of the day, a system like this will help facilitate competitive raiding on every server while also making it more accessible to the masses.
One issue I always had with competitive raiding is that these encounters have generally been the funnest encounters in the game. There are so many interesting and clever mechanics that me and my guild were able to enjoy over the years, but while we were farming these bosses, we were inadvertently preventing others from ever having a chance to experience that content, not to mention how it thwarted their ability to progress/compete. The gear gap continued to broaden and our "encounter mastery" continued to grow stronger. While we still had alliances on our server with other guilds, they were generally non-competitive raiding guilds. When it came to competition, heated rivalries ensued. I remember hearing and seeing plenty of unpleasant messages while participating in the hardcore raid scene and that's something I hope to avoid this go around. Rather than competitive guilds being viewed as the villain ... how about they get to play the role of hero for a change? How exactly could that work?
It starts with the competitive guilds taking out the "True Hyper Version." At that point, it's a free for all. Anybody and everybody can attempt it. More likely than not, there will be a few guilds who just aren't prepared for a fight of that magnitude. After the uber guild downs the true hyper version, it opens up the ghost version to everybody else. Now the guilds who couldn't necessarily kill the true hyper version might have something that they can kill. They get to learn the ropes of the fight and eventually acquire some loot that will help them grow stronger for next time. Rather than feeling "robbed" of content from another guild, they are "enabled" -- and not just for the "easy version" as some people might think. The ghost versions would still be incredibly difficult. But now they get to practice the encounter, accumulate some loot that will help them grow stronger ... and eventually have a chance to compete. I can't stress enough how important it is that guilds have the opportunity to at least experience the content. When content is purely contested, it's almost impossible for most players to learn the mechanics.
Beyond that, it's possible that downing the true hyper version has other perks and these would be temporarily accessible to everybody in the area. These wouldn't take shape as loot, but rather have an impact on the immediate territory and the NPC's who occupy it. Perhaps after a mighty dragon is killed, a new path to a nearby zone is opened up. With another boss, maybe it's the only path to a certain area that opens up. Another idea is that after a certain boss is killed, a nearby town temporarily decreases the "city tax" that is imposed on the sale of any goods purchased in the area. Maybe the local inn or tavern offers a small discount to everybody in the area as a gesture of appreciation for "Guild X" who killed the monster that was plaguing the neighborhood. Imagine the following:
Server Impact
What if killing raid bosses had an impact on the world our characters live in? Rather than being limited to shuffling more loot into the world, why couldn't downing a pesky dragon have a noticeable impact on the immediate area nearby? Loot acquisition will always be important as it plays a vital role in power progression for our characters, but wouldn't it be cool if the impact of downing these beasts could actually make a difference in how various NPC's interact with you / each other in the world?
Opportunistic Tradesmen
When a THV raid boss is killed, opportunistic tradesmen seek to grow their fortunes by setting up shop in an area that was otherwise too dangerous while the raid boss was roaming around. These merchants could sell unique crafting components or other desirable goodies that are only accessible for a limited period while the THV bosses are dead. Other merchants such as repair vendors, ammo vendors, or food/drink vendors could also sell their wares in convenient locations now that the territory is less hostile.
Kings Reach Extended
What if, every time a raid boss is killed in a certain area, there is a sense of "server progression" that takes place in the background? Perhaps there are Kings or Tribal Leaders that are looking to expand their territory and with every THV boss that is vanquished, they get one step closer. Maybe this could turn into a new tavern, inn, or outpost. Perhaps a shortcut is eventually opened up (a bridge built, tunnel excavated, etc) or elements of the faction system are adjusted. After expanding their territory, Tribe X now views kobolds as a pest to their operations, and killing them now grants faction with that tribe whereas before, they didn't.
Perhaps these contested raid bosses drop some sort of building material (rare ore, metal, wood) that is highly sought after by local authorities who are trying to build a teleportation spire in the area. Let's say it requires 100 of these items to build the spire -- the guild who turns in the most can have a monument built in their name, or perhaps they could name the spire itself?
Intensely Social
After a guild kills an obnoxious hill giant known for pillaging fields and slaughtering cattle, word starts to spread of their good deed. Local citizens in a nearby town are more amicable and promote the reputation of the guild who came to save the day. Perhaps the taverns/inns offer a temporary discount to any/all patrons in the area, but their text dialogue now includes a shout out for the guild who killed the hill giant. "Thanks to Guild X, we were able to enjoy a full harvest this month. Please enjoy a 10% discount on our wares."
Likewise, perhaps the king in the area is willing to temporarily reduce certain fees. Whether it's sales tax, property tax, broker fees, passage fees, etc ... perhaps there can be a mildly noticeable decrease to various fees in an area after certain contested raid bosses are killed. The king could put up message boards to announce such an event "Due to Guild X vanquishing Big Bad Red Dragon, we've had many more visitors and our mercantile district is thriving. We are temporarily reducing taxes/fees until further notice."
Coliseum
Doubling down on accessibility, what if, after any guilds kills a certain THV encounter, gnome scientists are able to extract samples and reproduce mechanical versions of the same encounter and allow challengers to do battle with them in their arena, for sport? They wouldn't drop the same loot of course ... but perhaps challengers would be willing to pay a fee to test these hyper versions in a neutral, more accessible location? Killing them could perhaps reward some sort of faction or token that could be exchanged with coliseum vendors to provide some sort of reward. This could be scaled to whatever feels appropriate ... but the point is to make the encounter accessible. Allow guilds to challenge themselves by doing battle with these mechanical constructs. Perhaps there could a leader board system of sorts that track various efficiency metrics such as time, death tally, DPS measurables by archetype, etc?
These are just a few ideas on how raiding can evolve in Pantheon. We can take the tried and true methods of the past, but reshape them in a way that make them more accessible and desirable. I firmly believe that there is a prime opportunity to capture the "raid audience" from the MMO genre and lure them to Pantheon. Most of the issues that have plagued the MMO genre over the years really come down to the following variables: "Hardcore vs Casual" / "Forced vs Optional" / "Fun vs Tedious" -- I think an ideal raiding system would feature gameplay aspects that could include both hardcore and casual, be truly optional, and reinforce the idea of having fun with friends.
Talonguard said:I see 3 groups of people commenting in this thread mostly.
Group A: Wants to see lockouts or some other tool implemented that stops monopolization of raid content so that 1 guild can't stop or slow the progression of an entire server just so they can be exclusively at the top and feel superior to everyone below them in progression.
Group B: Wants no lockouts because they feel if guilds other than themselves get to raid the content they are raiding, without having to passive-aggressively battle with them first, then its hand holding or some such thing, they think the true challenge should not be the content itself but the battle to poopsock/batphone more than the other guys.
Aka those with more time and fewer responsibilities are the winners of the race to the boss first and therefore should be the only ones who get to experience the raid content until they allow it. They also seem to have the misconception that lockouts would keep them from getting loots as fast as not having them. This is not true, if there are no lockouts there will just be longer re-spawn timers to prevent bosses from becoming loot pinatas.
There is no reasoned, moral argument for not having a means to prevent content monopolization, that is why they have not expressed one yet, and won't be able to.
Thus, they ever resort to false arguments and direct ridicule of the people making well-reasoned arguments as to why there should be lockouts or some other tool to prevent content monopolization.
Historically factual accounts of not having a system in place to stop content monopolization are discounted as being hyperbolic or irrelevant to the discussion without making a reasoned argument against it.
Group C: Very small group, mostly one very active person arguing against both group A and group B because they want to see instanced raids, even though VR has expressly stated there will not be instanced content of that ilk, from day 1.(notice I didn't say no instancing at all.)
This group continues to state that lockouts cannot be done without exploits, even though, a way was presented, that they themselves could not find an exploit for.
This thread has grown beyond any expectation I may have had when I started it to discuss lockouts and how they could possibly be beneficial to Pantheon, I would like to thank everyone who has helped shape the discussion in a positive way. I look forward to seeing how VR addresses these important issues.
Tal
Hell, if group C can be only one person, I want to have group D for myself : The group that wants no instancing and no lockout, thinking raiding shouldn't be the endgame of some sort like it used to be in kunark/Velious, because it's favoring too much item stat inflation and focus on soulless big groups.
As stated, instancing has been said not to be in the current game objectives, nor raiding beeing the focus of the game. I will just take VR's official words on this : There will be solo content, there will be raid content, but the focus is about group content.
6 pages over "some raid content" seems like an over reaction to something no one really knows about, will it even be relevant on some point ? Will raid be the only "max level" progression route because it forces a lot of logistic with a great number of players, thus reducing who can or will participate into it ?
Back when playing EQ1 I didn't feel the URGE to raid, I did some when I could and had 1 or 2 years of late, which made content very avaliable at this time, but it didn't feel like the only thing you can and should do, at least until I reached PoP.
Talonguard said:Group B: Wants no lockouts because they feel if guilds other than themselves get to raid the content they are raiding, without having to passive-aggressively battle with them first, then its hand holding or some such thing, they think the true challenge should not be the content itself but the battle to poopsock/batphone more than the other guys.
Aka those with more time and fewer responsibilities are the winners of the race to the boss first and therefore should be the only ones who get to experience the raid content until they allow it. They also seem to have the misconception that lockouts would keep them from getting loots as fast as not having them. This is not true, if there are no lockouts there will just be longer re-spawn timers to prevent bosses from becoming loot pinatas.
There is no reasoned, moral argument for not having a means to prevent content monopolization, that is why they have not expressed one yet, and won't be able to.
Thus, they ever resort to false arguments and direct ridicule of the people making well-reasoned arguments as to why there should be lockouts or some other tool to prevent content monopolization.
Historically factual accounts of not having a system in place to stop content monopolization are discounted as being hyperbolic or irrelevant to the discussion without making a reasoned argument against it.
Your seething is not well hidden. I think your post would've been better served without the assumptions of why people are presenting the opinions that they are.
Although, I suppose I can presume that you're specifically referring to those of group B that are going to reside on PvE servers, given that content will likely be a little more than passively aggressed over on PvP servers.
I like 1AD7's ideas.
@Porg. It is definitely possible for a guild to improve how efficiently they mobilize. At one point I was in a guild who kept losing the "race" to get to a target. So we started practicing mobilizing. Sort of like a fire drill. There were times when there was no actual target but the raid was called and we were timed in how fast we got there. Yes we had to leave our current group at the drop of a hat sometimes. That's how it is. We got pretty good at mobilizing after practicing. We definitely improved our efficiency and ended up having first crack at some raid mobs we would have lost out on otherwise.
But again, we have to be under the assumption that there will be enough raid mobs so that if you do lose out on a certain target there will usually be another target option. In original EQ...and to some extent kunark...there simply were not enough raid targets because the game had not yet grown into the full blown raiding game that EQ is known for and that people have grown to love. I think that will be an issue on release, not enough raid content to go around. As expansions come out that issue will fix itself.
@187
It seems like your idea is simply to have minibosses with lockout timers?
Whether a mob is a "ghost" version with a similar name or a completely different mob is just semantics isn't it? I guess it strokes players egos a bit when they can say they killed "Bohemoth" even though it is just a dumbed down version of "King Bohemoth".
In essence couldn't there just be a miniboss in the room before where King Bohemoth spawns that has the same 1 hr respawn timer as the "ghost version" you mention that, when you kill it, you have a lockout timer? It could be an easier version of the boss mob or a completely different mob. That wouldn't change the overarching idea right?
I feel like your idea is overcomplicating a simple approach. What am I missing?
@Philo & bryanleo9
I'll spend some time breaking down the concept in greater detail a little bit later. It's more than just semantics -- a big part of the draw to this system is that it allows players an opportunity to experience the standard version of these bosses. In my experience, competitive raiding was always focused on preventing other players from learning the ropes of any given encounter. The more difficult encounters generally have mechanics that take a lot of practice to master and when guilds rush to max and poopsock, it's almost impossible for the greater population to get some solid practice in when they eventually catch up. The guilds who rush are able to enjoy a raid scene that is generally uncontested because most players are still focused on leveling up. This system would prevent content monopoly but still offer truly contested encounters that players can compete for. More importantly, it offers a path of progression where players can learn the various encounters and better position themselves to contest the true hyper versions. The ghost versions cannot be monopolized due to the lockout mechanic. This system could also change the narrative where the hardcore guilds are considered villains that deny content from others. It doesn't require instancing and would allow all players who have an interest in raiding to thrive in the same environment.