This topic came up in Discord recently and I wanted to pose it to the greater community and get a better idea of how other people are interpreting the message. Back in November of 2018 Sarcoth Haven was invited to stream Black Rose Keep with several members of the development team. He asked about raiding and group size. Joppa responded and cited 12 man raids, 24 man raids, the possibility of 40 man raids, and "really challenging raid tier single group content." To me this implies that players will be limited to those respective group/raid sizes while engaging that content, the same as we saw in Vanguard. I can't imagine that zerging will be a thing in this game since it violates multiple game tenets. There has always been an emphasis on challenging content, meaningful risk/reward, earned accomplishments, etc. So the question I propose ... what does really challenging raid tier single group content mean to you, in the context of Pantheon?
Here is a link to the timestamped video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MPG2pbC3nw&feature=youtu.be&t=2037
I geuss in its most simplistic form, this would imply to me that you cannot complete this with group / solo gear, as you will run out of mana or the likes. Maybe that you can beat the first boss in a row of bosses but thats about it. It would also somewhat imply that it is instanced, as you cannot 'zerg rush' it, unless you get some sort of encounter lock like some games have.
To go into more depth, i believe it would require you to have gear with specific stats that is only achievable end game with other 'bosses', ofcourse this comes down to a gear check. But it can also mean that you are needing to pay attention because of certain scripts that are not found within the regular world of terminus. Require you to get certain items to spawn them or items needed during the fight.
This is most definitely going to be a nice discussion, as i cannot really forsee where this will take us.
I'll fall back to my old "it's artificial" argument when it comes to raid limits. I think we should just let things go, if people behave poorly or use cheez-e tactics like zerging, so be it. It's worth maintaining the immersion and integrity of the virtual world, imo. /shrug There's no reason why 41 people can't zone into a huge lava cave dungeon other than an overt game mechanic which breaks a wall for me that I think would be better off left alone. It also sucks having to leave people out.
And as far as your question about interpreting the message, I think it's pretty clear they are going to have raid limits.
Having multiple sizes of raid content is good for the community, but is just flat out terrible for guild management. I'd rather see all raids be one size, period. This wouldn't include the harder, more challenging, single group 'raid' content. I remember so much drama from the Karazhan raid in WoW, where if that split wasn't right - the snowball effect occurs. I'd rather not see that again!
I don't think we have enough information on this at the moment. On the one hand we have been told that raids are open world just like the dungeons but we have also been told that raids will be limited to certain sizes. How can you limit a raid size if just anybody can walk in? I think this is probably still a work in progress and I hope to hear more about this in the future.
Personally I like the idea of raids being open world and not instanced but that's a different discussion.
I would hope "raid tier single group content" means that it will require a high level of commitment of the group members. You cannot just take 6 random people. Actually, I would expect that such content requires an "optimal" group (maybe not with specific classes, but definitely with all roles, and then classes that can help with the encounters special requirements). All group members
- need to be well equipped
- must know how to play their class, in and out
- need to know how their group members classes work
- need to have experience of playing together
I think the last point is very important. Your group really must work like a well-oiled machine to beat such hard encounters.
As to the problem mentioned in previous posts, like limiting how many people can attend? Not sure since Pantheon will be open world. But I guess there are means to achieve this, like a door to the boss room that closes once a certain number of people have passed through it (and only opens if you beat the boss, or all died)? Or a quest giver handing out shards for a portal: He will give you x shards, all with a certain number. Once you activate the portal with a shard on you, the portal is locked to that shard's number for a certain time - if the time expires, you are automatically teleported back in front of the portal. Obviously, such mechanisms require that the boss actually engages you if you don't engage him (after a certain time), or you could just wait out the timer and get more people in.
Nolaen said:Vanguard original Griffon Quest series was for me raid tier single group content. Akande the Butcher anyone?
I still have nightmares and happy thoughts about Akande the Butcher, I beat him in his hardest form with my guild, Reverence, and since his changes we used to farm him and the rest for other guilds to help them get through, loved the quest though, best quest I have ever done in any game haha!
It just sounds to me like they are doing end game content that you can be apart of even if you aren't a member of a big raiding guild. It makes sense if you think about it. In Dungeons and Dragons a group of players is usually no more than 3-5 people but you can do the end boss if you use proper tactics. In LotR you had Sam and Frodo adventure together to Mt. Doom. There are plenty of examples that show you don't need 20+ people to take down the big bad at the end.
Well another comment that I have seen tossed around recently is "Encounter locking is the same thing as instancing." I'm honestly quite shocked that anybody would consider this a reasonable position. Instancing, in my opinion, is when players create a private zone (pocket dimension filled with freshly spawned content) that isn't shared with the rest of the world. Open world, in my opinion, means that players share the same space and vie for the same resources. EQ2 is a game that had a mixture of both open world and instanced content. As the game aged it started to lean more heavily toward instancing and that is when the game lost most of it's appeal for me. Instead of a living, breathing, and persistent world where players would run into each other while adventuring, or sometimes compete against each other, the community was fractured into countless pocket dimensions.
I am a fan of encounter locking because it preserves the integrity of challenging content. When I think about "really challenging raid tier single group content" it sounds very appealing to me because I know the content will be designed, specifically, to demand a stellar performance from every player in the group if they are to be successful. That sensation falls apart if you can engage that same encounter with 10, 20, or 30 players. At that point it wouldn't be considered single group content at all, it would be a raid. One of the other comments Joppa made was how "The number 24 is a good science to shoot for." Again, to me, this implies that 24 man content will be hand-crafted with a maximum 24 player raid size in mind. Every detail is fine tuned around the idea that it will push 24 players to their limits. If players can engage that same encounter with 50 people then the "science" becomes trivialized. So whether it's single group content, 12 man, 24 man, or 40 man ... I think it's reasonable to assume that we won't be able to steamroll this content with more players than what it's designed for.
In the end I am really happy to know that challenging content is being prioritized in this game. An open world doesn't cease to be open world just because of encounter locking. Instead of contested bosses dying within 5-10 minutes of spawning, mostly because they are overwhelmed with numbers that they aren't designed to handle, the content in the world actually has a chance to fight back! Raid teams are required to beat the encounter based on merit and performance. I have plenty of experience with this kind of group/raid scene and truly believe it's the best option when it comes to fun/healthy open world competition, or even offering challenging content at all. I have watched multiple raid teams vie for the same target, taking turns to see who can execute a clean pull and defeat the encounter from 100-0. These standoffs can last for hours or days at a time and it really goes a long way toward the idea of "respecting the world." Majestic Dragons shouldn't be put on farm status and get annihilated by an unlimited amount of players or box armies. They breathe fire, cleave and bite back. This is one of the most immersive feelings that I have ever been able to enjoy in an MMO, personally. Content is king ... not something that people swarm and spend more time divvying up the spoils of their loot piñata than they do battling the encounter.
In the end, we all know that Pantheon will be mostly group-focused. That tells me that there will be a healthy amount of "raid tier single group content" in the world. Hengarion was a single group boss that had raid-like mechanics in Vanguard. These type of encounters are a ton of fun and I'm really excited to see an evolved version of the science that goes into their design. I think it's important that we understand what these design choices mean because there are a bunch of new people joining the community each and every day and it's unfair to them if they can't properly manage their expectations based on what they hear from their fellow community members. I have tried explaining this same rationale of encounter design and was told that I didn't comprehend what Joppa intended to say and that I shouldn't be spreading misinformation. New community members are being told to join the Everquest P99 server so that they can get an idea for what kind of game Pantheon is going to be. I think it's time to get some of these facts straight and if I have misinterpreted what "really challenging raid tier single group content" is supposed to be, it would be nice to know.
oneADseven said: ... what does really challenging raid tier single group content mean to you, in the context of Pantheon?
"Encounter locking is the same thing as instancing." I'm honestly quite shocked that anybody would consider this a reasonable position.))
As someone that often reads things too literally, I think that is what you are doing here.
Obviously encounter locking is a very different mechanism with very different plusses and minuses.
But encounter locking and instances *are* alternative ways to solve the same problem and I assume that is what is meant here - and if so the statement is entirely accurate.
The problem of course is how to avoid or at least minimize certain content being monopolized by a limited number of player/groups/guilds. So that a lot more of us have a chance to try it out. Not necessarily succeed but at least have a fair chance.
An instanced dungeon allows anyone that qualifies to enter and enjoy the content. A negative way to put this is that it removes the challenge of competition and isolates the dungeon from Terminus. A positive way to put this is that it allows players/groups/guilds to enjoy that content without interference and without monopolization by others. Unlike VR I feel that there is room for both - some dungeons instanced so that they can be designed for one group and enjoyed by any group that wants to enter. Most dungeons not instanced with chaos ruling as many people compete against eachother and the mobs at the same time. My hope is that VR will come to see the benefits of a *bit* of instancing as testing shows that open world dungeons have many disadvantages as well as advantages. Am I holding my breath? Well, no.
Encounter locking allows everyone to enter the area but either prevents some players from attacking the mobs or allows them to attack but prevents them from benefitting from it. The objective is essentially identical to that for instancing the dungeon or encounter - to let more people do it without a relative handful of people monopolizing it. It is entirely rational to use both - thus, some dungeons instanced and limited and some dungeons open-ended and chaotic/competitive with encounter locking used to encourage access by more players. Clearly instancing and encounter locking aren't mutually exclusive. Indeed even in an instanced dungron you can have encounter locking - not to preserve access for more people but instead to restrict farming and keep certain items a bit less common.
I'm with Dorotea on this one. Encounter locking is just a work around to solve the same problem as instancing.
You are still artificially limiting the amount of people who can participate in an encounter. That's, by definition, not an open world.
Well, I know this isn't perfect, but they could just scale the bosses based on how many people are hitting it/ around in a certain proximity. Which means griefing will happen between guilds, but I think that is where the community comes in. Also, if they have lockouts on your character/account and have the raid boss spawn fairly quickly, then there wouldn't even be a need to grief other raids unless you are just pricks, or on a pvp server. If you are on a pvp server then everything goes.
Vanguard was an open world game that used encounter locking. Regardless of whether encounter locking and instancing may solve one of the same issues, they aren't implemented for the same reason. Instancing creates several issues that aren't observed with open-world encounter locking. The assumption is that encounter locking is implemented, specifically, to prevent content monopoly. I believe that is false. It's implemented to preserve the integrity of challenging content. It allows the development team to fine tune how challenging their content is without creating the issues that are exclusive to instancing. It means that they can create an encounter that is designed to push the limits of a single group, reinforce the value of it's risk vs reward, but without duplicating content or removing players from the world.
Instancing literally produces content out of thin air. The instanced version of Lady Vox can die 100+ times on any given day depending on how many people are capable of clearing that instance. The open world version is limited to whatever respawn mechanic that the development team assigns to it. With instancing you can have 20 different raid groups fighting the same "Lady Vox" at the exact same time in their own dimension. These instances aren't part of the open world ... they are fabricated dimensions with fabricated content. Encounter locking doesn't create that issue. There is one Lady Vox ... in the open world ... and if you're in her chamber, you'll be seeing the same Lady Vox as every other person on the server, in addition to all of those players.
It's a completely different situation and implying that encounter locking is the same thing as instancing is super far-fetched for that reason. I wear gloves to keep my hands warm. I wear socks to keep my feet warm. Just because they both keep a body part warm doesn't mean they are the same thing. When I'm wearing socks (no gloves) I can still interact with the touch screen on my phone. I can still look at my fingernails. My socks aren't magically redefined as something that are intended to keep my hands warm just because they can. My gloves are not magically redefined as no longer being gloves because of the existence of my socks. My hands are not magically redefined as feet if I decide to put socks over them instead of gloves. I think people are going overboard with their definition of what open world actually means. Since players aren't able to kill each other on PVE servers, does that mean it's no longer open world?
Yeah, I think encounter locking is fine. I don't see a problem with it. It's better than taking your time building a really cool boss and then having a zerg of 200 kill it with no skill. Find it dumb. Also like the idea of flagging a raid that kills the boss for a week so that they can't kill the boss in that period of time and have the boss spawn reasonably quick, like 30-min to an hour, so more guilds can fight the boss and not be content blocked by that one guild.
Watemper said:Well, I know this isn't perfect, but they could just scale the bosses based on how many people are hitting it/ around in a certain proximity. Which means griefing will happen between guilds, but I think that is where the community comes in. Also, if they have lockouts on your character/account and have the raid boss spawn fairly quickly, then there wouldn't even be a need to grief other raids unless you are just pricks, or on a pvp server. If you are on a pvp server then everything goes.
oneADseven said:
It's a completely different situation and implying that encounter locking is the same thing as instancing is super far-fetched for that reason. I wear gloves to keep my hands warm. I wear socks to keep my feet warm. Just because they both keep a body part warm doesn't mean they are the same thing.
This is a good example because instead of wearing gloves you can put socks on your hands to solve the same problem: keep your hands warm. Just like instead of instancing you can have encounter locks that solve the same problem. Encounter locks keep your hands warm all the same just in a different way.
A game can be mostly open world with some parts that are closed/not open (not trying to debate which is better). Artificially restricting the number of people that can participate in an encounter is, again, very obviously not an "open" encounter.
Fragile said:Having multiple sizes of raid content is good for the community, but is just flat out terrible for guild management. I'd rather see all raids be one size, period.
I very much agree with this sentiment. Having all raids designed around a fixed number of players does make guild management easier. You build a guild of, say, 40 people but the only raid content available to you on a given night is a single 1-group raid, how do you tell others they can't go? Raids are as much about an entire guild enjoying a single experience together as it is about the loot.
Then there is the issue of monpolizing content. Lets say there is a lot of 1 group raid content out there. While one might think that means more content open to everyone else it also means 1 guild can literally monpolize all that content because they can send out 1 group to all those raids. Look at it this way: You have 3 raids in the world, all 3 require 36 people and each raid is as far apart from each other as possible. A single guild would be very hard pressed to monopolize all that content as traveling to 3 far flung locations would be very time consuming. But if you have 3 1-group raids, a single guild could, much more easily, send 3 groups to those 3 raids simultaneously.
Now lets look at quality of gear. Loot from a 36 man raid should be far better than loot earned from what is, frankly, just slightly more difficult single group content. Just the man-hour investment in a 36 man raid is more than enough to justify the loot being 6x better than what should drop in a 1 group raid. But now compare 1 group raid gear to 'normal' single group content. How much better should the loot be? It needs to be better because the difficulty is higher, but how much better?
Sorry, VR, but single group raid content would be a terrible idea. Find a good number (I vote for 36) for raids and stick with it.
By definition a single group encounter isn't a raid boss. You need a minimum of 2 groups to be a low end raid boss. I am fine with different amount of groups for raid encounters. I think top end bosses need more people and consistent group numbers, but lower end raid bosses don't need as much. Gives those family guilds or guilds that are just casual that have maybe 20 people try some raid bosses out and do stuff together.
philo said:This is a good example because instead of wearing gloves you can put socks on your hands to solve the same problem: keep your hands warm. Just like instead of instancing you can have encounter locks that solve the same problem. Encounter locks keep your hands warm all the same just in a different way.
A game can be mostly open world with some parts that are closed/not open (not trying to debate which is better). Artificially restricting the number of people that can participate in an encounter is, again, very obviously not an "open" encounter.
Yes, I understand it's a good example and that's why I used it to reinforce my point. Just because you can put socks on your hands doesn't mean that socks are intended to keep your hands warm. The argument that encounter locking is the same thing as instancing is invalid just like calling gloves the same things as socks is invalid. I understand that someone can put socks on their hands to keep them warm ... but that doesn't mean they are now the same thing as gloves.
philo said:I'm with Dorotea on this one. Encounter locking is just a work around to solve the same problem as instancing.
You are still artificially limiting the amount of people who can participate in an encounter. That's, by definition, not an open world.
There is clearly a big difference between "open encounter" and "open world." Thank you for acknowleding that difference and using the proper verbiage in your recent response.