Tanix said:You got me oneADseven! I just can't keep up! You sold me, FFXI is exactly what Pantheon should be about!
That's what I thought. More deflection. I mentioned several times that these issues were solved in Vanguard. There is a reason why I brought up Vanguard, specifically. You mentioned that you don't like "Asian Design" when it comes to progression, development, or game play implementation. You can denigrate FFXI all you want but your argument doesn't hold up when you consider that Vangurd also eliminated kill-stealing and zerging. It seems to me that an emphasis on risk vs reward and challenging content (facilitated by certain features/systems/mechanics) can be enjoyed and appreciated by all kinds of people and development teams.
Xxar said:I want to kinda say this is not how it was at all .......
1) Get there before another. > No encounters where either on a rotation or camped.
Rotation? Not unless it was a server agreement among the guilds to honor such and poop socking was more of an issue for highly contested content. For most everything else, it was who got there first, got the encounter. Point is, this is one element of how gear was slowed into the game.
Xxar said:2) Be skilled enough to kill it. > All content is this way , regardless of the system used. In fact with a locking system , it is easier to balance content to what the original design was intended to be . This coupled with the fact , the encounters themselves can not be monopolized flat out.
Not sure the point here, this is merely another aspect of slowing in the list of things (ie you had to learn the encounter and with the other aspects of EQs spawn cycle, this could take a while). Locking systems promote KS grabbers though, EQ 2 was rampant with the KS tagging and supported far more grief play than I ever saw in EQ. In fact, EQ tanked hard on release, it was actually a failure due to the fact that most of its features did not go over well with EQ players.
Xxar said:3) Hope it drops the item you seek. > Rng has nothing to do with this ... in fact , you might not even get the item if it did drop .....
RNG certainly does, it is yet another component of slowing the rate of gear into the game. Combine it with a 7 day cycle and it takes a long time. This is a good thing, it makes gear rare and meaningful once you obtain it. Compare what Watemper was suggesting with a 30 min respawn and it means everyone is at least guaranteed a chance for the mob each cycle while with EQ's system, if someone got the kill first, you had to wait 7 days to see if you could try to get to the mob again.
Xxar said:4) Wait 7 more days to try again. > True, but you more then likely had a rotation on the server. If not you where probably being locked out of content and unable to experience it.
That is how eq was in reality for a comparison.
Again, rotations were something that wasn't a guarantee, maybe on the Legends server, but it really depended on if the guilds on the server had an agreement to such. First come first serve was common in early EQ. Even if there were rotations, this is still my point concerning what Watemper was saying.
He said have encounter locking, then flag the guild once they killed the encounter, then respawn the mob 30 mins later for another guild. My point was that this would greatly increase the rate of raid drops into the game, far above that of EQ. This is a bad thing. Raid gear should be rare, covted, sought after, not a door prize for everyone who shows up.
My comments were pointing out that EQ had numerous elements that caused items to be slowly brought into the game. As I said, do the math of 1 boss droping an item once every 7 days to the entire server and that of a boss dropping an item every 30 mins potentially. The rate of gear into the game is drastically more, again... this is bad for raid gear in a game like this.
The fact is, if you want longevity, you don't want guilds completely outfitting their entire guild in a short amount of time. They should be selectively searching for loot and when new content comes out, it should be a constant struggle to gear up to take on the next targets balancing what is needed to progress. There is a reason raid gear in WoW is a joke and it is because everyone has it. This also presents problems if everyone has raid gear as then new content has to be drastically increased in power (causing severe gear inflation and invalidating older content quickly) because everyone is capped out in all the gear. The reality is that few people should have all their gear when new content comes out, much less entire guilds.
So while there were issues with EQ's original design, encounter locking wasn't an issue, nor would it have solved EQ's problems. Rather content design was the problem (too many bottle necks where guilds could block progression). Like I said, there was a reason EQ 2 failed horribly and encounter locking wasone of the top of the list of the most hated mechanics of EQ 2.
oneADseven said:Tanix said:Based on your discussion, I am sure you will be pushing those "official systems, rules, and guidelines" to the point where you can easily find advantage. I find it humorous because you are certainly an "emergent" game player, but rather than being one that seeks to figure out advantage of that between you and the systems, rather you lawyer search the games player to player policy to find "emergent" means to avoid the entire point of player to player civil interaction. I can only imagine you will be a real riot and favorite on the servers you play.
I seem to recall you saying:
Tanix said:Zerging never was emergent game play, nor was power leveling, or any of those other cheese tactics.
Those are the result of poorly skilled players trying to win.
Emergent game play was figuring out how to split mobs that Verant designed to be unsplittable. It was learning to do things like pulling King Tormax to the zone line as a single monk solo without having to fight a single one of his guards (this was a very difficult feat for all but few pullers), or pulling Dane Frostweaver with a team of monks to the zone line and setting up a CoH group to cycle players who got banished every 45 seconds to the pit rather than fighting down to the pit and fighting constant respawns for hours during the fight.
There are numerous issues throughout EQ that were means to which players through clever tactics, could defeat an intended design. The things you describe are just dumb play, brute force tactics by very narrow and limited minds. Thing is, if you put in all these "restrictions" to FORCE a certain play style, all you end up doing is taking away the creativity of play, you destroy emergent play and essentially make a game on rails. That is, you make if bad for everyone just because the behavior of a few, which is exactly what modern game design did, it forced everyone to a specific play, made the games dumbed down, boring, and mundane.
Apparently the game is on rails if they make encounters that are designed to be unsplittable ... unsplittable. Apparently ... if the development team implements an intended design, the game is dumbed down, boring, or mundane ... when it does it's job. You are the one asking for loopholes. You are the one that wants to see a return to cheese play ... who doesn't care if accomplishments are earned fair and square. You would prefer that 12/24 man content can be zerged by any number of players. You don't care about power-leveling. It's hilarious that you have such an anti-rule stance concerning anything and everything to do with game design ... but when it comes to your precious "code" you think it should be sacred. You're willing to turn a blind eye to huge game defining issues (zerging/kill-stealing/malicious training/power-leveling/multi-boxing) but as soon as someone contests your "rare spawn" (in an open world game where competition is inherent, mind you) your feathers get ruffled? Hah!
I have suggested the exact opposite. I hope VR is proactive when it comes time to establish their rules and guidelines. What I do not want to see is a promise of fun/healthy competition that isn't backed up by complimentary game design or rules and guidelines. What I do not want to see is a promise of "emergent social constructs" that are attached to the hip of "in accordance with 1999 guidelines." I don't want to see some wishy-washy "maybe they are competing fairly, maybe one party is stealing" nonsense. VR can create whatever rules they want ... but after that, it's time to set the players free. That is where we are different. You want your codes and standards to be accepted as "the right way" of doing things ... while being willfully oblivious to major game issues that have plagued EQ and other MMO's in the past. I want to see zerging and kill-stealing solved by in-game mechanics. You want to see them exist as options and be able to label people who leverage them. Zerging has been widely accepted as "garbage" for a long time ... we might as well take the trash out now.
That is the entire definition of emergent play, doing what the developers did not intend.
The problem here is you know NOTHING about EQ, which is why this is a difficult discussion. You have no clue that FD pulling was NEVER intended in EQ. It was not a designed mechanic, and IN FACT, it was considered bad by even Brad himself, to which they attempted in Velious to actually stop or limit people from doing it. People learned how to do it anyway, by watching mechanics, how the game worked and using it to their advantage. That is what we call EMERGENT game play.
According to you, FD pulling should not even exist, and yet... here we are today, it being a very well accepted and DESIGNED mechanic in this game today.
So go on, tell me that you have a clue what you are talking about. Like I said, you don't know jack about EQ, all you know is your precious little FFXI game and constantly argue for the game to be designed with your JRPG MMO arcade mechanics.
oneADseven said:Tanix said:You got me oneADseven! I just can't keep up! You sold me, FFXI is exactly what Pantheon should be about!
That's what I thought. More deflection. I mentioned several times that these issues were solved in Vanguard. There is a reason why I brought up Vanguard, specifically. You mentioned that you don't like "Asian Design" when it comes to progression, development, or game play implementation. You can denigrate FFXI all you want but your argument doesn't hold up when you consider that Vangurd also eliminated kill-stealing and zerging. It seems to me that an emphasis on risk vs reward and challenging content (facilitated by certain features/systems/mechanics) can be enjoyed and appreciated by all kinds of people and development teams.
So? I already said Vanguard was not an ideal design, that it had many mainstream design mechanics that I think harmed game play. Fact is, Vanguard has a lot of horrible game mechanics (and a ton more added when Verant passed it off to SoE). The problem with your argument is it stands on a failed premise. That is, you argue that Vanguard is the natural linear progression of EQ, that it "Fixed" what is wrong with EQ because it had a bunch of mainstream mechanics added to it. If you are going to claim that, you might as well say WoW fixed what was wrong with EQ, and then we come to the real position here, which is you like mainstream mechanics and EQ is an outdated game to which should be disregarded due to the rightful evolution of games over the years.
That would completely miss the point of why this game was being developed and we are then back to square one with you telling me how these mainstream mechanics are better.
They aren't in my opinion and I think the reason games have turned to crap over the years is because all those "fixes" you praise are part of the problem.
Like I said, there is no compromise to be had with me. I am honest about that, you however arrogantly think your SUBJECTIVE position is superior and continue to argue with me like you are right and I am wrong.
Again, I dislike your tastes, I have my reasons and no amount of discussion with you will change it. I don't want to play the games you like, can you understand that or do I have to read another page or two of your bloviating about how your SUBJECTIVE opinion on game design is superior?
FFS this is getting stupid.
9 pages of arguing over opinions. Please stopa nd think before engaging with someone if they disagree with you, 1-2 posts to trya nd reach a middle ground is fine, anymore and you're just feeding the beast and bloating the forums.
Please take a breath and ask yourself if your post is constructive before continuing. When we release more information on this you will have a better idea of how it will work, until then - I am going to close this down, please don't start another one or it will be removed without warning.