((Yet, up until this moment, there has been no indication from Joppa, Kilsin, or anyone else at Visionary Realms that they would ever consider adjusting Feign Death so it can't be used for malicious training))
Feign death is a very handy spell and we shouldn't all have to live with a nerfed version just because a few people will use training maliciously.
Yet I see curiously little support for adjusting *training* to make it harder to use maliciously. Such as if the same person or group repeatedly causes trains the mobs *don't* train but run back to their spawn points the way they would in about any other MMO.
ecdubz said:stellarmind said:toxicity will always exist if more than 1 person is involved. it's human nature. it's part of a mmo.
You are very right. Its impossible to eliminate it but not necessarily to limit it. I want to find out how we can make that happen as a community.
Devs just have to make sure we have a LONG and useful Ignore List. When I was playing WoW after the connected some of the realms, my ignore list was used very frequently.
dorotea said: ... Feign death is a very handy spell and we shouldn't all have to live with a nerfed version just because a few people will use training maliciously.Yet I see curiously little support for adjusting *training* to make it harder to use maliciously. Such as if the same person or group repeatedly causes trains the mobs *don't* train but run back to their spawn points the way they would in about any other MMO.
That would remove it from being used as a pulling tool, though, right?
I'm right there with you, this solution would stop malicious training (as it did in EQ2), but I think it would be less palatable to the target demograpphic to affect every encounter in the game, rather than fix the one ability that has a 20 year history of being used for toxic behavior.
I think there is a middle ground where both sides can be unhappy with a compromise. :)
The middleground was found in FFXI. No feign death spell. Mobs would chase you until the end of the zone. Trains were definitely possible but unlike EQ2, NPC's wouldn't ignore players while returning to their stations. Encounter locking would solve a lot of issues with malicious training. Without encounter locking ... if an NPC runs by a player with a buff on them ... or someone who is healing another player, resting, etc, they will be added to their threat table, and thus prioritize them before attempting to return to their pre-aggro location. This is a huge difference compared to having mobs path back organically and having a chance to aggro players along the way.
I remember plenty of trains in FFXI but they weren't something players did maliciously, at least that I ever saw personally. Players were legitimately running for their lives, as they should, because dying was costly. Because of encounter locking (and the lack of spells like FD) players in the vicinity had an opportunity to move around and avoid getting annihilated by trains. Perfect middle ground IMO. Players knew better than to AFK near a zoneline because they were notoriously dangerous because of trains. Same deal with hanging around chokepoints that mobs might have to pass through. I wasn't a fan of the reset mechanism in EQ2 -- I saw huge intentional trains in that game as a result and players ended up circumventing tons of content. If an NPC is returning to a certain location, for whatever reason, they should be "live" along the way. This wasn't the case in EQ2 and it was quite immersion breaking and easily exploited.
I have always viewed feign death as an incredibly gimmicky ability. I have mostly chalked things up and concluded that Pantheon is intending to bring back certain parts of EQ, for better or worse. I'd toss feign death in the same hat as MDD. Kill-stealing/Training are both issues that could require CS intervention. Neither of these were considered "issues" in FFXI. Zerging trivializes content and contradicts more than half of the game tenets. Again ... wasn't an issue in FFXI. FFXI was known for challenging/difficult content ... for the emphasis of players needing to earn their achievements. I have heard plenty of great stories about EQ but when it comes to these three topics, specifically (Kill-Stealing/Training/Zerging) -- I feel pretty confident that FFXI was more conducive to the kind of shared experiences that most players really want out of an open world MMO. Some people seem to think that you need to have all of this "bad" in order to enjoy the "good" of "open-world" -- they are wrong, IMO, but that's heresy around these parts.
There are zero good reasons, that I can think of, to include kill-stealing, malicious training (as it was in EQ -- accidental training is fine), or zerging. The first two are extremely taxing on the CS team (surely they have more important things they could be working on?) and the latter compromises the integrity of a "challenging game." Pantheon would be better off without all 3. What positive benefits are there that are dependent on their existence? Being able to attack anything, at any time? It's mind boggling how anybody could view that as a legitimate position while also desiring a "challenging game." Zerging is the worst kind of "emergent gameplay" I have ever seen in an MMO. Try to imagine Basketball without dribbling or goaltending. Rules are necessary if you want the game to be interesting and challenging at the same time.
The only semi-decent argument that I have seen is that players want to be able to help others while out and about in the open world. That is still possible with encounter locking. If someone wants help then they /yell -- this breaks the "lock" and allows anybody and everybody to engage the encounter. Doing so will prevent the mob from awarding XP or dropping loot but that's reasonable since risk vs reward is paramount. I remember my EQOA days ... where everything was open ... where you could power-level someone to max in a few days time by having high level players 1 shot mobs as soon as they got to 49%. Was that freedom enjoyable? Sure ... but the world wasn't respected, and content was never king.
Do you want to play a game of D&D where players get to do whatever the hell they want or have an amazing dungeon master telling the story and ensuring that your experience is trying and memorable? Rules are put in place to remind us that the world does not revolve around us as players. Sometimes there are going to be things that are out of reach ... challenges that are almost impossible to overcome. You shouldn't be able to half-ass (or worse) your way through content for 100% of the reward. That isn't a hardcore game. That's easy mode masqued behind a facade of "freedom." Free of true challenge and difficulty, maybe. Free of consistency when it comes to how players "earn" their accomplishments.
Here are a few reasons:
1) Eliminate zerging. This would have a positive impact on risk vs reward, the economy, prestige, challenge, balance, strategy, coordination, teamwork, and so much more. It would also reduce the efficiency of multi-boxing and power-leveling. As far as game tenets ... positive impact on 8/15.
2) Eliminate kill-stealing. Instead of having a system where it's possible to both "steal" and "earn" credit at the same time (he said, she said, but I, but ... not fair!!!), the term "stealing" is nullified. This would allow competition to be more fun/healthy and PVE-centric. It would alleviate a massive burden from the CS team and free up their time for more meaningful duties. Again ... true PVE-centric competition ... not pseudo-PVP. It's already been stated that kill-stealing in and of itself will not be considered a reportable offense. Trust me when I say this ... villains are licking their chops, savoring the bountiful meals to come.
3) If used in conjunction with the removal of FD (and FD like abilities) it would also reduce the griefing potential for intentional training. Rather than mobs adding every single player that enters their proximity (during a train) to their aggro table, they will instead chase the person/group who initiated contact. After they are done chasing that person they will start heading back toward their camp in a "live" state. This gives players an opportunity to counter-play the train. This is incredibly important when you have deep/dangerous dungeons, especially with tight corridors. Oh and the meaningful death penalty? Love that ... but a lot of people won't when they suffer at the hands of other players.
Encounter locking is not a tool used by griefers. I have seen that comment suggested before while referencing some ghetto-rigged version that was used on P99 for less than a week. Encounter locking ensures that if a person engages an NPC, they have an opportunity to defeat it, and based on their own merit. If a level 25 group engages a boss inside of a dungeon ... they get a chance to take it from 100-0. A max level player wouldn't be able to 1 shot the mob once it's down to 70% and get easy credit against a full group of otherwise "level-appropriate" adventurers. This will alleviate the demand for a "Trivial Loot Code" type system that I have seen implemented in several MMO's.
It would not be possible for a single player to quickly engage a mob and then earn full credit for it while other players do all of the work. I'm talking about hard-coded legitimate encounter locking. Once you engage a mob, other players are prevented from engaging it unless they are in your group or you /yell for help. When content is actually challenging, and the death penalty meaningful, winning the engage takes a backseat to "being prepared." This has been proven in multiple MMO's. Encounter locking ensures that the underdogs have a fair chance at taking down content. This goes a long way toward helping guilds retain their best players rather than seeing a single dominant guild absorb the less competitive ones and assimilate whatever players they want.
As far as this "meaningful reputation" talk ... let's consider history. If the larger community bands together and blacklists a smaller segment, what happens? The smaller segment will eventually band together. They don't really have much of a choice. So now you have all of these bad actors working together ... sharing the same ideas, philosophies, and goals. By banding together this "black-listed segment" ends up forming into it's own niche community. A niche community of trolls, griefers, trainers, KS'ers, you name it. It's not like they become homeless. They are just encouraged to seek out other players who are more accepting of their ways and to then become self sufficient, and with a vendetta. If anything, it probably makes things worse. Being on a community black list just strokes their ego. It puts their name out there ... it allows the bad guys to be notorious, and infamous. Some people might consider them villains ... but they will be glorious heroes in their own right. They thrive in the spotlight and will feed off of the attention.
I have yet to see anything that comes remotely close to justifying the use of MDD. I have seen countless retorts based on logical fallacy or misinformation. Fearmongering. Trigger words. Anything and everything that can deflect attention from the main issues at hand. I remain 100% convinced that this game will use FTE if the tenets are truly the core pillars that this game is being built around. If there is a hidden tenet that stipulates that the game must follow down the path of EQ ... "because EQ" ... then not so much.
It gets pretty goofy when people have no real argument and instead try to twist the conversation into saying that I'm scared. I'm scared of zerging ... and DPS racing. I'm a horrible MMO player and my opinion means nothing. I'm not even a human ... I'm an ape! I want an easy-mode game filled with hand holding and participation trophies. I have seen and heard it all. It is what it is. I want a game that focuses and emphasizes cooperation over competition and conflict. The latter two can exist, certainly, as they are inherent in an open world game. But should players be more concerned about the mighty foes they are engaging or the band of "heroes" beside them? When players are planning and strategizing ... should they be thinking about how they should set up their group/raid composition and hotbars to counter the NPC's they're about to fight, or having an edge against other players? PVE or Pseudo-PVP? Is there really any question?
For a more comprehensive breakdown (MDD vs FTE with encounter locking) please see my post on this thread: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/9257/community-debate-two-guilds-arrive-at-an-overland-raid-mob/view/page/1
Is the writing on the wall? Check out this section of the stream with Jim Lee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnQD5xoQADE&feature=youtu.be&t=8345
"Let's do this legit. If we can't kill him with 12 people ... we don't deserve ... yeah, we need to go play a more casual game." They know it. We know it. Some form of encounter locking is necessary. The only reason they beat that content is because they zerged it. That's perfectly fine for a pre-alpha stream. At the same time ... it's already been demonstrated that content in this game can be trivialized. We have watched FD training occur on stream. We have watched zerging on stream. Are these things memorable pastimes that we're trying to bring back? Let's consider the following FAQ excerpt:
Pantheon is most definitely a modern MMO with modern graphics and new and exciting features and mechanics. There are already emulators out there that are clones of earlier MMOs and Visionary Realms has no desire to make another emulator. That said, we also feel that many of the features and mechanics of previous MMOs have been abandoned in more recent games, resulting in a less challenging, compelling, deep, and social experience. Pantheon, therefore, will indeed bring back some of these conventional mechanics and ideas but with a fresh perspective, some tweaks and revisions. We also understand that while gamers’ tastes don’t fundamentally change over time, their situations, lives, and responsibilities do. Likewise, some game mechanics often associated with earlier MMOs involved inordinate amounts of downtime, overly severe penalties, too much competition over content and resources, and even downright boring or overly repetitive gameplay. Our intention, therefore, is not to bring back ‘everything’ from the old days, but rather to pick and choose those which make sense and are needed to make a fun, social, cooperative, and challenging game.
Zerging ... kill-stealing ... FD training ... someone help me understand. I have dealt with all of this stuff in the past and am not the least bit excited to see any of it emerge in Pantheon. Not only do they not contribute toward making the game more fun, social, cooperative, or challenging ... they do the opposite. Thankfully all of these issues were solved in Vanguard, and seeing that Pantheon is also a spiritual successor to that game ... it makes plenty of sense to draw upon it's strengths.
I would venture that encouter locks for non "raid" mobs would make kill stealing much easier. It becomes in a very plain way, whoever engages first, not whoever "deserved" or "earned" it. We see this allllll the time in wow, it's why hunters are reviled. You could clear down to a very difficult encounter, break a dificult spawn, spend hours waiting for the rare mob to pop, and all some other group would need to do is skate along behind you and be .1 of a second quicker on the draw. I get that kill stealing is just one of the examples being used as a pro for locking.
Not all zerging is bad. In the Jim Lee example I don't honestly see what's wrong with it. They did what they needed to do. Was it a bit absurd? Yeah. I just don't think that's going to be normal behavior because zerging, in my experience(first Nag kill on emarr was insane/hilarious, melee running back from bind points 10 minutes away over and over), also comes with a cost. It means lots more deaths and it's less efficienct in terms of time required and loot acquired.
When it comes to raid content, that's all going to be on farm status anyway at some point, so it won't really impact the economy. If 80 people do it or if 36 people do it, the same number of items will be enterering the world at the same rate. When the 36 fail, the 80 get their shot, and vice versa.
If people want to be scrubs, let em, everyone will know.
I still don't think that content should be designed around the number of people it takes to defeat it. A mob will have HP and mana and dps and mitigation, etc, and people will overcome that however they can.
Also, I've already admitted that I might be wrong on this subject and I'm willing to give something different a try, but MDD in particular seems to be at the core of this game. I will stop short of saying that encounter locking is a form of sharding hehehe.
That's leap-frogging and that exists with both MDD and FTE. That same exact situation can happen with MDD ... but just imagine the level 25 group spending hours breaking a camp and waiting for a named boss to spawn. Then it does. Then a level 50 rogue pops out of invis and annihilates it in 2 seconds. At least with FTE the low level group has 6 chances to win the tag. With MDD that high level player will get the kill the vast majority of the time regardless of who engages first. So again, to be clear ... leap frogging can/will occur with both systems, and it's arguably worse with MDD ... and it's not a reportable offense. I feel there are other ways to mitigate this type of behavior but the fact that players can leapfrog with FTE doesn't mean that it's a strike against FTE.
It's a pre-existing condition from MDD that doesn't get solved, completely, but it does get alleviated (using the example I just gave.) For higher level content ... it should be difficult enough, in most situations, where players have to execute a countdown of some sort prior to engaging. As long as content is difficult then winning the engage should take a backseat to meaningful preparation. In some games ... it's not uncommon for players to feign-pull ... they act like they are going to pull just to force their competition to panic and pull while not being absolutely ready. When the game is actually hard this will usually have lethal consquences. Bosses shouldn't be some pushover loot pinata ... they should punish mistakes, especially over-eager players.
Mobs should hit really really hard when they don't have debuffs on them. A countdown usually takes place to allow an entire group to coordinate their abilities. The tank might use a temporary buff or two that grants damage reduction or additional threat. A healer might toss a ward (shield that absorbs damage) or his own damage reduction buff on the tank. Any class who has a debuff that can reduce the damage of the mob should probably apply that first, and as fast as possible ... otherwise the boss will beat on the tank like a damn mack truck. Applying attack/casting speed slows, stat reductions, accuracy debuffs, stuns, stifles, dazes, disarms, mezzing/fearing/rooting adds, etc ... should all be really important during that first 10-15 seconds of an engage. If one or two people aren't ready ... or timing their abilities right (in order to help facilitate a clean engage/pull) then there should be a high chance of a wipe.
That is what comes to mind when I think of "hard content." Mobs that will absolutely destroy a group of players if they aren't on their "A Game" -- things get even more interesting when you think about dispositions. If mobs or bosses have a chance to spawn with a random disposition ... that could have a huge impact on the planning phase. I'd love to see the game be so hard that over-eager players end up with egg on their face for trying to win an engage 1 second faster than others. That's exactly how it should be. I expect content to be challenging in this game. Players shouldn't always be super excited to pull a boss. They should be nervous ... because they should be really hard, and death should really sting. They can alleviate that nervousness by preparing and responding to dynamic changes such as the disposition/archetype of bosses and/or their adds.
oneADseven said:That's leap-frogging and that exists with both MDD and FTE. That same exact situation can happen with MDD ... but just imagine the level 25 group spending hours breaking a camp and waiting for a named boss to spawn. Then it does. Then a level 50 rogue pops out of invis and annihilates it in 2 seconds. At least with FTE the low level group has 6 chances to win the tag. With MDD that high level player will get the kill the vast majority of the time regardless of who engages first. So again, to be clear ... leap frogging can/will occur with both systems, and it's arguably worse with MDD ... and it's not a reportable offense. I feel there are other ways to mitigate this type of behavior but the fact that players can leapfrog with FTE doesn't mean that it's a strike against FTE.
I don't think it's worse with MDD because if you're on the wrong end at least you have a chance. It alleviates one flip of the coin, but not the other.
In any event, I still don't think leap-frogging is any worse with FTE. That low level group has "multiple chances" in the scenario I provided ... whereas with MDD, the high level player can usually coast their way to victory with a couple big cooldowns. It isn't a perfect solution but it has way more pros than it does cons. We'll have to agree to disagree on zerging. If it's possible for players to trivialize the intended challenge of an encounter, that's awful for the game. Brad suggested during the stream that they only killed it because of zerging, and prior to that he said that if they couldn't kill it legit then they should be playing a more casual game. Pantheon has always been touted as a game that will offer challenging content. Strategy and planning are supposed to be important. All of that goes out the window if players can zerg. Unacceptable, IMO. It's not something I am really worried about, though, since VR has always maintained a "We don't want our content trivialized by zerging" stance. I don't really care how they solve it, as long as they solve it ... and without instancing.
oneADseven said:In any event, I still don't think leap-frogging is any worse with FTE. That low level group has "multiple chances" in the scenario I provided ... whereas with MDD, the high level player can usually coast their way to victory with a couple big cooldowns. It isn't a perfect solution but it has way more pros than it does cons. We'll have to agree to disagree on zerging. If it's possible for players to trivialize the intended challenge of an encounter, that's awful for the game. Brad suggested during the stream that they only killed it because of zerging, and prior to that he said that if they couldn't kill it legit then they should be playing a more casual game. Pantheon has always been touted as a game that will offer challenging content. Strategy and planning is supposed to be important. All of that goes out the window if players can zerg. Unacceptable, IMO. It's not something I am really worried about, though, since VR has always maintained a "We don't want our content trivialized by zerging" stance. I don't really care how they solve it, as long as they solve it ... and without instancing.
Zerging is a strat tho, and the intended challenge will always be diminished, regardless of raid limits or encounter locking. WOW never became, in my experience elite groups of people doing more with less, it just became a DPS race. Invite the people that get you the next guild/server/whatever best mark.
ecdubz said:**As a disclaimer to the devs. This post is not meant to become a flame fest but I understand if you feel you need to lock it down. BUT, I do believe that in the gaming industry someone somewhere needs to address the rising (rising...its freakin risen and festerred) issue that this post is highlighting.**
To start off I want to first say that any criticism is welcomed. I want this to be a discussion and, as I mentioned above, not a pie throwing contest. Something that I do not want to see in Pantheon and what I would love the team at Visionary Realms to have is a hard stance on toxicity between players. This should be a hard stance both in the game and out of the game (meaning on the forums). Toxicity has been a plague to the industry ever since Everquest and people training / stealing camps on purpose. I myself have been back and forth on the subject of player driven policing and GM enforced. This is not a simple issue beyond players throwing vulgar words at eachother and what I dont want is this to blow up on one side or the other. The simple thing that I would like to see is not necessarily to enforce AGAINST toxicity which I am very well aware the team at VR is going to already have a plan for but to ENCOURAGE respect between not only players but to the communities we will be occupying the same space with.
Not to over explain the issue but I would really like to see players game together instead of dragging others down to get ahead. Now that I have said that I will await the impending troll responses, backhand comments and other negative attitudes I have come to expect out of this genre. Please prove me wrong.
Thank you Sylvanfox, I forgot what the OP was about as I read through these last pages.
To the OP, I'm sorry man but I'm thoroughly confused about what point you are making. You want the VR team to take a hard stance on toxicity, but not necessarily enforce against it?
This game, as well as any other game I've played (which is many), will have set forth rules and policy for us to follow. The rest will be handled a number of ways which will include tools within the game (ignore), the community, etc. Not sure what else can be said about the subject.
--- My opinions are not humble, they are just my opinions. ---
vjek you are right - I wasn't careful in my wording. I should have specified that if a person or group trained mobs onto *another player* repeatedly the mobs would lose interest and stop attacking the other player.
My use of feign death has always been - in any game that has it - twofold. If an encounter goes poorly I can run to a spot with no mobs, flop and hopefully avoid dying. Or if a lot of mobs are between me and where I want to be I can sprint through them and hopefully flop before they do me in. OneADseven may be right - perhaps it is too gimmicky and should just get nerfed to oblivion.
Those who say that the community can reduce toxicity significantly have partial blinders on. People that like being jerks will be jerks and they will band together and not care all that much if they are shunned by most of us. Sure the community can reduce toxicity. Sure the community can teach people that do things out of ignorence not malice. But there will alaways be toxicity - guaranteed. Whole guilds proud to be considered jerks. So I agree that reducing the harm they can do to the rest of us is worth consideration in designing game mechanics.
No solution is perfect - if it was it would be in almost universal use by now and we wouldn't be debating it. But I agree that first-to-engage has fewer flaws than most-damage-done. There is a certain basic ...fairness .... inherent in letting the person or group that pulls a mob actually have a chance to finish it off. At level-cap I think one can reasonably argue either way but at lower levels where a very high level can come in and steal a low level group's hard work with one attack I think FTE is overwhelmingly better.
Even if I was truly unsure - and I am not - I would go for the system that is less likely to have new players trying the game out totally screwed and perhaps leaving in disgust. A group of level 10s spending hours to spawn a boss and seeing a level 30 one-shot it as they are fighting it and then it is the *killstealer* that gets the loot and credit - that is just wrong and they may be disgusted enough to leave the game entirely.
Encounter-locking has flaws too, of course, but I don't see any of them as even remotely as bad as a game that encourages zerging.
Rokuzachi I suspect your points are far more valid in most current MMOs than they will be for Pantheon - thus the popularity of these discussions.
The great bulk of the concern in this thread has nothing to do with chat and those that abuse chat - as you say there are tools for that and Pantheon will probably use them.
The great bulk of the concern has nothing to do with jerks in one's groups - as you say that can be handled readily enough and when someone gets a reputation you just can avoid grouping with him or her.
I may be wrong but I think the two primary drivers to the toxicity debates are killstealing and training.
Training isn't an issue in other games because there *is* no training. Training means to run mobs over to other players and then leave the zone, die, or feign death, with the mobs then attacking the other players. Very very few games allow this to happen so it simply is not an issue. EQ allowed it - perhaps because they couldn't program a better system in those primitive days, perhaps because they didn't realize how it would be abused, perhaps because they thought it would be a good system. With the overwhelming nostalgia for all things EQ VR has determined to bring training back - which means bringing the abuses back.
Part two of why the issue is far more relevant for Pantheon than other games is because of the death penalty we will have. In most games today death is a minor inconvenience - if someone trained you to death it might cost you 3 minutes of time and 10 copper pieces. So you wouldn't really *care*. Pantheon with real death penalties and slow travel back to where you died will be different.
The killstealing issue is more relevant because almost all MMOs today use a tagging system. Anyone that damages a mob gets credit.So if someone kills *your* mob they aren't taking anything away from you they are speeding up your progress. Pantheon may or may not use a tagging system but most of us assume it will not.
Part two of the issue is that Pantheon will be far less focussed on quests and more focussed on group killing of difficult enemies. If you need to kill 10 rats in LOTRO and someone high level comes in and slaughters a few of them it is no disaster. Unless they keep doing it to grief you in which case they may get banned or suspended for griefing. But if your group spends two hours spawning a named mob with an important drop and a high level steals it this *is* a big deal to you, Thus the debates on FTE versus MDD or other systems.
Maybe you uinderstood all this in which case apologies but I thought it might pay to highlight how toxicity raises different issues for Panthon than exist today in most MMOs.
Rokuzachi said: ... Has everyone really experienced such vile and reprehensible behavior in an mmo that its destroyed their experience? ...
vjek said:Rokuzachi said: ... Has everyone really experienced such vile and reprehensible behavior in an mmo that its destroyed their experience? ...
I won't speak for anyone else, but for me and mine, in every game we've played in the MMO category, that has any mechanism to grief others via in-game mechanics? It was abused to create toxicity until it was removed.
To dorotea's many points, EQ1 is the only one that didn't fix this issue. And to this day, on every EQ1 emu/TLP server, it remains one of only two ways players can negatively affect the gameplay experience of another, without PvP. Nobody cares about chat. Most guilds (toxic or not) use Discord now, and know that in-game chat is evidence, so they simply avoid it as much as possible.
But yes, I've seen 150-person pure toxic guilds (who know they are, and revel in the fact) come into The Deep with 8 monks, train every group there, repeatedly, until everyone else zones out and the only people in the zone are their guild. Then they proceed to farm the entire zone, every stunnable mob, with AE stun groups, for up to 20 hours straight. In Grieg's End, if some group is pulling near the gate, that same guild will simply train half the zone to the gate and Feign Death, until that original group dies, and they move in. They don't say a word. They don't care. Reputation means exactly nothing, because they have 144 other toxic friends who say "the game permits it. I'm playing the game. If the game didn't permit it, we couldn't do it".
You'll also note, I don't care, personally, about all the maybe's and what if's. I only care about the historically demonstrated, logically provable, currently-used, toxic in-game mechanics. And so far, in Pantheon, that number is exactly one: Feign Death.
And it can be fixed, they just either don't want to, don't care to, or won't say they might.
Let healers bring monks out of their feign death with a heal. Most groups have a healer so they can have a way to defend themselves.
There's no shortage of ways to fix it, for certain, Doford. Legitimately, though, healing your own Monk can save them from dying, while Feigned, today. As with a few other options, that makes it less useful as a tool for pulling, which I'm all for, but would affect the role of the class.
Doford said:vjek said:Rokuzachi said: ... Has everyone really experienced such vile and reprehensible behavior in an mmo that its destroyed their experience? ...
I won't speak for anyone else, but for me and mine, in every game we've played in the MMO category, that has any mechanism to grief others via in-game mechanics? It was abused to create toxicity until it was removed.
To dorotea's many points, EQ1 is the only one that didn't fix this issue. And to this day, on every EQ1 emu/TLP server, it remains one of only two ways players can negatively affect the gameplay experience of another, without PvP. Nobody cares about chat. Most guilds (toxic or not) use Discord now, and know that in-game chat is evidence, so they simply avoid it as much as possible.
But yes, I've seen 150-person pure toxic guilds (who know they are, and revel in the fact) come into The Deep with 8 monks, train every group there, repeatedly, until everyone else zones out and the only people in the zone are their guild. Then they proceed to farm the entire zone, every stunnable mob, with AE stun groups, for up to 20 hours straight. In Grieg's End, if some group is pulling near the gate, that same guild will simply train half the zone to the gate and Feign Death, until that original group dies, and they move in. They don't say a word. They don't care. Reputation means exactly nothing, because they have 144 other toxic friends who say "the game permits it. I'm playing the game. If the game didn't permit it, we couldn't do it".
You'll also note, I don't care, personally, about all the maybe's and what if's. I only care about the historically demonstrated, logically provable, currently-used, toxic in-game mechanics. And so far, in Pantheon, that number is exactly one: Feign Death.
And it can be fixed, they just either don't want to, don't care to, or won't say they might.
Let healers bring monks out of their feign death with a heal. Most groups have a healer so they can have a way to defend themselves.
So trade one possible abuse for another?
There is no fix to this. This is why modern MMOs kept removing complex spells, abilities and systems. They kept dumbing down the game more and more in order to "fix" things. The problem isn't the game, it is the people. So, you let the people manage themselves and the extreme bad apples, you step in and cut from the tree. Anything else will only shift the abuse area from one place to another.
dorotea said:The great bulk of the concern in this thread has nothing to do with chat and those that abuse chat - as you say there are tools for that and Pantheon will probably use them.
The great bulk of the concern has nothing to do with jerks in one's groups - as you say that can be handled readily enough and when someone gets a reputation you just can avoid grouping with him or her.
I may be wrong but I think the two primary drivers to the toxicity debates are killstealing and training...
Great post, dorotea, you explained things well (not going to quote your full post, but you captured the situation perfectly). Chat trolls or people who are being generally "toxic" in chat/messages/guild are easily dealt with via features like /ignore. Not a big issue and that's the one area the broader server community can deal with easily.
When many of us hear the word "toxic" we're thinking of kill-stealing, training, monopolizing bosses, denying content to others, etc. It's a topic that's come up before even with direct reference to EQ: https://old.reddit.com/r/PantheonMMO/comments/8wgrvx/the_toxic_hardcore_crowd_of_eq_and_its_potential/
I think there's a propensity by many who are following Pantheon's development to "conveniently forget" how many aspects of EQ's design are open to abuse, and are downplaying the extent to which such abuse has undeniably occurred. Now, how do we deal with that abuse going forward? There are a variety of "levers" that can be adjusted to mitigate against such issues. Those levers might involve things like encounter-locking, using first-to-engage instead of most-damage-dealt, adjusting certain abilities like FD, having mobs "ignore" other nearby players if the player they were chasing uses FD, or even selective instancing of some zones (absolute last resort imo).
One or more of these "levers" can be adjusted to mitigate the toxicity issue. Personally I have a few preferences for which ones I'd like to be used, but the fact is that VR will have to implement some of these solutions even if they come with some small compromises because ultimately, these solutions are the lesser evil to the toxicity that will be present in Pantheon without them.