Ziegfried said:I get the feeling Porygon is correct because I read that post as well about having several raid tiers ready at launch...and that sounds like a raid focused game to me not a group focused one. Earlier discussions they stated a 20/60/20 design, solo/group/raid. But having multiple raids ready to go at launch with a small dev team worries me, that means they are putting a much larger emphasis on raiding than 20%.
I think the qualifier here is what kind of raids. Raids are fine, and fun. But having tried to play FFXIV.. the speed, rush to the end, kill it quick is what's made it hard to stomach and that's before the problem with being matched with people I can rarely ever speak to again because it's a cross server "Group Finder" Social raiding, with land marks and a more smell the roses approach to the runs would be a profoundly different atmosphere. And the effectiveness of those raids is really as simple as tweaking drop rates and item requirements to meet the time demand.
Porygon said:The fact that people think the game wont be endgame focused is silly.
Yea. Maybe the focus will not be on endgame content initially. But they have already stated they want to release with x amount of raid encounters and various tiers. That thought process already indicates they are looking to establish a healthy endgame. And this is at launch.
The content that comes out after release will almost certainly begin to switch the focus to max level and end game play. It's natural progression. It will happen.
Also, you can have a meaningful leveling experience but also focus on endgame play. That's not impossible.
Why do you assume that raid encounters will all be at max level?
Ziegfried said:And heres the thing: FF14 and WoW have the hardcore raiding covered. It's not as though the MMO market is wide open for that demographic. I've noticed most of us on these forums are in fact raiders, or have at least done some raiding in MMOs. But are most of the Pantheon fans here really looking for a raid focused MMORPG? I mean we already have options for that.
On content blocking that is something that happens in non instanced open world MMOs, especially where there are bottlenecks as others have stated. It happens in dungeons with various named mobs being permacamped if their drops are good enough. Gotta take the good with the bad when it comes to no instancing open world. Either players can affect you while engaged with a mob or they can't. If they can't, then a large part of the rationale of having no instancing is gone. I mean what's the point? People can watch you kill the dragon but cannot assist/hinder in any way? The last thing I want is another instanced raid heavy MMORPG.
Ok, I have to respond to something you said, even though I normally get too involved in the raiding disussions, because I think you're operating under a misconception - I can't speak for WoW, as I haven't played it since vanilla. But I *can* speak for FFXIV - and a raiding game, it is NOT.
Sure, they have content that they call "raids", but that content is almost all just harder versions of group content. The closest thing that FF14 has to EQ/WoW style raiding is what they call "Alliance" raids - and there are exactly 9 of those in the game, total (3 sets of 3 that can be done independently, one from the base game and 2 from the expansions).
Now don't get me wrong, I love FFXIV's alliance raids - they're fun. But because of the game's focus on allowing people to do things without having to have a guild to back them up, they're simply not on the same level, challenge-wise, as the raids that people 'round these parts like to talk about. Likewise, while the game's "Savage" and "Extreme" fights can be tough, they don't involve the number of people that many people would consider needed to constitute a raid.
So, to say that FFXIV has a lock on hardcore raiding is really not true. Are there players in FFXIV that think they're hardcore? Sure. Would they last ten minutes in the raids of Vanguard or EQ2, let alone Classic EQ? Not a chance. Heck, they'd be hard pressed to survive Wildstar raids, and those were at least similar to how FFXIV sets up their "raid" content.
So, what do "hardcore raiders" actually want? Here's my studied opinion (disclaimer: I haven't qualified as hardcore anything since leaving EQ in 2003, so my views might be anachronistic):
- Raids should involve multiple groups of players. How many can be debated, but in general people seem to like anywhere from 3 to 6 groups to constitute a "raid" for Pantheon.
- Raids should be more challenging, skill-wise, than single-group content. This is in addition to needing more people.
- Raiding should offer rewards commensurate with the challenge involved.
- Ideally, raiding should offer some sort of content progression, where there are easier raids and harder raids, and defeating the easier raids helps prepare you for the harder ones.
To be clear, I don't disagree with your central point - which is that if Pantheon overly focuses on raid content, it will hurt the game in the long run. I agree with that. We MUST understand that despite any of our personal preferences and playstyles, raiding is something that many busy adults simply can't or won't do all that often. If that's all the game has to offer for them at level 50, then the game will fail for everyone except the hardcore raiders.
However, it is also absolutely true that there will be many players who really want to be able to do compelling and challenging raid content in Pantheon. Their needs are not being fulfilled by other games either, and it is not fair to them to say that Pantheon shouldn't have raiding content as well. Pantheon should be a game that raid-oriented players can enjoy, just as much as group-oriented players.
The right answer for Pantheon, I think, is going to be a balance of things. Here is my opinion:
1) Pantheon should launch with some raiding content. Does it need a full-on progression of raid tiers? NO. But should it have at least a few raids that people can aspire to go do? YES.
2) The ratio of group content to raid content, at any given level range, sould be somewhere around 85% group/15% raid. I am specifically saying *any* level range because I don't believe raids should start at level 50. There should be raid targets at all level ranges, or at least as many as make sense.
3) True raiding zones, by necessity, will probably be level 50 (although I'd love to see some level 35-40 raiding zones too). That's fine. So long as there's still that 4-5:1 ratio of group zones to raid zones at that level, it should be ok.
4) The game will need to provide mechanisms to prevent content denial both in group and raid content. They do not have to be the same mechanisms, nor does the same mechanism need to be used for every single piece of content. Some things can be purely contested. Other things should be protected/locked/triggered/whatever. The key to making things work is to have a variety.
Personally, if *I* were designing the system, the way I would do it is set up "world boss" or "zone boss" type encounters to be contested - because these should be rare and special things. That does NOT mean their spawns should be predictable at all. Spawns for these encounters should involve far more variables than just a time window.
Quest-related fights would be triggered (and potentially locked). For standard named spawns and minor bosses, I would have these be contestable, but randomize spawn conditions and locations such that the majority of them would be impossible to truly camp. Your group might be in the Barracks waiting for the Sergeant, but today he spawned on the Parade Grounds instead. That sort of thing. Doesn't mean he might not show up in the Barracks later though.
As for raid zones, I would use a system similar to Vanguard's APW to try and prevent these from becoming a massive bottleneck, but probably not to the point where everyone got their own instance of the zone whenever they wanted.
The net effect of all this is that intentional content denial would be less likely to occur. Contention would happen sometimes, yes. Sometimes someone might beat you to one of those very rare and special things - but that's kind of the point, because it's very rare and special. Likewise, if a particular raid zone was overcrowded, there might be situations where there's simply not enough copies of the zone to go around - but, that should be mitigated by the presence of multiple raid zones that people can choose from.
5) As for any sort of raiding progression, that should really come with expansions and not at launch (I mean, let's be reasonable about this - we're already asking for a lot from VR for launch). But I would expect that expansions should add additional raid content alongside additional group content. Please note however, that does NOT mean that I support increasing the level cap in every expansion or intentionally causing mudflation to justify adding harder content to the game. There's enough bad examples to learn from that VR can and should be smarter about expansions than that.
With ALL of that said, the real issue here is having enough content a year or two years after launch, so that there is plenty of variety for people sitting at level 50. Vandraad had a very good point up above where if you look at content like a pyramid, with the high-level stuff forming the tip of the pyramid, problems are bound to occur. So, rather than talking through all the what if scenarios where someone else gets to the camp or the raid target 15 minutes before we do - I think we should be talking about how the game needs to have lots of different places that players can spread out and adventure in at all levels. If there's not enough content to go around, all of the bad things we all fear will come to pass. And that's true whether we're talking about grouping, or about raiding.
Apologies for the semi-rant, but I see these raid discussions go into a death spiral all the time, and I just feel like we've sort of done that particular topic to death here on these forums. The game can and should support hardcore raiders, casual raiders, and non-raiders alike and equally. There should be things people can compete over, but people shouldn't be forced to be competitive just to play and experience the majority of the game's content. Instead of talking about how things need to be one way or another or arguing that the game should cater to our needs at the expense of others, we should be looking for ways that we can all enjoy Pantheon together.
Also Ziegried please note that pretty much none of that is directed at you personally. Your post just triggered me a bit is all. It happens every once in a while :P
I just want to point out that Sony dealt a devistating blow to EQ by catering to raiders at the dismissal of the groupers. Raiders are a small subset, and Sony attended to them over groupers to which cost them dearly. SoL was the last expansion that served any interest to that of group based players. PoP was a complete slap to the face of groupers as the game was designed specifically for that of raiders. They tried to attend to this lacking with gimmicks with Legacy of Yeksha (Which was hashed together poorly) and LDoN (Which was more of a gimmick to try instancing). Then they released GoD which was another huge slap to the face of groupers. Their continued insult to group players caused most to leave and move off to other games such as WoW, which... at release was very strongly focused on group content.
I remember the raiders threatening Sony constantly, going on about how if they didn't get their way, they would take their large size guilds and leave the game. Point is, Sony listened to them, and ended up losing a large amount of their subsciption base. Be careful thinking raiders are the meat of a game like this. I would say group content far more important than raid content, especially in a game where raid content is contested. I enjoyed raiding when I could, I led many raids in EQ, but I despised the contested raiding, which is why I will not be taking part in raiding other than at a passing process.
For those of you who are worried about competition in group content, realize that in contested raid content of this nature, unless you have no life, you won't be raiding much until content becomes very old and dated.
Keno Monster said:Great post by the OP, asking a hard question without being combative.
I have no answer, this is a problem that in my experience hasn't been solved. In OG EQ the answer was to make the game amazing all the time, which obviously wasn't sustainable.
Thanks Keno^^ I figure we all just want the game to be the best it can be.
((I remember the raiders threatening Sony constantly, going on about how if they didn't get their way, they would take their large size guilds and leave the game. Point is, Sony listened to them, and ended up losing a large amount of their subsciption base.))
I could hardly agree more.
Raiders help support a game - it is good to have raiding content. Perhaps more for people that wouldn't want a game with no raids but that also enjoy other aspects of the game. People that do nothing but raid 24/7 probably won't be that attracted to Pantheon. But while supporting raids and listening to raiders is important - so is listening to group-focused players, and casual players, and pvp players and *any* other players.
When you treat raiders as the most important group and focus on what they ask for more than what anyone else wants .....the name of that game is oppression and shame, and the MMO that plays it is lost.
I would say the same thing about doing only what pvp players want or only what casual players want or even only what group-focused players want - this is not an anti-raider post. Some of my best friends .....
Balance is the key here.
Tanix said:Raiders are a small subset
Though I agree with Dorotea's take on your post I disagree with the bit above. Raiders comprised a significant portion of EQ's player base. Sony's problem was in listening to the vocal minority who tend to be the hardest hardcore raiders. That group is very small but, overall, raiders as a group were quite large.
If there is no content more challenging than running the same group content over and over VR will lose players. While there are plenty of players who prefer RP or crafting or other forms of more casual play there are plenty more who play for the challenge and progression. Despite the success of Tera I doubt Pantheon will survive long on nothing more than the subscription fees of the casual-only players.
Akilae said:Tanix said:Raiders are a small subset
Though I agree with Dorotea's take on your post I disagree with the bit above. Raiders comprised a significant portion of EQ's player base. Sony's problem was in listening to the vocal minority who tend to be the hardest hardcore raiders. That group is very small but, overall, raiders as a group were quite large.
If there is no content more challenging than running the same group content over and over VR will lose players. While there are plenty of players who prefer RP or crafting or other forms of more casual play there are plenty more who play for the challenge and progression. Despite the success of Tera I doubt Pantheon will survive long on nothing more than the subscription fees of the casual-only players.
Raid content is not more challenging than group content though. What made raids difficult was the organization of the number of people in coordination to a task. There were areas in EQ where a group had to be extremely skilled in order to navigate and defeat the content. Having such content in mass, combined with a very long leveling cycle is plenty to keep a sub base. Also, contested raid content is for people who have enormous amounts of time to play or can drop their RL obligations at moments notice to raid for several hours.
Now if we use the definition of "Casual" and "Hardcore" as it was in release EQ, casual players comprised the bulk of the player base (ie people who played 20-30+ hours a week), while the Hardcore were players who had no jobs (or jobs that allowed them to play from work constantly) and spent most of their time playing in order to compete. The problem with contested raid content is that it is narrowly focused content which by its basic design will create bottle necks. Now certainly they could design the entire game with raid content being as common as group content, but... that is not what they stated, so... raiding will become a choke point of contested content where those "minority" will dominate it due to thier play time over those who can not be online 24/7 or be on call to log in 24/7.
Contested raid content in my experience and those I played with was not the shining moment of EQ. In fact, it was considered one of the failings of the game as it favored the very situation I just described. Group content while contested can create issues, can be made in a much larger amount which allows players to spread out, avoiding impassable choke points which will be the case with limited raid content. For instance, In the begining of EQ release, pickup raids for Vox and Naggy were fairly common, but this was before organized guilds became a common and competitive thing. Once they did, Vox and Naggy were almost impossible for anyone but those guilds who had no RL responsbilites. It became a choke point for the game. With each new zone, the same result existed as the power guilds of players who could play 24/7 dominated the raid targets.
Remember that in EQ, raid targets were on a 7 day timer, so if you missed the window, you had to wait another week. If VR tries to remedy this with special design to allow every guild to farm a raid target each week, it will massivley increase the number of items into the game and that will have a very large effect on the games system, again... removing some of the elements of what made gear in EQ unique.
As I said with group content, the spawn cycles were 30 mins and rarity was controlled in drop rates combined with rare spawns. With a large world of content, and very specific attention to making the content difficult as well as slow progressing, such can easily retain the main player base as they will be able to fit that playstyle within their RL abilties. Will it be modern day casual? Nope... as most would consider EQ casuals to be extreme hardcore these days. In fact, if they designed it as difficult as I would hope they would, you are going to find a lot of modern gamers will be either delighted by the challenge that they seek in raid content now being availble in group content, or horrified how the game is designed in their view as "Harcore" throughout (ie no casual content).
I honestly think it would be a mistake for them to overly cater to raiding. The bulk of their subs are not raiders (not in the sense of contested raiders), nor are they casual in the sense of today, they are just people who don't have time to play games like kids without any responsibilty, and this is coming from a guy who played EQ on release while working 40-60 hours a week. You can make time to play a game for periods of time, but being on call to play a game at the games demand requires little to no RL responsibilities.
dorotea said:((I remember the raiders threatening Sony constantly, going on about how if they didn't get their way, they would take their large size guilds and leave the game. Point is, Sony listened to them, and ended up losing a large amount of their subsciption base.))
I could hardly agree more.
Raiders help support a game - it is good to have raiding content. Perhaps more for people that wouldn't want a game with no raids but that also enjoy other aspects of the game. People that do nothing but raid 24/7 probably won't be that attracted to Pantheon. But while supporting raids and listening to raiders is important - so is listening to group-focused players, and casual players, and pvp players and *any* other players.
When you treat raiders as the most important group and focus on what they ask for more than what anyone else wants .....the name of that game is oppression and shame, and the MMO that plays it is lost.
I would say the same thing about doing only what pvp players want or only what casual players want or even only what group-focused players want - this is not an anti-raider post. Some of my best friends .....
Balance is the key here.
People who raid 24/7 will be greatly attracted to Pantheon as it is contested content and people who have enormous amounts of time will dominate that content. I think if you are expecting people to casually raid on release in contested content, you might be disappointed. Also, hardcore raiders don't usually view group content as relevant. They will grind as fast as they can to get to the raid content, to dominate and control it. This is how contested content works with raiding and barring VR putting in a bunch of safety nets and artificial mechanics to essentially create the same results that instancing would (which would defeat the point of contested content), I don't see how they will stop it.
My point was not to say raiding should not exist, but they should be careful about making it a focus as this is what ran off a large portion of their base.
The problem isn't raiding, it's how EQ handled raiding in the end. As an MMO player in general, I think raids are quite fun and amazing. I love big epic fights with a lot of people coordinating together to take down the impossible. What EQ did in PoP was definetly catered to Raiders. Does this mean that PoP shouldn't have existed? No. PoP had some great content catered to raiding...but that was it. If Sony added more than just raid focus then people wouldn't of had a problem.
I would like to see more of a 60/30/10 split myself in terms of group/raid/solo if there has to be solo designed content for w/e reason.
In terms of top heavy stuff, I have posted some stuff already in this thread, but regardless of what you do the more zones and space you add to an MMO the more people will congregate to the new zones leaving the newbies behind. Even with EQ and the new dungeon zones that spread across all levels it still separated the higher end players from lower level. Newbs don't get into a game and autmatically know where to go and how to get to the new expansions with all those cool new zones that the higher level people are near. So it honestly depends on content design and how much they expand this world
I really dont feel this will be an issue unless they go extensive on a system like Alternate Advancement (Everquest), I for one enjoy playing multiple classes as im sure others will as well especially if you are able to twink. I think that was a key factor in the success of Everquest and what made it blow up was the fact that you could twink your alts it gave great incentive to level again. And lets be honest no one hated having a twink in their group when trying to level.
Tanix said:Porygon said:The fact that people think the game wont be endgame focused is silly.
Yea. Maybe the focus will not be on endgame content initially. But they have already stated they want to release with x amount of raid encounters and various tiers. That thought process already indicates they are looking to establish a healthy endgame. And this is at launch.
The content that comes out after release will almost certainly begin to switch the focus to max level and end game play. It's natural progression. It will happen.
Also, you can have a meaningful leveling experience but also focus on endgame play. That's not impossible.
Why do you assume that raid encounters will all be at max level?
Because theres been 0 indication that lower level raids are anything other than an idea they've had as a way to increase the leveling experience. Any time spent on low level raids is a complete waste of time (in my opinion). They will be exciting at first, getting 20 level 15s together... but you can accomplish a similar excitement during the leveling process by just having a few multi group mobs (as opposed to full on raid bosses).
I disagree that PoP was a mistake. PoP opened the world up and allowed people to travel to places they otherwise would have time to. It definitely allowed me to explore the world in a way I wouldnt have before due to ridiculous time investments it would take for little reward. The top end of the expansion was definitely raid focused, but there was alot of lower level zones introduced strictly by level requirement. Saying it was a slap in the face to groupers is just wrong.
Now GoD (which is absolutely the best expansion eq has ever put out, for raiders) definitely hurt groupers more. But the raids in GoD were absolutely top notch and made everything else EQ has designed in the past laughable... with the exception of a few of the PoP events. By this time the game design had shifted and rightfully so. The MMO playerbase had grown up and was looking for something more.
Also. WoW didnt steal players because of group focused content. WoW stole players because it was a better game. That's why several of the top top end guilds left as well. I still remember reading a post where Furor was discussing how the taunt mechanic was going to work in WoW and how much better it would be as a tank to actually be able to take threat when needed. WoW was just better.
Porygon said:Tanix said:Porygon said:The fact that people think the game wont be endgame focused is silly.
Yea. Maybe the focus will not be on endgame content initially. But they have already stated they want to release with x amount of raid encounters and various tiers. That thought process already indicates they are looking to establish a healthy endgame. And this is at launch.
The content that comes out after release will almost certainly begin to switch the focus to max level and end game play. It's natural progression. It will happen.
Also, you can have a meaningful leveling experience but also focus on endgame play. That's not impossible.
Why do you assume that raid encounters will all be at max level?
Because theres been 0 indication that lower level raids are anything other than an idea they've had as a way to increase the leveling experience. Any time spent on low level raids is a complete waste of time (in my opinion). They will be exciting at first, getting 20 level 15s together... but you can accomplish a similar excitement during the leveling process by just having a few multi group mobs (as opposed to full on raid bosses).
Point is, raids don't have to be max level, and it being better or not really is just a matter of taste. The concept is fully functional and while I was not a big fan of EQ2, I did like that they had raid style mobs throughout their levels. So it has worked and can work.
Porygon said:I disagree that PoP was a mistake. PoP opened the world up and allowed people to travel to places they otherwise would have time to. It definitely allowed me to explore the world in a way I wouldnt have before due to ridiculous time investments it would take for little reward. The top end of the expansion was definitely raid focused, but there was alot of lower level zones introduced strictly by level requirement. Saying it was a slap in the face to groupers is just wrong.
PoP turned the game into a gimmick with theme park style entry gates and keyed zones. The entire expansion focused on raids, period. Raids were needed to progress most locations. If you were a guild that did not have raid capability, your options were limited to a few zones while the rest of the game was designed for the top end raiders and catered to their entire concept of content blocking. I raided some of PoP, and even my guild who did raid hated PoP for its numerous bottle necks.
PoP invalidated meaningful travel in EQ (far more than SoL did), which is where it was known for mainstreaming the game.Allof a sudden players could instantly warp to anywhere around the world, making the entire concept of classes with specific travel abilities, the unique aspects of having travel speed spells, etc... pointless, all to serve a mainstream concept of design. People complaining about taking time to have to get anywhere? That was the point. IF you wanted to see locations, you planned and setup a means to group with others as such. By doing so, it provided oppurtunity because not everyone wanted to waste the time exploring as many would rather crowd the latest hyped dungeon. Those who sought exploration found new areas, dungeons out of the way and came across drops many did not know about (due to the fact that EQ's rare/drop system kept people from finding out too quickly what dropped what).
The funny thing is that PoP killed the group game not only with the raid focus, but by dumbing down the game with fast travel. It was an expansion that many of us thought was a knife to the back of most players (and an obvious sign of Smed and Co taking over the design to cater to mainstream gamers).
Porygon said:Now GoD (which is absolutely the best expansion eq has ever put out, for raiders) definitely hurt groupers more. But the raids in GoD were absolutely top notch and made everything else EQ has designed in the past laughable... with the exception of a few of the PoP events. By this time the game design had shifted and rightfully so. The MMO playerbase had grown up and was looking for something more.
Nobody cared accept the top end raiders. By that time, between the garbage content between and the fact that the "top raiders" threw tantrums, GoD was released early to appeal to the raiders (yet again). Omens of War and GoD were supposed to be a single release, but Sony pushed out GoD to cater to the raiders. Group players got fed up, tired of the handouts and listening to the whines and cries of people like Furor throw tantrums to get his way.
Porygon said:Also. WoW didnt steal players because of group focused content. WoW stole players because it was a better game. That's why several of the top top end guilds left as well. I still remember reading a post where Furor was discussing how the taunt mechanic was going to work in WoW and how much better it would be as a tank to actually be able to take threat when needed. WoW was just better.
Yes, a better game at the time specifically because it focused on group content while EQ had turned into a raiders only game. WoW copied EQ, attempting to "fix" the problems that EQ had (ie being focused only on raids). Furor was a horrible tank and his guild was terrible (they were known for zerging everything and were one of the biggest offenders with content blocking in Time to stop other guilds who were half the number but better players). The only reason Furor was picked up by Blizzard was because he was buddies with Tigole (a leader of another guild who was a Blizzard employee).
Furor and Tigole were the ones who demanded that WoW go from its initial design of 25 man MC to 40 man. They wanted BIG raids again, where the entire focus of the game was massive amounts of people.
Funny how the "top percent raiders" got hired in a new game after he threw tantrums in the previous one to get what he wanted, only to drop it and run off to WoW. Keep in mind Furor was well known for getting classes nerfed in EQ.
Also, remember that the original developers of WoW all left right before it was released due to it being bought out by a major entertainment company. Basically, those who created WoW had no hand in its later development. That is, WoW had a pretty good initial design template, but then was taken over by "Big Entertainment" and that is why it ended where it is.
Most of my friends hated leaving EQ, but as I said, the game abandoned them for mainstream and top raiding.
Nephele that is a huge post dude lol...I did actually read it all though. I find it interesting you don't consider FF14 to be "true raiding" and "not truly raid focused". The top end raiding in FF14 is cleared by very few people, it's not easy content by most peoples standards. I suppose the content isn't nearly as extreme as the stuff found in WoW's Sunwell or ICC 25 heroic LK but we are talking difficult content here. So yeah I find this dismissal of FF14's raiding fascinating. These points you mention are in fact part of what could drive Pantheon to become a raid focused game, particularly these two:
- Raiding should offer rewards commensurate with the challenge involved.
- Ideally, raiding should offer some sort of content progression, where there are easier raids and harder raids, and defeating the easier raids helps prepare you for the harder ones.
If by rewards commensurate with the challenge involved you mean superior gear, that's gonna create the same system we saw develop in EQ where you get a top heavy raid focused game due to the best gear dropping from raids, and needing to do various raids in progression to get ever more powerful gear. Now maybe if raiding gives you a unique mount, or unique looking weapon/armor that wouldn't necessarily lead to the game going raid focused. But if the gear is flat out superior to all group content and more raids are released with ever increasing power I think it's obvious what is gonna happen, raiding will become the focus of the game. If raids are contested content in an open world setting you will also see content blocking, so your points are well taken on that subject. This in particular:
"4) The game will need to provide mechanisms to prevent content denial both in group and raid content. They do not have to be the same mechanisms, nor does the same mechanism need to be used for every single piece of content. Some things can be purely contested. Other things should be protected/locked/triggered/whatever. The key to making things work is to have a variety. "
That is going to be absolutely essential moving forward if Pantheon is going to have progression raiding in an open world setting, it cannot be emphasised enough. I found your response interesting, and I think we see mostly eye to eye on the subject.
Ziegfried said:The top end raiding in FF14 is cleared by very few people, it's not easy content by most peoples standards. I suppose the content isn't nearly as extreme as the stuff found in WoW's Sunwell or ICC 25 heroic LK but we are talking difficult content here. So yeah I find this dismissal of FF14's raiding fascinating.
I think it's just a matter of perspective really. On my server/datacenter, there are dozens of groups that have cleared O12S, and all that's really left for them is Unending Coil at this point - and to be honest, I think some of them have cleared that too.
The main reason I don't consider FFXIV's difficult content to be raiding, however, is the group size. I might be old school, but to me a raid is something that takes more than 8 people to do. I'll admit the content is challenging - Shinryu EX took us weeks to figure out, and I *still* have a hard time getting people to go do Turn 9 synced with me. But I compare that to things like the Plane of Fear (or VP, or NToV, or any other raid) in EQ, or APW in Vanguard, or the Datascape in Wildstar, and it's like comparing an apple to a potato. It's just not even in the same class of content.
Raids, for me, will always involve more than a single group of people. This is also why I consider FFXIV's "true" raids to be the Alliance Raids - because those involve coordinating the actions of multiple parties of players.
I fully admit that this is somewhat of a bias, and that others may have different perspectives :)
Ziegfried said:These points you mention are in fact part of what could drive Pantheon to become a raid focused game, particularly these two:
- Raiding should offer rewards commensurate with the challenge involved.
- Ideally, raiding should offer some sort of content progression, where there are easier raids and harder raids, and defeating the easier raids helps prepare you for the harder ones.
If by rewards commensurate with the challenge involved you mean superior gear, that's gonna create the same system we saw develop in EQ where you get a top heavy raid focused game due to the best gear dropping from raids, and needing to do various raids in progression to get ever more powerful gear. Now maybe if raiding gives you a unique mount, or unique looking weapon/armor that wouldn't necessarily lead to the game going raid focused. But if the gear is flat out superior to all group content and more raids are released with ever increasing power I think it's obvious what is gonna happen, raiding will become the focus of the game.
This is very true, but I think it can be mitigated if we stop thinking that raid rewards need to be "better" in terms of raw numbers, and instead think in terms of other factors. Here's a few off the top of my head:
- Unique and compelling appearances ("Woah, is that the raid set? That looks amazing!)
- Set bonuses (I know, I know, but they're a good way to make something appealing without making everything else obsolete)
- Unique procs that are really only useful in raid situations
- Unique mounts, pets, housing items, cosmetic items, and so on.
By thinking a little bit outside the box on rewards, it should be possible to make raid rewards compelling without making them all "Best in Slot" - which, by the way, is a concept I am adamantly opposed to in general :)
Porygon said:Tanix said:Lots of stuff
I honestly just look at the game differently. I dont necessarily think the things you're saying are wrong, but I just disagree.
To be expected. Most of the people I tend to find agreement with in these things look at EQ release to Velious to be the golden years of EQ (ie when Verant ran the show) and SoL on to be the start of decline with the game.
There's a parallel to other games and to life. Catering to only raiders (assuming a 'traditional' end-game) in MMORPGs is like catering only to eSports players/fans in MMOFPSs.
There is the misguided belief that these 'top end' aspects of the game are the ideal or epitome of gameplay, but most players cannot reach it, are uninterested or even unaware it exists.
It's like a travel company only improving their 1st class trips or a bank only their millionaire account features. They would quickly go out of business without their real majority audience.
I truly hope that VR stick to what they have said because so far they have, in many ways, prettymuch every time the subject comes up, talked about the great importance of sideways/horizontal progression.
Tanix said:I just want to point out that Sony dealt a devistating blow to EQ by catering to raiders at the dismissal of the groupers. Raiders are a small subset, and Sony attended to them over groupers to which cost them dearly. SoL was the last expansion that served any interest to that of group based players. PoP was a complete slap to the face of groupers as the game was designed specifically for that of raiders. They tried to attend to this lacking with gimmicks with Legacy of Yeksha (Which was hashed together poorly) and LDoN (Which was more of a gimmick to try instancing). Then they released GoD which was another huge slap to the face of groupers. Their continued insult to group players caused most to leave and move off to other games such as WoW, which... at release was very strongly focused on group content.
I remember the raiders threatening Sony constantly, going on about how if they didn't get their way, they would take their large size guilds and leave the game. Point is, Sony listened to them, and ended up losing a large amount of their subsciption base. Be careful thinking raiders are the meat of a game like this. I would say group content far more important than raid content, especially in a game where raid content is contested. I enjoyed raiding when I could, I led many raids in EQ, but I despised the contested raiding, which is why I will not be taking part in raiding other than at a passing process.
For those of you who are worried about competition in group content, realize that in contested raid content of this nature, unless you have no life, you won't be raiding much until content becomes very old and dated.
This is my own supposition during that time of PoP to LoY. What I noticed, was two raiding guilds dominated the end game, and of course everyone wanted in. It was about this time that Playerauction started heating up, it may have been created around that time or near, but there were other sites that sold game currency for cash and game items(pixels) for cash. Interestingly, these top guilds were hitting PoP regularly and I expected a flood of raid items at really low prices because, no guild could have enough bag space.
At that time the leader of this top raiding guild was given- I say given- an all expense paid trip to a convention by the corporation that now owned the game rights. I wondered why. The altruistic part of me thought it was about a sort of east meets west view of the art of gameplay. I mean california, Far east influence at the time, ideology- it seemed to fit. But the suspicious part of me intuited something else. Money. This raid leader was telling the corporation how much money could be made, as he made much (against the EULA). Then coincidentally, remember the concern about bag space? suddenly LoY came out with- guess what? more bag space and new shared bank spaces. I wonder what could the motivation be except for the raid leader to be able to hold more loot because people were paying, and shared made it easier to transfer- maybe some devs were being paid under the table by the raid leader, I dont know. Then I see a level 1 character with a name made up of combined names of both raiding guilds, selling raid gear, only raid gear. Possibly to cater to the RMT plat buyers? I don't know.
Soon after the story hit about the guy in the APAC region going to court over a game sword he did not get from a RMT trade. This concerned me as it was putting value on pixels where there was no value before. However the good side of this was people creating sigs? for cash? that seemed more arty and innocent enough, but same concept of digital property/art having value to a consumer. And then soon after that, the corporation started taking action to sell stuff and it gradually creeped in to include RMT transactions I think the first test of a game based UI RMT platform was the pizza thing? where WoW spoofed it with chinese food or something (perhaps the ethereal meme behind the RL creation of panda express?)
I think this time was the start of game development companies seeing cash-shops as a viable business plan and created - well what it is today. For which age has conflicted me. I recall how I felt that was not the point of the game and felt sure such RMT was - well people that thought that way and liked cash shops were bad people, just didnt get it, unfit for soceity, never read "the emperors new clothes" as a child and learned the lesson from it, kind of thing (the emperor could also be wearing pixels). But then as I aged, was I bitter just because I didnt think of the idea? and likewise who am I to criticise the benefit people made from being a part of cash shops? the employees and worlkers and devs that made money and whose lives were improved by such- even though mine was not by virtue of not being in that business.
If I was Amish, I would socially ostracize all those casual players in RL that think Cash shops are "ok". Look at fortnite and the parents who are of my mind, but cater to their children and spend in fortnite for them. Do they not know they are supporting this concept and rewarding their kids?. Maybe that is inevitable. Like those who read cheat codes or, as also came about, expected cheat codes and then started paying for cheat codes in "lesser " games like mario or zelda. So when I heard "niche" I assumed, all those values I hold, or held, will be supported and any attempt to go against those values by other players will be harshly dealt with by the developers. But what is motivating the developers to do so? look what happened after PoP, surely someone was paid.
And the players conned themselves in a typical con that counts on the rubes own sence of pride guiding their actions by associating being part of a top end guild with being "better than" and an attestation to playerability, where loot was given by a council and not DKP and no one wondered where all that stuff went, and where I assume even the raid leaders asked members to sell their char and possibly baited them with amounts. Stories of 16 year olds getting 700.00 for their monk and were pleased to use that to buy a used car, or some player selling their char to a person in the military for 2,000.00 and getting it back 15 years later at no cost because the purchaser moved on or forgot. Good work if you can get it. What is the compulsion that makes me NOT want to sell my char- yes I was poor and almost homeless at one time, never crossed my mind, in retrospect I feel kind of stupid because it didn't. But my point is, there is no real (RL) reinforcement to keep that ideal.
I think this took the enjoyment out of the game and made it a job- and many people assume sweat-shop like conditions that APAC children players endure just for gold-farming. It is true, but the environment I am sure is very much like a call-center than a sweat shop (hello, you have won a 4day 3night carribian cruise. Hello, you can consolidate your credit card debt. Hello, your PC has been infected, Hello, can I interest you in home security?, Hello, buy this stock! I am from big name and make 500k a year! do it now! send me 10k!~)
I think it was the outside force that changed the player mindset instead of letting the player mindset evolve organically. A "game" is supposed to be fun for all, not just the best geared or the Krono dealers.
Manouk said:
...snip...
I think it was the outside force that changed the player mindset instead of letting the player mindset evolve organically. A "game" is supposed to be fun for all, not just the best geared or the Krono dealers.
Interesting supposition, while I remember some elements of these issues, I was not that involved in the background of the whole issues. I remmeber Yantis being a cancer on the game. I remember players buying and selling items being looked down on heavily (so much that if it got out you were buying items with RMT, it could get you blacklisted from guilds and ostracized by the community). I remmeber the devs going on about how Yantis and RMT was causing severe damage to the game (there were pages of devleloper discussion about the detriment of this practice). Though your mention of Krono puts the dates into perspective as at that time I was not actively playing either EQ/EQ2, but I did see and hear them implementing such.
I never understood the RMT mindset. Call it a different generation and all, but the idea of paying real money for digital cheats in a game was just insane. I mean, the whole point of a game was to defeat it, to succeed over its obstacles. That was the "fun" of a game and the point of why people played games.
That is, I disagree with you on the premise that a game is supposed to be "fun for all". A game is not fun, it is not entertainment, it is a very specific thing. Some people will play games because of what a game is due to the fact that in playing it they are entertained, and the activiitty is fun, but the game itself is not "fun", nor "entertainment" itself.
This is why I think there is a disagreement in expectations of games these days. I see a game as something that challenges me (in many different ways, often based on its genre or basic design focus) and the concept that I might get frustrated, fail, etc.. is to be expected and those things are definitely not "fun" (few will claim they love frustration, failing, etc....), but it is the overall process of encountering the failure and then eventually overcoming it to which entertainment results, to which fun is produced.
This understanding I think is at the forefront between opinions on what a game should provide.
Every game that has touted it was designed for "Everyone" to be "fun" for everyone, etc... I have disliked as I found it to be bland, mindless activity. It is why I view most games produced today (other than those who are niche and deisgn their games against the mainstream idealogy) to be garbage, pointless button clicking lacking any intellectual or even physyical challenge in play. They are akin to slot machines where people dumbly pull a lever and get excited about flashy lights and sounds.
/shrug
Tanix said:Point is, raids don't have to be max level, and it being better or not really is just a matter of taste. The concept is fully functional and while I was not a big fan of EQ2, I did like that they had raid style mobs throughout their levels. So it has worked and can work.
Those came well after release. On release there were a couple multi-group "encounters" but they were hardly what anyone would call raids. Sony added raids because that's what the players wanted.
Tanix said:PoP turned the game into a gimmick with theme park style entry gates and keyed zones. The entire expansion focused on raids, period. Raids were needed to progress most locations. If you were a guild that did not have raid capability, your options were limited to a few zones while the rest of the game was designed for the top end raiders and catered to their entire concept of content blocking. I raided some of PoP, and even my guild who did raid hated PoP for its numerous bottle necks.
So you didn't like PoP's raids and rapid travel. Many others did. When the world grew so large that it could take well over an hour just to get from point A to B the players started complaining. Even those who weren't fans of instant travel could support something being done to help.
Tomato, tomahto.
Tanix said:Also, remember that the original developers of WoW all left right before it was released due to it being bought out by a major entertainment company. Basically, those who created WoW had no hand in its later development. That is, WoW had a pretty good initial design template, but then was taken over by "Big Entertainment" and that is why it ended where it is.
Almost... WoW was released late 2004 and wasn't merged with EA until mid 2008, 3.5 years later. While Vivendi was involved prior to EA they left Blizzard to run their division as they saw fit. Though EA has done WoW no favors they had no impact on the first expansion and very limited impact on the second. Yeah, after that it was a shitshow.
But from the beginning WoW was a raid-focused game. The solo and group play wasn't an end unto itself but a means to reaching the raid content. Nobody got to level cap and then spent all their time hanging out in low level areas for the amazing gray content.
All RPGs, not just MMORPGs, are character development games. That necessarily involves constantly improving yourself, growing and getting stronger, more powerful. By definition there is an end-game as long as there is a level cap. Players at that cap need something to do, something that increasingly challenges them over time. Group content can only go so far in that direction thus we have raids. Raids can also serve as a time gate on player progression to prevent players from burning through the content too quickly. That's why PoP and other content was "gated".
I'm not sure what game you want to play. You dislike raiding and fast travel, don't seem to care about progression, and want plenty of solo content. Maybe you'd prefer a game like Life is Feudal where you can play solo or as a group, build out your home/village/city while plenty of others are doing the same, talking or not talking to each other, fighting or not fighting with each other, etc. No levels, just skill improvement and slow growth with a nigh impossible-to-reach "cap".
Akilae said:Tanix said:Point is, raids don't have to be max level, and it being better or not really is just a matter of taste. The concept is fully functional and while I was not a big fan of EQ2, I did like that they had raid style mobs throughout their levels. So it has worked and can work.
Those came well after release. On release there were a couple multi-group "encounters" but they were hardly what anyone would call raids. Sony added raids because that's what the players wanted.
That wasn't the point. The point was if you could have raid content not at max level. You are only validating my premise here.
Akilae said:Tanix said:PoP turned the game into a gimmick with theme park style entry gates and keyed zones. The entire expansion focused on raids, period. Raids were needed to progress most locations. If you were a guild that did not have raid capability, your options were limited to a few zones while the rest of the game was designed for the top end raiders and catered to their entire concept of content blocking. I raided some of PoP, and even my guild who did raid hated PoP for its numerous bottle necks.
So you didn't like PoP's raids and rapid travel. Many others did. When the world grew so large that it could take well over an hour just to get from point A to B the players started complaining. Even those who weren't fans of instant travel could support something being done to help.
Tomato, tomahto.
You make a very compelling point, for mainstream design. Note how your objection is that people loved PoP because travel was fast travel all over the world ( a modern mainstream design mechainc). Keep in mind many of us who look to this game as a solution do so because of our desire for it to attend to not "mainstream" design choices, but that of the older systems where things like travel meant something. Pop was considered a mainstream dumbing down of EQ, it was Smeds vision of EQ, not Brads and we all know where Smed took us with his vision.
Akilae said:Tanix said:Also, remember that the original developers of WoW all left right before it was released due to it being bought out by a major entertainment company. Basically, those who created WoW had no hand in its later development. That is, WoW had a pretty good initial design template, but then was taken over by "Big Entertainment" and that is why it ended where it is.
Almost... WoW was released late 2004 and wasn't merged with EA until mid 2008, 3.5 years later. While Vivendi was involved prior to EA they left Blizzard to run their division as they saw fit. Though EA has done WoW no favors they had no impact on the first expansion and very limited impact on the second. Yeah, after that it was a shitshow.
Slight of hand. The point was, most of the original developers left Blizzard before WoW was released. You claiming Vivendi was involved and let Blizzard run as they saw fit only proves the point and shows why the developers left. WoW was taken over by big business mainstream design from day one and your dismissal of what happend not only flies in the face of the facts of the time, but it claims to have some intimate knowledge internally of Blizzard at the time. What I speak of was public knowledge, your argument claims restricted knowledge, so... please explain how your assessment flies in the face of public statements by the original developers at the time.
Tanix said:But from the beginning WoW was a raid-focused game. The solo and group play wasn't an end unto itself but a means to reaching the raid content. Nobody got to level cap and then spent all their time hanging out in low level areas for the amazing gray content.
Incorrect, WoW didn't even have a major raid zone working at release. The entire focus of WoW on release was group content. The "raid" focus (if you want to call two group content raids) of WoW was Strathalome and Scholomance and Upper Black Rock spires at release, all 10 man dungeons. MC was slated to be a 25 man dungeon and was pushed to a 40 man at the behest of Furor (I remember him swooning over this in interviews at the time) and other like minds. This was all common knowledge during the time.
Tanix said:All RPGs, not just MMORPGs, are character development games. That necessarily involves constantly improving yourself, growing and getting stronger, more powerful. By definition there is an end-game as long as there is a level cap. Players at that cap need something to do, something that increasingly challenges them over time. Group content can only go so far in that direction thus we have raids. Raids can also serve as a time gate on player progression to prevent players from burning through the content too quickly. That's why PoP and other content was "gated".
Except this is false. End game is a modern definition of those who do not wish to put the effort into the journey in order to get to the top (D&D certainly didn't operate as such and cRPGs also did have this concept). I remember it, I watched EQ, WoW, etc.. and heard the arguments of certain types of people who despised the RPG concepts, didn't want to develop a character, rather they were interested in playing an arcade game with others at max level and they did raids. Your argument is not one of people who loved cRPGs, but people who loved arcade games and liked the multiplayer interaction of MMO raids. This was also what some of us PC gamers were upset about during the time as the console generation flooded into WoW and brought with them all the game expectations they had of console games which were extremely different in design to that of PC games.
Tanix said:I'm not sure what game you want to play. You dislike raiding and fast travel, don't seem to care about progression, and want plenty of solo content. Maybe you'd prefer a game like Life is Feudal where you can play solo or as a group, build out your home/village/city while plenty of others are doing the same, talking or not talking to each other, fighting or not fighting with each other, etc. No levels, just skill improvement and slow growth with a nigh impossible-to-reach "cap".
PoP was not progression, it was bottle necks. PRogression is a basis for cRPG play, PoP containerized what was an open world and turned it into a bunch of key contests to progress. I love character progression, AD&D style development and openess in play, not arcade style theme park play and PoP has more in common with WoW in its basic core principals of design than it does original EQ. EQ to Velious was an open world game. PoP was a themepark for arcade junkie mainstreamers.
I like group play, I even enjoy raids, but I don't care for modern mainstream design which is all back end loaded content focused on arcade junkie fast track play where "development" is measured in how many keys you collect rather than the endurance of a characters design over the course of an environment.
I don't want a modern raid game, but apparently you do? Which then begs the question, after you have read the tenants of this game, the FAQ, can you please explain to me how this game achieves what you are expecting over what I am?
For those that feel that raid content shouldn't be the focus:
How do you keep people playing long term once they have acquired what they want from group content?
Part of the benefit of raid loot it that there are long spawn times so it gives people incentive to play for a longer period of time as they try to attain that loot.
((How do you keep people playing long term once they have acquired what they want from group content?))
If it takes a year or two to get to top level this isn't at all the same issue it is in current games where you can do it in *days* or weeks.
You add new content for them to play - if the average player takes years to get through the old content you have plenty of *time* to do this - you break the model where people race through your content in weeks and then scream "now what".
You add new features - housing for example or ships (as in Vanguard).
You add new group content that is just as hard for one group as a raid may be for four groups. You break the current model where raids are the only "real" content and grouping is a way to keep casuals busy.
You don't let them get all they want from group content that fast. Gear doesn't drop from the sky like manna and killing a boss doesn't guarantee you get something your class can use.
If some players want nothing but to race through the content that you spent so much time and love on and do nothing but raid - you wave goodbye when they are all raided out. You don't need to bend over and spread for them because they are a really small percentage of the subscriber base in a game like this - and while they might spend a lot more than average in cash shops there *is* no cash shop.