Yeah I like seeing those corpses too. I don‘t think Pantheon will be going in the direction of instances. There will be multiple servers of course, but I think it will be so new that people will help each other and explore; not “rush to finish.” I am curious though too - interesting question!
side note: While I don’t P99, kudos to you playing on P99 Green. That’s great. :)
#communitymatters #makenightmatteragain #factionsmatter #riskvsreward #deathpenalty #HardRaiding #respectyourguild #HellLevels
I think temporary layering like WoW did was a good mix, you still saw a bunch of people but not to the point it was 25 people trying to kill the same mobs in a small area, now granted i know it isn't a quest driven game like wow so the number could possibly be a bit more crowded but i also know i dont want to see an entire server of lvl 1-5 still fighting the same mobs, it can be frustrating. I believe if we have a temp layering for like 2-4 months.(not counting dungeons or other highly contested zones) i believe would help alot.
The answer from VR has changed over the years. Initially it was no instancing, then revealed that the equivalent of /pickzone might be something they would use.
Last year, iirc, they said no, they wouldn't have any instancing of any kind, even /pickzone. Then this year, Brad described a reasonable hand-drawn facsimile of Phasing, which is a form of instancing, to some.
So.. who knows what they'll really end up with? /shrug
Personally, I really liked /pickzone, (with appropriate limits and anti-exploits); it seems to handle temporary high population situations pretty well. It was abused tremendously on EQ1 TLP until adjusted, however.
Some of the earlier videos also showed or made mention of a dynamic respawn modifier or feature, whereby if there were many people killing many things in an area or zone, they would respawn faster to accommodate multiple groups. Obviously, that's.. problematic for a few reasons, if certain emergent behaviors aren't countered.
Given currency and equippable/sellable items will be dropping from creatures directly, I don't think the health of their economy is a primary design goal. As such, the dynamic respawn feature might work perfectly fine, economy be damned, especially for the first month. Not my choice, but it would work, technically.
Maybe they'll just increase density of mobs in starting area. That doesn't worry me though, there is plenty of ways of solving it and even if nothing will be done about it it will sort itself out when some players will start to transition to higher level zones. Besides there will be quite a lot things to do outside of fighting at the beginning (and onwards). I'm more concerned about servers crashes at the very beginning xP
Mob density needs to be high everywhere, not just newbie zones. Everyone who will be in Alpha needs to take a serious look at mob density at every tier, in every zone and give solid feedback on mob density. It is better to have too many mobs than too few. From what I've seen on the streams, mob density as it is right now (which will change) is far too low.
It will be an issue. I know the devs said they want a social game. That means different things to different people. Those that are into diagramming their dps vs every pc in their group/guild and plotting kills per minute might be disappointed. The idea of downtime/social interaction in EQ was unique. How will that work in Pantheon? Will the min/max folks be happy with Terminus if it's not steady pull / kill / loot. What will some people do if there's a natural lull between pulls?
Too high a mob density can be worse than not enough mobs to kill. Especially for classes that do not kill quickly.
Multiple versions of the same zone - as discussed in more detail a while ago - still seems like the best solution to be sure Pantheon is playable and makes a good impression on new players.
Much better than having too many servers and needing server mergers far too early in the game's life cycle.
I don't forsee this being a big problem, especially compared to p1999 where everything is known (and very easy) and most players are experts at this point. They can make due with fast respawns and heavily encouraging grouping by level 4 or 5, then you have full groups fighting single mobs at a time instead of every 6 players fighting 6 mobs individually.