No instancing or sharding sounds good until you hit 180 minute queues to log onto the server because player density is too high and your guild has only gotten one raid target in the last 2 months because there are 123 guilds competing for 28 raid targets on 3 day respawn timers, 90% of which go to the 4 poop sock guilds.
philo said:We have to be under the assumption that the server populations are well balanced.
Dont blame incompetent implementation on the system just because it was managed poorly. That is a human error issue. Not an issue with the system.
Agreed, was about to post the same thing. They will do their best to populate the servers in a way that supports their game design.
bigdogchris said:...People working hard and competing to get ahead results in a greater feeling of accomplishment than being handed levels through instance grinding.
Lol *sigh* this comes up again and again, eh? So, you aren't "working hard" unless someone else is being shoved aside? If you aren't 'beating' others, you are being handed levels?
Pretty sure the issue doesn't come down to those two extremes and nothing in between and that not everyone needs to be squabbling with others to feel 'accomplishment'.
Can we just stop with the whole "if you don't find contention the ideal you must be a carebear wanting the game handed to you with instancing" fallacy/hyperbole/strawman thing, please?
I simply want a game that truly emphasises PvE and doesn't make everything a pathetic pseudo-PvP squabble.
That does not mean instancing and it does not mean 'easy'. I want the *game* to be what I fight, not other players. I want PvE where, when I see other players, I am pleased, not dejected because some kind of spoily, griefy thing is about to happen.
Open world to me and, I'm confident saying "to most people", is best embodied by shared experienced and opportunities for cooperation and synergies. Contention is at best a neutral, mostly undersirable side-effect and is certainly no ideal to be aspired to.
If you want contention with players at every turn, perhaps play on a PvP server? It would have to be a free-for-all one, of course, no factions, where anyone can resolve any issue at any time by ganking you, or getting their guild to. Want contention? Do it properly and fight to the death, not this hand-slapping, hair-pulling PvE 'contention'.
If you want 'competition' surely there is nothing better than PvP? Why ruin PvE with an emphasis on contention?
Anyway, I don't know why I'm arguing. As I think I've said before: People aren't going to change the type of person they are and if you feel 'beating' other people is necessary to have the best fun you can, then you aren't going to change that belief.
Thankfully, Joppa seems to have a healthy attitude to it. He even 'over-ruled' what Kilsin was saying in this regard in the May Roundtable. When talking about camps Kilsin (a self-proclaimed PvP fan) suggested if someone is camping and area and you want it, then you could just work out ways to force them off it.
From Joppa's response: -
"that's not something that we we would want to see"
"that's not a good day"
"that's part of this whole like question of play nice, open world, non-instance, most damage done - like this whole conversation"
"will like camp stealing, like blatant kind of over-the-top This person's clearly here they're clearly holding this and I'm just coming in and completely like taking it from them? On a PvP server? Absolutely"
"on a PvE server I don't think that's gonna fly"
I am all for shared limited resources. I do not want prolific use of instances. None would be ideal. I do not expect or want contention to be completely eradicated at the expense of open world play. I simply want it treated like it should be in a PvE focused game: something to be avoided and certainly NOT something to be aspired to. It is something to be limited and mitigated.
Thankfully VR seem to see it that way too.
philo said:We have to be under the assumption that the server populations are well balanced.
Dont blame incompetent implementation on the system just because it was managed poorly. That is a human error issue. Not an issue with the system.
I'm glad to see you being optimistic! But...
I don't think server population management can possibly be anything but a massively blunt tool which cannot fix the problem of overcrowding at particuar times in particular zones or sub-zones.
If you allow a large population you will get crowds in some places/times. If you have a smaller population you will get certain zones empty at some times.
How can controlling the number allowed into the whole server possibly address those granular issues?
@dispo
That is how VR has stated they will handle over crowding multiple times. By balancing the server populations.
We will not be having sharding or picks on release. They will monitor the player numbers and adjust. That has been the way they are going for years. Yes, certain areas will be crowded. But with the tiniest bit of management we won't see anything like the Aradune server. Didnt you hear CP talk about only going to certain zones in EQ because other zones were crowded? That is WAI.
Can we not have a discussion about open world games where you don't over exagerate and claim that the sky is falling?
A tiny fraction of people will do what Kilsin suggested in the recent dev stream and simply blatantly steal your camp. Such a tiny percentage that it is a non issue and you are making it way over blown (again).
Just like in real life. Someone could steal from you. Someone could attack you. Someone could cause you problems. But thats not normal because people are inherently good and reasonable and generally treat others as they want to be treated.
If someone steals your camp its time to use your problem solving skills. If you cant come to a reasonable solution and all you can do is to walk away from that particular situation, maybe that is best?
Most of the time there wont be a problem at all but to hear you talk about it you would think you are in a full blown PvP game with gankers around every corner waiting to ruin your fun on purpose. Give me a break.
The thing is you cannot actually balance servers. The developer can make suggestions as to which servers historically have the lowest server populations but thats a best guess. Players pick a server and build up. If they are successful and have fun then their friends and family tend to join them. Now you have a lot of people with sunk time in the early/midgame that will not willingly give it all up to switch servers with lower populations if suddenly the end game content was flooded on their server.
There are non combat advantages to servers with high player populations. Vibrant economies, plenty of players to group with in your level range, more guilds like Nephs that run player hosted events. Moving from a high population server tends to push you to a server where those aspects are muted or non existent.
So what it comes down to is your solution to being on a server that is over crowded to the point that virtually no content is available is to quit your current character/guild/friends and start over on a low population server.
Maybe it could be considered a tool if VR allowed for free character transfers periodically which could be done at the guild level but that has a giant host of other problems. Learn from the mistakes and issues of the TLP servers and P99 Blue and Green, don't repeat them and wonder why everyone quits.
If a server gets to the point that VR deems it is getting close to full they simply open new servers (newer players usually prefer to start fresh...aradune is a prime example).
If they are under populated they get merged.
It isnt an exact science but it isnt impossible to balance. Of course some servers will be more populated than others. We all have to expect servers to feel pretty full on release but for there to be a drop off a few months later.
If they are well monitored your worry about players being forced to quit or start over is a non-issue.
It could become an issue of course but this is way down the list on my list of concerns.
philo said:
Just like in real life. Someone could steal from you. Someone could attack you. Someone could cause you problems. But that's not normal because people are inherently good and reasonable and generally treat others as they want to be treated.
Philo, while I absolutely believe this is correct in real life I am just going to say that it has *not* been my general experience with other players in online games - not in 20 years. In the vast majority of games, if it was possible for people to steal my pull, my kill, my camp, try to gank me, or even just run in and grab the quest thing while I'm fighting the mob that's guarding it, forcing me to wait for it to reset - that's generally what they'll do.
Sure, there are people playing MMOs that are nice and reasonable and will wait their turn and so on - but in my experience, they are the exception rather than the rule. I'm sure in real life they're wonderful people. But when they're in game, they take on the mentality of winning at any cost, or of might makes right, or even just the game lets them do it so it must be ok, and they start to damage the experience of other players around them instead of enhancing it. The more a game is designed to encourage competitive behavior, the worse it gets for people that aren't inherently competitive. The only people you can trust to be decent or at least tolerable are your guildmates and your friends. Everyone else is suspect.
In most MMOs, this has been mitigated by heavy use of instancing, phasing, sharding, and so on. We all recognize that those technologies have caused as many problems as they solve and probably aren't the right way to go for Pantheon. However, that does not mean that players are magically all going to start being nice and polite to each other, and it doesn't mean that there shouldn't be some guard rails to try and keep the toxic behavior to a minimum.
Personally, the idea I've liked the most so far has been Iksar's idea that maybe for highly desirable loot items, you can only loot them once within your character's lifetime. Use it, sell it, whatever - but it's the only one of those you'll ever get. It's not a solution for everything but it does at least put a limiter on people's desire to farm lower-level content. Not to mention, it would probably help keep the economy from being flooded with those items, which is good for everyone.
philo said:@dispo
That is how VR has stated they will handle over crowding multiple times. By balancing the server populations.
Yes, I know, and *shock horror* I don't agree with them on this approach. I don't think it will work any better than it has in other games that have tried it, which is to say, it didn't work.
Hopefully the content level is big enough to match server capabilities. Not doing so doesn't seem like good business. I suppose if there's some other fun place to go, then we could always move around...maybe we just need a backup plan on a busy server.
I agree with Nephele about Iksar’s idea for limited loot for characters. It might be preferable to have the drops limited by whether the character owns the item if there’s any kind of item decay or destruction that could occur. This seems to potentially address the worst camp breaking issues...would it not?
If the items can be sold, The admins might even be able to tell of the server is becoming unbalanced watching the price of these items since the theoretical limit could be one per player on the server. So, if mid level item prices drop, funnel more new players to that server perhaps..?
That said, I played eve online for many years loving pvp and then retreating to my traditional PvE mmorpgs when I wanted less adrenaline. I found lots of empty PvP zones in those games because the content wasn’t designed for PvP...there’s likely no point in adding sandbox PvP if the content isn’t designed for it. Still, I would be up for the occasional voluntary battle to the honorable near-death...especially if the power of skills are level-set like in mentoring
philo said:Can we not have a discussion about open world games where you don't over exagerate and claim that the sky is falling?
Apparently no more than we can have a discussion about open world games without some claiming the best fun to be had is player contention and it's never caused any negative issues.
If the pro- contention/competition side stop trying to claim it's the ideal to aim for, I will stop pointing out all the ways it is not.
philo said:A tiny fraction of people will do what Kilsin suggested in the recent dev stream and simply blatantly steal your camp. Such a tiny percentage that it is a non issue and you are making it way over blown (again).
Just like in real life. Someone could steal from you. Someone could attack you. Someone could cause you problems. But thats not normal because people are inherently good and reasonable and generally treat others as they want to be treated.
Great to see you being so optimistic on this issue.
It is, unfortunately, nothing like real life. Yes, in real life most people are fine. Also, in real life there are plenty of 'others' and a lot of those people are curtailed and disuaded from toxic behaviour by published, well known rules and effective policing and punishment systems.
It would take a very small minority of bad people to make real life a hellish anarchy if there were no rules and consequences to 'bad' behaviour.
In games, when there are no published rules and no serious consequences things can rapidly get toxic and it only takes a small minority to spoil it for everyone.
philo said:If someone steals your camp its time to use your problem solving skills. If you cant come to a reasonable solution and all you can do is to walk away from that particular situation, maybe that is best?
No. It absolutely is not best. Best is to have clear play nice policy where you talk to the person who is transgressing it and persuade them to play nice. When they refuse, you have recourse to stop them without taking 'the law into your own hands' and making things worse. You might even be wrong, after all.
philo said:Most of the time there wont be a problem at all but to hear you talk about it you would think you are in a full blown PvP game with gankers around every corner waiting to ruin your fun on purpose. Give me a break.
Again, not what I said or implied and I agree that most of the time there won't be a problem. But there may well be a problem often enough that, if the 'toxic' players are allowed to 'win', because there are no play nice rules and there is no policing of any other kind but by players (and the toxic players have plenty of powerful friends, just like 'good' players do) then the game may become known for being a 'haven' for bad behaviour and those just wanting some PvE fun will leave or never join in the first place and those others will become a bigger and bigger percentage.
The sky is not falling. The sky hasn't even finished being built yet, but if we go ahead and build just like every other game has; hoping for the best and doing nothing to mitigate the problems we know very well have plagued and even ruined other games, the sky, no matter how beautifully crafted, may well fall later.
Don't believe contention can lead to toxicity and problems that can't be resolved by community policing? That's up to you I guess.
Thankfully Joppa apparently realises it can.
disposalist said:philo said:If someone steals your camp its time to use your problem solving skills. If you cant come to a reasonable solution and all you can do is to walk away from that particular situation, maybe that is best?
No. It absolutely is not best. Best is to have clear play nice policy where you talk to the person who is transgressing it and persuade them to play nice. When they refuse, you have recourse to stop them without taking 'the law into your own hands' and making things worse. You might even be wrong, after all.
I am not disagreeing with you but I would like to explore this further. Policy or not people will act like this since it's an online environment and they don't think there are any real consequences. So in the scenario where there is NO play nice policy, you should talk to the person and try to persuade them to play nice. If they refuse your only options are to cry, log off, or go find something else to do in game. In the scenario where there IS a play nice policy, you still talk to the person and try to persuade them to play nice. If they refuse your options are still the same with the additional option of....(this is the part I'd like to discuss)...
So what IS the additional option? /petition a GM and have them sort it out? Because I don't see that going well either. Maybe you have another solution in mind though so I'd like to hear how you (or anyone) see it playing out.
I just can't imagine trying to peititon a GM to say "Please come help, I've been at this camp for 2 hours and some bozo just walked up and started taking all the kills." Then waiting minutes? Hours? For the GM to show up all the while just getting more frustrated because bozo won't leave. Finally a GM does show up and begins the interrigation. Bozo lies of course. You tell the truth. The GM is forced to go read the logs? How long does this take? I just really don't think it's reasonable for the GM's to handle every little argument in the game and where do they draw the line? Will they help level 6 player who's been herrassed by level 10 player for a half hour? Will they help level 50 guild that's about to raid a mega boss and bozo guild comes in and takes it? It just seems like such a big can of worms to open up and there aren't enough man hours to solve all our problems. Some of them we're just going to have to deal with on our own and/or get over it and move on.
I've heard lots of ideas but it just seems like there might not be a good solution to the problem. I am NOT saying that I want trouble from other players in the game, I just feel like it comes with the territory and a play nice policy isn't a realistic solution in my opinion. With that said - I would still much prefer an open world with the existence of these problems than an instanced world without these problems.
Of course there might still be a good solution out there so brainstorming and discussing is certainly worth it.
Edit: I will add that I am not opposed to a play nice policy at all. Having one and not enforcing it is much better than not having one at all. At least having one gives the option of enforcing it...it just has to be very clearly spelled out which is another huge pain. So many grey areas. I know they talked about it in a stream or two and they're trying ot stay away from it but it probably would be nice to have some specifics in writing. In your previous post where you quoted Joppa saying "that probably won't fly on a PvE server" it seems reasonable to get that in writing and be more specific about what exactly won't fly.
Yes, you would /report someone. No, I wouldn't expect GMs to come for every little thing, but if they eventually do and the baddies are punished, it will deter others.
The fact that there *are* rules and there *are* punishments means a lot of people who might have behaved badly will not.
In an environment where it is known there are no rules, no one will even know what they should or shouldn't be doing and you can't justifiably punish anything.
In an environment where there *are* rules, but it is known there are never/rarely any punishments, people who might not have done 'bad' things, will do them, even knowing they are bad.
Much like in real life, if there is, say, a burglary, the police will take your details, but may not even come out.
If there are couple of burglaries with similar MOs or in the same area, they might send out a scene-of-crimes investigator for evidence.
If there is a spate of burglaries, they might send out patrolling officers to the region.
In game, if a camp or area or player is getting a lot of /reports, they might take it more seriously or even send a GM.
...
I could go on, but isn't it obvious?
Imagine real life without laws, policing or a justice system. In games, it is even more disasterous, but thankfully people don't suffer real violence and loss. It's just the game that dies...
Before I get accused of over-reacting again, I just explaining my point-of-view, not likening pleasantness in a game to real life crime in importance, but wouldn't it be a massive shame for Pantheon to be an awesome game, but lose a ton of players due to toxicity that could be mitigated or even prevented by some simple measures like PNP, a /report system and a few GMs to police them?
@Ranarius I agree that there are grey areas and it is a difficult issue, but VR are a team that have decades of experience. I don't believe they have to make everything black-and-white in order to be effective, either. If they can't unravel a grey area, they can at least identify those grey areas - it should still be obvious to people that when they are *in* that grey area, maybe they should be careful not to upset others because they might well be in the wrong.
I think most people, given the chance, *do* want to play nice and will do *if they know what that is*.
philo said: I feel sorry for the couple of you that have constant bad experiences when interacting with others. That is definitely not my experience. I wonder why? I can only assume you have unreasonable expectations. That seems to be the case here in a few instances (without calling anyone out).
Not what anyone said. Not sure how many times I can say I know it is only a small minority of people and small proportion of the experience.
It's enough to give a game a reputation and put people off, though.
And it's unecessary, with a few simple precautions.
There aren't many murderers in real life, but that doesn't mean it's fine to have no laws relating to murder.
In the years I played EQ I only had a few times people blatantly disregarded any pretense on wanting to be nice to others. I have never had to /report or involve a GM that I remember. I definitely had times when I disagreed with other players but was able to work out some form of solution without involving a GM.
Times change though and many of my friends warn me that what we had in EQ is no longer possible. Many games have taught players to treat other players as NPC if they notice you at all. Heck even in a pickup group you can play for hours without even talking to the others group members. And so many games now are PVP, reinforcing and encouraging that type of behaver. I do not know if this is true or not but it rings true enough to worry me.
When Kilsin described how camps might work I was so stunned it was hard to even listen to him. I had to rewatch the video later to let it sink in. Thanks disposalist for posting the transcript of Joppa’s response. If I thought Kilsin description was truly the expectation and plan I would lose all hope that Pantheon would be home for long. Thankfully Joppa was quick to clearly point out that is not the expectation at least.
EQ definitely had a PNP policy in place as well. So not only have times changed but it was a good idea to have it even back then. I guess my hope is that the developers at least understand what an open world can be like when there are no rules at all. I then hope they have some plan to discourage the blatantly bad behaver.
bigdogchris said:What you gain from instancing you lose in community and sense of accomplishment. The levels will come no matter what system you have but having a good community and feeling great about what you have is something you can't get back. People working hard and competing to get ahead results in a greater feeling of accomplishment than being handed levels through instance grinding.
That's not exactly true, instancing (and I am not in any way suggesting this game should have it) came about and was mostly designed by hardcore EQ raiders who were tired of the extremely toxic way raiding/content denial worked in EQ despite the fact that the way things worked greatly benefitted them. They saw how much greater the collective good would be if more players could band together and really form the bonds challenging the game content compared to being edged out or fighting other players just to have any attempt at the higher challenges.
You were originally the guild master of [renowned hardcore EverQuest raiding guild] Legacy of Steel, correct? What did your experience as a hardcore MMO raider make you want to bring to WoW, and what did it make you want to leave out?
As a hardcore guild leader, I realized the depth that there is to these games. Previous to that experience, there weren't a lot of games out there that you wanted to continue, to be powerful with a large group of other players and constantly beating new content. I'd been hardcore in other games before it, like FPSes and RTSes, but in those games the joy of the game comes from the competition, and the only thing unique that changes is the competition. I think that when you look at EQ, the high-end guild game and the raiding, you realize: Wow, if you could be in a cooperative game, you get to know people, build up these bonds and teamwork, as you're presented with challenge after challenge? It's a very positive thing.
...
If you weren't a designer, but a hardcore WoW raider, do you think you would think the game was too "casual" these days?
Quite possibly. I have this theory that, when you're a really elite hardcore gamer, what you really want - what drives you - is that sense of competition; really having that gap between you and the less skilled, and more casual. That's what drives you, and that's not different no matter what game you're playing: WoW, Counterstrike, Warcraft III, games like that. You strive to make the gap as big as possible.
So I certainly think that there is that sense that "Hey, I remember back when I had to walk uphill to school in snow both ways, and other players don't have to do it as hard as I did!" There's naturally going to be some resentment, but in the bigger picture, it doesn't diminish their accomplishment at all. They're still better and more skilled - but the gap has changed.
Even if the feeling of accomplishment were higher it still wouldn't be enough to warrant the massive lows the majority would experience as the hardcore dominate them day after day, week after week, and so on. Far greater community and accomplishment when more people are able to band together and form the bonds challenging the PvE the game has to offer and to find out if they are skilled enough or not.
As for Play Nice Policy, it's pretty well a requirement in this age. P1999 had to enforce one because things quickly boiled into toxicity, and yes even EverQuest had similar problems within the first year:
For the first few months after EverQuest’s release, we felt that a policy of non-interference in many of these matters was warranted. However, we continued to lose good players. This was not due to any deficiency or dissatisfaction in the game, but due to dissatisfaction with the treatment that they received from their fellow players, and the perceived inability of our Customer Service department to intervene. Late last year, we made a commitment to our players to begin playing an active role in many of these situations.
The intent of these policies is to provide the players with general guidelines for what is or is not acceptable behavior in EverQuest, and give them the opportunity to work out differences prior to involving the EverQuest Customer Service Staff. Naturally, in a game as multifaceted as EverQuest, we are not able to cover every possible issue that could arise as part of these policies. In these cases, it is the spirit of a rule that will prevail over any discrepancies in the letter.
philo said: I feel sorry for the couple of you that have constant bad experiences when interacting with others. That is definitely not my experience. I wonder why? I can only assume you have unreasonable expectations. That seems to be the case here in a few instances (without calling anyone out).
I know I had my share of nasty experiences in EQ. In DaoC, SWG and WoW as well. There are plenty of nasty, self-centered, arrogant and ruthless people out there that play games. Those very people tend to gravitate towards the contentious content as they get off on giving other people grief. So anyone who pursues any of said contentious content has a high likelihood of running into them.
Some times its just negative nasty comments that a veiled in semi polite speech.
I dont get it, I raided fairly high end in early EQ...not the top guild on the server but maybe 3rd or 4th guild or so. Had over 3 years of played time on my main from 99 through 04. I was very active.
I can count the times I had issues with others on 1 hand. Both in raids or in groups.
I dont understand the disconnect or why others had so many negative experiences?
Maybe we evaluate the situations differently?
There were dozens of times at least our raid group and another raid group were buffing up staring at a mob. 9 times out of 10 we worked it out between the 2 groups. The 10th time it was simply most damage dealt. No problems either way. We walked away from a raid mob and let the other guild have it plenty of times...and they did the same for us.
When we repeatedly were beaten to raid spawns we called fake raids and practiced mobilizing so we would be quicker at transporting a raid force across the world when a mob spawned. We got faster and started getting more mobs eventually.
I didnt feel like it was a problem when we lost out on raid mobs because we were slow. The other guild got there first. That's on us. No problem.
I just didnt have these issues others seem to have.
Ive rarely had those issues in any game...though most of them are heavily instanced so it isnt as much of a possibility. That is why I used EQ as the example.
philo said:I can count the times I had issues with others on 1 hand. Both in raids or in groups.
I dont understand the disconnect or why others had so many negative experiences?Maybe we evaluate the situations differently?
I'm with you on this one. I had maybe 3 experiences bad enough to even remember them years later...and all 3 are memories I cherrish now. It must be all about perspective.
Thinking about it ran,
Maybe a large part of it is because I tend to not commit to free to play games?
I played LotRO heavily until it went ftp. I played DDO heavily until it went ftp.
I have seen multiple games go from having a fantastic community to being a cesspool when they go ftp and thats when I move on.
I bet that is a large part of why I have such a different perspective compared to some. I think that alone solves a lot of the issues people are bringing up.
Is it because the purely subscription model attracts a more mature audience? In my experience it does.