I watched all of the recent streams and in many of the streams when a question came up about kill stealing and other not so nice behaviors, Dev's answers were usually that whoever is doing the anti social behaviors will get a bad rep and the community will somehow affect behavior change. I take it to mean that maybe someone with a bad rep will not get into groups as easily or maybe not be sold crafted equipment etc. I think some of the Devs may be victims of their own utopian world dreams and 1990s nostalgia and it is going to be a rather rude and disapointing awakening.
As long as someone is not breaking TOS, which camp and kill stealing and other bad behaviors are not according to Devs and it will be all a DPS race, as long as people doing it are paying their subs, there is not going to be any community impact because all that is needed is a group of people with the same mentality to form a guild and be each other's support and grow a guild that just wants to dominate the server. We also know guilds that have been around for years, with awful reputations that live to just migrate to new games and servers to dominate and take over and Pantheon is not going to be different. Reputations and "Play Nice" were huge decades ago, but there are too many people now that just care about their egos and give two craps if they steam roll over other payers, they simply do not care.
So what exactly can the community do on a PVE server against 30+ people that come over as a guild with the sole intention of running the server? They will be the ones that can play 20 hours a day and organize in a way to take world mobs and spawns anytime they want. Just look at EQ guilds like "Thats EQ Baby", or "Bloodthirst" or "Relentless Insomnia" or any number of guilds that had awful reputations. They did not care because they had the internal support and numbers to not need to rely on the "community" for anything and could completely control quests and epics being finished for really long periods of time.
Its fine if VR wants a free and wild west gameplay, but I have not seen anything in any of the streams to really put teeth to "community" policing and I am really interested in seeing what people have seen in other games that may work other than trying to form bigger vigilante poop socking guilds to compete? If they do, don't they just become the bigger poop socking fish?
I am hoping that VR has a change of heart and introduces instances for the players and guilds that do not want to engage in steam rolling other players and work quest mobs and other important NPCs so that they are not able to be cock blocked by a small group of people that throttle the server, impedes quests and other player accomplishments. Sure, go ahead and load up on world bosses that spawn and drop great gear so that there is a good spirit of competition, but keep important quests, epics and other personal accomplishment chains invulnerable to long spawns and rarity and control by other players.
I am very excited for Pantheon, but I have the same caveat you do. There are always those who want to dominate content/server/mobs. I don't have any idea on how to stop what I see as inevitable behavior. If you're with a group clearing a dungeon clearing to a boss (example) and a superior group, couple of groups, guild, that wants to leapfrog you I see no way to stop that, and maybe most will say you shouldn't stop it. Or your group has been waiting for "x" to pop up for that shiny you want, but a faster group tags and defeats him. I've never played a game where that was in anyway stopped by any company. It's just the way it is.
Antisocial behavior is in the eye of the beholder. The idea that bad seeds will be shunned by the community is sheer bollox. Community policing is the biggest joke in this industry. It does not exist. As you pointed out the bad seeds are some of the best run guilds, and in the past, they dominate content if they want to. Unless the bad seed guild actually changes code they usually are left alone. There are people who have been on these forums who have stated their desire to dominate content. No one shot the idea down. Anyone who has played an mmo knows of guilds that control content so no one else has a shot at the high end. Once again, is that a bad thing? I don't know how any company can moderate that, even if they wanted to. I've yet to see any company want to.
Im a casual player and I won't be contesting for the fastest through content. The only thing I can hope for is that if your group is fighting a mob that's grey to anybody in the group, the mobs drops no loot or experience. That's the only way I see of higher ups not dominating prized loot, or forming a choke point to better content.
I would advocate for a play nice policy that has some teeth to it.
Any guild that controls content so that no one else has a shot at it will be given three warnings. If they fail to police themselves by refusing to work in good faith towards an equal rotation, then the entire guild will be involuntarily moved to a designated PVP server.
@Stellarmind I dont think PvP is an answer, it is just a gamestyle where vigilantism *seems* a 'real' answer and the kind of players that enjoy PvP don't seem to mind griefing and vigilantism as much. I don't play many PvP games, but in my experience, those that want to grief still finds ways to make other players' lives unpleasant just like in PvE and the problems and solutions are essentially the same, but perhaps without involving GMs as much.
I have the same concerns. They have been expressed before and, yes, VR still seems to think 'community policing' will be effective, though they also do talk about having plenty of Customer Service and GM support. This *may* be effective but there's a big *if*.
In my not-so-humble opinion VR needs to take a few hours to produce some PNP and/or guidance documentation so players know what the issues are and what they *should* be doing so at least when things go wrong there is 'official' guidance and, thus, players know when to /report and when to just grind their teeth and avoid.
Reputation only bothers those that care and I'm afraid a lot of people don't appear to care much these days. Some folks actually enjoy griefing and upsetting people and will push it just far enough to not get banned, but happily get 'bad' reputations and, yes, as pointed out about, they forms griefer groups.
The only way to avoid that grief behind toxic enough to ruin the game is to A) make the game mechanics so restrictive as to ruin the game, B) Make rules draconian enough so as to micro-manage everything and ruin the game and need a ton of GM/CS folks to police and enforce or, C) Have PNP and guidlines and encourage good behaviour and have GM/CS policing as a backup.
Obviously I favour C. The community *can* 'police' itself only if it has a good idea of what is 'right' and 'wrong' and has the ultimate backup, when talking about the guidance doesn't work, of an *effective* /report system.
P.S. GMs do need an effective /report system, not just a massive text log to search through.
I am also personally in favour of some sort of fleshed out PNP so the community have some clear guidelines to follow and knowledge about what to do /where to go, if situations arise where players cannot resolve the issue among themselves.
I realize though, that such an option comes with some drawbacks for a company such as VR, in that they of course would have to enforce such a policy. That would require resources and being a small indie developer of limited means, this just doesn't seem viable as VR would probably have to draw resources away from other areas, to be able to enforce the PNP. Furthemore some players would likely be put off by such a policy, so complaints would arise no matter which route VR chooses.
I think that in the case of Pantheon, this is just something we as players will have to contend with, at least initially, and hope that VR has some innovative take on how to combat these things trough mechanics or by other means. I do hope though, that VR will take a hands on approach to the more egregious examples of griefing and disruptive behavior.
Maybe down the line when the game hopefully becomes established and get's a more solid financial foundation, they will be able to revisit the issue and adjust accordingly if all hell breaks loose on the servers.
I would much rather hate everyone in a guild on a server than effectively ignore everyone on the server like many mmos.
I fully expect the hatred and drama. Most of it will be subjective feuds, but common enemies bring people together.
When a guild is known to steal spawns and ignore camps then you ignore their camps. You don't take the high road, you contest every camp their guild takes and you explain their guild doesn't believe in camps so you are merely respecting their wishes. You offer to coth the entire zone to their camp. Anyone who groups with their guild is fair game. (edit: while grouping with them)
Then there are MMOs where you play with people you would never even see again. Cross server completely fair and on the rails where you are just a number in a line.
Edit: You get far more good than bad out of the system, but you need the bad to really highlight the good.
Nekentros said:I would advocate for a play nice policy that has some teeth to it.
Any guild that controls content so that no one else has a shot at it will be given three warnings. If they fail to police themselves by refusing to work in good faith towards an equal rotation, then the entire guild will be involuntarily moved to a designated PVP server.
This is what I was thinking too; though not to a PVP server. Move any guild that plays this way to the same server and let them battle amongst themselves. Instances are not the answer.
Mirc said:This is what I was thinking too; though not to a PVP server. Move any guild that plays this way to the same server and let them battle amongst themselves. Instances are not the answer.
Yeah, I guess it doesnt need to be a PVP server; just one that is designated for repeated play nice violations.
stellarmind said: that enforces my point. devs say that its okay to spawn camp, killsteal etc, it doesn't violate tos, it is fair game whether an individual thinks it's okay or not. the system works against the individuals sentiment. it's still a player to player issue
It is *usually* a player-to-player issue, but devs would be horrendously naive to give no guidance. They know from years of experience what kind of things cause friction and negativity and would be bad for the game and community.
stellarmind said:let me flip the tables. a group of players that have banded together after 3 hours of prep, many months to get to their state, has a player that is disrupting their farm session. while they have been there for 2 hours, one player thinks it's his turn and rights to said mob. group of players then report one individual 3 times for trying to killsteal because he needed it for a quest and now he gets pushed off to a pvp server
Your example is a bit extreme and reductive. No one would get moved to another server for three reports. Doubtful that anyone would or should even get a punishment at all for three reports. At worst they should be reminded of how they could have approached it better and told to get along nicer in the future.
Of course, if there was a PNP or guidance document they would probably not have misbehaved in the first place, or would have talked to the camping group and made an accomodation, knowing it was a difficult situation and no GM/CS involvement or even /reports would be needed.
With no guidance whatsoever, of course, people would just do what they like and wait for others to become upset before even thinking about it.
stellarmind said:both players according to the pve rules, tos, reports and conduct are not wrong. both guidance is correct
I disagree. The player coming into a 'camp' and attempting to KS with no attempt to negotiate whatsoever has been rude and selfish. Or perhaps he did it once when the campers weren't really on in and the campers blew up at him, in which case the campers were being rude and selfish and should have talked to him first and would have discovered it an innocent mistake and come to some arrangement. Or perhaps the campers said nothing until the interloper KSed several times and then reported him for 'repeated interference', in which case the campers are being rude and selfish again, because they 'entrapped' him - they should have spoken up and talked earlier.
The point is there are many ways things can go wrong and many ways things can go right, but with no guidance on what potential problems there could be and what to do to resolve them, those problems will easily turn into blow-ups and toxic behaviour.
With a PNP that describes the concept of (amongst many other things) camps and how you might share etc, players have a framework in which to approach the problem and come to an agreement and bad-feelings and GM/CS action is much less likely to be needed.
The game doesn't even have to officially support camps, but to give guidance about that common concept (and others) that a lot of players operate to would be a no-brainer, surely, and would save a lot of player heartache, community damage and GM/CS time.
stellarmind said:the issue at it core it still a player to player interaction. since right and wrong is subjective. it is wrong for the group to monopolize a mob. it is wrong for individual to disrupt group from farming. so then whos right? good game devs should remain neutral. the group of 3 players that think they are good and just have suppressed an individual because it's their right. the individual sees the group as a tyrannical and can't do anything because they are not the 'community'.
Agreed, but, as I've said, without guidance and/or PNP on which to base behaviour and negotiation, the potential for problems becoming toxic is much higher.
The guidance does not even have to say what position is 'right' or 'wrong', it just has to identify the potential issues that decades of MMORPG playing has taught us and give healthy suggestions on how to get along when those tricky situations arise.
I also think that without the tools to do so, a community cannot really policy itself. Against "organized evil", there is not much the average gamer can do. That's why I also hope for a solid PNP document, and enough GMs to enforce it if required.
But of course, this topic is not new, and there have been lots of suggestions over the last years. For overland raid mobs for example, the lockout system has been mentioned: Once such a mob has been killed, the raid groups that killed it will be locked out for a week (or however long), and cannot attack the mob again during this time. The mob itself respawns very quickly, so other players can have a shot at it.
Other mechanics suggested have been triggered boss fights for important quests (instead of camping for them), or even "instanced" fights (only those who trigger the mob can fight it). An example we have seen of this is the fight in halnir cave where the room's door closes when the fight starts.
I don't think we need such mechanics for everything, but if they are used for important quests and raid fights, it might help prevent bad feelings. And I also agree a bit with what was said above, with bad feelings from time to time (because you were beaten to a mob for example), the good feeling will be that much better when you finally do it. That said, I still think competitive behaviour should be limited, we are playing a PvE game after all.
PNPs are the HOAs of gaming. Anyone wanting to join one is probably the type of person that gives them a bad name.
I really don't want to see something like a PNP that says this guild can have 3/4 the spawns. So the top two guilds run the show? Top 3? Do 50 guilds each get a pull in? When it existed in EQ they had the committee that still gave the vast majority of kills to the top guilds on the server. The game wasn't for casual raiding and that is fine since there was so much else to it beyond raiding.
We also need to remember these policies are always used against the common player more than anything. A horrible person that would just walk up and KS will also lie to the GM where needed or abuse the rules any chance they could. I am fine playing against a horrible player. There are ways to deal with horrible players and guilds in game. They may not be ideal but they are at least there. If I have to argue against the type of person who reports people every other day for my right to play the game I would end up quitting the game when wronged. I am not going to say oh the GMs just made a mistake. No they built a system that is being abused.
I have seen really stupid things happen with play nice policies. Person A calls Person B an idiot. Asks if they are disabled, asks if they are crying, jokes about drinking their tears etc. Person B says a bad word or says "I will kill you" instead of "I will kill your PC" Well Person A knows that is a bannable word/phrase/etc and reports them. These people exist. Do not give them more power.
I have seen people banned for killing players on a pvp server too many times. You like to go out and kill lvl 20s? Well thats fine you keep slaughtering lvl 20s. But if you kill that horrible person too many times a day or week well then that is bannable (not corpse camping) They will gladly stick around to die enough to get you banned.
When you start trying to dictate how people can play you need a system that is beyond what we have seen. I think VR has the right idea with a less is more approach.
Jobeson said:PNPs are the HOAs of gaming. Anyone wanting to join one is probably the type of person that gives them a bad name.
That's a sweeping statement and not one that I agree with.
I think you raise some fair points though, as to why a PNP is a difficult policy to implement and uphold. But also think that you generalize the issue somewhat, with your examples of some potential negative consequences of a PNP.
There will also be examples where a PNP has led to a fair outcome following a conflict. I know of no systems that are flawless, so I guess it basically comes down to personal preference, regarding which side of the fence you find yourself at. I would personally prefer a well thought out PNP. But that is probably mostly down to personal experience and I wouldn't claim it to be the panacea to all problems that can arise between players, but I would still prefer it to lawlessness.
There have definitely been a lot of posts on this topic because content denial is one of those extremely thorny topics that has plagued mmo's and is a grave concern to many players. I feel VR has been able to come up with some very elegant solutions to other thorny problems that MMO's face, but so far, they have not adequately addressed content denial and it remains a real concern for many. I don't know if VR has directly espoused the idea that Pantheon is about the journey and not the endgame but it has been alluded to in many of their writings. If VR truly wants Pantheon to become a long term home for players they must come up with an adequate solution to content denial. If players are not able to play at their own pace and then be able to compete or complete content as they reach it because other players who have gotten their first are preventing them from doing so, Pantheon will not remain a long term home for people. Community policing will not work, nor do I have faith in a strictly enforced play nice policy. There have to be mechanics in place that prevent content denial, tricky for sure, since a banance needs to be found that keeps the vision of open world competition that VR is committed to but still stop other players from blocking content. VR has shown that they are able to tackle other thorny issues but so far I have not seen any indication they are willing to put any mechanics in place to prevent content denail and it leaves me very concerned. I know if they find the will to do so they can, it just remains to be seen if they will.
Deathwish said: ...As long as someone is not breaking TOS, which camp and kill stealing and other bad behaviors are not according to Devs and it will be all a DPS race, as long as people doing it are paying their subs, there is not going to be any community impact because all that is needed is a group of people with the same mentality to form a guild and be each other's support and grow a guild that just wants to dominate the server. We also know guilds that have been around for years, with awful reputations that live to just migrate to new games and servers to dominate and take over and Pantheon is not going to be different. Reputations and "Play Nice" were huge decades ago, but there are too many people now that just care about their egos and give two craps if they steam roll over other payers, they simply do not care.
So what exactly can the community do on a PVE server against 30+ people that come over as a guild with the sole intention of running the server? They will be the ones that can play 20 hours a day and organize in a way to take world mobs and spawns anytime they want. Just look at EQ guilds like "Thats EQ Baby", or "Bloodthirst" or "Relentless Insomnia" or any number of guilds that had awful reputations. They did not care because they had the internal support and numbers to not need to rely on the "community" for anything and could completely control quests and epics being finished for really long periods of time. ...
If the game permits it, the players will do it. Been that way since 1995, and no MMO has done it differently.
If anything, MMOs have become more lax in their approach to player behavior, because they simply do not care once the subscription is paid, and cancelling a subscription is the worst possible Customer Service result, as it cuts off revenue/income/profit.
The (revealed to date) evidence so far? Pantheon is being designed as a competitive and exploitable game in every respect. Unity. Shared Loot. No instances. Infinite taps. Currency dropping directly. Currency being tradeable. Equippable items dropping directly. Insufficient sinks. Any one of these things might be something that could be mitigated, but all of them together? Guaranteed competition and exploitation.
The only thing missing is krono or similar, and it'll be an RMT paradise, just like EQ1.
Every issue you've raised, Deathwish, has been repeatedly discussed on these forums over the past 5+ years, with no logical solutions offered by Visionary Realms, because they evidently don't see them as problems, being a problem of the fundamental design of pretty much every major system and mechanic in the game. They certainly aren't interested in the solutions offered by the community, if history is any indication (and this thread will be locked as a consequence, likely).
"Anyone who thinks the whole 'community policing' thing is at all viable, or will in any way replace an actual system of player behavior management and control, is completely and utterly delusional. Those same people who believe this kind of system will work, because 'it worked before in Everquest' clearly have some kind of selective memory, because that was never the case in Everquest. Reputation did not mean anything, even in the best case scenarios, because all of the 'outcasts' simply guided together and made 'outcast' guilds so they could continue to troll and 'poopsock' outside of bounds.
Even on former servers like the one I used to play on, Karana, where we actually had a Karana Council of Guilds, there were plenty of 'bad egg' guilds out there that would completely ignore or undermine the council's guidelines, and this was when we also had the benefit of additional support from GMs and other support staff from high above. Do you really think that the same system, with even less failsafes than that, is going to be as effective, if not better? Absolute absurdity.
The 'solutions' others have presented on this thread, and others, are laughable at best and completely dunced at worst. There is no amount of 'go sit down in the corner Timmy, and think about what you did!', or crying and whining to the GMs that the mean bullies came and took your playspot, is going to prevent or do anything to hinder said kinds of people from doing what they do. Who would have thought that habitual arsehats are habitual arsehats? Complete shock. 10/10. Would camp steal again.
Triggered fights? Sealing off walls and closing doors? Player 'lockouts' for players who have killed that particular mob that week? How are all of these things not, in function, instancing, but just worse? That is what most of these other 'solutions' come down to: they're instancing, but worse. Any attempt to separate a boss mob from the rest of the world, while a group of players engages with it, is -in essence- cutting that fight off from the rest of the world: effectively, instancing. Only worse.
This isn't even to mention that VR probably isn't even capable of putting in any kind of 'soltuion' that is nearly as, or as, effective as instancing; hence, why they're touting the 'police yourselves' option, because even they know that it is pointless and just can't be arsed, because they've stuck with their 'instancing bad!' stance for this long. They also know if they 180'd on instancing at any point, then you lot would piss and moan about it until they end of time.
Weird, it's almost as if a game came out 16 years ago that had a solution to this kind of problem, and several others. It's almost as if said game took all of the problems and flaws Everquest had in it's formula, and actually addressed them, even fixed them! Wow, if only such a game actually existed that held all the answers to these problems that keep popping up for this upcoming game, that no other game in the industry has anymore!!
If only."
The response I got from my husband after I told him what I had read, and I agree.
Some great thoughts and I am a bit surprised that with all of the careful and methodical approach that VR is taking for the past 8 years, that there is not a more fleshed out idea already of what they want to do as far as keeping the griefing down to a minimum. It is still a bit early so I will give them the benefit of the doubt, but this issue is not going to be highlighted in any of the stages pre launch. The people that have pledged for Pre Alpha, Alpha and Beta are not going to be griefers, so its ironic as this problem will not be worked out like a bug or bad mechanic until many months after launch. Actually the only way you could see how bad it was, would be if a few groups of people were handpicked to deliberatly test how other testers could be griefed, like hiring hackers to hack and test your systems.
I am not in favor of any "Nanny" state and if it got to a point where GMs were directly having to organize and schedule gameplay, or we had to organize guilds in someway to have a co operative schedule, that would do it for me and I would move on to a different game. I am very fine with having a good amount of world bosses that can be dps raced on to get drops, but if there are rare mobs that have to be camped and killed to complete individual quests for epics and other important advancements, those should have some kind of protections, such as being spawned only by the person or group doing the quest and can only be looted by that same individual or the group that spawned it and loot locked or the kill registered to the person or group that spawned it, even if some other group killed it.
Loot lockouts are ok for certain mobs too or making them turn untargetable to others works as well. VR really needs to understand that instancing is good for guild bonding and development so they can plan and organize together for short bursts of 2-4 hours and have fun. You really will not be able to do this if its all open world killing and grinding because the smaller and more casual players will only get into casual guilds that will not be able to complete content against the more poop socking guilds that are already talking about comming over to Pantheon to "kick ass" once it launches.
I think investors are also not stupid and know what modern gameplay has become and will most likely look for some reasonable game mechanic that helps aleviate this problem.
I just saw the guild recruitment folder and read some of the adverts. This is a perfect example of what I mean by VR really needs to give some hard thought and planning to put in some protections against a "just let dps race" settle it. The only way that guilds with this kind of goal will be successful is if they hit exping fast, steam roll over everyone else without caring about playing nice and take control of as much area to exp and loot farm as possible. I know I have heard that instancing will be a no go so far, has VR said anything about having "Picks" or "Mirrors" of the zone if it gets too crowded?
**** is a competitive raiding guild which has maintained a major presence in the Everquest community for the last eight years. Our goal has always been to tackle the hardest content and to do it better and faster than anyone before us. On the Everquest Progression servers we've set many world record kill times including Lord Nagafen (40 hours), Lady Vox (44 hours), Phinigel Autropos (54 hours 20 minutes), Cazic Thule (108 hours, 28 minutes) Eye of Veeshan (Classic Completion - 9 days, 6 hours 8 minutes), and Kunark Completion (4 days, 4 hours 38 minutes). Keeping with this tradition we've claimed over 60 server first kills in addition to waking the Sleeper on two separate servers and completing all Everquest raid content from Classic through Underfoot (16 expansions!).
This discussion seems very close to an old topic, I’m just going to link this thread since my opinion hasn't changed.