philo said:Porygon said:We've also already seen how to solve this problem and allow for extremely healthy servers for years to follow (instances for raid content).VR has discussed multiple ways they are going to handle this without instancing.
One way is the door locks behind the players as soon as someone enters the area (which is very similar to instancing in the end where players basically have a private area to fight a mob...unless 2 raids all step through at the same time).
Another thing they have mentioned to alleviate some of this is the infamy system which, among other things, will allow guilds to spawn their own boss mobs.
We will see how it plays out. It wont be as cut and dry as instancing but this has been discussed plenty. Brad definitely thought there were creative work arounds to the issue.
Yes, but without actual details, we cant just assume something is going to be put into place properly. We just have to wait and see what they decide on. I dont really see how allowing guilds to spawn their own mobs is different than instancing, but to each their own. As long as there is some sort of system that will allow multiple guilds the opportunity to kill endgame bossses, ill be happy.
Saying "but without actual details, we cant just assume something is going to be put into place properly" is like when someone says : what if it isn't balanced? We always have to be under the assumption of a well implemented/balanced system in order to have a valid discussion.
I dont really see how allowing guilds to spawn their own mobs is different than instancing
Having the option to spawn your own mob can still happen in an open world game. How is that even a question?
philo said:Vandraad said:philo said:Vandraad said:So if my group sees your group fighting a mob and a 2nd mob nearby is under crowd control but the boss mob is there with nobody attacking it? We can waltz right past you and kill it...We didn't killsteal it, we didn't take it from you..none of that..because your group wasn't actively engaged with it.
Of course the trash mobs on the way to the named don't count as a claim on the boss. Does this need to be said? Yes of course.
You know that and I know that, but there is a sizeable subset of the playerbase that would argue to a GM that the boss was KS'd because and I'll quote from previous arguments I've heard from this exact scenario as a GM in EQ1: "We were about to engage it" or "We were actively clearing to the boss". Boss or not, named or not, the argument from these people is the same: "We've been camping these mobs for hours and they just showed up and starting taking them."
I'll be honest Van, when you said that I didn't believe it. You would have to have only played instanced games and had almost no open world game experience to think that...and then this happened 2 posts down:
The trash mobs on the way to the boss mob certainly count as claim on it. It is why they are there, you earn the right to fight the boss mob by killing the trash mobs.
People who have only played mmos after Wow released are going to have a very eye opening experience I think. To not even have this basic understanding that you have to have a mob engaged to have a official "claim" on it is laughably inexperienced imho.
I think most of us expect camp checks to become the socially accepted norm (even if VR doesn't officially) ...but then I know many players don't even have experience using camp checks. (I had a conversation once where someone thought I was talking about crowd control when I said CC).
I haven't played mmos after Wow besides like a month of Rift and some testing for some other one I don't remember and literally one day for some space mmo I don't remember.
I had lots of camps and rare spawns stolen from me in Everquest. FF11 too, for the short time I played it.
Other people have different perspectives. Nothing laughable or basic about it.
As I said, I see killing trash mobs as work. My work should have a paycheck with my name on it. My pay should be what I worked to ultimately get, such as fighting a rare spawn. There should be enforced policies in place to make sure this happens in a way that I can trust.
If game mechanics solve the camp problem for me, great, but I feel better with something to fall back on. Anarchy wouldn't necessarily mean someone shoots at me, or steals all my stuff, but I still don't like anarchy.
Re. the "killing trash mobs is a claim" points, no clearly it's not, *but* the whole point of squigglybops (the acronym PNP still seems to mean "exactly like Everquest" to some, so I'm not using it because it's not what I mean) should be acknowledging that avoiding toxicity isn't just about the easy and obvious situations. Quite the opposite. They should help when things are weird.
Whether people make a legitimate 'claim' or not is almost immaterial if players are regularly getting upset and conflict is caused by something. By 'conflict' I mean player-to-player arguments and toxicity as a result of in-game difficulties. Yes, I accept that not every bit of competition or contention will cause conflict. I wish others would accept that a lot of the time it *will* cause conflict or at least ill-feeling bad enough that, if it is regular, people will simply stop playing.
In the "clear to a boss" situation, if an encounter is designed such that it is essential to clear a bunch of 'trash' mobs before encountering the boss (or you will fail because of adds) what can happen is 'bad actors' might intentionally wait for a group to have mostly cleared and be engaging the last group of 'trash' and then stroll in and engage the boss.
Imagine the frustration of coping with an area quite comfortably with your group and a 'neighbouring' group *repeatedly* swooping in for the boss fight while you are engaging the last few trash mobs. No contact from them even if sent tells. In frustration, you would probably attempt the boss too early, pressured by the swoop group, and end up wiping. Maybe you would decide to sit back and do nothing and let the swoop group clear and leap-frog *them* only for them to just keep in their area, resulting in you uselessly sitting on your arse for ages. Maybe you'd do that and another group will come along and see you 'aren't clearing' and you end up in a three way argument as you *and* and repeat swoop group decend on the boss. Etc, etc.
The point is, there *will* be situations where, because it's an open world, players have the opportunity to be a-holes. Shizzle happens and misunderstandings occur and no one expects or wants everything to be sanitised, but Squigglybops can help when things 'get bad'.
In the above example, the important part of the 'bad' is "repeatedly" and "no contact". If someone or a group or a guild is doing something that will clearly upset others and is doing it repeatedly and with no attempt to talk it through, *that* is what Squigglybops should make clear is not ok and may lead to GM/CS intervention.
Squigglybops need to be accepting that shizzle happens and sometimes it's unintentional or accidental or just a one-off and if the situation is consentual, then there's no problem, but it needs to be clear what that shizzle *is* and that you need to avoid it *if possible* and if others aren't ok with it you need to resolve it *nicely* and come to an understanding. It needs to be clear that, if you don't, you are in the wrong, not somehow justified because you are 'playing within the higher level rules' or 'the game lets you'.
Maybe a metaphor would help this conversation?: -
In real life, there are no laws about queue-jumping. There are laws about public affray and disorder and whatnot, but none of that covers someone walking to the front of a queue. If it becomes a known phenomenon in, say, a particular chain of shops, that queue-jumping is happening and the shop does nothing, they will lose customers. Maybe it becomes known and it leads to people 'standing up for themselves' and occasions of conflict resulting in police action because 'real laws' end up being broken; this still results in less customers. Maybe it results in the queues getting ignored and people squabbling and scrabbling over getting to the counters. Maybe the kind of big, beefy folks that can intimidate a crowd are happy - they get to always go first. But we all know for 99.999% it's reputational damage and lost customers.
What would, of course, happen is the staff would put up a sign saying "queue here" and even "please don't queue jump". Sometimes people will still queue jump, by accident or as a one-off for some mitigating circumstance and the people in the queue, knowing that's not ok and knowing the jumper should know it's not ok, can judge whether to talk to the jumper or feel justified and be backed up by everyone when complaining to the staff. If there were no sign, though, they would have to resolve it themselves, maybe get into a fight or just take it and get upset.
For the shop staff and owners to ignore queue-jumping, knowing it happens and causes conflict, would be naive and ridiculous. It's a no-brainer for them to have clear guidance in such a well-known problem area. They don't have to go to as far as 'controlling' people with barriers or draconian one-in-one-out rules, because most people want to be good and know there is a queuing policy. When it's not busy it can be more informal. People can let others go in front of them if they want. Some can push to the front and others might let it go because it's a nice day. No one need feel their freedom is being oppressed. It doesn't need to be escalated to a law of the land in order to be largely resolved. Company reputation intact. Customers happy.
BeaverBiscuit said:I haven't played mmos after Wow besides like a month of Rift and some testing for some other one I don't remember and literally one day for some space mmo I don't remember.
You havent played an mmo since prior to 2004? I thought I hadn't played a game in a long time but that is extreme.
BeaverBiscuit said:As I said, I see killing trash mobs as work. My work should have a paycheck with my name on it. My pay should be what I worked to ultimately get, such as fighting a rare spawn. There should be enforced policies in place to make sure this happens in a way that I can trust.
If you consider any part of playing a game as "work" you should probably not participate in that part of the game at least. If that, in this case, is killing non-named mobs you are going to struggle to enjoy your time.
VR understands they cant police camps. Why dont you? It has been discussed repeatedly. It cant and won't happen. To think otherwise shows a disconnect from the reality of the situation.
The heart of this issue is always going to be, "Is a completely 'open world' with no instancing to speak of and MDD worth all of the negatives that come with it? Are the benefits really all that great? Was Everquest really so exceptional?"
And the answer is no.
No.
No, of course not.
No discussion is even necessary after even the briefest looks back into MMO history. What is gained from such a system? Community? Plenty of other MMOs have great communities, regardless of there not being a 'true open world', so it can't be that. Is it the very concept of a system where you 'lay down camp and kill respawns for a few hours?', because aside from that being one of the most boring gameplay loops ever of all time, you can do that in other games, so it can't be that. Is it that such a system has stood the test of time, and that there are just that many people pining for it's return? No, of course not, because Everquest got absolutely REAMED by the first competitor that came along, and hasn't recovered since. Right now it survives on the sheer amount of addicts still playing it, alone.
Though, it's funny to me how it seems to be too much to expect VR to hire additional staff to finish the game within our lifetimes, but when it comes to hiring scores of GMs to manage every ticket complaint about stolen loot and Clan Dbag shenanigans, that's suddenly easily doable and totally does not require tons of money and resources to maintain? If that's what the belief here is, then boy do I have some stock suggestions for you.
The GMs are supposed to be there for "hey, I fell through the world", or "hey, this quest is broken", or "hey, this mob isn't spawning and I can't finish this quest", or "this mob is way too high/low from it's intended level", or "this mob isn't casting the spells it should be for it's level." They are also supposed to be there for actual issues, such as "hey, this guy is asking for my credit card number", or "hey, this guy/girl is harrassing me and making multiple characters", or "hey, this guy is selling items with RMTs instead of in-game gold", or "hey, this person is cussing way too much in open chats", or "hey, I can't log in for some reason."
They are NOT there for "wahh, Clan Dbag killed our raid boss", or "wahh, this high level came in and took our camp", or "wahh, this Clan Dbag guy ninja-looted this drop before we could decide who gets it." They have not been babysitters in MMOs for decades now, and for good reason. If VR actually wants to waste time, resources, and money, trying to micro-manage every possible little territory and loot dispute, then more power to them I guess. Wouldn't be the first time they've made a management decision which ended up being a total money and time sink (like trying to cash in an an audience that doesn't exist anymore in the first place, and again, for a good reason). Either this game will catch on and grow in population, meaning it will be that much harder to manage, meaning they will need to hire a varitable army of GMs as it is; or, the more likely scenario is that they will only need a few GMs, but only because the population will be so incredibly small that at that point, that it will begin to call into question whether or not that can even keep the wheels turning.
People have moved on from this kind of experience, and most of them have never looked back.
It doesn't matter how they try to dress it up behind fancier particle effects and WoW-esque totally-not-talent-trees-guys-really-it's-different. Making a completely open world game, without any SYSTEMS in place to discourage bad behavior such as FTE and instancing, but rather putting in systems such as MDD and no instancing whatsoever which would allow these scenarios to even pop up IN THE FIRST PLACE, is actual nonsense -- it's putting alcoholics in charge of the local pub. And then to not be in recognition of camps is just exasperating it even further, and I can't even stand the concept of 'sit down, camp respawns all day' as a playstyle in the first place. There is virtually no benefit to it, whatsoever, and almost all downside -- it is allowing problems to needlessly crop up, that you then have to try to come up with solutions for.
Call it "fostering community" all you want, or that any kind of instancing would "ruin the open world" all you want, but many many people never had ANY problems making friends on other games, both at release and to this very day. Instancing brings about a true PvE expereince, not a PvPvE one that completely open worlds do. More modern games had their own problems, but instancing/FTE were NOT among them. Open world with PnP is simply old, antiquated, outdated, a waste of time for everyone involved, and will not work in a PvE setting whatsoever. It didn't work back then, and it most certainly will not work now. The PnP experiment failed. It's time to finally accept that.
But then, I suppose if you actually fix these issues, certain people wouldn't have petty and easily-circumvented nonsense to whine to the GMs about.
Unrelated, but imagine if DOOM 2016 completely ignored that the y-axis exists now because 'old school did it better.'
philo said:Saying "but without actual details, we cant just assume something is going to be put into place properly" is like when someone says : what if it isn't balanced? We always have to be under the assumption of a well implemented/balanced system in order to have a valid discussion.
I dont really see how allowing guilds to spawn their own mobs is different than instancing
Having the option to spawn your own mob can still happen in an open world game. How is that even a question?
By that logic none of the conversations on the forums should even exist until we have concrete deatils for everything. When a developer says "were going to have an open world competitve game but we will have a system in place to prevent one guild from monopolizing content" .. the logical conclusion would be instancing. I didnt want this to devolve into an instancing conversation, but because you asked...
Allowing guilds to spawn their own boss in open world can create a ton of concerns if not implemented properly. Especially if theres no concrete PNP and its left to the guilds to determine how the server is policed. Can multiple guilds spawn the mob at once? Whats the internal guild cooldown for spawning? Whats the cooldown once the mob is killed? How do you determine who is on lockout vs who isnt? Can other people attack the mob I spawn? What if we wipe, is the mob FFA? If so, what happens if another guild kills our mob? How many attempts do we get before the mob disappears? If 2 guilds engage and kill Are we both on lockout? Do they get the loot? Can mobs be trained into the boss area?
These are the questions I came up with after reading your response, having mobs spawnable in open world creates a ton of questions. You know what youre getting with instances, its pretty clear cut. Lets assume for a moment some of the best case scenarios...
The guild/raid that spawns the mob is taken to a boss area that is closed behind them and they are allowed to fight the boss until their "timer" is up. This is basically instancing.
The guild/raid that spawns the mob are the only ones able to attack the mob, everyone else is unable to. This is just instancing where others can sit and watch.
If youre going to have a system in place to stagger or prevent ACTUAL competition, it should be instances. If you want to have a system in place that allows for some competition, then you should have open world mobs killable by anyone, with a secondary quest that can be done by a guild to allow them to spawn their own version of the mob which only they can attack or engage.
Here what i think, people have a negative opinion of instances because they feel it removes a social aspect from the game. It doesnt. Prior to systems like the dungeon finder in wow, the overall game was still very heavily community based. Even after EQ put instances in the game, there was still a huge social aspect involved in the game. Having raid mobs instanced, benefits every single person on the server. There is no other system in place that ive ever seen that can say otherwise. I also can not see a single benefit of allowing another guild to watch my guild kill a mob. There are so many concerns and issues that could arise from this. If you dont want instancing, because you think having open world mobs is going to be more fun, youre wrong. Its only going to be fun for the top guild on the server, everyone else is going to lose. There isnt a single argument that can be made against instancing, if your goal is to have fair gameplay at a high level.
And to tie it all back in, without instances, youre going to need to have a set of guildlines in place to prevent griefing and such with peoples raid mobs, because it will 100% happen.
OCastitatisLilium said:The heart of this issue is always going to be, "Is a completely 'open world' with no instancing to speak of and MDD worth all of the negatives that come with it? Are the benefits really all that great? Was Everquest really so exceptional?"
And the answer is no.
No.
No, of course not.
No discussion is even necessary after even the briefest looks back into MMO history.
Everything you said is perfect. We should be friends.
OCastitatisLilium said:The heart of this issue is always going to be, "Is a completely 'open world' with no instancing to speak of and MDD worth all of the negatives that come with it? Are the benefits really all that great? Was Everquest really so exceptional?"
And the answer is no.
No.
No, of course not. ...
Says you. I would say yes, but I wouldn't say of course not because I realize people will disagree and I understand. Those people should go play a different game.
Mirc said:OCastitatisLilium said:The heart of this issue is always going to be, "Is a completely 'open world' with no instancing to speak of and MDD worth all of the negatives that come with it? Are the benefits really all that great? Was Everquest really so exceptional?"
And the answer is no.
No.
No, of course not. ...
Says you. I would say yes, but I wouldn't say of course not because I realize people will disagree and I understand. Those people should go play a different game.
I also would say
Yes, The real world feel is worth it. (just as I say carractor collision is worth it)
Yes the benefits really are that great.
Yes Everquest was really so exceptional.
Where I would draw the line in agreeing with Mirc is "Those people should go play a different game" I would LIKE to take that attitude, but Visionary Realms has yet seemed to be vague (IMHO) at best about where they really stand on a lot of issues like this. I believe they don’t want to run anybody off until they actually PLAY the game and see what they come up with so they are intentionally vague. I’ve seen them flip flop more than once on (my interpretation on what they said) about their stance on issues such as this one. It could be very possibly be that I “should go play a different game" however I don’t know of any others that would fit the criteria.
Porygon said:philo said:Saying "but without actual details, we cant just assume something is going to be put into place properly" is like when someone says : what if it isn't balanced? We always have to be under the assumption of a well implemented/balanced system in order to have a valid discussion.
I dont really see how allowing guilds to spawn their own mobs is different than instancing
Having the option to spawn your own mob can still happen in an open world game. How is that even a question?
By that logic none of the conversations on the forums should even exist until we have concrete deatils for everything.
That is incorrect. We just have to assume any system will be implemented well to even talk about it. That has to be the basis for any conversation because everything could be bad if it is imbalanced and poorly implemented. But that should be common sense.
This game will use minimal instancing. To argue for instancing at this stage of development is a waste of time.
IMO:
The only reason to presume a system will be implemnted poorly is a lack of details regarding the design goals or implementation.
If all those details are known, and they're logical, fun, challenging, don't repeat the mistakes of history, and overall are positive, then we can discuss how great it will be to see them in action.
So far, though, very few systems are known to that level of detail, or are even logical in their design, hence all the pessimism, criticism, and similar negative speculation.
vjek said:IMO:
The only reason to presume a system will be implemnted poorly is a lack of details regarding the design goals or implementation.
If all those details are known, and they're logical, fun, challenging, don't repeat the mistakes of history, and overall are positive, then we can discuss how great it will be to see them in action.
So far, though, very few systems are known to that level of detail, or are even logical in their design, hence all the pessimism, criticism, and similar negative speculation.
Can you provide any details on this raiding system that they are planning on implementing? Which by the way, would be a first if implemented properly with no instances.
Because you know I've been around for a while, and we've yet to receive any information on the topic, so yes, I have massive doubts about its possible success. The developers saying they want to implement a system that has open world raiding but doesn't allow for a guild to monopolize content is admirable, but until I see details I will never believe it will be implemented properly.
philo said:That is incorrect. We just have to assume any system will be implemented well to even talk about it. That has to be the basis for any conversation because everything could be bad if it is imbalanced and poorly implemented. But that should be common sense.
This game will use minimal instancing. To argue for instancing at this stage of development is a waste of time.
The game hasn't been released. You don't know if it will use minimal instances, thats just the thought at the moment. There have been several systems that have been drastically changed in the last few years.
And what stage of development is it dumb to argue for something you believe is better than anything that could likely be developed? Have we seen any raiding content? Have we even heard about the supposed "mechanics" that will magically allow for an open world game to remain competitive while somehow now allowing 1 or 2 guilds to control everything? We've heard such little information regarding endgame. That I would say this is the perfect time to be having this conversation, since if a decision had been made we would likely have more information.
We've already seen aspects that lean towards potential instances, having a bosses door close behind you is just another way to separate the outside world from the party or parties engaging the mob. This system could easily expand at a higher level to allow something akin to instances for raiding.
I gave you more credit than that. Your post comes off as completely uninformed
Porygon said:You don't know if it will use minimal instances, thats just the thought at the moment.
Yes we do. That has always been the case. You very obviously don't understand the current state of the game to think something like that could change now.
And what stage of development is it dumb to argue for something you believe is better than anything that could likely be developed?
Now...and the last 2 or 3 years since we have been past the point of making any drastic changes like you are suggesting. As has been mentioned multiple times by Kilsin.
Have we seen any raiding content?
Yes
Have we even heard about the supposed "mechanics" that will magically allow for an open world game to remain competitive while somehow now allowing 1 or 2 guilds to control everything?
Yes, we were just discussing some of the things VR has talked about in regards to this. Whether you like the answer means nothing.
We've heard such little information regarding endgame.
End game has never been the focus of Pantheon but VR has talked about raiding dozens of times. They have talked about raid size and dynamic raid scaling. We have seen a raid zone and a raid boss. We know raid zones will have multiple atmosphere effects that you can't max out your acclimation to. We should have a general understanding of the direction they are going.
We've already seen aspects that lean towards potential instances, having a bosses door close behind you is just another way to separate the outside world from the party or parties engaging the mob.
That door closing mechanic was 1 thing brad talked about specifically in order to avoid instancing. It solves some of the problems that instancing is meant to solve.
You have to realize that saying the game should utilize instancing at this point of development is so completely ridiculous that we just can't have a conversation if you think that is even remotely an option.
philo said:BeaverBiscuit said:I haven't played mmos after Wow besides like a month of Rift and some testing for some other one I don't remember and literally one day for some space mmo I don't remember.
You havent played an mmo since prior to 2004? I thought I hadn't played a game in a long time but that is extreme.
BeaverBiscuit said:As I said, I see killing trash mobs as work. My work should have a paycheck with my name on it. My pay should be what I worked to ultimately get, such as fighting a rare spawn. There should be enforced policies in place to make sure this happens in a way that I can trust.
If you consider any part of playing a game as "work" you should probably not participate in that part of the game at least. If that, in this case, is killing non-named mobs you are going to struggle to enjoy your time.
VR understands they cant police camps. Why dont you? It has been discussed repeatedly. It cant and won't happen. To think otherwise shows a disconnect from the reality of the situation.
I've played a little p99 since then, and I did get WoW classic. Give me a break. MMOs typically suck compared to single player or regular multiplayer.
Also, it's an actual thing about people that they appreciate stuff they worked for more. So I like that the trash mobs are work, given that I get the reward for that work.
Why, exactly, can't VR police camps? Is it too expensive? How much would it increase my subscription cost?
You have to realize that if people need to sink a lot of time and effort into this game they won't like getting punished, and seeing others getting punished is a huge deterrent to breaking the established rules. Once the rules are established as enforced rules, the work load for enforcing them goes down significantly.
Disposalist also made a pretty good point above that people having toxic situations that are not properly addressed can lead to Pantheon losing subs.
I'd probably be willing to pay the price to have an open world game that doesn't devolve into what I see as toxicity. It certainly would, without enforcement or some really amazing new idea we haven't heard yet.
If the really amazing new idea fixxes the problem? Still let us report stuff because we won't need to. Customers like it when companies go to unnecessary lengths to make them comfortable. Happy customers go to unnecessary lengths to give you money.
Just so we are clear, having a general rules/ PNP and policing camps are 2 different things. VR is not going to define camps. I'm curious, do you consider P99 to have those camps policed?
There are a couple reasons why they can't police camps.
It's just not realistic. Man power is a factor. If AAA mmos with huge teams can't VR would have a tough time.
It turns into a he said/she said type of thing and there has to be a hard fast line that infractions can be judged on. That line is whether the mob in question was engaged or not. So they will police individual mobs. That is easy to see in the logs.
philo said:Just so we are clear, having a general rules/ PNP and policing camps are 2 different things. VR is not going to define camps. I'm curious, do you consider P99 to have those camps policed?
There are a couple reasons why they can't police camps.
It's just not realistic. Man power is a factor. If AAA mmos with huge teams can't VR would have a tough time.
It turns into a he said/she said type of thing and there has to be a hard fast line that infractions can be judged on. That line is whether the mob in question was engaged or not. So they will police individual mobs. That is easy to see in the logs.
Information gathering is really amazing. I don't know exactly how it works, but I've heard from another thread on this topic, that it is possible in this day and age to bring up an actual video of what happened and watch it. It involves a special log that doesn't take much space to collect constantly, that you plug into a simulator for your game, and it recreates everything that happened in movie form.
If this technology was used, would it remove the he said/ she said? Triple A companies are always bad at using new stuff. They prefer sticking to the tried and true. Reducing prices and all that.
And again man power is of course a factor but I bet there's plenty of great people to choose from when this game probably won't have a ridiculous amount of servers to police in the first place. 1 $20 an hour agent, 24 hours a day for a month (obviously this would be covered by multiple agents who all make $20/hour), would increase the sub price for a 5000 man server by $2.88. Take it up to $3.50 because there are benefits and managers somewhere. Assuming you can watch the video, deliver quick punishment, and deter others from making the same infraction, how many agents would you need to add for a 5k server specifically for camp management?
I personally don't think it's more than 1, especially because the customer service reps you already have on duty could help when noone is threatening each other's lives. I wouldn't mind that price tag. It's the price of playing a game that doesn't use the obvious mechanic to fix the obvious problem.
I've also mentioned before that as far as policing camps goes, they really don't need to deal with every infraction. Half, or even less, would be plenty. The police deter most people from breaking laws with similar success rates.
And no, p99 is not very well policed. I think there's some? It's also pretty free, though.
I'm not sure about that video technology. It sounds interesting.
There are large threads on PNP and player infractions that have been discussed in the past. Joppa has talked about it. I know there are at least a few statements from Kilsin on the forum. VR will step in for clear cut violations or repeated violations. Minor infractions aren't going to be addressed. Those things are going to happen in an open world game. We have to take the positive interactions with the negative interactions. That is part of it.
philo said:I'm not sure about that video technology. It sounds interesting.
Back in 2005, Battlefield 2 had "Battle Recorder". It was a server option that recorded all player actions for a whole multi-player match such that the match could be re-played in a 'theatre' mode and viewed from virtual cameras.
Roll forward just a few years and it was abandoned due to... no idea. It was very popular and there were constant campaigns in fan forums for its return. It never reappeared. In fact, server options, like private configurable servers, disappeared too. I believe it was due to 1) Using the same lobby/server design for console and PC versions (and, thus, simplifying as much as possible) and 2) EA wanting to rent out servers, not allow private servers.
With Pantheon being PC only and with modern cloud server tech I don't see why Pantheon couldn't record a lot of player actions and have software to play it back, but then again, I'm not a technical specialist in that area.
I would imagine the potential for impact on performance is great. Also the cost of storage.
As with most things, though, it depends on the will to 'support' your community. If they have to raise the subs a bit in order to have the tools to effectively police servers, I'm in. It will, of course, have much more potential than just policing, too.
philo said:There are large threads on PNP and player infractions that have been discussed in the past. Joppa has talked about it. I know there are at least a few statements from Kilsin on the forum. VR will step in for clear cut violations or repeated violations. Minor infractions aren't going to be addressed. Those things are going to happen in an open world game. We have to take the positive interactions with the negative interactions. That is part of it.
Yes. It's been pretty clear from VR they don't want to 'degrade' the open world feel just to avoid some potential negativity. Equally, though, just abandoning players to self-police would be naive and plain silly when they know very well where the 'pinch points' are and could guide players through that.
Porygon said: ... Can you provide any details on this raiding system that they are planning on implementing? ...
IMO:
Not yet, because they haven't released those details in 7+ years.
With many of their systems that were initially mentioned during the Kickstarter, or from 2014 to 2020, the situation is the same.
Visionary Realms does not engage the community when it comes to implementation details or core game systems. They offer broad strokes or general concepts regarding in-game mechanics, and rarely (if ever, that I've seen) delve into the detailed design discussions with the crowdfunding community.
So, it's our donation money they're spending, but they have no obligation to provide the details. This is the freedom that donation crowdfunding offers developers and they are taking complete advantage of the situation. As an artist, of course that's wildly attractive.
It's purely positive, from the perspective of the artist. There's no obligation to produce anything nor iterate with your 'patrons' (in the historical meaning of the word). You can do as you wish without any hint of accountability.
Unfortunately, without those repeated iterations, debates or effective idea consolidation with the community on the topic of detailed design discussions, you end up with all of the logical flaws that are now evident every time they talk about these and other distinctive systems.
In particular, with MMOs, every content isolation system that is attempted that isn't instancing will logically be worse than instancing, in the context of the problems it solves versus the problems it creates.
25+ years of MMOs has proven this repeatedly, yet, their claim is that their system will be better than instancing, preserve the desired friction and social toxicity of no instancing, but still permit content to be consumed by "not everyone", concurrently.
Their responses, when queried, repeatedly over the years, whenever anyone in the community eventually gets their attention long enough to ask them precisely how something will work is: "trust us" or "we can't say because the dozens of companies producing this exact same MMO, with this exact same Intellectual Property, will steal the idea". Both statements merit skepticism, given they, as a team, have never produced a product that you can purchase and play, and they have no competition. (as in zero other companies are producing a niche MMO of this type, scope, or target audience). Saying "trust us" while at the same time hard coding everything into the game client for over 6 years does not create a ton of trust.
The closest they have come to describing the raid system is that it will be similar to Vanguard, and/or may have lockouts and/or timers with respect to spawning the raid target. Of course, 10 seconds of critical assessment from the perspective of "how can we abuse this" shows all the flaws with that system, but they refuse to discuss it further. Unfortunately, as you're well aware, Porygon, any type of content isolation is considered instancing, by a portion of the target demographic. Might not be a very large portion, but it's still the case.
So, regardless of whatever system they put in place, a portion of their target audience will consider that system to be a form of content isolation (Only a single guild/group can engage) and then will turn to indirect PvP and other shenanigans to negatively affect the gameplay experience of that competing group. Something as simple as showing up with 300+ of your friends to watch the fight and lag the zone will be entirely possible without instancing, and completely eliminated with instancing. Even their demonstrated closed-door boss-rooms are a form of instancing, to some.
Rather than simply instancing multi-group content and permitting shared flagging on single-group flag targets (which eliminates all the social friction and toxicity), they are determined to walk down this instancing-is-bad path. It's quite clear to me and those in my guild now, after 7+ years: They want the social toxicity. They are designing Pantheon to guarantee it.
Which is pretty hilarious to me, considering the flagship, distinctive, or similar features that have been dropped over the past 5 years. Somehow, no-instancing makes it through, while Colored Mana, Dynamic NPC Encounter Groups, and more are dropped and re-building all the zones to add climbing is added. Their 'sacred cow' selection criteria is quite inconsistent. :)
@ dispo, I'm curious how video footage could work to solve issues? It seems like it might not fix anything but maybe I'm wrong? As far as policing camps it wouldn't be as clear cut as "player X engaged mob Y first". There still has to be a hard line that a CS rep can use to conclude there was a violation. It doesn't seem like a video would always provide that?
But it couldn't hurt I guess. It doesn't remove the need for the requirement to have a mob engaged to have a claim on it.
BeaverBiscuit said:Information gathering is really amazing. I don't know exactly how it works, but I've heard from another thread on this topic, that it is possible in this day and age to bring up an actual video of what happened and watch it. It involves a special log that doesn't take much space to collect constantly, that you plug into a simulator for your game, and it recreates everything that happened in movie form.
I could be wrong but IIRC this is how most every FPS game that has death recaps works. When you are watching your death you are watching a simulation of what happened based on stored positional/loadout/etc data and not actual footage (which would be a massive amount of data to store even short term for each player). I think this is also how they do it for MOBAs or RTS games that let one save a replay after a match.
I don't see why a modern MMO couldn't be built with robust GM/CS tools that could do the same for player positions/ability usage/notices of mob aggro/text communication and whatever else. At that point it isn't really a "he said she said" anymore.
vjek said:Porygon said: ... Can you provide any details on this raiding system that they are planning on implementing? ...
IMO:
Not yet, because they haven't released those details in 7+ years.
With many of their systems that were initially mentioned during the Kickstarter, or from 2014 to 2020, the situation is the same.
Visionary Realms does not engage the community when it comes to implementation details or core game systems. They offer broad strokes or general concepts regarding in-game mechanics, and rarely (if ever, that I've seen) delve into the detailed design discussions with the crowdfunding community.
So, it's our donation money they're spending, but they have no obligation to provide the details. This is the freedom that donation crowdfunding offers developers and they are taking complete advantage of the situation. As an artist, of course that's wildly attractive.
It's purely positive, from the perspective of the artist. There's no obligation to produce anything nor iterate with your 'patrons' (in the historical meaning of the word). You can do as you wish without any hint of accountability.
Unfortunately, without those repeated iterations, debates or effective idea consolidation with the community on the topic of detailed design discussions, you end up with all of the logical flaws that are now evident every time they talk about these and other distinctive systems.
In particular, with MMOs, every content isolation system that is attempted that isn't instancing will logically be worse than instancing, in the context of the problems it solves versus the problems it creates.
25+ years of MMOs has proven this repeatedly, yet, their claim is that their system will be better than instancing, preserve the desired friction and social toxicity of no instancing, but still permit content to be consumed by "not everyone", concurrently.
Their responses, when queried, repeatedly over the years, whenever anyone in the community eventually gets their attention long enough to ask them precisely how something will work is: "trust us" or "we can't say because the dozens of companies producing this exact same MMO, with this exact same Intellectual Property, will steal the idea". Both statements merit skepticism, given they, as a team, have never produced a product that you can purchase and play, and they have no competition. (as in zero other companies are producing a niche MMO of this type, scope, or target audience). Saying "trust us" while at the same time hard coding everything into the game client for over 6 years does not create a ton of trust.
The closest they have come to describing the raid system is that it will be similar to Vanguard, and/or may have lockouts and/or timers with respect to spawning the raid target. Of course, 10 seconds of critical assessment from the perspective of "how can we abuse this" shows all the flaws with that system, but they refuse to discuss it further. Unfortunately, as you're well aware, Porygon, any type of content isolation is considered instancing, by a portion of the target demographic. Might not be a very large portion, but it's still the case.
So, regardless of whatever system they put in place, a portion of their target audience will consider that system to be a form of content isolation (Only a single guild/group can engage) and then will turn to indirect PvP and other shenanigans to negatively affect the gameplay experience of that competing group. Something as simple as showing up with 300+ of your friends to watch the fight and lag the zone will be entirely possible without instancing, and completely eliminated with instancing. Even their demonstrated closed-door boss-rooms are a form of instancing, to some.
Rather than simply instancing multi-group content and permitting shared flagging on single-group flag targets (which eliminates all the social friction and toxicity), they are determined to walk down this instancing-is-bad path. It's quite clear to me and those in my guild now, after 7+ years: They want the social toxicity. They are designing Pantheon to guarantee it.
Which is pretty hilarious to me, considering the flagship, distinctive, or similar features that have been dropped over the past 5 years. Somehow, no-instancing makes it through, while Colored Mana, Dynamic NPC Encounter Groups, and more are dropped and re-building all the zones to add climbing is added. Their 'sacred cow' selection criteria is quite inconsistent. :)
This might be my favorite response you've ever made.
Iksar said:BeaverBiscuit said:Information gathering is really amazing. I don't know exactly how it works, but I've heard from another thread on this topic, that it is possible in this day and age to bring up an actual video of what happened and watch it. It involves a special log that doesn't take much space to collect constantly, that you plug into a simulator for your game, and it recreates everything that happened in movie form.
I could be wrong but IIRC this is how most every FPS game that has death recaps works. When you are watching your death you are watching a simulation of what happened based on stored positional/loadout/etc data and not actual footage (which would be a massive amount of data to store even short term for each player). I think this is also how they do it for MOBAs or RTS games that let one save a replay after a match.
I don't see why a modern MMO couldn't be built with robust GM/CS tools that could do the same for player positions/ability usage/notices of mob aggro/text communication and whatever else. At that point it isn't really a "he said she said" anymore.
oooo cool points, that makes a lot of sense, thank you!