LastObelisk said:Multiplayer games are meant to be competitive, in what regard is the question. For a game like Pantheon it would be excelling is a specific area and being better than the average person in that area. This also would align with player identity and uniqueness of a characters role, regardless of what that might be.
For those that are crafters/gathers finding rare recipes, and rare components to use in those recipes to yield better finished items, would in a sense be a form of competition.
For adventurers it would be those who excel more in the perception system and have the ability to unlock more content.
And for combatants it would be finding better gear to aide them in their class specific roles.
Essentially this could apply for any system implemented in to the game. The key is limiting players to what they can do and making the content difficult enough so they can't possible do everything, even if they have multiple characters.
This is all with PvP aside, which is the most straight forward way to have a competition.So to answer the question.... Yes, you should cater to the competitive. Otherwise it's going to feel like being spoon fed content.
not every multiplayer game is competitive your making a blanket statement that has too many holes in it.
Akilae said: ...I'm referring only to the goals-oriented players and those who rank their progress against everyone else. The "achievers".Achievers need an endless stream of goals to reach for, always another carrot after the last stick has been taken down. This can be very difficult to keep up with as a game studio. One thing that can help with that is to slow the rate of progress by a lot, e.g. level 40+ in EQ1. But there must always be another carrot or people will leave. Look at WoW and every new expansion they produce: Expansion comes out, an ever-decreasing percentage of the raiders (and players in general) return to the game for 30-60 days then cancel again because they've already beaten all the new content. It's not a sustainable model. ...
IMO:
The endless stream of goals doesn't have to be only adventure loop content. A breadth of content/loops, in the same world, is how you keep players engaged who are going to chase all the carrots, not just the adventure loop carrot.
Some customers are going to simply play with the most efficient TTK to reach max level/max adventure loop power in the shortest amount of time. And then stop playing until there's more content.
Not much you can do for them other than do your best (as a designer or developer) to attract them to other game loops. Some might be determined to ignore all those other game loops, and again, not much you can do.
Ideally, though, they are a minority of your target demographic, and most of the game loops are attractive to most of the players, and keep most of them working towards their goals. That'll keep the subscriptions active. Especially if there is tangible synergy between game loops.
But.. you have to have many game loops to even have a shred of hope to pull this off. For example, a game with (only) a smaller adventure loop than EQ1 and a smaller crafting loop than EQ1? Probably not going to do as well as EQ1. And what I mean by that specifically is: If your expectation is that players won't follow a linear path of tier 1->tier 5 (0-9,10-19,20-29,30-39,40-49) then you have to actually provide several non linear advancement options, or offer incredibly attractive rewards and/or synergy with parallel/concurrent game loops. (faction, diplo, world plot, dimensions, layers)
If you don't? They will follow the default, most efficient, or only available advancement path.
If you have 5 tiers of adventure loop content per continent, then it seems reasonable (and has been historically and logically proven already, many times over) players will linearly consume that content to advance, especially if they are granted abilities, spells, skills, or other advancement options that are level gated, including other game loops like crafting. (or anything other than the adventure loop)
I agree that trying to push out a new tier of adventure loop content of this current development team is unsustainable. I would say it's actually unachievable for them, too. I mean, it's been over 7 years, and we don't even know the official public design goal of how many continents or zones are intended for launch. They've restarted adventure loop content, entirely, the whole entire game world, at least twice. They've re-done all the adventure classes at least 3 times in that time. I mean, comparing the original Kickstarter class goals with the class pages today, you might as well be looking at an entirely different classes, they're so different.
Their current goal is claimed to be that alpha will contain content for leveling from 1-50. But it doesn't say that there will be more than 1, 2, or 3 zones of each tier, on 1, 2 or 3 different continents.
Knowing the context of their claim would allow some further conclusions to be drawn about their intentions with respect to the adventure loop, alone. With respect to linear or non-linear paths, this would significantly alter how much direct competition there would be to advance through the adventure loop or not.
Another aspect of the equation is their target population per server. It's been speculated to be somewhere between 1000 and 4000 players. If only 10-30% (100-1200) are concurrent, it can dramatically affect how much in-game direct "you stole that mob from our camp" competition players might see in the adventure loop. AU players playing on a NA server in the middle of the night might have a zone to themselves, whereas East Coast NA players during early evening might see 10+ groups in a zone.
Then you have the problem of.. temporal weighting. As time moves forward, so does the average level of your average player. (1-2 hours per day, iirc) When "everyone" or most players are consuming Tier 5 (level 40-49) content, is there enough? How many level 45+ groups could lguk and/or solb support, concurrently, at launch? What's the public design goal regarding how many tier5 zones Pantheon will have, at launch? Never been revealed in 7+ years, afaik.
tl;dr? You can't keep all achievers happy, but you can keep some achievers happy, if you have enough game loops.
It is folly to design around those that cannot be contented by any amount of content as they play 10+ hours a day. I think the level of importance of "hardcore" is vastly overestimated as there will always be those who rise to the occasion and fill any vacancy in terms of seeking prestige/loot.
I'd say the problems with WoW or FFXIV is they are heavily tied to and focused on their main storylines and as such they want everyone to be able to progress through and see all the content. So all their raids etc have a more or less "story" mode that lets pretty much anyone complete them. After that all that is left is for the most dedicated who want to raid week after week doing the same fight(s) over and over (as all/most of the good loot is in those encounters) once a week or otherwise spend time grinding monotonous weekly currencies. It's just (IMO) poor design all around and I think the heavy focus on raiding as a whole needs to be reeled in.
I think EQ1 *mostly* got the balance right. The core leveling/progression of the game needs to be 1) fun and 2) challenging/rewarding. That makes for replayability and keeps the casuals happy. The competitive crowd is racing to end game regardless, so the base game really needs to just focus on the two things above. Easier said then done, but simple in concept. EQ1 did this extremely well, and contrary to Classic WoW, the lack of instancing made the leveling experience and loot progression last longer. There were some problems with EQ in regards to the more casual gamer, but those could be specifically addressed, the overall concept of game design was great for everyone.
The competitive crowd is very easy to design for. They're going to eat content if they can get their hands on it, but not instancing things and having bosses on long, random repop timers addresses that issue almost completely. Then you just have BiS gear drop exceedingly rarely from the rare spawns. That loot treadmill carrot alone combined with the difficulty of consistently getting spawns due to racing other guilds is going to keep people striving for the best gear for a very long time as we saw in EQ1. The trick though is to make sure the underlying game and raids are fun and challenging.
The curveball I might throw out there is the idea of having a Tier 0.5 (in concept) instanced raid dungeon. The reality is that family and casual guilds need an end game too. Not everyone just wants to putz around on 20 alts. The problem is that casuals need a casual raid to enjoy over multiple days without having to be concerned about racing other guilds. To me, the answer in design, especially at end game, is to have a couple instanced raid zones that are tuned in difficulty and gear to be a significant notch below the "real" competitive raiding content, but significantly more desireable than most max level dungeon gear.
I don't see designing a game for casuals, competitive gamers, and everyone in between to be at odds with each other at all. The core game has to be fun and challenging regardless of who is playing. Casuals need a couple end game instances, competitive gamers need the race that open world raids provide. As long as the mobs aren't loot pinatas, retention should be good for both. So, my final answer is that VR should cater the game to all potential players simply by making a fun and strategic core game with some instanced end game content, but mostly open world end game content.
Oldwargoat39 said:LastObelisk said:Multiplayer games are meant to be competitive, in what regard is the question. For a game like Pantheon it would be excelling is a specific area and being better than the average person in that area. This also would align with player identity and uniqueness of a characters role, regardless of what that might be.
For those that are crafters/gathers finding rare recipes, and rare components to use in those recipes to yield better finished items, would in a sense be a form of competition.
For adventurers it would be those who excel more in the perception system and have the ability to unlock more content.
And for combatants it would be finding better gear to aide them in their class specific roles.Essentially this could apply for any system implemented in to the game. The key is limiting players to what they can do and making the content difficult enough so they can't possible do everything, even if they have multiple characters.
This is all with PvP aside, which is the most straight forward way to have a competition.
So to answer the question.... Yes, you should cater to the competitive. Otherwise it's going to feel like being spoon fed content.
not every multiplayer game is competitive your making a blanket statement that has too many holes in it.
I don't know of any MMO that doesn't offer some sort of competitiveness. Most multiplayer games in general are competitive. Sure there's some co-op games out there, but even your friend is still probably trying to do better than you are.
Mathir said:I think EQ1 *mostly* got the balance right. The core leveling/progression of the game needs to be 1) fun and 2) challenging/rewarding. That makes for replayability and keeps the casuals happy.
How do you reconcile the two bolded bits? I agree that EQ1 got it mostly right but failed pick-up raid after failed pick-up raid did nothing to make the "casuals" happy. EQ1 was difficult enough that most players/classes required a group to kill even a random trash mob, nevermind killing raid bosses with the good loot. "Casual" in EQ1 meant you stood around EC tunnel or PoK chatting in general or guild chat while maxing out every known craft. That might be the pinnacle of gameplay for some and I'm not faulting that -- I spent a great deal of time doing exactly that -- but there was a huge amount of content out of reach for a large segment of EQ1's population due to the base challenge of that content. Even for semi-hardcore raiding guilds, most never made it to PoTime during EQ1's apex (we can debate where the real "apex" was another time :) ).
Crafting in EQ1 was a thoroughly unrewarding and carpal tunnel inducing experience. There were almost no quests at all despite the name of the game; the epic quests were usually rewarding assuming you didn't already have a better item but those took a skilled raid group for certain steps, something most casual players didn't have access to. That just leaves group grinding, inventory management and chat for the non-hardcore. Is that enough?
Akilae said:vjek said:Finn said:I think you are confusing "competition" with "goals to strive for". It isn't necessarily just seeing a raider in their end-game gear that keeps "casuals" playing, it is seeing anything they don't have, and they want, that keeps them engaged.
What this ultimately boils down to is good content, goals to pursue, and progress to earn. ...
IMO:Completely agree, Finn, and I would post the exact same response.
Competition comes in many forms, and every person I have played EQ1 with played as long as they had goals to strive for or help with. Nothing else mattered.
Directly competing with other players did not and does not have to be part of the successful equation or solution.
They strove to improve their character, or help their friends, or any other goal, for as long as it took, co-operatively.
Paying for the privilege of being citizens of a dynamic virtual world does not always mean direct competition in a negative social context with other citizens.
There are many games that are like that, for certain, but I have long since lost any interest in participating or paying for that privilege if it requires the negative social context.I've seen it repeated several times (more recently since 2018) on these forums, but people conflate social toxicity with a requirement for the success of Pantheon, and I just can't agree based on history.
I think I've made a major mistake in failing to define what I mean by "competitive players". I'm not talking about PvP griefers or any others whose life is made whole by interfering with someone else's. It's not about toxicity or lack of cooperation or any kind of negative style of play. I'm referring only to the goals-oriented players and those who rank their progress against everyone else. The "achievers".
Achievers need an endless stream of goals to reach for, always another carrot after the last stick has been taken down. This can be very difficult to keep up with as a game studio. One thing that can help with that is to slow the rate of progress by a lot, e.g. level 40+ in EQ1. But there must always be another carrot or people will leave. Look at WoW and every new expansion they produce: Expansion comes out, an ever-decreasing percentage of the raiders (and players in general) return to the game for 30-60 days then cancel again because they've already beaten all the new content. It's not a sustainable model.
I'm also not saying that these players should be the sole focus of VR. Not at all. All player types (worth supporting, e.g. not the toxics) should be kept in mind and built for but they should always ask "Are there enough carrots?" at the start of every planning meaning. If the answer is that half of the "top" players have beaten the game then it's probably already too late.
Lastly, I'm not at all saying that hardcore raiders are better than role players, crafters or the whole range of other less hardcore players. Hardcore represents only a small percentage of the playerbase. I am, however, saying that if that small group gets bored or unhappy a game loses its energy, the thing that drives progress. It's not a critical component to many games. It is critical to an MMORPG in the style of PRotF that is already targeted at a niche audience. If it turns out that I'm completely wrong about Pantheon then so be it; it's just not the game for me and that's fine. I'm still happy to have contributed some tiny bit to helping keep the MMO industry alive a bit longer with my pledge. An MMO is nothing if not a giant chatroom with an environment to chat about. Maybe it really is enough to provide the environment and the chatroom without anything to strive for.
You originally seemed to be relatively clear that you were referring to "raiders" as what you viewed as "competitive players". However, now you seem to be walking that back a bit to include anyone who works towards a goal.
If that is actually your view, then it seems like we are on the same page. :)
Honestly, you can't just design a game for one extreme of the population or the other.
If you only focus on keeping the top 10-30% of the player base happy, eventually you end up driving away the people who just want a more relaxed experience. On the opposite hand if you put more focus on the casual experience you drive away those looking for a competitive endgame experience.
A game needs to be designed in a way where players actively want to and naturally seek out more challenging content. I think that one of the major problems with most modern games is that they lack a decent transition between easier content and harder content. I think that the majority of people in games, who remain "casual", tend to remain casual because that is the way they were taught to experience the game. They have to weigh this jump in difficulty and some may not find it worth it, while others may find it too intimidating.
I personally think that a game needs to start out with the intention of training its players in what to expect in the long run. If your emphasis is on challenging group-based combat, then players need to be trained and taught to seek out groups very early on. Content needs to become increasingly more difficult as a player levels up to the point that jumping into a raid ends up feeling like a natural power progression. The more challenging the content is the more a player should feel enticed to participate in it.
Games that focus on either competitive play or casual play are doomed to failure. Games, if focussed on Competitive play, rarely garner enough attention from Casual players to keep a game thriving for extended periods of time. Nobody cares about being the best player in a dead game. Look at all of the "esports" games released over the past 10 years that died the moment the casual player base moved onto the next big release. Alternatively, games that focus on casual play leave the more competitive players running out of content and becoming bored with the game, and the playerbase languishes and slowely dies without any significant events to pull more players into the game.
Games should focus on being enjoyable for as wide of an audience as possible within the scope of the projects vision. Both the competitive players and casual players will be able to carve out their own niche. The passion and drive of the competitive players should be able to inspire the casual base towards achievement, and the casual bases simple enjoyment of the game should be able to remind competitive players to have fun.
Akilae said:Mathir said:I think EQ1 *mostly* got the balance right. The core leveling/progression of the game needs to be 1) fun and 2) challenging/rewarding. That makes for replayability and keeps the casuals happy.
How do you reconcile the two bolded bits? I agree that EQ1 got it mostly right but failed pick-up raid after failed pick-up raid did nothing to make the "casuals" happy. EQ1 was difficult enough that most players/classes required a group to kill even a random trash mob, nevermind killing raid bosses with the good loot. "Casual" in EQ1 meant you stood around EC tunnel or PoK chatting in general or guild chat while maxing out every known craft. That might be the pinnacle of gameplay for some and I'm not faulting that -- I spent a great deal of time doing exactly that -- but there was a huge amount of content out of reach for a large segment of EQ1's population due to the base challenge of that content. Even for semi-hardcore raiding guilds, most never made it to PoTime during EQ1's apex (we can debate where the real "apex" was another time :) ).
Crafting in EQ1 was a thoroughly unrewarding and carpal tunnel inducing experience. There were almost no quests at all despite the name of the game; the epic quests were usually rewarding assuming you didn't already have a better item but those took a skilled raid group for certain steps, something most casual players didn't have access to. That just leaves group grinding, inventory management and chat for the non-hardcore. Is that enough?
Casuals enjoy challenge at their pace, they just don't enjoy the stress of competing for the chance to take on the challenge. EQ1 raiding was not casual friendly at any point, but the rest of the game was to a degree, outside a few perma-camped rare mobs (which can be addressed in Pantheon by having multiple spawn points and lower overall frequency). I would make a modern game with an end game raid instance or two that would be mainly for the casual crowd, something like WoW's Molten Core and BWL. The key thing being legit challenge and decent, not great loot, but excellent loot for anyone not doing the "real" end game content, which would be the open world raid mobs/zones ala EQ1's Plane of Hate/Fear, Dragons, Phinny, etc... The hardcore players/guilds would either skip the instanced raid content altogether, or just chew through it quickly and progress to competing over the open world extremely difficult raid content. The casual players and family guilds would cruise along at their pace before eventually progressing to the instanced raids that they could attempt on their time schedule and pace.
That's the only thing I really feel needs to be designed differently for the two groups, and in some ways, it's not even different, it's just the competitive guilds are going to want to get past the instanced raids to fight over the BiS drops from open world raid areas and mobs, so they won't spend too much time there, whlie the casuals might very well aspire to just get those instanced raids on farm status even though the gear is very good, but not nearly the best.
Crafing in EQ1 was tedious for sure, we are a long way past that. Im fairly certain we will be doing Vanguard style crafting in this game, which to this point for me, was the best there has been. Everyone enjoyed VG's crafting, casuals and hardcores alike. As for questing, I hope it's similar to original EQ, there actually were quite a few quests scattered around, most fairly in-depth, but you really had to seek them out. Trivial tasks like fed-ex delivery and wolf pelts existed in the newbie areas too, and that's fine, but I really liked the meaty quests like Paw of Opalla, Greenmist, etc... I thought most of those quests were good for casuals and hardcore alike, the hardcore just tended to find out about them and finish them first.
Finn said:You originally seemed to be relatively clear that you were referring to "raiders" as what you viewed as "competitive players". However, now you seem to be walking that back a bit to include anyone who works towards a goal.
If that is actually your view, then it seems like we are on the same page. :)
I don't mean to walk it back that far. I was trying to avoid the comparisons of "competitive" to "toxic and anti-community". Though I do still mean "raiders" the same focus on end-game content for those players benefits everyone else by providing goals to reach for. So in that sense, yes, it applies more broadly to anyone who works toward a goal.
FatedEmperor said:Honestly, you can't just design a game for one extreme of the population or the other.
Certainly not. I'm suggesting only that during planning meetings the first question asked is "Is there enough content for the hardcore players?". That should not be the only question asked.
Mathir said:Casuals enjoy challenge at their pace, they just don't enjoy the stress of competing for the chance to take on the challenge. EQ1 raiding was not casual friendly at any point, but the rest of the game was to a degree, outside a few perma-camped rare mobs (which can be addressed in Pantheon by having multiple spawn points and lower overall frequency). I would make a modern game with an end game raid instance or two that would be mainly for the casual crowd, something like WoW's Molten Core and BWL.
This is a very interesting point (the bolded bit). When MC and BWL were introduced they absolutely were not for the casual players. It was only much later after mudflation that the content became easier for more casual players to complete. I doubt much of this community could get behind the idea of supporting mudflation in Pantheon but maybe this is somehow a route to take. If content gets nerfed (just the difficulty, not the loot) a while after introduction then it would be more accessible to non-hardcore players who have long moved on to the next new thing.
I guess I simply disagree that end game raiding is/should be the thing that drives competition, content, or goal pursuit. I am not saying that raiding doesn't have its place, or that it isn't important. I just don't view that particular content or demographic as any more important than any other aspect of a quality MMO.
Granted, I am probably in the smaller group that thinks you can have a perfectly good, dynamic, immersive MMO that doesn't have raiding at all. IMO, raiding doesn't "make an MMO", it is simply one particular type of content. One that, again IMO, tends to actually overshadow the rest of the immersive gameplay of a quality MMO by pushing people to rush through content to "get to end game".
Not saying I am right or you are wrong, just that I disagree with the base premise, I guess.
Akilae said:MMORPGs usually have some long, overarching storyline quest that keeps you playing and reaching for a goal at least until you hit or get near level cap. For many players this questline and its long to-do list provides goals, something to do when you log in that isn't just grinding for a little more XP. The social aspect of a game is also a strong draw so having in-game goals is certainly not the only motivator to log in. I assert, however, that the social draw is not in and of itself enough for most players and when the level cap is hit and the story quest is complete there is only one thing left: Seeing raiders in their fancy glowy gear and thinking "I want that".
While these dangling carrots do encourage players to explore and advance beyond their own comfort, other wants exist that aren't looted or quested and cannot be obtained with a raid force. For instance, attempting to solo as a non-solo class adds a degree of challenge and one more avenue of replayability without depending on the social aspect of a game. Ideally, when the "shortest distance between two points" crowd has come and gone, everyone else will still be connecting the dots elsewhere. If history is any indication, expansions will add moar dots into the mix and the hardcore players will return, making a beeline for the final destination.
No matter which playstyle is preferred, the world itself ought to take center stage, not the players who inhabit it, regardless of which type they identify as. However, it is necessary, in an age of speedruns and workaround tutorials, to account for the hardcore players in a mad rush to beat the game rather than to live in the world.
Perhaps there would be value in creating a test server intended for the hardest of hardcore raiding, similar to there being at least one server dedicated to PvP.
PvP servers would cater to those within the community who want to PvP, and allow those who are curious to dip their toes in the water and see if it's too hot, too cold, or just right. Of course, players would still be able fight each other on PvE servers by dueling or entering an arena, but it wouldn't be so prevalent as to influence every interaction. Similarly, with a dedicated raid server, players could still raid on the other servers but those targets would come as a result of the test server, where the most hardcore would be in containment, vying for game/server first bragging rights. VR could then use information gathered from the resulting dystopia to choose how raid content should be added to the other servers going forward, along with preemptive tweaks to get out ahead of any problematic behavior among players (problems that might have been unforseen if not for the hardcore test server).
Akilae said:Those raiders, if they get bored and leave the game for a new challenge elsewhere, may largely disappear if there isn't sufficient content to keep them busy, balance is bad so they have to play a class they don't like as much since their preferred class is too weak or useless, or combat itself is simply unrewarding or unsatisfying. Once the raiders are gone or severely diminished in population the game will largely stagnate and with stagnation others will leave as well. In later stages of a game with raiding the experienced raiders become the path to glowy gear for more casual players. Once the population drops to some sub-critical mass the game effectively dies.
Agreed, but never underestimate the satisfaction gained from dominating a competitor and denying them loot, especially when two guilds have a history. And even if the raid target drops nothing new and no longer poses much a threat, the guild that downed it still boosts its morale and pads its DKP, all but stealing members from the opposition.
Also, catering to the most competitive players doesn't have to involve "endgame" content—the inclusion of a hardcore mode, similar to Diablo, would provide enough of a challenge. Players that die lose everything. Players that reach max level are no longer subject to permadeath and earn a title for the achievement, along with other possible rewards. Serverwide messages announcing the death of hardcore players (filterable and above a certain level) would also add a communal layer to the competition—the opposite of shouting "ding", where other players would reply with "rip" instead of "grats". It would also encourage conversations about zones and their hazards, indicating to new players what to expect.
stellarmind said: yes. hardcore raiders and competitive pvpers drive the economy of the game. im not talking cash shops. i'm talking mats, potions, food, the best gear and equipment. they are the majority of the economy in every major mmorpg that is still running today.
This is completely and utterly wrong. They are a far smaller % of the playerbase and the economy than you realise.
Bleeding edge hardcore players make up 1-2% of active players, they are also the most fickle and the easiest to quit and move on to a new MMO to consume everything at a lightning pace.
Games should not be designerd around trying to satiate locusts.
as players can play the way how they want (according to the rules) they will stay in game
just need a good balance
i think players who want to play with their brain are tired of these consoles MMOs games
and i think in pantheon they will find what they r looking for ( i hope :D)
even id its a game its good to have some good and real world
Ezrael said:stellarmind said: yes. hardcore raiders and competitive pvpers drive the economy of the game. im not talking cash shops. i'm talking mats, potions, food, the best gear and equipment. they are the majority of the economy in every major mmorpg that is still running today.This is completely and utterly wrong. They are a far smaller % of the playerbase and the economy than you realise.
Bleeding edge hardcore players make up 1-2% of active players, they are also the most fickle and the easiest to quit and move on to a new MMO to consume everything at a lightning pace.
Games should not be designerd around trying to satiate locusts.
I agree with this statement. Why should the Devs cater to a small % of content locusts (1-2%) over the rest of the players who are playing day in and out? Most of the 1-2% buy there gold from gold farmers (EG WOWs World first group METHOD) so which economy are they boosting? the RMT/gold farming markets. It's weird how they don't call out the RMTs and farmers when world's first races are going on? there usual response is "Why report them? They are just going to come back within an hour?".
Why should 98-99% of the community listen to 1-2% of the community who are going to leave once "content" has dried up for them and show back up when there is new content? I rather have my voice listen to and heard by the devs and community managers rather than having to pass it by the hardcore community first than have them filter it to the community managers (this happened in FFxiv a lot). honestly, I do not consider them "hardcore raiders" they are just locusts that do not care about any community as long as the devs to there respective MMOS placates to there demands.
There's definitely a problem of definitions in this thread.
I think a lot of people are using the word "competitive" when they mean "challenging".
"Competitive" derives from "competition", meaning beating something or someone else.
Things can be 'challenging' and 'difficult' without being competitive, it is a totally separate concept.
If you say an MMORPG must be 'competitive' you are going to get a lot of push-back unless it's a PvP MMORPG.
If you say an MMORPG must be 'challenging', you will get next-to-no argument, especially from backers of Pantheon, since it's one of the 3 main drivers. It's in caps on the first page of the website, "Community, Challenge, Discovery".
Arguably, adding competition, even if unnecessary, can make something more 'challenging', but it is unnecessary and even irrelevant to a PvE game, which is all about cooperation of players against the game.
It's been discussed a lot in these forums how much 'competition' should be in the game. The issue of contention itself contentious.
Challenge, though? If that's what this thread was meant to talk about, then almost 100% of us will say "bring it on".
The question perhaps should be not how challenging should the game be, but how much casual content should there be? How much that people just wanting a relaxing adventure with their friends?
I see games these days having something often called "story" mode, where the challenge is minimal in order for players to see everything the game has without much actual challenge.
Maybe there could be a 'story' server that is a lot easier? Not sure if that's a good idea.
I'm sure there will be stuff 'casual' players can easily do and stuff that 'hardcore' players can do, but I don't think either should be a big percentage of the content.
Most players do 'hardcore' stuff sometimes and do 'casual' stuff sometimes. To try and make a game that will focus on 'normal' content, naturally, *and* allow players that want *all* hardcore or *all* casual is impossible.
There are plenty of games that focus on the 'hardcore'. In some that is raiding, in some that is PvP. It is always to the detriment of the PvE journey. Pantheon has decided to focus on the group-based PvE journey as it's 'normal' because that has been lacking for many years and is missed by a big group of players.
I'm sure there will be plenty for the 'hardcore' to do in Pantheon. I'm sure there will be some for competitive players and for casual players, too.
To respond to the OP, though: No, I don't think the 'hardcore' (or 'competitive' players I believe you are possibly incorrectly calling them) need to be focused on to make a game successful at all. A game needs to pick a core audience, cater to them and keep catering to them and not be tempted to deviate to widen their market but dilute their quality.
Akilae Opinion: The competitive players, though few in number compared to the more casual players, drive the game and keep it alive.
I dont think it is nessassary to have a large "hard core" raiding element to have a successful rpg mmo at all. Raiding (for the majority) is only required if BiS or gear tokens and the like are only available from those zones, or when the world content has been consumed or for a change in pace. As long as you have 1000s of players in the main game world that are hunting, creating and discovering, then the game will still be vibrant and evolving. If those discoveries and adventures cause changes in that world then it is evolving and progressing without the need for raids. Raiding is definately not the beating heart of mmo gaming, it is an apect of the world as are dungeons, PvP and PvE. The real heart of the rpg mmo is the RPG element. Get that right and the world will live with or without raid zones.
Akilae: Achievers need an endless stream of goals to reach for... Look at WoW and every new expansion they produce: Expansion comes out, an ever-decreasing percentage of the raiders (and players in general) ...
There is more to a game than taking down a raid boss and more than one way to measure achievement. I would argue that players who have completed their classes epic quest lines in their entirety have easily achieved as much as any hard core raider.
The ever increasing level range expansion model with new raids by your own admission is not working, so why employ it? Pantheon is about exploration and discovery. There will be raids but the world is the main focus. As long as there is more to discover and experience and uncover, then that will be enough for the majority of players. Raiding does not need to be there for Pantheon to be a success. It will be, and I will take part, but the real success of Pantheon will be measured in the game world and its lore and immersion, not in a raid zone.
LastObelisk said:Oldwargoat39 said:LastObelisk said:Multiplayer games are meant to be competitive, in what regard is the question. For a game like Pantheon, it would be excelling in a specific area and being better than the average person in that area. This also would align with player identity and uniqueness of a characters role, regardless of what that might be.
For those that are crafters/gathers finding rare recipes, and rare components to use in those recipes to yield better finished items, would in a sense be a form of competition.
For adventurers it would be those who excel more in the perception system and have the ability to unlock more content.
And for combatants it would be finding better gear to aide them in their class specific roles.Essentially this could apply for any system implemented in to the game. The key is limiting players to what they can do and making the content difficult enough so they can't possible do everything, even if they have multiple characters.
This is all with PvP aside, which is the most straight forward way to have a competition.
So to answer the question.... Yes, you should cater to the competitive. Otherwise it's going to feel like being spoon fed content.
not every multiplayer game is competitive your making a blanket statement that has too many holes in it.
I don't know of any MMO that doesn't offer some sort of competitiveness. Most multiplayer games in general are competitive. Sure there are some co-op games out there, but even your friend is still probably trying to do better than you are.
Yes, MMOrpg's that have PvP elements offer competition, but most elements within MMORPGs were never intended to be competitive at all that is a given fact. If you did some research PvP was shoehorned into a lot of MMORPGs after a small, but vocal group of players wanted it and most of the time it ended up being horrible unless an MMORPG is built around PvP, there will always be an issue with PvP and PvE elements, if you did some research you would find this out. Some games? There is a large list of games that are co-op that is not competitive, Contra series, Dungeon&Dragons: Tower of Doom and Shadows over Mystara Mario Bros., Battletoads, Left for dead 1+2 (PvP was added afterward) GTFO. and those are just to name a few. Only hyper-competitive and ego-driven players want PvP shoehorned into everything.. normally people will work together when a common goal is needed to be reached. This also ties into a comment you made "Yes, you should cater to the competitive. Otherwise, it's going to feel like being spoon-fed content" this is a misleading statement without any facts to back it up. When given a choice to explore freely and make choices (that matter) and without being on a forced linear path like most MMORPGs are currently doing, you're not being spoon-fed content your creating content. What you're asking for an overly optimized, linear, none deviating path to reach level cap quickly so you can start raiding right away, that is spoon-fed content and no one wants that in this game. Part of what makes Pantheon different is the exploration and choices you make.
Ezrael said:stellarmind said: yes. hardcore raiders and competitive pvpers drive the economy of the game. im not talking cash shops. i'm talking mats, potions, food, the best gear and equipment. they are the majority of the economy in every major mmorpg that is still running today.This is completely and utterly wrong. They are a far smaller % of the playerbase and the economy than you realise.
Bleeding edge hardcore players make up 1-2% of active players, they are also the most fickle and the easiest to quit and move on to a new MMO to consume everything at a lightning pace.
Games should not be designerd around trying to satiate locusts.
I could be wrong; however, I think you misunderstood what Stellarmind was saying in this post.
Raiders make a player economy thrive by purchasing crafted gear/consumables in higher quantity than non-raiders (with exceptions of course). While you will get non-raiders using consumables to get a 1% damage/health/mana increase for the most part raiders will be popping them like candy to get any benefit they can to take down the raid boss (that is not on farm status). Wipe 8 times on the boss? Hundreds of consumables used/lost by the raid.
This is not to say that VR should cater to raiders. This is not to say one play style is better than another. All I took from their post was that raiders consume more crafted items than non-raiders and because of this, the player economy is impacted more by raiders than non-raiders. And from my experience that is true. I always consume fewer items when I am not raiding than when I am, with the exception of the quality of life consumables (Faster travel, faster health/mana regen, etc).
disposalist said:Arguably, adding competition, even if unnecessary, can make something more 'challenging', but it is unnecessary and even irrelevant to a PvE game, which is all about cooperation of players against the game.
It's been discussed a lot in these forums how much 'competition' should be in the game. The issue of contention itself contentious.
VR is building competition into the very fabric of Pantheon through use of open world, no/very very limited instancing, MDD engagement model for group level content and FTE for raid content, etc. Pantheon is a zero-sum game at its core: If I'm engaging in this content, whatever that content may be, you cannot engage in it until I'm done. You wanted that harvesting node? Too bad I got her first..I win, you lose. You wanted that name mob? You might have engaged first but I did more damage..I win, you lose. You wanted that dragon? We beat you in the race to get here and engaged first..we win, you lose.
VR is absolutely catering to competitive players even on the PvE servers.