I'm attempting to approach this topic with some care as it's easy to misinterpret my intent. Also camps have been talked about so much. Also note that the camps I'm speaking of are grind/farm spots and not the safe spots already mentioned and even shown off in Amberfaet.
Putting the TL;DR in front: How much intentional design would you like to see for camps in Pantheon? I personally would like to see a reasonable amount, as I think structure is good but player choice is more important. I.E. Corners with no pathers and only one spawn. Rooms with empty, dark corners (don't step too far out, though.) Dangerous ledges with poor line of sight, but plenty of space and no spawns. Etc.
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I brought it up in discord, but something I'd like to see in dungeons in pantheons are areas that were "designed" to be "camps." I'm using heavy quotes here because I don't want to give the impression that VR is forcing us to only plop ourselves down in one spot. Rather what I mean is that a specific area is just designed in such a way as to encourage us to set up shop there and begin our grisly business. It will still be up to the players to choose the actual spot, but it can be convenient when you find an area that seems to be made for it. I'll get to more specifics in a second.
I started thinking about it after the most recent Cohh stream. They were exploring Halnir's Cave which I found to be really quite nice, if a bit dark. Definitely something I want to visit when I can. But it occured to me that just about every time Cohh streams, they do this long dungeon crawl. Now, I actually prefer dungeon crawls as opposed to static camps, but I don't think that will be the primary method of grinding in Pantheon (and I am 100% okay with that. Sitting down and camping is also quite fun.) So I started wondering about showing a more typical player experience in a future stream where they spend 20-30 minutes crawling to a specific spot and plopping down there for the next hour. That's probably far less exciting of a stream now that I think about it, so they'd need to fill the time with chatter about game specifics.
Speaking of specifics, I said I would get to that later. Thinking back to some of my favorite camp sites in EverQuest, there were a few that were memorable because of their general safety without sacrificing proximity to mobs. Most of these were accidental. Like Magus/Hand in Lower Guk. There was a corner on the magus side that only got one ghoul pathing through it. Perfect camping spot. The rooms in Grieg's End were large so you could pick a corner and you would only be in range of one or two spawns. Similarly in Chardok & Old Seb there were many intersections and walls where you could semi-safely rest on your laurels. Most of that was accidental good design. There were many, many more camps that were actually incredibly dangerous because you were dead center in a bunch of hostile spawns. Breaking the camp was wholly necessary for survival. Most of Mistmoore comes to mind. I strongly disliked those camps. A single mistake, or someone needs to suddenly leave/afk for more than a minute and you've lost all progress on breaking the camp. You have to abandon it and back off or risk an almost guaranteed wipe.
Is it not more interesting and exciting when you find one if they are not designed to be good camps? I could see it working ether way just not seeing how planning it out helps.
I have also noted the streams many times skip over parts of the intended gameplay and had also considered a camp as a possibility. They have had some camping in past streams just a lot shorter than a natural experience players might do. I think some of us might be excited to see a stream like this. Sure, would be a lot more time to talk about the game which would be amazing. Not sure it would appeal to the majority of players though.
starblight said:Not sure it would appeal to the majority of players though.
That's the rub, right? Most of us here would like a stream like that BETTER, but how much of Cohh's audience (for example) would sit around to watch him... sit around? And listen to a bunch of detailed gameplay chat? But I don't see them doing that as a dev stream because there wouldn't be anybody around to ask questions.
Again for clarification, I'm not saying they should set up neon signs saying "camp here," but instead have the occasional spot that is intentionally a little bit safer than the surrounding area. It would still be up to the players to find and utilize or ignore them.
starblight said:I get that they would not be marked but as a player I would rather think it was not planned at all. This way I am feeling like I found something rare and unintended. In short let them design it but do not tell us and make us think they did not.
Haha so you want them to be intentionally designed but you want them to not tell you about it? I get that.
I'm one for a more natural design than seeing that the game is trying to move me down a path or show me a camp spot and have the players figure it out from there.
So many games no longer feel like they could be an actual world, unless... is life just a series of hallways and I've been blind this whole time?
Gintoki88 said:I'm one for a more natural design than seeing that the game is trying to move me down a path or show me a camp spot and have the players figure it out from there.
So many games no longer feel like they could be an actual world, unless... is life just a series of hallways and I've been blind this whole time?
What is natural design in this context, though? It's being put together by people. I suppose they could utilize some element of randomness for caves and other nature inspired dungeons. But what about Keeps and Castles?
Oh, or maybe you're referring to NPC placement/pathing? They could wander around a bit more randomly in most cases with only a few static spawns/paths. That would complicate the process of finding the best/safest spot to park your party.
If you're looking at crawls, the biggest problem here is that everyone has to accept that a given location/zone is for crawling and that groups need to crawl at the same pace and same direction. Nothing is more frustrating than working your way through a dungeon only to have a 'better' group come up behind you, leapfrog your location and start killing everything ahead of you. What do you do now? Stand there and wait for respawns? Go back? What about the groups behind you if you decide to turn around and clear back the way you came? The situation quickly devolves into a mess of groups going in all directions at different speeds causing people to complain to the CS staff.
Build the world, populate the world and areas with NPCs, make them actually live in their respective environment (some statics, many moving, doing all the things they need to do to support their existence there) and let the players figure it out. Yes, have named around. Some should be static as they can be associated with a particular location such as the Goblin Blacksmith. He should be in the armory, not roaming around the kitchen. Goblin Captain, though, could very well be a roamer covering the entirety of where these goblins live and having multiple spawn points.
Byproducts said:...
Putting the TL;DR in front: How much intentional design would you like to see for camps in Pantheon?
...
IMO:
A little bit, but not exclusively. What I mean by that is if it were my problem to solve, I would turn most large dungeons into procedural content generators, whereby there would be static content of the bulk of the area, but by interacting with various objects, these would transition to shared, semi-shared, or group specific temporary or permanent content.
Put another way, I want designers to take into consideration server population cap, zone respawn rate, TTK and rewards per combat event/encounter. As far as strictly design goes, I would rather have the choice to remain engaged as a group if we desire, rather than be bored. That means having more than one zone per continent per level tier, and having rewards be randomized somewhat like Michief TLP does it.
Personally, I find value in finding secret doors, interactable objects, and similar based on temporal variables, non-combat actions, and/or class synergy to keep camps/zones/areas fresh, new, or engaging, whichever are design goals.
I would rather not see artificial designations for camps.
The harsh reality is, the punitive advacement rate of classic EQ1 will likely never be repeated, and thus the requirement to hold a camp purely for XP for multiple days will also likely (hopefully) not be repeated. :)
Given that, I am leaning more towards innovation in utilizing 'secrets' rather than signposts of "this camp starts/ends here".
I mean, quick calculations mean that once everyone is at max level, even if it's only half a server, and you have 3000 as a server cap, where are those 1000-1500 players going to go each night? That's 166-250 full groups you have to provide content for. 2 zones per continent at max level, as a minimum, means 6 zones total, or 27-41 groups per zone, evenly distributed (NBL!). At a TTK of 1 minute, and a 10 minute respawn, that's a LOT of mobs per zone. That's between two and four times what I recall seeing in any Original EQ1 zone, personally.
Vandraad said:If you're looking at crawls, the biggest problem here is that everyone has to accept that a given location/zone is for crawling and that groups need to crawl at the same pace and same direction. Nothing is more frustrating than working your way through a dungeon only to have a 'better' group come up behind you, leapfrog your location and start killing everything ahead of you. What do you do now? Stand there and wait for respawns? Go back? What about the groups behind you if you decide to turn around and clear back the way you came? The situation quickly devolves into a mess of groups going in all directions at different speeds causing people to complain to the CS staff.
Build the world, populate the world and areas with NPCs, make them actually live in their respective environment (some statics, many moving, doing all the things they need to do to support their existence there) and let the players figure it out. Yes, have named around. Some should be static as they can be associated with a particular location such as the Goblin Blacksmith. He should be in the armory, not roaming around the kitchen. Goblin Captain, though, could very well be a roamer covering the entirety of where these goblins live and having multiple spawn points.
That Blacksmith got hungry. Let the guy have his snack. He'll be back to work later. Hopefully before the Captain realizes he's gone.
Wholly agree with your assessment on dungeon crawls. Even though I think a good dungeon crawl is more interesting overall, Pantheon will need/have camps.
I'm moreso curious what VR could/should do to facilitate 'camping' without harming player choice.
I kinda agree with vandraad in that camps are more organic in that they may not be there by design but players figure out where a good spot might be. For instance in one of the first Amberfaet runs- when they met the chained giant golum with the glowing eyes and collar with glowing runes? As they were heading up to that point, Joppa hinted at trying to climb that wall abruptly to the left, although eyes were led to the right down where there was a path/stairs. They climbed and found themselves on a very tight ledge, the kind of place where you are telling your group mates if they would just please get as far against the wall as possible to be considerate for everyone else. IIRC did someone fall? I think Roenick slipped and fell! Anyway, just around- like 2 feet away from them with a wall of rock only seperating them to their left was a trainer with a wolf, and ahead was a number of mobs including a named wolf they could see. A pather would roam directly in front of them and possibly aggro the trainer in that alcove 2ft through the rock. Technically, "that" was a camp; albeit a tight one.
They did as much clearing as they could but then- to show as much as possible they did "crawl"- and comments made about climbing everywhere. But there were spots I noticed that a group could keep busy in an area- iirc they had to move quickly because of roamers and respawns so a group could make a camp. They also showcased the idea of safe-spots, where you can camp out and come back in at that spot instead of having to get to town to camp out safely and have to crawl all the way back to that point to progress onward the next time you logged on.
How-Ev-Er, personally I like seeing crowded/populated areas especially dungeons because I'm a bit of a scardey cat, but I also like the opportunities for social interaction with people outside my group. I think its nice to go into a hard dungeon and see people there, shouting or talking and maybe get a PuG, fill in a spot or if with a group, head somewhere even if places are taken - can pass by and chat with people that are there. Sometimes people are looking for different things or about to leave, and sometimes if the mob they just killed has the quest item you need, and the named pops by you that they were after, you can shout that info to each other and coordinate efforts: you fight to them, they let you loot the quest piece, then take them back to your spot where you left one to keep an eye on the named and help them kill the named and carry on. if you die, there are people that are prone to help that is not out of their way,
Byproducts said:... I'm moreso curious what VR could/should do to facilitate 'camping' without harming player choice.
IMO:
Procedurally generate temporary/shared/semi-shared content based on dynamic interaction with objects in the world.
What that means in practice is, once a zone starts to get "too full"? Thematically consistent objects in that static world start to be interactable, and lead to secret areas that are procedurally generated.
It's your choice, as a group, to go or not, and yes, it's temporary, but it keeps your customers engaged.
A positive side effect is that it creates the opportunity for designers to be creative in the appearance and difficulty of that optional procedural content.
It also creates the emergent behavior of "bringing enough" players into an area to trigger this mechanic, to roll the dice on what you can choose to experience, if you wish.
Optionally, non-combat loop skill & knowledge acquisition could also play a part. Diplomacy, Crafting, Lore, all have features that lend themselves well to creating these on demand, to the point where someone could collect "secret passage" notes from diplomacy, so that the next time they went back to that area, they can consume those notes, and for thier group only (or not, again, design goals) create access to that procedural/secret content.
Or crafters like Cooks create animal/vermin-specific gourmet food, and mice, spiders, birds, insects, etc, lead the group to cracks in the walls, floors, or ceilings that permit access to that procedural/secret content, once used in an area.
vjek said:IMO:
Procedurally generate temporary/shared/semi-shared content based on dynamic interaction with objects in the world.
What that means in practice is, once a zone starts to get "too full"? Thematically consistent objects in that static world start to be interactable, and lead to secret areas that are procedurally generated.
It's your choice, as a group, to go or not, and yes, it's temporary, but it keeps your customers engaged.A positive side effect is that it creates the opportunity for designers to be creative in the appearance and difficulty of that optional procedural content.
It also creates the emergent behavior of "bringing enough" players into an area to trigger this mechanic, to roll the dice on what you can choose to experience, if you wish.Optionally, non-combat loop skill & knowledge acquisition could also play a part. Diplomacy, Crafting, Lore, all have features that lend themselves well to creating these on demand, to the point where someone could collect "secret passage" notes from diplomacy, so that the next time they went back to that area, they can consume those notes, and for thier group only (or not, again, design goals) create access to that procedural/secret content.
Or crafters like Cooks create animal/vermin-specific gourmet food, and mice, spiders, birds, insects, etc, lead the group to cracks in the walls, floors, or ceilings that permit access to that procedural/secret content, once used in an area.
I believe a bit of what you said might go against their "no instances" philosophy. At least for group content (jury may or may not still be out for raid instances.)
My initial post was a bit too narrow. While I took into account pathing mobs and mob spawn locations, I still had EQ too firmly in mind when considering what Pantheon could do. There is an endless number of tools they have to make camping more dynamic and interesting while facilitating it.
Some things you and others have mentioned to make camping more challenging:
-ever changing content. Mob locations are (mostly) not static. They follow pre-defined paths or no paths at all. They spawn anywhere in a given area. Whether they wander or stand around could even change from spawn to spawn. (Opportunity for dispositions to affect that.)
-dispositions, speaking of, just in general will make camping more dangerous
-the same nameds spawning in many locations throughout the dungeon, and spawning in a variety of ways. Some might wander, some might not, some might have place holders, some might be on a timer (i.e. every 2 hours)
Some things that have been mentioned here or on the discord that can facilitate camping
-nameds share loot. Camping a singular named might be difficult for a variety of reasons, but camping location A could provide most of the same loot as location B.
-trash can spawn faster if a zone is under heavy loads, and potentially more total spawns could be triggered at certain thresholds
-I also like the idea of "triggering" spawns through certain actions that you suggested. Widgets inside the dungeon or player crafted items could force new spawns to happen or cause existing spawns to happen more frequently.
Lots of ways to make an old idea fresh and more interesting.
My simple answer is "Some." I'd like some of both.
My more complicated answer is:
The interesting thing to me about a true open world is that you can't truly design the content to be this or that. It's always going to come down to the players and how the players choose to engage that content. If you place 4 level 10 mobs around a fire that all agro together that might be a "camp spot" for a level 8-10 group. But for a level 14 player that might be a hit and run spot. There are so many variables and there is no way for someone (other than the players themselves) to call something a camp.
I don't think camps should be designed into dungeons to have a safe place to pull into. VR needs to be concerned with mob density and that is about it. There shouldn't be some designed safe camp to pull mobs into. Do you want to deal with the patrol? Do you want to deal with the spawn? Do you want to loop around room to room so you are never getting spawned on?
VR talked about designing safe places inside dungeons for players to meet up and regroup. It is not a place to pull mobs into, it is the safe place to be out of the way from trains and the like. Everywhere else in the dungeon should be a danger. If you AFK in a camp room you eventually die.
Byproducts said:Putting the TL;DR in front: How much intentional design would you like to see for camps in Pantheon?
I would prefer they put little to no thought into it, let camp's evolve naturally by player choice and skill. It seems to me i already seen potential camp sites in the last Cohh stream. The room they started in had a few spawns as well as pulling in from other rooms. This "camp" was obviously to easy for them, so they moved down the stairs. The bottom of the stairs had what one mob? This got a bit tougher for them as I belive even at least one wipe. They moved past this place without ever clearing it just as any group would while moving to a camp. A camp can be anyplace you can hold out while clearing surrounding mobs. It's expected to fight your way down to it.
Ranarius said:It's expected to fight your way down too it.So you crawl your way to the camp :)
exactly, The exception would be if other groups had the areas cleared already (camping them) And any of those places along the way could be camps depending on the abilitys of the group in question.
Byproducts said:I believe a bit of what you said might go against their "no instances" philosophy. At least for group content (jury may or may not still be out for raid instances.)
...
-trash can spawn faster if a zone is under heavy loads, and potentially more total spawns could be triggered at certain thresholds
-I also like the idea of "triggering" spawns through certain actions that you suggested. Widgets inside the dungeon or player crafted items could force new spawns to happen or cause existing spawns to happen more frequently.
Lots of ways to make an old idea fresh and more interesting.
IMO:
True, there are lots of options. As far as instancing/no-instancing, you can make all triggered content shared, but the other group must also have the same trigger, and/or use the same interactable object under the same conditions, to generate the same seed, if it's done that way. Otherwise, it's not an instance in the sense that it's only for you/your group. It's not. It's temporary and pseudo random, but everything else is the same. It's open world content in every measurable way, it's just temporary open world content. If it's a design goal, you could make all the procedural seeds static, but I think it's better to do it with more flexibility, personally.
On the subject of PC population affecting respawn. This is a very very risky feature, if commensurate economic sinks/elements/features aren't in place. This is one of those mechanics where economic design affects many systems, the combat loop included. If you allow players to turn entire zones into loot amplifiers, and have things like tradeable currency, selling to NPCs, salvaging, with any number of other historically proven design failures implemented, you're gonna have a bad time. :)
It sounds good in theory, and it's absolutely great as a solution if the Economic design is appropriate. Pantheon will not have the appropriate economic design, if the past 7+ years is any indication.
I feel it's a bit of both. Some camps are obviously intentional, such as Gfay Orc Hill or LFay sisters. Others are emergent, such as the Unrest garden wall. Smart players and strong groups can make their own camps; it doesn't necessarily need to be designed in by dev.
How much? Good question. I would be interested in hearing from EQ devs on this (maybe something for aLovingRobot to dig into).
Byproducts said:Wholly agree with your assessment on dungeon crawls. Even though I think a good dungeon crawl is more interesting overall, Pantheon will need/have camps.
EQ1's expanion Lost Dungeon of Norrath was all about the dungeon crawl. If the dynamically created dungeons would have had a greater variety of blocks making up the dungeon it would have, I think, faired much better. But it was all instanced content and that's a topic on these forums which really draws out some major community hostility.
vjek said:On the subject of PC population affecting respawn. This is a very very risky feature, if commensurate economic sinks/elements/features aren't in place. This is one of those mechanics where economic design affects many systems, the combat loop included. If you allow players to turn entire zones into loot amplifiers, and have things like tradeable currency, selling to NPCs, salvaging, with any number of other historically proven design failures implemented, you're gonna have a bad time. :)
It sounds good in theory, and it's absolutely great as a solution if the Economic design is appropriate. Pantheon will not have the appropriate economic design, if the past 7+ years is any indication.
Then there is the massive potentional for exploitation and griefing. There you are in your group set up at a nice camp spot that you're just able to handle. It's touch and go from time to time but you're holding your own. Suddenly 100 people enter the zone and now mobs start respawning a lot faster, throwing off your cycle completely and your group wipes. Players will quickly learn where the sweet spot is in term of zone population. They will know the base respawn rate and will quickly learn how that rate changes based upon population. It's a good way for a guild to cledar a zone just by flooding it and overwhelming everyone there.
Vandraad said:Then there is the massive potentional for exploitation and griefing. There you are in your group set up at a nice camp spot that you're just able to handle. It's touch and go from time to time but you're holding your own. Suddenly 100 people enter the zone and now mobs start respawning a lot faster, throwing off your cycle completely and your group wipes. Players will quickly learn where the sweet spot is in term of zone population. They will know the base respawn rate and will quickly learn how that rate changes based upon population. It's a good way for a guild to cledar a zone just by flooding it and overwhelming everyone there.
That is an extreme case and something to test for.
EverQuest actually has this system. It's easy to see in action because their spawns are exact. People used to think there was variance (and that might be the case for certain spawns or might have been the case in the past for all spawns) but it actually turns out the spawn times are exact, but it's the number of people who change.
The amount of change isn't a lot. In Guk I noticed a variance from as high as 32 minutes when it was just my group in the zone down to as low as about 28 I think when the zone was packed full of 60 people. So a change of just under 60 people created a change of approximately 20% (my numbers show 22.5 but I don't fully trust my memory so let's say 20.)
I think that's a pretty good number for such a drastic change in zone population. It's not like if it's just your group and the camp is clear, monsters will suddenly spawn by the droves. They'll still spawn in the same order you killed them, one or two at a time, and with the same amount of time between them, it's just that the cycle will start earlier. So you might not kill as many mobs within the new spawn cycle but are still killing the same number per hour, allowing a little room for another group to squeeze in nearby. Or not if you're good. ;)
Organically the camps came about because rare spawn mobs only spawned in specific locations with placeholders. That high reward location drove the attention and need for a limited resource.
As those first level of camps became established the secondary level of xp camps or holding spots for the prime camp spots were found with enough mob density for it to be practical.
Examples from EQ Old Sebilis:
Even with those camps established you always had conflict between the players in the zone over who is steal spawns from one camp or another. EQ never honored camps as ownership and that is really only found in private servers like P99.
So regarding design about the only thing you can actually design is where the rare spawns show up in the zone. If you keep them seperate enough with enough mob density that a full group can just camp there then a de facto camp has been designed which is only true if you are working with players in the intended level range.
Janthu said:Organically the camps came about because rare spawn mobs only spawned in specific locations with placeholders. That high reward location drove the attention and need for a limited resource.
As those first level of camps became established the secondary level of xp camps or holding spots for the prime camp spots were found with enough mob density for it to be practical.
Examples from EQ Old Sebilis:
- Disco 1 - Named for room with multiple rare spawns
- Disco 2 - Named for room with multiple rare spawns
- Chef Camp
- Fungi Camp
Even with those camps established you always had conflict between the players in the zone over who is steal spawns from one camp or another. EQ never honored camps as ownership and that is really only found in private servers like P99.
So regarding design about the only thing you can actually design is where the rare spawns show up in the zone. If you keep them seperate enough with enough mob density that a full group can just camp there then a de facto camp has been designed which is only true if you are working with players in the intended level range.
I touched on that in the last paragraph of my initial rambling.
Most camps in EQ - especially Vanilla, Kunark and Velious - were quite bad if you think about it. Way more dangerous than they should have been, but necessary because you wanted to stack as close as you could to either the named spawns or the higher density of mobs so you could protect them from poaching.
My question was more about how much you want to see the game be like EQ in that regards (eg build it and they will camp,) and how much you'd rather them design the world so that sitting directly on top of spawns isn't necessary at least not the more efficient approach?
Keep in mind that Pantheon is not a clone of EQ so there will definitely be differences in design approach right from the get go.