I like the idea of a a bunch of people amasing togeather to defeat a common enemy. Guild wars 2 does this to some degree. Everyone that comes togeather to defeat the common threat gets a small reward. You dont have to be grouped all you have to do is help in the cause and you get a headhunter reward. EQ had a bunch of flagging mobs where a bunch of people from different guilds would get togeather to do some back flagging or whatever, it gives players a taste of commonality vs allways being in a competition. I like events like this because it brings people togeather fluidly. I think this system would work well in newbie areas as well because newbies tend to go it solo for like the first 5 lvls. But if all the newbie mobs are a common enemy and the objective is to smash the threat then all the newbies will bond togeather and use teamwork to quickly dispatch the enemy even without necessarily being grouped.
I wasn't a fan of this system in GW2. You literally can stand around and mash 1 with a ranged weapon and be rewarded for it.
These types of "mass events" are the antithesis of challenging gameplay, and it basically gives players a free ride.
Not to mention, it completely deprives any social aspects. Everyone just gathers around for the event, mindlessly mashes buttons to increase the invisible "participation" algorithm, and collects their effortless rewards. There is no interdependency or socialization, which seems to be a far cry from the objective of the developers with this game.
munge said:
I disagree i found backflagging public raids like Grummus in everquest to be very fun. /ooc hay eveyone grummus is up lets all clear our way to him and get our new guildies and our alts flagged for crypt of decay HORAY!!!
This part of what you said in your OP I agree with, but I too did not like GW2 public events, nor any other game that did it. Most poeple just ran there, mashed DPS abilities becuase tankign and healing never got factored in well ( like in rift) then ran their own ways right after. To me this does not build community.
I did like the flagging system of PoP and I loved teh pick up raids and backflagging events that happened. If this makes it into the game I will be happy.
munge said:
I disagree i found backflagging public raids like Grummus in everquest to be very fun. /ooc hay eveyone grummus is up lets all clear our way to him and get our new guildies and our alts flagged for crypt of decay HORAY!!!
Well, backflagging events and such are nowhere near as low-effort and silly as public events in GW2. This is literally apples and oranges.
There's pickup raiding, and then there's the near-zero-effort handouts that GW2 is based around.
Filzin said:
I can only hope that encounters are much to difficult to have flag mobs killed in PuG raids. Hopefully we are all looking for a bit more from Pantheon than that.
Reason EQ was so nice, the earlier tiers could be done with a PuG Raid, at least a bit after it was released. The elemental planes and Time were not "PuG'able" but most until end of GoD, mid way through OoW If I remember correctly?
Sounds accurate.
PoTime had ~165HP on some pieces at the extreme upper end, iirc. Omens of War had items in the 400 HP range with augs. That level of gear inflation was about what was necessary to be a little bit more loose with raid requirements for PoP flagging.
That said, I fully agree with Filzin (hi Filzin) that encounter difficulty should have the bar set at high coordination, at least until gear inflation allows for the requirements to be loosened.
If Pantheon takes off the way EQ did and gets super popular, future content release will inevitably trivialize things a bit.
Liav said:
If Pantheon takes off the way EQ did and gets super popular, future content release will inevitably trivialize things a bit.
Hopefully not to fast though, wrote big post about it in another thread, but I hate how WoW upgrades gear so fast each new expansion...
Dreconic said:
Liav said:
If Pantheon takes off the way EQ did and gets super popular, future content release will inevitably trivialize things a bit.
Hopefully not to fast though, wrote big post about it in another thread, but I hate how WoW upgrades gear so fast each new expansion...
Oh yeah, hopefully not fast at all.
WoW was basically the trendsetter for what are considered "themepark" MMOs though, and later EQ expansions eventually started to emulate the gear treadmill since it was the popular thing (still is).
If Pantheon wanted to appeal to the largest audience possible, that's the way to go. Fortunately, however, that is not the direction they plan to take the game, at least as they've announced it. Rapid gear inflation doesn't really pair well with a game that's trying to go back to the roots of the genre, so I doubt they're naive enough to do so.
I enjoyed the GW2 events for awhile but a lot of people are correct all you had to do is essentially auto attack if you had enough people around and you would win/get a reward. The common enemy theory isn't wrong in theory it just needs to be implemented better then GW2. You have to create an event that requires people to work together in order to complete, the event needs to have elements in it that require risk. At the lower levels/higher levels this could be a great way for the community to work together and grow (Server Pride). Make the events require guilds/PUG raids to work as a team in order to complete an event that benifits everybody and also server bragging rights.
Filzin said:
I can only hope that encounters are much to difficult to have flag mobs killed in PuG raids. Hopefully we are all looking for a bit more from Pantheon than that.
I think we need to remember that every single encounter in EQ was contested. I remeber many PuG raids failing unless you managed to pull a few people from Afterlife to come hold your hands. And they only came because they had to wait because Solusek Ro was spawning in like 4 hours but they had to be online and ready for it. And no one was going to compete with them for the kill. I am not exactly sure who I am agreeing with here, but I do think that it is important that everyone can experience content. I am not trying to say I should be able to beat the game, but if I want to sit and find people for 5 hours so that I can do that one encounter that could have huge upgrades for me but is nothing to the top tier. I think I should be able to PuG it. Also I think that Pugs are an essential part of the community driven MMO.
munge said:
I like the idea of a a bunch of people amasing togeather to defeat a common enemy. Guild wars 2 does this to some degree. Everyone that comes togeather to defeat the common threat gets a small reward. You dont have to be grouped all you have to do is help in the cause and you get a headhunter reward. EQ had a bunch of flagging mobs where a bunch of people from different guilds would get togeather to do some back flagging or whatever, it gives players a taste of commonality vs allways being in a competition. I like events like this because it brings people togeather fluidly. I think this system would work well in newbie areas as well because newbies tend to go it solo for like the first 5 lvls. But if all the newbie mobs are a common enemy and the objective is to smash the threat then all the newbies will bond togeather and use teamwork to quickly dispatch the enemy even without necessarily being grouped.
Ok I played guildwars only to some degree, but I didn't see any socializing aspect in this events. To have a sense of commonality I need something more than just random solo players wacking on the same mobs for some minutes. I didn't have this sense of "we" in the public quests in Warhammer online, nor the rift events in Rift (or when I had it then the memory is lost).
All "groups" (this ungrouped events included here) formed for a very short time to just complete some minor task, resulting in having more or less reward. And you *did* need to compete again the rest of the people participating, doing more dps or hps to have better reward. Nobody in this "groups", me included, cared for one bit about the commonality. Groups vaporised the instant the task was done.
To feel a sense of communality I need groups who stay together for some time, hours, if possible. Competing groups in contested zones also helped form community, because you saw who was ninja looting, kill stealing, and you came to know the people who were decent. You won't learn that in that events you describe. Ok to be fair, I least I didn't ;)
I'm hoping that public quests are handled like the Ring War in EQ1 Velious Era... If a zone changing event occurs because someone advanced a quest that's awesome but if cycles of public quests just keep repeating it makes to world actually feel more static just knowing that if you stand around a while the event will pop off again.
Thanks for reading,
Kiz~
Angrykiz said:
I'm hoping that public quests are handled like the Ring War in EQ1 Velious Era... If a zone changing event occurs because someone advanced a quest that's awesome but if cycles of public quests just keep repeating it makes to world actually feel more static just knowing that if you stand around a while the event will pop off again.
Thanks for reading,
Kiz~
Yes, Exactly!
I think its easier to have the common enemy affect faction, but I see your point. However I did like the dynamic in luclin where the natives were replaced by the playable race NPC's it was necessary to get the thing to lead to the mnemonic of Khati shah, there was a small encampment that was dangerous but if this event occured the people in the encampment were replaced. Also I kind of liked the triggable 3-way wars in shadeweavers thicket? because I used it to tey to get crafting components, one faction had one component, and the other faction, another, the third had none, so you would trigger the war with one, to kill the existing, they would set up shop, you could hunt them for components, then trigger the war with the other, to kill them, and then hunt for different components, and for completeness, bring the original inhabitants back, should any newbies need them for whatever, I would always check the zone beforehand lest I step on toes.
Are you talking about the grimling war in grimling forest? It was a great mechanic that EQ never did get quite right, was always buggy, a lot of times the trigger mob wouldn;t spawn, or some one would kill it too early and break the whole chain tell a server or GM zone reset.
Rifts mechanic on getting in on the kill and rewards seems to be ok for area spawns of events. As for them being common enemies that oppposite faction could get in on, im not sure. Been awhile. Feels like pantheon wont be so seperate as rifts world though, so I am assuming it will feel more like EQ in that any faction can join in a player guild or event.