Im sure they will have full zones under access required.
Id like to see it as the following.
Quest that requires 12 items these 12 items can be found within 12 seperate zones from a certain mob type with a really low drop rate once complete this gives you access to a door in a raid zone which allows you to go try kill the first mob this will be required by all raid members to enter the chamber/pass through the door.
would also make lower zones populated if the mobs where in them zones.
once you kill the first boss within that zone all people present get a quest to access the next boss.
maybe kill 3 raid mobs in diffrent zones to get shards to open the portal to the next boss.
something along those lines would be good and give people a feeling of acomplishment when completed
Elrandir said:Dullahan said:Pantheon raid accessibility options: try harder.
A little ironic, coming from someone who doesn't want to see the bar on skill getting raised too high:
I merely don't want my mmo changed into dance dance revolution or a twitch based game. MMORPGs come from a line of games where time devotion, knowledge, strategy and social challenges like teamwork and leadership were the defining factors, not how accurately you can click your mouse or how fast you can mash button rotations. That is where "skill" in games always ends up, and that should not be the most important factor in Pantheon or any other MMORPG claiming to be traditional.
Dullahan said:I merely don't want my mmo changed into dance dance revolution or a twitch based game. MMORPGs come from a line of games where time devotion, knowledge, strategy and social challenges like teamwork and leadership were the defining factors, not how accurately you can click your mouse or how fast you can mash button rotations. That is where "skill" in games always ends up, and that should not be the most important factor in Pantheon or any other MMORPG claiming to be traditional.
And once again, we're actually more or less in full agreement. I just feel pretty strongly that two people (or groups of people, in the case of guilds) who are willing to make the same time investment and who display the same level of competence (whether that's coping with mob mechanics, or mobilizing to get there in the first place) should see the same level of rewards in the game. Unfortunately, Everquest's original mechanics for dealing with exclusive content introduced some implicit biases into the system that resulted in this not necessarily being the case.
EQ's system rewarded availability as much as (if not more than) commitment. I personally think that time commitment should work independently of when you're able to put in those hours. It shouldn't matter what time zone you live in, or what days of the week that you're free to invest your time. If you put in the same number of hours, and display the same level of competence you should be able to reap the same rewards.
As you and many others have stated, we may never even see an issue in Pantheon. Maybe the leveling curve will prevent a critical concentration of high level players capable of taking on the exclusive content. Maybe the Progeny system will help keep the player-base from becoming too top heavy. Then again--maybe not. In the mean time, I don't see the harm in trying to theory-craft systems that might show less bias. It's certainly possible. The idea of Overpowered Content for instance would have raid mechanics mirror group mechanics, which doesn't share the same temporal bias as long respawns do. I wouldn't want to see something like that implemented for all raid mobs, but I think the potential for a mix of different encounter types might provide an environment that is immersion-friendly and rewards time commitment in an unbiased way.
I havent read thru the entire thread yet, but I'll come back to that when I have a little more time.
Another mechanic idea, potentially, would be progressive raid difficulty based on the number of times a guild/group has defeated it. This could either be based on guild membership or flags on the individuals in the attempt. If the latter, it could be either by character or account. (I havent completely thought this through, and I'm not sure which is most logical. I havent had my morning coffee yet, so maybe I'm completely full of crap...)
The thought here is that any collection of players starts with a baseline difficulty level. Maybe you have 5-10 kills at that baseline before difficulty starts to increase. This allows any given group at the very least a high probability of attaining the drops that they desire and gain the advancements that they really need and discouraging farming the mob after that period without paying a heavier toll to do so and risking failure progressively more.
Ideas for difficulty increases:
For every raid member that has 5+ flagged kills for the raid mob, the encounter spawns another reinforcement add for every additional flag.
Or resists of the mob increase.
Or damage dealt increase.
Or another set of mob effects are added.
Or the mob will begin a retreat to a bolt hole, and the raid is then on a timer.
Or Elrandir's idea of environmental damage is engaged based on 5+X kills, with the environmental damage ratcheting up based on that.
I just believe that one of the fundimental reasons that raid monopolization has occurred in the past is based on incentive to do so. I still think mechanics that remove the incentive are better, but disincentives like these might be workable as well?
Sure, if you're the biggest baddest guild on the server and trully completely overpower all content then you could perpetually monopolize the raid. But if that's possible, then the raid encounters and itemizations are already complete failures, IMO.
Porky said:Instanced
1. raid guilds can still compete via what they have killed and how fast they killed it IE tracked via VR or 3rd party site with a list of what and when.
2. no worries of people rushing in and stealing/training/and angry PMs from people that are watching.
3. lockout timers forcing you not to raid due to clearing all content too fast.
4. less CS petitions due to less aggro from other guilds.
5. no interaction with other guilds as your in the zone with just your guild.
I pointed it out in a diffrent thread but I feel it is worth repeating. Instancing causes the rarity of items to be drastically reduced leading to the BiS parade. I feel we should avoid it at all costs. I am for a lockout system but I stll feel raid targets should be on a longer(5-7day) timer before ANYONE can kill them. #NOLOOTPINATAS
I have taken a couple of ideas in this thread (plus a couple of my own) and sewn them together to create, what I think, would be a great lock-out/immersion/fun/rewarding/fair system.
(I love Feyshteys ideas, as I had many of them before reading his post :p)
First, I think a random respawn time is definitely needed. However, +/- 4 days is a bit much... maybe 24 to 48 hours. It takes a lot of effort to put together a raid force, and continually doing so without seeing action is boring (unless you can think of a way to make clearing trash fun).
Secondly, I think after a raid boss has been attempted/beaten, a player should have some sort of disadvantage on successive attempts through a non immersion-breaking mechanic. Here are 2 ideas:
1: By surviving in the zone for x amount of time or by defeating the boss, a player gains y number of flags. Once a raid boss sees how tough the attackers are (by adding up the number of flags in the zone, raid?), he decides to call on additional (mini-bosses/spirits/gods/etc.) to help him. These could be fought at the same time as the raid boss, or before the encounter. However, the longer you are there or the more times you are able to kill the boss, the more "friends" he will call upon. These fights get progressively harder until he requests a "friend" so powerful (his god?) that it will basically 1-shot your raid. The flags can drop off over time, and can even drop off faster with more attempts by "other attackers", as the raid mob starts to "forget" exactly who you were (cause he's been attacked by so many people). This means that the more "other players" get in attempts, the faster players with flags get back into action, thus encouraging community. Devs could even throw in a small increase in rare loot drop rate as an incentive to try.
2: Along the same lines, the boss could gain "knowledge" of the attackers' techniques. This would cause the raiders to gain a stacking debuff depending on the number of attempts or times he is killed. Eventually you would be too predictable to defeat. Again, the debuffs can drop off over time, and can even drop off faster with more attempts by "other attackers", as the raid mob starts to "forget" exactly who you were (cause he's been attacked by so many people). And again, this means that the more "other players" get in attempts, the faster players with flags get back into action, thus encouraging community. And yes, once again, Devs could even throw in a small increase in rare loot drop rate as an incentive to try.
Third, I would love to see raid bosses roaming throughout the world. When a raid boss pops, why does he have to stay put? Let him rest for a couple hours (2-4?), then hit the town. Let him visit a nearby zone for a little fun. He could walk there, port there, sow there, whatever, depending on his class. The people camping him will still get first dibs as they will be there when he spawns. The above mechanics could still be implemented to ensure he wasn't killed too frequently by the same people. And it would create so many stories: newb players running for their lives... raid bosses wiping out nearby NPC's towns for a short time... full scale raids happening next to a level 3 who's grinding gnoll pups. Also, it would give guilds a pretty quick heads-up. And scrambling to beat that "other" guild to a boss is very competitively rewarding.
Elrandir said:To create more exclusive content, you could combine this with other mechanics mentioned before, like the triggered spawns. Say it took, on average, ~2 hours for a raid force to camp one of these high-level named and collect a quest item from it. And say it took 4 such drops from different locations to gather all the drops needed to trigger the ‘real’ raid boss. You now have an event that takes (on average) eight hours of raid time just to gather the components to trigger. If the main event takes ~2 hours to clear to and beat, then that’s ~10 hours of time commitment total, which is about a week’s worth of raiding for many casual guilds.
Two things I like about this are that:
Since the named and place-holders follow the same mechanics as any normal group content, they will remain present in the environment at all times so that there is always danger lurking around the bend.
Like group content, you have the balance between time-investment and reward. Guilds that could spend more time farming PH’s will get more drops and be able to trigger more bosses.
I really like the idea of having to work for a raid target spawn. It's definitely something that could be worked in lore-wise and would certainly be better for those guilds that can't (or simply don't want to) have a raid force on call 24/7. Despite that, I still have some concerns with how this mechanic would play out.
If the mechanism is farming PHs -> Named spawns -> Kill named for token -> Use token(s) to spawn boss
Chenzeme suggested a possible solution to the last issue, but this still leaves the first three. So I would like to suggest a variant on your mechanic that might remedy these specific issues.
Instead of trying to balance the population of spawns vs. the player population to control the rate at which players can farm them and attempt the raid target, perhaps control the farming process itself. If the fights against overpowered content were restricted to a number of players per fight, then you could employ your control scheme by balancing the length of the fight. The mobs could be flighty against more than 2 groups of players. This would cause you to need farming teams of 2 groups, but not be able to overpower the content and stomp it by bringing many more. You could also have a stronger version that won't flee until over 4 groups, so multiple farming teams could work together (same guild or not) to get more tokens.
I kind of like the side effect that this would have on the overpowered content itself. If you had a raid group of 40 just sitting around and preparing for a big fight, the roaming cyclops would avoid it. But if you have 4 tired adventurers, that's what the cyclops wants to smush. Also if the villagers came out with their pitchforks, the cyclops would just flee. Overpowered content just feels to me like it should be made up of opportunistic hunters.
Dullahan said:Elrandir said:Dullahan said:Pantheon raid accessibility options: try harder.
A little ironic, coming from someone who doesn't want to see the bar on skill getting raised too high:
I merely don't want my mmo changed into dance dance revolution or a twitch based game. MMORPGs come from a line of games where time devotion, knowledge, strategy and social challenges like teamwork and leadership were the defining factors, not how accurately you can click your mouse or how fast you can mash button rotations. That is where "skill" in games always ends up, and that should not be the most important factor in Pantheon or any other MMORPG claiming to be traditional.
The problem with your time spent in game to have the best gear is a broken logic due to the fact that guilds will simply call up their guildies to get online to kill a target, which takes like Zero Time, cept for the whole part of fighting down to get to the raid target itself. So if this happens which it will Time devotion means very little, knowledge is simply learned by constantly fighting him which is basically a passive thing since you just ahve to keep fighting him and come up with ideas to counter of of the things he does, strategy comes from knowledge, and the social challenge is basically wiped out by them also calling up their guildies and making sure they are the first ones there. so all these challenges your talkng about are very easily overcomed and aren't much of a challenge at all and their will be at least 1 guild in each server that would do this simply beuase they would wan tot lock down content and prevent anyone from catching up to them and simpy contiinue to do so just becuase they simply can. Reason why if they don't cause something to stop this from happening like a lockout timer or anything they will continue to do so, and hence making the only true challenge is how many do you think the top guild will kill this time tonight?
Ainadak said:Elrandir said:To create more exclusive content, you could combine this with other mechanics mentioned before, like the triggered spawns. Say it took, on average, ~2 hours for a raid force to camp one of these high-level named and collect a quest item from it. And say it took 4 such drops from different locations to gather all the drops needed to trigger the ‘real’ raid boss. You now have an event that takes (on average) eight hours of raid time just to gather the components to trigger. If the main event takes ~2 hours to clear to and beat, then that’s ~10 hours of time commitment total, which is about a week’s worth of raiding for many casual guilds.
Two things I like about this are that:
Since the named and place-holders follow the same mechanics as any normal group content, they will remain present in the environment at all times so that there is always danger lurking around the bend.
Like group content, you have the balance between time-investment and reward. Guilds that could spend more time farming PH’s will get more drops and be able to trigger more bosses.
I really like the idea of having to work for a raid target spawn. It's definitely something that could be worked in lore-wise and would certainly be better for those guilds that can't (or simply don't want to) have a raid force on call 24/7. Despite that, I still have some concerns with how this mechanic would play out.
If the mechanism is farming PHs -> Named spawns -> Kill named for token -> Use token(s) to spawn boss
- This could run into the same issue that you are hoping to avoid, where guilds fight over who can get to the named spawns first or lurking ninjas can tag them as they spawn.
- If these spawns are abundant, then some very large guilds could bring large numbers to overpower the content and farm en masse to quickly blow through token collection (no challenge, no fun).
- If these spawns are sparse, then guilds will fight over the limited supply.
- Spawning the boss could result in people trying to ninja the spawn or vultures waiting for you to fail once.
Chenzeme suggested a possible solution to the last issue, but this still leaves the first three. So I would like to suggest a variant on your mechanic that might remedy these specific issues.
Instead of trying to balance the population of spawns vs. the player population to control the rate at which players can farm them and attempt the raid target, perhaps control the farming process itself. If the fights against overpowered content were restricted to a number of players per fight, then you could employ your control scheme by balancing the length of the fight. The mobs could be flighty against more than 2 groups of players. This would cause you to need farming teams of 2 groups, but not be able to overpower the content and stomp it by bringing many more. You could also have a stronger version that won't flee until over 4 groups, so multiple farming teams could work together (same guild or not) to get more tokens.
I kind of like the side effect that this would have on the overpowered content itself. If you had a raid group of 40 just sitting around and preparing for a big fight, the roaming cyclops would avoid it. But if you have 4 tired adventurers, that's what the cyclops wants to smush. Also if the villagers came out with their pitchforks, the cyclops would just flee. Overpowered content just feels to me like it should be made up of opportunistic hunters.
Some of this is Exactly how Sky and Sea worked in FFXI. Best of both worlds and incidently my favorite style of endgame content. Sky was one large zone that held 13 Named Boss mobs (there were others too really but they were quest and story related). But 8 of them spawned in different ways like timers and lottery spawns, etc. They dropped trigger items used to spawn the other Named. Four Named each had a corresponding specific pair of Named that dropped trigger items. So You would camp the 8 named in a large and dangerous area and they were contested. But the size of the zone and the number of contested mobs helped control everyone being able to be everywhere at once. On avergae my Linkshell (guild) was able to get at least 1 set of trigger items every 3 days. Once you had the corresponding trigger items you could summon a specific Named at your leisure. So this part is not contested and can be scheduled. There were four different Named that you could summon using the triggered items. Then you could use trigger items from all 4 of them to summon the ultimate Named of Sky. But all 5 of those triggered Named also had a chance to drop rare loot.
This created in my opinion a fun expeience that had a fair mix of both contested and uncontested content in a large zone (Think of it as a zone sized dungeon with both outside and inside dungeon areas). It was designed for a full alliance of players (FFXIs normal raid size force). Thrill of the Hunt, rivalry of the race to claim, combined with non zergable uncontested challenge that can be done when you want. Drop rates on gear were rare (including not seeing any significant drops 3-4 times in a row). If you wiped and couldnt recover fast enough, mob would either despawn (have to collect triggered items again), or a rival Linkshell could claim it (too bad so sad).
Riahuf22 said:Dullahan said:Elrandir said:Dullahan said:Pantheon raid accessibility options: try harder.
A little ironic, coming from someone who doesn't want to see the bar on skill getting raised too high:
I merely don't want my mmo changed into dance dance revolution or a twitch based game. MMORPGs come from a line of games where time devotion, knowledge, strategy and social challenges like teamwork and leadership were the defining factors, not how accurately you can click your mouse or how fast you can mash button rotations. That is where "skill" in games always ends up, and that should not be the most important factor in Pantheon or any other MMORPG claiming to be traditional.
The problem with your time spent in game to have the best gear is a broken logic due to the fact that guilds will simply call up their guildies to get online to kill a target, which takes like Zero Time, cept for the whole part of fighting down to get to the raid target itself. So if this happens which it will Time devotion means very little, knowledge is simply learned by constantly fighting him which is basically a passive thing since you just ahve to keep fighting him and come up with ideas to counter of of the things he does, strategy comes from knowledge, and the social challenge is basically wiped out by them also calling up their guildies and making sure they are the first ones there. so all these challenges your talkng about are very easily overcomed and aren't much of a challenge at all and their will be at least 1 guild in each server that would do this simply beuase they would wan tot lock down content and prevent anyone from catching up to them and simpy contiinue to do so just becuase they simply can. Reason why if they don't cause something to stop this from happening like a lockout timer or anything they will continue to do so, and hence making the only true challenge is how many do you think the top guild will kill this time tonight?
As you would know by reading one of my many, many posts, there are incredibly easy ways to prevent that.
What you are describing is the easy spawn monitoring that existed in EQ where a player or alt character planted near a spawn would detect a boss and then batphone the rest of the guild. What I suggested was removing the ability to do that by placing raid mobs in heavily patrolled areas with no safe zones. That would require guilds to work and actively monitor locations with a raid force to check whether a mob has spawned.
That means if a guild was committed to a certain mob, clearing it and watching it, it opens other dungeons or spawns for other guilds to do the same. I would recommend that these areas also have rare spawn raid targets to give guilds an incentive to clear these areas beyond the possible presence of a boss. Something like traks lair with Tolapumj and Seb Protector, except perhaps with other random spawn mobs. Instead of farming by way of camping and crawling being solely a small group endeavor, they could also have similar content aimed at small and large raids.
Amsai said: Could you clarify that last part Dullahan. It sounds interesting but having no EQ frame of reference I got lost with the Named.
The last part was kind of a tangent, but is meant to give more purpose to the idea of increasing risk and time investment with farming high level mobs.
The objective is to make it so no one guild can effectively farm every mob in the game by tasking teams of members with the trivial task of watching for high value targets to respawn (or worse, automating the process using scripted characters), and then notifying (batphone) the rest of the guild when they're up.
The solution is making it impossible for any one person or small group to monitor most of these spawns by making mobs immune to tracking, random in respawn intervals, and in dangerous areas without safe places to park spotters. No sneaking, no training in, no trivializing the process of checking the status of most raid mobs. Thus, players actually have to form raids to spend considerable time investigating whether raid targets have indeed respawned.
The problem with that is it could be troublesome and disappointing to continually spend time putting together raids to find the mob you seek has not respawn. The solution to that problem is the give minibosses or rare spawn (notorious monsters) raid-calibre mobs to serve as a consolation prize. The example was a dragon from EQ named Trakanon who had two named next to his lair which dropped some decent items and respawned several times a day (vs Trak respawn of 1 week). By providing at least some incentive for players by way of rare spawns, it would mitigate some of the disappointment if the desired target were not up. Beyond static spawns like that, you could even have rare spawns mixed in with the content surrounding raid targets that could be camped by a guild.
This will still favor the most hardcore guilds, but would require the devotion of an entire raid instead of allowing a single player to monitor the status. The benefit is that it opens up other areas, affording other guilds an opportunity to find rare spawns up.
Some will, of course, still argue that its "not fair" because they feel entitled to kill whatever they want, whenever they want. That just isn't the nature of contested, open-world content.
Thanks for taking the time Dullahan, it really helps me visualize it better.
Honestly, I could get on board with this........... provided there is enough content to actually distract guilds and leave other areas free. Not to the extent that there is no competition though of course, just to thin the heard as it were. What that amount of content is and how far they should be from eachother would need to be balanced with general active player population. But I think that sounds good. Probably the best thing about your suggestion is the busy work. Im not a crafter. I crave adventure. And Id rather slog through the hordes to the lowest dungeon then twiddle my thumbs in town, but thats just me.
Completely agree with nature of contested and open world content, but I do have a question for you. Does that mean you think all meanigful high end content should be contested? Im not against contested content or even that it has the best loot, but I do want other combat related content that isnt contested too. I like both or even a mix of both at the same time. Its not for convenience so much as to mix things up and ensure the process wouldnt always be the same. Though to some degree things like place holders or true lottery spawns could help.
Amsai said:Completely agree with nature of contested and open world content, but I do have a question for you. Does that mean you think all meanigful high end content should be contested? Im not against contested content or even that it has the best loot, but I do want other combat related content that isnt contested too. I like both or even a mix of both at the same time. Its not for convenience so much as to mix things up and ensure the process wouldnt always be the same. Though to some degree things like place holders or true lottery spawns could help.
Everything should be contested if its to matter. That doesn't mean every mob and every step of a quest must be contested, but the better and more important items become, the more progressively harder they should be to obtain. Anything that is offered by way of convenience should be considerably less powerful and valuable than the contested variety. Really, anything thats totally static and uncontested shouldn't yield anything tradeable or it will render other tradeable items less valuable, including those for quests or crafted.
Fair enough. I dont totally agree with it, but I cant really fault you for your stance. I guess Im just not so black and white on the issue. I would say a compromise and offer Named for pure challenge here and there that hold no value other than bragging rights, but Im not sure anyone else would welcome that or that the devs would want to create a boss mob for that purpose. But sometimes in FFXI I would hunt NMs that after so many expansions no longer had any real value, just to challenge myself or my group. I suppose I could just be an oddball that occaisionally took some risks without even the hint of a reward.
Also I just re-read that last part:
anything thats totally static and uncontested shouldn't yield anything tradeable or it will render other tradeable items less valuable
Are you hinting that you would be okay with uncontested content sometimes as long as the drops were not tradeable? Kind of doubt it but figured Id ask anyway.
I will say this though. If the content was delivered in the way you specified, and only that way. There better be enough to keep me busy for about 40 hours a week. Otherwise I wont be able to play this game full time like I did with XI, and while I will play a lot Id have to suppliment with other games to fill in where Pantheon lacks
Dullahan said:Riahuf22 said:Dullahan said:Elrandir said:Dullahan said:
As you would know by reading one of my many, many posts, there are incredibly easy ways to prevent that.
What you are describing is the easy spawn monitoring that existed in EQ where a player or alt character planted near a spawn would detect a boss and then batphone the rest of the guild. What I suggested was removing the ability to do that by placing raid mobs in heavily patrolled areas with no safe zones. That would require guilds to work and actively monitor locations with a raid force to check whether a mob has spawned.
That means if a guild was committed to a certain mob, clearing it and watching it, it opens other dungeons or spawns for other guilds to do the same. I would recommend that these areas also have rare spawn raid targets to give guilds an incentive to clear these areas beyond the possible presence of a boss. Something like traks lair with Tolapumj and Seb Protector, except perhaps with other random spawn mobs. Instead of farming by way of camping and crawling being solely a small group endeavor, they could also have similar content aimed at small and large raids.
If they could accompolish this Than i could see this working, and it would also require different guild to communitate with each other so a guild know they aren't fighting down a dungeon that has a possibility of being up being killed in the process, not saying that's there s no competition awaiting them, but at least know their friendly allied guilds or just honest ones saying that they haven't pursued him. I have to say the absolute worst stragedy of trying to be a top raiding guild would come from batphoning would depress me quite a bit, and it was a great idea at the time but it cuased more problems than it solved for the most part.
Riahuf22 said:Dullahan said:Pantheon raid accessibility options: try harder.
Pantheon raid accessibility options: make to where Guilds can't sit at raids and watch them come up, just to kill them within 30 minutes, makes the game fun for no one but the guild doing it.
I have personally killed raid mobs for no other purpose than to prevent another guild from doing the encounter.
I'm not saying it's a good thing, but anybody who claims it's not a big issue is simply not telling the truth.
Although the mobs dropped loot, it wasn't anything we really needed. We killed them because they were a gateway for access to other areas that we didn't want people getting into so that we could farm them with less worry of others messing with the mobs we wanted to kill.
So yes, it's a problem, and it needs a better solution than the childishly flippant "try harder" type responses some are giving.
Searril said:Riahuf22 said:Dullahan said:Pantheon raid accessibility options: try harder.
Pantheon raid accessibility options: make to where Guilds can't sit at raids and watch them come up, just to kill them within 30 minutes, makes the game fun for no one but the guild doing it.
I have personally killed raid mobs for no other purpose than to prevent another guild from doing the encounter.
I'm not saying it's a good thing, but anybody who claims it's not a big issue is simply not telling the truth.
Although the mobs dropped loot, it wasn't anything we really needed. We killed them because they were a gateway for access to other areas that we didn't want people getting into so that we could farm them with less worry of others messing with the mobs we wanted to kill.
So yes, it's a problem, and it needs a better solution than the childishly flippant "try harder" type responses some are giving.
I've done it too, but mainly because it was so easy to do.
As soon as you stop looking at p99 and emulated servers as the example of how raiding will work in Pantheon, the sooner you can stop worrying. Pantheon will not be 2 servers filled to the brim with hardcore players with complete knowledge of the game, waiting for raid targets to pop for years on end.
Dullahan said:Searril said:Riahuf22 said:Dullahan said:Pantheon raid accessibility options: try harder.
Pantheon raid accessibility options: make to where Guilds can't sit at raids and watch them come up, just to kill them within 30 minutes, makes the game fun for no one but the guild doing it.
I have personally killed raid mobs for no other purpose than to prevent another guild from doing the encounter.
I'm not saying it's a good thing, but anybody who claims it's not a big issue is simply not telling the truth.
Although the mobs dropped loot, it wasn't anything we really needed. We killed them because they were a gateway for access to other areas that we didn't want people getting into so that we could farm them with less worry of others messing with the mobs we wanted to kill.
So yes, it's a problem, and it needs a better solution than the childishly flippant "try harder" type responses some are giving.
I've done it too, but mainly because it was so easy to do.
As soon as you stop looking at p99 and emulated servers as the example of how raiding will work in Pantheon, the sooner you can stop worrying. Pantheon will not be 2 servers filled to the brim with hardcore players with complete knowledge of the game, waiting for raid targets to pop for years on end.
I've never played on p99 or any emulated servers, so I'm not using them as an example of anything. My experience is based on my past personal history playing Everquest on Verant/SOE servers.
Searril said:Dullahan said:I've done it too, but mainly because it was so easy to do.
As soon as you stop looking at p99 and emulated servers as the example of how raiding will work in Pantheon, the sooner you can stop worrying. Pantheon will not be 2 servers filled to the brim with hardcore players with complete knowledge of the game, waiting for raid targets to pop for years on end.
I've never played on p99 or any emulated servers, so I'm not using them as an example of anything. My experience is based on my past personal history playing Everquest on Verant/SOE servers.
Either way when its a trivial matter to farm static mobs and park spotters at spawnpoints, it allows a single guild to farm the entire server. When checking mobs requires time and a raid effort, suddenly it won't be such a simple matter scouting every raid target in the game.
For as long as there is a way to prevent spawn sitting, and some other nasty habits people have done to prevent other guilds from progressing i am fine with it, not saying the lesser guilds deserve to have a shot at a raid target but am saying if you can make it to where you have to venture even 30 minutes into a dungeon/castle or whatever to figure out if a raid target is up that still gives time for a lesser guild to maybe find the correct location to find another raid target and have a chance to kill it. This i would be fine with, for one like i said above it builds guilds together to see if the target has been checked by them and at what time and such, if they decide to give out that information is up to them but at least it does cuase guilds to work together if they decide to.