ZennExile said:arcsbane said:ZennExile said:Everything in the game will be open world and technically contested. Unless I imagined that detail. Mob density, item distribution, lore consideration, and a host of other issues rank much higher on the white board than trying to protect specific elements of content from being trolled by people who have been bored years. It will be years down the road before that matters, if it ever does at all.
When you have a sense of what is known, and work from there up to create something possible, you can make anything work. Then you can inject fun anywhere you want on the white board based on your new ideas. Instead of trying to constrain the idea of fun to past experiences.
Endorphins come from many sources. Fun is not the most potent.
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There are a ton of things on these boards that aren't as important on your whiteboard, though. Bards, housing, there's even a post about having farmville-esque aspects in the game. These people aren't trolling; they're excited for something special and until more details are given the sky is the limit in their imaginations. And it's all subjective, isn't it. I doubt anyone here has, objectively, the single best answer to anything. They are indeed, as you say, trying to protect elements of what they found enjoyable in their past experiences. Because this game is trying to grasp those older elements, no?
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I think your last sentence is on the nose, though. Those older games had a lot of opposite-of-fun times, but those made the rest so much better.
Yeah, the good bits shine a little brighter when you have to dig through the grime for them. But what I meant by the whiteboard thing is not so much about importance, it is about relating back to a hierarchy of correlations. So you don't get lost in the fine details. Those things I listed relate to the function of (Raiding and Large Scale Content). Not really any other aspect of the game. Each aspect of the game is the center of its own universe with its own hierarchy of correlations. Or something like that.
I just see a completely different set of limitations that don't have anything to do with some notion of what "can't work" or how other games have done it. And I could punt me a whole orphanage full of disabled Gnome children, every time I see someone trying to end a conversation with "what can't work". Especially when the argument is all semantic and flimsy...Â
oneADseven said:The biggest issue with fully contested content, though, is that most players never get an opportunity to experience it.
Sorry to poach one sentence, I read it all I just think only this part relates to what I am looking at. And that is, what if... you just stopped caring about this, and build exclusive content just for the ultra minority to find, on purpose.  If that is your goal as the developer, there is no slap in the face. You did your job if only a few top guilds manage to clear your content. Right?
If only a few guilds manage to clear it, yes, that would be fine. But only a few guilds to ever even try it? I can't imagine that being a development goal. When you're talking about the most complicated/difficult encounters, I would imagine they take up more programming/development time than any other encounter in the game. It just seems really inefficient to spend the most time on something that only the small fraction of the population will be able to enjoy. I could be wrong though. If that is indeed a development goal, then you're 100% right. I would be perfectly okay with that. I love the idea of exclusivity. I have enjoyed the highest accolades of raiding in just about every game I have ever played ... but what ended up happening is you saw less and less contested content as the game aged.
The more exclusive content is, the more people there are outside of that circle getting upset. Before you know it, everything is instanced and everybody gets their participation trophy. I just think it makes the most sense to balance it out from the beginning ... embrace the idea that you want to offer exclusivity, but not to the point where you prevent 99% of your population from having a chance to enjoy it. That will inevitably lead to torches and pitchforks. I would prefer to see a balanced sense of exclusivity last the entire span of the game rather than seeing it implemented strongly in the beginning, and then see it fade away as time goes on. Hardcore raiders are often referred to as the "5%" ... and when you make content specifically for them, that the other 95% feels like they are getting robbed of ... it becomes a "Casuals are X% of your playerbase and are what keeps the lights on. I want that too, or I will go find another game that conforms to my ideals." It's a mess I hope to avoid. Let them have their participation trophy ... literally. Allow them to participate in the content ... whether they beat it or not, who knows?
arcsbane said:Fluffy said:How can anyone truly expect people to run hot for raids with all this mumbo jumbo that surrounds this?
Raids are so *overraided*.Players assess themselves,raiding and the endgame way too highly. I detest endgame and the desire for it
Baffling what some would consider fun.
I haven't played any MMO past months and reading here now reminds me why I don't enjoy those games any longer and don't miss them to be honest
Its repulsive
Heck,we are at the point that eating battery acid would be more fun and entertaining than all this same-old same-old
I can respect that, in your opinion, the end-game (defined as raiding in this instance, I think) is detestable. But, let me ask you this question: How does its inclusion affect you personally? Everyone's "fun" is different, but they aren't mutually exclusive. A game can contain what you consider fun as well as things that someone else might consider enjoyable. Many people that I personally know (and am harassing to pledge since I discovered this project) loved the raiding and played exclusively for that in the end. But, I did have a couple friends who disliked and, therefore, didn't participate. And it was fine. They weren't really inferior in a dungeon or anything. But its exclusion could remove something that many would consider to be their penultimate goal and what they find fun. VR's FAQ says it'll be minor in comparison to the group content anyway. Even if it is just a few encounters, it's something many may be looking forward to and I (and I do not intend to invalidate your experiences with this statement, so no disrespect intended) don't understand why it would make you not enjoy an entire game that has so many other facets.
In a multiplayer each facet of the game affects everyone.Both on a social and quality of gameworld kind-of-level
It is like watching a movie at the theather,when a group makes noise and misbehaves during the movie, it affects your quality time and enjoyment/immersion with the movie,with those other people in the room.
Just like that raiding affects quality of the game for everyone playing (also because the content is designed for groups most of the time) + it divides players and causes toxic behavior towards each other + it puts the focus on anything but the gameworld.
Everything that goes into a multiplayer affects the entire game for everyone.
If you try to please everyone a bit you please nobody in the end .So I don't believe it is wise to use certain facets to please "different kinds of folk" that have a different opinion on fun
There are no different kinds of fun.Either the game is or isn't I think.And for how long does it stay fun if we get the same-old struggles and drama we were forced to deal with in MMOs the past years.
I hope they stick with the vision and won't allow the noise here about endgame and raiding to affect the vision
and won't allow it to worsen the general mood within the community
My point exactly. Hardcore raiders who want to focus on the end-game are the minority. Don't let their voice (noise) affect the vision. Any consideration for end-game raiding divides the player base and causes toxic behavior. You toss the hardcore crowd a bone and the "majority" come out of the woodwork to remind you how bad of a decision it is. Don't even entertain their ideals because it will inevitably lead to the toxic plague of madness that we have seen in MMO's of the past. This is what I'm talking about when it comes to exclusivity ... the most hardcore people who want a sense of exclusivity can become "detested" or their views perceived as "repulsive." How they could have fun, playing in a way that is enjoyable to them, is "baffling." Eating battery acid would be more fun/entertaining than the same old conversation about "end game discussion, raiding & alternatives."
You have to be really careful when you create something special for a minority. The minority doesen't pay the bills. Why do they get something that aligns with their playstyle that is inaccessible (except it's not) to the majority who keep the lights on? It's a super slippery slope and one that needs to be handled with extreme care and caution. If you create a super difficult mob, and then slap a "contested" sticker on it ... anybody with a job/family can chime in about how it isn't fair. What isn't fair? The reward of course. You can make the most difficult content in the game, add in rewards that are commensurate, but anybody who can't put in the time/effort to earn it feels shafted. They don't want to join an "elite" guild that has playtime requirements, gear checks, etc.
None of that really matters much. You shouldn't be assuming that rewards would be too great, or that people would be upset. Nothing "you" have seen in MMOs in the past really matters much to anyone but you personally. You built an argument against your own imagination here.
There are thousands of reasons to build hidden content into the game that is unique and exlcusive. But beyond all those I can readily imagine and vomit here, the FAQ clearly eludes to exactly this kind of content being important and even goes into a bit of detail as to why.
I didn't build the argument. I based my stance off of dozens of comments that I have seen on this very forum since I have joined it. I used years of experience in playing this genre, and how I watched it evolve to where it is today, and then provided a possible explanation on how/why it got there. I have seen official responses on this forum that have alluded to the idea that we will see both kinds of content ... "exclusive, contested content" and "accessible, ghost content" in regards to raid bosses. To be clear, I am all for exclusive content that is only accessible to the elite few who put in the hours and become true masters of their craft. At the same time, though, I understand that when someone mentions such a view point, it's very likely to be met with disapproval from the "majority" who wouldn't be able to experience it. I'm not arguing against my own imagination ... I used my imagination to help uncover an angle, the "hyper/ghost" concept that I think would be a happy medium. I have learned that finding a compromise somewhere in the middle is much more likely to be received in a positive light than focusing on an extreme on either side.
Liav said:arcsbane said:You are quite passionate about this, Liav. It's a new thread to me, as a new supporter and follower of Pantheon, so I guess I don't have the fatigue you display in reference to this topic.
While, yes, racing is something from the past, I thought that that is what this game is trying to do. Go back to the roots, the past, of these MMOs and bring those things back. Especially the social and community aspects. This is one of those things. For good or ill, those races were something that made raids special, at least to me, and incredibly social. Not just with your own guild, but with any others you raced or with whom you worked out deals. The weekly timers were also a good restriction on the introduction of powerful items into the playerbase. And I don't think I ever participated in a raid that utilized 200 or more toons. I don't think any of the guilds on the Tribunal could even field that many people. The largest raids I participated with were 60-70 people perhaps.
The guild I'm in on Phinigel has 60-70 mains alone, and that is less than some other competitive guilds. As early as the beginning of this year, there were well over a hundred players racing for mobs in Vex Thal during U.S. daylight hours. That's not necessarily bad, but the fact is that the guild in question still managed to monopolize 99% of open world raid content. If not for the instances on this server, it's likely we would have been the only guild on the server with more than one piece of loot.
While I have the playtime to make it happen, most do not. I want Pantheon to succeed, and having a single guild monopolize all of the raid loot on a given server is not going to make the overwhelming majority of players very happy.
I enjoy competition in the form of server firsts, world firsts, etc. Not sacrificing my health through sleep loss to ensure that my guild maximizes their loot intake. If this is the route that Pantheon takes, then I will no doubt be answering 4am text messages to come slay pixels, because that's how I play. The problem is that I would rather not stop playing Pantheon as a result of burnout because the devs are married to an antiquated raiding model.
Call me selfish, I don't really care. Part of my lack of patience on this subject is that most people posting here asking for this crap either don't understand what they're in for, or they're fine with what I would describe as really terrible gameplay. Either way, it bothers me.
Haven't really been watching the forums too much since it was becoming a lot more repetitious but I do agree with Liav.
If the system used is no instancing, random spawn type thing ala EQ1 then most of the high end players will result to being bat phone. I truly hope that is not the case. That means that kills will be based simply on time zone when it spawns and that is never a good way to do things. There are ways to try to counter man this point but each has many pros and cons. Lot of them have been listed in this thread so I won't go and relist them to open up another debate on the merits of them. We will just have to wait and see in alpha/beta how they decide to go and give feedback from there. I for one will be advocating for either spawned versions of raid mobs or even instanced versions of the raid mobs. Yea yea I know everyone hates instancing but even if the instance version drops less loot or whatever this gives people the ability to do the bosses on their time without having to deal with the massive hate that comes with racing the top guilds.
For those thinking we could all civilly run a rotation ala P99, get real. It works there simply because GMs enforce it and even then people break it all the time. If all we have are 1-2 servers then it maybe possible here but it's still not realistic.
Anyway it goes there will be a group of people who aren't happy. Best thing to do is make the majority happy because they are the ones paying the bill. The only ones who would say different are the ones who want to monopolize content just because they can. I say let people play how they want, when they want. Monopolizing content doesn't make you better, it simply means you have no life and spend more time in game.
I'm late to this discussion since I only just recently registered on these forums but I wanted to throw out my opinion, if for no other reason than to give people more to discuss :)
I think we as players fall into a trap by talking about "the" endgame. What we should really be talking about is all the stuff that would be fun/interesting and keep us playing once we've run out of level progression - because that's what we really mean when we say "endgame".
So, who says it has to be just one thing?
If I think back on all the games I played that really had staying power, here's the list of stuff I come up with.
1) Raiding - absolutely, raiding is important. And by raiding, I mean "content that requires more than just a normal group to do" That said, I don't define raiding as "endgame-only". EQ2 for example had some really great mid-level raids. So let's broaden the definition here. To me, a raid is:
- Something that takes more than a single group to do
- Something that involves a high level of challenge, both for the group as a whole and for the individual
- Something that has meaningful rewards when it's beaten, to help drive a sense of achievement.
As far as raid sizes and levels, I don't think we should lock ourselves into a "you must be this tall to ride" mentality. One of my favorite raid dungeons was a 2-group dungeon in EQ2's splitpaw content pack. One of my favorite raid fights was an 18-person encounter at level 30 in the same game. And of course, I will *never* forget taking 36 people to go kill Nagafen and Vox in EQ for epic quest pieces, or racing other raids to the Trakanon spawn. That said, one of my favorite things in FFXIV is/was the Odin FATE - which you might not think of as a raid, but it nominally hits each of those points I mentioned up above. Along with that I should say that I absolutely loved some of the "invasion" events that would happen sometimes in various games, where suddenly, the entire population of the zone/region is banding together to deal with something unexpected.
So anyway, I think "raid" content - in the form of scripted fights, multi-group dungeons, world bosses, dynamic content, and so on - is an important part of any game, and it's something that should certainly be available at the top end of character progression. BUT, it should be available well before that too.
2) "Epic" quests. When I say this, most people probably think about EQ epic weapon quests, and credit where it's due - I think that was the first game that really did that, at least that I can remember. But I think one of the things that keeps us playing once we've run out of levels to grind is the idea of big, long, globe-spanning quests with lots of sub-objectives to do along the way. There's good and bad ways to implement these things, but the point is they're something that you can focus on, with lots of sub-objectives (and hopefully a good story) along the way, that takes a long time to complete, and helps keep you playing. I also think that just like raids, these things don't have to wait until you're at level cap to start. There's no reason why they couldn't actually begin pretty early on, progression-wise, and just keep on going well past the time you get to the level cap. And PS: They don't have to be just for weapons either.
3) Community/guild projects. One of my favorite things in Vanguard was teaming up with my guild members to build a fleet of caravels and galleons. Or, the work we put into building our guild hall. This type of content (and I do consider it content) gave us things we could focus on as a guild, that didn't require us to all be at a minimum level or logged on at the same time. The examples I used were crafting but this type of thing doesn't have to be exclusive to crafting either. For example, imagine if guilds had faction standings just like players did - and by raising your guild's standing with a faction, by undertaking tasks of some sort or just generally killing their enemies, you could unlock cool features and rewards?
I could probably come up with a few more given time, but hopefully this gives ya'll some food for thought. Raiding's awesome and I love me some raiding, but it isn't (and shouldn't be) the only thing to keep us going at the top. Likewise, I don't think we should have to wait until the cap to start doing any of this either.
Maybe a better way to put it is that in my opinion, there shouldn't be an end to the game. You finish one thing (level progression) but you still have plenty of other things to do/see/accomplish.
Raiding is likely to be the pinnacle of endgame in Pantheon.
While some demographics of players might enjoy building boats and calling it endgame, there is still a hierarchy to these things. Large scale, difficult encounters involving several groups of players is the logical top of the totem pole as far as content goes. Actually, PvP is probably the top. Raiding sits below that.
Unless something truly revolutionary happens (Pantheon is not revolutionary, the game by definition is falling back on older style gameplay), I would say that the content hierarchy goes like this:
Solo PvE -> Group PvE -> Small group raiding -> Several group raiding -> PvP
Horizontal progression is great but it still resides within these categories. This is how a traditional MMO works.
Enitzu said:The reason vanilla EQ raiding was so utterly boring was the fact that you could essentially kill the dragons with 25 people yet raid sizes were 72. So you ended up having way more people than needed which trivialized the content.
This is completely innacurate. Please don't make statements if you didnt actually play that content you are referring to. Raids were not sized for 72 people (or capped at 72). 25 people couldn't kill naggy/vox when the lvl cap was 50. Also, there is no such thing as vanilla EQ.
philo said:Enitzu said:The reason vanilla EQ raiding was so utterly boring was the fact that you could essentially kill the dragons with 25 people yet raid sizes were 72. So you ended up having way more people than needed which trivialized the content.
This is completely innacurate. Please don't make statements if you didnt actually play that content you are referring to. Raids were not sized for 72 people (or capped at 72). 25 people couldn't kill naggy/vox when the lvl cap was 50. Also, there is no such thing as vanilla EQ.
Nephele said:I'm late to this discussion since I only just recently registered on these forums but I wanted to throw out my opinion, if for no other reason than to give people more to discuss :)
I think we as players fall into a trap by talking about "the" endgame. What we should really be talking about is all the stuff that would be fun/interesting and keep us playing once we've run out of level progression - because that's what we really mean when we say "endgame".
So, who says it has to be just one thing?
If I think back on all the games I played that really had staying power, here's the list of stuff I come up with.
1) Raiding - absolutely, raiding is important. And by raiding, I mean "content that requires more than just a normal group to do" That said, I don't define raiding as "endgame-only". EQ2 for example had some really great mid-level raids. So let's broaden the definition here. To me, a raid is:
- Something that takes more than a single group to do
- Something that involves a high level of challenge, both for the group as a whole and for the individual
- Something that has meaningful rewards when it's beaten, to help drive a sense of achievement.
As far as raid sizes and levels, I don't think we should lock ourselves into a "you must be this tall to ride" mentality. One of my favorite raid dungeons was a 2-group dungeon in EQ2's splitpaw content pack. One of my favorite raid fights was an 18-person encounter at level 30 in the same game. And of course, I will *never* forget taking 36 people to go kill Nagafen and Vox in EQ for epic quest pieces, or racing other raids to the Trakanon spawn. That said, one of my favorite things in FFXIV is/was the Odin FATE - which you might not think of as a raid, but it nominally hits each of those points I mentioned up above. Along with that I should say that I absolutely loved some of the "invasion" events that would happen sometimes in various games, where suddenly, the entire population of the zone/region is banding together to deal with something unexpected.
So anyway, I think "raid" content - in the form of scripted fights, multi-group dungeons, world bosses, dynamic content, and so on - is an important part of any game, and it's something that should certainly be available at the top end of character progression. BUT, it should be available well before that too.
2) "Epic" quests. When I say this, most people probably think about EQ epic weapon quests, and credit where it's due - I think that was the first game that really did that, at least that I can remember. But I think one of the things that keeps us playing once we've run out of levels to grind is the idea of big, long, globe-spanning quests with lots of sub-objectives to do along the way. There's good and bad ways to implement these things, but the point is they're something that you can focus on, with lots of sub-objectives (and hopefully a good story) along the way, that takes a long time to complete, and helps keep you playing. I also think that just like raids, these things don't have to wait until you're at level cap to start. There's no reason why they couldn't actually begin pretty early on, progression-wise, and just keep on going well past the time you get to the level cap. And PS: They don't have to be just for weapons either.
3) Community/guild projects. One of my favorite things in Vanguard was teaming up with my guild members to build a fleet of caravels and galleons. Or, the work we put into building our guild hall. This type of content (and I do consider it content) gave us things we could focus on as a guild, that didn't require us to all be at a minimum level or logged on at the same time. The examples I used were crafting but this type of thing doesn't have to be exclusive to crafting either. For example, imagine if guilds had faction standings just like players did - and by raising your guild's standing with a faction, by undertaking tasks of some sort or just generally killing their enemies, you could unlock cool features and rewards?
I could probably come up with a few more given time, but hopefully this gives ya'll some food for thought. Raiding's awesome and I love me some raiding, but it isn't (and shouldn't be) the only thing to keep us going at the top. Likewise, I don't think we should have to wait until the cap to start doing any of this either.
Maybe a better way to put it is that in my opinion, there shouldn't be an end to the game. You finish one thing (level progression) but you still have plenty of other things to do/see/accomplish.
You make a lot of great points. I think Progeny can be the feature that sets the tone for "replay value." FFXI used a sub-class system that made it so there truly was no end-game. There was always something to do. Leveling a sub-class to 25, 37, or 50 (at different stages of the game) was more important than earning any piece of gear, or completing any quest that was considered "end-game." They made it so that ALL content was relevant ... players were invested in their subclasses, and so the lower tier economies were BOOMING. If progeny ends up being a major feature that most players feel the need to tap into, I think Terminus will be a better place. If it's an optional thing that gets overlooked because the rewards aren't worth the time spent to accumulate them, every tier of content would be missing out in multiple ways.
I think it's very important to continue cycling veteran players onto lower level characters, and it should be consistent. I can't stress enough how much of a positive impact it has on the health of a server and longevity of the game. The hardcore raiders don't have to complain about "limited content" because there truly is no end-game. You don't get to "i-level X" and stop growing. There is always another stone to turn ... ability to seek out ... monster to hunt ... friend to make, the list goes on. I have said this before ... progeny will most likely be the single most important feature of this game. It's the ultimate cure to boredom in a sandbox world ... and you can use it over and over again, year after year ... and it only gets better. It can be the difference between a hardcore raider only logging into the game to complete raids every week, and playing it for fun during their free time.
Here is how I would like to see "end-game" defined. End-game is when you stop growing in power. You have every piece of loot, every ability, every faction, every monster conquered ... and if something new comes out, you are in the best position possible to take it down. When an expansion comes out, you have all of the "pre-work" done because you essentially "beat" the regular xpac and only need to focus on new content when the expansion is released. Progeny can make that problem go away. People won't get concentrated at the very top and run out of things to do. Make it so leveling up additional characters can continue to yield more rewards that are otherwise unattainable. Create exclusive quest lines, gear, abilities/spells that are only available to people with a second, third, or fourth generation character. Go all out! I understand that some people wouldn't like this, but if you think about why remort (progeny) was ever implemented into MUD's ... well, here are some of the reasons per http://mud.co.uk/dvw/whatisremort.html :
There are many reasons for having remort, from an admin perspective. Most importantly (in my opinion) is that it gives your higher level players something to continue to work towards or for. It's frustrating having a bunch of really bored players who loved the game when they started (weeks or months ago) but now have nothing else to do. Obviously there are other things you can have them doing besides remort (special high-level quests, special areas just for those of that level, access to being guild leaders if they have made a certain level only and so forth), but it is another option you can offer them.
You can reward your long-term players with some nifty new classes or special skills and spells. Those that are willing to play your game long enough to earn the right of a remort will often continue playing longer and have more loyalty to your game. After all, they've worked hard to get where they are! These classes may be considered more powerful and hence more desired than the initial starting classes that everyone chooses from. They may have new spells or skills that are unique amongst the different classes. Finally, on games that use class-based equipment, adding equipment that only the remort classes can use is also a draw for players.
Finally, on some games the only way to have multiple classes is through the remort system. That is, you have to start over again if you want to have access to more than one class and one set of skills. On games that start out with multi-classing from the beginning this is probably no nearly as novel, but it can add some spice to those games that do not have multi-classing available any other way.
DragonFist said:philo said:Enitzu said:The reason vanilla EQ raiding was so utterly boring was the fact that you could essentially kill the dragons with 25 people yet raid sizes were 72. So you ended up having way more people than needed which trivialized the content.
This is completely innacurate. Please don't make statements if you didnt actually play that content you are referring to. Raids were not sized for 72 people (or capped at 72). 25 people couldn't kill naggy/vox when the lvl cap was 50. Also, there is no such thing as vanilla EQ.
This is true. Raiding caps of 72 or any other number didn't come until years later with instanced raids. And I don't remember raids from those era being boring.
Yup. We used to do Vox, Naggy, etc. with 36 people as a standard. Sometimes people would go in with a little less or little more, but 36 was the generally accepted number. Same for Hate/Fear/Sky, although I did hear about people clearing Hate with 24 a few times (a very well-geared 24). But there were no limits. I remember one night where we had nearly 100 players in Fear because the first raid had a bad break, and then the second raid wiped trying to rescue the first raid, and finally the third raid came in to clear the respawns so the first two raids could CR and get some sleep. Not joking. Keep in mind that EQ didn't even have a raid UI at this point, so raid leaders were coordinating their groups via /shout and a piece of scratch paper. Seriously. It wasn't until later that the idea of raid UIs and having games officiall recognize "raid groups" as a thing really happened.
When POP released, people were doing some of the raids there with up to 72 players, but it was usually around the 36-48 side.
The biggest pickup raid I ever did was during the Halloween event one year when they set the Dracolich from Fear loose in the Rathe Mountains. People kept training the zone with him and with all of his little friends, so at one point we had eight groups on that zoneline just keeping it clear and protecting a full group of healers who were rezzing everyone, while another four groups were venturing out to drag corpses back. We counted rezzes - when we finally managed to finish CRing the entire zone and kill the stupid dracolich around 8 hours later, we had performed over 400 unique rezzes that night.
Fun times.
It's not the size of the raid that matters though. You can have a challenging raid with just 2-3 groups. APW in Vanguard was 18 people, and we never thought it was "easier" than POP.
Nephele said:...We used to do Vox, Naggy, etc. with 36 people as a standard....
No way. Not fear or hate either. Period. Not at level 50. After level 50? who cares? It doesn't matter cause you're too powerful and you're also doing a raid that's been done a 100,000 times. Boring indeed.
This is also why any comment about raiding on a progression server like Phynigal or Agnar or such like and talking about intelligent raiding like Liav mentioned is garbage because that's not raiding. That's reading how someone did the raid and what has been perfected over the last 18 years and claiming that's raiding....
Sorry folks, but again, that's not raiding.
oneADseven said:Guilds at the top of the food chain will make it their #1 priority to farm these encounters and kill them the instant they spawn to prevent other guilds from having an opportunity to learn them. It's cut-throat. I am a guild leader who has done this for many years and across a variety of games. We don't wake up at 4 AM so that we can kill pixels for fun. We do it because we want to make sure nobody else ever has an opportunity to experience the precious real time practice of fighting the mob.
This is the crux of the issue for me. Is this really a mentality that should be catered to or otherwise designed for?
Nephele said:DragonFist said:philo said:Enitzu said:The reason vanilla EQ raiding was so utterly boring was the fact that you could essentially kill the dragons with 25 people yet raid sizes were 72. So you ended up having way more people than needed which trivialized the content.
This is completely innacurate. Please don't make statements if you didnt actually play that content you are referring to. Raids were not sized for 72 people (or capped at 72). 25 people couldn't kill naggy/vox when the lvl cap was 50. Also, there is no such thing as vanilla EQ.
This is true. Raiding caps of 72 or any other number didn't come until years later with instanced raids. And I don't remember raids from those era being boring.Yup. We used to do Vox, Naggy, etc. with 36 people as a standard. Sometimes people would go in with a little less or little more, but 36 was the generally accepted number. Same for Hate/Fear/Sky, although I did hear about people clearing Hate with 24 a few times (a very well-geared 24). But there were no limits. I remember one night where we had nearly 100 players in Fear because the first raid had a bad break, and then the second raid wiped trying to rescue the first raid, and finally the third raid came in to clear the respawns so the first two raids could CR and get some sleep. Not joking. Keep in mind that EQ didn't even have a raid UI at this point, so raid leaders were coordinating their groups via /shout and a piece of scratch paper. Seriously. It wasn't until later that the idea of raid UIs and having games officiall recognize "raid groups" as a thing really happened.
When POP released, people were doing some of the raids there with up to 72 players, but it was usually around the 36-48 side.
The biggest pickup raid I ever did was during the Halloween event one year when they set the Dracolich from Fear loose in the Rathe Mountains. People kept training the zone with him and with all of his little friends, so at one point we had eight groups on that zoneline just keeping it clear and protecting a full group of healers who were rezzing everyone, while another four groups were venturing out to drag corpses back. We counted rezzes - when we finally managed to finish CRing the entire zone and kill the stupid dracolich around 8 hours later, we had performed over 400 unique rezzes that night.
Fun times.
It's not the size of the raid that matters though. You can have a challenging raid with just 2-3 groups. APW in Vanguard was 18 people, and we never thought it was "easier" than POP.
You just said in a previous post...
Nephele said: I will *never* forget taking 36 people to go kill Nagafen and Vox in EQ for epic quest pieces
There were no epic quests during the time period we are talking about. The lvl cap was higher during the time pertiod you are referring to.. The gear was way better. You were killing outdated content with those 36 people in order to get epic pieces...
I'm sure many of us remember the dracolich halloween event. I don't remember it being that rough...
There are plenty of people who inaccurately state their EQ experience. Please don't add to them. You weren't killing Naggy/Vox with 25 people when the cap was 50. I know it was a long time ago and it is difficult to remember specifics but...just no.
With respect to EQ raiding, Philo said : "There are plenty of people who inaccurately state their EQ experience." they are stating their EQ experience correctly but that's not the experience people had who were there first, who did it first. Unless you were there in the beginning, relating your experience really is immaterial.
Mod Edit: Removed quoted or referred to content that was removed.
Iksar said:oneADseven said:Guilds at the top of the food chain will make it their #1 priority to farm these encounters and kill them the instant they spawn to prevent other guilds from having an opportunity to learn them. It's cut-throat. I am a guild leader who has done this for many years and across a variety of games. We don't wake up at 4 AM so that we can kill pixels for fun. We do it because we want to make sure nobody else ever has an opportunity to experience the precious real time practice of fighting the mob.
This is the crux of the issue for me. Is this really a mentality that should be catered to or otherwise designed for?
No, which is why I have actively advocated for the "hyper/ghost" concept to be considered as I feel it could be a great solution for those very specific pain points. If raid bosses are purely contested, it's a kill or be killed world. You either adopt a mentality like that or lose out to someone else that does. We have come a long way in this genre and I am excited to see what VR has in mind when it comes to how they plan on implementing this kind of content.
What I would really like to see is Raid Events that maybe only happen once or have massive cooldowns like 60+ days, as well as have an impact on the Lore. Maybe the NPCs that survive the event take up shop temporarily in a low level dungeon, or maybe even take over an NPC town until a guild can defeat them or the event ends. Pretty much all top tier raids could follow an event format.
When my people would call a raid it was a community affair with plenty of booty for everyone. (forwardSlash winkemoji) They would even bring children to chase down the lifestock and round them up. Everyone had a job to do. Not just the best warriors.
Raids don't have to be a theme park ride, nor complex at every layer. You could have top guilds fighting descended Gods with complex mechanics, and everyone else fighting their generals with toned down mechanics. Or maybe Final Fantasy a single boss into several chucks that multiple groups can fight at once. Maybe the head and arms are 3 top raids, the torso is a tier back, and then the entire rest of the server can start fighting the minions, or the legs and tail.
Imagine if these top tier raids could be initiated only by competitive raid groups, but the entire server can participate. There is no reason at all to bind your thinking to an old paradigm.
philo said:Nephele said:DragonFist said:philo said:Enitzu said:The reason vanilla EQ raiding was so utterly boring was the fact that you could essentially kill the dragons with 25 people yet raid sizes were 72. So you ended up having way more people than needed which trivialized the content.
This is completely innacurate. Please don't make statements if you didnt actually play that content you are referring to. Raids were not sized for 72 people (or capped at 72). 25 people couldn't kill naggy/vox when the lvl cap was 50. Also, there is no such thing as vanilla EQ.
This is true. Raiding caps of 72 or any other number didn't come until years later with instanced raids. And I don't remember raids from those era being boring.Yup. We used to do Vox, Naggy, etc. with 36 people as a standard. Sometimes people would go in with a little less or little more, but 36 was the generally accepted number. Same for Hate/Fear/Sky, although I did hear about people clearing Hate with 24 a few times (a very well-geared 24). But there were no limits. I remember one night where we had nearly 100 players in Fear because the first raid had a bad break, and then the second raid wiped trying to rescue the first raid, and finally the third raid came in to clear the respawns so the first two raids could CR and get some sleep. Not joking. Keep in mind that EQ didn't even have a raid UI at this point, so raid leaders were coordinating their groups via /shout and a piece of scratch paper. Seriously. It wasn't until later that the idea of raid UIs and having games officiall recognize "raid groups" as a thing really happened.
When POP released, people were doing some of the raids there with up to 72 players, but it was usually around the 36-48 side.
The biggest pickup raid I ever did was during the Halloween event one year when they set the Dracolich from Fear loose in the Rathe Mountains. People kept training the zone with him and with all of his little friends, so at one point we had eight groups on that zoneline just keeping it clear and protecting a full group of healers who were rezzing everyone, while another four groups were venturing out to drag corpses back. We counted rezzes - when we finally managed to finish CRing the entire zone and kill the stupid dracolich around 8 hours later, we had performed over 400 unique rezzes that night.
Fun times.
It's not the size of the raid that matters though. You can have a challenging raid with just 2-3 groups. APW in Vanguard was 18 people, and we never thought it was "easier" than POP.
You just said in a previous post...
Nephele said: I will *never* forget taking 36 people to go kill Nagafen and Vox in EQ for epic quest pieces
There were no epic quests during the time period we are talking about. The lvl cap was higher during the time pertiod you are referring to.. The gear was way better. You were killing outdated content with those 36 people in order to get epic pieces...
I'm sure many of us remember the dracolich halloween event. I don't remember it being that rough...
There are plenty of people who inaccurately state their EQ experience. Please don't add to them. You weren't killing Naggy/Vox with 25 people when the cap was 50. I know it was a long time ago and it is difficult to remember specifics but...just no.
So I went and looked it up, just to make sure I remembered right, and you're partially correct. The Fiery Avenger was in game pre-Kunark. The other class "1.0" epics were added after Kunark, because of player demand. Then later they turned around and added a second round of epic quests. But we were farming those books before Kunark released :) Just not the bard strings and such. You can actually find patch notes for old EQ archived online. Talk about a trip down memory lane.
I will say that I personally never killed Vox (before or after Kunark) with less than about 33 people. You just needed that many people to make it work, back when I was running it. I never saw it personally, but I did hear of guilds taking down Naggy with less than 30 - but he was always the easier fight. That was most definitely after Kunark though.
That being said, I'm not sure how this is really relevant to the rest of the discussion in the thread? I mean don't get me wrong, forum jousting is a fun pastime, but shouldn't we be talking more about what we want Pantheon to be like and not trying to prove who remembers the year 2000 better? :)
Edit: I re-read and I think you actually got me confused with someone else! I never claimed to be killing them with 25 people. That was Enitzu, I believe. I was actually agreeing with/supporting your comment. I know the way the forum handles quotes makes it hard to figure out who said what in a big set of nested quotes, so no harm done :)
The dracolich event on the Nameless was super bad just because people kept trying to kill it without clearing the smaller mobs away first. That and the trains. It was like mass stupidity and confusion. Other servers probably had it much better.
To bring us back on track a little - I'm not sure I agree with your assertion that content is obsolete as soon as the level cap goes up. While that's certainly true in more recent games (and it sucks), back in pre-POP EQ it wasn't the case at all. Those fights were only marginally less challenging with "geared" 60s than they were at 50. Even in the Velious era when most guilds were sitting in NToV, people still wiped on dragons/hate/fear regularly, and not for lack of levels or gear. It wasn't until POP happened and player stats really started to spike upwards that old world things got "easy" to the point where you could really "undersize" them.
I think it's more true to say that (specific to Pantheon) - level cap increases don't have to kill content, as long as itemization is handled in such a way that player power doesn't skyrocket along with that level cap increase. It's totally something that VR should insure that they do *right* once the game releases and they start working on expansions. Hopefully they already know that.
Thread cleaned up, all off-topic and personal references have been removed, please take any personal issues to PMs, no one else wants to read them and it is against forum guidelines to do so, further action will be taken against repeat offenders if this continues as the message doesn't seem to be getting through.
Sarim said:IMO having to fight over contested mobs is a form of PvP, which has no place in a game that claims to be PvE. With that in mind, I would prefer that Pantheon will go a route similar to VG's raiding with lockout timers and fairly quick respawns.
Of course in an open world everything is sort of contested, but at least with most stuff, you have other options. Your favorite exp spot is already camped, or someone is harvesting the area you wanted to? No problem, go somewhere else. But with raid mobs which require so much more "setup" to fight effectively, and which are more rare (both due to long respawns and the simple fact that there aren't as many of them), this model of "go somewhere else" breaks apart.
Also the question of entitlement. If every every player (who can muster enough support and prepare correctly) can just go and fight all raid mobs, then raid rewards aren't exclusively anymore only to those "pro players", right? But again, isn't it sort of the point of a game that claims to be a cooperative PvE game, that the game should put limits on what you can or can't do, and not other players?
I recognize that the contest that existed in EQ is a source of "drama" which may be a driving force to build a great community, instead of having just a number of guilds who merely co-exist in a game world. The question is just, does the positive that comes from it outweigh the negative?
Sorry for the rambling...I think I need to get some coffee now :)
Ahhh yes, this is at the core of what is wrong with contested raids on a PvE server. On PvP servers contested raids are merely another thing to fight over, but on PvE servers things get all screwed up without heavy GM interference. Since Pantheon is going to launch without PvP I think it should be obvious that contested raids are a bad idea.
To get on with the topic of Raiding in MMOs...last I checked Pantheon doesn't have a massive budget nor a massive dev team. The smart money is to not even bother with raiding at all since that is not what the majority of MMORPG players do anyways...but it is sounding like VR is going to develop raids for Pantheon. I think the game will suffer because of it. Raids take the largest amount of time to develop for and are used by the fewest players. Raiders tend to be hardcore gamers who consume content very quickly, and they are very vocal. I should know, I raided quite a bit in WoW during BC, Wrath, and Cata. During Wrath I was in one of those guilds that did bleeding edge content (25 man ICC heroic). I didn't raid a lot in EQ but I did a few Phinny and Hate raids. If you only develop a small handful of half-baked raids the raiders will be very critical of you, they are not easily pleased.
In my view if you have a limited budget you either develop a game centered around raiding, or you develop a game centered around the other stuff. What was WoW's budget? 100 million dollars? Vanguard:SOH was 30 million and that was a very conservative budget. RIFT was around 50 million. Raiding cannot be done right without a very heavy focus upon it in other words it needs a large dev team dedicated to it.
So at this point I say bring on the alternatives for endgame. Grinding rep, grinding gear, progeny system, elite dungeons, whatever.
oneADseven said:Iksar said:oneADseven said:Guilds at the top of the food chain will make it their #1 priority to farm these encounters and kill them the instant they spawn to prevent other guilds from having an opportunity to learn them. It's cut-throat. I am a guild leader who has done this for many years and across a variety of games. We don't wake up at 4 AM so that we can kill pixels for fun. We do it because we want to make sure nobody else ever has an opportunity to experience the precious real time practice of fighting the mob.
This is the crux of the issue for me. Is this really a mentality that should be catered to or otherwise designed for?
No, which is why I have actively advocated for the "hyper/ghost" concept to be considered as I feel it could be a great solution for those very specific pain points. If raid bosses are purely contested, it's a kill or be killed world. You either adopt a mentality like that or lose out to someone else that does. We have come a long way in this genre and I am excited to see what VR has in mind when it comes to how they plan on implementing this kind of content.
But how is the "hyper/ghost" concept not the exact same thing? The same mentality prevails. Hardcore raiders dominate all the hyper spawns to deny the opportunity for others to experience the "real" encounter & to deny them access to the actual good loot.
That's not how it works. Ghosted mobs in Vanguard couldn't be engaged until unghosted, in other words it functioned like an open world lockout timer. Assuming that the lockout timers are in increments of 24 hours, this allows you to have a sane raiding schedule.
Making it so the mobs respawn every hour or so allows a lot of guilds get chances at the content.
At the same time, this still allows for racing because it is possible for two guilds to compete over the same mob when neither guild has a lockout.
Iksar said:oneADseven said:Iksar said:oneADseven said:Guilds at the top of the food chain will make it their #1 priority to farm these encounters and kill them the instant they spawn to prevent other guilds from having an opportunity to learn them. It's cut-throat. I am a guild leader who has done this for many years and across a variety of games. We don't wake up at 4 AM so that we can kill pixels for fun. We do it because we want to make sure nobody else ever has an opportunity to experience the precious real time practice of fighting the mob.
This is the crux of the issue for me. Is this really a mentality that should be catered to or otherwise designed for?
No, which is why I have actively advocated for the "hyper/ghost" concept to be considered as I feel it could be a great solution for those very specific pain points. If raid bosses are purely contested, it's a kill or be killed world. You either adopt a mentality like that or lose out to someone else that does. We have come a long way in this genre and I am excited to see what VR has in mind when it comes to how they plan on implementing this kind of content.
But how is the "hyper/ghost" concept not the exact same thing? The same mentality prevails. Hardcore raiders dominate all the hyper spawns to deny the opportunity for others to experience the "real" encounter & to deny them access to the actual good loot.
It's not the "exact" same thing because people still get an opportunity to learn the encounter. It may not be the exact same fight as the "hyper" version, but players would still be able to get some valuable practice in on the mob. That alone is an incentive compared to purely contested content where most guilds will never have an opportunity to engage it, let alone learn it's mechanics. Additionally, the ghost mob would still drop loot. Both versions could have a shared loot table, and the hyper version could have some exclusive drops. I have been involved in the hardcore raiding scene for many years and I can tell you without a doubt that allowing people to practice an encounter (even if it's toned down some) and earn some loot from it puts them in a much greater position to actually "contest" the "contested" version. It's a night and day difference. If the hardcore raiders "dominate all of the hyper spawns" then good for them ... there is no excuse for "well I never even had a chance to pull it/learn it" or "we just don't have the gear to fight it" -- these are two extremely important variables that otherwise would not exist. What would you rather have? Remember, the idea behind this is a compromise. Would you rather see some contested content that drops the best loot in the game, and some "ghost" content that is catered more towards casual semi-hardcore guilds that drops decent gear? Or would you rather see every mob have both versions?
Well as you know I'd rather see raids not be an exclusivity club at all, the difficulty of the encounter should be the filter between the haves and have nots. People are quick to jump on the "then everyone will be running around in raid gear" or "loot pinata" bandwagons, yet even in something like WoW the hardest raids are completed by just about 5% of the population or one particular tier in FFXIV history that was so tightly tuned that only 1% ever finished when it was relevant. Be "better" than other players by being more skilled, not by being in the right place at the right time.