Disclaimer: The below is something I think that Pantheon can learn from, which is why I'm posting about it here. It's not an attempt to argue that one game is "better" than another or that there's not other games that Pantheon can learn from as well. It's not an attempt to say that Pantheon needs to be "like" any other game. It's simply an examination of how players react to a scenario that is similar to what Pantheon envisions, and asking the question "what can we learn from this?"
So, when I am not spending my time doing Pantheon-related things or building my Fortress of Doom in No Man's Sky, I still log into FFXIV to play with my guildies there. As I'm sure some of you aware, FFXIV is at its core a very different game from what Pantheon is trying to be. However, a few months ago, Square Enix introduced a new content area they call "Eureka, the Forbidden Land" which is purposely designed to be a throwback to an older, group-focused way of doing things - something that's very relevant to Pantheon.
About a month ago the second set of Eureka content was released, and now having played through both sets of content (though I'm still working on the second) I wanted to present some things that I have noticed, which I think are relevant for VR and Pantheon.
How Eureka works:
The bulk of FFXIV is designed to be soloable, with grouping reserved primarily for dungeons and story instances. Quests are the primary XP generator although it's possible to earn XP by killing things or completing in world events (called FATEs). Instances and FATEs will automatically scale everyone down to their level, so a level 50 person can help their level 20 friend complete content with no problems, although the scaling isn't perfect and stats earned from gear generally result in people being overpowered when they're scaled down.
Eureka turns that on its head:
How players have reacted:
Put together, all of this represents a return to a much more time-intensive, group-oriented design. It's a big departure from everything else in FFXIV, so it's interesting to look at how players have reacted to it. Here's what I've noticed:
1) People complain about the grind, but they still do it. Whether it's because they've run out of other things in the game to work on, or because they really want those shiny weapons and armor, a fair number of FFXIV players are working their way through Eureka at their own pace. They'll complain about how long it takes to level up, but they'll keep going and working on it.
2) People progress at vastly different rates. In the first week after the release of each of the two Eureka zones so far, people playing in them have been relatively close in level. By the end of that week however, there's a group of people who have shot up to the higher levels for the zone, and then everyone else who's somewhere behind them. By the third week, the division has become so extreme that it actually causes conflict between people trying to do the higher-level parts of the content, and people who are still leveling up.
3) People find the most efficient way to level very quickly. In the first Eureka zone, within a week, players had figured out the trigger conditions for every Notorious Monster as well as the cooldown timer for them between spawns, built a web tracker application, and from that time forward the way to level up became to join the "train" that would go from NM to NM to NM and spawn them in sequence. Normal grouping was essentially abandoned because the NM train rewarded experience so much faster and more efficiently. For low level characters, this often meant standing in a corner while everyone else fought the monster, so that you could essentially soak up free experience - which, even scaled down because of your level, was still significant.
The second Eureka zone has a smaller number of NMs and made them a bit tougher for people outside of their level range to get to. The patch that brought the zone also added a number of weekly "challenges" that reward substantial experience for killing 20/30/40/60 of various types of mobs that are near your own level. The result of that now is that people group up for "challenge" groups to do their challenges each week, and then go after whichever NMs are within their reach. At higher levels, the "train" takes over as players are able to access more of the NMs.
4) The biggest complaint of players is that they can't play with their higher/lower level friends. People will complain about the grind (but still do it), and they'll complain about how boring the train is (but still do it). But the vast majority of players who are unhappy about Eureka are unhappy because they can't group with their friends or guildmates due to level differences. At least from what I have observed, this is the main reason that people simply avoid doing the content - especially if they're starting late and are behind everyone they know.
What Pantheon can learn from this:
I think there are a few lessons that can be learned that apply to Pantheon. Other folks may spot things that I missed, but here's what I see.
1) Slow progression is not a deterrent, as long as the rewards are meaningful.
2) If there's a path of least resistance for progression, players will figure it out and abuse it, ignoring everything else.
3) If the game doesn't find a way to allow people to play with their friends despite level differences, players will be discouraged and unhappy.
(Edited a couple of times for formatting)
Nephele said:
What Pantheon can learn from this:
I think there are a few lessons that can be learned that apply to Pantheon. Other folks may spot things that I missed, but here's what I see.
1) Slow progression is not a deterrent, as long as the rewards are meaningful.
2) If there's a path of least resistance for progression, players will figure it out and abuse it, ignoring everything else.
3) If the game doesn't find a way to allow people to play with their friends despite level differences, players will be discouraged and unhappy.
(Edited a couple of times for formatting)
I am a long time FF MMO player. I stopped XIV right before Stormblood tho, so dont have direct experience with Eureka. However, I wanted to comment on your three points.
1.) Spot on. The rewards should to be meaningful AND lasting. Also, slow progression only becomes detrimental to a game if the content is all loaded at the "endgame." From what I have been reading about Pantheon it seems like the game will be interesting at all levels, so slow progression could be a none issue with their formula. It actually could be a good feature.
2.) One trend in FFXIV I never cared for was the exp trains. Whether it was for hunts, Fates, or Eureka... its just a bad model. FFXI had a better NM system, where there was more of a random set of places NM could spawn, and larger time window. I believe if Pantheon follows something like this it would prevents the websites from tracking NM so easily. Also, the teleporting feeds those trains because you can travel anywhere, at any time.
3.) In this day and age I agree that we should have ways to play with friends of differetn levels. However, I would like to see some restrictions on it.
For example here is an idea... if I'm level 50 and my friend is level 25, I can only sync with him/her in a town(safe zone). After we are done leveling, I have to go back to a safezone to unsync. The reason I would like to see this is because it allows players to group with friends but at the same time it truely brings you back down to their level.
You can't just power through the first part of a dungeon to meet your friend at a camp, then level sync with them, and power your way back out later on. Just a thought!
Anyway, thanks for the post.
Frankly and not to take as an aggression, but the best things to learn from Eureka are not to make anything lookalike. The rewards are really meaningless for the time and grind it takes, which isn't even "pleasing at all.". Like every "relic weapon quest" it's not aimed at casual or regular players, but only thoses who can spend 8 hours a day farming, especially as Ilvl in FFXIV is quickly errased by new content and items and no grind is meant to "last".
In EQ class weapons were a long run you could do in a long time, but that would last you long.
Other points are experiences you can see in the many different MMO that flourished and died in the last decades : People will at least work to reach the "top" of the game, and I did it a lot of time myself (Wilstar, Rift, beeing examples) only to leave because it wasn't interesting at all in the end.
Nephele said:What Pantheon can learn from this:
I think there are a few lessons that can be learned that apply to Pantheon. Other folks may spot things that I missed, but here's what I see.
1) Slow progression is not a deterrent, as long as the rewards are meaningful.
2) If there's a path of least resistance for progression, players will figure it out and abuse it, ignoring everything else.
3) If the game doesn't find a way to allow people to play with their friends despite level differences, players will be discouraged and unhappy.
Good news....
1. They're planning on slow progression with the understanding that some people are going to do whatever they can to rush to it to get to the "end game". That being said there will be meaningful content, and "phat l00tz" for all levels. Including mid-level raid-style content.
2. See item 1, and.... There are going to be things that if you skip out on them, you will "miss out" on some things relatively important. For instance, they said that if you don't do much "adventuring", you will miss out on skills and skill trainers that someone else may not, which means that if you're both level 30 (for example) they may have some skills that you do not. They're hoping to make it so that people want to adventure, not just raw grind to get to max level as quickly as they can.
3. Good news.... That's what the "mentor system" that they are planning on putting together is exactly for. So that you can temporarily "de-level" to group with your friends who are lower level than you are. They called it something specific, but I can't remember what it was called.
Please keep in mind that this is all information that I gleaned from various streams, so your mileage may vary once they actually go live.
@Op I've played abit of the Eureka content and I have to say that Square need not bother doing it as it's a poor throw-back. As for rewards for grinding; what rewards? You level up (that's your reward for grinding) and explore to find gear/loot/stuff.. and this is just one of the reasons why they've done a poor throw-back in my opinion. I have full confidence if anyone's gunna make a decent group game, it's VR.
Very good post - there are so many things I disliked about FFXIV but most of them focused on having to do endless dungeons in groups where people rarely spoke to each other and the only challenge was learning the mechanics and going from point to point to point at the right time in the right way. Ability to play your class rarely relevant. I left well before Eureka and have never regretted it. But some things FFXIV did very very well.
>1) Slow progression is not a deterrent, as long as the rewards are meaningful.
2) If there's a path of least resistance for progression, players will figure it out and abuse it, ignoring everything else.
3) If the game doesn't find a way to allow people to play with their friends despite level differences, players will be discouraged and unhappy.<
1. Definitely true from my experience with the caveat as you noted that if the "endgame" is particularly interesting or important more than a few people will view the rest of the game as an obstacle to be overcome not enjoyable content for them to get their money's worth from. Thus, while Pantheon needs some raids or other endgame content, an excessive focus on this will undercut all that came before.
To me slow progression implies that rewards should generally *not* be that meaningful. The power of gear in particular should go up slowly just as levels go up slowly. If a major quest line at level 15 gives the first magic weapon - plus one (using D&D terminology) and it *glows* that fits nicely with slow leveling.
2. Most definitely true. Many paths to power-leveling or speed-leveling have involved using techniques put in the game to allow people of differeing levels to group with each other. EQ2 and level-agnostic dungeons, Rift and intrepid adventures for example. This should be prevented at almost all costs lest Pantheon die the real death or, worse, turn into EQ2 or Rift.
3. Agreed but IMO *far* less important than preventing the power leveling abuses so prevelant in many other games. People can find ways to play with friends - such as dedicated groups that level together while people that play a lot more spend their extra time on other characters.
The abuse almost always is that the lower level gains experience or gear far too fast. Often because the experience table gives lower levels far too much experience compared to their actual level. Also often because the scaling down of higher levels leaves them too powerful for their new nominal level and the group blows through content very fast - thus far too much experience per minute.
If VR cannot avoid both of these things there should be no mentoring despite the advantages you correctly point out.
Thanks dorotea. I can always count on you for a thoughtful response :)
I think in most games with level-sync mentoring systems (including FFXIV) the problem always comes down to gear scaling. Since gear gets more powerful as players level, when they sync down, those modifiers are still higher than what they would have had at the lower level, and this results in them being able to do things more easily than they should have otherwise - which in turn leads to the power-leveling scenarios.
I feel like there should be a way to make that work but it's something that a lot of games have failed at getting right, to date.
Wow, a thoughtful thread - I have to jump in. Nicely summarised Neph. Agreed with both on points 1 and 2; and while both valid on number 3 I think I'm with Neph slightly more. Yeah there are always ways to play with friends, but I've seen sometimes those paths can take you a little too far out of your way (e.g. creating an alt while falling behind on your main in some respect). I've experienced this once where ultimately I had to make a choice between friend and raids. That was not a pleasant place to be.
I was really enjoying what you wrote Neph right up to the trains. Those were awful; as too was the far too strict dance routine of the bosses (and the demise of the WHM in favour of scholar at endgame). I thought I might even pop back into it for a bit up to that point. Shame because I loved the story quest to bits and the world was fantastic; and I was very attached to my lovely multi-class character. So many good things going for the game, ruined by one point. I wonder if there's a lesson somewhere in that too..