This is an idea I've had concerning the notion of dynamic difficulty as a potential solution to the problem of large well-structured guilds monopolising or near-monopolising large tracts of raid content, which is likely going to become an issue sooner or later in a purely open world, especially given Pantheon's "veteran" playerbase.
The devs have previously talked about the idea of dynamic difficulty in raiding, where a raid encounter might scale its difficulty according to the number of people who engage it, e.g., Boss_A when engaged by 40 people will be a very different encounter from Boss_A engaged by 20 people.
So, the basic idea then is the activation of dynamic difficulty with respect to number of consecutive kills of a Raid Mob, as well as just for raid size. For example, every consecutive time a single guild kills a certain Boss in a row, the difficulty of that boss will increase slightly, but only for that particular guild. So, if Guild X kills Boss_A once, and if they then mobilise for it again ~3-4 days later when it respawns, it's going to be more difficult than it was during their first kill, but JUST for Guild X. And then more difficult still the third time, and so on. Eventually Boss_A will become prohibitively difficult for Guild X, forcing Guild X to take a break from it. That is, if Guild Y then comes along and kills Boss A (which will be "base level" or "normal" difficulty for Guild Y), then the positively reinforcing effect will be broken for Guild X and the next time they come along, it will be "base level" for them as well.
I think this is actually a pretty feasible solution to the problem. It will reduce the extent to which the most organised and competent raid guilds can monopolise content, but in a way that correlates with that guild's ability, i.e., the more effective and organised the guild, the greater number of times they'll be able to kill a single boss back-to-back before they're forced, by excessive difficulty, to take a break and give a less "hard-core" guild a shot. This system would have the additional benefit of automatically providing maximally challenging content to the most capable raid guilds, reducing likelihood of burnout at the high-end. Guilds would need to continuously adapt and grow and evolve in order to take on the Nth incarnation of any given raid mob. It might be that on release the 2nd incarnation of pretty much every raid boss is just going to mercilessly skullfuck any raid team, but that after a few weeks/months of farming gear, that 2nd incarnation becomes plausible, although this can be tweaked however desired.
This might be implemented on an individual basis. So, for example, each person involved in the immediately previous kill of Boss_X will, upon engaging the mob, activate a 2% (arbitrary example) modifier of the stats of Boss_X. And this 2% modifier will be adjusted upwardly according to the number of consecutive kills the person has been involved in (e.g., it might be doubled to 4% for somebody who was involved in the previous two kills, rather than just the previous one), and will be adjusted downwardly according to the number of days that have passed since the boss was last killed (i.e., the entire effect will decay over time, and so might be halved for every 24 hours). So, the final "difficulty level" of the Boss would be 100% plus an individual modifier for each person who was involved in the previous kill, with each of these individual modifiers adjusted according to consecutive kills (increase) and time elapsed (decrease). The effect will decay over time (i.e., the downward adjustment) so that guilds without any competition won't have to wait indefinitely.
So, every person who engages a Boss when they were involved in the previous kill will make the Boss more difficult than its base level.
In order to prevent guilds from using alt armies, the individual modifier might apply to an IP/account rather than just a single character, although I'm entirely unaware of whether implementing something like that would actually be plausible.
Potential for abuse exists in people from opposing guilds who were involved in the previous kill deliberately getting on aggro lists to artificially boost difficulty. But that might not be too hard to deal with by classing such behaviour as griefing warranting account action.
In addition to the "continuous" difficulty modification I've described above, there might also be a "discontinuous" difficulty modification that activates once a certain theshold is crossed. For example, rather than simply stats being increased, it could be that if the 150% mark is crossed, then the Boss might gain new mechanics and abilities.
You could even have a silly little emote like "The spirit of recalls its previous encounter with you and your allies and has learned from its mistakes! [143%]" in order to notify the raid that the difficulty has been amped up, and the extent to which it has been amped up.
But the overall effect would be to increase content accessibility without requiring instancing and without requiring that the strongest guilds don't compete to their full ability. That is, they'd still be free to compete, but the mob difficulty they'd face would scale according to their ability to monopolize. With a playerbase that is likely going to disproportionately consist of people who have previously played in high-end raid guilds in previous MMORPGs, and who will therefore intend to play in such raid guilds in Pantheon as well, I think that something like this might be a necessary part of preventing the raid scene from becoming an absolute clusterfuck.
As you mentioned, this is to easy to abuse/grief.
Throwing low level bodies into raid mobs to increase the difficulty and prevent guilds from being able to kill it. I like the idea about the mob increasing in difficulty for consecutive kills.
It should not be tied to IP, my alt should be able to raid anything I want separate from my main without making things harder.
It should be a flat difficulty increase for the mob itself, completely separate from the number of players. 5% increase to boss difficulty for each consecutive kill, based upon the number of players flagged for the recent kill (if more than 50% of the attacking players have the "debuff" the mobs difficulty increases when it hits 95%.
This would prevent griefing from guilds, since if my guild killed it last with 50 players, if I'm able to bring 50 players again the difficulty increases. If I can only field 30 and another guild has 50, theres no way for us to affect them, it would just be a standard dps race.
I like your idea about the difficulty modifier only taking effect at 95%, offering a sort of buffer period. That way if a guild is trying a raid-wide 3rd iteration, for example, for the first time and they're expecting it to hurt, then they have the first 5% to brace themselves for it; imagine if Vindi suddenly became AOW at 95% back in Velious.
I hadn't actually considered the possibility of deliberate abuse using low-level characters, but wouldn't having the flagging check consider character level would be a simple solution to that? It would mean that if you want to risk a character/account by deliberately using it to abuse something like this, you first have to spend hundreds of hours to level the character to max or near max.
I'm not sure I understand your last paragraph, but my intention is that the difficulty mechanic would reset on every deaggro, so if we had two guilds simultaneously competing (with one guild having killed the mob the previous cycle), then they'd be taking turns at the same mob but with two different difficulty levels.
Tethys said:I like your idea about the difficulty modifier only taking effect at 95%, offering a sort of buffer period. That way if a guild is trying a raid-wide 3rd iteration, for example, for the first time and they're expecting it to hurt, then they have the first 5% to brace themselves for it; imagine if Vindi suddenly became AOW at 95% back in Velious.
I hadn't actually considered the possibility of deliberate abuse using low-level characters, but wouldn't having the flagging check consider character level would be a simple solution to that? It would mean that if you want to risk a character/account by deliberately using it to abuse something like this, you first have to spend hundreds of hours to level the character to max or near max.
I'm not sure I understand your last paragraph, but my intention is that the difficulty mechanic would reset on every deaggro, so if we had two guilds simultaneously competing (with one guild having killed the mob the previous cycle), then they'd be taking turns at the same mob but with two different difficulty levels.
Low level abuse or high level abuse. It doesnt matter. The only reason to have a mob change difficulty based on number of players is to prevent zerging, well you can also prevent zerging by instancing... but that's another thread. I just think it's too easy to harass other guilds with.
For example. I'm in the top guild. For whatever reason we are unable to field a full 50 players to contest guild 2 on a kill. Instead we send in our 30 players just to make their fight more difficult and hopefully prevent them from killing the boss.
As for my last paragraph let me try and explain what I meant.
I dont think the mob difficulty should increase purely based upon someone being flagged as being the last to kill, more so based on a majority of the players attacking the mob.
So if guild 1 kills the mob with 50 players, all of who now have the debuff, the next time they fight, they will be fighting the "harder" mob. Let's say the next time they go to raid that mob their numbers are low. Now they only have 30 players available. If guild 2 (with 50 players) engages at the same time as guild 1, the mon should not be buffed, since its 50 "new" players and 30 "recurring" players.
Also, something else you could do. You could have a stacking buff on individual players. So instead of each time the boss getting 5% harder (assuming 50 players is the targeted raid size) you can apply a stacking debuff on the players that increase the mobs difficulty by .1%. Therefore at 50 you have your 5%, but if you're unable to field the same raid size you arent being hindered entirely by a raw % increase. This would also be a way to actually scale a boss based upon raid size, but restrict the ability to grief other raids, since someone who isnt flagged as a recurring attacker doesnt impact the difficulty.
Withouth specific condition, that's a design GW2 used as all their "timed targets" are FFA and everyone gets loot. To counter zerging they are stronger and stronger the more people are involved in the fight.
The result beeing : Bosses are usually incredibely hard once a threshold has been reached, not because they are "complex" but because many people are afk / dead not standing back or not even trying to deal with mechanics.
They are mathematically too hard for a low amount of players (10 or less, I'd say) and technically too hard for a zerg of 100 players due to the scaling ignoring the lazyness factor, which is a common abuse with all FFA reward system : Get involved and get away.
I am not against dynamic stats for encounters, but I think they are even more of a pain to balance for every size sample. For thoses who remember the "Flex" size of wow raids (which is the norm now except for mythic raiding), they were advertised as "flexible between 10 and 25 players" but ended beeing impossible at 10 due to too few players to share and manage mechanics. The threshold of "healers per player" were also really dull and resulted to players having to switch between heal and DPS depending of the encounter, with the addition of no more tank need whatever the size was, putting the flex to concern only heals and DPS.
However, I do not know how they plan to make "lockout mechanics" for FFA targets and prevent zerging as a norm.
@Tethys - Firstly, I would like to give you some credit for trying to tackle this concept. I think the future of MMO balance will be found in some form of dynamic difficulty scaling. Often times this comes by the game actively changing itself to adjust to the skill of the user or by the user adjusting their expectations to set their own barrier for "success".
One thing I think you should consider with this concept is how players will try to beat your system and whether or not that process is enjoyable. If there's one thing you can count on, it's that people will try to find a way to circumvent any barrier with the least possible cost.
Guild based difficulty scaling - I think the lowest hanging fruit here is having multiple guilds that you swap in/out of or un-guilded people. If Guild A has most recently killed Boss X, then before you engage everyone in the raid drops guild, then pass invites around for Guild B, then take it down at normal difficulty. The payoff is worth the cost, but the cost is annoying, tedious, and will cause players to complain that they're being "forced" to behave in such an odd manner.
Individual based difficulty scaling - In this setup you would just have to create an alt. This is quite easy to achieve and high end raid guilds would likely require that you have two raid-ready characters to swap between so they can lock things down. The payoff is worth the cost and the cost isn't so bad. I don't think many players would complain, but it also wouldn't be much of a roadblock.
Account based difficulty scaling - In this setup you would have to buy a second account and create your second character there. I think people would say this is pay to win and would raise hell.
IP difficulty scaling - I don't know how this would work, so I can't speak to it, but I would imagine that some combination of VPN and have multiple accounts would circumvent it. It just doesn't seem like a great path to go down.
You have proposed 4 variables that can act as the limiting factor - Guilds, characters, accounts, and IP addresses. These things can all be artificially multiplied by individual users to create a loophole.
I think some iteration of this concept could be viable, but I don't think you've found it quite yet. I think (as I've said in other threads) that the competitive part of raiding should be offloaded to group/solo content where smaller groups have a chance, but my hat is off to you for throwing your concept into the ring and I hope you and others continue to brainstorm on it.
A consecutive kill difficulty scale would be easily circumvented by the top guilds coordinating their raids and trading back and forth. For example, guild A kills boss A while guild B kills boss B. Next spawn, they trade.
Also, how would this scaling work if there are players from both guilds raiding with the other guilds? Would the presense of a single guild A member in guild B's raid count as a guild A kill for scaling purposes?
Very interesting thread.
I will just comment on one point - I am not convinced that someone else killing the mob should reset the difficulty. In fact I am quite convinced it shouldn't. Maybe the passage of time - a LOT of time - should.
Maybe it should never be reset - let each guild move on and give others a chance after enough kills.
Counter-argument - what about new members that want to gear up? Well there should be quite a few bosses to kill. And a system that makes it very hard for one guild to stay preeminent sounds good to me.
Like a "luxury tax" in some United States professional sports. Make it harder and harder for the top guild to stay on top and encourage new players/alts to try other guilds.
The "elitist" crowd with top guild experience strongly favors open world with no instances and a lot of competition. Because they expect to dominate. Okay let's give them what they claim to want - competition - for status as the best guild to join or stay in.
It also depends on how hard it is to setup a guild. Otherwise, kill boss, disband guild, create new guild.
Or even better Guild "Uber-Players" creates a new guild "Uber-Players-DragonRaid" and invite the raid members, kills dragon, disbands new guild.
I like the concept of scaling difficulty, but tieing it to a guild is hard to control and has too many variables to make it fair or consistent.
Although my initial recommendation was that something like this should be implemented on the individual level rather than at the guild level...
Tethys said:This might be implemented on an individual basis. So, for example, each person involved in the immediately previous kill of Boss_X will, upon engaging the mob, activate a 2% (arbitrary example) modifier of the stats of Boss_X. And this 2% modifier will be adjusted upwardly according to the number of consecutive kills the person has been involved in (e.g., it might be doubled to 4% for somebody who was involved in the previous two kills, rather than just the previous one), and will be adjusted downwardly according to the number of days that have passed since the boss was last killed (i.e., the entire effect will decay over time, and so might be halved for every 24 hours). So, the final "difficulty level" of the Boss would be 100% plus an individual modifier for each person who was involved in the previous kill, with each of these individual modifiers adjusted according to consecutive kills (increase) and time elapsed (decrease). The effect will decay over time (i.e., the downward adjustment) so that guilds without any competition won't have to wait indefinitely.
So, every person who engages a Boss when they were involved in the previous kill will make the Boss more difficult than its base level.
In addition to the "continuous" difficulty modification I've described above, there might also be a "discontinuous" difficulty modification that activates once a certain theshold is crossed. For example, rather than simply stats being increased, it could be that if the 150% mark is crossed, then the Boss might gain new mechanics and abilities.
In order to prevent guilds from using alt armies, the individual modifier might apply to an IP/account rather than just a single character, although I'm entirely unaware of whether implementing something like that would actually be plausible.
How about a sort of "hybrid" system that considers both individuals and guilds then? Here's how I would envision it: IF Guild X composes ~40% or more of a killing force, then all players with the Guild X tag will also be flagged as having "participated" in the kill, such that simply dropping the guildtag will be insufficient to "deflag" a person. So, it would still be on working on "the individual level", but there would be a sort of Guild-Wide contaigon system wherein all characters/accounts/IPs in a certain Guild at time of Boss death are flagged. This model would potentially incorporate all four of the levels you identify (character, guild, account, IP) and therefore might be plausible. Thanks very much for picking the idea apart Ainadak, most helpful.
If it were the case that all IPs involved directly or indirectly (by Guild-Wide contaigon) in a kill become flagged as having participated, then I can only see one feasible "workaround" for a guild hellbent on dominating everything they can but unwilling to face the system honestly and head-on... And that would be to become large enough to be able to field two individual raid squads each tagged in separate guilds. That is, it might mean that what would otherwise be a single guild may voluntarily fractionate into two guilds united under an Alliance of some sort. I think this could actually be a satisfactory result, as it may still have the effect of distributing mob access to a greater number of people than otherwise...although admittedly this is debatable. Although it's also conceivable that this might encourage some guilds to abandon having their characters tagged in guilds altogether, but to nevertheless have two or more free-floating raid forces...
One obvious issue here is making sure that the system doesn't suffer from runaway complexity. I think that in order for something like this to work it needs to remain relatively straightforward to understand, rather than having a million and one separate conditions written in fine-print. I'm sure some would argue that that point has already been reached.
Dorotea, I do like your idea as it would make simply sitting out for one week unable to completely negate previous kills. It might be that there are individual modifiers for something like the past 5 or 6 (or however many you want) previous kills, all active simultaneously, and all constantly decaying towards 0. This would force guilds to have to improve themselves constantly if they wish to continue killing raid bosses at any given frequency.
Akilae said:A consecutive kill difficulty scale would be easily circumvented by the top guilds coordinating their raids and trading back and forth. For example, guild A kills boss A while guild B kills boss B. Next spawn, they trade.
Also, how would this scaling work if there are players from both guilds raiding with the other guilds? Would the presense of a single guild A member in guild B's raid count as a guild A kill for scaling purposes?
1. To some extent that's true, depending on how exactly it's implemented. But even if it does lead to two guilds swapping back and forth, that's probably a better result overall that one single guild completely dominating. Because for one thing, if it's just one guild dominating, it may eventually lead to an up-and-coming guild feeling compelled to compete so aggressively that we reach "poopsocking" intensities where dozens or even hundreds of players are sitting at a spawnpoint waiting for a boss to spawn so they can instantly swamp it. Ask anybody who raided on p99 from ~2011-2015 or so.
2. See my post immediately above for how a system like this might be implemented on a kind of "hybrid" level, both individually and guild-wide (although fundamentally at the individual level, with a guild-wide contaigon system in effect).
I like your thought, but I think there are many ways around the things you say... like alts... vpns... jumping guilds...
I really do not want instancing but I really can not think of a bettter way personaly....
The only other Idea i have is that you have a trigger.... spawn it... have a dps race(if you can even beat it)... Then you get to pick a door.... in this case lets say a gold door, silver door, or bronze door... and then you can go in and try to kill The head boss... if thats going through a dungeon and try to get to the main boss or just the main boss and you try and kill it.....
Does that make sense?
Once you pick a door you can't do anymore doors till next week or whatever it is... I think of it like a lock out
But even this has the same draw backs.... swaping guilds, alts, vpns Thats why I say an instance that takes you a long time to get through with many bosses might be best... It could take you a few days to get to boss.... just a thought....
I do like your idea but like I said no matter what you do people can think of ways around it...No drops might help you idea somewhat too
Being competitive.... I have been in guilds where we got more than our fair share of world boss fights and have had my own guild that we did really good in downing world boss fights... But I really do not like that I think everyone should get a chance... I know I am turning a little soft but I always felt bad for smaller guilds that are friends or just a bunch of friends that like to be in a guild together and they never get a chance... When I hear people talk about being world first I really start thinking douche.... Like in VOT that stream that talks about Pantheon when they had guests on and they talked about how good they are... I do not want to be around people like that anymore
Alts won't be a problem if you flag Accounts/IPs. Jumping guilds won't be a problem if the flagging occurs at the individual level but in a guild-wide contaigon sort of way (i.e., If >40% of a killing force composes Guild X, then ALL members of Guild X are flagged as having been involved in the kill, regardless of whether they drop their guildtag or not). The issue with flagging Accounts though is that, as somebody has mentioned, this will encourage some guilds to enforce a TWO-ACCOUNTS REQUIRED policy, which will be a total ******* P2W nightmare. And, as you mention (although this is something I am entirely ignorant about) VPNs might be able to evade IP checks? And this is not to mention the fact that many players will strongly dislike their entire account(s) being flagged and thus being unable to raid that content again (without difficulty modifiers, etc.) on their alts.
Yeah, it's difficult business. There's a very real tension between (i) allowing those players who are expressly interested in dominating to the fullest extent to manifest their favoured play style (let the no lifers no life if such is their wish; you cannot destroy that which has no life), and (ii) allowing less hard core players some level of access at the high-end. The trick is to develop some constellation of infrastructure where this tension will more or less naturally balance itself out in a manner that's maximally satisfying to both camps.
I think it's important that both of these things happen. That is, it's important that the most serious and most raid-oriented guilds, by virtue of maximising their capacity to mobilise for and kill raid targets, experience a very real advantage over those guilds that are either less interested and/or capable. But it's also important that those guilds that strongly desire raiding to be a part of their game world, but who aren't willing to invest as much time/effort as the other class of people, are still able to enjoy raiding.
You don't want a situation where the hard-core guilds are artificially held back from having any success/gear-advantage over the less hard-core guilds, e.g., by enforced rotations for example. And you also don't want a situation where a single guild with a world-wide playerbase and a distributed leadership system enabling them to field fully functioning raids 24/7 (this is 99% going to happen) is able to prevent all other guilds from having any taste whatsoever of open world targets.
It's a difficult problem.
Yeah, I agree, I think making sure that some raid mobs are triggers is important; this will ensure that all raid-interested guilds can raid to at least some extent. But I also think it's important to reduce the likelihood/ease with which a single guild can monopolise all freely contestable raid mobs.
Dynamic raid content is nothing new.
It was used extensively in Vanguard raiding. generally it was fairly simplistic. If you didn't kill the boss in X time he started getting harder and harder.
There were other variations, some harder, some easier.
But Vanguard still had to introduce lockout timers, as one group of 40 dedicated players managed to keep most raid content killed. Oddly they did it not by blocking other guilds, they were just good. Other guilds were not, even when given first crack at raid targets they could not succeed.
Personally I do not care for that type of coding. It seems gimmicky to me and just poor programming to fix bad design. I also did not care for lockout timers. Another gimmick I feel. A bad code fix for a bigger problem.
I don't believe in a true persistent contested world you should start introducing weird code gymnastics to fight what is simply a lack of content. Either that or reduce server pop cap.
As Brad has said on a few occasions, having enough content will solve much of these issues.
Having 3K+ players in a world with 10 raid targets is not good MMO math.
Zewt: With a playerbase that is likely going to disproportionately consist of people who have previously played in "high-end" raid guilds in previous MMORPGs, and who will therefore intend to play in such raid guilds in Pantheon as well, it might well surprise you how quickly end-game raid content becomes highly competitive, regardless of server population caps. The possibility of high-end gridlock is a very real problem, and I don't think that simply having three raid zones at launch is a guaranteed solution. All you need is one guild per server that has been founded on the premise of total domination to risk preventing all other guilds from any taste of open world targets.
There are currently dozens of veteran EQ guid and raid leaders (myself included) from decades past who have committed to reforming their guilds in Pantheon, and whom are importing a "high-end" mentality. And I know of at least two colossal guilds who are approaching Pantheon with the explicit purpose of dominating everything and anything they possibly can. Like I said, all you need is one guild with a world-wide playerbase and a distributed leadership system enabling them to field fully functioning raids 24/7 to deny the whole rest of the server. Don't underestimate the resourcefulness of a hundred angry nerds acting in concert. I've seen this sort of thing happen over and over. You won't be able to design enough raid content to prevent this from happening. You won't be able to set server caps low enough to prevent this from happening (just one pre-planned monopoly-oriented guild is required).
Vigilante: That's simply a forced rotation, and it leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many. The trick is allowing the most competitive guilds to compete to their heart's content, but within the context of some sort of system that has been designed in such a way that full-scale monopoly is either very, very difficult or nigh impossible.
Tethys said:Zewt: With a playerbase that is likely going to disproportionately consist of people who have previously played in "high-end" raid guilds in previous MMORPGs, and who will therefore intend to play in such raid guilds in Pantheon as well, it might well surprise you how quickly end-game raid content becomes highly competitive, regardless of server population caps. The possibility of high-end gridlock is a very real problem, and I don't think that simply having three raid zones at launch is a guaranteed solution. All you need is one guild per server that has been founded on the premise of total domination to risk preventing all other guilds from any taste of open world targets.
There are currently dozens of veteran EQ guid and raid leaders (myself included) from decades past who have committed to reforming their guilds in Pantheon, and whom are importing a "high-end" mentality. And I know of at least two colossal guilds who are approaching Pantheon with the explicit purpose of dominating everything and anything they possibly can. Like I said, all you need is one guild with a world-wide playerbase and a distributed leadership system enabling them to field fully functioning raids 24/7 to deny the whole rest of the server. Don't underestimate the resourcefulness of a hundred angry nerds acting in concert. I've seen this sort of thing happen over and over. You won't be able to design enough raid content to prevent this from happening. You won't be able to set server caps low enough to prevent this from happening (just one pre-planned monopoly-oriented guild is required).
I'm curious about the mindset here, we all know competition is a heavy part in the MMO market currently, and I'm not sure allowing anyone to own every inch of content would not push the game to it's own death. In that sense, what is the mindset of such players willing to simply devour everything from everyone, if it kills the game they enjoy ? That's sawing the branch on which you're sat, at least.
I know a lot of guilds claimed to do this on EQ server, while it was either true or simply exagerated, there is also a dimension that is rarely considered : Thoses guilds aren't 10 people, or 20 people. They are hundreds and in that sense, they cannot be considered as "One guild" compared to smaller guilds of a few dozen players. In that sense it's also logical that they have a bigger part of the pie because they represent a big % of the competing playerbase. You can have 10 guilds competing for some targets, but if one of them represent 50% of the overall competing player pool, there is nothing wrong that they own 50% of the content.
We still do not know what will be the "End game" everyone fears here. EQ had good and bad, but frankly back then I was such a casual I didn't even know all thoses batphone things. I reached max level with my first toon around Planes of Power and never cared at all about competition even thought I played since Kunark. I'm pretty sure MOST players will be in that case (Probably not me, as I have a lot of free time to play, and a partner for every adventure), and they will simply enjoy the ride and reach max after 6 or 12 months. And maybe there will be adjustments if the community is toxic to itself, maybe there will be an extension with new content to explore, maybe "big premade groups" will simply be bored to eat everything and will drop the game. Who knows ? They stated raids will exists but won't be a focus for the game, which is group centered, I'm really sure people are just assuming the game will be Kunark/velious/pop like, with multiple successive raid tiers.
What if it isn't even the case ? Will the game be ruined for raid affictionados ?
What if raiding doesn't bring the "best loots" at all ?
What if raiding is not meant to be an high end at all ?
People have been bypassing the levelling process since a long time, because it felt like a timesink where you gather useless gear for endgame, and a barrier to the "true game". But... what if it's not the case in pantheon ? I enjoyed every toon I made in EQ and I had only 2 chars maxxed when I left, one close to be and numerous alts ranging from 20 to 40. I loved playing them in different level tiers, different encounters, different challenges. And while the raids were impressive, they didn't stood close in overall interest as they were limited to "Avoid dyeing or stand outside of melee range if you lack resists" ?
It was just a fraction of the game that got capitalized like diamond, only to be forced to release Raid expansions one after the other. And I didn't even buy velious untill It was offered with later expansions for that sole reason : It was useless to a casual player not tied in a big guild forcing big encounters. In that scheme, velious was a terrible economic design as I can suppose a lot of people didn't bother buying it until they were maxxed out or close to. Maybe it's not innocent with Verant's buyout, after all. How can you sustain a game if you work hard on an expansion targeted at a niche category of players in a game that was already niche back then ?
Tethys said:Zewt: With a playerbase that is likely going to disproportionately consist of people who have previously played in "high-end" raid guilds in previous MMORPGs, and who will therefore intend to play in such raid guilds in Pantheon as well, it might well surprise you how quickly end-game raid content becomes highly competitive, regardless of server population caps. The possibility of high-end gridlock is a very real problem, and I don't think that simply having three raid zones at launch is a guaranteed solution. All you need is one guild per server that has been founded on the premise of total domination to risk preventing all other guilds from any taste of open world targets.
There are currently dozens of veteran EQ guid and raid leaders (myself included) from decades past who have committed to reforming their guilds in Pantheon, and whom are importing a "high-end" mentality. And I know of at least two colossal guilds who are approaching Pantheon with the explicit purpose of dominating everything and anything they possibly can. Like I said, all you need is one guild with a world-wide playerbase and a distributed leadership system enabling them to field fully functioning raids 24/7 to deny the whole rest of the server. Don't underestimate the resourcefulness of a hundred angry nerds acting in concert. I've seen this sort of thing happen over and over. You won't be able to design enough raid content to prevent this from happening. You won't be able to set server caps low enough to prevent this from happening (just one pre-planned monopoly-oriented guild is required).
Vigilante: That's simply a forced rotation, and it leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many. The trick is allowing the most competitive guilds to compete to their heart's content, but within the context of some sort of system that has been designed in such a way that full-scale monopoly is either very, very difficult or nigh impossible.
"With a playerbase that is likely going to disproportionately consist of people who have previously played in "high-end" raid guilds in previous MMORPGs, and who will therefore intend to play in such raid guilds in Pantheon as well, it might well surprise you how quickly end-game raid content becomes highly competitive, regardless of server population caps."
Not sure how you came to know Pantheon will have a "disproportionately" sized number of players who were in "high-end" raid guilds, and that they intend to do the same in Pantheon. I happened to spend a year or so raiding with BotS in vanguard but could not say I plan on raiding in Pantheon. It took a lot of time and was hard careful work. Not something angry nerds will be doing.
Not much surprises me about MMOs, my MMO career started in 96' with UO alpha and never stopped. It also included creating comprehensive fan sites for EQ1 and Vanguard.
You may have a hundred angry nerds but if raid size is fixed and there are enough raid targets, unskilled zerging will quickly lead to failure and disgruntlement.
[update]
The one caveat would be if raid targets are poorly designed and badly balanced, making them easy targets for sloppy play. Then all bets are off and anyPUG/Zerg group could breeze through them. My best experience with this was early raiding in Vanguard before the game got nerfed with KDQ. No under-geared, poorly performing group could take down raid targets in those days of Vanguard.
zewtastic said:"With a playerbase that is likely going to disproportionately consist of people who have previously played in "high-end" raid guilds in previous MMORPGs, and who will therefore intend to play in such raid guilds in Pantheon as well, it might well surprise you how quickly end-game raid content becomes highly competitive, regardless of server population caps."
Not sure how you came to know Pantheon will have a "disproportionately" sized number of players who were in "high-end" raid guilds, and that they intend to do the same in Pantheon. I happened to spend a year or so raiding with BotS in vanguard but could not say I plan on raiding in Pantheon. It took a lot of time and was hard careful work. Not something angry nerds will be doing.
Not much surprises me about MMOs, my MMO career started in 96' with UO alpha and never stopped. It also included creating comprehensive fan sites for EQ1 and Vanguard.
You may have a hundred angry nerds but if raid size is fixed and there are enough raid targets, unskilled zerging will quickly lead to failure and disgruntlement.
Fair enough; it's a hunch. I did qualify the statement with "likely". My perspective is that it's something that will occur naturally from Pantheon's focus on returning to the "challenge" of the early MMORPGs. I believe that such a playerbase, attracted by the prospect of this "challenge", may have a more raid-heavy composition than your average MMORPGs playerbase.
And perhaps I mispoke for comic effect haha. Sure, there'll be raid guilds that are relatively large, uncoordinated, your typical "angry nerds", and who would depend upon mindlessly overwhelming mobs with numbers (which is something I think we have reason to believe will be unlikely in Pantheon). But that's not what I'm talking about. You might be aware of what I'm referring to if you've been involved with high-end raiding on the Project 1999 EQ Classic emulator in recent years, or even if you've been paying attention to the TLP servers. I don't think there'll be a shortage of competently led, well organised, and coordinated teams of experienced "veteran" players, who will have largely pre-formed their guilds well before official release, and who are approaching Pantheon with the explicit intention of "dominating" as much content as possible; as a definition of "winning". And just one of these per server will be sufficient to massively restrict raid content from most other raid guilds who didn't come to the game with such a competitive mindset.
Edit: The reason I referred to a "hundred" players, is that these are the sorts of numbers that will allow a guild to become a world-wide 24/7 raid guild, with at least two, maybe three, major timezones, capable of fielding raids every single hour of the day. This is a model that was well developed on p99 and which has been thoroughly tested since. These guilds will exist.