Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Please don't create unnecessary bottle necks

    • 49 posts
    June 17, 2019 8:26 PM PDT

    In anticipation of Pantheon I started playing EQ again. I created my fav class, the enchanter and made my way through the game. The experience has been fantastic with the exception of dealing with all the bottle necks. The Veeshan's peak key, and certain epic quests have proven to be incredibly frustrating. Take for example the enchanter epic, in addition to dozen's of difficult tasks, you had to kill 3 separate mobs, each of which had a 4-7 day spawn time. In a game with hundreds of enchanters, these bottlenecks create uncessary division, anger, and frustration.

    So please, as you build the game and create quests, make the challenge be the mob difficulty, not excessively long spawn timers

     

    Cheers

    • 1247 posts
    June 17, 2019 11:40 PM PDT

    I remember those bottlenecks lol. I imagine we will see long quest-lines here one way or another. Will be interesting to see what VR has up their sleeves for sure. :)


    This post was edited by Syrif at June 17, 2019 11:41 PM PDT
    • 124 posts
    June 17, 2019 11:48 PM PDT

    To be honest, camping those mobs was part of the immersion for me, setting up a phone rotation to call in help when it popped and all that. Sure it is also a strain on real life and might not really fit in today's economy, but still i think it had charm. (aside of the fact that it prevents one of the best items for the class to be mass distributed, this ensured a more gradual way of the items entering te game.)

    • 1247 posts
    June 17, 2019 11:54 PM PDT

    @Decarsul Yea I can see the immersion too with that. I think there was a ton of emphasis on group-play in these situations. 

    • 1714 posts
    June 18, 2019 1:18 AM PDT

    Not everyone "deserves" to get everything. I agree that certain bottlenecks can be frustrating or are poorly designed, but there's an additional sense of reward when  you overcome something difficult. Items like epic weapons should be hard to acquire and not everyone who is of the approriate level should be guaranteed the opportunity to obtain them. 

    • 1315 posts
    June 18, 2019 3:59 AM PDT

    I agree that not everyone "deserves" to get everything. The dividing line should player skill and team coordination and not a matter purely of luck where the game rewards dedication and temerity rather than poop-sock obsession.

    • 31 posts
    June 18, 2019 4:01 AM PDT

    Some epics were unnecessarily hard that's for sure. Or rather, they weren't balanced in comparison to other epics. But the bottlenecks are good things for the most part. However, I think the bottleneck shouldn't be confused with busy work though, that's when it loses it for me. If there isn't a sense of accomplishment, just extreme annoyance, then something isn't right. Just my opinion

    • 297 posts
    June 18, 2019 5:20 AM PDT

    benty said:

    Some epics were unnecessarily hard that's for sure. Or rather, they weren't balanced in comparison to other epics. But the bottlenecks are good things for the most part. However, I think the bottleneck shouldn't be confused with busy work though, that's when it loses it for me. If there isn't a sense of accomplishment, just extreme annoyance, then something isn't right. Just my opinion

    I somewhat agree. Things that are meant to be highly rewarding should be challenging. The issue is in what the challenge comes from. Hoping I get lucky enough to catch a spawn that occurs hours or days apart isn't a real challenge. Hoping when I get to the end of a quest I can get the final step done before someone comes along and steals it from me, resetting all my progress isn't a real challenge. The game should be challening, not the players, and not arbitrary rarity of avaialble content. 

    I've been playing Everquest again recently and the number of times I've felt a sense of pride in my accomplishment is far outweighed by the number of times I've finished a task and thought, "Well thank goodness I don't ever have to do that again."

    RNG is not challenge. It is lazy design.

    • 18 posts
    June 18, 2019 5:44 AM PDT

    all ive read here is: "i want an easy game where i dont have to compete for success. i want everything handed to me.  i dont have to be social... just go through the game from start to finish by myself."

     

    harsh response, apologies, but "bottlenecks" that require team work and planning and coordination are not a hindrance.  100% of games that are coming out these days are so entirely scripted and easy-mode that there are no challenges, no unknowns, no substance. its amazing to me that games titled AFK Arena and Idle Heroes are even a thing. Lineage 2 allows you to auto quest. Granted these are all mobile games... that mentality has crept into every PC title ive seen come out recently, and has been backfilled into other mmos so the players dont even have to try to succeed. 

    • 297 posts
    June 18, 2019 5:50 AM PDT

    ChristoUS82 said:

    all ive read here is: "i want an easy game where i dont have to compete for success. i want everything handed to me.  i dont have to be social... just go through the game from start to finish by myself."

     

    harsh response, apologies, but "bottlenecks" that require team work and planning and coordination are not a hindrance.  100% of games that are coming out these days are so entirely scripted and easy-mode that there are no challenges, no unknowns, no substance. its amazing to me that games titled AFK Arena and Idle Heroes are even a thing. Lineage 2 allows you to auto quest. Granted these are all mobile games... that mentality has crept into every PC title ive seen come out recently, and has been backfilled into other mmos so the players dont even have to try to succeed. 

    It's not merely a harsh response. It's completely ignorant of the points raised in the thread.

    I specifically said, for example, that I don't want an easy game. I don't want a game where the so-called challenge is how long I can stay online in one place. I don't want a PVP PVE experience where the only reason I can't attain things is I have a life outside of the game whereas other players can sit and gank spawns all day long.

    • 31 posts
    June 18, 2019 5:58 AM PDT

    ChristoUS82 said:

    all ive read here is: "i want an easy game where i dont have to compete for success. i want everything handed to me.  i dont have to be social... just go through the game from start to finish by myself."

     

    harsh response, apologies, but "bottlenecks" that require team work and planning and coordination are not a hindrance.  100% of games that are coming out these days are so entirely scripted and easy-mode that there are no challenges, no unknowns, no substance. its amazing to me that games titled AFK Arena and Idle Heroes are even a thing. Lineage 2 allows you to auto quest. Granted these are all mobile games... that mentality has crept into every PC title ive seen come out recently, and has been backfilled into other mmos so the players dont even have to try to succeed. 



    Haha I have to agree with this slightly, when I saw a game titled AFK Arena I thought it couldn't be real. I do think most of the responses so far disagree with removing the bottlenecks, so not sure if you read those (the quote "all ive read here" assumes you read all the responses). Basically I don't think anyone wants the game to be easy. My response (which I've mentioned before in another post) is in regards to things like EQ's artisan prize which makes you near max every crafting skill to gain the most benefit from the stats. A task that is mostly busy work, intentionally slow, with very little benefit past a certain point. It wasn't really good design, just something to kill time and if you raid like me it was a maxing necessity.

    • 1315 posts
    June 18, 2019 6:02 AM PDT

    ChristoUS82 said:

    all ive read here is: "i want an easy game where i dont have to compete for success. i want everything handed to me.  i dont have to be social... just go through the game from start to finish by myself."

     

    harsh response, apologies, but "bottlenecks" that require team work and planning and coordination are not a hindrance.  100% of games that are coming out these days are so entirely scripted and easy-mode that there are no challenges, no unknowns, no substance. its amazing to me that games titled AFK Arena and Idle Heroes are even a thing. Lineage 2 allows you to auto quest. Granted these are all mobile games... that mentality has crept into every PC title ive seen come out recently, and has been backfilled into other mmos so the players dont even have to try to succeed. 

    Apologies but your harsh response contradicts its self.  There is a big different between a bottle neck that requires a spawn that on average only spawns 73 (5 day respawn) a year with only a 50% drop rate and a randomly spawning roving event that is only open for 3 hours on average a week and as many groups who have a one-time use trigger can challenge the event.  The event itself would be where the challenge lays not in poop-socking a spawn.

    If you equate scripts to easy-mode then you are playing easy games.  Good scripts will have many variable configurations it can auto generate as well as the ability scale based on the number of participants so there is no way to effectively zerg a challenge even without quest instancing.  One thing Lost Dungeons of Norrath had before everyone over geared them was that they were VERY hard even when you memorized them.  Now if you throw in that you can only try once a week and the configuration could change for each and every trigger you have a skill and teamwork based bottleneck that is much more of an achievement to overcome than “woot after 97 hours of camping it finally spawned . . . @#$%^#$%^ it didn’t drop!!!”.


    This post was edited by Trasak at June 18, 2019 6:05 AM PDT
    • 724 posts
    June 18, 2019 6:19 AM PDT

    Totally agree with the OP. When you have to make the game a (full time) job in order to have a chance to finish important quests, then IMO the quest designers have failed badly. The difficulty in such quests should be in overcoming challenging fights or puzzles. Not the 1000 other players also wanting to finish their quest.

    I get that an open world involves competition in some way. But the designers have to ensure that it is healthy competition, not the opposite.

    • 18 posts
    June 18, 2019 6:27 AM PDT

    Confusing... 

     

    OP: "The Veeshan's peak key, and certain epic quests have proven to be incredibly frustrating. Take for example the enchanter epic, in addition to dozen's of difficult tasks, you had to kill 3 separate mobs, each of which had a 4-7 day spawn time. In a game with hundreds of enchanters, these bottlenecks create uncessary division, anger, and frustration."

    Chanus: "Hoping I get lucky enough to catch a spawn that occurs hours or days apart isn't a real challenge. Hoping when I get to the end of a quest I can get the final step done before someone comes along and steals it from me, resetting all my progress isn't a real challenge. The game should be challening, not the players, and not arbitrary rarity of avaialble content. "  

    "I have a life outside of the game whereas other players can sit and gank spawns all day long."

    Trasak: "The dividing line should player skill and team coordination and not a matter purely of luck where the game rewards dedication and temerity rather than poop-sock obsession." 

     

    These are things that other major titles like Final Fantasy XI, Ultima Online, and EQ successfully encorporated and had hugely dedicated followers and players for many years, even private servers to keep the game going after they effectively shut down.

    Long spawn times with high rates of failure and low drop rate prevent people from swarming end game content. if you want to play the game for a single week and have the best gear in the game and all of the content mastered, there are games like WoW still running strong. there is a reason many people want to go back to WoW Classic, before the easy mode was incorporated after Burning Crusade.       

    Everyone has a life outside of the game. That just means that you have to link up with friends who are willing to help you track goals - i remember in ffxi having my guild call me when a spawn time was coming up so i could plan to be on when it did, logging out of the game in the spawn area to be ready. 

     Encounters are designed (scripted) to be beaten, learn the fight, do the steps, get the kill.  if that was all there was to it, all you have to do is wait for someone else to figure the fight out and post the walkthrough. is that really what you want out of this game?

    I'm not saying these things to insult you all. but these are the types of statements that lead to developers incorporating quick wins over deep content and stuggle to get that item, or access to that dungeon, a chance at a unique item. they are called unique not because you can only carry one of them... but because they are hard to get. 


    This post was edited by ChristoUS82 at June 18, 2019 6:37 AM PDT
    • 297 posts
    June 18, 2019 6:28 AM PDT

    Sarim said:

    Totally agree with the OP. When you have to make the game a (full time) job in order to have a chance to finish important quests, then IMO the quest designers have failed badly. The difficulty in such quests should be in overcoming challenging fights or puzzles. Not the 1000 other players also wanting to finish their quest.

    I get that an open world involves competition in some way. But the designers have to ensure that it is healthy competition, not the opposite.

    There's friendly competition, like see who can get to a certain point first. I am fully in favor of things like that even though I don't personally care about them myself. All things should be equal between competitiors and their individual (group/raid) accomplishments should come from their perseverence and cleverness. That, to me, is the spirit of MMO gameplay.

    Then there's PVP competition (in a PVE setting, not referring to PVP servers) where other players can inhibit your progress by being jerks, or simply by getting there before you did. I think that kind of competitive content just breeds a toxic and unfriendly playerbase. People seem to romanticize the idea of groups and guilds banding together for justice and equality against these types of open world mechanics, but the reality is that just doesn't happen. It may have happened here and there in a vacuum but the overall and most common result is an increase in community toxicity.

    • 297 posts
    June 18, 2019 6:36 AM PDT

    ChristoUS82 said:Everyone has a life outside of the game. That just means that you have to link of with friends who are willing to help you track goals - i remember in ffxi having my guild call me when a spawn time was coming up so i could plan to be on when it did, logging out of the game in the spawn area to be ready.

    I do have a life outside of the game and I don't want a game that requires me to have to make sure I check Discord (or whatever out-of-game chat feature) constantly and be ready to log in at a moment's notice in order to progress my character. 

    How many people want this kind of a game as opposed to how many people will simply choose to not play the game at all if this is what it requires?

    At some point people are going to have to realize that a hard core game for hard core gamerz is just going to turn off a large potential playerbase, and result in a game that can't support itself on the occasional revenue from a few dozen grognard leets.

    • 1315 posts
    June 18, 2019 7:00 AM PDT

    ChristoUS82 said:

    Long spawn times with high rates of failure and low drop rate prevent people from swarming end game content. if you want to play the game for a single week and have the best gear in the game and all of the content mastered, there are games like WoW still running strong. there is a reason many people want to go back to WoW Classic, before the easy mode was incorporated after Burning Crusade.       

    Everyone has a life outside of the game. That just means that you have to link of with friends who are willing to help you track goals - i remember in ffxi having my guild call me when a spawn time was coming up so i could plan to be on when it did, logging out of the game in the spawn area to be ready. 

     Encounters are designed (scripted) to be beaten, learn the fight, do the steps, get the kill.  if that was all there was to it, all you have to do is wait for someone else to figure the fight out and post the walkthrough. is that really what you want out of this game?

    I'm not saying these things to insult you all. but these are the types of statements that lead to developers incorporating quick wins over deep content and stuggle to get that item, or access to that dungeon, a chance at a unique item. they are called unique not because you can only carry one of them... but because they are had to get. 

    Simplistic sophistry at its purest.  Anything that challenges poop-socking as the final arbiter of success is immediately branded as WoW kiddies wanting immediate gratification.

    Comparing a well-tuned but variable script for the risk vs reward to a mob that can be soloed is hardly an example you can use in favor of making long spawn mobs more “challenging”.  Yes a script will be designed with a win condition otherwise it would just be the Kobayashi Maru.  But I can bet you the people that “just use the walkthrough” are doing so long after the scripted events are progression, only the skilled and hardworking players can defeat it even with a walk through while it is progression content.  It’s like complaining a level 30 dungeon is too easy at level 50, why even waste the breath.

    The idea any of us are asking to have everything in a week is absurd.  In my previous example I was still requiring one to find the random spawn that is only available for a short amount of time per week.  Additionally you would need to have farmed up the one time use key.  If you fail on your attempt at the challenge encounter then your key is consumed and you cannot rechallenge the event that week.  You need to go back and refarm the trigger and wait for a time when it pops back up in a different location and try again.  The only difference is that as many groups with triggers that are able to get to the spawn before it despawns will be able to challenge the event rather than the first person that spots it gets a free epic.

    If you add in things like everyone in your group must be below level 30 or mentored down to level 30 in order to even enter the event then challenge never becomes trivial.


    This post was edited by Trasak at June 18, 2019 7:03 AM PDT
    • 297 posts
    June 18, 2019 7:07 AM PDT

    I don't necessarily want a challenge to never become easier either. There is a value to being able to run back through old content in order to catch up your friend who stopped playing for a while, or didn't keep up, or has just started playing for the first time.

    I don't want to steamroll that content without thinking about it, as I think the ability to do that leads to all sorts of other bad-for-the-community behaviors. But I don't want to have to go back and bang my head against the wall in the same way I needed to when the content was new. That only ensures new and returning players rarely get to see that content or don't get the same chance to play through it (as the bulk of the playerbase has moved on and doesn't want to go back through it again).

    I have no problem with challenge being highly mitigated by outleveling content, so long as there is still some challenge to it and it is not entirely trivialized. Shrouding down, to use Everquest as an example, actually made me a worse group member than people engaging the content at-level (at least the last time I used shrouds, which was admittedly at least ten years ago). If my shroud were actually a slightly-more-powerful group member at appropriate level, that would give me a lot more incentive to both use shrouds in the first place, but also help out lower level players. 


    This post was edited by Chanus at June 18, 2019 7:08 AM PDT
    • 1860 posts
    June 18, 2019 7:09 AM PDT
    I'm all for long quests with rare drops from mobs with long spawn times. At the rate VRs small team produces content if there aren't timesinks many people will run out of content/items to attain and end up quitting or taking a break from the game.
    • 3852 posts
    June 18, 2019 7:09 AM PDT

    I agree that there is a distinct difference between challenge and bottleneck.

    Having to do difficult things - of course.

    Having to do things with a good group - in this game, yes.

    But long respawn times requiring you to be very lucky, and compete with other players that need the same thing so that maybe only one group a day or one a week can get it, no.

    Anything requiring that you be on 24/7 waiting for a respawn or have friends that will call or text you in real life to drop what you are doing and get on - no, and no and no again.

    • 372 posts
    June 18, 2019 7:20 AM PDT

    ChristoUS82 said:

    all ive read here is: "i want an easy game where i dont have to compete for success. i want everything handed to me.  i dont have to be social... just go through the game from start to finish by myself."

     

    harsh response, apologies, but "bottlenecks" that require team work and planning and coordination are not a hindrance.  100% of games that are coming out these days are so entirely scripted and easy-mode that there are no challenges, no unknowns, no substance. its amazing to me that games titled AFK Arena and Idle Heroes are even a thing. Lineage 2 allows you to auto quest. Granted these are all mobile games... that mentality has crept into every PC title ive seen come out recently, and has been backfilled into other mmos so the players dont even have to try to succeed. 

    Bottlenecks require teamwork and but are not a hindrance???  

    Hindrance: a thing that provides resistance, delay, or obstruction to something or someone.
    Bottleneck: a narrow section of road or a junction that impedes traffic flow.

    Aside from robbing words of their definitions, this post is extreme in addressing 100% of games that are coming out.   

    I think that bottlenecks serve a purpose when used sparingly or carefully but I do understand the concern of the OP.  It can be a PITA.  Let's just consider all sides without attempting to be 'harsh'

    • 297 posts
    June 18, 2019 7:21 AM PDT

    There needs to be a way for a couple-hours-a-day player to meaningfully progress or the game will be dead on arrival as it cannot attract and hold a large enough playerbase. I am completely fine with that type of player not being able to achieve every goal, or experience all possible content. Over the course of (let's say, because we have no idea,) a year between expansions, I think that player should be able to complete the meaningful solo/group content for that expansion. They may not be able to achieve the prestige rewards in-era, and I think that is totally acceptable, but they need to be able to feel like there is a compelling reason and an acceptable reward for playing at all. If there isn't, they simply won't play, and I know Everquest is still chugging along after 20 years, but it gets very little in the way of new, unique, and compelling content developed for it. Those devs do a lot with very limited resources, but a new game having to prove itself cannot be run like that. It needs a large enough playerbase to afford robust development. 

    If you rely on extremely rare spawns and highly time-gated content for normal character progression, you are not going to attract a large enough playerbase. 


    This post was edited by Chanus at June 18, 2019 7:22 AM PDT
    • 1247 posts
    June 18, 2019 7:23 AM PDT

    @Dorotea Interesting thoughts. Just curious - how do you propose not every high-level (or a certain class) ultimately getting the same high-end or rare item then? 

    • 646 posts
    June 18, 2019 7:27 AM PDT

    ChristoUS82 said:all ive read here is: "i want an easy game where i dont have to compete for success. i want everything handed to me.  i dont have to be social... just go through the game from start to finish by myself."

    Rather inappropriate response for what the thread was actually about, but people love their knee-jerking I suppose.

    OP is all for challenge, but doesn't find being forced to one at a time wait around for a multi-day spawn timer a particularly engaging component of gameplay. I would tend to agree. If it was a side pursuit, a la the Time-lost Protodrake in WoW for example, that would be one thing, but a quest for everyone of a particular class? Not great design.

    • 297 posts
    June 18, 2019 7:34 AM PDT

    Syrif said:

    @Dorotea Interesting thoughts. Just curious - how do you propose not every high-level (or a certain class) ultimately getting the same high-end or rare item then? 

    Is this a real problem?

    If you mean not having Best In Slot items, you could create a spread of several items with cosmetic differences that are functionally the same, as the simplest solution. Or you could create different loadouts that excel in different scenarios, and make multiple scenarios meaningful.

    This is getting a bit off-topic for this thread though, which I think is not encouraged here.