Artificial time blocks are neccessary, that was the point I was making. A challenging fight only goes so far in prolonging content.
Serious question, how fast do people believe they are going to be near endgame to even consider these kind of events? If your averaging a couple hours a night as a casual player, how soon do you expect to be at cap to face the challenges of competing resources? If this game is anything like older styled mmo's, a couple hours a night won't get you close to endgame in any significant way for the competing resources to become an issue, I'd understand if we were dealing with these issues in a faster leveling paced mmo but I don't think that's the case here.
And in any event, those who oppose competing for resources, will you be opposed to progressing through a means that took significantly longer but gave you more guranteed advancement to your goal?
Chanus said:... I do not want ...my character's progress to be inhibited by the direct actions of other players in a PVE environment.
You might enjoy a game that isn't open world more? The actions of others will be able to inhibit your progress in Pantheon in numerous ways.
Here is a question for everyone in this thread.
Where would you use a bottleneck and why? Conversely where would you not use them and why not?
1) Bottlenecks can be a great way to bring people together if the needs overlap. If VR ends up going with “break through events” in order to continue progressing in your class I could see the target being a good bottleneck.
For example once a character reaches level 29 they would need to complete a feat of strength to demonstrate their ability before they will be granted level 30.
The feat of strength requires you to assist in defeating a level 30 boss mob (tuned for 24 level 30 players of high gear for the level and maxed skills). Defeating the encounter will be very hard as the characters will only be level 29 and may not be used to working together or fully geared.
Having any character above level 29 contribute to the fight in anyway will negate the feat of strength for everyone. All buffs would be down ranked or wiped at some point in the encounter so that only buffs available to the 24 characters will be part of the battle.
The boss mobs that can be killed for this will be fairly rare wild spawns (2-5 days) with maybe 8 total options across the game per level range (one per race area). In addition to the natural spawns a raid group could spend roughly 100 combined man hours to force a spawn.
The bosses will have rare drops when naturally spawn and a higher quality drop table when killed in challenge mode. If the mob is force spawned then the exclusive challenge items will drop but the general table will not.
People may choose to stay at level 29 until they receive a challenge item that they want.
2) Super rare crafting resources and opportunities to learn special crafting skills can be materially bottlenecked. Getting these opportunities can largely be a matter of luck but persistence will increase your opportunities. It would be even better if these different special crafting skills were mutually exclusive in order to help differentiate master craftsmen from each other.
3) Items of high cosmetic value and maybe a very nice QoL features that don’t present too much of an advantage can still be reasonable things to have as a hardcore long time frame nearly single point access camps.
4) Epic 1.1 upgrade items. As the true epitome of a class advancement I could see the final step of upgrading their class defining item including both spawn and item bottlenecks. Those bottlenecks would still need to be reasonable for the server populations, say 10% of the max level players will be able to achieve it a year assuming all spawns and drops are killed immediately after spawning.
Things I would not bottleneck but might make rather grindy to require significant effort to achieve.
1) Class defining items. If a character is not considered fully functional (like with the monk or cleric epics) without them then acquiring them should be a matter of effort and coordination and not pure luck. If they are not class defining then making them a matter of luck is more acceptable.
2) Gating. Gating through bottlenecks is both frustrating and one of the primary sources of drama where one group of players can deliberately inhibit the access of other players to content purely for the purpose of artificially decreasing competition to content. Gating can be a combination of farming and feats of strength but should not be pushed through a single access point that a single guild can sit on and prevent anyone else from accessing new content. It would be different if the server as a whole could retaliate against the blocking guild by destroying their player cities and embargoing their NPC vendors.
3) Class defining skills. Similar to items if a skill is needed for your character to be considered complete then there should not be a single point of access to that skill. Having the teacher that is a random spawn and only wanders for a short period of time that you must both receive and complete the quest during is a different matter as more than one group could be doing it each spawn.
philo said:Chanus said:... I do not want ...my character's progress to be inhibited by the direct actions of other players in a PVE environment.
You might enjoy a game that isn't open world more? The actions of others will be able to inhibit your progress in Pantheon in numerous ways.
I am very aware of this and I am worried this will result in the highly toxic and childish communities that spring up around open world DPS-race games because of the insistent high-minded and completely naive ideal of the "community" banding together to prevent the problem bad actors whose names "mean something".
There are a lot of aspects of open world games I prefer and enjoy. Griefing of extremely rare and time-gated spawns is not one of them and is something I think is bad game design. Brad has stated at least once that their ideal world includes content not being specific to single spawns in many cases, or that there will be such a large world with so many desired targets that it should be mitigated by people spreading out naturally. I am willing to give his vision a chance because I want to play this game specifically, but I have never in 20+ years of playing MMOs and 30-ish years of playing online games seen this concept not result in a toxic community of basement-dwelling griefers running roughshod over everyone else.
Grimix said:Artificial time blocks are neccessary, that was the point I was making. A challenging fight only goes so far in prolonging content.
Serious question, how fast do people believe they are going to be near endgame to even consider these kind of events? If your averaging a couple hours a night as a casual player, how soon do you expect to be at cap to face the challenges of competing resources? If this game is anything like older styled mmo's, a couple hours a night won't get you close to endgame in any significant way for the competing resources to become an issue, I'd understand if we were dealing with these issues in a faster leveling paced mmo but I don't think that's the case here.
And in any event, those who oppose competing for resources, will you be opposed to progressing through a means that took significantly longer but gave you more guranteed advancement to your goal?
I wouldn't mind a system that allows slow but sure progress. But then this should be the way for everyone. If prolonging content is the goal, then there should not be any shortcuts! The power gamers will still be faster to complete their quests than the more casual players.
Understand me right: I am not against all competition. I just think that unhealthy competition should be avoided by game design if possible.
Good posts everyone. There will be both casual players and hard-core players. The bottlenecks and ’epics’ are there for people who want to attempt it. Obviously, there will be casual content for casual players whereas hard-core, very tedious content will be there for hard-core players. I had casual friends who had no interest in epics at all and did tons of other gameplay instead. As for epics, I never saw them as being universal where everyone just gets one.
Syrif said:Good posts everyone. There will be both casual players and hard-core players. The bottlenecks and ’epics’ are there for people who want to attempt it. Obviously, there will be casual content for casual players whereas hard-core, very tedious content will be there for hard-core players. I had casual friends who had no interest in epics at all and did tons of other gameplay instead. As for epics, I never saw them as being universal where everyone just gets one.
I feel like this is a false dichotomy that circumvents the argument being made.
No one is suggesting Epic quests should be easy, or have everyone "just get one".
The issues are the Epic quest problems that are seen in games like Everquest (which is inarguably a significant inspiration for the design philosophy of Pantheon) where progress can be prevent or wiped out by unnecessary bottlenecks (as the OP and thread title specifically mentions), such as extremely rare and random success chances other players can easily prevent you from attaning through griefing.
Chanus said:Syrif said:Good posts everyone. There will be both casual players and hard-core players. The bottlenecks and ’epics’ are there for people who want to attempt it. Obviously, there will be casual content for casual players whereas hard-core, very tedious content will be there for hard-core players. I had casual friends who had no interest in epics at all and did tons of other gameplay instead. As for epics, I never saw them as being universal where everyone just gets one.
I feel like this is a false dichotomy that circumvents the argument being made.
No one is suggesting Epic quests should be easy, or have everyone "just get one".
The issues are the Epic quest problems that are seen in games like Everquest (which is inarguably a significant inspiration for the design philosophy of Pantheon) where progress can be prevent or wiped out by unnecessary bottlenecks (as the OP and thread title specifically mentions), such as extremely rare and random success chances other players can easily prevent you from attaning through griefing.
I don’t think mass-griefing will be much of a problem with VR as I’ve heard it is in private servers. For example our GM’s implemented raid rotations that worked quite well in Prexus back in the day. As for private servers, I don’t play those obv. :)
Syrif said:Chanus said:Syrif said:Good posts everyone. There will be both casual players and hard-core players. The bottlenecks and ’epics’ are there for people who want to attempt it. Obviously, there will be casual content for casual players whereas hard-core, very tedious content will be there for hard-core players. I had casual friends who had no interest in epics at all and did tons of other gameplay instead. As for epics, I never saw them as being universal where everyone just gets one.
I feel like this is a false dichotomy that circumvents the argument being made.
No one is suggesting Epic quests should be easy, or have everyone "just get one".
The issues are the Epic quest problems that are seen in games like Everquest (which is inarguably a significant inspiration for the design philosophy of Pantheon) where progress can be prevent or wiped out by unnecessary bottlenecks (as the OP and thread title specifically mentions), such as extremely rare and random success chances other players can easily prevent you from attaning through griefing.
I don’t think mass-griefing will be much of a problem with VR as I’ve heard it is in private servers. For example our GM’s implemented raid rotations that worked quite well in Prexus back in the day. As for private servers, I don’t play those obv. :)
I don't play on private servers either.
It takes heavy-handed and draconian policing of an open world game to prevent griefing, and it is never completely effective (nor can it be). If VR is willing to invest that kind of effort and the resources required, hopefully it will have a significant impact, but it seems far more reasonable to take the lessons learned from decades of gaming into account when designing a game.
Something that people are overlooking in regard to game longevity is the progeny system. Lets not forget that VR is intending on having an entire system designed around prolonging gameplay and promoting replaying through content... "artificial" timeblocks aren't "neccesary". Having "meaningful and challenging" content will encourage players to go through the content again or circle back to content they missed especially if there is an incentive to do it again as another decendant (progeny character) that has special features.
Another thing being overlooked is VR's intent on having meaningful raid-like content at all levels; This would also promote repetitive play/replay of content for those that choose to.
We already know there will be meaningful/challenging content like epic quests, class specific quests for iconic abilities, grinding for environmental atmospheric items to allow access to previously unexplored areas, and key quests - having additional "artificial" content that can heighten a troll's ability to grief by having rarespawn+raredrop "quest" NPCs that can't be shared will absolutely negatively impact an open world game drastically (I say "negatively" because there is nothing positive from it - a "sense" of accomplishment should have very little to do with RNG... people are confusing "luck" with an accomplishment).
"Bottlenecks" are fine as long as long as they can't be further "clogged/stopped" by players with ill intent (griefers/trolls or just bored high level characters). Especially since policing trolls on a PvE server will be nearly impossible.
((You might enjoy a game that isn't open world more? The actions of others will be able to inhibit your progress in Pantheon in numerous ways.))
Beyond question this is true - it is true in any MMO. Other people kill mobs you want for drops or experience, harvest resources you need, etc. The only way to avoid this is to have a totally instanced game which is not what any of us want.
There are - of course - ways to have an essentially open-world game while reducing competition between players on pve servers. Some Pantheon will surely adopt - others it will not. Just to mention a few without advocating for or against them.
1. Reasonably fast respawn times - slow enough that everyone cannot get everything they want almost immediately but quick enough that Pantheon does not earn the nickname Evercamp 2 or 3.
2. Multiple locations for respawn so that it is difficult or impossible to monopolize them. Even a large aggressive guild is unlikely to keep an eye on 100 potential respawn locations over several continents.
3. Use of immunities and cooldowns. Prevention of anyone that has already killed a named mob from interacting with it - for a period of time appropriate under the circumstances.
4. Limited use of instances so that certain *critical* encounters can be enjoyed in peace without interference by griefers or others.
5. Gating encounters so that once they are triggered no one else can interfere. Functionally equivilant to an instance but it allows the developers to accurately say there are no instances. As with a boss fight being in a locked room that no one can enter unless they are in the group or raid that triggered the encounter.
6. Shared credit for mobs or resources. If two or more players get there at about the same time and each attack the mob or interact with the resources node they both get credit. Maybe not 100% credit but at least partial credit.
I also agree I liked the VT key idea. It was something to do when there was nothing to do or something to do inbetween somehting else planned. Even if you had the key piece or were bored, you could join a group to help or get a group and hang out in the zone, exploring a bit, going for key pieces and maybe a suprise named.
I am not a designer but I understand the fulitity behind random spawns, rare spawns and random drops from those rarespawns. I agree that that is lazy design. with regards to questing and chanter epic in aprticular, if this is called a bottle neck I suggest the following design:
Same "bottleneck" occuring with predictability, but random events occuring within the "bottleneck" causing unpredictability. The result could be: an easy run, a fail, a "lucked out on that one" but never the same. It is the number of variables within the predicted event that will determine the playability. If an RNG is to be utilized, it is here in the number of variables that occur within the "bottleneck". This is what I think will be the difference in game design, in where the RNG is used.
So, say you are going for that chanter epic. And you research it by going to Third party sites that give write ups as to how to get to the bottleneck and see a chinese menu-like list of events that can occur in this bottleneck. During the event you may get 1 from column A and 2 from column b, or 1 from a, b and c, or 3 from c, etc. Each of those random events might be just a really tough monster, or a monster with mechanics. Each of the columns would be 5 or 6 items long. So you trigger the event, the person or thing is there, but what occurs afterwards is anyones guess. The only thing I would add is a lock out timer on attempt. So if you try today and fail, you cannot attempt again until- 3 days or whenever the game developers deem fit.
Manouk said:Same "bottleneck" occuring with predictability, but random events occuring within the "bottleneck" causing unpredictability. The result could be: an easy run, a fail, a "lucked out on that one" but never the same. It is the number of variables within the predicted event that will determine the playability. If an RNG is to be utilized, it is here in the number of variables that occur within the "bottleneck". This is what I think will be the difference in game design, in where the RNG is used.
I think the Disposition System they are planning is the right way, or at least a good way, to implement this.
RNG should never cause a guaranteed fail state, but it can create interesting and compelling challenges that can vary from iteration to iteration of the same event.
Keno Monster said: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.
I apologize if I’m splitting hairs here but everyone should have the “opportunity” to acquire items like epics - so long as they are capable of completing the task. To use the word “opportunity“ implies that no matter how capable or how much support someone has from other players, that they simply cannot acquire said item. That the opportunity does not exist for them.
urgatorbait said:Keno Monster said: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.
I apologize if I’m splitting hairs here but everyone should have the “opportunity” to acquire items like epics - so long as they are capable of completing the task. To use the word “opportunity“ implies that no matter how capable or how much support someone has from other players, that they simply cannot acquire said item. That the opportunity does not exist for them.
Sadly, I think that is actually what some people here are advocating.
Darch said:Especially since policing trolls on a PvE server will be nearly impossible.
Of course it’s possible and it happened on Prexus all the time back in the day. It’s not like this is going to be private servers lol. Furthermore in reference to bottleneck thread, I mentioned Prexus GM’s coordinated, scheduled, and implemented raid rotations each month that worked quite well. It gave others access to attempt that very rare item etc. This was a long time ago. It’s not like VR GM’s are going to just sit idle lol. I don’t see why ‘trolls’ wouldn’t be ’policed’ here.
I was encouraged by Brad's (I think) comment on one of the streams along the lines of, "When people are telling me they read War and Peace while playing Everquest, that's maybe not what we were going for."
I hope it is not wishful thinking that I am taking that to mean he realizes perhaps extremely long spawn timers were bad game design (they were).
Chanus said:I was encouraged by Brad's (I think) comment on one of the streams along the lines of, "When people are telling me they read War and Peace while playing Everquest, that's maybe not what we were going for."
I hope it is not wishful thinking that I am taking that to mean he realizes perhaps extremely long spawn timers were bad game design (they were).
Well, I never read when I played lol, but I did socialize & plan with guild and friends during downtime. I do think it’s important to have both tedious and hard-core content for the hard-core base just as it is to also having casual for more casual players. That’s the beauty of open-world in my opinion; it’s not just ‘black or white.’
Chanus said:I feel like this is a false dichotomy that circumvents the argument being made.
No one is suggesting Epic quests should be easy, or have everyone "just get one".
The issues are the Epic quest problems that are seen in games like Everquest (which is inarguably a significant inspiration for the design philosophy of Pantheon) where progress can be prevent or wiped out by unnecessary bottlenecks (as the OP and thread title specifically mentions), such as extremely rare and random success chances other players can easily prevent you from attaning through griefing.
The problem is that "difficulty" is something varying from a player to another, some consider many, many things like a chore, a timegate, a bottleneck, and simply deprive the aspect of it increasing the overall difficulty.
I never encountered and an MMO something that was "difficult enough" that I couldn't get overtime. Some tried (Wow's challenge mode as an example) but they weren't hard once you got the right strategy (shared on internet), consummables, and a few tries. The only reason they aren't super common is because they were retired after the expansion and made unavaliable, thus only beeing doable during a two years timeframe of subscription. We even carried one or two players in the same party for the third characters we did the "challenge modes gold" with. They weren't exceptionnal and usually we could only expect their basic role player as needed, but no extra, no save move, nothing more.
There is no cost in an MMO, nothing but time because death, wipes, failures are only worked around with more tries to perfect your tempo and just obtain it. That's why some bottlenecks exists. Not because they are clever or testfull of player's skill, but because they help diluting the only thing that can stop players from doing hardtry over and over : time
Syrif said:Darch said:Especially since policing trolls on a PvE server will be nearly impossible.
Of course it’s possible and it happened on Prexus all the time back in the day. It’s not like this is going to be private servers lol. Furthermore in reference to bottleneck thread, I mentioned Prexus GM’s coordinated, scheduled, and implemented raid rotations each month that worked quite well. It gave others access to attempt that very rare item etc. This was a long time ago. It’s not like VR GM’s are going to just sit idle lol. I don’t see why ‘trolls’ wouldn’t be ’policed’ here.
This isn't 1999 any more, and the troll community is much more creative and larger than most people actually think (players literally play MMOs with the sole intention to grief others as opposed to 20 years ago when a player would become disgruntled occasionally and then attempt to make other people upset for a couple of hours - those people could be policed by the community through public shaming/isolation).
VR has explicitly stated that policing the community will be incumbent upon the community, not the GMs unless there is a mechanic being exploited. GMs will be around for bugs, exploits and events. Trolls wear public shaming like a badge of honor... and people's complaints confirm that their griefing is yielding results, which promotes more griefing. a.k.a. Cry more bro :'(
Darch said:Syrif said:Darch said:Especially since policing trolls on a PvE server will be nearly impossible.
Of course it’s possible and it happened on Prexus all the time back in the day. It’s not like this is going to be private servers lol. Furthermore in reference to bottleneck thread, I mentioned Prexus GM’s coordinated, scheduled, and implemented raid rotations each month that worked quite well. It gave others access to attempt that very rare item etc. This was a long time ago. It’s not like VR GM’s are going to just sit idle lol. I don’t see why ‘trolls’ wouldn’t be ’policed’ here.
This isn't 1999 any more, and the troll community is much more creative and larger than most people actually think (players literally play MMOs with the sole intention to grief others as opposed to 20 years ago when a player would become disgruntled occasionally and then attempt to make other people upset for a couple of hours - those people could be policed by the community through public shaming/isolation).
VR has explicitly stated that policing the community will be incumbent upon the community, not the GMs unless there is a mechanic being exploited. GMs will be around for bugs, exploits and events. Trolls wear public shaming like a badge of honor... and people's complaints confirm that their griefing is yielding results, which promotes more griefing. a.k.a. Cry more bro :'(
I’ve heard the exact opposite; that ‘griefing’ was worse then vs now being that there is far less open-world at the moment & with more limitations. Either way, I’m not at all worried lol. I have more faith in Visionary Realms than that. ;)
Chanus said:I was encouraged by Brad's (I think) comment on one of the streams along the lines of, "When people are telling me they read War and Peace while playing Everquest, that's maybe not what we were going for."
I hope it is not wishful thinking that I am taking that to mean he realizes perhaps extremely long spawn timers were bad game design (they were).
Your not offering solutions except to get rid of them. Your argument is very one sided and your not even attempting to understand the other side of the argument....
I agree with the assertion that having highly valuable items only dropping from one source is a bad idea, no doubt about that. But I still feel theres a place for super monsters to appear in the open world under circumstances that are not forced popped or have low respawning timers. I like the thought of named monsters having multiple spawn locations but guilds will have those locations under lock as soon as they notice a pattern so that's no answer.
I feel like ffxi handled this situation very well, you had your heavily contested named monsters but you also had the opportunity to pursue the items you wanted through more controlled circumstances. One way required luck and a good guild, the other usually required an immense amount of time and resources. Both avenues wound up meeting at some point and mostly everyone was happy.