Alot to read here, didnt read it all but here is my opinion of "camping:
I think the idea of camping as it was in 1998/1999 when EQ came out would not work in 2020. Here is he reason why:
I to remember the days of camping for a YAK in Lower Guk. A rare item off a rare spawn. O the trains in Guk. They were glorious. Or waiting until the frenzied ghoul would spawn so you could get the sash. Lets also not forget the waiting list for the oppotunity to camp for the journeymans boots.. Permanent SOW. :)
My main point is time. The ghoul lord for example was 30 min respawn IIRC and then he only had a *chance* of spawning or it was his placeholder. I think the amount of time that would be needed to bring back the hours upon hours and even days of staying logged in AND PLAYING to camp a mob would be not fly in 2020. Not saying that the talented team at Pantheon couldnt do something very crerative which they have already discussed but some changes would need to be made for what "camping" means.
Now if what the definition of "camping" is what zer05tar said earlier on, meaning the party sits and the tank goes and pulls the mob back to the group, then yea, I think something like that could be done in a creative way and would change the dynamic of the run to the end of dungeon you see in other MMOs.. MMOs of today most people dont even "play" the dungeon. They buff the tank, send him in and follow behind until they all get to the first boss and then either fight the mobs that are left after the "run" or simple die, rez, kill boss, move on. Rinse, repeat to the next boss. IMO doing something like that is taking all the hard work and creativity that goes into a dungeon from the Devs side and just dumps all over it. All they want is the boss and the loot, they dont care about anythings else. I know that when I still play the few MMOs I play that my guild dosent to that. We dont take short cuts. We play the dungeon as intended.
Anyways, thats how I heard it.
Beloc
Yea I'm a bit confused by some of the community that are clearly invested in the game in a major way, that don't seem to hear the devs saying the word Camp.
In all of the anit-camp replies, no-one acknowledges that the devs have talked about camping in the streams. I've read the entire thread and I believe I've watched every stream.
Is this not the reason we are all here for a game like this with challenge and throw back ideas? This is why I'm here is a return to these types of a difficult challenges.
I'm not saying we can't improve on systems but some of this is like building a better mouse trap where they have already Said they are working on it and it is In Game. (Like multiple spawns with similar gear)
The idea that we could get THE item updgrade we want in an hour is horrifying to me. To imagine that every 2hour play session equals an upgrade is so boring. Work for it man. Maybe you get lucky and first camp gets you the item. Maybe you have to do 5 times. That is the feeling of accomplishment of working against the RNG.
That is the Point of camping. If you want to run non stop and never speak to anyone you are playing D3 or Rift or any number of speed run instanced crap
xxbelocxx said:My main point is time. I think the amount of time that would be needed to bring back the hours upon hours and even days of staying logged in AND PLAYING to camp a mob would be not fly in 2020.
Technology has increased, player skill has increased. The amount of time it takes players to play through content had decreased because of it.
If we don't have long grinds and camps and time sinks this game won't survive the long run.
At least we have the benefit of some other systems that will extend content. VR wont be able to keep up with content development unless they utilize them all.
Not only will the long camps and time sinks fly, but it is a big part of what is missing from games today. They keep players playing. Give them something to strive for. That is what many of us want.
There are plenty of games out there you can play if you want to attain an item in only a few hours. Personally I dont feel anywhere near the same amount of satisfaction in attaining an item that is easy to get.
Not having long time sinks is fine for pay to win/cash shop games that plan on making as much money as fast as possible and not lasting. With a subscription format it only makes more money if it is able to keep players playing for the long term.
philo said:xxbelocxx said:My main point is time. I think the amount of time that would be needed to bring back the hours upon hours and even days of staying logged in AND PLAYING to camp a mob would be not fly in 2020.
Technology has increased, player skill has increased. The amount of time it takes players to play through content had decreased because of it.
If we don't have long grinds and camps and time sinks this game won't survive the long run.
At least we have the benefit of some other systems that will extend content. VR wont be able to keep up with content development unless they utilize them all.
Not only will the long camps and time sinks fly, but it is a big part of what is missing from games today. They keep players playing. Give them something to strive for. That is what many of us want.
There are plenty of games out there you can play if you want to attain an item in only a few hours. Personally I dont feel anywhere near the same amount of satisfaction in attaining an item that is easy to get.
Not having long time sinks is fine for pay to win/cash shop games that plan on making as much money as fast as possible and not lasting. With a subscription format it only makes more money if it is able to keep players playing for the long term.
I agree. All VR has said is they want you to be able to get something meaningful done in a two hour session. They do acknowledge that players - even the players that overall enjoyed the long camping game in EQ - might not have the contiguous time we had in those days, BUT that doesn't mean that patience and endurance shouldn't and won't be things that are rewarded in Pantheon.
There could still be camps that have you coming back again and again for those 2 hour slots until you get what you want from them. There could still be quests that have you working for months - in 2 hour slots - to finish.
I'm sure there will be plenty to do *during* those 2 hours slots, even when camping with a long-term aim - for those with ADHD who enjoy more immediate gratification, but I also hope there will be plenty of long-term, long-time aims over the coming years.
I think a distinction needs to be made between player driven methods of play, and development driven world dynamics.
PLayer driven methods of play are "camps" and dungeon "crawls" - as have been discussed. I noticed the OP left out mage ability, which can summon a table of food that all the members can eat from :)
The devs, on the other hand and as mentioned in blackrose keep, will have a world dynamic where certain nameds will not always spawn in one spot, but can spawn in many areas and often will roam. Thereby eliminating the ability for one "camp" to monopolize a given spawn.
So, yeah, if you want to grind there, or if- as Cohh mentioned in one stream- "just kill stuff" yeah.
Akilae said:EQ's world was dangerous. You couldn't just barrel through content without worrying about getting slaughtered. There was a very real risk to being careless which made the rewards and the failures more dramatic and impactful.
Nephele said:Camping had nothing to do with this. I get that you were saying it to make a comparison with WoW but it really has nothing to do with enabling camping or not. Camping comes about because of how you populate areas and how you incentivize people to move around or stay in those areas - not because of the difficulty of individual monsters. Consider this: Vanguard had large open-world dungeons with relatively challenging fights all the way through - very few encounters were really "trash". However, most players "crawled" the dungeons instead of camping parts of them. Why was that?
I don't understand why say camping had nothing to do with EQ's difficulty. Camping is necessary if the mob density, difficulty and respawn rates dictate it. EQ's "trash" mobs were difficult, usually packed in fairly closely and the respawn rates could keep an undergeared group farming the same 5 or 6 mobs for hours. Let's not forget the tendency in EQ for mobs on levels above and below you to aggro on you, too, and then the social trains that could cause.
Even in EQ groups that could out-kill all of those factors would "crawl" around dungeons. Ultimately that was the goal: crawl your way to the bosses for the real loot. In that respect all MMOs are basically the same. But the more difficult ones caused groups to pause for a while a various places to clear the rooms ahead.
Akilae said:There's not much of an in-between here either. I also played a lot of DAoC and camping in that game was very rare, only in a few specific places and that was mostly due to so many players being in the same region at the same time. Camping was how several groups could share an area, not a means of clearing mobs. Most of the time camps weren't respected anyway.
Nephele said:This, I think, is closer to the truth. It's a given that with shared dungeons in Pantheon, people will need to spread out and split up to share space. The conflict isn't about whether there's one group in the ballroom, another in the kitchen, and a third in the courtyard. It's about whether one of those areas should be incentivized more highly than the others, and whether competition over highly incentivized camps should be the norm.
In simpler terms: Do you want the game design to intentionally pit players against each other, or not?
I would prefer that the game is designed such that temporary camping is necessary in order to progress through the content and that it's not possible to just keep running from room to room slaughtering all the things without risk. Players will pit themselves againt others in *any* environment so there's shouldn't be much thought put into that during game design. It's only natural that certain "camping spots" will be more valuable than others due to the mobs those camps include, e.g. bosses. As long as players respect the existing camps (ha!) there won't be problems.
Akilae said:A game either requires camps for survival or it doesn't. The former type of game tends to be slower-paced and more socially oriented. The latter are hack-n-slash, action style games. Given a choice between the two I'll take camps every time.
Nephele said:This is an overgeneralization. Camping isn't required for socialization to occur. Wildstar was a great example of this. It was not a camping game. The group content was often instanced and the open-world areas were soloable. Yet many people met and got to know each other through adventuring. How? Because group content was *extremely* challenging, and required players to work together and coordinate closely. It also helped that the game's non-combat gameplay promoted people doing things together.
Socialization happens because of shared objectives, interdependency, the difficulty of attaining goals, and downtime. If people are constantly fighting, they're not talking - it doesn't matter what game you're talking about. I had plenty of chain pulling groups in EverQuest where no one said anything in group chat beyond "incoming", "oom", and various CC macros. All that mattered was the experience rate per hour. I had plenty of dungeon camps where I grouped with different people every night because all that mattered was the loot drop I was after. 90% of those people I never saw or grouped with ever again. It's true that camping *can* provide an opportunity for socialization to occur, but it is NOT a guarantee, and it is not the only factor. Ironically, I probably made more friends (outside of my guild) in pickup raids and LDON groups back in EQ than I ever did in open-world camps. Why? Because we all had reasons to keep coming back week after week.
Camping isn't *required* for socialization but it definitely *encourages* socialization. If a group is able to run-and-kill through a dungeon they are too busy to socialize. Yes, it can still happen but it isn't helped. And camping doesn't automatically mean there will be socialization. We seem to be saying the same thing here so I'm not sure where the disagreement is. My quoted statement didn't mention camping or socialization, only that in a difficult game groups will be required to camp and in most modern MMOs you hack-n-slash your way through them (because they're not difficult) and that I prefer the former.
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Camping doesn't guarantee socialization and a faster pace doesn't prohibit it. But there are definitely more opportunities to socialize if the game pace is slowed down and fewer if it is sped up. I think we're all, or at least most of us, looking for a game that is more cerebral and social than yet another speed run game. After all, MMORPGs are basically chat rooms that give you something to chat about. At least they used to be.
A quick comparison/point that I don't think has been mentioned in this thread (unless I missed it somehow).
WoW Dungeons - A level 35 dungeon was full of mobs that a level 35 group could take on
EQ Dungeons - Most dungeons had a WIDE range of mobs. A level 25 group might be able to camp the entry level groups in a dungeon but would have NO CHANCE to work their way to the deeper parts of the dungeon. In the same dungeon a level 35 group could work their way through the entry mob groups and reach some of the deeper mobs that are level 33, 34, 35.
My point is - A low level group could still experience the dungeon. While camping that lower level entry group they would start to get the feel for the dungeon. As they level up and return to that same dungeon from time to time they will work their way further into the dungeon, get to know the dungeon even more. Eventually being high enough level to work their way to the deepest parts of the dungeon and set up camp there. The sense of danger is drastically increased by this feature I believe. In WoW if your group could handle the initial mobs in a dungeon you were pretty confident you could clear the whole dungeon. In EQ if you had trouble clearing the initial groups then you knew there was NO chance you'd be able to work your way to the deeper bosses.
So - camping in this case was definitely a good thing. It gives you a chance to experience a dungeon even if you aren't powerful enough to clear the entire thing. You go, learn a camp, level up a bit, etc. Maybe in another play session down the road you revisit that same dungeon and learn a deeper camp. Dangerous and exciting!
Ranarius said:A quick comparison/point that I don't think has been mentioned in this thread (unless I missed it somehow).
WoW Dungeons - A level 35 dungeon was full of mobs that a level 35 group could take on
EQ Dungeons - Most dungeons had a WIDE range of mobs. A level 25 group might be able to camp the entry level groups in a dungeon but would have NO CHANCE to work their way to the deeper parts of the dungeon. In the same dungeon a level 35 group could work their way through the entry mob groups and reach some of the deeper mobs that are level 33, 34, 35.
My point is - A low level group could still experience the dungeon. While camping that lower level entry group they would start to get the feel for the dungeon. As they level up and return to that same dungeon from time to time they will work their way further into the dungeon, get to know the dungeon even more. Eventually being high enough level to work their way to the deepest parts of the dungeon and set up camp there. The sense of danger is drastically increased by this feature I believe. In WoW if your group could handle the initial mobs in a dungeon you were pretty confident you could clear the whole dungeon. In EQ if you had trouble clearing the initial groups then you knew there was NO chance you'd be able to work your way to the deeper bosses.
So - camping in this case was definitely a good thing. It gives you a chance to experience a dungeon even if you aren't powerful enough to clear the entire thing. You go, learn a camp, level up a bit, etc. Maybe in another play session down the road you revisit that same dungeon and learn a deeper camp. Dangerous and exciting!
probably the most valid comment in the whole thread. Thanks Ranarius
Yes interesting point Ranarius.
I can remember in EQ1 as a newb I was not near Guk so I didn't experience it at all until lower Guk. However I went back to upper later on with twinks as it was undercamped and had decent exp for that time period.
One thing I would point out is that in an Amberfaet stream they talk about the level of the spiders at the beginning being in their 20s and then later the level of the dwarves being 30s. I believe they also talked about this in 2 other Cohh streams/zones. Yes it is pre-alpha but it sure seems that it is designed this way currently :)
I like that this allows social interactions between level ranges and promotes things like asking for help to get back to your corpse and you get some nice player with invis or stealth to drag it up or simply pull past greys, or perhaps wreck the zone hehe. Get buffs, get help on a named, things like this really happened back then (unlike speed run queued games with little talking). These sorts of things were always one of my recruiting tools for more casual or new guilds in various games. If you help someone and teach them things that loyalty makes for lasting friendships.
Here is an interesting 2-part video covering this topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSzK5cQkbhI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vSmYQPhTLY
It's short, about 11 minutes total.