Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Are we bringing Camping back?

    • 810 posts
    May 22, 2020 2:54 PM PDT

    Iksar said:

    @Philo

    Well I would say that if they don't want this game to crash and burn then some concessions must be made. The old EQ open world style of content denial/monopoly is a dumpster fire that frankly doesn't even appeal to many old EQ vets.

    Sharding popular zones will automatically make it far more friendly than EQ.  There may be other ways to make it go smoother, but having four to five groups to a dungeon or what have you during prime time will bring a nice balance. 

    • 1860 posts
    May 22, 2020 3:44 PM PDT

    Jobeson said:

    Iksar said:

    @Philo

    Well I would say that if they don't want this game to crash and burn then some concessions must be made. The old EQ open world style of content denial/monopoly is a dumpster fire that frankly doesn't even appeal to many old EQ vets.

    Sharding popular zones will automatically make it far more friendly than EQ.  There may be other ways to make it go smoother, but having four to five groups to a dungeon or what have you during prime time will bring a nice balance. 

    They have said they aren't going to do that.  They want to deal with that issue by balancing the server populations.

    • 1860 posts
    May 22, 2020 3:54 PM PDT

    Iksar said:

    EQ dragons would teleport players away that were over level 52 as somewhat of a first means to hopefully open content to others/level appropriate players, which doesn't jive with your proposed idea of an open world as it conflicts with players being able to see but not interact with content. 

    That was a bad mechanic for sure when it was released halfway through Kunark.  At least it was only for 2 mobs in the game...but still, not great.

    I think there is a reason that mechanic wasn't used again in the future.  It wasnt good and they realized that even back in 2000...

    EQ became full blown non- open world with ldon in 2003.

    EQ had issues to of course...even early on when it was considered good.  


    This post was edited by philo at May 22, 2020 3:57 PM PDT
    • 12 posts
    May 22, 2020 5:28 PM PDT
    This is really such a complex topic with so many pros and cons on every side.

    What if loot could be shared throughout the dungeon? The toughest boss at the end of the dungeon may have a x% chance to spawn and a x% chance to drop the best item while the other sub bosses scattered throughout the zone may do the same at lesser percentages depending on difficulty?

    Would at least give other groups a chance at the desirable stuff when strong groups are holding down a room, without messing with instancing or timers, etc.

    Not that it necessarily should apply to every drop, but the majority?
    • 1273 posts
    May 22, 2020 5:48 PM PDT

    Most of the suggested solutions are anti-social solutions.  Those aren't gonna fly.  I think one of the major points is to force groups to have conflict, which forces conflict resolution.  I understand that sometimes players and/or guilds are not interested in resolution; if that is the reputation they want to build for themselves then they'll have to deal with the consequences.  

    • 643 posts
    May 22, 2020 6:23 PM PDT

    zer05tar said:

    Camping. Adjective. Planting the group in one place, while one member pulls mobs to the group.

     

    I noticed on the Stream and several videos that the group was marching through a dungeon without camping. Camping is basically what made Everquest the game it was. The 'Moving Through A Dungeon To The End' mechanic is something WoW did and, frankly, something I want to steer clear of.

     ...

    Thoughts?

     

    I am 100% in the same "camp" as you on this topic

    • 1399 posts
    May 22, 2020 8:17 PM PDT

    What's being talked about here (again) is ways to artificially control human behavior to make this GAME a “happy place” for everybody so all the impatient children can get what they want when they want it so that they don’t take there ball and go home.

    EXACTLY what has destroyed the MMORPG genre over the years.

    I just hope (and I believe it’s true) VR see’s through it, and gives us a game where YES guild can and Will monopolize content, High levels will monopolize content, all the inpatient’s that CANT WAIT do indeed take there balls and go home and they rest 85% of us are free to enjoy the WORLD and maybe even join that guild that’s monopolizing the spawn point, and monopolize it with them (actually I won’t, but I may ask if I can join there group if they get an opening)

     

    The OP had a pretty good topic, the rest of you with your solutions on “how to control the WORLD” have made a mess of it.

    • 1273 posts
    May 22, 2020 8:21 PM PDT

    Zorkon said:

    EXACTLY what has destroyed the MMORPG genre over the years.

    We keep saying it but they aren't listening.  The thing that surprises me is that VR has made it clear as well, then people pledge and try to change it.

    • 1399 posts
    May 22, 2020 8:28 PM PDT

    Ranarius said:

    Zorkon said:

    EXACTLY what has destroyed the MMORPG genre over the years.

    We keep saying it but they aren't listening.  The thing that surprises me is that VR has made it clear as well, then people pledge and try to change it.

    I know, and it's going to be HARD for VR to stand there ground... this preaching all the terrable reasons WHY they should dumb down the game is very vocal (like most cry baby's... Good God my Daugher could scream at 3 yo!!) , myself I'm pretty easy going and paitent and happy to just ignore them and stay silent (becouse I get myself in trouble when I speak up... no filter!) But I seen where that got the genre, last tiem, I lurked and stayed silent and now I don't even want to play any of them anymore. So I have no one else to blame.

    This time I'll speak up, at least once.

     

    edit: Lol, this post reminded me of Chris Stapelton  - Nobody to Blame But Me


    This post was edited by Zorkon at May 22, 2020 8:32 PM PDT
    • 2752 posts
    May 22, 2020 10:44 PM PDT

    At exactly no point have they said content denial or camp monopolization is either a goal nor desired. These idea that allowing content denial will lead to any kind of positive social interactions or otherwise meaningful conflict resolution are laughable at best. So is the tired nonsense argument that accessability only equals loot pinatas and everyone getting what they want when they want.

     

    But hey I get it, some percentage of people want a pseudo player vs player dramafest of might makes right and relish the worst parts of EQ.

    • 523 posts
    May 23, 2020 5:09 AM PDT

    They've stated they are making end game content similar to how they handled Vanguard.  I never stuck around to see APW in Vanguard, but apparently however they did that raid zone was fairly well received.  As for individual leveling dungeon camps, they've stated they'll have randomized spawns so that you don't have to be in a certain spot to camp a potential certain drop.  The exception might be a "boss" battle at the end of the dungeon, but that will require a non-reusable trigger item that will be obtained somewhere in the dungeon and consumed in the process, this keeps that final boss from being camped by one group indefinitely.  The team is well aware of the pros and cons of EQ1 style play.  We are past this.

     

    The OP's original thoughts on how campfire's might be utilized to provide further class individuality and group dynamics is worth discussing.  I hope Joppa chimes in.

    • 810 posts
    May 23, 2020 5:58 AM PDT

    philo said:

    They have said they aren't going to do that.  They want to deal with that issue by balancing the server populations.

    I wonder what other popular rumours are floating around in Pantheon I don't know are only rumours.  I gotta say, no sharding really amps up the issue of over populated zones.  I mean what happens when they make a new dungeon?  Just wait 30 days in line until you can play it?  I don't like the perma open shards, but the population controlled ones are great. 

    • 724 posts
    May 23, 2020 6:22 AM PDT
    I like the camping idea of having some perk based on who sets the camp or something along the line of a "base" of advantage.

    And... The Bard pole dancing...hahahahaha
    A Bard camp could get a bonus to something something but up the sneak rating of mobs because everyone is distracted, allowing an orc or something to burst into the area and cause chaos.
    • 3852 posts
    May 23, 2020 6:39 AM PDT

    ((You should absolutely not be able to fight any mob any time you want (for a number of reasons).  That is one of the positives in an open world/contested game. ))

     

    This - from 2 pages ago - really represents the heart of the matter. 

    Do we want an open world game? Yes almost all of us do. Some say no instances or shards at all. Some say use of sharding to ameliorate temporary overcrowding is fine and shards aren't instances. Some say use of a few instances is good to avoid bottlenecks and griefing but almost everything open world (a view seemingly rejected by VR but testing may or may not change minds). There is not any significant sentiment at all for more than limited instances.

    Do we want a mostly contested game? Perhaps not. There is a strong sentiment against this as well as quite a few that argue for it. Mostly contested games produce bottlenecks and griefing by their very nature. Phones or beepers or pagers going off at 3AM - a major boss just spawned - get to it fast or else guild x will take it (we don''t need it but we sure don't want them to have it or they may get enough gear that they can do some of the content that only we are doing now).

     

    ((They want to deal with that issue by balancing the server populations.))

     

    Important that this be done but essentially irrelevant to the topic of camping or contested versus not so contested. In fact if they do a crappy job of it and some servers are significantly lower population that may work better. Lower population servers almost universally are more friendly and less cutthroat in any MMO. For the obvious reasons.

     

     

    • 1315 posts
    May 23, 2020 8:34 AM PDT

    I do think it would be cool if players could setup camps out in the larger wilderness zones that acted as creature attracters or could include them.  Sort of as a way for players to interact with and influence the spawn rate of the world.  In this way an otherwise empty area of a zone could be turned into a viable adventuring location.

     

    Wilderness camps could have multiple uses and solve multiple problems.

    1. They could be portable harvest focused workstations.

    2. Be a visible gathering point in otherwise open terrain.

    3. A means of load balancing over population without resorting to sharding zones or massively increasing spawn rate by locally increasing spawn rates and or composition.

    4. Another path of horizontal progression for players, caravan groups and guilds.

      

     

    • 1273 posts
    May 23, 2020 10:32 AM PDT

    I wonder what other popular rumours are floating around in Pantheon I don't know are only rumours.  I gotta say, no sharding really amps up the issue of over populated zones.  I mean what happens when they make a new dungeon?  Just wait 30 days in line until you can play it?  I don't like the perma open shards, but the population controlled ones are great. 

    Your best bet is to start by reading the FAQ: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/game/faqs/ ; Start there and you'll be able to debunk a lot of what people are saying on the forums.

     

    • DUNGEONS AND RAIDS

    • 9.0 Are dungeons open world or instanced?

      All dungeons are open world. There are no plans for instanced dungeons at this time. The dungeons will be very large to handle multiple groups of players. More shards/servers will be added if overpopulation becomes a problem.

    • 2756 posts
    May 23, 2020 10:51 AM PDT

    Jobeson said:

    philo said:

    They have said they aren't going to do that.  They want to deal with that issue by balancing the server populations.

    I wonder what other popular rumours are floating around in Pantheon I don't know are only rumours.  I gotta say, no sharding really amps up the issue of over populated zones.  I mean what happens when they make a new dungeon?  Just wait 30 days in line until you can play it?  I don't like the perma open shards, but the population controlled ones are great. 

    Older members here have absorbed every single stream, interview, roundtable, podcast, newsletter, article, etc. Usually twice or more and then discussed it all.

    I consider myself an 'old' member, but joining early 2016 I was still a couple of years after the original kickstarter and felt like a 'new-comer' for a while.

    So, it's not so much 'rumours' as often something that has been heard, read, watched, or whatever and recalled from last week or years ago.

    In this particular case, yes, I believe VR have mentioned they would prefer to use server population to stop zones being overcrowded.

    I'll comment now as I did then: That is too blunt a tool. If you avoid over-populatiopn at peak times, you end up with empty zones at other times. Maybe if you mix in multi-region or multi-timezone servers, but that's messy. You basically end up doing regular server splits/combines and server transfers no matter what.

    What do cloud services do these days to address temporal population peaks and troughs?  Do they allocated enough resource to cover what they hope the population will be?  Or do they spin up more servers for peak times and shut them down again later?  Zones shards are a fine tool to solve over population and they bear little resemblance to the demonised 'instancing' of encounters. If a zone is designed to hold 100 characters and 200 turn up, you spin up a new zone shard at 101 and offer the second half the option. I've played several MMOs that do it. It's fine.

    But we'll see in alpha maybe beta. Unfortunately, there issues don't really come up until release or beyond. I hope VR allow for that.

    P.S. Sorry if the term 'shard' is confusing. When I say a "zone shard" I mean just a zone clone, not a whole server. The FAQ says "shard/server" meaning a whole new server. I'm pretty sure previous MMO uses of the term 'shard' has meant zone clones, so when I first saw the FAQ I thought they meant "zone or server clone", depending on if they have a zone over-crowded or perhaps a whole server suffering, but apparently not. They mean they want to control individual and temporary zone population problems by controlling the whole server population.


    This post was edited by disposalist at May 23, 2020 10:56 AM PDT
    • 1273 posts
    May 23, 2020 11:44 AM PDT

    The zone shard idea was the first big turn off for me about EQ2.  I realize I didn't give it a ton of time, but it was SO annoying to me when I'd zone into a zone to find a friend and we could not find each other because we were in different "instances" of the zone.  I know they worked on ways around that like being in the same group, or maybe being on each others friends lists or whatever, but I personally did not like the feeling at all.  One of the things I was excited about for this game was the absence of shards/instances/clones.  I feel like they really take away from the organic community aspect of the game.  

    With that said, I do understand the issues with overpopulation, they just don't bother me that much I guess.  I remember when I first started EQ in '99.  I was running around Kelethin wondering what the purpose was, there were players everywhere and nothing to kill haha.  Eventually I happened to be in a spot where a wolf spawned so I killed it.  That only happened during the most crowded times and was very rare.  After the initial wave of level 1 to 5 players moved on I never had that issue again, even during peak play times, because the level of the population was starting to spread out.  I was also a fairly patient person, not in a hurry to get that next kill.  I was fine with running around, looking at trees, watching other players, checking out the towns, all that.  The game wasn't just about killing the next mob.  I do hope that we don't need to resort to shards/instances but I would understand if that ends up being the only good solution.

     

    Edit to fix typos haha...that's what happens when you try to type anything coherent with your 4 kids in the room.


    This post was edited by Ranarius at May 23, 2020 4:43 PM PDT
    • 287 posts
    May 23, 2020 11:48 AM PDT

    dorotea said:

    I strongly disagree with the fondness many feel for camping - a fondness they quite likely did not feel while they were actually doing it. Killing mobs in one spot for an hour or two between traveling around to see other things and doing quests is fine - that isn't what I am criticizing. But if camping is the main focus of a game I think that game has problems keeping people interested. Heck - keeping people awake.

    I strongly disagree with your assertion that camping was among EQ's worst features :)

    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.

    Contrast that with WoW's apparent modus operandi of speed-running all the things.  Trash mobs were regularly gathered up so the group could AoE them down with no risk.  Nobody wanted to socialize, it was all about getting this tedious task done asap.  Among other poor design decisions in that game, this aspect was partly responsible for the garbage community.

    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. 

    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.

     

    One last thought: Camping during a dungeon crawl, as described above, was fine.  "Camping" quest mobs, where you had to sit in the same place sometimes for hours, days or even weeks, killing near-infinite placeholders, sucked.  In that respect, yes, camping was awful.  But in the context of this thread, meaning waiting while your puller grabs some mobs to kill, that kind of camping is nearly essential to avoid creating another WoW clone.


    This post was edited by Akilae at May 23, 2020 11:52 AM PDT
    • 8 posts
    May 23, 2020 12:16 PM PDT

    /yell CAMP CHECK?!

    • 1785 posts
    May 23, 2020 12:22 PM PDT

    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.

    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?

    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.

    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?

    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.

    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.

     

    • 2756 posts
    May 23, 2020 2:21 PM PDT

    Ranarius said:

    The zone shard idea was the first big turn off for me about EQ2.  I realize I didn't give it a ton of time, but it was SO annoying to me when I'd zone into a a zone to find a friend and we could not find each other because we were in different "instances" of the zone.  I know they worked on ways around that like being in the same group, or maybe being on each others friends lists or whatever, but I personally did not like the feeling at all.  One of the things I was excited about for this game was the absence of shards/instances/clones.  I feel like they really take away from the organize community aspect of the game.  

    With that said, I do understand the issues with overpopulation, they just don't bother me that much I guess.  I remember when I first started EQ in '99.  I was running around Kelethin wondering what the purpose was, there were players everywhere and nothing to kill haha.  Eventually I happened to be in a spot where a wolf spawned so I killed it.  That only happened during the most crowded times and was very rare.  After the initial wave of level 1 to 5 players moved on I never had that issue again, even during peak play times, because the level of the population was starting to spread out.  I was also a fairly patient person, not in a hurry to get that next kill.  I was fine with running around, looking at trees, watching other players, checking out the towns, all that.  The game wasn't just about killing the next mob.  I do hope that we don't need to resort to shards/instances but I would understand if that ends up being the only good solution.

    Zone shards were a little painful in EQ2, yes, but that could totally be coded better so you wouldn't even noticemost of the time. And they should only be used when peak over-population occurs, which should be rare.

    You might not even apply them to the low level zones where population being high is more normal and not so painful.

    And you might not even apply them until the population is the zone is very full.  And even then you wouldn't force people to use them.

    In my experience of MMOs over-full zones have been a much greater cause of grief than zone shards.

    If you rarely saw that problem, then, great! If controlling the server population can somehow stop zones over-populating at peak times, then cool. In that case, the zone shards won't even kick in.

    But if you *do* get over-population issues... why not have some recourse?

    • 113 posts
    May 23, 2020 4:43 PM PDT

    To the OP. First of all I think the assumption that camping is in game is valid as it has been mentioned in streams. This fact has been eluded to a couple of times but seems to be glossed over in most replies in the thread. 

    I like the idea of having perhaps 2 or 3 options per class for camp buffs so that there is a discussion about "Should I drop down a regen font or a spell damage font?" depending on the situation and group makeup as apposed to it just being a default "ok we are in our corner that we broke and now everyone pop down your camp buff". Of course if there is always a Best for each class that defeats the point so they would need to be balanced properly to entice that decision making. 

    As to the debate about how camping should work and the problems associated with an open world with contention on named, it seems that the major contributors here are ignoring the posts about what we have heard the Devs state outright. I realize it is pre-alpha and now is the time to make our opinions clear, but there has hardly been any mention about what we've heard from the Devs in streams. I'll paraphrase here as it would be difficult to get the time stamps for every video.

    For example they stated in an Amberfaet stream that the zone would accomodate 8-10 groups?

    They mentioned coordinating camps during a question about chat channels. (In the same sentence as Raids)

    Said that a player may want an item but that comparable items would be available from other named. It was very specific that they wanted to have alternative locations to get those upgrades to alleviate camping problems. 

    Eluded to camping named in the keep in Amber (or was it the Magicians tower?) for a particular item wanted.

    Talked about some anti-KS mechanics with locking the room when the boss fight started (Magicians?, and the raid zone on the floating islands stream with windswept?)

    I think there are more that I'm missing too, but my point is that it seems odd to me for people to argue certain things that we already know are in the plan from Devs, albiet not finalized of course. 

    On to my personal feelings about camping, I started playing EQ in 1999. Some of my best memories are pre-Kunark Guk camps. Yea the FBSS was The item, but even as a Cleric I enjoyed those groups a lot. In those days it wasn't an easy camp and you had to be on your game. The stakes were high, and when the named popped it was a feeling of great anticipation. I played a monk and warrior too and bad pulls could be devastating which made the pullers job important and they had to be mindful. The feeling you got when you've learned the zone by heart was amazing, accomplishment, a great puller reputation! Learning every room in order to be a good puller, having a rotation in your head for spawn times to pull, it was all so far removed from WoWs fall onward. 

    Even in EQ2 early days before they removed Group exp debt, it was pretty hardcore to actually Know the dungeon and Know the pulls, Know the named, because if you died it hurt everyone. I for one certainly want to see this type of gameplay come back, gameplay where it matters if you have a player that is an expert in that zone or not.

    If there are not named camps then this is lessened to a great degree. You run through and kill everything, someone says "Hey does this guy drop anything good?" and we say "meh I dunno they all drop crap let's just keep running through as fast as we can". Named loot camps are important imo. Point being without Camps, Pullers are missing out on a unique experience. 

    I enjoyed farming greys sometimes in EQ for say the pre-nerf Circlet of Shadows and mostly the idol. I made a lot of plat from that. It was not exciting but I spent that time chatting with guild and friends. That being said I'm not against grey mobs not dropping loot to prevent higher levels from monopolizing for profit. 

     

     

     Edit typo

     


    This post was edited by GeneralReb at May 23, 2020 5:45 PM PDT
    • 1273 posts
    May 23, 2020 4:57 PM PDT

    On to my personal feelings about camping, I started playing EQ in 1999. Some of my best memories are pre-Kunark Guk camps. Yea the FBSS was The item, but even as a Cleric I enjoyed those groups a lot. In those days it wasn't an easy camp and you had to be on your game. The stakes were high, and when the named popped it was a feeling of great anticipation. I played a monk and warrior too and bad pulls could be devastating which made the pullers job important and they had to be mindful. The feeling you got when you've learned the zone by heart was amazing, accomplishment, a great puller reputation! Learning every room in order to be a good puller, having a rotation in your head for spawn times to pull, it was all so far removed from WoWs fall onward. 

    I've said this exact thing a few times in the past few months.  I was a puller in my groups...and a Ranger at that.  Even in Guk I was the main puller.  I had to work hard to build a reputation to be a puller that groups trusted (even though I was a ranger ;-))  But you're right, the sense of accomplishment is amazing when you get there!

    • 118 posts
    May 23, 2020 5:38 PM PDT

    I feel like one of the more important things to get right is to not have powerful gear able to be soloed by a single lvl 50 enchanter. In EQ some of the best drops are easily soloable and don't require a group effort to get, this leads to spots being camped for hours on end by one or two people taking turns.  Making end game content hard enough that you can't solo the important stuff will go a long way to alliviating some of the issues you find in EQ.

      It might create more issues with guilds blocking out loot completely from casual players with their guild groups swapping out but im HOPING VR is actually planning on addressing that particular issue because there has been a lot of talk on their end about how they have a plan for how to handle it, but the recent community stream where they said " we aren't going to police guilds competing for content" and " we are not going to have a play nice policy" really leaves the door open for things to be the same.