Liav said:philo said:Liav said:
Vanguard and EQOA will likely remain as the highlights of my MMO career, two games that were shut down in short order. As much inspiration as they took from EQ, they improved on enough that I can look at them as superior (to me). I just want Pantheon to go more in the direction of those games, for obvious reasons.
Liav said:
Seemingly, but I get more enjoyment out of EQ than any other game. Funny how that works.
Explain how these two comments work in relation to each other please.
Vanguard and EQOA don't exist anymore. Case closed.
Ah ok. The statement about EQ is worded as an absolute statement. I guess it should have read something like :I *currently* get more enjoyment out of EQ than any other game.
That would have made it more clear. The wording was the issue.
philo said:Liav said:philo said:Liav said:
Vanguard and EQOA will likely remain as the highlights of my MMO career, two games that were shut down in short order. As much inspiration as they took from EQ, they improved on enough that I can look at them as superior (to me). I just want Pantheon to go more in the direction of those games, for obvious reasons.
Liav said:
Seemingly, but I get more enjoyment out of EQ than any other game. Funny how that works.
Explain how these two comments work in relation to each other please.
Vanguard and EQOA don't exist anymore. Case closed.
Ah ok. The statement about EQ is worded as an absolute statement. I guess it should have read something like :I *currently* get more enjoyment out of EQ than any other game.
That would have made it more clear. The wording was the issue.
You're right. My apologies for the ambiguity.
Dullahan said:I miss fighting a mob and thinking, "Wow, is this mob even killable?" I think restoring that sense of mystery could go a long way to keeping people playing an MMORPG.
It's totally possible to have capped raids and fight a mob thinking "is this mob even killable". I feel like you are usually a well thought out person but I don't see how this makes any sense to me. You're making it sound like the only way to reach this scenario is through uncapped raids.
I don't care if they are capped or not, I just prefer raids that require around 20ish people. And if they are going to create raids that never have to require more than say 24 people then why not just cap it at 24 with 4 groups of 6.
I've raided in plenty of MMOs from EQ to EQ2 to WoW and Rift. And VG was easily the one I had the most fun in while raiding. VG was perfect for me with 24 max players. And VG you didn't need 24 to kill some of the bosses but you never needed more and that's prefectly fine for me. I feel it is a more intimate experience while raiding when you don't have dozens upon dozens of raiders. I love being able to chat with the entire guild while kicking bosses butts.
I feel like when you get to 30+ players you lose that intimacy because it is really hard for 50 some players to speak freely while raiding. As a raid leader I feel like I would prefer to manage 24ish players to 72. I've never led a raid of 72, I've never actually led a raid of more than 24, but organizing and managing players' schedules in a guild with more than 24 players seems just more appealing to me if it the raid is kept around 24.
These are the 2 main reasons for me. The intimacy of raids around 24 players and just the management of it.
I do have one question though. PRF is a niche' game. If raids are to be uncapped or are to have 50+ players, would that be possible IF PRF's subscriber count is on the lower side of things? As much as I would LOVE to see PRF nab WoW numbers, I think that is maybe a lil unrealistic. But what player base IS realistic? And what would be realistic for 50+ player raids? I guess one way to answer this would be to question how well the raids are doing on the non popular EQ servers. Phinny can easily be found at max pop at most times of the day but what about some of the other servers that aren't so popular, are the uncapped raids doing fine on those servers? I mean either way I still want 24 man raids, 30 might be pushing it but definitely nothing more than 30.
I'd like to take a different look at how best to determine the optimal raid size by looking at what composes a raid. What is the primary concern of every player? They want to be useful, knowing that no matter if it group content or raid content there is a place for them, they can contribute. So lets look at a few things:
Pantheon has 4 Archetypes: Tank, Priest, Melee DPS, Caster DPS. Within each archetype we have 3 classes. So for every class to have a spot the minimium raid is 12.
From this composition we can make solid assumptions if raids were capped at 12 with the requirement of every class represented:
From just these few assumptions that puts a huge limit on the quality, complexity and excitement of a raid if you cap the size at 12.
If we cap the raid at 24, however, we can change our assumptions quite a bit while still holding to our base premise of every class being represented:
So with a raid size of 24 the raid NPCs can, at a minimum, double in strength and this would maintain a similar level of difficulty of a 12 person raid. Such a raid could deal with 2 equal encounters simultaneously. Raid composition choices increased dramatically, allowing for different approaches to content. Guilds will be able to have more of their members join raids with 24 slots available.
So now we move on to raids of 36 slots and here, I think, is the sweet spot for raid size in Pantheon.
A raid of 36 means the potential complexity of a raid nearly limitless. Here is where you can get the multiple adds, AEs, split raid situations, etc. Yet nothing stops you from bring fewer players should you feel capable of handling the target with less. Coordinating 36 people is something that takes some skill.
One thing you have to take into consideration is that we have a limited developer staff. If raids were capped at 12, imagine how many raids the deveopers will need to design to keep a server population full of 12 man raids happy? At any given time on a server you can expect hundreds upon hundreds of players, probably even a thousand or more. Granted not all of them will be of raid level at any given moment but with just a low bar of entry set at 12, we'd need a huge number of raids available to us.
Now by increasing the raid to 36, you put more people into a single raid thus needing fewer overall raid encounters around the world. And because raids this size are more capable and more flexible, raids can be longer in duration, keeping those raiders engaged for more time. I think that no matter how you break it down, having at least 36 person raids will be far better for the game as a whole than raids capped at lower numbers.
36 would probably be fine and allow for more flexibility than 24. It's just the 50+ situation that I feel is where you start to get into zerg territory. There's basically a tipping point where having more people in a raid is just bad for the game. It's a worse individual player experience, and it's far worse for the developers to design raids around those numbers.
Even so, I think 24 is also fine and I have seen plenty of flexibility with a 24 man raid format.
NoobieDoo said:I do have one question though. PRF is a niche' game. If raids are to be uncapped or are to have 50+ players, would that be possible IF PRF's subscriber count is on the lower side of things? As much as I would LOVE to see PRF nab WoW numbers, I think that is maybe a lil unrealistic. But what player base IS realistic? And what would be realistic for 50+ player raids? I guess one way to answer this would be to question how well the raids are doing on the non popular EQ servers. Phinny can easily be found at max pop at most times of the day but what about some of the other servers that aren't so popular, are the uncapped raids doing fine on those servers? I mean either way I still want 24 man raids, 30 might be pushing it but definitely nothing more than 30.
Above all, this is my biggest concern. If they come out at the begining requiring high number in a raid, that may never happen and is just a waste of a limited budget. Start out reasonable, then if the population is there to support it, add new mobs or harder versions of the old raids.
I hope 100k plus players come immediately, but no to confident it will happen.
Not too mention the effort to maintain several guilds on each server that can field a 70+ raid force regularly. I am sure membership turnover will be a significant problem. Smaller raids are more manageable, strictly for this reason.
But, overall, I am all for devs creating mobs with specific numbers and roles in mind, then letting the players decide what to do. If a mob for 24 people drops 2 pieces of loot, it should still drop 2 pieces of loot with 50 people. That is the diminishing return for Zerging.
Design for a specific number, but don't cap it.
Beefcake said:The Devs can simply design a raid fight with a certain number or players or roles in mind. Then, let the players decide what they want to bring to the fight.
Ths allows for maximum flexibility.
The problem is that you always have to facilitate zerg guilds just trivializing your encounter. Instead of building in safe guards to prevent that from happening, it's far more practical to just restrict the raid size in the first place.
I can think of so many mechanics that are utterly trivialized by throwing masses of players at it. It's just not worthit to try to accomodate that many people. I'm not even confident that Pantheon will be able to sustain huge raid sizes for a long time post-launch. For both future proofing and practicality of design, limits make sense.
Edit: You responded to and/or said some of what I said already. However, I still disagree with your conclusion that it should be uncapped.
Of course, they could always add another mechanic or increase the hit points/power levels dynamically based on the number of players attacking the mob. If you designed it for 4 groups and a 5 groups are attacking, add a mana drain proc. At 6 groups, add a death touch. At 7 groups, add some trash spawns. This would not be hard to add as a template to all encounters.
From the recent stream, this seems to be what is already planned.
NoobieDoo said:Dullahan said:I miss fighting a mob and thinking, "Wow, is this mob even killable?" I think restoring that sense of mystery could go a long way to keeping people playing an MMORPG.
It's totally possible to have capped raids and fight a mob thinking "is this mob even killable". I feel like you are usually a well thought out person but I don't see how this makes any sense to me. You're making it sound like the only way to reach this scenario is through uncapped raids.
I don't know. I think it's more logical to surmise a mob might not be killable in a system of uncapped raids, than a sanitized system where everything in the known game is designed for a specific amount of people. Don't really see how any other conclusion could be reached, tbh.
Just apply it to any situation in EQ, and you'll see exactly where I'm coming from. Avatar of war. Most mobs were killable with 30-40 people. Suddenly this mob that took twice that comes out of no where. It turns out that mob was intended to be killed, but had it been tailored for 30-40 people, there would have been no question whether it was killable. It simply couldn't have been much harder than anything else.
I have played eq, eqoa,wow,and rift. That being said I had the most fun raiding in eqoa. When we started out we would take 20+ people to kill the small bosses and 50-60 if not more to kill the big bosses.
Raid encounters should be tuned to x amount of players....and after you reach max gear and masteries...the number of people needed begins to drop.
Since the game will be new and exciting I would say the small raid bosses should be tuned for 18ish people...mid level bosses 30ish....high end bosses 42ish...
The tuning should be set for people with slightly above average gear..so that at first everyone has to do their jobs...
Another alternative would be if VR did something like rift..and boss hp and dmg changes by how many you have in attendance...
Slightly off topic..but..
Low end raid bosses 3 pieces of loot + 25% epic spell..
Medium bosses....4 pieces of loot + 33% chance at epic spell
High end bosses.....5 pieces of loot 50% chance at spell
My own gaming history is a mix of games, but mostly the theme is along the lines of competitive and challenging. I’ve played a lot of rts SC etc and I played a lot of DOTA/2 and when I played wow for many years I was all about raiding I couldn’t have cared less for the other aspects of that game.
My other gaming experience though are EQ / D&D / p1999
My personal hopes for Pantheon are that it is firstly a more sandbox/open world, do whatever you want, adventure game that has a feel of original EQ and d&d to it. Where you aren’t restricted in your choices and levelling and hanging out with new people is fun and engaging. But what do I want from raiding? I want very difficult encounters that are hard strategically & push you to the limits of your character’s mechanics.
Ok with that being said why would I prefer uncapped to capped? Because designing a challenging raid around a set number of people isn’t mutually exclusive with a capped number, you would always design any encounter for a set number of people. However, allowing the player base to find the optimal number to engage with and not forcing you to have to bench players 26 through 29 because your restricted fits more with the EQ vibe. If they are challenging encounters that will be a big step forward from EQ as raiding there is a joke mechanically. You get a best of both worlds ‘old school’ more d&d first gen mmo do what you want, with a 2017 difficulty level. I don’t see why people think you can’t have both and capping the raid is the superior option. Capping the raid is the best to get the most ‘fair’ result in the sense that if guild A and B both beat the encounter you know neither of them just threw bodies at it. But life is not fair and I don’t think a game that is trying to represent a dangerous world to adventure in should be fair and have arbitrary rules. Especially since it is 2017 and we’ve come a long way. My hope is that the developers would be able to achieve interesting/difficult encounters without having to constrain the player base.
To address people zerging encounters, while I personally would never ever want to be involved in a guild that just zerged content, do I think others who want to or perhaps lack the time/skill to do the encounter the most optimal way shouldn’t be able to? No this is an easy fix solution for making encounters hard and allowing people who are more casual see them and complete them. The only problem here would be; if the most optimal method of beating the encounter was a zerg, but if they design the game correctly it shouldn’t be. We are aware this happened in EQ I’m sure they can add incentives for the min-maxers/elite players to not engage in this activity (more loot drops the less people you engage the mob with?).
If the encounters are designed correctly, the server population balanced, the release of new content is done right and you add in incentives for skilled play with the right number of players for the encounter you will get people breaking away from zergs to form smaller guilds. You want a game that challenges people’s ideas and makes them want to play better for the greater reward. This should flow naturally from good design, not force rules upon people unless you absolutely have to do so, and I don’t think this is a situation that requires a hard and fast rule or at least I hope it doesn’t.
Finally, a quick note on what raid size I would like the encounters to be designed around, I think somewhere in the region of 25 would be best so you still get a feeling of strong personal involvement and there being a largish force of people to make it feel epic. I wouldn’t mind more, but since we are unsure of how popular/big the game will be I think it’s better to err on the side of caution. They could always add the odd encounter / solo boss that multiple guilds need to team up for one night a week, would be an interesting/fun social experiment or a nightmare :)
Looks like the middle ground is the 36-man. Some people prefer less and some prefer more/uncapped, but I've seen members on both sides saying they'd be okay with 36. I'd still prefer to leave it uncapped or have a larger force myself, but I could live with 36. The main thing I'm hoping to avoid is having multiple versions of the same encounter depending on raid size. That ruins it for me.
Beefcake said:Of course, they could always add another mechanic or increase the hit points/power levels dynamically based on the number of players attacking the mob. If you designed it for 4 groups and a 5 groups are attacking, add a mana drain proc. At 6 groups, add a death touch. At 7 groups, add some trash spawns. This would not be hard to add as a template to all encounters.
From the recent stream, this seems to be what is already planned.
On the contrary, it would be extremely difficult to have a system to dynamically scale raids and actually maintain the same difficulty level across the board.
Arbitrarily increasing things like HP and max hit is how you end up with zones like Vex Thal.
You're severely underestimating the amount of code that would take compared to just limiting the number that can engage.
Beefcake said:I think you are severely underestimating the devs ability. They already mentioned doing just this. Having additional spawns, etc., if too many people join the fight.
I believe that is their current intent.
You say I'm underestimating, I say you're overestimating.
The sheer number of variables that go into making an encounter difficult for various quantities of people isn't just as easy as "give it more HP" and "spawn more adds".
I prefer a blend of all raid sizes. The problem with running a 24 man raid (I have vivid memories of this in EQ2) is that in order to faciliate an "ideal" raid comp, some classes might get left out. We had a monk that had to sit out of raids for years because he just wasn't as tanky as a gaurdian, paladin, or SK. The ideal raid set up had a bard/enchanter in pretty much every group, which would be 8 out of 24 slots, or one third.
I'm not sure how many of you played FFXI, but they had a raid called Dynamis which I'm pretty sure was uncapped, and still very challenging. If I recall correctly there could sometimes be over 100 players in the zone and I remember the raid quality being very intense and fun. There was so much going on and everybody had an opportunity to get into the raid, regardless of what class they played. I like that.
Any time a raid leader has to potentially make a guy sit because of his class, I feel there is room for improvement. Later in the game certain fights actually required a brawler (3 Princes in KoS expansion) to basically combat how often these poor guys were asked to sit.
Anyway, I love the idea of having large scale raids. Where there is a will, there is a way. But what I don't like is when you cap the limit of players that can participate in a raid, some classes will get a spot by default because of what role they play. I remember recruiting nonstop for coercers in EQ2 because of how important they were for raids. Does anybody remember a high demand for a monk or bruiser? Of course not. Most high end guilds only had one of each because there was never a reason to bring more, let alone one to begin with. The larger the cap for raids, the more likely everybody will have a chance to participate. Not to mention how bad loot distribution was. When 1/3 of your raid force is comprised of bards/enchanters, it's so much harder for them to gear up. Likewise, there was tons of brawler loot that dropped, and our brawlers only had to spend minimum DKP on their leather gear to gear up. They then had way more DKP than any other tank class for things like jewelry, giving them a huge advantage over loot that was shared between all tank classes.
Personally, I'm in favor of a 72 man raid cap. If a guild can't field enough players to kill the bosses, then maybe some alliances will form. There is nothing wrong with the community coming together for a bigger purpose. And for the guilds that ARE fortunate enough to maintain a high quantity of players, they won't have to worry about an "ideal" raid comp because with that much space, pretty much everybody can get a spot. Flexibility is key. I remember the most high end guilds in EQ2 would roster no more than 30 players because the raid cap was set at 24. They did this to make sure they geared up extra fast. Think about how many players were turned down an opportunity to be a part of that guild because of the capped raid size. So many people were unable to experience the highest end content because of a stagnant number. They could have been amazing at their class but that didn't matter. Especially for brawlers or guardians. You very rarely ever saw a raid field more than 1 guardian. Well that sucks for anybody who enjoys playing that class doesen't it?
While I agree that encounters can be toned and designed easier with a set raid cap in force, that still takes away flexibility from guild leaders and raid leaders, and also excludes a portion of the player base from playing in certain guilds. There were so many times where a person wanted to invite their friend to the guild, but because of what class they played, we just didn't have room. And even for the classes that were more desirable, because of number cap, we just couldn't justify letting them have a spot on our roster. Some people were okay with sitting but that isn't fun. Personally I would love to play a monk in Pantheon but if history is any indicator of the future, there will be a very small demand for that class. They were great at soloing content and helping train groups through dungeons and whatnot but you'd be very hardpressed to find any top tier guild fielding more than 1 or 2 brawlers.
Beefcake said:Of course, they could always add another mechanic or increase the hit points/power levels dynamically based on the number of players attacking the mob. If you designed it for 4 groups and a 5 groups are attacking, add a mana drain proc. At 6 groups, add a death touch. At 7 groups, add some trash spawns. This would not be hard to add as a template to all encounters.
From the recent stream, this seems to be what is already planned.
And how is the game going to determine who is and is not with a given raid attacking some target? And what about all the classes that don't actually attack the target? Imagine the griefing potential whereby your raid is attacking a Boss in some open zone and another raid just walks up and starts chucking some DPS at it.
Vandraad said:Beefcake said:Of course, they could always add another mechanic or increase the hit points/power levels dynamically based on the number of players attacking the mob. If you designed it for 4 groups and a 5 groups are attacking, add a mana drain proc. At 6 groups, add a death touch. At 7 groups, add some trash spawns. This would not be hard to add as a template to all encounters.
From the recent stream, this seems to be what is already planned.
And how is the game going to determine who is and is not with a given raid attacking some target? And what about all the classes that don't actually attack the target? Imagine the griefing potential whereby your raid is attacking a Boss in some open zone and another raid just walks up and starts chucking some DPS at it.
Right. I don't want to see alpha delayed for 4 months while the devs implement fifty thousand lines of code to accomodate a zerg raid style, when there's not even a guarantee that the development time spent will sufficiently address the problems caused by uncapped raids.
I'm sure everyone thinks that I'm super negative about everything, but I feel like some of these suggestions need a reality check. Developers don't just squat down and poop code. Uncapped raids are a very serious proposition with a huge amount of things to take into consideration to make it work correctly.
This is one thing that modern games did right, in my opinion.
Vandraad said:Beefcake said:Of course, they could always add another mechanic or increase the hit points/power levels dynamically based on the number of players attacking the mob. If you designed it for 4 groups and a 5 groups are attacking, add a mana drain proc. At 6 groups, add a death touch. At 7 groups, add some trash spawns. This would not be hard to add as a template to all encounters.
From the recent stream, this seems to be what is already planned.
And how is the game going to determine who is and is not with a given raid attacking some target? And what about all the classes that don't actually attack the target? Imagine the griefing potential whereby your raid is attacking a Boss in some open zone and another raid just walks up and starts chucking some DPS at it.
If I recall correctly Rift did/ still does? have the auto scaling in certain encounters. I remember one time when we were out in a 12 man raid and we're doing one of the rifts when another raid ran through near us. Our mob scaled up because of more players in the area, and we promptly wiped. Wiping in Rift is was no big deal really, but something like that in Pantheon would definitely hurt.
Liav said:Vandraad said:Beefcake said:Of course, they could always add another mechanic or increase the hit points/power levels dynamically based on the number of players attacking the mob. If you designed it for 4 groups and a 5 groups are attacking, add a mana drain proc. At 6 groups, add a death touch. At 7 groups, add some trash spawns. This would not be hard to add as a template to all encounters.
From the recent stream, this seems to be what is already planned.
And how is the game going to determine who is and is not with a given raid attacking some target? And what about all the classes that don't actually attack the target? Imagine the griefing potential whereby your raid is attacking a Boss in some open zone and another raid just walks up and starts chucking some DPS at it.
Right. I don't want to see alpha delayed for 4 months while the devs implement fifty thousand lines of code to accomodate a zerg raid style, when there's not even a guarantee that the development time spent will sufficiently address the problems caused by uncapped raids.
I'm sure everyone thinks that I'm super negative about everything, but I feel like some of these suggestions need a reality check. Developers don't just squat down and poop code. Uncapped raids are a very serious proposition with a huge amount of things to take into consideration to make it work correctly.
This is one thing that modern games did right, in my opinion.
You have no idea what they have already prepared. So, before you declare every idea other than yours in need of a reality check, check your own.
You can state your own position without telling us we are all unrealistic.
We have heard your point of view. You have heard ours. I think it's enough now. Laters.
The days of tank n spank raids are long gone. As such, zerg tacticts don't work nearly as well. Part of being in a guild is playing with the same group of people day in and day out. You begin to operate as a cohesive group. You need everyone to do their part and you may fail a raid several times (for us it was RZTW) before you finally get it. Simply throwing more people at a target isn't always the answer. I don't know what the devs have in store, but I hope that there are methods in place almost make it a hinderance to bring too many people, eg each player death spawns adds or something I dont know, or once XX number of people are on the aggro list, number XX+1 gets banished to the other side of the zone. Who knows.... I know my ideas have plenty of downsides too, I'm glad I'm not the one who has to actually come up with the solutions