Faelor said:Wellspring said:...
So tell me Liav... when you have 50 people online ready to raid, how are you going to 14 of your guildies that they can't come along, night after night? Talk about the opposite of fun and community oriented.
This is a logical fallacy. Just because you were in that situation, and the guild allowed itself to get in that situation, doesn't prove itself to be a valid argument point for someone else.
As someone who helped lead multi-game guilds, that is not a fun scenario to be in. But in regards to what a valid size for a game is and establishing a point, it's next to invalid. We may as well cater the raiding game to the few guilds who will have 500+ members.
Okay, tell me what guild size the raid content should be catered to then? Why not cater to all of them, even those with 500+ members? Some people like to be in a big guild, some like to be in small ones. Why design raid content that diminishes one guild size or the other, if it can be avoided?
Just saw this thread and probably skipping something someone has already said, but one thing I am a big fan of in WoW and some other MMOs is raid size scaling. If Pantheon could implement a similar system here that would be awesome. The problem with this though is I hate that people still found a sweet spot that limited the amount of people some wanted to bring. Not sure how to create a system where bringing more people won't necessarily hurt you. Well, unless they are bad obviously.
In my opinion, raids should be catered to whatever the raid boss is... there shouldn't be a standard. They should keep things fresh an interesting by shaking up the raid sizes based on the boss, while also making some kind of logical sense.
What do I mean?
The beauty of this system is that there doesn't need to be a floor or cap, but the developers can put soft floors and caps in the game via the perception system to give the raid party a sense that they are a bit undermaned or overmanned for this.
Examples.
Now, there is a problem with this... this works for instanced groups but not for overworld groups... right? I'd say it works for both!
Coda said:In my opinion, raids should be catered to whatever the raid boss is... there shouldn't be a standard. They should keep things fresh an interesting by shaking up the raid sizes based on the boss, while also making some kind of logical sense.
What do I mean?
- * The raid boss is a lich, lichs are human sized, so the raid will be smaller on average... think 24-36 in count.
- * The raid boss is an ancient dragon. Dragons are large, Ancient Dragons are even larger. This one will require a small army to take out... 48-72 in count.
The beauty of this system is that there doesn't need to be a floor or cap, but the developers can put soft floors and caps in the game via the perception system to give the raid party a sense that they are a bit undermaned or overmanned for this.
Examples.
- * Bringing such a large group to the ancient temple's entrance alerted the lich's forces in advance! They have taken extra precausions against your attack! [Less loot; party too large]
- * As you walk into the volcanic caverns, you get the sense that you are a bit undermanned for the battles to come... perhaps you should return with a larger force?
Now, there is a problem with this... this works for instanced groups but not for overworld groups... right? I'd say it works for both!
- * If the raid is instanced, this system can work seemlessly.
- * If the raid is not instanced, this system can work, but would require a warning and restrictions like...
- Warning! Make sure your party is prepared before all hell breaks loose! [You can't add or remove raid members beyond this door]
I like that, and I think something like that could work.
One small adjustment to the last part. Instead of it being based off of how many members are in the raid (which has locked encounter implications to prevent help from outside the raid), make it based on the number of players within range of the encounter. You could have a boss inside of a room, and when you trigger the start of the fight, the door closes and everyone inside the door is counted as part of the raiding force.
Liav said:Having raids with wildly different sizes sounds like an absolute nightmare for guild leaders.
Yeah, I feel like the benefit of set raid sizes were introduced to allow guilds to form more cohesive raiding units. This made it challenging, but aimed to maintain a lot easier for guilds to remain together and transition from raid to raid. Going back to uncapped raid sizes would certainly introduce some benefits, but it would absolutely bring back well known downsides.
Has any game tried multi-raid group encounters though? If your standard raid sizes is 24, then try one 48 man raid designed for two distinct groups per expansion. Say a raid where two dragons are fought simultaneously, or two entrances to a fortress are seiged, or who knows what. I would really like to see guild alliances formed through this type of joint raiding venture, but maybe it would instead just encourage more 2-raid team guilds. May not be feasible or appealing mechanically, but I would be interested to see it tried.
As for desired raid sizes, I think that the scaling of encounter difficulty would be absolutely great and I don't think it would have to be as grand as some have suggested. Take a hypothetical 36 man raid size. How much scaling would you actually need? I would only aim for +-2 players on either side (so 34-38). Once you have reached a balanced raid composition (all classes are represented), then the healing and damage output, interrupting capability, dispelling ability, and such all scale nearly linearly with additional players. If you want to increase a raid boss' dps without causing one shots, you increase the frequency of attacks. A raid boss might attack 38 times per minute against 38 players and 34 times per minute against 34 players. This does not need to trend towards a one shot mechanic. If you allow +-5 folks to take part, then maybe a 31 man raid would require siginificantly different tactics than a 41 man raid, and more complex scaling would be required, but for small scaling it should be possible to preserve difficulty by just adjusting some numbers. If you go for uncapped encounters, then scaling would be a hugely demanding balancing task.
Finally, one comment that was made was that commonly accepted raid compositions by encounter have become severely limiting. There's no single solution for this, but what VR has already proposed is an awesome start. They have proposed that encounters will have some variability in them, so we might see Dragon X use cleave one day and flame breath the next, or maybe just use one or the other more or less. As long as there's enough variability, then agreement on a single best composition will be murkier and may not be something the community holds to unquestioningly. We'll have to see.
Ainadak said:Has any game tried multi-raid group encounters though? If your standard raid sizes is 24, then try one 48 man raid designed for two distinct groups per expansion. Say a raid where two dragons are fought simultaneously, or two entrances to a fortress are seiged, or who knows what. I would really like to see guild alliances formed through this type of joint raiding venture, but maybe it would instead just encourage more 2-raid team guilds. May not be feasible or appealing mechanically, but I would be interested to see it tried.
Only issue I can foresee is that it wouldn't be very conducive to the competitive nature of raiding. How do you determine who's best if cooperation to that extent is required? I could see it as being fun for some one-off kind of content, but as a regular part of the content structure it might not have amazing results.
I'd be happy to cooperate with other guilds for events or some such, though.
Ainadak said:As for desired raid sizes, I think that the scaling of encounter difficulty would be absolutely great and I don't think it would have to be as grand as some have suggested. Take a hypothetical 36 man raid size. How much scaling would you actually need? I would only aim for +-2 players on either side (so 34-38). Once you have reached a balanced raid composition (all classes are represented), then the healing and damage output, interrupting capability, dispelling ability, and such all scale nearly linearly with additional players. If you want to increase a raid boss' dps without causing one shots, you increase the frequency of attacks. A raid boss might attack 38 times per minute against 38 players and 34 times per minute against 34 players. This does not need to trend towards a one shot mechanic. If you allow +-5 folks to take part, then maybe a 31 man raid would require siginificantly different tactics than a 41 man raid, and more complex scaling would be required, but for small scaling it should be possible to preserve difficulty by just adjusting some numbers. If you go for uncapped encounters, then scaling would be a hugely demanding balancing task.
Honestly 5-10 players isn't really significant enough to require balance tuning in the first place, in my opinion. I'd be more worried about an encounter scaling to support anywhere from 24 to 240 people, which is the type of scenario I foresee with uncapped raids.
Ainadak said:Finally, one comment that was made was that commonly accepted raid compositions by encounter have become severely limiting. There's no single solution for this, but what VR has already proposed is an awesome start. They have proposed that encounters will have some variability in them, so we might see Dragon X use cleave one day and flame breath the next, or maybe just use one or the other more or less. As long as there's enough variability, then agreement on a single best composition will be murkier and may not be something the community holds to unquestioningly. We'll have to see.
I concur that having extremely rigid raid compositions is a negative for numerous reasons and I genuinely hope that the encounter design will support a variety of raid compositions within the set number of players.
Liav said:Only issue I can foresee is that it wouldn't be very conducive to the competitive nature of raiding. How do you determine who's best if cooperation to that extent is required? I could see it as being fun for some one-off kind of content, but as a regular part of the content structure it might not have amazing results.
I'd be happy to cooperate with other guilds for events or some such, though.
Yeah, I would expect anything like this would be the exception rather than the rule. I wasn't suggesting it as a form of competition though, I would figure both groups would get a separate loot stack upon completion, but they would both fail if either group wiped. If they introduced a competitive form of raiding (I have suggested this type of thing in the past), then I think that would be awesome.
Ainadak said:Has any game tried multi-raid group encounters though? If your standard raid sizes is 24, then try one 48 man raid designed for two distinct groups per expansion. Say a raid where two dragons are fought simultaneously, or two entrances to a fortress are seiged, or who knows what. I would really like to see guild alliances formed through this type of joint raiding venture, but maybe it would instead just encourage more 2-raid team guilds. May not be feasible or appealing mechanically, but I would be interested to see it tried.
Closest thing I've seen to what you describe was in SWTOR, one of the operations required you to defend and solve two puzzles on separate sides of the zone at the same time. So the raid of 20 players had to split in half, and coordinate solving the puzzle (while enemies kept spawning) at the same as the other half. If either side failed, then you couldn't proceed to the next area. Is that sort of the mechanic that you meant?
SWTOR also had one encounter where each person in the raid had to solo their own mob. So you would have 20 players all fighting 20 different mobs and you couldn't really attack anyone elses mob. Some mobs were harder than others, so like you would assign your healers to solo the easiest ones. If one player in the raid failed to kill theirs in time, you'd have to do it all over again. They had a number of unique raid fights in that game.
Wellspring said:Closest thing I've seen to what you describe was in SWTOR, one of the operations required you to defend and solve two puzzles on separate sides of the zone at the same time. So the raid of 20 players had to split in half, and coordinate solving the puzzle (while enemies kept spawning) at the same as the other half. If either side failed, then you couldn't proceed to the next area. Is that sort of the mechanic that you meant?
SWTOR also had one encounter where each person in the raid had to solo their own mob. So you would have 20 players all fighting 20 different mobs and you couldn't really attack anyone elses mob. Some mobs were harder than others, so like you would assign your healers to solo the easiest ones. If one player in the raid failed to kill theirs in time, you'd have to do it all over again. They had a number of unique raid fights in that game.
Mechanically, yes, that is what I was referring to. The intent was moreso searching for ways where alliances could actually be formed if content was made to allow multiple guilds to work together for some purpose. The only functional guild alliances that I have ever seen were in the early days of Warhammer Online's Realm vs. Realm system, but that was short lived and not all too similar to PvE. The SWTOR puzzle you describe is much more similar to what I was asking about, but instead of trying to encourage two natural (standard raid sized) groups to work together, it takes one group and separates them. If this content were used sparingly enough (once per month lockout type thing), then perhaps it wouldn't interfere with the development of guilds around the standard raid size and then could actually encourage alliances. However, it may be the case that in the end all systems of this type would practically result in taking one group and separating it.
I think one of the major issues people are having with this conversation is that they feel like allowing more people into a raid than was intended ie: zerging, is a bad thing.
I challenge you to accept that as ok.
More players get to experience the content. A smaller guild who kills that mob with a lesser number of players still gains an advantage.
The smaller raid force will gear up their members more quickly and completely while that larger raid force barely increases their overall power given the same amount of kills. We also have to understand that not all raid content will be "zergable". That smaller guild with fully equiped members will be able to advance to other, non zergable, content much sooner than the larger guild because the larger guilds gear is much weaker on average.
Also:
We all say we want challenging raid content right? With truely challenging raid content there is going to be a, hopefully very large, percentage of the player base that are unable to complete it. Having a couple raids that allows those players to throw a large number of players at it and experience success shouldn't be considered a bad thing. It won't be possible in all raids. Good players will still complete it with less.
Rephrasing.
I don't personally think that zerging fits with the tenets of the game, honestly. It is mutually exclusive with challenge, in my view.
philo said:Regardless of any other points, the above post reminded me of the horror of back flagging. Having to flag and back flag members over and over in PoP is what lead to me quiting EQ. Myself and others don't want to have to redo trivial raid content repeatedly in order to help others flag just so that everyone can progress to something better.
Can we please have keys and flagging be limited to 1 or 2 group content max? It is one thing to have 5 people volunteer to help 1 person get keyed/flagged. It is another thing to have 40 people volunteer to get 8 people flagged...repeatedly. I know it breaks down to the same percentage but it isn't the same as far as willing volunteers. That is rough. Can we please limit the required flagging to small group content only? Please?
I've got mixed feelings about this one. One the one hand, I totally like the idea of pre-flagging/back-flagging being done in smaller groups. PoJ trails was a good example of single-group pre-flagging. PoN Hedge Maze is another good example of a smaller scale mini event... I was never a raid leader but I had no problem leading the hedge maze, so it allowed us to get people flagged without chewing up a raid day or requiring raid numbers.
On the other hand, if you combine back-flagging with the availability of top-tier loot, you've got incentive to take down the same boss several times to get your players geared for the next tier.
After giving it some thought though I think I'm leaning more back towards flagging (if they even implement flagging) being done with 1-3 groups, and raids being 9-12 groups depending on what the player base can sustain.
Liav said:Rephrasing.
I don't personally think that zerging fits with the tenets of the game, honestly. It is mutually exclusive with challenge, in my view.
I agree with this statement.
philo said:I think one of the major issues people are having with this conversation is that they feel like allowing more people into a raid than was intended ie: zerging, is a bad thing.
I challenge you to accept that as ok.
More players get to experience the content. A smaller guild who kills that mob with a lesser number of players still gains an advantage.
The smaller raid force will gear up their members more quickly and completely while that larger raid force barely increases their overall power given the same amount of kills. We also have to understand that not all raid content will be "zergable". That smaller guild with fully equiped members will be able to advance to other, non zergable, content much sooner than the larger guild because the larger guilds gear is much weaker on average.
Also:
We all say we want challenging raid content right? With truely challenging raid content there is going to be a, hopefully very large, percentage of the player base that are unable to complete it. Having a couple raids that allows those players to throw a large number of players at it and experience success shouldn't be considered a bad thing. It won't be possible in all raids. Good players will still complete it with less.
I have to agree with the heart of what you're saying, but I do disagree with some of what you have said.
1) Being able to get newer, less organized, and/or less skilled players into raids where they can be successful is definitely appealing. I would actually be entirely in support of having SOME zergable content so that those who don't raid can get the feel of it. I still remember being dragged along to my first and only Nagafen run and to this day I don't know anything about how that fight actually worked. Lasting memories can be made for the zerglings!
2) Having zergable content can devalue targets in an intangible way. It's not super logical, but if you know you can trivialize content by bringing some extra warm bodies, it won't ever feel dangerous.
3) While there is some room for saying that smaller guilds will be able to challenge themselves by bringing fewer people, it's not an especially natural thing for people to do. For those who do rubik's cubes, self-handicap is an accepted and standard approach. This is because comparisons between cubers (do they call themselves that?) are made by handicap. In an MMO the way you show your success is through gear. Half of that is showing that your guild has downed a boss and the other half is fully gearing out your group. It is our nature to apply cost functions and optimize and unfortunately, the cost function almost always ends up at work (perceived) vs. payout. If you can sleep your way through an encounter with 30 people, you won't see people struggling and dying to succeed with 25. If you can zerg down the first kill, then that half of the piece is removed. Your goal is to get gear with the least perceived work and sweating and dying just isn't worth a slightly faster time to get fully geared.
With that said, people will push themselves to complete challenges and self handicap even for just superficial rewards. If players are rewarded with some form of prestige (gear always seems to be the most effective carrot) for pushing themselves, then they will. You could give players a "Boss Score" in each player's character panel, which ranks them on players used per encounter, time taken, and deaths and players would push to improve each boss score. I'm not really suggesting this as a mechanic, but just as a representation of how little is required to entice players to provide for their own challenge.
The other thing we should take into account when discussing "zerging" is that it is easy to talk about if we know what the number of players an encounter is tuned to accomodate.
If VR tellls us, all our raids our set for X amount of players, then sure, it is easy to know that X+10 or X+20 is playing that encounter in a way that was not intended. Often times we don't have access to that info. I think letting the players figure it out can be a good thing.
philo said:The other thing we should take into account when discussing "zerging" is that it is easy to talk about if we know what the number of players an encounter is tuned to accomodate.
If VR tellls us, all our raids our set for X amount of players, then sure, it is easy to know that X+10 or X+20 is playing that encounter in a way that was not intended. Often times we don't have access to that info. I think letting the players figure it out can be a good thing.
Not sure what you're implying. Do you think that players won't trivialize encounters if they bring more people than intended?
Ainadak said:
3) While there is some room for saying that smaller guilds will be able to challenge themselves by bringing fewer people, it's not an especially natural thing for people to do.
With that said, people will push themselves to complete challenges and self handicap even for just superficial rewards. If players are rewarded with some form of prestige (gear always seems to be the most effective carrot) for pushing themselves, then they will. You could give players a "Boss Score" in each player's character panel, which ranks them on players used per encounter, time taken, and deaths and players would push to improve each boss score. I'm not really suggesting this as a mechanic, but just as a representation of how little is required to entice players to provide for their own challenge.
I agree Ainadak and I want to highlight the quoted part above. You are right that some small incentive to encourage completing an encounter with a smaller group would be helpful. That would still allow for those who might struggle otherwise be able to complete it with a greater number. It sounds like a good solution.
philo said:Ainadak said:
3) While there is some room for saying that smaller guilds will be able to challenge themselves by bringing fewer people, it's not an especially natural thing for people to do.
With that said, people will push themselves to complete challenges and self handicap even for just superficial rewards. If players are rewarded with some form of prestige (gear always seems to be the most effective carrot) for pushing themselves, then they will. You could give players a "Boss Score" in each player's character panel, which ranks them on players used per encounter, time taken, and deaths and players would push to improve each boss score. I'm not really suggesting this as a mechanic, but just as a representation of how little is required to entice players to provide for their own challenge.
I agree Ainadak and I want to highlight the quoted part above. You are right that some small incentive to encourage completing an encounter with a smaller group would be helpful. That would still allow for those who might struggle otherwise be able to complete it with a greater number. It sounds like a good solution.
If loot wasn't a factor, sure. No guild is going to compete for a higher score if it reduces their chance of getting loot.
Liav said:philo said:The other thing we should take into account when discussing "zerging" is that it is easy to talk about if we know what the number of players an encounter is tuned to accomodate.
If VR tellls us, all our raids our set for X amount of players, then sure, it is easy to know that X+10 or X+20 is playing that encounter in a way that was not intended. Often times we don't have access to that info. I think letting the players figure it out can be a good thing.
Not sure what you're implying. Do you think that players won't trivialize encounters if they bring more people than intended?
I don't claim to make that statement. Whether an encounter is trivial or not is based on a variaty of factors. A few of which might be: gear lvl, class make up, player ability, player quantity, player level etc.
In some cases, bringing more players than intended won't trivialize content. In some cases bringing less players than intended will trivialize content.
Maybe I'm not understanding the question because I seem to be stating the obvious?
Liav said:
If loot wasn't a factor, sure. No guild is going to compete for a higher score if it reduces their chance of getting loot.
I don't think it needs to be said that by the time a guild would be attempting it with a lesser number of people that encounter would basically be on farm status. Doing it with a lesser amount of players wouldn't really add much risk of failure. Maybe just enough more to make it a bit more fun.
Also, please lets not focus on the reward. The incentive can be adjusted. That is not the point of the conversation.
At some point all raids become trivial. It's inevitable. In Pantheon, I would hope there is going to be a lot more to the raid mechanics than simply having the numbers.
One of the biggest incentives for raiding is for loot. The more people you bring to a raid, the less likely you are as an individual to get a piece of that loot. I really don't see why you want to limit the amount of people that can participate. It's unecessary IMO. It's a problem that will handle itself.
What about bosses designed to be killed by a single group? If a raid of 24 players decided to kill a single group boss in LGUK, do you think the game mechanics should prevent that? It's trivializing the group content after all. But before long, the players in said raid willrealize they are wasting their time, and that their time could be much better spent doing something else in-game.
I feel like comparing group content to raid content for the purposes of this discussion isn't really valid.
Players won't waste time killing 6 man content with 24 because the rewards from 6 man content won't justify it. Players will kill raid content with larger numbers because it's the path of least resistance.
When you cap your raids at 24, you will fill your raid with 24 players. You won't take less people unless you're required to because it'd be silly. The difference is that with uncapped raids the end result is the same, it's just a million times harder to keep the content compelling when you can just throw bodies at it.
If the best argument people can make against capped raids is that people won't do raids with huge numbers of players anyway, then it seems pretty reasonable to cap the raids so the developers have static parameters for design purposes. Otherwise, you have to design your raids with the possibility of zerging in mind, which is just silly.
To add on to all of this, I'd be really pissed if the concept of server firsts was lost because people would just zerg new content with 200 people so they can claim they did it first.
Liav said:Rephrasing.
I don't personally think that zerging fits with the tenets of the game, honestly. It is mutually exclusive with challenge, in my view.
Your view seems to be mutually exclusive with social challenges and almost entirely based on combat performance.
That's something that doesn't fit with the tenets even more.