Zerging shouldn't exist.
Zerging is, at it's core, what happens when the fastest way to clear content is to apply no stratagy and just rez train everything down. It's... most of the time... a completely braindead in the experience. Zerging is literally the age old stratagy of, "Frontal assault, or death by frontal assault"... it's not a healthy metagame to exist in a game. I can name several games that are trying to fix this issue because the playerbase complained once the equivialant Zerg stratagy was descovered. It removes the any player piloting... hell, it even breaks immersion!
There should be content that is too difficult to complete if you do not have developed stratagies, geared party members and those willing to put forward the effort to learn.
Dullahan said: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.
You can have plenty of social challenges with a 6 man group, let alone with a raid of 24.
Two people experience social challenges.
You really don't think there are practical limits to human interaction?
Megaera said: Liav...what size do you think is minimal for a mob to be considered a raid boss
To me, a raid is anything that requires more than a single group (regardless of group size) to accomplish.
In EQ2, we had "x2" and "x4" raids, meaning two groups or four groups. The group size was 6, so that's 12 and 24 players respectively. Both of these constituted raids as they were >1 group encounters.
Take note though that x2 raids nor x4 raids were particularly easy compared to eachother. Because of the player limit imposed, the raids were exceptionally well tuned to the number of players in many cases. Several examples stand out in my mind.
philo said:
How does "you have to ask more of your guild mates to sit out of a raid if the raids are uncapped" make any sense at all? That only makes sense if the developers are putting restrictions on the raid as if it were capped.
Lets make sure we are discussing the same point here.
When someone refers to an uncapped raid I think most people take that to mean a raid without restrictions. If it is a raid that doesn't officially have a player limit, but the boss despawns when 50 players attack it; it is still a capped raid. Yes that might be an extreme example but it is just that, an example. A boss that enrages to the point that it is unkillable, under the current gear set, when a certain amount of people attack it is the same thing.
Please lets try not to argue semantics. The difference between a capped and an uncapped raid should be clearly and easily defined as far as discussion goes.
Who is arguing semantics? A lot of people here seem to want raids to be uncapped as well as restrictions on bosses so that they can't be zerged while also not having any guild mates sit out of fights. OF COURSE this don't make sense lol.
I am hip to what is being discussed here bro/broette. I'm not the one who brought this up, you may want to go back through some of the other's posts here to see what they are discussing.
Dullahan said: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.
While I do think that there is room for the social challenge in Pantheon, I think it should be on equal footing with combat challenge. Some of the things Ive read on these forums would lead me to believe that some folks think the social and immersion elements of this game should be vastly more important than the gameplay mechanics and challenges. If nothing else I think all 3 elements should be considered in equal measure and in the best attempt not to make significant sacrifice in one area in favor of another. Just like Liav might be too focused on the combat challenge there are a few folks here that would seemingly throw all combat challenge out the window as long as they can play with 200 of their best buds or for some just as long as the encounter is so immersive that their characters need bio breaks in the middle of a raid.
So the question is how do you make a Raid size that is immersive, socially challenging, combatitivly challenging, and yet still have sound gameplay mechanics? I dont have the perfect answer but I know a little compromise in each part could go a long way. But most anytime someone suggests something it always gets picked apart by the extremes on either end. All or nothing, black or white, slippery slope etc.
Megaera said: The more I think about it, the less I can come up with a solution. VR would literally have to write a script for ever named they consider a raid boss to determine number of players...or guilds attending said raid....then they would have to write another one to scale the boss hp...dmg...adds..and then write a script to scale the adds.... The script would have to stop scaling at some point because it would literally 1 shot the tanks...and the aoes would instantly kill the raid... Then VR would have to sit down and crunch numbers to determine the average hp and mitigation a tank and accompanied raid party should have when they attempt boss... They could scale it so that the dmg would equal 90% max hp of tank and players....so your raid healers would have to be on the ball...your off tanks would have to be decently geared...and you would need a bunch of ppl watching all mechanics until you adjusted to the fight
First I would like to say that putting limitations on player participation by guild or limiting guild size has some pretty real and unfortunate immediate consequences. However, that approach is unnecessary as if you're trying to limit raid size, you can do so using direct approaches rather than indirect.
Scaling is difficult to get exact, but the VR guys won't be falling victim to the issues that you're describing. Take for example your issue of eventually one shotting tanks. Generally speaking boss damage (as in damage for an individual hit) is already balanced around expected gear levels of the attacking players. If you want to scale the damage per second that a boss does in order to counter the increased healing/mitigation per second found in a raid of increased player size, then you would increase the attacks per second, not the damage per attack of the raid boss. You can logically presume that any fight can logically be balanced to any player count (until you go low enough to exclude balanced compositions). Scaling is just the function that takes you between balanced encounters.
The simplest approach for VR (as far as I can tell) to approach scaling is to simply balance an encounter using a test group of 30. Then take that same group and cut out 6 players, then balance it again around the remaining 24. Simply linearly scale the differences in the remaining region (you can introduce more intermediate balance points to improve accuracy). However, even just taking two data points (24 and 30 players) this more than doubles the balancing work for each encounter. If you are slapdash in your balancing of a single encounter based on a single raid size, then your encounter simply becomes an easier or harder encounter relative to the rest of the content around, which has moderate consequences. If you make similar mistakes in the balancing of a scaled encounter, then one raid size can be seen as entirely preferred, negating all your hard work in additional balancing and frustrating the community as they will feel their hand is being forced to bring a set number again.
Amsai said:So the question is how do you make a Raid size that is immersive, socially challenging, combatitivly challenging, and yet still have sound gameplay mechanics? I dont have the perfect answer but I know a little compromise in each part could go a long way. But most anytime someone suggests something it always gets picked apart by the extremes on either end. All or nothing, black or white, slippery slope etc.
Amsai you boss. You're always open to the middle ground. I came into this argument entirely opposed to zerging, but I have actually been swayed by some of the arguments. While I think it's a horrible status quo for raiding content, I would actually love to see some large scale uncapped encounters used to introduce players to the raiding world. Maybe give said bosses 1 always-drops high end gear piece and then everyone participating gets some top end group-tier crafting component. The great thing about zergable content is that it's so difficult to balance well, so just make it zerg-friendly and spend almost no time balancing it at all! While it still would require the art assets and mechanic testing, perhaps at least the mechanics can be a hodge-podge borrowed set from the rest raid content?
I agree that a middle ground can be found between the socializing, combat, and various other aspects can be found.
I personally believe that a limited raid size in the 20-24ish, maybe even 48ish is suitable to that end. That is the middle ground, in my opinion. I don't really believe that my argument could reasonably be interpreted as an extreme erring on the anti-social side. For instance, I'm pretty vocally opposed to solo content.
Here's a breakdown of the reasons I see for people wanting uncapped raids, and my responses:
"It's exclusive." - Yes, it is exclusive, as are an innumerable amount of other things. I don't consider exclusivity to be inherently negative.
"People may have to sit out of raids." (kind of goes hand in hand with exclusivity)" - Don't recruit so many people to your guild if the raid size is limited.
"Less people means less socialization." - Do you really expect to have meaningful relationships with every individual in a 200 person guild? At that point, your guild is a glorified public chat room. Also, I believe that smaller guild sizes carry a more positive social impact than larger guilds. How many friends do you really have? Not acquaintances, friends. I imagine the number is on the smaller side (<20) unless you're an enigmatic social butterfly. If raids are uncapped, you'd have an equivalent experience just recruiting randoms in a public chat channel.
A lot of the problems brought up in this thread can be fixed by instancing raids... as much as people seem to dislike that idea, instancing does give the devs the easiest control over balance when it comes to very large groups of people. Hell, they could only instance the bosses in the raid and it would solve almost every problem people have in this thread.
What are your guy's thoughts on that?
Coda said:A lot of the problems brought up in this thread can be fixed by instancing raids... as much as people seem to dislike that idea, instancing does give the devs the easiest control over balance when it comes to very large groups of people. Hell, they could only instance the bosses in the raid and it would solve almost every problem people have in this thread.
What are your guy's thoughts on that?
I am 100% against it. Instancing is not the solution.
Also instancing, particularly in combat related zones, is against one of the fundamental pillars of the game. They've already said multiple times that they do not plan to implement instancing. The only exception would be for story telling/class relate purposes (and maybe other minor things (?)), but certainly not raid encounters.
Coda said:A lot of the problems brought up in this thread can be fixed by instancing raids... as much as people seem to dislike that idea, instancing does give the devs the easiest control over balance when it comes to very large groups of people. Hell, they could only instance the bosses in the raid and it would solve almost every problem people have in this thread.
What are your guy's thoughts on that?
The only thing instancing actually does is separate a group from the rest of the world. It inherently provides hard raid size limitations, but the same can be done in open world content through both soft and hard approaches. The only benefit that I could see is in reducing computing strain by limiting the number of players in the area. If you would like to clarify what issues instancing solves, then I would be willing to listen, but I believe it's a moot point given that the devs have already taken a hard stance on instancing.
Coda said:A lot of the problems brought up in this thread can be fixed by instancing raids... as much as people seem to dislike that idea, instancing does give the devs the easiest control over balance when it comes to very large groups of people. Hell, they could only instance the bosses in the raid and it would solve almost every problem people have in this thread.
What are your guy's thoughts on that?
Eh, it's not necessary. It certainly is easy, but it's not necessary.
Locking the encounter to the raid that engages it accomplishes the same goal.
Ainadak said:Coda said:A lot of the problems brought up in this thread can be fixed by instancing raids... as much as people seem to dislike that idea, instancing does give the devs the easiest control over balance when it comes to very large groups of people. Hell, they could only instance the bosses in the raid and it would solve almost every problem people have in this thread.
What are your guy's thoughts on that?
The only thing instancing actually does is separate a group from the rest of the world. It inherently provides hard raid size limitations, but the same can be done in open world content through both soft and hard approaches. The only benefit that I could see is in reducing computing strain by limiting the number of players in the area. If you would like to clarify what issues instancing solves, then I would be willing to listen, but I believe it's a moot point given that the devs have already taken a hard stance on instancing.
First and foremost, I know devs have taken a stance against instancing. If they pull off an unexploitable system that completely avoids instancing, they're pulling off something that MMOs have dreamt of doing since the genre came out. It's still worth talking about instancing if they use it very sparingly.
Instancing basically makes a controlled environment where devs can make the encounter pan out as they intended.
Some of these ideas are a little complicated. Boss scores, big and small bosses (although a cool idea), zerging. I hate the idea of zerging. You shouldn't have X number of players without some sort of strategy and players being properly geared for it. And properly geared doesnt mean you have to have gone through previous raid tiers or dungeon tiers. You could craft it or buy it off the AH for all I care. If you have time to farm gold but didn't bother doing dungeons or raids up until this specific raid you want to enter, spend your gold or use your crafting mats. But zerging should never be a strat for people to do with 0 skill and 0 gear. That's boring.I do like the idea of bigger raids though. Being able to carry A FEW select people in your guild who need to learn strats or get some gear.
I, personally, don't want this game to be anything like WoW or Rift though. No one should be able to push content and get raids done within a few months. It should take a decently long while. All these games are cookie cutter strats now. People breeze through, share videos, sell raid spots for loot, etc. Its not even about the game anymore, just making a few extra bucks or a few thousand gold. And world first just means how much of a no life you are. In Rift there was a point in time I was playing while new content was being released. A few guilds were so ready for world first they spent 16 hours in raid one night just to get the first boss down. Where with my guild, it took them 2 nights, but they only raided for 3-4 hours a night. They ended up doing it in less time than the first guild to achieve World First. I don't know, but to me, titles become pretty pointless if a guild can get brand new content done and achieved in 16 hours lol. But that's just me.
I hope, if anything, raids and mechanics are a lot like Vanguard. I didn't get to raid a whole lot there, but from my experience with dungeons and raids, it was pretty fantastic. No one shared strats or made a lot of vids so they could stay ahead of everyone else.
Angrykiz said:I'd like 6 man groups and raids to be 8 groups for a total of 48 players on raids.
Kiz~
I am ok with 10 man group sizes for a total of 50 players. (But if we had unrestricted sizes up to 100, it would be ok)
with 0 restrictions on groups formed. Leaving it up to the raid leaders to decide if they want 2 man groups or 10 man groups.
100 open world raids are very difficult to manage, and impossible to fill correctly.
Restricting, the groups, the raids, and other things turns off players that are forced to sit out.
I had that once, I and about 7 others had to sit at zonein waiting to get into the raid if someone dropped out in POK (EQ) because we where recruits we where left waiting until a full member was done.
Then we would have our option based on most class needed. Sometimes we where forced to sit for hours on end doing nothing but waiting. It was rather dull.
So restrictions are not always nice. We also never had enough to fully do 2 complete raids, but once in awhile we did try. Smaller older zones for new members lacking special things such as AA's, spells, special drops... that we could clear the zone with 20-30 extra members.
Coda said:A lot of the problems brought up in this thread can be fixed by instancing raids... as much as people seem to dislike that idea, instancing does give the devs the easiest control over balance when it comes to very large groups of people. Hell, they could only instance the bosses in the raid and it would solve almost every problem people have in this thread.
What are your guy's thoughts on that?
I dont think you can over use instancing. I liked them, and enjoyed going back 3 days or 7 days later to do it again.
Some people complained about instancing was over used in EQ, and it was used incorrectly. I feel much different, i think it enhanced the quests, the raids and managed things much easier then the full out open world content. We would have ever joe blow casting spells on the raid mob, especially high dps wizards, necros.
So i am into instancing, and i dont think it is a problem to use it for many raid mobs.
I know I'm late to the discussion and my opinion will probably get overthrown by people that already have their mind made up, but the vast majority of my raiding experience is from DDO which had 12 person raids. It really made each person's contributions make an obvious difference, for better or for worse. Not to mention the UI was simple. It was truly a defining moment in my gaming career and even my life overall when I was able to rise in fame and become the go-to cleric on my server because I could solo heal the most high end raids. I loved the feeling of being able to make a name for myself because everyone in the group knew that it was me that was holding them together. That just isn't possible with big swarms of people. But that's okay. DDO isn't the best comparison because everything is instanced. (Not sure why I was so freaking addicted to that game lol.)
At the same time, I do like the epic feeling of zooming out and seeing an army of people charging full speed at a dragon. But that should be the exception rather than the norm. That would be more special. So ideally, each raid would have it's own set limit that way there's a wide variety across the board. I guess I'll throw in 25 as another potential number for raid limits.
Crazzie said:
I am ok with 10 man group sizes for a total of 50 players. (But if we had unrestricted sizes up to 100, it would be ok)
with 0 restrictions on groups formed. Leaving it up to the raid leaders to decide if they want 2 man groups or 10 man groups.
100 open world raids are very difficult to manage, and impossible to fill correctly.
Restricting, the groups, the raids, and other things turns off players that are forced to sit out.
I had that once, I and about 7 others had to sit at zonein waiting to get into the raid if someone dropped out in POK (EQ) because we where recruits we where left waiting until a full member was done.
Then we would have our option based on most class needed. Sometimes we where forced to sit for hours on end doing nothing but waiting. It was rather dull.
So restrictions are not always nice. We also never had enough to fully do 2 complete raids, but once in awhile we did try. Smaller older zones for new members lacking special things such as AA's, spells, special drops... that we could clear the zone with 20-30 extra members.
As dull as that does sound, its the name of the game, and probably why raiding and sitting out was much more necessary back then. If you want to raid you gotta wait. Now a days, raiding content accommodates that. You can pug groups and get into raid content and do decently well in raids. The restriction usually makes it so some people will have to sit. I think the exact amount in most raids in WoW or Rift are reasons why people recruit extra people. Some people are more reliable to show up for every raid than others. Some are not, which isn't bad, it just means that they need someone to replace that person. Even if its jsut for 1 night a week.
Everything starts to go to the grey area when you have someone that can't be on as much, and has to be replaced once a week. But you also have someone that also can't be on as much but wants more than 1 raid night a week. I think having a max and a min might be pretty great for raids. But don't make it too big of a gap. Like 30-36 players. 30 min, so you're going to want to recruit maybe more than 30 players for raids, but don't go over 36 so you don't have to sit people out? But thats not always going to work out for some guilds. They will want a full 36 or more so they can start 2 raids or so they have extra people. There's always going to be someone sitting. If you dont want to sit, find a smaller guild, and help it grow to be a raiding guild. If you join one that already raids and expect to get your spot immediately, you kinda deserve the sit.
Bazgrim said:I know I'm late to the discussion and my opinion will probably get overthrown by people that already have their mind made up, but the vast majority of my raiding experience is from DDO which had 12 person raids. It really made each person's contributions make an obvious difference, for better or for worse. Not to mention the UI was simple. It was truly a defining moment in my gaming career and even my life overall when I was able to rise in fame and become the go-to cleric on my server because I could solo heal the most high end raids. I loved the feeling of being able to make a name for myself because everyone in the group knew that it was me that was holding them together. That just isn't possible with big swarms of people. But that's okay. DDO isn't the best comparison because everything is instanced. (Not sure why I was so freaking addicted to that game lol.)
At the same time, I do like the epic feeling of zooming out and seeing an army of people charging full speed at a dragon. But that should be the exception rather than the norm. That would be more special. So ideally, each raid would have it's own set limit that way there's a wide variety across the board. I guess I'll throw in 25 as another potential number for raid limits.
Are you saying you didn't have 12 bars set up for all your clickies and other various things? :^)
Oh, I love and still play DDO. I think it's an unsung gem in the sea of MMOs. Ignoring minmax drama and bug abuse, I think that game is a great example of small raids being great (and very difficult for that matter, even overleveled). I, too, loved healing in DDO raids, and even with a small group of 12 people... even with 2 healers... can be overwhelming with debuff, dots, environmental hazards (flying swords...) and the occasaional rez made for some of the best raid expereneces out of all the MMOs I've played.
Coda said:Bazgrim said:I know I'm late to the discussion and my opinion will probably get overthrown by people that already have their mind made up, but the vast majority of my raiding experience is from DDO which had 12 person raids. It really made each person's contributions make an obvious difference, for better or for worse. Not to mention the UI was simple. It was truly a defining moment in my gaming career and even my life overall when I was able to rise in fame and become the go-to cleric on my server because I could solo heal the most high end raids. I loved the feeling of being able to make a name for myself because everyone in the group knew that it was me that was holding them together. That just isn't possible with big swarms of people. But that's okay. DDO isn't the best comparison because everything is instanced. (Not sure why I was so freaking addicted to that game lol.)
At the same time, I do like the epic feeling of zooming out and seeing an army of people charging full speed at a dragon. But that should be the exception rather than the norm. That would be more special. So ideally, each raid would have it's own set limit that way there's a wide variety across the board. I guess I'll throw in 25 as another potential number for raid limits.
Are you saying you didn't have 12 bars set up for all your clickies and other various things? :^)
Oh, I love and still play DDO. I think it's an unsung gem in the sea of MMOs. Ignoring minmax drama and bug abuse, I think that game is a great example of small raids being great (and very difficult for that matter, even overleveled). I, too, loved healing in DDO raids, and even with a small group of 12 people... even with 2 healers... can be overwhelming with debuff, dots, environmental hazards (flying swords...) and the occasaional rez made for some of the best raid expereneces out of all the MMOs I've played.
Lol I should have specified that the raid UI itself was simple. Just 12 health bars on the side of the screen. Rather than 30 or more that take up half of my viewable space or a raid comprised of a bunch of separate groups where I can't easily see who is in the other groups. I got a Razer Naga and assigned the 12 buttons on the side of the mouse to F1-F12 so I could quickly target each of my raid members.
But yes, I also had 13 or 14 hotbars with abilities & clickies for almost any situation I could think of. It was amazing to sit down and have the keyboard/mouse be extensions of my body as I frantically but dexterously pounded the keys to keep everyone alive cause there was always so much going on. Felt like a god lol. Good times.
I don't know, I guess we have a different view of what "raiding" is.
To me raiding is supposed to be massive and epic. A large number of players joining forces to defeat the game's most difficult bosses together.
The 12-man "raiding" you described from DDO is basically what I would consider "group" content. Certainly not very epic when it only requires a total of 12 players to defeat the biggest baddest monster in the game.
Wellspring said:I don't know, I guess we have a different view of what "raiding" is.
To me raiding is supposed to be massive and epic. A large number of players joining forces to defeat the game's most difficult bosses together.
The 12-man "raiding" you described from DDO is basically what I would consider "group" content. Certainly not very epic when it only requires a total of 12 players to defeat the biggest baddest monster in the game.
Don't get me wrong, "massive and epic" raiding is great too, but there is a difference between an 'epic battle' and 'clusterfuck rez train'. Dungeons and Dragon's Online made battles feel epic even with a raid party size of 12 especially with the story behind each of them and the place your character has in the story unfolding. In addition, even with 12 people, raids felt like raids. General content in DDO is harder than most MMOs in general.