Tanix said:Which brings us to the issue of, do we want a game... or do we want entertainment? There is a lot of entertainment out there, 100's of MMOs that are designed to entertain people, but are very lacking in the game department.
Personally, I want to get on and play a game, not sit and relax without being challenged. If I wanted to relax without any effort, I would read a book or watch a movie. /shrug
Sure, I want a game. But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't be able to have entertainment sometimes. A reasonable amount of time.
IMO, If I performed at 110% a number of raids in a row - as the raid leader, or the puller, or the tank or something - the desire to play in a relaxed way once in a number of raids is normal. Someone else should be able to pick up the slack once in a while. My raid attendance, back when I was raiding in EQ and WoW, was above 90%, and rarely as "just another guy". But, from time to time, you need to relax.
If you force everyone to be under stress and tension all the time, the fun part disappears.
Aethor said:Sure, I want a game. But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't be able to have entertainment sometimes. A reasonable amount of time.
IMO, If I performed at 110% a number of raids in a row - as the raid leader, or the puller, or the tank or something - the desire to play in a relaxed way once in a number of raids is normal. Someone else should be able to pick up the slack once in a while. My raid attendance, back when I was raiding in EQ and WoW, was above 90%, and rarely as "just another guy". But, from time to time, you need to relax.
If you force everyone to be under stress and tension all the time, the fun part disappears.
You're making sense. Not everyone on the forums has done hard raids for weeks on end and they aren't on the same page. Don't sweat it.
Unfortunately, I don't imagine they'll give much room on this issue. I think if you want to join the hard raids, you've got to be a hard raider and not let up.
That said, you made sense both times you explained it. I just don't see much hope for this issue. :)
Edit: I immediately thought of when I got into raiding, I was carried by friends. There is always room to get carried!! :)
Aethor said:
Sure, I want a game. But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't be able to have entertainment sometimes. A reasonable amount of time.
IMO, If I performed at 110% a number of raids in a row - as the raid leader, or the puller, or the tank or something - the desire to play in a relaxed way once in a number of raids is normal. Someone else should be able to pick up the slack once in a while. My raid attendance, back when I was raiding in EQ and WoW, was above 90%, and rarely as "just another guy". But, from time to time, you need to relax.
If you force everyone to be under stress and tension all the time, the fun part disappears.
Yeah I'm looking for a game too. Its possible to enjoy relaxing in a game for periods of time and also wanting some sort of high attention challenge for a period of time. Plane of Sky would take 2-3 days of 12 hour days to clear. No one is going to expect anyone to be on there A game for that amount of time. I like the idea of raid size not being fixed because it essentially balances itself. More people, more mouths to feed, takes longer to move on. Fewer people, harder challenge, gear up faster.
Aethor said:If you force everyone to be under stress and tension all the time, the fun part disappears.
These forums are really hypocritical sometimes. People complain about not wanting to be forced to play the game a specific way then go about advocating for it somewhere else because in their eyes that's a crucial game defining feature.
Challenge is subjective. To assume everyone views it the same as yourself is ignorant.
Raid size... smaller the better in my opinion. I'd say three group maximum. BUT if this is not to be an instance based game.. how would you enforce that? Have the encounter banish or autokill extras? And what about level ranges? Honestly, I think we lack sufficient information to even have a reasonable discussion for this topic in Pantheon yet, unless I have missed something somewhere?
Planned raid sizes are 12 and 24. Here's a good conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0-uAKV4CBs
EQ allowed a 72 man max for raids. The reality was that a very organized and efficient raid force could do it with MUCH less. I have seen raids done with 18-24 people (Sleepers Tomb, ToV, etc...) to which 72 man raids had difficulty. The interesting thing about EQ was that 72 man raids didn't really make the raids super easy over the efficient raiders that did it with less. I have been in a 30 man taking on the AoW and a 72 man taking on the AoW around Velious release and the numbers didn't make that much of a difference when it came to the technique and process. It went faster, but over all it wasn't that much easier for the larger raid (one slip, instant wipe regardless if you had 30 or 72) and in fact, I would say due to the larger amount of people, it was harder at times because that many people staying in sync is challenging (too many people get bored and ignore orders, etc...).
So I don't have a problem with raids "allowing" for more people. My position is that the raid should be designed to be difficult AT the max number and only the extremely skilled, organized and focused raiders should be able to do it with less people (as EQ often was). This is why by the way EQ had issues with large raid guilds blocking others. That is, the loot dropped the same regardless, so a smaller guild could gear up MUCH faster than a large zerg guild, which is why many zerg guilds blocked others from the content (FOH and Afterlife, BTW the leaders were WoW content designers ).
My objection is not that you want a variable in the ability to do raids, but in the reasoning some of you use to justify it. The fact that you want to "relax, and not be challenged" and to essentially be given a "participation trophy" for simply showing up is... absurd (in my opinion). I too "have a life", "work long hours", "have a demanding job", and "serious responsibilities", but I don't think because of that, I have any right to demand the game "dumb itself down" to serve my individual demands because I personally don't want to choose another game (or at the least choose some other function in play such as not raiding) or activity. I think it is up to me personally to be the one who adjusts my expectations and to seek out that which properly meets those expectations than to demand others adjust to my expectations or a game be designed around my individual demands.
You see, as I have said, if I wanted to "raid" in a game where I could simply log in and be carried by others without effort in order to be rewarded for such, I would choose any modern MMO to achieve this as this form of expectation is common among them. I would not seek a game that attempts to break that modern mainstream mold and then demand it adhere to such mainstream standards. I personally find such expectations to be... well… entitled.
Max 24-36... Then guilds can split up into different areas.
Instancing was good for this but we have to over come the existing challenges. Rift was a horrible game to get into raids, as if you where not up to par you where not allowed to go. YOu where capped out of the existing raids for many months due to the sheer size of the guilds.
So i say it all may depend on guild size and also availablity of the raids. Not everyone will be able to go, and your left pondering should i leave this guild?
It happens i am afraid to say.
Crazzie said:Max 24-36... Then guilds can split up into different areas.
Instancing was good for this but we have to over come the existing challenges. Rift was a horrible game to get into raids, as if you where not up to par you where not allowed to go. YOu where capped out of the existing raids for many months due to the sheer size of the guilds.
So i say it all may depend on guild size and also availablity of the raids. Not everyone will be able to go, and your left pondering should i leave this guild?
It happens i am afraid to say.
I found 12 man raids of LoTRO to be perfect. I think a lot of people agreed with this focus in that game. During the time, they had a 12 man and 24 man raids. There were some very nice items in the 24 man raid, but most people seemed to gravitate to the 12 man Rift raids. It really seemed like a good balance. I had done 72 man raids in EQ, 40 and 25 mans in WoW , as well as the 24/12 in LoTRO and I think the 2-3 group mark really is the sweet spot. I found this to be true in the "relationships" that were built over the years with other players.
While I had been in guilds of over 100+ from EQ (we were the largest Test guild on EQ), I found that over the years the bulk of the people I came to know, to continue to play with and come back into contact with over the years were around the 12-18 mark. Past that, I can't even begin to identify people past basic remembrances of names or situations of past games.
The point is, 12-18 allows for more of a community based approach to game play. A more intimate number of players to grow and foster relationships outside of mere acquaintances online. It also provides a more intricate control group for content that is better suited for challenging content and communication of objectives.
Anyway, I would prefer the group sizes to be in the 12-18 range max, preferably 12 as that is two solid groups of players who will know each other in their play styles intimately and provide a unity in play that could challenge the developers to build content of exceptional means.
philo said: @Tanix Eq didn't allow for 72 man raids...the 72 person raid window wasn't added until eq was already on the decline. During eqs prime raids were unlimited. That explains a lot about your perspective...
Pretty sure, could be wrong, that the 72 person raid window was a titanium client thing, which means late "classic" and yet, as you know, was still just a convenience option for raid leaders and in no way an actual cap. Also, I didn't read this thread.
Keno Monster said:philo said: @Tanix Eq didn't allow for 72 man raids...the 72 person raid window wasn't added until eq was already on the decline. During eqs prime raids were unlimited. That explains a lot about your perspective...Pretty sure, could be wrong, that the 72 person raid window was a titanium client thing, which means late "classic" and yet, as you know, was still just a convenience option for raid leaders and in no way an actual cap. Also, I didn't read this thread.
I believe the raid window was released with PoP.
EppE said:Keno Monster said:philo said: @Tanix Eq didn't allow for 72 man raids...the 72 person raid window wasn't added until eq was already on the decline. During eqs prime raids were unlimited. That explains a lot about your perspective...Pretty sure, could be wrong, that the 72 person raid window was a titanium client thing, which means late "classic" and yet, as you know, was still just a convenience option for raid leaders and in no way an actual cap. Also, I didn't read this thread.
I believe the raid window was released with PoP.
Nod. And it still wasn't in any way shape or form a raid limit. It just made it nicer for RLs to deal with 72 or fewer members.
Crazzie said:Max 24-36... Then guilds can split up into different areas.
Instancing was good for this but we have to over come the existing challenges. Rift was a horrible game to get into raids, as if you where not up to par you where not allowed to go. YOu where capped out of the existing raids for many months due to the sheer size of the guilds.
So i say it all may depend on guild size and also availablity of the raids. Not everyone will be able to go, and your left pondering should i leave this guild?
It happens i am afraid to say.
All that does is shrink the entire world and promote the monopolization of content that many people are so afraid of.
Porte said: Long time reader, never posted until now, but would like to add my POV (as long time EQ and WoW guild and / or raid leader). I would prefer a different approach. The good and social aspect of EQ raiding for me was personally that usually getting to the boss was the fun and long part, the boss itself, while sometimes not trivial often was (for us not bleeding edge up from scratch to PoP) not an endless wipefest unlike WoW mythic was. EQ allowed me to take almost everyone on a given raid, knowing that some people performed better than others. It was the raid leaders job to set things up so that it works, put the right people on the right job. With fixed raid size and very challenging encounters this becomes just a business. Social factors have to be ignored. All the good friends that maybe are not the fastest, they have to sit on the sideline and stick to the cheering role. Unless your friends only consists of awesome players, of course. Maybe it would be good to consider this aspect too.
Well said.
philo said: @Tanix Eq didn't allow for 72 man raids...the 72 person raid window wasn't added until eq was already on the decline. During eqs prime raids were unlimited. That explains a lot about your perspective...
That may be true, it has been so long I don't remember those specifics. That said, your point does not negate or even provide a relevance to the comments I was making about raid size and challenge.
I mean, your comment was surely just about being informative right? There were no personal motivations here, nope.
Keno Monster said:EppE said:Keno Monster said:philo said: @Tanix Eq didn't allow for 72 man raids...the 72 person raid window wasn't added until eq was already on the decline. During eqs prime raids were unlimited. That explains a lot about your perspective...Pretty sure, could be wrong, that the 72 person raid window was a titanium client thing, which means late "classic" and yet, as you know, was still just a convenience option for raid leaders and in no way an actual cap. Also, I didn't read this thread.
I believe the raid window was released with PoP.
Nod. And it still wasn't in any way shape or form a raid limit. It just made it nicer for RLs to deal with 72 or fewer members.
That is kind of the point though on EQ content I think, as to why zerging wasn't a guarantee. Most of the fights came down to a key selection of members for the task and the rest were just damage fodder. That said, the fights were extremely long, so having more people might help reduce the time in the fight, but it didn't make it any easier as the key roles in the raid still needed to succeed or it was a wipe. Zerg was always a loose term in EQ in that it wasn't like WoW where "DPS" could be used to account for a poor core raid team.
The beauty of this was that the 72 man raids had 2 times or more the people to have to consider for loot distriubtion, which is why smaller guilds who could do more with less progressed faster.
Vandraad said:Niien said:I hope there's no limits and we can take as few or as many as we want just as it should be.
Think about that from the developers point of view for a moment. They are trying to create content that is interesting and challenging. How could content be made challenging if players could bring any number of players? You might say "make it dynamic, responding to the number of players present". Ok...what I choose to bring just myself? Should the raid content adjust to just me? No, there would have to be some minimum number of players. And if you're going to have a minimum, is stands to reason then there should be a maximum.
Only by limiting the maximum number of participants can the content be balanced properly. Unbalanced content will quickly ruin a game.
Eve goes all out open limits. Of course, it's nearly all pvp which means the enemy is constantly moving. Can you imagine have EVE online style time dilation while fighting a dragon? I would never want to have to turn the music off and the graphics down...somewhow it runs counter to something in my blood!
That said...maybe you could pull this off if the raid doesn't always land in the same place?
Tanix said:Keno Monster said:EppE said:Keno Monster said:philo said: @Tanix Eq didn't allow for 72 man raids...the 72 person raid window wasn't added until eq was already on the decline. During eqs prime raids were unlimited. That explains a lot about your perspective...Pretty sure, could be wrong, that the 72 person raid window was a titanium client thing, which means late "classic" and yet, as you know, was still just a convenience option for raid leaders and in no way an actual cap. Also, I didn't read this thread.
I believe the raid window was released with PoP.
Nod. And it still wasn't in any way shape or form a raid limit. It just made it nicer for RLs to deal with 72 or fewer members.
That is kind of the point though on EQ content I think, as to why zerging wasn't a guarantee. Most of the fights came down to a key selection of members for the task and the rest were just damage fodder. That said, the fights were extremely long, so having more people might help reduce the time in the fight, but it didn't make it any easier as the key roles in the raid still needed to succeed or it was a wipe. Zerg was always a loose term in EQ in that it wasn't like WoW where "DPS" could be used to account for a poor core raid team.
The beauty of this was that the 72 man raids had 2 times or more the people to have to consider for loot distriubtion, which is why smaller guilds who could do more with less progressed faster.
We've always agreed on this. "My" guild did vox the week before Kunark came out and the devs posted about it on the forums. No FoH BS.
Progression shouldn't be measured by the rate of loot acquisition; it should be measured as a process of gradually moving toward a more advanced state of being able to overcome in-game challenges. When I played my first MMO, EQOA, "zerging" had already been popularized in Everquest and migrated over from the very beginning. The most difficult content in the game was beaten by multiple semi-coordinated zerg blobs (100+ necros/mages) before being taken down by any coordinated raid team. The idea that the smaller and more coordinated guilds would progress faster isn't really true if we're using history as a precedent. Some loot is better than zero loot, regardless of how you have to split up the "rewards." The ugliness of zerging is that "true progression" (defeating difficult content) is more of a foregone conclusion. It's not a matter of if players can progress, it's a matter of who gets their shinies.
Beyond that, times have evolved quite a bit over the last 20 years. Seeing that there is no plan to forbid multi-boxing, it is quite predictable that there will be a ton of folks out there running multiple accounts. When it comes to raiding guilds, in particular, these boxed accounts are nothing more than a "bonus body." Players will fire up multiple accounts knowing full well that they are only eligible to receive "credit" (DKP or otherwise) on their main. So when you have a raid team that has 24 real players, and 16 boxed accounts, the theory that this 40 man team will progress slower than a true 24 man team is false. Those extra 16 accounts are going to have an impact on performance. If pet classes end up being multi-box friendly (they can deal significant damage through pets or minimum spell-weaving while boxed) then they will likely be the most popular box choices.
So using the above example imagine the following scenario:
Raid Team A: 24 real players, 0 boxed accounts. Balanced raid composition of tanks/healers/damage/support.
Raid Team B: 24 real players, 16 boxed accounts. Same balanced raid composition of tanks/healers/damage/support, but with an extra 16 necromancers/summoners outside the raid contributing.
Again, the boxed accounts should be viewed as a "bonus body" rather than an account that will be directly competing with a main character for loot. You bring as many of these bonus bodies along as possible because, at the end of the day, there is very little opportunity cost for doing so. You don't have to split up the loot with these accounts. They are free damage, free heals, free buffs, whatever you want to call it. They provide a tangible benefit toward any team that is capable of fielding them, and if this is allowed to happen, degenerate play will be encouraged by the very nature of the game. In some ways this could be considered as an indirect pay-to-win "feature" -- whichever guild has the most multi-box-capable players will have an inherent advantage against those who do not. Once Pandora's Box is opened, it only gets worse. We'd eventually get to the point where a "meta-composition" is identified ... 24 wizards maybe?
If zerging is viable then there is zero chance that Pantheon will have fun/healthy/fair competition. Thankfully, Brad has been consistent over the past 4-5 years in saying that zerging is something that they do not want to see in Pantheon. I am encouraged by the "24 man raid team" limit that Joppa has mentioned in several past streams, and even more excited about the prospect of eventually having raid content designed for 6-8 groups. If we ever get to the point where we have content "designed" for 72 players, that would be truly epic! I prefer a game/world where content is intended to be challenging, is designed to challenging, and where "progression" is earned by overcoming those challenges. Distributing loot is a privilege for those who are capable of overcoming the challenge. The "challenge" of distributing loot amongst a zerg blob is not some sort of balancing agent that justifies the existence of degenerate play and underhanded tactic. I think underdogs should have a chance to be successful and that is extremely unlikely if Pantheon devolves into a state of "whichever guild brings the biggest zerg, or fields the most wizards in a single composition, wins."
I'm hoping that Terminus will be a dangerous world filled with mythical beasts and monsters that can stay up for extended periods of time because of how difficult they are. The content itself should be challenging -- I do not want to play a game that sees every raid boss dropping within 5 minutes of spawning. Zerging needs to be strictly forbidden. The world is either going to be sacred and majestic, or it's going to be a toy ... a play-thing, a joke that is exploited for amusement and shiny harvesting. The developers will go out of their way to produce interesting content (as Vandraad pointed out) -- it behooves them, then, to establish rules and guidelines that prevent their content from being trivialized.
oneAdseven your theory is very beautiful the problem is that you lack the practice
what would happen in that situation is that team A is going to mobilize much faster than team B for when team B arrives with their box accounts the boss raid will be dead and their loot distributed and that boss will leave a few flags for to be able to access the next raid zone and team A would only need 24 and the B 40 team
for when team B has those flags for their 40 tons the team is already in the following raid zone
I'm sorry for my bad English I hope you can understand
You would be surprised how helpful it is to have a box army at your disposal when it comes time to mobilize. Teleport spells (for both wizard/druid) will be available around the clock. If summoners get CoH, they will be a very popular box choice. As soon as players figure out the spawn timers of a raid boss they will camp them in advance. A team with more accounts will be able to lock down more content as they'll be able to park watchers at more mobs. No matter how you spin it, boxing doesn't really slow people down. The main incentive for boxing is that it allows folks to trivialize aspects of play that are intended to require multiple players. It allows solo players to get into areas they otherwise wouldn't be able to and navigate the world as if they had a buddy accompanying them for the ride. We have no idea how any kind of flagging system is going to work in this game but it's a far reach to suggest that boxing would slow that process down. If zerging is viable then it would allow guilds to bring 40 players to a 24 man encounter, and defeat it when they otherwise may not have been able to, thus circumventing the intended barrier of challenge that the flag was supposed to represent in the first place. Players will figure out ways to get their boxed accounts flagged and they will continue to be bonus bodies in every area of the game that real players congregate. Content can never be king if players are able to resort to the Abominable Zerg Monster.
Raid size limits are necessary in order to actually create engaging raid content that's tailored to expect high skill levels and synergistic play. If guilds can bring more players/characters than the raid was designed for and still receive loot, then there is literally no incentive for them not to since they can trivialize the content and still receive a reward. And if anyone really doesn't think box groups will be a thing if raids have no cap, then they're conveniently forgetting how many boxes were used by raid guilds in EQ. Pantheon Cleric's current design is a great example: braindead easy class (cast a couple spells and then sit on floor) that will be boxed just like EQ Cleric in raids.