Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Why training and other "bad things" are good for the g

    • 27 posts
    July 18, 2017 6:11 PM PDT

    Liav said:

    This runs completely contrary to the concept of higher quality of life, modern medicine, etc. It also contradicts mountains of evidence. Would someone seriously try to argue that an increase in pain correlates with an increase in joy?

    It does not run completely contrary to the concept of higher quality of life.  His entire point is that increases in quality of life are made through overcoming struggles.  If there are no struggles, how is an increase even possible?  Moreover, if the struggles are trivial, are not the joys they entail equally trivial?  

    Liav said:

    Would someone seriously try to argue that an increase in pain correlates with an increase in joy?

    Are you saying that it can't?  Do you feel greater pleasure from solving a problem on your own or being given the answer from someone else?  Do you feel greater pleasure from beating a trivially easy boss on your first attempt or by beating a tough boss on your 10th try?

    Liav said:

    The point I'm getting at is that quotes and cutesy common sayings do not serve to create a productive discussion.

    Neither does being arrogant and dismissive.  Moreover, there is a reason sayings such as this are common; becuase they were articulated well, are succint, and speak to a recognizable truth.

    A difficult road is often a more rewarding road.  Allowing villainy allows for heroism.  These are maxims I agree with and I used a quote that illustrates them much better than I can.


    This post was edited by Lucid at July 18, 2017 6:24 PM PDT
    • 2419 posts
    July 18, 2017 6:21 PM PDT

    Liav said:

    Vandraad said:

    vjek said:

    Designing Toxicity into your game ensures failure.  I look forward to seeing how this turns out for Visionary Realms, with popcorn if necessary. :)

    EVE Online would like to have a word with you.

    EVE is a PvP game, competitive by nature. Competition breeds toxicity.

    Vjek's statement didn't have the caveat of only being applicable to a PvP game and was not about competition breeding toxicity.  He said toxicity ensures failure and that blanket statement is categorically not true.  EVE Online, being a game where lying, cheating, stealing, and straight up griefing is hugely encouraged (even in areas where PvP is severely hampered by game mechanics) by the developers has lead the game to last over 10 years and maintain a consistent population and hugely devoted fan base. Just saying...

    • 27 posts
    July 18, 2017 6:35 PM PDT

    Liav said:

    There is a line as to what is allowable in a game. This debate should be centered around where that line is. If someone is going to draw that line in such a way that it allows training, it would probably be prudent to provide arguments in favor of training as a mechanic itself.

    Generalized statements such as "it makes the game sterile" do not provide any merit for specific actions being allowable as opposed to others, as outlined above.

    It would seem prudent to start from the premise that training exists rather than that training is bad.  If it exists, tell me why it shouldn't.

    Presumably, training will simply be a possible experience due to the way the game is built.  If it is something players are capable of doing without exploitation, then it falls on those arguing for it's removal to provide an argument as to why they feel this way.


    This post was edited by Lucid at July 18, 2017 6:36 PM PDT
    • 2419 posts
    July 18, 2017 6:55 PM PDT

    Training happens because NPCs chase players.  So you get rid of NPCs running anywhere, right?  Wrong, because that makes NPCs incredibly easy to exploit by ranged attacks or every mob will have the ability to summon because if they can't run they won't then let you run.

    You could go the EQ2 route where NPCs, after chasing some distance, would rush back to their spawn point and reset before they could aggro or be aggroed by others.  That too was easily exploitable, allowing smart players to skip huge swathes of zones/dungeons.  I remember running around solo in dungeons 5+ levels higher than me looking for harvest nodes without a fear in the world because of EQ2s mechanics. Heck, travel anywhere in EQ2 was incredibly easy just because mobs did not chase very far.  The world never felt dangerous.

    So we are back with NPCs chasing players. We do already know, however, that not all NPCs will share the same desire to chase and that long will help reduce the main complaint of training which comes from those people who decide to AFK at the zoneline even when they know it is a stupid decision.

    • 399 posts
    July 18, 2017 7:19 PM PDT

    Lucid said:

    Liav said:

    This runs completely contrary to the concept of higher quality of life, modern medicine, etc. It also contradicts mountains of evidence. Would someone seriously try to argue that an increase in pain correlates with an increase in joy?

    It does not run completely contrary to the concept of higher quality of life.  His entire point is that increases in quality of life are made through overcoming struggles.  If there are no struggles, how is an increase even possible?  Moreover, if the struggles are trivial, are not the joys they entail equally trivial?  

    Liav said:

    Would someone seriously try to argue that an increase in pain correlates with an increase in joy?

    Are you saying that it can't?  Do you feel greater pleasure from solving a problem on your own or being given the answer from someone else?  Do you feel greater pleasure from beating a trivially easy boss on your first attempt or by beating a tough boss on your 10th try?

    Liav said:

    The point I'm getting at is that quotes and cutesy common sayings do not serve to create a productive discussion.

    Neither does being arrogant and dismissive.  Moreover, there is a reason sayings such as this are common; becuase they were articulated well, are succint, and speak to a recognizable truth.

    A difficult road is often a more rewarding road.  Allowing villainy allows for heroism.  These are maxims I agree with and I used a quote that illustrates them much better than I can.

    /applaud. Well said. I wish I had the eloquence you demonstrated.

    • 2130 posts
    July 18, 2017 8:33 PM PDT

    Lucid said:

    Neither does being arrogant and dismissive.  Moreover, there is a reason sayings such as this are common; becuase they were articulated well, are succint, and speak to a recognizable truth.

    A difficult road is often a more rewarding road.  Allowing villainy allows for heroism.  These are maxims I agree with and I used a quote that illustrates them much better than I can.

    I'm not being arrogant and dismissive.

    Succinct? I'll give you that. However, I would argue that many common sayings are inarticulate, and that a saying/phrase/quote/whatever being common has no relationship with its truth. So many commonly held beliefs are, or have been, outright false or half-truths at best, and as time has progressed we have cast them aside. I hope that trend continues.

    Citing quotes or common sayings doesn't provide anything of substance to a discussion because it is a cheap substitution of your own thoughts on a subject. If you hold a position on a topic and wish to express it, it's a reasonable expectation for you to be willing to do so in your own words. There's a good reason why replies to posts with "this ^" deservedly get criticized.

    I didn't reply to the rest because the rest of your replies are predicated on the belief that I'm being arrogant and dismissive, which I reject.

    Vandraad said:

    Vjek's statement didn't have the caveat of only being applicable to a PvP game and was not about competition breeding toxicity.  He said toxicity ensures failure and that blanket statement is categorically not true.  EVE Online, being a game where lying, cheating, stealing, and straight up griefing is hugely encouraged (even in areas where PvP is severely hampered by game mechanics) by the developers has lead the game to last over 10 years and maintain a consistent population and hugely devoted fan base. Just saying...

    I guess I'm disputing the term "toxic" the same way I dispute the term "grief".

    If a game supports hostile actions between players, those actions are, in my opinion, exempt from the label of "toxic". It's a mutual contract when you play certain types of games that the salt will flow.

    When I hear "toxic", I think of actions outside of what is explicitly allowable through the game rules. For instance, League of Legends isn't a toxic game because you can take hostile actions against players. It's considered a toxic game because you can't play it without being told to end yourself if you underperform.

    Highly competitive environments breed that kind of behavior. It won't be absent in Pantheon due to the competitive nature of some aspects. Allowing people to have very powerful tools (training) to take hostile actions against other players in a game where it isn't fundamentally supported opens a much larger door for what I would consider to be toxicity in a PvE game.

    Lucid said:

    It would seem prudent to start from the premise that training exists rather than that training is bad.  If it exists, tell me why it shouldn't.

    Presumably, training will simply be a possible experience due to the way the game is built.  If it is something players are capable of doing without exploitation, then it falls on those arguing for it's removal to provide an argument as to why they feel this way.

    Fortunately I'm not operating under the premise that training is bad. I'm arguing that it's bad, and I'm open to arguments that it isn't.

    I've already argued why I feel it shouldn't exist. My first post in this thread was almost a year ago, where I explicitly stated my reasons. vjek has also made solid contributions for my arguments.

    It was pointed out that accidental and intentional trains are "different". While technically true, one cannot exist without the other. If training is allowed, intentional training is allowed by extension and it will be used for malicious purposes. Additionally, training is essentially PvP. Indirectly killing or severely disrupting other players achieves the same goal that direct PvP allows, except it is far more difficult to take reciprocal action. For instance, maybe 1% of EQ players know how to deal with a skilled player who wants to shut down practically an entire zone. Even then, it is often a no-win scenario where you simply need to relocate to another zone.

    My argument is simple. Giving players that amount of power is undesirable. The only chance mechanics that allow training will succeed is if there is swift, severe action taken by GMs to resolve the incidents. This is a waste of time and resources, and it is far more practical to simply not have mechanics that allow it in the first place. The other alternative is not punishing it, in which case Pantheon is a PvP game for all intents and purposes and many threads and posts on these forums have convinced me that adversarial gameplay is not something the Pantheon target demographic will enjoy.

    If this is a false dichotomy, I'd love to hear other potential options. Involuntary PvP flags will never fly because of the aforementioned reasons. Not only that, but proposing workarounds for issues that shouldn't exist in the first place seems silly when you can just not include the mechanics in the first place.

    Edit: If I'm dragging this out too much feel free to just delete my post and I'll stop replying to this thread.

     


    This post was edited by Liav at July 18, 2017 8:54 PM PDT
    • 3237 posts
    July 18, 2017 8:50 PM PDT

    Bring on the training, griefing, and toxicity.  The world will be a better place.  I absolutely despised how the reset mechanic worked in EQ2 and 100% agree that it was abused.  Feign Death was stupid over powered in that game (this is another conversation) but even without it, there were still plenty of examples where people could train through content to completely bypass it.  (Run through 50 mobs and jump on a wall to reset aggro, for example.  I know Pantheon will have climbing, and I really hope that mobs don't reset when someone goes for a climb.)  At the end of the day, toxic players/drama can make the game more entertaining for those who can band together and overcome it.  The potential to get trained makes the world more dangerous.  It's win-win in my book.  Please understand this is just my opinion and I don't mean to say that the world is literally going to be a better place.  I'm sure some people might get frustrated by certain mechanics such as getting trained ... if people grief, you deal with them.  It's so easy to record gameplay anymore that if someone does something super shady, they'll likely get roasted for it.


    This post was edited by oneADseven at July 18, 2017 8:55 PM PDT
    • 1921 posts
    July 18, 2017 11:23 PM PDT

    Vandraad said: Vjek's statement didn't have the caveat of only being applicable to a PvP game and was not about competition breeding toxicity.  He said toxicity ensures failure and that blanket statement is categorically not true.  EVE Online, being a game where lying, cheating, stealing, and straight up griefing is hugely encouraged (even in areas where PvP is severely hampered by game mechanics) by the developers has lead the game to last over 10 years and maintain a consistent population and hugely devoted fan base. Just saying...

    If something is true once, is it true every time?

    There have been well over a dozen failed toxic MMO's since 1996.  One exception makes the rule, eh Vandraad?

    Would you rather I phrase my statements with a bunch of caveats, so you can point to Eve, yet again, as the exception that makes the rule?  Sure, let's do that some more.  ;-)

    If Eve launched today, it would, in my opinion, fail without so much as a whimper.  The only thing that keeps it going are the ties to RMT, much like Krono in EQ1, these days.

    So, I stand by my statement, and if VR chooses to emulate Eve's business model and toxicity, like PFO did?  It will fail.  Just like PFO did.  Ryan Dancey couldn't make PFO work like Eve, there's no way in hell Brad is going to.

    • 27 posts
    July 19, 2017 12:03 AM PDT

    Liav said:

    I'm not being arrogant



    What do you call it?  Rather than acknowledge someones point of view, you decided that they were not worth engaging because they didn't use their own words.

    Liav said:

    and dismissive.

    You made some type of matter of fact statement that pain can't lead to joy without any type of argument.  Not only is it not a matter of fact, it is certainly not common sense as you asserted.

    Liav said:

    However, I would argue that many common sayings are inarticulate, and that a saying/phrase/quote/whatever being common has no relationship with its truth.

    Many are; many are not.  This is why I qualified what I said with: "sayings such as these" rather than making some broader claim.

    Liav said:

    and that a saying/phrase/quote/whatever being common has no relationship with its truth.

    This is a claim I never made.  Something being common does not make it true.  Rather, these types of sayings ring true for some people; thus they see more common usage.  Obviously, the quoted text is a contentious claim and I'm not arguing that.

    Liav said:

    Citing quotes or common sayings doesn't provide anything of substance to a discussion because it is a cheap substitution of your own thoughts on a subject.

    Whose words they are is irrelevant.  The idea expressed is one I agree with and one that I do not feel equipped to state in any clearer terms.  It seems reasonable, to me, to expect that one of the greatest authors of the 19 century could articulate an idea better than I.

    Liav said:

    If you hold a position on a topic and wish to express it, it's a reasonable expectation for you to be willing to do so in your own words. There's a good reason why replies to posts with "this ^" deservedly get criticized.

    Sure, that's reasonable.  However, again, the author of the words is irrelevant.  I don't see any practical reason to quibble about who wrote the words as opposed to the ideas expressed.  Saying "^this" is a mark of support for the person they are referring to.  If you think that is something people shouldn't do then fine but this has nothing to do with what we're talking about.

    Liav said:

    I didn't reply to the rest because the rest of your replies are predicated on the belief that I'm being arrogant and dismissive, which I reject.

    The rest of my reply is not predicated on you being arrogant and dismissive at all.  They were direct questions posed at comments you made.  This is the meat of the problem and you have yet to address any of the points of contention at all.  You being arrogant and dismissive was an aside at the end of my post, not a thesis.

    Liav said:

    Fortunately I'm not operating under the premise that training is bad. I'm arguing that it's bad, and I'm open to arguments that it isn't.

    If someone is going to draw that line in such a way that it allows training, it would probably be prudent to provide arguments in favor of training as a mechanic itself.

    I don't know how you square these two comments.

    Presumably the line is already drawn.  Training exists as a mechanic.

    On one hand you say you are not operating from the premise that training is bad and on the other you are placing the onus on those who reject the idea that training should be removed.  It is not up to those who want to leave things as is to come up with an argument for leaving the line where it's at.  It is up to those who want to redraw it (Read: remove training) to convince the other side why they are right.  You provide arguments, the other side proceeds accepts or rejects and you proceed dialectically.  So let's do that:

    Liav said:

    1) My argument is simple. Giving players that amount of power is undesirable. The only chance mechanics that allow training will succeed is if there is swift, severe action taken by GMs to resolve the incidents. This is a waste of time and resources, and it is far more practical to simply not have mechanics that allow it in the first place.  2) The other alternative is not punishing it, in which case Pantheon is a PvP game for all intents and purposes and many threads and posts on these forums have convinced me that adversarial gameplay is not something the Pantheon target demographic will enjoy.

    1) Do you have anything to support the claims that it is more 'practical' to rework the mechanics than it is to police what may be rare behavior?  I see no reason to accept that on it's face.  Consider that changing a mechanic like this might not be as simple as you are assuming and that this malicious behavior may potentially be extremely rare, for example.  Also, allowing players this amount of power might be desirable depending on what the alternatives entail.

    2) I have no problem with them taking the pulse of the community and making decisions based on this.

    Liav said:

    proposing workarounds for issues that shouldn't exist in the first place seems silly when you can just not include the mechanics in the first place.

    Do you have anything over and above your seemings?  You appear to be assuming that it is just easier to rework this mechanic but I have yet to understand why this is the case.


    This post was edited by Lucid at July 19, 2017 12:16 AM PDT
    • 54 posts
    July 19, 2017 1:49 AM PDT

    vjek said:

    Vandraad said: Vjek's statement didn't have the caveat of only being applicable to a PvP game and was not about competition breeding toxicity.  He said toxicity ensures failure and that blanket statement is categorically not true.  EVE Online, being a game where lying, cheating, stealing, and straight up griefing is hugely encouraged (even in areas where PvP is severely hampered by game mechanics) by the developers has lead the game to last over 10 years and maintain a consistent population and hugely devoted fan base. Just saying...

    If something is true once, is it true every time?

    There have been well over a dozen failed toxic MMO's since 1996.  One exception makes the rule, eh Vandraad?

    Would you rather I phrase my statements with a bunch of caveats, so you can point to Eve, yet again, as the exception that makes the rule?  Sure, let's do that some more.  ;-)

    If Eve launched today, it would, in my opinion, fail without so much as a whimper.  The only thing that keeps it going are the ties to RMT, much like Krono in EQ1, these days.

    So, I stand by my statement, and if VR chooses to emulate Eve's business model and toxicity, like PFO did?  It will fail.  Just like PFO did.  Ryan Dancey couldn't make PFO work like Eve, there's no way in hell Brad is going to.

    There only needs to be one example of a successful MMORPG that allocates to players a large amount of in-game freedom that has led to a good amount of griefing to refute the argument that in-game freedom—and the griefing that results from it—is sufficient for a MMORPG to fail. EVE is that example.

    What this means is that it is plausible that those other “toxic MMOs” failed for different reasons. For example: clumsy controls, poor UI design, boring gameplay, ugly graphics, little content, etc.

    If a game developer were to develop a well-made game that allocated a large amount of in-game freedom to players, then that game would become critically acclaimed. Mark my words. People crave virtual worlds and in order for there to be a compelling virtual world there needs to be a plethora of choices, free agency, and meaningful consequences. Most people find hand-holding and on-the-rails themepark games boring. That's not to say one cannot be successful--or that one cannot be fun. What I'm saying is the philosophy behind the themepark MMORPG is flawed compared to the vision of creating a true virtual world.

    World of Warcraft is highly successful, but I believe its success had to do with it being well-made and well-maintained, developed by the cool kid on the block (Blizzard), and it being based on an already popular video game series and universe; not only that, but its release was following in the fresh footprints of one of the true pioneers of the genre: EverQuest. WoW's success had nothing to do with it having invisible barriers next to cliffsides (in dungeons), weak penalties for dying, solely instanced dungeons, no meaningful faction system, no weapon skills (although it did in the beginning), locked encounters, and players being able to hit level cap in 20 hours.


    This post was edited by manofyesterday at July 19, 2017 2:07 AM PDT
    • 323 posts
    July 19, 2017 3:52 AM PDT
    So those of you who think training and other potential forms of griefing are "good," do you also expect VR to police the game for griefing? I'm having trouble understanding what your ideal vision is here. Like, the game allows training, but then someone can call the Termimus cops for a remedy for training?
    • 40 posts
    July 19, 2017 5:33 AM PDT

    There is real no way to elminate training that doesn't seriously and negatively affect other aspects of the game. I'd state that dealing with training is a better option than artificially limiting it and everything that comes along with it. 

    • 151 posts
    July 19, 2017 7:02 AM PDT

    I think instead of talking about removing trainig and finding ways to not have that mechanic in game we should find ways to prevent exploiting it. Like changing or removing feign death. A train that is a result of a group messing up and running for safety is completely fine in my oninion. Makes for some excitement for those peoople that are playing in a spot that is at an evacuation route for a zone. To avoid, maybe don't camp on the main drag? If possible that is.

    What is not exciting (usually) is a monk running into your group with 30 mobs and flopping over. That is more stupid than fun. I know there are other threads specifically on that topic so I won't try to post ideas on how to fix it but that to me is the root issue. I don't want to see trains go away. I want to see stuff like FD go away.

    • 3852 posts
    July 19, 2017 7:15 AM PDT

    >There is real no way to elminate training that doesn't seriously and negatively affect other aspects of the game<

    I don't claim to be an expert on the topic since I never spent much time in any MMO that allowed training. So maybe I am missing some basic things - this is a question not a disagreement or an attack.

    How does it  "seriously and negatively" impact the game if a mob returns to its spawn point without attacking anyone else if the player that aggrod it flops over or leaves the zone? Assuming no one else attacked it, healed or buffed the person that attacked it or is grouped with the person that attacked it. 

    In other words if I am outside its normal aggro range it will return to its territory and leave me in peace if I do nothing to get its attention.

    Is there a potential exploit here that I am too ignorent of the mechanism to recognize?

    • 278 posts
    July 19, 2017 7:28 AM PDT

    dorotea said:

    >There is real no way to elminate training that doesn't seriously and negatively affect other aspects of the game<

    I don't claim to be an expert on the topic since I never spent much time in any MMO that allowed training. So maybe I am missing some basic things - this is a question not a disagreement or an attack.

    How does it  "seriously and negatively" impact the game if a mob returns to its spawn point without attacking anyone else if the player that aggrod it flops over or leaves the zone? Assuming no one else attacked it, healed or buffed the person that attacked it or is grouped with the person that attacked it. 

    In other words if I am outside its normal aggro range it will return to its territory and leave me in peace if I do nothing to get its attention.

    Is there a potential exploit here that I am too ignorent of the mechanism to recognize?



    Yes sadley there is , the monk ungroupe remove buffs and train a groupe of mob away and the rest of the groupe goes past and so on and as feign death is a monk primary move it needs to stay as a monk pull is a controlled training.

    • 57 posts
    July 19, 2017 8:15 AM PDT

    For me, a un-intential train though sucking if you get wiped happens and occasionally should happen. It's the people that intentially go out of there ways to grief that I dislike and since I usually play classes that receive the short end of the stick, finding a ressurrection and lost time and experience doesn't sit well.Currently I am playing on the Agnarr server until Pantheon enters it testing phases. I hate the wild wild west attitude that has cropped up. Mages sitting afk running macros to send pets off to kill named the split second they pop and can out dps you. People taking mobs from you that you engage because you lack the dps. Or the guy who calls a camp only to find himself the target of a group of trainers or box army coming in and taking it from him is toxic to my tastes.

    The question then becomes if the company that maintains the game won't even bother to police the game after it states that certain things are unexceptable. People will then complain and either join the griefers as a way to teach them for doing it and risk getting disciplined themselves when the game maintainers finally do respond if at all or leave the game. I personally won't join the griefers or retalliate back in same nature. I'll just pick up my toys and go someplace else even if I have been trying for hours to get my upgrade that I need to be a better player then pay for the item through credits or artificial items (example krono).

    • 3852 posts
    July 19, 2017 8:24 AM PDT

    >Yes sadley there is , the monk ungroupe remove buffs and train a groupe of mob away and the rest of the groupe goes past and so on and as feign death is a monk primary move it needs to stay as a monk pull is a controlled training.<

    This I understand,  but how would a speedy return of the mob to its patrol point rather than letting it get distracted by innocent strangers be a problem?

    Wouldn't you WANT the mob to return as fast as possible before the monk's group was out of the area?

    • 281 posts
    July 19, 2017 8:42 AM PDT

    1) It breaks immersion.

    2) It may seem to solve the problem but it makes the environment less dangerous.
    3) It creates new problems, like:  You take on a named and its adds.  It was a risk but you took it with hopes of potential reward.  Someone else shows up and attacks just the named.  The adds don't attack him because of the code that locks their agro on you and prevents others from getting agro.  You die after he's killed the named.  He gets loot, you don't.  He had no risk whatsoever.

    • 793 posts
    July 19, 2017 8:49 AM PDT

    We all claim to want better AI, smarter mobs, mobs that don't do predictable things, Unless that unpredicatable thing is attack an innocent starnger he's walking past on his way back to his point of origin?

    No one likes being wiped by a train, intentional or not, but they added a sense of danger to locations. There were commonly known rules when you were training, to shout out to the zone that it was coming. Sometimes we would prepare and try to pick off mobs from the train, other times, we took cover off the path.

    Intentional repeatative trains were rare, and those people often got blackballed by the community and eventually banned.

     Maybe some of these games have changed to where this is commonplace, but it surely wasn't back in the early days, and I would like to beleive that if it has become commonplace, that it is more a result of poor community and poor CR from the game. I don't see VR being completely uninvolved. these guys PLAY the game along side us, they don't want that extereme negeative gameplay any more than us.

    So are we just over exaggerating this whole issue? 

     


    This post was edited by Fulton at July 19, 2017 8:49 AM PDT
    • 2752 posts
    July 19, 2017 9:15 AM PDT

    dorotea said:

    How does it  "seriously and negatively" impact the game if a mob returns to its spawn point without attacking anyone else if the player that aggrod it flops over or leaves the zone? Assuming no one else attacked it, healed or buffed the person that attacked it or is grouped with the person that attacked it. 

    In other words if I am outside its normal aggro range it will return to its territory and leave me in peace if I do nothing to get its attention.

    Is there a potential exploit here that I am too ignorent of the mechanism to recognize?

     

    I think it more has to do with the dumbing down of AI at that point and making the game/zones (dungeons in particular) noticeably less challenging. I personally think trains should be in the game and something VR could keep tabs on to perhaps change should it become a real issue, as I was purposefully trained in EQ maybe 5 times in 4 years. Trains don't really bother me much as most people yell it out or you tend to see it coming, and those doing it on purpose are either classes with FD or people who themselves are also losing EXP to do so.

     

    That said I would like to see perhaps a mechanic in place that punishes people who train without needing VR intervention, though I know it is probably impossible. The only thing I can think of would be an invisible switch being flipped when a player pulls more than x mobs, if he/she dies without doing X% damage to them then any other player deaths in the immediate area from those mobs also add an additional 15% exp loss per player death for the person who trained. Maybe each player gets one "freebie" every 72 hours or more to cover the possible accidental train while genuinely making a break for the zone. Alternatively, maybe mobs just don't aggro in the immediate area that they de-aggro a player due to death/fd but further on their patrol back to spawn they switch back to regular aggro. 

     

    Either way, I think training is fine though I disagree with some of the above sentiments for more ways in which players can both positively and negatively influence the game for others on PvE servers. The challenge and hardships on a PvE server that you are overcoming and finding that real sense of accomplishment should be coming from the game itself being brutal, not other players shoving you around. 

    • 399 posts
    July 19, 2017 10:06 AM PDT

    i was thinking along the same lines as Iksar. 

    If someone pulls more that x (6?) mobs, isnt it possible that one of those 6 is smarter than the rest and sees through FD?  This would stop intentional training as the FD'r would most likely be killed.

    In a group situation where 6 or more might be pulled on purpose, the FD'r might not even FD if there's a warrior who can tank and taunt. 

    If an FD occurs in order to pull a group of mobs away in order to provide easy passage for the rest of the group, that should be ok. It doesn't even need to be an FD class to do that. If then the puller zones and the mobs return to their spot and there is one or more groups at the zone line, oh well... Anyone should know zone lines are dangerous places...

    • 1019 posts
    July 19, 2017 10:41 AM PDT

    Having to race to a spawn point of a mob or raid boss, trying to organize your guild and get there before your rival guild was such an enjoyable memory.  Did we always get there first? No, but sometimes we'd sit there and watch them die.  Then we'd pull, they'd sit there and watch us die.  Or if they killed it, or we killed it, congratulations were spread around by each side.

    Yes, we need the challenge, we need the competion.  If it's all instanced and we all get to do what everyone else gets to do, then it's not special.  Might as well make a game with a 24 person server limit.

    Healing a trainer and then getting pwnd by the mobs he had after him was a laughable experience, and one that made me very apprehensive of healing random people, but still a good part of the community of the game.

    • 3016 posts
    July 19, 2017 11:23 AM PDT

    dorotea said:

    I personally think training is a terrible mechanism to use in a game. It allows players on a pve server to deliberately use the environment to kill other characters. If I want other players to kill my characters I will play on a pvp server. This has nothing to do with whether I am a wuss and want an easy environment and a lot of handholding. It has to do with my view of what players should be able to each other and my strong opposition to intentional griefing as a legitimate way of playing. For the record, I am not a wuss. I am a carebear. There is a difference.

    Mod Edit: Removed portion that applied to the removed content. :)

     

    I'd just like to clarify...I have a hunch I need to do that.   In my paragraph I wasn't talking about deliberately training people...I don't do that..ever.    But I DO warn people that a train is coming,  it was part of gaming etiquette to warn people what was coming (IF I had started that train accidentally)    /shout or /ooc   "Train to zone get off the tracks"    IF you had an ounce of caring about what you had created by accident.   Some didn't care,  no control over that.    What I was talking about was the people I witnessed who didn't understand how the AI worked in that zone.      If you fought a group of mobs..and one happened to get away,  it would march around the whole zone pretty much and complain to its neighbours.     With the effect of a heck of a lot of agro mobs coming back to visit your group.      That's how it worked,  wasn't deliberate and it was self caused by that particular group.      In a game like that you pay attention to your surroundings,  and what you're doing.  If you don't there are consequences.    That's all I was saying..and the sissy thing was meant as a bit of humour.  :P  Also wanted to mention that I have been known to root something that was chasing someone ..and kill it.   I do that on Agnarr right now. :)   Course you have to be careful its not a mob or mobs being brought back to a group on purpose.      EQ was a learning curve, I made my fair share of mistakes as I was learning,  sometimes I died, sometimes I didn't..but as time went on I got better,  I adapted.     It is a game after all,  and if it makes you think and strategize,  and maybe even help out people around you,  so much the better. :)  And perhaps I have a bit of carebear in my personality too...because I care about my community. :)

     

    Cana

     

     


    This post was edited by CanadinaXegony at July 19, 2017 11:47 AM PDT
    • 3016 posts
    July 19, 2017 11:51 AM PDT

    Durp said:

    i was thinking along the same lines as Iksar. 

    If someone pulls more that x (6?) mobs, isnt it possible that one of those 6 is smarter than the rest and sees through FD?  This would stop intentional training as the FD'r would most likely be killed.

    In a group situation where 6 or more might be pulled on purpose, the FD'r might not even FD if there's a warrior who can tank and taunt. 

    If an FD occurs in order to pull a group of mobs away in order to provide easy passage for the rest of the group, that should be ok. It doesn't even need to be an FD class to do that. If then the puller zones and the mobs return to their spot and there is one or more groups at the zone line, oh well... Anyone should know zone lines are dangerous places...

     

    So what you are suggesting is a feign death fizzle?   Hey we casters get fizzles..seems only fair.  hehe

    • 2130 posts
    July 19, 2017 12:06 PM PDT

    @Lucid

    I'm just going to drop this topic here. I don't have the patience to repeat myself. If we don't have common ground yet, we never will.