Edit * Liav hit what i was trying to get at right on the head here, when i wrote this i was very tired... I don't want things to necessarily be done as quickly as possible, what i was getting at was don't force me to wait on a time gate. In the WoW example i needed say 2k rep only way to get rep was 500 per day for x days. Thats not ok. Instead make that needed rep 20k and give me a way in game to farm that up without forcing me to wait on something. I want to keep playing your game, i don't want to play something else while waiting. , sorry for the confusion...*
Liav said:Time gating is literal prevention of progress based on time.
Faction grinding in general is not time gating. Faction grinding where you can only gain 500 faction per 24 hour period is time gating.
I was wondering if there was plans to install something like this into the game, i'm unsure exactly how to explain it so i'll give an example from World of Warcrafts latest expansion Legion.
There was 2 dungeons in the game that were locked behind a reputation (faction) grind. To get the flags for these dungeons you needed to do a certain quest and those quests were locked behind rep. In order to gain rep for this quest giver you would have to do these mini or "daily" quests. THIS WAS THE ONLY WAY. There was only so many of these quests you could do in i want to say a 12 hour period of time, and then you would have to wait another 12 hours time. Now when I reached this point in the game I believe it was day 2 maybe 3 into the expansion launch, I had already completed all previous content that was available at the time, All the quests in the surrounding areas, All the dungeons including Heroic and Mythic, There was really nothing available for me to "progress" except for getting into this dungeon and continuing the area's story line. The content was out, It was released, It was playable and doable it was just locked behind this what i called a time gate. Because in order to get the reputation required to get this flag for the questline it would take me atleast another 2 days i think it was if i did every single "world quest" for this faction. It literally left me with nothing else to do.
Now given in Pantheon its gonna be similarily structured like EQ where as you go from place to place doing your thing to my understanding. Where as World of Warcraft has more of a linear approach on their contact where you started in Area A then move to B, C and then on and on untill the next expansion comes out. But please for the LOVE of god don't place anything in this world where you're stuck waiting on a refresh timer for some dailys to continue on with what at the time was the Main story line.
So here's a counter arguement that i feel like some folks are going to throw my way and i'll address that aswell. We'll Use an example from Everquest. Veeshan's Peak immediatley comes to mind and bear with me its been a long long time so my timers might be far far far off. The goblin in Lake of Ill Omen i THINK was a 3 day long timer. and you required a drop from it in order to complete your key... to progress. I'm not gonna lie I hated keys like that but they arent the end of the world especially in a game like everquest and you could sit there and poop sock mobs like that and compete with someone to get that particular item, Where as the WoW example the only thing i was competing with was a stupid refresh timer.
Anywho while were on the topic, and im sure its been brought up a bunch of times already... But maybe think about this too. Is it fun to compete over a camp like that goblin to get access to an area? I PERSONALLY don't think so... But if its a necessary evil it is what it is. I think guilds should definatley fight over raid monsters and whatever monsters in the world 100%, But i don't think its right or fun for guilds to even have the ability to monopolize access to the monsters. Make those fights hard, hard as hell. Make those guilds prove they are worthy to compete over the loot. Another example was from an EQEMU I played called shards of dalaya. There was a ton of raid mobs in the game on 3-7 day timers that you would have to kill to get access to the next raid zone or tier. And the top tier guild always killed that key mob so they wouldn't have competition. Untill they get to the City of Mist i forget the changed name. But basically they made that last boss (Animation for those that played) in there so hard and so fine tuned the top tier guild didn't even have to kill it to keep folks out. The fight was hard guilds that werent ready for it simply couldnt do it.
While epic quests and raid mobs will likely be on these long timers i don't think its the same thing before someone argues that aswell. I think the EQ enchanter epic mob in Neriak was what on a 7 day timer? That IS pretty absurd in my opinion even for an epic. But its whatever time gating mobs in an epic stops you from being uber, Where as i want this conversation based around time gating content thats released and ready to go.
Sorry for this spiel, playing some WoW right now on an alt and reached that point made me think about it. And pantheon is the next big and great adventure i can't wait to embark on. While its not a HUGE deal it was annoying, at the time i wanted to play the hell out of some WoW, Instead for those next 3 days i was stuck logging in for an hour every 12 hours to do all the dailys and then i moved on to play something else untill i finally reached the reputation needed. Also please keep in mind for the average player this wasnt a big deal. They put HUGE emphasis on World quests and how much they meant to the expansion. If you played like an average player and did your World Quests daily you'd prolly not have any issues reaching your reputation flag by the time you were ready for it. But for folks like me that enjoy BLASTING through content it just stone walled us. I did mention it on Blizzards forums at the time and lots of folks told me to level my cooking and tradeskills.... well to me.... thats.... BORING... Don't FORCE me to do optional things that i likely don't want to do =p
Thanks for reading, Oozu
TLDR, but:
I think folks who like to "blast through content" are a big part of the problem in MMORPG's......this "race to the top" approaches this as a game to beat or win, instead of a virtual world to live in.
I want every roadblock, hurdle, slowdown and impediment to combat this "race to the top" approach - I've proposed a negative exponential (diminsihing return) XP curve
for this very reason
Time gating is awful. Hard pass. It is antithetical to the concept of a challenging game for normies with low playtime to suggest that progress should be time limited to lower the ceiling on how fast you can progress. People will level faster than other people, deal with it.
I'm not against time-gated content, but I am against repetitive daily quests. I don't like repetitive daily quests because they appear to me to be a poor substitute for adding real content and makes me feel like the game is dieing because they're not willing to put the time in to do real content.
As for punishing someone for the "push to the top" playstyle, I'm against that too. Just make the game challenging, but don't punish people because they like to play the game in a specific manner. I don't like xp penalties for playing for too long, or bonuses for logging out (which is nothing but a penalty for those that play more, just with a different linguistic spin). This kind of playstyle has very little impact on others, and as long as someone is not being disruptive to the game or other players then their playstyle shouldn't be dictated.
I personlay support a xp curve rather then dailys. Make the game take time i work a full time job and likely i will be behind no lifers. However I will be glad of it if i have a world where i always have things to do. That is what a world is not some ride that last 2 weeks then done. Death to all dailies who wants to do the same quests every day. Give me a world i have to work at, one i can live in, and one i can be immersed in.
1.2 Will playing Pantheon involve ‘camping’?
This is a tricky question to answer, primarily because ‘camping’ means many different things to many people. To some, camping means sitting around in one place for hours on end with lots of downtime and lots of boredom too. To others, it means moving to different locations, establishing a foothold in a dangerous area, and then often having one or more members of the group ‘pulling’ mobs back to that foothold. The developers of Pantheon are interested far more in the latter than the former. If done correctly, this style of gameplay can be a lot of fun and also provide opportunities to socialize. That said, while Terminus is more of an open ‘sandbox’ world and not about moving linearly from one quest hub to another, establishing footholds in the depths of dungeons will not be the only way to advance your character.
(From: FAQ: https://pantheonmmo.com/game/faqs/
If we are talking faction grinding, sure, I've no problem with that mechanic. I'd rather not have required quest items held behind a rare, long respawn timer that is contested with everyone (I've no issue with it be contested, just a 3 day timer that resets when someone kills it is beyond restricting).
Yes let's have no time gating whatsoever, make it so when I log in, I do some series of intricate button presses that takes a super good player to complete, and I immediately ding max level and the best gear in the game is automatically equipped to my character. Also in big huge words on the screen it says "YOU WIN!!!!!!!!"
Seriously guys? Everything about the MMORPG Brad is trying to make is based on progression of all forms requiring "Time", otherwise, what the hell is the point of even playing?
My main disagreement with time gating is extremes of "everyone needs this one mob and it has a respawn timer of days" or "requires 500,000 faction and one can only make 100 faction a day no matter what one does". But reasonable time syncs I don't have much problem with.
Rallyd said:Yes let's have no time gating whatsoever, make it so when I log in, I do some series of intricate button presses that takes a super good player to complete, and I immediately ding max level and the best gear in the game is automatically equipped to my character. Also in big huge words on the screen it says "YOU WIN!!!!!!!!"
Seriously guys? Everything about the MMORPG Brad is trying to make is based on progression of all forms requiring "Time", otherwise, what the hell is the point of even playing?
Why do you think it means auto win with no time gate? Time gates are dailies in my eyes. What we need is a good xp curve.
Say getting for lvl 1-5 would take 10 hours now depending on how long you play each might take you a week where otheres if they grind non stop for 10 hours would be lvl 5. As in all RGPMMOs you will have a xp curve if say the cap is 50 it could take 80 hours of leveling to hit it. Some without jobs or have 2 weeks off would compleat it in less then 2 weeks and if thats how some one wants to do it good for them others it would take much longer. In modern MMO the time to gane a lvl is to low.
As for a gate its ment to force you to play the game each day to only do those quests because the game has no content or other way to make people play. I wont speak for every one but if Brad wants a game where all i do is the same quest over and over i was sadly mistaken that this game was going to be any diffrent from other modern MMOs.
Another reason why people can spead through modern MMOs so fast is do to the quest markers and the fact that you dont have to read any thing to figure out where to go its all handed to you on a silver plater. NPC "Please Sir I Ne......" Player "STFU SKIP SKIP SKIP. Finaly its over now on my map it say i go here and do this." I myself have done this and i admit its sameful and no i have no idea why my chaceter was doing any thing other then the main story, because i didnt need to pay atention. We all rush to the end game because with out trying you can beat those games in 2 weeks and be up there with every one else. I would argue that if we did not have the ability to finish so fast we would slow down for a marithon and rather then rush for the 100 yard dash.
In the end just give me a game that takes time but i can play as much as i want or as little with out fear that i have to do this quest or i missed out for that day. If repeatible quest exist so be it but let me do 100 times a day or 0 knowing i can do them the next day. Let people play on their time.
fazool said:TLDR, but:
I think folks who like to "blast through content" are a big part of the problem in MMORPG's......this "race to the top" approaches this as a game to beat or win, instead of a virtual world to live in.
I want every roadblock, hurdle, slowdown and impediment to combat this "race to the top" approach - I've proposed a negative exponential (diminsihing return) XP curve
for this very reason
I agree. Far too many people see MMOs as a "game to beat". And that's the problem with most modern MMOs. They were designed to feed this need. Luckily, Pantheon is not a linear game like that. It is closer to "old school" Everquest in that respect. Brad has already stated that Pantheon should be viewed as a world not a game in the modern MMO sense.
kelenin said:I'm not against time-gated content, but I am against repetitive daily quests. I don't like repetitive daily quests because they appear to me to be a poor substitute for adding real content and makes me feel like the game is dieing because they're not willing to put the time in to do real content.
As for punishing someone for the "push to the top" playstyle, I'm against that too. Just make the game challenging, but don't punish people because they like to play the game in a specific manner. I don't like xp penalties for playing for too long, or bonuses for logging out (which is nothing but a penalty for those that play more, just with a different linguistic spin). This kind of playstyle has very little impact on others, and as long as someone is not being disruptive to the game or other players then their playstyle shouldn't be dictated.
Some of the existing videos have already stated that there will be "faction grinds" required to get to certain content. As an example, to use the forge in the ice cave, you will have to faction grind to get viewed kindly enough by the smith to use it.
It's a bit naive to suggest that, in a world which centred around group content and community, that the people who are pushing to the top don't impact others.
Typically the "top guilds" will dominate content, gate access to areas by controlling the flow of critical items (such as keys), charge other players outrageous loot rights for epic drops...
So given that we're talking about a game where there is no instancing and we can reasonably expect time gated long respawns on major bosses and drops, how other people play is going to have a major impact on how you're able to progress.
I'm all for gated content, but I'm hoping there are additional mechanics that make it much harder to poop sock or have an entire guild log in at the foot of a boss mob 5 minutes before he's due to spawn. In addition to making the appearance of mobs harder to predict, I hope they randomize up the loot table somewhat so the chance of any given drop is spread across more bosses of equal difficulty. So if dragon A is camped, your guild can go after a different dragon, perhaps many zones away, and have a chance at the same loot. In the case of outdoor bosses, I also hope they mix up not just the spawn time, but also the location, making it more competitive to have your guild mobilize. EQ is filled with examples of mobs that could have had randomized spawn points, but just ended up getting killed seconds after spawning for the past 15 years.
Liav hit what i was trying to get at right on the head here, when i wrote this i was very tired... I don't want things to necessarily be done as quickly as possible, what i was getting at was don't force me to wait on a time gate. In the WoW example i needed say 2k rep only way to get rep was 500 per day for x days. Thats not ok. Instead make that needed rep 20k and give me a way in game to farm that up without forcing me to wait on something. I want to keep playing your game, i don't want to play something else while waiting. , sorry for the confusion...
As far as epic mobs etc, I'm not looking for the play nice feed us what we want necessarily. I was actually fine with epic mobs being , but at the same time i'm usually in a higher tier guild and that competition for a 3 day timer mob was never really an issue for me. But even in an open world game like EQ or what we think pantheon is going to be. It wouldnt be hard to do something like the end of the bard epic where you do so much on a huge quest of epic awesomeness and then hand some stuff into the undead bard and it spawns your epic mob. you could do that for every big kill step. Unless a guild is sitting there waiting for you to come turn in your items and steal your kill then you'll be fine. But at the same time in that arguement I HAVE seen folks do it with the cleric epic on EQ1. But honestly with epic quests and the like i don't feel like Time gating is an issue. I have no problems with time gating things in the manner of a respawn timers for flavor or power increases. I have a problem with time gating zone content. Don't deny access to a place. Once you open that place if everythings on a huge timer. Sure thats your perogative.
Please. No time-gating. Being one of the people that will generally only have an hour or two a day to play (when I'm lucky) time-gating would generally be an advantage to me, and I'm still opposed to it.
I highly encourage VR to not go down the road of developing gimmicky artificial variations of experience based on some naive hope that you can "fix" player behavior. You can't. You'll just create invisible walls that frustrate and annoy your core audience, and generally reduce the quality of the gameplay. Yes, you might have some players that applaud that they don't have to deal with X, Y or Z because of system-whatever. But they will be equally frustrated when they realise they can't get any more xp, or they can't help someone who's wounded, or they can't do any number of other things because of well-intentioned but counterproductive rules.
On the subject of time gating I fully understand why Activision/Blizzard went that route...it was a smart move to force players to stay subbed longer. It is one of the best methods to keep those ultra hardcore players around longer becuase otherwise they will blast through the content and quit in the first month, and return for every new content patch blast through it then unsub again. The easier your game is the more players will blast through the content and those of us who have played WoW know full well the game is "faceroll EZ mode" until you get to mythic/hardmode raids. If VR doesn't make things difficult and/or grindy enough then time gating becomes necessary in some form or another. I hate daily quests so you won't hear me advocating for that approach, but as Oozu said there will likely be key mob on a long respawn timer or something of the sort.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the OP.
Is time gating by the OPs definition:
A) Requiring a lot of time played in order to grind xp/faction/etc. to gain levels and/or access content?
or,
B) Scaling xp gained for a given player based on the amount of time that player has been in game or gained xp in a given period of time? (Reducing xp gains for like actions after X hours online in a week, as an example).
I'm not at all opposed to A).
I'm completely opposed to B).
Liav said:Time gating is awful. Hard pass. It is antithetical to the concept of a challenging game for normies with low playtime to suggest that progress should be time limited to lower the ceiling on how fast you can progress. People will level faster than other people, deal with it.
Agreed. Time-gating was something I absolutely despised in WoW and several other games. It ranged from faction related quests that could be used to purchase minor upgrades or cosmetic mounts, all the way up to completing legendary weapon quests. Have never been a fan. It makes the world seem like a job (but worse) -- if you don't log in and participate at the exact ideal pace, it's impossible to "catch up" later. If you miss a single opportunity (don't log in for a day) you will never be on par with the guy who logs in every day. You can't just put in an extra long session on the weekend to close the gap. You could literally spend 10 hours per day playing 6 days a week and not be able to keep up with someone that spends 1 hour per day 7 days a week. This is a tactic that belongs in F2P phone apps, and even then, it's still horrible.
oneADseven said:Liav said:Time gating is awful. Hard pass. It is antithetical to the concept of a challenging game for normies with low playtime to suggest that progress should be time limited to lower the ceiling on how fast you can progress. People will level faster than other people, deal with it.
Agreed. Time-gating was something I absolutely despised in WoW and several other games. It ranged from faction related quests that could be used to purchase minor upgrades or cosmetic mounts, all the way up to completing legendary weapon quests. Have never been a fan. It makes the world seem like a job (but worse) -- if you don't log in and participate at the exact ideal pace, it's impossible to "catch up" later. If you miss a single opportunity (don't log in for a day) you will never be on par with the guy who logs in every day. You can't just put in an extra long session on the weekend to close the gap. You could literally spend 10 hours per day playing 6 days a week and not be able to keep up with someone that spends 1 hour per day 7 days a week. This is a tactic that belongs in F2P phone apps, and even then, it's still horrible.
Also agree. I would go one step farther in saying that respawns are a time gate as well, but a necessary evil. I would hope key mobs, rare mobs don;t repop on server restarts. Although I like tryign to catch a server up spawn and lock down the respawn timer, having a random modifier to the first spawn on server start can prevent some of these time gates and control on respawning for key mobs.
Feyshtey said:Please. No time-gating. Being one of the people that will generally only have an hour or two a day to play (when I'm lucky) time-gating would generally be an advantage to me, and I'm still opposed to it.
I highly encourage VR to not go down the road of developing gimmicky artificial variations of experience based on some naive hope that you can "fix" player behavior. You can't. You'll just create invisible walls that frustrate and annoy your core audience, and generally reduce the quality of the gameplay. Yes, you might have some players that applaud that they don't have to deal with X, Y or Z because of system-whatever. But they will be equally frustrated when they realise they can't get any more xp, or they can't help someone who's wounded, or they can't do any number of other things because of well-intentioned but counterproductive rules.
Well said. The idea of "fixing player behavior" is what makes it feel like a job. It removes the twinkle from your favorite star and gives you a broom while pointing you toward the nearest dust pile.