I think a better question is whether most gamers enjoy raiding at all. Pretty much everyone only does them for the gear no matter what game it is. No one I know does them out of pure enjoyment. If raids didn't give the best rewards no one would do them and I think that says a lot about how necessary raiding really is.
I raid in every MMO I play and i would be perfectly happy if Pantheon deleted raids forever and just made a plethora of end game group dungeons instead.
???
I loved raiding in my past and I led many EQ raids. Of course people do the raids for gear, they do group dungeons for gear, they do epic quests for gear, is it really surprising people do things for gear in a character development and progression focused game? It is the entire point!
Do you know I have seen your EXACT argument made before, but instead of "raids", it was "group content" and the demand to be able to solo?
Hey, I have no problem with it if they scale the fights for how many people are there and make it where who ever claims it gets the loot.
What do you mean by "Whoever claims it gets the loot"?
Also, I don't mind scaling providing scaling has some component on reward and there are limits to the scaling. That is, I want to be able to go in with 6 people and take on a mob that was designed for 12-18 or more and through skill and excellent team work be able to gain the rewards of that 12-18 player risk. The last thing I want to see is everything to always be scaled to my group as not everyone is of equal skill and having to play at that scale of skill would quickly make the game boring.
If they make the game anything like Oblivion/Skyrim, it will be a complete waste of time for game play.
I think what he means is if you engauge a mob and havent wiped. A group cant come along after the fact and do enough damage or get a killing blow and get the loot even though your party got first claim.
I'm not sure how you are unable to make the connection between encounter lockouts/raid caps and instancing. Both were created to limit the number of people who could experience content at one time. Both compromise realism and the unrestricted nature of an open world in favor of controlling gameplay with hardcoded restrictions.
No, what I said regarding raid sizes is definitely not wrong (nor am I naive or blind). I've played every major MMO release in the last 2 decades and I can tell you zerging happens only when the game encourages it. Outside of PvP titles, zerging is counter productive, especially when dealing with contested content and a slower rate of progression (which very few titles have had other than EQ). All it takes is for smaller guilds to nab contested targets a few weeks in a row, and the zerg falls apart at the seams. I've been on both sides of that scenario on both live PvE, PvP and Project1999 servers. Honestly, I need not say any more, Sinist covered this fully, much to your disdain.
I'm actually glad you stopped by here so I could tell you to stop being so emo, without the repercussions on the official forums. Every time someone shuts down your arguments, you throw a tantrum and ad hominems ensue.
Dullahan, I respect your opinion a great deal. I'm glad to hear that you aren't as concerned about zerging, and that if we set things up right, it won't be a big deal. Personally, I'm a little more worried about it than you are. I do fear that if we eliminate restrictions to group and raid sizes and make Pantheon more 'sandboxy', which we want to do, that some will take advantage of the situation and use it to trivialize content and encounters (by zerging, by doing content that is significantly lower level than your group (bottom feeding), etc.).
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-------------------------------------------------------------- Brad McQuaid CCO, Visionary Realms, Inc. www.pantheonmmo.com --------------------------------------------------------------
For instance, a particular raid could take roughly 30 players. If
a guild brings more than 30, the encounter could dynamically scale to
maintain that same level of challenge. Why not ask for that instead of
pleading for developers to interfere with your virtual world via
hardcoded restrictions.
The main issue I have with this suggestion is that you demand raid encounters being scaleable.
I.e. the core setup of your raidbosses is always the straight "have enough dps to kill it fast enough" encounter. And you want to basically raise the hitpoints.
That wasnt the case in Vanguard. SOME raid bosses did this. On second thought - this was very often part of the deal of a raidboss, after a while they would berserk if you didnt kill them fast enough. However, that almost always wasnt enough, example for other issues bosses had:
- clearing all roamers or static adds - very often the issue was to keep the tank alife. The more people, the more healers, the more trivial this task. Especially since the raid boss cant increase the damage dealt to the tank - otherwise they would just one hit said tank - not to hit the boss at the wrong time, otherwise the boss would raise their damage output - kick a stance at the right time - disenchant certain spells on the mob, from DK, Sorcerer, Blood Mage, and possibly Psionicist. Bard had a disenchant, but it was often quite weak (Bard had no reason to maximize Int in any way) - cure poison from any healer (IIRC Phoenix Shaman even had an immunity to poison buff) - cure curse from a necromancer or shaman - dispel certain spell castings, one boss even required to reflect their own spells (only Sorc can do this naturally) in order to deal any damage - avoid a certain damage type since this will actually buff the boss (one specifically annoying boss kept getting immune and healed by
damage types until everybody could only hit the mob with bare hands) - a secondary tank has to work on aggro and force the boss because the main tank loses all aggro at some point, some bosses did this repeatedly - the raidforce often had to be posititioned very carefully in order to avoid an almost all around attack - the raidforce has to move out of the way completely to avoid a large scale attack, for example Kotasoth you have to move over 50 away, or Shiver you have to break line of sight in order to not get stunned - Turning the mob so it would deal damage to the raid in order to break a stun - Several tanks have to tank different adds or even minibosses and keep the occupied and possibly positioned; as mentioned before, Dresla was an example in which Dreslas children had to be kept alife or Dresla would beserk and probably wipe the raid - Or certain adds have to be kept mezzed or charmed - Tanks have to use their immunity at specific times - Pulling with a Monk ... or a poor necromancer - One especially nasty boss would drain all mana of the raid force. Only way I know of handling this was with a special ability of the druid which allowed raidwide to keep spellcasting despite lack of mana - Having a BM because their lifetap heals would ignore distance and allow healing a tank more than 25 units away - handling certain abilities that would throw you around (some could be neutralized with necro levitate) - etc etc etc
Most of these strategies tend to get much more trivial with more players. Especially since you are more likely to have all classes.
For example we sometimes had the issue in Vanguard that we didnt have a Ranger to kick stances. Monks could kick stances, too, but their kicking was a lot less reliable. I'm not 100% sure but I think Warrior could also kick stances, though I dont remember ever relying on that. Technically Disciple could definitely kick stances as well, however in raids their stance kicking was simply disfunctional and useless, as was their Fake Death.
The main issue I have with this suggestion is that you demand raid encounters being scaleable.
I.e.
the core setup of your raidbosses is always the straight "have enough
dps to kill it fast enough" encounter. And you want to basically raise
the hitpoints.
Wait a minute, that wasn't the case in EQ generally. The fights were hardly ever about DPS (that is a mainstream concept), rather they were about endurance, consistency, a skillful application. If you want to label EQ raids, label them the "Be perfect, and do that for hours to win!", not some concept of "Yeah, like zerg the mob with a ton of DPS and it is easy". Heck, even early WoW (the king of zerg DPS design) didn't have that in MC. In fact, MC was designed around old EQ fights. Long term fights, make sure you keep your heals going, make sure your tanks are doing their rotations and switches, etc... make sure your DPS doesn't agro, etc....
Later in instances like BWL we did see the whole DPS everything to win concept approach. I remember because we were applying some interesting approaches to some BWL fights to beat them and then heard that another guild stopped using any real strategy and started reducing every fight to a DPS approach and there... WoW Mainstream was born!
Point is, DPS wasn't a main approach to most EQ fights because they were too damn long and too damn sensitive to have a bunch of yahoos trying to DPS each other to a win. Hell, that meant WIPE most of the time.
I'm not sure how you are unable to make the connection between encounter lockouts/raid caps and instancing. Both were created to limit the number of people who could experience content at one time. Both compromise realism and the unrestricted nature of an open world in favor of controlling gameplay with hardcoded restrictions.
No, what I said regarding raid sizes is definitely not wrong (nor am I naive or blind). I've played every major MMO release in the last 2 decades and I can tell you zerging happens only when the game encourages it. Outside of PvP titles, zerging is counter productive, especially when dealing with contested content and a slower rate of progression (which very few titles have had other than EQ). All it takes is for smaller guilds to nab contested targets a few weeks in a row, and the zerg falls apart at the seams. I've been on both sides of that scenario on both live PvE, PvP and Project1999 servers. Honestly, I need not say any more, Sinist covered this fully, much to your disdain.
I'm actually glad you stopped by here so I could tell you to stop being so emo, without the repercussions on the official forums. Every time someone shuts down your arguments, you throw a tantrum and ad hominems ensue.
Dullahan, I respect your opinion a great deal. I'm glad to hear that you aren't as concerned about zerging, and that if we set things up right, it won't be a big deal. Personally, I'm a little more worried about it than you are. I do fear that if we eliminate restrictions to group and raid sizes and make Pantheon more 'sandboxy', which we want to do, that some will take advantage of the situation and use it to trivialize content and encounters (by zerging, by doing content that is significantly lower level than your group (bottom feeding), etc.).
Well I believe that if the same factors exist in Pantheon that existed in EQ, players will, eventually, play efficiently. I'm sure there will be times, especially early on, where people will zerg content. That is exactly how it happened in EQ, and I don't think its going to change. If a boss requires fire resistance, and most people haven't acquired that gear, chances are a big guild or multiple guilds will work together to throw players at it. However, I still believe down the road, permitted raid gear is desirable and rare, that people will forego zerging in order to actually equip themselves and their friends. That is simply not going to happen in a timely fashion when you are bringing more people to the fight than necessary.
All that said, I still think it would be better to have a system that scales in some way. I remember months ago this topic was mentioned on the official forums, I believe in response to developer round tables. Have you guys considered this further and if so, had any luck with it? I don't know how problematic such a thing would be, but I think there are some simpler ways to discourage zerging like spawning adds. Players will quickly learn than when adds begin spawning around a boss, it was intended for him to be killed with less. It should still be possible, but definitely not as easy as just zerging it down.
EQ Raids were the best. No number limits, everyone could join in and contribute. As a low level Paladin my guild always invited me to their raids even though my character would not make any contribution whatsoever to the event, except for dieing a lot. But while I was there I would crack jokes and entertain the crowd.
Raids were social, nowadays they are just another type of E-sport.
For instance, a particular raid could take roughly 30 players. If
a guild brings more than 30, the encounter could dynamically scale to
maintain that same level of challenge. Why not ask for that instead of
pleading for developers to interfere with your virtual world via
hardcoded restrictions.
The main issue I have with this suggestion is that you demand raid encounters being scaleable.
I.e. the core setup of your raidbosses is always the straight "have enough dps to kill it fast enough" encounter. And you want to basically raise the hitpoints.
You still aren't thinking outside of the box. There are unlimited ways to scale content. I never said raise the hitpoints and I never suggested every fight be a DPS race. In fact, the goto I would use would be to spawn adds, but ideally every boss would scale differently, it would simply take more work.
If a raid boss poisons and the tactic is to keep your raid cured, perhaps adds poison as well. Or maybe the adds stun after the boss poisons to make it harder to cure.
My raid experience is with WoW. I have seen two iterations on world bosses. The Classic WoW, EQ style (well as close as WoW was to EQ from my understanding) where there was a 40 player cap on raid teams and the team that tagged first got the loot, but anyone could help kill the boss, there was no limit.
This method was mitigated with some interesting mechanics. Kazzak would heal if any player in combat with him died. Lethon had these mushrooms that would span from a dead player and it was contagious and would spread, basically if anyone died, it was a wipe as this would spread and wipe the raid.
Azuregos was pretty zergy, but a lot of fun PVP happened when guilds were gathering to kill him.
For the most part, guilds waited for each other to attempt the bosses, on a one attempt basis. There was some asshattery, but I never experienced it on the servers I was on. However, they did implement a mechanic on the four dragons where players that died to them would get a 15 minute debuff that would instagib them if they tried to fight the boss again before the debuff expired. This ensured that teams got a fair chance if another guild wiped.
There were trolls with Kazzak and Lethon, level 1s that would purposefully die to wipe raids on those bosses.
These also required a group, unless you were a healer, there was a lot of damage so tanks and DPS could not really participate alone if they were not in a group.
WoW also launched with no cap besides the 40 man limit to the raid interface. This meant you could take a 40 man raid into a 5 man group.
The interesting thing with this is that the players self limited themselves based on the chance to get loot. Most dungeons were run as a 5 man group as intended. More difficult dungeons like Strat, Scholo and UBRS/LBRS self capped around 20 players. Most early raiding guilds ran 10 man farm groups for Tier 0 sets. Now any of these groups could ahve taken a full 40 man raid, but I saw time and again that around 15 members, new players and current team members would decide to bail because of the low chance for loot.
High end teams only went 10 man or less because they could run four groups instead of one big 40 man zerg, garnering 4 times the loot in comparable time.
This was instanced, but it does show that there are many means other than hard caps and instancing to solve problems like zerging and trivializing content. Griefing can still be an issue, and many people think it SHOULD be an issue. This is where PVE is turned into PVP, even if you cannot actually attack other players.
Now, WoW has zerg raids where everyone gets a chance at loot and you do not even need to be in a group and the bosses do nothing really threatening, and classes all have self heals, so even if they did, it wouldn't really be an issue. But that is a whole other discussion about world boss design gone awry.
These methods described do not lead to the iron hard challenges Vanguard offered, though.
For example my guild required multiple raids before they managed to kill 'Enraged X-83'. When everyone was in poor gear, it was actually pretty hard to kill him fast enough before he would start berserking.
These methods described do not lead to the iron hard challenges Vanguard offered, though.
For example my guild required multiple raids before they managed to kill 'Enraged X-83'. When everyone was in poor gear, it was actually pretty hard to kill him fast enough before he would start berserking.
In your mind they don't because your mind is stuck in a box (with Vanguard written in permanent marker on the side). I guarantee I could design content that was as challenging or moreso without imposing unrealistic restrictions like instancing, raid caps or even locked encounters. With the ability to adapt encounters to the number of players engaged, the options are really endless from a programming perspective.
Its really all a matter of whether they want to spend that much time creating an adaptive raid system, or whether they want to spend that time elsewhere. After all, Pantheon is first and foremost a group oriented game, but even in group content, there would be times where such a system could kinda revolutionize PvE and give the game a much more dynamic and unpredictable quality. I think its that sort of thing that is long overdue.
These methods described do not lead to the iron hard challenges Vanguard offered, though.
For example my guild required multiple raids before they managed to kill 'Enraged X-83'. When everyone was in poor gear, it was actually pretty hard to kill him fast enough before he would start berserking.
In your mind they don't because your mind is stuck in a box (with Vanguard written in permanent marker on the side). I guarantee I could design content that was as challenging or moreso without imposing unrealistic restrictions like instancing, raid caps or even locked encounters. With the ability to adapt encounters to the number of players engaged, the options are really endless from a programming perspective.
Its really all a matter of whether they want to spend that much time creating an adaptive raid system, or whether they want to spend that time elsewhere. After all, Pantheon is first and foremost a group oriented game, but even in group content, there would be times where such a system could kinda revolutionize PvE and give the game a much more dynamic and unpredictable quality. I think its that sort of thing that is long overdue.
Or maybe I'm just a dreamer...
Very possible. Look at WoWs phasing system, it is essentially a form of concept (ie situational/location based triggers) your are describing.
My issue with it is that I still want to see mobs too hard for a given raid, where they have to go out and gear up on other raid targets to eventually be able to handle that one. There should be hard caps on difficulty level so that this can create that sense of carrot to improve and eventually conquer something through development.
If all the raids scale, then basically every encounter is tailored to the group. Since everyone is not equal in skill, this is going to present a problem for those of high skill and it turns into a problem similar to games like Skyrim/Oblivion which scale the content to the player constantly, removing that sense of danger and challenge of content that is out of reach for the player.
That is, the average raid team may take 24 people and be near the same level, but an exceptional raid team may be able to do with with 12-18 and at lower levels than the raid mob. Scaling would remove this challenge of ability.
EQ Raids were the best. No number limits, everyone could join in and contribute. As a low level Paladin my guild always invited me to their raids even though my character would not make any contribution whatsoever to the event, except for dieing a lot. But while I was there I would crack jokes and entertain the crowd.
Raids were social, nowadays they are just another type of E-sport.
Yep and Its pretty damn sad what it's turned into. EQ raids were amazing I agree. I think instancing has ruined a lot of things as well. Yes it has opened up the capability for multiple guilds/players to tackle the encounters/content an what not but it has turned from being engaged in the game world to being engaged in an instance therefor disconnecting you from any world you were in. Might as well not even make a game world and just make a hub game and in that case I would completely quit playing mmo's all together. Put the world back into the game and make it important and bring back a community, something that has been missing from mmo's for far too long.
These methods described do not lead to the iron hard challenges Vanguard offered, though.
For example my guild required multiple raids before they managed to kill 'Enraged X-83'. When everyone was in poor gear, it was actually pretty hard to kill him fast enough before he would start berserking.
In your mind they don't because your mind is stuck in a box (with Vanguard written in permanent marker on the side). I guarantee I could design content that was as challenging or moreso without imposing unrealistic restrictions like instancing, raid caps or even locked encounters. With the ability to adapt encounters to the number of players engaged, the options are really endless from a programming perspective.
Its really all a matter of whether they want to spend that much time creating an adaptive raid system, or whether they want to spend that time elsewhere. After all, Pantheon is first and foremost a group oriented game, but even in group content, there would be times where such a system could kinda revolutionize PvE and give the game a much more dynamic and unpredictable quality. I think its that sort of thing that is long overdue.
Or maybe I'm just a dreamer...
Very possible. Look at WoWs phasing system, it is essentially a form of concept (ie situational/location based triggers) your are describing.
My issue with it is that I still want to see mobs too hard for a given raid, where they have to go out and gear up on other raid targets to eventually be able to handle that one. There should be hard caps on difficulty level so that this can create that sense of carrot to improve and eventually conquer something through development.
If all the raids scale, then basically every encounter is tailored to the group. Since everyone is not equal in skill, this is going to present a problem for those of high skill and it turns into a problem similar to games like Skyrim/Oblivion which scale the content to the player constantly, removing that sense of danger and challenge of content that is out of reach for the player.
That is, the average raid team may take 24 people and be near the same level, but an exceptional raid team may be able to do with with 12-18 and at lower levels than the raid mob. Scaling would remove this challenge of ability.
Just to clarify, when I say scale, I don't mean scale downwards. If a mob is intended for roughly 30-40 people, attempting it with 20 means you get massacred. I do not believe in ez mode raids.
Also, if a mob is a certain level of hardness (lets call it tier 3), the mob would be designed for players equipped in tier 2+ gear. If more players attempt the mob than the minimum raid, the encounter would scale with mobs or mechanics appropriate for a tier 3 encounter. In other words, if you attempt to zerg a raid without the appropriate gear (let alone knowledge), it could actually become exponentially harder because now you don't have just 1 mob that outclasses your raid, you have additional mobs or mechanics that outclass your raid; Meaning mobs are harder to hit, spells harder to resist, attacks harder to dodge, and so on and so forth. The adaptive (anti-zerg) mechanics would ideally be there only to accommodate a large raid of players who are fully capable of killing the mob with minimal raid size, yet want to include others (because its an MMORPG ffs).
Just to clarify, when I say scale, I don't mean scale downwards. If a mob is intended for roughly 30-40 people, attempting it with 20 means you get massacred. I do not believe in ez mode raids.
Also, if a mob is a certain level of hardness (lets call it tier 3), the mob would be designed for players equipped in tier 2+ gear. If more players attempt the mob than the minimum raid, the encounter would scale with mobs or mechanics appropriate for a tier 3 encounter. In other words, if you attempt to zerg a raid without the appropriate gear (let alone knowledge), it could actually become exponentially harder because now you don't have just 1 mob that outclasses your raid, you have additional mobs or mechanics that outclass your raid; Meaning mobs are harder to hit, spells harder to resist, attacks harder to dodge, and so on and so forth. The adaptive (anti-zerg) mechanics would ideally be there only to accommodate a large raid of players who are fully capable of killing the mob with minimal raid size, yet want to include others (because its an MMORPG ffs).
Ok, that would take care of my concern.
I think it is a great idea and it would meet the concerns of those who are worried about zerging as well. It is a great way to implement a barrier that accentuates game play, rather than deterring from it. So instead of having an instance and it saying "You can only have this much", the encounter simply adjusts dynamically to the increased numbers when people engage.
The trick would be in the tuning of such correctly and avoiding abuses (exploits, grief tactics, etc...), but I think it is very doable.
I repeat: if your mob scales up, you can have more people. And if you have more people, the raid automatically trivializes, for example:
- You can be sure you have all the classes required, because with many people, you have ALL classes.
- You can be sure your tanks will get best healing, because the raidboss cannot ramp up damage output, otherwise it would one shot the tank - but you can have as many healers as you want to
- Also you will always have all healer types, and in Vanguard, each healer type gave another form of hitpoint buff to a tank - Shamans with a direct buff, Disciple with a sequence of special attacks, Clerics both with a buff and with a dynamic group buff that required to crit, and finally Blood Mage both with a buff and the ability to "share hitpoints" - part of the damage on the tank would go to the Blood Mage instead, which is also why Blood Mage had so many hitpoints in the first place (they started with the same HP as any other healer, but had a strong HP selfbuff that would stack with their regular HP buff).
An interesting idea. And worth exploring. Im not a coder, but does anyone know if this would be doable/cost effective approach? It creates the need to play strategically, and could promote challenge instead of trivializing the content. But definitely exploitable in its current form. I could see a rival guild purposely sending in their people to help activate the zerg mechanics and cause failure (of course in a PvP setting this could be used as a legit tactic but not so much in PvE).
My easy solution would be to layer that system with tagging/claiming/non-interference. But I know you dont like that kind of thing. Do you have any ideas about how to handle that?
I repeat: if your mob scales up, you can have more people. And if you have more people, the raid automatically trivializes, for example:
- You can be sure you have all the classes required, because with many people, you have ALL classes.
- You can be sure your tanks will get best healing, because the raidboss cannot ramp up damage output, otherwise it would one shot the tank - but you can have as many healers as you want to
- Also you will always have all healer types, and in Vanguard, each healer type gave another form of hitpoint buff to a tank - Shamans with a direct buff, Disciple with a sequence of special attacks, Clerics both with a buff and with a dynamic group buff that required to crit, and finally Blood Mage both with a buff and the ability to "share hitpoints" - part of the damage on the tank would go to the Blood Mage instead, which is also why Blood Mage had so many hitpoints in the first place (they started with the same HP as any other healer, but had a strong HP selfbuff that would stack with their regular HP buff).
There are numerous ways to apply difficulty without linear increases. There are additional adds, enrage mechanics, AoE's, scripting behavior changes, etc...
You can have all the classes in most games raids anyway, so that isn't an advantage. Tanks will always have the best healing, but... being able to heal a tank isn't a simplistic concept. You can implement features that interrupt healing, or harm the tanks ability to take damage, or maybe there is an element that charms the main tank and so you must have multiple sources of tanks and players to deal with a charmed PC, etc.. the list literally goes on indefinitely.
As Dullahan mentioned, there are infinite ways to create a scaled encounter system to increase difficulty based on increased numbers. The only limitation is ones imagination in that design.
An interesting idea. And worth exploring. Im not a coder, but does anyone know if this would be doable/cost effective approach? It creates the need to play strategically, and could promote challenge instead of trivializing the content. But definitely exploitable in its current form. I could see a rival guild purposely sending in their people to help activate the zerg mechanics and cause failure (of course in a PvP setting this could be used as a legit tactic but not so much in PvE).
My easy solution would be to layer that system with tagging/claiming/non-interference. But I know you dont like that kind of thing. Do you have any ideas about how to handle that?
Well, it depends on their core engine and if it has support for some of this concept or if they would have to write a sub element into the game engine to handle this feature. Then there are numerous aspects of how this implementation would work with the other games systems and play features. The concept is doable, as I mentioned WoW has a far more complex phasing system that changes entire environments, physics, and game play elements based on player location, so this isn't something that hasn't been done.
If you think about it, what you need is a system that can query for the correct information from the players engaging a boss so that it could properly scale the encounter to meet those needs. That information could be a lot of things. You could collect the number of players in proximity, you could also collect their classes, gear, etc.. if you like. Then you could take that information and dynamically adjust the encounter as simple as if it was player hitting an ability based on a condition.
Granted you would have had to build some templates on the boss encounters for various group sizes before and then implement those abilities based on that number increase.
So, lets use a basic example. The boss for 12 people is designed more of a simplistic fight, lets say tank and spank with some special abilities on the boss. Then, 6 more people show up. The game identifies this and dynamically adds the 18 player balancing mechanisms to the game (maybe adds of such come in), and lets say that another 6 show up, and the boss enrages, charms the tank who in turn starts attacking with increased strength and with a random attack mechanic (ie moves in a pattern that the raid needs to understand and learn from player to player).
All of this could be done dynamically, as if the Boss simply hit a special ability when the game noticed there were added players brought into combat.
Here is the tricky part as is always in any games design. You have to account for player abuse and exploits. This is the hard part as there are numerous ways the players can abuse the intent of the design there by making it far easier than intended. So, naturally in every design as this, you would have to have people break it over and over, have team sessions on how to break the encounter, etc... to avoid the numerous abuses that will come up.
I don't see how it can not be done, but it all comes down to the team as they have intimate knowledge and while it may be possible, it may not be practical in their current direction.
An interesting idea. And worth exploring. Im not a coder, but does anyone know if this would be doable/cost effective approach? It creates the need to play strategically, and could promote challenge instead of trivializing the content. But definitely exploitable in its current form. I could see a rival guild purposely sending in their people to help activate the zerg mechanics and cause failure (of course in a PvP setting this could be used as a legit tactic but not so much in PvE).
My easy solution would be to layer that system with tagging/claiming/non-interference. But I know you dont like that kind of thing. Do you have any ideas about how to handle that?
Heavy theory crafting ahead.
I've thought of many ways that players could game the system or use it as a tool to grief others, but for every scenario I came up with I also thought of at least 1 solution. Its hard to say for certain what would or wouldn't work, that sort of thing would require testing.
One example: in the event that a rival guild sent player(s) in to trigger anti-zerg mechanics, the logic would be to determine whether the players were of the same raid, of the same guild and how many players they were grouped with (as well as their affiliations). That logic would be the first step in determining their intentions. It would also be necessary to measure the benefit (to the original raid) or detriment (to the mob itself) to help decide whether they were counted as a legitimate addition to the raid or an opposing force.
Beyond that its hard to say because it would depend on what way a given encounter scales. If adds spawn, for instance, some could spawn and specifically attack that player(s) outside of the raid force and ignore the original raid. At that juncture, its safe to say one of two things is happening, either the raid force is trying to circumvent the system or an outside force is attempting to wield it as a weapon. Either way, you could safely code it to be extremely dangerous for players outside of the raid (if they attack the mob/heal the raid) without it directly effecting the normal fight with the primary raid.
If for some reason logic failed, they could default to making the encounter harder, or giving the players the benefit of the doubt. When that happens, the fight could be reviewed and a new logic could be created to deal with it. That same code could be used in all fights, though obviously, it would manifest itself differently depending on the specific way a fight scales.
Comments
I loved raiding in my past and I led many EQ raids. Of course people do the raids for gear, they do group dungeons for gear, they do epic quests for gear, is it really surprising people do things for gear in a character development and progression focused game? It is the entire point!
Do you know I have seen your EXACT argument made before, but instead of "raids", it was "group content" and the demand to be able to solo?
Interesting don't you think?
Also, I don't mind scaling providing scaling has some component on reward and there are limits to the scaling. That is, I want to be able to go in with 6 people and take on a mob that was designed for 12-18 or more and through skill and excellent team work be able to gain the rewards of that 12-18 player risk. The last thing I want to see is everything to always be scaled to my group as not everyone is of equal skill and having to play at that scale of skill would quickly make the game boring.
If they make the game anything like Oblivion/Skyrim, it will be a complete waste of time for game play.
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Brad McQuaid
CCO, Visionary Realms, Inc.
www.pantheonmmo.com
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I.e. the core setup of your raidbosses is always the straight "have enough dps to kill it fast enough" encounter. And you want to basically raise the hitpoints.
That wasnt the case in Vanguard. SOME raid bosses did this. On second thought - this was very often part of the deal of a raidboss, after a while they would berserk if you didnt kill them fast enough. However, that almost always wasnt enough, example for other issues bosses had:
- clearing all roamers or static adds
- very often the issue was to keep the tank alife. The more people, the more healers, the more trivial this task. Especially since the raid boss cant increase the damage dealt to the tank - otherwise they would just one hit said tank
- not to hit the boss at the wrong time, otherwise the boss would raise their damage output
- kick a stance at the right time
- disenchant certain spells on the mob, from DK, Sorcerer, Blood Mage, and possibly Psionicist. Bard had a disenchant, but it was often quite weak (Bard had no reason to maximize Int in any way)
- cure poison from any healer (IIRC Phoenix Shaman even had an immunity to poison buff)
- cure curse from a necromancer or shaman
- dispel certain spell castings, one boss even required to reflect their own spells (only Sorc can do this naturally) in order to deal any damage
- avoid a certain damage type since this will actually buff the boss (one specifically annoying boss kept getting immune and healed by damage types until everybody could only hit the mob with bare hands)
- a secondary tank has to work on aggro and force the boss because the main tank loses all aggro at some point, some bosses did this repeatedly
- the raidforce often had to be posititioned very carefully in order to avoid an almost all around attack
- the raidforce has to move out of the way completely to avoid a large scale attack, for example Kotasoth you have to move over 50 away, or Shiver you have to break line of sight in order to not get stunned
- Turning the mob so it would deal damage to the raid in order to break a stun
- Several tanks have to tank different adds or even minibosses and keep the occupied and possibly positioned; as mentioned before, Dresla was an example in which Dreslas children had to be kept alife or Dresla would beserk and probably wipe the raid
- Or certain adds have to be kept mezzed or charmed
- Tanks have to use their immunity at specific times
- Pulling with a Monk ... or a poor necromancer
- One especially nasty boss would drain all mana of the raid force. Only way I know of handling this was with a special ability of the druid which allowed raidwide to keep spellcasting despite lack of mana
- Having a BM because their lifetap heals would ignore distance and allow healing a tank more than 25 units away
- handling certain abilities that would throw you around (some could be neutralized with necro levitate)
- etc etc etc
Most of these strategies tend to get much more trivial with more players. Especially since you are more likely to have all classes.
For example we sometimes had the issue in Vanguard that we didnt have a Ranger to kick stances. Monks could kick stances, too, but their kicking was a lot less reliable. I'm not 100% sure but I think Warrior could also kick stances, though I dont remember ever relying on that. Technically Disciple could definitely kick stances as well, however in raids their stance kicking was simply disfunctional and useless, as was their Fake Death.
Wait a minute, that wasn't the case in EQ generally. The fights were hardly ever about DPS (that is a mainstream concept), rather they were about endurance, consistency, a skillful application. If you want to label EQ raids, label them the "Be perfect, and do that for hours to win!", not some concept of "Yeah, like zerg the mob with a ton of DPS and it is easy". Heck, even early WoW (the king of zerg DPS design) didn't have that in MC. In fact, MC was designed around old EQ fights. Long term fights, make sure you keep your heals going, make sure your tanks are doing their rotations and switches, etc... make sure your DPS doesn't agro, etc....
Later in instances like BWL we did see the whole DPS everything to win concept approach. I remember because we were applying some interesting approaches to some BWL fights to beat them and then heard that another guild stopped using any real strategy and started reducing every fight to a DPS approach and there... WoW Mainstream was born!
Point is, DPS wasn't a main approach to most EQ fights because they were too damn long and too damn sensitive to have a bunch of yahoos trying to DPS each other to a win. Hell, that meant WIPE most of the time.
All that said, I still think it would be better to have a system that scales in some way. I remember months ago this topic was mentioned on the official forums, I believe in response to developer round tables. Have you guys considered this further and if so, had any luck with it? I don't know how problematic such a thing would be, but I think there are some simpler ways to discourage zerging like spawning adds. Players will quickly learn than when adds begin spawning around a boss, it was intended for him to be killed with less. It should still be possible, but definitely not as easy as just zerging it down.
Only exactly one raid force could engage a raid boss. Once the raid boss was engaged, nobody else could do anything to it. The raidboss was locked.
If it was a 18 man raidboss and the raid had 24 people, the people in group 4 couldnt do anything to the raidboss, either.
I expect the same mechanic will be used in Pantheon.
No number limits, everyone could join in and contribute.
As a low level Paladin my guild always invited me to their raids even though my character would not make any contribution whatsoever to the event, except for dieing a lot.
But while I was there I would crack jokes and entertain the crowd.
Raids were social, nowadays they are just another type of E-sport.
If a raid boss poisons and the tactic is to keep your raid cured, perhaps adds poison as well. Or maybe the adds stun after the boss poisons to make it harder to cure.
This method was mitigated with some interesting mechanics. Kazzak would heal if any player in combat with him died. Lethon had these mushrooms that would span from a dead player and it was contagious and would spread, basically if anyone died, it was a wipe as this would spread and wipe the raid.
Azuregos was pretty zergy, but a lot of fun PVP happened when guilds were gathering to kill him.
For the most part, guilds waited for each other to attempt the bosses, on a one attempt basis. There was some asshattery, but I never experienced it on the servers I was on. However, they did implement a mechanic on the four dragons where players that died to them would get a 15 minute debuff that would instagib them if they tried to fight the boss again before the debuff expired. This ensured that teams got a fair chance if another guild wiped.
There were trolls with Kazzak and Lethon, level 1s that would purposefully die to wipe raids on those bosses.
These also required a group, unless you were a healer, there was a lot of damage so tanks and DPS could not really participate alone if they were not in a group.
WoW also launched with no cap besides the 40 man limit to the raid interface. This meant you could take a 40 man raid into a 5 man group.
The interesting thing with this is that the players self limited themselves based on the chance to get loot. Most dungeons were run as a 5 man group as intended. More difficult dungeons like Strat, Scholo and UBRS/LBRS self capped around 20 players. Most early raiding guilds ran 10 man farm groups for Tier 0 sets. Now any of these groups could ahve taken a full 40 man raid, but I saw time and again that around 15 members, new players and current team members would decide to bail because of the low chance for loot.
High end teams only went 10 man or less because they could run four groups instead of one big 40 man zerg, garnering 4 times the loot in comparable time.
This was instanced, but it does show that there are many means other than hard caps and instancing to solve problems like zerging and trivializing content. Griefing can still be an issue, and many people think it SHOULD be an issue. This is where PVE is turned into PVP, even if you cannot actually attack other players.
Now, WoW has zerg raids where everyone gets a chance at loot and you do not even need to be in a group and the bosses do nothing really threatening, and classes all have self heals, so even if they did, it wouldn't really be an issue. But that is a whole other discussion about world boss design gone awry.
Cheers!
For example my guild required multiple raids before they managed to kill 'Enraged X-83'. When everyone was in poor gear, it was actually pretty hard to kill him fast enough before he would start berserking.
Its really all a matter of whether they want to spend that much time creating an adaptive raid system, or whether they want to spend that time elsewhere. After all, Pantheon is first and foremost a group oriented game, but even in group content, there would be times where such a system could kinda revolutionize PvE and give the game a much more dynamic and unpredictable quality. I think its that sort of thing that is long overdue.
Or maybe I'm just a dreamer...
My issue with it is that I still want to see mobs too hard for a given raid, where they have to go out and gear up on other raid targets to eventually be able to handle that one. There should be hard caps on difficulty level so that this can create that sense of carrot to improve and eventually conquer something through development.
If all the raids scale, then basically every encounter is tailored to the group. Since everyone is not equal in skill, this is going to present a problem for those of high skill and it turns into a problem similar to games like Skyrim/Oblivion which scale the content to the player constantly, removing that sense of danger and challenge of content that is out of reach for the player.
That is, the average raid team may take 24 people and be near the same level, but an exceptional raid team may be able to do with with 12-18 and at lower levels than the raid mob. Scaling would remove this challenge of ability.
I definitely would want that back and I am happy it apparently will indeed be back.
Also, if a mob is a certain level of hardness (lets call it tier 3), the mob would be designed for players equipped in tier 2+ gear. If more players attempt the mob than the minimum raid, the encounter would scale with mobs or mechanics appropriate for a tier 3 encounter. In other words, if you attempt to zerg a raid without the appropriate gear (let alone knowledge), it could actually become exponentially harder because now you don't have just 1 mob that outclasses your raid, you have additional mobs or mechanics that outclass your raid; Meaning mobs are harder to hit, spells harder to resist, attacks harder to dodge, and so on and so forth. The adaptive (anti-zerg) mechanics would ideally be there only to accommodate a large raid of players who are fully capable of killing the mob with minimal raid size, yet want to include others (because its an MMORPG ffs).
I think it is a great idea and it would meet the concerns of those who are worried about zerging as well. It is a great way to implement a barrier that accentuates game play, rather than deterring from it. So instead of having an instance and it saying "You can only have this much", the encounter simply adjusts dynamically to the increased numbers when people engage.
The trick would be in the tuning of such correctly and avoiding abuses (exploits, grief tactics, etc...), but I think it is very doable.
- You can be sure you have all the classes required, because with many people, you have ALL classes.
- You can be sure your tanks will get best healing, because the raidboss cannot ramp up damage output, otherwise it would one shot the tank - but you can have as many healers as you want to
- Also you will always have all healer types, and in Vanguard, each healer type gave another form of hitpoint buff to a tank - Shamans with a direct buff, Disciple with a sequence of special attacks, Clerics both with a buff and with a dynamic group buff that required to crit, and finally Blood Mage both with a buff and the ability to "share hitpoints" - part of the damage on the tank would go to the Blood Mage instead, which is also why Blood Mage had so many hitpoints in the first place (they started with the same HP as any other healer, but had a strong HP selfbuff that would stack with their regular HP buff).
An interesting idea. And worth exploring. Im not a coder, but does anyone know if this would be doable/cost effective approach? It creates the need to play strategically, and could promote challenge instead of trivializing the content. But definitely exploitable in its current form. I could see a rival guild purposely sending in their people to help activate the zerg mechanics and cause failure (of course in a PvP setting this could be used as a legit tactic but not so much in PvE).
My easy solution would be to layer that system with tagging/claiming/non-interference. But I know you dont like that kind of thing. Do you have any ideas about how to handle that?
You can have all the classes in most games raids anyway, so that isn't an advantage. Tanks will always have the best healing, but... being able to heal a tank isn't a simplistic concept. You can implement features that interrupt healing, or harm the tanks ability to take damage, or maybe there is an element that charms the main tank and so you must have multiple sources of tanks and players to deal with a charmed PC, etc.. the list literally goes on indefinitely.
As Dullahan mentioned, there are infinite ways to create a scaled encounter system to increase difficulty based on increased numbers. The only limitation is ones imagination in that design.
If you think about it, what you need is a system that can query for the correct information from the players engaging a boss so that it could properly scale the encounter to meet those needs. That information could be a lot of things. You could collect the number of players in proximity, you could also collect their classes, gear, etc.. if you like. Then you could take that information and dynamically adjust the encounter as simple as if it was player hitting an ability based on a condition.
Granted you would have had to build some templates on the boss encounters for various group sizes before and then implement those abilities based on that number increase.
So, lets use a basic example. The boss for 12 people is designed more of a simplistic fight, lets say tank and spank with some special abilities on the boss. Then, 6 more people show up. The game identifies this and dynamically adds the 18 player balancing mechanisms to the game (maybe adds of such come in), and lets say that another 6 show up, and the boss enrages, charms the tank who in turn starts attacking with increased strength and with a random attack mechanic (ie moves in a pattern that the raid needs to understand and learn from player to player).
All of this could be done dynamically, as if the Boss simply hit a special ability when the game noticed there were added players brought into combat.
Here is the tricky part as is always in any games design. You have to account for player abuse and exploits. This is the hard part as there are numerous ways the players can abuse the intent of the design there by making it far easier than intended. So, naturally in every design as this, you would have to have people break it over and over, have team sessions on how to break the encounter, etc... to avoid the numerous abuses that will come up.
I don't see how it can not be done, but it all comes down to the team as they have intimate knowledge and while it may be possible, it may not be practical in their current direction.
I've thought of many ways that players could game the system or use it as a tool to grief others, but for every scenario I came up with I also thought of at least 1 solution. Its hard to say for certain what would or wouldn't work, that sort of thing would require testing.
One example: in the event that a rival guild sent player(s) in to trigger anti-zerg mechanics, the logic would be to determine whether the players were of the same raid, of the same guild and how many players they were grouped with (as well as their affiliations). That logic would be the first step in determining their intentions. It would also be necessary to measure the benefit (to the original raid) or detriment (to the mob itself) to help decide whether they were counted as a legitimate addition to the raid or an opposing force.
Beyond that its hard to say because it would depend on what way a given encounter scales. If adds spawn, for instance, some could spawn and specifically attack that player(s) outside of the raid force and ignore the original raid. At that juncture, its safe to say one of two things is happening, either the raid force is trying to circumvent the system or an outside force is attempting to wield it as a weapon. Either way, you could safely code it to be extremely dangerous for players outside of the raid (if they attack the mob/heal the raid) without it directly effecting the normal fight with the primary raid.
If for some reason logic failed, they could default to making the encounter harder, or giving the players the benefit of the doubt. When that happens, the fight could be reviewed and a new logic could be created to deal with it. That same code could be used in all fights, though obviously, it would manifest itself differently depending on the specific way a fight scales.