Scaling is the worst laziest idea i have seen besides all the lame free xp ideas i have seen in games over the years.
When you design a Boss or ANY mob for that matter i would hope some thought and effort goes into it.You cannot properly scale that over any level i is 100% impossible.Well not impossible if players had the exact same design/setup at any level which of course we know is never the case.
As mentioned by poster above me there are numerous ways that just go into design a boss it is not or SHOULD not be just about ramping up damage or lowering it.All of a players skills/abilities/spells and stats go into those decisions and of course that changes at all intervals of a game.
This idea of scaling is usually further simplified by devs making abilities that can sway a fight obsolete versus a Boss which is another idea i find lame and shows a bad developer/system designer.Players should NEVER lose their abilities just because it is a Boss,why give them the abilities then in the first place since a boss is usually the ONLY time you really need those.
None the less i just shake my head when i see ideas like scaling i just get a really bad feeling about a system designers competence.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
1. We have no instancing. Thus there should be no scaling, either. Ever.
2. A raidboss is NOT a regular encounter. Its a very well defined encounter
with very high rewards that requires very carefuly balancing. It should be unbeatable with the wrong strategy and/or with a too weak or too poorly setup
raid force. And one shouldnt be able to solve currently unbeatable raids with zerging.
3. You completely ignored my argument. Zerging isnt a myth. Zerging will always trivialize encounters. A zerging raid force has every buff in the game. Every class and special ability. Every crossclass synergy in the game.
4. Having twice the player characters doesnt give you just twice the power, it can give you much more, especially since certain things cant be scaled up anymore.
Scaling is the worst laziest idea i have seen besides all the lame free xp ideas i have seen in games over the years.
When you design a Boss or ANY mob for that matter i would hope some thought and effort goes into it.You cannot properly scale that over any level i is 100% impossible.Well not impossible if players had the exact same design/setup at any level which of course we know is never the case.
As mentioned by poster above me there are numerous ways that just go into design a boss it is not or SHOULD not be just about ramping up damage or lowering it.All of a players skills/abilities/spells and stats go into those decisions and of course that changes at all intervals of a game.
This idea of scaling is usually further simplified by devs making abilities that can sway a fight obsolete versus a Boss which is another idea i find lame and shows a bad developer/system designer.Players should NEVER lose their abilities just because it is a Boss,why give them the abilities then in the first place since a boss is usually the ONLY time you really need those.
None the less i just shake my head when i see ideas like scaling i just get a really bad feeling about a system designers competence.
First, yes a bosses armor rating could be higher if he is a boss. Thus the damage you deal would be lower. A boss also might have higher agility, which would effect your chance to hit. Do you even have any clue how this works?
Regarding scaling, its obvious you didn't even take the time to read, because half of what you said was covered in above posts or completely irrelevant.
2. A raidboss is NOT a regular encounter. Its a very well defined
encounter
with very high rewards that requires very carefuly balancing. It should
be unbeatable with the wrong strategy and/or with a too weak or too
poorly setup
raid force. And one shouldnt be able to solve currently unbeatable raids
with zerging.
So you are saying a raid encounter can not be carefully designed to be balanced for 12, then balanced for 18, then balanced for 24 all the while adjusting its balance dynamically according to the raiders present?
Also, Dullahan clarified that scaling in his example would be for scaling up an encounter, not down. So, if the encounter was designed for 24, nothing will change if you bring 18. It will still be a 24 man raid encounter being fought by 18.
The point of his suggestion is scaling "up" the encounter to deal with the "zerg" argument people have been making about overpowering a given raid mob design.
3. You completely ignored my argument. Zerging isnt a myth. Zerging will
always trivialize encounters. A zerging raid force has every buff in
the game. Every class and special ability. Every crossclass synergy in
the game.
And if you scale that encounter to take such into consideration? I am not sure your point. Are you saying you can not design an encounter to be difficult if a raid has every class and special ability? EQ raids were not only every class and special ability, but often redundancies of them, and yet EQ raids are some of the most difficult raids I have ever been on in all my years of gaming.
4. Having twice the player characters doesnt give you just twice the
power, it can give you much more, especially since certain things cant
be scaled up anymore.
No it does not, but then that is why don't just make a stupid scaling algorithm and say done (that is piss poor design), what you do is design an encounter for several sizes appropriately and then implement scaling algorithms which will adjust the encounter based on those templates of design. This way, you deal with the problem you are pointing out.
No it does not, but then that is why don't just make a stupid scaling algorithm and say done (that is piss poor design), what you do is design an encounter for several sizes appropriately and then implement scaling algorithms which will adjust the encounter based on those templates of design. This way, you deal with the problem you are pointing out.
This sounds at aweful lot like what Blizzard does now with the different raids.. In essense LFR/Normal/Heroic/Mythic are templates?
Each has added mechanics and scales to the number of players.
Just because I'm a gamer doesn't mean I drive a Honda.
No it does not, but then that is why don't just make a stupid scaling algorithm and say done (that is piss poor design), what you do is design an encounter for several sizes appropriately and then implement scaling algorithms which will adjust the encounter based on those templates of design. This way, you deal with the problem you are pointing out.
This sounds at aweful lot like what Blizzard does now with the different raids.. In essense LFR/Normal/Heroic/Mythic are templates?
Each has added mechanics and scales to the number of players.
Yep, except all mobs contested in an open world. I actually haven't played WoW since BC, but this sort of thing isn't rocket science, nor should it be limited to modes in an instance.
Krimzin said: This
sounds at aweful lot like what Blizzard does now with the different
raids.. In essense LFR/Normal/Heroic/Mythic are templates?
Each has added mechanics and scales to the number of players.
Yes, similar, but they handle the different encounters through instances. This would be handled dynamically in a contested world. So since you can't use instances to handle this, you would need to implement a system in the game that is able to query the numbers and adjust dynamically based on that.
So in a way, similar in basic concept (different raids for different numbers), but different in implementation.
edit:
Also, you don't have to completely design it in templates, but categories of rated encounter mechanisms which can be randomly triggered when more people are added. This would give some interesting change ups as you would never truly know what combination of mechanics you would get with higher numbers. Heck, this sort of design could be put into the standard system as well.
Though obviously these would need to be tested to keep the balance correct.
2. A raidboss is NOT a regular encounter. Its a very well defined
encounter
with very high rewards that requires very carefuly balancing. It should
be unbeatable with the wrong strategy and/or with a too weak or too
poorly setup
raid force. And one shouldnt be able to solve currently unbeatable raids
with zerging.
So you are saying a raid encounter can not be
carefully designed to be balanced for 12, then balanced for 18, then
balanced for 24 all the while adjusting its balance dynamically
according to the raiders present?
Also, Dullahan clarified that
scaling in his example would be for scaling up an encounter, not down.
So, if the encounter was designed for 24, nothing will change if you
bring 18. It will still be a 24 man raid encounter being fought by 18.
The
point of his suggestion is scaling "up" the encounter to deal with the
"zerg" argument people have been making about overpowering a given raid
mob design.
3. You completely ignored my argument. Zerging isnt a myth. Zerging will
always trivialize encounters. A zerging raid force has every buff in
the game. Every class and special ability. Every crossclass synergy in
the game.
And if you scale that encounter to take such into
consideration? I am not sure your point. Are you saying you can not
design an encounter to be difficult if a raid has every class and
special ability? EQ raids were not only every class and special ability,
but often redundancies of them, and yet EQ raids are some of the most
difficult raids I have ever been on in all my years of gaming.
4. Having twice the player characters doesnt give you just twice the
power, it can give you much more, especially since certain things cant
be scaled up anymore.
No it does not, but then that is
why don't just make a stupid scaling algorithm and say done (that is
piss poor design), what you do is design an encounter for several sizes
appropriately and then implement scaling algorithms which will adjust
the encounter based on those templates of design. This way, you deal
with the problem you are pointing out.
Instancing gives the programmer a clearly defined moment when he can actually scale the encounter to the group of players trying to solve it.
I'm saying the raid boss should always have the exact same strategy. Losing or winning a player and suddenly the raid boss behaves a lot differently, thats not a good idea.
And again, the classic issue with scaling is the main tank. No matter how many people you have, the tank has a fixed amount of hitpoints. The boss cannot hit them harder just because more people are there. So for example instead of two Clerics who need to spam their heals on the main tank against Guar in Vanguard you have now maybe half a douzen healers that can chainheal the tank and theres just no chance for a failure, ever. Thats a trivial example for something that cannot scale.
Zerging is real.
Synergies are real. Having more players gives you more powers. For example all the abilities on a long recast timer are now available far more often, because multiple players have them.
Instancing gives the programmer a clearly defined moment when he can
actually scale the encounter to the group of players trying to solve it.
So does a given condition to which a trigger occurs to match that specified condition. Instances are simply technological limitations of thinking. Do you honestly think that an "instance" means anything? Do you know what an instance is? It is simply a conditional structure to where all players who enter are constrained to a given set of environmental rules. I could draw an arbitrary line that triggers the very same thing based on who crosses it and how many and achieve the same thing without loading screens or predefined walls that an instance is. Stop thinking in limited design terms, WoW has been handling such structures of change for years. This isn't a new concept.
I`m saying the raid boss should always have the exact same strategy.
Losing or winning a player and suddenly the raid boss behaves a lot
differently, thats not a good idea.
Where did I say the event would change if someone died? As for that, why not? Why does a boss have to "stay the same" through out? In fact, I like the idea of someone dying and it causing various changes in the boss fight. You see, I am interested in game play and such change ups is interesting and exciting. If I wanted boring regurgitated fights, I have numerous mainstream games today to choose from.
And again, the classic issue with scaling is the main tank. No matter
how many people you have, the tank has a fixed amount of hitpoints. The
boss cannot hit them harder just because more people are there. So for
example instead of two Clerics who need to spam their heals on the main
tank against Guar in Vanguard you have now maybe half a douzen healers
that can chainheal the tank and theres just no chance for a failure,
ever. Thats a trivial example for something that cannot scale.
You aren't dealing with my points. Fights are not simply about the tanks HP. There are numerous elements of play to disrupt this, and you keep trying to focus on a linear style of development focus. I mentioned many elements of encounters that can disrupt healers, disrupt tanking abilities, charming of a tank, etc...
You ignored them all because you don't have an answer.
No offense, but I can't stand limited one dimensional thinking. Pull your dang blinders off, think outside the box, play a lot of MMOs for craps sake, your knowledge of the industry and various game systems is extremely limited. I mean, that is not bad that you don't know, but this constant arrogance that you keep arguing against people with, seriously, you need to educate yourself on what is out there, what has been done and what can be done.
One of my favorite parts of Raiding from Everquest was the competition. Not knowing when a boss would spawn then racing other guilds to kill it was so much more exciting. With Instancing.. log in to raid.. Log off. Rinse repeat= boredom. With competitive raiding you were always ready to raid.
Instance Raiding is like being married for years.. Have sex on certain days no big deal. Competitive raiding is the same but your wife calls and says her friend just spawned and wants to have a threesome...You will kill yourself to get there to take that down.
Just because I'm a gamer doesn't mean I drive a Honda.
If this game wont have raids it will fail hard on its ass, its still not confirmed wether there will be raids or not. If theres any statement out there, i would appreciate a link, but to my knowledge there isnt.
It's mainly a hardcore pve (fantastic) But for it to really shrine you need raids (as there is no end game pvp, or pvp in generel) dont fix things that doesnt need fixing, raids are great for communities and excitement in a pve oriented game.
If this game wont have raids it will fail hard on its ass, its still not confirmed wether there will be raids or not. If theres any statement out there, i would appreciate a link, but to my knowledge there isnt.
It's mainly a hardcore pve (fantastic) But for it to really shrine you need raids (as there is no end game pvp, or pvp in generel) dont fix things that doesnt need fixing, raids are great for communities and excitement in a pve oriented game.
They've definitely confirmed this many times. In fact, I don't think there was ever a point where they even eluded to not having raids. They simply want to make it clear that because raiding is something only a small minority will take part in, group content will be the primary focus.
Building a game around a niche within a niche doesn't work very well. See Wildstar.
One of my favorite parts of Raiding from Everquest was the competition. Not knowing when a boss would spawn then racing other guilds to kill it was so much more exciting. With Instancing.. log in to raid.. Log off. Rinse repeat= boredom. With competitive raiding you were always ready to raid.
Instance Raiding is like being married for years.. Have sex on certain days no big deal. Competitive raiding is the same but your wife calls and says her friend just spawned and wants to have a threesome...You will kill yourself to get there to take that down.
LOL! This has got to be the best quote to man kind. Good one sir good one!
On a serious note, I agree. Instancing made shit boring exceptionally quick. I am whole-heartedly, 100% against instancing/phasing/whatever form of disconnecting you from the game world that there is. *MOST* of my good memories from MMO's over the past decade have been from EQ and Vanguard, 2 VERY non-instanced games where a community formed, where content was contested which resulted in competitions which was awesome. Visibly seeing other players in dungeons made the dungeons feel bigger, they were bigger and made the game as a whole just better.
Here's a great example of non-instanced content -
Back when Velious was the current expansion in EQ, Kael Drakkel, a zone that housed both solo, group and raid content. I remember being the Monk pulling for our raid force and where you go to the arena(an area in the zone) it split to either going left or right. We went one way, clearing everything in our path and to the side of us was another raid force clearing trying to get up to Derakor the Vindicator, a raid target up in the area we were clearing to as well as the Avatar of War. It created a competition between each raid force to get up there and grab the targets. Some will say thats bad but its quite the contrary. There was a mutual respect in the sense that our group tagged the raid boss, began to wind him down and we wiped. The 2nd raid force helped by rezzing our raid, buffing us up, allowing us to try again before them getting their shot. We wiped again and they grabbed it. It was a mutual healthy respect among the raid forces(which might not happen now unfortunately with the current generation of players) and helped each other. While our raid didn't down our target, it bonded all these players together and there was at least 100 people in this area. Everyone knew each other, everybody had played together. We NEED that type of shit back in these games. It created bonds, friendships and most importantly good memories.
Instances you zone in, don't say a damn word to the people you're with, finish the dungeon and bam, bye bye! Cant remember their names, their classes, anything about the people you just played with and that's sad.
If this game wont have raids it will fail hard on its ass, its still not confirmed wether there will be raids or not. If theres any statement out there, i would appreciate a link, but to my knowledge there isnt.
It's mainly a hardcore pve (fantastic) But for it to really shrine you need raids (as there is no end game pvp, or pvp in generel) dont fix things that doesnt need fixing, raids are great for communities and excitement in a pve oriented game.
It has been stated on the main site that raiding will be involved but smaller group content will be the main priority and focus. There was even a percentage around like 15%-20% which would be how much focus on raids there will be. I'm sure we can all agree that will not be set in stone but it is a goal they are aiming for. They also went to say that the best gear will not be only found from raids.
Knowing what the max size of raids are helps me determine if I can dedicate enough time to that game to enjoy all of its content. If raids sizes are unlimited or are just really big like a max of 50 players then I just don't have enough time to invest into that game and I will not buy it. But knowing that a game has a raid limit of 24 players, or something reasonable, lets me know that I should be able to balance my responsibilities and be able to enjoy all of what that game has to offer.
This is also one of the reasons why they have capped raid sizes IMO. It helps potential players with determining if they can enjoy the game and all of its content and whether or not they should buy the game or invest money into it.
If a guild wants to zerg so be it, it's ineffective and the guild that focuses its resources to defeat bosses with minimal people will excel faster and honestly more happily in most cases. But that doesn't mean zerging doesn't exist and doesn't negatively affect some players and their opinions matter too.
Zerging and unlimited raid sizes aren't impossible to design around but it's FAR easier to design bosses with a nice and neat raid size limit than it is to scale a boss and throw in all these stop-measures just to prevent zerging. I don't see what the big deal is of setting a raid size cap if most of yous who want uncapped raids will just raid with the minimal amount of players anyways. What's the difference if a raid boss can be beat with 18 people and the rules are that the raid size is capped at 24 vs raid size is unlimited?
Knowing what the max size of raids are helps me determine if I can dedicate enough time to that game to enjoy all of its content. If raids sizes are unlimited or are just really big like a max of 50 players then I just don't have enough time to invest into that game and I will not buy it. But knowing that a game has a raid limit of 24 players, or something reasonable, lets me know that I should be able to balance my responsibilities and be able to enjoy all of what that game has to offer.
What do you think is going to change time wise between a 24 and a 50 man raid? Granted, its easier to gather and coordinate a raid of 24 people, but 50 players who actually have their stuff together is not that much different. I've raided with 25, 50 and even larger groups before and accomplished a variety of raids in 2 hours or less. Unlike instanced dungeons, raids and dungeons in Pantheon will all exist in the open world, and aren't necessarily intended for players to complete in a single play session. I believe they intend to allow players places of relative safety to camp in to pick up where they left off on another day.
I'm just kind of interested in understanding how you think they will differ to the degree you wouldn't even want to play the game.
Just to note, Pantheon is not a raid focused game, so there will be plenty of small to large group content outside of raiding. Its also not set in stone yet, but I think I remember hearing the target raid size is currently 32 players.
Knowing what the max size of raids are helps me determine if I can dedicate enough time to that game to enjoy all of its content. If raids sizes are unlimited or are just really big like a max of 50 players then I just don't have enough time to invest into that game and I will not buy it. But knowing that a game has a raid limit of 24 players, or something reasonable, lets me know that I should be able to balance my responsibilities and be able to enjoy all of what that game has to offer.
What do you think is going to change time wise between a 24 and a 50 man raid? Granted, its easier to gather and coordinate a raid of 24 people, but 50 players who actually have their stuff together is not that much different. I've raided with 25, 50 and even larger groups before and accomplished a variety of raids in 2 hours or less. Unlike instanced dungeons, raids and dungeons in Pantheon will all exist in the open world, and aren't necessarily intended for players to complete in a single play session. I believe they intend to allow players places of relative safety to camp in to pick up where they left off on another day.
I'm just kind of interested in understanding how you think they will differ to the degree you wouldn't even want to play the game.
Just to note, Pantheon is not a raid focused game, so there will be plenty of small to large group content outside of raiding. Its also not set in stone yet, but I think I remember hearing the target raid size is currently 32 players.
I'm a player who 'has my stuff together' and I join guilds who have their stuff together. With saying that the amount of time it takes a raid force of 24max players who have their stuff together and a raid force of 48+players who have their stuff together is pretty much twice the amount of time. You claim that you have raided (and assumingly accomplished a good night) in 2 hours with raids of 25 players and as big as 50 players, the same as I. But that's kind of skewing the information ain't it? Of course you can finish a good night within a few hours. But what about before you are on farm status? You know as well as I do 2 hours for a night that you are attempting brand new bosses is different than 2 hours on a night of farmed bosses. Now, with attempting new bosses you are going to need pretty good gear right? So how long will it take to gear up 50 players vs 25 players? Isn't twice the amount of time a pretty good assumption (rhetorical question)? And to get ALL 50 players ONE single item is not going to happen in one night let alone 2 maybe 3. So now hopefully you can understand where my time, MY valuable time, comes into play and why large raid sizes are a concern for me.
I like to raid up to 4 nights a week. The time it takes to learn bosses and form strats and then gear up guildmates in a reasonable and 'happy' pace for myself has best revolved around 20ish players. Whether it be 24mans, 20 mans, or 25mans I have been able to raid under these raid sizes and have fun. When raiding with 40-50 members in previous MMOs it has just required too much time, only so much gear drops a night.
I'm a huge supporter of Pantheon and I never said if raids were 48+ players that I would not want to play the game. I said I would not have the time to experience all it had to offer. Now, yes, you are right with Pantheon not revolving heavily around raids which is great (and if you would have read my post JUST before this post you quoted you would have seen that I just said that). And I might even be able to swing 32 man raids but that's pushing it. But as I said before, knowing what the MAX size of raids are helps ME to know what I'm going to be able to enjoy. Unlike Pantheon most other MMOs heavily involve raiding so if I'm not able to fit raiding in for those games then I'm missing a big portion of the game and would you consider that spending my money wisely if I'm not able to play and/or enjoy a large portion of the game? And even if raiding is a small portion of Pantheon, if raiding requires too many people I'm just not going to be able to raid and then I'm still missing a part of the game which would suck.
I like how you answered my question with another question. ;P So since I answered your question how about you answer mine? And to be clear I'm not even against you on this, I'm not against dynamic raid sizes. I just like to know what the very max amount of players will be for any given content. If 32 players will be the max needed for any raid boss but the devs leave raid sizes open so a guild who wants to bring 40 players can I'm fine with that, I said it previously. I'll be in a guild that beats it with 25.
But my question is if you feel the same way, if you believe that your guild is efficient and you will bring the least amount of people you possibly can then why not just have raids capped anyways. If they cap raids at 32 but you can clear with 24 then what's the problem? Why require stop measures for unlimited raid sizes when you can just have a nice and neat number where the raid is capped. Capped raids just seem to make the devs lives easier and players like me know how much time will be required to raid.
But my question is if you feel the same way, if you believe that your guild is efficient and you will bring the least amount of people you possibly can then why not just have raids capped anyways. If they cap raids at 32 but you can clear with 24 then what's the problem? Why require stop measures for unlimited raid sizes when you can just have a nice and neat number where the raid is capped. Capped raids just seem to make the devs lives easier and players like me know how much time will be required to raid.
Why not have capped raids? Because I think ideally, an MMO should create as few restrictions as possible. Especially restrictions that make an MMORPG less massively multiplayer. Though that ideal may, for now, be more trouble than its worth from a development perspective.
I think, if forced to choose, the social experience is of greater importance in an MMORPG like Pantheon than challenge. You can find challenge in many MMOs. What you can't find is any MMO that encourages the social interaction that existed with EverQuest (which also happened to be challenging).
I'm not a big raider anymore, don't have the time/desire to commit; however, I still would vote for Non-Capped Raids for Pantheon.
I think one of the major aspects that people are overlooking on this thread and on the official forums that helped prevent Zerging in EQ1 was how DoTs didn't stack and mobs had high resists which resulted in many resisted DD spells. So yes, you could bring 15 Necromancers, Shamans, Druids, etc. but their DPS was highly diminished due to the ability to not stack Dots until September 2002, which, most likely, was why the first raid cap was introduced at 72 when Planes of Power was released in October 2002.
I think if Pantheon implemented a similar system that was implemented at EQlaunch, then the zerging wouldn't be as big of an issue as DPS would be controlled, and, raid-sizes would be more controlled since it wouldn't be a great benefit to bring multiples of many classes and raids would want to bring the fewer players to distribute loot (yes whine away that not all classes would be as good at raiding, but the necromancer type class is the best soloer - can't have it all). It's more realistic to me that a mob can't have 30 Venom of the Snake Dots on them anyway.
I was able to find the patch notes when EQ made the change:
DoT stacking rules were changed with the September 4, 2002 patch, after the release of Luclin. The game became so much easier then.
From the patch:
** Spell Stacking Changes **
We've made two changes to the way spells stack.
Damage Over Time (DoT) spells are spells that linger on the target doing damage. Until today two different characters could not have the same DoT spell on the same target. As long as one copy of the spell was active any new version of the spell would not take hold. After today the same DoT spell cast by different casters can affect the same target at the same time. Also, if you cast a DoT spell on a target and you already have that spell active on it, the spell will refresh. (Note: It will not be possible to stack Lifeburn).
This does not allow for inferior spells to stack along with superior spells. (Example: Two Necromancers can both land Boil Blood on the same target. However, Heat Blood, being an inferior spell, will still not stack.)
Several DoT spells that have debuff components such as Tuyen's Chant of Frost and Breath of Ro will not stack due to the balance issues of having several hundred points of Resistance debuffs on a single NPC.
We've also rewritten the way that spells stack with other spells with the same benefits (for example, to spells that give bonus hit points). Generally speaking spells may now 'bounce' off each other (neither overwriting the other) and stacking issues should now be easier to resolve.
(b) Vote for uncapped raids for, well, kind of "ideological"(*) reasons which have absolutely nothing to do with the goal of creating the best possible gaming experience.
(c) Might nor might not want to reintroduce bugs of early EQ to "fix" the proposition you made under (b).
(b) Vote for uncapped raids for, well, kind of "ideological"(*) reasons which have absolutely nothing to do with the goal of creating the best possible gaming experience.
(c) Might nor might not want to reintroduce bugs of early EQ to "fix" the proposition you made under (b).
(*) Cant come up with a better word
A. Most likely wouldn't yes, but just because I most likely wouldn't raid in Pantheon doesn't mean I would want to cheapen the game experience for others. I've raided in both uncapped and capped raids, and uncapped were by far the better option to offer the best possible gaming experience. I don't have nearly as much time to group anymore either, but I wouldn't want Pantheon to cater to the solo crowd due to my time constraints.
B. See response to A.
C. I only offered that suggestion as an option as so many people are concerned about Zerging, and, it wasn't a bug, it was a known feature by the developers that wasn't changed. Read some of the older archived forums. I'm more in Dullahan's (and other's) camp that guilds, even with stacking dots as a game feature, would ultimately control the raid numbers as there will be major drama if loot had to be shared between 100 people on each raid. I don't disagree that "strength in numbers" type raiding won't occur initially - it did in EQ as well. However, what ultimately will happen (with hardcore guilds especially) is the fewest number of people possible will be taken to accomplish the raid because many/most? who raid are there to raid for the best loot. And, if family friendly guilds have players who obviously aren't "good/skilled" players, they can be taken to the raid without a detriment to the raid. Or, "non-essential" raiders can be taken without penalty and you don't have to make the ridiculous decisions as a raid leader saying "sorry Class A, I can't take you on this epic raid since there's a lockout at 24 players - you're not essential."
When reading all the responses in this thread, it appears many don't have a basis for comparison as they are arguing against uncapped raids and have never played original EQ. If Pantheon was theme-park clone 1000 with WoW-like community, then I would agree with capped raids as well as the community would never police each other as player/server reputation doesn't matter and loot wouldn't be a control-point of raid sizes as everyone would be offered a free Raid Token to get their gear (and 100s of players would be invited). It's much different when there are only a limited number of raid drops.
If you have two warriors and they hit the same mob, the mob will receive twice as much damage as from a single warrior.
If you have two mages and they hit the same mob, with your implementation the mob will not receive more damage than from one mage.
Thats obviously defunct.
Besides, it still wouldnt stop zerging. It would just mean zerging is limited to certain classes. Can only have one Necromancer, one Enchanter and one Druid - or whatever the DoT classes will be (so far Necromancer isnt in yet, but I would suspect they will add them after release).
But if Wizards have no or few DoTs and to their damage mostly with direct spells, you can bring as many as you wish.
Comments
When you design a Boss or ANY mob for that matter i would hope some thought and effort goes into it.You cannot properly scale that over any level i is 100% impossible.Well not impossible if players had the exact same design/setup at any level which of course we know is never the case.
As mentioned by poster above me there are numerous ways that just go into design a boss it is not or SHOULD not be just about ramping up damage or lowering it.All of a players skills/abilities/spells and stats go into those decisions and of course that changes at all intervals of a game.
This idea of scaling is usually further simplified by devs making abilities that can sway a fight obsolete versus a Boss which is another idea i find lame and shows a bad developer/system designer.Players should NEVER lose their abilities just because it is a Boss,why give them the abilities then in the first place since a boss is usually the ONLY time you really need those.
None the less i just shake my head when i see ideas like scaling i just get a really bad feeling about a system designers competence.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
2. A raidboss is NOT a regular encounter. Its a very well defined encounter with very high rewards that requires very carefuly balancing. It should be unbeatable with the wrong strategy and/or with a too weak or too poorly setup raid force. And one shouldnt be able to solve currently unbeatable raids with zerging.
3. You completely ignored my argument. Zerging isnt a myth. Zerging will always trivialize encounters. A zerging raid force has every buff in the game. Every class and special ability. Every crossclass synergy in the game.
4. Having twice the player characters doesnt give you just twice the power, it can give you much more, especially since certain things cant be scaled up anymore.
Regarding scaling, its obvious you didn't even take the time to read, because half of what you said was covered in above posts or completely irrelevant.
So you are saying a raid encounter can not be carefully designed to be balanced for 12, then balanced for 18, then balanced for 24 all the while adjusting its balance dynamically according to the raiders present?
Also, Dullahan clarified that scaling in his example would be for scaling up an encounter, not down. So, if the encounter was designed for 24, nothing will change if you bring 18. It will still be a 24 man raid encounter being fought by 18.
The point of his suggestion is scaling "up" the encounter to deal with the "zerg" argument people have been making about overpowering a given raid mob design.
And if you scale that encounter to take such into consideration? I am not sure your point. Are you saying you can not design an encounter to be difficult if a raid has every class and special ability? EQ raids were not only every class and special ability, but often redundancies of them, and yet EQ raids are some of the most difficult raids I have ever been on in all my years of gaming.
No it does not, but then that is why don't just make a stupid scaling algorithm and say done (that is piss poor design), what you do is design an encounter for several sizes appropriately and then implement scaling algorithms which will adjust the encounter based on those templates of design. This way, you deal with the problem you are pointing out.
Lets see your Battle Stations /r/battlestations
Battle Station
And well said Sinist.
So in a way, similar in basic concept (different raids for different numbers), but different in implementation.
edit:
Also, you don't have to completely design it in templates, but categories of rated encounter mechanisms which can be randomly triggered when more people are added. This would give some interesting change ups as you would never truly know what combination of mechanics you would get with higher numbers. Heck, this sort of design could be put into the standard system as well.
Though obviously these would need to be tested to keep the balance correct.
I'm saying the raid boss should always have the exact same strategy. Losing or winning a player and suddenly the raid boss behaves a lot differently, thats not a good idea.
And again, the classic issue with scaling is the main tank. No matter how many people you have, the tank has a fixed amount of hitpoints. The boss cannot hit them harder just because more people are there. So for example instead of two Clerics who need to spam their heals on the main tank against Guar in Vanguard you have now maybe half a douzen healers that can chainheal the tank and theres just no chance for a failure, ever. Thats a trivial example for something that cannot scale.
Zerging is real.
Synergies are real. Having more players gives you more powers. For example all the abilities on a long recast timer are now available far more often, because multiple players have them.
So does a given condition to which a trigger occurs to match that specified condition. Instances are simply technological limitations of thinking. Do you honestly think that an "instance" means anything? Do you know what an instance is? It is simply a conditional structure to where all players who enter are constrained to a given set of environmental rules. I could draw an arbitrary line that triggers the very same thing based on who crosses it and how many and achieve the same thing without loading screens or predefined walls that an instance is. Stop thinking in limited design terms, WoW has been handling such structures of change for years. This isn't a new concept.
Where did I say the event would change if someone died? As for that, why not? Why does a boss have to "stay the same" through out? In fact, I like the idea of someone dying and it causing various changes in the boss fight. You see, I am interested in game play and such change ups is interesting and exciting. If I wanted boring regurgitated fights, I have numerous mainstream games today to choose from.
You aren't dealing with my points. Fights are not simply about the tanks HP. There are numerous elements of play to disrupt this, and you keep trying to focus on a linear style of development focus. I mentioned many elements of encounters that can disrupt healers, disrupt tanking abilities, charming of a tank, etc...
You ignored them all because you don't have an answer.
No offense, but I can't stand limited one dimensional thinking. Pull your dang blinders off, think outside the box, play a lot of MMOs for craps sake, your knowledge of the industry and various game systems is extremely limited. I mean, that is not bad that you don't know, but this constant arrogance that you keep arguing against people with, seriously, you need to educate yourself on what is out there, what has been done and what can be done.
With competitive raiding you were always ready to raid.
Instance Raiding is like being married for years.. Have sex on certain days no big deal.
Competitive raiding is the same but your wife calls and says her friend just spawned and wants to have a threesome...You will kill yourself to get there to take that down.
Lets see your Battle Stations /r/battlestations
Battle Station
It's mainly a hardcore pve (fantastic) But for it to really shrine you need raids (as there is no end game pvp, or pvp in generel) dont fix things that doesnt need fixing, raids are great for communities and excitement in a pve oriented game.
Building a game around a niche within a niche doesn't work very well. See Wildstar.
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/game/faqs/#q17
On a serious note, I agree. Instancing made shit boring exceptionally quick. I am whole-heartedly, 100% against instancing/phasing/whatever form of disconnecting you from the game world that there is. *MOST* of my good memories from MMO's over the past decade have been from EQ and Vanguard, 2 VERY non-instanced games where a community formed, where content was contested which resulted in competitions which was awesome. Visibly seeing other players in dungeons made the dungeons feel bigger, they were bigger and made the game as a whole just better.
Here's a great example of non-instanced content -
Back when Velious was the current expansion in EQ, Kael Drakkel, a zone that housed both solo, group and raid content. I remember being the Monk pulling for our raid force and where you go to the arena(an area in the zone) it split to either going left or right. We went one way, clearing everything in our path and to the side of us was another raid force clearing trying to get up to Derakor the Vindicator, a raid target up in the area we were clearing to as well as the Avatar of War. It created a competition between each raid force to get up there and grab the targets. Some will say thats bad but its quite the contrary. There was a mutual respect in the sense that our group tagged the raid boss, began to wind him down and we wiped. The 2nd raid force helped by rezzing our raid, buffing us up, allowing us to try again before them getting their shot. We wiped again and they grabbed it. It was a mutual healthy respect among the raid forces(which might not happen now unfortunately with the current generation of players) and helped each other. While our raid didn't down our target, it bonded all these players together and there was at least 100 people in this area. Everyone knew each other, everybody had played together. We NEED that type of shit back in these games. It created bonds, friendships and most importantly good memories.
Instances you zone in, don't say a damn word to the people you're with, finish the dungeon and bam, bye bye! Cant remember their names, their classes, anything about the people you just played with and that's sad.
This is also one of the reasons why they have capped raid sizes IMO. It helps potential players with determining if they can enjoy the game and all of its content and whether or not they should buy the game or invest money into it.
If a guild wants to zerg so be it, it's ineffective and the guild that focuses its resources to defeat bosses with minimal people will excel faster and honestly more happily in most cases. But that doesn't mean zerging doesn't exist and doesn't negatively affect some players and their opinions matter too.
Zerging and unlimited raid sizes aren't impossible to design around but it's FAR easier to design bosses with a nice and neat raid size limit than it is to scale a boss and throw in all these stop-measures just to prevent zerging. I don't see what the big deal is of setting a raid size cap if most of yous who want uncapped raids will just raid with the minimal amount of players anyways. What's the difference if a raid boss can be beat with 18 people and the rules are that the raid size is capped at 24 vs raid size is unlimited?
I'm just kind of interested in understanding how you think they will differ to the degree you wouldn't even want to play the game.
Just to note, Pantheon is not a raid focused game, so there will be plenty of small to large group content outside of raiding. Its also not set in stone yet, but I think I remember hearing the target raid size is currently 32 players.
I think, if forced to choose, the social experience is of greater importance in an MMORPG like Pantheon than challenge. You can find challenge in many MMOs. What you can't find is any MMO that encourages the social interaction that existed with EverQuest (which also happened to be challenging).
I think one of the major aspects that people are overlooking on this thread and on the official forums that helped prevent Zerging in EQ1 was how DoTs didn't stack and mobs had high resists which resulted in many resisted DD spells. So yes, you could bring 15 Necromancers, Shamans, Druids, etc. but their DPS was highly diminished due to the ability to not stack Dots until September 2002, which, most likely, was why the first raid cap was introduced at 72 when Planes of Power was released in October 2002.
I think if Pantheon implemented a similar system that was implemented at EQlaunch, then the zerging wouldn't be as big of an issue as DPS would be controlled, and, raid-sizes would be more controlled since it wouldn't be a great benefit to bring multiples of many classes and raids would want to bring the fewer players to distribute loot (yes whine away that not all classes would be as good at raiding, but the necromancer type class is the best soloer - can't have it all). It's more realistic to me that a mob can't have 30 Venom of the Snake Dots on them anyway.
_____________________________________________________________________
I was able to find the patch notes when EQ made the change:
DoT stacking rules were changed with the September 4, 2002 patch, after the release of Luclin. The game became so much easier then.
From the patch:
** Spell Stacking Changes **
We've made two changes to the way spells stack.
Damage Over Time (DoT) spells are spells that linger on the target
doing damage. Until today two different characters could not have the
same DoT spell on the same target. As long as one copy of the spell was
active any new version of the spell would not take hold. After today
the same DoT spell cast by different casters can affect the same target
at the same time. Also, if you cast a DoT spell on a target and you
already have that spell active on it, the spell will refresh. (Note: It
will not be possible to stack Lifeburn).
This does not allow for inferior spells to stack along with superior
spells. (Example: Two Necromancers can both land Boil Blood on the same
target. However, Heat Blood, being an inferior spell, will still not
stack.)
Several DoT spells that have debuff components such as Tuyen's Chant of
Frost and Breath of Ro will not stack due to the balance issues of
having several hundred points of Resistance debuffs on a single NPC.
We've also rewritten the way that spells stack with other spells with
the same benefits (for example, to spells that give bonus hit points).
Generally speaking spells may now 'bounce' off each other (neither
overwriting the other) and stacking issues should now be easier to
resolve.
(a) Wont participate in raids anyway.
(b) Vote for uncapped raids for, well, kind of "ideological"(*) reasons which have absolutely nothing to do with the goal of creating the best possible gaming experience.
(c) Might nor might not want to reintroduce bugs of early EQ to "fix" the proposition you made under (b).
(*) Cant come up with a better word
B. See response to A.
C. I only offered that suggestion as an option as so many people are concerned about Zerging, and, it wasn't a bug, it was a known feature by the developers that wasn't changed. Read some of the older archived forums. I'm more in Dullahan's (and other's) camp that guilds, even with stacking dots as a game feature, would ultimately control the raid numbers as there will be major drama if loot had to be shared between 100 people on each raid. I don't disagree that "strength in numbers" type raiding won't occur initially - it did in EQ as well. However, what ultimately will happen (with hardcore guilds especially) is the fewest number of people possible will be taken to accomplish the raid because many/most? who raid are there to raid for the best loot. And, if family friendly guilds have players who obviously aren't "good/skilled" players, they can be taken to the raid without a detriment to the raid. Or, "non-essential" raiders can be taken without penalty and you don't have to make the ridiculous decisions as a raid leader saying "sorry Class A, I can't take you on this epic raid since there's a lockout at 24 players - you're not essential."
When reading all the responses in this thread, it appears many don't have a basis for comparison as they are arguing against uncapped raids and have never played original EQ. If Pantheon was theme-park clone 1000 with WoW-like community, then I would agree with capped raids as well as the community would never police each other as player/server reputation doesn't matter and loot wouldn't be a control-point of raid sizes as everyone would be offered a free Raid Token to get their gear (and 100s of players would be invited). It's much different when there are only a limited number of raid drops.
If you have two warriors and they hit the same mob, the mob will receive twice as much damage as from a single warrior.
If you have two mages and they hit the same mob, with your implementation the mob will not receive more damage than from one mage.
Thats obviously defunct.
Besides, it still wouldnt stop zerging. It would just mean zerging is limited to certain classes. Can only have one Necromancer, one Enchanter and one Druid - or whatever the DoT classes will be (so far Necromancer isnt in yet, but I would suspect they will add them after release).
But if Wizards have no or few DoTs and to their damage mostly with direct spells, you can bring as many as you wish.