It was not clearly an error, even though you might not agree with the concept. It was known at launch and was not changed for over three years even though EQ was being patched consistently (and not ignored like VG). And, I'm indifferent to how it was implemented in EQ anyway, I was just sharing information as everyone is focused on zerging raid mobs being the reason for capped raids - I think zerging would be self-contained even with stacking DoTs. Community and Loot are the two bigger factors that will control raid sizes and zerging. But, I'll respond to the rest of your post.
You're right, melee DPS could be duplicated. But gear wasn't so inflated at launch that raiding with a Short Sword of Ykesha at 8/24 damage/delay was game-breaking. Trying to bring 15 rogues/warriors/rangers without proper heals equaled a death sentence. As long as Pantheon follows a similar gear scaling system and not offering WoWesque/VGesque epic freebie quest gear rewards - it wouldn't be game-breaking there either. Raid mob difficulty would also have to be tested (alpha/beta).
And, there's many ways to control DPS that were intentionally/unintentionally implemented into EQ (and there's many more tactics that could be used now). There were raid mob AoEs which the healers often couldn't keep up with even if you were in a group with a raid geared cleric. And, if you weren't, and were one of the unlucky members who weren't part of a group with a good healer you were as good as dead - or were constantly running out of the fray and trying to self-heal (paladin) or /bind wound. There weren't Raid UI Mods that screamed HEAL that you could just macro or click buttons easily - player skill was much more noticeable.
Also, resist gear was basically a must, and if you didn't have it, you were going to die. And, even if you did have it, the stats outside the resists were so bad that if you didn't have proper heals, you were going to die. DD spells were often resisted on raid mobs, even with resist debuffs, so bringing 100 wizards with the inability to heal them wouldn't be as beneficial as you'd think as they'd die quickly without proper heals, while many spells would be resisted.
And, again, raids will control their sizes as well if loot is finite. If Pantheon offers Raid/Group Tokens for completing content which will obviously promote zerging content with uncapped raids, that is a whole different issue anyway.
You're right, melee DPS could be duplicated. But gear wasn't so inflated at launch that raiding with a Short Sword of Ykesha at 8/24 damage/delay was game-breaking. Trying to bring 15 rogues/warriors/rangers without proper heals equaled a death sentence. As long as Pantheon follows a similar gear scaling system and not offering WoWesque/VGesque epic freebie quest gear rewards - it wouldn't be game-breaking there either. Raid mob difficulty would also have to be tested (alpha/beta).
Excellent point. Gear progression in EQ did not promote the DPS zerg fests that are so common these days in the mainstream games. Remember, HP bloat was deemed "poor design" in games and so game mobs started to have less and less HP, fights became shorter and shorter to focus on more "reflex" style arcade game play. Add in the need for players to be rewarded with huge upgrades and you ended up with dungeons becoming a zerg AOE fest to a DPS speed race on the end boss.
In EQ, mobs took a while to kill. You couldn't rely on DPS tactics to makeup for a poor healing/tanking/CC team. Things took time, so you had to make sure you could last the fight. That is not to say that people didn't maximize for better DPS, but DPS didn't win the fights as they do in games today.
I see games like DDO who are having huge problems with adding difficulty because they have made their characters so powerful that players are killing them in a hit or two. The result is that there is no time to provide challenge and so increased difficulty design results in a "who gets the first drop" style of play where either the player one shots the mob, or the mob one shots the player.
In games like WoW and similar you could take in a DPS team and overpower any content with raw DPS, often bypassing the contents design with such. You couldn't do this in EQ because the fights lasted too long, DPSing before you ran out of mana/HP wasn't an option. You either approached the raid efficiently, or you wiped.
Now certainly if you raid efficiently, then bringing more will speed up the process, but as you pointed out, the added DPS from more classes didn't overpower the fight. I think this is something people do not understand because they never experienced the long fights EQ had. They view everything in terms of games today where mobs die fast, AoEing is the common tactic for dealing with trash and boss fights last a few minutes.
That is, you really couldn't "zerg" EQ in any real sense of the word. That is, Zerging comes from the Starcraft units zerglings to which their strategy was to overpower a mob by mass numbers as cannon fodder. You didn't "overpower" mobs in EQ due to fights lasting too long and bosses basically one shot any character who didn't have a chain heal going and due to heal chains causing a lot of agro, a mess up by the tank usually resulted in the heal chain being destroyed.
As I have said in previous discussions, those who claim people were zerg content (as the definition it is known for) didn't spend much time raiding to any understanding of the mechanics of the fights. It just didn't work that way.
Now as I said, having more could help, but it wasn't overpowering. Since that was the case, having large raids worked against the goals of gearing and being mobile. They carried a lot of extra baggage with them.
You're right, melee DPS could be duplicated. But gear wasn't so inflated at launch that raiding with a Short Sword of Ykesha at 8/24 damage/delay was game-breaking. Trying to bring 15 rogues/warriors/rangers without proper heals equaled a death sentence. As long as Pantheon follows a similar gear scaling system and not offering WoWesque/VGesque epic freebie quest gear rewards - it wouldn't be game-breaking there either. Raid mob difficulty would also have to be tested (alpha/beta).
Excellent point. Gear progression in EQ did not promote the DPS zerg fests that are so common these days in the mainstream games. Remember, HP bloat was deemed "poor design" in games and so game mobs started to have less and less HP, fights became shorter and shorter to focus on more "reflex" style arcade game play. Add in the need for players to be rewarded with huge upgrades and you ended up with dungeons becoming a zerg AOE fest to a DPS speed race on the end boss.
In EQ, mobs took a while to kill. You couldn't rely on DPS tactics to makeup for a poor healing/tanking/CC team. Things took time, so you had to make sure you could last the fight. That is not to say that people didn't maximize for better DPS, but DPS didn't win the fights as they do in games today.
I see games like DDO who are having huge problems with adding difficulty because they have made their characters so powerful that players are killing them in a hit or two. The result is that there is no time to provide challenge and so increased difficulty design results in a "who gets the first drop" style of play where either the player one shots the mob, or the mob one shots the player.
In games like WoW and similar you could take in a DPS team and overpower any content with raw DPS, often bypassing the contents design with such. You couldn't do this in EQ because the fights lasted too long, DPSing before you ran out of mana/HP wasn't an option. You either approached the raid efficiently, or you wiped.
Now certainly if you raid efficiently, then bringing more will speed up the process, but as you pointed out, the added DPS from more classes didn't overpower the fight. I think this is something people do not understand because they never experienced the long fights EQ had. They view everything in terms of games today where mobs die fast, AoEing is the common tactic for dealing with trash and boss fights last a few minutes.
That is, you really couldn't "zerg" EQ in any real sense of the word. That is, Zerging comes from the Starcraft units zerglings to which their strategy was to overpower a mob by mass numbers as cannon fodder. You didn't "overpower" mobs in EQ due to fights lasting too long and bosses basically one shot any character who didn't have a chain heal going and due to heal chains causing a lot of agro, a mess up by the tank usually resulted in the heal chain being destroyed.
As I have said in previous discussions, those who claim people were zerg content (as the definition it is known for) didn't spend much time raiding to any understanding of the mechanics of the fights. It just didn't work that way.
Now as I said, having more could help, but it wasn't overpowering. Since that was the case, having large raids worked against the goals of gearing and being mobile. They carried a lot of extra baggage with them.
Wow I remember those days of the rolling chain heals. I thought it added intensity to encounters because you knew how important it was for that whole dynamic of the tank/heals working in unison. 1 slip and it caused panic and worry but it COULD be salvaged if the players were quick enough and good enough to pick up what was needed. This is a great article and not a lot of people were fortunate enough to experience EQ raids back in the day.
Debuffs played a pivotal role, player buffs were important, the players and classes mattered and all played a role. Nowadays certain classes/roles are not that important which is kind of sad. I hope to Pantheon brings back the important of player buffs, debuffs on mobs(Slows drastically changed an encounter where you could go from a mob swinging 192083123 mph and was not doable to a mob that WAS doable)
Debuffs played a pivotal role, player buffs were important, the players and classes mattered and all played a role. Nowadays certain classes/roles are not that important which is kind of sad. I hope to Pantheon brings back the important of player buffs, debuffs on mobs(Slows drastically changed an encounter where you could go from a mob swinging 192083123 mph and was not doable to a mob that WAS doable)
This brings up an important point. I was thinking about the progression of buffs in games over the years, especially how they progressed in EQ.
Early EQ, If I remember correctly, the average buff lasted around 5-10 minutes I think give or take. When you factored in that you could only have 8 spells memorized at any given time, it really put into perspective the importance of buff management. So, usually unless it was a very specific need, you loaded up a limited number of specific types of buffs generally needed. This really put into play the idea of time management and weighting spell use and benefit based on the situation.
People complained about this and they increased the time limits. Now, I can understand the issues with the very low time limits on them as it became a nightmare of buffing every few pulls in the game. I think they upped them to 30 mins for most, with some special ones still being lower time limits meant to be in-combat uses. The 30 min limit seemed well balanced, as you could retain your buff for a good length of time, but there was still the issue of dealing with management of it, so you didn't buff everyone with every buff available.
Though over time, buffs got longer and longer. Some of them were spell rewards, which ok... I can except to an extent, but then they became longer and longer to the point where we had 3+ hour buffs that could buff entire raids, etc...
What do you think happened? Well... eventually people complained about having to buff at all in other games. Then, buffing turned into auras and in some games, they began to phase out the whole mechanic because players could essentially buff themselves in everything, so it became a redundant mechanic that had no diversity. That is, if everyone had them on all the time, why not design the content to not have them at all? It is just a pointless mechanic that serves no purpose anymore.
That is the eventual slippery slope that occurred with buffing systems, but it wasn't just buffing, this sort of design progression existed in many other areas of development.
The point is, while there are some things where the micromanagement becomes ridiculous, other times it is the very point, for if everything in the game is easy and convenient all the time, then technically, it is not needed as a mechanic in the first place (ie... how fast travel became standard).
These are things I began to understand over the years of gaming as I experienced both sides of the fence. Many things I used to "hate" or get "annoyed" with, I eventually realized were what made the systems important and gave the game a sense of choice and depth.
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.
This could even be a solution used to stop zerging, if say dots only stacked to 3 and were a major portion of your dps, you could then only get full dps out of 3 of any given class in your raid, this number is of course arbitrary, but you could technically make any further dps of that class past 3 very much diminished. And the same could work for melee, with their bleeds etc, as well as possibly enemies gaining armor when more physical damage dealers are engaged with it than it is designed for. There are also ways to prevent healer zerging as well, although generally all the guilds I ever remember in EQ struggled to find enough lol! Also as a joke, if you bring too many enchanters maybe the encounter spawns extra adds for them to deal with.
Point is, there are tons and tons of practical logical intelligent ways to stop zerging, we should never have to resort to community destructive tools like instances and raid size caps.
I don't like the idea of telling friends I can't play with them because they aren't good enough to be in my A squad and the instance only lets us bring 24.. that shit's whack.
You're right, melee DPS could be duplicated. But gear wasn't so inflated at launch that raiding with a Short Sword of Ykesha at 8/24 damage/delay was game-breaking. Trying to bring 15 rogues/warriors/rangers without proper heals equaled a death sentence. As long as Pantheon follows a similar gear scaling system and not offering WoWesque/VGesque epic freebie quest gear rewards - it wouldn't be game-breaking there either. Raid mob difficulty would also have to be tested (alpha/beta).
Excellent point. Gear progression in EQ did not promote the DPS zerg fests that are so common these days in the mainstream games. Remember, HP bloat was deemed "poor design" in games and so game mobs started to have less and less HP, fights became shorter and shorter to focus on more "reflex" style arcade game play. Add in the need for players to be rewarded with huge upgrades and you ended up with dungeons becoming a zerg AOE fest to a DPS speed race on the end boss.
In EQ, mobs took a while to kill. You couldn't rely on DPS tactics to makeup for a poor healing/tanking/CC team. Things took time, so you had to make sure you could last the fight. That is not to say that people didn't maximize for better DPS, but DPS didn't win the fights as they do in games today.
I see games like DDO who are having huge problems with adding difficulty because they have made their characters so powerful that players are killing them in a hit or two. The result is that there is no time to provide challenge and so increased difficulty design results in a "who gets the first drop" style of play where either the player one shots the mob, or the mob one shots the player.
Exactly. And, mana/hp pools at EQlaunch were very low as well, so you couldn't last long without proper healing. Also, there was no in-combat or fast out of combat hp/mana regen so you couldn't manipulate those game mechanic tactics to zerg by running out of combat regen-ing and then returning.
You make a good point on time as well. All you would need to do to remember how long it took to kill things in EQ is to play on a progression server and camp the Ghoul Lord - a named 45ish mob (not a raid mob). Even with a well balanced full group, killing Dars/Boks/Guks/Named takes a long time - minutes, not AoEing DPSing mobs in seconds like current gen MMOs. And, not only time to kill the mobs, but to regen hps/mana afterward.
But, I'll get back on topic again and address the fear of zerging with uncapped raids. I'll use my EQ raid guild as an example. If there were excess DPS, they basically formed their own "extra" groups, and the majority would die without heals because as Rallyd stated - there Never were enough healers - everyone wants to play the "fun" classes - DPS/Pet Classes etc. But, we didn't want to not invite guild members to the raid and we would like their extra seconds/minutes of DPS. But, you couldn't put non-essential raid members in the main raid groups or it could interrupt the raid/healers as they would try to keep the DPS alive and cause an entire raid wipe. And, once the Main tank(s) died, you were screwed.
Also, people's fear of uncapped raids is that raids will be easier, trivialized, etc., but, to this day, I've never raided a more difficult area than trying to "break in" to the Plane of Fear. Obviously this is my opinion here and it is subjective, but if the raids are designed right, gear inflation was properly monitored, and anti-zerging tactics used (Plane of Fear mobs had Huge agro range and tons of wandering mobs), Dot-Stacking, mob difficulty then zerging won't be an issue. All it took was one bored idiot to start running around while groups were regaining hp/mana (didn't even have to be afk/semi-afk) and agro a group of mobs to wipe the raid. And, the more players that are involved, the more likely that will be to occur.
I would much rather mimic an EQ launch gear progression/raid mob difficulty curve and do thorough player testing on future expansions to make sure gear does not trivialize content and allow raids to remain uncapped.
Let's be serious for a moment and admit something many here don't seem to want to admit - Without instanced raids, most of us old timers won't see any of the content.
Raids will belong to the kids with tons of free time, much like it did back in the day. I was more than happy to be on call 24/7 for world spawns when i was younger but i'll be damned if i put up with that nonsense today.
Was it a blast back then? Sure. Would it be today? Not a chance.
Let's be serious for a moment and admit something many here don't seem to want to admit - Without instanced raids, most of us old timers won't see any of the content.
Raids will belong to the kids with tons of free time, much like it did back in the day. I was more than happy to be on call 24/7 for world spawns when i was younger but i'll be damned if i put up with that nonsense today.
Was it a blast back then? Sure. Would it be today? Not a chance.
Why do you say that? I was working 50-60 hours a week and on call when EQ came out. A lot of the people I played with were professionals in their late 20's to 30's, had jobs, families, etc...
Now do you mean we didn't see top end contested content? Sure, that was heavily contested with many people as you say doing those raids in the middle of the day and without life schedules, but we did eventually get to see them, especially because EQ released timely content and had numerous raid mobs throughout the game world. So, when the top end guilds were doing the current content, we were doing the stuff they had already been doing for quite a while.
Besides, you don't have to instance content to be able to achieve the same thing. Some solutions are to have rule set servers with signup and rotation raid schedules like EQs Legends server had. Also, some servers brokered similar deals with guilds to achieve the same thing. The point is, you can still do raid content, you just can't be the first and do the latest content if you don't have the time, that is for those who do. In fact, the best place to be is an expansion or so behind the top raiders and if you don't have the time to play consistently, chances are you will be, so everything works out, just like it did in EQ.
I think it is a common misconception that people who played EQ were kids without jobs or families. In fact, I knew more adult professionals in EQ than I ever did in any of the mainstream games. Though that was a time when most of the people who played these games back then were techies, academics, IT, and computer hobbyist.
Well its confirmed that there wont be any instances other than the main storyline. Dont expect any for raids or dungeons.
Saying that this whole zerg argument doesnt really matter if you believe it or not. Brad acknowledged it as a potential problem. And all though he has stated they dont want caps, they are looking into and looking for ideas about how to prevent it or strongly mitigate it. So I think at this point agree to disagree and start theorycrafting more ideas that stop zerging but are not immersion breaking/ anti-community. Eh?
So far my favorite idea was the raid boss running away. But as with any ideas needs to be fleshed out and not exploitable.
Well its confirmed that there wont be any instances other than the main storyline. Dont expect any for raids or dungeons.
Saying that this whole zerg argument doesnt really matter if you believe it or not. Brad acknowledged it as a potential problem. And all though he has stated they dont want caps, they are looking into and looking for ideas about how to prevent it or strongly mitigate it. So I think at this point agree to disagree and start theorycrafting more ideas that stop zerging but are not immersion breaking/ anti-community. Eh?
So far my favorite idea was the raid boss running away. But as with any ideas needs to be fleshed out and not exploitable.
Well, we have thrown out ideas already and Brad said they are going to keep an eye on it, so there is not much to be concerned about to be honest. If it is an issue, they will deal with it, if it isn't well.. /shrug
Well said Sinist and I enjoyed reading the different ideas. Looks like we will be getting an update "soonish" according to our favorite stealthy moderator. Hopefully this and other hot topics will be revealed. ^.^
Let's be serious for a moment and admit something many here don't seem to want to admit - Without instanced raids, most of us old timers won't see any of the content.
Raids will belong to the kids with tons of free time, much like it did back in the day. I was more than happy to be on call 24/7 for world spawns when i was younger but i'll be damned if i put up with that nonsense today.
Was it a blast back then? Sure. Would it be today? Not a chance.
This is one of my least favorite counterarguments and I hear it all the time in opposition to designing group only content and non-capped/non-instanced group dungeons or raids. I fall squarely in the category that I don't have as much free time as I did back at EQlaunch; but a gaming world should not cater to me. There's plenty of MMOs available that allow for raiding on a budget.
Pantheon's dev team has stated that they are designing Pantheon content with the 2-3 hour gaming session in mind. So, there should be plenty of group content for that style of player (me). However, if a skilled player plays 10+ hours and is attempting to tackle current raid content - they shouldbe rewarded and have better gear than me. That does not mean that the player who can only dedicated 2 hours a night or less can't ultimately experience everything, it just may not be at the same speed. It also doesn't mean that the 2 hour player can't be the most skilled.
It's the expectation of the gamer that has to change. I might not experience raid content (if I chose to raid) during the current expansion, but that doesn't mean I ultimately couldn't - it's just the expectation that I have to be the best, have the best gear, be a server first, etc. that has to change. And, that's hard for me as I am competitive and want to be the best. It's much better to have that ever-dangling carrot. If you water down that idea, everything becomes trivialized.
Let's be serious for a moment and admit something many here don't seem to want to admit - Without instanced raids, most of us old timers won't see any of the content.
Raids will belong to the kids with tons of free time, much like it did back in the day. I was more than happy to be on call 24/7 for world spawns when i was younger but i'll be damned if i put up with that nonsense today.
Was it a blast back then? Sure. Would it be today? Not a chance.
First Off, I'm getting to be an Old Timer as well, but I disagree with you.
Anything you do, be it a game or not, is about time management. I work 6 days a week and I'm married. With that said, I still manage a decent raid schedule. Tue/Thur 8-11.. sometimes Wednesday. You can do anything you want if you have the right mindset.
Just because I'm a gamer doesn't mean I drive a Honda.
It's the expectation of the gamer that has to change. I might not experience raid content (if I chose to raid) during the current expansion, but that doesn't mean I ultimately couldn't - it's just the expectation that I have to be the best, have the best gear, be a server first, etc. that has to change. And, that's hard for me as I am competitive and want to be the best. It's much better to have that ever-dangling carrot. If you water down that idea, everything becomes trivialized.
This reminds me when mainstream games started moving to "daily" content grinds rather than the older style grinds and used the excuse that it was because the player base demanded that content be adjusted to fit those who "didn't have time to play games like a kid all day because they had a job, real lives and a responsibility".
The funny thing was that all of us guys who did actually have that were really perturbed because we didn't have the time to log in every single day to do the daily, sometimes we could only work out a marathon day of play on the weekend or something, so the switch to the casual "do your daily in 15 mins" style of play was a huge kick to the face to those "working" people. Heck, many of us gave up on even trying to do them because at least when we could do it on our own time, we could get in some nice sessions, but with the dailies, it was would take an enormous amount of time for often a pointless reward.
If Pantheon wants to make a solid game, then they need to tell people "NO" that conflict with the "Vision". Besides, most of the "I don't have time to play" arguments are more of the "I won't make time to play". I knew one guy who used to complain about his lack of time to play the game, how he couldn't keep up and that the game needed to allow for more people like him who had real lives. Thing was, he was on sports teams all year long where he consistently was going to practices, games and social meets. He played golf every weekend and refused to play the game during TV games that he followed.
Nothing wrong with that, but if the game was so important to him (important enough for him to whine and complain all the time about it), he could have easily worked in a bit more time if he liked, but he didn't, rather he expected the game to be adjusted to fit his inattentive play style. I think it is safe to say we have plenty of games out these days that completely cater to that lifestyle and play. Pantheon doesn't need to.
Let's be serious for a moment and admit something many here don't seem to want to admit - Without instanced raids, most of us old timers won't see any of the content.
Raids will belong to the kids with tons of free time, much like it did back in the day. I was more than happy to be on call 24/7 for world spawns when i was younger but i'll be damned if i put up with that nonsense today.
Was it a blast back then? Sure. Would it be today? Not a chance.
This is one of my least favorite counterarguments and I hear it all the time in opposition to designing group only content and non-capped/non-instanced group dungeons or raids. I fall squarely in the category that I don't have as much free time as I did back at EQlaunch; but a gaming world should not cater to me. There's plenty of MMOs available that allow for raiding on a budget.
Pantheon's dev team has stated that they are designing Pantheon content with the 2-3 hour gaming session in mind. So, there should be plenty of group content for that style of player (me). However, if a skilled player plays 10+ hours and is attempting to tackle current raid content - they shouldbe rewarded and have better gear than me. That does not mean that the player who can only dedicated 2 hours a night or less can't ultimately experience everything, it just may not be at the same speed. It also doesn't mean that the 2 hour player can't be the most skilled.
It's the expectation of the gamer that has to change. I might not experience raid content (if I chose to raid) during the current expansion, but that doesn't mean I ultimately couldn't - it's just the expectation that I have to be the best, have the best gear, be a server first, etc. that has to change. And, that's hard for me as I am competitive and want to be the best. It's much better to have that ever-dangling carrot. If you water down that idea, everything becomes trivialized.
This is nail on the head here.
That selfish mentality that everything should be geared towards the casual player is what destroyed mmorpgs. Challenging content, the need for long term commitment and a games ability to retain its players have all been a casualty of allowing everyone, regardless of their playtime, to accomplish everything. That has also absolutely destroyed the believability of virtual worlds. In real life, not everyone has the ability to do everything. To some degree, that truth must carry over.
This isn't even about catering to raiders or the hardcore. Of course there should be more content for the casual player, but that content and rate of progression should not be scaled according to the lowest common denominator, but the greatest. If it takes the hardcore player 3 or 4 months to see all the sites, get all the achievement, and acquire all the best items, at least then it means everyone else will still be playing for a year. Its selfish for the player with only a few hours to think they should be able to achieve as much as those who play all day.
Let the players of today with that time to devote have their reward and stop trying to punish everyone because you no longer have that time. It makes the entire game less enjoyable for everyone.
This could even be a solution used to stop zerging, if say dots only stacked to 3 and were a major portion of your dps, you could then only get full dps out of 3 of any given class in your raid, this number is of course arbitrary, but you could technically make any further dps of that class past 3 very much diminished. And the same could work for melee, with their bleeds etc, as well as possibly enemies gaining armor when more physical damage dealers are engaged with it than it is designed for. There are also ways to prevent healer zerging as well...
I just wanted to elaborate on this idea, because its yet another way that raid power could greatly decrease beyond a certain number of players, without actually placing a hard cap on players.
The inability for dots to stack is one thing, but perhaps a mob hit by a fire or ice nuke could become less susceptible to that type of damage for a limited time. That means if you have 4 casters present using fire, they have to coordinate who will use ice or other lines of magic. Beyond those 4, you may end up using the same effects on a mob and it doing significantly less damage. Thus, the zerg without that coordination is way less effective. Even organized players, with a larger raid, will suffer a huge reduction in power due to diminishing returns.
This principle could be applied across the board to all forms of damage or healing. You could even add AI to compensate. If a mob is taking too many backstabs, for instance, it could begin moving around, forcing the entire raid to adjust and putting everyone in harms way to frontal attacks.
Then instead of allowing unlimited debuffs and for every debuff to stack, there could be a limited number of active debuffs (could be separated into 2 types, short term and long term). Every ability used on the mob, especially a mob with high armor, would have to be approached carefully. If an entire raid uses the same abilities they commonly use in a group, they would be overwriting those armor reduction debuffs that are crucial for that fight. This could greatly increase the hardness of a fight, simply because there are too many people and they aren't working together. However, even if they are working together, it places a logical limitation on what abilities can be used, thereby reducing the potential raid dps, becoming especially pronounced with larger raids.
Let's be serious for a moment and admit something many here don't seem to want to admit - Without instanced raids, most of us old timers won't see any of the content.
Raids will belong to the kids with tons of free time, much like it did back in the day. I was more than happy to be on call 24/7 for world spawns when i was younger but i'll be damned if i put up with that nonsense today.
Was it a blast back then? Sure. Would it be today? Not a chance.
This is one of my least favorite counterarguments and I hear it all the time in opposition to designing group only content and non-capped/non-instanced group dungeons or raids. I fall squarely in the category that I don't have as much free time as I did back at EQlaunch; but a gaming world should not cater to me. There's plenty of MMOs available that allow for raiding on a budget.
Pantheon's dev team has stated that they are designing Pantheon content with the 2-3 hour gaming session in mind. So, there should be plenty of group content for that style of player (me). However, if a skilled player plays 10+ hours and is attempting to tackle current raid content - they shouldbe rewarded and have better gear than me. That does not mean that the player who can only dedicated 2 hours a night or less can't ultimately experience everything, it just may not be at the same speed. It also doesn't mean that the 2 hour player can't be the most skilled.
It's the expectation of the gamer that has to change. I might not experience raid content (if I chose to raid) during the current expansion, but that doesn't mean I ultimately couldn't - it's just the expectation that I have to be the best, have the best gear, be a server first, etc. that has to change. And, that's hard for me as I am competitive and want to be the best. It's much better to have that ever-dangling carrot. If you water down that idea, everything becomes trivialized.
Oh i do agree with most of what you have to say but it all comes down to how content is implemented. I don't believe we'll agree how best to handle certain aspects though.
I can only speak from my own personal experience in FFXI's endgame community. I saw the community go downhill very fast. We went from actively working with other guilds to rotate bosses and even /roll for claiming rights, to developing claiming bots and breaking all embargo rules in the name of loot acquisition. It was ruthless. We monopolized the hell out of every world spawn, even older content that was still lucrative, to the point of everyone that wanted loot had to pay us for it. Your average player or guild had no chance.
There was no such thing as seeing a boss spawn and guilds running to claim it. We had groups of players dual boxing characters at every single spawn point in every zone 24/7. Bosses spawned already claimed, usually to a claim bot or packet sniffer tool. It was the wild west where anything went.
My fear is that this nonsense returns. I'm a super competitive person that'll put in the time needed but not if this is encouraged again. There has to be a better way. There has to be systems in place from the ground up to discourage this type of behavior. Ultimately it'll be on the players to police themselves if systems are not in place. That will work at first but it won't last. I'm looking for a system that will.
Maybe Pantheon has a better system and my fears will be alleviated.
First Off, I'm getting to be an Old Timer as well, but I disagree with you.
Anything you do, be it a game or not, is about time management. I work 6 days a week and I'm married. With that said, I still manage a decent raid schedule. Tue/Thur 8-11.. sometimes Wednesday. You can do anything you want if you have the right mindset.
Lol the game is being built with EQ Classic in mind, not WoW. Jump on project 1999 and tell us how many raid items you get with that schedule.
Let's be serious for a moment and admit something many here don't seem to want to admit - Without instanced raids, most of us old timers won't see any of the content.
Raids will belong to the kids with tons of free time, much like it did back in the day. I was more than happy to be on call 24/7 for world spawns when i was younger but i'll be damned if i put up with that nonsense today.
Was it a blast back then? Sure. Would it be today? Not a chance.
This is one of my least favorite counterarguments and I hear it all the time in opposition to designing group only content and non-capped/non-instanced group dungeons or raids. I fall squarely in the category that I don't have as much free time as I did back at EQlaunch; but a gaming world should not cater to me. There's plenty of MMOs available that allow for raiding on a budget.
Pantheon's dev team has stated that they are designing Pantheon content with the 2-3 hour gaming session in mind. So, there should be plenty of group content for that style of player (me). However, if a skilled player plays 10+ hours and is attempting to tackle current raid content - they shouldbe rewarded and have better gear than me. That does not mean that the player who can only dedicated 2 hours a night or less can't ultimately experience everything, it just may not be at the same speed. It also doesn't mean that the 2 hour player can't be the most skilled.
It's the expectation of the gamer that has to change. I might not experience raid content (if I chose to raid) during the current expansion, but that doesn't mean I ultimately couldn't - it's just the expectation that I have to be the best, have the best gear, be a server first, etc. that has to change. And, that's hard for me as I am competitive and want to be the best. It's much better to have that ever-dangling carrot. If you water down that idea, everything becomes trivialized.
This is nail on the head here.
That selfish mentality that everything should be geared towards the casual player is what destroyed mmorpgs. Challenging content, the need for long term commitment and a games ability to retain its players have all been a casualty of allowing everyone, regardless of their playtime, to accomplish everything. That has also absolutely destroyed the believability of virtual worlds. In real life, not everyone has the ability to do everything. To some degree, that truth must carry over.
This isn't even about catering to raiders or the hardcore. Of course there should be more content for the casual player, but that content and rate of progression should not be scaled according to the lowest common denominator, but the greatest. If it takes the hardcore player 3 or 4 months to see all the sites, get all the achievement, and acquire all the best items, at least then it means everyone else will still be playing for a year. Its selfish for the player with only a few hours to think they should be able to achieve as much as those who play all day.
Let the players of today with that time to devote have their reward and stop trying to punish everyone because you no longer have that time. It makes the entire game less enjoyable for everyone.
so can i sum up what you are saying... the developers should make the best content for the very few hardcore/raiders raiding should be a thing for least people as possible developers are foolish to put their creativity and soul into content for the masses, instead they should make their best most proud works of creation accessible to the least possible people. that is the altruistic mentality the selfish middle 80% of the server population doesn't get?
so can i sum up what you are saying... the developers should make the best content for the very few hardcore/raiders raiding should be a thing for least people as possible developers are foolish to put their creativity and soul into content for the masses, instead they should make their best most proud works of creation accessible to the least possible people. that is the altruistic mentality the selfish middle 80% of the server population doesn't get?
lol
Oh please, I have heard this counter argument so many times it is like a rap beat from the 80's.
It isn't a reasonable argument, it is an argument of extremes based on a false summary designed to promote the victimization mentality. Honestly, I would spend time trying to reason with you, but I have been there, done that with people making these arguments and know that it would be wasted entirely as you have no interest in what this game is trying to achieve.
So, all I can say is... if you don't agree with what this game is being designed to achieve, go play another game. This game isn't for you and there are numerous games out there completely designed to fit your mentality. Enjoy!
so can i sum up what you are saying... the developers should make the best content for the very few hardcore/raiders raiding should be a thing for least people as possible developers are foolish to put their creativity and soul into content for the masses, instead they should make their best most proud works of creation accessible to the least possible people. that is the altruistic mentality the selfish middle 80% of the server population doesn't get?
lol
Sinist answered back appropriately, but I can't help it - I'll bite anyway.
1. If "best" equals raids to you, then yes. Many gamers don't view raids as the best (I don't). But, that doesn't mean I don't realize that the most challenging, time consuming content shouldn't be rewarded appropriately.
2. No one said raiding should be for the least amount of people possible. But, if you don't have the time/skill to raid, you shouldn't be rewarded a participation ribbon - as Sinist said, this isn't your game and the game shouldn't cater to you.
3. Developers already said the group game would be the focus and raids would be only approximately 15% of the content. So, developers would be focused to the masses and the 2-3 hour playstyle(raiders being the minority) . If you view "raids" as the best part of the game, then that is subjective, again, I don't. I view the journey 1-50 as the best. If you're talking about not being able to obtain the best loot without the greatest challenge, then again, wrong game.
4. It is altruistic and unselfish if a gamer is able to look outside of him/herself to create the best possible game even if he/she can't experience everything in it. It is very selfish if a gamer whines and cries and says that a game must cater to my lifestyle/time constraints/schedule at the expense of other gamer's experience because I can't get everything that the other player has (like Sinist said victim role). There's plenty of games that are available where you can obtain the "best" or be the "best" without effort - I'm still hoping Pantheon won't be one of them.
Comments
You're right, melee DPS could be duplicated. But gear wasn't so inflated at launch that raiding with a Short Sword of Ykesha at 8/24 damage/delay was game-breaking. Trying to bring 15 rogues/warriors/rangers without proper heals equaled a death sentence. As long as Pantheon follows a similar gear scaling system and not offering WoWesque/VGesque epic freebie quest gear rewards - it wouldn't be game-breaking there either. Raid mob difficulty would also have to be tested (alpha/beta).
And, there's many ways to control DPS that were intentionally/unintentionally implemented into EQ (and there's many more tactics that could be used now). There were raid mob AoEs which the healers often couldn't keep up with even if you were in a group with a raid geared cleric. And, if you weren't, and were one of the unlucky members who weren't part of a group with a good healer you were as good as dead - or were constantly running out of the fray and trying to self-heal (paladin) or /bind wound. There weren't Raid UI Mods that screamed HEAL that you could just macro or click buttons easily - player skill was much more noticeable.
Also, resist gear was basically a must, and if you didn't have it, you were going to die. And, even if you did have it, the stats outside the resists were so bad that if you didn't have proper heals, you were going to die. DD spells were often resisted on raid mobs, even with resist debuffs, so bringing 100 wizards with the inability to heal them wouldn't be as beneficial as you'd think as they'd die quickly without proper heals, while many spells would be resisted.
And, again, raids will control their sizes as well if loot is finite. If Pantheon offers Raid/Group Tokens for completing content which will obviously promote zerging content with uncapped raids, that is a whole different issue anyway.
In EQ, mobs took a while to kill. You couldn't rely on DPS tactics to makeup for a poor healing/tanking/CC team. Things took time, so you had to make sure you could last the fight. That is not to say that people didn't maximize for better DPS, but DPS didn't win the fights as they do in games today.
I see games like DDO who are having huge problems with adding difficulty because they have made their characters so powerful that players are killing them in a hit or two. The result is that there is no time to provide challenge and so increased difficulty design results in a "who gets the first drop" style of play where either the player one shots the mob, or the mob one shots the player.
In games like WoW and similar you could take in a DPS team and overpower any content with raw DPS, often bypassing the contents design with such. You couldn't do this in EQ because the fights lasted too long, DPSing before you ran out of mana/HP wasn't an option. You either approached the raid efficiently, or you wiped.
Now certainly if you raid efficiently, then bringing more will speed up the process, but as you pointed out, the added DPS from more classes didn't overpower the fight. I think this is something people do not understand because they never experienced the long fights EQ had. They view everything in terms of games today where mobs die fast, AoEing is the common tactic for dealing with trash and boss fights last a few minutes.
That is, you really couldn't "zerg" EQ in any real sense of the word. That is, Zerging comes from the Starcraft units zerglings to which their strategy was to overpower a mob by mass numbers as cannon fodder. You didn't "overpower" mobs in EQ due to fights lasting too long and bosses basically one shot any character who didn't have a chain heal going and due to heal chains causing a lot of agro, a mess up by the tank usually resulted in the heal chain being destroyed.
As I have said in previous discussions, those who claim people were zerg content (as the definition it is known for) didn't spend much time raiding to any understanding of the mechanics of the fights. It just didn't work that way.
Now as I said, having more could help, but it wasn't overpowering. Since that was the case, having large raids worked against the goals of gearing and being mobile. They carried a lot of extra baggage with them.
Wow I remember those days of the rolling chain heals. I thought it added intensity to encounters because you knew how important it was for that whole dynamic of the tank/heals working in unison. 1 slip and it caused panic and worry but it COULD be salvaged if the players were quick enough and good enough to pick up what was needed. This is a great article and not a lot of people were fortunate enough to experience EQ raids back in the day.
Debuffs played a pivotal role, player buffs were important, the players and classes mattered and all played a role. Nowadays certain classes/roles are not that important which is kind of sad. I hope to Pantheon brings back the important of player buffs, debuffs on mobs(Slows drastically changed an encounter where you could go from a mob swinging 192083123 mph and was not doable to a mob that WAS doable)
Early EQ, If I remember correctly, the average buff lasted around 5-10 minutes I think give or take. When you factored in that you could only have 8 spells memorized at any given time, it really put into perspective the importance of buff management. So, usually unless it was a very specific need, you loaded up a limited number of specific types of buffs generally needed. This really put into play the idea of time management and weighting spell use and benefit based on the situation.
People complained about this and they increased the time limits. Now, I can understand the issues with the very low time limits on them as it became a nightmare of buffing every few pulls in the game. I think they upped them to 30 mins for most, with some special ones still being lower time limits meant to be in-combat uses. The 30 min limit seemed well balanced, as you could retain your buff for a good length of time, but there was still the issue of dealing with management of it, so you didn't buff everyone with every buff available.
Though over time, buffs got longer and longer. Some of them were spell rewards, which ok... I can except to an extent, but then they became longer and longer to the point where we had 3+ hour buffs that could buff entire raids, etc...
What do you think happened? Well... eventually people complained about having to buff at all in other games. Then, buffing turned into auras and in some games, they began to phase out the whole mechanic because players could essentially buff themselves in everything, so it became a redundant mechanic that had no diversity. That is, if everyone had them on all the time, why not design the content to not have them at all? It is just a pointless mechanic that serves no purpose anymore.
That is the eventual slippery slope that occurred with buffing systems, but it wasn't just buffing, this sort of design progression existed in many other areas of development.
The point is, while there are some things where the micromanagement becomes ridiculous, other times it is the very point, for if everything in the game is easy and convenient all the time, then technically, it is not needed as a mechanic in the first place (ie... how fast travel became standard).
These are things I began to understand over the years of gaming as I experienced both sides of the fence. Many things I used to "hate" or get "annoyed" with, I eventually realized were what made the systems important and gave the game a sense of choice and depth.
This could even be a solution used to stop zerging, if say dots only stacked to 3 and were a major portion of your dps, you could then only get full dps out of 3 of any given class in your raid, this number is of course arbitrary, but you could technically make any further dps of that class past 3 very much diminished. And the same could work for melee, with their bleeds etc, as well as possibly enemies gaining armor when more physical damage dealers are engaged with it than it is designed for. There are also ways to prevent healer zerging as well, although generally all the guilds I ever remember in EQ struggled to find enough lol! Also as a joke, if you bring too many enchanters maybe the encounter spawns extra adds for them to deal with.
Point is, there are tons and tons of practical logical intelligent ways to stop zerging, we should never have to resort to community destructive tools like instances and raid size caps.
I don't like the idea of telling friends I can't play with them because they aren't good enough to be in my A squad and the instance only lets us bring 24.. that shit's whack.
You make a good point on time as well. All you would need to do to remember how long it took to kill things in EQ is to play on a progression server and camp the Ghoul Lord - a named 45ish mob (not a raid mob). Even with a well balanced full group, killing Dars/Boks/Guks/Named takes a long time - minutes, not AoEing DPSing mobs in seconds like current gen MMOs. And, not only time to kill the mobs, but to regen hps/mana afterward.
But, I'll get back on topic again and address the fear of zerging with uncapped raids. I'll use my EQ raid guild as an example. If there were excess DPS, they basically formed their own "extra" groups, and the majority would die without heals because as Rallyd stated - there Never were enough healers - everyone wants to play the "fun" classes - DPS/Pet Classes etc. But, we didn't want to not invite guild members to the raid and we would like their extra seconds/minutes of DPS. But, you couldn't put non-essential raid members in the main raid groups or it could interrupt the raid/healers as they would try to keep the DPS alive and cause an entire raid wipe. And, once the Main tank(s) died, you were screwed.
Also, people's fear of uncapped raids is that raids will be easier, trivialized, etc., but, to this day, I've never raided a more difficult area than trying to "break in" to the Plane of Fear. Obviously this is my opinion here and it is subjective, but if the raids are designed right, gear inflation was properly monitored, and anti-zerging tactics used (Plane of Fear mobs had Huge agro range and tons of wandering mobs), Dot-Stacking, mob difficulty then zerging won't be an issue. All it took was one bored idiot to start running around while groups were regaining hp/mana (didn't even have to be afk/semi-afk) and agro a group of mobs to wipe the raid. And, the more players that are involved, the more likely that will be to occur.
I would much rather mimic an EQ launch gear progression/raid mob difficulty curve and do thorough player testing on future expansions to make sure gear does not trivialize content and allow raids to remain uncapped.
Raids will belong to the kids with tons of free time, much like it did back in the day. I was more than happy to be on call 24/7 for world spawns when i was younger but i'll be damned if i put up with that nonsense today.
Was it a blast back then? Sure. Would it be today? Not a chance.
Now do you mean we didn't see top end contested content? Sure, that was heavily contested with many people as you say doing those raids in the middle of the day and without life schedules, but we did eventually get to see them, especially because EQ released timely content and had numerous raid mobs throughout the game world. So, when the top end guilds were doing the current content, we were doing the stuff they had already been doing for quite a while.
Besides, you don't have to instance content to be able to achieve the same thing. Some solutions are to have rule set servers with signup and rotation raid schedules like EQs Legends server had. Also, some servers brokered similar deals with guilds to achieve the same thing. The point is, you can still do raid content, you just can't be the first and do the latest content if you don't have the time, that is for those who do. In fact, the best place to be is an expansion or so behind the top raiders and if you don't have the time to play consistently, chances are you will be, so everything works out, just like it did in EQ.
I think it is a common misconception that people who played EQ were kids without jobs or families. In fact, I knew more adult professionals in EQ than I ever did in any of the mainstream games. Though that was a time when most of the people who played these games back then were techies, academics, IT, and computer hobbyist.
Saying that this whole zerg argument doesnt really matter if you believe it or not. Brad acknowledged it as a potential problem. And all though he has stated they dont want caps, they are looking into and looking for ideas about how to prevent it or strongly mitigate it. So I think at this point agree to disagree and start theorycrafting more ideas that stop zerging but are not immersion breaking/ anti-community. Eh?
So far my favorite idea was the raid boss running away. But as with any ideas needs to be fleshed out and not exploitable.
Well, we have thrown out ideas already and Brad said they are going to keep an eye on it, so there is not much to be concerned about to be honest. If it is an issue, they will deal with it, if it isn't well.. /shrug
Pantheon's dev team has stated that they are designing Pantheon content with the 2-3 hour gaming session in mind. So, there should be plenty of group content for that style of player (me). However, if a skilled player plays 10+ hours and is attempting to tackle current raid content - they should be rewarded and have better gear than me. That does not mean that the player who can only dedicated 2 hours a night or less can't ultimately experience everything, it just may not be at the same speed. It also doesn't mean that the 2 hour player can't be the most skilled.
It's the expectation of the gamer that has to change. I might not experience raid content (if I chose to raid) during the current expansion, but that doesn't mean I ultimately couldn't - it's just the expectation that I have to be the best, have the best gear, be a server first, etc. that has to change. And, that's hard for me as I am competitive and want to be the best. It's much better to have that ever-dangling carrot. If you water down that idea, everything becomes trivialized.
Anything you do, be it a game or not, is about time management.
I work 6 days a week and I'm married.
With that said, I still manage a decent raid schedule. Tue/Thur 8-11.. sometimes Wednesday.
You can do anything you want if you have the right mindset.
Lets see your Battle Stations /r/battlestations
Battle Station
This reminds me when mainstream games started moving to "daily" content grinds rather than the older style grinds and used the excuse that it was because the player base demanded that content be adjusted to fit those who "didn't have time to play games like a kid all day because they had a job, real lives and a responsibility".
The funny thing was that all of us guys who did actually have that were really perturbed because we didn't have the time to log in every single day to do the daily, sometimes we could only work out a marathon day of play on the weekend or something, so the switch to the casual "do your daily in 15 mins" style of play was a huge kick to the face to those "working" people. Heck, many of us gave up on even trying to do them because at least when we could do it on our own time, we could get in some nice sessions, but with the dailies, it was would take an enormous amount of time for often a pointless reward.
If Pantheon wants to make a solid game, then they need to tell people "NO" that conflict with the "Vision". Besides, most of the "I don't have time to play" arguments are more of the "I won't make time to play". I knew one guy who used to complain about his lack of time to play the game, how he couldn't keep up and that the game needed to allow for more people like him who had real lives. Thing was, he was on sports teams all year long where he consistently was going to practices, games and social meets. He played golf every weekend and refused to play the game during TV games that he followed.
Nothing wrong with that, but if the game was so important to him (important enough for him to whine and complain all the time about it), he could have easily worked in a bit more time if he liked, but he didn't, rather he expected the game to be adjusted to fit his inattentive play style. I think it is safe to say we have plenty of games out these days that completely cater to that lifestyle and play. Pantheon doesn't need to.
That selfish mentality that everything should be geared towards the casual player is what destroyed mmorpgs. Challenging content, the need for long term commitment and a games ability to retain its players have all been a casualty of allowing everyone, regardless of their playtime, to accomplish everything. That has also absolutely destroyed the believability of virtual worlds. In real life, not everyone has the ability to do everything. To some degree, that truth must carry over.
This isn't even about catering to raiders or the hardcore. Of course there should be more content for the casual player, but that content and rate of progression should not be scaled according to the lowest common denominator, but the greatest. If it takes the hardcore player 3 or 4 months to see all the sites, get all the achievement, and acquire all the best items, at least then it means everyone else will still be playing for a year. Its selfish for the player with only a few hours to think they should be able to achieve as much as those who play all day.
Let the players of today with that time to devote have their reward and stop trying to punish everyone because you no longer have that time. It makes the entire game less enjoyable for everyone.
The inability for dots to stack is one thing, but perhaps a mob hit by a fire or ice nuke could become less susceptible to that type of damage for a limited time. That means if you have 4 casters present using fire, they have to coordinate who will use ice or other lines of magic. Beyond those 4, you may end up using the same effects on a mob and it doing significantly less damage. Thus, the zerg without that coordination is way less effective. Even organized players, with a larger raid, will suffer a huge reduction in power due to diminishing returns.
This principle could be applied across the board to all forms of damage or healing. You could even add AI to compensate. If a mob is taking too many backstabs, for instance, it could begin moving around, forcing the entire raid to adjust and putting everyone in harms way to frontal attacks.
Then instead of allowing unlimited debuffs and for every debuff to stack, there could be a limited number of active debuffs (could be separated into 2 types, short term and long term). Every ability used on the mob, especially a mob with high armor, would have to be approached carefully. If an entire raid uses the same abilities they commonly use in a group, they would be overwriting those armor reduction debuffs that are crucial for that fight. This could greatly increase the hardness of a fight, simply because there are too many people and they aren't working together. However, even if they are working together, it places a logical limitation on what abilities can be used, thereby reducing the potential raid dps, becoming especially pronounced with larger raids.
I can only speak from my own personal experience in FFXI's endgame community. I saw the community go downhill very fast. We went from actively working with other guilds to rotate bosses and even /roll for claiming rights, to developing claiming bots and breaking all embargo rules in the name of loot acquisition. It was ruthless. We monopolized the hell out of every world spawn, even older content that was still lucrative, to the point of everyone that wanted loot had to pay us for it. Your average player or guild had no chance.
There was no such thing as seeing a boss spawn and guilds running to claim it. We had groups of players dual boxing characters at every single spawn point in every zone 24/7. Bosses spawned already claimed, usually to a claim bot or packet sniffer tool. It was the wild west where anything went.
My fear is that this nonsense returns. I'm a super competitive person that'll put in the time needed but not if this is encouraged again. There has to be a better way. There has to be systems in place from the ground up to discourage this type of behavior. Ultimately it'll be on the players to police themselves if systems are not in place. That will work at first but it won't last. I'm looking for a system that will.
Maybe Pantheon has a better system and my fears will be alleviated.
the developers should make the best content for the very few hardcore/raiders
raiding should be a thing for least people as possible
developers are foolish to put their creativity and soul into content for the masses, instead they should make their best most proud works of creation accessible to the least possible people.
that is the altruistic mentality the selfish middle 80% of the server population doesn't get?
lol
It isn't a reasonable argument, it is an argument of extremes based on a false summary designed to promote the victimization mentality. Honestly, I would spend time trying to reason with you, but I have been there, done that with people making these arguments and know that it would be wasted entirely as you have no interest in what this game is trying to achieve.
So, all I can say is... if you don't agree with what this game is being designed to achieve, go play another game. This game isn't for you and there are numerous games out there completely designed to fit your mentality. Enjoy!
1. If "best" equals raids to you, then yes. Many gamers don't view raids as the best (I don't). But, that doesn't mean I don't realize that the most challenging, time consuming content shouldn't be rewarded appropriately.
2. No one said raiding should be for the least amount of people possible. But, if you don't have the time/skill to raid, you shouldn't be rewarded a participation ribbon - as Sinist said, this isn't your game and the game shouldn't cater to you.
3. Developers already said the group game would be the focus and raids would be only approximately 15% of the content. So, developers would be focused to the masses and the 2-3 hour playstyle(raiders being the minority) . If you view "raids" as the best part of the game, then that is subjective, again, I don't. I view the journey 1-50 as the best. If you're talking about not being able to obtain the best loot without the greatest challenge, then again, wrong game.
4. It is altruistic and unselfish if a gamer is able to look outside of him/herself to create the best possible game even if he/she can't experience everything in it. It is very selfish if a gamer whines and cries and says that a game must cater to my lifestyle/time constraints/schedule at the expense of other gamer's experience because I can't get everything that the other player has (like Sinist said victim role). There's plenty of games that are available where you can obtain the "best" or be the "best" without effort - I'm still hoping Pantheon won't be one of them.