Interesting thread, made even more interesting by the fact that we have Brad listening in intently and chiming in accordingly. That said, I'd like to add my two cents in the form of a solution. Mine is a very simple one and very easy to implement. IMHO, one of the main reasons players camp is because they know the item loot tables of each mob to camp prior to starting their camping sessions. That said, wouldn't an easy solution to that be to make the loot tables random across all level appropriate mobs and zones?
Randomizing item loot tables across all level appropriate mobs and zones would not only make it a guessing game of which mob to camp for any item, but it would also spread out the camping potential to such a varied extent that experiencing over camping on any one mob, or zone, literally non-existent. In other words, how do you target any one specific mob for an item if you do not know what that mob is going to drop? This would, of course, exempt level appropriate quest items needed for quest completion. Level appropriate dungeons would work in the same manner in as much as we know we will get something of value, we just won't know what that item will be and therefore will not be tempted to camp the mob ad nauseam in hopes of attaining that one item that the mob is "known" to drop.
This all, of course, assumes a healthy variety of mobs and zones for every level. Which, IMHO, should be a necessary priority if we are aiming for that "old school" long leveling journey experience where a player will remain at the same level for a good period of time.
Seriously guys. TLC was invented in EQ and quickly abandoned because everyone hated it. Why would you think these guys would give it another try? It was and is a flawed concept.
This isn't a discussion about asking for TLC, it is a discussion about the issues that led designers to consider such implementation and about the flaws of it as well as the issues that may warrant it.
Besides, TLC as we know it is not what I have been suggesting. I don't want to see that type of stuff either (where you are barred from loot because you are too high of level). There is a worry about certain things that may occur and this is a good time to throw out all kinds of discussion on it rather than wait for it to become a problem and then they implement a solution that is hastened by emotional parties.
Getting rid of free player trading does 'fix' farming, but it also takes away so much from the game too. I'm really not looking for 'quick fixes' that often do more harm than good. It's like Instancing -- yes Instancing 'fixes' some issues, like too much contested content, etc., but it also does much more harm than good.
So it's safe to assume Pantheon's items will be mostly tradable (except for quest items and such). And it's safe to say the vast majority of zones will NOT be instanced.
Useful brainstorming and theory crafting at this point would take the above and then try to figure out how to address bottom feeding, farming, etc. within those confines.
thanks
What about phasing individual contested mobs, so that everyone has a shot. Considering EQ's low drop rate, letting everyone have a shot at the mob shouldn't create a huge influx of items, at least not any more than some twerp camping it day in and day out.
That goes against the idea of contested content. Contested content is not the problem here, it is the possible extreme abuses that are. Having to be diligent to get a camp, or having to wait a while before the popularity dies off because you don't have a lot of time compete with the new content is not the problem.
The problem is going through all of that and still not having a chance because some guy is farming for his E-Bay sales to make real money, or the guy who is trying to bank up a ton of plat so he can buy that top end item that he doesn't want to put in the effort to camp himself (often because they suck so bad nobody wants to group with them) or... the entitled who say "but I work all day, I have a job, I don't have time to play and get that item... I should be able to buy that item.. my fun... blah blah"
Nothing wrong with having a hard time getting a camp. That is the point and this makes the item rare, difficult to obtain, and worth having it. Though... having 50 of those items thrown up on the AH kind of defeats that whole point, and in my opinion, that is a problem.
Honestly, when you see a person with an item on, you should go "They put time and effort into obtaining that item", not "They ground easy crap for weeks to buy that" or "He paid $99.99 at FarmYOGear for that". Seeing that crap kind of makes you look at the time and effort you put in and go... "screw this, not bothering with this stupid game".
I have a feeling that many players are like me in that they would prefer to get their gear, xp, rewards from adventuring, not the AH or cash shop. Thanks to current developer mindsets and RMT professionals and certain player behaviors, more often than not, many if not most gamers are forced to get the gear they need from other players instead of the content. Great for the handful of cheaters and exploiters and crappy for the gaming population at large. Defeats the purpose of risk vs. reward and diminishes the reason to explore and do the content in the first place. Allowing individuals or groups of players the tools they need to lock down content and rewards for their own purposes engenders anti-social behavior. Creating pecking orders and placing a focus on contested drops as content is detrimental to cooperative game play.
A lot of the social issues can be managed with player reputation, and for those obvious issues, I really think we can rely on the player base. Camping is another story though. You see, there is nothing wrong with someone technically camping an item for long periods of time. What may be wrong is their incentive to do it.
You see, if they are camping weeks on end to obtain an item they will use or for a friend, well... eventually they will move on. If they however are camping the item because it is a hot cash item and the more the better, how long they decide to stay and how often that same person keeps tying up the camp can be indefinite and continuous. It doesn't take many people with the same idea to essentially cause a camp to go into perm-camped status.
Now I am not suggesting they should be disallowed to get items they seek, I am suggesting there be things put in to discourage the practice of turning a camp into that extreme focus. The idea is not to make it so "everyone gets an equal shot", that is not the point, I could care less about that, it is about making sure that a small number of individual does not have the power to control a spawn to such an effect.
I am not suggesting a bunch of harsh mechanics, penalties or gimmicks, rather I think subtle code implementations can be implemented that will only reduce the extreme cases. If implemented correctly, people will still be able to camp spawns for long periods of time (rares are not easy drops), and return to the camps over time as well. It won't guarantee the camp will be available, it will only target the extreme cases and if it is true as to what people are saying (ie those extreme cases never happen), then nobody should ever notice it.
Interesting thread, made even more interesting by the fact that we have Brad listening in intently and chiming in accordingly. That said, I'd like to add my two cents in the form of a solution. Mine is a very simple one and very easy to implement. IMHO, one of the main reasons players camp is because they know the item loot tables of each mob to camp prior to starting their camping sessions. That said, wouldn't an easy solution to that be to make the loot tables random across all level appropriate mobs and zones?
Randomizing item loot tables across all level appropriate mobs and zones would not only make it a guessing game of which mob to loot for any item, but it would also spread out the camping potential to such a varied extent that experiencing over camping on any one mob, or zone, literally non-existent. In other words, how do you target any one specific mob for an item if you do not know what that mob is going to drop? This would, of course, exempt level appropriate quest items needed for quest completion. Level appropriate dungeons would work in the same manner in as much as we know we will get something of value, we just won't know what that item will be and therefore will not be tempted to camp the mob ad nauseam in hopes of attaining that one item that the mob is "known" to drop.
This all, of course, assumes a healthy variety of mobs and zones for every level. Which, IMHO, should be the priority if we are aiming for that "old school" long leveling journey experience where a player will remain at the same level for a good period of time.
That is a solution, but is kills certain aspects of goal oriented play. I have played games that do exactly as you mention and the problem is that it takes away the meaning of a specific mob kill. It takes away the connection of style and meaning of a loot drop (ie getting the Staff of Ro off Rahotep or the FBSS haste sash off the Frenzy Ghoul).
DDO did such and I can tell you it caused me to quit the game. It completely killed the excitement of coming across a certain named, or the goal play of trying to get to a certain camp and wait with anticipation with each rare pop... "will he drop the sash? or the Helm this time?"
Interesting thread, made even more interesting by the fact that we have Brad listening in intently and chiming in accordingly. That said, I'd like to add my two cents in the form of a solution. Mine is a very simple one and very easy to implement. IMHO, one of the main reasons players camp is because they know the item loot tables of each mob to camp prior to starting their camping sessions. That said, wouldn't an easy solution to that be to make the loot tables random across all level appropriate mobs and zones?
Randomizing item loot tables across all level appropriate mobs and zones would not only make it a guessing game of which mob to loot for any item, but it would also spread out the camping potential to such a varied extent that experiencing over camping on any one mob, or zone, literally non-existent. In other words, how do you target any one specific mob for an item if you do not know what that mob is going to drop? This would, of course, exempt level appropriate quest items needed for quest completion. Level appropriate dungeons would work in the same manner in as much as we know we will get something of value, we just won't know what that item will be and therefore will not be tempted to camp the mob ad nauseam in hopes of attaining that one item that the mob is "known" to drop.
This all, of course, assumes a healthy variety of mobs and zones for every level. Which, IMHO, should be the priority if we are aiming for that "old school" long leveling journey experience where a player will remain at the same level for a good period of time.
That is a solution, but is kills certain aspects of goal oriented play. I have played games that do exactly as you mention and the problem is that it takes away the meaning of a specific mob kill. It takes away the connection of style and meaning of a loot drop (ie getting the Staff of Ro off Rahotep or the FBSS haste sash off the Frenzy Ghoul).
DDO did such and I can tell you it caused me to quit the game. It completely killed the excitement of coming across a certain named, or the goal play of trying to get to a certain camp and wait with anticipation with each rare pop... "will he drop the sash? or the Helm this time?"
So I am dead set against that personally.
I understand, but TBH there will be something about every solution that won't sit well with a certain percentage of the gaming population. That said, bouncing these concerns off of each other is what these discussions are about so in that light, and in regard to your concern, a solution could be that random loot is handled in this manner but drops that are specific to a named mob would be handled in the timing solution that you suggested. The answer is somewhere in the middle of all of these solutions being suggested and even then there will be a percentage that will not agree with it.
It isn't about "entitlement", in fact I never even used the AH because I thought it was cheating for people who were too lazy or too unskilled to be able to actually play the game to get their items.
THIS exactly is the reason we can not find any solution between the two of us.
You think AH and trading is lazy, unskilled cheating. That is so far away from my standpoint that we would never be able to reach any agreement on this topic. Actually i question how you came to such a dramatic statement.
But i understand why you are so furious about this topic now. It makes sense with that sentiment. However i STRONGLY disagree. Trading, no matter how, is a huge part of MMOs and actually was one of the biggest parts about early EQ. Who does not remember the EC Tunnel?!
I have always been a little jealous about those experienced and wealthy traders tho. Never managed to make it work for me. More of the adventure type,... but trading your goods for something else was fun, almost always. And most definitly a part of the game and NOT CHEATING or lazyness. Getting EVERYTHING in a game by yourself should not be possible, or very, very, VERY time consuming. Unlike the current gen "rush to get your gear in 3 days"-mmos.
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
It isn't about "entitlement", in fact I never even used the AH because I thought it was cheating for people who were too lazy or too unskilled to be able to actually play the game to get their items.
THIS exactly is the reason we can not find any solution between the two of us.
You think AH and trading is lazy, unskilled cheating. That is so far away from my standpoint that we would never be able to reach any agreement on this topic. Actually i question how you came to such a dramatic statement.
But i understand why you are so furious about this topic now. It makes sense with that sentiment. However i STRONGLY disagree. Trading, no matter how, is a huge part of MMOs and actually was one of the biggest parts about early EQ. Who does not remember the EC Tunnel?!
I have always been a little jealous about those experienced and wealthy traders tho. Never managed to make it work for me. More of the adventure type,... but trading your goods for something else was fun, almost always. And most definitly a part of the game and NOT CHEATING or lazyness. Getting EVERYTHING in a game by yourself should not be possible, or very, very, VERY time consuming. Unlike the current gen "rush to get your gear in 3 days"-mmos.
How did I come to such? I have explained. It is because player trade circumvents player progression of difficulty in play by the developer. Do you honestly think that a player who sits on the AH market, trading, buying low, selling high and playing the market puts in the same amount of effort that the guy who goes to that difficult camp with the group, spends the time and effort breaking it and holding it?
I played the AH game, as I said... I proved many times over to those who said otherwise that the AH game is cheat game to fast earnings playing on the impatient and gullible. You give me a tad bit of cash and with some time and patience, I will turn that money into large amounts, with the more I make the bigger I make. Give me enough time and I will be able to buy anything the market has and I can do this with spending little to no time playing the game. Hell, I got a lot of my hints from guys in EQ who built millions just sitting as a level one in EC building slowly and then exponentially, never once having to play in a group, never once have to put any effort of skill into playing a class, never once having to give a shit about the game.
I am not jealous of those traders, as I said... I have been them, I just see such pursuits as STUPIDLY easy money and pointless play. It isn't hard, it isn't even remotely difficult.
See, I would like to play a game where people can't cheat with those idiot player trade markets. Heck, I even suggested in my discussion (not sure this one or not) that there should be all kinds of real life mechanics for traders to force them to actually play a game, to have to deal with risk in buying selling, to have to deal with taxes, rent, product degradation, etc... I mean, you want player trade? Fine, make it a game, just like the adventure game, make people earn their damn money rather than just gimmick selling with no consequence.
Heck, I have suggested elaborate systems in other games as a solution and you know what? Nobody wants them... It is because they have no interest in playing a game, they just want the AH to cheat through the systems, both those who want boring safe mundane grinds over actual skill and effort and those who simply buy their progression through gold sellers.
Interesting thread, made even more interesting by the fact that
we have Brad listening in intently and chiming in accordingly. That
said, I'd like to add my two cents in the form of a solution. Mine is a
very simple one and very easy to implement. IMHO, one of the main
reasons players camp is because they know the item loot tables of each
mob to camp prior to starting their camping sessions. That said,
wouldn't an easy solution to that be to make the loot tables random
across all level appropriate mobs and zones?
Randomizing item
loot tables across all level appropriate mobs and zones would not only
make it a guessing game of which mob to loot for any item, but it would
also spread out the camping potential to such a varied extent that
experiencing over camping on any one mob, or zone, literally
non-existent. In other words, how do you target any one specific mob
for an item if you do not know what that mob is going to drop? This
would, of course, exempt level appropriate quest items needed for quest
completion. Level appropriate dungeons would work in the same manner in
as much as we know we will get something of value, we just won't know
what that item will be and therefore will not be tempted to camp the mob
ad nauseam in hopes of attaining that one item that the mob is "known"
to drop.
This all, of course, assumes a healthy variety of mobs
and zones for every level. Which, IMHO, should be the priority if we
are aiming for that "old school" long leveling journey experience where a
player will remain at the same level for a good period of time.
That is a solution, but is kills certain aspects of goal oriented
play. I have played games that do exactly as you mention and the problem
is that it takes away the meaning of a specific mob kill. It takes away
the connection of style and meaning of a loot drop (ie getting the
Staff of Ro off Rahotep or the FBSS haste sash off the Frenzy Ghoul).
DDO
did such and I can tell you it caused me to quit the game. It
completely killed the excitement of coming across a certain named, or
the goal play of trying to get to a certain camp and wait with
anticipation with each rare pop... "will he drop the sash? or the Helm
this time?"
So I am dead set against that personally.
I understand, but TBH there will be something about every solution
that won't sit well with a certain percentage of the gaming population.
That said, bouncing these concerns off of each other is what these
discussions are about so in that light, and in regard to your concern, a
solution could be that random loot is handled in this manner but drops
that are specific to a named mob would be handled in the timing solution
that you suggested. The answer is somewhere in the middle of all of
these solutions being suggested and even then there will be a percentage
that will not agree with it.
Well, if I had to choose between dealing with random loot as I have
experienced and the abuse of players over camping things? I will take
the over campers 10000 times over each week and twice that on Sunday.
Been there, done that. Random systems I won't play if you paid me to. Horrible implementations.
It isn't about "entitlement", in fact I never even used the AH because I thought it was cheating for people who were too lazy or too unskilled to be able to actually play the game to get their items.
THIS exactly is the reason we can not find any solution between the two of us.
You think AH and trading is lazy, unskilled cheating. That is so far away from my standpoint that we would never be able to reach any agreement on this topic. Actually i question how you came to such a dramatic statement.
But i understand why you are so furious about this topic now. It makes sense with that sentiment. However i STRONGLY disagree. Trading, no matter how, is a huge part of MMOs and actually was one of the biggest parts about early EQ. Who does not remember the EC Tunnel?!
I have always been a little jealous about those experienced and wealthy traders tho. Never managed to make it work for me. More of the adventure type,... but trading your goods for something else was fun, almost always. And most definitly a part of the game and NOT CHEATING or lazyness. Getting EVERYTHING in a game by yourself should not be possible, or very, very, VERY time consuming. Unlike the current gen "rush to get your gear in 3 days"-mmos.
How did I come to such? I have explained. It is because player trade circumvents player progression of difficulty in play by the developer. Do you honestly think that a player who sits on the AH market, trading, buying low, selling high and playing the market puts in the same amount of effort that the guy who goes to that difficult camp with the group, spends the time and effort breaking it and holding it?
I played the AH game, as I said... I proved many times over to those who said otherwise that the AH game is cheat game to fast earnings playing on the impatient and gullible. You give me a tad bit of cash and with some time and patience, I will turn that money into large amounts, with the more I make the bigger I make. Give me enough time and I will be able to buy anything the market has and I can do this with spending little to no time playing the game. Hell, I got a lot of my hints from guys in EQ who built millions just sitting as a level one in EC building slowly and then exponentially, never once having to play in a group, never once have to put any effort of skill into playing a class, never once having to give a shit about the game.
I am not jealous of those traders, as I said... I have been them, I just see such pursuits as STUPIDLY easy money and pointless play. It isn't hard, it isn't even remotely difficult.
See, I would like to play a game where people can't cheat with those idiot player trade markets. Heck, I even suggested in my discussion (not sure this one or not) that there should be all kinds of real life mechanics for traders to force them to actually play a game, to have to deal with risk in buying selling, to have to deal with taxes, rent, product degradation, etc... I mean, you want player trade? Fine, make it a game, just like the adventure game, make people earn their damn money rather than just gimmick selling with no consequence.
Heck, I have suggested elaborate systems in other games as a solution and you know what? Nobody wants them... It is because they have no interest in playing a game, they just want the AH to cheat through the systems, both those who want boring safe mundane grinds over actual skill and effort and those who simply buy their progression through gold sellers.
Game play? LOL
NO... just another mainstream "cheat play".
tell me, do you feel that people in real life are "cheating" too when they use currency to buy goods and services as opposed to making everything themselves?
and here is another thought: if the developers agreed with you and thought that trading and using an AH was "cheating" in thier current forms why put them in the game? Could it be that they designed the game with these systems in mind from the get go?
naw. . .its far more likely that you are right and everyone else(including the developers) is wrong. . .
tell me, do you feel that people in real life are "cheating" too when they use currency to buy goods and services as opposed to making everything themselves?
and here is another thought: if the developers agreed with you and thought that trading and using an AH was "cheating" in thier current forms why put them in the game? Could it be that they designed the game with these systems in mind from the get go?
naw. . .its far more likely that you are right and everyone else(including the developers) is wrong. . .
O.o
Tell me, do people in RL get to live in a fantasy world and ignore all reality while they have no rent space, no degrade products, no taxes, fees, licenses, operating costs, labor costs, storage costs... etc....
I think you better get a better argument if you want to claim I am being unreasonable about the complete "freebies" the player trade market gets.
In a lot of games, the items you can buy on an AH (or otherwise trade) are not as good as the non-tradeable drops you get in a dungeon. So even if you had a lot of coin from buying, selling, re-selling or farming, you would still need to get out of the city and fight if you want the best items. Will that not be the case in Pantheon?
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I do agree that contested loot can be an issue as I played recently on the latest EQ progression server. All of the mobs that would drop anything worthwhile were permacamped by people that were using programs to box 50 toons at a time.
I think a large amount of content and rare spawns would help as well as a mix of lore, no drop and freely tradeable items...will be the final set up for the game.
In a lot of games, the items you can buy on an AH (or otherwise trade) are not as good as the non-tradeable drops you get in a dungeon. So even if you had a lot of coin from buying, selling, re-selling or farming, you would still need to get out of the city and fight if you want the best items. Will that not be the case in Pantheon?
Well, I think Pantheon is aiming to have most of the drops in the game be fully trade-able without restrictions with only specific high end raid, epic and specific quest items being no drop.
That being the case, "most" items will likely be fully trade-able based on the discussion I saw, which means group dungeons will be open game and primarily the issue I was pointing out with spawn locking. Raids are only supposed to be around 15-20% of the game, so I don't see those being the issue at all to be honest. That also presents the problem that if people can "buy" their progression through the AH and most of the game is group based content, I think Pantheon is going to run into people hitting the caps very quickly due to the AH and plat RMT market spurring such transactions.
That is my opinion though. It is possible I could be wrong, but if I am right... it will be a large pile of "something" hitting a fan.
I do agree that contested loot can be an issue as I played recently on the latest EQ progression server. All of the mobs that would drop anything worthwhile were permacamped by people that were using programs to box 50 toons at a time.
I think a large amount of content and rare spawns would help as well as a mix of lore, no drop and freely tradeable items...will be the final set up for the game.
Yep. I see it being a problem, I hope I am wrong, in fact me being wrong would be flipping awesome, nothing to worry about and everything would be great... but... well... I am not so optimistic.
That said, we can have our cake and eat it too in this case. They can through some clever design implement a system that curbs abuse and is invisible or non-play progression disturbing if they are careful and think out an honest solution. I really think it is possible to create an invisible wall that only an abuser will know exists.
Your solution will make haste items common because they will be dropping from numerous spots. They wil be common, but basic statistics, there will be far more haste items in your solution than there would be if there was a limited source. That is, limited is the definition of rare. Not only that, but your solution does nothing to stop the camping issue. You think it will, but all that will do is increase the number of camps gold farmers will be able to camp in order to obtain those haste items.
This can go two routes... either the farmers camp and destroy to slow down the influx of haste items, or... they flood the AH with them making the price stupidly low.
The result? that rare and wanted item is now a common joke in the market where every player, twink and PET has one available.
I am not saying I want easy access to the damn spawn. I am saying I don't want some low life camper/gold seller camping it 24/7 so they can work the damn AH market to either promote their RMT or cater to the gold buyers who will use the AH as their damn cheat center for upgrading.
I wasn't born yesterday, and this isn't my first MMO. If you think people won't be using the AH quite excessively to BUY their way up the ranks in game, then I don't think you have played many MMOs because it is common knowledge of the gold buying market in games these days. Pantheon unless it has some amazing code to stop the antics of gold sellers, WILL have a MASSIVE amount of such abuses and so to think that issues won't come up in a contested content game is pure head in the sand thinking. it WILL be a problem and no... giving everyone a participation trophy which is what adding numerous camps for the same item will be is not the solution.
Seriously, I have seen you argue for the rarity of items and the uniqueness of having put the effort to obtain a rare item, and yet here you are arguing that flooding the damn game with multiple camps to provide similar items is a solution just because you can't accept a feature that if implemented properly will only target the people who are trying to circumvent game play through get rich schemes on the player trade market?
I don't get it... this is why I seriously hate the stupid player trade system. All it does is allow people to cheat and circumvent game play to get their item a heck of a lot more easily than if they camped it themselves.
I mean... "Oh look, I easily camped multiples of this hot item solo for weeks on end so I could sell them to gold buyers who are twinking their characters to by pass having to earn them in game play so I can turn around and bypass having to earn another item in game play by paying enormous amounts of cash to obtain it!"
It is beyond stupid. The whole player trading economy bullshit is just a hidden gold sellers scam to attend to cheating players. At least when there was a bartering economy, players had to provide equal value for trade. Now they just farm crap and make tons of plat to "grind" their way to top end gear! Yeah, that isn't mainstream at all.. nope. /boggle
I'm sorry dude but you're committing a major slippery slope fallacy here with that argument.
What you are doing is exaggerating things severely. It's not like he is suggesting we add 5x as many camps dropping similar items. The other issue you're not taking into account is its easy to balance the rarity side of things. If lets say the FBSS was the only item of its type, and it had a 5% drop rate. Then if they add a second camp with a similar item, but drop the FBSS drop rate to 2.5% and the new item at the new camp also has 2.5%, then the market is not being flooded with items, etc. The number of rare haste belts coming into the game is still the same.
The other issue is we have literally decades of evidence to the contrary of what you're saying will happen. That type of behavior does happen in games with AH. But in games like EQ, etc, where you had to physically sit around to sell items and couldn't just throw it on the AH and log off, that type of thing almost never happened. The longest I ever saw a single person sit around a camp single item was for about 18 hours. Having low enough drop rates combats this behavior. If someone sits around for 48 hours straight and only gets 2 items, and then does it a couple days later and only gets 1, they're going to be severely disinclined to engage in that type of behavior.
I just have not experienced what you have said outside of games that didn't have AH.
Edit: I really do think a wait and see approach is best. I do agree with you though that its a good idea to have some ideas to combat it fleshed out. However, under no circumstance is not having a player trading system in place a solution. That is something that will in my opinion kill the game for most people.
Edit 2: Also, if there is a good progression of items in the game, particularly at the higher levels, it removes the incentive for higher levels to farm lower quality items. Again it comes back to making sure things stay rare, but in the case of the FBSS, the issue was that there was no gap item between the FBSS and things like the RBG/RBB. So even an expansion later, people were still camping the crap out of it because there was nothing else to camp. If they had added an ever so slightly better item for kunark in between the FBSS and the RBG, it would have been a lot better. Hell it wouldn't even have needed to have been that much better. They could have called it the Flowing Green Silk Sash and it had 20% haste and a couple minor stats, and it wouldn't have hurt the game in any meaningful way.
Edit 3: Btw, on the rarity side of things, haste belts were actually stupidly easy to get in raid environments. Haste belts for every class dropped like candy in plane of sky. It was only the tradeable ones that became an issue. And frankly they still got flooded because once people replaced their FBSS etc, with a different, belt, they just sold their old one (or sometimes gave it to a twink, but either way).
Post edited by Hrimnir on
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I'm sorry dude but you're committing a major slippery slope fallacy here with that argument.
What you are doing is exaggerating things severely. It's not like he is suggesting we add 5x as many camps dropping similar items. The other issue you're not taking into account is its easy to balance the rarity side of things. If lets say the FBSS was the only item of its type, and it had a 5% drop rate. Then if they add a second camp with a similar item, but drop the FBSS drop rate to 2.5% and the new item at the new camp also has 2.5%, then the market is not being flooded with items, etc. The number of rare haste belts coming into the game is still the same.
The other issue is we have literally decades of evidence to the contrary of what you're saying will happen. That type of behavior does happen in games with AH. But in games like EQ, etc, where you had to physically sit around to sell items and couldn't just throw it on the AH and log off, that type of thing almost never happened. The longest I ever saw a single person sit around a camp single item was for about 18 hours. Having low enough drop rates combats this behavior. If someone sits around for 48 hours straight and only gets 2 items, and then does it a couple days later and only gets 1, they're going to be severely disinclined to engage in that type of behavior.
I just have not experienced what you have said outside of games that didn't have AH.
Edit: I really do think a wait and see approach is best. I do agree with you though that its a good idea to have some ideas to combat it fleshed out. However, under no circumstance is not having a player trading system in place a solution. That is something that will in my opinion kill the game for most people.
It was rampant in EQ with the Bazaar, what do you mean? Or are you saying it wasn't a problem pre-Bazaar? Even then though, camping was just starting. My example of my necro guild mate camping for FBSS was done pre-Bazaar.
You also have to realize that I am not trying to say a single person holds it for days and weeks on end. I am saying that players of such a nature camp to extreme extent which limits other entry into the camp. As I said in my FBSS example, there were three necros trading off the camps.
As I said, we will wait and see, but I also wasn't saying "no player trade", I was using that as an example of how it kills the behavior, meaning it is the main cause of why people would do such behavior in camps. The point was to focus a better solution to deal with those specific people.
Ideally, I would like to see the trade system have all kinds of realistic and pro/con systems that makes the idiotic easy manipulation of them in games today become much much more difficult (taxes, fees, licenses, rent, storage space fees, product degradation, etc... all on reoccurring monthly costs), though... just as you say having "no player trading" (which I am not advocating, rather fully controlled game system brokering between players with price controls, caps, etc...) will kill the game, so will any such solution I am speaking of as the point of the player trade system is not game play, but nothing more than player approved cheating. Until they put in some actual game play system to make it more than just a gimmick, it will be the center for abuse in all games.
That is what developers are ignoring. The trade system is their biggest offending loophole that sets all the of the rules, progression, and expected play on its ear. Until they deal with that, the rest is just blowing smoke up peoples arse.
I'm sorry dude but you're committing a major slippery slope fallacy here with that argument.
What you are doing is exaggerating things severely. It's not like he is suggesting we add 5x as many camps dropping similar items. The other issue you're not taking into account is its easy to balance the rarity side of things. If lets say the FBSS was the only item of its type, and it had a 5% drop rate. Then if they add a second camp with a similar item, but drop the FBSS drop rate to 2.5% and the new item at the new camp also has 2.5%, then the market is not being flooded with items, etc. The number of rare haste belts coming into the game is still the same.
The other issue is we have literally decades of evidence to the contrary of what you're saying will happen. That type of behavior does happen in games with AH. But in games like EQ, etc, where you had to physically sit around to sell items and couldn't just throw it on the AH and log off, that type of thing almost never happened. The longest I ever saw a single person sit around a camp single item was for about 18 hours. Having low enough drop rates combats this behavior. If someone sits around for 48 hours straight and only gets 2 items, and then does it a couple days later and only gets 1, they're going to be severely disinclined to engage in that type of behavior.
I just have not experienced what you have said outside of games that didn't have AH.
Edit: I really do think a wait and see approach is best. I do agree with you though that its a good idea to have some ideas to combat it fleshed out. However, under no circumstance is not having a player trading system in place a solution. That is something that will in my opinion kill the game for most people.
It was rampant in EQ with the Bazaar, what do you mean? Or are you saying it wasn't a problem pre-Bazaar? Even then though, camping was just starting. My example of my necro guild mate camping for FBSS was done pre-Bazaar.
You also have to realize that I am not trying to say a single person holds it for days and weeks on end. I am saying that players of such a nature camp to extreme extent which limits other entry into the camp. As I said in my FBSS example, there were three necros trading off the camps.
As I said, we will wait and see, but I also wasn't saying "no player trade", I was using that as an example of how it kills the behavior, meaning it is the main cause of why people would do such behavior in camps. The point was to focus a better solution to deal with those specific people.
Ideally, I would like to see the trade system have all kinds of realistic and pro/con systems that makes the idiotic easy manipulation of them in games today become much much more difficult (taxes, fees, licenses, rent, storage space fees, product degradation, etc... all on reoccurring monthly costs), though... just as you say having "no player trading" (which I am not advocating, rather fully controlled game system brokering between players with price controls, caps, etc...) will kill the game, so will any such solution I am speaking of as the point of the player trade system is not game play, but nothing more than player approved cheating. Until they put in some actual game play system to make it more than just a gimmick, it will be the center for abuse in all games.
That is what developers are ignoring. The trade system is their biggest offending loophole that sets all the of the rules, progression, and expected play on its ear. Until they deal with that, the rest is just blowing smoke up peoples arse.
You're talking about the bazaar, which was for all intents and purposes an auction house. Frankly by most of our opinions the game had gone severely downhill by that point. But yes, I am absolutely talking pre bazaar.
Your example of the necro was the exception not the rule. Most of us played the game extensively prior to that, I had 4600 hours prior to PoP on my paladin and I can count on my fingers the number of times I experienced people doing ridiculous things like that.
And frankly, if a guild of people, or a group of friends is trading off and monopolizing a camp, I don't really have an issue with that. Whether they are there or someone else is there, the same number of items are still coming into the market. The issue is if a single person is being incentivized to monopolize the camp. The second issue is that if that is the only item of its type, and there are no other options, then it becomes a problem. Similar to in POP when guilds would monopolize key mobs so that other guilds couldn't get past that stage of the key process, and then the guild monopolizing it would have unfettered access to the raid content above it. This is is a failing of the game design. There is a level of rarity that is necessary to make items have value. But there is inbetween. Having say only 1 haste belt in the entire game off 1 camp in the entire game, is stupid. However the flipside of like WoW where you just have 64 different variations of the same items from tons of different places is a problem as well. The middle ground is what works. Have 2-3 variations across various camps, etc.
Again, the point is also, with a player trade system, you don't have to specifically camp the item you want. So what if the FBSS camp was not open, just go camp a different item, sell it, and use the money to buy an FBSS on the market. There's multiple paths to the same goal. It's just like real life, if you want a house, you don't have to go build one yourself, you can work a job, make the money, and then buy the house from someone who did build it.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I have a feeling that many players are like me in that they would prefer to get their gear, xp, rewards from adventuring, not the AH or cash shop. Thanks to current developer mindsets and RMT professionals and certain player behaviors, more often than not, many if not most gamers are forced to get the gear they need from other players instead of the content. Great for the handful of cheaters and exploiters and crappy for the gaming population at large. Defeats the purpose of risk vs. reward and diminishes the reason to explore and do the content in the first place. Allowing individuals or groups of players the tools they need to lock down content and rewards for their own purposes engenders anti-social behavior. Creating pecking orders and placing a focus on contested drops as content is detrimental to cooperative game play.
I just don't understand this mentality. If you spend 8 hours in a dungeon with your buddies camping your 1h sword of badassery. And I spend 8 hours in a different dungeon camping the chestplate of badassery, and I sell said chestplate, and use the money from it to buy the 1h sword of badassery, we've both spent 8 hours achieving our goal.
As I've said before, the issue here is having an auction house where people can drop items, and then log off and have their items be available for sale. The AH is the problem. Not the player trade system. EQ did not have these issue early on because of a combination of 2 things. 1. Items were rare. 2. You had to physically be present and meet up with and initiate a trade with a person. You couldn't just drop it on the AH and go watch 10 hours of Netflix while your items sold and log back in a day later to a massive pile of gold.
The other issue with ONLY being able to get items from adventuring is it makes large swathes of content become useless. Maybe some new player a couple years into the games life wants to get an item from a dungeon, but he can't get enough players together to go camp the item because the overall playerbase has moved on. In this scenario there is incentive for that content to be utilized because a higher level player can go camp that item to sell and make money etc, and now the new player who would otherwise be screwed, can buy the item from the guy who can actually camp the item.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Getting rid of free player trading does 'fix' farming, but it also takes away so much from the game too. I'm really not looking for 'quick fixes' that often do more harm than good. It's like Instancing -- yes Instancing 'fixes' some issues, like too much contested content, etc., but it also does much more harm than good.
So it's safe to assume Pantheon's items will be mostly tradable (except for quest items and such). And it's safe to say the vast majority of zones will NOT be instanced.
Useful brainstorming and theory crafting at this point would take the above and then try to figure out how to address bottom feeding, farming, etc. within those confines.
thanks
What about phasing individual contested mobs, so that everyone has a shot. Considering EQ's low drop rate, letting everyone have a shot at the mob shouldn't create a huge influx of items, at least not any more than some twerp camping it day in and day out.
That goes against the idea of contested content. Contested content is not the problem here, it is the possible extreme abuses that are. Having to be diligent to get a camp, or having to wait a while before the popularity dies off because you don't have a lot of time compete with the new content is not the problem.
The problem is going through all of that and still not having a chance because some guy is farming for his E-Bay sales to make real money, or the guy who is trying to bank up a ton of plat so he can buy that top end item that he doesn't want to put in the effort to camp himself (often because they suck so bad nobody wants to group with them) or... the entitled who say "but I work all day, I have a job, I don't have time to play and get that item... I should be able to buy that item.. my fun... blah blah"
Nothing wrong with having a hard time getting a camp. That is the point and this makes the item rare, difficult to obtain, and worth having it. Though... having 50 of those items thrown up on the AH kind of defeats that whole point, and in my opinion, that is a problem.
Honestly, when you see a person with an item on, you should go "They put time and effort into obtaining that item", not "They ground easy crap for weeks to buy that" or "He paid $99.99 at FarmYOGear for that". Seeing that crap kind of makes you look at the time and effort you put in and go... "screw this, not bothering with this stupid game".
Aradune keeps labeling this game as a cooperative MMORPG. Focusing on contested content or drops spits in the face of coop and turns it into a pvevp. Only now, you can't do anything to the asshats that ruin your day by locking content down. I despised that aspect of EQ and will not tolerate it in Pantheon if that is the path they choose. Having recently been subjected to the content lockdown in the new TLS for EQLive, it has refreshed my despite for such game design. If this is what Aradune really wants, then make it a real pvp game so you can get back at the jerks and content hogs.
Aradune keeps labeling this game as a cooperative MMORPG. Focusing on contested content or drops spits in the face of coop and turns it into a pvevp. Only now, you can't do anything to the asshats that ruin your day by locking content down. I despised that aspect of EQ and will not tolerate it in Pantheon if that is the path they choose. Having recently been subjected to the content lockdown in the new TLS for EQLive, it has refreshed my despite for such game design. If this is what Aradune really wants, then make it a real pvp game so you can get back at the jerks and content hogs.
Well, I think they might have some PvP servers come release, just as EQ did, they just haven't committed to it as of yet so your chances are pretty good of having a PvP server to play on, especially if there is enough interest.
Me personally, I had all the PvP I could want for a lifetime while MUDing before EQ was even out, I really don't care to pvp anymore. I would just like a solid EQ like experience (pre-mainstream features) before it went to hell.
Edit 2: Also, if there is a good progression of items in the game, particularly at the higher levels, it removes the incentive for higher levels to farm lower quality items. Again it comes back to making sure things stay rare, but in the case of the FBSS, the issue was that there was no gap item between the FBSS and things like the RBG/RBB. So even an expansion later, people were still camping the crap out of it because there was nothing else to camp. If they had added an ever so slightly better item for kunark in between the FBSS and the RBG, it would have been a lot better. Hell it wouldn't even have needed to have been that much better. They could have called it the Flowing Green Silk Sash and it had 20% haste and a couple minor stats, and it wouldn't have hurt the game in any meaningful way.
Edit 3: Btw, on the rarity side of things, haste belts were actually stupidly easy to get in raid environments. Haste belts for every class dropped like candy in plane of sky. It was only the tradeable ones that became an issue. And frankly they still got flooded because once people replaced their FBSS etc, with a different, belt, they just sold their old one (or sometimes gave it to a twink, but either way).
Your solution is actually what they did do in Kunark. There were easy common drop haste belts for every melee class from plane of sky for starters, and that was pre-Kunark. Then there was hangman's noose and sash of the dragonborn (but it was only slightly better, and quite a bit harder to camp being in Howling Stones).
Re: @Sinist how did I get all those haste items on a PvP server? By playing the game which was apparently much less contested and full of gold farmers than you remember. Maybe Rallos had a slightly lower population than PvE servers, but I had even better gear on my wizard until Velious when I totally stopped playing on Tarew.
EQ server list with populations from 2001.
Yes, PvP servers were usually quite a bit behind early on due to the competition. Rallos Zek was no different. Plane of sky was an 8 hour respawn though, and the basic, non-quest haste belt from there was a common drop off almost every named on each island. Many epics took everyone there, so it really became the easiest way to get haste, especially decent nodrop haste that couldn't be looted in PvP. I got hangman's noose because I was really lucky when I was camping Sebilis keys for either myself or a guild mate. I killed Severilous 1 time with only my guild there. We did it with less than 4 groups of mostly non-60s and I probably just won the roll (we didn't do DKP). Same thing happened with cowl of mortality.
One thing you can know, is that people weren't going to spend less time trading in East Commons to obtain those items than I spent acquiring them the old fashioned way.
It was rampant in EQ with the Bazaar, what do you mean? Or are you saying it wasn't a problem pre-Bazaar? Even then though, camping was just starting. My example of my necro guild mate camping for FBSS was done pre-Bazaar.
You also have to realize that I am not trying to say a single person holds it for days and weeks on end. I am saying that players of such a nature camp to extreme extent which limits other entry into the camp. As I said in my FBSS example, there were three necros trading off the camps.
As I said, we will wait and see, but I also wasn't saying "no player trade", I was using that as an example of how it kills the behavior, meaning it is the main cause of why people would do such behavior in camps. The point was to focus a better solution to deal with those specific people.
Ideally, I would like to see the trade system have all kinds of realistic and pro/con systems that makes the idiotic easy manipulation of them in games today become much much more difficult (taxes, fees, licenses, rent, storage space fees, product degradation, etc... all on reoccurring monthly costs), though... just as you say having "no player trading" (which I am not advocating, rather fully controlled game system brokering between players with price controls, caps, etc...) will kill the game, so will any such solution I am speaking of as the point of the player trade system is not game play, but nothing more than player approved cheating. Until they put in some actual game play system to make it more than just a gimmick, it will be the center for abuse in all games.
That is what developers are ignoring. The trade system is their biggest offending loophole that sets all the of the rules, progression, and expected play on its ear. Until they deal with that, the rest is just blowing smoke up peoples arse.
There is an example of no player trade economy being put into a game that traditionally had it, and that is Diablo 3. And look what it has brought down upon it, since the removal of player trading, and all items being specific to you, the game has MASSIVELY dropped in popularity since the change.
The only part of what you're saying I agree with is the fact that you should be able to obtain an item by camping it if you want.
The response I have to that is that you may have to *gasp* WAIT YOUR TURN. In a virtual world with no instances you need to SHARE your experience with everyone else, it's like RL, if you want to eat at that nice restaurant tonight you had better have an early reservation, or you're just shit out of luck. Exclusivity is something I desperately want back in my MMORPGS.
How did I come to such? I have explained. It is because player trade circumvents player progression of difficulty in play by the developer. Do you honestly think that a player who sits on the AH market, trading, buying low, selling high and playing the market puts in the same amount of effort that the guy who goes to that difficult camp with the group, spends the time and effort breaking it and holding it?
....
Game play? LOL
NO... just another mainstream "cheat play".
No, i don't think they have the same difficulty. They simply play another way then i do. And i love that about MMOs. It is possible to be a PvE player, PvP player, Trader, Crafter,...
Why would i question other peoples reasoning to play a game? Just because they get their enjoyment in a differend way and via differend playstyles? No. Let them play how they want and i play how i want. They fokus on trading and i fokus on bringing them the goods to trade, while also benefitting from them by exchanging my treasures.
Why do you play MMOs if all you want is adventure? Any solo RPG would fit way way better. I mean... i dislike FPS combat, so i just don't play FPS. I don't start a FPS game and demand a change in gameplay to fit my style.
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
How did I come to such? I have explained. It is because player trade circumvents player progression of difficulty in play by the developer. Do you honestly think that a player who sits on the AH market, trading, buying low, selling high and playing the market puts in the same amount of effort that the guy who goes to that difficult camp with the group, spends the time and effort breaking it and holding it?
....
Game play? LOL
NO... just another mainstream "cheat play".
No, i don't think they have the same difficulty. They simply play another way then i do. And i love that about MMOs. It is possible to be a PvE player, PvP player, Trader, Crafter,...
Why would i question other peoples reasoning to play a game? Just because they get their enjoyment in a differend way and via differend playstyles? No. Let them play how they want and i play how i want. They fokus on trading and i fokus on bringing them the goods to trade, while also benefitting from them by exchanging my treasures.
Why do you play MMOs if all you want is adventure? Any solo RPG would fit way way better. I mean... i dislike FPS combat, so i just don't play FPS. I don't start a FPS game and demand a change in gameplay to fit my style.
Can we cut it out with the straw mans? I am not one of those people who demand the game be put into an easy little box to cater to my position. Your response here is shows either you aren't reading my responses are you are just bring ignorant to attend to a devious purpose.
Your comments of "Why can't you just let people play the way they want to play?" is a common one used by people who are PTW RMT supporters. They disregard all the aspects of a game in order to promote being able to circumvent game play. buying your way up through the game is not a "play style", it is a bypassing play in order to get an easy win. Calling that a play style is like calling a bug seeking exploiter who dupes a "play style" because that is how they "enjoy" the game.
You are hiding behind group play in a means to say that if I can't accept people who want to cheat the content, bypass intended play mechanics, that some how I am anti-game. It is an absurd fallacy to justify a PTW mentality that has become the cancer of MMOs by people who will not accept that what they are doing is just a form of cheating a system.
I bring up the need to make player trade an actual game rather than some gimmick that any idiot can manipulate to get rich easy so they can buy their way past game play and people rush to defend it with "their fun" /derp and "their play style" /derp rather than agreeing trade having pros/cons like a "game" /gasp is better than the bypass player trade provides as a means to circumvent actually having to play the game. Go ahead, tell me it is about "my fun" and all that, just like those who demand the game be made easy, have soloing, etc... same people, same argument, both want easy access progression, one is just deluding themselves that they are different.
Go ahead though, spin this and try to make it seem like I am some mainstream player asking for the game ot be handed to me. I am sure that Alinsky tactic works just fine for clueless people.
Comments
Randomizing item loot tables across all level appropriate mobs and zones would not only make it a guessing game of which mob to camp for any item, but it would also spread out the camping potential to such a varied extent that experiencing over camping on any one mob, or zone, literally non-existent. In other words, how do you target any one specific mob for an item if you do not know what that mob is going to drop? This would, of course, exempt level appropriate quest items needed for quest completion. Level appropriate dungeons would work in the same manner in as much as we know we will get something of value, we just won't know what that item will be and therefore will not be tempted to camp the mob ad nauseam in hopes of attaining that one item that the mob is "known" to drop.
This all, of course, assumes a healthy variety of mobs and zones for every level. Which, IMHO, should be a necessary priority if we are aiming for that "old school" long leveling journey experience where a player will remain at the same level for a good period of time.
Besides, TLC as we know it is not what I have been suggesting. I don't want to see that type of stuff either (where you are barred from loot because you are too high of level). There is a worry about certain things that may occur and this is a good time to throw out all kinds of discussion on it rather than wait for it to become a problem and then they implement a solution that is hastened by emotional parties.
The problem is going through all of that and still not having a chance because some guy is farming for his E-Bay sales to make real money, or the guy who is trying to bank up a ton of plat so he can buy that top end item that he doesn't want to put in the effort to camp himself (often because they suck so bad nobody wants to group with them) or... the entitled who say "but I work all day, I have a job, I don't have time to play and get that item... I should be able to buy that item.. my fun... blah blah"
Nothing wrong with having a hard time getting a camp. That is the point and this makes the item rare, difficult to obtain, and worth having it. Though... having 50 of those items thrown up on the AH kind of defeats that whole point, and in my opinion, that is a problem.
Honestly, when you see a person with an item on, you should go "They put time and effort into obtaining that item", not "They ground easy crap for weeks to buy that" or "He paid $99.99 at FarmYOGear for that". Seeing that crap kind of makes you look at the time and effort you put in and go... "screw this, not bothering with this stupid game".
A lot of the social issues can be managed with player reputation, and for those obvious issues, I really think we can rely on the player base. Camping is another story though. You see, there is nothing wrong with someone technically camping an item for long periods of time. What may be wrong is their incentive to do it.
You see, if they are camping weeks on end to obtain an item they will use or for a friend, well... eventually they will move on. If they however are camping the item because it is a hot cash item and the more the better, how long they decide to stay and how often that same person keeps tying up the camp can be indefinite and continuous. It doesn't take many people with the same idea to essentially cause a camp to go into perm-camped status.
Now I am not suggesting they should be disallowed to get items they seek, I am suggesting there be things put in to discourage the practice of turning a camp into that extreme focus. The idea is not to make it so "everyone gets an equal shot", that is not the point, I could care less about that, it is about making sure that a small number of individual does not have the power to control a spawn to such an effect.
I am not suggesting a bunch of harsh mechanics, penalties or gimmicks, rather I think subtle code implementations can be implemented that will only reduce the extreme cases. If implemented correctly, people will still be able to camp spawns for long periods of time (rares are not easy drops), and return to the camps over time as well. It won't guarantee the camp will be available, it will only target the extreme cases and if it is true as to what people are saying (ie those extreme cases never happen), then nobody should ever notice it.
That is a solution, but is kills certain aspects of goal oriented play. I have played games that do exactly as you mention and the problem is that it takes away the meaning of a specific mob kill. It takes away the connection of style and meaning of a loot drop (ie getting the Staff of Ro off Rahotep or the FBSS haste sash off the Frenzy Ghoul).
DDO did such and I can tell you it caused me to quit the game. It completely killed the excitement of coming across a certain named, or the goal play of trying to get to a certain camp and wait with anticipation with each rare pop... "will he drop the sash? or the Helm this time?"
So I am dead set against that personally.
I understand, but TBH there will be something about every solution that won't sit well with a certain percentage of the gaming population. That said, bouncing these concerns off of each other is what these discussions are about so in that light, and in regard to your concern, a solution could be that random loot is handled in this manner but drops that are specific to a named mob would be handled in the timing solution that you suggested. The answer is somewhere in the middle of all of these solutions being suggested and even then there will be a percentage that will not agree with it.
You think AH and trading is lazy, unskilled cheating. That is so far away from my standpoint that we would never be able to reach any agreement on this topic. Actually i question how you came to such a dramatic statement.
But i understand why you are so furious about this topic now. It makes sense with that sentiment. However i STRONGLY disagree. Trading, no matter how, is a huge part of MMOs and actually was one of the biggest parts about early EQ. Who does not remember the EC Tunnel?!
I have always been a little jealous about those experienced and wealthy traders tho. Never managed to make it work for me. More of the adventure type,... but trading your goods for something else was fun, almost always. And most definitly a part of the game and NOT CHEATING or lazyness. Getting EVERYTHING in a game by yourself should not be possible, or very, very, VERY time consuming. Unlike the current gen "rush to get your gear in 3 days"-mmos.
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
How did I come to such? I have explained. It is because player trade circumvents player progression of difficulty in play by the developer. Do you honestly think that a player who sits on the AH market, trading, buying low, selling high and playing the market puts in the same amount of effort that the guy who goes to that difficult camp with the group, spends the time and effort breaking it and holding it?
I played the AH game, as I said... I proved many times over to those who said otherwise that the AH game is cheat game to fast earnings playing on the impatient and gullible. You give me a tad bit of cash and with some time and patience, I will turn that money into large amounts, with the more I make the bigger I make. Give me enough time and I will be able to buy anything the market has and I can do this with spending little to no time playing the game. Hell, I got a lot of my hints from guys in EQ who built millions just sitting as a level one in EC building slowly and then exponentially, never once having to play in a group, never once have to put any effort of skill into playing a class, never once having to give a shit about the game.
I am not jealous of those traders, as I said... I have been them, I just see such pursuits as STUPIDLY easy money and pointless play. It isn't hard, it isn't even remotely difficult.
See, I would like to play a game where people can't cheat with those idiot player trade markets. Heck, I even suggested in my discussion (not sure this one or not) that there should be all kinds of real life mechanics for traders to force them to actually play a game, to have to deal with risk in buying selling, to have to deal with taxes, rent, product degradation, etc... I mean, you want player trade? Fine, make it a game, just like the adventure game, make people earn their damn money rather than just gimmick selling with no consequence.
Heck, I have suggested elaborate systems in other games as a solution and you know what? Nobody wants them... It is because they have no interest in playing a game, they just want the AH to cheat through the systems, both those who want boring safe mundane grinds over actual skill and effort and those who simply buy their progression through gold sellers.
Game play? LOL
NO... just another mainstream "cheat play".
Well, if I had to choose between dealing with random loot as I have experienced and the abuse of players over camping things? I will take the over campers 10000 times over each week and twice that on Sunday.
Been there, done that. Random systems I won't play if you paid me to. Horrible implementations.
and here is another thought: if the developers agreed with you and thought that trading and using an AH was "cheating" in thier current forms why put them in the game? Could it be that they designed the game with these systems in mind from the get go?
naw. . .its far more likely that you are right and everyone else(including the developers) is wrong. . .
O.o
I think you better get a better argument if you want to claim I am being unreasonable about the complete "freebies" the player trade market gets.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I think a large amount of content and rare spawns would help as well as a mix of lore, no drop and freely tradeable items...will be the final set up for the game.
That being the case, "most" items will likely be fully trade-able based on the discussion I saw, which means group dungeons will be open game and primarily the issue I was pointing out with spawn locking. Raids are only supposed to be around 15-20% of the game, so I don't see those being the issue at all to be honest. That also presents the problem that if people can "buy" their progression through the AH and most of the game is group based content, I think Pantheon is going to run into people hitting the caps very quickly due to the AH and plat RMT market spurring such transactions.
That is my opinion though. It is possible I could be wrong, but if I am right... it will be a large pile of "something" hitting a fan.
That said, we can have our cake and eat it too in this case. They can through some clever design implement a system that curbs abuse and is invisible or non-play progression disturbing if they are careful and think out an honest solution. I really think it is possible to create an invisible wall that only an abuser will know exists.
I'm sorry dude but you're committing a major slippery slope fallacy here with that argument.
What you are doing is exaggerating things severely. It's not like he is suggesting we add 5x as many camps dropping similar items. The other issue you're not taking into account is its easy to balance the rarity side of things. If lets say the FBSS was the only item of its type, and it had a 5% drop rate. Then if they add a second camp with a similar item, but drop the FBSS drop rate to 2.5% and the new item at the new camp also has 2.5%, then the market is not being flooded with items, etc. The number of rare haste belts coming into the game is still the same.
The other issue is we have literally decades of evidence to the contrary of what you're saying will happen. That type of behavior does happen in games with AH. But in games like EQ, etc, where you had to physically sit around to sell items and couldn't just throw it on the AH and log off, that type of thing almost never happened. The longest I ever saw a single person sit around a camp single item was for about 18 hours. Having low enough drop rates combats this behavior. If someone sits around for 48 hours straight and only gets 2 items, and then does it a couple days later and only gets 1, they're going to be severely disinclined to engage in that type of behavior.
I just have not experienced what you have said outside of games that didn't have AH.
Edit: I really do think a wait and see approach is best. I do agree with you though that its a good idea to have some ideas to combat it fleshed out. However, under no circumstance is not having a player trading system in place a solution. That is something that will in my opinion kill the game for most people.
Edit 2: Also, if there is a good progression of items in the game, particularly at the higher levels, it removes the incentive for higher levels to farm lower quality items. Again it comes back to making sure things stay rare, but in the case of the FBSS, the issue was that there was no gap item between the FBSS and things like the RBG/RBB. So even an expansion later, people were still camping the crap out of it because there was nothing else to camp. If they had added an ever so slightly better item for kunark in between the FBSS and the RBG, it would have been a lot better. Hell it wouldn't even have needed to have been that much better. They could have called it the Flowing Green Silk Sash and it had 20% haste and a couple minor stats, and it wouldn't have hurt the game in any meaningful way.
Edit 3: Btw, on the rarity side of things, haste belts were actually stupidly easy to get in raid environments. Haste belts for every class dropped like candy in plane of sky. It was only the tradeable ones that became an issue. And frankly they still got flooded because once people replaced their FBSS etc, with a different, belt, they just sold their old one (or sometimes gave it to a twink, but either way).
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
It was rampant in EQ with the Bazaar, what do you mean? Or are you saying it wasn't a problem pre-Bazaar? Even then though, camping was just starting. My example of my necro guild mate camping for FBSS was done pre-Bazaar.
You also have to realize that I am not trying to say a single person holds it for days and weeks on end. I am saying that players of such a nature camp to extreme extent which limits other entry into the camp. As I said in my FBSS example, there were three necros trading off the camps.
As I said, we will wait and see, but I also wasn't saying "no player trade", I was using that as an example of how it kills the behavior, meaning it is the main cause of why people would do such behavior in camps. The point was to focus a better solution to deal with those specific people.
Ideally, I would like to see the trade system have all kinds of realistic and pro/con systems that makes the idiotic easy manipulation of them in games today become much much more difficult (taxes, fees, licenses, rent, storage space fees, product degradation, etc... all on reoccurring monthly costs), though... just as you say having "no player trading" (which I am not advocating, rather fully controlled game system brokering between players with price controls, caps, etc...) will kill the game, so will any such solution I am speaking of as the point of the player trade system is not game play, but nothing more than player approved cheating. Until they put in some actual game play system to make it more than just a gimmick, it will be the center for abuse in all games.
That is what developers are ignoring. The trade system is their biggest offending loophole that sets all the of the rules, progression, and expected play on its ear. Until they deal with that, the rest is just blowing smoke up peoples arse.
You're talking about the bazaar, which was for all intents and purposes an auction house. Frankly by most of our opinions the game had gone severely downhill by that point. But yes, I am absolutely talking pre bazaar.
Your example of the necro was the exception not the rule. Most of us played the game extensively prior to that, I had 4600 hours prior to PoP on my paladin and I can count on my fingers the number of times I experienced people doing ridiculous things like that.
And frankly, if a guild of people, or a group of friends is trading off and monopolizing a camp, I don't really have an issue with that. Whether they are there or someone else is there, the same number of items are still coming into the market. The issue is if a single person is being incentivized to monopolize the camp. The second issue is that if that is the only item of its type, and there are no other options, then it becomes a problem. Similar to in POP when guilds would monopolize key mobs so that other guilds couldn't get past that stage of the key process, and then the guild monopolizing it would have unfettered access to the raid content above it. This is is a failing of the game design. There is a level of rarity that is necessary to make items have value. But there is inbetween. Having say only 1 haste belt in the entire game off 1 camp in the entire game, is stupid. However the flipside of like WoW where you just have 64 different variations of the same items from tons of different places is a problem as well. The middle ground is what works. Have 2-3 variations across various camps, etc.
Again, the point is also, with a player trade system, you don't have to specifically camp the item you want. So what if the FBSS camp was not open, just go camp a different item, sell it, and use the money to buy an FBSS on the market. There's multiple paths to the same goal. It's just like real life, if you want a house, you don't have to go build one yourself, you can work a job, make the money, and then buy the house from someone who did build it.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I just don't understand this mentality. If you spend 8 hours in a dungeon with your buddies camping your 1h sword of badassery. And I spend 8 hours in a different dungeon camping the chestplate of badassery, and I sell said chestplate, and use the money from it to buy the 1h sword of badassery, we've both spent 8 hours achieving our goal.
As I've said before, the issue here is having an auction house where people can drop items, and then log off and have their items be available for sale. The AH is the problem. Not the player trade system. EQ did not have these issue early on because of a combination of 2 things. 1. Items were rare. 2. You had to physically be present and meet up with and initiate a trade with a person. You couldn't just drop it on the AH and go watch 10 hours of Netflix while your items sold and log back in a day later to a massive pile of gold.
The other issue with ONLY being able to get items from adventuring is it makes large swathes of content become useless. Maybe some new player a couple years into the games life wants to get an item from a dungeon, but he can't get enough players together to go camp the item because the overall playerbase has moved on. In this scenario there is incentive for that content to be utilized because a higher level player can go camp that item to sell and make money etc, and now the new player who would otherwise be screwed, can buy the item from the guy who can actually camp the item.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Aradune keeps labeling this game as a cooperative MMORPG. Focusing on contested content or drops spits in the face of coop and turns it into a pvevp. Only now, you can't do anything to the asshats that ruin your day by locking content down. I despised that aspect of EQ and will not tolerate it in Pantheon if that is the path they choose. Having recently been subjected to the content lockdown in the new TLS for EQLive, it has refreshed my despite for such game design. If this is what Aradune really wants, then make it a real pvp game so you can get back at the jerks and content hogs.
Me personally, I had all the PvP I could want for a lifetime while MUDing before EQ was even out, I really don't care to pvp anymore. I would just like a solid EQ like experience (pre-mainstream features) before it went to hell.
Re: @Sinist how did I get all those haste items on a PvP server? By playing the game which was apparently much less contested and full of gold farmers than you remember. Maybe Rallos had a slightly lower population than PvE servers, but I had even better gear on my wizard until Velious when I totally stopped playing on Tarew.
EQ server list with populations from 2001.
Yes, PvP servers were usually quite a bit behind early on due to the competition. Rallos Zek was no different. Plane of sky was an 8 hour respawn though, and the basic, non-quest haste belt from there was a common drop off almost every named on each island. Many epics took everyone there, so it really became the easiest way to get haste, especially decent nodrop haste that couldn't be looted in PvP. I got hangman's noose because I was really lucky when I was camping Sebilis keys for either myself or a guild mate. I killed Severilous 1 time with only my guild there. We did it with less than 4 groups of mostly non-60s and I probably just won the roll (we didn't do DKP). Same thing happened with cowl of mortality.
One thing you can know, is that people weren't going to spend less time trading in East Commons to obtain those items than I spent acquiring them the old fashioned way.
The only part of what you're saying I agree with is the fact that you should be able to obtain an item by camping it if you want.
The response I have to that is that you may have to *gasp* WAIT YOUR TURN. In a virtual world with no instances you need to SHARE your experience with everyone else, it's like RL, if you want to eat at that nice restaurant tonight you had better have an early reservation, or you're just shit out of luck. Exclusivity is something I desperately want back in my MMORPGS.
They simply play another way then i do. And i love that about MMOs. It is possible to be a PvE player, PvP player, Trader, Crafter,...
Why would i question other peoples reasoning to play a game? Just because they get their enjoyment in a differend way and via differend playstyles? No. Let them play how they want and i play how i want. They fokus on trading and i fokus on bringing them the goods to trade, while also benefitting from them by exchanging my treasures.
Why do you play MMOs if all you want is adventure? Any solo RPG would fit way way better. I mean... i dislike FPS combat, so i just don't play FPS. I don't start a FPS game and demand a change in gameplay to fit my style.
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
Can we cut it out with the straw mans? I am not one of those people who demand the game be put into an easy little box to cater to my position. Your response here is shows either you aren't reading my responses are you are just bring ignorant to attend to a devious purpose.
Your comments of "Why can't you just let people play the way they want to play?" is a common one used by people who are PTW RMT supporters. They disregard all the aspects of a game in order to promote being able to circumvent game play. buying your way up through the game is not a "play style", it is a bypassing play in order to get an easy win. Calling that a play style is like calling a bug seeking exploiter who dupes a "play style" because that is how they "enjoy" the game.
You are hiding behind group play in a means to say that if I can't accept people who want to cheat the content, bypass intended play mechanics, that some how I am anti-game. It is an absurd fallacy to justify a PTW mentality that has become the cancer of MMOs by people who will not accept that what they are doing is just a form of cheating a system.
I bring up the need to make player trade an actual game rather than some gimmick that any idiot can manipulate to get rich easy so they can buy their way past game play and people rush to defend it with "their fun" /derp and "their play style" /derp rather than agreeing trade having pros/cons like a "game" /gasp is better than the bypass player trade provides as a means to circumvent actually having to play the game. Go ahead, tell me it is about "my fun" and all that, just like those who demand the game be made easy, have soloing, etc... same people, same argument, both want easy access progression, one is just deluding themselves that they are different.
Go ahead though, spin this and try to make it seem like I am some mainstream player asking for the game ot be handed to me. I am sure that Alinsky tactic works just fine for clueless people.