That is not what classic Everquest was about, and it was much more popular before instanced raids became the norm than it was when everyone got their free chance at items.
False, instancing didn't have a negative effect on EQ.
Instancing was implemented in 2003, in LDON.
EQ's population peaked several years later.
That one is hard to say. If you look at the graph, there was downturn around the time it came out. It was released in September which the graph seems to show a drop around that time. Also though keep in mind that WoW was in beta around that time which pulled a lot of players from EQ, including myself.
I do remember LDoN not being well received. Most thought it was a massive grind for little reward and many hated the behaviors it produced (ie the run through as fast as possible to farm the reward). It was a failed attempt in EQ and many didn't bother with it other than for getting a special item to which it was viewed as a "chore" type of expansion.
And yet Pantheon is being made without instances and with contested content.
Then it will simply fail.
Griefing, permacamping raids, waiting weeks to get access to a raid, and forced PVP for PVE raids, is something most PVE players don't like.
Without instances, EQ would have never lasted.
Without instances? Nah.
EQ had problem with the contested raid content because it became the main focus of play. They told the group players to hit the road by overly catering to the raiders (PoP was a big insult to group players with all the raid gated zones). With WoW coming out about that time, most of the group players went off to it for that reason. I remember a lot of people not wanting to leave, but there was noting they could do. Either you were in one of the top guilds who were powerful enough to fight over the content or you didn't raid and if you didn't raid, there was little you could do.
Then there was the extremely poor content design for raids which only encouraged the ability of a single guild to be able to block raid progression (Velious had a few choke points and SoL increased it, but PoP mastered the art of cock blocking content).
I will agree that contested content was not favored. Rarely did I see people go on about how they loved to rush off at a moments notice to have to get a raid mob. It was usually always negative. Most of my positive experience with raiding was the raids themselves after the drama was over or doing them in organized fashion on the Legends sever. Contested content "raids" was never a desired form of play.
That said, instances are not the solution. Giving everyone a prize is not a solution. IF people wanted what instances provided, there would be no need for this game.
Lets stop pretending that in 2004 when EQ peaked that it wasn't 95% open world content, and that it tanked from that point on while the design was shifted towards convenience and with a heavier raid focus. Fast travel, instancing and less community focus were what killed EQ, not World of Warcraft.
The population losses EQ suffered around 2004 are pretty well documented, even by EQ developers.
Instances or fast travel had nothing to do with it. There were instances before 2004 and fast travel was introduced with PoP, in 2002, a popular expansion.
In 2004, Gates of Discord was launched, a very very hard expansion. Gates of Discord had bugs, such as NPC eating reagents.
Even Smedley admitted it was a disaster:
And then both EQ2 and WoW came out in the same year, in 2004. A substantial amount of EQ players went to WoW.
I liked GoD as an expansion, even though it was brutal.
I think someone explained that one. Basically they released the content wrong. OoW and GoD were supposed to be one expansion, and if you released them OoW was supposed to be first. GoD was the raid heavy expansion that was designed in a way that only the top raid guilds could seem to handle the content jump and so the rest of the players were relegated to sitting around doing Legacy of Ykesha and LDoN which were pretty much rushed out crap mostly designed of gimmicks, not actual content.
Raiding content was part of the problem, but I wouldn't say instancing is the issue here. There was poor design so many levels. Sony was showing its incompetence at this point.
I'm not sure why you guys think it should revolve around social and political PvP and contested content. In my mind, it should be a very minor part of the game if not at all. Like raiding, only a small subset of gamers are into the contested content thing.
As far as I can tell, Aradune is more interested in creating a game with more challenge and player interdependency and less about the more controversial and divisive mechanics that were more detrimental to EQ in the long run.
I'm not sure why some think this either. Contested raid content was never deemed fun or enjoyable by anyone I remember, almost all EQ players are PVE focused players. Players griefing others over raid spawns was one lowest points in EQ history.
Lol, in what world do you live? The most popular EQ emulators run classic-velious with hundreds of thousands of registered accounts. Pantheon's forums are predominantly filled with people who want a derivative of classic EQ. When Daybreak wants to make money, they offer progression servers which are always most popular during the early expansions.
You don't remember anyone who deemed contested raids fun or enjoyable? Well I don't know anyone who enjoyed EQ after contested raids as much as classic.
Are you certain that gamers playing P99 are there for the contested content or is more likely due to other factors, like nostalgia, slower paced gameplay, greater challenge, less hand holding...or a plethora of other reasons? The only thing I remember about contested content was the continual drama in /ooc chat in east commons about kill stealing, raid rivalries and ninja looting. Fires of Heaven and their low handed behavior was often brought up. Kinda like it has been lately on the TLS Ragefire with the Twisted Legacy guild locking everything down.
I'm not sure why you guys think it should revolve around social and political PvP and contested content. In my mind, it should be a very minor part of the game if not at all. Like raiding, only a small subset of gamers are into the contested content thing.
As far as I can tell, Aradune is more interested in creating a game with more challenge and player interdependency and less about the more controversial and divisive mechanics that were more detrimental to EQ in the long run.
I'm not sure why some think this either. Contested raid content was never deemed fun or enjoyable by anyone I remember, almost all EQ players are PVE focused players. Players griefing others over raid spawns was one lowest points in EQ history.
Lol, in what world do you live? The most popular EQ emulators run classic-velious with hundreds of thousands of registered accounts. Pantheon's forums are predominantly filled with people who want a derivative of classic EQ. When Daybreak wants to make money, they offer progression servers which are always most popular during the early expansions.
You don't remember anyone who deemed contested raids fun or enjoyable? Well I don't know anyone who enjoyed EQ after contested raids as much as classic.
Are you certain that gamers playing P99 are there for the contested content or is more likely due to other factors, like nostalgia, slower paced gameplay, greater challenge, less hand holding...or a plethora of other reasons? The only thing I remember about contested content was the continual drama in /ooc chat in east commons about kill stealing, raid rivalries and ninja looting. Fires of Heaven and their low handed behavior was often brought up. Kinda like it has been lately on the TLS Ragefire with the Twisted Legacy guild locking everything down.
I would say it is many other reasons. Again, never saw contested raids as anything but a hassle to many. Maybe it is because Dullahan said he played PvP in EQ predominately that he has such a view? PvP servers were all about constant drama and some who are accustomed to it tend to see the conflict as not a big thing. /shrug
That is not what classic Everquest was about, and it was much more popular before instanced raids became the norm than it was when everyone got their free chance at items.
False, instancing didn't have a negative effect on EQ.
Instancing was implemented in 2003, in LDON.
EQ's population peaked several years later.
Not sure what you guys are discussing but I wouldn't put much stock in that site with that data. It's been false on of many occasions.
On another note, you must have not played, or been around EQ during the time LDoN released. It was deemed the worst expansion in EQ's history and still to this day by a huge amount of players and I wouldn't put it past the reason of it being because of instancing. It's a proven fact that Instancing has HURT MMO communities more than its helped it. After instances were implemented, communities in MMO's took a massive shit down the drain. For me personally LDoN was absolutely atrocious. Not because the content was bad while in the instance but it separated you from the game world and disconnected you from what you had been playing for so many years prior to LDoN.
That wasn't my experience at all. I played EQ for the first 6 years non-stop and it was during LDoN that I found myself grouping more than I had up to that point. For months, it was groups of dungeon running. I'd never had more fun in EQ except for the release of the beastlord in Shadows of Luclin. Like all expansions in EQ, they become stale and people move onto the next one. No matter how much people liked previous expansions, the new expansions would always turn the older ones into ghost towns.
I have no doubt in my mind that instancing made the raiding scene much less stressful and more enjoyable. While I'm sure it didn't appeal to some, I believe those people were very much in the minority at the time. Instancing is the best tool to deal with bottlenecked content, but not nearly so much if the game offers multiple paths for the same objective. Not much discouraged me more than being unable to do the content I felt like doing at the time I wanted to do it, even more so when it was due to other players blocking my path on purpose.
That wasn't my experience at all. I played EQ for the first 6 years non-stop and it was during LDoN that I found myself grouping more than I had up to that point. For months, it was groups of dungeon running. I'd never had more fun in EQ except for the release of the beastlord in Shadows of Luclin. Like all expansions in EQ, they become stale and people move onto the next one. No matter how much people liked previous expansions, the new expansions would always turn the older ones into ghost towns.
I have no doubt in my mind that instancing made the raiding scene much less stressful and more enjoyable. While I'm sure it didn't appeal to some, I believe those people were very much in the minority at the time. Instancing is the best tool to deal with bottlenecked content, but not nearly so much if the game offers multiple paths for the same objective. Not much discouraged me more than being unable to do the content I felt like doing at the time I wanted to do it, even more so when it was due to other players blocking my path on purpose.
Thing is, LDON brought about the spam based dungeon run style of play that exists today. I mean, it literally became a rat race of people grinding the instances over and over. It was what became of instances today where people fast ran them to farm the prizes.
Not being able to do content anytime you felt like it is why gear was rare, why it meant something to obtain rewards or finally get that camp. Instancing turned the game into a solo game for players to gain their rewards at their own pace.
Now you might think this is great, but there is a problem... when everyone is a winner, then none are. Instances gave everyone a prize, everyone a win, and the idea of uniqueness, of rarity, etc... was removed.
In EQ, not everyone had that special item, not everyone wanted to spend the effort to obtain a given item. Also, with contested content, it limited the flow of items into the game. So, getting that one specific item had meaning. With instances, the odds of obtaining that item was increased by the number of instances that dropped it.
If you look to the TLP servers in EQ now, they are a joke. Seriously, spam of people "Guild x killed Cazic... Guild y killed Caziz, Guild z killed Cazic" and in every kill that is duplicated loot brought into the game. Rarity? Nope... everyone gets a prize!
Now, add in the fact that you can do any content when you feel like it and think about how this speeds up content consumption? If you can do every mob without waiting in line, then you can more quickly obtain your rewards which speeds up your completion of the content where you then sit at "end game" waiting for new content.
EQ took a long time because getting geared took time to obtain. You had to compete for the raid boss and if you got it, you had to get lucky with the drop. The next time the raid boss popped, you may not get it that time, which means time spent waiting for the next spawn. This behavior caused guilds to slowly gear up (well, aside from the content blocking guilds, but that is another issue).
The key here is the loot, the rate of progression. These are things that will harm the game in the long run. Instancing isn't the "solution", it is simply a tool and it comes with its own problems. People are getting hung up on the tool and missing the main issue here.
We will have to agree to disagree, its a minor point on the discussion anyway, and as long as Pantheon is sub based, its a totally non-issue. Hell Id even be ok (not great mind you) with a purely vanity cash shop. I just dont think its right to pay for special access to content that you already have access to with your sub. Something about it turns my stomach and activates my shady radar. Moving on!
This isn't a subjective issue, there is no agree to disagree. As I said, Pay to Win is a specific thing, not some subjective definition you just make up and modify to fit your needs as you go along. That is what I showed to Drivendawn. The reason you are saying "agree to disagree" because your definition of Pay To Win is finding trouble with my points and so rather than deal with that, you just respond with "agree to disagree" as if it can still allow your point to be correct, it is not.
As I said, there is no Pay To Win with the features I mentioned. There is no circumvention of content, there is no paying money to progress, there is no short cuts, there is not any sense of paying to bypass play, no "winning" achieved over that of any other server which is what Pay to Win is. Now you can call it "elitist" or can say it is allowing people to buy special treatment, etc... but you can not say it is paying to win. That is a misuse of the term.
A vanity shop is pay to win. It is the direct purchase of appearance items which circumvent the game play to achieve an item in game that would provide a unique look. Since having a certain look is a form of achievement in EQ (it was very difficult to find matching and good looking gear to consistently wear in play), being able to "buy" it is a bypass, a circumvention, "paying to win" a certain look. I am against ALL Pay to Win.
A sub is just a monthly fee, what it contains depends on what you pay. As long as that sub contains no bypass of content, circumvention of play, etc... then it is just a feature of play. With the server I talked about, you paid for services, not game play cheats. It could have very well been an extra server for PvP that they charged extra for because it cost more to do a different balancing of classes and play to have PvP (just using this as an example), yet you or Drivendawn didn't consider that Pay to Win, even though it met your definition of it exactly.
If you want to disagree on what is the best color, on if pie is better than cake, we can agree to disagree, but you can not take a subjective stance with a objective oriented quantifiable argument, it is invalid.
You are right. Its not subjective. I was just trying to be polite and move on. But if you want to continue on this issue thats fine too. Firstly, After reading this big block of text in an attempt to call me out, all I get from it is an unreasonable defense. Its amusing to me that you say I use "agree to disagree" just because I dont agree with it.
I dont really find a vanity shop pay to win. I do find it distasteful, and implied I could live with it. I dont consider paying for a look pay to win. I didnt gain anything that will help me play better. Its just cosmetic fluff! But hey from an RP standpoint Im willing to see how it could appear that way. But whatever. If you consider it a bypass, then how is it you cant see what you were talking about as paying to bypass competition. Cant have it both ways Sinist
Now what you are suggesting is in fact PAY TO WIN. Period and the fact you wrote out this long post and dont see it is just crazy to me. Its not an issue as long as you arent paying extra for special access to an area of content that you already have access too. And you took my Pay to Win faster too literally, because I also included in that ease of access. You are paying money to bypass the other players and avoid competition. If it was just a matter of choosing a different server for my existing sub no problem. And no, its not even close to paying for an expansion. Thats paying for new content, not paying extra for existing content you already have access too. How do you not get that?
I dont really find a vanity shop pay to win. I do find it distasteful,
and implied I could live with it. I dont consider paying for a look pay
to win. I didnt gain anything that will help me play better. Its just
cosmetic fluff! But hey from an RP standpoint Im willing to see how it
could appear that way. But whatever. If you consider it a bypass, then
how is it you cant see what you were talking about as paying to bypass
competition. Cant have it both ways Sinist
It is a bypass, we have pages of people complaining about the appearance slot issue and how it meant something in EQ to have a certain look. We have people complaining about how "hard" it is to find a good look in the game and that is why they want a store, etc... That very fact establishes that paying money to get it rather than playing the game is Pay To Win. Again, you keep suggesting this is subjective, it is not. You have not defended your position. You just keep dismissing all contest to it and claiming your subjective position trumps objective evaluation. Saying "it is just fluff" isn't a support for your position it is a flippant dismissal. The fact is, by "buying" your look, you are not "earning" your look in game. That is the very definition of Pay To Win.
Now what you are
suggesting is in fact PAY TO WIN. Period and the fact you wrote out this
long post and dont see it is just crazy to me. Its not an issue as
long as you arent paying extra for special access to an area of content
that you already have access too. And you took my Pay to Win faster too
literally, because I also included in that ease of access. You are
paying money to bypass the other players and avoid competition. If it
was just a matter of choosing a different server for my existing sub no
problem. And no, its not even close to paying for an expansion. Thats
paying for new content, not paying extra for existing content you
already have access too. How do you not get that?
I asked you, where is the win? You avoided answering to that many times, where is the win? I showed the logic of your position to be lacking each time and you failed to respond to it.
There is no bypassing other players. Everyone on that server agreed to a slower rate of progression by having a rotation (this invalidates your faster win claim). The Legends server provided extra content, it provided GM created and driven quests (that is like an expansion and invalidates your expansion argument), it had special rule sets (ie being able to name a new item, raid rotations) just like a PvP server or any other special rule set server, but it is NOT pay to win because it does not meet the definition of pay to win, it does not circumvent content, it does not allow the player to bypass or be handed any "wins". The cost thing was because of the GM support, the web tools, the interaction, etc... It cost money to attend to it, that is why your paid more.
You want to drop this discussion, fine... but accept that you can not defend your points, don't expect me to act like we can "agree to disagree" when you are blatantly abusing logical grounds.Your feelings and your subjective "belief" here is absolutely irrelevant to the establishment of your validity. It is an objective argument and you can not properly support your own as your premises are conflicting making any conclusion from them invalid.
I don't think you can define "pay to win" without first defining "win."
A lot of people define winning as the acquisition of power. If that is winning, then anything acquired by paying money that makes a character more powerful, or that makes it easier for a character to acquire more power, is paying to win.
Applying this to raiding, I think that paying money to have better/easier/faster access to raid encounters than other folks have is paying to win. In fact, I think it is one of the most compelling examples of pay to win, because it pertains to a part of the game that is intensely competitive and where just a few hours difference means being first, second or just an also ran in a race between guilds.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I did defend it and you ignored it. YOU ARE PAYING TO BYPASS THE CONTENT! It doesnt matter if "everyone" agreed to it. All the extra bells and whistles dont matter either. That just means everyone in that server agreed to pay extra to bypass the competition of other players in other servers. People that cant afford or dont want to pay that extra fee are at a disadvantage that is purely based on REAL MONEY! Its not a belief Sinist. Its not some sort of intangible faith or feeling. The second paying extra money came into it made it a fact.
The vanity shop issue is the one based on "feelings" and not hard numbers like stats.
If you ask EQ players which expansion they liked best.
The numbers tend to look like this:
But if you ask players who actually played all of those expansions, the numbers often look like this:
I'm not saying either is right or wrong, but the first graph is like asking people if they can order 12 movies by best movie....and they only saw 4 out of 12 movies.
Omens of War was a fantastic expansion, but if you never played it, you wouldn't know, and you wouldn't vote for it.
I don't think you can define "pay to win" without first defining "win."
A lot of people define winning as the acquisition of power. If that is winning, then anything acquired by paying money that makes a character more powerful, or that makes it easier for a character to acquire more power, is paying to win.
Applying this to raiding, I think that paying money to have better/easier/faster access to raid encounters than other folks have is paying to win. In fact, I think it is one of the most compelling examples of pay to win, because it pertains to a part of the game that is intensely competitive and where just a few hours difference means being first, second or just an also ran in a race between guilds.
Then if that is Pay to Win, then is not playing on a PvE server Pay To Win because it is better/easier/faster than having to compete with others in PvP to earn it?
Keep in mind that the extra paying was for the other things, not because of the rotation. As I said, other servers did rotations on their own, it just wasn't organized and managed by the GMs.
Money is not the key issue to paying to win, circumventing game play is.
Now you could make the argument that competition is game play, and therefore by having to not compete, it is paying extra to win. This however has to build its position that the entire point of paying more for the Legends server was the server rotation schedules. This is not even remotely true and if you look at the above feature list, they don't even mention raid rotation in the list as that was not the main point of this server, that was not what you were paying for.
I did defend it and you ignored it. YOU ARE PAYING TO BYPASS THE CONTENT! It doesnt matter if "everyone" agreed to it. All the extra bells and whistles dont matter either. That just means everyone in that server agreed to pay extra to bypass the competition of other players in other servers. People that cant afford or dont want to pay that extra fee are at a disadvantage that is purely based on REAL MONEY! Its not a belief Sinist. Its not some sort of intangible faith or feeling. The second paying extra money came into it made it a fact.
The vanity shop issue is the one based on "feelings" and not hard numbers like stats.
What content is being bypassed or made easier? Your points on faster I rebutted. It is slower access to content on a rotation server. Pay to win is essentially cheating the games systems to advance. What is being cheated? Who is being cheated?
The Vanity shop is as I said, you have yet to contend with your points being invalid. You dismissed it. Getting a unique look in EQ was an accomplishment, being able to buy it is bypassing the play required to achieve it.
Paying money is not the definition of Pay to Win otherwise a Subscription game vs a FTP game would define the subscription game as Pay To Win. Are subscription games Pay to Win because money is involved.
Deal with my counters or be shown to be avoiding the weakness in your own premise.
If you ask EQ players which expansion they liked best.
The numbers tend to look like this:
But if you ask players who actually played all of those expansions, the numbers often look like this:
I'm not saying either is right or wrong, but the first graph is like asking people if they can order 12 movies by best movie....and they only saw 4 out of 12 movies.
Omens of War was a fantastic expansion, but if you never played it, you wouldn't know, and you wouldn't vote for it.
Is this real data or you just generalizing to make a point?
Then if that is Pay to Win, then is not playing on a PvE server Pay To Win because it is better/easier/faster than having to compete with others in PvP to earn it?
Playing on a PvE server is easier. But it costs the same as a PvP server. So it's not pay to win.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
If you ask EQ players which expansion they liked best.
The numbers tend to look like this:
But if you ask players who actually played all of those expansions, the numbers often look like this:
I'm not saying either is right or wrong, but the first graph is like asking people if they can order 12 movies by best movie....and they only saw 4 out of 12 movies.
Omens of War was a fantastic expansion, but if you never played it, you wouldn't know, and you wouldn't vote for it.
Is this real data or you just generalizing to make a point?
I think I see the angle you guys are trying to establish. Thank you Amathe for making an honest effort to logically establish a position rather than just dismissing.
If we accept competition as the key element of the games systems, its entire point of game play. Then, by paying "extra" for a server that specifically provides this, that would be paying to avoid that required game play.
Reasonable argument.
Then Amasi's point is that because someone would have to pay "more" for such, they are paying to win.
There are many problems though.
For one, a person who buys an expansion that has a special feature such as the Bazaar could claim that this gives players an advantage and is essentially pay to win.
So, by not adding such a feature to the default game, then it is paying to win. By the way, this very argument was made during the release of the Bazaar by people who did not want to buy the expansion at the time and felt that a UI feature of such advantage should be given free to the players otherwise it would be a forced "paying" to gain advantage, especially for those who thought SoL was complete crap and didn't want anything to do with it (you could skip an entire expansion such as SoL and some did raiding the other expansions).
The Legends server had special content (GM ran quests, GM ran events, etc...) just as a new expansion would have. It came with tons of Web tools for guilds, character sheets, etc... again.. like SoL added the Bazaar, so did the Legends server offer these special features.
So, was the Bazaar Pay to Win? It is exactly the same thing as if you wanted the extra content and features of the Legends server, you had to pay for it.
This is the flaw in the arguments I see presented.
I think that an expansion pack is meant to be an addition to "the game." So buying an expansion pack is no different in my mind than buying the original game. If it were otherwise, than everyone who purchased any of Everquest's 22 expansions have all paid to win, which is a position that I do not believe would square with anyone's usage of that term.
The Legends server, by contrast, gives you the game plus many other things which I still maintain makes it pay to win.
But, another wrinkle would be at what point is the competition "over." If someone bought something today that gave them an advantage in downing Trakanon, does it matter since Trakanon has been downed 100,000 times already by now? Is there a statute of limitations on this concept? Or, for so long as there are two guilds left in all the world who are still interested in that encounter, and they are competing against each other for the privilege, does pay to win still come into play?
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Well an expansion is ok because you are playing for newly created content. And its sort of an odd bird to classify but I would say GM created content or live content would fall into the same category. Its new content. And while It would be ok. I would hope the devs wouldnt nickel and dime me to death. Like how some free to play models will with DLC packs. But at that point not a pay to win so much as just annoying.
My specific issue only has to do with paying for special access to content I should already have access too. Now if my sub cobers it and its just a matter of choosing the server with that rule set. No problem. Im not at a disadvantage and if I choose not to go to that server then thats on me not the devs. But the second Im blocked out by an extra price tag to get special access then thats where the problem is.
I vividly remember Legends server, and its for one single reason. It was a well known fact that the major problem with the legends server to the rest of the playerbase of EQ was that you could transfer to legends for free (if you payed the sub), then you could transfer OFF of legends to any server you wanted. So the common theme was to transfer to legends for 2 months, get full raid geared, and come back to your original server with all the loot everyone else wanted, and all you did to get it was pay.
Remove the ability to transfer on or off of the server and it becomes much less of an issue. I would however note though that it does make some players feel bad when they can't afford the server and they feel like their server is getting less GM events and attention because they aren't paying more for it.
Being fair across the board is an important aspect of old school gaming IMHO.
I vividly remember Legends server, and its for one single reason. It was a well known fact that the major problem with the legends server to the rest of the playerbase of EQ was that you could transfer to legends for free (if you payed the sub), then you could transfer OFF of legends to any server you wanted. So the common theme was to transfer to legends for 2 months, get full raid geared, and come back to your original server with all the loot everyone else wanted, and all you did to get it was pay.
Remove the ability to transfer on or off of the server and it becomes much less of an issue. I would however note though that it does make some players feel bad when they can't afford the server and they feel like their server is getting less GM events and attention because they aren't paying more for it.
Being fair across the board is an important aspect of old school gaming IMHO.
The server transfer thing was a big abuse, but I think it brought up a real problem with the contested content. Some servers tried to emulate the rotation based concept through player cooperation, and it worked for some servers, but not all (some servers had real dicks who agreed, then cheating constantly and because there was no real consequence, the concept failed).
I can understand the arguments of those who think PTW, on one side...
yes.. it is essentially a pay walled means of avoiding the chaos and
abuse of contested content, but I will be honest, It isn't pay to win as there is no win. That is, just by being present on the server and functioning like anyone on the other servers, you are not given special reward. It is just that there is no "free for all" of the raid mobs. Everyone is forced to an equal approach to the mob. No hand outs are given, no rewards are offered and if you can't defeat the raids, you can't even sign up for them. The "ideal" of Pay to Win is to be given progress through paying money and such a system does not achieve that.
I mean, PvE only is not Pay to Win, but... if we were to
make game that was all about PvP and then allow a higher paid server
that was PvE only, that would meet the potions of people calling it
PTW?
I think that the attempt to define such is a stretch to encompass anything that does not give equal share as being "pay to win" when in fact, that is not the case. Even so, as I said.. the Legends server was all about the service and that was why the cost was more. Maybe at the time, due to the lack of technology, you also paid more to have a GM arbitrate the rotation system, testing, and web forum, but at that point are you paying for the privilege or just the cost of its implementation? I mean, it isn't like giving players access to potions for money which has no real cost in function.
These days though, to implement such a feature in the game, it could be easily facilitated through automation with little management cost. I haven't done any major software development for years, but I know for a fact it would take me very little time to design a database, webpage, and implement such in a Unity based engine (especially if it is in C# which is nowhere near as complex as C/C++/Assembly).
Point is, and this is my opinion, I think a rotation system is the best solution to both sides of the issue. It allows eventual access by all raids without the drama, but does not pollute the game system with gear inflation.
The problem with this implementation is dependent on how many raid mobs there are and how many likely guilds there are on the server. When the average raid was usually 50-70, this usually resulted in only a handful of capable guilds to take on the content, but with the VR shooting for 12 main raids to be the max (what I think I read), this could mean a heck of a lot more capable guilds and if there are not a lot or raid targets, this could be an issue.
Point is, the rotation system may not be a good solution until the game has built up a solid list of raid targets at multiple tiers. In EQ it worked because by the time they implemented the Legends server, there was The main game, Kunark, and Velious which had a lot of content at multiple tiers. So there was room for the average server to do a rotation.
Now if VR is using a dynamic load system to emulate servers, it may be possible for them to have smaller population servers to give that "community" feel and allow for such an implementation, but this really depends on what they are planning, what the costs are and what their tech is capable of achieving. In that respect, my idea may be unobtainable.
If you ask EQ players which expansion they liked best. ... But if you ask players who actually played all of those expansions, the numbers often look like this:
...
First you argue that instancing is good for EQ based on a graph that shows the FIRST (in the history of EQ) loss of subscriptions immediately following the big instancing expansion.
Now you completely fabricate data according to your own preferences and what people thought after the majority of EQ players stopped playing EQ. Just stop.
It was the beginning of the end. People want proper progression. LDON and GoD introduced instancing en masse, and they also invalidated previous content and the progression that kept the old world relevant and people playing the game. This period in EQ was the precursor to WoW and the Burning Crusade. Expansions completely invalidating the previous game. It changed EQ dramatically, and clearly not for the better.
Lol, in what world do you live? The most popular EQ emulators run classic-velious with hundreds of thousands of registered accounts. Pantheon's forums are predominantly filled with people who want a derivative of classic EQ. When Daybreak wants to make money, they offer progression servers which are always most popular during the early expansions.
You don't remember anyone who deemed contested raids fun or enjoyable? Well I don't know anyone who enjoyed EQ after contested raids as much as classic.
Are you certain that gamers playing P99 are there for the contested content or is more likely due to other factors, like nostalgia, slower paced gameplay, greater challenge, less hand holding...or a plethora of other reasons? The only thing I remember about contested content was the continual drama in /ooc chat in east commons about kill stealing, raid rivalries and ninja looting. Fires of Heaven and their low handed behavior was often brought up. Kinda like it has been lately on the TLS Ragefire with the Twisted Legacy guild locking everything down.
I'm sure they're there for both. The point is that if contested content was as hated as was being suggested, the servers that have tried offering the newer expacs or even custom content would be more popular. The p99 servers have always been extremely top heavy too, with hundreds of people competing for raid content.
Call it prestige, call it exclusivity, or call it vanity, but that was the thing that set EQ apart. That was why it was dubbed Evercrack. It was about the thrill of finally accomplishing something that took a lot of time, and often a lot of people. Convenience mechanics deteriorated those foundational tenets, and with it caused the downfall of player interdependence and the sense of community.
Comments
I do remember LDoN not being well received. Most thought it was a massive grind for little reward and many hated the behaviors it produced (ie the run through as fast as possible to farm the reward). It was a failed attempt in EQ and many didn't bother with it other than for getting a special item to which it was viewed as a "chore" type of expansion.
EQ had problem with the contested raid content because it became the main focus of play. They told the group players to hit the road by overly catering to the raiders (PoP was a big insult to group players with all the raid gated zones). With WoW coming out about that time, most of the group players went off to it for that reason. I remember a lot of people not wanting to leave, but there was noting they could do. Either you were in one of the top guilds who were powerful enough to fight over the content or you didn't raid and if you didn't raid, there was little you could do.
Then there was the extremely poor content design for raids which only encouraged the ability of a single guild to be able to block raid progression (Velious had a few choke points and SoL increased it, but PoP mastered the art of cock blocking content).
I will agree that contested content was not favored. Rarely did I see people go on about how they loved to rush off at a moments notice to have to get a raid mob. It was usually always negative. Most of my positive experience with raiding was the raids themselves after the drama was over or doing them in organized fashion on the Legends sever. Contested content "raids" was never a desired form of play.
That said, instances are not the solution. Giving everyone a prize is not a solution. IF people wanted what instances provided, there would be no need for this game.
Raiding content was part of the problem, but I wouldn't say instancing is the issue here. There was poor design so many levels. Sony was showing its incompetence at this point.
Are you certain that gamers playing P99 are there for the contested content or is more likely due to other factors, like nostalgia, slower paced gameplay, greater challenge, less hand holding...or a plethora of other reasons? The only thing I remember about contested content was the continual drama in /ooc chat in east commons about kill stealing, raid rivalries and ninja looting. Fires of Heaven and their low handed behavior was often brought up. Kinda like it has been lately on the TLS Ragefire with the Twisted Legacy guild locking everything down.
I would say it is many other reasons. Again, never saw contested raids as anything but a hassle to many. Maybe it is because Dullahan said he played PvP in EQ predominately that he has such a view? PvP servers were all about constant drama and some who are accustomed to it tend to see the conflict as not a big thing. /shrug
That wasn't my experience at all. I played EQ for the first 6 years non-stop and it was during LDoN that I found myself grouping more than I had up to that point. For months, it was groups of dungeon running. I'd never had more fun in EQ except for the release of the beastlord in Shadows of Luclin. Like all expansions in EQ, they become stale and people move onto the next one. No matter how much people liked previous expansions, the new expansions would always turn the older ones into ghost towns.
I have no doubt in my mind that instancing made the raiding scene much less stressful and more enjoyable. While I'm sure it didn't appeal to some, I believe those people were very much in the minority at the time. Instancing is the best tool to deal with bottlenecked content, but not nearly so much if the game offers multiple paths for the same objective. Not much discouraged me more than being unable to do the content I felt like doing at the time I wanted to do it, even more so when it was due to other players blocking my path on purpose.
Thing is, LDON brought about the spam based dungeon run style of play that exists today. I mean, it literally became a rat race of people grinding the instances over and over. It was what became of instances today where people fast ran them to farm the prizes.
Not being able to do content anytime you felt like it is why gear was rare, why it meant something to obtain rewards or finally get that camp. Instancing turned the game into a solo game for players to gain their rewards at their own pace.
Now you might think this is great, but there is a problem... when everyone is a winner, then none are. Instances gave everyone a prize, everyone a win, and the idea of uniqueness, of rarity, etc... was removed.
In EQ, not everyone had that special item, not everyone wanted to spend the effort to obtain a given item. Also, with contested content, it limited the flow of items into the game. So, getting that one specific item had meaning. With instances, the odds of obtaining that item was increased by the number of instances that dropped it.
If you look to the TLP servers in EQ now, they are a joke. Seriously, spam of people "Guild x killed Cazic... Guild y killed Caziz, Guild z killed Cazic" and in every kill that is duplicated loot brought into the game. Rarity? Nope... everyone gets a prize!
Now, add in the fact that you can do any content when you feel like it and think about how this speeds up content consumption? If you can do every mob without waiting in line, then you can more quickly obtain your rewards which speeds up your completion of the content where you then sit at "end game" waiting for new content.
EQ took a long time because getting geared took time to obtain. You had to compete for the raid boss and if you got it, you had to get lucky with the drop. The next time the raid boss popped, you may not get it that time, which means time spent waiting for the next spawn. This behavior caused guilds to slowly gear up (well, aside from the content blocking guilds, but that is another issue).
The key here is the loot, the rate of progression. These are things that will harm the game in the long run. Instancing isn't the "solution", it is simply a tool and it comes with its own problems. People are getting hung up on the tool and missing the main issue here.
I dont really find a vanity shop pay to win. I do find it distasteful, and implied I could live with it. I dont consider paying for a look pay to win. I didnt gain anything that will help me play better. Its just cosmetic fluff! But hey from an RP standpoint Im willing to see how it could appear that way. But whatever. If you consider it a bypass, then how is it you cant see what you were talking about as paying to bypass competition. Cant have it both ways Sinist
Now what you are suggesting is in fact PAY TO WIN. Period and the fact you wrote out this long post and dont see it is just crazy to me. Its not an issue as long as you arent paying extra for special access to an area of content that you already have access too. And you took my Pay to Win faster too literally, because I also included in that ease of access. You are paying money to bypass the other players and avoid competition. If it was just a matter of choosing a different server for my existing sub no problem. And no, its not even close to paying for an expansion. Thats paying for new content, not paying extra for existing content you already have access too. How do you not get that?
It is a bypass, we have pages of people complaining about the appearance slot issue and how it meant something in EQ to have a certain look. We have people complaining about how "hard" it is to find a good look in the game and that is why they want a store, etc... That very fact establishes that paying money to get it rather than playing the game is Pay To Win. Again, you keep suggesting this is subjective, it is not. You have not defended your position. You just keep dismissing all contest to it and claiming your subjective position trumps objective evaluation. Saying "it is just fluff" isn't a support for your position it is a flippant dismissal. The fact is, by "buying" your look, you are not "earning" your look in game. That is the very definition of Pay To Win.
I asked you, where is the win? You avoided answering to that many times, where is the win? I showed the logic of your position to be lacking each time and you failed to respond to it.
There is no bypassing other players. Everyone on that server agreed to a slower rate of progression by having a rotation (this invalidates your faster win claim). The Legends server provided extra content, it provided GM created and driven quests (that is like an expansion and invalidates your expansion argument), it had special rule sets (ie being able to name a new item, raid rotations) just like a PvP server or any other special rule set server, but it is NOT pay to win because it does not meet the definition of pay to win, it does not circumvent content, it does not allow the player to bypass or be handed any "wins". The cost thing was because of the GM support, the web tools, the interaction, etc... It cost money to attend to it, that is why your paid more.
You want to drop this discussion, fine... but accept that you can not defend your points, don't expect me to act like we can "agree to disagree" when you are blatantly abusing logical grounds.Your feelings and your subjective "belief" here is absolutely irrelevant to the establishment of your validity. It is an objective argument and you can not properly support your own as your premises are conflicting making any conclusion from them invalid.
A lot of people define winning as the acquisition of power. If that is winning, then anything acquired by paying money that makes a character more powerful, or that makes it easier for a character to acquire more power, is paying to win.
Applying this to raiding, I think that paying money to have better/easier/faster access to raid encounters than other folks have is paying to win. In fact, I think it is one of the most compelling examples of pay to win, because it pertains to a part of the game that is intensely competitive and where just a few hours difference means being first, second or just an also ran in a race between guilds.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
The vanity shop issue is the one based on "feelings" and not hard numbers like stats.
The numbers tend to look like this:
But if you ask players who actually played all of those expansions, the numbers often look like this:
I'm not saying either is right or wrong, but the first graph is like asking people if they can order 12 movies by best movie....and they only saw 4 out of 12 movies.
Omens of War was a fantastic expansion, but if you never played it, you wouldn't know, and you wouldn't vote for it.
Keep in mind that the extra paying was for the other things, not because of the rotation. As I said, other servers did rotations on their own, it just wasn't organized and managed by the GMs.
Money is not the key issue to paying to win, circumventing game play is.
Now you could make the argument that competition is game play, and therefore by having to not compete, it is paying extra to win. This however has to build its position that the entire point of paying more for the Legends server was the server rotation schedules. This is not even remotely true and if you look at the above feature list, they don't even mention raid rotation in the list as that was not the main point of this server, that was not what you were paying for.
The Vanity shop is as I said, you have yet to contend with your points being invalid. You dismissed it. Getting a unique look in EQ was an accomplishment, being able to buy it is bypassing the play required to achieve it.
Paying money is not the definition of Pay to Win otherwise a Subscription game vs a FTP game would define the subscription game as Pay To Win. Are subscription games Pay to Win because money is involved.
Deal with my counters or be shown to be avoiding the weakness in your own premise.
Is this real data or you just generalizing to make a point?
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I think I see the angle you guys are trying to establish. Thank you Amathe for making an honest effort to logically establish a position rather than just dismissing.
If we accept competition as the key element of the games systems, its entire point of game play. Then, by paying "extra" for a server that specifically provides this, that would be paying to avoid that required game play.
Reasonable argument.
Then Amasi's point is that because someone would have to pay "more" for such, they are paying to win.
There are many problems though.
For one, a person who buys an expansion that has a special feature such as the Bazaar could claim that this gives players an advantage and is essentially pay to win.
So, by not adding such a feature to the default game, then it is paying to win. By the way, this very argument was made during the release of the Bazaar by people who did not want to buy the expansion at the time and felt that a UI feature of such advantage should be given free to the players otherwise it would be a forced "paying" to gain advantage, especially for those who thought SoL was complete crap and didn't want anything to do with it (you could skip an entire expansion such as SoL and some did raiding the other expansions).
The Legends server had special content (GM ran quests, GM ran events, etc...) just as a new expansion would have. It came with tons of Web tools for guilds, character sheets, etc... again.. like SoL added the Bazaar, so did the Legends server offer these special features.
So, was the Bazaar Pay to Win? It is exactly the same thing as if you wanted the extra content and features of the Legends server, you had to pay for it.
This is the flaw in the arguments I see presented.
The Legends server, by contrast, gives you the game plus many other things which I still maintain makes it pay to win.
But, another wrinkle would be at what point is the competition "over." If someone bought something today that gave them an advantage in downing Trakanon, does it matter since Trakanon has been downed 100,000 times already by now? Is there a statute of limitations on this concept? Or, for so long as there are two guilds left in all the world who are still interested in that encounter, and they are competing against each other for the privilege, does pay to win still come into play?
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
My specific issue only has to do with paying for special access to content I should already have access too. Now if my sub cobers it and its just a matter of choosing the server with that rule set. No problem. Im not at a disadvantage and if I choose not to go to that server then thats on me not the devs. But the second Im blocked out by an extra price tag to get special access then thats where the problem is.
Remove the ability to transfer on or off of the server and it becomes much less of an issue. I would however note though that it does make some players feel bad when they can't afford the server and they feel like their server is getting less GM events and attention because they aren't paying more for it.
Being fair across the board is an important aspect of old school gaming IMHO.
I mean, PvE only is not Pay to Win, but... if we were to make game that was all about PvP and then allow a higher paid server that was PvE only, that would meet the potions of people calling it PTW?
I think that the attempt to define such is a stretch to encompass anything that does not give equal share as being "pay to win" when in fact, that is not the case. Even so, as I said.. the Legends server was all about the service and that was why the cost was more. Maybe at the time, due to the lack of technology, you also paid more to have a GM arbitrate the rotation system, testing, and web forum, but at that point are you paying for the privilege or just the cost of its implementation? I mean, it isn't like giving players access to potions for money which has no real cost in function.
These days though, to implement such a feature in the game, it could be easily facilitated through automation with little management cost. I haven't done any major software development for years, but I know for a fact it would take me very little time to design a database, webpage, and implement such in a Unity based engine (especially if it is in C# which is nowhere near as complex as C/C++/Assembly).
Point is, and this is my opinion, I think a rotation system is the best solution to both sides of the issue. It allows eventual access by all raids without the drama, but does not pollute the game system with gear inflation.
The problem with this implementation is dependent on how many raid mobs there are and how many likely guilds there are on the server. When the average raid was usually 50-70, this usually resulted in only a handful of capable guilds to take on the content, but with the VR shooting for 12 main raids to be the max (what I think I read), this could mean a heck of a lot more capable guilds and if there are not a lot or raid targets, this could be an issue.
Point is, the rotation system may not be a good solution until the game has built up a solid list of raid targets at multiple tiers. In EQ it worked because by the time they implemented the Legends server, there was The main game, Kunark, and Velious which had a lot of content at multiple tiers. So there was room for the average server to do a rotation.
Now if VR is using a dynamic load system to emulate servers, it may be possible for them to have smaller population servers to give that "community" feel and allow for such an implementation, but this really depends on what they are planning, what the costs are and what their tech is capable of achieving. In that respect, my idea may be unobtainable.
Now you completely fabricate data according to your own preferences and what people thought after the majority of EQ players stopped playing EQ. Just stop.
It was the beginning of the end. People want proper progression. LDON and GoD introduced instancing en masse, and they also invalidated previous content and the progression that kept the old world relevant and people playing the game. This period in EQ was the precursor to WoW and the Burning Crusade. Expansions completely invalidating the previous game. It changed EQ dramatically, and clearly not for the better.
Call it prestige, call it exclusivity, or call it vanity, but that was the thing that set EQ apart. That was why it was dubbed Evercrack. It was about the thrill of finally accomplishing something that took a lot of time, and often a lot of people. Convenience mechanics deteriorated those foundational tenets, and with it caused the downfall of player interdependence and the sense of community.