Things like this are what make this site frustrating.....The game is a couple years from release so why even bring this stuff up?...People are so driven by what is 2-3 years away on this site instead of focusing what is right now.
Things like this are what make this site frustrating.....The game is a couple years from release so why even bring this stuff up?...People are so driven by what is 2-3 years away on this site instead of focusing what is right now.
What is right now? I don't really see anything worth discussing in beta or launched.
even though this is the main game i am looking forward to that is currently in development, i expect absolutely nothing. hopefully it turns into a great mmorpg with a healthy community but i certainly won't hold my breath.
I just have top say one thing because well i want the best game experience i can get. I don't like Raids,imo they are never necessary and will alienate a lot of players all the time.
This is the same type of attitude which has lead us down the path we're at now with the industry.
Nobody is forcing you to raid. They've already said raiding will be around 5-10% of the games content. So, basically you're just being petulant and selfish based on...? Jealousy? I don't know. I mean i really don't get that mentality. If you don't like doing something, don't do it.
It's like saying that a grocery store shouldn't carry oreos cus you're gluten free and since you can't have them, nobody should be able to, and that having them will "alienate" players. No, the only people who it will alienate are irrational people who operate on a me me me mindset 24/7
No you don't get it and that is the reason WHY we are where we are now with games and EVERY game is doing raiding,so your point of "where we are at now" is further proven wrong by YOUR own admittance.
My point was also that you do not NEED it,there is NOTHING you can't do in a game that would need 24 players ,NOTHING.Any design or idea you want from a raid can be done with 6 players,so it becomes nothing more than some l33tist term or some bragging platform.
Raiding does NOTHING to bring a guild together,you can bring players together with 6 man groups.I almost find it hilarious because in REALITY inside of groups MOST are acting as" individuals" anyhow so what's the difference?Unless you are trying to tell me each player is interacting with all 24 players?Not a chance ion hell but with a 5/6 man group you can most certainly have everyone interacting with each other. All raiding does is create a more cumbersome time consuming 6 man group all you have is 3-4 6 man groups.You can't even properly heal a 24 man group,nor can you properly target 24 people,it is just a sloppier less organized form of 5/6 man grouping.
my main was a shaman back in the classic EQ days. i was usually the only shaman in the raid but sometimes there would be one or two others.
i interacted with every single group, i had to buff every group. there was also no raid instancing when i played EQ and in my guild we usually had like 50-60 people on raids (sometimes more when we let other guilds join us)
yeah its not as easy and efficient as running just one small group, thats what makes raiding more challenging.
that said, i'm not a huge fan of raiding anymore myself. i like the idea of making small group content hard and rewarding just like raiding is.
but raids should be a part of this game i just hope it isn't the only way to get the best gear in the game.
In conjunction with a creating more suspenseful situations, losing xp from dying creates a longer leveling phase, which coming from EQ and FFXI was a major part of the game.
Like most, I hate being able to get to max level in a week; however, the leveling experience has to be rewarding AND challenging to justify the long grind.
In conjunction with a creating more suspenseful situations, losing xp from dying creates a longer leveling phase, which coming from EQ and FFXI was a major part of the game.
Like most, I hate being able to get to max level in a week; however, the leveling experience has to be rewarding AND challenging to justify the long grind.
Hey, as R Kelly said, there aint nothin wrong, with a little bump n grind...
"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."
raids should be a part of this game i just hope it isn't the only way to get the best gear in the game.
But it will be. Brad has said it will be. More to the point, if raiding wasn't the only way to get the best gear there would be no point including it in the game. The sole purpose of raiding is to provide an ego-boost to a very specific demographic of players by setting up a progression path which favors them over the vast majority of players. It's all about coddling that particular demographic so they can feel "leet".
That demographic is comprised almost entirely of hopeless virgins who never leave their homes except when it's time to cash their welfare checks. They live entirely in their games and their entire sense of self worth is wrapped up in their in-game "accomplishments".
That's why they love the raid grind. They can play the game like a job because it's all they ever do. They don't care if raiding isn't actually fun because they aren't in it for fun. They are in it to prove that they are better than the common scrubs.
These people would never accept it if there was any other way to progress at the high end because the whole point of the raid grind is to slow or block the progression of normal people so the "hardcore" raiders can prove that they are "better" and thus cling to some tenuous sense of superiority.
I haven't been following the official pantheon forums but you can bet that these people are crawling all over those forums. Shouting down anyone who threatens them and trying to warp the game even more to their liking.
I'm sorry if I'm being unkind here but this is the reality. Those people are the reason we can never have a good grouping game which makes a reasonable compromise between <ultra-casual> and <hardcore> because the moment they get a whiff of something that might skew in their favor they dog pile on the game in development and push and push to send it to the far end of the bell curve where they live in their mothers basements.
however, the leveling experience has to be rewarding AND challenging to justify the long grind.
Keep in mind that the "leveling experience" is not just the things the Devs put in the game for us to whack on. It's also time spent with friends (including new ones you make as you go). I have spent many evenings doing things that may look repetitious, but they actually were not because I was also enjoying hanging out with my buddies.
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raids should be a part of this game i just hope it isn't the only way to get the best gear in the game.
But it will be. Brad has said it will be. More to the point, if raiding wasn't the only way to get the best gear there would be no point including it in the game. The sole purpose of raiding is to provide an ego-boost to a very specific demographic of players by setting up a progression path which favors them over the vast majority of players. It's all about coddling that particular demographic so they can feel "leet".
That demographic is comprised almost entirely of hopeless virgins who never leave their homes except when it's time to cash their welfare checks. They live entirely in their games and their entire sense of self worth is wrapped up in their in-game "accomplishments".
(snip)
Don't judge. Actually, most raiders I've known had jobs and even some of them were military. I don't think ambition or ego are necessarily tied to how much time someone has to play a game or whether they live in their mother's basement. YOu'd be surprised how many basement neckbeard aren't raiders or don't even play well. It's personality more than anything else.
raids should be a part of this game i just hope it isn't the only way to get the best gear in the game.
But it will be. Brad has said it will be. More to the point, if raiding wasn't the only way to get the best gear there would be no point including it in the game. The sole purpose of raiding is to provide an ego-boost to a very specific demographic of players by setting up a progression path which favors them over the vast majority of players. It's all about coddling that particular demographic so they can feel "leet".
That demographic is comprised almost entirely of hopeless virgins who never leave their homes except when it's time to cash their welfare checks. They live entirely in their games and their entire sense of self worth is wrapped up in their in-game "accomplishments".
That's why they love the raid grind. They can play the game like a job because it's all they ever do. They don't care if raiding isn't actually fun because they aren't in it for fun. They are in it to prove that they are better than the common scrubs.
These people would never accept it if there was any other way to progress at the high end because the whole point of the raid grind is to slow or block the progression of normal people so the "hardcore" raiders can prove that they are "better" and thus cling to some tenuous sense of superiority.
I haven't been following the official pantheon forums but you can bet that these people are crawling all over those forums. Shouting down anyone who threatens them and trying to warp the game even more to their liking.
I'm sorry if I'm being unkind here but this is the reality. Those people are the reason we can never have a good grouping game which makes a reasonable compromise between <ultra-casual> and <hardcore> because the moment they get a whiff of something that might skew in their favor they dog pile on the game in development and push and push to send it to the far end of the bell curve where they live in their mothers basements.
This statement is beyond ridiculous, having raided since 1999, as a productive member of society, with other productive members of society.
Raiding in general does take more time, but its never necessitated the levels of dedication that you claim above outside of possibly a certain emulator that has skewed your perception. I can tell you the above description describes a small subset of people who raid and is not at all representative of players who raided in EQ back in its heyday.
raids should be a part of this game i just hope it isn't the only way to get the best gear in the game.
But it will be. Brad has said it will be. More to the point, if raiding wasn't the only way to get the best gear there would be no point including it in the game. The sole purpose of raiding is to provide an ego-boost to a very specific demographic of players by setting up a progression path which favors them over the vast majority of players. It's all about coddling that particular demographic so they can feel "leet".
That demographic is comprised almost entirely of hopeless virgins who never leave their homes except when it's time to cash their welfare checks. They live entirely in their games and their entire sense of self worth is wrapped up in their in-game "accomplishments".
That's why they love the raid grind. They can play the game like a job because it's all they ever do. They don't care if raiding isn't actually fun because they aren't in it for fun. They are in it to prove that they are better than the common scrubs.
These people would never accept it if there was any other way to progress at the high end because the whole point of the raid grind is to slow or block the progression of normal people so the "hardcore" raiders can prove that they are "better" and thus cling to some tenuous sense of superiority.
I haven't been following the official pantheon forums but you can bet that these people are crawling all over those forums. Shouting down anyone who threatens them and trying to warp the game even more to their liking.
I'm sorry if I'm being unkind here but this is the reality. Those people are the reason we can never have a good grouping game which makes a reasonable compromise between <ultra-casual> and <hardcore> because the moment they get a whiff of something that might skew in their favor they dog pile on the game in development and push and push to send it to the far end of the bell curve where they live in their mothers basements.
The amount of bullshit in this post is overwhelming.
People like you are literally the reason why we have faceroll easy mode solo quest hub MMOs.
A small minority of raiders, typically the top 10-20% of raiders, are there for the "e-peen" aspects of raiding. The rest of raiders are there because they enjoy tackling objectives with groups of friends. They enjoy working together, coordinating efforts, etc. If you actually raided you would know how full of crap you are and how ridiculous of a statement that you made is.
The absolutely hilarious part of this is that you don't even realize that the last statement you made, about how raiders supposedly "push and push" to send it to "the far end of the bell curve" is literally the exact OPPOSITE of what has actually happened. It's actually the "ultra casuals" who have done exactly that (as far as pushing for their play style to be dominant) and that is exactly why were are in the state we are in the MMO genre.
The only reality is the one you choose not to acknowledge. Saying something repeatedly does not make it true.
"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."
The absolutely hilarious part of this is that you don't even realize that the last statement you made, about how raiders supposedly "push and push" to send it to "the far end of the bell curve" is literally the exact OPPOSITE of what has actually happened. It's actually the "ultra casuals" who have done exactly that (as far as pushing for their play style to be dominant) and that is exactly why were are in the state we are in the MMO genre.
No...actually both have happened. The insane, no-life, hardcore raiders have pushed one way and the ultra-casuals have pushed the other way. The reason the ultra-casuals are winning is because the "hardcore" demographic, while being extremely vocal and active on forums, is too small to support a game by itself.
There is a middle road between solo play MMOs and MMOs that devolve into a god-awful multi-group raid grind but the "hardcore" people are the reason that middle road will never be taken. And THAT is why the ultra-casuals are winning the war.
I'll admit I'm a bit surprised that nobody jumped in here to claim that the reason they can play a game like a job is because they are an independently wealthy, international playboy. That's the response I used to typically get from the "hardcore" folks. I suppose people are a little more savvy about internet posing now.
What difference does it make if someone else plays a lot, or has better gear? How does that diminish my enjoyment of the game unless I allow it? All I need is good enough gear to be able to take on the content I am doing.
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What difference does it make if someone else plays a lot, or has better gear? How does that diminish my enjoyment of the game unless I allow it? All I need is good enough gear to be able to take on the content I am doing.
What difference does it make if someone else plays a lot, or has better gear? How does that diminish my enjoyment of the game unless I allow it? All I need is good enough gear to be able to take on the content I am doing.
Rose Colored Glasses detected...
I don't know what you mean.
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The absolutely hilarious part of this is that you don't even realize that the last statement you made, about how raiders supposedly "push and push" to send it to "the far end of the bell curve" is literally the exact OPPOSITE of what has actually happened. It's actually the "ultra casuals" who have done exactly that (as far as pushing for their play style to be dominant) and that is exactly why were are in the state we are in the MMO genre.
No...actually both have happened. The insane, no-life, hardcore raiders have pushed one way and the ultra-casuals have pushed the other way. The reason the ultra-casuals are winning is because the "hardcore" demographic, while being extremely vocal and active on forums, is too small to support a game by itself.
There is a middle road between solo play MMOs and MMOs that devolve into a god-awful multi-group raid grind but the "hardcore" people are the reason that middle road will never be taken. And THAT is why the ultra-casuals are winning the war.
I'll admit I'm a bit surprised that nobody jumped in here to claim that the reason they can play a game like a job is because they are an independently wealthy, international playboy. That's the response I used to typically get from the "hardcore" folks. I suppose people are a little more savvy about internet posing now.
That's untrue. There were 10 Man Raids in WoW to suit the more casual player base, but they complained that the gear from their 10 mans weren't as good as gear from 25 Mans. Now there are Flex Raids. There was LFR Raids but they complained that they were too hard, but they still wanted great rewards, so now the LFR has been nerfed into the ground in difficulty with rewards to match the effort, and they now complain that it isn't worth doing because the drops look terrible and have terrible stats.
The problem is that the casuals want too much for too little effort, and the hard core players want their rewards to be exclusive to the difficult content. That's the huge rift.
The thing that everything revolves around in most of these MMORPGs, is items and achievements, because it's the only material way to display character advancement once you've gotten to end-game levels.
A Player who had to go through organizing raids of 25-40 players over months to gear up doesn't, and shouldn't, want/have to sit there and see someone who does nothing but 5 mans pop up with gear that is anywhere near the calibre that he's wearing.
Risk v. Reward is a thing. Group content isn't and never will be as rewarding as raid content, and if it is (MoP LFR), then the community will make sure the raids or buffed or the drops are nerfed to restore that balance.
I feel like raiders are demonized and casuals get away with this precisely because they are the majority. They want too much for too little effort, and with very little time investment. That's why you have the current crop of games.
If you want something like OG EQ with ridiculous XP and Gear Grind and Penalties, etc. the people who are "above casual" will still best you in all of those ways the same way the "no lifers" shot ahead in games like Lineage II (for example).
It's something that's not worth going through the trouble of trying to balance. At some point, you have to cut your losses. Either your game will be casual and turn off raiders for a number of reasons, or it will be hardcore and turn off casuals for a number of reason.
Pantheon - at least what the developers are describing - is not going to be a super casual player's dream, and when you're playing 5 hours a week compared to my 20-30 hours a week... Do you think I'll want anything to do with you after a couple of weeks when you're nothing but a useless bluebie who can't survive outside of lowbie areas?
All this will do is preserve many of the issues in EQ's original system, while making level disparity a limiting factor (something that games like WoW have largely eliminated... but you see this issue in games like Lineage II).
raids should be a part of this game i just hope it isn't the only way to get the best gear in the game.
But it will be. Brad has said it will be. More to the point, if raiding wasn't the only way to get the best gear there would be no point including it in the game. The sole purpose of raiding is to provide an ego-boost to a very specific demographic of players by setting up a progression path which favors them over the vast majority of players. It's all about coddling that particular demographic so they can feel "leet".
That demographic is comprised almost entirely of hopeless virgins who never leave their homes except when it's time to cash their welfare checks. They live entirely in their games and their entire sense of self worth is wrapped up in their in-game "accomplishments".
That's why they love the raid grind. They can play the game like a job because it's all they ever do. They don't care if raiding isn't actually fun because they aren't in it for fun. They are in it to prove that they are better than the common scrubs.
These people would never accept it if there was any other way to progress at the high end because the whole point of the raid grind is to slow or block the progression of normal people so the "hardcore" raiders can prove that they are "better" and thus cling to some tenuous sense of superiority.
I haven't been following the official pantheon forums but you can bet that these people are crawling all over those forums. Shouting down anyone who threatens them and trying to warp the game even more to their liking.
I'm sorry if I'm being unkind here but this is the reality. Those people are the reason we can never have a good grouping game which makes a reasonable compromise between <ultra-casual> and <hardcore> because the moment they get a whiff of something that might skew in their favor they dog pile on the game in development and push and push to send it to the far end of the bell curve where they live in their mothers basements.
Raiding is about giving longevity to content. It fuels the game in ways you are too blind and stupid to realize. If a good drop drops in a dungeon, raiders may go there simply to min/max for raiding, when otherwise they may not feel it's worth the time and get the next best thing cause it's "good enough." Additionally, raid content gives structure to the game and content additions. It gives it longevity.
Learning encounters. Getting them on farm. Farming gear for your raid team. This all takes time.
Without raiding, this game would be dead in the water.
Why do you think virtually every PvE game has a raid-based end-game? Cause a certain small demographic they could afford to ignore want it?
Why do you think virtually every PvE game has a raid-based end-game? Cause a certain small demographic they could afford to ignore want it?
Okay, believe that ;-)
And in the post-WoW era what has happened to virtually every PvE game with a raid-based end-game?
Hmm?
The game launches. Lots of people jump in to try it out. Then, in a relatively short time (less then a year generally) the population begins to drop off.
Let us speculate why this might happen. You offer people a choice to "raid or quit" at the end-game. People reach the end-game and start quitting. Hmm.....is it possible there might be some connection? No...surely not. It couldn't be!
The fact is that the vast majority of people simply do not like that crap. Don't want to do it. And won't do it for very long. And that trend is only growing as people who once were willing to do it have grown sick and tired of it.
You can call me blind and stupid all you want for pointing out the facts but that isn't going to change reality. Pantheon is setting itself up to prove this all yet again. But the terrible thing for Pantheon is that it's going to start out with a lower than normal population to begin with because the early game will have less mass appeal. And almost certainly their raiding end-game will be even more onerous than usual.
I prefer small group content that takes 100 years to max my toon to committing raid schedules and organised raiding. I don't mind if a game has raids as end game content as long as there is an alternative path to progress, even if it was longer and more grindy than the raiding path.
I also hope it will take a long time before anyone reaches the so-called end-game in Pantheon. Let this game not be one of those one month wonders with few days of leveling and clearing the whole content in following three weeks.
I think some people are missing the fact that Pantheon is being designed primarily for group content, NOT for the casual solo content, nor for the hardcore raid content. While players will be capable of doing some solo, and some raiding, that isn't the main focus.
@darksworm seems to believe that the point of these games is to raid, and those of us who may choose not to raid, or who don't have time in our schedules for it, are just here to keep the lights on for the others. It's perfectly fine if he believes that. I have no quarrel. These are fantasy role playing games, and that evidently is his fantasy for the role in the game he imagines he occupies.
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It's honestly pointless to even argue with Neanderthal anymore. He has it in his head that raiders = rich playboys that like to play the game like its a job, and that they're only doing its so that they can lord their "riches" (RL and in game) over the simpleton "ultra casual" peasants.
Despite mountains of facts, logic, reason, and evidence to the contrary of his opinion, he chooses to continue to believe something that simply isn't true.
"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 keep seeing someone say that an XP penalty is just a way to increase the "grind." The use of the word "grind" in that argument shows me exactly how that person feels towards leveling. It is just a grind to to the max level. If that is the way a person views MMO's, I don't want that person's opinions counting for anything in the making of this game.
In Vanguard there was an XP penalty. It was small. I thought, even at the beginning, too small. That being said, I only considered about 5 hours of my total game play as a grind. Normally, I would log on and be excited for whatever it was that I was going to do. Find a group for a dungeon I like, or a dungeon I haven't seen, or some overland areas that had rewards I wanted, or encounters I'd like to try. If the game provides a situation where going from 1 to the max level is fun and rewarding, while also presenting risks and danger, I wouldn't call that a grind.
Anyone that views leveling as a grind in all situations is not the type of person I want giving game design advice. The leveling game for Vanguard was great, so great in fact, that I leveled twice to the max level, and once to about level 30, in the first couple months. If you view leveling as grinding before you've even seen what the game plans to include as leveling content, then no argument for XP penalties will make sense. When you view leveling as a major part of the adventure, there's no reason that losing XP is anything more than a penalty for making a mistake.
If the leveling experience is as good (hopefully better) than Vanguard; ie. lots of small group/large group areas, unique awards, rare spawns, extremely difficult to accomplish quests, there is no reason to call it "grinding" and making the adventure long via XP penalties for death is hardly something to complain about.
Why do you think virtually every PvE game has a raid-based end-game? Cause a certain small demographic they could afford to ignore want it?
Okay, believe that ;-)
And in the post-WoW era what has happened to virtually every PvE game with a raid-based end-game?
Hmm?
The game launches. Lots of people jump in to try it out. Then, in a relatively short time (less then a year generally) the population begins to drop off.
Let us speculate why this might happen. You offer people a choice to "raid or quit" at the end-game. People reach the end-game and start quitting. Hmm.....is it possible there might be some connection? No...surely not. It couldn't be!
The fact is that the vast majority of people simply do not like that crap. Don't want to do it. And won't do it for very long. And that trend is only growing as people who once were willing to do it have grown sick and tired of it.
You can call me blind and stupid all you want for pointing out the facts but that isn't going to change reality. Pantheon is setting itself up to prove this all yet again. But the terrible thing for Pantheon is that it's going to start out with a lower than normal population to begin with because the early game will have less mass appeal. And almost certainly their raiding end-game will be even more onerous than usual.
I'm curious how you can attribute that to a raid-based end game.
Almost every MMORPG launched recently has had a raid-based end-game. In fact, that has been the general formula since EverQuest.
EQ, EQ2, WoW, AoC, Vanguard, Rift, FFXI[V], etc. all had/have raid-based end games. DAoC had raids at end-game and so do games like GW2. Lineage II's end-game is raiding Epics and Dragons.
The fact that they put some PvP areas or have FFA/Open PvP doesn't change the fact that character progression beyond a certain point at max level is basically tied to your willingness to delve into raiding.
So I don't see your point. 90% of MMORPGs have end-game raiding so it's kind of blind and stupid to invent facts based on norms and then blame it on one obvious element almost all of these games have in common...
It's kind of like saying Trinity was killing the genre, when every game had a Trinity and you really didn't have enough non-Trinity games to weigh that baseless "fact" against (and the general observation is that the lack of a "trinity" isn't really helping those games that eschewed it).
People quit those games because most of them were either buggy as hell (Vanguard), had content cliffs at end game (Age of Conan), were simply not fun to play, or were terrible in a variety of ways.
Some of them simply do/did not have development teams good enough to do the game justice. That is not a trivial factor.
I agree MrBungle,i also don't want people who think gaming is just a speed race to the next level influencing games either. What i do feel we should do is lose the term DEATH or death penalty,there is NO DEATH,just call it a KO,knocked out scenario. Then to keep in terms of realism pretty much the only way we can do it with computer code is to give players penalties ,example strength,slowed or agility and dexterity loss,ideas you WOULD expect from being KO'd. Determine a time frame,how long do these penalties last,are they instant or gradual returns,to me it should be a gradual return to normal status.
On the same note ,FOOD should be 100% active to keep in line with making sense,it should not be an OOC idea which makes no sense.you could even have a rare or hard to craft item that helps restore ones status after being KO'd,some healing fruit or elixir but definitely do NOT want to turn the game into any healing pot game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Comments
i interacted with every single group, i had to buff every group. there was also no raid instancing when i played EQ and in my guild we usually had like 50-60 people on raids (sometimes more when we let other guilds join us)
yeah its not as easy and efficient as running just one small group, thats what makes raiding more challenging.
that said, i'm not a huge fan of raiding anymore myself. i like the idea of making small group content hard and rewarding just like raiding is.
but raids should be a part of this game i just hope it isn't the only way to get the best gear in the game.
Like most, I hate being able to get to max level in a week; however, the leveling experience has to be rewarding AND challenging to justify the long grind.
Hey, as R Kelly said, there aint nothin wrong, with a little bump n grind...
"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
But it will be. Brad has said it will be. More to the point, if raiding wasn't the only way to get the best gear there would be no point including it in the game. The sole purpose of raiding is to provide an ego-boost to a very specific demographic of players by setting up a progression path which favors them over the vast majority of players. It's all about coddling that particular demographic so they can feel "leet".
That demographic is comprised almost entirely of hopeless virgins who never leave their homes except when it's time to cash their welfare checks. They live entirely in their games and their entire sense of self worth is wrapped up in their in-game "accomplishments".
That's why they love the raid grind. They can play the game like a job because it's all they ever do. They don't care if raiding isn't actually fun because they aren't in it for fun. They are in it to prove that they are better than the common scrubs.
These people would never accept it if there was any other way to progress at the high end because the whole point of the raid grind is to slow or block the progression of normal people so the "hardcore" raiders can prove that they are "better" and thus cling to some tenuous sense of superiority.
I haven't been following the official pantheon forums but you can bet that these people are crawling all over those forums. Shouting down anyone who threatens them and trying to warp the game even more to their liking.
I'm sorry if I'm being unkind here but this is the reality. Those people are the reason we can never have a good grouping game which makes a reasonable compromise between <ultra-casual> and <hardcore> because the moment they get a whiff of something that might skew in their favor they dog pile on the game in development and push and push to send it to the far end of the bell curve where they live in their mothers basements.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Raiding in general does take more time, but its never necessitated the levels of dedication that you claim above outside of possibly a certain emulator that has skewed your perception. I can tell you the above description describes a small subset of people who raid and is not at all representative of players who raided in EQ back in its heyday.
The amount of bullshit in this post is overwhelming.
People like you are literally the reason why we have faceroll easy mode solo quest hub MMOs.
A small minority of raiders, typically the top 10-20% of raiders, are there for the "e-peen" aspects of raiding. The rest of raiders are there because they enjoy tackling objectives with groups of friends. They enjoy working together, coordinating efforts, etc. If you actually raided you would know how full of crap you are and how ridiculous of a statement that you made is.
The absolutely hilarious part of this is that you don't even realize that the last statement you made, about how raiders supposedly "push and push" to send it to "the far end of the bell curve" is literally the exact OPPOSITE of what has actually happened. It's actually the "ultra casuals" who have done exactly that (as far as pushing for their play style to be dominant) and that is exactly why were are in the state we are in the MMO genre.
The only reality is the one you choose not to acknowledge. Saying something repeatedly does not make it true.
"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
No...actually both have happened. The insane, no-life, hardcore raiders have pushed one way and the ultra-casuals have pushed the other way. The reason the ultra-casuals are winning is because the "hardcore" demographic, while being extremely vocal and active on forums, is too small to support a game by itself.
There is a middle road between solo play MMOs and MMOs that devolve into a god-awful multi-group raid grind but the "hardcore" people are the reason that middle road will never be taken. And THAT is why the ultra-casuals are winning the war.
I'll admit I'm a bit surprised that nobody jumped in here to claim that the reason they can play a game like a job is because they are an independently wealthy, international playboy. That's the response I used to typically get from the "hardcore" folks. I suppose people are a little more savvy about internet posing now.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
That's untrue. There were 10 Man Raids in WoW to suit the more casual player base, but they complained that the gear from their 10 mans weren't as good as gear from 25 Mans. Now there are Flex Raids. There was LFR Raids but they complained that they were too hard, but they still wanted great rewards, so now the LFR has been nerfed into the ground in difficulty with rewards to match the effort, and they now complain that it isn't worth doing because the drops look terrible and have terrible stats.
The problem is that the casuals want too much for too little effort, and the hard core players want their rewards to be exclusive to the difficult content. That's the huge rift.
The thing that everything revolves around in most of these MMORPGs, is items and achievements, because it's the only material way to display character advancement once you've gotten to end-game levels.
A Player who had to go through organizing raids of 25-40 players over months to gear up doesn't, and shouldn't, want/have to sit there and see someone who does nothing but 5 mans pop up with gear that is anywhere near the calibre that he's wearing.
Risk v. Reward is a thing. Group content isn't and never will be as rewarding as raid content, and if it is (MoP LFR), then the community will make sure the raids or buffed or the drops are nerfed to restore that balance.
I feel like raiders are demonized and casuals get away with this precisely because they are the majority. They want too much for too little effort, and with very little time investment. That's why you have the current crop of games.
If you want something like OG EQ with ridiculous XP and Gear Grind and Penalties, etc. the people who are "above casual" will still best you in all of those ways the same way the "no lifers" shot ahead in games like Lineage II (for example).
It's something that's not worth going through the trouble of trying to balance. At some point, you have to cut your losses. Either your game will be casual and turn off raiders for a number of reasons, or it will be hardcore and turn off casuals for a number of reason.
Pantheon - at least what the developers are describing - is not going to be a super casual player's dream, and when you're playing 5 hours a week compared to my 20-30 hours a week... Do you think I'll want anything to do with you after a couple of weeks when you're nothing but a useless bluebie who can't survive outside of lowbie areas?
All this will do is preserve many of the issues in EQ's original system, while making level disparity a limiting factor (something that games like WoW have largely eliminated... but you see this issue in games like Lineage II).
Raiding is about giving longevity to content. It fuels the game in ways you are too blind and stupid to realize. If a good drop drops in a dungeon, raiders may go there simply to min/max for raiding, when otherwise they may not feel it's worth the time and get the next best thing cause it's "good enough." Additionally, raid content gives structure to the game and content additions. It gives it longevity.
Learning encounters. Getting them on farm. Farming gear for your raid team. This all takes time.
Without raiding, this game would be dead in the water.
Why do you think virtually every PvE game has a raid-based end-game? Cause a certain small demographic they could afford to ignore want it?
Okay, believe that ;-)
And in the post-WoW era what has happened to virtually every PvE game with a raid-based end-game?
Hmm?
The game launches. Lots of people jump in to try it out. Then, in a relatively short time (less then a year generally) the population begins to drop off.
Let us speculate why this might happen. You offer people a choice to "raid or quit" at the end-game. People reach the end-game and start quitting. Hmm.....is it possible there might be some connection? No...surely not. It couldn't be!
The fact is that the vast majority of people simply do not like that crap. Don't want to do it. And won't do it for very long. And that trend is only growing as people who once were willing to do it have grown sick and tired of it.
You can call me blind and stupid all you want for pointing out the facts but that isn't going to change reality. Pantheon is setting itself up to prove this all yet again. But the terrible thing for Pantheon is that it's going to start out with a lower than normal population to begin with because the early game will have less mass appeal. And almost certainly their raiding end-game will be even more onerous than usual.
I also hope it will take a long time before anyone reaches the so-called end-game in Pantheon. Let this game not be one of those one month wonders with few days of leveling and clearing the whole content in following three weeks.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
It's honestly pointless to even argue with Neanderthal anymore. He has it in his head that raiders = rich playboys that like to play the game like its a job, and that they're only doing its so that they can lord their "riches" (RL and in game) over the simpleton "ultra casual" peasants.
Despite mountains of facts, logic, reason, and evidence to the contrary of his opinion, he chooses to continue to believe something that simply isn't true.
"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
In Vanguard there was an XP penalty. It was small. I thought, even at the beginning, too small. That being said, I only considered about 5 hours of my total game play as a grind. Normally, I would log on and be excited for whatever it was that I was going to do. Find a group for a dungeon I like, or a dungeon I haven't seen, or some overland areas that had rewards I wanted, or encounters I'd like to try. If the game provides a situation where going from 1 to the max level is fun and rewarding, while also presenting risks and danger, I wouldn't call that a grind.
Anyone that views leveling as a grind in all situations is not the type of person I want giving game design advice. The leveling game for Vanguard was great, so great in fact, that I leveled twice to the max level, and once to about level 30, in the first couple months. If you view leveling as grinding before you've even seen what the game plans to include as leveling content, then no argument for XP penalties will make sense. When you view leveling as a major part of the adventure, there's no reason that losing XP is anything more than a penalty for making a mistake.
If the leveling experience is as good (hopefully better) than Vanguard; ie. lots of small group/large group areas, unique awards, rare spawns, extremely difficult to accomplish quests, there is no reason to call it "grinding" and making the adventure long via XP penalties for death is hardly something to complain about.
Almost every MMORPG launched recently has had a raid-based end-game. In fact, that has been the general formula since EverQuest.
EQ, EQ2, WoW, AoC, Vanguard, Rift, FFXI[V], etc. all had/have raid-based end games. DAoC had raids at end-game and so do games like GW2. Lineage II's end-game is raiding Epics and Dragons.
The fact that they put some PvP areas or have FFA/Open PvP doesn't change the fact that character progression beyond a certain point at max level is basically tied to your willingness to delve into raiding.
So I don't see your point. 90% of MMORPGs have end-game raiding so it's kind of blind and stupid to invent facts based on norms and then blame it on one obvious element almost all of these games have in common...
It's kind of like saying Trinity was killing the genre, when every game had a Trinity and you really didn't have enough non-Trinity games to weigh that baseless "fact" against (and the general observation is that the lack of a "trinity" isn't really helping those games that eschewed it).
People quit those games because most of them were either buggy as hell (Vanguard), had content cliffs at end game (Age of Conan), were simply not fun to play, or were terrible in a variety of ways.
Some of them simply do/did not have development teams good enough to do the game justice. That is not a trivial factor.
What i do feel we should do is lose the term DEATH or death penalty,there is NO DEATH,just call it a KO,knocked out scenario.
Then to keep in terms of realism pretty much the only way we can do it with computer code is to give players penalties ,example strength,slowed or agility and dexterity loss,ideas you WOULD expect from being KO'd.
Determine a time frame,how long do these penalties last,are they instant or gradual returns,to me it should be a gradual return to normal status.
On the same note ,FOOD should be 100% active to keep in line with making sense,it should not be an OOC idea which makes no sense.you could even have a rare or hard to craft item that helps restore ones status after being KO'd,some healing fruit or elixir but definitely do NOT want to turn the game into any healing pot game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.