As Aradune has said, and people have selective memory here, zerging causes poblems. Period. I played EQ extensively in my youth (over 5000 ours in 2.5 years) and I can assure you, because I was there, plenty of guilds (including the one I was in) zerged content, ALL THE TIME. One of the guilds I most respected on my server (Afterlife) was actually known for doing content with 66% to half the number of people as a guild like Fires of Heaven (who regularly brought 70+ to a raid). Personally I wasn't impressed with them being the first guild to down a dragon when Afterlife came in and did it a few days later with 20 or 30 less people.
Regardless, the "not getting gear" fast enough to keep zerging from happening just didn't pan out. Plenty of people were happy just to see the content. They didn't care about not getting the gear. Hell, look at P99, it happens still there. Guilds like BDA constantly zerg content, and there is no shortage of people lining up to join because *some* chance at raid loot is better than *no* chance at raid loot. Not to mention people who aren't great players can tag along in a 70 person raid because if they screw up, its not that big of a deal, there's 69 other people to pick up your slack. When you're doing content with 20 or 30 people, EVERY mistake matters.
Well as someone whose played exceeded even yours and raided on two different servers, my experience was different.
You are right in that people often zerged early on. That stemmed mostly from fear of the unknown (in a dangerous world) and the general lack of skill among players in the early years. By the end of classic, guilds were already breaking off into smaller, more competent groups and often killing raid targets with a fraction of the numbers we originally required. It was just the nature of the early process.
Also, p99, while an accurate emulation on a mechanical level, is nothing like classic EQ. Both servers are extremely top heavy, consisting of mostly max level characters and players contending for raid targets. They also have a variance system that forces guild to inflate their ranks to track raid targets.
Well that just goes to show you that maybe it was a problem for other people. Just because you didn't have the the problem doesn't mean others didn't. There was problems in XI to and certain people could not be policed or reasoned with and even formed guilds so that it didn't matter about their reputation.
The tracking of raid targets and Zerging of Raid targets is EXACTLY why Instances were created. I remember waiting days for a mob in FFXI to spawn and when it did it was a large guild that got the kill because they had over 100 people there. Instances made life better because I could stick to my group of friends and didnt need to be in 1 single large guild that allowed me to do things in game. Thats why any game coming out that has these old mechanics will not attract people.
While I dont particularly mind instanced content as long as its balanced with equall amount of open world. I dont have a problem with a totally open world. So I think there will be plenty of people like myself that long for a return of oldschool mechanics. I just want them to be careful of implementation.
The tracking of raid targets and Zerging of Raid targets is EXACTLY why Instances were created. I remember waiting days for a mob in FFXI to spawn and when it did it was a large guild that got the kill because they had over 100 people there. Instances made life better because I could stick to my group of friends and didn't need to be in 1 single large guild that allowed me to do things in game. That's why any game coming out that has these old mechanics will not attract people.
Instancing happened for a few reasons, including allowing devs to make less content, and then allowing players easier and less contested acquisition of desired items. It went hand-in-hand with the shifting of MMOs from being highly social, cooperative, challenging and competitive to being more of an online single player experience. These design changes were made hoping that it would result in MMOs that were truly mass market, and began when devs/publishers started chanting 'we have to make a WoW-killer'. No WoW-killer has emerged, but there are now quite a few 'modern' MMOs out there with no stickiness, no community, and rewards that are easy to obtain and levels that are quick to achieve. And lots of players are bouncing around, trying this one and that, but not settling down and making one their home. For some of these players, that's fine, and that's exactly what they want out of online gaming. But for a lot of other people, they want to find a new home and this shift has left them feeling orphaned. It's the latter group that Pantheon is after.
Yes, if zerging was undesirable only because it was an indication that players were competing for content and resources, then Instancing would be a way to 'stop' Zerging. But in the context of Pantheon, a game where a reasonable amount of competition for content and resources is part of the design, Instancing is not the answer because of all of the other negatives Instancing brings to an MMO focused on community, cooperation, lasting and true friendships, and shared experiences and memories.
In Pantheon, we want to avoid zerging because it can trivialize the environment and remove risk and challenge from the game. There are some simple ways to stop zerging, but they usually involve draconian rules, and we want Pantheon to be more sandboxy and open. So the likely answer is better NPC AI, where mobs simply flee if too many attack them, or call for reinforcements, or change their behavior in some other way (although I am not a fan of simply scaling difficulty either).
Anyway, if a game with these 'old mechanics' isn't interesting to you, that's fine. But asserting that it won't attract anybody -- well, me and a whole bunch of other MMO fans who are yearning for a game like Pantheon will have to agree to disagree with you. That said, Pantheon is a group focused game, not a raid focused game, so you will absolutely be able to stick with a group of friends and you won't feel you need to be part of an uber guild. Likewise, if too much competition for content arises such that the game world feels overcrowded and that there isn't enough content for everyone, we'll launch additional servers/shards. There are many ways to deal with the issues you've brought up without resorting to instancing, I promise
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-------------------------------------------------------------- Brad McQuaid CCO, Visionary Realms, Inc. www.pantheonmmo.com --------------------------------------------------------------
Very well said Brad. Stick to them guns Bro. There are many that are behind you. Even if I dont always agree with some of the EQ folks. That by no means says that I dont want an Open World. And I predict that along with old EQ vets, that there will be plenty of VG and EQOA and XI refugees as well.
The tracking of raid targets and Zerging of Raid targets is EXACTLY why Instances were created. I remember waiting days for a mob in FFXI to spawn and when it did it was a large guild that got the kill because they had over 100 people there. Instances made life better because I could stick to my group of friends and didnt need to be in 1 single large guild that allowed me to do things in game. Thats why any game coming out that has these old mechanics will not attract people.
This example is two seperate problems if you stop and think about it. Did that large guild get the mob because they zerged it with over 100 people, or did they get the mob because there was no encounter lock mechanic to stop someone kill stealing.
I see a lot of these arguments about zergs and most of them are boiling down to encounter lock rather than anything else.
Personally I think that a MASSIVELY multiplayer game should not have a hard cap on how many players can attend a raid, or it's no longer MASSIVELY multiplayer.
If zerging offends you sense of style fair enough but then again who gives a damn if it's not interfering with your guild's attempts to down bosses?
As for trivialising content, if someone goes to the trouble to get that many players to attend then he/she has earned the right to try it their way.
As long as there is a decent mechanic in place to prevent kill stealing or locking raid encounters once started then zerging is no longer a problem for the smaller more organised groups/guilds.
I'd like my MMO to have two M's please, not one. No more of this 25 man raid BS, thanks. How about we get an MMO that actually designs content for a massively multiplayer encounter, literally 200 players required to take it on.
Maybe it's time to move away from the "raid boss" and think outside the box we all seem to have fallen into. I dunno, perhaps we could try something different like a scenario where some bad guy is holed up in a fortress guarded by an elite company of mercs that you have to fight your way past but not in small groups of 5 at a time. Instead you have to engage and kill a shield wall of 200 warriors to even get to the gates.
Maybe that works, maybe not. I just know I'm sick and tired of games where you can't do anything with more than 25 people claiming to be massively multiplayer. I'm praying to the MMO Gods that Pantheon will be.
As Aradune has said, and people have selective memory here, zerging causes poblems. Period. I played EQ extensively in my youth (over 5000 ours in 2.5 years) and I can assure you, because I was there, plenty of guilds (including the one I was in) zerged content, ALL THE TIME. One of the guilds I most respected on my server (Afterlife) was actually known for doing content with 66% to half the number of people as a guild like Fires of Heaven (who regularly brought 70+ to a raid). Personally I wasn't impressed with them being the first guild to down a dragon when Afterlife came in and did it a few days later with 20 or 30 less people.
Regardless, the "not getting gear" fast enough to keep zerging from happening just didn't pan out. Plenty of people were happy just to see the content. They didn't care about not getting the gear. Hell, look at P99, it happens still there. Guilds like BDA constantly zerg content, and there is no shortage of people lining up to join because *some* chance at raid loot is better than *no* chance at raid loot. Not to mention people who aren't great players can tag along in a 70 person raid because if they screw up, its not that big of a deal, there's 69 other people to pick up your slack. When you're doing content with 20 or 30 people, EVERY mistake matters.
Increased numbers won't change the fact that if you don't have a solid healing chain, a competent tanking team and raid that works its agro positions accordingly, numbers won't matter. Numbers only affected the speed at which you could take something down and in EQ, that "speed" isn't like what people understand today where they bosses drop in mere minutes of fighting. In EQ, bringing 70 to a raid while another had 20 less doesn't change the mechanics that much.
For instance, if your tank goes down in AoW, it doesn't matter if you have 30 or 80, you will wipe as it is not a game of having a tank, it is an intricate agro management fight. Many EQ raids were like this. All that increased numbers did was reduce the time on the fight which might mean instead of 30 doing it in a couple hours, the 70 might cut that in half. Sure, it reduces the difficulty of the endurance component, and can help with some split fights, but at the end of the day it wasn't a "zerg" which implies people just overpowered the mobs.
What fights do you remember where you simply went in and overpowered with numbers and the fight intricacies did not matter? Maybe Aerin`Dar was one I remember where zerging could be done (due to PoPs bind locations and easy of travel to the planes), but even then it really wasn't a zerg in the fight as much as it was an easier prep for the next attempt. Most other raids you couldn't do such as recovery took too much time and as I said, raw power in numbers couldn't makeup for poor execution.
My guild often did content in very few numbers, with rag tag gear, and not the perfect line up of classes and when all was said and done, having more only meant a faster kill. As long as you had a solid chain of healers, enough means to feed them mana, good line of tanks applying solid agro management between them, and an aware raid that did not interfere with that agro management, the fight was a guarantee. The hard part with a small group was the time it took to beat the encounter. That is all large numbers provide, recovery isn't something that was likely very often in EQ due to the extreme damage of the bosses and hate lists. Once the agro management is broken, the fight is usually a wipe regardless of your numbers (with some exceptions like Dain Frostweaver who didn't do as much damage, but had an enormous amount of HP and banished people every 45 seconds).
That aside, the gearing issue was a problem and the only reason FoH was able to remedy that is because they played some pretty poor tricks with blocking other guilds from the content which was a problem regardless of numbers and confirmation that smaller guilds could bypass the large ones. That is, the reason guilds like Afterlife were outperforming guilds like FoH was because of the very points being made about gearing massive amounts of people. Besides, Furor's guild wasn't popular because it was skilled, but rather because he was an ass and constantly caused issues with other guilds.
Well to your first point, you are correct. However, you're speaking more from a PoP level of raiding, whereas the majority of mine was with Original, Kunark, and somewhat Velious (mostly Kunark). Especially in Kunark zerging content was absolutely not an issue. But you are correct, when it got to POP, particularly post Luclin when raid mobs had millions of HP and could take 40 minutes to kill, mechanics became a much bigger part of the pie.
One of the main things i miss about EQ and hate about modern mmos (and hate is probably not a strong enough word here) is the that EQ didn't have "enrage" timers. Enrage timers are stupid. They are the height of stupid. If someone figures out a way to take down a mob (within the rules of the game of course), they should be able to. If someone wants to take 12 people to try to kill a mob that was designed for 24, they should be able to.
Thank you btw for pointing out what a bunch of jerks FoH was in general.
"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."
As Aradune has said, and people have selective memory here, zerging causes poblems. Period. I played EQ extensively in my youth (over 5000 ours in 2.5 years) and I can assure you, because I was there, plenty of guilds (including the one I was in) zerged content, ALL THE TIME. One of the guilds I most respected on my server (Afterlife) was actually known for doing content with 66% to half the number of people as a guild like Fires of Heaven (who regularly brought 70+ to a raid). Personally I wasn't impressed with them being the first guild to down a dragon when Afterlife came in and did it a few days later with 20 or 30 less people.
Regardless, the "not getting gear" fast enough to keep zerging from happening just didn't pan out. Plenty of people were happy just to see the content. They didn't care about not getting the gear. Hell, look at P99, it happens still there. Guilds like BDA constantly zerg content, and there is no shortage of people lining up to join because *some* chance at raid loot is better than *no* chance at raid loot. Not to mention people who aren't great players can tag along in a 70 person raid because if they screw up, its not that big of a deal, there's 69 other people to pick up your slack. When you're doing content with 20 or 30 people, EVERY mistake matters.
Well as someone whose played exceeded even yours and raided on two different servers, my experience was different.
You are right in that people often zerged early on. That stemmed mostly from fear of the unknown (in a dangerous world) and the general lack of skill among players in the early years. By the end of classic, guilds were already breaking off into smaller, more competent groups and often killing raid targets with a fraction of the numbers we originally required. It was just the nature of the early process.
Also, p99, while an accurate emulation on a mechanical level, is nothing like classic EQ. Both servers are extremely top heavy, consisting of mostly max level characters and players contending for raid targets. They also have a variance system that forces guild to inflate their ranks to track raid targets.
You are correct, particularly about P99 being top heavy. My point was more to the fact that you would get entire guilds who would be willing to tag along for a raid boss just simply to see the content. There were multiple casual guild alliances who would do insane things like bring 60 people just to clear fear or hate (this even during the late Kunark days) It happened ALL THE TIME on Mithaniel Marr.
The point i was trying to make overall is that the rarity of the gear doesn't necessarily completely remove the chance of zergs. It *somewhat* diminishes it, but there are other factors which cause it to happen. Its not a catch-all solution and there are multiple examples, including original EQ, which show that it still continued to happen on a regular basis.
"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."
You are correct, particularly about P99 being top heavy. My point was more to the fact that you would get entire guilds who would be willing to tag along for a raid boss just simply to see the content. There were multiple casual guild alliances who would do insane things like bring 60 people just to clear fear or hate (this even during the late Kunark days) It happened ALL THE TIME on Mithaniel Marr.
The point i was trying to make overall is that the rarity of the gear doesn't necessarily completely remove the chance of zergs. It *somewhat* diminishes it, but there are other factors which cause it to happen. Its not a catch-all solution and there are multiple examples, including original EQ, which show that it still continued to happen on a regular basis.
Well, there were some bad guilds that used to try and double up on things. For the reason we previously discussed, they weren't very successful. Often the would end up spending most of their time clearing the trash and then maybe taking out a boss or two before quitting. Then a smaller guild would swoop in after the left and take down the bosses they couldn't.
I always laughed when people tried to zerg the Maestro in Hate. The Marstro would turn and life tap the entire raid healing to full again. I watched a zerg raid do this over and over. The thing is, a smaller raid force was better as he couldn't heal as much. If they implement more mechanics such as that, then zergs will not be as ideal as a well coordinated smaller group.
These are the types of "caps" I think they can put in that stay true to the issue. This would still allow any raid size, but the mechanics would work against having too many people. That is, it will be better to bring less, not more.
One of the main things i miss about EQ and hate about modern mmos (and hate is probably not a strong enough word here) is the that EQ didn't have "enrage" timers. Enrage timers are stupid. They are the height of stupid. If someone figures out a way to take down a mob (within the rules of the game of course), they should be able to. If someone wants to take 12 people to try to kill a mob that was designed for 24, they should be able to.
Ah i remember the days of FFXI not having enrage timers. Since servers were all mixed with US, EU, Japan, and Oceanic communities, guilds would actually hold world spawns for hours and hours until the time of death better coincided with their primetime. Holding bosses for up to 8 hours was not unheard of.
For an international MMO, i saw the value of implementing enrage timers. It sure as hell helped my guild actually get to see some of these bosses that we otherwise would have never seen. The Japanese and European guilds were way more hardcore than any US guilds and probably still are to this day.
Basically, i see the value if the playerbase stops playing nice and forces it, but i'd rather not have it if at all possible. As usual, it's on the players to stop trying to game the system to their advantage. I don't see that ever happening.
One of the main things i miss about EQ and hate about modern mmos (and hate is probably not a strong enough word here) is the that EQ didn't have "enrage" timers. Enrage timers are stupid. They are the height of stupid. If someone figures out a way to take down a mob (within the rules of the game of course), they should be able to. If someone wants to take 12 people to try to kill a mob that was designed for 24, they should be able to.
Ah i remember the days of FFXI not having enrage timers. Since servers were all mixed with US, EU, Japan, and Oceanic communities, guilds would actually hold world spawns for hours and hours until the time of death better coincided with their primetime. Holding bosses for up to 8 hours was not unheard of.
For an international MMO, i saw the value of implementing enrage timers. It sure as hell helped my guild actually get to see some of these bosses that we otherwise would have never seen. The Japanese and European guilds were way more hardcore than any US guilds and probably still are to this day.
Basically, i see the value if the playerbase stops playing nice and forces it, but i'd rather not have it if at all possible. As usual, it's on the players to stop trying to game the system to their advantage. I don't see that ever happening.
I think maybe you misunderstood enrage timers. Enrage timers are when you engage the boss, and you have to kill it within X number of minutes or it goes into god mode and starts wtf pwning everyone. Its a stupid mechanic which WOW used liberally and i hate it, with a passion.
"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 think maybe you misunderstood enrage timers. Enrage timers are when
you engage the boss, and you have to kill it within X number of minutes
or it goes into god mode and starts wtf pwning everyone. Its a stupid
mechanic which WOW used liberally and i hate it, with a passion.
Hate it or not - thats one of the ways the developers can make sure only those people can get the better raided gear that already have worked enough on their gear (and their skills) to provide a certain damage output.
I think maybe you misunderstood enrage timers. Enrage timers are when
you engage the boss, and you have to kill it within X number of minutes
or it goes into god mode and starts wtf pwning everyone. Its a stupid
mechanic which WOW used liberally and i hate it, with a passion.
Hate it or not - thats one of the ways the developers can make sure only those people can get the better raided gear that already have worked enough on their gear (and their skills) to provide a certain damage output.
By the way, Vanguard used this a lot, too.
It is lazy design, nothing more and it is why we have so many games today where nothing matters except DPS zergs.
Gating for gear is fine, it is a part of the progression aspect of play, but you do it through a culmination of elements like.. mitigation, resource management, item effects and enchantments, etc... that are all required to handle a given event.
Those enrage mechanics are just cheap gimmicks to avoid having to actually design events and lead to itemization streamlining and eventually we have WoW 2.0.
If Pantheons goal is to regurgitate poor design gimmicks, they might as well give up now.
With all do respect he does understand what they are. He was just explaining why they would be in a game using FFXI as an example. You see, before enrage was put on NM's in XI people would get hate on them and hold them and kill them at the time they wanted to change their spawn time to. Sometimes up to 12 hours.
Never happend in EQ, ever. Sounds like a design flaw in the game mechanics of FFXI.
With all do respect he does understand what they are. He was just explaining why they would be in a game using FFXI as an example. You see, before enrage was put on NM's in XI people would get hate on them and hold them and kill them at the time they wanted to change their spawn time to. Sometimes up to 12 hours.
Never happend in EQ, ever. Sounds like a design flaw in the game mechanics of FFXI.
I don't like them either but I'm not convenced it would not happen in pantheon without some sort of system in place to keep it from happening.
What you are describing is impossible to do in a game like EQ. Fights were not that simple that the guild could do what you are suggesting. There is no way a guild could hold a raid boss long enough to make significant changes in its spawn times. Also, EQ spawns were not on exact spawn timers. They were a 72 hour timer with a random +/- of hours (I think a random 6-8 hour window).
You could get it within a given day, but you could not lock it down to an hour. Like I said, it sounds like a flaw in FFXI design.
I have to agree Rage timers can be extremly bad when they make DPS the only thing that matters.
XIV is a great example. Game is doing good sub number wise but DPS is all that matters in the major fights. And not just from the DPS, but the tanks and healers as well. It is litteraly all that matters due to absurd dps checks on everything. Tanks are in full dps gear, healers are focusing on dpsing over healing, and obviously dps are dpsing.
XI it was added to prevent holding, but the rage timers were long. Usally 1-2hrs. The typical boss fight could be killed in 5-40mins depending on if you had decked out members or new endgame players and if you had your full alliance there at spawn. So the mechanic was only there to prevent holding. Or in the case of Pand. Warden, to prevent people who were extremely undergeared from throwing bodies at it for 20hrs and not getting anywhere and apparently throwing up and stuff from the stress. (Sure many of us remember this article online where they slammed square for bad game design when there was nothing wrong at all with it).
It was not really that bad of a design for a game with a claim system, the fights were designed so the spawns would cycle through all the playzones and give equal chance for people in each area to get claims. SE did not expect players to hold a mob for 12-14RL hours to screw over competition. The long rage timer was the fix to prevent this.
I am ok with rage timers, but they need to be alot longer then the fight "Should" require. The rage should be 2 times longer then the fight should take. That way it could be killed with less the a full ally and it does not require the optimal setup every single time.
With all do respect he does understand what they are. He was just explaining why they would be in a game using FFXI as an example. You see, before enrage was put on NM's in XI people would get hate on them and hold them and kill them at the time they wanted to change their spawn time to. Sometimes up to 12 hours.
Never happend in EQ, ever. Sounds like a design flaw in the game mechanics of FFXI.
I don't like them either but I'm not convenced it would not happen in pantheon without some sort of system in place to keep it from happening.
What you are describing is impossible to do in a game like EQ. Fights were not that simple that the guild could do what you are suggesting. There is no way a guild could hold a raid boss long enough to make significant changes in its spawn times. Also, EQ spawns were not on exact spawn timers. They were a 72 hour timer with a random +/- of hours (I think a random 6-8 hour window).
You could get it within a given day, but you could not lock it down to an hour. Like I said, it sounds like a flaw in FFXI design.
Oh, I see now. 72 hour random spawn sounds like a nightmare though. There were all sorts of types of spawn in IX to tell you the truth.
Actually, I got that wrong. Sorry, I meant to say 7 day re-spawn timer with a 72 hour randomized spawn timer. I think you understood though.
Point is, you couldn't force an exact spawn time which removed the problem you had.
What group size do you think Pantheon should support ?
And how many groups should a Pantheon raid force allow ?
What are your reasons for these numbers ?
The question is actually deceptively complicated. There are a lot of factors that depend on specific mechanics of the game. Here is my attempt to provide my opinions on a simplified scale.
(1A) Max Group Size
My preferred maximum group size would be 6. You need to cover the basic "required" roles of (1) tank, (2) healer, and (3) crowd-control, and fill out the rest of the group with DPS. From experience, the "required" roles are often much rarer than the DPS roles. Thus allowing one DPS per required role allows players to play their DPS preference. Even with a max group size of 6, I expect that there will be more leftover DPS and a scarcity of tanks, healers, and CC.
The problem with going beyond 6 is that a bare-bones group of 4 (covering Pantheon's "quaternity" of roles) will have problems killing content designed for 5 DPS (if max group is 8) when the group instead only has one DPS.
Another problem is that the higher the max group size, the more time will be spent simply finding people to fill the group and finding replacements. Once the game has matured, it will also be difficult to impossible to find enough lower-level people to fill a group. This is where Mudflation can be a good thing, as smaller groups can still be viable.
(1B) Minimum Group Size
While soloing might be limited to certain classes, I feel that a group of 2 players of any class should be viable (though sub-optimal) for getting at least some XP and loot. This enables a group to at least get started, and then add the required roles as they become available, rather than needing to gather at least 4 people of different roles to even begin.
(2) Raid Size
I prefer the larger raid sizes. The 72-man raids from Everquest really did make things feel epic. You could have different groups of people doing entirely different things. You could require the raid split up geographically to hit different targets. Thus, you could do the same raid multiple times and still experience something entirely different, depending on your assigned task.
One typical problem with large raid sizes that needs addressed, though, is how to handle "extra" tanks (and likely "extra" CCs). The game wants the population to be 1/6th tank, 1/6th healer, 1/6th CC, and 1/2 DPS for all the group content. For raids, it should not suddenly want 1/15th tank, 1/6th healer, 1/15th CC, and 21/30th DPS.
If designing for large-sized raids, I feel it would also be useful to have some intermediate-sized content. Thus if 72-man raids are the "top" raids, still have some 12-man or 36-man content.
I could be wrong but I thought the devs said no crazy long spawn timers. I could be wrong but I thought they were looking at somewhere between2 and 8 hours. Now it still could be random in that time range though. Anyways dont take that as gospel but Im sure I read it from a dev. Just thought if this was true it would change this conversation a bit.
What group size do you think Pantheon should support ?
And how many groups should a Pantheon raid force allow ?
What are your reasons for these numbers ?
The question is actually deceptively complicated. There are a lot of factors that depend on specific mechanics of the game. Here is my attempt to provide my opinions on a simplified scale.
(1A) Max Group Size
My preferred maximum group size would be 6. You need to cover the basic "required" roles of (1) tank, (2) healer, and (3) crowd-control, and fill out the rest of the group with DPS. From experience, the "required" roles are often much rarer than the DPS roles. Thus allowing one DPS per required role allows players to play their DPS preference. Even with a max group size of 6, I expect that there will be more leftover DPS and a scarcity of tanks, healers, and CC.
The problem with going beyond 6 is that a bare-bones group of 4 (covering Pantheon's "quaternity" of roles) will have problems killing content designed for 5 DPS (if max group is 8) when the group instead only has one DPS.
Another problem is that the higher the max group size, the more time will be spent simply finding people to fill the group and finding replacements. Once the game has matured, it will also be difficult to impossible to find enough lower-level people to fill a group. This is where Mudflation can be a good thing, as smaller groups can still be viable.
(1B) Minimum Group Size
While soloing might be limited to certain classes, I feel that a group of 2 players of any class should be viable (though sub-optimal) for getting at least some XP and loot. This enables a group to at least get started, and then add the required roles as they become available, rather than needing to gather at least 4 people of different roles to even begin.
(2) Raid Size
I prefer the larger raid sizes. The 72-man raids from Everquest really did make things feel epic. You could have different groups of people doing entirely different things. You could require the raid split up geographically to hit different targets. Thus, you could do the same raid multiple times and still experience something entirely different, depending on your assigned task.
One typical problem with large raid sizes that needs addressed, though, is how to handle "extra" tanks (and likely "extra" CCs). The game wants the population to be 1/6th tank, 1/6th healer, 1/6th CC, and 1/2 DPS for all the group content. For raids, it should not suddenly want 1/15th tank, 1/6th healer, 1/15th CC, and 21/30th DPS.
If designing for large-sized raids, I feel it would also be useful to have some intermediate-sized content. Thus if 72-man raids are the "top" raids, still have some 12-man or 36-man content.
Honestly these are good things for the devs to consider, what kind of content they want to create and what kind of numbers they would like to target for players to be able to tackle said content.
I would however say that there is no logical reason why we should cap the amount of players that can do anything, there are far too many ways that have been discussed and make logical sense that can discourage and even prevent players from zerging content without putting a cap on how many friends they can have or play with.
Putting a cap on it is just another hard coded limitation to what players are able to do, and I feel it is unnecessary if the game is designed correctly.
I think maybe you misunderstood enrage timers. Enrage timers are when
you engage the boss, and you have to kill it within X number of minutes
or it goes into god mode and starts wtf pwning everyone. Its a stupid
mechanic which WOW used liberally and i hate it, with a passion.
Hate it or not - thats one of the ways the developers can make sure only
those people can get the better raided gear that already have worked
enough on their gear (and their skills) to provide a certain damage
output.
By the way, Vanguard used this a lot, too.
It is lazy design,
Ok, then how exactly would you limit the number of raid forces that are able to kill your raidboss ?
Gating
for gear is fine, it is a part of the progression aspect of play, but
you do it through a culmination of elements like.. mitigation, resource
management, item effects and enchantments, etc... that are all required
to handle a given event.
That would only work if the gear difference between raided gear and non-raided gear would be quite steep, which wasnt the case in Vanguard.
I see players are already demanding how a raid should be made. This is where the developer has to ignore players and make the game they envision. If they can't make a raid that works with THEIR game they may as well not try. The best option is to be free to try new things even if they choose not to go with it.
Some players here cannot see past the last games they played. Those games have nothing to do with this game ... or perhaps a lot. We will never know where the game could go if the developers have no freedom.
Yeah, this is a tough one. We definitely don't like hard
restrictions. Ideally, I'd like to see group and raid sizes vary, and
the content to match it. Easier said than done, though. As was
mentioned, nobody wants a mishmash of content all over the place,
designed for a wide variety of group/raid sizes. That type of 'dynamic
world' is simply too dynamic.
But the zerging issue is
something we're keeping in mind. If we are more open and less
restrictive when it comes to group/raid sizes, then we do have to be
concerned about someone bringing 20 people to a 15 man encounter. We
don't want content and encounters trivialized due to zerging.
There are several things we want to do to make sure raid items don't
trivialize group content, some of which I can talk about briefly.
First, the power differential between raid loot and group loot doesn't
have to be huge to still make people want to raid. There will also be
quests that require people to turn in powerful items. There will also
be temples that encourage people to sacrifice great items for long term
buffs.
There's also the idea of situational gear, where many of
the more difficult and challenging encounters (both raid and group)
drop items that are situationally very powerful, but not necessarily
generally that much more powerful. An easy example are 'bane' items or
items that protect you in extreme climates/atmospheres. So you may get
an item that is really effective against, say, dragonkind, but against
most other mobs, not necessarily better. Or you might find a talisman
or other item that protects you against extreme climates in certain
areas of the game, essentially unlocking those regions, but outside of
those regions these items don't really do much.
The general
idea is that 'better' doesn't have to mean 'always better' or 'always
does more damage or has more AC'. Better can instead mean more
specificity. Generally powerful items are useful most anywhere. But
the really rare and powerful items (and not just items, but spells and
abilities), those can be more powerful and effective in specific
contexts, in specific areas, or against specific types of encounters,
but not necessarily universally 'better'.
Instancing happened for a few reasons, including allowing devs to make
less content, and then allowing players easier and less contested
acquisition of desired items. It went hand-in-hand with the shifting of
MMOs from being highly social, cooperative, challenging and competitive
to being more of an online single player experience. These design
changes were made hoping that it would result in MMOs that were truly
mass market, and began when devs/publishers started chanting 'we have to
make a WoW-killer'. No WoW-killer has emerged, but there are now quite
a few 'modern' MMOs out there with no stickiness, no community, and
rewards that are easy to obtain and levels that are quick to achieve.
And lots of players are bouncing around, trying this one and that, but
not settling down and making one their home. For some of these players,
that's fine, and that's exactly what they want out of online gaming.
But for a lot of other people, they want to find a new home and this
shift has left them feeling orphaned. It's the latter group that
Pantheon is after.
Yes, if zerging was undesirable only because
it was an indication that players were competing for content and
resources, then Instancing would be a way to 'stop' Zerging. But in the
context of Pantheon, a game where a reasonable amount of competition
for content and resources is part of the design, Instancing is not the
answer because of all of the other negatives Instancing brings to an MMO
focused on community, cooperation, lasting and true friendships, and
shared experiences and memories.
In Pantheon, we want to avoid
zerging because it can trivialize the environment and remove risk and
challenge from the game. There are some simple ways to stop zerging,
but they usually involve draconian rules, and we want Pantheon to be
more sandboxy and open. So the likely answer is better NPC AI, where
mobs simply flee if too many attack them, or call for reinforcements, or
change their behavior in some other way (although I am not a fan of
simply scaling difficulty either).
Anyway, if a game with these
'old mechanics' isn't interesting to you, that's fine. But asserting
that it won't attract anybody -- well, me and a whole bunch of other MMO
fans who are yearning for a game like Pantheon will have to agree to
disagree with you. That said, Pantheon is a group focused game, not a
raid focused game, so you will absolutely be able to stick with a group
of friends and you won't feel you need to be part of an uber guild.
Likewise, if too much competition for content arises such that the game
world feels overcrowded and that there isn't enough content for
everyone, we'll launch additional servers/shards. There are many ways
to deal with the issues you've brought up without resorting to
instancing, I promise
Dullahan, I respect your opinion a great deal. I'm glad to hear that
you aren't as concerned about zerging, and that if we set things up
right, it won't be a big deal. Personally, I'm a little more worried
about it than you are. I do fear that if we eliminate restrictions to
group and raid sizes and make Pantheon more 'sandboxy', which we want to
do, that some will take advantage of the situation and use it to
trivialize content and encounters (by zerging, by doing content that is
significantly lower level than your group (bottom feeding), etc.).
I find it more important that they figure out what kinds of boss encounters they wish to make and base amount of people in the raids to make said encounter interesting. The problem when you have a huge number of people in the raid is that their function mostly becomes bloat that cause bosses and spawns to have lots more health without making a difference for the mechanics of the fight.
With Pantheon having more roles you should be capable of making more interesting fights that require fewer people. I don't see a reason why Pantheon raids would require more than 30 players.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
I find it more important that they figure out what kinds of boss encounters they wish to make and base amount of people in the raids to make said encounter interesting. The problem when you have a huge number of people in the raid is that their function mostly becomes bloat that cause bosses and spawns to have lots more health without making a difference for the mechanics of the fight.
With Pantheon having more roles you should be capable of making more interesting fights that require fewer people. I don't see a reason why Pantheon raids would require more than 30 players.
That depends entirely on what your objective is. Anyone can make a fight that requires every single person to perform a specific job perfectly, and for them to fail when someone does not.
I think the real challenge in an MMORPG is to reward not only those who play well, but those who are able to coordinate a large number of people and successfully manage the drama and expectations.
I find it more important that they figure out what kinds of boss
encounters they wish to make and base amount of people in the raids to
make said encounter interesting. The problem when you have a huge number
of people in the raid is that their function mostly becomes bloat that
cause bosses and spawns to have lots more health without making a
difference for the mechanics of the fight.
With Pantheon having
more roles you should be capable of making more interesting fights that
require fewer people. I don't see a reason why Pantheon raids would
require more than 30 players.
Very well said.
Vanguard had 18 and 24 man raids. IIRC in the end every raid was 24 man.
I read somewhere (but I've forgotten where) that they're aiming for 32 man raids for Pantheon. That strongly implies the group size will be 8 (so a Pantheon raid force would be 4 groups a 8 people).
Comments
Yes, if zerging was undesirable only because it was an indication that players were competing for content and resources, then Instancing would be a way to 'stop' Zerging. But in the context of Pantheon, a game where a reasonable amount of competition for content and resources is part of the design, Instancing is not the answer because of all of the other negatives Instancing brings to an MMO focused on community, cooperation, lasting and true friendships, and shared experiences and memories.
In Pantheon, we want to avoid zerging because it can trivialize the environment and remove risk and challenge from the game. There are some simple ways to stop zerging, but they usually involve draconian rules, and we want Pantheon to be more sandboxy and open. So the likely answer is better NPC AI, where mobs simply flee if too many attack them, or call for reinforcements, or change their behavior in some other way (although I am not a fan of simply scaling difficulty either).
Anyway, if a game with these 'old mechanics' isn't interesting to you, that's fine. But asserting that it won't attract anybody -- well, me and a whole bunch of other MMO fans who are yearning for a game like Pantheon will have to agree to disagree with you. That said, Pantheon is a group focused game, not a raid focused game, so you will absolutely be able to stick with a group of friends and you won't feel you need to be part of an uber guild. Likewise, if too much competition for content arises such that the game world feels overcrowded and that there isn't enough content for everyone, we'll launch additional servers/shards. There are many ways to deal with the issues you've brought up without resorting to instancing, I promise
--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Brad McQuaid
CCO, Visionary Realms, Inc.
www.pantheonmmo.com
--------------------------------------------------------------
I see a lot of these arguments about zergs and most of them are boiling down to encounter lock rather than anything else.
Personally I think that a MASSIVELY multiplayer game should not have a hard cap on how many players can attend a raid, or it's no longer MASSIVELY multiplayer.
If zerging offends you sense of style fair enough but then again who gives a damn if it's not interfering with your guild's attempts to down bosses?
As for trivialising content, if someone goes to the trouble to get that many players to attend then he/she has earned the right to try it their way.
As long as there is a decent mechanic in place to prevent kill stealing or locking raid encounters once started then zerging is no longer a problem for the smaller more organised groups/guilds.
I'd like my MMO to have two M's please, not one. No more of this 25 man raid BS, thanks. How about we get an MMO that actually designs content for a massively multiplayer encounter, literally 200 players required to take it on.
Maybe it's time to move away from the "raid boss" and think outside the box we all seem to have fallen into. I dunno, perhaps we could try something different like a scenario where some bad guy is holed up in a fortress guarded by an elite company of mercs that you have to fight your way past but not in small groups of 5 at a time. Instead you have to engage and kill a shield wall of 200 warriors to even get to the gates.
Maybe that works, maybe not. I just know I'm sick and tired of games where you can't do anything with more than 25 people claiming to be massively multiplayer. I'm praying to the MMO Gods that Pantheon will be.
One of the main things i miss about EQ and hate about modern mmos (and hate is probably not a strong enough word here) is the that EQ didn't have "enrage" timers. Enrage timers are stupid. They are the height of stupid. If someone figures out a way to take down a mob (within the rules of the game of course), they should be able to. If someone wants to take 12 people to try to kill a mob that was designed for 24, they should be able to.
Thank you btw for pointing out what a bunch of jerks FoH was in general.
"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
The point i was trying to make overall is that the rarity of the gear doesn't necessarily completely remove the chance of zergs. It *somewhat* diminishes it, but there are other factors which cause it to happen. Its not a catch-all solution and there are multiple examples, including original EQ, which show that it still continued to happen on a regular basis.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I always laughed when people tried to zerg the Maestro in Hate. The Marstro would turn and life tap the entire raid healing to full again. I watched a zerg raid do this over and over. The thing is, a smaller raid force was better as he couldn't heal as much. If they implement more mechanics such as that, then zergs will not be as ideal as a well coordinated smaller group.
These are the types of "caps" I think they can put in that stay true to the issue. This would still allow any raid size, but the mechanics would work against having too many people. That is, it will be better to bring less, not more.
Ah i remember the days of FFXI not having enrage timers. Since servers were all mixed with US, EU, Japan, and Oceanic communities, guilds would actually hold world spawns for hours and hours until the time of death better coincided with their primetime. Holding bosses for up to 8 hours was not unheard of.
For an international MMO, i saw the value of implementing enrage timers. It sure as hell helped my guild actually get to see some of these bosses that we otherwise would have never seen. The Japanese and European guilds were way more hardcore than any US guilds and probably still are to this day.
Basically, i see the value if the playerbase stops playing nice and forces it, but i'd rather not have it if at all possible. As usual, it's on the players to stop trying to game the system to their advantage. I don't see that ever happening.
"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
By the way, Vanguard used this a lot, too.
Gating for gear is fine, it is a part of the progression aspect of play, but you do it through a culmination of elements like.. mitigation, resource management, item effects and enchantments, etc... that are all required to handle a given event.
Those enrage mechanics are just cheap gimmicks to avoid having to actually design events and lead to itemization streamlining and eventually we have WoW 2.0.
If Pantheons goal is to regurgitate poor design gimmicks, they might as well give up now.
You could get it within a given day, but you could not lock it down to an hour. Like I said, it sounds like a flaw in FFXI design.
XIV is a great example. Game is doing good sub number wise but DPS is all that matters in the major fights. And not just from the DPS, but the tanks and healers as well. It is litteraly all that matters due to absurd dps checks on everything. Tanks are in full dps gear, healers are focusing on dpsing over healing, and obviously dps are dpsing.
XI it was added to prevent holding, but the rage timers were long. Usally 1-2hrs. The typical boss fight could be killed in 5-40mins depending on if you had decked out members or new endgame players and if you had your full alliance there at spawn. So the mechanic was only there to prevent holding. Or in the case of Pand. Warden, to prevent people who were extremely undergeared from throwing bodies at it for 20hrs and not getting anywhere and apparently throwing up and stuff from the stress. (Sure many of us remember this article online where they slammed square for bad game design when there was nothing wrong at all with it).
It was not really that bad of a design for a game with a claim system, the fights were designed so the spawns would cycle through all the playzones and give equal chance for people in each area to get claims. SE did not expect players to hold a mob for 12-14RL hours to screw over competition. The long rage timer was the fix to prevent this.
I am ok with rage timers, but they need to be alot longer then the fight "Should" require. The rage should be 2 times longer then the fight should take. That way it could be killed with less the a full ally and it does not require the optimal setup every single time.
Point is, you couldn't force an exact spawn time which removed the problem you had.
(1A) Max Group Size
My preferred maximum group size would be 6. You need to cover the basic "required" roles of (1) tank, (2) healer, and (3) crowd-control, and fill out the rest of the group with DPS. From experience, the "required" roles are often much rarer than the DPS roles. Thus allowing one DPS per required role allows players to play their DPS preference. Even with a max group size of 6, I expect that there will be more leftover DPS and a scarcity of tanks, healers, and CC.
The problem with going beyond 6 is that a bare-bones group of 4 (covering Pantheon's "quaternity" of roles) will have problems killing content designed for 5 DPS (if max group is 8) when the group instead only has one DPS.
Another problem is that the higher the max group size, the more time will be spent simply finding people to fill the group and finding replacements. Once the game has matured, it will also be difficult to impossible to find enough lower-level people to fill a group. This is where Mudflation can be a good thing, as smaller groups can still be viable.
(1B) Minimum Group Size
While soloing might be limited to certain classes, I feel that a group of 2 players of any class should be viable (though sub-optimal) for getting at least some XP and loot. This enables a group to at least get started, and then add the required roles as they become available, rather than needing to gather at least 4 people of different roles to even begin.
(2) Raid Size
I prefer the larger raid sizes. The 72-man raids from Everquest really did make things feel epic. You could have different groups of people doing entirely different things. You could require the raid split up geographically to hit different targets. Thus, you could do the same raid multiple times and still experience something entirely different, depending on your assigned task.
One typical problem with large raid sizes that needs addressed, though, is how to handle "extra" tanks (and likely "extra" CCs). The game wants the population to be 1/6th tank, 1/6th healer, 1/6th CC, and 1/2 DPS for all the group content. For raids, it should not suddenly want 1/15th tank, 1/6th healer, 1/15th CC, and 21/30th DPS.
If designing for large-sized raids, I feel it would also be useful to have some intermediate-sized content. Thus if 72-man raids are the "top" raids, still have some 12-man or 36-man content.
Honestly these are good things for the devs to consider, what kind of content they want to create and what kind of numbers they would like to target for players to be able to tackle said content.
I would however say that there is no logical reason why we should cap the amount of players that can do anything, there are far too many ways that have been discussed and make logical sense that can discourage and even prevent players from zerging content without putting a cap on how many friends they can have or play with.
Putting a cap on it is just another hard coded limitation to what players are able to do, and I feel it is unnecessary if the game is designed correctly.
That would only work if the gear difference between raided gear and non-raided gear would be quite steep, which wasnt the case in Vanguard.
Some players here cannot see past the last games they played. Those games have nothing to do with this game ... or perhaps a lot. We will never know where the game could go if the developers have no freedom.
You stay sassy!
And in the other thread:
With Pantheon having more roles you should be capable of making more interesting fights that require fewer people. I don't see a reason why Pantheon raids would require more than 30 players.
I think the real challenge in an MMORPG is to reward not only those who play well, but those who are able to coordinate a large number of people and successfully manage the drama and expectations.
Vanguard had 18 and 24 man raids. IIRC in the end every raid was 24 man.
I read somewhere (but I've forgotten where) that they're aiming for 32 man raids for Pantheon. That strongly implies the group size will be 8 (so a Pantheon raid force would be 4 groups a 8 people).