Not quite a solution, but something to deal with the problem of "single choke points" for contested content. For example having several mobs or areas that drop same quest items, so that being blocked from doing whatever quest you decided on doing, is a much rarer occasion - In an open world with "slow travel" and maybe having troubled a bunch of friends to come and help, it really really suck to say .. oh well, sorry guys your 2 hours was for nothing, maybe some other time. This old eq problem MUST have a solution; it just doesn't go in 2019.
But anyways, phasing .. mob locking; it just breaks immersion. Strangely enough the good old instancing of whole zones seem to be the least immersion breaking; just not the kind where you can insta jump between them... that should only be doable at specific areas/entrances.
Phasing is pretty bad in an MMO. I suppose it's all pretty subjective to how you'd want it handled.
Personally, for simple alternative, I'd rather see something like:
Those special quest mobs are visible to everyone but unattackable until the group they spawned for initiates combat.
Not the most immersive solution, but better than entire groups phasing out and reappearing like ghosts, or swinging at the air like they are fighting ghosts.
This would allow others to join in a fight, but not be able to swipe the mobs, etc. Maybe an icon on the enemy portraits that show they are currently locked.
Or even better, give them a slight colored glowing aura or something to signify whether they belong to your group or some other.
That would easily let other groups know they are "locked" mobs.
Seeing mobs just stand there and not do anything might be a bit weird, but - in theory - those types of mobs would only spawn when said group is nearby, so I don't see that it'd be much of an issue.
In addition, if the nearby friendly group sees you fighting some big quest battle, they could pitch in and keep other enemies off your back. These are the types of things that public worlds allow - teamwork and cooperation.
The worst thing I saw was in ESO's public dungeon type zones back in the day. You'd have a quest to go into a place and kill some guy. You'd zone in and be making your way through the zone. Someone else would kill it and if you were anywhere nearby you got kill credit for it, even though you never even saw it or attacked it.
Someone else completing your quest was pretty lame.
Lots of posters bringing up possible issues, why not just phase the dungeon zone to the group? This way which is similar to FFXIV seems to have no benefits.
... The worst thing I saw was in ESO's public dungeon type zones back in the day. You'd have a quest to go into a place and kill some guy. You'd zone in and be making your way through the zone. Someone else would kill it and if you were anywhere nearby you got kill credit for it, even though you never even saw it or attacked it.
Someone else completing your quest was pretty lame.
That is one thing that is easily solvable. Just like most quests in eq, you have to have(bring back) proof of deed. Mostly in early eq, even access quests were tied to a physical object in the world (key, stone, etc), it was only until later it changed a bit, though also still usually explained by some kind of magic appropriate to the world (aka not gamey things).
I think this solution is both easy to follow and implement, and on top of that using this solution would additionally ensure that they not fall into the muddy hole of easy but gamey solutions that other mmos are stuck in. For example, some game number keeps track of your kill count and then suddenly out of nowhere you receive a piece of gear; no npc involved just the game counting for you ... that is the definition of gamey. It is important to not break the suspension of disbelief by unlogical (to the world in question) things happening.
Phasing is pretty bad in an MMO. I suppose it's all pretty subjective to how you'd want it handled.
<snip>
The worst thing I saw was in ESO's public dungeon type zones back in the day. You'd have a quest to go into a place and kill some guy. You'd zone in and be making your way through the zone. Someone else would kill it and if you were anywhere nearby you got kill credit for it, even though you never even saw it or attacked it.
Someone else completing your quest was pretty lame.
Odd post.
You start by saying "phasing is bad". OK.
You finish though by giving an example of how public dungeons - so not phased - can work. You gave ESO and Zenimax as an example and I am not sure whether they reduced the "in the vicinity" radius but the simple fact is that in a "public dungeon" people "close to mob" expect credit if it dies. They don't want to wait 10 minutes - or whatever - for the next spawn.
Now you might say: you have to do 10% damage. And I could say: well that's pretty lame - only 10%? Or maybe get the killing blow in ... in a public dungeon. Or remember to wave at it and take a selfie.
And here is the conundrum. The "proper" solution to this "badness" - to make sure that you really, really deserved the credit for that kill is ... roll of the drums ... instancing / phasing etc.
Lots of posters bringing up possible issues, why not just phase the dungeon zone to the group? This way which is similar to FFXIV seems to have no benefits.
You clearly haven't drunk from the "there will be no instancing" fountain of Pantheon.
Yet another Nathan NAPALM video. I like this guy and subscribed to his channel
ever since I watched his story of being upsessive about getting
Everquest working for the first time back in 1999.
Anyway,
Here he describes
Brads idea of using "phasing" of mobs for groups instead
of instancing. I couldn't follow it
completely unless I watched it again, but I got the basic idea.
For me,
I'm not too sure I
like it. Being able to only see your
fights against what others see is a recipe for disaster. Or one group can't touch what your group is fighting.... I have to say I'm a little confused in the complexities.
It sounds like an unneeded programming
nightmare, confusing the player, and a huge chance for a buggy game overall. Compound this with no individual servers and realms, but replicas of the same
much like a mega server.
It seems it will be a "some times it works some times it don't" kind of thing. Or one group member doesn't see it all unless he logs out and back in.….. I'm afraid this entire system will have huge
problems.
I'm ok with
instanced or non-instance, even if you have a strong opinion one way or another people will get over it. But I'm not a fan of playing around with such dynamics. You can tell in his voice
Nathan is concerned too.
I am clueless as to why people get so bent out of shape on about everything they mention that might be done in this game. Phasing has been done before, its not that complicated and sure is better than the games that have triggered quests mobs out in the open which are attack-able by everyone.
Its probably no more complicated than having to set it so that the spawned quest mob can only be attack-able, taunted, ect by the group with the quest.
Also without some type of mechanism for this, I can just see groups waiting in line to get the next triggered spawn.
Or maybe they just let multiple quest mobs spawn, which will be real confusing to people with all the unkillable clone mobs running around. Better not lose your target.
might be just me, but that combat looks quite boring.
No more boring than vanguard or lord of the rings online or eq. It's a different way of thinking about combat. It's meant to be slower and more strategic and less action oriented. Which, has a broad set of examples as Mount and Blade has "action combat" as well as Tera or Black Desert and they all manifest differently.
It's not strategic it's just slow. People seem to tag all the oldschool combats with "strategic" for some odd reason. That being said I prefer those slow combat systems.
It was not that slow for a bard well not later on. Early on only about half our skills worked so it might have been slower then.
Remember GW1 I'm a little shaky on the details its been years. But as soon as you left a city or safe zone you were instanced by yourself or your group.
It worked well but it made for a very lonely game.
Basically the same technology for Dungeons and Dragons Online.
I know I'm talking more about instancing than phasing, but still it's worth mentioning.
Not having any instancing was the one crucial difference.
Sigh. Oh well.
NO.... I'ts not "Pantheon is dead"..... But it's a very big deal, and a game changer to what people are expecting. Infact most are thinking simple EQ1 remolded.
Guild Wars is actually exactly the example I know firsthand for instancing. Thats when I realized how awful an idea instancing is.
It makes a LOT of sense for GW because you dont have a subscription. So making it effectively a singleplayer game, or a small scale multiplayer game if you're grouping, most of the time, makes a lot of sense in reducing network traffic to a minimum, and thus cost of running the servers. The "hubs" in which you see other players do not have any mobs or combat, so the network traffic you get from that can still be relatively small.
Still its really not a MMO, not even by a long shot, anymore. You feel alone and isolated. Because GW isnt much of a good game in many other respects, either, I got very, very bored very, very quickly, too.
When I say "Pantheon is dead" it means its dead to *me*.
Obviously have no control over what other people play, and why would I want to have such a control anyway.
And when I hear "gamechanger" I actually expect an IMPROVEMENT. And a very substantial one at that.
Guild Wars is actually exactly the example I know firsthand for instancing. Thats when I realized how awful an idea instancing is.
It makes a LOT of sense for GW because you dont have a subscription. So making it effectively a singleplayer game, or a small scale multiplayer game if you're grouping, most of the time, makes a lot of sense in reducing network traffic to a minimum, and thus cost of running the servers. The "hubs" in which you see other players do not have any mobs or combat, so the network traffic you get from that can still be relatively small.
Still its really not a MMO, not even by a long shot, anymore. You feel alone and isolated. Because GW isnt much of a good game in many other respects, either, I got very, very bored very, very quickly, too.
When I say "Pantheon is dead" it means its dead to *me*.
Obviously have no control over what other people play, and why would I want to have such a control anyway.
And when I hear "gamechanger" I actually expect an IMPROVEMENT. And a very substantial one at that.
This aint no improvement.
Now all of this I agree with, I understand the details given about Pantheon are sketchy. But at first glance, it seems they are drastically changing the rules mid stream.... I may not play it !
It gets me mad in some ways: Take peoples money and change the game around 180 degrees.....But have to wait for more details.
Not having any instancing was the one crucial difference.
Sigh. Oh well.
Well if you consider phasing out for a few minutes to kill an occasional quest mob and then returning to the dungeon or area the same as instancing a whole zone or dungeon as done in other games then I guess it is dead for you.
Phasing is pretty bad in an MMO. I suppose it's all pretty subjective to how you'd want it handled.
<snip>
The worst thing I saw was in ESO's public dungeon type zones back in the day. You'd have a quest to go into a place and kill some guy. You'd zone in and be making your way through the zone. Someone else would kill it and if you were anywhere nearby you got kill credit for it, even though you never even saw it or attacked it.
Someone else completing your quest was pretty lame.
Odd post.
You start by saying "phasing is bad". OK.
You finish though by giving an example of how public dungeons - so not phased - can work. You gave ESO and Zenimax as an example and I am not sure whether they reduced the "in the vicinity" radius but the simple fact is that in a "public dungeon" people "close to mob" expect credit if it dies. They don't want to wait 10 minutes - or whatever - for the next spawn.
Now you might say: you have to do 10% damage. And I could say: well that's pretty lame - only 10%? Or maybe get the killing blow in ... in a public dungeon. Or remember to wave at it and take a selfie.
And here is the conundrum. The "proper" solution to this "badness" - to make sure that you really, really deserved the credit for that kill is ... roll of the drums ... instancing / phasing etc.
Well, you certainly took that to an off-the-wall extreme.
Nevertheless, my point was simple. If you aren't even a participant in an event, it's silly to suddenly be credited for it.
For a real-world example from ESO:
Don't ask me names of places because I don't remember.
In this one house/building type thing, your quest is to go kill the boss dude. It was a 2 or 3 story house, you enter at ground level. I got credit for killing that guy while I was still near the entrance of the first floor without even knowing what happened.
For a technical explanation:
I assume due to the vertical layering, I was considered "in the vicinity". But, in reality, I wasn't around the guy.
I'd rather not get credit for an enemy I never even see.
And here is the conundrum. The "proper" solution to this "badness" - to
make sure that you really, really deserved the credit for that kill is
... roll of the drums ... instancing / phasing etc.
Completely the opposite of what I was saying. I don't care if I had only done 50 damage to the mob and he had 3,000 health. I would have at least been a participant who contributed something.
Is that perfect? No, but I definitely prefer that over phasing everything in an MMO world.
But getting credit without even being present or contributing to the battle/event is just baffling.
How do people come to the conclusions that they do? I didn't even get the impression of phasing from this at all. I believe it might have been EQ2 where you go and try to fight a mob that someone else was attacking and you just simply couldn't do damage to it and it completely ignored you.
I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem to me like he's trying for something crazy.
I hate phasing. WoW used it over much and made it almost impossible to play with friends and guildies unless you were on the very same part of every quest you had. I would rather they just did shards of zones you could switch too at will as the game added more to deal with conjestion.
Comments
But anyways, phasing .. mob locking; it just breaks immersion. Strangely enough the good old instancing of whole zones seem to be the least immersion breaking; just not the kind where you can insta jump between them... that should only be doable at specific areas/entrances.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I think this solution is both easy to follow and implement, and on top of that using this solution would additionally ensure that they not fall into the muddy hole of easy but gamey solutions that other mmos are stuck in.
For example, some game number keeps track of your kill count and then suddenly out of nowhere you receive a piece of gear; no npc involved just the game counting for you ... that is the definition of gamey.
It is important to not break the suspension of disbelief by unlogical (to the world in question) things happening.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
You start by saying "phasing is bad". OK.
You finish though by giving an example of how public dungeons - so not phased - can work. You gave ESO and Zenimax as an example and I am not sure whether they reduced the "in the vicinity" radius but the simple fact is that in a "public dungeon" people "close to mob" expect credit if it dies. They don't want to wait 10 minutes - or whatever - for the next spawn.
Now you might say: you have to do 10% damage. And I could say: well that's pretty lame - only 10%? Or maybe get the killing blow in ... in a public dungeon. Or remember to wave at it and take a selfie.
And here is the conundrum. The "proper" solution to this "badness" - to make sure that you really, really deserved the credit for that kill is ... roll of the drums ... instancing / phasing etc.
I'm a little shaky on the details its been years. But as soon as you left a city or safe zone you were instanced by yourself or your group.
It worked well but it made for a very lonely game.
Basically the same technology for Dungeons and Dragons Online.
I know I'm talking more about instancing than phasing, but still it's worth mentioning.
I want to go deeper, but people get mad.
I understand the details given about Pantheon are sketchy. But at first glance, it seems they are drastically changing the rules mid stream.... I may not play it !
It gets me mad in some ways:
Take peoples money and change the game around 180 degrees.....But have to wait for more details.
I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem to me like he's trying for something crazy.