Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

haus_sl said:

I like the idea of timed events/encounters. Defeat boss X and get <loot> , defeat him in under so many minutes and get <loot>+<loot> (or <loot++), and so on... rewarding more efficient/effective teams with either more or better loot. Want better loot? Learn to play better.

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I like this idea. It could also work for raid size. But rather than a hard cut off, make it be an increase in probability. There could be an increase in probability in the number of items and the quality of loot. The faster you defeat the boss, the better chance for uber loot. The smaller the raid size, the better chance for uber loot.

This way you always have a chance for uber loot, but the better raids will have better chances. A poor raid will tend to have fewer items drop and they will be lower quality.

DeLLy_sl said:

This.

I can't see raids being a major part of the future of MMO gaming. Make 20 awesome 5-10 man instances, not 5 awesome 5 man instances and 1-2 40 man raid zones.

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5-man instances that only drop 1 loot at the end?

The problem with scaling raid encounters is it's very difficult to make them more and more interesting when you don't know how many people you are going to bring. Unless you have some crazy AI brain that can make scripts and encounters on the fly, you need some kind of constant value to keep quality controlled.

Else you're just going to get tank and spanks or zerg death fights. See GW2 for that.

mkopec_sl said:

Ill be happy if the entire "raiding form 7-11" bullshit dies this next gen of mmorpgs. I would be happy with a group centric game again, focusing on the core group of 5-10 people rather than some bullshit raids that everyone needs to plan their entire RL around. But its obviously not going to be this game.....

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What do you mean again?

EQ did group somewhat but was mostly raid centric. So maybe UO? I dunno never played it, was it more group centric?

Kirun_sl said:

Scaleable raid content isn't something we can have until there is a major leap forward in AI, I agree. I just want scaleable instance content. Or content with various "sizes" in mind. I hate that these games are solo, group, or "raid" sized only. There needs to be content for those of us that fall inbetween those amounts.

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No, no there does not. Trying to fit every size is what gave us the pile of shit WoW has become where everything seems focused either on the uber hardcore or the uber casual, with the majority being forgotten.

Imo one of the worst things a game can do is try to make too many people happy. I don't think it can be done both physically and financially.

It's my main concern with this game. They seem to be trying to make soloers happy, groupers happy, raiders happy and pvpers happy, not to mention housing/crafting aspects. I dunno it just seems like way too many mouths to feed. If they can pull it off more power to em, but every "group" just screams for more and if they don't get it they leave.

Kirun_sl said:

Which is why I'm asking for "scaleable" content. Fuck, Diablo 3 scales based on how many players are in a game, I see no reason why MMOs can't have a similar mechanic for instances.

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And the scaling in diablo is far from scientific. People will figure out whatever the magic size is and that will be the size everyone wants for their raid.

Draegan_sl said:

It really depends on how they plan on scripting the raids. In the last 6 years or so we've seen raids become more and more finely tuned. You need 1000 Raid DPS to win and if you have 999 you auto-lose to enrage. If Jimmy dies or misses a cue, you lose. If timmy misses an interrupt, you might as well wipe.

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When you insist on instancing, that?s the only way to keep making raid encounters difficult until you can get AI that can adapt to different situations. The rest is just tinkering with an intrinsically flawed design. Raids in EQ were far more exciting than raids in WoW, even though bosses in WoW were far more complex in the strategy required to defeat them. Why? No instancing, which added a social element to raiding. The most exciting part of a raid was not the fight. It was finding a boss up, rounding up people to go kill it before another guild did. Racing to it, organizing, fighting, leapfrogging etc. Organizing pacts and treaties with other guilds, helping with breaks, corpse runs etc. Smaller guilds working together, larger guilds feuding and competing. Those elements made raids and the end game of EQ exciting, not the fight. Have you ever heard the saying, ?joy is found in the journey, not the destination.?

Underjoyed_sl said:

When you insist on instancing, that's the only way to keep making raid encounters difficult until you can get AI that can adapt to different situations. The rest is just tinkering with an intrinsically flawed design. Raids in EQ were far more exciting than raids in WoW, even though bosses in WoW were far more complex in the strategy required to defeat them. Why? No instancing, which added a social element to raiding. The most exciting part of a raid was not the fight. It was finding a boss up, rounding up people to go kill it before another guild did. Racing to it, organizing, fighting, leapfrogging etc. Organizing pacts and treaties with other guilds, helping with breaks, corpse runs etc. Smaller guilds working together, larger guilds feuding and competing. Those elements made raids and the end game of EQ exciting, not the fight. Have you ever heard the saying, "joy is found in the journey, not the destination."

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These elements also caused people to quit in droves when they realize that jobless losers with unlimited playtimes will take everything and leave them nothing. That design is dead and buried and good riddance.

Kreugen_sl said:

No, no there does not. Trying to fit every size is what gave us the pile of shit WoW has become where everything seems focused either on the uber hardcore or the uber casual, with the majority being forgotten.

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This. You can't have the exact same content that is designed to entertain whatever number of friends you have. It becomes ambiguous and you no longer have a point of reference with other people. If you were talking about a single player or multiplayer game, then what you are asking for is perfect. But in an MMORPG that is attempting to build a community, or common thread, among thousands of people you need a common reference point. That means content type needs to have some kind of constant to it.

Are any of the dragon fights in GW2 memorable? No. They are plain and boring, but they make for really cool youtube videos. However during the Naxx race in WOW 1.0, the race to complete the zone was pretty damn engaging around the internets.

If you were to make Naxx 1.0 scalable, then more people would complete it. It would be finished and people would shrug and said they had fun a few times, and that would be it. A blip of fun in the bigger picture of things. However with a commonality, anyone who attempted, finished, or competed in 1.0 Naxx has some common thread to relate to each other about and it becomes more than just a collection of scripted fights.

I hope that makes sense.

Underjoyed_sl said:

When you insist on instancing, that's the only way to keep making raid encounters difficult until you can get AI that can adapt to different situations. The rest is just tinkering with an intrinsically flawed design. Raids in EQ were far more exciting than raids in WoW, even though bosses in WoW were far more complex in the strategy required to defeat them. Why? No instancing, which added a social element to raiding. The most exciting part of a raid was not the fight. It was finding a boss up, rounding up people to go kill it before another guild did. Racing to it, organizing, fighting, leapfrogging etc. Organizing pacts and treaties with other guilds, helping with breaks, corpse runs etc. Smaller guilds working together, larger guilds feuding and competing. Those elements made raids and the end game of EQ exciting, not the fight. Have you ever heard the saying, "joy is found in the journey, not the destination."

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That's a totally different form of gameplay: it's called social PVP. Some people might love that shit, and I completely understand why. Personally I don't have time to be on the clock for a video game anymore. I'm not in college or unemployed.

But that's completely separate from making a compelling PVE game. You just described a PVP game where you can't directly attack other people.

Draegan_sl said:

That's a totally different form of gameplay: it's called social PVP. Some people might love that shit, and I completely understand why. Personally I don't have time to be on the clock for a video game anymore. I'm not in college or unemployed.

But that's completely separate from making a compelling PVE game. You just described a PVP game where you can't directly attack other people.

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Kinda has that with the weekly race for "randomized" raids with rankings they talk about.

I doubt I'll raid at all in this game. never got into it in WoW because life had caught on and not having a raid schedule after years of EQ raiding was so refreshing I never cared to get back into it. That said, I prefered the time in EQ when you could bring as many or few as you wanted (for reference my guild raided with 20-30ish in Velious and up to 50ish in Luclin, depending in the year we were between 1st and 3rd guild on the server). Drama is unavoidable anyway but with the onset of more and more flags and raid limits and more tuning for a specific number of players, we had to turn people away one day and bot up on the next. Neither was fun or made the organizing easier.

I guess it would be nice if raids are set up for a target number and have at least some room for scaling up or down. The script doesnt have to scale between 20 and 40 but small raids for 20+/-2 and big ones for 40+/-4 would be neat. Gives some wiggle room to keep the social part of guild intact.

I do like Draegans ideas, first thing i was thinking of was PoTime as well though, so its not entirely new. The guild puzzles in GW2 have nice ideas, though they are lacking in actual combat. The final of the last living story chapter in GW2 was something I really liked too, would love to see more like that. The bottom line is the engine has to be capable of more then tab-targeting and spam heals/taunts/nukes.

I think the key point a lot of people are missing is the fact they want 1% of the player population to be able to COMPLETE raids and get the gear.

It's supposed to be hard. It's Naxx 1.0, not Molten Core first 3 bosses.