Goblin Squad Member
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I may have commented about this before, but it's been bugging me anew in Vanguard recently. I'm aware that it probably won't be as big a problem in PFO since PFO won't be as Theme-Park oriented.
The Problem: A particular area has 20 NPC monster spawn points. Each spawn point has an equal chance to spawn as one of three monster types. There are PvE reasons to kill the first two monster types. Either out of ignorance or laziness, many players only kill the types they need for PvE reasons. Soon, the area is completely overrun with the third type. Also needing the other two types for PvE reasons, I begin killing all the third type in order to make room for the first two types to spawn. While doing this, other players run around cherry-picking the first two types.
This is a poisonous mechanic that leads to intense resentment, and generally promotes anti-social behavior. I don't know if there are technical reasons why this kind of situation is desirable, but from a player perspective it is beyond maddening.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I may have commented about this before, but it's been bugging me anew in Vanguard recently. I'm aware that it probably won't be as big a problem in PFO since PFO won't be as Theme-Park oriented.
The Problem: A particular area has 20 NPC monster spawn points. Each spawn point has an equal chance to spawn as one of three monster types. There are PvE reasons to kill the first two monster types. Either out of ignorance or laziness, many players only kill the types they need for PvE reasons. Soon, the area is completely overrun with the third type. Also needing the other two types for PvE reasons, I begin killing all the third type in order to make room for the first two types to spawn. While doing this, other players run around cherry-picking the first two types.
This is a poisonous mechanic that leads to intense resentment, and generally promotes anti-social behavior. I don't know if there are technical reasons why this kind of situation is desirable, but from a player perspective it is beyond maddening.
What the did in COH was to have PvE quests where each spawn type was needed for various missions. One mission may have you kill 10 skulls, while the next would have you kill 10 clockwork. Somtimes the type was rare, but you could run to another area of the map and find them.
I would think that PFO may do something similar, but with orcs and goblins instead of skulls and clockwork.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Kill 10 CoT in King's Row without a travel power. No thanks, I'll go find another contact.
CoX also did contextual spawns, wherein if you were the first person to pass through an area in X time (where X is the time it takes server to clear spawns no one is actually observing), then it would spawn an enemy group of a size and level as close to appropriate for you as the area would allow.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I guess this sort of thing will maybe have more context in PFO in your hex, or a wild hex, it's more about fighting off competition or coming to a compromise (enemy, neutral?). Also how specialised some characters are at taking on particular mobs: Maybe if the bestiary is stock full of a wide range of types which require specialists, should ease the pressure on a given mob type for farming purposes by all and sundry?
"Farming mobs" in mmorpgs, feels wrong, especially when bots are involved.
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Goblin Squad Member
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When they do introduce quests in PFO, I really hope they look a lot more like DDO quests than the standard 200 flavors of farming 10 of <insert mob name here>.
I am going to be very serious here.
If the instanced quests are not fun like the DDO quests with puzzles and stories and thoughtful adventures, I am not playing PFO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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When they do introduce quests in PFO, I really hope they look a lot more like DDO quests than the standard 200 flavors of farming 10 of <insert mob name here>.I am going to be very serious here.
If the instanced quests are not fun like the DDO quests with puzzles and stories and thoughtful adventures, I am not playing PFO.
I think early on, quests will mostly be an emergent property of the environment. Somebody wants a better sword, they're on a quest to find a smith that is available to craft custom items. The item they want takes a wing from a wereduck. The place wereducks spawn is currently held by a trade guild that is looking to corner the market on wereduck wings. They have an agreement with local bandits to give discounts on gear if the bandits run off players who they consider to be poachers. etc...
I'm sure that when devs decide to add little theme park bits in, they'll want to craft more of a story than "kill 10 goblins" or "you found a hole in the ground". Finishing off weapon skill training may require a "win X battles" accomplishment, and the escalation cycles will provide some "you found a hole in the ground" stuff, but they've also said they'll eventually add 'modules' to the game.
I may have commented about this before, but it's been bugging me anew in Vanguard recently. I'm aware that it probably won't be as big a problem in PFO since PFO won't be as Theme-Park oriented.
The Problem: A particular area has 20 NPC monster spawn points. Each spawn point has an equal chance to spawn as one of three monster types. There are PvE reasons to kill the first two monster types. Either out of ignorance or laziness, many players only kill the types they need for PvE reasons. Soon, the area is completely overrun with the third type...
This is a poisonous mechanic that leads to intense resentment, and generally promotes anti-social behavior. I don't know if there are technical reasons why this kind of situation is desirable, but from a player perspective it is beyond maddening.
Well, I'll give a specific example of what you describe, and then I'll see if I justify this being how things are done.
If anyone here ever played WoW back in classic, you probably would have heard of a weapon enchant called "Crusader". The recipe for this enchant only dropped off 1 mob in one particular camp, in one particular zone. Only the Scarlet Spellbinder NPCs could drop the formula. Now, when you killed a spellbinder, another NPC would shortly spawn - the type of NPC would draw from a short pool of all the NPCs that spawn in that area; about 3-4 different NPCs. So, like you describe in your game, if you only kill the Spellbinders, it doesn't take more than 2-3 passes of the camp before all the NPCs are up but no spellbinders are around.
So, what if a spellbinder should spawn when one is killed? Well, wouldn't that spawn point just be camped? If everyone knows where the NPC will spawn, it usually becomes an AoE fest as all players try to get the 'tag' or loot rights to the corpse. Randomizing NPC spawns helps prevent outright camping of a certain NPC by allowing them to virtually be anywhere in the area to which they spawn.
I think in your scenario, you're more likely to co-operate with other players. The fact that you (or they) don't, is a byproduct of making games (and especially MMORPGs) more 'casual'. When content becomes massively soloable, you're more likely to view other players as competition rather than an opportunity. Take a game like EQ or FFXI - MMOs that required groups of players just to kill 1 thing and having that be the norm, fostered a co-operative environment. Groups weren't always easy to find, so building a social network in-game was beneficial.
Thanks to the massive success of WoW's 'don't worry, be happy' model, players now get away with self sufficiency because it is often easier AND faster. I don't know if you've ever done quests in a group in WoW but in a lot of cases items were unique in the sense that only 1 party member would get credit per spawn/kill/loot. Imagine how a 'collect 5 of' quest in a party of 4 turns into 'collect 20'. Rather than combating this solo behavior, I've seen games designed to just give everyone credit without having to party up. The public quests in WAR, Rift's dynamic events. You could invite yourself into groups rather than needing an invite sent in SW:TOR (and possibly rift or WAR I think I've seen it somewhere prior to TOR). WoW now has tag-less elite spawns. Instead of issuing group quests - players now just kill the big elite mob when they see others doing the same. And soon WoW will have tag-less World Bosses. It's pretty sad how low the standard has dropped.
At least in PFO if someone is taking all the NPCs you've done all the work to spawn, you could always kill them :) (I'm betting that sometimes you're just going to have to set aside your reputation/ alignment and put someone in their place)
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Goblin Squad Member
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When they do introduce quests in PFO, I really hope they look a lot more like DDO quests than the standard 200 flavors of farming 10 of <insert mob name here>.I am going to be very serious here.
If the instanced quests are not fun like the DDO quests with puzzles and stories and thoughtful adventures, I am not playing PFO.
Well while I hate to say it, as I did love DDO's quests, the big thing of how their quests worked, was by definition pure theme park, you can write long elaborate stories, detail puzzles etc... but the issue is PFO as described intends a good amount of persistance. IE you clear the dungeon, you eradicate the kobolds from it, you stop X from doing Y, what you should expect... is not for the same kobolds, X doing Y for someone else to stop 5 minutes later, at least not within the core game (modules could be a very different story, but I have a feeling they will have a very limited effect on the world, they almost certainly have to).
Now what I do see room for is world effecting quests, Dungeon opening quests etc... Resource protection, saving cities that are actually player based. What I'd like to see is quests that when they are completed, they are completed. I'd also like to see them in a form that brings people together rather than splits them appart when they have the same goal. IE If there is a quest to slay the black draggon of whatever, when the quest is open, people should be given tools to possibly communicate or meet up with others working towards it, no limits to participants, no kill steal, if the dragon is dead your NPCs should be happy. To me nothing is more jarring in an MMO than, "Go kill Joe the traitor", arriving just in time to see someone else kill Joe, and having to wait 30 minutes for joe to reappear so he can be killed again. I'd rather see quests where dozens meet up with the common goal, and even if not in a party, should be encoraged to work together when they have the common goal, not have the critical need to get the last hit or 51% of the damage depending on the system that determines where the credit goes.
I'm interested in learning if they plan to have any quests in the game before release? I think an Eve like tutorial system would help new players learn about the world and their options. Such a system would normally involve some type of quests, but we don't know if they plan on having a tutorial.
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Goblin Squad Member
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While it may of course not fit in it's entirety for PFO, I really like how Guild War 2 handles quests.
There are personal quests. Personal in the sense that it's done once you have achieved amount of progress and that progress is tracked only for you. This progress is generally towards a cause. As an example the cause my be to defend a village. you gain quest progress through killing the attackers, repairing stuff in the village, reviving NPC defenders or transporting equipment from the storage to the defenders. Spawn rates are, if I recall correctly, adjusted if more or less players are present.
There are public quests. Public in a sense that it's based on an event and everyone present can contribute and progress is tracked for the complete event and not the individual players. Failure to complete the event has concequenses. Like for example the above mentioned village gets assaulted in a concetrated attack and if you fail to protect it controll changes to the attackers. Rewards are adjusted for the contributions. The way escalation is described already sounds like the logical evolution of this.
As a side note they did say that further down the lifetime of PFO they will introduce something akin to PnP modules that are instanced and accordingly elaborate.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So, what if a spellbinder should spawn when one is killed?
Static spawns, where the spawn is always the same NPC monster type, is only one possible way of solving the problem. Another is giving players a good reason to kill all the different types of mobs there. Another, and probably my favorite, would be to modify the loot table based on how many different types of mobs, and how many mobs of each type, a particular characters has killed in the area recently.
The fact that you (or they) don't, is a byproduct of making games (and especially MMORPGs) more 'casual'. When content becomes massively soloable, you're more likely to view other players as competition rather than an opportunity.
I very much agree with this observation. I tend to send /tells to other characters in an area when I'm killing there, to see if they need the same stuff I do. More often than not, the only reply I get is silence.
I've actually brought up this very problem before. My solution (which wouldn't work in PFO) was to give a character the same xp they get for soloing a mob regardless of how big a group they're in. I guarantee that would make even the most casual, lone-wolf character happy to group up with just about anyone.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As Papaver mentioned, it seems like GW2 has solved a lot of those issues, Nihimon. You can party up, but you don't have to. I've seen events that practically generate a flash mob the size of a WoW raid party. Rewards are done individually anyway, so there's rarely reason to fight over spawns, and spawns seem to be done somewhat contextually, based on the players that are near enough to interact with them. You'll also occasionally find creatures of differing types fighting one another.
As to patching up the traditional EQ/WoW-like themeparks, adding quests for mostly unused creature types would seem an easy fix, but most of these teams don't go back to update lower-level areas. They're probably too small and too slammed with developing the next expansion. Maybe if the 'unused' mobs were collected, the creature parts for them could be incorporated into the recipes for high-level crafting. That would get some higher-level characters 'slumming' and creating churn in the spawns for a while, and when they've moved on to other things, the level-appropriate players could at least collect something valuable to sell when they're clearing things themselves.
Although it might be more geared to a PvE type game, if a bunch of players show up in an area, having the same quests. For that area, maybe the game could convert the individual quests into a type of public quest similar to the public quests in Warhammer? Where all members would knock out everyone's objectives, then the players could split back to their individual units and go turn their quests in?
GW2 did an alright job of 'group if you want, but it won't matter much in the end'. But every character in that game was self sufficient. Everyone was responsible for their own DPS, healing and damage avoidance/mitigation. A group of individuals or a group of players in a raid didn't really provide any difference. And that's fair enough, but you couldn't apply the same system to games where some characters are healers, some are tanks, some are buff/support roles etc. I think in other MMOs, there is meant to be a group structure because the classes were designed to synergize with each other.
GW2 had some of it's own issues with dynamic events. Early on (and I don't know if they ever truly fixed this) you could game the heck out of rewards by failing the big dynamic events. If the encounters only triggered once every few hours, then it was more beneficial to progress through all the stages to the end - and then wipe. The event resets after a few minutes, and you repeat. Players earned more rewards/karma by doing this even with diminishing returns on the same event.
I stopped played after ANet started to retool the events and do a massive nerf to karma gains in an attempt to make gear and legendary weapon acquisition take substantially longer. I admit players were abusing the dynamic event system and not playing it as intended, but it seemed like the dev's counter to that was just as bogus but in the other direction. I didn't have any particular fun farming the same events over and over. And when faced with the prosepect of doing the same event farming in 1 zone every day for months just to get a legendary; I quit playing. Instances were the same. You could do different branches of each instance; but the majority of players were only interested in doing the 1 path that was fastest (and easiest because everyone knew it inside and out)
It'll be interesting seeing how the ability to (virtually) multi-class works in PFO given that they want people working together. I guess a lot depends on where certain abilities are located within the different roles skill trees.
Abilities like healing, speed buffs, stealth, Melee avoidance buffs will all be sought after. But if they are placed further up on the skill trees some will be more trouble then they are worth. Guess we won't know till we can begin messing with the roles.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It'll be interesting seeing how the ability to (virtually) multi-class works in PFO given that they want people working together. I guess a lot depends on where certain abilities are located within the different roles skill trees.
Abilities like healing, speed buffs, stealth, Melee avoidance buffs will all be sought after. But if they are placed further up on the skill trees some will be more trouble then they are worth. Guess we won't know till we can begin messing with the roles.
True. I hope that if there is an invisibility spell, it wont be a replacement for a good stealth skill. The one thing I dislike about Pathfinder pnp skills is the combination of hide and move silently and spot and listen. Being invisible is a lot less useful if you are making enough noise to wake the dead.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Warning: Designer Rambling
The described spawning method is used a lot because it's incredibly simple for designers needing to place a ton of content. Place spawn node, set whether it has a radius for things to randomly appear within, tell it how often to spawn and how many spawns to stop at, and attach a list of potential things to spawn. When your goal is to have a large area full of monsters to kill with a bit of variation, it's super fast. You take one minute to set up the first one, and then cut and paste it all over the section of the map. Instant content, just add server cycles.
And it's not even that bad of a system, for what it's used for, until someone comes along and does something to make one of the creatures on the list more desirable than the others due to loot or a quest that's overly specific. If you're just using it to provide visual or tactical variation, but the creatures all have basically the same loot table and all count toward the same quests, then the issue of people exhausting the chewy center of the spawn node goes away. It still has the core problem of maintaining the idea that "content" = "monsters standing around in fields waiting to be killed."
Right now, the escalation system means we're not planning any static spawn generators of that kind. At the very least, spawn generators need to change their lists pretty drastically between the creatures involved in the escalation and the current power level of the cycle, and we'll probably do something even more complex than that. Most of our quests are also going to dynamically update based on the escalation cycle.
And, at a higher level, our PvE content is much more akin to the Public Quests of Warhammer, Rift, and Champions or the Events of GW2 than the individual quests of WoW. Quests are our way of telling you what you can do to help the hex you're in advance the escalation. If you and other players are killing the same mobs, you're both working to affect the same escalation and shouldn't be at cross purposes or able to casually screw one another. You can, of course, deliberately screw one another over in exciting ways :) .
So that's all to say that I doubt we'll have the problem of players eating the best chocolates out of the spawn box and leaving you with only monstrous nougat. We will, of course, probably see exciting new problems while we get the systems tuned up correctly :D .
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True. I hope that if there is an invisibility spell, it wont be a replacement for a good stealth skill. The one thing I dislike about Pathfinder pnp skills is the combination of hide and move silently and spot and listen. Being invisible is a lot less useful if you are making enough noise to wake the dead.It'll be interesting seeing how the ability to (virtually) multi-class works in PFO given that they want people working together. I guess a lot depends on where certain abilities are located within the different roles skill trees.
Abilities like healing, speed buffs, stealth, Melee avoidance buffs will all be sought after. But if they are placed further up on the skill trees some will be more trouble then they are worth. Guess we won't know till we can begin messing with the roles.
It would be pretty cool if characters made realistic noise, like plate wearers rattling, chain clinking.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Stephen Cheney, thanks very much for that explanation. I was hoping one of the devs would go into some detail when I said "I don't know if there are technical reasons why this kind of situation is desirable".
Suddenly, though, I'm curious if all the PvE/Quest content in PFO will revolve around Escalations...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Warning: Designer RamblingMarvellous!
... Right now, the escalation system means we're not planning any static spawn generators of that kind. At the very least, spawn generators need to change their lists pretty drastically between the creatures involved in the escalation and the current power level of the cycle, and we'll probably do something even more complex than that. Most of our quests are also going to dynamically update based on the escalation cycle.
What was that about a 'power level of the cycle'? So could I infer well that an escalation alters over time to produce more powerful critters the longer it runs? Or am I misconstruing? Is the 'power level' instead the relative strength of the nearest settlement?
And, at a higher level, our PvE content is much more akin to the Public Quests of Warhammer, Rift, and Champions or the Events of GW2 than the individual quests of WoW. Quests are our way of telling you what you can do to help the hex you're in advance the escalation. If you and other players are killing the same mobs, you're both working to affect the same escalation and shouldn't be at cross purposes or...
Should I take this to mean that it may be possible to solo in tandem with other soloists and not have to group?
Since xp isn't built by kills, seems like it would be so. Will it be possible to loot another's kill? Would that result in a thief flag?
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Goblin Squad Member
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If so that would mean the spawning of those randomized dungeons might be connected to escalations....
Suddenly, though, I'm curious if all the PvE/Quest content in PFO will revolve around Escalations...
"No, man, leave the orcs alone. If we let 'em grow til thursday we get a dungeon!"
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Goblin Squad Member
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"No, man, leave the orcs alone. If we let 'em grow til thursday we get a dungeon!"If so that would mean the spawning of those randomized dungeons might be connected to escalations....
Suddenly, though, I'm curious if all the PvE/Quest content in PFO will revolve around Escalations...
It gives new meaning to the phrase "Dungeon Farming".
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I guess that means no random animals wandering the land? Unless they are part of an escalation cycle it doesn't sound like there will be?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I guess that means no random animals wandering the land? Unless they are part of an escalation cycle it doesn't sound like there will be?
I doubt that. I think there will be random spawns in the wilderness far from any civilized hexes that will have powerful rare creatures that are just there. If they are engaged and not defeated, then they may attack settlements. I could see a lot of fun in being a solo explorer who comes across a dragon, and then attacks it and dies. This of course is seen as an act of war by the dragon, who is now going to attack all the human settlement near it's hex.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I guess that means no random animals wandering the land? Unless they are part of an escalation cycle it doesn't sound like there will be?
If you're talking about critters like squirrels and deer and raccoons, it wouldn't surprise me to learn they have a different mechanic from "monsters"
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Goblin Squad Member
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I guess that means no random animals wandering the land? Unless they are part of an escalation cycle it doesn't sound like there will be?
Lisa did say she liked that proposal to link escalation to the ecology... start with rabbits and other furry creatures and if they overpopulate it spawns wolves and goblins and voilà! escalatory activity.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Suddenly, though, I'm curious if all the PvE/Quest content in PFO will revolve around Escalations...
It's certainly the core part of your PvE meal. There may be additional sides and garnishes once we're sure the escalation system is properly fun.
So could I infer well that an escalation alters over time to produce more powerful critters the longer it runs?
They are, indeed, called Escalation Cycles precisely because they escalate :) .
Should I take this to mean that it may be possible to solo in tandem with other soloists and not have to group?
We really like the feeling of cooperation in PvE that public quests/events have been creating in recent MMOs, where the systems don't make you mad that someone helped you. Not having to figure out how to split up XP from a kill helps a lot, but we also need to create a looting system that's reasonable for all situations including PvP. Meanwhile, settlements play a big role in escalation cycles when they're in a settled hex, so it's likely you'll be alongside fellow citizens a lot of the time anyway.
So we'd definitely like to support the unofficial party of solo players all working on the same part of the escalation. But it's too early to tell for sure whether we'll be able to create a fair looting and (quest credit) system that supports all agendas.
If so that would mean the spawning of those randomized dungeons might be connected to escalations.
Yes, when we have dungeons most of them will probably also hook into the local cycle in various ways.
I guess that means no random animals wandering the land? Unless they are part of an escalation cycle it doesn't sound like there will be?
Too early to tell exactly what form that will take. "Random animals wandering" has a lot of dependencies on things like Art priorities and how many AI-entities are reasonable to add for color without overburdening the server. In the long run, they would probably also be controlled by some kind of dynamic system rather than static spawns.
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Goblin Squad Member
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"content" = "monsters standing around in fields waiting to be killed."
This so belittles, imo, the PvE content/the state of the world and the nonchalence of the player in the wilderness/bush. Which is very bad for atmosphere/immersion/surprise. I think one side to a solution is dangerous mobs or a careless player losing something (eg death -> husk reclaim, mobs that may then loot your corpse or destroy something of yours?, mobs that may call reinforcements or even "ambush you" eg even traps?).
If you and other players are killing the same mobs, you're both working to affect the same escalation and shouldn't be at cross purposes or able to casually screw one another. You can, of course, deliberately screw one another over in exciting ways :) .
This gives more purpose to killing mobs, so I really like it, especially the latter situation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ Avena
Indeed it does belittle the whole feeling of adventure. I'm trying to remember how long I actually moved through the trees in Meridian 59 as if I were flitting stealthily from tree to bush.
Not long. Same in EQ: not long. Crushbone Orc Centurion twenty feet distant and he still just stands there moving like a big city traffic cop at rush hour.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Being, I would love if NPC mobs needed LOS to aggro, instead of just having a big circular aggro radius. I'm not sure we're there yet, but we can definitely see it from here :)
If they can do it in a stealth game, they should be able to do it in a MMO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Nothing is worse than the 'mobs standing around waiting to be killed'... except the piled high spawn points (think EQ 1, with the lines of cha-cha-ing mobs heading for the exit).
LOTRO and Conan seem to do a decent problem with avoiding (mostly) the 'kill 10 rats' type quests, but there are still too many of them. I'd like to see as many player generated quests as possible, you know?
For me, in particular, with the way I want to play, I'd *love* to see people able to post a 'job' to a board. Something like 'I need 50 brown leathers at the next town over, I'll pay 50s'.
Not just shouted in trade (which gets old), but paying to toss it onto a job board for people like me to load up and bring.
Stephen, I really like the escalation system. It sounds like a very cool way to involve both new players, and experienced ones as well. Plus sounding just fun! I'm pretty sure you've seen me talk about this, I've certainly spread the news around <g> but during Mark's Fear the boot interview he mentioned players having options in dealing with NPC mobs. Two things he mentioned were possibly enlisting an Orc captain, and his group I assume, and allying with a group of witches that moved into an area. Are you guys planning for things like this, or was he on the sauce that evening? :P
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Goblin Squad Member
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For me, in particular, with the way I want to play, I'd *love* to see people able to post a 'job' to a board. Something like 'I need 50 brown leathers at the next town over, I'll pay 50s'.
Not just shouted in trade (which gets old), but paying to toss it onto a job board for people like me to load up and bring.
i think this will be a MIGHTY common occurrence, or people even travelling out to mines/logging camps to ask in person.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@carneaslaughter, you should check out the Goblinworks Blog: Signed... In Blood
I was actually super excited about that when it was posted - along with the whole kickstarter thread about inns/merchant caravans etc.
However, May was a long time ago, and I just feel that constant support for this stuff should be re-iterated (by the players, that is).
Lots of great stuff gets kicked around early, and sometimes even into beta... to disappear sooner or later. Look at TSW - they keep making that easier, and WoW has sunk to Kiddie Toy level.