Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[James]

Originally Posted by Miele

Since it's pretty much a proven fact that every 25 players raid in WoW has at least 5 terribads players on average that are being pulled through content, having the possibility to run the place in 20 would be a blessing to some guilds.

This is so retarded it hurts. Someone on another board put it far more eloquently than I ever could, so I'll just quote him:

Originally Posted by Maledict

The dumb FoH discussion already has folks saying that cutting the big raid size down to 20 would be good, because it would allow them to cut the fat in their 25 player raid. These are the same idiots who said the same when going from EQ to WoW (54 to 40), and then in TBC when we went from 40 to 25. Generally, if you're in the position to "cut the fat" and can identify it that easily, you'll always be wanting to cut the fat because the problem isn't with your players, it's with how you build your guild.

[Ninajrr]

Tweaking loot table probabilities based on group size, casualties and time (and any other factor you can think of that is skill-based) is a nice way of changing the focus of killing bosses from zerg to strategy.

It also helps to defeat websites like wowhead which give precise drop chances of awesome items.

This is not quite the same as the Bear Mount drops which are a more discrete time-based challenge, though that idea can be included as well in some cases. Each factor independently effects the loot tables, and cumulatively can add up to impressive differences.

eg: boss loot table, can drop 1 item

Slow, Full Group, Lots of Deaths:
75% decent item
12.5% pretty good item
12.5% awesome item
0% badass item

Fast, Missing a few Players, Few Deaths:
25% decent item
25% pretty good item
25% awesome item
25% badass item

Fucking Fast, Missing a LOT of players, No Deaths:
0% decent item
12.5% pretty good item
37.5% awesome item
50% badass item

That is an extremely exaggerated example, but it helps to illustrate the basic idea. It is "like" adding a scalability to content except the increased difficulty is put entirely on the players beating the odds (which are a lot more fun, no?). Other ideas come out of this as well, such as increasing the number of drops a boss has when it is absolutely demolished (helps to outfit guilds who have dungeons on 'farm' a lot faster).

[Apostle]

Im sorry, but doing something like that is just dumb. Just because it takes group A a long time to finish a dungeon and they die a lot does not mean they should not have just as much chance at an item as another group. If they can finish the content they should get the same % chance. Group B's increased chance of your Badass item comes from the fact that they can do that same encounter 3 times to the first groups 1.


You want it to be harder? Make a new instance/encounter that is harder.

[Ninajrr]

Originally Posted by Apostle

Group B's increased chance of your Badass item comes from the fact that they can do that same encounter 3 times to the first groups 1.

This is only true if you remove dungeon lock-outs, which you cannot do without shooting yourself in the foot.

Why should a group that stumbles through an encounter get the same reward as a group that blows it to pieces? The reward for doing the encounter "poorly" will still be worthwhile to that group of players, its not like I am suggesting they get some complete piece of crap item for barely succeeding. The bottom line is that if you want players to play the game well, you need to reward them for it. Make them strive for it.

[James]

So what you're saying is bosses need a 'hard mode' version that will award extra loot, achievements, and titles, generally setting them apart from the rest of the scrubs on the server? Sounds familiar...

[Miele]

Originally Posted by James

This is so retarded it hurts. Someone on another board put it far more eloquently than I ever could, so I'll just quote him:

Fair enough, what if you could run a raid with 28 or even 35 instead? I didn't say I want all "raids" with groups of 20 or 10 or 5.
If a scaling system is implemented, your awesome 22 men guild won't have the *need* to find those 3 eluding competent players, but could recruit them without being in a rush and if you have more than you would normally need, you can make them play with you all the time, instead of taking turns which is something nobody likes.

You can even remove the cap for raid size, scale down obtained rewards accordingly when it approaches the zerg size. Honestly, people raided with 72 in EQ1 and before they introduced raid size caps, they could be even more, hell you could always run more than 1 raid in a zone when it wasn't instanced. Just being able to run a hylarious pug of 100+ players would be cool every now and then, even if lag kills them all.

You see? Some people read only what they want to read instead of looking at the whole picture: maybe I like the idea my small guild won't have to take turns and can instead filed one or two more players, your super large guild could go to raid with 60+ instead and "select" the 12 groups-super-omg-fucking-hard mode where mob farts will be so powerful the turbulence generated will strip cloth users naked or they could zerg the 8 groups version for faster (and likely lesser quality or quantity) rewards.

Anyway, that was just something I had in mind as a nerd playing these games, I'm sure people that is paid to find ideas and solutions can probably come out with much better stuff. I just have a gripe with a hard cap for the number of players that can raid at once, if some dev can figure out a good way to invent a soft cap instead, I'd be joyful and pay him a beer or three.

[Ninajrr]

Originally Posted by James

So what you're saying is bosses need a 'hard mode' version that will award extra loot, achievements, and titles, generally setting them apart from the rest of the scrubs on the server? Sounds familiar...

Yes, but you need to make the "hard mode" more continuous and allow players the ability to control how difficult an encounter is (to a limit, of course)

[Azrayne]

Kind of on a complete tangent, but am I the only one who thinks we need to put an end to this trend of using mounts as some major progression point and only handing them out 20 or 40 levels into the game? I understand the logic in using them as the metaphorical carrot, but I think an incentive born solely out of how agonizingly dull it is to wander around the gameworld on foot for the first X levels is bad design.

Faster mounts? Sure. Cooler mounts? Hell yeah. But at least give us something serviceable within the first hour or two of playing a character.

[Caocao]

Genereally speaking you're not going that far in any game you start out in. You don't have to start making larger trips until you start up w/ the group content and or a different set of quests. This is when you want to do shit w/ your friends who are other races etc and need to make it over there. I don't really see a problem with using a mount as a "coming of age(level)" type deal as they have been doing for quite some time. I'd rather not be in the newbie zone/island w/e seeing a bunch of people on mounts.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Ninajrr

Yes, but you need to make the "hard mode" more continuous and allow players the ability to control how difficult an encounter is (to a limit, of course)

You mean like tiered hardmodes with 1, 2, 3 and sometimes even 4 or 5 different levels of difficulty? Hrmn...James you got a line on where we've seen something like that before?

Anyways...

Miele...you're kinda missing the point. Yes it sucks that you have 26 players and someone has to sit out. However, until this miracle algorithm appears that can completely balance a 5 man fight for 100 people so that difficulty is consistent (taking into account other random factors such as DC's, communication issues, reaction times in large environments, world objects being harder to see due to crowding, etc...etc...) so that the same loot drops (otherwise you'll end up with logical gaps anyways. That is if 20 people is the cutoff point between getting ilvl 219 gear and ilvl 226 gear, sucks to be your guild if you have 18 raiders) and all the other logistical problems you'd have to solve....

...well it's kinda pointless to talk about. Right now it's a pratical impossibility. We might as well talk about how boss fights are getting stagnant and the answer is to have completely realistic destructible environments where every grain of sand is considered it's own object. Neat to think about and yes it's a solution, but it's also practically impossible at this point.

And so is scaling raid content to group size unless you go with completely pointless classes like in CoH and enemies whose most complicated ability is a snare. Perhaps we can get Dumar to pipe in here with a "Done right, dynamic content is awesome!

[James]

Originally Posted by Ninajrr

Yes, but you need to make the "hard mode" more continuous and allow players the ability to control how difficult an encounter is (to a limit, of course)

So what you're saying is there needs to be varying degrees of difficulty for each hard mode encounter that are completely player controlled? Like a big red button, maybe...

[Ninajrr]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

You mean like tiered hardmodes with 1, 2, 3 and sometimes even 4 or 5 different levels of difficulty? Hrmn...James you got a line on where we've seen something like that before?

Yes, exactly like that, but I am suggesting you can do it without having to design 5 independent difficulty versions of the same content by having variables alter the reward probabilities based on how well the players do.

[James]

Personally I'd rather push a big red button. It's just so much cooler.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Ninajrr

Yes, exactly like that, but I am suggesting you can do it without having to design 5 independent difficulty versions of the same content by having variables alter the reward probabilities based on how well the players do.

Nothing I'd enjoy more then beating 1 keeper YS only to find out we didn't get an ilvl239 item because RNG fucked us on your continuous scale. Random loot is random and subsequently terrible. We sure as shit don't need -more- randomness injected into the loot system.

[Azrayne]

Originally Posted by Caocao

Genereally speaking you're not going that far in any game you start out in. You don't have to start making larger trips until you start up w/ the group content and or a different set of quests. This is when you want to do shit w/ your friends who are other races etc and need to make it over there. I don't really see a problem with using a mount as a "coming of age(level)" type deal as they have been doing for quite some time. I'd rather not be in the newbie zone/island w/e seeing a bunch of people on mounts.

Which would kind of be my point, give it to people when they start doing longer trips.

If you take WoW by example, back at release you got a mount at 40, by which point you'd already explored probably 2/3 of the gameworld, wandered the better part of both continents on foot, it was a bitch. Likewise with WAR (which is what brought this thought to mind), you get your mount at level 20, meaning you've already run around two of the four tiers on foot. It's boring, it's tedious and it's unnecessary.

I'm not saying pop into the game with one, but I think getting your basic run of the mill mount at level 10 or so isn't beyond reasonable.