Contested content: yea or nay?

I for one am opposed to most/all content being contested. Open world stuff I'm ok with, but why should I have to compete with other players who will more than likely wait until the mob is almost dead to ninja it away from my guildies and I? No thanks. Having an occasional contested dungeon is fine, but making everything contested will ultimately drive me away from a game I am eagerly waiting to try out.

The current game I'm playing has a contested zone with an 8 hours respawn timer. This one zone has caused so many problems on the server it has led to players being banned and fractured/destroyed a few guilds along the way. It has also led to one guild controlling that zone. To me having all contested content is very bad for the community. I know some people here want the "omg my epeen is so big because I stole the loot from you" playstyle, but I can assure you that many players don't. With the sheer number of games out there and the players time often divided among them, why should there be something that could quite possibly push players to those other games and away from this one? I played EQ for many years and never did like contested content, but I also understand that it is needed. Just don't make it so that players on PvE servers have to compete with the AI AND players.

Well, most of the world will be contested.
However, there wont be static spawns

Don't care if there is contested or not contested, just as long as I know there isn't some loot ninja about to loot. That is one thing I enjoyed with EQ2, was that they locked the encounter after you began the fight. So, I'd see bring a similar feature to EQN

Contested and instanced divides the world between hardcore and fake hardcore. Make the raids and the majority of content contested.

EQN doesn't have tagging, so I'm not sure the concept of loot ninja is even feasible in EQN.

Are we sure about this?
I know we have discussed it many time, but have we ever gotten any kind of statement about "shared" mobs etc?

Haha. Whew. That was a tough quote to find and I just looked at it yesterday! I knew somebody was gonna ask me to dig it up. Took me, like, 20 minutes to find it even knowing Terry said it.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/09/everquest-next-wants-to-make-you-care-about-other-players

Thank you.
I missed that article way back then.

This does make some discussions in this thread a bit pointless though.

From the article

I hope this actually clears up some of the older discussion.

This is why contested content should be used sparingly. People with this type of mindset who believe that because someone can not dedicate multiple hours daily to a game should be held as a second class player will ruin the community. Everyone playing this game should have access to all the same loot, play less it should take you longer, play more it should take less time; but in no way should any player be scorned for preferring instanced content over fighting against players. If I wanted to fight with players over stuff I'd play on a pvp server, which I have zero desire to do.

Well, most of the world will be contested content.
Instances will be limited and used for story finales

You know what ruins a community even faster? People not playing because the game is dying due to it being stale, boring, and the same as everything else out there, full of easy mode instances because heaven forbid we have a challenge and rare items. Instead, lets all sit around holding hands and singing kumbaya.

I would love to sit around and sing kumbaya - especially via SOEmotes!!

Seems like EQN is mostly contested content (instances just for story finales and such) and no tagging for the loot distribution.
Dunno how rare items will be handled. Cool and diverse is actually good enough for me. If we can customize gear via components... I should be able to make mine unique.

I couldn't disagree more. Someone who plays less shouldn't automatically have access to someone who plays more. If a player happens to only be able to play say 30 minutes per play session and certain content takes an hour the player with less time just has to deal with not being able to experience it. MMOs have become a huge bore because most MMOs try to create content around the least amount of time. It is what gave us the shorter and more boring dungeons because it is all about having to get the reward for a dungeon as fast as possible.

Also, even if you do happen to have enough time for the content, someone player less or more shouldn't get the same loot in the same amount of time. Rewards of any type shouldn't be guaranteed after X amount of time played. Winning the lottery after X amount of time in real life may be fun but a game actually suffers from it. It is the token system that sucks all the fun out of being rewarded. You are guaranteed to win after acquiring a certain amount of tokens which in turn makes people want to rush through the content in order to get rewarded as fast as possible. This is another reason to make dungeon runs shorter.

And players shouldn't be scorned over preferring instanced content but they have enough games in which they can find this. Instanced content belongs in themepark games or actually vertical progression type of games, which is something that EQN is not supposed to be. Rewards, as in gear, in EQN isn't supposed to increase your power level but it is supposed to make you more versatile. Sure, this could theoretically increase your power level somewhat but not as much as in WoW-clones which are all about this. With lots of instanced content as THE content comes vertical progression but also comes the destruction of the actual game world and would give us yet another lobby game.

I guess I need some examples to be able to weigh in meaningfully.
I think I agree with both Netasi and gwaha - depending on the specific circumstances.

The example I might give is fighting a dragon.
A solo player with only 30 minutes to play should not be able to kill an ancient dragon - if an ancient dragon is raid content that takes 2 hours.
But, seems like it should be OK for a raid that plays 30 minutes a night to work through the dungeon rather than doing it all at once.
In EQN, I'm not sure how one ensures that no one else goes in and kills the dragon while you're away. It's not going to be via an instance.

Might be, though, that young dragons are solable in 30 minutes. Perhaps it takes the solo player 100 young dragons to get enough mats for an item similar to what drops from one defeat of an ancient dragon.

Instances kill games. It's been said time and time again, this is a fact as it segregates the player base. Contested content while is an issue for the mass majority of casual players who have limited time to play, including myself, is still fun to play for a lot of people. The largest complaint that I see here is that many people play games which has had contested content and they get locked out because someone has the content on lock down. This won't be an issue in EverQuest Next, because after time those creatures are going to move on which means that not only does the play with little time have to find them again, the player with more time has to find them.

This is a double edged blade, because of the comments which have been made it begs the question exactly how is loot handled. If loot is handled like Guild Wars 2, sorry for the comparison, then nothing is literally contested. If it is handled like Everquest II where encounters are locked and only those in your group get access to the loot, then contested content could being an issue. Next the issue comes to the tagging system, I understand that they say there won't be a tagging system but, underneath the hood there is a "tagging" system. How would you determine how loot is distributed without some type of system in place which is designed to keep track of how much a person does per encounter. You simply couldn't, so there is a "tagging" system in place...just not a traditional tagging system.

People in general need to learn to work together and that is why contested content will always win out. Contested content forces players to socialize and work together to complete common goals. It worked in Everquest 1 and it will work in EverQuest Next. Instance are a thing of the past and should only be used in dire situations. If there is no contested content in the game, then it will turn out exactly like Guild Wars 2 turned out, Zerg Wars 2. I do not want to play EverZerg, I want to play EverQuest Next which makes players work together to complete goals. Bring back socialization and not toddler town like in World of Warcraft.

With that being said, games will always have their toddlers which play..no I'm not talking about actual toddlers, I'm specifically talking about those which are old enough to know better to cry and whine like toddlers in chat. This is unfortunately the way kids/teens/young adults have been raised and it won't change. I just hope they add a good /ignore function because I imagine I will have tons of people on my ignore.

TLDR; too bad it was a really good post!

Risk Vs Reward + Time Vs Reward.

No Content should be time gated. Risky content should have better rewards.

He Talathion. Still on EQ2 or those forums? I'd remember that signature anywhere, even if it has been a few years.

EQ2 is deadish. I am hoping EQNext will be a Sandbox that rivals EvE/SWG :>

You can say it as many times as you like, it doesn't make it true. But say it loud enough and long enough...

Contested content divides the player base into those who want to control said content and have the power to do so and everyone else.

Yeah, I'm sure all those people who were blocked from progressing in the game because a couple of guilds decided it would be fun to keep everyone else from seeing the cool new stuff on the side thought it was a blast

Taking fragments of paragraphs out of context only creates misunderstanding.

@Italic: You are absolutely right, however @Bold, instances segregates the player base making the world feel empty. This has a larger impact on games especially whenever new players try to join them. If new players see that there are tons of players doing stuff in dungeons which are contested they are more likely to stay with the game than if they join a game and find little to no players in the world.

@Underline: This is how the game in and of itself was flawed. In EQ Next, guilds won't have that luxury due to not having static spawn locations. A guild might keep players from progressing through a zone but, eventually even that guild will block it's own self from progressing as the creatures will just pack up and leave. So while the guild is occupying Crushbone blocking people from progressing in that area, the Orcs might be taking over Kelethin because the guild is driving them out of Crushbone.

I'd honestly love to see guild try to block progression of players in a true sandbox game. In a true sandbox game, there is plenty of content for everyone. Just because you get your guild together to go clear out Crushbone doesn't mean you have to stop your plans of doing things just because a guild is "blocking progression", because in a true sandbox game there is no traditional progression. Progression in a sandbox game is a reflection of your own desires.

If you desire to be the one to clear out Crushbone, but were beat to the punch; how are you any different than the person who did it before you?