Contested content: yea or nay?

In early years EQ1 was.

Erm, have you watched their previous panels? This is one of the points they have reiterated quite a few times. I forget which panel it was from specifically otherwise I would link the video. But they spoke about how mobs in current MMOs spawn in preset locations. Like a goblin camp in Butcherblock, it is there now, today, as I write this. And two years from now, assuming they don't revamp the zone entirely, those goblins will still be there, in the same location. If they die, they will come back in 20 minutes in the same spot, or whatever their respawn timer is set to. In EQN, they are supposed to respawn in a different location and seek out an environment that suits their needs and rebuild from there.

Your example is extremely unlikely, even in a game with static spawns. People ran through places like South Ro all the time in EQ1 when traveling to Guk. You'd see someone sitting on that hill camping the Ancient Cyclops. No one stopped to wait a few minutes to see if they'd get lucky and be able to steal something from you. If someone stopped, it was because they flat out wanted the camp. This isn't supposed to be able to happen in EQN. You would never be sitting on that hill waiting for the Ancient Cyclops to spawn in the first place.

Yes, if opportunity arises, some players will be jerks to advance themselves. This will happen in EVERY MMO unless the MMO is 100% instanced (even in this, you will still run into jerks quite frequently if you're creating pugs/pub groups). What the heck is the point of playing a "Massive Multiplayer" game if you want to hide in a hole all day never interacting with anyone? Every experience won't be an awesome one, this goes for any multiplayer game, no matter the genre. But, the AI they claim to have created should greatly reduce the probability for these distasteful situations.

or they could add EQ2's encouter lock to solve it.

Simple answer.. the game is fun.

I can give a crap about the other people in the sense of the game. Its just like in life. You don't just associate with everyone you see. you don't hang out with everyone you see. If i don't want to interact or it i want to, that's my decision. Isn't that part of this game, making decisions?

You also don't know how the dynamic event system will work. You can have tons of them happen all the time. Which would make hanging out somewhat around someone making a hole a viable way for people to do events. I wouldn't do it, but i am sure some would. You aren't just sitting there maybe. You may be killing a treant or a goblin. But you would be surprised what people do in MMOs. Many afk for hours in a town or ontop of a windmill. Or some aren't afk and they sit around for hours doing NOTHING.

So my example is not extremely unlikely. Its extremely likely. Common place who knows since we don't know the frequency or possible frequency of events happening. It could be common place.

not sure what that is since i didn't play it but i guess its you unlock the event its yours to do?

"Ninja looting" as you call it, to me is great gameplay. I loved being a thief in Shadowbane. So we disagree on that point.

I still think a simple loot system is best. It doesn't complicate loot rights in groups, it solves issues when these small altercations happens between players, and it gives another 2 professions players can be in the game; the thief and the anti-thief. At a minimum I would like to see a free loot system on PvP servers.

I could understand a free loot system tied to groups on PvE servers; but then you still have the problem with who gets the rights to the loots. That's why in a true free loot system you don't need to worry about who attacks the mob first, who does the most damage, or even if everyone is involved. If the mob dies and his corpse holds something, then anyone can loot the npc.

The problem I have with locked content is that often times it's not handled very well in that this type of "inconvenience" is often dropped on players either at a very high level or very sporadically. Zones like Nagrand in WoW or Lands of the Dead in Warhammer Online were great concepts, but the problem with both of them was that people often didn't understand the concept when they finally arrived at that content.

This is mostly because of something that WoW and WAR didn't do but I've seen a heavy focus on with Wildstar in that they are trying to teach people about later-game concepts and mechanics from early-game onwards. While it isn't necessarily the greatest example as the game isn't out yet, they are showing a knack for understanding that concept.

So now that I've gotten to the point, for EQ Next I'd love to see temporary content lockout based on the playerbase's efforts. As there aren't two different factions, the way I envision this is by either having NPCs taking over a certain village or equivalent, or a creature stronghold with a boss or instance within that needs to be broken into and held.

The basic concept for the stronghold raid would be this:

1. Heavily defended NPC stronghold, seems to be guarding something.
2. You make your way into the stronghold, defeating the leader and everyone in it.
3. You gain access to either a portal, an instance or a bigger baddie within.
4. You try to defeat this challenge, but while you try and do so the larger fortress down the road noticed you invading their ranks and starts sending in reinforcements to take back the stronghold.
5. While a group of people is trying to defend the fortress from being re-taken by an ever-growing group of baddies, a raid-group or equivalent are trying to defeat the big bad.
6. Either the big bad is defeated or you're overrun, if you succeed in killing the big bad, everyone gets a piece of the lootpie. Both defending and attacking should(could) be about the same difficulty and would be appealing to people with different playstyles.
7. Do this enough times, and the stronghold will either be abandoned or the larger fortress will make it almost in-capturable depending on how badly it's defeated.

This would make for content that you're not always able to do but could also lead to villages and such being raided in a counter-attack which would make access to that village much harder for the duration of the siege/takeover.

PvP ninja looting fine. But pve no. Too much drama from it. If you love that, then great. You are in the minority. I find that one of the most stupid parts of EQ1. Spending 12 hours farming stuff to go spawn something that has a 5% chance to drop something for an epic and someone jerk comes in and ninja loots it even if they don't need it. That is not game play that's griefing.

It seems many people need to watch the SOE panel videos to answer some of their misconceptions.

There will be a means of direction provided to players in EQ Next. If there is a particular activity that you enjoy performing, the game will recognize this and "point" you in the right direction for more of that game content that you prefer doing.

Want to mine all day? Ok, head over here...
Want to kill things? Right this way....
I forget the name theyve given this software, but it is there to help guide players who need guiding.

That being said, to clarify a few things. There will be no "loot" like we're used to in this game. They also have a system in place to deal with loot when and if it drops that they believe everyone will be happy with. Remember, seeing another person will be a GOOD thing in EQ Next. All those bad thoughts you're all having about what other players can do to you should be thrown out the window.

And for goodness sakes, go watch the SOE panel videos!

I think a lot of it comes down to how it is tiered and the difficulty to get the best stuff. Crafted items (if that is an option)< Regular world drops< Instanced drops<Rallying cry drops, as an example. I also think that having cosmetic variations of items, but with essentially the same stats will help make players feel like there is a level of customization and individuality. If you can have a sword/mace/axe of X that all have the same stats, and equal level of difficulty, but then all players aren't trying to get that one item that has those stats.

I think you are not understanding an important distinction...

Your guild getting to and killing raid boss X before me is not "Denial of content." I'm FAIRLY sure what they mean by this is what happened in PoP - where a few uber guilds on each server collaborated to keep the planes locked by keeping the boss mobs needed for keying perma-dead... thus denying the rest of the server entire zones at a time.

THAT - is denial of content.

Static spawn points created issues in the past, who's to say that randomly generated spawns won't create similar issues? Let's think outta the box.. what issues can this lead too? It's hard to think into the future.. but that is where failure and victory await us..

So why aren't you playing one of the many RPGs that don't require you to interact with everyone yet share similar combat/story styles since you seem to assume everyone playing is a sadist?

And what does someone AFKing in town or on top of a windmill or standing around in town doing NOTHING have to do with someone stalking you in game just to ruin your day? You seem to have an EXTREMELY low view of people. Also, I've been playing MMOs for 14 years and not once have I encountered a situation like what you described. A player randomly spots me and decides he's going to follow me around just to steal what mob, treasure, or resource I might find? LOL? You can't be serious..

That's the issue right there - and not with you, but with the game design; so let me explain.

Spending 12 hours farming for a 5% chance to drop an epic; yeah that would be complete and utter BS if someone stole a loot drop from you like that. But I'm not talking about epic anything, we are talking about looting basic resources and nothing more. Raids in EQN should be limited to resources and not statistical gear. Regular/Boss mobs would have the same chance to drop the same resources, but different values of gold. So in 12 hours of farming you should have enough gold to buy the piece you are waiting for to drop.

We have to get out of the mindset that NPCs are for epic loot. We should be steadily farming resources and gold to buy our gear from crafters. Not only does this create the basis for a good economy, but it allows players of all time durations to work towards actually getting gear and not just having a chance at gear.

So who cares if a random person loots 1 npc you killed; that's likely to be .1% of the total gold/resources you got for the day. Again I don't know how loot drops will be handled, and how valuable or fluid loot will be; but I surely hope that loot in this game is more for the resources and gold than for actual gear. My scenario if implemented would be good for PvE and PvP, because it allows the players to "know" when they will get there next set of gear. It's similar to how you would farm Obols in EQ2; they are "rare" drops, but not rare enough I would cry if someone looted 1 from me.

general ones:

areas in zones can be camped - not in the traditional sense but if the area is Goblin Hills, they will be in the zone somewhere and if you want the goblin spear the sections where goblins are will be camped even if they float around the zone.

random encounters and KSing other types of griefing- said what i was gonna say on this a few times and lumped them into one


I think the overall fix for all of this may be cooperative killing. Those that took part get loot. There may be a threshold of 15% dmg done to mob or whatever number that isn't near 50%. You can't have a GW2 like hit the mob with a straw and get phats. But this would eliminate A LOT of the problems that could arise. As my example in a few posts back stated, there could be someone exploring and coming across what you are doing. Maybe you just woke up Salamander of Saliva. You can't beat it but another person would allow you to. Thats the good aspect of contested stuff. You can work together IF the loot is cooperative. I know some people are against everyone gets loot. OK, lets take that. Then those that did X dmg to it get a roll which is automatically done or with your choice to roll or pass. But ninja looting as an above posters said is the worst way to do loot EVER in the history of ever.


Now for raids which is another type of monster. I think the best items should come from many places. I don't want just raids to be the end all be all. But I also don't want a group of 3 hopping in while a guild is trying to kill Dragon of Smash. This is where tactics and such come into play.

Say Dragon of Smash needs certain mobs killed or it heals and Group Tiny doesn't know that and kills the wrong ones.This would screw that guild or group of people doing it. I think raid encounters should be flagged/locked.

How dare you come in here, with your calm rational thoughts and disrupt the rage! Lol, just kidding, and thanks.

Oxzilary: I think you are missing the point of emergent AI. How are players supposed to know where the boss is going to spawn if even SOE can't predict 100% where a mob will find its home?

I have an idea! we the players make a pro and con list so we can have a real idea of what as a group like and don't like for a contested world after all the dev's will take a look at it so list it like this.

Pro- no more instances
Con- high possibility of people ninja-ing

then if need be add a explanation.

EverQuest Next is a game about collaboration, not competition. We aren't rival good and evil races battling for supremacy and dominion over Norrath, we are all conscious and civilized and unified by certain common tasks and goals related to the settlement of new societies across the world.

The EQN team can define the kind of competition they want to see by deciding whether content is contested or not.

If content is not contested, competition will be a matter of rival groups being glad for each other's success and striving to find ways to be better. Ants building a linked-legs ant bridge so everyone can escape the floods and reap the rewards.

If content is contested, competition will be a matter of rival groups constantly at each other's throats, constantly pillaging one another and perpetuating a cycle of brutal rivalry that holds everyone back. Crabs in a bucket exercising crab mentality, holding each other back, saying "if I can't ave it, nobody can" in every contested situation.

Contested content is a two edge sword for me, on one side its nice to have as it mixes up the world a bit but on the other hand it's more designed for larger groups/guilds and can cut off some of the player base.

I played GW2 and Orr uses a style of contested content and in order to unlock vendors/dungeons/area's you are required to do a long line of events. In one sense its fun to achieve and when the zone is busy it works well as your all working as a group but when its empty and unless your part of a large guild getting those points unlocked is a nightmare.

Contested points may start off well but like GW2 when the fractals got introduced Orr was dead and suddenly getting to those points became harder and harder. That meant alot of newcomers were finding it harder to complete their main story line as it required you to visit a dungeon in one of those contested area's. It also meant if you were new to the game you were missing out on obtaining some of the end level gear that was alot easier to obtain for others when the zone was more populated.

So contested content maybe a good idea at the start when things are busy and going well but when things quieten down all it does is restrict newcomers and smaller guilds/groups content which in turn may put people off playing. It also depends what they mean with contested content as there is a few differing definitions of it and I maybe wide of the mark on my interpretation of it.