yay another camping spawns rant

[_____________Cloudehxx]

Ive spent over 6 months trying to get anything out of camalot, I still have yet too, I quit.

6 WHOLE GOD DAMN ****ING MONTHS
**** THAT


Did 5 days ago, this game ****ing sucks.

[Obit]

Didn't you ninjaloot a almost full set of dragon armor?

Oops no, that was a lie, you bought it with exploited credits /slap.

[______________Rogoff]

Croak, that might be the single most interesting post I've read in a long while. Thank you.

BTW, I think when people say 'camping', they mean killing a mob over and over in the hope of getting a rare item.

Taking a group to a static camp (i.e. NW Mines) is a lot of fun, and I think most people look forward to more of that.

[____________Psiraven]

People say they have lots of fun in places like Dragon Necropolis (where the loot is randomly spread out all over the zone and most every mob has a chance to drop some good gear), but they only go there occassionaly. For the day to day grind, they're camping something somewhere else....

...I think they realized that PvP, missions, and the story arc were not scratching the itch players had for unique items, and static dungeons.

---------------------

Enlightening post overall, but in general these paragraphs are a pretty backwards way of looking at it.

You try to put a human justification for everquests decision to put camps in. Basically, you're trying to say that people may SAY they dont like camps, but in reality yes they DO want camps.

Not to make a bad real life analogy but I want to drive a point home, this is the rapist's mentality when a woman says no, but he insists she really wants "it" despite quite clear communication to the contrary. No does not mean Yes.

These paragraphs ignore the simple and common sense observation that if you put an item in a game that will give one lucky sob an advantage over everyone else then everyone will "feel forced" to camp it....especially if PvP is a large part of the game. If it works this way, its because it was designed this way from the very start and is hardly an observation of reverse psychology.

If you look at it from a purely unemotional free enterprise, market forces outlook, it is quite clear why people endure this kind of game play...to remain competitive or be outdone by competition.

If I camp more than actually dungeon crawl...then believe me, its not because I wanted to camp, its because the designers designed it that way and basically placed before me two options 1) camp or 2) be made obsolete by other players who do camp. After all, you guys have total control over the process. Rather than try to say players spend time camping because of some weird reverse psychology, its better to say that with current tech, game developer tools are too limited to do anything but place camps in.

It should be clear that when players say they don't like camping, they mean it. Implementing camping buys you no loyalty: not from me anyway. Many of us are waiting to jump ship to the game company that finally manages to get it "right."

Its not patronizing to say players want a "sure thing." Its just as patronizing as you wanting a paycheck for the time you put in at work...except now we are dealing with a virtual world.

[Croak]

These paragraphs ignore the simple and common sense observation that if you put an item in a game that will give one lucky sob an advantage over everyone else then everyone will "feel forced" to camp it

The basic premise of that argument is true, but I contend that if provided a non-camping alternative to said item, people still camp, because it is considered easier to sit and wait than it is to, say, dungeon crawl. Once again, it's about the sure thing.

And by the very nature of crawl based content, or flagged/triggered events, means they require more personal effort and commitment at any given time during the process than would be required by simply sitting in one spot and keeping an area clear. Which is the Catch-22 of the whole situation.

Entertainment in a MMORPG comes primarily from two sources:

Contending with the environment, and social interaction.

Camping generally does not provide much in the way of contention, so it has low entertainment value in that respect. It also provides little in the way of stimuli for social interaction, further lowering the entertainment value.

So, if it was fun, nobody would complain, right?

Well, you can't design a 'fun' camp. If you add elements in to make it entertaining, it's no longer a camp.

Once again, as much as the designers are at fault for implementing content of this nature (and we are, I make NO claims of innocence here), the players are also inflicting this upon themselves to a degree.

I've personally placed non-camp items in EQ that have had the same or in many cases, higher functionality as commonly camped items, and it seemed to take no pressure off the camps they were designed to replace. There's always somebody to fill the vacuum at an established camp.

The best solution that I can come up with that will eliminate camping is pretty simple. Don't put camp-able targets in the game, ever. People will ALWAYS make the path of least resistance the most traveled path, it's just the way we're wired. So, the path of least resistance in a game must always strive to be an entertaining path.

Additionally, this path should be entertaining after multiple trips down it, because content in a MMORPG by it's very nature has to be repeatable. That requires designers to think further outside the single player 'disposable' content box we're all still using.

And therein lies another problem. It's pretty easy to use hindsight to point out things like camping, or Broken Shores missions, but it's not so easy to have the foresight to prevent future occurances of similar nature.

Because of that, I expect it will still be some time before you see designers "get it right". We'll get better and better with every iteration, and the collective knowledge base of what works and does not in these games is growing, but the simple fact of the matter is, nobody can agree on what is right or wrong at this point.

In the case of EQ and AO, it's mostly too late to rework the resistance paths. Though AO has one advantage, in that the number of these encounters is relatively low at this point, allowing them a realistic chance to correct the problem at the root.

[____________Psiraven]

Good points. I can't argue with any of that.

[________________Xira]

So essentially the game's already screwed.

It's just not TOO Screwed to be saveable, if they from this point foreward do not put in any more campable resources.


Which they will not do...because they don't have to tools or time or experiance or foresight needed to add things other than camps.

In otherwords:

This game's screwed, see ya in Star Wars Galaxies.

[Bionitrous]

I can argue with it. And there are lots of people in my guild who can argue with it.

If there was a quest that took six months to complete to get an item, we would all be working the quest rather than sitting in Tri-Plumbo's chamber to get an item in an equivalent 6 months of time.

Maybe the drones of EverQuest liked camping. Those who stayed in UO didn't like it. Those who went back to UO didn't like it. That's a force to be reckoned with.

Most of us who like UO knew where to go for 'good' loot. We had no clue what we would get. But, we knew there was a fair chance of something 'good'. Really nothing was unique and that was a good thing.

Same thing for Diablo II. You had like 6 magical properties dropped on items in various combinations. You didn't go to X to kill Y to get item Z because item Z DID NOT EXIST! That was a great part of the draw of that game. Aside from the uniques (which you could get in several ways) you had absolutely no idea what that unidentified item might have in store for you.

There was not need to camp because camping gained you nothing. The best ring in the game you couldn't even look up in any database because the best ring didn't even exist in some database.

If you think that people actually like the fact that they 'know' that they can go kill TriPlumbo who will appear in the Biomere Dungeon every three hours and drops a Rust Pitted Ring that provides 220 Hitpoints every 40th 'pop', then please tell me which MMORPG you are working on because I want to make sure I stay as far away from it as possible.

Anarchy Online has turned me off as far as MMORPG's are concerned. I'm went from the 'playing till SW: G comes out' phase to 'F.U. a-holes if any company wants my money they better beg' camp. Four people could quit AO and I'd be gone after the horse crap that Nelebs->Smugglers->Camelot->VanHorn-Zuwadza has wreaked upon paying customers.

If there is ANYTHING wrong with this godforsaken (but pretty) pile of kludges its the CAMPING. I know at least a dozen people I've told to stay far away from this game because of the Lab Director situation and the Tarasque.

You sir Mr. Croak are wrong. Very wrong. You may indicate your findings in EverQuest with your 500,000 subrscribers. But you don't speak for the 400,000 or how many UO subcribers or the how many hundred thousand Diablo and Diablo II players.

Yeah, give us a quest and we'll do it. Make us camp first a spoiler web site and then a monster and if you were here in my office I'd push the limits of civility with you.

[teejay]

Just a little comment for the game players...

This game used to be camp free...


Players were pissed and if the old forums were still around I would link to thread after thread after thread of players complaining that there wernt camps and werent bosses.

Yet 9 months later, people want them gone.

The moral of the story is...

most want them, some dont.

We have to live with them. And you do not always need the items to have the edge. You need the items to be cool mostly, but there is a little bonus.

[Bionitrous]

Those people aren't playing AO anymore. A lot of people came to AO from EQ because they thought this was the next logical step. What they found in AO freaked 'em out because it was so totally unfamiliar to them. They begged for the comfort of what they knew.

I remember those posts.

Those people are long gone and are never coming back. The people who stuck with AO stuck with it because it used a Skill system rather than a level system and because you could log on and do something almost instantly.

Those people are now in DAoC or infesting the SW: G boards.

I find more ex-UO and AC and first-time MMORPG'ers in AO than I actually find EQ'ers. Truth.

[________________Xira]

Originally posted by Xira


This game's screwed, see ya in Star Wars Galaxies.

Or shadowbane

Honestly the saddest part is they had all the tools they needed when the game shipped to avoid adding camps: Missions.

Really how much trouble would it have been to put _ALL_ unique mobs into a dungeon of some kind then have an NPC spawn missions to go into that dungeon? Which would then exist for only you and anyone you gave a key to?

Really, the addest part is they could have avoided turning this into EQ, but they conciously choose not to.

[______________Rogoff]

Bio, Croak is absolutely right. People love to camp.

When they can't camp (mission terminals) they design software (AOMD) that ALLOWS them to camp.

And then everyone uses it.

The Path of Least Resistance.

Now the fact that YOU don't like to camp is a different issue.

[Bionitrous]

He's just wrong when he speaks in absolutes. He might be referring to the most populated MMORPG to date. But that's still a selective pool to sample from.

The people who remain in AO remain because of how AO played. The people who thrived in EQ thrived because they liked how that game played. There were a ton of people who puked when they saw how EQ made you play and went back to UO. There were also a ton of people who moved from UO to EQ that found a game more suited to them.

He's absolutely wrong in speaking in absolutes. Game designers are likewise not doing themselves a favor to completely model their game after another that only suits perhaps half their potential audience. Many veterans of AC or UO would rather slit their wrists than be subjected to what EQ makes you do.

I hope I never colored my comments to speak in absolutes such as he did. I understand that most of the people who remained in EQ were drawn to it for a particular (and popular) reason. Just don't try to use that sample pool as anything even close to definitive.

[____________Psiraven]

He was speaking in terms of practical realities of game designing. And I can understand that. No, I still don't like camping either. My response was more in the spirit of "oh well, what comes will come. and Ill play it as long as I have fun"

[________________Xira]

They could eliminate spawn camping, make item gathering much more fun and intresting, and slow down player leveling all at the same time....

Just put all unique mobs in spawned missions(i.e. camelot would be a dungeon, you would get a key and go into it, fight your wqay to tarr, then leave with the loots) and let players get keys and dupe the keyw, make the mission last X hours.

1 boss mob per mission it will actually take the person longer than before to get the item.

[Cambist]

People will ALWAYS make the path of least resistance the most traveled path, it's just the way we're wired. So, the path of least resistance in a game must always strive to be an entertaining path.

I'd say fighting over 8-10 uniques with hundreds of other people has gone about as far from the path of least resistance and entertainment as possible. Not only that, it's destructive to the community. Especially with no kill-stealing policy which EQ did have and did enforce. The high end game in AO is seeing who can kill-steal the best.

Also, they have the tools to change the spawn timers and even the ability to randomize spawns through scripts of some sort. They've already done both with the Trash King and his minions. So, I don't think the designers are as hobbled by the programming as EQ might have been.

[Neoncoyote]

You know what's even funnier?

Their own Polls.

Overwhelmingly in the polls people said No Camping, so what do we get? Camping.

In their polls PVP Issues ranked far below even Keeping the animated series going (which was low on their list)
So what do they do? Nerf every class tons of items and PVM play for PVP.

Funcom doesnt really care what we want, it's what they want.
I think the polls are just a source of amusement for em.

I think we should all Pettition Micro$oft into doing something with the SHADOWRUN rights they own. Much better system anyhow... maybe we can get Micro$oft to sell em to some company who will do something with it and do it right.

-Uber Frustrated since I was a Paying Betatester on Day 1

Originally posted by Greystar
You will be fooled again, Funcom always announced and advertised Anarchy Online as a game without camping at release. Other companies will advertise the same and might end up like AO as well.

Unfortunately FC had to realise that they did not have the tools to create new quests, dungeons and unique mobs/items without lots of coding work, so they had to put in camping a few months after release to keep their playerbase busy for the time being.

If you want games without camping, there are lots out there, actualy only EQ is worse camping wise than AO.