yay another camping spawns rant

[____________Psiraven]

As I sit here typing this, I'm camping a damn spawn. God knows when it was killed last so I'm basically wasting my time doing nothing waiting for it.

AO is the first and definitely the last MMORPG that I will ever buy that has camping spawns as a feature of gameplay. I don't care how good they are or how advanced they are technologically. From now on this is a game breaker for me. I'm stuck in AO cuz I invested a lot of time already in it, but I wont be fooled again.

/rant off

[____________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.

[OneManArmy]

How a bout NOT camping?

Screw the damn items you camp for. Forget them!

[Czarina]

I have gone the non-camping route... It really frustrates me that there are items though, that I'd really like to use that my only options are to pay 100mil cred for or waste a many hours of my life to get... if anything, this will be the reason I ever decide to quit... either that or boredom... which ever overwhelms me first!

I keep hoping they are going to make changes to the system though, so that I may stand a chance at getting some of those rare items... might even convince me to make an alt (i.e. a prof jones vest would be convincing enough for me to make a nanomage alt)... making alts keep people playing the game longer... so maybe it's a better idea to make the items at least a little more plentiful

[______________DocNec]

I tried the non camping route too.. but in the long run you just can't be as competetive of a player if you don't. Mantis eggs, the horribly ugly yet useful hood, sleeves, bracers (gone soon), dacranums...give a HUGE advantage over those who use just standard mission gear.


It's a big smack upside the face to all those who wanted to play a mmorpg solo and still be "uber".

I feel for you

[____________Psiraven]

The result of my camping.

Killed boss once...NO ITEM DROPPED

2nd spawn...outdamaged by other peeps.

3rd spawn...2 of my good friends show up to compete for the spawn...and I don't want to have to KOS them for it so I leave.

Thanks for wasting my evening, Funcom.

[crazyhorse]

Camping = players will play and pay for the game longer.... Why you may ask? Well because every hour we all spend camping are hours where we are not leveling/RPing/or other FUN stuff, which means (from the companies perspective) we all will not become bored of the fun stuff as quickly and quit playing....

What most will do is *****, *****, ***** (myself included) about camping, then when we get our UBER item/s that we wasted hours or days camping we will be all happy about it, forget how much we actually hate the idea of camping and go off and play the fun parts...

Camping forces the players to fall behind in progress (level wise) and slows the player down... But, a player who gets the UBER camp items will be much more powerful at the same level as someone who does not...

What it all means is that the companies will keep doing this to keep us all playing longer... It seems illogical but obviously it works...

Look at EQ... It has the most camping of any game and it is the most popular of any of the MMORPG's...Think FC took a page out of their book? I wish they didnt but its obvious they did...

[Czarina]

Originally posted by Crazyhorse
Camping = players will play and pay for the game longer.... Why you may ask? Well because every hour we all spend camping are hours where we are not leveling/RPing/or other FUN stuff, which means (from the companies perspective) we all will not become bored of the fun stuff as quickly and quit playing....

I'm not 100% convinced on this for several reason... if 100 people quit because of camping and being unable to obtain an item.. and say they would have each played an average of 2 hours a day for another 3 months.. then that's 93x2x100... 18,600 that need to be made up in others playing for longer than they ever would've..

In addition... some people (like myself) can't stand even slight camping.. and don't participate in it at all! I will actually play the game less, because there is less for me to do in it, since I can't acquire all the items I may want unless I pay someone else for camping for me (i.e. 100mil for item)

[crazyhorse]

While I am not convinced that what I said is true, I guess what I was doing was try to figure out why on Gods Green Earth would a company put camping in thier game, and that is really to only explaination I could come up with that made any sense...

I guess another reason a company would put in camping would be to keep items more rare... But, instead of camping (which does not reward good gameplay just the ability to be able to sit in ones ass the longest) why not make a challenge of some kind that rewards good gameplay... Quests/uber items should not need camping instead they need someone with an imagination to implement their introduction to the game...

AO was going to be different...It was going to have the ability to solo all the way to 200 (while that may be, it is virtually impossible)...

But more importantly AO it was to have NO CAMPING... I guess it just became too easy to implement the old and tired type of gameplay (camping) rather then actually going out and doing something innovative...

Whomever thought that camping was a good way to implement items/quests should be forced to aquire each and every uniquie camped item and perhaps when he is waiting for the next spawn he will come up with a better way to introduce future items....

[Marbreth]

The worst thing about camping in AO is that even after spending many hours waiting for the mob to spawn there is NO guarantee that the mob will drop the item.

This is just BS! Most unique mobs are on an 18 hour spawn, thats like nine items a week if they dropped each time, but they don't.

I know people that have killed one unique nine times and not seen the item drop. WTF is that!

I agree that in the end, camping, especially when items don't drop, will result in more lost accounts. I have given up on camping items, it's not fun, is time consuming and very frustrating when you manage to win loot and go home empty handed

[______________Shatai]

Originally posted by Demono
I'm not 100% convinced on this for several reason... if 100 people quit because of camping and being unable to obtain an item.. and say they would have each played an average of 2 hours a day for another 3 months.. then that's 93x2x100... 18,600 that need to be made up in others playing for longer than they ever would've..

No, that'd be 100 accounts that they have to make up.

The numbers of hours people play isn't what determines how much money FC gets in, it's how many accounts they have active and paying.

A casual gamer is paying exactly the same amount as a hardcore camper. The difference is that the casual gamer is likely to have more fun for the time that they ARE on, because they're less likely to be spending it camping.

Unless camping's your thing of course, in which case off you go

[Mercatura]

The numbers of hours people play isn't what determines how much money FC gets in, it's how many accounts they have active and paying.

That might explain why half the time it seems FC doesn't give a flying **** about those of us playing the game, only that we let them charge our credit cards.

[Nova]

one real nofun "com" is even if you play you charapter to level 200. You are not able to use you all your nanos (ecxecpt MPs)

So at level 200 you have to wear those unique/uber/all camped items to able use all your nanos.

What a joke.

So, i try to go no-camp roud, i have to somepoint to do it...or pay 100milj for the item.

That really make me think about more this game mechanism.

[Cambist]

Originally posted by Shatai
The numbers of hours people play isn't what determines how much money FC gets in, it's how many accounts they have active and paying.

Actually the casual gamer makes them more money than the hardcore gamer. Less bandwidth cost. Less server load/hardware requirements. Generally it's a good thing if someone logs in for an hour a day and then goes about their business in real life for the game companies.

They'd do well to cater to the casual gamer, but instead have this horrible camping unique system. Learn from Everquest's mistakes please Funcom. No one enjoys standing around waiting for hours doing absolutely nothing day after day after day........... Getting frustrated at all of their enemies, friends, and then eventually the person that forced the situation on them.

Also, no one appears to be listening on this issue. There have been dozens of threads. We hate camping. Funcom has said there would be no camping. There is camping. Not only is there camping, there is more camping than almost any other game on the market. Even Everquest is better in some respects. The spawns at least have drop items every time. Fix it, please!

[engelstein]

Did Everquest make any mistakes, from a business standpoint? They're *still* the biggest MMORPG. all this time after release. People might *****, whine, and moan about camping, but *people still camp*. It's something to do. I wonder how many people would be complaining about having nothing to do if all the 18h spawns were removed. (And Tara is one too, remember)

[crazyhorse]

Originally posted by Shubalubdub
Did Everquest make any mistakes, from a business standpoint? They're *still* the biggest MMORPG. all this time after release. People might *****, whine, and moan about camping, but *people still camp*. It's something to do. I wonder how many people would be complaining about having nothing to do if all the 18h spawns were removed. (And Tara is one too, remember)

That pretty much exactly my point but wouldnt it be great if someone somewhere used their imagination and innovation and came up with something that could replace camping?

There must be something that can both entertain the gamers as well as distribute the "uber loot" that, while it may take 18 or more hours to complete, it takes good gameplay for the goal to be achieved...

I assume nearly everyone hates camping yet many or most still do it, ***** and whine about it, but still do it... EQ, as far as I know, was the first to introduce it and is the most popular... I would think that if a game came along with an alternative to camping that game would have potential to become the new biggest game...

However, putting camping in a game takes little thought, nor innovative minds; while trying something new takes balls... Its just so much easier to introduce camping then actually straying from the beaten path and trying something new...

I dont expect AO to stray from the path just as I dont expect SWG or and other game to stray from the path... Its inexpensive, easy and no risk is involved when introducing camping... Funcom wont change it, EQ2 wont change it and SWG wont change it... Sadly, the players who want the UBER loot will be forever destined to camp and the ones who dont have 40hrs a week to play will be without...

[Cambist]

Originally posted by Shubalubdub
Did Everquest make any mistakes, from a business standpoint? They're *still* the biggest MMORPG. all this time after release. People might *****, whine, and moan about camping, but *people still camp*. It's something to do. I wonder how many people would be complaining about having nothing to do if all the 18h spawns were removed. (And Tara is one too, remember)

I'd say it's one of the top reasons they lose customers, yeah. Did they make any mistakes from a business perspective?

I'd say shallow gameplay and therefore lower retention of their customers is a mistake. I'd say forcing your customers to play for 6 hours a day every day rather than giving them game mechanics that would let them get in for a few hours and enjoy the game is a mistake. Yeah, I'd say they made some mistakes from a business standpoint.

If they weren't the first 3d mmog out of the gate, I don't think they would've done as well. Marketing muscle from Sony certainly doesn't hurt. Unfortunately for us, they did well and are therefore taken as the de facto standard. EQ can do no wrong because they make the most money, huh?

When The Sims Online comes out and beats EQ in subscriptions maybe Funcom will change the game so we all just stand around and emote in our apartments. It's gotta be the right thing to do in AO if it made money, right?

[crazyhorse]

Sims Online will probably have actuall camping... -- go to store, buy equipment, set up tent with friends and stand around and emote for hours on end.... Wait that is what we do now...

[Croak]

Well, as somebody who used to work on EverQuest, I can tell you the main reasons why EQ put mobs like that in.

First, it's an easy and surefire way to limit how often an item comes into the gameworld. You see it in two forms, the mob you need to kill being on a timer, or the quest NPC you need to interact with being on a timer.

Most of EverQuest's early population was done in this manner, but nobody could predict the extreme popularity of the game. The intent was, you gather a party, and that party crawls through the dungeon, and kills all the rare mobs that are up in the process, and move on. Instead, the zones were crowded, and people starting setting up camps.

But the method is still being used, because it works, and alternatives like triggered spawns, scripted events, etc, are difficult to implement in EQ, and are prone to fail or be less predictable than a simple timer and drop percentage.

With the lack of time EQ designers have always had to implement content (players burn through it faster than it can be implemented and start clamoring for more, and publishers burn through cash faster than it is made, so they want new expansions on the shelves yesterday), there's not a lot of 'luxury' to implement more complex schemes.

The second reason is that players like a sure thing. This sounds patronizing, but it's true. If you KNOW that Mob X has Item Y, and will drop it on a regular basis, and you want Item Y, you'll tend to camp, because eventually, you WILL get the item you seek.

Placing more randomized loot around a dungeon, while promoting more crawling and less camping, tends to also lower a player's personal commitment in a dungeon.

While camping is generally mind-numbing, it's also familiar, low stress, and when you are 'holding down' a camp, you've got a sense of investment in the camp, and are unwilling to let it go.

Even after several no-camping alternatives were put into the game with Kunark and Velious, people would still spend hours killing the same small set of mobs over and over, even the ones who professed to HATE camping. If you look at the most popular non-raid zones in EQ (and even the raid zones for that matter) you'll see that they are the ones with multiple static camps.

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.

At this point in EQ, it's just as much a matter of player choice as it is game design that keeps camping alive.

AO is facing the same set of problems. Not enough time for the designers to implement more complex spawns, and they're in the same learning curve that EverQuest designers were/are in.

They did identify the problem before the game shipped, and took some pretty good steps to eliminate camping in day to day gameplay, but after the game shipped, I think they realized that PvP, missions, and the story arc were not scratching the itch players had for unique items, and static dungeons.

So, they started implementing them best they could. I imagine they had (and probably still have), very poor tools for this sort of content implementation, so they're getting by the best they can. They already had a spawn timer system in place, and they had loot tables, so they made use of them.

In most studios, content takes a back seat to art, engine/client and server in terms of programming time, and these days, the amount of work required to implement complex art assets, a modern engine, and a server structure that can handle the load of 100k+ players is staggering. And sad to say, the look of a game is one of it's biggest selling points, though it's not a major retention factor. But since most studios fully understand the concept of box sales, and have a much lesser grasp on what keeps people playing, they throw the money and assets at what they know.

After a game ships, and the designers moan enough, and the powers that be start realizing that the designers are not just moaning for the sake of moaning, more assets are shifted to content tools.

EverQuest starting seeing this shift in Velious, and it continues today. But even with better tools, it's hard to go back in and rework existing content (players generally consider changes like that a nerf of sorts), and frankly, there isn't much time to redo old content, because as mentioned above, most of the focus is on getting the next SKU out the door to generate more instant revenue and keep the game visibility high to attract more new subscribers.

On top of that, new content methods are really experimental, you can't really predict how players will react to them. Not to mention that you have to bring the designers up to speed on the new tools, and new ways of thinking about content implementation. And once again, the old static mob is a sure thing, and starts to look pretty good to a designer after a few solid months of sixteen hour days.

As a designer on a new MMORPG project, one of my goals is to make sure that our content creation tools are powerful and flexible early on, and I hope we can make that happen. If we can meet that goal, that means that we'll be able to implent content faster (more) and with more complexity (better). Mobetta is a good thing.

And I wish FunCom the best of luck as well. With my guess on what they've had to work with, and the problems they've been having, I think they've done more than a fair job, and they'll only get better.

[Myga]

Camping = players will play and pay for the game longer.... Why you may ask? Well because every hour we all spend camping are hours where we are not leveling/RPing/or other FUN stuff, which means (from the companies perspective) we all will not become bored of the fun stuff as quickly and quit playing....

Well can be true but its not in AO. The rarity of rust pitted rings isnt making me play this game more, it will most likely have opposite effect. I dont even bother camp tri plumbo anymore, I killed him 20+ times and gotten nothing but garbage. Every time I killed him I did so competing with other players which is something I hate. While its true that rarity can make ppl play this game longer, FC does this wrong and brutally fail at keeping players. You need to dangle a carrot FC but it has to be within reach or ppl wont bother go after it.

As for Everquest it is the biggest success among these games true. Is that because of camping? Not really. EQ has tons of content, and tons of new content make it in with regular periods. As for this content, Verant makes mobs that actually are challenging, not some "2ppl can easily kill second hardest mob in game" crap like AO. In EQ it takes months for guilds to get organized and coordinated enough to take down these mobs, while I'm sure all the new bosses in AO in 14.5 will die the day 14.5 goes live. When you kill bosses in EQ, they do drop items that is vastly superiors to other items and these items arent rare like stuff in AO (mobs themselves might only spawn once a week but they do drop their stuff pretty commonly and several items every time). Highlevel players actually have plenty of stuff to do in EQ. This I believe is the way to success.