Say My Name, Say My Name

by Moorgard on 2001-07-16

On multi-group raids:

Brad,

Ok, so Verant likes grouping... But, they apparently don't like multi-group raids... Why isn't there a 'raid channel (or channels)' for each zone?

A lot of people aren't in guilds, and a lot of guilds get allies to raid - why not fix this 'design flaw' so you can accommodate us?

(granted, 'design flaw' is not the most appropriate word, but it fits my feelings on this...)

Thanks

Jason Wallace

You're right: we need to better accommodate multi-group raids. We definitely have lots of content in the game designed for raids, and we love the fact that the game can handle massive battles. But it wasn't always that way, which can help explain why we don't currently have any features to support groups with more than six members.

Way back when we were designing the game we were very worried about how many players we'd be able to display on the screen at once. This was back when we were developing a software render and using Pentium 133s to develop the client. In the text MUDs we'd played, groups could be huge (sometimes there'd be between twenty and thirty people all attacking a dragon). But we were worried about framerate, and what might happen if a bunch of players appeared on the screen at once.

Single player games didn't really have such concerns because their developers could always control how many players and NPCs could appear on the screen at once - they could budget for a maximum. But we couldn't stop an army of players from assembling (nor did we really want to).

So we designed the game for a maximum group size of six, made some character optimizations (for example, dynamic level of detail on character models), and hoped for the best.

Turns out, over time, technology has advanced such that we can display many more players than ever we'd hoped. Not only that, bandwidth optimizations have been made as well. So we've been putting in raid content for some time, but I agree with you - it's time to put in additional support and features for larger group communications, experience splitting, etc.

I don't have a time frame for you, but I hope it will happen by Luclin or soon after.

Reaction: Woo-hoo, about time!

On pulling in general, and the monk in particular:

Brad,

Cool idea by the way (referring to Ask Brad).

My question is about the effect "pulling" has had on the game and if it's not what you originally had in mind when the game play was being designed. Would/will you design your next games to be Pull proof?

I have read on the boards from time to time, that Verant was disappointed when certain situations were being single pulled because your intent was for those to be multi mob encounters. I play a Monk and in my 59.4 levels I have pulled A LOT of mobs. I have abilities that make it easy in most cases to pull a single back for processing.

I have follow up questions that ride on your answer being that pulling is not what you originally intended, especially FD splitting. What was your intent was with FD if it wasn't pulling? Will you include similar ability in future ventures?

Observation from me as a player: It doesn't work in a fight if other players are still hitting said mob, so, it only seems to be useful for pulling and CR.

Thank you for reading along,

Paul Carter

Well, yes and no. The original intent of the game certainly did not include 'pulling'. We rarely pulled when we were playing text MUDs; rather, we'd fight room to room, adventuring through a dungeon or towards a specific goal.

But, obviously, 3D graphical MUDs like EverQuest aren't room based (in other words, there's no clear delineation between rooms like most text MUDs have). One of the several results of this evolution from text to graphics was 'pulling'.

From a design standpoint, pulling is a bit frustrating because it's much harder to set up an encounter with multiple NPCs that you desire to fight the player (or group of players) all at once. Pulling allows one to separate groups of NPCs, singling them out, making them easier to kill.

All that said, we did realize these ramifications early in beta and started adapting the game accordingly. Spells and other strategies were put into the game to support and actually help players pull, and the game designers started laying out dungeons and other adventure areas accordingly.

In the future, I'd love to experiment further and try to recapture more of the multi-NPC battles we experienced in text MUDs. But EverQuest is and will remain a game where 'pulling' is a valid and recognized tactic.

Oh, and Feign Death was originally designed to be merely a feature that would save a Monk should a battle go rather badly. It was an ability we gave that class to make up for their lower Armor Class.

Reaction: Wow, this is the first time feign pulling has sorta kinda almost been acknowledged as a viable technique. This after Abashi and Absor have both railed against it and zone designers have gone out of their way to make it unusable. Somebody better tell Brad, though, that monks don't suffer from a lower armor class per se, but do get shafted in the hitpoints category.

On his name:

Brad who the heck are you any way?

R. Thomas

I'm Brad McQuaid, currently the Vice President of Premium Games for Sony Online Entertainment/Verant Interactive.

Reaction: Okay, guess we knew that.

All in all, Brad's ongoing column is a good thing for the game, though I suspect updates will get fewer and farther between, especially as Luclin approaches.