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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
I understand that there are people that want auto-flagging for the potential incentive for more PvP.
There are also people who think there is already too much potential for unwanted PvP.
I don't think players in Ashes will be able to "take the boss kill".
Everyone who participates will get credit for their participation - the same as our xp goes to nearby nodes.
Nodes track everything we do, so participating in the dungeon means that everyone gets credit for what they do.
You can choose to prevent people from participating in ridding the dungeon of the boss if you want to, but you risk gaining Corruption if they don't flag, so...
probably better to cooperate than compete.
I have, in several of my previous posts (in different threads too).
We will have instanced dungeons for pure PvE experience. Open dungeons should balance that by allowing some PvP experience (without corruption) so people that love PvP can enjoy as well.
To the point. Don't be too greedy, leave some toys for other kids to play as well.
A nice discussion, but is this all theoretical based on what we would like to see or what we think would work best, or be the most fun? Can anyone actually provide any actual examples from the games they have played? I know there must be some.
We know that the devs have been looking at current MMOs and deciding what is working and what is not, and working out what they want for Ashes. I am just wondering what games they might be drawing on for open world dungeons. All three of the dungeons in the Alpha Zero will be open so they obviously want to test how it goes, but are they drawing on experience or just from theory?
I have been doing some research but can’t really find much other than Darkness Falls from 15 years ago.
Some dungeons will come with a mix of areas within, so it's not impossible there could be pockets of a dungeon that allow for auto-flagging...
But, it's not going to be the common design for fighting in dungeons nor the common experience for fighting dungeon bosses.
I'm sure the devs are drawing from both experience and theory.
Always great if we can find which games they're hoping to model for Ashes features.
But, this is really more an issue of the devs' philosophy regarding PvP combat in the open world (including dungeons) than modeling dungeons in other games.
Do the devs want us auto-flagging in free-for-all dungeons or do they want Corruption to still be in play?
I'm asserting that if the devs wanted auto-flagging to be the common experience in dungeons, they would have included dungeons when describing PvP for caravans, sieges, arenas and battlegrounds.
I hope that is so, at least.
STEVEN: A quick clarification with regards to our terminology when using the term battleground is, because we're instituting a flagging system that allows PvP to erupt anywhere, I consider battlegrounds to be kind of interchangeable with a zone that exists within the open world that does not include our flagging mechanics but instead flags everyone for battle - so it's a battle ground...it's open PvP.
And that includes the caravan system, it includes castle sieges and node sieges and objective-based guild wars and things like that. But, in addition to that, we have arena systems.
Let's see if we can find a quote where the devs include dungeons and dungeon bosses as part of free-for-all, contested PvP - as general/common gameplay.
I'm not sure that hunting grounds are different from battlegrounds.
But, that's a great question to confirm, sure.
I can only hope we will have a huge zone in which to roam with our warbands.
Yes, world bosses. The kind that is likely to spawn outside a dungeon, rampaging or something. Much like FF14's Behemoth and Odin. People would fight over boss credit, too, not necessarily literally (unless they don't mind corruption). Though I guess people being attacked would often retaliate in this kind of scenario, to not let the other party win the boss credit.
The people who spent 20 minutes working their way to the lair of the boss should still have accrued credit for their participation in defeating the threats within the dungeon.
What are the ramifications on the rest of the ZOI for purging diseases and revealing hidden paths and destroying Corrupted altars?
Just because they failed to defeat the final boss, doesn't mean that they shouldn't be compensated for decimating the boss' minions.
In an Ashes dungeon, would two groups even end up at the same the same entrance to an instance? Perhaps the second group is pursuing a different objective? Or perhaps they use their set of utility skills to gain access to a section of the dungeon the first group can never reach.
Perhaps the first group triggers a cave in that blocks off the path to their instanced both while the second group is funneled to their own instance.
In a world that is dynamic rather than static, we should be able to move beyond people camping the entrance to the boss lair. And we should also be able to move beyond defeating the boss being the only objective/motivation for adventuring in the dungeon.
Hopefully, chaos doesn't have to be all about players attacking other players.
Experiencing content in a dungeon should be dynamic rather than static - it should commonly be the case that once a dungeon is cleared, other players can't experience the exact same content.
Do dungeons always have to be about killing a boss?
Maybe after the dungeon is cleared the first time, the next quest that takes place in that dungeon involves building altars and establishing a temple.
Perhaps different sects will be competing to defend their altars in order to have their temple be the one that is completed.
Perhaps an established temple triggers a completely different dungeon population with a boss in a different area within the dungeon. And, perhaps, the specific mobs and the specific layout is determined by the race as well as the religion that establishes the temple.
That might be too ambitious for Ashes - especially for launch.
But, that is the potential of how the design concepts for nodes might eventually be used to ensure that dungeons are no longer static.
And that's why I backed the game.
So, that even if Ashes is vaporware, the devs have the opportunity to perfect the implementation of these concepts and eventually we can have dynamic encounters in MMORPGs, rather than repeatable, static encounters.
Then you have tens of thousands who will not get to experience it and I think that is just too huge a waste of resources, and also pretty unfair. I'm no "everyone get's a trophy guy" but let's be realistic - this is a game in which we all want to experience the world and that means dungeons too.
So there has to be some level of static content and replayability. I fully expect there to be incidents and occurrences that may be one time only, or very short duration, and I love that idea, but I don't think they should be dungeons.
To riff slightly on you post though, if there was a cycling reset then that would be really cool. The instance has 3 or 4 (arbitrary number) stages and cycles through these depending on player interaction.
So the movement between a stage may take one week or one month or 3 months. But over time everyone will have a chance to experience each stage if they are diligent and attentive.
I can see that adding in a nice balanced level of dynamism and allowing everyone to enjoy all the content. Let's have our cake and eat it too!
This would mean some dungeon content in constantly non-developed nodes would be static. For more desirable nodes the dungeon content could be ever changing.
I do not necessarily agree that everyone should have the opportunity to experience the exact same dungeon. Having the opportunity to clear the dungeon, not specific content, I think matters more. However, if the dungeons did cycle and the opportunity existed I would not be an elitist about clearing content.
It's not a waste of resources when the dynamism is created by procedural generation.
We all want to experience the world - we don't all want to experience static, repeatable content.
If the devs want massive numbers of people to have an opportunity to kill a boss that ends a month-long narrative that everyone participated in, then yeah, there should be an instanced dungeon that allows everyone an opportunity to fight that boss, so that it's not just the one group who happens to be online at the right time of day on the right day of the week to defeat the boss for the entire server.
The event for defeating that boss should last for at least a week - so everyone has the opportunity to fight the boss during the time they normally play.
But, that means that players should not be able to camp the location of that boss in order to prevent other players from having that opportunity - without risking Corruption.
Once a group kills Saru's Hunger, they should not be able to return through the dungeon and camp the lair of Saru's Hunger in order to prevent a different group from killing Saru's Hunger.
Players should not be able to kill Saru's Hunger multiple times.
Either Saru's Hunger remains dead for the entire server the first time it's killed because it's not a significant boss in the world narrative or it's instanced in a way that once each group completes the event, the members of that group can't repeat it.
There wouldn't be a cycling "reset", just like there isn't a cycling reset with the rest of the game. It would all based on the procedural generation caused by nodes (and however that is also updated by the devs).
The content of the dungeon would be dependent upon the tasks, quests and events the nodes generate. Which all change based on player interaction with the nodes (along with some updates from the devs).
Dungeon content is already tied to nodes, so should be moving through stages in some fashion anyway - as the nodes in the area generate new tasks, quests, events and dungeons. It's already the case that dungeons don't last forever. The appear and disappear (and possibly relocate) based on how players are interacting with the nodes.
Really the only thing that I've suggested that may be farther than the devs have already planned is that the meaningful objectives of the dungeon don't always culminate with killing a boss.
The tasks, quests and events provided for players can send those players far across the map to complete.
The repercussions of our interactions leveling a node aren't always only local.
Building a town at Node B could cause a dungeon to appear and/or change the content within dungeons all the way over in ZOI W.
Even though Node W remains at Stage 0.
It seems pvp in UO was renowned as cheap, though. Paralyze, Ebolt, Ebolt, dead (and unable to do anything at all once paralyzed). So I never saw fit to even try. At least it wasn't that weird 5 minutes duration paralyze seen in Sword Art Online. Amazingly long for a true-PK game. I'd think even 5-10 seconds much of an advantage. 5 minutes you can take a nap before you kill.