Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Open Dungeons with a Boss room is a must..............
Has anyone watch Sword Art Online? If not go check it out. I think they handle how the open world dungeons should work very well. Mainly anyone can enter them, no matter the party size, even if your solo. But once you enter the Boss room, you need to be in the same party, or you can't enter once the door closes behind you.
IMO this is how it should work in this game. I am not taking about the sub-bosses, just the main boss on each level of the dungeon.
What do you guys think?
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Personally, I've never liked Boss rooms in other games. Too often people would camp the mob or rush in and "steal" it. And if there's a long spawn time, there would be a long wait if a group had just killed it before you got there.
Interesting idea here, though. How would it work? Presumably, the Boss would have to scale to the size of the group, since group size would be random. What about different player levels? I've seen it where everyone is made the same level for a public raid. Seems like there would need to be set times when the Boss mob spawned? But is it doable to scale the Boss to group size and different levels?
No.
But seriously with open boss rooms there will be that one annoying stealthier who will be hiding in there waiting for the perfect time to gank your healer, just because they can.
There are workarounds for higher players "holding you off". For me I would make open world dungeons only on max level content not during leveling.
So leveling stage would have only instanced dungeons, and max levels would have both instanced and open world dungeons to choose.
Zerging will be possible, but it is countered with open PvP. So you are not fighting just boss, you are fighting both boss and your player competition for loot, so it's challenging in different way.
And if you don't like them, just don't go and go to instanced instead, since you will have both available.
This also allows for high level players to either grief or protect players which I think adds to a cool dynamic of conflict. They can stop lowbie players from completing dungeons which then they need to ask a higher level to come protect them. Which has been done in other MMO's which I honestly found fun. Yes people don't like others stopping them from completing their content, but if their's no conflict or it becomes easy to complete then everyone becomes detached and disengaged in the game. So this is why I would like open world dungeons at all levels, and Boss rooms not to be Safe. High Risk High Reward, meaningful conflict over bosses etc.
Having to relay on other players to help progress you, MMO's are not suppose to be just a solo aspect of the game (a lot of players got use to this with WOW's direction they have taken in the last few expansions), they use to rely on massive amount of people to get things accomplished. They already said outright murder is going to have heavy penalties so I don't think it will be a constant zerg/ gank fest. It is possible I know there are certain people that's what they love to do in MMO's. But I think making the choice of letting another team down a Boss vs being Red for a few hours might be a meaningful Choice, and individuals will have to weigh there options to stop you, or wait for the timer to reset.
Letting Boss rooms to be a safe area is a slippery slope and can be easily abused to avoid pvp, and such. I think people need to understand what Intrepid has been saying throughout the live-streams and the pillars they want their game to have. They don't like the disconnect that games have had with instanced dungeons and safe area's because that made people careless and made the game have less conflict and took away the risk. Also made the game feel like a job rather than a fun time in a dungeon, you down the same boss over and over again hoping to get a certain gear rather than revel in the fact you actually killed the dungeon boss.
You reveal it, it stays open for a short time then it re conceals.
Someone else is still able to reveal it again, like you previously did, though.
On the closed dungeon side, well, as was said theme park ride as closed experience can be rather boorish.
So my personal conclusion is, make dungeons big. As SAO was given as example, yeah make it so freaking huge you would have to explore it's parts. Maybe even map it out and sell that information to others.
Do not be able to log out in front of the boss room or in the dungeon at all (failsafe for disconnects should be a thing tho) so you just play on another character until it's time. You want to challenge the boss, go through the whole dungeon with all it's content and effort. Log Horizon 2 the raid dungeon(s) looked amazing in that regard.
That still leaves the matter of the actual boss fight and I simply don't know about that. I do not think it is in any way a good experience to fight through the whole 95% of the boss HP, just barely keeping it together and stay alive just to have a fresh group walk in on you and steal it. It is cheap, it is sleazy, it's disgusting. No one can sell me on the conflict part there.
The only thing I can take away from that is, that we should fight for the right to challenge a boss, but we shouldn't be fighting a boss and a group of player right at the end of the encounter. So yeah for this one reason alone I would be leaning to physically (not instanced) closed boss rooms until a better solution is presented.
In general, due to not having any experience with those kind of games, I think the way to the boss room should bear the conflict part and starting the boss try is the reward for overcoming the community conflict.
Pooka's 1 gold is worth more than your 1 gold.
Because it took them a month straight doing just that and eating/sleeping? Amazing for people who live in the game and who got nothing better to do (even then it must be mentally draining). But completely unrealistic if you happen to do anything else outside the game.
But how about a high stakes, high reward dungeon(s), that appear(s) at random times, someplace on the map, that is open to everyone at the same time, but first come, first serve?! People are to discover them (by luck, searching activly, what would boost the "adventurer" feeling some more) and gather people from guild, area or friends to challenge the dungeon to clear it. To make sure, leeching is out of the question, there should be a "activity counter" for mobs killed, puzzels solved, boss dmg etc, so the reward will be higher the more active you are. Leechers will have to contribute or be happy with their 5x Potion at the end. These dungeons can even be used for Event Encounters. Werewolfs at a Full moon (once a month), Jack'o'lanterns at halloween and so on.
I would like the idea of gathering resources and suddenly find a crack in the mountain, where a spontanous dungeon appeared, gathering my friends and charge into the unknown
I'm a full time student and work at the side to afford my own apartment and living expenses. It is save to say I do not have all to much time to game on my hands. Once I finish with my university degree I don't see that changing all too much since I do like to do a lot of other things and I still say: YES, absolutely.
You are describing WoW in it's classic and Burning Crusade state(without this being an anime and having to overdo it with dread, Ashes is still a game. I'm sorry I thought I could imply a little bit through context without having to spell every detail out).
That's what people did, questing for access, getting geared up in challenging dungeons, sometimes having to go out of their way to craft/obtain gear to even be able to survive to the "unique" hazards in certain raids, training, testing, attempting and at some point finally enjoying the pleasure of overcoming a great challenge.
It was a process of months on end.
This whole more and more washed down shit streamlined crap afterwards didn't give me half the pleasure any of the BC raids gave me(since I joined to late for classic).
Guess what? I wasn't a no-live then, in fact we only raided twice a week, I still played other games too and yet I still saw all raids and conquered a good portion of them in time of their prime state.
Sure, you won't be among the world firsts to achieve this without the time on hand like others that only sleep/eat and play, but you will get to experience it in your own time just the same, if you wish to do so.
At least that was how WoW used to be and that's what I wish for Ashes of Creation to attempt and recapture in it's own interpretation and ways of delivering content.