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.
World Bosses- raiding and economy
neuroguy
Member, Alpha Two
In one of the newer livestreams, there was the good old question of "will world bosses be killable multiple times or just once?" and it was carefully and diplomatically answered without giving much away. This could be to keep the mystery or, in my opinion, because there are some design decisions that are not finalized. Regardless, one thing is for certain, some bosses will not be killed more than a few times and will only be done so by the "hardcore". (ref: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CwaEg-b20k @ 1:00:23 ish)
I want to discuss the economic ripples of these world bosses and events. Based on the answer, I'd like to think AoC will have an ahn'qiraj gates style event for most world bosses where a large number of individuals need to contribute somehow to take down the boss. This should make any such event attract a lot of players and guilds. Those wanting to participate in the content directly (wanting to kill the boss) and those that are there to make a profit by supporting the raiders. So caravans would start to ship to the hub closest to the boss, bandits and mercenaries to rob and protect them would be hired, crafters would set up stalls. Raiding guilds could be sponsored or make contracts with merchants/gathering guilds to be supported with the required potions etc to kill the boss in return for some % of the loot perhaps?
This all would require that a big scale world boss like a winter dragon to have several stages/layers of content that needs to be peeled to access and attempt to kill the boss, and that there is a race to kill the boss due to limited and few lives. I think this would be really interesting actually. Less hardcore players could participate and kill mini-bosses (repeatedly) while the big boss himself could, justifiably, be only killed by a few. This way many people could experience "raiding" but perhaps not every raid encounter. This could also be a potential place to implement "hard modes" where guilds can start to attempt the world boss after some stage of progression is made, but if they continue with the peripheral quests/events, they may weaken the boss or gain assistance to make it easier forcing decisions of "hard mode now and risk dying/losing prep and ultimately the kill to another guild? or easier mode later and risk a braver guild to take the kill before we do?".
Anyways, thoughts/opinions?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CwaEg-b20k @ 1:00:23 ish)I want to discuss the economic ripples of these world bosses and events. Based on the answer, I'd like to think AoC will have an ahn'qiraj gates style event for most world bosses where a large number of individuals need to contribute somehow to take down the boss. This should make any such event attract a lot of players and guilds. Those wanting to participate in the content directly (wanting to kill the boss) and those that are there to make a profit by supporting the raiders. So caravans would start to ship to the hub closest to the boss, bandits and mercenaries to rob and protect them would be hired, crafters would set up stalls. Raiding guilds could be sponsored or make contracts with merchants/gathering guilds to be supported with the required potions etc to kill the boss in return for some % of the loot perhaps?
This all would require that a big scale world boss like a winter dragon to have several stages/layers of content that needs to be peeled to access and attempt to kill the boss, and that there is a race to kill the boss due to limited and few lives. I think this would be really interesting actually. Less hardcore players could participate and kill mini-bosses (repeatedly) while the big boss himself could, justifiably, be only killed by a few. This way many people could experience "raiding" but perhaps not every raid encounter. This could also be a potential place to implement "hard modes" where guilds can start to attempt the world boss after some stage of progression is made, but if they continue with the peripheral quests/events, they may weaken the boss or gain assistance to make it easier forcing decisions of "hard mode now and risk dying/losing prep and ultimately the kill to another guild? or easier mode later and risk a braver guild to take the kill before we do?".
Anyways, thoughts/opinions?
2
Comments
But rarity and inconsistency in the spawns leads to higher prices for materials, which is better for the guild/raid that kills them.
I believe that randomly spawning world bosses would be better. That way, the raids would have to actively track world events and track down the world bosses. Another thing would be that some bosses would be worth more then others, and these price differences would be random (because this specific type of boss, lets say wolf types, suddenly spawned more regularly then other types, like spiders or ogres).
Steven once said (in the video where they showed the rain effects while playing some PvE), that world bosses migrate because of things like strong rain etc (the giant crab/spider that left its home to find something better because the rain filled the old one up with water for example)
The rarity of boss materials shouldn't have a huge impact on the health of the economy as a whole. Sure, it will be a part of it but unless the boss materials are required in high volumes, the market will be fine. The particular mechanics of the boss however, will impact what materials/gears/potions etc are needed and change up market prices and the global economy. More importantly, the physical location of the boss will require caravans and mass migration of wealth/resources. That last point is where I think the biggest boon to economy and the game in general will take place. It will constantly shift around the population of the server, will motivate caravans and movement of wealth etc.
Again though, this is highly contingent on making these world boss events long (to justify the moves,) rewarding, and accessible to all (to some degree).
Players participate in a week or two long event. Once the event has reached the point where the world boss has triggered players have a couple days to find and kill the boss before the event is over and the boss will no longer spawn. During this window I think the boss should have a semi random spawn timer (eg. after being killed there should be a couple hour down time where it can't respawn followed by a 3-6 hour spawn window) During this time many groups will likely be camping out waiting for the boss to spawn resulting is some large scale PvP battles to push other groups out of the "battle arena"
I think it would be nice to see lesser raids linked to the main raid bosses that smaller groups could take on that are more oor less heralds of the main raid boss to come.
"These are generally going to be events. There will be a sense of participation in these events. So, in terms of rewards, we want to make sure that everbody who participates in a battle like that feels rewarded. So, there will be some RNG involved in that but... those are generally going to be world bosses and will generally be events so there will be quests associated with them."
---Jeffrey
"Specfically, they are open world, and while everyone will have a reason to be there from a participation standpoint, the epic gear or legendary gear or big rewards, yes, those will be finite and only certain groups will be able to get them."
---Steven
"It will have to do with participation."
---Jeffrey
"Yes."
---Steven
That really has little to do with being a hardcore player.
The devs mention "participation" because killing that Winter Dragon will involve quests and crafting that lead up to the final kill. I don't know what you think of as a few players, but I hope killing these type of bosses would be on the same scale as a Node siege. That it won't just be about striking the final blow on the Winter Dragon and that there will be other strategic objectives that participants will have to complete.
It shouldn't be any more of a "hardcore only" experience than a Node siege is.
And we should expect a similar amount of participation from crafters - not because they want to make a profit off the "raiders", but because the perpetual winter disrupts the flow of resources they rely on.
That disruption should be the primary economic impact.
The devs didn't say anything in the quotes above about epic or legendary gear only being attainable raiders who kill world bosses
That wasn't part of the question so it also wasn't part of their answer.
My understanding is that there will be different epic and legendary gear attainable besides just being part of the group/raid that kills the world boss.
Here's another quote:
"The amount of effort needed and inter-dependencies across the different types of players – between raiders and PvPers and crafters and even role players and the taverns and businesses: the processors and gatherers – all of those systems will likely have a component that lends toward creating or crafting that legendary item... We want to stay away from the highly RNGd system, and instead take our multiple progression paths that we are offering the players and put the construction components for achieving these legendary items within them so it encourages communities to work together because it's going to be difficult for just one person by themselves to gather everything. Not to say that they couldn't in an economic sense, by buying those components, that's possible. But achieving them from a time investment standpoint we want it to be considerably less RNG focused."
---Steven
mark 55:49
This kind of content is also not the only raid content that will be in Ashes - I don't even expect it to be the top end of such. It's more community oriented content rather than high end content.
I'd expect the events to take place over perhaps a matter of days, and also be taking place in more than one place at a time as well. Perhaps they would culminate in one area with one fight, as that would make for more enjoyable and understandable content from an individuals perspective than if the event ended in many places at the same time - people wouldn't get a sense of scale of the event.
As to rewards and economic impact - that totally depends on how frequent the events are. I personally hope they come up with a better reward structure than most games, which simply reward based on input, almost always DPS + healing + damage taken (perhaps with modifiers to some of these). The problem with this is that it almost always rewards those with the best gear, as people with the best gear can do more damage, take more damage and heal more than people with less good gear - and usually the rewards for such events are something that people with good gear will have no real use for but would be the best item many others that participated would have if they got them.
Given what has been said I feel that the "economic ripples" will go something like this. A Winter Dragon appears and causes giant blizzards in the area that disrupt trade routes. On top of that a call goes out for adventurers to gather supplies and resources in preparation to fight the dragon. In that one move you have not only increased demand but reduced the supply. The result is that prices for the relevant resources will rise very quickly. Prices will continue to rise until all the requirements for fighting the boss have been met, at which point the players go out and slay the dragon.
Now that the dragon has been slain, the blizzard stops which opens up trade routes again. And of course since there is no longer a threat, demand for certain resources goes down and prices go down too. That seems to be the most logical effect on the economy based on the information we have.
They have in the past explicitly said there will be raid content that only a small % of the player base will be able to beat.
People will have their own reasons for participating in content. For a lot, their motivation will be to kill the dragon, wanting to discover how the fight works and beat it (that's what I meant by "hardcore"... raid progression people essentially). But yeah I mean that's what I'm hoping for: a whole event where things need to be done by crafters and such for the boss to even become accessible let alone beatable.
I don't really care about the loot structure and made no comments on it tbh.
On that note, I really hope they don't artificially deny access to the boss until certain requirements are met, like not being able to target/damage the boss until you gather the necessary resources. I'd much prefer the boss to be fully killable from the start of the event, but is made very hard to kill until the requirements are met.
This way, the players have a choice. They can try to kill the boss quickly when it is at its most dangerous (and possibly get rewarded more for it). Alternatively they can play out the event by completing the smaller requirements that will then make killing the boss easier.
I half agree. As I said in op, I think the difficulty decision is a fun one to make:
But I disagree with being immediately available. If the boss is killed immediately, for whatever reason, the event is essentially inconsequential. Give the economy some time to react at least, people in the world should care about this large scale event. In instanced raids, you have the gating of other bosses to kill, attunement etc. I think that serves an important purpose and think some form of gating should exist on these world bosses.
@arzosah
I mean sure, but it was still explicitly said that a small % would be capable of beating some content due to its difficulty.
They have in the past explicitly said there will be raid content that only a small % of the player base will be able to beat.
[/quote]
The content we are talking about here is world bosses/world events, which are almost guaranteed to not be the top end of raid content.
The top end o raid content - the content the small percent of players will kill - is likely to either be found at the end of a difficult dungeon, or in an instance somewhere.
That's an assumption you've made, unless you have some source to back it up. Yes there will be instanced dungeons/raids but my understanding is that this will be as few as possible. But regardless, world bosses are not necessarily going to be like WoW where you just walk up and kill them.
In that link, if you gave it a listen, Steven describes the stages of progression for a world boss from e.g. acolytes to generals etc all the way to the world boss. That sounds like the structure of increasing difficulty bosses so again, I think your assumption is unfounded. It sounds like the world boss encounters are fully capable of being top tier raid content. And even if they are not, if they have relatively rare-ish spawns (or jittered and unpredictable in time and location) or can only be killed once/few times, the "hardcore" progression people will push to kill it and thus only a small % of the population would experience the actual world boss fight.
Hardcore raid content is not synonymous with killing world bosses.
You first wrote, "some some bosses will not be killed more than a few times and will only be done so by the 'hardcore'". Now, you're saying "a lot of people" killing the bosses will be hardcore because their motivation will be to discover how to beat it. I'm pretty sure everyone who kills the bosses will want to discover how to beat them because how to beat them will change from session to session, according Steven and Jeffrey.
There will be hardcore raiders whose primary motivation to raid is raid progression, certainly. That does not mean they will be the only people defeating the bosses you reference.
You did not mention loot structure in your original post, but that's what the devs focused on in the link you shared. Steven and Jeffrey focus on the rewards attainable from world boss events and indicate that they won't just be attainable by "hardcore raiders".
The reason I don't think world bosses will be content that only a small percentage of players will ever kill is because unless Ashes has a content locking system (which would be odd in the context of this game), the usual strat to kill a world boss is to just throw more people at it. I've yet to see a single non-locked world boss where this wasn't the best strategy, and as a strategy it flies directly in the face of content based on the idea that only a small percentage of people will kill it, especially in the context of a game that we know will have some instanced raid content - a content type that is locked in participation numbers by default.
So sure, it is an assumption, but at least it is an educated one.
I don't want to get lost in semantics here. My point is that people will be motivated to kill the boss for the sake of progression. Those players I called "hardcore" raiders because the reason they play the game is to simply progress through raid content. If the difficulty of a raid is hard, only a % of that % of the player base will be able to beat that raid content. I'm not saying anything about the exact # of players that will clear content, maybe you could re-state your original point? I think it may have gotten lost in the semantics, unless your point was to clarify the semantics which is a bit odd imo :P.
Well it's not an assumption because that's literally the link I posted where Steven talks about world boss raid content that a single digit % of the playerbase will see. I hope the link takes it out of assumption territory haha :P but yes I absolutely agree and my immediate thoughts on world boss "raid" content was well won't people just throw more bodies at it? But surely somebody at Intrepid also had the same thought and they have some plan to address that? I mean to assume otherwise is to insult the design team imo haha. What is their plan to deal with it? No idea, if you want to speculate on possibilities I would love to hear it
Personally, as I mentioned above, I think we all have an inherent understanding of "world boss" content as open (like you mentioned) where you just walk up and engage a boss like the nightmare dragons in vanilla WoW. But I don't think that's how intrepid sees or designs these world encounters. I think it's honestly just a term they use to contrast it with "instanced" content. If you had a whole raid like karazhan but not instanced (so you could happen across other raid parties), I think that's more of their vision than the nightmare dragons.
Keep in mind that only a small percentage of the server population can own a Castle each month.
That does not mean it will always be the same players owning the Castle(s). And doesn't necessarily mean those who own a Castle are "hardcore" Castle siegers.
I am nitpicking, but it's not really semantics.
I think we agree on the basic concept you seem to want to focus on: the impact on economy from different types of playstyles contributing to defeating the world boss event.
I disagree with some of the details of your presentation.
I have to assume that is on purpose. It's not like they aren't aware that WoW is there.
Based on that, I don't personally think *anything* from WoW is worth looking at in terms of what Intrepid may do with Ashes, and this is why I think the better context to look at to figure out what kind of thing they may do with world bosses (as opposed to raid bosses or contested raid content) is to look at rifts from Rift, and public quests from GW2, or even CR/GR from Archeage (with a little bit of Red Dragon thrown in) would be more acurate than anything from any stage of WoW.
The point of putting content out in the open world - as opposed to in a dungeon or instance - is so that anyone can take part in it. This is the reason I don't think Intrepid have any plan to address simply throwing more people at an open world boss encounter - simply because they want as many people as possible taking part in this content. If a world boss interrupts your game play in any fashion, you should have a hand in it's downfall if you chose to - the guild you are in or the gear you have should not determine if you are able to help kill a world boss (as opposed to a raid boss).
In the video linked above, they specifically say that the epic/legendary gear from world events will be finite, but say nothing at all about how many people will take part in killing the content, or at least that's all I heard (feel free to transcribe it if I missed it though). Saying gear is finite doesn't go any way at all to saying how many people participated in killing the encounter, it just says that not everyone will get epic/legendary gear from world bosses.
This is where the psychology comes into play and is vitally important. If you tell players "you cannot do this without first doing x/y/z because....reasons!" chances are they will call it bullshit. If however you say "there's the boss, feel free to try to kill it now" (even knowing they have no chance of killing it), the players will feel more in control of what is happening and be more willing to go through the hoops.
Just as an example, take a look at 2 different games - Dark Souls and Pokemon. In Pokemon there are a ton of artificial barriers that force a player to take a very linear path. "This pokemon is blocking the way and won't move until you have a specific item" which is stupid because you know you could defeat the pokemon easily if given the chance. This is honestly very frustrating, especially on repeat play-throughs.
On the other hand, in Dark Souls the paths are a lot more open, and the game encourages you down the "correct" path by varying the difficulty of each path. Path A might have lower level mobs that are easier to kill, whereas path B might have much higher level mobs that are almost impossible for you to kill. You aren't told which path to choose, but instead are given the choice. Newer players will probably take the easier path, whereas veteran players might want to take the harder path which would speed up their progression through the game.
Again this goes back to the issue of "player agency". Players respond much better if they are given a choice on how to proceed, rather than just being told "you can't do that yet". Why can't I do that yet? Because we said so! ......
And quite frankly, if all the players on a server band together they should be able to kill a world boss as soon as it appears.
So, we know that we won’t be able to defeat these bosses immediately.
I use WoW as a point of comparison because that's something I am familiar with and think most other people are too. I also don't have that much experience with other mmos so I can't really draw parallels lol. In this case, I was using the nightmare dragons as an example, it has nothing to do with WoW being an inspiration or having any bearings on the actual AoC content.
I don't think the reason you state is the only possible reason of having open world content (as opposed to instanced). It's a design decision that can have many reasons and also many consequences. I also don't think that just because a world boss "disrupts" your game play as you say, that you should have a hand in its downfall. Levels and gear are important gating mechanisms, and thus motivation, for lots of content, I don't think that a lvl 1 character for example should be able to have any bearings on a world boss or you risk zerg-like mechanisms being easier to utilize. You are right though, there is nothing to explicitly say IS intends to limit or prevent more bodies being thrown at world bosses, or none that I'm aware of at least. I personally would like that though because you can simply overwhelm and trivialize most mechanics by just having more and more people participate.
Yeah but nobody would advocate for that... It's like invisible walls: if you must restrict player movement, put something sensible or lore-related in the game, not invisible walls. They have sensible gating mechanics it sounds, from quests and stages/prior bosses that must first be defeated. Gating mechanics exist in games, and there are many good reasons for them. Like I said, many games have attunement, in-game mechanics, in-game requirements (e.g. reputation requirements) etc for a lot of content and yes if done to an extreme they impinge on player agency but they don't inherently do so. Player agency does not equate to a lack of structure. It makes sense to have to kill lieutenants and generals before the final boss. People could complain that it takes away their agency of in what order they kill things I guess but like you can then complain about anything I guess haha. Having gating mechanisms does not mean you are taking away player agency.
Most likely, that Level 1 character won't remain Level 1 by the time they encounter that boss.
When I run my brand new, Level 1 Forsaken character over to the Tauren starting area straight out of character creation, it's no longer Level 1 by the time I arrive... just from exploration xp.
If the Winter Dragon is Level 50, I doubt the abilities of Level 1-5 characters will have much effect on it, but that doesn't mean the effect will be 0. Also, could be that low levs are able to lend some utility, like Cleansing or Detecting Tracks.
Steven and Jeffrey say it's not possible to zerg in Ashes.
Sounds like prerequisites, like quests and mini-bosses are going to gate access to the world bosses, so it's not really possible to zerg. Also, just because the world boss is not in an instance does not mean it's going to be in a location everyone can access. We may need to channel a relic to open a gate behind which the world boss awaits.
I don't agree that allowing all players to try to defeat content is like invisible walls.
When I explore in WoW or EQ or any MMORPG/CRPG, I travel as far as I can until I encounter red/skulled mobs that can one-shot me. There are no invisible walls preventing me from trying to kill those mobs, but I can be fairly sure I won't be able to kill those mobs and it's pretty obvious that I would not long survive a battle with them. It's sometimes a challenge just to outrun them.
But, there's nothing preventing me from attacking them if I want to.
In vanilla EQ, there were no invisible walls preventing me from traipsing down the Darkpaw Gnolls lair at low level. I would be highly unlikely to survive all the way to the boss.
So... yes, there will be some gates. It will also feel like we have player agency.
Anyone can make the attempt to defeat the world boss - not everyone will succeed.
Many people will not make it through the gates in time to challenge the world boss - for a variety of reasons.
I think, though, that we're all in agreement that not everyone will get epic/legendary resource drops from the world boss. That only a small percentage of the population will. That should have some effect on the economy since those resources will be relatively rare.
But, seems like neuroguy is more interested in discussing how raid prep affects the economy rather than how raid drops affect the economy.
I'll give you a quick outline of the type of content (being as unspecific as possible, to those that played Rift and GW2).
You're adventuring along, and all of a sudden you get given a new quest. The quest is to participate in an event that you just walked within range of. This event may have just started, or may have been going on for a while. There may be minutes worth of content in this event, hours, or even days.
As you get closer to the event (or perhaps as you start to participate), you are automatically placed in to the raid of other players that are also participating in the event - no invites, no accepting, you are just *in* the raid.
You and those around you progress the quest. It may take you off to other places, it may have started in several places at once and everyone is merged together or it may simply keep you all in that one spot. As you get to the end of the quest, the boss spawns - this boss may or may not have HP an damage dealing abilities that scale based on how many people are participating in the event.
If/when the boss is killed, loot from the event is generated and given to players based on total input to the whole event.
---
Now, looking at the above, I'm sure you can see how that would work with the example of a winter dragon, and how that is far more in line with what Ashes is trying to be than a single boss that is just placed in the world for players to kill.
However, the literal point to this type of content is that almost anyone can join. In many games, players are artificially scaled up to an appropriate level so they can participate in this kind of content (though I don't expect to see that in Ashes, which is why I didn't list level as one of the things that shouldn't hold a player back from being able to participate). Because there literally is no mechanic to stop more and more people entering the encounter, and because the openness of the content does not lend itself well to fail conditions, this kind of content is never actually *hard*, but rather time consuming (arduous, perhaps).
So, world bosses are a very specific, very important kind of content in Ashes. It is the kind of content people will tell stories about - about how the whole server came together to kill the 'big bad thing' that was threatening one metropolis or some such. However, it is not the content that only a small percent of players will be able to kill - that will be a different type of content - one that is no more or less important than world bosses.
I expect similar mechanics to be in place for defeating a world boss as winning a Castle Siege, Node Siege or Guild War. There will be objective-based mechanics - in addition to quests. It won't just be a boss out in the open that everyone will be able to zerg. Also won't be an instance.
"Hard" is subjective.
Steven does state that only a small percentage of the population will be able to defeat a world boss.
He doesn't refer to that small percentage as only hardcore raiders.
"Part of Gathering is being able to spoil the loot from a particular creature or boss. So, if you want to be able to get those mats from the boss, they're not going to drop just for anybody... they will only drop for a Master Gatherer who is capable of extracting those resources from the creature itself. So, the reason why we say there are a lot of inter-dependencies between the crafters of the world and the raiders of the world and/or the PvPers of the world is because we don't want to house the capability to attain these things all within the adventuring class. We want there to be an influence necessary from the crafters guild to either come and participate and spoil the boss or to gather the goods."
---Steven
If not hardcore raiders, what group is it that you propose will be those killing that content that only a single digit percentage of players will kill? Who is it killing the content that is at the top end of that tiered content showing other players what they can strive to accomplish?
And remember, if players are supposed to strive towards something, that content needs to be available to them. This excludes the notion that only a small percentage of players will kill content because not everyone has access to it.
A quest can be as simple as telling you what the objective-based mechanic is. No developer worth a damn will put a major event in the game that has an objective based mechanic in it without telling the player what that mechanic is. The appropriate place to tell the player this is in their quest log - and thus that objective based mechanic becomes a quest.
It is still an objective based mechanic, but it's also an entry in your quest log.
If you actually read what I said about events, it is actually essentially exactly the same as what you are saying. You are basically saying you disagree with me, and then essentially repeating what I just said as being your own thoughts.