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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
You misunderstood, I was saying that the gating to the world boss won't be because "reasons" as was suggested by wanderingmist, as you mentioned there will be quests etc to gate access to the boss. We are pretty much in agreement I feel like.
One point I do want to touch on though is this fucking loot thing. I don't care about loot because it is one of the least interesting gating mechanisms an MMO has to offer imo, and let's be honest... it is often very explicitly a gating mechanism. Once you hit a level cap, having a way to make you feel more powerful is one of the main ways to continue a sense of character progression. However, unlike levels that come in predictable increments, loot is based on RNG (dropping and distribution RNG) and thus slows down your progression. But you don't really need better gear unless there is content that is tuned for better gear. Essentially, from a PvE perspective, there is very little reason to chase better gear if there is nothing too hard for you to accomplish with your current gear. So I only care about gear for the purpose of being capable of engaging with harder content, I don't care if it's legendary or common or w.e. All that being said, I think gear is a very logical and convenient gating mechanism still. I think it makes sense to feel more powerful after defeating a big bad boss which is how powerful you need to be to try to tackle the next big bad boss. If you didn't have people with different qualities of gear, you would be relying purely on the fight mechanics to establish how challenging a fight is and that becomes very stressful development-wise. Having "gear check" fights, or bosses that are similar or comparable to previous bosses but tuned for players with better gear is a necessary design/development convenience imo.
@noaani
What you describe sounds extremely unappealing to me, at least in theory. Not saying they are bad ideas, just don't sound appealing to me personally. I played GW2 for a bit and those event/quests were just too random and discontinuous for me to really care. I just didn't understand what I was taking part in or why and I felt a compulsion to participate to get the loot/xp. I like a more goal-directed style of game play where I decide on a goal and set out to achieve it and explore as I see fit (or just set off with the goal of exploring). To be constantly pulled into events I have no context for with automated "grouping" does not sound fun to me.
I think I just disagree with what you say the point of the world boss content is. Also, this content is meant to be fail-able and have real consequences (that's not opinion) and, I hope, meant to not be completed by everyone. Stories of servers coming together can still be made and told without every single player actually throwing an arrow at the dragon, hence my gates of ahn'qiraj comparison.
Lore reasons aside, why are gating mechanics a good thing? You say there are many good reasons for it but I can't think of any good reasons that relate to Ashes.
In fact, the only mmorpg that did gating well was WoW at the start of BFA which denied access to the raids for the first 3 weeks. This worked very well because it allowed players (particular progression raiders) time to enjoy the story and level up, get their footing in the expansion before going into the world first race. This wouldn't apply in Ashes because the world boss events will be at a time when players will likely already be level capped and be prepared for it.
What I'd like to ask you next then is quite complex though.
Ok, so MMO's have open world content, they have dungeon content, they have phased content and they have instanced content. Within each of these there is scope for solo, group, raid or multi-raid scales of content.
Now, it is important to remember that MMO developers want to develop the game in a way that is resource friendly for both the client and server - it makes for a better experience for all. Because of this, they want to use the least resource dependent content type to achieve the goal of the specific piece of content they are creating. In terms of resource use, instancing is easiest, then dungeons, open world and lastly phasing.
Now, if you are going to put a boss encounter in the open world, you need a reason to put it there that can't be achieved if you simply put that same boss in an instance of a dungeon. So, why would the developers put a boss in the open world, using up the resources of the server but also of every client in the area, if not to add in content that is there for everyone (or almost everyone) to participate in if they wish?
There are other ways they can put in content for a elect few that is less disruptive to players and to system resources. Why not use them instead?
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I totally agree with you that GW2 in general was boring. I played it for a while at lunch but it never took hold (though I understand it is a better game now). A big part of that was the PQ's and how disjointed they seemed with the rest of the game.
The rifts in Rift were not much better. They were great to start, but after even just a few weeks they became like a chore you had to do to keep your server/faction running. They absolutely were possible to fail, and failing them (or no one even attacking them) did have wider effects (the rift would gain more influence in the zone, taking over the local population). They didn't have fail mechanics in terms of requiring everyone to follow a script or something, but each wave did have a timer and failure was actually more common than success unless you were in an area with a mas of players.
While I didn't like the way that content in wither of those two games was implemented, I can see how it could be done in a way that is fun. The first step to that is that these events need to be a LOT more rare than they were in either of those two games. They should happen on a server somewhere each week or so, no literally every minute of every day happening somewhere on the server. Also, the narrative around them needs to be far more clear than in GW2 (though Rift didn't he the issue for me, though I paid attention to the lore in that game).
With that in mind, content that you may only see once every few months, content that you know is important (and are aware of why it is important rather than just knowing it), content that is different from what you usually do - to me that sounds like the potential for a good evenings/wekends gaming.
The quote I included about Gatherers spoiling the boss and devs wanting to ensure that the ability to attain these things is not housed solely in the adventuring class is another indication that it's not all about the raiders. That quote states that the devs want crafters to come and participate in the defeat of the world boss. And it's the participants that receive the rewards - not just raiders. And not just hardcore raiders.
Available to all does not mean that all people will be capable of completion.
But, it's not really going to be available to all.
I read what you wrote. I don't agree with the details of what you wrote.
You stated, "You're adventuring along and all of a sudden you get given a new quest."
I don't agree that's how these events will transpire. Rather, in the case of the Winter, there will be a perpetual winter and players who wish to put an end to that perpetual winter will be able to find paths to do so. Players will be able to acquire quests that lead to the defeat of the Winter Dragon.
We won't automatically be placed in raids, just as we won't automatically be placed in raids when we enter a Caravan PvP bubble. We won't automatically be placed into raids even when we choose to attack or defend a caravan.
"No invites, no accepting, you are just *in* the raid," does not sound like the game design philosophy of the Ashes game devs. That sounds like the fever dream of a "top end raider".
“Reasons” referred to a hypothetical where the obstacles to defeating the world boss feel artificial.
I think the three of us agree that the gating in Ashes, as described by the devs so far, doesn’t appear to be artificial.
I don’t consider loot to be a gating mechanism at all. We get loot after we’ve passed through the gate and overcome the challenges; not before.
I always care about gear that helps my character be more effective at the roles I want to pursue, regardless of level cap or whether the gear is dropped from a boss or crafted or bought.
If there are compelling stories for me to pursue after level cap, I will probably attempt to acquire the gear required to experience those stories. I don’t necessarily have a problem with those stories being gated in some fashion by gear progression after max level.
I especially don’t mind there being a necessity to acquire specific gear sets in order to successfully overcome those challenges. That gear could just be different - doesn’t have to be more powerful.
What I have a problem with is poor story design where the journey at max level feels hackneyed and artificial, boring and repetitive.
The way to overcome that is for the world bosses to have meaningful impact.
If I have to put an end to the perpetual winter caused by the Winter Dragon in order to complete construction on the Scholar’s Academy, I’ll acquire whatever gear I need. I expect some of the resources I will need for gear will be in the form of loot from some mob(s), sure.
I don’t agree that loot RNG slows progression. Mostly because I don’t have a concept of progression time goals in a manner that could be slowed by loot... or gear. Probably because I don’t care about gear progression...it’s just a by product of leveling and crafting... I reach a particular level, I can equip a new level of gear.
I don’t have to chase better gear to appreciate the value of having better gear. Whether I want to equip epic or legendary gear depends on the specific character I’m role playing and the specific pieces of gear. But, this discussion is about raids and economy. Selling loot that we acquire from world bosses is going to affect economy. That there is RNG associated with those drops doesn’t mean that loot won’t significantly affect the economy.
I don’t have to be chasing gear to be interested in acquiring epic and legendary loot from a world boss.
And I don’t have to be motivated to repeat battles in order to complete a set or obtain a specific item to have the desire to obtain some epic stuff when the RNG gods favor me with an epic or legendary gift.
Gear check is an OK gate.
Doesn’t really have to be “more” powerful. Doesn’t have to be a vertical increase. Could just be a horizontal change.
We’re talking about effects on the economy. If I’m focused on Shadow gear rather than Ice or Fire gear, I’m not going to care that the epic Fire gear isn’t more powerful than the epic Ice gear, I’m just going to be happy that I can sell the epic loot for an epic price.
Well to start off, there are gating mechanics in AoC confirmed already. In general though gating serves important meta purposes, gating mechanisms help pace players, avoid burn out, motivate engagement with in-game systems, having a robust economy, increase the subjective value of rewards and provide intrinsic motivation for players to overcome the challenges they pose.
Some classic gating mechanisms are character level, gear, reputation, attunement etc. What is actually gated can also differ. For example in AoC we don't have level gate location/zone as WoW does. In WoW, a part of my personal motivation to level up was to explore new biomes and see new monsters. In AoC, zones don't have levels but contain different level content depending on the node stage and how far into the wilderness you venture. So in principle, you have more control over what biomes you explore and interact with although some parts of the world are still gated by level/gear.
Most of the positives of gating are self explanatory I feel but just quickly raid attunements for example serve the lore purpose as you mentioned, they slow down guild progression through raid content so it feels like there is more of it, prevent guilds from being able to chain content together and burn out chasing first kills, and allow development time for content that will not be immediately experienced by players. For enhancing subjective value, the winterspring frostsaber from WoW is a really good example. The mount is a pretty cool model and a lot of people would choose to ride one if they could but it was locked behind a ridiculous rep grind (back in the day, don't know about now). This made seeing the mount, or owning it that much more rewarding because not everybody had access to it. For motivating engagement and the economy, in order to unlock crafting recipes (and augments), you often need to take part in reputation grinds. This makes some craftable items that are superior (even with similar materials going into making them), harder to create allowing their value to increase due to low supply while simultaneously retaining the value of lower quality higher supply items. Other than that, runescape has a great system of gating where you need to engage with multiple skills to level any individual one up effectively or to take part in quests.
Essentially, in the extreme, a lack of gating means all players can access all content whenever they want. Nobody will have any motivation to do anything. But of course, the best engagement and fun will be had with some intermediate level of gating and people get paid money to figure out what that is lol.
I honestly know very little about server infrastructure but what you say is intuitively fair. It makes sense that open world content where many people can be in the same place would have heavier server load but instancing content would probably have a bigger memory load.
IS probably chose to have open world content for a variety of reasons but let me explain why I don't think one of them is for "everyone" to experience something, at least not together. Dungeons are also not instanced. AoC will have party sizes of 8 for dungeons, which means the dungeon content is tuned for 8 people to be able to beat. Let's assume most of the dungeons aren't like top tier raid content (meaning more than just a single digit % is meant to experience and beat them). So why would IS have dungeons in open world instead of instances? Clearly they are not intended for the whole server to participate in at once, and if anything, making it open world stops people from participating because of boss respawn timers and PvP. Well that's also the answer, the PvP, or organic conflict is what IS has explicitly stated as the reason for taking an open world direction. They want people to fight over bosses and the right to kill them. So going back to world boss content, given the stages and quests (and hopefully ahn'qiraj style large scale participation) required, many people can "participate" in the event, but not be the ones to actually kill the world boss.If anything, I expect there to be a race and competition between groups for the right to do so, and that's an implicit assumption in my op. All of this is also the reason I think there will be mechanics in play to restrict the number of players that can participate in the actual world boss kill. Plus, it has been mentioned that AoC will have PvE content designed for 8, 16 and 40 man groups (https://www.reddit.com/r/AshesofCreation/comments/aomez2/february_8_2019_questions_and_answers/).
If you still disagree (which I agree is fun :P) then you need to answer why dungeon content, tuned for 8 player parties, is open world in AoC for some reason other than the stated "meaningful conflict" ;D.
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What came first, the chicken or the egg?
So then we agree.
At level cap, for your character's power level progression, which is how I set that up, then yes RNG is slower than the previous way your character would increase in power (leveling).
I agree, I just very intentionally chose to ignore loot and its role on the economy. I wanted to focus on the structure and design philosophy of the world boss event and how that alone has a large economic impact. Of course injecting rare materials into the market will change the economy, that's an uninteresting discussion in my eyes.
Gear checks are by definition vertical progression because there is no resist gear in AoC. With carrying weight limits and no fast travel, I think this is a practical and good design choice.
I’m an Explorer. I’m going to explore as long as there is cool new stuff for me to look at - gate or no gate.
Gates just mean it’s going to take longer for me to explore all the static content.
What is considered the best engagement and fun will depend on the play style.
I don’t need gates to be motivated to do stuff in an RPG.
You may have set that up, but I have not experienced that.
For me, leveling has taken longer than gear progression at max level.
OK, but...
That makes the link you shared in your original post very odd because there's really nothing in the dev quote that has anything to do with how world boss event has a large economic impact, other than the mere mention of world bosses.
This simply is not true.
1: I would love to see a dev quote that says no resist gear, but...
2: We know that weather can affect elemental damage output so, even without resistances, my Fire Wand from a Fire Dragon could have the exact same damage as my Ice Wand from a Winter Dragon when I use them in a rain forest although the Fire Wand is weaker than the Ice Wand when I’m in the Arctic and the Ice Wand is weaker than the Fire Wand when I’m in the desert.
Horizontal progression, rather than vertical progression.
3: Also, advanced weapons can have up to 5 weapon abilities. The abilities that come from a Fire Dragon Eye could have the same damage as a the abilities from a Winter Dragon Eye, but the Fireball has a stun while the Iceball has a snare.
It’s not inherently vertical progression.
4: Part of the RNG for Ashes loot is going to be related to the skill level of the Gatherers harvesting the resources and some will be related to the skill level of the Enchanters.
So, the reason that a specific Fire Dragon Eye is more powerful than a Winter Dragon Eye is more likely to be due to the Crafters rather than due to all Fire Dragon Eyes inherently being more powerful than Winter Dragon Eyes.
In Ashes, there will be a variety of reasons to seek a Fire Dragon Eye rather than a Winter Dragon Eye besides a desire for more vertical power.
And, in Ashes, some gear checks will be due to performance within a specific biome, rather than objective and universal vertical power.
That’s just tip of the iceberg...
Though, I am not expecting Ashes to have gear checks that literally bar content - instances will be rare.
I did a quick search and couldn't find the quote I recall (although I retain that it was said, I just can't seem to find it right now). I do have a quote however for AoC not wanting to have different sets of gear for PvE and PvP and the reasons why that's annoying. You could easily extend that for resist gear and again, I clearly recall a quote (somewhere) where it was explicitly mentioned as such. (PvE vs PvP gear ref:
A gear check fight is a fight where the tuning of the fight, e.g. the dps required to kill the boss before some enrage timer, the amount of raid healing that needs to be done, the amount of damage that needs to be soaked, is such that you need some quality of gear to succeed. Having sufficient dps, hp pools and healing is dependent on gear. Having good enough gear is usually a vertical progression. Sure there are extremely niche situations in which you could have similar gear and one meet the gear check while the other doesn't but frankly I don't understand your need to argue about exceptions and rare instances. It does not take away from my point, gear checks by definition require a certain quality of gear, having that quality of gear is a vertical progression from having gear that is unable to meet the gear check. Sure you can compare similar level fire or ice weapons but I would compare 1 weapon with a stronger weapon, it doesn't matter why one is stronger whether it does more damage because of it's quality or the element+season combination. If something does more damage it is vertical progression.
Bravo.
And when they get there, players will likely have an update automatically placed in their journal so they know what to do. This means that someone that isn't specifically out looking for this event but happens to stumble in to the area where it is taking place will also have the quest automatically put in their journal.
I apologize for not providing an example from the perspective of every player on the server.
Dungeons are indeed content that is designed with an amount of conflict and confrontation in mind. The design ideal last I heard was that most dungeons would be designed to be able to support around 4 full groups of players at a time, and any more than that would result in conflict by design.
This is why dungeons are not being instanced, that Intrepid have left the door open for some specific instances to exist should they feel the need for them.
However, this doesn't necessarily hold true for world boss content. While conflict is absolutely a valid reason to put some raid level bosses in the open world (WoW's dragons, EQ2's Avatars, Archeages Leviathan etc), it is not as valid a reason to make a world boss with an event attached to it open world content.
Now, I've done a fair amount of product development in my time. One of the major steps in product development is in figuring out what things people are likely to complain about, and eliminate those potential issues before you even release the product.
If an MMO released content (a piece of content an be looked at as an individual product) that saw the whole server band together to complete an event that took hours or even days, and then at the end some elite raid guild swoops in to take the final kill and thus the best rewards, what complaints do you think are likely to result from that product?
If people participate in the event to spawn the boss, they should be able to participate in killing the boss they helped spawn. That doesn't mean a kill is guaranteed, but they should be able to participate as much as anyone else.
Yes, but any product will have its intended audience. But regardless, you have identified some issues with my interpretation of the world boss events and thus, as good product development dictates, you could simply address them instead of using the possible shortcomings as killing arguments.
Critically, I think we disagree on what it means to participate in a world boss event. If you engage with the quests, the war effort, killing of the lesser bosses etc in the event, many would consider that participating in the event. This remains true, even if the individual never sees let alone attempts the final boss itself. If you raided black temple back in TBC WoW but never killed or got to see Illidan, you still raided black temple. The structure and gating of the world boss event is crucial to prevent any sense of unfairness. If the gates are set up in a way where any raid group with the intent to take down the world boss needs to go through the same set of challenges (i.e. quests, lesser bosses, resource gathering, or whatever else it would entail). Then there is no "swooping in", the top raiders would be the ones to kill the boss because they beat the same challenges as everyone else, just faster. Everyone else would have to compete to accomplish whatever they could in the meanwhile. This is more or less the system I described in the OP. Everyone needs to help out with the ahn'qiraj-like event, but only the top tier get to kill off the world boss. Everyone who wished participated, but you only got the big boss kill if you were the best.
This fits the design philosophies of IS well. It is competitive and prone to organic, meaningful conflict. It allows for mass participation and reward will be given proportional to participation and effort. Your description of a top guild swooping in just does not feel like it is supported by any of the design philosophies described. It also sounds like a silly demand to take part in the killing of a world boss if it spawned in your backyard, it is similar to demanding that Illidan be killable by any raid group because he is the poster bad-guy of the expansion. Killing bosses, whether it is open world or not, should be a feat that is earned. Everyone needs to jump the same hoops, some will be faster and they will earn it first. It sounds like when it comes to world bosses, if you're not first or able to kill the boss within some time window after the first kill, then you simply won't get a chance until the next event spawn. Sounds fair to me.
So to me, asking players to participate in an event that results in a boss spawning that someone else then kills in front of those players and claims the rewards from is simply asking for complaints (or worse yet, people just quitting the game).
However, that doesn't mean other, similar content based around that concept aren't 100% viable.
The first is simple, you could simply have open world contested raid content.
I'd be shocked if Ashes doesn't have at least an amount of this content anyway. This type of content puts some real competition in to the PvE game, and I've participated in a LOT of these raids where we had an audience of 100+ people just watching, and have recruited players that watched us kill this kind of content as their introduction to raiding as a concept. I've sat there with a full guild raid watching another guilds attempt, hoping they wipe so that we can have a pull - and have had times where they have wiped and we got the kill, and have had times where we have sat aside simply watching another guild succeed.
I am of the personal opinion that PvP ruins this kind of content, as I believe a PvE boss should put one guilds PvE ability up against another guilds PvE ability - however I doubt that will be the way it would go in Ashes. If PvP is introduced in to this type of content, then the guild that can get the most players is the guild that will get the kill.
You could also have an event that takes place in many different parts of the world. Crafters do a thing in one part, soloers in another, sailors do something out at sea, there is something that requires full groups, and there is something that requires a full raid. To me, there are three required factors that would make this kind of event work well where a world event that we talked about above in the thread may not.
The first is that these aspects of the event need to all take place in dramatically different parts of the games world - far enough apart that players should only expect to be able to participate in one aspect. Second, make as much about the event known well before hand, so players are able to chose which part of the event they wish to take part in, and have time to get there. Third, make it known that there will be some contention for some aspects of this event. However, with this you wouldn't be asking solo players to try and go up against a full raid of players in order to try and get the rewards from the event they just helped progress.
What this results in, is people have a choice if they want to take part in a solo adventuring, crafting, grouping, sailing or raiding aspect to this event, knowing full well that they forgo the other options when making a choice, and that some of these options may be contested.
There are no doubt dozens of other forms such content could take, and I'm sure you could think of a few that I couldn't.
This conversation actually reminded me of an event in EQ2 - one that I had long forgotten about (purposefully). It was the event they had for releasing Kingdom of Sky, that games second expansion. There was an event in six locations around the world, with players spending days rushing to get the event done before the expansion released (though I'm sure the developers would have run the event anyway). When "the thing" was built, it spawned dragon. It was an easily killed dragon, only needed a solid group of 6, but it was flagged as a raid mob. In EQ2, any mob flagged as a raid mob was locked to the first group to tag it. So this meant that the first group to tag any of these dragons when they spawned got the kill, the title and the ring they all dropped. This also meant that hundred of players that had just spent days spawning these dragons got nothing for their efforts, and were justified in being pissed.
It's fair to say, EQ2 never had an event like that one again.
I'll actually be quite surprised if they don't have this mechanic in the game for specific things.
Many games make use of it, though none more so than Archeage. However, you are right that top end raiders aren't much of a fan of it - not for themselves at least, they are cool with that kind of thing for people that don't have a raid ready built for them.
Ashes is a PvX game, so there is just PvX gear.
That’s not anything like Ashes being a game focused around having no resistance gear. And seems counter to different biomes weakening or strengthening elemental abilities.
Having good enough gear is often a vertical progression - especially in games like WoW and EQ. But Ashes game design is significantly different especially because there is a focus on Crafters affecting the gear crafted from the resources harvested from mobs and bosses.
Gear progression isn’t just going to be about gear that is dropped by bosses, rather we are going to be asking Crafters to craft the gear we want, requesting stats and requesting specific abilities - especially specific weapon abilities.
It’s not going to be repeat the same raid until the full set of gear we want drops off the boss.
And we will sometimes want different gear for different situations.
Especially different gear for different biomes.
We can expect that one aspect of better gear is going to be that it works better with our class or weapon abilities or works better with our augments - again, horizontal progression rather than vertical progression. Because Ashes has more focus on horizontal progression than previous MMORPGs.
You are asserting niche and rare instances with no evidence that will be true in the Ashes design.
What we’ve been told about the Ashes design indicates that horizontal gear checks will not be as rare as you believe.
I don’t agree with your vision.
We can wait to see which of us has the more accurate view when the game launches, but also these disagreements allow us to craft better questions for the devs to elaborate on and/or confirm.
You would compare stronger weapons because that’s what you’re interested in. And I’m stating that in Ashes, gear progression will frequently be horizontal rather than vertical. Which is one of the reasons that any class can use any weapon.
Better will sometimes about tactical strategy that is not about which item has more vertical power - significantly so.
Again, if two weapons do the same damage in a neutral biome, but each does more damage in its respective biome, that is horizontal progression, rather than vertical progression.
And, in terms of impact on economy, we can expect them to have the same price when sold to NPCs.
I think your background is showing a bit. You are trying to appease as many people as possible while IS has demonstrated with other mechanics in their game (e.g. mayoral system, castle possessions, flying mounts) that they are totally fine with only a few people experiencing some content. I guarantee that many people will complain about those systems too, and by your product development logic, those would all be flawed as well. But it is simply the direction they have chosen to go. If they did things the opposite way, people like me would complain. You can't get rid of complaints, which is why your target audience is important.
You still refer to things like "swooping in" or "right before their eyes". This is misrepresentative of how things will most likely occur. In the EQ event, if everyone was capable of hatching an egg that auto-tagged for whoever hatched it, but only 10 eggs could hatch, that would be more comparable to what I think world boss content will be like.
I also actually absolutely hate the idea of advanced notice and super spread out engagement in the event. It also doesn't make sense given that world boss events will be local and contingent on nodes/node levels. Super spread out would ruin a lot of the fun economic impact of these events as I outlined in op and advanced notice makes it more of a scheduled event than an organic one in a living world.
Your main assumption is always that IS will want people to engage with as much of their content as possible while my main assumption is that IS wants everyone to have the opportunity to engage with all of the content, but motivate greatness by only allowing a small % to experience some small % of the content. This is amicable with world boss events as I've described them. If there are quests, mini-bosses and other processes around a world boss event, then the actual world boss itself is indeed a small % of the event, the most crucial one yes, but a small one nonetheless. Therefore, appropriately I think, only a few will be able to fight and kill the dragon while many can engage with all the rest of the content the event has to offer.
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My assumption is that Intrepid will have specific content that they would expect few people to participate in, or be successful at, but that is not what what world boss content is for.
Just because they are happy with few people participating in some content, that doesn't meant they are happy with that for all - or indeed even most - content in the game.
To me, if you want few people to participate in a piece of content, you put that content out of the way of everyone else. If you specifically put content in front of everyone, you expect everyone to be able to participate.
You may see it differently, but from a product development/business perspective, I don't see any better way.
Edit to add; as I've said above, I'm all for contested content. I like it because I am more often than not on the side of people that get the rewards (not always, no one is always on that side). It's just that contested content is it's own thing, and world bosses are their own thing, and while both are fun, they should remain separate.
Well within that capacity, the castles and mayoral positions are far more intrusive and in people's face than any world boss event which will come and go in any given area. I don't think it's about picking what content is going to be the single digit % and what isn't, it's about the small % within each system that will be experienced by single digit % of players. So for world boss content, the actual world boss would be it, the rest of the events around it would not.
There is semi-automated systems that are planned to be implemented. For example if you approach a caravan you will have some prompt where you can choose to attack or defend it or ignore it and keep going your marry way.
If you are in an area of a siege, and you suddenly are just *in* the raid for that siege (would need a way to determine attacker from defender). If you want to leave, you just leave. But if you want to participate in the siege, being in the raid makes many things simply easier - communication being at the top of that list.
This is *FAR* easier than everyone asking for invites or what ever.
Generally speaking, in that type of content, the more people you are with, the more raidwide buffs you have, the better things are for you.
I mean, sure, some people will want to be in their own group (usually only top end raiders that can form their own raid), but there would be far less people over all that do this than people that just stay in the raid that was automatically formed, meaning less effort over all. Then when you factor in how much easier it is to drop from a group than to ask for, get sent and then accept a group invite, it's a no-brainer.
Once the event progresses to the point where you get to fight the actual boss, anyone who hits the boss will get a small participation reward in the form of gold pieces. On top of that the boss will have a traditional loot table that will go to the raid group that either landed the killing blow, or did the most damage to the boss.
In this way, everyone who participates in the event gets some kind of reward and therefore has an incentive for taking part, while still offering the more "hardcore" players a chance to earn rare loot from the event.
As for the issue of joining and leaving automated groups, this should definitely be an option. All it takes is a simple button in the options menu to either allow the system to automatically place you in a group, or ask you for confirmation first. One thing that also helps is a QoL change that Blizzard have put in quite recently, which is "group invite request". Simply put, this speeds up the process of joining groups in the open world. Before you had to ask one of the group members if you could join them, who would then have to pass the message onto the group leader, who would then have to find and invite the person who wanted to join. This is really awkward to do so instead you can just send a request to join a group, which is automatically be sent to whoever the group leader is. The group leader can than accept or deny the request. Much easier and faster in the open world.
You have described, quite literally, a loot pinata hahaha where gold coins pop up above your head when you hit it with a mario sound effect I can only hope :P. But in all seriousness I think this would be a tragic lost opportunity if they made the reward system so trivial as it suggests that the boss fight is also trivial.
The whole thing should be set up like a reputation grind imo. You take part and participate in tasks/quests etc to gain the ability to engage increasingly difficult tiers of content leading up to the world boss. You get rewards for contributing to the effort (i.e. your gain in reputation) plus you get the loot that drops of the content you were able to unlock and also beat. This rewards players for their time via the reputation baseline reward, but also gives them a sense of accomplishment and rewards them for having the skill to kill w.e tier of content they are able to.
The tough part is, again, the open world aspect of it. Even if something is "open world' does not make it freely accessible. It just means it is not instanced. This could mean that depending on your "reputation level" as I've described it, you gain access to the area (perhaps with some item or something, or some spawn mechanic that you can now engage) where you could fight that tier of content. Other groups that managed the same would be able to be there too allowing for conflict to occur. Lower tier content would have more things to kill and faster respawn (high supply high demand) but as the tiers go up, fewer targets to fight over (there will be less generals than acolytes to kill).
That's discrimination
well, how else are they meant to respawn?
Magic (duh!).