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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.
Environmental Developement
consultant
Member
I do a lot of posts on Player Development. Probably need to say why. When WoW Population was about 5 million was reading forums and one of the many fun facts of WoW came out. Blizzard put out that less than 10 percent of population raided.
Now there are reasons for this like instant que especially Looking for More raid system. Plus some people do not have the time or other people just like to go fishing. But the percentage of people is so huge 4.5 million. That is pretty safe to say that lots of people that want to raid but do not. Raiding in WoW is medium difficulty. Not talking about guilds going after guild ranks just. talking about finishing raid with lets say 3 or 4 wipes. So there is a ton of people that want to raid but do not but could easily could if they just knew how.
Mcstackerson made a really good point about giving mobs similar abilities that you would find in raids. Now this may sound kind of over kill. But in PvP games like League of Legends raid mechanics are actually in a lot of player abilities.
I play Sion and that guy has and Area Effect charge abilities that has to be avoided. So if you stand in the fire 20 times most likely get killed 20 times. So Would learn to stay out fire really quickly. Some abilities area effect rays that shoot out doing damage to everything in front of them. So player has to line targets to maximize effect. Be cool if we had one or two abilities like that not appropriate for every class.
Thing is in Raids and in difficult dungeouns that causes wipes so might get removed before you learn raid or dungeoun mechanics. But if you increase the number of times a toon deals with simple raid mechanics they would most likely to be ready for it. When they finally get to a raid. So giving Mobs raid like abilities is a great idea.
As far as dungeouns are concerned simple non lethal raid mechinics could be added. Things like slime puddles that slow you. Vents that pour out venemous gas but do not kill you. Could even have little power ups like mushrooms that heal a little bit. Even something as simple as a rock that you cannot walk over but small enough to jump over. Just little things that you put in the environment to make people pay attention. The opposite of this is going through the entire dungeoun with nothing of interest but the mobs and the bosses.
Another thing I was thinking is having sounds of danger. Like steel grating, and door closing inside a dungeouns
Could also be applied to the open world just different sounds. But think key element here is that it might mean something. If certain sound always means certain mob is around then sound becomes nothing more than an alert. But if it sometimes means that there is a monster around the corner then it keeps the element of surprise. Plus keeps toon a little bit more engaged in the game.
Now there are reasons for this like instant que especially Looking for More raid system. Plus some people do not have the time or other people just like to go fishing. But the percentage of people is so huge 4.5 million. That is pretty safe to say that lots of people that want to raid but do not. Raiding in WoW is medium difficulty. Not talking about guilds going after guild ranks just. talking about finishing raid with lets say 3 or 4 wipes. So there is a ton of people that want to raid but do not but could easily could if they just knew how.
Mcstackerson made a really good point about giving mobs similar abilities that you would find in raids. Now this may sound kind of over kill. But in PvP games like League of Legends raid mechanics are actually in a lot of player abilities.
I play Sion and that guy has and Area Effect charge abilities that has to be avoided. So if you stand in the fire 20 times most likely get killed 20 times. So Would learn to stay out fire really quickly. Some abilities area effect rays that shoot out doing damage to everything in front of them. So player has to line targets to maximize effect. Be cool if we had one or two abilities like that not appropriate for every class.
Thing is in Raids and in difficult dungeouns that causes wipes so might get removed before you learn raid or dungeoun mechanics. But if you increase the number of times a toon deals with simple raid mechanics they would most likely to be ready for it. When they finally get to a raid. So giving Mobs raid like abilities is a great idea.
As far as dungeouns are concerned simple non lethal raid mechinics could be added. Things like slime puddles that slow you. Vents that pour out venemous gas but do not kill you. Could even have little power ups like mushrooms that heal a little bit. Even something as simple as a rock that you cannot walk over but small enough to jump over. Just little things that you put in the environment to make people pay attention. The opposite of this is going through the entire dungeoun with nothing of interest but the mobs and the bosses.
Another thing I was thinking is having sounds of danger. Like steel grating, and door closing inside a dungeouns
Could also be applied to the open world just different sounds. But think key element here is that it might mean something. If certain sound always means certain mob is around then sound becomes nothing more than an alert. But if it sometimes means that there is a monster around the corner then it keeps the element of surprise. Plus keeps toon a little bit more engaged in the game.
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Comments
In my experience of trying to recruit players in to raid guilds, the two most common reasons for players not being interested are that they just aren't interested in raiding, or that they are unable to commit specific blocks of time every week to joining a guild that raids at those times.
This second point is why Blizzard added LFR, it meant players could raid on their schedule, rather than on a specific and pre-set one.
As to people that are just straight up uninterested in raiding - cool, their prerogative. Different people play MMO's for different reasons, not everyone is striving for the top end.
As to the mechanics going in to group content first - it's not necessarily a good idea.
Developers put new mechanics in to raid encounters for two reasons. The first is to give raid players a challenge - as that is what we are there for. The second - and this is something that is often not considered by many players - is to test out those new mechanics.
Top end raiders know how to play the games they play better than the people that make them, and better than the people paid to QC that game. When a new mechanic is introduced, the developers and QC are able to make sure that it won't crash the game, and that it functions as intended, but they don't really have the ability to test how much of a challenge it will be to players.
This is where raiders get handed the mechanic.
This is also why it is fairly normal for a mechanic from a raid boss in one expansion to end up in group content either in the next expansion or the one following that.
Now, if new mechanics were to be put straight in to group content, it would have the effect of putting mechanics that are untested in terms of difficulty in front of players that may not be aware that they are testing the mechanic for difficulty.
This is bad.
Further, if this were the case, it would means raiders have no new challenges to take on once they get up to that raid content, as they would have analyzed and defeated all the mechanics the developers have to offer before they get to raids.
As to environmental effects - some games already do this.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding but raids are group content.
What OP is suggesting is that all levels of mobs have basic raid mechanics that must be obeyed. Not to the degree of a half second indicator to a one-shot, but something that gives a decent amount of reaction time and isn’t outright lethal on its own.
If players in every content area have encountered the basic raid mechanics, having them compounded, less forgiving, and more frequent in a true raid setting would go over much better.
This obviously doesn’t include the unique mechanics a raid might have that isn’t suited to everyday encounters, but those are what make a raid feel impactful, whereas the basic “block this, avoid that, damage now, interrupt this, get that add” are able to applied very widely to get the playerbase as a whole used to the simple raid mechanics. It’d make the step from casual exploration to small group dungeons to large raids much smoother.
Anyway, I agree with @noaani that most of the time if someone wants to raid but doesn't it's because of time commitments rather than not being skilled enough (or thinking they aren't skilled enough). This is the way of the world. There are plenty of things I would love to do but can't due to the time constraints. For example, there was a time when I was aching to try Archery but my local Archery club only trained at times when I was working.
Raiding is one of those activities that requires you to set aside a portion of your time regularly to do it. Putting "raid" mechanics into dungeons isn't going to change that simple fact.
Again though, this means players aren't going to face any new challenges when they start raiding - which is kind of the point to raiding.
If you wanted to say put "some" of the mechanics in group content, but leave some for raiders - well, all games that I have played both group and raid content in already do this.
I do not recommend giving complex raid mechanics to mobs. I said similar mechanics as in simple and not lethal just like inPvP (can be pretty lethal in PvP though.
So reason main reason 4.5 million people do not raid is scheduling conflicts. One thing that does not support this ist that WoW was trying to get a Mentoring guild of the ground. They were asking community if any one was interested in starting up a guild just to show them how to raid.
Well even if this is the case no reason to not implement idea. Do not see this type of program making people so good that it would make raids to easy. Especailly since there are a lot of wipes right? Thanks for your posts though.
But easy way to find out is just wait till games come out and take polls. Matter of fact. you could make threads in current MMO and see what there reactions are.
Thats why I think that they should have implemented a story mode for raids. Make it super easy, but dont give any epic items, but rather some cosmetic items that resembles the real raid items but doesnt look like the real deal. LFR raids took the meaning behind epic away in my opinion.
In my experience of leading progression raids in both WoW and GW2, a lot of the difference between success and failure is attitude. When you start doing progression raiding you have to completely change your mindset, which some people really struggle with regardless of their physical skill.
Your average player goes into a raid with the mindset of "we're going to kill the boss", but when you are progression raiding, you need a mindset of "we're going to survive the boss". That is a key distinction. If you can do all the fight mechanics perfectly, to the point where the boss physically cannot kill you, you will win. Of course, this means that you have to do hundreds of pulls and be able to do the fights in your sleep before you get your first kill, and a lot of people cannot handle that.
The other problem that a lot of players have when getting into progression raiding is learning how to play undergeared. In games like WoW, Aion and FFXIV you can overgear yourself for the fights before even stepping into the raids, which feels completely different to going in undergeared as a progression raider. Again, this is something that some people never get used to and cannot handle, so they quit.
Notice that neither of these problems has anything to do with a person's ability to play their class or press their buttons. It is all psychological. Putting raid mechanics into dungeons isn't going to help change someone's mindset.
A lot of people just want a fairly relaxing game where they can feel some level of success. Most players aren't really interested in being "the best" and doing stress inducing, exacting, raids, where you have the potential of people yelling at you, or even kicking you.
Formerly T-Elf
Raids are not, and should not, be relaxing. They are there to test yourself against whatever the developers throw at you in my opinion. You dont have to raid to feel successfull in my opinion. You can feel ratification through crafting awesome gear, by making deals in the auctionhouse or by testing yourself in pvp.
Raids and worldbosses like the ancient dragon are the pinnacle of PvE.
That was my point...raids are NOT relaxing. There ARE other ways to feel successful in MMOs, and most people don't find it raiding.
Formerly T-Elf
Sry then, i didnt get that xD
This is something that the OP doesn't seem to understand. Raiding is a niche activity and many people aren't interested in doing it but the OP sees the low numbers of raiders and thinks there is a problem that needs fixing.
Please re-read my comment. If “block big attacks, avoid AoEs, deal damage when enemy is staggered, interrupt channels, get the enemy healer” are "new raid challenges" then something went very wrong in the combat design. Players should be encountering the basics every step of the way and building a good foundation of skill if they decide to move on to group content.
Raids aren't only the basics +one-shots, they're unique interactions that belong to that raid. They're those strange artifacts hidden on ledges your ranger has to grapple up to, or there's a neutral force your bard might be able to persuade to fight with you, or maybe there's two bosses that require the raid split for a long time, maybe a boss has rhythm-based mechanics, maybe it throws down AoEs that turn into buff circles after, maybe it spawns things that end up protecting you. Those are raid mechanics that players will have to learn in the raid.
What they should not be learning in a raid is "oh the AoE in here can kill me?". They should know that from their questing. They should know which vfx mean they can interrupt, and which vfx mean they need to vacate the premises. If the game doesn't require the basics early on, then players will start seeing those basics as optional despite being the core mechanics in any raid.
Raiding is a niche activity. That is what I am trying to address. Wandering mist did you not make a thread about a mentoring program. About how people get to max level and think they could raid. Now you are saying well is not about skill it is about logistics.
And did not Noaani make reference to you can take a horse to the water but you cannot make the horse drink it. Not referencing anything about people just do not have time to raid or committment in another post that is.
Raiding is Niche Activity. well that is what issue that I am trying to address. People that do not raid are missing out on a huge aspect of an MMO that is lots of fun and can be really rewarding. Now 40 man raids are kind of Niche Activity. Not to sure if just finishing a raid with 3 or 4 wipes a like stated in OP is a niche ability.
Ideal place to put a mentoring program is in dungeons and open world cause that is were they are going to be at one time or another.
Definitely said not progressive raiding like going after guild ranks but just finishing raids with lets say 3 or 4 wipes not sure were you are going with this progressive raiding.
Maybe you guys only read like first sentence of post.
Any ways mentoring programs weather integrated into the Environment or Seperate applicatoin would benifit the MMO greatly.
If I want to mentor someone I don't need a special title or mentorship program to do it, I'll just do it. And I'll only do it if someone specifically asks for it. I will not force my knowledge on anyone.
Onto raiding in general, the people who don't raid can be broadly split into 4 groups:
1. People not interested in raiding at all.
2. People who want to raid but can't commit to a schedule.
3. People who are too intimidated by the thought of doing "hard content" to even try.
4. People who have tried but lack the mindset to succeed.
A mentorship program may help the third group of players but these are very much the minority. Groups 1, 2 and 4 can't really be helped with any of the ideas you have put forth.
Now that we have that sorted, I would like to ask, why do you want raiding to become more mainstream?
When you consider Ashes is going to have raid events that effects entire areas of the map in a negative way, it would be beneficial to have a large scope of players than can tackle that challenge. Especially when some worlds will be less populated, or with a playerbase generally less focused on combat.
Equipping players with the basics won’t make everyone a raider, but it will make becoming a raider much less steep learning curve if the world doesn’t have completely different rules than a raid.
Scary things in a raid should be scary everywhere.
As I said, these mechanics are already in group content of every game I have ever played.
You can't say "games should be putting these mechanics in group content so that players can experience them before they get to raids" when games are already putting those mechanics in group content.
The point is for people to struggle. The point is that most people will fail at it. Some will continue to struggle for a long time to clear it. Some will clear it quickly, either through talent or because they've been doing similar things for 10+ years. Some will quit before clearing. And a lot of people won't even try, if they know how hard it is and they know their own limits.
If those facts don't ring true for "top raiding content" then it's probably not actually difficult at all. You either make hard content specifically for the top 10% (making it automatically niche) or you don't. There's no way to make hard content for everyone.
You can help people build themselves up in order to do hard content, and you can encourage more people to try it out, but you cannot get everyone to complete it.
Not everyone can be an astronaut or a brain surgeon or a cutting edge inventor. Most people are mediocre and that's fine.
I'm not saying this to be elitist or to exclude people. I think most of the MMO population could do top-end raiding if they devoted enough time and attention to it. But I don't think most of them would enjoy doing that.
And btw, LFR/story mode can still contain all the cool new mechanics of the top-end raids, if they have a lot more leeway built in (less damage, more time to react, fewer people have to get it right to pass, etc.)
??? Once again, please read my comment?
Open world questing is not group content. I am fully hoping that solo quests demand the same basics as amy raid or dungeon, where you have to approach a boss with respect to its attacks.
I know raids can change based on node development, but what do raids do to affect the node? I remember an example about a dragon and eternal winter but thought that was a world boss case.
Suppose there is a system to help players experience the content:
Raid group A kills a boss without the mentoring system.
Raid group B kills the same boss using the mentoring system.
Like everything else, the rewards for raids should match the risk. Group A accepts more risk by learning the fight without guided assistance. So how would you handle rewards? - would you have a less valuable loot table for group B?
A world boss is a non instanced raid, going by all the descriptions of such we’ve been given.
Aah k, I thought this thread was more about dungeon raids, so I was curious if dungeons/dungeon mobs impacted the world somehow, which would be interesting too.
Here's the issue...
With solo content, you can either create an encounter where players use their class to it's fullest, or you can create an encounter where players disregard their class mechanics in order to follow the encounter script.
If you put an encounter in to the game that has a big attack that players should avoid, how do you force them to do that?
If it is small enough to not instantly kill a mage, it is small enough for a tank and healer to ignore. If I am that mage, I'll just be root/nuking the mob to death. If I'm a ranger, I'll be kiting it. If I'm a Summoner, I'll have a tank pet taking it on while I hang back. At this stage, you really have to ask yourself what the point of that big attack was in the first place.
Because different classes tackle content in such vastly different ways in solo content, mechanics like that simply can not work.
When you get the trinity in action though, those vastly different ways of tackling content all get condensed down in to one basic system of tanks taking damage, healers healing damage and DPS dealing damage.
It isn't until you have this basic setup in play that you can add actual mechanics to content and expect those mechanics to actually influence how players take on that piece of content.
There also could be an argument to make that players shouldn't be going from solo to raid content without taking on group content between them, at which point they will come across these mechanics. I am not making that point here, I am only bringing it up to point it out from a player perspective.
The point I am making is that those mechanics can't be implemented in to solo content in any reasonable manner - group content is the lowest common denominator in terms of where these mechanics can exist, most games already use these mechanics in group content, and players should play through group content before moving on to raid content.
Then we have a fundamental disagreement. Players using their class to avoid, outheal, resist, or interrupt the damage of a large attack is the entire purpose of having those big attack. The point of the heavy hitting attack should be to require players use their class intelligently and with respect to the game world‘s enemies as a whole.
A mage and ranger should have to kite enemies or lock them down, a summoner should have to thoughtfully manage their pets, a healer should have to heal while weaving in damage, a tank should be learning to manage their resources in a fight to outlive an enemy.
Those things should not be a group-only experience. At no point do I believe a solo player should be able to disregard an enemy of their approximate level and be able to crush it without taking any measures to avoid its damage in some way. It directly leads sloppy play as they try to move up. It creates disparity between what they’ve established in solo play as acceptable, and viable combat patterns, and what is actually acceptable.
There is no point attempting to try and teach players how to function in raids, if the means by which they would deal with a situation are nothing at all like what they would do on a raid.
Because that's the thing - in a raid, or even a group, rangers don't kite. Mages don't root/nuke. Healers don't have to think about taking damage themselves.Tanks don't have to focus on keeping themselves alive.
If all is going well, the only two things a tank needs to consider are the position of the mobs in the area, and keeping the enemy focused on himself. All the healer needs to then do is keep that tanks health topped up. The mage and ranger need do nothing other than unload their arsenal on the target that they trust won't then turn towards them, as the tank has that under control.
There is and always will be a massive difference between what you do in group play and what you do in solo play. This is completely unavoidable - as the only game that tried to reduce that difference (GW2) had players demand from the developers that they put it back in.
The problem there was that with group content, players equaled the sum of their parts. In games with a full trinity system, they are far, far greater than the sum of their parts, and so this allows content to be made that is more challenging and more interesting.
You can not like it all you want, won't change the facts of the matter.
The trinity becomes extremely boring if all raid are designs as tank-and-spank like you’ve just described.
There is no difficulty in dps races, there’s no difficulty in stat checks. The numbers game is not what makes a raid fun or challenging. I really hope Ashes will not be that shallow that a dps can expect to be wholly unprepared for a single add to catch aggro on him and that’s considered a normal expectation.
Ugh, I'm honestly so sad the way GW2 raids turned out. Arenanet had so much going for it by getting rid of the holy trinity class system but then ruined it later on with their raids. I would like to point out here that the players (as far as I know) never demanded a holy trinity class system. What we wanted was end-game PvE content (i.e. raids). That's it, nothing more or less.
But when players asked for raid content instead of designing raid encounters that complimented the game's combat system, they just put in WoW-style raid fights and ham-fist in tanking which the core gameplay was never designed for.
What makes this even worse is that Arenanet already got this right with the original Guildwars, which had amazing PvE group content that didn't rely on a holy trinity. Yes there were healers but no tanks since there was no threat mechanic. Mobs chose their targets based on a list of criteria including location, health and armour values. This was great because it meant that everyone had to think carefully about their position, and the casters and healers did have to learn how to kite and use CC, etc otherwise they would die very very quickly.
I wasn't describing a raid encounter there at all, I was describing the absolute basics of what different classes do during a raid.
I was only talking about the basics of what the players do, not what the encounter, it's script or the environment require from the raid as a whole, or individuals within it. Actually, topping the parse of a raid guild is a challenge - as if there are 40 raiders, only one of them is able to be at the top each time. This doesn't mean that encounter was a challenge for the raid, but the individuals in that raid had one hell of a challenge trying to be the best in that raid.
So obviously, this is a point that I completely disagree with you on, but I absolutely do fully understand where you are coming from.
I've been raiding for almost 20 years. In that time, I have played exactly one game that had a good raid game (and a total of many 10 - 12 that have poor raid games). Everything I talk about in terms of raiding are with the knowledge that a game can exist that has a good raid game like that one game I have played that had that good raid game.
Someone that has not played that one game would not have that same notion of what is possible in terms of raid content in MMO's, and this is why I understand why you think what you are saying here.
I've not talked at all about what would/should/could happen in situations where adds are spawned as a part of an encounter.
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If you are playing a game that has classes with a single viable spell rotation in the raid game, you are playing a game with a combat system designed around solo play, with group and raid play kind of shoehorned over top of that.
This is what vanilla WoW was.
This makes for boring raids, as even if the encounter is fun, the combat system with which you are attacking that encounter is not. This is why I disdain WoW raids, and actually openly laugh at people that only use WoW as a point of discussion in terms of MMO raids.
On the other hand, if you build an actual interesting combat system, a system with built in variation, your raid could be attacking an actual training dummy and have more fun than you would have while tackling some of the most enjoyable content in other games.
This is actually something I've done this in past. I took a few members of my brothers WoW raid guild, logged them in to level capped characters in another game (I usually have 4 or 5 accounts if I am serious about a game), and we attacked a training dummy for several hours. It was fun, and they had more fun with that than they had while raiding in any expansion in WoW.
You can complain that the trinity makes games boring all you want, and in the case of most games, I'd agree that the games themselves are boring. However, as someone that has played a game that is far from boring, despite using the trinity to a far greater degree than any other MMO I've played, I am able to say outright that it is not the trinity system you are actually finding boring, it is the implementation of it in the games you have played.
Since you have not played a game with a good implementation of that system though, I am not blaming you for this, but rather the developers of the bulk of MMO's out there that don't know how to develop a class that is able to function solo, but is also able to be actually interesting to play while grouping or raiding.