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Different types of Dungeons and Raids
CaptnChuck
Member
What if you had 3 types of dungeons and raids? Resource Dungeons/Raids, Gear Dungeons/Raids and Lore-based Dungeons/Raids?
Resource Dungeons/raids could be open world dungeons/raids, that give you the materials required to repair/enchant your gear.
Gear Dungeons/raids could be instanced dungeons/raids, that give you gear/gear crafting material, based on your performance in that dungeon.
Lore-based Dungeon/Raids are exactly what they sound like. They are instanced dungeons/raids that drop moderately good gear/materials.
This way you can have challenging PvE content by virtue of it being instanced, without taking much away from the social aspect of MMOs, as players will have to do open world PvE content in order to constantly enchant and repair their high level gear.
The reason I suggest this idea is because I feel like its very difficult to make open world dungeons/raids truly challenging, at least in terms of PvE. Right now it looks like the main challenge of PvE content actually lies in PvP, as you will have to constantly fight off players that come to contest the dungeon/raid. This can be great on a moderate basis, but if you have to constantly do it everytime you decide to clear a dungeon/raid, it can get tiring real quick.
What do you guys think? Have there been MMOs in the past that managed to make open world PvE content truly challenging?
(EDIT - removed lore-based dungeons as that wasn't really my main point)
Resource Dungeons/raids could be open world dungeons/raids, that give you the materials required to repair/enchant your gear.
Gear Dungeons/raids could be instanced dungeons/raids, that give you gear/gear crafting material, based on your performance in that dungeon.
Lore-based Dungeon/Raids are exactly what they sound like. They are instanced dungeons/raids that drop moderately good gear/materials.
This way you can have challenging PvE content by virtue of it being instanced, without taking much away from the social aspect of MMOs, as players will have to do open world PvE content in order to constantly enchant and repair their high level gear.
The reason I suggest this idea is because I feel like its very difficult to make open world dungeons/raids truly challenging, at least in terms of PvE. Right now it looks like the main challenge of PvE content actually lies in PvP, as you will have to constantly fight off players that come to contest the dungeon/raid. This can be great on a moderate basis, but if you have to constantly do it everytime you decide to clear a dungeon/raid, it can get tiring real quick.
What do you guys think? Have there been MMOs in the past that managed to make open world PvE content truly challenging?
(EDIT - removed lore-based dungeons as that wasn't really my main point)
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My assumption is that this will eventually take the form of a number of bosses in each dungeon/raid being instanced off (or phased off). This would leave in place the need to fight down to the bottom of the dungeon, against both mobs and other players, but it means when you get there you know you have content, that content is able to be properly tuned to a single group or raid, and is also able to be tuned to assume that other players will not also be fighting you.
In games with open PvP, world boss encounters are not PvE content - they are PvP rewards. The idea is to either completely clear out or outlast the opposition so that you are able to take on the encounter without contest from other players - and in almost all such games, the encounter itself is actually disappointingly easy. Archeage was the worst offender at this - the dragon and kraken in that game were quite hard to kill, if you had other players stopping you. Two full raids of 40 players each could spend hours on them.
Or, if you had no competition, 10 players could take them out in about 15 minutes, without a single death.
Now, this type of content is actually really important for a game like Ashes - but it needs to be considered PvP content, not PvE content. So far, this is the type of content we have heard Intrepid talk about - but they will likely have to add in content more tuned to PvE players at some point.
As to the third type you added - lore based raids and dungeons - that should be included in all content. I don't personally think it needs it's own content, as everything we do should be lore based.
Hmmm....but is this really better than what I suggested though? It could possibly create situations where players skip bosses to try to reach the end quickly. They will view contest PvP as a chore and not as a fun mechanic on the side, which will be super unhealthy for the game.
With my idea however, if you contest for resources, in resource dungeons/raids, the PvP wouldn't be seen as a chore. This is because you can experience the PvE content you want in the form of instanced dungeons/raids and then choose to either, buy the resources that you need to repair/enchant your gear, or contest resource dungeons for it. This makes it so that players who actually enjoy both PvP and PvE are provided an option to do so, while PvE only players can buy the resources required without participating.
That does make me a little worried. I do hope that Intrepid don't just focus on the social aspect of an MMO. I think that sacrificing some social activity, in exchange for better designed and more challenging PvE content, is extremely worth it. So I do hope that if they read my idea, they at least give it some thought.
Yea that's completely fine as well. My main point was regarding the first two types of dungeons.
So thankyou for the detailed reply @Noaani. But you still didn't tell me your opinion on my idea. Do you like it or nah?
The developers are not that interested in making purely PvE content, or purely PvP content, they want everything to contain an element of both.
Instanced dungeon and raid bosses skew very closely to purely PvE content - if it were not for the fact that getting to them involves potential PvP, then that is exactly what they would be.
A purely instanced dungeon will be a pure PvE setting, and is as against the design intention of the game as adding material rewards to a PvP arena would be.
Also, in your suggestion, players would be able to simply break down the gear they got from the instanced PvE content in order to get materials to repair their gear, completely negating the need for the open content.
Yea that would happen. This system I suggested only works if the materials required to repair/enchant gear is different from the material required to craft said gear.
Maybe instead of open world dungeons dropping repair/enchant materials, they could only drop enchant materials instead. You could also make it so that different gear require different enchant materials. Since enchanting gear comes with a risk of breaking them, this would provide a significant incentive to clear these open world dungeons/raids regularly.
So now what do you say @Noaani ?
One option is to have short respawn time and have "checkpoint" spots throughout the raid for wipe recovery.
Also if there will be an open world chore required to open a certain raid for limited amount of time then it will lead to other guilds trying to grief them. Which will ultimately lead only for the most massive guilds in the node to raid period, because if any smaller guild opens up a raid then the massive guild will just sweep in wipe them out and clear the raid for themselves, while having a dedicated 1 or more pure pvp guarding raidsto ensure the guild gets everything from there.
Overall I think we need more info on the practical side of raiding.
Edit:
Also this would lead to a thing where small guilds might resort to "sneaking" raids in offtimes in order to have any chance for loot.
Or even the most powerful guild might resort to have any smaller guild pay them royalties in order to not wipe them and protect them.
I really wonder if this guild to guild interaction is what they aim for with only open world raids
― Plato
Whats wrong with it? Crafting is segregated from PvP but to get materials to craft, you need to collect resources that can be contested by players. Similarly, PvE can be segregated from PvP as well, but in order to enchant/ further progress your high end gear, you need to participate in open world dungeons as well.
You don't have to make PvP a core part of every playstyle. As long as its a certain part of it, that will do.
All this comes from a PvPer btw.
Yea, there are a lot of things that could go wrong with what we know of the PvE system. But to be fair, we don't know a lot yet.
Also, in your reply, you didn't mention your opinion on my suggestion. What do you think? Does it solve some potential issues that you see happening?
― Plato
I disagree. I do think that instanced dungeons solve a lot of problems that open world dungeons pose. However, they take a lot away from the social aspect of MMOs. That's why its important to find a balance.
I think FF14 and WoW do PvE content pretty well.
I did a poll a long back, about what players preferred, PvE or PvP. A significant portion of them preferred PvE, and didn't mind a little bit of PvP. This further goes to show why MMOs like WoW and FF14 are the top MMOs right now. Its because they excel at dungeon/raid content, thus appealing to the largest portion of the MMORPG playerbase.
So if Steven wants AoC to be a gold standard for MMOs, he needs a large playerbase. In order to do this, AoC HAS to appeal to the PvE community. As it stands right now though, it seems like PvE is not possible without dealing with constant PvP. And that scares a large portion of the community away.
I don't think that changing the vision of a game slightly, for the betterment of the game itself, is a bad idea. Besides, you still retain some of the social aspect of open world dungeons/raids, by having the resource based dungeons that I mentioned.
Let's also not forget that PvE content is a social activity in and of itself; as gathering an 8 man, 16 man, or 40 man group, requires you to socialize with others in your world.
And the instanced content is purely reserved for story purposes tells me quite clear that any and all of competitive content is focused on players creating the raids in certain capacity.
I imagine that some raids are only to be opened up like war effort for opening the gates of AQ in classic wow. And every boss has only 1 life and once it dies the loot table for next boss is determined.
Also this reminds me kind of the story of Smaug in the hobbit. That is once an area is rich enough it can attract evil creatures such as Smaug to attack.
All of this leads me to believe that there will be no weekly lockouts for raids. Since the node development itself will open the raid.
― Plato
@Aardvark
I do hope that they don't do that. Even as a PvP player, I would love to be able to do challenging PvE content on the side; PvE content that is difficult because of PvE mechanics and not because of PvP mechanics.
I hope for that too...but with non instanced open world raids in open world pvp...well unless they change that the pve will not be challenging on its own
― Plato
This is true, but that *if* there is quite big.
I've seen games where the hardest encounters are open world - but they didn't have PvP at all. I've also seen games with open world bosses and PvP, but the bosses were not hard.
These two things don't go together very well, which is why I am fairly convinced that Ashes will have some instanced raid content.
It may not (probably will not) have it at launch, but it will likely be the first new content that is planned after players reach the level cap (meaning it will be implemented in to the game around 9 - 12 months after launch).
Yea but I'm kind of against forcing PvP down the throats of players. There's already plenty of PvP systems in the game. So I don't think that there is a reason to make PvP a significant part of PvE as well. By making it so that you need to do open world dungeons to farm materials required to enchant your gear, you maintain a healthy amount of PvP, while providing PvE-focused players a means to enjoy the game.
I disagree, because the approach of Intrepid is the one that might actually work. This is because the raids themselves are going to be a big piles of wealth. Which in turn creates a big demand for pvp players. I am thinking this because the whole caravan system is going to work like that.
I wouldn't be surprised if there will be an actual aimed alliance between PvP and PvE guilds. So PvE guilds will be focused on millking the hardest iteration of raids possible to get the most loot from there and at the same the PvP guild is going to be focused on protecting the procuring the goods and eventually delivering those for payout.
Instanced content is assured fun, but I am willing to give the open world raiding a chance. Thing is that the game rules around that should promote healthy player interactions and it definitely should not have the best gameplay loop be some degenerate zerg/cheese.
― Plato
I expect us to be able to do raid and dungeon testing towards alpha 2/beta 1. My fear is that by then it may well be too late.
Open world PvE content, at least from my experience, has always derived its difficulty primarily from the PvP aspect of the content and not from the PvE itself. @Noaani stated his experience with it as well, which seems to be somewhat similar to mine.
And I agree with what he said in his reply as well; at that point open world dungeons and raids are no longer PvE content. They are PvP content.
So I do hope that Intrepid understands this when they design PvE content.
I wholeheartedly agree that when PvE encounter is designed with PvP in mind then in turn it becomes a PvP reward and therefore PvE doesn't exist
― Plato
Ah but you see that's where the problem arises.
If you make the PvE content difficult, then players that try to clear it will be overwhelmed when they get contested while clearing that dungeon.
On the other hand, if you make PvE content easy, assuming that players will try to contest, then the content itself will be boring and un-challenging if contention doesn't take place.
So Intrepid has to find the right balance, which is going to be super difficult. But it is possible.
All of this depends on how PvP specs are going to be stronger than PvE specs. And most importantly what it will cost to change PvE spec to PvP, because depending on the player population in nodes the raiding guilds are going to have 2 raid groups. One for clearing and second for a protective bench so the raid leads can request any class stack dynamically depending on what random mobs/bosses they encounter and at the same time to be somewhat protected.
It will all depend on their implementation, but that in due time since combat itself comes first.
― Plato
With that being said, I really really enjoy competitive PvE Modes in the Form of Dungeons, Towers, Raids and Wave Defense. I would feel like it is a pity to design all these amazing bosses, open world raids and dungeons, without taking full advantage of the PvE Aspect of it.
Since they don't want us to earn the limited resources/gear to keep them contested, i'd suggest the following as an alternative to what @CaptnChuck suggeste:
Don't give us resource/gearing type rewards. Utilize the Raids, Dungeons and Bosses, build upon their mechanic to make them challenging PvE encounters in an instanced form, but don't give us resources for it. Instead, make it a monthly/seasonal competition that awards Titles as well certain exclusive cosmetics for the game. Score it through:
Make certain Tiers
- Bronze (3,000 Points+)
- Silver (5,000 Points+)
- Gold (8,000 Points+)
- Plat (9,000 Points+)
- Diamond (10,000 Points+)
that award increasing amounts of goodies depending on where your team places. Additionally create a leaderboard, where the top 1,2,3,5,10 receive a special Title and a recolored exclusive version of the cosmetic awarded to the people in Diamond/Plat ranking.This would keep the open world content as relevant as it is now, but provides the PvE Playerbase a interesting type of content, many would love to do. People that aren't interested in it wouldn't miss anything at all and the base concept of the bosses already exist in the game, which would the reduce the effort they have to put in.
Yea but titles don't mean much to a lot of people. Very few people will actually participate in content like that if it doesn't really progress their character's power in some way.
You still miss their design goal. To keep the endgame in the open world. Your solution moves the endgame to a different instanced content
― Plato
I disagree with this statement. Why can't an open world dungeon be "PvE challenging"? I can't wait for the cool ideas and innovations Ashes will bring to dungeons and one of them being challenging boss fights. There will be open world boss fights where PvP is a danger, but there could also be semi-instanced boss fights: as soon as a boss fight starts, a metal gate closes every entrance of the boss room, making everyone trapped inside until the boss is dead, the people are wiped or a timer runs out.
I agree that having to PvP every time you want to run a dungeon can get boring, but if that's the audience the game wants to cater, this will not change unless absolutely needed. I believe that there will be mechanics in place to discourage PvP in boss fights specifically, but if that's not Ashes vision, then it won't be touched unless necessary.
I don't at all, i'm well aware. But so do Arenas, Battlegrounds, as well as most of the RP features thrown into the game.
Having a system like this with limited amount of attempts would barely do anything to the population of the open world. It would just give something to strive for, for the interested, dedicated PVErs. @Tragnar , something they want to compete in. If you don't give that to them, then they won't be in the open world either, because they have nothing they would be in the open world for. You push them into the open world by giving them an incentive to do the open world content. For example gearing for competitive PvE Content.
It's true that AoC won't be for everybody, but if you can't make minor adjustments, that provides different crowds a reason to stay, become part of the open world PvX and something to strive for within the game, then this game will suffer the same fate, that all the other games did, which looked too narrow-mindedly at their core audience. Wildstar is the widest known victim of the exact same mindset. They were so focused on their vision of an Hardcore PvE Game, proclaiming that the game wouldn't be for everyone, that they didn't see the amount of players they got driven away by that exact mindset (which wasn't the entire reason, but certainly a big factor in its demise).
You give RPers the tools and content to stick with the game? Why? Because you want them to play the game. Will they be in the open world, participating in its content while RPing? Barely. You still want them, because in times where they aren't sitting in their ERP Tavern, they are indeed contributing to the world.
I suggest you read @Noaani 's first reply and see the discussion between me and @Tragnar . We went into it in detail.
I'm not saying the should have no instanced PvP or instanced PvE, but I believe it would be a big detriment for the game to have main PvP or PvE endgame instanced. From the design philosophies I've read about Ashes it is clear that they want to create an immersive world where everyone has the opportunity to find his/her own slice of content.
If PvP players need to cooperate with PvE players to do PvP content and PvE players to cooperate with PvP players to ensure their safety during raiding then the game will be much better than separating those two crowds.
― Plato