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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
This is a huge assumption and is very subjective. I'll grant you that most people who like PvE, currently like PvE instances. This is definitely the trend in PvE-centered MMORPGs. However, we can't say that the epitome of PvE content is instances, it could very well be stuck at a local maxima and it's very possible that there's another format that more people would subjectively like better.
The main reason why PvE instanced content is so popular right now is that its development is easy due to its static nature. Developers can control the exact number of people in the raid, and tune the bosses to exactly account for this. Therefore, it's much easier to balance content for this format. But there could be other ways to implement challenging PvE content, maybe changing dungeon design, AI adjusting for how well the raid is doing at different stages, etc... This is harder to code and design for, but it's possible that this could not only be better tuned than static content, but it also could be less repetitive. I just really doubt that the best PvE design possible in a MMORPG is static, repetitive, instanced content. MMORPGs allow hundreds of players to play them, and yet the supposed epitome is 40 man raids playing what is essentially a co-op linear minigame.
That is an assumtion you are making about instanced content - and one that is patently not true. If an AI can be made to adjust things based on how well the raid is doing in an open setting, it can be more easily made to do the same in an instance - becasue the AI doesn't need to compensate for and non raid members that may be present.
The reason instanced content will always be the pinnacle of PvE content is purely because of the controlled nature of instances. As soon as you remove the instanced component, you remove that control that developers have over the content and environment. I didn't say it was the epitome of MMO's, just of MMO PvE content.
There are other aspects to MMO's than just PvE content.
My bad, I was referring to MMO PvE content when I said that.
True, it is possible to implement those things into instanced PvE content. I'm not willing to assume that non-instanced PvE content can't be better, even though proper implementation of it will undoubtedly be more work and more difficult to get right.
Now when that rumbling is over, lets see what we can take from Lineage2 for example, something that the devs(and Steven in particular) refer to quite often.
There are numerous bosses in L2 which has different "engage" mechanic, and most of them require a quest item to even start the engage.
1. The statue engage - There is a boss called Baium that sits on top of a hugeass tower, which in it self was an issue in earlier patches, because the means of fast travel to the top were very limited. The boss had an "entry zone" in front of his room in form of a crystal, and that crystal was inactive while the boss was dead. The boss had a respawn window of lets say 2 hours(fictional number for the purpose of the presentation), during those 2 hours he could "respawn" in any moment, which gave the tactical advantage to the group sitting on the crystal. When he respawned, everyone with the quest item ready could teleport in(consuming the quest item), and interact with his statue. Once someone talked with the statue, he awakeness, the crystal(entrance mechanism) closes, and the encounter begins. This way the only ones who can fight the boss are those who entered before he was awakened. If you have no rivals inside, you are free to engage, but if there were numerous contenders that entered with you, prepare to fight until someone is wiped, either with the help of the boss, or through your own strength.
2. The Dragons engage - 2 Dragons in earlier patches had the same mechanism of entry, with a crystal in a deep lair, and a quest item required(consumed on entry). What they had different is the "awakening" mechanism. They also had a "respawn window" of lets say 2 hours again, and they could spawn at any point. Once they have spawned, anyone can enter their lair through the entry crystal, however there was no strict mechanic to awaken them, they were on a timer. Once the first person entered through the crystal, a timer of 30 minutes started, and during that time anyone could keep entering, fights could start and finish, full squads could get wiped and reenter again before they awaken. But once they have awakened, the entrance is locked, and only the people inside(let it be only your squad, or a number of rival guilds) can engage it.
3. The registry engage - A boss named Frintezza had also had an "entry door" in form of a tombstone, also needed a quest item(consumed on entry), but this quest item was only required by the squad leader, and this is why. To enter Frintezzas domain you needed a strict number of people(36-45) in a squad, and the squad leader had to register his squad through the tombstone, and all the squad members must be in the proximity of the entry to qualify. This is where it lead to pvp and contest, as everyone who wished to enter had to have somewhat of a control over the tombstone while Frintezza is respawning, but even if you were losing the pvp's, you could still through different means outmaneuvre a way stronger opponent, and register your squad first, granting you an entry. Once inside, you cannot be interfered, its only your squad(36-45) against Frintezza.
Honorable mention - The Door Engage - one more boss that i would not include here is a boss behind a door, that opens only during ingame midnight(00:00), and stays open for 2 real time minutes, only during this timeframe you can enter the boss location.
All of this have the same theme in common, they require pve(quests) to be done to enter, they require pvp to earn the right to enter, and they might be tuned as high up as you want inside, since once the dominance inside was established, you will not be interefered, unless you wipe ofcourse. Forgot to mention that all of those also had a "sleep" mechanic, that put the bosses back to dormant stated - ready to be awakened again - if they werent touched(damaged) for 30 minutes.
You could not use summons in those zones(summoner classes could not summon party members inside, clan leaders could not open clan gates, etc.), and if you logged out for more than 10 minutes(disconnect safety), you would get kicked out to the nearest viladge.
Those are only some of the possible solutions, i dont say they are perfect, but they would suite the game way better than strict instanced content for multiple groups entering at the same time.
I honestly believe that if the game had those mechanics back in 2003, and the devs played and enjoyed those games, they will come up with something good, and not the casual "instanced content" that you see everywhere nowdays.
EDIT:
To avoid all the situation of the boss being "too strong, it will wipe everyone before the fight even starts" you can make the boss a semi-dummy for the first 10%, that will do some attacks, maybe some aoes, dots, but the real hard mechanics will start after that percentage, which will mean that someone is confident in his strenght, and commited to the boss.
While this is a valid point - and absolutely is a complaint many people will make at some point - Intrepid have already addressed it by saying that such content exists to give people something to strive towards.
If you have cleared all the content, you have nothing left to work on (from a PvE perspective). As such, it should be very hard to clear all the content.
The only time I would personally say that people making such a complaint have a valid issue is if the content doesn't ramp up. If content goes from being mind-numbingly easy then up to impossible other than for the few percent, that means the bulk of people in the middle have no challenging PvE content to participate in.
If the content scales in difficulty at least somewhat, then I'm more than happy to shoot down such complaints myself.
It is also worth pointing out that all of the mechanisms you outlined are essentially ways to have functional instances in a game that doesn't really have an easily acceptable instancing mechanic.
The downside to all of them seems to be that should the raid wipe, the content is finished. This prevents the ability for the content to be actually properly difficult - as content that is properly difficult will always see wipes happen, and it is not uncommon for a top end guild to need several hundred pulls (and thus wipes) on an encounter to figure out what it is doing, work out a plan for how to deal with what it is doing, and then successfully execute that plan. If you are only realistically getting one pull a day, content will naturally be made easier to compensate for that. Of course, this can simply be countered by adding a respawn point in the psuedo-instance.
The other issue with this type of content - based on your description of it - is that kills of the content will be far more common. If the mobs respawn every 2 hours, we could expect to see them killed at least 8 times a day over weekends, and at least 4 times a day during the week. That is 32 kills a week that we can easily expect - from a possible theoretical maximum of 84 kills a week.
In most games, top end raid zones have a 1 week lockout (give or take a day). There are also usually only 3 or 4 guilds per server able to kill actual top end content. This means that using instances with lockouts, actual top end content is being killed 3 or 4 times per week per server - while using this system as described it would realistically be 32 kills a week. Again, this could easily be altered by making the timer 24 - 36 hours rather than 2, but even if it is a 24 hours timer the encounters would still be killed twice as often each week as they would be using instances with lockouts. Since guilds would be taking on the same encounters multiple times per week, they would also get tired of the same content much faster - and also out-gear it much faster.
Also, requiring quests to enter instances is fairly common - the original EQ had quest access required to enter overland areas, let alone instances - way back in the 90's. This is not really anything that is specific to the type of thing you are talking about in L2, but is something I am a fan of being used in a limited fashion.
As the boss is only "falling asleep" if left untouched for certain time(30 minutes in that particular example), you should have more than enough time to realize that its a wipe, drop a ress on someone, let everyone die to deagro, and then proceed to ress everyone else to stabilize. That was a commonly used thing...
Thats a misunderstanding on your side, or just bad explanation on mine. They dont have a respawn time of 2 hours, they have a respawn window of 2 hours, for example Baium(the statue) had 5 days respawn time and 8 hours respawn window, so his respawning would start 5 days after the kill, and he could respawn anywhere in range of 8 hours. That was made to add dynamic to the waiting situation, and prevent static camping.
Just wanted to point out that those mechanisms i refered to are not actual instances, you could very well see and target people and bosses inside the rooms, they were just locked out from outside interference. You could still track the progress of the bosses, and speculate if the squad inside will succeed or not, thus camping the entry to perhaps reenter as soon as they fail and leave the area.
Not saying it isn't effective, but it is cheap.
A simple respawn location in the psuedo-instance would be significantly better.
Yeah, my bad.
This is essentially the same spawn timer as most contested raid encounters in games that have them (though the two hour window is significantly smaller than the 5 day respawn and 36 hour window I am used to). Contested raid content is a content type I personally enjoy more than instanced raids.
However, this brings up other issues.
Content like this is a perfectly valid thing to have in a game - but if the game is planning on having a high PvE population at all (even if that population has to do non-PvE tasks as well), then there needs to be content to support that.
This kind of content - where there is essentially one kill of an encounter per week per server (or close to it), means only one guild has content. This is where instanced content proves it's worth - every guild that wan'ts content will have it, but only those good enough will kill it.
Guilds need content to keep people together. While I am not saying that all guilds need appropriate content every night of the week, it shouldn't be too hard for people to understand that guilds do need some content to stay together (or to stay in a game).
To me, the minimum is 2 nights a week of content that the guild can plan around - and the occasional unplanned event on top of that.
This type of content - though enjoyable - fills the role of the occasional unplanned event, rather than filling the role of the 2 nights of planned content.
This isn't a reason to not have it. I would love it if Intrepid managed to get in contested raid encounters in to Ashes in a way where opposing guilds can't simply snipe the tank to stop the kill - and a psuedo-instance like this seems to me to be the perfect way to do it.
What I would really enjoy with this type of content is that same short duration access (specific mechanics are unimportant). Whoever gets in to the instance in the alloted time then fights off competitiors until only one guild remains - and they can then use family summons to pull in any of their guild that missed (there should be a mechanic to limit the total player count somewhere though).
Make it so that the entrance opens back up should the encounter reset, allowing other guilds to come in, and the only respawn point is outside of the psuedo-instance. The only other things from there is adding in a way for people outside of this psuedo-instance to be able to see what is happening inside, but in a way where they have no impact at all on it.
What you have then is a situation where guilds will wait by the entrance hoping the guild pulling the encounter wipe, allowing more to enter. If the guild that pulled the encounter attempts to cheese a raid wipe as per the above, they would have to do so in a way where the mob doesn't reset (and if they pull that off, they deserve some serious credit).
So, you have guilds waiting by the entrance (perhaps having multiple would be an idea), watching the fight, hoping the rival guild fails so they can have a shot. To me, killing a contested encounter in front of a rival guild is more satisfactory than just killing that rival guild in PvP, or in a siege (though perhaps not in a siege against a metropolis in Ashes - we shall see).
It is great content, but in order to be at it's best it needs to be devoid of PvP during the actual PvE aspect (though PvP leading up to that would just make it better).
The issue with it again is - it does not provide guilds with that two nights worth of content that in my experience is the minimum needed to keep guilds together in a game - but it is amazingly enjoyable additional content to that.
PvP has a lot of options (caravans, sieges, etc.). But with open world bosses, this is going to force PvEers to be subject to something they don't want participate in (I get that right?). I get it, I'm with you. With instances, at least you can lock the doors to your party, and do as you please.
I also agree, if you have open world bosses, they will have to scale bosses to fight 4x300 man guilds, possibly. With instances, you can, at least, control the size of the content (players).
I am not at all saying Intrepid should not have open world content of several different types, just that they should also have instanced content.
To me, based on what I have seen in other games, open world bosses are all about PvP. It is not some side element to be considered, it is the bulk of what is going on. Take away the PvP element, and the bosses are very, very easy.
Again though, this is not a reason to exclude this kind of thing from the game. These bosses make for a fantastic PvP McGuffin, and are what produces some of the best PvP content in any game that has them.
What they are not, however, is good PvE content.
I want good PvE content - as do many others.
We don't want harder PvE and remove PvP.
What we fear is Intrepid making PvE too easy, cause of the PvP factor.
well judging by most comments, pve'rs are asking for instanced dungeons and raids, to have "safespace" for pve content.
I don't see any reasons for making open world raids hard, with interesting mechanics regardless of extra difficulty due to possible pvp as long as tp spots are mot next to raids, which was said will npt going to be the case, as they want distance to matter. And with family tp feature if you have smart reuse time you wont going to be able to tp whole zerg next to the boss 2nd time. So you win a pvp fight and you have some time to finish the boss.
100% this. I love it. I don't want there to be ZERO instanced raids as I think this is a great opportunity to give us a lore style raid that people can enjoy and complete with fair to hardcore difficulties....but I would expect 95% of all raids and dungeons to be counterable.
The issue with this is that guilds can - and will - block other guilds from progressing.
It should be safe to assume that at some point, killing top end content is where progression lies.
If all top end content is able to be blocked off by a guild, then all those wanting to progress via that content won't be able to do so. Since all a guild would need to do in order to block other guilds from killing content if it is open world is actually kill it themselves, this isn't even a stretch to assume it will be the case on virtually all (perhaps even literally all) servers.
If open world mobs have a spawn timer of 6 days (which is the low end for such games across the number of games I have played with them), then a single guild will likely be able to hold down 18 or so of them, which is more than Intrepid have said will be active on a server at any time (due to node status).
Now, I am all for there being some content that players can completely block others from participating in. This game wouldn't feel right if that were not the case.
However, there also needs to be content that guilds can't block others from participating in (at least not easily).
If a guild is being blocked on content by another guild, then obviously there is a discrepency in progression there. If that guild being blocked has no content by which to progress, they are in a hopeless situation with no obvious way out.
This is what has plauged every open PvP MMO. Games start out with a good sized population, but before long one guild dominates and the others realize they are in that situation above. These guilds either leave the server, or leave the game.
This is why most PvP focused MMO's have a large population to start, but drop off much faster than PvE based MMO's, and that drop off lasts much longer.
If guilds do not have content they reasonably know they are able to run, the games population after 18 months will be 10% of the population in the first month.
There will already be guild wars. These can block guilds from progressing much easier and more comprehensively than just blocking access to dungeons. In fact, in a guild war, it'll be much easier to attack guilds in other ways than figuring out which dungeons the guild will be at on a given day.
If guilds want to progress in the open world, they will likely have to work with other guilds or figure it out themselves. If they can't because the guild is poorly run, then the guild will die and its members will join another guild. It's not Intrepid's job to handhold guilds to ensure they succeed and beat all the content.
That's the problem, what if there's no PvP skirmish in a dungeon end boss??? The boss is just gonna be a piece of cake???
If I can agree with keeping PvP, you have to agree to not dumb down the difficulty of PvE.
I don't disagree with you, but lack of progress due to denial of content is a completely different situation to lack of progress due to being at war with a rival.
A war gives you something to do, it is in itself an activity to do, and people are unlikely to get virwd during this time.
Denial of content means you have nothing to do. You could attempt a war or some such, but since your rival is already outgearing you, and in a position where they can continue to progress you you are not, such a war is unlikely to be successful.
Rivalry and competition is all good. It is what the foundation of a fame like Ashes needs to be. The thing is, and this is what I have been saying all along, that competition and rivalry can't mean players have nothing to do. If it gets to this situation, that competition goes from being good for the game to incredibly bad for the game.
My point is, the boss without pvp will be piece of cake either way at some point, because all of its mechanics will be known and people will know how to counter them.
I'm all for challenging PVE content and i like that PVP adds uncertainty and variation to every boss fight.
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A war gives you something to do, it is in itself an activity to do, and people are unlikely to get virwd during this time.
e.[/quote]
I think you got it wrong, a war is not just some activity to go out and search for players to kill, war is a tool, that enables you to fight against dominating guild over raids. you get no corruption for killing guild you are at war with. so that means if they busy fighting a boss, they are at dissadvantage and you can kill their healers, dps easy.
Trust me, if Intrepid delivers on the scope of content they have already said will be in the game, there won't be a lack of things to do. Especially if you're in a guild war.
We know how many open encounters Intrepid plan on having live on each server, on average, and it is not enough.
I'll likely be running the guild denying people raid content, and the amount they have said there will be is child's play to keep locked down. 12 - 15 encounters is easy to keep on lockdown.
Other guilds will be able to run instanced content if there is any, and single group content, but almost all servers will have a single guild (perhaps two) that has a monopoly on the open world raid content that has been talked about - because there simply isn't enough if it.
well, thats the problem with most mmos today, they encourage division. And they cater to either pvp or pve content. If everything will be as steven is promising to be this will encourage guilds, not pvp guilds or pve guilds, as you will not going to be able to have one without the other. You will need pvp people to clear pve content and vise versa.
On the other hand im also worried about having couple of big alliances that control everything, so i hope they will implement mechanics that discourages zerg and that make it not worth for players to be in a zerg alliance due to not being able to access content. So encouraging more mid size guilds and alliances that constantly fight against each other.
The 12 - 15 world boss raids won't be the majority of the PvE content in the game. This is the highest level of PvE content that only single digit percentages of the population will be able to beat. There will be many more dungeons than world boss raids, and so locking down all of these down is virtually impossible.
If the guild is good enough to beat the highest level content in the game (12-15 world boss raids), then they should be able to handle another guild trying to block access to it. Also, a guild won't be able to spread out their resources to lock down every world boss. The world is too big for that. If a guild tried to do this, the other major guilds on the server would destroy them. There could also be creative solutions such as bribing the guild that is blocking a world boss, or creating an alliance to oust them.
Every game that has had top end open world content - whether that game has PvP or not - has had a very small number of guilds monopolize it. The top guilds on each server are able to do this, and it is in their best interest to do this, so they do this.
This should not be a hard concept to understand. 15 encounters is not hard for even one guild to monopolize - and you don't even need to be a mega-guild or in an alliance to do this.
In other games, all other guilds have then fallen on to instanced content as the thing they do as a guild to keep the guild together. This allows them to have some successes with content, allows them to bring in some good gear, and keeps them close enough to those top end guilds that they are able to - on occasion - contest those open world kills.
Of all of this, it is arguably the successes on content that is most inportant, as this is what keeps the members of the guild happy, and as such is what keeps the guild together. No PvE biased guild can survive any game without PvE successes, and no guild can have success on content unless they have that content available to them.
A PvE guild attempting to stay together in Ashes without content is about as likely to happen as a PvE guild staying together in Crowfall.
In a game with open world content and no instanced content (again, I am only talking about raid content), those guilds not getting the open world kills due to them being monopolized by another guild will have nothing to fall on to in order to keep it's PvP biased guild members happy with the guild - and more specifically, happy with the game. While I hate zergs, it is not zergs that will dominate raid level content. It is one guild of 50 - 60 players.
If Ashes has no instanced raid content, a guild like this is where all of the raid level loot will be (literally), and so a zerg is the only potential remedy available to others to shift the status quo.
@Bricktop
You DEFINITELY do not want to do that. Why? Simple, because players will find out all of the possible spawn location even if they have to datamine the information out. Once you get the locations then you will have army of lvl 1 scouts looking for that boss with exact timers (all of it could be 3rd party based - discord for example) and once the boss is spawned then every guild member hops into their alt to family summon anyone from the guild so the guild is mass summoned to the spot and zerged on first try - that is how the monopoly will look like.
The only option is to hand in the spawn of open world raid boss to the hands of players so they control when it spawns and there is clear progression towards it
Ashes has already something better - Family summons, there is no possible counteraction against that while preserving its original purpose (if you have requirement for it to be only for max lvl then you basically kill 70% of its intended use). And all that you base your argument around is having respawn spots far away from raids. Which a lot of times might not be true and is generally dangerous to rely on that. Plus what you are describing with "regrouping" and "getting morale back up" is total nonsense for organized groups on discord or any voice comm. The respawn time is literally tied to the distance traveled and having "maxed" out mount is going to be an entry barrier for guilds attempting to raid. To be honest I will be amazed if the average "runback" is going to be longer than 10minutes which is basically a minimum amount of time for recovery and killtime for the overwhelming majority of playerbase. Only the top-top-end
You are mistaken. AoC is not going to be PvP game. PvX heavily implies that there will be a big portion of the game focused on controlled PvE.
@Mojottv
If raid becomes this easy after following a guide and the "proper" strategy. Then it was never easy to begin with.
Adding the danger or world pvp to raids is only creating gigantic window for mass frustration for PvE focused guilds. There are ton of players dedicated to only grief others and they will hold big power over Ashes and this will lead to calling whole AoC community the most toxic one online.
― Plato
How many players do we need to grief any raid on the server?
I can see a world where the hardest PvE content is open world, if there are systems to support and limit mass frustration. Like to have open window for "qualifiers" of a mass PvP battle to get a token for entering the raid - like a key to open the raid and close the entrance once inside.
If the leaderboard top-end raids are going to be open world then there needs to be ways to fight griefers without creating a zerg PvP army guarding the entrance.
Without it Ashes will become the most toxic place on the internet. You cannot give individuals or small organized parties the ability to f*** over 40+ people over and over.
The only way I could potentionally see open world raids is to give ramped up corruption to the griefers so if they want to grief a raid group whole night (4+ hours) then the corruption should allow to completely steal all of their belongings (including everything worn) until their corruption ends.
― Plato
@Tragnar
If raid becomes this easy after following a guide and the "proper" strategy. Then it was never easy to begin with.
Adding the danger or world pvp to raids is only creating gigantic window for mass frustration for PvE focused guilds. There are ton of players dedicated to only grief others and they will hold big power over Ashes and this will lead to calling whole AoC community the most toxic one online.
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See thats where our definitions of easy and hard differ. For me if, i can look up a guide on youtube and follow some instructions is easy. Dont see anything hard about following simple set of instructions. It gets hard, when things you cant predict hapends and when you actually have to think on the fly, then it might become hard.
Most popular competitive games have the most toxic communities. Why? because you compete against other people, and rely on your team to be successful as well. If AOC ends up being what was promised, then community will be very toxic and very friendly at the same time. Because playing the game will make you feel happy, angry, sad, etc etc. Making game that makes you experience different emotions is good. sometimes people will help you, sometimes will get in your way.
It was said multiple times that there's no participation awards. That means, only people who are good enough, guilds who are good enough will be able to beat hardest content. I you're not, then either improve, find better guild or find some other content.
That will absolutely be in an open world game. Have a good group of people ready to defend you while you kill bosses if it makes you nervous. You might get an instanced raid here and there, but I doubt it'll have the top top gear of the game. Maybe close to it, but the absolute best will most likely come from open world. The game is slated for 80% open world content and 20% instanced.
We have also already covered the definition of PvX. The game is PvX in that you need both systems in order to succeed as a player. PvErs need to PvP in order to secure world bosses, and PvPers need to kill open world bosses to craft the best gear in the game. It's all intertwined.