Should the final boss be instanced or open world?

Call it the hardest boss or final boss, does not matter. For major patches, we will probably have a main antagonist we have to fight.

Obviously, we want this epic questline ending boss to be hard, unforgiving, and nerd-gasm inducing when you kill it. The visuals should be epic. The fight should be difficult, but fun.

But the biggest question... should he be instanced or open world? What do you think? And why?

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daveywavey

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I would have to say that the concept of a epic questline leading up to a final boss is a flawed one in itself. Intrepid can tell me I am wrong about their vision of the game if I am, but in my opinion we are the the final boss.

The wars we have with each other to me should be the final boss. Any dragons or powerful monsters in the world are just resources to be fought over. The only story I care about is my node vs whom ever wants to take it. That is a living story that we can all participate in.

In this way, all bosses can and should be open world. Feel free to disagree, but I have stated many times that MMOs need to be moving away from set quests and storylines, and move deeper into systems that harvest natural player interaction and emergent stories. A little bit of background lore and setting is fine to give players a starting point, but we need not have the DEVS drip feed us story every six months like WOW and FFXIV.

If we're the main source of story, how are The Ancients the "primary antagonists"? In order to be a "primary antagonist", they need to be involved somehow, and that can only really be through quests/mission/story content.

Noaani

Vhaeyne wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Vhaeyne wrote: »

Right, now I am thinking AOC is like 20% story, 80% open world.

Open world doesn't mean there is no story - it basically just means "not instanced".

That is how I meant it.
EVE online style, you figure it out your own goals gameplay for 80% of your gameplay experience.
Standard MMO style, Spam quest chains for the remaining 20% of your gameplay experience.

Just an educated bet on how (40 days of 6-8hours to cap) in a dynamic world will work for story telling.
Always happy to be wrong when predicting how things will actually pan out.

While you may be right, I'm not personally looking at EVE for much of an insight in to how Ashes will be other than some aspects of the economy - especially in relation to individual marketplaces and the need to move materials.

I may be wrong, you may be wrong (most likely, we are both wrong), but that is how I see it.

Tragnar

I really like the idea that only the best of us on the server can go and kill the last/hardest boss. There could definitely be secondary bosses/minions for people to tackle in order to allow the fight to begin - that way you get to participate in killing said boss even without entering combat with him.

Nobody really enjoys zergfests, because the enjoyment from that is the novelty - "hey so many people together in one place fighting!" - when novelty fades then it just becomes a tiresome chore that shoots down your fps

having game systems to ensure the amount of players to not exceed 40 is the only way to create varied, engaging and challenging bosses. There could even be hard nerf for the loot if you fight it with more than 40 people - like "good you killed him with 50 people, here is some pocket change, but if you want the treasure come as 40 next time"

TSG

Marzzo wrote: »

I can't understand how anyone wants an epic encounter in the open world. The lags, the tank and spank mechanics, just ugh.

Just the fact that a boss is balanced around the fact that troll guilds will come and try to stop you makes me cringe. It's a sad truth that open world bosses are just there to be cool. The only challange is using brain power to spawn camp it and hope some scrubs dont come and mess up the fight.

If nobody comes and messes up the fight the boss will just be a cakewalk since you cant make a boss with deep mechanics open world. Never seen it in any game.

Other guilds/nodes contesting your guild's/node's progress isn't them trolling. It's called competition, and if you want to be a part of the best group, your group will need to contest others progress in the game.

Tragnar

TavernSide Gaming wrote: »

Marzzo wrote: »

I can't understand how anyone wants an epic encounter in the open world. The lags, the tank and spank mechanics, just ugh.

Just the fact that a boss is balanced around the fact that troll guilds will come and try to stop you makes me cringe. It's a sad truth that open world bosses are just there to be cool. The only challange is using brain power to spawn camp it and hope some scrubs dont come and mess up the fight.

If nobody comes and messes up the fight the boss will just be a cakewalk since you cant make a boss with deep mechanics open world. Never seen it in any game.

Other guilds/nodes contesting your guild's/node's progress isn't them trolling. It's called competition, and if you want to be a part of the best group, your group will need to contest others progress in the game.

I agree it would be great to have a tight competition, but it would be shame if the bosses are designed around competition - if you are ok with the boss being challenging for single 40man group and literally unkillable with rivaling guilds around then we basically want the same thing, but we both are concerned about different points of importance

Vhaeyne

daveywavey wrote: »

If we're the main source of story, how are The Ancients the "primary antagonists"? In order to be a "primary antagonist", they need to be involved somehow, and that can only really be through quests/mission/story content.

The Ancients? Sounds like some random jurks that will be easily defeated. When that happens we can all keep killing each other.

See you on the battlefield.

Greendino

I think the whole point of the game is that there won't be a single "final boss", given that the node system means that there will which high tier encounters are available is determined by which places are leveled up.

I think this a very interesting thing, so that there will always be a drive to destroy nodes (and always a need to defend them) because of this, only adding to ongoing conflicts.

Khronus

The hardest content should be instanced. I am not a fan of having 300 people show up to fight a boss. That just doesn't seem like fun. Being able to organize, progress, work on rotations/talent trees.....that is what I am hoping for. If we can steam roll everything, the game won't last.

Asgerr

If said raid monsters are storyline related, it would behoove everyone to have it be instanced.

However I can also see a raid boss with a particular time limit to the fight, or with multiple steps. Perhaps after x amount of time or % of life lost, the boss flies away and it's up to the players in that server to track it down. Perhaps it requires the use of ballistae and other siege weaponry, and thus we need to collaborate to move the resources to the area where the boss flew to.

Over multiple stages, and phases, perhaps the boss has some other "downtime mechanics". Say if we don't find it in time, it destroys a node in the area or ravages through that node's resources etc.

This, coupled with the size of the world and the no fast travel, would certainly make the fight feel grand and epic, with some Monster Hunter elements to it as well.

Jeetoph

I understand the competition between nodes is the main goal of the game and therefore a big part of content is and should be open world (dungeons included) to allow node citizen to sabotage their rival's progression.
That said I would appreciate a little part of the game's content (like HL Raids) dedicated to PvE only and I can't see that happening without being instanced.

Cadac

I hate the idea of zerg = win. I also hate the idea instanced content on farm status. We shall see what Intrepid does. I will not complain without playing it first.

World bosses should be the pinnacle of difficulty, and gear progression. They will be the acid test for the PVX model in Ashes I think.

Khronus

end game content should be instanced but earned through some form of open world unlock. Maybe max lvl node/city unlocking the content for the local faction to be able to experience. If all of the best content is able to be griefed, people will get tired of dying while trying to do the content. We need a way to organize and progress as a group IMO.

halbarz

Open world ... if people are afraid of being steamrolled. they should plan their encounter better.
Have scouts, form alliances with other guilds, communicate with each other and be prepared.

PvP is not only about numbers, by having eyes on potential groups you can either run off or prepare for battle. People have forgotten how much influence good communication can have in PvP.

Forming a good community will be key to achieving your personal objectives in Ashes and this will for sure be the case for raid bosses.

Khronus

halbarz wrote: »

Open world ... if people are afraid of being steamrolled. they should plan their encounter better.
Have scouts, form alliances with other guilds, communicate with each other and be prepared.

PvP is not only about numbers, by having eyes on potential groups you can either run off or prepare for battle. People have forgotten how much influence good communication can have in PvP.

Forming a good community will be key to achieving your personal objectives in Ashes and this will for sure be the case for raid bosses.

If they allow the best content to be open world, best believe I will be bringing 300-1200 people with me to shut you down lol. You are absolutely incorrect that pvp is not about numbers. It will be a steamroll on whatever node I want to control. Just like someone can form an alliance to stop a zerg, so can other guilds form an alliance to zerg. Even if evenly matched, try killing a raid boss while fighting an equal number of players. It would be cancer to get any content done without going extreme and doing "late" raids....which I feel is more than we should have to deal with as players. This is a game, not a second job.

Heruwolf

Personally, I'd like to see some kind of pseudo-instancing. It's open world, but it has a giant door/barrier that when the boss is engaged it activates the barrier or door to block everyone else who's not in the area. This stops massive guilds from messing up your fight 75% of the way through, but also allows raids to compete against each other during the first phase of the boss.

There are a lot of challenges with this. If during the first phase of a boss there is more than one raid in the designated boss zone, then it does its normal mechanics but also pulses an ever increasing AOE. The purpose of the AOE is mostly to not allow people to just heal through it, but also forcing stealthers out so that they can't stick around for forever. The increasing AOE also serves as a sort of enrage timer, eventually being a one-shot. If you were to try to zerg it, the boss recognizes the number of players around them and either one-shots everyone in the room, or simply leaves, like flies away, burrows underground, escapes into a side room and shuts the door, something. This makes for an anti-zerg mechanic.

While there are plenty of potential issues that exist the biggest one that I see is What happens after you've successfully defeated the other players, you've fought tooth and nail, and your raid team one, but 10+ of your raid are dead. Do they auto-rez? Do they get the option to run back and enter the room? Can you rez them during combat?

Furthermore, this stops raids from kiting bosses back to Metropolis nodes and killing them there by zerging them too, granted that can be solved by leash ranges.

I'm not a game dev, so this is literally me putting 30 minutes of thought while also watching a random twitch stream, so idk. Take it or leave, idc. XD

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