OP ideas seems pretty biased/limited by his WoW knowledge/experience, not taking in consideration other games that focus on open world content and use PvX systems/concepts akin to what AoC is aiming towards.
And are those other games still up and alive/successful like WoW? Because from my understanding, other rpgs that put more focus in things like PvP eventually died out.
Such a limited point of view, to think that a game would die because of being pvp focused and not because of it's p2w monetization systems, the ultimate MMORPG slayer in the west....
It really seems like you are looking after some new WoW Clone, pushing ideas to make AoC more WoW-like, kinda similar to some folks that appeared here on the forum asking for AoC PvE only servers....
Never heard of Lineage/lineage2 and Aion? Even tho not popular in the west like WoW, they are still insanely popular in the east and pretty pvp focused.
If you want an example of a popular mmorpg here in the west more pvp focused there is BDO.
To add on to this, WoW is such a terrible metric for MMO success because it's really an exception to the rule.
So many MMO's are doing great and have been for just as long as WoW. Sure they might not be as popular as WoW, but if you take WoW out of the comparison they are doing just fine. GW2, ESO, BDO, and many more aren't as dead as people would lead you to believe.
Edit: And just like JAmesSunderland said, those that failed have a cash shop and monetization as the usual culprit.
If you want an example of a popular mmorpg here in the west more pvp focused there is BDO.
While Ashes would no doubt be considered a success if it did as well as any of these games, they do seem to be the limit of potential long term success for PvP focused MMO's.
The problem with them all is the PvP crowd. They move on to the next PvP game almost without fail. This means any PvP focused game can likely count on a good amount of success, but only until the next PvP game comes out.
The fact that both BDO and Albion are doing ok right now is purely down to the isometric nature of Albion putting a lot of people off. If that game was fully 3D, BDO would be as quiet now as L2 is.
When Crowfall comes out, both games will be a lot quieter. When Ashes comes out, Crowfall will be a lot quieter. When the next PvP game comes out, Ashes will be a lot quieter.
If you want an example of a popular mmorpg here in the west more pvp focused there is BDO.
While Ashes would no doubt be considered a success if it did as well as any of these games, they do seem to be the limit of potential long term success for PvP focused MMO's.
The problem with them all is the PvP crowd. They move on to the next PvP game almost without fail. This means any PvP focused game can likely count on a good amount of success, but only until the next PvP game comes out.
The fact that both BDO and Albion are doing ok right now is purely down to the isometric nature of Albion putting a lot of people off. If that game was fully 3D, BDO would be as quiet now as L2 is.
When Crowfall comes out, both games will be a lot quieter. When Ashes comes out, Crowfall will be a lot quieter. When the next PvP game comes out, Ashes will be a lot quieter.
That's the first time i hear about this "PvP crowd" concept, for me the people that keeps jumping after the "next new big game" are called "trenders" that are usually the people that leaves after a games initial launch hype.
As for L2, it's only dead/silent here in the west, its alive asfk in the east.
I believe that even tho very important, the PvP isn't the main selling point of AoC which has alot of amazing and unique concepts/features/systems and it's monetization system is also a big differential, so i don't think AoC will be quieter any time soon if they manage to deliver what is promissed.
To pick up from this, L2 is alive except for the us uk germany france and nordic countries.
Russians and many south and east eu countries as well as slavic, asians and latin ppl play L2.
It's going strong since 2003 with millions of servers. Many many L2 servers are live for 5+ years. And they are not even official. Some are p2w some are non p2w hardcore.
I feel sry for ppl who only got to experience wow like games.
Man there's been plenty of successful pvp mmos. The pve market is bigger, but that doesn't mean there's not a sizable pvp market for businesses to tap into too. And that's what Ashes is doing, they're making a pvp focused mmo. And by the looks of it, they're making a damn good one. Not a doomed to fail full loot/hardcore mmo like Darkfall. They have innovative features, pretty lenient loot loss on death, new twists to pvp, new reasons and motivations to pvp. It has a serious chance to be successful and some of the best pvp in decades. Let them do their thing man.
If you want an example of a popular mmorpg here in the west more pvp focused there is BDO.
While Ashes would no doubt be considered a success if it did as well as any of these games, they do seem to be the limit of potential long term success for PvP focused MMO's.
The problem with them all is the PvP crowd. They move on to the next PvP game almost without fail. This means any PvP focused game can likely count on a good amount of success, but only until the next PvP game comes out.
The fact that both BDO and Albion are doing ok right now is purely down to the isometric nature of Albion putting a lot of people off. If that game was fully 3D, BDO would be as quiet now as L2 is.
When Crowfall comes out, both games will be a lot quieter. When Ashes comes out, Crowfall will be a lot quieter. When the next PvP game comes out, Ashes will be a lot quieter.
That's the first time i hear about this "PvP crowd" concept, for me the people that keeps jumping after the "next new big game" are called "trenders" that are usually the people that leaves after a games initial launch hype.
Call it what you will.
To be clear though,I am not saying that all PvP players do this, or that it is exclusive to PvP players.
All I am saying is that it is noticeably more prevalent among the PvP crowd than the PvE crowd.
We've already lost New World to yall. Lord of the Rings also by Amazon is probably a lost cause. Just give us one bro. shit
To be fair, I would never expect a Lord of the rings anything to not be a PvE lore fest. Where the players avoid conflict with each other at all costs, but yes there needs to be at least one PvX game that is not p2w. I am dying over here!!
Yeah Vhaeyne. All the p2w games don't count. Neither do the games made by a team of 10 on a shoe string budget. We just want one Western made, decently funded, non p2w pvp mmo. With an open and alive world. Been a long time since we've really had a game that checked those boxes and more. Who knows, could be a big hit.
We've already lost New World to yall. Lord of the Rings also by Amazon is probably a lost cause. Just give us one bro. shit
I'm going to say that I agree, but I am going to put a caveat in there.
PvP in Ashes is about disruption. You disrupt nodes, you disrupt harvesting, you disrupt commerce, you disrupt questing.
What this means is that PvP in terms of quality is an echo of what ever is in the game. If the rest of the game is fairly bland, PvP in Ashes will be fairly bland. If the rest of the game is varied, exciting and interesting, then PvP in Ashes will be the same.
Based on that, it should go without saying that if the game in question has a good top end PvE scene, then that gives PvP players more to PvP with those PvE players over.
Thus, in order to have the best PvP in a game like Ashes, you need to have the best PvE.
Arguing for good PvE in Ashes is not arguing against having good PvP. It is arguing for there to be more to PvP over, which means better PvP.
Edit; even in relation to instances - having an encounter be instanced does not remove PvP from the equation - it only removes it from the encounter specifically.
If a raid encounter in Ashes is instanced, I Would argue that the rewards from that should be required to be transported to your home node via mule, and when the encounter is killed a serverwide (or at least local) announcement should tell people the name of the mob that was killed, the name of the player that looted the reward in question, and their home node (thus the destination they have to take that reward to). I would also argue that there be a time limit of an hour (maybe two), to get that reward back to your home node in order to be able to turn it in to an item of use.
With this, while you have removed PvP from the encounter, you have still given PvP players more than enough opportunity to attempt to disrupt the situation.
I'm terrible at writing conclusions. Anyways, I think for the long term health of the game, it's important to have great instanced content and not put all your eggs in one basket. Have difficult content options for PVE, PVP, World content, etc and let people choose what they want to focus on, and if they are good enough to be top players, to get great loot for it.
Well, I think one of the reasons it seems like WoW is being carried by Mythic+ etc is because Mythic+ etc killed what WoW could have been. Back in the olden days when we had stuff like Everquest (PVP servers) all of the dungeons were free-for-all and man let me tell you there was ALWAYS some kind of craziness going down. Guilds had to learn to play nice together and form agreements over boss kills, people would undermine that agreement and kill the boss anyway causing major drama and mini wars that would then have to be resolved so that they could play nice and share again. Farmers had to learn when to be farmers and when to be players and relinquish camps for other people to enjoy (or else). There was always drama and if you weren't enjoying the participation in it you could certainly enjoy it from the outside.
This may not seem fun on the surface but games like that had 1/4 the content that WoW does today but being non-instanced by design it really generated so much more dynamic entertainment.
All that said, it would be a lot easier to add in a little instanced content later, if necessary, than it would be to start with instanced content and step away from it - and like someone already mentioned every time you do that you kill a bit of the real world so it would have to be done sparingly. The only way to pepper in a bit of instanced content without the rest of the game suffering would be to make sure that the rewards involved would be more trivial than they were for the 'real-world' and of course instanced M+ers and raiders would push for more 'balance' until we had WoW all over again.
I'm not trying to rip on your thoughts - I just think you will be pleasantly surprised at how engaging non-instanced content can be
Idk about eveything else, i stopped reading at the mythic+ part.
Things like Raider.io ruined WoW?? This wouldn't be any different for AoC, do not let that toxicity come to AoC.
This just sounds like a ''This game isn't WoW, but should be more like WoW'' topic, its gonna be a completely different game, it wont be for everyone, you can always just stick to playing WoW.
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akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
My understanding is that only a limited amount of gear will be bind on pickup, so if you are not doing raids, joining a clan or even pve content, then there is still probable possibility that if you play the market well enough you might just be able to obtain it that way.
OP ideas seems pretty biased/limited by his WoW knowledge/experience, not taking in consideration other games that focus on open world content and use PvX systems/concepts akin to what AoC is aiming towards.
And are those other games still up and alive/successful like WoW?
I'm so tired of hearing this. If all you can come up with for an argument is "WoW this, WoW that", it shows how little you know about the MMORPG space. WoW has been on a downward spiral since 2010. Most of the players still clinging to the game won't leave because they've invested 5+ years of their life logged into the game. I wouldn't call a game that's losing more and more players each expansion a 'success' anymore.
Lol I mean look at the WoW devs struggling to release patch 9.1 before Shadowlands turns 1 year old.
I recommend branching out and playing other MMO's so that you can potentially bring a better argument to the table. Like others have stated above, more instanced content means less people in the open world, and Ashes needs players in the open world for the game to do it's job properly.
Well, I think one of the reasons it seems like WoW is being carried by Mythic+ etc is because Mythic+ etc killed what WoW could have been. Back in the olden days when we had stuff like Everquest (PVP servers) all of the dungeons were free-for-all and man let me tell you there was ALWAYS some kind of craziness going down. Guilds had to learn to play nice together and form agreements over boss kills, people would undermine that agreement and kill the boss anyway causing major drama and mini wars that would then have to be resolved so that they could play nice and share again. Farmers had to learn when to be farmers and when to be players and relinquish camps for other people to enjoy (or else). There was always drama and if you weren't enjoying the participation in it you could certainly enjoy it from the outside.
This may not seem fun on the surface but games like that had 1/4 the content that WoW does today but being non-instanced by design it really generated so much more dynamic entertainment.
All that said, it would be a lot easier to add in a little instanced content later, if necessary, than it would be to start with instanced content and step away from it - and like someone already mentioned every time you do that you kill a bit of the real world so it would have to be done sparingly. The only way to pepper in a bit of instanced content without the rest of the game suffering would be to make sure that the rewards involved would be more trivial than they were for the 'real-world' and of course instanced M+ers and raiders would push for more 'balance' until we had WoW all over again.
I'm not trying to rip on your thoughts - I just think you will be pleasantly surprised at how engaging non-instanced content can be
On EQ PvE servers it wasn't as wild, mostly civilized. People would enter a dungeon and shout "camp check" to know if the room they were interested in had people in it. Paladins would camp one room of Guk for the Ghoulesbane, they would help each others, but keep a list on who would get the sword if it drop. Popular npcs were camped 24/7. You could walk in some dungeons without seeing a mob because everything was killed very shortly after it spawned. Static drops + overcrowding made the content hard do access.
I guess instanced dungeons seemed like a good idea a first. Groups had the whole dungeon for themselves. People could have a go at all the dungeons. "Interesting" loot drop from mini bosses who had their own little scenarios.
But there was a price... Every time you enter a dungeon it is the same as before, no one has cleared a part of it, no one is there to hear your shouts and come to help from an adjacent room, and no one is really interested in the trash mobs between the bosses. On PvP servers, although getting in the instance may be tougher, once in, you're in PvE land.
Open dungeons are not perfect, but I hope they'll bring back the dynamic feeling of old. I hope all denizens are worth fighting over and not only the big dogs.
Im so tired of instanced bosses. The best times I had in MMOs was fighting for world bosses and competing with other alliances for drops. Every time a new game comes out there's always someone complaining about PVP. Please, for the love of god, can we get one just one game that is focused on open world PVP and not just one big PVE grindfest.
OP ideas seems pretty biased/limited by his WoW knowledge/experience, not taking in consideration other games that focus on open world content and use PvX systems/concepts akin to what AoC is aiming towards.
And are those other games still up and alive/successful like WoW? Because from my understanding, other rpgs that put more focus in things like PvP eventually died out.
Believe there is much more Pve themepark mmorpg death then pvp/pvx, and some of them Triple AAA projects like rift, secret world, star wars, wildstar, fallout76 now tell me how many big budget mmorpg pvp/pvx you have? Fast answer 0, all western indie devs or asian p2w...
Now the top 4 mmorpg played WOW, GW2, ESO, FF, what they have in common? An well know IP an background, and big budget... So i will just believe that PVP/PVX mmorpg always died after i see a Big budget project dying, that 4 themeparks are played because of IP and story in game, many of that players don´t care about the player interaction in the game...
Im so tired of instanced bosses. The best times I had in MMOs was fighting for world bosses and competing with other alliances for drops. Every time a new game comes out there's always someone complaining about PVP. Please, for the love of god, can we get one just one game that is focused on open world PVP and not just one big PVE grindfest.
More than that, even in a PvE game having non-instanced bosses can be a very competitive experience.
For example in Ragnarok Online (Classic edition) I had great fun contesting bosses with other guilds: boss loot only dropped to whoever did most damage, which facilitated competition, and there were numerous ways to interfere with each others plans without direct PvP.
Then again, there are games like BDO which be like "We have open world bosses and PvP", but on close inspection it appears that the way these bosses are implemented doesn't promote any competition, doesn't promote any skill or cooperation, and is just mindnumbing bash fest where everyone gets loot in the end, and all boss abilities are telegraphed a mile away (and if not - be ready to hear everyone cry about it)
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NagashMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
100% agree that pve is important and should be as good as possible in any game including Ashes. I wasn't trying to imply that pve isn't important. Having players whose main focus is pve in a pvp leaning game is a good thing if they want to be there. And they should be catered to with good pve content.
But New World's pvp system was absolutely neutered by people whining. It needed fixing, but many of the people who were whining, their only goal of that whining was to see pvp completely removed. And they mostly succeeded, it's neutered. And this isn't the first time that's happened, many games have been through this to varying degrees. (I've been playing mmo's for 25 years.) And Amazon's LOTR will probably end up the same way. Maybe even Riot's mmo.
But heavily instanced games are just bad when you're trying to make an open, immersive, alive world. It's been proven time and time again. Your solution of making the players leaving an instance have to transport the loot somewhere while being pvp vulnerable is pretty good. I think it'd be a worthy compromise in general. Although people will game that system and cause people to whine when they steal their loot without even having to kill the boss themselves. But it just leaves the question, why instance it in the first place?
And to answer my question as to why NOT to use instances, because this isn't a competitive pve game. It never marketed itself as, it's never declared itself to be, it's actually quite the opposite. Instanced pve is good for competitive pve. Instanced pvp is good for competitive, fair, balanced pvp. This game is trying to be neither. It's trying to be an MMORPG. Thank you god for finally giving us a dev team willing to take a stab at reviving the genre.
This game should not be like WoW and add instances because "WoW is the most successful mmo of all time and they did it." This game is trying to be quite the opposite of WoW. Mostly non instanced. Very few BOP/BOE. No addons. No raid finder. Very little fast travel. Pvp focus instead of pve focus. I could go on and on, they're literally trying to be the opposite. And people coming in here trying to make it more like wow. It's not gonna stop. I said it in another thread, people need to be willing to make their voices heard and defend the game. They will never stop, it will continue even past launch.
I aint done. lol. The definition of MMORPG has never been WoW. The definition has never exclusively been 40 man instanced raid content (the country line dancing equivalent of gaming), nor mount collecting, nor skin collecting, nor pvp relegated to arenas and battlegrounds, nor fast travel to anywhere in the world. That's just what wow did. And they struck a chord, did very well. Major props to them. Games a legend, an icon, I respect it. But it could be argued that WoW doesn't even fit the definition of an MMORPG anymore. It is argued in fact. Either way, the definition allows for a lot, including a whole world of things WoW doesn't even touch on.
But heavily instanced games are just bad when you're trying to make an open, immersive, alive world.
Very few people are asking for the game to be heavily instanced - I would argue that even the OP here isn't asking for heavily instanced. He is asking for instances (which Intrepid have confirmed to be in the game), and a lot of his reasoning is the same as what I have been saying for a very long time (you cant have a challenging encounter in an open PvP setting and expect it to be killed).
About the only place I disagree with the OP here is in instancing dungeons. Instances in Ashes should be single encounter affairs, not full dungeons. On top of that, the entrance to them should be in open dungeons - as this means the exit for them is in open dungeons.
In a similar way to how good PvE will mean better PvP, instances done well will also lead to better PvP. While you may not be able to interrupt people mid encounter (no self respecting PvP player would do that), the very fact that PvP is absent from the encounter itself allows the developers to add in a PvP contest in other ways.
Well then I think we're mostly in agreement. I'm cool with the 20% instancing that the devs have cited. We don't know exactly what that 20% is going to be, but I'm cool with the number. I wouldn't call that heavily instanced. But it wouldn't take much going up from there and I'd begin to call it heavily instanced.
The whole point of the game is the conflict between nodes, guilds, and whatever other factions. Resources and dungeons will be contested. There will be strategies at times to try and stop opposing nodes and guilds from doing dungeons and collecting the resources therein. If you can just sidestep all of that by heavily instancing it, it kinda defeats the general stated purpose of the game.
I don't know if you were being sarcastic about the "no self respecting pvp player" comment or not, but I absolutely would interrupt people mid boss encounter if they were enemies or if my group just wanted to kill the boss. That sounds like an absolute blast. And I fully expect to be the one being attacked sometimes too mid boss encounter. That sounds like a blast too. There will be some incredible fights that are generated by that mechanic.
Edit: There will be some incredible politics generated by that mechanic too. It's the lifeblood of the game, the driving force. Everything the game's trying to be.
Its actually good thing that there are almost no instances. I played both type of MMOs, where it favors instances like WoW and where there are 0 instances like L2 (at least at start there were no instances).
From my experience, MMO without instances is way way better and more interesting. Thats actually how I imagine real MMO should be.
Some benefits of no instances:
- closer community: you can see and interact with more people and might actually start knowing your server players, start making bonds and rivalries.
- feeling like you are actually in a big world, instead of multiple tiny instanced worlds.
- players are more interconnected with each other as there is one shared world, so action and consequences are way bigger.
You could say that in instances you could have more fair competition, like instanced raids etc. In a sense yes, but it is very small price to pay to have actual MMO game world. And with instances it would not work the same as without.
I played Dragon Nest when it first came out and I liked a few things about the game, but the fact that everything was an instanced dungeon made the world feel small and fake.
I wish I were deep and tragic
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akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited April 2021
Forgive me, but with L2 I thought most of the raid bosses were open world but some of the big bosses were in fact instanced. I recall heavy pvp for some of the major ones to be first in their room where by once a certain amount of time or something triggered the door to lock to further access.
My clan used to keep a stopwatch on some of the lesser bosses and do them quite regularily and although open world pvp, I think we only got hit by a competing clan during a raid about 1 in 20 or 30 raids. And those clans often had little interest to kill the boss, more over it was to dishearten / upset our clan that they were at war with.
So based on my isolated and limited experience in open world raids where pvp is possible, it was not really an issue to have open world bosses but still feel that the key, largest raid would still benefit with something similar with instance gating
Forgive me, but with L2 I thought most of the raid bosses were open world but some of the big bosses were in fact instanced. I recall heavy pvp for some of the major ones to be first in their room where by once a certain amount of time or something triggered the door to lock to further access.
My clan used to keep a stopwatch on some of the lesser bosses and do them quite regularily and although open world pvp, I think we only got hit by a competing clan during a raid about 1 in 20 or 30 raids. And those clans often had little interest to kill the boss, more over it was to dishearten / upset our clan that they were at war with.
So based on my isolated and limited experience in open world raids where pvp is possible, it was not really an issue to have open world bosses but still feel that the key, largest raid would still benefit with something similar with instance gating
L2 Grand/World Bosses till High Five
Queen ant: Not instanced
Core: Not instanced
Orfen: Not instanced
Zaken: For most of the time was not instanced, but after Gracia Epilogue became instanced with 2 difficults.
Baium: On respawn everyone could use the teleport crystal and enter his arena using the quest item (people would pvp for hours to secure the crystal spot for their clan), but after awakening him no one else could enter it(some times it would respawn in the middle of a fight so both clans would enter and standoff inside of the arena with the boss awakened to see who would secure it).
Unsure if it can be considered an instance.
Beleth, Antharas and Valakas: The same as Baium.
Frintezza(Scarlet Van Halisha): The same as baium but was eventualy turned into an instance in Freya version
Baylor: Simple wasn't considered a world boss by most because it was a 1 party boss.(Was instanced)
Freya: Straight up instanced with 2 difficults.
Comments
To add on to this, WoW is such a terrible metric for MMO success because it's really an exception to the rule.
So many MMO's are doing great and have been for just as long as WoW. Sure they might not be as popular as WoW, but if you take WoW out of the comparison they are doing just fine. GW2, ESO, BDO, and many more aren't as dead as people would lead you to believe.
Edit: And just like JAmesSunderland said, those that failed have a cash shop and monetization as the usual culprit.
The problem with them all is the PvP crowd. They move on to the next PvP game almost without fail. This means any PvP focused game can likely count on a good amount of success, but only until the next PvP game comes out.
The fact that both BDO and Albion are doing ok right now is purely down to the isometric nature of Albion putting a lot of people off. If that game was fully 3D, BDO would be as quiet now as L2 is.
When Crowfall comes out, both games will be a lot quieter. When Ashes comes out, Crowfall will be a lot quieter. When the next PvP game comes out, Ashes will be a lot quieter.
That's the first time i hear about this "PvP crowd" concept, for me the people that keeps jumping after the "next new big game" are called "trenders" that are usually the people that leaves after a games initial launch hype.
As for L2, it's only dead/silent here in the west, its alive asfk in the east.
I believe that even tho very important, the PvP isn't the main selling point of AoC which has alot of amazing and unique concepts/features/systems and it's monetization system is also a big differential, so i don't think AoC will be quieter any time soon if they manage to deliver what is promissed.
Aren't we all sinners?
Russians and many south and east eu countries as well as slavic, asians and latin ppl play L2.
It's going strong since 2003 with millions of servers. Many many L2 servers are live for 5+ years. And they are not even official. Some are p2w some are non p2w hardcore.
I feel sry for ppl who only got to experience wow like games.
To be clear though,I am not saying that all PvP players do this, or that it is exclusive to PvP players.
All I am saying is that it is noticeably more prevalent among the PvP crowd than the PvE crowd.
To be fair, I would never expect a Lord of the rings anything to not be a PvE lore fest. Where the players avoid conflict with each other at all costs, but yes there needs to be at least one PvX game that is not p2w. I am dying over here!!
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
I'm going to say that I agree, but I am going to put a caveat in there.
PvP in Ashes is about disruption. You disrupt nodes, you disrupt harvesting, you disrupt commerce, you disrupt questing.
What this means is that PvP in terms of quality is an echo of what ever is in the game. If the rest of the game is fairly bland, PvP in Ashes will be fairly bland. If the rest of the game is varied, exciting and interesting, then PvP in Ashes will be the same.
Based on that, it should go without saying that if the game in question has a good top end PvE scene, then that gives PvP players more to PvP with those PvE players over.
Thus, in order to have the best PvP in a game like Ashes, you need to have the best PvE.
Arguing for good PvE in Ashes is not arguing against having good PvP. It is arguing for there to be more to PvP over, which means better PvP.
Edit; even in relation to instances - having an encounter be instanced does not remove PvP from the equation - it only removes it from the encounter specifically.
If a raid encounter in Ashes is instanced, I Would argue that the rewards from that should be required to be transported to your home node via mule, and when the encounter is killed a serverwide (or at least local) announcement should tell people the name of the mob that was killed, the name of the player that looted the reward in question, and their home node (thus the destination they have to take that reward to). I would also argue that there be a time limit of an hour (maybe two), to get that reward back to your home node in order to be able to turn it in to an item of use.
With this, while you have removed PvP from the encounter, you have still given PvP players more than enough opportunity to attempt to disrupt the situation.
Well, I think one of the reasons it seems like WoW is being carried by Mythic+ etc is because Mythic+ etc killed what WoW could have been. Back in the olden days when we had stuff like Everquest (PVP servers) all of the dungeons were free-for-all and man let me tell you there was ALWAYS some kind of craziness going down. Guilds had to learn to play nice together and form agreements over boss kills, people would undermine that agreement and kill the boss anyway causing major drama and mini wars that would then have to be resolved so that they could play nice and share again. Farmers had to learn when to be farmers and when to be players and relinquish camps for other people to enjoy (or else). There was always drama and if you weren't enjoying the participation in it you could certainly enjoy it from the outside.
This may not seem fun on the surface but games like that had 1/4 the content that WoW does today but being non-instanced by design it really generated so much more dynamic entertainment.
All that said, it would be a lot easier to add in a little instanced content later, if necessary, than it would be to start with instanced content and step away from it - and like someone already mentioned every time you do that you kill a bit of the real world so it would have to be done sparingly. The only way to pepper in a bit of instanced content without the rest of the game suffering would be to make sure that the rewards involved would be more trivial than they were for the 'real-world' and of course instanced M+ers and raiders would push for more 'balance' until we had WoW all over again.
I'm not trying to rip on your thoughts - I just think you will be pleasantly surprised at how engaging non-instanced content can be
Things like Raider.io ruined WoW?? This wouldn't be any different for AoC, do not let that toxicity come to AoC.
This just sounds like a ''This game isn't WoW, but should be more like WoW'' topic, its gonna be a completely different game, it wont be for everyone, you can always just stick to playing WoW.
I'm so tired of hearing this. If all you can come up with for an argument is "WoW this, WoW that", it shows how little you know about the MMORPG space. WoW has been on a downward spiral since 2010. Most of the players still clinging to the game won't leave because they've invested 5+ years of their life logged into the game. I wouldn't call a game that's losing more and more players each expansion a 'success' anymore.
Lol I mean look at the WoW devs struggling to release patch 9.1 before Shadowlands turns 1 year old.
I recommend branching out and playing other MMO's so that you can potentially bring a better argument to the table. Like others have stated above, more instanced content means less people in the open world, and Ashes needs players in the open world for the game to do it's job properly.
On EQ PvE servers it wasn't as wild, mostly civilized. People would enter a dungeon and shout "camp check" to know if the room they were interested in had people in it. Paladins would camp one room of Guk for the Ghoulesbane, they would help each others, but keep a list on who would get the sword if it drop. Popular npcs were camped 24/7. You could walk in some dungeons without seeing a mob because everything was killed very shortly after it spawned. Static drops + overcrowding made the content hard do access.
I guess instanced dungeons seemed like a good idea a first. Groups had the whole dungeon for themselves. People could have a go at all the dungeons. "Interesting" loot drop from mini bosses who had their own little scenarios.
But there was a price... Every time you enter a dungeon it is the same as before, no one has cleared a part of it, no one is there to hear your shouts and come to help from an adjacent room, and no one is really interested in the trash mobs between the bosses. On PvP servers, although getting in the instance may be tougher, once in, you're in PvE land.
Open dungeons are not perfect, but I hope they'll bring back the dynamic feeling of old. I hope all denizens are worth fighting over and not only the big dogs.
Believe there is much more Pve themepark mmorpg death then pvp/pvx, and some of them Triple AAA projects like rift, secret world, star wars, wildstar, fallout76 now tell me how many big budget mmorpg pvp/pvx you have? Fast answer 0, all western indie devs or asian p2w...
Now the top 4 mmorpg played WOW, GW2, ESO, FF, what they have in common? An well know IP an background, and big budget... So i will just believe that PVP/PVX mmorpg always died after i see a Big budget project dying, that 4 themeparks are played because of IP and story in game, many of that players don´t care about the player interaction in the game...
More than that, even in a PvE game having non-instanced bosses can be a very competitive experience.
For example in Ragnarok Online (Classic edition) I had great fun contesting bosses with other guilds: boss loot only dropped to whoever did most damage, which facilitated competition, and there were numerous ways to interfere with each others plans without direct PvP.
Then again, there are games like BDO which be like "We have open world bosses and PvP", but on close inspection it appears that the way these bosses are implemented doesn't promote any competition, doesn't promote any skill or cooperation, and is just mindnumbing bash fest where everyone gets loot in the end, and all boss abilities are telegraphed a mile away (and if not - be ready to hear everyone cry about it)
DING DING DING we have a winner
100% agree that pve is important and should be as good as possible in any game including Ashes. I wasn't trying to imply that pve isn't important. Having players whose main focus is pve in a pvp leaning game is a good thing if they want to be there. And they should be catered to with good pve content.
But New World's pvp system was absolutely neutered by people whining. It needed fixing, but many of the people who were whining, their only goal of that whining was to see pvp completely removed. And they mostly succeeded, it's neutered. And this isn't the first time that's happened, many games have been through this to varying degrees. (I've been playing mmo's for 25 years.) And Amazon's LOTR will probably end up the same way. Maybe even Riot's mmo.
But heavily instanced games are just bad when you're trying to make an open, immersive, alive world. It's been proven time and time again. Your solution of making the players leaving an instance have to transport the loot somewhere while being pvp vulnerable is pretty good. I think it'd be a worthy compromise in general. Although people will game that system and cause people to whine when they steal their loot without even having to kill the boss themselves. But it just leaves the question, why instance it in the first place?
This game should not be like WoW and add instances because "WoW is the most successful mmo of all time and they did it." This game is trying to be quite the opposite of WoW. Mostly non instanced. Very few BOP/BOE. No addons. No raid finder. Very little fast travel. Pvp focus instead of pve focus. I could go on and on, they're literally trying to be the opposite. And people coming in here trying to make it more like wow. It's not gonna stop. I said it in another thread, people need to be willing to make their voices heard and defend the game. They will never stop, it will continue even past launch.
About the only place I disagree with the OP here is in instancing dungeons. Instances in Ashes should be single encounter affairs, not full dungeons. On top of that, the entrance to them should be in open dungeons - as this means the exit for them is in open dungeons.
In a similar way to how good PvE will mean better PvP, instances done well will also lead to better PvP. While you may not be able to interrupt people mid encounter (no self respecting PvP player would do that), the very fact that PvP is absent from the encounter itself allows the developers to add in a PvP contest in other ways.
The whole point of the game is the conflict between nodes, guilds, and whatever other factions. Resources and dungeons will be contested. There will be strategies at times to try and stop opposing nodes and guilds from doing dungeons and collecting the resources therein. If you can just sidestep all of that by heavily instancing it, it kinda defeats the general stated purpose of the game.
I don't know if you were being sarcastic about the "no self respecting pvp player" comment or not, but I absolutely would interrupt people mid boss encounter if they were enemies or if my group just wanted to kill the boss. That sounds like an absolute blast. And I fully expect to be the one being attacked sometimes too mid boss encounter. That sounds like a blast too. There will be some incredible fights that are generated by that mechanic.
Edit: There will be some incredible politics generated by that mechanic too. It's the lifeblood of the game, the driving force. Everything the game's trying to be.
From my experience, MMO without instances is way way better and more interesting. Thats actually how I imagine real MMO should be.
Some benefits of no instances:
- closer community: you can see and interact with more people and might actually start knowing your server players, start making bonds and rivalries.
- feeling like you are actually in a big world, instead of multiple tiny instanced worlds.
- players are more interconnected with each other as there is one shared world, so action and consequences are way bigger.
You could say that in instances you could have more fair competition, like instanced raids etc. In a sense yes, but it is very small price to pay to have actual MMO game world. And with instances it would not work the same as without.
I played Dragon Nest when it first came out and I liked a few things about the game, but the fact that everything was an instanced dungeon made the world feel small and fake.
My clan used to keep a stopwatch on some of the lesser bosses and do them quite regularily and although open world pvp, I think we only got hit by a competing clan during a raid about 1 in 20 or 30 raids. And those clans often had little interest to kill the boss, more over it was to dishearten / upset our clan that they were at war with.
So based on my isolated and limited experience in open world raids where pvp is possible, it was not really an issue to have open world bosses but still feel that the key, largest raid would still benefit with something similar with instance gating
L2 Grand/World Bosses till High Five
Queen ant: Not instanced
Core: Not instanced
Orfen: Not instanced
Zaken: For most of the time was not instanced, but after Gracia Epilogue became instanced with 2 difficults.
Baium: On respawn everyone could use the teleport crystal and enter his arena using the quest item (people would pvp for hours to secure the crystal spot for their clan), but after awakening him no one else could enter it(some times it would respawn in the middle of a fight so both clans would enter and standoff inside of the arena with the boss awakened to see who would secure it).
Unsure if it can be considered an instance.
Beleth, Antharas and Valakas: The same as Baium.
Frintezza(Scarlet Van Halisha): The same as baium but was eventualy turned into an instance in Freya version
Baylor: Simple wasn't considered a world boss by most because it was a 1 party boss.(Was instanced)
Freya: Straight up instanced with 2 difficults.
Aren't we all sinners?