[Feedback]Please reconsider allowing other groups to interact with you while doing a PvE boss!

I just watched the Alpha One Raid Boss video that was released a week ago and you guys mentioned that you were going to allow other groups to steal raid boss kills. I strongly believe you should reconsider doing this. Other groups to interact with you while you're trying to kill a boss, let alone steal boss kills. I want to be clear that this level of restriction is not necessary for non-boss encounters.

I come from Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR), which had a little bit of that PvP during PvE with the Dreadtooth and Nightmare Pilgrim world bosses and it was just super annoying. Thankfully, you couldn't ever steal kills since the combat is locked to the group that pulled it, but it was still ridiculously easy for individual players to completely ruin things and cause a wipe.

In SWTOR, one of the tank classes has stealth, so all they'd have to do is just hide in stealth until we pulled the boss and then they could just taunt it periodically to mess up positioning or just keep aggroing it to prevent the actual group from successfully even pulling the boss. If we tried to kill them, they could just stealth out and run away/hide and then cause some more mayhem later on once their cooldowns came back and because they're a tank, they have stronger DCDs and armor, so they can survive long enough to do this even if a ton of players attack them all at once.

I am not sure how much influence individual players will have in this game, but I imagine tanks will be capable of at least some level of this, and the more challenging the boss is, the less influence is required to cause a wipe anyway because you can just intentionally cause a raid wipe mechanic to fail as opposed to just attacking the group . For example, if there's some cleave attack that does a ton of damage so it needs to be pointed away from the group, all the troll needs to do in order to cause a wipe is taunt once to turn it around and cleave the raid, and with proper timing, this wouldn't take more than a second to accomplish.

Now the problems in SWTOR were mainly just from obnoxious trolls, I hate to imagine how much worse it would be if enemy guilds/nodes/whatever feel obligated to stop you because you're granted a buff or they don't want you to have access to the loot or want to steal it for themselves (not sure if all of that is possible). Keep in mind that all this frustration comes from just enemy players being able to interact with the boss, not steal kills. People will leave the game if they have been working for months or weeks trying to kill a difficult boss, only to have some rando come out of nowhere to steal the kill at the very last second. Even if they don't leave the game, raid groups need to be coordinated and scheduled, and these sorts of complications put additional unnecessary burdens on the coordinators and leaders because even if people don't leave the game outright, people are gonna choose to not show up to those events, meaning replacements will need to be found.

There are some ways to design around these issues, but they come with their own tradeoffs and drawbacks, a lot of which would greatly restrict the way that classes, roles, and boss mechanics are designed. I would hate to miss out a cool ability or mechanic simply because it would make it too easy for someone to ruin a whole raid group's day. Furthermore, while there are some players that like both, a lot of players strongly prefer one type of content to the other in regards to PvE and PvP and some of the required skills to be good at each are vastly different and in some cases the optimal play is opposite. For example, a good raider will not necessarily be a good PvPer, and while it may be optimal in PvP to use lots of self heal abilities, you wouldn't be caught dead trying to use an off-heal in a raid (this may not be how things are balanced in AoC, but that's how things are balanced in SWTOR). Forcing a player to get good at a type of content they don't like in order to do the content they actually want to do is going to make most players look elsewhere. This is a step beyond making people do something they dislike, such as grinding for gear, because you don't have to be particularly good at gear grinding to get it done. In order to get good at PvPing, you have to practice. Even if they can't interact directly with the boss, I'd hate to get all of that valuable loot stole by having an enemy group of skilled PvPers attack immediately after the boss dies or be prevented from doing the boss in the first place because that group was guarding the entrance. I am happy to elaborate on more potential solutions if people want, but honestly, that's enough for a whole post on its own. Bottom line: the benefits of PvP during PvE bosses do not outweigh the drawbacks. Thank you for reading my essay.

TL;DR It's way, way too easy for individual players, let alone large groups, to completely stop an actual group from being able to beat a boss. Allowing other players to interact with raid bosses, let alone steal kills, is ridiculously frustrating and designing around it would require too many restrictions on how classes, roles, and boss mechanics are designed.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Dygz

Endonae wrote: »

Loot isn't a good reason to play any game anyway. If you feel the need to get rewarded for the time you spend consuming entertainment, you aren't actually being entertained.

Loot is an excellent incentive for questing in RPGs. Loot helps us progress our characters, and progressing characters is the primary goal of RPGs. Because that improves our chances to defeat challenges.
If we're talking about some other type of game that is not an RPG, sure, loot may be irrelevant.

Endonae wrote: »

The end result is that super challenging open world boss fights become so much more about luck than they should be because the bosses will always be easier when there is no interference whatsoever. This creates a perverse incentive for players to raid at later hours when more of the community is asleep or for guilds focusing on this content to seek out/settle in less populated areas.

I don't know what this means.
In Ashes, a significant motivator to kill a boss is because the boss is disrupting the livelihoods of the citizens of the node or region. Loot acts as a bonus. If the primary reason to kill the boss is just loot, sure, PvP might ensue. If the primary reason to kill the boss is to end the eternal winter the Winter Dragon is causing in the region, groups will most likely ally with each other, rather than fight each other.
"A raid boss, such as a winter dragon, may appear because a node has developed to Town (stage 4). This may bring an eternal winter that affects crop rotations until it is killed."

I see nothing perverse about the strategy to play during hours when PvP is low, if/when avoiding PvP is a goal.

Endonae wrote: »

I don't think you're recognizing the fact that there are things that trolls will be able to do that can cause a wipe in super difficult content. The only solutions are to heavily restrict what individual players are capable of, which isn't fun for anyone; make the bosses easier, which means we aren't talking about super difficult content anymore; or accept reality that you can't have actually challenging yet still enjoyable content unless you instance it.

We will have to see how common it is that trolls can accomplish what you assert.
Sure, if it's as bad as you predict, the devs might drastically change the design - similar to how New World changed their PvP design due to more trolling than they expected.

Jamation

Endonae wrote: »

Thus far, this conversation has largely focused on loot distribution. I think the looting rights as they have been described here are fine within this sort of PvX system, though it seems to be at odds with how it was described in the video where they said that ninja kill stealing at the last second was possible in order to get the buff from killing the boss.

I believe you might be mixing up what will be available in a world boss on release, versus a boss during a siege, versus the bosses presented in alpha 1. When he made the comment about last hits getting the buffs it was presented as being for the bosses during a siege. And from what I understood it seemed like it was for the 100v100 fights during the alpha 1 testing.

As for having mechanics like that during an open world boss I'm all for it. It will mean you'll not only have to cooperate with your team, but also have a plan in place for potential intruders. Perhaps you have a team of 8 focus on taking out anyone that approaches your team. But I think the conversation has been focused so much on loot as that is the primary reward and function of these bosses. Sure, some people might kill them for fun, but they wouldn't just leave the loot there because they only did it for fun, they'd still pick it up. The point of doing this type of content is for loot, experience, and gold. If players didn't receive anything for doing this type of content they simply wouldn't do it except maybe to try it out once or twice.

And as things stand the loot distribution system sets things up so that a small group wouldn't be able to snipe the boss and gain anything beneficial from it. Of course there will be troll parties that try to do this things, but that's what guild wars, social blacklisting, and having a prepared group is all about.

Will this make bosses more difficult and risky? For sure. But it won't deter people from trying to get that top tier loot. It'll just make them more cautious and aware of their surroundings (which as a healer I'm all for people being aware of their surroundings. 'Yes. You died because that was a pool of laaAaaAavvva. Noooo I caaaan't heal through that. Ha...silly dead people')

Endonae

Jamation wrote: »

I believe you might be mixing up what will be available in a world boss on release, versus a boss during a siege, versus the bosses presented in alpha 1. When he made the comment about last hits getting the buffs it was presented as being for the bosses during a siege. And from what I understood it seemed like it was for the 100v100 fights during the alpha 1 testing.

My goodness they need to work on being more clear about this stuff and maybe not use such misleading terminology! Thank you for providing some clarification. When I think of a raid, I think of a longer, purely PvE activity where the main focus is a gauntlet of bosses that tend to feature far more mechanics than and sometimes less of a focus on trash mobs in between the bosses shorter PvE content like dungeons. On higher difficulty levels, individual raid bosses tend to take at least a few weeks to clear, if not more.

When I watched the video which specifically refers to them as raid bosses and presents what looks like their take on a raid, I imagined what the max level difficulty (nightmare, mythic, master mode, etc.) raid boss might look like if you decided to remove it from its instance and just plop it in the open world. The vast majority of the bosses I know of would be literally impossible to clear with any sort of PvP interference, especially if it was more trollish behavior where the enemy is just trying to cause a wipe rather than beat the boss themselves. I wasn't worried as much about the open world nature of the bosses they showed at the difficulty levels presented in the video. I was more concerned about what it would mean for the higher difficulty level I enjoy.

I get what people are saying about having people whose primary/sole job is to protect those fighting the boss and that combination of PvP and PvE does sound interesting. Though the harder you make the boss, the more important it becomes for the guards to make sure that absolutely no one gets through while the boss is getting fought and I am not sure how feasible that will be. The less feasible it is, the more likely it will be that the boss needs to be made easier.

I don't think what you said about trolls is gonna do much though. It doesn't work to punish them in social ways because trolling is inherently an anti-social behavior. Yeah it might help in a few cases, but I think most trolls are lone actors or band together specifically with other trolls. I am concerned about what the individual or a small group is able to do to completely wreck what a large group is doing without the large group being able to do anything about it by abusing game mechanics, like taunting the boss from stealth or dragging a nearby boss over.

bloodprophet

One of the best parts of being on a PvP server in Rift at launch was when a zone event happened when the big boss came out and both sides would rush to the boss and gather waiting for the other to move. A large PvP battle in the middle of the boss fight was amazing fun. Trying to wipe the other side out and kill the boss at the same time had it's ups and downs but over all was good times.
I would like to see them put a couple big boss fights that were super hard to do even without PvP. Just so we can see who can do it anyway.

Vhaeyne

"Risk vs Reward." This is the main philosophy of the game.

Securing a raid boss is not about who was lucky enough to get their first like in your standard theme park MMORPG. It is a substantial calculated risk a large group of people have to make together to attempt a world boss in a highly competitive open world environment.

You are risking around 40 peoples time, energy, repair costs, and opportunity costs. All of this to try and secure raid loot. There are other potential costs to attempting a raid boss such as reputation (If a guild was to lose a raid fight that would surely not be good for the guilds social reputation). Protection costs are also something that may be a factor (Some PvP guilds may charge raids to allow them to attempt bosses in "their area" without harassment). And many other costs that may arise from a highly social open world.

All of this is Risk, for a shot at the best rewards in the game. Raiding a world boss is not something you do every Tuesday for a extra shot at some sub par raid loot before your guild gets together for instanced prog. It is the competitive end-game of Ashes with the highest reward.

This is what draws me to Ashes.

Above all else... The Tulnar must be destroyed.

Noaani

Asgerr wrote: »

The first party to obtain a tag (on a mob or boss) will require approximately 40% or more of the total DPS to be granted looting rights.

Parties who do not have the first tag will be required to do more than approximately 60% of the total DPS to qualify for looting rights.

While this is the best information we have right now, it will likely have to change before the game goes live.

Based on these rules, if three groups of players all do equal damage to a mob (33.3%), no one qualifies for loot.

While there is an argument that this could be implemented as a means to discourage zerging, it would be ineffective at that task (zeros would organize a full raid of 40 players as DPS). All it is doing is punishing groups attempting actual encounter contesting.

To the OP, as easily these forums biggest advocate of instanced raiding in Ashes, I have to disagree with you.

The game does need (and will have) some instanced raids. However, Ashes is all about conflict with other players, so the majority of raid encounters will need to reflect this.

FuryBladeborne

Noaani wrote: »

Asgerr wrote: »

The first party to obtain a tag (on a mob or boss) will require approximately 40% or more of the total DPS to be granted looting rights.

Parties who do not have the first tag will be required to do more than approximately 60% of the total DPS to qualify for looting rights.

While this is the best information we have right now, it will likely have to change before the game goes live.

Based on these rules, if three groups of players all do equal damage to a mob (33.3%), no one qualifies for loot.

I interpreted the description as looting rights = exclusive rights; and, if no on obtained looting rights, then anyone could grab the loot.

FuryBladeborne

Endonae wrote: »

...there's not much you can do to stop someone if they can hide in stealth and just taunt the boss right before it casts a huge high-damage cleave.

1: ...If all bosses are out in the open world, I worry that the main ways to solve this would be by making bosses a lot more forgiving (and therefore significantly less challenging) or by taking away powerful and interesting abilities from classes to make it harder to do things like this.

2: ...I am not sure what the general MMO terminology is, but at least in SWTOR, the instanced bosses are called raid/lair/operation bosses while the non-instanced ones are called world Bosses.

3: ...From the video, I got the impression that no bosses will be instanced.

4: ...My biggest worry is that it prevents the game from having actual challenging bosses that require a significant amount of progression (as in more than a day or two)...

1:Unfortunately, tanks with stealth may be possible since we don't know what the tank/rouge class will get. Although I would be surprised if primary class tanks get more than a few seconds of stealth from any ability.

2: At least in the case of open world bosses, the raid and world boss seems to be interchangeable in Ashes.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Raid_bosses

3: 80% of dungeons and raids will be open world while the remaining 20% will be instanced.

4:Thats a good question and there have been a number of threads discussing whether open world raids and dungeons means that content will be less challenging in order to be possible.

Noaani

FuryBladeborne wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Asgerr wrote: »

The first party to obtain a tag (on a mob or boss) will require approximately 40% or more of the total DPS to be granted looting rights.

Parties who do not have the first tag will be required to do more than approximately 60% of the total DPS to qualify for looting rights.

While this is the best information we have right now, it will likely have to change before the game goes live.

Based on these rules, if three groups of players all do equal damage to a mob (33.3%), no one qualifies for loot.

I interpreted the description as looting rights = exclusive rights; and, if no on obtained looting rights, then anyone could grab the loot.

That is possible, but if it were the case I would have thought Steven would use the word "exclusive", as it is fairly straight forward.

In the citation given on the wiki for this, when talking about the 40%, there is the use of the word "maybe", as in, that number is not set in stone as yet.

To me, this says that the whole thing is still a work in progress, and will change.

VmanGman

This type of PvX interaction is a core design philosophy of AoC. It's true that it's not for everyone, but many of us are very excited about it.

One big thing to remember is that AoC doesn't have any predetermined factions. All factions are player made through nodes, guilds, parties etc. and this will create lots of diplomacy and drama. It will create an environment where people need to interact with each other often and build relationships.

Yes, you might have another individual or party come and mess with you while you do the boss, but you can team up, fight back, bring more friends to fight back, or take it further and exact revenge by later attacking their caravans or maybe even their node.

World bosses are often not the ultimate "endgame" in sandpark (sandbox) PvX MMORPGs such as AoC. The interactions between players and all the emergent gameplay that follows said interactions is the real "endgame".

Nagash

I've said it before but I will repeat it here anyway

Ashes of creation will not be for everyone, if you do not like the game maybe its not for you.

BonesIn

Asgerr wrote: »

Found it!

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Loot_tables#Loot_tagging

Looting rights (also known as Loot tagging) is based on a tag and DPS (damage) system.
The first party to obtain a tag (on a mob or boss) will require approximately 40% or more of the total DPS to be granted looting rights.

Parties who do not have the first tag will be required to do more than approximately 60% of the total DPS to qualify for looting rights.

This does seem a much more bearable way of dealing with things.

With this any PvP that may occur during a boss fight would be a very interesting scenario

Back up.

So the game literally incentivizes and encourages maximum damage output to secure kills and potentially even steal them? Already a bad start.

And you people don't want performance trackers because it will "create toxicity"?
You think the game that literally tells you to go grief other players is going to become "toxic" because there's a performance tracker?

You don't think people are going to have high expectations of/from their raid team to be the most optimal spec when your own character's progression and time can literally be stolen from you based on their damage performance?

It's one thing to take longer and require more pulls to down a boss with a weak raid team. That's tolerable and can be fun in the off nights.

But to have it literally stolen from you because your damage wasn't good enough is going to push people to want to improve their performance more than anything else. And if you don't give players the tools and knowledge to improve then you'll just end up frustrating them and leaving their confused as to why they lost.

This just seems like the beginning to a disastrously contradictive and ill thought plan.

I just wanted to point this out on this awfully designed forum platform (barely usable on mobile).

Songcaller

How will a parser assist you if you're stomped into the floor through PvP?

How will a parser assist you in the breakdown of the fight unless you can see the other people involved too which goes against the stance whereby people want the parser for their guild only?

Why do we keep having the argument about no parser turn up in multiple places when there's a mega thread about parsers?

From my standpoint, the fact parsers are waved in my face in the forums shows how they will be waved in my face in the game if they are permitted. Parsers aren't some miracle fix all solution and parsers shouldn't be required to make you a good gamer. If you are outmatched by another raid team then the outcome is obvious. Who needs a parser to explain the damage was too low when someone else has stolen the kill? Obviously your damage output was lower than the raid in question, if you need a parser to explain that fact I don't even know how to not pity the fool that does.

Talents

The large majority of content in Ashes is PvX. Most of the raids you will be doing at end-game will be in an open-world area, meaning while you're trying to kill a raid boss, another group can easily come along and kill your group and take the boss. This is an intended part of the game.

George_Black

If they follow your suggestion, this would become another ff14, eso type of mmo. Why do this when they set out to bring back the true open world mmo?
They have said that there will be a small amount of instanced PvE raiding. What are you worried about?

akabear

L2 had most of the raids where other players could interact. I no longer recall why, by my guild did high level raids with mains and we all had a range of lower level alts to do rounds of the lower - mid raids as well. I think it gave clan points of something and was necessary to get clan skills or rewards or something.

We went through waves of doing no raid or doing only raids.

In 6 years of playing, I think we were party wiped 4-5x by an enemy clan during a raid that waited until the boss was nearly done, then came in enforce. But they did with no interest nor capability to do the boss. Just started picking off the support classes at the periphery first before we noticed. So, slack on our end. And did so as we were at war (either declared or not)

All other attempts by enemy guilds or groups wanting the same boss or interfere were met with a decisive switch between pve at the boss to the pvp to the players and quickly wiped and focus returned to the boss.

We kept a solid relationship with other raiding clans and agreement to take turns. And when a known enemy was on the prowl that we knew we had not capability to deal with or motivation to deal with that day or time, we just did one of the multitude of other things one could do in game or went on to one of many other bosses.

Key point to not be wiped was just to maintain a situational awareness and pick your battles.

I think from memory there was little to no advantage to take out a party just before they completed a raid as the rewards scaled from damage done. So the final kill did not result in a bounty or a pro-rated bounty.

Interesting to see how AoC handles that last key part of if bounty goes to the final kill or damage done or some other metric!

Zence

Asgerr wrote: »

Found it!

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Loot_tables#Loot_tagging

Looting rights (also known as Loot tagging) is based on a tag and DPS (damage) system.
The first party to obtain a tag (on a mob or boss) will require approximately 40% or more of the total DPS to be granted looting rights.

Parties who do not have the first tag will be required to do more than approximately 60% of the total DPS to qualify for looting rights.

This does seem a much more bearable way of dealing with things.

With this any PvP that may occur during a boss fight would be a very interesting scenario

As long as the above sticks through - I don't see an issue. Having the extra threat of others coming in the mix of big boss kills in open world dungeons or open world bosses etc give so much more opportunity for you to be creative to ensure your guild/group walks away with the loot. Wiping another team and walking away with the loot always feel good - especially if people are trying to prevent your team from progressing and you come out on top. Conflict brings good and bad memories that we all grow from and get to reflect back on in various ways which is what makes MMO so amazing.

Cat Quiver

TL;DR: I ran out of pve things to do in my last mmo so here's some suggestions to wildly change the fundamentals of this one so it too can be like the rest.

Child Item