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What if instanced dungeons were designed to be hardcore?
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I have seen that something like 80% of the ashes dungeons will be open world while 20% will be instanced. I was wondering what if the 20% instanced dungeons were designed and intended to be a hardcore experience? What I mean by that is the dungeons would reset to the beginning if everyone zones out or there is a party wipe. Additionally, I would personally like to see any gear and xp you get in the dungeon removed if you party wipe. Each dungeon could include a warning of modifiers that were built into the dungeon at the entrance. one example, maybe there is a lock carved on the wall to show that the dungeon locks when you enter it so you can not leave without dieing and/or if you lose a party member you can not get a new party member and have them zone in you get to decide if you can keep going with 4 people or give up. One way to offset this would be to include strategically placed resurrection stones/obelisks good for one resurrection so if your healer dies to a trap he should have seen coming you can revive him without having to restart as long as you have gotten to one of these stones.
Regardless I think it would add a level of fun if getting your loot was only half the battle you then needed to get out alive to keep what you got. Some additional modifiers that could be used I have included below
Dungeon has a higher than normal number of minion mobs (e.i. bring aoe if you can)
Dungeon bosses hit harder than normal.
Dungeon contains traps
Dungeon is unstable and will collapse 5 minutes after the last boss is slain.
I am not saying these should change regularly or anything like that but it would be a cool if a dev could take the normal dungeon formula and say I really want a bunch more of X and then add it while also giving people a heads up at the entrance what they are in for when you discover the dungeon. Imagine coming across a new dungeon with a new symbol that is not in the wiki yet and finding out the v shape with a water drop off it is a vampire fang and all the mobs heal for part of the damage they do so focus fire is extra important.
Regardless I think it would add a level of fun if getting your loot was only half the battle you then needed to get out alive to keep what you got. Some additional modifiers that could be used I have included below
Dungeon has a higher than normal number of minion mobs (e.i. bring aoe if you can)
Dungeon bosses hit harder than normal.
Dungeon contains traps
Dungeon is unstable and will collapse 5 minutes after the last boss is slain.
I am not saying these should change regularly or anything like that but it would be a cool if a dev could take the normal dungeon formula and say I really want a bunch more of X and then add it while also giving people a heads up at the entrance what they are in for when you discover the dungeon. Imagine coming across a new dungeon with a new symbol that is not in the wiki yet and finding out the v shape with a water drop off it is a vampire fang and all the mobs heal for part of the damage they do so focus fire is extra important.
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Pretend they are not a thing!
I prefer the instanced dungeons to be simple to make solo or group questlines and add that kind of hardcore content in the open world dungeons.
@Dygz spot on.
The more instanced an massively "multiplayer online role-playing game", MMOPRG becomes the less massively and more "somewhat multiplayer online role-playing game", SMORPG it turns to be.
why the instanced dungeon hate? just curious
That allows for emergent gameplay.
rose tinted glasses mostly people forget back when popular mmo's had open dungeons and zerg guilds would randomly shut them down or when 2 guild groups would show up and everyone had a meh geared pvp gank alt logged out in the area so they could swarm the competition while not getting the consequences on their main. all of that is before you consider streamers etc who will be showing up to dungeons with a literal army of followers.
i get that the ideal of not having instances is out there but people are pissy about 20% instanced content the devs have said would be in the game and refusing to even talk about how the instanced content could be made unique and cool.
It does not seem like most people remember the "fun" of the zerg group shutting entire gameplay sections because they could show up with 10x the people.
I mean yea I get that notion, I love immersion in games.
But having all content be able to be invaded by random people is sometimes bad for immersion too imo. And you're right it can absolutely be emergent when its done right.
But its also easy to overwhelm world bosses with numbers instead of strategy. And its easier for guilds to farm mobs, or come to try to challenge other guilds or swipe kills. All of that is... kind of distracting imo.
I totally believe open world content should be around though, but i like instanced content to exist as well and it feels like sometimes that can be just as immersive.
A good story villain sometimes needs to control the inputs to give you the feeling of tension and eventual achievement for overcoming it.
Instanced content does that in a better way sometimes - it let's your guild take things at their own pace, reform, and strategize without feeling pressured to respawn and zerg the boss with other fighters (as happened in the stream tbh). Just my 2c though
Steven intends for that to happen , to promote conflict and competition , that is why there is going to be a dps race on looting rights on the bosses. The instance content will be very story focused from my understanding.
yea i get that, and I'm not saying that shouldn't exist. but at the same time, we should probably have instanced content too is all imo. Instanced content = progression raiding... open world boss kills on the other hand its harder to have those mean anything consistently in terms of skill which is maybe what you want to have for guilds. Again though, its cool that each boss encounter is its own thing too sometimes, just... its nice to have the option
I'm not as concerned about competition in dungeons/raids as I would be in most games because we have more meaningful reasons to defeat dungeons and bosses than mere greed. The primary reason to defeat bosses is because we want to get rid of a dire threat that is endangering the region. So, there will be incentives for random groups to work together; not just carrots to push everyone into conflict.
You can you can think that but only one group gets the rewards for killing a boss , you going to be playing in a game with a bunch of pvp players , and people can freely attack each other. The hand holding rainbow stuff you see happening is not going to happen. People want loot , its always the source of drama in a lot of mmorpgs.
We kill the Winter Dragon because it's causing a perpetual winter that has a negative impact on progressing the Node(s).
It's always the main source of drama in a lot of MMORPGs that have nothing else as a motivator besides loot.
Which is why Nodes are so crucial to the success of Ashes.
And if that Winter Dragon has good loot , guilds will fighting over it not working together , Ashes wont be a carebear game.
What do you all think?
*Speculation: Dungeons just for citizens of a metropolis? Dungeons just for adherents of each of the religions? Dungeons for members of the Bounty Hunter guild? Dungeon for a max level Tavern!
Corruption wont prevent you getting killed many times in one day with a server size of 10,000 , you can be killed by guilds that declare war on your own guild , killed by the population of node your mayor just declared war on and these enemy guilds and nodes of players can freely kill you all they want to everyday.
Guilds can't declare war on your guild if you don't join a guild.
Node Siege declaration does not allow people from the rival Node to kill you everyday without the risk of Corruption. They will only be free from the risk of Corruption on the day of the Siege.
Ashes is not L2 , it may have L2 vets , but the audience of this game is going to be different. Lots of Archeage players back the kickstarter since was Steven was a AA player and making a game that is similar, Archeage was extremely toxic game. Thanks to Asmongold a lot of WoW players( the toxic ones) are now interested in playing the game too. The world bosses will be extremely contested , the loot will be fought over , and yes you will be killed a lot in game over this.
I'm not aware of Archeage and WoW having Corruption.
Corruption wont prevent you from being killed ten times by a big group of players each taking a turn to do so. The pvp encounters will still be very frequent in game. Remember Steven had actually tell people in the Alpha to stop ganking people.
Corruption is in an Alpha state - just like everything else is.
Anyway, this is not the thread to derail with your delusions.
You are right. The Earth is flat.
but that doesn't mean it won't still be a fun or beneficial thing to have these competitive elements overall. Good moments will definitely be coming alongside frustrating ones though. Ganks, home node takeovers, pressure to join powerful guilds, kill swipes, etc...
Personally wondering where the instanced dungeons will even fit in with the changing world. Figure it'll probably be something story related?
So an alternative to this could be a FFXIV Heaven-on-High/Palace of the Dead type deal where it's almost it's own little world. Depending on where the instanced dungeons are/what they're goal is, it could be something more lore based, that way it doesn't feel like a forced story, but still includes a lot of cool info and stuff. Perhaps even a "vision" or something that goes further into the APOC stuff during the corruption period with all the in-fighting.
Well if you like pvp these things will be a lot fun for sure.
Since the world is jumbo size and has verticality thanks to the underrealm , I am sure you can find some good spots hidden in the deep places of the world to place them.
Oh sorry, I didn't mean like physically fit in. I more-so meant where they would be seen as normal/acceptable. Like why a dungeon would intentionally be instanced compared to open world. Like would they make XYZ dungeon an instanced dungeon just to make it instanced, or would it have a purpose/reason for being instanced
It will be for Nodes story content and will appear when its unlock and can go away if the node is destroyed unlocking new content elsewhere.
I think there are some valid concerns around it though, such as bosses being zerg magnets and it completely getting rid of any purely PvE high end competition. I remember hearing Steven saying some raid bosses are designed for a certain number of people, but that's just silly if they are just open for as many people as turns up.