I disagree with this generalization. This may be how some people play the game, but others prefer to spontaneously do things that they want to do at the time. Do you feel like dueling? Go through your friends list and see if anyone online wants to duel. No one wants to duel? Then maybe work on crafting or another profession. Maybe on your way to gather some missing materials for crafting, you find out that a friendly guild is in a guild war with an enemy guild and you spontaneously offer to help them out. Etc...
No, Noaani. For some of us the activity is the point of focus. I won't go bowling, even with my friends, because I find it especially boring. I prefer to do things on my own than dragging with me someone bored with it, who's only tagging along for company. If I want to do something I don't mind doing it with someone else who also enjoy it, but I'll not invite someone to have my fun ruined by feeling guilty of wasting their time.
I don't play games to make friends, even if they are "massively multi-player". Anyone saying that's the point of a mmo, to socialized, is reducing the scope of the genre. Maybe it fits their attraction to the genre, but wanting to limit it to mainly that aspect is myopic.
I have this feeling like you aren't going to like AoC....
You don't play multiplayer games to socialize and make friends? Would you prefer lobby based content? Nobody else is here for that if so. Obviously Intrepid is not making a game limited to ONLY social interaction. Your response to the bowling reference isn't important because you missed the point completely. Nobody cares if you like bowling or not haha. The fact that you feel you are dragging people around by inviting them to content you enjoy is also ridiculous. You feel guilty for wasting someones time, in a game that, in its purest essence is a WASTE OF TIME? My mind is blown.
I should expect as much from a Tulnar.
I like to explore the game world, and you would have me trapped in a lobby, waiting wasting my time to access content! Preposterous! No, I want to roam around, see what there is to do, what's on the other side of the hill. And to be clear, even if I don't come to make friends it doesn't mean I don't make friends, or socialize. It's just that's not what draw me into these games. Cooperation if part of the fun, I just prefer when it comes out of spontaneous need. You see a bright opening to the surface and join a few clawed friends to risk the peril of the sun.
While that spontaneous nature is something that does happen, MMO's are geared towards organization, not spontaneity. Look at Ashes, sieges, guild and node wars,
I disagree with this generalization. This may be how some people play the game, but others prefer to spontaneously do things that they want to do at the time. Do you feel like dueling? Go through your friends list and see if anyone online wants to duel. No one wants to duel? Then maybe work on crafting or another profession. Maybe on your way to gather some missing materials for crafting, you find out that a friendly guild is in a guild war with an enemy guild and you spontaneously offer to help them out. Etc...
Sure, big events generally need to be planned and scheduled, but the majority of gameplay is not like this unless it's a lobby MMO like WoW.
I'm not super sure I understand what it is you disagree with.
I said that MMO's may not be for a player akin to what is being discussed, because such a large amount of the genres content is not geared towards them - I also said that if they are happy with this, then more power to them.
You agreed with me in regards to much of the content not being suited, and yet are suggesting that if they want to play an MMO anyway, more power to them.
It would seem to me that you actually agree with me, not disagree.
I was basically saying that sandbox MMOs are meant to have more degrees of freedom and room for spontaneity than themeparks/lobby MMOs. So, I disagreed that MMOs are "geared towards" organization, and not spontaneity. For more sandboxy games the design is quite the opposite, actually.
No, Noaani. For some of us the activity is the point of focus. I won't go bowling, even with my friends, because I find it especially boring. I prefer to do things on my own than dragging with me someone bored with it, who's only tagging along for company. If I want to do something I don't mind doing it with someone else who also enjoy it, but I'll not invite someone to have my fun ruined by feeling guilty of wasting their time.
I don't play games to make friends, even if they are "massively multi-player". Anyone saying that's the point of a mmo, to socialized, is reducing the scope of the genre. Maybe it fits their attraction to the genre, but wanting to limit it to mainly that aspect is myopic.
I have this feeling like you aren't going to like AoC....
You don't play multiplayer games to socialize and make friends? Would you prefer lobby based content? Nobody else is here for that if so. Obviously Intrepid is not making a game limited to ONLY social interaction. Your response to the bowling reference isn't important because you missed the point completely. Nobody cares if you like bowling or not haha. The fact that you feel you are dragging people around by inviting them to content you enjoy is also ridiculous. You feel guilty for wasting someones time, in a game that, in its purest essence is a WASTE OF TIME? My mind is blown.
I should expect as much from a Tulnar.
I like to explore the game world, and you would have me trapped in a lobby, waiting wasting my time to access content! Preposterous! No, I want to roam around, see what there is to do, what's on the other side of the hill. And to be clear, even if I don't come to make friends it doesn't mean I don't make friends, or socialize. It's just that's not what draw me into these games. Cooperation if part of the fun, I just prefer when it comes out of spontaneous need. You see a bright opening to the surface and join a few clawed friends to risk the peril of the sun.
While that spontaneous nature is something that does happen, MMO's are geared towards organization, not spontaneity. Look at Ashes, sieges, guild and node wars,
I disagree with this generalization. This may be how some people play the game, but others prefer to spontaneously do things that they want to do at the time. Do you feel like dueling? Go through your friends list and see if anyone online wants to duel. No one wants to duel? Then maybe work on crafting or another profession. Maybe on your way to gather some missing materials for crafting, you find out that a friendly guild is in a guild war with an enemy guild and you spontaneously offer to help them out. Etc...
Sure, big events generally need to be planned and scheduled, but the majority of gameplay is not like this unless it's a lobby MMO like WoW.
I'm not super sure I understand what it is you disagree with.
I said that MMO's may not be for a player akin to what is being discussed, because such a large amount of the genres content is not geared towards them - I also said that if they are happy with this, then more power to them.
You agreed with me in regards to much of the content not being suited, and yet are suggesting that if they want to play an MMO anyway, more power to them.
It would seem to me that you actually agree with me, not disagree.
I was basically saying that sandbox MMOs are meant to have more degrees of freedom and room for spontaneity than themeparks/lobby MMOs. So, I disagreed that MMOs are "geared towards" organization, and not spontaneity. For more sandboxy games the design is quite the opposite, actually.
I would argue that the lobby based MMO offers more in regards to spontaneity than the sandbox MMO.
In a lobby game (don't conflate lobby games with themepark games - the terms are different), you can simply opt at any time you wish to join a queue for what ever piece of content you want.
That is the definition of spontaneity in an MMO, as far as I am concerned. You want a group? Have one. You want PvP? Go for it. You want a raid? there is already one waiting for you.
With a non-lobby game, specifically a game like Ashes, if you want to do a thing, you need to find the right number of people to do the thing, that want to do that same thing at that same time, and you need to all get to that same in world location where that thing is.
Now sure, you can ignore all of that content, and just go roaming and see what happens, but you can do that in lobby games as well.
The real part I don't understand is - you seem to agree that this specific kind of playstyle renders some parts of the game out of reach (in Ashes, that is currently guild wars, node wars, castle sieges, node sieges, raids, likely higher end crafting and perhaps some naval content). This is something we both seem to agree on.
Yet, in a lobby game, that list if content that is out of reach for this same player type is basically limited to top end raiding. Everything else is still within reach of the spontaneous player.
I don't see how you can claim a game like Ashes is more suited to this than a lobby game that is literally designed for this type of player.
Now, I do understand why you wouldn't want to play a lobby game - but that isn't the point being made. The point being made is that sandbox games are better suited - which to me seems to be something that is self-evidently not true.
I would say that, on a personal level, where MMOs have failed me is in the end game department. I usually enjoy all the leveling part, but the end game become too stagnant and repetitive for me. So, while for most people the game begins at max level, for me it ends there, sort of. I just roll another character to experience the game in a different perspective. Another class. Another part of the world.
The caravan system will probably be that best place for me to prolong the lifespan of my characters. Mercenary work to defend them has some appeal, and you end up somewhere different as a bonus. Resources gathering also has some appeal.
MMOs may not be tailored perfectly for me, but I found my place in most of the ones I've played. I'm totally ok with organized play being the main focus of most players, so long as it's not the only way to play the game.
Be bold. Be brave. Roll a Tulnar !
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited September 2021
MMORPGS are not supposed to have an endgame.
Which is precisely one of the major appeals of Ashes:
A dynamic world that continues to churn out new content even after you reach max Adventurer level.
I would say that, on a personal level, where MMOs have failed me is in the end game department. I usually enjoy all the leveling part, but the end game become too stagnant and repetitive for me. So, while for most people the game begins at max level, for me it ends there, sort of. I just roll another character to experience the game in a different perspective. Another class. Another part of the world.
The caravan system will probably be that best place for me to prolong the lifespan of my characters. Mercenary work to defend them has some appeal, and you end up somewhere different as a bonus. Resources gathering also has some appeal.
MMOs may not be tailored perfectly for me, but I found my place in most of the ones I've played. I'm totally ok with organized play being the main focus of most players, so long as it's not the only way to play the game.
See, to me, this is all good.
As I said earlier, if you go in to a game that has large parts of it that are not your kind of content, but you find enjoyment in the parts that are, more power to you.
Yet, in a lobby game, that list if content that is out of reach for this same player type is basically limited to top end raiding. Everything else is still within reach of the spontaneous player.
I don't see how you can claim a game like Ashes is more suited to this than a lobby game that is literally designed for this type of player.
It's more like the sterile environment of lobby games which limits spontaneity and emergent gameplay. Most of your time in the open world in these games is spent in town ignoring everything around you waiting for matchmaking to teleport you to a dungeon. You have no real awareness of anyone else. They just appear and disappear in town as they are teleported to and from various dungeons that you can't see or visit.
In a non-lobby game, you need to travel somewhere, and you actually have the opportunity to see what's going on around you, as it's not some opaque system. People are doing observable things in the open world, and not in instances. So that's where the opportunity for more spontaneity kicks in. For example, if you were traveling to a specific dungeon and you run across a guild whose guild castle is being sieged, and you know that they won't make it in time to contest the world boss spawn that they usually take, then you can spontaneously change your plans to gather people for the world boss instead.
For example, if you were traveling to a specific dungeon and you run across a guild whose guild castle is being sieged, and you know that they won't make it in time to contest the world boss spawn that they usually take, then you can spontaneously change your plans to gather people for the world boss instead.
While I know this is just an example, if this were something that actually happened, you can guarantee that the people that organized that siege on the guilds castle have also organized a raid to take out that world boss that the guild in question usually gets - it wouldn't be an accident that the siege is happening just then.
It may not be a raid from that same guild that organized the siege (almost certainly won't be, in fact), but you had better believe there will be an organized raid to take it on.
As someone that assists in organizing this kind of thing in previous games, this is absolutely what I would do. I would organize the raid for a time when such a boss was due to spawn, and I would have people both at the siege to take the castle, and also at the mob to take it. If a guild with a castle is spending the time to keep that mob on (or near) total lockdown, then you had better believe I would be able to find others that want a clean shot at it, and that are able to take it out.
Even if we didn't explicitly organize for a raid to be at that mob, since siege times are public and pre-determined, some other raid would have seen the siege at the time the mob was set to spawn, and would have decided they wanted a go at it.
The best your rag-tag group of people could do in this situation is contest against and organized raid (or several organized raids) - the exact same thing you could do if that guild that owns the castle was taking it on.
This is why I don't quite understand the comments about this gameplay style. I mean, I can see the logic of more people in the open world meaning more things happening meaning more opportunity for spontaneity - I even agree with it to an extent. The thing is, with open world content, you are basically leaving yourself at the mercy of what organized people drop on the floor. At least with instanced content (lobby or not), you know you have that content there that you can take on as you wish.
Again though, if you still find a game that you enjoy, more power to you.
I'll admit that the world boss thing was a bad example. I should've said literally anything else, like taking their rare resource gathering locations that they usually control. There's of course plenty of other examples that allow for greater spontaneity in a non-lobby open world.
MMORPGs satisfy different sources of intrinsic fun for different people. As the genre has evolved over the years from the MUD's of eld to New World releasing in a few weeks, the genre has also evolved (and become diluted) to satisfy the desires of a bunch of different ways that people want to play simultaneously.
Is the way you have fun by doing highly competitive, class-based, 3v3 combat in a tab-target setting with abilities and cooldowns? Possible in WoW. There's a whole community built around it that all know each other and tend to all be on the same server (tichondrius on the US). Ashes wants to have arenas.
Is the way you have fun by defeating set-piece raiding content cooperatively, either with your current friends or by making new ones? MMOs like FFXIV or WoW have you covered there. There are massive communities that support those activities and raiding tends to drive the rest of the gameplay (need consumables for raiding, need herbs for consumables, need to gather for herbs, need to be in the world to gather, etc). Ashes wants to have set-piece encounters.
Is the way you have fun by fighting over open-world bosses or claiming territory, as Steven like to talk about one of his fondest MMO memories (the 10+ hour boss fight where he fell asleep and woke up and folks were still at it)? The MMO genre can support this. Ashes wants to have this.
If they wanted, the WoW devs could hard pivot and make a pure raiding game. They could remove all of the character customization and the questing. They could remove the PvP, the dungeons, the gear, everything. The whole game could be just "you have a character that has an ability kit and you work together with 19 other people to defeat this raid". The team could focus on pumping out tons of raids for players to queue into to cooperatively defeat. Then it would be a "lobby" game as folks like Noaani like to call it.
They didn't though, and WoW isn't a lobby game, it's a full-blown MMO. Folks are out in the open world, running around doing world quests, harvesting materials to make consumables, manually running to m+ dungeons (can't teleport to those by the way), etc.
For what it's worth, I'm really excited about open-world raiding in ashes - it's one of the things I look forward to most. It's where I think I'll get most of my intrinsic fun.
At best, WoW is half way between a lobby game and a full blown MMO.
5 years ago, I was happily and successfully arguing that it wasn't even an MMO at all - other than in name. The fact that it has *some* worthwhile content that you can't just queue up for now means that it at least has it's foot in the door to being legitimately called an MMO - but that is about it.
To be a fully blown MMO, the game would need to have no lobby. No LFG/LFR, and no arena queue. If you want to raid an encounter, get some friends, go to the encounter then kill it. If you want PvP, get some friends, find some enemies and kill them.
The fact that WoW still has much of that content behind a lobby system means you can't really claim it isn't a lobby game, and so shouldn't call it a full blown MMO either.
I'll admit that the world boss thing was a bad example. I should've said literally anything else, like taking their rare resource gathering locations that they usually control. There's of course plenty of other examples that allow for greater spontaneity in a non-lobby open world.
Yeah, I knew it was just an example, but from my perspective it was the perfect example for you to pick.
Resources or something like that are a much more likely thing to be left in this situation. Again though, it is as I said in my previous post to you - it is still a gameplay style where you are only really taking advantage of what organized people are leaving behind. This is the bit I still don't get.
I honestly don't think I am likely to ever understand that specific perspective - but this is why I have been saying that if you still find a game you enjoy - more power to you. Me not understanding shouldn't (and I assume doesn't) have any effect on how you enjoy the game, which is why that is my stance towards everyone that enjoys any game - as long as they aren't asking for changes to the game to suit themselves (which no one here is doing, I feel I should add - hence the whole more power to you thing).
As someone with a very different playstyle in MMO's to me, I would be somewhat interested in your and Percimes take on the content outline I posted earlier in this thread - if you have the time. It's the stupid long post at the top of page two.
If I had to modify your outline it wouldn't be by much.
I would add a few mini open dungeons: lairs, ruins, camps, nothing serious but challenging enough so you can't walk in there as you please. There could be a leader or boss there, but one that is nigh impossible to fight alone, but if 2-3 people were to team up they could do it. This leader is harder either because it's tougher or has a few too many guards with him. To make these places uninteresting for group of 4+ is more a question of spawn time: too long to be worth the time staying there. These long-ish spawn time means the soloers or duos have to keep moving. WoW had many of these small cave system, but rarely with a proper boss.
Other than that, I would let incomplete or ad-hoc groups of miss matched roles to have their chances to wander into most dungeons. Unless it's a very efficient group of 6-8, they shouldn't be able to tackle any bosses, but the patrols and rooms of normal mobs should be possible, though always risky.
Anything to encourage people to team up to cease an opportunity, even if it's into non-ideal groups or only temporary. Who knows what will come of it, maybe they'll balance the group and tackle other challenges. Won't be as smooth as people prepared and who know each other's capacities, but still.
That would help a lot. From my perspective, gathering 8 people of the appropriate classes for PvE content is not something that can happen on the fly. If you can built the group overtime and still be able to take on challenges before being full, that's a big plus. It beats waiting in a lobby or list. That's less an issue in PvP, 5-8 people, whatever the classes, can coordinate somewhat. Until the meet the people prepared to face them that is.
A variation to your "cage" encounter type that could be interesting would be something with a modified siege mechanic. A guild or association could work onto a world boss summon. Let say a dragon is seen circling in the sky but will only come to ground level if the proper bate is placed. The guild does a "quest" to acquire this bate, similar what is necessary to start the siege process. Once on the ground the dragon can be contested, but since the timing for luring it down is in the hands of a specific group, they can put the odds in their favour.
I'm all for content gradually altering to become harder, rather than a sudden jump.
This would be like the transition from overland (solo) content to underrealm (small group) getting gradually harder and harder for one person, to the point where after a while they just couldn't continue on their own.
A similar thing in dungeons, where the entry to the dungeon is only a little above what the content outside it was, and gradually gets harder and harder. This would see content at the start of a dungeon be suited for almost any collection of 4 or 5 players, but as you move through, you get to content that needs the full 8 players, and needs proper co-ordination.
Mini-dungeons could be a thing, but I could see an easier way to do this would be to have small caves and such that are considered underrealm (and so gradually get harder until they are suited to a small group), but that are not connected to the greater underrealm itself. This would add a consistency to content that I think games should strive for, while still adding that functionality that you talk about. This could be an underrealm cave that is filled with beast, but could just as easily be a cave that is a campsite for bandits or what ever.
Other games get away with this by having areas like this instanced off, so players know what they are getting in to - but that is unlikely to be a thing for this kind of content in Ashes, so some other mechanism needs to be put in place to tell players they are moving on to a different type of content, and I personally see value in using the same mechanism that is already in use.
I also like the idea of using siege mechanics in non-siege content. I can see potential uses for everything from the side goal system sieges have, to the actual siege equipment being used. I am unsure of exactly how I would want to see this implemented, but I do see value in it.
I read your post on pg 2, and I don't have an issue with most of it, Noanni. There's a lot of good ideas in that post. The thing that I would change the most is the cage system that you proposed for dungeons though. I feel like it is still too opaque for me for an open world game, and I would like to be able to have a better feedback mechanism for the progress in the dungeon, and player agency to do something other than just wait to see if the group wipes or not. It still feels like they've entered an instance, and you have no idea what people are doing inside. It's non-observable. They could be trolling and wasting time not even fighting the boss for all you know.
I like the non-linearity of the dungeons that you suggested. This is something that I myself have mentioned in the past as well. Basically, what I would have is parallel sections of the dungeon. If one group gets to a parallel section first, it does not necessarily mean that they will get through the content first, because a better group might come along, and start a parallel section to the first group after, but finish first and move ahead because they are more efficient. In order to prevent groups from just piggybacking off other's hard work clearing out sections of the dungeon and immediately engaging the first group, there would be doors at the beginning and end of each section. The doors at the end of each section will only open after all mobs or that particular section mini-boss is killed. After the beginning door of the next section is entered, the previous section that was just cleared respawns all mobs and the previous section end door closes and locks.
Each door would have a way to barricade the door with a certain number of people. Say, maybe 5 people max could barricade a door, with one person lightly barricading the door could hold people out for a minimum of maybe 5 minutes, and five could hold people out for 25 min. These times could be adjusted per dungeon depending on the content. This gives some underleveled or underperforming guild members the opportunity to feel like they are actually contributing something to the raid.
The beauty of such a system is that the group that came later must make meaningful decisions on whether to race the first group through the parallelized content, or focus on bringing down the door to try to kill the first group. Also, there is the possibility that the two groups finish at exactly the same time, which would be even more interesting and unpredictable. It also allows for the group that finishes the parallel section first to force an engagement at the end of the parallelized content if they really want to risk the PvP and buy some extra time for the next section. This parallelized design is also scaleable to more than 2 groups, to however many sections of dungeons that Intrepid can design. Maybe a dungeon with 3 parallel sections would lead to a 3-way race, then a subsequent parallel section would only have 2, etc... And each section could be easier or harder depending on the group composition, leading to having to make tactical changes on which parallelized section to attempt. This system also allows groups to know where the group ahead of them is, and gives them something active to do instead of just waiting for them to finish, while making the first group feel the pressure that exists everywhere else in the world of Verra(?), where there is always the a little unpredictability and a threat of player disruption.
The thing is, all of my suggestions fit into my dislike of purely linear content, which I consider boring once it is solved. This is why I don't particularly like PvE content, as it is all scripted and will never have the variability of PvX or PvP content. If it's impossible to make AI dungeon content challenging with PvX being involved, then I would like some system similar to what I've suggested. Maybe Intrepid know what they're doing and have something way more innovative than what I've thought up. I just hope that they don't have to fall back on instancing as a substitute for actually well-designed game systems that work in the open world.
My ideas may not make sense to PvE players. I value being able to make tactical decisions on non-static content that can only be provided by non-scripted competition (aka non-PvE). Addressing one of your earlier questions about not understanding my playstyle, sometimes you can not just expect that your linear plan with work in these scenarios, and it's fun for me to take advantage of opportunities that the unpredictability of PvX or PvP provide (such as coming across a loaded caravan on your way to a dungeon). It's just more efficient and fun to change your plans and use wit to take advantage of unpredictable situations, instead of just do x then y then z, period.
@bigepeen
Been away a few days, sorry I didn't reply sooner.
There is a lot to unpack there, honestly.
I do like the idea of parallel corridors you suggested, but I have two points/questions in relation to it.
The first is that a mechanic that specific would be fantastic in "some" PvE settings, but any dungeon it is in would feel the same as any other dungeon it is in. This means it would be an awesome addition to a game, if used in one or two dungeons every content cycle.
The second is a question as to how you see it being played as content. Is the idea (in your mind) that it is a race of sorts? The reason I ask this is because the way I would play a content piece like this is that I would simply get to it earlier in the day than anyone else. Everyone that comes in an hour behind me and my group/guild will spend their time running through these corridors of content, only to find that what ever is at the other side of them has already been killed.
If the content is more akin to a race, where everyone has to start at the same time, then this keeps the idea of whom ever does the content fastest getting the reward at the end.
I do agree with you in saying that once an encounter has been killed, it is significantly less interesting (usually, I have come across a half dozen encounters that are as interesting and difficult to kill on the 20th kill as they were on the first).
However, I would rebut that point by stating that most PvP fights are just as uninteresting.
The thing that makes PvE good is not the fact that every encounter is enjoyable every time - it is the fact that there is always an enjoyable encounter to head towards. When you kill that encounter you have been working on, sure, it becomes less interesting - but if you just go a little further down the corridor, there is a new encounter to work on.
This leads to the key thing needed to make a good PvE game, why few developers even try to make a good PvE game any more, and subsequently the reason why I consider the two EQ games to be the only truly good PvE MMO's out - a good PvE game needs a new encounter ready to go as soon as players defeat the current encounter.
Blizzards biggest failing, in my mind, is not the introduction of LFG/LFR, it's not the dumbing down of their already dumbed down combat system, it's not the "borrowing" of lore from another IP, it's not the addition of motorcycles to the game, its not the... you get the point.
To me, their biggest failure is that they haven't kept pace with their players. Their second biggest failure is that they never had any real idea how long it would take their players to defeat an encounter.
WoW is on it's 8th expansion, by my count. EQ2, a game that is one month older, is about to release it's 18th. EQ, a game that is only 5 or so years older, is about to release it's 28th. Some WoW players may want to jump in here and say that WoW releases content mid-expansion, to which I will simply say - so do both EQ games, as well as releasing expansions at more than twice the rate.
Knowing how long it will take your players to defeat an encounter is key to this. I recall a discussion I had with a developer that had just had a top end encounter added to EQ2. He said he expects it to take players 6 weeks to kill, and if it isn't dead in 7 weeks, they may need to rebalance it (but he stressed that he didn't think it would come to that). The encounter was first killed 45 days (or 6 weeks, 3 days) after going live, and they had more content ready to go by then.
The notion of developers keeping pace with their players is not something I expect many people to really understand, as unless you have played an EQ game at the top end, you have probably not experienced it at all (I honestly can't think of any other MMO that actually even tries to do this, let alone manages to do it).
When you do experience it though, the argument of an encounter becoming less interesting once you have killed it is kind of a moot point. The second you kill that encounter, it becomes old news and there is a new one to take on.
I wonder if dungeons will have attunement stones or something.
Once you kill a boss will you be able to skip that floor on future runs, and hop down to whatever content layer you're working on?
I guess similar to the checkpoint floors in Diablo 1.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Highly unlikely there will be checkpoints that allow you to skip areas of a dungeon or raid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJbyxRdB6dE&t=1344s One of the design elements that we're implementing into our raids is that the raid will not be exactly the same every single time. You're going to have variables that can't necessarily be pre-planned out for. You can pre-plan out for a lot of the raid like how many DPS do you need and healers and support; where the key position and all that kind of stuff; but I think the compelling aspect of Ashes raiding will be the difficulty in achieving this content and having that content change from session to session as well.
A lot of those systems are influenced obviously by world development. So the raid kind of takes into account at what stage has the world developed: Are there two metropolises now available in the world? Okay well let's activate this skill in this skill. Now you have five metropolises, well now all these skills have been activated. Are there are they all economic nodes? Are they all military nodes? That we can change things based on that stuff. And it really is a threat assessment from the environment against the players.
---Steven
For the first question from Noanni, the problem is that devs cannot keep pace with players for PvE content. It takes far less time to consume content than it does to design and implement it. I honestly don't think this is a solvable problem for any single studio making a PvE game. Either you are forced to make the content extremely difficult to keep players from immediately beating the new content, or fail at trying to produce more content than your players can consume. Blizzard basically had no choice but to make the content extremely hard to keep people occupied until they could finish the next update. I never played EQ because it came before my time, but I think EQ had the benefit of a different MMO audience that was newer to MMOs in general and one that wasn't so focused solely on beating PvE content.
PvP and PvX are different, because a lot of the content comes from player competition and interactions. That's why counterstrike players have been happily playing the same map for over a decade. PvP being uninteresting is personal taste I guess. I think it's more that you don't like PvP in general, or in a particular game, than it being uninteresting. PvP usually doesn't get dull and uninteresting, because there will always be someone who is able to kill you (100% winrate in PvP is non-existent), and it is unpredictable by nature in both the wide variety of human play styles, builds, and plays/mistakes.
As for the second question, yes, the parallelized sections can be a race, but it won't always be a race. I'm assuming that the cage instance must have some kind of time limit, or else someone could sit in there for an infinite amount of time to lock everyone out of the dungeon forever. The barricades also give the group feedback on if there is pressure behind them because a single group member holding the door could observe damage on it. So it wouldn't always be constant time pressure depending on other groups. The parallel structure gives other groups the means to challenge other groups indirectly and pressure them from taking too much time while locking others out of content. The barricade strength of each door could be adjusted per dungeon to give players more or less time per section. The advantage of this design is they give players better feedback on where the group ahead of them is in the dungeon, and prevent constant PvP from happening if the PvE content can't be challenging when under PvX.
Also, if you want to prevent groups from just camping the entrance to the dungeon, parallelized sections solve this by having multiple entrances that lead to parallel sections before they get to a intermediate ring leading to deeper parallelized sections.
A group could technically camp inside the first ring after the first parallel sections, but this would keep the fighting inside the dungeon. Then, when the final boss of the dungeon is killed, the dungeon would need to be reset, maybe by making lava flood everything. All sections reset, and after a short period of time, groups are free to enter the dungeon again.
When a dungeon reset happens, it is unlikely that a single guild is in control of every outer entrance of the dungeon, which could be separated by a long distance, and so if a group is at each entrance when the reset happens, then it is possible for a group to purely win through PvE. However, other guilds can recognize that a particular guild is the best at speedrunning PvE, and they would have the player agency to spy on which entrance they are at, and engage them in PvP when the reset happens. All of this costs a guild resources though, and if they really want to lock down a single dungeon, it won't nearly be as easy as locking down a single dungeon entrance. And even if they could, there's almost no way that a guild could fully lock down multiple dungeons. This is another advantage of parallelized dungeon design.
For the first question from Noanni, the problem is that devs cannot keep pace with players for PvE content. It takes far less time to consume content than it does to design and implement it. I honestly don't think this is a solvable problem for any single studio making a PvE game. Either you are forced to make the content extremely difficult to keep players from immediately beating the new content, or fail at trying to produce more content than your players can consume. Blizzard basically had no choice but to make the content extremely hard to keep people occupied until they could finish the next update. I never played EQ because it came before my time, but I think EQ had the benefit of a different MMO audience that was newer to MMOs in general and one that wasn't so focused solely on beating PvE content.
EQ had this advantage, EQ2 did not - yet EQ2 still managed to have new content ready for players.
One of the key things EQ2 did to this end was not put much emphasis on the encounter model. It wasn't an issue in EQ2 to take an existing mob - just any random model at all, really - and upscale it to make it a raid encounter.
There were obviously still many encounters that had unique appearances, but if the game needed a new encounter, not needing to worry about making a unique model with many animations and such cut the development time down by more than half.
That game knew it's player base was about substance first, substance second, and appearance third. As such, it provided substance to it's players. It was not an issue to occasionally release an entire raid zone with 6+ bosses, many dozens of trash mobs, hundreds of new items and not have a single piece of new art as the art department were working on other things.
The only reason other development studios have for not doing the same is ego.
PvP and PvX are different, because a lot of the content comes from player competition and interactions. That's why counterstrike players have been happily playing the same map for over a decade. PvP being uninteresting is personal taste I guess. I think it's more that you don't like PvP in general, or in a particular game, than it being uninteresting. PvP usually doesn't get dull and uninteresting, because there will always be someone who is able to kill you (100% winrate in PvP is non-existent), and it is unpredictable by nature in both the wide variety of human play styles, builds, and plays/mistakes.
PvP gets dull until you come across someone as good or better than you. Then it is interesting while you are in that match - then it is dull again. The better you are, the more dull it is.
PvE is interesting while you are working on a new encounter, and then that one encounter becomes dull once you kill it (usually). Then you get another encounter that is interesting. The better you are at PvE, the more interesting the content you see gets (assuming good developers).
As for the second question, yes, the parallelized sections can be a race, but it won't always be a race. I'm assuming that the cage instance must have some kind of time limit, or else someone could sit in there for an infinite amount of time to lock everyone out of the dungeon forever. The barricades also give the group feedback on if there is pressure behind them because a single group member holding the door could observe damage on it. So it wouldn't always be constant time pressure depending on other groups. The parallel structure gives other groups the means to challenge other groups indirectly and pressure them from taking too much time while locking others out of content. The barricade strength of each door could be adjusted per dungeon to give players more or less time per section. The advantage of this design is they give players better feedback on where the group ahead of them is in the dungeon, and prevent constant PvP from happening if the PvE content can't be challenging when under PvX.
Also, if you want to prevent groups from just camping the entrance to the dungeon, parallelized sections solve this by having multiple entrances that lead to parallel sections before they get to a intermediate ring leading to deeper parallelized sections.
A group could technically camp inside the first ring after the first parallel sections, but this would keep the fighting inside the dungeon. Then, when the final boss of the dungeon is killed, the dungeon would need to be reset, maybe by making lava flood everything. All sections reset, and after a short period of time, groups are free to enter the dungeon again.
When a dungeon reset happens, it is unlikely that a single guild is in control of every outer entrance of the dungeon, which could be separated by a long distance, and so if a group is at each entrance when the reset happens, then it is possible for a group to purely win through PvE. However, other guilds can recognize that a particular guild is the best at speedrunning PvE, and they would have the player agency to spy on which entrance they are at, and engage them in PvP when the reset happens. All of this costs a guild resources though, and if they really want to lock down a single dungeon, it won't nearly be as easy as locking down a single dungeon entrance. And even if they could, there's almost no way that a guild could fully lock down multiple dungeons. This is another advantage of parallelized dungeon design.
My cage example did leave you with one misconception that I didn't make clear in my first post on it, and also forgot to clear up in my reply. If you are fighting in that cage, others can see you just fine - they can see what you are doing, how well you are doing, and when you start dying. They may be distracted due to PvP while trying to watch, but they can see inside that cage just fine.
And yes, there could be a time limit, though I am more inclined to make it so the mob simply attacks as soon as the cage is closed. If a guild is capable of just holding on against the best mobs in the game, then they deserve to block that encounter from others - though there would be no real reason why they would do that and not just kill said mob.
As your idea of parallel corridors is fleshed out more, it becomes more and more apparent to me that it is a great idea for specific content (as in, I'd actually like to see it in a game), but not for general dungeon content.
This is because one of the things with an open dungeon is that there doesn't really need to be one boss that is hardest, as open dungeons do not have a singular focus on that boss in the way an instanced dungeon does.
Also, an open dungeon should have other actual objectives - quest updates, specific harvests in various locations, rare but very useful drops from other mobs in the dungeon, etc. So even if the dungeon does have a single hardest boss, not everyone in the dungeon is after it.
All of these things can't really happen if every time the hardest boss in the dungeon is killed, the place resets. That kind of thing only really works if everyone in the dungeon was going after that one hardest boss.
Open dungeons were another feature of EQ and EQ2 that very few games even attempted to pull off.
Again, as a content piece, this is great. It just doesn't fit the concept of an open dungeon if they are all done in this manner.
It could be a part of a dungeon, and only that part of the dungeon resets - but that would fit in to the idea of a specific piece of content again, where if you are in the dungeon and decide to enter this content, your objective would be to kill that boss in the middle.
As stated before there isn’t really an endgame in ashes due to the world being ever changing. There is always a new quest or a new dungeon to do. If u really wanna think endgame, more like personal goals could that. I for one want to make a really broken nightspell build focusing on crit and ability duration. These types of goals are endgame in a sense for the player but not actually the game.
As stated before there isn’t really an endgame in ashes due to the world being ever changing. There is always a new quest or a new dungeon to do. If u really wanna think endgame, more like personal goals could that. I for one want to make a really broken nightspell build focusing on crit and ability duration. These types of goals are endgame in a sense for the player but not actually the game.
The world will be ever-changing, sure. This doesn't mean that there won't be an end-game. Rather, it means that a subset of the available content will only exist at one time. For example, say that node-52 contains a big dragon boss if that node gets to tier-5, which it does. Now, the end-game content that week has a big dragon boss.
The "game" always included the big dragon boss, but your server has it available this week, because node-52 is temporarily tier-5. In the future, node-52 may be sieged. This siege is also part of the end-game loop, and is scheduled content. You have to sign up, and you might not get chosen. To better your chances, you'd probably want to reach end-game (by leveling up to max, improving your gear, getting into a guild, optimizing your build, etc).
In general, the stuff that you do in the game creates currency, and the more difficult stuff creates more currency and tends to be player-contested. You use this currency to purchase more character power (gear, enchantments, etc), or invest in crafting to craft either yourself or other players more character power (in exchange for currency). You use this character power to be more effective at doing the stuff in the game (dungeons, raids, bosses, caravans, sieges) that nets you currency to loop back to more character power and repeat. This is the end-game loop.
Ever-changing, although catchy, doesn't inform us at which pace these changes will present themselves. Some servers could see long plateaus with not much noticeable change, then something happens and everything is shuffled on the deck. Others could see gradual changes, predictable changes. Others could be chaos logged-in, all day, every days
So, if things have plateaued or are evolving slowly, a player-made endgame of a sort will establish itself. And there can be a form of routine in ever-changing events, especially if they are easy to predict.
Don't assume too much about how "ever-changing" things will really be.
Ever-changing, although catchy, doesn't inform us at which pace these changes will present themselves. Some servers could see long plateaus with not much noticeable change, then something happens and everything is shuffled on the deck. Others could see gradual changes, predictable changes. Others could be chaos logged-in, all day, every days
So, if things have plateaued or are evolving slowly, a player-made endgame of a sort will establish itself. And there can be a form of routine in ever-changing events, especially if they are easy to predict.
Don't assume too much about how "ever-changing" things will really be.
Even if the world was straight chaos, the endgame loop is still "work together with my guild mates to do our most efficient currency farms so we can purchase/craft our most efficient character power upgrades". Then, these upgrades let you farm even more efficiently and so on. Maybe you log in and you thought you were going to go kill the dragon in node-52 but that node got sacked, and now there's a huge turtle boss in node 35, so you go contest that instead. Or maybe there's nothing so the best way to spend your time to is spend 4 hours farming out the high-value dungeon that's always available in node-17. Maybe none of those farms are better gold/hr than trying to do a caravan run or trying to raid a caravan run that's supposed to happen tonight so you do that instead.
Either way, the loop is just do content for money, spend money on power, use power to get more money.
I'd like some instanced dungeons with an extremely hard boss made for a single party. Just a few of them. That could pass as an end game. It's like combining a dungeon and a raid but for a single party.
It would give you something to try when you waiting for raids or pvp situations that won't result in an overwhelming loss.
Ever-changing, although catchy, doesn't inform us at which pace these changes will present themselves. Some servers could see long plateaus with not much noticeable change, then something happens and everything is shuffled on the deck. Others could see gradual changes, predictable changes. Others could be chaos logged-in, all day, every days
So, if things have plateaued or are evolving slowly, a player-made endgame of a sort will establish itself. And there can be a form of routine in ever-changing events, especially if they are easy to predict.
Don't assume too much about how "ever-changing" things will really be.
My question on the ever-changing world is will they have any kind of world events that will force change if there's ever a gridlock or something...
If a certain guild controls a metropolis and castle for X long really keeping that area kind of stagnant.
I'd like some instanced dungeons with an extremely hard boss made for a single party. Just a few of them. That could pass as an end game. It's like combining a dungeon and a raid but for a single party.
It would give you something to try when you waiting for raids or pvp situations that won't result in an overwhelming loss.
Would you be willing to compromise with the PvX guys on making sure that these dungeons didn't have any character-power rewards?
I would love extreme-difficulty small-group instanced content for strictly cosmetics like titles, or mount skins, or armor skins.
I think 3-man is my favorite size (I love grandmaster nightfalls in destiny 2), but I'll settle for 5 or 8.
I'd like some instanced dungeons with an extremely hard boss made for a single party. Just a few of them. That could pass as an end game. It's like combining a dungeon and a raid but for a single party.
It would give you something to try when you waiting for raids or pvp situations that won't result in an overwhelming loss.
Would you be willing to compromise with the PvX guys on making sure that these dungeons didn't have any character-power rewards?
I would love extreme-difficulty small-group instanced content for strictly cosmetics like titles, or mount skins, or armor skins.
Naw I think it's fair for content like that to have power rewards especially if only 1% of the community are the only ones capable of completing it. Since it's small scale enough for virtually anyone to try whenever they want. I think they should have both power and cosmetic rewards associated with them so that people know how much of a badass you are.
If PvP players can't complete them then that is on them. I don't think the game should cater to people not willing to complete content that has certain rewards because it's not content they are willing to do.
The reason PvPers should only get these rewards in certain PvP events is because not all PvP is equal. Some PvP could end in a single hit or be too one sided. So you have to be careful with what kind of content gets rewarded with power in it. However, dungeons are not subject to those kinds of limitations because they are hard no matter who you are.
Comments
I was basically saying that sandbox MMOs are meant to have more degrees of freedom and room for spontaneity than themeparks/lobby MMOs. So, I disagreed that MMOs are "geared towards" organization, and not spontaneity. For more sandboxy games the design is quite the opposite, actually.
In a lobby game (don't conflate lobby games with themepark games - the terms are different), you can simply opt at any time you wish to join a queue for what ever piece of content you want.
That is the definition of spontaneity in an MMO, as far as I am concerned. You want a group? Have one. You want PvP? Go for it. You want a raid? there is already one waiting for you.
With a non-lobby game, specifically a game like Ashes, if you want to do a thing, you need to find the right number of people to do the thing, that want to do that same thing at that same time, and you need to all get to that same in world location where that thing is.
Now sure, you can ignore all of that content, and just go roaming and see what happens, but you can do that in lobby games as well.
The real part I don't understand is - you seem to agree that this specific kind of playstyle renders some parts of the game out of reach (in Ashes, that is currently guild wars, node wars, castle sieges, node sieges, raids, likely higher end crafting and perhaps some naval content). This is something we both seem to agree on.
Yet, in a lobby game, that list if content that is out of reach for this same player type is basically limited to top end raiding. Everything else is still within reach of the spontaneous player.
I don't see how you can claim a game like Ashes is more suited to this than a lobby game that is literally designed for this type of player.
Now, I do understand why you wouldn't want to play a lobby game - but that isn't the point being made. The point being made is that sandbox games are better suited - which to me seems to be something that is self-evidently not true.
The caravan system will probably be that best place for me to prolong the lifespan of my characters. Mercenary work to defend them has some appeal, and you end up somewhere different as a bonus. Resources gathering also has some appeal.
MMOs may not be tailored perfectly for me, but I found my place in most of the ones I've played. I'm totally ok with organized play being the main focus of most players, so long as it's not the only way to play the game.
Which is precisely one of the major appeals of Ashes:
A dynamic world that continues to churn out new content even after you reach max Adventurer level.
See, to me, this is all good.
As I said earlier, if you go in to a game that has large parts of it that are not your kind of content, but you find enjoyment in the parts that are, more power to you.
It's more like the sterile environment of lobby games which limits spontaneity and emergent gameplay. Most of your time in the open world in these games is spent in town ignoring everything around you waiting for matchmaking to teleport you to a dungeon. You have no real awareness of anyone else. They just appear and disappear in town as they are teleported to and from various dungeons that you can't see or visit.
In a non-lobby game, you need to travel somewhere, and you actually have the opportunity to see what's going on around you, as it's not some opaque system. People are doing observable things in the open world, and not in instances. So that's where the opportunity for more spontaneity kicks in. For example, if you were traveling to a specific dungeon and you run across a guild whose guild castle is being sieged, and you know that they won't make it in time to contest the world boss spawn that they usually take, then you can spontaneously change your plans to gather people for the world boss instead.
It may not be a raid from that same guild that organized the siege (almost certainly won't be, in fact), but you had better believe there will be an organized raid to take it on.
As someone that assists in organizing this kind of thing in previous games, this is absolutely what I would do. I would organize the raid for a time when such a boss was due to spawn, and I would have people both at the siege to take the castle, and also at the mob to take it. If a guild with a castle is spending the time to keep that mob on (or near) total lockdown, then you had better believe I would be able to find others that want a clean shot at it, and that are able to take it out.
Even if we didn't explicitly organize for a raid to be at that mob, since siege times are public and pre-determined, some other raid would have seen the siege at the time the mob was set to spawn, and would have decided they wanted a go at it.
The best your rag-tag group of people could do in this situation is contest against and organized raid (or several organized raids) - the exact same thing you could do if that guild that owns the castle was taking it on.
This is why I don't quite understand the comments about this gameplay style. I mean, I can see the logic of more people in the open world meaning more things happening meaning more opportunity for spontaneity - I even agree with it to an extent. The thing is, with open world content, you are basically leaving yourself at the mercy of what organized people drop on the floor. At least with instanced content (lobby or not), you know you have that content there that you can take on as you wish.
Again though, if you still find a game that you enjoy, more power to you.
MMORPGs satisfy different sources of intrinsic fun for different people. As the genre has evolved over the years from the MUD's of eld to New World releasing in a few weeks, the genre has also evolved (and become diluted) to satisfy the desires of a bunch of different ways that people want to play simultaneously.
Is the way you have fun by doing highly competitive, class-based, 3v3 combat in a tab-target setting with abilities and cooldowns? Possible in WoW. There's a whole community built around it that all know each other and tend to all be on the same server (tichondrius on the US). Ashes wants to have arenas.
Is the way you have fun by defeating set-piece raiding content cooperatively, either with your current friends or by making new ones? MMOs like FFXIV or WoW have you covered there. There are massive communities that support those activities and raiding tends to drive the rest of the gameplay (need consumables for raiding, need herbs for consumables, need to gather for herbs, need to be in the world to gather, etc). Ashes wants to have set-piece encounters.
Is the way you have fun by fighting over open-world bosses or claiming territory, as Steven like to talk about one of his fondest MMO memories (the 10+ hour boss fight where he fell asleep and woke up and folks were still at it)? The MMO genre can support this. Ashes wants to have this.
If they wanted, the WoW devs could hard pivot and make a pure raiding game. They could remove all of the character customization and the questing. They could remove the PvP, the dungeons, the gear, everything. The whole game could be just "you have a character that has an ability kit and you work together with 19 other people to defeat this raid". The team could focus on pumping out tons of raids for players to queue into to cooperatively defeat. Then it would be a "lobby" game as folks like Noaani like to call it.
They didn't though, and WoW isn't a lobby game, it's a full-blown MMO. Folks are out in the open world, running around doing world quests, harvesting materials to make consumables, manually running to m+ dungeons (can't teleport to those by the way), etc.
For what it's worth, I'm really excited about open-world raiding in ashes - it's one of the things I look forward to most. It's where I think I'll get most of my intrinsic fun.
At best, WoW is half way between a lobby game and a full blown MMO.
5 years ago, I was happily and successfully arguing that it wasn't even an MMO at all - other than in name. The fact that it has *some* worthwhile content that you can't just queue up for now means that it at least has it's foot in the door to being legitimately called an MMO - but that is about it.
To be a fully blown MMO, the game would need to have no lobby. No LFG/LFR, and no arena queue. If you want to raid an encounter, get some friends, go to the encounter then kill it. If you want PvP, get some friends, find some enemies and kill them.
The fact that WoW still has much of that content behind a lobby system means you can't really claim it isn't a lobby game, and so shouldn't call it a full blown MMO either.
Yeah, I knew it was just an example, but from my perspective it was the perfect example for you to pick.
Resources or something like that are a much more likely thing to be left in this situation. Again though, it is as I said in my previous post to you - it is still a gameplay style where you are only really taking advantage of what organized people are leaving behind. This is the bit I still don't get.
I honestly don't think I am likely to ever understand that specific perspective - but this is why I have been saying that if you still find a game you enjoy - more power to you. Me not understanding shouldn't (and I assume doesn't) have any effect on how you enjoy the game, which is why that is my stance towards everyone that enjoys any game - as long as they aren't asking for changes to the game to suit themselves (which no one here is doing, I feel I should add - hence the whole more power to you thing).
As someone with a very different playstyle in MMO's to me, I would be somewhat interested in your and Percimes take on the content outline I posted earlier in this thread - if you have the time. It's the stupid long post at the top of page two.
I would add a few mini open dungeons: lairs, ruins, camps, nothing serious but challenging enough so you can't walk in there as you please. There could be a leader or boss there, but one that is nigh impossible to fight alone, but if 2-3 people were to team up they could do it. This leader is harder either because it's tougher or has a few too many guards with him. To make these places uninteresting for group of 4+ is more a question of spawn time: too long to be worth the time staying there. These long-ish spawn time means the soloers or duos have to keep moving. WoW had many of these small cave system, but rarely with a proper boss.
Other than that, I would let incomplete or ad-hoc groups of miss matched roles to have their chances to wander into most dungeons. Unless it's a very efficient group of 6-8, they shouldn't be able to tackle any bosses, but the patrols and rooms of normal mobs should be possible, though always risky.
Anything to encourage people to team up to cease an opportunity, even if it's into non-ideal groups or only temporary. Who knows what will come of it, maybe they'll balance the group and tackle other challenges. Won't be as smooth as people prepared and who know each other's capacities, but still.
That would help a lot. From my perspective, gathering 8 people of the appropriate classes for PvE content is not something that can happen on the fly. If you can built the group overtime and still be able to take on challenges before being full, that's a big plus. It beats waiting in a lobby or list. That's less an issue in PvP, 5-8 people, whatever the classes, can coordinate somewhat. Until the meet the people prepared to face them that is.
A variation to your "cage" encounter type that could be interesting would be something with a modified siege mechanic. A guild or association could work onto a world boss summon. Let say a dragon is seen circling in the sky but will only come to ground level if the proper bate is placed. The guild does a "quest" to acquire this bate, similar what is necessary to start the siege process. Once on the ground the dragon can be contested, but since the timing for luring it down is in the hands of a specific group, they can put the odds in their favour.
This would be like the transition from overland (solo) content to underrealm (small group) getting gradually harder and harder for one person, to the point where after a while they just couldn't continue on their own.
A similar thing in dungeons, where the entry to the dungeon is only a little above what the content outside it was, and gradually gets harder and harder. This would see content at the start of a dungeon be suited for almost any collection of 4 or 5 players, but as you move through, you get to content that needs the full 8 players, and needs proper co-ordination.
Mini-dungeons could be a thing, but I could see an easier way to do this would be to have small caves and such that are considered underrealm (and so gradually get harder until they are suited to a small group), but that are not connected to the greater underrealm itself. This would add a consistency to content that I think games should strive for, while still adding that functionality that you talk about. This could be an underrealm cave that is filled with beast, but could just as easily be a cave that is a campsite for bandits or what ever.
Other games get away with this by having areas like this instanced off, so players know what they are getting in to - but that is unlikely to be a thing for this kind of content in Ashes, so some other mechanism needs to be put in place to tell players they are moving on to a different type of content, and I personally see value in using the same mechanism that is already in use.
I also like the idea of using siege mechanics in non-siege content. I can see potential uses for everything from the side goal system sieges have, to the actual siege equipment being used. I am unsure of exactly how I would want to see this implemented, but I do see value in it.
I like the non-linearity of the dungeons that you suggested. This is something that I myself have mentioned in the past as well. Basically, what I would have is parallel sections of the dungeon. If one group gets to a parallel section first, it does not necessarily mean that they will get through the content first, because a better group might come along, and start a parallel section to the first group after, but finish first and move ahead because they are more efficient. In order to prevent groups from just piggybacking off other's hard work clearing out sections of the dungeon and immediately engaging the first group, there would be doors at the beginning and end of each section. The doors at the end of each section will only open after all mobs or that particular section mini-boss is killed. After the beginning door of the next section is entered, the previous section that was just cleared respawns all mobs and the previous section end door closes and locks.
Each door would have a way to barricade the door with a certain number of people. Say, maybe 5 people max could barricade a door, with one person lightly barricading the door could hold people out for a minimum of maybe 5 minutes, and five could hold people out for 25 min. These times could be adjusted per dungeon depending on the content. This gives some underleveled or underperforming guild members the opportunity to feel like they are actually contributing something to the raid.
The beauty of such a system is that the group that came later must make meaningful decisions on whether to race the first group through the parallelized content, or focus on bringing down the door to try to kill the first group. Also, there is the possibility that the two groups finish at exactly the same time, which would be even more interesting and unpredictable. It also allows for the group that finishes the parallel section first to force an engagement at the end of the parallelized content if they really want to risk the PvP and buy some extra time for the next section. This parallelized design is also scaleable to more than 2 groups, to however many sections of dungeons that Intrepid can design. Maybe a dungeon with 3 parallel sections would lead to a 3-way race, then a subsequent parallel section would only have 2, etc... And each section could be easier or harder depending on the group composition, leading to having to make tactical changes on which parallelized section to attempt. This system also allows groups to know where the group ahead of them is, and gives them something active to do instead of just waiting for them to finish, while making the first group feel the pressure that exists everywhere else in the world of Verra(?), where there is always the a little unpredictability and a threat of player disruption.
The thing is, all of my suggestions fit into my dislike of purely linear content, which I consider boring once it is solved. This is why I don't particularly like PvE content, as it is all scripted and will never have the variability of PvX or PvP content. If it's impossible to make AI dungeon content challenging with PvX being involved, then I would like some system similar to what I've suggested. Maybe Intrepid know what they're doing and have something way more innovative than what I've thought up. I just hope that they don't have to fall back on instancing as a substitute for actually well-designed game systems that work in the open world.
My ideas may not make sense to PvE players. I value being able to make tactical decisions on non-static content that can only be provided by non-scripted competition (aka non-PvE). Addressing one of your earlier questions about not understanding my playstyle, sometimes you can not just expect that your linear plan with work in these scenarios, and it's fun for me to take advantage of opportunities that the unpredictability of PvX or PvP provide (such as coming across a loaded caravan on your way to a dungeon). It's just more efficient and fun to change your plans and use wit to take advantage of unpredictable situations, instead of just do x then y then z, period.
Been away a few days, sorry I didn't reply sooner.
There is a lot to unpack there, honestly.
I do like the idea of parallel corridors you suggested, but I have two points/questions in relation to it.
The first is that a mechanic that specific would be fantastic in "some" PvE settings, but any dungeon it is in would feel the same as any other dungeon it is in. This means it would be an awesome addition to a game, if used in one or two dungeons every content cycle.
The second is a question as to how you see it being played as content. Is the idea (in your mind) that it is a race of sorts? The reason I ask this is because the way I would play a content piece like this is that I would simply get to it earlier in the day than anyone else. Everyone that comes in an hour behind me and my group/guild will spend their time running through these corridors of content, only to find that what ever is at the other side of them has already been killed.
If the content is more akin to a race, where everyone has to start at the same time, then this keeps the idea of whom ever does the content fastest getting the reward at the end.
I do agree with you in saying that once an encounter has been killed, it is significantly less interesting (usually, I have come across a half dozen encounters that are as interesting and difficult to kill on the 20th kill as they were on the first).
However, I would rebut that point by stating that most PvP fights are just as uninteresting.
The thing that makes PvE good is not the fact that every encounter is enjoyable every time - it is the fact that there is always an enjoyable encounter to head towards. When you kill that encounter you have been working on, sure, it becomes less interesting - but if you just go a little further down the corridor, there is a new encounter to work on.
This leads to the key thing needed to make a good PvE game, why few developers even try to make a good PvE game any more, and subsequently the reason why I consider the two EQ games to be the only truly good PvE MMO's out - a good PvE game needs a new encounter ready to go as soon as players defeat the current encounter.
Blizzards biggest failing, in my mind, is not the introduction of LFG/LFR, it's not the dumbing down of their already dumbed down combat system, it's not the "borrowing" of lore from another IP, it's not the addition of motorcycles to the game, its not the... you get the point.
To me, their biggest failure is that they haven't kept pace with their players. Their second biggest failure is that they never had any real idea how long it would take their players to defeat an encounter.
WoW is on it's 8th expansion, by my count. EQ2, a game that is one month older, is about to release it's 18th. EQ, a game that is only 5 or so years older, is about to release it's 28th. Some WoW players may want to jump in here and say that WoW releases content mid-expansion, to which I will simply say - so do both EQ games, as well as releasing expansions at more than twice the rate.
Knowing how long it will take your players to defeat an encounter is key to this. I recall a discussion I had with a developer that had just had a top end encounter added to EQ2. He said he expects it to take players 6 weeks to kill, and if it isn't dead in 7 weeks, they may need to rebalance it (but he stressed that he didn't think it would come to that). The encounter was first killed 45 days (or 6 weeks, 3 days) after going live, and they had more content ready to go by then.
The notion of developers keeping pace with their players is not something I expect many people to really understand, as unless you have played an EQ game at the top end, you have probably not experienced it at all (I honestly can't think of any other MMO that actually even tries to do this, let alone manages to do it).
When you do experience it though, the argument of an encounter becoming less interesting once you have killed it is kind of a moot point. The second you kill that encounter, it becomes old news and there is a new one to take on.
Once you kill a boss will you be able to skip that floor on future runs, and hop down to whatever content layer you're working on?
I guess similar to the checkpoint floors in Diablo 1.
One of the design elements that we're implementing into our raids is that the raid will not be exactly the same every single time. You're going to have variables that can't necessarily be pre-planned out for. You can pre-plan out for a lot of the raid like how many DPS do you need and healers and support; where the key position and all that kind of stuff; but I think the compelling aspect of Ashes raiding will be the difficulty in achieving this content and having that content change from session to session as well.
A lot of those systems are influenced obviously by world development. So the raid kind of takes into account at what stage has the world developed: Are there two metropolises now available in the world? Okay well let's activate this skill in this skill. Now you have five metropolises, well now all these skills have been activated. Are there are they all economic nodes? Are they all military nodes? That we can change things based on that stuff. And it really is a threat assessment from the environment against the players.
---Steven
Developer quotes have no place here.
PvP and PvX are different, because a lot of the content comes from player competition and interactions. That's why counterstrike players have been happily playing the same map for over a decade. PvP being uninteresting is personal taste I guess. I think it's more that you don't like PvP in general, or in a particular game, than it being uninteresting. PvP usually doesn't get dull and uninteresting, because there will always be someone who is able to kill you (100% winrate in PvP is non-existent), and it is unpredictable by nature in both the wide variety of human play styles, builds, and plays/mistakes.
As for the second question, yes, the parallelized sections can be a race, but it won't always be a race. I'm assuming that the cage instance must have some kind of time limit, or else someone could sit in there for an infinite amount of time to lock everyone out of the dungeon forever. The barricades also give the group feedback on if there is pressure behind them because a single group member holding the door could observe damage on it. So it wouldn't always be constant time pressure depending on other groups. The parallel structure gives other groups the means to challenge other groups indirectly and pressure them from taking too much time while locking others out of content. The barricade strength of each door could be adjusted per dungeon to give players more or less time per section. The advantage of this design is they give players better feedback on where the group ahead of them is in the dungeon, and prevent constant PvP from happening if the PvE content can't be challenging when under PvX.
Also, if you want to prevent groups from just camping the entrance to the dungeon, parallelized sections solve this by having multiple entrances that lead to parallel sections before they get to a intermediate ring leading to deeper parallelized sections.
A group could technically camp inside the first ring after the first parallel sections, but this would keep the fighting inside the dungeon. Then, when the final boss of the dungeon is killed, the dungeon would need to be reset, maybe by making lava flood everything. All sections reset, and after a short period of time, groups are free to enter the dungeon again.
When a dungeon reset happens, it is unlikely that a single guild is in control of every outer entrance of the dungeon, which could be separated by a long distance, and so if a group is at each entrance when the reset happens, then it is possible for a group to purely win through PvE. However, other guilds can recognize that a particular guild is the best at speedrunning PvE, and they would have the player agency to spy on which entrance they are at, and engage them in PvP when the reset happens. All of this costs a guild resources though, and if they really want to lock down a single dungeon, it won't nearly be as easy as locking down a single dungeon entrance. And even if they could, there's almost no way that a guild could fully lock down multiple dungeons. This is another advantage of parallelized dungeon design.
One of the key things EQ2 did to this end was not put much emphasis on the encounter model. It wasn't an issue in EQ2 to take an existing mob - just any random model at all, really - and upscale it to make it a raid encounter.
There were obviously still many encounters that had unique appearances, but if the game needed a new encounter, not needing to worry about making a unique model with many animations and such cut the development time down by more than half.
That game knew it's player base was about substance first, substance second, and appearance third. As such, it provided substance to it's players. It was not an issue to occasionally release an entire raid zone with 6+ bosses, many dozens of trash mobs, hundreds of new items and not have a single piece of new art as the art department were working on other things.
The only reason other development studios have for not doing the same is ego. PvP gets dull until you come across someone as good or better than you. Then it is interesting while you are in that match - then it is dull again. The better you are, the more dull it is.
PvE is interesting while you are working on a new encounter, and then that one encounter becomes dull once you kill it (usually). Then you get another encounter that is interesting. The better you are at PvE, the more interesting the content you see gets (assuming good developers).
My cage example did leave you with one misconception that I didn't make clear in my first post on it, and also forgot to clear up in my reply. If you are fighting in that cage, others can see you just fine - they can see what you are doing, how well you are doing, and when you start dying. They may be distracted due to PvP while trying to watch, but they can see inside that cage just fine.
And yes, there could be a time limit, though I am more inclined to make it so the mob simply attacks as soon as the cage is closed. If a guild is capable of just holding on against the best mobs in the game, then they deserve to block that encounter from others - though there would be no real reason why they would do that and not just kill said mob.
As your idea of parallel corridors is fleshed out more, it becomes more and more apparent to me that it is a great idea for specific content (as in, I'd actually like to see it in a game), but not for general dungeon content.
This is because one of the things with an open dungeon is that there doesn't really need to be one boss that is hardest, as open dungeons do not have a singular focus on that boss in the way an instanced dungeon does.
Also, an open dungeon should have other actual objectives - quest updates, specific harvests in various locations, rare but very useful drops from other mobs in the dungeon, etc. So even if the dungeon does have a single hardest boss, not everyone in the dungeon is after it.
All of these things can't really happen if every time the hardest boss in the dungeon is killed, the place resets. That kind of thing only really works if everyone in the dungeon was going after that one hardest boss.
Open dungeons were another feature of EQ and EQ2 that very few games even attempted to pull off.
Again, as a content piece, this is great. It just doesn't fit the concept of an open dungeon if they are all done in this manner.
It could be a part of a dungeon, and only that part of the dungeon resets - but that would fit in to the idea of a specific piece of content again, where if you are in the dungeon and decide to enter this content, your objective would be to kill that boss in the middle.
The world will be ever-changing, sure. This doesn't mean that there won't be an end-game. Rather, it means that a subset of the available content will only exist at one time. For example, say that node-52 contains a big dragon boss if that node gets to tier-5, which it does. Now, the end-game content that week has a big dragon boss.
The "game" always included the big dragon boss, but your server has it available this week, because node-52 is temporarily tier-5. In the future, node-52 may be sieged. This siege is also part of the end-game loop, and is scheduled content. You have to sign up, and you might not get chosen. To better your chances, you'd probably want to reach end-game (by leveling up to max, improving your gear, getting into a guild, optimizing your build, etc).
In general, the stuff that you do in the game creates currency, and the more difficult stuff creates more currency and tends to be player-contested. You use this currency to purchase more character power (gear, enchantments, etc), or invest in crafting to craft either yourself or other players more character power (in exchange for currency). You use this character power to be more effective at doing the stuff in the game (dungeons, raids, bosses, caravans, sieges) that nets you currency to loop back to more character power and repeat. This is the end-game loop.
So, if things have plateaued or are evolving slowly, a player-made endgame of a sort will establish itself. And there can be a form of routine in ever-changing events, especially if they are easy to predict.
Don't assume too much about how "ever-changing" things will really be.
Either way, the loop is just do content for money, spend money on power, use power to get more money.
It would give you something to try when you waiting for raids or pvp situations that won't result in an overwhelming loss.
U.S. East
My question on the ever-changing world is will they have any kind of world events that will force change if there's ever a gridlock or something...
If a certain guild controls a metropolis and castle for X long really keeping that area kind of stagnant.
Would you be willing to compromise with the PvX guys on making sure that these dungeons didn't have any character-power rewards?
I would love extreme-difficulty small-group instanced content for strictly cosmetics like titles, or mount skins, or armor skins.
I think 3-man is my favorite size (I love grandmaster nightfalls in destiny 2), but I'll settle for 5 or 8.
Naw I think it's fair for content like that to have power rewards especially if only 1% of the community are the only ones capable of completing it. Since it's small scale enough for virtually anyone to try whenever they want. I think they should have both power and cosmetic rewards associated with them so that people know how much of a badass you are.
If PvP players can't complete them then that is on them. I don't think the game should cater to people not willing to complete content that has certain rewards because it's not content they are willing to do.
The reason PvPers should only get these rewards in certain PvP events is because not all PvP is equal. Some PvP could end in a single hit or be too one sided. So you have to be careful with what kind of content gets rewarded with power in it. However, dungeons are not subject to those kinds of limitations because they are hard no matter who you are.
Basically noobs ruin PvP rewarding in games. xD
U.S. East