How to prevent "boss farming" turning into a monotonous task

"farming world bosses" specially when hunting for that super rare drop has two potential issues.

1.- One strong guild could monopolize the world boss by keeping track of the respawn timer and camping the boss arena preventing others to try to defeat it.
2.- Once you got the mechanics mastered the process of farming a boss becomes tedious since is a long battle with no surprises.

In my opinion farming bosses should not be something that can be done over and over without variance, it should be something that always keeps you on your toes in order to keep the farming interesting.

By example the boss spawns in the forest's labyrinth, the floor of the boss arena has some poisoned mushrooms so you need to watch out were you step during the fight, and also bring poison resistance gear + antivenom because they can explode from time to time, when you defeat the boss, it disappears and you need to wait X time, but when it respawns, it doesn't respawn in the forest, now it appears on the pirate cove, and now the battle arena is a flooded cave were, from time to time, drowned pirates appear during the battle to attack your backline, now you need to rethink the formation of your party and keep some tanks on the back to fend off the undead pirates, you managed to defeat the boss again, now you should wait Y time, and it appears again in the forest, but this time, there are no mushrooms, there are corruption crystals all over the place, that put a debuff on everybody on your party and now you need to get rid of the crystals while fighting the boss and bring some bards to help mitigate the debuffs while figthing the boss.

In all those cases the boss was exactly the same (assuming the boss didn't suffered changes due to the node system) but both the location and the environmental hazards were semi random and radically different, making the act of farming a boss, more engaging even if you have done the battle several times since you will always have to take something different in consideration and you don't know exactly what to expect on each encounter, also since it can appear in several places is not that easy to simply monopolize the boss since you would have to cover many potential boss arenas

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Noaani

akabear wrote: »

I wonder if that approach would be viable in AoC?

I would expect Steven to add in any one of several mechanics that have been added in to MMO's in the years since to prevent this kind of thing. It is kind of cheesy, and he isn't that keen on blatant cheesing of game mechanics.

A few mechanics that I have seen to combat this are a timer when you die - if you do not get revived or respawn voluntarily, you automatically respawn after a short period of time. A second is that when you die, your camera is essentially cut. Either everything just goes black, or you are forced to look directly down, zoomed in as far as the game allows (not a fan of this one, personally). The third is that you can't log out of a character that is dead, and should you disconnect while dead, you are automatically respawned.

So really, if this is something that is viable in Ashes, it is because Intrepid are happy with people cheesing mechanics.

McShave

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to farm a dungeon or raid instead of a World Boss? I understand that world bosses drop the best loot, but there are many ways that Intrepid can prevent farming: random respawn time, random spawn location, random boss type, etc. In a raid or dungeon tho, respawn time is faster, location is not random or less random, and the bosses are usually the same.

There is the thing Steven talked about, how the boss fights will be dynamic and can change from encounter to encounter. Depending on how many variations of each boss fight they make, this could be a huge factor in making the boss fights not feel repetitive.

Noaani

McShave wrote: »

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to farm a dungeon or raid instead of a World Boss? I understand that world bosses drop the best loot, but there are many ways that Intrepid can prevent farming: random respawn time, random spawn location, random boss type, etc. In a raid or dungeon tho, respawn time is faster, location is not random or less random, and the bosses are usually the same.

There is the thing Steven talked about, how the boss fights will be dynamic and can change from encounter to encounter. Depending on how many variations of each boss fight they make, this could be a huge factor in making the boss fights not feel repetitive.

While he did talk about the boss fights changing, he also said that you will know basic things such as what classes to bring along. This limits the changes that can be made to the boss, if it is to hold true.

The way this will end out - feel free to save this quote for the future - is that boss encounters will have a basic framework that is 90% of the encounter. The last 10% will change - this will be things like the range, shape, damage type and timer of AoE's. These are changes that could trip up mediocre guilds, but once a top end guild has that 90% under control, the 10% won't provide any challenge.

There isn't any other economically viable way to do it imo.

You are right that dungeon bosses would be easier to farm - but world bosses have better loot (at least in every game I have played that has had both).

akabear

Noaani wrote: »

akabear wrote: »

I wonder if that approach would be viable in AoC?

I would expect Steven to add in any one of several mechanics that have been added in to MMO's in the years since to prevent this kind of thing. It is kind of cheesy, and he isn't that keen on blatant cheesing of game mechanics.

A few mechanics that I have seen to combat this are a timer when you die - if you do not get revived or respawn voluntarily, you automatically respawn after a short period of time. A second is that when you die, your camera is essentially cut. Either everything just goes black, or you are forced to look directly down, zoomed in as far as the game allows (not a fan of this one, personally). The third is that you can't log out of a character that is dead, and should you disconnect while dead, you are automatically respawned.

So really, if this is something that is viable in Ashes, it is because Intrepid are happy with people cheesing mechanics.

None of the alts were in instanced zones nor dead when logged out.
I don`t know of any mmo that prevents you from logging in and out of a live character in an open zone.
A mechanic to prevent this would be to only be logging out in town and/or reset to nearest town when loggin out, and given there is very limited fast travel, I cannot see that happening.

Perhaps with a limited number of characters per account and limited boxing, then perhaps the advantage will be limited

SirChancelot

Sathrago wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

Which dungeons and raids remain active can change based on the rise and fall of Nodes.
It is not the case that once a dungeon boss appears, it remains on the server for months and years.

😂😂😂😂
Right?

Sathrago

SirChancelot wrote: »

Sathrago wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

Which dungeons and raids remain active can change based on the rise and fall of Nodes.
It is not the case that once a dungeon boss appears, it remains on the server for months and years.

😂😂😂😂
Right?

It's my fault really. I keep clicking on his messages even though I have him blocked.

SirChancelot

I think the only thing I have heard mentioned that might prevent a world boss from being 'farm status' would be the described scaling difficulty of bosses.
I forget where I heard it, but if you beat a phase on a boss faster (a higher geared guild most likely) it ramps up the difficulty with either a new phase or mechanic.
If a boss starts getting farmed too hard they could just add a new tier to the difficulty levels.

Other than that, yeah, people consume content faster than it's created...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Merek

Unless the bosses have true mechanical depth, which I doubt, especially now, they will always be turned into a farm.

Noaani

akabear wrote: »

I don`t know of any mmo that prevents you from logging in and out of a live character in an open zone.

Ah, I assumed this wasn't possible.

All games I have played that have had a raid mob in a location where going to see if it is up is non-trivial have had roaming mobs that would simply not allow you to log in or out in sight of said raid mob while alive.

I honestly didn't consider that a game developer would make this possible. Seems like an oversight on their part to me.

For mobs that are indeed trivial, it makes no real difference.

Dygz

https://youtu.be/yDbsYYuUtxM
1:10:34

There's also this dev quote:
Gimlog: How will the swap over for increasing or decreasing a Node level look for mobs. Do old mobs just pop out of existence and new ones appear or something else?

Jeffrey: More than likely what we will have is the existing mob base will just live on until they are killed. And, as that population is removed, the new population comes in. So it will be fairly organic. We don't want that experience of, "OMG a level just changed!"
So, the mobs you're attacking right now will probably stay there. Once you kill those mobs, they will be replaced by the new ones.

Dygz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIVnt8SDdrY&t=1244s
20:44

And this one:
Our seasons are non-static. I mean, they are static but also non-static.
Zones will experience seasons based on their location in the world. And they'll be going through these seasons, and you'll have different types of crop cycles and rotations associated with seasons and you'll have pathing that opens up when Summer comes but is closed when Winter approaches. You'll have solid water, where you can walk on the water and you won't have access to it if it's in Winter but, the water will be open when it's Summer and Spring.
And then you'll have Events that bring with it, weather:
If some Winter Dragon appears because some Node has developed to Stage 4, and that Dragon brings with it an Eternal Winter, if players don't kill that Dragon, that Winter stays.

How long will that Winter Dragon be available for farming for that "super-rare drop" the OP posited??
The OP states: "In my opinion farming bosses should not be something that can be done over and over without variance, it should be something that always keeps you on your toes in order to keep the farming interesting."

And I'm asking, "Is that really how 'farming' works in Ashes?"
I asked that question in a hyperbolic manner, sure.

Noaani

Dygz wrote: »

And I'm asking, "Is that really how 'farming' works in Ashes?"
I asked that question in a hyperbolic manner, sure.

Mobs like this (event mobs in MMO's in general) are for many people to participate in, not just guilds.

This kind of event will be more akin to public quests, or the rifts from Rift, or the anchor things from ESO.

This is not a raid encounter a top end guild cares about.

arsnn

Hm, i think Intrepid is very aware of this Issue. I would recommend using the wiki every now and then.
Here are some things that have not been mentioned yet at all from the wiki page for raids https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Raids

"Raids will also have dynamic elements that can change from session to session.[9]

The types and numbers of bosses and mobs present in the raid and their skill repertoire."

"The difficulty of PvE content, such as raids and dungeons will adapt based on the performance of the raid or group against previous bosses in that encounter.[14]

Higher performance in earlier phases will increase the difficulty of subsequent phases of the encounter.[14]
Certain AI behaviors might activate based on progress within an encounter.[15]
The higher the difficulty, the better the loot tables will be.[14]
Bosses and mobs will not auto-scale based on group size.[16]"

Will Intrepid succeed at making it a good experience ? We don´t know.
Are these things applicable for other PvE scenarios like smaller world bosses? We don´t know.

But i think it´s at the center of their design decisions and how they plan out the modularity of the encounters that is build up through the content distribution of nodes.

daveywavey

The thing I like about Ashes is that the creators actually want to PLAY the game, rather than just MAKE and SELL it. Gives me hope that we'll get a good experience.

McMackMuck

@daveywavey Agreed.
I just don't want the devs on my server - insider knowledge is an unfair advantage, especially if there are dev commands available to them.

The variations that Intrepid have planned should hopefully make things less predictable, but we don't know to what extent (and maybe Intrepid don't yet know). Until we see a wider spread of how Bosses are implemented (not just A1 content, because that was a server test) it's difficult to assess. Having several different game mechanics that a boss could use keeps players on their toes for a little longer until they have learned to recognize the mechanics and adapt.

Noaani

McMackMuck wrote: »

I just don't want the devs on my server - insider knowledge is an unfair advantage, especially if there are dev commands available to them.

In most of the MMO's I have played, there have been developers that I have known about on my server (or, producers in the case of Archeage).

Honestly, it's fine. In almost all cases, if they use their position for gain in game, they are putting their job at risk. Most people don't consider it worth the risk.

It is fun though, when they screw something up just a little - if you know what their responsibilities with the game are - to send them a message as soon as they log in next joking about how they fucked the game up.

overfitneuralnet

So, your solution to making bossed not farmable is having a larger finite number of mechanics?
Unless you constantly introduce more and more random mechanics and events around and during boss fights, eventually people will get the hang of all of them and the boss will become 'farmable'.

On the other hand, if a single guild is able to monopolize a world boss (they will probably have to respawn timers that are a week or two long, so...) and nobody has attempted to gather people to stop them, then they kind of deserve to 'farm' the boss.

Depending on how the scaling mechanics for bosses world (the anti-zerging boss scaling) works it may be enough by itself to reduce potential monopolies. Example:

Boss: Big-Ass Spooder
If there are more than 30 people in a 5 square kilometer proximity around the boss, then the boss scales up, summons more adds, calls spider web tornados and spits acid. It gets passive regen and a 250% hp boost that heals it up to the new max hp. Boss now deals %hp damage per second to all players in a 200m radius

Something like this will discourage camping the spawn with 300 people because it will make the boss infinitely harder to 'farm' and monopolize. And if the guild wanted to have just one normal party farm it and the rest 260 people guard around so nobody interrupts the farm, then they would have to stand a lot further away from the boss area which would give more opportunities to sneak up behind the 'farmers' and stick one in them.

Thaedd

Boanergese wrote: »

It would be nice if the boss had like 10 abilities, and it randomly chose from 4 of those abilities each time in order to keep the dance fresh. To the extent that you can make the AI great I think we all want a challenge from world bosses. The other option is to have Steven, or another GM be the boss.

World Boss 1 Player Base 0

How about having world bosses move/fly around instead of just sitting there waiting to die? For example, a dragon on a mountain could see a herd of animals below and decide it's feeding time, and fly over there. Sticking with dragons, they're usually depicted as being intelligent, so perhaps if it sees a massive zerg coming it's way, it
calculates the odds against it and maybe it decides to fly away? Then players would have to follow on the ground if they really want to kill it...and since it left, guess what some items/treasure it has are left behind at its original spot...new quests could happen from those items perhaps...and if you want to get crazy perhaps there's an option for players to "defend " the boss by attacking its attackers and not the boss? What if the dragon remembers who did what (maybe in a general way), like "they all seem to come from that town" and if it survives that town is in for some revenge the next night, or at least a fly-by scorching whomever is out and about, destroying some buildings, etc.

Btw I love the idea of gms controlling the boss, it would need to be done right of course, but the idea of bosses/mobs reacting dynamically would be cool.

Or if a dragon feeds on sheep and for some reason the sheep population declines in an area it goes to a different area...

This post could go on forever but one last thing: what if that dragon got too close to another dragon's feeding grounds, how would the resident dragon react? They could have a spectacular aerial battle...

Looking forward to this game!!

Dygz

Monster Coin Events

fabula

I do not see big guilds camping a boss by killing everyone that comes along. Corruption is a thing in this game, are all these people going to turn red and therefore becoming even better targets than the boss itself?.

I guess you could make it so that the boss creates a big PvP zone like the caravans do, but then bosses would become a huge mess with TONS of people since there wouldn't be any death/corruption penalties. The boss mechanics would then have to be designed around having adverserial players that are trying to get you killed.

If the boss does not create such a PvP zone then guilds will to come to an agreement that whoever is ready first gets a shot at the boss. These agreements will be enforced by the huge number of people around them that know they can't kill the boss but hope there is a conflict where someone turns red.

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