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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
I can tell you haven't done high end pvp with this post. Pvp will always be more challenging then any kind of mob in the game because at the end of the day (unless they go heavy action based) mobs are just puzzles. Once the puzzle is solved you follow the formula and builds and easy.
Pvp isn't a puzzle, you need to manage entire guilds or multiple guilds of people. Keep them happy, deal with your threats of other players. Have strategies with territory control how to depend your place, or attack another as well as deal with how player react and what plans they come up against you. Ride your highs, but also manage the lows so it doesn't impact your guild. Hold your territory or take more more the many many days of sieges. Deal with drama, etc.
PVE does not compare to the power of PvP and dealing with other humans not limited by programmed AI.
*Ashes should not be linage, Ashes needs to be ashes. Its own modern and top tier territory siege mmo. That is the only point ill agree with you on.
Max lvl to Max lvl and best gear in game id expect a 50% increase in stats. Meaning a very easy win. I think you have a issue in thinking a casual player needs to complete with a hardcore player when that will be they 5%. Level matters and if you are playing casually and a lower level you will 100% lose against a higher level player. Just play at your level and make friends and you will be fine.
This post is clearly referring to people of equal level (max level).
I can tell you haven't played top end PvP in a server segregated, persistent world MMO game with this post.
Sure, a single boss is a puzzle, and generally speaking, once you solve it, it becomes easier.
The thing is, the developers add new mobs, with new puzzles, and if they are doing their job well, you never run out of new puzzles to solve.
With players in PvP though, it's exactly the same. Once you figure out a players strengths or weaknesses, they virtually never change. Players dont just suddenly gain faster reaction skill, as an example.
So, eventually the same thing happens, you figure out a player, and they become much easier after that.
Since Ashes will see players bound to their server, there will be a very limited pool of top end PvP players. In Archeage when I played it, there were about 20 people on my server (the highest population at launch) that were actually good at PvP. The thing is, since players are server bound, this pool of top end PvP players gets just as stale as doing the same PvE content can.
The thing there is, developers can (and should) add more PvE content. If you feel a desire to kill a PvE encounter more than 12 times, the developers screwed up.
Developers cant just add new top end PvP players, and so when fighting the same handful of people gets stale, it will stay stale. Even if the developers alter classes and such, you still have the same players with the same sets of inherent strengths and weaknesses. An alteration to a class still isnt going to increase the reflexes of a player.
Anyone that things PvE gets stale but PvP doesnt has clearly never actually played PvE. The only way you can think this is if you totally ignore the 30 to 50 new encounters a competent developer adds each year, while PvP players are stuck with the handful of opponents.
Honestly you do not understand pvp, you are trying to boil my post down to 1v1 when i was never talking about 1v1 lmao. That right there shows you don't understand the work and challenges of high end pvp that will always be more difficult then PVE encounters in a game.
Ashes PvP is not going to be stale im confident in their designs that has been talked about and shown, which is far above pvp in any other mmo with changing landscapes and giant sieges.
You are literately talking out of your ass with 30-50 pve encounter literarily just stop lying. No game has 30-50 pve encounters that are all equally challenges and take ages to complete you only get a handful. And again once the puzzle is solved you look at a guide online follow it and have it much easier. No need to think you just follow the video.
There is no video to follow for what ashes if doing in pvp on this kind of scale with this many player period. There is no guide that will tell you how to react to everything players do and how things change in real time. Pvp isn't just limited to the giant battles, but again i need to repeat myself but making the guild, dealing with the drama, retaining your territory and players, etc.
Honestly this shouldn't be a debate you are literally trying to say in a game that will have a giant focus on PvP that AI is harder then having players as you opponents in the world. Be it small scale battles or battles to control the entirety of the land.
You can't be talking about guild based organized PvP here, surely. If you were, you would know that guild based PvP is almost exclusively about the few people on each side that are running things going against each other, and everyone else is just a peon that is there to do what they are told (essentially).
Those at the top absolutely do fit in with what I was talking about above where PvP is the same few people taking on the same few people over and over again, with little to nothing at all really changing.
While I was playing Archeage, the guild I was running was facing off against the same three guilds for a year and a half. It didn't matter if it was open PvP over a mob, naval PvP for trade packs or a fishing spot, an in game event, a guild war, or a castle siege - it was always the same three other guilds - because there were only four top end guilds on the server and no one else had the balls to really attack us (that is how you know you are top end in regards to PvP - you get very little PvP).
When ever we were in a situation where we were up against one of those three guilds, we always knew about what to expect, because they always had the same people leading them. That persons brain isn't going to change, and so once you understand how that brain works, you have effectively solved the PvP version of solving a PvE puzzle.
The problem is, the developers aren't going to replace that brain like they do with PvE encounters.
Now, I have to also assume you aren't talking about arena PvP as being top end. If you are, all you will get back from me is incessant mocking. Literally the only thing PvP could ever claim to have over PvE is that it can occasionally have some unpredictability. Arena PvP literally reduces unpredictability as much as is possible, making arena PvP the least PvP version of PvP that is available to us.
This leaves open world PvP. As I said earlier, if you are being attacked in open world by random players, you are not playing top end PvP - if you were top end in regards to PvP, they would not attack you. This was literally my experience in Archeage after my guild disbanded (due to lack of content), and I moved to a new server. People would see the solo player that happened to be the only pirate on the server (as in, red to literally everyone else on the server), think that the four of them will take me on because pirate, look at the gear buff I have (when I transferred to the server, I had the best gear on the server by almost 10%) , and without fail they would just move on.
Now, maybe by top end PvP you actually mean mid-range open world PvP, where people can and do attack you. If this is the case, then all I can say is that you don't know top end PvP, and are mistaking mid-range PvP for top end. Show me where I said that all 30 - 50 encounters were equally challenging. You will not be able to find it, because I never said it, because that is not how it works.
It doesn't work like that because game developers need to create content both for people that know what they are doing like me, and other people, like you.
However, even easier encounters can be both interesting and enjoyable. If you are playing a game where there are video guides for current content, you are paying a game with no competition. I personally don't play such games, because why would I? If you do, that's cool, you do you. However, don't make the assumption that just because videos of current content exist in the competition-less game you are playing, that they will exist in every game.
Since there will be competition in Ashes, I would wager that most guilds will run a similar policy to guilds in EQ2 in relation to strategies to killing bosses. If you let out any secret, you are out of the guild.
Guilds in EQ2 did this because the top end encounters in that game were open world - the first guild to kill it got the loot, everyone else misses out. Letting a guild on your server know how to kill a mob they were having trouble with would mean they would be able to get more loot faster, meaning that with the next open world boss spawn they would be in a better position to get that kill out from under you.
As such, many raids from that game STILL don't have videos about them, almost two decades later. And this is a game that generally didn't even have PvP.
Add PvP to that, and I see literally no reason at all why any guild in Ashes would release videos on current content.
I find that this attitude is quite unfortunate, and yet common in certain ways. "I have chosen to skip the entire discovery phase of this content. Why is it so boring?"
I'm not saying guides are wrong or bad. Only that... if you want to enjoy the puzzle, you can simply choose to not work against your own enjoyment by looking up the solution in advance. The existence of guides isn't an excuse for not enjoying PvE encounters.
Some people do that its fine, the majority will look at a guide and expect others to know the guide. Look at lost ark for that very reason. I'ma just make this blunt 95% of people will look at a guide, you might have that 5% that try without one for fun at first but eventually will look at a guide. Even more so if you are trying to be competitive.
Honestly you actually have to be cracked out right now you literally are agreeing with me without knowing if what you are saying is true LMAO. All forms of pvp are more challenging and honestly I don't feel like repeating myself when i made a large post going over it already you just want to ignore it and that is fine since you already agreed with me.
If you are in a top guild and people don't attack you that is because of the difficulty and waste of time if they do attack you and are not prepared. Compared to PvE content where you just keep ramming against it til you beat it, find out the puzzle if its new (or just look at a guide and have it easy) and done and done.
Same brain? a brain isn't a simple ai bud just because you are the same person doesn't mean you won't try new things, evolve your plan, etc. If one group does something that works and other group does the same thing that doesn't work every time I'd have to question the leadership.
To continue with that notion which concerns me more then anything if you think people are simple minded and did the same thing or you did not see new things. I have to question at what stage were you playing the game if there was that lack of a challenge and was it a dead mmorpg at that time? If its dead you won't have a challenge since people aren't playing it.
In high stress situations, human brains are very close to simple AI.
It is far more likely (based on your reactions to someone who, as far as I can see, gave you a direct information point from their own experience), that you are the one who has not played things at a high level.
"Now, maybe by top end PvP you actually mean mid-range open world PvP, where people can and do attack you. If this is the case, then all I can say is that you don't know top end PvP, and are mistaking mid-range PvP for top end."
The above is more likely to be true in this case, if it is not true, you are making your arguments quite poorly, giving the impression that it is true. I suggest attempting to address this aspect first, there is no way for this conversation to proceed in a useful way for Intrepid otherwise.
Gaming is a high stress situation? You all are really trying to spin hard that pve is more difficult then pvp. It actually is crazy. And no i have first hand experience with pvp for a bunch of games.
No matter how you try to word it, i think that is one of the most dumb points you can make trying to say AI is more difficult then dealing with a human.
Alright, well... I suppose you don't exactly need to have 'credibility' in order to keep talking.
AI in games is made weak because the developers want it to be weak so that players don't get destroyed by the AI's ability to respond. In nearly any game where the AI is explicitly intended to try to defeat the players most of the time, it will often be staggeringly hard to the point where most players give up.
At this point, all you're doing is digging yourself into a hole and waving a flag that says "I don't understand AI or PvE". I'm just surprised at it. Did you know that MOBA developers can make AI bot opponents but have difficulty doing this because tuning the AI down far enough for non-pros to learn anything is really hard?
Is your counterpoint to the above 'That's not true', or is it something else?
All I will do is point out that I can indeed see two possibilities as to how a person could have the opinion you are sharing here, and back it up enough that it seems obvious that they actually believe it.
The first is that the person in question has never seen top end PvE. If all you have seen is base population, then one could have the opinion that PvP is harder.
The second possibility is that the person in question is just bad at PvP. In this case, clearly that person would think PvP is harder.
It is worth noting that a person holding this view, regardless of which of the above are true (and one of them has to be true) must also only be speaking from their own subjective experience. Said person must not look at what is happening outside of their own subjective experience.
But it gets even worse than that. AI can be made all knowing. It can be programmed to cheat essentially. It can fully know your gear, your loadout, and abilities. And it can be programmed to counter all these things as needed with virtually instantaneous reaction times. And it can be given any number of insane mechanics.
Generally content isn't made like this though. It's finely tailored by the devs under the framework of, ok we want 1% of the population to be able to beat this boss. Or ok this boss, we want about 10% of players to be able to beat it, or 20, 40, 60, 80, 100%. However hard they want the encounter to be, that's how hard they make it. But generally speaking, it's beatable by someone. And there's the hard cap. It can only be and only IS so hard.
I'm sure someone has some example of a boss that was too over tuned and was unbeatable. Well congrats you found the 1 in 10,000 scenario to try to completely derail the discussion. Another silly, overused debate tactic. But generally pve is made to be beaten, and it pretty much always is beaten, or toned down.
So top tier pvp. What even is top tier pvp? Kind of subjective. Less defined than top tier pve. Some would say 3v3 arenas, others might say WoW BG's, and others would say open world pvp and all that it entails. Well in the case of open world pvp, it absolutely can be and is at times harder than top tier pve. It can be hard to the point of impossible.
Because it's not tailored. It's not formulaic. There's no script of what's going to happen and how it's going to happen to you. Sometimes you encounter situations that are just not winnable. 5 vs 30 can be winnable. 5 vs 60 can be impossible. We don't even need to "make that one mistake" that gets the whole raid killed. We're dead either way. It's that hard. Every member of our 5 is pushing their class and their skills to the max against an onslaught of human players. Success isn't measured by coming out on top(although often you just might), it's how many we managed to take with us. Or were we able to escape. Or were we able to complete some objective before dying.
Part of the difficulty of top tier pvp is to avoid these unwinnable situations. They can be avoided to some extent, but sometimes they're just going to happen. You need a good shotcaller, same as you need a good shotcaller for top tier pve. But the difference is that the pve encounter is static, and the pvp encounter is dynamic, where overwhelming odds can be applied against you in an instant. It takes a whole different skillset and mindset to deal with.
"Once you solve it, it becomes easier" , no...it becomes solved. Back in the day, without Youtube having an answer for pretty much everything fairly popular, single player games and even mmo's were far more enriched due to a lack of accessible knowledge. You don't have an answer though for a player in demand, say I'll be a day 1 player and I'm 6+ months in and I'm advising friends, I'm going to tell them x y and z is tricky, you should watch this youtube for 10+ minutes.
They are going to do it (as opposed to "leave me alone, I'll enjoy at my own pace!), as this isn't a PvE only game with only achievements and bound items to earn, playings are going to feel the economy effecting them, whether that be for gear, housing deco or achieving high husbrandry so they can start looking into the amazing fantasy creatures they'd like to own.
Constant development time focused on PvE content, especially completely new content is a full on commitment, usually at the expense of something else and I've never played EQ2/FF14/WoW (only seen) but I know for a fact none of them are fondly remembered for their Guild, economy, seiging and group PvP replayability (with a degree of exception of WoW back in the day).
Your last sentence is just plain ignorance towards ever changing politic/war struggles which are influenced easily by economy, seiges and likely a lot more than renowed PvP focused mmo's like Archeage and L2 offerered.
I don't blame you entirely, it's obvious that you love to be strong and prideful in a world enriched with all kinds of wacky PvE content, platform and puzzle challenges but in the interest keeping all walks of players accounted for I don't see this at all without their being a seperation or a bias.
I'm asking for decent PvE content + great foundations like economy, balancing, clever events, great resource allocation, great and working node systems etc + a little bit of spice incentivizing PvP via seiges, caravans whatever. This is all mainly system fundamentals.
What you're asking for is incredible PvE content, mystery and lore at plenty of turns and whatever else, probably to a decent level. This is all, going to be needing a lot of effort to keep fresh, will probably be fantastic for a month or so and everyone, including most dedicated players will be either waiting on the next expansion or not really care because they wanted the next mmo experience, "a home", you're trying to create a great game, for however long it lasts, that people will want to replace.
I put faith in systems, replayability, player driven content that encourages determination and excitement from doing so, otherwise I can't be arsed to look forward to another mmo again as it's not about the fucking players, it's about some god damn omega lore, raid, boss, "completion". The big corperations will LOVE to handle this stuff, its got quick appeal and easily sells but just STOP encouraging it on a project that players can actually be involved with, something where they and their avatar matter more than raid 1 through f'in 50, for god sake man!
This is a really good take on it that I realize I was too shortsighted to see.
My mind never thinks of heavily unbalanced PvP situations as 'hard'. Just 'unbalanced'. But one can't ignore the fact that PvP can be dynamic enough that a person can be capable of winning an unbalanced situation and therefore consider it 'hard'.
And since owPvP games innately have 'being outnumbered' as a completely valid part of the challenge, it's quite shortsighted to ignore this as part of the definition of 'PvP can be more challenging than PvE'.
What I don't understand is the difference between 'I am outnumbered, the enemy can do way more damage than I can in the same amount of time' and 'This boss has attacks that can do way more damage to me than I can handle'. Is there a difference other than dynamism? The boss is 'scripted' to do damage that is controlled, the enemy group, by numbers alone, is not.
I've never thought of 'bosses that hit too hard for the situation to be dealt with' in that way before, but if the argument was 'PvP is dynamic because you could find yourself in a 5v60' then I did in fact misunderstand you @Mag7spy
And that kind of variety not only brings dynamism (which I do consider the main difference in the example you gave) to the fight, but also way more paths to potential victory, especially if we consider party vs party pvp.
I think the main problem of Noaani's argument is the fact that he got to the top of pvp in AA, while he was still struggling in pve in EQ (unless I missed a mention of him clearing all the content that was present in the game at the time of him playing it). When you're at the very top of pvp to such a point that no one even fights you (outside of the usual people at the same top), you've "beaten" the game. And if the game's design doesn't allow other people below you to get to your power lvl or at least beat you from time to time - that's a badly designed game imo.
And the same can be said about PvE. Once you've beaten all the pve content in the game - all the content is easy. The execution itself might give you some trouble, but you've solved the puzzle already and the AI ain't changing until the next update, so the encounter itself is not much harder than those pvpers who're at the same top as you. You know moveset and "logic" of both, so your combat might stop being as engaging as it was when you were struggling against either of them.
And this is where the renewed content comes into play. Imo the ideal mmo with pvp in it should change up its balancing with each update/expansion, the same way it updates its pve content. This way you can't always be at the top, because the power placement will shift and you'll have someone new to struggle against. The main and obvious problem with this kind of setup is of course the damned players. Because instead of enjoying a challenging pvp after the new update, they'll just complain that their class got nerfed and will go level up another character of the "now OP" class. And due to previously being at the top, they'll have a much easier way back to the top, because they'll have access to the required gear and they'll have way faster leveling thanks to their guild. And now they'll hit the pvp top yet again and will now go back to complaining about how pvp is boring and super easy.
It's the age-old issue of people being dumb and stubborn against their own good.
Now you're back to points I must 'disagree' with you and support Noaani on.
You've been at the top of PvP on your server though, so I don't know why you'd say these things? Lineage PvP does not look that easy.
But I honestly disagree with SO MANY things in this post from the perspective of 'would I want to play a game like this', that I can skip it all. If Ashes PvP is implemented in the way you're implying, I have no reason to play it. Their game doesn't support that type of PvP as far as I'm concerned, and it would make the experience highly unpleasant for me personally.
More power to everyone who enjoys:
1. Large gear disparity.
2. Hard counters even in groups
3. Consistent meta shakeups involving nerfing classes to provide 'challenge'.
I'm not a person who plays games with weak dynamism in its PvE, either... So I can say that for me PERSONALLY I don't WANT Ashes to be designed with any of the things you or Mag suggests, but I can just keep hoping for a different game to play if it is, whereas I feel like y'all will be stuck if Steven doesn't go all in.
Obviously it still requires skill to execute that kind of interaction and come out on top, but I'd assume it's no harder than a top lvl pve player doing a top difficulty pve encounter for the hundredth time. The base requirement of skill is really damn high, but you're already used to executing actions perfectly at that lvl, so, in comparison to your lower lvl fights upwards, this is now relatively easy. Though I might be wrong in that assumption, cause I haven't participated in instanced top lvl pve in raiding games. I'm not a fighting gamer so I don't know if fighting games get balance updates/patches or if it's just "wait until the next installation in the series comes out"-type of thing, but how do top ranks not "solve" each other after weeks/months of playing together at the top? Or do people just start learning more characters once they've hit max rank with one? Or do you just want to differentiate how it is in fighting game from how it is in mmos? I mean, L2 had a fairly tight gear scaling and, while there were some counters in party pvp, there was nothing that couldn't be overcome with skill/gear.
The meta shakeups definitely happened though. There was a mage era, an archer era, a dagger era, a fighter era, a particular class being especially strong era - but through all of those, you could still try and fight through gear or personal skill, or counter party setups. The RPS would just shift from one setup to another. You were still stronger against some people, but weaker against others - those people just changed. Maybe I misunderstand what dynamism means in this context. I was thinking in the lines of "with a pve boss fight you know Boss' AI, you know his moves and you know what to do to avoid them" and to me that seems like a low dynamism setup.
While with the variables I've listed for pvp matchups you don't really know what kind of situation you might be in when you're out and about. You might come across 3 people that are weaker geared so you manage to beat them. You might come across one stronger geared person and they beat you (even if not by a large margin). You might come across a full party and manage to outkite them because of your classes high maneuverability. Or you, as a full party, might come across 200+ people and, while dying at the end, kill a good chunk of them because you're not only outgearing them, but also outskilling and outmicro-managing them (I've posted a vid of party vs a shitton of people from L2 before). To me that seems like a high-dynamism system. Your direct mechanical input might not differ from the pve example, but the result will be drastically different, depending on the matchup.
I'll give an example from FFXI.
I like to solo a specific 'vampire' style enemy. Group combat is a thing I'm willing to explain but don't have time for right this moment.
The enemy casts Silence, Gravity, strong Wind damage effects, and Haste on itself, and uses a move that steals one buff from the player and applies it to themselves. There's other stuff too (mainly it has +100% movement speed relative to most other enemies and therefore is very hard to kite), but let's go with this.
What do you do to just 'easily PvE' this?
If you need to cast, then you need to CC it to stop the Silence. Which means you can't CC it to stop the damage. If you buff yourself to resist the damage, it can just steal the buff. If you buff yourself to hit harder, it may steal that too. The other move it can use is basically a Knockback+Stun that interrupts your casting anyway.
It doesn't make sense to just use CC whenever it's up because you are juggling decisions. Damage vs being debuffed vs it doing less damage but negating your stuff plus 'is it worth putting up this buff on my end for a shorter time and then playing around the fact that it has absorbed the buff' or 'It just used Stun so it can't just insta-steal my buff so I'll buff now to get the maximum benefit but now I have to focus on using that buff so I have to think about which spell to CC', but I can't actually afford to buff right now because I was stunned and I need to cast quickly before I get Silenced.
Throw in random crits and so on.
"You know his moves and how to avoid them."
Do you consider the above to fall into simply 'you know his moves and how to avoid them'? I can agree that this isn't HARDER than PvP, it's very much like fighting a Red Mage in the same game, but then again, to me, Red Mages are also dynamic and can be overwhelming if they're good.
I find the two to be approximately equal, the boss is just stronger and I have to keep it up for a longer time.
This is a standard 'random roaming Elite' in a specific area. There are about... 400 different 'Elites' of this type.
More assumptions lmao. I have more experience in pvp and pve then you but its ok.
Not sure I 100% understand what you're asking. The main difference between the two that I was talking about is that in the boss example, it's tuned to be beaten by who the content is targeted at. So it's hard, but beatable. In the greatly outnumbered in pvp scenario, which is what most open world top tier pvpers engage in, it's everywhere from easy to impossible. Just depends on what you're faced with in a given situation, and the possibilities are near endless. So by extension, it's harder at times.
It's all kind of apples and oranges though. They are different skillsets. And it's really hard to objectively measure any of this. All I can point to is that top tier open world pvp opens you up to impossible situations, pve raids generally don't.
Hats off to top tier pvers though. There is some truly punishing pve content out there. Things that you can wipe on dozens if not hundreds of times before the puzzle is figured out.
Thank god someone understands. Also include the fact of remaining on top as a guild, putting the guild together, keeping your players, etc. All of that is part of high end pvp its not just about the fight but everything leading up to it to be in a position, as well as strategies.
If I am playing my class the way I like, and I am doing fine, and Intrepid decides 'Ok let's shake up the meta by weakening this class and strengthening another' (not aiming for balance ENTIRELY, but for a shakeup), then one of two things will happen.
Either my Archetype is weaker, but I'm not leveling another 300 hours to change it...
OR:
My enemy is stronger, for whatever reason, and I can play perfectly and lose in a situation where if I played perfectly I didn't lose before...
Fighting games tend to change things toward improving the experience of players and balancing, these days. Some don't. I don't play those. Some MOBAs don't. I don't play those either. Just not my thing.
Fighting games aren't really binary choice trees, probably because spacing matters. There's optimal, and then there's risky-but-rewarding. So there's no 'need' to shake up in that way. Yet the result is still SOME stagnation. An 'optimal and safe' opponent plays a particular way. If you shake up the Meta so that the 'best' character is now one that beats their optimal and safe style... are they supposed to give it up in order to win more?
What if they're not good enough at playing 'risky-but-rewarding'?
I dunno, I just come from a different space, so I don't get it. But there's no need to try to explain it to me, as noted, I'm the one that most modern games are shifting toward catering to. I DO still think that intentional 'meta shakeups' in a game where your choice is supposed to matter after 50 levels and switching is difficult, isn't really in line with Ashes philosophy, but there's no way to know that for sure, so.
PvP isn't hard, people are predictable. The only time I ever have a challenge in PvP is when I'm leveling a new character and my gear sucks by comparison. But arenas and battlegrounds, and even when a game comes up with something new and weird like "huttball" it gets extremely repetitive just like PvE content can feel.
I can totally see PvE as harder for new content when you don't know a fight works and you're trying to figure out how to handle it. I also think you're underappreciating what ashes has said they plan to do with PvE content. In theory the ashes PvE scene should change, dungeons should grow, maps will be different from server to server, I'm super stoked for the world bosses that may change and get new phases if they are getting DPS'ed too fast.
I think your comparison to other games isn't giving ashes enough credit.... If they deliver on all of that of course...
Now if all you're trying to say is "AI is better than a person" then sure, I'll agree. But PvP is more challenging... Meh, haven't seen it...
I'm going to go with the latter, people are not predictable.... if you have a raid with 250 people with all different types of classes of arch types, of positions you can go, sieges, plans, etc. You are effectively saying you can predict everything in the game with a million different scenarios.
You don't have to predict all of the scenarios. You only have to predict the effective ones and just overwhelm the ineffective ones with raw skill.
That's what pro gamers do all the time.
"Opponent is using weak or bad strategy, I don't need to understand it, I just need to exploit it."
"Opponent is using one of the strong strategies I know from my knowledge of the game, I must do these things to counter it."
Is this... not how it works for you?
And the same would apply to a Boss, unless he was completely randomized or had completely random triggers (at which point I dunno if PvErs would really enjoy that type of enemy). But in owpvp, it's always randomized. Even with locations that are usually visited by the same people, you never know how many of them might come or whether a new group of people leveled up to a point where they can farm that location so it's a completely new set of "logic and class/gear". To me that owpvp is way more dynamic than fighting mobs with predetermined sets of abilities and responses, even if they are quite varied.
Oh, THERE we go. I was actually making too many assumptions.
Yes, in FFXI, enemies have randomization and random triggers alongside their reactive ones. You have to respond on the fly all the time. It changes according to how many people have hit it, it changes according to what types of things are effective (only a few enemies do this but we know they all COULD), it changes according to who has hate.
I am once again surprised at the level of development of games that other people play. Yes, if Ashes enemies don't randomly choose between different impactful abilities, I will consider it not worth my time, I just don't play those game types.
I can have a good basic STRATEGY to deal with that mob, but if on a given day it just 'decides to spam damage instead of ever absorbing any buffs from me', I have to adapt, and FAST. Fail to adapt (or adapt back) and I lose.