Will PvE be trivialized by the high number of multi-target skills?

Context:
You are a player doing solo, PvE content in leveling gear.
You are fighting are normal (non-elite) mob(s) around your level.
Although I believe that combat shouldn't be designed around casual solo PvE content (but group combat instead), it is still the most common encounter in the game.
Also, let's not bring group gameplay into this discussion, as that would make it much more complicated. I think it makes sense to settle on a good solo PvE baseline before discussing that.

What is your desired difficulty for this type of content?
Where would you like AoC to end up on the spectrum below?

I think it is important to discuss how we want single-target and multi-target attacks to be balanced relatively to each other, both in quality and strength.
With melee combat looking to be heavily cleave/AoE based, and ranged combat also having lots of multi-target skills, we might be leaning closer to the left side of the interval.

Some questions to help you with your responses:

Are you happy with AoC's current PvE difficulty from what you could gather from the livestreams?
Where would you draw the line between meaningful and non-meaningful content on the spectrum?
How would you balance the number/type of single vs multi-target skills to get there?
What other mechanics could be utilized outside of stat boosts to preserve challenge?

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Tryol

🦆RESERVED🦆

neuroguy

I don't really care about the context, I think it's in principle fine to have A to D in small doses in any game but generally speaking I much prefer my time being occupied with the D side of the spectrum. It does a better job of creating a sense of danger. It also allows the developers to make parts of the world sparsely populated by mobs and still be relevant/worth-while and dangerous. It also promotes group play, you know, the whole shtick of the game. If I can solo 10 mobs by myself, the hard part of my farming is leashing all 10 in the first place, why would I share the xp with other people just for help leashing? If each player can solo many mobs, a single party will take up way more space/resources.

Mag7spy

I'd have to say B most of the time,. And have some spice where there might be a A instance or a C instance.

Tryol

neuroguy wrote: »

I don't really care about the context, I think it's in principle fine to have A to D in small doses in any game but generally speaking I much prefer my time being occupied with the D side of the spectrum. It does a better job of creating a sense of danger. It also allows the developers to make parts of the world sparsely populated by mobs and still be relevant/worth-while and dangerous. It also promotes group play, you know, the whole shtick of the game. If I can solo 10 mobs by myself, the hard part of my farming is leashing all 10 in the first place, why would I share the xp with other people just for help leashing? If each player can solo many mobs, a single party will take up way more space/resources.

The context is necessary here because the picture is specifically meant to describe the average casual, solo PvE experience. As with dungeon/group content everything from A to D can be fun in different scenarios.

I'd personally lean towards D as well, but I'm not sure something like that would be a hit with the very casual crowd, so I'd happily compromise at C.

SongRune

My ideal is C, with maybe a slight tilt toward D. I want individual mobs to be interesting and challenging. I want to be able to handle a second or third if I'm playing well, but got unlucky with aggro, but don't want bulk slaying to be a main mode of operation. But I've pulled two extra enemies that are a disfavored enemy for my build, or I'm already relatively beat up, chances are I don't manage unless I'm an absolute badass, and relatively lucky.

In my ideal world, you can vary the difficulty and survivability of this sort of experience by fighting lower or higher level enemies, allowing you to have a range of experiences based on your choice of grind location. A few levels lower, I might be able to take those extra enemies without as much trouble. A few levels higher, I can hunt my build's favored enemy for a good exciting fight.

Dygz

I'm expecting Everquest because combat is balanced for 8-person groups.
But, the June 2022 combat demo seems to indicate Modern World of Warcraft.

neuroguy

Tryol wrote: »

The context is necessary here because the picture is specifically meant to describe the average casual, solo PvP experience. As with dungeon/group content everything from A to D can be fun in different scenarios.

I'd personally lean towards D as well, but I'm not sure something like that would be a hit with the very casual crowd, so I'd happily compromise at C.

I assume you mean PvE. The game is not made for solo play per se, and the average casual experience can vary widely based on the quests for example, hence my point of context not mattering that much. But I mean my answer is the same. I prefer D. I'll add another reason that @SongRune 's response made me think of: individual mobs are irrelevant in aoe farming. When you are expected to fight multiple mobs at the same time, they can't all have interesting and dangerous abilities, maybe just one or two of them at most. So why not remove the fluff extra mobs, only keep the dangerous ones and have them reward more xp? The only thing farming multiple trash mobs simultaneously (solo) achieves is giving you that power fantasy feel which is what most of AoC's target audience is trying to get away from, being some god-like hero.

Tryol

neuroguy wrote: »

Tryol wrote: »

The context is necessary here because the picture is specifically meant to describe the average casual, solo PvP experience. As with dungeon/group content everything from A to D can be fun in different scenarios.

I'd personally lean towards D as well, but I'm not sure something like that would be a hit with the very casual crowd, so I'd happily compromise at C.

I assume you mean PvE. The game is not made for solo play per se, and the average casual experience can vary widely based on the quests for example, hence my point of context not mattering that much. But I mean my answer is the same. I prefer D. I'll add another reason that @SongRune 's response made me think of: individual mobs are irrelevant in aoe farming. When you are expected to fight multiple mobs at the same time, they can't all have interesting and dangerous abilities, maybe just one or two of them at most. So why not remove the fluff extra mobs, only keep the dangerous ones and have them reward more xp? The only thing farming multiple trash mobs simultaneously (solo) achieves is giving you that power fantasy feel which is what most of AoC's target audience is trying to get away from, being some god-like hero.

Yes, I meant PvE (edited my post), sry about that.

I know that the game is not made for solo players. I am not advocating for them to make solo content either. I'd be perfectly fine with it personally if there was no way for a player to solo-level to max (although it'd turn of lots of people). But solo content exists in the game and it will almost definitely be viable to level to max, even if slower than in group because you can't do the more rewarding content.

As long as solo content like that exists, it is worth discussing because it will be experienced by a huge amount of players. That is why I made this post, not because I want them to focus on solo player content.

I'd be the happiest we ended up at C or D, but as @Dygz also mentioned, we might be leaning towards B considering what they've showed in the last update. I really hope that is not the case, although B would be bearable, I think A would completely ruin levelling for me.

CROW3

D moving toward C as I level toward max.

Dolyem

Between D and C. Not only does it make gameplay more impactful but it also encourages players to group up, allowing for communities to grow in-game. It also keeps mobs available for more than a single person in an area, preventing farmers from tagging everything in a big circuit and easily taking an entire area by themselves, that right there is a bot/gold farmer deterrent by itself.

A and B can be tossed in for events and things of that sort to add some flavor but it shouldn't be the norm, especially not for solo play.

Mag7spy

Trying to wrap my head around why people want one singular mob to be challenging in terms of dying if they have their guard down. Is it because of things being balanced around 8 man groups so when you are running in 8 you want the mobs to always be giving groups a challenge without it being a lot of mobs that way there wouldnt be as much of a reason for elite mobs and they will be extremely challenging?

Dolyem

Mag7spy wrote: »

Trying to wrap my head around why people want one singular mob to be challenging in terms of dying if they have their guard down. Is it because of things being balanced around 8 man groups so when you are running in 8 you want the mobs to always be giving groups a challenge without it being a lot of mobs that way there wouldnt be as much of a reason for elite mobs and they will be extremely challenging?

Honestly it comes down to character development. Is everyone a "-magni bronzebeards voice- CHAMPION!" wwho literally saves the world on a daily basis? Or are they just normal adventurers trying to make a name for themselves in a world that has no idea who they are? I prefer the latter. And I also just prefer an MMO that focuses on community rather than solo play, so if the mobs are difficult by yourself, it promotes that.

Mag7spy

Dolyem wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Trying to wrap my head around why people want one singular mob to be challenging in terms of dying if they have their guard down. Is it because of things being balanced around 8 man groups so when you are running in 8 you want the mobs to always be giving groups a challenge without it being a lot of mobs that way there wouldnt be as much of a reason for elite mobs and they will be extremely challenging?

Honestly it comes down to character development. Is everyone a "-magni bronzebeards voice- CHAMPION!" wwho literally saves the world on a daily basis? Or are they just normal adventurers trying to make a name for themselves in a world that has no idea who they are? I prefer the latter. And I also just prefer an MMO that focuses on community rather than solo play, so if the mobs are difficult by yourself, it promotes that.

Ya that is what I was starting to think as a understanding for it, mobs being like that would be a solo players worst nightmare to be honest. They accidently pull 2 mobs and they be dead unless they were skilled enough.

I think to be more inline with that C would be better and have mobs with a lot of difficult abilities to deal with.

Ludullu

I'd probably prefer a downscale up the levels. Go from A at lower lvls to D at top lvls. Hook in new players and casuals with fun "I'm a fucking superhero" combat and then bring in harder and more complex mobs, while decreasing their numbers.

A sprinkling of reverse population would be nice too. So that there's a few locations with hard singular mobs at low levels and then a few locations with easy group mobs at top lvls. With mid lvls having the most of both sides, which might limit the "mid lvl burnout" feeling and have a way to test your newly acquired class augments on a wide variety of mobs.

SongRune

NiKr wrote: »

I'd probably prefer a downscale up the levels. Go from A at lower lvls to D at top lvls. Hook in new players and casuals with fun "I'm a fucking superhero" combat and then bring in harder and more complex mobs, while decreasing their numbers.

This is generally a bad idea in any field. You want your lower level gameplay to accurately represent the general form and concept of higher level gameplay. If you don't, you'll get all the "mass carnage" people joining, loving it, and quitting as they get to endgame, and you'll have all the "challenging single-target enemy" people quitting out at low levels due to the appearance that this isn't their type of game. Some players in both groups will investigate higher level gameplay, but that just means you lose a few of the first group faster, and force the well-informed members of the second group to slog through something they dislike. No-one wins. You have to make your game's intended audience clear and honest at all stages, or you'll end up with the wrong people, missed opportunities, and high attrition.

Dygz

I mean... I mostly solo in MMORPGs and Everquest style is preferable.
I typically pull individual mobs from groups and deal with them 1v1.
That's pretty much the way it worked in Alpha 1, I think.

On the one hand, the June 2022 made it seem like we will typically aggroing groups, so we should expect that solo combat will be challenging and we will want to travel with a group.
But, if it's as easy to solo groups as it was in that demo - it looks like combat is closer to B.

Of course, the UI was turned off, so we don't know what levels those mobs were compared to that Weaponmaster. Could be those were effectively trash mobs.

Dygz

Yeah. If the game is supposed to be balanced around 8-person groups, then we shoud typically be encountering groups of mobs where each individual mob is a challenge for each individual in a player group.
There can be elites as well.

That means that mobs and NPCs should be raiding players, especially during World Events, just as players raid mobs.
Rather than hacking and slashing through hordes of mobs.
Again, especially true in a PvX game where PvE should be on par with PvP. At least in terms of health and abilities, if not in terms of AI tactical genius.

Ludullu

SongRune wrote: »

This is generally a bad idea in any field. You want your lower level gameplay to accurately represent the general form and concept of higher level gameplay. If you don't, you'll get all the "mass carnage" people joining, loving it, and quitting as they get to endgame, and you'll have all the "challenging single-target enemy" people quitting out at low levels due to the appearance that this isn't their type of game. Some players in both groups will investigate higher level gameplay, but that just means you lose a few of the first group faster, and force the well-informed members of the second group to slog through something they dislike. No-one wins. You have to make your game's intended audience clear and honest at all stages, or you'll end up with the wrong people, missed opportunities, and high attrition.

But that's why I said that you should still have a taste of the other side at all times. The Yin and Yang approach. And this is just in the context of solo pve. The game will be mainly designed for party play, so it's not like solos are even the target audience. I just suggested a way to hook them into the game more, because they'd still be able to farm easy group mobs at top lvls, but would still have to group up for more difficult content, same as they probably would have to do to kill hard singular mobs at low lvls.

I see it like this. Quite a lot of people will probably start the game alone and they might not like if the game is super hardcore right off the bat. But if they enjoy the game enough to get to higher lvls, to a point where you kinda need to find people to help you - there'd be more chances that by that time they would've met a guild they like or just a group of people to play with. And at that point that can try out the more difficult content, which would mainly be solo mobs (in my preference that is, I dunno how it'll be in Ashes).

If they don't like that gameplay, they can still go farm group mobs, but now there's fewer places where they can do that. So they might still have to group up at least with 1-2 people to defend themselves from other people farming those locations who might want to pvp them (that is, if the player in question doesn't want to pvp). So the difficulty of the overall gameplay still goes up. The risk vs reward equation stays the same. And this pushes people towards guilds/groups, which is the semi-final goal of the game because there's a tooon of group/guild gameplay, but you gotta be a part of those groups to experiences it and unless you push people into that situation - most people won't even try.

I might be wrong in my proposition of how things would go with my suggested mob balance, but I personally feel like it would be good, which is why I'd prefer it to be done this way.

Dygz

I mean - solos are a target audience.

SongRune

@NiKr, My complaint isn't with the concept of having some degree of level variance in what's available. I've even implicitly 'required' it in my own post. The ability to go up or down a couple levels by fighting in an easier or harder area is important to being able to support multiple player skill levels and party sizes. I agree with you that this should be available even at the lowest and highest levels, where you might otherwise 'run out' in the natural "fighting higher of lower level areas" progression. There should absolutely be areas on the top end that challenge the heck out of well-organized groups, and some areas on the bottom that let players have a "level -1 enemies" experience. (That's how at least one other game I've played handled this. The starter areas had a few level -1 enemies. You could fight below your level, even at level 1, to get you started if you needed that.) The point where my objection comes, is when you start to shift the style of the game (e.g. more lower-level AoE to make A or B the intended gameplay before you level into C or D), or do anything to capture an 'falsely intended' audience. It is at that point that you're shooting yourself in the foot in the way I described. Otherwise, I agree with you that the top and bottom ends need to still have the same spectrum available to them that you could get by fighting above or below your level in the midgame, which is how I understood your main point.

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