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Instanced vs Open World dungeons
Scoots
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Was reading an interesting discussion on discord regarding instanced vs. open world dungeons/bosses. By the time I got around to throwing my 2 cents in, the discussion had moved on to something else, so I'm posting it here on the forums.
People were discussing the split of 20 percent instanced and 80 percent open world. Opinions on Pro's and Con's etc. (apologies if this has been discussed ad nauseam in other threads. My quick search wasn't super exhaustive.)
That said, when it comes to dungeons, the most important thing for me is boss/mob difficulty. I want interesting and complex mechanics. Mechanics that take weeks or even months to learn and overcome (even with yt walkthroughs). I want plenty of bosses so difficult they would be near impossible with even a hint of open world competition. I want bosses that require lots of focus and many wipes with subsequent strategy adjustment/discussion/coordination between those wipes. After all, it's those moments...when your group finally overcomes a difficult boss (and the pursuant sense of accomplishment and elation)...that have made some of the best gaming memories for me. It makes me wonder if a raid group can get that level of focus, get the required time and wipes on any given raid night, to satisfy that level of PvE difficulty on open world dungeons? That might be difficult to achieve. That might mean the devs choose to tone down boss mechanics.
I don't want the main difficulty for any given boss to be whether or not it's being contested by another group...and then the actual boss fight is mediocre at best from a mechanics standpoint. That or having to worry that your carefully planned and organized designated raid night goes to shit, because some other guild has gotten there first or is pestering you from the perimeter. At least not 80% of them.
Don't get me wrong, open world contests are fun in their own right for sure. I'm huge on PvP. If open world dungeons can be done without sacrificing PvE difficulty then great. If not, I just wonder if 80% open world dungeons is a bit too high. Maybe 50/50 is a better split?
People were discussing the split of 20 percent instanced and 80 percent open world. Opinions on Pro's and Con's etc. (apologies if this has been discussed ad nauseam in other threads. My quick search wasn't super exhaustive.)
That said, when it comes to dungeons, the most important thing for me is boss/mob difficulty. I want interesting and complex mechanics. Mechanics that take weeks or even months to learn and overcome (even with yt walkthroughs). I want plenty of bosses so difficult they would be near impossible with even a hint of open world competition. I want bosses that require lots of focus and many wipes with subsequent strategy adjustment/discussion/coordination between those wipes. After all, it's those moments...when your group finally overcomes a difficult boss (and the pursuant sense of accomplishment and elation)...that have made some of the best gaming memories for me. It makes me wonder if a raid group can get that level of focus, get the required time and wipes on any given raid night, to satisfy that level of PvE difficulty on open world dungeons? That might be difficult to achieve. That might mean the devs choose to tone down boss mechanics.
I don't want the main difficulty for any given boss to be whether or not it's being contested by another group...and then the actual boss fight is mediocre at best from a mechanics standpoint. That or having to worry that your carefully planned and organized designated raid night goes to shit, because some other guild has gotten there first or is pestering you from the perimeter. At least not 80% of them.
Don't get me wrong, open world contests are fun in their own right for sure. I'm huge on PvP. If open world dungeons can be done without sacrificing PvE difficulty then great. If not, I just wonder if 80% open world dungeons is a bit too high. Maybe 50/50 is a better split?
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Comments
Sometimes that will be due to contesting the boss with a rival raid group.
Just because 80% of the dungeons/raids are open world, that does not mean the boss will actually be contested 80% of the time you fight a raid boss.
Sure, and I understand that. Contested raids also bring other opportunities for collaboration amongst guilds/groups. (ie: hey, watch our backs while we take the boss out and we'll watch yours tomorrow...) There's plenty of coolness with contested dungeons, and I'm excited about that aspect too. My main point though...is I also like sweaty hardcore PvE content. Where the devs don't have to worry about the "unknown" variable of PvP in their design choices. Where their sole focus is PvE mechanic design. Where the players, due to necessity, need to methodically progress through the dungeon without the threat of pvp.
Anyway, just thinking out loud here on what balance I would personally prefer. Having not played 80/20, it seems a bit light on instanced raiding. This coming from someone who has to work during the day and partake in various other adulting duties. My limited playtime will often need to be scheduled throughout the week. It's by no means a deal breaker for me either way though...it'll be fun to see how the split ends up playing and I'm sure I'll be happy with whatever they put out.
Now Steven has said that he wants super difficult bosses in Ashes, but it's yet to be proven how exactly he plans on designing such bosses in the context of open world.
Some good dungeon content in the video as well if your interested.
Just because 80% of the dungeons are open world that does not mean you will be running into other groups 80% of the time you choose to go on an open world raid.
Part of your planning can also include choosing times and locations to make running into other groups unlikely.
I don't think you need to be concerned about how the devs design an instanced raid differently than an open world game.
Ashes is a PvX game.
And allegedly Intrepid doesn't want grind in their game so farming stuff might be tied to particular world events or boss spawns or dungeon openings (due to node progress), which will push anyone who wants to get that farm towards the place of said farm. So there'll probably be way more friction in Ashes than there was in L2.
And then we have a shitton of "prime-time events" in the game too, which will push people to play during those times even more, which in turn will decrease the amount of free space around any given piece of content.
I might be wrong in my assumption, but so far all the design choices definitely tell me that there's a pretty high chance of high player friction on most, if not all, days.
We'll see how strategic players can be about choosing times and locations to avoid running into other groups in open world raids. Sounds like it's not something you were attempting to do.
If you're farming the raid boss... then, yeah, you are very likely to run into other farmers.
And you can give advise to "just pick another time to do what you want" because you're a time-hardcore person, but most people can't just pick their gametime willy-nilly. Especially if they're playing in a group/guild, where the shared gameplay window is even narrower.
I'll be playing Ashes for a ton of hours every day so I can dodge people as much as I want, but I'm the exception and not the rule in that regard. You are too.
A raidbosses gets boring after the first encounter.
Contest between players never does (as opposed to BGs and pve instanced raids.)
this is an open world pvx game and people can either accept that or find another mmo to play, there's amazing mmos out there with great instanced content, such as WoW and FF14
I mean...we're all on the same team here. We all want AoC to be awesome. No need for the "take it or leave it..you can go play something else" mentality. If it ends up being 90/10 or 80/20...I still plan to play the game as much as I can. But last time I checked Steven welcomes feedback and input from the community. It's cool for people to share their ideas and thoughts even though we know the team can't make the game perfect for everyone's situation or preference.
Yes I know the answer is 10 points percentile, but you get my meaning. So long as the majority of content is open world, which is what we want for this game, does the fine tuning of percentages really matter as much? Are we being over protective of this theoretical 80-20 split?
If the split is 7/3 - you'll only have 7 such places. To me that sounds great cause I'm used to having 3-4 places to grind, but considering that Ashes doesn't want to have gear grind, they'll need more variety of content, because all of this open world stuff will be fought over, and the less content there is the harder it'll be for people to farm anything.
So in order to have enough content for people we need enough open world dungeons. I mean, we need that if we want to keep the game from becoming yet another instanced mmo. Now there a question of how Intrepid will make that open world content interesting and difficult w/o making it instanced, but that's a problem for a later time.
People just hear what they want to though.
People can also carry on polite discourse that fosters and encourages the flow of ideas. This gatekeeping is pretty toxic to the community. Every time someone shuts the conversation down with "accept it or gtfo" keeps people from wanting to post. I'm not mad or anything, it's the internet after all...was just hoping we could keep AoC a step above.
Anyway, I just wanted to throw a post up to see what peoples thoughts on the matter was. I think it'd be cool to have a little more instanced content, others don't. Noted.
Returning to an open world dungeon does not guarantee that the same content will still be there.
Open world just means it's not a segregated instance.
You said, "Maybe a 50/50 split is better."
I did not respond with "accept 80/20 or gtfo".
Pretty sure we had polite discourse after my response.
Liniker responded: "tbh if anything I'd make it 90/10 - 10% of instanced just for very few specific main quest dungeons and that's it
this is an open world pvx game and people can either accept that or find another mmo to play, there's amazing mmos out there with great instanced content, such as WoW and FF14."
You replied: "If it ends up being 90/10 or 80/20...I still plan to play the game as much as I can."
And... I'm pretty sure that agrees with my comment:
"Well, people can also accept that Ashes is open world with 20% instanced dungeons/raids."
1: Where do we disagree?
2: And what is toxic or impolite about my quote?
3: The conversation continued with: "Honestly, how different is 80% open world vs 70% open world?"
4: This thread seems to be quite cordial so far... especially for the internet.
If only bosses drop anything valuable, then the game might die real quick, cause all the pvers will just leave after learning that they can only farm a few bosses a day IF they're lucky enough to be the first ones to farm said bosses that day. This is assuming that bosses don't have just a 1-2h respawn timer.
But if mobs give some valuable mats - the dungeon will be grindable, even if mobs have a fairly long respawn. The dungeon itself might just be quest-based with simply a few npcs there that are tied to different quests, though I'd personally consider that a waste of physical space, if a whole damn dungeon just exists to house a few npcs.
And so far I don't think we've heard any info on how exactly Intrepid's planning on preventing grindability of their open world content. If you have some info that I've missed, I'd be very grateful if you could link it.
Intrepid. Please, please, please.... don't listen to this guy.
I love story quests, so in that sense I wouldn't mind seeing a 50/50 split between instanced and open world, because to me that means a ton of story quests.
I would like to see many open world dungeons across the world. Some of them HUGE in size, with different branches, meaning you have to fight for a long time to get near the end. Some branches behind hidden doors. Preferably with different quick one-way exits spread throughout.
Also, you can always reuse an instanced dungeon for more story. Especially considering the tech they've shown in yesterday's stream. They could easily make several versions of the same instanced dungeon that would show the passing of time throughout the story quest, w/o making several completely new dungeons.
Steven 😇: It’s important to note, that just because we are including a triggered event system that will spawn raid events, does not mean that we will not include traditional raiding systems as well. I gave the triggered event raid as an example of how we want to introduce a different element to the traditional system. Additionally it’s important to note that the traditional world bosses that exist for those traditional styles raids, will change based on node development.
"We want things to be more fluid and one of the ways that we make them more fluid is through our triggered event system. That is one of the methods by which we make these more spontaneous. We make them more accessible to a wider audience. You can be just in the city and not normally be a part of a raid team, but now get to participate in this organic event that's kind of popped up around the city and if you are not participating then buildings are gonna get destroyed and NPCs are going to die... It's not just how fast can we do it, how will we get it done in its schedule, but oh my god this thing popped up if we don't kill it we're not going to access to our stables this week and we can't get our animal husbandry certificates... It's that risk versus reward that gives you a sense of adrenaline."
---Steven
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. We want there to be variables that get manifested by you know what type of node got developed elsewhere. Is he going to have acolytes or cultists? What will the acolytes have skills [available] to them? What kit is the boss gonna have? What available skill repertoire will the boss be able to [wield]? ... 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
Because Ashes is dynamic, rather than static, grinding and farming dungeons/raids are going to be different than in previous MMORPGs. Some dungeons/raids will pop in and out existence based on Node development and destruction.
Even when it's possible to return to a dungeon/raid to grind, that is not necessarily the same thing as farming because the same stuff might not be there anymore.
Even outside of dungeons/raids... different mobs appear and disappear based on the development and destruction of Nodes (and probably with the change of Seasons). So, while you can always grind mobs, you won't always be able to farm those mobs for long... especially for casual time players.
Even if we assume that each season change brings a huge node event and Intrepid puts seasons on a 1week timer, that's still ~6d of grinding whichever dungeons the node controls. And the events themselves might not change the dungeons either, so there's that too.
And even if literally all metro-controlled dungeons get their mobs switched with each new season, that doesn't stop the grind for anyone who's trying to be at the top of the food chain. Anything they can farm will be valuable because everything in the game is valuable. "The dungeon changed and no longer drops you bow parts for your ranger party? Well it now drops staff parts which weren't accessible before so literally every mage will want to buy them, SO KEEP GRINDING!"
So again, unless there's literal lockouts or limiters on how much one player can farm - I really don't see how Intrepid's gonna stop the game from having grinds. And if they do have those features, I'd be interested in seeing whether they want to appeal to time-hardcore players who want to do non-artisan stuff in the game all the time.
Now I'm not saying Intrepid must do any of those things or that I'll think the game's shit if they don't have a grind. I'm just curious how exactly they'll design it. And to me, an event once a day/week is definitely not enough to dilute my grind so much that I stop seeing it as grind.
I said that 80% open world dungeons/raids does not mean all 80% are farmable.
Also, grinding is not synonymous with farming.
And, as you pointed out earlier, lots of people do not have the time to run dungeons/raids 6 days per week.
Raid content changes session per session...according to Steven.
Of course, we'll have to test it to see how closely implementation matches the design.
They could of course have mobs with 0 loot, just as a way of making an "npc dungeon" more fun, but I somehow doubt this one too. Though I guess this would fit the "risk vs reward" scheme, so the possibility of Ashes having this kind of dungeons is definitely higher than it having empty dungeons.
Just because you can grind something does not mean you can farm it.
While some people may consider farming to be a grind, others may consider farming to be tons of fun, rather than a grind.
Grinding is not synonymous with farming.
An area that was previously a dungeon/raid might be empty.
If there's mobs you can grind the mobs and get loot. That does not necessarily mean you can farm for the stuff you wanted the last time you were there. But, there might not even be mobs there anymore, even though the area is still there and you can explore it.
And just to clarify, imo grinding is not boring. So whether I'm just killing mobs for money or doing some artisan stuff for myself - the value of the action is the same to me. The grind in this case just indicates some action that I can do for a very long period of time repeatedly. Our definitions for grind are different, so I think this clarification is important.
Farming is repeatedly defeating the same mob/boss in order to acquire very specific/decent loot.
Originally, grinding is what you're doing when you're leveling and there are no quests available that will give you a bunch of xp. You have to grind until you hit the next level - where new quests become available.
Around 10 years ago, when gamers decided that "Endgame is the real game", grind was any leveling stuff you have to do in order to reach max level.
Farming is killing the same boss over and over again in order to obtain the boss drops.
Either because you're trying to obtain specific BiS gear and/or you're planning to sell lucrative rare drops.