Instanced vs Open World dungeons

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?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Dygz

In Ashes... your carefully planned raid night might go to shit for a variety of reasons.
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.

Scoots

Dygz wrote: »

In Ashes... your carefully planned raid night might go to shit for a variety of reasons.
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.

Ludullu

As my 2 cents - no, 80/20 (with most instances being story-based) is more than enough and well-balanced. The game will be about player on player interaction, so 80% of dungeons being open world is right in line with that goal.

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.

bloodprophet

At 1:40:00 they enter a portal to a boss from with in a dungeon. they could easily make some of them bound to a specific raid group if they choose to. Not saying they and not saying they won't. Just saying it is possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trk0Tik18j8

Some good dungeon content in the video as well if your interested.

Dygz

Scoots wrote: »

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.

I don't think you understood what I wrote since you still focused on running into other groups.
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.

Ludullu

Dygz wrote: »

Ashes is a PvX game.

I think this mantra might work against you sooner rather than later. L2 was PvX too, but I don't remember a single farming session where I wouldn't see/fight a person in the same place. And that was on way smaller servers than what Ashes has planned.

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.

Dygz

PvX was about the way the devs design the mob behavior; it's not related to the chance of running into another group.

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.

Ludullu

Dygz wrote: »

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.

Oh, I attempted it a lot, but in L2 even at 3 am in bumfucknowhere there was always some nerd just grinding. But Ashes will be way more concentrated on prime-time gaming so there's higher chances that most people will see each other in the open world.

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.

George_Black

Too bad. The focus here is more about mmos as a whole, instead of instanced co-op groupfinder stages, passed as raids in games like w0w, ff14, eso, tera, and all the rest.
A raidbosses gets boring after the first encounter.
Contest between players never does (as opposed to BGs and pve instanced raids.)

Liniker

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

Scoots

Liniker wrote: »

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

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.

Dygz

Well, people can also accept that Ashes is open world with 20% instanced dungeons/raids.

Asgerr

Honestly, how different is 80% open world vs 70% open world?

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?

Ludullu

Asgerr wrote: »

Honestly, how different is 80% open world vs 70% open world?

Instanced content in Ashes won't be repeatable and won't reward you with BiS stuff. Let's say there's 100 dungeons overall. If 20 of them are just one-offs with cosmetic/mid gear rewards, that means that 80 will have farmable content with varying levels of gear, that includes BiS stuff. Obviously, not all of those dungeons will be top lvl, so let's say 8 of them are (10%). If they're properly spread out throughout the world, you have 8 distinct places you can farm when you reach top lvl of your character's progress.

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.

Warth

Asgerr wrote:

Are we being over protective of this theoretical 80-20 split?

People are, especially considering that Steven has said on multiple occasions, that the 80-20 rule is just a guideline. In some of the Interviews he even said, "80% or more will be open world", "instanced content is primarily used for story purposes", "instanced content isn't meant to be actively farmed".

People just hear what they want to though.

Scoots

Dygz wrote: »

Well, people can also accept that Ashes is open world with 20% instanced dungeons/raids.

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.

Dygz

80% percent open world dungeon does not mean all 80% are farmable.
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.

Dygz

Scoots wrote: »

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.

I dunno why you quoted me since I didn't say "accept it or gtfo".
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.

Ludullu

Dygz wrote: »

80% percent open world dungeon does not mean all 80% are farmable.
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.

Well yeah, that's the thing they gotta prove to me, cause right now I don't see how an open world dungeon won't just be a grindable place.

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.

DaffyDux

Otr wrote: »

Asgerr wrote: »

Are we being over protective of this theoretical 80-20 split?

I think it should be 90-10.
Only 10% for story related instances, where you are safe from PvP.
Else the initial vision of having a game which encourages player cooperation gets weaker.

PvE instanced content favors group finding UI to be able to play with anyone (to save time), teleport to dungeon, cross server interaction... features which are common in other MMOs.

Ashes of Creation promised risk vs reward. I would not compromise on this.

Intrepid. Please, please, please.... don't listen to this guy.

Child Item