Probably not as I have opined, but I would expect Intrepid to come up with something - potentially not until after launch though.
I do not think Intrepid want boring PvE content, and they can not have engaging PvE content and also expect players to be able to take on PvP at the same time.
And rest assured, literally the only solution any game has come up with so far to resolve this issue is to have boring PvE content. L2, Tera, Wildstar, Archeage, Albion - the one thing they all have in common is that 99.9% of the content is dead easy to the point where you don't even need to pay attention to it.
Sorry, but did you not read my post about making singular mobs on the easy side? Just because you can do AoE to mobs doesn't necessarily make mass pulling and AoE'ing any less engaging, it just favors certain classes and builds more than others.
The thing is though that say in WoW, that's the meta way to level and do dungeons, if you aren't playing a cleave you're a lot less useful. This is different though, you can't just pull multiple mobs all the time because now you have something else to worry about, other players.
This doesn't mean you can't make some mobs more difficult, it should probably just be the main type of encounters in the game. It appears that weapons can aoe hit and from what I can tell it looks like every class is going to have access to some kind of AoE. If they did something like this they could do it very well and make it very engaging. Not a spam AoE, but maybe an aoe with a cooldown like multishot for WoW hunters. A combination of trapping for CC, multishotting, single target attacking.
Making the more mobs you gather more difficult. None of that pull 20 things, ice nova them and blizzard them down until they make it to you, rinse and repeat stuff.
I mean you had other players to sort of worry about in WoW with the other faction, but you didn't in dungeons. The way AoC is set up would work perfectly with this system.
And like Nikr said, bosses are already going to scale depending on your previous fights apparently so for single mob bosses they can keep doing exactly that. If you AoE pulled all throughout the dungeon then they are going to be more difficult. If you had some jackasses following you the whole time waiting for their moment to strike, and you decided to play it safe, then the boss is going to be easier as well to give you some advantage for when/if they do decide to gank you mid fight.
Honestly, that just sounds mind numbingly boring for the bulk of the time.
Yeah, it's gonna be a very difficult balancing act for Intrepid to pull off. I wanted to suggest a mechanic inverse to the bosses' powerup when there's more people around, where normal mobs would instead become weaker, but then realized that this would just lead to everyone zerging mobs and easily farming shit.
I think that a threat control tool in several classes could probably make this interaction more interesting and keep the mob difficulty high. Something like "the current threat list gets cleaned" and a "generate threat against a picked target" could throw a huge wrench into the newcomers plans, where the super hardcore mob suddenly forgets all about its original attackers and now goes for the new dudes.
Have those abilities on a long cooldown and maybe make them class-synergistic and you'll have yourself a unique tool to use for those kinds of situations, which would be somewhat useless during a normal fight against the mob. Like, yes, you can use those abilities to counter some particular mob mechanics, but if you know that you're farming a highly contested mob, I'd assume you'll save that threat control in case some competitors come to you.
Remember Lineage 2 Dark Elf Fighters Skill Confusion?
That made a targetered monster(or player) lose its threat and original target and forcing them to randomly pick another one(player or even another monster) within a certain range?
I kinda want bards to have a skill like that but AoE, i believe making it specifically target something/someone you want would be insanely strong and would hella boost the skill griefing potential instead of working as a chaos creator that can flip the table and make a boss or groups of monsters to possibly attack another group(s) wanting to take over your grinding spot or raid boss while your party is with its hands full dealing with it, reseting your party threat points and giving it the chance of changing focus to deal with the enemies amidst the chaos created.
And yes such skill would require a hella long cooldown to justify its power and potential, it would even allow counterplay by having the enemy bard give its try at playing their own AoE confusion if they get the inital unlucky result of having most of the monsters/boss thrown at their party..
Sorry, but did you not read my post about making singular mobs on the easy side?
Killing many small, easy mobs at once is not engaging.
That said, if this were how the game was designed, the basic meta would be that you only pull as many as you can manage if you get attacked half way through.
The one thing even less engaging than killing many small easy mobs is killing fewer small easy mobs in case you get attacked.
And yes such skill would require a hella long cooldown to justify its power and potential, it would even allow counterplay by having the enemy bard give its try at playing their own AoE confusion if they get the inital unlucky result of having most of the monsters/boss thrown at their party..
Yeah, there'd obviously have to be a ton of testing to properly time the cooldowns and the effects themselves, but I think there's a ton of potential variety in threat gameplay abilities, same with detargeting stuff. Hell, those abilities could just be the same ones, but with different effects on mobs/humans. Saves the game from bloat, while providing the split-second decision making for pvx situations, while also being useful in pure pve or pvp situations. Just design them well enough and you got yourself a ton of fun tools to use
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akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
@Noaani "In my opinion, attacking a player or a group while they are taking on content is low."
Yes, you are right and it wasn`t fair and it was not enjoyed but that is exactly the drama that made L2 players have objectives - sly play/stealth play / secrets/revenge pking/amnesties/alliances, or just politics in general.
It was the players that created the substance to the mmo. far more than mod difficulty could ever.
Yes, you are right and it wasn`t fair and it was not enjoyed but that is exactly the drama that made L2 players have objectives - sly play/stealth play / secrets/revenge pking/amnesties/alliances, or just politics in general.
It was the players that created the substance to the mmo. far more than mod difficulty could ever.
Yeah, this is why my suggestion specifically isn't to remove it, just to make it more rare by adding a small deterrent.
To me, an activity that isn't enjoyed yet causes further gameplay should be deterred, but not prevented. I mean, that is why we have corruption in the game in the first place.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Alpha testing is only really any good at seeing how things work on a technical level.
You can not test social aspects of a game in an testing situation.
Actually, humans are involved in the testing. Alot of them are not professional testers, and are in fact just players hoping to have some time in game sooner. And a prolonged alpha 2, can test social settings as well, by simply having some testing servers receive no instruction, and just seeing how things develop.
Alpha testing is only really any good at seeing how things work on a technical level.
You can not test social aspects of a game in an testing situation.
Actually, humans are involved in the testing. Alot of them are not professional testers, and are in fact just players hoping to have some time in game sooner. And a prolonged alpha 2, can test social settings as well, by simply having some testing servers receive no instruction, and just seeing how things develop.
Everyone going in to alpha testing knows that the server will be wiped eventually.
Second, people put less time in to testing a game than they do in to playing a game - generally speaking.
Lastly, testing environments don't generally have peoples full social circle in them.
These all combine to not being able to properly test out how things will work on a social level.
Me when hear a game will fail because pve isn't what they want, sounds like the gold argument -fp-. Anyway I don't know why anyone thinks they are doing PvE content while being attacked by pvp players, if there is a threat of another guild showing up in a dungeon you better be ready to fight and drop the PvE. You aren't doing both at the same time. No mechanics need to change or be made worst, you need to deal with a player threat.
Me when hear a game will fail because pve isn't what they want, sounds like the gold argument -fp-. Anyway I don't know why anyone thinks they are doing PvE content while being attacked by pvp players, if there is a threat of another guild showing up in a dungeon you better be ready to fight and drop the PvE. You aren't doing both at the same time. No mechanics need to change or be made worst, you need to deal with a player threat.
The whole point is that you can't just disengage the pve to fight the players. And if pve is challenging than any interruptions will fuck up both the pve and the pvp and you'll most likely just die.
I've seen content locking become a strategy in PvP before, and in PvE for that matter too.
Ie. A big guild will lock down some portion of PvE progression (like a non instanced dungeon) to prevent players from progressing to better gear or weapons.
This stops effective pvp competition from forming, makes PvE players pay your guild for access to the content, and makes it easier to lock down new content for your guild.
This only really works for big guilds able to lock down the content 24/7 though.
Instanced dungeons became a thing in MMOs for a reason. I do not like instanced dungeons one bit, but I think most people fail to recognize that they were created to solve a problem with the way mass amounts of players interact on these types of games.
Removing the instances from MMOs is a good thing, but it reintroduces the original problem of players being "toxic" ( for lack of a better word). I see that AoC is going for a PvE /PvP hybrid, and I hope they are successful, but at the end of the day, if good gear is locked behind PvE content, then that content becomes crucial to PvP and of necessity gets targeted by PvP players to control that resource.
This only really works for big guilds able to lock down the content 24/7 though.
And usually the other important factor is poor gear balancing. If just a single step in gear tiers is enough for those at the top to completely dominate anyone below them - of course it's gonna be easy for them to just prevent anyone from farming some piece of content. But if gear is fairly close in its power lvl, then even weaker-geared people might win out a few battles here and there and get a chance to farm.
Me when hear a game will fail because pve isn't what they want, sounds like the gold argument -fp-. Anyway I don't know why anyone thinks they are doing PvE content while being attacked by pvp players, if there is a threat of another guild showing up in a dungeon you better be ready to fight and drop the PvE. You aren't doing both at the same time. No mechanics need to change or be made worst, you need to deal with a player threat.
The whole point is that you can't just disengage the pve to fight the players. And if pve is challenging than any interruptions will fuck up both the pve and the pvp and you'll most likely just die.
You are 100% disengaging the pve, killing them and then doing the pve before they get back. You don't pvp them inside the mobs that just be dumb.
Me when hear a game will fail because pve isn't what they want, sounds like the gold argument -fp-. Anyway I don't know why anyone thinks they are doing PvE content while being attacked by pvp players, if there is a threat of another guild showing up in a dungeon you better be ready to fight and drop the PvE. You aren't doing both at the same time. No mechanics need to change or be made worst, you need to deal with a player threat.
The whole point is that you can't just disengage the pve to fight the players. And if pve is challenging than any interruptions will fuck up both the pve and the pvp and you'll most likely just die.
You are 100% disengaging the pve, killing them and then doing the pve before they get back. You don't pvp them inside the mobs that just be dumb.
Disengaging may not be so simple. From what I remember from showcases and the A1, the enemies inside dungeons had an extremely long leash range.
It may be more feasible to reset a boss encounter to focus on PvP but that would require the other group to also leave the boss room instead of just taking over the fight.
Which is the greater folly, summoning the demon or expecting gratitude from it?
You are 100% disengaging the pve, killing them and then doing the pve before they get back. You don't pvp them inside the mobs that just be dumb.
You're in a limited space (if we're talking dungeons here). Mobs will most likely have a pull radius of the whole room and maybe even a bit outside of it. You're fighting the mobs in the room and dudes come into the room and start fighting you. How do you disengage the mobs here?
And again, this is in the context of mobs being difficult and not just braindead weak ones.
You are 100% disengaging the pve, killing them and then doing the pve before they get back. You don't pvp them inside the mobs that just be dumb.
You're in a limited space (if we're talking dungeons here). Mobs will most likely have a pull radius of the whole room and maybe even a bit outside of it. You're fighting the mobs in the room and dudes come into the room and start fighting you. How do you disengage the mobs here?
And again, this is in the context of mobs being difficult and not just braindead weak ones.
Well we will have to look at encounter to encounter, if there is a way int here has to be a way out. If another party is starting to show up you should have some notice ahead of time that a guild is entering your area. Either way at that point you don't do the pve content your focus will have to be on beating the other players. For this kind of thing id expect respawn points to be far upon dying as well. Else you aren't doing pve you need to win the pvp first until one gives up.
Logging out characters at essential content is how you trick a guild into starting a fight. Then you log in after they engage and wreck their attempt at a dungeon boss.
People use spies and spotters for this type of thing, but maybe you know this from your name?
Well we will have to look at encounter to encounter, if there is a way int here has to be a way out. If another party is starting to show up you should have some notice ahead of time that a guild is entering your area. Either way at that point you don't do the pve content your focus will have to be on beating the other players. For this kind of thing id expect respawn points to be far upon dying as well. Else you aren't doing pve you need to win the pvp first until one gives up.
L2's dungeons had a ton of dead end rooms and quite often they would have the best mobs in the dungeon or just a boss spawn point, so there weren't always a way out.
As for notices, that would only work if you're a part of a guild that's at war with another guild and you're always on the lookout for them. But quite often you might just be a party of people who're farming a room and there's another random party that comes in and wants to fight you for that room.
If you're a group of 8 people and the mobs are properly difficult, you won't have anyone to be the lookout, standing somewhere else in the dungeon. Though even if you did stand somewhere else, there's no assurance that the party that's running through the dungeon is going directly for your room, so you disengaging a valuable mob preemptively might just fuck over your ability rotations (assuming we have super long cd abilities with high value).
And even if you have a lookout and he stands right outside your room, as I've said, your room might be a dead end and the only way out is through another group. But at this point you're at low mana/health because you were engaging the mob, so any kind of pvp would be hugely disadvantages to you. And depending on how Intrepid sets up loot rights checks, if you just run out of the room and the newcomers finish out the mob (because they've got all their abilities at the ready) - you might lose your valuable loot. And if you don't run away, we come back to the "pvp is shitty for you cause you're not at full power".
None of these things were really an issue in L2 because pve was super basic, but if Ashes will indeed have complex and hard pve then there's gotta be a way to manipulate mobs in your favor, in case someone comes to take them from you. The newcomers would have the same tools too, at which point it'd become a game of chess and proper party gameplay, where the more skilled group should ultimately win.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Ashes dungeons/raids should be more about defeating the bosses to end their deleterious effects on the region, rather than about preventing others from getting gear.
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ElderMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Ashes dungeons/raids should be more about defeating the bosses to end their deleterious effects on the region, rather than about preventing others from getting gear.
It's my understanding that the dungeon story arcs unlocked through node progression only influence the content and objectives throughout a dungeon and don't have any fail conditions or impose any negative effects on a region.
Is it not true that these fail conditions only apply to random raid events, NPC node attacks, seasonal events, etc, and not semi persistent dungeons?
Which is the greater folly, summoning the demon or expecting gratitude from it?
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Do you have a dev quote that states only?
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ElderMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited August 2022
It's an understanding I've come too through research.
I'm not stating it as fact but I've failed to find any information stating the intended design is for dungeons in AoC is to have fail conditions or impose any negative effects on the region. Only that the story arcs influence the content and objectives of the dungeon.
If you have any quotes or references proving otherwise I'd be happy to adjust my thinking on the topic.
Which is the greater folly, summoning the demon or expecting gratitude from it?
Ashes dungeons/raids should be more about defeating the bosses to end their deleterious effects on the region, rather than about preventing others from getting gear.
And what if I want to prevent those bosses from getting killed exactly because I want their deleterious effects on the region to continue 3 birds one stone.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Exactly!!!
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
It's an understanding I've come too through research.
I'm not stating it as fact but I've failed to find any information stating the intended design is for dungeons in AoC is to have fail conditions or impose any negative effects on the region. Only that the story arcs influence the content and objectives of the dungeon.
If you have any quotes or references proving otherwise I'd be happy to adjust my thinking on the topic.
I think since you are the one claiming the absolute of only - it's up to you to prove the dev quote that states only. I'm not aware of a dev quote that states only.
Lots of things in Ashes can be a story arc.
I think you may be referring to Events?
But, I'm still not aware of a dev quote that says "Only Event bosses will have deleterious effects outside of the dungeon/raid that players will want to end."
Comments
Sorry, but did you not read my post about making singular mobs on the easy side? Just because you can do AoE to mobs doesn't necessarily make mass pulling and AoE'ing any less engaging, it just favors certain classes and builds more than others.
The thing is though that say in WoW, that's the meta way to level and do dungeons, if you aren't playing a cleave you're a lot less useful. This is different though, you can't just pull multiple mobs all the time because now you have something else to worry about, other players.
This doesn't mean you can't make some mobs more difficult, it should probably just be the main type of encounters in the game. It appears that weapons can aoe hit and from what I can tell it looks like every class is going to have access to some kind of AoE. If they did something like this they could do it very well and make it very engaging. Not a spam AoE, but maybe an aoe with a cooldown like multishot for WoW hunters. A combination of trapping for CC, multishotting, single target attacking.
Making the more mobs you gather more difficult. None of that pull 20 things, ice nova them and blizzard them down until they make it to you, rinse and repeat stuff.
I mean you had other players to sort of worry about in WoW with the other faction, but you didn't in dungeons. The way AoC is set up would work perfectly with this system.
And like Nikr said, bosses are already going to scale depending on your previous fights apparently so for single mob bosses they can keep doing exactly that. If you AoE pulled all throughout the dungeon then they are going to be more difficult. If you had some jackasses following you the whole time waiting for their moment to strike, and you decided to play it safe, then the boss is going to be easier as well to give you some advantage for when/if they do decide to gank you mid fight.
Remember Lineage 2 Dark Elf Fighters Skill Confusion?
That made a targetered monster(or player) lose its threat and original target and forcing them to randomly pick another one(player or even another monster) within a certain range?
I kinda want bards to have a skill like that but AoE, i believe making it specifically target something/someone you want would be insanely strong and would hella boost the skill griefing potential instead of working as a chaos creator that can flip the table and make a boss or groups of monsters to possibly attack another group(s) wanting to take over your grinding spot or raid boss while your party is with its hands full dealing with it, reseting your party threat points and giving it the chance of changing focus to deal with the enemies amidst the chaos created.
And yes such skill would require a hella long cooldown to justify its power and potential, it would even allow counterplay by having the enemy bard give its try at playing their own AoE confusion if they get the inital unlucky result of having most of the monsters/boss thrown at their party..
Aren't we all sinners?
That said, if this were how the game was designed, the basic meta would be that you only pull as many as you can manage if you get attacked half way through.
The one thing even less engaging than killing many small easy mobs is killing fewer small easy mobs in case you get attacked.
Yes, you are right and it wasn`t fair and it was not enjoyed but that is exactly the drama that made L2 players have objectives - sly play/stealth play / secrets/revenge pking/amnesties/alliances, or just politics in general.
It was the players that created the substance to the mmo. far more than mod difficulty could ever.
To me, an activity that isn't enjoyed yet causes further gameplay should be deterred, but not prevented. I mean, that is why we have corruption in the game in the first place.
Alpha testing is only really any good at seeing how things work on a technical level.
You can not test social aspects of a game in an testing situation.
Actually, humans are involved in the testing. Alot of them are not professional testers, and are in fact just players hoping to have some time in game sooner. And a prolonged alpha 2, can test social settings as well, by simply having some testing servers receive no instruction, and just seeing how things develop.
Everyone going in to alpha testing knows that the server will be wiped eventually.
Second, people put less time in to testing a game than they do in to playing a game - generally speaking.
Lastly, testing environments don't generally have peoples full social circle in them.
These all combine to not being able to properly test out how things will work on a social level.
Ie. A big guild will lock down some portion of PvE progression (like a non instanced dungeon) to prevent players from progressing to better gear or weapons.
This stops effective pvp competition from forming, makes PvE players pay your guild for access to the content, and makes it easier to lock down new content for your guild.
This only really works for big guilds able to lock down the content 24/7 though.
Instanced dungeons became a thing in MMOs for a reason. I do not like instanced dungeons one bit, but I think most people fail to recognize that they were created to solve a problem with the way mass amounts of players interact on these types of games.
Removing the instances from MMOs is a good thing, but it reintroduces the original problem of players being "toxic" ( for lack of a better word). I see that AoC is going for a PvE /PvP hybrid, and I hope they are successful, but at the end of the day, if good gear is locked behind PvE content, then that content becomes crucial to PvP and of necessity gets targeted by PvP players to control that resource.
You are 100% disengaging the pve, killing them and then doing the pve before they get back. You don't pvp them inside the mobs that just be dumb.
Disengaging may not be so simple. From what I remember from showcases and the A1, the enemies inside dungeons had an extremely long leash range.
It may be more feasible to reset a boss encounter to focus on PvP but that would require the other group to also leave the boss room instead of just taking over the fight.
And again, this is in the context of mobs being difficult and not just braindead weak ones.
If PvE has good gear drops, then it becomes a target of PvP of PvP players who want to lock down that content to slow down their competition.
You don't even have to beat a guild in a fight to cause enough chaos to prevent them from beating a dungeon.
Well we will have to look at encounter to encounter, if there is a way int here has to be a way out. If another party is starting to show up you should have some notice ahead of time that a guild is entering your area. Either way at that point you don't do the pve content your focus will have to be on beating the other players. For this kind of thing id expect respawn points to be far upon dying as well. Else you aren't doing pve you need to win the pvp first until one gives up.
People use spies and spotters for this type of thing, but maybe you know this from your name?
Im sure they function alot like dungeons from Everquest PvP servers tbh which i think worked fine appart from everquest pvp wasnt very balanced :P
As for notices, that would only work if you're a part of a guild that's at war with another guild and you're always on the lookout for them. But quite often you might just be a party of people who're farming a room and there's another random party that comes in and wants to fight you for that room.
If you're a group of 8 people and the mobs are properly difficult, you won't have anyone to be the lookout, standing somewhere else in the dungeon. Though even if you did stand somewhere else, there's no assurance that the party that's running through the dungeon is going directly for your room, so you disengaging a valuable mob preemptively might just fuck over your ability rotations (assuming we have super long cd abilities with high value).
And even if you have a lookout and he stands right outside your room, as I've said, your room might be a dead end and the only way out is through another group. But at this point you're at low mana/health because you were engaging the mob, so any kind of pvp would be hugely disadvantages to you. And depending on how Intrepid sets up loot rights checks, if you just run out of the room and the newcomers finish out the mob (because they've got all their abilities at the ready) - you might lose your valuable loot. And if you don't run away, we come back to the "pvp is shitty for you cause you're not at full power".
None of these things were really an issue in L2 because pve was super basic, but if Ashes will indeed have complex and hard pve then there's gotta be a way to manipulate mobs in your favor, in case someone comes to take them from you. The newcomers would have the same tools too, at which point it'd become a game of chess and proper party gameplay, where the more skilled group should ultimately win.
It's my understanding that the dungeon story arcs unlocked through node progression only influence the content and objectives throughout a dungeon and don't have any fail conditions or impose any negative effects on a region.
Is it not true that these fail conditions only apply to random raid events, NPC node attacks, seasonal events, etc, and not semi persistent dungeons?
I'm not stating it as fact but I've failed to find any information stating the intended design is for dungeons in AoC is to have fail conditions or impose any negative effects on the region. Only that the story arcs influence the content and objectives of the dungeon.
If you have any quotes or references proving otherwise I'd be happy to adjust my thinking on the topic.
Lots of things in Ashes can be a story arc.
I think you may be referring to Events?
But, I'm still not aware of a dev quote that says "Only Event bosses will have deleterious effects outside of the dungeon/raid that players will want to end."