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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 never claimed any absolutes or any unreserved truths as I specifically stated it was my understanding and had asked you If it were true, rather than providing my statement as fact.
This is what I mean by story arcs influencing dungeons.
Storyline objectives for players inside dungeons will depend on the story arc paths chosen through the node system.
Certain dungeons and other points of interest across the map will all be affected by the server’s node development. Some dungeons will only be unlocked if nodes are developed to certain stages. The storyline objectives for players inside dungeons will also be dependent on the story arc paths chosen through the node system. The drop tables in area and dungeons will also be tied into the progression of certain areas. For example, let’s say that the humans have developed a node in Region A, and a storyline has opened up that leads players to inspect the ruins (dungeon) of a nearby area. And let’s say that this node was developed in a scientific (crafting) zone… Well before the node developed, this dungeon was accessible… But now the dungeon has propagated new monster assets that include a drop table catering to a crafting emphasis because of the development of that scientific node. And perhaps, a new boss appears in different rooms of the dungeon that includes different adventure quest starts, like a mysterious item with a storyline that can only be progressed if a node develops to the metropolis stage in a certain region, across the world. Our system is so vast, when it comes to interconnectivity and how the world reacts to the players.
http://www.mmogames.com/gamearticles/interview-ashes-of-creation-wants-bring-virtual-world-life
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Dungeons
Ashes is a dynamic world with a Predicate System which... predicates major Events.
So, there will be stuff...especially bosses... that are part of the predicate system that leads up to the major Events.
"If some Winter Dragon appears because a Node has developed to Stage 4, and that Dragon brings with it Eternal Winter and if players don't kill that Dragon, the Eternal Winter stays. And that's going to affect a lot of different gameplay stuff."
---Steven
That's a raid boss that appears just from a Node reaching Stage 4.
But, also...
"In the Event system, we have predicates. And these predicates must be satisfied before a particular story arc or a particular Event can kick off. And, these Events are very wide-ranging in what they can be. This could be a plague that's sweeping the land. This could be a natural disaster that is a forest fire. Or a volcanic eruption. It could be a response from a particular NPC faction or a monster faction, like here in this video where you see a faction assaulting a town. But, what's interesting about these Events is, there's always a clock ticking in the world. There's always something that's happening in the background, regardless of what player decisions are made sometimes. These things can continue to develop. And, if you don't pay attention to them or you don't respond to them or you do not stop them from advancing in stages, these things will have an effect on your day-to-day activities. They will create obstacles. They will potentially destroy buildings. They will create havoc within the game player world. That will force you to respond. And, if you do not, you will suffer the consequences."
---Steven
"There could be a multitude of reasons why an Event could trigger - such as the leveling up of a node, change in climate or season, a specific number of NPCs being killed, and much more. You never truly know when an event could occur, so players will need to pay attention and stay on their feet!"
--- https://ashesofcreation.com/news/2022-05-04-types-of-events-on-verra
You seem to be saying that not killing dungeon bosses will never be a predicate to an Event.
That killing dungeon bosses will never be a stage that prevents advancing to the next stage - and eventually become a major Event if the predicates are not dealt with.
You seem to be saying that it's only raid bosses, like a Winter Dragon, that will cause problems outside of the dungeon or raid, but, I see nothing from the devs that suggests dungeon bosses are exempt from being a predicate.
It seems likely that dungeon bosses will commonly be a predicate. You should expect dungeon bosses to be part of a story arc.
(I was still typing as you posted, so... I think you've addressed your use of "only". We don't have to quibble over that, I think.)
I don't deny these assumptions could very well be correct. Although I'm still slightly hesitant to believe so without some clarification or confirmation from the devs.
I may attempt to get this clarified in the next QA, this has most definitely got me considering different aspects of AoC's design I had not previously considered the potential for.
Great discussion.
Thanks!
Sounds like normal PvP to me my point was about bosses since that was what was being talked but earlier. If it is just dungeon mobs and someone wants to flag that is part of it being PvX and doesn't really need to be balanced differently and shouldn't. Unless you are in a tiny dungeon it should be clear people are fighting mobs around your area since things should respawn.
But what Noaani disliked was pvp around normal mobs, because, the chances are, that's what you gonna be doing way more than killing bosses. And if that process is boring (in the case of pvp being completely normal cause mobs are trash) or super unfair (mobs are hardcore, which leads to pvp destroying any kind of mob farming) - it'd lead to player dissatisfaction. And this problem can be solved fairly easily and I hope Intrepid manages to do it. If even I could come up with a semi-decent idea to keep both sides of the pvx spectrum satisfied, then I'd hope Intrepid devs are smart enough to come up with a few even better ideas.
Dygz is high on copium, he made something up then told you to prove him wrong lmfao. I have the same understanding as you with things, though it is not saying there can't be some event that can happen and you defeat some boss and makes a certain areas less dangerous akin to rift or new world. Making up things or stretching statements should be taken with a pinch of salt until we see how far they will actually go with content in the game.
Instances are the best way to resolve boss kills, farming for resources, gold, loot and anything else the character needs to progress.
Instances, remove the timers from all loot spawns and mob spawns, find a way to prevent bot farming from occurring. These are all game breakers. If you create an economy-based game to get loots than the hacks and cheats will come in the game and ruin it for the paying customer. I won't pay for a game that allows BOTS to roam free, and i wont police this game when its CSR job to police their own game. I absolutely refuse to do CSR job or DEV job to control a Bot filled game anymore. You want revenue, then resolve BOT farming when you design your instances, and character creation bots from clogging a server and so on.
All mmos to date have bot farmers. so, you know what I'm talking about. you want me to be loyal to this game, then get CSR on board and address BOTS and gold sellers.
Once again, hire me to be a CSR in game, i refuse to police any more games and beg action, the only action will be to leave the game never to return. You can support all the bots you want than and never take action on them.
I think this might be backwards.
Instanced content makes it difficult to identify bots since they are always in an isolated bubble out of sight and can create bots that follow a standard pattern.
Open world dungeons in nature are dynamic since other players can interfere with eachothers progression through them. If bots are visible in the open world it's easier see them, report them and have them removed.
Of course. It's a dude looking for a job as a CSR on a game forum for a game that doesn't exist yet, rambling about how we need to stop bots in a thread unrelated to bots. He doesn't look like he knows anything about how anything in this world works.
Mobs and bosses can be designed so that their specialty is changing the situation and applying statuses rather than dealing damage. Particularly in conal or AoE ways.
In this way, the entire group is engaged with a changing situation other than 'Tank HP ok/Tank HP not ok'.
When you add more players to this mix, but make it possible for the attacks to hit all players regardless of if they are in the party, then you have multiple ways of creating some 'annoying' situations (because players can pull mobs to other groups to cause those groups to be debuffed occasionally), and some 'interesting' ones (because players who come to challenge for a room are now taking on a PvP encounter while both sides are debuffed by an enemy).
Group A can then temporarily disengage, with only their Tank really needing to retain control of the mob, but for conal attacks, technically this means that the Tank can now use the mob itself as a debuffing turret on the enemy depending on how things go. The Tank could, in 'normal play', save their 'big mitigation' abilities for 'pushing deep into a dungeon they know is safe from PvP challengers at the moment' or just for 'when challengers enter the room'.
This also lowers the amount of 'HP healing is the deciding factor for content difficulty' somewhat, as the 'skill' involved is optimizing performance while debuffed or while constant situation changes are happening.
Solo players similarly would be able to take on at-level content but slowly due to 'being debuffed and working around it, but using their self sustain'.
I have played games like this before. I can feel the influence of those games in Ashes' mob design as of Alpha-1, before they even 'needed' to put anything like that in.
Many mobs don't have to be not engaging, it's just the way most games do it that's not engaging. You're thinking of BDO or maybe blizzarding in WoW or that type of AoE.
If AoE skills and mobs are developed right then you should still be facing a challenge.
Here, think of this. You have 1 mob who hits for 100 a hit and does a stun about once every 10 seconds. Now you have 10 mobs who do 10 dmg a hit and stun about once every 100 seconds(don't know when, just once no faster than 100 seconds). It's essentially the same thing, there's just more models and more attacks per second(which is the most game changing thing about that)
Now for the AoE, it should never be done where you can just cheese the mobs completely like a mage blizzarding and ice nova in WoW. There should be some real risk involved. Say you have a hunter and he can multishot 10 enemies at once, but it has a 20 second cooldown so he has to single target the rest of the time. Also he has a frost trap, but that trap should not slow down enemies enough that he can cheese them the whole time, it only negates dmg for a short duration. Plus there are mobs who will be resistant to this and possibly chances mobs have to completely resist the debuff per tick of it's application. So even if you have spell penetration(if that will even be in this game), you cannot completely cheese them because the trap only last for so long and you can get far enough away to run away and reset aggro, but you cannot kite them(only a single mob with a single target concussion shot).
For mages there can be a frost nova and a blizzard, but the blizzard can't slow like it does in WoW, or the blizzard has to have a cooldown.
It should never be ice nova a pack, sit back and blizzard, ice nova, rinse and repeat. There should be no AoE meta. AoE should only be a cooldown based skill apart from weapon swings(since you're up close and take dmg the whole time), and direct dmg should still be the main source of dmg.
The goal for this is players getting to essentially choose their difficulty at any given time and weigh the risk vs. reward for any given situation.
The meta of pulling only so many mobs that you can pvp someone half way through is an impossible statistical meta if conditions always break even. It will never be the case. If you are in an open area where you can see for a long ways, then you pull as much as you can. If you are with barely any visibility you should probably play it safe(not fun, but the risk vs reward is like that). Or you could and just pray you are that one in a billion that never gets pvp'd in the entire 5k hours you ever play the game.
I was going to say, I'd definitely want to pay someone to be outside the dungeon giving us a heads up if another party shows up and if the first mobs in the dungeon have respawned yet.
Supposedly it's been said that the party who tags a mob needs to do 40+%t of the damage to get the loot and any other party will need to do 60+%.
Ashes does not.
Rather than being given a plate full of abilities and that is basically it, Ashes will show you an entire smörgåsbord of abilities, and you can pick and chose which ones you want. As such, there absolutely will be characters that are built around dealing AoE DPS - and this will just be even more true if the bulk of farming is based around AoE mobs. The bulk of the game will be in areas where visibility (at least in one direction) is limited.
So, by your own admission, this is making the bulk of the game not fun, but the risk vs reward is like that - at least according to you.
Point is, I don't like the idea of all mobs being designed around the notion of AoE content like this. It makes things too similar, and cuts available content types down drastically. The game should be designed where some areas are indeed predominantly AoE, but other areas are more single target.
As such, I just don't like your idea.
Yea I guess it'd probably just be a better idea to give all characters a way to temporarily drop threat completely(like a fade or cower from WoW, but completely drop threat), and give it a long cooldown.
So if someones attacking you their attacks draw some AoE threat and gets the mob on them for a little bit.
There's just got to be something to alleviate this issue, even if it's small, I think most everyone would agree there needs to be SOMETHING.
I don't like the bolded part here at all...It's a little elitist (in my opinion).
It's probably better to think of it as a form of pvp. Limited resources is one of the ways they plan on creating player friction and driving player interaction. Having a personal loot system where everyone who tags gets a chance at loot would take away a major source of conflict.
cant bots do the instances 24/7 over and over? unless ur suggesting limiting the access to instances to like 1 a day or something and preventing the players form playing?.
then whats the point of the open world? beautiful landscapes and thats it?
Don't assume
It's something that would change casual's behavior. If you know you wont get rewards from content, you aren't going to go do it and instead do something that will get rewards from. The goal is to have content for everyone but not all content will be for everyone.