@Noaani No i provided 1 obvious response to a problem. 1 of many. Also i cited that IS will design world bosses around a capped number of players intended to participate. Meaning that if i bring 200 players to the raid meant for 40 i should be able to sustain those losses from PvP. Even if its not achieved in the first attempts because the boss isn't scaling with players like EQ2 then there's a ton more opportunity for players to finish a boss while continuing both PVP and PVE.
A couple scenarios are obvious here because of the way IS designs bosses with a set number of participants in mind.
World boss spawns - A mega alliance brings 120 players together to fight the boss, blocking other guilds with 1 raid group of 40 while their remaining 2 raid groups of 40 engage the boss, also on a boss designed for 40, IS has stated each boss will scale with how well the previous stage was completed so its obvious that the strategy will be to use a rotating 40 man squad split into 5 groups of 8, with another raid group on standby to the main raid group again with 8 squads, each squad paired with an in raid squad, as intruders slip past it will be each squads job to rotate out as they lose players to (ganks, enemy attempts at sabotage and boss kills)
creating a cycle of in raid squads that never goes above 40 as to minimize the scale of the next stage of the boss while maximizing the likelihood of success, while this occurs the rest of this mega raid group is on duty for defense of the raid and with the current style shown in A1 of single entrance boss locations it really isn't far fetched to imagine why this strategy would work.
You could have alliances that come together, large guilds or its even possible to imagine that because of planning guilds allow 1 raid group from an enemy guild to complete a stage before a separate guild takes out the raid group while maintaining aggro and rotating their raid group in, with that cycle continuing into the final stage where the sheer number of guilds fighting for the boss results in a whipe or completion.
My point is only that the L2 system isn't needed here because of what will likely occur in its place.
My oversight @Noaani was merely my assumption that giving a single example of an answer to a problem would be enough for you to come up with more solutions yourself.
"Detect Stealth" spells and auras are a staple in MMOs that have stealth.
And usually only a particular class (or maybe even an archetype) as those. And as Noaani pointed out, aoes would only work on flagged or enemy guild players, so unless any "detect" works on any "stealth" - ya ain't seeing a player pass by.
NiKr I hope you aren't being convinced for instanced content to be the main end game from a pve player....
As I've explained in the OP, L2 had instances that I saw as open world. Noaani couldn't have convinced me of anything that I wasn't already convinced of beforehand.
NiKr, this topic is going to end in nonsensical derail due to issues with priors again.
Or go play Monster Hunter, particularly if you can find any friends to play it with, certain things about this are much easier to grasp intuitively after doing so.
We're all about the derail At least this is my small thread that I'm fine with derailing if that happens, while I don't want to derail the main DPS thread (even though I've done it several times already )
As for MH, aren't all those bosses "instanced"? As in, you go to a completely different place to fight them. I've seen a few streams of MH and it seemed to be just big instanced locations with cool difficult bosses. I understand the complexities of fighting and the potential razer sharp tuning of stats/attacks, but this thread was more about people's opinions on the statements made by Steven in relation to pve content. And so far, the majority seems to have high hopes of that statement becoming reality.
A couple scenarios are obvious here because of the way IS designs bosses with a set number of participants in mind.
You forget that Intrepid has also said that boss' will become harder if there's more than the intended number of raiders. And if the boss is literally at peak difficulty already, then any additional complications would immediately wipe the raid.
And as for controlling any other intruders - your whole guild/alliance would have to go super red in order to do that, because intruders won't need to flag up or be at war with you or do anything of the sort. They'll just run towards the boss, enable his anti-zerg mechanics and wipe the original raid. That's it. And depending on how those mechanics are triggered, the intruders might not even die, because they'd be on the edge of the boss location and as soon as they see the boss "raging", they'd just back up and take no damage while the og raid gets demolished.
In Monster Hunter World, the instance is 'players vs Monster'.
The interruptor in that case, though, is not another player, it's another MONSTER.
When you've had the experience of 'trying to kill something in 15 minutes' and another whole monster (which you don't even NEED to kill) drops in and starts attacking you too with all its mechanics, the feeling is achieved.
Most players of easier games, particularly easier MMOs, will usually think 'it's just an Add'. But adds are part of MMO bosses by design. The player is 'intended to be able to win against the target and also the Adds'.
Monster Hunter isn't designed that way. You CAN be strong enough to not DIE when an 'Add' appears, but if you were being challenged (spawns of monsters in a zone are random, 3 large ones at a time according to ecology, you often are hunting just one) by the one, and a troublesome Add shows up, that is RANDOM. In many cases you don't even know beforehand which ones will be there.
If you are trying to fight 'Apex Predator A' and 'powerful attacker B' shows up just as you are setting up a good situation, it isn't a question of 'will you die', it is a question of 'can you still do the requirements to clear Apex Predator A?'
Fortunately in Monster Hunter, another monster showing up is usually a benefit to you, as the two often fight, but the 25% or so of times where it isn't, the difficulty of a short-time limit hunt more than doubles. Sometiimes your target will go into rage mode just because the other APPEARS, when you weren't expecting that, and your mitigation or whatever is 'down', and now you die.
Again, this isn't exactly how it goes, and you have to start from the principle of 'I am choosing to do this thing because it is hard enough to not have a guaranteed victory', and THEN throw in the 'well here's a gigantic flying wyvern dropping literal explosive scales all over the battlefield while I fight this thing that must be dodged perfectly... guess I'll die'.
In Monster Hunter World, the instance is 'players vs Monster'.
The interruptor in that case, though, is not another player, it's another MONSTER.
Ah, I see. I might try it out when I have the money for it then. Would also provide me with some better pve experience overall.
Well, either way, that was my attempt at re-framing the point. The Priors can easily be different.
If you find that someone's counterargument is 'You wouldn't design a game that way', that person's priors are unhelpful. Same for 'The boss wouldn't be that hard' (why is it good PvE then? Priors unhelpful), 'You could make mechanics to help you against the Add', (why is it good PvP then? Priors unhelpful).
It's all just 'people coming to the same conclusion as Noaani but treating it as fine/a good thing. I also do this. I don't think 'PvE must be awesome cool hard even when no rivals are around', for games, but that's because my entire 'feeling' is that the PvP will keep things going. And going... and going...
Similar for any solution that removes or reduces the 'Open World' aspect of it. Sure, that's fine. If we wanna go 'PvP for the right to enter the instance!' it's okay, but the priors still fail. It's like 'gearing to deal with the second monster'. If the target monster was so engaging (on its own) that you could lose, you gear up toward handling IT. If you could afford to gear up for handling 'random add', your main target wasn't THAT strong. And that's ok. "Having to fight the main target with suboptimal state" can be a challenge type too. But it generally implies that the target is not likely to win if you are at optimal.
Open World PvX bosses therefore would generally be either 'designed to be beaten with suboptimal situations' (which could be done multiple ways, maybe some really great ones!) or 'designed to only be beaten when no one is around to create a suboptimal one' (I consider this sort of thing fun, but even I don't have the stamina for constantly fighting over a boss that you can only kill when all your opposition is dead AND your group is in near-perfect condition).
You forget that Intrepid has also said that boss' will become harder if there's more than the intended number of raiders. @NiKr thats why i said maintain 40 players or however many are designed for the boss inside of the bosses aggro and leave the remaining to defend around it and replace dead/dieing players from boss kills and players getting by. Going super red would only happen if we killed non combatants but IS has turned players purple in areas around objectives in the past why would they not have an large area around the boss flag players for PVP.
Going super red would only happen if we killed non combatants but IS has turned players purple in areas around objectives in the past why would they not have an large area around the boss flag players for PVP.
Changing people out w/o disturbing the anti-zerg mechanics could be impossible, if the boss tracks the attackers instead of purely its threat list.
Also, if the mechanics are hardcore enough, the death of even one member should already mean the end of the raid, let alone a whole damn party.
And as for pvp zones around bosses, yes that is definitely a possibility, but again, it will all depend on how far that zone stretches out to. If it's purely in the boss' location - ya ain't stopping anyone before they mess up the raid. If it's half the dungeon around the boss, that could work, but then I'm not sure how many people would be fine with high lvl dungeons being pvp areas (I would be though ).
In other words, there's a ton of things that go against the currently planned features. I'd like to hear what Intrepid has planned for them, but I'm guessing we won't know that until later on in alpha2.
Thats very true, and i definitely agree that the timeline is after the alpha when systems are more fleshed out and tested by the playerbase. I am sure they will release a high level boss for us to toy with in the world so that they can get an idea on the general mechanics that need to surround that boss to make it a competitive and fun environment. Like the size of the area around the boss flagging players for PvP or the design around threat regarding whether its a per player basis or general threat level. My opinion regarding the need for a L2 style system to compliment AOC open world bosses still stands. I feel like in the future that may change though once we have that hands on time.
The 20% instanced could also be left for the end game raids? I wouldn't be too against that honestly if we are talking about massive raids important to the lore and basic progression. May not even have the best gear but at least tier 1 or 2. Tier 3 being left for Hard end game OW raids/crafting
The 20% instanced could also be left for the end game raids? I wouldn't be too against that honestly if we are talking about massive raids important to the lore and basic progression. May not even have the best gear but at least tier 1 or 2. Tier 3 being left for Hard end game OW raids/crafting
They'd need to clarify the "non-repeatable" statement then. Cause big instances with big drops would have to be repeatable, otherwise there'd only be a few items from them on the whole server and those would decay soon enough and you'd have no way of repairing them cause you can't go back into the dungeon to get the mats.
The 20% instanced could also be left for the end game raids? I wouldn't be too against that honestly if we are talking about massive raids important to the lore and basic progression. May not even have the best gear but at least tier 1 or 2. Tier 3 being left for Hard end game OW raids/crafting
They'd need to clarify the "non-repeatable" statement then. Cause big instances with big drops would have to be repeatable, otherwise there'd only be a few items from them on the whole server and those would decay soon enough and you'd have no way of repairing them cause you can't go back into the dungeon to get the mats.
Yea that's true, but I wouldn't be against it being repeatable either. Just set those mats to be exclusive to that gear so it can't be farmed for other purposes. Leave farming for open world
The 20% instanced could also be left for the end game raids? I wouldn't be too against that honestly if we are talking about massive raids important to the lore and basic progression. May not even have the best gear but at least tier 1 or 2. Tier 3 being left for Hard end game OW raids/crafting
So end game is just instanced raids and you don't interact with people? Can't see them doing this. Going forward all end game content would just be instanced because they would be following the pattern when they release more new content. And AoC slowly turns into WoW.
Don't understand when people that have a appeal for AoC based on what has been mentioned wanting to start playing instanced content now.
It's cause they've said contradicting things. Or at least they seems contradicting w/o further clarifications. I'd be completely fine with the currently presented design cause I'm completely fine with sub-par pve supported by great pvp.
But that kind of design removes any potential of appealing to more hardcore pve players, who could then pull in more softcore pve players. And w/o pve you wouldn't have a PvX game. If Intrepid somehow manages to get true open world bosses that are also super difficult, while not making them impossible to beat due to potential pvp - I'll be all the happier for it.
@Noaani
See, for me personally, the optimal system would be:
Boss Spawns
First raid enters the preparation room for the boss.
20-30 min after the first raidgroup enters, the bossfight begins.
Within this waiting period, other raid may contest the first raid.
The group that's left standing at the end may attempt the boss with their 40 people, but are protected from others once they were allowed to enter.
This would prevent zerging down the boss, as only 40 people were allowed to fight the boss in the end. This would make the bossfight meaningful, as they have worked hard to secure the attempt. This would allow the devs to make the boss as hard as any top tier pve encounter as the boss fight itself would be uninterrupted and limited in the amount of players.
A system like that essentially is built the following way:
contest other players for the right to challenge the boss
have the boss attempt be undisturbed once you secured the right to challenge it.
This could be done in a number of ways, like a pre-boss that drops the gate key to the boss-room (Raid that secures it can challenge the boss), a preparation room etc.
It would adhere to all the key concepts Ashes is built upon (PvE and PVP being intertwined, the scarcity of materials and rewards, the player driven conflict...) with fixing the 3 most potent issues that prevent top end encounters from being part of the game. (Zerging the boss, Interruption through other parties during the bossfight, Corpse Rushing the boss).
I just don't see Intrepid opting into something like that.
I just don't see Intrepid opting into something like that.
I mean, you've literally just described a "world instance" that I described in the OP and which was the main form of Legendary Boss raids in L2 and pretty much what volcano dragon had, except the doors didn't close behind the raiders
I just don't see Intrepid opting into something like that.
I mean, you've literally just described a "world instance" that I described in the OP and which was the main form of Legendary Boss raids in L2 and pretty much what volcano dragon had, except the doors didn't close behind the raiders
With an unclosed door, how did L2 prevent the players from zerging down the boss with 5x the intended amount of players?
Also, "instance" seems to be the wrong word in this case, as "Instance" in terms of gaming is commonly used as:
"A term used to describe a private portion of a game world created just for an individual or group of players."
- Simon Carless (2004) or "An instance is a special area, typically a dungeon, that generates a new copy of the location for each group, or for a certain number of players, that enters the area"
Essentially a design concept, where multiple copies of the same space exist.
In your scenario. Only one group could challenge the boss at the same time, which wouldn't make it an instance by definition.
Also, "instance" seems to be the wrong word in this case .
That's why I called it "world instance", cause it still had partial open world mechanics, while functioning like an instance (no one could disturb you once the fight properly began).
Also, "instance" seems to be the wrong word in this case .
That's why I called it "world instance", cause it still had partial open world mechanics, while functioning like an instance (no one could disturb you once the fight properly began).
@NiKr i'll read again through the OP. Thanks. I just skipped over it.
Choosing the word instance wasn't a wise move IMO, as it upsets and pits all the people against you, who go with the traditional concept of instance and see how its directly opposing core design goals of the game.
It's like using the word add-on and everybody getting all stuck up in their panties with the whole no add-on mentality.
Especially since Intrepid is already using the word instance to refer to player/group specific, closed of iterations of the same content and dungeons for story purposes.
Choosing the word instance wasn't a wise move IMO, as it upsets and pits all the people against you, who go with the traditional concept of instance and see how its directly opposing core design goals of the game.
Not trying to be a dick here or anything, but that is literally what I was trying to do with my post and you'd know that had you not skipped it I wanted to see what people thought about the currently presented design direction of "open world vs instanced content". And I presented an example of how "instances" could be seen as "open world events". And kinda were exactly that in L2, which is a big inspiration for Steven.
So far the majority believes that Intrepid can pull off their planned design. I hope so too, but we'll have to see how it works out in alpha2.
The 20% instanced could also be left for the end game raids? I wouldn't be too against that honestly if we are talking about massive raids important to the lore and basic progression. May not even have the best gear but at least tier 1 or 2. Tier 3 being left for Hard end game OW raids/crafting
So end game is just instanced raids and you don't interact with people? Can't see them doing this. Going forward all end game content would just be instanced because they would be following the pattern when they release more new content. And AoC slowly turns into WoW.
You didnt read the part where the top tier end game is still Open world.
My oversight Noaani was merely my assumption that giving a single example of an answer to a problem would be enough for you to come up with more solutions yourself.
No, your oversight was in not realizing that this is something I have been considering fornonless than 5 years.
Your example was something I came up with on the first day I starting thinking about - just as you seem to have.
The reason I then spent five years thinking about it is because that example isnt feasible at all, and so I tried to come up with one that was.
I am unsure how you suggesting something that i have already considered and dismissed as being not suitable would then spark me in to some Eureka moment that had somehow escaped me for the last five years.
Having ideas is good. Sharing those ideas is great.
However, when we so share ideas, expect others to find flaws in then that you didnt see yourself. This doesnt mean the idea is bad, it means it is unfinished. That person that pointed out those flaws is giving you an opportunity to finish your idea - you can either take that opportunity, or sulk (in my experience, most sulk).
I'll restate the issues I see, as well as mention some others that I have thought of over the last 5 years - whether you chose to attempt to finish or sulk is up to you.
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Your idea of having instanced level encounters in the open world and must expecting players to find a diplomatic solution to be able to kill them has not yet worked in any game. The only game we have of reference for that content being in a PvP setting is EQ2.
In EQ2, there are two hard factions (there was technically a third, but it wasnt really a permanant faction).
While it is easy to say that the two faction nature of the game made forming some sort of agreement for this harder than a game with soft factions, keep in mind that any group of 25 players were able to stop any number of rivals from getting that kill.
Thus, you needed to make an alliance with every guild of 25 or more players - or any guild that could form a part of a 25 player group.
As such, you essentially need to get basically all level capped players on side. I mean, it's not like you could make one agreement with the entire opposing faction (as with any game, agreements would have to happen on the guild level).
This is the same issue that would be faced I Ashes - you essentially need to come to an agreement with every guild on the server. This isnt reasonable.
However, even if we set aside the above, content asking players to form agreements like this goes against what Ashes is. The idea of nodes and guilds I Ashes is to work together within your structure (guild and allies, node and parents/vassals) but to be against other structures.
Trying to form a lasting agreement on one piece of content, to only then go off and attempt to take over the castles of people you have this agreement with is never going to end well. No matter what the agreement, people will get bitter about it.
Basically, adding this content to Ashes would be adding.content that is only able to be killed if the entire server is in harmony - on a game where the entire server is supposed to be at war with each other.
It just doesn't fit this games design.
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Now, you did say that you posted your suggestion in the hope that it would somehow result in me coming up with something that could work. As I said though, this is a problem I have been thinking about for half a decade (on and off), and have come up with nothing.
If you would rather try and think of a different approach rather than trying to fix this one, that would also be all good.
While it is easy to say that the two faction nature of the game made forming some sort of agreement for this harder than a game with soft factions, keep in mind that any group of 25 players were able to stop any number of rivals from getting that kill.
It just doesn't fit this games design.
And as an example from L2, with its guild-based factions, if there's only one source for something - everyone will fight over it. Mainly because "why da fuck should I share this one top lvl piece of power with someone else, when my whole goal is to be stronger/better than them?"
So yes, diplomacy does not work in these situations, especially when the whole premise of the game is built upon competition.
I will say my biggest turn-off for Open World raids actually happened in a private server game where the warring factions were actually separated in the beginning of the launch. Each faction had their own raid world boss, and it created nothing but drama between guilds because you couldn't simply fight it out. I was leading the biggest guild on my faction and attempted to share kills or include other players from other guilds in the loot distribution but it inevitably just made a lot of players quit due to not getting in on the top tier loot....and that was without PvP. Would it have been better with PvP? I don't know, because even the guild I was leading decided to stop bothering with the game due to the devs not acknowledging massive problems, including the limited end game loot causing players to abandon ship.
With PvP maybe it could've at least added a fun aspect to it, allowing for people to fight for the right instead of hoping they get in on the group that tags it. Also could've added a whole "enemy of my enemy is my friend" aspect. Or it could have been even worse.
Either way, I feel like there should be both instanced and non-instanced raids. Or at least limiting players to how many kills they can get credit for each day/week/month for certain bosses. And regardless, leaving the top tier gear in the open world raids and dungeons to keep true to the risk vs reward design.
With PvP maybe it could've at least added a fun aspect to it, allowing for people to fight for the right instead of hoping they get in on the group that tags it. Also could've added a whole "enemy of my enemy is my friend" aspect. Or it could have been even worse.
In my experience it just becomes more fun. And soooo much more rewarding if you do win your right to farm the boss and get the loot.
Would it have been better with PvP? I don't know, because even the guild I was leading decided to stop bothering with the game due to the devs not acknowledging massive problems, including the limited end game loot causing players to abandon ship.
This is why I have been saying for actual years now that instances are NEEDED in a modern MMO - basically the same conclusion you have come to based on your experience.
They dont need to drop the absolute best gear, that is fine going to open world encounters. However, they do need to drop the second best gear.
While not having top end gear is an issue for many players, not having content is even more of an issue.
With PvP maybe it could've at least added a fun aspect to it, allowing for people to fight for the right instead of hoping they get in on the group that tags it. Also could've added a whole "enemy of my enemy is my friend" aspect. Or it could have been even worse.
In my experience it just becomes more fun. And soooo much more rewarding if you do win your right to farm the boss and get the loot.
I agree - but that is why you need both.
Both instanced content (guaranteed access content may be a better term here) and open world content (contested content may be a better term here) actually provide different things.
When done properly (not even well, just properly) they complement each other. Neither detracts from the other in any way at all.
@Noaani I think we disagree on the reasoning for this scenario we both cooked up. I believe it could work especially if AOC created a large flagging area around the boss. Diplomacy doesn't need to be made with everyone on the server merely enough to allow for a large enough number of players to participate in both the guarding and rotation of players in the raid that losses would become irrelevant. Now like @NiKr and i discussed this depends heavily on IS designing world bosses with a large combatant flagging area around them and on whether AOC decides to scale bosses based on body proximity or based on the DPS applied which could be scaled back by the raid to the 40 player strategy originally suggested in my post, these are assumptions so i acknowledged with Nikr that this may not be the case because if either of these don't apply then the strategy of diplomacy until you have just enough to overwhelm the area will probably not work since the boss would scale or players could suicide run in. For now I will carry on with those assumptions because IS has indicated they will use these strategies in the past (based on their verbiage), however I understand they may not be implemented and thus make all of this wrong.
Each scenario assumes that the majority of the time the attempt to take the world boss will fail
In a PVX scenario such as this IS designed this boss areas with a single entrance in A1, that alone tells me they understand the difficulties of top tier content and players capability to disrupt everything so easily, which would indicate they plan to allow guilds to utilize strategies to block players ever getting to the raid as long as the defending guild is highly organized.
Next because of my assumption regarding scaling on DPS for each stage and not proximity of bodies then another strategy to apply could merely be letting the other players fight for the boss before taking over the location nearer to the end with the expectation that you could take out the defending force and remaining raids that where already there.
I also believe that IS won't design a world boss with the expectation that nobody ever tries to interrupt the raid therefore the assumption is always someone will attempt to interrupt the raid, however is the power of the enemies and the tools given to me by AOC enough to prevent their attempt from impacting my raid? Basically i assume if the guild isn't made up of the top 15-25% quality of players (max level, good gear, good communication, decent mechanics) then i assume the attempt to stop the raid would fail.
There is a lot to the idea of diplomacy in this case that extends beyond just "hey let me do this raid uwu" because we are talking about AOC here so this part is not comparable to any MMO created, as in this case I can literally destroy your home or remove or grant access to caravans.
1. Hey let me do this raid or I will siege the metro your a patron of.
2. Hey let me do this raid and I'll let your caravans run through my metro instead of continuing to gank them on sight for 1 month.
3. Hey your not part of a node? Funny I know your guild resides primarily in these 3 locations that are good for farming, I'll just declare war on your guild and set a kos directive for my alliance.
4. Your guild is stronger than my guild and won't let me take this boss? Guess I'll just run my squads around your groups until I've hit enough of your caravans that to transport them your using more man power value than resources transferred value.
5. You guild is stronger than mine and won't let us go for this boss? Luckily we are friends with multiple crafting guilds that supply most of the metros with mounts and top gear, how about we remove that supply?
Obviously each of these scenarios only works under certain circumstances but you get the point, under diplomacy there are literally a plethora of options not to mention a few PVP options.
Yes everything is based off the complicated idea that IS can balance a raid to always have the expectation to be interrupted and continue while maintaining the coveted "top end PVE content" but until proven otherwise that assumption makes more sense than to assume the opposite.
(assumption being IS will succeed in making OW top tier PVE content) because that is what they told us they will do.
Comments
A couple scenarios are obvious here because of the way IS designs bosses with a set number of participants in mind.
World boss spawns - A mega alliance brings 120 players together to fight the boss, blocking other guilds with 1 raid group of 40 while their remaining 2 raid groups of 40 engage the boss, also on a boss designed for 40, IS has stated each boss will scale with how well the previous stage was completed so its obvious that the strategy will be to use a rotating 40 man squad split into 5 groups of 8, with another raid group on standby to the main raid group again with 8 squads, each squad paired with an in raid squad, as intruders slip past it will be each squads job to rotate out as they lose players to (ganks, enemy attempts at sabotage and boss kills)
creating a cycle of in raid squads that never goes above 40 as to minimize the scale of the next stage of the boss while maximizing the likelihood of success, while this occurs the rest of this mega raid group is on duty for defense of the raid and with the current style shown in A1 of single entrance boss locations it really isn't far fetched to imagine why this strategy would work.
You could have alliances that come together, large guilds or its even possible to imagine that because of planning guilds allow 1 raid group from an enemy guild to complete a stage before a separate guild takes out the raid group while maintaining aggro and rotating their raid group in, with that cycle continuing into the final stage where the sheer number of guilds fighting for the boss results in a whipe or completion.
My point is only that the L2 system isn't needed here because of what will likely occur in its place.
My oversight @Noaani was merely my assumption that giving a single example of an answer to a problem would be enough for you to come up with more solutions yourself.
As for MH, aren't all those bosses "instanced"? As in, you go to a completely different place to fight them. I've seen a few streams of MH and it seemed to be just big instanced locations with cool difficult bosses. I understand the complexities of fighting and the potential razer sharp tuning of stats/attacks, but this thread was more about people's opinions on the statements made by Steven in relation to pve content. And so far, the majority seems to have high hopes of that statement becoming reality. You forget that Intrepid has also said that boss' will become harder if there's more than the intended number of raiders. And if the boss is literally at peak difficulty already, then any additional complications would immediately wipe the raid.
And as for controlling any other intruders - your whole guild/alliance would have to go super red in order to do that, because intruders won't need to flag up or be at war with you or do anything of the sort. They'll just run towards the boss, enable his anti-zerg mechanics and wipe the original raid. That's it. And depending on how those mechanics are triggered, the intruders might not even die, because they'd be on the edge of the boss location and as soon as they see the boss "raging", they'd just back up and take no damage while the og raid gets demolished.
The interruptor in that case, though, is not another player, it's another MONSTER.
When you've had the experience of 'trying to kill something in 15 minutes' and another whole monster (which you don't even NEED to kill) drops in and starts attacking you too with all its mechanics, the feeling is achieved.
Most players of easier games, particularly easier MMOs, will usually think 'it's just an Add'. But adds are part of MMO bosses by design. The player is 'intended to be able to win against the target and also the Adds'.
Monster Hunter isn't designed that way. You CAN be strong enough to not DIE when an 'Add' appears, but if you were being challenged (spawns of monsters in a zone are random, 3 large ones at a time according to ecology, you often are hunting just one) by the one, and a troublesome Add shows up, that is RANDOM. In many cases you don't even know beforehand which ones will be there.
If you are trying to fight 'Apex Predator A' and 'powerful attacker B' shows up just as you are setting up a good situation, it isn't a question of 'will you die', it is a question of 'can you still do the requirements to clear Apex Predator A?'
Fortunately in Monster Hunter, another monster showing up is usually a benefit to you, as the two often fight, but the 25% or so of times where it isn't, the difficulty of a short-time limit hunt more than doubles. Sometiimes your target will go into rage mode just because the other APPEARS, when you weren't expecting that, and your mitigation or whatever is 'down', and now you die.
Again, this isn't exactly how it goes, and you have to start from the principle of 'I am choosing to do this thing because it is hard enough to not have a guaranteed victory', and THEN throw in the 'well here's a gigantic flying wyvern dropping literal explosive scales all over the battlefield while I fight this thing that must be dodged perfectly... guess I'll die'.
Well, either way, that was my attempt at re-framing the point. The Priors can easily be different.
If you find that someone's counterargument is 'You wouldn't design a game that way', that person's priors are unhelpful. Same for 'The boss wouldn't be that hard' (why is it good PvE then? Priors unhelpful), 'You could make mechanics to help you against the Add', (why is it good PvP then? Priors unhelpful).
It's all just 'people coming to the same conclusion as Noaani but treating it as fine/a good thing. I also do this. I don't think 'PvE must be awesome cool hard even when no rivals are around', for games, but that's because my entire 'feeling' is that the PvP will keep things going. And going... and going...
Similar for any solution that removes or reduces the 'Open World' aspect of it. Sure, that's fine. If we wanna go 'PvP for the right to enter the instance!' it's okay, but the priors still fail. It's like 'gearing to deal with the second monster'. If the target monster was so engaging (on its own) that you could lose, you gear up toward handling IT. If you could afford to gear up for handling 'random add', your main target wasn't THAT strong. And that's ok. "Having to fight the main target with suboptimal state" can be a challenge type too. But it generally implies that the target is not likely to win if you are at optimal.
Open World PvX bosses therefore would generally be either 'designed to be beaten with suboptimal situations' (which could be done multiple ways, maybe some really great ones!) or 'designed to only be beaten when no one is around to create a suboptimal one' (I consider this sort of thing fun, but even I don't have the stamina for constantly fighting over a boss that you can only kill when all your opposition is dead AND your group is in near-perfect condition).
Also, if the mechanics are hardcore enough, the death of even one member should already mean the end of the raid, let alone a whole damn party.
And as for pvp zones around bosses, yes that is definitely a possibility, but again, it will all depend on how far that zone stretches out to. If it's purely in the boss' location - ya ain't stopping anyone before they mess up the raid. If it's half the dungeon around the boss, that could work, but then I'm not sure how many people would be fine with high lvl dungeons being pvp areas (I would be though
In other words, there's a ton of things that go against the currently planned features. I'd like to hear what Intrepid has planned for them, but I'm guessing we won't know that until later on in alpha2.
Yea that's true, but I wouldn't be against it being repeatable either. Just set those mats to be exclusive to that gear so it can't be farmed for other purposes. Leave farming for open world
So end game is just instanced raids and you don't interact with people? Can't see them doing this. Going forward all end game content would just be instanced because they would be following the pattern when they release more new content. And AoC slowly turns into WoW.
But that kind of design removes any potential of appealing to more hardcore pve players, who could then pull in more softcore pve players. And w/o pve you wouldn't have a PvX game. If Intrepid somehow manages to get true open world bosses that are also super difficult, while not making them impossible to beat due to potential pvp - I'll be all the happier for it.
See, for me personally, the optimal system would be:
This would prevent zerging down the boss, as only 40 people were allowed to fight the boss in the end. This would make the bossfight meaningful, as they have worked hard to secure the attempt. This would allow the devs to make the boss as hard as any top tier pve encounter as the boss fight itself would be uninterrupted and limited in the amount of players.
A system like that essentially is built the following way:
This could be done in a number of ways, like a pre-boss that drops the gate key to the boss-room (Raid that secures it can challenge the boss), a preparation room etc.
It would adhere to all the key concepts Ashes is built upon (PvE and PVP being intertwined, the scarcity of materials and rewards, the player driven conflict...) with fixing the 3 most potent issues that prevent top end encounters from being part of the game. (Zerging the boss, Interruption through other parties during the bossfight, Corpse Rushing the boss).
I just don't see Intrepid opting into something like that.
With an unclosed door, how did L2 prevent the players from zerging down the boss with 5x the intended amount of players?
Also, "instance" seems to be the wrong word in this case, as "Instance" in terms of gaming is commonly used as:
"A term used to describe a private portion of a game world created just for an individual or group of players."
- Simon Carless (2004) or "An instance is a special area, typically a dungeon, that generates a new copy of the location for each group, or for a certain number of players, that enters the area"
Essentially a design concept, where multiple copies of the same space exist.
In your scenario. Only one group could challenge the boss at the same time, which wouldn't make it an instance by definition.
But I pretty much explained how it worked in my OP
@NiKr i'll read again through the OP. Thanks. I just skipped over it.
Choosing the word instance wasn't a wise move IMO, as it upsets and pits all the people against you, who go with the traditional concept of instance and see how its directly opposing core design goals of the game.
It's like using the word add-on and everybody getting all stuck up in their panties with the whole no add-on mentality.
Especially since Intrepid is already using the word instance to refer to player/group specific, closed of iterations of the same content and dungeons for story purposes.
So far the majority believes that Intrepid can pull off their planned design. I hope so too, but we'll have to see how it works out in alpha2.
You didnt read the part where the top tier end game is still Open world.
Your example was something I came up with on the first day I starting thinking about - just as you seem to have.
The reason I then spent five years thinking about it is because that example isnt feasible at all, and so I tried to come up with one that was.
I am unsure how you suggesting something that i have already considered and dismissed as being not suitable would then spark me in to some Eureka moment that had somehow escaped me for the last five years.
Having ideas is good. Sharing those ideas is great.
However, when we so share ideas, expect others to find flaws in then that you didnt see yourself. This doesnt mean the idea is bad, it means it is unfinished. That person that pointed out those flaws is giving you an opportunity to finish your idea - you can either take that opportunity, or sulk (in my experience, most sulk).
I'll restate the issues I see, as well as mention some others that I have thought of over the last 5 years - whether you chose to attempt to finish or sulk is up to you.
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Your idea of having instanced level encounters in the open world and must expecting players to find a diplomatic solution to be able to kill them has not yet worked in any game. The only game we have of reference for that content being in a PvP setting is EQ2.
In EQ2, there are two hard factions (there was technically a third, but it wasnt really a permanant faction).
While it is easy to say that the two faction nature of the game made forming some sort of agreement for this harder than a game with soft factions, keep in mind that any group of 25 players were able to stop any number of rivals from getting that kill.
Thus, you needed to make an alliance with every guild of 25 or more players - or any guild that could form a part of a 25 player group.
As such, you essentially need to get basically all level capped players on side. I mean, it's not like you could make one agreement with the entire opposing faction (as with any game, agreements would have to happen on the guild level).
This is the same issue that would be faced I Ashes - you essentially need to come to an agreement with every guild on the server. This isnt reasonable.
However, even if we set aside the above, content asking players to form agreements like this goes against what Ashes is. The idea of nodes and guilds I Ashes is to work together within your structure (guild and allies, node and parents/vassals) but to be against other structures.
Trying to form a lasting agreement on one piece of content, to only then go off and attempt to take over the castles of people you have this agreement with is never going to end well. No matter what the agreement, people will get bitter about it.
Basically, adding this content to Ashes would be adding.content that is only able to be killed if the entire server is in harmony - on a game where the entire server is supposed to be at war with each other.
It just doesn't fit this games design.
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Now, you did say that you posted your suggestion in the hope that it would somehow result in me coming up with something that could work. As I said though, this is a problem I have been thinking about for half a decade (on and off), and have come up with nothing.
If you would rather try and think of a different approach rather than trying to fix this one, that would also be all good.
So yes, diplomacy does not work in these situations, especially when the whole premise of the game is built upon competition.
With PvP maybe it could've at least added a fun aspect to it, allowing for people to fight for the right instead of hoping they get in on the group that tags it. Also could've added a whole "enemy of my enemy is my friend" aspect. Or it could have been even worse.
Either way, I feel like there should be both instanced and non-instanced raids. Or at least limiting players to how many kills they can get credit for each day/week/month for certain bosses. And regardless, leaving the top tier gear in the open world raids and dungeons to keep true to the risk vs reward design.
They dont need to drop the absolute best gear, that is fine going to open world encounters. However, they do need to drop the second best gear.
While not having top end gear is an issue for many players, not having content is even more of an issue.
I agree - but that is why you need both.
Both instanced content (guaranteed access content may be a better term here) and open world content (contested content may be a better term here) actually provide different things.
When done properly (not even well, just properly) they complement each other. Neither detracts from the other in any way at all.
Each scenario assumes that the majority of the time the attempt to take the world boss will fail
In a PVX scenario such as this IS designed this boss areas with a single entrance in A1, that alone tells me they understand the difficulties of top tier content and players capability to disrupt everything so easily, which would indicate they plan to allow guilds to utilize strategies to block players ever getting to the raid as long as the defending guild is highly organized.
Next because of my assumption regarding scaling on DPS for each stage and not proximity of bodies then another strategy to apply could merely be letting the other players fight for the boss before taking over the location nearer to the end with the expectation that you could take out the defending force and remaining raids that where already there.
I also believe that IS won't design a world boss with the expectation that nobody ever tries to interrupt the raid therefore the assumption is always someone will attempt to interrupt the raid, however is the power of the enemies and the tools given to me by AOC enough to prevent their attempt from impacting my raid? Basically i assume if the guild isn't made up of the top 15-25% quality of players (max level, good gear, good communication, decent mechanics) then i assume the attempt to stop the raid would fail.
There is a lot to the idea of diplomacy in this case that extends beyond just "hey let me do this raid uwu" because we are talking about AOC here so this part is not comparable to any MMO created, as in this case I can literally destroy your home or remove or grant access to caravans.
1. Hey let me do this raid or I will siege the metro your a patron of.
2. Hey let me do this raid and I'll let your caravans run through my metro instead of continuing to gank them on sight for 1 month.
3. Hey your not part of a node? Funny I know your guild resides primarily in these 3 locations that are good for farming, I'll just declare war on your guild and set a kos directive for my alliance.
4. Your guild is stronger than my guild and won't let me take this boss? Guess I'll just run my squads around your groups until I've hit enough of your caravans that to transport them your using more man power value than resources transferred value.
5. You guild is stronger than mine and won't let us go for this boss? Luckily we are friends with multiple crafting guilds that supply most of the metros with mounts and top gear, how about we remove that supply?
Obviously each of these scenarios only works under certain circumstances but you get the point, under diplomacy there are literally a plethora of options not to mention a few PVP options.
Yes everything is based off the complicated idea that IS can balance a raid to always have the expectation to be interrupted and continue while maintaining the coveted "top end PVE content" but until proven otherwise that assumption makes more sense than to assume the opposite.
(assumption being IS will succeed in making OW top tier PVE content) because that is what they told us they will do.