What is your opinion on forbidden zones/abilities?

Dragonrune

A lot of varying mmorpg games have different concepts of the listed above topics. What is your guys opinion on introducing forbidden zones with harder monsters and end boss that when defeated becomes a node to the winning group with the boss being a protector of the node. The other being forbidden abilities that deal a great amount of AOE damage with an equal great consequence such as losing 5 levels and the gear that you are wearing.

Warth

Out of curiosity: which games has a mechanic like this:

The other being forbidden abilities that deal a great amount of AOE damage with an equal great consequence such as losing 5 levels and the gear that you are wearing.

Please name Game and Bossfight. I'm kinda curious now regarding which Devs would slap their playerbase this hard. Also, i kinda assume the game isn't really alive anymore.

Baltan

I can't really see a player base that would want this, it's off-putting enough when you see a level 50 zone next to a 10-20 zone with no indicators other than mobs chasing you. I'm sure there will be really hard raids to play though🤷‍♀️

MaiWaifu

The closest I can remember to a mechanic like forbidden spells was in Soul Sacrifice on PS Vita.

https://soulsacrifice.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Rites

But even then, it's not an MMO and the debuff effects; although permanent, they are pretty easy to recover from.

I'd be interested to see something similar implemented in other games, but I don't think AoC is the type of game that should have something like this.

Karthos

This is one of those mechanics that so niche that it's honestly something that a game would only include if they were struggling for a broader range of activity already. I just don't see the wide appeal of content that actively makes you "de-level" in a game where the Corruption system exists, that's role is to encourage behavior by essentially hindering you by making your character weaker.

It's kind of like having game that jails you for misdeeds, but then puts a raid in the game that puts you in jail when you down the first boss. There's just a very very small group of players that would do this, and Intrepid would be much better served putting time into systems that are more broadly appealing.

Dolyem

It could be interesting to grant an option for beating a raid boss to either kill it outright for loot or to sacrifice the loot for the ability to enthrall it and set it as a node or castles guardian.
The forbidden abilities don't sound appealing really. And would likely be very difficult to balance.
Either way, both concepts are non-essential to the current systems and should wait for consideration until everything else is polished.

Garrtok

Sounds not good at all.