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Dungeon Boss Grinding - PvE talk
Vyril
Member
Bosses should spawn often 30m - 4hrs. Scaling depending on quality of the drops the bosses possess. And how deep in the dungeon they reside, biome, etc.
Main thing that needs to be balanced is drop rates, and recipe requirements.
Appropriate resource requirements for crafting and proper drop tables. Facilitates grinding bosses and the common interaction of other groups through out the day. Then you dont get piles of groups waiting, but more of a rotation throughout the world of the different dungeons for different componets.
There is just no reasonable way people could obtain sufficient components if respawns are on long extended timers.
You want many people having components they can buy/sell instead of them be clustered into large guilds that will horde or gouge prices.
The uber elite components would be low drop rates. Forcing contesting of the boss area but not guaranteeing success. Making even large guilds to have to stay spread out in the world to gather components.
Side note we need more details for their plans for dungeon content and PvE.
Main thing that needs to be balanced is drop rates, and recipe requirements.
Appropriate resource requirements for crafting and proper drop tables. Facilitates grinding bosses and the common interaction of other groups through out the day. Then you dont get piles of groups waiting, but more of a rotation throughout the world of the different dungeons for different componets.
There is just no reasonable way people could obtain sufficient components if respawns are on long extended timers.
You want many people having components they can buy/sell instead of them be clustered into large guilds that will horde or gouge prices.
The uber elite components would be low drop rates. Forcing contesting of the boss area but not guaranteeing success. Making even large guilds to have to stay spread out in the world to gather components.
Side note we need more details for their plans for dungeon content and PvE.
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The whole point of owpvp is to have soft friction that facilitates said pvp and scarce resources and long respawns facilitate that soft friction. Having more bosses would only give those big guilds more resources, because a big guild can have enough people to spread out across several timezones, while smaller guilds can realistically only play within their primetime.
And if the server has one primetime that bosses can respawn in (with maybe even a random point within that primetime), this would give those smaller guilds an opportunity to get together and plan out their course of actions to try and prevent a bigger guild from getting the boss.
You cant pile all content into this primetime window. As it stands now a lot of major content is in primetime. That's just not smart you start to deteriorate all the content because you create a binary choice. Organized PvP or PvE.
You might as well only turn the server on for prime time.
The key is drop rate balance and recipe requirements. Raids maybe, you can put them on longer timers, but just doesnt make sense for 8/16 man content.
I personally would love if bosses with nice drops would respawn at the crack of dawn, because I know that I'm gonna be playing during those hours and I'd find people who'd be playing with me. And then I'd farm the next boss that respawns when the normal people go to work. And then the next one, when they have lunch. And then I can sleep while they enjoy their one boss during prime time.
And fast travel? And UI to find groups easily? Maybe cross-realm instancing?
You are ultimately negating everyone that plays during the day, or have guilds under 16 players. That will be overshadowed and underpowered by the 4k+ others players on during prime time.
You're making wild assumptions on your percentages, and it's a pretty hot take on what you think people want.
Then use a straw man arguement on what you assume people would say.
What?
Typical pve grinding playstyle needs them.
Use the same methods gatherers do, when they grind materials. Walk back to town.
Well... you can call each NPC a mini boss if you want to
And all the people that play during the day would have more ways to make money that would then let them buy the gear that they can't farm during primetime. That's the beauty of free market and non-BoE/P gear. I still left 20% of unsureness just because I haven't polled people on this topic or discussed it at length with a wide variety of players. But what I based my assumption on is the dozens of threads that start with "I'm a father and over 30, I ain't got time to grind, please make it so that I can still do content in the game" and "how will my small guild fight against the 16h/d nerd guilds that dominate everything?"
Both of those issues would be solved by having primetime-only gameplay. There's a reason why games have spikey online. And, as has been said by a lot of people, pvp in mmos is quite often hated because it's usually initiated by those who have more power. And quite often that power comes from them grinding the game for a ton of time every day. A primetime mmo would drastically level out the playing field.
But I'm sure that no one is crazy enough to even try and make such an mmo, so we'll never know whether I'm correct or not.
"Primetime only gameplay"
Should be exciting.
That sounds awful tbh. The best part of video games is the accessibility. You can sit down on your couch or at your desk and just play a game for as long or as little as you want, no need to drive anywhere or make plans. I don't think anyone wants a pointless time restriction on when they can and cant play the video game they paid for.
You keep making up numbers. Lots of college kids play games that dont have anything going on during the day but go out at night, or stay up past 9pm lol. People work 2nd and 3rd shifts. Do the majority of people play in prime time yes, but not all if them.
What about weekends ?
Your solution isn't the best, so I suggest you keep trying.
You mean the game will not be for the 80% of players?
But should be?
It makes no sense, isn't it?
We have to bring profit driven common sense development to this game.
As I literally said, majority would probably have ~5h to play (unless they're unsocial nerds like I am) and most people will have <3h.
And like I said even before that, no one will ever make an mmo like this, but what we do see is this classic line
Peak at evening, low at other times. And it would most likely be lower were it not counting everyone outside of one country, but afaik steam doesn't provide server-based numbers and I dunno if there's another site that would give reliable stats on this topic.
Also, when you say bosses, are you talking about all types of bosses?
Currently, according to the wiki, we know of 4 types of bosses: Raid bosses(~12~15 of them), Dungeons bosses(?), World Bosses (?) and Legendary World Bosses(?)
With ~12~15 raid bosses i would expect a respawn time of around ~6~8 hours for them,
No idea about Dungeon bosses without knowning how many there are,
World bosses probably ~36~60 hours?
Legendary World Bosses probably once a week per respawn?
Aren't we all sinners?
Dungeon, small group content 8/16.
Player base of 10k not concurrent but log in that day. Let's say 20 dungeons and for sake of calculation. Only 1 boss. 6 hour respawn. 4x a day. 80 kills a day. Each kill can only be claimed by 1 group.
Only 640 unique players get kills. 1280 if all bosses need 16 players.
Now in reality, you will reduce those unique players because server politics and guild dominance and you're likely looking at 3-7% unique players get boss kills.
Screw the 93%, well we can knock off a generous 50% of players that do other content. So roughly 43% of players won't get to kill a boss that would likely want to.
So what are the players left to do in the game? Harvest mats grind basic mobs ?
Hypothetically of course. Based on hypothetical numbers.
A big part of the game is the economy, if large section of players cant contribute with meaningful loot it's going to cause issues.
Caravans and ships need to be filled, or that content is dead.
Considering Pyroclastic Wyrm (54K HP) which is a lv10 Dungeon Boss
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Pyroclastic_Wyrm#/media/File:ss-2020-12-19-01_26_27-00002.png
and Brood Queen (63K HP) which is a lv10 Raid Boss (Raid = 40man)
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/images/4/44/ss-2020-06-01-01_40_18-00001.png
I really don't think Dungeon bosses will be able to be taken on by 8/16 players.
I believe only mini bosses or probably "party bosses"(if that will be a thing) will be dealt with that amount of players.
Aren't we all sinners?
Make money in all the other ways possible. Artisan system (gathering/processing/crafting), fishing, grinding regular mobs, grinding elite mob camps, transporting and trading those mob certificates to other nodes for better profit. And some of the lesser contested dungeons that perhaps may exist.
The most lucrative moment for a player, pound for pound, will probably be the moment he loots the highest tier, legendary boss. But how long did it take to achieve that? How many other groups were contesting it? How long did they have to wait for it to respawn? How many times did they die during this process? How many consumables did they use during the pvp contesting and boss fight? Only one of the groups gets the loot. Everyone else wasted their time, other than any incidental grinding they did while in the area.
Meanwhile, my group went fishing.
"Fishing will be lucrative if done well.[7]" - from the Wiki.
A less contested activity and less lucrative than getting the loot from a top dungeon or world boss. But you have a much better chance of doing it non stop.
Every minute that a guild or group is trying to get the kill on a boss and failing at it, is a minute they could have been making steady, more guaranteed money doing something less contested. Every minute that these guilds are contesting these high tier bosses is a minute they're not contesting you with whatever activity you're doing.
The game is an economic simulator of sorts. There will certainly be a hierarchy of what are the best methods to make money. The best methods will be the most contested. This will create an equilibrium. More lucrative but more contested activities may at times be less lucrative than less lucrative and less contested activities.
A lot of this is speculation, but it's the way I envision it.
Content will be tailored for 40, 16 and 8 person group sizes.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Group_dynamics
Exactly my point, but this is the 8/16 man content the game is talking about providing. So it's not likely the "lesser" dungeons will be limited.
If the argument is hardcore guilds will get gear faster than others and be able to do more that doesn't really change anything as if it is only like almost once a day those same guilds will still roll most people and get it.
If the desire is to limit how much a 24/h game will get simply add limits on how often you get get gear from a boss (so if you have done the boss already you get 1/2 or 1/4 the drops, which still allows reasons to help guildies or other people who have not).
For world bosses I'd rather it be more akin to bdo in the old days where everyone has a chance to get something and if you are doing more damage you have a higher chance. While allowing you to pvp guilds you are against to prevent some people from getting loot. This allows general focus on the boss with some pvp between guilds / nodes.
Which allows some people that aren't as big on pvp still a chance to get something from these bosses that spawn every few or three days. Without being like i can't win against a zerg guild and the zerg guild always gets the loot. Which would continue the issue of the larger guilds winning cause they play more at the end of the day.
Agreed, hard set timers won't be beneficial, but require to be in a range and a decent frequency to facilitate player agency / interaction. Part of their gameloop is mob grinding, so you can expect groups to be in and out dungeons grinding other parts of the dungeon and checking to see if the bosses spawn and become available.
the mini boss's could have a chance to drop the rare crafting mats also at a much lower chance though and the end boss has slightly higher chances plus a small chance to drop completed items
Let's talk this out.
If dungeons are designed well, you should have at least 4 floors to a dungeon. T1, T2, T3 and T4.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Resource_quality
T1: ~30 - 60 min
T2: ~60 - 2hrs
T3: ~2 - 6 hrs
T4: ~6 - 12 hrs
On top of that you can have multiple wings to each floor, with different spawn rates and difficulties.
I think most people are pigeon holing a boss to be this EPIC fight, when they can be general challenges with varying degree of difficulties and loot qualities. These fights just take more time to accomplish leading way for other groups to enter the areas.
Until you hit T4 they can be semi-grindable bosses. T4 is more of a Raid encounter, and not all dungeons would have a T4, and node levels could play a part in that.
I agree this sounds about right for me. You can still have fun on the first floors but if you choose to you can journey to the end for the big boss battle. The timers for each section is about right to. I think random times for each spawn could work.
Come on, you didn't even bothered reading the source/reference of that?
Its not refering to Raid Bosses, its literally just content.
Here is the source/reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/AshesofCreation/comments/aomez2/february_8_2019_questions_and_answers/
Q: Are you still aiming for 40-man raids? What other raid sizes will be available? Will loot tables differ based on the size of the group?
A: We’re still playing around with sizes, but you can likely expect 40, 16 and 8 person sized content. We will be testing dynamic loot tables, but will have more of an idea on that during our test phases.
Sure you may argue on the Raid bosses "boss category" the possibility of High/big(40 man), Medium(16 man)(mini bosses?) and Low/small(8 man)(Party Bosses?) "Raid bosses" but thats just beyond current knowledge and would require different respawn timers based on category.
Aren't we all sinners?