Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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
Say there's 5 mob spawns in a dungeon. Each spawn can be taken up by a group of players. Let's say that the whole dungeon drops a single set of items (that would be shit imo, but that's beside the point for now).
Now, my assumption for drop chances is that they'll be low. But that obviously leads to grind-like gameplay, which is why I added the "mobs get harder and a mini-boss" in my suggestion, because those would drive up the drop chances and make the whole process less grindy (even if I think that grind would support pvx better).
If we assume that there's either no other location that gives the same loot as this 5-spawn dungeon or at least very few other places with it - we'll have way more than 5 groups of players aiming to get that loot. This is the funnel I was talking about and the pitting of players against each other.
Now the placement of pvp in that pve could be shifted along the gameplay loop in whichever way Intrepid wants it. We could have longer pve (due to difficulty or hp/def stats), so there'd be a higher chance that another group will attack the currently farming one. Or we can have shorter pve with long respawn cd, so it'd be more of a fight for the location itself rather than a fight for loot. We could lock the rooms during pve, so the pvp would always be for the location, and the pve itself could be designed way more intricately. Or we could only lock the mini-boss up, so pvp would just happen any time before it.
I'm personally used to fully open rooms, semi-short respawn cd and low-mid hp stats (depending on the group composition), with only Epic bosses getting locked up. But obviously that kind of approach only really works when the pve itself is super simple. If Intrepid is really going for a more complex design - they'll probably go with some way to help the defenders (or at least that would be logical imo).
But all in all, the contest is for the limited loot. If the whole cycle of one room gives you on average 1/3-1/2 of a gear craft in mats (I'd probably keep it even lower) - sharing a room with some other group would be silly, even outside of the potential anti-zerg mechanics. Although I might think it's silly because my brain is basing my judgement on the grindy nature of L2, where there was no fucking point in sharing the very little stuff you did get during farming. If drop rates are way higher or simply linked to quests - pvp will be non-existent.
So again, all my assumptions are based on the context of a working pvx game, where people fought for farming spots both in-between respawns and during pve itself. There's a deeper reasoning balance of "how long it took to come back to the same room under the same buffs", which considered the existence of TPs, the mana regen values, the depth of the room within the dungeon and a few crucial ability CDs. But we've got pretty much 0 info on any of that, so I think that's a conversation for a different time.
Grati for the full elaboration. I actually do understand your perspective more specifically now, I just had too narrow a perspective on it due to my own past experiences. I was thinking moreso in terms of 'the boss mob that spawns' since it would have the higher chance to drop stuff, and the general 'benefit of disrupting an attempt at farming that boss'.
I guess they could change the way XP is awarded from the style used in Alpha-1, but obviously I'm biased and really hope they don't.
One of my biggest goals is to remove the "trash" characteristic of mobs. Either remove unneeded mobs completely or make all of them useful in some way. Imo the pvx funnel works if mobs drop the same stuff as bosses, so farming all mobs is still valuable which means that fighting for all mobs is valid.
Separating loot tables or sources of value would probably lead to increase in pvp for each room, because there'd be several different groups fighting for different reasons, instead of all those groups being spread out across more land. And while I would appreciate that, I'm not sure about others, especially if some of that value comes from artisanry which would probably have more anti-pvp people than plain pve gameplay.
well, we only saw the first floor, basically the lobby. the following floors could have rooms with mobs for people to farm. its going to be like cruma tower, I think...but steven said that people will spend a lot of time in that dungeon