Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
World Bosses: What is your idea of a healthy game loop?
Aniion
Member, Alpha Two
Many people have different ideas of what a "World Boss" fight should be, usually based off the game they enjoyed the most. The differences include difficulty, lockouts, and rarity/tradeability of drops, PvE vs PvP focal point, etc.. From my experience, this usually falls into three general camps:
From the low information we have so far, it seems like AoC follows a single-owner World Boss system. This falls into the OWPVP, risk vs reward type mantra that they've been following since they announced. They have mentioned variable spawn locations/times as well, so this WB system fits well. For those that dislike this, the usual "if you dislike OWPVP, this game isn't for you" response is expected, as fighting over contested resources is a cornerstone of this game.
My question isn't really "which do you like", but instead, which system do you think is healthy for the game/gameplay-loop that you envision? Do you want a PvP-centric WB, but don't want to feel like you're missing out on a lot of loot if you don't contest every spawn that comes up? Are you in support of a loot-lockout, which would remove the FOMO of missing out on other WB, and free up your time to do other content (possibly contesting a nearby nodes resources while you know a lot of their citizens are at the WB)? Do you think having simultaneous WB spawns across the continent is enough of a way to mitigate the "zerging" or "uber-contesting" around a single WB, and don't feel the need for any artificial lockout to help ease the amount of WB resets? Or do you just think a community, participation-based WB is the best-case, and disagree with the PvP-centric WB gameplay loop?
My thoughts: I'm fine with any of these systems, except faction-based. That's mostly due to the pitfalls of any faction-based system being the inability to change factions, and one faction having a snowball effect.
My main concern, however, is in the lack of information around loot lockouts & loot rarity (which is fine, they just haven't spoken on it yet). If the loot is amazing enough to have these randomly spawning World Bosses, that can require 8-to-40 people groups to take down, then they may be the unanimous "BiS" way to get money/loot/crafting material for the same amount of effort. And if these WB can also be integral to Story Arcs, Artisan Promotion Quests, etc. (as AoC tends to do, weaving PvE & PvP objectives together to get both types of players to interact), it may result in an insane amount of frustration. An 8-man recommended WB would still summon a 40-man group from a raid just to secure the rare drops. 40-man WB would have so many 40-man groups all contesting, possibly resetting the boss (another unknown: how does aggro-switching, leash rules, etc affect the boss? Despawn time? etc.) & making it a giant waste-of-time for so many, but still so mandatory to contest for progression that it may result in PvE players stalling in their progression because they never prioritized PvP.
A common comment for players who are Artisan focused who cannot themselves contest a PvE objective due to PvP is to join a guild who farms that content FOR you in order to develop the goods, as one symbiotic system. That's definitely a viable gameplay-loop, and insanely rewarding when it's successful. The issue I have with that is for the casual player, that's an insanely difficult roadblock to go over. Many players going into the game won't have the knowledge that they may be severely hindered without a group dedicated to helping them farm something until well into the game, and at that point, you might be the 30th, 40th, 50th+ "Herbalism main" in any guild you might be joining, and delaying your progress in the game so much behind things OUTSIDE of your agency/control is very frustrating. It definitely makes sense for Artisans who have a dedicated farm-system in place to progress faster than those that are alone, but that shouldn't be the "default" that everyone who wants to go far in PvE/Artisan should strive for. The default imo, should allow a completely resonable (albeit slower in comparison) timeline/path for those to enjoy content/progress in their path without getting completely locked-out by PvP content they need their hand-held for.
- A "community" World Boss. This is one where the spawns for these bosses are usually known, on a semi-usual timer. Large groups congregate, and (depending on the existence of a trinity-system or not) parties may or may not form. It is not necessary to be in a party to participate. The mechanics are usually more indescriminate and high damage, as the main contest is Person vs Boss. New players usually die and run back in, as they want to do enough damage to get a reward/better rewards, whereas experienced players have figured out all the tips and it's pretty much a cakewalk. These tend to have little-to-no loot lockout rules, as well as a very very low chance at "amazing" loot. As a result, there's usually a "pity" loot, where attending enough of the World Boss lets you accumulate this non-tradeable reward that you can trade in for the higher-rarity loot. In general, this is more of a participation boss, where groups of 30/40/50+ players are necessary to kill in a timely manner, but the rewards aren't insanely enticing considering the extreme low-chance at "great" loot. Seems to be the favourite of those with a very small, tight-knit group of people, or those who have a more PvE mindset and don't mind missing out on the "high-risk, high-reward" content, but still participate in group content where they don't have to be "friends" to jump in and get that "community" feeling (world events, dungeon-finder, and random party invites are their main ways of group play).
- A single-owner World Boss.These WB are mainly focal points for PvP combat, since only ONE party/group/raid/guild will receive the loot. As a result, the WB may have a variable spawn time, location, or a combination of both, making it more difficult to pre-plan, and rewarding those who are either lucky or always prepared. These may also have a variable "recommended" party size, where groups as low as 8 or as high as 40 (in AoC) may be able to comfortably defeat the boss in a timely manner. These are more common in "trinity" based systems, due to the necessity of having aggro and controlling the movements/actions of the boss, as well as knowledge of which party/group/person has the highest share of damage (through a threat meter, dps meter, or just overall aggro). Due to only ONE group owning the loot, these WB may have a loot lockout rule, to disincentivize a "rich-get-richer" type gameplay loop, incentivize varied gameplay, discourage the need to "optimize" time by only doing one piece of content at every spawn, or any other reason. The PvP content is the main point-of-contention, and as a result, the rarity of the drop-rate may be increased, due to the unlikelihood of a group "farming" it (through a system-induced lockout, or just due to the push-and-pull of PVP, or even due to the inability to predict the spawn/spawn-time). Seems to be the favourite of those who are coming into a game with a fairly large group already, or those who are anticipating building/joining a community as soon as possible.
- A faction-based World Boss. Similar to the previous two WB types, but a combination of the two. PVP-based, but no need to coordinate beforehand, and players naturally fall into groups. Has the pros of the "community" WB (players with no friends online/dead guild, and players with poor gear & low level can still find groups and be valued to participate), and the pros of a single-owner WB (contested PVP environment, us vs. them mentality, rewards coordination and execution). The rewards aren't usually as good as the single-owner, but better than the community.
From the low information we have so far, it seems like AoC follows a single-owner World Boss system. This falls into the OWPVP, risk vs reward type mantra that they've been following since they announced. They have mentioned variable spawn locations/times as well, so this WB system fits well. For those that dislike this, the usual "if you dislike OWPVP, this game isn't for you" response is expected, as fighting over contested resources is a cornerstone of this game.
My question isn't really "which do you like", but instead, which system do you think is healthy for the game/gameplay-loop that you envision? Do you want a PvP-centric WB, but don't want to feel like you're missing out on a lot of loot if you don't contest every spawn that comes up? Are you in support of a loot-lockout, which would remove the FOMO of missing out on other WB, and free up your time to do other content (possibly contesting a nearby nodes resources while you know a lot of their citizens are at the WB)? Do you think having simultaneous WB spawns across the continent is enough of a way to mitigate the "zerging" or "uber-contesting" around a single WB, and don't feel the need for any artificial lockout to help ease the amount of WB resets? Or do you just think a community, participation-based WB is the best-case, and disagree with the PvP-centric WB gameplay loop?
My thoughts: I'm fine with any of these systems, except faction-based. That's mostly due to the pitfalls of any faction-based system being the inability to change factions, and one faction having a snowball effect.
My main concern, however, is in the lack of information around loot lockouts & loot rarity (which is fine, they just haven't spoken on it yet). If the loot is amazing enough to have these randomly spawning World Bosses, that can require 8-to-40 people groups to take down, then they may be the unanimous "BiS" way to get money/loot/crafting material for the same amount of effort. And if these WB can also be integral to Story Arcs, Artisan Promotion Quests, etc. (as AoC tends to do, weaving PvE & PvP objectives together to get both types of players to interact), it may result in an insane amount of frustration. An 8-man recommended WB would still summon a 40-man group from a raid just to secure the rare drops. 40-man WB would have so many 40-man groups all contesting, possibly resetting the boss (another unknown: how does aggro-switching, leash rules, etc affect the boss? Despawn time? etc.) & making it a giant waste-of-time for so many, but still so mandatory to contest for progression that it may result in PvE players stalling in their progression because they never prioritized PvP.
A common comment for players who are Artisan focused who cannot themselves contest a PvE objective due to PvP is to join a guild who farms that content FOR you in order to develop the goods, as one symbiotic system. That's definitely a viable gameplay-loop, and insanely rewarding when it's successful. The issue I have with that is for the casual player, that's an insanely difficult roadblock to go over. Many players going into the game won't have the knowledge that they may be severely hindered without a group dedicated to helping them farm something until well into the game, and at that point, you might be the 30th, 40th, 50th+ "Herbalism main" in any guild you might be joining, and delaying your progress in the game so much behind things OUTSIDE of your agency/control is very frustrating. It definitely makes sense for Artisans who have a dedicated farm-system in place to progress faster than those that are alone, but that shouldn't be the "default" that everyone who wants to go far in PvE/Artisan should strive for. The default imo, should allow a completely resonable (albeit slower in comparison) timeline/path for those to enjoy content/progress in their path without getting completely locked-out by PvP content they need their hand-held for.
2
Comments
The room would unlock when the boss respawns and anyone would be able to enter the room. One of the bosses had a "wake up" mechanic where the first person that entered his room could go touch a statue and the boss would immediately start the fight, which in turn locked the room's door until either the boss died or all players inside did. 2 other bosses would awake after a timer that started as soon as someone entered their room.
This design would usually lead to a "king of the hill" type of pvp encounter, where several guilds would first fight around the door, while they wait for the variable respawn timer, and then fight inside the room until the doors closed and only one guild remained inside.
To me this kind of design feels like the perfect representation of pvx. The whole thing requires you to be good at both pvp and pve. And the doors closing allows developers to come up with all kinds of pve designs, because at that point it'd pretty much be an "instanced" location.
And Intrepid could also approach this mechanic from all kinds of angles. The trigger for the boss could be a competitive puzzle with small skirmishes throughout. Or it could be a "spill the blood to awake the boss" kind of thing. Or the boss could awake only when there's some particular amount of people around (or specifically flagged people). Or any other idea that would combine pvp with pve.
As for loot - it's yet again the same preference. L2's big bosses would drop the same stuff you could get from mobs in their locations (both full pieces and crafting mats). And every boss would have a specific semi-universal singular drop that would be considered the biggest prize (some bosses had this at <100% drop rate). So even if the boss was controlled by a single guild - other guilds could still farm the mobs and get the same gear. And due to long respawns and singular (not assured) unique drops, the controlling guild wouldn't have that big of an advantage over others, even if they had farmed the boss multiple times.
Steven liked this design, so my current hope is that the team and him can come up with an even better iteration of this or just add some more variety to it, while preserving the core principles of the design.
That's a good idea, and something I hope they implement as well.
I also realized the "flying" mounts being available through a World Boss drop, and World Bosses being only single-owner, would have some people for/against it. I think one way to mitigate this is for AoC to be very fluid with their definition of "World Boss". Having a World Boss that's very similar to your example is great, but making the drops centered around, say, that dungeon's "theme", which could be very heavy armor/heavy weapon related drops.
Then, another "World Boss" in the Forest, with a much more common spawn rate of, say, 5 times a day, aimed at 8-man parties, that mostly drops Logging and Herbalism related drops, as well as loot for Animal Husbandry, and some mounts/pets. This way, those that are dedicated to the path of PvP, BiS farming, gearing, etc. will gravitate to the low-spawn, heavily contested WB that drop loot that scale players vertical progression, whereas those that are more focused on PvE, Artisan, horizontal- and collectible-based progression will gravitate to the higher-spawn, smaller-party boss, that may spawn in a much larger area (so you and some buddies farming in one corner of the map stumbles across the WB spawning, call a few other ppl, and manage to kill it before others find out). You still have that sense of risk vs reward, and that possible player-contention, but it's not worth it for vertical progression enjoyers to camp out an entire forest and zerg it down every spawn.
I value multiple types of players getting to enjoy the risk vs reward type game that AoC is looking to be, and I think the best way to do that is to have clear delineation between the "rewards", so that the "risk" is scaled appropriately. I hope they don't end up throwing all horizontal & vertical progression rewards into giant "everyone should want to do this" events, creating balls of clusterfuck, and instead provide multiple pockets of these points of contention, meant for smaller and larger groups, that players can prioritize based off their individual goals.
So, no arena?
Hm. Sounds good balance-wise, but a bit dull. The way I'd do it is give most difficult-to-clear (through required numbers, or battle challenges, or spawn rarity) bosses unique loot, but assign tiny drop rates to that (perhaps <1% of encounters in the most extreme cases, though it depends on boss availability). Then add the universal loot reward you described on top.
Rare unique items are just fun. Just have to control their supply.
How much those unique items can compete with crafted items or other high-tier equipment would depend on how challenging it is to clear the boss. Bosses that allow for more effective contestation of objective control would give better rewards. (Same goes for the droprate of impactful non-unique loot.)
I actually don’t care about instanced arenas. I also care about my flower pickers and PvE heroes too.
I would really have to see it done, if it was a proper PvX arena I’d be for or more so than a straight PvP one.
Like release the lion and the fighters.
If Ashes is PvX, then I expect such and don’t want to see isolated activities.
Edit: I’m mr thumbs tonight, damn phone
The bulk of Ashes is going to be PvX. However, if Intrepid can support it, the game will simply be better off if they can also have some PvP only activities, and also better off if they can have some PvE only activities.
Obviously, the key there is Intrepid being able to support it all.
The reason this is my opinion is that a game like Ashes needs to attract the same individual players to the game 4 or 5 times a week, for multiple hours at a time, ideally for years on end.
To me, variety in gameplay is key to achieving that. The more variety the better - within that above caveat of Intrepid being able to support it.
1. I like to sleep at night, so it'd be good to set respawns of the big WB near the server primetime (sadly classic Longhorn Golkonda at 4 a.m.).
2. I don't really wanna use my second PC to monitor WB and complain about how P2W it is, so it'd be nice to see announcements about the respawn window (e.g. "The Cyclops will appear within one hour").
PvP-only activities are fine if it is hard to abuse rewards.
PvE-only activities are fine if it isn't forcing me to create 10+ characters to farm it all day to get best gold/hour farm ratio.
Yes, but it helps if there's a clear focus. Games I've played that captivated the *same* players in the *same* long average timeslots (and enough of them to make the activities interesting) all shared that they had a clear focus on one aspect (RvR OR PvP OR PvE) that united the playerbase. The side activities from other categories were high-quality enough to allow those who enjoyed them to use them to wind down or engage in them regularly, or sometimes to wait for their friends to come online, but not *incentivised* enough to continuously split the community.
Games that *did* incentivise all their elements equally suffered from low-quality gameplay, unenthusiastic group activities, and inconsistent activity schedules if you weren't in a zerg guild (which is, again, uninspired, low-quality content.)
That's why I think games that want to be good, have to accept that they inevitably need to be *some* form of niche (Though they can still have many players. Just not every player.). Which by extension is why games that aspire to be "the next WoW" are inevitably bad, and usually fail. (Which is not necessarily to say that WoW is terrible, I hope that's not the point anyone reduces this comment to.)
This part of your post I agree with - however I disagree with the idea that the focus needs to be something akin to RvR, PvP or PvE.
Traditionally, the "glue" that has held most MMO's together has been guild based conflict.
I definitely prefer this idea to the "open world boss cluster" where you fight players and the boss at the same time. It sounds fun and engaging!
Then again, they could always mix things up, but I definitely feel like it would be in the spirit of PvX without opening up for needless clusters and headaches.
Totally, I was just using simplified examples.
U.S. East
The end point of my thought from above is that if the guild is the focus of your game, then you can have PvP, PvE, RvR PvX, what ever, it doesn't matter.
To me, any content in an MMO that allows players to forward their guild is content that brings players together.
What has me curious about the games you have talked about where some content types took a back seat is if that content that took a back seat was designed for a full guild to participate in or not.
In my experience, if a game has a focus on a specific sized guild, any content that requires a different number of players will often take a back seat. If a game has PvP content that focuses on 40 people, for example, and has PvE content that focused on 6, that PvE content is going to take a back seat - it is going to be the thing you do while you wait for the rest of the guild to log in.
On the other hand, if a game has PvE content that requires 24 players, but PvP content that only asks for 6 players, then people will run that PvP content while waiting for their guild to log in.
The content people do while waiting for others has nothing to do with it being PvP or PvE, it is simply a case of how many players that content asks for.
As such, a game that has PvP content asking for 40 people can have PvE content that asks for 40 people, and both can be considered important content, with players running either PvP or PvE content that only asks for 4 - 6 players as secondary content.
If I remember correctly, some of those pvp fights between several sets of guild alliances had several sets of players.. those for the pvp fight to determine access and then those that continued through for the boss fight itself.. the amassing of players to contest the access was often far greater than the actual number of players that would finally enter..
and yet given the spawn time, sometimes there were massive fights with many players, organized and a true battle to win and then there were times the boss spawned when the server was in off peak time and then the wars were dropped and players were picked up to boulster the numbers from anywhere..
strangest feeling to do a raid knowing that you have a war tag over your head and in a room with several dozen enemy players and nobody touches you..
that was the beauty of the community and politics that the basic L2 game developed
Hazard a guess, far less personal