Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
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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
A couple things I noticed and feel could be improved are
1. During the boss moves when he stomps and bangs his fists on the ground felt lacking. Maybe have a shockwave that needs to be blocked or knocks you backwards to the ground with damage given.
2. The wolf adds felt too few and far between. If you're going to have them, HAVE them. Possibly start with 1 or 2 that the DPS needs to focus on and down in a certain time limit or that same amount will spawn in again doubling what needs to be killed. Or have them higher health more DMG. something along those lines. The boss felt like he walked around and stomped to get rid of an anoyance. Not like he was fighting for his life.
While this is a little off topic, I feel I need to point this out.
The concept of content being instanced or open has no bearing AT ALL on players trying out weird combinations. You absolutely can do that with instanced content.
In fact, there was a raiding guild in EQ2 that was only made up of Paladins.
That exact list of requirements you are talking about is something that only happens if the developers specifically call for it. If you make content that requires a tank and 20 DPS, and you only have 24 raid spots, then obviously you are only taking 3 healers.
Such content can be open world just as easily as it can be instanced. These two aspects of content are completely disconnected from each other.
You're gonna get something closer to what you want as more bosses are showcased. And that's what the feedback is for, for you to give input on how to make things better, what you want to see in other boss encounter showcases. I thought your bullet list of 5 or 6 different boss mechanics all sounded good. Not sure if it's in this thread or another, but I read through them, and they sound good to me.
They said in the video that this is an early, mid level boss. And as we all know, work in progress, lacks polish, subject to tweaking blah blah blah.
But anyway, I think there's more to come that will be closer to meeting your standards. That said, there are some realities. New studio, never put out an mmo before. Mostly open world, non instanced encounters. And encounters that are subject to pvp.
The odds of Intrepid putting out the same quality and quantity of boss encounters that an established company, whose sole focus is pve, with years or decades of experience designing bosses, with a much bigger budget, with a much bigger portion of that budget specifically for boss design, is low. Long sentence, but the odds are low Intrepid can match pound for pound against the heavyweights of boss encounter design. Especially when Intrepid has so many other systems they're focusing on too.
Anything is possible though. Sometimes there's an upstart in some industry or field that just pops up out of nowhere and does everything better or just as good as the established heavyweights, right out the gate. I'm not trying to slight Intrepid's potential prowess. But it's unlikely. They could still get pretty close though.
That's all assuming that primary classes can viably respec between roles. We don't know if that's true yet. Considering a class is literally called "tank" it's fair to say they're probably not gonna be picked as a dps ahead of a pure dps class. Alternatively you have to have high level geared alts which we also have no idea what the time commitment will be.
I think you're taking it the wrong way though. The problem is straight up the ratio of tanks in each type of content. If you only have 1 tank for 24 people in raid then those who really want to raid will reroll as dps or healer. Which will then mean there is a shortage of tanks for everyone in single group content when you need 1 in 8 people as a tank.
It's a ratio problem created by the devs, and can only by solved by the devs ensuring primary class tanks have a competitive dps spec (or some other kind of use), or design encounters so that the ratio stays the same for each level of content.
Even for low level Boss, I feel like some basic mechanics should be present, and it was what you have done here. The mechanics can be far less punishing. I liked the fact that the boss roam in his environment instead of just standing.
I don't have any bosses in mind, but I like the fact that as the health pourcentage get low, the intensity/difficulty of the fight grow. It adds on the epicness of the fight and it is rewarding to finaly beat a boss when you failed multiple times at 0 to 10% of his health.
My best memories of boss killed was with this conditions (low health fail).
This might be a consideration for higher level bosses.
Compared to other MMO, you seem to have the environment well integrated, even in fights. I would have loved if the Cyclops used it more. It may be complicated to implement, but like the Cyclop hiding behind a rock so ranged DPS have to adjust or the tree trunk creating big holes in the ground so as the fight advance it is more and more complicated to simply move in the "arena".
Interaction with the environment is almost not present in any MMO so you maybe you should push further in this direction.
To finish, I may not be completly applicable for low level boss but more for max level cap bosses. I think the most important thing is to design bosses so that "zerg" them is not possible, or do not give huge advantage.
Most of the time where I feel disappointed with world bosses in MMO because you can simply abuse them by outnumbering the boss. Like a boss designed for 40 is far too easy if you simply bring more people, and most of the time even ignoring the mechanics. This feel realy bad.
PS: Not english, sorry for the mistakes
I have every expectation that everyone in my guild will maintain a main and at least one raid ready alt. If you don't have a raid ready alt, you don't have the commitment to be raiding - at least not in the sense of a raid guild. If you don't have that commitment, you shouldn't have any expectation of being able to fulfil your desired role on a raid. Raiding is primarily about teamwork, about the raid, about the guild - it isn't actually about you.
The problem is not the number of tanks required for content. It is the expectation of a few ex-WoW players that they should have everything they want immediately. If you go back to my post above, you will note that in a game with a raid size of 20, I would maintain 24 guild members which would include 4 raid ready tanks.
That isn't even including the non raid ready tanks we would have in the guild.
We have no shortage of tanks.
How can you then claim we would have a shortage of tanks?
In basically every game other than WoW, it is an activity that requires commitment to your guild.
If you want to raid anything other than world events without putting in that commitment in a game like Ashes, you are probably going to find yourself out of luck, regardless of what class you are playing.
I don't mind commitment, I just don't believe you should have to commit to alts - that's poor game design to me. Alts should be optional.
I'm not particularly looking for an argument - this is a feedback forum and my feedback to the devs is that if the ratio of tanks/healers/dps is different depending on the number of groups then it's going to cause flow on role supply/demand problems.
Regardless of what the content asks for, that means people need to be flexible. I mean, if one guild happens to have 2 people wanting to tank and another guild happens to have 5 people wanting to tank, developers can't make a top end encounter to satisfy both guilds. Any encounter that has that much variation in it simply isn't going to be hard for any guild that takes the best mix.
Since the point of tanking is to be a focus point (of enemy damage as well as of healing), having as many tanks in a raid as every other class just isn't viable. You are not longer the focus point, you are now just another tank.
WoW made the mistake of adding LFR. This opened raiding up to people without needing to put in that organization, but also made it so the game treated players as disposable, meaning players treated each other as disposable.
The other thing LFR did that was almost as bad as leading to players treating each other as disposable, is it lead players to forget that raiding is less about the content than it is about the people. The content is important, but the people are more important. If you dont have the people part of that equation organized, you have no business trying to work on the content part of it.
On the other hand, if you do have that people part worked out, you'll have no problem leveling an alt to help your friends.
I agree, I am a 100% non-meta, non-guide, RP sandbox player. Although the reality is, that you see specified raid combinations in instanced theme-park MMO's more often than in sandbox MMO's. Much of that is driven by communities rather than just developers because many people WANT/NEED to be told what to do.
Guiding new players through a game like Albion Online and it is always "Where should I go? What do I need to do?" and their brains just stun lock when you reply "Up to you, go and do what you want"
I do think there should be some super difficult Raid bosses with complex mechanics that require very specific raid compositions (or raid abilities) to overcome. I just think that should be more End-Game type content and would be better suited mostly to instanced spaces so devs can really go to town on intricate and intense pve mechanics.
In my opinion the combat looked very promising and I can't wait to see what kinds of different world bosses you will show us in the future and how the other classes work in world boss fights!
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
I'm very excited about world bosses' lores and what kinds of other roaming world bosses players will encounter in different parts of Verra!
What I was wondering during this cyclops fight was the purpose of those cool looking "spirit wolves" that ran on the battle field. Were they attacking the players or did they buff the cyclops?
One idea came up to my mind when I saw the cyclops bashing players with the tree. It would be funny and cool to see players' bodies getting stuck halfway into the ground when the cyclops bashes them with that tree causing a stun for a short time.
However, it is developer driven - at least at the top end.
Top end raids (instanced or open world) usually need a fairly specific list of classes. I have absolutely played games that had encounters where having the wrong secondary class on one healer would prevent your raid from being able to kill an encounter.
This is just part and parcel of top end PvE.
Where it is somewhat a player driven issue though, is that guilds that aren't killing that content still want that exact mix of specific classes and builds. The content they are taking on doesn't need it, but to them, it must be the best because that is what the best are using.
An argument could be made that this aspect of it is player driven - but I would still call that at least equal parts developer driven. I mean, if you are a raid guild and wanted to limit your membership to as low a number as possible (meaning the average player in your raid gets geared up faster), then would you opt to take anything other than the ratio of classes that the top end content is asking for? Even if you aren't running that content today, surely you hope and/or aspire to take on that content at some point (Steven has made the point that the reason raid content is viable to develop even though it is taken on by a small percent of the population is that it is aspirational content for most players).
So, those end game raid encounters that you are talking about, the ones that will require fairly specific raid compositions - they are the exact content that causes every guild with any raiding aspirations of raiding top end content to have specific guilds compositions.
It is the guilds without those aspirations that are able to try the weird combinations.
As to your comments about Albion - the game is shit from my perspective, you are illustrating a part of the reason for that.
I would not call it a boss. I understand the overuse of the phrase but it was much more like legendary monster than a boss fight. Also I understand the group supposedly made it look easy only because you were buffed in a sense beyond what normal players would realistically be. That said, it seemed too quick and too easy. I would buff the chance of self healing to give it a lot higher chance of healing itself in that phase. As others have said the fact it is pure Zerg and nothing had to be dodged just felt overly lazy and not at all like anything other than a huge normal creature. It was a missed opportunity. Could have at least had one dire mechanic for newbies/low levels to get aquanted with. Entry level boss should be an introduction. Last thing you want is players getting to max content playing like that on a top tier boss. Please make it so when it collided with you it hurls you. This is supposed to be a massive boss that’s powerful not a feather. I really liked however the enrage faze and hope you make it more impactful when it roars. I want to feel it’s anger after losing its weapon. Maybe a screen shake and distortion. That one aoe attack I could not tell why it was hitting players who seemed out of range of the animation. Again need more knockback or knockdown abilities. Knockback you still land on feet much quicker back to the fight, knockdown takes longer to get up. Lastly, the walking was a bit wonky. How the giant turns was too wonky/choppy and fear of a world where servers seem too pixelated to keep performance up.
Pvp and Boss's.. Especially World Bosses
I am concerned also not particularly with the boss itself but how pvp will play out. As we know people are people and no offense to anyone here but most people are pretty self-serving but i suspect by what people have written that pointless pvp will occur over said boss. I say pointless because i would like to assume that politics plays a greater role in the area of who controls said node to get a advantage or might be looking to find newbies to try to recruit into the node. As well why two seperate groups would fight over said boss when probably 75% of the time i would imagine the guild(s) that have control over the nodes would just organize ahead of time since they will most likely be in the area as being in another node does not seem to accomplish if at all or alot for said node owners.. Crafters, yes, node, eh, not so much. Also there is not gflying quickly from one place to another so said opposing guild in another node loses advatange to get there before said node can organize depending on distance. So i am left to assume to human nature especially in video games often is kind of nasty and ugly as well as immature without seeing or hearing more about said systems to help mitigate said human error. However i do hope to see and even expect to see some guilds who work together perhaps in a alliance scrimmage for fun. I'm obviously not a hardcore pvper by any means and as a pvx game it can be hard to steer players who are naturally disorderly in said events as said world boss pvp. I really am not looking forward to playing a game that is just pvp pvp pvp for everything, it'd be like going back to pre-school fighting over useless crap when you got tons more you could of just chosen. I am excited for the game, but honestly don't know if i will end up playing. However i will be playing and leaving much feedback for alpha 2 and look forward to it! *Please do not bother replying about my response i will not respond or read it. This feedback is only for the developers. - Thanks.*
On a side-note
I am curious how it makes paths throughout the world. Is it self generated to be different unique when it spawns? Or is it set paths? I could not make out by what was said which it is.
I get the desire for really hard content but this boss seems to be for newbs + there's a chance it'll turn into a pvp battleground.
Overall, I thought it was a decent showing for a first world boss. Comparable to some of the early WB's in GW2.
I found myself wanting to hear Tumok hum/grunt as he strolled through the forest.
When he got to the arena, instead of just awkwardly standing there, maybe have him plant the log into the ground and [Pray to it/Channel power into it/Admire it lovingly/Do something with it].
In the fight, phase 2, there could be an interesting spin where you can deliberately NOT kill the totem and try just burn through the healing. If you manage this, the log becomes harvestable afterwards for rare resources (lumber, spores/mushrooms, moss, magical/forest essence etc...).
Another thing i couldn't help but imagine was when the log gets destroyed is that Tumok cries out in anguish at the loss of his beloved weapon. The remaining shards of the tree could protect Tumok as he enrages.
At the end, the remaining tree bits can be collected as "twisted bough" used for crafting.
If you kill him after destroying his tree, it enables the drop "tears of a cyclops" - used for crafting.
I think overall I would like to see more how the world bosses would feed into the economy.
Aside from the challenge of the fight, why should we engage with Tumok?
In phase three spawnt two "spirit wolfs" that felt a bit out of place, maby there is a lore reason for that monster type. but if it's not the case i have drawn two Ideas that are mor fitting for the boss theeme.
I see
I think that is not going to work too well for PvP-enabled open world bosses though. Maybe up to a point, but if a competing raid shows up, I think you should be able to defend and kill the competition without having to reset the boss. I am not completely opposed to having some mechanically complex world bosses, where most of the players have to be on point and uninterrupted by PvP to stand a chance. But this would require them to have one or more other raid groups protecting them. For larger guilds I can see this work.
But even with a system as you describe - where it's not absolutely critical that every role is done exactly optimal and right, and where people can rotate in and out based on cooldowns - it is super vulnerable to PvP. For instanced content it will work really well, and that is where I would normally expect them to add the harder and more complex mechanics, where everybody in the raid have specific roles, even if they are only variants of each other in some cases.
I know your subject is aiming to focus on the encounter itself and the fighting mechanics with it.
But I'm not a PvE specialist so I would like to bring on another take on world's boss and I feel it can be a good discussion to bring here regarding the Cyclops introduction, and it's the behaviour of the world boss outside of fighting, which is always non existant in MMORPGs, and I think it would be really amazing to have something more. That a world boss is not just a big piñata waiting to be zerg, kill and loot in a define zone.
I made that comment on reddit, but I felt like I really wanted to share it, so I do it again here
Ashes of creation is aiming to be a next gen MMO right ? Then it would be nice if Ashes take a step further from other MMOs and those special monsters do not just spawn randomly, wander randomly or through a pattern in a define zone and wait kindly to be kill by some adventurers. And if it does not happen, well they are just gonna wait there hours (days ?) to be kill. Enventually, after some time when the population of the server is mostly high level (because it will happen), that special monster will loose interest and just stay put in his zone, like a good boy waiting.
That's a thing I always though of being an immersive breaker in MMOs. Take example of Guild Wars 2 world's boss. Those big dragons commanders are just gonna wait still in their area to be kill. They are basically just big piñatas waiting to be punch and looted.
And it's sad because, they are not just some random monsters, they got backstories, a unique design etc... And if you think from a RP point of view, why would such a powerfull ennemy not move and stay right in his place waiting to die instead of accomplishing his purpose ?
So I would love (dream) to see those special monsters fitted with a particular IA and behaviour. Take exemple of that Cyclops. He spawn. He was bannished by his kind long time ago and sided with the ancients. He now wants to take revenge. So he does not just spawn, he has a goal. I'm gonna say really random stuff, but it's just so you get the idea. For example he could go and look for an ancient forge to get better equipment, if he succeeded he could have higher stats and become more difficult. He could walk into other zones of the map and look for followers, attack a village, trigger a monster coin event ? He would not be limited by a specific zone but could walk as he wishes into the world of Verra. And the longer he survives, the more powerfull he could become, to a certain degree adapted to the design level of course.
At one point players would be force to group and try to defeat him because he would become a threat for a node. And that, even if the server population is of a higher level. Even if the looting and experience is not really interesting anymore, they would have to defeat it to defend their home.
Since their story is unique, their design is unique, their character is unique etc... Would be nice if they feel really "alive" and "animated" with a purpose.
I know it's a lot more work, but then again, it's not like it's for every monster, "just" for those special world monsters. You could make fewer special monster boss, but really alive ones with a special IA and behaviour, quality not quantity.
Well I doubt I will ever see that, but just wanted to share what I would love to see in an mmorpg regarding a world boss
An open-world sandbox PvX MMORPG successfully kickstarted and made by a small group of passionate developers. If AoC isn't paying attention to a game like Albion and its successes and failures then I think that would be a huge mistake. Just saying X=Shit is useless. It's like me saying wow is shit because it is a bloated 20-year-old Zombie that needs to be put out of everybody's misery. It might be true but it isn't exactly useful information for Ashes development.
[*] How do you feel about the combat preview featuring the Cyclops?
Player Combat is improving. The basic attacks of the cyclops needs improvement. It was to fast for his size and looked off. I would say slow it down to a slow stomp but have aoe dmg so its harder to roll out of it.
[*] Do you like the mechanics, multi-group gameplay, and boss phases?
Yes!!! The 3 phases was a fantastic idea and I loved it. However, the wolves were cool but felt like low dmg and not impactful.
[*] Is there anything, in particular, you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
I would say add few more applicable funny animations. Meme worthy or memory worthy. Having him grab a player and throw him far away or at a tree. Have him stomp a player into the ground for him to be cc'ed for a few seconds. Have him kick a player like a football. Watch the player get yeeted away.
Lastly, the walking animation. He should leave giant footprints. When he targets a player and walks to him it looks very wonky.
L2 had static buffers that you had to have in your party if you wanted to be optimal, static main healer that you'd only change if you had chonky members (though even then it'd be debatable), static party setup due to specific class abilities.
Intrepid have stated that they want to have "one of each" as a "default" composition. To me that implies that archetypes will have some abilities that can't really be replaced by another archetype and that are important in a lot of gameplay cases.
If that is not the case then we'll have ourselves the classic "everyone's a mage and/or archer and wants DA BEEG DEEPS". If a full raid can do with a single tank - most tanks will be useless, so people will reroll. If the raid can do with 1-2 healers instead of 4 - the same situation. If majority of bosses have only one resistance (melee or range or magic) - raids will just get a ton of non-resisted dps to bring down the boss instead of coming up with some proper setup.
And as Noaani said, any raiding guild will try getting players that will be needed for the best endgame content, which means that any unneeded archetypes will be shit out of luck in their leveling process, which then creates a snowball effect of everyone rolling into mages/archers or smth similar.
Yes, there can be bosses that are stronger resisted against one type of damage, but I think that those bosses should have mechanics/adds that require the resisted archetypes, so that those people also have something to do. This way players can create their own small families that stick together for much longer and where each player knows their own archetype like the back of their hand, instead of having a revolving door of alts and substitutions "because this boss doesn't need any fighters so you either become a mage or get fucked".
The giant should have some collision detection and make some arm movement to push over the trees, right now hes just moving though them like they are air.
The graphics are starting to look a little bit outdated though and needs an update for 2023.
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I agree here. There should be varying levels of difficulty. While many people in the forums might fashion themselves to be raid gods and goddesses the majority of players won't be.
I'd rather have a slightly more complex boss than a "difficult one". Difficulty usually comes from incoming dmg and pace of the fight. If the fight is fast-paced and the damage per hit is high - the fight is really difficult. It can be super simple in terms of complexity of the combat and actions though.
And I think that the Cyclops is an example of that. He moves a lot, strikes relatively often and then has a fairly high dps aoe that killed a few raiders and held the majority of the raid below half hp. That's kinda difficult to manage. But in terms of his complexity and the variety of players responses to it - there was barely anything there.
Melees ran for him, ranges dpsed him, tank was doing god knows what and cleric healed. And this didn't really change at all during the fight. The only thing that changed was the targeting that went from the boss to the adds to the tree to the boss (I don't think wolves were even targeted).
What would, imo, be a better boss is something that has you do a few more different actions, but has slower pace and/or lower dmg. So the fight might not be as frantic and thrilling (though these were debatable during the showcase), but it'd be fun and interesting. And it would also show newcomers what they might expect later on in the game, when Intrepid would in fact speed up the pace and ramp up the damage, while keeping (or even adding) mechanic complexity.
And I think Azherae's post showed several nice mechanics that wouldn't really overwhelm players, as long as the boss itself wasn't killing them in 1.5 aoes.
wait when are the sales closing? ;-;