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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
No, it's not that at all - it's the fact that I wasn't talking about dungeons at all.
Open world PvE content should have boss mobs. They should be appropriate to the type of mob you are fighting, they should be the same level, and they should be for the same number of people.
An example of this is EQ2. In the early game, in the overland zones, any and every mob type had a boss that could spawn.
If you were in a forrest and there were 12 owlbears off to the side of the path, there was a boss owlbear that could spawn. If mixed within those owlbears there were some badgers as well, there would be the possibility of spawning a boss badger.
If you then moved over to a group based part of that zone and came across some giants, the giant guards will have a boss, the giant priests will have a boss, the giant scouts will have a boss etc.
These bosses would usually be a slightly buffed version of the regular mob, a little more damage from regular attacks, more HP (about twice as much), and they would usually have one or two abilities that their associated mobs didnt have. They weren't an overbearing challenge, unless you found yourself fighting one unexpectedly. You generally wouldnt be calling in additional help to kill one of these mobs - if you were farming the area, you would have been fine killing the boss of that area if you were expecting it.
These bosses usually had different spawn mechanics. Some would be a percentage chance to spawn every time a placeholder mob was killed. Some would simply be a timed spawn (either just spawning a given amount of time after the last kill, or spawning with the next appropriate mob killed after that time period). Some were also the end of a ring event, where you would have to kill several waves of mobs in order to get to the boss.
Additionally, on top of these small bosses, zones would have other bosses that werent tied to any other mobs. These would often roam large areas - often the whole zone.
Point is, in EQ2 specifically, an overland zone would have well over 100 small boss mobs. We didnt refer to them as boss mobs - but that is the easiest way to communicate the general concept to someone that seems to have limited PvE experience (I'm sure you will agree that this is fair to say).
This is what a game that gives a shit about its players does for overland PvE.
I technically would be fine with that, but not limited to the point that I wouldn't understand what a mob leader is...?`
None of this really vindicates the point I was criticising, which was: And where my main counterargument was:
The point is that why settle for an overland mob grinding experience that is essentially one dimensional, when instead you can have 3 dimensional content?
You could look at this as just being for leveling, or you could look at games like BDO and Archeage (speaking from first hand experience) and L2 (second hand info) and realize that a lot of people spend a lot of time at the level cap just farming overland mobs. BDO was the absolute worst at this.
If you have a game like Ashes, but with zones populated based on the above, you wont just have a half dozen farming spots that everyone fights over and those that lose have nothing to do. Rather, you have several full zones worth (or Ashes equivalent) of overland content for level capped players, where rather than fighting over having an area to farm, you are fighting over these spawns when they appear. You could quite happily have a hundred or more people farming in an area like this, with fights breaking out every time one of these mobs spawn.
The key thing is, in a game like BDO and Archeage, when you fight someone in an overland area, the genreal idea is that this is now your spot, and they need to go off and do something else. The notion of beating that person to get a thing is good, but the notion of that person now not being able to do the activity they wanted to do is bad.
Very bad.
With the above population, you aren't all that likely to fight someone over a spot, there should be more than enough to go around. Rather, you will fight them over a spawn if they get one. Sure, they may be upset at you for killing g them, or upset at themself for being killed, but they still have the option of carrying on with that activity.
Or, you know, we could just have bullshit bland overland content.
As to your comments about experience gain and loot, they are design decisions. Developers could make it so all the loot and experience is from these mobs, they could make it so none of the lot or experience is from these mobs (I wouldnt suggest either of these), or they could arrive at some position - literally any position - in between.
Designing populations like the above would drastically alter the way the overland game is played, in a way that allows many more people to participate in a way they feel is worth their time, but yet in a way where there is no detrimental effect at all on the amount of PvP that happens.
Never been much of a console gamer, so I aren't overly familiar with that game. As to your question, it depends on which definition you are talking about.
If you are talking about my insistence in this thread to not consider harvesting or crafting as PvE, but rather to consider it as harvesting and crafting - most games do that already. Most games have a developer (or small team) that work on crafting, and other developers that work on populating zones and such. They are developed as distinct entities, and in most games, players consider them to be different types of content. As such, games are already developed with this in mind.
If you are referring to my comments that I personally only consider bosses as PvE content, I dont expect that to be something developers build a game around. I dont think I would even want a developer to - I dont want an MMO built just for me, I want an MMO built for as many different people with as many different play styles to create as wide and varied a community as possible.
The point of that comment was to illustrate to some people that if you are trying to entice people from one game to another with PvE content, that is the only content those people will be looking at.
I meant the part I put in bold.
I'm with you that crafting and harvesting aren't solely PvE content. Their mechanics are, but their goals can thread into the PvP realm if you have to compete with other players. Crafting an item for yourself or to give an NPCs stays in the PvE realm (as most people see it), but if you want to sell it on the player market there is a competitive side that kicks in, and for some it can become their focus, their interest. Same with harvesting/gathering. If you have the zone for yourself it's one thing, but if you have to compete with other players, even those of your own faction (as it was the case on WoW PvE servers), it's another thing.
As for Shadow of the Colossus... The game is about fighting big monsters/bosses and some platforming/exploring. There is no fighting beside those bosses. The story/game progress only through these encounters. And the game was a success, so I thought it was a good example that showed that, although rather specific, your definition isn't as crazy as some think. Maybe just a bit odd in the case of a MMO.
If someone were to try and make a game based around only bosses as PvE, I think it would have to be a cross between DDO where there is essentially no overland areas, and monster hunter.
Not saying the game should be made though, I'd much rather a more varied game than one tailored to any individual play style, let alone any individual player.
Honestly, I think even I would enjoy the more varied game than the game tailored to me.