To further simplify and generalize the idea. Have a set of boss fights that are neither contested, nor give a reward, but instead are followed by secondary objective in which both risk and the reward are present (reward being loot appropriate for the boss killed).
I think i'd be ok with that. Would PvE players be happy?
To further simplify and generalize the idea. Have a set of boss fights that are neither contested, nor give a reward, but instead are followed by secondary objective in which both risk and the reward are present.
I think I'd be ok with that. Would PvE players be happy?
Seems an improvement. Is much much closer to PvX (as I define a pvx game).
I estimate it could attract a higher percentage of PvE players.
However, would you accept the risk vs reward to be balanced based on performance during the first fight?
The better you fight in the first stage the lower the risk to be in the 2nd stage?
Leaving the challenge of your game up to it's players means that as your player population wanes, your games challenge wanes.
It's really wild to see someone say that difficulty based on challenge from other players is bad design.
Main pillar of AoC "risk vs reward" is inspired by content being open world and contested by other players in L2. The more value something has - more players will be competing for it and harder it will be to obtain. Who are you going to compete against to become a Mayor, to collect rare ore, skin an animal, play auction house? Everything you do in AoC will involve competing with other players one way or another at some point (not always and not necessarily through violence, scaling up with reward).
Would you say MOBAs are also bad design, because if you have no opponent to play against - there is no challenge? You don't say! Conclusion that should come from this is that player base is important, not that it's bad design.
If you focus onto a PvE fight, it is easy to not notice PvPers approaching behind you. They can even damage you to help the NPCs win.
that comes with practice and being good ;3
You can also designate somebody to observe the area. But the consequence is the same.
You have to be able to disengage safely the fight, heal up and be ready for the PvP part.
Normally PvE encounters do not let you do such things easily or don't let you leave the area at all.
If you cannot, then is like having human opponents with very powerful summons fighting against you.
Imagine a summoner getting summons as strong as the strongest NPCs the other classes can barely solo.
Everyone would rage and ask the summoner to be nerfed, either his summon or the player attributes.
i know what it feels like. been doing that in l2 for 20 years. its amazing tbh.
i like killing bosses, but killing bosses AND players is even better
It's really wild to see someone say that difficulty based on challenge from other players is bad design.
No, it really isn't.
Lets imagine we have a game, lets call it Archeage.
Lets imagine this game has an encounter, it's big, red and dragon like, lets call it Red Dragon.
Now, this encounter drops the best items in the game, and lets also imagine the design of this encounter is based on other players showing up preventing you from killing it.
Explain to me how risk vs reward works here if no one shows up to stop you killing it.
As I've said, the above has happened, specifically on that encounter in that game, but on other encounters in that game, and other games as well. My guild killed the Kraken with no one else even in sight, no ships (or even clippers) on the radar, let alone putting up a fight. This is back in early days of Archeage as well, when the Kraken was still the hardest boss that was able to be killed - and it was on one of the most populated servers in the game at the time.
FIghting players should result in rewards for fighting players that is approiate to the risk that players pose. Fighting encounters should result in rewards from fighting those encounters that are appropriate to the risk that those encounters pose.
That is how risk vs reward properly functions. As soon as you have a situation where you are fighting players for rewards from bosses, you have lost any sense of actual valid risk vs reward, and have just set up a pinata for players to fight over.
This is fine if the objective is to encourage mass PvP (it works at that goal just fine). However, attempting to call it risk vs reward is just an outright fallacy, because the risk you undertake and the reward you stand to get are not actually connected to each other at all.
It's really wild to see someone say that difficulty based on challenge from other players is bad design.
No, it really isn't.
Lets imagine we have a game, lets call it Archeage.
Lets imagine this game has an encounter, it's big, red and dragon like, lets call it Red Dragon.
Now, this encounter drops the best items in the game, and lets also imagine the design of this encounter is based on other players showing up preventing you from killing it.
Explain to me how risk vs reward works here if no one shows up to stop you killing it.
As I've said, the above has happened, specifically on that encounter in that game, but on other encounters in that game, and other games as well. My guild killed the Kraken with no one else even in sight, no ships (or even clippers) on the radar, let alone putting up a fight. This is back in early days of Archeage as well, when the Kraken was still the hardest boss that was able to be killed - and it was on one of the most populated servers in the game at the time.
FIghting players should result in rewards for fighting players that is approiate to the risk that players pose. Fighting encounters should result in rewards from fighting those encounters that are appropriate to the risk that those encounters pose.
That is how risk vs reward properly functions. As soon as you have a situation where you are fighting players for rewards from bosses, you have lost any sense of actual valid risk vs reward, and have just set up a pinata for players to fight over.
This is fine if the objective is to encourage mass PvP (it works at that goal just fine). However, attempting to call it risk vs reward is just an outright fallacy, because the risk you undertake and the reward you stand to get are not actually connected to each other at all.
did you kill it after everybody had killed it and had its loot or did you kill it when everybody wanted to kill it?
did you kill at 4 am when everybody was sleeping? at 10 am when everybody was working? during prime time? when.
also, what makes you think those boses were designed as risk vs reward? ashes is a different game. the only thing ashes has from aa is naval combat lol. just because a game is pvx doesnt mean tis automatically risk vs reward. thats soemthing you add intentionally. a game can be pure pve or pvp and have risk vs reward
did you kill it after everybody had killed it and had its loot or did you kill it when everybody wanted to kill it?
did you kill at 4 am when everybody was sleeping? at 10 am when everybody was working? during prime time? when.
So, when I left the game it was considered the second highest boss in the game.
It had a regular spawn time of the same time every week.
ashes is a different game.
As have no proof at all that Ashes is designed to be any different. Since Archeage is one of the main games that Ashes takes insperation from, we actually have reason to believe it will be the same.
Also, this same thing happened in L2, because the design was the same.
just because a game is pvx doesnt mean tis automatically risk vs reward.
Every game ever made that has progressive loot "is risk vs reward" - at least every game I have ever played.
did you kill it after everybody had killed it and had its loot or did you kill it when everybody wanted to kill it?
did you kill at 4 am when everybody was sleeping? at 10 am when everybody was working? during prime time? when.
So, when I left the game it was considered the second highest boss in the game.
It had a regular spawn time of the same time every week.
ashes is a different game.
As have no proof at all that Ashes is designed to be any different. Since Archeage is one of the main games that Ashes takes insperation from, we actually have reason to believe it will be the same.
Also, this same thing happened in L2, because the design was the same.
just because a game is pvx doesnt mean tis automatically risk vs reward.
Every game ever made that has progressive loot "is risk vs reward" - at least every game I have ever played.
yeah but how many people were after that boss when you were killing it? maybe people already got what they needed and other people didnt have the gear or numbers to kill it. it happens. maybe your guild couldnt get the boss because other guilds just killed you and you could only get it when they werer interested?
well aoc is 80-90% l2, aa influence is minimal. basically just naval combat. ashes has more from aion than from aa lol
but anyways there are differences. in l2 you didnt really drop loot on death (only at the beginning, you could drop your gear if you were white and died to a monster) but that changed and there were also ways to protect your gear even if you were red.
there were also bosses that dropped stuff than any1 could get even if oyu didnt kill them, like the sub class bosses. there werent that many risks in l2 for losing a bos fight. it was only not getting the loot and pretty much anything dropped by a boss could be acquired in other ways except for the epic jewels.
id say the risk is bigger in l2. you have social risks that literally affect your city and your items in your wharehouse. you drop stuff when you die. death penalty, stats dampening, etc. we have to play the game and see
yeah but how many people were after that boss when you were killing it?
As I said in the post a few above, the week before there were over 400 people present.
well aoc is 80-90% l2
Yeah, but the content in question from Archeage was based on L2 as well.
The same thing happened (from what I have been told) on low population L2 servers (including private servers).
The point here is fairly simple though. If there is an encounter that has it's reward based on the risk that players assume will come via other players, if those other players do not come, there is no risk and thus the risk vs reward is out of place.
I'm not really arguing any other aspect of risk vs reward here other than this fact.
In regards to Ashes, it is perfectly believable that there may well just be times when people don't show up for world boss kills. They may have sieges or wars that need their attention - meaning that this situation where a world boss that offers no challenge itself spawns, and no one shows up to contend it is actually even more likely to happen in Ashes than it does in other games.
This is fine if the objective is to encourage mass PvP (it works at that goal just fine). However, attempting to call it risk vs reward is just an outright fallacy, because the risk you undertake and the reward you stand to get are not actually connected to each other at all.
You still keep thinking that difficulty is what dictates the worth, and that killing a boss inherently is difficult (it's not) - your argument stems from faulty logic. Supply and demand determine worth. You can have two items that have exactly the same way of obtaining them, yet one of them is 1000x more valued. Did no one care about the loot from your boss? Was the boss worth fighting for? Think why no one else was there - should they be? If they should - find out why they weren't and fix that. My bathwater would be extremely difficult for you to obtain, how much are you willing to pay? You are being like those people that think squashing 100 watermelons with their ass is a world record worth being proud of. Maybe no one cares about red dragon as much as you do?
As reward goes up - the chance to have competition goes up. There are other factors involved as well, that can either increase further or reduce the competition. So yes, if reward is not high enough - sometimes there will be no competition. It is logic based self-balancing system, it's not perfect, but it's very good. TLDR: Logic chain works one way, but not the other (like you are trying to say). Demand goes up - so does the worth - so does the competition - so does the difficulty. Higher competition leads to higher difficulty. But higher difficulty leads to lower competition.
In regards to Ashes, it is perfectly believable that there may well just be times when people don't show up for world boss kills. They may have sieges or wars that need their attention - meaning that this situation where a world boss that offers no challenge itself spawns, and no one shows up to contend it is actually even more likely to happen in Ashes than it does in other games.
That's part of the whole point! You have to choose - do you want to protect your castle, or go fight the world boss. You can't have it all. If castle is higher value to you - your competition can have easier time with the boss once in a while (if for some reason no one else cares about that boss, even though its so very much desired to be killed - only way that makes any sense is if you have a dead game with an empty server - i don't think that is what Intrepid is trying to design, is it?). And it's ok if sometimes there is no one to compete, consider yourself lucky in that case.
Not only it is believable, it is to be expected (if worth is low enough), and it's fine - what i see as alternative is you progress past any content, not just a boss, and it literally never is a challenge again. And you will outgear it, it's an MMORPG, where progression and it's feeling are important. The whole point is to keep it relevant by introducing player friction, so it can always have a chance to pose a challenge without removing the feeling of progression. Higher value content - higher chance there will be competition. From 0 to 100%. It's a scale. Sometimes, based on conditions, there will be no one else. Just like if you have 25% chance to crit - then 75% of the time you will not. It's ok, it's how it works. You don't want 100% competition for everything and everywhere, specially in a game that you are expected to play for long hours.
As reward goes up - the chance to have competition goes up.
Yes, but my point is that this is still dependent on players, and players are not predictable.
That specific kill of that encounter - I literally have no idea why no one else showed up. Same time every week, 400 the week before, over 300 the week after - but only 15 of us that week.
All the stuf you are talking about in regards to item rarity (supply vs demand) is probably all true (I say probably because I am not putting a lot of thought in to it). The thing is, it isn't relavent to this discussion.
TLDR: Logic chain works one way, but not the other (like you are trying to say). Demand goes up - so does the worth - so does the competition - so does the difficulty. Higher competition leads to higher difficulty. But higher difficulty leads to lower competition.
See, I don't disagree with this either - but only as a generalization.
It is not a universal rule - which is my point.
I'll go over a few events that I know have had direct impacts on the population levels of MMO's I've been playing over the years...
Oblivion, Skyrim and Baulders Gate 3 launches all had massive impacts on the populations of the games I was playing at the time.
Superbowl ususally sees less activity.
Thanksgiving usually sees fewer people with regular schedules able to log on.
Christmas is often just dead, as is New Years.
Game of Thrones episode drops saw drops in numbers at any given point in the night, though most people still logged in (I noticed this most with seasons 4 - 6). I've not noticed this with any other show.
The recent Oppenheimer/Barbie weekend saw the game I was playing at the time have surprisingly low population.
When playing on an AU server, the whole place was disturbingly quiet on days with NRL or AFL finals - and fairly quiet for any Origin game.
EU servers are often quiet for Champion League finals (or other major games), though this depends more on who is playing that it does with AU servers.
Olympic Games often seen people technically online, but not paying attention.
People can really be fickle - the above are just the drops in population that I noticed in the games I was playing, and that I could place a reason on. And these are the people you want game developers to rely on for their games challenge. I would much rather the developers provide the challenge directly, thanks.
yeah but how many people were after that boss when you were killing it?
As I said in the post a few above, the week before there were over 400 people present.
well aoc is 80-90% l2
Yeah, but the content in question from Archeage was based on L2 as well.
The same thing happened (from what I have been told) on low population L2 servers (including private servers).
The point here is fairly simple though. If there is an encounter that has it's reward based on the risk that players assume will come via other players, if those other players do not come, there is no risk and thus the risk vs reward is out of place.
I'm not really arguing any other aspect of risk vs reward here other than this fact.
In regards to Ashes, it is perfectly believable that there may well just be times when people don't show up for world boss kills. They may have sieges or wars that need their attention - meaning that this situation where a world boss that offers no challenge itself spawns, and no one shows up to contend it is actually even more likely to happen in Ashes than it does in other games.
Yes, but my point is that this is still dependent on players, and players are not predictable.
That specific kill of that encounter - I literally have no idea why no one else showed up. Same time every week, 400 the week before, over 300 the week after - but only 15 of us that week.
So it worked the next week, and previous, and maybe every week before that? It's ok to sometimes not get the expected result. It happens all the time - in games and in life. Unexpected things can feel bad, or be exciting. It's just the way it is.
Look at any game that retained popularity over long period of time, 90%+ of them are competitive.
yeah but how many people were after that boss when you were killing it?
As I said in the post a few above, the week before there were over 400 people present.
well aoc is 80-90% l2
Yeah, but the content in question from Archeage was based on L2 as well.
The same thing happened (from what I have been told) on low population L2 servers (including private servers).
The point here is fairly simple though. If there is an encounter that has it's reward based on the risk that players assume will come via other players, if those other players do not come, there is no risk and thus the risk vs reward is out of place.
I'm not really arguing any other aspect of risk vs reward here other than this fact.
In regards to Ashes, it is perfectly believable that there may well just be times when people don't show up for world boss kills. They may have sieges or wars that need their attention - meaning that this situation where a world boss that offers no challenge itself spawns, and no one shows up to contend it is actually even more likely to happen in Ashes than it does in other games.
so why no one went there the next week, just u?
No idea, that is kind of the point.
You can't rely on people to provide the risk aspect of your risk vs reward.
If you do, you have a game with inherently uneven and unpredictable risk vs reward.
You can't rely on people to provide the risk aspect of your risk vs reward.
If you do, you have a game with inherently uneven and unpredictable risk vs reward.
But in the bigger picture the balance stays the same. The ones who missed one farm would now have a higher desire to not miss the next one and definitely win against you, otherwise you might snowball in power. So now they might bring more people to the next farm or do whatever is in their power to mess you up.
So between those 2 farms the overall risk/reward equation stays equal.
It's similar to boss mechanic rng. On one day you might get insanely lucky and the boss won't do half of his super hardcore mechanics, while on the other day he might do them all more than usual. So while one farm was super easy, the overall encounter history would still be considered difficult, because of the implication.
The popular, longer lasting MMO's are cooperative, not competitive. That is this genres strength.
Doesn't this go against your own words? You said that EQ2 had the fiercest competition in the genre. You keep saying that EQ2 still releases updates that are amazing and great.
Those two things would imply that the most competitive mmo out there is also the longest lasting one, which contradicts this comment.
You can't rely on people to provide the risk aspect of your risk vs reward.
If you do, you have a game with inherently uneven and unpredictable risk vs reward.
But in the bigger picture the balance stays the same. The ones who missed one farm would now have a higher desire to not miss the next one and definitely win against you, otherwise you might snowball in power. So now they might bring more people to the next farm or do whatever is in their power to mess you up.
So between those 2 farms the overall risk/reward equation stays equal.
Except the following week they bought fewer than they did the previous week.
See, what you guys are all doing is talking theory. You are all forgetting that theory doesn't mean shit when you include the human element - and that human element is exactly what this kind of game design relies on.
Except the following week they bought fewer than they did the previous week.
Yeah, I dunno the specifics of what AA had in their bosses that people couldn't give fewer shits about them in this way. Or maybe it was just your server or whatever other reason.
I'm speaking from experience of being that one guild that decided to farm a boss instead of defending a siege and has been the guild that had to bring stronger forces to the next farm because we missed a boss. And I've been on the sidelines of other guilds doing exactly this.
And all of this was on private servers where the perceived value of the gameplay itself is lower, cause your character are not "endless" how they'd be on official servers. So if AA had problems with people fighting over bosses - to me that's either a problem in design or the fact that AA attracted more non-competitive players to itself.
Cause if you're talking about the release of AA, that's the exact time when I was big time GLing in L2 and the exact time when the experiences I'm talking about took place. So to me it's obvious that either the target audiences of the games were different (and we'll have to see which one Ashes attracts) or that the design had some kind of a flaw where the best boss with the best loot in the game was so damn worthless that people didn't even contest it.
See, what you guys are all doing is talking theory. You are all forgetting that theory doesn't mean shit when you include the human element - and that human element is exactly what this kind of game design relies on.
I'm talking based on my experience, and i am able to extract logical arguments out of it. Experience may differ, but logic either makes sense or it does not. Your logic is not keeping up, and you keep trying to fall back on experience instead.
That's the thing, experience is a part of that human element - different people will have different experiences meaning different results when they are put in the same situation.
Yeah, I dunno the specifics of what AA had in their bosses that people couldn't give fewer shits about them in this way.
It isn't that people didn't care - again there were hundreds the week before and hundreds the week after.
I straight up don't know the reason for this particular situation - but I did list a whole pile of the reasons I have found over the years for similar situations of lower population/engagement with the game.
The popular, longer lasting MMO's are cooperative, not competitive. That is this genres strength.
Doesn't this go against your own words? You said that EQ2 had the fiercest competition in the genre. You keep saying that EQ2 still releases updates that are amazing and great.
Those two things would imply that the most competitive mmo out there is also the longest lasting one, which contradicts this comment.
In the context of the post I was replying to, I made the assumption that competion was essentially a synonom for PvP - as it is to many people.
It isn't that people didn't care - again there were hundreds the week before and hundreds the week after.
I straight up don't know the reason for this particular situation - but I did list a whole pile of the reasons I have found over the years for similar situations of lower population/engagement with the game.
But you said that the next week there were fewer people instead of more, so imo that boss' loot didn't enough value in people's eyes to fight over it as much as they should've.
It kinda feels like AA attracted more of a casual scene at the start and by the time your group was already farming the boss (I assume yours was a hardcore one) the general playerbase hadn't distilled to a super hardcore group that would try harder to fight for the boss. While on L2 private servers that's pretty much what the entire playerbase was.
Were there cases later on where people tried to contest the bosses harder if they lost/missed on the previous farm? Or did your group just dominate everyone so they didn't even try to fight you?
But you said that the next week there were fewer people instead of more
Yeah, over three hundred people still.
I've only given numbers of three weeks - a bit over 400, then 15, then a bit over 300.
If we go back a futher 6 weeks and forward a further 6 weeks, that bit over 300 is fairly average. It isn't a low number, it was just lower than the week with a bit over 400. That slightly over 400 was something of an exception in terms of there being more people than normal.
In terms of people considering it not worth it - the items were quite good and could make the difference in even large scale PvP, and both of the two major sides had weeks where they came out on top so neither side would have been overly discouraged as it likely to happen (considering how one sided other timed events on the server were, I was somewhat surprised at how balanced the kills between these two sides was).
The third side was there to cause trouble. They didn't care about winning or losing, they just wanted to fight. It was this group that bought most of the additional players to that week with 400 people - there numbers went from a normal showing of about 25 - 30 up to about 80 that week.
I've only given numbers of three weeks - a bit over 400, then 15, then a bit over 300.
If we go back a futher 6 weeks and forward a further 6 weeks, that bit over 300 is fairly average. It isn't a low number, it was just lower than the week with a bit over 400. That slightly over 400 was something of an exception in terms of there being more people than normal.
Then it seems that it was just a weird fluke. Those will inevitably happen even if the pve is great (your own group's people either can't make it or servers having issues or whatever).
But as we've discussed before, I do agree that we need good pve in the game, no matter how pvp is designed into/around it.
Yeah, I dunno the specifics of what AA had in their bosses that people couldn't give fewer shits about them in this way.
It isn't that people didn't care - again there were hundreds the week before and hundreds the week after.
I straight up don't know the reason for this particular situation - but I did list a whole pile of the reasons I have found over the years for similar situations of lower population/engagement with the game.
well, ive played games where my guild wasnt interested in a particular boss, however, when they found out that another guild was, we would go kill the boss just to screw them. so maybe thats what happened in aa. people did this boss, not for the boss, but for the fight. didnt you say there was a boss with better loot?
so that week when the main people who did that boss couldnt do it for whatever personal reasons they had, the opposing forces didnt, because there was not gonna be a fight and they werent really interested in the boss. thats my theory
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what if my true motivation is fame greed and glory? am i not allowed to RP as the villain, or anti villain, or anti hero? why do i have to RP the way you want me to RP?
also, again, games (and i dont mean video games only) were pvp. you had to compete vs other players to win. i could actually say that it was pvers who "poisoned" games
I think, you are talking about "RP motivation" and I am talking about player motivation.
And, you seem to be talking about "games" in general, wheras I am talking about RPGs, specifically.
I've only given numbers of three weeks - a bit over 400, then 15, then a bit over 300.
If we go back a futher 6 weeks and forward a further 6 weeks, that bit over 300 is fairly average. It isn't a low number, it was just lower than the week with a bit over 400. That slightly over 400 was something of an exception in terms of there being more people than normal.
Then it seems that it was just a weird fluke. Those will inevitably happen even if the pve is great
This is my conclusion as well.
My point is - this isn't what a game should be basing it's risk vs reward on.
As someone that has killed all the bosses in WoW while you played, you would know that if there is one boss that has better loot than the boss in question, the boss in question is still dropping nothing but best in slot items.
The other boss may be dropping mage boots, rogue gloves, a healer shield and a tank weapon, but this boss may be dropping tank boots, healer gloves, mage weapon and rogue bow.
As to people just randomly deciding to show up because they suddenly found out that people were after that mob - everyone in the game capable of not being instantly killed by said boss knew what the boss was, where it was, when it spawned and who was after it. Not only was the spawn of the boss announced hours before it happened, but the game had an in game calander that included every future spawn of the mob. It was in the calander because it was "the" boss for a good long while.
Basically, there was no scope in that game for people to "find out" about that boss.
Comments
I think i'd be ok with that. Would PvE players be happy?
I estimate it could attract a higher percentage of PvE players.
However, would you accept the risk vs reward to be balanced based on performance during the first fight?
The better you fight in the first stage the lower the risk to be in the 2nd stage?
i know what it feels like. been doing that in l2 for 20 years. its amazing tbh.
i like killing bosses, but killing bosses AND players is even better
Lets imagine we have a game, lets call it Archeage.
Lets imagine this game has an encounter, it's big, red and dragon like, lets call it Red Dragon.
Now, this encounter drops the best items in the game, and lets also imagine the design of this encounter is based on other players showing up preventing you from killing it.
Explain to me how risk vs reward works here if no one shows up to stop you killing it.
As I've said, the above has happened, specifically on that encounter in that game, but on other encounters in that game, and other games as well. My guild killed the Kraken with no one else even in sight, no ships (or even clippers) on the radar, let alone putting up a fight. This is back in early days of Archeage as well, when the Kraken was still the hardest boss that was able to be killed - and it was on one of the most populated servers in the game at the time.
FIghting players should result in rewards for fighting players that is approiate to the risk that players pose. Fighting encounters should result in rewards from fighting those encounters that are appropriate to the risk that those encounters pose.
That is how risk vs reward properly functions. As soon as you have a situation where you are fighting players for rewards from bosses, you have lost any sense of actual valid risk vs reward, and have just set up a pinata for players to fight over.
This is fine if the objective is to encourage mass PvP (it works at that goal just fine). However, attempting to call it risk vs reward is just an outright fallacy, because the risk you undertake and the reward you stand to get are not actually connected to each other at all.
did you kill it after everybody had killed it and had its loot or did you kill it when everybody wanted to kill it?
did you kill at 4 am when everybody was sleeping? at 10 am when everybody was working? during prime time? when.
also, what makes you think those boses were designed as risk vs reward? ashes is a different game. the only thing ashes has from aa is naval combat lol. just because a game is pvx doesnt mean tis automatically risk vs reward. thats soemthing you add intentionally. a game can be pure pve or pvp and have risk vs reward
It had a regular spawn time of the same time every week.
As have no proof at all that Ashes is designed to be any different. Since Archeage is one of the main games that Ashes takes insperation from, we actually have reason to believe it will be the same.
Also, this same thing happened in L2, because the design was the same.
Every game ever made that has progressive loot "is risk vs reward" - at least every game I have ever played.
yeah but how many people were after that boss when you were killing it? maybe people already got what they needed and other people didnt have the gear or numbers to kill it. it happens. maybe your guild couldnt get the boss because other guilds just killed you and you could only get it when they werer interested?
well aoc is 80-90% l2, aa influence is minimal. basically just naval combat. ashes has more from aion than from aa lol
but anyways there are differences. in l2 you didnt really drop loot on death (only at the beginning, you could drop your gear if you were white and died to a monster) but that changed and there were also ways to protect your gear even if you were red.
there were also bosses that dropped stuff than any1 could get even if oyu didnt kill them, like the sub class bosses. there werent that many risks in l2 for losing a bos fight. it was only not getting the loot and pretty much anything dropped by a boss could be acquired in other ways except for the epic jewels.
id say the risk is bigger in l2. you have social risks that literally affect your city and your items in your wharehouse. you drop stuff when you die. death penalty, stats dampening, etc. we have to play the game and see
As I said in the post a few above, the week before there were over 400 people present.
Yeah, but the content in question from Archeage was based on L2 as well.
The same thing happened (from what I have been told) on low population L2 servers (including private servers).
The point here is fairly simple though. If there is an encounter that has it's reward based on the risk that players assume will come via other players, if those other players do not come, there is no risk and thus the risk vs reward is out of place.
I'm not really arguing any other aspect of risk vs reward here other than this fact.
In regards to Ashes, it is perfectly believable that there may well just be times when people don't show up for world boss kills. They may have sieges or wars that need their attention - meaning that this situation where a world boss that offers no challenge itself spawns, and no one shows up to contend it is actually even more likely to happen in Ashes than it does in other games.
You still keep thinking that difficulty is what dictates the worth, and that killing a boss inherently is difficult (it's not) - your argument stems from faulty logic. Supply and demand determine worth. You can have two items that have exactly the same way of obtaining them, yet one of them is 1000x more valued. Did no one care about the loot from your boss? Was the boss worth fighting for? Think why no one else was there - should they be? If they should - find out why they weren't and fix that. My bathwater would be extremely difficult for you to obtain, how much are you willing to pay? You are being like those people that think squashing 100 watermelons with their ass is a world record worth being proud of. Maybe no one cares about red dragon as much as you do?
As reward goes up - the chance to have competition goes up. There are other factors involved as well, that can either increase further or reduce the competition. So yes, if reward is not high enough - sometimes there will be no competition. It is logic based self-balancing system, it's not perfect, but it's very good.
TLDR: Logic chain works one way, but not the other (like you are trying to say). Demand goes up - so does the worth - so does the competition - so does the difficulty. Higher competition leads to higher difficulty. But higher difficulty leads to lower competition.
Not only it is believable, it is to be expected (if worth is low enough), and it's fine - what i see as alternative is you progress past any content, not just a boss, and it literally never is a challenge again. And you will outgear it, it's an MMORPG, where progression and it's feeling are important. The whole point is to keep it relevant by introducing player friction, so it can always have a chance to pose a challenge without removing the feeling of progression. Higher value content - higher chance there will be competition. From 0 to 100%. It's a scale. Sometimes, based on conditions, there will be no one else. Just like if you have 25% chance to crit - then 75% of the time you will not. It's ok, it's how it works. You don't want 100% competition for everything and everywhere, specially in a game that you are expected to play for long hours.
Yes, but my point is that this is still dependent on players, and players are not predictable.
That specific kill of that encounter - I literally have no idea why no one else showed up. Same time every week, 400 the week before, over 300 the week after - but only 15 of us that week.
All the stuf you are talking about in regards to item rarity (supply vs demand) is probably all true (I say probably because I am not putting a lot of thought in to it). The thing is, it isn't relavent to this discussion.
See, I don't disagree with this either - but only as a generalization.
It is not a universal rule - which is my point.
I'll go over a few events that I know have had direct impacts on the population levels of MMO's I've been playing over the years...
Oblivion, Skyrim and Baulders Gate 3 launches all had massive impacts on the populations of the games I was playing at the time.
Superbowl ususally sees less activity.
Thanksgiving usually sees fewer people with regular schedules able to log on.
Christmas is often just dead, as is New Years.
Game of Thrones episode drops saw drops in numbers at any given point in the night, though most people still logged in (I noticed this most with seasons 4 - 6). I've not noticed this with any other show.
The recent Oppenheimer/Barbie weekend saw the game I was playing at the time have surprisingly low population.
When playing on an AU server, the whole place was disturbingly quiet on days with NRL or AFL finals - and fairly quiet for any Origin game.
EU servers are often quiet for Champion League finals (or other major games), though this depends more on who is playing that it does with AU servers.
Olympic Games often seen people technically online, but not paying attention.
People can really be fickle - the above are just the drops in population that I noticed in the games I was playing, and that I could place a reason on. And these are the people you want game developers to rely on for their games challenge. I would much rather the developers provide the challenge directly, thanks.
so why no one went there the next week, just u?
So it worked the next week, and previous, and maybe every week before that? It's ok to sometimes not get the expected result. It happens all the time - in games and in life. Unexpected things can feel bad, or be exciting. It's just the way it is.
Look at any game that retained popularity over long period of time, 90%+ of them are competitive.
No idea, that is kind of the point.
You can't rely on people to provide the risk aspect of your risk vs reward.
If you do, you have a game with inherently uneven and unpredictable risk vs reward.
Game yes, MMO no.
The popular, longer lasting MMO's are cooperative, not competitive. That is this genres strength.
So between those 2 farms the overall risk/reward equation stays equal.
It's similar to boss mechanic rng. On one day you might get insanely lucky and the boss won't do half of his super hardcore mechanics, while on the other day he might do them all more than usual. So while one farm was super easy, the overall encounter history would still be considered difficult, because of the implication.
Those two things would imply that the most competitive mmo out there is also the longest lasting one, which contradicts this comment.
See, what you guys are all doing is talking theory. You are all forgetting that theory doesn't mean shit when you include the human element - and that human element is exactly what this kind of game design relies on.
I'm speaking from experience of being that one guild that decided to farm a boss instead of defending a siege and has been the guild that had to bring stronger forces to the next farm because we missed a boss. And I've been on the sidelines of other guilds doing exactly this.
And all of this was on private servers where the perceived value of the gameplay itself is lower, cause your character are not "endless" how they'd be on official servers. So if AA had problems with people fighting over bosses - to me that's either a problem in design or the fact that AA attracted more non-competitive players to itself.
Cause if you're talking about the release of AA, that's the exact time when I was big time GLing in L2 and the exact time when the experiences I'm talking about took place. So to me it's obvious that either the target audiences of the games were different (and we'll have to see which one Ashes attracts) or that the design had some kind of a flaw where the best boss with the best loot in the game was so damn worthless that people didn't even contest it.
I'm talking based on my experience, and i am able to extract logical arguments out of it. Experience may differ, but logic either makes sense or it does not. Your logic is not keeping up, and you keep trying to fall back on experience instead.
That's the thing, experience is a part of that human element - different people will have different experiences meaning different results when they are put in the same situation.
Again, the human element at play.
It isn't that people didn't care - again there were hundreds the week before and hundreds the week after.
I straight up don't know the reason for this particular situation - but I did list a whole pile of the reasons I have found over the years for similar situations of lower population/engagement with the game.
In the context of the post I was replying to, I made the assumption that competion was essentially a synonom for PvP - as it is to many people.
It kinda feels like AA attracted more of a casual scene at the start and by the time your group was already farming the boss (I assume yours was a hardcore one) the general playerbase hadn't distilled to a super hardcore group that would try harder to fight for the boss. While on L2 private servers that's pretty much what the entire playerbase was.
Were there cases later on where people tried to contest the bosses harder if they lost/missed on the previous farm? Or did your group just dominate everyone so they didn't even try to fight you?
I've only given numbers of three weeks - a bit over 400, then 15, then a bit over 300.
If we go back a futher 6 weeks and forward a further 6 weeks, that bit over 300 is fairly average. It isn't a low number, it was just lower than the week with a bit over 400. That slightly over 400 was something of an exception in terms of there being more people than normal.
In terms of people considering it not worth it - the items were quite good and could make the difference in even large scale PvP, and both of the two major sides had weeks where they came out on top so neither side would have been overly discouraged as it likely to happen (considering how one sided other timed events on the server were, I was somewhat surprised at how balanced the kills between these two sides was).
The third side was there to cause trouble. They didn't care about winning or losing, they just wanted to fight. It was this group that bought most of the additional players to that week with 400 people - there numbers went from a normal showing of about 25 - 30 up to about 80 that week.
But as we've discussed before, I do agree that we need good pve in the game, no matter how pvp is designed into/around it.
well, ive played games where my guild wasnt interested in a particular boss, however, when they found out that another guild was, we would go kill the boss just to screw them. so maybe thats what happened in aa. people did this boss, not for the boss, but for the fight. didnt you say there was a boss with better loot?
so that week when the main people who did that boss couldnt do it for whatever personal reasons they had, the opposing forces didnt, because there was not gonna be a fight and they werent really interested in the boss. thats my theory
And, you seem to be talking about "games" in general, wheras I am talking about RPGs, specifically.
My point is - this isn't what a game should be basing it's risk vs reward on.
The other boss may be dropping mage boots, rogue gloves, a healer shield and a tank weapon, but this boss may be dropping tank boots, healer gloves, mage weapon and rogue bow.
As to people just randomly deciding to show up because they suddenly found out that people were after that mob - everyone in the game capable of not being instantly killed by said boss knew what the boss was, where it was, when it spawned and who was after it. Not only was the spawn of the boss announced hours before it happened, but the game had an in game calander that included every future spawn of the mob. It was in the calander because it was "the" boss for a good long while.
Basically, there was no scope in that game for people to "find out" about that boss.