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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.
Baseline boss difficulty vs reward
morphwastaken
Member
It's counter-intuitive, but makes perfect sense in context of AoC.
Most rewarding world bosses can be mechanically most simple, since large portion of the challenge will come from other players. Those bosses just need to feel epic with huge AOEs.
It also works the other way. Most complex bosses can be given the least reward. This will make them least contested - perfect for those who primarily seek a great PvE experience.
This provides a nice content gradient form primarily PvE to primarily PvP, while being PvX all the way through.
Makes sense thematically as well - if there is 200 players around a huge dragon in the field - it's just going to breath fire at 50 of them, not really do some intricate mechanic. While some dungeon dwelling mystery monster can be all kinds of unexpected and complex.
Food for thought.
Most rewarding world bosses can be mechanically most simple, since large portion of the challenge will come from other players. Those bosses just need to feel epic with huge AOEs.
It also works the other way. Most complex bosses can be given the least reward. This will make them least contested - perfect for those who primarily seek a great PvE experience.
This provides a nice content gradient form primarily PvE to primarily PvP, while being PvX all the way through.
Makes sense thematically as well - if there is 200 players around a huge dragon in the field - it's just going to breath fire at 50 of them, not really do some intricate mechanic. While some dungeon dwelling mystery monster can be all kinds of unexpected and complex.
Food for thought.
1
Comments
If they wanna do a little better they can focus it more too like certain other games.
Content A rewards make you better at things similar to Content A, so there's a progression. Content B is the same.
Give 'PvP-heavy' rewards for fighting around bosses, and 'PvE-heavy' rewards for fighting complex deep dungeon or semi-instanced stuff.
Both gear types are still useful in either content type, but 'Elemental Defense' is more likely to be a strongly desired thing for PvE focuses than for PvP ones, and so on. So 'rewarding' is 'relative to whatever you enjoy that brought you to the point of engaging with the content to begin with'.
why would the pvers kill the hard boss with no rewards? they could just kill bosses with rewards. you know, pvpers pvp for fun, no reward needed. pvers dont pve for fun, they need a reward or they are always complaining that doing this is a waste of time blah blah blah etc.
also, it takes away from the game. why put a boss that no one wants when you could put a boss that everyone wants, and make it so the audience who isnt the target audience does it?
also, that wont attract pvers either since they will still have to endure months of pvp anyways. unless they just log in, do the boss that no one wants and log off right there lol and you can do it since you start the game
I could point you at FF14 ultimate difficulty, which gives only a title and a glamour (basically a transmog if you dont know what glam is), and you need best in slot gear already to even attempt to challenge it.
And a nice chunk of the pve playerbase do it anyway, despite it not giving better gear.
-casuals- are the ones that feel like they need a reward for doing something to be worthwhile, and this is true whether the content is pve or pvp related.
As for why put a boss that -no one wants-
Well, if anything from the dozens of forum topics on related subjects should tell us. There is a whole spectrum of players, and there is no one size fits all solution, this is why games have all sorts of different bosses in them.
Really easy ones with low rewards.
Moderately challenging ones where the bulk of rewards go since almost everyone will participate in this content.
Mega challenging ones that only a small portion of players spend their time.
And it should be no surprise that developers spend the majority of their time and energy in the middle ground, and only occasionally touch the extreme ends of the spectrum of interests.
I just hope that the game isnt brain numbingly simple in the pve encounters "just because people are scared of getting ganked". I get people are scared of pvp, but its part of the game and it adds excitement.
Steven kiiiinda addressed this in the latest interview, but it was still just usual "well, your tank could run towards the enemies and any boss aoe would hit them as well". I want more and better mechanics than that.
it still gives a unique reward. op said a boss that gives little reward. to my understanding, he meant a reward of little to no value, not something unique like a title and a transmog...
now, you said you need bis gear to do it. imagine you do that on ashes for the pve players. how long will it take them to get bis gear? do you think they will endure months and months and months of getting trashed in pvp just so they can get bis gear to do a boss? the suggestion is pointless.
if they have to pvp to get the gear to do the boss, they wont play. so the solution (to a problem that doesnt exist) would be to add a complete progression path from level 1 to level 50 with bis gear that avoids pvp, avoids competing for resources, etc. and this is not this type of game. so if you add that, it takes away from the game.
no. read above. and you would be splitting content and gear, so no
Then PvP focused players will fight them.
Neither is true, especially in PvX game. This is how foolish PvPers describe PvEers and vice versa. Both do it for fun and reward, at varying degree, based on a situation.
All bosses would be desired, depending on what player is looking for. Idk if you did not read, but each audience would get what they want. PvPers less PvE, and PvEers less PvP.
This does not need a level requirement.
then you are going in the opposite direction of the current design of aoc. read my post above.
That would be awesome! Regardless of my point.
I don't think that making the gap between PvP and PvE bigger by introducing content-specific gear would be a good idea in PvX game.
I really hoped this wasn't going to be the way that post got interpreted, but I didn't want to add a bunch of disclaimers and make the post long.
This is not what I meant.
Because of the way Ashes is designed, there are going to be stats that are more meaningful in most PvE than they are in most PvP and I feel like the devs will know what those stats are.
I'm suggesting that they skew the rewards accordingly to create a nice spectrum of player experiences, in the way that the games I am used to, do it.
It could go as far as no reward whatsoever with no chance of PvP, but i think keeping enough reward to retain some chance of PvP would be a much better idea though, to keep it PvX.
Hm, I feel I've probably contributed what little I can to this thread.
It's probably just personal preference, never mind, you're right, let's just give the PvE players less rewards altogether instead.
Nope, I cannot. I contributed nothing. Carry on.
A super basic example:
- bosses/mobs mostly have elemental attributes to their attacks
- open world bosses have X value of those attributes
- dungeon/instanced bosses have 10X those attributes
- player weapons have attack types (slashing, bashing, etc)
- basic attribute value of player weapons is Y
- mobs have them too, but it's a 1/10Y value
Azherae's suggestion is to have ow bosses drop items that would usually have Y resistances. Instanced bosses would drop items that have X resistances. If I'm understanding the suggestion correctly, the items themselves could be the same, or if we followed Steven's preference for "ow bosses provide you BiS mats" then instanced stuff could simply give the items that could then be applied to gear and give it the X attributes.In other words, pvers will have better chances of fighting subsequent hard bosses, while pvpers would have more ways to counter each other while they dance around the ow boss.
Both of yours suggestions could be combined into one system and it would be quite good imo, though I'm sure that a lot of people will still hate the sheer mention of instances (I'm included
I think he wants to offer PvE just for fun but if they complain that they want rewards too then he can show them the battlegrounds.
No reward without PvP.
He hopes that he can convert PvE players into PvPers.
Steven tries too but only for 45 days.
If PvE enjoyer wants to go and fight world boss, involving mostly PvP - i would not want him to feel discouraged by PvP players being stronger at PvP because they have PvP stats on gear.
Maybe i also need to give a simplified example for my original point.
World boss is difficulty 5, and reward is 10.
There is 10 guilds fighting for it, only one can win. You could either count it as 10 times harder to get the reward, or 10 times less reward per guild on average, does not matter.
10/5/10 = 0.2 reward/difficulty ratio
Dungeon boss is difficulty 10, and reward is 4.
There is 2 guilds fighting for it, only one can win.
4/10/2 = 0.2 reward/difficulty ratio
It would not actually work exactly like that, but the idea is that it would balance itself out to be roughly same risk/reward by players being more or less competitive around it, depending on reward. For example - it would simply be not worth your time to fight over a dungeon boss among 10 guilds.
So if you want to have hard boss, that is not as contested - just lower the reward, so it's worth less to fight for.
It is still worth killing, it's just not worth fighting for as hard.
Also, even if there are other ow bosses alive, some of those 10 guilds would instead go fight pvers for their boss, because pvpers would, in theory, be better at pvp. Losing against 9 stronger guilds is way worse than most likely winning against 2 pve guilds.
Azherae's suggestion could potentially lead to collaboration between pve and pvp guilds, because pvers would need defense at their super difficult boss, while pvpers might need a stronger pve force at the ow boss (because their pve dps might be stronger, or the encounter is just way easier for them).
This is why my initial response was simply "do better at pvx design", because trying to split your audience barely ever works. And even if somehow they do manage to get people separated, non-instanced super hardcore bosses can still be fucked over by even just a few people from a pvp guild, so the pvers would not only have lower rewards, but also lower chances of finishing their farm successfully.
I dont think difficulty needs to only scale by damage done / required gear to tank it either. I mean I want difficult bosses in terms of how many mechanics they are throwing out at nearby players. Let me pvp while dodging and weaving between so many aoe's.
All I am sayin is, if another guild wants to come fight me while I'm dealin with a boss, they better be ready to handle the boss mechanics also at the same time they are trying to take me down.
Cant dodge the aoe or handle the fire? Stay out of the kitchen then
I still think pure PvE raiders are meant to venture into the 20% instanced content.
For sure, there is way more variables and possibilities involved. Other content will play a role. Friends and alliances will play a role. What if there is 2 guilds cooperating on world boss? What if it's alliance of 5 vs alliance of 5? My example is extremely simplified. But regardless of situation - reward distribution should balance out the competition, on average.
Maybe one day you will be lucky and have no other guild fighting you over a red dragon, who knows
Ideally there would be no distinction between PvP and PvE player - just PvX player, that can go do more PvP focused content, or more PvE focused, depending on how competitive they feel at the moment.
EXACTLY. so its pointless adding just a little something just for players who arent even the target audience T_T
With the exception of WoW, that is incorrect.
PvE players play games with good PvE because that is what is fun.
The reward structure is supposed to be designed in a way where the items dropped from one tier of encounters increase the over all power of the raid to the point where they can begin to take on the next tier of encounters.
For the most part, this is where complaints about itemization from top end raiders come in. It isn't about "rewards" or anything like that, it is purely a case of if itemization isn't done properly, it negates massive portions of content.
It's actually kind of similar to the whole debate about leveling speed and low level content becoming irrelevent. There is a speed at which things should be bypassed or sped up, but complaints will come if developers attempt to bypass too much, too quickly.
The only complaint about itemization is if the loot from one tier isn't actually quite where it should be in order to take on the next tier of content. This can be as much an issue with that content as with gear, but gear is usually easier to fix, so that is what such complaints come across as.
Point is, most PvE raiders look at gear as keys to more content - it is that additional content that is the reward, because it's just straight up fun to do (if it is designed well).