From the Ashes - PvE Challenges (KPS)

This discussion is part of the Master article "From the Ashes - Difficulty Philosophy Discussion". Please visit that forum post (Also by me) before reading this one! Or don't, it's your life, read what you'd like.

This is one of the three discussion posts talking about the individual reward and challenge structures associated with the different aspects of the upcoming game!

These posts will be specific to the mechanics that we are familiar with in Ashes of Creation! If there are any gaps in this information relevant to the concepts of KPS, I will simply fill in those gaps with some theory crafting. If there are any corrections on factual information that need to be made, please point them out to me!

This KPS discussion will be on PvE, that being specifically Dungeon, Raiding, and World Boss content.

As a reminder: KPS is an Acronym that stands for Knowledge, Persistence, Skill. These are the different potential approaches to resolving a difficult challenge!

ALL OF THE FOLLOWING ITEMS ARE PURELY THEORY CRAFTED, ANY SIMILARITIES TO REAL IN GAME ITEMS IS A COINCIDENCE, OR THEY LIKED MY IDEAS!

When I think knowledge associated with PvE I think about group composition, understanding of damage types of the boss, understanding the individual mechanics and ways to circumvent them.

Discover the Location of a Dungeon, Raid or World Boss. - Adventurer's Commission - 50g

Discover the Location of every Dungeon or Raid or World Boss -

The Cloak can be given a specific and unique design associated with the different discovery goals. Likely something like maps, compasses, etc.

Discover the location of Every Dungeon, Raid AND World Boss -

Deal Vulnerable Damage to 10 Different Boss Level Mobs (Deal damage type they are weak to) -

Protect an ally from a specific mechanic type during a raid encounter 100 times -

It may seem evident, persistence would likely imply clearing PvE style encounters multiple times.

Complete the same PvE encounter 3 times. - Repeat Customer Clearance - 50g

Slay the same boss 7 times -

Defeat every Dungeon encounter on verra 3 times -

Slay the Same Boss 50 Times -

Skill can often be an ambiguous term. A lot of different people will tell you different things when it comes to what is "Challenging" , actually in reference to how much practical skill is required. Practical skill to me implies fast reaction time, correct key presses, accurate aiming with action combat spells, etc.

After completing a dungeon encounter gain 50g for every (1) player less than the recommended player count - Against all odds

Defeat a boss on your own after your entire party has fallen (Must deal 5% or more damage) -

Solo any final boss in a dungeon encounter -

Participate in a World Boss fight without taking a single damage to your base health -

Defeat every single Dungeon encounter within 10 hours -

These are obviously just a large amount of item concepts that I enjoyed making! Please let me know if you think that the concepts, or interpretations of the challenges are off base or not! The items are far less important with such minimal information on the balance and technical stats of the items.. I'm really just BS'ing. I'm more curious if you think that the challenges to earn them apply KPS properly! Please feel free to offer alternatives.

Thanks for your time!

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Comments

Depraved

never been a fan of getting items just for walking around or being linked to achievements, especially if the items are good because then im kind of forced to do those boring activities that i don't want to. i hated every second it took me in eso to get the meteor skill, spent hours doing nothing but walking around collecting stupid pieces of paper.

if anything, achievement rewards should be cosmetics.

also, it makes no sense that you can get items from achievements when the items are supposed to be crafted. also it makes even less sense to get them by doing just pure pve. the direction of this game is about doing pve with other players as interference (imagine a basketball game against another team vs just shooting hoops yourself alone or just with your team)

item rewards from pure pve, or even pure pvp achievements seem to be going in the opposite direction of the game.

Azherae

These definitely feel like the sorts of things that would work well in World of Warcraft or the upcoming Tarisland.

Since I specifically avoid that game type due to not liking the feelings their designs are intended to invoke, it's not surprising that I don't like or even understand the point of some of these concepts, even if I take them as a broad trend.

I believe this would just recreate 'more of the same'. If I were discussing this with friends, I would literally use examples such as these to help them learn 'why you don't do it this way'. They're all on a very strong 'feel good' theme for the player.

I think it's a reward structure that I don't like, because instead of the player feeling rewarded by the personal outcomes of having the Knowledge, Persistence, and Skill, they're instead relatively lightly tested on all those (and not particularly in combination) and then given a reward that they can quantify their personal use/need for.

Fortunately, I don't get to make 'MMO Design Exams'.

Ludullu

Depraved wrote: »

if anything, achievement rewards should be cosmetics.

This.

Also, all of those "challenges" relate to persistence and not any of the other stuff. Mainly because you'd simply need some time to do them, instead of any skill or knowledge.

Also also, I sure as hell hope we have none of that "you can solo a damn dungeon final boss" in Ashes

ChaosFactor

Depraved wrote: »

never been a fan of getting items just for walking around or being linked to achievements, especially if the items are good because then im kind of forced to do those boring activities that i don't want to. i hated every second it took me in eso to get the meteor skill, spent hours doing nothing but walking around collecting stupid pieces of paper.

if anything, achievement rewards should be cosmetics.

also, it makes no sense that you can get items from achievements when the items are supposed to be crafted. also it makes even less sense to get them by doing just pure pve. the direction of this game is about doing pve with other players as interference (imagine a basketball game against another team vs just shooting hoops yourself alone or just with your team)

item rewards from pure pve, or even pure pvp achievements seem to be going in the opposite direction of the game.

So my problem with this argument is that it is operating off of the assumption that the gear rewarded from these achievements are an option that every player HAS to achieve. What the tiered rewards associated with challenges/achievements is intended to provide is a method for every single kind of player to achieve a certain level of power through whatever means of CHALLENGE feels most comfortable/fun to them. If there is more than enough of a library of achievable and powerful gear throughout the game, then you by no means would be required to achieve it this way.

I will reference to one of the points that was used in the video I linked in the primary article. Asmongold mentions that it's incredibly boring when the final player power (4) can only be achieved via 2+2. Giving the player agency to do 1+1+1+1 or 1+3, etc. allows for far more control over your character and the world around you. I see nothing but a upside to allowing this.

ChaosFactor

Azherae wrote: »

These definitely feel like the sorts of things that would work well in World of Warcraft or the upcoming Tarisland.

Since I specifically avoid that game type due to not liking the feelings their designs are intended to invoke, it's not surprising that I don't like or even understand the point of some of these concepts, even if I take them as a broad trend.

I believe this would just recreate 'more of the same'. If I were discussing this with friends, I would literally use examples such as these to help them learn 'why you don't do it this way'. They're all on a very strong 'feel good' theme for the player.

I think it's a reward structure that I don't like, because instead of the player feeling rewarded by the personal outcomes of having the Knowledge, Persistence, and Skill, they're instead relatively lightly tested on all those (and not particularly in combination) and then given a reward that they can quantify their personal use/need for.

Fortunately, I don't get to make 'MMO Design Exams'.

So I definitely agree on what you bring up here. I'm soon to read responses to the primary thread were you might have quite likely brought up a similar point, but I will reference to that main article regardless. I do my best to address the fact that I both despise the reward structure and approach at balance of power in modern games. I also do my best to try and describe why these challenge methods are not similar.

I do think that these sub articles are most certainly not perfected and one of the obvious and prefaced aspects of that is the inability to properly establish the degree of challenge due to not knowing the literal statistics in gameplay. The idea is to make many of these things actually diligently challenging, to follow in the guidance of Steven's vision of a hard game. In the same way that it is going to feel very rewarding to reach max level in a generally hard game, these challenges should present something that requires a SIGNIFICANT amount of effort to complete. Obviously this would have to be balanced according to the general stats provided by players participating in the game. We may find that doing Vulnerable damage to 10 different bosses can be achieved damn near accidentally, and have to up the number, or add terminology that distinguishes each target in some way.

And finally last point, I'd like to think that with enough time there would be a laundry list of these achievements available to gear. Therefore not only should the individual challenges be hard to achieve, but if clearing out large groups of a certain mob type is your preferred method of playing the game, you will be taken to your extremes, and pulled through hell itself to get the entire set of gear associated with the achievements.

ChaosFactor

NiKr wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

if anything, achievement rewards should be cosmetics.

This.

Also, all of those "challenges" relate to persistence and not any of the other stuff. Mainly because you'd simply need some time to do them, instead of any skill or knowledge.

Well see, I would like to believe that you contradicted your own point in this post. Persistency for the record should be clearly distinguished because it is literally purely about time committed, whether or not you activate your brain or hands doesn't have to be involved.
The contradiction I believe is the statement

NiKr wrote: »

Also also, I sure as hell hope we have none of that "you can solo a damn dungeon final boss" in Ashes

The fundamental idea that is meant to be presented here is that it should be basically "impossible" to solo a boss. I also would love to assume that the game is generally designed around the concept of companionship or assistance being needed at every step. But the fact is, if you have the SKILL required to subvert the expectations of the game, surpass the balancing, then you've proven that you have Skill that is beyond that of most other players. A great example of how Skill is distinguished from Persistence

xDrac

I'd rather not have stat items linked to achievements, personally.

Depraved

ChaosFactor wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

never been a fan of getting items just for walking around or being linked to achievements, especially if the items are good because then im kind of forced to do those boring activities that i don't want to. i hated every second it took me in eso to get the meteor skill, spent hours doing nothing but walking around collecting stupid pieces of paper.

if anything, achievement rewards should be cosmetics.

also, it makes no sense that you can get items from achievements when the items are supposed to be crafted. also it makes even less sense to get them by doing just pure pve. the direction of this game is about doing pve with other players as interference (imagine a basketball game against another team vs just shooting hoops yourself alone or just with your team)

item rewards from pure pve, or even pure pvp achievements seem to be going in the opposite direction of the game.

So my problem with this argument is that it is operating off of the assumption that the gear rewarded from these achievements are an option that every player HAS to achieve. What the tiered rewards associated with challenges/achievements is intended to provide is a method for every single kind of player to achieve a certain level of power through whatever means of CHALLENGE feels most comfortable/fun to them. If there is more than enough of a library of achievable and powerful gear throughout the game, then you by no means would be required to achieve it this way.

I will reference to one of the points that was used in the video I linked in the primary article. Asmongold mentions that it's incredibly boring when the final player power (4) can only be achieved via 2+2. Giving the player agency to do 1+1+1+1 or 1+3, etc. allows for far more control over your character and the world around you. I see nothing but a upside to allowing this.

its not boring when it is acquired by that. also, its neither a good nor a bad solution. it depends on the game. dont copy the result, copy the strategy.

there are games where you can gear up in different ways, such as wow, and the gear is sepparated into pvp or pve.
there are games where you can gear up in different ways, such as l2, but the gear isnt sepparated for pvp or pve (althoguht some sets are a bit better for pvp or for pve, bu t it also depends). however, in l2, you can acquire the same piece of gear in multiple ways.

so if we go by your logic of acquiring the gear in different ways, we would need to put the exact same gear with different acquisition methods, but people would probably just stick whatever is the fastest...or abuse things like kill 100 players.

on top of that, just because something works in one game, doesnt mean its a good fit for another game. ashes direction is acquiring gear through crafting (which i hate btw, but it is what it is) so adding bis gear through other methods goes into the opposite direction of ashes design.

if this gear isnt bis, then its most likely pointless to even try to complete the achievement, and then when you casually complete it, it feels worthless because the gear is trash. and if the gear is bis, then you are forced to do it, destroying your own logic of 1+1+1+1+1 or 1+3. do you get it now?

edit: another factor why this isnt a very good idea for ashes is that this isnt a game where everybody is a winner. part of gearing up in ashes is being able to win pvp for resources, and those resources are limited, so not everybody will be able to get the resource, however, you can still buy it from other players. if you tie gear to achievements, you are either reducing the importance of winning fights to access gear, or you make it completely impossible for the majority of people to even get the gear since they will not complete the achievement, ever, and now they dont even have the option to buy the gear. another reason it goes the opposite direction ashes is going.

ChaosFactor

Depraved wrote: »

its not boring when it is acquired by that. also, its neither a good nor a bad solution. it depends on the game. dont copy the result, copy the strategy.

there are games where you can gear up in different ways, such as wow, and the gear is sepparated into pvp or pve.
there are games where you can gear up in different ways, such as l2, but the gear isnt sepparated for pvp or pve (althoguht some sets are a bit better for pvp or for pve, bu t it also depends). however, in l2, you can acquire the same piece of gear in multiple ways.

so if we go by your logic of acquiring the gear in different ways, we would need to put the exact same gear with different acquisition methods, but people would probably just stick whatever is the fastest...or abuse things like kill 100 players.

on top of that, just because something works in one game, doesnt mean its a good fit for another game. ashes direction is acquiring gear through crafting (which i hate btw, but it is what it is) so adding bis gear through other methods goes into the opposite direction of ashes design.

if this gear isnt bis, then its most likely pointless to even try to complete the achievement, and then when you casually complete it, it feels worthless because the gear is trash. and if the gear is bis, then you are forced to do it, destroying your own logic of 1+1+1+1+1 or 1+3. do you get it now?

edit: another factor why this isnt a very good idea for ashes is that this isnt a game where everybody is a winner. part of gearing up in ashes is being able to win pvp for resources, and those resources are limited, so not everybody will be able to get the resource, however, you can still buy it from other players. if you tie gear to achievements, you are either reducing the importance of winning fights to access gear, or you make it completely impossible for the majority of people to even get the gear since they will not complete the achievement, ever, and now they dont even have the option to buy the gear. another reason it goes the opposite direction ashes is going.

I'm curious what the thought that I'm looking to take this concept directly from another game comes from? I had no game that I intended on reflecting upon when creating this concept. Perhaps you're saying that I'm inherently looking to copy WoW via my bias?

The fact that if you can get identical gear from multiple sources leading to everyone doing whatever's fastest I agree with, that is player behavior. But ultimately I don't see that as an issue I don't think. If the fastest way to gain a BiS Shadowmancer staff is to clear the shortest dungeon 10 times in a row, hardcore players will dive straight for that. (Perhaps Ashes systems would even compensate for that? If everyone knows that Dungeon is absolutely paramount, guilds would fight for control over it to try and limit the people who have access to that great item.) But even if that's true and that's how the end up getting geared, it would still allow for the person who can't stand dungeon spamming to instead complete 50 quests in the Riverlands to get it instead.

I will say that BiS isn't the only important thing to a lot of players. Especially with 64 classes in the game, all with unique builds and unique weapon builds, if there are incredibly flavorful aspects to these weapons, then players attempting to create incredibly unique builds would still seek them out. (I think that's one of the best aspects of some ARPGs that aren't completely solved)

I do think there is good merit to the Edit, and but what I would say in response is that if epic gear is meant to be limited and legendary virtually impossible.. then I would simply have to scale back this reward system. My goal with this system is to allow massive amounts of creativity and freedom to reach the ~75th percentile of player power.

ChaosFactor

xDrac wrote: »

I'd rather not have stat items linked to achievements, personally.

I'd love to have your reasoning if you want to provide it, I'd like to understand the counter-arguments as well as I can.

Depraved

didnt say you copied a game specifically, but getting stats/gear from achievements/quests is nothing really new.

even if they arent bis, my other points are still reason enough to not do it. it undermines the crafting system, and again i hate crafting, so i want alternatives. and it undermines pvp. you can just go play your solommorpg aoc and get the items instead of actually joining a guild, competing, pvping, etc. which is the direction ashes is going.

if this was a game that separated progression, then sure. but it isnt, and your idea goes against ashes direction, thats why it isnt a good idea for ashes, even if it could be a great idea for another game.

when you add, remove or modify something, you have to analyze and observe how it affects other parts of the game. things are not in isolation.

Ludullu

ChaosFactor wrote: »

Well see, I would like to believe that you contradicted your own point in this post.

ChaosFactor wrote: »

Discover the Location of a Dungeon, Raid or World Boss. - Adventurer's Commission - 50g

Just run around and you'll get this. Simply time requirement, not knowledge.

ChaosFactor wrote: »

Discover the Location of every Dungeon or Raid or World Boss

Same.

ChaosFactor wrote: »

Discover the location of Every Dungeon, Raid AND World Boss -

Same.

ChaosFactor wrote: »

Deal Vulnerable Damage to 10 Different Boss Level Mobs (Deal damage type they are weak to) -

Just keep hitting every boss you see with all your types of attack until you get this. No knowledge required. Could also be gotten by playing the game normally, because your guild would take you to different bosses, which is also just time instead of any knowledge.

ChaosFactor wrote: »

Protect an ally from a specific mechanic type during a raid encounter 100 times -

Any "do this stuff X times" is just persistence. No knowledge required. The item also doesn't match with tanks who'd most likely be the ones casting protective buffs.

ChaosFactor wrote: »

After completing a dungeon encounter gain 50g for every (1) player less than the recommended player count

This is potentially a good skill challenge, but mainly depends on whether high lvl players can clear lower lvl dungeons and on how much money we get for other activities. If we have <50 for a lvl-equal dungeon - this is abusable by going to lower dungeons. If we get more (let alone way more) - this is kinda pointless, because you'd be at a big disadvantage against the potential pvp part of the dungeon and 50g wouldn't matter if you keep dying to full parties.

ChaosFactor wrote: »

Defeat a boss on your own after your entire party has fallen (Must deal 5% or more damage) -

Again depends on whether high lvl players can kill lower lvl bosses. If yes - super abusable and just takes time. If no, then it could still be abused against the weakest boss at equal lvl, but would mainly just be a random occurrence, because no party would want to risk near-wiping just to get a non-boss item. And those who would want that would just require time for attempts.

ChaosFactor wrote: »

Solo any final boss in a dungeon encounter -

Addressed this below.

ChaosFactor wrote: »

Participate in a World Boss fight without taking a single damage to your base health -

You'd have to somehow define "participation", because this can just be achieved by hitting the boss once and then stand at the edge of his area.

ChaosFactor wrote: »

Defeat every single Dungeon encounter within 10 hours -

Does this mean on the entire map or within one dungeon? First is simply impossible due to travel time, second has no relation to skill because dungeons are open world, so the chances are you won't have all encounters up at the same time while the dungeon is also completely empty of people.

And even if you can catch the dungeon in that state - there's only luck in that, because if a party/raid can clear the last boss (which will usually be the hardest) then they obviously can clear everything else.

I guess respawn timer control could be seen as skill, but we don't know whether we'll be able to do that, so that is still up in the air.

ChaosFactor wrote: »

The fundamental idea that is meant to be presented here is that it should be basically "impossible" to solo a boss.

Like, I said, I don't want the game to have bosses that have hp regen lower than single-source damage output. That is just silly to me.

And I already talked about higher lvl players farming lower lvl content. I'm against that as well.

Azherae

Well, in the vein of the other question, since it seems best to move away from the specific examples given for the moment, I offer another Elite one.

There's a specific Event in Elite that can be experienced when a Low Security star system has a faction that reaches the 'Boom' status in Trade. It starts to spawn occasional "Convoy Dispersal Threat 2" signals. When you go to these, your goal is to either help rob a convoy of 6 or 7 trading ships, or protect those ships from 4 powerful raiders (one of which is in a less powerful ship but is often still skilled).

If there was an Achievement or equivalent for doing the protection one solo (and the game didn't have a Solo mode), it would be hard to get without 'going to find a part of the galaxy where the conditions were met, but no one else knew about it yet basically. - Knowledge

Then you'd obviously have to manage to achieve it overall, winning what is often a 4v1 depending on your approach (when there is a 7th Trader ship, it can be strong enough to make this possible), and in most medium or small ships, you would need to bring 'reloads' for your weapons, even. - Persistence

On top of all that, if the game's defense values were closer to their original and you couldn't just build Super ShieldTank large ships, at least some could argue that doing this without the Traders being shot down or robbed, would take... - Skill

Here's the issue as I see it though.

Players can do all that, or they can:
1) Use an external site to figure out where to go, even coordinate how to spread out so that they can all do it, and the only thing that will get in their way is people whose only goal is to prevent them from succeeding
2) Persist at something else until they have a powerful efficient ship with lots of reloads, probably one that was the subject of someone's YT video on the most efficient way to bypass the Persistence requirements of the challenge
3) Build an All-Turreted Lasers Full Shield Power Imperial Cutter, tag all the enemies, and go afk and check back every so often to activate an ability

The first is my usual complaint.
The second is similar.
The third, you could argue is a fault of the game, but designers, sanely, make things that are meant to be experienced or achieved by some percentage of players normally above 10%, and doing so leads us 'right to YouTube' you could say. The problem I have with this is simply that I want people to be able to play their own way without 'feeling like they have to follow some guide because the thing is too hard'. But ofc, one could make it so that one doesn't care about the reward.

Except that, ChaosFactor, you mentioned Vertical Progression as part of this. So if we parallel to Ashes' Event system, which is about the same, let's say...

"Protect 30 damaged caravans, while dealing 10% or more damage to at least 20 bandits each time."

Reward: "Necklace that improves the radius of your AoE by 6%"

Half the AoE Mages on the server, regardless of their natural interest, are now going around 'helping against bandits' and arguing with people who 'mess up their damage numbers on the bandits'.

For me personally, this is the outcome I absolutely expect, and I don't like it at all. Doesn't matter if it is a Necklace or an Augment you get from the 'Highway Protection Society'. Maybe a Cosmetic Title, maybe 'favor with the Highway Protection Society' then used for Horizontal progression options. But not Vertical, for me.

Because as soon as it is vertical, people will find a way to negate Knowledge and then dial down Skill as far as they can into Persistence.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Because as soon as it is vertical, people will find a way to negate Knowledge and then dial down Skill as far as they can into Persistence.

A horse is running around a huge field, free and happy.

You add an achievement with a precise requirement - the horse is now in an arena, might hit a wall now and then because movement has become limited.

You tie that achievement to a valuable tangible reward - the horse is now on a track, being pricked into its sides to go in a very precise direction and any movement to the side would most definitely lead to conflict and potentially injuries (not limited to the horse in question).

Child Item