On World Boss Scaling, and Random Event Scaling

Here are a few of my thoughts on these two topics:

Random Event Scaling:

In my view, there's a compelling argument to be made that the more people participating in a random event, the more enjoyable and, in essence, epic it should feel. In light of this, I propose that we incentivize this concept by ensuring that, on average, the more individuals participating, the better the rewards become for each person once the event concludes. On the flip side, we wouldn't want people anxiously waiting for the event to commence, hoping that no one else joins, and getting frustrated when others start showing up. That doesn't sound like much fun. Instead, we should have folks excitedly messaging their friends, saying, "Hey, the event is starting – get over here!"

I believe that once an event is underway, it should no longer scale in response to new participants. Now, you might argue, "But wouldn't that allow people to easily exploit the event by keeping it unchanging and simple, then having a large group join as soon as it starts?" This concern holds true only if my first suggestion is not already in place. If the average rewards per person are tied to the event's size, we'd want the event to scale as high as possible before it commences. Also, not allowing the size of the event to increase after it beginning creates a form of artificial "urgency" to get as many friends there within the allotted time. This makes for exciting player/guild/community interactions.

World Boss Scaling:

In the context of World Boss scaling, the previously mentioned idea might not be applicable since a World Boss is not an event that "waits" to begin. Ideally, a World Boss should dynamically adjust its difficulty according to the number of people attempting to defeat it.

However, a challenge arises here – it doesn't feel authentic to witness your spells becoming less effective and the Boss growing more resilient during a fight as more people join. My solution to this problem is a cosmetic adjustment and a reframing of the concept of "scaling." We could introduce something akin to an "Anger/Fury/Rage" counter on World Bosses, increasing based on the number of participants attacking it (The counter would be basically scaling, but in a visualized form). This small change, while essentially altering nothing in terms of gameplay, provides a "rationale" for the Boss becoming tougher and makes the experience more immersive. Rather than mere "Scaling," it becomes a "Boss Mechanic." This is essentially a shift in perspective for players, but it's a beneficial one. And also, if one wished to tie in "better rewards" for a "higher Rage/Fury" score, even better, incentivize people to invite friends from all across the world before starting the Boss!

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Veeshan

My option when it comes to world boss scaling is this

World boss designed for X amount of players, when there are more players than X the boss gets exponentially harder so its less effient or impossible to kill when there more players than intended (say 1 player after X add 5% to the players effectivness however every player over makes the boss 10% harder) this is how u prevent zerging bosses down
I would also consider making bosses get a shout mechanic where everyone withing say 100m of the boss gets flagged as a combatant when there more than X players, this allow players to fight players to bring the boss down if a group tries to troll the players by rocking up just to make it harder for the raid doing it.

GrappLr

Veeshan wrote: »

My option when it comes to world boss scaling is this

World boss designed for X amount of players, when there are more players than X the boss gets exponentially harder so its less effient or impossible to kill when there more players than intended (say 1 player after X add 5% to the players effectivness however every player over makes the boss 10% harder) this is how u prevent zerging bosses down
I would also consider making bosses get a shout mechanic where everyone withing say 100m of the boss gets flagged as a combatant when there more than X players, this allow players to fight players to bring the boss down if a group tries to troll the players by rocking up just to make it harder for the raid doing it.

I think the shout mechanic sounds interesting, could be something to think about.

As for the boss being "impossible" past a certain amount of players, I think it should scale linearly (with a twist), past a certain x number of attackers.

For example, boss is designed for 10 people. 11th person adds 10% difficulty. 12 people makes it 20% more difficult, etc.

The thing is, this is accounting for perfect coordination. As a group gets bigger, coordination falls apart. You can coordinate a 10 man group very effectively. You can't coordinate a 200 person group effectively at all (at least not to the same degree). This means, that even though scaling is linear, it gets harder the more people there are.

Veeshan

player will always take the path of least resistant if group constant is more effient to do with 2 groups then they will annoyinly so you got to make thing like bosses less efficent to do when they have more players than intended. This can be adding new mechanics like more aoe skills or increase power in attacks or more add spawns
I actualy think V rising is realy good example tbh there a boss that spawns 3 adds per player in the area so of u try and do it with 10 people (Group size cap is 4) you getting 30 skeletons spawn every 10 seconds which just zergs u making it much harder to do the more players u have since there manageable when there 6-9 of them but not with so many even with the additianal players. Problem with V rising bosses though is since they scaled by any amount of players u would often fight them with 1 person and swap out when that person gets low so boss never gets stronger than 1 player and that was the cheese strat.

Either way bosses and group content needs to be less efficent the more people u bring over the intended difficulty and there should be a mechanic that flags people when this happens so people can kill people outside the group to make him scale back to normal difficulty.

GrappLr

Veeshan wrote: »

player will always take the path of least resistant if group constant is more effient to do with 2 groups then they will annoyinly so you got to make thing like bosses less efficent to do when they have more players than intended. This can be adding new mechanics like more aoe skills or increase power in attacks or more add spawns
I actualy think V rising is realy good example tbh there a boss that spawns 3 adds per player in the area so of u try and do it with 10 people (Group size cap is 4) you getting 30 skeletons spawn every 10 seconds which just zergs u making it much harder to do the more players u have since there manageable when there 6-9 of them but not with so many even with the additianal players. Problem with V rising bosses though is since they scaled by any amount of players u would often fight them with 1 person and swap out when that person gets low so boss never gets stronger than 1 player and that was the cheese strat.

Either way bosses and group content needs to be less efficent the more people u bring over the intended difficulty and there should be a mechanic that flags people when this happens so people can kill people outside the group to make him scale back to normal difficulty.

I can see the sense in this argument. Although I'd argue that higher player count should also equate to higher reward, if it's more difficult (higher reward per person on average).

Ludullu

I like the current design

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/World_events
World events adapt to the strength of the participants. The more players participating in an event the more challenging the event will become and the higher the rewards will be for completing the event.[4][2][1]
Participation is not based purely on numbers of players joining the event.[5]
Player power and NPC power is not scaled up or down, rather the number and types of NPCs in the event will be affected.[5]

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/World_bosses
Bosses and mobs will not auto-scale based on group size, but AI behaviors may dynamically adapt to the number and types of combattants in proximity to the encounter.[35][38]

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