Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
But when calculating spawn rate based on interest in the mobs, only use UNIQUE ATTACKERS or unique visitors to the area.
If there is a group spawn camping, this should not trigger more respawns. One player with 10 kills still just counts as 1 player.
But if there are a lot of people waiting/trying, this definitely SHOULD trigger more respawns.
"Attacker" would mean someone who successfully got a decent loot share, not someone who did 1% damage and found a piece of hide material. That player would still be considered "waiting."
If you're talking about big honkin' boss monsters...you just have to walk the line between how "special" you want them to be and how many players you want to have the experience of fighting them.
Also, how many of these do you envision? If there's 2000 of them no one is going to have time to run around the HUGE world map and kill all of them. In that case, go ahead and pump up the respawn.
If you're talking about 200 of them...probably throttle that down to keep them rare and make the hunt/kill more of an experience and event.
In general, most theme-park games have too fast of a respawn rate.
I can't really think of a game that does it well to be honest. But what I would think would make sense and would more movement in the world would be an inverse correlation between regional player activity and spawn rates of rare creatures.
The forest where at all times someone is in to farm? Lowest spawn rate of rare mobs.
The barrren hills at the edge of the map far away from all big nodes with little to no player activity there? High spawn rate and higher spawn numbers.
Depending on how much player movement needs to be incentivized the difference should be adjusted, but it seems to me that without much doubt that this would be a primary mechanic to ensure that the world changes because people will always want to move closer to opportunities when the pieces of the cake have all been distributed in one place. I guess something similar could be done with the occurance of rare resources.
As for generals mobs I think it should be predictable as for rare it should be depending on difficulty those mobs have also how important or valuable it is the loot dropped by those mobs is.
Which games do you feel have done this well, and what did you feel was good about respawn times for mobs?
I feel like some mobs and open world mobs in Wow have cool respawn times .
Open World Respawn: Determined by player density, decreasing in time the more players are around. 5-15 Minute Default timer depending on location. Getting killed by sudden respawns can be annoying, especially when you are in a mine setting and there is only 1 way out; where you came from. Have those respawns take longer.
Rare Mobs: 1 hour with rates varying depending on player density in reverse, so that the respawn timer increases when no one is around.
Instanced Dungeon: 2hr respawn to give players enough time to complete the dungeon without respawns, even if they are having a tough time.
Instanced Raid: 1 Week. No trash respawns ever, PLEASE.
World Boss: I don't think world bosses are a good idea and generally lead to frustration from other guilds ganking mid pull. It's hard to design a world boss to be challenging enough under the restrictions of open world since that limits how much time you can spend wiping and attempting to learn a boss. The longer a guild spends on a world boss, the more likely another guild will come in and interrupt them. Getting wiped mid pull by another guild or even just a couple of trolls is anything but enjoyable. Imagine if in Dark Souls they could invade you mid boss fight, that's what world bosses are like. The alternative is making the bosses easy enough so that most guilds kill them quickly, but then those bosses just become loot grind pinatas, which is very boring game play.
Cooperative world bosses, where anyone can join in, are just loot pinatas and take 0 skill. They are just tedious tasks that you have to complete to maximize your player power.
For general mobs: It was heavily favoured to have randomized spawn locations in a area and not have them spawn on the exact same spot over and over. The suggestions for respawn rates coined in the discussion consisted of: Base the rate off of active "kill quests" in the node and/or "Amount of players present" and/or "collect quests" in the node and/or randomized spawn times between 10-60 seconds.
For rare mobs: The suggestions were: A spawn rate between 2-5 hours, and you could perhaps reduce this time by killing their kin (general mobs) to provoke a spawn.
For dungeons: People in generally disliked clearing a dungeon from top to bottom, and from bottom to top again when you're done, if it wasn't worth the effort. Mobs are often just there to slow you down and aren't worth your time to clear out. If they're worth your time, a "general mobs" respawn rate could be applied.
For raid settings: A random respawn rate every day/two days, with a "build up" before it spawns. Say a raid boss is about to spawn, this spawn is indicated by a visual effect that ramps up in a period of 1-3 hours ahead of time. This gives time for groups to get ready to not miss out and/or fight for the raid boss
Whatever you end up doing, please don't make it so the fastest leveling method is grouping up in a massive zerg-ball roflstomping through high-density mob areas.
I like that the monster respawn rate is balanced according to the number of players in the zone, if the zone has a small number of players, the monster respawn rate does not have to be as fast only if there are 100 people in the area. For normal monsters at least.
As for rare monsters/Bosses in open world, they should not be affected by the number of players in terms of their reappearance time. That said, I find the overly predictable side of fixed timers and fixed locations a bit... boring. It would be interesting to see monsters appearing with more diverse conditions such as season, time of day or night, phases of the moon or stars, Ashes of Creation presenting this kind of system, this would be an opportunity to make players interact with its systems in their everyday lives. Try to guess where and when they might spawn.
Whether looking for a rare monster or a boss in open world remains either a surprise or an adventure to find where and when it will appear. The monster or boss could also reappear under event conditions or event chains. In short, something more organic than just every day at a fixed time.
However, if the player invests time, he should at least be able to guess the location and time of the next spawn with immersive elements.
In the case of quests they should be more predictable than in other cases. But there can be respawn predicates thanks to the number of people in the area with the quest activated etc. in short by tracking player activity.
For dungeons and raids, I think that given that AoC has chosen to have a large number of open dungeons, it would be interesting to first optimize the player flow, the big problem I encountered with dungeons open were those that did not have an "Exit Path" for people who had completed the dungeon or raid and had to retrace their steps, and therefore re-fight enemies and bosses as new groups entered the dungeon. In this case the respawn rates become chaotic and this creates traffic jams and queues in the dungeons.
So respawn rates within closed structures will depend on the architecture of the dungeons and raids that Ashes of Creation decides to follow. Optimally I think that they should also be influenced by the number of players in each area of the dungeon, allowing not only to possibly generate more quickly and more monsters against large groups than small ones, therefore sorts of "independent Timers" relying on a segmentation of dungeons and raids into small parts to determine the rates and number of respawns for the following group(s), would I think achieve something organic.
For Dungeons and Raids, informing players that a boss or at least the final boss has been beaten by visible signs or in the worst case a message would also be a good idea to prevent players from going through a raid for 2 hours to see that the final boss is not available. For example if the boss is in a volcano, when he is beaten the volcano is calm and it is a point visible from very far away, and when it is available the volcano is active.
Super short answer: I prefer them to be Rather unpredictable but the player should be able to get clues and information to guess where and when this or that rare monster or boss will reappear. But not to the point where it can establish a precise schedule or deduce a respawn table by zone and times.
Which games do you feel have done this well, and what did you feel was good about respawn times for mobs?
I could give you the names of a lot of games that did it wrong, but did it right...
WoW with micro instances where we change phase, where we are alone facing an experience designed for a certain number of players is a solution to this problem but removes the social side.
Guild Wars 2 in terms of open world bosses and event chains is very interesting, but is far too predictable, allowing players to simply have an agenda and travel around the world to chain them together, it's very " Optimal" but the immersion and discovery side suffers.
Image : Guild Wars 2 Boss and Events Schedule, it's kinda ... too much i think.
wrong thread... most people will do a separate one and leave the Dev feedbacks on topic, if possible
Edit: Sorry - just caught myself being a Hall Monitor....
But I'd like to see it more random. Like actually random. So random that only the hardcorest of the hardcorest would actually sit there and camp it. And they'd suffer an opportunity cost for doing that. They ultimately might be rewarded for the dedication by getting the kill, but they suffered the opportunity cost as well by not being out doing other things.
For regular mobs, I dunno whatever makes sense. Some variety in spawn times across different types of mobs and areas, fast spawning areas, slower spawning areas etc.
-When the appearance of bosses in the open world is announced publicly, they can appear every X hours
- If bosses appear at a certain time in different zones for everyone to see (ingame), that's fine with me too
- However, if bosses appear unannounced and at set times and have relevant loot, this only ensures that a single guild or group is farming the bosses and no one else
- therefore open world bosses should spawn in groups every other full hour, dungeon bosses spawn 30 min after beeing slain (- so other partys can get a chance) and raid bosses should (if not anounced) spawn with an fixed time(like 2-4 hours) but also an delay from 1 min to 2 hours
Which games do you feel have done this well, and what did you feel was good about respawn times for mobs?
- Moobs respawn times should be multiplied depending on the active player nearby so that when a new area is released it doesn't get crowded and everyone has to wait for there Questmoobs.
- GW2 has already been shown above with its schedule
- BDO has a few websites that track boss spawns so anyone can look them up
- War of the immortal had fixed spawn times (after they were killed) so you could secretly farm them with your guild, but then everyone else wouldn't see them
- Bless also had a fixed timer, but players usually announced this publicly to get help
- or like: War of the Immortales, Bless, GW2 and other games you have multiple server/realms/zones of the same area so more player can simultaneously fight bosses
Made me chuckle, love the honesty.
How about this: The closer you are to big bosses or dangerous spots, the faster the respawn is and more mobs would spawn. This amps up the thrill and teamwork in these risky areas.
The respawn speed could be influenced by how fast the mobs are dying and also add a few extra mobs. So, by having enough mobs active and keeping the pressure on players would balance the challenge to an optimal level. This way the area would never be too empty or too easy.
Triggers
When certain mobs die or certain events happen, then it should immediatelly influence the spawns, speed and quantity should be influenced:
Etc, my vision about is is having gentle tweaks on the spawn speed and quantity and bring the challenge to an optimal level. Tomorrow if the composition and performance of the players in that area is different, then the spawn would be influenced
First of all, welcome back. Second of all, as crazy as it sounds I agree there should be hard counters in PvE. Make the PvE players sweat in their little green bubbles. After all, PvP looks to be having hard counters unless the devs listen and balance the game better.
If I'm killing world mobs for xp or a quest, I would like them to be respawned by the time i finish one loop of my farming route.
When it comes to bosses in dungeons, I think they should have a relatively fast respawn rate, like 5 to 10 minutes or so (depending on the number of groups in the dungeon). Nothing kills the excitement for dungeons to see the bosses have been killed recently and you have to wait an hour for them to respawn (or more likely leave and come back another day). From what I understand, dungeons are open world and meant to be farmed, so that means staying in a small area and killing bosses multiple times.
Rare mobs can have a long respawn time, 6+ hours, since they usually drop something with high value and you want to keep the value of those items high through scarcity.
World bosses can be 24 hours or several days, up to a week depending on the difficulty of the boss.
Now for select bosses, events and perhaps even some mobs .. perhaps a little extra consideration for not just when or how frequently but just how they enter the world!
For Mobs like :
- Rare Mobs,
- Rare Middle-Boss to Boss Mobs,
up to :
- World Bosses,
I personally would prefer, if the Respawn Times are always a bit different, regarding that when the Servers have Maintenance Times/Breaks like once in a Week,
-> the Mobs concerned don't necessarily restart at always the same Day that the Servers are refreshed with Maintenance.
Like if a World Boss spawns for Example at least once - every Three Days,
it could also be, that said World Boss may rarely spawn only every Four Days - or maybe up to Five Days. This way, they would always feel kinda fresh -> ESPECIALLY for People who plan to farm them in huge Groups/Raid Groups.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Currently no guild !! (o_o)
Seeing a mob respawn or pop has always bothered me, it breaks emersion. If the system was set to where no mob will ever spawn in sight of a player it would fix this issue. It would also change how spawn timers and other elements would work. For example: if your group has taken a position in a dungeon to camp a named or rare spawn it will never spawn in the spot you are sitting thus you will have to move or pull mobs to your location to fight.
This would also make people roam more and move areas since once you kill all the mobs in a spot no others will spawn on that spot. If a lot of players are in a dungeon perhaps no mobs will be spawning or very few when a player in not in sight of a spawn point. This would encourage PvP among the players since if there are fewer players in the area then more mobs would be spawning out of sight. This would make all dungeons and monsters into a resource to be fought over.
Lots of mobs vs a few. This is another design element that affects spawn timers. If you want a lot of mobs that are weak and players are able to kill in fast action then you need to have a shorter respawn time. A better system imo is fewer mobs that are a lot harder to kill, and thus a longer spawn timer. Lots of mobs that a group can AOE down removes the usefulness of the Tank. Tanks are at their best and feeling most useful when they are the focus of a mob or two and not trying to run around peeling weak mobs from casters.
Also the way to look at any mob is it is a resource to be harvested. The more valuable the resource the longer spawn time should be the rule of thumb along with location changes and other elements to make the rare mob truly rare.
I do agree that if the mobs are quest mobs they should spawn more often for the people doing the quest. one way to make quest mobs not a thing others harvest would be to make their resources gained from killing them almost useless.
Games that have different approaches to this issue.
ESO - lots of weak mobs (PvE was to easy, rather boring and repetitive)
EQ - Very hard mobs that required a group to kill just one and crowd control required for the group to survive if more than one mob attacked. (PvE was tough but repetitive and very stagnate)
DAOC - medium difficulty mobs group size would determine how many mobs were pulled the spawn rates were decent they also had a camp bonus exp. The less the mobs were killed in an area the larger the bonus exp. (PvE was okay but nothing special - best PvE was in the regions where PvP could happen like Darkness falls dungeon or the Frontiers where you could be killed by players)
A suggestion, when a mini-boss, or boss of a dungeon is killed, this does a "demoralizing" debuff for the trash mobs so that that trash mobs that have no respawn will be held back longer before the respawn.
Fixed mob respawn rates are good for setting up static camps and pulling mobs when farming loot or XP, but not so good when dealing with variations in player density. With a very high density of players in a limited area, all looking to farm the same item/boss/quest, fixed respawn times can generate congestion. A dynamic respawn timer based on creatures survival rates (how long they stay alive) in relation to the number of players in the area, tend to reduce congestion.
One could argue fixed rates could lead to more player conflicts though.
Which games do you feel have done this well, and what did you feel was good about respawn times for mobs? I miss the old days of hour-long static xp camps in Everquest, with predictable respawn timers for trash mobs, and placeholder+skip spawn mechanics for rares.
World of Warcraft on the other hand invited to a more fluid gameplay where we moved through the content, as opposed to invading the content, and setting up camp there.
Both have it's appeal.
I think one thing that is slowly fading from gaming is slowing down and smelling the flowers.
Everyone wants to rush to max and start min/maxing and figuring out the Meta and losing the value of the world you spend time creating. Fast travel, sanctuary cities, universal storage, etc are quality of life features we all love but take away from the old school "Mount up and run" and during that run you find all sorts of cool stuff.
We need something that brings the player back into the world and immerses them with the smaller things. A great example is the cow level in D4. We need things that require (undocumented and not publicly tested) world conditions to be met before it can spawn. An example of how something like this can work is, once X number of rabbits in this zone die, a new species spawns in this new zone and then once the server kills X number of the new species 5 items spawn around the world , once all 5 items are found it opens this door to a new secret dungeon, new boss, new puzzle, etc that then players can participate in. This allows the game to build on itself while players are engaged in playing.
Look at the anime Bofuri, she wanders around, finds a mob no one knew existed because they never cared to explore and next thing you know she has a super OP Shield that no one else has. Exclustivity is not a bad thing either. Items that only 1-5 players in the universe have is not bad for the game. It gives people something to look towards. It gives you that thing to stunt how hard you farmed. Nothing is worse then getting a "rare" mount and everyone has it cause they had to make it accessible for everyone. There is no flare to it.
In WOW, I think I appreciated the dungeon rare spawn rate which seemed to be rng. I also really liked some of the mount/pet spawn rates. For example; the Zulian Tiger was very rng and hard to obtain. Even when the content was old it was still 1 raid per week per character. The search for the timelost proto drake was kind of brutal in Wrath. The person who got it was either shit lucky or lost some serious time/life farming it. People who had these mounts were proud and I remember being envious of them. Wow eventually ruined some of these mounts IMO because you rarely needed a ground only mount. Which really diminished half of the mounts you obtained, but I digress. Spawn rates for hunter pets/kill rares achievements such as Loque’nahak were decently rare. I remember being very happy to get him and terrified another hunter was going to kill him or try and gank me while I was taming him.
In short, I’ve grown to really appreciate a good challenge. I believe this is why Classic wow, and now hardcore wow, are still popular. This is very subjective though so I don’t envy your challenge. My wife read/spell checked and concurs with everything I typed. Good luck AOC! P.s. Alpha II PLEASE!
I hope it will be variable timer (also on resource-Spawns) so noone can times farmroutes (resources and mobs/bosses).
When i see all the games with static timers, it does not feel imersive, more like mathematical/clean organized clockworking...
If its somehow possible, it might be good to varii spawns in proportion of servers population?!?
imo
:-)