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
We know castle sieges will happen once a month for each of five castles on a given server. We know that in the three weeks leading up to a given castles siege, there is a smaller siege on one of the three nodes that make up that castles territory. We know castle sieging has a temporary alliance mechanic associated with it.
We know node sieges will be common enough of a possibility for players to participate in at least one a week if they wish to do so - probably more. We know players in allied nodes cant fight against a node, and players in nodes at war can't be defenders of a node.
We know the population cap will start at 250 per side, and perhaps increase to 500 per. We know small aspects of all sieges will contain small instanced PvP components. We know sieges will only happen during server prime time, giving everyone the highest chance of being able to participate. We know siege weapons will be a major factor for sieges. We know sieges will have multiple objectives players to achieve to have effects such as making respawn harder for the opponent, or easier for allies.
With caravans, we know that they will be a perpetual source of organized PvP. We know that this will be something that is required for the game to function, so such PvP will always happen. We know players can chose which side to join in on when a caravan is under attack - attackers or defenders. We know a caravan is itself made up of individual components that can be attacked and destroyed. We know if you kill the driver of a caravan you can then drive off with said caravan for about 15 minutes before it is destroyed. We even know that you get more loot from a caravan if you pick up sealed crates and transport them rather than destrpying them.
Now, I admit we don't know much about naval PvP, nor node or guild wars. However, we do know some aspects of these other PvP sources.
In terms of PvE, we don't know half of what is above. Sieges have some instanced PvP - presumably this is able to be repeated every siege. Is there any PvE that is similar?
We know there will be the ability for everyone to participate in a siege quite often. Not fight to obtain the right to participate, actually participate. Is there any such comparison in PvE?
We know sieges will have fairly major mechanics specific to them such as siege weapons - will PvE have any major mechanics akin to this, or will it just "borrow" things from PvP?
I mean, we don't even know how many bosses will spawn on a given server. Sure, we have a list of a few PvE encounter names, but that is about as useful as having the names of the castles.
So, I also feel that we know significantly (exponentially) more about PvP in Ashes than we do about PvP. Further, we know a lot more about what we don't yet know about in regards to PvP in Ashes - we know there is a lot more information to come with wars and naval content. We have no idea at all what there is to still be talked about in relation to PvE - because they haven't talked about it enough for us to have any idea at all what they want to do (and what they are able to do).
This is the point.
Mag has been arguing for a long time that "the developers don't know, you can't ask them to give details on what they don't know". I have long told him that details of PvE are worthless - I never want details. I want plans. I want to know what Intrepid want to do, and what they feel they are capable of doing.
If all they are able to do is say they want multiple phase fights (arguing as if this is a good thing - it is not), adds, and random skill usage, then my faith and trust in their ability to pull off meaningful PvE content is at rock bottom. This is kind of like saying "yeah, we will have PvP, you'll be able to, like, cast spells and hit each other with melee weapons and stuff", but the developer having nothing else to add to that.
Every single person I play MMO's with regularly knows someone at Intrepid (past or present) in a capacity where they are on a first name basis. We all know the staff is competent at pulling off content. However, we all also know that they can only do that if there is creative desire to do so - which so far there straight up isn't.
I don't know if Steven thinks what he talks about is good PvE or not, all I know is that what little he talks about in regards to PvE is not good PvE.
what is good pve?
As a question, this encompasses more than you think.
You are perhaps thinking encounters and their design - but this only makes up part of what good PvE is.
Look back to our recent discussion where I outlined two raid encounters that were back to back. They were very different fights, and other fights in that same cycle were even more different.
What made that content cycle good (arguably the best single content cycle of the best PvE MMO ever) is the fact that almost every encounter asked players for something entierly different. There were perhaps only 3 encounters out of more than 20 that you could lose due to lack of DPS, but every encounter was difficult in its own way.
While each encounter needs to be well crafted, that in itself doesn't make for good PvE. Each encounter also needs to be totally different.
This is why phases in PvE is not inherently a good thing. Encounters having phases essentially means the encounter changes in to a mechanically different fight, and so acts as 2, 3, 4 or even 5 different fights in one. The problem is, players don't have the option to respec between phases, meaning the same spec needs to be valid for the whole fight.
A shit tier game may put in an encounter that has a phase that requires pure DPS, a phase that requires high survivability, and a phase that requires a lot of CC. The tuning for this encounter will be very neutral by necessity, and players will be required to take a build that is decent for DPS, has some survivability and either deals or doesn't break CC. Very bland.
A good game will take those three phases, split them out in to three encounters and require players taking on the DPS aspect to run with the actual best DPS spec (both for individual players and for the raid as a whole) that the game offers in order to have any chance at killing the encounter. Then players taking on the survivability aspect will need to spec in the highest survivability build available, likely seeing the entire raid having either cleric or tank as their secondary. Then the last will see the raid needing to pull out a comparitively large number of CC specalists, and make sure everyone elses build is not going to break said CC.
Because each of these individual encounters can be tuned under the assumption that the raid is spec'd specifically for what the encounter asks, the encounter can ask for much more of that thing than any encounter with phases can ever ask for. Thus, the individual encounters will always feel more unique.
However, if those three encounters above existed in isolation in an MMORPG, it would still be shit PvE. Good PvE needs progression (basically a natural step up from running group content, with a steady incline up to the hardest encounters in the game), and needs access to content (if I need to PvP a PvP focused guild in order to PvE, the game has PvP with rewards, not PvE - if PvP needs to be a factor, give me the content, let me beat it, then make me PvP after the fact). Then there is also a volume of content, but this ties in to progression. If a game has 6 raid encounters, that is a very short progression and would mean either the progression isn't that nice steady incline, or it would mean the hardest encounter isn't much more than the easiest (6 encounters would equal a single content tier in most games - a progression cycle would be 4 or 5 tiers).
I don't really think Intrepid will cater to PvE raiding players. However, I will continue to point out what they need to do in order to cater to us, and continue to point out they have the staff on hand to make it so - specifically so that everyone knows the only reason they don't cater is due to some "creative" decision.
Hi Noaani!
I can see how my post could be misinterpreted. No worries! Let me reiterate for clarification
Like I had said, we can continue to freely discuss PvX, or PvE raiding in this thread
I'm offering a touch-point back to OP's intentions for newcomers to the thread. This can be a jumping-off point for some to join the conversation, which can help this thread's traction and introduce new ideas and opinions to the topic
I do not wish to argue with you, so I will leave it at that. Feel free to carry on
As a reminder, Ashes of Creation is a PvX game. Players will naturally encounter both PvP and PvE elements. It is unlikely that a player could purely focus on just PvP or just PvE. You can read more about PvX here, on the wiki: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/PvX
You can also read about Raids here, on the wiki: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Raids
Thanks.
To add to this (mostly for anyone new to the thread, but potentially also for you if you were not aware);
Those of us that have been around these forums for a long while have long since talked about the fact that there are some players that only want PvE content and no PvP at all, and also some players that only want PvP content with no PvE at all. This game will not suit either of these players, and so the assumption is that they will simply not play Ashes.
As such, when those same few of us that have been here a while talk about PvE players, we are talking about players that prefer PvE over PvP, but fully accept PvP, and even enjoy it in the right circumstances. Same with when we talk about PvP players, we have discounted players that only want PvP and nothing else, and so refer to those that prefer PvP over PvE as being PvP players.
It's just easier to write that out than explaining it over and over.
As to the game being a PvX game rather than a PvE or PvP game, I want to point out that Ashes will have repeatable PvP content that is completely divorced from PvE in the form of arenas and sieges. It seems only fitting that it also have repearable PvE content in the form of instanced raids to balance this out.
I suppose it couldn't hurt, but in the end, they don't plan to make 'hyper complex PvE', because that isn't very compatible with PvX. What they can do, what they've built towards doing as far as I've seen, is to make 'complex PvX'.
This is a thing that can be done, if that's the audience you're going for. And for now, Ashes would be among the only games with any intention to do this (since, if you were putting in the effort to make complex PvX, you'd have the tools to pivot to making decently complex PvE and pleasing a larger slice of the market share).
Even TL is on the fence, it has a lot of bosses that could be 'shifted to be complex PvX', but are just dungeon bosses, and yet their 'raids' tend to be either 'Woo PvE zerg' or 'Ok let's PvP around this pinata for 20m'. Even the dungeon bosses, they're clearly being conservative in just how hard those are, because it's not time for 'difficult' yet. They're appealing to 'just slightly better than the average'. (See below)
But when you say 'tools', the problem is that even if you wanted to limit yourself to 'complex PvX', there still isn't really much of a way to discuss 'tools', any more than you can do it for Elden Ring, Monster Hunter, etc. Those PvE experiences aren't based on 'design tools', the whole point is that they're so unique that your entire goal structure can change from target to target, and then it comes down to 'what aspects of your regular gameplay the devs wish to maintain within the fight'. Most people won't understand the design space if someone attempts to explain the 'tools and approaches' used to make and tune even the simpler boss in the video.
Any such stream would just come off as rambling, potentially empty promises, to many people, and for others, those videos exist already. What needs to be shown has already been shown (relative to Steven's PvX commitment). There's no real need to even discuss 'PvE raiding' in the simple sense. There is only 'PvX raiding' and the stuff they can do to make that 'not stupid'.
PvX gamers are few, as I perceive it, and hard to please. Average PvE gamers and average PvP gamers are much easier to appease through explanations and simple stopgaps like 'close the Boss door' and 'flag everyone for PvP'.
So I take back the first thing I said: If Intrepid went into detail about their PvX encounter design philosophy, it'd probably do more harm than good.
It is just (arguably) not their specific vision for PvX.
If that TL boss is an "instanced" one then daaamn I sure hope AoC's instanced stuff is harder. Hell, I hope ow stuff is harder
That's only because they did it very correctly, though. That boss has (from just watching the video, I haven't fought it) at least 4 'mechanics' and hits the tank for around 1k HP (1/8thish) per swing, right?
But it has no sub-mechanics, and no forced tradeoffs. It isn't meant to be hard. If it was meant to be hard it would have those things. It's meant to be what the average player wants. 4 repeated mechanics and a chance to flex their DPS while feeling like they are skilled for managing to not mess up the mechanics for 5 minutes. (and they are, it's just not 'only 8% can clear it' skilled, nor is it 'the top PvX players can outmaneuver you and cause your interference to fail' skilled).
My point was about tools though. That fight is full of 'design tools', basically 'slots where they can tweak the difficulty up or down while doing PvX things and still letting players play their class'. The issue is, if Intrepid were to show off that sort of thing, I don't think it would be much benefit, and it would still sound mainly like 'well that's how bosses are going to be' instead of an example.
Better to throw us into Alpha-2 with 30-40 of 'fleshed out versions of that' and have people settle into their comfort zones, whether that be New World or WildStar.
Yeah, I just hope we have those 30-40. Obviously we'll have them sooner or later in A2, but, just as it was with A1, all the big streamers will stream the release of A2 and then leave back to their usual content. So if start of A2 doesn't have some good content to show the game will be, once again, called doa/scam/shit/etc.
Obviously it won't mean much as long as the main release is good, but it's just gonna be a pain to live through for several years until said release
Well, I might make the fourth TheoryRaid thread, due to this, at least, rather than derailing this one more.
I have a new idea of how to use it for data collection, but that's not really as helpful with the current state of the forum sub-demographic. Either way, no point in just thinking about it and not typing, and there's the tiny chance that it'll help you or Intrepid.
Instanced area with only one party in the instance is an artificial barrier.
Takes away the need to hire protectors.
I am against this suggestion.
I'd luv rather defense structures when boss fight start, to give small PvP defenders advantage.
Accessing defense structures should flag all raid members for PvP.
If you want to create bosses that appeal to PvP first players, then do that.
If you want to create bosses that appeal to PvE first players, then do that.
The two are very different, and you should not try to combine them in to one encounter.
The idea is to create all types of bosses how they need to be, then find a way to turn that in to something that you can label as PvX after the fact.
It is the notion that PvX needs to be PvP and PvE together at all times that needs to die. Even more true considering the hypocrisy of the game happily catering to just PvP by itself many times.
Going green caters to pve exclusive playstyles.
I think boss zone barriers can prevent kiting and zergs from entering the encounter.
Instanced pvp content helps reduce presence of pvpers in the open world, technically effectively to pve only players.
Not much hypocrisy and pve catering should be pursued more.
IS should do what they are doing in a fun and creative way, they don't need to cater to the same people yelling for instanced PvE content. Create different elements of PvX types of content is much more appealing. 20% instancing is fine, not you spend the day doing 3-5 instance dungeons avoiding people and calling it a day.
If a game has an open world boss spawn once a week, 40 players get to kill it. If that boss is instanced, as many players as are in capable guilds get to kill it.
If the only top end encounters players have access to needs to be fought over, the actual content is that fight, the encounters are the rewards from that fight.
There is indeed hypocrisy in saying PvX means PvP and PvE together always, and then adding PvP only arenas and sieges.
"Going green" does not remove PvP as being potential.
This just highlights your insane inability to comprehend.
You and I have talked about instances before. We have talked about how anyone that wants good content in an MMO with both instances and open world knows for a fact that open world content should have the better drops - but that a game like WoW that puts no top end content in its open world can not achieve this.
We have also talked about the difference between instanced dungeons and instanced encounters. Based on those discussions, you know full well that running three instanced encounters would see a group or raid spend about 30 minutes total in instances, and several hours getting to each of them in an open dungeon.
These are things you and I have discussed many times before, and it is your insistence to just ignore points that don't serve the argument you wish to make that is why so many people here just ignore you. It is why no one takes your arguments even remotely seriously - you aren't here for discussion or debate, you are here to blast your oft ill considered opinion in defiance of any facts.
Thing is, it is the implementation of instances that determine if people will just run them all day or not. People are not going to be running a fifth of an MMO a day, meaning 20% instanced content is more than enough for people to not do anything else - depending on how it is designed. If it is implemented poorly,that 20% will see peoplejust run instances. If it is implemented well (individual instanced encounters spread out among open world dungeons), even as much as 33% of content being instanced wouldn't see people just spend all day in instances - as they still need to run open world dungeons to get to said instances.
We really have not that is you and Nikr talking about that, your outlook and mine are different. There hasn't been a point fully understanding exactly the way we look at things since I don't go solely by your logic and you don't accept others.
Your points are not facts either, you just simply don't acknowledge things against your point and it doesn't lead to any productive disccusion or atleast 80% of the time.
If we are talking about open world dungeons you aren't going to get a giant open world dungeon then a large personal dungeon with multiple bosses that doesn't even sound realistic. Sounds like you are trying to push the goal post for instanced content because you know you just need to have enough for people to start complaining if the game is built around it.
Perception can shift from PvX to more towards PvE for certain groups of players WoW crowd or even asmongolds crowd. And using those types of influencers to further push for more instanced content.
You have debated Nikr about instanced content giving good drops akin to the difficulty (no one is saying it is the absolute best drop int he game) that becomes a easier tread mill for people to run instanced content and gear up fast making more content easier / quicker to do.
Fully aware of travel time, instanced dungeons will have people complaining about no fast travel or group finder and a desire for such a thing so they can que up and run the content faster. Among other things that will take away from PvX and what IS are trying to go for.
I know you are aware of what you are trying to do by pushing for certain PvE elements with the future effect it will have in moving away from PvX and moving towards flat PvE instanced encounters. That is why so many people call you out but can't be bothered to deal with interacting with you after awhile.
You try to push a narrative you can't do PvX, but that simply comes from 1 you into wanting to do it and wanting a certain pve element based on the type of games you like, and 2 lack of creativity to think of how to approach it and thinking IS can't do it. Eve if they could it most likely wouldn't be fun for you since you are stuck on separating them.
Personally I think PvX would be amazing and something mmorpgs have lacked and has been growing in more newer games. It is difficulty to make it but it adds to a lot of variety of gameplay that will make gameplay loops not feel as boring.
End of the day I'd rater see what IS is doing in Alpha - 2 before its decided what can and can not work for PvP, PvE, PvX. It is their risk to take in approaching the most difficult one, their own ambition to take it on. It doesn't mean you can't be critical or have your bias but rather than just being all negative, why not attempt to also try to offer feedback in a way that would create good PvX experiences.
And if a ton of players end up finding the game not fun and it is shared in the community during alpha 2 they will have to rethink their approach. but as usual I'm guessing this is the part where you just want the to do what you want and say nothing works but pve instances lmao.
L2 also had huge dungeons with an instanced (or caged) room at the end. Sometimes that room would just be a singular 4-wall room and sometimes it would be a a fairly long dungeon on its own.
In other words, this part of what Noaani said is definitely normal design (I'm sure EQ2 had this too). Hell, A1 had this in the volcano. You had to TP to the dragon at the end, so functionally that TP could be turned off after a time and you'd have yourself an instanced at the end of a huge dungeon.
I'm not talking about a single room, I'm talking about what would equal to someone talking about an instanced dungeon. Else I'd say instanced boss.
*edit if you are going to tell the PvE crown their instanced content is a single boss area I high doubt the y are going to say that is good pve content. One example was in new world where they added a "raid" Which was a glorified single boss. Not even talking about the mechanics that was not what people wanted, they wanted a proper raid dungeon. So a boss room was an actual meme.
Last edit* So making it clear what they want is important to establish a baseline, I'm just going to say i highly doubt their Raids will be a single room in what they want.
When i mention things I'm talking about what people want and what are their expectations. Aligning with PvE, if you say we have raids and to them its not a raid that is how you create false perceptions.
And as he keeps telling you, he wants ow stuff to give best things, so ow bosses would still be valued higher and fought over more. And if the instances, that even Noaani wants, are located deep in dungeons - there's gonna be preventive pvp there, where enemies will try and hold off the farmers from doing the instance for as long as possible.
This is where the guild/node wars would come in, but we've got fuckall info on that so it's hard to speculate on that front. I'd personally prefer if both of those could be forced onto people, but for a pretty big cost (exponentially so if a big guilds decs a smaller one). So that people could plan out their resources and timings and delay their opponents' farm for as long as possible.
And Noaani suggested in the past that the boss loot from instanced could require a caravan to transfer it back, so there'd still be pvp in that form as well (and again, this could just be one of the options).
I obviously don't agree on everything with Noaani, but I feel like we are both willing to give up some part of our arguments to achieve a middle ground. And while I agree with you that WoW players will definitely try and fuck the game over, I also feel like having a middle ground before majority of WoWers even come here would go a long way to prevent most of them from asking for more pve.
i dont disagree here, but what if the devs dont want everyone killing that boss all the time? im not gonna discuss balancing rewards, thats a different issue that is best left to intrepid.
i like instanced dungeons, they are fun and its one of my favorite things to do in a mmorpg. i played tabletop dnd once too and i loved doing dungeons..coudlnt wait to get to the next one. but the point of a game like ashes is that you have to pvp (or coop) to pve and you want to pve to become stronger in pvp. as far as i know, there will be instanced dungeons in ashes, and you will have different parties in different entrances racing to clear the content and multiple bosses to get to the final boss. then they can pvp for the boss or cooperate and kill it. this seems a solution that aligns more with the game in general. you could always do these instances with your guild and cooperate instead of compete for the final boss.
regarding world bosses, since they are out in the open, im sure the whole server can go and kill it...but the rewards will be distributed based on looting rights and maybe some randomness like in TL. but everybody still has a chance.
regarding arenas, they are different. we can agree that equalized arenas would be the same as instanced pve dungeons. you can get rewards by avoiding the open world. if you have regular non equalized arenas, you still need to be out in the world and pvp / pve to get the gear to do arenas. the equivalent for instanced dungeons would be removing dungeons / raid progression and making the players pvp/pve out in the open to get the gear to do the instances.
regarding top end pve. we go back to vanilla and chocolate cake here (and the whole reply tbh) i like both cakes, but if you are making a chocolate cake, make the best chocolate cake you can, dont add vanilla thinking you will attract more customers and vice versa, because you will end up losing customers.
how many players do top end pve? 1%, 5%, 10%? we can agree that not everyone is interested in such high difficulty, plus not everyone who is interested on it can clear them. if you are making a game for one type of crowd, why would you add things for a different type of crowd? why add 10% vanilla to your chocolate cake?
lets say top end raiders who can clear this super difficult content are 10%. this seems reasonable and im using this number for the example. you claim that if ashes doesnt add this type of content, these 10% crowd wont play the game. fair enough, i agree with you (lets ignore the fact that these top pvers are usually bad in pvp, and will probs never even have a chance to do the content since they will be stomped left and right prior to get there and quit, but thats another topic).
for this example lets say ashes has a limit of 100 players (server capacity, costs, customer support costs, management, gm, etc, etc), 10 of them are top pve raiders and the other 90 are the pvx crowd the game caters to. lets remember that you cant make a game for every single gamer in the world (or any product really, for every customer), if you dont add this top pve option, the 10 top pve players will not play the game, now the game has only 90 players. but guess what? 10 spots just open. if you make the best pvx game you can make, the 10 spots that just open will be filled by another 10 pvx player, replacing the 10 top pvers that just left. in the end, it doesnt matter if "noaani" doesnt play the game, because "bobthecasualpvertoppvper" will take his spot. make a full chocolate cake. dont add vanilla.
My main issue as usual will be gameplay loops that potentially revolve around queuing up instances and full instanced dungeons.
The cage thing isn't that bad but i don't view that as instanced. If you tell someone there is instanced content there understanding is you will be able to repeat that content (though mmorpgs have different rule sets) . I understand how you view it it is kind of the same thing but I'm going from a perspective that is more clear cut (because if you tell someone there is instanced content and it does not match their understanding of instanced content it would create a disconnect).
So at this point I'm saying in this discussion the argument is PvE players want instanced bosses and not dungeons? So right away a rule set would be drops once per day from them.
Right now, to me, Steven's description of AoC's instances says that they'll be on-and-done stuff. And even if a few of those are repeatable - I don't expect them to be daily, cause there's been no indication that he wants that kind of content in the game.
I still would support super hardcore instanced pve that you can attempt as many times as you want, but only clear once a week (and it then changes smth so that the next week requires a new raid setup). So those who do want to grind that kind of content - can. I'd expect this content to not give best gear, but that's where my discussions with Noaani on instanced rewards and gear progression come in, and that's a whoooooole different topic.
This kinda related to what Depraved said above. Instanced content is either self-sufficient and provides players with "equalized" gear to clear said content, or it's based on the ow gear acquisition methods and requires you to participate in the other parts of the game if you wanna progress in your preferred content. I support the latter. Both pve and pvp instanced content should rely on your getting gear from the open world things (obviously buying included).
And imo this way we can have instanced content that might cut off a fraction of players from the open world encounters, but the game's overall gameplay flow won't suffer from it because there's gonna be a ton of people who gotta go farm ow things to provide gear for those instanced dudes. And every player will just be able to choose which side they prefer.
That's fine, put *that boss* in the open world.
Then create instanced bosses that specifically exist to give people content to play. There is no reason at all you can't have both - even EQ and EQ2 had both despite their lack of PvP.
When you break it all down, the only reason to not have instanced encounters is if the developer doesn't want players having reasonable access to encounters. Literally everything is in their control (kind of the point of instances). They can dictate how common the drops are, they can dictate how often a player can take on the encounter, they can dictate how many people can be present, they can dictate how much interaction players need with the open world in order to realize the rewards of the instance, they can even control if there are any special mechanics involved in realizing those rewards - an often stated suggestion of mine has been to require players to carry the mobs corpse (or part thereof) via the caravan system back to a metropolis node for processing. Throw up a serverwide announcement, and watch people come along trying to stop them getting it back.
To me, that is far more engaging PvX than having to kill players in order to be able to kill an HP stick which is what most bosses in PvP/PvX games amount to.
This would only be the case if the developer created instanced raid content in a manner where the encounters dropped finished items.
If a game like Ashes did as a game like Ashes should do, and instead dropped components, then people running instanced raid content still need to be out in the open world with PvP and PvE in order to get gear upgrades, just as people running arenas need to be.
This is another of those things that can be how the developer wants it to me. If they wanted to make it so you start a raid progression path and have no need to then look anywhere else for gear, they absolutely can do that.
Or the developer could do it the way Archeage did - mobs drop components that are used along with other refined materials to upgrade items to the next tier. If I have a brestplate that took me 10 iron to make, I could upgrade it with 10 steel (made with 10 iron each) and three fairly common components from different open world bosses.
Then I could upgrade that item with 10 feysteel (each made from 10 steel), and use a few more common components from above, but also a component from a group based open dungeon boss.
Then I could upgrade that item using 10 darksteel (each made from 10 feysteel), using three items from that group based open dungeon, as well as one from a group based instanced dungeon.
Following this method, the basic item cost 10 iron, but the item that uses the instance dropped component uses 10,000 iron. Clearly in a situation like this, players wishing to have gear using those instance dropped components would need to expend some effort in the open world.
It is literally 100% up to developers as to whether they want players interacting with the world or not. Having instanced encounters does not alter that it is up to them.
A few point with this.
Sure, 10% clearing it is feasable.
However, you are forgetting the friends, family and other community members that come along with top end guilds. If I bring a guild of 50 players to Ashes, I am adding at least 200 accounts to the server we are on - probably closer to 250.
This would then mean that in your 100 player limit with 10% being that top end PvE crowd, you now lose at least 25 players for not having this PvE as opposed to the 10 you were thinking.
However, you only took in to account the players that were killing the content, not the players that came to the game for the content but are not able to kill the top end of it.
While this is different for every game, I can state quite happily that general raid progression sees dozens of guilds killing lower tiers, and only 2 or 3 killing the top tier. Thus, if 10% of the population are killing the top end, 50%+ are killing the low end. While not all of these would be joining the game specifically for this content, some would. For those that aren't joining the game for this content but are participating in it regardless, the game is better off for them for having this content than it would have been.
The next question I have for you is in regards to the people that you think would fill in what you think to be 10 spots, but would actually be 25 or more. Why were they not already playing the game? Your scenario had a cap of 100 players, but the game won't have that cap - there will not be a point in Ashes where someone trying to open a new account is refused because the game is at the limit.
You say they would come because the game has better PvX due to not having instanced content - but that isn't something that is necessarily the case. Instanced content can absolutely make a games PvX better, just as instanced arenas can make a games PvX better.
Edit to add; I absolutely agree with your point that it doesn't matter to Intrepid if *I* play Ashes. It doesn't matter to them if you play, or if NiKr plays, or if Dygz plays.
What matters to them is numbers. More people playing means more money for post launch development, more people for cooperative play, and more people for adversarial play. Basically, more is better.
If there is a big chunk of players that would play the game based on Intrepid improving one type of content they already plan on having in some manner, and if improving that content didn't have any detrimental effect on any other content, there is no real reason to not improve that content.
The kind of player that would look at a game and decide to not play it because it has some content that they themselves don't want to play is not the kind of player that an MMORPG with asperations of a long life should be trying to cater to. A game with such asperations should be catering to people that look at a game to see if it has what they want from a game, and then looks at any other content as something for other people, and perhaps something they may dabble in later.