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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Ideas to help keep dungeons from becoming so repetitive
So I think it's a safe bet most if not all of you reading this have played a mmo with dungeons. It's also probably a safe bet that most of you enjoy running a dungeon the first few times but after running the same dungeon multiple times you and your group just try to get through it asap for the loot, xp and get on your way. I'd like to share a few ideas I have and give others a place to share their thoughts as well to help keep this from happening in Ashes.
1. Make trash mobs random: Is there a mob who will heal his allies? Is there a glass cannon mage that will do high dps but dies quickly? Is the a mob that will silence your healer? How many mobs are there in the room? These are questions I think we players should have to figure out the answers to on the fly, not with previous knowledge or by watching a YouTube video
2. Less trash mobs but more aggressive trash mobs: One thing that's always bothered me about games like wow the fact the we can walk into a room full of mobs, cc a few mobs, use ranged to pull a few mobs all while their friends just stand there and watch. If we players are in the mobs line of sight and not hidden they should be attacking, not standing there doing nothing. The combination of this and point 1 I think would make fighting trash mobs in dungeons much more interesting, make us figure out our strategy for dealing with the pack of mobs on they fly.
3. Random abilities for bosses: Give each boss a list of abilities say maybe 10 or so to pick from and have the game randomly give the boss maybe 5 of those abilities so that we players don't know exactly how the fight will go before it's started
4. Different aggro for intelligent mobs then for dumb mobs. A zombie or a dumb ogre I get being able to just tank and spank but the necromancer who summoned the zombies should be able to decide who the real threat is even if a tank is taunting him. Mobs with a higher level of intelligence should have to be dealt with by using cc abilities, not only would it be more realistic but it would give dps something else to think about other then dps charts and not standing in the red circles........speaking or red circles thats idea number 5
5. Get rid of red circle telegraphs!!!!!!!!!! Don't get me wrong I want high damage dodgeable attacks from bosses but please use another method of telling players to move then a red circle. A few ideas I have on this would be say a mob is about to do a high damage charge attack instead of a red line showing where it's going to charge have it lower it's head and stomp its feet signaling it's about to charge. Another mob might have a whirlwind axe aoe attack instead of a red circle around the mob have it lift it's axe up in the air and tilt a shoulder back signaling it's getting ready to spin.
Anyways that's all I can think of right off hand, had a few other ideas as well but drawing a blank now that I'm actually at the computer. Would love to see some other ideas on how to keep dungeons from getting stale
1. Make trash mobs random: Is there a mob who will heal his allies? Is there a glass cannon mage that will do high dps but dies quickly? Is the a mob that will silence your healer? How many mobs are there in the room? These are questions I think we players should have to figure out the answers to on the fly, not with previous knowledge or by watching a YouTube video
2. Less trash mobs but more aggressive trash mobs: One thing that's always bothered me about games like wow the fact the we can walk into a room full of mobs, cc a few mobs, use ranged to pull a few mobs all while their friends just stand there and watch. If we players are in the mobs line of sight and not hidden they should be attacking, not standing there doing nothing. The combination of this and point 1 I think would make fighting trash mobs in dungeons much more interesting, make us figure out our strategy for dealing with the pack of mobs on they fly.
3. Random abilities for bosses: Give each boss a list of abilities say maybe 10 or so to pick from and have the game randomly give the boss maybe 5 of those abilities so that we players don't know exactly how the fight will go before it's started
4. Different aggro for intelligent mobs then for dumb mobs. A zombie or a dumb ogre I get being able to just tank and spank but the necromancer who summoned the zombies should be able to decide who the real threat is even if a tank is taunting him. Mobs with a higher level of intelligence should have to be dealt with by using cc abilities, not only would it be more realistic but it would give dps something else to think about other then dps charts and not standing in the red circles........speaking or red circles thats idea number 5
5. Get rid of red circle telegraphs!!!!!!!!!! Don't get me wrong I want high damage dodgeable attacks from bosses but please use another method of telling players to move then a red circle. A few ideas I have on this would be say a mob is about to do a high damage charge attack instead of a red line showing where it's going to charge have it lower it's head and stomp its feet signaling it's about to charge. Another mob might have a whirlwind axe aoe attack instead of a red circle around the mob have it lift it's axe up in the air and tilt a shoulder back signaling it's getting ready to spin.
Anyways that's all I can think of right off hand, had a few other ideas as well but drawing a blank now that I'm actually at the computer. Would love to see some other ideas on how to keep dungeons from getting stale
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Comments
I like Wildstar and his red telegraphs, you can clearly see when boss/mob is doing something but your idea sounds good. When you fight the boss it will lower is head to charge. Some gestures of the boss would mean what is it going to do.
So for the random trash mobs. If the types of mobs are discernible through their name, then you can scan a room without getting involved in a fight. I will use a dungeon that is ran by let's say... a group of greedy humans who have taken over this system of caves as they have heard that this newly developed city (newly levelled node) is full of crafters who will need resources. Ok so you enter the cave through a descending tunnel that leads to a big room with a bunch of <Greedy Human Miner> mining nearby resources. Around them you see <Human Mercenary Fighter> which is probably some sort of melee dps who were hired by whoever is running this operation knowing people would come here hoping to get these resources themselves . Then without getting in too much detail there could be throughout the caves <Human Mercenary Mage>, <Human Elite Assassin>, <Human Elite Sorcerer>, <Human Priest>, etc...
Otherwise you might need to go in with a tank and have him pull the aggro to see what kinds of mobs there are. So all of them would be <Human Fighting Under Credelia's Orders> but wearing different kind of armour, using different techniques/spells, etc... which would make it even harder as you would need to target people based on their looks and take damage until you've identified who does what.
Then you mention having mobs aggro on sight. But games are designed to be a certain difficulty targeted at a certain group of players. Which is why when you walk in a big room you don't usually just have everyone go like "Oh shit! Get 'em!" and then you've got 100 mobs on your ass. Or the dungeon could be made of a deeper cave system with more but smaller rooms where as you said every mob who sees you in said room doesn't just watch its buddies die until you get close enough to be bothered to fight but actually jumps at you. Maybe for bigger you rooms they could do like some games and have part of the mobs be facing away and therefor not notice you right as you step in so you don't need to aggro the whole room every time. But then if we're talking about realism and lines of sights, might as well talk about how mobs in the next room are going to be hearing all of their comrades brutally murdered but not do a single thing until they see you and go "Oh damn, it wasn't a prank..." to then attack you. I mean, I guess that would make it even more interesting but it just gets harder and harder for the devs... haha *I'm assuming here, no experience in game development*
As for your third point, I don't have much to say. You're right but then again it'll be more work for the devs and you will probably at some point have the YouTube video just be an extra 48 minutes long and explaining what to do in every possible scenario... hehe
After that is the intelligent aggro. Well... that is interesting but then it changes so many things. Let's skip to boss fight. Okay boss is intelligent <Credelia> and decides to focus on your healer, then beat up all your dps and then kindly asks the tank to leave out the front door. Rip. Unless bosses aren't part of this category and only strong mobs. So let's go back to my first paragraph with the mobs having names hinting at their function. Ok so you're scouting the room and you stumble upon this one gal called <Human Master of the Dark Aggro Ignoring Arts>. Dunno 'bout you but I would ask Healer to stand back a bit and focus dps on this guys. Cool. But then we get to the unnamed mobs. Okay tank you go in let's see what we're dealing with here... "Uh guys... I'm down..." says your healer. Ok no problem, this game is challenging we'll keep an eye out for that next run. Fast forward 2 hours: "Fuck this shit, it's all random and none of the mobs are predictable..." Rip. I just mean you're saying we ignore classic aggro mechanics which is interesting but will need to be implemented very carefully haha
Lastly, no red circle telegraphs. Agreed! I haven't played much BDO yet but their world bosses don't have any of those which make you focus on the boss's movements in order to dodge. Fun stuff! (Unless you're me with old PC and all graphics down which means boss don't even render so you can't tell shit and just pray to rnjesus and roll face on keyboard hoping to get some loot)
Sorry for not giving you any ideas of my own yet but it's unexpectedly late and I need to get a few minutes of sleep... And so also sorry if none of this makes sense I'm pretty tired hehe... but y'all seem like an awesome community so far from my few hours of lurking on Discord. Hoping to bring up some interesting discussion!
Sincerely i am not a PvE player. I don't care how dungeons are. I don't mind to repeatedly play the same dungeon to achieve goal or drop something valuable. It doesn't matter to me if dungeon has a slight difference when you visit it for the second time. For me, it's still PvE and AI is AI... But I wouldn't mind contested dungeons. Players fight over it and only one party gets to interact with the entrance door... Or another group of players waiting on the hill and jumping on to other group and race to finish the dungeon until they revive and come back :eyes:
As a ruling guild of the area, owner of the node, who allowed/provided a dungeon to spawn in the world I wouldn't want any other rival guilds to come and farm that dungeon in pace!
Sincerely i am not a PvE player. I don’t care how dungeons are. I don’t mind to repeatedly play the same dungeon to achieve goal or drop something valuable. It doesn’t matter to me if dungeon has a slight difference when you visit it for the second time. For me, it’s still PvE and AI is AI… But I wouldn’t mind contested dungeons. Players fight over it and only one party gets to interact with the entrance door… Or another group of players waiting on the hill and jumping on to other group and race to finish the dungeon until they revive and come back :eyes:
As a ruling guild of the area, owner of the node, who allowed/provided a dungeon to spawn in the world I wouldn’t want any other rival guilds to come and farm that dungeon in pace!
[/quote] I like where your going though I think contested world bosses would be better then dungeons. I'm currently playing Black Desert and the free for all world bosses is a joke imo. I miss the old wow days of ganking the Horde healers when they're in a group doing one of the elite quests in Nagrand and sitting back and watching the boss wreck the rest......good times
I really like the idea of different trash mobs. Clearing trash is normally one of the more mind numbing parts of dungeons, and some randomness would make it a little less of that.
I also really like the idea of "smarter" mobs. Things like that make CC matter, and make dps have to do something other than "dodge X attack, continue deeps". Having CC/interrupts/positioning matter is something I've always enjoyed.
I also hate telegraphs. It is very immersion breaking, but without telegraphs I feel like it limits the amount of "party wipe/one shot" like abilities you can put on a boss. Without red circle like telegraphs, you need to have very obvious animated telegraphs. As much as you want things to not be the same every time you go into a dungeon, you also want to be able to eventually learn all the mechanics a boss may have so you're not wiping 5+ times every time you go into a dungeon.
On this same note tho, I hope we get to see the "open world" parts of dungeons not so complex, purely because you need to have varying degrees of difficulty for varying degrees of skill levels. If players that are lower skilled or maybe don't have crazy reaction times or even bad ping/fps, can't complete dungeons it alienates a part of the player base.
I have faith they they will be able to find a balance between accessibility, and difficulty where players of all skills level will be able to have fun.
I would like to see something like a few random minibosses be able to show up and try to kill you mid dungeon doesn't matter what dungeon your running or something where there is a possibility of getting raided by a ton of demons increasing the difficulty of a dungeon maybe after you beat an area or even mid fight. and all of this would be random so you don't know if it will happen on your run. Maybe even the mobs get buffs the more you run the dungeon.
Dungeons should try to take some aspects of story telling. If you want a more engaging story, sometimes, you just have to get really mean towards your characters.
That being said, I can understand why this may be undesirable. It can really slow down the pace if you're always on the lookout and trying to disable every trap you come across. Just throwing the idea out there.
#1 Players do Dungeons today for gear (Outside of PVP players). This means running X dungeon for the gear they want to drop based off of RNG OR in FFXIV case run as many as they need to max out stones per week to buy gear. Everything is built around this treadmill
#2 LFD/LFR/Duty Finder/Every Automated Grouping tool. Yes because of these tools it is click a button wait 10 minutes for the dungeon queue to pop easy to get a group. No longer do people need to talk to each other for a Dungeon nor will they if content is so hack n slash easy. This kills Communities, Guilds and Friends list.
So how to Fix Number #1. Simple make it that Dungeons are no longer the main source of gear. Make it that all gear in the game is craftable by someone. But make it that Dungeons are a source of crafting mats, special mats for the high end gear, and good source of gold. Add in items that can be used to glamour your gear, mounts, and a whole host of treasures and people will still do Dungeons even though the treadmill. You can also make Dungeons hard that require an hour or more to do as long as if dungeons are taking more than 90 minutes have save points for the casual group people will still do them. Add in the need for Support, as well as Tank, Healer and DPS and you have yourself a good setup
How to Fix #2 simple No Automated Grouping tools period. Have Group/LFM Browser and let people message people to join their group or ask questions on joining a group. This means people will not be doing a Dungeon every 10 minutes for 10 minutes and repeating the cycle. It means today or tomorrow you might not get into a dungeon. It means make friends that want to run dungeons but might need to have a set night to do them because of real life. Since you dont do dungeons for gear you are NOT forced to having a Automated Grouping tool to do a Dungeon. If you want gear go work on getting gold another way. Dungeons should drop a good amount to it makes doing them well worth it.
And further, you will probably see crafted gear being the best gear you get, or at least close to it. There may still be somewhat of a treadmill tho if certain mobs and bosses drop rare mats that are needed for crafting the gear, but I don't think it will be purely restricted to needing to farm bosses.
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I dont mind gear coming from dungeons but anything that is dropped from a dungeon should also be able to be crafted by some crafter in the game. If you make 1 large loot table per tier of dungeons just allow crafters to make that stuff as well too. Leave the gear drop off of chest from the dungeon and leave it setup with RNG. Gear should be allowed to be sold or traded to anyone until it decays. Do that and Dungeons will not become repetitive just for gear. Yep Crafting items should also drop. We should also have glamoured items that drop from the same tier loot table. Also A lot of Gold should drop from Dungeons.