PvE Difficulty

Bricktop wrote: »

Instanced raids should ABSOLUTELY NOT offer gear, and if they do it should be fairly insignificant compared to gear that comes from open world anything.

It was just a possible solution that I came up with. I never said that it was the only one.

Bricktop wrote: »

The last thing they need to do is cater to PvErs and kill the game like New World did.

Should have added this to my post.

To those of you saying that this game shouldn't appeal to everyone....Shut up. Steven clearly said that he wanted AoC to appeal to all types of players: PvP, PvE, crafting etc. He wants this to be a PvX game.

There you go, I fixed it.

Grievousness wrote: »

For example just add one WoW style boss into a one room instance.
The developement effort for that would be really low and people had at least something that can be made challenging from a pure PvE perspective.
Having like 1 boss that 2% of the playerbase can kill won't impact the rest of the game and would at least be more than nothing.

I actually don't agree with this. Either change it for the whole player-base or don't change it at all.

Also.....How is 1 boss going to do anything to solve the problem?

Vyraka

I have primarily played PVE in the past. This time around, I'm trying to get more involved in Guild Activities and PVP. I think it's a little too early to be worrying about end game, however, I understand the concern. I mean - if fighting a dragon threatening your town is mid-game, what's end game?

Bricktop wrote: »

I don't understand how all these PvErs know that there is definitively no challenging PvE content when the game is not out and we don't know enough information. Cram as much PvE content as possible into the game and make it as challenging as you can, no problem. The problem comes in when PvE players demand the game be changed to be less open world and more instanced, which completely detracts from the goals of the devs.

Of course nobody knows but you can predict things based on the things we know.
The idea of early access / alpha / beta is to solve issues before the game is released.
If you wait until release they will take awefully long until they can actually fix a lack of content in that regard since they are busy solving problems that usually come along with for example the launch itself.

A "wait and see" approach doesn't work most of the time as we have seen multiply times before.
If they manage to do challenging content for PvE players I have no issue if there aren't instanced raids.
It mostly just doesn't work out that way.

Bricktop wrote: »

Instanced raids should ABSOLUTELY NOT offer gear, and if they do it should be fairly insignificant compared to gear that comes from open world anything. I see people in this thread saying "Some people might not want to engage with larger guilds and server politics and alliances". Guess what buddy? THAT'S the game. You are saying you don't want to play a large part of the game. That's part of the reason people play open world PvP player driven MMOs. Instanced raids allow you to skip out on a massive part of the game, the open world and the dangers of navigating through it. If you don't want to concern yourself with alliances, server politics, PvP, and things of that nature, there are plenty of games that offer instanced PvE content already.

The higher the difficulty, the better the loot tables will be.
source: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Dungeons#PvE_difficulty

If bosses are hard the loot will be good.
That's the design philosophy.
Nobody is asking for anything different.

Half the problem won't just be solving the dungeon, it will be solving other players too.
source: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/PvE#Dungeons

If that is the case half of the PvE content is not PvE but PvP making it laughable if you look for a challenging PvE experience.

Your demand for crap loot on a challenging PvE encounter is contradicting the design philosophy in the same way instanced content would.

But nobody is really demanding instanced content.
The thing demandend is challenging PvE content, if they make challenging content from a PvE perspective it is fine.
People talk about instancing because it seems unlikely they will archieve challenging PvE content in the open world.

CaptnChuck wrote: »

I actually don't agree with this. Either change it for the whole player-base or don't change it at all.

Also.....How is 1 boss going to do anything to solve the problem?

This isn't meant to be a 100% solution.
I am just saying you don't need to transform the whole game.

If you have at least something in the game and it is good people will ask for more.
If you have nothing in the game people will leave because the game just lacks the content to begin with.

Grievousness wrote: »

People talk about instancing because it seems unlikely they will archieve challenging PvE content in the open world.

Based on what? Prior game experiences with open world content? Why don't you see what the dev team comes up with first before throwing around terms like "instance"

Warth

Grievousness wrote: »

Assuming that WoW type PvE content is good: Why would it be a bad thing to take that as inspiration?
For example just add one WoW style boss into a one room instance.
The developement effort for that would be really low and people had at least something that can be made challenging from a pure PvE perspective.
Having like 1 boss that 2% of the playerbase can kill won't impact the rest of the game and would at least be more than nothing.

Yeah, people would kill it after a week or two of progress. What then? Supply more and more of those? Suddenly it starts impacting the rest of the game.

No decent PvEr would be remotely happy with 1 instanced PvE Boss, that will die soon enough. Suddenly you need a full raid, then another and then another. PvE Content is barely sustainable when you focus most of your development efforts towards it. Its not at all sustainable when you just develop it as a side note.

as @CaptnChuck said, this wouldn't solve anything at all.

Bricktop wrote: »

Based on what? Prior game experiences with open world content?

Based on my experience and the experience of other people on this forum.

Bricktop wrote: »

Why don't you see what the dev team comes up with first before throwing around terms like "instance"

Why do you dislike the term "instance"?
There is nothing wrong with it if you don't go over board.

If we wait and the content sucks it will take some time to create new content.
Good content isn't created on a whim.
So if we are correct and the PvE content won't be too great we probably have to wait a long time before they can fix that problem.
Basically killing the PvE player base maybe 3 months after release.

Vyraka

What if the end game challenge was PVP? What's wrong with that? And I say this as someone who likes to gather, craft, do quests, etc. I find PVP to be challenging, but I'm open to the idea that at least at some point I'm going to need to engage it.

Vyraka wrote: »

What if the end game challenge was PVP? What's wrong with that? And I say this as someone who likes to gather, craft, do quests, etc. I find PVP to be challenging, but I'm open to the idea that at least at some point I'm going to need to engage it.

Steven wants this game to be PvX. NOT PvP. So you need compelling endgame content for all types of playstyles, PvP, PvE, Crafting etc., in order to make AoC a PvX game.

CaptnChuck wrote: »

Vyraka wrote: »

What if the end game challenge was PVP? What's wrong with that? And I say this as someone who likes to gather, craft, do quests, etc. I find PVP to be challenging, but I'm open to the idea that at least at some point I'm going to need to engage it.

Steven wants this game to be PvX. NOT PvP. So you need compelling endgame content for all types of playstyles, PvP, PvE, Crafting etc., in order to make AoC a PvX game.

The game is PvX in that you need to do both systems to succeed. At the end of the day it's a PvP-centric game.

Vyraka

Bricktop wrote: »

CaptnChuck wrote: »

Vyraka wrote: »

What if the end game challenge was PVP? What's wrong with that? And I say this as someone who likes to gather, craft, do quests, etc. I find PVP to be challenging, but I'm open to the idea that at least at some point I'm going to need to engage it.

Steven wants this game to be PvX. NOT PvP. So you need compelling endgame content for all types of playstyles, PvP, PvE, Crafting etc., in order to make AoC a PvX game.

The game is PvX in that you need to do both systems to succeed. At the end of the day it's a PvP-centric game.

Right - I mean - what's the difference between a NPC siege against your city and a PC siege against your city? PCs are a little bit more unpredictable and may not have an easy to figure out strategy. While it falls into the category of PVP, I think it also falls into the category of PVE because it's your environment - IE city - that is under siege. That sounds like a challenge!

Warth

PvX doesn't mean you can do it all separately.
PvX means that they are all intertwined.

Warth wrote: »

PvX doesn't mean you can do it all separately.
PvX means that they are all intertwined.

No that's not exactly what it means. The crafting system isn't tied to PvP. So why should the entire PvE system be tied to PvP then? A PvX game is a game that caters to players of all playstyles.

Besides, I'm not asking for PvE content to be purely instanced. Only 50/50. The enchant/resource dungeons are open world while gear based dungeons are instanced.

Vyraka wrote: »

What if the end game challenge was PVP? What's wrong with that? And I say this as someone who likes to gather, craft, do quests, etc. I find PVP to be challenging, but I'm open to the idea that at least at some point I'm going to need to engage it.

I have no issue with that, but in that case they should purely advertise it as a PvP game.
Since they actively stated there will be PvE content for every part of the player base it would be obviously confusing for most players and more importantly just incorrect.

Vyraka wrote: »

Right - I mean - what's the difference between a NPC siege against your city and a PC siege against your city? PCs are a little bit more unpredictable and may not have an easy to figure out strategy. While it falls into the category of PVP, I think it also falls into the category of PVE because it's your environment - IE city - that is under siege. That sounds like a challenge!

There is some merit to what you say.
But the focus is slightly different.
PvE encounters usually present you with variety of different problems,
you have to work out a way to solve them in the most efficient manner to succeed.

PvP sieges are way more chaotic and less straightforward.
You usually cannot predict the flow of battle like you can in a PvE fight,
there is also a lot more personal responsibility involved in PvP than PvE usually.

There will certainly be people enjoying both.

Warth wrote: »

PvX doesn't mean you can do it all separately.
PvX means that they are all intertwined.

People in games with strict distinction between PvE and PvP also refer to guilds as PvX guild if they do both.

I personally wouldn't claim to have an exact definition since the term is simply used every time seomthing has PvE and PvP elements, if they interconnect with each other or not doesn't seem to be the defining element.

CaptnChuck wrote: »

Warth wrote: »

PvX doesn't mean you can do it all separately.
PvX means that they are all intertwined.

No that's not exactly what it means. The crafting system isn't tied to PvP. So why should the entire PvE system be tied to PvP then? A PvX game is a game that caters to players of all playstyles.

Besides, I'm not asking for PvE content to be purely instanced. Only 50/50. The enchant/resource dungeons are open world while gear based dungeons are instanced.

I'm sorry but you are just wrong here. The game is PvX in that PvPers will still need to PvE and kill bosses in order to get gear, and that PvErs still need to PvP in order to kill bosses and get good gear. Crafting is needed by all players in order to craft said gear. The reason it works that way is because it's an open world game.

There is an 80/20 split of non-instanced vs instanced already in the game. You are suggesting MORE instanced content, which goes against the open world design of the game. Instanced dungeons that good gear drops out of are an absolutely atrocious idea if you are trying to make an open world game that requires people to fight over limited resources. Please stop trying to completely change the design of the game to have instanced raids.

bigepeen

Here's a direct quote from Steven:
"It would definitely be in the single digits of population that will be capable of defeating certain content"

Does that sound like everyone should expect to experience all the content in AoC? If people want to quit the game because of that, then that's fine, but this gives plenty of other people something to strive for.

This only really applies to the highest tier difficulty content, the 12 to 15 world boss raids. Large dungeons is one way to reduce the number of PvP encounters, but also the number of lower tier dungeons should be exponentially larger than the number of world boss raids. This will reduce the probably of running into another group significantly, while still not completely eliminating the risk.

Bricktop wrote: »

I'm sorry but you are just wrong here. The game is PvX in that PvPers will still need to PvE and kill bosses in order to get gear, and that PvErs still need to PvP in order to kill bosses and get good gear. Crafting is needed by all players in order to craft said gear. The reason it works that way is because it's an open world game.

Why are you typing when you don't know anything? PvPers don't NEED to PvE to get gear. Crafting is NOT needed by all players to get gear. If so, whats the point in having other professions?

@Bricktop , I'm afraid you're grossly uninformed on what Steven wants this game to be. He doesn't want to force players to do things they don't want to do. He wants to allow every type of player to play the game. That's what he means by PvX.

Stop confusing your idea of a PvX game with Steven's. Yours is completely different, and may I say terrible. Forcing players to play one way is a terrible way to design a game.

Bricktop wrote: »

There is an 80/20 split of non-instanced vs instanced already in the game. You are suggesting MORE instanced content, which goes against the open world design of the game. Instanced dungeons that good gear drops out of are an absolutely atrocious idea if you are trying to make an open world game that requires people to fight over limited resources. Please stop trying to completely change the design of the game to have instanced raids.

Sometimes its ok to modify the design of a game, if it makes it better. Besides its not the ONLY solution. Its just something I came up with.

I think that introducing instanced PvE content is the only way Intrepid can bring challenging PvE content into AoC. That's my personal opinion, based on games that have done similar things in the past. I'd love to be proved wong, but so far I haven't been. That's all.