Possible Solutions for PvE Difficulty

Introduction

Its no secret that a lot of people, including me, are concerned about PvE content difficulty. Many people on this forum seem to think that the problem with players like us is that we don't want to face "risk" while clearing PvE content. This couldn't be further from the truth.

There are different types of risks. Different types of players enjoy different types of risks. Some people like the RNG risk associated with crafting. Some like the risk associated with being ganked. And some like the risk of being wiped on a raid or dungeon. Some are like me, they like all 3.

Right now, we know that the first two types of risk are going to exist in AoC. Steven has said that he wants an enchanting system similar to L2 in AoC (during his interview with Tim), which was a high risk-high reward sort of system where your weapons had a chance to break if you tried enchanting beyond a certain point. The second risk is going to exist in AoC as well, by nature of the game being Open World.

Its the third risk that most people are concerned about. In making the vast majority of PvE content Open World, will PvE content be made too easy? Will it end up just being PvPvE, where the difficulty arises from player contention, as opposed to PvE, where the difficulty arises from the content itself? This is the question that Intrepid needs to answer. We know that open world content can never truly be as challenging as instanced content, but the gap has to be small. How large of a gap will it be when the game comes out? That is what people like me are worried about.

Possible Solutions

Now, Let's talk about possible ways to bridge this gap.

Fix no.1 - Adding A LOT of entrances to each Dungeon/Raid

This is one of the simpler solutions, but is also the most time consuming to implement. Basically make dungeons/raids into a maze of sorts with multiple entrances. Each entrance leads into its own mini dungeon/raid within the original dungeon/raid. These entrances can lead to a set of 3 or so bosses, and can also intersect with another entrance's mini dungeon/raid to connect a few bosses.

The amount of these entrances can be controlled depending on how contested you want that particular dungeon/Raid to be.

At the end of the dungeon, all the entrances can lead upto a final boss room. This will be more of a PvPvE encounter. This also encourages guilds to perform well, as clearing the bosses quicker lets you get to the final boss faster. The final boss will drop similar tier loot as the previous bosses, but will drop more of it along with a few additional materials/items. These items can be mounts/recipes etc.

Also, the dungeon/raid map won't show you where you're at. They'll just give you a general understanding of the different areas in that particular dungeon/raid. (Suggested by @Merek )

Fix no.2 - Keys for Dungeons/Raids (Suggested by @Chaostastic and modified by me)

This is an interesting fix, but I'm not sure how effective it will be. I think its still a better solution than the first one, simply because its a lot easier to implement.

This idea works by controlling the ease of access for different dungeons/raids. By controlling the ease/difficulty of entry into a dungeon/raid, you can regulate the amount of player contention for that particular dungeon/raid. For example, a dungeon may require a special key, that takes a ton of time to grind for, and is consumed on entry. This way you are less likely to run into a contesting group, but its not entirely PvP free either.

Some dungeons might be easier to access simply because their keys are fairly easy to obtain. These dungeons will be more PvPvE than PvE. They could offer enchanting materials, materials that reduce the chance of your gear breaking when enchanting, augments, etc. Others will be more difficult to access simply because their keys are far more difficult to obtain. These dungeons will be more PvE than PvPvE and could drop high level gear. Of course all of these rewards can be interchanged, but this is the general gist of the idea.

Fix no.3 - Introducing different types of Dungeons/Raids

This is probably the most controversial one and that's fine. I still stand by it and I feel like its probably the best solution to solve the problem, even though a lot of people disagree with me. In terms of ease of implementation, its somewhere in between the first two solutions.

Basically how this works is that there will be two types of dungeons. Resource Dungeons/Raids and Gear Dungeons/Raids.

Resource Dungeons/Raids will be Open World content that give you enchanting material for your gear, materials that reduce the chance of your gear breaking when enchanting, augments, and repair tokens. Because enchanting gear is necessary to bring your gear upto the best level and because of the risk associated with it, players will be trying to run these dungeons/raids as often as possible. This will be more oriented towards PvPvE than PvE.

Gear Dungeons/Raids will be Instanced content that give you gear, and materials required to craft said gear. This will be purely PvE content. Additionally, apart from gear requiring its own crafting material to repair it, it will also require tokens. These tokens will only be obtained from Resource Dungeons.

This suggestion still retains the PvX aspect of the game as players will still need to do Resource based dungeons in order to gain progress/repair the high level gear that they obtain from Gear Dungeons/Raids.

Fix no. 4 - Specialized Instancing mechanics for certain Bosses

@wArchAngel has explained this in great detail with examples from L2. Check it out here:

https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/249865/#Comment_249865

Conclusion

So what do you guys think? Which of these solutions do you like the most and why? If you dislike all of them, then please do explain why and if you do have any alternate suggestions/ideas, then do list that as well.

There's also the whole thing with zerging a boss down. Steven has said that they are working on mechanics to prevent zerging, but I'm not sure how effective that will be. The reason for this is because there are so many possible ways that such type of mechanics can lead to griefing in an Open World MMO. If you make the boss too easy because you want player contention to be the main source of difficulty, then the content itself will be boring and easy when there is no such contention. This is what happened with the dragon and the kraken in ArcheAge. Also, if this does happen, then the content itself won't be PvE anymore. It will be PvPvE. On the other hand, If you make the content too difficult, then it will be impossible to fight off both players and the boss at the same time. So they will have to find the right balance.

P.S. I made a post discussing this before but I didn't explain myself well. So a lot of people didn't understand my position properly. I also managed to pick up a few possible solutions from that discussion, all of which I mentioned above. If you wish to read it, here you go: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/46473/pve-difficulty

Also, to those of you asking why discuss this now, Shut up. By your logic nothing should ever be discussed on this forum as we don't have sufficient info on anything. Why discuss multiboxing? Why discuss corruption? Why discuss combat? We don't have complete info on these topics either. There's nothing wrong in discussing possible problems that may show up in game.

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Comments

Tyrantor

CaptnChuck wrote: »

@Tyrantor

I don't think people like you would even need to do that.

You might be right, but considering you failed to acknowledge my post in your other thread that's still present on the 1st page of these forums because you were too busy board warring that you needed to create a 2nd thread with the same topic, I really don't think this thread is deserving of my initial post.

Warth

I think the first question we should ask ourselves is, how would challenging PvE in AoC even look? The entire premise is very different from games like WoW or FFXIV. Let's just start with some of the most meaningful differences:

No DPS-Meter. How do you deal with DPS Checks (which are very common (possibly multiple) in every single WoW Boss. Do you make them so lenient than dedicated PvErs won't have any trouble meeting them, so your average joe can meet them as well? Do you make them hard to meet and force your average gamer to simply "get gud"? Do you get rid of them entirely? Cause raid wipes by failing to do mechanics instead of being too slow?
No supportive Add-Ons. No ERT, no WA, no DBM and no BW. The requirements for players to multi-task, attend to more issues at once, Dodge while keeping buffs up, while managing boss mechanics while realizing what the boss will do next are substantially higher than they ever were in WoW. Can you overload bosses with the same kind of mechanics? How about one-shots, do one-shot mechanics have a place?, Do you pace it slower? Will missed boss mechanics simply wipe you or just put a massive strain on both healers, tanks and the DPS' Ability to evade?
40 Man Raids. Not really much to talk about. Current WoW Raids with 40 man? Yikes. How much leeway do you give players to fuck up without causing the attempt to fail?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a strict no-addon rule. Especially those that help you in combat are absolute cancer. Not having them from the get-go sets a lot of different restriction and pre-requirements for PvE-encounters. I personally like that. The question remains though, what will Ashes PvE look like without them? Imagine N'zoth, the world first guilds in Complexity-Limit and Method killing them took ~260 Kills each. With DPS Meters, with a whole bunch of supportive Add-Ons and a considerably smaller Raid Size. Something like that wouldn't be killable in a year with the restrictions Ashes has put in place.

Now, what I am trying to say is... It might make sense to think about the way PvE content could/will look in Ashes, before thinking about how you can implement it Different solutions might become impossible, some might become mandatory. Maybe we even land at a place, where we have to reconsider the thought process altogether.

When was the last time we have a a PvE Game with hard PvE Content with restrictions like these? Never? Closest was probably Wildstar. They did have Add-Ons, they did have DPS Meters. They just had a 40 man raid, which they implemented like you'd implement a WoW Boss. What happened? The first 40-man boss (System Daemons) ripped through most of the guilds like a hot knife through butter. Literally one of the handful of bosses that kill more guilds than it was killed by. Not just random guilds, but guilds of dedicated WoW Raiders.

What's your thought on that @CaptnChuck ?

Without knowing what to implement, how could we ever come to a sensible decision on how to implement it?

wArchAngel

Warth wrote: »

I think the first question we should ask ourselves is, how would challenging PvE in AoC even look? The entire premise is very different from games like WoW or FFXIV. Let's just start with some of the most meaningful differences:
No DPS-Meter. How do you deal with DPS Checks (which are very common (possibly multiple) in every single WoW Boss. Do you make them so lenient than dedicated PvErs won't have any trouble meeting them, so your average joe can meet them as well? Do you make them hard to meet and force your average gamer to simply "get gud"? Do you get rid of them entirely? Cause raid wipes by failing to do mechanics instead of being too slow?

No supportive Add-Ons. No ERT, no WA, no DBM and no BW. The requirements for players to multi-task, attend to more issues at once, Dodge while keeping buffs up, while managing boss mechanics while realizing what the boss will do next are substantially higher than they ever were in WoW. Can you overload bosses with the same kind of mechanics? How about one-shots, do one-shot mechanics have a place?, Do you pace it slower? Will missed boss mechanics simply wipe you or just put a massive strain on both healers, tanks and the DPS' Ability to evade?

40 Man Raids. Not really much to talk about. Current WoW Raids with 40 man? Yikes. How much leeway do you give players to fuck up without causing the attempt to fail?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a strict no-addon rule. Especially those that help you in combat are absolute cancer. Not having them from the get-go sets a lot of different restriction and pre-requirements for PvE-encounters. I personally like that. The question remains though, what will Ashes PvE look like without them? Imagine N'zoth, the world first guilds in Complexity-Limit and Method killing them took ~260 Kills each. With DPS Meters, with a whole bunch of supportive Add-Ons and a considerably smaller Raid Size. Something like that wouldn't be killable in a year with the restrictions Ashes has put in place.

Now, what I am trying to say is... It might make sense to think about the way PvE content could/will look in Ashes, before thinking about how you can implement it Different solutions might become impossible, some might become mandatory. Maybe we even land at a place, where we have to reconsider the thought process altogether.

When was the last time we have a a PvE Game with hard PvE Content with restrictions like these? Never? Closest was probably Wildstar. They did have Add-Ons, they did have DPS Meters. They just had a 40 man raid, which they implemented like you'd implement a WoW Boss. What happened? The first 40-man boss (System Daemons) ripped through most of the guilds like a hot knife through butter. Literally one of the handful of bosses that kill more guilds than it was killed by. Not just random guilds, but guilds of dedicated WoW Raiders.

What's your thought on that @CaptnChuck ?

Without knowing what to implement, how could we ever come to a sensible decision on how to implement it?

In my humble opinion dps checks and oneshots should never even be measured, those are just cheap ways to "upscale" the encounter and make it seem "harder", which in return just makes you feel like you need an addon or a dps meter(which most of the times you dont, but people now days feel handicapped without them). If you put a mechanic that makes you deal "x damage in y time period" thats like saying "we didnt have anything in mind, so there you go, just hit it as fast as you can... and yay! you did it!".
There are a lot of ways you can make the encounter harder, without it going down the simple way of dps check and oneshots(failing a mechanic doesnt even have to lead to a oneshot, but it can be devastating).
From my personal experience, from Aion 5.1, a game where dungeons are usually laughable, we had an instance introduced that only 2-3 groups per faction per server managed to clear until it was nerfed, being one of them i can say that you dont need dps checks to be immediately punishing, but they can lead to some very bad situations.
You had 2 side-bosses to kill before you could dps the main-middle boss. There was a soft dps check, since the bosses were simply regening, and below certain level and certain stats breakpoints you couldnt outdps the regen. There was a medium dps check when the 2 side-bosses were downed, you had limited time to bring the middle-boss(stunned) to 25%, but that didnt punish you with a wipe, as the boss was a hydra-like being, if you failed that "dps check" the phase went 1 step back, and you had to dps the side-bosses again while the middle boss stays the same hp for the next attempt, which was a tedious proccess of constant pressure, timers and ads. But it didnt make you fail, it just forced you to retake the previous step, which usually led to bad concentration, frustration and wipes, but people that could "hold it steady" could do it in 2 cycles, slow and steady. Our first kill took us around 1 month of attempts - with learning all the mechanics, all the stat breakpoints, leveling and gearing properly, and it was a 1 hour encounter just for the last boss.

You could make a lot of mechanics that seem easy on the first sight, but might get tricky the more people you have. Shifting floors - for example land blocks in the lava with the dragon that will submerge from time to time, leaving unobserved and careless people in danger. Personal aoe trigger, the dragon could simply launch a meteor shower on everyone, which would proc an aoe explosion around every characters position in dragons proximity with like 2s windup - that would punish less coordinated blobs of people, if you spread unevenly, or not coordinate movement in the same direction might cause a lot of dead people.
Guildwars2 had "semi-dps-check" in form of cc breakbar, you can add that requirement for example that a dragon will attempt a "fly above burning everything" attack, and you need like 5 tank pulls, or 10 displacement abilities to stop it from doing so and stagger it. If you fail, he can do a flight above the arena, leaving 2 x-like trails of scorching earth that will heavily damage people on its way, and will block that ground area from walking on freely for a period of time.

I could sit for hours just bouncing ideas and throwing mechanics back and worth, that require you to actually be observant and play the game, and not rely on addons and dps-meters.

But i beg you, for the love of god, dont make it instanced, free entry content that any amount of people can farm simultaniously in multiple instances.

Archaeon

I thought of Fix 3 in another thread. I feel like that may be the best way to handle it.

The people who care about node building/resources will naturally care about PvP. So open world dungeons which don't have complex boss mechanics and having Pvp 'happen' mid-fight, makes sense. There is no such thing as a 'safe node' in this game (as far as I know), so these guys will want to do this type of PvE content.

The people who are care about challenging pve content can have their own dungeon instantiated and be rewarded with power progression in PvE.

Tyrantor

wArchAngel wrote: »

But i beg you, for the love of god, dont make it instanced, free entry content that any amount of people can farm simultaniously in multiple instances.

Drunk delete. All we need is instanced PVE so people can farm, for what I don't know yet considering it seems that crafting is going to be the primary source of gearing out characters.

Anyway you look at it instanced PVE would create an unfair advantage for those who do that since their "risk" would be less.

Merek

Tyrantor wrote: »

wArchAngel wrote: »

But i beg you, for the love of god, dont make it instanced, free entry content that any amount of people can farm simultaniously in multiple instances.

I'm already annoyed that Caravans appear to be instanced. Seems like they would be way more fun if you had to sneak through open world zones, sort of like a mini world boss/event every time a caravan comes through a zone, as people rush to help defend/attack it. All we need is instanced PVE so people can farm, for what I don't know yet considering it seems that crafting is going to be the primary source of gearing out characters.

Anyway you look at it instanced PVE would create an unfair advantage for those who do that since their "risk" would be less.

Wait, are you serious? I thought they were in the open world zones... That's unsettling. I think instanced dungeons are off, but I understand why they are. But instanced caravans? Yikes.

Bricktop

Tyrantor wrote: »

wArchAngel wrote: »

But i beg you, for the love of god, dont make it instanced, free entry content that any amount of people can farm simultaniously in multiple instances.

I'm already annoyed that Caravans appear to be instanced. Seems like they would be way more fun if you had to sneak through open world zones, sort of like a mini world boss/event every time a caravan comes through a zone, as people rush to help defend/attack it. All we need is instanced PVE so people can farm, for what I don't know yet considering it seems that crafting is going to be the primary source of gearing out characters.

Anyway you look at it instanced PVE would create an unfair advantage for those who do that since their "risk" would be less.

That doesn't seem accurate. Are you sure?

DioTheHero

Caravans are open world PvP. Where did you get the idea that it's instanced? The only thing I've heard hinted about it is that when you approach a caravan, you'll likely select a prompt that you're either there to defend or attack it... this is probably just a mechanism to determine who gets rewards or spoils based on the success or failure of the caravan and so you can't change sides.

Tyrantor

Haha ok my bad I might have had a little too much of the tavern ale this night. Really thought I read it somewhere that we would have to sign up for defense or attack on caravan's some where. - like as a way to "flag" as a combatant.

Bricktop

Tyrantor wrote: »

Haha ok my bad I might have had a little too much of the tavern ale this night. Really thought I read it somewhere that we would have to sign up for defense or attack on caravan's some where.

That's the prompt he was telling you about. When you go up to a caravan in the open world it will prompt you with "Do you want to attack, defend, or stay neutral?"

Which I personally am worried about, hopefully there is a long timer on that. How can I threaten the caravan owner to pay or they will be attacked if I have to make that choice immediately without even talking to the person?

Marcet

If the difficulty is the way its supposed to be, I don't care about getting ganked or doing PvP.
What we don't want is Intrepid making easier PvE cause of the PvP factor.

Im 100% with the dungeon keys thing. I loved it in other games.

CaptnChuck

@Warth

Warth wrote: »

The question remains though, what will Ashes PvE look like without them? Imagine N'zoth, the world first guilds in Complexity-Limit and Method killing them took ~260 Kills each. With DPS Meters, with a whole bunch of supportive Add-Ons and a considerably smaller Raid Size. Something like that wouldn't be killable in a year with the restrictions Ashes has put in place.

N'zoth was actually unbeatable when he initially came out. So there's that. Tuning a boss' strength in various phases, at different raid performance levels, is obviously something that Intrepid will learn with practice. They will prob be testing this out during the beta phases.

Warth wrote: »

Now, what I am trying to say is... It might make sense to think about the way PvE content could/will look in Ashes, before thinking about how you can implement it Different solutions might become impossible, some might become mandatory. Maybe we even land at a place, where we have to reconsider the thought process altogether.

When was the last time we have a a PvE Game with hard PvE Content with restrictions like these? Never? Closest was probably Wildstar. They did have Add-Ons, they did have DPS Meters. They just had a 40 man raid, which they implemented like you'd implement a WoW Boss. What happened? The first 40-man boss (System Daemons) ripped through most of the guilds like a hot knife through butter. Literally one of the handful of bosses that kill more guilds than it was killed by. Not just random guilds, but guilds of dedicated WoW Raiders.

What's your thought on that @CaptnChuck ?

Without knowing what to implement, how could we ever come to a sensible decision on how to implement it?

We know that there is no way that AoC can attain the same level of difficulty as WoW or Wildstar. Open World content can never be as challenging as high level instanced content, especially not without dps meters. What I listed above are mere solutions to control difficulty, so that you can control the type of difficulty of that content, and the general difficulty of that content as well.

Its true, we don't know much about how raid/dungeon bosses are going to work. But we have an idea about the general framework. So using that, we can make some calculated guesses as to the problems that are going to exist and possible ways to solve said problems. We know that open world content is going to be far less difficult than instanced content. So what are the possible ways to bridge that gap? That's what this thread is about.

A similar thing happened with Multiboxing. We knew about multiboxing in various other games. So a lot of people were discussing about ways to combat multiboxing in AoC. Ultimately, Intrepid made the right decision when it came to multiboxing, and if this happens with PvE difficulty as well, then I have no issues whatsoever.

All I'm doing is discussing solutions for a problem we know has existed in other games with open world content.

Noaani

Tyrantor wrote: »

wArchAngel wrote: »

But i beg you, for the love of god, dont make it instanced, free entry content that any amount of people can farm simultaniously in multiple instances.

Drunk delete. All we need is instanced PVE so people can farm, for what I don't know yet considering it seems that crafting is going to be the primary source of gearing out characters.

Anyway you look at it instanced PVE would create an unfair advantage for those who do that since their "risk" would be less.

Very few people are asking for instances farming content.

Some are, sure. But not most.

What most people want are instances for the sake of having an actual PvE experience in Ashes that isn't interrupted by PvP.

Now, if a group or raid have to run through the open world to get to a dungeon, then make their way through that dungeon to the bottom in order to get in to an instance that contains a single encounter, and then they have to fight all that way back, it really is stretching things to say they are avoiding PvP, or that they are farming content.

All it is doing is removing the ability for PvP to occur during that encounter - and attacking a group or raid that are engaged in content is cheap and cheesy.

I don't personally think it is in good taste for anyone to complain about a small number of encounters being outside of interference from PvP, considering getting to and from those encounters opens players up to PvP.

As to players taking on the content being at an advantage due to less risk - this is probably the weakest argument possible.

The content is available to all, so there is no advantage to anyone. Also, if the risk shifts from players killing you to mobs killing you, the risk is the same - and PvP content that is designed to be killed without PvP can be designed to be harder tha PvE content that is designed to be killed with PvP can.

Aardvark

CaptnChuck wrote: »

Bricktop wrote: »

CaptnChuck wrote: »

Bricktop wrote: »

CaptnChuck wrote: »

Bricktop wrote: »

Some great ideas in here that would allow for PvE without killing the open world nature of the game.

I would also recommend This excellent post by @wArchAngel for some great ideas on how you could structure open world boss encounters so that they are partially "instanced" or have lockout mechanics that allow for PvP at first, but the victor goes the spoils.

Thankyou for linking that comment. It does go into great detail and talks about the final fix that I didn't mention in my post; the idea of instancing bosses once your group engages it. I'll add that in if I happen to have the time.

One thing I cannot understand is, how exactly does the idea of "bosses getting stronger based on your raids performance on previous bosses" apply to this one?

Sorry, I'm not sure where you see that. However if I had to wager a guess based on the quote alone I would suggest that there will be instanced WoW styled raids in the 20% instancing number, and the devs would love to have the AI behave that way in those style of instances. Or perhaps that could apply to open world dungeons.

The 20% instanced content is only for lore related raids. At least thats what I inferred from what Steven said during his interview with Asmongold.

As for the bosses being instanced, yes that's essentially what @wArchAngel said. But they're not the vanilla type of instancing. They're specialized instancing mechanics.

I just wanna point out that all of WoWs raids tied into the lore/story. That could still mean it's the raid style you enjoy. We just don't have enough information.

Incorrect. I don't "enjoy" instanced content. I enjoy challenging content.

Also I don't think that lore dungeons/raids will offer the best gear. They'll probably only offer moderate/decent gear, alongside achievement/organization related rewards.

But non-instanced content isn't challenging. It's pestered with pvp which is something different. Your post reads I don't enjoy challenging content, I enjoy challenging content.

Vyraka

Aardvark wrote: »

CaptnChuck wrote: »

Bricktop wrote: »

CaptnChuck wrote: »

Bricktop wrote: »

CaptnChuck wrote: »

Bricktop wrote: »

Some great ideas in here that would allow for PvE without killing the open world nature of the game.

I would also recommend This excellent post by @wArchAngel for some great ideas on how you could structure open world boss encounters so that they are partially "instanced" or have lockout mechanics that allow for PvP at first, but the victor goes the spoils.

Thankyou for linking that comment. It does go into great detail and talks about the final fix that I didn't mention in my post; the idea of instancing bosses once your group engages it. I'll add that in if I happen to have the time.

One thing I cannot understand is, how exactly does the idea of "bosses getting stronger based on your raids performance on previous bosses" apply to this one?

Sorry, I'm not sure where you see that. However if I had to wager a guess based on the quote alone I would suggest that there will be instanced WoW styled raids in the 20% instancing number, and the devs would love to have the AI behave that way in those style of instances. Or perhaps that could apply to open world dungeons.

The 20% instanced content is only for lore related raids. At least thats what I inferred from what Steven said during his interview with Asmongold.

As for the bosses being instanced, yes that's essentially what @wArchAngel said. But they're not the vanilla type of instancing. They're specialized instancing mechanics.

I just wanna point out that all of WoWs raids tied into the lore/story. That could still mean it's the raid style you enjoy. We just don't have enough information.

Incorrect. I don't "enjoy" instanced content. I enjoy challenging content.

Also I don't think that lore dungeons/raids will offer the best gear. They'll probably only offer moderate/decent gear, alongside achievement/organization related rewards.

But non-instanced content isn't challenging. It's pestered with pvp which is something different. Your post reads I don't enjoy challenging content, I enjoy challenging content.

Isn't that just a matter of opinion? I mean it looks like you are defining what challenging means, but that's really relative to each player. I can find non-instance bosses to be challenging.

Aardvark

Vyraka wrote: »

Aardvark wrote: »

CaptnChuck wrote: »

Bricktop wrote: »

CaptnChuck wrote: »

Bricktop wrote: »

CaptnChuck wrote: »

Bricktop wrote: »

Some great ideas in here that would allow for PvE without killing the open world nature of the game.

I would also recommend This excellent post by @wArchAngel for some great ideas on how you could structure open world boss encounters so that they are partially "instanced" or have lockout mechanics that allow for PvP at first, but the victor goes the spoils.

Thankyou for linking that comment. It does go into great detail and talks about the final fix that I didn't mention in my post; the idea of instancing bosses once your group engages it. I'll add that in if I happen to have the time.

One thing I cannot understand is, how exactly does the idea of "bosses getting stronger based on your raids performance on previous bosses" apply to this one?

Sorry, I'm not sure where you see that. However if I had to wager a guess based on the quote alone I would suggest that there will be instanced WoW styled raids in the 20% instancing number, and the devs would love to have the AI behave that way in those style of instances. Or perhaps that could apply to open world dungeons.

The 20% instanced content is only for lore related raids. At least thats what I inferred from what Steven said during his interview with Asmongold.

As for the bosses being instanced, yes that's essentially what @wArchAngel said. But they're not the vanilla type of instancing. They're specialized instancing mechanics.

I just wanna point out that all of WoWs raids tied into the lore/story. That could still mean it's the raid style you enjoy. We just don't have enough information.

Incorrect. I don't "enjoy" instanced content. I enjoy challenging content.

Also I don't think that lore dungeons/raids will offer the best gear. They'll probably only offer moderate/decent gear, alongside achievement/organization related rewards.

But non-instanced content isn't challenging. It's pestered with pvp which is something different. Your post reads I don't enjoy challenging content, I enjoy challenging content.

Isn't that just a matter of opinion? I mean it looks like you are defining what challenging means, but that's really relative to each player. I can find non-instance bosses to be challenging.

Open pvp bosses aren’t challenging the pvp is what causes the challenge not the boss

Tyrantor

Noaani wrote: »

Very few people are asking for instances farming content.

Some are, sure. But not most.

What most people want are instances for the sake of having an actual PvE experience in Ashes that isn't interrupted by PvP.

Now, if a group or raid have to run through the open world to get to a dungeon, then make their way through that dungeon to the bottom in order to get in to an instance that contains a single encounter, and then they have to fight all that way back, it really is stretching things to say they are avoiding PvP, or that they are farming content.

All it is doing is removing the ability for PvP to occur during that encounter - and attacking a group or raid that are engaged in content is cheap and cheesy.

I don't personally think it is in good taste for anyone to complain about a small number of encounters being outside of interference from PvP, considering getting to and from those encounters opens players up to PvP.

As to players taking on the content being at an advantage due to less risk - this is probably the weakest argument possible.

The content is available to all, so there is no advantage to anyone. Also, if the risk shifts from players killing you to mobs killing you, the risk is the same - and PvP content that is designed to be killed without PvP can be designed to be harder tha PvE content that is designed to be killed with PvP can.

Out of all the posts in this thread I'm a bit surprised you are replying to mine especially on such a grand scale.
Since you went to all this trouble I want to show you how you not only made my point but contradicted yourself.

Noaani:
1) What most people want are instances for the sake of having an actual PvE experience in Ashes that isn't interrupted by PvP.
2) As to players taking on the content being at an advantage due to less risk - this is probably the weakest argument possible.
3) The content is available to all, so there is no advantage to anyone. Also, if the risk shifts from players killing you to mobs killing you, the risk is the same.

Look at what you're saying - "The risk is the same if mobs can kill you and players can't" IF that was even remotely true on any level, guess what........ No one would be asking for instanced PVE. What is simply being asked for is a "safe" place from PvP or literately a safe PVE zone, boss mob or not. You understand that once the player element of death is removed it's already a 50% advantage (less risk) over everyone else in the game that is NOT in the PVE instance at that exact moment regardless if that group has to walk there or walk home exposed to PvP. Once the loot drops and gets equipped they will have no risk of loss because of PVP.

Any boss mob that can be designed to kill the players as "instanced content" could be created for the open world just the same.

In addition the risk of death to players is going to account for being looted. If you die to a Mob it's not going to loot you, and frankly at the moment it's not really clear exactly what happens in terms of item loss from mob death, however if there is none, or your "group" can just pick it up this would also count as an advantage to do instanced PVE since your body would not be looted in PVP death i.e. less "risk"

So while my point may be "weak" for you it's still the truth.

CaptnChuck

Tyrantor wrote: »

Look at what you're saying - "The risk is the same if mobs can kill you and players can't" IF that was even remotely true on any level, guess what........ No one would be asking for instanced PVE. What is simply being asked for is a "safe" place from PvP or literately a safe PVE zone, boss mob or not.

@Tyrantor I CLEARLY defined the different types of risks in my post. READ IT. A super difficult boss can be as or even more challenging than random players.

Tyrantor wrote: »

You understand that once the player element of death is removed it's already a 50% advantage (less risk) over everyone else in the game that is NOT in the PVE instance at that exact moment regardless if that group has to walk there or walk home exposed to PvP. Once the loot drops and gets equipped they will have no risk of loss because of PVP.

What loss are you talking about? You don't lose gear when you PvP. You have a CHANCE to lose gear when you're CORRUPTED. I suggest you read the wiki properly, as your replies to my post clearly show that you still don't know much, and that you're just posting for the sake of posting.

NO ONE is asking for pure instanced content. Most people want some sort of hybrid content. Understand that first.

Tyrantor wrote: »

Any boss mob that can be designed to kill the players as "instanced content" could be created for the open world just the same.

This statement itself shows that you have no idea what you're talking about. ITS NOT THE SAME THING. That's why a lot of people are asking about it. If you had any idea about how bosses worked in general, you wouldn't be saying senseless things like this.

Tyrantor wrote: »

In addition the risk of death to players is going to account for being looted. If you die to a Mob it's not going to loot you, and frankly at the moment it's not really clear exactly what happens in terms of item loss from mob death, however if there is none, or your "group" can just pick it up this would also count as an advantage to do instanced PVE since your body would not be looted in PVP death i.e. less "risk"

You lose SOME gatherables on death. That's it. You're not gonna gain a ton of resources from killing players. Nobody who comes to raid is even gonna have that many gatherables. They're gonna have potions and stuff which are NOT lootable. So you're not even gonna get anything if you kill them, aside from a huge amount of corruption.

You're not going to instantly teleport to a hybrid dungeon. You have to WALK there. And during that time, you can be attacked. And that's COMPLETELY OK. What we don't want is to constantly deal with PvP, DURING THE ENCOUNTER. Not BEFORE/AFTER IT.

CaptnChuck

Redacted

Bricktop

CaptnChuck wrote: »

@Tyrantor I CLEARLY defined the different types of risks in my post. READ IT. A super difficult boss can be as or even more challenging than random players.

A scripted AI encounter that you can predict and research can never be as difficult as an unscripted and unpredictable fight with an actual person or group of people who thinks for themselves no matter how much you try and claim otherwise. There is ZERO actual risk in a raid instance. Dying in a video game isn't a risk. Paying repair bills aren't a risk. A boss doesn't remember you and actively hunt you and your guild down in game for months trying to make you all quit the game.

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