If you are coming to Ashes of Creation to try to find Mythic+ raids, you have the wrong game.

I posted this on reddit but I figured I would post it here too. I have noticed a couple people on the forums that are convinced that open world PvE dragons won't be challenging enough, and the primary solution is to have the Intrepid team start cranking out Instanced Mythic Plus pve raids for ashes of creation.

This is the wrong game for that. If the PvE in Ashes of creation is not as challenging as mythic+ raids from wow, that isn't a problem, and it does not need to be fixed. Take a look at the design pillars for ashes of creation.

instanced pve raids are not part of any of the design pillars to the game.

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Design_pillars#Design

instanced pve raids are not a major part of any of the games Steven draws inspiration from when creating ashes of creation.

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Design_pillars#Inspiration

Eve Online with its regionalized economy and risk vs reward in transportation.[9]
ArcheAge with its building systems, transportation and naval combat.[9]
Lineage II with its risk vs reward, castle sieges, flagging, open world PvP and guild progression.[10][9]
Star Wars Galaxies with its crafting systems.[9]

Take a look at the games above. Instances PvE Raids aren't even mentioned as an inspiration! While some of these games may have had pve instanced raids they aren't very challenging because PvE raids were not the primary purpose of the game, and were only there as a side feature.

What do the above games have in common? A heavy focus on territory control and player guilds / factions that fight over said territory. If the PvE instanced content isn't challenging enough, that is a low priority problem because it isn't the primary focus of the game. The primary focus of the development team will probably be fleshing out the node system and game mechanics for how the player built factions can interact with each other (node building / sieges / trading / pvp ) and when they are planning out future content it will most likely be features that enhance the node system, not an endless stream of instanced pve raid 5,6,7,8,9 that has tier 13,14,15,16,17 gear in it.

At the end of the day, having the Intrepid team side track to make sure there are Mythic+ raids on release is a monumental amount of scope creep that should be avoided, as it has nothing to do with the prmiary focus of the game (the node system and player built factions / territory control)

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Noaani

You say all of that, yet you miss this quote from Steven out completely

Combat itself will be pretty intricate mechanics-wise. We're going to have different phases of the bosses, there's going to be a lot of adds stuff, there's going to be random oriented skill usage. We're not going to have telegraphed templates on the ground, but we will have telegraphed animations, so it's going to be location, mobility, strategic. It will be something that can not be repeatable in the exact same way from raid to raid, but has a variance between the combat, so raiders are going to have to be fluid in thinking on their feet

Now, if the mechanics of an encounter are intricate and also matter, that means players outside of the guild taking on the encounter will be able to easily mess those intricate mechanics up for the guild trying to kill the encounter.

Since top end loot - and the mobs that drop it - are basically a beacon to all guilds on the server to come and attempt to get said loot, and since spawn timers will be at least somewhat predicable, it is safe to assume that there will always be competition for top end encounters.

So, you either have some encounters that are not subject to interferrence, or you don't have intricate mechanics on top end raid content.

Since we know that 20% of the games content is to be instanced, and we know that the intent is to have at least some top end content with intricate, phase based mechanics, it is fairly safe to assume there will be instanced raid encounters with intricate, phase based mechanics.

No one is suggesting that PvE instanced raids should become the focus, and if that is what you think, you should read the threads in question better.

forkbomb

Noaani wrote: »

You say all of that, yet you miss this quote from Steven out completely

Combat itself will be pretty intricate mechanics-wise. We're going to have different phases of the bosses, there's going to be a lot of adds stuff, there's going to be random oriented skill usage. We're not going to have telegraphed templates on the ground, but we will have telegraphed animations, so it's going to be location, mobility, strategic. It will be something that can not be repeatable in the exact same way from raid to raid, but has a variance between the combat, so raiders are going to have to be fluid in thinking on their feet

Now, if the mechanics of an encounter are intricate and also matter, that means players outside of the guild taking on the encounter will be able to easily mess those intricate mechanics up for the guild trying to kill the encounter.

So you mean like world dragons from classic wow?

Noaani

forkbomb wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

You say all of that, yet you miss this quote from Steven out completely

Combat itself will be pretty intricate mechanics-wise. We're going to have different phases of the bosses, there's going to be a lot of adds stuff, there's going to be random oriented skill usage. We're not going to have telegraphed templates on the ground, but we will have telegraphed animations, so it's going to be location, mobility, strategic. It will be something that can not be repeatable in the exact same way from raid to raid, but has a variance between the combat, so raiders are going to have to be fluid in thinking on their feet

Now, if the mechanics of an encounter are intricate and also matter, that means players outside of the guild taking on the encounter will be able to easily mess those intricate mechanics up for the guild trying to kill the encounter.

So you mean like world dragons from classic wow?

No idea.

Wow is full of bad game design, so I am more likely to say that if WoW has it, no other game should rather than if WoW had it, other games should.

forkbomb

It was a joke. Ill be more direct

Now, if the mechanics of an encounter are intricate and also matter, that means players outside of the guild taking on the encounter will be able to easily mess those intricate mechanics up for the guild trying to kill the encounter.

That's true and there are plenty of ways to solve this problem without instancing off the content. Specifically, a screen raid to take out anyone that will mess with it. Sounds like you better get busy making alliances in this player faction focused game

Noaani

forkbomb wrote: »

It was a joke. Ill be more direct

Now, if the mechanics of an encounter are intricate and also matter, that means players outside of the guild taking on the encounter will be able to easily mess those intricate mechanics up for the guild trying to kill the encounter.

That's true and there are plenty of ways to solve this problem without instancing off the content. Specifically, a screen raid to take out anyone that will mess with it. Sounds like you better get busy making alliances in this player faction focused game

That is a psuedo-instance, and has already been talked about at length here as a way to solve one of the two things that a limited amount of instanced content (read - about three encounters in total) would bring to Ashes.

The other thing it would bring is the ability for all guilds - even those always on the losing side of PvP - to know they will have something PvE based that they can kill.

This knowledge of there being at least something they can do will keep guilds in the game.

If you look at the two major influences in terms of games on that list, they both essentially had the same singular issue - and it is an issue almost all PvP MMO's have had.

Game goes live, players break up in to groups, one group beats the other. It is then on the developers to reward that group of players, often at the expense of the ones that lost.

This is fine, it is how it should be.

Thing is, that group that just won, they are now more likely to win next time, which will mean more rewards for them, which means they will be even more likely to win the time after.

The problem here - from a developers perspective - is that they want both groups to stay in the game, and in order to do that, they need both groups to be competitive. This is the problem with PvP heacy MMO's that is yet to be solved, and is what causes PvP games to have such drastic player atrophy from 8 - 18 months after launch.

While this is not a silver bullet approach, one of the things you can do to keep that group of players that are always on the losing end in the game (and thus paying subscriptions, and more importantly increasing the occurance of PvP for everyone else) is to give them some form of progression that is at least partially removed from PvP. Not completely removed, that would not fit in with Ashes at all, just partially removed.

That is what instanced raid content would provide - if done in the way literally everyone here is suggesting.

There are people that say this will lower the amount of PvP that happens, but those people are just stupid. All it is doing is shifting the time the enivitable PvP will happen.

If you put some food in your dogs bowl and then tell your dog to wait, the dogs food isn't going away while the dog waits. When you let the dog eat it's food, there is still that same amount of food there.

Likewise, if a raid enters a PvE instance while there was a group wanting PvP right behind them, all that group wanting PvP need to do is wait at the entrance to that instance. The PvP isn't going anywhere, there is just a slight wait on it. The raid would need to come back out that way, and if they were successful they will even have more on them to potentially lose (those of us wanting instances are even saying we want raw materials as drops, rather than finished items - that way the materials are up for grabs in PvP on the way home, and players with them are then unable to be summoned to safety). This just gives the raid more of a reason to fight back, and provides would be attackers with more potential reward for you if you kill them.

This is why I can't understand people that say instances are bad for Ashes, or that they don't fit in with Ashes. Sure, having everything instanced wouldn't work - at all. It would defeat the purpose of PvP in the game. Having a few instances though, that literally only adds more to *everyones* game play experience.

forkbomb

Noaani wrote: »

The other thing it would bring is the ability for all guilds - even those always on the losing side of PvP - to know they will have something PvE based that they can kill.

This is literally another foundational point that Steven brought up. Sorry there are unique things that you may NEVER get to experience. Its how we got participation trophy mmorpgs where everyone can get everything because we wouldn't wanna leave anyone out of anything. Its why nothing feels special because it ISNT special.

Noaani wrote: »

Game goes live, players break up in to groups, one group beats the other. It is then on the developers to reward that group of players, often at the expense of the ones that lost.

This is fine, it is how it should be.

Thing is, that group that just won, they are now more likely to win next time, which will mean more rewards for them, which means they will be even more likely to win the time after.

The problem here - from a developers perspective - is that they want both groups to stay in the game, and in order to do that, they need both groups to be competitive. This is the problem with PvP heacy MMO's that is yet to be solved, and is what causes PvP games to have such drastic player atrophy from 8 - 18 months after launch.

This is where your entire argument gets blow apart. It sounds like you have never spent a serious amount of time in a territory control mmorpg before. No one group ever gets to powerful no matter how much they win, all factions eventually fall. There is even visual proof of you being wrong on this specific point you are trying to make. Want to see it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7wQznerRMs

Noaani wrote: »

There are people that say this will lower the amount of PvP that happens, but those people are just stupid.

lol

Noaani

forkbomb wrote: »

It sounds like you have never spent a serious amount of time in a territory control mmorpg before.

About 5 years in Archeage - not super territorial, but it did have an aspect of that to it.

I saw the guild on top beat the guilds under it. I saw the guild at the bottom break and leave the game. I saw the remaining guilds split and reform, then the guild at the bottom broke up and left the game, then the remaining guilds split and reformed, then the guild at the bottom broke up and left the game - this happened about 8 times before the first round of server mergers - at which point it all just started over again.

Some people like to say Trion's pay to win scheme killed Archeage - but the pay to win aspect of the game didn't actually get that bad until about 2 years in to the game being live. By that time, the population was about 10% of what it had been - the game was already dead by that point and the cash shop was introduced as a way to scavange what few extra coins they could off the corpse.

While those on top will always eventually fall, they are not the issue here.

The issue - the thing that developers need to work on doing - is keeping the people at the botton in the game until those at the top fall. Not just in the game, but somewhere near competitive so that when that group at the top do eventually fall, they are not so far off the pace that they are complely ineffectual.

Also, EvE isn't a particularly good example to compare territory to with Ashes, as territory isn't a strict concept in Ashes like it is in EvE.

I will say though, of all PvP focused MMO's, EvE does have the best player retention. However, it is going down - the games peak was in 2013. Other than a single outlier in 2016/2017 for a few months, the population has been decreasing at a fairly consistent rate.

A better game to compare this aspect of Ashes to - the PvP systems - would be the two games that Intrepid have said they are taking insperation for PvP from - Archeage, but mostly L2.

L2 is a mess of a game due to not giving players a reasonable path to progression. Players were left to forge their own - which in most cases meant either forging a path in a different game, or forging a path using scripts.

Aardvark

No but the fact the raids are open world meaning the pve part will be joke easy and only hard if you get pvp harassment is a very big problem

Tragnar

Every world boss that I have ever seen is just a toy put into the sandbox world with the incentive for players to tear each other apart for it.

When you throw into that setting with antizerg mechanics to limit players to 40 players(in the case of ashes) then you either make it easy or literally unkillable, because the hours required for teaching 40 people how to play the fight is so big that you will always have someone grief their pulls.

So the bosses will just remain undefeated until the developers make them so easy that the boss dies with first few tries whenever the team can sneak those bosses during offpeak hours

Bricktop

Gettin my popcorn ready. Can't wait to see massive paragraphs about why the game will die without instances and free gear. We all know instances are what keeps a game alive right? Just look at wildstar!

Aardvark wrote: »

No but the fact the raids are open world meaning the pve part will be joke easy and only hard if you get pvp harassment is a very big problem

Can you link me the video you watched that talks about the open world boss mechanics, how a few of the bosses fights will play out, etc. I wasn't aware people knew how the fights/PvE were gonna go yet. It's mindblowing to me how many people know how easy it is when they haven't played the game yet or have seen zero information about the open world raid mechanics.

Tragnar

Ashes is not the first MMO to be created so it is fair to make educated assumptions about shared content types with other MMO's. Specifically about open world bosses - they have never been in any game a difficult obstacle to kill unless you had to PvP during the fight.

There is simple provable correlation between decreasing difficulty and increased player numbers for the encounter. For the most part it is not about if the players are actually fighting between each other, but what if they join hands and a boss that was created as a challenge for 40people is easily defeated by 80 or even 60? How do you recognize players that want to wipe the players or players that want to help them to make it much easier?

To make the argument that we don't know what the raids will look like when we have decades of raid content from other games is totally irrelevant.

It is just the worst practice to expect that Intrepid will invent a new way of doing things before they actually invent it.

VmanGman

Noaani wrote: »

You say all of that, yet you miss this quote from Steven out completely

Combat itself will be pretty intricate mechanics-wise. We're going to have different phases of the bosses, there's going to be a lot of adds stuff, there's going to be random oriented skill usage. We're not going to have telegraphed templates on the ground, but we will have telegraphed animations, so it's going to be location, mobility, strategic. It will be something that can not be repeatable in the exact same way from raid to raid, but has a variance between the combat, so raiders are going to have to be fluid in thinking on their feet

Now, if the mechanics of an encounter are intricate and also matter, that means players outside of the guild taking on the encounter will be able to easily mess those intricate mechanics up for the guild trying to kill the encounter.

Since top end loot - and the mobs that drop it - are basically a beacon to all guilds on the server to come and attempt to get said loot, and since spawn timers will be at least somewhat predicable, it is safe to assume that there will always be competition for top end encounters.

So, you either have some encounters that are not subject to interferrence, or you don't have intricate mechanics on top end raid content.

Since we know that 20% of the games content is to be instanced, and we know that the intent is to have at least some top end content with intricate, phase based mechanics, it is fairly safe to assume there will be instanced raid encounters with intricate, phase based mechanics.

No one is suggesting that PvE instanced raids should become the focus, and if that is what you think, you should read the threads in question better.

Instanced dungeons will be mainly used for story content. They will not be used for hard mode (mythic+) content. https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Instancing

OP is right. If you are looking for mythic+ level dungeons with no PvP interference then this is the wrong game for you.

Aardvark

vmangman wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

You say all of that, yet you miss this quote from Steven out completely

Combat itself will be pretty intricate mechanics-wise. We're going to have different phases of the bosses, there's going to be a lot of adds stuff, there's going to be random oriented skill usage. We're not going to have telegraphed templates on the ground, but we will have telegraphed animations, so it's going to be location, mobility, strategic. It will be something that can not be repeatable in the exact same way from raid to raid, but has a variance between the combat, so raiders are going to have to be fluid in thinking on their feet

Now, if the mechanics of an encounter are intricate and also matter, that means players outside of the guild taking on the encounter will be able to easily mess those intricate mechanics up for the guild trying to kill the encounter.

Since top end loot - and the mobs that drop it - are basically a beacon to all guilds on the server to come and attempt to get said loot, and since spawn timers will be at least somewhat predicable, it is safe to assume that there will always be competition for top end encounters.

So, you either have some encounters that are not subject to interferrence, or you don't have intricate mechanics on top end raid content.

Since we know that 20% of the games content is to be instanced, and we know that the intent is to have at least some top end content with intricate, phase based mechanics, it is fairly safe to assume there will be instanced raid encounters with intricate, phase based mechanics.

No one is suggesting that PvE instanced raids should become the focus, and if that is what you think, you should read the threads in question better.

Instanced dungeons will be mainly used for story content. They will not be used for hard mode (mythic+) content. https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Instancing

OP is right. If you are looking for mythic+ level dungeons with no PvP interference then this is the wrong game for you.

The OP is right in that while advertised as PvX this game is not likely to be that way. It’s shaping up as pvp with some sprinkles for the sole purpose of causing more pvp. There currently does not look to be any meaningful pve coming

VmanGman

Aardvark wrote: »

The OP is right in that while advertised as PvX this game is not likely to be that way. It’s shaping up as pvp with some sprinkles for the sole purpose of causing more pvp. There currently does not look to be any meaningful pve coming

With the majority of gear and progression coming from PvE and crafting the game is absolutely PvX.

I think that some of you don’t understand what PvX means.

You seem to think that PvX means that PvE players can fully enjoy their PvE in peace and PvP players can go out there and just brawl it out without having to worry about PvE (or with as little overlap as possible).

What PvX actually means is that when you go out into the world and progress your character you will have to engage in all types of content (PvE AND PvP).

PvX in AoC doesn’t meant that every player will have their little portion of the world where they can do their content. It means that all content is mixed and integrated with each other. That’s why Intrepid has the design goal of majority open world dungeons and very few instances.

You need to stop looking for ways to remove the PvP from the PvE. That is not Ashes of Creation’s design goal. The dungeons in this game will not be mythic+ level, but Intrepid seems to understand the issues that MMOs have so I am sure that they are aware that tank and spank content is not fun. The dungeons will have some difficulty from a PvE standpoint, but also a big balancing factor will be the PvP. Please stop trying to separate the two. If you don’t like the PvX nature of the game then the game might not be for you.

Ventharien

Aardvark wrote: »

The OP is right in that while advertised as PvX this game is not likely to be that way. It’s shaping up as pvp with some sprinkles for the sole purpose of causing more pvp. There currently does not look to be any meaningful pve coming

If the only source of gear progression is pve, the game has meaningful pve. You cannot purely pvp and succeed. You cannot purely pve without the possibility of pvp. So PvX is a perfectly acceptable term. The subjective argument currently occurring isn't about pve content being meaningful, or present, It's about how it's perceived difficulty is being compared to other titles.

And Intrepid has never stated nor indicated that is their goal. If you look at the quotes used in this thread, you see they are much more focused on making the PvE encounters non repetitive, and the raid themselves varied and changing. Difficulty is a subjective meter that they can't possibly build around. They will try to make it engaging, and do their best to have the largest amount of people possible believe it is fun and had a measure of difficulty to it.

anotherone

This thread is a joke! Bricktops new fake account

Maybe some official statement would be nice here to make it clear. Your hardcore pvp game isnt out yet. No matter how hard you are wish for.

In the end you have to keep in mind that this game is announced with a subscription model. Think about it before you discuss for what kind of people the game will be. The more people the better, if you like it or not.

neuroguy

Oh boy another spin off thread. Why don't we take a break from this topic and come back to it during alpha or once we have some more footage of what they're doing in dungeons (and some hints hopefully to how raids are going to be).

I know we're all dying to play and consume more information but I believe all that could be said has been said on this particular topic... somewhere in the hundreds of pages across like 5 threads.

Aardvark

Why do you keep calling crafting pve that is player vs time sink profession it’s not pve. And pve that is joke easy is not meaningful content it’s just a time sink for the pvp players. So far this game appears to be pvp and some things to cause pvp. That is not pvx. To be pvx it must have both meaningful pvp and meaningful pve

Hurf Derfman

What if I want mythic+ raids™️ and arenas™️ at the exact same time?

Sherkus

The important thing here is the next:

If you buy AoC do it because AoC is what you expect, don't try to change it.
One thing that scares me is Intrepid Studios hearing cryes in the next months/years and changing some ideas of the game...
The game should stay how it is...
Just see how World of Warcraft Classic has changed along the years... World of Warcraft Battle For Azeroth is not an MMORPG anymore, its an MORPG, the massive scale has been lost across the years...
the first step was including a queue system for partys, then creating the gathering system personal, then creating warmode on/off, then making world bosses useless...

I hope that Ashes of Creation never changes those ideas just to take more people to the game..
Anyway, there are no mythic + raids, but if you kill a boss faster than it should be, the next one increases the difficulty, with more dmg/hp and mechanics, also more drop... so its similar

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