Those huge dungeons

I know that not all dungeons will be huge sprawling affairs but how does intrepid make us the players want to explore every part of them? What incentives could be put in place to make it relevant or worth while to explore those side passages rather than just take the most effective path straight to that last boss?

For me I can not help but think back to vanilla wow and black rock mountain and how it all linked together to form a huge sprawling dungeon and I can't help but wonder if intrepid has any similar sorts of plans for their dungeons.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

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maouw

I wonder if a good way to implement this is to make the side branches of a dungeon affect the boss fight.
Which way it affects the boss fight is another question thought.

In most games I've played, exploring the side branches made the final fight easier

in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, you could explore the world or walk straight to the final boss fight as you were.
Exploring the world would make fighting the final boss easier.

I wonder if you could implement this the other way around, so that exploring the side branches increases the difficulty of the boss?

Not sure which direction would be more appropriate.
(maybe one boss in one direction, another boss in the other direction)

Varkun

Perhaps going in one direction might give you the drop on the boss making it easier to kill it and thus less loot or perhaps there might be something that will aid you in the fight to come an ally or such. While going another way may give the boss some warning and thus able to prepare by calling minions to help fight and thus more loot off the minions.

Intrepid has mentioned that killing early bosses quickly will result in a tougher fight for the next boss perhaps by exploring those side tunnels there might be some way to slightly mitigate the increase in power.

Good thoughts though @maouw

Noaani

My assumption with dungeons in Ashes is that they will be laid out somewhat similar - in general - to dungeons in EQ2.

This is for two main reasons. The first reason is taht many dungeons in EQ2 were open as opposed to instanced. The second reason is that a lot of ex-EQ2 staff work on Ashes. Obviously I may be wrong here, but as a generalized assumption it is likely not too far off.

What that game did to encourage people to spread out around a dungeon was quite simple - dungeons didn't generally have an end boss.

Instead, each dungeon had several (often several dozeon) bosses and mini-bosses spread out all over the zone. It meant that the best strategy for taking on a level appropriate dungeon was often to just to go to an area of the dungeon that wasn't currently occupied.

This worked in that game because the more desired items were usually on a shared loot table rather than being specific to one encounter (though some encounters did have the occasional piece of unique loot). With Ashes having encounters drop materials rather than items, this should fit in just fine.

This whole thing allows dungeon designers to have side paths, offshoots, and even just random rooms that are all worth players time.

Vhaeyne

I think the reason they are going to be so big is to allow multiple groups the ability to farm at once. I am feel like a broken record comparing AoC to L2, but this was the case in l2. You would be in constant competition for loot with other groups, and people would often kill each other to maintain "Their" area of a dungeon.

Sov54

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I think the reason they are going to be so big is to allow multiple groups the ability to farm at once. I am feel like a broken record comparing AoC to L2, but this was the case in l2. You would be in constant competition for loot with other groups, and people would often kill each other to maintain "Their" area of a dungeon.

It was the same in Tibia, the oldschool game I used to play.
Usually it would just be handled politically, but yeah, we need dungeons to be big.

Varkun

While I am a long time MMO player I have not played every game out there and I appreciate the perspectives from other games that have been put forward in the above posts.

It is true with Ashes that there is that option of pvp when you come across another group and this plays into the dungeons needing to be large. With materials being a portion of boss loot and I would imagine the mobs within a dungeon would provide some form of resources also the need to protect a farm location and the ability to work off corruption through experience gain may very well provide yet more incentive for pvp within dungeons.

I just hope that the very large dungeons will have many viable options when it comes to exploring them depending on what the goal of a party is. Should provide for some interesting encounters with other player groups let alone the NPC mobs.

wArchAngel

You enter the dungeon solo, most likely you will look for a very small room with 2-3 mobs that you can solo kill before their respawn timer overwhelms you. You will contest those tiny areas with other single adventurers.

You enter the dungeon with a few people(not full group), most likely you will look for either 2-3 tiny rooms connected, or one medium room to satisfy your clear speed with respawn timers, you will contest those rooms with other small groups, or a bunch of solo players that will try to defend their 1 tiny room, and might try to collaborate with another solo player whose other room you try to take, which will eventually lead to a somewhat equally sized conflict.

You enter the dungeon with a full group, most likely you will look for the biggest room to satisfy your clear speed, or a lot of connected small rooms, which will lead to conflict between full groups for those big rooms, or if a big group tried to take multiple small rooms(which might consist of multiple tiny rooms), the players in those rooms(not full groups) might collaborate to give opposition to the full group.

You enter the dungeon with an alliance of groups, your primary goal would be to clear the bosses and leave, or clear the bosses and 'close' a big part of the dungeon after you clear the bosses, so your groups would split accross evenly to satisfy their clear speed with respawns, which will naturally push away(or force to fight) all the groups that are currently sitting there. If they choose to leave, they will be forced to look for a similar room in that dungeon, and either occupy it if its free, or contest it against same "pushed over" groups.

Thats how it will work most likely, from my previous experience with such dungeons. Every single room of those dungeons will be occupied eventualy, if it fits the average progression of the area. Some rooms will be more desired than others, some groups will be stronger than others, which will lead to dynamic reallocation of people inside the dungeon all the time.

Crosim

I am not sure of the specifics on dungeons, but I remember is being said that like 80% were open and 20% were closed? That being said I just always assumed that the whole scaling mechanics was a feature of an instanced dungeon since otherwise people might form multi-groups and abuse the system?

I have never played EQ2, but I am currently going back through EQ1 now. I assume much of the same design philosophy carried over to its sequel. In those dungeons, as Noaani pointed out, there are lots of bosses to keep moving around to and incentivize mobility in a party, or let them camp an area to farm a specific item or group of mobs.

Keep in mind, dungeons have shifting 'hidden' areas that may or may not be active, so going back over areas could be super rewarding if you have a keen eyed adventurer in your group.

There was also mention of solo instanced dungeons? No idea how that works or would be balanced.

PlagueMonk

Varkun wrote: »

I know that not all dungeons will be huge sprawling affairs but how does intrepid make us the players want to explore every part of them? What incentives could be put in place to make it relevant or worth while to explore those side passages rather than just take the most effective path straight to that last boss?

For me I can not help but think back to vanilla wow and black rock mountain and how it all linked together to form a huge sprawling dungeon and I can't help but wonder if intrepid has any similar sorts of plans for their dungeons.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

My incentive for completely exploring it would be.........because it's there. This is admittedly a good reason to play a stealth class because they can usually go places others can't without the need to hack/slash their way through it.

bloodprophet

PlagueMonk wrote: »

Varkun wrote: »

I know that not all dungeons will be huge sprawling affairs but how does intrepid make us the players want to explore every part of them? What incentives could be put in place to make it relevant or worth while to explore those side passages rather than just take the most effective path straight to that last boss?

For me I can not help but think back to vanilla wow and black rock mountain and how it all linked together to form a huge sprawling dungeon and I can't help but wonder if intrepid has any similar sorts of plans for their dungeons.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

My incentive for completely exploring it would be.........because it's there. This is admittedly a good reason to play a stealth class because they can usually go places others can't without the need to hack/slash their way through it.

Why hack and slash when fire works sooooo much better.

Katak

Surprised that I haven't seen it mentioned in this thread, but combat isn't the only reason for dungeons. Rogues will make a lot of their pay there, while hopefully avoiding much combat.

ThePhilosophile

to be honest, I wouldn't mind if Intrepid did something similar to WoW:WotLK Ulduar heroic modes. Particularly 0 yog aka Alone in the Darkness. I always thought Ulduar was one of the best raids Blizzard ever designed in terms of giving players creative ways of increasing boss difficulty and loot tables.

Vhaeyne

ThePhilosophile wrote: »

to be honest, I wouldn't mind if Intrepid did something similar to WoW:WotLK Ulduar heroic modes. Particularly 0 yog aka Alone in the Darkness. I always thought Ulduar was one of the best raids Blizzard ever designed in terms of giving players creative ways of increasing boss difficulty and loot tables.

Ulduar is my favorite raid of all time across all MMOs. I absolutely loved it. I must say that I would not expect anything like a WOW raid in AoC. Because the bosses are open world they will just be prize piñata's. Imagine doing yog25 with 60-120 people all fighting each other, and the boss. You can't tune a boss for that amount of people present, and have it be challenging. Steven says this is not the case, but I am extremely skeptical. I hope that once we get more into the alphas and people start raiding. Intrepid will see that in order to maintain the integrity of a challenging raid boss. You need to have it happen in an instance, and the fight needs to be tuned for an average gear level that is on the edge of what is currently obtainable. The gear system in AoC is another variable that makes me skeptical about AoCs open world raids being difficult. Imagine if you could have ICC25 man gear while fighting yog25. That may very will be the case. With the over enchant system, it is going to be very hard for the devs to come up with a scaling system to makes it so that the bosses are not getting melted by clans of players in the highest tier OC gear they can bring to the zerg.

To further drive my point home. Anyone who raids seriously has seen the difference between week one strats and week two+ strats. What is the difference? Enough of the raid got a few peices of gear, and we are now skipping mechanics or just outright able to ignore them. That is how tightly tuned a modern raid is. You can't have that in an open world, with multiple party's showing up, and a gear system that allows for such a vast range of power.

Now don't get me wrong here. I am not hating on AoC, I love everything I am seeing about the game. As much as I loved Ulduar, I loved going around with my clan hunting raid boss spawns and fighting for them in l2. It is a different game style. Politics and territory control Vs set experiences. We have plenty of the games with the modern raids that are tightly tuned to precise party sizes and gear scores. WOW/FFXIV have proven to both be very very good at that. We don't have enough of what AoC is showing us it wants to be. I want the open world PVP economy based sandbox that AoC is showing me it is.

Varkun

Vhaeyne wrote: »

ThePhilosophile wrote: »

to be honest, I wouldn't mind if Intrepid did something similar to WoW:WotLK Ulduar heroic modes. Particularly 0 yog aka Alone in the Darkness. I always thought Ulduar was one of the best raids Blizzard ever designed in terms of giving players creative ways of increasing boss difficulty and loot tables.

Ulduar is my favorite raid of all time across all MMOs. I absolutely loved it. I must say that I would not expect anything like a WOW raid in AoC. Because the bosses are open world they will just be prize piñata's. Imagine doing yog25 with 60-120 people all fighting each other, and the boss. You can't tune a boss for that amount of people present, and have it be challenging. Steven says this is not the case, but I am extremely skeptical. I hope that once we get more into the alphas and people start raiding. Intrepid will see that in order to maintain the integrity of a challenging raid boss. You need to have it happen in an instance, and the fight needs to be tuned for an average gear level that is on the edge of what is currently obtainable. The gear system in AoC is another variable that makes me skeptical about AoCs open world raids being difficult. Imagine if you could have ICC25 man gear while fighting yog25. That may very will be the case. With the over enchant system, it is going to be very hard for the devs to come up with a scaling system to makes it so that the bosses are not getting melted by clans of players in the highest tier OC gear they can bring to the zerg.

To further drive my point home. Anyone who raids seriously has seen the difference between week one strats and week two+ strats. What is the difference? Enough of the raid got a few peices of gear, and we are now skipping mechanics or just outright able to ignore them. That is how tightly tuned a modern raid is. You can't have that in an open world, with multiple party's showing up, and a gear system that allows for such a vast range of power.

Now don't get me wrong here. I am not hating on AoC, I love everything I am seeing about the game. As much as I loved Ulduar, I loved going around with my clan hunting raid boss spawns and fighting for them in l2. It is a different game style. Politics and territory control Vs set experiences. We have plenty of the games with the modern raids that are tightly tuned to precise party sizes and gear scores. WOW/FFXIV have proven to both be very very good at that. We don't have enough of what AoC is showing us it wants to be. I want the open world PVP economy based sandbox that AoC is showing me it is.

Some great points and yes Intrepid are going to have many hurdles to over come to get the dungeon/raiding into a good state with so many variables thrown into the mix. I often wonder if they intend to instance many of their raid bosses so they can control some of the variables and create a competitive raid environment. That 20% of instanced dungeon/raid content.

Vhaeyne

Varkun wrote: »

Some great points and yes Intrepid are going to have many hurdles to over come to get the dungeon/raiding into a good state with so many variables thrown into the mix. I often wonder if they intend to instance many of their raid bosses so they can control some of the variables and create a competitive raid environment. That 20% of instanced dungeon/raid content.

I have thought about it a lot. That is why I get a little wordy when the topic comes up. I won't be able to give actually feedback until Alpha2 myself, but I am extremely eager to see how the raid bosses pan out. Even if the raids are lack luster. The game will still be fantastic. With the focus on open world PvP, and economy. The game may just be closer to a fantasy version of EVE. Which would be perfectly fine by me. I don't NEED raids. I need a game that rewards socializing, and makes the work I put into my gear valuable for longer than a patch.

Varkun

I left my hardcore raiding days behind me in wow not saying I wouldn't dip my toe back in with Ashes but there is honestly so much on offer within the game I can honestly see myself being spoilt for choice as to what to do every time I login to Verra. I just hope they can deliver on the systems they have promised.

maouw

It's good you'll be around to give feedback on the raids.
The more feedback they get, the better chances for the raid to improve

I'm quietly optimistic that they'll have mechanics that prevent zerg without having to lean on instancing.
If not, we can discuss a few.

LieutenantToast

Hiya! Looks like some folks in this thread have already brought up some great points around the majority of dungeons being open vs. instanced, so you all will likely be exploring quite a bit to find a good spot that works best for you and your group. Plus, you never know what loot might be hiding around that next corner!

There are certainly a lot of variables to consider in terms of power balance for both dungeons and raids as well, so I'm sure we'll be asking for all of your detailed feedback on tuning those knobs as we get deeper into testing

ThePhilosophile

Hmm, maybe its weird mention, but in the Anime, Sword Art Online, they make the whole raid open, but they leave the boss behind a closed door that can only be engaged by players who are in the same group. Perhaps a system like this could work so that a boss can't just be zerged.

Possible solutions could be that who ever first engages the boss would have the entire party ( so long as they are inside the dungeon) teleported to the boss room, and all other players who are not in the party will be teleported outside the door to wait their turn so to speak. or perhaps an activation beacon that can only be activated if someone is not in combat could be present just inside the door that essentially does the same thing.

Varkun

As @LieutenantToast mentions there need to be reasons to go back to dungeons and raids beyond just killing the bosses for loot, reasons to explore and kill those supposed trash mobs. It is up to us as testers and fans of the game to provide feedback on what we would like to see what works and what doesn't work. Not all feedback and ideas may fit within the devs ideas or the theme of what Verra might be but is still worth providing.

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