Concerned that world bosses will become the same as the ones in Guild Wars 2

Was watching the latest dev update and the bit where they discuss world boss scaling got me thinking about why I quit doing them in Guild Wars 2.

They weren't fun because everyone just stood in the safest spot and stayed there the whole time.

The only real solution to this is minimize the "safe spots" so that there isn't much of that, but I think player collision will be huge in these events, but then the battlefields will have to be HUGE to house that many people, and allow them to move enough to dodge the attacks.

Just wanted to toss this out there and start the discussion!

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Noaani

@Leiloni
Sorry for the long post, though I have made it as worth your while to read as I think I am able.

Leiloni wrote: »

I'm not sure there were interviews where I personally had the impression he wanted typical progression raiding with several bosses and continually introduced new content.

This isn't what is being talked about.

No one is expecting Intrepid to be in a position where they feel a need to introduce new raid content every few months in order to feed top end raiders. This is not a requirement of progression raiding, it is a result of lazy development from Blizzard (which is the only game 95% of players have experienced raid progression in).

Good game development processes would allow the development team to implement new raid content on a yearly basis and keep the raiding population happy. Most of the senior staff at Intrepid are ex-SoE employees, and worked on three of the five games I listed in an above post as having good top end raid content (EQ, EQ2 and Vanguard). So, it should go without saying, the staff that Steven have are capable and experienced in implementing progression raiding in a manner that blows everything Blizzard has done away.

Whether that happens again in Ashes is yet to be seen - but the ability to do it again is there.

As to comments from Steven in relation to progression based raiding.

One of the design elements that we're implementing into our raids is that the raid will not be exactly the same every single time. You're going to have variables that can't necessarily be pre-planned out for. You can pre-plan out for a lot of the raid like how many DPS do you need and healers and support; where the key position and all that kind of stuff; but I think the compelling aspect of Ashes raiding will be the difficulty in achieving this content and having that content change from session to session as well.

In this quote, Steven is talking about differences between how he wants Ashes raid content to be in comparison to most other games. The differences have the potential to be great, and this line of thinking could make Ashes raid content stand out from other games by itself.

However, I would like to draw your attention to the bolded part above. Some aspects of teh raid can be pre-planned.

One of the key aspects of pre-planning a raid is knowing that you have a target to take on. There are only two means by which players can know they have a target to take on - either the target is in an instance they have access to, or the target is an encounter they can force spawn.

Since force spawned encounters can be very easily exploited for large gain, the assumption that should be made is that a good number of these encounters would be instanced.

There will be some in-depth raiding that has multiple stages that will be extremely difficult and... It would definitely be in the single digits of population that will be capable of defeating certain content... It doesn't mean that there won't be content available for the larger percentages as well... There should be a tiered level of content that players can constantly strive to accomplish. If there is no ladder of progression and everything is flat and all content can be experienced, then there is no drive to excel.

Now, if this comment is not describing something extremely similar to a progression based raiding scheme, I would be quite interested to hear exactly what kind of content it is that you think would fit in to the above description.

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, this is more specific.

This comment is essentially describing top tier raiding in EQ2. In the hardest of encounters, you can't simply repeat what you did the time before. Even comments like the telegraphed abilities not being stenciled on the ground is right out of EQ2.

Again, I should point out, Intrepid have a number of senior staff on board that developed raids in EQ2.

Any player that raided in EQ2 and is aware of the early hires Steven made would not be able to read this quote and not immediately make the assumption that Steven plans to model raid content at least in part on EQ2's raid content.

Now, you are a comparitively new member of this community, as far as I am aware. As such, unless you have gone specifically looking for information on raids, you wouldn't have seen or heard much about them at all. This is why I am giving you a reply that is as full of information as I can make it rather than my usual style of posting when I think the poster in question should know better.

Basically, since you don't strike me as being a player that is overly interested in raids, and since there hasn't been much new information on top end PvE for actual and literal years (as my initial post pointed out, there hasn't been any new raid info in years - all quotes above were from early/mid 2018), I have no reason to expect you to be aware of what has been said in relation to PvE raiding.

However, after reading the above, I would hope that you, as well as many others, come to the same understanding that I came to many years ago - Steven at least at one point intended this game to have a solid top end PvE scene, and people bought in to this game because of that.

Noaani

Dreoh wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Dreoh wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Dreoh wrote: »

If you actually paid attention, they said they would scale in mechanics, not statistics.

Meaning they'll get new abilities the more people there are, not more health/attack/defense/etc.

That doesn't really mean a whole lot. They are not the first to attempt to do that.

It means a lot compared to what OP is specifically scared of.

No it doesn't.

Yes lol, it does.

OP was specifically scared of just stat scaling and fights not changing

New Mechanics specifically address that, you're being disingenuous arguing otherwise.

Again, this is untrue.

The way almost all guilds will eventually realize is the best way to take on content that has these scaling mechanics is to assume that they need to kill the hardest version of the encounter.

As such, guilds will go in to the fight under the assumption that all mechanics will be turned on, and any that are not simply make the encounter easier.

This basically leaves content as being the same as it is in other games like GW2, but with the potential for it to occasionally be easier.

bloodprophet

The boss fight that starts at 1:40:00 in the 4k video seems like a really good starting point. Don't see why they can't find a creative solution to the zerg. Having collision turned on for us and the monsters changes the dynamic as well. No stack everyone on this one spot best we can nonsense. Then if the terrain
come in to play as well some people may be pushed out even farther and not able to help.
I have confidence they will surprise us on this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkwaYLOuw2s

akabear

Total word count of 3,830 so far to this thread; 1,962 or >50% can be attributed to Noaani.

Noaani

akabear wrote: »

Total word count of 3,830 so far to this thread; 1,962 or >50% can be attributed to Noaani.

Seems fairly normal.

If you don't want to read, don't ask questions.

SquirrelTeamSix

I'm not going to respond to each person as I'm on mobile with a dog pawing my phone out of my hands but I think it's a bit silly that people are just flat out saying that what I am concerned about simply won't happen, for no reason.

We have no reason to expect anything of the world bosses as of right now because the devs haven't even really made any that would support 40 ish people yet.

They can say anything they want, it doesn't mean that their words will work in practice let alone make it into the game.

And that's not me calling the devs liars, it's just that I don't think the issue is as simple as "the devs won't make the same mistakes as x devs because reasons"

There are reasons the world bosses are the way they are in other games, and I would bet a lot of money it's not because the devs were lazy or unoriginal. It's tough to make content of that scale and have it be impossible for players to find ways to trivialize mechanics.

Hell Stephen even kind of eluded to that when asked about over zerging the world bosses to begin with.

There's no way anyone can say it won't happen, no one knows that, not even the devs.

SquirrelTeamSix

Sathrago wrote: »

I think you are taking mechanics from other games and assuming that intrepid will make the same mistakes. We just can't know yet as they have already said that even they don't know exactly what they will do to make zerging bosses harder.

I am not assuming anything, just starting a discussion on a possibility.

Dreoh

Noaani wrote: »

Dreoh wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Dreoh wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Dreoh wrote: »

If you actually paid attention, they said they would scale in mechanics, not statistics.

Meaning they'll get new abilities the more people there are, not more health/attack/defense/etc.

That doesn't really mean a whole lot. They are not the first to attempt to do that.

It means a lot compared to what OP is specifically scared of.

No it doesn't.

Yes lol, it does.

OP was specifically scared of just stat scaling and fights not changing

New Mechanics specifically address that, you're being disingenuous arguing otherwise.

Again, this is untrue.

The way almost all guilds will eventually realize is the best way to take on content that has these scaling mechanics is to assume that they need to kill the hardest version of the encounter.

As such, guilds will go in to the fight under the assumption that all mechanics will be turned on, and any that are not simply make the encounter easier.

This basically leaves content as being the same as it is in other games like GW2, but with the potential for it to occasionally be easier.

I see what you're saying, I guess the argument just returns to whether or not the fight is cookie cutter or not

Noaani

Dreoh wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Dreoh wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Dreoh wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Dreoh wrote: »

If you actually paid attention, they said they would scale in mechanics, not statistics.

Meaning they'll get new abilities the more people there are, not more health/attack/defense/etc.

That doesn't really mean a whole lot. They are not the first to attempt to do that.

It means a lot compared to what OP is specifically scared of.

No it doesn't.

Yes lol, it does.

OP was specifically scared of just stat scaling and fights not changing

New Mechanics specifically address that, you're being disingenuous arguing otherwise.

Again, this is untrue.

The way almost all guilds will eventually realize is the best way to take on content that has these scaling mechanics is to assume that they need to kill the hardest version of the encounter.

As such, guilds will go in to the fight under the assumption that all mechanics will be turned on, and any that are not simply make the encounter easier.

This basically leaves content as being the same as it is in other games like GW2, but with the potential for it to occasionally be easier.

I see what you're saying, I guess the argument just returns to whether or not the fight is cookie cutter or not

Maybe, but the thing with raiders is that we spend time reducing content down to it's basic elements - meaning everything is cookie cutter to us.

To me, open world encounters are all inevitably going to end up as some version of GW2, L2, etc. The solution to this that I see as being the best is to not try and fight it, but rather to accept it and even lean in to it.

Rather than trying to force open world encounters to fit in to a raid progression box (a box Steven has said he wants Ashes to have), my suggestion would be to implement a raid progression, and also implement these open world bosses. Then you simply state that these open world bosses are not a part of that raid progression, but rather are their own thing.

Then you have the open world raids that guilds spend hours fighting over (which in itself is enjoyable content), but you also have the progression raiding that many guilds need so they simply have some PvE content to run as a guild.

This is - surely - the best of both worlds.

Debase

Noaani wrote: »

Any player that raided in EQ2 and is aware of the early hires Steven made would not be able to read this quote and not immediately make the assumption that Steven plans to model raid content at least in part on EQ2's raid content.

I hope this is true in some ways and hope it isn't in others. Did a ton of EQ2 raiding, both on PVE (Najena) and PVP (Nagafen). The actual PVE design of the game was very good with (in most expansions) good raid progression that stratified player progress based on difficulty. Obviously, there are at several key issues that make the model they utilized so unworkable that I'm not sure a facsimile of EQ2 raiding should even be utilized. First, they clearly aren't using the encounter locking mechanism, which will make the scaling difficulty in the open world uncharted territory. Obviously this is addressed via instancing.

The bigger issue is that EQ2 failed on contested PVE in a PVP environment, which is a huge part of AOC's goal. The only encounters where this would really work were those that were trivially challenging from a PVE perspective such that you could actually defend against the attackers while also doing the raid content. Anything that was PVE challenging you pretty much had to sneak in the middle of the night to avoid PVP contest in order to complete.

Noaani

Debase wrote: »

The bigger issue is that EQ2 failed on contested PVE in a PVP environment, which is a huge part of AOC's goal. The only encounters where this would really work were those that were trivially challenging from a PVE perspective such that you could actually defend against the attackers while also doing the raid content. Anything that was PVE challenging you pretty much had to sneak in the middle of the night to avoid PVP contest in order to complete.

I totally agree.

EQ2 didn't succeed in regards to contested content on PvP servers - though PvP was never a focus of that game, to be fair.

I've been saying for many years on these forums that actual PvE encounters, encounters that provide an actual challenge to players, that are able to be used as a step in a progression system, simply can not exist in an open world PvP setting.

The other thing I have been saying for just as long is that this isn't an issue.

A game like Ashes can - and should - have open world PvE content that are that basic tank and spank that encounters like EQ2's four Dominus encounters in RoK had, or like Archeages Red Dragon, or like almost anything in GW2, L2, BDO etc. Having these encounters is not a bad thing, even if they are simple. In a PvP setting, these encounters essentially fill the role of PvP objectives, and there is a lot of fun that can be had in relation to this type of content.

Then, as well as that, a game developer needs to implement an actual raid progression.

What you then have is open world content for players to fight over directly, and progression content for players to, well, progress through.

If you literally took EQ2's instanced raid content and dropped in in to Ashes without any additional changes, it would be out of place.

However, if you take that content and make two specific changes to it, you then have content that fits amazingly well in a game like this.

Those two changes are that you first of all require guilds be patrons of the nearest metropolis in order to gain access (or potentially a direct vassal).

The second chage you make is so that all drops from this content is in the form of raw materials that can be dropped when killed, except for one potential drop that is a 25% chance of dropping only from the final boss in each instance. This drop, rather than being a raw material, simply can not be placed in a player inventory, but rather needs to be transported in a caravan. Also, when a player loots this item, there is a serverwide message informing all other players of that fact.

There are a few other details that I would look at to make this work, but anyone looking at this and not seeing how that fits perfectly well in to Ashes probably hasn't been paying attention to what Ashes is.

With this, if there is a guild that I am particularly opposed to, I can attempt to encourage other guilds to put in the effort to take over that guilds patron status. If we are able to make it so that this guild is no longer patron of their node, they lose access to this content. It's just gone.

Second, if we can't do that, we can siege the node they are patron of. If we succeed, since there is no longer a metropolis in the area, no one has access to that content from this node cluster.

If we are unable to do that, we could simply work out when this guild is raiding the content in question, and plan out an ambush on any potential caravan that they would need to run if they manage to get that top tier drop. Since this is a caravan, we are able to attempt this ambush without fear of corruption.

To me, this is instanced raid content implemented in a way that works perfectly with a game like Ashes. This isn't the only way to do this, but it is the easiest and most obvious way that I can think of.

akabear

Let me see if I read this correctly, simplistically, you are suggesting that if a group successfully take down a boss, their certain drop items will not go to the group but the group`s caravan. And if they wanted to receive the reward of that kill, by default of the current system, would then require them to also successfully defent that loot until it got to town.

If that is what you are suggesting, great for mechanic, but I cant see why 1) extending raiding to require caravan extension 2) the necessity of using a caravan when the local town may be the place of choice to manage the drops in the first place.

Is there something missing from the interpretation?

Noaani

akabear wrote: »

Let me see if I read this correctly, simplistically, you are suggesting that if a group successfully take down a boss, their certain drop items will not go to the group but the group`s caravan. And if they wanted to receive the reward of that kill, by default of the current system, would then require them to also successfully defent that loot until it got to town.

If that is what you are suggesting, great for mechanic, but I cant see why 1) extending raiding to require caravan extension 2) the necessity of using a caravan when the local town may be the place of choice to manage the drops in the first place.

Is there something missing from the interpretation?

Yeah, you haver the general direction of the idea.

To your two specific questions,
1, why extend raiding to this specific caravan - the answer is simple, to open the rewards from the raid up to PvP. If a raid is going to take place in the relative safety of an instance, it is perfectly within reason, in my mind, that there essentially be a forced exposure to PvP.

2, the caravan would need to take this item to a metropolis.

As an addition to the idea above, once the item gets to a metropolis, it can then be processed in to an item that can be carried in a players inventory as normal - and can be used to craft top end items using this item, regular raw materials and drops from single group content. I would avoid the need for other raid components so that a smaller guild that is competent in PvP but not big enough to raid are able to make use of this reward if they get their hands on it.

Leiloni

Noaani wrote: »

One of the key aspects of pre-planning a raid is knowing that you have a target to take on. There are only two means by which players can know they have a target to take on - either the target is in an instance they have access to, or the target is an encounter they can force spawn.

Since force spawned encounters can be very easily exploited for large gain, the assumption that should be made is that a good number of these encounters would be instanced.

You're assuming that because you want it to be true. You're missing the third and perhaps more obvious choice - you know you have a target to take on because it's a fixed spawn in the open game world. What we know so far is they've confirmed two types of "raids". That is world bosses as well as open world raids - similar to open world dungeons except for more players. We saw one of these in the Alpha 1 preview livestream back in March. They haven't yet confirmed any to be fully instanced and in fact they've spoken little about what even will be instanced content. Considering the 80/20 comment, most of this we already know is open world content which fits what they said above. And they've already said most of the 20% will be story content - which makes sense - you don't want players merely trying to get the story to be risking a gank or fighting for an important story mob to spawn - but most of the rest of the game content, they do.

Steven has also spoken a bit about how these encounters spawn. Specifically we know that PvE content is a major reason for developing certain nodes to a certain point. Opening up and changing content in general, of various kinds, via the node system, is perhaps the key aspect of the game's design. This is an idea we've been hearing from day 1 (and yes, I've been around since day 1). So we know that open world dungeons and open world raids are going to exist in fixed locations as points of interest and then be populated based on the node system and what nodes nearby are developed to what stage. The types of mobs and difficulty will be influenced by the world around it. You can view the A1 preview video to get an idea of how that open world raid will look (very open, exploratory design, likely to find competing raids farming in there, rather hectic possibly if there's more than one raid team competing for the boss, or even PvPing for the boss, etc.).

Aside from knowing what open world dungeons/raids exist in an area, you'll also know what world and regional bosses exist as well. World bosses are the 40 man content and those are static. Regional I believe are 16?, not sure about that, but those, like the open world dungeons and raids, are influenced by the nearby nodes.

So yes you can plan for the existence of these bosses, but that's about it. And, the content we currently know about is all open world content. They've been rather clear on that and haven't mentioned instancing at all in regards to the above.

Noaani wrote: »

There will be some in-depth raiding that has multiple stages that will be extremely difficult and... It would definitely be in the single digits of population that will be capable of defeating certain content... It doesn't mean that there won't be content available for the larger percentages as well... There should be a tiered level of content that players can constantly strive to accomplish. If there is no ladder of progression and everything is flat and all content can be experienced, then there is no drive to excel.

Now, if this comment is not describing something extremely similar to a progression based raiding scheme, I would be quite interested to hear exactly what kind of content it is that you think would fit in to the above description.

If you listen to the entire section of that interview it's quite clear what he's talking about. He mentions that there are various "tiers" of content available to the players - solo, 8 man, 16 man, and finally 40 man. As mentioned above, we already know the "raiding" content will be open world raids and world bosses. He's confirmed world bosses to be 40 man and the open world raid dungeon video looked more like a 16 man group, although for all we know there may be open world raid dungeons designed for 40 as well. This harder 40 man content was what he then went on to describe as the hardest content, likely only doable by a small number of players, and as something he wanted the rest of the player base to strive for and work toward. This difficult long term goal is the ultimate progression to strive for he said.

Not progression as in, progressing through 8 or 12 bosses of a raid, and then later a few months to a year later progressing through another 8 or 12 boss instanced raid. He's never said anything that would remotely sound like he's thinking that. You progress through the open world that they're creating, and progress through the node system that is so integral to it, and risk competing with other players for the hardest and best content because its all in the open world. Progress in levels, gear, and skill through solo, 8 and 16 man content to perhaps one day take on that 40 man content yourself.

Noaani wrote: »

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, this is more specific.

This comment is essentially describing top tier raiding in EQ2. In the hardest of encounters, you can't simply repeat what you did the time before. Even comments like the telegraphed abilities not being stenciled on the ground is right out of EQ2.

Again, I should point out, Intrepid have a number of senior staff on board that developed raids in EQ2.

Any player that raided in EQ2 and is aware of the early hires Steven made would not be able to read this quote and not immediately make the assumption that Steven plans to model raid content at least in part on EQ2's raid content.

This is also quite a stretch. As I said above, there's no reason to believe these are 8 boss instanced raiding encounters. From everything they've said, it's quite clear we have open world raid dungeons for 16 or potentially 40 man groups, and 40 man world bosses. These are your raid content. And the content is influenced by the node system, as is nearly everything else in this game.

As for the fight style described in that quote (which is literally the only thing being discussed in that quote), it's been seen in other games as well. TERA for one had fights like that and you really had to be on your toes every damn time you did a boss because you never knew how it would go. But merely because another game did fights a certain way that doesn't mean the devs are going to copy every single other aspect of the raids that game did. Stop looking for what you want to see, and look for the things that have actually been said (and haven't).

On the topic of boss fight styles in general he has said some more specific things on that if you're curious. From more recent interviews we've heard him speak about the idea of a boss whose fight tactics vary based on factors such as what nodes are developed, to what level, etc. and there would be a branching decision tree dictating how the boss would act in a fight based on all these external factors. So as the world changes, the boss itself changes. This is the variety he talked about.

Atama

Yeah, I was also under the impression that raids and dungeons are open world, they have to be to support PvX. If we have instances that’s the first I’ve heard of it.

Michael

Assuming they implement what they are aiming for, I think it will be great. What is stopping them from raising the bar? Just because other games fail at certain aspects, doesn't mean Ashes has to. That is exactly why this game is being created.

Noaani

Leiloni wrote: »

So yes you can plan for the existence of these bosses, but that's about it. And, the content we currently know about is all open world content. They've been rather clear on that and haven't mentioned instancing at all in regards to the above.

We *know* for a fact that they will instance some raids.

When we want to confine an encounter to a particular number of players, that's when it goes instanced, for the most part. Whether that be an overarching encounter of the primary narative, or we want to contain because the loot drops are something special, you know that's when we will likely use that 80/20 rule on instancing vs non-instancing and we can control the player count

Now, this was said in direct relation to instancing and raids.

Once again, I am unsure how a player can read/listen to that and still say there won't be instanced raids in Ashes.

For several years now I have been saying they will need to instance some raids. I have not been saying they have absolutely said they will instance some raids, but rather, if they want to have what it is they claim they want to have, then that will require some raids be instanced.

Now, people have been arguing that Intrepid never said there will be instanced raids (and until recently, they hadn't), but that was never my argument - at least until now. My argument was that they would eventually realise that they will need to instance some raid encounters, and it would seem Intrepid have reached that point.

The specific reason I even said they would need to instance some encounters is due to being able to control player count - and Steven specifically mentioned exactly that.

Leiloni wrote: »

Not progression as in, progressing through 8 or 12 bosses of a raid, and then later a few months to a year later progressing through another 8 or 12 boss instanced raid. He's never said anything that would remotely sound like he's thinking that.

I've never said anything remotely like that would be, should be or could be in Ashes.

That is you taking Blizzards version of progression based raiding and assuming it is the only way for it to work.

Not only is the Blizzard way not the only way, it is easily the worst way.

You can have progression based raiding with three encounters, you do not need multiple instances of 8 or more.

Stop making wild assumptions about what I am talking about here - it makes you look a little foolish, and wastes both of our time.

Leiloni wrote: »

This is also quite a stretch. As I said above, there's no reason to believe these are 8 boss instanced raiding encounters.

EQ2 had a very large number of singe boss instances, which is exactly what I have been saying instanced raid content in Ashes (content that we know we will get) should be.

If there is an open raid dungeon designed for 40 player raids, and that is able to hold maybe 4 or 5 raids at a time quite comfortably, and that dungeon has maybe 3 or 4 main bosses and 10 - 12 smaller bosses, that dungeon should also have 2 or 3 instances that each contain a single boss encounter (and maybe some base population, but that is irrelevant).

I have said exactly this many times before, including in threads you have been a part of over the last 6 months or so.

So again, stop making assumptions that I am talking about instances with 8 or so bosses, as that is not at all even close to what I am suggesting, and you bringing it up isn't helpful.

Leiloni

Noaani wrote: »

Now, people have been arguing that Intrepid never said there will be instanced raids (and until recently, they hadn't), but that was never my argument - at least until now. My argument was that they would eventually realise that they will need to instance some raid encounters, and it would seem Intrepid have reached that point.

Noaani wrote: »

If there is an open raid dungeon designed for 40 player raids, and that is able to hold maybe 4 or 5 raids at a time quite comfortably, and that dungeon has maybe 3 or 4 main bosses and 10 - 12 smaller bosses, that dungeon should also have 2 or 3 instances that each contain a single boss encounter (and maybe some base population, but that is irrelevant).

These are both assumptions. We have to look at what we know, which I already stated above. Realistically l nothing else matters if you just want to have a discussion about what we know is being offered in the game.

But let's just go with it for a moment if you want to make guesses. What makes you think the above would happen when they keep telling us the game has a PvX focus, that it's all about the open world, that it's all about risk vs reward, about players making the content and changing the world. Where does instancing a boss fight fit into that? It ignores all of the core ideas they have for this game.

They don't want to control player count manually. We know they plan to design boss fights to account for additional players and make it harder to ignore mechanics. That question has been asked and answered numerous times. But you're also ignoring the idea that all content is potentially contested. An open world raid is going to be a hot spot for such contests - either players will fight for stuff via PvP or they'll just try to passively out-PvE each other and then the 60/40 loot tagging rules come into effect regarding what group does the most DPS to a boss or mob. There's no need to instance such boss fights because they are intentionally not instanced, to play into other game mechanics.

Noaani

Leiloni wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Now, people have been arguing that Intrepid never said there will be instanced raids (and until recently, they hadn't), but that was never my argument - at least until now. My argument was that they would eventually realise that they will need to instance some raid encounters, and it would seem Intrepid have reached that point.

Noaani wrote: »

If there is an open raid dungeon designed for 40 player raids, and that is able to hold maybe 4 or 5 raids at a time quite comfortably, and that dungeon has maybe 3 or 4 main bosses and 10 - 12 smaller bosses, that dungeon should also have 2 or 3 instances that each contain a single boss encounter (and maybe some base population, but that is irrelevant).

These are both assumptions. We have to look at what we know, which I already stated above. Realistically l nothing else matters if you just want to have a discussion about what we know is being offered in the game.

They are assumptions, but that is because you quoted the part of my post where I was saying how *I* see it happening eventually, not how Intrepid have said it will happen. When I say "this is my assumption for how things will go", turning around and arguing that it is just an assumption is not the greatest of arguments.

But let's just go with it for a moment if you want to make guesses. What makes you think the above would happen when they keep telling us the game has a PvX focus, that it's all about the open world, that it's all about risk vs reward, about players making the content and changing the world. Where does instancing a boss fight fit into that? It ignores all of the core ideas they have for this game.

It fits in to the part where Steven said that they will instance encounters if they see a need or desire for it.

At this point, you are not arguing against me, you are arguing against Steven.

Again, this quote is from Steven in relation to instancing raid content;

When we want to confine an encounter to a particular number of players, that's when it goes instanced, for the most part. Whether that be an overarching encounter of the primary narative, or we want to contain because the loot drops are something special, you know that's when we will likely use that 80/20 rule on instancing vs non-instancing and we can control the player count

You seem to either be totally ignoring this, or somehow reading this to mean there will still be no instanced raids.

I am not sure which, but neither of these two positions really square well with what has been said.

Basically, you are saying they will not instance content, and Intrepid are saying they will instance it when they see a need to do so.

They don't want to control player count manually. We know they plan to design boss fights to account for additional players and make it harder to ignore mechanics. That question has been asked and answered numerous times. But you're also ignoring the idea that all content is potentially contested. An open world raid is going to be a hot spot for such contests - either players will fight for stuff via PvP or they'll just try to passively out-PvE each other and then the 60/40 loot tagging rules come into effect regarding what group does the most DPS to a boss or mob. There's no need to instance such boss fights because they are intentionally not instanced, to play into other game mechanics.

A few points here.

Reading this, I can only assume that you think there is only a place for one type of raid content in Ashes - which is just odd.

I mean, sure, WoW only had one type of raid content post vanilla (to my knowledge), but many other games have had both open world raiding and instanced raiding co-existing perfectly well.

That is what Ashes will have to do. That is what I have been saying for years Intrepid will need to do. That is what Steven recently said they will do.

Your arguments make some sence if I make the assumption that you are making the assumption that there will only be one type of raid content in Ashes, either instanced or open world. As soon as you realize there can be both (and indeed a third type that Ashes will likely need as well), your arguments fall completely flat.

To break the above down even further;

- Intrepid have specifically said they will control player numbers if they need to, so saying they don't want to at all is disingenuous.

-They can have boss fights with mechanics to account for additional players in the open world, while still having some instanced content. The fact that they want one does not mean they can not have both.

- Instanced content can be contested, you just can't contest it while the raid is taking on the content. There are other ways to contest content though. This is especially true if the entrance to that instanced encounter is in a dungeon - which is why that has always been my primary suggestion for this content.

- Open world raids will be hotspots for contest, and this is why open world raids will be some of the most enjoyable PvP content in Ashes. That doesn't mean there can't also be PvE raiding. These two things do not need to be mutually exclusive.

Fact is, Steven has said there will be instanced raids, and they have even set aside an allowance of 20% of all raid content to be instanced if they feel the need for it (I don't see the need for it to be that high, but I am not complaining).

I have been saying for years that they will eventually realize this, and they have now realized this.

Now it's your turn to realize this.

FuryBladeborne

Atama wrote: »

Yeah, I was also under the impression that raids and dungeons are open world, they have to be to support PvX. If we have instances that’s the first I’ve heard of it.

80% of dungeons will be open world. While I couldn't quickly find a quote for it, I am pretty sure raids have also been specified as 80% open world and 20% instanced.

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Dungeons

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