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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Should the final boss be instanced or open world?
Marzzo
Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Call it the hardest boss or final boss, does not matter. For major patches, we will probably have a main antagonist we have to fight.
Obviously, we want this epic questline ending boss to be hard, unforgiving, and nerd-gasm inducing when you kill it. The visuals should be epic. The fight should be difficult, but fun.
But the biggest question... should he be instanced or open world? What do you think? And why?
Obviously, we want this epic questline ending boss to be hard, unforgiving, and nerd-gasm inducing when you kill it. The visuals should be epic. The fight should be difficult, but fun.
But the biggest question... should he be instanced or open world? What do you think? And why?
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Comments
Honestly didn't even have to think about that one.
Edit to add though; I am not a fan of the last boss of a content cycle being needed for a quest. If anything, the quest chain should end with granting access to that encounter (whether physical access or an item/ability that makes taking the encounter on viable, or some such).
The ability to take on content should always be viewed as a reward, rather than as a task.
If major patches apply story arcs that apply to an entire server, I'd like to see the progression of the player base through that story become as shared, integrated, and open to all as much as possible.
Of course designing the mechanics to back that up is another story, but I'm sure we can do more than shuffling 40 people at a time through the experience.
Sure it could be difficult to work with/against others in trying to be first, but unless this is a world level boss (where I'd assume the difficulty would be so high the need for world cooperation would be required) as opposed to semi-regional based on metropolis location, I don't see it being as big a problem as most people will start to realize which groups hang around which regions of the map.
I'd be disapointed with that for any boss.
That is a situation where Intrepid have boxed themselves in, and now need to deal with what that means.
One of the things EQ2 had for it's open world content - that absolutely won't work in Ashes - is that only one raid could engage a mob at a time. As soon as one raid attacked it, they were locked to it, and it to them. Since there was no PvP, it meant all other raids getting formed up could do was watch, wait and hope that the raid taking the encounter on failed so that they could have a shot.
This did create it's own type of competition - both in terms of which raid could tag the mob fastest when another raid wiped, but also which raid could learn the encounter the fastest in order to get the kill.
The most important thing it did though, is preserve the integrety of the encounter - something Intrepid have given no signs of even understanding as yet.
That said, Ashes is a game that is mostly open world. It would be wrong for the end boss in a mostly open world game to be anything other than open world - Intrepid just need to figure out how that looks with the encounter still maintaining it's integrety.
This is where scouts will be brought back to the game and play a huge role, preparation for such a attack, being able to pull of the mob and deal with the situation. Also something you could organise with your alliance for backup.
There will be big dungeon bosses, and also world bosses. One of the Creative Director's favorite things about Lineage 2 were the gigantic open-world bosses that it would take a lot of players to bring down. As previously stated, there will specifically be content intended for 40-ish players at once.
At the moment, they have 3 of the to-be World Bosses named, and there are specific mentions in this link to Legendary Bosses, as well; There will likely be open-world bosses for 8+ players, as well as 40+ players:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/World_bosses
They've talked on scale-ability for difficulty, as one possible way of ensuring the World Bosses don't get steam-rolled.
Like an event, that would actually be befitting for a final boss.
Afterwards he can respawn as a raid-tier boss either instanced or non-instanced, but the first kill should be a massive event with serverwide effort and consequences if failed to kill within a time frame.
I think they did something similar to this in the Monster Hunter World game.
Anyway, this could be another boss in the game, but it seems fitting as a "final boss" encounter too. Let me know what ya think.
The wars we have with each other to me should be the final boss. Any dragons or powerful monsters in the world are just resources to be fought over. The only story I care about is my node vs whom ever wants to take it. That is a living story that we can all participate in.
In this way, all bosses can and should be open world. Feel free to disagree, but I have stated many times that MMOs need to be moving away from set quests and storylines, and move deeper into systems that harvest natural player interaction and emergent stories. A little bit of background lore and setting is fine to give players a starting point, but we need not have the DEVS drip feed us story every six months like WOW and FFXIV.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Geez I hope we don't have to do a long quest line just do kill a world boss, not like you're going to kill him by yourself so don't force me to do more quests than I need to please.
You're right though , that would suck if it was the case.
While some people are happy with the idea of harvesting, crafting and PvP'ing in order to progress so they can better harvest, craft and PvP, most players want more than this from an MMO.
There needs to be activities that people can actually *do* so that the harvesting, crafting and PvP'ing that players do have a meaning other than being self-perpetuating.
This was my biggest issue with Archeage.
Even before it became heavily pay to win, players were leaving the game due to there being nothing to actually do. In fact, my argument would be that it became overly pay to win in order to make a profit after the bulk of the playerbase left due to having nothing to do.
Basically, without something to do, most players will not have anything to do. The best thing to give players to do - arguably - is solid quest content.
All I can really say is that I am willing to adjust my opinion based on what I see when I get in the game, and start experiencing it for myself. I would never recommend more story based content for EVE online, but I always welcome new story in FFXIV (because it means new raids). It depends on the game. Right, now I am thinking AOC is like 20% story, 80% open world. If that's wrong, I will still try AOC. I just want to see AOC lean as hard into emergent gameplay as possible. With or without story based content.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Just the fact that a boss is balanced around the fact that troll guilds will come and try to stop you makes me cringe. It's a sad truth that open world bosses are just there to be cool. The only challange is using brain power to spawn camp it and hope some scrubs dont come and mess up the fight.
If nobody comes and messes up the fight the boss will just be a cakewalk since you cant make a boss with deep mechanics open world. Never seen it in any game.
Steven did say they would reserve instancing for when the story needed it, but that has since been changed to when the content or the story needs it (they will instance an encounter to limit numbers if that is what they need to do).
To me, that doesn't mean all story is in instances and all open world is devoid of story, it means that if they want to present a portion of a story to players in a way that requires their attention, they will instance that portion of the story.
I totally agree, unlocked open world encounters have literally never been anything other than bland (locked open world encounters can be grat though).
Thing is, Ashes is all about the open world, so that is where the boss encounter of the game should be.
That is how I meant it.
EVE online style, you figure it out your own goals gameplay for 80% of your gameplay experience.
Standard MMO style, Spam quest chains for the remaining 20% of your gameplay experience.
Just an educated bet on how (40 days of 6-8hours to cap) in a dynamic world will work for story telling.
Always happy to be wrong when predicting how things will actually pan out.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
If we're the main source of story, how are The Ancients the "primary antagonists"? In order to be a "primary antagonist", they need to be involved somehow, and that can only really be through quests/mission/story content.
While you may be right, I'm not personally looking at EVE for much of an insight in to how Ashes will be other than some aspects of the economy - especially in relation to individual marketplaces and the need to move materials.
I may be wrong, you may be wrong (most likely, we are both wrong), but that is how I see it.
Nobody really enjoys zergfests, because the enjoyment from that is the novelty - "hey so many people together in one place fighting!" - when novelty fades then it just becomes a tiresome chore that shoots down your fps
having game systems to ensure the amount of players to not exceed 40 is the only way to create varied, engaging and challenging bosses. There could even be hard nerf for the loot if you fight it with more than 40 people - like "good you killed him with 50 people, here is some pocket change, but if you want the treasure come as 40 next time"
― Plato
Other guilds/nodes contesting your guild's/node's progress isn't them trolling. It's called competition, and if you want to be a part of the best group, your group will need to contest others progress in the game.
I agree it would be great to have a tight competition, but it would be shame if the bosses are designed around competition - if you are ok with the boss being challenging for single 40man group and literally unkillable with rivaling guilds around then we basically want the same thing, but we both are concerned about different points of importance
― Plato
The Ancients? Sounds like some random jurks that will be easily defeated. When that happens we can all keep killing each other.
See you on the battlefield.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I think this a very interesting thing, so that there will always be a drive to destroy nodes (and always a need to defend them) because of this, only adding to ongoing conflicts.
However I can also see a raid boss with a particular time limit to the fight, or with multiple steps. Perhaps after x amount of time or % of life lost, the boss flies away and it's up to the players in that server to track it down. Perhaps it requires the use of ballistae and other siege weaponry, and thus we need to collaborate to move the resources to the area where the boss flew to.
Over multiple stages, and phases, perhaps the boss has some other "downtime mechanics". Say if we don't find it in time, it destroys a node in the area or ravages through that node's resources etc.
This, coupled with the size of the world and the no fast travel, would certainly make the fight feel grand and epic, with some Monster Hunter elements to it as well.
That said I would appreciate a little part of the game's content (like HL Raids) dedicated to PvE only and I can't see that happening without being instanced.