How dificult will open-world mobs be?

Will mobs in the open-world be solo-able or will they require more than one player to take them down?
I would also like to here everyone's opinion on whether or not open-world mobs should be solo-able or require a group. Thanks!

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Azherae

knickii wrote: »

There are mobs with a + behind their name. Some tied to quest chains, that will require a group for that quest level. Tried to solo one and it wasn't possible.

Cleric can solo the non-quest ones, the open world ones, even with the mob being 5+ levels over them. I haven't seriously failed to solo that type yet.

Dygz

Azherae is a walking, talking DPS meter.

knickii

Azherae wrote: »

knickii wrote: »

There are mobs with a + behind their name. Some tied to quest chains, that will require a group for that quest level. Tried to solo one and it wasn't possible.

Cleric can solo the non-quest ones, the open world ones, even with the mob being 5+ levels over them. I haven't seriously failed to solo that type yet.

Cleric OP. :P

Azherae

knickii wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

knickii wrote: »

There are mobs with a + behind their name. Some tied to quest chains, that will require a group for that quest level. Tried to solo one and it wasn't possible.

Cleric can solo the non-quest ones, the open world ones, even with the mob being 5+ levels over them. I haven't seriously failed to solo that type yet.

Cleric OP. :P

Indeed, I'm really interested to see what they do about this. In most games with no scaling this is solved by making the strong healer class pretty squishy, but I'm not interested in that, so unfortunately I have to wait and see if there will be some 'offset' to the whole 'everyone can wear every gear piece'.

I really hope it's not passives...

Merek

Braindead easy, they've gone with how others have put it, the 'walking resources' route. It's disappointing but what can we do? They may make them a bit more mechanically difficult in the future, but it's doubtful.

Dygz

I mean....it's Alpha One and not a content test.
There's about 3 resources total on the current mobs, so I wouldn't call them walking resources.

HazardNumberSeven

I imagine it will depend on the mob and the area.

George_Black

The idea is that past mid lv you wont be able to go alone in zones for mid lv+.
You will have to form a good group with the right classes.

What you see now is low lv mobs. And it's Alpha.

Azherae

HazardNumberSeven wrote: »

I imagine it will depend on the mob and the area.

Sort of, but that gets into 'what the player is trying to do'. It's always possible to find something that's too hard for you, but because of that, we can't be technically talking about that.

MMOs generally have two ways of building. Build so players will optimize their flow, finding the enemy they can kill the fastest in large numbers for the most exp, or build so that they optimize their performance, pushing for the enemy that gives the max exp that won't shred the Tank in 2-3 hits and is still killable (usually because mowing through lower leveled, less dangerous ones, causes them to run out of enemies in the area).

Games that build for (or end up being) Optimization: Flow usually have enemies with weak mechanics, no scaling, and they are pretty numerous. In some games, very numerous. This encourages players to find the area where they can find the most enemies, and power through them. Also encourages conflict. Sometimes it causes soloing if a person can find a spot for themselves.

Games that build for (or end up being) Optimization: Performance have enemies with strong mechanics that drastically alter your ability to defeat them sometimes, often have damage scaling, and the enemies are much less numerous normally. Players are encouraged to group up (because by the time you can get past the damage scaling to consistently win, the level scaling has made it not worth it). Encourages cooperation up to a point. Players who enjoy challenging themselves more than 'being efficient' are the ones who try to find a solo spot rather than a group (assuming they aren't just not in the mood for grouping up)

It's hard to get to a point between these. Mostly it's easier to choose one for the main leveling experience and then make bosses/dungeons for the other.

"No damage scaling + level scaling + meaningfully distinct classes" pushes the game toward Optimization: Flow even if the enemies have stronger mechanics. You might want to duo, but it would seldom be worth your time to gather a full group, for open world content, once you got good enough or found a 'favored enemy' that your class is good at defeating.

However since it is Alpha, we can't say what the mechanical difficulty of open world enemies will be. If they push it far enough 'back' to Optimization: Performance we might see something. The issue is that when 'kill the enemy fast enough for it to not use its strong mechanics' is possible because of no damage scaling, either your damage formulas based on level and stats borders on silly (so that a level 40 can't output the damage required to kill a level 50 enemy) or the enemy becomes an HP sponge (the level 40 can't output the damage because the level 50 enemy has lots more HP than the level 40 equivalent enemy), and in an Alpha game without finalized combat, this is probably all you will see from the average open world enemy.

Enigmatic Sage

that depends on:
- your level vs the mob level/tier (normal, champ, elite etc)
- your class and stat allocation
- your skill and competence

In a scale from 1 to 10, I'd say anywhere from 1 to 10.

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