DUNGEON FINDER
Classic WoW players make a big deal out of introduction of a dungeon finder into the game. They view it as the first big step towards destruction of the game they use to enjoy, and possibly one of the first big steps towards the corruption of the MMO genre as a whole.
Ashes of Creation is not going to have a dungeon finder, and I think we are all very happy about that.
Why?
Because it sacrifices a human connection between people playing the game on the altar of convenience. Yes, you don't have to go through the hurdle of looking for people to go to the dungeon with, but as a cost for that players are now expendable, and a dungeon run feels more like a League of Legends game.
All of that is true.
You know what this is also true about?
Battlegrounds.
People, who hate dungeon finder and also will defend battlegrounds is quite a weird phenomenon.
Because battlegrounds is a dungeon finder for PvP.
You press a button. You get teleported to another place. You get paired with a bunch of people you don't know and will never talk to again. Then you are playing a League of Legends game for some number of minutes, and you get teleported back.
WHAT ELSE DO YOU NEED
Back in Lord of The Rings Online days we use to have Ettenmoors - a huge location made specifically for PvP, or as we called it, PvMP - Player versus Monster Player. In LotRO monster-players did not have levels, only pvp-ranks - they had max level of a current expansion by default, and all they did was PvMP. With new ranks they got new abilities and stats. As a monster-player all you cared about was KILL HUMANS MANY GET RANK WHERE ARE THEY KILL THEM FOR THE SAURON.
The problem was that Ettenmoors was the only PvP location in the game, and as a monster player you were forever trapped in it. Maybe they planned on adding more at some point, but never got to it - there was a lot of talk about Free People bias - probably true, and also fair enough - the game was created for Free People players - they had dungeons, raids new classes, everything - and playing as a monster was supposed to be something you might do for fun once in a while, if you just want pure PvP.
So yes, just one PvP-location where you had to stay as a monster player. One location. Forever.
Who would want to play like that?
A lot of people.
For how long?
For years.
Why?
Because it was amazing.
People who don't play games might wonder why would someone spend years of their life in an MMO. People who play MMOs might wonder why would you spend all these years in only one location? What are you, insane?
The answer to that is: that was enough.
Just seeing another guy in an actual place in a game, and saying "You know what? F*ck this guy!" and then killing him (or getting killed) is, I believe, one of the coolest things you can do in an MMO, and maybe in games in general. And it created all the best things an MMO can offer. Conflict, friendships, betrayals, reputations, competition. It was somehow all in there, in just one location.
People who made battlegrounds thought that that wasn't enough, and they were wrong. They thought that you needed something else, but you didn't.
JUST TAKE THE FLAG
Capture the flag. Hold the point. Kill the boss. All of these things are generally just an annoying distraction from killing this guy other there. Often times you would be fighting, and winning the fight, and enjoying it... Oh wait, we just lost the game, because some dude just snuck out our flag or something... Well, okay then.
The only reason people care about the damn flag, or holding the control-points, or whatever else - is because they get awarded points for doing it. But people queue up in the battleground not thinking "oh yeah, can't wait to get my hands on this flag". People queue up because they want to fight.
Let's put it this way: if you didn't award anyone anything for doing battlegrounds, no one would be capturing flags. But people would still be fighting.
What I am saying is not a case against flags. I like flags, they are square shaped, and have cool symbols on them.
It is also not a case against capturing objectives in an MMO - objectives are good. As long as they have flags. With cool symbols.
But objectives are supposed to be as good as the fights they are causing, and they mean as much as the things you get for capturing them. We had them on Ettenmoors, and there they made sense, because they would bring people together to capture and fight. But on a tiny battleground they are not causing anything, and for capturing them you just get some points you can later spend on something else...
Also, on battlegrounds objectives are not "real". Because thousands of flags are getting captured in the same place at the same time by people on different "layers", and I think a part of you always keeps that in mind.
IT MUST MEAN SOMETHING
The Ettenmoors case is also interesting because it contradicted many fundamental ideas of what an MMO should have - and yet people still loved it. Monster players did not have "BIG OPEN WORLD ONE MILLION SQUARE KILOMETERS". And - overt your eyes from the heresy I am about to spew - they did not even have expansions. Well, the expansions were there, but for the monster players it just meant getting their max level immediately and having to wait for free people to catch up on levels and get their gear.
Ettenmoors was not perfect. At the time I would often find myself advocating for adding more interesting things for monster players to do. But the fact that they didn't add anything and we all still played it and had a great time must mean something about PvP in MMORPGs.
And after Ettenmoors any battleground just feels like a worse version of something else.
