How to prevent "boss farming" turning into a monotonous task

"farming world bosses" specially when hunting for that super rare drop has two potential issues.

1.- One strong guild could monopolize the world boss by keeping track of the respawn timer and camping the boss arena preventing others to try to defeat it.
2.- Once you got the mechanics mastered the process of farming a boss becomes tedious since is a long battle with no surprises.

In my opinion farming bosses should not be something that can be done over and over without variance, it should be something that always keeps you on your toes in order to keep the farming interesting.

By example the boss spawns in the forest's labyrinth, the floor of the boss arena has some poisoned mushrooms so you need to watch out were you step during the fight, and also bring poison resistance gear + antivenom because they can explode from time to time, when you defeat the boss, it disappears and you need to wait X time, but when it respawns, it doesn't respawn in the forest, now it appears on the pirate cove, and now the battle arena is a flooded cave were, from time to time, drowned pirates appear during the battle to attack your backline, now you need to rethink the formation of your party and keep some tanks on the back to fend off the undead pirates, you managed to defeat the boss again, now you should wait Y time, and it appears again in the forest, but this time, there are no mushrooms, there are corruption crystals all over the place, that put a debuff on everybody on your party and now you need to get rid of the crystals while fighting the boss and bring some bards to help mitigate the debuffs while figthing the boss.

In all those cases the boss was exactly the same (assuming the boss didn't suffered changes due to the node system) but both the location and the environmental hazards were semi random and radically different, making the act of farming a boss, more engaging even if you have done the battle several times since you will always have to take something different in consideration and you don't know exactly what to expect on each encounter, also since it can appear in several places is not that easy to simply monopolize the boss since you would have to cover many potential boss arenas

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Boanergese

It would be nice if the boss had like 10 abilities, and it randomly chose from 4 of those abilities each time in order to keep the dance fresh. To the extent that you can make the AI great I think we all want a challenge from world bosses. The other option is to have Steven, or another GM be the boss.

World Boss 1 Player Base 0

Dygz

Is boss farming really possible in Ashes?

Sathrago

Dygz wrote: »

Is boss farming really possible in Ashes?

You're right once a player kills a boss they will never be able to fight that boss again.

Is this really what you thought?

Dygz

"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. We want there to be variables that get manifested by you know what type of node got developed elsewhere. Is he going to have acolytes or cultists? What will the acolytes have skills [available] to them? What kit is the boss gonna have? What available skill repertoire will the boss be able to use? ... A lot of those systems are influenced obviously by world development. So the raid kind of takes into account at what stage has the world developed: Are there two metropolises now available in the world? Okay well let's activate this skill in this skill. Now you have five metropolises, well now all these skills have been activated. Are there are they all economic nodes? Are they all military nodes? That we can change things based on that stuff. And it really is a threat assessment from the environment against the players."
---Steven

Sathrago

Dygz wrote: »

"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. We want there to be variables that get manifested by you know what type of node got developed elsewhere. Is he going to have acolytes or cultists? What will the acolytes have skills [available] to them? What kit is the boss gonna have? What available skill repertoire will the boss be able to use? ... A lot of those systems are influenced obviously by world development. So the raid kind of takes into account at what stage has the world developed: Are there two metropolises now available in the world? Okay well let's activate this skill in this skill. Now you have five metropolises, well now all these skills have been activated. Are there are they all economic nodes? Are they all military nodes? That we can change things based on that stuff. And it really is a threat assessment from the environment against the players."
---Steven

So you think they will never show the same boss or bosses with the same loot table due to that quote? Do you realize how much work would be required to always be making new bosses for each and every location described by this?

Stop being daft. Once a boss spawn is found it will be farmed regardless of how rare and what random abilities it spawns with.

Dygz

I think "farming" is not going to how people typically envision it.
Ashes is a dynamic game, rather than a static game.
How long will bosses stick around? We have no clue.

Sathrago

Dygz wrote: »

I think "farming" is not going to how people typically envision it.
Ashes is a dynamic game, rather than a static game.

Dynamic in the sense that abilities, terrain hazards, trash mob spawns, etc will change. They cannot remake an endless amount of bosses for every single location and then have them all randomly drop unrelated loot. You will be able to farm these locations otherwise it would be more annoying to farm specific gear/materials than any other game designed to date. Lets say they have 4 different bosses that can spawn in a location, that doesn't suddenly change all drops from said boss spawn. If that happened people would just be running around, avoiding combat, and checking boss spawns for the boss they want, which is still farming bosses but a ton more work is required.

Dygz

Dynamic in the sense that dungeons and raids and the bosses within them can change (as in bosses that were there before might not be there later) based on how Nodes rise and fall and what quests people complete.

tautau

Not new bosses, as I understand it, but changes to the bosses. For example:

The boss is in a cavern which opens when the nearby Scientific node reaches town stage and the boss has various abilities and stats. When the Divine node on the other side of the Scientific node becomes a village, some acolyte healers join the boss. Then the Divine node builds a temple, and the healers become stronger and the boss gets resistance against some skills. Throughout this time, the boss rotates randomly through six sets of behaviors, six sets of armor and six weapons (6x6x6=216 combo possibilities) for each different raid.

Then the Scientific node levels and the boss strengthens and changes dramatically. Coincidentally, across the world a Military node goes from town to city causing additional adds (of 6 kinds, which rotate 6 weapons and 6 spawn areas) to join the boss. Since the Divine node's temple also levelled, the acolyte healers are stronger and can also heal the adds, and there are 10 healers now. And the boss's range is increased 40%.

And so on and so forth with each change in the nearby nodes and throughout the world. As a result, it is very rare that the raid is ever the same. Of course, this is a made-up example based on my speculation of Steve's comments. It would not be too difficult to program using if...then statements in the appropriate language. If a chump like me could do it in excel then AoC's experts can make it fancy, fur sure.

Dygz

Which dungeons and raids remain active can change based on the rise and fall of Nodes.
It is not the case that once a dungeon boss appears, it remains on the server for months and years.

Sathrago

Dygz wrote: »

Which dungeons and raids remain active can change based on the rise and fall of Nodes.
It is not the case that once a dungeon boss appears, it remains on the server for months and years.

Taleof2Cities

Sathrago wrote: »

You're right once a player kills a boss they will never be able to fight that boss again.

Is this really what you thought?

Are you from the States and ever heard of the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889?

If you're the first to claim a farming spot ... it's yours.

(Kidding of course ... I agree with you about the boss spawn mechanics.)

Dygz

Oh. Also, raid bosses come and go based on seasons.

Noaani

I think the thing Dygz probably isn't thinking about is that players will put content on farm status faster than developers can create that content.

So honestly, it doesn't matter how often it changes, eventually it will all be on farm status.

This is what i mean by him being unqualified in this discussion - he has no idea at all what he is talking about. Mobs could change weekly, or even daily, and top guilds will still have the content on farm status eventually.

If developers then push out a new wave of bosses and start working on a second wave, players will have that first new wave on farm status before the second new wave is ready.

Okeydoke

Kionashi wrote: »

In my opinion farming bosses should not be something that can be done over and over without variance, it should be something that always keeps you on your toes in order to keep the farming interesting.

You're in luck then. The biggest variance will come from your fellow Ashes players. That's on top of the pve side variance which includes things like the boss scaling with the amount of people present, or different mechanics based on the node levels and type of the area.

Nearly everything will end up on "farm status" to some extent but there will be an ever present danger from other players. For most people here for the game's merits, that's why they're here, because it won't always be the typical scripted mmo raid experience. You're gonna get your variance. And even if you don't every time, just the chance you could will make it that much more exhilarating every time.

George_Black

The open world RB scene of AoC will be similar to L2, so here is my experience and a suggestion.

First of all, since there will 100% be PvP involved, it will never be boring. Those that dont like PvP can go cry, or do with the limited instanced PvE content.

In L2, the big guilds would have an account of naked characters. They would take them to the RB location, kill them and use them as cameras to check if the RB has respawned.

I suggest raid bosses multiple, distant respawn locations if they are not too important with the lore. That way, only dedicated raiders can track them down and good for them. The rest of the players can encounter them randomly, form a group if they can, and kill them.

If the raid bosses are related to the lore of the area/open world dungeon, they should be in a chamber accessible only to those that have completed a group quests. PvP can still occur, since there will only be ONE instance of that chamber (open world mmorpg) but there is the requirement of meeting the demands of the npc gate keeper (quest).

That way, cameras cannot be set up, and the big guilds will have to activelly go and undertake the quest for the RB. The players in the region will realize that the RB is about to go down and will get mobilized.

No ninja/camera raiding.

And once more, for those that only care about PvE, deal with it...

Noaani

George_Black wrote: »

In L2, the big guilds would have an account of naked characters. They would take them to the RB location, kill them and use them as cameras to check if the RB has respawned.

Most modern games 2ith open world raid encounters.put timers on how long you can remain a corpse, specifically to combat this.

No idea if Ashes will do this (or otherwise limit vision while a corpse), but I would imagine they would do something here.

Your suggestion is one way this could be accomplished, but honestly, it isn't my favorite way.

And yeah, you are 100% right about PvP.

Open world raid bosses are PvP content, not PvE. The side that wins the PvP will get the kill, every time.

Boanergese

Noaani wrote: »

I think the thing Dygz probably isn't thinking about is that players will put content on farm status faster than developers can create that content.

So honestly, it doesn't matter how often it changes, eventually it will all be on farm status.

This is what i mean by him being unqualified in this discussion - he has no idea at all what he is talking about. Mobs could change weekly, or even daily, and top guilds will still have the content on farm status eventually.

If developers then push out a new wave of bosses and start working on a second wave, players will have that first new wave on farm status before the second new wave is ready.

You are thinking of games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 and the fact that fights are scripted. It is true that the best people in the world will figure out the fight. There probably will be Youtube videos and strategy guides on the boss mechanics. However, depending on how difficult Intrepid wants the raids and bosses to be will determine the fight status. We don't know yet how difficult world bosses are going to be.

For those not familiar with raiding, farm status means that the group has learned the fight and can defeat the boss every time. We also don't know how often world bosses are going to respawn. Also, as other have mentioned we don't know who all are going to fight each other to kill the world boss. You may have 20-30 guilds all wanting to kill that rare mob. it might be a 2-hour fight as people rush back to kill each other to have the right to kill the world boss. World of Warcraft had difficult boss fights. As I mentioned before there is nothing to say the boss couldn't have 20 abilities it pulled from in a table. Intrepid could really be anal and have the abilities switch every 10% of the boss's health. A fight doesn't have to be winnable. They might make you kill it 1000 times before you luck your way into a kill.

We are all assuming the World of Warcraft scenario where you bring your 20-person team to a mythic raid which is instanced and if you wipe on the boss, you just reset the fight, and keep trying till you make progress. We also don't know if the world boss's health resets or how it gets health back. What if 60 rogues were stealthed and waited till you got the boss down to 15% health and then wiped your raid just to say, "Bless You". By the time you got your group back from the respawn point the boss was back at 100% health. The rogues were gone, and you didn't get your kill or epic loot. By the way I am accepting applications not for the rogue griefing alliance. Get your alts ready. As we haven't played the game yet, I think you are making assumptions @Noaani which you have no data to support.

Having played MMO for 20 years I get what you're saying that people will burn through content quickly depending on how much time they have to "no life" the game, but hopefully if the game has enough PVE, PVP, crafting, and RP people won't get bored that fast. Also, how do you know how much MMO experience Dygz does or doesn't have? Do you know the person in real life? Were they in your guild? How do you know whether Dygz was or wasn't in a cutting-edge guild in the past?

Noaani

Boanergese wrote: »

We are all assuming the World of Warcraft scenario where you bring your 20-person team to a mythic raid which is instanced and if you wipe on the boss, you just reset the fight, and keep trying till you make progress.

I'm not making this assumption at all.

I've lead top end raids on content that is instanced similar to WoW - but also on content that is open world but without PvP so only one guild could engage the encounter at a time, and if you wipe another guld will be right there ready for when the mob resets to have a go. I have also lead raids in a fully open PvP setting, much like many of the raids in Ashes will be, where the side that wins in PvP is the side that gets the kill.

A fight doesn't have to be winnable. They might make you kill it 1000 times before you luck your way into a kill.

I only really talk about scenarios that are reasonable and likely. This is not such a scenario.

While you are absolutely welcome to discuss scenarios that won't happen, don't @ me in such discussions because I do not care.

If we are talking about scenarios that are likely to happen, what I talked about in the post above stands.

Also, how do you know how much MMO experience Dygz does or doesn't have?

Because he and I have been having back and fourth discussions for about 5 years.

akabear

George_Black wrote: »

The open world RB scene of AoC will be similar to L2, so here is my experience and a suggestion.

In L2, the big guilds would have an account of naked characters. They would take them to the RB location, kill them and use them as cameras to check if the RB has respawned.
..

Back in the day, I ran 3 accounts each with I think 5 characters.

I played one main and had 2 alts en-tow when other players were not online.

And I made alts for all other account slots and would place them strategically on the map log them on and off to either a) check spawns of bosses to see if they were up or not or b) in key Xp areas where I could scout if free of enemies or a target to kill.

I also made a couple of dummy characters, with similar outfit / look and gear but low level.. and any clan that decided to kill me got my alt instead and a ton of karma .. karma to follow up on!

I wonder if that approach would be viable in AoC?

Child Item