DPS Meter Megathread

NiKr wrote: »

My logic was based on your "20h of raiding a week" suggestion. I guess EQ's instances work differently or maybe I misunderstood how they worked in wow/ff14/l2, because I'm used to "instance" being a thing where you enter it, clear it and you're done. You could then repeat it immediately for more loot. And you could repeat it ad nauseam, until you get literally all of the possible gear from it.

This is who instances work in games where the developers are more concerned with filling on player time, and are happy to do so via monotonous, repetitive tasks.

Archeage did instances this way as well.

In games where the developers are more concerned with player experience and enjoyment - rather than just shoveling time sinks in their path - developers put lockouts on all instances.

In EQ2, these lockouts were a few hours for the handful of solo instances the game had, 20 hours for group instances, and 6 days 20 hours for raid instances.

Open world raid bosses also had spawn times of no less than a week.

Thus, that 20 hours of raid content involved not killing the same encounter twice in one week.

If people have the idea that instanced raiding in an MMO involves zoning in, killing a mob, zoning out and then back in, and then killing it again - I can perhaps understand a bit more why some people are so against it.

That would be a shit experience.

However, in a game like EQ2, you literally cant kill the same mob twice in a week (for the most part). This is why variation between mobs is king, rather than trying to create some randomness within the same encounter.

My understanding of WoW raid instances is that they have a lockout that resets based on the weekly server reset. My experience in Wo2 is limited to logging on to someone else's account, getting a leveled gesewd and spec'd character that is usually right at the zone entrance, reading the abilities I have, listening to what I should expect from the encounter, then killing it (I usually cause exactly 1 raid wipe). As such, I am not 100% sure this is still the way it is handled, and have no idea at all about group dungeons.

I have even less of an idea about FFXIV, as I have only recently begun looking in to that game.

As to your point about instanced raids in Ashes not giving best in slot gear, and thus shouldnt be as hard, I disagree 100%, and will once again cited EQ2 as to why.

Without a doubt, the hardest encounters in EQ2 were instanced.

However, they didnt always drop best in slot items.

On top of its instanced raids, EQ2 had open world raids. Every item these mobs dropped was best in slot - and that was without the PvP aspects.

Even though these mobs were not technically as hard, their competitive rarity made it make sense for them to drop the best gear in the game.

This is what I would expect from Ashes. The main differences being that there are more open world mobs than instanced, and that the top tier of open world mobs will be able to supply every item, that would not leave any gaps for instanced encounters to have anything best in slot.

My expectation with this would be that there are three tiers of open world raid mob, in terms of spawn rate, difficulty and loot quality. From there, my expectation is that instanced mobs will exist as the most difficult to kill, but as they are comparatively common the loot would fall in between the bottom and middle tier of open world mobs in terms of gear quality.

I think you mentioned playing AA. I haven't played it, but I've heard that most if not all huge bosses there are open world, is that right? Cause if it is, then I'd assume that when Steven says "raiding content" he just means a huge boss with a ton of people fighting it.

The problem with this is that Intrepid have talked about both tiered content, and raid dungeons.

While I have no doubt that some of the raid content in Ashes will be in line with what Archeage offers (I have talked about my experiences with that games Red Dragon a number of times here), but what Intrepid have talked about points to them wanting more.

Noaani wrote: »

If people have the idea that instanced raiding in an MMO involves zoning in, killing a mob, zoning out and then back in, and then killing it again - I can perhaps understand a bit more why some people are so against it.

That would be a shit experience.

As far as I know that is the usual thinking when people hear "instanced dungeon". And the gear connotations that come with it. Which is why everyone who dislikes that mechanic is so against it.

Noaani wrote: »

My expectation with this would be that there are three tiers of open world raid mob, in terms of spawn rate, difficulty and loot quality. From there, my expectation is that instanced mobs will exist as the most difficult to kill, but as they are comparatively common the loot would fall in between the bottom and middle tier of open world mobs in terms of gear quality.

I'd personally be fine with that. All we have to know now is whether all the masses that played wow/ff14 and enjoyed raiding would be fine with that, cause afaik raiding in those games gave you BiS, so I'm not sure if our oldschool preferences (cause EQ2 is most definitely oldschool at this point) would match the current mmo culture.

Noaani wrote: »

The problem with this is that Intrepid have talked about both tiered content, and raid dungeons.

When it comes to raid dungeons, I'm pretty sure Steven was always relating them to L2's Antharas' Lair or smth similar. Think the volcano dungeon from alpha1, but even more intricately laid out. You'd go through increasing difficulty of mobs and then have a huge epic boss at the very end. L2 had a semi-instance room for that boss and Ashes could definitely do the same, considering they already had a Portal gate to get to the dragon.

As for tiered Boss content within a dungeon - that's definitely smth I wanna see too, cause I'm very curious how they will design that. I have a few personal ideas of how it could be done so I do think it can be done, but for now I'll just wait and see what they have come up with.

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

If people have the idea that instanced raiding in an MMO involves zoning in, killing a mob, zoning out and then back in, and then killing it again - I can perhaps understand a bit more why some people are so against it.

That would be a shit experience.

As far as I know that is the usual thinking when people hear "instanced dungeon". And the gear connotations that come with it. Which is why everyone who dislikes that mechanic is so against it.

I wouldn't say that.

Anyone that has played EQ/EQ2 or WoW (other than LFG/LFR) should be fully aware of lock outs on instances. It's only really people that play games where group/raid PvE content is a tertiary consideration that would have this as their primary idea of instanced content.

I'm sticking to my opinion that instances without lockouts are in place to keep you occupied, rather than keep you entertained. It says a lot about the focus of the game and the dedication of the developers (management more than staff) if they give you so little content that you have any desire at all to do the same thing twice in a row.

The other thing to keep in mind, if players cant just re enter an instance, you can put a fail condition on it. There is no point having a fail condition if people can just zone out and back in again to have another go - but if they have to wait either a full day (group content) or a full week (raid content), then failing does kind of suck.

I mean, Archage had a quest where you needed to run one dungeon 100 times. I knew players that did this in a weekend. That is not good gameplay.

All we have to know now is whether all the masses that played wow/ff14 and enjoyed raiding would be fine with that, cause afaik raiding in those games gave you BiS

First, keep in mind that in my suggestion above, it is still raiding that gives best in slot gear - it is just not instances raiding.

I know some people dont differentiate between the two, but that would be as incorrect as not differentiating between instanced PvP (arena) and open world PvP. They are VERY different things.

As to whether people would be accepting of it or not, it comes more down to how the open world content is designed, and how much of it there is to go around.

It also depends on just how frequent PvP is in raid dungeons - not to say there shouldn't be ple type of PvP, but there absolutely should be mechanics to discourage initiating PvP on a raid that is already engaged with a raid encounter (there is more to it than just this in my mind, but I am not going to get in to it in *this* post).

From my perspective (that of talking to raiders daily about many aspects of MMO's), many people are more than happy with open world content, PvP et al - people are welcoming to new things.whatmatters is that there are still mobs for them to kill.

Something else to keep in mind, Steven has talked about how mobs in a zone will get progressively harder if you do well on the previous bosses in the zone. I dont see any reasonable way to make this work without instancing the whole thing. While I do not personally want multi-boss instanced raids in Ashes, I dont see any way around it with some of the comments Steven has made - assuming there is a desire to stick with them.

Noaani wrote: »

As to whether people would be accepting of it or not, it comes more down to how the open world content is designed, and how much of it there is to go around.

Yeah, I was thinking more in terms of this kind of line of thinking: "There are instanced raids in this game but they don't give me BiS like I'm used to. I dunno if like that". In my eyes not having some feature is better than having a gimped one. I hope most people don't agree with me on this and they'll be fine with getting non-BiS gear through weekly instances, like how your circle of players would.

Noaani wrote: »

It also depends on just how frequent PvP is in raid dungeons - not to say there shouldn't be any type of PvP, but there absolutely should be mechanics to discourage initiating PvP on a raid that is already engaged with a raid encounter (there is more to it than just this in my mind, but I am not going to get in to it in *this* post).

I could see the discouragement for that being anti-zerg mechanics that start their effect from the outskirts of the boss location rather than under the boss. This way any incoming players would be the first ones to get hit by them, which would at least partially deter them from trying to interrupt a farm (cause they have lower chances of winning the pvp because of said mechanics).

Noaani wrote: »

From my perspective (that of talking to raiders daily about many aspects of MMO's), many people are more than happy with open world content, PvP et al - people are welcoming to new things. What matters is that there are still mobs for them to kill.

I wish Intrepid had some way to engage lowbies in high lvl raiding too. Mb some turret-like things that have their own mechanics that lowbie players can operate. Or maybe low lvl mobs that would put strong disabling debuffs on high lvl players, while lowbies can kill them freely.

Noaani wrote: »

Something else to keep in mind, Steven has talked about how mobs in a zone will get progressively harder if you do well on the previous bosses in the zone. I dont see any reasonable way to make this work without instancing the whole thing. While I do not personally want multi-boss instanced raids in Ashes, I dont see any way around it with some of the comments Steven has made - assuming there is a desire to stick with them.

I think this could be done with player markers that then activate new spawns in certain locations. Say your party A kills boss 1 in room A1 in 5 minutes. Now this party has a 5min marker on them. If you go to room B1, the next mob spawn in that room would be a "5min" spawn (or could be a boss). In order to get the next marker you need to kill these newly spawned mobs (you could add some visual/audio/quest-based indicator for this). Say you kill them in 4min. Now you have a 5/4 marker and room C1 would now spawn a boss instead of mobs (or the other way around with B1) because you did better.

And you could have all kinds of interconnection of this type. And people would probably want to optimize the hell out of these runs, so you could maybe randomize marker-giving mechanics. Bosses would have different drops, mobs could have different quest ties with different node hooks. All kinds of shit. And it all would be party-dependent instead of being purely location-based.

NiKr wrote: »

Yeah, I was thinking more in terms of this kind of line of thinking: "There are instanced raids in this game but they don't give me BiS like I'm used to. I dunno if like that". In my eyes not having some feature is better than having a gimped one. I hope most people don't agree with me on this and they'll be fine with getting non-BiS gear through weekly instances, like how your circle of players would.

some people will say this, for sure.

I'd think it would be about on par with the number of people that wouldn't play Ashes because you cant get gear directly from PvP though. Both will be fairly small numbers.

I could see the discouragement for that being anti-zerg mechanics that start their effect from the outskirts of the boss location rather than under the boss. This way any incoming players would be the first ones to get hit by them, which would at least partially deter them from trying to interrupt a farm (cause they have lower chances of winning the pvp because of said mechanics).

My thoughts on this are a little different.

I personally think that a raid should be well within their rights to attack another raid that is mid encounter - however, a raid doing this should then essentially be excluded from being able to kill bosses for a period of time (no less than an hour).

You kind of have the choice of being there to kill stuff - in which case you compete against other raids using the loot distribution mechanics but can also just PvP then when bot engaged with a boss, or you are there to stop others getting kills - in which case it should be basically impossible for you to kill a boss

I know I said above that it should be discouraged - but I don't think it should be outright prevented. This should apply to group dungeons as well as raid dungeons, imo.

While I thought I had a mechanic for how this could work, as I wrote it down here I came up with a few issues and potential exploits with it - so while I know what I want the end result to be (and think that the bulk of raiders would be perfectly fine with), I don't currently have a suggestion for a mechanism that would achieve it.

I think this could be done with player markers that then activate new spawns in certain locations. Say your party A kills boss 1 in room A1 in 5 minutes. Now this party has a 5min marker on them. If you go to room B1, the next mob spawn in that room would be a "5min" spawn (or could be a boss). In order to get the next marker you need to kill these newly spawned mobs (you could add some visual/audio/quest-based indicator for this). Say you kill them in 4min. Now you have a 5/4 marker and room C1 would now spawn a boss instead of mobs (or the other way around with B1) because you did better.

And you could have all kinds of interconnection of this type. And people would probably want to optimize the hell out of these runs, so you could maybe randomize marker-giving mechanics. Bosses would have different drops, mobs could have different quest ties with different node hooks. All kinds of shit. And it all would be party-dependent instead of being purely location-based.

I've put a LOT of thought in to how Intrepid could make their stated goal with encounter scaling work, and I literally can't think of anything other than outright instancing that would achieve it as they stated.

The above is very close to one of the things I considered. The main issue with this is that if I come across you and your raid taking on group 1, and me and my group/raid start attacking that same mob, that means your group/raid that may have been capable of getting that first 5 minute marker now all of a sudden have a 2 minute marker on you. Since we are dicks, we are not going to assist you at all on the next boss, meaning it is now too hard for you to take on, because the game thinks you are better than you are, because I made the game think that.

While it could be argued that this is an intended "feature" of any proposed system, if that is the case then this system has already strayed away from what it is intended to be - a means of rewarding players that excel at PvE.

Quite honestly, I have put more thought in to the proposed notion that Steven has for these raids than I have in to any other system in this game, and I really can't think of any way to make it work as described (and as was the seeming intent) without having instances with multiple encounters.

I wish Intrepid had some way to engage lowbies in high lvl raiding too. Mb some turret-like things that have their own mechanics that lowbie players can operate. Or maybe low lvl mobs that would put strong disabling debuffs on high lvl players, while lowbies can kill them freely.

I'd rather encourage lower level players to engage with lower level raiding.

Again with EQ2, it had raid mobs as low as level 18. You didn't even pick your final class until level 20.

I think this is a better idea than either getting lower level players involved in higher level raiding (higher level PvE content should be restricted to those of higher level - there is a reason for leveling up), and also better than only having raid encounters at the level cap (this causes people to have no idea at all what a raid even is until they get to that level cap, and thus the game drastically alters for them when they get there).

Noaani wrote: »

The above is very close to one of the things I considered. The main issue with this is that if I come across you and your raid taking on group 1, and me and my group/raid start attacking that same mob, that means your group/raid that may have been capable of getting that first 5 minute marker now all of a sudden have a 2 minute marker on you. Since we are dicks, we are not going to assist you at all on the next boss, meaning it is now too hard for you to take on, because the game thinks you are better than you are, because I made the game think that.

The boss could maybe account for "zerging". So if it's a one-party boss, yet it gets attacked by 2 parties and gets its anti-zerg mechanics enabled, the markers could be asterisked with a "anti-zerg was enabled", so if the system that's tracking the markers sees that only one group has gone past some point of the dungeon, it would then lower the difficulty a bit. Obviously this kind of stuff would have to be properly designed and remain hidden so that people wouldn't know how to exploit it immediately, but I still think it could be possible.

Noaani wrote: »

Again with EQ2, it had raid mobs as low as level 18. You didn't even pick your final class until level 20.

I think this is a better idea than either getting lower level players involved in higher level raiding (higher level PvE content should be restricted to those of higher level - there is a reason for leveling up), and also better than only having raid encounters at the level cap (this causes people to have no idea at all what a raid even is until they get to that level cap, and thus the game drastically alters for them when they get there).

And L2 had bosses at lvl 20, right after your first class specialization. I'm not saying to completely remove low lvl content. I'm just saying that you could have both. Low lvl mobs should be on a fairly short respawn timer cause there's gonna be a ton of low lvl players at the start and in the first few months so they should have great content right from the get-go. And they'd outlvl those bosses fairly quickly too, so I don't think that quick respawns would be much of a problem.

But I think that having some low lvl content around high lvl raids/bosses would not only bring hardcore and casual players closer, but would also provide proper guild training for all the newcomers. Instead of just being "that one newbie that's gonna be leveling alone for several weeks while everyone at the top is having fun" have it be "that one newbie that can mount a turret during the raid and help out with a particular mechanic". Now the new player can enjoy even more content, can see what's in his future (a cool huge raid) and would already become a part of the team. I see this as an absolute win.

Noaani wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

So the question is, if that is a part of the games plan way back then, why should they change the games design to take it out?

The system is designed the way it is for the same reason nodes are, by creating limited supply, you create player friction and conflict. Your recommendation destroys that.

No it doesn't, and basic math is your friend here to prove that.

Imagine the game has 5 instanced raid encounters (I am not asking for more than this).

Imagine each encounter drops enough crafting material to make exactly 2 items.

Thus means that a raid of 640 item slots (40*16) is able to get 10 items per week from these encounters at the absolute best.

Further, since these items are not best in slot, they aren't even the items that these people are really wanting - they are still interim items.

Sure, other raids may be able to kill those mobs as well, but they have their own 640 item slots to fill.

If this level item item acquisition destroys the limited supply of items in the game, then itemization in the game was already destroyed.

Use basic math. If the mob is in the world, only one group can get what drops from it per spawn. If the mob is in an instance then everyone gets the drops. More importantly, this destroys conflict around content by removing the friction it's limiting nature creates and turns it into an everyone wins scenario.

Since it's easier to get items from an instance, any item that is in the world and lower in power to the instance items, becomes irrelevant. There is an increased risk with less of a reward.

Tragnar

How is that an argument against instances? You can have an open world event with build up that gives a "ticket" for a single boss instance - that way the intended scarcity is kept and the possibility for uber grief toxicity is out of the question

there should be some system to prevent small group targetted griefing for boss encounters - all open world versions of it have so far failed miserably - instance was the only successful solution - so if you are worried that the instance is run by too many people then just limit who can enter the instance

Like hell - you could also give as many boss instance ticket out, but only the fastest group gets loot - or every successive raid clear gets less rewards - so for example first 3 groups get full rewards, and then it goes down

Tragnar wrote: »

How is that an argument against instances? You can have an open world event with build up that gives a "ticket" for a single boss instance - that way the intended scarcity is kept and the possibility for uber grief toxicity is out of the question

there should be some system to prevent small group targetted griefing for boss encounters - all open world versions of it have so far failed miserably - instance was the only successful solution - so if you are worried that the instance is run by too many people then just limit who can enter the instance

Like hell - you could also give as many boss instance ticket out, but only the fastest group gets loot - or every successive raid clear gets less rewards - so for example first 3 groups get full rewards, and then it goes down

This is another gimping of the system that will just push away anyone who prefers instances and their usual design from other games. It's the same as "owpvp" in opt-in games. Any person who enjoys real owpvp will spit on that kind of implementation of the system because why have a shitty version of the system, when you could've just avoided having the system at all and not alienate all the people that came to the game for said system.

If you say "we have instance raids with good gear in them", people will come to your game expecting the usual "everyone can try the instance. Maybe not everyone can beat them, but you can try" instead of "participate in pvp in order to get a chance to enter the instance". That type of thing only works on pvp gamers, like those from L2, because at the core of the feature there's only pvp.

Or if by "open world event" you don't mean "there'll be pvp there", then you're just creating unneeded complications for people to enjoy the content.

Tragnar wrote: »

How is that an argument against instances? You can have an open world event with build up that gives a "ticket" for a single boss instance - that way the intended scarcity is kept and the possibility for uber grief toxicity is out of the question

there should be some system to prevent small group targetted griefing for boss encounters - all open world versions of it have so far failed miserably - instance was the only successful solution - so if you are worried that the instance is run by too many people then just limit who can enter the instance

Like hell - you could also give as many boss instance ticket out, but only the fastest group gets loot - or every successive raid clear gets less rewards - so for example first 3 groups get full rewards, and then it goes down

Yes, those are things that could be done if it's deemed necessary but being able to contest a spawn is part of the game and removing it from the world, removes that option. Yes, if there is an issue of small groups greifing then there are other things that can be done with encounter, world, and combat design.

Putting difficult encounters behind choke points that are easy to block would be a good way to allow people to block off a boss so they can stop small groups from getting to the boss and interfering.

Designing an encounter so one random person can't cause a wipe is also a good way to prevent a small group from griefing.

We don't have perma stealth so a group can't sneak into a raid group and hit a vulnerable person.

You did a good job of coming up with those other solutions so i'd imagine there are other things you could think of that doesn't involve giving up and throwing it into an instance.

mcstackerson wrote: »

Since it's easier to get items from an instance, any item that is in the world and lower in power to the instance items, becomes irrelevant. There is an increased risk with less of a reward.

I didn't say it wouldn't be easier, I said that if that rate of new items in the game broke itemization, then itemization was already broken.

It would take a guild of 40 players over a year to get geared out from this content - and that is assuming killing all such mobs every week, and not having ny players need to be replaced ever. If we assume both of the above, and also assume time off for Christmas and such, you are actually looking at about two years to gear out a raid.

If this content is still relevant in two years, clearly they didn't add anything new, and the game has already failed.

Keep in mind, Ashes is not going to be like L2 where you get a new item every few months. It isn't going to be like WoW where you get a new item every few days, either. It will have to sit in between these two. A single player in a guild killing these mobs would spend an average of an entire month between getting a single item from them.

That is absolutely not breaking the economy as you have claimed. Your statement was either pure ignorance, or pure hyperbole. I refuse to believe you could hold that opinion for real - you are not that dumb.

Okeydoke

Tragnar wrote: »

Like hell - you could also give as many boss instance ticket out

Nothing screams theme park like tickets. Tickets for instanced bosses. Hello? Pvx game remember. Bueller?

Nearly everything is subject to pvp. You are supposed to be at risk of being contested. Small group interfering with your boss fight? KILL THEM. Utterly annihilate them. Small group griefers griefing your raid group? K.I.L.L. THEM. That's what the game is about. Or cooperate/strike a deal with them. Also what the game is about.

"We MAY have some encounters that are in instances." - Steven. Last question, most recent live stream. We we're previously told up to 20% of dungeon encounters may be instanced, for narrative appeal. Who knows how exactly it will end up, that's just what we've been told.

To what mcstackerson said, yeah some of these encounters can be designed with bottleneck entrances. Between player collision, area denial spells/abilities, other things perhaps, there are ways you can empower raid groups to defend themselves and their boss fight.

I'm also not entirely opposed in some cases to a barrier in the bottleneck that can be set up. Like a drawbridge, a gate, boulders, a magical forcefield. Something that the raid group currently fighting the boss could set up in the bottleneck and then have to maintain through a repair mechanic as outside groups try to break it down. With max defenders repairing it and max attackers attacking it, advantage attackers, it will eventually break down. But it would buy the defenders some time.

Haven't really thought it out, just saying I'm open to ideas like that. But tickets for instances? This just isn't that game. It's not me saying that, its the owner of the game.

Hey Steven. Hey buddy. How are you. Do you have the money, resources and studio experience to compete with the titans of mmo pve content like WoW? Your game hasn't become the most hyped and anticipated mmo because you talked about instanced raid content. Quite the opposite. Literally the opposite.

Edit: How'd this dps meter megathread turn into this anyway. What am I doing here

Noaani wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

Since it's easier to get items from an instance, any item that is in the world and lower in power to the instance items, becomes irrelevant. There is an increased risk with less of a reward.

I didn't say it wouldn't be easier, I said that if that rate of new items in the game broke itemization, then itemization was already broken.

It would take a guild of 40 players over a year to get geared out from this content - and that is assuming killing all such mobs every week, and not having ny players need to be replaced ever. If we assume both of the above, and also assume time off for Christmas and such, you are actually looking at about two years to gear out a raid.

If this content is still relevant in two years, clearly they didn't add anything new, and the game has already failed.

Keep in mind, Ashes is not going to be like L2 where you get a new item every few months. It isn't going to be like WoW where you get a new item every few days, either. It will have to sit in between these two. A single player in a guild killing these mobs would spend an average of an entire month between getting a single item from them.

That is absolutely not breaking the economy as you have claimed. Your statement was either pure ignorance, or pure hyperbole. I refuse to believe you could hold that opinion for real - you are not that dumb.

Instances will affect the amount of items farmed and you know it.

You also ignored the other half of the argument which is arguably more critical to the game's design, conflict.

Instances completely remove the conflict around it and allows everyone to get the rewards(unless you limit access/rewards). This also decrease conflict around any open world content that isn't as rewarding since people will be less likely to take the increased risk.

NiKr wrote: »

The boss could maybe account for "zerging". So if it's a one-party boss, yet it gets attacked by 2 parties and gets its anti-zerg mechanics enabled, the markers could be asterisked with a "anti-zerg was enabled", so if the system that's tracking the markers sees that only one group has gone past some point of the dungeon, it would then lower the difficulty a bit. Obviously this kind of stuff would have to be properly designed and remain hidden so that people wouldn't know how to exploit it immediately, but I still think it could be possible.

Two parties (whether groups or raids) on one target is kind of a part of the design of the game. The game is designed around hte idea of groups and/or raids competing with each other on the same encounter, with the group or raid that does the most damage to the mob getting all the rewards. That isn't the type of zerging the anti-zerging systems would be trying to prevent.

That said, imagine you and I are both running a raid dungeon. We come across each other at a boss, and due to not wanting lesser drops due to corruption, we decide that PvP isn't on the cards.

So, we compete with the encounter. Both our raids attack it, and who ever does the most damage gets the loot - and so both raids are doing the absolute best we can.

Cool, it's literally everything in relation to this system and the systems on the fringes of it is working as intended so far.

Now we move on to the next boss. Since we did so well on that previous encounter, the next encounter is now tuned for people doing *that* well. So, we get to the encounter, and not wanting to fall behind in DPS, you pull it.

We just sit there and watch.

The encounter is tuned to a much higher difficulty than you and your raid can handle, because it is expecting two raids.

Now, there are things that can be done, like fighting over it, or moving on to the next encounter, what ever. However, this system is now no longer functioning as it is supposed to function. It has been taken from being a system to reward players that perform well, and to tailor content to the ability of the people taking it on - to that of an adversarial system that is used to get rid of competition as much as it is used for anything else.

There is literally no permeation of this system that I will not be able to game to piss off your raid outside of instanced raid content. If I am able to use this system against you, then this system is not functioning as it is intended.

Keep in mind, I am not asking for multi-boss raid instances in Ashes. I believe that would be a bad thing for the game. However, the system as described by Steven does not work as intended without it.

mcstackerson wrote: »

Instances will affect the amount of items farmed and you know it.

Your argument was not that it would add more items to the game, it was that it would destroy any notion of limited supply.

If you now want to change your stance to that of "instanced raids will see more items in the games economy", then I will not only agree with you, but I will also point out that I called out exactly that hyperbole above.

I'm going to assume that the above is your actual, non-hyperbole stance.

Based on that, I want to point out that you have not given any reason at all as to why you think this is a bad thing. Should you attempt to make that argument, keep in mind the 2 year time period that it would realistically take a raid to get geared out via this content, along with Stevens plan for content additions that are to include new bosses, new gear, increases in character power and increases in character level.

Further to literally all of that, if the games economy is designed around the idea of these encounters existing, then not having them would be bad for the game.

So, you are now in the position of having to explain why you think we currently know that it is a bad thing that the potential possibility exists of a raid of 40 players (640 item slots) acquiring 10 mid tier items per week, on content that will be obsolete probably within a year, making that gear obsolete within a year, in a game that has it's economy designed around that gear at that acquisition rate being a part of the design.

That is what you initially said would "destroy limited item supply".

As to the conflict aspect of it, I have addressed that in the past.

Ashes is a PvX game, not a PvP game. This means PvE and PvP will be present together most of the time (or at least the potential of both).

However, there is literally nothing at all stopping one or the other existing in small amounts without the other.

If you do not agree with this, I expect you to be arguing why the military node arena NEEDS to have raid bosses in it as well as other players, as this is a PvX game, not a PvP game.

If you are arguing that it is ok for PvP to exist by itself in an instanced off setting (the arena), then you now need to explain why you do not also except a limited amount of PvE being instanced off by itself.

Tragnar

I get the adversity against instances - what if then when you engage the boss everyone in your raid team becomes uninteractable to every player action that isnt in the raid group - and the boss as well

remember that this is to only prevent the uber griefers that with no end wipe groups on open world boss content - no game so far has done that well

it is either an easy loot box that isnt satisfying to kill, because the only exciting thing about it is to see the giant zerg killing it

Noaani wrote: »

Two parties (whether groups or raids) on one target is kind of a part of the design of the game. The game is designed around the idea of groups and/or raids competing with each other on the same encounter, with the group or raid that does the most damage to the mob getting all the rewards. That isn't the type of zerging the anti-zerging systems would be trying to prevent.

Boss' abilities and environmental hazards will scale with attackers' quantity. I called that anti-zerg, but iirc it's just an intended mechanic to counter 2 groups from the same guild fighting a one-group boss. The same mechanic would apply when 2 groups from different guilds are present in the boss location.

Noaani wrote: »

Now we move on to the next boss. Since we did so well on that previous encounter, the next encounter is now tuned for people doing *that* well. So, we get to the encounter, and not wanting to fall behind in DPS, you pull it.

We just sit there and watch.

The encounter is tuned to a much higher difficulty than you and your raid can handle, because it is expecting two raids.

The markers would still help with countering this gameplay. Mark each group with separate markers. Track those markers not only within the boss location, but only in Boss' aggro list.

If on the second boss one of the groups didn't even enter the location, lessen the difficulty and then readjust it in future boss stages if the group comes in later on.

If the group entered the location but didn't start attacking the boss, ramp up the environmental hazards to make them move way more. If they continue to not do anything, ramp it up even higher on future boss stages. And this would be on top of already heightened "anti-zerg" mechanics.

Noaani wrote: »

There is literally no permeation of this system that I will not be able to game to piss off your raid outside of instanced raid content. If I am able to use this system against you, then this system is not functioning as it is intended.

And this is why I still think that L2's semi-instances would achieve this goal w/o much changes to the overall system or "risk vs reward" ideology.

We could still have an instance that rewards mid gear once a week, but for all the other content I think semi-instances would work. But we'll have to see what Intrepid comes up with first, in order to give proper feedback to whichever exploits their system might have.

NiKr wrote: »

The markers would still help with countering this gameplay. Mark each group with separate markers. Track those markers not only within the boss location, but only in Boss' aggro list.

This wouldn't help at all.

Getting on a mobs aggro list is not hard.

No matter what the system is, it will be gamed. Keep in mind, while the mindset of a PvP player to to get in to opposing players heads, PvE players put that same effort getting in to the games "head". Working out how to get a system or a mechanic in the game to work to our advantage is literally the point of PvE content.

It could be a pseudo-instance rather than an actual instance, but it is still a requirement that for this mechanic that Steven has talked about to work, there needs to only be one raid present.

Noaani wrote: »

No matter what the system is, it will be gamed. Keep in mind, while the mindset of a PvP player to to get in to opposing players heads, PvE players put that same effort getting in to the games "head". Working out how to get a system or a mechanic in the game to work to our advantage is literally the point of PvE content.

Well yeah, any system will get gamed sooner or later. It just depends on how much it can be gamed and how fast.
It could be a pseudo-instance rather than an actual instance, but it is still a requirement that for this mechanic that Steven has talked about to work, there needs to only be one raid present.[/quote]
Which is why I wanna see Intrepid's system first to know how exactly they plan to realize Steven's designs.