"World Instances"

I want to discuss the currently planned 80/20 (open world/instanced) content split and the statement that instanced content will be non-repeatable.

I mainly separate bosses into open world and instanced. There's several mechanics to how you fight them or how you get to fight them, but at their core it's binary. Open world bosses obviously have to be easier than instanced ones, mainly due to the pvp potential. There's obviously gotta be way more of them in the world and they should obviously have several different mechanics of their appearance and encounters.

I come from L2 and its instanced bosses had a "world instance" kind of mechanic. Something that could only be beat once per its respawn cycle for the entire server and has instanced mechanics. Those instances also had 2 types: they either let in only one raid or had an open to anyone access to the instanced room but only for a short time window. Obviously there was a shitton of pvp for these bosses, because they were rarer than open world bosses (don't necessarily have to be the case in Ashes) and only one group of people gets to kill them, while the rest of the server had to wait for that boss to respawn again.

here's an example of a "pure" instanced fight. There's a ton of pvp happening around the npc that let's you into the instance and the video's poster is the first one to enter (mainly due to server settings, cause iirc you shouldn't be able to enter with dead raid members, but that's beside the point)
here's an example of "open door for a while". The video is inside boss' room, there's pvp between different people (the purple icon above people's heads means "one-sided war declaration") and anyone who missed the time window stayed outside and can't come into this room until the boss dies or everyone inside wipes.

In that second case, if the people inside all died, the boss would "fall asleep" for several minutes (might've been up to 30min-1h, don't remember exactly) and then the door would open again.

Now here's why I made this post. There's the "instanced content is only 20% of all the content and is non-repeatable" statement (in the context of dungeons of course). To me personally, the instanced bosses from L2 still felt like open world ones, because your right to their loot comes directly from open world. That is, if you didn't win in open world pvp (could be some pvp-including puzzle/mechanic in Ashes) - you didn't get to even try and fight the boss. So I'd be completely fine if top lvl bosses in Ashes had this "world instance" mechanic (and the volcano dragon from alpha1 kinda already did, though I think the "doors" didn't close). It would let Intrepid design the boss encounters with all kinds of intricacies and difficulties w/o sacrificing open worldness (again, imo). And considering Steven's statement of "we'll have bosses that only <10% of the playerbase can defeat", I'd assume that high difficulty pve is one of the goals for the game.

What do you think though? Especially those who consider themselves purist of Intrepid's design and sticklers of definitions. Would this "world instance" mechanic break the "80/20, no repeatable instances" promise for you? Do you think that the promise itself is silly in the first place, because you can't make super difficult open world pve and expect people to clear it while literally anyone is free to interrupt their farm? Would love to hear your opinions.

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Noaani

Warth wrote: »

That depends on the implementation of it all. Inability to join the boss arena when in combat or the requirement of a damage interrupted 3 second channel would essentially stop suicide bombing attempts for bosses, that have top-end pve requirement (which i still don't believe we'll get many of just as a side-note).

I mean, it does depend on the implementation, but that doesn't exactly favor preventing players getting in.

Your first point would be turning the encounters in to an actual instance. If this happens, they may as well just go actual fully instanced with it.

The second would be easily dealt with by any form of protection barrier ability any class may have. That said, unless they make the area a battleground, you would need to attack each player individually - AoE's won't work. Best of luck with that.

If we don't have many encounters that would be considered top end PvE, the game can no longer be called PvX - imo.

Since Steven has made many comments about there being top end encounters in Ashes (not that I am convinced he actually knows what a top end encounter even is), as far as I am concerned, it should be the primary assumption.

As to stealth, the ability to detect stealth doesn't have a particularly great history of being effective in large scale conflict. If you can easily see 300 characters near you, you are not likely to focus on the one character you can barely see.

Mag7spy

@NiKr I hope you aren't being convinced for instanced content to be the main end game from a pve player....

Warth

Noaani wrote: »

Since Steven has made many comments about there being top end encounters in Ashes (not that I am convinced he actually knows what a top end encounter even is)

pretty much my assumption as well.

Voxtrium

"There's obviously gotta be way more of them in the world." This statement i think @NiKr doesn't have to be true. Also @Noaani "Essentially, you can not have both PvE and PvP challenge at the same time without one of them being sub-par." This doesn't have to be true. There is no law that tells us that 1 has to diminish in the face of the other, we as developers merely haven't found the tools to create this circumstance.

The thing about comparing EQ2 bosses to our hypothetical in Ashes is the inherently different structure. In EQ2 you had 2 factions and therefore half the server was your enemy and therefore you always had a plethora of options for either side to show up to stop the other faction. In Ashes with open world content there is a chance that if you are getting shut down every time by another guild, your diplomacy is sub par, not your fighting, maybe you can argue there will always be another rival guild, but there is a level somewhere that can reached to complete the content, through diplomacy with other guilds, number of players at the raid for defense and number of players available for the raid itself.

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Alpha-2#Persistent_alpha
"Bosses and mobs will not auto-scale based on group size."

Since this is the case I see no reason a world boss designed for 40 players can't be taken down somehow. More players, less enemies etc. I don't believe the L2 system is necessary to compliment the bosses.

Leiloni

NiKr wrote: »

tautau wrote: »

I'm from L2 as well so I understand the tradition of it being that way. But why not have some (or the best) Open World bosses be just as hard as the hardest instanced boss? Sure, it would be quite an accomplishment to both hold off the opposition and take down the boss. But it Would be quite an accomplishment.

From what I've heard of games with harder pve than L2's, open world bosses are either never beaten, or they get nerfed down until they are beaten. If you make a super difficult open world boss, even a single enemy player can mess you up. It can be a ranger who shoots you from a nearby hill, it could be a stealthed rogue who slips by your pvp protection, or it could be the usual enemy guild that just runs up to you and their mere presence makes the boss mechanics even harder and you wipe. And you obviously can do the same to them, at which point we're back to the "it's never beaten" issue.

I'd love for Intrepid to somehow succeed where everyone else failed (hell, that's the reason I'm here in the first place), but I'm not sure if this is the place where they even can.

I mean in Aion what we did in situations like that is you'd have a second raid(s) on PvP/Guard duty and they'd be the ones out there killing that ranger in the hills and patrolling to keep you safe. Obviously that doesn't mean people won't die, but if successful they could keep away the majority of fighters while the PvE raid(s) works on killing the boss (and I assume if a person here or there dies at the boss fight they can be rezzed mid fight).

Leiloni

Warth wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

Warth wrote: »

I don't quite agree with this point. They do not have to be easier, they just require pacts, coordination, people that are only there to defend the attempt from others players rather than fight the boss itself.

We'll have to see how rogue's stealth works in practice. Cause it's easy to say "just defend the raid from everyone else", but as Noaani said, it's not always possible to do so, even from just a few people let alone potential full enemy raids or just trolls that have fun by messing up people's farming.

"Detect Stealth" spells and auras are a staple in MMOs that have stealth.

This but there's also the fact that one stealther isn't going to take down a raid. He might not even be able to take down one person because as soon as he pops out of stealth to attack someone people will target him. And that person is already being actively healed by more than one healer at that point as well. Honestly it just sounds like a death sentence - why would any stealther do that? Especially in a game where even without the 39 extra friends and several healers to back him up, the TTK would still be 30s-1 min.

Dygz

Depends on how Stealth works.
Especially if we can place a Stealth/Invis augment on Hallowed Ground.

Noaani

Voxtrium wrote: »

Also Noaani "Essentially, you can not have both PvE and PvP challenge at the same time without one of them being sub-par." This doesn't have to be true. There is no law that tells us that 1 has to diminish in the face of the other, we as developers merely haven't found the tools to create this circumstance.

So, here's the issue with your analysis here.

You are basically saying that in order to kill open world mobs that are designed to actually be hard, all factions on the server need to come to an agreement.

This isn't an agreement with every guild that could kill the boss, keep in mind - it is an agreement with every player that could prevent you from killing the boss (basically with every level capped player on the server).

My experience of these things tells me that you are unlikely yo ever get even 50% of the top end players on a server to agree to something that doesn't directly benefit them.

However, I'm happy to ignore this oversight of yours. This leaves us with the fact that if your above hypothetical situation was to ever actually happen, it actually proves the point I made.

The point was that you couldn't have an encounter with both good PvP and good PvE, the point stands - the thing is, your solution to it is to remove the PvP element via diplomacy.

Regardless of whether it is players doing this or developers doing it, the end result is the same - no PvP.

Noaani

Leiloni wrote: »

I mean in Aion what we did in situations like that is you'd have a second raid(s) on PvP/Guard duty and they'd be the ones out there killing that ranger in the hills and patrolling to keep you safe. Obviously that doesn't mean people won't die, but if successful they could keep away the majority of fighters while the PvE raid(s) works on killing the boss (and I assume if a person here or there dies at the boss fight they can be rezzed mid fight).

Aion bosses weren't on par with raid bosses in other games though.

Azherae

@NiKr, this topic is going to end in nonsensical derail due to issues with priors again.

It'd probably make more sense to consult Noaani directly if you care about the derail.

Or go play Monster Hunter, particularly if you can find any friends to play it with, certain things about this are much easier to grasp intuitively after doing so.

Voxtrium

@Noaani No i provided 1 obvious response to a problem. 1 of many. Also i cited that IS will design world bosses around a capped number of players intended to participate. Meaning that if i bring 200 players to the raid meant for 40 i should be able to sustain those losses from PvP. Even if its not achieved in the first attempts because the boss isn't scaling with players like EQ2 then there's a ton more opportunity for players to finish a boss while continuing both PVP and PVE.

A couple scenarios are obvious here because of the way IS designs bosses with a set number of participants in mind.

World boss spawns - A mega alliance brings 120 players together to fight the boss, blocking other guilds with 1 raid group of 40 while their remaining 2 raid groups of 40 engage the boss, also on a boss designed for 40, IS has stated each boss will scale with how well the previous stage was completed so its obvious that the strategy will be to use a rotating 40 man squad split into 5 groups of 8, with another raid group on standby to the main raid group again with 8 squads, each squad paired with an in raid squad, as intruders slip past it will be each squads job to rotate out as they lose players to (ganks, enemy attempts at sabotage and boss kills)
creating a cycle of in raid squads that never goes above 40 as to minimize the scale of the next stage of the boss while maximizing the likelihood of success, while this occurs the rest of this mega raid group is on duty for defense of the raid and with the current style shown in A1 of single entrance boss locations it really isn't far fetched to imagine why this strategy would work.

You could have alliances that come together, large guilds or its even possible to imagine that because of planning guilds allow 1 raid group from an enemy guild to complete a stage before a separate guild takes out the raid group while maintaining aggro and rotating their raid group in, with that cycle continuing into the final stage where the sheer number of guilds fighting for the boss results in a whipe or completion.

My point is only that the L2 system isn't needed here because of what will likely occur in its place.
My oversight @Noaani was merely my assumption that giving a single example of an answer to a problem would be enough for you to come up with more solutions yourself.

Ludullu

Warth wrote: »

"Detect Stealth" spells and auras are a staple in MMOs that have stealth.

And usually only a particular class (or maybe even an archetype) as those. And as Noaani pointed out, aoes would only work on flagged or enemy guild players, so unless any "detect" works on any "stealth" - ya ain't seeing a player pass by.

Mag7spy wrote: »

NiKr I hope you aren't being convinced for instanced content to be the main end game from a pve player....

As I've explained in the OP, L2 had instances that I saw as open world. Noaani couldn't have convinced me of anything that I wasn't already convinced of beforehand.

Azherae wrote: »

NiKr, this topic is going to end in nonsensical derail due to issues with priors again.

Or go play Monster Hunter, particularly if you can find any friends to play it with, certain things about this are much easier to grasp intuitively after doing so.

We're all about the derail

At least this is my small thread that I'm fine with derailing if that happens, while I don't want to derail the main DPS thread (even though I've done it several times already

)

As for MH, aren't all those bosses "instanced"? As in, you go to a completely different place to fight them. I've seen a few streams of MH and it seemed to be just big instanced locations with cool difficult bosses. I understand the complexities of fighting and the potential razer sharp tuning of stats/attacks, but this thread was more about people's opinions on the statements made by Steven in relation to pve content. And so far, the majority seems to have high hopes of that statement becoming reality.

Voxtrium wrote: »

A couple scenarios are obvious here because of the way IS designs bosses with a set number of participants in mind.

You forget that Intrepid has also said that boss' will become harder if there's more than the intended number of raiders. And if the boss is literally at peak difficulty already, then any additional complications would immediately wipe the raid.

And as for controlling any other intruders - your whole guild/alliance would have to go super red in order to do that, because intruders won't need to flag up or be at war with you or do anything of the sort. They'll just run towards the boss, enable his anti-zerg mechanics and wipe the original raid. That's it. And depending on how those mechanics are triggered, the intruders might not even die, because they'd be on the edge of the boss location and as soon as they see the boss "raging", they'd just back up and take no damage while the og raid gets demolished.

Azherae

In Monster Hunter World, the instance is 'players vs Monster'.

The interruptor in that case, though, is not another player, it's another MONSTER.

When you've had the experience of 'trying to kill something in 15 minutes' and another whole monster (which you don't even NEED to kill) drops in and starts attacking you too with all its mechanics, the feeling is achieved.

Most players of easier games, particularly easier MMOs, will usually think 'it's just an Add'. But adds are part of MMO bosses by design. The player is 'intended to be able to win against the target and also the Adds'.

Monster Hunter isn't designed that way. You CAN be strong enough to not DIE when an 'Add' appears, but if you were being challenged (spawns of monsters in a zone are random, 3 large ones at a time according to ecology, you often are hunting just one) by the one, and a troublesome Add shows up, that is RANDOM. In many cases you don't even know beforehand which ones will be there.

If you are trying to fight 'Apex Predator A' and 'powerful attacker B' shows up just as you are setting up a good situation, it isn't a question of 'will you die', it is a question of 'can you still do the requirements to clear Apex Predator A?'

Fortunately in Monster Hunter, another monster showing up is usually a benefit to you, as the two often fight, but the 25% or so of times where it isn't, the difficulty of a short-time limit hunt more than doubles. Sometiimes your target will go into rage mode just because the other APPEARS, when you weren't expecting that, and your mitigation or whatever is 'down', and now you die.

Again, this isn't exactly how it goes, and you have to start from the principle of 'I am choosing to do this thing because it is hard enough to not have a guaranteed victory', and THEN throw in the 'well here's a gigantic flying wyvern dropping literal explosive scales all over the battlefield while I fight this thing that must be dodged perfectly... guess I'll die'.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

In Monster Hunter World, the instance is 'players vs Monster'.

The interruptor in that case, though, is not another player, it's another MONSTER.

Ah, I see. I might try it out when I have the money for it then. Would also provide me with some better pve experience overall.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

In Monster Hunter World, the instance is 'players vs Monster'.

The interruptor in that case, though, is not another player, it's another MONSTER.

Ah, I see. I might try it out when I have the money for it then. Would also provide me with some better pve experience overall.

Well, either way, that was my attempt at re-framing the point. The Priors can easily be different.

If you find that someone's counterargument is 'You wouldn't design a game that way', that person's priors are unhelpful. Same for 'The boss wouldn't be that hard' (why is it good PvE then? Priors unhelpful), 'You could make mechanics to help you against the Add', (why is it good PvP then? Priors unhelpful).

It's all just 'people coming to the same conclusion as Noaani but treating it as fine/a good thing. I also do this. I don't think 'PvE must be awesome cool hard even when no rivals are around', for games, but that's because my entire 'feeling' is that the PvP will keep things going. And going... and going...

Similar for any solution that removes or reduces the 'Open World' aspect of it. Sure, that's fine. If we wanna go 'PvP for the right to enter the instance!' it's okay, but the priors still fail. It's like 'gearing to deal with the second monster'. If the target monster was so engaging (on its own) that you could lose, you gear up toward handling IT. If you could afford to gear up for handling 'random add', your main target wasn't THAT strong. And that's ok. "Having to fight the main target with suboptimal state" can be a challenge type too. But it generally implies that the target is not likely to win if you are at optimal.

Open World PvX bosses therefore would generally be either 'designed to be beaten with suboptimal situations' (which could be done multiple ways, maybe some really great ones!) or 'designed to only be beaten when no one is around to create a suboptimal one' (I consider this sort of thing fun, but even I don't have the stamina for constantly fighting over a boss that you can only kill when all your opposition is dead AND your group is in near-perfect condition).

Voxtrium

You forget that Intrepid has also said that boss' will become harder if there's more than the intended number of raiders. @NiKr thats why i said maintain 40 players or however many are designed for the boss inside of the bosses aggro and leave the remaining to defend around it and replace dead/dieing players from boss kills and players getting by. Going super red would only happen if we killed non combatants but IS has turned players purple in areas around objectives in the past why would they not have an large area around the boss flag players for PVP.

Ludullu

Voxtrium wrote: »

Going super red would only happen if we killed non combatants but IS has turned players purple in areas around objectives in the past why would they not have an large area around the boss flag players for PVP.

Changing people out w/o disturbing the anti-zerg mechanics could be impossible, if the boss tracks the attackers instead of purely its threat list.

Also, if the mechanics are hardcore enough, the death of even one member should already mean the end of the raid, let alone a whole damn party.

And as for pvp zones around bosses, yes that is definitely a possibility, but again, it will all depend on how far that zone stretches out to. If it's purely in the boss' location - ya ain't stopping anyone before they mess up the raid. If it's half the dungeon around the boss, that could work, but then I'm not sure how many people would be fine with high lvl dungeons being pvp areas (I would be though

).

In other words, there's a ton of things that go against the currently planned features. I'd like to hear what Intrepid has planned for them, but I'm guessing we won't know that until later on in alpha2.

Voxtrium

Thats very true, and i definitely agree that the timeline is after the alpha when systems are more fleshed out and tested by the playerbase. I am sure they will release a high level boss for us to toy with in the world so that they can get an idea on the general mechanics that need to surround that boss to make it a competitive and fun environment. Like the size of the area around the boss flagging players for PvP or the design around threat regarding whether its a per player basis or general threat level. My opinion regarding the need for a L2 style system to compliment AOC open world bosses still stands. I feel like in the future that may change though once we have that hands on time.

Dolyem

The 20% instanced could also be left for the end game raids? I wouldn't be too against that honestly if we are talking about massive raids important to the lore and basic progression. May not even have the best gear but at least tier 1 or 2. Tier 3 being left for Hard end game OW raids/crafting

Ludullu

Dolyem wrote: »

The 20% instanced could also be left for the end game raids? I wouldn't be too against that honestly if we are talking about massive raids important to the lore and basic progression. May not even have the best gear but at least tier 1 or 2. Tier 3 being left for Hard end game OW raids/crafting

They'd need to clarify the "non-repeatable" statement then. Cause big instances with big drops would have to be repeatable, otherwise there'd only be a few items from them on the whole server and those would decay soon enough and you'd have no way of repairing them cause you can't go back into the dungeon to get the mats.

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