Today 4man group in a 8 man area shows a larger issue in terms of difficulty

Here is my main gripe with what was shown.

This is an area meant for 8 players. But we had 4.
Those 4 fighting 1 elite mob took about 15-20 seconds. That is perfect time to kill for a 4 man.
But thats the problem - this is an 8 man area, meaning an encounter is 6-10 seconds.

I think the area is undertuned if they had an 8 man party and an actual tank doing it's job properly.

1) Basically - the amount of struggle they had today, is what I expect and would like to see as if this was an 8 man group. I want to see an 8 man struggle in this area and not breeze through.

2) with that being said - I dont think a 4 man should be able to compete in the area. Maybe the regular elite mobs but DEFINATELY NOT on bosses. Seeing them being able to still overcome "bosses" as a 4man is disappointing.

3) I hope to see 8 man time to kill on elite mobs be on avg 20-25 seconds and bosses 40-60 seconds

overall today video shows it looks hard but when in is put in context, four level 13 doing an 8 man level 15-17 content - the difficulty setting is undertune.

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Gizban

4-man group should not be able to do an 8-man group, especially at lower levels!

Perhaps at higher levels with more experience and more utility synergy, maybe scrape by? No, I don't like that either. Just should never happen. That needs to be reworked.

Way too easy! I could see this get boring if its all at face value, i.e. mob difficulty was done and no cheats going on.

Songcaller

What luck it was that the update was not a content update but a class one.

novercalis

Neurath wrote: »

What luck it was that the update was not a content update but a class one.

I did not understand your sentence, I am assuming you are trying to say - the showcase was about the tank and not the content???

What we learned from the showcase is more than just tank.

Improved UI, Map Artstyle, Mob Leash range, Tanky weird janky walking animation, Loot setting, Loot UI, Loot vote mechanic, Mob Damage output, Mob animation, aggro body pull range. Map location, Node location, setting, theme.

These are values that have been set. Wether they are the final settings is unknown to us. I'd rather highlight these issues now then when it's too late. I highly highly doubt they will be doing a showcase on leash, dmg, difficulty, mob animations stuff.

Songcaller

But the ai and creatures have always been rubbish in the show cases. From the dragons to the weird dungeon creature, to the creature which catapulted players onto the beach and for the static flying creatures in a1.

I have never felt any content feedback has been taken. Even in a1 they said it wasn't a content test but an overall test. A1 had some harder mobs but not many. A0 had far harder mobs which seemed to have been tamed/reduced.

I do not know when the true pve will be shown or if the true pve will ever be up to par. We are only ever shown up to level 15 and even then with a fraction of actual skills. Some call Ashes a hardcore pvp game so I guess sub par pve is the standard there.

novercalis

When steven has mention that he is taking inspiration from L2, EQ and old school mmo - those contents were hard. When he hired Jeffery Bard, a EQ guy - we were excited to see hard content. Knowing his intention is to make leveling be 2-3 months - we know the content is gonna be hard. When you introduce Xp debt, that makes us believe there will be difficult content that constantly threaten us to the dreaded xp debt mechanic.

I get A1 gameplay didnt reflect that but there is no hard criticizing this now. I can only assume, the devs in charge of characters (both PC and NPC) are working on the strength and weakness, deciding the HP pool, the mechanics, the abilities, the amount of experience point, damage output, etc.. therefor they are also the same people who decides the difficulty of it.
Thus I feel it should be brought up. They should always tune it hard and scale down, instead of start weak then tune up.

no-one likes easy, too hard and we can tone it down notch by notch.

Azherae

novercalis wrote: »

When steven has mention that he is taking inspiration from L2, EQ and old school mmo - those contents were hard. When he hired Jeffery Bard, a EQ guy - we were excited to see hard content. Knowing his intention is to make leveling be 2-3 months - we know the content is gonna be hard. When you introduce Xp debt, that makes us believe there will be difficult content that constantly threaten us to the dreaded xp debt mechanic.

I get A1 gameplay didnt reflect that but there is no hard criticizing this now. I can only assume, the devs in charge of characters (both PC and NPC) are working on the strength and weakness, deciding the HP pool, the mechanics, the abilities, the amount of experience point, damage output, etc.. therefor they are also the same people who decides the difficulty of it.
Thus I feel it should be brought up. They should always tune it hard and scale down, instead of start weak then tune up.

no-one likes easy, too hard and we can tone it down notch by notch.

Lots of people like easy.

The majority of people like easy, flashy, and power-fantasy.

Nothing about the overall leveling time implies the content will actually be hard, there are games that still 'don't do this'. EXP debt will apply to all the people of below average skill for whom what you call 'easy' is a nice challenge', the people that Steven is 'trying to appeal to with his Showman Persona'.

Those people can fall, just as Steven and the Devs can fall, against that content.

L2 and AA have hard content? Like, relative to the type of thing we are talking about here. I thought they had 'will delete you if you pull too many or go to an area too far over recommended level' content. I'm willing to accept that as 'hard', though.

Songcaller

I associate health with TTK and don't believe the hardest mobs have the most health per say. One of the hardest mobs I've ever fought was against a wizard with 100 hit points and a pet with 100 hit points. Both the wizard and pet put shields on each other and you couldn't dent the health whilst both damaged the attacker. Windows of opportunity opened and you'd need to nuke in each window. Slow reactions could get you killed.

Hence why I still think the basic premise of the pve is still flawed. Elite mobs should call for aid - all bosses should call for aid. Thus, a skilled player would have to use counter play instead of dying or face planting. The ranger showcase showed the best outcome with the ranger 'dying' a lot to the ranged damage. However, the simple addition of a call for aid would turn the 4 man team into 8 because fighting lone elite mobs would be very rare.

Azherae

Neurath wrote: »

I associate health with TTK and don't believe the hardest mobs have the most health per say. One of the hardest mobs I've ever fought was against a wizard with 100 hit points and a pet with 100 hit points. Both the wizard and pet put shields on each other and you couldn't dent the health whilst both damaged the attacker. Windows of opportunity opened and you'd need to nuke in each window. Slow reactions could get you killed.

Hence why I still think the basic premise of the pve is still flawed. Elite mobs should call for aid - all bosses should call for aid. Thus, a skilled player would have to use counter play instead of dying or face planting. The ranger showcase showed the best outcome with the ranger 'dying' a lot to the ranged damage. However, the simple addition of a call for aid would turn the 4 man team into 8 because fighting lone elite mobs would be very rare.

Can you imagine the coolness of not being able to kill the magey one outside because when you attack it, Lord Oakenbane sends 3-4 grunts out of the fallen keep to help and you have to manage it before they arrive?

Or if you decided 'ok let's skip that guy and go straight for the big boss' and then Lord Oakenbane 'wails' and the other starts to move in so it arrives when Oakenbane is at like half health and now you have to deal with the mage too?

Nostalgic.

novercalis

Neurath wrote: »

I associate health with TTK and don't believe the hardest mobs have the most health per say. One of the hardest mobs I've ever fought was against a wizard with 100 hit points and a pet with 100 hit points. Both the wizard and pet put shields on each other and you couldn't dent the health whilst both damaged the attacker. Windows of opportunity opened and you'd need to nuke in each window. Slow reactions could get you killed.

Hence why I still think the basic premise of the pve is still flawed. Elite mobs should call for aid - all bosses should call for aid. Thus, a skilled player would have to use counter play instead of dying or face planting. The ranger showcase showed the best outcome with the ranger 'dying' a lot to the ranged damage. However, the simple addition of a call for aid would turn the 4 man team into 8 because fighting lone elite mobs would be very rare.

And intelligent mobs should also learn to retreat and trigger aggro from other nearby allies.

Edit: actually ALL 90% of the MOBS should retreat. Even a wolf knows it's in danger when it's about to die. I can see Undeads not retreating but most beasts, humanoid, monstrosity knows to retreat for their life & call for back up.

Songcaller

Yeah, retreat is also a very cool feature. I do enjoy running down foes that might pull in fresh mobs. I'm a pvper who loves pve too. I just want more 'life' in the ai.

novercalis

for real.

I hope they listened now and improve

novercalis

BUMP

McShave

Wait for when they test balance to give balance feedback. They're still designing the classes, we have a long way to go

Mag7spy

Am i allowed to hate these threads i feel like there has be a lot of whining and not a lot of thought put in.

Why can't we have more beneficial threat topics like?

How to increase challenge of 8-man content and types of mechanics to add difficulty for larger group play

So many post of these seem like a throw away getting stuck on things that are not important, like balancing early in development which isn't going to happen. To skew it towards something that can be better like talking about actual mechanics and sparking more ideas for the devs.

ClintHardwood

Things like precise number balancing are a waste this early into development. This is the problem with releasing alpha content into the world—most people lack that sense of what's important and what isn't. A bigger issue is a lack of complex combat mechanics that require coordination from a group to survive. I imagine we'll have more of the latter once the devs figure out exactly what they want from their combat system, and sometime in late beta, they'll solve the first issue.

Songcaller

I see 'balance' being thrown around a lot in recent posts. PvE and AI have nothing to do with 'Balance'. We have seem numerous reveals with the AI and the AI has not improved. I feel it is pertinent to nudge the devs to improve the AI/PvE before we have a full game and crap AI/PvE.

novercalis

it's important to note and critic when Steven states in the video that content can be done by lower levels. Which is a red flag.

"Now we really in that live stream did not perform well against that Main boss dude. But again this is an area intended with 8 people with pots and, you know, other supplies we dont necessarily have access to." -- Steven in 2nd YT video

As his 4 man decimates the area second time around.

there's conflicting issue, as it's telling me - that was intentional design.

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