Baseline boss difficulty vs reward

It's counter-intuitive, but makes perfect sense in context of AoC.

Most rewarding world bosses can be mechanically most simple, since large portion of the challenge will come from other players. Those bosses just need to feel epic with huge AOEs.

It also works the other way. Most complex bosses can be given the least reward. This will make them least contested - perfect for those who primarily seek a great PvE experience.

This provides a nice content gradient form primarily PvE to primarily PvP, while being PvX all the way through.

Makes sense thematically as well - if there is 200 players around a huge dragon in the field - it's just going to breath fire at 50 of them, not really do some intricate mechanic. While some dungeon dwelling mystery monster can be all kinds of unexpected and complex.

Food for thought.

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Raven016

Fantmx wrote: »

I don't think removing the carrot from the stick would lead to people chasing the stick. I would prefer to see the hardcore PvE content be in the 20% instanced content. The challenge of world bosses should be the PvP component.

I think he wants to offer PvE just for fun but if they complain that they want rewards too then he can show them the battlegrounds.
No reward without PvP.
He hopes that he can convert PvE players into PvPers.
Steven tries too but only for 45 days.

morphwastaken

NiKr wrote: »

Your suggestion in the OP does exactly this

How would my suggestion make someone who enjoys PvP more - weaker in PvE, or other way around?

NiKr wrote: »

In other words, pvers will have better chances of fighting subsequent hard bosses, while pvpers would have more ways to counter each other while they dance around the ow boss.

I get it. I'm not asking "What is the suggestion?", i'm asking "What is the benefit?". What does making PvPers better at PvP specifically actually achieve? Why do you want this to be a thing?
If PvE enjoyer wants to go and fight world boss, involving mostly PvP - i would not want him to feel discouraged by PvP players being stronger at PvP because they have PvP stats on gear.

Maybe i also need to give a simplified example for my original point.
World boss is difficulty 5, and reward is 10.
There is 10 guilds fighting for it, only one can win. You could either count it as 10 times harder to get the reward, or 10 times less reward per guild on average, does not matter.
10/5/10 = 0.2 reward/difficulty ratio

Dungeon boss is difficulty 10, and reward is 4.
There is 2 guilds fighting for it, only one can win.
4/10/2 = 0.2 reward/difficulty ratio

It would not actually work exactly like that, but the idea is that it would balance itself out to be roughly same risk/reward by players being more or less competitive around it, depending on reward. For example - it would simply be not worth your time to fight over a dungeon boss among 10 guilds.

morphwastaken

In other words - you can manage how contested something is by changing how rewarding it is. More reward = more contest.
So if you want to have hard boss, that is not as contested - just lower the reward, so it's worth less to fight for.
It is still worth killing, it's just not worth fighting for as hard.

Ludullu

morphwastaken wrote: »

In other words - you can manage how contested something is by changing how rewarding it is. More reward = more contest.
So if you want to have hard boss, that is not as contested - just lower the reward, so it's worth less to fight for.
It is still worth killing, it's just not worth fighting for as hard.

This would only be the case if that low reward boss somehow always respawns at the same time as all the ow bosses. If it's instanced, there's no reason for pvp guilds not to farm it. If it's not instanced and there's not another, supposedly, more valuable boss alive at the time - more guilds will fight for it.

Also, even if there are other ow bosses alive, some of those 10 guilds would instead go fight pvers for their boss, because pvpers would, in theory, be better at pvp. Losing against 9 stronger guilds is way worse than most likely winning against 2 pve guilds.

Azherae's suggestion could potentially lead to collaboration between pve and pvp guilds, because pvers would need defense at their super difficult boss, while pvpers might need a stronger pve force at the ow boss (because their pve dps might be stronger, or the encounter is just way easier for them).

This is why my initial response was simply "do better at pvx design", because trying to split your audience barely ever works. And even if somehow they do manage to get people separated, non-instanced super hardcore bosses can still be fucked over by even just a few people from a pvp guild, so the pvers would not only have lower rewards, but also lower chances of finishing their farm successfully.

Ruerik

Im certainly the minority opinion here, but I want difficult bosses, regardless of chance of pvp happening.

I dont think difficulty needs to only scale by damage done / required gear to tank it either. I mean I want difficult bosses in terms of how many mechanics they are throwing out at nearby players. Let me pvp while dodging and weaving between so many aoe's.

All I am sayin is, if another guild wants to come fight me while I'm dealin with a boss, they better be ready to handle the boss mechanics also at the same time they are trying to take me down.

Cant dodge the aoe or handle the fire? Stay out of the kitchen then

Fantmx

Raven016 wrote: »

Fantmx wrote: »

I don't think removing the carrot from the stick would lead to people chasing the stick. I would prefer to see the hardcore PvE content be in the 20% instanced content. The challenge of world bosses should be the PvP component.

I think he wants to offer PvE just for fun but if they complain that they want rewards too then he can show them the battlegrounds.
No reward without PvP.
He hopes that he can convert PvE players into PvPers.
Steven tries too but only for 45 days.

I still think pure PvE raiders are meant to venture into the 20% instanced content.

morphwastaken

NiKr wrote: »

This would only be the case if that low reward boss somehow always respawns at the same time as all the ow bosses. If it's instanced, there's no reason for pvp guilds not to farm it. If it's not instanced and there's not another, supposedly, more valuable boss alive at the time - more guilds will fight for it.

Also, even if there are other ow bosses alive, some of those 10 guilds would instead go fight pvers for their boss, because pvpers would, in theory, be better at pvp. Losing against 9 stronger guilds is way worse than most likely winning against 2 pve guilds.

For sure, there is way more variables and possibilities involved. Other content will play a role. Friends and alliances will play a role. What if there is 2 guilds cooperating on world boss? What if it's alliance of 5 vs alliance of 5? My example is extremely simplified. But regardless of situation - reward distribution should balance out the competition, on average.
Maybe one day you will be lucky and have no other guild fighting you over a red dragon, who knows

Ideally there would be no distinction between PvP and PvE player - just PvX player, that can go do more PvP focused content, or more PvE focused, depending on how competitive they feel at the moment.

Depraved

morphwastaken wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

do you think they will endure months and months and months of getting trashed in pvp just so they can get bis gear to do a boss? the suggestion is pointless.
if they have to pvp to get the gear to do the boss, they wont play. so the solution (to a problem that doesnt exist) would be to add a complete progression path from level 1 to level 50 with bis gear that avoids pvp, avoids competing for resources, etc. and this is not this type of game. so if you add that, it takes away from the game.

Depraved wrote: »

and you would be splitting content and gear, so no

Every player will have access to all content equally, they just need to accept what that entails. PvE player can go get involved in PvP and do a world boss, and vise versa. Everyone will need to do both, if they want to be efficient, just the ratio will differ. This is already true for regular monster farming - you can farm a "top spot" and PvP for it all the time, or you can take less contested one and avoid PvP, for the most part.

EXACTLY. so its pointless adding just a little something just for players who arent even the target audience T_T

Veeshan

There also ways they could make more tradition mechanic bosses like WoW where it tailored made for x players, by making a barrier that only allows x amount of people can enter but there should be ways to disable to barrier (Boss should get enrage quick enrage time if disabled though to stop other allied groups to disable barrier to zerg boss but delayed enough to allow for group engaging to break off the boss to reset it for the fight over the boss) from the outside if another group comes along and want to fight for the boss so there are ways they can make those hard mechanical bosses and prevent zerging

Noaani

Depraved wrote: »

pvers dont pve for fun

With the exception of WoW, that is incorrect.

PvE players play games with good PvE because that is what is fun.

The reward structure is supposed to be designed in a way where the items dropped from one tier of encounters increase the over all power of the raid to the point where they can begin to take on the next tier of encounters.

For the most part, this is where complaints about itemization from top end raiders come in. It isn't about "rewards" or anything like that, it is purely a case of if itemization isn't done properly, it negates massive portions of content.

It's actually kind of similar to the whole debate about leveling speed and low level content becoming irrelevent. There is a speed at which things should be bypassed or sped up, but complaints will come if developers attempt to bypass too much, too quickly.

The only complaint about itemization is if the loot from one tier isn't actually quite where it should be in order to take on the next tier of content. This can be as much an issue with that content as with gear, but gear is usually easier to fix, so that is what such complaints come across as.

Point is, most PvE raiders look at gear as keys to more content - it is that additional content that is the reward, because it's just straight up fun to do (if it is designed well).

Noaani

morphwastaken wrote: »

It's counter-intuitive, but makes perfect sense in context of AoC.

Most rewarding world bosses can be mechanically most simple, since large portion of the challenge will come from other players. Those bosses just need to feel epic with huge AOEs.

It also works the other way. Most complex bosses can be given the least reward. This will make them least contested - perfect for those who primarily seek a great PvE experience.

This provides a nice content gradient form primarily PvE to primarily PvP, while being PvX all the way through.

Makes sense thematically as well - if there is 200 players around a huge dragon in the field - it's just going to breath fire at 50 of them, not really do some intricate mechanic. While some dungeon dwelling mystery monster can be all kinds of unexpected and complex.

Food for thought.

I actually don't disagree.

I've said for many years now that even if Ashes had a full on instanced raid progression, the best loot in the game would have to come from open world encounters that ideally have a corruption free area around them.

The issue I have with it is in assuming that this is in any way a balanced form of risk vs reward.

It is not.

As such, it is bad game design, even if it is was Ashes should have (open world PvP in an MMORPG is in itself bad game design outside of Korea, I see no reason to stop with the bad game design decisions at that point).

morphwastaken

Noaani wrote: »

It is not.

Why not? Did you see my example? Players manage risk vs reward.

Dygz

The primary reward for killing the Winter Dragon should be removing the Perpetual Winter from the effected Region.

Noaani

morphwastaken wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

It is not.

Why not? Did you see my example? Players manage risk vs reward.

What happens when players have something better to do and so don't show up?

What happens when players don't have something better to do and so all show up?

Each of these will increase or decrease the risk involved to who ever wins. Proper risk vs reward would dictate that increased risk = increased reward, decreased risk = decreased reward, yet that is not the case here.

There is a difference in risk if there is a swing of just 10 players in your favor or against your favor.

Thus, this is not a balanced form of risk vs reward. The reward is not directly attached to the risk - each is derrived from different entities.

morphwastaken

Dygz wrote: »

The primary reward for killing the Winter Dragon should be removing the Perpetual Winter from the effected Region.

Isn't that already in the game in some form? Siege bosses?

Noaani

morphwastaken wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

The primary reward for killing the Winter Dragon should be removing the Perpetual Winter from the effected Region.

Isn't that already in the game in some form? Siege bosses?

It is in place for some events, but Dygz is an RP idealist.

morphwastaken

Noaani wrote: »

yet that is not the case here.

There is a difference in risk if there is a swing of just 10 players in your favor or against your favor.

Thus, this is not a balanced form of risk vs reward. The reward is not directly attached to the risk - each is derrived from different entities.

On average it is balanced. Sometime harder - other times easier. But there will be expected level of competition, just like you expected roughly 300 players on red dragon in your example from another thread.

Noaani

morphwastaken wrote: »

On average it is balanced.

Yes, but by definition that means it isn't balaced each time. Risk vs reward means you get reward based on the risk you experienced, not the average risk you could have faced.

And even then, there is no guarantee that it will be balanced over time. If one server has a guild that is dominant enough, they won't have anyone challenging them at all.

morphwastaken

Noaani wrote: »

morphwastaken wrote: »

On average it is balanced.

Yes, but by definition that means it isn't balaced each time.

You consider this a downside - i find it to be the main reason to have PvX game - so that encounters differ from time-to-time, based on player activity.

Noaani

morphwastaken wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

morphwastaken wrote: »

On average it is balanced.

Yes, but by definition that means it isn't balaced each time.

You consider this a downside - i find it to be the main reason to have PvX game - so that encounters differ from time-to-time, based on player activity.

Encounters differing due to PvP is fine.

Calling results of those encounters appropriate/balanced in regards to risk vs reward isn't.

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