Supporting PvE Raiders in Ashes

Azherae wrote: »

It's meant to be what the average player wants.

I'm once again cursed with the desire for way above average difficulty, while having way below average skill for clearing it

Azherae wrote: »

Better to throw us into Alpha-2 with 30-40 of 'fleshed out versions of that' and have people settle into their comfort zones, whether that be New World or WildStar.

Yeah, I just hope we have those 30-40. Obviously we'll have them sooner or later in A2, but, just as it was with A1, all the big streamers will stream the release of A2 and then leave back to their usual content. So if start of A2 doesn't have some good content to show the game will be, once again, called doa/scam/shit/etc.

Obviously it won't mean much as long as the main release is good, but it's just gonna be a pain to live through for several years until said release

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

It's meant to be what the average player wants.

I'm once again cursed with the desire for way above average difficulty, while having way below average skill for clearing it

Azherae wrote: »

Better to throw us into Alpha-2 with 30-40 of 'fleshed out versions of that' and have people settle into their comfort zones, whether that be New World or WildStar.

Yeah, I just hope we have those 30-40. Obviously we'll have them sooner or later in A2, but, just as it was with A1, all the big streamers will stream the release of A2 and then leave back to their usual content. So if start of A2 doesn't have some good content to show the game will be, once again, called doa/scam/shit/etc.

Obviously it won't mean much as long as the main release is good, but it's just gonna be a pain to live through for several years until said release

Well, I might make the fourth TheoryRaid thread, due to this, at least, rather than derailing this one more.

I have a new idea of how to use it for data collection, but that's not really as helpful with the current state of the forum sub-demographic. Either way, no point in just thinking about it and not typing, and there's the tiny chance that it'll help you or Intrepid.

Otr

Stalwart wrote: »

Content Suggestion:

- Put the final boss at the end of an open-world dungeon in an instanced arena.
- Look at making 3+ of these boss arenas for release.
- Have the number available to the server based on node setup.
- Fight lengths will be long (10-15+ mins), have multiple stages/waves and possibly separate rooms to change up the arena.
- Content needs to take time to learn and complete. Nothing you can walk into and master in a couple of days.
- Look to current games that are focused on PvE Raiding.
- Only allow one party in the instance at a time. It's not required from a PvP aspect, see paragraph above, I do think it could help eliminate people zerging your fine-tuned mechanics.
- Consider allowing only one instance at a time. This has a lot of implications. Especially around watching the door for PvE and PvP. Just something to consider.
- Consider reduced death penalties in this "event". I'm not positive about this, but I tend to think tough content will require wiping and plenty of it.
- Include achievements like speed, no-death and other fun unique ones.

Instanced area with only one party in the instance is an artificial barrier.
Takes away the need to hire protectors.
I am against this suggestion.
I'd luv rather defense structures when boss fight start, to give small PvP defenders advantage.
Accessing defense structures should flag all raid members for PvP.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

PvX gamers are few, as I perceive it, and hard to please. Average PvE gamers and average PvP gamers are much easier to appease through explanations and simple stopgaps like 'close the Boss door' and 'flag everyone for PvP'.

So I take back the first thing I said: If Intrepid went into detail about their PvX encounter design philosophy, it'd probably do more harm than good.

Yeah, I guess you're right. My idealistic PvX boss design would most likely not appeal to either side of the pvx player scale.

You know this is what I've been telling you for well over a year, right.

If you want to create bosses that appeal to PvP first players, then do that.

If you want to create bosses that appeal to PvE first players, then do that.

The two are very different, and you should not try to combine them in to one encounter.

The idea is to create all types of bosses how they need to be, then find a way to turn that in to something that you can label as PvX after the fact.

It is the notion that PvX needs to be PvP and PvE together at all times that needs to die. Even more true considering the hypocrisy of the game happily catering to just PvP by itself many times.

Chonkers1

Noaani wrote: »

It is the notion that PvX needs to be PvP and PvE together at all times that needs to die. Even more true considering the hypocrisy of the game happily catering to just PvP by itself many times.

Going green caters to pve exclusive playstyles.
I think boss zone barriers can prevent kiting and zergs from entering the encounter.
Instanced pvp content helps reduce presence of pvpers in the open world, technically effectively to pve only players.
Not much hypocrisy and pve catering should be pursued more.

Same pattern as usual complain about pvp and get more PvE into the game. Argue drops need to be good from pve instances, argue again for more pve instanced content. Then WoW player base comes and argue for even more and less pvp. Suddenly direction changes like every mmorpg and the WoW players eventually quit for next WoW expansion.

IS should do what they are doing in a fun and creative way, they don't need to cater to the same people yelling for instanced PvE content. Create different elements of PvX types of content is much more appealing. 20% instancing is fine, not you spend the day doing 3-5 instance dungeons avoiding people and calling it a day.

Chonkers wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

It is the notion that PvX needs to be PvP and PvE together at all times that needs to die. Even more true considering the hypocrisy of the game happily catering to just PvP by itself many times.

Going green caters to pve exclusive playstyles.
I think boss zone barriers can prevent kiting and zergs from entering the encounter.
Instanced pvp content helps reduce presence of pvpers in the open world, technically effectively to pve only players.
Not much hypocrisy and pve catering should be pursued more.

The actual point of instanced content is to allow more players access to that content.

If a game has an open world boss spawn once a week, 40 players get to kill it. If that boss is instanced, as many players as are in capable guilds get to kill it.

If the only top end encounters players have access to needs to be fought over, the actual content is that fight, the encounters are the rewards from that fight.

There is indeed hypocrisy in saying PvX means PvP and PvE together always, and then adding PvP only arenas and sieges.

"Going green" does not remove PvP as being potential.

Chonkers1

Noaani wrote: »

The actual point of instanced content is to allow more players access to that content.

If a game has an open world boss spawn once a week, 40 players get to kill it. If that boss is instanced, as many players as are in capable guilds get to kill it.

There is indeed hypocrisy in saying PvX means PvP and PvE together always, and then adding PvP only arenas and sieges.
.

Mag7spy wrote: »

Same pattern as usual complain about pvp and get more PvE into the game. Argue drops need to be good from pve instances, argue again for more pve instanced content. Then WoW player base comes and argue for even more and less pvp. Suddenly direction changes like every mmorpg and the WoW players eventually quit for next WoW expansion.

IS should do what they are doing in a fun and creative way, they don't need to cater to the same people yelling for instanced PvE content. Create different elements of PvX types of content is much more appealing. 20% instancing is fine, not you spend the day doing 3-5 instance dungeons avoiding people and calling it a day.

This just highlights your insane inability to comprehend.

You and I have talked about instances before. We have talked about how anyone that wants good content in an MMO with both instances and open world knows for a fact that open world content should have the better drops - but that a game like WoW that puts no top end content in its open world can not achieve this.

We have also talked about the difference between instanced dungeons and instanced encounters. Based on those discussions, you know full well that running three instanced encounters would see a group or raid spend about 30 minutes total in instances, and several hours getting to each of them in an open dungeon.

These are things you and I have discussed many times before, and it is your insistence to just ignore points that don't serve the argument you wish to make that is why so many people here just ignore you. It is why no one takes your arguments even remotely seriously - you aren't here for discussion or debate, you are here to blast your oft ill considered opinion in defiance of any facts.

Thing is, it is the implementation of instances that determine if people will just run them all day or not. People are not going to be running a fifth of an MMO a day, meaning 20% instanced content is more than enough for people to not do anything else - depending on how it is designed. If it is implemented poorly,that 20% will see peoplejust run instances. If it is implemented well (individual instanced encounters spread out among open world dungeons), even as much as 33% of content being instanced wouldn't see people just spend all day in instances - as they still need to run open world dungeons to get to said instances.

Noaani wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Same pattern as usual complain about pvp and get more PvE into the game. Argue drops need to be good from pve instances, argue again for more pve instanced content. Then WoW player base comes and argue for even more and less pvp. Suddenly direction changes like every mmorpg and the WoW players eventually quit for next WoW expansion.

IS should do what they are doing in a fun and creative way, they don't need to cater to the same people yelling for instanced PvE content. Create different elements of PvX types of content is much more appealing. 20% instancing is fine, not you spend the day doing 3-5 instance dungeons avoiding people and calling it a day.

This just highlights your insane inability to comprehend.

You and I have talked about instances before. We have talked about how anyone that wants good content in an MMO with both instances and open world knows for a fact that open world content should have the better drops - but that a game like WoW that puts no top end content in its open world can not achieve this.

We have also talked about the difference between instanced dungeons and instanced encounters. Based on those discussions, you know full well that running three instanced encounters would see a group or raid spend about 30 minutes total in instances, and several hours getting to each of them in an open dungeon.

These are things you and I have discussed many times before, and it is your insistence to just ignore points that don't serve the argument you wish to make that is why so many people here just ignore you. It is why no one takes your arguments even remotely seriously - you aren't here for discussion or debate, you are here to blast your oft ill considered opinion in defiance of any facts.

Thing is, it is the implementation of instances that determine if people will just run them all day or not. People are not going to be running a fifth of an MMO a day, meaning 20% instanced content is more than enough for people to not do anything else - depending on how it is designed. If it is implemented poorly,that 20% will see peoplejust run instances. If it is implemented well (individual instanced encounters spread out among open world dungeons), even as much as 33% of content being instanced wouldn't see people just spend all day in instances - as they still need to run open world dungeons to get to said instances.

We really have not that is you and Nikr talking about that, your outlook and mine are different. There hasn't been a point fully understanding exactly the way we look at things since I don't go solely by your logic and you don't accept others.

Your points are not facts either, you just simply don't acknowledge things against your point and it doesn't lead to any productive disccusion or atleast 80% of the time.

If we are talking about open world dungeons you aren't going to get a giant open world dungeon then a large personal dungeon with multiple bosses that doesn't even sound realistic. Sounds like you are trying to push the goal post for instanced content because you know you just need to have enough for people to start complaining if the game is built around it.

Perception can shift from PvX to more towards PvE for certain groups of players WoW crowd or even asmongolds crowd. And using those types of influencers to further push for more instanced content.

You have debated Nikr about instanced content giving good drops akin to the difficulty (no one is saying it is the absolute best drop int he game) that becomes a easier tread mill for people to run instanced content and gear up fast making more content easier / quicker to do.

Fully aware of travel time, instanced dungeons will have people complaining about no fast travel or group finder and a desire for such a thing so they can que up and run the content faster. Among other things that will take away from PvX and what IS are trying to go for.

I know you are aware of what you are trying to do by pushing for certain PvE elements with the future effect it will have in moving away from PvX and moving towards flat PvE instanced encounters. That is why so many people call you out but can't be bothered to deal with interacting with you after awhile.

You try to push a narrative you can't do PvX, but that simply comes from 1 you into wanting to do it and wanting a certain pve element based on the type of games you like, and 2 lack of creativity to think of how to approach it and thinking IS can't do it. Eve if they could it most likely wouldn't be fun for you since you are stuck on separating them.

Personally I think PvX would be amazing and something mmorpgs have lacked and has been growing in more newer games. It is difficulty to make it but it adds to a lot of variety of gameplay that will make gameplay loops not feel as boring.

End of the day I'd rater see what IS is doing in Alpha - 2 before its decided what can and can not work for PvP, PvE, PvX. It is their risk to take in approaching the most difficult one, their own ambition to take it on. It doesn't mean you can't be critical or have your bias but rather than just being all negative, why not attempt to also try to offer feedback in a way that would create good PvX experiences.

And if a ton of players end up finding the game not fun and it is shared in the community during alpha 2 they will have to rethink their approach. but as usual I'm guessing this is the part where you just want the to do what you want and say nothing works but pve instances lmao.

Mag7spy wrote: »

If we are talking about open world dungeons you aren't going to get a giant open world dungeon then a large personal dungeon with multiple bosses that doesn't even sound realistic. Sounds like you are trying to push the goal post for instanced content because you know you just need to have enough for people to start complaining if the game is built around it.

Iirc WoW classic had open world dungeons that had instance entrances deep within them. Obviously pvp rules are different there, but that's not the point here.

L2 also had huge dungeons with an instanced (or caged) room at the end. Sometimes that room would just be a singular 4-wall room and sometimes it would be a a fairly long dungeon on its own.

In other words, this part of what Noaani said is definitely normal design (I'm sure EQ2 had this too). Hell, A1 had this in the volcano. You had to TP to the dragon at the end, so functionally that TP could be turned off after a time and you'd have yourself an instanced at the end of a huge dungeon.

NiKr wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

If we are talking about open world dungeons you aren't going to get a giant open world dungeon then a large personal dungeon with multiple bosses that doesn't even sound realistic. Sounds like you are trying to push the goal post for instanced content because you know you just need to have enough for people to start complaining if the game is built around it.

Iirc WoW classic had open world dungeons that had instance entrances deep within them. Obviously pvp rules are different there, but that's not the point here.

L2 also had huge dungeons with an instanced (or caged) room at the end. Sometimes that room would just be a singular 4-wall room and sometimes it would be a a fairly long dungeon on its own.

In other words, this part of what Noaani said is definitely normal design (I'm sure EQ2 had this too). Hell, A1 had this in the volcano. You had to TP to the dragon at the end, so functionally that TP could be turned off after a time and you'd have yourself an instanced at the end of a huge dungeon.

I'm not talking about a single room, I'm talking about what would equal to someone talking about an instanced dungeon. Else I'd say instanced boss.

*edit if you are going to tell the PvE crown their instanced content is a single boss area I high doubt the y are going to say that is good pve content. One example was in new world where they added a "raid" Which was a glorified single boss. Not even talking about the mechanics that was not what people wanted, they wanted a proper raid dungeon. So a boss room was an actual meme.

Last edit* So making it clear what they want is important to establish a baseline, I'm just going to say i highly doubt their Raids will be a single room in what they want.

Mag7spy wrote: »

I'm not talking about a single room, I'm talking about what would equal to someone talking about an instanced dungeon. Else I'd say instanced boss.

Like I said, both existed in WoW and in L2, and I'm sure in EQ2 as well.

NiKr wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

I'm not talking about a single room, I'm talking about what would equal to someone talking about an instanced dungeon. Else I'd say instanced boss.

Like I said, both existed in WoW and in L2, and I'm sure in EQ2 as well.

When i mention things I'm talking about what people want and what are their expectations. Aligning with PvE, if you say we have raids and to them its not a raid that is how you create false perceptions.

Mag7spy wrote: »

When i mention things I'm talking about what people want and what are their expectations. Aligning with PvE, if you say we have raids and to them its not a raid that is how you create false perceptions.

I mean, my preferred method of pvx is the "cage" at the end of a huge dungeon. It's still effectively an instance, it's just that there's some pvp before the encounter. Noaani wants that to just be a part of the overall pve encounters and not necessarily the main one.

And as he keeps telling you, he wants ow stuff to give best things, so ow bosses would still be valued higher and fought over more. And if the instances, that even Noaani wants, are located deep in dungeons - there's gonna be preventive pvp there, where enemies will try and hold off the farmers from doing the instance for as long as possible.

This is where the guild/node wars would come in, but we've got fuckall info on that so it's hard to speculate on that front. I'd personally prefer if both of those could be forced onto people, but for a pretty big cost (exponentially so if a big guilds decs a smaller one). So that people could plan out their resources and timings and delay their opponents' farm for as long as possible.

And Noaani suggested in the past that the boss loot from instanced could require a caravan to transfer it back, so there'd still be pvp in that form as well (and again, this could just be one of the options).

I obviously don't agree on everything with Noaani, but I feel like we are both willing to give up some part of our arguments to achieve a middle ground. And while I agree with you that WoW players will definitely try and fuck the game over, I also feel like having a middle ground before majority of WoWers even come here would go a long way to prevent most of them from asking for more pve.

Depraved

Noaani wrote: »

Chonkers wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

It is the notion that PvX needs to be PvP and PvE together at all times that needs to die. Even more true considering the hypocrisy of the game happily catering to just PvP by itself many times.

Going green caters to pve exclusive playstyles.
I think boss zone barriers can prevent kiting and zergs from entering the encounter.
Instanced pvp content helps reduce presence of pvpers in the open world, technically effectively to pve only players.
Not much hypocrisy and pve catering should be pursued more.

The actual point of instanced content is to allow more players access to that content.

If a game has an open world boss spawn once a week, 40 players get to kill it. If that boss is instanced, as many players as are in capable guilds get to kill it.

If the only top end encounters players have access to needs to be fought over, the actual content is that fight, the encounters are the rewards from that fight.

There is indeed hypocrisy in saying PvX means PvP and PvE together always, and then adding PvP only arenas and sieges.

"Going green" does not remove PvP as being potential.

i dont disagree here, but what if the devs dont want everyone killing that boss all the time? im not gonna discuss balancing rewards, thats a different issue that is best left to intrepid.

i like instanced dungeons, they are fun and its one of my favorite things to do in a mmorpg. i played tabletop dnd once too and i loved doing dungeons..coudlnt wait to get to the next one. but the point of a game like ashes is that you have to pvp (or coop) to pve and you want to pve to become stronger in pvp. as far as i know, there will be instanced dungeons in ashes, and you will have different parties in different entrances racing to clear the content and multiple bosses to get to the final boss. then they can pvp for the boss or cooperate and kill it. this seems a solution that aligns more with the game in general. you could always do these instances with your guild and cooperate instead of compete for the final boss.

regarding world bosses, since they are out in the open, im sure the whole server can go and kill it...but the rewards will be distributed based on looting rights and maybe some randomness like in TL. but everybody still has a chance.

regarding arenas, they are different. we can agree that equalized arenas would be the same as instanced pve dungeons. you can get rewards by avoiding the open world. if you have regular non equalized arenas, you still need to be out in the world and pvp / pve to get the gear to do arenas. the equivalent for instanced dungeons would be removing dungeons / raid progression and making the players pvp/pve out in the open to get the gear to do the instances.

regarding top end pve. we go back to vanilla and chocolate cake here (and the whole reply tbh) i like both cakes, but if you are making a chocolate cake, make the best chocolate cake you can, dont add vanilla thinking you will attract more customers and vice versa, because you will end up losing customers.

how many players do top end pve? 1%, 5%, 10%? we can agree that not everyone is interested in such high difficulty, plus not everyone who is interested on it can clear them. if you are making a game for one type of crowd, why would you add things for a different type of crowd? why add 10% vanilla to your chocolate cake?

lets say top end raiders who can clear this super difficult content are 10%. this seems reasonable and im using this number for the example. you claim that if ashes doesnt add this type of content, these 10% crowd wont play the game. fair enough, i agree with you (lets ignore the fact that these top pvers are usually bad in pvp, and will probs never even have a chance to do the content since they will be stomped left and right prior to get there and quit, but thats another topic).

for this example lets say ashes has a limit of 100 players (server capacity, costs, customer support costs, management, gm, etc, etc), 10 of them are top pve raiders and the other 90 are the pvx crowd the game caters to. lets remember that you cant make a game for every single gamer in the world (or any product really, for every customer), if you dont add this top pve option, the 10 top pve players will not play the game, now the game has only 90 players. but guess what? 10 spots just open. if you make the best pvx game you can make, the 10 spots that just open will be filled by another 10 pvx player, replacing the 10 top pvers that just left. in the end, it doesnt matter if "noaani" doesnt play the game, because "bobthecasualpvertoppvper" will take his spot. make a full chocolate cake. dont add vanilla.

NiKr wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

When i mention things I'm talking about what people want and what are their expectations. Aligning with PvE, if you say we have raids and to them its not a raid that is how you create false perceptions.

I mean, my preferred method of pvx is the "cage" at the end of a huge dungeon. It's still effectively an instance, it's just that there's some pvp before the encounter. Noaani wants that to just be a part of the overall pve encounters and not necessarily the main one.

And as he keeps telling you, he wants ow stuff to give best things, so ow bosses would still be valued higher and fought over more. And if the instances, that even Noaani wants, are located deep in dungeons - there's gonna be preventive pvp there, where enemies will try and hold off the farmers from doing the instance for as long as possible.

This is where the guild/node wars would come in, but we've got fuckall info on that so it's hard to speculate on that front. I'd personally prefer if both of those could be forced onto people, but for a pretty big cost (exponentially so if a big guilds decs a smaller one). So that people could plan out their resources and timings and delay their opponents' farm for as long as possible.

And Noaani suggested in the past that the boss loot from instanced could require a caravan to transfer it back, so there'd still be pvp in that form as well (and again, this could just be one of the options).

I obviously don't agree on everything with Noaani, but I feel like we are both willing to give up some part of our arguments to achieve a middle ground. And while I agree with you that WoW players will definitely try and fuck the game over, I also feel like having a middle ground before majority of WoWers even come here would go a long way to prevent most of them from asking for more pve.

My main issue as usual will be gameplay loops that potentially revolve around queuing up instances and full instanced dungeons.

The cage thing isn't that bad but i don't view that as instanced. If you tell someone there is instanced content there understanding is you will be able to repeat that content (though mmorpgs have different rule sets) . I understand how you view it it is kind of the same thing but I'm going from a perspective that is more clear cut (because if you tell someone there is instanced content and it does not match their understanding of instanced content it would create a disconnect).

So at this point I'm saying in this discussion the argument is PvE players want instanced bosses and not dungeons? So right away a rule set would be drops once per day from them.

Mag7spy wrote: »

So at this point I'm saying in this discussion the argument is PvE players want instanced bosses and not dungeons? So right away a rule set would be drops once per day from them.

And this is exactly where we gotta give feedback to Intrepid that we (well, those of us who don't) don't want dailies like that.

Right now, to me, Steven's description of AoC's instances says that they'll be on-and-done stuff. And even if a few of those are repeatable - I don't expect them to be daily, cause there's been no indication that he wants that kind of content in the game.

I still would support super hardcore instanced pve that you can attempt as many times as you want, but only clear once a week (and it then changes smth so that the next week requires a new raid setup). So those who do want to grind that kind of content - can. I'd expect this content to not give best gear, but that's where my discussions with Noaani on instanced rewards and gear progression come in, and that's a whoooooole different topic.

This kinda related to what Depraved said above. Instanced content is either self-sufficient and provides players with "equalized" gear to clear said content, or it's based on the ow gear acquisition methods and requires you to participate in the other parts of the game if you wanna progress in your preferred content. I support the latter. Both pve and pvp instanced content should rely on your getting gear from the open world things (obviously buying included).

And imo this way we can have instanced content that might cut off a fraction of players from the open world encounters, but the game's overall gameplay flow won't suffer from it because there's gonna be a ton of people who gotta go farm ow things to provide gear for those instanced dudes. And every player will just be able to choose which side they prefer.

Depraved wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Chonkers wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

It is the notion that PvX needs to be PvP and PvE together at all times that needs to die. Even more true considering the hypocrisy of the game happily catering to just PvP by itself many times.

Going green caters to pve exclusive playstyles.
I think boss zone barriers can prevent kiting and zergs from entering the encounter.
Instanced pvp content helps reduce presence of pvpers in the open world, technically effectively to pve only players.
Not much hypocrisy and pve catering should be pursued more.

The actual point of instanced content is to allow more players access to that content.

If a game has an open world boss spawn once a week, 40 players get to kill it. If that boss is instanced, as many players as are in capable guilds get to kill it.

If the only top end encounters players have access to needs to be fought over, the actual content is that fight, the encounters are the rewards from that fight.

There is indeed hypocrisy in saying PvX means PvP and PvE together always, and then adding PvP only arenas and sieges.

"Going green" does not remove PvP as being potential.

i dont disagree here, but what if the devs dont want everyone killing that boss all the time?

That's fine, put *that boss* in the open world.

Then create instanced bosses that specifically exist to give people content to play. There is no reason at all you can't have both - even EQ and EQ2 had both despite their lack of PvP.

When you break it all down, the only reason to not have instanced encounters is if the developer doesn't want players having reasonable access to encounters. Literally everything is in their control (kind of the point of instances). They can dictate how common the drops are, they can dictate how often a player can take on the encounter, they can dictate how many people can be present, they can dictate how much interaction players need with the open world in order to realize the rewards of the instance, they can even control if there are any special mechanics involved in realizing those rewards - an often stated suggestion of mine has been to require players to carry the mobs corpse (or part thereof) via the caravan system back to a metropolis node for processing. Throw up a serverwide announcement, and watch people come along trying to stop them getting it back.

To me, that is far more engaging PvX than having to kill players in order to be able to kill an HP stick which is what most bosses in PvP/PvX games amount to.

regarding arenas, they are different. we can agree that equalized arenas would be the same as instanced pve dungeons. you can get rewards by avoiding the open world. if you have regular non equalized arenas, you still need to be out in the world and pvp / pve to get the gear to do arenas. the equivalent for instanced dungeons would be removing dungeons / raid progression and making the players pvp/pve out in the open to get the gear to do the instances.

This would only be the case if the developer created instanced raid content in a manner where the encounters dropped finished items.

If a game like Ashes did as a game like Ashes should do, and instead dropped components, then people running instanced raid content still need to be out in the open world with PvP and PvE in order to get gear upgrades, just as people running arenas need to be.

This is another of those things that can be how the developer wants it to me. If they wanted to make it so you start a raid progression path and have no need to then look anywhere else for gear, they absolutely can do that.

Or the developer could do it the way Archeage did - mobs drop components that are used along with other refined materials to upgrade items to the next tier. If I have a brestplate that took me 10 iron to make, I could upgrade it with 10 steel (made with 10 iron each) and three fairly common components from different open world bosses.

Then I could upgrade that item with 10 feysteel (each made from 10 steel), and use a few more common components from above, but also a component from a group based open dungeon boss.

Then I could upgrade that item using 10 darksteel (each made from 10 feysteel), using three items from that group based open dungeon, as well as one from a group based instanced dungeon.

Following this method, the basic item cost 10 iron, but the item that uses the instance dropped component uses 10,000 iron. Clearly in a situation like this, players wishing to have gear using those instance dropped components would need to expend some effort in the open world.

It is literally 100% up to developers as to whether they want players interacting with the world or not. Having instanced encounters does not alter that it is up to them.

Depraved wrote: »

for this example lets say ashes has a limit of 100 players (server capacity, costs, customer support costs, management, gm, etc, etc), 10 of them are top pve raiders and the other 90 are the pvx crowd the game caters to. lets remember that you cant make a game for every single gamer in the world (or any product really, for every customer), if you dont add this top pve option, the 10 top pve players will not play the game, now the game has only 90 players. but guess what? 10 spots just open. if you make the best pvx game you can make, the 10 spots that just open will be filled by another 10 pvx player, replacing the 10 top pvers that just left. in the end, it doesnt matter if "noaani" doesnt play the game, because "bobthecasualpvertoppvper" will take his spot. make a full chocolate cake. dont add vanilla.

A few point with this.

Sure, 10% clearing it is feasable.

However, you are forgetting the friends, family and other community members that come along with top end guilds. If I bring a guild of 50 players to Ashes, I am adding at least 200 accounts to the server we are on - probably closer to 250.

This would then mean that in your 100 player limit with 10% being that top end PvE crowd, you now lose at least 25 players for not having this PvE as opposed to the 10 you were thinking.

However, you only took in to account the players that were killing the content, not the players that came to the game for the content but are not able to kill the top end of it.

While this is different for every game, I can state quite happily that general raid progression sees dozens of guilds killing lower tiers, and only 2 or 3 killing the top tier. Thus, if 10% of the population are killing the top end, 50%+ are killing the low end. While not all of these would be joining the game specifically for this content, some would. For those that aren't joining the game for this content but are participating in it regardless, the game is better off for them for having this content than it would have been.

The next question I have for you is in regards to the people that you think would fill in what you think to be 10 spots, but would actually be 25 or more. Why were they not already playing the game? Your scenario had a cap of 100 players, but the game won't have that cap - there will not be a point in Ashes where someone trying to open a new account is refused because the game is at the limit.

You say they would come because the game has better PvX due to not having instanced content - but that isn't something that is necessarily the case. Instanced content can absolutely make a games PvX better, just as instanced arenas can make a games PvX better.

Edit to add; I absolutely agree with your point that it doesn't matter to Intrepid if *I* play Ashes. It doesn't matter to them if you play, or if NiKr plays, or if Dygz plays.

What matters to them is numbers. More people playing means more money for post launch development, more people for cooperative play, and more people for adversarial play. Basically, more is better.

If there is a big chunk of players that would play the game based on Intrepid improving one type of content they already plan on having in some manner, and if improving that content didn't have any detrimental effect on any other content, there is no real reason to not improve that content.

The kind of player that would look at a game and decide to not play it because it has some content that they themselves don't want to play is not the kind of player that an MMORPG with asperations of a long life should be trying to cater to. A game with such asperations should be catering to people that look at a game to see if it has what they want from a game, and then looks at any other content as something for other people, and perhaps something they may dabble in later.