Supporting PvE Raiders in Ashes

For starters, this isn't the main focus of AoC. This is a PvX game and I want the open world to stay relevant, becoming the main character. What I'm suggesting below is only something sprinkled in. Only a portion of the 20% instanced content. It will take development time, but is not the core of the game like some others.

I've seen quotes that suggest this may be on their mind. I've also seen some more recent counterarguments. This is just something I want to express that I'd like to see in the game. If this is old news, great. If not, please consider it.

Background:

I main ESO right now. The end-game raids in these games are a ton of fun to me. The harder difficulties, then achievement hunting, it feels very rewarding to complete them. 12 of my friends work together for months to optimize our group and perfect the mechanics. I hear WoW raids are legendary. Many others like Final Fantasy, etc.

The common thing here is an instanced PvE arena. For the instancing part, Steven has said himself that this instancing allows for more advanced mechanics. I believe that as well. The PvE part is more complicated though. I would like to see ideas to mix in PvP. I can think of some interesting ones but nothing concrete atm. The main concern I want to eliminate is mechanics being "dumbed down" because of the threat of PvP. I know in the raids we do, one goofball could run in the middle of everything and kill everyone. That's the nature of having those advanced mechanics.

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.

Reward Suggestion:

- Do not drop exclusive materials, but valuable ones.
- Small chance to drop a unique gear recipe (that can be sold).
- Small chance to drop a low-quality version of that gear.
- Very small chance to drop skins/cosmetic items.
- Miniscule chance to drop a flying mount.
- Performance metrics drive drop rates.
- Completing achievements awards small cosmetics or titles.

It is important to remember that your group will have to fight through an open-world dungeon to get there and to bring the loot home.

Thank you for reading.

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Comments

Ludullu

Liniker wrote: »

that was an exhausting reading, feels like we are stuck in hell with the same people repeating the same old arguments over and over until someone goes nuts lol

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

My point is that players should never find themselves in that situation.

Yes, we've discussed this before. You want EQ2 amounts of bosses in the game, while I simply do not see that happening in Ashes. Like, nowhere near that. Especially considering the 80/20 split, cause even if we somehow do get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of bosses (which is still nowhere near enough for a full server) - they will all be killed at all times, so, unless we have endless daily instances, no one will have that kind of content fulfillment.

I think perhaps there is some disconnect here.

As we have talked about at some point in the past, there are two tiers of bosses. There is the big bad guy at the end of a dungeon, but then there is also a plethora of bosses throughout that dungeon.

When talking about loot earlier, spawn times, all that kind of thing, I am talking about the big bad guy. When talking about bosses in general just now, I am talking about both groups - there should always be a boss on the horizon.

In terms of development time, it can take weeks (or months) to develop the big bad guy at the end. This is because it usually has a unique model with many animations (which just the animations can take weeks), and also often has completely new mechanics associated with it.

Those smaller bosses though, they don't need unique models, and shouldn't be using new mechanics. Take a base population mob, give it a new name, double it's HP, increase it's damage output by 10 - 20%, and give it one additional ability - job done. They take about 20 minutes to throw together.

As such, there is no excuse to not have many of them - a dungeon should have at least one of these mobs capable of spawning in every single room - if the dungeon has a broom closet, it should also have "Hal, Master of Brooms" as a potential spawn.

While these encounters are not offering up unique mechanics or such, the fact that there are so many of them means that there is always variation. There is always interest. You aren't just fighting the same trash over and over again.

If anything, I think your evaluation of instances just doesn't match Steven's. Instanced stuff will mostly be story-based, and for Steven it's important to tell his cool story, so it won't be wasted dev time even if those instances are one-offs (which I expect AT LEAST a half of them to be).

Cool, his game, he can do that.

What that means though, is that people defending his game design do not get to use development time as a reason to not do something.

My reason for pointing it out wasn't to change Stevens mind on the game (I never have that as a goal, Intrepid shouldn't be listening to any of us). My reason was to point out that the argument used was flawed.

Bring it back a step further in the discussion, my point is about players having access to content. I'm a fan of that being the case, and I have pointed out that the only reason for Ashes to not have ample content for players to easily access is if Steven does not want that to be the case.

Now, you may well want to argue that the game design Steven has doesn't cater for that or what ever, but what that means is that the game design for Ashes doesn't inherently allow for players to have access to content.

Put that statement front and center on all marketing material, see how well the game does. On the other hand, if it isn't something you want to market the game as, why make the game that way?

Noaani

Liniker wrote: »

I think the most important part that is missing, is understanding that there is not a dictionary definition of PvX and it does not mean 50/50 perfect balance of PvE and PvP

The other thing to keep in mind is that PvX doesn't mean PvP and PvE need to happen at the same time. They both need to happen, it just isn't required that they happen at the same time.

A game where you run around the open world harvesting materials, killing mobs and engaging in PvP in order to get gear to run an arena is PvX.

A game where you run around the open world harvesting materials, killing mobs and engaging in PvP in order to get gear to run an instanced dungeon is PvX.

why? pvp arenas are easy to develop, they are popular, common and inside the original scope, that's about it,

...

open world content is the way to go,

There is something of a contradiction here.

You say they should have PvP arenas but not PvE ones (instanced PvE encounters) because PvP arenas are easier to implement.

Cool, I agree with that point - they are.

Then you go on to say that open world is the way to go - despite the fact that it is exponentially harder to develop open world content for a given number of players than it is to develop instanced content for that same number of players.

If your argument is to make it easier for Intrepid, cool, you want to argue for instanced content.

If your argument is not that, then don't use that argument for why PvP arenas should be in the game first.

Basically, either use your argument everywhere, or nowhere.

Aszkalon

Stalwart wrote: »

It is important to remember that your group will have to fight through an open-world dungeon to get there and to bring the loot home.

Thank you for reading.

I just thought of something ... ...

When we got through the Dungeon ... ... ... probably invested several Hours of Effort and Gameplay into it,
got to the Boss of the Dungeon by the Skin of our Teeth (lol) and then manage to finally kill the Boss and probably sack all possible Treasure Chests, Loot-Bags, whatever may be behind the Boss or so, or maybe loot it from the Boss itself,

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... will we have something like a Heartstone-Feature ?

Will we be able to return Home with all of our Loot in our bags, like in World of WoW-Token-Craft ?

Or : will we need to turn back the "normal", manual Way ? No matter how many People who could want to rob us, could wait on our way back home ?

I see both positive and negative Points if we don't have a Heartstone/Teleport-back-to-Home Possibility.

The sheer Thrill could make the Game multiple times more exciting though somewhat more stressful at the same time.

Sure, a Heartstone would bring us way more to the easy Side. Returning to our Place at the Inn inside a Node, or at our Freehold would be nice. Save Time as well.

But imagine we must try to get back no matter how many Robbers, Highwaymen and other Bandits in Form of actual fellow Players await ?

Of Course it would suck big Donkeyballs if certain Dungeons would then always be camped by Dozens of People who wait for returning single Groups to gank.

But this could be countered by the murder-hobo'ed Players not being able to drop the Loot specifically dropped by the Bosses.

Or maybe People simply need to bring a small Army of Allies every single time. 😁 . 😅

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

As such, there is no excuse to not have many of them - a dungeon should have at least one of these mobs capable of spawning in every single room - if the dungeon has a broom closet, it should also have "Hal, Master of Brooms" as a potential spawn.

I'm talking about the same boys. The disconnect might be coming from our different perceptions on their respawn timers. Cause I'm used to 24+-3h (iirc).

What do you expect the timer to be? Would it be simply "they all respawn at the start of the server's prime time?" Or smth way way shorter? I think we've talked about this before, but I forget your preferred number for this.

I'm saying that if even every damn room in the dungeon has that kind of boss boy, with their kill time probably being a few minutes - they'll be dead by the end of the first hour of primetime, and then players only have plain mobs to farm, if they want the drops from that dungeon.

And this applies to all dungeons on the server, as long as the server is full. 5 metros, with, say, 10 huge dungeons each (maybe 50? rooms). 2500 such bosses for, say, 1k people (top lvl competitive players looking for gear). ~120 groups, so ~20 bosses per group.

If respawn is at primetime - every room gets cleared within 3h tops. And that's if there is in fact so many dungeons with so many rooms with each one having a "~5m farm" boss, and with only 1k people even attempting to farm them. Reality will most likely have fewer rooms for more people.

Any other type of respawn usually leads to stronger groups shifting timers to their benefit and farming stuff off prime time, so majority of players have even less boss content.

And this comes back to your point of "the game doesn't give content to people" and that is EXACTLY what Steven has been saying for years. Not everyone gets a reward, because it has to be earned. This is why the game is PvX. People gotta fight people to fight mobs. THAT is the content, which then leads to a reward.

Your usual counter argument to this is that this is just a pvp game and those usually have shitty pve, so it's better to just call them pvp games. Which is why I keep saying that we gotta require good pve from Intrepid to justify the PvX nomenclature.

We agree on the "needs better pve" part, so main point of this post is "what respawn timer did you have in mind"?

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

We agree on the "needs better pve" part, so main point of this post is "what respawn timer did you have in mind"?

No respawn timer.

Taking a page from the EQ playbook (EQ, EQ2, Rift Age of Conan and a number of other games all did this) you put your open world bosses as potential spawns.

So, say you have a blacksmith workshop in your dungeon. You may have 8 spawns of mobs called "blacksmith assistant". One of these mobs (indistungishable to players) has a respawn table that includes the rooms boss as somewhere between a 10% and a 25% chance.

This means the spawn rate is based on the amount of use the dungeon gets. More people running through it means more bosses will spawn. It's an elegant, functional, self contained system.

And this comes back to your point of "the game doesn't give content to people" and that is EXACTLY what Steven has been saying for years.

There is a difference between "doesn't give content to people" and "doesn't allow players to have access to content".

A game handing out content would be DDO - there being no overland to speak of, and instanced content being seconds away at all times.

That isn't what I (or anyone else I can think of) wants for Ashes.

However, we want access to content. If we need to make our way for 15 minutes overland to get to a dungeon, then fight our way for an hour down in that dungeon all the while facing potential PvP, thats fine - if we know there is some real content (my definition of content) for us to take on at the end of it. Having content we need to fight others for is also great, but there needs to be content that we know we can participate in.

I would like to add that a 75 minute adventure in a world with open PvP in order to get to content is not what any reasonable person could consider "giving people content". That is content that the players in question have earned uninterrupted access to just by getting there.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

So, say you have a blacksmith workshop in your dungeon. You may have 8 spawns of mobs called "blacksmith assistant". One of these mobs (indistungishable to players) has a respawn table that includes the rooms boss as somewhere between a 10% and a 25% chance.

This means the spawn rate is based on the amount of use the dungeon gets. More people running through it means more bosses will spawn. It's an elegant, functional, self contained system.

Kinda sounds like my idea for "growing difficulty dungeon rooms"

Then a question related to that, what's the difference between having well-designed hardcore plain mobs and these mini bosses you want? Cause to me this seems exactly the same.

And I'd imagine these mini bosses would also have fairly low drop rates, as to not destroy the economy by overfarming them, so it would literally be the same as what I want, except in the name.

Noaani wrote: »

However, we want access to content. If we need to make our way for 15 minutes overland to get to a dungeon, then fight our way for an hour down in that dungeon all the while facing potential PvP, thats fine - if we know there is some real content (my definition of content) for us to take on at the end of it. Having content we need to fight others for is also great, but there needs to be content that we know we can participate in.

I would like to add that a 75 minute adventure in a world with open PvP in order to get to content is not what any reasonable person could consider "giving people content". That is content that the players in question have earned uninterrupted access to just by getting there.

So yeah, again, my main point is "all pve should be of high quality, so that the PvX name fits the gameplay". My room suggestion plays into that, and I feel like Steven's supposedly planned "dungeons know how fast you clear stuff" is somewhat similar to that in nature.

You might be clearing some rooms on your way to your preferred loot (cause I'd hope a huge dungeon has a range of loot tables) and when you get to your spot - you'll get some form of heightened reward, if your performance so far has been stellar. This obviously depends on the other player presence in the dungeon, and all that, but I hope you get my point.

In other words, how exactly is what you're asking any different to what I'm asking? And just to remind, my room suggestion includes a potential lock out of your room, so that your final bossy mob can have an even better designed combat than the general population, all while no one else can access your room.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

So, say you have a blacksmith workshop in your dungeon. You may have 8 spawns of mobs called "blacksmith assistant". One of these mobs (indistungishable to players) has a respawn table that includes the rooms boss as somewhere between a 10% and a 25% chance.

This means the spawn rate is based on the amount of use the dungeon gets. More people running through it means more bosses will spawn. It's an elegant, functional, self contained system.

Kinda sounds like my idea for "growing difficulty dungeon rooms"

Then a question related to that, what's the difference between having well-designed hardcore plain mobs and these mini bosses you want? Cause to me this seems exactly the same.

And I'd imagine these mini bosses would also have fairly low drop rates, as to not destroy the economy by overfarming them, so it would literally be the same as what I want, except in the name.

NMs (Named Mobs? Notorious Monsters?) are a content question, but not a Raid question for most people that I know of.

They're fun, they have good drops, they can be really hard, they easily promote conflict even in FFXI where you can't literally kill other people.

The system described is the 'Lottery Pop' (at least that's the term I'm used to). This is why it has no respawn timer.

Ashes already has these, afaik. You might need to use a word for 'Raid/Alliance tier content for the level or area' (FFXI terminology doesn't do well here, they just call them 'HNMs' and no one even agrees on what the H stands for).

EDIT: Oh, as for the difference you requested, I'll throw in my data too.

Basically nothing. Their special attacks do more things, they have more health so that you have to think more about if you can afford to just offload damage to remove their threat quickly, etc. They're effectively required because normal mobs 'must be easier' (complexity wise) if you want players to grow, or to retain those that don't play at a high level.

But then, players like you need something to do, and players who are at that level need a goal to improve their skill toward.

And of course, we all need 'something to fight over'. Bonus if it can spawn in different rooms that aren't super close to each other and none of the parties are entirely sure which one.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Then a question related to that, what's the difference between having well-designed hardcore plain mobs and these mini bosses you want? Cause to me this seems exactly the same.

There are a number of reasons - but the biggest is psychology.

Players generally prefer having variety in difficulty - easy mobs then hard mobs. Bosses like this are a means of communicating which is which.

Players generally prefer the idea of going after a mob with a name, rather than killing generic encounters. It just feels better.

Players generally prefer to have a short term goal, one that they can understand, these mobs absolutely fill that role.

And I'd imagine these mini bosses would also have fairly low drop rates, as to not destroy the economy by overfarming them, so it would literally be the same as what I want, except in the name.

100% drop rate - but of a material of which you need several of in order to make an item (either three or five).

If people want to put the time in to farm them so much that they tank the price on the open market, have at it. That is kind of the point of a game with a complex economy.

So yeah, again, my main point is "all pve should be of high quality, so that the PvX name fits the gameplay". My room suggestion plays into that, and I feel like Steven's supposedly planned "dungeons know how fast you clear stuff" is somewhat similar to that in nature.

Stevens plan here will either not make it to live, or will be so easy to abuse that it will ruin the game.

I have always essentially discounted it as ever becoming a reality, and I continue to do so.

As to the difference with what you are talking about (iirc, just base population, low drop rate mobs), the difference is as per the above.

As for the lockout thing, all that does is prevent interruption to content you have secured access to. It isn't a substitute to instances in regards to access to content - it literally doesn't perform that function.

As we have talked about in the past, this kind of thing is fine for that purpose - for that function. However, it simply does not fulfil the function of allowing access to content for players.

In that above example, if me and my guild take that 75 minute trek to the botton of that dungeon, access to that content should not be conditional on anything other than us getting there. We shouldn't miss out because someone killed the mob yesterday, and if we kill it today that shouldn't stop someone else having access to it (if they earn it) tomorrow.

This is the function instances provide.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

You might need to use a word for 'Raid/Alliance tier content for the level or area' (FFXI terminology doesn't do well here, they just call them 'HNMs' and no one even agrees on what the H stands for).

This is then another question, that I believe I've discussed with Noaani in the past as well. Should raid-sized groups have as much content as single groups do?

And would that even be feasible from the gameplay side of things. I'd hope that raid-sized bosses do in fact have respawn timers and are in fact way more limited in numbers than these Named dudes.

And if that's the case, then raid activities are a separate discussion and the minibosses we're talking about would mainly be a group (2 at most) thing. And I think having smth like "clearing 3 Named dudes spawns a 2-party boss in a certain room" would provide that "smth" you mention here.

Azherae wrote: »

And of course, we all need 'something to fight over'. Bonus if it can spawn in different rooms that aren't super close to each other and none of the parties are entirely sure which one.

Azherae wrote: »

Basically nothing. Their special attacks do more things, they have more health so that you have to think more about if you can afford to just offload damage to remove their threat quickly, etc. They're effectively required because normal mobs 'must be easier' (complexity wise) if you want players to grow, or to retain those that don't play at a high level.

To me this is mainly an overworld thing and potentially an "early rooms in the dungeon" thing.

Players progress through lvls, which in themselves represent the increase in difficulty, which in turn justify the longer leveling process, exactly because players gotta learn how to fight well. And those who haven't learned, by the time they're max lvl, can fight overland mobs/NMs (who are easier) and/or fight slightly below their lvl, which would fill up dungeons of Stage5 nodes or early rooms of Metro ones.

This is why I said that it'd only be 1k people who're fighting over Metro dungeons, cause I'd imagine that this would be the rough amount of skill-enough players, even if majority of the server is at max lvl. Most likely that's on the lower side of estimation, but I was giving the example at least a bit of a chance.

In other words, my point is that dungeons should be the peak difficulty content in the game for your current lvl. So you either can clear them (or clear a part of them) or you gotta do a stage below your progress or overworld stuff.

And imo this would also somewhat prevent the weaker people from leaving the game, because these dungeons would most likely have a much higher probability of pvp, and this pvp would be against higher powered enemies, so if players learn from the start that equal-lvl content is not always the best choice of action - they'd be more willing to fight against weaker mobs in the endgame (these mobs are still difficult enough, but just easier because they're a step below the weak player's progress).

And if AoC's crafting system proves to be what it promised to be - fighting weaker stuff is still viable, because its mats can still be used/sold/recrafted.

In other words, "for everyone according to their ability" or whatever that red bearded man said in the past.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

There are a number of reasons - but the biggest is psychology.

I addressed this in my response to Azherae.

Noaani wrote: »

100% drop rate - but of a material of which you need several of in order to make an item (either three or five).

If people want to put the time in to farm them so much that they tank the price on the open market, have at it. That is kind of the point of a game with a complex economy.

This ties back to the gear acquisition pace, and that's a whoooole different discussion (that we've also already had).

I disagree with this, so it's up to Intrepid to design the game however they see fit.

Noaani wrote: »

In that above example, if me and my guild take that 75 minute trek to the botton of that dungeon, access to that content should not be conditional on anything other than us getting there. We shouldn't miss out because someone killed the mob yesterday, and if we kill it today that shouldn't stop someone else having access to it (if they earn it) tomorrow.

This is the function instances provide.

Yeah, I disagree with this too, cause, like I said, to me the whole packages IS the content. But we won't agree on this particular topic either way. I got your point, so now I just gotta remember this for the future, so that I don't repeat the question ONCE AGAIN

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Yeah, I disagree with this too, cause, like I said, to me the whole packages IS the content.

Right, and that is the thinking that leads to poor PvE.

If you want to say that the whole thing is the content, then you have no appeal to PvE players. There isn't any more to that specific conversation.

To a PvE player (especially a top end PvE player) an MMORPG is a series of halls and tunnels and stairs and paths that all lead to various pieces of content. Make that series of halls and tunnels and stairs and paths as PvX as you like, as long as the content at the end of it is what we expect.

That is the really short version of the only way to get PvE players in to Ashes. The only way to get a good PvE game in to Ashes.

You don't need to like it, I don't expect you to like it, I am just stating that this is how it is.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

If you want to say that the whole thing is the content, then you have no appeal to PvE players. There isn't any more to that specific conversation.

Here's 2 situations:

you run from the node to the dungeon
you run through the dungeon to the room that has your desired loot
you kill some mobs that aggro onto you throughout the dungeon
you kill some people that are your GWs/NWs/flagged randoes/PKers
you come to the room and fight a few respawns of increasingly difficult Named mobs
you, potentially, fight off some newcomers that wanted to farm the same room
after, say, 3 respawns your room gets locked and after a minute (or however it takes to regen to full in the game), or after triggering the spawn on your own, you get a well-designed complex group boss with the loot chances that you mentioned here before

you run from the node to the dungeon
you run through the dungeon to the room that has your desired loot
you kill some mobs that aggro onto you throughout the dungeon
you kill some people that are your GWs/NWs/flagged randoes/PKers
you come to the room and fight a few respawns of increasingly difficult Named mobs
you, potentially, fight off some newcomers that wanted to farm the same room
after, say, 3 respawns you drop a key to a door that takes you into an instanced room with the same boss as the situation above

What is the functional difference between these 2 situations? Do you expect the instance at the end of your 75min travel to be slightly more than a single good group boss? Cause the same thing could be accomplished through smth like "one you defeat the boss, it opens a hidden path that takes you to a new room" and you just "change cages", to allow another group to take your previous room.

If you want a repeatable instance at the end of that 75min travel, then what exactly would people fight over throughout those 75 mins, if the best loot is in the instance itself? And then, what about different loot tables. Would each loot set have its own repeatable instance?

And what would be the impact of such a design on the crafting system of "even low lvl stuff is valuable", cause to me this sounds like a "if you have 8 alts of whichever lvl - you can clear 8 dungeons and multiply your loot by that amount" situation. Cause this is exactly what we did in L2 once it got more instances. And I definitely don't want the game to devolve into that.

And if those instances are not repeatable, then how many of them exactly would it take to fill up months of content consumption by the players and how much dev time would that require?

And again, I'm talking here about raid-sized stuff that's on a weekly timer. I'm talking about a "your guild doesn't have a highly valuable event right now, so your group gotta do smth today, and you decided to farm a dungeon"-type deal.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

If you want to say that the whole thing is the content, then you have no appeal to PvE players. There isn't any more to that specific conversation.

Here's 2 situations:
you run from the node to the dungeon

you run through the dungeon to the room that has your desired loot

you kill some mobs that aggro onto you throughout the dungeon

you kill some people that are your GWs/NWs/flagged randoes/PKers

you come to the room and fight a few respawns of increasingly difficult Named mobs

you, potentially, fight off some newcomers that wanted to farm the same room

after, say, 3 respawns your room gets locked and after a minute (or however it takes to regen to full in the game), or after triggering the spawn on your own, you get a well-designed complex group boss with the loot chances that you mentioned here before

you run from the node to the dungeon

you run through the dungeon to the room that has your desired loot

you kill some mobs that aggro onto you throughout the dungeon

you kill some people that are your GWs/NWs/flagged randoes/PKers

you come to the room and fight a few respawns of increasingly difficult Named mobs

you, potentially, fight off some newcomers that wanted to farm the same room

after, say, 3 respawns you drop a key to a door that takes you into an instanced room with the same boss as the situation above

What is the functional difference between these 2 situations?

Point 7 above shouldn't exist. It serves no purpose.

However, the difference between these two is simple. I'll give you two.

The first is that I can cheese the first one to prevent others having access to it. Even if there is a timer on it, all that means is I need a few friends.

Anything that is open world can be blocked - whether by legitimate means or by cheesing/exploiting game systems. I've yet to see any game with open world content where players have not been able to block off portions of that content in unintended ways to the point where developers need to get involved (developers - not CS).

Instances do not have this weakness.

The second is that because the first of these would require a timer, the content within it actually can't be all that hard. Actual hard content takes hundreds of attempts to get right, which would mean actual years with this kind of thing. As such, if this is what we have, we have mid tier PvE at best.

If the idea is to get actual good PvE, then group or guild wanting to participate needs access to the content at the same time - not just one.

That is two reasons that are irrefutable assuming you want actual good PvE.

Now, you are claiming you don't see the difference - why are YOU so adamant for the first of the above?

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

Point 7 above shouldn't exist. It serves no purpose.

It serves the same purpose as the "lottery pop", as Azherae called it. It adds more chances to drop your preferred loot and eases you into the peak content (especially if the changing nature of the world is considered, and these preliminary mobs can indicate what abilities the boss will have this time).

And also the pvxness of this part of the content, cause your road there might not have any pvp, but then the room itself might have people in it (or you might be the "people" to other players).

Noaani wrote: »

Anything that is open world can be blocked - whether by legitimate means or by cheesing/exploiting game systems. I've yet to see any game with open world content where players have not been able to block off portions of that content in unintended ways to the point where developers need to get involved (developers - not CS).

I don't really get this point. What exactly are you trying to stop here? Other people from accessing the room at all? Then this would either require a ton of bodyblocking or the exploiting means you mentioned, at which point Intrepid should do smth about it.

But even then, you'd only be stopping them from the preliminary mobs, because the final boss is caged. So I still don't really get the point of this blockade.

Noaani wrote: »

Instances do not have this weakness.

You can still block someone's access to the instance entrance. That's kinda the whole point of "pvp before pve" in my previous examples of what I'd like as a representation of pvx for Ashes.

Noaani wrote: »

The second is that because the first of these would require a timer, the content within it actually can't be all that hard. Actual hard content takes hundreds of attempts to get right, which would mean actual years with this kind of thing. As such, if this is what we have, we have mid tier PvE at best.

If the idea is to get actual good PvE, then group or guild wanting to participate needs access to the content at the same time - not just one.

Again, I don't think I understand what you're trying to say here.

Are you implying that the instanced version would not have a timer on it? Then where's the difficulty, if you can simply farm the boss for however long.

Or are you talking about a respawn timer? But then how does it even matter if the boss is so damn hard that you can't even kill it. It wouldn't even go on respawn. Well, maybe the preliminary mobs could be considered a respawn timer for it, but, as I pointed out above, those mobs could show what the boss setup is today, so if you're attempting it on a different day - you might have change your build (the thing you wanted iirc).

As for the overall time required to beat the encounter - yes, it would take a lot. And only the guilds with highly skilled pvxers (or pvp and pve groups) would be able to accomplish that. You gotta defend your attempts, otherwise someone else might beat it before you.

This does bring up another question though. If this was an instance, do you expect a wipe inside of the instance to bring you right outside the room with full HP/MP, so that you can reattempt it all again instantly? Cause that's what you make it sound like.

And if that is what you want, then the 75min travel doesn't matter at all and everyone would simply sit at the boss all day, attempting the farm. Like, hundreds of people in one place. One could argue that there might be some wars for it or whatever, but as several people in the past have pointed out - people like to cooperate when it's way more beneficial to them. And when the award simply comes from finishing an instance - there's 0 point in fighting over an instance that's available to all.

I think I've given this example before, but just to explain my point better here. There was an instance in L2 that gave out best gear at that point in the game (for other L2 players, this will be in the context of a new server). It had "twice a week" respawn timer and a limit on the amounts of kills per "cycle" (let's say 20 for this example). When cycle ended, the instance would change to an open world enhancement stone farming location for 12h.

And so guilds would at first rarely fight around this instance, because there'd only be so many guilds that could even clear the instance, so spending time trying to prevent other farms wasn't as viable. But with time, there'd not only be more guilds clearing it per cycle, but even repeat alt groups from the same guilds. And at that point, as soon as news of "another group is gathering to fight the instance" got to a guild - they'd immediately go to the entrance and try to stop their competitors.

In other words, pvp was only present when there was scarcity (or at least a perceived one). Your suggestion seems to imply no such scarcity, so I see no reason for people to fight over these instances. At which point the entire game just becomes "we sit at an instance, trying to clear it; day in day out".

I don't want that in Ashes, exactly because I've already experienced that in L2 and the game only got worse because of that. And to me it seems that Steven has a similar mindset on the topic.

I do agree that we should have at least a few instances with super hardcore raid content (and probs a few with SH party content), but those things should be the aspirational content that people work towards. In other words, the bosses that we're talking about right now would not be the pinnacle of difficulty in the game, so they wouldn't require hundreds and hundreds of attempts.

The bosses I'm talking about would be the base lvl supplier of mats for gear crafting. You'll still have a chance to drop a few mats from mobs, but once you "crack the code" of farming the bosses - they're the main source. And this is why I keep saying that even plain dungeon mobs should be at the complexity of Named ones. Dungeons should be the day-to-day goal of anyone who's in the stage of mats acquisition, and that stage should take a long while and have pvp in it. And in order to justify the pvx name, this pvp gotta be counterbalanced with good pve in the form of hard mobs that lead to an even harder boss. All of which then culminates with a raid on a truly hardcore boss that gives best mats (and rarely full things).

To me, this is the "L2 but better" approach to pvx, which seems to at least somewhat align with Steven's desires for the game (at least right now, with the limited amount of knowledge on the far plans for pve).

Azherae

The difference is that two guilds go to King Behemoth and only one gets to fight King Behemoth that wee, , vs two guilds going to the King Behemoth to Behemoth's Dominion and one of them getting to fight King Behemoth first/only when the others (or whoever else appears) are done competing for whatever drops the key.

Hierarchy of PvE content vs exclusivity of PvE content.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Hierarchy of PvE content vs exclusivity of PvE content.

The first one in your example is the exclusivity one, right? Or did I misunderstand?

To me it should be both. The one who earn the right to fight first is the one who gets the exclusive reward if they manage to clear the content. So you either have a strong pvx team that can both pvp and pve, or you have more people part of whom protect the pvers' rights to farm. And any contenders gotta figure out how they'll approach the situation.

And if that's still just exclusivity of content, then I don't think I understood the second part of your example.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Hierarchy of PvE content vs exclusivity of PvE content.

The first one in your example is the exclusivity one, right? Or did I misunderstand?

To me it should be both. The one who earn the right to fight first is the one who gets the exclusive reward if they manage to clear the content. So you either have a strong pvx team that can both pvp and pve, or you have more people part of whom protect the pvers' rights to farm. And any contenders gotta figure out how they'll approach the situation.

And if that's still just exclusivity of content, then I don't think I understood the second part of your example.

I understand your perception, but remember that for people other than you, the fight is itself the reward in many ways.

The reason for logging in to the game is 'to experience the fight'. This could still be a PvX fight situation, for some, but for the PvE raiders we are supposedly talking about, they may not mind being the third or fourth to get to fight the content, if they were the third or fourth strongest on the server.

But the dynamic of a game where 'Third place gets their turn when first and second place are done or don't want it, and might not get their turn if the previous fourth or fifth place overtakes them (because they run out of time)' and a game where 'only first place gets to experience the content' are very different.

I've said before that I am not much of a PvE 'raider', but this isn't because of disinterest, and I will be nice enough to myself to say that it isn't because I suck utterly and couldn't do it. But FFXI is the 'exclusivity' type of game design. So I never got to 'open world raid' much because only the top groups ever got to raid (PvE MPK tactics meant they would just kill off weaker groups anyway).

There was no access to 'top end content' for me during the time that it was considered top end content, I was too young to follow the schedules of any top groups even if I tried. And there was never any incentive for additional competitive groups to form. Everyone who wanted to face the content 'wanted to join the winning side'.

Hierarchical content access leads to 'matchmaking'. Exclusive content access leads to 'gatekeeping'. PvEMainly raiders have no incentive to play a PvX game built on gatekeeping.

EDIT: Changed a 'players' to 'raiders' for absolute clarity.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Hierarchical content access leads to 'matchmaking'. Exclusive content access leads to 'gatekeeping'. PvEMainly raiders have no incentive to play a PvX game built on gatekeeping.

How hard it would be for people to work together to accomplish their goals? If hardcore pvers who're not all that keen on pvping believe that they're able to beat a super difficult boss on fewer tries than a pvx (let alone pvp) group - why wouldn't they work together with a pvp group who'd provide those pvers with a chance to attempt the boss first?

I feel like it's always both idealistic and nihilistic to say that it'll always be the big groups who get every farm/attempt of the boss, because everyone would always go to that big group first, rather than trying to stand up against them.

And I know it's naïve to hope that there'll always be someone who does choose to stand up against them, but that's usually what I've seen in my experience (and have at least attempted this as a leader myself), which is why I keep naively hoping that this will be the case in Ashes as well.

And now that I think about it, this kinda plays into pve elitism (usually coming from Noaani) that pvpers will never be able to beat the proper hardcore pve. Because if we do have instances that have no limits on them - only the pvers will benefit from them.

It could be argued that Noaani's idea of post-pve caravans could balance it out, but to me it feels like it would instead just hold the pendulum on the pvp side, because now pvpers would have no benefit in working together with the pvers and they will instead just always attack them and rob them. At which point we come back to the "everyone leaves because hunters drive out the prey".

And in the classic circular argument, if those pvers want to work with pvpers to get defense for their post-pve caravans - why can't they do that for pre-pve defense?

I feel like all this cumbersome thought process is exactly why Steven keeps saying that instances are story-based and that the game is about "not everyone winning". Cause that's a much easier approach to the situation, than trying to find the perfect middle-of-the-road design for the game.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Again, I don't think I understand what you're trying to say here.

I don't think you are understanding much at all of what I am saying.

Some of that is no doubt due to me not explaining it well enough, but some of it is without a doubt due to you not being able to distance yourself from how things were in L2.

Basically, if I don't talk about something, you should probably assume I am talking about it being the opposite of L2, not what L2 did.

A recent example of this is timers. Talking about those smaller bosses, you couldn't get your head around what timer they would have, and had quite a lot of thoughts on the matter.

Thing is, anyone that has played a game with this kind of content would know straight away that it is a random spawn mechanic - because that is what is needed to make this content work. You preseumably haven't seen such a system, and so thought the whole thing couldn't work because you couldn't work out a spawn timer that would work. I didn't bother mentioning it at the start because to me this is just an inherent aspect of this kind of content and doesn't actually warrent mentioning.

Back to your post;

NiKr wrote: »

It serves the same purpose as the "lottery pop", as Azherae called it. It adds more chances to drop your preferred loot and eases you into the peak content (especially if the changing nature of the world is considered, and these preliminary mobs can indicate what abilities the boss will have this time).

If players feel they need to be eased in to the content, they can sit at the door for a few spawn cycles.

If they feel they are ready to go, they shouldn't be required to do so.

This is a pointless, monotonous requirement that detracts from the actual content, rather than adds to it.

I don't really get this point. What exactly are you trying to stop here?

Stop people being able to kill the encounter - via what ever means are available to me.

If I can stop you from having access to an encounter, you will never have access to that encounter.

Even for a PvX game, this is only good game design if it applies to some content of each type. If it applies to all content of each type, then this is horrid game design.

But then how does it even matter if the boss is so damn hard that you can't even kill it.

With the content you are talking about (cages), I would expect a competent PvE guild to be able to kill it either first or second pull.

As a content type, this is not suitable for actual hard content, for reasons I mentioned a few posts above.

Basically, if the goal is good PvE, this is something that can be used sparingly, on some encounters.

This does bring up another question though. If this was an instance, do you expect a wipe inside of the instance to bring you right outside the room with full HP/MP, so that you can reattempt it all again instantly? Cause that's what you make it sound like.

My expectation is about 10 wipes, at which point you would need to head back to a node with services of some form (repairing, if nothing else), and you can then head back down if you like.

Where the respawn point is located is something that I don't care too much about at this stage.

so I see no reason for people to fight over these instances.

Yeah, you shouldn't fight over them.

Fight over the drops, for sure. FIght because you don't like the other people even, if that is what you want. However, you shouldn't fight against other people for the right to play the game you are paying a subscription to play.

That is stupid.

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