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How tethered should world bosses be?
akabear
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
In the early days of my L2 server, some of the world bosses were untethered to specific areas. I have vivid memories of the chaos they caused, like the time a small group led a world boss into town from a remote location. The boss wreaked havoc on the AFK stores while active players banded together to defeat it over the stores enjoying the fight in town and the spoils from the dead player stores..
Another memorable event was when a small group of players guided a world boss across the map into the open training arena. Since there were no death penalties in the arena, this group managed to defeat the boss themselves, despite their small numbers.
Or an event where there was no going out of town as the bosses took over the entrances.
These experiences sparked my imagination about the possibilities in the game world.
What if larger bosses had slight tethers, while smaller ones had none or very limited ones?
What if bosses could be trained on each other as well as players?
Perhaps there could be certain penalties or risks for players attempting such feats, but also increased bonuses for those who succeeded.
It's just a random thought!
Another memorable event was when a small group of players guided a world boss across the map into the open training arena. Since there were no death penalties in the arena, this group managed to defeat the boss themselves, despite their small numbers.
Or an event where there was no going out of town as the bosses took over the entrances.
These experiences sparked my imagination about the possibilities in the game world.
What if larger bosses had slight tethers, while smaller ones had none or very limited ones?
What if bosses could be trained on each other as well as players?
Perhaps there could be certain penalties or risks for players attempting such feats, but also increased bonuses for those who succeeded.
It's just a random thought!
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imagine you are in town setting up your shop or whatever and go afk 2 mins to get some water then you come back and you are dead because some idiot lured a boss to that area and you lost half of your stuff.
I think bosses should be tethered approximately to the geographical area of their node, or of the two nodes they are at the 'border of'.
I think the Ancients/Others type bosses should have no tethers if they are not spawned 'only in Corrupted areas'. If they 'only spawn when the area is corrupt' I think they should tether to wherever the Corruption ends.
The question isn't about dungeon bosses, but I'll still add that I think they should generally stay on their FLOOR, but I don't care if they leave their room.
Beyond that point, they should have 'Draw In' or something similar on anyone with hate, and it should do damage to that person when they use it, and maybe wreck their gear. Hopefully a lot. Realistic? No. But neither is dragging a boss a whole Node/Dungeon Floor away from their intended location.
Smaller 'Elites' or 'Named Monsters' or whatever people want to call them, can just work mostly like the mobs in their area, or by their type. A Mushroom gives up, a Gryphon goes back to its nest, a Raptor chases you almost endlessly.
I think that it might be good to have several possible 'things', of that type and others that we have not thought of yet, as possibilities. Don't tell the player base about them, let us discover them. Some may deal with bosses, some might be entirely different possibilities.
Likely, there will be things that the player base figures out are possible that the devs will not have foreseen, that is likely in such a complex world.
The boss been drawn into Giran happened on Gusin.... was a very memorable day.
Agree, players will invariably find holes in the design, especially early on..
If minor bosses would aggro major bosses and increase spoils and players that were responsible for luring the boss out of its region became flagged, then kind of fulfills the risk/reward ethos..
Then a degree of risk vs reward.
Also, could be bosses friendly to a node, and patrolling defensively on nodal borders.. somehow under some financial control/ arrangement by mayors.
If we are going to be fighting over them in the open, then the tethers need to be very small I would think. That gives consistency and lets the devs control the battleground. Otherwise dragging them to a less accessible area will be meta.
On one hand, it sounds amazing to see bosses attack settlements and cause havoc on rare occasions.
But on the other hand, considering how punishing death is in AoC I don't feel quite right about having people in cities - with potentially loads of stuff in their inventory - die and lose all of that just because they happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
I suppose I'd advocate for some sort of inventory protection while inside cities (which might also help a lot in regards to protecting players against people attempting to oneshot/gank people at bank/trading posts - if PvP in cities is a thing) - but of course that opens up a can of worms regarding other mechanics. c:
That can be managed multiple ways to not screw players over pretty easily though. No death penalties for players (at least ones that were out of combat when they entered) inside settlement limits, don't have the AI attack non-hostile players inside settlement limits, or plenty of other ways to design a system like this in a way that feels dynamic and alive but doesn't really punish players just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time
but for Example Firedragons, Icedragons, whatever Dragons and/or Monsters, should make some Sense of where to appear. When for Example Dragons in Ashes would have a Cave and a Hoard they guard, similar like in Dungeons and Dragons,
then it would make Sense that they would never venture that very far away from their Hoard. Yes, they can fly - and hence, bypass HUUUGE Distances in a very quick Time,
but they know every Moment they leave their Hoard unguarded, some sneaky, little Humans might dare to try to steal from them. 😁 . 😈
While some bugs or edge cases can cause memorable experiences, would be better to not be frequent.
It is better players to find the boss where it is supposed to be rather than being glitched into some remote place on the map. So if something unusual happens, should be like once per year.
Indeed those seem to have this purpose.
What inventory protection?
Gear is not dropped.
In town players have no idea if you have something in inventory or not and they can better kill you outside as you bring resources or while you drive a caravan. When you arrive with the caravan, it becomes invulnerable and the materials are in the cargo window not your inventory.
Becoming corrupt in a city is the worst place because...
NPC guards will kill corrupted players on sight.[63]
NPC guards are capable of being killed, but they have high skill levels, damage mitigation, and power levels.[64]
And there was at least one guard walking on the road near a level 3 node in a recent stream.
People found them interesting because it was something different. People found a new way to do an odd thing with a game mechanic. For the most part, these things were then fixed, and new games didn't make the same mistakes again (generally).
Having a game where that can be done again wont be nearly the same as it was, because most of the reason those things were memorable is because of how new and unique they were.
If Ashes were to look back at those few occasions and attempt to build a game where that can be redone, then every boss would be pulled to a nearby metro.
Not just one or two, all of them.
People not at all interested in killing them would very quickly learn when bosses are due to spawn and just not log on.
Rather than asking for Ashes to have old ways to break the game built in, I'd much rather Intrepid design the game to prevent as many of those as they can. This means that people playing Ashes can find new, unique ways of breaking them game that are specific to Ashes, that people on an MMO forum in 10 or 20 years can then make threads like this asking for - where hopefully someone makes this same point to them - rather than rehashing something that has been done.
So, Ashes boss leashes should be of moderate length. Enough that you cant pull it anywhere it could cause uninterested players issues, but long enough so that running away is still dangerous.
Speaking of the materials, of course. c:
It kind of just crossed my mind how much it would suck if someone had just emptied loads of valuable materials to sell at the local trading post, had to go AFK cause the cat demanded food at that very minute and then came back to a dead character with a share of the materials in the pile of ash. :x
I do like the suggestion of monster coins filling these function as it would (probably?) not be as random and unexpected (?).... And it would be really cool to be minding your own business when suddenly you hear the settlement's warning bells and guards shouting!
Generally, a leash should reflect the wants and needs of the mob.
then whats the point of pulling the boss to the city? people usually do that shit to get others killed.
the only other cons i see for it is faster respawns if u die to the boss and lots of people hitting it. but you can also get that from killing the boss at its respawn. if you are competing for the boss and you want to kill it before the war kills it, then pulling it to town is a bad idea. probably only solo players who wanna attempt to get some loot would do that.
The wandering ones should be able to be kited around as long as they are on their path anyway, but as soon as they stray too far, they should go back.
Getting some world boss pulled into a node is fun for some people 3 years later looking back at it. Not so much for others.
To try and get other people to help or to make the world seem less like a static theme park just waiting for the players to go do something? And even if the idea would be to damage another guild's town or node (which would be valid in a game like AoC) then negative consequences for players that don't want to participate or are AFK could be minimized while still allowing the world state to be affected in unique ways.
The OP clearly doesn't want this mechanic just to try and troll others, they want it to make the game world feel more like a real, believable place. Having a boss just stand around in a small "arena" waiting for a group of players, and then having them not ever leave that area (some exceptions could apply obviously) is just archaic, boring design.
I think you got my intent.
It was never about creating chaos, but rather allowing possibilities to exploring the potential outcomes and perhaps some hidden results that can only be found by trial and error.
Imagine the coordinated effort entailed by a large group holding down a boss while another equally large group pulls a distant mini-boss into proximity, causing both bosses to engage each other. This could lead to an increase or change in the magnitude of rewards. Players might need to be flagged to pull out of a tethered range, adding a strategic element. Furthermore, players would have to defend their path from the boss's origin to their desired location, turning the whole exercise into a logistical, team-oriented, and potentially political event.
Perhaps for those successful, then stories being told of guilds uniting to pull two of the largest bosses across the land to fight each other collectively, sharing the spoils. Being able to pull off what others couldn`t or didn`t know could.
All about creating a sandbox of possibilities rather than the more rigid, predictable outcomes of a theme park set situations.
Players who dare to risk all become the most rewarded.
This is something I've been wanting back in MMOs for a very long time. I enjoy games like FFXIV and ESO but basically every single piece of content in those games outside of PvP is just so heavily scripted and sterilized that there's essentially nothing more to do than memorize some patterns. It's especially jarring in ESO since it's superficially presented like the single player TES games that do have a pretty open sandbox to try creative things (they did at least add the stealing/pickpocketing gameplay though, which was a nice departure from generic theme park MMO design). It effectively feels like you're just existing in the world created by the devs where you have no real influence, not in a world created for the players.
I think they are letting you do this as part of the monster coin economy. Now it would be interesting to have the group spend the monster coin to untether the monster and allow them to lure it rather than just having the monster show up. But then I think part of the purchase is the control of the monster to attack certain buildings and whatnot.
Or can there be multiple ways to spend the coin? The primary way and the alternate old school way?
What if luring these bosses from corrupted areas spreads the corruption? And players involved get the risks/rewards from it? Could a group lure the corruption away from a node given enough time/resources? Could this not be tied into the event system, creating new story arcs?
Think a good game allows for out of the box thinking with consequences rather than strict rules enforcement. So rather than “no, you can’t” it’s “yes, you can, but…”.
can appease every one who want bosses attacking settlements by making that a event where its coded / scripted to attack but cant be led there by players. allowing no tether without some restraint can just lead to cheesy strats or exploits, nothing to stop 200 low lvls that dont care about xp debt that much just wailing on a boss non stop if its stuck in town / nearby a respawn zone killing everything