How tethered should world bosses be?

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!

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Ludullu

I'd want this purely for the stories of player massacres, which would make the game seem way more fun than the current sterile games.

Depraved

never liked this tbh. i hope it cant happen, specially considering you can drop stuff when you are green.
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.

bloodprophet

I vote for no tether on world bosses and a random 30-50% of all other mobs should have no tether.

Azherae

Had to think about this one for a while because I still feel like I don't know enough about Ashes' actual boss concepts, but then I remembered the It Who Twins.

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.

tautau

I remember the L2 boss getting dragged into Giran, we may have been on the same server @akabear . It kept people talking for months.

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.

akabear

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.

Diamaht

akabear wrote: »

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!

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.

daveywavey

People have been pretty vocal about not having other players be able to train mobs on them to kill them. How would this be different?

Dezemi

I am torn on this, honestly.

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:

Diamaht

Let the monster coin system function as the city attacker. Less need/want to train a monster to a city that way.

patrick68794

Depraved wrote: »

never liked this tbh. i hope it cant happen, specially considering you can drop stuff when you are green.
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.

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

Aszkalon

World Bosses should make at least a " little bit " Sense. I would like if that "Giant-Dude" from a few Stream-Presentations could for Example wander through the whole lot of the Riverlands,

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. 😁 . 😈

Otr

akabear wrote: »

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!

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.

Diamaht wrote: »

Let the monster coin system function as the city attacker. Less need/want to train a monster to a city that way.

Indeed those seem to have this purpose.

Otr

Dezmerizing wrote: »

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:

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.

Noaani

The thing with stories from years ago about players doing things with mob leashes and such - is that they were from years ago.

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.

Dezemi

Otr wrote: »

Dezmerizing wrote: »

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:

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.

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!

Morashtak

There should be some logic to the leash length;

In general, a mob should not chase threats/prey into terrain that would cause damage to itself (ex. ice-based mobs should not chase players into lava fields).
Non-intelligent wandering mobs might chase potential prey for a relative longer period of time, the leash length reflecting a risk-reward system.
Semi-intelligent mobs with nests/lairs might have a much shorter leash that reflects them chasing off potential threats.
Intelligent mobs with a defined territory (village, etc.) might have two leashes; one for chasing off threats and another for raiding nearby resource areas.
Exceptions might be made for extremely arrogant mobs (red dragons, etc.) that believe they can not only eliminate their current target but any trespassers in their lairs.
Mobs that reach the end of their leash might have a chance to break it if there's a risk/return scenario that satisfies a ruleset which applies to that specific mob.

Generally, a leash should reflect the wants and needs of the mob.

Percimes

One legitimate "broken leash" I remember, although not from a boss, was the huge knights some casters would charm in DAoC (Telamons). They were high level mobs and originated in an area far, far away from the Albion frontiers. A pain to get considering Albion's frontiers weren't usually the main spot for RvR. But to defend the realm's relic(s)... must have been something for the hybernians and midgardian not familiar with the PvE side of Albion.

Depraved

patrick68794 wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

never liked this tbh. i hope it cant happen, specially considering you can drop stuff when you are green.
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.

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

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.

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