Can we just get rid of boss/monster drops altogether?

The way it is right now, players can just mob/boss grind all the way to max level and never even think about crafting. Crafting is mostly a noob trap time waster.

The only way I can see this game working is if they completely stopped all monster/boss drops and only dropped mats. Trying to grind to max level in starter/novice gear will become such a slog that people will actually be incentivized to stop the leveling grind at some point (high teens?) and instead work on getting the professions up and so that leveling becomes more time efficient.

As long as we can gear up/level up without wasting time on nodes/professions then those things are just a noob trap to slow down players who dont know any better.

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Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

If you honestly believe top end guilds will be farming daily mob spawns, who do you think will own castles? The two activities are kind of mutually exclusive.

I think misunderstanding comes from the difference in our term usage, as we've discussed before. To you, anything outside of a properly complex bossfight is a mob, while I use mobs to literally mean normal mobs (including the 1-3* Elites, cause their respawn is just a few minutes).

So when I'm talking about farming spots - I mean farming mobs in them, while you wait for the boss to spawn. And I laid out the situation where a few guilds might contest the boss spawn window (which means constant pvp, trying to remove the competitor, in case the boss does respawn right as you remove them), while weaker guilds get to have mob spots open to them.

As for the siege preps - that highly depends on what exactly that includes. In my experience, getting better gear for as many members as possible is one of the main ways of preping for the siege, so farming mobs/bosses would directly make you more prepared for it.

Running caravans could be another way, because that's money and you can use economy to get gear, but then you're making the guilds, that farmed/crafted items in the first place, stronger.

And then if there's specific requirements for the sieges - the guilds that plan on participation will be doing those. Castle node caravans, node buildup (which will most likely include killing mobs and bosses within those ZOIs) and on the attacking side - contesting all of those actions.

But considering the amount of siegable things in the game and the cost of the action - I'd imagine only 5-10% of guilds will be involved in that, if even that. At which point we simply shift the stuff I'm talking about by that amount of guilds and we have the same situation. The leftover stronger guilds might be contesting general daily bosses, while even weaker guilds (or at this point potentially solo pugs) get to farm mobs more.

Obviously there's also the underlying gathering lvl of actions, but we've yet to see how pylons will work exactly, so it's hard to say how they'll impact guild-based contests of gatherables (if at all).

And so again, given even the current state of things, it sure looks like farming normal mobs is the thing that people are meant to be doing. And it'll only be even more true once gear craftable parts are added into them.

Azherae

Ludullu wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

c) The game is heavily built around that contesting of specific content (that's what they keep showing us they want, PoIs, static respawns, Starred mobs, less solo content), not contesting of 'space' or the dynamics around that

But to me this sounds exactly like L2. You'd pick a spot that had a specific mob respawns, because you were hunting for a specific drop from it, and you'd farm that spot for as long as you can, while other groups come in and contest it.

You might've fought over the space in general, but the core goal was "this is my mob, so I gotta remove competition".

Right, and this happens because L2 was simpler and had less paths, particularly less guild-self-contained paths, to actual contesting and building of power (and specific types of easier PvE/less of specific dynamics).

Either that or your definition of 'weaker guild' is way above what I'm referring to.

So instead, view it through the lens of Static Respawns, even though those went away, and consider how they're similar to Caravans and Freeholds. Because the type of mob farming that I expect to be meaningful in Ashes is closer to those Static Respawns than to what I believe you are describing from L2.

If you knew the Static Respawn, you could get powered up and geared up without fighting normal mobs even considering that you might need materials from them (just to be clear there are reasons why you can't do this in TL, they're just unintuitive and definitely don't fit Ashes)

If you can run a Caravan with the Glint that drops universally (but higher qualities of Glint drop from the same bosses we're talking about), you can buy materials. If you can raid Caravans successfully, even better. And to remind of your usual complaint, if you can swipe materials from a smaller Guild you somehow set up a Purple v Purple situation on, that too.

If you can lock down a Freehold for your guild, you can now charge others to spend their time using it. Top guilds practically print money without even needing to farm 'normal' mobs, which means they can then spend that money on things that get or keep them ahead (repairs, taxes, new Freeholds after Sieges, gearing alts), and then use the bulk of their time to be at every boss spawn they catch a whiff of.

And also remember that as of now we understand the rules around Corruption to be 'you can drop gear no matter what your PK count is'. It's not even about dropping gear though. It's as you said it, an arms race of alts and counter-alts.

Except that 'weak guilds' don't have strong counter-alts, if they have them at all.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

If you can lock down a Freehold for your guild, you can now charge others to spend their time using it. Top guilds practically print money without even needing to farm 'normal' mobs, which means they can then spend that money on things that get or keep them ahead (repairs, taxes, new Freeholds after Sieges, gearing alts), and then use the bulk of their time to be at every boss spawn they catch a whiff of.

In other words, it's about avoidance of contest through multiple ways, which make the underlying supposed design of "people should be contesting these things" useless exactly because there's just way too many ways of avoiding said contest WHILE still coming out ahead.

Then yeah, I can see why the same ways of content contest wouldn't really work out. And then this is kinda goes back to Steven's love for contradicting design directions

In that case I'd probably prefer an almost fully randomized respawn timer, because I experienced the precise timers in L2 with a few instances and that stuff inevitably lead to the dirtiest most boring tactics imaginable. The random timer (given that there's enough overall content in the world to fill out the 24h of the day) would at least just create the reactive gameplay flow that would keep everyone on their toes, especially if they already had some other plans for that day.

Azherae

And ofc, to tie this back into the main topic.

If you knew that the boss was 'only' going to drop a Material, either the Guild must have at least one person (honestly probably another Alt, possibly not even actually in the Guild) who can craft or use it, and you risk being killed for it after the fight (if you can't just log off first).

Whereas if the boss drops a full item, winning camper wins, which is 'what happens now' but what I absolutely expect to change. This goes for much 'weaker' mobs in the same way, as long as they are 'special' enough to have anything even near to an hour respawn.

Material at least implies that money must be spread around to all the people who 'help with the Artisanship leveling' (we're assuming not the absolute hyper-optimized guilds for this moment), dropped gear implies 'camping is just profit'.

Ludullu

Player loot strikes once again. I'm real damn interested in seeing how all of that gets received by the time the game comes out. I still think that's one of the "out there" parts of the design. And most definitely one of the "not for everyone" thing.

Noaani

Ludullu wrote: »

I think misunderstanding comes from the difference in our term usage, as we've discussed before.

Nah, we've had that in the past, but I am not making any assumptions as to what you are thinking in this regard.

My main point here is that top end guilds in Ashes shouldn't be spending time every day farming mobs - of any type. They shouldn't need to farm base population at all, and daily spawns should be something they only take on if they are in a position to do so without compromising the more important activities they should be doing.

I'm sure this was the case in L2, but Ashes has entire layers of content on top of what L2 ever had.

You say that you are used to seeing siege preperation in games be focused mostly on getting the best gear you can get. While I can't find the quote, and it may not even be valid any more, Steven has said in the past that the effort required to successfully siege a node should be on par with the effort taken to build that node in the first place. This is in things like building siege weapons, so it is effort expended in the game that is exclusively for sieges.

So yeah, if you are a top end guild wanting to siege a metropolis, you aren't spending time farming a daily spawn mob. If you own a castle you have a whole list of things you need to be doing all the time, and so would probably not want to risk that for the quality of item that can come from a daily spawn. A weekly or monthly spawn, sure, but not daily. Spending 20 or 30 minutes on a daily one may even be fine, but not several hours.

I mean, top end guilds are after power and influence. What will provide them that better - a 2% increase of a stat on a single item on a single player (that will be able to be purchased for gold anyway), or a castle where among other things, you are pulling in gold from taxes across a massive region?

It isn't in Intrepids (or the games) best interest to pull these players out of the game for 3 hours a day for these mobs - which is probably why it looks like they are going with specific respawn times rather than a window (I would still prefer a larger window so that farming the location waiting for the spawn is just inefficient use of top end player time).

If you want to then say "then daily spawn mobs are for the next tier of guilds down", then sure, potentially. But that is a discussion I am less inclined to be a part of, as I understand the perspective of top end guilds well, but not of second tier. I wouldn't want to speak for them.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

Steven has said in the past that the effort required to successfully siege a node should be on par with the effort taken to build that node in the first place. This is in things like building siege weapons, so it is effort expended in the game that is exclusively for sieges.

But node building requires killings mobs, not just for the node xp it gives, but for the mats they drop, cause you use those in node buildings.

So we agree on this, but just our expectation of what actions will need to be taken differs. And obviously we have no real clue either way, so it's hard to talk around this part of the topic.

Noaani wrote: »

a 2% increase of a stat on a single item on a single player (that will be able to be purchased for gold anyway), or a castle where among other things, you are pulling in gold from taxes across a massive region?

But getting the castle requires those 2% increases on a lot of your people, cause they allow you to outmatch the potential competition for the castle.

Though, if we actually don't need all that much better gear to contest a castle - I'll be all for that, as I'm sure you know. I hate snowballs and want the weaker groups to have as much of a chance as possible, so it Intrepid come up with a design where they have that - awesome!

Azherae

Ludullu wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Steven has said in the past that the effort required to successfully siege a node should be on par with the effort taken to build that node in the first place. This is in things like building siege weapons, so it is effort expended in the game that is exclusively for sieges.

But node building requires killings mobs, not just for the node xp it gives, but for the mats they drop, cause you use those in node buildings.

So we agree on this, but just our expectation of what actions will need to be taken differs. And obviously we have no real clue either way, so it's hard to talk around this part of the topic.

Noaani wrote: »

a 2% increase of a stat on a single item on a single player (that will be able to be purchased for gold anyway), or a castle where among other things, you are pulling in gold from taxes across a massive region?

But getting the castle requires those 2% increases on a lot of your people, cause they allow you to outmatch the potential competition for the castle.

Though, if we actually don't need all that much better gear to contest a castle - I'll be all for that, as I'm sure you know. I hate snowballs and want the weaker groups to have as much of a chance as possible, so it Intrepid come up with a design where they have that - awesome!

This is the opposite of the 'avoiding snowball', but not for a reason that the gearing you see in L2 or BDO would indicate. For this, I think you have to understand ESO or reference TL much more.

It's not that 2% increase doesn't help, it's that 'more powerful' isn't usually the thing gear is giving in the way most people from games with simpler itemization 'understand' easily. And that's why bosses dropping full gear is so troublesome.

Obviously there will always be top end gear that is rare and hard to get which makes you 'better at your role', but in a less simplistic game, the number of these gear pieces that a guild already winning, needs to actually have, is much smaller.

TL has quite a few weapons that are actually easyish to get, or are harder to get but only used by one out of (effectively) 100 'classes', which have a huge impact on planned/structured PvP. So it's more like 'this guild of 70 only needs a single Nirma Sword' (back when this was BiS for a specific type of Tank).

Sure, it's better if all the Tanks have this sword and can practice to fill that position in the battle formation, but if your guild is active and organized, especially in Ashes where you can just trade any gear to any guildmate, there's much less need to contest the boss except to suppress others from having such swords.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Obviously there will always be top end gear that is rare and hard to get which makes you 'better at your role', but in a less simplistic game, the number of these gear pieces that a guild already winning, needs to actually have, is much smaller.

Yeah, I think what Ashes will really teach me is that I just like simplistic mmos

Something like Divekick in the world of fighting games.

Azherae

Relative to the topic, it's again another good reason to have things drop moreso materials that help modify gear.

If you know a boss drops 'the best Full Defense PvP Tanking Shield', you have an incentive as a top guild to contest this just to prevent your rivals from getting that shield.

If multiple bosses drop materials that can be used to make (or build up to, as in the case of Throne and Liberty) the 'best Full Defense PvP Tanking Shield', you have to spread yourself thinner to stop them all.

If there's a group out there who figures out a team composition where the Tank isn't even using Full Defense Tanking as their strategy, now you don't even know what to suppress.

There's a big difference between 'Achievements' and 'Stuff You Can Lord Over Other People' that PvP games often mess up. Sure, the average wannabe-top guild will usually mock people who aren't using the meta gear, but that only lasts until they start to WIN.

Then it becomes 'the new meta' and people mock others for not having those, as if it was always a given that they should. If you ignore the mockery, your build/idea might still be garbage, but the thing about a complex MMO is that you can't usually know that without actually trying it out quite a bit with people competent enough to actually implement the strategy.

This would result in lots more experimental gear being made too, rather than 'Guys lets kill Firebrand for the Fire Shield because it's the best and Ice magic sucks in PvP anyway'. Remember, PvP demographic is just as much if not more crybabies than PvE demographic.

So if anything, mobs shouldn't drop completed pieces because it makes people even more whiny.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

If multiple bosses drop materials that can be used to make (or build up to, as in the case of Throne and Liberty) the 'best Full Defense PvP Tanking Shield', you have to spread yourself thinner to stop them all.

Yep, definitely agree. I usually talk about this in terms of crafting sets and stuff, because I'm used to them giving you the biggest part of your gear-based stat boost, but if Intrepid can do this per each item - that'd be great. And they seeemingly said they'd do something similar, with different mats giving different stats on items during crafting, but we still haven't heard anything about that since.

And this would also relate to the supposed likeness to SWG's crafting, where different mats would interact differently with each other, so if you were crafting Shield A which needed a few different mats and Shield A part from Boss A - those parts might boost their defense from, say, riverlands mats, while if you were making Shield B with mats from Boss B - they'd boost their fed from tropics mats. So you'd have 2 completely different paths to the same stat value.

And obviously those shield parts should boost other stats from other mats as well. Feel like that would really make crafting valuable, especially if working with different mats becomes its own gameplay-based skill that you gotta do a few times for your character to "learn" how to work with them.

Possibilities are endless

Azherae wrote: »

This would result in lots more experimental gear being made too, rather than 'Guys lets kill Firebrand for the Fire Shield because it's the best and Ice magic sucks in PvP anyway'. Remember, PvP demographic is just as much if not more crybabies than PvE demographic.

Oh this recent lawless zone change where Jundark got them removed showed exactly this. PvPers lost their ganking spots and immediately started crying worse than a hurt baby.

Andi

In phase 1, gear did drop, and you'd get better stuff from crafters. That's a model I can get behind: drop green, have crafted gear be blue at a minimum, with a chance to proc higher, if they use higher quality mats.

Bam, problem solved.

Noaani

Ludullu wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Steven has said in the past that the effort required to successfully siege a node should be on par with the effort taken to build that node in the first place. This is in things like building siege weapons, so it is effort expended in the game that is exclusively for sieges.

But node building requires killings mobs, not just for the node xp it gives, but for the mats they drop, cause you use those in node buildings.

So we agree on this, but just our expectation of what actions will need to be taken differs. And obviously we have no real clue either way, so it's hard to talk around this part of the topic.

We are not likely to see materials needed for creating sieges and building up a node come from mobs. More to the point, we aren't likely to see these materials be gathered by top end guilds.

I have no concrete reason to assume what I am here about Ashes, other than looking at Archeage. So, similar to why you think what you do by looking at L2.

However, assuming a wide range of people are working on a siege (attack or defense) I see the bulk of the material gathering being done by more casual players (how ever one choses to define that), and then transported and worked (how ever that happens) by top tier players. Top tier players aren't going to want to spend their time banging on rocks to gather stone when a casual player can do that, freeing the top end player up for transporting that stone safely to where it is needed. Given the choice, this is what makes sense.

Now, you would want to say "but those players need gear for that" and I do agree. I even agree that some of this gear may come from daily spawn mobs. However, that is why those mobs are likely to remain having set respawn timers - so these guilds are only spending 20 minutes on them instead of 3 hours.

Keep in mind, it is the time spent farming them that I do not see being worth these players time, not the act of killing the mobs and taking their stuff.

Noaani wrote: »

a 2% increase of a stat on a single item on a single player (that will be able to be purchased for gold anyway), or a castle where among other things, you are pulling in gold from taxes across a massive region?

But getting the castle requires those 2% increases on a lot of your people, cause they allow you to outmatch the potential competition for the castle.

Though, if we actually don't need all that much better gear to contest a castle - I'll be all for that, as I'm sure you know. I hate snowballs and want the weaker groups to have as much of a chance as possible, so it Intrepid come up with a design where they have that - awesome!

It isn't about the gear, it is about the time spent getting that gear.

That 2% increase on one stat on one item for one player may well be worth 20 minutes of the guilds time. It isn't worth 3 hours of the guilds time when they need to be leveling up one of their castle nodes for the siege the next weekend, or when they are trying to shore up their metropolis, or plan a siege.

That said, in my experience of MMORPG's over the last 15 or so years, if an item drops on a mob that is a daily spawn, in a game where there is no restriction on trade, that item will be up for sale before long. A top end guild may consider it a better use of the guilds time to buy that item rather than spend even 20 minutes farming it. They can probably make more gold that the item costs in that amount of time - let alone in the 3 or so hours you are talking about.

I'm not a fan of set boss respawns, but Ashes does need to have respwns happen in a way that takes up the least amount of player time possible. The game can't really sustain 3 hour farms for single bosses. 3 hours farming a location for coin or experiece, sure, but that isn't what we are talking about - top end guilds will have faster ways of achieving both of these anyway.

daveywavey

Ludullu wrote: »

What if we had smth like "a guild that has a hall can summon an open world boss within the server's primetime window (maybe even a window within that one), but it comes at the cost of their hall being open for attacks by other guilds. And those attacks can result in some resource loss for the guild, maybe a debuff for a day or two, and some gains for the attackers".

Why tie it to guilds? Make it a Relic that the nodes will fight over for control.

Ludullu

daveywavey wrote: »

Why tie it to guilds? Make it a Relic that the nodes will fight over for control.

Mostly for organizational situation of it all. The guilds would still be the ones summoning the boss, even if it was the node relic.

Also, from what I understood, the relics are meant to be targets of wars rather than just something that can happen daily, and my suggestion was more along the lines of "guilds have something to do on the daily basis, and it also creates daily contest for said thing".

Azherae

Ludullu wrote: »

daveywavey wrote: »

Why tie it to guilds? Make it a Relic that the nodes will fight over for control.

Mostly for organizational situation of it all. The guilds would still be the ones summoning the boss, even if it was the node relic.

Also, from what I understood, the relics are meant to be targets of wars rather than just something that can happen daily, and my suggestion was more along the lines of "guilds have something to do on the daily basis, and it also creates daily contest for said thing".

I can't see how this would turn out meaningfully different than Riftstones.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

I can't see how this would turn out meaningfully different than Riftstones.

I dunno what those are

If you're talking about the Dragon's Dogma things then google says they serve a "summon a helper" purpose, but I haven't played any DDs, so that particular context is completely lost on me.

And if you're talking about a different game's mechanic, then I'm even more lost

Azherae

Ludullu wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

I can't see how this would turn out meaningfully different than Riftstones.

I dunno what those are

If you're talking about the Dragon's Dogma things then google says they serve a "summon a helper" purpose, but I haven't played any DDs, so that particular context is completely lost on me.

And if you're talking about a different game's mechanic, then I'm even more lost

Ah, yes, sorry.

Riftstones in Throne and Liberty are a matter of territory control (which can be contested every 3 days, roughly) by a guild vs another, where the reward is access to a daily boss instance.

This is not the same as what you suggested, however, there is probably a reason for that, based on what I understand of player capacity and incentives. Briefly:

1. If you fight over this ability to use a boss instance with more than 2-4 guilds, there will be issues similar to what happens for sieges, but less good/dynamic (so it's GvG 1v1 in TL, it could possibly be allowed to be higher but then collusion and lockout would happen)
2. If you make this timing flexible (unlike TL which is clearly timed to known primetime) you get both the problems of 'people being able to do things during times they know their opponents will not be on AND 'one guild just challenging everything until they win one (unhealthy, even if it does count as matchmaking)
3. If you don't allow the 'attack' to be initiated regardless of action by the holding guild, you will get some behaviour you really don't want
4. If you make this more than once every 2 days you will definitely cause a disparity and burnout type (and obv drastically annoy PvE-first players, even if they are in good PvX guilds)
5. If your server population ever wobbles, you will massively impact the quality of the PvP for these even with all of the above in place, especially in a game with potential for huge guilds.

So I biasedly assume that if Intrepid were to implement this, and take all those things into account, it will come out exactly the same as Riftstones.

There is no specific problem with Riftstones, I'd even say it's a great mechanic and implementation, but it isn't what most PvP enjoyers of Ashes seem to want.

Once again, just curse Amazon.

Vyllz

I strongly disagree with removing boss and monster drops entirely.

Ashes is aiming for a balance where crafting is essential and meaningful, but removing all gear drops would strip away a huge part of the excitement in PvE content. Looting a powerful weapon or rare item from a tough boss is part of what makes MMOs fun and memorable, it’s a reward for risk and effort, not just a gear treadmill.

Crafting in Ashes will already play a major role in best-in-slot and progression systems, especially with how augments, enchantments, and enhancements work. But forcing everyone into professions by making leveling unbearable? That would feel punishing and take away player agency. Some people enjoy crafting, others enjoy hunting bosses, the game should support both.

Balance, not restriction, is the key here.

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