What is your MMO PvE experience like?

Post by sternzy on 2022-06-19 23:56:39

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Post by George_Black on 2022-06-20 00:47:27

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Post by Dygz on 2022-06-20 00:58:46

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Post by Azherae on 2022-06-20 01:39:24

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Thank you, though I only quoted one section, all data is noted.

One final clarification if you don't mind, the example is shorter this time so no spoiler tag.

Assume that you hear that the Star System where you have spent some time in the past while it was doing well, is now under a Pirate Attack. You have seen Pirate Attacks in THIS system before. You do not know if it can be different (assume that the Lore system is deep enough that you can't be sure it will be the same, but there's maybe an 80% chance it will be the same as the last time you were there during a Pirate Attack). Do you return to see if it's different if you were 'about to change location anyway', or do you look for something else to do because you've seen it before and the chances of pure Novelty are low?

This is (in my head, sorry if it doesn't match up) my distinction between JUST Dynamism and Novelty. The 'change to Pirate Attack' is Dynamic alone, it's rare enough that you'd go more than 3 months between them. But you've still seen it before. It's not 'Novel' unless you hit that 1d5 on it being DIFFERENT. You probably have a lot more factors to consider here, so I won't request that you try to cut it down, you can just say 'it depends' and I'll leave it at that.

And a bonus question if you're willing, assume that NPC Security will show up if you get the PvE threat's attention and kite them, and that you aren't doing anything else right then (or you probably wouldn't have interacted with the prompt). Kite or disengage?

Post by Azherae on 2022-06-20 01:44:13

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Thank you as well, a followup then. Were there games you tried and stopped playing mostly because of the lack of open world PvE challenge?

There's a lot of games that are bad for a lot of other reasons, so you can just ignore all those ones so that the list doesn't get stupidly long, I'm talking about games where you were at least ok with the rest of it but just 'couldn't stomach the lack of threat in PvE' and just stopped playing.

(I'm trying to establish some understanding of games I may not have played and their levels of PvE)

Post by Noaani on 2022-06-20 02:12:26

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Post by Voidwalkers on 2022-06-20 02:18:27

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Post by Ludullu on 2022-06-20 03:18:27

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I won't speak for other L2 players on the forum, but for me the "one epic boss per update" (roughly every 6 months) was more than enough. Outside of that boss there'd be several open world bosses and farming locations, but nothing anywhere near the complexity or difficulty of an epic boss, which in turn were nowhere near top lvl pve from raiding games.

When you have the time, you can check out this archive of the official L2 site. In the "news -> game updates" tab you can see all the things that devs wanted to advertise to their players. Mobs/bosses were only a small part of the overall picture, because that wasn't really the goal of the game.

https://legacy-lineage2.com/news/chronicle1_01.html

And when it comes to Ashes, I'd be fine with even less pve content if node-castle sieges/caravans/farming locations/artisan stuff took up enough of my time to entertain me. Now obviously any pver wouldn't be fine with that, so I'm sure that Intrepid will have a steady flow of new pve stuff. What form that pve will have though - now that's a whole different question.

Post by Dygz on 2022-06-20 03:32:11

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Post by Noaani on 2022-06-20 03:49:36

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Post by JamesSunderland on 2022-06-20 04:21:06

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Post by Azherae on 2022-06-20 04:25:22

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In the situation I'm referring to, if the Pirate Attack goes on for long enough, the current leaders of the Star System will possibly lose their control of it and the entire Ethos and Government style would change. If you wanted to maintain a status quo and liked the current leaders, you might help more often, I'll assume (response unnecessary if I'm not wrong and you prefer to leave it there). So the complexity is approximately equal I feel, hence the question.
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On this side, note that the NPC Security is probably showing up to help YOU against the threat and will probably destroy or chase off the enemy as long as you can keep them occupied for long enough without being destroyed. I doubt your answer will meaningfully change here, if I consider it to be 'I would probably remain engaged and kite them around'. Thank you for data.

Post by Ludullu on 2022-06-20 04:32:23

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I agree with everything else, but am not completely sure about this point. In the context of "BiS won't come from instances" - yes, a pvp-centered player will be a part of that kind of raid and will reap rewards from it sooner or later. But with instanced content, I don't see why a guild would distribute loot from it to their pvp parties, when there's open world content that, in theory, should be providing gear of equal strength.

But if you meant it in the way of "you'll have the same tier of gear w/o even participating in the instanced content" - then yeah, I'd assume there'd be no such requirement, even though if I was leading a hardcore guild, you bet your ass I'd be telling everyone to clear those instances no matter how long it takes. I'm all about PvX players, if you're in my guild you better be able to do both cause I ain't about to bother with splitting my guild in two, just so I could use those parts for different kind of content.

Post by Noaani on 2022-06-20 04:36:56

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Post by George_Black on 2022-06-20 05:17:48

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Post by Ferryman on 2022-06-20 08:07:55

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Post by Dygz on 2022-06-20 08:37:00

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Post by Azherae on 2022-06-20 08:47:22

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Now this one, I have interest in because it directly relates to my original reason for asking the question.

You have to be GOOD to survive that long. Or rich. And by good I do mean 'as a kiter and pacifist'. You'd need a related build (almost certain that you'd have one), this is not an option 'open to all types of player'. Sure, many can fight, and many can flee, but there is a subset of builds that will not survive long enough for the Security to show up.

I have nearly lost ships from 'forgetting I was in my Hostage Rescue ship instead of my Search And Rescue ship' and 'the enemy is randomly stronger than usual' or 'the enemy's build randomly counters mine more than usual' (the Pirates are different every time, from a pool of... about 23 different ones so far, with about 2^20 different possible build combinations, many of those obviously being similar to others)

Any opinion here? To me this is 'randomness and dynamism combined with challenge, creating an interesting experience', but I feel like it wouldn't work without the underlying knowledge that you are built for it. Are you more likely to draw enjoyment from randomly doing (or not doing) something your build is suited for, or is that entirely secondary to the story you are aiming to experience in that session?

Post by Dygz on 2022-06-20 09:18:40

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Post by NishUK on 2022-06-20 10:30:14

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Post by Ludullu on 2022-06-20 15:29:47

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In my experience maybe ~10-20% of people can be 100% polite in rivalries or wars. You can freely speak to them off of the battlefield, you can usually even befriend them and become guildies if their/your guild falls apart. I have several old friends that I got in this way. But outside of those 10-20 it's a barren toxic land of "I took yo mama to the movies yesterday and left here there alone in the middle of the movie!"-type stuff. The super toxics >:)

Post by NishUK on 2022-06-20 17:25:40

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Post by mcstackerson on 2022-06-20 17:45:01

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Post by Ludullu on 2022-06-20 18:34:50

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Back when I played and pvped the whole game was about chat and socializing, so I did in fact talk to a lot of people. And considering that I'd spend weeks/months fighting the same ones, I'd get to know them somewhat well. And in my experience 10-20% were the completely levelheaded people who understood that it was just a game and we just had a war, so there was no reason to shittalk/flame your opponent. The other 80% were just on the range of "oh fuck off you noob" to the type of quotes I wrote in the previous post.

I won against them? "Oh you cheated/overfarmed with 0 skill/got lucky"

I lost against them? "GET FUCKED, BITCH! THAT'S WHAT YOU GET!"

And this could even repeat across multiple fights within one day. And considering that peak of my pvp career was around early 10s, I'd assume that most of those people weren't just kids that just discovered the game. It was already huge by that point, all the servers I've played were already on the older updates so they were populated by people that played the game years ago, and early tens was right about the time where all the younger gens of gamers started to shift from the mmo genre towards other games. So I can't even dismiss all that toxicity as just "them being a dumb kid".

Now again, I always say that all the things I mention is "purely my experience". Maybe I got (un)lucky, maybe it was the game, maybe it was the people of CIS countries and their mentality. I'm not trying to say that literally 80% of the entire mmo population are super toxic mfers. If anything, I'll be more than happy if that's not the case, because it'd mean that Ashes will live a long and successful life and I'll have a new mmo to live in.

Post by Azherae on 2022-06-20 18:45:07

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Back when I played and pvped the whole game was about chat and socializing, so I did in fact talk to a lot of people. And considering that I'd spend weeks/months fighting the same ones, I'd get to know them somewhat well. And in my experience 10-20% were the completely levelheaded people who understood that it was just a game and we just had a war, so there was no reason to shittalk/flame your opponent. The other 80% were just on the range of "oh fuck off you noob" to the type of quotes I wrote in the previous post.

I won against them? "Oh you cheated/overfarmed with 0 skill/got lucky"

I lost against them? "GET FUCKED, BITCH! THAT'S WHAT YOU GET!"

And this could even repeat across multiple fights within one day. And considering that peak of my pvp career was around early 10s, I'd assume that most of those people weren't just kids that just discovered the game. It was already huge by that point, all the servers I've played were already on the older updates so they were populated by people that played the game years ago, and early tens was right about the time where all the younger gens of gamers started to shift from the mmo genre towards other games. So I can't even dismiss all that toxicity as just "them being a dumb kid".

Now again, I always say that all the things I mention is "purely my experience". Maybe I got (un)lucky, maybe it was the game, maybe it was the people of CIS countries and their mentality. I'm not trying to say that literally 80% of the entire mmo population are super toxic mfers. If anything, I'll be more than happy if that's not the case, because it'd mean that Ashes will live a long and successful life and I'll have a new mmo to live in.

I hear from my EU team member that they tend to be more toxic over there in general. My indirect experience at tournaments and in matches in my circles backs this up.

No one will ever know for sure or experience the same things, but I'm really just here to add the anecdote.

Though, I don't think 10% is accurate, that's a bit too high, don't you think? Were you playing on a particularly nice server in general?

Post by Ludullu on 2022-06-20 18:54:34

Though, I don't think 10% is accurate, that's a bit too high, don't you think? Were you playing on a particularly nice server in general?
If 10-20 seems high to you, then I'd throw that up to me playing on older updates of the game, so at least a good chunk of players were on the older side so they were a bit more reasonable than your average edgy/jackass kid.

Post by Azherae on 2022-06-20 19:10:25

Though, I don't think 10% is accurate, that's a bit too high, don't you think? Were you playing on a particularly nice server in general?
If 10-20 seems high to you, then I'd throw that up to me playing on older updates of the game, so at least a good chunk of players were on the older side so they were a bit more reasonable than your average edgy/jackass kid.

Anyways, since I'm in a predictive mood today and have NishUK's data 'front loaded'...

To both @NishUK and @mcstackerson

Yes there is confirmation bias, but when speaking of personal experience of toxicity, confirmation bias is part of the experience outright.

Consider (NishUK brought this up as a counterpoint to George for no clear reason other than contrarianism) that there is no benefit whatsoever for the people involved in this conversation to 'claim more toxicity than exists'. George has asked for no change based on it. NiKr has offered no 'fix this so I don't have to deal with it', and I am likely to have equally toxic responses after a while (I like to think I'm more eloquent about it).

So basically going 'no, I think your experiences aren't the norm, mine are', serves no purpose here. This is a roundabout way of asking to not derail this thread with it. If it's required for NiKr, George and I to just ignore this, I will request that NiKr do so, and expect George will just tell you the equivalent of 'fuck off' anyway.

If going 'yes I'm sure you're right in everything you said and my experience is an outlier' is the way to end this tangent, you can have that too.

@NiKr , you have my request.

Post by George_Black on 2022-06-20 19:26:33

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Post by mcstackerson on 2022-06-20 19:32:20

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Post by Azherae on 2022-06-20 19:38:16

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It absolutely would be, but your method of attempting to clarify it would not serve that purpose.

To briefly examine why:

"This sounds like bias, are you sure?"

There are a few people in the world for whom this is a useful 'check on their perceptions', who will do that self examination ONLY when prompted by someone else. These people are not EDIT: often prolific posters on forums.

You have no basis for it other than your own experience as a contrast, right? There is no objective data suggested or presented that would justify even your perception that it is bias.

Your basis for challenging someone else's natural bias in this case is either 'your own bias' or 'your perception that other people who say these things don't account for their bias before saying them'.

This is why your approach is not useful for data collection . So if you are trying to help me with data collection by challenging others' biases, please bring statistics to the table to show them that they may be an outlier. In that case, it would still be a derail.

Nevertheless I thank you for the sentiment.