What is your MMO PvE experience like?

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I understand your disagreement.

I am not saying that you are not allowed to perceive bias. My previous post was targeted more at a subset of actions based on that perception that are helpful or not helpful to data collection.

Please let me know what aspect of that post I need to clarify, or ignore this response as if I chose not to respond to you.

Thank you for data.

It seems that you have indeed been limited in this, and based on just the games you have listed, the PvE is an accessory to the PvP at best, and you value the freedom of not needing static tactics or roles so that everyone is playing at full capacity in the same overall way.

I think that having some reference point for this that is closer to the other side would basically be a requirement in order to 'convince' in any way, because it sounds like you haven't even played any games where the developers put real effort into the AI or even potential.

BDO in particular is super bad at this because even their new explicitly solo 'Rift Boss' enemies, they have a rating system for what they consider 'challenging' vs not, and the only 'good' boss that actually responds to your movement and positions, in the whole set, and actually uses its own movement properly, they felt necessary to re-class as 'very hard'.

If your PvE experience has been this... let's say 'lacking', it makes sense that you don't consider PvE as a possible main draw for content, so let's not even consider 'Bosses' per se.

What would it take for you to think of PvE as 'not a damage sponge script'? It sounds like you may just not like the style of GAME that leads to PvE being good, which may unfortunately have some implications about whether you will actually enjoy Ashes as it is currently being designed (going only by what we experienced in Alpha-1)

We can try starting from the base of BDO since we both have some understanding there. What would it take for BDO to not feel like that? Since you played very early, I believe the only bosses I can be 'sure' that you experienced in any sort of 'group' are Dastard Bheg and Red Nose? Lmk if we can go 'up' to Nouver.

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The definition of 'regularly' matters a lot, as players will obviously shy away from any situation in which they have the potential for this, so we can only discuss it from the perspective of if the designers intended for it to be possible.

That said I had the (mis?)fortune of dying with my group in FFXI like... yesterday.

And it was within our expectation. So, some information for you.

There is a mage enemy called a Poroggo, basically a magic casting frog.

We fought one, then moved to another with the same intention. Here's what we have to look out for:

1. Large AoE attack spells, our Dark Knight is supposed to Stun these.
2. Large CC AoE status spells, same deal.
3. AoE damage and Silence 'TP ability'
4. Single target 'Charm and transform into Frog' TP ability.
5. Self-target 'increase enemy's own magic damage' ability (Tank is supposed to dispel this).

Short version, Single target charm was used on the Tank, who is also the one who dispels effects, just as the Tank used an ability that results in magic being evaded. Now neither I nor the Dark Knight can put the Tank to sleep until the charm wears off. No big deal, in frog form she doesn't do much damage, but now we have no tank, and it falls to the Dark Knight.

So it's a split second decision of 'should we let the Dark Knight continue to take hits from both the transformed Tank and the enemy', which may interrupt spellcasting, or 'should we waste some of our potential DPS to transfer the enemy to someone else' (since the Dark Knight has to hold back their power to let the enemy target someone else).

We made the wrong call. In order to do this well, the Dark Knight must empower themselves with some abilities and magic, and at the moment she started to cast a longer one, the enemy went for large AoE fire spell. And I was in the middle of healing. So no defensive spell to reduce fire damage, and currently no 'HP Shield' on myself since if it starts to attack me I want it to do damage so it gets OFF me as soon as possible so that it doesn't Charm ME.

So down I go.

The worst part is, that if I'd survived the spell, it would only have had to use the Silence ability right after and everyone would still be low. Not unsurvivable, but the adaptation would need to happen instantly, and I'd have to Ult probably (CC Cleanse and full heal), if that was on cooldown, we'd be likely to die (the Dark Knight might survive with her Ult if the enemy didn't adapt).

Players don't fight these enemies for XP, they have other more predictable and defensive options, and death is common ENOUGH that 'prioritizing avoiding death and EXP loss' when grinding for XP is more important for many people than being challenged (but if you can avoid dying, you could conceivably kill the less defensive enemies faster).

This is also why I am wondering if Ashes will retain the current XP system which is the one I am used to. If I kill a level 11 Crab at level 6 I get 400+ exp instead of the 100 I get for a level 6 crab. Non-static exp values are a thing I generally 'assume games will have' but I realize that I have no basis for that either, I just happen to play only games where that's the case (other than BDO which I just play for contrast).

I believe and obviously hope that Ashes is planning to kill us with some Poroggo or whatever, and so far that's the experience I had in Alpha-1. If I go for something 6+ levels over, even in group, if it's not defensive, and someone goes afk, someone can fall. If someone makes the wrong decision or misses a cue to do something, someone can fall. At best your exp is meaningfully slowed while you recover from whatever.

This... doesn't seem to be the base experience (get it?) of others?

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Yyyyep, I've spent waaaaay more time in random rooms of L2's dungeons, than I ever did around the boss. Now there's the fact that L2 had hardcore grinding as the main means of spending time in game, so I dunno if Ashes will have the same design, but I at least hope that it'll be as Dygz said, we can go into a dungeon w/o the plan being just "let's go kill the boss".

NiKr wrote: »

We have not received permission from Noaani to share the quoted post.

Yyyyep, I've spent waaaaay more time in random rooms of L2's dungeons, than I ever did around the boss. Now there's the fact that L2 had hardcore grinding as the main means of spending time in game, so I dunno if Ashes will have the same design, but I at least hope that it'll be as Dygz said, we can go into a dungeon w/o the plan being just "let's go kill the boss".

Hopefully not to derail too much but I have a related question based on something I thought about for PvX.

In the situation I am used to, I would not expect PvP in dungeons or at 'farming spots' for standard mobs very often except in the case of serious overcrowding. Here's the reason.

If my group kills enemy A with a good pull, it allows us to safely move to enemy B without worrying about A behind us, we might even fight B in the spot where A was. We defeat B as well and quickly run away from A's respawn because it will respawn SOON but not as quickly as we can engage enemy C.

While we are fighting C, A will respawn. This puts a barrier between us and a secondary group AND offers them a target to kill. If we keep moving, then B and C will also create the same 'barrier/target'.

This would reduce points of friction considerably. My question therefore is... does this actually happen in L2 as well? You've implied that the mobs can at least take long to kill even if they aren't dangerous. Which I would expect to trigger the same thing, and people would clash only when they are 'in a room that they consider safe' and 'someone else tries to use the same room'.

I wouldn't expect that a roaming group who intends to delve far INTO a dungeon has a good reason to off the group in front of them other than 'wanting to get to the boss first', but my only equivalent experiences in BDO are 'figuring out a rotation that doesn't overlap with anyone in the same area'. The concept is the same overall but the feeling of doing it is definitely not.

We have not received permission from Dygz to share the quoted post.

This interpretation is an unexpected but also totally valid one relative to what I was saying, so I'll ask about this too.

Is that also not the norm? Are the enemies in a dungeon usually tuned to be 'if you can defeat these you are definitely also ready to take on the boss'? My experience is the opposite. People there 'to farm exp or sometimes items' absolutely do not want to go NEAR the boss or the Elites in the same area because they aren't strong enough for that.

I'm used to a form of cooperation where people will literally go:

"[TO Server Chat or to Friend with known strong guild]: Yo, $BOSS is up, there are three parties here, we'll keep the random enemies off you if you protect us from having to worry about it."

I believe I've experienced in NeverWinter just the 'the Dungeon is a single adventure' but that's not really open world in the same way so I don't count that. Should I be counting it? And regardless of all that, would you PREFER that if you can clear the dungeon mobs you can probably take on the Boss?

Azherae wrote: »

This would reduce points of friction considerably. My question therefore is... does this actually happen in L2 as well? You've implied that the mobs can at least take long to kill even if they aren't dangerous. Which I would expect to trigger the same thing, and people would clash only when they are 'in a room that they consider safe' and 'someone else tries to use the same room'.

Pretty much what James said. The friction would come from limited amount of rooms with the mobs that you need and/or some rooms being controlled by the warring guild's members.

Here's 2 examples of maps. One is a huge dungeon with an Epic Boss at the end (Steven has mentioned it on streams before) and the other is an event-based Catacomb w/o a boss (iirc). Depending on how good your gear is, your whole party could be taking one small room and refreshing your buffs/mana in-between respawns, or you could do this type of shit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZfCHHtTKBE

And if you were that kind of overboosted, it'd usually mean that your guild has some enemies and your ass might get got at any moment (though I dunno the situation with the person in this particular video).

And here's a vid with some low lvl pvp at the start and high lvl pvp in and around a dungeon. It's pretty much all against guild war enemies, but that's who your pvp would usually be against, so it's a good example of how farming would go. If you're on the side of enemies in the video - you're just farming and then see your enemies running towards you to stop your farm (I'd say this was more frequent than them just wanting to farm the same spot). Mobs would get involved because aoes would fly around so they'd have to be sleeped/rooted. This video is not from the same day so it shows some periods of time where dvp's group is fighting against stronger people. And later on in the vid they're fighting against weaker people, attack first and still manage to lose pretty much their whole party with dvp pretty much being the lone survivor mainly because his char is overboosted to all hell so it's difficult to kill him w/o full assists, which in turn would allow his party to kill everyone.

But I'd say this is a good example of tight gear scaling with an OE system. People have t4-5 in the video and manage to kill each other pretty much equally. While some OE on a strong character (a ton of dvp's strength came from Epic Jewelry that gave a ton of great stats, so that's a huge factor too) allows you to have the upper hand. Also, this video obviously shows the successful attacks, so it's not like his OE gear literally always won.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2dEBjc2XAE

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

This would reduce points of friction considerably. My question therefore is... does this actually happen in L2 as well? You've implied that the mobs can at least take long to kill even if they aren't dangerous. Which I would expect to trigger the same thing, and people would clash only when they are 'in a room that they consider safe' and 'someone else tries to use the same room'.

Pretty much what James said. The friction would come from limited amount of rooms with the mobs that you need and/or some rooms being controlled by the warring guild's members.

Here's 2 examples of maps. One is a huge dungeon with an Epic Boss at the end (Steven has mentioned it on streams before) and the other is an event-based Catacomb w/o a boss (iirc). Depending on how good your gear is, your whole party could be taking one small room and refreshing your buffs/mana in-between respawns, or you could do this type of shit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZfCHHtTKBE

And if you were that kind of overboosted, it'd usually mean that your guild has some enemies and your ass might get got at any moment (though I dunno the situation with the person in this particular video).

Is this a matter of being overleveled or just overgeared?

In the system I'm familiar with, that Ashes seems to use currently, IF this was 'overleveled', then the exp would drop to around 15xp per kill, THEN spread across the whole party. Whereas going to a strong zone and fighting one (or 3+ I guess if we're considering Lineage style) and barely surviving would grant anywhere from 300-400 xp per kill.

The information I can find indicates that Lineage works the same, so I would assume overgeared, but I will await your clarification.

Azherae wrote: »

Is this a matter of being overleveled or just overgeared?

The information I can find indicates that Lineage works the same, so I would assume overgeared, but I will await your clarification.

I thiiink their gear is shimmering, which is at least +6 iirc (haven't played on classic/super new servers, so not as well-versed on this feature). And their halberd is +10, so it's definitely the case of overgeared to all hell. Mobs are the same lvl as the farmer cause their names in the target window are white. Safe enchant lvl being +3. Though I'd assume they used some safe enchant scrolls that don't burn your item on failure.

On top of that, the mobs are only x5 hp, so they're not as fat as some of the higher lvled ones can be (x8 is the biggest multiplier iirc) and this person's class is designed for aoe CCing, so most of the mobs are stunned, which greatly decreases their dmg output. And the farmer's buffs are all top lvl, so it's also a case of overbuffed too, which is a huuuge factor in L2.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Is this a matter of being overleveled or just overgeared?

The information I can find indicates that Lineage works the same, so I would assume overgeared, but I will await your clarification.

I thiiink their gear is shimmering, which is at least +6 iirc (haven't played on classic/super new servers, so not as well-versed on this feature). And their halberd is +10, so it's definitely the case of overgeared to all hell. Mobs are the same lvl as the farmer cause their names in the target window are white. Safe enchant lvl being +3. Though I'd assume they used some safe enchant scrolls that don't burn your item on failure.

On top of that, the mobs are only x5 hp, so they're not as fat as some of the higher lvled ones can be (x8 is the biggest multiplier iirc) and this person's class is designed for aoe CCing, so most of the mobs are stunned, which greatly decreases their dmg output. And the farmer's buffs are all top lvl, so it's also a case of overbuffed too, which is a huuuge factor in L2.

It's noted, and I'm thankful, I really wouldn't have thought it was possible to do that level of increase in power from OE due to the further trivialization of PvE that would result from it. For my personal tastes, I'll hope that's not how it works in Ashes, but good to know overall.

Would there be any incentive to taking on stronger enemies with the overgeared form instead, in terms of farm speed? BDO is the only game I have kept playing where the economy is based on 'Trash Loot' or 'standard Gold per hour' as the actual purpose of the farming time, and as you know, the most efficient farm in that game is 'kill whatever you can basically one-two shot as fast as possible because killing harder stuff is slower but rewards around the same $$'.

Azherae wrote: »

Would there be any incentive to taking on stronger enemies with the overgeared form instead, in terms of farm speed? BDO is the only game I have kept playing where the economy is based on 'Trash Loot' or 'standard Gold per hour' as the actual purpose of the farming time, and as you know, the most efficient farm in that game is 'kill whatever you can basically one-two shot as fast as possible because killing harder stuff is slower but rewards around the same $$'.

Yeah, usually you'd go to more difficult farming places if you had that kind of boost. Though that depends on the ease of farming and level of pvp danger. Higher lvled locations might've been taken by their guildmates or warring guilds. Or they just didn't feel like using the other characters/players too much (I'd assume those support characters are not all driven by different people, if any at all), so this kind of farm was more beneficial.

Plus there's the option of preferred loot. They might've been going for some specific thing they wanted to drop and this was the best place to do it at that level.

And as for high OE impacting things this much. This is the exact reason why I pushed so hard for OE being very rare and expensive and, ideally, with a chance of failure. But L2's official servers are the greatest examples of horrid p2w shop features, so that whole discussion, that we've had multiple times by now, doesn't really apply here. But overall, yes, I do hope OE won't influence things as much, even though this kind of boost was fairly rare on the older version of the game where you didn't have all the "+20% to chance of success" scrolls and "safe enchant scroll that doesn't destroy your weapon" was suuuper expensive so only the chosen few on the server would go this far, which is why I believe that proper acquisition balancing would work just fine.

Thank you both. If this is what I can expect from Ashes and not have to worry about it changing (I asked in Q&A for this month, hopefully it's cemented enough for an answer) I'll probably be happy from at least that perspective personally.

Have you been able to enjoy games where this isn't the case? I would expect that any owPvP game where high level players rapidly mow down low level enemies for decent benefit is asking for big trouble...

Azherae wrote: »

Have you been able to enjoy games where this isn't the case? I would expect that any owPvP game where high level players rapidly mow down low level enemies for decent benefit is asking for big trouble...

Even the super small slice of classic WoW that I tried (up to lvl 30), I highly disliked the fact that at lvl 28-30, mobs in the very first location still dropped shit for me. With my super bias towards L2, this feature was just baffling to me, cause why da hell would you let high lvl players benefit from low lvl locations/mobs.

And this is definitely the biggest reason why I hope that artisanal professions can be balanced in such a way that low lvl players can stay low lvl and still be super useful because their artisanry works in those places where high lvl artisanry doesn't.

My biggest example for that is the Spoiler class from L2. It was pretty much a specified class for gathering cause it let you get more resources from a dead mob. And there'd be a few low lvl locations that provided you with a ton of great resources at a low time/power investment. In L2 those places were usually filled by alts of high lvl dudes, but that's exactly because the system wasn't balanced too well around not having a constant inflow of newbies. Intrepid could account for that in their design.

But the point is, low lvl players could earn some good money by farming those lucrative locations w/o really fearing that some high lvl dude would just come there and kill them w/o a problem. Now obviously, the fact that most of them were alts, usually it went like this: I'm farming a location and see another Spoiler running to it; I fight with him and win out just barely, because our power lvl is similar; he says "oh, f u, I'm gonna bring my main and kill you; he brings his main and it's a dude from a warring guild; I bring my own main and we fight. Usually it would go 2 ways from there: one side either completely overpowered the other with their main, or we'd fight for a pretty long while sometimes even asking our guildmates to help

One of the problems I could see with this kind of setup is more pvp for the casuals who decided to stay at low lvls. Either from alt chars or just from guild-supported newbies in better gear. Though at that point I'd personally just look for a guild to get the same kind of support, but obviously that's cause I'm fine with fighting in that kind of situation, while someone like Dygz might be out of his "pvp allotted time" for that day and might just give some corruption to the attacker until they leave. But that would require at least a few kills, because the attacker themselves is at the same lvl and will be getting lower amounts of corruption than if it was a high lvl dude.

But either way, all of that will be tested during the alpha2, so we'll see.