"World Instances"

@NiKr , this topic is going to end in nonsensical derail due to issues with priors again.

It'd probably make more sense to consult Noaani directly if you care about the derail .

Or go play Monster Hunter, particularly if you can find any friends to play it with, certain things about this are much easier to grasp intuitively after doing so.

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And usually only a particular class (or maybe even an archetype) as those. And as Noaani pointed out, aoes would only work on flagged or enemy guild players, so unless any "detect" works on any "stealth" - ya ain't seeing a player pass by.

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As I've explained in the OP, L2 had instances that I saw as open world. Noaani couldn't have convinced me of anything that I wasn't already convinced of beforehand.

Azherae wrote: »

NiKr, this topic is going to end in nonsensical derail due to issues with priors again.

Or go play Monster Hunter, particularly if you can find any friends to play it with, certain things about this are much easier to grasp intuitively after doing so.

We're all about the derail At least this is my small thread that I'm fine with derailing if that happens, while I don't want to derail the main DPS thread (even though I've done it several times already )

As for MH, aren't all those bosses "instanced"? As in, you go to a completely different place to fight them. I've seen a few streams of MH and it seemed to be just big instanced locations with cool difficult bosses. I understand the complexities of fighting and the potential razer sharp tuning of stats/attacks, but this thread was more about people's opinions on the statements made by Steven in relation to pve content. And so far, the majority seems to have high hopes of that statement becoming reality.

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You forget that Intrepid has also said that boss' will become harder if there's more than the intended number of raiders. And if the boss is literally at peak difficulty already, then any additional complications would immediately wipe the raid.

And as for controlling any other intruders - your whole guild/alliance would have to go super red in order to do that, because intruders won't need to flag up or be at war with you or do anything of the sort. They'll just run towards the boss, enable his anti-zerg mechanics and wipe the original raid. That's it. And depending on how those mechanics are triggered, the intruders might not even die, because they'd be on the edge of the boss location and as soon as they see the boss "raging", they'd just back up and take no damage while the og raid gets demolished.

In Monster Hunter World, the instance is 'players vs Monster'.

The interruptor in that case, though, is not another player, it's another MONSTER.

When you've had the experience of 'trying to kill something in 15 minutes' and another whole monster (which you don't even NEED to kill) drops in and starts attacking you too with all its mechanics, the feeling is achieved.

Most players of easier games, particularly easier MMOs, will usually think 'it's just an Add'. But adds are part of MMO bosses by design. The player is 'intended to be able to win against the target and also the Adds'.

Monster Hunter isn't designed that way. You CAN be strong enough to not DIE when an 'Add' appears, but if you were being challenged (spawns of monsters in a zone are random, 3 large ones at a time according to ecology, you often are hunting just one) by the one, and a troublesome Add shows up, that is RANDOM. In many cases you don't even know beforehand which ones will be there.

If you are trying to fight 'Apex Predator A' and 'powerful attacker B' shows up just as you are setting up a good situation, it isn't a question of 'will you die', it is a question of 'can you still do the requirements to clear Apex Predator A?'

Fortunately in Monster Hunter, another monster showing up is usually a benefit to you, as the two often fight, but the 25% or so of times where it isn't, the difficulty of a short-time limit hunt more than doubles. Sometiimes your target will go into rage mode just because the other APPEARS, when you weren't expecting that, and your mitigation or whatever is 'down', and now you die.

Again, this isn't exactly how it goes, and you have to start from the principle of 'I am choosing to do this thing because it is hard enough to not have a guaranteed victory', and THEN throw in the 'well here's a gigantic flying wyvern dropping literal explosive scales all over the battlefield while I fight this thing that must be dodged perfectly... guess I'll die'.

Azherae wrote: »

In Monster Hunter World, the instance is 'players vs Monster'.

The interruptor in that case, though, is not another player, it's another MONSTER.

Ah, I see. I might try it out when I have the money for it then. Would also provide me with some better pve experience overall.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

In Monster Hunter World, the instance is 'players vs Monster'.

The interruptor in that case, though, is not another player, it's another MONSTER.

Ah, I see. I might try it out when I have the money for it then. Would also provide me with some better pve experience overall.

Well, either way, that was my attempt at re-framing the point. The Priors can easily be different.

If you find that someone's counterargument is 'You wouldn't design a game that way', that person's priors are unhelpful. Same for 'The boss wouldn't be that hard' (why is it good PvE then? Priors unhelpful), 'You could make mechanics to help you against the Add', (why is it good PvP then? Priors unhelpful).

It's all just 'people coming to the same conclusion as Noaani but treating it as fine/a good thing. I also do this. I don't think 'PvE must be awesome cool hard even when no rivals are around', for games, but that's because my entire 'feeling' is that the PvP will keep things going. And going... and going...

Similar for any solution that removes or reduces the 'Open World' aspect of it. Sure, that's fine. If we wanna go 'PvP for the right to enter the instance!' it's okay, but the priors still fail. It's like 'gearing to deal with the second monster'. If the target monster was so engaging (on its own) that you could lose, you gear up toward handling IT. If you could afford to gear up for handling 'random add', your main target wasn't THAT strong. And that's ok. "Having to fight the main target with suboptimal state" can be a challenge type too. But it generally implies that the target is not likely to win if you are at optimal.

Open World PvX bosses therefore would generally be either 'designed to be beaten with suboptimal situations' (which could be done multiple ways, maybe some really great ones!) or 'designed to only be beaten when no one is around to create a suboptimal one' (I consider this sort of thing fun, but even I don't have the stamina for constantly fighting over a boss that you can only kill when all your opposition is dead AND your group is in near-perfect condition).

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Changing people out w/o disturbing the anti-zerg mechanics could be impossible, if the boss tracks the attackers instead of purely its threat list.

Also, if the mechanics are hardcore enough, the death of even one member should already mean the end of the raid, let alone a whole damn party.

And as for pvp zones around bosses, yes that is definitely a possibility, but again, it will all depend on how far that zone stretches out to. If it's purely in the boss' location - ya ain't stopping anyone before they mess up the raid. If it's half the dungeon around the boss, that could work, but then I'm not sure how many people would be fine with high lvl dungeons being pvp areas (I would be though ).

In other words, there's a ton of things that go against the currently planned features. I'd like to hear what Intrepid has planned for them, but I'm guessing we won't know that until later on in alpha2.

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They'd need to clarify the "non-repeatable" statement then. Cause big instances with big drops would have to be repeatable, otherwise there'd only be a few items from them on the whole server and those would decay soon enough and you'd have no way of repairing them cause you can't go back into the dungeon to get the mats.

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It's cause they've said contradicting things. Or at least they seems contradicting w/o further clarifications. I'd be completely fine with the currently presented design cause I'm completely fine with sub-par pve supported by great pvp.

But that kind of design removes any potential of appealing to more hardcore pve players, who could then pull in more softcore pve players. And w/o pve you wouldn't have a PvX game. If Intrepid somehow manages to get true open world bosses that are also super difficult, while not making them impossible to beat due to potential pvp - I'll be all the happier for it.

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I mean, you've literally just described a "world instance" that I described in the OP and which was the main form of Legendary Boss raids in L2 and pretty much what volcano dragon had, except the doors didn't close behind the raiders

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Nah, I forgot to write "from alpha1".

But I pretty much explained how it worked in my OP

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That's why I called it "world instance", cause it still had partial open world mechanics, while functioning like an instance (no one could disturb you once the fight properly began).

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Not trying to be a dick here or anything, but that is literally what I was trying to do with my post and you'd know that had you not skipped it I wanted to see what people thought about the currently presented design direction of "open world vs instanced content". And I presented an example of how "instances" could be seen as "open world events". And kinda were exactly that in L2, which is a big inspiration for Steven.

So far the majority believes that Intrepid can pull off their planned design. I hope so too, but we'll have to see how it works out in alpha2.

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And as an example from L2, with its guild-based factions, if there's only one source for something - everyone will fight over it. Mainly because "why da fuck should I share this one top lvl piece of power with someone else, when my whole goal is to be stronger/better than them?"

So yes, diplomacy does not work in these situations, especially when the whole premise of the game is built upon competition.

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In my experience it just becomes more fun. And soooo much more rewarding if you do win your right to farm the boss and get the loot.