Dungeon Boss Grinding - PvE talk

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Here's a runthrough of a dungeon with one of the dragons from L2 (starts at 1:45).
https://youtu.be/s-2uP-IWUrM?t=105

Each room (or two) is pretty much 9-man party content, depending on character strength. The teleport to the dragon himself is shown on this map as hall of flames (the video runs past that point).

And this is the hall of flame map after the tp.


And I'm pretty sure this video is from one of the rooms in the hall of flame. This is how your guild would be welcomed if your war enemies knew you were planning to come to the boss (so in theory an hour or two before his minimal respawn).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKAn_oBdDrU

Alternatively some rooms on the way would just be farmed by the clueless war enemies and your guild would run over them on your way to the boss. Which would trigger a response from those enemies and it would be you who're the welcoming side from that video.

Imo making a full dungeon purely for 40-man raids would be a waste of space because 40-man raids should be rare and epic times rather than something mundane, and, as far as I see it, open world dungeons are somewhat mundane because you spend most of your time there (unless you're a hardcore gatherer/quester).

If you have repeatable (or grindable) 40-man dungeons that have best quality mob drops (they'd have to due to their requirements) - you're dooming any smaller guild on never having the chance to farm them by themselves. While a big guild could easily have several groups that could constantly farm it throughout the day. Obviously small guilds can collaborate on it, but it'd be very difficult to keep having 40 people all online at the same time who also have nothing else to do.

Maybe we're just talking about different types of content again. I see open world dungeons as something that can be grindable, which allows for friction and all that. Do you see them as more of a "we go kill a boss or two in the dungeon and leave" kind of content or smth else?

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So yeah, we were in fact talking about different types of content.

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Ah, that makes more sense.

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Which is why I think that 40-man raids should be a rarer thing. So that people would get hyped for the "big thing" happening, say, once a week or so.

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But how often to they gather though? Did people in EQ2 always play as a 40-man stack? And if yes, how long and how often did they play?

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I mean, one doesn't really stand in the way of the other and imo only fills out the time of anyone who's not interested in the artisanal part of the game but still has time to play after or before the big boss fight.

You said that you think it should just be bosses on top of bosses on top of bosses, but that doesn't really work in an open world game. Well, unless there's hundreds of 40-man bosses with short respawns. And while I could maybe see Ashes getting up to that number after a while, I'm not sure if it would be feasible to make that many bosses for release.

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Ah, so barely 2-3 hours a day. Was that hours of pure content from start to finish or does that include the time required to gather up the people and get to the boss locations? I'm assuming it's the former.

EQ was more about the pve side, so I think it'd be fair to have 1/2, or at least 1/3, of that time be spent on pvp. Depending on how Intrepid sets up respawn timers around dungeons, a well-coordinated 40-man raid should be able to wipe their enemies once, maybe twice, and start the pve fight. Dungeon (or boss room to be exact) design would have to account for that battle and give either mana regen or hp/mana regen once the "door closes" and before the fight itself, so that the group that stayed alive during the closing of the door would have a proper go at the boss.

If we're talking super hardcore bosses (which I'm sure you are), I'd personally prefer a mechanic that lets the other raid get to the boss immediately if the first raid wipes. Imo this would give the more pve-inclined people a chance to prove their superiority, so even if they lose the pvp for the first rights they still have a chance to fight the boss in case their enemies fail.

Have 10-15 raid bosses with weekly respawns and you'll have yourself around 2h a day of pvx content (which includes the pve content you'd deem good). Another hour would be required for travel, but with some good planning and good coordination, I think that can be cut down somewhat.

There'd also be a ton of bosses for smaller groups and general mobs (if varying difficulty) for prolonged grinding. Obviously the drops would have to be properly balanced across these all versions of pve content, and considering that it all can involve pvp in some way - it'd be PvXey.

There'd be all the other primetime and offtime activities that might let smaller guilds farm some stuff (or at least try), because the bigger guilds would see those activities as more important at the time.

Or, well, I'd see this as a good setup for day-to-day gameplay and an overall gameplay loop. I'd imagine you disagree with this though

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I know you hate WoW as an example and I'd assume you don't value FF14 as a great example either, but, from what I understand, both of those games have millions of players of which only a small fraction actually participates in top lvl content (namely the hardest raids in the game). Everyone else just does their own small stuff, be it some mobs farming or questing or artisan stuff or RPing.

My example of 10-15 weekly bosses accounts for 5-6 full raids that fight for the right at the boss at the same time each day, especially if it's 14 bosses a week. Each continent has 1 top lvl top difficulty boss a day every day. Raids will most likely split between them, depending on their composition and knowledge of the boss. If the boss fight takes ~20-30 minutes (with pure wipe mechanics later on in the fight) and the pvp before the boss takes roughly the same amount of time, you'll have several hours of gameplay if the boss is as hard as you say EQ2 top ones were (meaning that after the initial pvp for the first rights, the guilds would pretty much just switch between each other until either one side beats the boss or quits for the day).

And that'll be happening on both continents every day between, potentially, several raids. But even if we keep it to the minimum and say that it's just 2 raids per continent. That's 160 people who literally have their hands full with hardcore content each and every day. Especially if bosses have some rng variety to them so that the ones who've beaten it already can't just do it on repeat w/o any issues.

And that's assuming that those raids don't have guildies that might have to help the raid win the first rights in pvp, so in theory it's even more than 160, but let's just keep it with the minimal numbers.

That would be the content for the best of the best on the server. Outside of that you'd have several bosses for smaller groups (ideally a few dozen), a ton of locations for singular groups (elite mobs or group mobs or small bosses), all the overworld locations for solo players and obviously all the artisan stuff.

All of that content would be either contested or just fully packed, depending on the mob population design and balancing Intrepid goes with. And this would be purely the content that's linked to the pve side of the game in any way - that being mobs and environment in artisans' case. On top of this there'd be caravans and any potential wars/sieges going on, so the more pvp-leaning players will be taken up by that content too (on top of the pvx content).

Imo that seems like enough content for everyone, with said content being exactly the thing that those players would want while also being pvx. And I feel like I might be forgetting something too, so that's maybe not even everything in the game.

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I mean, L2 had this. You had raid content at lvl40, lvl50 and 52, lvl61 and several ones at top lvl (these ones grew with max lvl of the game).

I was just giving the example of endgame gameplay loops, because if people are playing the game for a long time, their low lvl encounters will be only a fraction of their overall gametime.

But yes, I agree that there should be raid content at several lvl steps (usually coinciding with gear tiers).

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Yours. Because as I said, the pvp would only give you the right to attempt the boss first. If you fail, the other group gets to try. And this would be done until someone wins or leaves. Well, that is I'd want it to be that way to keep raiding leaning towards the pve side, while not completely removing pvp from it.

And if my pvp guild can't pve for shit, we ain't ever successfully farming that boss. Which would mean that we'd either team up with a guild who can farm it (might even be yours), and defend that ally against any other guild that might want to do attempts and could potentially be another successful raid team, or we'd just look for another 40 people who'd be better than us at pve and recruit them.

And I'd expect your guild to do the opposite of that. Which would mean that both of our guilds had to look outside of our preestablished groups to achieve a PvX victory. Which, in my eyes, would make both these guilds PvX ones, rather than purely one or the other. And in an ideal world I'd want to have a group of 40 people who can do both, at which point they'd be true PvXers.

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But my point is exactly opposite. I want the majority of owpvp happening around or for mobs. I don't want gatherers to get ganked (but they obviously will, which is why they need protectors) and imo the only meaningful owpvp is one that happens to determine who has the right to farm high value mobs/boss.

I'd assume that the same locations would also have high value gathering, so in a way it'd be a part of the meaningful owpvp, but it'd happen to prevent someone from gathering rather than purely for looting the gatherer (well, I want it to be that way, obviously it'll probably not be).

And I already gave potential designs of how you could have a strategic pvp fight around hardcore mobs w/o turning it into "defenders always lose because the mob will always only be attacking them".

I want Ashes to meet higher standards of what a pvx game can be. I completely agree that all the pvx game up till now have had trash pve, but that's exactly why Ashes could completely fill that niche of the mmo genre if they succeed at combining the two sides of the spectrum.

Now I don't quite believe that they'll succeed, purely because my own standards are way too damn high, but I'd like them to at least try. And so far Steven seems to want to try, judging by his promises. We just gotta see what exactly he has in mind.

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I guess if Ashes has several different gear sets at top lvl that go from lowest to highest in power, then the low difficulty raids could give those low power sets w/o attracting the super hardcore players to always farm them. But I don't remember if we've gotten any info on how many levels of gear power we'll see at each tier.

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It's an open world boss which will exist in the world until it dies, so, as I see it, you should be able to attempt it until it dies.

And you can remove the pvp part after the first encounter by having a "full wipe" limitation on player respawn within the boss room. So players in the raid can only respawn once the whole raid is dead. And either have a separate respawn locations that they respawn to or just have the default location be some way outside of the dungeon. And as soon as the first raid wipes, the second can enter the room.

This way you'll have the raiding groups just switching places until someone manages to beat the boss. And any potential "we won't let you get close to the room" pvp part can be still shifted to the pvp part of the guild or mercs or allied guilds. And the enemy would have to PK the whole damn raid if they wanted to stop them. There's a "guild war" alternative to that PKing, but they could've declared a war onto your guild either way, so that part would be present no matter what type of boss it is.

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This is why I suggested the reagro/dump agro/direct agro mechanics back when we talked about this kind of stuff last time. Again, I want true PvX, so imo there should be player tools that not only allow you to fight around mobs, but even use those mobs to your advantage, while your enemy has potential counters to your actions. So the whole encounter would turn into a much more strategic event that would require a ton of coordination and forethought.

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That sounds somewhat similar to Blade&Soul's gearing system. Though iirc your suggestion from this post goes a bit deeper than B&S's did.

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Yeah, I hope it works out that way in the end, no matter what the gearing system itself is (though they're obviously connected).

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I feel like I'm either not explaining myself well enough or there's some misunderstanding on either mine or yours side.

I think the problem is with my words usage (which is ironic, considering the discussion we recently had). I shouldn't be using "open world" as much as I do when referencing bosses. I guess "semi-instanced" should work? Maybe world-instanced?

Either way, imo the raid bosses (mainly the 40-man ones) should be in the world instances that I described before.

• There's only 1 boss for the whole world to farm
• only one entrance to his room
• that entrance opens up when the boss respawns and will close after a short period of time if any player enters the room (could be changed to "if a full raid is in the room")
• Until the entrance closes, anyone can enter the room.
• Once the door closes, you can exit through a teleporter/npc (sends you to a preset respawn point outside of the dungeon)
• Before the fight starts there's some mechanic that lets you regen back up to full
• If you die, you can either be resurrected or you must lie on the floor until the full raid wipes, at which point you all respawn in the same place where the teleporter sends you

The boss fight itself could be (and imo should be) as hard as you say EQ2's fights were, because in function the fight is happening in an instance, so everything can be controlled by the devs.

So, after that explanation, would you still consider that kind of encounter as not enough pve content (in the context of what I said before, that if you wipe - you just have to wait for the other raid to wipe until you retry)?

And if yes then why?

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Again, this is where our views are just different. I expect the design of the game to allow me to counter those situations or make them work for my own benefit.

There's mobs around? Fucking use them to your advantage because you have the tools to do so.
Someone's pushing your character off a cliff? There's gotta be either a gliding mechanic or a sliding mechanic or a gripping mechanic or climbing mechanic or anything of the sort to prevent that kind of situation.

Yes, some will obviously try to avoid being in those situations in the first place, but I think that the game should allow you to get out of any situation that is possible within the game (well, to some extent that is). I understand that this might be an unrealistic request, but like I said - my standards for an amazing mmo are high. I can definitely play a good or a normal mmo, but if we're talking what I'd prefer - it's that.

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I'm the wrong person to ask L2 had arena fights that had big benefits if you were #1 in your class. Those arenas were influences by your gear and upgrade lvl of abilities. In order to get amazing gear and high upgrade lvl you had to griiiiiind. Thousands upon thousands of mobs.

A few thousands of those were "purely pve" because those mobs lived in fortresses that your guild had to siege and most of the time (well, on the servers that I played) my guild would be the only one sieging the same fortress at any given time(there were several and I'd usually look for those that were never sieged by other guilds). And this was the best way to upgrade your abilities so I'd be doing this for a few weeks usually (1-2 1-hour sieges every 4 hours). No players in sight.

And all the other mobs had some pvp with players, but I'd call that filler, just as you call literally any non-raid content filler. And so after dozens of thousands of mobs I'd be finally able to have a good chance at fighting in the arena, so I'd go pvp there and it would have the highest quality 1v1 pvp in the game.

And to me L2 is still a pvx game. It's just that, be it just you or your circle of people (or potentially all pvers), I don't differentiate content like that. Anything in the game is content for me. Farming easy mobs, farming hard mobs, farming bosses of any difficulties - all of that is just pve for me. And I'm used to the system where even the easy mobs are valuable to some extent, so it's not like I'm wasting time farming them. And if on top of that pve content I also have pvp encounters (also of any difficulty) - that makes it pvx content.

If literally all mob pvers have the same opinion as you - I'm 99% sure they'll dislike Ashes, because I'm almost as strongly sure that Ashes will not have that amount of that type of content. Hell, I doubt it'll have that even in 2-3 years after release, even if it's super successful. Now, I could be wrong of course, but I somehow doubt that.