Is the goal truly PvX?

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Oh, I'm sure that it was, but WoW was the thing that made mmos as popular as possible. Most mmos just copied its designs later on and/or tried to replicate its success w/o really knowing the real reasons for it.

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I mean, to me that description sounds like my party trying to kill the enemy party that was holding a spot. The enemy was overgeared so we'd kill ourselves several times against them, but after trying different approaches we might be able to get a win, cause either rng was on our side or the enemy slipped up (which in pve's case would mainly just be ability/mechanic rng being more favorable towards players in a particular run).

And unless the game's pvp balance is completely out of whack, there's usually at least a few parties on the server that can beat yours more often than not (this would be the "when they finally get a kill, it is still fairly normal for any subsequent kill attempts to take a dozen or more attempts" part), especially if there's RPS balancing.

And, just as you said, there's always the potential of the other side bringing in more people, so even if your side is at the very peak of power - you can still get into situations where the odds are against you, while the fight also requires you to be at your best performance.

And the "winning" is always subjective. I don't care that in pvp "a player" has won if I was the loser. To me there's no difference between "a player" winning against me a "a mob", because in both cases I am the one who lost. And until I win against whichever target I chose, there won't be "a win" state.

And it's the same for the other side if they lose. They might've gotten zerged by some huge guild or a boss rng triggered several wipe mechanics one after the other and they didn't manage to avoid them. Both instances would probably feel "unfair". And if the boss doesn't have that kind of rng, that'd mean that it's scripted and it'd be way easier than pvp.

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I've had people that I could literally never beat. No matter how stronger I became at my class, they always found a way to beat me. And I've had several guilds that managed to wipe my own w/o any issues each time we fought each other, be it at party vs party lvl or full GvG. And both of those cases were across months of gameplay, with at least several daily encounters and dozens of such encounters during sieges every week.

And I've seen people quit the game because they felt like fighting those guilds was useless due to them being way too strong. And even after we joined up with a few other guilds, we still couldn't beat our enemies fully, though we did get closer. Those enemies were pretty much the strongest guild on the server, so in terms of "quality" of pvp, I'd say that we were going up against the best possible pvp content on that server.

Have there been cases where people stopped playing the game, or at least attempting the boss, during those 1k tries? I'd assume there must've been at least someone who had lost all hope. Cause if not, I'd say we were going up against worse odds

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Like I said, winning is subjective. I don't care for the aggregate, because if we were to take the aggregate - that boss saw you as the easiest content around. It's just that you don't respect AI rights

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From what I've heard tbc pve was very easy, so no wonder the poll shows that.

Just in case it somehow matters to y'all, at some point you switched from discussing 'variety' to discussing 'difficulty'.

Azherae wrote: »

Just in case it somehow matters to y'all, at some point you switched from discussing 'variety' to discussing 'difficulty'.

As we always do

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Just in case it somehow matters to y'all, at some point you switched from discussing 'variety' to discussing 'difficulty'.

As we always do

Well, things changed from Debate of Concepts to Debate of Opponents, so the variety would tend to go down.

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And I addressed this point. Even when you come to the top, there's gonna be people doing their best to take you down. And if the game's design allows that, you gonna have a tough time being at the top. L2's private servers rarely allow that, which is why I've had cases where some people were completely unbeatable, but Ashes could design their classes in such a way that there are no unbeatable player opponents. RPS design will definitely help with that.

And when you then apply the zerg potential to the equation, you have yourself a never-ending fight for dominance. And in PvE you don't really have that kind of fight. Well, you do, but it's just a "fight" against rng and more about your ability to react/adapt to sudden changes in the encounter rather than a more wholistic skillset of controlling your enemy, knowing their reactions, triggering those reactions at correct times rather than just reacting yourself, and changing your party/raid composition to properly address your enemy's changes in composition (be it an increase in numbers or a changeup in classes).

Btw, were there any EQ2 bosses that changed their mechanics between fights so completely that they required a different set of classes or gear? That is, not while you were trying to figure out how to beat the boss, but after that.