Supporting PvE Raiders in Ashes

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I forget if I've asked you this before. If you're clearing a hard instance, do you expect the loot to 100% drop or do you expect it to have a non-100% chance? Or is smth in-between, along the lines of "this instance has 10 potential drops, but it only drops 3 per clear (with randomized chances of each)"?

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Open world dungeons are as repeatable as instanced ones, except they're about the pvx experience rather than a pure pve one.

So, if anything, this bakery is selling cakes with chocolate and vanilla by default. With pure flavor limited amount cupcakes on the side. The bakery knows that their TA is limited and hopes that the cupcakes provide enough of a cushion to not go into the red.

And curse you all for talking about cakes and shit while I'm trying to eat less sugar

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My man, what are you even talking about? Are you sure you want to be making claims like that? NiKr clearly cares about good PvE in Ashes more than we do.

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This comes down to the loot tables of non-boss mobs and to the amount of instances available to any given person on a daily basis.

If non-boss mobs give even a fraction of a boss' value - killing them in ow dungeons is viable when you don't have access to a boss. And if, say, you're a mage and want to craft a new staff you may have 8 open world dungeons that have a few mobs and a few bosses that drop mats for it and you have 2 instances that do so as well (but are on a weekly reset timer) - you'll clear those 2 instances asap and will either have nothing to do or will simply go and fight over mobs/bosses in the ow dungeons.

So even if the instanced dungeons are repeatable, unless only the boss drops matter and instances are dailies - ow stuff is still more beneficial to put more devtime into, because it's gonna be the main source of content for the majority of people when it comes to their day-to-day gameplay. And those are the "face" of Steven's PvX design, so they better be presentable and nice.

NiKr wrote: »

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This comes down to the loot tables of non-boss mobs and to the amount of instances available to any given person on a daily basis.

If non-boss mobs give even a fraction of a boss' value - killing them in ow dungeons is viable when you don't have access to a boss. And if, say, you're a mage and want to craft a new staff you may have 8 open world dungeons that have a few mobs and a few bosses that drop mats for it and you have 2 instances that do so as well (but are on a weekly reset timer) - you'll clear those 2 instances asap and will either have nothing to do or will simply go and fight over mobs/bosses in the ow dungeons.

So even if the instanced dungeons are repeatable, unless only the boss drops matter and instances are dailies - ow stuff is still more beneficial to put more devtime into, because it's gonna be the main source of content for the majority of people when it comes to their day-to-day gameplay. And those are the "face" of Steven's PvX design, so they better be presentable and nice.

At this point I've lost track of the 'common definition' of PvX player, but basically, for my group, 'all of this'.

We don't want 'Base Toublek pumped up into forced spec changes and derivative puzzle solving, in an instance'. We don't want 'Halfassed Chernobog/King Excavator'.



We definitely don't want whatever the hell THIS is (Talus, guild boss version)



The only connection I see between drops and 'PvX player content goals' is that if you make good drops off boring open World mobs, you water down everything about the game to BDO tier. The solution to this is to make the mobs less boring, nothing else.

"Supporting PvX raiders in Ashes" is obviously priority, so the topic doesn't even have to be our usual rotunda about who is what. Assume we get PvX support, and want to give the PvEMainly players something. Do we even know what they (within the concept of Ashes) want? There's 'those that can't possibly get what they want', and maybe that's 'literally all of them'.

Just put decent-not-great Enchanting/Enhancing materials in the 'Instances' to smooth out the Econ curve and call it a day. As players move more out of the 'average/casual' space, they need these less, and get pushed into the Open World, possibly with the skill/invested mindset to stay. Laning Phase, but without even a Lane opponent.

Azherae wrote: »

We definitely don't want whatever the hell THIS is (Talus, guild boss version)

That's a guild boss? A dude that barely does any dmg, has like 3 attacks, easy shields and also a, I fucking hope not free, respawn 5 meters away from it? HUH?

Azherae wrote: »

The only connection I see between drops and 'PvX player content goals' is that if you make good drops off boring open World mobs, you water down everything about the game to BDO tier. The solution to this is to make the mobs less boring, nothing else.

Yep, which is why I always keep saying that I want hardcore pve across the board, and why I suggested that "growing difficulty dungeon room" mechanic a year or so ago.

I do doubt that I'd fall into the "common" definition of a pvxer though. Or maybe it's the opposite and I'm THE ONLY pvxer around, who wants the best of both worlds instead of saying that pve is shite and that pvp even existing prevents the game from being a pvx game.

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This is where Intrepid's world manager could come into play. They have the tools to control drop rates across the board and match them to server statuses, so instanced/ow content is equal in item acquisition pace - as long as that's what Intrepid want of course.

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I'm talking about the overall value of mobs. Say your high skill team can get money through some other means, with which you'd be able to purchase the mats from the non-boss mobs that you want (again, this is in the context of both your instances and the ow bosses being on cd).

But other groups of players who're interested in farming mobs and fighting people could then trade you those mats, were they to drop any (this would be me and any other pvx grind enjoyer).

Pretty much an "everyone wins" situation. I get to grind mobs, while fighting others who want to grind those mobs; you get to do whatever other content you see more valuable; we both benefit in the way we want, with you buying the item you need from me.

And again, any of the drop rates in this situation can be varied/controlled by the devs.

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Yes, we've discussed this before. You want EQ2 amounts of bosses in the game, while I simply do not see that happening in Ashes. Like, nowhere near that. Especially considering the 80/20 split, cause even if we somehow do get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of bosses (which is still nowhere near enough for a full server) - they will all be killed at all times, so, unless we have endless daily instances, no one will have that kind of content fulfillment.

If anything, I think your evaluation of instances just doesn't match Steven's. Instanced stuff will mostly be story-based, and for Steven it's important to tell his cool story, so it won't be wasted dev time even if those instances are one-offs (which I expect AT LEAST a half of them to be).

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I'm talking about the same boys. The disconnect might be coming from our different perceptions on their respawn timers. Cause I'm used to 24+-3h (iirc).

What do you expect the timer to be? Would it be simply "they all respawn at the start of the server's prime time?" Or smth way way shorter? I think we've talked about this before, but I forget your preferred number for this.

I'm saying that if even every damn room in the dungeon has that kind of boss boy, with their kill time probably being a few minutes - they'll be dead by the end of the first hour of primetime, and then players only have plain mobs to farm, if they want the drops from that dungeon.

And this applies to all dungeons on the server, as long as the server is full. 5 metros, with, say, 10 huge dungeons each (maybe 50? rooms). 2500 such bosses for, say, 1k people (top lvl competitive players looking for gear). ~120 groups, so ~20 bosses per group.

If respawn is at primetime - every room gets cleared within 3h tops. And that's if there is in fact so many dungeons with so many rooms with each one having a "~5m farm" boss, and with only 1k people even attempting to farm them. Reality will most likely have fewer rooms for more people.

Any other type of respawn usually leads to stronger groups shifting timers to their benefit and farming stuff off prime time, so majority of players have even less boss content.

And this comes back to your point of "the game doesn't give content to people" and that is EXACTLY what Steven has been saying for years. Not everyone gets a reward, because it has to be earned. This is why the game is PvX. People gotta fight people to fight mobs. THAT is the content, which then leads to a reward.

Your usual counter argument to this is that this is just a pvp game and those usually have shitty pve, so it's better to just call them pvp games. Which is why I keep saying that we gotta require good pve from Intrepid to justify the PvX nomenclature.

We agree on the "needs better pve" part, so main point of this post is "what respawn timer did you have in mind"?

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

Kinda sounds like my idea for "growing difficulty dungeon rooms"

Then a question related to that, what's the difference between having well-designed hardcore plain mobs and these mini bosses you want? Cause to me this seems exactly the same.

And I'd imagine these mini bosses would also have fairly low drop rates, as to not destroy the economy by overfarming them, so it would literally be the same as what I want, except in the name.

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So yeah, again, my main point is "all pve should be of high quality, so that the PvX name fits the gameplay". My room suggestion plays into that, and I feel like Steven's supposedly planned "dungeons know how fast you clear stuff" is somewhat similar to that in nature.

You might be clearing some rooms on your way to your preferred loot (cause I'd hope a huge dungeon has a range of loot tables) and when you get to your spot - you'll get some form of heightened reward, if your performance so far has been stellar. This obviously depends on the other player presence in the dungeon, and all that, but I hope you get my point.

In other words, how exactly is what you're asking any different to what I'm asking? And just to remind, my room suggestion includes a potential lock out of your room, so that your final bossy mob can have an even better designed combat than the general population, all while no one else can access your room.

NiKr wrote: »

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Kinda sounds like my idea for "growing difficulty dungeon rooms"

Then a question related to that, what's the difference between having well-designed hardcore plain mobs and these mini bosses you want? Cause to me this seems exactly the same.

And I'd imagine these mini bosses would also have fairly low drop rates, as to not destroy the economy by overfarming them, so it would literally be the same as what I want, except in the name.

NMs (Named Mobs? Notorious Monsters?) are a content question, but not a Raid question for most people that I know of.

They're fun, they have good drops, they can be really hard, they easily promote conflict even in FFXI where you can't literally kill other people.

The system described is the 'Lottery Pop' (at least that's the term I'm used to). This is why it has no respawn timer.

Ashes already has these, afaik. You might need to use a word for 'Raid/Alliance tier content for the level or area' (FFXI terminology doesn't do well here, they just call them 'HNMs' and no one even agrees on what the H stands for).

EDIT: Oh, as for the difference you requested, I'll throw in my data too.

Basically nothing. Their special attacks do more things, they have more health so that you have to think more about if you can afford to just offload damage to remove their threat quickly, etc. They're effectively required because normal mobs 'must be easier' (complexity wise) if you want players to grow, or to retain those that don't play at a high level.

But then, players like you need something to do, and players who are at that level need a goal to improve their skill toward.

And of course, we all need 'something to fight over'. Bonus if it can spawn in different rooms that aren't super close to each other and none of the parties are entirely sure which one.

Azherae wrote: »

You might need to use a word for 'Raid/Alliance tier content for the level or area' (FFXI terminology doesn't do well here, they just call them 'HNMs' and no one even agrees on what the H stands for).

This is then another question, that I believe I've discussed with Noaani in the past as well. Should raid-sized groups have as much content as single groups do?

And would that even be feasible from the gameplay side of things. I'd hope that raid-sized bosses do in fact have respawn timers and are in fact way more limited in numbers than these Named dudes.

And if that's the case, then raid activities are a separate discussion and the minibosses we're talking about would mainly be a group (2 at most) thing. And I think having smth like "clearing 3 Named dudes spawns a 2-party boss in a certain room" would provide that "smth" you mention here.

Azherae wrote: »

And of course, we all need 'something to fight over'. Bonus if it can spawn in different rooms that aren't super close to each other and none of the parties are entirely sure which one.

Azherae wrote: »

Basically nothing. Their special attacks do more things, they have more health so that you have to think more about if you can afford to just offload damage to remove their threat quickly, etc. They're effectively required because normal mobs 'must be easier' (complexity wise) if you want players to grow, or to retain those that don't play at a high level.

To me this is mainly an overworld thing and potentially an "early rooms in the dungeon" thing.

Players progress through lvls, which in themselves represent the increase in difficulty, which in turn justify the longer leveling process, exactly because players gotta learn how to fight well. And those who haven't learned, by the time they're max lvl, can fight overland mobs/NMs (who are easier) and/or fight slightly below their lvl, which would fill up dungeons of Stage5 nodes or early rooms of Metro ones.

This is why I said that it'd only be 1k people who're fighting over Metro dungeons, cause I'd imagine that this would be the rough amount of skill-enough players, even if majority of the server is at max lvl. Most likely that's on the lower side of estimation, but I was giving the example at least a bit of a chance.

In other words, my point is that dungeons should be the peak difficulty content in the game for your current lvl. So you either can clear them (or clear a part of them) or you gotta do a stage below your progress or overworld stuff.

And imo this would also somewhat prevent the weaker people from leaving the game, because these dungeons would most likely have a much higher probability of pvp, and this pvp would be against higher powered enemies, so if players learn from the start that equal-lvl content is not always the best choice of action - they'd be more willing to fight against weaker mobs in the endgame (these mobs are still difficult enough, but just easier because they're a step below the weak player's progress).

And if AoC's crafting system proves to be what it promised to be - fighting weaker stuff is still viable, because its mats can still be used/sold/recrafted.

In other words, "for everyone according to their ability" or whatever that red bearded man said in the past.